A steady drip sounded from somewhere to her left, and a phone rang obnoxiously loudly about ten metres to her right. Kate Beckett was no fool: she kept quiet and and closed her eyes to heighten her hearing.

"Beckett," the strange woman answered the phone. It was slightly alarming to say the least; not only had the woman kidnapped her, but she was pretending to be her?

"Oh, hi, Rick," she heard the woman gush. "Oh, no, there's a bit of a problem with the part we need for the car – I'm still trying my hardest to get there."

Beckett rolled her eyes. She assumed this might be the fourth time that Castle had called her, and either Castle knew she'd been kidnapped and wasn't letting on, or he didn't know. And she went with the first idea, considering that she regularly referred to her partner as Castle, and not as Rick.

"Okay, yeah, I'll see you later," Giselle Chambers said in a passable imitation of Beckett's voice. She heard the woman hang the phone up and then the footsteps that echoed off the walls came closer and closer. Kate had opened her eyes, yet due to the lighting, she wasn't able to see quite as well as she'd hoped.

"Oh, you're awake," Giselle sneered. "He really likes you, you know. Richard. He's called three times to check on you today. Isn't that sweet?"

"Three?" Beckett asked, shrugging. She was trying desperately to keep her cool here. "Wasn't too far off then."

"I don't want him to like you," Chambers said, annoyed that Beckett had been so nonchalant about this. "He's supposed to like me. Understand?"

"Who are you?" Beckett questioned.

"I'm not the one tied up, sweetie," she answered. "You answer to me, not the other way around."

"Who are you to Rick?" she asked, not giving any indication that Castle might know that she wasn't really Beckett.

"We were going to get married once," she said.

Beckett raised her eyebrows. "Is that so?" she asked. "Why – uh, why didn't you two get married?"

The other woman froze up. "I've been stalking all four of you," she said, striking up a defence. "I know everything I need to know about you to be able to make one phone call, and have your lover boy come running."

"We are not together," Beckett sighed. "And once I get out of here, I can have you done for stalking."

"Oh, you don't actually think you're getting out of here alive, do you? How sweet. You, and Kevin and Javier - you're all going to die."

"Castle!" Roy Montgomery yelled, storming into Beckett's apartment. "What in the hell are you doing here? I told you to stay away from the case."

"Shhhhhh!" Castle hissed, motioning for him to be quiet. "I'm thinking."

"Castle. I know your theory."

"How?"

"I ran into Ryan and Esposito in the Morgue," he answered. "Why would you possibly make that connection?"

"Gut feeling," Castle shrugged. "And, also, nobody heard screams. What's one thing that can knock you out instantly without a sound?"

"Do you think it might be possible that Beckett was kidnapped inside her house?"

"I'm just going over that now, and the answer is no. Do you remember the Scott Dunn case? How he blew up her apartment? I stayed with her the night before, sleeping on the couch, and she informed me that she slept with a gun. If she had heard anything out of the ordinary inside the house, she would have been able to stop it."

"So? What if she was in the shower?"

"Her gun's not here, which means she has it. Which means she was out of the shower when she was taken. Besides, I don't think she showered this morning."

"What makes you think that?"

"There's no trace of water in the bathtub?" he answered, realising how awkward and slightly stalker-ish this sounded.

"You're sounding really creepy, Castle."

"I'm just going over everything I can think of," he said. "Do you have any more information that I can work with?"

"Well, the prints you ordered from Beckett's phone – which I need to talk to you about – came from one Giselle Chambers. Picked her up -"

"Giselle Chambers?" Castle asked, suddenly worried.

"You know her?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "She proposed to me once after knowing me for less than a month. Said she was head over heels in love with me... I turned her down, never saw her again after that. And if Giselle was the one that took her... that means she's after me, not Beckett. But then, why would he take Beckett?"

"Please," Esposito said, walking into the room. "Everybody knows you two like each other. And the easiest way to get to you is to take someone you love – extremely common with stalkers and kidnappers."

"Love?" Castle sputtered.

"I mean, you know, care about. I reviewed the security footage again, Captain, and there's no camera for Beckett's hallway. However, a woman was seen dragging an unconscious body down to the parking garage."

"Which would help if we knew what kind of car Chambers drove," Castle growled.

"How long ago was your relationship with Chambers?" Montgomery asked.

"If you could call it that, my relationship with her was a year and a half ago, and it only lasted about three weeks."

"And then you..."

"Well, I refused to marry her, she left peacefully, albeit upset, I finished Storm Fall and started shadowing Beckett. You know the rest."

"Was there ever any indication that Chambers was dangerous?" Esposito asked.

Castle furrowed his brow and looked around. "Where's Ryan?" he asked.

Esposito spun around. "He was right behind me a few minutes ago – said he had to go to the bathroom."

"He's not back yet?"

Without waiting for an answer, Castle called Beckett. Ignoring the two rings in his pocket, he waited for it to go to voicemail. "Beckett," came the answer.

"Beckett? Do you know where you are?"

"Castle? I don't know – it's dark. Water dripping. Why?"

"We're trying to find you, and we think Ryan's just been kidnapped. Has she caught on to us yet?"

"No, she hasn't."

"How did you answer the phone?"

Beckett, though Castle couldn't see, blushed and closed her eyes. "Using my nose."

Castle grinned. "I'd love to see that."

"Gotta go," she whispered, and the call ended.

He turned to see Montgomery and Esposito staring at him, eyebrows raised. "That was Beckett – the actual Beckett," he clarified. "She just confirmed what we already know: dripping water, and she said it was dark. If she was in a basement, there'd be like, a small window to the outside world, wouldn't there?"

"It's unlikely she's in the sewer," Esposito said. "Somebody would have noticed one woman dragging another down a manhole."

Castle ignored all the sexual references he could tie into that statement. "So where is she?"

"I want a security detail on Castle and Esposito at all times," Montgomery ordered. "If anybody so much as approaches them, you start closing in. Is that understood? These are people that are safe."

Castle and Esposito sat down at their work stations, mulling over the recent development – if you could call another friend and colleague being kidnapped a development. Both were staring absently in the direction of the murder board, when Beckett's desk phone rang.

"Castle," he answered it distractedly.

"How did I know you'd be at my desk?" Giselle's voice answered. Obviously she was losing her ability to imitate Beckett effectively. Or maybe Castle was just getting better at noticing the differences between Chambers' cheap imitation and the actual Beckett.

"Oh, I don't know, maybe you know me too well," Castle replied carefully, waving at Esposito to get him to trace the call. "Where are you? I haven't seen you all day."

"Why Rick?" she asked. "Miss me?"

"A little bit," he shrugged. "Are you at home? Maybe I could swing by and visit? I'll bring Chinese food, your favourite."

Esposito nodded, and Castle tried to get off the phone as soon as possible. "I'll be there in fifteen minutes!"

"Rick!" Giselle yelled, but Castle hung up the phone too quickly.

"Where's the call from?" Castle asked, eager to get going. In fact, he didn't even wait for the answer, but grabbed his coat and walked out of the precinct.

"Castle! Where are you going?"

"To Beckett's apartment," Castle replied, "where Chambers thinks I'm going."

"So why are you going to go there? She's after you, I hope you realise."

"Yes, she is after me," Castle said. "And so I'm going to go. Meanwhile, you're going to make sure Beckett and Ryan get out of wherever they are alive. Do you understand me?" Castle fixed him with a stare that Esposito knew meant that if Castle didn't have his way, he might be involved in another murder.

"Understood," Esposito nodded, and walked back into the station.

Giselle stalked angrily into her basement, where she held Kevin Ryan and Kate Beckett. In a rage, she ripped the cloth from around Beckett's mouth, clawing some skin off in the process, and pulled her face close to hers.

"You and I are going on a little field trip," Chambers growled. "Your boyfriend wants to have Chinese with you in your apartment, and I don't want him to know I've got you just yet."

"Cute, but my boyfriend is in Africa, and he's not coming back until next week."

"Oh, really? So why did the two of you kiss last week?"

"What?" Beckett asked, her mouth dropping open in shock. Ryan started roaring with laughter.

"Those two? Kiss? Please, if that had happened, I'd know about it."

"You really have been stalking us, haven't you?" Beckett realised. "The only people that could have possibly known about that are me, Castle, and the guy that I clocked over the head, who we arrested. How did you find out?"

"Wait, you mean...?" Ryan started, but stopped after Beckett glared at him.

"The building across the street," Chambers smiled darkly. "It looked like you two really meant it. Otherwise you wouldn't have gone back for more. How long were you waiting to do that, Detective Beckett?"

Beckett wished more than anything that her arms and legs were not tied behind her back. Nothing would give her more pleasure right now than beating the woman that knew too much about her relationship with Castle to a pulp. Instead, she closed her eyes and let out a deep breath.

"If we don't leave now, he'll get there before us," Beckett informed her. "And you wouldn't that now, would you?"

Giselle locked eyes with her for a moment, then put the cloth back around her mouth and dragged Beckett from the room.

Hey guys, easily not my best chapter. Sooo now that Ryan's found out about the kiss how long do you think it'll be until Esposito and Lanie find out too?

Well, I know this is hardly pertinent to my writing, but I got a kitten on Sunday night, and his name is Marco. He's been messing around and crawling up into a ball on my laptop when he's not getting attention. The other day, in a matter of about five seconds, he managed to turn my music on, mute my sound, retweet something, open up my dashboard and, lastly, translate from Portuguese to English.

He also managed to get rid of a whole section of chapter eight of this fic last night, so I'm currently working on redoing that again, because the first time I did it, I thought it was going too fast, and I realised that it wasn't really where I wanted it to end up anyway.

Anyway, if you have any suggestions, questions, comments, advice, constructive criticism, be sure to let me know. You can review the story, or private message if you like, but I would love to heat it.

Love, gabiellexx