Rick caught his wife halfway up the ladder, numerous plastic black bats dangling on thin pieces of fishing wire swaying in her clenched fingers.

"Kate, what are you doing?" He tried to keep the alarm out of his voice, aware that coddling and being overprotective of his wife was something she neither wanted nor would put up with for very long.

Judging by the way her eyes cut over to him, her mouth pressed into a line of disapproval, he wasn't successful. "You shouldn't be climbing…." Rick said, hoping to soften her reaction to his panic with a dose of very gently broken truth.

"Castle, I'm not an invalid," she huffed at him, stepping up one more rung of the ladder even while he bit his lip and prayed that she didn't fall.

"Seriously, Beckett," he began after a moment of watching, his heart lodged somewhere in his throat. Sure, he knew his wife, and understood on some level that she would never put herself and their child at risk by doing something she didn't find herself capable of, but Rick also knew that pregnancy was full of surprises and his normally graceful wife becoming a bit clumsy and awkward was bound to be one of them. "I'll do those. Get down."

It surprised him that she relented after hanging just one of the bats, her descent from the ladder very measured and cautious. Once her feet were back on the ground, Rick took his first full breath since stepping into the living room, quickly taking the decorations from her as if that alone would prevent Kate from heading back up to finish the job.

To help the cause, he stepped up the rungs quickly, extending an arm over his head to press one of the strings, its end coated in sticky tack, to the ceiling. It was pleasing to see the way the bat twirled and then dangled down, the effect of the different lengths Rick had cut the strings adding a bit of dimension to the decor.

"Castle," Kate said after a bit of silence, giving him pause as he put up the second-to-last string. Immediately, all of his attention turned toward his wife, her face shining with a combination of embarrassment and shame that he couldn't quite figure out. "I'm sorry," she continued, placing a hand on the ladder."I wouldn't have been up there except…."

Kate hedged on finishing her thought, bright spots of color blooming on her cheeks. "Except what?" he asked, stepping down one rung to be closer to Beckett in her bare feet.

"Sometimes I forget," she admitted with a little sigh. "Not that I'm pregnant, I never could forget that. But I'm so used to doing whatever needs to be done without hesitation that I forget that I shouldn't, even if I can."

He could tell from the wariness in her eyes that admitting about her forgetfulness wasn't the only thing on her mind, so Rick smiled, leaning in to dust his lips across Kate's with a gentle grin.

"You've always been an independent person, and I've always loved that about you," he replied, lifting a hand to stroke his fingers along her jaw until Kate gave him a small smile in return. "But you are right, just because you can do some things, it doesn't mean you should. Like climbing ladders, chasing criminals…."

"Shooting a gun, leaving my desk," Kate added on, this time giving him a full blown smile.

"Exactly," he chuckled, darting in to meet Kate's mouth for a slow kiss that nearly had him falling off the ladder to reach for her at the feel of her teeth sinking into his lower lip.

Sticking his hand out to grab the ladder in order to keep himself upright, Rick caught a glimpse of his mother in the corner, quickly spinning to finish setting a pair of tall black candlesticks already topped with a pair of candles onto the piano.

Had he realized they had an audience, Rick wouldn't have put his tongue in Kate's mouth.

Well, maybe not.

Chuckling to himself as Kate bent over another box of decorations, he saw the front door opening, Alexis on the other side with a big grin. "Hey pumpkin," he called as she stepped inside, shutting the door behind her and shrugging out of her jacket to reveal a tight black dress and a pair of towering heels that he was sure had once kept residence on a shelf in the walk-in closet he shared with Kate. "Why are you so dressed up?"

The intended casualness of his question obviously didn't fool any of the women in the room, all of them exchanging pointed looks that quickly bounced in his direction. "What? I just wanted to know!"

More specifically, he wanted his daughter to admit to him whom she had dressed like that for, but he wasn't going to share that with the rest of his family.

"What? A girl can't get dressed up to help her family decorate for Halloween?" Alexis replied, the look in her blue eyes a little too innocent to be believable. And when Rick combined it with the slight smirk his daughter was giving him, he rolled his eyes, stepping down from the ladder to wrap his arms around her.

"Maybe some girls," he said, dusting a kiss at the crown of her head. "But not you. Did you have a good time on your date?"

Her smirk twisted into a full-blown grin at the question, and he watched in fascination as Alexis did something he hadn't seen in years. His daughter dipped her head down, trying to hide behind a curtain of hair that was far too short to conceal the pink glow at her cheeks.

In a flash, Rick had a memory of Alexis at 15 - grinning and day-dreaming over her first date with the kid from her Advanced Poetry class at Marlowe Prep - and he just wanted time to slow down. His daughter wasn't 15 and thinking about her first kiss anymore. She was 22, nearly a college graduate, and old enough to make her own life-altering choices, which presented a whole new set of problems.

"I did," she said with a happy little sigh, her eyes flicking over to meet both Kate and her grandmother in turn. "I really, really did."

The beep of his phone cut into the conversation, the sound signaling that the pizza he had put together and tossed into the oven had finished baking. Giving Alexis another smile, Rick moved towards the kitchen, leaving his daughter and Kate to prop a skeleton against the wall by the front door.

"How did the outfit go over?" Kate asked once her hands were free, smiling at Martha as the woman approached to join in on the conversation.

"It was a hit," Alexis replied, grinning at her grandmother's hum of approval. "I overdressed for what he had planned, but you were right and it didn't seem to matter. He kept complimenting me, and didn't even mind when I had to go back upstairs to grab tennis shoes."

"Why in the world would you need tennis shoes for a date?" Martha asked, frowning at the very idea.

"Laser tag, Gram." Kate didn't think it was possible, but Alexis' smile stretched just a bit wider, practically beaming at the two of them. "He wanted to take me to do something that he enjoyed, and I couldn't do a course in Kate's heels."

"Laser tag," Martha repeated, somehow looking both pleased that her granddaughter had had such a nice time and dubious that such an activity was a date-appropriate behavior. "Well, as long as you had fun, kiddo."

Chuckling at Martha as she glided away towards the kitchen, Alexis stepped out of her heels with a sigh, flexing her feet in relief. Bending down, she snagged the pair from the floor, passing them back to Kate with a murmured thank you.

"Anytime, Alexis," she said in reply, placing the shoes near the office door and reaching in to give the young woman a quick hug.

"If you ladies have finished conspiring to keep me out of the loop on Alexis' dating life," Rick said from behind them, sliding an arm around both of their waists to gently guide them towards the kitchen island where the fragrance of cheese and tomato sauce waited. "Our dinner is waiting."

"Dad, we aren't conspiring," Alexis sighed at him. "I just… asked Kate for a bit of advice."

"And told your grandmother about Kyle."

The flicker of shock on Alexis' face quickly twisted into betrayal as she glanced towards Kate, who winced in response. "I didn't tell him," she said quickly. "But we saw the two of you together at the book release party…"

"It's just as well," she said, sliding onto a stool. "I asked him to come to the party tomorrow, so it would have come out then."

"What I don't understand is why you didn't want to tell me," Rick said, and though he tried to hide the hurt in his voice, it was still apparent in the emotion bleeding into his eyes. "Did you think I wouldn't approve?"

"Oh, Richard," Martha sighed at him, topping up her wine glass from her spot at the opposite end of the counter. "It has nothing to do with that."

"Then what?" he asked, turning to look at all three women. "Alexis tells me everything."

"I was going to tell you-"

"She was going to tell you-"

Alexis and Kate spoke up in tandem, sharing a brief smile at their synchronicity before Kate gestured for Alexis to go ahead. "I didn't say anything because I wasn't sure there was anything to talk about," she explained. "Kyle - or Officer Hernandez to you - was assigned to lock up when I was at the Twelfth after…."

Alexis hesitated for a moment, her eyes welling up with tears as the memory of Paige's death rose up to kick her where it hurt the most. "...after Paige," she whispered, clearing her throat quickly and giving her dad a watery smile.

"He and I talked a bit, and then I ran into him one afternoon when I came by the precinct," Alexis continued, talking over her dad's question of when and why she had come by the precinct. "And we went to get coffee together, that turned into an invitation to come to your release party as friends and then, tonight, an actual date. I talked to Kate because she knows Kyle, and she would give me an honest opinion."

"So would I."

With a tilt of her head and a raise of her eyebrows, Alexis conveyed the perfect amount of skepticism and amusement, the expression evaporating just a bit of the pain and grief she was still harboring over the death of a childhood friend. "Sure, once you listed all the reasons I shouldn't be dating a boy - any boy."

Passing a plate with two thick slices of pizza to Kate, Rick considered the merits of Alexis's words, admitting to himself that his daughter was right. Besides, did he really mind that she had reached out to Kate? That Kate had responded not only by encouraging his kid towards a guy who seemed nice enough when they had interacted at the precinct, but by helping her decide on what to wear on her date?

He could never be upset over Alexis finding something that made her smile and laugh, those two things so rare for his daughter in the past few weeks. "You're right," he said, passing Alexis a plate with her own slices and returning to plate another for his mother. "But I tell you not to date, only because no one can ever measure up to the greatness of your dad."

Clapping his hands together at their groans and eye rolls, Rick snagged a thick slice for himself, biting off a big bite. Seconds later, his eyes were watering and his mouth was on fire, the steaming piece of pizza searing the roof of his mouth and leaving him hopping around the kitchen, waving his hand in front of his mouth even once he had swallowed.

"Hot," he croaked at his girls, each of them doing their best not to laugh.


The glow of the computer screen illuminated the otherwise dark office, Rick's fingers typing a steady beat across the keys that might have fooled his sleeping wife that he was writing.

That was what he had told her when she had crawled into bed after Alexis and his mother had left for the night, the decorating for the party finished and the remains from their pumpkin carving contest cleaned up.

Kate would lecture him for hours if she knew that he had snuck photos from the files on the clown murders, which was why he had no intention of telling her until he had something concrete to add to the case.

Opening up an email from Hayley, Rick scanned her text, a smile curling at his mouth; the Brit had come through yet again. At his request, she had contacted the camp director and convinced the man to turn over a list of campers in 1998, which he opened with a click of the mouse.

Settling in with a sip of coffee from one of his favorite mugs, he started at the top, typing the first name on the list into his browser's search engine.


"Beckett, wake up."

She was pulled from sleep thanks to Castle's urgent tone, scowling at her husband when she cracked open one eye. "We can have sex in the morning, Castle," she sighed, nudging his hand away and closing her eyes.

"I... well, yes," he replied, momentarily distracted by the mental image of Kate all wet and soapy from a shower, pressed up against the tile wall while he... Giving a fierce shake of his head, Rick nudged his wife again. "Looking forward to it," Rick said, "but that's not what I need to tell you."

With a groan, Kate opened her eyes, slowly sitting up to fix him with that intense stare that he knew had given more than one criminal pause over the years. "Then what?"

"Tessa Hannon."

Brushing the hair from her face, she frowned at her husband, struggling to recall the name as her brain tried to push past sleep and fire on all cylinders. "The witness from the first murder?" she asked, sounding a bit more unsure than she liked.

"One and the same," he said, thrusting a piece of paper into her hand and jabbing a finger near the middle of the page. "That name is on a list of Yocona Falls campers from 1998. I know that's not definite confirmation of anything…."

"But it's a hell of a coincidence," Kate added, suddenly wide awake and picking up on Castle's thought. "How did you find this?"

"Hayley."

Not bothering to ask for the full story - she could find that out later - Kate reached for her phone, scrolling through her contacts until she found the number she needed for the detective currently on duty at the Twelfth. "Saunders, I need you to run a name for me. Tessa Hannon. She would be between 11 and 18 in 1998; likely lives in the city or one of the boroughs."

A minute later, she was out of bed, hurrying into the closet to grab pants and a sweater, whatever shoes her hands closed on first: a pair of flats that she slipped on without hesitation.

When she stepped back into the bedroom, Castle was already dressed, cell phone in hand. "I know we were thinking the killer was a man because of the height, but I saw her at the crime scene, Beckett. She's definitely tall enough to be the killer. Close to six feet tall, if not right on the nose, in tennis shoes."

Shrugging on the trench coat that she had carried out from the closet, she gave a nod, moving into the office to unlock the safe and pull her gun out, quieting Castle's protest with a look. "If she's the killer, there's no way we are going without a weapon," she told him. "There will be backup and this is a last resort, but we are taking it and a side piece."

That said, she reached in for her smaller gun, passing it to Castle as her phone rang.

Fishing it from her pocket, she lifted it to her ear. "Beckett." Minutes passed with the two of them standing in the office, Kate listening intently while Rick hovered nearby, trying to catch snatches of the information being relayed to her. "Text me the address, and have uniforms head there immediately. Observe only until they hear otherwise."

Dropping the phone back into her pocket, Kate picked up her badge and keys from her desk. "Interesting thing about Tessa Hannon," she said. "Turns out that Anthony Deveney's parents were her legal guardians. They grew up together after her parents died."

Rick felt his mouth fall open, the gasp slipping out of his mouth. "That is a twist I did not see coming."