Castle's POV:
My mother and I stood in the elevator in the 12th, anxiously staring at the floor numbers and waiting for the fourth floor button to light up. Ryan and Esposito were going to help us find Alexis. Apparently, she had actually been on her flight to JFK, so I didn't understand why she hadn't told Pi or why she just disappeared at the party they were at. The doors opened and we stepped into the familiar homicide department. I could see the cappuccino machine, still in its regular place in the break room. Ryan and Espo were standing in front of the murder board, checking for clues they might have missed. I guess I had expected everything would be different since Kate left, and along with that, I had to also. But everything was the same. It was the same place, with the same smell of coffee, and the same background noise of authoritative people talking over each other.
"Castle, Martha, over here," Esposito called. They stepped away from the murder board and brought us into the break room, where two more people were waiting, I assumed the parents of Kayla Lansing, the other missing girl. We sat down on the couch and it felt so weird to be in this position. This was the same room Kate and I had used to interrogate the people the department wouldn't let us go full-on at, and also where we would talk to the victim's next of kin. But now it was my turn. I was no longer on the team, I was the opposite of it. "We've ascertained information..." Ryan began, but was interrupted by the door bursting open. "The FBI will be assisting on this case," an intimidating FBI agent stepped in. "I'm Agent McCord," and then she pointed to her partner slipping in behind her. "You may know my partner, Agent Beckett."