The instance the shot had resonated in the staircase, two thoughts went through Kate's head. She acted on the first – Get Castle out of the line of fire – out of pure instinct, grabbing her companion by his shoulders and pushing him down behind one of the desks with adrenalin-enhanced strength. Castle was far too surprised to put up any resistance, but when she got back up to follow up on her second thought – Ryan, Esposito! – he reacted a lot faster than she had thought him capable of. His hand grasped her wrist and he whispered in a commanding tone of voice: "Kate, wait!".

The sound of the gun shot changed into loud, angry shouts, and they weren't Ryan or Esposito's. She managed to discern three different male voices, but she couldn't understand a single word. Three – three voices?! It didn't make any sense. There was supposed to be one guy up there – one! "Let me go!", Kate shot back and tried to break away, but even though Castle didn't have her training, he was still a lot stronger and apparently not intent on giving in to her will. "They need h–"

He cut her short with a look that expressed a deep concern, a fear for his own life and that of his friends, combined with a steely determination, and the words: "I know. But you're not helping them by running into the line of fire like a rookie. We need back-up."

Though everything inside her screamed to get into that staircase to come to her partners' aid, she also knew he was right. Which meant she had to get back to the car – how could she have been so reckless? Finding Christopher, bringing him in for questioning… It should have been so easy that she had deemed radios and safety jackets, standard protocol, unnecessary. But there was no time to blame herself right now – that could and would happen later, as she knew only too well. Now she needed to get out of here and back to the car before …

The scream was shrill enough to pierce marrow and bone and occupied every single thought she had had up till that point. Judging by the look of pure terror on Castle's face, he had heard the word hidden inside the outcry as well – a name that they knew only too well. Javi. Oh God. This wasn't happening. This just wasn't happening. It took Kate every grain of self-restraint to take back control over her own thoughts and her body that seemed to be hell-bent on casting any caution to the wind. Think clearly, she forced herself to calm down. Back-up. Now. Go get back-up.

She raised herself up, peering at the doorway to the stairs and trying to assess the time it would take her to dart through the warehouse and reach the parking lot in front of the factory. Half a minute, maybe one minute. Should be possible. "I'll –", she was about to say when another shot caught her utmost attention and made her throw herself down next to Castle again. The bullet ricocheted off the metal desk without doing any harm, but the signal it had sent was clear: No way could she get out that way.

"Woah!", her companion exclaimed and they both ducked lower, protecting their heads with their arms, but the attack wasn't followed up upon with the rain of fire that she had expected. Instead a deep voice resounded in the warehouse: "We know you're there, Detective. You and your pathetic excuse for an author." The words sounded as if they were spoken very carefully and they were filled with an accent that she couldn't place, but it wasn't like she had the time to think about it. The man growled something in a foreign language and she could hear footsteps running from the scene towards the door on the parking lot side. Then he directed his attention towards her and Castle again: "I want you to listen, and I want you to listen carefully."

Oh, she listened carefully, alright. She usually did when somebody was threatening her life, especially when she at the same time was concerned about the well-being of her partners. Her fingers were playing with her gun almost on their own, but without knowing which aces the guy had up his sleeves, there was no way she would use it. The scream still resonated in her ears and made her painfully aware of the fact that she had no idea if Esposito was still alive and what had happened to Ryan afterwards.

The next sound at least answered one of her questions: A cry of pain reached her ears and there was no mistaking the source: Kevin. This time, her body acted before logic could kick in, and she jumped to her feet, her gun pointed at the doorway to the staircase. Castle managed to pull her back down almost as quickly as she had gotten up, but she had seen enough to know that they were in way over their heads. There were two guys in black clothes and with ski masks over their heads, a very large, bulky one and a smaller, athletic one, both with guns in their hands. Ryan was kneeling between them, hands behind his back and apparently only held upright by the slim guy who had dug his nails into the Detective's brown hair and was pressing his weapon against Ryan's throat. Even from this distance and in the fading light, Kate could see the pained expression on her partner's face and considering recent events she was pretty sure that those had been tears glistening on Ryan's cheeks. Oh God. Esposito… Kate took a deep breath, placed her useless service weapon on the concrete next to her and stood up once more, very, very slowly and despite Castle's Get back down-expression and exclaimed: "I'm listening."

She saw the large man smile underneath the mask and wished she could wipe that expression off his face with a well-placed punch. "Here are our terms, Detective Beckett", he said, seemingly unimpressed by her previous stunt. "If you want to see Detective Ryan again alive –" At that the other guy tightened his grip and was rewarded with a quiet whimper that cut directly into Kate's heart. "you will not investigate this case any further." From the outside, she could hear the sound of an engine roaring to life – probably their escape vehicle – but there was nothing she could do about that right now. Not if she didn't want to endanger Kevin's life further. Dammit! She was clenching her fists so tight, the skin on her knuckles turned a ghostly white. Was there nothing she could do? Nothing at all? Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Castle get up too and soon felt his hand on her shoulder, and she was thankful for the gentle squeeze that made her relax just a little bit and made it possible for her to think. There wasn't that much time before the vehicle would be at the door, and she had to make every second count.

"How do I know you'll keep your word?", she asked in as strong a voice as she could muster. The answer didn't surprise her, but still hurt like a knife being plunged into her heart: "You do not. But I promise you, if you do continue looking into Nina Carrera's death, Detective Ryan will wish that he had never been born." The words were powerful enough – she had gotten the message –, but the slim guy apparently felt a need to underline them nevertheless by forcing Ryan to his feet and using the handle of the gun to place a hard blow in her partner's midriff that made him stagger one step forward. The punch had been hard enough to cause him trouble breathing which his assaulter acknowledged with a widespread grin.

"Alright, alright!", she called out before that sadistic bastard would take her silence as an excuse to hurt Ryan further. "We'll close the case, I promise. Just leave him alone!" Though she tried really hard to make her voice sound commanding and self-assured, she could feel how miserably she failed. Seeing Ryan like this, still not knowing what had happened to Esposito… Slowly, but surely the wall she had built around herself began to crumble and she was eternally grateful for Castle's reassuring touch. This wasn't the time to fall apart.

"Oh, do not worry, Detective Beckett. As long as you keep your nose out of our affair, I will keep my associate from harming your partner any further", the large man said in that calm, chilling voice of his, though his eyes were by now directed towards the doorway out. Kate discovered the brown van the same instant Ryan's captors did and she could have flogged herself for not investigating the vehicle when she had seen it before. "Now allow me to bit you adieu", he went on and gave his associate a sign that caused him to grab Ryan at the shoulder and push him towards the way out. The gun was pointed at the floor now, as if the guy didn't deem it necessary to threaten Ryan directly anymore, and apparently her partner saw the chance that presented itself to whirl around and yell: "Javier's been shot. Third fl–" The last word turned into an agonized gasp when his captor drove his elbow into Ryan's solar plexus before slamming him into the wall next to the doorway with such force that Kate could see how consciousness drained out of him quickly. The large man said a word in the foreign language – something like Trottle – and helped his associate to half-drag, half-catapult Ryan into the open van before the side door crashed shut and the van left the factory area with screeching tires.

Kate didn't lose one precious second. "Ambulance!", she yelled while already diving across the knocked over desk and darting towards the staircase as quickly as her feet would carry her. Hang on, Javi, she thought and had to fight down the panic that now finally had decided to roam freely in her upset mind. Right now, there was nothing she could do for Ryan but make sure that his partner survived, and that was exactly what she intended to do. She thought she heard Castle say something behind her, but she was enhancing the distance between them too fast to understand his words, already sprinting through the doorway and taking the stairs up to the third floor three steps at a time, her heart pounding heavily, painfully in her chest. Hang on, Javi! The scream, the tears on Kevin's cheeks, his panicky tone of voice all should have prepared her for the worst, but when she saw Esposito lying there on the floor and all that blood – Oh God, so much blood – she couldn't help but let out a short cry of fear, anger, despair, before her senses returned to her and first aid measures came flowing into her mind. It wasn't before she had thrown herself down next to Esposito that she recognized the first aid attempts that already had been made – one makeshift bandage around his chest and stomach, one around his left thigh, made out of a formerly white, torn blouse that already was turning red, but was quite taut and prevented Esposito from bleeding out. Or had at least done so until now. Kate hurriedly took off her own blouse to use it as a tourniquet to compress arterial circulation in his leg – judging by the amount of blood oozing through the makeshift bandage, his attacker must have hit the femoral artery, and that was bad. Really bad. Though the bullets hadn't hit anything immediately vital like heart or lungs – if they had, he'd be dead by now –, the blood loss alone was life-threatening, and he needed antibiotics fast in order to avoid septic shock due to infection from the stomach wound. She just hoped Castle had gotten a hold of that ambulance yet.

"Hang in there, Javi. Please, please hang in there!", she whispered while applying the tourniquet. Whether it was due to the pain she caused him, or whether he just recognized a friendly voice, she didn't know, but suddenly his eyelids fluttered and he mumbled something inaudible. Kate crept closer towards him and tried to catch his gaze, but his eyes were glassy and seemed to stare into nothing, as if he didn't even notice she was there. His lips moved again, forming one word, and when she placed her ear next to his mouth, she was able to understand what he was saying: "R-ryan?". A piercing sting went through Kate's chest. Despite the blood loss and his half-conscious state, Esposito's only worry was still his partner's wellbeing, just as Ryan's only worry had been Javi's, even with a gun to his head. Oh, guys, she thought and whispered with a heavy heart: "He's… he's alright. Don't worry." She hated lying to him, but in his current state she thought it best not to upset him further. Apparently, those words had been all he needed to hear, because his lips curled into something like a smile before his head sank back onto his chest. He'd drifted back into unconsciousness, which probably was for the best. Kate made sure the tourniquet was tightly secured, then she leaned back and let her thoughts flow freely. Instantly they began circulating around the bandage she had found on her partner. The blouse looked like it belonged to a woman, and though she hadn't seen the last person of the trio that had attacked Ryan and Esposito, she was pretty sure she hadn't heard a female voice before. And even if she had, it didn't make any sense that they would treat Esposito after shooting him. So who had helped him?

"Ambulance is on its way", Castle pulled her from her thoughts as he knelt down beside them with a concerned expression on his rugged features. "How bad is it?"

It was horridly bad, but Kate didn't have to say that for Castle to know. On the one hand, it didn't take a psychic to read her facial expression, and on the other hand, he had done enough GSW research to know a fair deal about the seriousness of a punctured artery and the risks of an open gastrointestinal tract. And if that wasn't enough, her barely stifled tears were a dead giveaway. Don't die on me!, she thought once more and used all of her body strength to put more pressure on the arterial wound. How much blood had he lost already? How much more could his body take? "You hang in there, Javier Esposito!", she hissed, only first noticing that she had spoken the words out aloud when Castle muttered: "Can't be long now. I'll meet them downstairs." Then she was alone with her thoughts and her dying partner once more, focusing intently on his breathing that seemed to grow weaker by the second.

Kate was completely taken by surprise, when a hushed voice asked from behind her: "Is he… is he going to be okay?"

Kate's head snapped around and her gaze locked with that of a young woman who stood in the doorway to the third floor. The first thing Kate noticed were the long, blonde locks that were reaching a long way down her back – blonde hair, like on the brush, she thought – next the sapphire blue eyes that stared at her filled with fear. She was tall, almost half a head higher than Kate, and very skinny, as the lack of a top revealed – now at least she knew where the white blouse had come from.

"Thank you for aiding him", Kate muttered with a nod in Esposito's direction. "He has lost a lot of blood and I… I don't know if he'll make it. But at least you gave him a fighting chance." She meant every word – without the immediate help, the blood loss might already have been too much before she had reached her partner. The woman – more of a girl, really, Kate assessed her to be seventeen, maybe even younger – smiled timidly and said in a thick accent: "I could not just leave him there." It wasn't the same accent Ryan's kidnappers had spoken; this one she had heard many times before. Eastern European, probably Russian, which really didn't make any sense, but at this point Kate had stopped trying to make sense of anything concerning this case. At this point all she could think about were the nerve-racking minutes it took the ambulance to make it out to the sugar refinery, and all her energy went into preventing the blood to flow too freely from Javier's wounds. It was only after she finally heard the siren coming closer, after she saw the paramedics haste towards them and helped them get Esposito on the gurney, only after she was sure that there was nothing more she could do for her partner, that she thought about turning around to face Esposito's savior once more. But by then, the girl was gone.