When she was sure that she'd cried herself out, Beckett left the bathroom where she'd been hiding for the past hour, and went back to her desk. She supposed that she'd better look at the crime scene photos that Esposito and Ryan had left for her while they went and got something for lunch.

This time she noticed it straight away – no blood splatter at either of the crime scenes. And both of the bodies had been lying down peacefully, almost as though they were sleeping when they'd been shot. Confused, she went through the autopsy notes that Lanie had presumably finished while she'd been... indisposed.

"So they are linked," she muttered to herself, fumbling around for her phone. She'd been just about to ring Castle when she remembered – they weren't working together anymore. She put the phone back down on her desk, controlling her emotions rather well, in her opinion, when Esposito and Ryan arrived back at their desks.

"Looking over the case files?" Ryan asked.

"Yeah," she said. "How come they were both unconscious when they were shot?"

"Should be in the autopsy notes," Esposito said. "They were both knocked out with Chloroform."

"Shut the front door!" she exclaimed, staring at them. "You've got to be – ugh, I'm going to kill him!"

"Woah, calm down, Beckett," said Esposito. "You talking about Castle?"

"No, I'm talking about the only other male that I talk to on a regular basis," she said sarcastically.

"Josh?" Ryan asked, reasonably confused.

Shit, Beckett thought.

"She broke up with Josh this morning," Lanie said, happily strolling up to her best friend's desk. "I see you're out of the bathroom now," she added with a nod towards Beckett. "Feeling better?"

"No where near," she said, looking at the case files. "Why didn't you tell me right away when you found out that they were knocked out with Chloroform?"

"Well, I tried to call you, sweetie, but you weren't answering either of your phones, and I know better than to disturb a girl when she's crying her eyes out. Especially if it's you."

"You – you broke up with Josh?" Esposito asked, and he had a feeling that her crying her eyes out had absolutely nothing to do with breaking up with her boyfriend.

Ryan looked more excited than a dog with a bone at Christmas. "Does this mean you and Castle are finally going to get together?"

Lanie and Esposito glared at him.

"Did I just – did I just say that out loud?" he faltered.

They nodded.

"Can we get back to this case, please?" Beckett asked.

"We know who did it, why don't we just go and arrest her?" Esposito suggested.

"We don't know who did it," Beckett told him.

"Giselle Chambers," Ryan said. "Of course she did it."

"Did you find any prints at any of the crime scenes? Did you have any witnesses that can place Chambers at the crime scene? I actually don't think she did it."

"What makes you think that?" Ryan asked, angrily. "She kidnapped the two of us."

"Think about it, Ryan: she kills two people in exactly the same way but leaves no prints or clues to her identity. We don't have a scrap of DNA evidence linking her to the two murders. But, she brutally kidnaps two NYPD detectives, leaves evidence all over the place, and reveals to us who she is? That doesn't sound like a murderer."

"I still find it hard to believe that we couldn't find any evidence on the bodies or at the scenes."

"I'm fuming the new body for prints now," Lanie butted in. "I'll call you if I get anything."

"Thanks, Lanie," Beckett said, with an attempt at a smile.

Lanie lazily saluted her and left to go back down to the morgue. Beckett looked down at the case files to see if she could find anything more when she felt Esposito and Ryan staring at her.

"What?" she asked, looking up at them.

"Just thinking," Esposito said thoughtfully. "Now that you and Castle are pretty much going to be an item, you're going to need a nickname."

"We are not an item," she stressed, adding yet in her head. "And what do you mean, nickname?"

"You know, like celebrity couples have. Like... Bradgelina or TomKat. You know, those cutesy nicknames so that you don't have to say the entire two names of the people you're talking about."

"Well, you're not going to have to worry about that any time soon," she said, looking back down at the file, "because Castle and I are not dating. Neither are we celebrities."

"But Castle is," Ryan pointed out. "I'm thinking Kick," he added.

"I'll kick you in a minute," Beckett muttered, though nobody heard.

"That sounds like some ridiculous energy drink that the kids are drinking nowadays," Esposito disagreed. "No, no, what about... Rate?"

"So people could 'Rate' us from one to ten?" Beckett asked, laughing mockingly. "See what I did there?"

"Kate-sel."

"Katchard."

"Rickerine."

"Katick."

"I have a suggesion," Beckett interrupted before they could think of anything more ridiculous. "How about Caskett? Because that's where the two of you are going to end up if you say one more word about this."

"You know, that kind of works," Esposito nodded, impressed. "Caskett. We'll stick with that."

"I now see why he made you two 'Roach'," Beckett sighed, rolling her eyes. "Don't you have some work to do, or, something?"

"We can't do anything until we get the results back from Lanie."

"We should go question Chambers," Ryan said, still convinced she'd done it.

"We don't know where she is," Beckett said, pushing her hair back from her face. "And even if we did, we can't question her. We're too close to the investigation, you know, being her victims."

"I can, though," Esposito said. "All we need to do is find her."

"Well, wherever she is, she's with Castle," Beckett said. "And we don't know where he is."

"Call his house," Ryan said. "See if he's there."

Beckett stared at him and then shook her head. "I don't want to know where he is," she said, standing up and heading towards the elevator. "I think that you two can do this case by yourselves. I don't want anything to do with it. Not at the moment."

"Beckett!" Ryan called out, starting after her. Esposito held him back, shaking his head too.

"Leave it, Ryan," he said. "She needs her space, okay? She's been through a lot in the past few days. Let's just focus on catching our killer."

"But -"

"Ryan, I'll hit you if you try and get her involved, okay?"

"Understood."


Beckett turned the lock to her bedroom door so that nobody could get in. Of course, she wasn't expecting anybody to get in, but she'd been kidnapped yesterday, so she was still slightly on edge. Confident that the door was not going to open from the other side, she slid down it and sat on the floor, her hands pushing her hair back off her face so that she felt slighlty less trapped.

He'd said that he loved her, she remembered. Only in her wildest dreams had he ever said that to her; she had never thought that the words would escape his lips in real life. But things had definitely been different between them lately, after he'd come back from the Hamptons. The flirtatious teasing between them had settled down, only popping up occasionally, usually caused by herself. She'd been subconsciously trying to get him to want her, she now realised, and was thankful she was alone when her cheeks blushed a dark red.

But yesterday, he said he'd only gone to the Hamptons with his ex-wife to make her jealous. At the time, she thought that he wasn't into her. And, she now realised, he must have thought that she wasn't into him.

"Why didn't I just say it?" she whispered to herself. They could have been together all that time. He wouldn't have gone away and left her spiralling back down the road of her mother's case. Because that's where she went when he wasn't there – to twelve years before. Sighing, she stood up and unlocked her door again, walking over to the murder board she'd made. As she opened the shutters, her phone vibrated.

Normally she would have ignored it, but something told her to look at it. It had only gone off once, so she knew that it was a text message. Which meant that it was not anybody from the precinct about a case. It was probably Lanie, seeing if she was okay.

However, the name that bore into her eyes from the glarish light on the phone was not Lanie Parrish. It was Richard Castle.

Don't even think about it.

He knew her too well, she thought and she beamed at the thought.


"Who were you texting?" Giselle asked as she walked back into the apartment with some quite full suitcases.

"Oh, just Alexis," Castle lied easily, pocketing his phone. "Come on, lunch has just been delivered. I've got The Lion King ready to go."

"Disney movies, really?" Giselle asked. "Actually, you really meant we were going to watch movies?"

"What else would I mean?" he asked uncertainly.

"I don't know," she said seductively. "I thought we could participate in some more... adult activities."

Castle rolled his eyes. "It's barely even lunch time," he said. "Too early for... adult activities."

"So, we're really going to watch movies then?" she asked, unbottoning her coat. Castle's mouth dropped open a little bit in surprise – underneath her coat, Chambers wore what Castle could only describe as indescribably sexy lingere. And for a fleeting second, he was tempted by it, but quickly shut his mouth and looked away.

"That was the plan," he choked out. "But, I guess, plans could be changed."

Chambers beamed at him and gently dragged him towards the bedroom. It was against his better judgement to do this, but he let himself be led along.

"Is there anything you'd like me to do?" she asked, pulling him closer to her as they neared the bed. "I'll do anything."

"Actually," Castle said , his own voice low and seductive, "there is. Since I've been working with the NYPD, I've loved to interrogate people." He was appalled with himself and what was coming out of his mouth. He was planning quickly, giving no thought to what would happen after he had her locked up."I like them to be wearing handcuffs."

Giselle raised her eyebrows and smiled at him. "I'm all up for wearing handcuffs," she said. "Do you have any?"

He reached behind her and pulled Beckett's handcuffs out of the drawer beside his bed where he'd placed them this morning. "Special issue," he smiled slyly.

She giggled ecstatically as Castle placed one of the cuffs around her right wrist then, the chain through the bedframe, and placed the other cuff around her left wrist. Then, as she continued to giggle, he stood up and backed away, a menacing glint in his eye. "That was a lot easier than I thought it would be," he shrugged, actually proud of himself. "But then, you were never really a smart one, were you, Giselle Chambers?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked, affronted, pure rage in her voice as she pulled on the handcuffs as if they'd magically loosen themselves and let her free. "What are you doing?"

"Oh, come on, you honestly thought I'd leave them forever? Marry you? This was all a part of a plan to get you in jail so that you can't kidnap anybody else."

"Rick!" she snapped. "Let me out of here!"

"Not likely," he said, as he closed the bedroom door behind her.


"Esposito," Esposito answered, looking around the precinct.

"Yes, I'd like to give you some information about a criminal you're looking for," the smug voice of Richard Castle replied.

"Castle?" he asked. "What – Beckett's not here."

"Oh, isn't she?" he asked, with genuine concern. "That's not why I called. I've got Chambers, and I know that Montgomery doesn't want her or Ryan on the case. Ergo, I called you to tell you that I've got her."

"We know you're with her," Esposito sighed. "Beckett told us."

"I have her handcuffed to the bed!" he said in exasperation.

"Look, I don't want to know about your demented sexual escapades, Castle," he said, seemingly disgusted as he scoffed. "Honestly, what is it with celebrities and their fetishes?"

"Esposito -"

"And just remember that Beckett is like my little sister, okay?"

"What has that got to do with anything?" Castle asked, completely thrown off.

"What's what supposed to mean?"

"Well, you just went from not listening to me telling you that I have a criminal that you're after in my apartment so that you can come and charge her with the kidnapping of Beckett and Ryan to telling me that if I do anything to Beckett you'll kill me."

"I didn't say that," Esposito said, shaking his head slightly.

"That's what you implied," Castle said.

"Didn't mean anything," the Detective said. "I'll be there soon with some uniforms. You know we'll have to get a statement from you? Interrogate you?"

"I'm well aware of how things like this work," Castle sighed. "Just get over here so I can leave."


Hey guys :)
So, reading over this, not my best piece of prose. I promise the next chapter will be better, alright?
And, just to further my writing skill, I've signed up to do reviews of books, games and music for the student magazine at my university. The editors of the sections said that they'd email me about it soon, and I'm really looking forward to it.

In other news, I used a piece of equipment at work wrong, and kind of badly hurt my foot. I can barely put any weight on it, and it hurts like hell.

I also finished a tonne of chapters over the past week, but I couldn't update anything because my brother used up our bandwith and the internet was going to slow to function at all, so I didn't have internet. So you shouldn't have to wait too long between chapters because I'm fairly sure I'm almost done.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy your day/morning/night/evening/afternoon/any other possible time of day that I may have forgotten because it's almost midnight while I'm writing this.

Love, Ashley xx