Sydney sat facing the door of the coffee shop. Parker sat across the table from him, watching people walk by on the street. This was Sydney's idea, and Parker didn't have a lot of faith in it, but she didn't have any better ideas, so when Sydney said, "That's her," Parker dutifully got up and got in line, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. The line moved sluggishly under the weight of so many of Monday morning's coffee addicts. Parker managed to stay unnoticed until it was her turn to order. She got a standard coffee—she wasn't a connoisseur—and wasn't surprised to find Kate Beckett staring at her.

Parker feigned surprise anyway. "Detective Beckett?" she asked, as if she hadn't spent the morning waiting for Kate to show up in the shop.

Kate blinked. "Um. Yeah. What are you—how—" Kate pressed her lips together and looked away, studying the murals on the walls. She refused to look at Parker until the barista had called her drink. "Do you have a couple of minutes?" Kate asked.

Parker nodded and looked around the coffee shop, her eyes locking with Sydney's for a fraction of a second. He got up and Parker nodded to the now-empty table. "Do you want to have a seat?"

"Sure." Kate sat facing away from the door. "How did you know her?" Kate asked.

Parker thought briefly about feigning a bit of ignorance, but she knew it wouldn't do her any good. "You mean Johanna? I didn't. My mother mentioned her a few times, so your name rang a bell," Parker lied smoothly. "I didn't know you were related. Is she—?"

"She was my mother," Kate said. "She was murdered fourteen years ago." She gripped her coffee cup, scratching the cardboard sleeve with a fingernail.

"Assassinated, made to look like a bad mugging. I don't know who killed her."

"My mother was killed when I was ten," Parker told Kate. "I know who killed her, but I can't do anything about it. I'd be dead in a second."

Kate let out a short laugh. "You and me both." She rubbed her chest absently. "I've had two attempts on my life already. I was shot in the chest a year and a half ago, and back in May the same guy tried to kill me by throwing me off a building."

Silence fell over the two of them. Parker was at a loss for something to say that wasn't harsh or cutting.

"You said Reynolds' killer is untouchable."

Parker nodded. "Yeah, well, he is."

"Nobody's untouchable," Kate said.

"Maybe in your world." Parker could feel the tension building already. Kate wanted her murderer, and Parker refused to give him to her.

"I could have you locked up for contempt, you know."

Parker rolled her eyes. "If you want your killer, Detective, I'll tell you what to look for, but you won't find him."

"I'll find him," Kate argued.

Parker stood up from her chair. She wasn't going to sit around for this. "His name is Lyle. He's missing a thumb because he crossed some Chinese mafia a few years ago, and he staged his own murder when he was seventeen." She turned to go, but stopped and added, "You won't catch him; he's a ghost."

Parker walked out of the coffee shop, dropping her full cup into the trash on her way out. When she walked across the street to the car, Sydney was nowhere to be found. A note was folded up and jammed in the door handle.

Meeting up with an old colleague. See you back at the hotel. - Syd

Parker crumpled the note up and stuck it in her pocket. She got into the car and drove back to the hotel, wondering if Kate Beckett was actually going to try to find Lyle.

Castle walked into the precinct to find Kate sitting at her desk, staring at her notepad. He could tell she'd been sitting there a while, and that she was somewhere else.

"Hey," he said, sitting in his chair. "You okay, Beckett?"

Kate looked up. "Hmm? Oh, yeah. I just… I know who murdered Reynolds, but there's no way to find him. He doesn't exist."

"What do you mean, he doesn't exist? He shot a guy twice in the chest."

"He doesn't exist, just like that Parker woman doesn't exist."

This was too cool. "You mean the government doesn't know about them?" He tried not to sound too eager, but judging by Kate's face, he failed miserably.

"Castle," she said, and she sounded like someone had punched her in the chest hard enough to make her cry. "You know what this means."

He sobered. He did know. "Yeah, I know."

"I have to tell Gates that we have no leads. I have to tell Barry Reynolds' family that we may never catch his killer. I have to tell Amy Parkins' family that we may never catch her killer. And I have to come in here every day with the knowledge that a man who killed four people under my jurisdiction is still out there because I couldn't find him."

"Kate, it's not your fault. You said the guy doesn't exist."

"He exists in my books."

Castle took the note pad out of her hands and set it on the table. With nothing to hold, her hands dropped uselessly into her lap. Castle took them in his own. "How many murder cases have you solved?"

Kate shrugged. "I don't know. At least a couple hundred."

"And how many of your cases have gone unsolved?"

"Maybe a dozen or two."

Castle squeezed her hands. "You, Detective Kate Beckett, have one of the highest crime-solving rates in the NYPD, but that doesn't mean you'll solve every case."

"That's the problem!" Kate exclaimed. "I did solve this case. I know who the killer is. I know his name. I know he's missing a thumb because of an incident with Chinese mafia, and that he staged his own death when he was seventeen. I know who the killer is, and I can't bring him in because he's a ghost, and he's disappeared into the ether."

Castle rubbed a thumb across the back of Kate's hand. "Listen to me. You are the best of the best, Kate Beckett. You solve all kinds of murders, but that does not mean you can wallow when you miss one. You gave this one your honest-to-God best effort, and you can tell those families that you know who did it."

Kate nodded, looking away. "And then I have to tell them that he's still out there, that he's vanished and I have no way to find him. I have to tell Gates all that." She took her hands back and used one to prop her head.

"You can do it, Kate." Castle sat back in his chair. "I know you can." He smiled.

She'd just gotten back to her hotel room in New York when the hotel phone rang. "What?" she said, dragging out the vowel. It could only be one person; she'd made sure that no calls could be made to her room.

She'd been out all day—no Sydney, no Sweepers—trying to find out more about the connection between her mother and Johanna Beckett, but nothing had panned out. What she really needed was to talk to Kate Beckett again, but there was no way Parker was going to get the information she wanted out of that woman until the case on the Reynolds guy was closed. And the coffee shop was too public for the kind of information Parker needed to exchange.

"I heard you're back in town," Jarod answered.

Parker pinched the bridge of her nose. She didn't want to deal with this, with him, right now. "What do you want, Jarod?"

"I want to know where Ethan is."

Parker wanted a cigarette. "I don't know where he is," she snapped. She considered going down to the corner mart. It wasn't far, and Sydney was still out, doing whatever he'd been doing since that fiasco in the coffee shop.

"Have you heard from him recently?"

"Since the last time you called, no." She was getting very, very fed up with Jarod.

Jarod sighed.

"What?" Parker demanded sharply. A voice in the back of her mind suggested that she was fed up with the chase.

"I thought you'd have something," Jarod said. "After all, you do such a fantastic job of chasing me."

Parker firmly squashed the little voice. She was definitely fed up with Jarod. "Don't you have something better to do? Help some poor, mistreated soul or right some terrible wrongs?"

There was a pause. "I've been trying," Jarod said quietly, and hung up.

You run, I chase, she thought. The same old story.