The underground chamber that Alexis, Ashley, Ryan, and Jenny were currently housed in must have been somehow entangled with a plumbing system, because it was covered in moist and mildewed spaces. Drops of water clinging to the ceiling reflected the dim light from the lone lantern that Ryan had left on before they'd all gone to bed, and it gave Alexis the impression that she was staring up at a dark sky sprinkled with glimmering stars. It was nice, even if it were just an illusion.

The fake stars did nothing to help her sleep, though. Ryan had offered her and Ashley one of the air mattresses, so she at least wasn't trying to fall asleep against the cold stony ground. She still had trouble. Ashley had planned to sleep on the ground, but she'd insisted he sleep up on the bed with her, and every time he so much as twitched the mattress jostled and swayed from side to side. She was inches from the ground and she felt seasick.

And then there were all the things that Ryan had told her earlier about her father, about Beckett. His morbid story was spinning around inside her head like those balls in the bingo number caller thingy that you turn…

God, she really did need sleep, but it wouldn't come. Giving up, at least for the moment, Alexis got up, being as careful as possible not to shake the bed. She stretched her arms behind her, hearing her shoulders crack from keeping still and straight on the bed. She was heading towards one of the vast shelves for a bottle of water when Ryan's silhouette caught her eye. He was sitting up at the edge of his bed, not sleeping, and he turned to her when he heard her move.

"Sorry," said Alexis quickly, hoping she hadn't woken him. "I was just thirsty-"

"'S okay, I was up already," said Ryan. "Seems like every night I'm getting more and more nocturnal." He frowned, like he was thinking of something. "Well, not nocturnal, insomniac, since I don't sleep in the daytime either." She nodded, understanding. She and Ashley had been driving all night, and she always felt unsafe falling asleep when there was no one there to keep watch. For a long time, she'd slept in forty-minute naps, repeatedly setting an alarm to ascertain that she woke up several times during the night in case someone broke in or she had to make a quick getaway.

"I'm sorry about your partner," she said, wondering if that's what he'd been thinking about. She'd noticed how broken up he'd been telling the story earlier, but no one had addressed it.

"It's alright," he said with one of those "I'm fine" head bobbles. "I'm sorry about your dad. And your mom, and-" He stopped, noticing Alexis' expression, and decided to stop listing the people she'd lost.

"Is it going to be like this forever?" she said suddenly, her voice hoarse with distress. She bunched her dark hair up in her hands. It was greasy- she hadn't showered since Chicago. "Always running, or hiding?" To herself she'd always held on to the hope that eventually things would calm down, that she'd be able to live peacefully again, but here was a man in her same situation who probably had a more accurate idea of how things would play out.

"No," said Detective Ryan, "It's not going to be like this forever." He pointed to the whiteboard against the wall that was coated with pictures of people related to the case. "We're gonna catch this jackhole."

Shortly after their conversation, Ryan sent Alexis back to bed and tried to do the same. He woke up a few hours later when Jenny did and saw Alexis standing in front of the murder board, hand on her chin, contemplating it. He watched her with a sad smile while Jenny began preparing breakfast. "What?" said Alexis, noticing his gaze on her.

"Nothing," said Ryan. "You reminded me of someone is all."

Once everyone had taken their cereal and coffee and were wide awake, Ryan gathered them all in the middle of the floor. It reminded him of the team meetings they used to have at the precinct, only on a much smaller scale, with much higher stakes. "People have been trying to solve Johanna Beckett's murder for almost two decades," he started off. "And so far, whoever hired Dick Coonan to kill her has remained untouchable." Alexis felt a bit irritated- they knew all this already. "But," said Ryan, pulling a thick manila envelope out from the bag of things he'd taken from the Castle residence, "we just found this. It's from the Captain, he must've sent it to Castle the day he died, and Castle didn't get it until later, and then didn't have time to look through it all before… well…" Trailing off seemed to be the equivalent of the idiom "kicked the bucket".

"Where'd you find this?" asked Alexis, stunned. She'd looked through her dad's things before she ran away, but this envelope she'd never encountered before.

"Folded up inside of his Firefly DVD case," said Ryan. Alexis smiled a little.

"So we'd have to be trying to find Serenity," she murmured to herself, experiencing a pang for her father.

"Anyway," said Ryan, tapping the envelope for emphasis, "whatever's in here was enough to kill thirty-seven people for." Alexis opened her mouth reflexively to tell him not to end a sentence with a preposition, but shut it again. It was neither the time nor the place. Ryan ripped open the top of the envelope and dumped its contents out on the floor, directly in the middle of the circle the four of them had formed and began sifting through it.

Police reports, before they had been altered and erased. Witness statements. Pictures- a black car nosing into an alley, two men dragging a gangly figure into a warehouse. There was a transcript of a telephone call between Dick Coonan and another person, a person who, based on the phone call, was employing Dick for his assassination skills.

It was a name that every one of them recognized.