A/N: First, thanks to dtrekker for the new story cover art!

Second, the next update won't be until Sunday, because I'm going to Comic Con to meet Nathan Fillion! :)

Eleven

"Pamela Mackey! Pamela Mackey was driving the other vehicle involved in Anthony Ciardi's crash!"

Kate nodded, her eyes wide.

"This isn't a coincidence. She knew—she knew something! Damn it, why is she dead?! We could really use her right now!" Castle groaned as he tossed the paper from Anthony Senior's accident report onto the table.

"I know; I can't believe I didn't see it before." Kate shook her head, disappointed in herself for not noticing. Then again, Pamela's name was only mentioned once in the report and at the very end; it wasn't surprising she had missed it.

"Alright, alright." Castle paced the small space around the table as the pieces of the story formed together in his mind. "Pamela Mackey was close enough to the accident to become collateral damage when the detective's car spun around after being hit. Maybe that means she saw the driver of the tow truck—maybe she could identify him. Assuming for a second that the dirty cops wanted Anthony dead, they would have also been in a position to realize that Pamela was a witness, so they bought her off or scared her into silence after the crash."

Castle stopped, looked at Kate and snapped his fingers. "That's it! Tony must have read this report—he must have figured out she was someone we should talk to, but she was avoiding his calls. When he finally got ahold of her, whoever set this thing up realized he was getting too close, so they killed Pamela so she couldn't talk, Tony because he was investigating and set me up for the whole thing. Damn it!"

Kate sighed and rested her hands on her hips. She had to admit, the story was plausible. More than plausible, actually; it made quite a bit of sense. Unfortunately, it was still based on a number of assumptions, the first and largest of which being that the dirty cops existed in the first place.

"It all sounds good, Castle; but we need proof."

He ran his fingertips over his chin. "Can we run Pamela's financial records?"

"Already have 'em," Kate informed him with a smile. She grabbed her laptop and hunched over it, her forearms resting on the table. She clicked the icon link on her desktop and logged in to the FBI intranet.

"How far back can you go?" he asked as he watched her type.

"As far back as we need."

Castle walked around behind her and watched over her shoulder as she scanned through documents. "I would just like to take this opportunity to say that I'm officially creeped out by the ease at which the FBI can access information."

She glanced up over her shoulder at him. "Then I won't show you the file they have on you."

Castle shivered. "Please don't; I'd rather not know."

Kate clicked through Pamela's files until she came to the financial records section. The FBI pulled the past five years of her records just in case they were necessary. Fortunately, Anthony senior's death fell in that five year time window.

"Hey, speaking of financials," Castle began as Kate skimmed the information. "Did you request Anthony Senior's?"

"Yes, while I was at my father's house."

"Oh really? The FBI has lackeys available on a Sunday?" he asked with a light chuckle.

Kate let out an exhale. "Actually, I didn't request them from the FBI; I requested them from the NYPD."

His brow furrowed. "The NYPD?"

Kate raised herself to an upright position and rounded her shoulders. "Yes. I'm not supposed to be investigating Anthony Senior and my so-called partner, Agent Banner, gets copied on all my information requests, so I couldn't risk him seeing what I was doing."

"Then who'd you request the information from?"

"I called in a favor with one of my old partners at the Twelfth."

"And," Castle asked cautiously, "you can trust him?"

She smiled and turned back to her laptop. "Of course. I only told him as much as I had to and he said he'd have the information to me as soon as he could. Ah! Here they are." She gestured towards the laptop screen to reveal the financial information for Pamela Mackey.

Kate and Castle sat side-by-side at the computer as she clicked through the financial records for the few months before Anthony Senior's death and in the months following. Castle had no idea what he was looking at—to him, it was just a bunch of numbers. Sure, he was able to pick up on what he assumed to be her paycheck, as it was a biweekly deposit of a similar amount of money, but beyond that it just seemed to be a bunch of miscellaneous transactions, so he waited for Kate's opinion.

"Nothing out of the ordinary," she concluded finally.

Glancing at her and then back at the screen he asked, "Are you sure?"

She nodded. "Pamela didn't receive any electronics payments for odd amounts. Nor did she have any unusual deposit in her history. Unless they paid her with cash she stuffed into her mattress, she wasn't bought off."

"They still could have threatened her into silence," Castle pointed out. Kate nodded, agreeing to this.

Castle stood and walked around the table once more, thinking back through everything he knew about Pamela. At that point, it was very little, which irritated him since he was accused of ending her life. He thought for several more minutes before an idea came to him. His head whipped towards Kate's and he saw she was smiling. "What?"

"Go ahead."

"No, what?"

"I think I know what you're going to say."

"What am I going to say?"

"What if Pamela Mackey was involved?"

Castle did a double take at her. "That's what I was going to say!" He exclaimed with such great excitement that Kate laughed.

"Seriously! It could make sense. Shit, it could all make sense!" As he talked, he began to pace again. "Pamela was in on it the whole time…She-she was driving right behind Anthony Senior. Maybe she was even radioing to the guy in the tow truck so he knew when Anthony Senior crossed into that intersection!"

"Radioing?" Kate questioned. "This was only a few years ago, Castle; there were cell phones."

He gave her an unappreciative look. "Whatever! You know what I'm saying—she was in on it. She had to be. Maybe she still is—er, was. So when Tony kept calling her, she got spooked. Maybe she was meant to lure him into get murdered, but whoever the murderer is got sick of her and offed them both! The possibilities are endless!"

"I agree," Kate said. "So we need to narrow them down."

"Right—you're right. We need to look into Pamela's life. We can do interviews! We can visit her place of work! Interview her family!"

Kate held out her hands, palms facing towards him. "Whoa, slow down there, Columbo. You're right, I need to do all of that, but it's a Sunday afternoon so just take a deep breath. Besides, even if I do go and visit these people, you're not coming with me."

Castle's expression fell. "What do you mean?"

She threw her hands up in frustration. "Hello! Accused felon! Are you out of your mind?"

"But…my disguise…"

"Is dreadful," she told him. A wounded look crossed his face and Kate felt a momentary pang of guilt. "Look, Castle, I appreciate that you want to help, I truly do, but right now it's more important for you to stay out of prison then for you to help."

He grumbled and turned his attention towards the floor, where he scuffed his toe across the hardwood. "Fine."

Figuring food might be a good distraction for him, Kate suggested, "How about I go and get us some dinner?"

Castle's expression perked at the thought. "Oh, yeah, I could eat."

"Me too," she said, rubbing her belly. Why hadn't she noticed how hungry she was before? Suddenly, she was ravenous. When was the last time she ate, anyway? "What are you in the mood for?"

He walked a few steps closer to her. "Well, if you don't mind a bit of grocery shopping, I'd like to make you a proper dinner tonight."

Her expression softened at his sweet gesture. "Oh, Castle, that's nice, but you really don't have to go to any trouble-"

"No trouble," he cut her off, smiling. "Consider it a thank you for…aiding and abetting me." Kate agreed with a nod and waited while he wrote out a grocery list. "By the way," he said after handing it to her, "is it okay if I use your computer while you're gone?" She gazed at him hesitantly and he quickly added, "I won't send out any emails or smoke signals I swear—I just want to look at the case files some more."

"Case files only," she warned before grabbing her purse and heading out the door.

An hour later, loaded down with shopping bags, Kate returned to the apartment after retrieving everything on Castle's grocery list. It amused her how specific he was about certain things, like getting fresh herbs, not dried, and organic, free-range chicken. Yet, she had watched him shovel down Lucky Charms not twelve hours earlier.

She set all the bags down in the kitchen and then walked into the main room to find him hunched over her laptop with intense concentration. "You know, when I said you could use my laptop, I thought not looking at porn was implied."

He glanced up at her. "Funny. But I assure you, this is the furthest thing from porn."

Kate walked around behind him and saw that he had discovered the crime scene photos from Anthony's apartment and was scrolling through them. She imagined reviewing at the photographs transported him right back to that moment, which must have been quite horrifying for him.

"You know it's funny," he began, almost as though he had read her mind. "Even though I was there, looking at these still doesn't seem real—it feels like a dream. Well, I guess more accurately a nightmare."

"I know," she said, patting his shoulder gently.

He closed out the pictures on the screen and walked into the kitchen. As he sorted through the groceries, she sat at one of the bar stools at her kitchen counter, watching him. "You always hear about criminals who go on the run and I always wondered why they did that. I mean, why would you do something that stupid? You know you're going to get caught. Do you think by running you're just erasing what happened?"

"People always seem to have the 'It won't happen to me' mentality," Kate pointed out.

He nodded. "I suppose. But, it's an odd thing—you never really know how you're going to react. You don't want to know. Standing there in Tony's apartment, looking down at his body my brain just kept telling me to run. Rationally I knew I shouldn't, but it just kept screaming 'Run! Run you idiot!' But I didn't…I believed in the justice system; I believed that because I was innocent, they would see that too. Ironic," he added with a bitter laugh.

"You did end up running, though," she pointed out.

He looked over at her. "Only after I realized I was being shanghaied."

He asked Kate to direct him to knives, a cutting board, and a skillet in her kitchen. After she did, he sliced the chicken breast pieces and plopped them into the skillet along with some olive oil and onions he'd chopped. As he worked, she watched, following the steady movements of his knife with her eyes and thinking about his situation.

"Castle?"

"Hmm?"

"Can I ask…how did you escape in the first place?" She remembered briefly wondering about his situation on her drive to his Hampton's home five days before. It was fairly uncommon for criminals to escape police custody, even less common during their transfer to central booking, as they were typically heavily guarded at that point.

"Ah," he smiled at her, "a magician never reveals his secrets."

She curled her lip a she looked at him, not buying such a bullshit line.

"I think in this case the less you know the better, but let's just say my lawyer is worth every penny of his exorbitant salary."

She nodded and thought on that for a moment, wondering what it could have possibly meant. She hoped that someday he might tell her the truth, but for the moment she would choose to be satisfied with his cryptic response.

After a few more minutes of watching him prepare food, she realized she should offer to help. When she did, he refused politely, saying there was no need; he had a handle on everything. Kate then went to the refrigerator and retrieved a beer for each of them. Upon taking a long swig of hers, she looked over to him and sighed. "I'm really sorry you got involved in all this, Castle."

"I'm not," he said firmly. At her questioning expression, he continued, walking towards her and wiping his hands on the towel he'd thrown over his shoulder. "Okay, obviously I would prefer not to go to jail, but look at everything we've uncovered. How great will it be if we can find whoever killed Anthony Senior? No one even knows he was murdered! No one would have known either, if it wasn't for you."

Feeling her cheeks flush at his words, Kate looked away and took another sip of her drink. "Me? Don't give me too much credit here. You did all the heavy lifting."

"Which wouldn't have gone anywhere if you hadn't listened to the crazed ramblings of a man on the run."

She looked back at him with a bemused expression, hardly able to keep a straight face as she teased him. "To be fair, I mostly listened to the evidence, not you." He gave her a look and a smile burst onto her face. "Kidding."

"Well I'm not," he said, leaning his forearms against the counter across from her. "You are an extraordinary woman, Kate, and no matter what happens—no matter how this thing ends—I'll always be grateful for everything you've done."

He held her gaze for another moment and then turned back to the chicken cooking on the stove. Kate rubbed her hand across the back of her neck, hoping her cheeks weren't turning too red at his comment. She could feel her heart palpitating and her lack of control of it annoyed her. She took another sip of beer. "You're right—no matter what happens, we're doing the right thing here. You don't know how important closure is for a victim's family."

Castle studied her as she sat at the counter, picking at the label on her beer bottle and avoiding his gaze. Something in her tone told him that her comment came more from just a cop's perspective. No, if he had to guess, it came from a victim's perspective. But what, he wondered, was she the victim of?

The sizzle of the skillet he was babysitting forced him to tear his gaze from her and back to the stove. Once the chicken was finished cooking, he divided his stir-fry concoction evenly between two plates, garnished them both with a few sprigs of fresh herbs. He placed one plate in front of her with a sweeping hand gesture. "Bon appetite!"

She smiled gently at him. "Thanks Castle; it looks great."

As they began to eat, Castle directed the conversation back to her comment from a few minutes earlier. "I can only imagine how difficult it would be as an investigator not to be able to provide that closure for a family." Okay, so maybe he was baiting her a bit, but he couldn't suppress his writer's curiosity and was hoping that maybe she'd bite.

Kate stabbed at a piece of chicken with her fork, but suddenly she wasn't as hungry as she'd been an hour earlier. She could feel it in the pit of her stomach: that ache, that same feeling—the one she'd bottled inside for so many years. She hid it away, afraid to let it out for fear she'd never be able to seal it up again.

As a cop, she was trained never to show weakness, especially not in the field. Somehow, though, she'd adapted that practice to her whole life, as if every second of every day was lived on the battlefield. Emotion was a weakness and a vulnerability she couldn't afford there and she never before questioned her decision to keep it all inside. Then why, she wondered, in that moment, did she feel the urge to let it out?

She felt it bubbling to the surface, an uncontainable force. It had happened before, and she'd burrowed it down, but doing so was so exhausting, so draining, she wondered what would happen if she just let it out. So she did. "My mother was murdered."

Kate set down her fork and looked up at him after the words left her mouth. Seeing that she had his undivided attention, she continued. "Ten years ago, she was stabbed and left in an alley. The cops said it was a mugging, a random incident, and they never found the person responsible."

Castle nodded slowly. For him, that one paragraph illuminated her entire story. The pieces zoomed across his mind and linked up. He'd only known her for a few days, but in that moment he felt as though he understood her story completely. "That's why you decided not to go to law school and you went to the police academy instead. You wanted to bring justice and closure to others so they wouldn't face the same void you did."

For a moment, the accuracy of his observation alarmed her, but then she realized she didn't care if he knew the truth about her. Given everything they'd gone through together in the prior few days, it seemed like a fair trade. "Yeah," she said breathily. "Something like that."

"For the record," he said, turning back to his meal, "I find you even more extraordinary now."

She smiled and picked up her fork. "Well, you're not so bad yourself."

After they finished their meal and cleaned up the kitchen together, they retired to Kate's couch. She picked through the drug case files on her computer, making one last ditch effort to find common ground among them. She'd read through each file at least twice, but she hoped a third time would be the charm and a name would jump out at her, just like Pamela Mackey's had in Anthony Senior's accident file. As she read, Castle flipped through the channels on her TV with the volume on low.

"Well, I think I'm going to get ready for bed." Kate announced, rubbing her tired eyes. Her document review had revealed no new useable evidence, just as she feared.

Castle glanced at the clock and then back at her. "It's 9:45."

"And tomorrow's a Monday so I have to be at work early for a department meeting. Not all of us have the luxury of a cushy writer's schedule, Castle," she pointed out.

"Hey! My schedule isn't cushy!" He defended. She gave him an expression making it clear she didn't believe him. "It's not! You have no idea how often I'm up until two, three in the morning finishing my chapters before they're due."

"And," she said, standing, "I don't suppose this would be because you procrastinated at all?"

He gasped a dramatic, obviously fake gasp. "Procrastinate! I don't know the meaning of the word."

"I'm sure."

Kate left the siting room and walked into her bedroom, where she knelt down and pulled a long narrow storage container from under the bed. From it, she pulled two sheets and a spare pillow, all of which she carried back to the sitting room with her. "Here," she said, plopping the pile down on the coffee table. "For you; for the couch."

He smiled at her and nodded. "Thanks. And Kate." He stood and took two steps forward. "Thank you, for doing all this. I don't think I ever truly thanked you for not turning me in all the times you could have. And now, for letting me stay here…I really am grateful."

"I know and you're welcome. I hope you sleep well."

"Goodnight Kate," he said simply before watching her walk into her bedroom and shut the door behind her.