In the busy hub of the Twelfth precinct's Homicide division, there was an oasis, and its name was 'Brewster', the honking-huge monster of an espresso maker Castle had bought for them as a thank-you when he'd first joined up with Beckett. When interrogations went cold, when the paperwork was enough to gag a maggot, or when there was just a need to be away from the noise of the bullpen, Ryan always stepped into the break-room and brewed himself a latte. If he was feeling brave, he stole a few pumps of vanilla syrup from Beckett's private stash for his fancy coffee.

Closing his eyes, he breathed deep the scent of steamed milk and good beans and let himself drift for a few seconds.

'Daydreaming, Detective?'

Ryan opened his eyes, saw Lanie standing at the doorway, looking positively adorable in her lady-suit and her long hair in French-braided pigtails. Her shirt was a bright peachy colour, making the baby bump look like a fresh scoop of sherbet; in her hand was her briefcase that was almost as big as she was.

'Even us lowly civil servants of the law need to recharge the batteries. Here, gimme that.'

He took the briefcase from her hands, poured the remaining steamed milk into Esposito's 'Mr. Lady Hawk' mug. 'I thought you were supposed to be off going crib shopping or something like that with hubby.' Ryan bit his tongue as Lanie spluttered in her steamed milk. 'Something I said?'

'No, that's just the first time someone's called Dave my 'hubby'. And yes, he's meeting me here once the briefing is done. We're off to look at furniture for the nursery.'

Before Ryan could respond, Esposito popped his head in the doorway. 'Captain's ready for all of us, bro. Hey, Lanie,' he added, coming into the room and picking up her briefcase for her. 'Nice coffee mug.'

When the group joined Castle, Beckett and Montgomery in the conference room, the captain stood up and pulled out a chair for Lanie. 'Here, Doctor, no reason to be on your feet for this one.'

'Thank you, sir.' Lanie wiggled her butt all the way to the back of the chair so her belly had as much lap to rest on as possible, then rolled her eyes when Esposito began unpacking her notes for her. 'I'm pregnant, not an invalid, Javier. No, wait.' She held up her hands when she saw the slight hurt in his eyes. 'I know you're only trying to help and make it easier for me. Thank you.'

'Anytime, Doc.' Esposito passed her the four case folders, then took his seat beside Ryan.

'Alright people, here's how it's shaking down.' Montgomery adjusted his tie, gestured to the collated murder board Beckett and Castle had drawn up for the meeting. 'We've got four homicides with the same MO spread out at different points of the city starting in July of this year. All were found face down in their kitchens, choked into unconsciousness and then stabbed. Beckett.'

'The first victim, Portia Milton, thirty-one, accounts manager at TD Trust on West Thirty-Fourth. Lived alone at the time of her death, having just gotten out of a messy relationship. When she was killed, the conclusion was drawn that it was her violent ex-boyfriend who'd murdered her and then took his own life by overdosing on heroin, saying he was sorry for what he did to her in his suicide note.'

'No one thought to investigate it further than that?' Montgomery asked.

'At the time, it looked solid.' Esposito drew out his own notes made on the Milton homicide. 'The boyfriend, Rob Parker, had a sheet for assault and knocked her around on a regular basis, but Milton wised up and kicked his ass out. He'd left threatening messages saying no bitch told him when he was done with her.'

'The ME's report showed she was killed with one blow to the spine which paralyzed her and the subsequent seven blows were just window dressing,' Lanie added. 'She bled out on the kitchen floor.'

'Which brings us to victim number two. Kendra Santiago, twenty-nine, single, worked for a telemarketing firm called Globa-Vox selling long distance phone plans.'

'How does a girl working at a call-center live in a condo on the Lower West Side?' Ryan queried, rolling his stress-egg in between his palms.

'Family money,' Castle supplied. 'When she graduated college, she came into inheritance from her grandmother to the tune of almost eight-hundred grand and used three hundred of that to buy her condo, left the rest to collect interest in her trust fund. She worked at the telemarketing firm for pocket and grocery money.'

'Must be nice.'

'She was attacked in her kitchen from behind and quickly subdued as there were no signs of struggle.' Lanie passed around copies of her condensed report, complete with photographs. 'As you can see, she was left like Milton, face down as she bled out.'

The group examined the pictures, remembering how Miss Santiago's kitchen had looked so gruesomely artistic - pure white everywhere, the counter-tops, the chairs, even the dishes, all splattered with wild splashes and streaks of her own bright red blood.

'Third victim,' Beckett continued somberly, 'Jackson Creedy, twenty-three, City College student with no known part-time job. Unlike the women, there was a definitely struggle between him and his attacker.'

'We found no hair, fibres, or other DNA samples in his apartment and all of Mister Creedy's wounds are post-mortem.'

Esposito took the pages Lanie passed around the table. 'You sure on that, Doc?'

'The killer didn't realize he'd done the job by choking Mister Creedy to death first. Toxicology shows he was definitely on the gym-juice which means while his muscles were getting bigger, his immune system and others were breaking down.'

'Which explains why our killer got such a fight from him but still won,' Castle jumped in. 'He'd put up the 'roid-rage fight but since he doesn't realize his body is being destroyed from the inside out, he wouldn't know pressure that would knock a regular person unconscious-'

'Could kill someone with weakened body systems,' Beckett finished.

'That's all good detective work but it still leaves us with body number four, no killer and no way of connecting them all to said killer.'

'Actually, body number four doesn't belong with this group.' Lanie pulled her fresh autopsy report out. 'Tito Chavez' murder doesn't fit the pattern of the other three. He was given a tranquilizer to render him unconscious, then stabbed five times, not eight, somewhere else and dumped at that location based on his lividity. And the kind of tranquilizers he had were prescription strength.'

'She's right.' Castle walked around the table to the murder-board, examined the other three victims' information. 'This guy's got at least two murders under his belt, maybe even three or four so if you're that good, why would you do something as messy as using a prescription drug to knock the fourth victim out?'

'Unless you've got a beef,' Esposito concluded. 'Chavez was less than a model citizen, busted for drug trafficking twice, probably why the killer picked our choke-and-stab guy to group him in. Make it look like he was changing up the pattern, becoming more aggressive.'

'So we're down to three bodies. Our perp had to connect them so here's the Double Jeopardy question - what do a banker, a call-center worker and a university student with no obvious intersections in their lives all have in common?' Montgomery asked. 'You guys work on that, I've got a tap-dance to do with the Chief and the Mayor.'

Beckett waited until her captain had left the room before speaking. 'Esposito, head up to Vice and talk to Gil Mazzara on the Chavez murder, get everything on him, work history, financials, associates, the whole playlist. Castle and I are going to go back over the Milton homicide, see if there's something in her and the boyfriend's deaths that'll pop. Karpowski's said she and her trainee'll give us whatever we need. Ryan, you'll brief her on Santiago and Creedy. We don't want this guy thinking that we've got nothing so let's get something. Oh, and Doctor, your date's here.'

Lanie glanced over her shoulder, saw Dave still in his work clothes and holding up his hand in a wave; she beckoned him into the room as she gathered her original copies off the desk. 'Hey sweetie.'

'Hey. You ready to buy baby's first bed?'

'Very.' Lanie rubbed her fingertips over her forehead in frustration. 'These cases, the choke-and-stabs, they are going cold really quickly which doesn't bode well for Beckett and the boys.'

'Do you need to stay and help?' he asked, picking up her briefcase and setting it on the table for her.

'No. That's the frustrating the about being the ME sometimes. Once I've got the bodies examined and all my reports and tests are run, it's in their hands.'

'Doesn't mean you don't have a brain you can use.'

'Exactly.' Lanie rested her palm on the side of her belly, felt the fluttering there again. 'Yes, yes, I know, you're in there, Daddy and I aren't ignoring you on purpose.'

Dave watched her smile, but couldn't help feeling a little jealous. He wanted to feel that sensation too, feel that little life he'd made with Lanie squirming around under her belly. He knew it was selfish and completely ridiculous, but he was feeling just a little like an outsider; Lanie was the one carrying the baby and was feeling all those changes and movements while he watched from the sidelines. Still, he knew from his readings that it was natural to feel this way since he was the guy; it didn't stop him from anticipating the first time he'd feel that hand or foot under his girlfriend's skin.

'You need to hit the head before we go?'

'Yeah, I think I'll go just to be on the safe side.'

Dave held her coat and her briefcase as she walked away to the ladies' room; the moment she'd turned the corner, he went over to Ryan and Esposito's desks, hissed at them. 'Guys?'

'Yeah?' Both glanced over in unison and Dave could see why Lanie called them a two-headed monster.

He reached into his pocket, pulled out a printout of an email he'd gotten from his mother. 'You think I should worry about getting this sized?'

Esposito, being close to Dave, craned his neck while Ryan scooted over in his wheel-foot desk chair. On it was a picture of an antique ring, the thin gold wires forming a braided lace band in the middle of which sat a small round-cut diamond. 'Dude!'

'I know.'

'Dude!' Ryan repeated in a low voice in case Lanie came wandering over. 'When?'

'Soon. I'm not just giving this to her because of the baby. I love her.'

Esposito stood up, slapped his hand on Dave's back. 'Trust us, she'll know.'

R&R&Enjoy.