They had less than a second to grieve. Jenny didn't even stop moving. She glanced at her fallen fiancé when she heard him thud onto the floor, and then started up again with the shooting. More armed men kept pouring into the room. If she had moved with poise and precision before, it was nothing compared to now. She spun around the room, a careful and deadly dance between comrades and enemies, until she became a blur of black and blonde.

She aimed to kill- no more of this kneecapping crap. As she moved to the other side of the room, a circle of destruction gathered around her as the people coming after her fell down one after the other. Alexis grabbed Ashley and hauled him across the room after Jenny, and Booth followed.

They didn't meet as much opposition as they progressed through the house. Evidently, Dobson had figured that most people would be stopped by the men at the front. Ashley knew the floor plan and where Benjamin Dobson was most likely to be, and Officer Booth was able to hear where the most activity in the house was.

"I love you," said Ashley, running up beside Alexis as they headed on through the house.

"We're not going to die." Booth passed them and ran down a narrow hallway, and she pulled Ashley into it to follow him.

"What makes you so sure?"

She glanced at his worried expression and almost smiled, deciding that in this defining moment she would quote what had been her father's favorite TV show. "Because we are so… very… pretty. We are just too pretty for God to let us die." She hooked her arm over his shoulder to shoot a man coming up behind them. "Come on."

The big house was no labyrinth, and it didn't take them too long to find the senator's office. He was sitting in a spinning chair at the back of the large room, facing the door like he'd been expecting them. As soon as they rushed into the room, men leapt out from the corners and tackled Booth, Jenny, and Alexis, pulling them over to the sides of the room despite their attempts to get away.

Ashley managed to evade capture, slipping away and stepping closer to Dobson. For a moment, no one moved, and the now-standing Dobson just stared down at Ashley. It was in this moment that Ashley finally seemed to register the dart sticking out of his neck. He picked it out, wincing, and tossed it across the room. He didn't see it, but it landed near Alexis's feet and she eyed it with a small gasp.

"Sorry about that," said Dobson, nodding to the dart, a sinister lilt to his voice. "Harry likes to stand at the door and say 'boo.'"

"He's dead," said Booth. One of the men holding him socked him in the jaw to shut him up.

"I assumed." Dobson shrugged. Harry must have been some kind of ally and Dobson shook away his death like it was a leaf that had landed on his shoulder. This, more than the countless people Dobson had killed, chilled Ashley and convinced him of how evil a man this was.

"You shot at me." Ashley held out his antique revolver and pointed it at Dobson, trying to keep his hands from shaking.

"No, no," Dobson corrected him, "my men shot at you. Legal differences, you understand." Ashley glared at him. "But see, there's no gun pointed at you now. I haven't attacked you. If you kill me, it isn't self-defense. It's murder." Ashley faltered, his finger tapping anxiously against the trigger of the gun.

"Ash, just shoot him!" yelled Alexis before a hand was slapped over her mouth, silencing her.

Ashley didn't need any more convincing. Time was running out, and he could die at any moment. Alexis could die. He aimed at Dobson's stomach and fired. The bullet missed its mark by a few feet, sinking into the plaster of the wall above Dobson. It was, however, enough to startle the senator, and he fell backward into Booth's waiting handcuffs.

While Ashley hadn't been watching, Booth had elbowed and kneed his way out of capture and sprinted around the room to Dobson. "Benjamin Dobson," said Booth, "you're under arrest for the murders of Johanna Beckett, Roy Montgomery, Kate Beckett, and fifty-four others. You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."

Once Dobson was cuffed, his hired men were somewhat less devoted to hanging onto Alexis and Jenny, and the two women were able to break free. As soon as she was out of the hold, Alexis ran to meet Ashley at the middle of the room. As he turned to hug her, she shoved some sort of needle into his shoulder. "Ow!" said Ashley. "What the hell are you doing?"

"I'm the hell saving your life." She pulled the needle out of his arm. "That dart was coated with poison."

"And you just carry around the antidote?" said Ashley, looking at the needle in her hand.

"I told you I had everything I needed in my purse." He felt like laughing. Instead, he pulled her into a tight embrace, glad that they had survived.

After one long moment where victory tinged the air, Booth called for backup to carry away Dobson, and also ambulances for the people they had injured. Ashley and Alexis, sticking tight together, turned to see Jenny standing by the door. It seemed as if Kevin's abrupt death was catching up with her now that everything had slowed down. She swayed in place, looking utterly lost. Kevin Ryan had not only been the love of her life, he'd been her only human contact in the past six years.

Alexis started to cry, grief and loss and pity for Jenny forcing out the tears that she didn't think existed anymore. And then Ryan stepped through the door, clutching a bloody ear with one hand and reaching for Jenny with the other. "D'I miss the fight?" he said, looking around the room. Jenny spun around, mouth popping open in disbelief.

"Kevin?" He raised his eyebrows, realizing that she'd thought he was dead.

"Yeah, it was just a graze-" She attacked him before he could finish his sentence, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him like she needed to prove to herself that he was really alive. Ashley put a hand on Alexis's shoulder, turning her away from what seemed like a personal moment. They stood in the middle of the room and watched as the man who had tortured and killed Richard Castle was read the Miranda Rights that no one thought he deserved.

When Ryan was being herded into the ambulance so the medics could staunch the bleeding in his ear, he turned to Alexis, patted her shoulder, and said, "Good work, Castle."