Castle all but forgets his physical pain when Kate utters those words. Her whole body seems to sag with the weight of her statement, the thought that the worst case of her career has come back to haunt her again. He slides his hand off her shoulder and down her arm, stopping at her wrist. He wraps his fingers gently around the smooth skin and tugs lightly.

"Come on, Kate. Let's take a break. I'll fix you a cup of bad coffee."

Kate glances over at Esposito, who nods at her, telling her wordlessly that she should go. After she slowly makes her way to her feet, Castle releases his hold on her wrist and follows her out of the room. They walk past Ryan, but he doesn't acknowledge them - he's got his nose buried in something on his computer. As they make their way into the break room, Castle notices Esposito pulling his chair up next to Ryan.

"Let me make the coffee," Kate points to the couch, "you go sit. You're pushing yourself too much. I promised your mother and Alexis that I wouldn't let you over exert yourself."

"I'm fine, Kate."

"Go. Sit. Down."

Castle sits down. He watches Kate busy herself with brewing a new pot, not that freshness will help the flavor much. She gets two mugs ready and then stares at the slowly dripping liquid. A few seconds later she lowers her head slightly, then reaches up with both hands and starts rubbing her neck. Castle picks himself up off the couch, strides across the room, and lifts his right arm up to push her hands away. He starts making circles with his thumb, kneading the knotted flesh as best he can one handed. She lets out a contended moan, then her head snaps upright and she spins around to face him.

"Why aren't you sitting down?" she demands.

"Hush, and turn back around," Castle tries to turn her with a hand on her shoulder, but she doesn't budge.

"No, Castle," she shrugs his hand off and crosses her arms. "I promis-"

"I know what you promised," he interrupts her, "but I'm a big boy, and if I want to stand over here by you, then I'm going to stand over here by you."

"Aren't you in pain?"

"Yes," he nods, "but it hurts just as much to sit as it does to stand."

Kate sighs. "Maybe they were right, maybe you should've stayed home. The head injuries or bruised ribs alone are enough to keep you at home, and you have both, plus all your other wounds and bruises. I should have sided with them this morning."

"Kate, I'm just as invested in this case as you are. I've bled for this case, risked my life for it, and if you think I'm just going to sit at home while you and the guys do all the work to solve it, you need to think again."

"None of that would've happened if you'd just stayed away in the first place," she hisses, "I tried from the day you were arrested to get you to stay out of all this, but no, you're the great Richard Castle and you do whatever the hell you want without taking a second to think about how your actions might affect the people in your life that care about you!"

"It's not like I could have known I was going to be kidnapped!"

"I told you that Lockwood was dangerous. I told you not to go anywhere near him or his motel. Castle, if we hadn't found you in time, he would have killed you. You told me yourself you thought you were going to die," she drops her arms back to her sides. "Does that not bother you? Knowing you almost died?"

"Yes, it bothers me, but I didn't die, so why focus on it? I'm alive, my wounds will heal, I'm doing good work here, with you."

"Don't you feel guilty?" her tone is less angry, her voice wavers.

"Guilty? About what? Being beaten? Finding a lead? I don't feel guilty, Kate, I feel lucky," he pauses, studies her, and comes to a realization. "Do you feel guilty?"

"Of course I do! If you had died, I-"

"But I didn't die, Kate," Castle interrupts her, "and even if I had," he steps closer to her, lowers his voice, "that would have been my fault, not yours. I made the decision to go to the motel, and I made that decision on my own. Just like I decided to be a part of this case."

"What about Alexis?"

"What about her?"

"You'd have left her without a father."

Castle swallows hard and licks his lips. "Kate," he stops, unsure of what to say. This is obviously not just about him, it's about her mother too, even more so than him. "Kate, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I didn't listen and that I forced myself onto the case against your wishes," he holds up a hand to stop Kate when she opens her mouths to respond. "Most of all, I'm sorry that you're having to open up old wounds. I'm sorry that your mother's case might be involved with this one. I know you thought it was over, and I hope it is, but I promise you," he reaches out and takes her hands in his, "if there is even the smallest connection between this case and your mother's murder, we will find it."

"I thought I'd solved her murder," she bites her lower lip, "but if Coonan was working for someone instead of acting on his own, I didn't solve it at all," she meets his still half swollen gaze with doe-like eyes. "I let her down, Castle."

"No you didn't, Kate," he shakes his head, wincing slightly from the pain the motion brings. "You didn't have a chance to find out that Coonan was working for someone, if that's even true."

She doesn't respond, just stares at him in a pondering silence. Castle wants to cheer her up, make her frown go away. So he does the only thing he can think of. He tries pushing her buttons.

"You know," he begins, "you're really cute when you're angry. I just wish you weren't angry with me."

"Castle," she sighs, "I'm not -"

"It was a joke, Kate," he cuts her off. "I mean, you are cute when you're angry, it's mostly because of the way your forehead wrinkles, but I was just trying to...okay, it was a lame joke."

"It was lame," Kate smiles briefly, "but it was kind of sweet. The idea was, anyway."

"Yeah?" Castle grins. "So, are we good?"

"We're good, Castle."

"Good enough for another kiss?" he raises his eyebrows.

"Don't push it, pal," Kate pulls a hand from his and wags her pointer finger at him, "I only let you get away with that last night because you'd had bad day and were under the influence of powerful pain medication."

"For someone who was just 'letting me get away with it', you sure seemed to enjoy the kiss."

"Don't flatter yourself, Castle," Kate smirks, "I just got caught up in the moment."

"You keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better, but you were clinging to me like stink on a skunk."

Kate doesn't get a chance to respond before Ryan and Esposito barge into the room and look back and forth between Castle and Kate for a moment.

"Uh," Esposito grins, "are we interrupting anything?"

Castle's "yes" is nearly drowned out by Kate's "no".

Ryan clears his throat and nods at their still connected hands, and Kate tugs her remaining hand away from Castle. He misses the contact immediately, and he doesn't care how much that makes him sound like a high schooler pining after their latest crush.

Esposito looks at his partner knowingly, then turns his attention back to Castle and Kate. "We found something that you guys are going to want to see."

"If you aren't too busy, that is," Ryan chuckles.

"We aren't too busy," Kate replies harshly, but Castle can tell from the guys' reactions that he isn't the only one who sees the corners of her mouth turn upwards. "What do you got?"

"Come check these records out," Esposito says.

He heads back out of the room, followed by Ryan.

"Not a word from you," Kate tells Castle as she falls in step behind them.

Castle feels a painful pull from the cuts on his lips as a wide smile spreads across his face, but he doesn't care. He follows her to the desk where Ryan and Esposito are waiting for them with several documents up on the computer screen.

"What does a murder from 2001 have to do with our case?" Castle asks after reading quickly over the first document.

Ryan looks up at him. "Before we get into that, I was able to confirm not only that Dick Coonan was also in the Special Forces, but he was in Franklin Kipper's unit. They fought in Operation Gothic Serpent together, so depending on how close they were, Coonan may have known that Kipper faked his death."

Esposito nods. "And considering that we're pretty sure Lockwood took over after Coonan died, I'm thinking Coonan gave his employer Kipper's new name and told them that he'd be another good hit man."

"So what's up with the 2001 homicide?" Kate gestures towards the computer.

"Oh yeah," Ryan smiles, "the victim in this case was a man named Jasper Thicke. He was found stabbed to death in an alley, and due to a lack of evidence, the case was marked as random violence and put in the cold case files. What's most interesting about it though, is that according to his autopsy report, his wounds are virtually identical to your mother's."

"How did you find that?" Kate asks.

"After I confirmed the Special Forces connection, I decided to look for other ways to connect our two killers." Ryan pulls up a different window on the screen. "I did a search of the cold case files, looking for unsolved stabbings and sniper shootings."

"There's a lot of unsolved stabbings we need to sift through," Esposito explains, "however, there were no unsolved sniper shooting before Dick Coonan died, but we found two since then."

"So," Castle says thoughtfully, "you're suggesting that Coonan killed more people, and we need to look through the unsolved stabbing cases to find them, and that Lockwood killed the two sniper victims."

"Exactly," Ryan nods enthusiastically.

"Why would two ex-special forces soldiers start killing in what seems a totally random way?" Castle muses out loud.

"If they truly are connected," Kate turns to face him, "then maybe the killings aren't random."

Castle feels a swell of excitement fill him. "If we could find more victims, and then find a connection between all the victims, other than the cause of death-"

"Then we could prove they were killed by Coonan and Lockwood-" Kate adds.

"And depending on how the victims are connected -" Castle continues.

"We might figure out who Coonan and Lockwood were working for-"

"Thus revealing who the Dragon really is!"

Kate's eyes dart to his lips and then back up, the movement so quick that Castle almost misses it. Holy hell that's hot. Does she even know she did that?

"Have you two been practicing that?"

Castle looks at Esposito. "Practicing what?"

"Finishing each other's sentences."

Kate rolls her eyes. "Don't dignify that with a response, Castle," her tone sounds annoyed, but the corners of her lip gives away that she isn't. She walks over to the white board and flips it around to the blank side. "Come on, guys," she looks back at them, "we've got a lot of work to do."

Five hours, several pots of coffee, and an ordered in lunch later, they have finally finished their research. Now that they're done, Castle leans back against the edge of the desk in front of the whiteboard and surveys their handiwork. Fourteen photos hang across the board, and under them is what Castle has dubbed the 'Timeline of Death'. It starts out before the first murder, in 1993, marking when Franklin Kipper 'died'. The next two photos are from a double homicide in 1995, the victims of which were twins, Gilberto and Remo Perrucci. Next was Johanna Beckett, killed in 1999, then Jasper Thicke from 2001. In 2002, a FBI agent named Charlie Benson had been stabbed to death, and in 2005 Sasha Nicoletti was murdered the same way, followed by a man named Barry Glass in 2006. The final stabbing victim, the only one not attributed to random violence, was Jack Coonan, killed in 2009. The timeline then lists the death of Dick Coonan, when Kate had shot him in the precinct. After that it moves to the sniper murders, which both happened a week apart 2010, the first victim was Leonardo Nicoletti and the second Gerald Hopkins. The final two pictures are Scott Taverner and Antonio DeLuca, rounding off the nearly two decades of murder and mayhem.

"Wow," he breathes out.

"Yeah," Kate sighs as she leans on the desk next to him.

Just then, Montgomery walks out of his office and joins the foursome in front of the board. "Is it done?"

"Yes, sir, it is," Esposito answers, "we think we've figured out how they're all connected."

The captain looks over the board for a moment in silence, then points at the pictures of the Perrucci twins. "I remember that case. Those boys were the sons of Angelo Perrucci, who used to be the head of the Perrucci crime family. He's in prison now, though. Their murder trial was controversial. A lot of people thought they convicted the wrong guy," he turns to Kate. "I thought you were looking for unsolved cases?"

"We were, but the wound patterns on the twin's bodies match the other stabbing victims, and the case still fits the 'random gang violence' criteria. The man that was convicted," she pauses and checks one of the files on the desk behind her, "Jonathan Fox, he purportedly killed the twins as part of a gang initiation."

"Also," Castle says, "we realized that both the Perrucci's and Jonathan Fox were mentioned in Johanna Beckett's murder file."

"Yeah," Kate nods, "she was trying to help him get his sentence overturned when she was killed."

"We think that if Fox was really innocent," Ryan speculates, "the real killer may have decided the best way to keep him in prison was to kill his new lawyer."

"Which happened to be my mother," Kate says somberly.

"What about the other victims?" Montgomery presses on. "How are they connected?"

"Well," Castle points at the board, "Jasper Thicke was killed next. He was a small time drug runner who got busted a bunch of times, twice in the last month before he was killed."

"Those last two times he was picked up in a part of town run by the Nicoletti family," Ryan tells Montgomery. "They're the Perrucci's biggest rivals."

"How do you know that?" Montgomery asks.

Ryan shrugs. "Back before I joined the 12th I did some work with the gangs and crime families. In fact, that's why Charlie Benson's name sounded so familiar when we saw it in the cold case files. He was an FBI agent that was leading an investigation into the Nicoletti family. He worked a few cases with my old partner and I."

Montgomery steps over to the picture of Sasha Nicoletti. "The next victim was a Nicoletti. I'm starting to see a pattern here."

Castle grabs her file from the desk and holds it up. "She was a Nicoletti by marriage," he explains. "She was married to Giuseppe Nicoletti, a guy 26 years her senior," his face scrunches up in disgust.

"He is the suspected leader of the Nicoletti family," Ryan says excitedly.

"What's interesting about her case," Castle continues, "is that a man named George Bruton came to the police claiming to be Sasha's lover, and he was adamant that her husband had found out about their affair and had her killed," he looks up from the folder, "but Giuseppe had a rock solid alibi and they could find no evidence of him hiring anyone so the case went cold."

"Does Barry Glass have any connection to the Nicolettis?" Montgomery points towards Glass' picture.

"Yes," Ryan answers him, "he was a tabloid reporter who was notorious for trying to get photos of all the crime families and gangs and such. He used to be an informant for the unit I worked for. I didn't put two and two together until today."

Castle tosses Sasha's file back on the desk. "We think he could have taken some pictures of the Nicoletti's that they didn't want getting out."

Kate points at Jack Coonan's picture. "Dick Coonan killed his own brother, and from what we could ascertain during that investigation, it was because he was selling drugs in a new part of town than he normally did. Jack was a member of the Westies, he mostly did enforcer type stuff but he was known to sell drugs from time to time as well."

Montgomery crosses his arms. "What part of town was he selling drugs in?"

Esposito grins widely. "Same area as Jasper Thicke."

"Seems like the Nicolettis really don't like strangers selling drugs on what they consider their turf," Castle says.

"So, when I killed Dick Coonan," Kate nods towards his picture, "whoever was using him to do their dirty work needed a new trigger man, so to say. We've already figured that Coonan could have mentioned his old war buddy named Kipper or Lockwood or whatever he was going by, and that's why he picked up where Coonan left off."

"Makes sense," Montgomery nods, "but one of the unsolved sniper murders was Leonardo Nicoletti. If the Nicolettis are behind this, why would they have one of their own killed?"

Esposito hands him the file from the shootings. "Probably because Leonardo was turning state's evidence against the family, and Gerald Hopkins was most likely killed because he was the prosecutor on the case."

Castle steps in front of Scott's picture. "We think that someone in the Nicoletti family is who Scott was in bed with."

Montgomery gives Esposito back the folder from the 2010 sniper murders. "Why hasn't anyone put all these murders together before? That's what I want to know."

"Different cops working the cases," Ryan offers, "different departments even, time passing between them, a whole number of things probably had a part in it."

"Well," Kate crosses her arms, "whatever the reasons may be, we've connected them now, and there's only one thing I can think of to do next," she pauses at looks at each of the four men before continuing. "We need to talk to Giuseppe Nicoletti."