Author's Note: So sorry for the long hiatus. I could not for the life of me figure out how I wanted to actually write the epilogue. I knew what I wanted to do, it just didn't want to commit to paper I guess. I promise I was not ignoring this story. Here, at long last, is the epilogue to "The Fall of the Shadow Fox". Enjoy!


Chapter 47

Beckett walked into the precinct and sighed. It had been four months and still no sign of Alex. Shaw had called this morning to ask for the umpteenth time if Alex Stevens had made contact, and Beckett had once again had to inform her that there had been none. This last time, Shaw had ended the call with a not very hidden "I told you so." Beckett went to her desk and took off her coat. She hoped Alex would keep her promise to turn herself in soon.

Esposito walked over to Beckett. "Shaw still hates you?"

"It's looking like that." Her coat went onto the back of her chair. "Any sign of our runner from yesterday?"

"Not yet. Unis are still canvassing. Tory's working on traffic camera footage."

"Good." Beckett glanced at Gates' office. "Captain's not in yet?"

"No." Ryan came over. "CSU just gave me the report on the discarded backpack. Contents were clothes and a brick of cocaine. Not sure where he got the cocaine, but it'll be enough to send our runner to prison for a long time."

"Was there DNA on the bag?"

"Yeah, but it's not in our system. The runner's ID is still unknown." Ryan handed the report to Beckett. "I gotta go home for a bit. Sarah Grace started throwing up and Jenny needs a few things from the store. I'll be back in a couple hours."

"Take your time." Beckett turned to the board. "Do we have anything new to work off of?"

Esposito shook his head. "Not yet. Where's Castle?"

"Publisher meeting. He'll be in later." She opened the forensic report. "It says here that the cocaine was a chemical match to a cache Narcotics seized a few weeks ago. Check with your sources there to find out what happened."

Esposito took the report she handed him and nodded. "You got it."

Gates walked in. "Where are we, Detective?"

"Uh, forensics report just came in. Our runner had a brick of cocaine in the backpack he discarded. The cocaine matches some that Narcotics seized a few weeks back. Esposito is heading over there to find out more."

"And Ryan?"

"He went home to help Jenny. Sarah Grace is sick and Jenny doesn't have what she needs to take care of her. He'll be back once he's dropped off the groceries." Beckett grabbed her mug. "I'm going to get some coffee and start running the victim's financials."

"Good. Keep me posted."

"Yes, sir."

Ryan returned two hours later as Beckett was wrapping up the victim's financial records. There was nothing there that gave them any idea why someone would want to kill the bank teller. Mr. Summers had lived a fairly ordinary life on paper. There had to be something he'd been hiding though. Normal people weren't usually killed that brutally. Esposito came back a few minutes later and held up a few papers to let Beckett know he had something.

She pushed her chair back and stood. "What'd you get?"

"Narcotics said that the drugs were probably sold before the raid. The guys they took down were suppliers, not the dealers. The suppliers sell to the dealers and the dealers have to break the bricks down themselves. I showed the picture of our runner to the detective in charge of the bust, but he didn't recognize him."

"So the runner may not be a dealer?"

Esposito shook his head. "Probably not. Detective Jameson will show the picture of our runner around. Maybe he'll have more luck."

Ryan was looking at the board. "Anything I can do?"

"How's Sarah Grace?"

"As you'd expect. Jenny's got it handled."

Beckett went to the board. "Our victim's financials were clean. You can start looking into the other aspects of his life. Espo, help him there." Her phone buzzed. "Lanie's got something for me."

"Tell my wife I say 'Hi.'"

Beckett headed down to the morgue. "What do you have, Lanie?"

"Hey, Girl. I'm finished with the autopsy. Victim's system was drug free. C.O.D. is blunt force trauma, as expected considering the beating he took. The stab wounds were all either non-fatal, or post-mortem."

"Seems like overkill to beat someone to death and then stab them."

"I think I might know why he was killed though." Lanie grabbed an evidence dish. "Mr. Summers swallowed this."

Beckett took a look. "A flash drive?" The flash drive was wrapped in plastic wrap that had been wrapped in tape. "That can't have felt good on the way down."

"Probably not, but it may have protected the contents from stomach acid. I was going to have Tory take a look."

"Good idea." Beckett looked at the victim. "These cuts look different."

"My guess is someone was trying to cut him open and get that flash drive out of his body."

"The runner was crouched over our victim. Could he have done that?"

Lanie nodded. "I would say yes. There was foreign DNA surrounding the wounds. It matched the sample from the recovered backpack."

"So, yes, it's the same guy, but no on the ID."

"Sorry."

"Anything else I should know?" Beckett looked at her friend. "Espo says 'hi' by the way."

"Hi back. Nothing at the moment. I'll call if something comes up."

"Thanks."

"No problem."

Beckett returned to the bullpen to update the board and noticed her husband had arrived at last. He was examining the board with a coffee cup in his hand. She looked at her desk and noticed he had set one there with her name on it. She smiled and made a detour for her desk to grab the coffee and then went to the board.

"How was your meeting?"

"Boring. How's your morning been?"

Beckett took a sip of her coffee and grabbed a pen. "Donkey work. Have you caught up?"

"Yeah. Your boards always have what I need to catch up quickly." Castle took a sip of his coffee as Beckett put Lanie's findings on the board. "I have a theory."

"You usually do."

"The victim was working for the cocaine suppliers as their money guy."

Beckett looked at Castle. "That's it?"

"I'm still working on why someone wanted him dead. Wait…"

"I'm waiting."

"Summers was laundering the drug money at the bank. He started to take a little more than his cut and the suppliers killed him to send a message to their other launderers."

Beckett pursed her lips. "That's actually not a bad theory. Lanie's going to give Tory the flashdrive she recovered. We'll have to wait and see what she finds."


Tory had managed to recover the data on the flash drive and was showing Beckett what she'd found. "Mr. Summers had transferred this data onto the drive a couple days before his death."

"What are we looking at?"

"My best guess is that this is a record of money transfers he made over the last two years. I ran a couple of the names on the accounts and most of them come back to men who have various drug related arrests." Tory pulled up the list of names. "I'm going to send a copy of this to Narcotics."

Beckett nodded. "Good idea."

"Actually, the whole case is getting kicked to Narcotics." Captain Gates had been listening to Tory's briefing. "When Ms. Ellis ran those names, I got a call from 1PP. We've been ordered to turn the whole case over to Narcotics. My guess is one of those names belongs to an undercover cop."

"The murder too, sir?"

"Yes. I don't want to let Mr. Summer's murder go either, but if turning this case over helps to bring down the criminal organization he was working for, then perhaps it's for the best."

"Yes, sir."

Gates left the room and Castle turned to Beckett. "I was right, by the way. Those transactions were to cover up a money laundering operation."

"Yeah, I noticed." Beckett turned to Tory. "Thanks for your help. I'll take the evidence down to Narcotics."

"Sure." She took the drive out of the computer and bagged it up again. "I've made a digital copy, if they need it."

"I'll let them know."

The detectives took pictures of their notes and Ryan printed out the shots while Beckett, Castle and Esposito took down the other things on the board. Everything was packaged into a box and Beckett took it down to the Narcotics unit. She quickly ran through what she knew and the evidence they had with the detectives and then headed back upstairs. She was worried that this case wouldn't get solved for a while. After what had happened with her mother's case, she always worried that any case she had to hand off would suffer the same fate.

The rest of the day was spent working other cases that had come across their desks in the past few weeks. Some cases were easier to solve than others; the unsolved ones they had fit that "others" category well. These were cases that lacked a lot of physical evidence or had been scrubbed clean. It might take months before these cases could be handed over to the courts. By the end of the day, some headway had been made on a couple of the cases, but not enough to bring any of them to a close.

Beckett and Castle walked out to the car, ready for the day to be over. "I hope Narcotics doesn't drop the ball on that one."

"Me too."

From behind them came a shout. "Detective!"

Beckett turned around and her hand came to her gun. "Alex. I thought you would have shown up before now."

Alex had her hands raised in surrender. "I said I would turn myself in to you. I didn't say when."

"I've noticed. What have you been doing?"

"Nothing in your department. Actually, I've just been shutting down my safe houses. It took longer than I thought it would." Alex stopped walking toward the detective. "Aren't you going to arrest me?"

"Turn around, hands on your head." Beckett had drawn her gun in case she needed it, but Alex complied and got down on her knees. Beckett took out a pair of handcuffs and secured Alex's wrists with them. "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?"

"Yes." Alex stood when Beckett pulled on her handcuffed arms and walked when directed.

"I'm going to have to call the FBI and let them know you came in. You'll be turned over to them as soon as they arrive."

"I understand."

Castle led the way back into the precinct. "I didn't think you'd show up again."

"I made a promise and now I'm making good on that promise. I never go back on my word."

"As I remember, 'to trust an assassin is to sign your life away.' That's what you said to me in Volkert's lair."

"You do realize I was saying a lot of things I didn't mean to stay on his good side, right? For the most part that is true. I'm sorry for what you went through. Most of that wasn't my idea."

When Beckett walked in the door, there were stares that turned into applause. Alex Stevens, the elusive Shadow Fox, was in handcuffs at last. Alex smirked and shook her head. These cops were making her arrest seem like it was a big deal, but the truth was that Alex was just done running. Beckett took her to the holding cell on the Homicide level, accompanied by a round of applause there too, and shut the door behind her. She them made the call to Agent Shaw to let her know that Alex had made good on her word at last.

Beckett hung up the phone. "Your ride will be here in an hour."

Shaw arrived on time and came up to the cage to collect her prisoner. Beckett and Shaw exchanged a handshake, paperwork was signed, and Alex was taken out of the holding cell with two large agents on either side of her. Alex was then escorted down to the caravan of Fed-mobiles wearing a bullet proof vest in case someone dangerous had heard the assassin was here. Alex was put in the same vehicle Shaw was in and the agent ordered the cars to start moving.

Shaw looked at Alex for a long time. "You disappeared from the warehouse like you were a ghost. How?"

"It's what I do." Alex leaned forward. "I've got information to trade."

Shaw scoffed. "You think we're going to put you in Witness Protection after everything you've done?"

"With the list of names, crimes, and locations I have, that's exactly what you're going to do."


A/N: I would like to thank phnxgrl, TORONTOSUN, Guest, and southerngirl1 for their reviews. I would also like to thank everyone else who ever wrote a review for any one of the three parts of "The Shadow Fox" Trilogy and everyone who read this story. It has been an incredible opportunity to write this story for the past four years (hard to believe it has been going for that long) and I've enjoyed reading each and every review and PM from all of you. I have grown so much as a writer by doing this and I hope to continue to improve with each of my current and future writing projects. A big thank you in advance to everyone who reads and/or reviews this chapter. I would greatly appreciate if you guys check out some of my other works and I hope to hear from you in the future. THANK YOU!