Beca gets sent away to a horse ranch, Hoofbeat, as a last chance due to her recent rebellious behavior. There she meets Chloe Beale, who changes Beca's rule of 'everyone's temporary'.

Castle and Beckett never met five years ago. Beckett's Mom's case remains unsolved, and Castle has no muse. What happens when their paths cross? An AU Target/Hunt meeting.

Bechloe: It's what she'd wanted, and exactly why she'd come here. Chloe can't handle conversation. Chloe can't handle speaking at all, because words – simple words, uttered earnestly through her best friend's lips, paired with a kind of vulnerability Chloe had never borne witness to, not in anyone, not in Beca – are exactly how Chloe had ended up here.

"I saved lives. The irony always glared back at me. I saved lives while slowly erasing any semblance of the life that I once had. But now wasn't the time for that. There was never a time to consider the past. The past was a dark remembrance of why I was here. It was for the best, I told myself once again..."

They thought this was his most remarkable dedication yet. But he didn't write it for them. He wrote it for her, and she would be the only one who'd never get to see it. One-shot, terribly sad, spoilers, major character death. But... give it a chance.

A continuation of Dangerous Game. Highly recommended that you read that first. Beckett tries to figure out where she wants things to go with Castle. Meanwhile, a serial killer fixates on Beckett.