Kate feels her body stir first, slowly rolling over onto her back before grabbing onto the top of the blanket and twisting over to the other side on a deep sigh, relaxing back into the mattress and pillow. She tests her eyes before falling back asleep, feeling them sting at the sides with crust. As she rolls back onto her back, closing her eyes again, she starts to wipe her eyes free of sleep and finally manages lob her head over on her pillow, nodding over to look at the clock on her nightstand.

When she sees the time, reads just fifteen minutes eight o'clock, her body switches into overdrive. "Crap!"

In a blinding flash, she flings the quilt off of her body, violently kicking her legs to untangle herself, and stands up. She stops and braces herself against the curtained window, feeling her head swim with dizziness. For a moment, as she clutches her head, her tight fitting Henley shirt feeling tangled and clingy against her, she takes a moment and feels her memory slowly start to swim back to her.

"Castle?" She asks out loud to the emptiness in her room.

Kate slowly paces around her bed, trying her damndest to recall last night. Did she get up and head to bed on her own? No, she doesn't remember doing that. Even if she did, she would have gotten under her covers. But mostly, her covers are undisturbed. She was sleeping under the quilt that she had over her...

Kate feels the tension slowly drift off of her, her heart swelling to bursting as a smile appears on her tired face. He must have carried her to bed. Dear God, she feels like she just fell in love with him all over again. Kate feels a nagging need in her as she takes a large step over to her dresser and pulls open his drawer. But when she finds his shirt missing, at first, her smile fades.

Her hand slowly finds the white button-up with just a slight fade of blue in the fabric, with sky blue pinstripes running down it that brought out his amazing eyes, and she feels her eyes burn. She turns quickly and leans back against the edge of her dresser, cradling the shirt he wore yesterday in her hands like a precious relic. He even switched out shirts for her. Her heart practically throbbing in her chest, she lifts the shirt up and presses the fabric to her face, inhaling as deeply as she can.

Her senses are filled with just as much of his scent as they would be if she had her face buried in the curve of his neck.

She blinks hotly as she lets the shirt down, petting one of the pinstripes with her thumb. "Deny it all you want, Castle." She speaks out loud to herself as she moves to carefully place the shirt back in his drawer. "I know you still love me."


Kate drives down Elk street twenty minutes after the usual time she arrives. She would have been able to arrive on time to meet him, but she having to take a detour due to the end of her street being blocked off was a bit of an annoyance. Maybe her arriving late will be an ice breaker, maybe just the one she needs to lead him into something light hearted, some playful banter. Her breath starts to tighten as she remembers what it was like to battle his wits, and how firey, passionate, and just incredible his mouth felt when it would reach its height and they'd dive over the edge together.

Her bottom lip gets clasped in between her teeth as she notices his house by the lake. But she feels her hopeful, and flustered, mood flutter away when she turns to pull to a stop at his curb. With him neatly dressed in a dark-colored button-down and jeans, standing at the base of his porch steps, she sees a local Crestfield police cruiser parked in his driveway. There are two uniformed officers talking with him, one of them with heavy set with short curly hair and the other long and lengthy with a shaved head. Kate whips off her seatbelt and shoves open the door to her Impala, climbing out as quickly as she can.

On a quick afterthought, she leans back inside and grabs the two cups sitting inside of the cup holders, flinging the door closed with her hip and then moving across his lawn, seeing both the officers give her a stare as they move back to their cruiser, the tall gangly one giving his partner a crocked smirk over the top of the car as he rounds over to the passenger side.

Ignoring it, she strides over the grass and sees him look in her direction, his expression and eyes softening as he turns to her. "Hey," he says in a small voice.

"Hey," she says as she meets him on the pathway leading up to his porch, absentmindedly handing him the cup on her left hand, and him absentmindedly taking it. "What's going on?" She asks, honestly concerned as she looks up to him with a worried arch in her brow, nodding behind her toward the police cruiser that she can hear take off back down the road.

"Oh," Rick shakes his head, "someone was found dead early this morning and the local police were asking me to look into it."

She feels surprise wash through her, stunned for a brief second into silence. "Oh."

Rick nods, looking to her eyes for a second, feeling tangled up right down to his soul. "It was uh," he starts, feeling nervous, "someone on your street, actually."

Kate feels even more surprised, having realized what the road was blocked off for. "Really?" When he purses his lips and gives her a single nod, she continues. "Who?"

"I told them to just give me the address and that I'd get the details at the scene."

"Oh," Kate says, not sure she knows how she's supposed to feel about it. Someone in Crestfield is dead. What is she supposed to do about it? "Why did they ask you? Was it murder?"

All he does is shrug, lifting his cup to his mouth before answering. "They don't know yet. I was about to head over there now, see if I could help out."

Kate nods, watching his physique as he takes the first sip, taking a second to admire him. In that second, she can feel everything that she felt earlier flutter right through her again, the hope and love she felt seeing the shirt he'd worn yesterday in his drawer. She wants to kiss him so bad right now. "Well," she starts in a tight voice, looking away to force the thought away, "I'm sure you'll do great."

"I don't know, I usually work with a partner." He says with an all too casual smirk and flare in his brow as he lets his cup down.

"Yeah, well, she has to sit this one out, so..." she trails off, giving him a gentle smile. "But you can give me a call if you need anything."

"It's probably nothing, Beckett." He says with a dismissive shake of his head. "All they told me was it was an elderly woman, lived alone, no family. It was probably natural causes, but... something about it has them spooked."

Kate's brow furrows as her mind pulls out a face from her memory. "Ms. Carlson?"

Rick eyes her curiously for a moment. "You know her?"

She shakes her head, blinking rapidly to shake away the cluttering quickly falling into her mind. "S-she uh... she lives down the street. She was always working in her garden."

Rick stays silent as her eyes widen and her brow furrows, looking away from him. "I should get going, but... um..." he hesitates, earning her eyes and attention back with his nervous tone. He gulps thickly as he takes the plunge. "Do you think we could meet tonight?" Kate's entire body lights up, her skin flaring with nerves. "For dinner?"

Her throat closing and her heart running laps around in her chest, she manages to speak. "What?"

"There's just," he says in a tight voice, his weight shifting from side to side, "some things I need to get off my chest, that's all."

She can't get her lungs to let go of this breath. This is it. She can feel it in his voice. He's taking her back. She can feel her body giddy with excitement, already wanting to preemptively jump him and wrap her entire body around him. "Sure." She finally manages to force out.

With a small, almost bashful smile, Rick gives her a nod. "I'll... pick you up, then?"

"Great." She says, letting loose her full smile, not able to hide how happy she is.

Rick lets his small smirk grow into a full, thankful smile. "I should go, they're waiting for me."


Pulling to a slow stop a few houses down from where they have the road blocked, seeing a few people crowded around on the sidewalk, Rick takes a slow, nervous sip from his cup, puts his Lexus in park, whips off his seatbelt, and shoves the door open. There's a nervous flutter in his heart. He's never been on his own with this before.

Shaking his head to try and physically shake away all of his thoughts, he steps out onto the street, taking in a long breath of the fresh Oregon air. He closes the door to his car and makes his way toward the roadblock, feeling a feigned confidence in his step. He sees some of the pedestrians look over to him, one of the middle-aged women pointing over to him and leaning over to the other middle-aged woman next to her. Knowing there are eyes on him now, he hardens his resolve and makes it to where the Crestfield police cruisers have the road blocked off, stepping through the opening in between their grills, and moving toward the small, one-story, yellow house with a perfectly kept lawn and a very well-groomed and cared for garden on either side of the front door, lining the entire front of the house.

It takes one quick glance, seeing policemen standing idly inside, a few standing idly near the front and a few more moving around the back of the house, for him to try and assess the situation.

What is he doing here? He has no clue what to do.

Feeling like a fraud, he nervously clutches his cup and shoves one hand in the pocket of his jeans and steps around the grass to head inside on the stone walkway.

"Rick?" A familiar, friendly, female voice says from behind him.

Rick turns with a soft lift in his brow and looks over to his side and sees Sierra, dressed in a dark blue windbreaker zipped up almost all the way and a pair of jeans, carrying a large, black toolbox in one hand and a clipboard in the other. "Sierra." He says in a welcoming but surprised tone.

"Hey," Sierra says with her usual bright, face engulfing smile, her eyes lighting up. "Funny seeing you here."

"Likewise," he says, turning to face her, feeling some of his nervousness and tension alleviate out of him. "Completely slipped my mind that you worked for the local morgue."

"Yeah, that's my job." She replies, happily rolling her eyes and smiling. "You know, getting to know dead people's insides."

Rick smirks softly. "I'm sure there's more to it than that, but if you want to put it in laymen's terms for me."

Sierra laughs breathlessly, her toothy, natural smile growing. "Well, uh..." she continues, nodding toward the house and her eyes starting to fall with her brow starting to arch a bit, "I'm sorry, Rick, but this is a uh... kind of a police only zone and I wouldn't want you getting in trouble, so... do you think you could, I mean, would you mind-"

"Oh, no," Rick interrupts her, pulling his hand out of his pocket. "See, I-"

"Mr. Castle?" A uniform calls from the front door. Rick and Sierra both turn to look over to the uniform, the small, heavy set officer with the short curly hair that met him at his house. "Everyone's waiting for you."

Rick gives the officer a polite wave and a smile before looking back over to Sierra, who's looking at him with wide blue eyes and an amazed slack in her jaw. "Duty calls, I guess."

As Rick turns and makes for the front door with his usual stride, he hears the fabric of Sierra's windbreaker quickly catch up with him. "Wait, they called you here?" Rick just looks over to her with a smile. "Oh, that's right!" She exclaims, stopping and doubling over. "You used to work with the NYPD with..." Sierra's excitement comes to a seemingly dead halt, her expression falling as her memory comes back, "oh."

He gives her an understanding nod. "It's alright." She gives him a soft, understanding smile, her natural openness and feeling as if he could just tell her everything. "I should get to it."

He heads up to the door as Sierra is trailing behind him. "So, the police really asked you to help?"

"Mmhmm," Rick hums her an answer as he moves through the door. "Those five years I spent with the NYPD wasn't just to get my partner to fall for me." Most of it was, he thinks.

Rick moves inside, the very familiar and very putrid scent of very old and very dead flesh hit him in the face as he steps inside, hearing Sierra right behind him. He looks behind him to let her walk with him to the body, seeing she's turning to shimmy her way inside with her toolbox, the heavyset officer standing at the door shifting his weight from side to side as she moves passed him.

"Hi, Dr. Baker." He says in a small voice.

Sierra gives him a polite smile as she moves through the door before looking over to Rick. "Don't worry, I'll get you some rub for the smell."

Rick nods and moves into the home's living room off to the left, where there are about seven uniformed officers all standing near the walls. In the middle of the floor is the victim, not what he'd consider elderly, but not in her prime either. A grey-haired, short woman, maybe five two in height at most. White tennis shoes, shorts and...

"Oh... god..." Sierra moans for him as she sees the body.

It's then that Rick looks down to the floor next to him and sees the three small animal carriers sitting against the wall, seeing a cat's eyes look at him through the holes on the side of the one closest to him. In horror, he looks back to the body, where small chunks of flesh are missing from the woman's legs and forearms. "Brings new meaning to the phrase 'cat got your tongue'."

"Here," Sierra says next to him.

He looks over and follows her arm to the small jar in her hand with white cream inside. He takes just a tiny bit on the end of his fingers and puts it under his nose, relieved once it starts to kick in and takes the putrid smell away.

"So, Mr. Castle," one of the officers on the other side of the room speaks up for all of them. Rick looks up and see the officer look around to his fellow uniforms before looking back to him. "What happened?"

Rick looks down to the victim laid out on the floor. "Um, Sierra?" He starts quietly, leaning over to the woman next to him. "Can you start the examination, please?"

He can hear Sierra's hard breath waft out of her as she moves away from him and over to the woman on the floor, kneeling down on the opposite side of her and opening her toolkit. "Ms. Carlson was only seventy-one years old." She says as she pulls her eyes away and peels out a pair of black nitrile gloves from inside her toolkit.

"Sierra, could you uh..." He waves at her, motioning for a pair of gloves.

After pulling the gloves on, Sierra continues. "No clear sign of death that I can tell."

"No blood," Rick points out and looks over the home, "no ligature marks... everything's still in place. No signs of a struggle." He observes.

"So," one of the other officers speaks up from the opposite side of the room, "what do we think? She died on her own?"

"Ms. Carlson was in perfect health." Sierra says from the floor, telling the officer sternly. When Rick looks down to her, he feels a smile pull at the ends of his lips. Sierra blinks at the officer softly and turns back down to look at the body. "She might have choked on something." Sierra says, putting her hands carefully on the victim's neck. "Something feels off about the throat but I can't be sure until I get her back to the morgue."

"Choked on what though?" Rick asks as he looks around the room. "Everything's still in order. There're no dishes out, no food scraps. She's too neat to have just choked on something." He points out, noting how perfectly the body is laid out, in the center of the living room.

"Well, there's no bruising around her neck, so I don't think she was strangled." Sierra points out, grimacing as she examines the victim's neck with her fingers. "I haven't even gotten to the teeth marks yet."

"Sierra, do you think you can give me a time of death?"

Sierra looks up to him. "Time of death? Well..." she says, shaking her head and sitting on her feet as she kneels down, "based on body temp and decomp... If I was being liberal about it, I'd say... two and a half days?"

"And-" another officer starts in a rushed, scared voice from the other side of the room. Rick looks over and Sierra over her shoulder to see another uniformed policeman pointing at the cat carriers. "What about tho-those? Why did they... why did they..." when the officer begins to visibly gag, Rick steels himself.

As the officer begins to rush toward the door, Rick reaches over and grabs the nearest officer he can, pulling on the shoulder strap of his body armor underneath his uniform shirt and yanking him toward the door. "Don't let him vomit until he hits the street. This is a crime scene." He hisses in the man's ear as he pushes him out toward the door.

"So," another officer starts again, "why was Ms. Carlson-"

"Eaten?" Castle asks nonchalantly. When all eyes fly up to him, Rick notices and has to pause, looking over everyone in the room. They're all staring at him expectantly. Not just because he said something inappropriate or off-collar like they did in NYPD, silently telling him to shut up. They're looking at him for answers... for leadership. "U-uhm..." he hesitates. "Cats don't bond with their owners."

"What's that mean?" Another one asks.

"It means they don't really love you like another human or... even a dog would." Rick shrugs casually. "Most of them see their owners as food sources so... that's how they treat you in life and death."

"Aw," Sierra says from the floor, gaining Rick's eyes. "But... my Persy-purs loves me." She says with a sullen frown, referencing the Persian that Rick remembers meeting.

"So," another officer starts from the other end of the room, "what do we do, Mr. Castle? Was it... was it murder?

"I'd usually wait for an autopsy to determine cause of death, but-" he stops when he feels his phone vibrate in his pocket. "But we don't have one of those yet." He mutters as he pulls out his phone.

He looks down to the screen and sees it's a text message from Beckett, come outside, it reads.

Rick shakes his head and quickly turns around to lean out the door, seeing Beckett standing on the opposite side of the street next to the middle-aged woman who noticed him as he pulled up. He motions to his phone and shakes his head, giving her a clear shrug of his shoulders. He watches as she looks back down to her phone and receives another text a second later. 911!

He gnashes his teeth and leans out the door, throwing his arms out to her.

He can see her shoulders deflate before putting her hands on the sides of her mouth. "Now!" She yells at the top of her lungs.

Rick looks over his shoulder before taking off in a light jog across the street, having to jump over where the officer lost his breakfast and slows down to meet her at the police line. "What is it?"

"It was murder." Kate says without hesitation.

Rick shakes his head for a second, still skeptical. "Beckett, she was an elderly woman who lived alone. It could have been a heart attack, a stroke."

"It was murder, Castle." She says sternly, giving him her look of knowing exactly what she's talking about, the look of her unwavering will.

"How do you know, Beckett? Did you even know this woman?"

"Her garden." She answers him confidently.

"Her garden?" He parrots, seeing her clench her jaw with impatience and look over his shoulder.

Kate reaches over the crime scene tape and puts her hand on the side of his head, her fingers going into his hair, and turns him around, putting her arm around his shoulder and mashing her head against his, pointing her arm straight out to the flower bed underneath the window in the room opposite of the room where the victim is. Feeling her hand on his face and her skin against his stubble, he ignores it as much as he can and notices the row of large yellow flowers is missing a few right underneath the window.

"So?" Rick shrugs as he pulls away from her.

"Castle, Ms. Carlson tended that garden every morning. She won awards for that garden. There's no way in hell she'd trample on her own flowers. Someone broke into that house."

Getting whipped into a panic, Rick looks frantically between her and the flower bed on the other side of the street, seeing two more officers that had gone around to the other side of the house now coming back and headed straight through the yard.

"Go, Castle! They're going to damage evidence!" She says powerfully and pushes on his arm.

She watches as Rick goes running back up the house, through the yard and putting his hand out, stopping the two officers before they can step over the scene. When he looks down, it takes him a second to kneel down to the ground and look at the flowerbed, then up to the window. After a moment, he looks back over to her, sending her a smile.

She watches in loving reverence as he motions for the two officers and orders them inside. "We still make a good team, don't we, Castle?"