Descending back to the first floor felt like a much longer trip.

Despite what she had claimed, Beckett was still reeling. The discrepancies between her and Rick's accounts were eroding the certainty of her recall, specifically in regards to whether the girl had truly spoken. That level of cognition didn't align well with the mundane, scientific explanations she had to work with. Too, Kate realized she had no memory of the girl's voice—not its tone, timbre, or volume. Bring me home. Not help me, save me, or so-and-so did this to me. Despite the clarity she had towards the words themselves, it was becoming difficult to maintain that they had not been some byproduct of her own thinking somewhere amidst the shock and confusion.

"You played me up there, didn't you?"

Beckett twinged, both from the unexpected interruption and all that the question implied. That was quick. She turned slightly, viewing him askance.

"You…" Richard stalled out there. He shifted his stance and moistened his lips.

"You backed me into a bit of a corner," Kate replied, bristling at first. He said nothing and so the defensiveness came and went swiftly, soon leaving only embarrassment in its wake. "That's not an excuse. I know. Shit," she issued softly, facing forward again. "I dunno. I acted on impulse."

She turned in the protracted absence of a reply and found Rick studying her bemusedly, not stiff with the anger she would have expected.

"Respectfully," he began with a slight lift of his eyebrows, "I disagree. Think about it. How many times have you straight up walked off and left me hanging when we've argued in the past? No, no," he hastened to add as her expression darkened. "That's no denigration against you. I push too hard sometimes. I can own that. My point is: you didn't just walk away, and the option you chose instead required a lot more effort. You…" He arched an eyebrow and almost smiled. "You know what you did, lady."

Beckett gave a swift roll of her eyes and shook her head in easy dismissal. "Walking away wasn't an option this time. You were about to throw me under the bus. Or the ambulance as it were."

"Mmhmm," he hummed dubiously. "Heaven knows I wouldn't have hopped to and followed after you had push come to shove. No precedent there. None at all."

She frowned down at the toes of her heels. Huh.

Don't mistake an observation for a complaint. I adore the new method.

Kate snorted softly and indulged in a feline drift of her gaze up and down his figure. "Don't get used to it. Next time we're skipping straight to me using my slappers."

He chuckled softly at her side, brief-lived though it was.

Ding.

The elevator doors opened to reveal a pair of nurses waiting to board. The man and woman split apart for them to exit and dipped mute nods of greeting. Before they departed, Rick asked the staff members about the location of the cafeteria. The instructions were simple enough and signage posted along the route through Beth Israel's broad, utilitarian corridors guided the investigators to their destination. A set of double doors were propped open at the cafeteria entrance.

The sprawling room beyond had been given similar tweaks of modernization as several other areas in the hospital. Plain white tiled floors swapped to pale gray concrete with wisps of white marbling. The area was opened up to the second floor level with three main pillars supporting a twenty-foot ceiling. The entire south wall was essentially segmented plate glass windows. Tables were arranged in loose coordination, rounded white surfaces bolted to black-limbed frames. The distant east wall boasted a service counter with glass-cased confections. Food service was not available at that hour, but the hum and glow of several vending machines against the north wall provided emergency relief for grumbling bellies.

A lone figure occupied the room.

The HEMS pilot was readily identifiable by the blue and gray flight-suit he wore, though the article was currently stripped to and tied around the waist, exposing a long-sleeved green t-shirt. A pair of black boots were also present, worn in military fashion.

The strike of Beckett's heels in the otherwise quiet room drew the man's attention from the coffee vending machine he was standing at. He stood around 5'7" or so with a lean, well-muscled build. The detective placed him in his early-to-mid thirties. Closely shorn black hair stood in upright rows. His skin had the luster of an artificial tan. As the investigators approached, his dark eyes roved up and down her figure. He unveiled an admittedly attractive smile complete with dimples. The guy didn't even glance at her companion.

"Why hello there," he greeted Kate.

She did not return the smile. "Good evening, Mister…?"

"Dufrane. Craig Dufrane." He held out a palm. "And you are?"

Beckett deferred the handshake in place of parting her coat and revealing the badge at her hip. It was neither the first nor the last place he looked while the view was on offer. She spouted the standard, official introductions for herself and Castle while retrieving her notepad and pen from the inner pocket of her coat.

"I understand you flew a patient in earlier this evening."

"Sure did. Poor girl. How's she doing?"

He didn't sound overly concerned but Kate dropped the news with care regardless, in case he was the type who hid their feelings behind a veneer of false bravado. "I'm afraid she didn't make it."

"Oh? Hmm. That's a shame," the pilot said while turning to acquire his coffee from the vending machine. He sipped it black. "Such a waste. She was pretty."

Beckett darted a swift glance aside at Castle and found his eyebrows fractionally ticked aloft as he studied the other man. His mouth quivered for a moment with a barely concealed snarl of distaste.

Agreed.

She asked, "Where did you pick her up, Mr. Dufrane?"

"Oh, you call me Craig, sweetheart."

Beckett arched a slim eyebrow, waited with her pen expectantly poised and her expression blank.

"Um. Port Washington. Thereabouts anyway. I dunno the area well."

She made a quick note.

"What were the circumstances of her pick-up?" Castle asked. "You don't work for a hospital, correct? Air ambulances are a privatized industry in New York," he added with a brief slant of his gaze to Beckett, as if assuming she didn't know. She didn't. "That means the client must have called your company directly."

Dufrane, who had seemed bound and determined to pretend her partner didn't exist up to that point, gave the author an annoyed once over. Then he did it again, lingering longer on the other man's high-end attire and accessories. His thin lips pursed into a displeased line.

Rick stared back at him with his eyebrows amusedly aloft. Just a little. A silent dare, Kate interpreted, inviting the other man to engage if he felt up for it. On the rare occasion, her shadow's self-assuredness was, she admitted to herself, kind of amusing to behold and—okay, fine—somewhat sexy too. Just a little.

Their interviewee elected not to accept the nonverbal challenge, instead replying with a show of boredom, "I dunno the details, bro. I get the calls from dispatch and fly. I picked that chic up at some other hospital. St. Francis, I think it was. I guess they didn't have room for her."

"Just you?" Beckett asked. "What about your crew?"

"It's usually me and a couple other guys, yeah. This job was transport only. Emphasis on speed. I lifted off from La Guardia around seven, had the girl on the pad here forty-five minutes later."

"That is fast," Castle confirmed with another sideways look at Beckett.

"Sure. But don't get me wrong. I don't do everything quickly." He winked at the detective and then turned a smug smirk on her companion

Ah. That made more sense. He wasn't putting any further effort into the come-ons. The pilot had swapped out flirting for the potential fun of pissing Castle off. Normally, Kate would have sent the author away for the rest of the interview and severed that distraction before it could become a bigger problem. In this case, however, Rick's apparent familiarity with helicopter operations might be helpful.

She gestured with her pen for Castle to proceed while she considered her notes thus far and plotted out the interview immediately ahead of her.

"Do you know the victim's identity?"

"Victim? Oh, the chic. Nah, bro. She was dead to the world the whole time I was with her. We didn't squeeze in much chit-chat."

Richard hesitated for half a second.

She knew why. Dr. Narayan had told them the vic went into the emergency room conscious. Comatose, but awake. That did not necessarily mean the pilot was lying. The girl could have regained consciousness at some point during the transition from the helipad to the ER. Kate kept her head down and added the detail to her growing list.

"Okay, but what about the client?" Castle recovered quickly. "They paid the exorbitant fee for flying her to Beth Israel but they didn't even tell you her name?"

"Come on, bro. You look like money. You gotta know how this shit works."

"Pretend I don't, bro."

Kate risked an upwards glance at that. A tick of dislike was twinging through the novelist's jawline. Suck it up, Castle. Keep him talking.

"Look," Dufrane began, "people don't pay what we charge just to skip the traffic. They want the exclusivity of it all—the pageantry, right? They also expect complete discretion. That's what we give 'em." He paused to sip from his coffee with a noisy slurp. "You must be thinking by now that we have a record of that call somewhere. I'm sure we do. Good luck getting a warrant for it."

"You don't have any concern for the girl you flew here?"

Kate looked up again with her fingers tightened around the pen. The tone of the question implied knowing the answer. All that was left then was the cutting commentary delivered by asking.

Dufrane's eyes narrowed but, to her surprise, he answered with controlled anger, "I care as much as you probably do. She was a cute kid, right? Had her whole life ahead of her or whatever. It's sad, yeah, and if I ran across the asshole who cut her up, I'd toss him into my rotor blades in about a fucking heartbeat." He turned and spat on the floor. "But shit happens. We can't fall apart over it."

"No," Castle agreed with a slow nod. "We shouldn't fall apart over it. We should be doing something about it."

Dufrane rolled his dark eyes. "Whatever, bro. Call the company and try your luck."

"And what is the name of the company you fly for?"

The pilot snorted a laugh. "Fuck you, man. Like you dunno. Is that all you need, lady? Cause I gotta get my bird back to 'er roost while the night's still young."

Beckett cut a look to her partner and he gave a slight nod to indicate that he was finished for the time being. She returned her attention to the man with the dimpled smile. "We'll try and get you on your way soon enough, Mr. Dufrane, but since you asked, yeah, I can think of a few more things. Let's start with a list of every person you spoke to between the time you left La Guardia and arrived here. Have a seat."

A/N: Once again, my thanks for follows and the comments. Sorry I can't get replies to my guests, but I'm glad you're all here for the ride. Updates don't often occur this frequently, but this was a littler addition that came together fairly straight-forwardly. Next up is Lanie. I've started into it a little and all I can say so far is that it's looking like one of those chapters that ends up being 10% plot and 90% humor and fluff. Thank goodness this is fanfic where we can get away with that shit. ;D