"This is stupid."
Detective Ryan more than shared the deeply rooted fear and worry behind the incessant complaining coming from the other side of the desk, as he watched Castle check his wristwatch for the eight time in the last two minutes.
Not that it mattered much. Until they knew more, the bullpen would be their place to wait out any further instructions and he hated every goddamn moment of it.
Once again, he let his eyes travel from the murder board over to Javi's desk, feeling the familiar sting in his gut, threatening to make him regurgitate his breakfast.
Castle seemed to share the sentiment when he burped quietly, looking up quickly as though he wanted to make sure nobody had heard him.
The unlikely duo had spent the better part of the past hour at Beckett's desk, as if the proximity to her work station would somehow allow them to enter that brilliant mind, find what had piqued her interest this morning and made her run out with Esposito.
But so far there had been nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nichts
Ryan raked a hand through his wavy hair, exhaling slowly, trying to calm his frantic heart to no avail. The unexpected kidnapping had pulled the rug out from underneath him, caught him off guard, the shock so fresh it made him dizzy.
Why? Why hadn't Beckett said anything as to where she was off to? Worse yet, why hadn't he asked?
There'd been nothing unusual about the car either. He and Castle had stormed downstairs to watch it get brought in, before the techs began to swarm it, trying to find some sort of clue. But there'd been nothing; no handwritten notes, no bloody fingerprints, no extra dent that wasn't there this morning.
"We have to put ourselves into the shoes of whoever kidnapped them…and figure out why.", Castle suggested after a while, glancing down at the espresso he'd made but never touched.
"They had to have gotten close to something. Somebody.", Ryan theorized, hating himself for being the one to point out the obvious.
"Why move the car and leave the cell phones in it?", the writer returned, frowning.
"They wanted us to find the car. Know that they'd been kidnapped."
"Yeah, but why no ransom demands? I mean, in the open market, the price for a pair of cops should be pretty impressive. Especially if one of them is stunningly gorgeous."
"Maybe because they already have plenty of money.", Kevin countered, never acknowledging his remark about Beckett, too busy letting his fingers tap a fast rhythm against the desk, "All they wanted was for Beckett and Esposito to stay out of the way for now. Make sure that whatever they discovered wouldn't make it back here."
"They never attempted to call, not to say what they found, nor to call for help. So whatever went down, it went down fast."
Castle nearly choked on those words, his eyes growing distant as his mind wandered back to the woman he'd spent the better part of the past few years adoring, and, in his own strange ways, protecting.
Ryan shared the same sentiments, his heart aching at his partner's and Beckett's startling disappearance and the motive behind it.
"Something tells me that we won't figure this out until we can identify Shelley's customers. One of them must be in a position where any exposure would be detrimental."
Castle barely nodded, that lightheartedness replaced with stoic brooding as the writer clenched his jaws, searching that busy brain of his for answers that seemed to be just outside their grasp.
At this point, the only good news Ryan was clinging onto were that there'd been no bodies found. No sign of struggle. No blood. Whoever had captured them seemed to want to keep them alive for the time being.
Ryan was about to pick up the phone and call CSU, hoping for some more updates on the car, when he heard Montgomery clear his throat halfway across the bullpen, his grim face ashen.
"Come into my office guys, you'll want to see this."