Hey, next chapter! Thank you so so so much to everyone for your support, especially everyone who's reviewed, it means so much to me, you've got no idea :)

Disclaimer: I, sadly, own not one bit of it-except the typos and the bad grammar, but hopefully you guys will ignore those :)

Ryan didn't bother checking for explosives this time, because there was no time. He broke the door down and ran into the house, flanked closely by Esposito. A loud crash from down the hall, followed by muffled voices, alerted the detectives to movement. They moved quickly and silently down the hallway until they reached the door right at the end. Esposito looked at his partner long enough to count to three, and then they kicked the door open and entered guns raised, accompanying their entrance with a shout of 'NYPD, freeze!'

Jerry, who was handcuffed to a chair in the corner, dropped the phone that he had been holding and it clattered to the floor. Then, form around the tipped table in the middle of the room, Castle poked his head around, his face expressionless.

'Castle!' they called to him 'Dude, are you okay?'

He shook his head slightly and ducked back out of sight. The detectives walked over to the other side of the table to join their friend and gasped, part shock part horror as they took in Beckett tied motionless to the table top.

'Beckett?' Esposito called, kneeling beside her

'Oh God…is…is she?' Ryan looked slightly sick

'D-de-' Castle couldn't say it, not properly, but then again he didn't need to. They all knew.

Ryan turned around and kicked the wall and Esposito slammed his wrist against the hard floor.

'I got him to call 911, but I don't think…' he was finding it difficult to form sentences. Ryan turned to Jerry, sitting staring with a morbid intensity at Beckett's head-the only bit of her he could see.

'What did you tell them?' Ryan demanded him sharply

Jerry just laughed

'You think I actually called them? You really are a rubbish cop,' Kevin Ryan was not a violent person, but when he reached his limit he could be quite aggressive. And now he was at his limit. He turned around quickly and delivered a swift, single punch to Jerry's right cheekbone and then promptly pulled out his own cell phone and walked away, calling emergency services.

'She's not gone yet,' Esposito was reassuring Castle, although less for the writer than for himself 'She can't be, she'll hold on,'

'She's not breathing,' Castle's voice was dead again, empty. Esposito looked at him, then back to the woman he loved like a sister. He crawled closer to her and then, very gently using two fingers, he tipped her chin up and tilted her head to the floor, trying to open her airways in the best attempt he could make to get her breathing again.

…

When the paramedics finally arrived they were all business. They calmly asked Castle to go through what had happened and then moved to Beckett, producing small knives and scissors from their kit to cut her bonds.

'Careful,' one of them advised 'that fall could have damaged her spine, maybe even broken neck,' the idea he could have done something like that to her made Castle groan inwardly. He sat and watched, his mind almost completely shut down, his heart in his mouth, as a paramedic went through the motions of CPR, trying to get her to breathe again. It could only have been a minute or so, but it felt like hours when eventually the small dark-haired woman in her EMT uniform gave up on Beckett's still unmoving form. She shook her head at a fellow paramedic and turned away to talk to Esposito.

Castle was numb.

Worse than numb. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't think. All he could do was move meaninglessly and before he realised it he was kneeling beside her lifeless corpse, clinging hopelessly onto her limp arm.

He didn't even know why he did it exactly, only that some unconscious hope seemed to live on inside him, but without any conscious thought, he began to perform CPR himself. He pushed desperately on her chest, willing her heart to beat again, paying to any deity that might listen to let her live again. He pressed his lips on hers, trying against all the odds to get air moving through her lungs again. The paramedics tried to pull him off, telling him that it was too late, she was gone, but he hit them away and Ryan and Esposito stopped them from touching.

He didn't know how long he tried for, longer than he should have if he'd been doing it properly, but just as he leant in to try and breathe air into her lungs for maybe the twentieth time, something moved within her. Some life force, pulling her back into existence. Then she drew in a deep long breath and began to cough even as her eyes flew open to meet Castle's wondrous gaze. Her coughing and panting breaths where so violent that they wrenched her body off the hard floor and she clasped desperately at Castle's shirt, trying to get air in and out properly. Castle slid his hands behind her, supporting her head and back as her body heaved in its mindless attempt to live again and he turned frantically to the stunned paramedics.

'Help me!' he cried to them even as he turned back to the writhing form of the woman he loved.

Hope you liked it! Did you really, honestly think that I would kill her? C'mon I'm not mean :) Please let me know what you think, even if it's like a word :)

Emz xxx