(A/N: Wow, can I just say I am feeling the love right now? Four reviews, 13 favorites, and 27 alerts in just two days! So I ignored the fact that I needed sleep and cranked out another chapter for you lovely people! ^^)

~Chapter Four~

The parking garage was hollow and cold. Beckett adjusted her scarf and fastened another button on her coat as her four-inch heels make a soundly entry. But the sharp echo and the peeling paint on the walls weren't the only things that gave the place an uneasy feel.

Castle, on the other hand, could have cared less about the peeling paint, and was too busy wondering about his various theories for the case aloud. Why had the victim stopped here the night he was killed? This was a pretty seedy part of town – was he a drug dealer? Or was he receiving drugs? Or did he play the sugar daddy card and have a prostitute waiting for him that night? He was right in mid sentence – something about the spirits again – when she pushed her hand against his chest and forced him to stop.

"Castle, shut up."

"What?"

"...Those weren't your footsteps just now."

"You were probably just hearing the echo."

"Then why did 'the echo' have an echo?"

Beckett reached for her gun under her coat and leaned up against a generously close wall. She could feel the adrenaline start to coat her veins as her breath became just that more heavy.

The next few moments were a haze of hatred and devotion. Many bullets were shot, but only the third to last made the rightful BANG in her ears. She shot twice more, just wanting them out of her sight, and then the world around her crashed, just leaving a small proximity of her and Rick, bleeding and heavily breathing Rick, on the cold concrete floor. As if by reflex, she pulled off her scarf and applied pressure to what was now a burning hole in his upper chest. She told him to stay calm and that everything was going to be fine, but she repeated it more to herself inside her head than she said it to him in the real world. She called desperately for the paramedics on her radio. Her blue scarf was now being died red with the blood, and her cheeks became wet with her tears.

"Rick...Rick, just calm down. You're gonna be fine."

"Kate...Kate, I-uh...Kate, listen to me. There's...there's some-something in my safe. Muh-Mother will...know what it is. If any-if anything happens to me-"

"Don't say that! Don't you dare say that!" Her hot tears now spilled onto the blue/red scarf.

"Kate, l-listen, please! If anything happens...just make sure you...you know what it is...What's in there...Oh, Kate, I love you." His breathing became short, and his voice was wispy. His blue eyes fluttered trying to hold on to what consciousness he had left. "Don't you forget that."

"I love you, too," she choked, kissing his forehead and still keeping a strong hand on his chest.

Kate woke with a large intake of air. She was still in her chair in the hospital. Her heart was jumping like a paddle ball in her ribcage, and she tried to regulate her breathing. She lifted up the hem of her shirt and dabbed at her sweaty forehead, then rolled up her sleeve and checked the time.

Nearly ten to three. She glanced at Rick in his bed, still unmoved and nearly lifeless. The heart monitor was still going at the same mockingly slow beat.

She then looked at the ring on her finger again. Rick's labored voice in her mind played over and over like a broken record.

"Oh, Kate, I love you. Don't you forget that."

She rung her hand through her hair once more, and tried to go to sleep again. She had no success until she finally dragged herself out of the room to get a cup of water, and only then did she doze on and off until she finally slipped under at about five in the morning.