A/N: Imagine that, I managed another chapter. I apologize for letting you wait but I am quite busy at the moment. I'm very close to finishing my dissertation, unfortunately that's not everything I have to do for college right now.

But for one I couldn't let you wait longer for another chapter and for another I couldn't wait to write another xD Just know that the next may take a while again. This one is...rather short again compared to the others but well, doesn't really matter, does it xD

Oh, btw, welcome new readers! I love each and everyone of you ;) (Includes the "old" readers as well of course xD)

So, I think I'll let you read right now ;) Enjoy!

Chapter 11

When they arrived at Carrie Downing's apartment the door man informed them that Carrie had moved out the day before.

"Right…Should've remembered that…" Beckett mumbled, recalling Nicole telling her about the fact that her mother had been thrown out. She turned to the doorman.

"Any idea where she went?"

The doorman shook his head. But she still uses this address for her mail. She told me she'd come in to check it every day at nine."

Castle checked his watch at that. "That's in half an hour. Should we wait?" he asked directed at Beckett who nodded in response.

"There's not much else to do in half an hour."

So they waited. Carrie was on time like clockwork. At exactly nine she walked through the doors into the lobby and to the mail boxes. She didn't see the detective and her partner waiting for her in the two chairs to the left of the entrance. Only when she turned around with a letter in her hand did she spot them and a frustrated and annoyed expression darted over her face.

Beckett got up and walked towards the woman, followed by Castle. "Mrs Downing," she greeted with a nod.

"What do you want here?" the woman asked harshly as always.

"Well, for one we're going to need your new address and for the other… Have you heard anything from your sister lately?" Beckett decided to not drop the bomb right away. There was information she needed to extract first.

"Excuse me?" Carrie asked, feigning innocence, "my sister?"

"Drop the act, Mrs Downing," Beckett exclaimed, losing her patience. "We know you took in Matty at Melissa's request and raised him as your own. She came by the precinct yesterday and told us everything."

"Oh and you just believe that stupid little bitch?"

"Considering that we have heard nothing but lies from you, who do you think we would believe more?" Castle asked sarcastically. He was losing patience just as much as his partner and said partner added, "Also, our ME has found traces of blood on Matty that matched a sibling to a toe. Only it couldn't have been from Nicole because it was from a male. There is no use denying it anymore. And you did ask your ex-husband if he told Nicole something. Why don't you come clean?"

Carrie Downing snorted. "Me, coming clean? That's what you should ask my forsaken sister!" she put a hard emphasis on "sister", almost hissing the word to them, making very clear what she thought of her.
"Well, she did. It would be too late now anyway."

That made Carrie look at the detective again, curiosity gaining the upper hand. "Why is that?"

"We found her shot in an alley a couple of hours ago. She was probably shot by a gang member of Matty's real father. Do you know anything about him?"

She shook her head no and realised that she pretty much had just given away that Detective Beckett was right, that her sister was right too and that she'd lied. "Fine then. Yes, I took Matty in. It was her idea, not mine. I was happy to give him a better life though, one he would never have been able to have with her. And about his idiot father. I have no idea. I saw him once, from afar. He slapped Melissa across the face. That's when we fought. She wouldn't do anything about it, she was far too dependent already, he had gotten her addicted to some drugs, there was no way I could talk sense into her. That was the day I gave up on her."

"How long have you known that your s- nephew was still alive?"

"He's my son, not my nephew. I raised him, that's all that count's," Carrie said to Beckett's change of words. Then she dropped her gaze and sighed.

"I didn't know," she answered the real question with a heavy sigh.

"Mrs Downing, your daughter told us about the bracelet and the message."

Beckett remembered very well that Mrs Downing had said that the message wasn't real when her ex-husband had asked her about it but something told her that there was more to it than the woman would say.

"Detective, that was not real."

"Nicole recognised the bracelet. Why shouldn't it be real?"

"I…It…It could just as well have been from one of the kidnappers. How would I know."

"So the message was real?" Castle asked and Mrs Downing shrugged.

"I mean, I don't know but the bracelet was his. It's… Melissa gave it to me. Somehow she'd figured a way to find that thing and have his name engraved. She wanted me to give it to him so he'd have at least something from her. I saw no harm in it, he would never know anyway," she shrugged and looked at Beckett again who could not quite figure this woman out. Some things she said made her seem human, a nice person who really cared about people and then she said something like this and Beckett didn't know why anyone would think like this.

She then looked at Castle. There was nothing they needed from Mrs Downing anymore for the moment except her new address.

"Where are you staying now, Mrs Downing?" she asked.

"The Gilbert Motel…For the moment."

Beckett nodded and started to walk away with Castle next to her.

"Detective?" she heard Carrie call after her.

"You'll find him, the guy who killed my sister? I mean...was it him? Was he the one who took my son too?"

There it was again, the good Mrs Downing, the one who really cared.

"We don't know yet. It is possible."

Carrie Downing nodded once, lips pressed together. She looked like she had aged another twenty years in the past five minutes.

Once they were back at the precinct they stationed themselves in front of the murder board that Ryan and Esposito had updated.

"There are far too many people on this board," Ryan stated and he was right. Their list of people who were involved was too long. They needed to narrow it down.

"Fine. We need something we can go on, something that will link these people to Matty. Or any of the other Downings that is."

Beckett wanted to get this sorted, get it done strategically. She folded her arms and stared at the names on the board and the boys joined her.

"Theories?" she asked to everyone around.

"Let's start with the inner circle. Nicole." Esposito suggested . "She still hasn't alibied out. Why? What could be her reason?"

"Why would she kill her brother? She has no reason. Even if she knew he wasn't her real brother, which I doubt."

"Fine Castle, got a better one?"

"Carrie. Maybe she did see Matty after all and he said he didn't want her as his mother anymore, that he wanted his real mother."

"She was drunk in her apartment, remember?"

"Not Carrie either then. Frederick?"

"I can't come up with a motive," Ryan thought aloud, "His alibi is a woman who doesn't exist though. At least not under this name. Which brings us to Giovanna Servente."

"Well, I agree on Frederick, I don't see a motive either. And he seemed very devastated when we told him."

Castle nodded his agreement to Beckett before he looked at the picture Ryan had found on the Downing Corporation Homepage. The woman on it looked like she was in her thirties, quite a few years younger than her boss who was in his fifties. She had long dark chocolaty brown and straight hair and a slight Mediterranean touch. She definitely had picked a name that went with her looks.

"What exactly did she do?" he asked and looked at Ryan.

"Well, take a guess… She was his secretary."

"How did she get the job when she doesn't even exist? I mean, they must have done a background check before employing her," Beckett wondered. She could feel Castle shift slightly beside her and knew he was about to spill one of his theories.

"How about… A foreign spy? They got her everything, her whole background, set it up so she could go there, hide in plain sight and wait for instructions from overseas…"

"And what kind of spy would that be?" Beckett asked with a raised eyebrow, trying to hide her smile without much success.

"I don't know. Some secret agency or another company, something like that…"

"Well, since we don't know anything about her, almost anything is possible. Espo, can you check with Interpol?"

Esposito threw a very sceptic look at Beckett. "You serious?"

"Well, Castle may be right thinking she's not from here. And with no identity she might just as well be someone who is on someone else's radar. We might as well check," she shrugged and Castle grinned at her.

"Still doesn't get us any further in the case, Castle…" she reminded him and he straightened his face.

"Of course, Detective. Let's get on with the list. Do we need anything from the kidnapping day anymore? Cause if we don't we could get rid of all the kids names."

Beckett nodded, stepped forward to take the eraser and cleaned the names off. They never really were supposed to be there anyways.

"Okay, who else?"

"Melissa and Connor" Ryan said, pointing at the two names.

Melissa never had been considered as a suspect and now that she was dead even less so. Her son though, was a different matter. They had nothing about Connor.

"I looked for Connor Payton but I couldn't find him. He must have his father's last name and we still don't know that."

"Okay, so basically we all agree that we have to find his father."

"Maybe we should first find a motive. Why would he kidnap his son? He has one already and he probably has a full gang of people who follow him without a blink. Why bring a boy into that circle who has lived a normal life for ten years? He would only be a threat, a weak link. Or at least a lot of work. A boy that age can remember his parents well enough to know he doesn't belong to these people."

Beckett smiled at Castle, her eyes sparkling. She loved it when he asked the right questions and this was exactly the right question. Why bother…

"I can understand that he wanted his first son but I don't have the impression that he's a very loving father. There must be another reason," Castle added, frowning.

"But there was no ransom call. Had he wanted something, he'd have demanded it," Esposito said while walking back to the team.

"I sent them the picture," he answered Beckett's unasked and unnecessary question.

"Maybe he didn't want anyone to know. Or maybe…" she muttered.

"Maybe what?"

Beckett shushed Castle. She was thinking hard now. Castle knew the look on her face only too well and as always he tried to catch up with her thoughts and his own thoughts were racing, trying to find connections, hints, anything really.

"Carrie!" both Castle and Beckett almost screamed in unison and smiled brightly at each other. Of course they had come to the same conclusion. They missed the looks that Ryan and Esposito exchanged. Both wanted to slap the two people in front of them. How could they be such a well-oiled machine, such a perfect team and not yet be together. They finished each other's sentences, they came to the same conclusions at the same time, they completed each other and it was so obvious. The detectives shook their heads. Also, they had no idea what exactly Carrie Downing had to do with the conclusion the two others had come to.

"Care to explain?" Ryan asked and both Castle and Beckett turned their heads.

"When we were with her this morning she said something. I asked her about the bracelet that Nicole had told us about, the one she'd found in her mother's apartment. Carrie denied again that the message was real but only at first. She then said it might have been from one of the kidnappers. She knows…"

"She knows why her son got kidnapped," Castle finished impatiently. "Or at least she knows something. She must have been in contact with the guy. Maybe he made a ransom call to her or maybe blackmailed her to give her sister up."

The boys both looked at them. It made sense. Somehow at least. Then Esposito asked, "But wouldn't she have done it? Given her sister up to save her son?"

"No. If the sister was the reason, then Carrie would have been clever enough to know they wouldn't hurt Matty. They would've needed him alive to get Melissa to show up. But Melissa had given Matty away willingly, she knew he had a better life and Carrie knew that Melissa knew. And Melissa was after all her sister. She may have broken all contact but they are family nonetheless."

"Well, let's call her in then. You two can do that. I'm sure she's seen enough of Castle and me for today. We'll look for other reasons for the kidnapping and try if we can find out who the father is. I'm quite sure he won't have gotten his hands dirty himself but if we find him, we find the people who do his dirty work."

She was sitting at her desk, staring into nothingness. The boys were out bringing in Carrie Downing and Castle had gone to the break room to get her another cup of coffee. She'd been on the phone with the Federal Marshalls and they had promised her to send her the files from Melissa Payton's case. She was close to finding the guy who was behind all this but it still didn't make enough sense to her. She had not had much time for others thoughts today but now she found her thoughts wandering off to the conversation she had with Lanie and to her latest dream. She had promised her best friend to come clean and tell Castle but this was neither the right time nor the right place. They were too busy with the case. And after the case she'd be too busy doing paper work. And then a new case would come and they'd be too busy again. Who was she kidding? If she was thinking like this, she would never be able to tell him. But she knew she had to. She also knew she couldn't do it just now.

Although, her dream had also made her realise something else. She may not always have loved Richard Castle the way she did now, loved him the way he was, with all his craziness, childish behaviour, seriousness with his daughter, everything. She loved him with all her heart now but if she was honest with herself, she'd loved him from the moment she'd met him in the library. Back then, as a seventeen year old, it was more admiration. She'd loved his voice and still did, she'd loved his books and still did but now, she loved him. Realising that – in a way – her heart had belonged to him for so much longer made it even more real. Maybe Lanie had been right. Maybe her dreams were some kind of twist of fate, something to tell her that she needed to live her life, that she needed to take the dive.

But this wasn't the time. Not quite yet.

Well, this was chapter 11 then. Probably not my best but well... I hope you enjoyed it anyways ;)

I've had an idea when I started this story...but I'm not sure if I should actually write it into the story cause I think it might get too much then...what do you say, are you up for some more craziness? ;)

And now a little advertisment xD I'm pretty sure that some of my new readers come from my lovely friend JennaBennet. Some of you may not know her so go over to her profile and read her story Lost in You. It's really great and it's complete =)

Now all there is left to say for today: Review please ;)