Wednesday 8:58 am

12th Precinct

Castle exited the elevator and walked into the bullpen carrying two coffees. He'd walked these exact same steps, holding these exact same blends, hundreds of times before. He realized he was more tired than usual, not having slept since yesterday morning. He was also a little down, having recently experienced, just two short hours ago, the Crane family notification, which had been nothing short of brutal. However, those feelings were offset by the thrill of the hunt, and the intrigue of this case. Undoubtedly the largest armored car heist in history, brilliantly planned and ruthlessly carried out, and he had a chance to help solve it! He looked at Gates' office and was surprised to see it empty. Ryan and Esposito were working at their respective desks. He placed the coffees at Beckett's desk and asked, "Where is everybody?"

Esposito answered without looking up. "Major pow-wow. I haven't seen that many Feds since I took that class at Quantico. They were going to try to squeeze them all in the big conference room over at the 3rd precinct. Or maybe rent out Madison Square Gardens."

"How's Gates?"

Ryan turned around and grinned. "She went with them to ride herd. An ATF guy and a lawyer from the security company tried to throw their weight around, getting in Demming's and Beckett's face. The Captain just blew them up. It was awesome. I've never known anybody who can be so obnoxious without either cussing or repeating herself. It's so nice she's had you to practice on all these years."

"I'm glad I could be of service. What are you doing?"

Esposito again. "We're looking for that stupid tractor trailer with armored car #468 on it. We've expanded the search parameters in both time and area. Not a sniff. Sounds like you had an interesting night."

Castle gave both detectives a detailed account of their night at Gotham Security, as well as a brief description of the extremely difficult interview with Archie Crane's widow Mi-Hi. He then started updating the murder board, adding the vitals for Crane and Palappadous. He put Ennis and King on as suspects. He expanded the time line to include the casino run for the armored car.

The elevator opened, disgorging Beckett and Demming. Beckett had gone all out, wearing her favorite 'power' suit. She called it her 'guilty' suit, either because she generally saved it for testifying in murder trials, or because it was so expensive. She joined Castle at her desk, spied her coffee, and grabbed it for a swig. "Thanks, Castle!"

"My pleasure."

"Can we talk?"

"Sure."

Beckett pulled him behind the murder board, put one arm around his neck and her other palm on his cheek, and gave him a long and passionate kiss on the lips. With tongue. And more tongue. She finally broke the kiss, stepped back a few inches, and whispered "Thank you."

Castle grinned. "You're welcome. Why are you thanking me? For a cup of coffee? I'll go get you a pot."

"For that. For all my other coffees." She leaned in and whispered in his ear, "For helping me … wash and shave … in the shower this morning." She rested her forehead against his. "For suggesting this suit today. For being there for me today at Mi-Hi Cranes. For just being there for me, always."

"Exactly. Always." Castle pulled her into a hug. "It may be a crappy thing to be good at, but you are awesome with grieving people. You are so strong, you seem to lend them strength, and give them a glimmer of hope for better times. Even when the world as they knew it has been burnt to ashes."

Beckett sighed. "I always thought it would get easier, somehow. It doesn't. I could not have done that today, if you weren't with me."

"Anytime, Kate. Forever."

"I guess we should step out before they start talking." They stepped quickly around the board. The bullpen was mostly empty. Esposito, Ryan, and Demming were suddenly busy reading files. Beckett smiled and called, "That file is upside down!" Esposito and Demming both started flipping their respective files around, catching themselves too late. Castle and Ryan laughed. Beckett's smile widened.

Esposito looked up. "Do we still have a case?"

"For now, but we are definitely on the clock. The company estimates anywhere from 18 to 24 hours to breach those internal safes without a key." Esposito and Ryan slid their chairs over, and Demming grabbed an extra. "The FBI is taking over the robbery aspect, mostly because of the Federal Reserve Bank getting hit for the first time in history. Fourteen million. It was all money that was supposed to go to their secure facility in New Jersey for disposal. Total take, just under forty-one million."

Esposito's eyes got wide. "Holy shit! Does the press have this yet?"

"If they don't, they soon will. Most everybody in that meeting was posturing to try to get a bigger piece of this case. If Chief Cavillo hadn't been there, I don't think Gates would have been able to hold on to it for us. Eventually, a couple of very smart lawyers from Justice laid out a plan that everybody could live with. They also promised us access to their information, which will be here shortly.

She drank more coffee. "They have their IT guys looking at the ACT software, where they think they've found vulnerabilities. The FBI is going on the premise that some or all of the rookie drivers at Gotham were in on it. They are trying to tie those guys to the shootout at the armory. They are also all over the heroin angle. It's confirmed it's Mexican Brown, a cut that the Cordova Cartel has been selling here for months. They are not admitting to looking at the Islamic extremist angle, but I have it on good authority that they'll be looking there as well." She looked pointedly at Demming.

Demming nodded his head. "Count on it. My source told me that two of the biggest suspects of the armory heist were the Cordova cartel and a group of West African Muslims known as the 'Movement of Oneness'. "

Beckett grimaced. "I don't want to narrow our focus to that degree. There's still a lot we don't know. I have some things I'd like to check out, but I'm willing to listen to suggestions if anyone has one."

Several seconds of silence. Castle raised his hand tentatively. Beckett asked, "Rick?"

"I have a couple of theories how this could have happened."

Beckett smiled, and said "Me too."

Ryan said, "Uh-oh!" He slid his chair back to his desk, grabbed a big bag of potato chips, and slid back again. "Okay, ready!" He opened the bag, poured several into Esposito's cupped hands, then leaned back in his chair and started munching.

Beckett squinted at him. At his smile, she rolled her eyes, then addressed her fiancé. "What are you thinking, Castle?"

"I'm thinking that everybody else is so focused on means, which always tracks back to the National Guard Armory shootout, that they're missing the most important item, opportunity."

Beckett nodded enthusiastically. "Which is the route of car 468."

"Exactly. It's so brilliant, I am filled with jealousy that I didn't think of it. Someone scheduled car 468 to drive to that alley at exactly 8:04 pm last night ... to its own robbery! Not only that, they cherry-picked the biggest and best Gotham Security pick-ups, and dropped them out of the schedule of the armored cars that should have made those stops! They then back-filled those stops with car 468, manned by three rookies who wouldn't know that anything was off. It's genius!"

Beckett smiled. "Those guys were so new they had no idea that what they were doing was bizarre, especially the last drop off in the middle of nowhere."

"I'd bet, if we checked, a Gotham armored car drove by each of those casinos while 468 was there. As long as none of the cars got more than half an hour out of whack, no alarms would sound. All the originally scheduled vehicles would be a little bit ahead of schedule, no big deal."

Beckett nodded, her eyes shining with excitement. "So they didn't need an inside man in 468. All they needed was an armored truck." She took Ennis' and King's pictures, and moved them next to Cranes under the word 'Victims'. She then took Gus the mechanic's picture, and moved it where theirs had been under the 'Suspects' heading. "I'm working on the premise that Ennis and King are captured or dead. The perps got the truck from Palappadous, and killed him because they knew he was the weak link."

"Right. All they needed was access to the ACT software."

"Sometime between the time yesterday's schedule was created and the time it was sent to Gotham."

"It's a cop!" Castle wrote 'cop'. "At least one. Maybe two. They needed the rookies' names, so maybe IAD was involved." Castle wrote 'cop2' with a question mark.

"Okay" Beckett agreed. "There must be at least three perps." Castle wrote #3. "One to shoot the truck, an explosives expert to remove the black box, and one to operate the crane and drive the semi. Would have been easier with four." He added a #4 and a question mark. "Which brings us back to the anti-tank weapon and the Semtex."

"It's not from the National Guard robbery. Not exactly. It must be from the third truck, the one the thieves didn't get away with!"

"Yes! Then liberated from wherever the evidence was being stored."

Castle and Beckett were now no more than 18 inches from each other. Both mirrored each other in excitement with blazing eyes, flushed cheeks, and rapid breathing. They smiled helplessly at each other, until they heard Demming's voice intrude into their little personal bubble.

"That was REALLY weird … do they make out now?"

They turned and looked at the three male detectives. All three were sitting back, munching chips, and sporting very different smiles. Ryan's showed pride and awe, bordering on adoration. Esposito's was a smile of exasperation, and Demming's one of puzzlement mixed with amusement. Espo said, "Bro, I think they already did that!" earning another squinty-eyed look from Beckett.

She pointed to the board. "Okay, this is how we are going to assume the robbery went down until we prove ourselves wrong. Ryan, could you please pull the phone records for all four of these guys, and text messages too. E-mails. The works. I want to know how these guys got called into work yesterday, because it wasn't from IAD. I especially want to know who was talking to Palappadous. Demming, I'm sorry to do this to you, but I need a complete list of everybody that has sufficient knowledge and access of the ACT software to pull this off. That includes civilians if they use it, IT people, everybody ….but especially 3rd Precinct IAD personnel and Robbery Division. Can you do that?"

"No problem." There wasn't anybody an honest cop wanted to bust more than a dirty one.

"Esposito, I need to find out what happened to the evidence from the armory robbery, and then do a physical inventory of it. But it needs to be done DISCRETELY. Castle will help you."

Castle looked puzzled. "How will I help him?"

Beckett beamed her best smile at him. "Castle, you know I love you, right?"

Esposito muttered to the others, "Set-up. This sounds bad."

She continued, "…and I'd never ask you to do anything that wasn't absolutely necessary?"

"Make that REAL bad."

Castle tentatively said, "Sure…"

"Great! Follow me!" Beckett marched to the small conference room near the elevator, Castle and Esposito following. She opened the door, turned on the light, and said "Voila!" Stacked on the table were six boxes stuffed with files, notebooks, and looseleaf paper. "The feds files, as promised!"

Esposito quickly exclaimed, "I gotta make a call" and ducked out.

"Beckett! Seriously?"

She patted his cheek. "What we need first is the inventory of that third truck, and the disposition of the evidence. You can either do this, or bring Gates up to speed."

Castle smiled, and took off his Sports Coat. "On it."

A/N: I'm kind of proud of this chapter. I almost wrote itself. Reviews are greatly appreciated - DD - pie day (3/14/15)