Detective Esposito grunts a hello and marches into the living room before dropping the boxes onto the coffee table with no concern for the decorative candles Alexis had placed there several weeks ago; the resulting rattle resembles the beat of Castle's heart. With Beckett's encouragement, Castle had held onto to the chance of convincing Ryan to help with a side investigation into the Beckett-Montgomery-Beckett conspiracy, but he definitely hadn't expected to be offering late-night coffee to the same guy who'd seemed to hate him just hours before.

Esposito declines the caffeine, but asks Castle for a shot of something strong.

As he's handing back an empty glass, Esposito looks around at the apartment. "Wanna tell me how you got this place?"

"How I—" Oh. Shit. Shit. Castle had been so surprised by the sudden appearance of the case files that he hadn't given any thought to Esposito finding him at Beckett's old apartment. He shrugs with forced nonchalance and summons whatever ability to improvise he might have inherited. "I rented it, same as most tenants do when they need somewhere to live. My mother's loft is nearby, so she helped keep an eye out for any great deals that became available and we were able to grab this at the end of May. Not a bad place for a detective, huh?"

It takes several seconds for Esposito to respond, his eyes narrowed, but he finally nods. "Yeah, I saw that she cosigned your lease. Must be nice having family money."

"It can be," Castle responds.

"And you changed your last name."

Unsurprisingly, someone has done his homework. "Long story and a longer-lost dream."

After one more glance around the room, Esposito mutters something under his breath and Castle is grateful that he's not being pushed any further. If Esposito isn't going to acknowledge that they're facing off in his dead colleague's apartment, Castle is all too willing to let it slide for as long as he can.

Eventually, Esposito nods at the row of ceramic elephants he'd pulled from the box and placed atop the table. "Most of the stuff left on Beckett's desk was regular office crap, just a bunch of pens, paper clips, that sort of thing. But she had this little family there for as long as I knew her and I didn't want them getting trashed by some asshole stranger going through her things." He pauses to glare. "I still don't."

"Got it, Detective. I'll be careful with the herd."

"Be careful with all of it," Esposito warns. "I don't really care whether you get yourself killed while on this charity crusade of yours, but Beckett's case actually means something to me and it would be great if you could keep from screwing it up."

Castle lowers himself to the chair in front of where Esposito has made himself comfortable on the couch. "Don't get me wrong because I am very grateful that you're here, but why are you here? You obviously don't like me. And your partner must not be on board or you would've tasked him with this little visit. So, what changed your mind?"

Too many emotions flash in the darkest parts of Esposito's eyes, but he blinks hard before responding. "I don't like you because I don't know you, but I spent the afternoon doing a little digging into your past. Something still feels off, but I've got connections both inside and outside the department and was able to confirm that you're probably who you say you are with the motives you say you have."

"Probably?"

"I don't fully believe anybody anymore."

There's no great way to respond, too much understanding of the situation would tip his hand, so Castle mumbles some sort of concession and waits for more of the story. Something beyond a basic background check must have led Esposito to his door, and it doesn't take more than a second for him to hear it.

"And my partner is not on board and will not find out I handed these files over to you. I don't know why he's so against pushing this case forward, even if it seems like a lost cause right now, but doing nothing for Beckett is just pissing me off and I need help here. You're far from my first choice, but If Ryan won't go rogue with me, I might as well use you."

"But you're sure you can trust him, right?"

It's a stupid question to ask, or at least the wrong time to ask it, and for a moment Castle wonders whether Esposito is about to yank the file boxes out from under him and take his chances alone; he looks angry enough to do it. Instead, the answer is just spit at him.

"I trust Ryan with my life and Beckett did, too. Say something like that again and we're done." Castle tightens his jaw and nods. "He's just a good Catholic boy who doesn't want to rock the boat and doesn't think we have enough evidence to get anywhere with an investigation anyway."

"Do you?" Castle wonders aloud.

"No, not really. But you can see for yourself. Everything we have – officially and unofficially – is in those files, so catch up and I'll give you a call tomorrow." And with that, Esposito heads for the door with the same steady stride with which he arrived, pivoting only when he's about to be locked out. "Remember, this never happened. I was never here."

"You have my word. Thanks."

It should be enough, probably would be for anyone else, but this arrangement seems built upon anger and Esposito tosses one final threat his way. "If you tell Ryan I did this, I'll make you bleed."

"Understood."

"You can stop your terrible game of hide and seek now. I know you were listening to that entire conversation."

Beckett drifts back into his living room, glancing toward the door with a melancholic shadow cast across her face. It makes her no less beautiful, but reminds Castle that this is so much more than a homicide investigation for her, makes him hold onto the responsibility of solving it with the kind of tenderness he thought he'd lost in California years ago.

"He's really not a bad guy, Castle. Not at all."

"Didn't say he was."

"No, but there's tension between you two and I don't want it to be a problem," she explains with a sigh. "While underestimating Ryan's caution, I think I also underestimated Espo's loyalty to me. Coming to you was a big deal for him, but as much as he needs help, it's not going to be easy for him to trust anyone right now, not after what our team has been through. This being my old apartment probably shook him even more. So, let's take a look at what they have and we'll go from there."

Before he pulls any paperwork from the box he's already moved to the couch, he arranges the elephants along the surface of the coffee table and takes her silence as tacit approval of their temporary home. Maybe when this gets wrapped up and the files are shelved forever, he can send the figurines to Beckett's dad. Or perhaps Esposito will soften enough to want them back. Either way, they're less important than the details awaiting them in the case reports, so he begins to read from the scrawled notes and Beckett studies him from where she paces.

"Okay, it looks like the Department of Defense told them that the gun used to kill you had been issued to a Navy SEAL who was killed in action seven years ago. Not a big surprise, his gun wasn't found back then and seems to ended up in some shitty hands. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be anything else that can help us out with an ID right now. DNA on the weapon didn't match anyone in the system, so that's a dead end. No pun intended."

"Well, there's the possible military connection, which isn't a huge shock when looking for a sniper, but it's worth remembering," Beckett interjects. "And Espo has contacts that might be able to help with that angle later."

Castle agrees, but quickly moves on. "A lot of the witnesses questioned at the cemetery said they noticed a man in a groundskeeper's uniform behind the trees around the time of the shooting, but the maintenance staff said no employees should have been in the area, so that was probably the shooter. With all the chaos after you went down, nobody managed to find him when it mattered, nobody came up with a description that would help distinguish him from the majority. They ran facial recognition programs and searched license plates pulled from surveillance cameras, but got nothing from those either."

"And if the guy was a hired assassin, he could be long gone by now. Out of the damn country, even. If there's not a bigger connection here and his job is done now that I'm dead, there'd be no reason for him to stick around and we'll never catch him."

"Look, I get that you want the man directly responsible for killing you, but you also want to bring this 'dragon' down, right?. So, we figure out who hired the sniper and bust the whole case open from the top down instead," Castle counters. "Based on what they noted here, the guys looked into money trails, but then–"

As his voice fades and he thumsb through the stack of papers in search of something Esposito shoved between the folders, Beckett jumps in. "There are a lot of money trails to trace, though. Not just my shooter. We've gotta go back and track the accounts tied to Montgomery, Raglan, and McCallister, find the money they were paid after my mom was killed."

"They found nothing on the sniper money, which isn't a surprise when nobody knows the identity of either side of that particular transaction. But your boys did have the same idea about Montgomery and the others," he explains, waving a post-it in the air, the detectives wary about adding anything about the conspiracy to the official case notes when there's no telling who else could be involved. "Unfortunately, the bank handling the blood money for those three closed down shortly after your mother died. I'm sure they cashed out instead of calling more attention to themselves."

"Okay, but those records must be kept somewhere, right? So, we switch gears and track those down now."

He shakes his head as he keeps reading, Beckett's frustration landing squarely upon his shoulders. "There was a fire at the warehouse just a few weeks later. Everything was destroyed, nothing to track down."

"And the cause?"

"Ruled accidental. Faulty wires. There's a copy of the inspector's report here."

Beckett freezes, her eyebrows arched as she stares him down. "Bullshit. First, the bank that could have delivered solid ties to the son of a bitch holding this all together closes down immediately after three payoffs are made. Then, by total coincidence and nothing more sinister, the warehouse with that bank's records goes up in flame, leaving us with no leads. Again."

"No leads yet," Castle corrects. "What if Esposito and I talk to the fire investigator, press him on the accuracy of his findings? We'll keep Ryan out of it and question him together."

"You think the guy would even remember the details after all this time?"

"Maybe, maybe not. But I'd say he's a lot more likely to remember if he was pressured into a phony report. Or if he received a monetary reward for his trouble."

"But if he was paid off, why would he tell you the truth now?" Beckett argues.

He shrugs before pointing out an important part of her own story. "Detective Raglan reached out to you when he knew he was dying, figured it was a good time to clear his conscience. Montgomery came clean before he died. It's been a really long time and this inspector may be ready to lighten his load, let go of the sins of the past."

She nods along and it strikes him how quickly they've found a rhythm, a challenging back and forth that keeps him on his toes and hungry for answers. There's nothing exactly wrong with his partner at the 1st, but working with Beckett gives him something more and it's a bit of a shock when he reminds himself she only appeared in his life 24 hours ago. Reality has been altered by the way she's spilled her story into his open arms, all the bittersweet memories and jagged revelations alternately soothing and scarring him as she speaks with a voice only he can hear. He's already learned so much, and he's utterly captivated; Castle wants to know everything, from the mundane to the extraordinary, for however long she'll continue to share. He's convinced that in another world she'd never allow him in so easily.

But then his chest clenches when he remembers that their time together is limited, bound only by whatever has her tethered to his home, the intangible urgency making it difficult to breathe. And maybe it's only the unusual nature of the case that has his passion reignited, his mind sharp for the first time in far too long. Perhaps the immediate bond with her exists solely in his imagination, no more real than the woman herself, but their partnership already hurts as much as it has him grateful for the spark she's brought into his life.

It's too late to bring anything into hers.