A/N: More alerts means more people reading. Thank you and welcome aboard.Gugh. I've written ahead by a few chapters and I find that it's very hard to refrain from posting more than one chapter a day. I don't want it to get over too fast though. Problems, problems. ; )

Disclaimer: I still do not own Castle.

Chapter 9

Kate Beckett had days where she went with minimal to no sleep at all yet she always woke up early. Her internal clock was so habituated that she didn't need an alarm clock by her bed although she did have one just in case. So like every other day for the past – who knows how many – years she woke up nice and early.

Richard Castle had days where he slept till the light of day came and went and it would be dark out again. Though he'd been waking up earlier than he should (He still woke up early of course. He had a child to take care of) for the past four years he still wasn't accustomed to wake up at the break of dawn. He usually joined the rest of them at the precinct at a more decent early than dawn – that is unless there was a drop. If there was a chance to be around Beckett with good reason, more than he already was, he wasn't going to miss it.

When she awoke she found them almost in the same position they slept in. She was sure their bodies must've moved involuntarily at night to keep from getting sore – the human body is smart that way – but overall, they were the same. She picked her head off from him and saw that their hands were no longer intertwined. Instead her right hand was on his chest, his right hand was around his waist keeping her close to him and his left hand was under hers on his lap. She couldn't suppress a smile from forming because though it should scare her, though she should be bolting she wasn't, it still felt right. The smile only grew when she took in his face. There was a remnant of a smile lingering on his relaxed face and coupled with his sleep tousled hair, he looked so adorable it was hard to look away.

She had to look away however. They had a psycho killer to catch after all. He stirred as he felt her move away from him and gave her a groggy smile and wished her "G'morning Kate".

"Good morning Rick. I'm going to go get ready. I don't know what you did to my ankle but I can almost move normally" She said as she showed him by moving her foot at her ankle.

'Ah, they weren't talking about it. That's fine, that doesn't make it any less real' he thought. "That's great! I'm glad. I'll go get breakfast ready" he said with a smile.

She got ready taking a little more time than she normally did. It's not that the showers in his guest room felt like some sort of miracle rain massage, just that she was being careful about her ankle. Maybe she took longer than she thought because when she came down he was fully dressed and making breakfast. It smelled heavenly.

"What's on the menu?" she asked him.

"Fruits" he said as he put down a bowl of strawberries and another of blueberries in front of her, "Bacon and eggs" he plumped down the dish that made her mouth water "and coffee" he said as he pulled two mugs, one for her one for himself. If the other stuff hadn't done it already – the steaming brew of high-end coffee had her salivating. He looked pleased and she thought that he had a right to. She gave him the biggest smile he'd seen in the past couple of weeks. He kept to himself the fact that he felt his heart triple in size; instead he gave her a big but soft smile of his own.

She had eaten heartily much to his pleasure. After he made his call to Alexis while Kate gathered her things, they set off towards the precinct all the while keeping an eye out for anything suspicious.

Once they got to the precinct they were back to being Beckett and Castle. It was unspoken between them. She didn't need to say it, Castle always understood and he always complied. It was one of the things she found endearing about him. He knew what she needed when she needed it. 'Why am I thinking about things I find endearing about him? Focus Kate' she told herself.

"Morning guys, did you get anything yesterday?"

She must have sounded as chipper as she felt because Esposito cocked an eyebrow and gave Ryan a knowing look. "Morning boss. I chased him on foot for a bit, but he was on a bike so I lost him pretty quickly. Although I did tell Ryan what direction to send backup in. He's smart though, he probably changed direction several times to lose us."

"They couldn't find him" Ryan confirmed. "How's the ankle?"

"Almost as good as normal" she smiled, "What do we have to work with this morning?"

"Nathan Smith brought in the letters. We've went through most of them. You guys can start with the rest" Esposito said. "We don't know where Daniel Smith is staying and we've got Nathan Smith under protective custody. Chances are he's seen his brother helping us out. One of the soldiers from Daniel's contingent – his best friend apparently – is coming in an hour for questioning."

Beckett and Castle took the rest of the letters and headed off to her desk. As they started reading they realized that what Nathan said had been true. Daniel's letters did start to sound off and they did get more agitated with passing time. It seemed like he tried to cover up his agitation by asking Nathan more about his work.

"Listen to this –" Castle read from one of the more recent ones "These people don't know what they're doing, Nate. I told them to stop screwing with God's work. Instead of heeding to my warnings, they permanently shifted me over to the field. They're just going to ignore all my lab work."

"Yeah, this one too" Beckett said as she read out another letter "I've told them it's a mistake. They haven't finished testing it fully in the lab but they've put it out for human testing already. If they keep going without thinking about the consequences, they'll have to deal with the outcome. I'm sure someone will show them right from wrong soon enough. But enough about that, Nate tell me more about your work? Tell me you guys test more extensively than we do here. Is your boss still grinding your nose to the stone?"

"He definitely has a problem with all of it. I think we were right about the motive" Castle said.

"Yes, I think we're right about it too."

Just as they finished the last of the letters they saw Daniel's best friend coming in. He wasn't in uniform but he sure looked like a soldier. He was probably six feet and seven to eight inches tall or so Castle estimated. He was extremely muscular, had a hardened face and a crew cut. They led him to the interrogation room after formal introductions.

"You wanted to know about Dan" Stephen Sanders said sadly.

"We were told that you are his best friend. That if we wanted to know about him you'd be the person to ask" Beckett said.

"I was his best friend."

"What happened?" Castle asked.

"Let me start from the beginning. It might give you some perspective. When Dan joined the military he was much too enthusiastic to be there. Some of us resented him for it because not all of us had as many options as he clearly did. He was always smart but he never showed off – he mostly kept to himself. His enthusiasm started to rub off on us. He obviously had his heart set on protecting this country by whatever means he could. He'd told me that he applied initially for field work but when they saw his resume they asked him to join their research division. He wanted to help in whatever way he could, so even though that wasn't what he signed up for, he did it willingly."

"Go on" Beckett said softly as she saw that he was struggling with the story.

"He did it willingly at first. But whether he was working himself too hard or whether the pressure was coming in from them, he was starting to lose it. It wasn't even that he was angry all the time. Sometimes I'd seen him break down, sometimes I'd seen him blankly staring at the wall. I never said anything of course because he'd become my best friend. Luckily I was always around to witness it. I only supported him. I didn't know yet."

"Didn't know?"

"I didn't know what was happening with him. In retrospect, he was having these – these mood swings. He was fighting with the higher-ups about testing their specimens. He thought he had the right since he was involved with most breakthroughs. He was close to engineering a corn that wouldn't need as much pesticide so that cultivation costs would be cut down drastically. Something like that anyway, I didn't understand much of it. I tried to tell him to take it easy but he didn't want to listen to me anymore. We had a fight and things went downhill."

"Downhill how?"

He took a deep breath and released it before he went on. "They had enough of him in the lab. They didn't want to deal with him anymore. So they told him that he'd have his wish and they put him in the field permanently. He didn't get to enter the labs after that. A few days after that he snapped. While we were undergoing a training exercise, someone must have provoked him. He turned on one of our guys and started choking him with his bare hands. We had to go break it up. I'd never been more scared of him or - anyone else for that matter - in my entire life. What I saw on his face was pure fury."

"He had been seeing one of our in-house psychiatrists." As he said this his lips quivered and he twiddled his thumbs absently. These were tells. Castle saw it and so did Beckett. It was obvious that he was hiding something. "They told him they had had enough. That he had been given more chances than anyone else would have gotten. They told him that this was it. He was discharged after that – not dishonorably though because they knew he knew too much of their experiments. Though he'd signed a confidentiality clause about them, I suppose they wanted to avoid any repercussions."

"What did the psychiatrists say Mr. Sanders. I can see you're hiding something."

"I – nothing" Sanders stuttered. He wiped the sweat from his brow. He looked at the recorder and the camera of the interrogation room. She motioned to Esposito through the glass to turn off the camera then she turned off the recorder. "I'm not supposed to be telling you this."

"Off the records" Beckett said. Castle leaned in attentively.

"He came to me one day after the psychiatric sessions. He was shaken about something so I asked him what he said despite our fall-out. He said that his psychiatrist had told him that he suspected it was MPD. I tried to talk to him more about it but he just shut me out and ran off. We never spoke about it after that and it was soon after we had the conversation that he was gone."

"MPD as in multiple personality disorder?" Castle asked in disbelief. This was getting more twisted by the second.

"Yes sir. I felt so bad about everything. It wasn't entirely him that fought with me. I confronted my superiors. They pretended not to know anything about the MPD and it was almost convincing. But then they said since our psychiatrist had referred him to another civilian psychiatrist, they were no longer liable. They told me that if I ever said a word of this to anyone, they'd give me the boot as well" he said guiltily "I have a family depending on me. I couldn't risk – but I sent him letters. I told him that I understood his behavior from earlier, that he might actually get better with the help and from being away from here. I never got replies."

"I'm sorry Mr. Sanders" Beckett said sympathetically. "Thank you for telling us this. We'd have been in the dark for longer. I'll keep it off the record, we'll try to find the civilian psychiatrist so that you don't have to get involved. I think that's all for now. If we need you we know where to reach. But if he contacts you at any point, call me immediately." They all stood as she gave him her card. He gave her the name of the civilian psychiatrist and parted ways.

After Sanders left the precinct they all gathered together to give update Captain Gates.

Gates wiped her face with a hand and said "This is getting ridiculous. Find this guy and put him behind bars as soon as possible."

"Yes sir" Beckett said through gritted teeth.

Castle thought 'No. That's not what we've been doing so far and that's not what we'll do now. We're going to continue to slide down rainbows and ride unicorns hand-in-hand while searching for gold pots in the land with leprechauns.' He kept it to himself though. Probably not the best thing to say when you're not in Iron Gate's good books to begin with.

Beckett rolled her eyes at Gate's back as she stomped away from them.

"Oh now we're supposed to catch the guy?" Esposito said with a grin.

"Damn why didn't we think of that" added Ryan while snapping his fingers dramatically.

"Come on guys. She's just as frustrated as we are" Beckett added with contained laughter at their antics.

"And I called it convoluted before" Castle said as he made a comical face.