Sorry, this chapter has taken forever. It didn't want to go anywhere. Anyway, exams are done and first year is over so updates should be more regular. P.S. extra kudos to you if you spot the Legally Blond reference.

"Kate Beckett? But… how?"

She leans her head against the plaster wall, confusion momentarily flickering through her mind before she remembers that she's supposed to be dead. She's dead. Everyone thinks she's dead. There's probably going to be an obituary in the papers, an announcement at work, a funeral… buried with her grandmother, probably. Her parents. God, this is going to kill them. Her mother would fight away the grief and bury herself in work, tire herself out day after day just so she can sleep at night without fear of nightmares, but her father… he was never good with emotions. He was never good at keeping them under wraps. Hearts on both sleeves and his trouser legs too. This is going to tear him apart from the inside out. "The woman… Kelly, she has red hair, and she knows so much about me, stuff from years ago that she must have researched… she told me my parents thought I was dead. She didn't say how."

"We found your body. Sorry, I mean, I'm a detective with the NYPD. We had a call a couple of days ago about a woman who was, um…"

"It's okay. I can take it." The rising nausea in her throat tells her she's not sure she can.

"She was shot. One bullet to the head. The room she was in was set up as a trap, the gun on a trigger, the moment the janitor opened the door… well. You get the picture. Everything about her lead us to a Katherine Beckett, thirty four, Manhattan resident, a lawyer with her parents firm. Nice apartment, wasn't much living been done in it considering the take-out temple in the fridge but you could tell someone had laid their stamp on it. She has a best friend called Maddie. Owns a restaurant. You were out with her when you had a run in with a man called Mike at a bar. At first we thought it must be him, you know, guy pissed at being turned down, but he had an alibi. Pretty solid one at that, too."

"She – she wasn't… who was she? The woman posed as me?"

"Who's to say she wasn't Kate Beckett?"

The sudden switch in mood startles her, a foot slipping against the floor to knock against the side of the wardrobe. "But-"

"No offence, but you're a voice through a wall. You can't prove that you're her. I don't know what this red headed woman sounds like. For all I know, you could be her and you're just messing with my head. Trying to find out what I actually know. It's not unlikely, people have tried it before.."

Kate draws her legs up to her chest, props her chin on her knees. She doesn't know this man. She doesn't recognise the voice, or the name. It's like he said, just a voice through a wall. For all she knows he could be this mysterious Jerry that Kelly keeps on referring to. "How did you get here?"

"Oh. I was… asleep."

"You were asleep?"

"Er, yeah. On your sofa. Kate's sofa."

"My sofa."

"If you say so. Anyway, there must have been a police officer on guard, or at least I must have thought there was. We usually do the first couple of days, you never know who may return. He woke me up. Said I shouldn't have been there. And no, I shouldn't, but I was tired and it was late and honestly I have no idea how I ended up on the sofa when I was in the bedroom – whatever, he arrested me, must have drugged me or something and then I woke up strapped to a table. What about you?"

"You were in my bedroom?"

"I was investigating your murder!"

"I'm not dead! Okay, I'm not – I'm not dead. Not yet anyway. I don't know what these people want, but I can tell you it is not good. It is not good at all. I don't know what they're doing to me but yesterday I was in surgery and they did something to my ear and I can't work out what it is. I can't work out what they want, and I'm a lawyer, okay, and a damn good one at that, and I'm normally good at seeing these kinds of things but right now I can't."

"Okay, okay, just take a couple of deep breaths. Calm down. Can you tell me anything that you remember?"

Kate presses her forehead into her knees, trying to think back in to the murky depths of the past week and try to work out what really happened. God, she remembers nothing. She'd been working on a case, late in to the night, the files spread out across her coffee table… was that the last thing she remembers? "I was working. There was a case, um, big business tycoon being sued for human trafficking, He was an artful bastard, and close to a hundred children have died because of him, maybe more, and we needed all we could to nail him. I think I must have needed to have a break at some point, that case is going to be ruined by now, nobody knows it as well as I do… maybe I went for a run? I know, it was dark and late, but I needed to get outside and feel fresh air. Besides, my block is never truly quiet. That's all I was going to do. Go around the block. Go to sleep. Look over again in the morning. They must have been waiting."

"How did they know?"

"What do you mean?"

"How did they know you would come outside? Or that you were even there? How did they know I was there?"

"Are you… talking about… no, I would have noticed..."

"You sure? You can buy cameras and microphones that are smaller than my fingernail these days. Stick them in lampshades, underneath cupboards… how often do we ever clean under them? I don't think this was a random grab and run. Like you said, they've done their research, they've found someone who looks like you, or they made to look like you. They've been planning this for a while. But why you?"

"Jerry."

"What about him? Who is he?"

"Kelly, the woman, she said I knew him. I don't know, she keeps saying I'll meet him eventually but I haven't yet. I don't know anyone called Jerry. I can't think of who he could be. Everyone that I'm familiar with and I see on a daily, weekly basis, I know their names. I know them. I know their family, the name of the cat they had when they were thirteen…"

"Could he be from one of your cases?"

"I suppose he could be. I think I would remember him though."

"You remember all of them?"

"I try to. My mother does the same, especially when she was my age, now she writes them all down in a book.I think she's scared she's going to forget them in her old age. Names, numbers, whether she won or lost. Ninety per cent of the time she wins."

"She sounds like an excellent lawyer."

"She is. When I was a kid, she would tell me I could be anything I wanted to be. You know when your parents tell you that you could be president some day, but they're just telling you that because they're your parents and that's what they're supposed to do? I think she genuinely meant it. I think she genuinely believed that I could go on and run a country. I don't think I've met anyone who's had as much faith in me as she does."

"I do."

"You do what?"

"Have faith in you. In us. That we can get our of here, and not in body bags. Or in whatever means of disposal they use here. Judging by their efficiency here I don't think this is the first time they've done this."

"It isn't. She told me… she said that everyone stops speaking eventually. I assume that means she kills them. Or he does." The thought makes her feel sick again, and she wishes for nothing more than an open window and some fresh air that can wash away the constant lingering smell of death. It loiters around the room. Waiting. It knows her time is limited. "How are we supposed to get out of this?"

"Well. I'm a cop. It's not the first time I've been in a situation like this, and I'm going to make sure it isn't the last. And you're a lawyer. I imagine you've had to argue your way out of a dead end before, you're a quick thinker, you see details that no one else has seen-"

"Like whether or not someone has had a perm."

"What?"

"Sorry, lawyer joke. But I still don't see how quick thinking and brains can help us get out of here."

"Well, okay, you said you went for a run. That means fit, healthy. Exercise?"

"Running, yoga, Kickboxing when I can fit it in."

"That will come in handy. We are going to get out of here, okay?"

She's not sure she believes him. There's something so final about this place, something so creepy and hidden that she's certain that even if she did manage to get out a door and out of sight of the guards she has yet to see, away from Kelly and Jerry, that she would have no idea about direction, no idea where she should head, and would, most likely end up going around in circles until she lands right back where she started, or just keep going and going and going until she collapses from lack of food and water and dies from exposure. She's not sure which death is worse.

"Detective Ryan?"

Ryan lifts his head from where he'd been pouring over financials for the fiftieth time that day to watch the ever so dashing figure of Martha Rodgers cutting through the swathe of detectives and officers alike towards his desk. Maybe she can illuminate him on the ever conspicuous absence of the illusive Richard Castle. "Mrs Rodgers?"

"I don't suppose you've seen anything of that son of mine, have you?"

So much for that theory. "No, he never turned up this morning."

"He didn't phone?"

"If he did, he didn't phone me. Why?"

"Well, you know I have Alexis during the day… and I know this job is busy and it takes up a lot of his time, and I love my granddaughter, I do, but he was supposed to pick her up last night, like he normally does. I means sometimes he just crashes on the couch because it's late and he doesn't want to disturb her, but when I woke up this morning there was no sign of him. No phone call, no note, nothing. It's not like him."

"He was probably just working late. Going over files, re-checking alibis, that kind of thing. Loses track of time, falls asleep somewhere…"

"Detective-"

"It happens to the best of us. My wife has found me face down on the coffee table on more than one occasion, surrounded by files, with three empty coffee mugs around me. She says it's not even the falling asleep that bothers her, it's my constant inability to use the same mug."

The anecdote receives a small, but watery smile from the older woman. "You really think it's just that? You know how much he loves Alexis, especially after… well. He wouldn't just abandon her. He would let me know."

"Okay, I will put an APB out on him and his car, see what turns up."

"You don't seem particularly concerned, Detective."

"Ms. Rodgers, if I put out APB's out for every time Castle went off the grid, or was missing for any slight amount of time, I would never be off the phone. I understand your concern, but Castle does this more often than he lets on. He'll turn up in a few hours with some new lead or a suspect. It's what he does. The only reason we let him get away with it is because he's so good at what he does."

"I'm just worried about him, detective. You know what happened with Meredith, and I know he's better and he's not as… you know…"

"This isn't Meredith. He doesn't know this victim. It's not the same. He knows it. And I trust him. As much as his action sometimes annoy me, I trust him."

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