Disclaimer: I don't own the Castle series (gosh, that'd be sick), the Storm franchise, the Heat franchise, or any of the characters

"What is it, Heat? What did you find?" Roach followed Heat as she walked intently to her desk, paying no mind to the two boys staring over her shoulder.

Rook laughed behind her. "CIA agent left this at her house," he said, a slight tone of disappointment in his words.

Heat smiled. "And it has all of the case files," she said lightly.

Ochoa stuck one of his hands into his pocket, pulling out a 4x6 photo. With dismay, he showed it to Raley. "Oh, Nikki," he whispered.

"What?" she asked impatiently.

He thrust the photo down into her hands, showing her the photo he had of her in his case. She sighed softly, all mirth leaving her face.

"Wait, you're still dating this guy?" Rook asked angrily.

He turned and began to stalk out.

"Wait, Rook! It's not what you think!" she called after him, but the elevator doors were already closing over his chiseled face.

Nikki put her face in her hands. "What else is in there?" she asked, her stress level rising with every word.

"Lauren's ME reports, case files, as well as some files that weren't originally ours…" said Ochoa. "These are," his eyebrows raised, "oh… These are our personal files…" he whispered, passing a file to Raley.

"How do they know all of this?" Raley exclaimed, flipping through a load of files that had his picture on the cover. Heat didn't say anything. She just sat there and stared at the file.

"I need to talk to Storm."

Sure enough, when she got home that afternoon, she had a single red rose with a faded yellow note tied to it. It arranged a meeting place and an address, a single heart placed on the bottom. Obviously he didn't know she was onto him.

She slipped some curlers into her hair, brushing on mascara and doing her eye makeup as fast as she could. Then, she pulled out a fitted green dress that had sleeves that went just over the shoulder and diamond cutouts on each side of her ribcage. She tugged it down so that it touched her knees, and she slipped her feet casually into a pair of black heels. She pulled her hair out of the curlers, leaving it with a nice little swing at the bottom. Last, she applied a nude, sparkly lipstick, and she grabbed her purse.

"Let's do this."

In the car on the way there, she had a few phone calls to make.

"Ochoa," she said into the car Bluetooth.

"Hey, chica! What's up?" he asked casually.

"Going to see Storm," she responded in an equally casual voice.

"Whoa! Whoa! Chica, calm down a sec! We haven't bugged you, or prepped you, we don't even have eyes on the location! You can't just go in there!" he exclaimed.

"Well, I am! He's CIA, he'll see it coming," she said angrily.

"Come on, chica, this is rash, even for you," he said, trying to calm her down.

Nikki sighed. "Well, I'm doing it," she said truthfully.

Ochoa started to complain again, but she put him on mute and dialed up a number on the other line.

"This is Jameson Rook, sorry I couldn't take your call, please leave a message at the tone, beep!" She could hear his chuckling in the background at the fake beep noise he made. God, is this all he does? Record new voicemail messages and write crappy news articles?

When the real beep came, Nikki was so distracted that she had forgotten what he was going to say.

"Rook… It's Nikki. Please. Come back to the precinct. We need you. I need you," she knew the words were exactly what he needed to hear, even if they weren't entirely truthful. "You're my partner and I can't do the job without you. Storm… I'm only seeing Storm as a liaison, okay? It's our way to get info from him, it's not real, I promise. Please, Rook. Please come back."

She hung up the phone angrily, incidentally hanging up on Ochoa as well.

As she drove down the long highway, she thought more and more about her words. Just a liaison… Doesn't mean anything… but that wasn't entirely true, and Nikki had just begun to see that.

She decided it was time to give someone else a call.

Her phone rang for what felt like years until the ME finally picked up.

"Lauren Parry," she said dully.

"Hey, Lauren, it's Nikki…" she said unsurely.

"Oh," Lauren said sarcastically, "it's you."

"Yeah, it's me. Before you hang up, just let me say something," she said quickly.

"I'm listening," Lauren said in the same tone.

"You were right. I do like Storm, and I don't know what to do about it," said Heat.

Lauren sighed, a bit of victory in her tone for being right, but luckily, she didn't rub it in Nikki's face. "I don't know, sweetie. I mean, you can't go on pretending that everything is fine between you two, but maybe once the truth is out there, everything will make sense."

"Yeah, I guess," Nikki said unsurely.

She could almost feel Lauren Parry's smile on the other side of the phone. "Don't worry, honey. Whatever happens between you and Storm, don't forget you have people that love you and support you, no matter what. Rook included," she added as an afterthought.

Nikki frowned. "What do you mean, 'Rook included'?" she asked incredulously, not enjoying what Lauren was implying.

"I just meant that even though he's being a stubborn ass right now, in the end, it's only because he cares. You're his partner, Nikki. He would never leave your side over something like this, not really. You just have to have faith that he will come back for you one day, okay?"

Nikki nodded softly. "Yeah, I guess."

"Don't worry, Nikki. Everything will work out fine," Lauren said reassuringly.

Nikki couldn't help but smile. "Thank you, Lauren. I'd be lost without you," she said quietly.

"That's what friends are for."