A/N: 3-4 more chapters left! Thank you for staying with me :). Special thanks to TORONTOSUN and wendykw for reviewing on practically every chapter. The insight is really appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Castle series, the Storm series, the Heat series, or any of the characters. Hopefully, underneath all the piles of junk on my desk, I'll find the rights.

Richard Castle pressed the pen into his paper, writing faster than he ever had before. He left ink stains on the table underneath him for putting so much strength behind his hands. A large smile (with a bit of chocolate in the corner, mind you) donned his face as his eyes widened in madness.

The look on his face, the pace of his writing, however, didn't mask the pain in his eyes.

Martha and Alexis stood in the door, but he was unaware of them.

"I'm glad he's okay, Gran," Alexis said softly, so as not to disturb the writer in his natural habitat.

Martha frowned, pursing her lips. "I wouldn't be so sure of that," she said softly.

"What do you mean?" Alexis asked, turning to face the older woman.

Martha sighed. "Just… what happens when this is over? When he publishes Heat Storm? What is he going to do then?"

Alexis pondered this.

"She's just going to break his heart again, Alexis. She's just going to unknowingly stomp on it and not look back. I mean, Detective Beckett is a lovely girl, really, but I don't know how much longer he can hold up like this," Martha said quietly.

"I don't think you're giving Beckett enough credit," Alexis said.

Martha looked down at her hands. "We'll see, I suppose."

And the two girls let themselves out, unaware of Richard Castle staring after them.

"That… was tense," Ochoa said, frowning. Raley nodded his head in agreement.

Lauren walked over to Nikki. "Honey, you okay?" she asked. Nikki didn't respond. She just stared after the door.

He's in love with me?

The group stood in an awkward silence for a while, waiting for Nikki to respond, but she didn't. All she did was stare. After a bit, Storm rose.

"I think I should go," he said quietly, and he excused himself just as fast as Rook had.

Nikki straightened, looking like a deer in the headlights. She stood up and ran after him, missing the elevator.

"What do we do now?" Ochoa asked.

Nikki sighed. "We question Agent Jones. He's the only suspect we have left," she said, closing her eyes. It was true, she knew. No matter how stubborn she was, no matter how close-minded she acted, she knew that Storm didn't do this. He wasn't capable of that kind of murder.

"Alright," he responded.

Storm huffed angrily to his car. I so didn't sign up for this, he thought to himself. All it was supposed to be was a simple tailing mission. Find what they had on the body. That was it.

But then it turned into something more.

Then he realized he was tailing the beautiful enigma that was Nikki Heat. She was her own kind of beautiful, leaving a trail of perfection in her wake. She was everything and always and forever and there was absolutely no way to put into words how he felt about her. She was beautiful. Plain and simple. And he had no idea how he was ever going to give her up.

Storm opened the door to his car, pressing the key into the ignition. The car jerked as he backed out of the parking lot, a little bit rougher than he should have.

He drove as fast as he could (without breaking the law) in silence until he could no longer take the demeaning thoughts that his brain kept sending.

So he turned on the radio. And the song playing just so happened to be Heat Wave.

He thought for a moment about turning it off, listening to all the thoughts of self-hatred and shame, but he didn't. Instead, he let it play.

The tears began to flood down his face so fast that he was unable to see the road. He pulled the Escalade over and put his forehead on the steering wheel.

If he had continued to drive, if he had just turned off the stereo, if he had checked the backseat of his car like he normally did, maybe he would have found that one of the seats was moving.

But, with his head down and his eyes closed, he didn't notice the figure emerge silently from under the leather interior and hit him on the back of the head, hard enough that everything went black.

Nikki had been sitting at her desk for a long while when Lauren Parry re-arrived. She was holding two cups of coffee, as well as a box of tissues. She sat down in Rook's old seat, putting one of the coffees in front of Nikki.

"You okay, Nikki?" she asked.

Nikki laughed humorlessly. "You know, I think you've already asked me that," she said.

"But you never gave me your answer."

"Yeah," Nikki said, "I think I am. Just kind of a surprise, 'ts all. I didn't know he felt that way about me."

Lauren pursed her lips. "I think you did," she said softly.

"What are you implying, Lauren?" Nikki asked, half humorous, half angry.

"I mean, it isn't like he kept his feelings hidden from you," Lauren says. "He must be a really crappy reporter if it takes him four years to write one article."

Nikki stared thoughtfully. "I really am blind, aren't I?"

Lauren laughed. "So do you feel the same way about him?"

"I don't know," Nikki said. "I didn't think so. I mean, with Storm, it's just all so confusing. I love Rook. I really do, I just interpreted it as platonic love. As annoying as he is, he's my partner, of course I love him. But Storm… as much as I don't want to like Storm, it's like I'm on fire every time I see him. But then—"

Suddenly, Nikki was cut off by her phone ringing. "Heat," she said dully.

When Storm woke up, the only thing he could think of was pain. There was sharp pain in his stomach, and a slower, burning pain in his legs. He forced his eyes open, taking in the place around him.

Three concrete walls, one… metal? Probably a containment facility… What's that brightness? It burns… Fire. It's fire. My legs are on fire. My stomach hurts. Why does my stomach hurt? Oh. Bullet wound.

"OH!" he cried out.

Bullet wound, fire… Shot down in flames, he thought to himself. I'm the next victim.

"But who's committing the crimes?" he thought aloud.

Okay, Storm, he thought to himself, pull it together. You can do this. Ignore the pain. Who were the other kills?

I need to leave a note to Nikki…

Then he got an idea. He picked up one of his hands, which was covered in ash of his own burning flesh. Obscenities were beginning to fly out of his mouth as he pressed his hand against his stomach. Blood coated his white collared shirt, and he picked up enough blood to write a message.

A. Showers. Bombshell.

He remembered reading about April's death in the papers from last week. That case would never have crossed Detective Heat's desk, being a serial bombing, rather than a standard homicide. He had worked with April briefly on a case involving a Senator's kid; the case was long solved.

T. Deckerson. Stabbed in back.

Tom had been his partner. They had worked together for almost a year now, ever since he had "died."

F. Garcia. Bite the bullet.

Flora Garcia was the agent who worked his homicide. She was in on the ruse, of course, but they needed to cover their bases.

With pain, Derrick Storm wrote the final line.

D. Storm. Shot down in flames.

Although he didn't want to admit it, he knew he was slipping, and that he would be dead soon.

So what did the murder victims have in common? They all were in the CIA. They all had a connection to… Storm's thoughts trailed off. Oh. OH. They were all in on my "death."

Then came the next thought, which filled him with a loathing dread. So why isn't Agent Jones here?

He pressed his index finger into the wound again, wincing and screaming softly, as he spelled out the words, QUESTION JONES.

He reached for his gun, but it was gone, along with his pager. Luckily, he kept a spare phone strapped to his ankle, that Jones didn't know about. The phone felt slippery in his blood-soaked hands, and although Storm wasn't soft-stomached, he felt a bit dizzy, watching the blood spill from his stomach. He tried to compress it as he dialed a '2'.

"Heat," the voice came across dully.

Storm heaved a breath. "Extra Space Storage," he said, trying not to pant.

"Storm?" Nikki asked. "Storm, are you okay?"

"58 West," he heaved. "143rd street."

He could hear Nikki's panicky breaths on the other line. "Storm, just stay with me, we're dispatching a police squad now. You're going to be okay, right?"

"Love you, Nikki. You know that, right?" he asked. Sure, he may have been utterly delirious by now, completely unaware of what was spilling out of his mouth, but he felt as though she needed to know this. "It all—it all started as a ruse. Us. But then… somehow it became real. What we had… what I felt… it was real for me, okay? It was so real. And I love you, Nikki Heat."

And the phone fell out of his hand. And all went black.