For those of you who aren't reading Christine Seeley Keenan (otherwise known as CSK) I LIKE REVIEWS! 1 REVIEW FROM 3 PEOPLE MEANS A NEW CHAPTER!

Trev

Goddamn, doesn't this woman leave? It's after midnight! I know for fact that she will be in before the crack of dawn. By now I'm beginning to wonder if she even has an apartment.

My position is secure, if juvenile. I'm hiding in a office supply closet. I had a fiber-optic camera under the door. Kate was diligently working on her computer. I understand staying up late working on paperwork. Even a operative like me gets stuck in the bureaucracy. But she had working on it since... six! More than four hours! Even New York doesn't assign that much paperwork!

Finally she gets up. She doesn't turn off her computer. Ah well, now or never.

I silently open the door and pad across the bullpen. I sneak a quick glance at her computer. Its not paperwork.

What the hell?! Rick Castle?! She's been researching her partner for who-knows how long! I have a sore back from being bent over for eight hours waiting for her to go home, all because she doesn't like to ask her partner questions? Grrrr.

I hear a door open. I quickly move to hide behind a desk. Kate resumes her position at her desk. She sets something down. A cup of coffee.

Alright, screw this. I am cranky, hungry, and sore. There is no reason why I should be. Niceness flies out the window. I draw my gun and flip it. I pad across the bullpen and swing my gun. The grip collides with the back of her head with a slightly sickening thonk! She collapses on her desk.

Now for what I came for. You can tell a lot about people by how they keep their desk. Hers is neat and professional. No personal affects to speak of. No pictures, or nicknacks, or anything of the sort. The top drawers contain office supplies, a toothbrush and tooth pate, and a hairbrush. She seems to spend a lot of time at the office then. Case files in the bottom drawers. Under those case files I find a single Polaroid.

It is a picture of a sixteen year old Kate and her mother. I remember this. Dad had been a avid photographer. I had been inspired and had taken this shortly before he died. They looked happy. I missed Aunty Jo, as she insisted we call her. Kate and her had been very close. No wonder her desk was absent of personal effects. She probably kept her personal life very personal.

Just to annoy, I raise her chair. Pranking Kate had been a rare recreational activity I had occasionally indulged in before my parents died. Made me feel nostalgic.

I grinned. I drew a screwdriver and a bug camera. I wouldn't miss the outcome for all the fights in the world.

~*~

Let me just say this: I wouldn't leave a concussed woman to her own devices. Even one as strong as Kate. That's a recipe for a lot of bad things. So I dropped her off at Castle place.

Okay, maybe "dropped off" might stretch it a little. I leaned her still unconscious form against the door and banged on it. Loudly. Then I skedaddled out of there.

I watched the apartment from the corner. It was raining pretty hard. My PDA rang.

"Trev."

"We got a slight problem." Patriks.

"BAC over the limit again?" I always tease him about his drinking problem. Patriks was one of the best operators I know, and the closest things I have to a friend in the COVENANT Project.

"Think I would be calling for a slight problem like that? This is New York. Cabs are coming out the ass here."

"What's the problem?"

"Our friend knows we're onto him."

"No duh. That's the whole point of me playing body guard." For anyone else, I would have been fine. But if Kate learned I had faked my death... I would be forced to give up a very good hobby:Breathing.

"Yeah, but he's not taking the bait."

"Huh?"

"He's hired his own guys to kill her."

"Boobs, half-boobs, or someone we should be worried about?"

"Half-boobs."

Hmm, this might save my hobby, "I can take them. You stay low. I take out the guys and you see if you can gauge his reaction."

"This is probably a test, kid." I have been an assassin for five years. I wasn't a newbie anymore. And there was a reason I was both the youngest Sergeant Major in Marine Corps history, and the youngest member of the COVENANT Project.

"If so, I'll pass with flying colors Old Man." I responded, "Just give their addresses."

"Why do I feel like that you will make my drinking worse?"

"Ouch, man. That hurts."

~*~

First things first: Tunes.

My PDA can hold over a thousand songs. Not that it was designed to. It was essentially a mini-computer. The storage space was designed to hold things like security videos, pictures of targets, and voice recording. So, it could hold music videos, pics, and Mp3s no problem.

After about ten minutes shifting through my selection, I finally decided on Hollywood Undead. There was a time when I would have chosen Bon Jovi, Billy Squier, or Blue Oyster Cult. Now I listened primarily to metal, rap, and country. I had always been a fan of country. Call it bred into my small-town genes.

As the angry notes Undead began to play, I rocked my head and drew my 45. cal SOCOM, silenced, of course. The door to the apartment was in front of me was cheap and worn. The apartment itself was probably under a hundred square feet. I probably could have pushed it open with my pinky. But that wouldn't have the grand effect I was looking for.

I kicked down the door. The two men inside didn't have time to react as I shot the first one in the head. His head snapped back as he crumpled, the back of his head blown to pieces.

The second one reached for the gun at his hip. I let him get to it and shot it out of his hands as he drew it. I kicked him in the ribs before he could react. He hit the wall with a resounding thunk!

He wasn't out though he charged at me. I grabbed his arm and kicked his knee. I swung him to the floor. I then put my knee on his elbow and yanked up. He screamed as his arm broke. A building like this, people don't care about tiny things like that. This is the Bronx, not Manhattan. I flipped him over and placed the suppressor of my Mk II in his mouth.

"Listen real good buddy," I used my scare-the-pants-off-Force-Recon-Vets voice, "I know you were hired to kill a women. Her name is Kate. Kate Beckett. Well, you're gonna tell your employer that she has a guardian psychopath. And this gaurdian psychopath will find him. And kill him."