A/N: Thanks for the reviews! I'll try to post chapter 8 by tomorrow :) Big thank you to my beta, Diana, for getting my chapters back to me so quickly even when I swamped her!
Disclaimer: not mine
"Grey, get the team and backup ready, we're going in on this place the moment we get an address. I'm calling DC to update them on our progress," Beckett said, pulling out her cell.
"I'll tell the boys to get ready," Castle told her, to which Beckett gave a nod of acknowledgement before he headed out.
By the time Ryan and Esposito returned to the meeting room with the results from the IP trace, Agents Grey and Lee had left. They quickly passed on the information to Cooper, who murmured a quick thanks before keying in the information.
Beckett pulled up the map onto the large screen in the room, watching as the results were slowly eliminated. All eyes in the room tracked the progress on screen.
"Dancing Ropes!"
"Jill's B&B!"
Both Ryan and Dom exclaimed at the same time as the other red zones on screen went away, leaving those two locations as the ones with the highest probability of being 3XK's hiding spot.
"Cooper?" Beckett asked, glancing at the agent who was keying in additional commands into his computer.
"No help here, Beckett. They're both an equal distance away from the same costumes rental shop," he told her with a frown.
"Your call, Castle. We'll hit both places at the same time, but the alpha team will go to the one that's more likely to be Tyson's hideout."
All eyes in the room were on him. Castle looked between the two locations and went with his gut feeling.
"Jill's B&B. The other one's too obvious. If I were Tyson, I'd leave a trail leading there, as a red herring, while I hide out at Jill's."
"Alright. I'll lead team alpha to Jill's B&B and Grey can lead team beta to Dancing Ropes. Better check out both places anyway. Let's move out."
Within twenty minutes, both teams were in position. The team leaders, namely Beckett and Grey, had gone over the floor plans of their respective buildings, planning for all possible escape routes. With everyone in position, Beckett gave the final command of a one-minute countdown before moving in.
All contact between the two teams would be terminated until the bust was over. If all things went well, one of the teams would be contacting Cooper with good news.
On her side, Beckett was leading the main team through the front. Esposito and Ryan flanked her, with Castle following behind them.
Just like old times, Beckett thought to herself. She grasped her walkie-talkie, telling her team, "All agents stand by, we're moving in."
On the other side of town, Agent Grey gave the exact same command. They moved in quickly, kicking down the door and rushing into the motel room. They were greeted by the sight of a bleary forty-something year old man who had been startled awake from his afternoon nap
The rest of the agents went in, clearing the bathroom and checking inside the closet while Agent Grey questioned the man. He was just an out of town chef who came to New York for the chili cook-off that had occurred over the weekend.
No Jerry Tyson.
Meanwhile at Jill's B&B, Detective Esposito had kicked in the door, allowing Beckett to enter the room. Ryan followed closely behind her, with Esposito and Castle bringing up the rear.
The main room was empty, except for a lone laptop sitting on the bed, but they methodically checked through the rest of the place, finally gathering back in the main room.
Both Ryan and Esposito told Beckett the same thing. "All clear."
"Damn," Beckett said under her breath. She phoned Cooper to let him know Tyson wasn't at their place, and he informed her of the bad news from Grey's team. The three of them were looking at her expectantly, but a quick shake of her head let them know that the other team didn't have Tyson.
Castle had walked over to the laptop and pressed the spacebar. The screen lit up, showing a live feed of another blonde, seemingly asleep on her bed. After a few seconds, the video feed was cut off.
Jerry Tyson greeted them from the screen.
"Congratulations for finding this place, Castle. As you can tell, I'm no longer there, and you just met my second victim. One more redhead to go, Castle, and I can go back to blondes."
The video finished with Tyson's taunts, the screen fading to black as silence descended upon the room.
"You!" Castle rounded on Beckett, pointing his finger at her face menacingly. "This is all your fault!" He hollered, stopping inches from her face.
"Castl-"
"No!" he interrupted, "Don't Castle me. You came in here, with your new team, to catch Tyson. Where did all that federal training go to, huh? Guess what, Beckett, this is all on you!"
He's just worried for Alexis' safety and acting out, Beckett told herself. It took all of her training to keep a calm exterior. Glancing over at Ryan and Esposito, she saw that they were holding themselves together better than Castle, but only marginally, and it was because they'd had training in the academy. She could see the effort it took them to compartmentalize their feelings.
"Castle, I need you to go home to Alexis, now. If you're up to it, you can come back to the precinct in the morning," she said to him in a low voice.
Castle stalked out of the room without another word, Esposito hot on his tail. Ryan looked at Beckett sympathetically.
"Beckett, you know that Castle… He's just emotional now, he didn't really mean what he said. You know that, right?" Ryan said weakly.
She shrugged non-committally. "I'm heading to the precinct to hand the laptop over to our tech guys, see what they can get. You coming along?" she asked, crossing over the room to shut the laptop screen, picking up the device.
"Yeah, sure, I'll ride with you."
Beckett gave him a quick nod of acknowledgement, pulling out her walkie-talkie once more. "Tyson was here, but he's long gone now. Get a team up here to sweep the place and see if they can find anything useful," she said. Static sound could be heard throughout the room for a few seconds before an agent's voice cut through the noise and replied an affirmative to her instructions.
Beckett and Ryan waited a while more before the first of a team of agents entered the room. Satisfied that they were getting to work, Beckett and Ryan headed back to the precinct.
"What do you mean, there's nothing we can do now," Beckett gritted out. She was this close to getting a stroke.
"Tyson's smart – he re-routed the transmission through a bunch of different locations and then encrypted them further. It'll take our system hours to get through. The soonest I'll be able to get you the second victim's location would be tomorrow. There's nothing to do now but wait," Dom explained.
Beckett had brought in the laptop half an hour ago, and they were currently working on getting information off the laptop based on the live stream of their second victim and Tyson's little pre-recorded message.
"There has to be something that we can do," Beckett insisted stubbornly.
"Beckett, it's been a long day. The best thing that you can do right now is head back and rest, come back in tomorrow with a fresh mind to lead the investigation. Let the computers do their job," Dom told her gently.
"Take your own advice, Beckett, go home."
She whirled around, surprised to find Esposito in the doorway. She hadn't even realized that he had returned to the precinct. She sighed, defeated. She was rather tired – more emotionally drained than anything else, actually.
"Fine, everybody head back. We'll start fresh tomorrow morning," she told them all. She went to collect her things, but Esposito called out to her once more before he left the room. "Lanie said to call her when you get off. Which happens to be now," he trailed off, not-so-subtly hinting at her to call the medical examiner, or else.
"Thanks, Espo. I'll do that."
Two hours later, Kate was standing in front of Dr. Lanie Parish's door, two bottles of wine in hand as she nervously waited for the door to open. Lanie had told her to come over for drinks, but she couldn't help the hint of trepidation that plagued her throughout the past two hours. Oh yeah, Kate Beckett was a little afraid of what her best friend (ex-best friend?) would do to her.
The door swung open, and Kate immediately brought up the wine bottles, greeting her meekly. "I brought wine?"
Lanie stood in the doorway, arms crossed and staring at her, un-amused.
"You're not going to bash me over the head with this, are you?" Kate asked, gripping the wine bottles tightly. "They're the good kind – your favorite, in fact. We don't want to waste it."
"Katherine Beckett, Im'ma smack you," Lanie finally greeted, a smile breaking through her stern façade, enveloping Kate in a tight hug.
"Girl, you're all skin and bones! Shouldn't you be eating better food with your fancy-schmancy federal pay?" Lanie asked in that blunt way of hers, pulling Kate in.
Kate chuckled. "Oh Lanie, I've missed you so much."
It was good to know that some things were still the same.
Kate set the wine on Lanie's counter, looking around her best friend's new place. She recognized most of the décor, but there were quite a number of additional decorative pieces. It seemed that Lanie had been keeping busy the past three years, traveling to places and collecting memorabilia.
"I can't believe that you've been back two days, two days," she emphasized, "and I only get a hello after asking Javi to pester you."
"Ehhh," Kate hedged, turning around to face her best friend who was walking over with two wine glasses, "You know Tyson's got us busy running all over the place. Plus I didn't know where we stood anymore. I mean, we hadn't talked for years." Kate shrugged, glad that she could be honest with her best friend.
"Yeah, Javi told me today was pretty tough," Lanie said sympathetically. She couldn't even begin to imagine how much stress Kate was under.
"Yeah? Well Javi kinda hates me." Kate sunk into her seat, mindful to keep her glass upright as she toed off her shoes and crossed her feet.
Lanie shot her a look as she settled into her own seat.
"Well, can you blame him?"
Kate smiled, savoring the sassy tone, the biting remark. She really missed Lanie – more than she had even realized. No one else had that unique Lanie-esque essence.
"No, I don't blame him. I kind of expected it – even I hate myself," Kate admitted, slowly sipping her wine. After a pregnant pause that allowed Kate's words to slowly sink through, Lanie started speaking softly.
"Sweetie, I wanted to stand up for you when you left, explain to the boys why you chose to go, but I couldn't. Not when I don't even know why you left New York! Kate, enough's enough. What the hell were you thinking three years ago? I want to know why the hell you went to DC, leaving us on such bad terms."
"I went to DC for this," Kate murmured into her wine glass, looking at a spot on the floor.
"What, you went to DC so that you could ruin your relationship with your whole team?"
Kate finally looked up to Lanie, holding her questioning gaze.
"No, I went there because of 3XK."
Lanie sat up, setting her wine glass on the coffee table. She didn't want to be occupied with any form of distraction, wine included.
"Hold up, girl. You better start from the top."
A/N: You guys didn't expect Tyson to be caught so soon/easily, right? And Lanie finally makes an appeearance! :) Review!