"Dad? Dad, wake up!" Her small hands cupped his large shoulders as his limb body laid on its side, "Dad!"

"Alexis?" He coughed twice and rolled over on his back with the help of his daughter's eager hands.

The teenager hugged her father and help him sit up-right. He grabbed her hands and stared at her bleeding wrists. Rope looped into a knot around one of them and she looked too. He looked away in anger and forced himself to his feet.

She grabbed his bleeding arm and pulled him back down.

The room was dark but not dark enough. Castle took a deep breath and looked away from his daughter. He studied the room with a blurry lens and quickly wished he hadn't. Walls covered blanketed with photos of them. The spots which were free of pictures were replaced with blood splatters.

Rick couldn't figure out where the blood came from. Yes, Alexis was bleeding, but it surely wasn't enough to make that mess.

"Dad, look at me! Can you hear me?" Her hands held his face on either side, soon dripping with the blood coming down his face. "Dad, answer me, please!"

She sat on her ankles beside him on the cold cement floor. He brought his hands to his midsection and looked down at them. Blood. How could it be? He hadn't felt any pain.

The brown door opened wide, "Ahh, my favourite people in the world, how are we doing today?" The man walked graciously toward them. "The silent treatment? Really? Is that the way your father raised you?"

He smiled.

Alexis removed her hands from her father's face and swallowed hard.

"Oh, I wasn't talking to you, sweetheart." His smile grew. Within seconds, his postured dropped. He placed his hands on his knees. His head leaned down, too close for comfort.

"Go to hell!" She barked.

Tyson raised his left hand until it collided with her pale, white cheek, throwing her back a few feet. "That wasn't very nice, little girl," Before he was Tyson found his next words a fist came up to connect with his jaw, sending his body to the ground.

Castle leaped onto him, a knee on his left side while the other was placed heavily on his chest. "Don't you ever lay a hand on my daughter you son of a bitch!" His left hand was placed around Tyson's brittle neck while a flurry of punches sent his head bouncing off the floor. Castle stopped when he saw a drop of blood on Tyson's cheek. A perfectly rounded drop.

Another drop made its way onto Jerry Tyson's face before Rick brought his hand up to his nose. Tyson elbowed him between two ribs, a spot that had proven to be painful.

"Dad!" Alexis crawled to him lying on the floor in shock as Tyson made his way out of the room laughing.

Kate stood there, in the room of the man she had come to know so well. The man she was falling in love with. She walked, slowly, over to his bureau and opened the second drawer. Material from a navy blue t-shirt gathered up in her hands. Bringing it up to her nose, she sucked in the powerful scent of him that took her to another place.

His big shoes led the way into the break room, "Kate, maybe we are looking at this the wrong way."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, I mean, what if it had nothing to do with the drug deal, maybe this is all about a mob hit? I'm telling you, I've got a feeling about this one, it's got 'mob hit' and 'CIA cover-up' written all over it! Hey, what if the butler is really a CIA agent, and the other six suspects are people he met at Ninja school?"

"Seriously? You've had four and a half years to come up with something better than CIA cover-up, and that's what you got? CIA and ninja?"

"Yeah, I'm kind of disappointed myself." His face fell.

"We all are, bro." Esposito stated as he clutched his cup of coffee, taking it off the counter and continued into the hall, leaving the two alone again.

She glanced back at him and smiled. Her smile was like none other he had seen. Kate Beckett was special, that he knew for sure, but the way she looked at him was majestic in many ways. The corners of her lips lifted to flash him just the smallest glance of love. After all, they were at work. He knew how powerful that smile became once they were alone at her place.

He watched as he body swayed toward the door until he quickly took three steps to her and almost whispered, "Wait."

His gentle fingers grazed hers as they both looked down. It felt like hours. They stood motionless. Fingers not entwined, but simply touching each other.

They let their fingers slide apart and she was back to work.

She placed the shirt upon his pillow and lied down beside it. Her arms wrapped around it as it stood in place for his chest, she pressed her nose into the pillow and drifted off into a mild slumber.

She woke to the sound of footsteps.

"Castle?" She breathed.

"Sorry sweetie, I didn't want to wake you."

"Lanie, what are you doing here?"

"Well, I went to your place and saw that you weren't there. It didn't take me long to figure where else you would go." She sat beside her friend on the king-sized bed.

"He's not coming back is he?" She said, teary-eyed.

"Yes he is. Kate Beckett, you get out of this bed and pull yourself together." She stood up and pulled the covers half off her friend.

"You're right," Kate's hand grabbed the end of the bed comforter and whipped it off her legs, pulling them up and doing a half-roll out of bed. "This place is a mess." She made her way to his bookshelf and straightened a few stray books.

"Kate, let's get you home." Lanie's eyes filled with tears as she watched her friend lose it.

"Yeah, right after I tidy up, those detectives really did a number on his dresser." Her words were barely comprehendible. Kate fought back tears as she grabbed for a few loose papers on his desk. Lanie's arm reached out holding Kate's in place.

"Kate. Let's go."

"What is that?" Kate's eyes analyzed a folded paper on the corner of Castle's desk.

"Kate, stop it, it's not healthy. I understand how painful this is to you." Lanie grabbed her shoulders and turned her around to face the door.

"No, Lanie hold on," she shook her shoulders free, returned to the desk and pulled the paper off its corner.

Kate studied the paper for a good minute. Straight-faced, she asked, "Lanie, what's an Osteolytic Lesions?"

"It's, uh," Lanie looked Kate, worry built in her eyes. She took a deep breath before asking, "Why, what is that, Kate?"

"It's a doctor's note. Lanie, what the hell is it?" Kate's body began to tremble.

"It's a breakdown of bones, usually caused by myeloma." Lanie shook her head, "Kate-"

"Go on." She ordered stone-faced.

"Myeloma is an accumulation of malfunctioning," she cleared her throat, "or cancerous, plasma cells." Lanie took a second to breath, "When myeloma invades bone tissue, it causes a formation of weak areas. The myeloma cells release chemicals that…" She sorted out her emotions. The ME didn't want to hurt her friend, but she knew her duty as a medical examiner to a detective who was tracking down a missing person. Two missing persons.

"Osteolytic Lesions created holes within bone marrow, causing it to resemble, for lack of a better relation, Swiss cheese. Osteolytic Lesions is a specific, punched-out, appearance that may occur in any bone in the body, but are most often noted in the spine, skull, pelvis and rib cage."