As always Castle belongs to ABC. Sorry this one took me so long to update. I was having some trouble making the interrogation scene feel "Beckett-like"

When Rick Castle and Kate Beckett stepped out of the morgue and into the bright sunlight of the early afternoon Kate pulled out her phone and hit speed dial four and put the phone up to her ear. It rang twice before a voice on the other end picked up.

"Esposito."

. "Esposito, I need you to find a Scott Hill and bring him in; he's a possible suspect in our case," Beckett said as her and Rick walked down the sidewalk toward the street, where she had parked her car.

Back at the prescient Esposito nodded his head, but then paused mid nod. He knew that name, but where had he heard it? That was when he heard Ashley's voice in his head reminding him of who he was. "Scott Hill? But isn't that-"

"Kimberly's boyfriend? Yes. We found his prints on the rope that Ashley was found hanging from this morning," Kate said as her and Castle got into the car.

"okay, no problem, we'll get right on it," Esposito said and without waiting to hear Beckett's thanks in the phone, pulled it away and put it back in its home.

By the time Richard Castle and Kate Beckett arrived back at the prescient Scott Hill was already in custody and waiting in the interrogation room. As Kate stepped into the observation room she spied Castle standing by the glass staring at the young man through it.

As Rick heard the door open he looked away from the suspect and his eyes landed on his muse as she walked through the door. "Beckett, I don't know if we have the right guy," he said as she came up next to him and looked at her suspect.

"We do," Kate replied as she nodded her head. Yes, she was sure. Everything was right about him; his age, his whereabouts, even the overall look about him. He was exactly the type of guy she could have seen Kimberly with.

Rick shook his head. He couldn't believe that the person they had sitting behind the glass was the one causing so much mayhem in New York City. He just didn't seem as if life had hardened him enough to do what had been done. "He's just so young."

Kate shrugged her shoulders; she had arrested kids younger than him for murder before. For a second her mind went back to Brandon, a seventeen-year-old prep school kid who killed one of his best friends to win his girl. "Yeah, he looks young, until he tries to date your daughter," Kate said and smirked at Castle.

"Can we leave my daughter out of this please?" Rick said as he looked over at Beckett. As their eyes locked that familiar tingly feeling presented itself in his gut again and his memory went back to the night before and he yanked his eyes away from her before he made a fool of himself again. "Um, Beckett, you don't really think it's him, do you?," Rick said as he cleared his throat.

Kate looked at Castle seriously. There was something in the way that he said that, that sounded as if he already believed Hill to be innocent. "It doesn't matter what I think, Castle. Evidence speaks; his prints were found on the murder weapon, smoking gun.

Rick was silent for a moment as he shook his head.

Kate frowned at Castle. There weren't many times when she wished she could read Castle's mind, but the look on his face at that moment made her want to know what was going through his head more than anything in the world. "What makes you ask?"

Rick shrugged. It was a simple answer, but like simple answers they were not exactly the most obvious. "Just that he confirmed that he knew Kimberly to Esposito, but he has no idea who Will is, and unless he's a world class sociopath, which he judging by the blank look on his face right now, I'm guessing he's not, he wouldn't have killed him. And we have evidence that the two cases are connected."

When Castle opened the door and Kate walked in she saw Scott Hill rise from his chair. As Kate looked at him she recognized the mask of fear that she had so often seen on her suspects. "Mr. Hill, my name is Kate Beckett, do you know why you are here?" she said as she stood across the table from him.

"No," he said as he shook his head. He had no idea why he was here. He was next to positive he had done nothing wrong, but then why bring him in if he was innocent?

Kate nodded her head as she sat down across the table from him. She knew he was going to answer like that; it wasn't as if he was going to confess to the murder with a single question. No, if she was going to get a confession, she was going to have to trick it out of him. "Do you know this girl?" she asked as she slid a picture of Kimberly toward him.

The fear that masked Scott's face a second before now dissolved into a mask of confusion. Of course he knew who Kimberly was; he had been in love with her since grade school. "Yeah, Kimberly Holtz," he said as he sat back easily in his chair. He smirked as he looked the pretty detective in the eye. "She must have done something pretty bad this time for you coppers to pull me in here, what was it?

Kate looked at the cocky expression across the young face of the man in front of her. She had seen that expression before, and it irritated her as much now as the first time she had seen it, across Castle's face. Swallowing she continued. "Can you tell me, Mr. Hill, what was the nature of your and Ms. Holtz's relationship?"

The arrogance faded from his face as Scott shrugged. He hated the idea of what Kimmy and he had become and he hated even more thinking about it. "She was my ex-girlfriend….for lack of a better word." Why did what their relationship became matter, did she need an alibi or something? "Why do you ask?"

Beckett was quiet for a moment to long as she looked down at the picture across the table. This had to be hard for her, investigating a murder of a childhood friend. Rick took her silence as his time to come in. "Because she was raped and murdered yesterday morning."

At Castle's words Scott looked up at the man in horror. Kim was dead? No, she couldn't be not his Kim. "Kimberly's dead?" he asked with fear in his voice as he looked at the detective for conformation.

Kate looked at the young man feeling pity for him but not allowing her face to show it. There was always a chance that he could be faking it to look more innocent. "Yes," she said as she looked away from the suspect in front of her.

"No," Scott said shaking his head violently. "No, that's impossible! I just spoke to her two days ago, she was perfectly fine!"

At his words Kate looked back at him, anger suddenly apparent in her body. "Yes, two days ago she was perfectly fine, until you killed her," she said as she waited for Scott to respond to the accusation.

Just like Beckett had expected a look of shock took over the grief that had found a home on Scott Hill's face as soon as she had delivered the news. "I killed her? No, there's been a mistake!"

"Really?" Kate said as she sat back and folded her arms. "If it was a mistake then would you like to explain to me how your prints got all over the murder weapon?"

Scott looked up at the detective with anger seeping through every pore in his skin. He was being framed, he had to have been. "Detective, I would never kill Kim, I loved her!"

"Why end it if you loved her so much?" Rick asked as he looked at man in suspect's chair.

Scott looked up at the man leaning against the wall with hate in his eyes. "I didn't end it, she's the one who left me. She wanted free reign to do what and who she pleased."

Kate raised her eyebrows. "I bet that made you mad, didn't it? You loving someone so much, and all she wants to do is be with someone else?"

"Yeah, it made me mad detective," Scott said as he looked at her seriously. He had watched CSI, he knew how cops worked, and he knew where they were going with this. "But I didn't kill her."

Rick shook his head at the man on the suspect side of the table. "Oh, no, you didn't kill her, you just raped her and then hung her up in a tree to dry, right?"

At Castle's words the color drained out of Scott's face. He looked at Beckett with glassy eyes. "Is that how you found her? Hung from a tree?"

"Yeah," Kate said as she raised her eyebrows and nodded her head.

Scott closed his eyes and shook his head. "So a rope was the murder weapon?"

Again the detective nodded her head as if the answer would be obvious. "Yeah. Why does that mean anything to you?

They were accusing him of murder because his fingerprints were on a rope that belonged to his old girlfriend? "Detective," he began solemnly, "Kimberly and I were crazy when we got together, she liked to role play. Her favorite was to be kidnapped and tied up. Bondage was a turn on for her. That rope you found, was because of that."

"You liked to play?" Rick asked from his corner of the room. He waited for Scott to nod his head questioningly before he stood up straight and walked over to him. "Tell me, Scott, is it possible, that you wanted to play one night, but she didn't want to? You didn't understand; things always went like this before. Why didn't she want to sleep with you now? Then, you decide well she doesn't really need to have a choice, you can do it anyway, tie her up satisfy yourself, I mean you had done it many times in the past for pretend; why not do it for real now? So you rape her. Then after you do, you realize she's going to go to the cops, and you're going to go to jail. You can't have that happen, so what do you do, you strangle her to death and hang her with a rope making it look as if she killed herself."

By the end of Castle's theory Scott was shaking his head so hard that his features were blurring to them around him. "No! I didn't do it! I didn't kill her!"

Kate looked at the young man in front of her. "Mr. Hill where were you Saturday night between the hours of one a.m. to three a.m.?"

Now they were asking for his alibi! Why wouldn't they just believe him, couldn't they tell he wasn't lying? "I was in Newark. My band and I had a gig. I invited Kimberly, and her roommate Ashley, but Ashley was the only one who came. Kim said she already had plans with her mother to go to dinner."

"Really?" Rick asked as he raised his eyebrows at Scott. "A gig, that's a pretty good cover. Where did you guys play?"

Scott shook his head. The only thought that was going through his head right now was how ridiculous this all was, he had done nothing wrong…well almost nothing. "A little private owned bar and club, has a hotel upstairs, it's called Henry's."

Kate nodded her head. She had heard of Henry's before, when she was in high school her and her friends used to drive down there a couple of times a month because the bartender would get them alcohol without even bothering to ask for an ID. "What time did your set end?"

Scott shrugged as he shook his head. "I don't remember exactly. It was about one, one thirty maybe. Somewhere in that timeline."

"you know the M.E. who looked over the body placed her time of death between two and three a.m. that time of night the drive wouldn't have taken you more than a half hour. You would have had plenty of time to drive there and back to secure your alibi that you were there for the night."

"Listen, not only would I not waste the gas to do that, I wouldn't kill Kimberly! After the gig was over I got a few drinks at the bar and I went to bed."

"Really? Is there anyone who can corroborate that?" Kate asked she looked into the eyes of the man in front of her.

At her question Scott closed his eyes. "Yes, actually there is," he was quiet for a minute before he looked up at Kate again. "Ashley, Ashley Moore."

As the words exited Scott Hill's mouth Kate and Rick both looked at each other with the same expression, wide eyed and jaw dropped.

"Yo, Beckett!" Esposito called as he walked up to her desk. "Just got off the phone with the roommate. She vouches for him, says they had a couple of drinks and spent the night together," he said as he shook his head.

Kate placed her face in her palm and shook her head. They had no suspect and they were back to square one. If they didn't find someone else soon they FBI were going to claim jurisdiction over this case, just like they did with Scott Dunn's.

Rick frowned as he look at the disappointed look on Beckett's face and went over the words that Esposito had just said again in his head. "How do we know that she's just not covering for her friend?" at his words Beckett looked up at him with a small glimmer of hope in her eye.

"I thought the same thing," Kevin said as he walked over to the other three detectives. "So I decided to call the bar. The bartender said he had gotten three complaints about how a couple couldn't make it to their room to have such a passionate embrace."

Kate shook her head. Of course he was a bust, deep down she had known it all along. He had no connection to Will, Nikki Heat, or her. If it wasn't him though, who could it be? Shaking her head Kate looked up at Esposito. "Let him go."

It was dark in her bedroom that night when Kate Beckett sat up in her bed with wide eyes once again awoken by the dream. The moon, which had shined in the room the past two nights she had spent at Castle's place, was hidden. She listened to the rain pattering on the rooftop above her head as she waited for her heart to return back to a normal pace. The only light in the room was emitting from the digital clock on the bedside table. Everything was silent, but the apartment was supposed to be silent, it was five o'clock in the morning. Something was wrong though, the silence that surrounded her wasn't the normal nighttime silence. Everything was too still. Slowly Kate scanned the room with her eyes looking for anything to out of the ordinary. Nothing was.

Shaking her head she realized she was just being ridiculous. They were safe, no one was going to get in, the building was protected by twenty four hour surveillance. Nothing was going to get them. As Kate settled back into a laying position she slipped her hand under her pillow to grasp her gun for assurance. As she felt only sheets under her hand her heart stopped. Her gun was gone. It couldn't have fell, she would have heard that and it would have certainly woken her up faster than that dream that she had did.

Kate frowned for a second. She hadn't forgotten to put it under there did she? No, she wouldn't have been foolish enough to leave it in the drawer next to her. Just in case, she rolled over on her stomach and went to reach for the drawer. However, just as she did, she felt a large hand cover her mouth and the cold steel of a barrel of a gun rest against her temple.