Chapter 8

The video started and Castle heard Becketts' sharp intake of breath. They watched as Lanie sat there eating some sort of sandwich and the male voice spoke in the background. "You have one minute." It said.

Lanie swallowed and looked at the camera. "Hey Kate, boys, I'm doing fine, really." Neither Beckett or Castle missed the slight tremors in her voice, but they didn't say anything and kept watching. Lanie continued. "As you can tell, at least I have food, though it would be nicer if it wasn't cardboard waffles and dry turkey sandwiches."

The kidnappers' voice interrupted, "watch what you're saying. Minute's over." Lanie glared at the man behind the camera but went back to eating. The voice over went on. "We've just passed the 24 hour mark detective Beckett, and I bet you're no closer to figuring out who I am or where I'm keeping your friend. Time is running out detective, brace yourself for the end."

The video went dark and Castle looked over at Beckett. Her face was frozen with her eyes stuck to the computer screen. She took a shaky breath but didn't move. "Beckett?" Castle said quietly.

His voice seemed to break her spell and she pulled up the tracing program on her computer. She ran the video through the program and came up with another IP address from an internet café. She looked over at Castle. "Ready for a field trip?"

A few minutes later they pulled up outside a small, but chic looking, building. The sign out front named it the Kava Café. Beckett had been there once, before they had remodeled. They walked up to the front counter. Beckett showed the person behind it her badge and the sketch of the man they had gotten from the girl at the first café. "I'm detective Kate Beckett. This man came in here about 15 minutes ago and used the internet…did he leave anything for me here?"

The woman nodded and reached under the counter, pulling out an envelope. "He said a detective would come in with a writer asking for him." She turned to Castle. "Are you a writer?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Have you ever heard of Derek Storm?" the lady shook her head and Beckett stifled laughter. "Well, yeah, I'm a writer." He finished. The lady handed the envelope to Beckett and she thanked her as they walked over to a table in the corner. Beckett knew they wouldn't find anything else there so she sat down and looked at the letter in her hands. The envelope had her name written on it, just as the last one had. She pulled the paper out and read it out loud so Castle could hear her.

I'm almost insulted detective, you're supposed to be the best yet you're no closer to finding me. you're still just running in circles. I had the impression that you were much better than this, but my game isn't turning out to be much fun. 23 hours Kate, don't let me down.

She looked down at her watch. He was almost spot on with the time. She handed the letter to Castle as she put her face in her hands and looked down at the placemats on the table. All of a sudden a realization hit her that almost knocked the breath out of her lungs. She sat in stunned silence for a second, simply staring down at the placemats.

Castle looked back and forth from the table top to her a couple of times before giving up. "Ok, I don't get it…what's so special about the placemat?"

She looked up at him with her mouth open and then sprang into action. She stood up from the table, almost knocking her chair over as she grabbed Castles arm. Despite his questions and protests she didn't say anything until they got back into the car and were driving at a breakneck speed back to the precinct.

"Kate will you please tell me what's going on?" He was almost yelling by this time.

"I've been to that café before, with Lanie."

"Ok, so…"

"All she did was complain about the food there. She said the coffee was always cold or something. When she finds something wrong with a restaurant she doesn't forget it. In the video he just sent us she said something about cardboard waffles and her sandwich being dry."

Castle let this process for a second before the light bulb over his head clicked on. "She's sending us clues to where he's getting the food he's giving her!"

"Bingo."

"Do you remember where you guys were when she didn't like the waffles or sandwiches?"

"I'm trying to remember. It's been a while since both of us had the same day off to do anything."

Castle let her sit the rest of the drive in silence. They pulled up to the precinct and saw Espositos' car already back, which meant Derek was waiting for her in interrogation. They took the elevator up and Castle let the silence stretch on, sensing that Kate was still trying to remember where her and Lanie had gone out to eat.

Ryan and Esposito looked up as they came in. "Derek is in interrogation 1 waiting for you." Esposito said. "You didn't go get Harris without me did you?"

Beckett shook her head. "No, we got another video." She pulled it up and let the boys watch it. "I traced the IP address to another internet café. We went there and got another letter, but all it does is taunt us some more."

Castle interrupted. "But then Beckett remembered that she had been to that café before, with Lanie."

"And then I remembered what she said in the video about the cardboard waffles and dry turkey sandwich."

Ryan looked skeptical. "So she's letting us know he's giving her crappy food?"

Beckett huffed and talked faster. "No, whenever me and her went out to eat, if there was something wrong with the food it was all she talked about for a day. She never forgets when something is wrong with a menu."

"She's giving us clues." Esposito said with awe. "That's my girl." He finished, under his breath.

"Exactly." Beckett said as she picked up Derek's file off of her desk. "I want you guys to get a map of the city. I want the two cafes he sent the videos from on there. I'm still trying to think of the places Lanie was giving us clues to. I'm going to go talk to Mr. Howse." She turned to Castle. "Castle, I know you've helped a lot with some interrogations, but I'm going to ask you to sit this one out."

He could see her bracing herself for a bad reaction but it was unnecessary. He could tell this was something she wanted, and probably needed to do herself. All he hoped was that she wasn't pushing him away completely, though he would have understood if she was. After all it was his creation of Nikki Heat that this kidnapper had heard of and come to test. He couldn't help but feel a little bit responsible for the position he had put these people in, these people that he had come to call some of his only true friends. They had all done so much for him and now, because of him, one of their own had been put in danger.

"Castle?" he heard Beckett's voice ask cautiously. He blinked a couple of times and realized he must have zoned out.

"Oh, yeah, it's fine. Go ahead. I'll just watch, or help the boys if they need it."

Beckett hesitated but nodded and headed off to the interrogation room.

The three men followed and went into the observation room to watch their partner at work. They watched as she sat down in front of Derek Howse and got him to confirm his shift the morning Lanie had been taken. "How does she do it?" Castle asked.

"What are you talkin about bro?" Esposito answered.

Castle looked over at the man next to him. "Your girlfriend, one of her best friends, someone she has worked with for years, was kidnapped, and she's in there acting like it's just any other case. I don't get it."

Ryan spoke up before Esposito could say anything. "That's just Beckett. It's how she's been since I've known her at least."

"There are cases that get to her, there are cases that get to all of us," Esposito said. "But if we let that show in interrogations, the real criminals, they would pick up on that in a second. They can tell where someone has a weak spot. Especially with her past, she had to learn quickly how to hide that stuff while she was talking to people. She just got a lot better at it than most people do."

Castle looked back at the brunette in the room in front of them and was just amazed by how strong she was, how strong she had had to become. He knew she had dealt with a lot regarding her mothers' case, both on and off the force, but every time he learned something new about her it was like he was still on the tip of the iceberg.

Ryan spoke up again. "We should go get that map she wanted."

The other two men nodded and the three of them walked out of the room and back to their desks. Castle used Becketts' computer to pull up a map of the city and print it out. He stuck it to the murder board, which they were inconspicuously calling the white board every time they needed to reference it, and stood back as Ryan and Esposito each went up and circled a building on the map. Now all they could do was wait until Beckett got out of the interrogation and hope that she had remembered the names of the places Lanie was giving them clues to.

Castle was just sitting and staring at the map when he had a sudden thought. He got up and walked back over to the board where the map was hanging. He looked at the distance between the two spots circled. "How far apart do you think those are?"

Ryan looked up at the writer with a puzzled look on his face. "Ummm…"

Esposito pushed a few buttons on the computer. "Seven miles. 15 minute drive on a bad day. Why?"

Castle wrote 'seven miles' on the board under the map and was about to answer when the interrogation room door opened and Beckett walked out. The three men looked up at her expectantly. She walked over to her desk and flopped down in her chair, pinching the bridge of her nose with two fingers. She looked up at the three pairs of eyes that were glued to her and shook her head. "He doesn't know anything. He says he saw the man come in, but the back door was left open because they had just gotten a shipment in. There's a display in front of the door from where he was standing so he didn't see anyone go in or out of it." she leaned back and noticed that Castle wasn't sitting in his chair next to her desk like he usually was. She pointed to where he was standing and addressed Ryan and Esposito. "What is he doing to my board?"

Castle looked down at the marker in his hand and opened and closed his mouth a couple of times but nothing came out. He looked over at Esposito and the detective spoke up. "He was asking about how far apart the two places on the map were. But hasn't told us why yet."

Beckett turned in her chair to look at Rick and raised an eyebrow. "Yes, do explain. Why are you touching my board and why does it matter how far apart the restaurants are."

He put the marker down and rushed over to sit in his usual spot. Beckett leaned forward and rested her chin on her hand. Castle started talking in a slightly rushed tone. "I was doing research for Derrick Storm, the book not the character, it's the first in the Storm series, but you know that already don't you? Anyways, I was doing research and there is a missing person at the beginning of the story and statistics show that if a kidnapper is holding someone hostage, and has to leave whatever building they are holding said hostage in, they don't usually go more than 10 miles or 15 minutes away. Now we have two points on a map, which is good…."

Beckett caught on to his train of thought and interrupted him. "But if I can remember where me and Lanie went out to eat then we would have 4 points,"

"Which would make it easier to triangulate a possible area where he might be keeping her."

Beckett's eyes were sparkling as she looked into Castle's for a second longer than she should have. "I remembered one of them. Café Henri, the place with the dry sandwiches."

Esposito opened up the internet and did a search for the café. A minute later he was circling it on the map. "This one is four miles from the place he sent the first video and six from where he sent the second one."

"Do you remember the other place?" Ryan asked Beckett.

She thought for a minute and then shook her head. "No, but we can do a search for breakfast places within ten miles of the other three. I'd recognize it if I saw it."

Ryan nodded and pulled up a program on his computer. He put in the addresses of the other three places and added a search radius. Beckett came to stand behind his chair as the program did its job.

She stared as four names popped up. She pointed to one. "That one, the Iris Café. Lanie went on about their waffles for like a week." She looked at the address and went over to the map. Circling the last building and standing back she realized the four locations made a small square. She shot Castle a look of excitement and gratitude and then turned back to the board. "That son of a bitch is keeping her somewhere within that square."

She turned to Ryan and Esposito. "Get back up in that area, and give every patrol car and undercover cop this guys' picture. Have them get close but we don't want to spook him if we can help it. Set up a perimeter first, block off any streets he might use to get out and watch the other ones. After that I want our guys looking for anything out of the ordinary. Tell them to go door to door with that sketch if that's what it takes. We aren't letting him get away with this."

Ok, first I would like to say that for this chapter I did actually use real New York restaurants but did not use their real actual locations. That being said I know nothing about the food or coffee from these places, I am sure they are all very good. Haha, so I am not trying to say that these places have bad food or anything. The links to information about them are below.

Also I've started to realize that this story might be quite a bit shorter than the last story. This has sort of taken on a mind of its own and it moving a lot quicker than I thought it would.

Anyways….hope you liked this chapter

.

.com/biz/cafe-henri-new-york#query:small%20cafe

.com/biz/iris-cafe-brooklyn-2#query:small%20cafe