Author's Note: I'd like to thank phnxgrl, MaineCastle, Chkgun93, TORONTOSUN, and southerngirl1 for their reviews. I'm glad you guys loved it! We're starting where the last chapter left off from Beckett's POV. Enjoy!

Chapter 9

Beckett and Esposito ran forward and pulled at the rolling door, but it wouldn't budge. Castle called to them, pointing down the alley. They hurried to him and spotted a door. Beckett and Esposito took up positions on either side of the door with Castle keeping an eye on the front to make sure Cassy didn't escape that way. Beckett looked at Esposito and he nodded.

Beckett twisted the knob and Esposito rolled inside with Beckett on his heels. They scanned the room, but the shelves right in front of them blocked most of the view. Esposito signaled that he would sweep to their right and Beckett nodded, watching his back. He got to the end of the shelving, checked around the corner, and then shook his head. Beckett motioned that she was going forward and Esposito nodded that he understood. She adjusted her grip on her gun and moved between two shelves. She peaked around the corner and her heart felt like it had stopped. Two bodies lay on the ground: Ryan and Jeremy Cassy. And Alex was kneeling over Ryan.

Beckett put her gun up and stepped around the corner. "Put your hands up."

Alex looked up. "Normally I might, but he's bleeding pretty bad."

Beckett looked down and realized Alex was applying pressure to Ryan's shoulder in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Beckett looked from Alex to Ryan, torn between doing her job and saving Ryan's life. Ryan's life won out, though Beckett did pause by Jeremy's body long enough to check his pulse. Beckett holstered her gun and grabbed a towel from the shelf before kneeling across from Alex.

"Get out of here."

Alex looked up at Beckett in shock. "What?"

Beckett positioned her hands with the towel to take over applying pressure. "This is me saying 'thank you for saving his life' but this is a one-time deal. Now get out of here. Esposito! Ryan's here and he's hurt!"

Alex removed her hands and Beckett's took their place. Outside, tires had come to a screeching halt, so Alex turned and ran to the wall where a two story tall ladder led to a catwalk and door to the alley on the opposite side. Just as Esposito rounded the shelves to find Beckett with Ryan, uniforms flooded into the warehouse from the side door.

Esposito looked up to see Alex climbing the ladder. "Alex Stevens, stop!"

Alex scrambled up the last few rungs of the ladder and shoved the door at the top open. Esposito had just reached the bottom of the ladder and started to climb. Castle watched them go and then dropped down across from Beckett with a phone to his ear.

He covered the receiver. "A bus is on their way."

"Good."

He paused, hand still covering the mic. "Did you let her go?"

"She got a ten second head start for saving his life. It's only fair; she was out looking for him just like us. If she hadn't, he'd be dead right now. She deserved some sort of thank you for that. Don't tell Esposito. He has no idea."

He nodded and uncovered the phone. "Yes, I'm still here…"

Meanwhile…

Alex shoved open the door and almost slammed into the railing of the fire escape. To her left was a ladder to the street, but a cop car was blocking the alley, so that was out. She went around the corner to the right and ran up the staircase to the next level. This level ended in a dead end right into a brick wall. She quickly observed the area and planned a risky route.

It wasn't a moment too soon. Behind her the cops were just coming out the door onto the fire escape. Alex sprinted forward. She'd almost reached the end when she used her Parkour skills to plant her right foot on the wall to her right and pushed off. This gave her the height she needed to place her left foot on the railing and then run across the wall to grab the pipe above an open window and swing through.

The window deposited her in a ballet studio where a group of five year olds were taking lessons. "Sorry to intrude." Everyone just stared at her with wide eyes as they watched her run out of the room. She ran to the nearest staircase and out the building into a very crowded street full of tourists. Slowing to a walk, she blended in, moving with the group as much as possible while still trying to put some distance between herself and the cops.

Sloan had remotely turned her phone back on so he could help with directions. "Duck down a little and turn your head to the left. Good, you didn't show up on that camera. Now get as close to the wall as possible."

"Have any cops made it onto this street yet?"

"There is a pair on the corner headed your way, so you should duck into the store right now."

Alex ducked into the store and made a show of being preoccupied with the magazines. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the pair pass the store. She counted to ten and exited the store again.

"Am I clear?"

"For now." Sloan paused as he listened to the police scanner. "More units are coming, so you need to move. There's a subway station a block from you. I can commandeer the cameras for maybe thirty seconds without sending up an alarm and the train is due in three minutes. Hurry."

"Got it." Alex started to run, trying not to draw attention to herself in the process. Things were going to be close…

Meanwhile…

Esposito opened the door at the top of the ladder and looked around. Alex had somehow managed to avoid Beckett seeing her, but he was going to do everything in his power to bring her in. From what little he'd seen of the scene, Alex must have killed Jeremy Cassy and saved Ryan's life in the process, but he couldn't figure out why. That question would have to wait; Alex was escaping. She wasn't going down the ladder to their left, so she must have gone right. He led the group to the right and up a staircase to find Alex sprinting at a dead end.

Esposito expected Alex to stop when she realized she had nowhere to go, but she didn't. Instead, she pushed off the wall with her right, stepped on the rail with her left, and then ran across the wall to swing from a pipe through an open window. Esposito stopped, stunned at what he'd just witnessed. They were three stories up. Alex had just run across a wall three stories above what could have been a fall to her death to get away.

He turned around. "Get down to ground level and start a perimeter. We cannot let her get away."

"Yes, sir."

Esposito went back inside in time to see Ryan get loaded onto a gurney and wheeled out. Blood covered his partner's shoulder and he was still out cold. He had a brief flashback to when Beckett had been shot at Montgomery's funeral. At least this time the bullet wound wasn't as close to the heart. Ryan had a better chance of surviving.

He climbed down the ladder and joined Beckett and Castle. "He gonna be okay?"

She nodded. "Paramedics said the injury was fairly clean. He should be fine. Alex?"

Esposito pulled a face. "I'd say we are still underestimating her abilities. She ran across a wall over a three story drop to swing through an open window. I sent uniforms to create a perimeter, but I think she escaped again."

Beckett nodded but didn't say anything. Esposito got the feeling that Beckett had seen Alex and chosen to ignore the assassin, but he pushed that thought aside. He decided that if that had been the case, Beckett had made the choice to save Ryan's life over pursuing Cassy's killer. He watched his partner and her fiancé as he pondered the question: what would I have done in her shoes? If he had come around that corner and seen Alex walking away from Ryan and Ryan was bleeding out, he probably would have put the life of his partner over arresting Alex too. But there was some tension in Beckett's posture that seemed strange. The best conclusion he could come to was that Beckett was still not completely back in her right mind yet.

Esposito filed it away to ask her about it later. "Has someone told Jenny yet?"

Beckett nodded. "She's headed to the hospital right now. You should go meet her there. Castle and I will stay here."

He nodded. "Good idea."

Lanie arrived with the CSU techs. Beckett met her at the door and brought her to the body of Jeremy Cassy while the CSU techs spread out to process the rest of the warehouse. The M.E. set her kit down nearby and set up her clipboard to start taking notes.

"Has anyone touched the body?"

Beckett nodded. "I checked his pulse at the right wrist. We know Alex is the killer though."

Lanie shot her friend a surprised look. "How do you know?"

Beckett pointed to the knife near Cassy's body. "That's a Wingwalk. And we saw her… escaping when we got here. She saved Ryan's life."

Lanie noticed the hesitation, but didn't press. Beckett was probably covering for something. She'd have to ask her husband what it was tonight. The M.E. made a few notes and then knelt down to start her exam. It looked like he'd been stabbed four times; three stab wounds looked like Alex's normal work, but there was one on his left that didn't match at all. If Alex was the killer, she had improvised a little for some reason.

Beckett walked around the warehouse as CSU techs got to work. Cassy had set up camp behind the shelves Ryan had been handcuffed to. A card table held a small TV and another was covered in food with trash on the floor next to it. A cheap plastic folding chair was set up next to the food table and a cot was against the wall. Cassy must have been working alone.

CSU techs were busy taking photographs of everything, though a couple techs were getting evidence bags ready to collect things when the pictures were completed. Beckett went back to Castle so the techs could do their jobs uninterrupted. He held open his arms and she gladly stepped into them.

"We found him." He pulled her close and rested his head against hers.

"With some help. No one's come back really excited, so I'm guessing Alex got away again."

"Why'd you do it?"

She shrugged. "I'm not really sure. Are you mad?"

"No."

She pulled back to look at Castle. "Are you going to tell Gates?"

He took Beckett's face in his hands and looked her in the eyes. "Never. You had a reason, even if you don't know exactly what it was. And I trust your judgment."

"Thank you."

Beckett and Castle headed to the hospital after Lanie was done with her exam and the body was headed for the morgue. Ryan was in surgery, but the doctors said they didn't expect any complications. According to them, the shot was a clean through and through. The bullet had come close to hitting the Subclavian Vein, but Ryan had been lucky. Esposito and Jenny were sitting in the waiting room when they arrived. Jenny still looked worried, but most of the fear had dissipated.

She smiled when she saw Beckett and stood up to give her a hug. "Thank you. You brought him back to me. Thank you."

"Of course. I was just doing my job."

Jenny stepped back. "No, it was more than that. You guys brought him home. You saved his life. Thank you. All of you."

Gates walked in and gestured to Beckett and Esposito. "Can I talk to you really quick?"

"Yes, sir."

She waited until her detectives were standing next to her. "When did you see Alex in the warehouse?"

Esposito spoke first. "Beckett wouldn't have been able to see her. She was applying pressure to Ryan's wound when I saw Alex going up the ladder."

Gates turned to Beckett. "That true?"

"Yes, sir."

Gates nodded. "A rookie apparently told I.A. he thought you guys were acting a little weird when he came in, so be prepared for questions. I believe you though, so I'll back you."

"Thank you, sir."

She glanced at Jenny and Castle as they talked. "You guys did good today. Call me when he gets out of surgery."

Beckett smiled. "Yes, sir."

A few hours later, Jenny was allowed to go see him as he came out of sedation. Beckett called Gates to let her know Ryan was waking up, after which the rest of the group was allowed to go visit. Ryan was reclined on the hospital bed, still pale and with several wires attached to him, but alive and awake. He smiled when he saw them, though his eyes were a little unfocused from the pain killers.

"Hey, guys. You're here."

Beckett smiled and took a seat across the bed from Jenny. "Of course we're here. Had to make sure you were okay."

"Yeah, I'm okay. Shoulder hurts a little."

Esposito grinned. "They got you on the good stuff if that shoulder only hurts a little."

Ryan smiled and nodded sleepily. "Thanks for finding me. It's kinda weird though."

"What's that?"

"Before I got shot, I coulda sworn I saw Alex."

Jenny looked at Beckett, who nodded. "She found you first; must have killed Jeremy Cassy around the time we arrived."

Ryan just nodded. "Thaaat's…goooood." He drifted off to sleep again.

Beckett smiled. "Get some rest."

A/N: And that's where I'm going to have to leave it for a few weeks. The next case I'm working on got technical very quickly, which means I needed to do a lot of research and that slowed down writing a bit. Until then, thank you guys so much for reading and I hope to see a lot of comments! Thanks!