Author's Note: I'd like to thank TORONTOSUN, phnxgrl, southerngirl1, and Chkgun93 for their reviews. TORONTOSUN: I tried the "on the record/off the record" thing in the initial draft and it just didn't quite feel right. I think the understanding between the two detectives is that the whole exchange would be mostly off the record just to keep Captain Gates happy. Thanks for the input though. This chapter starts out in Alex's POV right after the detectives' conversation. Enjoy!

Chapter 24

Alex stood in an alley across the street from Locken's building surveying the comings and goings. It wasn't a doorman building, but you did need a key. I don't have a key. She would have to wait for an opportunity or create one to get in. She adjusted the bag on her shoulder and surveyed the street again. A lady with two shopping bags was heading toward the building. Alex smiled and headed for the lady. Maybe my opportunity came sooner than I thought it would.

As the woman reached the door, Alex reached her. "Do you need some help with that?"

She looked over. "Oh, thanks." She handed Alex one of the bags. "I keep telling myself to get a cart to carry these, but I never do." She unlocked the door and pulled it open. "I'll let you get on your way."

Alex smiled. "Actually, I was on my way in anyway. Let me help you bring it up; I don't mind."

The woman smiled. "Thank you so much."

"It's my pleasure."

Meanwhile...

Instead of going back home or to the precinct, Beckett found herself at Alex's ransacked apartment. One of the earliest tips Castle had given her in their partnership was to walk the scene as though she were the victim or killer to figure out what had actually happened. They had gotten so good at it that they rarely had to actually visit the scene anymore; they could just talk it through.

This time needed the actual walk; the evidence was hard to read. There were a few things that stood out though. The ransacking seemed a little too deliberate, like someone was trying to cover up an abduction with a B&E. The fact that only one room had been disturbed also felt off. If it really was a robbery, more things would have been touched in more areas of the apartment.

Castle was examining the door. "I see a forced entry, emphasis on forced."

"Yeah, CSU already logged that footprint. Whoever took her came in fast and loud."

He went into the hallway outside the apartment. "They kicked in the door," he mimicked kicking in the door, "so where would she have been?"

Beckett looked around the front room. "In order for them to have the upper hand, she would have needed to be close to the door. I'm guessing she was in here, where she wouldn't have been able to get to a weapon quickly."

Castle pointed to an indent in the wall. "They hit this section of wall at some point. Maybe she was near the door when it got kicked in."

"Let's run that." Beckett took a spot a couple steps from the door as Castle went back into the hallway. "They kick in the door and the fight starts."

Castle grabbed Beckett's raised wrists and pushed her toward the indented section of the wall. "If the abductor was as good as Alex is, the fight might have ended here."

Beckett smiled coyly up at him. "I didn't know you had this fantasy, Mr. Castle."

Castle smirked. "We should focus, Detective. We wouldn't want to contaminate a crime scene."

Beckett laughed and pulled her arms free to look at the wall. "There isn't enough damage to the wall for her to have been knocked out."

Castle turned Beckett back around and brought a hand to her throat. "She might have been choked out or," he moved his hand to the side of her throat as though he were holding a syringe, "she might have been drugged."

"I can run with that. So how did they get her out of the building? According to Detective Grissom, the canvas didn't turn up any witnesses."

"We should go over those statements. No one saw anyone take Alex out of the building, but they might have seen someone take out something that was big enough to hold a body."

Beckett nodded. "Good idea."

With the groceries delivered and the offered tip refused, Alex made quick time getting to Locken's floor. She slipped her bag off her shoulder and took her knife out before hiding the bag in the planter just outside his door. She was seething and had to remind herself to reign in her emotions enough to keep her voice from shaking. She was so close, but she had to do this right. He was not getting away with what he'd done.

She knocked on his door. "Mr. Locken? This is Stacy from a floor down. Some of your mail ended up in my box today."

She heard movement from inside and lowered her head so he wouldn't see her face through the peephole. After a moment, locks began sliding back. Alex adjusted her grip on her knife and waited. A moment later the door started to open. Alex attacked, thrusting her knife into the widening gap between the door and the frame. At the same time she pushed her way inside, kicking the door shut behind her. He cried out in pain as the knife found his forearm.

Alex didn't even pause. All the rage, sorrow, and guilt she'd been holding in for the last few hours was unleashed on him. Locken tried to bat the knife out of Alex's hand, but she simply slashed in his hand's general direction, leaving a gash across the palm. He yelled in pain, but she didn't care. Tears fell from her eyes, her carefully guarded emotions in confusion. Rage battling with grief; her hatred for this man battling with her own guilt. Blow after blow rained down on his body, her knife leaving deep and shallow wounds in his flesh. Blood flowed freely from the many gashes she left behind.

Alex continued her assault without any sign of letting up. She was determined to kill him no matter what the consequences. Locken deserved it. Alex slashed and stabbed at every inch of him she could reach. At some point he had fallen. Unable to retrieve a weapon to protect himself from the assault, Locken had used his arms to shield himself as much as possible, but it had done little good. Alex wouldn't have let a weapon in his hands stop her anyway. Her blows found his torso more often now that he was weakened and couldn't defend himself as easily. Eventually he passed out from a combination of pain and blood loss. She made sure he never woke up again.

After a time, she ceased her assault on his body. Her arms had grown tired from the repeated blows and the smell of blood was strong. For a few moments she just knelt there and sobbed, letting the rest of her emotions out. Sloan's murder had been partially avenged. Knowing that half of her revenge was complete felt good. She smiled through her tears and envisioned killing The Gentleman too. The sound of a car backfiring brought her back into the present. She looked down at herself and found she was covered in Locken's blood and her own tears. Alex shuddered; I have to get this off now. But that would have to wait a moment longer. She turned Locken over and stabbed him three more times, her signature.

She then went to the kitchen sink and washed off her hands and knife. She had a few things she needed to do before she could leave, but she needed clean hands to do it. With her hands and knife cleaned, she retrieved her bag from the hall and went to take a shower. Afterward she put on clean clothes and shoved the trash bag of bloody ones in her satchel. Feeling refreshed, Alex went back out to the main room.

Locken was laying in the middle of the room, his body twisted from her turning him over earlier. Blood had splattered the walls and furniture, which would make it difficult to walk through the room without rubbing up against some. Alex managed to do so and stopped next to the kitchen table. She reached into her bag again and extracted the rag wrapped knife she'd pulled from Sloan's body. She slowly and carefully unwrapped the knife without touching it so Locken's fingerprints would remain undisturbed.

Alex placed it carefully on the table where it would be easily seen by the responding officers. She knew this man had to be the Chameleon, the same man who had also killed Jim Beckett; if he was, some of Jim Beckett's blood would be on this knife, helping to close that case even if legal justice couldn't be served. Vengeance had won this round.

She glanced around the room and noticed a landline phone hanging from the wall. She picked her way over to it, dialed 911, and left it off the hook. Cops would respond to the scene soon enough, so Alex wanted to leave as quickly as she could without stepping in the blood. Despite her rush to leave, she took a photo of his dead body with her phone and then made sure to close the door behind her so no innocent eyes would have to see the body. Her own childhood had been stolen with images like that; she didn't want to ruin another's.

Back out on the street, Alex noticed a camera a few feet from the apartment building's door. She walked to where she'd be in plain view of the camera and stared straight at it. The scene upstairs would leave no doubt as to who did it, so there was no point in trying to hide. She wanted them to know.

As she headed away from the building, Alex's mind was busy. The Gentleman, or "Volkert" as Sloan had once called him, would not be happy with what she had done. He would want revenge, but so did she. Killing Locken was well and good, but he was just a pawn in the grand scheme of things. The Gentleman was ultimately to blame. He had ordered her fiancé's execution. He had said the words. She wouldn't be happy until he was dead as well.

But he was a chess player. In order to get where he'd gotten in life involved a level of ruthlessness and cunning she had never encountered before. She would have to beat him at his own game and that meant doing whatever it took to stay alive and in his good graces. But first she had to survive the night.

Sloan had provided the answer, though she hadn't known about it till after he was gone. She pulled the flash drive out of her bag. Alex had quickly copied the files Sloan had acquired onto this flash drive and brought it with her, unsure exactly what she would do with it at the time. All she knew was that these files contained information on Volkert and his entire operation. Hopefully it contained enough information to keep her alive. The only problem was that having the information would only protect her for so long. In order to keep herself alive in the long term, the information had to be in a format that couldn't be easily destroyed, hacked, altered, or deleted in any way. It also had to be attached to a dead man's switch to ensure that her death would be detrimental to The Gentleman's plans. There was only one person she knew who could set that up.

Lanie was texted the address of another body as the sun went down. The drive was filled with cars all trying to get back to their homes after a long day at the office. For a brief moment she wished she was one of them. Lanie had a whole evening of what she wanted to do with her husband planned out before she arrived at the scene. She finally pulled the van into a spot in front of the apartment building in time to see a uniform throw up out front. She cocked an eyebrow before grabbing her kit and stepping out. What is waiting for me up there?

The sergeant saw her coming and met her halfway to the door. "Dr. Parish, Sergeant Bourne. We already called Detective Beckett. It looks like a Shadow Fox hit."

Lanie wondered why he would say that but let it slide for now. "Call Detective Karpowski as well; she's involved too."

"You got it." He relayed the message to one of the officers in his unit.

Lanie got on the elevator with Sergeant Bourne when the car arrived. "What should I expect up there? I saw one officer lose his dinner outside."

"He's not the only one. At least two others lost theirs in the hallway outside the apartment. It's pretty gruesome. I mean, I've been on the job ten years and seen a lot of bloody murders. This one had me heaving."

"Has anyone contaminated the crime scene?"

"A 911 call was made about an hour ago. We responded, knocked on the door, got no answer. That's when we kicked in the door. So the doorway has been messed with, but otherwise no."

Lanie stepped off the elevator as the doors opened. "No one has touched the body?"

"No ma'am."

"Good." Lanie looked into the apartment from the open doorway. "I see what you mean."

The sergeant stayed outside as Lanie ducked under the tape. "So, is it a Shadow Fox scene? I've been studying the cases and recognized the stab wounds to his back."

That's why he thinks its Alex's work. "I can't say for certain until I do the autopsy."

"Well, I'll be downstairs waiting for the Detectives. If you need anything, just tell one of my men and they'll radio down to me."

"Thanks. Oh, if the residents downstairs from this apartment haven't been evacuated yet, you should do that. This much blood seeping from the victim tends to soak through the floor and drip from the ceiling of the next apartment."

"You got it."

Lanie set down her kit in a spot not covered in blood and pulled on a pair of gloves and booties. The room and victim were both covered in blood. The M.E. set up her clipboard and started taking notes. The victim was a white male, between fourty-five and fifty, wearing jeans and a T-shirt without shoes, the trademarks of someone who was lounging around the house. She picked her way closer to the victim, careful to stay out of the blood spatter as much as possible.

CSU was arriving now. The group had to pause as they reached the doorway, surprise being the most common emotion, before stepping inside one by one. The photographers entered first, taking photos of the blood as they progressed. Lanie continued her exam. Even without moving him, Lanie could see the tears in his shirt that were consistent with Alex Stevens. But that would be true of the copycat too.

Esposito and Ryan had finally arrived. "Whoa, that is a lot of blood."

"Hey, husband. Beckett here yet?"

"Not yet, why?"

"I'm not sure whose case this is. I'm hoping they don't go at it like they did at Ewan Brebnor's scene."

Esposito had finally picked his way through the room to the victim's side. "They shouldn't; I heard Karpowski had asked for Beckett's help figuring out that scene."

Ryan was still by the door. "Uni downstairs says Beckett and Castle just arrived. Anything you want me to tell them?"

"Tell them to glove up 'cause it's a bloody mess in here." Lanie reached over and pulled a wallet out of the victim's back pocket. "And tell them there's no I.D. at the moment."

"You got it."

A/N: Alex got some of her revenge. Did you think it was in character? And what is going to happen next? Leave a comment below!