Author's Note-I know it's short and totally fillery but it sets things up and moves others along. My operation went well and I'm healing fast. I had the urge to write this story and so I wrote this in a burst and had it ready for posting in less than ten minutes. I hope this rings true for everyone. NYLF xx
The Captain paced the length of the bullpen while their FBI liaison was briefed by the boys.
Child abduction cases were FBI jurisdiction but they had sworn that The NYPD would be kept firmly in the loop. Gates had personally called the higher ups to ensure that both Kate and Rick where there when they brought her home. She wouldn't have the poor girl's family stonewalled by politics and red tape.
She had gotten to know her staff well.
Beckett's team were the best of the best, their closure rate the highest of the precinct let alone the department.
She knew their every tell by this point.
She could gather where they were in their investigations by a glace out of her office window. It was only because of this intimate knowledge of the team, the detectives in it, that she could see the defeat in Esposito's eyes, the guilt and fear in Ryan's.
Neither of them expected to get Nevaeh back and they were both terrified what that would mean to their boss, friend, sister.
Because Rick Castle may be a man of many talents, but his ability to read Kate was second to none. He was right in this, as he was in most things concerning the female detective.
If they didn't find Nevaeh Tyler alive and unharmed and soon, she would never ever recover.
Gates sighed to herself.
She needed her best team to do something she could never, and would never ask of them.
She needed them to be objective in the face of one of their own being missing.
She needed them to work this without emotion, by the book, fast and clean.
But what made their team so brilliant at what they did, was the fact they were never objective.
They all cared too much about humanity and justice to not pour their hearts and souls into every case, every lead.
This case was no different.
They would work no harder on this than they would any other, because they all cared just as much about this one as they did every other.
Their only ulterior motive was to save their teammate from the pain of losing another family member.
They would work night and day until they collapsed from exhaustion to try and save her from that fate.
And Gates knew she had no way to stop it.
So she did the only thing she could. She ordered lunch for the floor and got to work.
Captain of The Twelfth or not, she was a cop and there was a child, a cop's juvenile family member, missing and in danger.
Captain or not, her place right now was with her troops, fighting to bring their own home, safe and sound.