A/N: You guys rock! I appreciate your support of my story and your patience with how long it takes sometimes. We're nearing the end, only one – maybe two chapters left. This is the darkest story I've written and with everything going on in the world right now, it's sometimes difficult to write. I hope you stick with me through to the end. I hope you enjoy this chapter!

XXXXXX

As Kate followed Freddy out of the bathroom she heard a familiar song.

"You talk too much, you worry me to death…"

Skull-Face called out for Freddy.

"Hey, Boss! One of the cops' phone's ringing!"

"Weird ass ring tone for a cop," Freddy mentioned to Kate.

Kate said nothing, she was a bit in shock.

It was Castle.

Oh, God, it was Castle.

Freddy did call him earlier. And now he's calling back.

Skull-Face kept talking. "You want to answer it, or should I, or should it just go?"

"I got it," replied Freddy. "I gotta hear who this ringtone's for."

He shoved Kate back over to the other cops and went into the break room.

Creepy Clown, Zombie and Myers were making rounds of the stairwells at the moment, so no one was guarding the detectives. Eggerstrom took the opportunity to ask whose phone was ringing.

"Mine," murmured Kate. "It's Castle calling."

"Interesting ring tone," grinned Marcus.

Kate smirked back, relishing the bit of humor in such a dark situation.

"It's a private joke. Would you believe he's the one who put it on my phone?"

Marcus chuckled and was pistol whipped by Myers who had just walked up and heard the laugh.

"Think this is funny do you? Good way to get shot, don't you think? Everybody just shut the hell up."

Marcus felt blood trickling down his face, but said nothing more, just glared at Myers.

They had to figure out some way to get out of this fast – cuffed or not.

XXXXXX

Gates, Faulkner, Dragović, and Esposito were sitting around a table with Castle. It was time to make the call.

Rick swallowed nervously as he dialed.

It had been decided to put him on speaker phone, though the others wouldn't say anything. The guy in charge would know there would be people listening in, if he was worth his salt.

"What!"

The irritated voice echoed throughout the truck, making Rick jump and ramping up his anxiety.

"It's Castle – you know, the 'hack writer'?"

He winced, and Esposito rolled his eyes. That was an idiotic opening. Way to give the bastard ground, Rick.

"Figures you'd be the one with the stupid ring tone. What the hell do you want?"

"We need to know…" Rick began.

"No, wait, I know what you want," the man barked a laugh. "''Are you married?' Hell no. 'What do you do for a living?' None of your goddamn business. 'Why are you doing this?' Because it's fun. Anything else?"

Faulkner leaned forward with a frown. This guy seemed to understand the game plan. He wrote a note and passed it to Dragović.

He may have done this kind of thing before.

Dragović nodded and rose from the table. He gestured to Esposito who also stood and followed the psychologist outside.

Castle asked one of his odd questions.

"What's the meaning of The Beatles' Helter Skelter?"

"The fuck kind of question is that?"

Captain Gates looked up at Castle. That question flustered the guy. He hadn't been expecting a question like that. Good. Now maybe they'd get somewhere.

"One I'm curious about." Now Rick was in his element. The wacky theories, the out there questions – done in many ways just to mess with Kate, but at the same time giving insight needed to solve a case.

Gates was impressed with how calm Castle became after his initial nervousness. Like the rest of them, she knew he was terrified for all the detectives in the precinct, yet his stoicism now in the face of this telephone call astonished her. He wasn't a professional negotiator, he wasn't a cop. She knew he was probably still a bit shaky, but he wasn't showing it now. Maybe he'd inherited some of his mother's acting ability.

An ability she wished she had sometimes.

"It's a song about a fucking slide. That's a stupid thing to be curious about. You a moron or something?"

Faulkner was writing another note. He passed it to Rick.

Leave off the other weird one for now. Ask to speak to a hostage.

Castle nodded.

"I want to know how the hostages are…" he began.

"Nobody's dead yet," the man growled. "Unless the guy we dumped out the window bit the dust…I hope."

Gates shook her head at Castle, letting him know not to tell the captor anything about Detective Lennox.

He dipped his head again, and continued his question to the kidnapper.

"May I speak to one of them?" he began scribbling a note.

Ryan had come into the truck to make a report of what was going on outside – nothing, all was quiet at the moment – and he heard the question. It surprised him that Castle didn't ask for Kate specifically.

He sat next to Rick and saw the note being passed to Gates.

It ultimately doesn't matter who I speak to, but if I don't ask explicitly for Beckett, maybe he'll put her on.

Gates acknowledged that. It was a good point.

"I know you want to talk to the hot cop, what's her name? Katie? Maybe I'll let you. She's awake now. She kind of took a forced nap a little while ago."

Castle clenched his fist. Ryan put his hand over it, calming him.

Rick looked gratefully at the detective, realizing the captor was baiting him.

"I'm glad to hear she's awake. May I speak with her?"

The man laughed.

"Oh, so polite. Just so you know, she did a stupid thing. If she does something like that again a couple of colleagues of mine will get to play with her… She won't like that, and I bet you won't either."

Dragović had returned about the same time Ryan had come in and it was his turn to hand Castle a note.

Do not discount what he says, he may well be telling the truth. But do not let him get to you. He will know if he has by what you say now.

It took everything Rick had not to scream into the phone.

"I understand," he said as calmly as he could. "I merely want to know if they're all right. Please…"

XXXXXX

Freddy muted the phone and laughed aloud. The chick had this guy completely whipped.

He stepped out of the break room.

"Hey baby, your boyfriend wants to talk to you."

Myers grabbed Kate's arm and hauled her to her feet. He muscled her over to Freddy who uncuffed her – much to her surprise.

"I'll leave off the punishment for now. You tell him I was nice to you and cut your ties," he told her. "I'll even let you talk privately… sort of."

Kate looked at him questioningly but said nothing.

"I'll be in the room, but I won't listen in."

He grabbed her chin hard enough to bruise.

"Don't do anything stupid."

Kate swallowed as he handed her the phone.

"Castle?"

"Kate!"

The relief in Rick's voice was palpable.

"Hey. How's it going?"

Well, that was lame. Kate shook her head at herself, then heard Castle chuckling.

"Oh, you know – same old, same old."

She grinned.

"How freely can you talk?" Castle asked. "Are you alone?"

"Yes and no," she answered.

XXXXXX

Yes and no? What the hell did that mean?

"Is he listening in?"

"Kind of."

"Are you on speaker?"

"No."

Well, that was good to hear.

"Is he in the room?"

"Yes. And he was nice to me just now. He took the ties off me."

"That's good. I hope he won't put them back on."

Rick took a deep breath.

"Okay, so I'm here with Captain Gates, Ryan… Espo was here, but he went off to check something, and a few other people are here. They've given me some questions to ask you."

"All right, I'll do my best."

Castle looked up at Faulkner and Dragović. They nodded at him to continue.

"Have they told you why they're doing this?"

"Fun."

That answer made everyone at the table look up in concern. It was probably the worst news possible. Dragović gestured for Rick to keep going.

"Shit, that's not good," Castle's nerves were returning. At least the man holding Kate couldn't hear him. "How many are there?"

"Can't say."

Can't say? What did that mean? Why not?

Faulkner spoke up.

"Too specific. The guy with her may understand what she's telling you."

"All right," Rick said. "Are there three captors?"

"No," came the reply.

"Fewer?"

"No."

More than three.

"More than ten?"

"No, half."

Five.

"Can you give me a description?"

"Not really."

"Can you tell me anything about them? The leader?"

There was a long pause.

"I had a bad dream… on a road with a tree."

Huh? Castle looked at Faulkner, who shrugged.

"And hey, you remember that party where you gave me a crow?"

Everyone was writing, hoping to come up with some thread that would make sense.

"And the bad guy in First Avenger. His cousin."

XXXXXX

Kate was eyeing Freddy, hoping he wouldn't catch on to what she was telling Castle. The last two were the most obvious, but she couldn't think of anything else.

"Daryl Dixon's enemy, and Pennywise."

Freddy looked up and glared.

Damn, he got it.

He grabbed the phone, snarled a quick "Fuck you" into it and clicked off.

"You bitch."

"I didn't actually tell them anything."

"You better hope they don't figure it out." He slapped her hard. "You get off on getting beaten?" he asked. "'Cause you sure do stupid shit."

He put a fresh ziptie around Kate's wrists, nearly cutting off circulation, it was so tight.

"That's the last time you talk to your boyfriend."

XXXXXX

As soon as Kate's captor clicked off, all was chaos.

Gates was hollering out the door for the head of the SWAT team to come over.

Esposito had come back and he and Ryan were debating what Kate's cryptic descriptions meant.

Dragović and Faulkner were also discussing matters fervently between themselves.

Rick just sat.

He was curious about the characterization of each of the kidnappers, but he was stuck on the word 'fun'.

They're doing this for fun?

"Hey, Castle," Ryan broke his reverie. "When did you give Beckett a crow?"

"What? Oh. Let me look at your list."

As he perused the note Esposito handed to him, something was niggling at him.

Bad dreams? Trees? Crows? A bad guy's cousin?

It was Daryl Dixon and Pennywise that gave him the answer.

"They're wearing disguises," he announced. "Masks would be my guess."

Everyone looked at him.

"We've already assumed they would be wearing something to conceal who they are," Dragović eyed him.

"But this gives us a way to differentiate them."

"How?" asked Esposito. "None of these descriptions make any sense."

"A couple of them are simple. Pennywise was the clown in Stephen King's 'IT'," Castle explained. "One of them is a clown. Daryl Dixon's enemy in The Walking Dead?"

Ryan jumped on that. "One of the captors is dressed like a zombie."

Faulkner nodded.

"Okay, those are easy, what about the others? What's the cousin? And the crow?"

Suddenly the bird clicked.

"Not a crow, a raven," Castle said excitedly. "Remember that Halloween party I threw? The first one after I started following Kate?"

"Yeah," replied Ryan. "But what…?"

"She scared the crap out of me with that springy frog thing she had under her coat. I was dressed as Edgar Allen Poe and had a stuffed raven. I gave her the bird."

He paused, thinking.

"But Poe wouldn't be a particularly frightening character…"

"Maybe it's the holiday she was talking about," jumped in Espo. "Halloween?"

"Makes sense, but based on what Kate said, they're all wearing some kind of Halloween mask or costume."

"Come back to that one" Dragović remarked. "What about the tree?"

"Bad dreams on a street with a tree," Castle said thoughtfully.

Faulkner came back with "Wait a minute. Beckett said 'road', you said 'street'. That's it. A Nightmare on Elm Street. The leader has a Freddy Krueger mask."

"Yes!" exclaimed Rick. "The bad guy in First Avenger… That would be the first Captain America movie… the villain was Red Skull…

"Red Skull's got a cousin?" asked Ryan. "Was that in the movie? Or in the comics?"

"Neither," replied Rick. "Hmmm. His cousin…"

"How about just a skull?" asked Esposito. "Just a plain white skull?"

"Yes, that fits. Now, back to the Halloween mask. It's got to be more specific than just that. The movie Halloween. Michael Myers maybe?"

"That's good Mr. Castle," said Faulkner. "I'll run these and see if there are any other kidnappings or taking captives by men wearing these masks."

Gates came back over, the head of the SWAT team following close behind.

"As interesting as that is – and I do think it is – I'm more concerned about Kate's assertion that these monsters are doing this for fun."

Everyone grew quiet.

"We've all heard of people who murder for the thrill of it, some of us have seen it first hand. Mr. Castle, when you spoke to the man – probably the leader, how did he seem? Was he nervous either time you spoke to him? Did he seem suicidal?"

Rick leaned back in his chair.

"No, Captain. He was in control. I guess he could be nervous – I was nervous talking to him even though I hid it as best I could – but I'm not in any real danger. Technically he and his gang are. SWAT could storm the precinct, the detectives inside could rise up against them and take at least a couple of them out. But he was calm."

"Mr. Dragović, do you think this could be a suicide by cop scenario?"

"No, I agree with Mr. Castle. He had discipline in himself. He was annoyed by our calling him. It wasn't in his playbook. Hence the harsh greeting he gave when he answered."

"Threw me off my game for a second," Castle mentioned.

"That could also have been part of his plan," Dragović commented. "Mr. Castle, what was the point of your odd question? Other than confusing him with the strangeness of it?"

"A couple of reasons, first – to see if I could get a rise out of him – which worked. But also to see if he knew that the song is about a slide, or if he would bring up Charles Manson and his description of it."

He had everyone's attention.

"I think – and correct me if I'm wrong Dr. Dragović, I'm certainly no profiler – but the fact that he went with the slide definition shows that he's not given to ranting, and craziness. As we heard on the phone, he's calm, he knows what he's doing."

Dragović nodded his approval of the statement.

"I would also put out there that he is planning to kill hostages," Dragović warned. "That may well be his escape plan. His thinking is we will be so concerned with triage and getting our people to the hospital that he and his men will just slip away. He does not want to die himself, but if it comes to that he would say 'it's been a good ride', and take out as many people as possible."

"I agree," said Captain Gates. She pointed to the SWAT leader she'd brought inside the truck.

"We need to work out a plan with Captain Harrison to gain entry to the precinct."

She looked at everyone in turn.

"It's time to storm the building."

XXXXXX

A/N 2: Did this one work for you? I'd love to hear what you think of it!