Hej!

Nice to see you're still reading :-) I'm sorry for my relatively slow updating routine - I'm kind of a slow writer and in addition I haven't finished watching the show yet. After two almost boring seasons I reached the beginning of season seven and I have to admit, it has me thoroughly intrigued! I'm very curious to see the explanation of what happened so it's a constant struggle between 'writing' and 'watching'...

Before you start reading just one thing I forgot about last chapter: I have no way of legally watching 'Castle' in English, so most unfortunately I have to endure it in my own language. Major problem with that is, I have no idea what the characters are talking like, if they have favourite sentences, answers or anything. So sorry, if I don't exactly get them right. It's not my fault... But if you have suggestions or remarks, please, I'd be happy to read them!

It was two hours later that Castle and Beckett were expectantly waiting for Esposito to return and report or at least call.

When the three of them had prepared to leave earlier, Beckett had insisted on telling Gates where they were going, after all they couldn't just leave work in the middle of the day. As could have been expected, the captain hadn't been too thrilled and forbid them from 'spying on detective Ryan' as she had put it. Although, untypically, a short argument on the part of Esposito had managed to make her let him go. Apparently, she had taken pity on his urgent tone and almost desperate look. But she had stayed adamant about at least keeping Beckett where she belonged. And while she couldn't order Castle around, he chose to stay at the precinct. As curious as he had been, he had felt it more appropriate to let Esposito talk to Ryan alone. And he hadn't wanted for Beckett to be the only one left behind.

Now, they sat at Beckett's desk once more and tried not to check if someone came out of the elevator every few seconds. But they couldn't help staring at their mobiles which were lying in front of them, waiting for a call. Beckett's work was long forgotten and even Castle had given up on theorizing. They just wanted the answers Esposito was hopefully going to get.

"You think Espo found them at home?" Castle asked at one point and broke the silence that had spread between them.

"I don't know", Beckett answered wearily. "I feel like that'd be too easy."

"True." Castle let his head hang a little. "Why is nothing ever easy?"

She looked up at his unexpected rhetorical question. When he returned her gaze she lifted her eyebrows a little and shrugged, not knowing what to say to that. After that, they returned to their silent musings.

Another half an hour later, they both jerked when Beckett's phone suddenly started ringing.

"It's Espo", Beckett said half excited, half anxious. She lifted the phone to her ear and greeted the man on the other end of the line.

"Hey Espo, I put you on speaker, alright?" After an to Castle inaudible answer, she put the mobile back on the desk and touched a button. Both of them fixed their gaze on the device as if it was a person.

"So, did you talk to them?" Castle asked eagerly.

"No", came Esposito's voice. "I rang the doorbell at least five times but no one answered it."

"If nobody was there, then what took you so long?" Beckett inquired. "You've been gone well over one and a half hour now."

"Well, you see, I still had a key. Ryan gave it to me when they went on their honeymoon. So I took a look inside, just to see if I could find something."

Beckett shook her head and Castle was pretty sure she couldn't decide if she was glad or if this went too far in her opinion.

"And?", she finally asked. "Did you?"

"That's the thing", Esposito answered, "everything was just the same. At least almost, I only found three weird things. Or rather, I didn't find them. The frame with the picture from their wedding was empty and their toilet bags were missing. But when I checked their wardrobe to see if they had packed their other things, too, it didn't look like it, everything still there as far as I could tell. But guess what? There was no underwear. Nowhere. Just two empty drawers."

Castle looked up at Beckett, seeing his confusion reflected in her eyes. He felt his mind desperately trying to come up with an explanation for these strange findings, but it failed.

"Why would they take their underwear, toothbrushes and a picture but nothing else?" Beckett asked. "If they left for longer than a night, they would have packed other clothes, too. But if they only meant to stay away shortly, they wouldn't take all the underwear."

"Maybe someone else took them", Castle piped in.

"Still the same question. Why would anyone take those but nothing else. It doesn't make sense."

"No, it doesn't", Esposito was to be heard again. "That's what took me so long, I tried to find something else. Anything. But there was nothing." He sounded frustrated.

"Hm." Beckett thought about it for a moment. "Okay, I'd say you come back here. You can't do anything more there and maybe we'll come up with something together."

"Be there in thirty", Espo answered and ended the call.

Castle and Beckett looked at each other, bewildered by what Esposito had found.

"Any theories?", she asked him slightly desperate.

He slowly shook his head. "No, not a single one. Why would anyone do that?"

"No idea." She too shook her head.

It took Esposito another half an hour to get back to the precinct. When he arrived, Beckett had forced herself to finally continue working while Castle sat there, staring into a new mug of coffee, and tried to come up with an explanation. As the younger man approached the desk and once more positioned himself on its edge, Beckett lifted her eyes from the folders in front of her, glad to finally have a reason to stop filing through them.

"So, what do you think?" Esposito asked.

Beckett shrugged helplessly. "We can't think of anything. You?"

"Nope, still nothing." Castle was glad to see that Espo apparently had pulled himself together and managed to be his usual self fairly well. It had been disconcerting to see him so uncharacteristically downcast. Although his normally light air still was somehow dampened, no matter how hard he tried to conceal it.

Sometimes, Castle wondered about the slightly peculiar friendship of the two partners. They seemed to be too different to get along but somehow they had managed to build a friendship stronger than most others. Even though they never missed an opportunity to get the better of one another. Especially Esposito, being the more outgoing of the two, seemed to rather enjoy to embarrass his partner from time to time.

"And there really was nothing else that seemed unusual?" Castle asked.

"As I said, only the picture and the empty drawers. Otherwise it was their all time well cleaned flat." Esposito hesitated. "No, wait, there was something." He looked first at Beckett than at Castle. "I noticed there were dirty dishes in the washer."

"So their departure wasn't planned", Castle concluded.

"Maybe even forced", Esposito added, sounding a bit worried. "Perhaps they were abducted after all."

"But why would they be?" Beckett asked.

"My money is still on Jenny being the linchpin", Castle said. Beckett just shrugged Espo's questioning look off, mouthing "Don't ask".

"We're going round in circles", Beckett stated. "This won't get us anywhere as long as we don't know more. I'd say, we try finding out if anyone knows about something we don't."

"Okay", Esposito agreed. "I'll try contacting their friends, maybe you could reach out for the families." He got up again, looked at Beckett who nodded and left for his desk once more.

The afternoon passed by and the three of them got more frustrated with every hour. No one seemed to know anything, in fact, until called, no one had even known the couple had gone missing. After having reassured the at least tenth distant cousin that they would try to find out what happened, Beckett put her phone down and leaned back, looking at Castle.

"Nothing. Most of them haven't heard from Ryan and Jenny since the wedding. So wherever they went, if it was of their own free will, they're not staying with someone of their families."

"You think Esposito had more luck?" Castle asked.

"No", she answered, "if so, he would have told us."

Castle turned to look at the Latino. He had just put down his phone, too, and angrily crossed something out on a list in front of him. He then started typing on his computer, probably looking up the contacts of the next person.

"You're right", he agreed, looking around helplessly for something else to do. They had contacted everyone they knew of and hadn't learned anything, so they were back to square one. Something Castle could hardly bear. At least not in this case.

His gaze fell on the empty mugs on the desk and he decided to make new coffee once again. At least he felt helpful this way. He stood, picked up the cups and looked at Beckett.

"Yes, thank you", she answered his unspoken question and he left for the kitchen.

When he returned a few minutes later, Esposito had joined Beckett at her desk. A sense of déja-vu washed over Castle, with the only exception that his fingers weren't getting burned this time.

"Found out something?" he asked when he set down the mugs.

The younger detective shook his head. "No. They didn't even know they're missing."

"Same here", Beckett said.

"How can this be?" Castle asked in the following silence.

"No idea. The longer I think about it, the less sense it makes." Esposito and Castle both nodded at Beckett's statement.

"Maybe we should go to their flat again and look if there is something else", Castle proposed.

"You think I missed something?", Esposito asked indignantly.

"He means that three pairs of eyes see more than one", Beckett came to Castle's aid.

"Yeah, exactly", Castle confirmed.

Esposito harrumphed but didn't complain any further, he was too desperate to find something.

They had to wait another fifteen minutes until the detectives' shifts were officially over and Gates couldn't forbid them from leaving anymore. Which didn't prevent the captain from sending them a dark glare when all three of them left the minute they were allowed to.

The drive to Ryan's flat was a silent one, neither of them knew what else there was to say. Long since run out of probable ideas, they just hoped Esposito had overlooked something that would give them a lead. When they stood in front of the door leading to the flat, Castle rang the bell. They could hear the sound reverberate, but no one opened. After a minute and a second ringing Esposito produced the key and started to open the door. Suddenly, he hesitated.

"What is it, Espo?", Beckett asked when he stopped mid-movement.

"I locked the door twice when I left, I'm sure of it", he answered. "But right now, it was only on the latch."

The two detectives exchanged a slightly worried glance and simultaneously drew their weapons. Castle took a step back like Beckett had painstakingly taught him in the course of many cases. It may have been an overreaction from all three of them but almost open doors with no one answering the bell rarely meant anything good. And neither of them wanted to be unprepared, least of all in this case.

At a nod from Beckett, Esposito pushed open the door and immediately stepped inside, Beckett followed suit but turned right towards the living room. After only the fracture of a second, both of them stopped dead in their tracks. Castle, who couldn't see anything but their backs from where he stood, craned his neck curiously.

"What?", he asked in a loud whisper.

Beckett lowered her weapon and moved aside so he could follow her in. He had never been to the Ryan's before but he was pretty sure it usually wasn't this ... empty. There was nothing inside, not even fluff.

"Don't they have furniture?", he asked the stunned-looking Esposito.

"Yes, they do. It's just ... gone." The younger man was completely flabbergasted.

"How can this be?", Beckett asked while holstering her weapon and moving further into the flat.

"I don't know. It was all still here when I checked earlier." Esposito opened a door that apparently led to the bathroom while Castle checked the kitchen. There was nothing in any of the rooms. The whole interior of the flat had vanished as traceless as its owners.

After a minute of incredulous searching, the three met at the entrance door again.

"Empty. Completely empty", Castle stated.

"I don't understand it!" Esposito shook his head in disbelief. "It was all here", he repeated. "This morning it was all still here." He looked back into the rooms as if he waited for the stuff to mysteriously reappear.

"We should question the neighbours", Beckett said. "Maybe they've seen something. If Ryan and Jenny left alone or who emptied the flat. Anything useful."

Esposito nodded, checked if he still had the key and closed the door behind them.

They parted, Esposito starting at the right end of the hallway, Castle and Beckett at the left. It was a frustrating work, most of the tenants had been at work the whole day and therefor hadn't seen a thing. The majority didn't even know who that couple next door was, typically New York, and even if they did, they only knew of the Ryans as two friendly people who had greeted in the elevator but nothing more.

It first got interesting when Castle and Beckett had almost reached the end of their part of the hallway. The Andersons, an elderly married couple in the flat next to Ryan's, had witnessed an army of men carrying out what seemed like everything there was in a flat in barely three hours.

"And there was a man in a dark suit", Mrs. Anderson reported. She and her husband were standing in the open door, talking to Castle and Beckett. "He didn't seem to do anything, just walked in and out and talked on a mobile. But all the others did the work."

"Can you describe the others?", Beckett asked. "And how many were there?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe eight?" The woman looked at her husband who nodded.

"Seven, or eight, yes", he confirmed.

"And they wore overalls, dark blue. With a writing on it. Remover Banell, it said", Mrs. Anderson continued. "We saw them when we came back from the grocery store, we could hardly pass by, there was such a melee."

"We wondered what this was about", her husband joined in. "The Ryans were always so quiet and they loved it here. Only last week did Mrs. Ryan tell me how glad they were to have rent this apartment."

"It made the whole moving out thing all the more mysterious", Mrs. Anderson stated at which her husband nodded again.

"And what about the man in the dark suit, can you tell me something about him?" Beckett questioned further while Castle was slightly distracted by Esposito who had obviously finished his half of the hallway and now walked over to join them.

"There was not much about him, I think", Mrs. Anderson said and looked at the wall opposite of her, thinking hard. "Not very tall, dark hair... He looked kinda official though, if you know what I mean."

"Nothing striking?"

The couple looked at each other. "No, sorry", Mr. Anderson said.

By now, Esposito had reached them and Beckett motioned in his direction, introducing him.

"This is detective Javier Esposito, detective Ryan's partner. Espo, this is Mr. And Mrs. Anderson."

"Excuse me, your name is Javier?", the woman interrupted her. "As in Javie?"

"Yes, why?", the Latino asked, astounded.

"There was", she started to explain but then gestured impatiently, "oh, just wait, I'll go get it." With that, she disappeared into the back of the flat.

Castle, Beckett and Esposito looked at Mr. Anderson questioningly.

"This morning there was a note on the floor, someone must have slipped it under the door last night", he explained. "It says 'Javie' on it. We didn't know where it came from but since it lay there, we thought it must have had a purpose."

"We didn't want to throw it away, it just felt wrong", Mrs. Anderson added. She had returned, a small piece of paper in hand. "Good thing we didn't, though." She handed the note to the eager and mystified Esposito who immediately unfolded it after reading his name on top of it. It took him mere seconds to skim the small page. He lowered it, looking in equal parts disappointed and glad.

"Who is it from, what does it say?" Castle asked curiously. Instead of answering, Esposito just handed him the letter, so he and Beckett could read it.

The handwriting looked familiar although the note was obviously scribbled in a haste.

"Javie,
can't explain, check Simon Gallagher,
I'm sorry,
K."

Castle and Beckett looked first at each other then at Esposito. Both of them could now only too well understand the feelings displayed on his face. The letter was obviously written by Ryan and it was good to hear from him, but even though it contained a possible lead, it didn't lessen the mystery at all.

"Thank you, Mr. Anderson, Mrs. Anderson", Beckett politely said while Castle and Esposito nodded their heads in the direction of the couple. "You did help us a lot! If you remember anything else, please call." She handed them a business card with her mobile number on the back.

"We will", Mrs. Anderson said as her husband took the card. "And we're happy to help. Whatever happened to those nice young folks, I'm sure you'll get behind it", she added compassionately.

Beckett smiled at her. "Good bye", she said.

"Bye, dear", Mrs. Anderson answered and closed the door behind herself and her husband.

I hope, you are at least the tiniest bit mystified as to what happened. And maybe now you've got a theory - tell me about it, I'm curious!