The tensions mounting! Thank you to all of you who have stuck with me through the craziness of this story. I don't know how other author's here can bang out great stories in short periods of time? Thank you for you reviews, tweets and pm's, I am extremely grateful for them. Thank you to all of you who help. This should take this story over the 50k mark, and there is still more to tell. So come along for the ride and please hang on tightly it's going to be a bumpy ride! This is my entry into the 2014 Castle Hiatus Ficathon. Let me know what you think. Thank you!

A Code Call through the PA system meant someone was in trouble on their floor, probably cardiac arrest. It was a complication he didn't need. Then he realized the room number was on the far end of the wing. Castle's room was between them and him, the custodial closet in the quiet opposite end of the floor. He smiled, they would never notice him with all that crap going on. Prepare to die Detective, you too Castle.

He had to make it across the hall and into the custodial closet to get to his cart. When he opened the door into the stairwell he took a quick look toward the far end of the hallway, it was deserted. He moved down the hall, unlocked the storage closet and stepped inside. A set of scrubs was there waiting for him. He slipped them on, retrieved his duffel from the stairwell, slid his suppressed pistol and a knife into the belly band holster specially modified to permit the suppressor to extend down into the pants leg. It wouldn't show if he didn't bend over or take too long a stride. He had experimented with it and some of the other concealment items that were easily bought in this country. They even sold Men's Executive Concealment Briefs. Underwear that held a Glock. It wasn't his first choice, but this belly band worked great.

He placed the stethoscope around his neck, picked up the Registered Nurse ID badge he had a cobbler make based on one he had previously stolen. Hi there, Nurse Osbourne, he thought to himself. You have patients that need euthanizing. He failed to suppress the burst of pleasure he felt when he thought, about it. Best to just get with it. He needed the professional persona until the final moment. He knew he had to get them all to have any kind of leverage or bargaining chip with Volkov.

He checked the hallway, stepped toward the nearest nurse supply cart and looked into the room to see if the Nurse was likely to come back out. He saw the room was empty except for a sleeping patient and one nurse, she turned around and looked surprised to see him. He quickly reacted and charged at her. Panic spread across her face And she froze. She tried to scream but never got the chance, as he swept her hands aside, turned her roughly around and broke her neck all in one motion. Walker looked over her shoulder at the wide eyed patient and the beeping monitors. The patient's eyes widened, he wasn't connected to the vitals monitoring system, so it was safe to kill him and no one would notice for a while. His death certificate would state strangulation, but a crushed larynx with little struggle is what he would remember. At least he got to see his eyes in that last moment. Life is good. Death is better.

The other bed was empty. Walker dragged the nurse into the bathroom and dropped her body into the shower. She left a trail of urine on the floor but nothing else. He returned, ripped the tubes out of the arms of the patient, wrapped him in a blanket to contain the mess and dumped him into the shower as well.

He returned, looked at the room, grabbed the IV towers and other loose stuff, put it in the bathroom and shut the door. He pulled the privacy curtain, grabbed the patient's chart and put it in the stairwell.

All this had slowed him down considerably. A quick glance showed the confusion at the end of the hall was still in full swing. He straightened his scrubs, rechecked that the pistol and knife were still secure, and returned to the cart. There was only one person at the nurses station, the rest were apparently down the hall where the red light was still flashing.

He forced himself to relax. He'd been able to get immense pleasure out of watching the patient slowly die, but the nurse had been facing away from him, he hadn't gotten the pleasure of watching the lights go out. He shrugged his shoulders, put a pleasant but pre-occupied expression on his face and pushed the cart toward the door to Castle's room.

He rehearsed what he would say to the guard. Stopped, pulled the pistol out and stuck it in a bag on the side of the cart where he could have his hand on it when he rounded the corner. The adrenaline rushed through his system he anticipated killing the guard before entering the room, but when he turned the corner he stopped cold. There was no guard. The door was open, and the room was empty. They … were gone.

Walker fought down a sense of panic. He struggled with the racing kaleidoscope of impossibilities that assailed him. Were they moved to a safe house or a different hospital? His mind rushed with scenarios that left him dead. Then the voices of two nurses filtrated his thoughts and became understandable.

"That was a close one. That Dr. Bach is a bloody genius with that crash cart. She always knows what to do."

"Yeah, that's the most excitement we've had since they moved that Detective and Writer to the empty wing. Bet that's going to screw up the rehab schedule. I heard that was supposed to start in two days."

"About time. That was the oldest wing in the whole facility. Sometimes the lights don't even work."

"I used to dread shifts there. We had to use all bottled oxygen because the lines couldn't be trusted."

"And all those heavy electrical boxes, my boyfriend said they were isolation transformers, made so that the outlets met the required specifications."

Walker remembered that the 'A' wing was on the fourth floor of the original hospital building. It used to be general patient care. He wondered why they were moved there? Never mind, he'd go scout it now before they discovered the two bodies at the end of this hall and lock the place down. Damn, he needed to hurry.

A quick glance showed him he was still out of sight, he stuffed the pistol back into his holster, shoved the cart into the room and took off down the hall toward the stairs he'd used to get there. He made it without raising an alarm. At the last second he ducked into the store room, took two minutes to pack his duffel, picked it up, checked that no one was looking his way and ducked across the hall into the stair well.

He was almost down the stairs when he smelled cigarette smoke. What? There was no smoking in the hospital. He had been told smokers had to cross the street to smoke even in the winter. It was part of the work regulations. It must be Nurse Kiley. He had been busted for smoking in the stairwell more than once.

Apparently the smoker heard a door shut on the next floor and figured security was coming after him so he bolted. Walker made it to the door and was surprised to see lipstick on the still smoldering cigarette filter. He ignored it, unlocked and stepped through the door into the service elevator shaft and descended into the utility tunnels. As he ran through the tunnels he split his attention between avoiding getting lost and what he might find when he got to the wing that was going to be rehabilitated. He remembered, the freight elevator was been turned off. Everybody was pissed because they had to haul supplies up at night on the patient elevators. Crap! They had moved them because of the pictures he had left, by now they had probably doubled or tripled the guards. Not daring to take the stairway he would climb the elevator shaft ladder to the top, from there he scramble onto the roof.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ C&B ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Melanie Rose, RN, scanned the patient charts and noted the open one. She'd sent Kiley, the new phlebotomist who looked promising, to take the blood sample per Mr. Loden's open chart almost a half hour ago. The coding of the patient in 1W had sucked up all her attention, but with that behind them, and the patient alive, thank you very much, she had time to catch up. She glanced down the hall and didn't see the cart, so she decided Kiley must have finished and with the confusion down the hall had forgotten to enter it in the Computer system. She looked around, didn't see anyone she wanted to disturb and thought, I could use the walk. Short as it was, it would help work off some of the after effects of keeping that victim alive.

She strode rapidly down the hall toward 17W, even the first few strides felt good, and passed 6W, the room that the famous writer and his feisty Detective occupied until yesterday. The admittance list said they had a patient in ER that would be coming up for overnight monitoring. That's when she spotted Kiley's cart.

She spun around and took off down the hall toward 17W as fast as she could walk. A few second later she arrived at the room and stopped abruptly. Mr. Loden wasn't there. His bed was a mess, the IV bottle was on the floor. There was tubing sticking out under the bathroom door. She opened the bathroom door and staggered with the impact of what she saw.

Ten years of nursing, and this wasn't the first body she'd discovered, but these were the first two murder victims she'd ever seen. Her training suddenly took over. She leaned forward and checked for a pulse. Neither Kiley or Mr. Loden had one. As she backed away through the door, she spotted the room phone and quickly dialed the code for hospital security.

When the phone was answered she heard a young voice say, "This is Officer Kelly, hospital security."

"This is Nurse Rose. I'm in room four-seventeen W. I just discovered two bodies in the bathroom. One is a patient, one is our phlebotomist. I think they were murdered."

"You what?"

"Call nine one one. We have two bodies up here."

"Where?"

"Room four-seventeen W."

"How do you know they are bodies?"

"Because they are lying on the bathroom floor in a pool of blood, not breathing and without a pulse. Damnit, stop it with the stupid questions and call nine-one-one."

"I have to alert the supervisor. I'm not authorized to call the police."

She hung up, pulled out her cell phone and called nine-one-one herself.

"Nine-one-one. What's your emergency?"

"This is Nurse Rose, I'm the floor supervisor at Stony Brook University Trauma Center, I've just discovered two dead bodies in room four-seventeen W."

"Please stay on the line. We have a Red Flag on that hospital." A few seconds, which seemed like hours to her, later she heard, "My supervisor is on the phone to the FBI Agent in charge of the security detail there. Please stay on the line with me. Can you see the hallway? Is it clear?"

"Yes … there's nobody near me. There are people at the nursing station in the middle of the wing."

"Hold on." She heard voices in the background but couldn't understand them. Then, "A Federal Marshal should be there in less than a minute."

She saw the Marshall enter the corridor beyond the nursing station and head toward her at a dead run. He narrowly missed a nurse with a tray full of meds but didn't slow down. She knew when he saw her because his eyes got focused and his hand reached for his holster. She reacted like the cops she'd met had told her to, when she worked the ER. She dropped her phone and held her hands up empty palms forward.

Apparently he had time to take in her uniform and empty hands because by the time he slowed to stop he said, "Sorry. Where are they?"

"Bathroom."

He pushed by her, stopped cold in the bathroom door, pulled at the microphone on his chest and said, "Agent Shaw, we have two dead bodies in the room closest to the freight elevator stairway. They are in..." He looked at her.

She said, "Four-seventeen W."

He repeated, "Four-seventeen W."

"I'm locking down the hospital. How were the bodies discovered?"

Nurse Rose said, "Nurse Kiley's cart was in the room that Mr. Castle and Detective Beckett were in yesterday."

The marshal repeated the information to Agent Shaw.

"Send your team to Castle's floor now. Station them just outside the wing entrances. Put one of them on the roof. It's possible he'll come down from above. I'll get the NYPD on the first floor to close the doors. I don't want this guy to get to Castle and I don't want him to escape."

"How would he get up there. Wouldn't it be easier just to stop at this floor?"

"If he's as athletic as I think he is, he could climb the elevator shaft. The building blue prints indicate that it goes all the way to the cable hoist mechanism at roof level. He could come down from there and surprise our guy in the stairwell."

"Ok, Got it."

"Ten-Four. All available Marshal's to Castle's floor." Shaw said into her walkie talkie.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ C&B ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Walker needed a distraction. Something that would pull their guards away from the area and move them to a different threat. He stopped dead in his tracks. He pulled out the tunnel map he'd sketched based on the blueprints he'd found in the maintenance office one night. He could use the cell phone bomb he had hidden, or rig a timed explosion, or a triggered one? He quickly checked his phone. Nope, timed was out of the question, there wasn't any cell signal down here. He could rig an explosion in the passenger elevator shafts that fed the wing where they used to be. That would work. They'd think he was attacking that wing and rush to defend it. There were no guards there that he saw. This assignment had become a matter of life and death for him. Volkov would kill him.

He turned around and stopped when he heard distant voices. The cops were patrolling the tunnels. He needed to get to the roof. The plan for the new bomb went out of his head. He'd use the one he'd left in the loading dock area. Walker turned and moved as swiftly as he could toward the disabled service elevator shaft that would take him closer to where Castle and Beckett were located. Hopefully Hunt would be there too.

He looked around the corner and saw the door to the shaft was closed. That was normal and no guard, either. As fast as he could he moved to the shaft, picked the lock on the door, entered and locked it behind him. The elevator was on the first floor as expected. He moved over to the ladder and froze for a moment. The elevator in this shaft didn't have the back guard to prevent falls. It was a four story climb. So he'd better not fall. Walker grabbed the first rung and began to climb. He didn't look down, he just needed to make it up there. They would never expect him to come down from the roof, they'd expect him to come up from below. He felt invincible! They moved them but he knew where they were. Besides, he thought of the end game. A life time reliving all those moments, including his moment of triumph, as he watched The sexy detective die.

Filled with renewed resolve and confidence, his adrenaline still running high, he started to climb. He established a rhythm that never had less than three points of contact with the ladder. And before he realized it his head poked through the trap door into the main hoist compartment at the top of the shaft. He wouldn't fit with the duffel over his shoulder and it took him a couple of minutes of perilous maneuvers, including one almost fatal slip, to get it up through the trap door and onto the grate above. Then he followed it. He hadn't realized how tricky that would be and lay down to catch his breath and collect his thoughts.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ C&B ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shaw thought for a moment, decided she didn't want to alert Beckett yet, so she called the lead Marshal on the floor, "Marshal Mason, we've discovered dead bodies on the floor where you were yesterday. There is at least some chance they are related to the presence of Mr. Castle and Detective Beckett. I need you to do a walk around. I've asked that all the Marshal's not on the first floor meet with you. We need to totally lock that floor down but I want you to keep your men at the wing entrances. We need to stop him before he gets in."

"Roger that. I'll call if anything is out of the ordinary."

Shaw thought for a few seconds, then called Captain Gates.

"Captain Gates." She answered the phone.

"We've discovered two bodies on the floor where Castle and Beckett were yesterday. I need you to have your people lock the building down and set up check point. Nobody in or out. I think the assassin is in the hospital, but I don't think he knows where Castle and Beckett are because he didn't go there."

"Can you hold for a few seconds?"

"Yes."

Shaw heard muffled voices then Gates said, "Done. Have you told Beckett?"

"No. She looked like she'd been run over by a truck when we finally got them moved. I think they are safe. I have five Federal Marshals on that floor, people in the tunnels and your people around the building. She's in Castle's room, armed to the teeth wearing an assault vest. I wouldn't go in there without calling her first. She's on edge enough and on top of which she's recovering from two bullet wounds."

"I hope you're right because if that assassin gets in that room there will be hell to pay, and I don't mean then, I meant afterword's."

"If anything else happens, we get any clue he's still in the building, I'll tell her."

"When were the people on the other floor killed?"

"About forty minutes ago, as an estimate but it could be as much as an hour ago. They had a crash cart episode up there that had everybody's attention for at least half an hour. It was discovered after that."

"How did they discover it?"

"The dead technician's cart was found in Castle's old room by the floor nurse. She sprinted down the hall and found the technician and the patient she was to draw blood from both dead in the bathroom."

"So the killer managed to disguise himself as a hospital employee, kill the tech and patient, use the cart as cover, move undetected down the hall and then leave when he discovered Castle wasn't there?"

"Yes."

"It's your responsibility, but if it were me, and I didn't locate the killer in the next fifteen minutes, I'd tell Detective Beckett and put a Marshal in the room with her and "I agree."

"Keep me posted."

"I will. Gotta go." Shaw ended the call.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ C&B ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Vladimir Volkov sat at the desk in his posh uptown hotel. He had ordered room service and was nursing an exceptional glass of vodka. In his hand he held a picture of himself with his younger brother and wife at their wedding. He missed them greatly. Soon their deaths would be avenged and they could all rest easily. He flipped through a file, inside were pictures of Sophia Turner. She had been one of his best agents, and quite good in his bed. Yes, he would spend as little time as possible in this country. He hated everything about America and after the next two days he hoped to never step foot here again.

Thanks again to my helpers, betas and fight scene coordinator because without you guys my ADHD mind would drive all you readers away! They rock! Thanks again for reading :) Follow me on Twitter glo1196 - Tumblr: MyCastleObsession and on Pintrest glo11962 where I have a Castle board!