A/N As a reminder to the reader, this story takes place in the same AU universe as A Hole for Two, so Vikram is not at the 12th and Rachel McCord and her team, including Richmond, are still very much alive.

CBs

Chapter 35

Hayley sat at a poker table waiting for the players to arrive. As a new dealer, she had been assigned a lower stakes post. The no limit tables were in a separate room. Her posting seemed fortunate, since none of the players who'd disappeared had the means to play at the no limit tables. If something was happening, she was more likely to see it where she was.

People began to file in and the hostesses rushed to obtain drink orders. The house kept the liquor flowing as an inducement for the patrons to keep the money flowing from their pockets. It had been Hayley's observation at the Sapphire that plying players with liquor only worked on amateurs. The professional card players refused to have their senses clouded and sipped drinks that were strictly virgin. She couldn't tell what was happening in the next room, but the one she could see appeared to be filled with amateurs. As their consumption grew, their stakes dwindled.

Hayley surveyed the bosses that roamed the floor. Unlike the pit bosses at the Sapphire, they seemed less concerned with preventing cheating. Their main task appeared to be keeping the players happy. They were very good at it. As one pile of chips dwindled, most players were more than happy to purchase another, convinced that a change in their luck was only a hand away.

Late in the evening, another boss, to whom Hayley had not been introduced, began to walk the floor. Rather than playing the ebullient host, he moved around the room, subtly but intensely studying the patrons at each table. Hayley's inner radar screamed an alert. She was sure that if someone in the room was involved in the disappearances, it was the new watcher. Using a camera concealed in a button on the blouse of her uniform, she captured his image.

The courtroom proceedings had moved to examining the many Trimp contracts unrelated to Mary Brodsky's death. Mary's children were back in school and Kate was at her office. She had submitted the picture Hayley sent, for facial recognition. When there had been no local hits, she'd forwarded it to Richmond in D.C., begging the favor of his help. Richmond had responded that he was working on a case that posed an immediate threat but would run the picture for her when he could. When he was finally able to get back to her, he replied that he had found a 70% match with a photo from an Interpol file on the Russian mob and sent Kate the file.

Kate examined the photo of Yuri Tomov from Richmond's file. There were definite differences between it and the one snapped by Hayley. The nose was wider and the cheekbones and chin were both less prominent. Those were things Kate had learned could be altered by surgery. The eyes in Hayley's photo seemed older, but the look was the same.

Kate examined what details there were on Tomov. As the activities of the Russian mob had morphed from robbery, protection, and murder to cyber-crime, fraud, and money laundering, Tomov was a throwback. Yearning for the glory of the former Soviet Union, he had stuck, with limited success, to older styles of doing business. Within expatriate Russian groups, he was a zealous supporter of Putin and his push to restore Soviet power. In the new criminal movement toward capturing profit through exploitation of technology, Tomov had been pushed aside or ignored.

The fall of the Demachis would have left the perfect void for Tomov's style of crime to fill. But none of that explained the disappearances. With no threats or ransom demands, there was no opportunity for profit. If Tomov had a motive, it was baffling. This was one of the moments when Kate most missed the presence of Castle lounging in a beat up chair beside her desk. He would have read and digested the file before she was a quarter of the way through it and presented some wild theory to get her going. But Castle was splitting his time between writing his newest Nikki Heat novel and an industrial espionage case at RCI, and of course keeping abreast of Hayley's undercover work at the poker games. If she called him, she knew he would come, but it wasn't fair, especially since the elephant of their plans for a family was still firmly camped in the room. Wild theories could wait, at least until whenever they could both make it back to the loft for dinner. Kate decided to make it it her turn to cook.

It had been several days since Castle had stocked the refrigerator and much as Kate hated shopping, she decided it would be a good idea. She checked her phone to make sure she could still get her Nona's meat sauce recipe out of the cloud and left the precinct as soon as her shift was over. Castle had introduced her to Yossi, the local Kosher butcher. Kate had been unaccustomed to butcher shops, especially to kosher ones. When she had shopped, her meat had come in little Styrofoam or cardboard trays tightly sealed in plastic. Castle wanted no part of that, insisting that meat should be freshly cut in front of your eyes. He wasn't concerned with rabbinical approval so much as the humane conditions in which the animals had to be raised and slaughtered in order to earn it. What it came down to for Kate was that whatever they bought from Yossi tasted wonderful, and that was what she wanted, especially that night.

Yossi greeted Kate enthusiastically and suggested a course grind for the meat which would mimic the grinding Kate's grandmother had done at home. Kate visited the local organic market for the rest of her ingredients and headed to the loft. As she'd expected, it was empty. She pulled on an apron her mother had worn to make Sunday brunches and got to work.

Castle's nose drew him from the elevator through the door of the loft. He found Kate stirring a pot at the stove and lightly pressed a kiss to the side of her neck. "What's the occasion? Did Crotchety Craig finally get his retirement papers?"

"I wish," Kate replied, thinking of the official at 1PP who questioned every comma of her reports. "No, I wanted to run something about the CB case by you and I thought I'd make a dinner and we could talk some things over."

Castle pulled out his phone. "Wait, I need to record this day. Kate Beckett actually wants to talk."

"Rick please, I know you've been waiting a long time, probably way too long, but give me a shot, okay?"

"Okay," Castle agreed, the lines between his eyes not quite disappearing. "You want me to open some wine?"

"Already done," Kate replied. "But you can set the table. The salad is in the fridge. I just need to drop the pasta."

Castle twirled strands of linguine against the side of a bowl. "You said you wanted to run something about the case by me - and talk. I'm listening, Kate."