"Do you ever feel like you've been handed off to the uncle because your parents wanted some time to themselves?"

Castle had remained quiet for most of the drive, allowing Esposito to ponder life in silence; or whatever the seasoned detective did when he wasn't talking.

As they left city block after city block behind, he let his attention drift from the busy neighborhoods to the quiet police radio and back to Esposito, missing the friendly banter he always shared with Beckett.

"Well, as your uncle, I am going to prohibit you from doing something you will later regret…", the detective teased back, never taking his eyes off the busy road as he turned the Crown Vic south.

"It's not that I don't appreciate the company…", Castle began again, completely ignoring the other man's remark, "It's just so different. Javier, don't you feel like you've been…you know…sent out here to keep busy?"

With a chuckle, the detective shook his head, showing off that charming smile.

"Not at all. We're all good at different things. Ryan's a whiz on computers, Beckett's busy keeping Gates off our backs, so she's letting us do the leg work, ask the difficult questions, look around to see if we can find the killer. She's trusting us to be her drug sniffing dogs because she knows we're good at it. Well, one of us is anyway. The other one is just one of those yip yip dogs that tugs on everyone's pant legs and pees on the expensive planters."

"Look at Esposito trying himself at humor again…", Castle sneered half-heartedly, then returned his attention to the road.

A few blocks away from their latest murder scene, Javier slowed the car down somewhat, his mannerism returning to that serious expression Castle had become so accustomed to.

Deciding to join in on what he was asked to do by Beckett, though begrudgingly, he looked over at both sidewalks, trying to find homeless people, or anybody who might be a regular in the area and could have seen the body being dropped off in the inconspicuous alley.

It was a far-fetched plan at best, but to be perfectly honest, not the first time that they'd struck gold that way.

After a few minutes of oppressive silence, Castle cleared his throat once more and pointed to the left.

"I like that flower stand over there. Unbelievable the assortment they are offering considering their size. You see those pretty begonias? Did you know the begonia family tree contains more than two-thousand different species? They're gorgeous. I swear I can smell them from here. Maybe once we get done we can stop theeeeee-"

He was cut off when Esposito made a sharp turn across two lanes of traffic, causing the backend of the Crown Vic to spin and narrowly miss a parked car.

"I'm sorry, Espo, I didn't know you hate flowers…"

With the beeping of horns echoing in the back, they sped up significantly, whipping in and out of oncoming traffic to follow a set of brake lights that was quickly moving away from them.

"The black sedan…", Castle mouthed and used the handle near the roof to hold on for balance, as Espo reached forward to turn on the lights and sirens.

The added commotion seemed to only worsen the traffic ahead, causing some drivers to freeze and stop in their lane, others to sway onto the sidewalk, almost hitting pedestrians.

A glance to the left told him that Esposito was completely focused on the chase, his eyes never leaving the other vehicle as they zig-zagged through dense traffic at speeds that were far from safe for the busy road.

Castle let out an involuntary gasp when they nearly sideswiped a car, the passenger side mirror less than an inch away from the other vehicle.

"I know that sounds like a cliché but let's make sure we don't die in a fiery crash trying to catch this guy. I want to be present in body when the Mayor hands me the key to the city…"

As expected, Espo didn't react to his remark. Somewhere behind them, Castle heard an echo of sirens join the parade, a brief flash of blue and white indicating it was a patrol unit that had noticed the commotion.

The additional manpower only added fuel to the fire when it came to their suspect, who sped up even more, taking sharper turns, even running over a garbage container in hopes the debris would shake off his followers.

While that didn't happen, part of the metal cage went airborne, including a rogue piece that hit their windshield at full force, causing a spiderweb to form across most of the passenger side.

The impact had been so violent that it shook Castle, who was hanging onto the handle by his door for dear life, hoping and praying for a safe end to what was quickly turning into a terrifyingly real version of Gran Turismo.

With his shaking hand, he reached for his cellphone, speed dialing the number he knew by heart.

"Beckett?"

"Yes. Hi. Just ehm…just thought I'd check in."

"Castle? Is that you? Is everything ok? You sound strange. Why are there sirens in the background?"

When he noticed what the writer was doing, Esposito glared at him, then motioned for him to hang up the phone again.

"Yes, yes, we are just in…hot pursuit of the killer.", instinctively dodging when more debris came flying toward the window but missed it by sheer luck, Castle inhaled deeply, hoping to slow his incessantly racing heart, "He must have hung around the crime scene when he recognized us and fled. It's definitely a black sedan. I can't tell more at the current rate of speed and lack of…lack of visual capacity being that the windshield is busted. If we don't survive this, could you please make sure there are begonias on my grave?"

"Give me that thing.", Espo hissed from the other side and used his free hand to grab the cellphone, the other one steering the Crown Vic through a wall of stopped traffic near an intersection at nauseating speeds.

"Yo Beckett, that guy knows how to drive. That's no run-of-the-mill psycho we're dealing with here. And he knows us, so it's gotta be somebody we've come into contact with or who's been watching us."

"I can have Kevin go over the video footage we had the unis record at every crime scene and run it against our databank to see what we come up with.", Castle heard Beckett explain on the other end, her voice strained, "What's your location? We can send backup to help you out."

"Negative, we already got some. We're near the corner of-"

Castle wasn't sure why Esposito hesitated until he saw a large shadow appear to the right of him, ramming the unmarked police car with unforgiving force and making everything turn black.