The day of anxious waiting had turned into early evening and Beckett found herself growing more impatient by the hour.

Had Danny watched the lab crew from afar, well aware of the increased interest in his person by now? Even though they'd explicitly told his mother to inform them should he try to make contact, it was impossible to tell whether or not she'd released any information behind their backs.

After all, she was still his mother.

Part of her wondered if he was at her apartment, hiding in one of the closets, waiting for her to come home after a long day of work, with her guard down, an easy target for another attack.

Scoffing in frustration, Beckett ran a hand through her long hair, hoping to ward off the growing stress headache.

How could she even begin to put herself into the mind of a disturbed young man who was using the heinous crimes of a serial killer from the 70's to live out his deepest, darkest fantasies?

The buzzing of her cellphone from an incoming text message pulled her out of her deep state of concentration and she straightened out against her office chair, hesitating a moment to take in the whirring of the nearby espresso machine, subdued conversations from a few tables away and the humming of the elevator.

How few people truly knew about the dangerous tightrope walks they performed here on a daily basis? Would they ever grasp how many people were spared from a terrifying fate because detectives caught the bad guy in time? Did they see the pictures that were so deeply buried in her mind; the mangled bodies, the dull eyes? What about the overpowering smell of rotting human flesh? All these experiences were now filed in neat and clean folders, stored away for generations to come, comfortably hiding the realness of the situation and the split-second decision-making…along with the gut-wrenching sorrows of having come too late.

The second buzz reminded her of the text message still waiting to be read and she pulled her cell out of her pant pocket, surprised at the strange combination of numbers greeting her from an unknown contact.

"Hey Ryan…", she said, just loud enough for the young detective to hear and he got up to see her, followed by an equally intrigued Castle and Espo.

"Do you have any idea what this might mean? It's some sort of code…"

With her brows furrowed, she handed over the phone just to see Ryan mirror her expression.

"99966688 277733 6633998? That's an interesting combination…I can check it against what is in the system and trace the number it came from…"

"I can save you some of that time.", Castle replied from behind, his jaws clenched in undisguised dread, "You guys remember the old cell phones and what a pain it was to text?"

His hint caused an echo of understanding nods and she waited for the writer to look up the image of an old text pad on his cell phone.

"Let's see…the first word is you. Then…a…4 sevens in an r. then an e. You are…next. You are next."

His words caused a flurry of activity as she got up from her desk to follow Ryan to his workstation, hoping to track down the number the morose text message had come from.

While Castle stayed by her side, she watched Espo rush to the windows overlooking the neighborhood, hiding behind a beam as he carefully scanned all nearby buildings.

"How did he get my…", she muttered out of breath, her body tense, the feeling of vulnerability causing her to shiver.

Ryan's fingers raced across the keyboard at lightning speed, several windows filling up his screen before disappearing again as more information was added, then sifted through various filters.

A few feet over, she could hear Esposito call in units to check all buildings in the direct vicinity, hoping to circle in on their suspect before he had a chance to flee.

Down at Ryan's desk, her cell phone buzzed again, the sheer noise of it sending shudders down her spine.

"It's an image…it's super blurry though.", the young detective said, his voice trembling as he opened the attachment.

Exhaling slowly, Beckett leaned over, her eyes struggling to find anything tangible in the sea of scarlet and crimson colors that filled the entire screen.

The group fell strangely quiet, not sure what to make of it until Castle reached over, using his thumb and index finger to enlarge the image, and move it off to the left.

"There. See that white circle? That's part of a severed bone. I think we're looking at a murder scene."