The Coming Future (A Castle Fanfiction)

Part Fifteen: Wrong and Right

"Castle, calm down," Ryan said as he spoke with the writer in the den. They'd just barely told him that his lover was missing and so far, he'd completely flipped out.

"No! No, I will not calm down! Kate is missing! She disappeared! They were supposed to keep her safe!" Rick was absolutely furious when he heard this. His wrath was beyond anything Ryan could have imagined it would be. Castle had never acted this way. Not even when Alexis had been kidnapped had he been so blatantly irate.

Burns tried to help by saying, "Castle, relax, alright? We'll find her. She'll be fine," but it didn't help. Rick was completely freaking out.

"You don't know that! None of you can tell me that for certain! She has a weak heart, one that could have already given out from shock! She is two months pregnant with twins! You can't tell me to relax and that she will be fine without knowing whether you can bring my children back alive, and you can't promise me you can do that either!"

"Castle, take a breath, alright? You aren't helping anything by freaking out," Valgora said.

Rick snapped, "It's not like I can help it!"

The four of them then turned in to speak with each other and let him simmer. "So what in the hell do we think could have happened?" Carpenter asked. "Do we think it's because she's the only one that strayed off or- I mean- her situation being different than ours has come up a lot during this investigation."

"Truth is, we don't know," Melissa replied.

Valgora suggested, "Maybe we don't focus on the why right now and we try to focus on the where. I mean, he couldn't have taken her to the same place he took the others."

"Yeah, but he could have taken her anywhere," Burns said hopelessly. "If his plan is to just... kill her," she had to whisper so Rick wouldn't hear her. Thank God he didn't. "All he would have to do would be to take her into the forest. And he knows that place better than anyone. If she's in there, we might never find her."

Ryan replied, "I think we have to assume she's alive. We have dogs in the forest right now looking for her, but I don't think they're going to find anything. He needs to torment the girls he kidnaps and he needs to rape them, but Beckett doesn't fit those girl's profiles. Of we're assuming he just wanted to take one of us, no one fits that profile except the being outsiders part of it. If he broke his M.O, he's got to be doing something different with her. This might just be his next step in playing with us, and if that's it, he won't kill her. He'll torment her and make sure we all see it."

"So what are we going to do about it? How are we going to find her?" Carpenter asked, more stern this time.

Valgora input, "Esposito will have the dogs, so they might be able to track her scent in which direction she went, but on that highway, they won't get much. At east we'll know whether she's in the forest or not."

"He's outsmarted us so far and he thinks like a cop. We all know how to trick dogs into thinking someone went one way or just confuse them all together," Burns insisted. "I mean, he raided her desk and took our files. Everything he needed to fake a scent trail would have been in there."

"She's right. No matter where we look, odds are they're going to catch her scent in every direction," Carpenter insisted.

Castle then jumped in, "The method doesn't matter, okay? If you know you can't find her one way, you just have to find another way of looking for her. Check her financials, talk to relatives, neighbors and people who know him. Find a trail somewhere that can lead you to him. Just do something! We have to find her!"

"Castle, take a breath," Melissa forcefully demanded. "We all care about her and we all know how important it is to get her out of there as soon as possible, okay? We will do everything we can, but you and she are the ones who think the most like him. If you have any leads, we could really use them."