A flashing notification from the news app on his phone woke him up in the middle of the night. A quasi-terrorist organization had been uncovered. In his drowsy state, barely awake in the dark and emptiness of his room, Castle didn't even bother to read the whole thing. He shut the app and threw the phone on the nightstand, screen facing downward, so it wouldn't bother him again.

But the full extent of the case, how deep it went and who was involved had yet to be revealed.

Next morning, while he was patiently waiting for the coffee to brew, he received a text from Ryan. Turn on the news, now!

Lazily, he did. It came like a blast.

Evidence that connected the splinter group for kidnappings, various murders, shady dealings and more than one cover-up for a misbehaving politician who couldn't afford to lose their power for one or two bad habits, and a good bunch of arrests were being executed as the anchorwoman spoke.

A whistleblower had released a list of involved parties, people who bore some amount of weight in their society and politics that had hired those guys to clean the mess they had left behind and there were some very important names on that list. William Bracken was one of them.

And as the pieces of the messy puzzle that the last few weeks came from, formed a neat picture in his head, the news station sent a short video of one of those arrests as it took place hours before.

The man was being dragged down a staircase into a police car by none other than his wife.

Castle couldn't help but smile, as he focused on her figure for the fleeting moment she appeared on the flat screen. She had made it! Whatever Hunt had tried to explain, in his convoluted way, what she was trying to do, she had made it. Whatever she had been chasing for the past six weeks was now on national news, exposed and on its way for public shaming and the course of justice.

But that also meant she could come home, right? Hunt had told him, she wasn't running away for some obscure reason, she had her rights to be scared, that she had crossed someone very dangerous that was out for her blood. Or her family's, he had added during that brief call that had turned into an eye-opener for him.

He blindly reached for his phone and tried to call her, but it went straight to voicemail. He then typed a quick message. Just saw the news. Are you alright?

The reply came about half an hour later, while he was getting ready to go to the precinct. A little banged up, but alright. Then came a second one. Almost done.

That almost chilled the blood in his veins, frozen solid. He didn't want almost, he wanted now. He wanted certainty, he wanted his wife back for fuck's sake!

Before he went out though, he called Esposito. He didn't pick up. Then he tried his desk, still no answer. He tried with Ryan cell, and he finally picked up. Underneath his tired voice, he could hear what he thought was a tornado was passing through the building. The homicide division sounded like a crowded mall with people running up and down, answering phone calls, hastily carrying warrants just signed by judges to eager detectives, uniforms taking care of suspects and so on. The usual bustle of every other day, only with the added workload of such a big case that had just been cracked and was sending in more suspects and certain culprits than the cells could hold.

"Ryan, what's going on?" he asked, slightly worried.

He heard something he had never heard from Kevin Ryan, the voice of a man ready to give up everything and dedicate himself to some serious table flipping. "You mean, what's not going on. Everything blew up, Beckett and the analyst from DC uncovered the proverbial Pandora's box and it was a Czar Bomb ready to explode. We're swamped, trying to keep up with the usual workload and this. And we're not alone, half of New York's precincts are in the same conditions, not to mention Washington."

He was exhausted and not afraid to show it, Castle could hear it in his voice. "But… the news spoke of a CIA splinter group, is it really so big?"

"It's not only the splinter group, I wish it was only the splinter group. It's the insane amount of connection they had, from dirty cops to senators, and judges of the Supreme Court. They had ties everywhere, with everyone. They operated here, outside, killed, stole and kidnapped. And they controlled a huge flow of drugs, mostly heroin, and distributed them through all the United States. They are apparently responsible for an insane amount of terrorists attacks on US soil and they framed other people for them… it's them that kidnapped you and chased Beckett in September. They have ties with the terrorist attack you helped stop last year, even if they weren't involved. One of their own covered Bracken and Simmons with their shady dealings, they're…" he paused, and Castle heard the crackling sound of torn and crumpled paper on the line, then a sigh that sounded like distilled exasperation. "It's big. And we don't know how long it will take to actually go through everything and everyone Vikram and Beckett have found."

"Wow…" Castle didn't know what to say, except for that. He had the feeling that, in the next few days, he'd find out that Hunt had downplayed it, when he had described what Kate had been fighting against. The reason she left, still quite foggy to his opinion, suddenly became very clear in his mind. "Where's Kate? I tried to call her but it went straight to voicemail."

"From what I know, she's at 1PP. She might have uncovered something extremely important regarding the safety of many people, but she hid it and sort of broke the law to do so."

Castle sighed in relief. That almost over probably meant that she was dealing with the Commissioner or whoever was in charge. "How long do you think they'll keep her?"

Ryan sighed, too. "No idea. I wish she'd just come here and tell us what to do because we're neck deep in troubles. Espo's out with the SWAT team to arrest someone and she left me in charge of the Precinct and I don't know what to do."

"Do you need me to come in?" he proposed. "I can help, even if you only need a comic relief."

"No, Castle, this is not the regular mess we're talking about. We don't know what to do, for real." Castle could almost see Ryan running his hand through his hair and pulling at it, frustrated out of his mind. "Stay home. Wait for her."

That was the problem. He couldn't wait anymore. Now that he knew what she was looking for had been found and exposed, he wanted his wife back. No ifs, ands or buts.

"I promise I won't intrude, I'll stay in the break room, wait for her."

"Castle, really… for your own sake, stay home. We're losing our minds here, this is not the typical fullmoon thing here, when the lunatics come out and play. Unless you ardently desire to see each one of us crack under the pressure, stay home."

In the end, hearing Ryan begging convinced him to stay put at the loft. "Alright. I'll stay here. Just… call me if you need anything. And by anything, I mean it. Call even if you only need someone to come in and start making coffees." He stopped for a second and swallowed the heavy lump that was forming in his throat. "Or if you see her."

"Will do. Keep an eye on the news, apparently they received the same material we're basing our arrests on so you might learn something more."

After that, Castle never heard from Ryan or Esposito for that day, except for a couple of texts updating him about Kate's whereabouts. He spent the day, together with Alexis, watching the news and keeping a close eye to websites and Twitter feeds, as a new hashtag dedicated to the scandal had quickly started circulating and both people and journalists were using to comment the news. Her name never popped up though. Either the NYPD was keeping everything under the radar, and he could picture the equivalent of Zach Hamner wearing himself out to keep her name from being revealed, or the press didn't care.

Either way, he was happy about it.

Kate sent a couple of texts through the morning, confirming that she was being held at 1PP for an unofficial praise but official and, unfortunately, rather heavy scold. Even though Gates had come promptly to her side to defend her like a stern knight in a spotless armor, her bosses weren't happy about the fact that she had broken countless rules and laws to obtain that result. Just like Ryan had said.

Everything will be fine, just wait for me.

Oh, he could wait, but he was losing his mind too. Not even Hunt's quick phonecall served to calm him. He was fretless and agitated, and nothing could help.

"What if they fire her?" His voice sounded alien to him, it quivered and faltered just like Ryan's that morning. Now he understood why he had asked him to stay home. The Detective knew he couldn't handle the tension, not after so much time. "What if someone they didn't find and expose calls a hit on her?" he asked aloud as they watched the CNN.

Alexis averted her eyes from the TV and looked at him. "Hunt said he's going to clean up the rest, right?"

He groaned. "Do you trust him?"

At that, his daughter nodded. "He said he would come for me, and he did. He said things were going to be resolved quite quickly, and after all, six weeks is way less than what I had thought. When he asked for your help last year, he said he'd never bother us again and he never did. Up to know, he's always kept his part of the bargain, I don't see a reason not to trust him."

"For all we know, he could be their boss."

"Then he could have killed Kate a long time ago. But he called you to explain what was going on, even though he didn't give you the details. To keep you, us, even Kate, safe."

She was right. Every time they had crossed paths with Hunt, he had always been correct, in his own way. Alexis was always the voice of reason in that family. He so loved his daughter and her maturity. She kept him grounded like nothing else in the world. Only Kate could have the same effect on him.

He sighed and sagged back on the couch. "Right… you're right. What do we do now?"

She turned back towards the TV. "We wait."

Waiting wore him out.

Later that night, when the almost continuous flux of information came to a halt when the FBI closed the tap on them, or so Ryan had told him. The feds had taken over that afternoon, when they had enough time to organize and coordinate multiple squads across the country and the exhausted NYPD detectives were free to go home.

But the Feds had seized Kate and Vikram and, up to the last update he had received from Ryan, they were locked at 1PP to be questioned about their little underground operation. She had come in right after lunch, with two IA detectives at her side, to retrieve her personal iPad then she had been whisked away before she could even greet her people.

So, after that, no news had come through. No one knew when, or if, they'd be released.

He called Sofia, to inform her that Kate might have not come home that night, and she had told him that she had suspected it the moment she had launched out of the apartment after she had received a text message, the night before.

Around midnight, Alexis had gone upstairs to sleep, but he had decided to stay awake, to see if there were more updates during the night. He gathered his laptop and set himself on the leather couch in his study and opened Twitter and all the major newspapers websites, and kept refreshing them obsessively.

Meanwhile, he wrote the possible beginning of the new Nikki Heat novel. But his quest failed miserably as weariness took over him. He fell asleep like a rock, probably a bit after two AM.

He woke up hours later, when something gently touched his cheek.

Drowsily, he opened one eye to a slit. All he saw was Kate, a tired but happy smile brightening her face as she knelt beside the couch. Her fingers were now toying with his ear, tugging the earlobe. "Hey sleepyhead…" she whispered, trying to wake him up.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, not completely sure she was real and not a figment of his overly taxed, desperate imagination.

"I'm through thinking…"

He opened the other eye and looked up at her, suddenly awake and very serious as her words reminded him the text message he had sent weeks ago, in a fit of anguish. "So? What do you say?"

"Yes."

Quick friendly reminder: opinions expressed by characters not always - better, rarely - represent the author's own opinions. Just for future reference.