A body is found in a burning oil drum in the Lower East Side with ties to Beckett’s mother’s untouchable killer, Senator Bracken, on Castle.  Melanie Rogers, the dead girl, had met up with the senator multiple times before her death, and so Kate thinks that this may be her chance to put her mother’s murder behind bars.

In a cruel twist of fate it is not Senator Bracken who is the killer, but the one who may be killed.  A mad man is out to kill him and it is Beckett who is in charge of his safety detail.  In an extremely intense scene where Beckett has to interview the senator she tells him that not only does she wish she was the one behind the barrel of the gun in his murder but she also tells him that “she will not stop until she brings a murder to justice.”  Double meaning if you ask me.

Caught between vengeance and doing her duty as a police officer Beckett faces not only a moral dilemma, but a deeply emotional one.  She comes close to burning a letter written to the senator that may crack the case open sending her to her therapist who tells her that the right answer is “doing what you can live with.” The next day when asked if she found anything while searching through the threat notes sent to the senator, she says she has not found anything.  When she looks on at Melanie’s grieving sister she decides to be a cop first and a vengeance seeking daughter second.

This action proves harder to do than she thinks when she comes face to face with Robert McManus and lets him go when she had plenty of time to take him out.

McManus is later picked up and a bomb he was building is found.  Everything seems to fall into place but Becket thinks that, after careful evaluation, McManus is being set up.

Keep reading on page 2.