“Rick Castle: Any luck on Alice's clients?”

Rick Castle: Any luck on Alice's clients?

Kate Beckett: Yeah, a couple of possibilities. A hedge fund manager with investments in South Africa, a UN diplomat with ties to Russia, and a CEO with a manufacturing plant eighty miles from a Chinese mine.

Rick Castle: I wonder if we're looking at this wrong. What if it's not about Alice's clients, but it's actually about Alice?

Kate Beckett: What do you mean?

Rick Castle: When she was living with the gorillas in Africa, that was in Rwanda, right along the border of the Congo. A region known for conflict diamonds.

Kate Beckett: So you think she was involved in the blood diamond trade?

Rick Castle: I think it's a story that writes itself. A young primatologist in an unstable region falls for a different kind of guerilla, a warlord who is funding his bloody agenda with diamonds. He gives her one as a gift. No. No, go back. She's not that into him and she steals the diamond, having no idea its real value. She smuggles it back to the United States and finds she can't sell it without attracting too much attention, so she hides it. Until one day, a jilted and well-read warlord finds a book and sees her photo on the back. Knowing what she stole, he comes after her.

Kate Beckett: That is surprisingly plausible.

Rick Castle: I know, right? That's actually ... that would actually explain a lot. Why she was planning to disappear, why Esposito and Ryan were shot at in broad daylight. That's actually a perfect theory.