Sweets' face was contorted into an ugly sneer as he recognised the voice on the other end of the line. "Dr Sweets, it's so good to talk to you."
"What do you want, Pelant?"
"I want to admire your handiwork. That was you, wasn't it, who came up with the how-to-host-a-murder plan with Agent Flynn?"
Sweets didn't answer.
"No? Nothing? But it had shrink written all over it!" Pelant exclaimed, amused.
Sweets waited to see what the sociopath's game was.
"Pouting will get you nowhere, Dr Sweets." Pelant warned. "Besides, I know it was you. It's right here in your psych profile."
Sweets could hear Pelant ostentatiously rustling some paper. What a showman. He thought. As if a hacker would keep paper documents. "You're going to shrink a shrink, huh?" Sweets asked aloud, trying to keep him talking.
"Well, it's a subjective field," Sweets could hear the smile in Pelant's voice "but my favourite FBI profiler says that children with troubled childhoods, you know, that experience violence, often grow up to perpetuate it."
"Was your childhood troubled, Pelant?"
"Actually it was very pleasant." Pelant laughed.
"Well, you were fat. Kids must have teased you." Sweets said offhandedly.
Pelant ground his teeth. "And you were a geek. Kids must have punched you."
Sweets chose not to answer.
"Bet it seemed easy, the playground, after foster-daddy dearest." Pelant taunted. "But you see, Sweets, adjusting to violence like that, it means you're damaged. For a second-rate psychologist in other regards, you've got a little too much insight into criminal behaviour."
Sweets swallowed and put his game voice on. "You worried I'll catch you?"
"I'm worried you'll outperform me." Pelant chuckled. "Just think of all the scars you'd know how to inflict – all the broken bones you've felt from the inside..."
Sweets set his jaw and tried not to let his distress show in his face. Pelant probably had a stray camera trained on him right now.
"So, what, this phone call is motivated by jealousy?" Sweets tried.
"No, Lance, this is an offer. Think of me as a prospective sponsor." Pelant encouraged. "You and I could have a lot of fun with the Jeffersonian team."
"That is never going to happen," Sweets assured the serial killer "and A.A. was an interesting analogy – sponsors are supposed to save people. What do you think you can save me from, Pelant?"
"Mediocrity." Pelant shot back. "But before I go, you should know that an internship with me is a compulsory module. One way or another. You'll be hearing from me, Dr Sweets."
Sweets stared for a moment after the phone clicked in his ear. Thinking. Then he strode back inside the FBI building and headed for Booth's office.
"We need to talk."
"Sweets, have you heard of knocking?" Booth asked, feet crossed on his desk, looking up from an open file.
"No time. Where can we talk?"
Booth's eyebrows twitched. His eyes darted around, and scanned the hallway outside.
"Pelant?" he mouthed.
Sweets gave a small, businesslike nod.
"I know a place."
After a maze of corridors in the bowels of the building, Booth cranked an old wheel-operated metal door which reminded Sweets of a gun store or maybe a bank vault. He'd never been anywhere down here before.
"Here." Booth ushered him in and flicked on a light. There were shelves in the room but they were empty. "There's no cameras, no computers, not even air conditioning. Pelant-proof." Booth smiled tightly. "So what's up?"
"Pelant contacted me." Sweets said, leaning heavily against the cool brick wall with his hands in his pockets. "He said some very worrying things, there's a degree of mirroring in his behaviour that - "
"Whoa, Sweets, don't profile him, just start from the beginning." Booth patted his shoulder to steady him.
"Right. Okay. He said the fake-murder plan must have been mine, he talked about psychology and alluded to my childhood and suggested I was a good profiler but a crappy psychologist because of my insight into violence."
Booth gaped at him, and tried very hard to think of something to say that wasn't agreeing with a serial killer. "Well, uh..."
"Gee, thanks Booth." Sweets muttered.
"No, Sweets, you're a great shrink, really. Don't let Pelant get to you."
"That's not all." Sweets continued. "He said I'd be good at what he does and offered to be my sponsor."
Booth stared at him slack-jawed and then, after a moment, burst out laughing. "You. A serial-killer. And this guy is supposed to be a genius?" he guffawed.
Sweets sniffed.
"No, no, you're right, this is serious. He really thinks he can recruit you?" Booth folded his arms.
"He implied that I wouldn't have to be a willing pupil." Sweets sighed.
"Which means he's going to rig the next event to involve you."
Sweets nodded. "I think he means to draw me into the murders somehow, give me moral dilemmas." He said. "Psychologically speaking, this is a huge escalation. He's never tried to parley with one of us directly before."
Booth looked guilty for a fraction of a second before slamming into neutral, but Sweets caught Booth's arm. "Has he?" Sweets asked.
Booth scowled, then lowered his voice. "You can't tell anyone. Anyone!" he insisted.
"I promise." Sweets said.
"Booth swallowed. "Pelant called me after Bones proposed. He made me turn her down, or he was going to kill five innocent people."
Sweets gasped. "Oh, I so knew it!"
Booth frowned at him.
"Not about the innocent people part, but I figured Pelant was involved somehow." Sweets concluded.
"Yeah well, try not to look so happy about it." Booth muttered.
"Brennan will understand when she finds out." Sweets comforted him. He paused. "And then, she'll be pissed that you didn't tell her."
"I couldn't tell her! You've seen Bones act." Booth sighed.
"Yeah. I have." Sweets agreed soberly.
"So what does all this mean?" Booth asked Sweets.
Sweets steepled his fingers under his chin then rearranged his fingers into a gun shape, where his index fingers were the barrel pointed up at his chin. "He's establishing individual relationships with us. He sees me as being like him, a potential playmate. You, he sees as a rival. What he wants is relationships worthy of his intellect. A surrogate family, in a twisted sense. It's why he chose the Jeffersonian. What he wants is..."
"Bones." Booth finished grimly.
They looked at each other.
"How much do you want to bet that Pelant has been contacting her privately and instructing her to keep it secret too?" Sweets asked suddenly.
Booth slammed a hand against the wall. "He's been playing us all individually."
"We should see if anyone else has been targeted one-on-one." Sweets said.
Booth nodded. "I'm on it."
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Why are we meeting in Limbo?" Angela asked the group. It was weird seeing all the interns in the same place at the same time. Daisy and Fisher were competitively digging through a drawer; sure this was some sort of group assignment from Brennan.
"Because I'm the boss and I told you to." Cam smiled brightly at Angela, a warning shot. "And Booth told me to." she confided.
Angela exchanged looks with her husband and their hearts collectively sank.
"It's Pelant. Gotta be." Hodgins smiled ruefully, keeping his voice down.
"Well, Cher, as you are not my boss, perhaps you could explain what I'm doing here when I should be prepping for the Hans-Loughtor case." Caroline huffed.
"No, but I can." Booth swept in with Brennan and Sweets in tow. "Officially, we're here to divvy up responsibilities for the biggest missing person taskforce in FBI history, spring cleaning on behalf of our new governor." Booth looked around the room. "Unofficially..."
"It's Pelant." Sweets broke in.
The interns looked at each other.
"What we need to know" Booth stepped forward, looking into the eyes of each person gathered "is if Pelant has contacted any of you personally. Privately. He might have said there would be consequences if you told anyone, but there's no cameras or computers down here, and we've all got our phones switched off, right? So as long as we confine any talk to this room, he won't know."
Everyone looked guiltily at one another.
"I'm going to ask you each individually. Has Pelant made contact with you?"
He looked at Hodgins.
"No, man, I swear."
"No, sweetie." Angela said, looking past Booth to Sweets.
Daisy chimed in "Lance will know if you're lying. He's like a human polygraph. And no, Pelant didn't contact me." she added.
"Nope." Wendell said as Booth passed by.
"I doubt I'm interesting enough to rouse the attentions of a serial killer." Fisher deadpanned. "No." he said when Booth gave him a probing look.
"Dont look at me Cher. If I'd heard from the slimy little worm, you'd have heard from me moments later." Caroline said.
"No Sir." Finn said.
"He didn't contact me." Aristoo added.
"Nor me." Cam said.
"Nor me. I don't even work in forensics." Clark said.
"Well?"
"As far as I can see, they're all telling the truth." Sweets said. "That just leaves..."
"Pelant contacted me." Brennan said earnestly. "He suggested..."
She hesitated.
"Go on, sweetie." Angela encouraged her.
"He suggested that Booth turned down my proposal because I had abandoned him, when I went off the grid, and that Booth no longer trusted me." Brennan's clear blue eyes glimmered with tears she refused to shed.
"He also said there was a female serial killer, worse than him, who's been eluding us, and that he would help me catch her. The Ghost Killer."
"Dr Brennan!" Wendell gasped. "You can't honestly think you should work with one serial killer to catch another."
"Easy." Booth warned him, raising a hand to shush Wendell.
"I didn't accept his offer. I didn't turn it down either." At this Brennan looked Booth in the eye for the first time since she'd begun. "Some of her victims are here, in Limbo. I can't work it out..."
"Okay." Sweets clapped his hands together, drawing the crowd's attention away from Dr Brennan so she could pull herself together. "Whenever anyone needs to talk about Pelant, we come to this room under the pretext of working on the governor's 'Spring Cleaning'. If Pelant contacts you, come see Booth or myself and say "I found something in Limbo." that's the code term. Got it?"
The crowd murmured agreement.
"And be careful. Pelant is making this personal. Take extra precautions." Sweets' eyes lingered on Daisy as they milled out.
"Bones! Why didn't you tell me?" Booth yelled the minute everyone bar the three of them were gone.
"Why do you think?" Brennan shot back, angrily. "We smile and we kiss but we don't talk. Not anymore."
"Guys, this is just what Pelant wants. I think you, Booth, can understand why Dr Brennan chose to keep this from you." Sweets prompted.
He glared at Sweets, but stopped yelling.
"The question is, what do we do now? Do we accept his offer?" Brennan asked.
"No." Both men said at once.
Brennan blinked at them.
"This is classic escalation." Sweets said, stepping closer to Brennan. "He makes your relationship closer by giving you something you want, help with a murder, but once he's that much closer to you, he can do that much more damage."
Slowly, Brennan nodded.
Booth let out the breath he had been holding, relieved.
"He contacted me too." Sweets said. "Basically, Pelant wants me to be his apprentice and you to be his girlfriend."
"He wants to be Booth." Brennan said simply.
"I'm not Booth's apprentice..." Sweets began petulantly, then looked from Brennan to Booth. "Sorry, not important. More accurately, Pelant wants to replace Booth as the moral and patriarchal centre of the group. He's confident he can win you and I over."
"Why does he want us?" Brennan asked.
"Because you're the smart ones." Booth answered.
Sweets raised his eyebrows at being put in Dr Brennan's rarefied category, but Brennan didn't question it. Instead, she argued "Hodgins is very intelligent. And Fisher has a surprisingly high IQ..."
"But thanks to my research, he thinks you can be won over by any logical argument and that I can be tempted into immorality because I'm damaged goods." Sweets rolled his eyes.
"So, what's the plan?" Sweets looked to Booth.
Booth was very grim. "It's the same play as the body swap." he said finally. Only the kills aren't what we have to take away from Pelant." He swallowed, and when he looked up, his eyes were full of hurt. "It's you two. You need to go somewhere he can't watch you or taunt you. Break down his connection with the pair of you."
"No, Booth." Brennan said, apprehending what Booth was suggesting. "I won't do it again."
"Do what?" Sweets asked.
"Go off the grid. He wants us to hide from Pelant off the grid."
"I don't want you to." Booth gritted out. "But if he can't find you, it will derail his plans to induct you," he looked at Sweets "and woo you." his eyes settled on Brennan.
"I'd have to take Christine." Brennan said coldly.
"And Max. He'll keep you safe." Booth acknowledged, tears in his eyes.
"Is this it, Booth?" Brennan asked in a small voice. "Are we breaking up?"
"No. No, guys this is ridiculous." Sweets interrupted, unable to see his 'it' couple torn asunder.
"Have you got a better plan?" Booth said, anger mixing with his grief. "How are you going to stop Pelant when he's got a gun trained on you, huh, insisting you stab some innocent girl to learn the trade?"
"We don't know what he'll do." Sweets objected
"Exactly. All we know is who he'll do it do. That's our only card right now, so we'd better play it. You two are going bush."
"Three. I won't go without Christine." Brennan insisted.
"Four." Sweets corrected. The pair turned to look at him. "Max makes four." he shrugged.
"It's settled then." Booth said.
"No, no wait, I can't just leave my patients!" Sweets cried. "Who knows how long we'll be gone?"
"Not long if I can help it. With all the people I care about tucked safely out of the way" Booth avoided Sweets' eyes as he said this "and Pelant off his game, things will come to a head."
Sweets turned to Brennan. "It could work. If you or I were to turn Pelant down outright, he might retaliate, but if we're just missing he'll be driven to locate us to regain his sense of control. Distracted. What do you think? You know Pelant best."
"I don't like it." Brennan said. "He could target any one from the Jeffersonian while we're gone and without their two most valuable members, they'll be severely disadvantaged. And who will work on the Ghost Killer case?"
"Wait, you think I'm one of the most valuable members of the team?" Sweets boggled.
"After myself, yes. Against Pelant, your profiling, though subjective, has been highly effective. Perhaps you think in similar ways." Brennan stated.
Sweets grimaced. "Man, why is everybody saying that today?"
"So I guess I'll just take my useless gun and my useless tactical training and head back to the FBI?" Booth smarted.
"I didn't mean it like that, Booth." Brennan said coldly. "But you must admit, your skill-set is less useful in finding Pelant and more useful in dealing with him once he is found."
"Which is why we need to draw him out of hiding." Booth said darkly.
