The Terror of the Tennis Champ (Part One of Two)
By: DemonClowSorceress
Disclaimer: Only the OC's are mine. Everything else from Bones is not owned by me. Dammit.
Yet another installment in the BonesBooth Daughter series! Joy and Kent are back, baby!
Summery: Colton High School's champ tennis ace Gina Riverton is being harrassed and stalked. Can Joy help the teenage star before the stalker goes too far?
~Colton High School, Monday, 7:00 A.M.~
Gina Riverton stretched as far as she could bend forward, then lifted her leg up behind her with her hand. Championships were coming up soon, and she had to be in peak physical condition for the upcoming games. They would be grueling and a challenge, since aces from all over the country would be competing. But then again, Gina loved a challenge.
Finishing her warm-up stretches, Gina started up the tennis ball launcher and took her position. POOM! A green tennis ball came pelting towards her. With a solid backhand she sent it shooting into the chain-link fence. POOM! And another. POOM! And another. As the balls kept coming, Gina bounced and bobbed all over her side of the court to send each fuzzy green sphere back to whence it came.
She was so focused on her training that she failed to notice the shadow skulking around the tennis court. She also didn't hear the click-click-click of a camera as the shadow moved.
But Gina did hear the bloodcurdling scream when it came from the bushes by the back corner of the courts. She jumped in shock. Turning to face the noise, she gripped her tennis racket close and edged towards the fence. Another rustle of the bushes, and she screamed herself when a flaming body fell from the foliage and onto the green, burning on the court like an out-of-control wildfire.
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"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," Joy Booth groaned when she saw the police cars parked in front of her high school. "Really? Today of all days? Fan-effing-tastic."
Spying her best friend and cousin Emily, Joy waved. "Yo! Li!"
"I've told you before, stop calling me Li!" said the other girl, coming up to Joy. Resembling her mother more than her father, Emily Fortune Hodgins clearly had some Chinese features, as evident by her glossy black hair and smooth skin. However, her eyes were all her father's, a pretty blue that never failed to make boys continue to stare long after she had passed by.
Joy pasted a fake frown to her face. "But why? You're part Chinese, so it's appropriate."
"Only my daddy can call me Li!" Emily put her hands on her hips and smirked. "What about you, Joy-Joy?"
"Okay, okay, I get it, no parental pet names," Joy surrendered. She glanced back at the black-and-whites parked in front of the gym. "Hey, wasn't the big jock prank last night?"
Emily tapped her chin with one French-tipped nail in thought. "Um.....yeah, yeah it was! Why?" Before the last word left her mouth Joy had whipped out her phone and almost crushed a number on her speed-dial. "Oh c'mon Boothie, don't you think he's matured enough not to - "
"KENT, YOU EGOTISTICAL SONNUVAWIMP! PICK IT UP NOW!!" Joy's voice echoed from behind the two girls, startling them both. "I MEAN IT! PICK IT UP BEFORE I SLAM MY FOOT INTO YOUR FACE SO HARD YOUR BRAINS LIQUIFY!"
Joy turned and saw Kent walking towards them, holding his phone at arm's length like it was contaminated. His ringtone continued to shriek at him, repeating the threat until he declined the call. Then he yawned to pop his ears and saluted the girls. "Morning!"
"Don't 'morning' me, you idiot!" Joy leveled a finger at the cop cars while lowering her voice. "Last night was the jock prank! You were there, weren't you? And why is that your ringtone?!"
Kent smiled a hello at Emily before answering Joy. "In order, yes it was, no I wasn't, although there was an annonymous 911 call to the cops around that time, and because my phone was recording when you told me to pick up my soda can after I was done with it."
"You were littering in a park! That's a crime!"
"I didn't litter! The can bounced off the rim of the trash can when I tried for a three-pointer!"
The two friends continued to bicker childishly as Emily looked on with her own grin. Joy Booth and Tyler Kent were her two best friends and they were closer than any couple she'd ever seen before, except maybe her parents. Of course, they weren't actually a couple. True, they bickered like old married people, but it was a strictly platonic friendship. At least at the moment. Emily was sure that pretty soon all those repressed hormones would come crashing through their thick skulls and flood their brains so fast they'd jump each other in public.
Her mother's words, not Emily's. Angela Montenegro was always very eloquent when it came to people's love lives.
Flipping her glossy hair out of her eyes, Emily caught sight of a white tennis uniform by one of the police cruisers. "Um, guys? Guys? GUYS!" When they didn't pay any attention to her, she filled her lungs with air and yelled, "Bi zui, bai chi!"*
Joy and Kent jumped in shock. Kent's green eyes were wide in shock. "Such language," he murmured.
"You don't even know what I said," Emily replied. "Anyway, look over there. Isn't that the school ace?"
Joy looked over. "Gina Riverton? Why're the cops talking to her?" She didn't know Gina very well, but the sophomore tennis champ was her lab partner in Honors Biology. Curious, she headed over to the cruiser with Kent and Emily not far behind.
Gina was talking when they came up. "......and then I heard the scream just before the body fell. I screamed. Someone ran off towards the back parking lot like a rabbit, so I pulled my cell phone out of my bag and dialed 911."
"Did you touch the body?" the cop asked.
Gina shook her head. "Are you kidding me? It was burning and I could see bones sticking out of the - the - Ohmigod," she gasped, clutching her stomach and turning to throw up on the grass, narrowly missing the officer's shoes.
Bones? Horrificly burned remains? Sounds like a job for..... Joy looked and spotted the Jeffersonian coronor's truck and her father's black FBI standard-issue SUV. Yup. Mom and Dad are on the case.
"Joy?" Gina looked over towards the freshman and hurriedly ran over to her. There were specks of blood on her white uniform - cast-off spatter from when the body landed in front of her, Joy thought unconsciously, gleaning from forensic knowledge gleaned from years of listening to her parents and aunts and uncles in the lab. "Joy, what's going on? The FBI is here and nobody's telling me anything and I think I hurt my arm when I tripped and hit my shoulder on the ground when I was running and - "
"Okay, calm down, Gina," Joy said, holding the girl's shoulders gently but firmly. "Breathe. Don't worry. Did the victim look familiar?"
"I didn't exactly take a snapshot on my Blackberry," Gina said breathlessly. "But it was wearing a school blazer. I saw the horseshoe on the chest."
"Horseshoe," Joy repeated. "So, it's a student here at Colton." She gently touched Gina's shoulder and felt the girl wince. "Okay, I think you just bruised your shoulder. Just go to the ambulance and let them check it out, okay?"
She left Gina sobbing with Emily and began walking towards the tennis courts, aware of Kent keeping in step behind her. The entrance to the tennis courts was taped off with crime scene tape, but Joy didn't need to get too close.
Her mother, Dr. Temperance Brennan, knelt beside the disfigured remains in her blue Jeffersonian jumpsuit and was tilting her head this way and that, examining the remains like a person would examine a work of art. On the other side of the remains, Dr. Camille Saroyan was likewise scrutinizing the damage the fire had done to the corpse. But instead of appreciating the work, they were working to determine how the work was done and who had done it.
"Joy, get back to class."
The sound of her father's voice made Joy turn around. Kent was trying very hard to be in FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth's line of sight, while Booth was still ignoring Kent despite the boy's spiky hair being just above his eye level. The amount of testosterone in the air was almost stifling, making Joy roll her eyes at all the masculine grandstanding.
Of course Booth had been angry at Kent for leaving her during the hostage incident at the Jeffersonian last month. Temperance had forgiven Kent, saying that he had acted in a logical manner, but her husband's love for their daughter made him less forgiving. Despite all of Joy's reasonings and explainations, Booth was still very angry. So he'd taken to ignoring Kent whenever the teenage boy was nearby. Meanwhile, in a very obvious manner, Kent continued to insert himself into Booth's sightline whenever possible.
"Booth!" Temperance's call broke the tension in the air. "Come over here. This is extremely interesting."
Joy waited until her father left before slugging Kent's shoulder. "You dork! Cut it out!"
"He started it," Kent grumbled childishly.
"And I'm ending it!" she retorted.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%~~~~~~~~%%%%%%%%%%%%%
The three friends went to the Jeffersonian straight after school. As they entered the lab their bickering could be heard across the length and width of the entire area:
"You dumbass!"
"You pansy!"
"I'll be flyin' high while you're serving me drinks at the club, Booth!"
"With your luck, you'll be working the corner when I drive by in my Bentley!"
Angela Montenegro laughed as the teens approached the forensic platform. "Trading insults again, little girls?" She put her fists on her hips in a mocking serious stance as she smiled at Joy. "What have I told you about playfighting? Only in front of the boys and if you can get a slam-dunk." She punctuated the statement with a huge, flirty wink at Kent.
"Well, the day began with such promise," Emily said, waiting until her mother walked off the platform before giving her a kiss on the cheek. "There was juicy gossip about cheerleaders, lunch was pizza and brownies, I aced my English paper - and oh yeah, someone was found horrifically murdered on the tennis courts just before first bell," she said in the same chipper tone used for the previous announcements.
Angela sighed. "Yeah, Mr. Horrific is over there on the examination table, de-fleshed." Joy craned her neck to see her mother and Aunt Cam peering at the bones of the victim as Angela turned her attention on the token male in their group. "Oh my gosh! Kentie! You're looking super-cute as usual."
Kent grinned as he recieved a hug from Angela. "You saw me three days ago, Miss Angela. And why can't Squint be as happy to see me every day?"
"Don't call me Squint!" Joy burst out.
Emily shared a look with her mother. "Ni hao, ma ma."**
"Ni hao." Angela led the three teens into her office. Picking up a digital remote and inputing the data she had just collected, she turned to the 3D holographic projector affectionately called "The Angelator." Turning to Kent, she said, "This baby makes it so easy to reconstruct faces. All I have to do is input the tissue depth markers and voila!" She tapped her screen and caused a shower of golden pixels to spiral and reform into a skull.
"I always wish I had popcorn for this," Joy admitted as layers of muscles, flesh and skin formed on the skull.
But when the face made itself known, all three teenagers' jaws dropped. Emily began muttering in Chinese under her breath, sounding scared out of her mind. Angela looked at them in confusion, then back at the face. "What? You know the victim?"
"That's Brent Henderson," Kent said woodenly, staring at the revolving holographic face of their classmate. "He's a sophomore. He's going steady with Gina Riverton."
"Zao gao."*** Everyone turned to face Emily. She shook her head back and forth. "Not anymore. They broke up last week. And it was messy."
Joy looked at Brent's face. Her face began to form a familiar expression - half-closed eyes, head tilted to the right, mouth slightly pursed and open. "So," she said slowly, "this means that Gina's a suspect."
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"Ohmigod, that was - that - was BRENT!?"
Gina's breathless shriek was decidedly anti-climactic, Booth thought. Sitting across from the tennis ace, he pretended to read the open file in front of him while gauging her reaction. It seemed authentic, but sometimes they were very good actors. And that's why he had Sweets positioned behind the two-way mirror to offer his professional opinion.
Well, for a sixteen-year-old, Booth thought with a mental smirk. He never lost a chance at taking a jab at Sweet's baby face. "Miss Riverton, when was the last time you saw Brent Henderson before this morning?"
Gina wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, clearing her throat. "Um, maybe three days ago? We have fifth period English together." More tears spilled from her eyes. "I-I mean, we had - " Emotion overcame her and she buried her face in her hands.
"Who knew you'd be at the tennis courts this morning?"
She sniffed noisily. "My parents, Coach Williams, Br - " A choke stopped her from saying the victim's name, but she pressed on. "And Brent. He knew I trained on Mondays that early."
Sweet's voice came into Booth's ear via the earbud. "Those are real tears, Booth. She's not crocodile-ing out there. She's truly emotionally distraught over this news."
"Miss Riverton, could you think of anyone who would want to hurt Brent?" Booth asked. So she wasn't faking. Next jump: suspect pool.
Gina again wiped her eyes dry. Mascara was smearing around her eyes, making her resemble a drowned raccoon. Grimacing, Booth offered a tissue. "Thanks," she whispered, taking it to dab at her eyes. "Well, I'm the tennis ace. All the girls hate me because they think their boyfriends will leave them for me. And after last week, all the guys wanted to be my next Brent."
"Yeah, you two broke up," Booth remarked, looking at his file. "It wasn't clean and nice either, was it?"
"Well, we decided to see other people, but - wait, are you saying that I killed Brent?" Rather than be angry at the accusation, she was appalled. "I could never do that!"
"She's telling the truth, Booth," came Sweet's backseat interrogating. "She didn't kill him. There's too much honesty in her body language and vocal patterns."
"Not to mention it's impossible." Booth had to stop himself from breathing a sigh of relief when his wife's dulcet tone filtered into his ear. "Brent Henderson was severely assaulted just prior to his death. The fractures indicate it was done by a person much larger and stronger than Miss Riverton."
Gina muttered something under her sobs, but Booth was too busy listening to Temperance to catch it. "What was that?"
She started, then swallowed. "I just said that, well......" She sniffed several times to clear her nose of phlegm. "The real reason we broke up was..........because someone was stalking me. He threatened to hurt Brent if I didn't break up with him. I told Brent, and we agreed to do it publicly so the guy would know." Her bloodshot eyes welled with even more tears as she touched the picture of Brent on the table. "But he's still dead. And it's all my fault," she sobbed, her voice cracking twice before descending into tears again.
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"Poor Gina," Emily said the next day, leaning against her locker as Joy got out her Calculus textbook. "I mean, she broke up with Brent to protect him, but he still ends up dead. That's tragic."
Joy nodded, only half-listening. Her mind was still back on the stalker. Even though her father had expressly forbidden her from sleuthing (Who uses the word sleuthing? I'm not Nancy Drew, she'd thought during his lecture the previous evening) Joy couldn't leave this alone. It was her classmate, her lab partner, and a somewhat-friend. Nobody deserved the panic of checking over your shoulder every minute to see if the shadows are coming alive.
So that day in Honors Biology, she slipped a note to Gina, simply stating, I want to help you.
How? was the eloquent reply.
Joy pretended to scribble notes as she wrote her answer. You told my dad the stalker threatened to hurt Brent if you two didn't break up. How did he threaten you?
Gina wrote quickly. A note shoved in my locker. But the FBI have already seen it.
Do you still have it?
Yes.
May I see it?
"Okay everyone, start the lab," their teacher said, clapping his hands. Immediately the room filled with clinking glass and chatter. Joy crumpled up their correspondence and caught Gina's subtle nod before they became engrossed with their experiment.
After class, Gina took Joy to her locker. Joy noted that the tennis ace's space was immaculate, her books being in perfect order of height and subject, four star stickers on her locker walls, and two pictures of the famous tennis-playing sisters (Joy couldn't remember celebrity names to save her life) on the inside of the door. Gina extracted a folded piece of paper from her locker shelf and handed it to Joy. "This is the note."
Joy unfolded the paper and read the following words, written in permanant marker and bold print:
You're not making use of your full potential, Gina.
You're going on useless dates when you should be honing your skills.
Get rid of the boy toy or he'll be next on my list.
I'll know if you don't.
"I'll know if you don't....." Joy repeated aloud, musing. "This means he's able to keep track of your movements. Did you show this to anyone else?"
"Brent, my parents, Coach," Gina said, wringing her hands. "My parents thought it wasn't a good idea, but Brent said we should. He was worried about me....." A fresh tear slid from her eye, but she impatiently batted it away. "Well, at least I'm wearing waterproof mascara this time. I felt like a dork with that raccoon mask in front of your dad."
Joy reread the note. "It says, next on his list. Has he hurt anyone else before?"
Gina sniffed noisily. "Yeah. My puppy, Scooter. He was hit by a car a few weeks ago and we had to put him down. A note was left - Distraction Eliminated. It was right before I began training for semi-finals."
"So, he's trying to make you focus on your tennis playing....." Joy felt the impressions on the paper that weren't made by the marker. "Hey, can I borrow this?"
"Why?" Gina asked, crossing her arms as she looked over the top of the paper to read the note again. "What is it?"
The young Booth shrugged a shoulder. "Maybe nothing, but......lemme check a hunch."
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"Why are you in my house to conduct your experiments?" Kent yawned, rubbing his eyes clear of sleep when she sat at his desk. "Wait, better question - how the hell did you get in my house?"
"Oh please, that fake rock beside your door wouldn't have fooled no one." Joy switched on the desk lamp and held up Gina's note, examining the paper for any clues. "And I've been coming here since I was seven. You really think I'm that stupid?"
Kent yawned again. "So, what are you doing?"
"Gina's stalker wrote this note telling her to break up with Brent," Joy explained. "I'm thinking the stalker wrote this on a pad. It's legal notepaper. You got a pencil?"
"In the can."
Joy held the pencil slanted, rubbing over the sheet of paper in broad strokes with the side of the graphite. Grooves in the paper began to emerge, and those grooves lined up to form words. Joy held the paper close to her eyes and squinted, turning the sheet clockwise and counter-clockwise.
"Ya know, you're gonna ruin your eyesight doing that." Kent leaned over and grabbed the top of the paper. He looked at it at arm's length and gaped. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me. No way."
"What?" Joy asked, turning to face him. A piece of paper fell to the floor, so she leaned down to pick it up. It looked official, so she scanned it unconsciously. Her eyes widened.
"This is the rough draft of an essay. On Lady Macbeth." He sounded shocked. "The AP English class is on Macbeth now, aren't they? The stalker must've written the note on the same pad as his rough draft. He's a student."
Joy nodded. "We could ask Mrs. Grear who did an essay on Lady Macbeth." She had to fight to keep her voice level.
"Okay then. Tomorrow." He gave back the threat and pointed to his door. "Now, if you don't mind? I wanna nap."
"Yeah, sure." Joy left the Kent house and headed home. She bit her lip guiltily when she recalled the words on the official document, the one that she had read that had from Kent's room.
It was a summons to court, a subpeona. His hearing was coming up.
When she got home, Joy immediately went to her father. "Dad, can I ask a question?"
"What?" Watching the game, Booth saw his daughter's worried expression and sat up. "What's the matter, Joy-Joy?"
"Dad......what's the longest a juvie can get for aiding and abetting in a serious crime?" Joy bit her lip. "Specifically.........for working in a chop-shop?"
Temperance entered at precisely that moment, reading the Henderson case file. "Why? Was Brent Henderson part of a group of criminals who disassembled stolen cars?" she asked, looking for the information in the file.
Joy shook her head. "No Mom, but......Kent was."
Booth angrily looked back to his hockey game. "So? He was pardoned."
"I saw an official subpeona on his desk. He's being called back to testify." Joy looked at her mother, since clearly appealing to her father was out of the question. "It's been a year, Mom. Why are they doing this now?"
Temperance shrugged. "Perhaps new evidence has come to light. Maybe one of the higher-ups is trying to appeal out. Whatever the case, I'm sure it's nothing to worry about."
"Mom, I saw 'revocation of parole' and 'suspended sentancing'." The younger Booth was about ready to cry. "Kent never said anything to me about being on parole. Or being sentanced."
Both females turned to Booth, who was staring very intently at the TV even though the game had gone to commercials. Joy's eyes widened. "Dad?"
Booth didn't reply. He didn't need to. His silence spoke louder than any words.
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"Why yes, I do know this essay," Mrs. Grear said, pushing her square gold-rimmed glasses up higher on her nose as she read the few sentances. "Very well done, for a first draft. You want Stephen Rudimaker. He had Lady Macbeth as a character study." She raised an eyebrow. "But I already told this to Miss Booth, Mr. Kent."
Say what? "Thanks, Mrs. Grear," Kent said, taking his copy of the imprints. Heading out into the hallway, he made for Joy's locker. Wonder what Squint was thinking. We said we'd ask Grear together, so why did she.....?
Spying Emily listening to her iPod on a bench, Kent went over and tapped her shoulder. "Hey. You seen Squint today?"
"Kent?" Emily looked surprised to see him. "Um, Joy went to find Gina. She asked Grear about the note.........hey, are you okay? Isn't your thing coming up?"
"Thing? What thing?" But Kent had a horrible feeling in his gut that he knew what thing she was talking about.
"That, um, what's-it-called. Subpeona."
An angry shudder rippled through Kent. "And how would you know anything about something like that?" he asked in a level tone of voice.
"Joy mentioned seeing - " Emily's brain finally caught up with her mouth, shutting off voice while her jaw continued to work dumbly. "Ohmygod, Kent, I didn't know it was a secret. I'm so sor - "
"Where is she?"
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"Concrete dust and marble chips!"
"Does that mean something, Dr. Hodgins?" Cam Saroyan asked, crossing her arms at the bug and slime expert.
Hodgins preened. "It was in the victim's head wound. Wherever he was killed, he was either killed on a concrete floor with something made of marble or a marble floor with something made of concrete." He deflated a little to shrug. "Probably the former more than the latter."
"Did you tell Booth?" Cam asked out of habit.
"He and Dr. B are checking out the coach now. There were some sexual harassment charges brought against him in 2006 regarding one of his aces." Angela came up onto the platform with Emily in tow. Hodgins smiled at his daughter. "Hey gorgeous and beautiful, what's happening?"
"Dad, I don't think Coach Williams did it," Emily said. "He was at a tournament for the last two weeks with the rest of the tennis team. They didn't get back until today."
"Then why wasn't Gina Riverton with them?" Cam's question was laced with suspicion.
"She pulled a hamstring just before qualifying rounds. She got left behind." The girl twisted a lock of her hair. "Dad.....I think I screwed up. Bad."
Angela stopped him before he could explode. "No, she's not pregnant. She accidentaly let slip that Joy read about Kentie's subpeona."
"A subpeona? For what?"
Emily said, "Kent used to be in a chop-shop crew. They got busted a year ago, but Kent's testimony got him parole instead of jail time. His testimony was sealed, so nobody knew about it except the judge, the prosecutor, and the defense lawyers."
"And he's pissed," Angela added. "I mean, really pissed. Think 'angry dragon post eye-poke' mixed with 'shotgun-toting father with knocked-up teenage daughter' and add a dash of armageddon, and you've got maybe half his level of mad."
The phone rang. Hodgins answered, then hit speaker and returned the phone to the cradle. "You're on speaker."
"Hey, so that coach didn't do it. He was in Maryland with the rest of the tennis team for a tournament." Booth sounded tired, and in the background the squints could hear Temperance talking about something completely unrelated to the case. "But Gina Riverton had to stay behind because she pulled a hamstring two days before the qualifying period."
"When was the qualifying period?" Cam asked Emily.
The girl had to think for a few seconds, but then her eyes widened. "A week ago. She broke up with Brent just before she hurt herself."
"That meant the stalker knew."
Then came Temperance's voice. "Joy just called. She has a name. Stephen Rudimaker. He wrote the note to Gina Riverton."
Hodgins called up the name on the computer. "Stephen Rudimaker, 5'5'', a buck-seventy, got a prior for assault - his old man wouldn't stop hitting his mom, so Stephen sent him to the hospital."
"Tough little squirt, huh?" Cam noted, looking at the beefy teen's mug shot.
The tense atmosphere was suddenly shattered by a ringtone of Lady Gaga's "Telephone." With a gasp Emily whipped out her phone and checked it. "I got a text from Joy," she said, opening the message. "Oh, she's feng le. Completely feng le."****
"What?" Angela asked, concerned.
Emily looked up at her mother. "Joy is going with Gina to meet with Stephen for dinner," she said in the tone of voice that most people reserved for complete shock and disbelief.
Booth came back over the speaker. "Well, we're gonna go pick him up now. Got an address?"
Sweets suddenly came running up to the group, almost forgetting to swipe onto the platform. "That's not a good idea," he panted. "Most likely he's suffering from a very strong delusion that Gina is in love with him. Most stalkers suffer from this, but in his case he's got a full-blown doozy. Talking him out of it won't work."
"What d'you mean, Sweets?" asked Booth.
"If you disturb or try to break him out of his delusion, the resulting emotional distress would make him extremely dangerous. He could hurt himself or anyone close to him."
There was a muffled curse from Temperance, and the squints could hear Booth's siren switch on and wailing before the line went dead.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%~~~~~~~~%%%%%%%%%%%%%
"Stephen?"
Stephen turned around when he heard the voice of his love. "Gina, you came!" he exclaimed, happy as a puppy. She's finally here! She's here!
"I - I hope you don't mind that I brought a friend," Gina said apologetically. "But my parents aren't letting me go out alone anymore."
And in walked Joy Booth.
"Oh.....I said to come alone." Stephen's eyes narrowed slightly, then widened again innocently. She doesn't know. Gina brought her, so it must be okay. Don't panic.
He bowed low like a gentleman would. "Ladies, welcome. I wasn't expecting another, so let me put another place at the table." He went and got another set of cutlery and plates, placing them across the table from himself.
Gina's place would be beside him. As he'd dreamed of it for months.
Dinner was simple, since Stephen couldn't cook much. But the candles were lit, casting a romantic light over cornbread, pasta, and salad. Stephen felt very proud of himself; he'd managed to tame his unruly brown hair and fit into his old suit. He even found a pair of cufflinks in a local pawnshop and learned how to wear a tie.
Gina wore a simple pink sundress with pearls and a little hairclip to hold her bangs back. Joy wore jeans and a tee.
"Say, I was asking Gina when she and you first met," Joy said conversationally. "When would you say, Stephen?"
He immediately launched into a tale about being at the tryouts earlier in the year, how he'd watched Gina outshine every other player, and having a 'cosmic moment' when she glanced into the stands and right at him.
That was when he had fallen in love.
And that was when he swore to make her the best.
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Joy almost gagged then and there, but hid behind a mask of interest. She had read enough of her parents' case files to know not to exacerbate the situation. Stephen was in control now. He easily outweighted her and Gina by at least forty pounds, not to mention he would have no qualms taking Joy out. Gina he might leave safe, but only if she complied with his fantasy.
This guy ran over a puppy and beat Brent to a pulp, then killed him, Joy thought to herself. There's nothing he's not capable of.
Then Stephen suddenly jumped to his feet. "Hey, Gina, would you like to see something?" He practically skipped over to a drape-covered wall and yanked the drape away to reveal what Joy's father would call 'The Creepy Stalker Wall of Photographs.' Pictures of Gina training, walking, on her phone, at her house, with her parents, with friends, with Scooter, with Brent -
Joy looked closer. All the pictures of Gina with Brent had been altered - Stephen's face had been plastered over Brent's, replacing the boy. And Scooter's pictures had red X's over the little white puppy. He gets rid of the things that distract Gina from tennis practice, Joy realized. Her dog, her boyfriend -
"Are you Gina's friend?" Stephen asked suddenly, breaking through Joy's thoughts. He was watching her a little manically, as though he was ready to snap. A glance at Gina saw that the other girl was terrified. Gina was also palming one of the butter knives, so she wasn't so scared that her brain stopped working.
Joy spoke carefully. "She's my lab partner. We talk occasionally."
"About?"
"Most recently? You." She pretended to be intrigued. "I mean, the depth of your love is astounding. I've never seen anything like it."
Stephen puffed up. "Yes. I would do anything for Gina' well-being. I love her."
"So, would you even tell her what happened between you and Brent two days ago?" Joy asked gently. "I mean, so she'll understand exactly what you've done for her."
Gina's eyes went horrified-wide. Behind Stephen's back she kept mouthing Please no, please don't do this.
"Monday," Joy prodded. "You were taking more pictures of Gina as she practiced."
"She looked like an angel in her white uniform," Stephen said dreamily. He walked towards his wall of photos and touched a group lovingly. "Then that bastard Brent showed up. He demanded that I leave. Me! That pompous ass." He scowled at the memory. "He punched me, but he misjudged my strength. I gave him a run for his money."
"But the way he was found - "
"I had a statue that I wanted to give Gina. It was a pretty marble angel that used to belong to my mother." Stephen rubbed his hands, as if scrubbing them clean. "I had to bloody it! I didn't want to, but I was so mad! He screamed as I hit him again and again and - " Then his hands clenched into fists. "Then he stopped moving. I saw Gina coming closer, and I got scared, so I quickly lit his clothes on fire with my lighter. Then I got worried when she screamed, so I ran off."
Gina stood up, holding the butter knife at her side like a serial killer in a movie. "So.......you killed him......because of me?" Tears were pouring down her cheeks, completing her mask of shocked sorrow. "You killed Brent?"
Stephen held up his arms protectively, like he was scared she'd run him through. "You don't understand! I did it for us!" He crossed to the bureau and yanked open a drawer, pulling out a gun. Immediately Joy gestured to Gina to drop her knife. The girl was scared, but complied.
A shadow crossed the window towards the back door. Joy saw her father's visage looking through the window. She made a hold motion with her fist and stepped to the side, positioning herself to force Stephen to circle around to keep her in front of him. Surruptitiously she palmed her Swiss Army knife and flicked the smaller blade open with her nail.
"Stop moving!" Stephen ordered, pointing the gun at Joy. "Just stay there. Stay."
"Stephen, you've hurt Gina," Joy said calmly, using what little profiling she had learned from listening to Sweets' psycho-babble, as her mother liked to call it.
"It's so hard," he whined, waving the gun around as he turned to talk to Gina, who was pressed against his photo-plastered wall. "It's just so hard making sure that everything works out perfectly for you. I do what I can, Gina. I do, but it's just not enough."
Joy tried to keep her voice level. "Stephen, you've hurt Gina. Bad."
"Shut up!" Stephen ordered, pointing his gun solidly at Joy now. "Just shut up! You're not helping."
Gina's choked sobs broke through the tension. The sophomore had sunk to her knees, crying freely. "Just stop it," she whispered brokenly. "Stop, stop, please."
It happened in seconds. The gun clattered to the ground as Stephen tried to comfort Gina. The back door burst open to reveal Booth wielding his gun, expertly training on Stephen as Temperance came in with the handcuffs. Joy's mother tackled Stephen to the ground and handcuffed him before he could realize what happened. More cops entered the house, securing the premises and helping Gina out of the room since her knees were practically jelly.
Joy just watched the proceedings with listless eyes, as if she was just a spectator in a 3D game. When forensic teams began to sweep the house, she went outside and found her mother standing on the sidewalk, watching the hustle and bustle of the police. "Mom, I'm gonna head home, okay?"
Temperance caught the change of note in her daughter's voice. "Joy Christine Booth," she said sternly, "I think you should think very hard on what you are about to do."
She didn't use any contractions and said my full name, Joy thought. She's being serious. Hoo-boy. "I have to see Kent, Mom. I need to set this right."
"He may not want to speak to you. Not after such a violation of trust." As usual, Temperace's delivery was blunt and clinical, a scientist's observation. "And you did violate that trust, Joy."
"He kept secrets from me," Joy argued.
Temperance looked at her daughter, raising an eyebrow in a "So?" expression. "And you believe you are entitled to know those secrets? There are some things I never learned about your father until we worked together for several years. I am positive that there are still things he does not want me to know."
"But you want to know everything." Joy frowned, puzzled. Her mother was an investigator. Being a forensic anthropologist and a crime-fighter gave her this urge to learn what happened and how. "Why don't you find out?"
The best forensic anthropologist in the world stroked her daughter's cheek tenderly and said, "Because I know, in time, that he will tell me. I believe in him."
%%%%%%%%%%%%%~~~~~~~~%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Kent woke up hearing his doorbell ring. Groaning at whoever had disturbed his sleep, he rolled over and glared at his alarm clock. The red digital numbers blinked 2:32 A.M.
Only one person had the privilege to ring Tyler Kent's doorbell at two in the morning and live to tell the tale. Not that he really wanted to see this person at the moment.
It took him two minutes to walk downstairs in the dark and talk through his front door. "Whaddya want, Joy?" he said, purposely not using his nickname for her to show how annoyed he was.
"Can we talk?" Her voice was muffled by the door, but she sounded like a girl confessing to her crush, very shy and a bit scared to be rejected. "Can I come in?"
"We're talking now, and no you can't," Kent replied, not moving to open the door. "What do you want?"
"Why didn't you tell me you're on parole?"
The boy closed his eyes, composing himself before he answered. "I don't have to tell you everything about my life, Joy. You're not my mother or my caretaker."
A small pause, then she said, "I.......I thought we were friends."
Aw crap, he thought, one part ashamed and two parts pissed. He'd known Joy long enought to detect the almost concealed hurt in her voice. One of the worst disadvantages to being Temperance Brennan's daughter was having a very scared outlook on relationships between people. This extended into friendships as well, and with good reason - having a mother who had deep-rooted abandonment issues and a dad with an abusive childhood and sniper background, the very epitomes of lone-wolves, meant that Joy had to try twice as hard to trust people. And if that trust was ever called into question, then all of what she knew was threatened.
She thought she was wrong about them being friends.
Kent yanked open the front door. "Squint, let me - " the apology bubbled out of his mouth before his eyes registered the empty porch. He looked around, trying to see if she was still on the street, but nothing moved in the darkness. Joy was gone.
Mentally smacking himself in the head, Kent looked down at the subpeona in his clenched fist. "Dammit," he cursed under his breath. "Damn you all."
%%%%%%%%%%%%%~~~~~~~~%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Parker Booth heard the front door slam. Muting the hockey game, he glanced over the couch and saw his kid half-sister walking slowly towards the steps. She looked tired and downtrodden, a stark contrast to her usual self. "Hey kiddo, what's up?"
"Parker?" Even Joy's voice sounded tired and worn out. "I didn't know you'd be back tonight."
"Dr. Bones made mac and cheese. Microwaveable food sucks compared to that." When the mention of her favorite food didn't bring Joy's spirits up, the blond twenty-three-year-old raised his eyebrow. "Dad got pie. Raspberry, your favorite." Still no response. "Geez Squint, what's - "
"I'VE TOLD YOU BEFORE, DON'T F*CKING CALL ME SQUINT!!!!"
This shout caused four things to happen in the span of ten seconds. First, as Joy screamed the above sentance, her hand shot out and grabbed the closest thing to herself. It happened to be a glass left out from earlier. Grabbing the glass, she chucked it at Parker's head with deadly accuracy.
Second, it scared the crap out of Parker. He actually jumped off the couch so fast his shin banged into the coffee table, sending him sprawling to the floor in pain. The glass flew over his head, narrowly missing the television and exploded into a shower of shards behind him.
Third, the simultaneous crashes woke up Joy's parents from a dead sleep. Seeley immediately went for his gun, as did Temperance; after a couple close cases he had finally acquiested to his Bones carrying a piece of her own. Together, husband and wife ran down the stairs and trained their weapons on the source of the commotion. They saw Joy in the hallway, Parker on the ground gripping his leg and hissing in pain, and froze, confused.
But the fourth thing to happen was what made everything even worse. Joy suddenly and quite loudly burst into tears, right there in the living room, in front of God and everybody. A wordless wail jumped free of her throat, making even Booth jump in shock. Temperance's motherly instincts kicked in (Yes, she's got some of those now) and she shoved her gun into her husband's hands.
"Joy, shhhhh, it's okay," she said gently, hugging her daughter to allow Joy the shield of an embrace. "Shhhhh, calm down, it's okay. It's all right, honey."
Booth went over to Parker and helped his son up. "Wrong time to tease, Parker," he whispered, guiding his firstborn into the kitchen for some ice.
"Yeah, no duh." The blond young man looked at his father in disbelief. "Dad, what happened? I've never seen her that emotional before, not even when Pops died...."
Booth quickly made an ice pack out of ice cubes in a towel and held it to Parker's rapidly swelling shin. "She went to talk to Kent. Apparently she learned that he's been keeping secrets."
"The chop-shop kid you helped get off jail time?" For a second his eyes narrowed in confusion, then it hit him. "His hearing. Yeah, I heard about that. The head guy is trying to appeal out."
"He didn't tell Joy he was on parole pending his acquittal." The FBI special agent cursed under his breath. "I told her, I told her to stop hanging out with him, but would she listen to me? And now she's like that." He gestured angrily towards the entryway, where Joy's heart-wrenching sobs could still be heard.
Parker stared at him. "Dad, they've been best friends since forever. She couldn't stop liking him just like that." He rolled his eyes. "You didn't when you thought Dr. Bones didn't like you."
Booth scowled, remembering that time. "That's different, Parker."
"Not as much as you think, Dad." Parker listened to his little sister's crying and made a mental note to speak to Kent in the coming days. "I bet you felt the same way Joy's feeling right now."
Back with Temperance and Joy, the forensic anthropologist tilted her daughter's face up so Temperance could wipe the sticky tears away. "You went and talked to him." It wasn't a question.
Joy nodded. "I - I think I was wr-wrong," she choked out, trying to regain control of herself.
"About what?"
Joy hiccuped. "Us being friends. Mom, he......he wouldn't open the door. He w-w-would-d-dn't even l-l-look at me!" Her grip tightened around Temperance's torso as she buried her face again. "Why, Mom? Why does it hurt so much!?" she screamed, her voice muffled by her mother's pajamas.
Helpless, Temperance looked to the kitchen and caught Booth's eye. A silent conversation, primarily her begging for help and him having no reassurances for their daughter, ensued until Temperance's cell phone rang. Without letting Joy go, she reached over and flipped it open. "Brennan."
"Sweetie? What's the matter? I can hear someone crying......Is that Joy? What happened?! Did they get Booth or Parker?!"
"Angela? Why are you calling so late?" The last sentances caught her attention. "What about Booth and Parker? They're right here." At the sound of their names the Booth boys came into the living room, worry on their faces. "Calm down and tell me what's wrong," Temperance said clearly into the phone.
There was a long, deep inhale and exhale of breath. "It's Emily and Jack........Sweetie, they - "
Joy heard her best friend's name and sniffed once, a long one that cleared her tears away and steadied her. "Emily? What?"
"Angela, what's happened?"
Joy's free-spirited godmother sounded like she herself was fighting tears. "Emily went out with her father to get some ice cream. Apparently there was an accident - but the other driver didn't stop. The car wrapped around a telephone pole - "
"Are they all right?" Temperance asked, panicking.
"They're at Our Lady of Mercy Hospital," Angela said. "Jack's in stable condition, but Emily has a bad head wound. She's been moved to the ICU."
The next words chilled Joy's blood.
"The car was tagged by the 666 Devils."
Damn, it ended sad. I didn't want that! Oh well, that means I have to write the next bit!
I'm just considering popping out oneshots that can be read stand-alone but also in a consecutive timeline.
A.N.
Chinese translations (please bear with my cut-and-paste internet translations. Most are courtesy of Firefly)
* - "SHUT UP, MORONS!"
** - "Hello, Mom."
*** - "Goddamn."
**** - "Loopy in the head."