HUNTING THE HUNTER

A/N: please read

Title: Hunting the Hunter

Summary: Cam said, "Either you believe in the system or you don't, and I do." But she isn't the only one that believes in the system. Booth does too and with Pelant on the hunt he'll have to do it more than ever.

Genre: Angst, drama, NOT canon

Season/episode: Season 7 – episodes 6 ("The Crack in the Code") and 13 ("The Past in the Present")

Spoilers: Everything up to season 7 (primary Pelant's story arc)

Pairing: Booth/Brennan

Rating: T (If anyone disagrees please let me know)

Warnings: Violence, crime (like you'd see in the show), and NOT A B&B HAPPY ENDING!

Comments: Okay, so I have serious issues with the whole Pelant story line… it's like building a house of cards on the surface of Jupiter… it makes no sense whatsoever... but the finale really annoyed me. I've lost my patience with Brennan and Booth demanded to speak up and tell us his version. I'll do my best to put it into paper for you.

Disclaimer: Read profile

Acknowledgements: Big thanks to my beta Whatever55 for her great job

HUNTING THE HUNTER

Prologue

Season/episode: Season 7 – episodes 13 - "The Past in the Present"

It's been a week.

It's been a week since she left, since she ran with our daughter.

A week that I've spent without my baby or the woman I felt like I could call my wife. In that short week, just seven days, so many things changed, so many things were broken.

The world turned and we can't turn the clock back.

The first time I felt the world turning was on the stairs of my church. They had just run away not even two minutes earlier and Max had run in the other direction moments later. I was seated defeated on the stairs and all my arguments against her running, all the words I uttered trying to convince her not to listen to her father, came back to me. All the ways I could protect her here but could not if she ran, everything I said haunted me then. All the words that she ignored resounded in my head. I barely could contain my emotions: my fear, my anger, when I pulled my phone and called Flynn and hoped that he believed me. My speech was failing me and I almost couldn't tell him what the hell had happened before my stomach had enough. I could hear Flynn calling my name, trying to get me to answer his questions while I vomited the few contents that my stomach was holding at the time. I'll always be grateful for Father Keyes. Seeing my car still parked there, he exited the church to see why we were still there and found me. He took the phone from me and translated what little he understood of my ramblings to Flynn.

Ten, maybe fifteen minutes later, Flynn and the squints were there. They checked my car and discovered that Max disconnected the battery to stop me from chasing them. They also found a letter from Brennan apologizing to me and telling me that she was doing the best she could do to protect our daughter and our family.

But I knew better. She ran because she didn't trust me or the team to keep her and our daughter safe. She didn't trust me and she was on the run. That wasn't the worst though. The worst was that Pelant had made her his prey and hiding and running wasn't going to help. I was a sniper, a hunter by definition, I knew, as I know that God exists, that if Pelant decided to hunt them, both of them could end up dead. She was risking my daughter's life.

Fortunately, my sick appearance at the church convinced Flynn that I wasn't an accomplice. It didn't put me back on the case, but Flynn decided that he needed me to find Brennan and that I could help with that. Again, I was grateful, this time to the man that could have not trusted me but did, the man that later listened to my expertise when it was needed.

The second time the world turned it almost spun off of it axis. Flynn took me, the FBI techs, and the squints to what was my house until that day. Father Keyes refused to leave my side and came with us. The house needed to be searched from top to bottom and I just opened the doors for them.

With no more energy left, I was going to just collapse on the outside steps but the priest took upon himself to get me into the house and into my daughter's room. I really didn't want to get into the house but I didn't have the energy to argue either, so I just let him drag me in there. I felt like a rag doll but eventually we sat together on the floor in Christine's room.

Angela found my alarm clock tampered with to record conversations and send them to a computer out there somewhere. It wasn't the only thing tampered with. Our laptops had some kind of hidden virus that fed information to a different computer. The son of a bitch even hooked up the baby's cam to it.

I was still seated on the floor of my baby's room when Flynn came to talk to me. If Brennan were here he would now have two suspects: Brennan herself and an unknown person who had tampered with everything. But with her gone everything could be explained by her need to stay up to date with the case. I argued against the cam situated in the baby's room being a way of monitoring the case but he just pointed out that it was the only camera in the house and that I was indeed in that room now. With no arguments against it, he had no other option than to keep considering her the prime suspect, a fugitive, and he had to add kidnapping and endangering Christine to the charges. She took the baby, Flynn could not ignore that.

Somehow those words gave me some strength back. She didn't trust me to keep them safe, and she didn't trust the system. But I am the system, I believe in the system and this was not the way to do it. If she had trusted me, she would be here; she wouldn't be a fugitive; Flynn wouldn't have to accuse her of kidnapping and he would have leverage to look for another suspect.

I agreed with him; told him to do it, but I added something. The surveillance meant only one thing: Pelant was on the hunt for Brennan and he may even have been waiting for this. Flynn promised to do his best to get both of them back safe.

I couldn't stay in the house one more second and they took me to the lab; to Angela's office and I let my body collapse on her couch. We needed a plan, but I was in no condition to formulate one. The squints were feeling sad and guilty; it was plenty obvious that they felt responsible for not catching Pelant before this happened.

At some point, during our fruitless debate Caroline came into the lab, followed by David Barron, her ex-husband in tow claiming to be my lawyer. She took a look at us, deemed that we needed rest and practically ordered us home. Flynn knew that she was right and that we weren't going to get anything done that night, so he ordered the squints to go home and rest and to come the next morning ready to go over everything again. They needed to follow the evidence. If Pelant was guilty they needed to prove it and they needed to prove it fast. He was already unaccounted for, already under the radar, and if I was right he was after Brennan and my daughter.

The squints nodded and left looking depressed. Flynn left too, with a promise of returning my baby to me alive. Flynn has two little boys and I knew he really would do his best. Only Caroline, David, Father Keyes and Cam stayed behind with me. Caroline, like the priest, could do nothing but stick with me for moral support. Yet her presence seemed to calm me somehow.

Cam had called Rebecca and explained everything to her and to my surprise she wasn't angry at me. She tried to comfort me telling me that it wasn't my fault, that I would find them in time. She promised that I could talk with Parker whenever I want and we agreed to wait until I found them to explain everything to Parker. Rebecca talked to me as I was going to find them tomorrow, confident that by the time Parker visited me during the summer they would be back home. I didn't expect her compassion and her trust in me but I was glad to receive them.

When I ended the call, Cam offered me her guest room to stay as long as I needed. I wanted to accept because I couldn't bear going back to my house, not today, maybe never, but my body wasn't answering my commands. I was probably in shock. She noticed how much time I took answering, and she tried again. This time she asked me to go with her: she feared for Michelle. I nodded and Cam and the priest helped to pull me up from the couch.

They put me in Cam's car and David promised to visit me the next morning to go over the case. So did Father Keyes who promised to have my family in his prayers and to help me through this crisis however he could.

I don't remember much of the trip to Cam's house or how she got me into her spare bed. I barely remember the next morning: my meeting with David, being in the lab, talking with Flynn… everything was blurry and mixed up together. Day after day, they all looked the same, they mixed together and I could hardly tell one from the other. I remember our accomplishments clearly though.

During the rest of the week the squints worked undeterred and proved that Pelant manipulated the GPS ankle monitor using the chips on the books. It destroyed his alibi: he was now a viable suspect for all the crimes. They went over Brennan's car again and Hodgins proved that the last time it was at the asylum was two weeks prior to Ethan Sawyer's murder with some pollen on the tires. It contradicted the evidence that Sawyer's hair gave the FBI against her: it was reasonable doubt. Flynn officially added Pelant to the suspect list and when Angela finally proved that someone changed the time stamp of the asylum security cameras and that Brennan never paid Caroline off, he took her off of the list. Brennan was no longer a suspect in Sawyer's murder, but evading justice and taking the baby couldn't be ignored. He could not look the other way around. Angela was angry about that until Caroline pointed out that no one would want to prosecute that case and her friend would probably get a deal and avoid jail.

What she failed to mention to the angered artist was that her custody over Christine could be in question, especially if her escape put them both at risk. In fact, David had already suggested for me to file for full custody, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Even knowing in my heart that our relationship was dead, I couldn't do it. It would mean admitting that I didn't think that Brennan was keeping my baby girl safe and while I knew that running had put them in a bigger risk than staying, I couldn't admit that. If I admitted that… if Brennan wasn't keeping her safe… I couldn't even bring myself to think about the alternative.

But the truth was that we didn't know where she and the baby were, or where Max was, or where Pelant was. We knew nothing. Our inability to contact her or Max directly meant that the only way to let her know that she was no longer a suspect of murder was the press. We told the press the story, giving no details and admitting that we had no suspects to not tip off Pelant, but we told them that Brennan was cleared from the suspect list and then all hell broke loose again. The bitter feeling in my gut that had been with me since I saw her car drive away kept telling me that Brennan and Christine wouldn't be safe until they were back home and it turned unbearable when Flynn knocked at Cam's door this morning.

There was a body that looked like Pelant's handy work in the close proximity to my church. When we got there Hodgins, and Wendell were already examining the body. It was badly decomposed but the moment I saw the cheekbone implants I knew in my gut whose body this was. Cam's estimation of height and weight matched, and an hour later Angela's facial reconstruction confirmed that my worst nightmare was a reality and I found myself practically in the same position I started in a week earlier: collapsed on the stairs empting my stomach on them. The only difference was the stairs themselves, this time I was on the stairs of the platform in the lab instead of on the church's steps.

It's been a week.

It's been a week since she left, since she ran with our daughter.

A week that I've spent without my baby or the woman I felt like I could call my wife. In that short week, the world turned and we can't turn the clock back. Max Kennan had been dead that whole week, Brennan and my daughter had been on their own since then. On their own and being hunted by a psychopath. He's a week ahead of us and if I don't find them fast he is going to kill them both.

I believe in the system and she didn't.

She ran and I stayed.

Now I have to hunt the prey or the hunter before the hunter eats the prey.

Thanks for readying. I hope you liked it. Please let me know what you think about it.