Noir Hero

The noir hero is a knight in blood caked armor. He's dirty and he does his best to deny the fact that he's a hero the whole time.
Frank Miller

Chapter 1

She knew that they could never be together, there was just too much baggage, but deep in her heart, he was the one that she wanted and they both knew it. She didn't want to say that she loved him, because the minute that she did, it became real and her heart could be broken. She was safer keeping all her emotion for him bottled up inside.

He was her hero. Her knight in shining armor, always coming to her rescue. He had even taken a bullet for her. He knew her better than anyone, and they were partners. But would it ever be anything more than that?

He's the strongest love that she had ever felt ever felt.

With a sigh, Dr. Temperance Brennan closed her laptop and leaned back, she had a major case of writer's block. Reading over what she had just typed, she realized that it was more about her and Booth than Kathy and Andy. Holding down the delete button she deleted it all and was left staring at a blank screen. Giving up on the story, she got up from behind her desk and streached. Sitting down all day had left her stiff and sore, and it felt good when her joints popped. Leaving her office, she headed to the forensics platform to look at the remains of a young girl that had washed up on the shore of the Potomac River. Swiping her security card, she was surprised to see that the rest of her team had left, and that the remains were not where they had been a hour ago. Thinking Cam might have sent them for an x-ray or CAT scan, she checked the logs, but the only remains that had been sent were those of a twenty- year old man from Limbo, their twelve year old Jane Doe wasn't. Pulling out her phone and hitting speed dial, she waited for Cam to answer.

"Hi, Cam, it's me," she said, once Dr. Saroyan picked up. "Yeah, I'm still at the Jeffersonian, I was going to take a look at that Jane Doe we got earlier, but there's a bit of a problem."

"What sort of problem?" Cam asked grumpily, and Brennan could tell that she had sleeping.

"The body's missing."

"What?"

"The body's missing and since corpses cannot get up and walk away, someone either misplaced it or it was stolen. At first I though you might have sent it to get a CAT scan or something, but there's no record of it..."

"Call Hodgins, Booth and Angela, I'll be there in twenty."

Brennan hung up the phone, even more confused than when she had called. Who would steal a body? she wondered.

Exactly twenty minutes after she had hung up the phone with Booth, the last person that she had called, Brennan and her squints were gathered on the forensics platform.

"I don't understand," Booth said, looking around. "Why would anyone want to steal a dead body?"

Wendell didn't look at him, but said, "To keep us from figuring out who killed her and who she was."

"Well, they succeeded, didn't they? There are no bones left to identify," he said, and in response got a mean glare from Brennan that could melt stone. In all the years that they had worked together, he still hadn't learned not to tell her something was impossible, because if he did, she would do everything in her power to prove him wrong.

"We still have the security tape. We'll find them," she said, confidently, but he saw the look Cam gave her. He cocked his eyebrows at her, asking silently what was wrong. Brennan turned to face Cam just as she shook her head slightly. Brennan saw the headshake and knew what it meant with a sinking heart. There were no security tapes.

How are we ever going to identify this girl now? She thought, and then it came to her. Turning to one of her squints, she asked, "Angela, can you give our girl a face from the crime scene photographs?"

The artist looked a bit skeptical, but agreed to give it a try and after getting the photographs from Brennan, left the rest of the squints on the platform.

Brennan turned to the rest of the squints. "I know it's late, and I know you're all tired, but I know we can find something." They all nodded in agreement, and went of to their stations to analyze what little evidence there was.