Disclaimer: I don't own them, I didn't create them, and I don't profit from them.

Author's Note: This is a work in progress and I invite you to come along for the ride to the happy ending we know that we'll get to eventually...because everything happens eventually. Right?

Prologue

The heat was oppressive, not typical weather for the Puget Sound area at all. Seattle had just set an all time high of 103 degrees, although in the outlying areas, there had been reports of temperatures all the way up to 113. In a region where air conditioning wasn't standard equipment in houses and even some cars, tempers were short and the strawberry fields near the Skagit River were no exception.

Felix Hernandez was working to get the field ready for the second harvest of the season and as much as he was grateful for the work that provided a nice home for his family and food on his table, he would have much rather been sitting inside the Train Wreck Bar knocking back a cold one at the end of his day before heading home to play a little baseball with his son Carlos.

He had been methodically working the field and with the hot sun overhead beating down, he decided that a lunch break was in order - despite the fact that his tractor cab was air conditioned, he was way too hot. There was a nice little grove of trees at the edge of the field near a stream that fed into the river and it seemed to be calling to him. A little bit of lunch and some relaxation and he'd be ready to go back to working until it really was time to call it a day. He had barely taken three steps into the grove when a gruesome sight stopped him in his tracks. He had seen plenty of dead animals in his day - what with the hunting trips he'd taken with his brothers into the back country, but this was no animal. What he was seeing was obviously human and something else and all thoughts of eating lunch were abandoned as he scrambled for his cell phone and dialed 9-1-1.

"Bones!" Special Agent Seeley Booth had a purpose and right now that included finding his partner as he strode past the empty platform and straight for her office. He'd called her three times and three times it had gone straight to voicemail, so he wasn't entirely surprised to find her office empty and her cell phone sitting on her desk next to the land line. He turned on his heals and went straight for the office of Camille Saroyan. As much he might normally enjoy a game of hide and seek, he just didn't have the time for it. He poked his head into Cam's office. "Have you seen Bones?"

"Nice to see you too, Seeley." Cam's smirk and slight shake of the head belied her amusement at the way he had gotten straight to the point, sidestepping any small talk.

"Do you know where she is?" Normally he would have called her Camille, which she hated, followed by his own admonishment for her to not call him Seeley. Today he really had a schedule to keep and every minute that ticked by that he did not have his partner in tow mattered.

"Check Limbo." Cam gestured towards the door and as Booth turned and walked away in a hurry, she let out a smile and shook her head, muttering under her breath. "I really do hope that Dr. Brennan wakes up and realizes what a lucky woman she could be."

Brennan was carefully cradling a skull in her hands, taking great care to evaluate the splintering pattern on the frontal bone as Mr. Nigel-Murray looked on with a hint of trepidation on his face. "I believe that you are correct that this was the point of impact. The staining on the interior of the bone suggests that bleeding occurred anti-mortem and therefore is the cause of death." She glanced up at her intern as she gently set the skull down. "Very nice reconstruction job."

"Thank you, Dr. Brennan. Did you know that it is generally agreed that the first jigsaw puzzle was produced around 1760 by John Spilsbury, a London engraver and mapmaker?" For some reason he just couldn't stop spouting interesting facts when he was nervous.

"I did not know that." Of course she wondered what in the world that had to do with the remains that they had in front of them, but perhaps he had a point that he would eventually get to.

"Bones!" Booth had taken the steps two at a time down into Limbo and he felt relieved when he rounded the corner and found that he didn't have to search the entire labyrinth of bones for Bones.

"You don't have to yell, I'm right here, Booth." Clearly he had some matter of urgency on his mind as she turned towards him and took in his slightly harried appearance. It only then occurred to her that she'd left her cell phone upstairs in her office and might have missed a call.

"We've got a case." He glanced at his watch and felt some measure of relief that he had found her, now he just needed to get her out of Limbo and headed out the door of the lab altogether.

"I'll get my kit and I'll meet you upstairs." She offered him a smile as she pulled off her latex gloves and turned to Mr. Nigel-Murray. "Please place preliminary tissue markers and I'll review them before Angela inputs the measurements into the Angelator. Given the care that he'd taken with reassembling the skull, she wanted to see what his skill level was with placing the markers.

"You're going to need more than just your kit." And it was probably wishful thinking that she might have one upstairs in her office all packed and ready to go so that they wouldn't have to fight through the mid-afternoon traffic to her apartment.

Her head tilted slightly and her lips pulled into a conspiratorial smile. "Are we going undercover?" She very much liked getting to pretend to be someone else. Perhaps they would get to join the circus again, although given Booth's rather recent brain surgery, knife throwing would probably not be a very good choice for an act if she expected to remain uninjured.

Booth let out a slight chuckle. "No, we are not going undercover. We've got to catch a plane." And if they didn't hurry they were going to have to miss that nice non-stop flight from Reagan National and connect in Newark, Chicago, and Denver.

"Where are we going?" Her curiosity was piqued now.

"North of Seattle. Skeleton found in a strawberry field and they're holding the scene for us." He glanced down at his watch. "We've got to get a move on because we have to be at the airport in an hour and half." And that was pushing it. Thankfully, he had swung by his own place on the way to collect Bones and she lived only a short distance from the Jeffersonian, but he still might have to use the sirens and lights to get them to the terminal on time.

"Are you sure they won't compromise the remains before we get there?" Brennan hoped that the local law enforcement was competent enough to not disturb the site.

"We've got a non-stop flight as long as we hurry." He propelled her towards the stairs, she could ask as many questions as she wanted as long as she kept moving so they didn't miss that flight.

A sigh was the only sound left in Limbo as the voices faded away. It was obvious that despite his assignment to place the tissue markers, Dr. Brennan was not going to be able to verify them for a while if she was about to embark on a transcontinental airplane trip. Mr. Nigel-Murray felt a little invisible as he addressed the reconstructed skull. "Did you know that Seattle was the first city in the US to play a Beatles song on the radio?"