Hey everybody!

I know I shouldn't start a new fic, when I don't even seem to be able to finish "Mummy in the Mausoleum" (I'm kinda stuck), but I wanted to give you something to read. So I hope you enjoy and I'll return to my books and learn about the central nervous system and the sense organs.

Neither Crossing Jordan nor Bones belong to me in any way. Believe me, Jordan & Co. would still be on TV, if I did.

Chapter 1: Pack your bags!

"Pack your bags."

She hated it, when he demanded that from her. It seemed like she was his property, without her own rights. And she didn't want to leave again. She liked this city. She had found new friends. She liked the house they lived in. She even had a job, earned her first own money.

She wondered what would happen, if she stood up against him, told him, no, I won't. Go to hell. I'm not gonna leave again. Like she always did, when he told her to pack her bags. Up to now, though, that had only been a fantasy. But now she didn't want to leave any more. She had never liked a place as much as she liked Boston, Massachusetts.

She often just went to the harbor to hear the seagulls cry in the wind, to feel the sea breeze on her skin and taste the salt on her lips. Not to forget the sailing boats with their white sails, that zigzagged their way across the bay.

She'd never been in a city on the coast before. And this was where she always wanted to stay. No way was she going to leave again. No way.

A few silent tears slipped from her eyes. She squeezed them shut, willing the tears to stop.

She was sick and tired of this uncertainty. Of never knowing how long she would be able to stay.

She lived in the constant fear of having to leave. Again. And again not knowing where they would end up the next time.

It was always the same, time and place the only variable. A repeated disappointment, when her hopes would be shattered once again, for she hoped each time they settled somewhere that it would be the last time of moving and the place finally a constant.

She hated that she'd never been able to say goodbye. Hated not knowing why they had to leave. And that was something she desperately wanted to understand.

He should tell her. She was old enough.

She wanted to be able to feel at home again and this city was what came closest to that in years.

Wiping the tears from her face and replacing the sadness on it with a look of determination, she turned to her father and swallowed. "No." A simple word, two letters with great impact. It felt good, finally saying it. She felt good.

Until she saw her father's expression turn from surprise to anger and something else she couldn't quite get, as she had never seen that notion on her father's features. "Pack your bags!" He screamed it into her face. She had never seen her father like that. For a few seconds she faltered, then reasserted her determined expression, swallowing even harder. "No," she repeated, her voice as steady as she could manage. "I won't."

"PACK YOUR BAGS!"

Now she rose from the chair, she had been sitting on at her desk doing her chemistry homework. There was no turning back any more. "NO!"

He raised his hand and before she even realised what he planned to do, the hand slammed to her left cheek, leaving red streaks on her face. Her hands were icy and she held them to the searing hot pain in her cheek. Tears were flowing freely now, fear in her eyes.

"Pack. Your. Bags." His voice was quiet and calm and that terrified her even more, still she said, "No", her voice fluttery, her face tear stained. She couldn't believe that was her father, standing in front of her. "No," she repeated, almost inaudible.

Her father took her travelling bag from the floor, still packed with already read books and slammed it against her chest, repeating the same words yet again in quiet calmness.

The impact sent her flying backwards onto the bed. Her head banged against the wall. This must be a bad dream, she thought. This can not be real. Then she lost consciousness.

When she opened her eyes again, she found the room dark and empty. Just a bad dream, she thought relieved. We're not gonna leave again. My father didn't hit me. She tried to smile, but winced at the attempt. Her left cheek was swollen. She tried to rise from her bed, but soon fell back into the pillows. Her head hurt like hell. Again she lifted her body from the pillows, more slowly and carefully this time, till she sat on the edge of the bed. It had been no bad dream. But why was she still in her room? Where was her father? Had it been fear, the emotion she couldn't quite get, when he had yelled at her? But what had he been afraid of? She switched her bed side lamp on and winced a second time. The light was far too bright and sent a bolt of pain through her head. She turned the light in the direction of the wall and closed her eyes for a few seconds. Better. What now? She slowly opened them again and tried to stand up. Damn. She sank back onto the bed. She touched the back of her head feeling something sticky. Looking at her fingers, she realized it was blood that had mostly dried. Like on her pillow. I need to go to the hospital. Sinking slowly to her knees, she crawled over to the table and got her cell phone out of her school bag. She read the time from the display. 00:30. She had been unconscious for about six hours. She dialed 911.

"Emergency call. What can I do for you?" The voice on the other end was warm and friendly.

"Hello." She didn't recognize her own voice. It sounded weak and from far away. "I... I hit my head. It's been bleeding badly. I need help."

"Where are you, Miss?" The voice was still calm and soothing.

"At home, 24 White Deer Drive. Please..." Her voice trailed of.

"What's your name?" Now concern was evident in the woman's voice. "Miss?"

"Marie..." She closed her eyes and concentrated once again. "Marie McIntosh."

"Marie, the ambulance will be there in a few minutes."

"Thank you, ma'am." From far away Marie heard sirens. "Thank you." Blackness enveloped her again.

Ten miles to the south a badly damaged middle-class car went up in flames. On board sat an unmoving figure.

The black silhouette of a man disappeared into the surrounding woods. Then another car – an SUV this time – sped fast from the scene, leaving the wood quiet again except for the crackle of the fire.

Some time around 5 in the morning the fire had died down without touching the wood, but also without being noticed. Two hours later a car came by the clearing. On its door was the emblem of the local ranger station.

Usually Ranger Maple checked this place in the wood twice a week. It was a place that was rather seldom used as an illegal barbecuing location, so it wasn't necessary to check more often, especially this early in the year with the temperatures way below the sixties even midday.

This time, though, it smelled as if it had been used as exactly that, just with a hint of burnt plastic. Upon taking a closer look, he discovered that it was not a barbecue, that caused the smell, but a burned down car.

He called Boston police immediately and told them the license number of the car and that there was still someone on board. Someone very dead.

Twenty minutes later BPD Homicide Detective Woodrow "Woody" Hoyt bumped along the forest road in his city car following the ranger's terrain fit SUV. "Damn," he swore. This was not one of the comfortable ways of traveling. He checked on the ones bumping along the way behind him. The squad car had as many problems with the "street" as his car, only the ME's and the CSU's cars had no problems, being SUVs like the ranger's. "I should have driven with Jordan," he muttered under his breath and tightened his grip on the steering wheel as the road got even worse. Finally he saw the red stop lights of the car in front of him light up and he hit his own brakes. Finally. He couldn't have taken it much longer.

The ranger got from his car and the occupants of the other four cars copied him. Their breaths rose in small, white clouds from their mouths and noses. "It's right this way," Maple said making even bigger clouds with his breath and he pointed to a hardly detectable junction of the street. "There's not enough space for all of our cars to turn around, so we better leave them here." The two officers and the three CSU technicians nodded and started to follow him. Woody waited for Medical Examiner Dr. Jordan Cavanaugh to catch up.

"So, what have we got, exactly?" she asked, when she reached him. She pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders with her free hand.

"A car burned down last night on the clearing Ranger Maple's gonna show us. It belongs to sixteen-year-old Marie McIntosh." They came to the clearing. The smell of burned leather, plastic and rubber lay thickly in the air mixing with a note of burned flesh. Woody wrinkled his nose. "I don't like that smell."

"Me neither." Jordan pulled surgical gloves from the bag she was carrying. Then she handed it to Woody. "It's secure, right?" she yelled over to Maple, exchanging her leather gloves for the latex ones.

The ranger nodded in response. "The fire had already died down, when I found that car. It should be safe."

Woody saw the crime scene technicians were already taking photos and he went over to the officers and the ranger to tell them to walk the surrounding wood in a radius of at least 200 feet and mark everything that seemed to be odd to them, while Jordan leaned into the still warm car and looked at the remains of the human being on board.

"It's definitely not Marie," she said. "Looks more like a man." Jordan straightened again and asked Woody, "Did she report her car stolen?"

"No," Woody came back in her direction. "We haven't gotten hold of her yet, either. Was it murder?"

"I suppose it was. You see his crushed skull? But I can't tell you cause and time of death. More..."

"...back at the morgue," he completed her sentence. "I know. How do we get him out of that?"

"You don't happen to have vegetable oil in one of your suit pockets?"

"Pity that I chose this day to leave it at home." His dimples came to view.

"Okay, it was worth trying though, wasn't it?" Hers matched his smile. "I'll be right back."

"What do you need that oil for anyway?"

"Loosen his body from the metal parts of the car", she said over her shoulder.

For the second time that day Woody wrinkled his nose in disgust.

"Pack your bags."

She rolled her eyes. Why would he demand that from her? She hated being treated like property by him. Typical alpha male! He hadn't done that in a while, though. With Dr. Goodman around she had felt she had a slight chance of avoiding being pushed around, even if her protests had always been to no avail. But Dr. Camille Saroyan was clearly on his side, so she could forget trying to protest at all. Or perhaps it was the fact that she almost didn't mind any more, for wherever they would be going, they would be going there together. Something she wouldn't admit to anyone, not even herself. She put the bone of the ancient Chinese, she had wanted to look at, down again and instead looked at her partner Special Agent Seeley Booth. "This better be good. I already postponed this twice." Dr. Temperance Brennan pointed at the bones lying on the backlit glass table. "So where do you kidnap me to this time?" She gave him a warning glare.

"I never kidnapped you," he said a little irritated.

"Zach!" Brennan yelled.

"Yes, Dr. Brennan?" Dr. Zach Addy came from one of the small labs to the side of the anthropology unit of the medico-legal lab at the Jeffersonian Institute in Washington, DC. He was wearing the male version of Brennan's Prussian blue Jeffersonian lab coat, orange tinted goggles and latex gloves. Though he finally had his own doctor's degree, he acted as if he was still just her graduate student, her undergraduate assistant.

"We need to tell Beijing again, that we're gonna need more time." She turned to Booth again with a stern, but interested look on her face. After all it had always been interesting cases, when he had 'kidnapped' her before. "You didn't answer my question." She snapped the surgical gloves from her hands and dumped them in a red biological hazard container that was standing by the steps to the platform, she had been working on.

"An ex-Irish-Mafia-member's daughter's car burned down last night near Boston. With someone on board. We're guessing it was him. He was going to be a witness in a mob trial, but didn't want to be in witness protection. We lost track of him four months ago, when his daughter turned sixteen."

"When are we leaving?"

"In an hour. You don't protest?" He was stunned. In the past she often had protested, running to her boss, trying to talk herself out of it.

"Never worked anyway, so I can skip that, right? Otherwise it would be lost time." They had been walking to her office, where she put down her Prussian blue lab coat and replaced it with her regular jacket. "I just need to pack and organize a few things." She went back outside again. "Zach?" The young forensic anthropologist reappeared from the same lab as before, this time without goggles. "Can you pack the Chinese into his box again? We have a new case."

"Yes!" he said with perhaps a little too much enthusiasm. Anticipation always got the better of him, when there was a new, modern time case. He ducked under Dr. Brennan's glare and went straight for the platform.

Brennan walked to the Holographics Lab and found Angela Montenegro – the forensic artist of the Jeffersonian and her best friend aside from Booth – working on a simulation of a Daunian temple at her computer. Dr. Jack Hodgins sat beside her and commented her work. Both wore their blue lab coats – his plain and hers adorned with structured buttons and trimmed with colorful piping. They were smiling at each other.

"We got a new case. Booth and I are going to leave for Boston now," Brennan announced and caused them to look at her.

Hodgins' face lit up even more and he started to rub his hands. "A case."

"Be careful, Sweetie. Don't jump into every dangerous situation you can find." Angela's almond shaped eyes showed concern. She didn't like her best friend being so much out of the laboratory and hunting down murderers. In her eyes that was Booth's job, not Brennan's. She stood up. "No, wait, I changed my mind: don't jump into any dangerous situation at all."

"Yeah, okay."

"Come back in one piece." Angela hugged her friend. "Don't forget we have tickets for Cat Power."

"I'll try to be back in time."

Angela turned to Booth. "Take care of her, will you?"

"I'll do my very best." He smiled sheepishly.

"Do it better." As the duo started to leave, she added: "And make sure she remembers Cat Power. The concert is next Saturday."