Chapter 2

Booth was still pouting when he stalked into the midst of the overly crowded crime scene he'd been summoned to in the middle of a playground in South Amville Park. He wasn't particularly looking forward to working with his partner, for a change. Unbeknownst to him, his partner was in a completely different park, Northwell, at least a 45-minute drive away.

But there was one thing he did know for sure: This particular murder scene wasn't going to do much to improve his mood.

The utterly gruesome body, which some sick sonofabitch he simply couldn't wait to arrest had positioned on the bottom of the children's slide, was surrounded by several familiar faces from the Jeffersonian hard at work.

But apparently the murderer hadn't been finished auditioning for the Sick-Sadistic-Bastard-of-the-Year award simply by using a children's playground as his dump site…no, he'd also strewn internal organs, fingers and toes from one end of the park to the other, and some of the surrounding areas as well. Booth learned that happy fact when he stopped on his way into the park to ask a tech about the overwhelming number of FBI agents, Jeffersonian personnel, and crime scene technicians wandering around and bending over in small groups, studying the ground and placing evidence markers all over the park and beyond, as far as his eye could see.

As he got closer to the body, Booth took in the scene. Camille Saroyan was bent over the body at the slide, doing whatever it was she did with such macabre messes. Angela Montenegro had a disgusted look on her face as she snapped picture after picture, and Jack Hodgins had an utterly inappropriate look of pure entrancement on his face as he scooped up whatever the hell kind of goop he was scooping up. And Daisy Wick was…oh great, Daisy. It didn't really even matter what she was doing; she was Daisy.

Booth stifled a groan. He shouldn't be too surprised that both Bones and an intern had been called in. Judging by the sheer number of people milling around, it looked like every member of law enforcement in the D.C. area had been called in on this one, plus a few more.

Booth strode straight up to his core group, his eyes still scanning the entire area for Bones, not that there was much chance of finding her. There were missing fingers and toes scattered in a wide radius extending far outside his field of vision, according to the tech he'd pumped for information, which meant missing bones. So he was fairly sure he knew exactly what his missing Bones was off looking for, and that she wouldn't trust anybody else to do it. The body was far too fleshy at the present for her to hold much interest anyway. If only he had that luxury. His stomach hadn't felt so great since Bones dropped her little bombshell on him, and this...this wasn't helping.

The odor tripled its assault on his nose almost immediately as he got too close. The smell of death was bad enough. Whatever this was? It was way worse.

"Okay, what…what is that?" He was already pulling out his notepad, which quickly became a makeshift fan as he tried to push the godawful stench farther away from him. "God, you know, this day just keeps getting better."

Cam looked up briefly, sparing him a tiny grimace laced with amusement...he knew the smell was bad if it was even getting to her. "Good morning to you, too. What has you in such a great mood?"

"Good morning, Agent Booth!" assaulted his ears before he could even growl a mind-your-business response back to Cam. He wasn't sure which was brighter and more annoying…Daisy's voice, or her overly cheerful smile while she was wrist deep in gore. He muttered something unintelligible in response, hoping maybe the old adage 'if you ignore it, it will go away and shut the hell up' would hold true.

"Yeah, so… what have we got here?" he finally asked, fervently hoping there would be a swift answer - the kind where he could just say something like 'wrap it all up, send it to the Jeffersonian, and call me when you know something.'

"The absolute bottom of the depravity barrel," Angela chimed in by way of answer, her pretty face still twisted in disgust as she continued to snap pictures. "Ugh. Jack and I are moving to another planet."

Hodgins popped up with a grin, sticking a clear evidence container full of something slimy right in Booth's face. "Can't do that, Ange. You'd never find these babies on Mars. For that matter, never find them around here either. Aren't these fantastic?"

Booth pushed Hodgins' arm slightly away from his face. He knew better than to look in the box too closely. "Yeah, that's great, Hodgins. And what are they?"

"Gyralina Nopscai," Hodgins informed him with an even bigger grin. "They're dead, of course, but…this is awesome. It's been a long time since I've heard of these guys. Even I had to look them up."

Booth sighed, pressing his lips into a thin line. He really wasn't in the mood for this. "And what are they?" he repeated, finally risking a closer look into the container and answering the question for himself. "Snails. A bunch of smelly dead snails in slime. This helps me how?"

It rather annoyed Booth that Hodgins was looking at him like he was the crazy one, all while excitedly waving around a box of snail carcasses. "Not just any dead snails, Booth! These little guys are a long way from home. There's no way they should be here. One thing I'm pretty certain of is that they've been dead longer than the victim, judging by other insect activity. It's like somebody just sprinkled their little corpses all over the body. It has to mean something."

Booth was actually listening, finally, slowly nodding his head. "So you're saying the killer put them here on purpose. Some kind of message." He nodded his approval…anything to get the bug-man to figure this out fast so he could get out of there. "Good. Think you can figure out the message, lead us to him?"

Hodgins was waving that container in his face again. "King of the Playground!"

Booth ignored that completely, his notepad ready. Angela was rolling her eyes with enough disgust for both of them anyway. "So if they're not found around here, where do they come from?"

Hodgins was already removing his gloves and turning to the Jeffersonian's mobile computer station Angela had set up, fingers flying across the keyboard. "They're endemic to…ahh, somewhere Mediterranean. Greece, maybe? I was a grad student last time I even heard of these guys… give me a minute."

Booth turned his attention back to the others. "Cam? Anything on the victim?"

Daisy jumped in far too chirpily before Cam could get a word in edgewise. "Well, Agent Booth, I noticed in my examination...and may I just say that Dr. Brennan would be so proud…"

His already strained temper finally got the better of him, especially at the mention of Bones, whom he really didn't want to talk about at the moment. He cut the intern off none too kindly, one hand rubbing at his forehead with his eyes shut. "You know what, Daisy? Is your name Cam?"

Her mouth snapped shut like a rubber band snapping back into place. Disgusted hurt filled her features before she returned her eyes to her work. "Jeez, sorry," she muttered and then scoffed, not really sounding much like she meant that apology.

Booth wasn't feeling great about himself at the moment, but he'd at least done a bang-up job of getting Cam's undivided attention. Her wide eyes were fixed right on him, hands frozen hovering above the corpse that she was now ignoring. "Are you all right, Seeley?"

The conspicuous absence of the camera clicking told him that Angela was staring him down too. It only further stoked the flame of aggravation.

"You know, I'd be a lot better if somebody actually gave me something useful here! So I repeat: Camille, anything on the victim?"

Cam's jaw muscle ticked, but she didn't light into him like he might have expected. She did, however, continue to stare him down unblinkingly. "Female. Mid 30's. Medium build. No clue yet on race or cause of death, thanks to extensive damage. And then there's this..."

She held up an evidence bag, containing some filthy, torn, gore-coated fabric he couldn't immediately identify. "Her face had been covered by this. A lot of the cloth is shredded and missing, like she was wearing it over her head when she was dragged across rough ground. Dragging would certainly explain the facial damage. I'm thinking this used to be a pillowcase, but we won't know for sure until we get everything back to the lab. And now I repeat: are you all right, Seeley?"

His bluster deflated like a popped balloon. The last thing he needed was Cam on the trail. Sure, a whole lot of his and Bones' personal business had been gossip fodder at the Jeffersonian for months after her abduction. But this? This was not going to be.

"Yeah, listen...I'm sorry. Daisy, sorry. It's just been a long morning already. Okay?"

Cam nodded her head sympathetically, a knowing look on her face that told him she probably had a pretty good idea his troubles were Brennan-related. She gave him an out, though, gesturing at the corpse in front of her. "Yeah, tell me about it."

It was Angela, of course, who didn't want to let it go. "Aww, trouble in paradise?" she asked delightedly. "Let me guess…you guys finally climbed out of bed long enough to have that first big fight? Don't worry, G-Man. Making up is the fun part."

He might have lost his temper again, all things considered, had Hodgins not turned from the computer station with an excited look on his face which quickly turned a little sheepish as the implication of his findings hit him.

"Found it! Oh…oh, man. That sucks."

"What?"

Hodgins' face was apologetic as he stared at Booth. "Albania. These snails are only found in certain regions of Albania."

… ooo … ooo …

Albania.

The very word was like getting socked in the gut.

Booth's eyes immediately started scanning the crowd again. It was probably nothing. Coincidence, right? His eyes returned to the evidence bag resting by Cam's knee - a pillowcase, she'd guessed - and an uneasy feeling started growing in his gut.

"Where's Bones? Anybody know which way she went?"

"Booth…"

"What?" he snapped at Cam, but softened his tone when he saw just how wide her eyes were. "What? What is it?"

"She's not here, remember? You texted me at 5:00 this morning, saying she had the flu. That's why I called Daisy in. I haven't spoken with Dr. Brennan today."

"What?"

"So I take it you didn't send me a text." Cam said it as a flat statement, just putting two and two together. "It came from your number, Booth." Her tone was low, worried.

"Oh my God." Angela's hands went to her stomach, like she'd been punched. "Somebody please tell me what's going on here?"

"She did get called in," Booth insisted to Cam, not sure whether it was himself or everybody else he was trying to keep calm. He was all too aware of every eye now glued to his face, waiting for him to magically have the answer. "Body in the park. She got the call even before I did. She left about 15 minutes before me, so she's here somewhere."

Cam stood to her feet, pulling her gloves off as she did so. "No. She's not. You'd better try calling her."

"Camille?"

She was at his side in two steps, speaking in a hushed voice. "I was on the road when I got the call about the body, five minutes away. I've been here for hours - called my team in from here. Other than park security who found the body, I was first on scene, first vehicle in the lot. All of our staff has to check in with me and she knows that. She's not here, Seeley. That much I know for sure."

The fact that Cam looked a little panicky, before he'd even processed enough to get panicky, made his stomach flip over. His phone was in his hand in an instant, hitting the first number on his speed dial.

"Come on, Bones. Come on. Dammit, baby, answer." He got her voicemail. "Bones, it's me! Call me, as soon as you get this...I mean it. It's important."

He hung up and tried her office and then both their apartments, leaving some version of the same message in slightly more worried tones each time. This wasn't like her….at least, not anymore. Bones knew, because it'd come spilling across his lips one night in his bed a few months ago when he frantically reached for the comfort of her body after a particularly rough nightmare, just how nervous it made him not to be able to get her on the phone.

Calling her cell over and over that first night she'd gone missing in Albania, only to endlessly get her voicemail, had left its mark on him. And God bless her, ever since she'd found that out, he knew for a fact that she made every effort to either answer or return his calls at the very first possible moment just to reassure him. She had become meticulous about it in light of all they'd gone through together, though he knew full well that if it wasn't for those circumstances he'd have spent his entire lifetime occasionally having to track her down because she got engrossed in something squinty and didn't bother to check her messages.

The fact that she was so careful about it for him was one of the many actions that fully reinforced to him just how very much she actually loved him in return.

And the fact that she wasn't doing so at the moment terrified him. He'd no more than viciously stabbed the button to end the final call than he heard Cam's voice again.

"Tell me what you need, Seeley."

What he'd needed was to never have this feeling again as long as he lived. It took him a second to push down the sickening wash of deja vu that flooded him and force himself to fall back on his training. "Okay. Okay. All of you, top priority is finding out everything you can about this body and anything you can tell me about who killed her. Any detail, no matter how small or insignificant, I'm first to know about it. Got it? But Cam, if you could spare Angela to see if she can hack anything out of Bones' phone, find out who the hell called her? Mine and yours too, for that matter, find out how I sent you a text I don't know anything about."

Cam nodded once, sharply. "Done. Where will you be?"'

He was already backing away, eyes locked on the mutilated corpse on the ground. "I'm going to backtrack the route in, see if I can track Bones down. If I can't do that in about 10 minutes, I'm putting out an APB on her car and having the tech guys pinpoint her phone for me."

His footsteps had stopped, unable to tear himself away from the crime scene. Female, mid 30s. Pillowcase. Albanian snails. Gut-wrenching coincidence? Or could there be somebody from their ordeal he'd failed to eliminate? Somebody who was coming after them? After her? This couldn't possibly be coming back on them now, could it? He couldn't put voice to that tiny finger of suspicion just yet.

It was Hodgins who softly broke in, finally tearing Booth's gaze away from the sickening sight. "It's not her, you know."

"What? I know that." His answer was a little too fast.

Hodgins gave him a tiny smile. "Insect activity. I'll spare you the details, but this victim's been gone for at least 24 hours, Booth. No possible way it could be her."

He swallowed the lump in his throat. "Yeah, I know. So let's just do everything in our power to find this guy and make sure it never will be, yeah?"

Four pairs of sympathetic eyes were burning into his back as he turned and picked up the pace getting back to his vehicle to start looking for his partner, hoping against hope that there was some kind of horrible miscommunication and he was worrying for nothing.

... ooo ... ooo

He had no more than shut the door behind himself and inserted the key in the ignition, when a voice behind him had his hand briefly reaching for his gun. Until he recognized that voice.

"Don't make a scene...it's just the cavalry. Drive, we need to talk."

... ooo ... ooo

Booth's hand automatically returned to the key to crank the SUV, but his eyes were glued on the rearview mirror. He couldn't see anything, but he knew who was back there.

"Naji? What the hell..."

"You gone deaf, Seel? I said drive already. A few too many government types around here for a shy guy like me."

Booth's body obeyed while his mind was still racing. No sooner than he'd peeled out of the parking lot onto the street than Naji Basara appeared, somewhat gracelessly climbing over and falling across the center console to flop in the front passenger seat as Booth ripped around a corner. He winced, in what Booth just chalked up to Naji's typical melodrama, before gasping out, "Jeez, I said drive, not haul ass. You trying to get me killed, or just do it yourself?"

"What are you doing here? How'd you sneak in here?"

His old friend, whose honor and life he'd defended against racially-charged false accusations during their military days, and who had returned the favor by helping him invade the trafficking operation in Albania to save Bones, rolled his eyes dramatically skyward. "You forget what I do for a living? Don't answer that, I'm still not hiring you. There's something you need to know."

Booth's head turned toward Naji sharply. "Is this about Bones?"

Naji nodded, his expression now serious, lips drawn into a thin line. He might have looked a little pale, utterly exhausted maybe, but Booth didn't give it much thought. "Yeah, I hope not but it could be. Either her or you."

Booth didn't even flinch this time. Mission mode had taken over. "I knew it. That body back there...I already know there's an Albanian connection and that I was meant to find it. My people found what was probably a pillowcase over the victim's head, too. I don't even want to think it, but..."

Naji snorted. "Yeah. On the up side, you're about to have the fastest solved case in FBI history. I can tell you right now who did it, but damn you're not gonna like it."

"I'm gathering that," Booth gritted out through his teeth, trying to figure out who the hell he'd left alive over there that could possibly be holding a vendetta. To his knowledge, everybody that fit that description was dead, most of them at his own hands.

His friend had to draw a deep breath before he could bring himself to say it. He held up a thick manila file folder in his hands by way of peace offering as he finally took the plunge.

"Edon Tolka's alive, Seeley. He's here in D.C., and what's worse...I'm pretty sure he's got some high-dollar, high-tech help."

... ooo ... ooo

That hadn't been where he'd expected Naji to go, and Booth ended up giving him another reason to gripe about his driving. They just about ended up in the ditch.

"That...that's not possible," he finally managed.

"Why not? I'm pretty sure you didn't kill him." Although Booth might have convinced himself he'd imagined it in Albania, the disapproving tone in Naji's voice at this point left no doubt: he definitely thought Booth should have personally killed Edon, rather than hand-delivering him to the bookies he was fatally indebted too. And Naji had thought so from the beginning.

Booth shook his head furiously. "He was in deep, Noj. I gave him back to the bookies that wanted him. I know a little about how that works, the hard way, and Edon's at least six feet under. No. If anybody's come here looking for revenge, it's one of those bastards from that trafficking operation. Somebody we missed, somebody high up. Somebody that caught us on one of those damn cameras."

The file folder was being extended in Booth's direction again. "I get it. I really do. But you might want to have a look at this, Seel."

The soothing tone scared him just about as bad as it pissed him off. Naji was definitely not known for being either alarmist or tactful; if he was concerned enough to show up like this, and then get all sensitive, it meant they could be in for some serious trouble.

He spared a glance toward the folder, eyes immediately going back to scanning every detail of his surroundings as he slowly retraced Bones' most likely route. "Why don't you just fill me in? She was supposed to be on her way here, and I'm backtracking. What made you go looking into Edon to start with?"

Naji cleared his throat, a little nervously. "You did, getting all squirrely about it back in Albania. I had a feeling you hadn't quite done him in, like you wanted me to think you had."

Booth took his eyes off the road for a second to glare at him, and Naji held up a conciliatory hand.

"What? I've known you more than five minutes, all right? I didn't say it was a bad thing. I just had Irene put his name in our database when I got back, to keep a check on things. I hold onto more intel than God himself anyway, so it's not like it was a big deal or anything. Y'know, it wouldn't kill you to just say 'thank you' or something."

Booth's jaw was ticking dangerously. "You think I didn't check into him too? You think I never considered this? I checked that bastard's name every day for six months. I know he never turned back up for work; and that NATO guy he worked for, Kreshnik Benjamin, eventually filed a missing persons report on him a week after we left. Nothing ever turned up, just like I knew it wouldn't. All of his loans defaulted, his house got foreclosed, and he just vanished into thin air. His archaeological find was eventually discredited, the one thing he actually seemed to care about, and even that went completely unappealed because he's dead and gone."

Not really having the time for a not-so-healthy case of denial, Naji exercised his primary talent of being even more painfully blunt than Bones could be on a really bad day.

"Yeah, except for the part where he turned up a month ago with a shitload of nicely forged medical records claiming he'd been the victim of a hit and run accident, and had been in a coma in some hospital in Greece for nine months. Since we weren't exactly the proper authorities, and since we didn't exactly bother to fill the NATO guy in on what his star archaeologist had been up to on his off-days, Kreshnik Benjamin had no reason not to give the little prick his job back when he pulled a Lazarus and rose from the dead. And now he's here. Bastard's passport pinged on Irene's system three days ago, entering the country through the airport here in D.C."

Three days. The look Booth shot him would have scared the hell out of most people. Even Naji looked contrite as he continued.

"Yeah, Seel, I know exactly how long three days can be, all right? I'm sorry. I've been deep-under on what should've been a 24-hour mission for the last two months. Things got a little dicey, and I couldn't get out and get in touch with Irene until this morning for her to even tell me Edon had surfaced. I never told her this guy had something to do with you, or she'd have probably just contacted you herself."

Booth just continued glaring at the road ahead of him, no longer even looking Naji's direction.

Naji started fidgeting a little before he continued. "Well, I mean, maybe she would have. She gets a little frantic when I go all M.I.A. anyway. And then there's the other thing we've got going...now there's a story..."

"You couldn't pick up a phone instead of wasting time flying halfway around the world?" Booth cut him off. "Oh, I forgot, you don't take my calls these days."

Naji shot him a sidelong glance, cleared his throat again, and started over. "Yeah. Epically long story short: No, I couldn't trust your phone to call you, and I got here as fast as I could. We'll get to the phone thing...later. What I can tell you now is that Tolka's traveling with diplomatic status, and was traveling with some heeby-jeeby old skeletons he accompanied here that are bound for some museum. That was his ticket into town, which is just creepy all by itself, if you ask me. I mean, I really hate sociopaths, you know?"

Booth breathed deeply through his nose, trying to focus on staying calm. It might be Bones' only chance. His voice was deadly quiet, still refusing to believe the worst. "When I last saw him, he was bound and gagged, and a bunch of armed thugs were dragging him back into their warehouse. You're telling me he talked his way out of that, Naji? How?"

Naji gave him a disdainful look that if he didn't know better, he might have thought he'd learned from Bones herself. "Sociopath? Hello? In my line of work I'm practically the leading expert." His brow furrowed. "Which may be the most depressing statement I've ever made in my life, but hey, what the hell."

Booth wasn't in the mood for Sweets-style mumbo jumbo. "So he's a sociopath. So what?"

"So most of the ones I've run across could talk their way out of the 9th circle of hell if you don't see 'em coming. And don't forget something about those guys you gave him back to for the killing: they speak two languages, money and more money. If he somehow convinced them he's worth more to them alive than dead, then…well, you do the math. It would certainly explain his sudden technical know-how; you should see some of the technology the mob-types over there are coming up with to mess with people's phones, computers, what-have-you. We're talking sick stuff. Hasn't even got over here yet, but somebody doesn't stop it those guys'll take over the damn world. I knew it when I saw those medical records; they're damn good forgeries, and believe me, I'd know. Some big-wig somewhere with Europe's best tech guys on his payroll is backing this guy, and that's even scarier."

The reference to Naji having had a look at Tolka's fake medical records didn't escape Booth's notice. "You've seen them? The papers he showed up with?"

Naji thumped the file in his hand. "Right here, and a lot more too. You got someplace you can park? I don't think you're going to find what you're looking for just driving around."

... ooo ... ooo ...

By the time they'd parked in Booth's apartment parking lot and Naji had finished laying out the entire wealth of data he had printed off while en route on his private plane, Booth felt even more sick than he had previously.

Money. That was one thing that Tolka certainly wasn't finding in short supply anymore. Despite Booth's initial trepidation that Tolka must have returned to his earlier moneymaking scheme of abducting young women to sell to the trafficking operations - a possibility that gutted him, because he'd have taken the blame for each of those girls' losses squarely onto his own shoulders for not just killing the bastard when he had the chance - Naji was quick to dispel that fear.

After all, he opined to Booth, Tolka wouldn't much care what occupation he had to ply in order to stay alive and roll in plenty of money, so long as he got to do it; selling women had simply been a means to the end he wanted, not a favored career choice. And there was plenty of money in plenty of other types of criminal endeavors.

Naji's theory was that the bookies' bosses had probably seen Tolka's NATO connections (and resulting ease crossing customs) as an invaluable opportunity to put him to use running drugs for them to pay back his debt; so they had offered their financial backing and technological know-how to help him forge medical records and regain his job once he'd physically recovered from what Booth did to him. He also suspected that if that were the case, Edon had probably brought more into the D.C. area with him than some ancient remains slated for study and display in a local museum; somewhere close by there was likely a small fortune in drugs.

But drugs probably weren't his only reason for being in the area. It was just a little too convenient that Tolka's first international run for his would-be-murderers-turned-benefactors had brought him not only to the U.S., but straight to Booth and Brennan's home town. Naji didn't even believe in small coincidences, and this was a big one.

The pillowcase and distinctly Albanian snails left on a body that was sure to bring in Booth and Brennan said enough about Tolka's true intentions. At the very least, he was messing with them.

And then there was the matter of the mysterious phone call Booth told him about, the one that Brennan had received that morning. It was inherently obvious that Booth desperately wished he had paid more attention to that call.

Which brought Naji to his next problem.

On his long flight over, he'd had one of his tech guys go digging into whatever he could pull remotely from Brennan's phone, and Booth's too. What that remote survey had found was chilling, and he'd saved that info until the end for a few reasons - not the least of which was the fact that he dreaded seeing the look on his friend's face when he told him.

It was far more than a few forged medical records that had led him to believe Edon Tolka had some pretty heavy technological backing.

The virus that had been uploaded into Dr. Brennan's phone through the text she had received that morning was like nothing he'd ever seen before anywhere, and it was enough to make his blood run cold with the implications. First, she'd received a call which had been routed through an FBI extension to look legit; the following text that had ostensibly given her directions to the crime scene had instead utterly hijacked her phone. All incoming and outgoing calls after that point were jammed, along with texts and anything other than what the perpetrator wanted her to see and transmit. It would continue to shut down more systems as the virus replicated.

Even more scary than that, the exact coordinates she had been sent were blocked out and encrypted more securely than even any system Naji's team could hack through. He had his best guys working on it, but he couldn't begin to say where she had been sent when she left home that morning.

And Booth was really not going to like that.

… ooo … ooo …

Booth took in everything he had heard for approximately two seconds, before bursting out of his car and heading across the parking lot toward his apartment building. Naji hopped out too, then sucked in a sharp breath and reached out to grab the side of the truck for support. Through a pained haze, he watched Booth striding quickly for his apartment, probably planning either to check that his partner hadn't come home or to simply arm and prepare himself with God-knew-what-kind of non-FBI-sanctioned crap that would get him fired. He still wasn't giving him a job, Naji thought dimly.

It was a few more steps before Booth finally turned around and really saw him.

Not a moment too soon, either. Naji was doubled over, leaning up against the passenger side of the truck where he'd just exited, and clutching at his ribs as a fast-moving blood stain spread through his shirt.

TO BE CONTINUED...