Hunting the hunter

Chapter 1

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

Warning(s): Remember that this story will NOT have a B&B happy ending.

This morning we found Max Kennan's body. He's been dead the whole week. He was killed the same day that Brennan ran away with our daughter.

The surveillance found in the house I used to share with Brennan and the tampered equipment told me that Pelant was hunting Brennan. Killing Max proved that he had been waiting for them to run; he had been expecting it. He was a week ahead of us.

This psychopath was hunting Brennan and my baby girl and all I could do was vomit on the stairs of the platform in the lab.

Flynn stood beside me, gave some water, and snapped me out my shock by asking just one question. "How do we hunt down this guy?"

I looked at him not understanding his question. He was the agent here; it was his case. Why was he asking me? Yes, during the past week we proved that Brennan was innocent or at least we created enough doubt to convince Flynn to board his suspect's pool. He took Brennan out of his suspect's list but I didn't think that he was convinced of her innocence. And yes, he considered Pelant a suspect, but only because there was a lot of manipulated technology in the case and he was a hacker. There was no proof against him, solid or otherwise. I knew that we hadn't convinced Flynn that Pelant was our guy, yet. Or so I thought.

"I thought that you didn't believe us," Angela voiced my doubts about the other agent to the agent himself.

Flynn nodded, understanding our disbelief. "I didn't. I believed that you believed her innocent and Pelant guilty. But you created enough doubt for me to go over his interrogation tape… and… well, no cop would see that and not believe him guilty, at least of the other crimes… I still have my doubts about Sawyer's murder. But Christine's safety has to be my priority, so I'm willing to trust you for now."

"Okay, so what do we do now?" Cam asked. "We've gone over all the evidence over and over again, and we still can't prove him guilty nor can we find him."

"Which is why I was asking Booth," Flynn told the squints. "Booth, you're the best prepared here to hunt down a psycho… I hate admitting it, but I need your expertise here… but, everything goes by me. You're way too close to the case," he added the last part seriously, letting me know that if I break the rules I was out again.

I nodded numbly at his words. If asking permission to take a piss was going to get me in the case I'll ask like a good little boy. I needed to find my daughter. I needed my baby girl back in my arms.

Wendell was the first to speak. "We do have new evidence, Dr. Saroyan," he said pointing to Max's body.

"Yes, we do," Cam admitted, allowing her sorrow at the situation to show on her face.

It was obvious that none of us were completely out of the shock. Seeing Max Kennan, the man that killed, gutted, and torched the FBI Deputy Director to protect his daughter, dead had affected all of us greatly.

However, I found myself unsurprised by it. Max was the obstacle that Pelant needed to overcome to get Brennan. This was the first logical move for him.

"So we study the evidence we found at the crime scene and Max's body," Hodgins said.

"Max's car," I whispered. Brennan left in one car, and Max ran in the opposite direction, he must have had another car.

"You think that Max had another car?" Flynn asked. "But that means that they ran in two different directions and then planned on meeting someplace."

"Yes, if you followed Brennan they would need a second car," I pointed out simply. Max would have thought of that: changing cars is a classic move to confuse the cops.

Concentrating on the case, on finding Brennan and our baby, it made me feel less useless and my mind started clearing some. For the first time since they ran away, I felt that I could really start thinking logically. I felt stronger than I have felt all week.

I stood up. I was shaking, but at least my legs supported me. My steps were unsteady, but I managed to join the team in the platform and I rested my body on the handrail facing the squints.

"Okay, I'll have the FBI search the area to see if we find it, but for all we know he could have taken it."

"No. This guy is a planner; he would have had a plan in place for this situation so he would have his own car," I argued. I was convinced of this. Pelant had planned everything to the detail. He wouldn't have left the car to fate.

"You think that he planned all this, that he had a plan in place in case she escaped?" Flynn asked, unsure of the veracity of my words.

"I think he had a plan for both cases. Why do you think I called Hacker and manipulated him into putting extra security measures for Brennan in prison?" I almost shouted, frustrated. I couldn't stop the feeling that Flynn didn't know how dangerous Pelant really was and that was frustrating me. He asked for my expertise; yet he was arguing every step of the way.

"There's no record of that call," Flynn said, clearly demanding an explanation from me.

"There is. Just not where you were looking. I didn't want to set up a time for Christine's baptism on the phone. He had changed our ring tones. He had manipulated a call…I couldn't know what else he had tampered with. So I went there to talk to the priest in person and called from his office," I explained as patiently as I could. I felt angry. All my preparations were useless.

Flynn nodded. He guy was thinking hard, I could tell. I could practically see the smoke coming out of his head from him attempting to use his brain for a change. I probably would have found it amusing if it had been a normal case. "So again, Booth, how do we hunt down this guy?"

"We follow the evidence," Wendell said. "We have Max's body. You find for us Max's car so that we can go over it too… and if we find nothing we look again."

I nodded. Wendell was right, or at least, partially right. The squints needed to go over all the new evidence. I didn't think that they would find anything though.

"You need to investigate his life, all of it," Sweets said bursting into the lab. We all turned to look at him surprised to see the shrink. Flynn glared at him. He shouldn't have been here, he was off the case and he obviously didn't like the shrink disobeying him. "What? You didn't really expect me to go home and just sit while this is happening, right?"

The looks on our faces must have told him that we did, so he shut up until Flynn reminded him that he was off the case and that he shouldn't even be here. "I can help and I'll obey you the entire time, Agent Flynn," he said in his most convincing voice. "And I promise that the next time my profile matches to more than one person I will let you come to that decision on your own so that I don't hurt your feelings again."

Flynn allowed Sweets to stay but before he could talk again, I did it, "Sweets is right. Pelant had been like this all his life, we need to investigate him in depth. And Angela, I need you to keep looking through all his hacker thingies, especially the library scheme."

"Okay, but why? I already know how it works… I'll keep trying to prove that it was him, but how is that going to help us to find Bren and Christine?"

"Because he doesn't know that. He's arrogant; he thinks that his alibi is fool proof, that we could never find out how he manipulated the GPS system. He thinks that his system is perfect," I stated.

"You think that he may use it again," Angela said.

I nodded. I not only thought that he would use it again I hoped that he would because the truth was that he had planned for both scenarios while I only planned for one. I thought that I had succeeded in convincing her to stay; I didn't and now we were a week behind Pelant.

I was angry at Brennan for not trusting me, but I was also angry at myself for not preventing this. I needed to save them. I couldn't go back to Brennan, but I wanted her safe. I wanted my baby safe.

I did my best to concentrate on the case. Flynn, Sweets, and I started investigating Pelant's life while the rest of the squints did their thing.

Soon we had results. Angela discovered that there was a glitch in the baby's camera that matched the time of her baptism. It didn't record anything during two minutes. That was probably when Pelant went into the house and manipulated everything. The house is only forty minutes away from my church, by car he would have gotten there just about when the service ended. But he couldn't have known the details of the baptism… and even if he had found them somehow… How did he found them? And did he kill Max in the middle of the street and in the middle of the day?

He found Max, killed him and returned him to the church a week after actually killing him. He had a good plan, and his elaborated crime scenes meant that he was playing with us. He was confident enough in his plan to play with us and that was terrifying.

The scariest thing wasn't that though. Almost at midnight, Cam found a photograph from an old Polaroid inside Max's thoracic cavity. When Angela cleaned and restored it we saw Christine's crib and on the reverse an address.

We went to the address: Flynn, Cam and I. Cam got her old revolver out of her office and refused to let me go alone with Flynn. However, when we got there and I saw that the SWAT team was waiting for us I told her to stay outside.

The place looked like an old abandoned house, a normal family house where someone had lived happy in the past. It looked calm and quiet, peaceful even, but Pelant had directed us here so I was sure that it was anything but peaceful. My gut was again telling me that tonight wasn't going to be a good night.

Johnson, the team leader, walked to us when Flynn's SUV stopped. He wordlessly gave me a vest and a rifle. He looked at Flynn closely and ordered him to stay with Cam. Flynn argued, but Johnson just ignored him, which clearly pissed Flynn off. If it weren't such a tense situation I probably could have laughed at the look of fury and irritation that was on his face.

We got into position. Johnson used hand commands to order me to stay behind him as we prepared to go in.

A week and a day had passed since Brennan ran away with our baby. The same amount of time had passed since Pelant killed Max. Pelant himself gave us this address today when he left Max's body for us to find.

I heard the door being busted open and the smell of death caught me. I could only pray that what I found inside would not be my baby girl.

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