Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I own nothing here but the idea.

Author's Note: This is written from Brennan's POV.

By the time we reached the crash site the air already felt thick with heat despite the heavy gray clouds above us. As the SUV climbed along the winding service road the cloud seemed to lower until we were driving through fog. It wasn't as dense as the night before, and we quickly parked up in a row of similar vehicles. The heat hit me as though I'd slammed into a wall, and I shrugged off my jacket as I reached into the back seat and pulled out my field kit. Booth locked the car and waited for me to make my way to the front. His hand found my back and rested there as he guided me over fallen logs and through blackened trees. I fought hard to suppress the shiver that came from him making contact with me and concentrated on walking to the main crash site without falling down.

Morgue personnel swarmed around the shell of the plane. I counted three working on a set of broken remains that were flagged to the far left of the site, whilst a group of six huddled around a collection of flags within the fuselage. I scanned the area, looking for a place to start.

"With all these hands we shouldn't be here too long today." Booth followed me as I crossed to a flag six feet away from the main crash site. "The sooner you can identify the remains the sooner we can get back to DC. The heat here's killing me." He swiped a hand across his forehead for effect.

I slipped into the white overalls that had become recovery scene fashion and knealt down beside the set of remains. They were small, those of a child no more than eight. I gently examined the child, my gloved hands softly prodding burnt flesh. The child had been a little girl, and as I quickly worked I imagined all the things she could have been. She had been a dancer in life, visible in her ankle bones and her feet, and I pictured her twirling and leaping across a spot-lit stage as proud parents watched from the wings. A tear slipped down my cheek and I rubbed it away with the back of my hand before standing.

"Female, aged between six and eight." I kept my voice low and taut as I filled out an identification form and handed it to the technician nearest to me. I turned to Booth. "She loved to dance, and when she was five she broke the pinky on her left foot." My voice was softer, my eyes downcast.

"Bones, we don't have to do this, you know. We can go to the morgue. You can begin your identification."

I shook my head, glancing at the group still huddled around the fuselage. "It will be quicker if I do it," I told him as I pulled on a clean set of gloves. I crossed to another set of flagged remains. Booth followed me with his eyes, waited until I was knealt by the remains and then stood a little to my right.

These remains were those of an adult male, and I told Booth as much. "Possibly one of the teachers or a parent volunteer," I mused.

Booth checked the wrinkled manifest in my field kit. "According to this there were only four males on board the plane. Two were the pilot and co-pilot, one was a teacher and one a parent." He folded the sheet of paper and tucked it into his back pocket.

My eyes narrowed as I studied the victim's skull, devoid of all skin and tissue. I could clearly see areas where bones had been fused, around the nose and the chin. I checked again that the remains were male.

"Booth, this man had plastic surgery," I concluded. I pointed to the areas I had seen. "He had his nose and chin reshaped. Identifying this man isn't going to be easy."

By lunchtime I was in the county morgue, approximately ten miles from the crash site, in Springfield. I had been allocated a lab about a third of the size of my office at the Jeffersonian Institute, and I had to struggle to move around the examining table without bumping into the deep stainless steel sink and cabinet of instruments that stood on the wall opposite the door. Booth had struggled to sit comfortably on the chair pushed next to the cabinet and had opted to stand in the open doorway.

I quickly took photos of the remains as they lay on the table, taking several of the skull from different angles. I had set my laptop computer up on a wide shelf above the sink and connected it to a satellite receiver. As I downloaded the photos to the computer, I called up Angela. Her face quickly came into view on the screen, a puzzled expression on her face.

"Sweetie, are you there?"

I realised that I had set the camera too high up, and I stood back so that my face was just visible. "I'm here, Angela."

"Where are you? It looks like you're in a broom closet."

"I'm in the morgue," I replied. "This was the biggest office they had available. The pathologists are working at the community centre just down the street."

"Welcome to small-town America." She noticed Booth stood in the doorway. "Hey, Booth."

Booth nodded in reply. I turned back to the camera. "Did you get the photos I sent?"

"Zach's just pulling them up now," Angela told me. Zach Addy was my assistant, working for his PhD in Forensic Anthropology. I had no doubt that one day he would be running my lab. "Okay, what am I looking at?"

"The remains are male," I told her, walking around to the head of the examining table. "Approximately fourty to fourty-five years of age. What I'm concerned with is the skull." I quickly explained my theory that he had had plastic surgery.

On the screen, Angela nodded her head. "I agree," she replied. "It'll take me a while but I'll get working on a face and get back to you." She ended the connection and I closed the laptop. Then I returned to the table and began packing away the remains.

"Now what?" Booth asked from his position in the door.

I shrugged out of my lab coat. "Now we go and get lunch," I replied smiling. "I'm starving."

We drove back to our motel in silence, each involved in our own thoughts. Mine were about the body I had just worked on, and about how quickly I would be able to get an ID. I didn't know what Booths' were about, but he kept glancing over at me. I wasn't sure if I wanted to know.

Pulling up outside our room I got out quickly and unlocked the door. The beds had been made while we were out, the stained comforter having found its way back onto my bed. I pulled some clean clothes out of the closet and gestured to the bathroom as Booth settled on the sofa, flicking through the black and white t.v. channels.

I stepped under the hot shower and washed away the dust and dirt of the morning, scrubbing my skin with soap until it felt sore. I dried quickly, changing into a pair of stone-coloured slacks and an olive green shirt. I brushed my hair, letting it fall in loose curls on my shoulders, and slid my feet into a pair of tan sandles. When I stepped out the bathroom I saw that Booth had changed into jeans and a pale blue tee.

"Ready to go?" he asked as I tucked my wallet into my pocket. I nodded and he held open the door. "I thought we'd walk, seeing as it's such a nice day. I saw a diner about two blocks back." He led the way.

Silence fell between us again, but this time it felt uncomfortable. This time I knew what both of us had in mind: the near-kiss.

"Are we going to talk about what happened this morning?" Booth was the first to speak.

I looked down at my feet, concentrating on moving forward. "Nothing happened this morning."

Booth exhaled sharply. "Okay then, what nearly happened this morning. When we almost kissed."

"There's nothing to discuss, is there? You said it yourself. We almost kissed."

"Wouldn't you like to know why?" I followed as Booth rounded a corner.

"We had a moment," I replied, not really knowing what the 'moment' had been.

"A 'moment'?" His voice was shrill, incredulous.

"That's right. I was there, you were there... It was a moment."

"You can't explain it." His voice had a jokey quality to it. He was right, though. I couldn't explain it.

"It was the heat. The situation of sharing a room. You were just following your inate male tendancies."

He grunted. "Meanwhile, what were you doing?" We had reached the diner, and he stood with his hand on the door.

"I was..." I paused, not sure what I wanted to say. "Nothing happened," I finished lamely.

Booth grinned and opened the door, standing back to let me in. "You wanted to kiss me," he said in a sing song voice.

"No, I didn't," I told him, taking a seat at the far end of the diner.

"Yes you did!" He had a boyish smile on his face and I couldn't help but smile back.

"Maybe I did." I kept my voice low.

He opened his mouth to speak but a waitress approached the table, notepad in hand. She looked to be about sixty, her round body forced into the aqua blue dress she wore. A nametag attached to her dress identified her as 'Mindy'. Her bleached hair hung in a ponytail that swung from side to side as she regarded us. "What'll it be?"

I quickly looked at the menu and ordered a glass of lemonade and a club sandwich. Booth ordered a root beer and a steak sandwich, and the waitress scribbled the order onto the pad. She took the menus from our hands and turned to go, her tennis shoes squeaking across the blue and white checked linoleum.

"It's okay, you know." Booth's voice was barely audible above the din coming from the retro jukebox in the corner.

"What's okay?" I asked, genuinely confused.

Booth played with his paper napkin, folding and unfolding it. "If you wanted to kiss me. It's okay." His eyes never left the napkin.

I waited until Mindy had placed our drinks in front of us before I spoke. "Did you want me to kiss you?" I studied Booth intently.

He nodded, looked up and met my eyes. "Yeah." His voice was breathy, and he took a sip of root beer.

I took a sip of my own drink, my heart pounding in my chest. I felt like a schoolgirl, declaring her love to her crush. "I wanted to, too."

His head snapped up and he looked at me, a small smile playing on his lips. He reached out and took my hands in his. "I'm glad."

At that moment our meals arrived and I quickly disentangled my hands from Booth's as our plates were set down in front of us.

We ate in silence, and when we were done Booth paid the bill while I waited outside in the hazy sunshine that was trying to push through the clouds. I heard thunder rumble in the distance, and the sun disappeared behind a cloud.

I peered through the window next to me and saw Booth queuing at the counter to pay. A woman who looked as though she had ten years on Mindy was slowly jabbing the keys on the cash register while a smartly dressed man waited impatiently, clutching a fistful of notes.

I began to walk down the street, stopping in front of a store that sold camping equipment. I could make out a couple inside, father and son, trying on hiking boots. My heart tightened as I thought of the parents who had lost their children in the plane crash. They wouldn't get to go hiking or camping.

Behind me I heard the screech of rubber against tarmac, and I half turned in time to see a blacked out pick-up truck hurtling up the road. It stopped so that the back window of the cab was level with me. The window rolled down a few inches and I threw myself on the floor quick enough for the bullet that came hurtling out to go sailing over my head and smash into the window behind me. Screams errupted from the store and I watched from my position on the floor as the truck tore off leaving tyre marks on the road.

I shakily pulled myself up onto my feet and surveyed the broken glass behind me. Shards had sprinkled the window display, and the bullet had lodged itself into a manequin wearing camouflage. I was examining the model's wound when Booth raced out of the diner towards me. He grabbed me by my shoulders.

"What happened?" he demanded, shaking me slightly.

I relayed the story of being shot at - not for the first time in my life - working on keeping my voice steady. I failed miserably, and when Booth pulled me into a tight embrace I didn't pull away. We stayed like that for a few moments before he gently kissed the top of my head and reached into his pocket for his cell phone.

I glanced back into the store as Booth talked in clipped tones into his cell phone. The young boy who had been trying on boots clung to his father, sobbing. The older man was obviously shaken as he attempted to soothe the boy. I watched them until I could hear the distant whirr of police patrol cars, and until Booth gently guided me down the street.

I didn't realise I was back at the motel until Booth sat me down on the sofa. He sat down next to me, concern in his eyes.

"You don't have to sit staring at me," I told him, leaning forward, my hands on my knees. "I won't break if you look away."

Booth stood and walked over to the window. He pushed back the yellowed net curtain and peered out through the dirty glass. "Someone's not happy about us being on the investigation," he said as he continued to look out of the window. He sighed deeply. "I want you to go back to DC."

My ears burned and I sprung up from my seat. "What?" I was incredulous.

Booth turned to face me. "It's obvious that we've rattled a few cages. Seems to me that there's something or someone up at that crash site that they don't want us to find."

My eyes narrowed as I thought. "The Mexican drug dealer?"

A nod. "Exactly."

"But we haven't found any evidence that he was even on that plane." The words slipped out of my mouth as my brain made the connection. "The John Doe who'd had plastic surgery."

Another nod.

"Do you have any records on him, any photos that would ID him?" My brain was back in gear now, and I paced across the room.

"That's the problem," Booth said as he leant against the wall. "Our informant didn't give us any names. If we had a name, we could've matched it to the body." He stood in thought for a moment. "If Angela can get a picture for us, we can get an ID, but likelihood is if he's changed his face he's changed his name."

I walked over to my bed and pulled my laptop out from underneath it. I quickly powered it up and checked my e-mail messages. There was one from Angela. I gestured for Booth to fetch the portable printer I carried from the SUV.

Moments later he was back and plugged the printer into the wall. It whirred to life and I printed out the image Angela had sent me. We sat on the floor by the bed for a moment, the photo on the floor between us as we studied the handsome features of the man we suspected of drug dealing. His nose and chin were sharp, his cheeks full. Angela had given him blue eyes and a head of blond hair, and I had to admit that he wasn't unattractive. I pulled myself up from the floor and grabbed my jacket.

"Where are you going?" Booth stood and followed me as I headed to the door.

"To the morgue. The records of all the people on the plane will be there by now. We can get an ID on John Doe and unravel who he really was."

Booth was hesitant. "Do you really think it's a good idea? Bones, people are shooting you because of this guy. Maybe you should stay here and I should go to the morgue."

Sometimes it was endearing when Booth tried to protect me. This wasn't one of those times. "And in the meantime I get shot at here? I've got a job to do, Booth. I'm going to the morgue." I opened the door and paused, my hand still on the knob. "Are you coming?"

Booth sighed, clearly fighting his emotions. "Fine," he said at last. "But I'm driving."

I smiled slightly and headed to the SUV.