Chapter Three: One Question

Booth hated nights like these, when he glanced at his watch every five minutes, wishing he had made it home in time to eat dinner with his family. It was 8:30 and he was just finishing up some closing paperwork on a case. Since the birth of his children, he and Bones were forced to make some adjustments to their work schedules. Gone were the nights when both of them returned home just in time for bed, only to get up and do the same thing the next day.

Tullia had called his cell phone, asking if he would be home for dinner, putting on her best pout when he told her it was not likely. As precocious as his daughter could be, she could act her age when she wanted to.

He stretched and slipped into his suit jacket, grateful that what had turned into the work night was over. Twenty-five minutes later, he pulled into the garage, smiling when Hanley poked out of the interior door, a grin almost identical to his peering back at him.

"Hey, Bub," he told his youngest son. "Save me some dinner?"

"Parker's here!" he yelled instead, leaving the door open for his dad. "Mom is making him wash the dishes!"

"I'm not making him," Temperance said. She pressed a kiss against his lips, pulling his jacket off his shoulders. "It just so happens that you've raised a very polite young man, and he offered. Why would I say no?"

Booth grinned. He loved coming home to this every night. This woman. What had he done to deserve her and his wonderful family? Wrapping his hands around her waist, he kissed her again, only pulling away when Hanley made gagging noises and motioned his finger down his throat.

Parker was indeed washing dishes, but dried his hands when he saw his father and allowed himself to get pulled into his father's embrace. "They're not bothering you too much, are they Park?" Booth asked, hardly able to believe his little boy was approaching eighteen.

Parker shook his shaggy hair from his eyes. "Nah. They're annoying but I can't help but like them." He shot a glance to his sister. Tullia stood with her hands on her hips but for once kept her mouth shut. Though she never vocalized her love for Parker like Hanley did, Booth and Bones knew she looked up to him. They were both so thankful to have a teenager who, for the most part, was a good example.

He caught up a bit with Parker, though they had met for lunch the previous week and he came over for dinner a few times between his visits. Now that he had a driver's license, he and Rebecca no longer were required to shuttle him around and Parker could visit more freely.

They had saved Booth a plate, and as it warmed in the microwave, Tullia tugged on his sleeve. "I want to hear more of the story. You promised us last night. You left off right after Mom found those bodies in the well."

Parker rose his eyebrows. He was accustomed to Tullia's strange vocabulary – she was half Bones, after all – but glanced at his father for an explanation.

"These two," Booth motioned to his younger children, "wouldn't settle down the other night, so I started telling them the story of me and Bones."

"More precisely, he's telling us about a case," Tullia said. "Anyway, Mom had just found two bodies in a well..."

Parker laughed and sat down on the couch next to Bones. His visits were never normal. What had he expected this time?


"It wouldn't take long for this degree of decomposition to occur given the open-air source that the well was," Bones said as she surveyed the bodies on the forensic platform. "But it's unlikely that the victims died in the well. It's far more logical that they were murdered and then disposed of at the site." Brennan mulled over the possibilities. "There's hardly any flesh left. Dr. Saroyan, is it possible to ID them from any of it?"

"I can extract some DNA from the tissue, see if it matches anything in a database, but other than dental records, that's about all we've got. Unless you've got something up your sleeve." Cam was not worried. Dr. Brennan almost always came through for her. "Any idea on cause of death?"

Brennan's eyebrows furrowed. "I'll have to do some testing to confirm, but now that I take a closer look at the skeleton, it appears that there are some marks on the sacrum and coxal bones of the adult female. They look to be from a knife or a similarly-shaped weapon."

Cam grimaced. "Were they fatal?"

"Most likely. To have such deep bone lacerations indicates an extreme amount of force. It's unlikely anyone could survive an attack like that."

"And the girl?"

"I see no signs of trauma. Malnutrition is the only thing I can logically conclude. It seems to be far more advanced than the older female's. It was a very prolonged case."

"She starved to death?"

Brennan nodded. "It appears so. Angela's working on facial reconstruction for both of them, so hopefully that will lead us in the right direction."

As Cam was explaining that she would run DNA from each of the victims through the system, Bones heard her phone chirp the tone she had chosen specifically for Booth. "Booth is questioning the geocachers. I guess they're suspects. He wants me over there."


"I didn't know you got to ask the bad guys questions," Hanley remarked, sitting pleasantly beside Parker. "That's really cool."

"Hey," Booth cut in. "What about me? That's what I do all the time, Bud, and you don't think that's cool?"

"Duh. Mom gets to figure out how dead people died and talk to bad guys."

Grinning back at Bones, Booth slung his arm around her and said, "Well, I've always said your mother is the better of the two of us."

Bones cocked her head to the side. "Career wise, I may have a few more objectives, but that hardly makes me better."

It was Booth's turn to be surprised. "Temperance Brennan, is that you? Admitting that you're not better than someone? What have you done with my wife?"

Though it had been years since his dad and Bones had gotten together, sometimes Parker was caught off guard by their banter. After just more than ten years as a couple, he had thought that trait might start to simmer. He would never admit it to anyone, but seeing them gave Parker some hope that he could have a similar relationship.

"It's fascinating that the two victims had different causes of death," Tullia said. "I wonder how they ended up in that well together."

Booth sometimes wondered if the story he was telling his children was all that appropriate. He had certainly skipped over some of the extremely gory sections of the tale, and he would have to censor later on, especially when it concerned the night that he and Bones got together. They grew up with talk of corpses and murders. They're normal enough, if not exceptional. They want to hear it...

"You're lucky it's Friday," Booth said, thankful to interrupt his churning brain. "Or else I'd be ending here."

"You're gonna finish the story tonight?" Hanley asked eagerly, playing with a Hot Wheels car, running it up and down Parker's leg.

Bones twisted her leg with Booth's, one hand secured on the back of his neck, rubbing softly. "Oh, this was a very complicated case," she teased. "We could stay up all night and the story still wouldn't be over."


"So you're looking around the field where the bodies were found, for what? A clue?" Booth asked number one of the four geocachers.

Sweets had already explained the basics of geocaching to him. There was a Web site people signed up for, then left clues and coordinates to the location of their cache. Some people chose parks and other public grounds, and some members were trustworthy enough to hide a cache on their own property. Whoever decided to look for the cache would use a handheld GPS to get close, and when they found the it, would sign the log and place it back in its hiding spot for the next geocacher.

His file said the man he was interviewing was 19, but Booth thought he looked 14. He reminded him of Sweets, who was standing outside the interrogation room, on the other side of the two-way mirror. "It's not really a clue. You can leave whatever you want. Little trinkets, trackers, stuff like that. But it's mostly about signing the log then reporting it back to the site. We went straight for the well because it seemed like a good place to hide something. We were thinking the log would be in a film canister and attached to the underside of the roof."

"But instead you found the bodies?"

The guy nodded. "We found the canister with the log in it, too. You think we had something to do with this? You think we killed those people?"

"We're just trying to figure out why you were there, if geocaching wasn't just a convenient excuse to uncover the bodies."

"You mean the person who left the log? You think they used the site to lead us there?"

Booth shrugged. "It's possible. Can you remember how many people had signed the log before you?"

"Maybe twenty or so. The last one was dated over two months ago. I remember because it was the same day as my mom's birthday. We gave the cache to one of the officers. You think those bodies were in there for months?"

"This isn't about what I think, Mr. Schmidt. It's about what I can prove."

Bones stood beside Sweets on the other side of the two-way mirror, watching how easy Booth made it seem to interrogate someone. It never appeared to be very difficult until she had tried it and failed miserably. She admired his demeanor, how comfortable suspects seemed to be in his presence, even when he was grilling them about a disappearance or a murder.

She vaguely heard Sweets mumbling commands to Booth, but they all knew that this group of kids had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Booth made his way to Bones and Sweets, noting their silence. "They didn't do it," Booth sighed. "They're just a bunch of unlucky kids whose hobby was just ruined."

He looked to Sweets, who shifted his eyes toward Brennan and gave him a puzzled look. "Dr. Brennan?" he asked, attempting to rouse her from her long stare at Booth.

God, (not that she believed in God) what was it that had suddenly made Booth more attractive? Why had she never noticed how broad his shoulders were or how she could get lost in the brown of his eyes? This certainly was not the first time she had registered that he was an attractive male; she was not that detached. She noticed how other women ogled him. But this was different. Bad, maybe. This survey she was doing now, it was not 'anthropologically speaking,' as usual. It was something else. Somewhere she would never allow herself to go.

Booth waved his hand in front of her face, curious why her eyes were fixed on his face, then seemed to be roaming his body. He could not hold back his flush.

"Earth to Bones," he sang. She finally snapped out of it, flashing him a guilty smile. "I apologize," she whispered. "I don't know what got into me."

Sweets smirked. "Dr. Brennan just displayed the typical signs of attraction–"

Booth cut him off. The level of embarrassment about to make itself between them could not be further encouraged by a psychiatrist who looked twelve. It had no place between he and Bones, period.

Even if he wanted what Sweets was about to say to be true. More than anything.


Booth had just made his way downstairs after tucking in Hanley and Tullia. He spotted his wife and Parker chatting on the couch.

"They seemed to eat up that story," Parker said. "You're sure you're not embellishing a bit?"

Bones rolled her eyes. "Your father is a very good storyteller. Often people will tell him that he's very animated."

Booth sat down between them, throwing an arm around each of them. "Why, you want to take over, Bones? Think you can do better?"

Park laughed immediately at the typical defensive tone that shot from Bones' mouth in reply to his father. "I certainly got a lot of exercise in storytelling upon the birth of our two children. I even remember reading to Parker a few times when he was younger. I'm sure I'm more than capable of entertaining them–"

Booth cut her off, as he often did, with a kiss, wishing to take it further as they sometimes would on the couch, after they were sure the kids were asleep.

Parker tried not to roll his eyes in mock disgust, and was thankful when they eventually pulled apart. He turned toward both of them. "I have just one question."

"Shoot," Booth said, tapping his fingers against Bones', savoring the time he spent with his family.

"Why the hell did it take you two so long to get together?"


You know what to do. ;)