A/N: Thanks to everyone who has read and/or reviewed! I'm planning on updating weekly, because then I can stay a chapter or two ahead. Please enjoy, and let me know what you thought if you can spare the time :)


Chapter Two
Angela glanced up at the retreating backs of Booth and Brennan, but decided not to call them back. She had some work to do before the few frames of footage they had could be of any use- and even then, she wasn't sure how much she could pull from the tapes.
At the very top corner of the frame, only moments after her first glimpse of their mystery suspect, another pair of feet emerged. Angela could just about make out a duo of heeled shoes through the dense layer of fog that stained the picture. It happened so fast, she had to rewind and watch twice more as the suspect sprang from the gloom and the victim crumpled. Within ninety seconds, a car left the parking lot, headlights switched off. A well-rehearsed routine.
For an hour or so, Angela worked on the small amount of footage she had. She managed to pull the license plate, and texted the details to Booth. There wasn't much more she could do, so she decided to call it a night, and bumped into Cam on her way through the lab, her bag over her shoulder.

"Finishing up? Find anything?" Angela grimaced.

"Actually, yeah. I'm certain that Julie Hill was abducted from the parking lot. I got a license plate; I sent the details to Booth but it looks more likely that it was Julie's car rather than the killer's."

"He didn't drive in?"

"No, he walked in. The guard was asleep." Cam rolled her eyes and groaned.

"Maybe if he'd managed to actually do his job, that poor woman would be alive right now." Angela nodded, her expression forlorn.

"I know, right? It's just awful." A moment of silence lapsed between them. "What about you, any luck on the DNA?" Cam nodded, meeting her gaze.

"I'm thinking about calling Booth and Dr. Brennan back in. I didn't get a match, but it did pull up several open case files- other rapes and murders over several counties." Angela stopped dead in her tracks.

"So we've got a serial killer on our hands? Awesome." She contemplated for a moment. "I don't think Bren's slept in a while. Can it wait till morning, do you think?"

"There's no need to worry about me, although your concern is appreciated." Both women jumped, turning to see Brennan clicking towards them in her heels. "Zack called me. He thinks he's found the cause of death. What did you say about the DNA?" Cam explained to Brennan, and then again to Booth as he jogged up behind them.

"I ran the plate," He told Angela. "Car belonged to Julie Hill. I've put out an APB- if the killer's still driving her car around or if it's been dumped, we'll find it."

"Good, it may help us figure out where she was murdered."

"It wasn't at Pohick Bay?"

"No, Hodgins found trace evidence to suggest that she was killed elsewhere and her body dumped." Booth scratched his chin thoughtfully.

"Odd place to dump a body. Why leave it somewhere it's sure to be found?"

"Maybe the killer likes the attention?" Cam suggested. Brennan shook her head, suddenly breaking away and walking quickly towards the main lab, where Zack stood staring, engrossed, at the bones.

"Let's not jump to conclusions." She threw over her shoulder. Booth smirked as he rushed to fall into step with her, waving his goodbye to the two women. "What did you find, Zack?"

"I've found evidence of blood pooling-" He pointed out his evidence, and Bones nodded, brow furrowed. "I believe that the victim bled to death after sharp force trauma to several blood vessels. Both radial veins-" He indicated to Julie's wrists. "And femoral veins."

"Veins?" Booth asked, leaning closer to mimic Bones. "Wouldn't it have been quicker to sever the arteries?" Zack and Brennan glanced up as one, their faces reflecting equal measures of surprise. "What?" He asked, irritably. "I know things too, y'know." Bones smiled.

"You're certainly correct that an arterial bleed would likely be faster. They tend to spurt blood like a fountain. Venous bleeds are more similar to a moving body of water- they flow."

"Maybe the murderer didn't want her to die quickly." Zack muttered. Booth nodded, considering. It was a horrible thought, slowly bleeding to death over a few hours.

"Poor woman must have been terrified. And Cam thinks this guy's a serial killer- ain't that just the icing on the cake?"

"There's something else you should know, Dr. Brennan." She tore her gaze from her student, turning towards her student. "As you know, I found several fractures. The clavicle, radius, scaphoid, talus, four metatarsals, and four ribs -one true, three false- all presented varying degrees of fracture." Brennan's face creased in what could only have been sympathy for all the suffering this woman had endured.

"All of them perimortem?"

"I believe so, yes. And you should be aware, with the exception of the ribs-"

"They are the most commonly broken bones, I know." Bones interjected.

"Wait a minute," Booth was still trying to catch up with Zack's orthopaedic jargon. "You're saying that the killer broke the most common bones in the body? Why?" Zack shrugged.

"I don't know. Isn't it your job to figure that out?"

"Good job, Zack," Bones said, as she always did when she was impressed with one of her Squints. Booth liked that about her; she didn't particularly crave praise herself but always made sure to give it to her friends when she felt it was deserved.

"King of the lab!" The shout came before Hodgins was even in sight. He jogged up the platform steps, coming to a sudden halt when he registered Booth and Brennan's raised eyebrows. "Oh, uh, hey Booth. Dr. B." Booth crossed his fingers in the hopes that Hodgins had found some valuable information. So far, really, they had nothing to go on. They had a few seconds of a blurry figure on a tape, a troubling cause of death, and the DNA of a man who'd raped at least six women and had murdered at least three, with no idea of who the guy was. It wasn't that Booth didn't have faith in his partner and her team, but an involuntary shiver ran up his spine at the thought that the creep was still walking the streets- quite possibly looking for his next victim. Booth had never met the guy, but he hated him with such fury that he could practically feel his blood boiling in his veins.

"What do you have?" Bones asked, peering at the sheet of paper clasped in Hodgins' hands.

"Cam found a fibre in the back of the victim's throat. I analysed it for trace materials, and found small amounts of Trichloromethane." Booth cleared his throat, and Hodgins gave him a sheepish smile. "Sorry. It's chloroform. But -and this is the interesting bit- it appears to have been homemade."

"Guy makes his own chloroform?" Booth asked, an element of doubt in his tone. "Who the hell does that?"

"I don't know, dude. My best guess? He's being careful. Trying to be untraceable. Cam told me he's a serial, right? So the guy's spent years honing his craft, evading capture."

"Craft?" Bones didn't look impressed.

"Sorry, Dr. B. Anyway, so commercial chloroform is made by a photochemical reaction of chlorine and methane. But this stuff looks to be a mixture of your regular, garden-variety bleach, acetone -nail polish remover- and ice. There's something else too, but I'm still trying to separate the isotopes. It's pretty potent stuff." Brennan looked pensive.

"Can you try to isolate the brand of bleach and acetone used? Perhaps Booth could use it to track down large orders of it." Booth was not so confident.

"Sure, but any large orders of acetone or bleach would automatically raise suspicions. It's more likely the murderer bought small amounts at once. And if he's as careful as you think he is," He turned to Hodgins. "He'll likely have paid cash. But it's worth following, if we can learn anything from it."

"Sure. Oh, and while you're both here, I found a small amount of soil on the victim. It had traces of copper, which didn't present in the dirt samples I took from Pohick Bay."

"Can you do anything with it? Narrow down the area she was killed in?" Booth asked, hopeful once again.

"I'll see what I can do, but copper is a common element in soil. It's often used in gardening." He sighed, nodding his thanks to Hodgins.

"What now?" Bones asked, turning to him.

"I spoke to the hospital earlier; the security guard that was working the night Julie disappeared is called Stanley Shaw; he's not working again until next week. He's on vacation visiting family down South with no contact details available, so we'll have to wait a few days before we can talk to him. I'm gonna go speak with the lead investigators on the other rape and murder cases this guy is connected to, you do whatever it is you Squints do, and we'll speak to the guy when he's back."


"Hey, sleeping beauty, wake up," Booth rapped hard on the guard's box with his knuckles. The man inside, who had been snoring loudly with his chin on his chest, snorted in alarm and almost fell from his chair. He was a large man, bordering on obese, nearing his sixties. He sprang to his feet with surprising agility for someone of his size, eyes wide with alarm as they swept the area before him. Once he was satisfied that he wasn't about to be murdered, he opened the door to the booth and stepped outside, grunting with the effort of it.

"Can I help you?" He asked, disgruntled. Booth flashed his badge, his expression of contempt poorly disguised.

"Special Agent Booth, this here's my partner Temperance Brennan." The guard looked perplexed. "You were working the night of Julie Hill's disappearance, is that correct?"

"Oh, so that's what this is about," Shaw's voice was heavily accented by a Southern drawl. "Terrible thing, that. Damn shame- I heard she was murdered. But what's that got to do with me?" Booth's sharp intake of breath told Bones that he was angry, and she decided to step in before her partner had the man held up by his throat.

"We have reason to believe that Dr. Hill was abducted from this parking lot, Mr. Shaw. While you were on duty. Did you see anything unusual on that night, or in the weeks leading up to it?" She had mustered up all the politeness she could manage, but her tone was still cool. The colour had drained from Shaw's face, and he backed up, collapsing heavily into his chair. He took a deep, shuddering breath and pressed his fingers to his lips.

"Tha-that can't be right," He mumbled, his voice strained. "I woulda heard something. It was quiet the whole night; I don't remember anything weird happening." Booth slammed the heel of his hand against the door to the box, his temper having flared to breaking point.

"Or maybe," He hissed, moving so his face was just inches from Shaw's. "Maybe you were sleeping on the job, like we found you just now. We have CCTV evidence that you slept through the kidnapping of Julie Hill, okay? Maybe if you weren't such a lazy bastard, you might have kept her from being murdered- so how's about you think a little harder there, huh?" The colour flooded back to Shaw's cheeks, as a flush of bright red crept up the man's neck.

"Listen, Agent whatever-your-name-is, I have four kids, and three jobs to support them- so yeah I get tired. Listen, I liked Dr. Hill, I never woulda let her get hurt on purpose!"

"Then think, damn it, and answer my partner's question. Did you see anything weird happen?" The guard paused, stroking his unkempt beard, his forehead crumpling with concentration.

"Now that you mention it, I did see a guy couple'a times, hanging around late at night." Booth and Bones exchanged a glance, their jaws slack with incredulity. There was a pregnant pause.

"You... You saw a guy?" Booth hissed, his knuckles turning white as he clenched and unfurled them repeatedly. Bones thought he looked about ready to explode, and she could empathise. She'd quite happily have punched Shaw's lights out himself.

"Hey now, don't you go getting all stressy with me. I thought maybe it was one of the nurses' boyfriends or something. He'd be standing by the tree over there," He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "And then the next time I looked, he'd be gone. Seems harmless enough to me." If Brennan hadn't been so furious, she could have wept. This murder had not only been senseless, it had been preventable. If only the guard had been more alert to his surroundings. If only Julie hadn't been so attached to her work that she'd left so late at night. If only she'd had a family or more friends, people to look out for her, protect her. She was beginning to feel the pressing weight of urgency more and more with every hour they worked the case. She could hear Booth take some deep breaths, which she supposed was designed to calm him, and could tell by the continuing flare of his nostrils that it hadn't worked.

"You might wanna stay awake for this you incompetent piece of shit," He growled. "I'm only gonna say this once. You are gonna tell us everything, everything you saw on the nights you saw that... Harmless man. And then, if by some miracle the hospital doesn't fire your useless ass, you're gonna man up, drink some fucking coffee, and do a night's work in a conscious state. You hear me?" The man nodded fervently, sweat glistening on his brow. As soon as the man began to speak, Booth's cellphone trilled with an incoming phone call. He had a bad feeling as soon as he saw the caller ID. Motioning that Shaw should continue telling Bones, he walked a few steps away with what felt like a rock weighing down the bottom of his stomach. He flipped the cell open.

"Booth."

"Agent Booth sir, this is dispatch. We were told to call you." He shoved his spare hand deep within his pocket, glancing over at Bones.

"About what?"

"They've found a body, sir. It's thought to be connected to your ongoing case."

"Alright, text me the details." His voice had suddenly become very quiet, as if his vocal cords could only muster a few decibels. He turned towards Brennan. "Bones," He said, forcing himself to speak at a normal volume. Her gaze met his, and in that moment, she knew.
She just knew.