Author's Note: Sorry for the delay, but my muse was not cooperating with me. Lame excuse, I know. The fact is that I found myself considering several different directions to go with the whole Pelant case, but none bore fruit until I finally hit on this one. At one point, I was considering a Bones/Castle crossover that would kill two cliffhangers with one stone. Given the Federal Agent Beckett subplot it wouldn't be too tough to have Pelant get under her skin or get Senator Bracken involved at some point, leading to Beckett and Castle joining forces with Booth and Brennan and prompting Beckett to reconsider her taking the Fed job. Ultimately I decided that adding Beckett and Castle would make the story too busy, and I really couldn't think of a way to make them relevant to the story. (If anyone else wants to adopt my plot bunny, feel free.) Anyway, I finally hit on this idea, so here 'tis.

Chapter three
The Smoke in the Mirrors

GLENDOWER
I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

HOTSPUR
Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?

GLENDOWER
Why I can teach you, cousin, to command the devil.

HOTSPUR
And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil
By telling the truth; tell truth and shame the devil!

—William Shakespeare
Henry IV Part 1, Act 3 Scene 1

"Any word on our John Doe?" Brennan asked Angela as she entered the computer lab. Angela Montenegro Hodgins was at her regular perch, monitoring the myriad systems and displays of the Angela-tron. Three-dimensional images of the remains of their most recent case flashed before her eyes.

"Not yet," Angela replied tersely, her frustration visible in her faint scowl. "I was able to confirm your initial identification as a male Caucasian, between 25 and 30 years old. I also discovered faint traces of kerosene, which was probably used to torch him. Unfortunately, the body was so badly fried that DNA extraction is pretty much impossible. I identified three stab wounds to the chest, which appear to be cause of death."

"So the immolation was not cause of death?"

"More likely the killer stabbed the victim first and turned the corpse into flambé to confuse time of death." With a wan smile, she added, "On the plus side, the skull was caved in, again post-mortem, but the mandible was more or less intact, and I was able to extract two molars. I'm running a check on dental records, so we'll be able to identify our Burning Man."

"Good," Brennan nodded. "Once we have a positive identification, Booth can begin his part of the investigation."

Angela glowered slightly as her eyes glanced over the charred body. "Hopefully he won't mess it up this time," she muttered under her breath.

"What was that, Angela?" Brennan asked.

Angela turned toward her best friend, an unconvincing smile plastered on her face. "I didn't say a thing."

Not fooled, Brennan crooked an accusing eyebrow toward her long-time friend. "I fail to understand the hostility you have been demonstrating toward Booth this last month."

Angela glared at Brennan. "Well I guess we're even, Bren, because right now I'm failing to understand your lack of hostility toward Booth. The way he treated you, the man's way overdue on some heavy-duty groveling!"

Brennan scowled slightly at Angela's commentary. "Is this regarding his decision to break off our engagement?"

Angela rolled her eyes in mock-incredulity at Brennan's question. "Duh, Sweetie! I don't get it. First Studly breaks off your engagement without even a good reason, then he walks out on you and Christine, then you take him back and everything's hunky-dory between you? I just don't get it! I saw the way you were hurting when you announced the engagement was off. Now don't deny it, Bren," she added as Brennan raised her hand to interrupt. "You may have the best stone-face this side of Mount Rushmore but I've known you most of my adult life. I can tell when you're in pain, and you were in deep pain after Booth broke things off." Grunting with grim humor, she added, "I wanted to break something off of him, if you know what I mean."

Brennan cocked a knowing eyebrow at her friend. "You make your meaning vividly clear, Ange," she assured her, flashing a sardonic half-smile. "And you are correct; I admit that I was emotionally devastated when Booth first informed me that he did not want to marry me. But last week we had a long discussion regarding the status of our relationship and he explained the reasons for his actions. After hearing his argument, I conceded that he was correct in saying that we should not get married at this time." For reasons that I cannot explain to you right now, she mentally amended her statement. I wish it was not necessary to keep secrets from you, my dearest friend, but for now it is. I promise you that someday I will tell you the truth. Once Pelant is finally out of our lives forever. "The situation between Booth and me is neither hunky nor dory," she continued, "but we are working together toward a positive resolution."

Angela stared long and hard at her friend, weighing her statement in her mind. "I dunno," she answered skeptically. "I just hope it works out for the best."

"It is a challenge," Brennan admitted, "but Booth and I have invested too much of ourselves into this relationship to simply abandon it whenever things become difficult. I am confident that we will prove equal to the task."

"If you say so, Sweetie," Angela nodded. "I'm rooting for you both. No matter how mad I am at Booth right now, I have to admit, he's still one of the best things that ever happened to you."

"I concur wholeheartedly." Brennan smiled slightly, and Angela could sense that for once she wasn't smiling for her friend's benefit.

Angela nodded, accepting Brennan's assurances at face value. "Okay, Bren," she announced, donning a nearby pair of rubber gloves. "Let's move on from that unpleasant topic of conversation to something even more unpleasant; the Pelant case."

"You have some new information?" Brennan asked as Angela stooped down to pick up a plastic box she had borrowed from the evidence locker.

"More like some old information," Angela admitted. "I had been going over some of the evidence from his first confirmed murders about two years ago. Figured if I went back to that case with fresh eyes, I might find something."

"Judging from your tone of voice, it sounds like you think you have."

"Maybe, Bren," Angela hefted the evidence box to the examination table. Brennan noticed several vertebrae sealed in plastic bags, as well as some damaged computer components. "You remember how he managed to torch the Angela-tron the first time."

"You said that he somehow carved a scanner code into the bones of his first victim," Brennan recalled, "which planted a virus in the Angela-tron, causing its coolant system to malfunction."

"Big boom, exactly," Angela answered. "At least that was the working theory. Today, acting on a hunch, I took another look through the wrecked components, and found this." She withdrew a small plastic bag out of the evidence box and placed it on the counter. The bag contained a vaguely circular mass of scorched plastic. "I missed this melted slag among the components when I took the Angela-tron apart the first time, but I discovered it during my search today. Probably too upset when it blew up to really do a more thorough search. Anyway, the plastic weighs approximately 14.5 grams. What else weighs around 14.5 grams, give or take?"

Brennan paused for half a second of thought before answering; "A CD."

"A CD," Angela echoed in response. "Now, I've cataloged and inventoried every CD-ROM and DVD-ROM I've used in the Angela-tron, and when I found this slag among the components, I went through the inventory to see if anything was missing. All discs are present and accounted for. So where did this one come from?"

Brennan cast an aside glance at Angela, observing the widening of her eyes. Clearly she felt that she was onto something that could potentially change the course of their investigation. "I trust that was not a rhetorical question," she commented.

"Nope," Angela answered. "That disc was in the Angela-tron when it when kablooey, but I didn't put it there. And in its current state, there's no way I can read the data off it. So who did, and what was it doing there?" She then removed the sealed bag containing the vertebrae, and removed one of the bones. "This is the vertebra that Pelant carved his code into. I want to perform an experiment. I'm going to attempt to scan this vertebra again, and I need you here to witness. I want you to examine the main display as the scan progresses, while I check these diagnostic displays that I set up on the back-up monitors."

"Aren't you concerned that the virus will infect the mainframe again?"

"When I rebuilt the Angela-tron," Angela assured her, "I upgraded the anti-viral and anti-hacking software, and added redundancy safeguards so it's pretty much hack-proof. Plus I'll be watching the diagnostic displays like a hawk. Trust me, nothing's going to happen." After a moment, she sheepishly added, "And if it does, Cam can take it out of my paycheck."

"You're starting to emulate your husband too closely in these matters," Brennan remarked. "Tell me when you're ready."

Angela placed the vertebra under the scanners, making sure that the carved sections were clearly visible. Producing two sets of safety goggles from her desk drawer, she handed one to Brennan. "Just to keep Cam from getting on our case regarding procedure."

"Fair enough," Brennan conceded as she donned her goggles. "Let me know when you're ready," she added as she turned her attention to the main Angela-tron display.

Angela affixed her goggles to her face and placed her skilled hands over her computer keyboard. "Beginning initial scans in three—two—one—Fire in the hole!" She tapped the enter key, and invisible infra-red light pulses attacked the bone from multiple angles at once, mapping and documenting every crevice and plane of the bone. Brennan observed as a three-dimensional image of the bone emerged on the screen before her, while Angela monitored the diagnostic screens with a gimlet eye.

"Scan complete," Brennan announced. "Anything at your end?"

"Nada," Angela replied, her eyes never leaving the display. "No signs of any viruses or Trojan horse programs. Even if the bone contains the program that trashed the original Angela-tron, the new security protocols I installed in the upgraded model would catch them."

After a few tense minutes, Brennan asked Angela, "Should something have happened by now?"

"The original virus took awhile to show on the Angela-tron," Angela admitted, "by which time the system was fried. But with the new anti-virus software, we should have been at least alerted to a Trojan file or something. Running a virus scan right now," Angela announced, pulling up the appropriate program and launching the scan. After two tense minutes, Angela nodded with grim satisfaction. "Virus scan complete. Nothing showed up. No Trojans, no back-doors, no viruses, not even an annoying pop-up window."

"This would indicate," Brennan observed, "that the original virus was introduced by the disc you found, not by the bone scan."

"Precisely," Angela replied. "Which ties in with what I'm beginning to suspect regarding Pelant. He's been playing us like my dad playing Pearly Gates. He may be a brilliant hacker, but I suspect that a lot of what he's been doing is more smoke and mirrors than anything else."

Brennan's brow furrowed at Angela's statement. "I don't know what you mean by 'smoke and mirrors', Ange."

Angela smiled knowingly at her friend and explained; "I mean he's using misdirection. Making us think he's doing one thing when he's really doing something else. It's like a stage magician, making us think he's sawing a woman in half."

"There's no such thing as magic, Angela," Brennan protested. "You cannot simply bisect a person without causing irreparable damage."

"My point exactly, Sweetie," Angela insisted. "You know it isn't real, I know it isn't real, most of the audience knows that it isn't real. But by arranging the mirrors and curtains on the stage at just the right angles so the audience only sees what he wants them to see, and throwing a few flash-powder explosions around to draw their attention to where he wants them to look, any skilled illusionist can appear to be sawing a woman in half, or levitating, or teleporting from one place to another, and make it look pretty damn convincing."

Brennan reflected on Angela's words for a moment. "If I understand your analogy," she mused, "you are saying that Pelant, for all his vaunted skills as a computer hacker, relies on misdirection and deception, making us believe he is more proficient a hacker than he truly is."

"Exactly," Angela replied. "He may be good, even brilliant, but he's not some kind of mutant with superhuman computer-controlling powers. He didn't carve a virus code into a bone, he simply had a disc inserted in a drive when no one was looking."

"Maybe," Brennan nodded. "But he was still under house arrest with an ankle monitor when the virus was downloaded. How did he get the disc into your system?"

"There's only one way, Bren," Angela answered plainly. "Like all good illusionists, he has an assistant."

Brennan turned sharply toward her friend as the meaning of her last statement illuminated itself. "He has an accomplice? Someone with access to the Jeffersonian Medico-Legal lab?"

"Only explanation that makes sense," Angela replied.

Brennan nodded solemnly. "We need to inform Booth and Cam of your findings. If Cam can provide video surveillance footage from shortly before you first scanned the vertebra..."

A sudden digital chime interrupted Brennan's observations, prompting Angela to return her attention to her monitors. "Was that a warning? A possible virus?"

"No," Angela replied. "The dental records for our John Doe came in."

"Good," Brennan answered. "At least we can identify him now."

"And today's mystery guest is..." Angela murmured as she pulled up the file and displayed it on her screen. Brennan and Angela scanned the file information...

And stood thunderstruck as the absolute last name they expected to find was displayed plainly on the monitor.

"No way," breathed Angela. "No. God-damned. Way."

Brennan simply stared at the screen for several seconds, reading and re-reading the data retrieved from the dental records. Finally, she withdrew her cellular phone from her pocket and dialed a familiar number. Her heart thudded in her chest as the phone rang once, twice...

"Special Agent Booth."

"Booth?" Brennan announced herself.

"What's up, Bones?"

"We have a positive identification of our victim from dental records."

"You mean the charcoal briquette we found yesterday? Who is he?"

"Booth," Brennan replied, her voice equal parts relief and incredulity. "The dental records identified the victim as...as Christopher Pelant."

Three seconds dead silence, then, "Booth? Are you still there?"

"I'm on my way," Booth answered in a voice like sharpened steel.

TBC (but you knew that, didn't you?)