Title: Born to Die
Rating: T.
Disclaimer: Not mine. No siree.
A/N: Thanks to everyone reading and reviewing at the moment. I love reviews, they encourages me to write. So please, let me know what you are thinking.
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"Fabric tells me that the victim was wearing silk," Jack Hodgins informed the group, joining them on the platform. "Which tells me that she did not work in the hotel. Or if she did, she was not in uniform." Booth stepped back from the skeleton, carefully positioned on the metal gurney, her white, faceless skull inside a plastic box atop black form – kept away from contamination.
"How do you know?" he asked and Jack peeled his gloves off, triumphant and confident.
"I called the manager at the hotel, and he faxed through details of what materials make up their uniforms. The hotel shirts are made from 65 percent polyester and 35 percent cotton. It's doesn't take a genius entomologist like me to understand that polyester and cotton do not make silk. The gold neck scarves worn by the female members is produced using a kind of chiffon – but still no silk." Angela lifted her hand, her fingers smudged with graphite.
"Excuse me? I have stayed at The Arches, and I can tell you, the neck-scarves are not gold. Perhaps a light bronze, but gold? No, no." She shrugged. "The artist in me would beg to differ." Hodgins folded his arms, tapping his fingertips against his bicep.
"When were you at The Arches?" Angela feigned hurt, slipping her pencil into her hair.
"Ah, a dirty weekend at a prestigious hotel, romping on Egyptian cotton, soaking in a tub filled with jasmine and orange scented bath oils while outside, the Virginian countryside stretches on forever…" she sighed. "Even forensic artists can afford to treat themselves every now and again." Brennan pushed her stool back.
"Can we focus, please? Thank you." Jack watched Angela as she wiped the black smudges on her jeans. "The victim was a woman, approximately thirty years of age. She was five foot seven. Both wrists are broken, evidence of being bound. She's been dead for approximately six months." Booth slipped his hands into his pockets, rubbing his fingers against his palms.
"How did no one smell her decomposing body? Hodgins, can you check to see if she was moved? Perhaps evidence of being somewhere else?" Jack nodded and Brennan cast her partner a glare, mildly frustrated but mostly amused that he could so easily assert himself inside her lab. "I'm going to take a drive back to Virginia, have a chat with the maintenance man." Brennan pulled off her gloves, dropping them into her pocket.
"Why?" she asked, following him along the edge of the platform. Below, on the main laboratory, the other scientists did their jobs, unaware, as they always were, of the murdered body just a few feet away.
"Only one person would have reason to be in the ducts. He'll have plans, blueprints of the building and perhaps we can see if can find more evidence." He winked. "You see, Bones, this is why you do lab work and I do field work." She pulled her hair into a high ponytail, following him down the steps to the front door.
"I can do field work, too," she insisted. "I am excellent at finding evidence." She felt her brows draw together as they stepped into the cool, late October air. "In fact, finding evidence is what I do. You need me." Their shoulders almost brushed, their eyes meeting in a silent moment of fusing understanding. Booth did need her, even if the proud, macho part of him would never verbally admit it. Even if he preferred to insist he could still solve crimes, even if a little less efficiently than with her. "Do you have a bad feeling about the maintenance guy?" she asked, their feet crunching across the asphalt. Booth lifted his broad, sweeping shoulders inside his jacket.
"I don't know. Part of me thinks it would be foolish to stuff a body into the ventilation shaft, but then, part of me also knows that not even is criminally intelligent." Brennan nodded, knowing that murderers were very rarely clever enough to avoid being caught, and she made it her goal to always be more intelligent than the criminals who tried to outwit the law. Who thought it was acceptable to take the life of another.
Perhaps it was a personal goal for her, knowing that her mother was murdered. When she suspected that both her parents had been murdered, she had a raging fire of determination. When she stood over her mother's skeleton with irrefutable proof that she'd been killed, the fire became a furnace and now, instead of having a passion for identifying Ice Age skeletons, she preferred to assist the FBI in hunting down hardened criminals.
"Deep in thought, Bones?" Booth asked, tapping her arm. She swung her eyes towards him.
"I want to know who murdered her," she said, waiting until he unlocked his SUV.
"You always do," Booth replied, pulling his own door open. She climbed inside, slipping her seatbelt across her chest. She always felt as though she were embarking on some grand adventure when she got into Booth's government issue vehicle. She felt as though she had authority to enforce the law. Perhaps a small part of her wished she did. "You're good at that," Booth said, turning on the radio, firing the engine. She frowned. "Solving puzzles, answering the unanswerable questions," he explained, his large hands holding tight to the steering wheel. In her peripheral vision she watched his features change, his jaw tighten in contemplation.
"It's never okay to take a life," she said at last, turning away from him completely. "No one has the right to determine who should die and who should not." Booth hummed, the sound low and gravely.
"I agree. I don't think I was a natural sniper," he said, and his admission of anything related to his past as a Ranger brought her focus back to him. "I excelled at using a rifle. But I never excelled at putting an end to someone's life." She crossed her legs, brushing her open palm along her thigh.
"You mean you're not a born killer?" she asked and he replied only by glancing her way for a brief second. "Me neither. It's too easy to put an end to someone's life. It's so easy." Brennan shook her head. "Doesn't it frighten you, Booth, that if a seasoned killer wanted to end your life tonight, he could?" Booth inhaled.
"I don't think about it, Bones," he said. "It is far too easy to get caught up in the paranoia of what can go wrong in life. We should look embrace what we know we have. I learned that working as a sniper. Life is far too short for worries involving uncertainties." They barely talked until they reached the grand sweeping gates of The Arches.
"Have you ever went away for a dirty weekend, Booth?" Brennan asked, lifting her eyes to the high windows, taking in the ornate design of the luxury hotel.
"Haven't you?" Booth asked by way of response, and she shrugged her shoulders, signalling that she most definitely had not. Perhaps it was her hesitancy to stay in hotels, a reluctance she had never shared with anyone but him, or perhaps it was because she simply never found time for a weekend of sex.
Booth laughed. "God, Bones, you don't know what you're missing. I'll have to show you sometime." She wasn't sure that he was supposed to say what he said, and she wasn't sure he had even realised himself. But judging by the tightness of his jaw and the blazing fieriness of his eyes, he did.
What bothered Temperance the most was that she wasn't sure she was entirely opposed to the idea of learning new and exciting things with Seeley Booth. In fact, while their relationship might not have been defined as anything beyond professional, and while Dr Saroyan had been putting herself between them recently, Brennan still couldn't imagine herself being with anyone else. It was a disturbing realisation that made her spine stiff and her jaw hurt.
"Bones? You ready to cause some disturbances?" He touched her arm and she jolted.
"Absolutely," she said, willing away her adolescent thoughts, forcing open her door and turning away from him, so she didn't have to imagine what a dirty weekend away with him would entail. And so she wouldn't have to answer the question of whether or not she'd still hate hotels after.
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