Spoilers: Up to The Girl in Suite 2103.
Rating: Still T.
Summary (Updated):
Booth tried to make those facts look better, decorating them with that sliver-lining; he said there was a story she didn't know. But Temperance couldn't get pass the cold, hard facts.
Camille looked up at him, head in a curious tilt. "Why can't I feel used?"
Author's Notes: I guess I could be a runner-up for the Worst Updater Golden Bucket. There's a reason for that: I'm a damn slow writer. No, really. Real life complications aside, I need to make four or five drafts before things start to get palatable. I hope you guys can forgive me.
This chapter was particularly hard to write because I'd never handled a plot that actually thickens like this one does. I needed new things to happen in every paragraph, new questions to crop up too; I got a bit overwhelmed with all the things I had to juggle.
This fic hasn't been beta-ed so again, all mistakes are mine. Let me know when you see any.
I'm really glad people stuck around for Chapter Two, I want to thank astridv (thanks for the PostSnag Swagger rec!), avaleighfitzgerald, Alphie13, smellybely, Scazydramaqueen282, Alacaeriel, jenz and PurplePicklesUnite for each and every one of their syllables.
I don't know if the people who read chap1 are still there but thanks to them too, hope you're still enjoying this.
Now, a few words to a few people:
loneastronomer: My face lit up like the New York Christmas tree when I read the word 'rec'. One thing though, I never got to see that banner. There's no link. But the fact that you're loving the story gives my ego enough bolster, so don't worry.
audrey: First, thanks for reviewing. Second: fear not, Booth would never leave an injured—or uninjured—Bones to answer Camille's booty call. In this chapter you find out who really called.
Bella-mi-amore: "A lot of information" it's a good thing, right?
Sallyboat and Grevling: I tried to make things clearer this time. Let me know if things improved somewhat :)
Howdylynn and smellybely: "ultra-over-protective gear" will come in Chapter Four and right at the beginning. Promise this chapter is going to make overprotective Booth much more interesting.
I'll shut up now.
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Chapter Three
The Seeley in Silly
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Temperance Brennan sought The Truth. Her kind of Truth: the name of the victim, the name of the person who had tried to erase the existence of another human being. The Truth she created in the lab by examining human remains and the one Booth created when he used his knack for reading people or when he went 'Federal'.
The Truth they both created when they worked together.
It was what she had been doing for years so, naturally, when her mother's remains were identified, she thought it was her turn to get The Truth.
What she got was a dangerous tangle of lies and ugly facts: another name, another last name, a brother who had kept things from her, a father who was still alive and a mother that had been alive but watching a movie when she'd needed her the most.
Booth tried to make those facts look better, decorating them with that sliver-lining he liked so much; he said there was a story she didn't know. But Temperance couldn't get past the cold, hard facts.
She stared at the answering machine, her head pounding and making everything just a little bit extra sharp and painful. A sheen of tears covered her eyes.
"I think this call is going to be untraceable, like the last one." She pressed the back of her hand against the tip of her nose, as if to stall the tears.
She felt raw and numb at the same time; too exhausted to coat the past events with a layer of logic that would soften their impact but at the same time, too overwhelmed to let things seep through her heart so that they could really hurt as they should.
Booth came over to her side, crossing his arms tightly over his chest. "Bones."
She placed her hands on her hips and nodded. "I think it will." Two warm tears slid down her cheeks.
Booth took a step towards her. "Hey," he said, he lowered himself to catch her gaze.
She wiped the wet tear-trails from her cheeks, going over her father's words.
She stared at Booth and spoke in an eerily calm voice that was out of emotional-synch with her words.
"You know, they left the necklace in our shed. They stole it. They did whatever else they did that got my mother killed. But he yells at me for finding it, like it's my fault."
"Bones, he yelled at you because he's scared," he said, "For you."
Temperance took a deep breath. She needed to take control somehow. She needed to find him, to end the uncertainty that ate her away whenever she gave it half a chance to.
She looked at Booth. "Well, he doesn't have to be. I can take care of myself."
It was Temperance's instinct to convert pain or anxiety into some other feeling; it was a funnel-like mechanism: in pours pain, out goes anger or scientific detachment or anthropological sublimation.
She did this because at one time, there had been so much pain there hadn't been room for more so it had all turned into other things to take the pressure off. Denial about what was happening, anger at Russ, indifference towards the idiotic guardian ad litem social services had appointed her, hatred at her social worker.
The necklace appeared in her mind, along with her father's voice: toss it. Forget about it. Do not disobey me, Temperance Brennan.
"And I can make my own decisions," she said. "I don't want us to stop looking."
Resolve took over; Temperance Brennan wasn't the type of person who responded well to coercion.
Booth stared at her for a moment then nodded. "Ok." He glanced at the answering machine as if considering her father's warning. "Ok," he said.
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A computer rendered reconstruction of Bryan George's fractured skull appeared in the center of the Angelator, like a vision from a Death god, in communion with mortals at the Jeffersonian via the magic fires of holographic technology.
"Poor Bryant saw it coming," Angela said as she moved her pen across the digital pad.
The skull reduced in size and its skeleton emerged from the void of the Angelator; a dead Bryant stood once more. A generic weapon—a virtual stick—swung itself at Bryant's skull like a nasty poltergeist.
Bryant's skeleton crumpled.
Zack said, "Cause of death was a massive subarachnoid haemorrhage. One blow was sufficient to cause irreparable damage. He might have survived for a few minutes after the attack but he would've been unconscious."
Angela turned to her. "So what's the deal with Rebecca?"
Temperance gave Angela a warning glance. After filling Angela in on the details of last night, the call, her decision, Booth's approval of it, she had told Angela that she didn't want to talk anymore about it so from then on, she would appreciate if Angela acted as if that day were a normal day—or as normal a day as the Jeffersonian allowed.
Angela had said 'You got it, sweetie.' And now Temperance was getting it.
"Ange," Temperance said. "I'm not comfortable with gossip. Let me see a close-up."
Angela obeyed and the skull quadrupled in size.
Temperance pointed at the sections of the skull with her finger.
"It struck the parietal and temporal bones. A depressed fracture indicates a hard blunt object, possibly sharp," Temperance said. "What's the progress on the weapon ID?"
"Initially, it appeared there was too much fragmentation to reverse engineer the weapon with any acceptable degree of accuracy." Zack lifted a finger. "However, I found a peculiar indentation in a fragment of the parietal bone."
Angela crossed her arms over her chest, around the digital pad.
"Bren, it's not gossip if you don't know anything. If you don't share the juicy details." Her eyes grew wider. "Why-what do you know something?"
"No. And even if I'm not the one who provides the information, wouldn't you be the one gossiping? Wouldn't that make me a willing recipient of gossip and therefore a participant in the act?"
She turned to Zack before Angela could counter the argument and said, "What kind of indentations?"
Zack looked at Angela, giving her a cue.
With two deft glides of her pen and one tap, a detailed scan of a fragment of Bryant's temporal bone appeared.
Shaking her head, Angela muttered, "I swear to God, it's like arguing with Socrates."
Temperance ignored the comment. She pointed at the display. "Looks like—"
"I need your tongue, Carolina."
Temperance, Angela and Zack looked at the doorway to see Hodgins with his arm draped over a brunette lab technician, strolling together.
"Oh no, do not let fear mar your features. I need to borrow your tongue. It has a special, shall we denominate it talent I require," Hodgins explained.
Carolina threw her head back and let out a throaty laugh. "Those red curls of yours are putting too much pressure on your skull, Jack." And they were gone.
Temperance resumed her train of thought, as if uninterrupted. "Looks like the—"
Angela's jaw dropped five degrees. "Incredible." She shook her head. "In-credible."
Zack placed the tip of his pen on his lower lip, like Sherlock Holmes with his pipe and said, "It's most interesting. Could Hodgins' aberrant behaviour be explained in terms of his hair follicles?" He narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
Temperance gave them both a pointed stare. "Focus, people."
Angela sighed and turned to her. "Listen, sweetie, I'm just worried. It must've been pretty serious if he left you, you know?"
Temperance said, "What?" Frowning, she studied the fragment of parietal bone, floating horizontally and maximized until a barely visible line appeared etched in the bone. "That was left by the weapon?"
Zack pointed his pen at Temperance. "Yes, milliseconds before fragmenting the skull. I studied each fragment and several of them showed a straight line. There's a pattern to them."
Zack looked at Angela again.
Angela pulled up an image of Bryant's skull, this time without the fracture lines caused by the weapon.
Angela said, "Booth got a call from Rebecca the night you got a headful of Neolithic ashtray, remember he left?"
Temperance looked down, at the base of the Angelator. It was Rebecca who had called, not Tessa, like Booth had led her to believe. Actually no, he hadn't led her to believe anything, he had plain evaded giving a straight answer.
She didn't like it when Booth got secretive, it made her nervous.
His work as a sniper must have entailed a great deal of lying and hiding his true intentions and those kinds of skills weren't perishable, he still had them. So far he'd been a pretty lousy liar half the time and a very proficient deceiver the other half; this made it difficult for Temperance to determine his actual capacity for deceit. Temperance had become concerned with the concept of deceit in the last year.
Blue lines appeared on the skull: two, paralleled and 3 inches long. They showed the reconstructed pattern, etched into the skull by the weapon. Temperance refocused, as well as Angela.
"Anyway, things got quite heated. Becky was not happy."
Temperance stared at Angela, determined to squash this parallel conversation Angela had been instigating.
"All I know is that Booth left Parker with Tessa that night. Obviously, it was too dangerous to take Parker with him when he came to my apartment. It was a sensible course of action on his part. If that is why Rebecca was angry, I find her reaction extreme."
Angela's mouth turned into a perfectly surprised 'O'.
"That could do it," she said, nodding. "Definitely. Leaving her child with a former girlfriend at midnight and for another woman?" She shook her head, "Nah-ah. Head injury and wacko fan aside, I've seen divorced parents tear each other to pieces for less than that. I know, I dated a few."
Zack said, "Doesn't Agent Booth get Parker only on weekends? Dr. Brennan was attacked Monday night."
Too many questions, too many tangents.
"Ok. Ok," Temperance said. She looked at Zack. "What makes you think the weapon left those marks?"
"Before removing the remaining tissue I found traces phosphorous, nitrogen and potassium embedded inside the skin and the bone around the wound which means it didn't come from the burial site."
"Fertilizer," Temperance said.
Angela rolled her eyes. "God, Zack, you take your own sweet time, don't you? The murder weapon is most likely a trenching shovel."
She tapped her pad and a digital replica of a trenching shovel—a shovel with a steeple-shaped blade normally used to dig narrow ditches or make trenches for pipes or cables—appeared.
"That was my line." Zack said to Angela.
Angela gave him a Get-Over-It glance.
Zack lowered his head, staring at the place where his thunder had rested before Angela stole it. "I'd been working my way up to end it with a boom."
"With a bang, " Angela corrected.
Temperance nodded at the holographic replica of the trenching shovel as it bashed the skull, the spacing of the lines and the edges of the shovel fitted perfectly.
"Nice work, Zack. What made you think of a trenching shovel?"
"I used to help my grandmother in her garden. Until my mother found out grandma Phyllis was growing cannabis behind a very robust rosebush," Zack said, with a reminiscing gaze.
Temperance nodded. "It makes sense."
Angela frowned. "That Zack's grandma grew her own stash?"
"Bryant had a lot of gardening tools in his apartment. He could have been killed there, maybe the killer didn't plan on murdering him. I have to tell Booth we need to go back."
"Yes, you tell him that, sweetie, you tell him," Angela said, nodding three times in a very supportive kind of way before swinging the conversation back to her topic and being as subtle at it as a tanker truck swerving in the middle of a highway at 120m/p/h.
"What I think is Rebecca found out Booth was, you know, getting some from another source after they had that relapse or after they tripped over something and oh-my they fell naked on Booth's bed. . .whichever. Anyway, she got jealous. Some people are possessive like that and theirs is a complex relationship."
Angela could turn into a black hole sometimes, when she was set on delving into other people's motivations. And Temperance sometimes got caught in the gravitational pull.
Temperance was curious about the dynamics of Booth's life with women. She had been certain he was a solitary Alpha-male, he showed all the characteristics of one and yet—yet he was surrounded by meaningful relationships with women he'd been or was romantically attached to. It was fascinating to observe how he handled himself.
Temperance said, "She didn't sound possessive to me. She sounded quite independent, actually."
Angela tilted her head and smiled endearingly at her.
Temperance frowned. "What?"
"You're a peach, Bren. You really are. Okay, sometimes the deal goes like this: can't have you, don't want to have you but don't want others to have you. At least not so soon. Been there, his name was Etienne. Met him in Lyon. He did this pretty artful things with paint and not on canvass if you know what I mean," she said in a sultry voice.
Temperance chuckled.
"Where did he paint?" Zack looked from Angela to Brennan. From Brennan to Angela.
Angela gave Zack a pitying look. "Okay, look, you need porn. Rent one. Do it your way if you want, take notes and do charts but rent one." Angela turned back to Temperance. "I'm sure it's Cam," she said, nodding.
Temperance smile became guarded. "What makes you think Booth is having sex with Camille?"
"The head petting, dear. I told you when you were eyeballing that Mongolian skull last week—oh, silly me, you weren't listening. Won't I ever learn. Anyway, nothing says 'I rocked the bedsprings with ya' better than that."
Camille walked into Angela's office.
"Forced by peer-pressure I once watched Snowslut and the Seven Pimps."
Camille held up her hands. "Alright, I did not just hear that."
"Dr. Saroyan," Zack said, swallowing with effort, like he'd been caught watching porn right then. "I wasn't. . .I was just leaving." He slunk out of the office.
Temperance stared at Camille and tried to sort out the feelings Angela's theory had mobilized; like sleepy entities nudged awake by the aftershocks of the thought 'Camille and Booth', they were yawning, stretching and stirring up surprising feelings. This made Temperance uncomfortable.
She found that Camille was staring back, eyebrows raised.
Temperance snapped out of it. "Did you need anything?"
"Yes, Dr. Goodman said he needed you to oversee the safe transportation of some Asian Mummies? Says they have to be ready for Germany tonight. And there's a Chinese royal, Li-Win, Lo-Pong Something. He wants you to work on him, for a new exhibit."
Booth came striding into the office, 6-feet of pure kinetic energy.
"Hello ladies," he said to Camille and Angela as he torpedoed towards Brennan.
"Buy you lunch, Bones. Let's go. Chop, chop," he said, clapping his hands. He pushed her forwards a bit and then headed out.
Temperance stood still, by the Angelator. "I can't, I have work to do."
He turned around, buried one hand in his pant's pocket and said, "No, you don't. I talked to Goodman. You're free." He tipped his head towards the door and said, "So, let's vamoose."
Camille turned to Booth, crossing her arms over her chest and regarding him with a look Temperance could not decipher but would have wanted to.
"I talked to Goodman this morning," Camille said.
Booth gave Camille one of his winning smiles. "I talked to Goodman two minutes ago."
He went back, placed both hands on Temperance shoulders and steered her out of Angela's office.
Once in her office, Temperance had barely slipped on her coat when she felt Booth's hand on the small of her back, propelling her forward.
"Ok, ok, don't get your socks twisted," she said, slapping his hand away.
Booth joined his palms with his fingertips touching his mouth and said, "Get your shorts in a twist, Bones. In a twist."
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"Before you find out through other inappropriate channels, I gossiped again," was what Bones said as soon as they climbed inside his SUV.
Booth drove off the Jeffersonian parking lot and replied with: "Don't go start doing normal woman things, Bones. You'll confuse the heck out of me and it doesn't suit you."
"Whu—Why? It wasn't intentional. I told Angela you left Parker with Tessa and she deduced copious amounts of data from that simple premise. I was intrigued." She looked at him.
"Copious, uh?"
He could feel her eyes on him and wondered if she was waiting for his reaction to her admission of gossiping or waiting to drop another bomb.
"Angela told me it was Rebecca who called you last night, when you had to leave."
Bomb. And now she was waiting for his reaction.
"Yes. She called me."
Bones wasn't going to ask why he hadn't told her that yesterday when they were going over to Fisk the mutant lizard man; strictly speaking, he'd never refused to answer, he had conveniently dodged, leaped over and deaf-eared the issue.
Bones functioned on 'strictly speaking' language, a very logical Squintspeak that Booth took advantage of occasionally.
Bones stared at him in a ¾ profile, with her clear and cautious blue eyes.
"Have you started with the sulking and the not talking to me?"
Booth smiled and glanced at her. "No, Bones. It's Ok."
This really threw her off.
"Why? Why is it Ok?" There's no cause without effect to her.
Truth was Booth knew Angela had overheard but he'd hope those instincts of her only worked from 9-to-5. He'd watched over his vocabulary, didn't use Rebecca's name or any word that gave much information beyond the fact he was in deep trouble. And still, Angela had figured it out.
He wasn't surprised Bones knew, given the fact Angela's head was bound to implode if gossip stayed inside it for too long without being passed along.
However, the last thing on Booth's mind right now was not being nice to Bones, because the information he was about to break to her sure as hell wasn't going to.
"It's all Ok because," he said, parking the SUV in front of Wong Foo's and turning to look at her, "because you gossiped but you told me you did. That makes it all better, Bones." He flashed her a winsome smile.
Bones eyed him for a moment and then climbed out. Clearly him being so cool about it when before he'd taken direct steps to punish her didn't compute. She didn't say anything else until Booth pushed the door to Wong Foo's and waved her in.
"I'm sorry if I caused it. Angela says Rebecca got mad at you because you left Parker with Tessa."
He looked at Bones. So that's why she'd been so silent and ponderous. Bones had a way of being sorry that always made him want to forgive her. Of course, Booth would admit to this only—well, he would never admit to this particular weakness.
He guided her to an isolated table.
"And you left Parker with Tessa because I called you at 2 am when I shouldn't have called you."
As soon as she sat down, Bones started moving the saltshaker, soy sauce bottle from one end of the table, close to the wall, to the exact position he would have moved them: in easy reach of his right hand. When she finished, she put her elbows on the table, crossed her arms and said:
"I'm sorry. . .for causing you unnecessary problems."
All sugary sappiness aside, Booth felt touched by Bones' surprising familiarity with his eating habits. That table rearrangement she'd done would be filed into the "Good Bones" folder, no doubt about it.
Back when he'd first met her and she was 90 percent insufferable squint and 10 percent tolerable co-worker and he was a great deal more on the warpath, he'd thought of her as a very useful, very gorgeous pain in the arse.
After they had spent time together he realized he'd jumped to a few conclusions and in his mind, new categories were added to the subject 'Bones'. It started small, wedged between All the times Bones openly disregards any order I give her and Judgemental Bones started one file: Okay Bones and Funny Bones then Rage Against Whoever Wanted to Hurt Bones.
It had been a long time since he'd put a gun inside a man's mouth and meant it when he said he would fire it if things didn't play out the way he wanted. Then again, he had never met a woman with Bones particular brand of generosity: 'Are you looking for a whoopass? I'll give you one, or two, no problemo'.
Gang-banger, airport security, suspects; so, so generous was Bones.
So what? She drove him three kinds of crazy, but she was honest, brilliant and they were both after the same thing. Several more folders had sprouted in the course of a year like Good times with Bones and Sexy Bones.
It was during moments like these he'd just seen that forced him to consider that these 'folders' in his head weren't being stored just Because. They were trying to make a point, argue a case.
The thing was Booth knew the point they were trying to make; he'd been close to listen to it once or twice now, when he looked at Bones and smiled and she smiled back and didn't look away and he felt a bit reckless.
But there was no time or place to act upon those files. As far as those other feelings that had sneaked in and mingled with 'friendship' and 'partnership', Booth couldn't deal with them right now. The results could be disastrous for him and for her.
"Bones," he said, looking at her straight in the eye. "First—and never forget this—you can call me whenever you feel that you need me. Second, Rebecca wasn't mad because of you or Tessa."
The second part was a very astute, in his view, bending of the truth. Rebecca did grill him for leaving Parker with Tessa, never mind she'd asked Booth, with no heads-up, to take Parker for the night so that she and Whatsitsname could smooth a few ruffled feathers. Actually just one feather: Booth himself.
Rebecca was pissed off at him for other more complicated reasons. Sometimes, when anger was abundant and irrational it tended to overflow and make a mess. Bones had been caught in that mess.
He wasn't about to make Bones feel bad for asking for help.
Sid came over and without preambles said, "You both look like you crawled inside a cement mixer with half a dozen bricks."
Booth scratched one eye. "Sid, always taking time for pleasantries."
"I know just what you two need, wait a minute."
What Booth needed was something to absorb whatever chemical harm ten cups of coffee and an all-nighter had done to his body.
Bones smiled at Sid's retreating back; Booth hated to put that radiant smile out.
"I found the file on the Chicago bank your parents hit back in 1991," he said.
Her shoulders tensed. "So soon?"
"I got on it after I left the other night."
She did this half-smile and frown combo that told him she was nicely surprised. "At 3 am.?"
He shrugged. "The FBI is cool at night. I can sneak into Cullen's office and play with his golf machine, it really helps me think." He got a smile out of her. "You know, it gets a lot easier once you know where to look. Safe deposits. Chicago. Ten to fifteen years ago, unsolved. No violence. It did make the Chicago nightline."
Bones nodded.
"They took out the outside surveillance cameras of the Fairbanks Bank, bypassed the security system and went in. Fred, that's the nightshift's guard I talked to today, said they knocked him unconscious as he was leaving the bathroom. It seems they'd done all the hard work weeks or days before the actual robbery because they had the master key.
Back then folks figured they must've gotten access to it by conning the main guard. The only unusual thing Fred remembered before the robbery was a woman who'd asked him if she couldn't use the bathroom and had somehow locked herself in, her husband asked him for help getting her out. But they never went near Ronald, the main guard back then.
Also, your parents knew where the cameras were so they knew where to walk and where to look to avoid being caught on tape."
It had been impossible not to see where Bones brains had came from. Those brains could have wreak havoc if Bones' parents had decided to pass on the family business on to their children. Maybe he'd met Bones when he slapped cuffs on her, if he managed to catch her. What a creepy alternate world that would be.
Bones was pensive.
"Once inside the vault, they helped themselves. The thing they didn't know was that this small but very reputable bank was test-driving a new toy. A sort of motion sensor. At night they're set on No Movement. It's connected to a private security agency that monitors everything, so a big red flag went up in some guys control panel or whatever that night, when the first safe was removed. They turned up just as your parents were leaving."
She looked at the saltshaker. "1991. Month?"
"October."
She shook her head, incredulous: three months before they left. "Why would my parents change their identities, change Russ and mine, if they planned on keep robbing banks?"
Booth had wondered that same thing.
"Alright Bones, look, as far as we know, that's the only job they did in Chicago. Don't leap into conclusions. You're always telling me that."
Her posture slumped a little. "Yeah, but why risk everything?"
They fell silent. There was no answer to that, yet.
"These security guys," Booth said, "They almost caught them. There was a big chase but they lost them at the end, found their car two days later. Torched to a crisp."
Bones' mouth parted and she shook her head.
She was probably wondering why the hell didn't she and Russ ever notice anything wrong.
Obviously, a couple of teenagers wouldn't be all that interested in their parents movements, especially nocturnal and especially if they went out together. But the fact that Max and Ruth had managed to make Bones feel like there was nothing wrong with her family except for the normal stuff like a rebellious brother, shed light into what Booth was up against.
Max Keenan was smart, disciplined and fully compartmentalized human being who could keep an alternate life secret from his children for fifteen years.
It was going to be extremely hard to find him if he didn't want to be found.
Bones looked at him. "If they'd been caught, maybe they'd both be alive now."
"No, they would have been dead within a month."
She shifted in her seat. "Why?"
Booth winced and gave his chin a quick rub. "You've seen how hard it is for somebody on the outside to off somebody in prison.
Criminals are part of a big dysfunctional family. If they're in the same circle—say, banks—chances are at least they know of each other. One guy recognizes your father, tells another 'Hey, remember Max? From Ohio?' 'Oh yeah, sure'. Tongues wag and McVicar finds out he has to stop looking 'cause the cops just made his job a whole lot easier."
Things might've turned a lot different, in fact both Russ and Bones might have been killed, depending on what orders McVicar had had.
Booth's gut told him McVicar had been sent to dispose of the entire Keenan household, that's why her parents took drastic measures when Russ saw McVicar around.
Bones was staring at the saltshaker again, frowning.
"Hey, Bones?" he asked, reaching across the table. He put a hand on her forearm.
"I'm ok. I think I should call Russ." She paused, maybe thinking about when to call him and what to say. She looked at him again, ready for the rest. "What else did you find?"
"Remember Fred? Yes, well, he told me that two weeks after the robbery a man came up to him in a bar and offered him a ten thousand bucks the get him the private records of the names of the owners who's safes had been stolen—Fred mentioned Bobby was especially interested in safes between numbers 136.600 and 136.700.
Also asked for copies of the surveillance cameras from a week before the robbery. Fred just happened to have been a daddy for the third time and was stringed for cash so he agreed."
"Who was this man?"
"A private eye in Chicago named Bobby Crenshaw."
"Okay," Sid said, sliding both plates in front of them and two bottles of water. "Eat this, drink that and you should get back to your normal healthy selves. What happened to your head?"
"Caught the wrong end of a femur," Booth replied.
Sid smiled, understood it was a sensitive subject and went to spread his food-miracles elsewhere.
Booth reached for the saltshaker and noticed it was it a perfect position, almost as if he'd moved it himself. Bones wasn't eating.
He stopped sprinkling salt. "Bones, dig in."
He watched her until she understood he wasn't going to continue unless she picked up her fork and started packing it. So she did that.
"Now, the real interesting thing happened when I called Mr. Crenshaw. I asked him if he'd worked on the Chicago bank heist, 1991, there was this really telling pause before he made a liar of himself by saying he didn't know anything about it. I told him I knew about the tapes that he should cut the crap if he didn't want me knocking on his door."
Booth whistled. "He got aggressive. Too aggressive."
"Too aggressive?" Bones asked.
Booth noted she was chewing earnestly now and craning her neck just a few imperceptible degrees to inspect his plate. He pretended not to notice this.
"I wasn't probing too deep, it wasn't like I was asking him to go on national television and tell me the name of his client. It happened more than a decade ago, he shouldn't get bent out of shape like that."
"You think he's hiding something?" Bones asked.
"The FBI calls you to ask superficial questions you can do two things"—he pointed his empty fork to the right—"You can cooperate, take the heat off for a while if you're hiding something and look good in the process. Or," he pointed the fork to the left, "Or you can stonewall which raises all kinds of red flags and honking alarms.
Now, I know this guy is far from being a brainless moron; he was one of the best back in the nineties. Hefty fees, big clients. Whoever hired him to investigate your parents robbery must've been a big fish who warned grumpy Bobby about leaking his or her name to anybody."
"It's like the confidentiality agreement between a priest and a confessor. Its cornerstone is secrecy. Time can't erode it." A forkful of stir-fried veggies disappeared inside her mouth.
Booth glanced at her, holding his breath. He broke into a cold sweat every time Bones brought up religion to illustrate a point. Thankfully she didn't stretch the simile into something like 'Priests are like werewolves' or some other heretic comparison that would make Father O'Higgins want to drench her in holy water.
"Then how are we going to find out who hired him?" she asked after she finished chewing.
"I'm gonna call him again and if he's not a lot nicer to me I'm gonna hop on the first flight to Chicago and get acquainted over a dish of cupcakes. I might threaten him, too."
Bones gave him a small mischievous smile, one Booth liked to think it stood for You're naughty but I like you.
"What if it has nothing to do with my father or the necklace? What if—" she looked around the table, seeking an alternate scenario—"if he was hired by one of the other people who got robbed? What if—"
"Bones, it's a lead we have to check out. The only lead at this point. It doesn't pan out, we move on. Just," he raised his hand and lowered it a bit. "Calm down."
She nodded twice before her eyes flickered to his plate and then back to his eyes. He smiled and pushed his plate a bit closer to hers and she did the same. Their plates met.
Bones reached over to his plate and stabbed a cube of deep-fired chicken with her fork; she placed her cupped hand under the fork to avoid spilling sauce.
"Bryant George's head wound was made with a trenching shovel. I think we should go back to his apartment. We never considered his place as the murder scene."
Booth watched her chewing and then watched the tip of her tongue darting over her upper lip to collect extra sauce. She reached for his plate again. Off went another cube. He'd set those apart for her.
"Ok. Tomorrow," Booth said, reaching for her plate and staking his fork through some sort of fish he'd set his stomach on earlier. "Fisk hasn't called about the necklace. How about that stuff he said he found?"
Hmm. Tasty fishy. He took some more.
This food-sharing was a habit they had developed overtime, after so many take-out meals they'd become accustomed to the absence of plate-boundaries, if you will. Now after they were done tasting what they'd ordered they always swapped goodies.
The rules varied according to food. Booth didn't like sharing his fries, for example. Bones always claimed hers were less crispy or oilier than his which was ridiculous. Aside from that, Booth enjoyed the sharing. He wondered if cyber David got stuff picked from his plate too or if only Booth had the 'privilege'.
"Lab should have it done by tomorrow. I asked Angela if she could come up with a way of scanning pictures for masses and colors congruent with the necklace. Are you going to eat that?" she asked, pointing with her fork at something Booth had kind of shuffled to the edge of his plate.
Booth scrunched up his nose. He had no idea what that was. "No. From what pictures?"
"Social magazines, Chicago newspapers. It's a…shot in the dark," she said, tentatively and while staring at him.
He gave her the thumbs-up for the correct use of slang and she continued.
"I don't want to rely solely on a jeweler's memory and we need to know who owned the necklace before it as stolen," she said as she finished chewing. She took her glass of water and watched him over the rim.
"I'm gonna head back to the Bureau and finish up a few things but I want to check everything's alright at your place tonight so call me when you're ready to leave the lab. I'll give you a lift or follow you in my car. No, no arguing. I'm coming so don't—" He stopped himself.
Bones had finished her water and was now dabbing the corners of her mouth with a napkin. Her gaze on him, it looked like her mind was processing something entirely different form his words.
"You're not arguing."
Booth, like all people with secrets, tended to infuse certain looks with ominous meanings.
Bones leaned back in her seat, she regarded him for a moment with a very strange look in her eyes; looked like her pre-bomb-dropping stare, where she fine-tuned her question/remark/analysis in her genius brain.
"Are you having sex with Camille?"
Booth was paralysed for a whole second that really felt like a whole hour to him.
He'd planned clever ways of denying everything or of breaking the truth in the best way possible but it was not until now that he understood there would be no 'best' way to tell Bones, just like there wasn't a best way to torch a building—in the end there was going to be fire and chaos whether you started by taking a match to a curtain or a couch.
Not that Bones would be jealous, Booth was careful not to assume that. But there was a fact: Bones didn't like Camille or her methods. And by the look in her eyes, Booth could tell an affirmative answer was not what she wanted—or would like—to hear.
He needed Bones in her best cooperative mood now that they were walking into unknown territories. Maybe the private eye was a dead end, maybe not. Booth had no idea if there was another colourful guy like McVicar lurking in Max's past.
Also, Bones didn't need to feel his relationship with Camille somehow changed his relationship with her. So he lied to avoid them both a problem they didn't need.
"No," he said with an appropriate degree of shock and peevishness. He held her gaze until he saw she had believed him. Then, since Booth believed in 'what comes around, goes back to bite you in the rear' he said:
"So, has 'Mr. Campaign Against Gun Violence' found out you're like the NRA's poster woman?"
-------
It was 2:25 a.m. and Booth sat on the edge of Camille's bed, tying up his shoelaces in the automaton-like way of a person whose mind is off thinking about other things and left 'Hands' on auto-pilot. Two hours earlier he'd driven Bones to her apartment, made sure she was safe and offered to stay. Bones said 'thanks but dorky David is coming over, don't worry'.
Well, she didn't actually say 'dorky' but Booth knew deep down she thought of the word.
Then Camille had called.
Camille crawled on the bed towards him. She ran her hands up, from his lower back to his shoulders, palms warm and soft. She kind of straddled him, her knees flanked his hips. It made Booth want to stop tying his shoes.
She said into his right ear, "You come. You leave. Don't I feel used. . ."
Seeley—he was always Seeley to Cam—chuckled.
"Right. You. Used." She ran his hands over his chest. "I have to leave. I have things to do."
"Let me help you," she said with the wicked tone. She started buckling his belt. Seeley smiled.
"I doubt you can do much for Dr. Brennan at two in the morning," Cam said.
Booth stood up and away from her hands.
He slipped on his undershirt and then his shirt; he left it unbuttoned.
Camille looked up at him, head in a curious tilt. "Why can't I feel used?"
Booth stuffed his tie in his pants' pocket; he snorted a Let's-not-play-dumb laugh.
"Don't think I don't know why you agreed to this," he said, glancing at the rumpled bed.
It had started as a one night thing for fun and as much as he thought it could be only that, soon Booth came to grips with the truth and Camille's intentions. He'd seen them today in Angela's office.
Camille had the cunning gene and had always had the distinct ability to balance the scales in her favor. Be it flattery like she did with 'Hodge Podge' or threats like she did with Zack, she knew how to come out on top.
Except with Bones.
After a few weeks of working at the Jeffersonian, Camille knew—with the certainty of somebody accustomed to emotional engineering—that Bones could not be deftly flattered or intimidated into anything. Camille would never be in charge the way she wanted to be.
With Bones you went on equal terms or on no terms at all.
With Camille you went on unequal terms or she'll spend her time trying to make them unequal in some way.
Add to all this, his own declaration of who had whose back—unconditionally. Camille would evaluate the situation in simple terms: outnumbered, seek strategic advantage.
Granted there was physical attraction and yes, Camille might have other reasons to sleep with him but Booth knew for sure at least one of those other reasons: Camille thought their clandestine relationship gave her some kind of advantage over Bones.
To Booth it made absolutely no difference, his relationship with Bones remained intact Camille or not.
However, he wasn't thinking clearly and Camille was.
Cam lowered her eyes in an apparent shameful gesture that came out as false coyness.
"Good night, Camille," Booth said as he strode out of her bedroom, jacket over his shoulder.
"Don't you think I don't know why you started this, silly Seeley," she said, loud enough for him to hear.
Booth made it a point to slam her door extra hard on his way out.
It looked like the figuring out of intentions went both ways.
To Be Continued. . .
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