A/N I apologize for posting late, I intended to have this up last night, but 4 kids in RL can be far more distracting than one might wish for, at times. Thanks for the favorites and reviews. I will try to reply as I can. Without further ado, onto the story. (*sigh* I still don't own Bones)
As he pulled into the driveway of their Mighty Hut, Booth saw Flinn waiting for him with full entourage. They were already in the house, searching everything, of course. Flinn immediately asked the obvious question.
"Where's Dr. Brennan?"
"Good afternoon, to you too." He had to cooperate, but he didn't have to be too nice about it.
He handed him the letter. Flinn read through it twice, than asked the next obvious question.
"Are you saying you had nothing to do with this?"
"Actually, she's saying it. But since you're asking, no, I knew nothing about it, Flinn. Do you think I'd be standing here like a fool talking to you if I knew where my family was?"
"I understand that you are under a great deal of stress, Booth. I'm not the enemy. I'm only trying to find the truth, to do my job."
"That may be, but you should know, you are in over your head with this guy. If he can pull this off, frame Bones and Caroline, play these games with the whole Jeffersonian and the FBI, you better believe he can do worse to you."
"You mentioned that before. Just let me warn you, though. If I find the evidence, I will arrest Dr. Brennan, and she will be prosecuted."
"Yeah, thanks for the warning. Are your boys done tearing apart my house? I've had a really long day and I'd like to get some sleep."
"We are, actually. We'll need to retain some things, obviously. Laptops, files, you know... We left the inventory on the kitchen table."
"Right. So if that's all, then?"
Booth knew from the beginning he wasn't getting sleep tonight. He hit the fridge for a beer, than he dialed Hodgins. He didn't want to allow himself time to think about what had happened today. He couldn't. He'd stop and think when he got his family home.
They were there within the hour. Angela had Michael on her hip, which minimized the gesturing, but did nothing to calm her voice, perhaps even made it worse.
"Omygod, this just can't be happening. It's really happening, isn't it?"
For his part, Hodgins was holding together well. The conspiracy theorist in him had yet to make an honest appearance (although he had begun carrying a signal jammer in case of bugs, but no one needed to know that just yet). Still, he couldn't help but focus them on solving the riddle.
"OK, so you have got to see this thing this Ethan guy left on the wall. I don't even know where to begin, we don't have a mathematician on this level at the Jeffersonian. We can try running some computer programs, at least possibly assign meaning to some of these symbols, or associate them somehow, but interpreting it altogether? Computers can't do that man!"
He pulled out his laptop while he was talking and began scrolling through pictures. Booth was looking over his shoulder, still overwhelmed, as Angela handed Jack the baby and sat down in front of the laptop.
"I can access some of the programs I have on the Angelatron remotely, and I can use them to try to associate them with known mathematical functions or something, but I've got background programs still running on the QR code thing so it'll take time, and even if I get something, we need a human genius to interpret them."
Hodgins had to put it out there, so "You know, we need to remember that every time we touch technology, we make ourselves vulnerable to Pelant. We've got to assume that he has his little technological tentacles everywhere. Dr. B visited Ethan, but how did he alter the time stamp, or even know that she was there in the first place? She requested that plant, but how did he know? Just so you know, I'm carrying a bug jammer/detector everywhere I go these days, and I ain't using email or cel phones for anything."
Booth grimaced at the paranoia, but agreed overall. "Yeah, you got a point. We still should keep runnin' Angela's stuff on the QR reader, he'd already know if he's gonna, about that, but this triangle needs to stay on the QT. We need some names - get this stuff out to people we can trust and keep it away from any technology. Has Cam done anything with it yet?"
"Nahh, we weren't sure what to do with it yet, and then the s**t hit the fan with Dr. B, Sweets, Carolyn and everything. Got the pics taken, but haven't scanned them or anything."
"Great. See if you can get Cam to sit on it. Keep it as hardcopy only, forget to log it, do what you got to. Then we gotta find someone who can help us figure it out. Can you guys think of anyone else who could figure this out?"
Offhandedly, Angela said, "Well, I always just ask Brennan, When Jack isn't around. I get the computer stuff, but the fringe mathematical theorizing is beyond me."
"Hey, me too, man, really. Sorry, but numbers was always Zach's thing back in the day, I just tagged along for the ride."
Booth latched onto it. "Just what we need. One genius nut job to interpret another - or two. Is Zach still in DC?"
Jack spoke up. "Yeah, actually. Sweets can't seem to let go of the idea that he needs to 'help' him somehow, but no one but the psychologists have access to him. He quit taking visitors outside of his family ages ago. I send him stuff here and there, but it's been hard, man…"
"Yeah, I get it" he said, and he really did, but he had no time for emotions, he was already dialing Sweets
