Monday, 10:05 a.m.
He'd woken that morning and shaved and dressed and eaten and barely thought about it until he did.
Then he couldn't not think about it.
That's how the mind worked, he reminded himself. Try not to think about something and the only thing you could think about would be that thing.
Booth and Brennan.
They'd staged a celebration in the lounge for her benefit, to give her hope, but it had really been for themselves. Dr. Brennan had nodded and hugged them and taken it all in, but they could see just how false their celebration had been.
It felt more like goodbye.
Now he seemed to be struggling through his reports, struggling through the routine. Uncertainty ruled the day and he wondered just how long it might take for him to feel certain of anything again.
It hadn't helped that Danforth had re-entered his life and his office, intent on ruining a perfectly ruined day.
"Been checking all the hospitals and emergency rooms for a black male who fits the description of our runner," Danforth said as a way of greeting him as he waltzed into his office. "No one's come in with stab wounds as severe as your people say they'll be."
He hadn't slept well—Daisy had retreated to her apartment to finish a paper she was working on and he had tossed alone in bed until he'd finally managed a couple of hours of sleep. Danforth was as good as a nightmare.
"So you can't find the other victim," Sweets repeated. "Could be dead somewhere. Just how am I connected to this problem?"
"Loose ends, Doc," Danforth said as he slid into a seat on the couch, his posture not much different than yesterday's takeover. "Bancroft claims it was the other guy who did the stabbing and without a reliable witness, he's making a compelling case. Doctors tell me his wounds are consistent with a defensive struggle. He gets cut, gets scared and hightails it out of there because he's in no hurry to rescue his sister-in-law because he's playing hide the sau. . . ."
"I get the picture," Sweets said, his voice testy and his mood testier. "I can give you an idea of what kind of man might. . . ."
"Not looking for a mental picture, Doc," Danforth interrupted. "I'm looking for insights on what to look for physically."
It took a second, but the picture came into focus. "You want to ask Dr. Brennan to help you pick out the victim."
Danforth looked stunned and for one shining moment Sweets felt he had a handle on his day.
"I'm not going to ask how you got from point A to Z so quickly," Danforth said slowly. "But without more evidence, I can't hold Bancroft for too long. Charge him with leaving the scene, failure to report, that sort of thing. Minor on the face of it, really."
"I thought I was bad luck, Agent Danforth. I thought two agents shot in two separate incidents in which I played a part. . . ." Sweets felt the anger swelling.
"That's a might strong. . . ."
"And you don't like civilians in the field. You don't like Dr. Brennan. . . ."
"There's a time and a place for. . . ."
"And the Jeffersonian team is Booth's team and God help you but you really don't like to work with them because they really are loyal to a different agent."
"Everyone screws with the substitute teacher. . . ."
"And when we give you good advice, sterling advice, you ignore it and go ahead blithely. . . ."
"Stop."
Danforth was standing, his hands raised in surrender. "Yes, Dr. Sweets, I have opinions about civilians in the field and I have opinions about two separate incidences involving you." He looked absolutely feral. "I admit to having doubts about you in the field, such that I set up a ruse to lure the suspect from the cabin to avoid loss of life and limb. Even was willing to call in the locals to flush him out, if need be. Thing is, Doc, criminals aren't necessarily the sharpest knives in the drawer. You or me or both of us could have been killed out there yesterday. I did what I did to minimize risk. That's what a good agent does."
"But this is a murder, and I need the sharpest minds possible."
"You need the team at the Jeffersonian."
Danforth looked grim. "Yeah. I need them. And I need Dr. Brennan."
"But she won't work with you."
Sweets felt more and more in control.
"She won't work with anyone right now." Danforth began to slowly shake his head. "Your bone doctor has severe trust issues that probably mean that even if we solve this case, she's not going to throw in her lot with me. Or any agent."
"But Lisa Knowles believed in two things—having a good time and working just to keep the party going. Doesn't matter if she slept with the whole House of Reps or the President himself, she deserves justice, but that hasn't always been the focus of this case, has it?"
Danforth's words struck a note with Sweets.
"It's been about ego and pride and fear, not Lisa Knowles." Danforth closed his eyes and sighed heavily. "Her death was about greed or power or sex—I just don't know. I don't have a real clear picture of this and without something more to pull it into focus, Lisa Knowles just gets to fade into some distant memory, mourned and forgotten because other things got in the way."
For the first time since he began his unlikely association with the agent, Sweets felt as if they just might be on the same side.
"If you want Dr. Brennan's help," Sweets said slowly and deliberately, "try some of that honesty with her. She likes the truth."
Danforth's expression did not change.
"Problem is, Doc, that little speech was hers, not mine." The man looked positively uncertain of himself. "I need new material."
oOo
Monday, 2:57 p.m.
If this was the end of the dream team, Sweets thought, it would have one of those bittersweet happy endings.
The large monitors of Angela's computer flashed with images as the artist prodded her controller. Everyone had agreed to give this one last try—comb through the evidence which they hadn't necessarily had a hand in collecting and make something out of the nothing they seemed to be left holding.
"Triangulate old cell phone calls?" Danforth stared at the screens, his eyes trying to read the flood of images. "I hadn't thought of that."
"I can give you the nearest cell towers." Angela said. Her eyes scanned the screens. "You'll have to figure out what they're close to."
"I appreciate this," Danforth said. "I need the numbers I indicated. There were a lot of calls to that number and it had to be something."
He caught Angela's eyes as they both stared at the agent. The man was casting his line and hoping something jumped at the bait.
"Brennan's looking at the bones now," she added. "If Wendell missed something, she'll catch it."
Danforth said nothing, simply looked forward.
He wasn't about to jinx his luck.
He'd accompanied the agent to the hospital and together they made his case to Dr. Brennan. Sweets hadn't been able to read her; she'd been reading something to Booth as they walked in and it wasn't until later that he realized she had been reading something she was writing to him—a new novel, maybe.
For several minutes he had listened, the story a compelling mixture of characters both familiar and unfamiliar, but none he recognized from her novels. This was a different story designed maybe to have a different ending.
Sweets hadn't commented on it at the time—he felt that they were asking too much of her as it was, but she had relented and Danforth had driven her to the Jeffersonian and taken a back seat as she explained the need for them all to re-examine evidence.
He watched the kaleidoscope of images coalesce into one and the map appeared to pinpoint a large area of the D.C. area.
"It was a disposable cell phone," Danforth murmured. "But who the hell were you calling?"
"I can't answer that," Hodgins said as he entered the room, "but I can tell you that the fibers in the mattress were the kind that are used to prevent or deter infection from spreading. It's a special blend treated to repel germs and viruses. It's being tested in hospitals."
"Do you know which ones?"
Hodgins grinned at the agent's question. "Right here in D.C." He pointed toward a spot within the circle around one of the cell phone towers on Angela's diagram. "It's being tested at Little Company of Hope."
"The same hospital in which our victim's sister works," Dr. Saroyan added.
"Quite a coincidence," Angela said.
"As Dr. B says," Hodgins offered, "there are no coincidences in murder investigations."
Danforth blinked at the screen.
All heads turned as Dr. Brennan strode into the room. "The microfractures on Lisa Knowles' wrists were more than likely caused by struggling against a hard restraint."
"You can tell that?" Danforth's voice rose. "From looking at the bones?"
Dr. Brennan ignored the comment and took the controller from Angela and pressed a few areas on the pad. An enlargement of the wrist bones appeared to show tiny fissures that radiated out from the nearest points. Then the screen changed.
They saw a profile of bone that had been cleaved in two.
"The striations and force profile of the murder weapon did not fit any of the profiles of weapons in our database," she said. "That's why Wendell didn't find any matches."
"We don't know where she was killed or even why or with what." Danforth grunted. "More dead ends."
"Not quite," Dr. Brennan said. The images on the screen changed and a cutting tool with an unusual shape appeared on the screen. "Reverse engineering the wound marks gives us a weapon like this. This is what caused the marks on Lisa Knowles' bones."
"That?" Danforth stepped closer to the screen. "What the hell is it?"
Next to the weapon circled in red were Chinese knives and an assortment of knives most often found at the weekend flea markets. Each knife looked more murderous, more deadly than the next, but the murder weapon looked almost dainty besides the others. The business end had a rounded surface that seemed more like something from an umbrella and a sharpened point that tapered into a smooth, deadly edge. Serrations along the blade were irregularly spaced as if some kind of afterthought.
In all, it didn't look like a murder weapon at all.
"Something a machinist could make," Angela supplied. "A murder weapon that could not be traced to any known design in our current database."
"Don't you see what they've done," Hodgins added, "with her murder? One red herring after the next."
Danforth wasn't buying it. "We already eliminated the biggest red herring, the smuggling operation, from the murder."
"They planned this," Dr. Brennan interjected. "It would take some time to come up with the murder weapon, but someone had to design it and then make it. And a hospital would be an ideal place to stage the murder, especially a murder such as this. There would be copious amounts of blood. Both the victim and the killer would be covered with it"
"Wait," Danforth cautioned, but no one was listening.
"This was especially bloody." Dr. Saroyan was adding to the fray. She listed a number of arteries that would have been severed in the attack. "Blood spurts would be hard to clean up. . . ."
"Except in a facility that regularly has copious amounts of blood such as a hospital," Dr. Brennan said, pointing toward a new image on the monitor of Little Company of Hope. "If I were the murderers, I would choose a surgery."
"The blood could be explained. . . ," said Dr. Saroyan.
"Better yet, disposed of," Angela countered. "Along with all the linens and bedclothes. . . ."
"Incinerated at 780 – 1200 Celsius," Dr. Brennan continued.
"1436 to 2552 Fahrenheit," Hodgins translated. He gave a nod toward Danforth.
"With the rest of the medical waste. And the bone fragment could have been taken from a surgical procedure," Dr. Brennan suggested. "There were no discernible blood traces from another victim despite the savagery of the attack on Miss Knowles. It's quite possible it was harvested from a surgery and used to throw suspicion from Tom Bancroft to an unknown, black male in his early thirties."
"And the serrations or marks or what have you on the bone doesn't match the whatsit murder weapon we have now," Danforth offered.
"No, it matches." Dr. Brennan pressed another button and a fragment appeared on the screen with lines drawn between it and the rib bones that matched the profile of the murder weapon. "But they had the weapon. It wouldn't be that hard to use their knife on this bone."
"A conspiracy to commit murder," Hodgins said, warming to the story. "It fits. Who better to accuse of murder in D.C. but a whole group of people who are comprise a large segment of the prison population as it is. It's like that case where the mother drowned her children and claimed that they were attacked by a black male. How many police departments were scouring the area for that man before the truth came out?"
"She was manipulating the paranoia of the general population."
"And when the bone fragment is added to the body of the victim, it creates reasonable doubt that someone else was in that bed with her." Sweets saw the big picture coming into focus. "Tom Bancroft catches wind of the prescription drugs being warehoused at the shop and gets involved selling them at the hospital through his wife. When the sister finds out and maybe wants her fair share, they decide to kill the sister because she knows about it. Or she's already in on it."
"Patients look for less expensive alternatives to their medications," Dr. Saroyan mused. "A pharmacist could substitute lower quality drugs for the higher quality ones and still dispense them at the same price, then sell the higher quality drugs on the street."
"Lisa Knowles stumbles into what her sister and brother-in-law are doing, and. . . ."
"STOP!"
Agent Danforth stood between them and Angela's monitors, his hands raised and his face dark with the exertion.
No one moved. All eyes were on the agent as he tried to digest what they were saying.
Angela openly smirked while Hodgins grinned and Dr. Saroyan seemed to be suppressing her own smile. Only Dr. Brennan remained serious, her expression almost neutral even though her eyes seemed to be assessing the man in front of her.
"All right," he said finally. "All right. He did it. And she did it. And we know how they did it and probably why they did it." He turned toward Dr. Brennan. "He did it, right?"
"The force of the stab wounds with a weapon of this ilk would require a . . . ."
He held up his hand, stopping her. "He did it. They did it." He took a deep breath. "You all are going to run through this with me, one at a time, and I'm going to need to get warrants for the machine shop and the hospital and then I'm going out to arrest someone." He gave them each a long, thoughtful look. "We're going to build the story. . . ."
"This isn't a story," Dr. Brennan protested. "The evidence supports what we've been saying."
With her arms crossed, she seemed as intractable as Danforth.
"I appreciate your help, Dr. Brennan, I really do," he began slowly, "but right now it's a story. Then we try to see what evidence we have to fit that story."
"That's not how we work," Dr. Saroyan interjected. Her own posture mimicked Dr. Brennan's. "We don't adapt the evidence to a story of what we think happened. This is the only plausible way it could have happened."
Neither she nor Dr. Brennena were budging.
So Danforth blinked first.
"Please take me through the accumulated evidence," he said slowly, deliberately, his voice scrubbed of all sarcasm. "Please help me understand what the Bancrofts did and why they did it. Then I can get additional information through warrants and I can go out and arrest the SOB who did this."
Sweets cringed at the word, why, but he said nothing because Dr. Brennan said nothing. She only nodded and the evidence was laid out, piece by piece as Bancroft listened and asked questions.
Throughout the explanations, he watched Dr. Brennan, her demeanor cool and detached. And he watched Danforth and as he did, he realized there was only one way for this to end.
oOo
Monday, 5:35 p.m.
"You really didn't have to come with me, Doc."
The entrance to the hospital betrayed its beginnings at the turn of the last century, its Victorian influences evident in the old brickwork and ornate style. Inside, the old gave way to the new and only remnants of the original architecture showed through the modern lobby.
"Dr. Brennan insisted that we have a forensic team examine the surgical wing and look at the logs for the incinerator." Sweets felt he had to stay firmly in command of this part of the operation. "She didn't have to oversee it, but she chose to. The least I could do was to see the rest of this through."
"You could have another go at the husband. Present him with the new evidence." Danforth stabbed at the elevator button again. "If what you say is true, then it's possible he might flip on the wife."
Even if Danforth was a first-class ass, he was still a decent detective who wasn't content with simply laying the blame on an unknown assailant, thought Sweets. He wanted the truth and he was willing to unleash a team of forensic specialists to search for anything that would point the finger at the murderer.
"Hodgins has a team at the machinist's shop. If they can find the same kind of metal that was used in the knife. . . ."
"Game, set, match." Danforth drummed his fingers against the wall before turning to him. "Look, Dr. Sweets, this job is a lot about trust. Your Dr. Brennan trusts Booth and you trust him and it's a regularly trust festival. Hacker wants your 97 percent to keep his badge shiny, but the truth is that trust has to be earned. That's how the 97 percent stays there."
"She didn't have to come, you know," Danforth said as the elevator came to a rest in front of them. "Cops in the field. Scientists in the lab. That's the way of the world."
"Your world," Sweets said. "But in her world, Dr. Brennan can sometimes see things that others miss. You were smart to bring her out here. She'll see something or discover something that might otherwise be missed."
"Yeah." Danforth waited impatiently for the doors to finally open. When they did, he almost tried to push the door open, but settled for keeping it open longer. "Maybe. I don't imagine there's much intellectual stimulation waiting for Rip Van Winkle to awaken."
Sweets had an irrational desire to throttle the larger man, but he held steady and kept his eyes on the elevator control panel. He tried to compose a comeback about how the emergency instructions were more interesting than Danforth's insights, but he felt that was a stretch and held his comment.
The agent poked at the number of the floor where Mrs. Bancroft was scheduled to be and Sweets tried to keep his mind on the task at hand.
But it was hard. Dr. Brennan vied for his thoughts as did the comatose Booth. And little Christine. And Parker. And the Jeffersonian team that seemed forever linked to the fate of the Bs.
"We're here. Doc?"
Sweets shook himself and felt a sense of dread as he stepped out onto the floor. The nurses wore blue scrubs in various shades while the students, they'd been directed, would stand out in pale shades of yellow. Ashley Bancroft was standing with women dressed in a suit, her head bent over a clipboard.
"Mrs. Bancroft? May I have a minute of your time?" Danforth offered up a modicum of his gruff charm. "We think that we have a handle on what happened to your sister." He took Sweets in with his look. "Dr. Lance Sweets is here to help if you feel any distress, but I was wondering if you could help us understand some of the workings of the hospital."
Despite his protests, the man did understand how to elicit cooperation and Sweets joined in as they chatted as they made their way downstairs to one of the old surgeries on the first floor.
"Tom couldn't have hurt Lisa," Mrs. Bancroft was saying as they entered the old wing. "He certainly wasn't screwing her. I would know. A wife knows."
Sweets murmured something in agreement, the plan to build trust with Bancroft before springing their evidence on her. As they neared the surgery, they saw a flutter of activity outside the room—a trio of FBI techs were packing their cases.
Dr. Brennan and crew had been there at least an hour before he had arrived with Danforth.
Inside the anthropologist stood waiting for them.
"Ashley Bancroft, this is Dr. Temperance Brennan of the Jeffersonian," Danforth said. "She knows a thing or two about bones, specifically, the bone damage that was done to your sister."
"We found blood consistent with the sister's blood type," Dr. Brennan intoned.
"We get half a dozen gunshot victims, stabbing victims in here every Saturday night by 7. It could be anyone's blood."
Ashley Bancroft had picked a good place to stage the murder, Sweets thought. He could practically hear Caroline Julian pointing out how easy it would be for a defense attorney to dismantle their evidence.
"The protocol for cleaning this room of blood is fairly thorough," Dr. Brennan continued. "It's used mostly as an overflow room when the exam rooms are full."
Bancroft didn't miss a beat. "It's an old surgery. It's small and doesn't really have the room for all the machines and the surgical teams. . . ."
He listened to the explanation as he wandered the room. It was small and the machines that lined the walls made it even smaller. They were wrapped in clear plastic and had a patina of disuse about them. Dr. Brennan stood by the door as did Danforth.
"So a lot of blood flows through here," Danforth interrupted. "My people tell me that it's a straight shot to the incinerator chute from here. Pretty deserted, too. Older wing, not really up to today's standards but little money to upgrade." He snapped his fingers and pointed at Danforth. "That's what this was all about. Money. Lots of it."
"Money?" Bancroft put on her most innocent look. "My sister was killed for money?"
"Yes," Dr. Brennan said. "You killed her for money. You and your husband."
Sweets had seen many fine performances over the years, but Ashley Bancroft was playing her heart out for a shot at winning the Oscar for her starring role in her sister's demise.
"I loved my sister. Tom didn't hurt her. He was trying to save her. . . ."
"He killed her," Dr. Brennan said. "Probably with your help. You would know that freezing the body would retard decomposition, but more importantly, it would prevent insects associated with decomp from appearing on the body."
"Which would give you enough time for an alibi—a presentation in front of 100 or so nurses as part of a class project." Danforth cocked his head toward Dr. Brennan. "The floor plan of this part of the hospital has a service elevator right down the hallway toward the morgue."
"I don't have to listen to this," Bancroft was saying, "I didn't kill my sister. I didn't do what you say I did." She had stepped close to a gurney and her hands were thrust deep into the pockets of her scrubs. "I had no reason to kill her."
"But you did," Danforth said. "You were always paying for her good times. Her bad luck. Unemployment only goes so far." He punched the air. "Damn her. You were trying to do something with your life and she was doing anyone who came into her life. Including your husband."
Bancroft looked defiant still, but the façade was shifting.
Dr. Brennan held up an evidence bag. "You cleaned the room well, but bone chips can travel pretty far and can become part of the blood spatter." Sweets stepped closer and read the tag on it. "Bone fragment, right. . . ."
And that's as far as he got. The gurney was pushed hard into Danforth, causing the agent to lose his balance. Bancroft took several steps toward the door, but her surprise move was met with another.
All right, two others.
Seeing Danforth on the floor, surprised at being upended, Sweets pulled his gun and aimed it straight at Bancroft.
Then she disappeared.
Her lunge toward the door became more of a crashing collapse as Dr. Brennan's foot met her leg and the nursing student crashed headlong into the door.
Sweets followed, using his leg to catch the door and swing it open enough to follow her out even as he had to hip check the gurney out of his way.
But Bancroft had scrambled to her feet and was racing down the darkened hallway before disappearing into the shadows.
Without thinking, he started after her and found himself leading the pack, Dr. Brennan behind him while Danforth had found his legs and was bringing up the rear.
She hadn't gained much of a lead and he found himself with Dr. Brennan practically on his heels following Bancroft into a short hallway that led into another room.
And it was a mistake.
He raced into the room, crashing through the swinging doors only to feel something catch at his jacket then give way.
Whatever it was, his stomach burned and he stumbled backwards into Dr. Brennan.
"Sweets?"
His hand went to his stomach and he felt the burn and then the warm wetness and he had the sense of falling.
"Sweets?"
He held the gun in front of him even as he was falling to his knees and he called out, "Stop, FBI. Stop or I'll shoot."
A gunshot rang out, deafening him as he fell into something soft and safe. In front of him, somewhere in the distance, he heard a thud and a clatter of something metallic hit the ground.
"Did I hit her?" he asked as he felt his guts twisting and his side burning. He folded at the waist and he was grateful that Dr. Brennan was holding him steady because the ground was cold and hard and unforgiving beneath him.
"We need a medic," he heard as his guts seemed to pretzel twist at him. "We need a medic. Sweets has been injured."
He nodded at this news because it sounded right. A quick glance at his side told him that both his jacket and his shirt had been cut away and Dr. Brennan had wadded the fabric and was pressing it hard against him.
"Did I hit her?" he asked again. "I shot her, didn't I?"
He could vaguely see Danforth's silhouette in front of him hovering over something on the floor, but the pain rippling along his side twisted him into the spasms and he gasped for air.
"A doctor's on the way, Sweets," he heard Dr. Brennan's voice behind him. He had the sense that he was sitting on the floor with Dr. Brennan somehow wrapped around him, holding him upright. "Danforth's got her. She's not going anywhere."
He found himself like Booth's bobblehead, nodding dumbly at the news.
"I shot her," he gasped. "She was running and she did something to me and I heard the boom. . . ."
His side burned and Dr. Brennan was pressing into his side so hard that he thought that if she just let go it would feel so much better and he started to wriggle free of her, but she held him in an iron grip. Then Danforth was kneeling in front of him and someone in grey was kneeling in front of him and then was helping him lay down.
"Sweets, stay with me."
He grunted something and nodded dumbly and felt the pressure suddenly off his side and then something slick and warm oozing down his front and back and he wanted to tell them that it would stain his pants and he didn't mean to mess himself when in a waning moment of clarity, he wanted the answer to his question.
"Dr. Bones, did I stop her? I stopped her, didn't I?"
"No," he heard Dr. Brennan's voice as something pinched his arm and he felt himself drifting away from the moment into darkness, "Agent Danforth shot her."
Thursday, 2:57 p.m.
He eyed his watch as the hour narrowed down and began to tap his pen against the pad of paper in his lap.
". . . And I told her that it was my job." The agent looked to him for some kind of support, but Sweets ignored the cue and looked at his watch again.
"I'm dressing like that for a reason," the man continued, ignoring the obvious nonverbal cue from him, "high heels, push-up bra. . . ."
Sweets stilled the impulse to glance at his watch, and turned his pen to the pad to scribble a note. The stitches in his side itched fiercely under the protective gauze bandage.
". . . How was I supposed to know that I would like the feel of pantyhose or how those heels made my ass look?"
He fought the urge to check the time and the urge to draw a picture of the agent's newly-acquired wardrobe choices on the pad in front of him. Instead he jotted down a few terms straight from the American Psychiatric Associations' Diagnostic and Treatment Manual, circled these as well as the words, "homework assignment", and focused his attention on the agent.
"Agent Weston," he began, "maybe you need to talk to your wife openly and honestly about how you feel when you dress up as you do." He shifted in his seat. "You might even dress up for her gradually, let her see that it doesn't affect your sexuality but may, in fact, give you insights. . . ."
The words came automatically as if they had come straight from the bible of his profession, but he didn't pay that much attention. Agent Weston nodded solemnly, his body language clearly indicating he was open to his suggestions and he held on until the agent said his goodbyes and closed the door behind him before Sweets dove for his cell phone and re-read the text from Dr. Brennan.
"He's awake."
oOo
Thursday, 4:37 p.m.
Angela hugged him the moment he walked into the lounge and he gladly accepted the claps to his back and shoulder from Jared and Hodgins and the nod from Dr. Saroyan.
"You've seen him?" he asked. "He really is awake?"
The smiles and general air of relief said it all.
"Asked for a cheeseburger and a shake," Jared said. The younger Booth grinned. "Tempe practically clocked him, told him she didn't need to watch him have a heart attack, too."
Sweets couldn't help his own grin that easily chased away the gloom that had settled over him the last week.
"So what are we waiting on?" Sweets asked. "Can we go in to see him?"
"The doctors are with him," Hodgins offered. "They're just running a few tests and then we should be able to see him."
The lounge, so familiar and so gray these past few days, seemed almost brighter despite the waning day.
He glanced around the little family that had gathered there. Everyone had relaxed into smiles and laughter, the tension having been shed the moment they'd received the news.
He's awake.
Finally.
That should be enough for now, but he knew that it really wasn't. There were questions yet to be answered, a future for their little crime-solving family still uncertain. And the psychologist in him, the part of him who felt responsible for the mental well-being of his friends, wanted to know the answers.
Before he could see Booth for himself or poll the others about what they wanted for their futures, the elevators whooshed open and he recognized the heavy footsteps heading toward them.
Agent Matthew Danforth actually seemed to be smiling as he approached them.
And he carried a vase full of flowers.
These he handed off to Dr. Saroyan as if they were nuclear waste and then pulled him aside.
"You healing? Doing all that doctor shit they have you do?"
He wanted to laugh, but he knew from a few close calls over the last couple of days that laughter only pulled at the stitches and caused them to itch more.
"Yeah, I'm following doctor's orders although I was back at work today."
Danforth grunted.
"The flowers are nice." Sweets pointed at the vase which had been assigned a spot on the coffee table amid the coffee cups littered there.
"Booth doesn't need them, but the ladies like them." Danforth straightened and gestured in the general direction of Booth's room. "He's still got weeks of healing and rehab before he's officially back on the job."
"And you want to know if Dr. Brennan has changed her mind and will work with the FBI still."
He'd already had a conversation with Hacker about the possibility of keeping the Jeffersonian and FBI partnership alive, but he had no real answers for his boss.
"You got me, Doc." Danforth looked uncomfortable. "She handled herself well and she kept you from spilling your guts all over the shiny floors at the hospital."
"I handled myself well, too."
It had taken some time and some soul searching, but he had come to that conclusion on his own. He'd done his best—something Booth had always asked of him—and he had helped solve the case without jeopardizing anyone's safety except his own.
Danforth said nothing.
"C'mon," he repeated, "I did pretty well for myself. If I was going to get injured, a hospital is a pretty good place to get hurt."
It had been the joke of the week and he had taken the teasing good-naturedly. Booth and Brennan had been injured several times over the years and he'd seen other agents face down their own injuries. He saw it as a rite of passage. "When you're dealing with life and death," one of the agents had told him, "life's always sweeter when you come out on the alive side."
"Doc," Danforth began as he watched the interplay between the Hodgins and the others, "there's no good place to get hurt. This job has a habit of leaving all kinds of hurts and the trick is to avoid leaving too much scar tissue. That just acts as a reminder."
Sweets studied the man as Danforth studied Booth's odd, extended family.
"Your bone lady's got a lot of scar tissue," he murmured and Sweets found himself leaning in to hear him.
But he said nothing more.
"After they kick us out of here," Sweets said, "we're going to the Founding Fathers to hoist a few. I'd like you to come."
Danforth grimaced and shook his head. "I'm allergic, Doc. Bars don't agree with me."
"Angela's still nursing and I'm on paid meds so you wouldn't be the only one not drinking." Sweets wanted the man's company suddenly. "Jared's been sober for a while now and if we get Dr. Brennan. . . ."
He felt Danforth's hand on his arm.
"Look, Dr. Sweets, I appreciate what you think you're doing, but you don't have to."
"I know."
Danforth took a deep breath and seemed to be building toward something. "I came here to pay my respects, see if I could talk to you for a bit. Give you some advice."
Sweets nodded. "Sure."
Just then Dr. Brennan emerged from somewhere down the hall and he practically could feel the surge of relief and happiness from where he was standing.
"She sure is pretty when she smiles," Danforth said. "This job doesn't lend itself to much of that."
The pain and sadness that Dr. Brennan had worn over the past several days had evaporated and Sweets had to admit that she was quite beautiful without those grey veils.
"You were asked to work with the Jeffersonian, weren't you?" Sweets had heard the scuttlebutt in the office. "Hacker thinks you could fill in for Booth until he returns."
Danforth chuckled. "Despite what people tell you and what you might see, people aren't interchangeable parts. Your crew proves that. Sometimes you've got a one-of-a-kind sports car; take something away and all it is is some damned piece of junk."
"You don't want to be the substitute teacher? Think we'll just give you crap?"
Jared and Dr. Saroyan and Angela and Hodgins were disappearing down the hallway in the direction of Booth's room. Dr. Brennan stood at the juncture between the lounge and the hall and was gesturing toward them.
For a long, long moment, Dr. Brennan and Danforth seemed to be studying each other, sizing up the other. Then in a long, slow turn, Dr. Brennan made her own way back toward Booth's room.
Sweets waited. Danforth had kept his word, kept everyone apprised of the Bancroft's confessions and of how the Jeffersonian was earning the majority of the credit for cracking the case wide open—exposing murderers and smugglers and liars alike. Caroline Julian had practically been giddy as she outlined the charges to be leveled against the players.
"You wanted to give me some advice?"
Danforth seemed lost in some kind of thought, but he gave a slow nod. "You are a good man, a good psychologist, a good friend. You have a good, good heart."
"That's the thing. Some people have the killer gene, Doc; they can adjust to what they've done. They know how to hold that sadness at bay when it creeps up on them."
Danforth turned toward him, his face tired and worn. "You're a lot of things, Dr. Sweets. But you just aren't a killer."
A NOTE: I thank you for reading. It's been nice to read reviews in which readers have said, "I don't like Sweets but. . . " they've read the story anyway. I never considered Sweets' popularity; I just had a story I thought might be entertaining. I appreciate the reviews and in the next several days I intend to respond to them.
I set out to deal with the fact that they armed Sweets. I just don't see that he'll deal well with shooting someone, even if it is to save someone's life.
I'm heading back into Brennan and Booth territory—something angsty probably. It's already begun, waiting on this exercise in torture to run its course before I focus on it.
Originally this was going to be doled out in smaller clips, but given the facts that Sweets isn't terribly popular, I like longer chapters myself (I hate short chapters and long waits in between), and most of the story was written, I gave up that plan. I don't want to be whiny, but it can be very disheartening to write something you think is pretty good only to have a handful of reviews and a small number of readers. I guess I should write more fluff or smut or figure out what readers really want. Maybe it's a style thing. But in the meantime, I'll crank out my stories—they are, after all, some of the things I would like to read.
