AN: Warning: This is still not the climax of the story. Sorry if I leave you hanging, but next chapter is the one you're probably waiting for.

I tried to post this earlier but it didn't seem to work!

Thank you to jsq for the beta read.

Also: I set this story in the spring and Christine's birthday is coming up, but should it be a winter birthday? The Bones timeline seems all screwed up by the hiatus and Emily's real-life pregnancy, so I'm not overly concerned with canon calendars.

Part 7: Sweets' theories

Brennan turned off the siren once we'd bypassed the worst traffic. Speeding along the rain-wet highway, we heard only the squeak and swish of the windshield wipers.

My eyes kept returning to the digital clock on the dashboard. It had been just over forty-eight hours since Christine was taken.

Now Booth pulled out his phone to tell the FBI our plans. They had their own mission: taking Wolf into custody and questioning him. But because their techs weren't as fast as Bren and Hodgins, they hadn't found the asphalt and chicken clues.

"Cam, it's Booth. We've got the location." What he didn't say, but she surely understood was, I'm calling you because you can't order me to stand down and wait for back up. He gave her the address so she could relay it. They exchanged a few more words, and before she hung up she must have told him, Good luck.

"Listen, guys." Sweets leaned forward. "I think Pelant will be there, with Christine."

"That's what we're counting on," Booth said darkly.

"It's true we're operating under a lot of assumptions," Brennan added, "but the evidence was convincing. Enough of the variables converged for me to—"

"Yeah, no, I'm not doubting the integrity of the evidence. I think you're right: Pelant wasn't expecting us to find the car, or get the location from it."

"There's a chance he won't be there," Booth said. "Or he'll have moved Christine."

"I think he'll be there," Sweets insisted. "I'm trying to offer psychological insight here. I mean, Pelant wants this confrontation. I don't think it's a trap, at least not like the first time around, when he locked us in the building."

"Well, that's good," I said dryly. "But what are you saying, that he wants to get something out of this?"

"Possibly, yeah. Over the last two days, I've basically locked myself in my office, studying everything we have on him. And from what I can tell, he wants some kind of final challenge. Think about it: that rush you get from cracking cases and catching criminals? Pelant gets it from committing crimes. He gets a thrill from murder and elaborate schemes—"

"We don't have time for this," Booth said. "Just give me the bottom line, Sweets." Actually, we did have time. We were only about halfway through the drive, even at the breakneck speed Brennan was setting. What Booth meant was he didn't have the patience.

"Okay, well…" Sweets sounded hurt. "I don't think he'll be armed and dangerous, that's never been his style. He's a trickster, not a fighter. But we should be on guard for some other scheme. He might have another plot in place."

"Like what?" I asked reluctantly. By the look Sweets gave me, he could imagine plots as well as I could.

Brennan glanced at Booth, shifting her grip on the steering wheel. "Once Christine is safe, then we'll worry about why. But not before."

"Hey," I said softly. "You want to tell me your theories?" It seemed like Sweets' way of coping, to put on a professional hat and work through the findings. He looked grateful, so I called, "Don't mind us, okay? We'll just talk quietly back here."

Sweets nodded, leaning toward me and lowering his voice. "So, Pelant… For various reasons, he's picked Dr. Brennan, your whole team, as his adversaries. He nearly lost the last round, but still got away. He wants a re-match, and this time he's upped the stakes. Sabotaging the car and causing Booth's accident, abducting Christine… He wants us to come after him. He did the one thing he knew would unleash the most dramatic kind of response."

"Dramatic, meaning we all want to kill him."

Sweets was caught up in his theories. "Pelant… he's not a sociopath in terms of lacking all emotion. But he is a serial killer lacking empathy. I've been going over the information we had on him starting in high school, and I think that a part of his psyche is still stuck in that timeframe. It's a key facet of his personality: he's the loner, the computer nerd who outwardly disdains the popular crowd while secretly craving acceptance from them."

"And we're the popular crowd?"

"In his eyes, yes. He sees you, a group of very smart people about his age, doing great things with science and technology. It's like, he could have been one of you, if…"

"If he hadn't turned to a life of murder and mayhem before he even started college."

Sweets shrugged in acknowledgment. "Another key part of his personality is fueled by that need for recognition. He sees himself as this crusader against misguided, unintelligent authority. He strives to reveal flaws by breaking into supposedly secure government databases…"

His words reminded me of the ghost-like traces I'd come across, during those months of trying to track Pelant's activities. "Based on different usernames or signatures that I saw in chat rooms… there was nothing we could tie directly to him, but it looks like he might have had followers online. At least before he fled the country."

"There's definitely evidence of different hackers trying to either out-do each other, or sometimes rooting for their comrades to prevail. And whether we're talking the government, the media, or our team at the Jeffersonian," Sweets went on, "I think Pelant is fascinated by emotion. He wants to witness it, to provoke it. He wants it directed at him, especially intense emotion. And, if he's not going to win acceptance in a peer group or be praised for his actions—"

"Because they're crimes!"

"…then he'll be satisfied by negative attention just as well."

"Love and hate are two sides of the same coin, huh?"

"Exactly. They're both passions, separated by a thin line. They create a connection between people, even an intimacy. I think Pelant is seeking out that intimacy."

I looked at the rain-streaked windshield between Booth and Brennan. They either couldn't hear, or were just ignoring us. "Even if it means we want to kill him?"

Sweets touched the gun at his hip. "Even if."