By 11.00 on Friday night Booth had sorted out everything at the Hoover and was packed in his new SUV with his old gun, a high-powered rifle and more army rations than he'd ever wanted to lay eyes on. He took some comfort in that- he was kitted up to leave at a moment's notice. His shameful redundancy-slash-resignation was splashed all over the day's newspapers, complete with a photo some journo had snapped of him leaving the Hoover with a box in his arms. He was all too happy to fall off the radar after that.
Genevieve Shaw had been issued a phone with a new simcard to call him directly. Booth knew going off the radar and dropping the FBI would stop more agents being targeted by Broadsky, and maybe was the best way to find him in the long run, but the couple of hours he'd spent cooped up in the Hoover dealing with Hacker and Cullen, instead of hunting Broadsky had just about killed him. Bones had now been gone for around 72 hours and while he had no choice but to cooperate with the FBI to secure the help he needed, every minute grated on him.
Booth had every file in the whole damn FBI that made so much as a passing mention to the sniper. There were no recent sightings of him. A total of eight victims were recorded- Booth suspected there were others that the Bureau didn't yet know about. Twenty-three names were listed who knew old Jake from the army, had hired his services for an assassination or had come out of the woodworks in previous investigations. Three on the list were now dead. Eleven were in the DC area, and Booth chased down every one of them, Genevieve Shaw and her team co-ordinating the search from the office so he could move quickly.
Six men he'd questioned, who'd served together in the old army days knew him but hadn't caught a whiff of him in years. Nine people were in prison, mostly ones who had hired his services and a couple of crooks who'd just crossed paths, and Booth visited five of them in person and interrogated the other four over the phone in other cities. He'd travel there in person later, but was pretty sure none of them would be any use. To see the rest he'd have to wait until morning.
With no successful leads, now late on a Sunday night, Booth found himself driving to the diner. He gripped the steering wheel, going over in his mind all the dead ends he'd run up against. He needed to get to Bones- and to do that, he needed Broadsky. That meant, either Booth finding Broadsky, or Broadsky finding him.
Determining to make himself as visible as possible, he settled into his usual seat next to the window and opened the blinds all the way. He ordered a coffee from the waitress and found himself staring at the seat across from him, where any day of the week, she would have been sitting, making a terrible joke or gazing at him with those deep blue eyes.
'Booth?'
Booth looked up to see Angela making her way towards him. He gave her a smile, somewhat hollow, as she manoeuvred into Brennan's seat. 'Hey Angela. How's stuff going at the lab?'
'Ah, not much to report. Hodgins went back to search Brennan's apartment, just in case there was some evidence he missed… we came up empty. I hope you're having better luck.'
'Not so much. Genny Shaw's got feelers out and I've contacted names who might move in the same circles but no bites. I can chase down sources all day tomorrow, but to be honest, they're a long shot. I've started with the most likely leads... There's one other guy, Leisinger who might be worth a chat but Broadsky knows I'm looking for him… My gut tells me that when he's ready, he's going to make a move and contact me. And all I can do it watch and wait.'
Angela nodded and pulled a newspaper out of her bag. 'I'm guessing you haven't seen this, then.'
Booth took the paper, which Angela had folded over to page 10, where a small text article read 'High-profile Author and Scientist Missing'.
'Dr Temperance Brennan, celebrated Forensic Anthropologist and best-selling crime novelist has been reported missing from her DC Apartment building since Tuesday.
'I wasn't sure what to think when I saw the FBI on our floor, but it was pretty clear that something had happened in her apartment,' says a female resident of the same building complex. 'I went over to see what was going on and was asked the last time I'd seen her. I wasn't able to help much, she works pretty long hours but it's scary when it happens in your building, you know?'
Any information about her whereabouts should be forwarded to the police.'
Booth put the paper down and looked at Angela with hollow eyes. 'Yeah… that's, that's good. To tell people to look.' He swallowed, and took a gulp of coffee to compose himself. 'Obviously no one's called, or Shaw would have let me know right away.'
Angela nodded. She seemed to be beyond crying. Booth wondered how much of it she'd done in the last two days. 'Yeah. I guess that means she… she's not around.'
Booth ordered a burger and pie, Angela said she'd already eaten but ordered a sandwich anyway. They chatted quietly for another half an hour, filling each other in on their respective efforts. Angela had been working with Sweets making a visual suspect board with photos and details of all his victims, looking for patterns, but there was nothing Booth didn't already know. Hodgins and two of the squinterns had gone over old cases from bone storage and all the previous case notes involving him, and Hodgins and Cam had gone out to the previous crime scenes, not that there was any evidence left after so many months, just to get a sense of the places he was likely to go… The most common denominator they had come up with was 'rural', big remote areas of land, but even that wasn't entirely consistent with his kills. Of course, he FBI had scoured Broadsky's properties days ago, finding no trace of him or his firearms. Wherever he was now, it was likely to be remote and out of town… and equally likely to be in a crowded place. And even then, he might want to shake up his MO and send them in the wrong direction.
What Booth needed to know was what Broadsky wanted. And he had a feeling that no amount of reconnaissance work was going to tell him that.