My latest offering. I hope you enjoy. Thanks for all the reviews and please keep it up.

Disclaimer: Not mine and probably glad of it right now.

Biting her lip in indecision, Brennan looked from Booth to Angela, who still had her face pressed to the door. She really needed to tell Booth what had happened today, but the look of pleading on her best friends face was getting to her and as much as she wasn't looking forward to listening to Angela's tirade, she owed her the courtesy of explaining how they had gotten married and why they had kept it from their friends. With a resigned sigh, she made up her mind. Booth hid his grin, he had known all along that she would go talk to Angela, that was just the kind of person she was.

"Booth, I'll go talk to Angela, but I need to talk to Nathaniel alone, first." She saw and felt Booth stiffen and took his hand in hers, squeezing it reassuringly. "Please just trust me, Booth," she pleaded. When she put it like that, what choice did he really have? And he did trust her, implicitly. Cupping her face in his hands, he dropped a light kiss on her lips.

"Of course, I trust you, Baby. Now go talk to Nathaniel and take care of Angela, she's really beginning to creep me out." Brennan giggled and hugged him tightly.

"I love you, Booth," she whispered in his ear. His head jerked back a little, surprised and a little suspicious of her telling him that right now and he was immediately ashamed of the thought.

"I love you too, Bones," he answered just as softly, turning her toward the door and giving her a little push in that direction, earning a glare for his trouble.

"Nathaniel, I need to talk to you." He was immediately on his feet and heading in her direction, following her out the door. She shooed Angela away with the promise to come directly to her office and pulled Nathaniel to the side where they had at least a semblance of privacy, making sure to remain in full view of the people in her office and Booth knew she was doing that for him and, once again, felt shame. He had to let her know he trusted her, regardless of the circumstances and he did, he had just been too busy acting like a jealous jackass to let her know before.

Booth and the other four watched with interest as Brennan spoke rapidly with Nathaniel nodding his head periodically. She stepped a little closer to the other man and Booth saw Nathaniel look into the office, directly at him, then turn back to Brennan and shake his head vehemently. Booth intimately knew the stubborn look that came over Brennan's face. After all, he saw it often enough. She was determined to talk Nathaniel into something that he thought was a bad idea.

"Uh oh," whispered one of the twins. Booth looked around to see the others eyes also glued to the couple on the other side of the window.

"What?" Booth demanded.

"She's trying to talk him into something he's not happy about." Alex answered easily. Booth knew that, but how did these three guys know his Bones so well? Booth almost grinned as Nathaniel ran a hand through his military haircut, then nodded grudgingly and Brennan grinned happily, patting his arm. She obviously had Nathaniel wrapped just as tightly around her little finger as she did Booth himself and he was surprisingly ok with that. Looking at the interaction of the two without the red haze of jealousy clouding his vision, he saw that Brennan cared about Nathaniel but there was nothing sexual in her actions and he wasn't even sure if he wanted to know if they had ever been intimately involved anymore. It just didn't matter now. She was his wife and that said it all, as far as he was concerned.

He saw Brennan head toward Angela's office and Nathaniel reentered Brennan's, firmly closing the door behind him, seating himself and turning a speculative look on Booth.

"Would you rather ask questions or do you want us to just start talking?" he asked Booth.

"About what?" Booth asked suspiciously.

"About what she's been up to over the last several years." Booth noted the raised eyebrows of the other three.

"Everything?" questioned Alex incredulously. Nathaniel shook his head.

"I'll let you know what's off limits." Booth leaned forward and looked at the younger man menacingly.

"She's my wife. As far as I'm concerned, nothing is off limits. I need to know everything." To Booth's surprise, Nathaniel nodded his agreement.

"I agree, but some things you're going to have to hear from her or not at all." Booth actually agreed that some questions could only be answered by Brennan. Relaxing back into his chair, he looked at Nathaniel levelly.

"Start talking." Nathaniel gathered his thoughts and then grinned at Booth.

"Did she tell you how we first met?" Booth nodded.

"That she pulled your ass out of the fire? Yeah, she told me." Nathaniel nodded with a reminiscent grin.

"That's not how we met." Threw in one of the twins. Before Booth could even ask, Nathaniel shot the two grinning men a quelling look.

"She said no." They both looked bummed that they didn't get to tell the story of how they had met Brennan and this, of course, gave Booth a burning desire to know just exactly what she didn't want him to. He made a mental note to get the story out of her one way or another. His thoughts were pulled back to Nathaniel as the younger man began to speak in a calm, clear voice.

"The leader of the guerillas who captured my team is Manuel Perez. He's a real piece of scum, a psychotic sociopath who would kill his own mother if it suited his purposes. Unfortunately, he does have charisma and had been able to find a group of men just as dishonorable and bloodthirsty as he was and convince them to follow him. But they were a very poor group and weren't satisfied with raping and torturing villagers for fun for very long and they began to kidnap anyone who would bring them a decent ransom, working their way up to an Ambassador's daughter. Until then, they had simply been one of numerous pesky groups operating in that part of the country. Yes, they needed to be stopped but they weren't our problem, but when they kidnapped an American Citizen, a pregnant woman who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, they became our problem." Nathaniel's voice had lost its calm edge and his seething anger was clearly coming through, his jaw clenched tightly. Booth knew, from his own military experience, that whatever was coming was bad and patiently waited for the man to continue. Leaning forward and catching Nathaniel's eye, Alex received a barely perceptible nod and took over, giving his friend time to regain control.

"We were sent in covertly, solely to rescue the woman, with strict orders to only take out Perez as a last resort." Booth reared back in shock, unable to believe they had been given such ridiculous orders. He saw Alex and Nathaniel thought they were equally ridiculous, but they had been orders.

"For God's sake, why didn't they just let you take out the threat?" Nathaniel and Alex shared a grim look.

"At the time, we were told the political situation in the area was too unstable and taking out Perez would further destabilize it into open warfare, putting thousands of lives at risk. Too late, we learned that Perez had found himself a little friend pretty high up in the government and was being shielded by the bastard. The same bastard who was our liaison, so, as you already know, the rescue didn't exactly go as planned. We were fed faulty information and led straight into an ambush." Alex leaned back and Booth knew from the look on his face that he was remembering exactly what had happened on that day.

"I lost a man before we were captured," Nathaniel said softly, the pain of the loss echoing in his words. "He was a good man." Alex nodded his agreement, pain at losing a friend apparent on his face and Booth felt his heart go out to these men. He knew, intimately, the special relationship you developed with the people you trusted with your life every day and the loss of one of them was devastating. He couldn't imagine the guilt and rage it must have generated in these soldiers to know the loss was because they had been betrayed by someone they trusted.

"I'm sorry." Booth said simply. Nathaniel shot him a grim smile.

"Yeah, me too. Having a Special Forces team as captives was a real feather in Perez's cap. Usually, we would have been quietly ransomed back to our government, but this sick son of a bitch had no intention of letting us go. We were much more valuable to him in captivity, a status symbol of sorts. He had no intention of killing us anytime soon either, but he made sure we wished we were dead." Nathaniel sprung from the couch and walked over to gaze unseeingly out over the office floor, arms folded over his chest, his body rigid with the memories. Booth knew he was being told the captives had been tortured and he could certainly relate to that, feeling a surprising sense of fellowship toward the other soldiers.

"He began to get impatient after a week when we wouldn't tell him anything so he decided to make an example of me, thinking it would get the others to talk." Nathaniel didn't even glance around at Alex's snort, but Booth saw the look on the other man's face and knew he would have died before telling his torturers anything. Hell, that's what soldiers did.

"After three days without food or water and almost continuous beatings, I really thought I was done for, especially when one of the guerillas burst into my cell and held a gun to my head. I heard a shot and wondered why I wasn't dead then I looked up and saw a beautiful angel leaning over me asking if I was ok." Booth could see Nathaniel's reflection in the glass wall of the office and didn't much like the soft smile on his face or the tone of his voice, but he didn't think the other man was trying to rile him, he wasn't even aware of how much of his feelings the words revealed to the FBI agent. "We all got to the vehicles Red and the two CIA agents had brought to the village and got the hell out of there, but ran into a little trouble with more of the guerilla group. We took a lot of fire and had to fight our way through. Alex and I both took bullets and I told Red to leave us and get the woman out but she wouldn't go."

Well, duh, thought Booth, knowing his Bones would never abandon anyone to certain death even if it meant putting her own life on the line.

"She sent one of the CIA agents on with the woman while we provided cover and then she told us to grow a set, get off our asses and help her get us out of there and somehow we did." Booth could easily hear the admiration and laughter in Nathaniel's voice and had to fight back the jealousy.

"God, she was magnificent." Booth just gaped at the sincerity in Alex's voice and the other man grinned back at him unrepentantly. What the hell? Were they all in love with his wife?, Booth wondered with no little amount of disgust. He knew she was magnificent but he found himself not liking that he wasn't the only one with that knowledge.

"She became one of us that day. She even earned her unit tattoo saving my life," Alex told a stunned Booth, holding his eyes levelly. Booth tried to contain his wrath at what he thought the soldier was telling him, but just couldn't hold it back.

"What?" he roared, coming out of his chair to lean over Alex menacingly? "Are you trying to tell me that she became a part of your freaking Special Forces unit?"

"Not officially, Booth, so calm down," Nathaniel said quietly from behind him. Alex just continued to hold his gaze, wondering if he could take the older man if it came down to it. Not that he would even try because Red would kill him on the spot and he wasn't about to risk her wrath. Booth slowly straightened and turned his furious gaze on Nathaniel.

"What do you mean, not officially?" he demanded. Nathaniel's eyes dropped and Booth knew he wasn't going to like what was coming.

"Perez was rather put out that a woman, an American woman at that, had managed to take his prizes away from him and let it be known that she was in danger from him, so we made ourselves responsible for her safety."

"What, exactly, does that mean?" Booth gritted between clenched teeth. Nathaniel shrugged.

"At first, it was just that she couldn't leave the country without us," Nathaniel paused at Booth's snort of laughter.

"I'll just bet she loved that," Nathaniel and Alex both laughed at Booth's sarcastic words and the memory of the furious tongue lashings they had received from the good doctor the first couple of times they had insisted on accompanying her on one of her digs. They had simply let the angst roll off their backs and stuck to her like leeches. She had finally given up and put them to work, all the while assuring them she could take care of herself.

"Yeah, she was thrilled," Alex's sarcasm was unmistakable and Booth glared at him before turning his attention back to Nathaniel.

"About six months in we were contacted about a mission in the same area as her dig concerning these two bozos," Nathaniel jerked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the twins. "We already knew Perez had men in the area so we couldn't just leave her at the site and she refused to let us put her on a plane home, so we took her with us," Nathaniel backed up a couple of steps and held his hands up in supplication at the fury blooming on Booth's face and his clenched fists.

"You did what?" he yelled.

"We put her somewhere safe and told her to stay there," Nathaniel said in his own defense. Booth rubbed a hand tiredly over his eyes, needing to hear the rest of this but so not wanting to know.

"What did she do?" he asked quietly.

"She sure as hell didn't stay put," Alex commented in disgust. "Does she ever do what you tell her? Because, I have to tell you, I have never met a more stubborn, contrary woman in my life." He and Booth shared a commiserating look until one of the twins interrupted.

"Hey," objected Gavin, "lay off Red. She saved our lives that day."

"Yeah," agreed his twin with a grin, "she may be stubborn and contrary but she has more guts than anyone I know. But I thought she didn't want us to tell him about that day." Garret directed this comment at an uncomfortable looking Nathaniel, who turned to Booth with a sigh.

"Sorry, man, but that's one of the things she'll have to fill you in on." Nathaniel hurried into speech hoping to divert the angst he could just see Booth itching to release. Not that he was afraid of the other man's anger, there was just much worse to come. "Our superiors suddenly decided that Red was a very valuable asset and we began to get calls anytime we were with her and even a few missions that required her assistance when we weren't." Booth grabbed Nathaniel by his t-shirt and jerked him close until they were nose to nose before he could stop himself.

"You used her?" Booth hissed in a deadly voice.

"No," Nathaniel answered him levelly while three other voices shouted the denial from behind him, but Booth's attention never wavered from Nathaniel who motioned to his comrades to back off because they had all jumped to their feet ready to come to his defense if necessary. "No, Booth, we protected her. We care about her too much to ever use her, but our superiors contacted her directly and she made it clear she was doing what was asked of her, so we watched her back and kept her safe." Booth's jaw clenched and unclenched as he searched Nathaniel's face, he saw only truth there and finally released the younger man.

Nathaniel could understand the reaction, he had been more than a little pissed at the actions of his superiors, but the only option they had really had was refusing the mission which would have been career suicide and someone else would have been watching Red's back and that was unacceptable. Turning away, he began to pace, running a hand through his hair.

"Believe me, we tried everything we could think of, short of physically incapacitating her, to talk her out of those missions, but she is an adrenalin junkie and couldn't be swayed." Booth nodded. Brennan was, indeed, an adrenalin junkie and he could just imagine her thrilled excitement at going on a secret mission. Hell, he doubted even he could have talked her out of it. Not that he was any happier that she had done it, he just understood the position Nathaniel and his brothers in arms had been in.

"Perez had been sniffing around during this whole time but only made one very sloppy attempt to grab her, which we took care of without her ever knowing. She knew that Perez was angry and had sworn revenge but she never knew about the attempt to snatch her. We didn't want her to worry," Nathaniel said softly, his voice ripe with self loathing. "And that stupid mistake almost got her killed."

"What happened?" demanded Booth, forcing the words past the lump of dread in his throat. This had to be about what happened two years ago that was so bad Brennan wouldn't even speak of it. Whatever it was, Booth told himself, he would help her work through it. Steeling himself, he listened intently as Nathaniel started to speak.

"Two years ago, we were on an extended assignment, and Red had promised she wouldn't leave the country without us so we weren't worried about her safety. Unbeknownst to us, Perez had decided to make a move up the food chain and felt getting his hands on Red would bolster his position. Perez's contact had his own contacts in our very own CIA, and they very quietly arranged for Red make a quick trip to identify some remains for them. And thanks to my stupidity in not telling her about the kidnapping attempt, she wasn't afraid of Perez. She went back to Nicaragua without us." Seeing the questions brimming in Booth's eyes, Nathaniel held up a stalling hand. "Please just let me get through this and then I'll answer any questions you have." Booth nodded and Nathaniel took a deep breath before he continued. "They sent twelve damn good soldiers with her for protection and she would have been fine if we had just known the name of Perez's government contact, but we didn't. The bastard gave Perez GPS coordinates of their location and the convoy she was in was attacked. Six good men were killed outright, but Red and the other six got away. The CIA managed to keep it so quiet that we didn't even get the news until two days after the attack. Needless to say, we were on the next plane to Nicaragua. Intel was sketchy, but we gathered what information we could and headed out to find her. The man in charge of the rescue efforts on the Nicaraguan side's name was Juan Rodrigo, and it took us less than six hours in the jungle to figure out he was blowing smoke up our ass with the bullshit he was feeding us. That's when everything fell into place and we realized he was responsible for our first mission failing, but all that mattered at that point was finding Red as quickly as possible, we could always take care of Rodrigo later." Nathaniel stopped speaking and strode back over to stare sightlessly out toward the center platform and Booth thought he was finished until his anguished voice came out so softly that Booth had to strain to hear the words.

"Six days, she was lost and on the run in the jungle for six days before we found her. At least that's what we thought until we finally found her." Booth waited for Nathaniel to continue but realized the younger man couldn't go on and the hair on the back of Booth's neck stood at attention because it had to be pretty damn bad for a seasoned soldier not to be able to get the words out.

"What? What could possibly be worse than being lost in the jungle for six days with a crazy man who wants you dead chasing you?" he demanded, almost in a panic, praying he was wrong about the answer to his question.

"Perez found her three days before we did," Alex said quietly.