What? I mean... WHAT?

Presidential farewell speech? WHAT ABOUT BONES! We want Bones! Does it look like I care about a goodbye speech, regardless of my political views? He HAD to pick that timeslot, didn't he? He HAD to pick that day!

I guess the overdose we'll get next thursday will compensate, but... I wanted Bones NOW!

...

Anyway, can I just say something. SPOILER FOR A PROMO CLIP OF DTITP, so skip to normal font right about NOW!

...

I said SPOILER!

...

How awesome is the scene in the trailer? "Are you always this spontaneous during sex?" rofl!!

...

End of spoiler.

And rant.

And I'm not attacking the president. Seriously. Just his terrible timing. hehe

. . . CHAPTER 7

"Bones. Wake up!"

Did he like this? I wondered if, deep down, he didn't enjoy torturing me and (by the look on his face) torturing himself with these situations.

He came to my house.

He came to my house! And I'd been sleeping! And dreaming of him, of course. And I wasn't sleeping anymore, and he was there. Not kissing my neck.

Relax, Temperance. And don't forget to breathe.

I stumbled to the door and opened it a crack.
"What are you doing?"

Perhaps that's not the most usual question to ask, but I was angry at him for making me dream.

"Bones, it's important."

His tone was a bucket of ice-cold water poured over my head. His eyes had admittedly flashed to my chest for a moment, but after that he looked a lot more like the serious Booth I'd met so long ago. Driven.

He only got like this when something very bad had happened.

"What's happened?"

"Let me in, it's a pretty long story."

I shifted uncomfortably. Did I tell him my legs were bare and that all I wore under that ample shirt was panties? A part of me ached to see his reaction, but I understood that this was serious. No time to experiment with pushing limits. I still owed him for last night.

"Can you wait a moment while I change into something decent?"

"Sure."

I couldn't help the slow smile stealing my lips as I walked to my bedroom. His voice had sounded two octaves higher than normal.

And then I mentally shook myself. All this being half-asleep business and Booth just... existing when I woke up had left me quite confused.

Enough.

I hoped Frank Bram hadn't gotten away.

*

"Tell me what happened."

"Well... it's about the case, of course."

We sat at my dining room table. I'd put on a pair of jeans, but kept the large shirt. It felt comfortable and I was slightly cold.

"Yes. Is Bram still in custody?"

"No."

"What?"

The chair I'd been sitting on only moments ago crashed to the floor.

"Wait. Let me explain, okay?"

"Do you mean... you let him go? Booth, he was the prime suspect! What did he say? How could he possibly change your mind...?"

"Sit down, Bones. We let him go because we have another suspect." He didn't sound entirely convinced, and so I wasn't either. I reluctantly put the chair upright and sat.

"Say it, Booth. What's happened?"

"Look, it's like this. Margaret Stoker called us last night." My mind flashed to last night for a moment; hands and lips and frantic kisses and his words mixed with his breath on my neck, then snapped back to the present. "She sounded scared, but determined. She said her husband had called and said he'd escaped from prison."

"What? And you believed her?"

"He has. He's just disappeared. No malfunctioning equipment, no tricked cameras, no failure of the security system whatsoever... he simply wasn't there that morning. But that's not the point. Listen, her husband told her that he'd killed the four women, I quote '...who reminded me most of you, because I hate you and I want you to die, but you're not worth the effort of finding you, bitch. So I killed them.'"

"Where did you get this? His literal words?"

"She wrote down every word he said."

"Really?" This was unusual.

"She was told to do so. It's protocol, actually, with people in witness protection. They are told that if anyone calls with a threatening phone call, and the phone's not tapped, of course, write down everything they say word by word."

"Threatening? He said he'd kill her?"

"Actually... no. I mean, yes, but not exactly... What he told her..." Booth took a deep breath, as if trying to let me mentally prepare myself. But I'd seen so much pain already. Unimaginable atrocities committed in the name of good or bad, it didn't really matter why, only that they had happened. So whatever he said next, I was ready. I'd always be. This was part of the burden I carried every day.

A burden he seemed to understand, somehow.

"... he told her to kill herself, Bones."

I hadn't been expecting that.

"He what?"

"He told her to commit suicide, or he'd... and here's where it gets bad. Mrs Stoker refuses point blank to say what he'd threatened to do to her if she didn't listen to him. So we're afraid of what he told her he'd do, so bad that she suddenly wouldn't trust us anymore. She's terrified, Bones."

"You're watching her, right? She won't actually...?"

"No, of course not. I mean yes, we're watching her, no, she won't do anything."

I let this information settle on me heavily. Another weight added to anchor my resolve to figure this out.

"Bones, I think she's protecting someone. That's the only reason she'd do this."

"Who?"

"I don't know yet."

"But how does Frank Bram fit into all this? It seems a very, very strange coincidence that he knew one of the victims and Mrs Stoker. And the chocolates, flowers... all those other women, it had to be him! Every single one he claimed to love was killed. Violently, Booth; stab wounds, they..."

"Hey, I'm not happy about it either. It seems... well, impossible, actually. The odds are astronomical. I still think Bram should be the prime suspect. But there's an alternative explanation, and it makes perfect sense. You'll love it. I don't though. It feels... wrong."

"What is this... oh. I understand. You think he was being framed. That Kevin Stoker sent those flowers and those chocolates... you're right, it does make sense. If by coincidence Frank knew Lily and sent her the letter, and then he met Margaret Stoker and sent her letters too... well, it still feels like a leap. Although they live relatively close by, and changing his way of contacting them is weird… letters and roses are very different approaches... well, the evidence fits."

"Yeah, Bones, and the time line. Mr Stoker was put in prison a five months ago, and the three murders began nine months ago. One woman, one month. The fourth, Jeanie, is the question mark here. She was killed after Stoker went to prison, but even though her description fits the victim profile, the way she was killed is different. When Kevin Stoker was imprisoned, the murders ended. It has to be him. It makes perfect sense."

"Then why do you still look unconvinced?"

"I don't know. I hate coincidences."

"Me too." I pondered this brand new scenario. It did seem to fit, but something was strange. At the moment I couldn't say what, but I felt like Mr Stoker fit too well.
What a strange thought. It's impossible for anything to fit too well, since that would tend toward perfection and therefore the adverb 'too', which has negative connotations, would be ill used. This thought was Booth's influence, no doubt.

The feeling of unease didn't vanish, however. Something was missing, a piece to make sense of it all. I thought about Jeanie Whitmore. She was the strange, ill-fitting puzzle piece. She wasn't stabbed to death like the other victims, she received a fatal head injury by a blunt object we hadn't been able to identify, although Hodgins said it was wood. She was forty, attractive, tall, a brunette, and had lived relatively near the other victims. It was too much of a coincidence. Yet she'd been killed after Kevin Stoker went to prison.

So many coincidences in one case… there had to be a scenario to explain them all. I'd never believed in coincidences. This wasn't the right scenario after all.

Today I'd perform an even more thorough, detailed exam of Jeanie's remains, see if I'd missed anything last time.
"How did you say he escaped from prison? His trial began a week from now, he'd be heavily guarded. People don't just walk out of prison."

His eyes met mine and I knew, in a rare moment of intuition, that we were both thinking the same thing: no one walks out of prison unless you're Howard Epps. Epps was dead, however, and his story had ended. We'd moved on.

"He didn't. According to logs, he's still there. Except… well, he's not. Gone."

"Booth, that's impossible. There are records, cameras… cells are secure. He can't have simply disappeared."

"Bones, this happened two days ago. We're working on it, okay?"

I flinched. He'd been serious all morning, but not angry. Until now.

"What is it, Booth?" I sounded tired and exasperated, even to myself. He noticed my expression.

"Sorry. I'm just… this situation… it gets to me. I hate it." His eyes drilled into mine, but I didn't understand why. Did he think I wasn't worried about the case as well? I wasn't snapping at him every five seconds.

"Me too. Frank just walking… we should talk to Mrs Stoker."

He laughed a short, cruel laugh and stood up.

"What?"

"Nothing, Bones. I'll meet you at the Jeffersonian. I think we should concentrate on Jeannie Whitmore right now. Either we eliminate her as possible fourth victim or we prove Stoker isn't the killer."

"Yes, that's what I thought."

He nodded and walked to the door.

"Bones."

"What?"

"That shirt…"

I looked down at it. Was something wrong? One button was undone, but that was it. I looked decent.

"… where did you get it?"

"I've slept in it for a couple of years now. I think it…" but talking about past lovers felt wrong. I tried to be brave and remind myself that nothing tied me to Booth. "… I think maybe someone left it here. A man." I sounded idiotic.

Booth opened the door and walked outside. Then he turned to face me, leaning against the frame.

He smiled, and I slammed the door shut, panting.

I knew his reflexes would mean he'd avoid a broken nose. Even thought he'd deserve one.

"Looks nice!" he called from the hallway. I could tell that his eyes would be doing that thing where they shone with laughing secrets again. I leaned against the cold wood, wishing he'd just disappear. Trying not to picture his dark smile. Trying not to think of how much he enjoyed making me crazy for him.

Because his smile hadn't said he thought the shirt looked 'nice'. It said that, to his eyes…

I wasn't wearing any.

.

.

.

If I do say so myself, I quite liked the end of this chapter. The last sentence had been begging me to be written for a while now, so I did.

Aaaaaand look at how PRETTY that green button is! Oh, come on, we'll have to wait ANOTHER week for double trouble, I'll survive ONLY if you give me the great consolation of a review...

;)

Even to me I sound a BIT desperate.