Okay, here he is... enjoy!
3.
Sweets lurched forward with a shudder because a sound had startled him. He relaxed back against the wall upon which he was leaning against when he realized it was just his heavy and labored breathing.
Too awake to drift back asleep again, he pulled his knees close to his chest in an effort to rest his head on them. It was little comfort as the sleep he longed for only came in exhausted spurts, leaving him more tired than before, images that wouldn't leave his mind, a peace that would never come.
Why don't they come, it's been a month, how many more clues do I have to leave them?! Sweets mind was filled with his frustration. He knew he had to hide those clues in his profile but shouldn't they have found them by now, weren't they supposed to be the brightest and best, he pondered to himself.
Getting angry at his only friends wasn't going to help but after a month of pure hell Sweets ability to not blame everyone around him was fading. He was tired, hungry, in pain, weak and above all, petrified of what would happen the next time the door were to open. He lived in fear of the door opening with its loud creak. Sometimes it was the small bowl of food and water, other times it was work. He hated work.
Sweets rubbed his head as though rubbing it would force the thoughts away but he knew it was no use. He couldn't see anything in his dark room, devoid of windows but he looked still at his hands. The one thing body part that hadn't been hit or broken, they were too useful, they had to work. He had pondered breaking his own fingers so he didn't have to carry out the work anymore but then he may not have a purpose, a reason to be left alive. He had been hoping if he could only hold on long enough, then he could be found by the brightest and best team there was. He just hoped that time might come soon.
They read it over and over. They looked at each other with mouths agape. Help me. They read it over and over still, it was there, spelled out for them.
"How…" Cam finally formulated but had little else to add to it. None of them could add more. Their flippancy to pass the situation off as routine, Sweets was on a case that was all. Instead Sweets was the case. There was so much to wrap their minds around.
"Sweets was assigned to profile a killer?" Hodgins asked. That didn't seem right though and was reflected in the way he said it.
"No, that is no government assignment." Booth said pointing to the mutilated girl on the table.
"So Sweets is working against his will." Cam deduced.
"And someone is watching what he does or he would have sent a much bigger message sooner." Angela guessed.
"Sweets isn't using his soft science to profile these cases." Brennan began. "He's witnessing them!"
"That's got to be horrific." Cam said breathing in. "Sweets is a trained professional but…"
"We have to figure out where he is." Booth said. "We find Sweets, we find the killer, we have all of it. Let's track when Sweets went missing."
Angela went to her computer to immediately began pulling up all of the previous tracking she had done.
"You said that Sweets credit card activity was pretty normal." Hodgins said thinking back.
"Yeah but that doesn't mean it can't be manipulated." Angela said now feeling angry with herself for not doing something sooner, being more skeptical.
"When was the last time anyone actually saw Dr. Sweets, not an email or a text, saw him in person?" Cam asked.
They thought back.
"After he got back to work after the shooting and all? We went for a drink?" Angela suggested.
"No, I remember taking some files by him a day or two after on the bank case. He was really working on that. He kept saying he was onto something but he couldn't quite pinpoint it. I told him…" Booth sighed with regret. "I told him I only wanted results not guesses."
"We need those papers he was working on." Cam said and Booth agreed and went to make a call.
"So you think Sweets was getting too close to the killer?" Brennan asked.
"Okay well let's see what kind of footage we can find." Angela said. "Luckily the bar has surveillance."
"I'll have Caroline subpoena that footage and any from Sweets apartment." Booth said dialing another number now that he had secured from Sweets' secretary anything he was working on before on the case.
"What should we do about Sweets?" Angela asked looking at the email on the screen as she read it again, been busy at work, hope everyone is well. She sighed. Oh Sweets, the question is are you well. She worriedly thought to herself.
The door creaked open and Sweets body seized up from fear. There was no bowl or water. Oh God, Sweets thought to himself, not again.
The large man pointed for Sweets to get up and go out of the room. Sweets tried once to deny that request and the pain from that beating still persisted. It was between the second and third victim. He was pretty sure that was when his ribs got broken though he had passed out during the thrashing.
Sweets steadied himself against the wall as he slowly rose. His adrenaline was one of the few things propelling him forward. The sense of fear was his energy source as he neared the exit of his "room" though cell was more like it. The room was locked from the outside. It had no bed though it was where Sweets slept.
Most of the time he spent in the "big room" as Sweets called it to himself. He knew it wasn't original but he was too tired to come up with much more that was original. He was directed to his chair, a wooden chair at a small table with a laptop on it. Sweets glanced to the other table in the room, one nearby but he was glad to see it was empty.
The distance from the cell to the chair was a short one but Sweets could barely make the trip. His stomach knew better than to beg for food it would not receive. Sweets had no idea how much weight he had lost in a month but he was pretty sure it was at least twenty precious pounds. The drawstring pants he was given he found himself pulling tighter and tighter and his tee shirt larger and larger.
The man pointed to the email on the screen.
Hey Sweets, thanks for the profile. We miss you. I know you are busy but perhaps you can drop us a line and tell us how you are. -Angela
Sweets nearly teared up, they missed him. But still they didn't know, Sweets felt like they would never know.
The burly man tapped him on the back and pointed to the screen. Though wordless Sweets knew how to communicate with the brute. He tapped reply.
Hey Ange, thanks for asking, I'm fine. Sweets knew that was a lie, dying felt like a better description. Just been busy with work. Oh God, I hope he doesn't have another body, Sweets thought in his mind. I miss you guys too. Hope to see you soon.
Sweets wanted to bold the last bit but instead he sat back and waited for the captor to read over it. He thought it over and then nodded. Sweets had concluded long ago that no one else would really "sound" like Sweets in an email and thus he had to handle all correspondence. He had little ability to leave clues in such short sentences.
He sat and waited. He knew better than to get up before he was instructed to. He lost a tooth that way he recalled. At least it was one in the back and not one of his pretty front teeth. Sweets suppressed a smile as he had put it in a good place.
The smile faded as Sweets was swiftly kicked out of the chair. He hit the floor with the realization that without a victim the brute had become bored and needed an outlet. It was either him or another victim. As a kick came to his leg he realized how much he hated when Yaz was bored.
"Okay so I found this." Angela said, her eyes nearly bleary having gone thru hours of footage. "I've got stuff where Sweets gets out of his car but this is what we want to see."
The group was surrounding her in her office, images on the screen that made their hearts pump a little faster, the long missing image of Sweets to their eyes. Seeing him on screen made them feel a little closer, to actually get to see him. It was however a reminder of his youthfulness and a certain vulnerability they felt towards their youngest member. One they suddenly felt they hadn't kept close enough or paid enough attention to and were now paying the price for.
"So here is Sweets, this the night after Booth had last seen him. I tracked it back to this footage and found this though Booth wasn't sure which day so I went thru hours of footage for each night. Luckily, Sweets apartment is pretty nice and they have cameras at the end of each hall. Brace yourselves."
The image appeared of Sweets approaching his door, papers in his arms and a briefcase as well. He worked to balance them all as he fished his keys out of his pocket. They all waited when a figure literally stepped from the shadows and in movement injected something into Sweets neck.
In seconds the burly man collected the papers and Sweets as was gone.
"Holy crap, I didn't see that guy." Hodgins said.
"I know, he was incredibly stealth." Cam agreed. "Angela, can you run a facial recognition on him?"
"I can but he's practically in the dark the entire time." She said annoyed.
"We should look back at Sweets profiles." Brennan suggested.
"I thought you thought of Sweets' work as guesswork." Hodgins said watching Angela work on refining the footage.
"I'll admit that I don't think highly of Sweets profession, despite the fact that he has been able to help us many times with it, but this is not guesswork." She argued. "From what we can ascertain so far, they are actually eyewitness accounts."
Brennan's clinical tone did little to calm the thoughts of what Sweets must have been witnessing in these heinous crimes.
"But what I mean is that Sweets is a highly intelligent individual. He has most likely left other clues in his work for us to find." Brennan clarified.
This again fostered their interest and with the exception of Angela who continued to work on the footage, they each took a profile and began to skim over them.
"What exactly are we looking for?" Booth asked looking at the lengthy profiles. "I don't recall Sweets profiles being this long."
"It's possible that Sweets made them longer so he could mask more clues within them." Cam suggested when a knock came to the door.
"Sorry to intrude." Mrs. Robertson said, her arms overflowing with papers. Booth & Hodgins rushed to help her. "I brought everything he had recently."
"Oh good, more papers." Cam said with a smile. "For a digital age we are suddenly screwed."
"Okay, this is getting me nowhere." Angela said exhausted.
"Let me work on this image, you take the profiles." Hodgins suggested seeing that Angela was overwhelmed with work. He went to nearby desktop to work on the surveillance footage.
"Good, I'm about to go blind with that. I can work faster with Sweets profiles." She pulled up the three most recent files. "I'm running some software to pull any anomalies in the profiles."
The larger half of the group stood by waiting for something to come along as they didn't have the computer knowledge that Angela did.
"Here's something." She said pulling some pages up. "These letters are in bold in the first profile. They are not together but sprinkled throughout."
"I can hardly see they are in bold." Cam observed as they came up.
"I'm guessing Sweets was hoping whoever is looking over his shoulder didn't notice either." Booth said.
"Okay, I've got an A-Y-Z." Angela said looking at the letters floating above the type on the screen. The letters were repeated in bold several times.
"Yaz!" Booth said excitedly. Then his stomach sunk, oh crap, the psychopath has Sweets. Oh crap, that psychopath is the one who is sending us mutilated girls.
"Well we know what Yaz has been up to." Cam said trying to look at a positive side.
"Guys this is bad." Hodgins pointed out loud what they were all thinking. "And looks like I can confirm that is who grabbed Sweets." He said pulling the image from the desktop back to the big screen. "He steps in the light for just a second as he grabs Sweets. Comparing it to the image from the bank, it's him."
"So the military psycho who stole the account numbers from the bank found out Sweets was onto him and kidnapped him only to make him profile his killings as he's doing them?" Angela asked summing it up.
"Yeah, that's about right." Boot confirmed.
"Not good." Angela added.
"Ange, did you realize you had an incoming email here, from Sweets?" Hodgins said from her computer. He pulled it up to the big screen.
"I emailed him back, I didn't say anything about how we got his help message, I was just trying to feel him out." She explained.
Hodgins read the email out loud. "Hey Ange, thanks for asking, I'm fine. Just been busy with work. I miss you guys too. Hope to see you soon."
"I'm not getting any clues here." Cam said rereading it.
"There isn't one." Booth said. "I think he's just being honest. He hopes to see us soon."
"Okay, so how do we find him?" Brennan asked.
