Author's Note: First, an apology that this is going up a few days late. My personal life got crazy busy over the last three weeks such that I had very little time to write. Things are returning to a calmer state now.
So, getting back to this story, the question of why has bothered us all, I suspect. There are a lot of whys in the Pelant arc and while I may not know how to get rid of him (legally), I might be able to help our heroes use his own schemes against him.
~Q~
Interlude
"Are you going to stay while I read this," Booth invited.
And she blushed, a very rare occurrence indeed because it was nearly impossible to embarrass Temperance Brennan. Backing away, she gestured towards the exit. "No! No, I'll just ... get back to work." Then she left him alone with the remnants of her unpublished book.
The book that made her blush.
Grabbing several sheets of blank paper from the printer, Booth pulled the unbound pages closer and turned the first one over.
The novel began with a place and time:
Washington DC
4:47
Something about that number seemed important. It wiggled and gnawed at the back of his brain, teasing a memory that was just out of reach. His subconscious might pull it out later, he decided, but for now he scribbled,
'4:47. Number, time or date could be important. Cross check case files and Pelant's profile.'
Moving down the page, he began to read.
"People say, you only live once. But people are as wrong about that as they are about everything. In the darkest moments before dawn, a woman returns to her bed. What life is she leading? Is it the same life she was living a half hour ago? A day ago. A year ago. Who is this man? Do they lead separate lives, or a single life shared?"
As she'd warned him, Brennan had used their names. A woman named Bren approached her husband, Booth, and right in the very first chapter began what Booth thought might be the steamiest love scene she'd ever written. Both the passion and the erotic details painted pictures in his mind that wrecked havoc on his libido. His mouth went dry, his stomach twisting with desire as he read about himself making love to her years before it actually happened.
Had she actually read this out loud to him?! No wonder that dream was so vivid!
He paused, drawing a shaking breath, already so deeply affected that he was afraid to continue. But then he realized Pelant had read it too, and the same wave of violation washed over him that surely must have swamped Bones. Right here in her own words was the proof of how deeply she'd loved him and longed for him all those years ago. If she were next to him right now he would kiss her, make love to her right there, make any promise, do anything to reassure her.
Wiping his own tears away, Booth forced himself to keep reading.
"A storm approaches. It is still over the horizon, but there is lightening in the air. Are either of them aware of the gathering turbulence? Can they feel the crackle of electricity in the wind, or are they aware only of the power they generate between themselves? The first hint of the storm is not a thunderclap. It is a knockā¦."
She'd written this during his coma, Booth recalled, right in the midst of her chaotic proposal to have a baby using his donated sperm. The storm in her own life might have been that (now undeniably) love-generated request plus his sudden hallucinations and his collapse in the operating room. But in the story, it was a murder that disrupted the happy couple's lives.
A murder disrupting their happy, domestic life together... She'd said there were parallels.
Camille Saroyan appeared as the detective, the opponent, along with Jared Booth. Cam was cynically confrontational and yet fundamentally noble as she searched for the truth. Meanwhile, Jared wanted Bren and seemed to be helping while simultaneously trying to drive a wedge between the marriage partners. This made sense, he supposed, since she'd written it only a few months after her dead-end date with Jared, the soured RICO bust and Jared's lifesaving intervention when the Gravedigger had kidnapped Booth.
Booth sat back to make further notes, especially Jared's role as trickster and Cam's role as collector of evidence and seeking the truth at any cost. Considering how Brennan had once questioned Cam's integrity, he was surprised to see the way Brennan had written the detective bearing her name. There was a strong tension between the two characters (Cam's bold suggestion that Bren was cheating on her husband), and yet Bren reconciled it as police tactics designed to dig out a valid alibi at the expense of what Cam thought could be a crumbling marriage.
Sweets was a bartender and confidant to the secondary characters. "I'm practically a psychologist." Booth snorted a laugh.
Angela the hostess served as the heart of The Lab and aspired to interior decorating.
Hodgins the novelist/narrator watched everything with a knowing eye and told the story from an affectionate distance. In some ways his character paralleled Brennan herself (when he'd first met her), the anthropologist observer who cared about and yet never fully engaged with the people around her. The wry narration of Jack Hodgins echoed the softly sarcastic voice of Kathy Reichs, (Brennan's usual protagonist), and both of them, Booth realized, revealed Brennan's wistful sense that she was watching a family that wasn't quite hers. She didn't feel that she belonged, more that she was tolerated as an outsider allowed just inside the circle only because of their real affection for Booth.
A lump formed in his throat at that.
Caroline Julian was a corporate attorney who should be shifty and yet extended her protective presence over all the characters like a warm, motherly hen. "Consider them well represented."
As the story unfolded, he read the couple drawing closer as the clouds of doubt and suspicion thickened and yet did not tear them apart. The fictional Booth refused to even consider the possibility that she might be guilty, and Booth himself nodded agreement as he recalled similar sentiments as far back as New Orleans and their first year together as partners. No way Bones would ever murder someone, he would never believe that of her.
He read about the entire cast of characters contributing towards obfuscation in an effort to protect Bren and Booth from looming murder charges. As their manipulations of evidence was revealed, they were taken out (arrested) one by one... Booth's head shot up, recalling how he and Sweets and Caroline had been suspended one by one. Muttering a string of curses under his breath, he began scribbling more notes for follow-up.
He ran across the number 447 several more times and vowed to ask Brennan what the significance was.
Towards the end of the book, Bren declared faithfully that she knew fictional Booth would kill for her and keep it quiet so she wouldn't worry. He shuddered, struck to the quick by how well she knew him, then and now. And Pelant, if he'd read it, knew this also.
He expects me to try to kill him, Booth realized with shock. If Pelant read this book, he would expect Booth to hide the truth from Brennan and go after the source. Okay. Okay, this is good. I needed to know this. Passing a shaking hand through his hair, Booth sat back and let himself relax for a moment. He breathed deeply, closing his eyes to review all his plans from earlier in the day and realizing how deeply he'd been played. Shit. Then he wrote another note: 'The trick is to surprise him, to catch Pelant off guard. We have to do what he doesn't expect.'
At last he'd reached the final complete chapters, where he read about Detective Camille Saroyan's indecision as the last bit of evidence implicated her partner for murder.
"Ask your partner where he was when Worstenbach was shot," Max Keenen whispered with a sly gleam in his eye. "Check the records from his phone company and you'll find he was right here, defending his lady love..."
The stoic detective blinked back disbelief when Max's silky information wended its way through her head. Was it possible that Jared had framed his own sister-in-law?
Meeting Max's mocking gaze, Saroyan turned away in disgust and walked towards the exit, pulling out her own phone to make a quick, confirming phone call. Still waiting in the foyer five minutes later, she had her answer: GPS coordinates placed her partner in this building after midnight on the night Worstenbach was shot. The entire time, he'd been the killer.
Glancing down at the floor, she weighed the reason he'd killed against the reason the murder victim was there to begin with. They were sure Worstenbach had intended to harm or even kill his sister-in-law, which meant Jared's shot had probably saved her from injury or death.
She could say nothing. She could ignore what Max told her and let the murder fall to the wayside, unsolved. Or, she could uphold the law and let a jury make the call of whether it was justified or not. Slowly, Det. Saroyan pivoted and went outside in search of her partner. She had thirty seconds to make up her mind, and the fact that Jared had murdered the man and framed Bren rather than simply arresting Worstenbach was what finally tipped the scale.
When she reached the parking lot, he was standing there and a knowing glance flashed between them. Slowly, reluctantly, she stepped closer. "Jared Booth, I'm placing you under arrest for the murder of Dick Worstenbach."
"You would turn in your own partner?"
Cam blinked back tears of painful disillusionment but she nodded. "Either you believe in the system or you don't, and I do."
He chuckled without mirth. "Always pegged you for a bigger cynic than this. Worstenbach was scum."
"I hate this, Jared. I really hate it."
"Me, too." And he pulled his gun. So she had to pull hers.
And that's how the others found them, facing off against each other.
Grabbing the notes he'd made, Booth scribbled further observations and wrote a question for Sweets. He underlined it twice. Cam is the hero...?
Finishing the last full chapter left Booth wiping tears away again. Bren settled into Booth's lap and teased that she could no longer drink a glass of wine with him, but not because she was worried about becoming an alcoholic.
"No way," he exclaimed as comprehension bloomed in his smile.
Bren chuckled, playing with his tie and meeting his eyes adoringly. She'd never even considered the risk of bearing children into this cruel world until meeting Booth, but his honesty and compassion made her trust him like no other. He would never abandon her or their child.
"Yeah?" Before she could confirm it he pulled her down, sliding his lips over hers and drawing her slender (but not for much longer) body against his. Pure joy pulled him back at last. "You are pregnant?"
Reverently he placed his large palm over her belly, low, but she slid it down lower. (Correcting him, no doubt.) "There's a little baby boy, huh?"
Bren tilted her head and pursed her lips disapprovingly. "Or girl..."
"A baby," he murmured in blissful disbelief. "You're having my baby."
She nodded, suddenly tearing up. "You're happy?"
"Are you kidding? Come here." Their kisses grew hungrier as he tilted her backwards and reminded her how she'd ended up pregnant in the first place.
Another steamy love scene colored his ears scarlet and made him set the pages away with a shaking hand.
It was hard to believe she'd written this two years before they became this couple, that she'd wanted this life so early on. In fact, he realized, she written this only days after asking him for a sperm donation. She'd wanted his baby, wanted him, and had tried to genius her way into it when she thought he didn't want her... God, If only he'd known; if only one of them had been brave enough to say something. This was not the first time he'd found himself wishing he could go back and change their history, make his desire for her known so much earlier and then just waited for her to be ready. It wasn't the first time, but it was the most devoutly he'd ever wished for a do-over.
He couldn't go back in time, but he could let her know he wanted her now.
Gathering up his notes, Booth carefully restored the stack of papers and made his way back towards the lab. When he found her on the platform, bending over a tray of small bleached bones, he paused at the railing to simply admire her. How many years had he known her, and he still thought her the most beautiful, graceful woman he was ever likely to see. When Brennan worked with bones, she always flowed over them like water.
"Bones."
Cautiously, she glanced up and noted his enthralled expression but she didn't say anything.
Staying away might be the best plan but her book had made it just as impossible as the dream it generated had four years ago. Booth walked up the steps, setting off alarms to pull an audience while he crushed her against him. Her gloved hands shot outwards just before he tilted her head back and stole her mouth with a plundering kiss intended to outdo anything she'd ever imagined. Their reality was better than fiction.
Drawing away a few moments later, she looked half dazed and yet rapidly returning sensibility had already pursed her lips in burgeoning disapproval. "Booth. We're in the lab."
"I don't care who's watching. I love you and I just wanted to tell you that you were right."
"I was?" Her brow furrowed for a moment but then he saw her eyes start to sparkle a little and her body trembled slightly.
"About everything." Every question she'd asked, every suspicion she'd harbored, every plot she'd executed over the last twenty four hours. He shifted his weight, then added meaningfully. "I understand your point of view, that a piece of paper is not important because that isn't what makes me happy. You are what makes me happy. Just being with you is a dream come true."
He saw the moment she understood, saw her sniffle slightly and raise her wrist towards her eyes to brush away a drop. He held her gaze a moment later, until she nodded, then he left the lab.
~Q~
When he got back to the Hoover, Booth slipped into Sweets's office and just stood quietly for a moment to gather his thoughts. Before he could decide how to go forward, he needed to understand more of what Pelant expected from them.
Sweets pushed back from his computer, standing but going no further because he could see Booth was weighing his options, or possibly calculating risks. Finally Booth seemed to reach a decision, which led him to lean over and speak quietly.
"If he's targeting her, we need to find out why."
Drawing in a hissing breath, Sweets glanced over at his computer with a perplexed curiosity. "You want me to go over the profile again?"
Booth nodded, then drew a slip of paper forward to scribble another instruction. My coma dream. Lifting his eyes to meet the younger man's, he added, "There's something connecting them, Sweets. Find it."
"Yeah, okay."
"Meet her at the Jeffersonian at five this afternoon." Booth turned to leave and at the door, he paused again to issue a warning. "He wanted you dead because you're dangerous to him somehow. Be careful."
~Q~
Author's Note: We hate to admit it, but there is a reason Cam was needed when she was first hired. She did not just compensate for Brennan's lack of people skills or impatience over budgeting, she also proved herself essential when she centralized and organized the flow of information. Having access to information is vital. Booth knows something about Pelant's actions that Brennan doesn't, and only she can understand the importance of it. If she ever discovers this one thing, it might unravel another mystery.
What does Booth know...? It's not what you're thinking.
