Author's Note: A shout out to fellow writer, Wendish, who is writing 'You and I Collide, ' a deliciously funny, steamy, romantic version of THAT night and everything that happened (or didn't happen) during those first few nights when Booth and Brennan were finally getting together. A few weeks ago she and I had an exchange where she suggested a motive for Pelant that is both plausible and shocking. I already had this chapter sketched, but the essential root of this idea is similar enough to Wendish's idea that I think she deserves a nod for her fantastic vision. At the time I told her she would see the similarity when it comes up. Here it is... :D
~Q~
Afternoon
"How did it go with Booth?" Angela asked when she returned to her office and Booth had stayed below to begin reading.
Brennan glanced away uneasily, very uncertain of privacy now. "We're fine."
"Did you work things out?"
"We're still not getting married."
Angela sighed and nodded. "And that's what you call 'worked out?'"
Shrugging, Brennan turned to ascend the platform and resume her inspection of a group of bones that had been recovered from a roadside grave in rural Virginia. Her task of determining animal or human was made relatively difficult by their condition: heavily weathered, broken chunks that showed signs of having been gnawed upon by rodents and small predators.
Angela trailed behind, watching her with concern.
"We're not fighting," she defended a moment later. "It was a mutual decision."
"No one suggested otherwise, Sweetie."
"I know," Brennan hedged, suddenly uncomfortable. She studied the bone fragments with vigor, fingering the raw edges as if they held all the answers. "But you're looking at me like..." she didn't know what. Like there was a death in the family.
"I'm just worried," Angela said softly.
Not knowing what to say, Brennan nodded and deflected in the way she did best. Totally truthful cluelessness. "Because Pelant is still out there."
Angela offered her wry agreement lightly seasoned with a resigned roll of the eyes and left Brennan to her favorite means of distraction.
Time stood still when she worked with bones. Brennan tunneled her vision on the calcium flats and rills, taking tiny micrographs for visualization and documenting every taphonomic artifact as a way to isolate possible peri-mortem injuries. And then, of course, there was still the question of human or not, but her metaphorical intestinal sensations (gut, Booth called it) suggested human. The bones felt human.
Time stood still when she worked with bones and so when she heard Booth softly say the word, it surprised her. She'd temporarily forgotten he was still there, and why.
"Bones."
Lifting her eyes away from the bones to adjust her focus back outward, she noted the change in him. He looked different, seeming to radiate warmth and it made her heart throb and made her feel relieved even if she didn't know why.
He suddenly turned and a moment later he was up on the platform, his body slashing through the laser barrier to set off the squealing alarms (which of course made everyone within earshot—the entire Jeffersonian Medico-Legal Forensics Unit—stop and watch) and before she could ask him why he didn't just wait a second longer to pull out the access badge she'd gone to the trouble of getting for him all those year ago, she was hauled up against him and unable to speak at all.
His mouth, hot and demanding, poured heat into her and his lips immediately began prying hers open so that his tongue could sweep tenderly past the barrier of her teeth. He was breaking barriers, breaking rules, pushing past boundaries of publicly displayed affection that they had agreed upon when their partnership stretched to include love and family. She barely had the presence of mind to shove her gloved hands away before his intoxicating touch could make her forget everything except kissing Booth forever might be a wonderful idea.
When he released her a little and she tried to recall her scattered wits enough to remind him where they were (Pelant watching), Booth growled, "I don't care who's watching. I love you and I just wanted to tell you that you were right."
And though it took her a few seconds to sort through the pile of questions she'd harbored recently to pluck the exact match to his veiled answer and apply it correctly now, she got there rather quickly all things considered. Even with his kiss still smoldering against her lips and the echoing burn of her body, she understood him. Yes, he was hiding something. Yes, he still loved her. Yes, it was still a yes.
~Q~
Late Afternoon
As they'd agreed, Sweets came to the Jeffersonian late that afternoon and followed Brennan to the secure nook she'd carved out with Angela's help. Booth was already there, waiting. Everyone had agreed to leave their cell phones and computers in their respective offices and Angela had placed a scrambler and swept the area for bugs.
Taking a seat as he deposited a briefcase on the table, Sweets pulled out a legal notepad scribbled with ideas and looked over at the partners. "Are we assuming Doctor Brennan is Pelant's primary target?"
"You tell me," Booth challenged.
"Okay, this is what we know: Christopher Pelant is extremely intelligent and was effectively abandoned by his father at a young age. He was a social outcast as a teenager. He was overweight, had few friends. He may see a similarity between himself and Doctor Brennan, who was also abandoned and socially marginalized as a teenager."
Brennan held a steady, slightly challenging gaze on him. "That's psychology."
Beside her, Booth shifted and nudged her discreetly.
Sweets raised a brow. "That's my mojo, that's why I'm here."
"Yes, it is." She glanced away for a moment, considering the ways her life and Pelant's intersected. Was he looking to be noticed? Was this some juvenile playground game where a boy hits the girl he likes, just to get her attention? Only in this case, Pelant was killing people and destroying her life, as well as the lives of everyone around her. Brennan felt Booth's quelling touch and gestured for Sweets to continue.
"Pelant saw himself as a crusader, a champion of the truth. Again, he may have considered his objective to be similar to yours. The crime that first brought him notoriety was hacking into a Congressional website so that he could shut it down with the question: 'Where's the website?' He replaced it with his own photo, which suggests he is looking for acclaim. He wants to be recognized, famous. Again, like you."
"Anthropologically, that fits," Brennan conceded. "People search for acclaim as a means of distinguishing themselves."
Booth smirked at his unapologetically famous anthropologist/best-selling author/partner.
Sweets pulled a little grin at her rationalization and continued. "When that endeavor didn't pay off, he went for a bigger target. He took down the Department of Defense network with the question, 'What are you defending?' According to your interview notes, Agent Booth, Pelant claims his motive was to expose corruption in the form of improper campaign donations and bribes for defense contracts."
"Yeah, right. He's a real patriot," Booth grumbled.
"In his mind, that's exactly what he is," Sweets countered. "The hack into the DoD is what brought him under investigation by the FBI, which he believes to be unjust. He's looking for corruption, you see, exposing everything that's wrong with the government and that's where his path crosses yours, Doctor Brennan. That's where it starts."
She sat up a little straighter, listening carefully even as she felt Booth glowering nearby. "Because he thinks the FBI is corrupt?"
Sweets reached for the briefcase beside him and pulled out a file. "He gave us a hint in an interview back in January 2012 and I didn't realize the import." Sliding the folder towards her, he sat back and said gently. "I believe he thinks you got away with murder because the FBI is corrupt."
Booth shot upright with a bark. "What?!"
"Max Keenan's trial. Pelant said he'd read all the court transcripts where any of us gave testimony. In your father's trial, you were proffered as a viable alternative suspect, yet charges were never brought against you. No investigation either. Pelant may have assumed it's because of your association with Agent Booth and your work with the FBI."
Disturbed, Brennan pulled the transcript over and started flipping through it. She looked up at Sweets and reminded him, "You testified that I was capable of rationalizing murder."
"Yeah." He fingered the edge of the tablet in front of him as he measured his words carefully. "Objectively, I believe you would be capable, under certain circumstances, of planning and executing a murder. However, I believe such a murder would resemble the death of Deputy Director Kirby—close, quick and painless—rather than the one Pelant arranged for Ethan Sawyer, which was prolonged and cruel, and yet also detached. Furthermore, I'm quite certain you would dispose of your victim in a way that is completely untraceable."
Here he paused to reach a faintly admiring conclusion: "You probably would get away with it."
"No she wouldn't," Booth snorted.
Affronted, she lifted her chin in challenge. "Yes, I would."
"I'd catch you."
She chuckled. "We've had this conversation before and no, you wouldn't."
"You're forgetting how well I know you, Bones. The only way you would ever get away with murder was if I was involved in it with you."
Although she vehemently disagreed, Brennan dropped the argument because she was thinking again, drawing connections rapidly. She turned back to Sweets. "So, you're saying Pelant believes I carried out a murder and escaped the consequences, just as he did with his guidance counselor?"
"Correct. It's yet another way in which he views you as his equal. At the same time, he believes you are corrupt and by extension any criminal investigation in which you have participated is also potentially corrupt."
Having held himself in check at the revolting comparisons until this point, Booth lowered his chin now to stab Sweets with a furious glare. "You can't be serious! She's the most honest person you'll ever meet!"
Frustrated, Brennan placed her hand on Booth's arm and shook her head. Not the right time, not the right target.
Booth was the one thinking now. He glanced at the stack of papers Sweets had to read this evening and then asked the million dollar question. "What does any of this have to do with my coma dream or her book?"
He still recalled the basic outline from what she'd revealed years ago, and today Sweets had gone back through his notes from that summer of 2009 to refresh his memory. "Until I read it, this is only going to be my best guess."
Nodding, Brennan smiled crookedly. "Thank you for admitting it's a guess."
"It's an educated guess."
"It's still an unverifiable opinion."
"Whatever Bones," Booth interjected. "We need to hear what he thinks."
"I just wanted to make that clear," she defended.
"It's clear," Sweets clipped with annoyance. "Five years I've been helping you with profiles and still I have to go through this..."
"Sorry," she said, and sounded sincere. "I just don't like the imprecision of psychology."
And having to endure his psychologically objective lens probing into her with 400x resolution, scanning deeply into her very cells, was going to be excruciating. Brennan brought her arms up to catch hold and felt Booth's sympathetic hand smoothing her shoulder. Necessary pain, she reminded herself. Get it over with.
The silent struggle wasn't lost on him. Sweets shook his head, unable to stop himself from petulantly wondering why she didn't give Booth a hard time also, but he tried not to take it personally because he knew this was her way of distancing herself from the process. Granting her a moment of reprieve might prove more productive than pressing the matter too soon.
"Okay, let's delve into literary analysis instead. Assuming Booth's recollection accurately rendered the basic outline of your plot, your character was suspected of murder and evaded the consequences through the efforts of the people around her, people who cared about her and her husband."
Brennan nodded agreement. "She was framed unintentionally."
"Yeah, but that's not the part Pelant has chosen to fixate upon. As far as he's concerned, that novel is a form of bragging."
"Bragging." Though she wasn't trying to be difficult, Brennan's skepticism and desire to dismiss the idea entirely was unmistakable. It wasn't bragging at all, she'd written it as the antidote to having been so stressed from Booth's coma and her effort to understand who the people in her life were, what they meant to her. At that point she'd come to realize she loved Booth ... but she also loved Angela and Hodgins as family, (Cam and Sweets as dear friends), and losing any one of them would hurt just as much as losing Booth or her parents. Setting them all within a different context had helped her clarify the attachments between members of her metaphorical family as she'd realized that losing any one of them would cause her pain. And she'd never meant anyone to see it. How could that be bragging?
"Gloating."
Dismayed at this egregious misunderstanding of her motives, Brennan echoed, "Bragging, and gloating? It was private!"
"In his mind, you wrote that book as proof that you are so beloved that you actually could get away with a murder, because the people around you would believe you innocent and do anything to help you. It serves as a virtual gauntlet. Basically, he wanted you to prove it."
Surprisingly, she did not argue this. Instead she only sighed and slumped back in her seat a little. "The irony is, Bren was innocent of the murder, and I am innocent of Ethan's murder. The only thing he proved is that people who love us will help us when we're innocent."
"But the key is, in both cases, evidence suggested guilt and your friends helped you despite that."
"Agreed," Brennan conceded.
"And, I suspect, that is eating him up with jealousy. Pelant doesn't have any friends."
Shivering, she crossed her arms again and stared down at the file from her father's trial. All this might be caused by her effort to save her dad, and to understand her affection towards the people in her life. Other people had died along the way and lives were upended. How could loving people cause this much chaos? Brennan brushed a small tear from her eye but stayed in control as she pondered what to do with these insights.
What did Pelant expect her to do?
Beside her, Booth palmed her back reassuringly a second time. To Sweets, he asked, "What about the Johanson murder?"
"Inger Johanson's murder was specifically planned to draw your attention, as well as to test the capabilities of the entire Jeffersonian team. Your allies. He left her remains in the Lincoln Memorial, and President Lincoln is of course associated with honesty, integrity. He left you a message in bones specifically rearranged and encoding the location of the rest of her remains right on top of evidence proving FBI corruption."
Booth nodded his understanding. "So, that was his opening gambit? Testing us?"
"Yes. Then he retreated to set up the experiment."
~Q~
Leaving Sweets alone to read her short novel, Booth pulled Brennan aside a few feet away. "Bones, I noticed the number 447 came up in your book a few times. Does it mean something?"
For one second she looked confused, but then recognition dawned and she went a bit pale again. "It's the time you coded."
"Coded?"
"Your heart stopped at 4:47 PM. They got it started at 4:49."
"I was dead?!"
Reaching out to touch his arm, her touch grounded him and her assurance was almost comically understated. "Obviously you did not actually die, since you're standing here asking me if you were dead. Death is irreversible."
"Bones..." He crossed himself rapidly, shocked to learn this little factoid years later. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"You couldn't remember anything for a time. Given your total amnesia for the first day, the fact that you'd suffered a brief cardiac arrhythmia didn't seem particularly pertinent."
"But you had to watch that!" Shuddering slightly, Booth pulled her close and whispered an apology because now he knew exactly what it must have felt like.
"It wasn't your fault, Booth."
Unable to help feeling otherwise, he recalled regretfully, "I asked you to be in there."
"I wanted to be there," she countered, "because it made you feel safe."
Having her near would always make him feel better. The number was still nagging him, however. Pulling her closer again, he dropped a kiss on her head and thought out loud. "If I don't remember coding, why does the number 447 seem important...?"
"Perhaps you saw it somewhere else," she suggested.
"Yeah, but where?"
~Q~
Author's Note: Well, what do you think? You lovely readers have opinions, I'm sure. I'd love to hear them! :D
