Sweets, Brennan and Christine left Shady Palms in their light-blue Toyota not long after Max.

They were on a case, which made it easier to ignore all the sentiment of the night before and focus on the tasks ahead. Sweets could see from the nervous crease around Brennan's eyes that she just wanted things to be okay – to go back to normal.

He was prepared to give that to her.

"It won't be difficult to get out onto the greens," Brennan said over her shoulder as she drove. "but locating the exact spot that the body was recovered from, and performing a thorough excavation of the site will no doubt be more challenging."

"What will you say if someone catches you?"

Brennan shrugged. "I'll tell them I'm a gardener."

"No offense, but you're the wrong colour to be a gardener in a golf club in this part of the world." Sweets said sardonically. "And gardeners don't usually bring their kids with them to work."

"It is a Saturday. And adequate day care must be difficult to obtain for the working classes." Brennan looked in her rear-view mirror.

"Uh, Yeah. Sometimes I forget, you're not just rich, but super-rich. It must be such a pain, having to come down from lofty heights and mingle with the proletariat." Sweets rolled his eyes.

"You're hardly a member of the proletariat, Dr Sweets." Brennan reminded him. "I work with my hands more often than you do."

"Yeah, I guess it's hard to complain when your profession's weapon of choice is a couch." Sweets smiled lazily. "Besides, I'm prudently invested."

"Daisy mentioned that you were extremely talented with finances. Perhaps you could take a look at my portfolio sometime?" Brennan asked.

"Sure." Sweets said, his voice registering a little higher than he would have liked.

How does she manage to make finances sound like a euphemism? He wondered.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

They stopped at a public bathroom so Brennan and he could change into their disguises.

"You do look a bit like a gardener." Sweets conceded. Although, he thought privately, her gardener's costume was more like an outfit one might use to 'establish the storyline' in an eighties porno.

She was wearing very short army-green shorts and old runners, a white shirt-blouse and a tight khaki vest that accented her cleavage. Her hair poked out from an absurdly wide-brim hat and she was wearing outdoorsy gloves. Somehow those details made her look even hotter. Her travel kit was slung over her shoulder. He imaged her saying I have come to clip the roses... in a breathy voice before scolding himself and dismissing the thought.

She was surveying him too.

He had changed into a white polo-shirt, a pair of long taupe shorts, white socks and runners, and was wearing a pair of mirrored sunglasses. He looked slightly dorky, but in the entitled way of rich college kids. He was already working on the character with the cocky way he stood and moved. Brennan noticed that little arrogance looked good on Sweets.

It had been his suggestion that infiltrate the golf club and snoop around while she was working.

"Do you even know how to play golf?" She asked critically.

"I know the basics." Sweets countered. "Besides, I'm planning on spending most of my time in the clubhouse."

"That is how most members of the bourgeoisie play sports." Brennan concluded.

Sweets smiled.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It didn't take her more than forty minutes to locate the place the victim had been found. The Jeffersonian file had contained GPS coordinates and a description of the crime scene, and she'd memorised all six of the scant Ghost Killer files the first evening Pelant had taunted her about them.

The site was a long way out from the club house, but the soil was discoloured and the grass slightly spongier.

She spread a blanket for Christine on some nearby grass and set her up with some toys before she began methodically excavating.

She worked efficiently, taking some soil samples in zip-lock bags at each layer, but even after two hours of work, she was becoming convinced that there was nothing else in the location to find.

Dumping the soil back into hole, and re-covering it with the grass lid she'd cut out, she tried to look at the crime scene the way Booth would look at it. The Ghost Killer had dumped Chloe Campbell's body at the same site she had taken her from – the Caraway Hotel. It was therefore possible that this victim had some connection to the golf club, perhaps a member or employee.

If the Ghost Killer had acted alone, she would have had to drag the victim's body, which would have weighed at least eighty kilograms, out to this spot. That would be difficult.

Perhaps she had used a golf-buggy.

Brennan looked up at Christine, playing under the beech tree on her blanket. It was quite a lovely spot: an artificial stream gurgled beside her. Crocuses had been planted along the stream-banks.

It was picturesque.

What if the Ghost Killer had lured her victim out here under the pretext of a romantic tryst?

Brennan tried to imagine two lovers rolling around on the blanket. She began to search the stream bed and the crocus patches for any debris that might have rolled down-hill. Where would they go?

Brennan's imagination was suddenly flooded with images of being here with Sweets at dusk. First, she would straddle him, and he would lean up, eager to kiss her. Then she would let him roll her onto her back, and he would brace himself over her, kissing her neck with his full, soft lips and edging her slowly back between the roots of the tree...

Brennan cursed herself under her breath as she crouched down to inspect the roots. She had intended never to let herself mentally revisit the night before. To never even let herself think about the intensity in Sweets eyes as he had stared at her, bearing all his wants and fears for her to see. To forget that his kiss had freed something inside her, so much so that she would have wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist and kissed him until he stumbled out into the street with her attached, insisting that he find them a motel room...

If not for Booth.

As if Booth's name had summoned pain, Brennan noticed a small, enflamed bump at the base of the Beech tree. It had been injured somehow...perhaps a piece of the weapon the Ghost Killer had used had been lodged inside!

Drawing out the appropriate tool from her kit, she cored a piece of the tree, a centimetre out from the centre of the wound. Pulling the knot out, she gave a triumphant grunt of discovery: lodged in the centre of the knot was a bone fragment. Probably tooth.

She bagged the specimen, excited, then took a polaroid of the tree. Perhaps it was the murder weapon! If the victim had been braced above her, face-down, the Ghost Killer could have reached up driven the victim's head into the trunk at an angle, causing the tooth to break off and the stress-fractures seen to the back of the victim's cervical vertebrae three and four.

At the very least, this would have incapacitated him.

After taking several more photos of the site, she gathered Christine's things and headed back to the car. Another hour passed while she jotted her own notes down about the crime-scene and her inferences. She was beginning to get worried, when she saw Sweets, strolling towards her, all long limbs and casual confidence, wearing an obviously-purloined golfing visor.

How does he make a golf visor look sexy? She asked herself.

"Let's go." He said quietly, slipping into the driver's seat and starting the engine.

"You found something." Brennan said, recognising his excitement.

"Yeah, I did." He turned to Brennan, grinning. "There's a list of winners of the Galviston County Members Tournament on a plaque in a cabinet in the player's lounge. Guess who won the tournament in 1979 and 1982?"

Brennan furrowed her brow, wondering how the answer to that question could possibly be relevant to a murder that took place in 2012. "Who?"

"A Giles McNamara." Sweets grinned.

Brennan looked uncertain. "Giles is a male name. Pelant said the Ghost Killer was a woman."

"Giles might not be the murderer, but it's a connection between the cases, isn't it? They link back to the McNamara Group." Sweets said.

"It might be a coincidence. McNamara is not a terribly unusual surname." Brennan countered.

"Rain on my parade, why don't you? Fifty bucks says Giles is linked to the McNamara group." Sweets challenged.

"You're on." Brennan said. They both avoided lingering in each other's grip when they shook hands over the steering wheel.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Did you find the crime-scene okay?" Sweets asked as he drove.

Brennan noticed that Sweets never asked questions that set people up for failure. He hadn't asked her "Did you find anything at the crime scene?" because if she hadn't, he didn't want to make her feel bad. She added this observation to the growing list of things she appreciated about him.

"I found more than the crime-scene." She gloated. "I recovered a piece of tooth and have constructed a scenario for how it may have become lodged in the base of a beech tree."

She told him her theory about the Ghost Killer sexually luring her victim to the make-out spot, leaving out the part about her erotic visualisation.

Sweets gave her a proud smile.

"You've grown so much as an investigator. You're not just thinking like a scientist anymore, you're thinking like a cop...or, dare I say it, even a profiler."

Brennan was insulted. "I would rather think like a scientist than either one of those professions." she baulked.

Sweets sighed. "No, I mean, it's great that you're able to combine the logical thinking of a scientist with the speculative reasoning of a field that requires a more nuanced understanding of human nature."

"Oh." She flushed a little at the compliment.

But had she changed? Once, she would have ruthlessly shut down any speculation in her lab. Working with Booth had meant at times she had to show respect for his 'gut' instinct, and working with Sweets, she'd made allowances for his profling guesswork.

Now, she was in Texas chasing a phantom serial killer on nothing stronger than Pelant's word.

Was this erosion of the Scientific Method really growth? Or had she sacrificed little parts of herself along the way, for nothing more substantial than small acts of kindness to her friends?

She stared out the window.

The corruption of her system should have meant a decline in its efficacy. But it must be admitted, even when she'd humoured Booth and Sweets, they'd all continued to catch killers together, case after case.

She thought about Pelant's message: I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. Was the ruthless application of logic a form of tyranny too?

"You're still an epic scientist, Dr Brennan." Sweets said, after a moment. "I was merely complimenting the development of your other skill sets."

Her eyes widened. "How did you know I was thinking about that?"

Sweets smiled. "Educated guess."

Brennan eyed the visor nestled in Sweets' thick curls. She knew how silky they felt now, what it was like to thread her fingers through them. How soft and sensual his mouth was. The ease and humility with which he gave affection.

Had she allowed logic to tyrannise her when Sweets had asked her what she wanted? Had she made the wrong choice when she'd resisted change?

She turned away from him and watched the world whiz by out the window for a while.

Then, she glanced at Christine napping in the review mirror.

Ultimately, it made sense to stay with Booth, she reasoned.

Even though her feelings had changed.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The Dixie Pine Cottages outside of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, were the first stop on Max's list. They were arranged as relatively private cabins, though they all got electricity from the main building.

Sweets parked the car under a tree, and went to see the manager in the maintenance building.

"Well, hi there! And welcome to Dixie Pine Cottages. My name's Dianne, how may I help you?" The attendee had given this spiel so many times she apparently didn't need to breathe between sentences.

"I'd like to see about a family-size cabin and some firewood? It's gonna be cold tonight." Sweets asked as Sam.

"Number Three, Yellowglen sounds perfect for y'all. It's a twenty-dollar down-payment tonight, ten extra for firewood, and you settle your bill on departure."

Sweets put the money on the counter and she slid across a folder and a key, and a bucket of firewood.

"There's a phone in your cabin, dial three to ring out, the TV gets local channels, there's a child's crib folded in the store cabinet, no smoking in the property and a continental breakfast is served in the Long Room from seven a.m. Enjoy your stay."

Sweets could see why Max had chosen this place. He hadn't had to sign in, there wasn't a computer in sight, and the trees between the cabins would make it virtually impossible to be spotted by satellites as soon as you'd left the main road.

He drove them up to Number Three and parked the car under a giant spruce. They'd get sap and shed needles on the car during the night, most likely, but it was better than getting seen by Pelant.

Brennan and he unpacked most of their things, enjoying the luxury of the fact that they planned to stay two full days here. The combination of pine rafters, sunshine-yellow curtains, sofas and bed-linen made the whole place almost disturbingly cheery.

Sweets went around and drew all the curtains. Then he built a fire in the smoky metal grate and lit it.

"I thought you said you were never a boy scout." Brennan gestured to his fire-building skills.

"There was a fireplace in my family home." Sweets said. "Dad taught me."

Brennan began cooking a creamy mushroom pasta for dinner. "We're going to need more food supplies soon." she mused as she was stirring.

They all ate together around the kitsch pine table. After the relative successes of their day, Sweets was starting to relax a little.

They'd made progress in the case.

They'd sent profiling notes to Booth.

They'd managed to spend a whole day together without fighting or crying or...being inappropriate.
Compared to yesterday, today was good.

Well, maybe not when compared to a certain part of yesterday, but he was not even going to let himself think about that.

Sweets played with Christine for a little while before reading her to sleep. There was a main bedroom and a kid's bedroom in the cottage, and Sweets had set up Christine's things in the latter so her cot would be next to his single bed.

He shut the door quietly and came out into the living area, wearing his night shirt and sweatpants.

Brennan was by the sink, doing the dishes in a tank top and pajama bottoms.

"You should have left those for me. You cooked." Sweets pointed out.

"I had nothing more pressing to do." Brennan shrugged. "I can't process the soil samples I took without access to a laboratory, and I'd prefer to wait for Hodgins to analyse the particulates."

That was the highest compliment Sweets had ever heard Brennan give a co-worker; namely, that she trusted someone to do something better than she could do it herself.

"So we give them to your dad to courier back to the Jeffersonian? Man, he's going to be pissed when we tell him we want him to head back off to D.C. again." Sweets chuckled.

"It can't be helped." Brennan shrugged.

Sweets wondered, Does she keep sending Max away because she prefers it when we're alone?

Brennan dried her hands and came to rest against the sofa.

"Are we going to do the TV thing again tonight?" Sweets asked, reluctantly.

Television had brought them no good news lately. And neither of them had even really talked about or processed Finn's death yet. He didn't think it would help Brennan to see her youngest intern strung up on the news.

"We ought to." Brennan said. "We owe it to Mr Abernathy."

She dutifully tuned in to the appropriate station, and then took the left-hand side of the three-seater. Sweets was already settled on the right.

It would be so easy to move over and put his arm around her. Sweets thought.

But he wouldn't. He was already freaking out about what would happen, when they returned, if Booth ever learned about the kiss.

If Sweets was honest with himself, he knew he might have been prepared to pursue Brennan anyway, even if it meant sacrificing his friendship with Booth. If Brennan had asked him to.

But she hadn't asked. And there was Christine to think about.

The firelight dancing and flickering over her skin wasn't helping any. As soon as he'd done his duty by her, stayed with her to watch Finn on the news, he was excusing himself and going to bed. Away from temptation.

I could just put my feet on his lap. He'd very likely take the hint and start massaging them. Or kissing them. Brennan thought slyly, looking at the young man sprawled on the right side of the sofa from the corner of her eye, and allowing her mind to wander.

She reprimanded herself: this pent-up feeling was more than likely due to the fact that she hadn't orgasmed in almost a week. Perhaps she could take advantage of the fact there was no toddler sleeping in her room tonight and solve that problem herself.

The news bulletin finally came on. First they showed protesters in the Ukraine. Then there was a story about a factory-fire in China that had spread and killed hundreds. And in slot number three, they showed the ionic columns Sweets and Brennan had been dreading.

"The 'Monument Killer' who has captured the attention of the nation this week has struck again in our capital. Continuing what appears to be a vendetta against the Jeffersonian Institute, the body of a young woman was discovered in the Jefferson Memorial early this morning. The crime scene was under heavy guard, but officers were rendered unconscious by a gas attack. The young woman was an intern at the Jeffersonian, and is thought to have been targeted along with the two prior victims because of the criminology work they undertook for the FBI..."

A wave of shock seemed to ripple through Sweets' whole body. "Oh my god, Daisy..."

Sweets' grabbed the remote and shut the news off. Then his hands curled around it in a grip so hard Brennan thought it would shatter the plastic. He brought his fists up to his face and pressed them and the remote violently to his forehead, curling in on himself, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking, the intensity building like Brennan was watching a seizure.

Suddenly, he began sobbing – loud, barking whoops of pain.

Brennan slid over the couch until she was straddling his lap, fighting to get him to uncurl his arms and let go of the remote. She was sure it was going to break and he would cut his face with it.

"Sweets! Stop it, you're going to hurt yourself!" She wrestled the remote away from him and held his head between her palms, trying to get his wild and panicked eyes to focus on her.

"I should hurt myself! Look what I did to her..." Sweets sobbed something else incoherently.

"Pelant did this to her. And he targeted Daisy because of where she worked, not because of who she slept with." Brennan reasoned, wiping the tears from his red face with her thumbs.

"You don't know that." Sweets cried. "She didn't fit the type Pelant was gunning for. She was on that list because of her connection to me..." his voice was hoarse now "She was the only one, since my parents died, who ever put me first, liked me best, never made me feel like a freak..."

Brennan kissed the crown of his head, his brow, frantic to provide him with some sort of comfort that would stop his self-destruction: he was grinding his teeth, digging his nails into his palms so hard they were actually bleeding. She'd heard of cases where enraged or distraught individuals had pulled their own tendons away from the bone.

His voice broke "...and she would have died thinking I was going to save her, Daisy was like that, she'd think I was going to run in at the last minute on fucking horseback, and even as he was flaying her alive, she'd have been thinking that and I would have been here thinking about you."

That admission was all it took for Brennan to move her caresses down the plane of his face, until she was kissing him gently, over and over on the mouth, pulling away only to nuzzle her cheek against his like a cat.

"What's the point of psychology, getting inside the mind of serial killers," he breathed haggardly, "their horrible, twisted places, if you can't use it to save anyone?"

"You saved me. You did. I would never have had Booth or Christine if you hadn't come into my life. My beautiful daughter. I'd still be that lonely person absorbed by her career." She kissed him again. "And I would never have had you."

Sweets sobbed harder than he ever had in his life. He let Brennan wrap his arms around her, and pull his head into her chest while she stroked his head and back like a frightened child.

Finally, he calmed a little, relaxed his crushing grip and looked up into her eyes. They were red and raw from crying, too. She was gazing at him like he was the most important thing in the world.

Like she would give him anything if only he would be alright.

He grasped his hands around her waist and drew her in to him, kissing her, slowly at first, then passionately. He threw her back against the lounge, kissing the pale arch of her neck, until she knocked him backwards into the armrest. They worked off their anger and grief, vying for dominance, grasping and biting and threading their fingers through each other's hair. Sweets rubbed the palm of his hand up her chest, and cupped the hardening nub of her nipple until she moaned.

The good kind of moaning.

They rolled off the sofa, tangling together over their papers and knick-knacks. Brennan pinned Sweets in front of the fireplace, grinding against the hardening in his pants mercilessly until he flipped her and pressed her into the floorboards, his eyes alight with manic energy as his hand found its way down the front of her pants.

She moaned louder, damp around his fingers as he kissed down her chest in reply. She ripped off her shirt, then his, and ran her hands over his back, distantly thinking in some part of her forebrain that she could feel the raised scars like Braille under her fingertips.

Sweets took his hand away from her to remove his sweatpants. Brennan did the same. He was too slow for her liking and he'd barely achieved nakedness when she wrapped her legs around his waist, drawing him towards her.

When she guided him in, a myriad of expressions moved across Sweets' face like a star shower. Worry and self-loathing, adoration and guilt, tenderness, openness and gratefulness competed in his face.

She had never had a partner watch her so intensely, whose movements were so synchronised around keeping his gaze on hers.

He kissed her mouth and neck and ear and breathed: "I love you, you know."

He pulled back to watch her absorb this information. She was close to coming, but, ever-competitive, she drove back at him harder. She bit his neck, and scratched her nails through his hair, until he was coming soon after her. He cried out, and fell heavily, rolling and dragging her on top of him. His arms crossed over her back, holding her to him. He kissed her cheek and then her lips, all the while staring at her.

"You are the most beautiful, incredible woman I have ever met. I can't believe I got to do that." He laughed, and brought her hand up to his mouth and kissed it, palm and back, and then her fingers.

"You have to stop wearing those terrible suits." Brennan gasped.

He frowned at the non-sequitur.

"It's false advertising!" she playfully smacked his shoulder and rolled off him to one side to examine the living room. "Would you believe a couch-jockey did this?"

"Is that what they're calling psychologists now?" Sweets laughed, quirking an eyebrow.

His hand brushed up her stomach tenderly and came to rest between her breasts.
"I meant it, you know." He looked in her eyes.

She nodded, soberly.

Suddenly, the room felt cold. The fire had died down in the grate but that wasn't it. Talking had
ushered the betrayal of Booth and the ghost of Daisy into the living room.

Brennan took his hand. "Come to my bed tonight."

Sweets followed her into her room and together they'd climbed into the sheets. They held each other, running deft fingers over noses and cheekbones and orbital sockets and the shells of each other's ears, each trying to make a memory of the other's features, a memory they might need to take with them into the future.

Finally, they made slow, slumberous love again. Brennan fell asleep with her head on his shoulder. Their fingers were entwined together on his chest.