Chapter 9
Friday May 22 – Booth's apartment – 6:57pm
Brennan abruptly jerked upright to find herself not drowning in that excruciating darkness, but sitting in the middle of Booth's floor. She tried to get up, but immediately slumped back down when she felt the rush of dizziness take over her mind. Groaning, she rubbed the back of her head and desperately she tried to remember what had happened.
She remembered coughing, Booth screaming, the pain. Oh, how she remembered the pain – a pain so agonizing she was sure it was going to kill her then and there, but it was gone. The only thing she could feel now was confusion. She grumbled angrily because she knew she was forgetting something. Something important and she was frustrated that she couldn't remember what it was.
Grunting, she forced herself up. Dozens of people were wandering about her partner's apartment, and not one of them was Booth. She scoffed. How could he have just disappeared? And then she saw Sweets enter a room down the hall, and quickly she followed after him.
"Sweets, you can't keep me in here like this," Booth shouted. "My son and partner are missing! I have to go find them."
"There are people looking for them, Booth. I think we need to talk about… what… happened."
Booth watched angrily as the young Doctor pulled out a sheet of paper and began to scribble something down. In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to shoot him in the head. "You know what I think?! I think –" Booth immediately stopped when he saw Brennan (literally) walk through the door.
She locked eyes with him – a pair of eyes that were so familiar, so warm, and so young. At that moment she gasped out as a flood of memories came rushing back.
--
And a pair of chocolate eyes staring straight back at her. "Booth…?" her mind spoke for her as she clamped her heavy eyelids shut again.
"Dr. Bones! You're awake!
--
"Dr. Bones, I think you need this cloak more than I do. It'll protect you."
--
Brennan snapped back to reality when she heard Booth call out her name.
"Bones!" Booth couldn't hide the excitement in his voice. She was back! Here with him! Booth smiled. Maybe, he really hadn't been imagining her. Maybe, she really was here – with him.
Sweets raised an eyebrow, and Booth quickly tried to cover up his mistake. At this rate, he was going to end up in an insane asylum in no time. "I mean – I think I should go find Bones and Parker."
"I don't think that's a good idea," Sweets told him sternly. "So… how long have you been… seeing…Dr. Brennan?"
"Booth," Brennan gasped as she ran over to where Booth was sitting. "Just listen to me."
Booth didn't just want to listen to her. He wanted to hug her, ask her if she was okay, ask what had happened, but most of all he wanted to kiss her. It was the truth, he wanted her to moan his name, but he knew that was a reality that was never going to happen. Sighing, he nodded his head.
"Booth," came Sweets irritating voice. "Are you going to answer my question?"
"Booth, I saw Parker," Brennan finished.
"What!?" Booth jumped off the bed, standing beside her.
Sweets groaned. "Please sit down."
Booth glared at Sweets. He was never going to get out of here if this doctor thought he was seeing someone that wasn't there. However, he needed to talk to Brennan, but how? And as if Brennan could read his thoughts, she told him, "Booth, ask to go to the bathroom. We can talk in there."
"I have to go to the bathroom," Booth announced. "So if you'll excuse me…" he heard Sweets's cries of protest, but he ignored them altogether as he walked pass the young Doctor and into his bathroom. And once, the door was shut and locked behind him, Booth turned to Brennan in a harsh, yet excited whisper. "Bones… what happened?"
Brennan sighed as she slumped back against the wall, and slid to the floor. "One minute I was fine, and then this… pain... took a hold of my body. It felt like I was burning – it was so agonizing."
"You saw Parker?" Booth asked, the hope in his voice was evident and Brennan gave the slightest of nods.
"It's all so hazy, Booth. I could be imagining it… it feels like a distant dream." She stared off into space, lost in a thousand thoughts, not a single one of which Booth could guess.
Booth knelt down next to her on the floor, and if she had physically been there he would have placed a hand gently on her shoulder. However, she wasn't, so it remained hovering over her head. For the past few hours it seemed like the words between them were there only to outline the silences. Booth understood better than anyone that, in the blink of an eye, you might reinvent yourself. He understood that the person you were yesterday might not be the person you are tomorrow. But this time, he was the one who wanted to hold on to what he had, instead of letting go. "Please, try to remember. For me, Bones?"
She locked eyes with him again and she could see fear, anxiety, and hope flashing within him. He was pleading for her to remember, and the only thing she could see were a pair of young chocolate eyes staring straight back at her. "Booth, it was him. I'm positive. He has your eyes," she added subconsciously.
He raised an eyebrow, wondering how that was relevant. "Yeah… Rebbecca tells me that all the time."
"I thought it was you…until he gave me some cloak." Brennan glared.
Booth frowned. "He gave it to you?"
Brennan nodded angrily. "Why the hell would you tell him that it's impenetrable? He thinks that nothing will hurt him if he wears it!"
"He couldn't sleep at night," Booth told her defensively. "They had a lock in at his school. Some psycho brought his dad's gun to school to show everyone, and he accidentally pulled the trigger. No one was hurt, but it shook Parker up."
"So you make up an invisible – non existing – cloak!?" she shouted back.
He let out a frustrated sigh. Would Brennan ever see past her logic? "Look, Bones. Kids like to believe in that kind of stuff… magic. They live in a different world than us."
"I don't know what that means, but I do know that we all live on the same planet. It's called Earth."
"What I mean is that kids look at the world differently than us, Bones. They see it as a Disney movie. Good vs. Evil and in the end the good guys always win."
Brennan didn't need to tell him that the good guys never win in reality, because sadly Booth was thinking the same thing. She could see it in the way his face crumbled. "Booth, I'm sorry I don't remember anything else."
"It's okay, Bones."
But it wasn't okay. They both knew that.
"Booth, you alive in there?" Sweets shouted through the door, which was followed by a knock and a nervous laugh.
Brennan gave a false smile. "I think you should answer that, or Sweets may break down the door."
He returned her false grinned, but tears still threatened to make their way down his cheeks. Parker was missing and that was a mistake he would never be able to fix. Angrily, he got up and threw open the door. "What do you want Sweets?"
Sweets was taking aback by Booth's tears. "Oh – I'm sorry. I was just… who were you talking to?"
Booth felt his stomach drop. So Sweets had heard? Should he tell him? And before he could decided, his phone rang. Booth smiled. "What'd you know. Saved by the bell."
Booth smiled, Sweets glared, and Brennan said her normal response, "I don't know what that means."
"Booth," he answered. He listened for a minute before a scowl formed across his face. "English please."
On the other line, came Hodgins rather rude reply, "For you to understand I would have to use the term I strongly dislike..."
"He means dirt, Booth," Angela interrupted.
"We also found ash covering what was left of the victim's clothes," Cam told him.
Booth rubbed his temples. He hated when the squints were on speaker phone. It gave him a headache. "So…?"
"To make a long story short – at one point in time there was a fire were the victim was being held," Angela continued, but was only to be interrupted by Zach.
"Ash, dirt, fire, woods... that's great, but what does it mean, eggheads?" Booth spoke, completely ignoring how Brennan was currently staring off into space.
"Our victim's were covered in rich-loamy soil," Hodgins quickly added. "There in a forest –"
"You got to narrow it down," Booth cut in. "I already know they're in a forest, now tell me which one!"
Cam quickly jumped in, "They're being held in some sort of basement or cellar of a house. A house that's been abandoned, maybe. We ran a test over Dr. Brennan's earring – the one that we found in the victim's mouth. There were pebbles attached to it. From a river, maybe."
"Our victim's were found within a one mile radius of each other," Zach rambled. "From there, I searched house fires in the past years. In 1989 a small shack in the middle of the forest caught on fire. That house is in a five mile radius from where our victims were found. A river runs near this house, and if Dr. Saroyan is correct about the pebbles in Dr. Brennan's earring, then –"
"But what does all of this mean?!" Booth screamed into his cell.
But before any of the squints could answer, Booth heard Brennan's reply first. With a petrifying look in her eye she told him, "Booth, I remember everything. I know where Parker and I are being held."
--
Thursday May 20 – Brennan's Apartment – 11:11pm
"Pick up, pick up, pick up," Brennan muttered into the phone as she called her partner. She cursed loudly when she got his answering machine. She knew he was on a date, but this was definitely more important. She knew who the killer was – Joe Pickering. Age 35, six feet tall, and recently spotted pulling into a driveway of a house that was said to be abandon. It was the perfect location, in the middle of no where.
She had found out by an accident while she was examining the skull's head. She had dropped it; it had cracked, and out popped a pendent. The victim must have swallowed it, but that didn't matter why or how. What matter now was that that pendent had a name on it – Joe Pickering to be exact. She had ran his name across the database and his name and address came up. What surprised her the most was where he use to live; a perfect place to kill someone. And according to the clientele list, someone by the name of Joe Pickering, at that address, had recently deposited forty thousand dollars. Forty thousand dollars that just happened to be the exact ransom the latest victim was held for.
She had been so delighted about the news, but unfortunately everyone had gone home early. It was some holiday that didn't matter, but everyone else had wanted the night off, so lucky her had been stuck at the Jeffersonian alone. Sighing, she tried dialing Booth's number again, but when she failed a second time she dialed another number.
"Agent Ace, F.B.I," came the deep voice on the other end.
She was taken aback by the deep voice – this was definitely not Booth's boss. "Yes, is Booth there?"
"No, he told me to look after things while he was gone." He silently wondered if she could here the lie within his voice. "Dr. Brennan? Is that you?"
"Yes," she hesitated.
"Is there anything I can do for you?"
Brennan bit her lip, deciding if she should tell him or not. But what if the killer had another victim and was torturing that person now? Surely, Booth wouldn't mind if she had someone else do the job. Hadn't he told her that every second counts? "Yes, there is something you can do for me."
"And what would that be?"
"Did Booth tell you about the case we were working on?" Dr. Brennan questioned.
"With Mr. Caldwell?"
"Yes… I think I found the killer," Brennan finished. "You should send a team over right away. His name is Joe Pickering." Brennan waited for a reply, but she was only greeted by silence. "Agent Ace?"
"Yes, sorry. We'll have a team over right away."
"Don't you want the address?"
"No… I have it right here… thanks," and without waiting for a reply he hung up.
--
A half hour had past and she had heard no news from Agent Ace. Sighing inwardly, she picked up her home phone and began to dial a number, but immediately stopped when she heard the doorbell.
"Dr. Brennan it's Agent Ace, please open up," the voice called through her door.
She hesitated, wondering how, but mostly why Agent Ace had decided to show up at her apartment. She knew something wasn't right, but she couldn't leave him out there… could she? Maybe, she should act like she wasn't home.
And as if Agent Ace could read her questioning thoughts, he said, "Please… it's about Agent Booth. There was an accident… he was –"
She didn't have to hear anymore, and without question she threw open the door. She hadn't been thinking, all of her doubts about this man vanished when he mentioned Booth – what a mistake that had been. "What? What happened? Is –" but before she could say another word, she was knocked off her feet, landing sharply on her back.
"What a doll. Hun?" A man that looked exactly like Joe Pickering was hovering over her now. "To bad we have to kill her."
"That's what she gets for snooping," Ace replied angrily.
"Hey Boss, she's pretty," the third one - the one who had hit her - added. "Maybe, we could play with her first."
Joe Pickering – a.k.a. the Boss smirked. "I don't care what the hell you do with her. As long as you kill her afterwards. Ace, Tony… why don't you –" he trailed off in a howl as Brennan jumped up and punched him in the face. Blood immediately began to flow from his nose. "You bitch."
The rest was hazy, and she wasn't sure how long she put up a fight. It wasn't until the strongest one had hooked an arm around her waist was she aware that she could actually die tonight. She grunted as she felt a sharp punch to her face, her stomach, her back, her cheek. They were beating her senselessly, without mercy. But she was smarter. She kicked the one holding her in the groin, and since he wouldn't release his hold on her, they had both been forced to the ground. She staggered to her feet again, and she swayed as blackness began to cloak around her. She was sure she would pass out at any minute, and before she could take another step she felt a burning sensation take a hold of her body.
The savage blow had knocked her completely off of her feet, as something solid connected with the side of her head. Unprepared for the brutal attack, she fell backwards into the coffee table, knocking it and the delicate vase that was sitting on top, over. She had tried to block her fall, but by doing so, she felt the awful snap of her wrist breaking. The vase that had once been used as decoration, now served as her death trap. It had shattered across the hard wood floor and sent little pieces of glass cutting into her skin. She could feel the warm, sticky flow of blood, seeping down her forehead from the wound. Her stomach lurched, and her legs were wobbly, no longer able to support her weight. Instinctively, she began crawling towards the door. But she only made it two feet before one of her attackers grabbed her and pulled her back to him. She struggle with great effort, but it only took one more blow to the side of her head, for her to lose consciousness completely.
--
Brennan shuddered as she blinked her swollen eye open. Everything hurt. It hurt to move, it hurt to think – hell, it hurt to breathe. She struggle as she tried to remember what had happen, but she couldn't concentrate on anything. Nothing – expect, three annoying voices that wouldn't shut the hell up.
"What should we do with her, Boss?"
"Kill her… like the others," the one who was driving spoke. A rush of memories hit her hard as she remembered what had happened. Panic threatened to overwhelm her, but somehow she managed to keep still – they hadn't even seen her move.
"You know," the one who sounded like Ace began. "We could hold a ransom. She writes those books – betcha she makes a ton of money."
"True," the Boss agreed. "I'll think about it, but for now. Throw her in the basement."
She felt the car come to stop, and as soon as the car door opened she jumped – well, stumbled – out of it. She heard their shouts of surprise as she stumbled, tripped, and hopped her way through the dense and dark forest. It took all her strength to run – hell it hurt to move, let alone run. The only thing keeping her from stopping was Booth. Her body had no strength in her, but she somehow managed to run on. It wasn't until the ground disappeared from under her was she aware that she had run off a hill, and was currently plummeting into the icy river below.
