Author's Note:Massive last full chapter update!!! Alas, we've finally reached the end of our journey, folks. After this hefty chapter, there is merely an epilogue to go, which I have already written and will be up in the very near future. Please enjoy this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it—it may be my favorite chapter thus far.
I dedicate this chapter to my grandfather who died on October 8th. It was he who always wanted to read my writing, but I was never satisfied enough with anything I'd written to share with him. For the first time in my life, I've written something I can finally be proud of, and unfortunately now I cannot share it with him, but I know he'll be reading this over my shoulder and be pleased with what I've done. I couldn't ask for anything more.
Thank you all, loyal readers! Please let me know if you've enjoyed the ride as much as I have. And a special thanks to my new friend Alamo Girl, who has reminded me why the Bones community is so wonderful in the first place.
The Count of Ten
It wasn't filled with passion and desire, not like Booth would have expected from such an impromptu kiss, but rather with surprise and a strange sense of need. But a need for what, he couldn't tell. Brennan's heart remained a vigilantly shrouded mystery despite her hands gliding aimlessly across his broad chest. And he could sense the hesitance on her lips even as they pressed firmly into his; there was no rhythm to her movements, but instead a halting, if not endearing, exploratory quality to them. She was searching for something she could not find from him.
At last, Booth found his surprise fading and desire swirling in its stead. It was only natural to take it to the next level, right? After all, she was the one who initiated, and he had been viscerally imagining this moment since he'd allowed his fingers to graze along the hem of her skirt.
As he brought his hands up to her cheeks, she hurriedly stepped back and shoved her hands into her fitted coat pockets; her gaze was conveniently fixed on the exit. Booth couldn't stand having emotions unresolved, so he reached out tentatively to her again, but this time Brennan immediately returned to the familiar, cool woman she was. He watched as she slipped on that carefully constructed mask of the disconnected scientist and stared at him as though nothing had ever happened. It amazed Booth how easily she could shut him out.
"I have to go out for a bit," she said matter-of-factly.
"Wait, Bones, can't we talk about this for a sec—"
"Nope," she said cheerily, "gotta run!" She waved over her shoulder as she slipped out the exit, the cold, metallic click of the door jamb echoing down the hallway like a "tsk-tsk" from his grandmother.
Booth stood there dumbfounded, his arms out to his sides as if they were covered with stigmata. His mouth was agape, but his lips were still warm from the pressure his partner had exerted on them only moments before.
When he finally reconciled in his mind that the kiss had either been a figment of his imagination or temporary insanity on Brennan's part, he decided to return to his squints and see what they might have uncovered and maybe what had sent Brennan off her rocker.
His walk to the lab was perplexing. The supple squeak of his shoes as they folded with his gait and the gentle rustling of his suit jacket against his shirt offered cold comfort in comparison to the reality of Temperance Brennan's body caressing his. Booth simultaneously missed her and wanted to throttle her for all the things she did to him—and caused within him.
He emerged into the hive of the Jeffersonian, thrumming as usual with harried scientists racing about on assorted orders of imperative business. Ahead of him was Brennan's kingdom, complete with all the essential squints: Hodgins, Angela and Zack. He found his feet strangely leaden, as though his shoes were filled with a heavy metal. He had to reassure himself that they couldn't possibly know what had transpired between their boss and himself.
Angela was first to notice him. She cocked her head to the side when she realized he wasn't approaching their domain. "Booth? You look as if you don't know which way is up."
"I'm not sure I do," he said absently. It was as though he didn't even register that someone was speaking to him, let alone Brennan's best friend.
Angela pursed her lips suspiciously and leaned over the railing toward him. "What did she say?"
"Huh?" he asked, instantly brought out of his daze.
"Brennan. She left here right before you showed up. She's the only person I know who can leave somebody with a face like that."
Before he knew what he was saying, the words tumbled out of Booth's still tingling mouth. "She didn't say anything. She kissed me."
Zack dropped his clipboard, Hodgins ceased his incessant typing and Angela gaped. "What!" both of the male squints said in unison.
"Finally!" said Angela with a clap of her hands.
"Why?" Zack demanded. "What could possibly make Dr. Brennan make such an irrational, illogical, unprofessional decision like that?"
"Hey!" Booth said, mildly offended.
"It had to happen sooner or later. All that unresolved sexual tension," Angela cooed, swaying her hips back and forth. "I'm just glad it happened sooner. I couldn't stand it any longer if I had to see those two mooning over each other."
"But what about Dave?" Zack whined desperately, mourning the loss of his brewski buddy.
Hodgins patted his friend on the back. "Grow up, kid. The geek always loses out to a better pair of biceps."
"Boys!" Angela snapped, and then returned her exuberant gaze to Booth. "You have to give me all of the details! How did she kiss you? Why? What did you say?"
"I didn't say much of anything. I started to apologize, and before I knew it, she had her hand on my cheek and her other hand on my ches—my gun!" Everyone stared at Booth as he patted himself down and checked every pocket. "She took my damn gun! That little—"
"Oh, well, at least now it makes sense," Hodgins said as he returned to his computer satisfied that the world was not coming to an end.
"I feel better now," Zack added as he collected his clipboard and straightened his lab coat.
"Oh, Tempe," Angela sighed. After a moment of watching Booth search fruitlessly for his gun, she smiled at him and said, "Look at it this way, at least she didn't go after him armed with just her feminine wiles."
Booth stopped his search just long enough to look at her and nod. "You're right. She'd be doomed. Wait, what. Go after whom?"
Hodgins arched an eyebrow and deferred to his lovely counterpart who was busy sucking her teeth in frustration.
"Perhaps it's for the best you're gun-free for this moment…"
-----
The cricket minstrels were strumming away furiously in the moist summer heat, but the noise did little to soothe Brennan's ragged nerves. Her hands gripped her steering wheel so tightly that her joints burned, and when she became aware of this, she quickly released their deadly grasp. She needed her muscles to be relaxed and ready, particularly in her trigger finger.
Trigger. Gun. Booth's gun. The gray hunk of machinery weighed down her right side like an anvil in her pocket. The moment she had relieved her partner of his weapon, it had taken on an eerily heavy quality. It took all of her effort to continue to conceal it after her kissing ruse, the image of which was now inundating the back of her mind.
"Stop it, Temperance," she growled aloud to herself. She could afford such a reprimand within the confines of her vehicle, and it was best to get out all of her anger and confusion now before her task was fixed before her and she was launched onto a course from which she could never again deviate.
At the end of a narrow corridor of road loomed the vast lair of Hubert Giggles, a solitary warehouse in the serpentine back alleys of Anacostia. She had concealed her car behind some nearby dumpsters so Giggles wouldn't see it; she did not see any other cars along the paths. Two stories tall, solid and isolated, the warehouse was the perfect place to stash his female victims for the purposes of torture, rape and murder.
Fortunately for Brennan, the images of what he'd inflicted on the Ruh women was enough to bury her convoluted feelings toward her partner, and the gun in her pocket felt that much lighter.
Hubert Giggles, the methodical, practiced, shrewd murderer. Murderer wasn't even the right word for his species—more like chimera. He was human on the outside, but inside was another matter. He rebuked every anthropological schema she'd ever examined. Giggles was in a class all his own: a mind sculpted with hatred and misinterpretation with a conscience sorely lacking. This man seemed to be made of so many strange parts, and he challenged all of Brennan's preconceived notions. To define him, Brennan wouldn't need to look to her text books and fellow scientists, but to the Bible and the Church. She had never believed in Good and Evil as immutable ideas; she had always seen the world in shades of gray and believed that every human made his or her own choices based on past experiences and precedents set by role models. But within Giggles, she could find no gray, just a bottomless abyss, an endless night. There could be no justification for the atrocities he had committed, no explanation for his wrongs nor any way to set the scales in balance again.
Brennan removed the gun from her pocket and let the cool steel caress her fingers. She could have sworn she heard Angela say, "You sure you know what you're doing?"
"Hell, no," she responded, "but I'm going to do it anyway."
She switched her cell phone to silent, and thus Temperance Brennan proceeded to enter the spider's parlor.
-----
"So she was standing right here." Angela leaned slightly over the examination table with Clarimonde Ruh's body on it, wisps of her bangs catching on her eyelids. "She looked down, looked down harder, you know the way she does?"
Booth nodded with a slight smile on his face. "Yeah, she scrunches her face up like she's never seen a bone before, and she hunches over it curiously until she gets that 'Eureka!' moment and then every muscle relaxes. Then she has you guys do all the grunt work." He realized too late that the Squint Squad was staring at him amusedly. "What?" he demanded defensively.
Angela's tongue poked against the inside of her left cheek. "Nothing," she murmured. "You're dead on about the hunching thing."
"Oh yeah," Hodgins continued when he noticed Angela urging him to agree, "and you're totally right about that Eureka thing too. She totally had one of those."
"Yeah? Good." Booth lowered his defenses but kept a watchful eye on the two instigators. "When did this happen?"
Zack filled him in, as he was always particularly astute when it came to Dr. Brennan and her anthropological skills. "She was examining a particular bone, but I can't remember which one."
Booth took a step forward. "What do you mean you can't remember?"
Zack took a deep gulp and looked into the face of pure terror. Thoughts of their brief stint as partners were all too keen in his mind, and he had no urge to repeat them. He quailed under the burly man's intimidating gaze. "That is to say I'm not one hundred percent on which one she was examining. It was either in the upper torso or the neck, but it's hard to say. She wasn't talking to me."
"Well, what was she saying?"
"Dr. Brennan was murmuring something about finally being able to prove you wrong, that now she could prove who it was using real science, but she didn't say how."
"Sometimes I think that's her only goal in life, to prove me wrong," Booth grumbled.
Angela cocked an eyebrow and rubbed him reassuringly on the back. "Well, that and owning a gun."
"She wins on both fronts," Hodgins said cheerily.
Booth waved a hand angrily at them. "Enough from the Peanut Gallery, thanks."
Meanwhile, Zack was investigating the remains and didn't hear a word they had said. "I'm going to have to reexamine these bones exactly the way she did. Let's see, in all probability it was the hyoid bone, but perhaps the thoracic vertebrae…" He trailed off and spent a few minutes handling the fragile shards of ivory, the FBI agent all the while tapping his foot impatiently.
At last, he could stand it no longer. "Damnit, Zack, you're supposed to be the top genius here. You're the one the only one who can find Dr. Brennan. Work, work faster. That idiot's life is at stake." Agent Booth hovered over the young man's shoulder, and Zack could feel the hot irritation rolling off of him.
"I'm going as fast as I can," he insisted, but he felt every inch of pressure from the situation. Summoning every ounce of courage he had in the deepest recesses of his body, he added, "I need you to back off so I can work."
Booth opened his mouth to protest, but instead a tidal wave of shock rocked him and he obliged by taking a few steps back to lean against the railing. His watchful eyes never left Brennan's protégé, but at least the boy had breathing room.
"Come on, Zack, you can do this. I know you can. This is your moment to shine," Angela comforted. She rested a hand on his shoulder.
But Zack sighed with frustration. "I'm not good enough. I'm not Dr. Brennan."
"But you will be someday, and Brennan knows this. She wouldn't have tolerated you this long if she didn't honestly believe that." Zack looked momentarily heartened, and Angela nudged his shoulder encouragingly. "You can do this."
He nodded. "I've got to do this." He stared hard at the bones that lay before him, scrutinized every angle of each of them. He brought one after the other so close to his face he could smell the damp earth and musky scent of decomposition on it. He felt like he'd been staring for hours, but it had only been ten minutes.
"There's nothing here," he said at last in defeat. "Nothing. I have no idea what she saw here to get her so excited. I can't—" His eyes drifted back down to the skeleton. He was hopelessly inept. If Dr. Brennan died, it'd be all his fault. Worse yet, what if they never found her again because no one was as good as she was at finding the truth?
That's when he saw it. If he hadn't bowed his head, the light would never have caught it. "She wasn't looking at the hyoid or the thoracic vertebrae! She was looking at the anomaly on the third pectoralis minor!"
"Just pretend for a second that I'm not a world-renowned forensic anthropologist, and tell me what the hell that means."
"But you're not an anthropologist."
Booth sighed heavily. "I know that, Zack. It was thinly veiled sarcasm that obviously shouldn't have been veiled at all. Would you just translate please?"
"Dr. Brennan is right—we know who did this." He chose a long, sharp sliver of bone and presented it before his colleagues. "Watch the inside of this rib carefully." When Zack tilted the bone outward to show the concave bend in the bone, a misshapen fingerprint materialized like a bad childhood memory or the vestiges of the boogeyman under the bed. "Notice the distinctive ripple bisecting the whorls and the smooth, lineless patch above. This print could only be made by someone with extensive burn damage to his hands."
"How does that prove who did this?" Booth said perplexedly.
"Oh my god," Angela said with genuine shock and what Booth interpreted as sadness. "She didn't tell you anything about her lunch?"
"What's this about a lunch?" Hodgins and Angela exchanged looks, and Angela, the braver of the two, recounted everything that Brennan had told her from Giggles' flirtations to his charred fingertips. Booth stood there dumbfounded, his eyes clouded over with something that Angela had never seen in him—melancholy.
He had lost everything important that he could have sworn he had: Brennan's trust and confidence. She had locked him out and all because of his foolish pride. Why hadn't he listened to her, the one time she had a hunch about something? She was right after all—he was a fool.
The always ready relationship counselor, Angela put her hand on Booth's bicep and smiled comfortingly. "Don't feel badly. She wouldn't have told me either. I just happened to be standing in her way; there was no other way to get rid of me."
Booth pretended to shrug it off and looked back at the grad student, who stood uneasily by the examination table. "All right, we know the lunatic went to see another lunatic. Where do you think they are?"
"Hm, obvious guess here, but how about an insane asylum?" Hodgins offered.
Booth shook his head. "I asked where they are, not where do they belong. Other ideas?"
"We could call her, but we should know by now that our girl has got her phone on silent or off all together because she's just passed that level of crazy that even madmen don't dare to operate on. Wait, phone. I remember something about a phone," Angela began. "Brenn hurried out of here after she received a text message."
"A text message? Perfect! Thank you, I love you all." Booth immediately made a beeline for the exit.
"Go chase your girl!" Angela cried optimistically. Booth stayed long enough to leave her the image of a skeptical frown and disappeared beyond the archways.
Hodgins double-checked that the agent had gone before he said, "If that wasn't the most awkward exchange yet. I can't believe Dr. Brennan kissed him, even if it was for his gun."
Angela leaned against his computer desk and raised her eyebrows. "Maybe she actually listened to my advice."
"Oh lord, are you on that again? What advice was it this time? 'Save a horse, ride an FBI agent' or was it 'Carpe Booth'?"
"Can't remember exactly, but it had something to do with champagne and handcuffs."
"I like where this is going," Hodgins nodded approvingly. "How about a little break yourself? I've got a bottle of Dom Pérignon just waiting for a lovely lady to drink it with me."
She puckered her lips in contemplation only for a moment before shrugging her shoulders. "Why not? Normally I'd be worried sick about Brennan, but now that Booth's got unresolved issues with her, he'd cross the Devil himself just bring her back to life and kill her again."
"That image doesn't worry you."
"Naw," she said hopefully, "because I think he'd kill her with love."
"Still not feeling the comfort there, but if it gets you to have a drink with me, I'm on board. If anyone needs us, they've got our cell numbers."
On her way down the steps with Hodgins, Angela stopped to congratulate Zack on his incredible find. "I knew you could do it, Z-man. Dr. Brennan will be proud."
"Oh crap."
"What? Zack, what? You've got that Medusa-just-turned-me-into-stone look," she asked worriedly.
His petrified eyes were focused on nothing tangible, just a fleeting image of his inevitable demise at the hands of his mentor. "I didn't think about what Dr. Brennan would do to me if I led Booth to her after she had intentionally tried to avoid him. I'm toast."
"Yeah, and toast always lands butter-side down. Sorry, pal, but I recommend you live up these last few hours while you can. It was nice knowing ya." Hodgins patted his friend roughly on the back as he escorted Angela out of the Jeffersonian.
"Poor Zack," she whispered. "That guy lives in eternal fear of the Higher Authorities."
"Well, you would too if your gods were Brennan, Queen of the Dead, and Booth, Lord of I-Know-Where-You-Live." She laughed, and Hodgins smiled coyly. He couldn't wait for that champagne.
-----
There was no light here, no laughter, no gummy worms, no safety. The warehouse at the end of an unmarked road offered only night terrors and cold reality. Brennan eased her way along the featureless walls of Giggles' warehouse. She was careful not to make even the smallest sound. Booth's gun was in her right hand close to her body; it was as reassuring as a child's first blanket, and she treated it just as reverently. With her free hand, she tucked some errant hairs behind her ears. She checked every angle to make sure she wasn't being stalked or watched.
She was being careful, much more so than usual. She exercised more caution here than she ever had in her life, particularly because she had very little element of surprise; after all, she'd been invited. So she promised herself she would not charge nonchalantly into the building and she would not fearlessly hoist the gun in the villain's face the second she saw him. Even Temperance Brennan knew when to tone it down sometimes.
At last, a black portal loomed before her. It was open, a tender gesture from her gracious host. Hesitantly, she stood beside it, unwilling to go plodding through when she knew full well Giggles could be waiting to spring a trap. After moments of deliberation, Brennan craned her head around the frame and waited for her eyes to adjust to the blackness within the womb of the warehouse. Eventually inky shapes revealed themselves—banisters, staircases, hallways and a few pieces of crumbling machinery—and Brennan realized the magnitude of the situation. If she judged correctly, she was not safe in any area of this warehouse because Giggles could literally emerge from anywhere. Maybe if she kept her back against the wall…
Despite the time she spent analyzing the room, Brennan knew there was no other way around it—she had to go in now or not at all. Carefully she sidled around the door frame, hoping her shadow or silhouette wouldn't catch her stalker's eye. Inside was mostly cavernous, open and empty like a gaping maw. For a dangerous moment, Brennan entered the mind of the man she was seeking, something she wasn't particularly accustomed to and it chilled her. He had chosen this place well: there was a wide viewing area, like the arenas and amphitheaters of ancient Rome; and she suspected he thought a lot of what he arranged for his victims to do down here was like show for him. This was his kingdom, and he had total reign over it and all those inside of it.
Above her was a series of catwalks, narrow, rusting grating lined with delicate railings that encircled the room like a ribcage. She squinted for any movement up there, but there was none. To her immediate left lay the black portal into a hallway that probably held abandoned offices and bathrooms, but there was no way to tell without exploring, and Brennan couldn't afford the luxury of a flashlight. To the right was mostly empty space, barren expanses of wall that soared almost thirty feet up to a ring of chipped, smoky windows. They let in next to no light and served as a grim reminder that there was no hope within such a place.
She inched along the wall, scouring for clues as she went. Even above her vigilante-ism, Brennan knew this was a crime scene, and she had to protect it at all costs. As her eyes swept the area, the scientist in Brennan noted that the walls were painted an industrial gray consistent with the flakes of paint found on Clarimonde Ruh's bones. This place was growing more promising forensically by the second.
Near the foot of the stairs, Brennan froze stock still. She swore she heard a rustle coming from one of the corridors along the back wall. She waited, pressing her body as flat as she could into the shadows. When she was sure she'd heard nothing further, she continued her agonizingly tedious journey toward the first hallway.
Brennan felt the intense surge of adrenaline bubble through her veins, and she realized that, physiologically speaking, her body was urging her to escape such a high-anxiety situation, but rationally she could not talk herself out of it. There was a confirmed murder out there, and she was the only one invited to try and capture him.
Steeling her nerves, she hugged Booth's gun close to her as she approached the entryway. Again she stopped to examine the entrails of the building, only this time it was even darker, like being lost in subterranean caves.
Now or never.
Brennan plunged inside, probably too noisily, she realized as her shoes scuffed against the dusty cement floors. She concentrated on one foot in front of the other as she grazed the right wall with her shoulder. She came to one door frame and paused to gingerly examine whether the door was locked or not; it was, so she pressed on. The second door was the same. The third door was on the opposite side, and Brennan crossed long enough to confirm that it was locked as well. She retreated to the right side again and realized the hallway terminated in an L shape that probably connected to the next hallway.
The anthropologist turned her head back toward the amphitheater long enough to say goodbye to the soft beacon of dull light. She knew she had to turn the corner where there would be no backlight at all. She had to do it, for the Ruhs, for poor Grant Fine, for herself.
In an instant, Brennan was immersed in the deepest blackness she had ever experienced, darker than the previously unexplored catacombs in the Vatican she had been asked to evaluate, darker than the South African diamond mines that had trapped hundreds of workers and through which she had had to sift through the dirty rubble to uncover them even in absolute darkness—so dark, she couldn't even prove her eyes were open if she didn't touch them with her hands. She marveled fleetingly at how much darker each piece of this warehouse could get, but she knew any darker than this was eternal sleep—death. She maintained her steady pattern of following the right wall. Periodically she would stop and listen for footsteps, but thankfully there were none.
And then at the mouth of the connection, she heard the distinct sounds of scratching, many, many feet and claws scurrying and scraping along the hard floor. Rats. The same rats that nibbled on the remains of the Ruhs? Unlikely considering their short life spans, but they could conceivably be their descendents. The thought repulsed even this hardnosed scientist. They sounded as though they were surrounding her, and Brennan had the sickening feeling that they would overwhelm her if she didn't immediately escape the darkness.
Foolishly, she dove around the corner and stumbled into something soft. Something upright and soft. Something breathing. In the wan light of the distant amphitheater again in view, she made out the silhouette of a human. Body structure and physique suggested male, as did the close-cropped hair and collar of the starched shirt, but Brennan didn't need any of her anthropology skills to tell her what her gut knew. She was now wrapped in the arms of Hubert Giggles, her back against his chest like a lover who had sneaked up from behind for a surprise hug.
She heard the stiff crinkle of his shirt as he lowered his mouth to her ear and whispered breathily, "As silent as the grave in here, wouldn't you say?"
Brennan couldn't move, could barely breathe, and she certainly couldn't find her voice to respond. Her captor's grip was feather light but intense beyond all compare. His touch was stifling, and for reasons she could not explain, it held sway over her. She simply could not lift a muscle nor the gun she had pressed against her chest. Giggles' right arm slithered over her shoulder and down between her breasts, lightly caressing them with the back of his hand until his fingers grazed the thin neck of the service revolver. "Now, now, no need for violence, my dear. I merely wanted a little tête-à-tête with my old friend, Temperance. Let go," he cooed.
Somehow—she had no means of knowing how—Giggles acquired her weapon. He slipped it into the back of his waistband, and most surprising of all, he let her go. She stumbled back to the end of the tunnel and slumped against it, breathless and dizzy. She could not see his face since his back was to the light, but she didn't have to. Her training in kinesics allowed her to read his body language with relative ease: softened shoulders suggested little tension; cocked head, curiosity; arms at his sides, comfort; and legs shoulder-width apart, stability. Altogether, Giggles was the perfect model of composure.
"You're studying me, Temperance. I find that," he paused, "charming. I have been studying you as well."
At last, Brennan found her voice, what little of it left she had. "You're under arrest."
She couldn't see his face, but she knew he was smirking. "We both know you're not an officer of the law. Even if you were, you have no reason to arrest me."
"Really?" she said, her hackles finally rising. She stood up from the wall and approached him. "How about the deaths of two innocent women?"
"Oh, I doubt that very seriously. I had nothing to do with them."
"Then you deny harboring then burying their remains?"
"Clearly."
"Sorry to inform you, buddy, but I've got a rib bone with your melted fingerprint on it."
"Intriguing."
Brennan scowled. "That's all you have to offer? 'Intriguing?' Listen, I don't know what they taught you in evil villain school, but a fingerprint on human remains is about as guilty as it gets. You're going down for this, Mr. Giggles, and I'm the one taking you in."
The killer turned his back to her and walked toward the central room, his hands clasped neatly behind his back. Brennan followed at a relatively safe distance should he try to grab her again, but he did not. In the arena, he turned again to face her. "If everything is as definitive as you say it is, where, may I ask, is Agent Booth as well as the rest of the sharply dressed fury of the Federal Bureau of Investigation?" Brennan stood there silently, her keen eyes fixed on him. Now that she could see his face, she saw his smooth features, bright eyes and gently amused mouth, and hated him all the more for his condescension.
"You know, just a moment ago, you hesitated in my arms." The corners of his lips softened with the memory.
"My receptors must have misinterpreted the environment due to the extreme sensory deprivation in the hallway. My hypothalamus and biological clock was set to nighttime, slowing heart rate—"
"I think we both know you're heart was thumping," he couldn't resist interjecting with great relish.
"—breathing and neural processing. Therefore, reduced speed of the electrochemical message along the axons to my myelinated neurons delayed my inevitable revulsion from your touch." This justification was completely over-the-top, but it was more for herself than for her opponent, a sign that she was still Temperance Brennan, preeminent forensic anthropologist and brilliant all-around scientist. She noticed he was surprisingly unimpressed by her words, so she added bitingly, "In other words, it was temporary insanity."
Giggles began to circle her, his stiff leather shoes clicking and squeaking on the concrete. Brennan recognized the primal motion as hunter/prey behavior; he was sizing her up, and she had to hope to come out worthy of living. For the time being, he kept his distance of a few yards, and it was enough to let Brennan feel as though she still had some chance of escape if need be.
"Shall we not cut to the chase?" he began. "I told you at lunch today that I… desire honesty above all else in a mate. I am curious how honest you are, Temperance."
"I don't see how that's relevant considering I would never, ever partake in a relationship with a serial killer."
He sniffed with amusement and ceased his circling. He folded his arms over his chest and proceeded to analyze her just as she had been doing to him. "I'll lay it out on the table because, whatever else you may think of me, I know I can trust you with what I'm about to share." She opened her mouth to interrupt, but Giggles raised a hand that immediately silenced her.
"I killed those women, Temperance, I did. Goodness, it's wonderful to admit that! I killed them all."
"All?" Brennan couldn't help it—the tremor of shock displayed in her voice, and there was no way to take it back.
Surprisingly, Giggles did not bother berating or chastising her for it; he seemed to deem it appropriate for the moment. "All, yes. Three women to be exact."
"Not Jenna," she said near tears. She staved them back for the time being, but the situation was growing more dire by the second. Had the air grown thicker? It was hard to breathe.
He nodded solemnly. "Every man's dream, I suppose, to have women offering themselves to him. I was their emperor and they were—"
"Your concubines."
He bounced on his tip-toes before resuming his circling, this time a foot or so closer to Brennan. "I had to try them all out, you see. I had to find my match. See if any of them were worthy of being my empress."
"But you never did. A king doesn't marry his concubines." As much as she hated to admit it, she was starting to see the delusions and misunderstandings that governed this man's sense of reality. His cultural ideals were that of a Roman king, that women were for pleasure and used as a measure of one man's superiority over all others. Of course, Hubert Giggles had taken things way off course and had polluted cultural history to suit his own needs, but that didn't change the fact that she could follow where he was now leading her. Was this what he meant about trusting her? Could she really understand him, and did that ultimately mean that on some level she was like him?
"Precisely," he said delightfully and then trailed off. His eyes did not depart from hers, and he seemed to catch on to her epiphany. Still, he had the good sense not to prod her about it. "I had not found my empress."
"Things have changed?" she continued warily, picking up his slack. It was too late when she realized that was exactly what he wanted her to ask.
His net tightened again, this time by another few feet. "It seems they have." A wave of repulsion rippled through her. He couldn't mean her, he just couldn't. She waited with bated breath for whose name he would next speak.
With a twinkle in his eye, he said, "Your pretty friend, Angela Montenegro."
Brennan would have recoiled in horror were it not for the fact that she didn't believe him for a second. For the briefest of moments, Brennan imagined he was acting out some sort of primitive mating ritual, fluffing his feathers, trying to make her jealous, but she couldn't imagine why—she had to be giving off waves of revulsion by the bucket load.
When she didn't respond, he probed, "She is beautiful, isn't she? Venus herself in human flesh."
Suddenly she knew what she was to glean from this exchange. "How long have you been watching me?"
"Long enough, Temperance, long enough."
He was closer now, intolerably so. She could smell the starch in his shirt. He wasn't pacing anymore; there was no need. He had gathered the information he needed and he had already made up his mind about what he was going to do. "You like Roman mythology," Brennan said, biding herself some time.
Her mind was racing, an endless loop of chastising for her foolhardy plan followed by a prayer for rescue. "Please, someone, anyone. Please get here soon." But she didn't really mean for anyone to come, she meant for Booth. She realized the error of her ways now, too late, before this monstrosity.
"I dabble, but it's more out of a deep respect of history. Life was grander then, people believed in something. Ah, but I bore you. Let us change the topic of discussion to something a little more dear to my heart."
Brennan braced for his next question, but even then it wasn't what she had expected. "Temperance, what do you see in that man of yours?"
She blinked. In spite of her serious situation, she wanted to laugh. "Booth?"
Giggles frowned. "Not your partner. David, that man you're dating. Why are you with him? You're obviously too clever for his simplistic intellect. He couldn't possibly understand the complexities of your being nor deserve the raptures of your beauty."
"Oh, and a man who ritualistically rapes, tortures and mutilates innocent, unsuspecting women has all the answers to love?"
"Those women were false. They lied to me. They spoke deceitful platitudes of love to me, so I put them through a trial of fire. I tested their faith in love, and before a week was up, their true black hearts were revealed. Like picking up a beautiful shell to treasure, only to find a hideous, writhing creature underneath. Queenly material, I think not. They were peddling their wares in hopes of a reprieve, an escape from someone who had given them the world on a platter."
Suddenly, his eyes became very fixed on her face and then traveled down her body. His voice mimicked the sound of silk sliding across marble. "Would you break, Temperance? If I tested your love for David, if I tested you, would you break? I wonder."
She saw the coldness in his features, the face of a killer. He was searching for truth within her, and she knew she had to give it to him. It was the only way she could save herself. It would continue the game, the dance, but she could maintain some control. "I don't love David."
Giggles nodded slowly. "I know."
-----
Agent Booth sped down one highway after another and realized with some ironic bitterness that Angela was right, he was indeed chasing after his girl. Of course, the context of the phrase "his girl" was all screwed up, but he recognized that Brennan was indeed his. If anyone had asked, he would have argued on a superficial level that she was his partner and worked with him for the FBI. In reality, Booth knew it ran deeper than that.
Since this case had begun, Seeley had started to see Temperance in a softer light. She wasn't just the tormented scientist with an intellect even God envied; she was a woman who empathized against her will and believed in justice at all costs. And yes, she was more than a little nutty, but she chose to continue working with him, and he wanted that relationship to last until he couldn't lift his gun anymore and she couldn't lift a magnifying glass. Was that so much to ask, he wondered.
Traffic wasn't horrible, but it was irritating, and Booth's patience could best be summarized as a single strand of thread holding up a bowling ball. All it took was one old lady in a 1982 Cadillac Eldorado for him to punch the gas, flip the bird and cut her as well as three other people off. Every second he wasted behind these morons was a second closer to tragedy for his Temperance.
"What does she honestly think getting herself killed by this maniac is going to prove to me? I was wrong," he shouted to his non-existent passengers. "I made a mistake, and she shouldn't pay for it."
That was the tragic part, Booth realized, that Brennan didn't recognize her sometimes suicidal behavior or misinterpreted it entirely as independence. She wouldn't view this as a mistake. When he found her, she would inevitably spout some anthro-babble about how this was a fascinating study in deviant social and cultural behavior, and Booth would mount the Herculean task of trying to show her the proper way to apprehend a criminal, and there wasn't a moment in his whole life he wished for more than that. He couldn't wait to be bored and frustrated to death by the woman he wanted to work alongside forever.
Which is why he sideswiped a Toyota Tacoma and blazed through a red light. All in the interest of symbiosis.
-----
Back in the dank confines of the warehouse, Brennan was thinking about anything but symbiosis and anthro-babble. She was knee-deep in the most horrific and unsettling conversation of her life, and she had studied and confronted hundreds of killers.
Hubert Giggles stepped back a pace with a pleased countenance. "Thank you, Temperance, for your honesty. In return, I will reward you with a bit of my own. I want—" he glanced down at the floor in some sort of momentary panic, as though he could not find the right words, "—no, I desire you to know that I never raped Hanna."
"You broke her mother's bones if she didn't do what you wanted. Coercion is rape," Brennan spat. "And what of the other two women? Jenna and Clarimonde? They were conveniently absent from your pretty little speech."
Giggles shook his head in frustration. "Hanna and I were in love since the moment Jenna brought her home from school with her one day. The connection was instantaneous, like lightning. She slipped me her number on the way out that evening with the message to call her that night. We talked, and she seemed like a kindred spirit—a lonely soul in a place she didn't fit in. The more we talked, the deeper our connection became. She was my Juliet, and I was her Romeo. Ours was a tragic love."
"Love? You don't know the meaning of the word."
"Oh, and I suppose a great anthropologist like yourself does?" he retaliated with unexpected fervor. "I've watched you, Temperance. I see what you think of love. You believe it's a form of control established by society in order to market to the masses. Make them believe in an abstract idea no one can scientifically prove and then sell them Valentine's Day and anniversary junk. Isn't that what it is, Temperance? Love is nothing more than a society-imposed concept borne from physical attraction and the necessity of a species to procreate.
"My," he reflected with less anger, "You really are quite the teacher. Perhaps you should consider an alternate line of work."
Brennan's breath hissed through her teeth. It came so hot and rapid that her lungs ached. Her anger had never been so true or pervasive. She wanted to kill this man for mocking her, but she wanted to kill him even more because he was right. Listening to his regurgitation of everything she had ever told Booth and the others, it sounded so ignorant and wrong. She wanted to throw up, to purge herself of the mental intercourse he had just completed.
"You will be made to suffer for your actions," she promised in a voice that was her own and yet not. She sounded savage and primitive, an animal bent on revenge. She terrified herself.
"Now, now, Tempe. Jealousy is not a virtue."
Brennan contemplated kneeing him in the scrotum and handcuffing him to a sewer pipe until she could call Booth, but as she judged Giggles' current distance from her at four to five feet, he would likely expect some sort of attack and incapacitate her all together. The most she could muster to his nauseating comment was, "I was going more for righteous anger."
"All I ever wanted was the truth from those women. I wanted to know if they really loved me, and every last one of them lied. I asked them if they loved me, and they said yes! I know perfectly well they just said that because they thought that was what I wanted to hear. So I cut out their hearts as they had cut out mine with their lies."
Another foot closer. "But you, Temperance, you and I have a real connection. We have a foundation we can build something on. You don't lie. You play things straight. You don't mince words and say things you don't mean. You don't tap-dance around issues. What you see is what you get, and I can really see this relationship going somewhere." He winked at her.
Brennan scowled. "You wink at me like I'm supposed to get something special out of this, but all I'm getting is indigestion. Whatever deluded fantasy you have built up in your mind around our relationship, let me assure you that it has no basis in reality. You, Hubert Giggles, should not be allowed to continue living in society. I'm arresting you for multiple murder. You're either going to come along peacefully, or I will exercise my right to use force."
His lips twitched devilishly, and as if answering her prayer, he took another step toward her. "I love it when you talk dirty."
"Hope you love this too," she muttered as she reached out and seized his wrist, twisting his left arm painfully behind his back until his knees began to buckle from the pain. Still, he made no other outward sign of discomfort, and, in fact, he grinned irritatingly. Brennan easily fished the gun out of his waistband, released his arm, backed off and kept a bead on his chest.
Giggles laughed and sat up on his knees. "An unexpected turn of events, though not entirely unpleasant. You're an absolute delight when you're livid."
The door to the warehouse swung open, and Brennan could hardly trust what she perceived until she heard, "Calvary's here." It was Booth. She couldn't be sure because of the faint light, but she thought she saw relief and happiness wash over him when he saw her holding Giggles at gunpoint. She was elated that he came in just in time to see her man-handling her target. He'd never have to know what really happened. "Thank God you're all right." If she weren't detaining a killer, she would have run to him and thrown her arms around him, perhaps even have kissed him for real.
"Booth," she began incredulously, "what are you doing here?"
He stepped inside, and Brennan got a good look at her partner, who was more masculine, more imposing than usual. She thought he was probably asserting his dominance in their relationship, but she refrained from making a comment, for once in her life; if Booth had known that, he probably would have died from a coronary. "Rescuing you from your own mental illness," he quipped.
She frowned. "No, I mean how did you find me?"
"The Ringmaster may have meant that text for you, but it was easy enough for the FBI to trace."
"I didn't need the FBI, I used the Internet."
"Bones, what do you want, a cookie? Your way led you headfirst into a serial killer's lair alone. You could have just come to me, you know."
"And have you ignore my convictions?"
"Okay, I was an ignorant ass, but you can't seriously believe that I'd ignore hard evidence?"
"Oh! So Zack found the fingerprint! His progress is really quite impressive—"
"Bones?" he said with a curious tone. "What happened to Giggles?"
"What do you—" She turned her head to look at the spot where she had been holding him and realized with her fair share of horror that he was no longer there. She looked around the room and at last caught a glimpse of a figure racing into one of the black portals under the stairs. "Hm."
"Hm? Hm! That's all you have to say about it? It's amazing how you squints minimize any situation not directly related to dead bodies."
"It's not like he's got anywhere to go. I'm sure you've got HRT stationed around the building."
Booth's brow wrinkled slightly and he lowered the barrel of his gun just a tiny bit, but it was more than enough evidence for Brennan to decipher his meaning. "You came alone? I cannot believe you had the audacity to storm in here like a superhero without reinforcements."
"Hey, pot, why don't you save the speech for another kettle, okay? We have a murderer to catch. Besides, they're on their way."
"You just wanted to be first."
"Water under the bridge, Bones. Can't you just let sleeping dogs lie?"
"That's three clichés in under a minute," she wryly observed.
Booth looked up at the ceiling slack-jawed. "I'm taking my gun back, by the way," he retorted nastily, snatching the weapon from her hands and dropping it back into its home in his holster.
"And what am I supposed to do if he starts firing at us?"
"Take cover, and let me do my job, which is what you should have done in the first place instead of kissing me."
Booth took off toward the hallway into which Giggles had disappeared only moments before. Despite Brennan's worries that he would escape, Booth secretly believed that the killer wasn't going anywhere without finishing business with them first. He had no doubt Giggles knew the FBI hadn't shown up yet and the man had more than enough time to salvage whatever sinister plan he had. Booth would find him and string him up for what he'd put his partner through.
As they entered the dark tunnel, Booth offered Brennan something metallic. "Is it a gun?" she asked hopefully.
"Right, like I'm going to give you a gun when you're standing behind me. No, it's a flashlight."
"Oh, so I'm your map light now. Turn me on and off when you want."
"You're the one who kissed me, remember?" he whispered angrily. Momentarily, he turned to face her, the flashlight's beam revealing a confused and frustrated expression that Brennan, for once, could not interpret.
"I don't follow."
"Why did you kiss me?"
She shrugged. "I got creative."
"I thought I told you getting creative meant no gun."
"You told me that, but I chose to interpret it creatively," she persisted.
Booth turned back to the hallway and continued his careful progression, inch by inch along the dusty floor. "It's like reasoning with a shark. So the reason you kissed me was just to get my gun?"
"Of course." Sometimes she could be so blunt, he reflected, that he just wanted to shake some tact into her. Didn't she consider his feelings at all in the matter, or was she entirely ignorant of them? Recently he feared he'd become more and more transparent, and perhaps a part of him even hoped that her kiss was proof she'd picked up on them and responded positively.
He shook his head, not wanting to believe this was the answer, not allowing himself to believe it. "No, there were plenty of other ways you could have gotten that gun out of the holster. You chose that one. Why?"
"I—It seemed like the most logical and expedient choice." She stuttered, an encouraging sign.
"And I thought you said you weren't much of an actor?"
"I'm not."
"So there had to be at least a little something behind that kiss, something to improv off of."
"Now is not the time, Booth!" she barked.
"And when this is over, will that be the time?"
"I doubt it."
"Of course," he echoed with annoyance.
She paused and leaned in enticingly close to his ear, enough so that her hot breath funneled down his collar and ignited his skin. "You know, Booth, I wouldn't have kissed you if I hadn't needed your gun. Really, I wouldn't want to cross that line with you."
"You wouldn't?" he said in a tone that spoke not with disappointment or shock, but with challenge. It sounded like a dare, and Brennan was surprised at the fight she had to put up within herself to resist taking him up on it.
"Can we just forget it ever happened and work on finding a madman? Honestly, you find the most inappropriate moments to discuss these things."
"You were the one who kissed me on the way to catch said madman! You set the precedent for inappropriatenessity."
"Is that even a word?"
"Now who's being ridiculous?"
"Both of you," came the unexpected and frightening answer. It sounded like it came from all around them—above them, behind them, in front and in back of them. It was impossible to pinpoint the direction from whence it came, and Brennan swept the light wildly around the corridor to no avail. Booth put his hand on hers and directed the beam toward the ground. They stood stock-still, his skin still pressing into hers; unfortunately, neither had time to analyze the feelings this contact excited as a pebble rolled down the hallway toward them.
Booth took off running in the direction toward it while Brennan kept pace behind him, shining the beacon as best she could in front of him. They rounded a sharp corner, but when Brennan raised the flashlight, the hallway was empty. "Damnit," Booth cursed.
"Look," she said, directing the flashlight upwards. A row of ancient PA speakers lined the hallway. Just then, the light coming from the tool wavered, surged and faded, and then blinked out all together. "The flashlight's dead." She growled and tapped the instrument a few times with the butt of her palm to no avail, not even a single flicker. "Just like in the movies."
"How would you know about that?"
"Why is it so hard for you to believe that I've seen movies."
"I don't know, Bones. I guess I just didn't think it fit in with your view of the world."
"Which is what exactly?"
"Do we have to talk about this now?"
"Yes, actually. You brought it up."
"I just meant you view the world differently from us mere mortals. You're much more analytical. I never imagined you plopping down with a bowl of popcorn to watch Ghostbusters."
"Hey, I enjoyed that film, especially the part with the golem created from marshmallow."
"See, proves my point exactly. You couldn't just say Stay Puft Marshmallow Man like everybody else."
"I forgot his name," she said, wounded.
"Besides that, you usually call them 'films' or 'cinemas.' Nobody does that."
She colored slightly from the critique, anxious to prove she wasn't as disconnected from the world as she perpetually seemed to be. "It's true I often find myself looking for anthropological meaning in fil—"
"Is that a bone?" Booth said suddenly. Brennan's thorough eyes worked diligently through the darkness and swept methodically over each segment of the room just long enough to realize she'd been had.
She turned back to her partner and furrowed her brow. "If I believed that psychology had any scientific merit, I'd tell you to see a psychiatrist for your mental problems." He opened his mouth to respond, but she snapped, "And mention that pot one more time, and I'll knock you over the head with one."
Despite their dangerous predicament, Booth allowed himself to smile as did Brennan. "If we make it out of this in one piece," he thought to himself, "I'll give the woman a damn gun." Then maybe only a moment later, a fleeting, barely acknowledged microsecond at the back of his mind, he pondered what his partner might do next time she wanted a gun and he kept it from her.
However, all playful thoughts and banter vanished the instant he heard the PA's crackle to life. "Agent Booth, I have to mention how unprecedented I found your arrival. Initially, I confess it irked me a tad, but I realize now that perhaps it isn't such a disappointment after all."
Booth had no doubt he meant it to be cryptic, but he wasn't in a conciliatory mood. "Hey, psycho, the whole idea was to disappoint."
"Lemons to lemonade, I suppose," Giggles mused.
Brennan leaned in to her partner and whispered, "I've tried, Booth. The man is unflappable."
"Obviously," he said, raising his voice, "he hasn't spent enough time around you."
"That's where you're wrong, my good agent. I've spent enough time of late cherishing Temperance with my eyes and ears to know that simply isn't possible."
"He is talking about you, right?" Brennan elbowed her partner sharply in the ribs; she knew exactly which region to target for the sharpest, long-lasting pain. Booth snarled and massaged his side with the side of his arm.
"Truly the same. I've seen things that would make you blush, Agent Booth."
Brennan wanted to refute his claim as an impossibility, but she found no words could overcome her sense of violation and shame. The idea of someone tailing her, of watching her every move without even her slightest knowledge was horrifying. The safe world she had constructed around herself based on her conviction that she could always protect herself shattered completely. It felt like she was thrust into a dense jungle without so much as a pocket knife, and no amount of survival skills could protect her from the unknown pitfalls surrounding her.
Unconsciously, Booth huddled nearer to her, not just because of what Giggles was insinuating, but also because somewhere inside he knew she needed him and his strength. Riding on that resentment of the man who had made her feel this way, Booth aimed at approximately where he heard the voice coming from and fired at one of the speakers. It fizzed and sparked above their heads, a dull hiss issuing from its smoldering contents. The momentary burst of light rejuvenated the pair of them, and though the embers eventually faded to nothingness, a glimmer of hope flickered in their hearts.
"My, my," was the tinny reply from the now-distant speakers. "I was merely being honest. Temperance appreciates my honesty."
Booth shouted at down the hallway with all the breath in his lungs. "Come out, coward, and face me. Your sorry attempts at terrorism scare no one."
"If that's so, why did you shoot my speaker?"
"Don't try and analyze me, you maniac. Evil can never understand Good."
"I'm afraid that's where you're wrong, my good sir. If I am to follow the comparison you just set up, and I am to assume that I am on Evil's side, then I would say to you that the problem isn't that Evil doesn't understand Good—it's that we understand you too well. And that's what makes us dangerous and you easy to predict. We know what to exploit, how hard to hit to make your knees buckle, and we know above all else that you will always follow us. That's what makes you easy to trap as well. And should I be Evil and you Good, then, therefore, according to this world we have just fleshed out, than I would say you are delightfully in my trap." He let them stew in their silence for a moment and then said, "Lucky for us, the world isn't divided by such a blatant dichotomy."
"You never really loved any of those girls you tortured," Brennan said at last. It seemed such an obvious statement, and she thought herself silly for having voiced it, but she was compelled to speak all the same. "You didn't care anything for them. Whatever happened to make you the way you are—whatever environment you were raised in or whatever social groups you were cast out of—none of it gives you the right to take another person's life."
"Oh, Temperance. You do delight me. You are rationalizing what cannot be rationalized. True, I never did love them, but I'll tell you what I did love." The stagnant air swelled and pulsed and licked against her hot skin as she waited for his confession. She had forgotten Booth and his guns; she had forgotten the darkness; she had forgotten the Jeffersonian and her squints; she had forgotten her parents and Russ and that horrible Christmas years ago. The only thing that existed now were those speakers and the voice behind them. "I loved dominating them. I loved making them say things that no respectable woman would ever have said. I loved mutilating their fair flesh. And best of all, I loved making them do it to themselves. I gave them the right to choose to whom it happened, and they inevitably chose their own selves." The empty space surrounding her somehow felt full, like sucking tar pulling her down no matter how hard she fought to break the surface.
He continued, "But I could never do that to my Temperance."
"Why?" she gasped with what felt like the last of her breath.
"Because you I do love."
For the first time in her life, she felt faint. She stumbled to her left, and Booth was there because he was always there. She slumped against his right shoulder, and he reached an arm around her to hold her up. "You son of a bitch. I will make you pay."
"Don't make promises you can't keep, Agent Booth."
"Who says I won't keep it?"
"Just a hunch." And with that, the speaker clicked off.
Booth wasn't sure what to do. He wanted to stay with Brennan and soothe her, to hold her until she felt the strength return to her legs, but Hubert Giggles was a serial killer, and if he escaped, he would kill again. It was not a question of if, but when. He couldn't leave his Bones here either, not when the murderer had a fixation on her. "Think fast, Booth," he told himself.
"Bones?" he said tentatively. Her eyes were dazed, but she nodded immediately. "It's now or never. I've got to catch the bastard."
She squeezed his forearm. "I want to go with you."
"Of course." She stood up, and though she had now ceased all physical contact, Booth could tell she was staring at him, even through the dimness. "Is there something you want, Bones?"
She bowed her head and then looked toward the hall exit. "Would you mind if I stuck close?"
"I wouldn't let you do anything else."
"You wouldn't let me?" she said with renewed fire.
"That's my girl."
Brennan stepped back a few feet yet remained only an arm's reach away. They pushed through the thick veil of night and from one hallway into another, the last. Giggles was running out of places to hide, and Booth, for one, was itching to get him in his sights. He felt the body heat of his partner close behind—a position she had never willingly accepted before; thankfully she showed no signs of protest now.
They rounded another corner, plunged into the pure heart of blackness and swam through it blindly. Brennan's right fingertips pinched a sliver of Booth's suit jacket, and she held on with all her might.
They moved carefully, sinuously along the walls. Brennan felt every extension of her leg muscles—the slow burn of the quadriceps, the stiffness of the gastrocnemius, and the torsion of her soleus as her ankles deftly maneuvered around perceived obstacles. She thought of ankles, and then she thought of Clarimonde Ruh, brittle, overweight, innocent Clarimonde Ruh and her daughter. Thrust into such an environment and held under conditions from which no person could escape. The inevitably of their demise must have wore on them, but what made it worse was that their captor continually offered false hope, the belief that if they followed his rules, they might make it out okay after all. The terror was palpable, unconquerable. The only things Brennan had as protection against it were Seeley Booth and her superior intellect—together, they were unstoppable.
Booth had kicked in every door along the corridor, and as they approached the last corner, they realized they needn't bother with another door. Framed by the gloom at the end of the hallway stood an imposing figure; it waved. Brennan eased out just a little from behind her partner—she needed to face this man.
"High noon at the O.K. Corral. No where left to hide, freak show," Booth reminded him. He raised his weapon and casually aimed it at his quarry's chest.
"Temperance, please," pleaded the figure, "you must understand that everything that happened to those women happened so that we could find our ways to each other."
"You expect me to believe that you tortured and mutilated those women out of duty to a person you never even knew existed?"
Cold, hollow laughter reverberated through the warehouse and slapped like an icy wave against her ears. "Oh, how you delight me! You're right, I enjoyed watching those women plead for their lives. But that thrill, that urge, I have that for a reason, and that reason is you. We bring out the best in one another, don't you see?" He moved a step deeper into the inky depths and a step closer to the partners. Neither could see his eyes, but they could both feel him scrutinizing Brennan.
Booth decided to level the playing field a bit. He drew attention back to himself with a mere cock of his gun. "Hey, slime ball, don't look at her, look at me. I'm the one who's gonna shoot you."
The figure shook his head slowly. "Not likely, Agent Booth."
"Oh, really? And why is that?"
"I could be obscure and tell you it's because the FBI frowns on unprovoked shootings."
Booth sucked his teeth sharply. "It would hardly be unprovoked."
"And I could be transparent and tell you it's because you couldn't hit me even aiming squarely at me."
"He could," Brennan added smartly. "He's an unparalleled sniper."
"But in lieu of either of those choices, I shall be genteel and tell you it's because our business transaction is nowhere near concluded. You will not shoot me because I have something that you want."
Despite himself, Booth had to admit he was both curious and nervous. His brain swirled around what the creature could mean, and all sorts of horrific images bobbed across the surface of his mind. But as it was obvious that no answers were forthcoming, he knew he had to stave off any thoughts that could prevent him from keeping a level head. "I don't recall making any deals with you," he said warily.
"Not yet."
"Not ever."
"Whether or not you intended to do business with me, I think I've made it sufficiently clear that I have something you want, and in exchange, all I ask is a kiss from my fair Juliet."
"What planet are you from?" Brennan said with surprise, and if Booth hadn't felt every square inch of the gravity of the situation, he would have laughed at such a remark coming from her.
"Tut-tut, my darling. That's not a very nice thing to say."
"When it comes to you, I stop being nice."
"I will have my kiss."
"Shoot him, Booth," she demanded. Her partner stood there dumbfounded while her eyes urged him onward.
"Bones," he hissed quietly. "Now is not the time.
"And you," he continued, now addressing the shadow, "are going to come with me. No more games, no more tricks. Just because you're named like a circus clown doesn't change the fact that I will take you in by force if you do not comply."
"Again, Agent Booth, I reiterate that you can't—"
"Shut up. Just stop talking!" Brennan's outburst, her vehemence startled both men. "You are not interesting, you're not clever, and you're definitely not the man I love. I revile you."
Giggles obliged and was silent, but the two could easily tell he was furious even without seeing his expression. His carefully laid plans and delicately tended fantasies evaporated before his eyes, Brennan had made sure of it. The figure's right hand jerked. In it was an unmistakable shape, the shape of a pistol. It raised steadily and purposefully.
"Lower you weapon," Booth ordered. He did not. Instead his body faced Brennan, and the pistol set its sights on her heart. It was odd the way his body moved—haltingly, almost robotically, as though all the human essence had been sliced out of him, not that there was much to begin with. Her kinesics training told her nothing now, which was poetic in its own way considering Giggles wasn't one to follow preset rules.
A small shaft of light from the bright moon outside the high windows splintered the total darkness enough that Booth could clearly make out the outline of the killer at the end of the corridor. Booth raised his gun and leveled it squarely at where the man's heart would be if he had one.
"Shoot him, Booth!"
"I can't shoot without a positive I.D."
"We know it's him. He's got a gun pointed at me, for god's sake, shoot!"
"I can't see him!" he snapped at her.
"Put the gun down!" Booth demanded of Giggles. "Put the gun down right now, or I'll shoot! Now!" If he could have seen the face of the assassin, he knew he would be smiling that patronizing and sadistic smile of his. "Last warning. Put the weapon down now, or I will open fire, you sick son of a bitch!"
The killer waved mechanically even as the dry crack of the weapons firing snapped through the resounding silence. The flashes of the two gun muzzles simultaneously ejecting their cartridges gave just enough blinding white light to see the face of the villain, but he was not smiling as Booth had imagined; in fact, his face was as still as death. A deafening roar and the hot smell of gun powder laced with blood flooded the hallway as the silhouette crumpled to its knees. A heart beat later, so did Temperance Brennan.