Phase 10: Paper Locks
A/N: Ahh, yes. Another in a regularly irregular submission. Thank you, kind readers, for the reviews and the alerts.
oOo
Russ did that thing, that little thing that Bones did when she was thinking, when her mind was going a million miles per hour, and Booth was having a hard time looking in his direction.
"Dad's still not sure this is the right thing to do."
Booth glanced at Russ Brennan and tried not to see his sister in his expression, but it was hard. Damned hard.
Two hundred miles from Washington, D.C. and he should be used to the man sitting next to him, twelve weeks since he'd seen Brennan or Christine, and he should be used to all the changes in his life, but he wasn't used to a damned thing. He'd cultivated the patience necessary for a sniper, but no matter how fast Russ was pushing his truck along the highway, it just wasn't going fast enough, but a damned sight too fast.
He was the boy impatient for Christmas yet afraid of what he was going to find under the tree.
"You're sure Amy and the girls are fine?"
It was always easier to change the subject, find the semi-solid ground rather than the quicksand of talking about Max Keenan.
"My in-laws have loved having the girls and Amy for the summer." Russ glanced his way. "They even love me, believe it or not."
"They have to love me, I guess," he added in a self-deprecating tone, "given how sick Haley can get. They figure I'm a keeper if I stick around."
If he hadn't been Brennan's brother, his devotion to his adopted daughters alone would have earned Booth's respect. "But she's doing good now, right?"
Russ grinned. "Better than all right." He signaled, then eased the truck into the right lane. "She's a tough one, Haley. She might outlive us all."
Booth watched as the traffic on their left began to zoom past them as Russ made the slower turn off the exit ramp and pointed the truck toward the small resort town which had been the last place in which the Brennan family fugitives had been together.
It wasn't fair, Booth thought. Children should be allowed to be children, not deal with something as horrible as cystic fibrosis. But he'd seen too much, experienced too much to hold out much hope for that.
"Dad said the second car would have been parked about 5, 6 miles in that direction," Russ said pointing to his left. "She would have had some money with her, and if she got to the car, he said she would have enough traveling money for a week or so."
The snippets of information he'd gleaned over the last 24 hours through Russ' conversation with Max had been enough to tell him just how thorough the old con had been at concealing the three of them and making sure they had a couple of escape routes at each of their hiding spots.
"You think talking to the police here will really help?"
Booth really wasn't sure of anything at this point. But they needed a starting point to track Brennan and this was their best choice. "I want to know if they picked up someone matching her description." He sighed. Paranoia was Hodgin's territory and it was wearing him down. "There's nothing on the wires, but those could have been altered."
"You really think this Pelant guy can doctor stuff all the way from Washington?" Russ grimaced and again Booth was reminded of his partner. "Dad might be right. Maybe Tempe and the baby should stay hidden."
Nothing seemed certain except one thing when it came to Pelant. "He's capable of doing a lot of damage," Booth agreed. "And I don't think he's done with us."
oOo
She listened as Jack finished another in a long list of what seemed to be interminable calls to this person and that, all in the name of maintaining and keeping the Cantilever accounts safe.
Standing in the doorway of his study, she tried her best to don a teasing tone despite the seriousness of the situation. "You do know, don't you, that I told Cam we would be an hour late more than two hours ago?"
The Mighty Flynn as she was wont to think of him these days, had turned over Sawyer's code to the FBI computer experts for analysis and despite practically turning her computer inside out, she'd been unable to do more with the video of Ethan Sawyer than prove he had left the psychiatric facility little more than an hour before his death. As much as she would love to nail Pelant just out of principle for the damage he'd already inflicted on her friends, she wasn't sure what else she could do.
"I just have one more call to make, Ange."
Sighing, she retreated to the living room where Michael was deeply engrossed in trying to dismantle the walker she had paid some teenager at the toy store to assemble. "Daddy's still on the phone, Michael." She plopped down on the sofa to watch her son. "So we just cool our jets, kiddo."
Michael, oblivious to the crisis around him, succeeded in pulling the small red block from its nest in the walker and began pounding it against the side before tossing it in a sideways motion, then trying to reach for it. But the design of the walker and the length of the toss and subsequent roll put the block effectively out of reach and he sent up a wail.
To his protest, she only had one thing to say: "It's okay kid. I feel the same way."
"Angela?"
She turned to see Jack framed in the doorway. Despite his reassurances, he had the careworn face of a man at war with an enemy who could strike at any time. But that look passed quickly as he donned the other look—the one she knew he did purposefully to reassure her and to hide his anxiety from their son.
"Maybe we should just call Cam and tell her we won't be in at all." Angela reached for the red block and handed it to Michael who began to beat it against the walker. "Flynn froze me out of working on Sawyer's case until his FBI computer guys verify my findings. Maybe they'll have a better crack at it."
She'd protested, Cam protested more, but Flynn won and effectively curtailed any chance she had at seeing all the tricks Sawyer's code could do at least for a while.
"He's just verifying the program, Ange." Jack was trying to distract Michael from his noisy routine by trying to entice him with the purple rabbit. "Overthrowing the government kind of got his attention."
"How'd you like it if they sent your bug IDs out to be verified?"
It was a cold thing to say to her husband who had practically rocked her to sleep last night and she winced at her tone. But Jack, like he did so often these days, only smiled and tried to deflect her mood. "Cam said you'd probably have full access to everything by this afternoon, Ange. Besides," he added as he kissed her cheek, "you can spend more time with Michael and the two of you can help me water my plants."
He bent to Michael and pulled him up from the walker and into his arms. "You want to help Daddy, don't you, Michael?"
He could have been asking his son if he wanted to crawl through buckets of slime, but with that tone, Jack had a way of making Michael giggle.
"So, is the Cantilever group still solvent?"
He nodded as he rubbed Michael's belly, listing a number of security measures that seemed straight out of some spy thriller.
"It does sound a little like James Bond with all the triple confirmations and secret passcodes, babe."
"We can never be too careful, can we, Michael?"
He might have been directing his comment to his son, but she knew he was trying to make light of the whole situation that had had both of them on edge.
"The Cantilever group does a lot of good work," she acknowledged. "They help sign my paycheck every week. Keeps Michael here in diapers. Who knew we could have gotten in free at the zoo?" She, too, could play the game of trying to lighten the mood. "Does the Cantilever Group own any salons? I could go for a full day of self-indulgence."
Jack was swaying with Michael. "If Pelant succeeded in freezing the assets of the Cantilever Group, he could shut down the Jeffersonian."
The thought had crossed both their minds in the last several weeks. Jack had been on top of the threat to his family's fortune ever since Brennan had been framed for murder. Last night's and this morning's flurry of phone calls had been his way of ensuring the continued flow of funds for dozens of charities and scientific institutions.
"Did you know, Michael," he was saying, "that if we don't go into work today, they'll have to shut down the Jeffersonian?"
She gave him a look of protest. "Okay, I'll get Michael's things," she said as she made her way to the baby's room. She was growing tired, so damned tired, of the Mighty Flynn calling the shots. That and the new worry about Brennan had left her feeling limp like an old rag doll. "But maybe the Jeffersonian could do without us for the day," she called out half-heartedly.
"Never," he said as he continued to sway with his son. "Never."
oOo
"Anything?"
Agent Ginny Shaw had that squinty-eyed look of someone too long in front of the computer.
And a look of defeat.
"I've called everyone, even sent a couple of officers around to check and nothing. Nada. Zilch." She practically sagged into her chair.
Sweets studied the young woman. She was efficient and tenacious and more than a little possessed with this case—and maybe Agent Booth—and it was generally all those attributes—minus her obsession with Agent Booth—that had helped propel the investigation forward. Losing contact with the delivery man was a setback, but they were making some real progress on other fronts. Wasn't it just last night that the Jeffersonian found proof that the security tape at the psychiatric hospital had been doctored?
"We're not just spinning our wheels here," he started to say, partly to re-invigorate the investigation. "You've got the interviews with those students on the talks between Pelant and Sawyer and. . . ."
"I'm off the case."
Sweets did a mental U-turn. "What? We're making progress, here." They were even though they were just baby steps. "Why?"
Shaw sighed, shook her head and looked absolutely miserable. "You'll have to ask Agent Flynn."
oOo
Booth laid the photograph Angela had created for him on the counter as the sheriff sipped his coffee. From Max's description, this was how Brennan looked the last time he'd seen his daughter—blonde, tanned, thinner, her eyes an eerie green rather than her familiar blue. It was hard to look up from the face he found so familiar even in this different guise, but he did to gauge the sheriff's reaction.
"Sure, I know the woman." The big sheriff pointed toward the blonde Brennan. "Temperance Brennan. The author."
"So you saw her?" asked Russ.
"Nope," said the sheriff. "But she matches the description Franny gave of that woman staying at her cabin with her dad and the baby. Blonde, good looking." The man shrugged. "I didn't get my training at the Bureau, but I can do the math." He reached behind him to a computer printer and laid a printout over the photo. "I put out a query on the old man and the woman because of a drug bust and got back an FBI bulletin that the woman was wanted for a murder. Got a couple of phone calls, too, from an Agent Flynn." He tapped on the printout with his finger. "This morning, this comes over the wires."
The printout header marked it as originating from the FBI.
"Dropped the warrant on her." The sheriff shifted his weight and eyed both Booth and Russ. "So, she's not wanted anymore by the FBI, but you want her." He played his fingers lightly over the printout. "Which makes you family or friends, Agent Booth."
Russ shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and hesitated. "She's my sister," he said.
The sheriff nodded and then glanced toward Booth. "You're Andy Lister."
"He's just Booth," Russ corrected.
"Your kid?"
Booth nodded.
The sheriff smiled sympathetically and cocked his head, beckoning them to follow him to a small seating area in the office.
Booth took the cup of coffee the big man offered and perched himself on the edge of the chair. Russ positioned himself in the farthest seat from the sheriff.
"I like her books," the sheriff was saying as he pulled out a small folder from a stack on the table, "and thought it a shame she'd decided to try her hand at actually committing a murder rather than solving them. Glad I was wrong."
"Is there anyone we could talk to? Anyone she might have talked to here in town?" Booth asked.
The sheriff shook his head. "Didn't talk to hardly anyone in town. Asked the librarian about computer use, but beyond that, nothing. Came into the library, did her business, left. Only came in there twice and only wanted to use the computer, didn't even use the Internet. Her father did most of the grocery shopping. Didn't do much more than just chat up the ladies."
Booth sat back and marked off the library as a place to look for clues. "What about this Franny? Did you talk to her?"
"Of course," said the sheriff as he opened the folder in his hands. "Brought her in, sobered her up, questioned her. Sent deputies out to the cabin to dust it for prints and collect evidence." He pulled a paper from the folder. "Gave everything over to the FBI. They sent an agent down here." He pointed to a line on the paper. "Agent Megan Dawes. Efficient one, that one." He turned the paper over to Booth. "That's the inventory of the cabin. Mostly food, baby items. Nothing much to point to a direction."
"Sorry. Franny didn't have any idea what direction the old man went. I kind of figured he circled back and picked up your girl here in town and then hightailed it."
Booth tried to consider their options. This, too, seemed a dead end. Maybe they would be better off meeting up with Max? Bones had few options but to go to her father. He'd been through her computer, her address book, looking for names of anyone who might shelter her between here and her father's present location. But nothing. Where the hell was she? he kept asking himself.
"There was a car," Russ offered. "A 1992 Ford Taurus. Hunter green." He described the area where Max and Brennan had hid the car.
The sheriff made a sound that was a cross between a hiss and a cough. "Damn." He pulled himself up from the chair and waved them to follow him. "I might know your car. But she didn't leave town in that car."
oOo
Cam breathed in deeply and exhaled just as deeply hoping that she could tough this out. As a federal coroner she had seen her share of horrors and as head of the Medico Legal Lab at the Jeffersonian she had seen the worst of humanity, or at least, what was left of humanity once someone had finished filleting, frappeing and fricasseeing another human being.
But this was a horror of a different kind.
She'd spent the morning arguing, on the verge of threatening, but if she had wanted any semblance of keeping the Jeffersonian lab operating, of keeping her job, of having any chance at stopping Pelant, she had had to give in.
"So. . . I'm what, fired?"
Dr. Clark Edison was standing over the bones of a WWI soldier in the bone room and looking as depressed as if the man on the table were a relative.
"No, no, Dr. Edison," she said quickly trying to correct her mistake. "No, the Jeffersonian board would like me to hire you. Full time. In forensic anthropology."
Saying it fast had not made it sound convincing.
But Clark was practically beaming. "Well, I'm touched, Dr. Saroyan. I'd be honored to work here full time with all of you."
"No, I. . . ."
"I'm not hired?"
She drew in another huge breath and tried to expel all the demons that seemed to be tormenting her and making this more impossible now than it had seemed only an hour ago.
"No, they want to hire you. I want to hire you." She wanted to believe that yoga breathing was going to make this easier but she had already botched it up. "They want you to be the forensic anthropologist who works with the FBI liaison, Dr. Edison."
For a moment, it seemed as if neither one of them was breathing.
"What about Dr. Brennan?" he asked. "I thought that given the fact that we proved she didn't do it that she'd be back here and working in this lab like she had before." He looked confused. "I mean when she finally decides to come out of hiding."
Here's where it got messy, thought Cam. "The FBI has been in contact with the board and it was decided that Dr. Brennan's services with the FBI would no longer be required since. . . ."
She couldn't finish. The knot of anxiety in her stomach had made its way up to her throat.
But Clark could finish. "Her services are no longer required since she ran." He shook his head. "They figure she doesn't respect the law, then she might compromise future cases by ignoring it altogether."
It had been the battle she'd fought for over an hour, pointing out the woman's legendary objectivity and professionalism and citing dozens of examples of how the woman had served the FBI and other government agencies and at the end of each of the skirmishes in which she had gained some valuable ground, she still had lost the war.
And she felt badly for Clark who was now caught in the middle.
"You are a fine scientist, Dr. Edison. You are responsible for assisting in solving dozens of cases and your work over the last 3 months has been exemplarity. I don't know how we would have gotten along without you."
"And under different circumstances, you would be my first choice as a replacement for Dr. Brennan.
"But we both know that I'm not Dr. Brennan."
That had been the crux of her argument, the main battle that morning, but she had lost that battle as soundly as she had lost all the others. It wasn't that she didn't like Clark—she did. But he didn't have the credentials, he didn't have the qualities that Dr. Brennan had.
No one did.
"So the Jeffersonian board wants me to work with the FBI so that I can be the one kidnapped, shot, shot at, stabbed, beaten and buried alive," he said, "oh, and be accused of murder because of some rampaging lunatic psychopath serial killer who wants me dead? Did I get it all?"
He delivered his question with that incredulous tone he'd sometimes take when dealing with the weirdness of the lab.
"I think you forgot being blown up."
He smiled. He might have been a man of short stature, but he never really stood taller in her eyes than he did then.
She returned his smile.
"Dr. Saroyan," he said as he turned back to the bones on the lab table, "would you please inform the board that I am honored by their offer, and that I am thinking it over."
"Are you?"
"For now." He paused and seemed to be considering something. "I have learned it's best to take some time to consider life altering decisions. Besides," he added, "would you rather than I tell them I would be honored to be kidnapped, shot, shot at, stabbed, beaten and buried alive in my work with the FBI?"
"You forgot the part about being blown up and being accused of murder."
They shared a look, the look that long-time colleagues share when they know the system around them is tragically flawed and yet, they understand their place in that system.
"Dr. Saroyan?" Dr. Edison straightened. "I am honored by the offer, but I think I would be more honored to work alongside Dr. Brennan as I have in the past."
"Dr. Brennan may not want the job when she returns," Cam said, not sure if her words were a lie or not. She wasn't even sure if she would return. Of course, missing did not mean dead, but given everything that Pelant had been able to do to disrupt the lab and the lives of her friends, she really had no idea what to think. She feared that at any moment, the body of her friend would be brought into the lab, another victim of the madman who was Pelant and she really wondered if anyone would be able to stop him then.
"If Dr. Brennan wants to stick to research, I really wouldn't blame her," Dr. Edison offered. "These bones," he said, point to the body laid out on the table, "aren't likely to have someone lurking in the shadows ready to pop out and eviscerate the scientist who is just trying to determine cause of death or make an identification."
Cam studied the man in front of her for a moment. "You, Dr. Edison, are truly a gentleman. And I won't forget this."
He gave her a lopsided smile and a nod. "By the way, Dr. Saroyan, is there a reason why the board is just now acting on this? It seems to me that they could have done this months ago when this whole brouhaha began."
She sighed.
"I take that as a yes."
"The current FBI liaison requested it," she said. No matter how fast or slow she said something, she was discovering, it didn't make the discomfort in saying it any less.
"So it was Agent Flynn who said he could not work with Dr. Brennan," Clark said as he turned back to the bones. "Interesting."
"Yes," Cam said as she watched him work, "interesting."