*** 10 ***
Hours later, Temperance finds him slumped on one of the couches tucked into a corner above the lab. His long legs are stretched out in front of him and he's staring up into the rafters. Early evening sun stripes his face. A laptop is open on the low table in front of him, but the screen's dark, she sees, as she drops down beside him. "Hey."
Stillness personified, he says, "Talking to me, now?"
"Yes."
"Okay." He rolls his head and gives her his smallest smile, the one that just tweaks the corners of his lips.
"You could have told me what to expect, Seeley."
The use of his first name has him sitting up. There's power in the use of a name. Lots of cultures believe that, but it'd never been a personal conviction of hers until she met Booth. It's time she starts wielding that power as well as he does.
"We were talking song lyrics and names of trees and cloud formations when you could've been telling me to expect to be treated as a suspect, to expect to defend my actions, to tell them thirty times why I couldn't mark our path through the woods or escape the car or refuse to sort the bones or why I waited for you, without setting up a distress signal of some sort. Apparently, 'there wasn't a clearing large enough to set a big, attention getting fire in the dry woods' wasn't good enough. And neither was 'it was obviously not our captors intention to see us harmed', ergo matches and a pot."
He's thoughtful, rubs his chin and runs his thumb across his lips, which she appreciates, but she wants him to say something to make her feel better, to feel... not betrayed, not deceived. She prefers skimming his mysteries, his deep spots, not getting dunked in them. She's not ready for that. She doesn't want to know the Booth standing on the river bank, the Booth who refuses to hide his arousal, the Booth who would shoot a father standing next to his child. See his reflection in her Booth's eyes, listen to his hurt, touch his thigh, yes. Know him? No. Not yet. Her heart stops for an instant too long, before thumping extra hard and picking up again. Not yet, but she thinks one day she might want to know all of him.
He shifts, tucks one leg up under the other to face her. "Do you remember, on the Kent case, how all the witnesses described the enemy AK-47 fire as 'pop, pop, pop'"?
"Yes, you said their testimony was rehearsed."
"But the stories were each a bit different. Consistent but tuned to each man's duty."
"Yes?"
Surprising her, he picks up her hand. The sound of rain bouncing off leaves and cedar boughs and the ground comes rushing in on her. She lets him fold his hand around hers. "I don't want to hurt you, Temperance, but you already have a pretty big shield up, nothing much surprises you. You step into a fight rather than stepping away. You're literal. You're not... typical... in your responses to most anything. You think. I didn't want anyone," he says, squeezing her hand on the 'anyone'. "...thinking I rehearsed you. I wanted your reactions to be natural- to the circumstances, the questions, the suspicion. We didn't talk much about what happened. I didn't allow it, although I wanted to know, Bones, I did. I wanted to know."
"But we were in two different places, Booth, we had totally different statements."
"Sometimes telling it reduces the emotions, smooths the memories, helps the brain deal with the trauma. And if we told each other our very different experiences, invariably, we would end up sharing phrases or sliding in hearsay as our own. You say we were transported in three different vehicles. If I'd known that, I may have incorporated it, said I knew that for a fact, when actually, all I remembered when they asked me was whack."
"Whack?"
"Hellacious dreams." He looks down, at their hands, closes his eyes for a moment, wincing.
"Hellacious?"
"Yeah," he says, looking up. He smiles at her. "I read."
And, for some reason, she feels better. "That's a comic book word."
He feigns hurt, laying a hand on his chest. "You'd mock Batman?"
"I bet I could teach Batman a thing or two," she says, making sure it comes out smug.
He does something, that all peaceful thing he can do with his body and looks at her from under his lashes and her lower belly tightens, a tingle shooting up the base of her spine. "I bet you could."
She's a deer, stranded in a flashlight beam.
He lets go of her hand, grabs the files stashed under the laptop, and starts sorting the papers onto his knees. "Want to see what I found out?"
***
What Booth found out was that Mayport Rock bought the Douglas Point property from a private corporation originally founded by a partnership of four men who'd officially owned the land, and the land surrounding it, for better than two hundred years, the land and the partnership passing from son to son to son until there was only one. Turner Colvin.
"Turner Colvin," Booth tells the squints the forty minutes later. "...applied for a college grant claiming Native American ancestry; his father was a Lumbee."
"The plot thickens," Jack says from his perch on the arm of the couch.
Bones' says, "It gets better. Turner's father, Simmons Colvin, married his mother, Sarah Minor, in 1965. Turner was born in '66. Sarah's sister, Rebecca, five years her junior, met and married Stephen Stratton in the month before he left for Vietnam in 1967. And gave birth to Jack Stratton seven months later."
Booth watched the squints' gazes graze off each other's faces, the frowns. "You mean eight months, Bones," he says, just for fun.
She slips her hands in her pockets. "Nope. Seven months. Full term."
"So who was Jack Stratton's father?" Zach says.
Angela is the one getting it. Booth puts on his poker face as she looks back and forth between him and Bones. "Simmons Colvin," she says.
Booth nods. "Colvin never acknowledged Jack Stratton as his own, but Stratton's his spitting image. Colvin died in '98."
"And Turner inherited the kingdom of Douglas Point," Jack says
Zach looks at Hodgins and Hodgins looks back. Booth clears his throat.
"And sold it," Angela says.
"To Mayport Rock, for an amazing amount of money," Booth continues. "And Jack Stratton's left out in the cold, along with the descendants of the original partnership. Said descendants are mostly still involved in their Lumbee heritage. A lot of them have intermarried, among the Lumbees and the Catawbas, a recognized tribe."
"Okay," Angela says, "But Jack Stratton's been killing people for twenty years, how does that fit in?"
Booth admires her. She just gets it, connects the bigger picture dots, although her job depends on details.
"I don't think it does," Booth says. "He's just whatever it is that serial killers are. But, it does point to a motivation for burying the bodies there."
Jack nods. "Payback."
"But the freshest bodies aren't his." Angela says.
Glancing at Booth first, Bones says, "Stratton's adaptable, but no, their physical traits and presentation don't match Stratton's usual MO. We think it's a possibilty the people who kidnapped us were protecting that site, and may be responsible for those victims."
"Grave robbers," Zach says.
"We can't say that, Zach," Bones says. "The victims may be completely innocent of any wrong doing."
"Oh, that's sweet," Jack says.
Booth nods.
"You mean," Angela says. "Maybe the victims were grave robbers, and your bad guys killed them?"
"No," Bones counters, glaring at Booth.
Like a little conjecture ever hurt. He tilts his head in the oh-well gesture that had gotten him grounded again and again as a teen. Bones has nothing on his mother's glare. "No. Just a thought," he concedes, just to keep the peace.
"We know they aren't Jack Stratton's. That's all we know," Bones says firmly.
"Do we get to go to Bethesda?" Jack asks.
"Yes, but mostly to direct the FBI techs. The victims have odd shaped wounds. Booth and I suspect a bolt from a crossbow may have been used and removed, so take samples for comparison. I want live video of everything you're doing."
"Should we take our own pigs?"
"Eww." Angela says.
"Yes," Bones says. "And take your beetles, Zach, I don't know what they have for de-fleshing."
Booth decides he's glad she's not mad at him anymore.