Sorry it's been sooo long! I hope this makes up for it.

xxxxxxx

Booth sat across from the Interpol agent staring him down.

"Is he dead?" Sterling grinned.

"How did you hear about the car bomb?" Booth ignored the man's question disgusted by the giddiness of the possible result.

"Sources." Sterling answered. "I made a friend in Boston last time I was in town."

"Let me guess; the kind willing to break a few rules in order to get ahead in life?" Booth suggested.

"The kind that understand the value of 'I'll scratch your back in you scratch mine.'" Sterling clarified. "There's nothing illegal about Boston's finest assisting an ongoing Interpol investigation in hopes of receiving their shield."

"Of course not." Booth mumbled. "What were you doing in Boston?"

"Excuse me?"

"Chasing down a bad guy? It hardly seems like Interpol territory."

"No; it was prior to my promotion into Interpol. I was working with IYS insurance to track down a Faberge egg in Kiev."

"I remember that!" Sweets shot out. "That was just over a year ago; you got your promotion by hiding in the trunk of that real-estate guy."

"Something like that." Sterling sneered.

"Why would Kiev take you through Boston?" Booth asked him.

"Layover." Sterling answered.

"A layover where you decided to drop by the police department to elicit help for an agency you weren't yet apart of?"

"I had a feeling that big things could come out of cracking that case."

"And so you made it your mission to take down Ford and his crew before your

entrance to the agency? I have to wonder why?"

"Did you miss the part where they were thieves?" Sterling asked condescendingly. "That crew comprises of the best in their craft; when I take them down…"

"It'll prove that you're better." The psychologist cut him off. "But you didn't take Spencer down, did you?"

"You're the shrink, you tell me." Sterling glared at the man he looked down on as a child.

"No, no, you didn't do it. Too much uncertainty. You want him to be dead, though. It's your only way in. They are the best at what they do, and he was the protector." Sweets glared back as if he was reading the man's mind.

"'Protector.'" He laughed. "You make it sound so gallant. The knight in shining armor or the honored veteran, is that how you want to remember your old pal?"

Booth turned away as it appeared once again Sterling was privy to more information than he should have.

"I guess I overheard more than I should have down at the Jeffersonian." Sterling explained. "That man was not a hero; he hurt people, he killed people. You may think I'm a crooked opportunist, but in this situation I am not the bad guy."

"Booth." Sweets looked over at him concerned as the FBI agent tried to hide the sting of Sterling's words.

"In this case neither is he." Booth responded towards the man across from him. "So with all this special interest paid to him, do you have any ideas on the persons responsible?"

Sterling shook his head. "There are only a handful of enemies that left Spencer's company alive. Ford already gave you those names."

"How about an angry family member of someone that crossed his path?" Sweets looked to Booth.

"No; this wasn't a crime of passion."

"Organized crime?" Sweets threw out.

"The Russians don't like him much." Sterling snickered.

XXXXX

"How long do these things take?" Sophie asked Hodgins as Nate held onto her waiting to hear back from the results of the facial identification. Parker had been pacified by looking at slides under the bug and slime mans microscope.

"It's setting the markers that takes the most time after that it's just a matter of running it through a computer program that generates the face which we compare to his photo." Hodgins explained.

"Fifteen minutes/half an hour?" Nate asked more specifically.

"Not even. She's done so many it's become second nature." He watched as a tear fell down the grifter's face realizing that this fact probably wasn't as comforting as he hoped it would be. He settled on; "it won't be long."

"Then what?" Sophie looked to Nate.

"I don't know." He kissed the top of her head. He didn't want say out loud, in a government facility, that the next step was to find the person(s) responsible and either retrieve their teammate or avenge his death by any means necessary.

"What do we have here?" Parker asked picking up something from the evidence box.

"Don't touch that!" Hodgins yelled out.

Parker examined the mass in her hands knowing exactly what she had. "It's not pressure sensitive."

"What?" Nate questioned looking at the remnants of the bomb.

"See, right here." She pointed out. "It was triggered remotely by of a distance of no more than 50 feet."

Hodgins took the bomb from her hands to examine. "How did I miss that? How did you know…?"

The thief shrugged thinking it a bad idea to tell him that she's been using explosives as part of her trade since she was eight. "It's a hobby."

"What does that mean?" Sophie asked.

"It means Booth could be right." Nate responded. "The bomb was meant for a cover." Before he had time to process the fact completely he saw Brennan and Angela emerge from the techno-imaging room. "…Temperance…?"

Brennan shook her head. "It's not him."