Chapter 12 – Booth
Hearing the giggles from his daughter and inhaling the enticing aroma from dinner reassured Booth in a way few other things could these days. Pausing at the door from the garage, he caught a glimpse of Brennan playing peek-a-boo with Christine, using a lid from a pan as a prop for the game. He didn't want to admit it to Brennan, but sometimes he planned to work later than she did. Coming home to an empty house, this house he had made to be his dream home for his family, still threatened to overwhelm him with a suffocating emptiness and fear. He had to fight down the urge to break things as he had been wont to do during their absence.
She knew of how he reacted to things while she was gone, but he didn't see how it could help her knowing he still felt this way. She still held way too much guilt, and he didn't want to add to it because his fear wasn't directly aimed at her.
Time. He was working through it.
He continued past the threshold. "There are my two favorite girls!" Brennan smiled and Christine bounced in her chair, holding her arms out to him. He scooped her up and soared her through the air before snuggling her back into his chest. He leaned across to Brennan, cupped her face in his free hand, and kissed her fervently. Her response caused him to send off an irreverent prayer that Christine would go down quickly and easily that night.
"I think we don't have to worry about Flynn again any time soon." He told her about Shaw's admission earlier that afternoon and with Brennan's experience, he had a feeling that more women at the Bureau would likely come forward.
"Angela said she always thought he was 'skeevy'. I'm not sure precisely what that means, but it sounds like a very good word to describe him."
"I think I would have been really happy if you had done more to him than just tie him up."
She smirked. "You're the one that said no marks."
"That still gave you plenty of leeway."
Booth deposited Christine into her highchair and began to feed her while Brennan finished bringing their own dinner to the table.
"Do you still trust me?"
The question stilled him, and Christine complained loudly when the spoon he was holding hadn't made it all the way to her mouth. "What?" He quickly focused on finishing the route with Christine's food. "Of course. Why would you ask that?"
"I would understand if you didn't."
"Except I do, so why don't you catch me up with what's going on in your head."
"If it had been you who had been framed for murder and you left with Christine, leaving me behind, I'm not certain I would have been able to trust you again."
"I would never do that." He looked into her eyes earnestly. "Never. Okay?" As soon as he said the words, though, he realized the problem.
"That's exactly my point, Booth. You wouldn't, yet I did. How can you forgive me? How can you possibly trust me after that?"
"I just do."
She set her fork down in frustration, and Booth amended, "Look, I know that's not the neat, rational answer you want, but it's all I've got this time."
His phone buzzed, interrupting their stalemate.
"Booth. Yeah, okay. I'll be right there." He looked at Brennan apologetically. "Rockville PD has Celia Westerman at the Shady Grove ER. She wants to talk to me. You gonna be okay tonight?"
"Of course. I can wait up for you; I have papers to review."
Booth cleared his plate, then came back to the table to give Christine a final tickle and kiss, followed by a kiss good-bye to Brennan.
~oOo~
Celia Westerman was sitting in an ER observation room with one arm in a sling, bruises around her neck, and cuts on her face. Booth felt a twinge of guilt for not having pulled Torin in for questioning that night; maybe he would have been able to spot the danger and been able to hold him overnight. However, when they had interviewed her earlier that day, she had talked of things getting ugly with Tor, but never physically violent. Even so, between this and missing what had been going on with Flynn, Booth was feeling a bit errant in his observation skills.
"What happened, Ms. Westerman?" he asked gently as he sat near the examining table.
"He found out I talked to you about Stephen. I asked him if he ever talked to him, and he got mad really quickly." She paused, her silence obvious in "how" he got mad. "He kept asking me what I told you, but I didn't know anything. I'm scared that maybe he killed Stephen after all."
It was enough for them to hold Torin for questioning. Booth called to get Torin transferred to the Hoover and readied a team to search his house in the morning, especially after they had time to find out what they might be looking for.
"Any reason you can think of that Torin would want to hurt Stephen besides jealousy? Now would be a good time to tell me everything Ms. Westerman."
She looked away, chewing on her fingernails. After a moment, she met Booth's eyes again. "The disc."
"Computer disk?"
"No, the golf disc. The frisbee that has that chip in it. I think he has it."
~oOo~
It wasn't until Booth got up in his face about his assault on Celia that Torin began to talk.
"Search all you want, but I don't have the frisbee. Celia was supposed to get it or get the code so that I could pass it on to that Carter dude."
"What kind of cash was coming your way for it?"
"Five Gs."
"This doesn't seem like your normal gig." Booth paged through Torin's rap sheet, which listed mostly assault charges with one attempted robbery. "How the hell did you get involved with Carter Pattinson?"
"Shit, it was just supposed to be a thing to help me pay off a debt. I ran into an ex-girlfriend and we got to talking. But killing ain't my thing, man. I don't know who messed the dude up."
"A name, Tor, that's the only thing that's keeping you from never seeing the light of day again."
"Carrie. Carrie Lewis. She runs some sort of non-profit thing."
~oOo~
He'd warned Brennan that he'd be even later than expected and not to wait up for him. He couldn't have been happier that she didn't listen to him. With Christine still so young and sleeping unpredictably through the night and into the morning, they always agreed that at least one of them should get a good night's sleep. But sometimes, the time together, even if at a late hour, was worth being collectively tired the next day. Brennan sat in bed with her laptop, reviewing papers, writing, researching – he didn't know which and didn't care. She was awake and waiting for him.
He never did manage to sleep in their bed while she was gone. He tried the first night, but couldn't do it. He ended up sleeping in Parker's room when he wasn't there and on the couch when he was. In some ways he had regretted not trying harder, because then he would have been the only recipient of one of several electronic attacks, of sorts. They knew Pelant had been in the house, but did not seemingly discover any dangerous remnants like bombs or the like after a search. They did not consider that he had merely planted his own kind of psychological traps.
Booth's alarm clock had been set to release the same animal noises as his and Brennan's cell phones had used back at Pelant's parole hearing, which would then trigger a series of other audio anomalies throughout the house in various electronics – the coffee maker, the doorbell, the stereo, and finally the video security system, which ultimately showed Pelant in Christine's room. The cacophony had achieved its goal: panic. When Brennan and Christine returned, they'd had their couple of days reunion, then Booth used his alarm in the room for the first time since Brennan left, which triggered Pelant's chain reaction. The days that followed had been bad, really bad. He did not care to revisit those memories any time soon.
Now, however, was a different time. He kicked off his shoes and shrugged his jacket from his shoulders, throwing it to a chair in the corner with the tie he'd already removed on the drive home. He went to Brennan, who had already closed her computer and set it on the nightstand, and kissed her long and deep. Gathering his shirt into her fist, she pulled him down to the bed, then pushed him to his back in order to straddle him and unbutton his shirt.
"Agent Booth, I think you have made me wait long enough. I think I'd like to have my way with you right now."
A slow smile filled his face. "I think I would like to have your way with me, too."
"There might be marks."
"God, I hope so."