Authors Note: So, the story is now done. I've finished the final chapters, and they're edited, and they're all ready to be put up here. I'm thinking I might put them up twice a week now, once on saturday/sunday and one on wednesday/thursday. I'm not sure if i will or not, though. I might just make you all suffer. Mwahahahahaha! Reveiws are always welcome.

On with the show...

"The eyes are too close together, and his nose was wider, I think," Cathleen Jones said, handing the sketch pad back to Angela with a trembling hand.

Angela had been sitting in the cafeteria with Sweets, listening with half an ear, as he made adjustments to the profile. Booth and Brennan had gone to the police station to follow up on the RV. She wasn't entirely sure how the call had made it to her, but somehow Cathleen, without calling Booth, had created a phone chain that had some fifteen-year-old candy striper running up to her and begging her to go up to see Mrs. Jones. In the hour or so since Booth had spoken to her the face of her kidnapper had floated into her head. Or, more accurately had woken her up with a scream.

Angela went about making the changes to the sketch, keeping half an eye on Cathleen. There had been a number of small changes like this, but this had been the first time that it was close enough to get a reaction from the woman. The face that appeared on the page wasn't that scary. He looked like any middle-aged working man. Rough around the edges, but that could just be the sketch.

While Angela worked, Cathleen wrung the sheets in her hands, holding back the tears. She watched the artist and hoped that what she was doing would help catch this guy. He looked so normal, so average, but what he had done...

What he had done to her paled with what he was doing, probably right then.

"How about this?" Angela asked, handing the pad back.

"That's, yeah. That's him."

"Okay," Angela said, taking the pad back and squeezing the younger woman's hand, "thanks. Don't worry. You've got the best on the case; they'll catch him."

Cathleen nodded. She sniffled, and smiled as Angela started to pack up her things.

"There was a girl - I think it was his daughter. I don't think she was much more than ten," Cathleen cried, tears staring to fall from her cheeks. She hadn't cried, not once, since she'd woken up in that RV. She couldn't stop herself now.

"What?" Angela asked, hoping this was some sick joke.

"Her name was Francis, I think. Franny. She saved us. She brought us food, and, and, water. He'd bring us pills, and make us take them. Franny wasn't supposed to do anything but bring us water. He'd talk to her...like...like he was training her. Telling her how to keep her hair from landing on us. It was sick. So sick."

"Did he...did he...?" Angela couldn't get the words out, her mind unable to completely form the image. She thought of Booth, of Brennan. This was about to get personal.

"He didn't hurt her. Even when he caught her feeding us, he just laughed. She cut our bonds, while Dave slept. She...she saved our lives."

Angela got up and hugged the woman, tears of her own ready to fall. It had been bad enough when this was a murdering freak with some pimply twenty-something assistant. That his murderer-in-training was a ten year old girl made her ill. She did everything she could to keep it together in front of Cathleen.

She kept from crying until she was out the door. A child. The person who had cleaned the bodies had been a little girl. Sliding into the vinyl chair just outside the door, she saw red. There were some things you just didn't do.

Standing up, she gritted her teeth and made her way to the elevator. She'd tell Sweets first, then she'd call Booth and Brennan. She didn't want to be in the room with Booth when she told him. That wasn't going to be a pretty sight.

As she stepped into the elevator the tears finally stopped to a trickle. She was usually better than this, had been.

She called Hodgins and made him put the phone up to Michael's ear before she went the rest of the way to the cafeteria to find Sweets.

She wanted to make sure Michael knew he was loved.

Angela pulled up in front of the police station, ignoring Sweets squeak of protest as she pulled to an abrupt stop. Booth's reaction to her phone call had been about what she had expected. It had started with a string of curse words, followed by a crash and Brennan saying in the background that breaking things wouldn't help anybody. Her friend had then extracted the phone from her raging partner, and asked them to come over as soon as they could. She'd only broken half the traffic laws on the way over there, and had only made Sweets yelp once.

Booth was pacing in front of the door, yelling into his cell phone. Brennan stood a half step away from him, glaring at him. She made her way over to Angela and Sweets as soon as she saw them, and led them around the angry agent and into the building.

"I don't believe I've ever seen him quite like this before. He is having a harder time handling this than if the child were deceased. He won't listen to me. He told me to go home." She said the last through gritted teeth.

"Oh, Sweetie, you know how he gets about kids. He'll be fine in a couple hours, his head back on straight. He's worried abo-," at Brennan's furtive look, Angela cleared her throat, "um, he's worried about, about the girl. We all are."

Brennan smiled weakly, sitting down at a table tucked away in the break room. Angela and Sweets sat across from her, Sweets keeping an eye on the door for Booth.

"I just...I feel a bit out of my element," Brennan said. Sweets looked over at her, and his eyes widened at the transformation that suddenly took over. As soon as she stopped speaking she sat up straighter. She squared her shoulders, looking both of them over. Where a moment before there had been a worried, uncomfortable woman thinking about the man she loved, now Dr. Temperance Brennan was back. And Sweets knew the look in her eyes. She had a plan.

Without a word, she jumped up from the table and headed like an arrow into the main office. Sweets rushed after her, Angela on his heels. They saw her meet up with Booth, who looked calmer.

They stopped in front of a scrawny bespectacled man after whispering to each other a moment.

"What do you have on the RV information?" Brennan asked, scowling down at the young man. Booth put a hand on her shoulder, and she continued, softly, "We need that information as soon as possible."

"I-it's n-not in y-yet. Ca-california Department of Transportation hasn't g-gotten back with us yet. W-we're just waiting on them," the young man stuttered.

Brennan scowled, ready to yell at the officer. Booth took her arm and pulled her away.

"There's nothing you can do." Booth paused as Sweets and Angela drew closer. "Hacker is trying to get things sped up, but even he can't get the DMV to do what they don't want."

"Do you want to talk about this anger, and how it's going to affect both your working relationship and–"

"Shut up, Sweets," Angela interrupted, "and can we get to why I rushed over here going almost 70?" She pulled her sketch pad out of her bag, handing it to Booth.

"Is this him?" he asked, opening it.

"Yeah, and the girl." She reached over and flipped the page for him, "I went back to Cathleen before I called you. I thought, if he doesn't show up in any of the databases, maybe we can find her on the missing kids list. I can't imagine it's his actual child."

"Thanks, Ang," Brennan said.

"I already sent it to Cam, hopefully she'll be better than Wendell at using the Angelatron to search missing persons."

"Finally! Getting somewhere," Booth said, rapping the wall with his knuckles and grinning.

The Binghamton Police Department's conference room was also the interrogation room. This was a fact that more often than not led potential witnesses to clam up and ask for a lawyer. The proposed budget for the following year had an addition for the building that would add a proper room for questioning witnesses that was removed from the room where there questioned potential suspects.

Few people understood the distinction, and thought that a room was a room, and it was the people in it that created the nature of it. Booth knew better. Most people did not want to be associated with criminals, and the thought that in a moment's notice the person talking to them could go from concerned officer to angry interrogator frightened them.

That was why, when Cindy Wrecker drove her dilapidated Ford pickup into town, he took her into a side office to talk to her.

She seemed very agitated, wringing her hands as she sat in the overstuffed wingback chair that sat across from the desk. Booth thought it must be a strange sort of masochist who had this office, because the desk chair was the most uncomfortable thing he had ever sat in. Giving up the chair, he moved to sit in the other wing-back

"What brings you into town, Ms. Wrecker?" he asked, after the obligatory introductions.

"Well, I was at the hospital. In Liberty, see, when that poor couple was taken there, before they got transferred here. And, well, the officer that came. No, the thing is. What I mean to say..."

"Take your time, Ms. Wrecker. It's okay. Did something happen while you were there?"

"Well, no, not exactly. I ain't the kinda woman who goes around listening in doorways, Agent Booth. I don't want you to get that opinion. But, I know a guy, and well, we talk. I own a diner in a small town, you understand, it's a bit like bein' a bartender. And, well, they started talking."

"Okay?" Booth leaned back in the chair, crossing his legs. This was going to take awhile.

And it did. She talked in circles for almost half an hour. She didn't say much in that time, and Booth was having a hard time keeping his attention from wandering. It wasn't that he felt it wasn't important. He knew it was; it just seemed like there was so much more he could be doing. She spoke at length and said very little.

"And, then, you see, he told me about the RV. The information you guys went and sent out, it came to Rosecoal, and I heard about it. And then I remembered I'd seen it."

Booth sat up straighter, leaning towards her. "You saw the RV, Ms. Wrecker? With California plates?"

"I think so. Oh, a few days ago, I think. A day or so before that poor couple showed up at my door. They were so beat up. There's no way I could maybe go and see them, do you think? I dunno if they'd remember me, or what, but I feel kinda responsible. 'Specially if they were trapped in that awful machine when I saw it."

"Where did you see it? Did they stop and eat at your diner?"

"Oh, no. I was getting groceries and whatnot, you see. The diner was bein' looked after by my daughter and we were kinda out of wheat bread, and pancake mix, I think. It's been a few days, Agent Booth. I just, I remember it cause of the California plates and there was this little girl. And that's really why I came by here, you see. It's just that, if that's the guy, and he has that little girl with him. She was barely more than a baby."

The kid again. No one had heard anything about this before, and now she was turning up everywhere. This poor child, trapped with a killer. He kept seeing Parker when he thought of her. How he'd feel if someone was dragging him across the country killing people. And then he thought of Brennan's baby, his baby, unborn, and growing safely in its mother's womb. Untouched by death. What would it think if it was raised by a killer.

He tossed the thought away. If the child was their second killer, she still showed remorse. She was a new entity. A new variable in the equation, as Brennan would put it.

"Thank you, Ms. Wrecker. Do you think you can remember the license plate?"

"No, I'm sorry. I didn't see it." She stood, and he followed, offering his hand.

She shook it, accepted his pleasantries, and left, still wringing her hands.

Brennan stood outside the police station doors watching the occasional car drive by. It was half past eleven and Angela and Sweets were already back at the hotel. Booth had been working one angle or another with the local PD since Cindy Wrecker had left nine hours before. He'd tried to get her to go with them, but she'd talked him into letting her stay by napping on the sofa in the chief's office.

It had given her a cringe in her back and a splitting headache, but she wasn't at the hotel laying awake worrying that Booth was overworking himself.

It was funny how that had happened. Their roles hadn't revered, he still seemed convinced that every time she wasn't tucked in bed something horrible would happen, but now she knew how he felt. Sometime in the last four months he had become something to her that she could quite understand. It was more than a chemical reaction, but at the same time it wasn't. She had loved before, by her definition of it. A firing of neurons, the release of serotonin and and a feeling of euphoria. And it usually occurred during sex.

It was different with Booth, not that the sex wasn't amazing. It was more like she didn't need the sex to reach that warm blissful feeling. She'd go by his office and he'd smile and a haze, much like a post-coital glow, seemed to fall on her. She didn't understand it, she wasn't sure she wanted to.

With Booth, she'd found, sometimes she liked being in the dark.

She leaned her head back against the brick facade of the building and closed her eyes. She heard him approach before he spoke, and she smiled.

"Hey, Bones, lets get outta here."

She mumbled her consent, though it was muffled with a yawn. She tucked her arm in his, and they headed for the car. It hit her as she stepped off the curb.

The pain shot through her side, an arrow seeming to pierce her womb. She bit off a scream, letting go of Booth arm and hugging her stomach.

"Booth..." she whispered, biting her lip. He wrapped his arm around her, concern rolling off in waves.

"Are you okay? Come on, we'll go inside and call an ambulance." He started to turn her around back towards the building but she took a half step away.

"No, no. I'm okay now. I think I just stepped wrong." She shook it off, standing straighter.

"Oh no you don't. Come on, I'll drive you to the hospital then. You don't double over in pain because you stepped wrong."

"Just take me to the hotel, Booth, I'm fine."

Perhaps if she had said what was truly bothering her, things would have been different. If she had simply said that as the pain had receded the 'wrongness' that had been following her around had hit her full force they might have gone back inside. If she had said that she felt like she was being watched he might have been more alert.

Perhaps if she'd allowed him to take her inside, if only to sit down, the man in the bushes would have given up and gone elsewhere.

Perhaps if he had insisted that they go right to the car and hadn't stood there talking they would have already been safely locked inside the vehicle before the man worked up the courage to grab them so close to a police station.

But she didn't and he didn't.

And they were so focused on their baby, their baby that she felt move, and was sure was safe, that they didn't hear the man in the shadows creep up behind them.

They didn't know he was there until the world went black.