Author's Note: Thanks so much to all of you who are kind enough to leave reviews. It's wonderful to know people are enjoying the reading part as much as I enjoy the writing part. :)

~Q~

Fan Mail - Under Siege

~Q~

Who is the inspiration for Brennan's charming, smooth-talking Andy Lister...?

With the Pocket Books' publicist's tease still twirling in his mind, Booth decided the desire to answer that question had to be set aside because larger problems loomed. He was hungry, for one thing.

And he had to convince Brennan to hire an outside publicist as a safety measure — ironic, when the last thing he wanted was to draw more attention to her. It was too bad they weren't a real couple, because then he might have a shot at convincing her to take an extended vacation. His thoughts drifted to sandy beaches for a few minutes, recalling that afternoon last year when he'd hinted for her company on his suddenly solo vacation to Jamaica.

That made him think of bikinis, Bones in a bikini and— Okay, enough of this.

Booth pushed himself up and called out to Charlie in the bullpen. "I'm going to meet with Bones to discuss her publicist's advice over lunch. You think you can have Hector Sandoval's contact info by the time I get back?"

"Yep. Working on that right now."

Charlie was doing the modern gumshoe detective's dance at his desk (a pen in one hand, phone propped on shoulder, piles of public records clustered on his computer screen), leaving Booth free for other tasks. The need to satiate his hunger and his mission to mold the behavior of his partner into something resembling circumspection might best be accomplished with a trip to the Royal Diner. Convincing her to take any advice often took a light touch, an oblique (or even exasperated) suggestion followed by time for percolation, rather than a full frontal onslaught of force.

Nobody could make Temperance Brennan do anything she didn't want to do.

The proof of his wisdom was made manifest when he entered the medicolegal lab, because Brennan was much easier to find this time.

Here was surprising evidence that she'd actually heeded his warning to not be alone, for Booth spotted his partner up on the platform surrounded by a passel of busy squints. Not coming in far enough to be noticed yet, Booth gratefully watched them all from the doorway.

Cam was huddled over Hodgins's shoulder, who in turn was scowling into a computer monitor, and the two were quietly bickering over contentious lines of data. Angela had settled herself into a corner with a piece of mandible propped up on a rubber ring and she was eyeing it with evident distaste while sketching plausible jaws for identification purposes. Zack, most oddly of all, was perched directly beside his mentor while briskly rubbing sandpaper over a thin strip of what looked like either balsa wood or bone and Bones herself was plugged into one of the microscopes.

The quiet hum of productivity buzzed in Booth's ears, accompanied by a soft blip from Hodgins striking a key and a huff of disgruntled disagreement from his supervisor (who had chosen to take that term literally for the moment while she stood above him, viewing his work with a jaundiced eye).

"It's not going to change just because you don't like it," Hodgins groused.

"These results are inconclusive," Cam countered.

"All the more reason to go back out there and get another sample, so we can—"

"Waste time and resources." Her refusal cut through his argument like a machete, sharp and unrelenting. "My final answer is no."

Hodgins offered a quite respectable pout but he gave in, grudgingly.

Zack lifted his head, watching the argument with detachment while his hand absently scuffed the scratching sand paper across the bone. Angela sent a quiet, commiserating eye roll Hodgins's way. Brennan didn't seem the least bit aware of the battle going on behind her back, so intent was she on whatever miniscule bit of flotsam she had languishing under her lens.

Standing at the edge of her domain, Booth found it odd to see such activity knowing it had nothing to do with him or one of his cases: here before his eyes was evidence that Bones and her team would still have plenty of work to do even if the FBI never asked for their expert help again. Professionally, she didn't need him; professionally, he had no business being here at the moment.

Personally was turning into another matter, however, because Brennan's complete disregard for her fellow squint's losing battle over evidence integrity was nothing less than unsettling. She was still deeply ensconced in the head-butting phase of her new position as subordinate under Cam and this development (victory? quashing of Hodgins's zeal for reliable results?) should have activated some level of outrage from his precise and pedantic partner. It would have had her howling a few days ago.

Something was definitely off.

As he pulled out that access badge once more, Booth glanced down and was reminded again that she'd invited him into their midst and it had nothing to do with work. What reason, then? He vowed to ask her over lunch, and despite a sense of foreboding, the hope of getting an answer briefly brightened his mood.

Booth slid the card through the reader and bounded up the steps with a bounce in his step but before he could call out to her the sound of a ringing telephone broke the choreographed dance still carrying on before him and made every member of his squint squad pause in whatever they were doing. Strike that — every member but one. All heads turned toward Temperance Brennan who, for her part, stiffened slightly but did not pause in her activity. Instead, her hand held steady on a knob that she turned with deliberation, bringing something into focus that was not the sound shattering the lab.

That interruption, she was deliberately ignoring.

Her jaw tightened at the second ring. Angela's artistic eyes darted from her friend's jaw to her sketched ones, her lips pursing in thought, and Booth wondered why. "What's wrong?"

"The phone is ringing."

This literal statement came from Zack, almost comical in its obvious uselessness in terms of explaining anything. Yet it explained plenty because Brennan flinched again at this point when the phone rang yet again.

It did not ring a fourth time.

An uneasy silence gripped the entire, cavernous space during which Brennan's jaw flexed and shifted and Booth got the distinct impression that she could not have described what she was looking at under the microscope in that moment even if her life depended upon it. It was merely something to look at that was not any one of the concerned people looking at her.

As the seconds ticked by, work slowly resumed and his partner's tensed shoulders slowly edged back down into a more relaxed slump. She adjusted another knob, frowning down for a moment before picking up a pen and jotting notes on a lab sheet to her right. Then she dove right back into the world revealed under her lenses, tuning everyone else out until Zack leaned closer with the thin bone slice he'd been sanding. "Is this thin enough?"

Booth watched in bemusement as she broke concentration just long enough to glance at her intern's handiwork. "It needs to be less than 80 micrometers. Use the Vernier caliper to measure the thickness." She gestured to a digital tool that looked very much like a standard monkey wrench found in any mechanic's shop.

And then it happened again ... the bleating sound of Brennan's phone in her office set a half dozen sets of molars into a clenched position. Every single one of them halted again but this time all eyes were on Booth. Even his partner's.

"It's been like that for the last two hours," Angela volunteered. "Her phone just keeps ringing every few minutes."

"Same caller?"

Brennan's eyes flashed, a spark of rebellion despite the siege. "It's the same message, evidently recorded and set on a loop. I set the calls to go to voicemail but I think my box is full. Now it's just ringing through."

"Over and over," Hodgins added, shooting a sympathetic glance her way. "It's really annoying."

"Seeley, isn't there anything you can do?" This was Cam, her face pinched with harassment just as much as every one else's was.

Bewildered that the intensity had ramped up to such a degree in just a couple of hours, Booth barely managed to ask the unbelievable. "It's the same caller and he says the exact same thing every time?"

Lapsing into empirical mode, she made a face. "Well of course I can't say so definitively—"

"Let's just save some time and jump to that conclusion," Cam interrupted, earning herself a pair of pinched brows from Brennan.

Hoping to head off an empirical versus real world debate, Booth decided he had a professional excuse to be here, after all. As a referee. "Did you try tracing the call?"

"The number comes back unavailable." Angela, again. "But I managed a work-around and it's a cell phone, one of those pay-as-you-go deals. Prepaid, with cash."

Impressed as well as frustrated, Booth inquired, "Can you figure out where the caller is?"

"Not legally." Her frown was proof that Angela had considered illegal means but not yet acted on them. "The card was purchased in New York."

Another link to New York? Even though the anonymous letter had been dismissed (and the city had a population of something like ten million), Seeley Booth did not believe in coincidences. "I'll get you legal permission," he vowed.

The phone rang again, causing another round of stiffening from far too many rounds of tension over the last hour. He could tell they all needed a break.

"For now..." He strode back into his partner's office and pinched the cord out of the phone jack, strangling the bleating bell with a flick of his fingertips. Why was it so loud? It definitely seemed louder than normal. (Was it?) Returning to his squints, the brainiest batch he'd ever come across, Booth wondered out loud, "did someone mess with the ringer volume on that phone?"

Angela nodded and shrugged. "I think so, but still haven't figured out how he could have done it."

"So it's been that loud and obnoxious for two hours?" At Brennan's weary nod, Booth regarded her with open astonishment. "Why didn't you just unplug the phone?"

"I might miss an important call."

Laughing, he shook his head. "Bones you aren't answering and your voice mail is full... You're missing those 'important calls' anyway."

Her lips compressed with annoyance at being called out for inconsistency in her reasoning. "Is that why you're here? Do we have a case?"

"No." He felt Cam's speculative glare against his back, sensed Angela's suddenly too disinterested interest in her drawing. Zack had failed to resume his sanding project and Jack Hodgins had wrested himself free of the chemistry report on screen due to a preference for the more volatile chemical reaction taking place between the partners. Right, time to change gears. "I need to talk to you about your book and its publicity."

"I've got too much to do," she declined. "These histomorphological profiles—"

"They can wait," he asserted, sure nothing hidden in scraps of bone could be more important to her than her own safety. (Except, this was Bones and she really did have a thing for ... bones.) An obsession, almost. And as for safety, well... let's just say there was a reason he always had to insist on the gun going first. (She tended towards enthusiastic impulsiveness when out in the field.) Booth sighed, sensing a long battle ahead.

"Dr. Saroyan wants my completed evaluation on her desk by two o'clock. She was quite specific."

There was no rancor or bitterness, just determination to meet what Booth was suddenly sure was a vengefully arbitrary deadline, given certain developments. Deliberately, he baited his evidently bitter ex. "I'm sure Doctor Saroyan knows that her employees are entitled to lunch."

"No, Booth. It's my own lack of attentiveness to blame. I should not have allowed the telephone to pose such a distraction. It's just that you said I should not remain isolated and—"

"Cam won't mind extending her deadline by an hour, would you?" He turned towards the boss, his eyes pinning hers with an unspoken challenge that escaped no one's attention.

Not even Brennan, who usually could be counted on to have no awareness of undercurrents and no concern for bruised egos. No one was more surprised, however, than Camille Saroyan, who did not expect her reluctant employee to side with her against a man as charming as Seeley Booth. "Organizations depend upon a strict hierarchical layering of authority and responsibility. As I am in a subordinate position relative to Doctor Saroyan, I must stipulate to her right to establish my working schedule."

The unintended effect of such obedience was to completely undermine Cam's deadline, unless the pathologist held a plausible excuse to justify it. Otherwise she would have to invent one on the spot. When she couldn't, Brennan's unexpected capitulation to her tenuous authority forced Cam to offer her opponent a face-saving compromise. (Whose face she was saving, of course, was still open to question.) "I suppose I could offer you one of your 'freebies.'"

To this, Brennan frowned another refusal. "It would not be prudent to waste one on the time it takes to complete a routine accounting of osteons."

Waste one? Booth wondered what nuance he was missing now. The two women faced one another in an odd impasse, one too proud to simply offer an extension and one too proud to ask for it. Unless some other agent broke the stalemate.

"Come on, Bones," he wheedled, pulling the sounds out in sweet, taffy-like tune of neediness. "I'm hungry."

'And what does that have to do with me?' He could just see her thinking it, so he dialed the charm smile up to level six. "I'll let you steal my fries..."

Cam wasn't budging, but Brennan was wavering under the twin assault of his high-wattage smile and the promise of steaming hot fries left unattended on his plate. Pressing his advantage, Booth moved in for the kill. He reached for her hand and pulled her up, leaning in nearly nose to nose. "Just take your freebie and let's go."

She crumbled.

"I'll have them on your desk by two-thirty, Dr. Saroyan."

And now he knew exactly what the publicist at Pocket Books had meant about the smooth-talking Agent Andy in action. Grinning, he propelled his partner out the door.

~Q~

Author's Note: Whew! Once Booth sets his mind to something, he doesn't let anything get in his way.

Thanks for reading!

Scientific Note: Zack was shaving a sliver of bone to a width of less than 80 micrometers (or microns), which is less than the width of most human hairs. (Head hair averages 18-80 microns. Information regarding the preparation and examination of bone tissue that Zack, Hodgins and Brennan were each engaged in was obtained from the following four articles.

1) Jans, Miranda M, "Microscopic Destruction of Bone," chapter 2, pp 19-35. In Pokines, James T and Steven A Symes, editors, Manual of Forensic Taphonomy, CRC Press, 2014.

2) Robling, Alexander G and Sam D Stout, "Histomorphometry of Human Cortical Bone: Applications to Age Estimation," chapter 5, pp 149-182. (For Brennan, who was examining osteons under a light microscope and for Zack, who was learning how to prepare a sample.)

3)Katzenberg, M. Anne, "Stable Isotope Analysis: A Tool for Studying Past Diet, Demography and Life History," chapter 13, pp 413-441.

4) Burton, James, "Bone Chemistry and Trace Element Analysis," chapter 14, pp 443-460. (Both for Hodgins, whom I imagined was viewing the results from a "laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer." Ha! that's a mouthful, LOL. In short: LA-ICP-MS.)

The last three articles are contained in...

Katzenberg, M. Anne and Shelley R Saunders, Biological Anthropology of the Human Skeleton, 2nd Ed. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008.

...and all mistakes are mine.