13.
"I see you've met your roommate." Ryan said coming down the steps.
Sweets looked over to the dead woman on the floor. She had a vague familiarity and he wasn't sure if he wanted to know if he was right or not.
"Don't remember your old mom?" Ryan asked as Victor joined him on his descent down the steps.
Sweets had a feeling he was right about that one. He hadn't felt much of a connection with Ryan Master's wife when he was there, she was little more than an enabler of his antics. Instead Sweets reached up to pull himself into a mostly sitting position as he leaned back against the wall. It was a painful position as it pushed on his ribs that now felt near mutilated but his feeling of dread and adrenaline made his focus stay more on Ryan and Victor.
"Was that your mother?" Sweets said in cracked words coming from a dry mouth to Victor.
"Yeah I guess." He said shrugging his shoulders. Sweets found his response surprising.
"You didn't care for her?" Sweets asked and Ryan laughed.
"Who do you think killed her?" Ryan asked and Victor smiled. Sweets realized in that moment there was no real hope for Victor. Sweets now realized the only thing he could do was buy time until Booth arrived.
"She was real useless." Ryan said approaching the body and rolling it away so he didn't have to look at it. "She was on board until I killed that agent. She didn't think it would go that far, wanted it to stop." He laughed again. "Doesn't matter, we got what we wanted in the end." Ryan said staring Sweets down.
"Why me?" Sweets asked, buying time but curious.
"I told you, you had to pay for what you did to me, to us. I've been looking for you for years. Then I heard that agent was poking around, I knew he would come our way with you. But then you stood us up."
"I'm real sorry about that." Sweets said sarcastically, his breaths getting slower.
"Hey, it's all good, we got to use the car. That was our getaway car! Hated to see that thing go." Ryan said looking at Victor who nodded as well. Obviously it had been quite the father-son project. "Of course we hadn't expected you to live, but it really turned out better, this was much more fun. More cat & mouse."
Sweets let a smile creep across his lips.
"You got another catchy come back boy?" Ryan asked raising his voice.
Sweets let the smile fade. He was pretty sure he wasn't going to survive one more beating. "No sir, nothing."
Ryan still narrowed his eyes but he was interrupted by the sound of a helicopter go overhead.
"It's right below us sir but there's nowhere to land, too many trees. We'll have to try some place else." The pilot explained to Booth.
Booth looked out the window and considered the jump from the chopper to the rooftop but Brennan grabbed his arm. He didn't like it but he waited.
"What the hell is that?" Ryan asked obviously surprised. He looked back at Sweets who had a big smile on his face again.
Ryan walked up to Sweets and punched him in the face. Sweets turned his head back and still had the smile on his face. Ryan clenched his teeth and pulled Sweets up by his shirt and hooking an arm under his dragged Sweets up the steps and out the door.
"Car Victor!" He shouted to Victor who ran to a barn on the property.
Sweets squeezed his eyes shut as soon as they came outside and the intense morning light was too much. He could feel he was being drug across some uneven grass and every bump sent an intense pain shooting thru his body. He was being drug by his arm over his head. He inched one eye open to see his legs and feet being drug in tow. He knew he didn't have the strength to run but the glance at his feet, caked with dried blood, rocks and debris, he knew it was impossible to even stand.
He wanted to pull his hand away from Ryan but it was an impossible task. He had no strength and could feel he was fading fast. If it weren't for the curiousity keeping him awake, he would have passed out already.
The roaring sound of a car approaching brought made Sweets eyes shoot back to an open position and soon he was flung in the back seat of the car. The car took off and Sweets wondered if Booth was still in pursuit.
The chopper landed on the ground and the sounds of sirens were on approach. Booth watched as a car drove down the rural lane past them leaving a cloud of dust from the road behind it.
"Get me a car, now!" Booth shouted and the pilot was on the radio. In less than a minute one of the police cars that was on approach to the house was where Booth and Brennan were by the chopper. Booth took the driver's seat and Brennan in the passenger. Booth followed the dwindling dust trail in the road in pursuit.
"They're on us dad, what are we going to do?" Victor said and for the first time Sweets heard a tiny hint of panic is his voice.
"Dad?!" He asked again, most poingnant this time.
"I'm thinking!" He shouted back finally.
Sweets eyes were closed as he lay in the seat. He knew his life was in the balance of a decision that Ryan made. Sweets could hear tapping on what he guessed was a tablet.
"They're on the ground, they're probably be close." Victor reported.
"It seems they're after one thing. I think I've got an idea on how to kill two birds with one stone." Ryan said as he instructed Victor to open the car door while he kept driving.
Sweets felt the welcomed cool breeze as the car door opened and before he understood what was about to happen. Victor struggled some as Sweets realized he was being moved and soon pushed out the car door going a relatively high speed. Ryan seemed to be positioning the car in just the right place in the middle of the road as Victor released Sweets.
It may be been that because he was so exhausted that his body was in a relaxed state which allowed it to bounced a few times before it came to a stop. Sweets would have seethed at the pain but he was so far towards gone that he wondered if he really cared at this point.
The dust from the road swirled around him and he closed his eyes. He wondered if he could see a car, or thus, if a car could see him, and then it became obvious to Sweets what Ryan's plan was, as he lay in the middle of the road, with Booth in pursuit.
Sweets knew the seconds were ticking by, Booth would be over the hill in no time. He thought of how nice it might be to be hit by a car, again, but this time be put out of the misery his body was in. Still though, he thought of Booth, the guilt he would carry that he was the one behind the wheel though it had been Ryan's plan.
Sweets pushed his body to the side allowing the momentum to rock his body over. The pain was undescribeable. Sweets dug his hands into the dirt road and though his body was in complete disagreement he began to pull himself inch by inch out of the road, but it was slow going.
"How far ahead do you think they are?" Brennan asked holding onto the door handle at the high rate of speed they were heading following the swirling dust cloud. Booth was pretty sure they were gaining on the speeding car.
"Why is he running, he knows we are going to catch him." Brennan said in her rational matter of fact thinking.
"They always run Bones, they'll always take the chance." Booth answered though he was still concentrating on the road ahead, the dust was getting thicker, they were surely gaining.
The dust was in Sweets eyes, he wasn't sure if what direction he was heading but he hoped it was the right way. To him it felt like a mile but in reality it was inches as he clawed his hands into the rock and dirt mix that road was made of. His chest drug the ground across his broken ribs. His head swirled in a mass of pain and he wondered how he was even moving, or if he was outside of his imagination. His bloodied and impacted feet soared with pain but he knew he had to move faster so he pushed them in the ground to propel himself forward. He felt that cool breeze he had not long ago, that day in the woods. He eyed a rock next to him that began to rattle, he wondered about Angela's threat of witchcraft but then he realized it was really just the rumbling of an approaching car.
"BOOTH!" Brennan shouted as she would have sworn she stopped breathing a moment.
Booth pulled the car to the left as fast as he could but he could not avoid running into the fence. The airbags deployed and after a second to orient themselves Booth and Brennan rushed out of the car.
The dust still swirled from all of the movement on the road and them going off it. Booth wondered if their eyes had played tricks on them had they really seen…
The dust settled and everything was quiet now as they saw what they knew to be Sweets laying motionless, just inches from the edge of the road.