claimer - Bones and all its lovely characters belong to someone else.
A/N - Thanks to everyone who has kept reading this story and especially those of you who've reviewed (and consistently reviewed in many cases, which is really kind of you.) Particular thanks to Mendenbar for the assist with how doped up (or not) I could get away with making Booth in the previous chapter (and why.)
We're catching up with everyone in this chapter, before more case stuff in the next one, so not much BB on here (but more on the way!)
Bones was the first one to arrive at the lab the following morning. The night-shift was still staffing the security desk and the guard smiled and waved her through after checking her pass perfunctorily.
She headed straight for the small kitchen to switch on the coffee maker, drinking a pint of water while she waited for the pot to heat up. Tapping her fingers on the counter, she looked around the room before her gaze fixed on the notices pinned up on the board. There was a list of seminars on a range of esoteric topics; a series of boring health and safety reminders with wincingly bad cartoon illustrations; a couple of ads for items for sale and a poster declaring that someone had somehow managed to lose their deep sea diving helmet in the lab.
Bones shook her head, wondering why on earth they had brought it into the building in the first place, before concluding that it had probably been packed up and deposited in one of the vaults below the museum or in the numerous warehouses that housed the bulk of the Jeffersonian's collection.
She grimaced slightly as she imagined the helmet-less diver having to search through the hundreds of boxes that would have been added to the inventory, moved, replaced, checked or stored over the last few weeks.
Finally her attention was caught by the details of the Jeffersonian family day. She found herself reaching up to tear off one of the little slips with details of who to call for tickets, thinking that Booth and Parker would probably enjoy a behind the scenes tour of the museum. She put the scrap of paper in her pocket and began to pour herself a coffee without thinking about what her action implied.
As it slowly dawned on her that she had actually thought about the word family in the same context as her partner and his son, her grip on the coffee jug tightened reflexively.
She would have liked to have told herself that she didn't know what that meant, but after the events of the past day or so denial would have been an exercise in futility.
She placed the coffee jug back on the hotplate and pulled the offending piece of paper out again. She stared at it, chewing her lower lip. At 5:30 in the morning, and before ingesting toxic quantities of caffeine, she was incapable of arguing herself out of her initial, instinctive action. She couldn't deny that Booth and Parker would enjoy the tour and it went without saying that they would deserve a little treat together after all the trauma of the last few days; and it wasn't as if she had anyone else to bring as Russ was travelling several states away.
Defeated by her own logic, she scrunched up the paper and shoved it back into her jacket pocket. Then she grabbed her coffee and stalked across the lab towards her office.
Across town an exhausted looking Deputy Director Cullen was walking into the Hoover Building. One look at his tight-lipped and furious face and the guard made sure to run through the security protocols as rapidly as humanly possible.
Cullen grunted his thanks and stomped across the lobby to the lift. He had got precisely four and half hours sleep, after finally being ordered home for some rest by his superior. Cullen wasn't sure if his boss would have followed through with his threat to have him frog-marched from the building, but had decided that he didn't want to find out and, truth be told, he'd known that he had to snatch something approximating a good night's rest or he'd be next to useless.
The lift pinged open and he got in, leaning against the rail.
As the lift climbed the floors he decided that reviewing messages, making calls and then being interviewed were likely to take up most of the morning. Although his first task - once he was fortified with coffee - would be to call the hospital.
At this time of day, he was reduced to sampling the dubious delights of coffee machine with its hateful plastic cups. He swallowed the dark liquid, already counting down the hours until the canteen opened with its real espresso machine.
He made his way to his office, flicking on the lights, and sighed as he saw that there were post-it notes dotted all over the place and several pages of hand written notes. That's what came of being out of his office since yesterday lunch time.
He slumped onto the chair and started to work his way down the list, frowning when he saw a reference to the Jeffersonian and Dr Goodman. He rubbed his eyes tiredly - an inter-institutional bun-fight with the lab was the last thing he needed right now. He took a swing of coffee and read the details, shaking his head slowly.
When he'd finished, he paused for a moment and then began to smile reluctantly. Yes, he could still do without the hassle, but when his 'to do list' included writing five letters of condolence to families of agents who'd been killed on his watch, a hissy fit from the Jeffersonian's forensic anthropologist was deal-able. Besides, reading behind the lines of Dr Goodman's terse message, Dr Brennan and her team were still hard at work on the case and the problem was actually with the personnel he'd sent her way. Not that he'd told Mahoney to go anywhere near her.
He sighed, he should have realised that there was something fishy about the way Mahoney had been buzzing efficiently around the warehouse yesterday afternoon. He'd put it down to productiveness brought on by new responsibility, but it seemed it was more to do with face-saving after being chewed out by the formidable Dr Brennan.
He picked up the phone and dialled the hospital. Hoping, for more than one reason, that Booth was going to be well enough to be back at work sooner rather than later.
Booth shifted slightly and focused on the glowing hands of the beside clock: 5:30.
He sighed, every hour or so since 2:20am he'd been waking up, and each time it was more difficult to drop off again. The pain across his shoulder was lifting above an annoying background level, towards something he wasn't sure that he could deal with.
He looked at the IV line for a moment, considering.
Then took a sharp intake of breath and turned deliberately away.
He wasn't going there. Not this time. Not ever again.
He closed his eyes against the memories and tried to think good thoughts.
Uninvited his partner popped into his head and he smiled as he thought about how beautiful she'd looked yesterday, despite the dark circles under her eyes. He laughed to himself as he wondered how he'd managed to fall asleep when she was there, but was wracked with insomnia when wasn't she sitting at his bedside holding his hand.
He silent laughter halted and his breathing hitched slightly as he considered that comparison a bit more deeply.
Angela pulled a pillow over her head as the alarm rang insistently.
She sighed, it was no good she could still hear the damned thing and the only way she could turn it off was to get out of bed and walk across the room.
She knew herself to well.
"Alright! I'm getting up!" She yelled at the inanimate object as she threw the covers back and switched on the lights as she stumbled across to the shelf.
Slapping the button down, she enjoyed the silence for a moment, and then stared longingly at her bed.
She glowered for a moment and then, muttering 'must go to work, must go to work,' she stomped towards the shower.
Jack stood at the edge of the pool towelling off the beads of moisture clinging to his skin, before rubbing the towel over his hair.
He was breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling rapidly.
He'd learnt long ago that if he had to get up at this unearthly hour, the best way to wake himself up was some brief, brisk exercise. So he'd set the alarm a few minutes early and twenty lengths later he was wide-awake.
The looked down at the rippling water, reflecting that there were some compensations for his family's status.
Zach was reading. He usually woke up at five. For some reason he'd never needed more than five hours sleep.
He thought that might have been one of the reasons he did well at school. He really did have more hours in the day than most people.
He looked across at the clock, knowing that his landlord - and lift to work - would be hammering on his door in precisely ten minutes.
Dr Hodgins might profess belief in anarchy occasionally, but Zach knew that you could set your clock by his personal habits.
Agent Larsen was reviewing her notes as the train rattled in from her distant suburb towards the centre of the city.
She scrolled through the transcript of her interview with Dr Brennan and then each of her team.
Nothing.
Then she scanned through Booth's commentary.
Their stories were consistent, but in an inconsistent, non-coached, totally genuine sort of way.
Larsen was convinced that they weren't the source of the leaks, so that meant someone else inside the FBI probably was.
She sighed. Now she got to live up to her reputation as a ball-breaker by winnowing her way through the depleted ranks of agents who'd worked on the various cases.
She glanced at the list - she'd start with Deputy Director Cullen.
Special Agent Mahoney had meant to hit the snooze button, but his hand slipped and without realising it he turned his alarm off entirely.
Diving deeper under the covers, he soon fell fast asleep again.
He wouldn't wake up until his colleague, Special Agent Decker, started hammering on his door two hours later.
In a non-descript warehouse a goodly distance away from all the activity in Washington DC, a man and woman were looking into a crate of bank notes.
Behind them, someone was watching a computer screen intently, listening to a set of headphones.
They all looked up when tall, thin man strode in and gestured for them to load up the truck. As the man stepped out from the shadows, it was possible to see that his left arm was heavily bandaged. He moved slowly and it was obvious that he'd taken a serious injury recently.
As he hauled himself slowly and painfully into the passenger seat of the truck, the others seemed to know not to offer any help.
He settled back into the seat with a grunt and muttered a guttural curse at the FBI for their interference and for having the teremity to clip him with a loose shot during the gunfight.