A/N: There's a hell of a lot of dialogue in this one, and I tried my best to re-work it (and I know some of it is simply re-worded, but I did that to shorten things a bit), but a lot of it had to remain canon, so that the story follows the correct lines. My apologies if it's TOO canon for you. I'll give you a night with Bones as a way to make nice. :K

I stopped once on the way to the cave, to call Ted on my mobile. Then I pulled Kitten's truck over on the side of the road at the darkest part. In just a few minutes, Ted's car pulled up behind us.

"Hiya, buddy!" Ted called out.

"Prompt as ever, mate," I greeted him, getting out. I went 'round to the trailer bed and lifted it off Stephanie's body. I'd lain it over her to keep anything - her, an edge of the blanket, both, anything - from blowing off. Kitten stayed in the truck, still in a bit of shock and not being very talkative.

Whatcha got there?" Ted asked, waving at Kitten over my shoulder.

"Dinner for whichever ghoul you feel like rewarding, but make sure they clean their plate. I don't want any part of her resurfacing," I answered.

That must've been a bit much for Kitten - I could hear her stomach heave. She'd disposed of bodies before, yes, but she'd always buried them. She'd never given one over to be eaten by a ghoul.

Ted didn't share any of Kitten's qualms. He simply nodded and asked, "Anything I should warn them about?"

"Yeah." I handed over the Stephanie burrito and Ted plopped her in his trunk. "Tell them not to chip a tooth on the bullet."

That was officially too much for Kitten. She opened the truck door just in time, the evening's events heaving out of her stomach and onto the ground.

"She all right?" I heard Ted ask as she coughed and tried to take deep breaths to calm herself.

I sighed. "She will be. Have to be off, mate. Thanks."

"Sure thing, bud. Anytime."

She closed her door just as I climbed back in. I reached inside my jacket for my flask. "Whiskey. Not your favorite, but it's all I've got."

She took it and gulped until there was no more.

"Better?"

Her voice was scratchy when she answered. "Yeah."

The alcohol seemed to have served to wear off her shock and replace it with a lot of questions.

"No more cryptic shit, Bones. Who is Hennessey, and what's he got to do with a gun-toting psychotic from my physics class?"

I glanced at her as I started driving. "Physics? You met her at college?"

"I think you should answer my question first, since I'm the one who was nearly shot," she snapped.

"Kitten, I will answer you, but please. Tell me how you met and what happened tonight."

Her face tightened, and she gave me a rundown of her week with Stephanie, ending with "... the bitch was casing me!" she suddenly burst. "She told me tonight she was looking for someone disposable, and I practically slapped a big red bow on my ass!" Thank God Kitten had accidentally killed her; I don't know if I could handle it if she had gotten killed or pulled into Hennessey's ring...

"What about tonight?" I probed.

"Oh, she did one better than dig into my background." She outlined the invitation and the whole clothes charade briefly, finishing with, "And then she pulled a gun on me." Bloody slag, a simple shooting was too quick a death for her...

"Did she mention anyone's name at all?"

She seemed to be replaying the conversation in her mind. "No. She said something about paying her rent and me being what her landlord liked, then she said college girls were all stupid and she should tape-record herself…but no names."

I didn't say anything. Kitten waited, tapping her finger, then asked, "How is this related to Hennessey? You said you smelled him and other vampires there. Do you think somehow he found out who I was from the other night? That he wanted to finish what he'd started?"

"No." I replied instantly. I explained Hennessey's style - if he knew who Kitten was, he'd have come at her with force straightaway, not go through the farce of the fake friendship. I explained that's why I had wiped down everything in her apartment. "I wanted no trace of you for him to follow."

"If not because of last weekend, then why would Stephanie be involved with him and try to kidnap me? It doesn't make any sense!"

I gave her a quick glance as we reached the cave. "Let's sort this out inside. Gives me a chance to go through her things while we talk."

She and I picked our way through the narrow entrance and back to where I'd made my living quarters in the high-domed part of the cave. I emptied the bag's contents and Kitten sat on the couch in front of me, watching as I opened Stephanie's laptop first.

"Have you ever heard of the Bennington Triangle?" I asked, powering up the computer.

She frowned. "No. I've heard of the Bermuda one."

I quickly took a look through the slag's computer - idiot didn't even password her files, but that worked for us. I quickly found what I was looking for. "Look, there you are, Kitten. Under 'Potentials.' You should be flattered, you were first on her list."

She leaned over my shoulder and read aloud: "Cathy—redhead—twenty-two," then saw the other names and descriptions below her.

"Are you kidding me? Who are those other girls? Potential what?"

I did a bit more searching on her computer, then leaned back with a smug smile. "Well, what have we here? Charlie, Club Flame on Forty-second Street. Sounds like a contact." And I'd be willing to bet the idiot was thick enough to not write in code, but to write actual names and places.

"Bones!"

Her voice was sharp and I finally set the laptop aside to answer her. "The Bennington Triangle refers to an area in Maine where several people disappeared back in the fifties. To this day, no trace of them has been found. Similar thing took place in Mexico several years back. A friend of mine's daughter disappeared. Her remains were found a few months afterward in the desert. They only found pieces of her; she had to be identified by dental records. When she was autopsied, turned out she'd been alive for months before she was murdered, and when I dug a little further, it also turned out to not be that uncommon."

"What do you mean?"

I leaned back, tired suddenly. "Hundreds of women were murdered or went missing in Mexican border towns around that time. There's still not a clue of who did it. Then, several years ago, a number of young girls started to go missing in and around the Great Lakes area. More recently, it centered in Ohio. Most of them were presumed to be runaways, prostitutes, addicts, or average, little-known girls who had vanished with no signs of foul play. Since most of them were in high-risk categories, there wasn't much of a media fuss. I think Hennessey's involved; it's why I came here. He was near all three places when the disappearances started."

"You think Hennessey did all that? He couldn't eat that much if he wanted to! What is he, some kind of…undead Ted Bundy?"

"Oh, I think he might be a ringleader, no doubt about that, but he's not a traditional serial killer," I summed up crisply. "From the bits and pieces I've gathered over the years, I don't think he's keeping these people to himself—I think he's made an industry out of them." And he very nearly got my Kitten into it... I'd have chased him to the ends of the Earth if that happened, and done anything to get her out; he's lucky Kitten killed Stephanie, that saved him from the wrath of hell I would've given him...

"You think he's running a takeout service," she breathed as it all clicked in her mind. "Turning those people into Meals on Wheels! My God, Bones, how could he get away with it?"

"Hennessey was sloppy in Maine and Mexico, but he's gotten smarter. Now he chooses women society doesn't really care about, and if they don't fall into that category, then he sends vampires to prevent them from being reported missing. Those girls Winston told you about? He wasn't wrong, luv, they are all dead. I wanted confirmation that there were more girls missing than had been reported, that's why I sent you to him. A ghost knows who's died, even if those girls' families don't. I went to see them, and they'd all been bitten into believing their daughters were off pursuing an acting career, like you'd been told, or backpacking across Europe, moving in with an old boyfriend, whatever. Only a vampire could have enough mind control to program their parents into not questioning their absence. Hennessey's had his people rounding up even more girls for him lately. At colleges, on street corners, in bars, clubs, and back alleys. You asked how could he get away with it? Think about it, luv. People disappear all the time. The police have enough crimes involving the rich, famous, and powerful to make it easy for them to put the disappearance of some derelicts on their back burner, and that's just the ones they know about. As far as the undead world goes, Hennessey's covered his tracks very well. There's only suspicion, but no proof." And now he knows, and he knows I have a lovely red-headed accomplice, which means I have to be extra vigilant in trying to keep us safe...

"How long have you suspected this? You told me before you'd been chasing Hennessey eleven years. You've known what he's been doing that whole time?"

"No. It's only been the past two years that I've gotten specific information. I didn't know who or what I was chasing at first. Took me a few dozen blokes to get an idea of what was going on. A few more dozen to get a name of who might be running it. As I said, he'd covered his tracks. Then I hunted down those under his line who had prices on their heads - Sergio, for example. I've been picking apart his people for years, but only doing it to those who had bounties on them. That way, Hennessey didn't know I was on to him. He just thought it was business. Now he knows I'm out to get him, and why. And so does whoever else is involved, because he can't be doing this alone."

She thought about that for a minute. "So, even if you take Hennessey out, it still might not end. His partners could start right up where he left off. You don't have any idea who they could be?"

"I've come very close a few times to finding out, but...things happened." Like you, my lovely...

"Like what?"

"Like you - if I didn't know better, I'd swear you were one of Hennessey's. You have an incredibly bad habit of killing people before I can get any information out of them. Remember Devon, that bloke you staked the night we met? I'd been tracking him for six months - he was Hennessey's accountant, knew everything about him, but you plugged silver through his heart before I could say Bob's your uncle. I thought Hennessey knew I was getting close and sent you to silence him. Then you went after me the very next night. Why do you think I kept asking you who you worked for? And tonight—"

"I didn't mean to kill her!" she cried, clearly lashed with guilt.

I got up and went behind one of the cave's walls.

"Believe me, luv, I know that. You wouldn't kill a human unless it was by accident or they were wearing a Vampire Henchman badge and fake fangs. You didn't know Stephanie had anything to do with vampires - I swear your nose is just for decoration, you have no heightened sense of smell - and from the scene, it looked like you were wrestling for the gun when it went off. She probably had a good grip on it, too - she smelled like she'd been hyped up on vampire blood. Would have made her quite a bit physically stronger and she'd need that, for what her job was." I shuddered as I thought about how close Kitten had come to death, and was thankful that her strength as a half-breed (and hopefully some of my training) kept her safe.

"Why haven't you told me about all of this before? You trained me to fight, and then you kept me out of the real battle."

I stayed behind the wall while I answered. "I didn't want you involved. Blimey, I'd just as soon you not go after vampires to begin with, but that's what you want to do, so I trained you to be better at it. Not like you'd listen to me if I told you to stay home, is it? Still, Hennessey and his blokes are different. Your part with them was supposed to end after Sergio, but tonight ruined that. You should be patting yourself on the back for killing her. Those other 'potentials' certainly would, if they knew what she'd had in store for them."

"Was safety your only reason for keeping this from me, or is there more I don't know about?" Oh, there's more you don't know about, but it isn't time to tell you yet...

I poured water into a bowl. "No, there's another reason I kept it from you - I didn't want to give you another reason to hate vampires. You tend to judge people for what they are, rather than what they do, if they don't have a pulse."

She was silent for a moment. Then she said, "You should know something, Bones. I lied to you when we made our deal. I was going to kill you the first chance I got."

I gave a dry chuckle. "I already knew that, luv."

"About Hennessey…I want to help, I have to help. My God, I was almost one of those girls who never would have been heard from again! I know it's dangerous, but if you find out where this Club Flame is, if you get a lead, I want to be there. Hennessey has to be stopped."

I didn't answer her.

"I mean it," she went on. You're not talking me out of this!"

"I can see that. Here." I returned with a bowl of water and a cloth, setting it near her and then handing her one of my shirts. "You've got blood on the front of you. If you go home like that, you'll scare your mum into thinking you've been hurt."

She looked down at the large red smear of Stephanie's blood that stained her shirt. Clearly not thinking anything of my seeing her, she stripped off her shirt and started to scrub.

It was only after she cleaned the last of the blood from herself that she felt me stare.