Chapter Twenty

Booth's hand tightened around the grip of his gun at sight of the man waiting for him, but otherwise he didn't move.

"Easy, Lindley," he said, nice and quiet. "This doesn't have to be the end of the road for either of us."

Lindley didn't say a word. Didn't move a muscle. Booth took a cautious step forward. If he had spidey senses, he was sure they'd be off the charts right now.

"Lindley?"

When he got no answer, he took another step forward. Now he could see why Lindley had been so quiet: There was a neat, round hole in the middle of his forehead, and a trickle of blood frozen beneath it. His eyes were open, sightless, and there was frost on his eyebrows and hair. He'd been here awhile, then.

Booth held his gun up higher, two parts relieved and one part seriously unnerved. If Lindley was dead but the Gormogon skeleton was still there… Well, he didn't really know what that meant, but he was pretty sure whoever had pulled the trigger on Lindley wouldn't have gone too far without that damn skeleton.

"Hello?" he called, then cringed at the sound of his voice. Yeah – because if you're sneaking onto a boat where a crazy killer might be lying in wait, it's always good to announce yourself. Jesus; he was losing it.

He glanced back down at the other boat, where Erin was still waiting. She had a death grip on the side, and he knew she wouldn't be conscious much longer if he didn't do something. Right.

The boat was maybe thirty feet long, with a pilothouse and a cramped bunk and some storage space below deck. The radio in the pilothouse was disabled, but everything else looked like it was in working order. Booth searched the rest of the boat as fast as he could while still keeping an ear out for Erin and an eye out for crazed Gormogon apprentices. Nobody was there. Whoever was behind this, they were gone for the moment – and Booth didn't plan on sticking around until they came back.

"Erin!" he called over the side, once he was sure they were alone. "You still with me?"

She nodded – he could barely see the movement through the haze of snow still falling, but at least it was something.

"Good. We're gonna do the same thing we did before to get you up here – you tie a rope around yourself, and then I'll give you a hand to make it across, okay?"

He sort of expected her to fall apart at that point – she was half-dead, after all. He could hardly blame her for a little meltdown. Instead, she gave a stronger nod this time and looked him in the eye. She might be half dead, but there was still some spirit in there.

"Okay – yeah. I've got this," she said, her voice so hoarse he could barely hear her.

Somehow, she managed to make her fingers work enough to tie the rope around her chest and under her arms again. Booth stretched out over the side of the larger boat as far as he could, caught the other end of the rope when she tossed it to him, and tied it around one of the cleats on the deck to use as an anchor.

As it turned out, though, Erin didn't much need the rope. She got up on the edge of her boat with the thing rocking like a speed metal junkie underneath her, grabbed hold of Booth's hand, and pulled herself up and over the edge of the other boat in under a minute. She landed in a heap on the deck, stayed there a few seconds, and then gingerly pulled herself back up. She sat with her back against side of the boat, knees pulled up to her chest. Booth sat beside her, both of them gasping like they'd just finished the Iron Man. About sixty seconds passed before Erin cleared her throat.

"Uh, Booth?"

"Yeah?" He turned to her.

"Am I hallucinating, or is there a silver skeleton over there with a dead guy beside it?"

He shook his head. "Nah. It's real."

Just a quick pause before she took a breath. "That's good," she said. "I'd hate to think I was going nuts on top of everything else."

Booth gave them about two minutes to sit there and get their breath before he was up again.

"Come on." He took Erin's hand and hauled her back up onto her feet. "There's food and dry clothes below deck – get down there and change, then find something for us to eat. I'll get the boat started."

Again, he waited for her to argue. Instead, there was a second or two where she seemed to be shoring up before she actually started moving again, and then she kind of reeled into the pilothouse. Booth followed, but he stood aside and let her maneuver while she clambered through the little trapdoor below.

Okay – she was up, and she was still breathing. They had clothes, they had food, and they had a boat that could get them back to the island. Not to mention the fact that, as fate would have it, Paul Lindley was dead and the Gormogon skeleton had practically fallen in Booth's lap.

Things were starting to look up.

There was no key for the boat, but that was just a minor hiccup – with a little creative know-how and some of that handy special ops training he'd gotten over the years, Booth was able to hotwire the thing back to life. Erin came up from below a couple minutes later wearing a huge sweatshirt and some even huger sweatpants, along with gloves and what looked like three pairs of socks on her small feet.

"It doesn't look like it, but I did actually leave some stuff for you down there," she said, a little sheepishly.

That was good, because Booth was pretty sure he was about to lose some fairly important appendages if he didn't get out of the clothes he was in and into something dry.

"You mind taking the wheel? What'd you find for food down there?"

"Beans," she said. "A rat ton of canned baked beans, and some Spam." She grabbed the wheel while Booth went below.

The bunk was small, but it was neat and at the moment it looked damned inviting. Booth pushed that thought aside, and settled instead for rooting through the clothes until he found a dry pair of long underwear and some Carthartts that looked like they'd fit. Wait 'til Bones got a load of him in this stuff.

Erin was right about the food – baked beans and Spam. Booth changed as fast as he could, grabbed a couple cans of beans and a tin of the godawful fake meat, and went back up top. He opened a can of beans and handed them off to her with a plastic spoon while he took over at the wheel again.

"Eat," he said. He didn't even look at her, just daring her to fight him on it. When he glanced at her, though, she'd already dug in. No fight at all.

"You're feeling better?" he asked, eyes on the horizon while he tried to see his way clear around the snow and high seas.

"A little," she said. They were silent for a few seconds. Booth had the feeling there was something she wanted to say, but – even knowing her for as short a time as he had – he had the sense Erin wasn't the kind of woman who could be prodded into spilling her guts. She'd have to come to it on her own.

"I really didn't mean for anyone to come after me," she said, repeating what she'd said when he'd first hauled her out of the water. "This is my fight – I didn't want to drag anybody else into it."

"Yeah - I believe you," he said. "But it was kind of dumb, thinking we'd just let you go off in the middle of a blizzard. I mean – forget me, I barely know you. But you really think Diggs would've just let you go?"

"Well, that was kind of the point of sneaking away." She gave him a little sidelong smile, though she still looked sorry as hell. "Your partner must be ready to kill me."

"Pretty much," he agreed.

They'd been on the water maybe fifteen minutes, but with the wind working against them it didn't feel like the boat had moved at all. He kept a close eye on the gauges on the dashboard, charting his course that way since trying to do it by sight in the storm was pointless. Erin was definitely better than she had been, but she still looked unsteady on her feet. Booth nodded toward the hatch again.

"Why don't you go lie down? It won't be much longer and we'll be back to Monhegan – a little rest might do you and the kid some good." He nodded toward her stomach, gauging her reaction.

She hesitated a second; Booth got the sense she knew exactly what he was asking. "I think he's okay," she said, kind of quiet. Booth fought a smile.

"He?"

She rolled her eyes. Blushed, like she'd said something stupid. "It's just a feeling – I don't know. But when I was in the water…" She stopped and shook her head, brushing the whole thing off with a wave of her hand. "Whatever, it doesn't matter. But I think I'm okay."

She went back down below before Booth could ask anything else – which of course was her point, but right now he didn't really give a rat's ass. Something had happened while she was in the water; whether it was a come to Jesus moment or just the realization that somebody else was relying on her for his survival now, didn't really matter. Booth had the sense that she'd turned a corner in all this.

Once he was alone, Booth's thoughts rocketed straight back to Bones. She'd said she wanted to get married. She'd gone off the pill, he'd tossed the condoms – it was just a matter of time before they had their own baby on the way. It felt like everything they'd been through had been leading up to this moment – from the first time he'd laid eyes on her, all the scrapes he'd baled her out of, all the near-death situations she'd saved him from… All of it leading up to the two of them in a little house, living out the rest of their lives together.

Now, he just had to get back to her and get them both off that goddamn island.

"I'll take the wheel now, if you don't mind."

The voice surprised Booth so much he nearly jumped out of his skin. He closed his eyes for just a second, feeling a dread so deep it just about bottomed him out. He was still composing what he'd say, how the hell he was going to bargain his way out of this long enough to stay alive, when he turned. The man standing at the door of the pilothouse apparently wasn't interested in giving him enough time to figure something out, though: Booth had no more than turned to face him, thinking of Bones and the house they hadn't built yet and the baby they hadn't had, the places they hadn't gone and all the things he hadn't said, when Constable Mills leveled a 9mm at his chest and fired, point blank.

TBC

Possibly my cruelest cliffhanger ever? Just hang on, kids - fresh chapters will be up by this afternoon.