Author's note: Again, thank you to MickeyBoggs for her betaing skills.

Enjoy

Jane

Chapter 21

That was Hodgins car. At the same time Agent DiSalvo recognized a target on the heat recognition device, Dr. Hodgins recognized a killer in his rear view mirror. His hand touched Brennan's nervous knee and pointed at the mirror. Her fidgeting immediately ceased, suppressed by intent concentration. Now she had a visual confirmation of what the Angelator had shown her. She just couldn't conciliate that slight man, that seemingly harmless man with his elbow permanently frozen in an angle that had no business in a human arm, pulling it slightly up, perpendicular to his back with a serial killer, with the victims she had seen him leaving behind. And that face, how could that be the face of a killer? It looked so peaceful, as if he were merely taking a walk in the park. Her hand reached for the door. Hodgins stopped her.

"In the act. We have to get him in the act."
"In the act?" She asked almost stupidly. "In the act?" She repeated as indignation grew.

"Yes. All that we have is circumstantial."
"We'll have the bat."

"Trust them, Dr. B. Trust Booth." And his hand held her arm in persuasion. Trust Booth... Right... That, she did. What she couldn't do was just stand by seeing that small figure of a man with murder on his mind walking to Booth. She wanted to get out of the car and beat him to the floor. Beat him until what he did to those kids she had yet to return to their parents made some sort of sense. Beat him until she was sure he would never hurt anyone again. She had no empathy to be wasted on him. Her heart accelerated until it was the only sound she could hear drumming in her ears. The man walked past Hodgins' tinted windowed car, spared it a second glance that had Hodgins grabbing a tight hold on a .22 and pointing it discreetly under his crossed arms. As the man inched forward, he became both visible through the windshield, directly in their line of vision and in the night vision camera. Brennan watched in quiet horror as he made his way towards a car she had no idea was occupied by Booth or not. She wanted to yell out a warning, do something- anything- just to make sure Booth saw him coming. She had no doubt he could defend himself if he saw it coming. But what if he was distracted? Perotta was in the car with him. What if he was distracted with her? She searched the car for a weapon. A gun, a tire iron, a wheel lock. Anything she could use if Booth wasn't paying attention. She pulled the glove compartment open and blindly rooted through the goodies Hodgins had packed as if violence was a Sunday picnic. Her hands grabbed the only recognizable shape: a .38. She could do with something bigger, a cannon wouldn't be a bad thing. She had her own .45 in her purse but she couldn't find it without taking her eyes off of the movement of the man and that she couldn't afford that. Her hands checked that the security lock was off and the gun made its waking up noise that seemed to echo through the ominously silent night.

Booth was busy tuning out Perrota, busy plotting his conversation with Bones but he saw the man walking towards him. He heard Agent DiSalvo's What the fuck is that and he saw the man walking past a car. How the fuck in fuck's name did that fucking car get here? Civilian cars were supposed to be screened and discreetly told the Georgetown Waterfront was off limits for the night. His heart thrummed loudly and his mind focused on the man walking: thin and wiry, yes. Not the look of a baseball bat killer. He had expected someone bulky and built like a china cupboard. But thin and wiry and fragile looking men could sometimes pull killing strength out of nowhere. The bat hanging on his right hand side was the tell. It hung there as a separate entity, calm and poised for violence. Both bat and man were on a mission. A killing mission.

When the man walked past the civilian car, Booth cocked his gun and did a quick math: getting out of the car, aiming, shooting, saving the stupid couple that managed to get through the tac team perimeter. His hand jumped to the door handle when he saw the killer spare a second glance at the car. Perotta grabbed his arm.

"In the act, Seeley. We need to catch him in the act." Booth couldn't say what ticked him off the most, if it was that she grabbed his arm when he had his gun cocked, that she delayed his getting out of the car movement or that she called him Seeley. Whichever one it was, it made him growl. Made him loose the fragile grip on his temper he had had all day godforsaken day.

"Just. Shut. The. Hell. Up." Thank God there's no time for subtleties because right then he had the subtlety of an elephant on the high wire. He trained his eyes on the slow advancing figure, on the bat at his side. Perotta quieted down and even the tac team went dead silent on the radio. There was the crackling sound of the night full of near future events. His heart thumped loudly in his chest. This was it. This was really it.

This is it. They are all in place. The Daughters of Israel, the good and bad thief, the crowd, the cross. And this Golgotha.

He moved forward towards the black car. It was his mission, his destiny, but he was still scared. Even Jesus had been. He walked until he could see the occupants of the car clearly: one of the daughters of Israel and the good thief. He saw them clearly, as if it was daylight, as if all his senses were more awake, more acute and his soul rejoiced. God was on his side, God compelled him. And it was his final pleasure- so much more than any of the orgasms he had experienced when he killed to fulfill the will of God. It was a pure experience, it was rapture. He advanced towards the good thief and smiled. The good thief would see him and recognize him. And he would show him the path of heaven.

What happened next took the quality of surreal slow motion. Booth saw a killer walking towards him and knock on the window of his side of the car. As if he knew he was waiting.

Brennan saw killer approaching the car unstopped, in the open and the bat swing up. She had no idea if she would be able to aim and shoot without harming whoever was in the car.

Agent Mendez stared at his blue and read heat recognition screen absurdly aware that the scene in front of him was not one of his video games, that death was hovering, waiting to take people. Possibly, people he knew and admired.

And in a swirl of ecstasy, a man that heard God telling him to kill, smiled at Booth and told him this is me, recognize me, follow me and swung his trusted bat at Booth. The sound of the female scream startled him. It echoed through the night and was painfully loud in his ears Booooooooooth and it stretched and stretched until it was right behind him.

That second of hesitation, Agent DiSalvo would later write in her report of the events, saved Agent Booth who was still unfurling from the car, gun in hand and aiming at the target.

It was stupidly paralyzing, but the only thing in her mind at that moment was that someone was going to knock on her mother's door in a few hours and tell her that her daughter had been killed in action, just like she had to do earlier that morning, hardly a day ago. That would be her punishment. Here Lies Peyton Perotta and her mother crying over a white marble stone. In her paralyzed stupor, Agent Perotta could only watch as the bat swung up and in that microsecond of hesitation, the target looked backwards towards two dark figures running towards her car. Sounds seemed distorted. She could have sworn she heard Brennan screaming. But it couldn't be, could it, because she didn't know where they were. She hadn't told her or anyone at the Jeffersonian. She had been very careful in that. So why was Brennan running and screaming Booooth?

Hodgins ran behind Brennan. He was trying to catch up with her long strides, his shorter legs struggling to keep pace, a gun he'd forgotten he was holding hanging loosely in his hand. And all he could see was the bat, already held in an angle that was more than mathematical calculations, more than the Angelator's simulations- it was an obscene reality.

The man with the locked elbow, that same elbow that hurt every damned day of his miserable life saw one of the daughters of Jerusalem running to him. But she was not shouting his name and she was not smiling at him. She was screaming an unknown name and her face was locked in a mask of fear. He did not want to see fear in that face. He wanted to see rapture at her recognizing God's lamb sent to deliver her. It startled him, that unexpected face. He saw her coming close, waited for her to be close enough and plunged the bat as best, as far and as hard as he could.

Brennan felt something hit her right below her sternum. She felt the air going out of her in a whoosh and a force pushing her down onto the floor. She saw the killer's face close, so close. She placed it in an overlap with the images of the dead kids still in Cam's autopsy table, of Angela working with makeup trying to minimize the damage to the young faces so that they could be returned to their parents with some semblance of what they had been in life. She saw Booth raise his arm and take aim. And then everything faded into a pain free muted blackness.

It had surprised him. He had known he was walking his final steps that night. His final mortal steps. But it had surprised him that the good thief had turned on him, that the daughters of Israel had not come adoringly to him. It surprised him nearly as much that quick explosion of sound that had echoed through the night. It surprised him that red hot heat that spread from his head to his soul. But none of it was nearly as bad as looking around for the benign face of God, his shepherd and not finding it. His last ever feeling was one he knew well. Betrayal.