Mist
Alice in Wonderland had nothing on her. Or was she somehow some character from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe?
Through the back of the janitor's closet and down the stairs into the musty storerooms of the Jeffersonian and then it was a Choose Your Own Adventure. One way took her deeper into storage areas and the other to workrooms and still another took her out of the building.
And freedom.
She felt for the hard drive again and wished for the hundredth time in her short journey that they had invested in something cool like Foster's nipple ring. A lighter. A heel that attached to her shoe. An aglet for her laces.
Her mind had settled in fantasyland primarily because she was so very, very frightened.
Jack's instructions had propelled her so far into the bowels of the museum complex and if she stopped and thought for more than a second or two, she was ruined. She'd turn around and march right back to her husband and stand with him as they faced whatever was going to happen the only way two people who loved each other should: together.
But his instructions kept roiling around in her mind on an endless loop: Get as far away from here as possible because you're our only hope to expose the people responsible for all this and you're my hope that Michael Vincent will grow up into a fine man.
It was one of his longer speeches, but no less important as it fueled her escape from the lab with the entire set of computer files on her old iPod.
If it was good enough for Peter Jackson to transport dailies from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, it was good enough for her.
Damn, she was losing it; she had officially turned left into geekdom.
Making a right, she kept watch for the security cameras outside the workrooms and skirted those down a dimly lit hallway that fed into a larger passage leading into God-only-knew what. The hall had a definite gothic vibe to it. An emergency light at the other end of the hall beckoned and she started toward it, shuffling her feet for fear that she would trip over something in the dark. She pulled out her phone and stumbled through the menus until she came to her flashlight app.
The hallway looked much better in the dark.
But it was clear and free of cameras. Being married to a paranoid conspiracy theorist had rubbed off and she had spent more than one afternoon piecing together the security scheme at the Jeffersonian. A parting shot for the FBI techs which had swarmed down onto the lab had been a trail of turned-off cameras to act as breadcrumbs if needed. Hansel and Gretel could have used her and a bit of technology to make their own escape.
Another left, a right and a climb up stairs in one of the older parts of the museum complex had taken her far from the lab.
But it was drawing her back.
Jack was in danger and the best she could offer him was a stale donut on her desk and a brick—well, half a brick—in the bottom of her bag that was stashed in a drawer.
She tried his number on the off chance that he might be able to pick up and reassure her that he was all right, but the call went to voice mail.
"Oh, Jack," she murmured, the worry ratcheting up. She tried Wendell's number and Cam's, but each one went to voice mail leaving her feeling frustrated and more uneasy.
She could hide the iPod at one of the workrooms and saunter back into the lab, but she wasn't entirely sure she could retrace her steps in the labyrinth of halls down here. Besides, living with a conspiracy nut had drilled into her head the need to avoid giving the bad guys more leverage.
And like it or not, her return might hurt the situation more than help it.
Walking away from the lab was her best weapon and maybe Jack's best defense. Turning a corner, she caught the familiar red of an exit sign and headed toward it.
The crash door didn't send up an alarm and she found herself in a light evening mist and within sight of the trash containers.
She really had only one more play and she made it, picking the name from her menu and punching in a 2.
This one thankfully didn't go to voice mail.
"Brennan."
oOo
The place seemed familiar and yet not really. Through the back entrance and security and to the bank of elevators he was waiting for the punch line, the clown jumping out from behind a corner and yelling at him, "Gotcha!"
He really didn't know why he should be here, of all places.
The FBI had no love for him, sent him to jail, accused him of murdering three of his fellow agents, wouldn't listen to a damned thing he said. Wouldn't believe him. Left him to be the punching bag for the creeps he'd put in there. Then they'd pulled him out of jail, gave him a driver who either hated his guts or wanted him dead, but was doing this because he'd been ordered to, and delivered him to the Hoover with a T-shirt that looked familiar and a pair of jeans that were too big.
And a belt.
Probably meant to hang himself with it.
That's how the day had gone before his driver deposited him outside Stark's office and left him to stew here.
No secretary, no assistant. After regular hours. He was sure the guy had the means to end this right here and now.
But was that the anger talking? The uncertainty? Some guy shows up and says you're free and doesn't even have half a story to give you and then you're deposited like some homeless waif on the doorstep of the guy who should have believed you. Should have trusted you to be telling the truth despite the evidence.
Because someone had faked the evidence, faked it with McNamara, faked it with Foster.
He paced, tried to still his mind that did its own nervous walk, trekking through old wounds and emotional pits and coming back to the same conclusion.
He was done with this.
Being a Ranger had taught him that sometimes there came a point when you had to stop doing what you were doing and move onto something else. He had been good at killing, good at finding the target and ending it. But he had hated it; hated the stain that had grown onto his soul with each death. Hated knowing he was but a hair trigger away from making a mistake or becoming one of the targets.
Staring out the window from the—hell, he didn't even care how high up in the air he was, how damned important Stark might be—he saw the rain leave a mist on the glass outside, each droplet growing bigger and bigger as they joined more droplets and finally grew too heavy and gave into gravity which pulled them down.
He wasn't going to be that damned droplet anymore.
"Booth?"
The voice came from behind him and he turned slowly, deliberately, the call of masters no longer his concern.
Stark stood there in that same dark grey suit, the same white shirt and conservative tie, another drone in a world of drones that seemed to push buttons and push people around and never really listen to the truth.
"I'd like to apologize. . . ."
He couldn't listen to this. "You'd like to? You mean you can't?"
He'd fought several men at a time to stay alive. What had Stark cared about that? For all he knew the man had put him in the pumpkin patch and waited for him to be picked and sliced and carved up into some kind of something and forgotten until the next person stumbled into the slime and filth and tried to clean it up only to be drowned in the slop.
Stark had the sense to look sorry.
"I am sorry. We made a mistake."
"Mistake?" He was his father now, the rage burning white hot and he felt his body tense and shift into an offensive posture—hands curled into fists, muscles ready, his feet apart in a stance ready to take any kind of blow he was given.
"Miss Julian and Dr. Saroyan went to see the secretary himself on this. Detailed how we had treated a decorated FBI agent. Detailed just how wrong we had gotten it."
Something was wrong with that statement. Something he couldn't quite pick out.
"There's a cancer deep within the FBI if we could get this as wrong as we have." Stark shifted, relaxed almost. "It's not enough to tell you that we are sorry, that I am sorry," he said, "but that we need to clean out this cancer."
"Or we're no better than the people we put behind bars."
It took a great deal of time for him to sort through the words and to make sense of them. He'd spent so much time alone within the company of men who had no use for him that he actually had to replay the words in his head again and again before he understood.
"Good luck with that."
Stark's expression changed just a bit. "I was hoping to reinstate you and work with you to find out where we've gone wrong."
Months ago he might have jumped at the suggestion, but right now he was too sore and too angry to jump at anything. He was having a difficult time simply holding his temper in check.
"I made a horrible mistake, Booth. I've inherited a terrible disease deep within the bureau and it needs to be removed or it will destroy us."
At one time he could tell if people were lying to him. But time and a brain tumor had stolen away that ability and he wavered now over what Stark was saying to him if only for the months of living in a cage.
"All I want is to find out who did this to me and my wife and children and then I am done with the FBI," he said finally. "You can reinstate me or not."
Stark considered the conditions and bent to the desk and retrieved a gun and a badge. The sound of the gun thumping on the desk had a definitive sound much like the opening of a cell door. "I had them brought up here when I was contacted by the DoJ of your release." He seemed to be waiting on him. "This is your play, Booth."
He eyed them, wondered if this were some kind of cosmic joke. Less than 2 hours ago he was locked up and unsure of a future. And now?
The gun and the badge would force him to work within his oath—the FBI's betrayal would never really change that. And he wasn't going to let someone steal months from his life, threaten his life and the life of his wife without a fight.
But was this was how he wanted to fight back? Within the system that had abandoned him?
He wasn't sure he could trust the system anymore than he could trust Stark, but the gun and badge seemed to be calling to him.
oOo
She ended the phone call, but the terror in her friend's voice remained. They didn't have Booth, didn't have much trust in the FBI, but they did have something the men who had invaded the lab didn't have.
"We need to go to the lab."
Sweets had pulled them over under a street light, the mist in the air collecting on the windshield, causing the various lights around them into the prisms of each droplet.
"Dr. Saroyan said that they were considering the new information," Sweets countered. "I think it's better if we take this to the FBI and let them sort it out."
"Hodgins and Wendell are still in the lab," she argued, the lights around them dancing as a car drove past where they were parked. "We can't leave them there."
"What if we call the police? The police probably can be trusted." Sweets was reaching. "I can't believe they'd hurt them."
She felt the frustration of talking this through when it was clear what they needed to do. "The FBI was in the lab well before Cam and Caroline arrived to the Department of Justice. Well before I met with Cahill. It's entirely possible that the FBI will claim that they are investigating a problem at the lab and take Hodgins and Wendell into custody and charge them with violating security protocols."
"There's a leak," Sweets said as he shifted into drive and hit the windshield wipers before craning his neck to check for cars then pulling out onto the street. The wheels protested against the wet pavement. "They've been watching or listening in. . . man, we need a plan. Do you have a plan?"
"To get them out of there," she replied. But she knew that without knowing all the variables, they could just as easily be driving toward a trap that could destroy them all.