Author's Note: In answer to Anonymous, who asked how long I plan to make this and will the case be closed. Yes it will! There is what I call a story map, which has all the stops we need to cover - so I know exactly where we're going and how to get there. But the moment anyone asks me how long it will take to get to the final destination...? Well. I can try to guess but I'm never right, LOL! So what I'll say is that we're about 2/3 there according to the story map.

~Q~

Fan Mail - Walking Distance

~Q~

"No." It was rare to see Temperance Brennan lose her cold façade anywhere, most especially when she was at work, and yet here it was, happening again. For the second time today she was melting, denial flooding in a curiously controlled manner despite the precarious loss of both her protective shielding and basic reasoning skills.

It was downright stupid, what she'd done, and that was one sin he'd never been able to pin on her before. (Hell, no matter what the world threw at her, Bones never lost the ability to keep that super-charged intellect revving at top speed.) So why was she standing there shaking her head? "No."

Repeating herself was fairly uncommon, too.

"What do you mean, no?" Snarling at her was probably going to prove unproductive in the end yet he couldn't imagine how the hell she could rationalize keeping this a secret. Torn between fury and figuring her out, Booth dove back into the messages instead. (The ones she'd been hiding from him all morning, and why...?)

Sweet creature! said the Spider, you're witty and you're wise,
How handsome are your gauzy wings, how brilliant are your eyes!
I've a little looking-glass upon my parlour shelf,
If you'll step in one moment, dear, you shall behold yourself.

The creepy poem lines praised her best assets in another quartet, followed by more warnings, these timed during their commute into the Jeffersonian. While they were arguing in the parking garage over his 'illegal parking' and the conflicts of interest, she was already deliberately ignoring all these text messages.

"He..." She halted, hesitating long enough to assemble a half-hopeful defense. "He's warning me."

Had to be hopeful, right? Because the alternative was so much worse. "Yeah, he's warning you that he's planning to kill you."

I thank you, gentle sir, she said, for what you're pleased to say,
And bidding you good morning now, I'll call another day.

You have become his prey.

"That's not—"

He cut her off, damned if he'd let her talk him out of a gut-level interpretation because of her pedantic need to read the killer's manifesto before she would accept a projected motive. "What the hell, Bones! Why would you keep this from me. 'He'll see you dead?' 'You have become his prey?' If those aren't death threats then I don't know what is!"

Desperate, she shook her head again. "No, he's telling me you're the spider."

Looking back down at the last two lines, at the sick web spinning around them both, Booth felt himself getting confused and knew it was because he was listening to her. She was doing what she always did, forcing another point of view when her logic clashed with his gut instincts.

The Spider turned him round about, and went into his den,
For well he knew the silly Fly would soon come back again

And the last message, the one vibrating in Booth's shaking hand:

You know how this story ends.

"He's telling me that you're the one who's going to kill me, Booth. But I don't believe him so it doesn't matter."

Childlike logic. Sometimes she was worse than Parker, so damn innocent in her offbeat honesty that she just couldn't conceive of evil. Was it any wonder he went nuts trying to protect her...?

"Of course it matters! What's he going to do if he's sending you all these 'warnings' and you ignore him?! Huh?"

Bones kept looking at Booth, a slow squall sweeping into her stormy eyes as the inherent danger of her situation must have finally registered. Fear spliced with pain but she quickly blotted both out with a jerking nod of the head. "You're right."

A step backward.

No, a step backwards that turned into a slip and fall down a scree-covered slope. Booth suddenly sensed them both scrabbling for purchase on a hillside that wanted nothing more than to hurl them both to the bottom, separate and broken. She was sliding away from him.

...Secretly biting destroyer...

The venom was coming out of her damn cell phone. Secretly biting her and filling her with poison all morning long.

"I'm sorry."

"Bones."

"My behavior has been imprudent." And she was frozen over again, just that fast. All the puddles frosted over, her eyes turned to chipped ice. Turning, she vanished back into the Bone Room, leaving Booth to stare after her with more worry now than he'd felt five minutes ago.

~Q~

By the time he got into the office, his own where cops and guts reigned supreme, he was feeling far more focused on the gumshoe side of things. Profiles, phone calls and people, prisoners and police precincts, these were things he could handle. Maybe in like five minutes, when he'd had a chance to catch his breath along with a cup of coffee.

But that, of course, was not meant to be. Charlie Burns caught him just outside the elevator, prompting Booth to suspect he'd staked out the hallway. "Hey, boss. You know, I got to thinking..."

Never a good omen.

"I'm not going to like this, am I." Not bothering to slow down, Booth glanced sideways at his sidekick as Charlie trotted along beside him.

"There was a necklace left in Doctor Brennan's apartment, right?"

"Right." Three steps from the break room now, where rotgut coffee guaranteed to strip the white right off your teeth awaited. FBI brew was just as delightfully bad as military brew, and that was just how he liked it. Today it was just how he needed it and he was going to take a fortifying slug or two before taking on one more aggravation today.

"Well, I was wondering if it came from Mia Gemma."

Three steps, two steps ... so close and yet so far. Booth stopped walking, forcing Charlie to halt and spin because... "The store Hector Sandoval's credit card was used."

It just went to show how distracted Booth was, not to have thought of this himself about twelve hours earlier. Seeing the disgust warp Booth's mouth into a grimace, his right hand man offered conciliation on the spot. "You got busy on the body call yesterday and I ran out of sacked security guards to shake down. (He checked out, by the way — moved to San Antonio six months ago.) So... I researched the rest of the fraud complaint. The purchase that tipped Chase's fraud unit was a two thousand dollar artisan necklace."

A one-of-a-kind necklace bought with the same stolen card as the flowers, and it came from a shop less than three blocks away... Not a coincidence. There are no coincidences in murder, but did that rule hold true for stalkers?

"So," Charlie concluded, "I was going to ask you if you want me to go over there and check it out."

There was a torture device buzzing in his pocket with yet another text message from the stalker to Bones. Glaring down at the file he was holding, (Angela's work on both the lovelorn letter-writer and the reconstituted child), Booth's conscience went to war with itself. Take care of a battered baby by checking out missing child reports, schools, canvassing the neighborhood; take care of Temperance by checking out a fraud prisoner, or a bank fraud that might be linked to the unwanted gifts coming her way. Either way, Charlie needed an answer. "No."

"Half an hour, tops."

Booth glanced longingly at the less than shiny coffee urn beckoning him to a moment of caffeine communion that wasn't meant to be. Resigning himself to forbearance now that he had so many leads to follow, he redirected both himself and his assistant. "I'll talk to Mia Gemma. I need you to help with this instead."

Of the two files currently occupying Booth's left hand, the one on top waggled for attention. The little boy needed a name: unless they could figure out who he was, justice would not be done. And unless he could corral the work of a dozen agents it would take an eternity because it was starting to look like a door-to-door campaign.

"Bones finished the biological profile and Angela got a face. We're looking for a five to seven year old boy who looked like this." The reconstruction and photos of the little Spider Man shoes (cleaned up) exchanged hands, along with Hodgins's preliminary timeline. "Get in touch with the local police departments to see if there's a missing kid case from one to two years ago, where maybe they got a strange vibe. 'Cause he's not turning up in the national registries but kids don't just vanish without someone noticing, all right?"

Taking the photo and glancing over it thoughtfully, Charlie nodded. "Cute kid."

"Yeah. You know what, check the schools, too."

Aghast, the junior agent sputtered out a key fact he was certain Booth had overlooked. "Do you have any idea how many elementary schools there are in the District?"

"Start with the neighborhood," Booth admonished. "Most murdered kids under age ten turn up within ten miles of their home, but in cases involving domestic battery, 75% are disposed of within 100 yards of where they lived. Start with the local schools and work your way outwards."

"The kid was beaten. Doctor Brennan reports signs of malnourishment. Who says he even went to school?"

"What? Where does it say that?" Booth stepped forward, glaring down at the first page on the biological profile where Bones had documented markers denoting an inadequate diet that she attributed to poverty. Not sure how that made him feel (that the kid went hungry, that she'd failed to mention it, that he'd missed this, too), the besieged senior agent shook his head and turned it all over to a man better able to focus.

"This kid deserves one hundred percent of somebody's attention. Okay? If you can't get a name from the local police or school, the next step will be going door-to-door. I've got too much distracting me right now so please, take point on this kid."

Muttering an apology, Charlie took himself off with the precious profile, promising he'd get the search party arranged within the hour.

As soon as he was gone Booth snagged himself a gloppy cup of hours-old rotgut, smiling with semi-satisfaction as he dumped sugar and creamer, stirred it and watched the oily brown swirl. Taking a sip of sticky sweet covering the bitter, he nodded and retreated to his office. The prisoner's file dropped onto the inbox pile, suddenly a much lower priority now that he had a local lead and the phone banging against his hip with every step. Her phone, still spitting out venom every few minutes.

The calls to Cronin (in threat assessment) and Pollard (at Quantico) were undertaken as a three-way to save time and ensure everyone heard what everyone else had to say. Cronin and Pollard squabbled over imminent risk for a few minutes while Booth listened, head in hand and partially consumed coffee cooling under his nose. He breathed the scent in, wishing he could rewind the morning and be having breakfast with Bones again. Pollard was familiar with the old poetic fable that had bombarded her, used it to argue with Cronin as evidence that the risk was still moderate.

"He's already made contact," Cronin refuted, that graveled and cynical voice no less grating when it was on Booth's side. "He's approached her home and car. She needs a security detail."

"Your suspicion that he's trying to take over her security is what I'm getting at here," Pollard insisted. "This guy thinks someone she's spending time with is a threat to her."

"Agent Booth."

This was Cronin, only Booth had faded out and wasn't sure if he was being named or called to order. Bones herself had implied the same thing less than an hour ago.

Pushing the coffee away so he could straighten up and face the music, Booth glanced towards his closed door. "Look, there's something I gotta tell you guys."

His heart was thundering now, the phone slippery in his cold and sweaty hand and he felt that same body-jolting terror of a man who's just discovered the bulls-eye on his back. "Bones and I..."

The two squabbling agents fell silent for half a second but it was Cronin who broke in. "We already know, Booth."

"Know what?"

"That you're in love with her."

Swallowing, still breathing shallow, Booth closed his eyes. "She's in love with me, too. We kissed yesterday."

"Where?" Cronin, sharp as a rapier.

"The Royal Diner." In public. "And at a crime scene, right before we drove down to Quantico yesterday." (And last night and this morning we almost made love, I mean I wanted to and the only reason I didn't was because I really want to make love and he's watching...)

"Booth, for God's sake I told you not to do anything that would cause him to escalate!" Cronin was furious now, slamming something down on his desk.

As for Pollard, the only sound on his end was frantic typing. "Document every incident of intimacy between you and Doctor Brennan, including time, location and any witnesses present."

Flushing, Booth mustered a quick defense. "We didn't ... we just kissed, that's all."

"Look, I can't work up an accurate profile if I don't have all the information you've got. You can't hold back on me, Booth. I'm gonna need to talk to Doctor Brennan again, too."

"She's getting spooked," Booth agreed, knowing it probably wasn't enough to make her embrace psychology. "But she's not going to go along with any of this willingly."

Not for nothing was Cronin the lead in protective intelligence, he spotted the pattern immediately. "Twice yesterday you kissed your partner and then requested additional security for her immediately afterwards. Guilty conscience, Booth?"

"What?" Bristling, Booth leaped to his feet heedless of the zero-impact the gesture would have on Cronin, since it couldn't be seen. "Are you implying that I'm the one stalking her?!"

"He does fit the profile," Pollard added, far too thoughtfully. Booth's guts heaved.

"It's not me!"

Leo Cronin might possibly be the most disagreeable man in the Bureau, and the way he snarled into the phone offered no comfort to the protector now being accused of harming the one he loved the most. "You're the one putting her at risk. I don't give a damn about your feelings, Agent Booth. Doctor Brennan's safety is my only concern. Stay away from her."

"I can't." I can't. God, there's too much riding on this.

"Booth—"

"No you don't get it," Booth hissed, glancing guiltily out his glassy wall into the bull pen. "She doesn't trust people because she's been abandoned too many times, but she trusts me. I promised her I'd find a way for us to be together. If I leave her...? If I lose her trust, it's over. Pollard, you've read her file, right? You know what I'm talking about."

The most painful kind of silence pulled between them all. Booth breathing fast, trying to beat down panic at the thought of hurting Bones; Cronin plotting how he was going to protect a client who wouldn't cooperate; and Pollard, putting all the pieces together until they formed a nauseating possibility.

"What if he's banking on this...?"

~Q~

Scientific Note: Sometimes I read something somewhere and a fragment of it pops up years later at the most unexpected time. Such was the case when running a conversation between FBI Agents, where Booth chimed in with a statistic about missing children who later turn up murdered by family being found close to home most of the time. (In deaths that were caused by parental abuse, 73% of the grade-school aged children were found within 100 yards of their homes.) The idea came out of nowhere and yet it seemed ... correct. How would Booth know such a thing? (How would I...?)

It turns out my state cooperated with the FBI in a joint statistical analysis of child murders that was intended to help police conduct effective investigations into missing child cases.

1) Brown, Katherine M, Robert Keppel, Joseph Weis, and Marvin Skeen. Case Management for Missing Children Homicide Investigation, 2006. Rob McKenna, Attorney General of Washington and United States Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

2) Hanfland, K., R Keppel and J Weis. Case Management for Missing Children Homicide Investigation: Executive Summary, 1997. Christine O. Gregorie, Attorney General of Washington and United States Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs, pp. ii, 5-92.
www dot ncjrs dot gov / pdffiles1 / pr / 201316 dot pdf

3) Morton, Robert J and Wayne D Lord. "Detection and Recovery of Abducted and Murdered Children: Behavioral and Taphonomic Influences." Chapter 8, contained within Advances in Forensic Taphonomy: Method, Theory and Archaeological Perspective, Haglund, William D and Marcella H Sorg, editors. CRC Press, 2002, pg 151-171.

PS: All mistakes are mine.