Hug
He looked like he was about to fall over and instinctively she braced him in a hug.
"Booth will find her," she said, the words as true as any she had spoken. "He will find her."
He pulled back from her, nodding, still a bit unsteady. "Here." She pulled a stool from the rubble in one corner and positioned it next to a table. "You should sit."
Reaching out, he guided himself gingerly to the seat then looked around. "This is a goldmine of. . . ," he rubbed his head, ". . . of something. If we had gloves and some evidence bags. . . ."
More than once in the years she'd worked at the Jefferson, she could reach into her jeans or into a coat pocket and find a stray glove that had found its way there during the day. Reaching into her pocket, all she could find was an orphaned roll of candy. "This will have to do."
"LifeSavers," he read as he reached for the roll. "That's appropriate."
She retrieved the roll from him, took a piece, then stowed the roll in her pocket. She looked around. The walls sagged, the rows of bricks swayed with age and the vagaries of the thaw-freeze cycle in the ground behind them. The floor, little more than compacted dirt, had been further tamped down by the presence of so many boots in the basement.
"Angela knows what to do," she said. "She's very strong."
Hodgins' head bent and she could hear him sigh. Then he looked up, his eyes moist. "She didn't want to worry you. Thought you and Booth would. . . ." He sighed again. "Do what you're doing right now."
"She's strong," she repeated. But she couldn't give any more reassurance than that.