That'll Be the Day, Buddy Holly and the Crickets

Once upon a time, if she really believed in the fairy tales she was once told, Temperance Brennan would never find her Prince Charming, never fall in love, never live happily ever after.

But Temperance Brennan was, at heart, a woman. And her heart, a strong, quite reliable muscle, had been metaphorically claimed by one tall, ruggedly hot FBI agent with broad shoulders and a crooked smile.

That much, to Angela, was obvious.

But even more obvious to her was just how smitten Temperance Brennan was with her Prince Charming.

The lines had been crossed, the evil interlopers all sent packing, and somehow it should all work out that after the childhoods both endured, after all the murderers they'd caught, after all the trauma they'd faced that some how, some way they would have their happily ever after.

But it just didn't work that way.

Instead of riding off into the sunset or—had she had any say in the matter—spending the last two days and nights in bed, the two had been holed up in Brennan's office pouring over records trying to untangle the mess of the fraud case which had crossed over into an equally messy multiple homicide case.

It just didn't seem fair.

Not by a damn sight.

Standing in the doorway of Brennan's office, Angela couldn't help but feel powerless to help them. She'd set the Angelatron into overdrive looking for links between various records—financial, phone and case files—but she had only narrowed the field to a slightly more than six dozen agents with connections to Mark Fletcher. Factor in Tracy Lord, Agent Layton and anything else they could think of and the number dropped to slightly fewer than three dozen.

It just didn't seem fair.

Then try to narrow that number down some more, or look for more than just a papery thin connection and. . . well, it was frustrating. Scratch that. It was damned frustrating.

"Bren?"

Her friend was alone in the office, open take-out containers covering one table while file folders littered another. The air exchange in the Jeffersonian was state-of-the-art, and the aroma of the spicy Thai food had long since dispersed. Yet, the air seemed stale, close. Brennan was bent over one file folder and barely acknowledged her as she strode toward the couch.

"Hey Sweetie, how about taking a break?"

She knew the mere suggestion usually had little effect on her friend. Brennan was stubborn—or if one wanted to be kind, focused—and obsessed—or in friend talk, passionate—about her work. These qualities usually brought results, but the only thing her work ethic had generated of late was eyestrain and a back shaped like a question mark.

"It's here, Angela. It's somewhere in here."

Angela smiled.

"Now you're sounding like Booth."

It was enough to straighten Brennan's back into something closer to an exclamation point.

"Speculative? Optimistic?"

"Versus rational and pragmatic?" Angela slid onto the couch next to Brennan and took in her pale features. The anthropologist had been at it for hours and looked worn from the effort. "Wouldn't a very rational person concede that the paper trail between suspects might not exist? Especially if these are law enforcement officers? They'd be smarter than to leave a trail."

Brennan had made the suggestion earlier, well, two days ago, and it had resulted in the partners bickering over the possibility in which Booth had taken the position that someone had to have made a mistake along the way and left something behind to implicate him.

"No bread crumbs?"

Brennan closed her eyes, shook her head and leaned back against the couch.

For her friend to let the allusion go with no comment worried Angela.

"My couch is available. Lock the door, turn off the lights and. . . ."

"Booth's in there taking a nap," Brennan interrupted.

"Exactly."

The thin line of her lips curled ever so slightly. Brennan's eyes fluttered open and there was just that hint of a moment when

Angela thought her friend might just do it, she might just give in and take her up on the suggestion.

"It might not seem like it, but it's fairly comfortable," Angela went on, "although Booth's taller and bigger than Jack."

And the window of possibilities closed. "Don't tell Booth that you and Hodgins use that couch," Brennan said as she stood up stiffly

"It'll give him performance anxiety?" Angela couldn't resist teasing.

"No," said Brennan. "It'll freak him out."

Angela couldn't help but laugh at that image—hunky Booth becoming manic about sharing the couch that she and Hodgins had shared and shared and shared.

"You still need a break, Bren."

Her friend sighed and nodded tiredly. "Fletcher lectured at Quantico about fraud surveillance techniques which increases our suspect pool by dozens not to mention the number of field agents he's come in contact with in various parts of the country. Our pool could be hundreds of people." Frustration edged her voice. "He's also got contacts with law enforcement in several cities he's worked in over the past ten years."

Two days of searching and they seemed to end up at the same starting point.

"Just walk away from this for a while, okay? You're spinning your wheels and getting no where fast."

The hint of understanding came a second slower than what she might expect and her friend nodded slowly. "You're right, Ange, I need to take a break from this."

The admission was, in itself, somewhat of a shock. Angela sat a little straighter on the couch and tried to decipher the change in her friend.

"I'm an excellent researcher," Brennan continued. "I see patterns in information, connections between facts. . . but I don't see a clear pattern in these facts that can connect Fletcher to Tracy Lord or to anyone else for that matter."

"Then maybe this is the wrong place to look," Angela offered.

Brennan looked back toward the coffee table that practically groaned under the weight of papers scattered over it. Angela had spent enough time around Brennan and Hodgins to know that their minds never really took a break. It was the curse of genius to always have that brain in gear, churning away. . . .

No, not a curse, Angela thought. Her own mind had been trained to look, to see possibilities in images, meaning in objects and even though she didn't fit the definition of genius as practiced by her friend or by her husband, she understood how her own experiences and her own education had shaped her thoughts and how she saw the world.

It was her own kind of genius to see the possibilities in each image.

"Sweetie, let's. . . ."

"The bones."

"What?"

Brennan had turned toward her desk and was sifting through the pile of file folders there until she located one and flipped it open. "Tracy Lord's bones showed a slight. . . . Wendell? Is Wendell here this week?"

"Showed a slight what?" Angela asked a retreating Brennan.

But that was the thing with geniuses, Angela thought as Brennan left the office in search of her intern. Their brains just moved too quickly to keep up with them.

oOo

"The FBI just sent over the medical examiner's report and you're right," Cam said as her high heels announced her entry into the bone room, "there's traces of that same drug in Fletcher's system as in Lord's."

The renewed interest in the bones had made them re-examine the toxicology report on what was left of Tracy Lord's flesh which had taken them back to Mark Fletcher whose own remains were only now just yielding up its secrets.

The thing about geniuses, Angela knew from experience, they had a way of finding answers.

"So is anybody going to tell me what it all means?"

While it was her question, all eyes were on Dr. Brennan.

"It'll give us another way to narrow down our search parameters," she said. "If I'm right."

Hodgins strode in as if on cue, and confirmed their new direction.

"You are right, Dr. B." He held a clipboard, but it was just for show. Genuises were like that. "That small groove on Tracy Lord's bone yielded up metal particulates. Particulates that are a match for the kind of stainless steel used in the manufacture of hypodermic needles. Surgical grade stainless steel."

"I should have caught that, Dr. Brennan," Wendell mumbled.

"Yes," Brennan said, her focus on the monitor to her right.

Okay, so geniuses could be a bit blunt, Angela thought.

"Our shooter used his left hand for the needle, to inject the. . . ," Angela paused.

Cam supplied the name of the drug.

". . .And probably used his right hand to hold the gun to shoot."

Cam let out a breath. "So we're looking for someone who is ambidextrous?"

"Perhaps," said Brennan, "and possibly someone with medical training. Our shooter more than likely knew where to inject the nerve agent to maximize its effects."

"He couldn't have just, I don't know, switched hands?" Angela cradled the remote in hand.

"The drug has a short window of effectiveness, a matter of seconds."

"Why even use it?"

"To ensure the kill," said Booth. "A clean kill."

They all looked toward him. He stood just inside the door, his approach unnoticed by them. He'd spent at least 4 hours on Angela's couch sleeping and while he looked a bit groggy still, a little like a kid just waking up, his mind was remarkably alert.

"So we're looking at what," said Hodgins, "Special Ops training? Black Ops?"

"No," said Booth. Angela couldn't help notice the exchange between the partners. "Special Ops are taught to kill with one quick snap of the neck, or slit to the throat. Someone needed that extra time to kill."

"Should we look into the suppliers of the drug?" Wendell was looking to make his own contribution. "Maybe they've got records of who purchased it."

That stopped them.

"That would be a great idea, my man," Hodgins supplied, "except it's easily derived from a common household plant."

Hodgins clapped Wendell on the back and grinned. "Better luck next time, buddy," he said before sweeping out of the room with clipboard in hand.

"Good work, Mr. Bray," Brennan offered.

"It wasn't good work, Dr. Brennan." Angela had started her own trek to her office on Cam's heels, but turned back as Wendell began his explanation. "I missed the significance of that groove in the bone."

"Yes, you did, as I stated earlier, Mr. Bray." Wendell looked like someone had just kicked his puppy.

"But so did I," she said finally. Wendell started to lose the wounded look. "When I pointed out the groove to you, you found a corresponding entry wound in the flesh on our second victim. And you found this in the photograph since we do not have access to the remains."

"That, Mr. Bray, constitutes good work."

"You could have found that entry point, Dr. Brennan," he protested. "That'll be the day when you miss something like that."

"But I did not," she said. "Along with your subsequent analysis of the angle of entry of the hypodermic needle and the comparison to the groove in our first victim, proved invaluable to Ms. Montenegro's recreation of both sets of attacks." She seemed to be studying him.

"What we do in the lab, Mr. Bray, is a team effort. When one team member falters or makes a mistake, it can affect everyone on the team. Conversely, when a team member provides a valuable clue, it can re-invigorate the investigation."

As if to punctuate her conclusion, Brennan snapped off her gloves and made her way from the bone room leaving him a bit stunned in her wake.

oOo

At times she felt like she was the fairy godmother, offering Cinderella trinkets to accessorize her love life, turning pumpkins into coaches and mice into horses to transport her lovely off to the ball.

While she dared hoped for the X-rated Disney version of happily ever after for herself and her friend, she knew all-too-well the Grimm's version of the tale.

The real world trumped the fictional world every time and could just about kill romance.

"You know, Brennan," she said, her hand on her hip, "even the Curies took time to celebrate the discovery of radium or neutronium or whatever it was."

But if they were anything like Booth and Brennan, they simply went back to work.

Which is why Madame Curie died of some kind of poisoning.

"You know that, Sweetie, don't you?"

Brennan gave her the look that told her she missed something. "Madame Curie died of aplastic anemia due to the effects of ionizing radiation." She continued to organize the file folders on her coffee table. "Bones don't give off. . . ."

"No, Brennan, I mean that you should take Booth home and forget about death and murders and this whole fraud business for the evening."

"Ange. . . ."

"When was the last time the two of you did the horizontal mambo?"

If the look on Brennan's face was any indication, it had been too long.

"It proves my point."

"It only proves that I don't know what you're talking about." She was on pause, one arm cradling a pile of folders. "If you are referring to sex with Booth. . . ."

"Oh, hey, hold on there. . . ."

The man in question held up both hands as if to stop the conversation. He'd donned his leather jacket and with his hair slightly mussed from sleeping, it gave him an incredibly sexy vibe that Angela never understood how Brennan could resist. He strode into Brennan's office, a look of alarm at what the two of them could be brewing.

"You don't need to be talking about that, here of all places."

She felt almost like giggling. The tall, strapping man wanted to quash any talk of sex. "So maybe the two of you should be doing it," she countered, "at one of your places rather than burning the midnight oil here."

The look exchanged between the two was anything but smoldering.

"All right," she said, throwing up her hands, giving in to two of the most stubborn people she knew, "I still think the two of you need a break."

She turned back toward Brennan who had placed the file folders into a cardboard box. "A break—as in take the night off, get naked, roll around in a pile of those folders rather than. . . ."

"This sounds interesting!"

Her own husband had just stepped into the middle of her recommendation. One glance toward Booth told the story: his discomfort level went even higher.

"Ange, I was just wondering if you were ready to go." She wanted to laugh as Jack turned toward Brennan then Booth and then back at her. "Home. No file folders. Maybe some rolling around. . . ."

"Could we just drop it?" Booth's voice cut off Hodgins.

Brennan, the perfect straight woman, gave away nothing.

"Promise me that you'll take the night off," Angela insisted. "Take your shoes off, turn off the murder machine and just enjoy one another's company."

She waited for Brennan to quibble about "the murder machine" but her friend said nothing, only looked to Booth who, somewhat exasperated, nodded slightly.

"Ange?" Jack stood expectantly by the door.

She wanted to say something more—hell, that's what fairy godmothers did, right? But neither of her friends were giving more than just an inch and she needed them to take a trip of a mile (or several) far, far away from the lab and work and death.

But Jack was waiting, her retreat from the harsh realities contained within the lab.

"Take the night off," she said again. "Promise me."

"It seems very important to you," Brennan said.

"And to you." She could see a thin crack in Brennan's resolve. "Both of you."

This time she caught the look in Brennan's glance toward Booth and knew she had won.

Or thought she had won.

"It makes no sense, Booth. Why would anyone with Special Ops training need to inject a nerve agent to paralyze their victim? They have more efficient ways of immobilizing someone before shooting them."

Booth shook his head and shrugged. "It doesn't make sense. All the main players are dead, half of their associates are dead or in custody." He exhaled heavily. "Let's face it, we might have already gotten. . . ."

But he couldn't finish his statement because Brennan was rooting around on the papers on her desk.

"What?"

"There's something we're missing, Booth."

"I told you that, Bones." He tilted his head. "Let's face it. We can't prove anything more than Lord is dead as is Fletcher. We don't have enough evidence to arrest anyone else which is probably a good thing. The federal prosecutor's office is cleared only because we don't have any evidence tying anyone to the crime. We're done here, Bones. It's one of those moments in which we're stumped."

Life does have its moments. Some are recorded in pixels or colored dyes or silver nitrates. Most become lost memories, shuffled into the back closets of one's mind and forgotten.

And a few—sometimes a special few—become the things we hold onto just to make it through the bad times.

Angela wanted to savor that moment—one of the few times she could see her friend rise to the idea that maybe, just maybe she didn't have all the answers.

And then he walked in.

"Dr. Brennan?"

Brennan's bag was in hand, but it was almost instantly forgotten.

"You were right about something being off about the bones." Wendell Bray offered a clipboard to Brennan.

Genuises took mere seconds to break connections and to make connections and it took mere milliseconds for happily ever after—or at least, a night away from the and dead bodies—to make a U turn.

"Booth? We made a mistake."

"In what?" Booth who had seemed just as happy to be fleeing the lab as Angela was, became sucked back into the enchanted kingdom of the dead.

"Tracy Lord grew up in Pittsburgh."

"So? We traced her to that area. She grew up there, moved away, changed her name and Mark Fletcher probably killed her or had her killed."

"No. The isotope analysis places the victim in Wisconsin, the Madison area."

Even Angela, veteran of so many a-ha moments in the lab, even she knew the significance of Brennan's find.

"We misidentified the victim," Brennan said. "That is not Tracy Lord."

Booth leaned back against the edge of the couch. "So Tracy Lord is still out there someplace."

"She'd have every reason to immobilize her victims before she shot them," offered Wendell.

Booth placed his hand on Wendell's shoulder. "Tracy Lord could very well be our murderer."