Troubling Thoughts

The apartment could barely contain his emotion.

Arastoo had cooked an Iranian dish for her—kubu sazi with juleh kabab on a bed of shirin polow. The aromas had met her at the door as had Arastoo in apron and with a single rose in hand. Under candlelight she had tasted a bit of his childhood in Iran, a melding of flavors that spoke of an exotic world spiced by history.

Dessert had been lighter—wine and a saffron ice cream that simply tasted far too good that she'd given into seconds before retiring to the couch and watching Arastoo tidy up the kitchen.

"I cheated on the akbar mashti," he confessed as he brought her another glass of wine. "I got the ice cream at a little shop down on Wisconsin."

Then came the phone call.

Dr. Brennan's voice on the other line held no recriminations, but her conscience was calling her on her own mistake. She listened and added all the evidence together, the facts piling up in favor of Brennan's conclusion. The most damning, of course, for Arastoo, at least, was the bone anomaly, something he shouldn't have missed, but had.

"Damn it!"

Arastoo wouldn't look at her. His eyes darted around the room, unseeing, except for his failure.

"I made a mistake, too. I didn't read the elevated . . . ."

But her own admission didn't erase his oversight, just gave him company in overlooking indicators that might have found a different cause of death.

He held up his hand, the bottle of wine forgotten in the other. "I thank you for trying to make me feel better, but the truth of the matter is that I should have seen a mark made by a hypodermic needle on the bone. It feels like a rookie mistake."

He stood stewing, the romantic dinner fading away. "I know this sounds selfish. . . ," he started, then waved off that thought. "Just forget it. I should probably go back to the lab."

"No. Don't."

"You can't expect me to enjoy the rest of the evening," he began again, then stopped. He cursed in his native tongue, at least, she thought it was a curse word, his bruised pride demanding some relief. Arastoo sighed. "I was so pumped because I had the preliminary outline for my dissertation, my research was lining up and I had pulled some of the cases from the lab and. . . ."

The words settled between them and she wondered if he realized how he sounded.

"We thought we had cause of death. . . ."

"We wanted suicide to be cause of death."

"But it happens that people make mistakes. . . ."

"I can't afford to make a mistake like that."

"What's important is that we have cause of death."

"It's important that I'm perfect."

The rat-a-tat of their conversation ended abruptly as she realized they just weren't talking about the same thing.

He sighed again, shaking his head. "I have to go in there tomorrow and try to sell Dr. Brennan on my dissertation. . . ."

"I thought she already approved it."

"She did," he admitted. "She's put me in contact with people at State, an international policy group, the human rights. . . ."

She listened as he listed all the groups he'd already contacted and wondered how they had strayed so far from the real issue.

"Those don't sound like they have to do with the science," she interrupted. "You're looking at how science can help identify victims."

"Some do," he explained. "I now have access to information I wouldn't normally be able to access." He seemed to be pleading with her to understand his point of view. "The issue is that she expects me to be very thorough and if I can't be perfect on the remains, then it follows that I'm not being as thorough on my dissertaion."

Those words lingered in the air between them and Cam thought about other times in which she had to straddle the lines between lover and boss, between interns and Dr. Brennan. There was another line, too, she had grown to understand in the relationship between Dr. Brennan and her interns. "Are these your expectations or Dr. Brennan's?"

"Both." Howard Kessler's remains seemed to have become a footnote. "This dissertation has the potential to have a huge impact on international policy, to help curb human trafficking or at the very least, turn up the heat on the flesh peddlers and slavers because we'll have a forensic basis for identifying those people who have suffered such indignities."

It was noble and terribly ambitious. . . and far removed from the real issue.

"Agent Booth is investigating a murder now," she said. "He's lost several days because of our mistakes."

This kind of ownership never felt good, but ultimately it was her responsibility.

"Yes, of course." Arastoo looked almost startled by her statement. He breathed in through his mouth, then started again. "Dr. Brennan and Agent Booth have had such a rough go of it and I wanted to show her that I could do the work. She put it on me to find cause of death and all I did was rubber stamp the obvious."

That was the thing, wasn't it? she thought. They'd all been focused on helping and they had all missed something that told a far different tale. She'd checked and double checked the toxicology reports and when nothing in and of itself had signaled a problem, she had signed off on the case.

But when she took everything into account, it all made sense.

"Dr. Brennan's already at home, Arastoo," she said. It sounded lame, but she really didn't want to lose him to the lab for the evening, even though she had already lost him in a way. "She and Dr. Hodgins have already determined that the killer probably used a local toxin or paralytic to. . . ."

She kept talking even though Arastoo had stopped listening. He'd already given into the troubling thoughts and she doubted either one of them could entirely erase them.

oOo

Silence screamed loudest that night.

It filled the rooms and the space between them and although she knew it was not rational, it seemed to be true just the same.

The phone calls to Max started at the lab, but even a call to Russ to bypass caller ID and get past her father's defenses had only added to the growing number of messages in voicemail. Interspersed were calls to the Hoover to help ID the mountain man they'd met in West Virginia, calls from the U.S. Marshals and the sheriff's office in Burning Cabin looking for updates.

And the silence. That damned silence.

Each time she asked a question, made an observation, suggested something, Booth's answers remained small slices of the longer conversation they needed. Over ten years of knowing Booth, of observing him, cataloging his actions and reactions all gave her an almost encyclopedic understanding of the man who shared her life, but this Booth required fresh pages.

She understood, but didn't understand.

Sweets had offered to talk with her about Booth's return, and now, weeks later, she considered it. Booth prowled the house like something caged, but she wondered if he were only imprisoned by those troubling thoughts that too often chased him from bed and shadowed his days.

That night, she went through the motions with Christine, tried to make things as normal as possible—something she had learned both on the run and in a summer without Booth—and now she simply wanted to ignore the silences and concentrate on her daughter.

Bath time, then bed, then a book for herself. . . but Christine was resisting the schedule. She gave her daughter the time to play with the assortment of toys that her father had acquired for her—the rubber ducky especially getting a workout as it bobbed and floated and was pulled underwater only to shoot back up to the surface. She explained the science of it, the factors involved in buoyancy and she watched as Christine tested a few other toys by drawing them underwater and watching them re-surface as she let them go.

But her mind was elsewhere, trying to read the sounds of the house as she tried to gauge Booth's movements. Restless, he had stayed in no one room more than a few minutes as he paced throughout the house, plying the phone to locate Max or demand more information from the agents at the FBI.

"Why are you sad, Mommy?"

She hadn't heard the question the first time Christine asked it, only hearing her daughter after the toddler placed a wet hand on her arm and tried to grab her attention. The wet spot felt cold against her skin.

"I'm. . . I'm just thinking."

"Why Daddy is mad?"

She was never good at lying, so she suggested that Christine was clean enough and her duck had provided enough science for the evening. She wrapped her daughter in a towel and dried her, then helped her into her pajamas before leading her to the bedroom.

One look down the hall told her that Booth continued to worry the floor.

Christine practically skipped into her bedroom. "Find a book to read and I'll be back to read to you," she offered before turning and heading down the hall.

Booth stood looking out through one of the windows, the darkness of the hallway providing a balance that allowed a clear look at the side yard illuminated by the neighbor's security lights.

At that moment she wished she knew how to reach Booth, how to find the old Booth who could divorce himself from work, who found joy in simple pleasures, but that man wasn't the same man in front of her. This man was edgy and angry, unable to sleep, unable to see the past the case.

"Maybe you should talk to Sweets," she suggested, then recoiled at Booth's expression.

"Why am I angry? Oh, maybe you should talk to Sweets." His voice had that cutting edge that she recognized as sarcasm "Maybe I should just talk to your father as a material witness, oh, but I can't because the old fox has found himself some hole to crawl into."

His tone only offered up danger, but she tried again anyway. "You should talk to Sweets?"

"Why? He have any information pertinent to the case?"

"No," she admitted, uncertain of how to reach him, "but you are letting them win."

Booth screwed up his face to toss another volley her way when she heard a cry. Turning, she saw that Christine had followed her into the hallway, a book under one arm, her stuffed monkey dragging behind on the floor. Tears washed her face. "Daddy and mommy are fighting."

A glance toward Booth told her just how much Christine's storm touched him and she bent down to comfort her. "It's all right, honey."

Their daughter cried against her shoulder, her body trembling. Brennan felt Booth's hand on her, felt his body's warmth wrapping her and Christine as he bent to join them on the floor. He kissed his daughter's hair. "We're just talking."

"Daddy's angry," she countered, her face drawn up threatening another eruption of tears.

"No, no," he said, trying to erase the evening. "I'm not angry at you." He drew them both into his arms. "I'm not angry at you, little one."

They sat in the hallway, holding each other, holding Christine, and waited for the storm to pass.