Author's Note: Well now, this chapter just didn't want to cooperate. Or rather, the subject of this chapter wouldn't cooperate in his own conviction, choosing instead to charm me into writing what you see below. That can't happen because he's the villain. He's a suspect! He's ... wait, he's not a monster?

Well, that's what he'd want you to think, isn't it.

Once he was able to present his perspective suddenly he didn't look quite so much like a slimy toad and who among us is ready to see him redeemed? Not me, that's for sure. But, logically speaking and given Brennan's past behavior, this is probably the way he would justify his actions. He's still unethical but no longer a complete string-of-expletives in my mind (and I'm not sure how I feel about that).

~Q~


Fan Mail - Intuition


~Q~

The trip to their car took far too long, hastened to less than ten minutes as his legs pumped and beside him even long-legged Temperance Brennan labored to keep up. Behind them two agents shadowed every step, one keeping watch over their rear flank and the other sweeping his cautious gaze from side to side. Booth kept one eye trained on the front.

It still didn't feel like enough.

Even supposedly safe inside his SUV, with the tails trailing behind, didn't feel secure enough. It was only after their cars slid into the sheltering shadows of the Metro Field Office's cavernous parking structure that Booth began to breathe easier. Choosing his usual assigned parking spot kept their behavior uncomfortably predictable, but the trade-off was being closer to the elevators. Sensing her attention, he chanced a glance his partner's way, meeting her piercing scrutiny with a lowered brow and slight shake of the head.

Whether or not she knew what it meant, she remained seated beside him until the other two agents appeared at her door.

There weren't nearly as many cars remaining now that most of the FBI's civilian support staff had left for home, and the wide-open feel of empty space set Booth's teeth on edge. Across the grey and growing void of a late afternoon parking garage, Mutt-n-Jeff tagged along behind, earning the epithet in Booth's mind not only because of their contrasting appearances (one was affably tall, while the other was tersely short), but because one of them actually bore the name ... Jeff.

Well, Jeffries. (Close enough.)

Doors sliding apart allowed them all to enter an elevator and Booth stabbed at the fourth floor while flicking another peek his partner's way. "I need to make a few phone calls. Do you want in on that?"

The doors clumped shut. A hum and a bump sent them on their way up.

Beside him, Brennan kept her eyes pinned on the row of numbers that had begun blinking, signalling their steady rise toward his office on the 4th floor. "No. I'll just set up in the conference room if that's acceptable." She patted the messenger bag slung over one shoulder, probably intending to spend the next hour catching up on emails and reports.

So he hit the button for floor 3 and speared the twin tails with an unspoken absolute. Follow her.

"You gonna transcribe your notes?"

"No." Startled, she tilted her head up. "My notes never leave the lab, you know that."

"Right." He'd forgotten.

"It would compromise the case," she added.

"I know. I'm just not thinking clearly right now." He wasn't. Booth was a jittery ball of energy, his fingers pilfering a pocket to grasp his sobriety coin while his thoughts skittered around priorities and irregularities that somehow needed to be sorted out. Mentally he was standing at one of those Irish crossroads where fifteen different signs pointed the bewildered traveler in fifteen different directions.

But for all the frazzling Booth was feeling, his partner seemed steeped in calm. It wasn't only unnerving ... it got his hackles up. Looking down at that smooth, icy wall he realized her defenses were elevated to the maximum and letting nothing through at all. When Bones went into iceberg mode there was no telling what she'd do, where she'd go, what danger she would crash herself into.

A soft 'bong' announced their ascension beyond the first floor and without even a stop for more passengers to delay them that meant they only had two floors left before she left his side.

"Bones." She glanced up, wary now that she'd picked up on his turbulence. "Do you have any idea who could be doing this?"

"You mean speculate." It was abrupt. Harsh. Defensive.

His gut clenched.

"Listen to me," he insisted, casting a nervous glance at the climbing numbers that would soon signal a door closing on this conversation. Booth sped up his words, the rate tripling as he tried to explain the mechanics of intuition. "It won't be rational, okay? The gut feeling, it's just gonna be this idea, all right? You won't have any reason for it and in fact there might be a lot of logical reasons why it doesn't make sense. But there's that moment when the idea is just there. You probably discounted it right away. But it occurred to you. Right?"

Another 'bong.' Her eyes avoided his but she was shaking her head.

"You've been thinking it all day," he pressed. "It keeps coming back to you."

Stunned, perhaps, by his accuracy, her silver gaze flashed to his but reflected back only the polished nickel of the elevator doors.

"Who is it," he prompted. "Who are you thinking of?"

Her gaze flew backwards to the twin agents and that's how Booth knew she had a name in mind. Someone she cared about enough not to want to implicate on an irrational 'gut feeling.' "There's not enough evidence, Booth. I don't work that way."

"Bones, please."

The last 'bong' cut him off and she looked far more disturbed than she had just moments ago. "I will consider what you said."

And then the doors slid apart, allowing her to escape. As the two agents tailed her, Booth grabbed Jeffries' sleeve and insisted. "If she wants to use the rest room you send a female agent in with her. She doesn't go anywhere alone. Got it?"

"This isn't our first rodeo," Agent Jeffries growled, jerking his jacket free. "Nothing's gonna happen in here, anyway."

"She's unpredictable," Booth warned. "Don't let your guard down."

So it should come as no surprise that she stuck true to form and unpredictably turned up in his office an hour later. While Booth was still writing up his notes from the latest unproductive session with Pollard and Cronin, Bones breezed in, pointedly stating the conversation she was about to commence was private before shutting the door in her escorts' noses. Then she was crossing the room, leaning down over his desk and engaging Booth as if preparing for some sort of battle.

"Michael."

"What?" The name tickled as familiar and one he himself had discounted fairly early on. "Stires?"

Her old anthropology professor and possibly one of the most unethical men he'd ever met, at least in terms of how the 'doctor' conducted his personal affairs. Sleeping with students, rekindling old flames for the purpose of spying, then knocking his own protégé down before the altar of miscarried justice, just so he could use her as a stepping stool. Calling the guy slimy was an insult to slime as far as Booth was concerned.

"He's been calling."

Surprised, Booth set down the pen he'd been holding and considered reasons why she might suddenly decide to divulge this information. "Have you spoken with him?"

"No." Straight back up she stood as if already having second thoughts. Then she was stepping away, arms crossing into an immediate buffer between him and whatever else she was about to say. "He knew I wanted to go to Egypt. It's why we ended our personal relationship."

Booth stood, too, not certain if it was instinct or residual anger towards Stires that made him mirror her movements. This was it, the subject she'd not-so-adroitly avoided talking about during breakfast. Mindful of how hard this probably was for her to articulate, however, he kept his arms loose and stepped around the barrier of his desk. A quick glimpse of the Mutt-n-Jeff duo assured Booth their backs were turned so he went back to his partner and tried to sort out why anyone would fight over a flight to Egypt.

"Did he want to go somewhere else?"

"No." As a rule, Bones didn't pace or betray the more typical habits of nervous people and now was no exception. She remained still as stone, introspective and yet speaking slowly as if just now coming to some sort of understanding. "We kept our financial affairs separate so I felt that he had no input in how I chose to earn or spend my own money. He thought the trip was wasteful, that it was an irrational impulse on my part."

Though Booth had harbored similar thoughts this morning upon hearing about this trip she'd taken so soon after grad school, he was surprised to hear the slug Stires would have taken such a strong stand over it. Enough to start a fight. "Why?"

"Stanford had offered me a faculty position, one that would lead to tenure, but the acceptance of which precluded me taking my planned excursion. When I explained that I had declined Stanford in favor of the trip, Michael said... Well, he said something about me having 'Daddy issues.'"

There was that unsettled feeling again, clutching hard enough to make him swallow hard. This was the key, he knew it. Booth just didn't know where it fit. "Why do you think he would say that?"

"Because. I told him..." Whatever it was, she hesitated again, as if fearful of repeating history.

Told him? Told him what...?

Booth found himself holding his breath, watching trust battle caution and the seconds ticked slowly by. He could see the shields she hid behind wavering while she calculated the risk of repeating past mistakes versus the risk of keeping quiet any longer. If intuition was clawing its way up the back of his throat so viciously, he wondered what might be going on inside of her that would make her hesitate so much. Was it intuition moving her to speak? ... Or was it pressing her to keep quiet.

Finally her arms fell, leaving her looking very much like a lost little girl who couldn't quite figure out how she'd ended up that way. "My mom and dad had these old VCR cassettes. Before they disappeared, on Friday nights we'd all watch classic films together. Mostly they were films from the silent era, like Clara Bow and Lon Chaney, but of the more modern ones, The Mummy was my favorite. I watched it over and over when I was a little girl. I wanted to be an archaeologist. My dad promised me one day he'd ... he'd take me to Egypt."

"Bones..." He couldn't help responding to the bleak and factual implication that once upon a time she'd had someone who understood her and made promises that never came to pass. That fifteen years ago she'd lost not just parents but any sense of permanence. And five months ago, she'd lost even more.

Bands of sorrow tightened over his heart, his throat, and even his arms that didn't seem to know how to reach for her. She didn't want to be touched, however. He could see it in the way she blanched at his effort to even say her name. Perhaps it was the sympathy that made her recoil, drawing a defensive breath as she fell back a pace and he had to let her do that. Distance herself.

"Michael brought it up when I mentioned I'd reserved tickets."

"Oh." He didn't know what else to say, the turmoil of her confession (if you could call it that) hitting him with unexpected intensity. Booth drew a shuddering breath, trying to quell the potent combination of love and pain infusing him when he heard something so profoundly personal being used against her in yet another argument. Just like last year.

Stires... Rage wanted to rise but she spoke again, her words splashing cold water over the hot coals and Booth found himself steeped in ideas neither of them liked.

"Why would my dad have anything to do with it when I was the one going. This is why I hate psychology."

The idea that psychology wasn't always wrong, for example. Nor, perhaps, a man Booth was all too happy to keep on hating. Stires was still a slug but he might have had a point.

Gently, Booth nudged. "Don't you think some part of you wanted to go as a way to honor your relationship with your father?"

Stiffening, awash in an abrupt surge of confusion as the ancient argument unspooled again in this unexpected setting. Given all she knew about her father now, Bones seemed to flounder for a moment but then quickly regained her footing. Facts, ever her solid ground, provided a steady foundation despite the emotional tides battering what was left of a happy childhood. "No. My undergraduate degree was in bioarchaeology. Egypt is one of the oldest civilizations and ritual mummification is a fascinating process with implications for archaeology and forensic anthropology, especially practitioners who anticipate working in a desert environment. It was relatively inexpensive; it was easier to obtain a visa."

And while that was mostly the same series of lovely rationalizations he'd already heard this morning, Booth couldn't help recalling that moments ago she'd admitted the heart of the conflict might have been something else entirely. "But you gave up a great teaching option. You could have postponed the trip—"

"I didn't want the job at Stanford."

Booth blinked, startled at her quick dismissal of what anyone else would consider an Ivy League level of opportunity. All he could think to say was, "Oh."

"My application there was Micheal's idea." Cutting a quick glance at him, Brennan turned just as quickly away and rolled her lips inward. She shook her head, crossed her arms right back into the barrier she'd just let down so briefly. "He was adamant that I find a position within a top tier school, that if I accepted anything less than a track to tenured professorship I'd be wasting my talent."

Suddenly the 'daddy issues' charge was carrying a little more weight. Leaving aside the creep-factor of Stires playing 'father figure' to the student he was having sex with, her rejection of his efforts to direct her career did smack of adolescent acting out in some ways. "So this trip to Egypt was what, some sort of delayed teenaged rebellion?"

Her eyes going flat, Brennan turned towards the door. "Don't read into my decisions intentions that aren't there. I didn't want to work at Stanford; I wanted to see Thebes. That's all."

Then she was out the door, leaving Booth to wonder if she was angry or just ... done talking. Sometimes with Bones it was hard to tell.

~Q~

After she'd gone Booth blew out another pent-up breath and shook his fingers that had begun tingling during that tense confrontation.

Never ignore intuition.

A few strategic phone calls tracked Stires to his current post, a professorship just a few miles away at George Washington University. It was too late for office hours but an attempt to leave a message connected Booth to a breathy female voice. And while ordinarily that might have caught him off guard when he was expecting a machine to answer, this chance encounter with the current ingénue occupying his office told him more than he wanted to know about the man who'd mentored Bones. It seemed the seductive Stires liked them young and, from the sound of it, he liked to hear them speak. (Not that Booth could blame him on that count ... Bones pontificating on some esoteric topic ranked right up there with music and birdsong in terms of 'sounds that soothe Seeley Booth.')

So all right then, the guy liked smart, young, steamy-sounding students.

Refusing to speculate further on how much personal assistance the young lady might provide Stires, Booth introduced himself in an official capacity, capitalizing on his FBI credentials to impress the ingenuous gatekeeper. Though she played the part of innocent well, her flirtation wasn't fully veiled. Getting her full cooperation required a flirty tone of his own. Moments after fulfilling her promise of a quick patch-through to the lab, however, the sultry student aide vanished from Booth's thoughts because Stires answered promptly, already girded with caution.

"Agent Booth, it's been a while."

And what Booth heard was: why are you calling me...?

"Yeah, you know, I would have waited a lot longer" (like, 'til the end of never) "but it turns out I need your help."

"I ... thought you did your thing with Tempe."

"Oh I do. I do..." Booth trailed off, marshaling his questions into the best possible queue before starting down this treacherous path. Over the phone wasn't ideal and if the cloud of suspicion were darker he'd haul the guy in for formal questioning but... Despite Bones finally coming forward with this name, Booth wasn't convinced Stires was the stalker. Well educated male, yes; someone who knew her, yes. But anonymous? No. Stires liked attention.

And it was that gut feeling (that Stires was a wrong direction but Egypt and 'daddy issues' might not be) that had him risking an unofficial chat. "Look, um, we've got some guy that's making some unwanted contact with her and as part of the investigation we're checking into her past associations. It's just a formality to get you off the hook right away so we can focus our attention where it's more likely to hit pay-dirt. You understand?"

"So you're calling to clear me."

"Absolutely. That's why I'm calling."

Not quite. (Not that Stires needed to know that.)

But that's how you start, by lulling the subject into a false sense of safety. Just a formality. Just answer a couple of questions and you'll be on your way. The trick is, a sharp investigator never asks a question that he doesn't already know the answer to. "So, you been in contact with her lately?"

"Nope. Not since last year in court."

"Have you attempted to make contact?"

There was a pause, a telling one. "Yeah, I've tried."

"And...?"

"And what. She won't return my calls."

You stab her in the heart in front of twelve jurors and then wonder why she won't talk to you...? "Well, Bones, she tends to hold grudges." Booth forced out a false chuckle, hoping it would ring true over the phone line even though he was simultaneously imagining strangling the guy.

"I guess I knew that with the way she won't talk to her brother but this isn't the outcome I expected."

"Care to elaborate on that?"

Stires blew out a breath, huffed an abrupt laugh. "Tempe is rational. I mean, you know that by now, right? You work with her."

"Hm." It was a non-committal noise intended to keep the narrative going. He knew she wasn't half so rational as she pretended to be.

"Things that would upset most people, she doesn't blink an eye. She just doesn't care. When she's doing a job she puts her emotions aside and gets it done. Going into that courtroom I reminded her it was nothing personal; we're all going in there with an agenda and what we say on stage doesn't mean we believe it behind the scenes. Right? She's testified in cases before, she knows that."

"So from your point of view, it was just an act..."

"Yes! They pretty much gave me a script and told me to do whatever it takes to cast doubt in the jury's mind. I was working for the defense, Agent Booth. My job was to make sure you did your job right. That there was no question, no doubt in anyone's mind that you arrested the right people."

The very unpleasant sensation of seeing things from Stires' perspective tangled with remembering the aftermath and how Bones had shut down for weeks after that 'performance.' How could a man who claimed to know her not see the truth of her as well? "She doesn't 'act,' Doctor Stires. She tells the truth and expects others to do the same."

"I thought she understood how the justice system works! We're supposed to be impartial. Objective. We look at the facts, lay out all the possibilities and let the jury decide."

"You didn't once consider the possibility that she might take your words at face value?"

All he said was, "I didn't expect her to stop speaking to me again."

And that regret had an all-too-familiar ring to it. "Again?"

"When we ... uh ... separated the first time it wasn't on friendly terms."

"You argued." Knowing it already was one thing, being surprised that the other man would bring it up voluntarily and sound regretful was something else entirely. Booth wasn't prepared to feel any sympathy and found himself wishing it would go away.

"Yeah." Stires could be heard shifting, then a long pause. Booth filled the gap with his own recollections, the argument that split his budding partnership with her into a sock in the jaw and a silent wall that only time and determination could surmount. Before he had time to ask for it, Stires elaborated all on his own. "She was turning down the job of a lifetime to go sightseeing in Egypt. I pulled strings to get her that interview, I coached her through it, she aced it. And then when the offer came through...? She just threw it away."

"So much for gratitude," Booth nudged, wondering if Stires' stung pride played a greater role than his tone was letting on. But the commiserating nudge didn't budge him.

"Not that, just..." Another tired sigh. "Looking back, now? I guess I needed to let her make her own decisions even if I didn't think she was making the right choice. She was my best, my brightest student. I just wanted what was best for her."

And that's when the tone shifted, the blinders lifted, and there was no question about why she'd brought up Stires this afternoon. Even if she didn't understand yet, Booth did. Out of nowhere, a lump had formed in his throat, an actual wave of empathy carrying him towards a very intuitive conclusion. A very wrong, very Greek-myth-gone-horribly-wrong conclusion. "Like a father would."

"Maybe, yeah." The man sounded shaken, for while Booth had been prepared by everything happening of late Stires must have been blindsided by the realization when it came. "That argument is when I realized how messed up we were. That we needed to end things."

"So you left her."

"No! I wouldn't do that to her. She left me. It was the right thing, I let her go. I knew she was damaged but I swear to God I never meant to add to it."

No one could feign pain that well, not even a sociopath. Unable to believe he may have read the man so wrong (any man worth the word for 'adult male' had to know how wrong it was), Booth pressed for another answer. "If you knew that already then why did you do ... what you did?"

"I know I shouldn't have but she chose me. Tempe is beautiful, she's brilliant, she's confident to the point of arrogance. She didn't trade sex for grades if that's what you're worried about and I have never pushed myself onto a student. She's the one who came to me. I didn't think it was an abuse of power, I thought we were equals and Tempe ... she could have any man she wanted but she chose me. I took what she offered."

"You were her professor."

"And you're her partner. Are you telling me you'd turn her down if she chose you?" Stires laughed. Bitter, but also accusing. "You're already in love with her. That's why you're calling, isn't it?"

It wasn't, but by the time he hung up the phone Booth wondered why it kept taking him so long to see the obvious.

~Q~


Author's Note: So ... quite a few readers are dropping hints suggesting you're not reading this story for all the "intricate plots and the unique forensics." You're all just waiting for the page 187, aren't you! Yeah, I see you blushing beyond that screen, don't try and deny it.