Luck

Three weeks in the pull began.

He tried to dismiss it as one would a scratchy throat, but it persisted, reminding him every chance it got. A conversation with Aubrey, or a promo for one of the dozen or so procedurals on TV and he was right back in it, right back where he'd promised Bones he would never be again.

But unlike a cold, he couldn't simply take two aspirin and drown himself in chicken soup.

Five weeks in he found his thoughts straying so much, he doubled up on Gambler's Anonymous meetings and hit the gym to exercise away the demons.

It did not work.

By the sixth week knowing morning devotions at a local church weren't helping, and the extra mile he put in his runs was only giving him more too much time to think, he started digging a vegetable garden in the backyard and building a fort for his children.

He still felt the pull.

So one night with sports highlights wrapped around Hank's late-night feeding, he logged onto the FBI server for a midnight snack to feed his own curiosity. He told himself he'd only gone in to check on the status of some old cases, to remind him of an upcoming court date, but he had gone there to find something to satisfy the hunger that was gnawing at him.

At first he found only a few tidbits, an unsolved case, a dollop of information about missing persons, an informant gone missing.

His gut growled to alert him that there might be something here, but as luck would have it, there was a different kind of pull at the doorway.

"Booth?"

He logged off the site and closed the laptop. Bones scooped up their son.

"Just had to check a score, Bones."