Chapter 55: Spiral
Booth phoned the dispatcher as he sped through the night, not sure if he should be thankful or disturbed that the crime scene was only eight miles from his house. Bones' sports car made good time and it wasn't hard to spot the group of official vehicles that had assembled. A city cop waved him through the cordoned off alley at the flash of his badge and Booth was unsurprised to find that the FBI forensics team as well as a van from the Jeffersonian had beaten him here.
"Status?" he asked, shrugging on the flack jacket that was passed to him as he joined Perotta and Cam.
"Call came into D.C. HQ around five," Perotta filled him in. "My contact called me, I called Mitchell, Mitchell called you. My orders were to secure the scene and wait until you arrived for closer inspection, so we've been collecting periphery evidence but nothing in, around, or on the body."
"Same on my end," Cam spoke up. "I've got Hodgins here to help but we were waiting on you to begin preliminary inspection."
""I'm here, so go to it," he nodded, reigning in his frustration at the hours they'd already lost.
Much as he'd appreciated the vote of confidence, putting the whole investigation on hold until he arrived seemed more than a little extreme to him. "Mitchell said this is where Ange predicted the next dump would be?" Booth confirmed, turning back to Perotta.
"This block," the other agent nodded. "We have agents looking for missing girls in the corresponding location, but no one's turned up yet."
"They will," Sweets stepped into the conversation uninvited. "It fits the pattern."
"Aren't you up past your bed time, Sweets?" Booth raised an eyebrow, wondering who had let the kid come out and play.
"I thought that perhaps viewing the crime scene first-hand could lend insight as to why the killer has escalated all of a sudden," Sweets explained.
"Yeah, well, don't come crying to me if you have nightmares, okay?" he leveled a gaze at him.
"There must be a reason that a man who has exercised so much control and restraint to suddenly break out of his established time table and kill again," the psychologist ignored the jab.
Booth listened with half an ear as he began moving up the alley toward the body. He nodded a greeting to Hodgins who was collecting his own samples.
"Anything interesting?" he asked Cam.
"Actually-"
She never got any further than that because as Booth bent down for a closer look at what she was pointing at, something grazed the tips of his hair where his head had been and seconds later ricocheted off metal with a loud clang.
"Take cover," he barked.
For a split second, he thought about Perotta and Cam, but realized that they could handle themselves and grabbed Sweets by the scruff of the neck instead; flinging him behind the dumpster to his left before risking a glance to make sure Hodgins was following.
"Get in!" he shoved the entomologist to join Sweets, just as a large net dropped from up above.
Honed reflexes moved him out of the way just in time and he slammed into the brick wall, sliding in to join Hodgins and Sweets, and drawing his firearm in one swift move. A hailstorm of bullets rained down on the alley and Booth heard return shots being fired as well.
With his free hand he punched the speedial on his phone, "This is 22705 do not, I repeat do not send in backup! It's a trap!"
Realizing that he was talking to static and that the signal must've been jammed, he slammed the phone closed and focused back on the unfolding scene.
"AH!" Sweets' scream echoed shrilly off of the dumpster as a bouncing bullet made its way inside the makeshift barricade. Booth turned, swearing under his breath as he realized that he wasn't facing the gunman; Sweets was.
"Lemme through," he hissed to Hodgins, pressing the smaller man against the brick wall as he squeezed past.
Sweets, meanwhile, had started babbling on about the guy and his control issues again so Booth clapped a hand over the kid's mouth, all but picking him up and putting him behind where Hodgins had flattened himself against the wall.
"Head down. Mouth closed," Booth ordered Sweets before turning to Hodgins. "You figure out how we're gonna use what we've got to take this guy out."
"Where is he?" Hodgins was all business.
"Three meters up, at least four out," he craned his neck for the clearest vantage point. "I can't get a good enough shot without broadcasting our position."
"Supplies?"
"Whatever you've got on you and whatever's on the ground," Booth told him.
Muttering something about MacGyver, Hodgins started busying himself, leaving Booth free to try and figure out why the shooting pattern had changed all of a sudden.
"Booth-" Sweets' called timidly.
"Not now," he ground out.
"Yes, now!" the kid squeaked back, fear in his voice.
Booth turned once more, following Sweets' line of vision far up above their heads. The fire escape ladder creaked ominously as a series of well-aimed bullets began loosening it.
"Jack, I need something now!" he yelled.
"Working on it," the other man said distractedly, searching the alcove for something to use.
Without warning, Hodgins shot up, pushing past Booth to get a better look at the shooter. Bits of mortar peppered them as the seconds dragged out while he thought. Booth was about to question him again when the scientist gave a triumphant yelp.
"Booth, you got your lighter on you?" he asked, waving around his finds.
"Nice," Booth smirked at the cans of hairspray and began digging for his Zippo. "I'd use the one on the right."
"Okay…" Hodgins' eyebrow disappeared into his curly hair.
"Son of a barber," Booth reminded him, allowing himself a slight smile. "Jared and I used to set those things off all the time."
"Right," Hodgins wore a smirk of his own. "Lighter?"
Booth tossed it to him, watching as Hodgins fished around and jury-rigged a fairly decent launch pad, checking the angles as he went. Above them, the fire escape groaned and one hinge fell off.
"Cover your ears!" Hodgins warned, lighting the makeshift fuse.
With a shriek the can ignited; flying through the air and striking its intended target dead-on. From across the alley, the shooter yelled as the escape ladder he'd been standing on released, dumping him unceremoniously to the ground. Booth lost no time moving out from behind the dumpster, but found the alley floor littered with cargo nets, making it difficult for him to keep his footing. By the time he was free of them, the shooter was back on his feet and gone; swallowed by the dark, D.C. streets.
"Booth, Cam's hurt," were the three words that stopped Booth from plunging between the buildings himself after him. It was only when he swung back around toward Hodgins' voice that the state of things struck him.
Four of the seven-member tech team were staggering out from their hiding spots, tripping over the same heavy nets he had. Bullet-riddled walls surrounded them and they all shuddered as the fire escape above where Booth, Sweets, and Hodgins had been hiding finally crashed to the ground. Carefully, Booth picked his way over to a second set of dumpsters, where a small group huddled around Cam, who was conscious but grimacing in pain.
"Through and through," Perotta reported, holding Cam's arm fast to staunch the blood. "Got her just before we took cover."
Booth grabbed Sweets' suit jacket from his back, ripping out its lining to make a tourniquet.
"Pining for the old cop days, Camille?" he knelt beside her, securing the fabric tightly against her as Perotta moved out of the way.
He was relieved to see her weak grin as he propped her up against the dumpster.
"Is that jamming down yet?" he asked anyone listening.
Three cell phones flipped open and a chorus of "no" came back to him.
"I'll look for the transceiver," Hodgins volunteered, eager for something useful to do.
"Watch your step," Booth cautioned.
"Seeley," Cam's voice punched through her pain. "Techs in the cross-fire."
"I know," he grimaced, thinking of the three he hadn't accounted for, yet torn between his loyalty to his men and to one of his oldest friends.
"Go," she ordered. "I'll live."
He hated that she was right, but left Sweets to watch her either way. The other techs were already working to free their own, struggling under the nets' heavy weight. He and Perotta leant their strength, tipping the balance even as the city cops worked on moving the nets at the top of the alley.
One by one, the trapped men were freed and, to Booth's relief, found alive. Apparently, once they were down, the nets had acted as a shield and none of the bullet wounds had been fatal. By the time the last man was freed, backup had arrived and the new agents made quick work of clearing the remaining nets. The EMTs descended shortly thereafter.
"Sir, you're bleeding," one of the medics pointed to Booth's calf as he helped load Cam into the waiting ambulance.
Briefly he recalled one of the ricochets grazing him at one point and his back ribs were aching under the flack jacket from where it'd taken one as he'd shoved Hodgins in front of him, but it was nothing he needed to be dragged to the hospital for.
"Booth," Hodgins called, "you're gonna want to see this!"
"I'm good," Booth assured the medic.
He gave Cam's hand one last squeeze before hopping out of the ambulance and jogging back down the alley. Hodgins was standing in the narrow passageway where the shooter's ladder had dumped him, snapping pictures with the camera he'd brought for the original body.
"Couldn't find the transmitter, but he must've lost this in the dark," Hodgins observed, donning gloves and picking his find up so that Booth could see it.
Booth swore under his breath, whipping out his phone and then just as quickly putting it away.
"Sweets!" he bellowed at the kid, who was looking a little peaked, but uninjured. "You know how to find my house from here?"
"Yes," came the wary reply.
"I need you to get there as quickly as you can."
"Do I get to know why?" the shrink asked.
"That," Booth pointed to the gun in Hodgins' hand, "is a government-issue firearm, which means whoever was here is either FBI or CIA, and ten to one knows exactly where I live. You need to get there before he does and make sure Bones and the kids are safe, because I can't leave yet and because Bones is going to kill me if she finds out about this some other way."
He tossed Sweets the keys to Bones' car along with his ankle revolver just in case, showed him how to slip out without anyone else noticing, and sent him on his way; praying the entire time that he wasn't sending the kid into a second firefight.
