Future
He had that mad scientist look that was, well, kind of adorable.
". . . Butler was a key player on the regulator's staff to recommend that Eisenschenck Construction be disqualified from bidding on the project. He discovered irregularities in their reports on the disposal of hazardous materials from the old shoe factory site in Raleigh, but when the bids were opened, Eisenschenck had the inside track because they were one of the lowest bids. And you want to know what I think happened?"
She did, but she didn't. They were supposed to be having a relaxing evening at home with Michael Vincent already out for the count because she had spent the afternoon at the park with him doing her best to give him fresh air, exercise and enough of both to help him get to sleep early.
Oh, she loved her son, she did. But she also loved some alone time with her husband.
And they were alone. . . with the ghosts of conspiracies past.
". . . Butler's son goes into a rehab facility just a week before the bids are scheduled to be opened." He was taking another breath, readying himself to launch into another tantalizing tidbit about the conspiracies swirling around them, but all she really wanted was to relax with a glass of wine and a little flirting with her husband. Where that took them, she was willing to go, but conspiracies were winning the war with Hodgins.
"We know the son went into rehab because his roommate at Rutgers. . . ."
It was all important. She knew that. Knew that the bad guys had been getting away with crap for far too long. Knew that her friends and her family had been targeted because they knew too much. . . or at the very least, thought they knew too much. She knew that Jack Hodgins was a passionate man who had a mind that could race into several different directions at the turn of a phrase.
"How does this tie in with Hoover?" she interrupted. "The head of the FBI Hoover, not the other Hoover."
All right, it wasn't exactly fair to test that mind with a name that could elicit a full hour of recitation and reprobation as well as other –tions because he was probably the most expert of the experts she knew on the former slimeball director of the FBI. Yes, it was good to show interest in her hubby's interests, but mostly she wanted to direct him back to something she wanted to talk about that, to her mind, was a bit more important than derailing the creepazoids who'd been creeping around for the past 20-some years playing moneyball with people's lives but only slightly less important than some quality time with her husband.
Yes. She was being a bit shallow.
"Edgar J. Hoover sowed the seed for this kind of conspiracy. Spy on your enemies and then use that information to force the to do your will." Hodgins was wound up, his enthusiasm almost contagious.
"Hoover used the bureau to gather information, tons of information, on everyone from Elvis to Kennedy. Everyone who was anyone. Truman," he was running through the whole history like a steam engine, "Truman recognized the man's position and power and he knew, he knew the potential for usurping the power structure of the United States government."
"Then Truman should have done something about Hoover."
"No, no, no, no," he said, not skipping a beat. "Truman only met once with Hoover during his presidency. He specifically told Brigadier General Harry Vaughn, Truman's liaison with the FBI, to tell them to stop their Gestapo tactics because he wasn't having anything to do with it. But Hoover couldn't be stopped. He knew what he had."
Hodgins was winding up, recounting the history of Hoover's underhanded dealings president by president and while she knew the lesson was important, she also knew that he would go on for hours if given the opportunity.
So she didn't. "Do you think Brennan looks tired?"
She'd inserted the question in at the right moment, when Hodgins was about to segue into another tirade about Hoover and his wiretapping, when her husband had taken a breath and was at the exact moment when she knew she could catch the attention of his brain.
"Wh-wh-what?" He looked a bit confused. "I'm mapping out the greatest threat to our government and you ask me. . . you ask me about Brennan?"
"She does look tired, doesn't she?"
It took careful maneuvering to distract him sometimes. There were the old stand-bys: nakedness which usually led to sex, and Michael Vincent, which invited talk about his future and theirs, and she could go the route of tapping into his other passions such as aliens or politics or anything to do with his work, but gossip about the people they worked with could sometimes do the trick as well.
"And she's lost some weight." She toyed with her glass. "I'm worried that things aren't going so well between her and Booth."
There, she'd said it, offered up the thing that had been bothering her for the last couple of days. Well, not bothering her as much as something that she wanted to talk about and hadn't been able to with Brennan who slammed shut any hope of personal talk by running between the lab and the war room in the catacombs of the Jeffersonian.
Hodgins shrugged. "I don't know, babe. They seemed to be working fine."
"Working well together isn't any indication that there isn't something wrong," she countered. "Especially with them. The king and queen of working well together even when one of them is dating someone else or having a nervous breakdown."
"You think one of them is having a nervous breakdown?"
She sighed. Sometimes explaining all of this was just a whole lot of work. Hodgins could usually be counted on to share her interest in gossip especially about their fiends, but the conspiracy conversation he'd been having—the one-sided conspiracy conversation—was occupying far too much of his brain power. "Forget it," she said, waving him off. "I'll talk to Cam on Monday."
She hadn't meant to, but suggesting that she'd rather gossip with Cam was a bit deflating to her husband and she immediately wanted to take it back. The sad look he gave her mirrored the same kind of look their son could give her to make her do a 180 and give in on everything from his choice of socks to his choice of snacks.
The apple didn't fall far and all that, she thought.
"Babe," she soothed, "it's just that I'm worried about Brennan. One summer on the run, another broken-hearted, and then another with Booth incarcerated. . . ."
"Booth's not himself," he admitted. "He swills coffee like it was air and he's not catching some of the more obvious things that are coming up in the files."
She knew Booth had been bent a bit by his time in jail, but he seemed far more broken than she had thought which meant that Brennan was struggling. "I should talk with Brennan," she said. "I helped them get married and I should help them stay married."
"No."
"No?"
"No."
"She's my friend." It was an excuse that could be just enough of an argument. Sometimes.
"She's been busy." Hodgins countered. "She hasn't asked for help."
The problem was that Brennan didn't often ask for help. Okay, just not often on personal matters.
She sighed. She didn't mean to, but it elicited a kiss on the cheek from Jack and a sympathetic look.
"They love each other," he offered. "It's what will keep them together and we really need the two of them together on this one."
"Brennan sometimes needs a friendly push in the right direction." It's what friends did for each other. "Booth's more of the immoveable force until Brennan works on him."
Jack's eyes, so incredibly blue, betrayed a hint of something more than just empathy for her concern.
"Ange," he said, his voice taking on that low, slow tone he sometimes took with Michael Vincent, "Brennan and Booth are fine."
That was a matter of opinion, but she was willing to concede the point for now. "Things aren't always what they appear to be, babe. You know that as well as I do."
A cliché, true. But they were also magic words because Hodgins got that manic gleam in his eyes, that a-ha-eureka-moment look that she'd seen often enough over the years.
And she got a kiss. Full, on-the-mouth, you-are-the-love-of-my-life kiss that made sitting through the conspiracy rehash worth it.
Almost.
"Angela, you are a genius!" Hodgins had that rabid look. "I should have seen it. I really should have seen it, but I was just so consumed with. . . . We're being lead to look into these. . . these. . . they are red herrings!"
"Red herrings?"
"Yes, Ange. We're meant to look into these old connections to keep us from looking into any new connections. We think we're solving the great conspiracy of the century—or last century—but, in fact, we're only doing clean-up on the mess left behind by that lawyer Cahill and his cronies. Kill off Kessler so we have to look deeper into his death and take our eye off of what is really going on."
That mad scientist gleam was kind of sexy, but Hodgin's attention wasn't where she wanted it.
"Babe, maybe we should just. . . ."
"Angela," he said, "it's at the tip of my. . . I think they're just giving us this stuff, letting us think that we've got something, but all of it leads back to the original Ghost Killer killings and Kessler and Cahill's doings. There are other people who are still running the show, trying to. . . ." He stopped, the gleam turning to fear. "Maybe Booth has a good reason for being paranoid."
Something about how he said that made her listen—really listen—to his latest conspiracy theory.
oOo
"So," he drawled, "you think we've got a future?"
He said it in that way he had, slightly teasing, his lips curling upward just a bit. His eyes remained level with hers and while she thought the tone was meant to be light, the question itself was very serious.
"Yes," she said without hesitation, "of course."
His head bobbed up and down, his eyes focused on her, his hand cupping and uncupping the beer bottle that had long been forgotten as he talked.
Her own tea had grown cold, but she sipped at it just the same.
Sweets had given her information to read, so it wasn't hard to listen as Booth explained how he was feeling, what he'd been thinking, why he'd been acting as he was. She'd done what the psychologist had suggested, simply listened without making judgments, making sure to maintain a focus on Booth.
But she hadn't really needed the psychologist's schooling.
"We're okay?"
His eyebrows raised, his chin down, she knew it was a question as much as a plea.
"We're okay," she repeated. "I love you."
It was meant to explain everything she had done, everything she had felt, everything she still felt.
It brought tears to Booth's eyes.
"I know you do," he murmured. "I love you, too."
She did not look away from the intensity of his gaze, but a trill of emotion caught in her chest as he bent to kiss her hand, then held onto it.
"Maybe we should put this case on hold for a while," he suggested. "Just until we get something more substantial, can really make some connections to people in the FBI or higher up the food chain. Maybe that would just be better, to get my feet back under me before we go digging more."
"No."
"No?"
"Yes. No."
Even if it meant a return of that Booth—and she wasn't entirely sure that Booth would disappear after all of this—she still understood the importance of pursuing the case. But some things still should change.
"You should go to church on Sunday with Christine."
It had been something stewing in her mind for some time, something she knew had disappeared as this new Booth had taken up residence again in her life.
"You don't even believe in God."
"But you do."
She could see the boiling under the surface, the old Booth warring with the new. "Even I acknowledge that positive beliefs, meditation and prayer can contribute to healing and a sense of well being, Booth. You have always seemed to gather comfort and strength from your beliefs and I do not understand why that wouldn't be true now."
He was working his jaw, working through his answer and she simply watched, knowing the physiological changes on the outside only mirrored the changes within.
"I'm a little angry with God right now, Bones."
"I don't understand how you can be angry with a mythological figure." She wasn't trying to amp up his anger, simply stating the facts as she knew them. "I don't understand how a belief system that is predicated on the idea that forgiveness. . . ."
"Forgiveness?" Booth's anger was bubbling over and his tone had taken on the acidic edge that had lead them to this evening.
"Yes, Booth, forgiveness. That is the tenet of your faith, the underlying principle of your mythology."
His stillness gave her hope.
"You can think of it as spending time with Christine if you'd like."
She waited. "She would benefit from singing, the recitation of poetry, being in a group setting. . . ."
He held up his hand. "Okay, Bones. Okay."
"And if you're having trouble sleeping, maybe you should masturbate. . . ."
"Whoa, what?"
"Well, I know that I always sleep better after an orgasm. Of course," she added, "I could help you with that."
It elicited a small upturn of his lips, a lean toward her that gave her a hint of his warm, beery breath. "I always sleep better when I know you are with me."
"Where else would I be, Booth?"
oOo
He certainly liked the idea of hiding in plain sight. A park where old and young alike tested their wits against others like them in a game that was anything but simple.
Chess.
Sicilian defense, the English gambit, the Reti opening—all designed to create an advantage.
He moved his knight to d6 and waited. The man moved his pawn.
"You should know better than to leave the pawn hanging," he offered as a bit of advice. Others around them were playing against the clock, testing their abilities, but this was more of a friendly game, a more relaxed contest than those where they battled their opponent and an arbitrary time limit.
He hated pushing at a clock.
"The king is always a liability," he was saying, "always to be protected, but he should lead the pawn, not the other way around."
His opponent was doing entirely too much thinking about the position of his pieces, then brought his queen out in a show of aggression before rubbing at his beard.
"No," he said, trying to maintain his strategy rather than make an equally dramatic move. "No. She is powerful, but she needs a minor piece to be most effective."
The grumbling on the other side of the board was accompanied by a retreat as he brought his rook up to harass the queen.
The long, low release of breath by the man opposite him was something of a sigh and a groan tangled together. He was finally seeing the attack and he'd laid himself open to it.
First the bishop, then a pawn, another, the rook, the knight, the queen in retreat—parry and thrust, parry and kill, parry and. . . .
The queen was sacrificing herself in a last ditch effort to ward off the end of the king, a lone pawn standing guard in an impotent effort to stave off the inevitable.
He took the queen and then shifted his weight on the stool. "You are essentially done." He pointed out the route of his defeat, moving the pieces on both sides of the board for emphasis. "I bring up my knight to block your escape, you make some half-assed attempt to hold me off, but in the end, my bishop comes up, the king hides behind the pawn, but all I have to do is bring in the bishop, take out the pawn and your king is exposed and finished."
The man across from him had never had a head for chess or for the movements of pieces on the board. His worth was in other things, moves that only he could accomplish. The beleaguered king was laid down in defeat.
"Was Cahill our sacrifice?"
The question was fair if not obvious. He shrugged. "He had reached his expiration date, so to speak. Far too greedy and impulsive. He can't embarrass this Booth so he decides to end him. Spectacularly." He shook his head as he began to set up the board for the next match. "Better the man is killed in the field and disposed of more naturally."
The sigh and nod offered all the agreement he needed. "We fed him some names. Got rid of loose ends."
"Pawns." He spun the board around so that the white pieces were in front of his companion. "You can play this game for days, weeks even." He smiled as the first pawn was moved and he considered the strategy. He truly enjoyed considering future moves.
"We've been playing for years. Far more years than this Booth."
