14 Hours Earlier
Booth had no idea where he was. It was dark and cold, but also eerily silent. He thought that he could feel something moving slowly around the lower half of his body, but, since he couldn't see anything, he couldn't be sure. Booth couldn't feel his leg anymore, but he could still feel his stomach burning where the knife had been stabbed into him. Blood was definitely leaking out from the wound, but it wasn't gushing, which came as a relief to Booth. Slowly, Booth reached his left hand out to the side of him, hoping to feel something that would help him determine his surroundings. As he moved his hand backwards, he felt something hard and curved.
"What the hell?" Booth muttered as he ran his hand along what he thought might be a wall. "Where am I?"
Booth frowned. He pulled his hand back and slowly moved his left leg forward. He jumped when he realised that he was standing in water.
"Ouch!" Booth cried as he landed badly on his injured right leg and stumbled backwards into the wall behind him.
Water sloshed around as Booth attempted to drag himself into a standing position against the wall. Booth felt his leg give out again, and he dropped down the wall into the water. He tried to keep his head above the water, but was unsuccessful and swallowed some. Pushing himself back up, Booth coughed and spluttered for a couple of minutes.
"Bones," Booth whispered. "Please find me."
13 Hours Earlier
"Dr Brennan!" Aubrey shouted as he ran into the lab. "We found him!"
Brennan looked up from where she was attempting to work on a body. "Booth?" she asked desperately.
"Yes. FBI agents are on the way now, but I thought it would be easier for him to see you in the crowd of faces. Are you coming?"
Brennan peeled off her gloves and rushed over to Aubrey. "Where are we going?"
"I'll tell you in the car. We need to go now, it's going to take us at least forty-five minutes to get there."
Aubrey didn't wait. He started running back to his car, knowing that Brennan was right behind him. He had no doubt that the information he had received from the BOLO he had issued that morning was correct. That was why he had sent agents out ahead of him. If the person that had called it in was correct, Booth wouldn't have much time before he passed out, maybe even died. Aubrey couldn't let that happen.
"Where are we going?" Brennan asked again once she and Aubrey were seated in his car.
"Germantown. Someone reported seeing a man matching Booth's description being dragged into a water farm, just behind the Bretton Woods Golf Course," answered Aubrey as he sped out of the Jeffersonian's carpark.
"Water farm?"
"It's basically a big piece of land holding hundreds of water tanks that feed the Germantown and Poolsville areas. The tanks can be filled with more than ten feet of water. Anyone that has to work on the tanks has to wear scuba masks and oxygen tanks."
"Booth is somewhere around them?"
"Probably inside one of them," said Aubrey, feeling guilty that he had to be the one to tell Brennan this.
"Inside?!"
"We don't know how full the tanks are. There hasn't been much rain lately..."
"But he still could be drowning?! Aubrey, we need to save him!"
"We will. The agents that get there before us will search the farm and hopefully locate Booth so we can just go straight there. An ambulance will be en route as well so we can take him to the hospital."
"How can you be so calm?!"
"I have to be. If I'm not, then both of us will be sharing a room with Booth pretty soon. I need to concentrate. I'll lose it once we find and get Booth to safety."
Booth was exhausted now. He had been using all of his energy to stay upright in the water. His leg was burning again, so was his stomach, and he was finding it harder to breathe the longer he spent in the water. He still had no clue as to where he was, but he knew that if he could keep still, the water wouldn't pull him under again. His feet were touching the bottom of whatever his prison was, but the injured leg had no strength in it, and it was all Booth could do to keep standing on it.
Brennan was glad to finally reach the water farm. Aubrey had gotten a call from another FBI agent ten minutes earlier to say that they had narrowed the search area to a grid of four tanks in the northeast corner of the farm, so Aubrey had driven his car straight there, but it had still taken them precious time that they could have been using to save Booth.
"Can you do this Dr Brennan?" Aubrey asked as he grabbed a blanket and a water bottle from the trunk of his car.
"He's my fiance. What do you think?" Brennan said as she walked to the nearest tank and knocked on it. The quiet thud told her that the tank was filled with water.
"Agent Aubrey!" shouted someone from behind the next tank. "We think we have him!"
Brennan pushed past Aubrey and ran over. "Booth!" she shouted as she banged on the side of the tank. "Booth! Can you hear me?!"
There was a slightly muffled sound that answered Brennan's cries. For a moment, everyone was silent, listening hard for any other sounds that could tell them that the missing FBI agent was inside that tank.
"Booth?!" Aubrey called after a moment of silence.
"Help..." came another muffled cry.
"We're coming, Booth!" shouted Aubrey as he handed the water bottle and blanket to Brennan.
Three minutes later, Aubrey and a second FBI agent were standing at the top of the water tank, unscrewing the giant lid. Aubrey lowered a ladder into the tank and held it steady while the other agent climbed down it, wearing a diving suit for safety.
"Is it Booth?" Aubrey asked once he heard a splash that told him the agent was in the tank.
"Give me a moment," said the agent as he turned on a flashlight and slowly searched the tank. "Alright, I got him, Agent Aubrey! I need two minutes, then I'm bringing him up."
Booth could hear it. He could definitely hear it. Something or someone was banging on the side of his watery prison. He briefly wondered if his colleagues had found him, but then decided that it was more likely that his attacker was back. Booth decided that it would be better for him to stay quiet until he could be sure of who was out there.
"Agent Aubrey! We think we have him!" Booth heard, and, just moments later, he heard:
"Booth! Can you hear me?!"
That voice belonged to Brennan, he knew it. He knew that it was her. There was no mistaking that voice after almost ten years of working together.
"Bones? Bones, help me!" Booth called as loud as he could.
"Booth?!" called another voice a couple of minutes later.
"Help!" Booth shouted, just before he felt his leg giving way again.
Before Booth could pull himself back up the wall, however, there was a loud creaking sound and sunlight burst into his prison. Booth squeezed his eyes shut against the slim rays of light and dragged himself out of the water as best as he could.
"Alright, I got him, Agent Aubrey! I need two minutes, then I'm bringing him up."
Booth opened his eyes a fraction and found one of his colleagues standing in front of him.
"Agent Booth, where are you hurt?" asked the agent, having shone his flashlight onto something red in the water.
"My stomach and my right leg," answered Booth as the agent moved his light to check Booth's stomach.
"Looks like a stab wound in your stomach. Is your leg the same?"
"No. That's a bullet wound. Listen, can we get out of here? It's cold."
The agent nodded and took Booth's hand. He slowly helped Booth walk through the water and over to the ladder. "Hold on and Agent Aubrey will pull you up."
Booth silently took hold of the ladder and a second later, he was rising out of the water through a hole in the top of his prison.
"Where's Bones?" Booth asked, his teeth chattering, as Aubrey pulled him up and helped him over to another ladder on the side of what now looked like a water tank to Booth.
"Down there." Aubrey pointed to a small crowd of people. "Do you think you can climb down on your own?"
"We're going to find out." Booth turned around and slowly put his left foot onto the ladder. Carefully, he made his way down, stopping once to regain his footing after his injured leg slipped on a rung.
"Booth!" shouted Brennan as she rushed up and caught him before he could collapse onto the ground. "I was so worried about you."
"Yeah?" Booth asked in a whisper once he had hugged Brennan. "You're going to be more worried in a moment..."
"What are you talking about?" Brennan asked.
"I love you, Bones." Booth gave his fiance a small smile before he passed out.