BONES
Booth took Angela's advice, tugging on his boxers then crossing and locking the door only seconds after she'd left. I watched nervously as he flattened a hand against the door and dropped his head.
"Booth, I'm sorry. I should have thought—" I come to a stop when he looks around his shoulder and I see he's laughing.
"I'd made it forty-two years, Bones," he says to me, turning to look at me fully. "Forty-two years without being walked in on when I was with a woman…" He tilts his head to the side and back up again "…even when I was a kid. I should have known, of all people, it would be with you." My brows draw together. I don't understand.
"Are you angry?" He laughs again and with a slow shake of his head, approaches me.
"No," he assures, softly. "No. A little embarrassed but angry? No."
"What did you mean it would be with me of all people?" He takes another step forward and eases his hands around my waist.
"It means, I've never cared if someone knew who I was with, before. But you?" He brushes a kiss across my lips then tips his head back to look at me. "I want you… this… to myself for a while." He tucks a hank of hair behind my ear. "No eyes on us." He drops a string of kisses down the side of my neck as he speaks. "No questions… No one putting in their two cents." He returns his lips to mine. "Just you… and me… exploring this new phase of our relationship…" He wags his brows at me and a crooked smile lifts his lips "…And each other." He tugs me close. If I hadn't known what was on his mind before, when our hips connect, I would have had a big hint. But I didn't need it. His hand caressing the flesh of my lower back, the look in his eyes, the huskiness of his voice and the kisses he's been showering with me, says it all. "What time does Cam usually come in?" I tug down the zipper of his jeans as he eases my shirt over my shoulders and down my arms.
"She likes to have breakfast with Michelle before school," I answer. I'm a little breathless. The lips whispering along my shoulder are making it difficult to focus on anything other than what he's doing. "Seven-thirty or so," I manage, shrugging out of my shirt while shoving his jeans over hips then letting them drop. He glances at his watch over my shoulder.
"Then we have plenty of time." His lips capture mine again, as his fingers release the hooks on my bra.
"Angela and Hodgins," I remind, against his lips. As if I care. I rid him of his boxers and he kicks them aside.
"Angela will give us our privacy and dollars to donuts, Hodgins will hide in his bug room until I leave." My panties are the last to go. I step out of them and close back in on him.
"Dollars to donuts?" I ask, wrapping an arm around his neck and sealing my lips to his.
"Later," he murmurs against my lips, firming his grasp around my waist and walking us backwards. "Much… much… later." He falls backwards over the arm of the couch, taking me with him.
I'm laughing when I land on top of him, then my laughter is forgotten when he draws his fingers down my back and kisses me, delving deep, his pleasure rumbling low in his throat…
Angela smiles at me when I stride into her office.
"Just in time," she tells me, "I've just finished rendering the image of the victim and am cross-referencing reports of any missing children east of the Mississippi." I glance at the computer screen.
"She would have been a beautiful woman," I remark. I can see by her bone structure what she would have looked like when grown and she would have fallen well within the golden ratio. I feel her eyes on me even though we're standing side-by-side.
"So, I'm guessing after what Hodgins walked in on this morning, you and Booth had a good weekend?" I smile, while watching the screen as the computer runs comparisons.
"I've never gone away for a weekend with a man before. I found it very enjoyable, but that could be just because it was Booth." Ange laughs as she turns back to face the screen.
"I hope so. Do you think there's another weekend away in your future?"
"I have no way of knowing if there is, although we'll be going to London next summer." For some reason, she turns to face me again.
"London?! I thought Booth hated London."
"He does. He did. Cam said it's because he isn't adaptable." Another laugh. I wasn't aware I had said something amusing.
"Yeah, I can see that. So, if he hates London, why would you go there next summer?"
"My publisher offered me tickets to the Olympics. He was quite put out I had turned them down. The Olympics appear to be very important to him. When I spoke with Ellen this morning, I asked if they were still available and they were." I deflate when her computer screen blinks the announcement of 'no matches found.'
"That's weird," she comments.
"Can you bring up your photograph of the skull and place it side-by-side with your rendering?"
"Yeah, sure." With a few presses of keys on her controller, she does so. I compare the two images at length.
"Your rendering's accurate," I assess. "Run a comparison again, this time against all children reported missing in the contiguous United States and let me know what you find. Email a copy of the image and I'll send it to Booth." I turn to leave but only make it a few steps when Ange speaks.
"How long will you be in London?" I turn around and answer.
"Two weeks plus time to travel to and from." She stares at me with her mouth ajar. "Is something wrong?"
"Wrong?" She gives her head a shake. "No, not wrong. I guess I just never thought I'd see the day you were making plans for a two-week trip with a guy, let alone one more than a year in the future." She steps to me and gives me a brief hug. "I'm just so happy for you."
"You mean, Booth. You're happy for, Booth," I emphasize his name. "He the one excited to see grown adults playing like children. I'd much rather teach a two-week seminar on forensic anthropology at Oxford. I had a standing invitation from Ian before he died."
"Ian? Who's that?"
"Ian Wexler… Doctor…" I think to add, "…Ian Wexler. He's a forensic anthropologist, like me. He teaches at Oxford and works with Scotland Yard like I work with Booth at the FBI. He's quite good, although, not nearly as good as myself. Booth and I worked a case with him when we were in London two years ago. He made it quite clear he wanted to have sex with me," I laugh, low in my throat. "Booth didn't care for him, at all."
"I bet," she mumbles under her breath. "This Wexler guy, do you plan to be hanging out with him much while you're in London?"
"Ian's dead. Murdered. We found his killer before we left London."
"Oh." Thinking our conversation is over, I turn to the door again. "Brennan," I stop a few steps towards the door, "If he wasn't dead… would you?" The question gives me pause. I don't like to speculate, she knows that, but I suppose I answer because the answer to that question had come so quickly to mind, surprising me.
"No, I wouldn't," I answer, not turning to look at her. "Send me the reconstruction so I can get it to Booth."
Stepping out of the elevator on the fourth floor of the J. Edgar Hoover building, I walk with determined strides towards Booth's office. I'm agitated by the turn this case has taken… and our lack of progress so far. I'm disappointed when I see someone's already in his office with him. He waves me in anyway, as he continues to listen to Shaw.
"I found the husband holds three double-indemnity life insurance policies on his wife," she fills Booth In as I take a seat across his office. "Face value of those policies is $425,000."
"So, he'd be looking at an $850,000 pay day as the result of a fall down the stairs."
"Yes," Shaw confirms, "Which would be enough to pay off all debts, leaving a nest egg of a little more than half-a-million dollars to start a new life with his mistress, even before the sale of his current home. But, there's a problem."
"And what's that?"
"The husband has receipts showing he was out of town on business when she died. There's no record he took a plane back to Fairfax, commercial or private and the bus and train routes only solidify his alibi."
''Get to the point, Shaw," he orders.
"He was last seen when departing the hotel dining room at a little past nine-thirty and joined his associates for breakfast at seven-thirty the following morning. I'd like to recreate his route, departing Pittsburg at the same time, drive to Fairfax and return to Pittsburg approximately the same time he would have had to be on the road in order to make it back for breakfast in time and see if it's even possible."
"Bringing his alibi into question if it is," Booth mulls aloud. "I like it. Go for it."
"Yes, sir," she acknowledges, standing. She greets me as she passes.
"Dr. Brennan." I nod to her but don't speak. I don't know her.
Booth leans back in his chair and props his feet on the corner of the desk, smiling at me.
"Do we have an I.D.?" I hold up my hands and drop them.
"No, we don't and our findings so far have only made doing so more complicated." Dropping his feet, he sits up.
"How so?"
"To start, Angela searched for a match of any child in the contiguous United States, reported missing," I handed him a photo of her reconstruction. "There were no matches. Last night, Hodgins found more entomological evidence once we unwrapped the remains. The maggots in the abdominal area would suggest she'd been dead two days—"
"So, she'd been dead two-to-seven days—"
"But the Chrysomya ruffifacies in the feet say time of death was approximately two weeks ago," I finish.
"Why do I feel like we're back to chili con carne?" He's referring to a case a couple of years ago when we'd investigated the death of a physicist, who'd been found in two garbage bags, her bones shattered and her body ground up. I'm impressed.
"Because we are, to some degree. Cam found evidence of cytolysis: The cells had exploded due to liquid expansion. She also found grayish-brown leathery patches on the victims skin on the opposite side of the body in which lividity occurred, caused by oxidation after moisture in those areas had been depleted of moisture."
"What does all that mean?" he wonders, dropping the photo on his desk. I shift on my feet, finding the information as disturbing as I had when I'd first heard it.
"She was stored in a freezer, Booth, for at least two to three months, which is the minimal amount of time for the sublimation that causes the changes in her skin to occur." The tip of his tongue wets his lips and I can see his laryngeal prominence bob up and down as he swallows hard.
"So, this kid was beaten, starved, then stored in a freezer for who knows how long, until whoever did this felt it was safe to dispose of her somewhere around two weeks ago," he summarizes. Once again, his ability to deduce facts from the evidence, impresses me.
"Yes."
"Then we have Angela run the search again using a longer time period. Maybe five years, to be safe?" he suggested.
"The blanket she was wrapped in was manufactured three years ago. Angela already searched again using a three-year period and—"
"Nothing."
"Yes." I find it upsets me to say what I'm about to, "I don't think she was ever reported missing, Booth. How can no one notice when a little girl goes missing?"
"It's not as uncommon as you think, Bones, when abuse is involved. She was probably isolated. Even close neighbors may have not known she existed or she was seen so seldom no one questions her absence."
"But school! Surely her lack of attendance—"
"If authorities knew about her at all and she was of school age, it's easy enough to register a child as being homeschooled." My shoulders slump.
"Hidden away, beaten, starved, neither reported missing nor apparently missed. She was invisible, allowing whoever hurt her to do whatever they wanted whenever they wanted without repercussion." I turn pleading eyes on him. "Whoever did this to her can't get away with it, Booth. We can't let them."
"We won't, Bones, I promise." He picks up the photo of Angela's reconstruction. "I'll have our media coordinator post her picture on every news station, on every broadcast until we find out who she is. We will get her the justice she deserves." Moving behind his desk, he pulls his suit jacket off the back of his chair and slips it on. "If we drop it off now, we may be able to make most noon broadcasts. Then," he waits until I step out of the office in front of him, "We can go to the diner and grab some lunch." It doesn't take long to consider the suggestion, given I didn't have breakfast this morning.
"I am hungry," I admit.
"I thought you might be and with a little luck, maybe we'll know who our Little Doe is by the time we finish eating…"
But, we didn't know her identity by the time we'd finished our lunch or by the time Booth had come by the lab after seven to cajole me to leave. Over dinner and drinks at Founding Fathers, I'd chronicled the additional findings we'd made that afternoon.
"When I was examining the remains this morning, I found the skull and long-bones were softer than they should be. The blood tests Cam ran showed, among other things, that the victim's Vitamin D level to be ten nanograms per milliliter which is well below the standard of fifty-to-eighty nanograms per milliliter. She had rickets, Booth."
"Rickets? Isn't that the thing sailors used to get from not eating enough fruits and vegetables when they were on a voyage?" he asks.
"No, that would be scurvy. Rickets can cause stunted growth, delayed motor skills, muscle weakness, bowing of the legs, breastbone projection, extreme pain—"
"Would rickets explain your uncertainty about her age?" I nod my head as I reached for my scotch.
"It could, yes."
"What causes low vitamin D levels?" he questions.
"A variety of factors could account for Vitamin D deficiency: Darker skin color, living in a cold climate, medical conditions – such as Crohn's disease, hyperparathyroidism, cystic fibrosis—"
"Did Cam check to see if she had any of these… medical conditions?" I take another sip of scotch before answering.
"She did and the results were negative. It is more likely a combination of inadequate nutrition and prolonged lack of exposure to sunlight would be the cause of the levels Cam found."
"Are we talking days, weeks?"
"More likely months or in excess of a year." He shoves his plate away much as I'd just done.
"There's more," I forewarn.
"I think I need another drink first." He held up a pair of fingers to the bartender. One of the benefits of being a regular, as Booth calls it, is that we rarely have long to wait. Once he has drink in hand and has drank from it, I forge on.
"She has stress fractures in both wrists. Her hands were bound, Booth and she fought, trying to free herself from the restraints. Her abuser either unbound her hands three to four months ago, based on remodeling, or she'd grown too weak to fight any longer."
"Or resigned herself to her fate." I don't even know how to respond to that, the thought a child could feel such hopelessness somehow painful to me.
On our walk back to Booth's truck and on the drive home, we limited ourselves to small talk. When he parks the car in front of my building, I discover I have no desire to get out. I can't explain it. I neither want to be alone nor do I wish to spend the night here, at my apartment, where I have spent so much time alone in the past. So, once more, I find myself in unfamiliar – and uncomfortable – territory, having to recognize feelings I once, not so long ago, would have shoved aside. Ever sensitive to downward turns in my mood, he turns to me.
"You okay, Bones?" I stare at him for a trio of long seconds, before I dig up the courage to tell him what I need.
"I don't want to be alone tonight," I begin. He treads carefully.
"I was hoping you'd want company, which is why I grabbed a change of clothes from my place before I picked you up at the lab."
"Can we stay at your place?" I can't explain why I'd prefer to be at his place instead of mine. Maybe it's because we've spent more time at his place than mine in the past. Maybe it's because my apartment is orderly and… professional… while Booth's apartment is controlled chaos with nearly every wall and surface covered with things he has so carefully collected over many years, making it feel like the home it is to him and Parker.
"Stay at my place?" My lack of answer is an answer all its own. "Yeah! Of course!." He turns off the engine and reaches for the door handle. "Let go get whatever you need."
It doesn't require much time to do as I'd never unpacked from our trip after staying at the lab last night. With my overnight bag ready and waiting, I toss a t-shirt and pair of flannel shorts to sleep in into a bag, a change of undergarments and something to wear to work tomorrow. Less than ten minutes from when we arrived, we were back in the Sequoia and on our way to Booth's.
"Booth?" His eyes leave the road to look at me.
"Yeah, Bones?" He returns his focus to the road, something I am thankful for as I am often uncomfortable speaking about those things I don't understand.
"Did I do something wrong when I accepted Ellen's offer?" He does a double take at me.
"No!" he insists, adamantly. "From where I stand, you did something amazing. Why do you ask?" I scrunch my nose. Booth is a very private man, and although Angela is my best friend, I generally take care with what I share, keeping his privacy in mind. I'm not sure how he'll feel about my having discussed the trip with her, if only briefly.
"Angela asked if we were planning another trip. When I told her about London, she seemed very shocked. I got the impression I'd broken some rule I don't know or understand. Have I?" He laughs quietly, making me shift in my seat uncomfortably as I get the distinct impression I have done something wrong. When he glances at me again, whatever he sees makes him quickly clarify.
"I'm not laughing at you," he assures. "Relationships are like clothes, Bones: They're not one size fits all."
"Relationships are like clothes?" I turn my head to look at his profile. "I don't understand what that means."
"It means, a couple decides the course of their relationship, it's not dictated by some set of rules. Angela, for example, has her ideas of how a relationship works: First, the couple exchange keys to each other's places. Next, they take a couple weekend getaways together. Then, they take a long trip together or what she calls 'the pre-shacking up test vacation.' If the vacation goes well, the couple moves in together and if it doesn't, the relationship doesn't move forward or ends." This tidbit about Angela's view on relationships makes me even more nervous.
"I told you before, I don't know if I'll ever be ready to live with a man… you. I've always been alone. I wouldn't even know where to begin, sharing a home or if I'd be any good at it." He brings the car to a stop at a red light, then faces me.
"And I told you, I won't live with another woman unless I'm married," he reminds me, with a smile. "So, I think we can both agree the trip to London, for us, is not a test to see if we should move in together, right?" His logic improves my spirit, somewhat. He reaches for my hand – a gesture I'm coming to enjoy very much – and gives it a soft squeeze. "We're not like most couples, Bones. We didn't meet in college, on a blind date, or in a bar somewhere and…" he wiggles his brows at me "… deciding we were attracted to one another, immediately began dating." The light turns green, and he begins driving again. "Yeah, when we met, I was attracted to you and you were attracted to me, but even now, seven years after we met, we haven't gone on a real date. We learned to be partners, then, I'd like to think, friends. We built this family, of a sort, around us: Sweets, Cam, Angela and Hodgins, and Carolyn. And along the way – something I didn't even realize until my trip with Pops – we'd created a routine and traditions together, some—"
"You mean like jogging in the park on our days off and drinks after we solve a case…"
"Yeah, like that," he confirms. "Every day we make decisions that maybe we're not excited about – like, for me, watching Nova because that's something you enjoy, as we eat take out Chinese, something we both like or me chewing on a carrot instead of a hot dog during a big game because you don't like junk food, while you put up with me yelling at the TV. Most importantly we know something couples that have just started dating or have even been dating a while don't." I tip my head, curious.
"What's that?"
"That even though we can annoy each other and don't see almost anything the same way, we've already learned we're not happy when we're apart and, even though you and me makes no sense, whatsoever, were better when we're together. We make each other better." That draws a real smile to my face.
"We are better together," I affirm, which makes him smile as well.
"Stop worrying about what other people think a relationship should look like, Bones. We'll do this the way we've done everything else: Our way…."