As promised – here is Chapter 3!

Have fun reading it and PLEASE reward me with some of your REVIEWS!

xXx Tiana

Once they had started to go through the case file, they came to realise that they were still quite familiar with the whole thing. They went over miniscule things, other times just generally discussing other random things, but they all somehow linked back to the case.

At 5:45pm, the body had finally arrived. All five of them headed down to the lab, where Goodman was waiting. Brennan and Zack gently opened the bag and disposed of it as carefully as they could.

'Wow.' Zack whispered. The body of Maggie was all bones after they had cleaned it the previous time. However, her parents must have requested to dress it in a dress, a white one which still looked almost brand new.

'We'll have to get rid of the dress.' Brennan stated. She walked over to get a thin, almost blunt knife, which would cut through the material but not do anything to the bone underneath. As she was about to cut the dress, a voice made her stop.

'Wait! You can't just cut the poor girl's dress.' Angela moaned. Brennan stopped and looked up at her. She was leaning against the rails, but Brennan could now see that she was gripping the rails hard with her hands.

'Angela, we have to get the dress off of her. How else can we examine her bones?' she tried to reason. Brennan knew how cases of young children affected her, but Maggie was 19. It still affected her.

'Can't you just, you know, take it off. Like you normally would with a dress?' Angela asked. Her voice was quieter than normal, and Brennan could help but feel sorry for her. She looked at Booth, who was standing next to Angela. He shrugged and smiled gently.

'It's up to you, Bones.'

Brennan looked back at Angela and made eye contact. Brennan sighed and put down the knife.

'Ok. Wanna help then?' she asked gently to Angela. She nodded and walked over to the table. Together, the two of them took their time and gently managed to get the dress off without moving the remains around much.

Finally, the remains of Maggie Schilling lay on the lab table, ready to be examined, for the second time. At first, Brennan wasn't entirely sure how this was going to happen. If a year ago she had collected all of the information she could get off of them, then this time there wouldn't be much to get. But with one glimpse at the skeleton, Brennan knew that there was something there that would make the whole thing a hell lot easier.

'Uh. Dr. Brennan? Is it just me, or have these bones changed since last time?' Zack asked, timidly. In the year, Zack had progressed from being a student to a qualified pre-anthropologist. But Brennan was still his teacher, and he became very uncertain sometimes.

'Changed? What do you mean changed?' Booth asked, now walking up to the two of them and nearer to the body. Brennan swatted his ands away as he went to touch them. No matter how long he had worked with her, he could never remember to leave the bones to her.

'Look here. The bones are eroding, and there are many chippings, all over the body.' She explained to him, while going over the body to make sure that they wasn't anything else she had missed.

'Oh.' Booth replied, still a bit clueless while looking over the body from where he stood.

'Don't worry. I can't see it either.' Angela whispered to him, patting him on the shoulder. Booth smirked and shook his head.

'So what does that mean?' He asked. 'That the bones where handled with after the murder, that she had some kind of drug or a side effect to the one the Costello's gave her?'

When Brennan made no sing of stopping going over the remains to answer Booth's question, Zack took it into his own hands to do so.

'The victim had suffered from hyperparathyroidism. Her bones were brittle and would have caused them to rot quickly. Hence the chipping and the change in the shapes.' He voice was somewhat shy, but grew stronger near the end when Brennan had looked up at him and nodded.

'That's good, right?' Booth was unsure of what he had said, but it kind of made sense.

This time, Brennan chose to answer, finally happy that the rest of the bones where there and good to work with.

'Yeah. It should be. We could compare the amount of eroding with the time it has been, comparing it against the pictures of last time. If it is right, then we should be able to prove that she was bound against her will and therefore, her bones where ground together as she tried to escape.' She explained.

The two of them continued to examine the bones as Angela made a sketch and took down notes that she would need to make a successful comparison on the Angelator, Hodgins examined a couple of bugs found in the skeleton and Booth just sat in a swivelling chair, playing with his blue ball, throwing it and fiddling around with it. In other words, he was getting bored.

After a while, Goodman made his way back to the lab. At first, he looked over what they were doing, and then made an announcement. One that made Angela quite happy.

'The defence team's own anthropologist will be here soon to look at the remains himself. He is not permitted for anything except the remains, so I suspect that you will ensure that that'll happen.' He was looking at Booth when he mentioned that and he simply nodded back, like it was the obvious thing to do.

Goodman looked at Brennan and wished her luck before leaving. Before getting back to her job, she caught the eye of Angela, who was wriggling her eyebrows, and had an 'I told you' look on her face. Brennan shook her head and rolled her eyes, and then looked at Booth. He was still sitting on the chair but had stopped playing around with the ball.

'If you're tired, you can go home you know. I think we can handle it here.' She told him, worried that he looked worse than before. Booth shook his head at her.

'I'm sure you could, but I have to be here.' He simply replied. There was an edge to his voice which concerned Brennan. She never thought that Booth would be jealous, and she doubted it right now.

'Have to, or want to?' Angela asked, suggestively. She was standing close to where Booth was sitting and Brennan was standing.

Booth looked up at her and shot her a 'what?' look before shaking his head and giving her his normal smile. 'Have to, Angela. Orders from Cullen to stay here until the examination is done by Dr. Stires. Have to make sure that nothing irregular happens, or something like that. Not like I would notice.' He murmured the last bit. Angela smiled to herself.

'Really? And here I thought that being with Bren for a year would teach you something.' She shook her head in mock disappointment.

'Something, yeah. But nothing about this.' He said in a tone that made Angela wonder what he meant. She knew that Brennan could hear every word that they were saying, and found it hard not to go overboard. But she tried her best to get as close to the edge as possible.

'So you knew that Michael was coming?' Angela asked, not looking up from her notes as she did so. She wanted it to sound casual as possible. She did, however, see Brennan's head shoot up when she asked him and then down again, shaking it.

'Yes, Angela, I knew. And no, I'm not jealous, or worried, or whatever you want to say. Let's keep this professional, yeah?' he added. He knew what Angela was getting at and he wanted to get his side in before she could say anything else.

'Ok. If you say so.' Angela replied. She had received a knowing 'I told you' look from Brennan in a quick glimpse that she doubted any guy could've seen. So she decided to shut up and give it a rest until after Michael got there. Then she'll be able to see if Booth was telling the truth.

I hope that was ok?

Next couple of chapters – a couple teaspoons of jealousy and a cup full of anger… hehe!

How long till you read THAT is up to YOU!

R&R PLEASE!

Btw – why is there no Bones tonight? Why did they change the American Idol show for? I'm soooooo upset! Only the Jate in Lost tonight will get me through a Boneless night hehe!

xXx Tiana