They don't belong to me, although I wish they did. I just like playing with them. I hope you enjoy the end result.

Tuesday 4.20pm

Brennan felt the blood rush from her head. She placed her pen very carefully down on the desk, making sure she lined it up with the pile of papers, before looking back up to Agent Harris.

"Where?" she asked, forcing her voice to sound calm and even.

"I'll take you. It's an abandoned warehouse in the east of town."

"And what state is..."

The body was found following a fire in the building. It was treated as a fairly routine fire to start with, but once we realised Booth had been showing an interest in the building just before he disappeared last week, we put our full team on it, and they found a body buried under the rubble in a far corner of the warehouse floor."

Brennan stood up and grabbed her coat from the back of her chair. She headed for the main laboratory floor. "Zack, get your camera. We have a job to do."

Zack looked up and groaned. "Dr Brennan, I thought we got to finish early tonight?"

Brennan ignored his protests and reached past him to the bag they always kept ready for calls like this.

"What have we got this time?" Zack asked, surrendering to the inevitable.

"A body, burned in a fire." Brennan forestalled Harris's attempt to answer the young scientist's question. Harris looked as if he was about to say more, but Brennan gave him a warning look. "We work on what we find in the evidence, it saves false assumptions."

Harris nodded his understanding, and followed the scientists to the parking lot.

Tuesday 5.05pm

"Business as usual," Brennan muttered to herself firmly as she dressed in her overalls and pulled on latex gloves. She saw Zack looking at her in puzzlement, but ignored him and put on the proffered hard hat before heading into the building behind Agent Harris. Zack hurried along behind her, camera in hand. They walked over to the crowd that had gathered in one corner of the room. Agent Harris flashed his ID card, and the men moved aside to let them through.

The body was lying right in the corner. The smell of smoke was still very strong. Brennan took a deep breath and forced herself to bend down and examine the body closely. It lay almost face down on the concrete floor, drawn into a tight ball by the effects of the fire, its hands apparently cradled together in front. As Zack moved around taking photo after photo of the scene Brennan looked round. The building was partly destroyed; the floor above had collapsed over most of the area, and had been pulled to one side by the investigation team. In some places holes in the roof way above them gaped open to the sky.

Zack spared a glance at the wall behind them. "It is safe, I suppose?" he said nervously.

One of the men nearby nodded. "Our teams made it safe before we could enter to search. That's what led to the delay between extinguishing the fire and finding the body."

Harris bent down towards Brennan. "How soon can you tell?" he asked her.

She shook her head. "We have tests to run. We need to work on identity and cause of death. Anything else we can find. It will take time."

"But it will be a priority case."

"Of course." She straightened up and stretched her legs. "First impressions, Zack?"

Zack chewed his lower lip for a moment. "Well, he's burned, obviously, but my money would be on him already being dead before the fire, or at least unconscious."

"Why?" Agent Harris sounded curious.

"Lying on his front like that, his hands are beneath him. Not an easy position in which to breathe, especially when the room is filled with smoke. I'd say he was dead before he lay down."

Brennan nodded her agreement. "Okay, once you've finished with the photos we'd better turn him over and take more photos that way, before shipping him to the lab."

She walked away, back outside the building and across the car park to the bushes that lined the far side, before doubling over and vomiting into the undergrowth.

Tuesday7.00pm

The body had been recovered, and lay on an examination table in the forensic laboratory at the Jeffersonian Institute. Angela and Hodgins had been recalled, and were scowling at their boss.

"What I don't understand is why we have to work late on this tonight," Hodgins was protesting. "He'll still be just as dead in the morning. And we'll be rested and better able to work."

"You might be; I wouldn't," Brennan retorted. Hodgins frowned at this uncharactistic outburst from the usually calm anthropologist.

"Sweetie, what is it?" Angela asked with concern. Brennan tried to deny there was anything wrong. Then she decided it was unfair. They were all his friends as well. If they knew, they would back her up all the way with this case, there was no doubt.

"This body – it may be Booth," she confessed quietly.

"What?" Angela looked aghast. Hodgins looked down at the body with a horrified fascination on his face. Zack looked faintly sick.

Brennan nodded. "Booth went missing last week. Remember Agent Harris asking if we'd seen him? Well, apparently he was interested in this building where the body was found. And he disappeared at about the same time the fire started."

Hodgins set his jaw grimly. "What are we waiting for? Let's get to work."

Tuesday 8.54pm

"Are you all right, sweetie?"

Brennan looked over her shoulder to see Angela studying her closely. She tried a smile, but it came out more as a grimace.

"I don't know," she admitted. "It's difficult to accept that this may be Booth. It feels unreal, you know? I keep finding myself thinking how Booth and I will tackle the case, then I remember..." She shook her head. "I can't believe it's him. It can't be."

Angela nodded. "I know what you mean," she said, sinking down into a chair next to her friend. "I've got the Xrays and I'm working on a facial reconstruction. It's too early to tell, but still it feels a little wierd."

Brennan looked back down at her notes. "What have we got so far?" she murmured. "Definitely male. Definitely around 35-40 years old." She reeled off other facts, all of which fit Booth – as well as Harris and many of the other agents Brennan had had reason to work with over the past few years.

"Nothing to confirm either way," Angela agreed sadly. "Do you think it is him?"

Brennan shook her head. "I don't know," she admitted. "There's just no way of telling yet. We haven't heard back on the dental records. There's no way to get fingerprints. We will work this out, but it's too soon. We need to keep working." Resolutely she adjusted the focus of the microscope on her desk and resumed peering into it, refusing to be distracted from her work by thoughts of what might or might not be. There would be enough time to react when they knew the truth about the body they were working on.

Angela turned away and went back to her office. She looked down at the papers in front of her for a moment, thinking about Agent Booth. He was a cutie, no doubt about that. She remembered his charm smile, the one she and Brennan joked about; the smile he put on when he was trying to get extra assistance from her. Impossible to resist. She was tempted, of course, but she felt that his interest was directed towards Brennan only. Now perhaps they'd never get a chance to see how the relationship worked out, to see whether Booth would be able to get past Brennan's shell; whether Brennan would ever look up from the dead bodies she worked with and realise that there was a live one interested in her.

She picked up the tablet that controlled the Angelator and tapped on a few keys. A skull appeared in the image area in front of her and rotated slowly. As she continued adding markers here and there a face slowly started to grow on the bare bones.

Zack pulled more bones out of the cleaner, placed each one carefully on a tray and then carried it over to the examination table. He laid each one out, slightly touching the other bones he'd placed there. Already the skeleton was partially assembled. He recalled what he knew of the FBI agent. He had never really talked to him, not to exchange more than a few words at a time, and had always felt in awe of him. It was a very sobering thought that these might be his bones he was handling. In the end, it was what everyone was reduced to. No matter what they were like in life, in death they became a pile of bones and flesh, with little to distinguish the heroes from the villains.

He frowned slightly, adjusted the right ulna and radius on the table, scribbled something on a pad of paper on the desk nearby, chewed his lip for a moment, picked up both ulnae to compare them, then scribbled again.

Hodgins looked with satisfaction at his glass vials of bugs. Whatever else let you down, you could always rely on the bugs. He thought regretfully of Agent Booth. The two of them had occasionally discussed various conspiracy theories, and while he always felt that Booth was failing to give his theories the gravity they deserved, he at least felt the FBI agent afforded the scientist himself reasonable respect.

He examined the evidence in front of him, typed something into the computer, adjusted the microscope and peered again. Then he took a closer look at the results that were coming out of the computer. He thought for a moment, tapping his fingers against the computer keys without actually typing anything. Then he nodded to himself, coming to a decision, and set out the equipment for another test.

Tuesday 10.42pm

Angela stared once again at the image in front of her. There was no doubt in her mind now. She printed out a picture showing her conclusions, and took it through to see Brennan.

Zack picked up his notes and glanced one last time at the body. He was absolutely sure. He headed towards Dr Brennan's office.

Hodgins checked and double checked his figures. The conclusion was undeniable. He ripped the printout from the machine and took it to Dr Brennan.

Brennan looked up to see her team all converging on her office, serious expressions on their faces, all vying to speak first, to bring her the news she already knew. She pushed her chair back from her desk and stood up. She held up the file that had been delivered ten minutes previously, and that she had been working on feverishly ever since.

"I know," she told her team. "I know what you have to say."

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