A little plot development here, I'm afraid - lots of talking...
Wednesday 8.35pm
"Well come on, put us out of our misery," cried Hodgins impatiently. "Who is it?"
"I was concerned it might be Cullen, my boss," Booth admitted. "The leaks seemed to come from fairly high up in the organisation. But it didn't make sense. Why would Cullen suddenly be working with these guys? Now this-" he tapped Angela's sketch – "makes everything fall into place."
"It's Cullen's personal assistant, Maria," Brennan put in. "I've often seen her at the FBI office. She's always there in the background, making notes, reading case files, passing on messages..."
"...eavesdropping on conversations, no doubt," Booth continued for her.
"So now what do we do?" asked Zack eagerly.
"We go to Cullen," Brennan suggested.
"Not yet." Booth shook his head. "We don't have any proof. This is enough to tell us what we're dealing with, but I need hard evidence before I can take it any further."
"What sort of evidence?" asked Angela.
"Who she really is, for a start," Booth said. "And who the others are."
The team spread out, each taking a computer terminal and tackling the research task. Everyone was willing to work through the night to see this one out. Booth sat at a spare workstation near Brennan's office, absent-mindedly tucking into pizza as he worked. He logged into the FBI computer and started rereading the files on the bank raids the gang had carried out. He stopped every so often to look around him at the others, and marvel at how comfortable he felt with them all. Their minds seemed to work very differently from his, but still they cared about the same things as him, truth being the biggest of these. He looked over at Bones. It felt strange, now he came to think of it; why had he turned to her for help? But she was the only person connected with the case that he knew he could trust, and besides, she was a good friend. A very good friend. He wasn't sure where their relationship was going, but he could not mistake the relief she had shown when she had found out he was alive. Maybe one day they'd get around to doing something about their relationship. Right now, though, they were in the middle of an investigation. He turned his attention back to the computer screen.
Brennan was working in her office, going through the reports of the bodies, making sure all the reports were complete and all the evidence gained was recorded correctly. She glanced over from time to time to see Booth working hard. Once she noticed him sitting back in his chair for a moment and rubbing his wrists, and she remembered with a pang the painful bruising and chafing the ropes had left. Still, he seemed to have mostly forgotten his injuries, and to be working hard on trying to find something to solve the mystery of his attackers. She remembered again the agony of the evening before, when they had thought they might be working on Booth's body. If he had not escaped, it could have been him lying on the lab table under the magnifying glass. The thought felt very odd, like a dream. She felt moved at the thought that with all the resources he usually had at his disposal, he had turned to her for help.
After over an hour reading files, Booth pushed his chair back from his desk and turned to the others. "Okay," he said. "I don't know about you, but I'm completely stumped."
Zack nodded. "The identification on your dead body seems sound, but now we've looked deeper, there's nothing that goes back more than two years."
"The bank raids started in this area about eighteen months ago," Booth commented.
"And your body..." Brennan swallowed, then hurriedly rephrased what she was going to say, "this body you found was dead for about three months before you found it and called us in."
"And Agent Montsou disappeared nearly three months ago," Booth put in, sitting forward on his chair. "So, the first agent disappeared soon after this guy disappeared. And one of the guys involved in the bank raids and the deaths of Montsou and Cotton is related to my dead guy, because they look very alike. Brothers, probably."
"And your boss's PA looks like them both," Angela finished for them all. "So if we look for two brothers and a sister on a crime spree we might be able to work forwards from that instead of backwards from the present."
"Good thinking, Angela," praised Booth. He turned back to his computer screen, then groaned and rubbed his eyes. "It's no good, I'm going to have to take a break in a while."
Wednesday 10.05pm
It was Hodgins who made the breakthrough. He tapped into some sources who were interested in organised crime, and picked up rumours of siblings by the name of George, Paul and Anna Henderson. Notorious around the New York area, there were indications they might have moved to DC during the past few years.
They all gathered around the computer. "Which brother is dead?" Booth asked.
Angela peered closely at the text on screen. "It says here that George was the brains behind the three. Paul was a little crazy. He had a particular thing against the FBI. Apparently he held them responsible for the death of their father years ago during a raid that went wrong." She looked up. "Three guesses which one is dead and which is still alive and running the joint."
Booth looked serious. "You're absolutely certain on this?"
Angela twisted the screen so he could see better. "There's a photo." The similarity to Angela's sketches could clearly be seen in all three of the faces in the photo.
Booth nodded. "All right. That's enough. We need to go to Cullen."
He reached out for the phone on the desk, lifted the receiver and dialed. "Sir? It's Booth. No, I'm okay, Sir, just a little - I felt it was unsafe to make contact before now."
He explained what they had found out about the Henderson trio, then listened soberly. "Yes, Sir," he said at last. "I'll be here for a while. Let me know if I can help."
He replaced the receiver and turned to the others. "It gets worse," he told them. "Now Agent Harris is missing."
Please read and review! I'm nearly finished writing this one - don't think the cliffhangers are over yet ;-)