Disclaimer: see chapter one
Spoilers: for 'woman in the garden', but nothing big.
(A/N) AIC stands for Agent In Charge. I will be out of town for almost week so I will not be able to update for a while so I wrote an extra-long chapter I hope you like it. I really had a hard time writing this up. I hope it turned out alright. Thank you all so much for your feedback. Just so you know I don't mind at all if you point out my mistakes, I just don't think I will be going back and correcting them any time soon.
EDITED: 7/2019
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Chapter Eight
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5:00 A.M. Tuesday
Location: Unknown
After eating a granola bar Temperance grabbed her bag and headed out of her little hideout. She stopped at the entrance and took one last look around. She heaved a heavy sigh, turned and made her way out. She slowly and very very carefully made her way to the top of the hill.
Once she made it to the top, she put her bag down and leaned up against a nearby tree. It had taken her close to an hour to get up here. She didn't think it would've taken this long to get here. Regardless she made it in time do what she planned to.
Tiredly she pushed away from the tree and started looking around for things she would need to make her compass. She would need to find a clearing in the woods and a straight stick.
It didn't take her long to locate what she required. She walked to the middle of the clearing and stuck the stick in the ground. The sun was hanging low in the sky as it made it's way up. Temperance looked at the shadow that the stick made, then she pulled out the two lengths of rope and laid them on the ground in the shape of a cross with the stick in the middle, the top part of the cross was in the shadow of the stick. She bent down and wrote a W at the top of the cross, an E at the bottom, an S on the right side, and an N on the left.
She stood and winced in pain, her bullet wound had become so sensitive that almost any sort of movement caused pain. That was really starting to worry her.
Temperance pulled out her pad and pen, the night before she had made a little map of the area using the hill and the creek as points of reference. Now that she had a compass of sorts, she could see that the creek was to the northeast. She looked up and scanned the woods below her, she was able to see the roof of the warehouse it was to the southeast. She gave a slight shake of her head and turned away from the warehouse. She didn't think it would be a good idea to go back there.
She continued to scan the area, slowly looking back and forth. Then she saw it, movement, it was a vehicle of some kind, she strained to see beyond the car to where it was going. There, a building, no, in fact, it was several buildings, "It's a town," She whispered relieved, Brennan almost started to cry when she saw it. It was only about five miles southwest. She noted where the town was on her homemade map. There was a lot of empty space on her map between where she was and the town, a lot of space to get lost in, 'Well, as long as I can see the sun I'll know which direction the town is.'
Temperance bent down and picked up the ropes and stick, then erased any evidence of her being there. She took a deep breath and looked at the town, and wondered if she would be able to make it there. If she were uninjured and not in so much pain, she would have thought nothing of walking five miles or more. She had in the past hiked rougher terrain twice as long without a whole lot of difficulty, but now...? 'Now what?...now I hike to that town and find help, that's what, I'm still strong enough to make it. I can do this! I can,' she gave one quick nod of her head, then she grabbed her things and set out toward the town.
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10:42 A.M. Tuesday
FBI headquarters
Agent Kory Knight was trying desperately to get the attention of agent Penning for close to an hour. So far, she hadn't been successful. He was surrounded by all sorts of FBI personnel and she was getting tired of chasing Brad Penning all over the place. She could be patient though, and the information Kory had, just might help with his case, well at least she thought so. She was a fairly new agent she'd only been working for the FBI for a year. She had already proven herself to be a good agent that had great instincts and right now, they were telling her that she had something here.
So she just waited for the last batch of agents circling Brad to leave, but before she could get to him, Cullen and FBI director Furst intercepted Penning and then they headed for Cullen's office.
"Oh great, how long is this going to take?" she grumbled under her breath as she plopped down in the nearest chair.
Kory had been sitting there for fifteen minutes when she saw Agent Booth walk by. She jumped up to follow him if she couldn't talk to Brad then maybe she could talk to Booth.
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Booth was trying to find Agent Wilton, he needed to know if the lab had given her the results on the blood yet, he spotted her coming out of her office. As he made his way to her he walked past Cullens' office. He knew Penning was in there with not only Cullen but Furst as well, that was one thing Booth did not envy Penning.
"Hey, Judy did the lab get back to you abo.." he trailed off when he realized Wilton was on the phone.
Judy turned to him and gave him a sympathetic smile then mouthed, "No, not yet. Sorry," Booth nodded his understanding, she returned the nod then turned and walked away.
"Agent Booth, Agent Booth I need to speak with you."
Booth turned to see an attractive young woman in her mid-twenties with long black hair, tan skin, and blue eyes quickly walking towards him. He had seen her around and knew she was a junior agent, his mind race trying to come up with her name, 'was it Light? no, Bright? no... Knight, that was it, Agent Knight.'
"Agent Booth, I'm agent Kory Knight, I wanted to talk to you about the Brennan case."
"You know, Penning is the AIC on this case."
"Yes, I know," she said with a longsuffering sigh, "would you like to join me in the break room for coffee, so we could talk?"
Booth was a little puzzled by her response, to his mention of Penning, but was more interested in what she had to say about the case.
"Only if your buying."
She couldn't hide her incredulous smile at his pitiful attempt at humor, "That was such dad joke."
Her look and deadpan delivery made him laugh for the first time in what seemed like forever.
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10:42 A.M. Tuesday
Location: Unknown
Temperance stopped and looked around her, Ok now, she was fairly officially lost. It had become very cloudy in the last hour, which made it so she could no longer see where the sun was, and without the sun her map was pretty well useless.
She was fast running out of energy and was hungry, but she refused to stop. She was so deep in her thoughts that she didn't notice that the woods had begun to thin out. Started by the sudden change of the ground, she looked down to see what she had trod on. She found she was standing on an old dirt road that was more or less just two tire tracks. She knelt to get a closer look at the road and noted that it appeared that someone had driven through here recently.
Temperance was still studying the road when she heard a loud noise break the relative silence, her head shot up to see where it was coming from. She recognized the sound as coming from a generator. She cautiously walked toward the noise and saw a small cabin with an outbuilding, where the racket was coming from. She could tell someone was still in the outbuilding but was unsure if she should go up there and ask for help, so she continued to look around. Then she saw it the car, His car, this was her abductor. She immediately dove for the nearest cover, grunting in pain when she hit the ground.
She peeked through the underbrush she was hiding in, just in time to see him come out of the shed. He shut the door and locked it, muffling the noise of the generator, so much so, that you really couldn't hear it anymore. The man now climbed into his dark green Oldsmobile and started down the road she had been on moments earlier. Temperance pressed herself as close to the ground as she could and didn't so much as move a muscle until he drove past and she could no longer hear his car.
Brennen sat up and tried to figure out what to do next. She needed to get supplies and medicine if she was to have any hope of surviving. She looked at the cabin knowing that everything she needed was in there. She stood up, took a shaky breath, and hid her bag in the bushes. Then slowly crept up to the house before she could talk herself out of this crazy stunt. She didn't want to think about what would happen if he were to come back or if someone else were in the cabin and caught her there.
As soon as she reached the cabin she looked in all of the windows to make sure no one was in there. She found that the cabin had a great room that was a combo living room/kitchen, then there was a nice size bedroom and a bathroom. All were empty. She was feeling reasonably safe now, so she opened the front door.
Temperance looked around inside the cabin, it only had a few pieces of furniture. There was a table with four chairs in the kitchen area a desk a few feet from the front door, and a couch by the fireplace. The whole cabin was very neat and clean, not a thing was out of place there were no dishes in the sink or even drying on the counter, even the desk devoid of any clutter.
She started to make her way to the kitchen when she thought she heard something. She froze holding her breath, listening for it to happen again, but all she could hear was the very low buzz of the generator. She just stood there and waited, there it was again. She thought it sounded like someone crying, she tip-toed around the cabin trying to find where it was coming from, only to discover it was coming from the floor.
She spotted a rug by the back door, she went over to it and pick it up and found a trap door to a cellar. She pulled it up just a crack and listened. She heard a woman urgently whisper, "shh, quiet! He's coming! Please, please stop crying, you know he gets mad when we cry, please stop," the woman's tone pleading and scared.
At hearing this Tempe pulled the hatch all the way open and started down the stairs. She stopped halfway down and looked around, what she saw broke her heart and made her sick. Two women were sitting on the dirt floor, both had lightweight chains shackled around their ankle, chaining them to their own separate corners. Each woman had a small lumpy mattress, blanket, and a bucket with a roll toilet paper. The cellar was surprisingly big for such a small cabin. It was horrifying down there, it smelled of mildew and human waste the buckets had flies swarming around them and there was only one small filthy window to give them light.
"Will you help us?" asked a scared weak voice. Temperance rushed over to the woman and knelt in front of her, she looked at the cuff around the woman's ankle and found it locked just like handcuffs, "do you know where the keys are?"
"In the kitchen, in one of the drawers."
"I'll be right back," she got up to rush upstairs and find the keys but froze when she saw a third mattress and chain. Temperance shivered, knowing that chain had been meant for her. If she had not gotten away from him, this would have been her fate, sitting here in the dark waiting to die. For a moment she had a flashback to when she was in South America where she had been kept in a place very similar to this.
She shook off the bad memories and what-ifs, then raced up the stairs to the kitchen. She found two rings full of keys, then moving as fast as her injured body would allow, back to the woman. She was trying to find the right key, but there were so many, she knew this might take some time, and time was one thing they did not have.
"I'm Jodee, Jodee Wright, and that's Linda Prat," Jodee said pointing to the other woman, Linda just sat in her corner whimpering, looking shell shocked.
She looked at Jodee and smiled, "I'm Temperance Brennan."
Jodee lost all the color in her face, "It's you. You were next. He said he was going to get you."
Temperance busied herself with finding the right key, "I know," she said softly.
"But how...how did you..."
She didn't answer just kept trying keys till she found the right one. Once freed Jodee stood up unsure what to do next.
"Go upstairs and grab a pillowcase or a bag or something and fill it with food, water bottles, some utensils, maybe a small cooking pot, and any medical supplies you can find...Oh and some blankets. And remember to keep an eye out for him," Temperance said as she was trying to find the key to Linda's ankle cuff. "Can you do that, Jodee?"
"Yeah, I can do that, but please hurry," she called out as she ran up the stairs.
As soon as she freed Linda, she anxiously went to the stairs, feeling they had been here way too long. Temperance was halfway up the stairs when she realized Linda was not behind her. She spun around, only to find that Linda was still sitting on the floor, she ran back to Linda and pulled her to her feet, "come on we need to go. Don't you want to get out of here?" the woman nodded, "Then come on," Temperance urged, half pulling her up the stairs.
Temperance looked around the cabin and found Jodee over by the desk, she had just pulled something out of it. She watched as Jodee hugged whatever it was to her chest and kissed it then put it in her pants pocket. Temperance ignored what she had just seen and walked over to Jodee, pulling Linda behind her, "did you find everything? Are we ready to go? I think we should go."
"Yeah, I got everything. Let's go," Jodee bent down and picked up an overnight bag filled with the supplies that they would need.
Temperance took them to where she had hidden her bag. She stopped and kneel to pick it up when Linda ran into her, Temperance grabbed her side and hissed in pain. Linda jumped back and flinching away from Temperance and said in a weak little voice, "I'm sorry."
Jodee dropped the overnight bag and stood in front of Temperance, "Oh my god. Your hurt. Are you alright?"
She had to wait for the pain to subside before she could answer Jodee, "it's OK I'm fine."
"Well, you don't look fine. You're very pale. What happened to you? Did he beat you up?"
"No, not really, he shot me," Temperance said matter of factly.
"Shot? Oh my god, you were shot?"
"Yes. Now we need to get going."
"But..." she stopped when Temperance shot her a look, "Ok, where do we go from here?"
"Well, for right now let's just get away from here. Then we will try and figure out where that town is."
"What town?"
"The one I saw earlier today. It was just a few miles southwest of where I was," Temperance said as she picked up her bag.
"Are you sure you're all right? Do you think you'll be able to make it to this town?"
"Yes, I'm fine, I've made it this far, I'm sure I can make it the rest of the way."
"OK," Jodee picked up the overnight bag watching Temperance as if she were a ticking time bomb. Temperance felt bad that Jodee was worried about her, but there was nothing she could do about that. When she thought of what these women had suffered at the hands of that man, it made her so livid, she could just kill him. She grabbed Linda by the arm and headed away from the cabin, Jodee following a few feet behind them.
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11:02 A.M. Tuesday
FBI Headquarters
"So, Agent Knight what did you want to talk about?" Booth asked as soon as she sat down with her coffee.
"Kory please, Well, frankly put, I think Dr. Brennan is just the latest victim of a serial kidnapper. I've been working on this kidnapping case for close to four months now, and I think this is the guy who took Dr. Brennan. Here are some files on the serial kidnapper's victims," Kory pushed the files over to Booth, he picked them up and started looking through them.
After about ten minutes of studying the files, Booth put them down and looked at Kory, "Knight, what makes you think this has anything to do with Bo...ah...Brennan? None of these women are from DC and all of them are in different lines of work. The only thing they seem to have in common with Bones is their age and height," Booth said with a little irritation thinking this was just a waste of time.
"I know on the surface it appears that way, but look at these," Kory put four picture side by side in front of him. Booth looked down at them and was surprised to see that all the women in the pictures looked eerily alike. Kory then laid a picture of Temperance next to the others, all five women could have easily been mistaken for sisters, "all right, I grant you, they do look like Bones, Brennan, but that doesn't mean that this, is our guy."
"Ok, let's look at it this way, right now you are pretty much at a standstill until you hear back from the lab, right?" Booth nodded his head yes, not sure where she was headed with this. She continued, "so what would it hurt to look into this? If I'm wrong about this, and this guy isn't our kidnapper, you still haven't lost any time with your case, but what if I am right and we didn't at least look into this, what then?" When Booth didn't answer her right away, she continued, "we will have missed an opportunity, and precious time, that's what."
Booth gave a mirthless laugh, "I think you should have been a lawyer."
She smiled at him, "You know, that's what my brother keeps telling me, he never wanted me to become an agent. But it's not like he has a whole lot of room to talk, I was only following his lead."
"Your bother is FBI?"
Kory looked him as if he should already know that, "Yeah, Brad," When it was clear he still didn't know who she was talking about, Kory added, "Agent Penning," Booth look surprised then confused.
Penning was blond and fair-skinned, where Knight was olive-skinned with black hair, the only thing they had in common was that they both had blue eyes, but that was it. Kory must have understood his confusion, because she laughed and said, "I know, we don't look alike at all, we have different fathers. In fact, Brad's father was an FBI Agent, but he was killed in the line of duty when Brad was only three months old. Anyway, Brad looks like his dad and I look like mine." Booth found that Kory liked to talk and that he liked her but most of all discovered she was a good agent. She was still young and inexperienced, but with time he felt she would go far in the FBI.
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So what did you think? I know this is a really long chapter but like I said this chapter will have to last awhile. I really hope you liked it.