Author's Note: First of all, I would like to apologize that this took so long, and I would also like to apologize because I went back and read the last chapter and found that my computer decided to delete practically all of my question marks. Also, I would like to thank you for all the reviews, they really cheered me up. I got my grades back for last semester this week and I got all A's...except for creative writing, in which I got a B. Irony. It was nice reading all your reviews after that telling me that I don't completely suck (which was more or less what my professor told me). Anyway, enough whining, just for your info, Ockham's Razor, which obviously comes up in this chapter, is a real thing. If you want to know more about it send me a message or look it up...Wikipedia has a good explanation of it. I think you guys might like this one. :-) Enjoy...


The next morning found Temperance, Booth, Angela, and Hodgins back to the NASA lab that had become their second home. Temperance and Booth were avidly avoiding one another, their silences only briefly broken when they took the time to make rude comments to one another. Angela and Hodgins were working on ignoring both of them. Angela worked with Booth on fine tuning the face for the last girl from the Refuge, while Hodgins bent with Tempe over the girl's remains, their eyes scanning for any miniscule detail they may have missed. The bones had a great deal of damage due to animals, therefore gleaning information from them was proving difficult.

"Any information that could help us narrow down our search?" Angela asked, her eyes still glued to the hand sketched picture in her hands.

"Victim was between the ages of 21 and 26, female, and was about…" Temperance glanced on the notes she had made on a small pad. "…5'6" to 5'8" tall. African decent."

"She was at the Refuge for at least five years," Hodgins added.

"And she broke her leg when she was a child. More than likely between the ages of 7 and 10," Temperance said.

"So, that narrows the search down to any girl in the country who is black and who might have fallen down at some point," Booth said in a frustrated tone. "Oh, and she was also an average height. Well, gee, I don't know why we're having such a hard time figuring out who she is…"

"What do you want, Booth? This is all the bones are giving us," Temperance snapped.

"I want a name!" Booth replied.

"Then find one! That's your job," Temperance bit back.

Booth regarded her with a fierce gaze. "I could. Or I could just call your boyfriend and ask for the name of the girl he killed five years ago."

Temperance slammed her notebook onto the table. She was about to fire back a reply when Angela stopped her. "Tempe…"

Anger flared in Temperance's eyes, but she held her tongue. She roughly grabbed her notebook and began furiously looking at the bones.

Booth had a smugly satisfied grin. He opened his mouth to speak as well, but was stopped by a warning look from Hodgins. Booth shrugged and turned back to the computer screen.

Angela and Hodgins exchanged a tired look. They had been playing referee to their two co-workers for hours, and both were growing very, very tired of it.

The room dropped into a tense quiet, broken only by the steady clicking of Booth as he surfed the national archives. After about ten minutes, Temperance snapped.

"Could you click any louder over there, Booth? Seriously, because it's doing wonders for my concentration!"

Booth flared. "Sure. Just give me Brian's number and I won't have to search the archives anymore!"

"What, you didn't see it when you were deleting it from my phone?"

"BOOTH! TEMPERANCE!" Angela shouted. "Cut it out!"

Temperance and Booth rallied on, ignoring Angela's words. "You should thank me for deleting his name! I saved you from having to have a conversation with a killer!"

Temperance threw her hands in the air, her notepad flying unnoticed from her hand as she did so. "This is ridiculous! Yesterday you were convinced that Kate and Charlie Ribald were the killers, and now it's Brian?"

"He's the logical choice! Don't you find it a little strange that he just happened to start dating you when you started working on this case? His case?"

"First of all, I was dating him before you presented this little gem of a case to me, and secondly, he didn't just choose to start dating me, Booth! I was involved, too!"

"Wake up and smell the coffee, Bones, he played you! He's a sick killer, and now he's going to protect himself by hiding behind one of the main people who can nail his ass!"

"Odd that you mention coffee, considering yesterday the owners of the coffeehouse were the 'only logical choice' as suspects! That's the problem, Booth! Acting on instinct leads to mistakes!"

"Amen to that!" Booth screamed back, making it clear to Temperance that he wasn't referencing the case.

Temperance stared at him in anger, pain flashing though her eyes as she did so, but before Booth could register the look, Angela cut in. "Both of you stop! This is ridiculous! You've been screaming at each other for HOURS now, and it's gotten you nowhere! So, from now on, these are the rules: no yelling, no fighting, and no biting or condescending remarks! If you can't speak civilly to one another, then don't speak at all! Hodgins and I are sick of hearing the two of you bicker! Be productive and talk about the case or SHUT UP!"

"Amen to that," Hodgins said from his seat. Booth shot him a warning glare.

"Fine," Temperance answered. "Let's talk about the case, then."

"Great," Booth said, his tone harsh. "Let's start with the fact that Brian is our killer."

Temperance lurched in her seat as if she were about to physically attack Booth, but Angela instantly put up her hand and shot her a look to freeze her. "Alright, let's start with that. Why do you think Brian might be the killer?"

Booth settled back in his seat, lacing his fingers behind his head. "He makes sense. He was in the same location as the victims when they went missing, he has a connection to Chincoteague, and he keeps "checking in" by calling Bones. He's worried about something; he had the opportunity. He's the reasonable choice."

Angela then turned to Temperance. "And why do you think that Brian might not be the killer?"

Temperance dropped her notebook back onto the table and crossed her arms. "Several reasons; first, there is no evidence that suggests Brian was actually around any of the victims before they went missing. Just because he was in the same city doesn't mean he even saw them. Also, he wasn't even in the same city as Tammy and Vince, and Amy went missing two weeks ago when Brian was in New York a year ago. On top of that, there's the question of motive. Brian had no reason to want any of these random kids dead."

"Every one of the victims so far worked at a service related job," Booth pointed out. "Most were waitresses, and one was a cashier. Think about the girls at the coffeehouse; teenagers have no money, so when they get jobs, they work a lot of hours. Meeting any of these kids wouldn't have been difficult."

"There's no guarantee that Brian even went any of the places where the kids worked; he was in those cities so that he could attend a conference!" Temperance interjected.

Booth replied. "He wouldn't have been at the convention center the entire time! They hold them in cities so people can have something to do when they aren't in meetings. He would have been wandering in the city at some point, and there's a good chance he would have been in places like the ones where these kids worked."

"Fine," Temperance conceded. "Let's say he did meet the victims. So what? Hundreds of people a day go in restaurants in cities; Brian has no more connection to these kids than any of those other people. And, on top of that, we don't just have the bones of kids! What about the osteoporosis bones? How do you explain those? And you still don't have a theory for motive!"

"Sexual predator," Booth said, with a slight shrug. "Lonely guy, attractive young girls, maybe he had some fantasies that got away from him and people got hurt. You said yourself that there was evidence of sexual assault. And, on top of that, you said the victims had breaks that indicated that they were pushed into a confined space. He must have been putting them in the trunk of his car for transport."

"If he murdered them in different cities at different times, why would he bring them all to Chincoteague? Why not bury them wherever he killed them? And if one sexually fantasy just got out of control, why would he do it repeatedly for years?" Temperance asked.

"Maybe it just gives him some kind of sick high. He feels comfortable with Chincoteague, so maybe he felt safer bringing them here. He vacations here every year, so maybe it's his way of protecting himself; he can come back every year and remind himself that he's still safe."

Temperance groaned. "That's insane! And what about the Ribalds? Why are they suddenly off the hook?"

"I saw Charlie Ribald yesterday; he had no reservations about letting me look in the basement. He wasn't hiding anything. He wasn't acting like a man who was a murderer."

"So maybe he didn't kill the girl in the basement; that doesn't mean he didn't kill the others. We could be dealing with more than one case."

"We aren't," Booth answered simply.

Temperance sighed loudly. "You don't know that, Booth."

"It doesn't feel right," he answered.

Temperance felt her anger jump higher. "That doesn't mean anything! Look at the evidence; the other bodies were buried, and this one wasn't. The other bodies were simply left, this one was surrounded with limestone. The other bodies were places outdoors, this one was placed indoors. The killer in the case of Amy had to actually break into a building to leave her! That doesn't fit the profile!"

Booth threw up his hands. "Okay! Fine! How about this, then; Brian killed some of the victims, and the Ribalds killed the others. In fact, the Ribalds killed Amy, which is why nothing was stolen from the shop. They wanted to kill her, but waited until they had a convenient cover, which came when we breezed into town working on a serial murder case. They were asking us questions at dinner so they could learn our killer's style and imitate it to throw us off their scent."

Temperance shook her head. "That's not what happened."

Booth paused for a moment. "And how exactly would you know that?"

"Ockham's Razor," Temperance answered, as if this explained everything.

Angela cut in after a moment's pause. "Okay, I'll ask. Hey, Tempe, what's Ockham's Razor?"

Temperance gave a slight sigh before she began explaining. "Ockham's Razor is a principle. Put simply, it means that all things being equal, the simplest answer tends to be the right one. Sort of like the shortest point between two distances is a straight line; if something can be explained in one or two steps, it's more correct than trying to explain the same phenomenon in four or five steps."

The three stared back at her before Booth spoke. "Okay. Now, how is that relevant?"

"Your theory requires multiple 'maybes' and a series of conditions that are highly unstable. In order for you to be correct, a very complex set of requirements must be met. Therefore, since a simpler answer can be found, your theory is by nature unstable and inherently flawed."

Hodgins cut in. "What's your simpler theory?"

"I don't know completely yet, but obviously someone picked these people because they shared some sort of common feature, a feature that more than likely tied them to Chincoteague. Therefore, they were killed. We just have to figure out what the feature is. These might be different cases all together; that would also be a simpler theory."

Booth shook his head. "Just because a theory is complicated, that doesn't mean it's wrong."

"Just because a theory is convenient, that doesn't mean it's right."


Later that afternoon, Angela, Hodgins, Booth, and Temperance managed to find an ID for the last body from the refuge. The girl's name was Molly Cobb. She was 23 years old when she went missing in her hometown of Richmond, VA. Just like all the other victims, she had been a beautiful girl who had gone missing in broad daylight; she had recently graduated from college, and was working as bartender before she was killed.

The group made the appropriate calls and sent the body to Zach who was going to prepare the necessary DNA testing, although thanks to the condition of the bones, Temperance felt sure that they wouldn't glen much information from doing so. After the Jeffersonian was done with the remains, they would be sent back to Molly's home for burial.

Finding the ID for the last body at the Refuge did little to relieve the tension; instead of feeling as though they had accomplished something, the four only felt like bigger failures. Six people were dead; six people who had barely begun to have lives. The age range for the victims, excluding the still unexplained osteo bones, was fifteen to twenty-three.

Temperance and Booth continued to bicker with one another, and Angela and Hodgins were both too stressed to intervene. They stopped trying at dinner, and by the time the meal was over, the people at the neighboring tables were shooting the group menacing looks.

They arrived back at the hotel and gathered in Booth and Hodgins' room for a while. Everyone was on edge; although they had been working on this case for quite a while now, everyone felt slightly lost. They had their ID's, now they weren't quite sure what they should do.

The bickering between Booth and Tempe wasn't helping anything, and by 9:30 Angela was ready to kill them both.

"I'VE HAD IT!" she finally shrieked, stopping Booth and Temperance who were arguing over some meaningless statement again. "I can't take anymore of this! You two are adults, and you should be able to handle your problems! I'm sick and tired of being a damn referee to you two! And so, for the rest of the night, I'M NOT DOING IT ANYMORE!" She turned to Hodgins. "Screw plans! Screw letting them figure it out on their own!" She was waving her hands madly in the air as she turned back to the brooding Booth and Temperance. "Here's what's going to happen!" She grabbed Booth's key from the table. "We are taking your room keys. You are both going to stay in this room until you can figure out a way to be civil! You have to figure something out, because the constant fighting is driving me INSANE!" And, with that, she grabbed the hand of a rather stunned Hodgins, and dragged him out of the room. "Talk!" she shouted, and then she slammed the door behind her, leaving Booth and Temperance alone inside.

Booth and Tempe stood silently, surveying one another for a moment. Finally, Booth sighed and said, "alright. I guess we do have to figure something out here."

His tone was gruff. Temperance gave a slight nod. "Fine. What do you suggest we do?"

Booth shrugged and looked at the floor. "I don't know."

"Neither do I," Tempe answered. They both avoided the other's eyes.

Temperance sighed. "Listen, Booth…"

Booth stopped her. "Why haven't you dumped him?"

Temperance was momentarily caught off guard by his directness. "I haven't seen him," she answered.

Booth shook his head. "No. Don't give me that. You've talked to him on the phone, you saw him before we left, and you've had plenty of other opportunities! Why haven't you just told him that it's over?"

Temperance shook her head. "It's more complicated than that, Booth, and you know that!"

"How?" Booth practically shouted. "How is it complicated? I broke up with Meg over the phone!"

Temperance began to grow more angry. "No. Meg broke up with you."

"What's the difference?" Booth shouted back. "The point is, it ended simply over the phone. Why haven't you done the same thing with Brian?"

Temperance's tone was like steel. "My conversations with him have been limited. It seems that I had some problems getting my messages."

Booth's eyes flared, and his voice matched hers in eerie stillness. "Don't give me that. If you wanted to break up with him, you would have."

"Maybe I don't want to," she bit back.

"He's a prick," he growled.

"He's my boyfriend." Temperance saw the rage flare in Booth's eyes.

"Dump him."

Booth was standing directly in front of Temperance now. "It's more complicated than that," she answered, her voice harder than diamonds and completely unyielding.

"No, it's not," he replied, his voice just as harsh. He spoke in a tone that was barely above a whisper as they were standing very close to one another.

She looked at him, indignant. "And how you know that?" she hissed.

"Ockham's Razor." And, with that, he aggressively captured her lips with his.

Temperance's hands flew to Booth's face as his fingers firmly clutched her waist. Without really knowing how they got there, Booth soon realized that he had pinned Temperance against the hotel wall. They kissed each other with unbridled passion, the fire of their rage igniting their reactions to one another. Booth's tongue impaled Temperance's mouth as her hands dug throw his hair, grabbing at him, forcing him closer. She felt herself gasp as Booth's hands shifted and found their way under her shirt so they were resting on the bare skin that covered her ribcage. Pressed against the wall, she could feel his excitement growing quickly, and she felt all of her control fade away as well.

His hands pushed at her shirt, and soon she found that it was laying a crumpled pile on the floor, along with Booth's shirt and her bra. Pressing skin to skin, all things that were not Booth lost meaning. Names like Zach, Angela, Meg, and Brian meant nothing to her. The faces of the Ribalds and the pictures of the six victims leaked from her mind. Theories, answers, and questions suddenly lost all importance. They only thing that was important was Booth, who was now touching her, caressing her, and pushing against her with such delicious pressure that she felt she would crumble from the feeling of it. Her body ached where he did not touch her.

Booth felt her hands move as well, and within moments he felt her hands impatiently struggling with the waistband of his pants. He reached for hers as well, but a moment later she had torn the button from the front of the fabric and, ignoring the zipper, had slipped her hands inside, touching him in ways that made his breathing stop while simultaneously causing him to groan into her mouth. His reaction to her caused her rock her still clothed hips against him, and he suddenly realized that her touch was enough to make him explode within seconds. He was painfully aroused now, and he grabbed at her wrists to still her movements.

He fought with waist of her pants then, and moments later they both managed to rid one another of the clothing that had been in their way. It lay now, scattered about the room, ignored by the pair who were still desperately exploring one another with movements that were not at all tentative or inhibited. Their screaming at one another now seemed calm and friendly in comparison to the passion, the unfiltered need that they expressed toward one another.

When Booth felt he couldn't handle any more, he grabbed Temperance's waist and, pushing her slightly harder into the wall, slid her up higher. She instantly responded, as her legs surrounded his waist, clutching him, and Booth quickly thrust forward.

They both froze for a moment, eyes closed, as the sensation of being one enveloped them. Momentarily paralyzed, both were in complete awe of the feeling.

Booth remained frozen a moment longer, and Temperance began to whimper slightly, her hips moving against his with lust and desperation. Booth groaned, his fogged brain barely even able to form Temperance's name, as he began to move as well.

All either could do was groan and gasp as they moved by instinct, their mouths barely separated, breathing in one another's air. Temperance wrapped her arms firmly around Booth's neck, and they panted as they moved.

Before long, the movements increased in speed, and soon they were both thrashing against one another in ecstasy. Booth felt her release, and the erotic sound of her pleasure caused his release to immediately follow.

They stayed still for a moment, out of breath, their sweat mingling as they held onto one another. A short time later, they shifted so that Temperance was standing on the ground, though her arms still remained linked around Booth's neck, and Booth's arms still sturdily encircled her waist.

Temperance inclined her head slightly upwards a short time later, and her lips met Booth's a beautifully deep and meaningful kiss that did not break. She thought she could feel his heart pounding his chest, although she couldn't be entirely sure that it wasn't her own, and before long she and Booth found themselves sinking into the mattress on the bed, holding on another and kissing as they did so. Their was a peace to their movements now, though a short time later, when Booth began to feel a familiar stirring and the two moved under the blankets, the fire returned.


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