Ryan walked urgently passed the examination tables. He knew he was attracting attention with his behavior but he couldn't care less. After three days of intensive pushing, he had finally been granted his warrant to search Collins' house. The meeting with Allison had been postponed but Ryan needed to tell his partner to fetch the little girl at her school right away.

He barged in his partner's office just as she was hanging up her phone.

"Ryan, WHAT THE HELL?" Temperance screamed as she jumped out of her skin.

But Ryan didn't have time to make a comment about it, no matter how funny her reaction had just been.

"Grab your stuff." He commanded. "You're going to St. Sebastian's to pick up Allison."

"Why? What's wrong?"

"Get this." Ryan said as he watched his partner get to her feet and grab her coat from the hanger.

It was pouring rain outside.

"Collins' alibi doesn't check out. Well, it checks out partially."

"What do you mean?" Temperance replied, adrenaline pumping in her veins as they walked hurriedly towards the parking lot.

"I talked to his wife after we left the school the other day. She agreed to meet me at her work. Get this, she's a nurse."

"So?" Temperance answered, not sure where he was going with this.

"You'll see. So I asked her about the night of the disappearance. I told her that her husband said they had been watching a movie together. Get this. She says that she doesn't remember anything between 8:30 pm to 12:00 am that night."

"What?"

Temeprance stopped dead in her tracks, in the middle of the hallway. Ryan grabbed her arm and roughly got her to start walking again.

"She says that Collins and her sat down to watch a movie around 8:15ish. She said she felt drowsy and the last thing she remembers is wondering when was the last time she had fallen asleep at 8:30. Next thing she knows, she opens her eyes, the movie has ended and it's midnight."

"Still have no clue where you're getting at, Ryan." Temperance said as Ryan opened the door for her.

"She woke up to find her husband stirring beside her. She noticed that he wasn't quite in the same position as they had been before."

"Nothing out of the ordinary there. People move in their sleep."

Ryan was exasperated. He had been sure she would have caught his drift right away.

"The wife felt groggy and disoriented and she noticed that her husband looked the same. She also noticed a small cut on her husband's forehead. She got suspicious so she went around the house to check if there hadn't been a break-in. She found nothing."

"So?"

"She felt restless for the rest of the night and she was unable to fall asleep. When she went back to work later that day, she demanded a blood test to one of her colleagues. The doc found drugs in her system."

"She was drugged? By who?"

"By her husband."

Temperance stopped walking.

"Okay, Longström, you're really not making any sense."

Ryan also stopped walking. She never called him by his last name.

"Is that your gut feeling telling you Collins is the abductor?"

"I never said he was the abductor. I only said that Collins might have drugged his wife."

"But you've thought about it?"

Ryan sighed.

"Okay, maybe I did a little but I don't have time to explain it all at the moment. Listen Tempe, you need to get Allison to talk to you. Maybe if she talks, we'll know a little bit more about the disappearance of her friends. I really think this child knows more than she's telling and I'm pretty sure she knows exactly who abducted the children. "

Ryan paused for a brief second.

"That is what my gut is really telling me."

Temperance nodded. There was something about Ryan's behavior that made her want to believe him.

"I don't have my car. Booth drove me to work this morning." She told her partner, remembering that she had gotten a ride that morning.

In response, Ryan chucked her his keys.

"The FBI van is picking me up here in ten minutes."

Thanking him, she walked to his car and climbed in. Seconds later, she was on her way to St. Sebastian's.

Everything was quiet in the house as the search team barged in through the door and scattered across Collins' home. Ryan examined his surroundings. A living room was on his left, through which he could access a small kitchen. In from of him stood a door most likely leading to a basement. On his right, stairs climbed to the second floor. Ryan went left.

The living room was clustered with furniture. Ryan examined the couch. It looked fairly old and was on the verge of retirement. Everything seemed normal in the living room. He stepped into the kitchen.

This morning's breakfast was still on the table and the sink was filled with dishes. A small window opened to the backyard. Ryan looked through it. A swing hung from a tree and Ryan swore he could see a doll lying at the far end of the yard. A small door stood beside the window. He tried it but found that the door was locked... from the inside. He gave up. He didn't time to guess how to unlock the door. The presence of a doll annoyed the hell out of him but he reminded himself that it didn't mean anything.

"Collins could have nieces who visited him over the week-end." He said to himself.

Walking out of the kitchen, he immediately went upstairs where a few of his men were already going through Collins' belonging. Ryan sat down on the bed and opened the nightstand drawer. Several enveloppes were piled inside and Ryan took them out. They were all addressed to Collins. Opening one of the enveloppes, Ryan looked up to make sure no one was looking. He unfolded the paper. A two-page letter was written by hand.

James, you need to reconsider. The letter said. This is really not a good idea. There has to be some other way. I'm sure that if we sit down and talk about it, we'd both see that this is ridiculous.

Ryan had had enough. He put the letter back in the enveloppe and opened another one. The other letters were all similar. The expeditor seemed to beg Collins to reconsider something. Ryan couldn't tell from the content what that thing to reconsider really was. It almost seemed like the person was writing in code.

He double-checked each letter for a signature or a date but found nothing. Sighing, he put everything back in the drawer. Getting up, he walked towards the dresser. An agent informed him that someone had already gone through the dresser but Ryan didn't care. He liked to see things for himself.

As he opened the top drawer, he wasn't sure exactly what he was looking for. His gut told him that Collins had something to do with the disappearance of the Bradford children. He rummaged for a few moments before having to admit that the agent had been right. There was nothing else in this dresser other than clean underwears, socks and other clothing.

An hour of searching came out fruitless. Nothing had been found linking Melina or her brother to this house. Ryan walked out empty handed.

Back at the Jeffersonian, Temperance and Allison sat quietly in the doctor's office. Allison was seated on the couch, her legs dangling from it, while Temperance sat at her desk.

"Why am I here?" Allison asked.

Temperance looked up at the child.

"There's something I wanted to show you."

"Really? What?"

"Just give me a second."

The child nodded and continued looking around the weird woman's office. Because Allison had settled to qualifying Temperane as weird. As much as she wanted to hate her, just like every other cop who had talked to her, she just couldn't hate her. There was just something about her.

Temperance logged into her account and surfed the web site for what she was looking for. A roll of her mouse brought her to the photo album link. She clicked on it and waited. She glanced at Allison who was still sitting obidiently on the couch. She smiled.

She looked back at her screen and clicked on the photo album she wanted. She told Allison to come closer and the child got up. Temperance got up to leave the seat to the little girl and pulled another one.

"Who's that?" Allison asked.

"That's me with my mom when I was 8 years old."

"She's pretty."

"Yeah she really was." Temperance replied with a sigh. "Allison, do you know why I'm showing you this?"

Allison shook her head no.

"You see, when I was fifteen years old, my parents disappeared and nobody knew what had happened to them. About seven years ago, we found my mother's body."

"What happened to her?"

"It's not important. What is important though is that I finally got the answers I was looking for for years. To get them, I had to talk to a whole lot of people. My partner at the time questionned a lot of people who knew my parents and it was by asking questions that we were finally able to figure out what happened to my mother."

Allison nodded.

"Your best friend disappeared and I know it has affected you because it's happened to me. I know how it feels to lose someone you deeply care about. I didn't know where my mother had gone when she left. You know. You know where your best friend went. You don't have to be afraid to tell me because if you do, we'll be able to arrest whoever did this and he'll go to jail. He's not going to harm you."

Allison looked back at the picture on the screen. The doctor seemed so happy with her mother and she wondered if Temperance ever missed her mother.

"Do you miss your mom?"

"All the time." Temperance answered, truthfully.

"I miss Melina." Allison said, looking down at her hands.

Her tone was sad and Temperance felt herself tear up. She put her hand on the little girl's.

"That's why you need to tell me what happened to her and Carl."

Allison locked eyes with the woman sitting in front of her and told her everything that she knew.

"Amazing!" Ryan simply said as he sat down on the couch beside his partner. "You actually got her to talk?"

"Yes, Ryan. Now would you calm down?" Temperance replied, laughing softly.

"Calm down? But Tempe, this is huge. I mean we tried like three times to get her to talk and it didn't work. What did she tell you?"

A large smile spread over her face.

"She just told me what exactly happened that night."

"Which is?"

"Well the beginning was the same. Melina's mother tucked them in, they later sneaked downstairs for candy, they ate some and fell asleep. Allison woke up to the sound of flames, it was really hot in the room. That's where she changed her story."

Temperance stopped which only resulted in making Ryan less patient.

"Will you just tell me what she said?"

Temperance chuckled.

"She saw someone walk in the room. She couldn't make out who it was but she figured that it was probably a fire fighter. The man stopped dead in his tracks when he saw her. But then he walked deeper into the room, grabbed Melina and he was about to leave when he came back in his tracks and grabbed Carl as well. Before leaving the room, he told the girl to be patient, that another one of his colleague would come get her in a few seconds. Just like the man said, a minute or two later, another fire fighter came in, picked her up and carried her outside. You know the rest."

"That's it! It's officially a kidnapping. A fire fighter comes in, grabs two children and leaves the house. The children are never brought home to their parents, only the third child. It's a kidnapping."

Temperance nodded.

"If we could only found out who did. Allison didn't recognize the man at all?"

"Why do you say that?"

"Well most kidnappings are done by people known to the family. Allison might have known him."

"But Allison isn't family."

Ryan didn't say anything.

"You still think Collins is the abductor?"

"Well who else could it be? Besides we know he has a thing for little girls. Maybe he also has a thing for little boys. We don't know much about him."

"Did you check out his file?"

"He was charged for sexual assault on a teenage girl when he was 15 but because he was a minor back then, his whole history has been erased."

Temperance nodded.

"Still doesn't mean it's him."

"I know."

They sat in silence for a while until Ryan asked the question he had been dying to ask her since he found out Allison had talked.

"How did you get her to confess?"

"I told her about my parents."

"Oh..."

"Yeah. It seemed to be the only way. But hey it worked!"

Temperance sounded falsely cheerful.

"What did she say?"

"She asked me if I missed my mother."

"What did you tell her?"

"I told her I missed her all the time."

"Which you do."

"Which I do."

"Is that why you became a forensic anthropologist?"

"Pretty much. I guess that I thought because I couldn't get the answers to my questions, I could at least give other people the answers to theirs."

Ryan nodded knowingly. He hadn't known that his partner had suffered so much in her life. He had known about her parents before but they had never truly talked about it. It was still a taboo subject for her and he respected that.

"That's a very sweet gesture. I didn't know you could be such a softie."

"That's because you don't know me well enough. Why did you become a cop? Same reason as everybody else?"

Ryan shrugged.

"I guess. My dad was a police officer, my grandfather was a police officer and so was my uncle. I was the only boy in my family so everybody expected me to become one. It took a couple of years but I decided to join the police. I got recruted for the FBI shortly after I got my badge."

"Nice."

"Yeah I guess it's pretty nice. I got to meet you."

"Ryan..." Temperance warned.

She had a feeling where this conversation was going to go and she wasn't up for it. She had been able to tell him but she barely even had a chance to register what was happening before she felt lips pressed against hers. She felt her mind go blank and was unable to move for a few seconds. Her eyes involuntarily shut which made her miss the angry look on Booth's face as he caught sight of his wife kissing the partner she claimed she didn't have feelings for.

A/N: Okay guys, don't hate me just yet.