Disclaimer- I don't own Bones. I'm just waiting for Fatal Voyage to arrive… But I do own Ohayioumou Nude Beach, because I made it up. It's strictly coincidence if there is such a thing!
Temperance walked by the autopsy room on her way back to the morgue. She had been supervising the storage of the shark victim. Tempe turned her head slightly as if to view the workings on the cadaver that was found in her and Booth's hotel room, but only to see a solid black door. She felt her hand go up to the doorknob, but pulled away. 'It's not our jurisdiction. Not my job…' she told herself and stared straight ahead, walking directly into the morgue room. It was empty.
"Booth?" she called. "Damn it!" she swore when no one answered. She swerved headlong into someone's chest.
"Oh! I'm sorry! I-It was my fault!" A tall skinny guy with messed up red hair stuttered. "Y-you must be Dr. Brennan."
Tempe straightened herself out. "Yes, and you are?" she asked politely.
"Oh!" the guy scratched his head. "I'm Max –uh Dr. Collins." Max held out a hand. Tempe accepted.
"Good evening, Dr. Collins. Have you seen my partner, Agent Booth, around?"
"I'm really s-sorry, Dr. Brennan, but I think he left."
Temperance stepped back to allow Max in the morgue. "He left?" She was stung. He didn't even tell her that he was leaving. "Do you know where he went? Did he leave a note? Was there anyone in here when I was gone?" She grabbed Max's lab coat collar. "Tell me!"
Max held up his arms. "Ok, ok! He told me to tell you something. C-could you l-let go of me?" Tempe released him angrily. "He told me to tell you to go back to the hotel. He h-has some business to take care of."
"Go home! He wants me to go home! What a cocky son of a b-"
"Uh… Dr. Brennan? I d-don't like to hear swear words…" Max mumbled.
Temperance took a deep breath. "Ok, Dr. Collins. I need you to tell me if anyone talked to Booth while I was gone. Please."
"Y-yeah… there was a guy." Max shuffled to his desk and sat down.
Tempe rolled her eyes. "Could you describe him please?" she asked slowly.
"Tall… bald… dark sunglasses. He had a scar on his face. He was w-wearing a suit… Th-that's all I remember. Sorry Dr. Brennan…" he pulled on his earlobe nervously. "Dr. Brennan?" he turned around. She was already gone.
----------
'Go back to the hotel, my ass!' She walked to the parking lot, every step forceful and angry. She stopped in shock. 'He took… the car… Now I have to take the bus!'
Before she could continue down the sidewalk, a gloved hand came from behind her, smothering her mouth and nose in a cloth that smelled like chloroform. The other gloved hand clasped her arm tightly to prevent her struggling. She slowly stopped squirming as the chloroform began its job. She relaxed in her attacker's grip and blacked out within seconds.
----------
This lead seemed to be going nowhere. Booth followed the man in black, as he dubbed him. The man had come straight up to Booth in the morgue while he was waiting for Tempe to return. The man called himself Gale Shyam. He had dark skin and a scar running from his left eye to the corner of his mouth.
Gale had introduced himself to Booth. "My name is Gale Shyam," he had said. "My employer has some information about the shark girl case that he thinks you might want to know."
Booth had raised his eyebrows in suspicion. "And who is this employer of yours. Don't even think about telling me that he would like to remain anonymous, 'cause that'd just be too cliché for my taste."
Gale had just smiled revealing straight, bleached-white teeth. "Mr.-"
"Agent," Booth corrected.
Gale smiled again. "Agent Booth, my employer is a very powerful man. He is doing you a favor in granting you with this information. I suggest you quietly and patiently heed his demands."
"Well, let me break it to you Mr. Shyam. I work for very powerful men, as well. I like to call them the FBI: Federal Bureau of Investigation. You might have heard of them." Booth had stood up. He had towered over Gale.
Gale had chuckled. "Very well, Agent Booth. I will tell you all about the business on the way. We're running out of time."
Since Booth preferred to be in control, he took his own car and was the one driving and getting directions from Gale. They were on the road for half an hour when they reached a rocky deserted beach. Booth put the car in park and got out. He followed Gale onto the rocks where a little rowboat was floating in the water.
Booth stopped. "This may come as a surprise, but I don't trust you."
"Alright, then. You may leave." Gale stepped carefully into the boat.
Booth looked back at his car and sighed in submission. "Fine, fine! I'm coming, but this had better be good." He climbed in the boat.
"Oh it will, sir. It will." Gale smiled again and untied the rope from a rock jutting out from the water. He pushed off the rock and they went on their way.
Booth and Gale were in the boat for ten minutes in silence when Gale pointed out a little shack on the beach. "Why did we have to take the boat?" Booth asked.
"The beach between your car and this place is completely impassible. It is infested with venomous snakes. They like to lurk in those rocks. It is dark and cold," Gale had replied.
"I see…" They rowed back to a less rocky beach and pulled the boat into the sand to keep it from floating away. There had been nothing to tie it to.
There, Booth was, following Gale into the shack. He had told Booth nothing about his business the whole way here. The man in black held the door open for Booth who wasn't moving.
"I want to know, Mr. Shyam. What is the reason for my being here? Will I benefit your employer in any way? Do I even know him?"
Gale stepped back out of the shack and closed the door. He faced Booth. "You will not do good to him, but your partner will. He has great use for Dr. Brennan. That is the deal. You get the information about your case and he gets the woman."
Booth frowned. "I never agreed to that deal."
"You agreed to come here for information, Agent Booth."
"Then don't inform me. I'd rather not make deals with your kind anyway."
"My kind, Agent Booth? Hindu?" Gale raised an eyebrow and smiled.
"Of course not, Mr. Shyam. Your business is obviously dirty and I don't want to get into it." Booth discreetly checked if he still had his gun. "So what is it? Drug running? Is your employer a hit man or something?"
Gale chuckled. "You do not trust me, Agent Booth."
"Did you just figure this out? I didn't trust you from the first moment I laid eyes on your unnerving smile."
"Hmm…" Gale was obviously amused with something.
"You never intended on giving me information, did you, Mr. Shyam?" Booth narrowed his eyes. "Why did you bring me here?"
Gale frowned. "I will let you think about that, Agent Booth."
It was silent between them, but a war was waging in Booth's head. 'He wanted me with him, but why? Am I supposed to be watched so I don't see something? Am I being kept away from something? The morgue? The bodies? Bones! Damn it! I should have left her a message! I just left without thinking! She's probably looking for me. Or she could still be at the morgue like the smart girl she is, working on those skeletons… She's looking for me. Shit. Wait… Shyam is keeping me from Bones!' Booth's eyes widened. Gale smirked.
"Would you give me a minute, Mr. Shyam?" Gale nodded. Booth pulled out his cell phone and speed dialed Temperance. He heard a few rings and then her voice saying to leave a message or call her at a different number. 'Shit.'
Gale watched as Booth ran to the boat and kicked off the beach into the water. "He's gone, sir."
"That's ok, Gale. We stalled him for a long while. Everything is going according to plan." A voice was heard in the speaker in Gale's ear. Gale turned around and opened the door to the shack. There were stairs that led underground. He took them and disappeared into the darkness below.
Booth reached the part of rockier beach where he parked his car. He didn't bother to rope the boat back up. He had no time. He rushed to his car slipping on the wet rocks.
A half hour later, he was at the morgue. He ran in wet and sandy to the room where he had been just a couple hours before. It was empty. He went to the front desk where a thin, young, Hawaiian woman was sitting at her computer. "Excuse me, miss."
The woman looked up. "Yes, Agent Booth?"
"Has Dr. Brennan been in here lately?" Booth asked, trying to keep his voice calm.
"I'm sorry, sir. She left about an hour ago to find you. Would you like to leave a message in case she comes back?"
"Yes, thank you." The woman pulled out a notepad and waited. "Just tell her that I'll be at the hotel." The woman nodded and pinned the note onto a board.
Booth pushed off of the desk. There was nothing he could do, now. He had no leads. 'Security cameras!' He turned back to the woman. "Sorry, miss, but can you tell me where the security room is?"
"Of course, sir. I'll take you there, myself." She got up and stepped in front of Booth leading him down the hall, to the right, and up to a door labeled 'SECURITY'. The woman unlocked it. "Good luck, sir," she said and left him alone.
Booth pushed the door open and entered the dark, airless room. He looked through the tapes and chose the ones marked 'MORGUE ROOM', 'MORGUE HALL', and 'PARKING LOT'. He slipped all of the tapes into different tape players and rewound them an hour and twenty minutes back.
He saw Temperance walk down the hallway and stop at the autopsy room, just about to open the door, but she stopped and continued into the morgue. She entered the room and looked around. She called out his name and cursed at the silence. He watched her turn into a tall man in a white lab coat.
He introduced himself as Dr. Max Collins. She asked about Booth. Max had said that Booth left a message for her when he escorted Booth to the door. That wasn't true. Booth didn't leave a message. He had never seen Dr. Collins in his life. Max described Gale Shyam.
Booth knew what would happen next. Tempe had been lied to and she didn't know it. Max was setting her up. Booth watched Tempe angrily walk through the hallway. She disappeared off the screen for a minute and reappeared on the third screen of the parking lot. She practically stomped to the cars and stopped, seeing that Booth had taken the car.
"Whoops…" Booth just realized that he left Temperance without a ride home. "I really am a cocky son a bitch."
Temperance turned back onto the sidewalk. Booth watched someone dressed in black silently follow her. The figure suddenly covered Tempe's face and grabbed her to stop her from escaping. She resisted, but the abductor had her in a lock. Booth leaned forward as she passed out. This was what he had been waiting for.
The man or woman threw Tempe over his or her shoulder and carried her to a blue station wagon. Booth could just barely make out the license plate number. The car drove off leaving the parking lot almost empty.
Booth fast forwarded the tape but stopped it when he saw something unexpected.
---------
The back of Temperance's head hurt like hell. She was lying on a hard packed, dirt ground. The soil was unusually cool. 'Great… again I wake up in an unknown place with a headache!' She assumed the pain in her head was an effect of the chloroform.
She opened her eyes to find that she was in a cave. There were chains on the wall and red marks on her wrist. 'Great…' she said again. 'I've been bound and most likely raped.' Tempe sat up and found that she was free. She wasn't tied up and she was alone. She got up and ran out of the cave, but skidded to a halt and almost fell off a cliff.
"Oh my God…" Tempe took in her surroundings. She looked over the cliff onto an empty beach, for it was early in the morning. There was a sign right next to her on the cliff that read, 'Ohayioumou Nude Beach: Ladies Only'.
The beach was bordered with caution tape. 'Is this… God, this is where the shark victim was found,' she remembered the FBI reports saying something about a nude beach. 'I can't… God… How the hell am I getting down from here?' 'The ladder,' a voice, not her own, said in her head. "What ladder?" Tempe looked around, getting oh so close to he edge of the cliff looking over. On the right side, she felt a ladder with her foot, going down to the beach.
She took a deep breath and stepped onto it, slowly climbing down. The ladder was unsteady as she made her way down to the beach. 'Thank God I'm not afraid of heights.' Her foot felt warm sand, and she let out a breath. 'There's a dirt path to a parking lot. You'll find a dark green car parked in lot 4A. The keys are on the hood. Go to your hotel. Agent Booth will be there. You know what to do.'
A look of resolve came over Temperance's face. Her eyes darkened as she followed the orders given to her. The promised car was there. She got in and drove down an empty one-way street into the distance.
So! Who the heck is talking to Temperance? What the heck is going on? I dunno! Hee hee hee… Thank you all for your TWO reviews on chapter five. Gosh people… Anyway, I hope those of you who read this enjoy this chapter! It's summer, so I'll try to update sooner. I think I finally know what's going on!
