I reposted this chapter, as I wasn't really happy with how the case was panning out. Grr…it's still not really working as the intrigue isn't really there, but oh well…hopefully it's better than the first effort. As always, hope you enjoy it, and please review! Have an awesome day kate
Disclaimer: I so do not own Bones.
"Are you serious, Bones? That son of bitch has locked us in here?" said Booth angrily.
"It is a little out of the ordinary," Bones commented.
He pounded ineffectually on the door. The heavy steel absorbed all the sound. "I cannot believe that he would do this."
Booth's anger helped Brennan's anxiety to dissolve and she went over to him in an attempt to calm him down. Placing a hand on his shoulder, she spoke softly to him. "Why don't we just phone him?"
Booth exhaled; she was right. There was no point in getting all wound. He pulled out his cellphone, and dialled 911. Pacing, Booth waited for the call to connect.
"Come on," he growled. After waiting for almost 30 seconds, Booth ended the call and examined the phone. "I don't believe it. No signal! This is fucking unbelievable."
Bones pulled out her phone, and examined the screen. She shrugged her shoulders when she realised that she had the same result.
"He's going to have to realise that we're still down here at some point. We may as well do something to pass the time." Bones said.
Her comment caused Booth to smirk, a smirk that Bones caught. She punched him in the arm – hard.
"That hurt, Bones," he pouted.
"Well, you shouldn't have inappropriate facial expressions then," she replied loftily.
Crossing the room, she sat on the room's sole seat. That caused another sulky expression to cross Booth's face.
"Where am I gonna sit?" he asked, a little petulantly.
Bones looked bored. "That's not really my problem, Booth."
"I could sit on the seat and you could sit on my knee," he suggested.
That caused Bones to blush. "Booth, what the hell is wrong with you?" she asked, hiding her discomfort and confusion with annoyance.
Wanting a distraction she said, "Can I have a look at the case file?"
Her question caused Booth's expression to darken, and he frisbeed it across the room to her. "There really isn't any point." He stalked off to the other corner of the room where he sat down on the floor, knees drawn up, head resting on them.
Bones sighed. At least with Booth in the corner, she could try and concentrate on the file. Opening it, she wondered about the way he had spoken to her before. She could understand him being pissed off, as she was too, but the flirtatious comments were going a little too far. Bones rolled her head on her neck, regaining concentration on what was at hand. She could think about Booth later.
Booth watched Bones as she was drawn into her work. It was something that he admired about her – the fact that wherever, whenever, she was able to focus on the job they had to do. He ran his fingers through his hair. Man, he had been an arse before. Inappropriate remarks were not the way to go around Bones.
20 minutes later, after an extensive perusal of the file, Bones interrupted Booth's thoughts.
"Booth," she called out.
His head snapped up. "Yip, what is it?"
Frowning she walked over and crouched down beside him. "Look at this." She pointed to a date on the file. "It says here that these remains were found almost 5 months ago."
"Unbelievable," Booth said as he rolled his eyes. "This guy just gets more and more annoying." He looked thoughtful. "I wonder if that's why we got sent up here. Normally the remains would have been shipped to the Jeffersonian for examination. Maybe they felt FBI interference was needed to tidy up this guy's procedures. Because it really isn't normal for Cullen to send me to the end of the world without an explanation."
Bones spoke again. "The report from the scene is incomplete. You need to get a statement off the sheriff so we have a fuller account of what actually happened. All we know so far is that the remains were found by a group of people walking up Tasman Glacier, and that they were probably uncovered by the summer melt."
Feeling cramped in her uncomfortable crouch, Bones shifted slightly. However, her legs had pins and needles from a lack of blood flow and when she tried to move them; they wouldn't cooperate, tipping Tempe over into Booth's lap. Trying to extricate herself hurriedly, Bones blushed furiously. It didn't help when Booth wrapped a pair of arms around her waist and lifted her effortlessly off him.
Grinning over at Bones, as she sat next to him, rubbing her legs, Booth said, "I knew I could get you to sit on me somehow!"
Brennan frowned at him, and then gave in and poked her tongue out at him. She got up and snapped a fresh pair of gloves on.
"I'm going to take some photos of these, and take samples for Jack to analyse, considering it looks like we may be here for longer than I had anticipated. You'll just have to occupy yourself."
Booth nodded. "Fine."
Two hours later, Bones was degloving herself. She sighed.
"Okay, I'm getting kind of pissed off now. I really want to get out here."
Surprisingly, with her words, the door opened, revealing the ruddy face of the sheriff.
"What are you folks still doing down here? I thought you would have left hours ago."
Booth jumped to his feet. "Well, we would have been had we been able to get of here. You locked us in," he said aggressively.
The sheriff looked surprised. "Oh, I'm sorry. I must have forgotten to deactivate the automatic lock. We have it for security purposes."
Booth looked unimpressed by his lame story. However, he could feel Brennan's eyes drilling into his back, willing him to let it go. Booth sighed, and the pair followed the sheriff back upstairs.
Booth and Brennan headed over to the pub to get themselves some lunch, and to unwind a little after their rather stressful morning. An hour later, they were back over at the sheriff's office, interviewing him. As usual, Booth had warned Bones to stay out of it, although he had allowed her into the interview room.
"Right, Sheriff," Booth began. "We just want you to give us a full run down of everything that has happened in this case so far."
Sheriff Halcort looked shocked. "We got that skeleton near five months back!"
Booth wasn't going to let him get away with that after this mornings effort. "You can start from there then."
"Well, about five months ago, a group of five locals went walking on Tasman Glacier. Their names are in the file."
Booth looked down at the papers scattered across the table and found the people he was referring to – Dick and Lizzy Mitchell, Michael Best, Kelly O'Connell, James Scott – all locals as the sheriff had said.
"They'd been walking for around 2 hours when they came across the remains scattered across the ice. Some of bones were still partly embedded in the ice."
Booth interrupted. "Did anyone take any pictures of the bones?"
Halcort thought for a moment. "Umm…I think that Dick Mitchell, the guy who owns the store down the road, took a few."
"Why didn't you track them down and put them in the file, then?"
Sheriff Halcort shrugged. "I didn't really see the need. This isn't the first time we've found bones round here. Nothing has ever got solved in the previous cases."
Seeing Booth was seriously pissed now, Bones took over.
"How many other unidentified sets of remains have been found?"
Halcort looked off into space. "I think there've been four before this lot, all found during the summer over the last five years. We're pretty under-resourced here, so in the past I've just interviewed those who found them."
"What happened to those remains?" Bones asked.
"I sent them all over to Anchorage to see if their forensic people could find out anything else about them. As far as I know, they should still have them," Sheriff Halcort replied.
Booth and Brennan exchanged a look.
"Could you continue with your account of your investigation please, Sheriff?" Booth said.
"There's not really that much else to tell. Dick and his mates walked back down here and contacted me and the next day we took a chopper in and removed the bones. The local doctor had a look though he couldn't tell us anything, and I got statements from the five who saw found them. We don't have any missing people round here, so I contacted the FBI a while ago - thought it was a little weird that we had found one skeleton a year for the past five."
Booth had calmed down by now. "Could you give us a list of everyone that has had contact with the remains and hand over the files relating to the other remains? This is now a federal investigation. You are off this case, sheriff."
Armed with the files from the previous cases, and bundled up against the cold, Booth and Bones headed back to their accommodation. Although it was only 3pm, it was dark. Neither was in the mood to head off into the dark and interview anyone. Up in their room, the pair spread out the files on the bed.
"At least we know why the FBI sent us up here now," Bones said.
"I'm going to look through these files and see if I can find any links, although they're all probably as bad as the other one was."
Bones nodded. "I need to send these photos back to Angela, so she can start working on finding us a face. Zach can hopefully tell us the implement that caused our John Doe's head injury. I'll also get those remains from Anchorage sent down to the Jeffersonian."
They broke only for a quick dinner, so by 10pm, Booth and Brennan had a much clearer picture of what had happened. Bones flopped back onto the bed, stretching her legs
"So let's go over what we have so far. There have been five sets of remains found, one each year during August for the past five years. We know that they were all male but that's it. No people are common to the groups who have found them and they've all been found in different locations."
Booth slumped down beside her, rubbing his eyes with his hands. "That sounds about right." He rolled over to look at Bones whose eyes were closed. He poked her gently in her stomach. "C'mon Bones lets go to bed."
"Mmm, sounds good," she replied. "I'm still kinda jetlagged from the flight here."
Bones picked up her pj's from under her pillow and headed to the bathroom to get changed. Emerging from the bathroom, she slipped into bed, leaving the light on as she waited for her partner to return from brushing his teeth. Shivering slightly, Bones remembered her last effort at sleeping in this bed. Judging by the temperature, it looked like she was going to endure another sleepless night. Shutting her eyes, she pulled the blankets tightly around her.
Moments later, Bones felt the mattress sink as Booth got in beside her. He chuckled.
"Why does it not surprise me that you're a blanket hog, Bones?"
Brennan rolled over to face him. "I'm freezing!"
"I can fix that." With that, Booth reached out and pulled her against his body. "Is that better?"
Bones smiled as she sleepily nodded. She could feel the sear of his body heat against her back and all the way down her thighs. This was turning into a nightly thing – although at the moment she wasn't complaining.
As if he could read her thoughts, Booth said, "Don't go getting any ideas now." Then in a complete contradiction to his statement, he kissed her hair and whispered goodnight. The partners fell asleep locked together by Booth's embrace.