(The Body and the Bounty)

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Let the inquisition begin. Max moved his hands down the front of his shirt in a nervous gesture. He had been interrogated by Booth the previous day and now he knew it was his daughter's turn. Unable to do anything else, he knocked on the font door and waited patiently for someone to answer the door.

After a few seconds, the door was opened and Booth motioned for him to come into the house. "Max."

"Booth." The blank look on the face of his daughter's boyfriend wasn't a good sign as far as Max was concerned. "I'm a little early."

Closing the door behind his guest, Booth motioned for the older man to enter the living room. "Bones is in the kitchen. Sit down and I'll bring you a drink . . . Beer? Wine?"

"Uh, I'll take a Coke please or water." Max wanted to keep his senses fully intact. He was about to go into battle with his daughter and he needed to be unimpaired.

Surprised, Booth entered the kitchen, opened the fridge and pulled a Coke from the bottom shelf. "Your father's here."

Closing the oven door, Brennan slowly placed the pot holders on the counter and stared at the steaming pot of rice on the back of the stove. "Alright." She was torn about the situation with her father. "I promised to let him explain and I will."

Booth placed the bottle of Coke on the counter and placed his arms around his girlfriend, resting his hands on her stomach and his chin on her shoulder. "Hey, relax. You'll get through this one. Just remember that I'm on your side and whatever you decide to do about Max . . . I'll back you up. Always."

She appreciated his loyalty. Turning in his arms, she placed her hands on his neck and kissed him. "I want to trust him."

"I know." Booth returned her kiss. He hated that she was so upset with her father. If he could have protected her from Max's behavior he would have. "Everything is fine in here for the moment. Let's go talk to him and get it over with."

Filled with anxiety, Brennan closed her eyes for a moment, opened them and nodded her head. "Yes, it would be better to get it over with."

"Like ripping the band-aid off." Booth hated to prolong the agony of any situation. "Good or bad, let's just do this thing and see what happens afterward."

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They entered the living room as a couple. They weren't touching each other or looking at each other, but Max got the message. His daughter and her boyfriend were presenting a solid front. He had no allies in the room at the moment. Once he took the Coke from Booth, he opened it, took a drink and watched the couple sit down on the couch across from his chair. "Whatever you're cooking smells great."

Brennan wasn't going to be diverted with small talk. "You didn't give us all of the pages from Agent Harper's diary nor did you give us all of the tapes. Why?"

And so it began. "Like I told Booth, I needed insurance. I wanted to know that if my family was wiped out there would be a way to get revenge on Kirby and his stooges. I kept the last four pages because it named them all in one place. The diary mentioned each man as Harper uncovered them and what they were doing, but those four pages had them all listed in one neat list . . . Your mother knew right away we were in danger once we read the diary. We didn't know who to trust at the FBI, so we couldn't turn the stuff over to them. We kept most of the diary and most of the tapes in a safety deposit box, but those four pages and the tape were our backup plan. If we died then so would Kirby and his group of thugs . . . Tempe we weren't sure we were going to survive that year. In 1978, we had a strong-arm gang after us because we dared to leave them and if Kirby had known what we had, he would have found a way to find us and kill us, including you and Russ."

Curious, Booth leaned forward. "Why'd you belong to that gang? You were doing okay on your own."

"We didn't have a choice." Max felt a chill run down his back. "Christine and I had a little side operation working well for us. We'd figured out how to get into safety deposit vaults with as little trouble as possible. We usually selected about twenty of the bigger boxes in each vault, emptied them and then we were gone with no fuss and no muss . . . We stepped on one of the gang's operations and they threatened to kill us if we didn't work for them. We were scared. Those animals were white supremacists trying to accumulate enough wealth to start a civil war. They didn't care who they hurt or killed. We had to work for them until we could figure out how to escape from them."

"You could have run when you were approached. Why wait until 1978?" Brennan found his explanation faulty. "And in 1991 you ran when McVicar found you, leaving me and Russ behind. You didn't have to work for them at all."

He had known she wouldn't understand. "Look, when those guys approached us, they were going to kill us right then and there, but I convinced them that we could work together and make them richer faster. They kept a close eye on us for the first couple of years we worked for them. Then I guess they figured we weren't going anywhere and when we hit that bank in Dayton in 1978 and one state trooper died and seven were wounded things changed. During that robbery, we found Harper's diary in one of the deposit boxes and after we read it, we knew we had stumbled on to something big. We had seen on television that Agent Harper had been murdered and we had his diary and his tapes . . . That diary was radioactive. It pointed to a criminal organization in the FBI and we knew that Marvin Beckett had been framed for Harper's murder. It just made more sense that Kirby had killed Harper and set up Beckett . . . No matter what we did we were sure we were going to die and you kids were going to die with us . . . We ran. We ran to Illinois and changed our lives. We changed our names, how we made a living . . . we kept our heads down and we prayed that no one would find us, then in '91 McVicar was passing through town and he spotted Christine at the mall. We ran to protect you kids. We led them away from you as fast as we could. We figured if we died at least you and Russ would live . . . McVicar caught up with us at a rest stop in New Jersey. He hit your mother with the tip of a bolt gun. I fought McVicar and took his gun away from him and hit him with it. While he was knocked out, I found another car, hot wired it and got your mother out of there. She was hurt, but we didn't know how bad . . . Come to find out, it was very bad and she died a year later. I wanted to die with her, but I couldn't. I had two kids out there somewhere and I needed to stay alive for them, for you."

The mentioning of her mother's death sent a wave of sadness through her. The last time she has seen her mother was when she drove away with her father when they went Christmas shopping in '91. Her mother had laughed and waved at her and then that was it. At the end of the day, she was an orphan and several days later she was in Foster Care. "What did that matter? You left me in Foster Care. You let Russ run amok and become a criminal. What did it matter that you were alive?"

"Bones?" Booth was shocked. He knew that his partner loved her father even if she couldn't trust him, so her words were a surprise.

"McVicar was still alive and looking for me and your Mom." Max was certain this was going to be the end of his relationship with his daughter, but he continued the conversation anyway. "Once your mother was dead, I buried her with all the love that I had and I moved to Washington State. It was as far as I could get from you and Russ. I couldn't contact you because it would have endangered your life . . . After a few years had gone by and I thought the heat was off, I had a friend check on you and Russ. You were in college and doing well. Russ was working in an auto shop in Cleveland . . . It looked like you two were okay . . . My friend checked on you once a year and let me know what was going on in your life and when you started working with Booth for the FBI, I got scared. Kirby was the Deputy Director of the FBI by then, so I hired a guy to watch Russ and you. He mostly watched Russ because Russ couldn't seem to get his life together. He moved around too much and got involved in chop shops. When he was caught and served a little time in prison, I knew that he was the most vulnerable."

Max stopped, drank some of the cola and screwed the cap back on. "I know that Kirby had been searching for all of the members of McVicar's gang because of the diary. Somehow, he knew about the diary and the tapes and he was looking for them, for me, for your mother. Unsurprisingly the members of the gang started dying one after the other. McVicar saw the writing on the wall, came forward and turned states' evidence. He turned in the rest of his gang and Kirby used that as a stepping stone for a promotion at the FBI. He was still looking for me and Christine. He wanted those diaries and we were the only ones left. There was no way he knew that Christine was dead until you identified her body in 2005. When you started working with Booth . . . well, you identified your mother's body and that let him know who you were and who Russ was . . . He hired Garrett Delaney to watch you two and I guess when I never made contact with either of you he targeted Russ. I guess he thought that would force me to come out in the open to protect you, but he didn't know I knew what was going on and Garrett Delaney was killed. That didn't stop Kirby though. He tried to assassinate my boy and he paid for that . . . Look I'm sorry. My life has been a disaster since 1978 and you were caught up in it just because you were my daughter . . . I'm sorry. It's all I have."

Max's story had filled in a lot of blanks and if it was all true, then Booth could see why the events had played out like they had. "Now they're all dead. Kirby, the gang including McVicar . . . the rest of the agents are either in jail or they're dead."

"Congressman Abbot is dead." Brennan watched her father's face closely to see if there was a reaction. "He was murdered."

"Well, I didn't kill him. I've been in England for three weeks." Max shrugged his shoulders. "Abbot was a murderer, so don't ask me to feel sorry for him. He made his bed and someone burned it with him in it and it wasn't me."

Confused, Brennan wasn't sure what she should do next. Standing, she moved towards the kitchen. "Dinner will be ready in about ten minutes."

Not sure how to take that, Max stared at Booth. "And?"

Booth shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know . . . Just eat dinner, talk about unimportant things and let her think about it. It won't take her long to make a decision."

"That's what I'm worried about."

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