(The Next in the Last)

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With a little reluctance, Booth and Brennan left the cabin, collected their child from Max and returned home. Relaxed and refreshed, both of them returned to their job the next day, ready to work on any case that came their way.

Glad to see that Brennan was back, Angela walked into Brennan's office and sat down. "Hodgins and I are thinking about moving to Paris . . . permanently."

Surprised, Brennan closed the file on her PC and turned to face her friend. "You said that last month, I assumed you weren't serious since you've said it many times in the past."

Shrugging her shoulders, Angela glanced at the open doorway and then back at her friend. "What we've been through these past few years has made me realize that I'm not meant for this. I'm not meant to live elbow deep in blood and dead bodies. I could be in Paris painting and drawing. I wouldn't have to worry about killers and sadists . . . about evil men wanting me dead because I work for people that want to stop what they're doing. I'm an artist. I want to be surrounded by beauty and life. I want to wake up each morning and know that I'm not going to be handed a skull and be asked to give it a face. I want to be normal."

Not sure how to respond, Brennan placed her clasped hands on her desk and stared at her friend for a moment. Her thoughts collected Brennan nodded her head. "Is that what Hodgins wants too?"

"He wants what I want." Angela knew that Hodgins loved his work, but she didn't and she wanted a way out. She knew that Hodgins would give her what she wanted because he loved her and respected her. "He can get a job in Paris if he wants it, working with bugs and animals. He doesn't really need to work with dead bodies to do his job. He's a great entomologist. A couple of universities have offered him positions and up to now he's turned them down. He could leave here and find work elsewhere very easily."

She heard the certainty in Angela's voice and Brennan knew that Angela was determined to get her way this time. "I will miss you."

"I'll miss you too, Sweety, but you can always come and visit me." Angela knew that was unlikely, but she was determined to leave the blood and madness behind. She was meant to be amongst artists not scientists. They weren't really her people. They never were. "I . . . I'm not doing this to hurt you, Brennan. I just need to be me and Hodgins needs this too. I want my son to have parents that work normal hours and not need a nanny or a babysitter because his parents are working long hours. This is for him too."

"Yes, I see." Sad that her friend was leaving, Brennan knew that she would not try to talk her out of it. "You must do what is right for you . . . I will be happy for you."

"Thank you, Sweety." Angela stood up and smiled at her friend. "We're not leaving right away. We have time to say our good-byes."

Once Angela was out of her office, Brennan leaned back against her chair and sighed. She had thought that her friend had given up her dreams of Paris but clearly, she had not. Brennan wasn't sure if this was what Hodgins really wanted, but she knew he loved Angela and he would sacrifice his happiness for her. She considered Hodgins to be her friend and she would hate to lose his presence in the Lab. He was an interesting fellow and he made her laugh. Few people could.

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Their latest case was an odd one and rather creepy. The body that had been left behind by his killer had been posed and the body had been flayed. Brennan immediately noted the similarities between this death and some of the victims of Christopher Pelant. To her, it felt like Pelant was back, but she knew he was dead. She had observed his autopsy after he had died of a heart attack in a library.

Hodgins and Cam saw what Brennan saw and they worried that she might be right. Was it possible that someone was trying to copycat the late serial killer and this was his or her introduction? Booth hoped not, but his gut told him that his squints were probably right. They usually were about things like this.

The victim had been an independent computer consultant and Angela thought it was possible he might have stumbled upon Pelant's money in an account somewhere. When Pelant had died, they hadn't found any proof that he had any bank accounts, but the man's house had been paid for, his bills had been paid for a full year, he owed no debts, had no known source of income but he had to have money to pay his bills. Angela had tried to track down his bank accounts and had found an account at a local bank, but the money in the account came to $5,000 and she felt that wasn't the complete story. She came to the conclusion that most of his money was in accounts overseas and was probably being held by one or more dummy corporation. When the serial killer had died, she hadn't wanted to put in a lot of effort into looking for his money and stopped. Now she wished she had kept looking.

Booth and Cam thought Angela might be on to something. The agent turned over what they knew to an FBI forensic accountant and asked her to look for Pelant's money. He hoped if they could track it down, they might find whoever the Pelant copycat was. Angela had informed him that she was going to look too and Booth was confident that they might have a name soon.

Sweets was worried about Booth's latest case. "Booth, we know that Pelant considered himself a hacktivist. He thought he was saving the world. He wasn't of course. He was a murderer who used the ends to justify the means. We know he hacked into bank accounts and wiped out a lot of fairly well off people. Most of them were connected to the manufacturing of munitions, war planes, equipment used by the military, various military contractors . . . the man was the enemy of anyone the sold material to our military and any other nation for that matter. We know he stole money from these people because he bragged about it in his blog. Of course, in court he denied that and it had just been an exaggeration and claimed he was just being targeted by the government because he was fighting the military industrial complex . . . He probably had several millions of dollars squirreled away somewhere and I think Angela is right. Someone realized that our victim Franklin Holt found that money. I don't know how they knew. That's what you need to find out, but it was probably someone close to him, someone he trusted. With millions of dollars at their disposal, whoever this is can continue Pelant's work and that means he or she is a danger to our country, to us."

In full agreement, Booth knew that they needed to find Holt's killer as quickly as possible and Pelant's money. He didn't want or need another Pelant running around, free to kill in the name of a cause. He'd had enough of that.

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They had investigated their case with a certain sense of urgency. No one wanted another serial killer out there doing business. Angela thought it might be a good idea to contact Pete Jackson and see if he could help. The man was a computer genius and he might be able to figure out where Pelant's money was and how Holt had stolen it. She hoped that would lead to whoever had killed Holt.

Intrigued, Pete sat down at his computer and began hunting for Pelant's money. I can't believe I didn't think about looking for his money. I knew he had some. He bragged about hacking banks to get it. Stupid, just stupid.

While investigating Holt's house, Booth and Aubrey had found Holt's girlfriend Leelah Strawn there and all of Holt's computer equipment destroyed or missing. She had tried to run away, but Booth stopped her from leaving and once she was sitting in the living room, he interviewed her. During that interview she mentioned that Holt had worked for Dunlop Investments. When asked if she had ever heard of Pelant she mentioned that Holt had thought he was involved with Dunlop and Booth knew that they had found what they were looking for.

Holt had been contracted by Dunlop Investments to search for security holes in their computer systems. He found them and the head of security, Owen Ellickson had been fired. Ellickson had made a lot of threatening phone calls to Holt and Leelah thought they were serious threats. With a suspect, Booth and Aubrey decided to pay Ellickson a visit.

While that was going on, Pete Jackson waded through many servers searching for Pelant's accounts. After two days, working fifteen hours a day, he finally traced the money to Dunlop Investments. Apparently, the company hid Pelant's money on one of their servers and when Pelant died, it just sat at Dunlop until the day Franklin Holt had died. On that day, the money in the account disappeared. Before he continued his search, he contacted Angela and let her know what he had found out what he knew so far.

Happy that they had a lead, Angela passed that on to Booth and to Hodgins. Now that he had two corroborations that Pelant was connected to Dunlop, Booth was confident that he knew what had happened to Pelant's money. After confronting Owen Ellickson, Booth realized that Kevin Dunlop might have had more of an incentive to kill Holt that Ellickson had. If Dunlop had suspected that Holt had stolen the money he might have wanted it back and killed Holt trying to recover it.

Dunlop had denied everything until Booth and Aubrey confronted the man. They had used facts given to them by Angela about how Dunlop did business with dictators and drug lords and how they might not like it that his servers weren't as impervious from hackers as he claimed they were. Frightened, Dunlop admitted that he'd had control of Pelant's money until a few days ago. He didn't know how it was done, but when he had heard on the news about Holt's death, he did an audit and found Pelant's money gone. He knew that Holt had probably stole the money with a partner and that partner had probably killed him.

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In the end, it was determined that Ellickson had been Holt's partner but he had not killed Holt. That deed had been done by Leelah Strawn who was not Holt's girlfriend after all. She was a computer hacker and she had been searching for Pelant's money ever since the man had died. Apparently, a lot of people had been trying to find Pelant's fortune and no one had succeeded until now. Leelah had killed Holt, stolen his files the day he emptied the Pelant account at Dunlop and hoped to use those files to track down where Holt had parked the money. Booth and Aubrey tracked her down and got the files back and hopefully that meant the end of Pelant's evil influence on events.

Determined to track down the money, Booth handed the files over to Angela and asked her to do her best to find it. It didn't take very long before she found exactly where the money was. With a warrant the FBI forensic accountant contacted the bank located in the Cayman Islands and found out that the money was gone. Someone had got to it first.

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Filled with pride, Pete sat back and stared at the amount now sitting in a bank account he had opened in Switzerland. He had kept an eye on what Angela was doing during his hunt for Pelant's money and when he saw she had Holt's files, it only took him minutes to copy that information over to his server and begin his search.

Now that he had the money, he had to decide what to do with it. He lived a comfortable life and didn't need millions in a bank account. He used some of the money to set up a trust fund for the daughter of his cousin. He wanted to ensure she got a great education in whatever field she chose. Next, he checked into several charities, and started transferring money to them. By the end of the week the account was empty and he closed it.

Satisfied, Pete contacted Max and let him know he was going on vacation. It was time to visit his cousin and he planned to stay for at least a month. He wanted Max to know so he wouldn't worry about him.

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