(The Brother in the Basement)

Thank you for reviewing my story. It is the only way I can tell if you are still interested in it.

I don't own Bones.

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A Hysterical call came in at seven in the morning, to the McClean, Virginia police department. The woman making the call could barely be understood, but the hysteria, the obvious fear was enough to have a patrol car dispatched to see what was going on. When Officers Chen and Burns arrived at the house, they found a woman standing at the end of the driveway wringing her hands and weeping. Chen tried to get a coherent statement from the lady, but all she could say was 'Victor' and 'so much blood'.

Their guns drawn, Chen and Burns entered the small two story mansion and began to search each room on the ground floor, when they didn't find anything out of the ordinary, they moved up the stairs. The sight of blood on the staircase made them wary and they moved slowly trying to listen for any signs of someone in the house with them. Once on the landing they began searching the second floor and Chen found what the woman had found earlier. Calling out to his partner, he used his police radio to contact the duty officer and let her know that they needed help, a lot of help.

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After a McClean police detective inspected the room, he contacted the Deputy chief in charge of investigations who in turn called the police chief. After she was told who owned the house, she contacted the FBI. Besides Masbourian, some of the victims were well known criminals and Police Chief Tabitha Right knew that the FBI needed to be brought in. Her instincts had told her that Masbourian was going to be trouble one day for McClean, but she hadn't imagined it would be like this. Since the man had been of interest for the FBI for a few years now, she decided to let them handle this mess.

Booth arrived with Brennan and Aubrey at the reported crime scene and met Cam at the front door of the mini mansion.

"We have seven victims, six dead and one badly hurt. He's been taken to the hospital, but they're not sure if he's going to make it." Cam checked her watch. "As you know, the owner of the house is Victor Masbourian . . . Drugs, human trafficking, racketeering, arms dealer . . . his sister arrived this morning and when no one answered the door, she used her key to get inside. She found her brother and several other men in the den upstairs. It scared her pretty badly. She was barely coherent when the police arrived. They've taken her to a hospital for observation . . . she's in shock."

"Okay, take us to where the bodies are." Booth entered the house with Brennan and Aubrey and noticed two police officers standing in the hallway. "You guys the ones that found Masbourian?"

Nodding their heads, Officer Chen spoke for both of them. "Yeah, seven men shot, one man was still alive. He's at the Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church. That's the closest trauma hospital. The last I heard he was still in surgery. He lost a lot of blood before we found him."

"Got it." As they continued up the stairs, Aubrey noticed that the treads had dried bloody foot prints on them and he tried to avoid stepping on them as did Booth, Brennan and Cam. With this much blood, he assumed that the room where the victims lay was going to be horrific. When they arrived at the top of the stairs, Booth saw two nice paintings on the wall facing the landing, the beautiful beige carpet in the hallway was marred with bloody footprints leading down the hallway. There was an expensive looking marble figurine on a small table next to the door across from the stair landing. "That looks expensive. The guy lived well."

Not interested in aesthetics, Brennan followed Cam down the hallway and entered the room where the victims were, pausing in the doorway. "Have the techs taken pictures yet?"

"Yes, we can examine the bodies now." Cam pulled on some latex gloves, picked up her kit next to the doorway and approached the body lying next to a very expensive desk. "This is Victor Masbourian . . . The McClean detective removed the wallets from all of the victims and placed them in evidence bags after he checked for driver's license. The bags are on top of the desk. The licenses are taped to the inside of each bag, so you can read them . . . They dusted for prints on the desk before they used it."

While Brennan and Cam started to examine Masbourian, Booth and Aubrey stood in the doorway and tried to take in what they saw.

"This was a hell of a gun battle." Aubrey pointed towards the pistols and shotguns lying near the victims who were lying in large pools of drying blood.

After recording what he saw in his notebook about the positions of the bodies in the room, he also jotted down the type of weapons he saw. "Some of the weapons are military, but Masborian was an arms dealer so we shouldn't be surprised."

Booth entered the room and walked over to the desk. Moving the bags on the desk so they were in a row, Booth used his phone to take pictures of each driver's license. "Victor and his cousin Rubin . . . the world won't miss them . . . well maybe Victor's sister will . . . I'll run the rest of the names to see what I can find."

Brennan knelt next to Victor's body and examined the entrance wound. "A shotgun wound." She glanced around the room and noticed a shotgun lying next to a tall blond haired man sprawled near the safe. "Perhaps that one."

His gaze moving around the room, Booth spotted the shotgun and spoke. "A Mossberg 590A1."

Cam shook her head. "They had a little war in here."

"Yeah, but were there any winners?" Booth walked over to the safe and tried to open it. "It's still locked. We need to get this open and see if it's empty or not. It supposedly had $2 million in it and I want to know if someone in this little war got their hands on it and got out."

"$2 million?" Whistling, Cam sighed. "What kind of idiot keeps that kind of cash around?"

Booth shrugged his shoulders. "Not an idiot. Masbourian was a very dangerous man and there aren't a lot of people around willing to take on someone on like him. He probably thought his money was safe enough."

Snorting, Brennan shook her head. "Well dangerous or not, these men decided it was worth the risk, so I agree with Cam, he was a fool."

"A dead fool." Aubrey walked over to where one of the victims lay and poked the open gym bag laying next to the body. "Looks like explosives. These bastards weren't playing around."

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Benjamin Metzger couldn't believe what was happening. His original plan had been for Kevin O'Donnell and some of his friends to steal $2 million from Victor Masbourian, a wealthy arms dealer and give the money to Richard Bannerman to buy a list of undercover FBI agents. Richard had been moaning about the money problems he was having and Metzger had decided to take advantage of that. Metzger wanted to leave the FBI, but he needed money to make his unemployment palatable and selling a list of undercover agents to criminals for millions of dollars seemed the way to go.

Unfortunately, Richard had discovered he had a conscience, changed his mind and wouldn't get the list no matter how much money he was offered. Since he needed that list, Metzger had been forced to kidnap Chloe Robertson to push Richard to download the list and give it to him but Richard had still resisted and he had to send him one of Chloe's fingers to get him to cooperate.

While he was arranging to get the list, Metzger found out that Kevin O'Donnell had left the District with his wife and he'd had to find someone else to go after Victor Masbourian and the $2 million. He was still in contact with Pete Montgomery from his Navy days and since he knew that Pete was hard up for money it didn't take him long to get Pete excited about a cut of $40 million dollars or more. Metzger expected his sale of the list to make over $40 million and he was willing to have partners to get it. Pete had some friends he could count on that were combat veterans and he had given Pete the green light to go after the money at Masbourian's house.

In the meantime, Richard had come through with the list. Unable to keep witnesses like Richard and Chloe around, he had killed them. Before Richard had died, the agent had put up a fierce fight and Metzger had won that fight because he had used brass knuckles to beat the man to death. Unfortunately for Metzger, he had fractured his right hand and he had to take care of the bodies with one hand. To get rid of the bodies, he poured sulfuric acid over the remains to dissolve them.

To his horror and frustration, Pete and his friends weren't able to successfully raid the arms dealer's house and get away with the money. Pete and his friends Alex and Mitch had been killed while the last member of their group, Alan McBride had been badly injured. Alan was in the hospital and Metzger had no idea if Alan knew about him or not. Masbourian and his men were dead and the money was still in the safe. Things were looking bleak and he was afraid that the next time he was taken to an interview room at the Hoover it would be because he was under arrest for kidnapping and murder.

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Booth and Aubrey were in the waiting room of the Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church. Alan McBride was out of surgery and the agents were waiting to see if the man was going to regain consciousness. Booth was hoping that McBride could give him Metzger's name as a co-conspirator. With McBride's confession and O'Donnell's testimony, Booth felt that Metzger would be tied to everything and he could be put away. While they were waiting, Hodgins had put together some clues using the particulates he had found on the severed finger that Aubrey had found in the fridge in Bannerman's house and felt he knew where Bannerman and Robertson were. Everyone was hoping they were alive, but everyone was also pragmatic and knew that probably was wishful thinking.

Since Agent Miler was still Bannerman's partner, Aubrey contacted her and they met at a recycling plant in Loudoun County in Virginia. They found the bodies of the missing agent and his missing fiancé and Aubrey had them sent to the Lab as soon as possible. If there was proof as to who killed them, then they didn't have any time to waste.

After examining the contents of Chloe's stomach, Hodgins determined that she had been sedated by Doxepin that had been ingested. She had eaten Stilton cheese and drank some wine before she died, so she knew her kidnapper and hadn't felt threatened. Brennan and Cam determined that she had died of a gunshot wound to the stomach, so they needed to find the gun that had been used to kill her. They had also determined that Bannerman had been beat to death with something metallic. His skull had sustained heavy damage which had killed the agent.

While Hodgins did his experiments, Angela went through Bannerman's phone which still had pictures in the photo file. Several were of Grace Miller and they weren't pictures of a partner but something more intimate.

"I didn't kill Richard." Outraged, Grace glared at Aubrey. "He dumped me for Chloe and I was mad as hell, but I didn't shoot him. If I wanted the list of undercover agents, I could do that without Richard. You're wasting your time looking at me."

"Actually, it was Chloe that was shot. Richard was beat to death." Aubrey watched Grace to see how she reacted to that statement.

"I . . . didn't . . . kill . . . anyone." Worried, Grace started to think she might go down for a murder she didn't commit. She was afraid and she hoped the people at the Lab were as good at their jobs as Deputy Director Stark boasted they were.

Since they needed to make sure Grace hadn't killed her partner and his fiancé, Aubrey took her gun and had ballistic tests done on it. The test done quickly, it was determined that the gun hadn't been used to kill Chloe and that was a relief for everyone at the FBI.

Booth was informed by Aubrey about the ballistics test and he was more certain than ever that Metzger was their man and he was angry that their attention had been diverted to Grace for a while. He knew that Metzger had done this, but he couldn't overlook anything. When they went to trial, he didn't want there to be any doubt that Metzger was responsible for so many deaths.

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