Monday, July 16-10:00 PM
Booth pulled into Harding's driveway slowly, wondering if he should bother him at this hour, or if he should just go home and deal with it in the morning. He sat in the car contemplating for a moment, when he heard a gentle rapping at his window, and a set of dark eyes were staring in at him. He rolled his eyes and put the window down.
"Want to head to the diner for this?" He asked.
"She told you I was coming?" Booth asked, watching Ace shrug, then shake his head.
"I heard the call on the police scanner. I called the station. Is she okay?" He asked, lifting his eyebrow, he watched Booth nod. "Hodgins seriously hit him over the head with a shovel?"
"Get in the car, we can talk at the diner." Booth said, nodding toward the passenger seat, Ace nodded and walked around the car, and jumped in.
The car ride was quiet, though Ace could see the way that Booth was squeezing the steering wheel, his knuckles white, his jaw set slightly. He also knew that he should keep his mouth shut, but he couldn't stop himself. "I should have told you about Nichols earlier."
"Damn straight you should have told me about Nichols." He said, sending a glare to Ace, he set his foot just a little harder on the accelerator.
"Antonia should have told you about him too, Booth." Ace said, not trying to push blame, but to have Booth understand that he was not the only person with this information. "I told her that you needed to know, but she felt that since he had been transferred, that it wasn't pertinent. We didn't expect to see him again."
"My daughter was in a sexual relationship with an agent without my knowledge. An agent who apparently has control problems." Booth said, slamming on his brake at a yellow light, he ignored the sound of the horns behind him as he looked over at Ace. "You knew about this, and you said nothing."
"Her relationship wasn't my business. She's an adult, he's an adult. I have no right to tell her what she can or cannot do, just like ultimately you can't either." Ace said, watching Booth glare angrily. "Listen, I will tell you what happened, but you cannot take your anger out on me, and you cannot feel guilty for bringing him in on this case. You had no idea, Booth. It's not your fault. If it's anyone's fault, it's mine for taking some time off. If you had told me at the time that you were bringing him in on the case, I would have told you not to."
"Would you have told me why?"
"Probably not." Ace said honestly. "I take your daughter's privacy, and promises extremely seriously, Booth. I'd rather have her talk to me and know that her secrets are safe, then to have her go off and tell some stupid psychologist who doesn't give a shit about her. I would have asked her to tell you, though." He said seriously. "I did tell her before we came back from the beach that she needed to talk to you about it."
Booth remained quiet, chewing on Harding's words as he drove them toward the diner. His grip on the steering wheel was beginning to loosen slightly, and his erratic driving was becoming calmer. They arrived in front of the building, and Booth sat for a moment, without turning the car off. "I'm not hungry." He muttered.
"Yeah." Ace nodded. "I just figured, neutral territory." He shrugged.
Booth let out a light chuckle and sighed, tipping his head back, he shook his head. "I feel like I have absolutely no control over anything anymore." He turned his head to see that Ace was listening. "Where the hell have I been? I feel like yesterday they were fighting over who was going to finish my chocolate milkshake at the diner. Now, Grace is getting married, Toni's having a baby."
"And getting married." Ace said, watching Booth glare. "You were aware when you had children that they grow up, right? You didn't think that they just stayed little and cute their whole life, right?"
"Shut up." Booth muttered. "Talk to me about Nichols." He said, staring straight ahead, he sighed.
"A little over two years ago, we had Nichols on our… puppy patrol." He said, chuckling as he referred to their program of bringing agents in on cases that involve the Jeffersonian with their pet name. "He was a pretty good agent, though not particularly intelligent, as you know. I guess he and Toni got into a bit of a thing together, and were seeing one another not too frequently, but enough for Nichols to want to go out for more than just… dessert." He shrugged.
"Ace." Booth warned.
"What?" He said, shrugging again. "I'm trying to be sensitive here!" He sighed. "He wanted to go out on a real date with her, she agreed. I guess she had a panic attack, and he got a little rough with her. Yanked her out of the elevator, shook her, yelled at her pretty angrily. She impaled his foot with her heel, broke his toes."
"You said he slammed his foot into a concrete barrier chasing a suspect." Booth said, making a face.
"Uh, yeah. No." He shook his head. "I told you that, because he was embarrassed, she was embarrassed. It's fine." He shrugged. "I guess though, he wanted to try again. He asked her out a few more times, she declined, and the conversation turned pretty ugly. He was verbally abusive, and extremely out of line. She told him that she wasn't interested in a relationship with anyone, and each time they argued, it would get slightly more nasty. She told me about it, and he was immediately transferred."
"Why wasn't he reprimanded?" Booth asked, crossing his arms over his chest, he continued to stare out the windshield.
"Because what he said, while nasty and horrible. It wasn't a threat, it wasn't in a professional setting, and he never used FBI resources to further his interest. He wasn't threatening her, and she never let him get close enough to her to be a physical issue. He was transferred to Miami, and we thought we'd never see or hear from him again." Ace shrugged. "When we saw he was on the case, we just figured that now that she was in a relationship with Fitz, then he'd just back off."
"You're saying 'we' an awful lot." He said, lifting his eyebrow at Harding as the other man tipped his head back and let out a deep sigh. "How long have you an Toni had this little psychologist, secret keeping racket?"
Ace let out a harsh laugh, shaking his head at his former partner he sighed. "Since she was about ten or eleven years old." He said, watching Booth's eyebrows raise.
"That's when she started therapy." Booth said, sitting up, he looked Ace in the eye.
"Uh, yeah, just about." He nodded.
"Her therapy only lasted a few months, the doctor said she would just sit there and stare at him when he tried to get her to talk to him." Booth replied.
"Yeah." He nodded. "During that time, she'd get out of therapy, and in the evening she would call me. Once a week, like clockwork at first. Rebecca thought I was having an affair at one point. I had to tell her it was just Ant calling to tell me about her week at school. It was probably once a week for about a year, then occasionally… then when she started college, it was a bit more frequently again. Then when she started working at the lab, we'd have coffee and pie now and then." He shrugged. "When she started dating Fitz, it pretty much stopped."
"What… kind of things did you guys talk about?" Booth asked. He watched Harding give him a small head shake. "I know you can't tell me what you talked about, but… did she talk about the past?"
"A little." He said, trying not to reveal too much. "Mostly we'd talk about school assignments, or people in her classes that kind of picked on her. Small things, mostly. As things in her life got a bit more complicated, she'd ask me for advice on that. Stuff like the Nichols stuff."
"Were there any other incidents like this that I should know about?" He asked, his voice clearing as he made Ace aware of the seriousness of the matter.
"Nothing that she told me about. I mean she's had similar relationships with men, guys that she's… gone out with. None of them really stuck until Fitz. Where was Fitz, anyway, when this happened at the safe house?" Ace asked.
"Running an errand or something. Ant said something about bringing Fiona home." He sighed. "Nichols waited until he left the property and used the code to the safe house to approach her. She told him to leave. Apparently he grabbed at Melody, who promptly bit him in the hand and ran to get Hodgins."
Ace let out a light laugh. "I love that kid."
Booth hid his smirk and shook his head. "Hodgins found Nichols holding Toni's wrists, shouting at her, and took matters into his own hands." He nodded. "She wouldn't even talk to me about it." He sighed. "She told me to come to you." He said, looking down at the steering wheel for a moment he stared at it. "Why didn't she come to me?"
"She's probably embarrassed, ashamed." Ace said. "Were you yelling at Fitz?" He asked, gaining a glare from Booth. "Her first instinct is going to be to protect him, Booth. She probably wanted you to calm down. She really doesn't like upsetting you, Booth. She doesn't want you to think less of her, and she thought that if she told you about her relationship with Sam, then it would make all of the horrible things that Nichols said about her true. She didn't want it to be more real than it was. She just wanted it to go away. Growing up, she went to you for things she needed a reaction for, the things she knew that she needed taken care of. She came to me more just to hear her own voice. She needed non-judging, non-reactive ears so that she could work through her thoughts."
"She talked to you about the kidnapping, didn't she?" Booth said, looking at Ace as if he had slapped him in the face. Ace said nothing, simply looked to his friend as if he already knew the answer to his question. He looked away and took a deep breath, looking out the window toward the diner for a second he chewed thoughtfully on his bottom lip, trying to find the words for what he wanted to say. "Bones and I spent countless nights hearing her nightmares, Ace. We listened to her scream into the night, bang on windows, hide under beds and in closets in her most frightening night terrors." He said softly. "She never spoke a word about it to us outside of those terrifying moments." Booth shook his head. "Did she tell you about those things?"
"Yes." He nodded.
"And you were there for her." Booth said. It wasn't a question, just a simple statement. He looked to Ace and nodded his head. "Thank you for being there for her."
"I made a promise to you, Booth. You are my brother, my partner, and my best friend. Grace, Toni, Doc… they've become part of me too. Toni didn't want to hurt you, Booth. She didn't set out to hurt you. Talking with me just became a habit, and before she even realized it, she was telling me everything. I would have told you if she was in danger, and any time there was something that I thought was important, I told her to talk to you or Doc."
"I know, Ace." Booth nodded. He was about to put the car into drive to take Ace home when his phone rang. He picked it up pressed it to his ear. "Booth." He grunted. There was a pause, and he glanced to Ace, a smile spreading on his face. "Music to my ears." He said into the line. "I'm with Ace. We'll be there in ten." He said, dropping the phone into the cup holder, it was like air was breathed back into him as he turned on his lights and siren, and headed toward the Hoover.
"What do we got, Partner?" Ace asked as he glanced to Booth.
"I hope you didn't plan on sleeping tonight, because we have enough evidence in those bank account files and that journal to get us search warrants and a few arrest warrants in the morning. We have some paperwork to fill out." He grinned. "We're getting our girls back." He said, hitting the gas just a little harder, as they drove down the road.