Disclaimer: I thought I owned them, for a few seconds. Then I realized what I actually own is a picture of a phone booth, a plastic set of Bones, a little Castle for my fish tank, and the collected works of Samuel Beckett. Oh well.

A/N: Sorry for the delays. Real life got in the way. Bad real life! Real life has been banished to the doghouse, to think about how he's interfered with fic...

Chapter 14

Site 34 - Brooklyn

"I'm going to kill him," Beckett says, staring out the window.

"Who? Richard?"

"Yes."

"I'm unaware of any action he might have taken to foster your anger, unless you are still mad that he left us behind. You shouldn't feel that way, it was the rational choice to make."

Beckett refrains, barely, from rolling her eyes, but she goes back and sits with Brennan. "It still sucks."

"I will grant you that. That is why I am trying to use my time productively."

"Doing?"

"Hodgins provided us with untraceable internet connections. I am contacting a member of our team on Skype."

Kate gets up from her seat to stand behind Brennan and her laptop just as a face pops up on the screen. Kate is surprised, Brennan's teammate seems to be about Alexis' age.

"Dr. Brennan! Hodgins said you were okay, but I have to say, it's good to see you."

"You as well, Dr. Sweets. I need to ask your professional opinion about something."

"My professional opinion? I thought my profession was useless pseudo-science?"

"Yes, it is. But I have more than enough evidence that show your opinion is valuable."

Kate watches as the boy's ... Dr. Sweets ... face glows. She's starting to see how this awkward and tactless scientist can engender such devotion in people like Booth and Castle.

"I'm touched, Dr. Brennan. What can I help with?"

"Could Taffet have been working for someone, Sweets?"

"Why do you ask that?"

"We have been investigating ... someone else ... and there is evidence that Taffet was, at least at one point, working for someone else."

"As The Gravedigger?"

"Before."

Sweets leans forward. "It would explain some inconsistencies in her behaviour."

"Inconsistencies?"

"Taffet was a sadist. She enjoyed killing. But The Gravedigger personae killed in the most clinical, rational way possible. Taffet, at least in that first case, appeared to be entirely driven by rage and the desire to inflict pain. Why would someone like that bury people alive? She wouldn't be able to get any emotional feedback from that type of death."

"Secondly," Sweets continues, "Why would Taffet ask for a ransom? And why would she allow someone to live after the ransom was paid? We never found any psychological or physical evidence that she was motivated by money."

"So you think she was working for someone."

"Not necessarily for someone. Taffet had strong issues with authority. But she would've been able to partner with someone if she saw it as a way to advance her agenda. She was able to work within the local and federal judicial system for years. You know... Taffet said something to me, right before she died. She said this wasn't over."

"I don't know what that means."

"I didn't either, at the time. But what if she did have a partner? She might have believed that she had help coming to her."

"This is helpful, Dr. Sweets."

"What does this have to do with Broadsky?"

"We have reason to believe that this partner of Taffet's may be the person ordering Broadsky to kill us, among other things."

"Wow. What can we do to help?"

"How do we find this person? All of our original evidence was seized."

Kate speaks up, finally. "Look at the victims."

"Who's that?" Sweets says.

"A friend," Brennan says, "We never found anything specific about the victims, other than they were rich."

"You've been operating under the assumption that The Gravedigger killed for fun," Kate continues. "But if someone else was running things - or at least choosing the targets, there might be a trend there. Didn't the FBI check that out originally, though?"

Sweets looks nonplussed for a moment before continuing. "When the FBI originally looked at The Gravedigger, the profiler on the case decided that the killings were so ritualistic that they had meaning and of themselves. That's why they focused on the killer's profile, as opposed to the victims."

"Can you get me what the FBI had on the victims?" Brennan asks.

"Sure, Dr. Brennan, but I could also help you review..."

"Thank you, Dr. Sweets, but there are some things we know that we can't share yet," Brennan says, by way of dismissal, "Just get the documents to Dr. Hodgins. He knows how to get them to me."

She hangs up after that. Kate shakes her head. She's never met someone so uninterested in social niceties before. She still can't quite figure out how someone like Brennan and someone like Castle would become friends.

Unless Brennan was one of Castle's 'special' friends. Kate shakes her head. She doesn't want to think about that.

The computer beeps before either of them can speak, and Brennan opens the email that has just arrived. Kate looks over Brennan's shoulder at the dozens of documents that have been sent. Someone must have been expecting the request. Kate takes note of the signoff for the email - "Call Angela" - that Brennan appears to ignore.

"I will take a look at the victim's profiles," Brennan says. "I'm hoping you will be willing to take a second look at Taffet herself."

"Why?"

"You have greater familiarity with Bracken's history, and you are looking at the Taffet case without bias. You might see something we've gotten used to overlooking."

Kate nods. The reasoning is sound, so she goes over to the second laptop and pulls up the Taffet documents Brennan has forwarded.

It doesn't take her long to find something.

"Brennan," Kate says, catching the woman's attention. "Look at this."

Brennan comes over, this time to look over Kate's shoulder, as Kate points at the monitor.

"In 1992, Taffet was in the District Attorney's office, but as an intern. She was only in her second year of law a UVa. She graduated in '93 then did a year's clerkship with a judge in the 9th, before serving three years in the Army as a JAG."

"Taffet was Army?"

Kate nods. "It appears the Army paid for law school. There's no way she could have been leading Bracken around in 1992."

"So Bracken is lying."

"At least in part, but..." Something flashes in Kate's memory, and she quickly switches over to a web browser. She pulls up the Senate biographical pages, and goes to Bracken. "Look at this."

"Bracken also did a reserve rotation in the Army from 1995 to 1998."

"Right before his first Congressional run. He obviously did it to bolster his credibility … so why doesn't he ever mention it?"

"You said earlier he had no military background."

"I forgot. Most of the time, politicians like to mention their military service every other sentence."

"So there are at least two opportunities for Bracken to have met Taffet."

"But his story of her leading him around doesn't make any sense … whatever is going on, she's involved, but..."

"This doesn't give us any idea what the connection was, or why."

"No."

Frustrated, they drift away to their own thoughts. Then, after silent agreement, they split up the rest of the victim information and start looking through it again.

This time, there are no quick revelations. After about an hour of staring at the screen, Kate gets up and decides to make coffee. She needs a distraction.

"So, how do you know Castle?" Kate asks, as the coffee is brewing. She swore she didn't really care, but...

But the last few days have changed the game.

Brennan looks up from her screen, obviously surprised to be interrupted. "I would prefer not to go into it."

That is more than enough answer for Kate. "You too slept together."

Brennan cocks her head to the side. "Once... more than a year ago. But I suspect you mean intercourse. No, we have never had intercourse."

Kate shakes her head.

"We considered it, once. I was about to go off on a research trip, and he was on his book tour, last summer. We met up in San Francisco during my layover. It seemed like an attractive offer, but we both decided it would simply confuse our friendship. Though..."

Kate waits Brennan out. Years in the interrogation room have taught her that most people will fill a silence, though Brennan may be a bit different in that regard.

"... I suspect our reasoning, in retrospect, was different from what we stated at the time."

"I don't follow."

"Richard is an attractive man, though the ratio between his acromion and illiac crest are not what I would deem ideal. However, I now understand that my reticence was due to my dormant feelings for Booth. And, given Richard's brooding, I suspect his feelings for you were the cause of his own reticence. As well as his instigation."

"His instigation?"

"He had obviously experienced a recent emotional trauma. In my experience, such an event can cause people to seek out experiences that might act as an emotional soporific that they might otherwise avoid."

Kate nods. Instead of feeling jealous, she quickly finds herself feeling guilty. It's not a feeling she likes.

Brennan, however, seems to have deemed the conversation over, and returns to her screen. "While circumstantial, I do believe I have uncovered an interesting pattern."

Kate shakes off her thoughts, focuses on Brennan again. She pours the coffee and brings the two cups over to the table. "What did you find?"

"Taffet made five abductions that could reasonably be considered attempts to garner wealth. Four of those were successful, with payments of three million, two million, four million, and four point five million. Under the conjecture that she and Bracken are linked, I found that the payment patterns to Taffet closely aligned to payments to Bracken's campaign funds."

"Look here," Brennan says. "The first two abductions were in summer and early fall of 1998. In the two months after a kidnapping, the Bracken campaign fund sees an influx of new funds almost identical to the values paid to Taffet. Then there are no abductions until campaign season of 2000, when again, eight point five million is paid in ransom, and again, within two months, Bracken sees an influx of an additional eight million."

"How did you find this? Why didn't anyone else?"

"The donations are all spread out into hundreds of separate donations below the ten thousand dollar limit, so that they can remain anonymous. The data must be publicly reported to the IRS. I don't know why anyone would look if they didn't already suspect Bracken and The Gravedigger were related in some way. Furthermore, I had the advantage of knowing where this data is. A former intern of mine has an abundance of free time and a strong concern about the role of hidden organizations' play in the government and society. He has been collecting and publishing campaign finance information for the last two years."

"Lucky us. Maybe he can testify, when we put this all together."

"Oh, well, he's a former aide to a serial killer who is now in psychiatric lockdown. I am unsure a jury would be inclined to listen to his testimony."

Kate shakes her head. She's delved enough into Brennan's world for the day. "So we know that The Gravedigger had an ulterior motive. We know she's connected to Bracken. We know Bracken lied to us. But we're no closer to the Dragon or what the hell is really going on."

"No."

Kate stands up, stretches. She remembers that the email to Brennan mentioned an urgent call. Maybe someone else has some information for them, something to help them get out of this ever deepening maze.

But before she can mention it to the anthropologist, Castle and Booth come through the door.

"We found something," Castle says with his normal ebullience. Next to him, Booth seems more subdued.

"A couple of somethings," Booth says. "None of them I like."

"We found several things not to like as well," Brennan says, from behind Kate. It's then that Kate realizes that Booth has a cut over his eye and Castle's hand is lightly bleeding.

She suspects she's going to agree with Booth. There is nothing here to like.