"Booth!" Max's voice reverberated off the trees as he raced toward his son in law. "What the hell happened?"

"I don't know, Max."

"You don't know? Tempe is gone and that's all you can say? You don't know?"

"Don't start." Booth still had his mother by the arm as he used his body to force Max up against the side of the porch. Hester let out a strained whimper as she watched the two men exchange in a staring contest. Neither flinched. "You know how much I love your daughter."

"Yeah, I know how much you love your mother too. That's why all of this has happened, right? The whacked out, maniacal, crazy ass cult leader who's been holding her hostage all these years took my daughter to prove a point. Because you ignored your mother's friend when he kept telling you that they had to leave. You're the one who insisted that she stay. You were too busy playing little boy for your mama to realize how much danger you were putting your own family in."

Max's words slapped Booth in the face like a wet towel. He hadn't said anything that Booth hadn't already thought himself. He wasn't about to let Max know that though. He matched him toe for toe and tone for tone. "I don't put anyone's interests in front of Bones."

"Then send her back to whatever hell hole she blew in here from and get my baby back."

Max took a dive around Booth and attempted to grab Hester. Booth was one step ahead of him, and managed to capture Max with his left hand, gripping his upper arm.

It took all of Booth's strength; both literally and figuratively to maneuver both his mother and Max into the house without lessening his grip on them. He slammed them both down into kitchen chairs and sat between them. It was several minutes before anyone spoke.

"Listen Max, you can blame me. You can blame by mother. Blame whoever you want, but we both know that the only one who is really at fault here is The Leader. He took Bones because he wants my mom to go back. To go back to where he's been holding her hostage and lying to her for the past thirty years. But we can't just send her back. We can't let this guy win. You know that you can't negotiate with maniacs. It doesn't work."

Booth stood up from the table and walked to the refrigerator. He leaned against the counter and drank from the glass of water he had poured for himself, trying to calm his nerves. Once he finished, he placed the glass in the sink and rejoined Max and Hester at the table. He addressed Brennan's father first. "Now you can stay here and you can act like a reasonable person and you can help me. Or you can get the hell out of my house because no one is going to come into my home and accuse me of not being so in love with Temperance Brennan that I wouldn't give my own life in order to save hers. No one is going to get away with telling me that I don't care enough about her when everything inside me aches because I don't know where she is or if she's okay. Not even her father."

Max closed his eyes but nodded his agreement. "Fine. Then let's figure out how to nail this son of a bitch."

Booth nodded at Max, and then he shifted in his seat to face Hester. "Are you sure that you don't know where The Facility is? Something in thirty years had to have given you a clue. Anything."

"I don't know where it is. If I did, I would have already told you, Seeley." Hester wasn't sure that she was speaking the truth, but she wanted to believe that she was. In reality the idea that The Facility may be exposed because of her actions greatly upset her.

"So where is this George now? Did you kill him?"

The nonchalant way Max suggested murdering George made Hester gasp.

"I'm not you, alright? As much as I hate the guy, right now he is our best chance at getting Bones back alive. I did throw his ass in jail."

Max turned to Hester ."I want to talk to my daughter."

"There aren't any phones at The Facility," she answered.

"There has to be some way that you people are keeping in contact with your leader. I saw George talking on a cell phone at the wedding," Max said.

"It doesn't work that way, the inhabitants aren't allowed to talk on phones. Only certain upper level members can."

"Bones isn't an inhabitant, they kidnapped her."

"As far as they're concerned, yes, she is an inhabitant now. Until I go back."

"Then get to packing," Max said.

Hester looked to Booth, "He's right, I need to leave."

"It isn't going to work that way Mom. It's too late for that. Even if it were that easy The Leader is still committing multiple crimes, I can't just allow him to switch one felony offense for another."

"So you're going to ruin everything?"

"I'm not ruining anything Mom, I'm fixing things. This man has destroyed lives; he has to pay for what he's done."

"He doesn't destroy lives Seeley, he saves them. He saved me."

"He's trying to destroy mine. And your granddaughter's. He's not your hero, Mom. If he were then he would've let you leave the minute he knew the truth. The minute he knew that you had a family on the outside that loved you."

Hester sunk back in her seat. Seeley was never going to understand what The Facility meant to her. He would never see that arresting The Leader would be the worst thing that he could ever do to her. She had no idea how she could make him believe her and with George in prison, she had no way of taking things into her own hands by returning to The Facility.

Hodgins and Angela came by with Christine around ten that evening. Booth had phoned them and told them that he wanted to see his daughter. Now they were sitting with Max in the living room trying to solve the puzzle of The Facility.

"So what we've got a maniac with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder keeping a community of hopeless people held hostage?" Max summarized Booth's words as he finished detailing what he knew about his mother's life since she had disappeared.

"That's the way I understand it, yeah." Booth bounced Christine on his knee, trying to calm his daughter as she began to whine.

"What about the cell phone? Can we use that to trace the numbers back to The Facility?" Max held Monkey up for Christine to play with but she slapped it back toward her grandfather.

"He must have dumped it. I searched the room myself and a team of agents searched both their hotel rooms and the vehicle. They came up empty. I think George knew that they were going to kidnap Bones and he made sure to get rid of the phone before we started looking."

"Classic paranoid behavior," Hodgins added.

"This organization has stayed underground for at least thirty years. I think they know a few things about keeping secrets." Max was sitting on the couch, the stress obvious in his features and the manner in which he was gripping Monkey so tightly that his knuckles were turning white.

"They may have made a mistake taking Brennan. A lot of people know what she looks like. Maybe somebody on the plane recognized her? Could you interview the passengers Booth?"

"The FBI is already on it Ange. They've requested that I stay out of the investigation though. At least officially."

"So what can we do? Unofficially?" She asked.

"Get the transcripts from George's interrogation. See if anything matches up with information we found when my mother first showed up."

"And you need to have your shrink friend talk with Hester. Maybe he can figure out why she's so determined to put The Leader's needs in front of her own," Max added.

Hodgins agreed, "That's a good idea. There is some deep psychological shit going on here."

"Fine," Booth realized that Max had a point. He certainly didn't understand what was going on inside his mother's head, but maybe Sweets would. "But we'll do it tomorrow. She might be more open to talking with Sweets after she's had a chance to sleep on things."

"We all probably need to get some sleep. We should go home," Hodgins said, taking Angela's hand.

"I'm not going anywhere." Max stretched out onto the couch as if staking his claim.

"That's fine Max. You can stay here as long as you want."

"What are you going to do Booth?" Angela asked as Hodgins helped her put her coat on.

Booth looked down at the baby in his arms as she yawned widely. "Right now? I'm going to go put my daughter to bed."

Booth sat in the rocking chair by the picture window in Christine's room. He held his daughter tightly in his arms, as if he could keep her safe by pure will alone. As he rocked he could hear the chair strain beneath him. It was old and rickety but a few weeks' worth of elbow grease and a few coats of paint had restored it to its once natural glory. Well, aside from the creak. The chair let out another whine of discontent as he rocked and the baby opened one eye. She was glancing at him as if to say, "Mom told you the chair was too loud."

Booth smiled in spite of himself. Their daughter definitely had her mother's attitude, even at ten months. He knew he should try to put the baby down again. He had already tried twice but Christine wasn't used to sleeping in her own bed. Since birth she had slept with Booth and Brennan. Her mom said it was anthropologically important for her development, aiding in sleeping, feeding and bonding. With the baby in their bed, Brennan could usually breast fed and get her back to sleep before Booth realized either of them had woken. Booth simply liked the idea of having both his girls close during the night. The need to sneak off for bathroom or kitchen sex served to give them both a creative outlet for their love making. Booth liked to say that instead of the baby putting a damper on their sex life, she had brought new heat into it by forcing them to "think outside the bedroom."

Tonight he needed Christine to sleep in her own bed. That was the only way he was going to be able to work on his plan to free Bones from the hands of The Facility. But as he lay the baby down in her crib for the third time, she began to wail once again. Booth sighed and lifted her back into his arms.

"I don't like this either, Little One," Booth succeeded in getting her pacifier back in her mouth as he rocked her. "I miss Mommy too you know."

Booth smiled, he could hear Bones' voice in his head, "You do know that she cannot understand the depth of the conversation that you're attempting to have with her, right?"

Bones was probably right. She usually was, but Christine was an excellent listener. And right now, that's exactly what Booth needed.

"She knew. Mom knew that if she came back here that something terrible would happen. She knew and she did it anyway. Now, all I want is to see your mommy again. To see the way her entire face lights up when she sees you. You know it took her seven years to admit that she was in love with me? It didn't even take her seven seconds to say how she felt about you though." The baby cooed in his arms, and he held her tighter.

"Christine, I won't let this happen. I will not let him get away with this. I'll wipe their whole damn society from this Earth. I won't rest until I make sure that they never hurt another soul. I don't care about any ramifications, I'll expose every secret, ruin every life they're trying to save. They're trying to tell me that I can't have my mom and yours too. They think that I'll trade one of them for the other. And I think they were right, I'm almost ready to just hand my mom back over to this maniac. I guess that makes me a pretty horrible person, huh?"

He looked down at Christine as if he expected her to answer, only to realize that his tiny sounding board had fallen back to sleep. "Bones, she's one third of my reason for living. I don't want to be in a world without her. I didn't even know my mother was alive until last month. This isn't fair at all Christine." He readjusted the baby in his arms. "We're going to get your mommy back. Even if it does mean that I have to let mine go again. But I won't stop there. They're going to pay for what they've done to all of us."

Booth looked down at the sleeping little girl in his arms smoothing his large hand over the tuft of blond hair that was just beginning to form along her temples. As Booth leaned over the crib the baby began to cry again. "It's barely been twelve hours kid and we're both a mess," Booth said as he gave up on the crib and cuddled his baby back against his chest.

"Maybe I can help?"

Booth froze in his steps as he heard the voice. "I think you've done plenty. Don't you?"

"Seeley, I'm sorry. George kept telling me this was dangerous but I had to see you again."

"You should've gone to see Jared instead."

"Jared wasn't in People Magazine."

Booth finally turned to face his mother; Christine was wide awake now, her large eyes focusing on her grandmother's.

"She's a beautiful baby."

"Yea, she looks like her mom."

"I understand that you're upset Seeley. I'll go back and they'll return Temperance. It's the only way."

"Mom, I've already told you why that isn't going to work."

"Please Seeley, don't do this. I need The Facility. I need to go back. Don't try to punish them. They'll send Temperance home and I can go back to The Facility content that you're safe and that you're happy."

"You promise me she's safe there Mom?"

"They're not violent people Seeley. Over thirty years and I've never seen anyone harmed. They want to help people, albeit with unconventional methods."

"We're not going to agree on this. Listen, will you do me a favor tomorrow and talk to a friend of mine?"

"Sure." She walked forward and reached for Christine, "And for now let me help you with her."

Booth held on to his daughter, taking a moment to get his anger under control and to remember that his mother was as much as a victim in all of this that was. "Thanks, Mom." He handed Christine to her and kissed his baby on the head as he walked out of the room.

Hester settled into the old creaky rocking chair, breathing deeply to savor the sweet smell of the infant. There weren't any children at The Facility and she hadn't held an infant since Jared was a baby. "You need your mother back Christine. I've enjoyed my time here, I thought my boys were dead and I pray to God that they didn't tell your mother the same about you or your father. I didn't lie; they won't physically hurt her but sometimes their mind games are much more powerful than a punch would ever be. We can't leave her there much longer. Seeley thinks he can do so much more than he can. If he goes through with this plan, people will be hurt. Maybe even your mommy."

Hester laid her head atop of her granddaughter's and sighed, "I won't let anyone else get hurt."