Author's note #1: I know, it has been a (long, long) while. Real life has dealt me a lot of unexpected craziness. I can't promise regular updates, but I still love writing and have a plan for this story.

CHAPTER FOUR
Failsafe

-x-

Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.

-x-

Somewhere a phone was ringing.

Somewhere, quiet footsteps padded along a suburban carpet and light brightened a dim hallway.

"Hello?" The word was a question and her voice leaden with sleep.

He breathed in.

"I'm.." he began, tentitively. "I'm going to the movies today."

"Seeley?" Her voice had sharpened and he could almost feel the reverberations of her dreamlike state shattering.

"I don't know what I'm going to see," he continued, ignoring her question. This was no rehearsal, and the words were spilling from his mouth: a torrential verse they'd long ago scripted and hoarded away.

There was a pause and her thoughts seemed to swirl around him and take form, as he fought the temptation to answer the next question before it came.

"Who are you going with?" Her tone was neutral.

"Dr. Brennan."

"And her science club?"

"No." Coolness clawed the air around him. "Just Dr. Brennan."

He wanted volatile. He wanted the frozen glass in the phone booth to splinter when he breathed on it and the tumbling shards to pinch his skin and make him feel that this was not happening.

She held him intact. He could see the poise of her porcelain face framed by those doll-like blonde curls. Of all the times he wished for her to let him down, she disappointed him by staying true.

"Goodbye, Seeley," she said, softly, a hint of sadness, regret encapsulated somewhere in the briskness of her tone.

"Bye," he whispered, his voice cracking. "Tell Parker.." He bit his tongue, and let the sentence hang. No imaginings of this scenario had ever led him this far.

"I will," she replied with certainty.

"Take care, Rebecca."

He hung up the receiver and sank to his knees. His thirty seconds were up.

-x--x--x- -x--x--x-

The wind had picked up in intensity and the rain that spilled from the sky burned his skin like coffee. A palm stretched over his head provided no shelter, but the slow trail of the numbness as it approached his elbow was painful comfort in a world that was fast falling away from him.

"Where were you?" Brennan looked at him edgily as he stripped himself of his sodden jacket and boots.

Her concern seemed to bounce, torn to silence by the rustling of his clothes, but then he stilled slightly and caught her eyes.

"It doesn't matter," he replied.

She looked at her hands, wanting to press him further, but afraid of what she'd find she instead busied herself in the wet footprints that stained the wooden floor, before reaching down and picking up the thin rain jacket that they'd found stashed away in his trunk the day before.

"I'm going out." Her fingertips squeaked against the plastic, and although doubtful as to how dry she'd stay, she slipped it over her shoulders.

He faltered, his sullen expression melting away. "You can't go out."

He looked at her and she stilled.

"If you want to go out, I'll go with you."

She turned towards him. "I can look after myself. I don't need your protection."

"I know."

"I don't want your company."

"Bones - I"

"You what?" She crossed her arms. "You go out when you want to - without telling me. I woke up and you were gone, Booth. The room was empty."

He stepped towards her.

"Don't -" She raised her arm in protest. "I don't want to talk about this, and you.. don't want to talk." She pulled the door open.

"Temperance." His voice was low. She turned and watched as he freed his gun from his holster and slid it across the floor towards her, as he sat down. "Stay safe."

She picked in up and held it in her two hands. Daylight glinted off the metal surface and she felt its heavyness cut her right down to her bones. She reached over and shut the door, and then, quietly stepped over to his side. His eyes were dark and he stared despondantly as she slid down beside him.

"I'm no good at this, Booth," she began.

He looked at her and cleared his throat. "I won't disappear again. I promise."

"And whatever is making you broody -"

"I don't brood," he interjected.

She looked at him skeptically. "If you need to talk, I'll listen. I know I'm not very perceptive and I probably can't help you or make you feel better - "

He reached across and placed a finger on her lips, stunning her into silence. Her eyes widened.

"You're more than enough," he said, a hint of a smile touching his face, as his hand slipped down between them.

She felt warm against his shoulder.

-x--x--x- -x--x--x-

Even as the minutes trundled awkwardly into hours, the sense of being tacked down on an impasse refused to leave her. They had descended into a stilted silence, each afraid of testing the delicate truce that had somehow been reached. She missed him and hated the feeling of impending disaster that was slowly unfolding around them.

He was banging his way through the furniture again. Slamming the closet doors, rooting through the cases looking, she knew, for everything and finding nothing. It was the helplessness, the emptiness. The glaring fact that since they'd left the FBI office there had been no developments nothing to suggest the danger existed at all.

She wanted to go home.

The shrill ringing of the phone jolted her, and as she leaned instinctively to pick up the receiver, she felt her hand trapped beneath Booth's with enough force to prevent her picking up the call.

"Bones!" he whispered harshly. She seemed dazed and lost in thought. "We didn't order room service!"

Her brow furrowed. "Oh. Do you think it might be them?"

He nodded and freed her hand, sitting as close to her as possible.

She answered, holding the phone between them."Hello?"

Her voice was firm and authoritative. She excelled at maintaining control even though her heart was racing and the anticipation was making her lightheaded. Booth's arm rested on the bed, a reassuring hand grazing her shoulder.

They were met by the whining of misplaced high frequency machinery before a voice, distorted and metallic fractured the air.

"I know where you are, Temperance."

Then nothing.

Dead.

"No." She jumped to her feet, flinging the phone against the wall as though she had been burned. "No, no, no."

Booth was quick to follow her. "We need to go.."

"No." She clutched at him, pulling him to her but at the same time, keeping him at arms length. "It makes no sense, Booth. How could he know?"

She paused, her brow furrowed and her face pale.

"It doesn't matter," Booth argued. "Point is if we stay here.."

Brennan sighed frustratedly. "He shouldn't know where we are! We are not being followed. We swapped trucks. It doesn't make sense."

She breathed heavily and fell to her knees. "Did you check the seams?" She grabbed the end of his pants.

"What? No. Bones?" Booth took a step back and pulled her to her feet. He started with his sweatshirt feeling the sleeves and the back of the neck. "Nothing."

"These are clean too," Brennan dumped her night clothes back in the closet, before tipping the contents of her handbag onto the bed.

"We've checked everything before," Booth murmured scooping up her puzzle book and leafing through it.

He glanced up and saw that she had frozen, her fists tightly clenched.

"Bones?" She kept her head down, refusing to meet his gaze. Her lips were pursed, as she desperately tried to dam the tears that were poised to slip from her eyes.

He took her hands and slowly peeled back her fingers one by one. A small tracking device glittered from beside an ugly pressure mark on one palm. The other hand concealed a green "Maverely Foundation" pen snapped in two.

"I'm so sorry, Bones." He pulled her to him and tucked her head into his neck.

"It can't be him. It can't," she whispered. "Russ.."

He tightened his grip around her waist. Thinking back to the metal voice he had sworn he'd heard a hitch - "Temp-ie-rance", a slur so subtle he had barely acknowledged it. Nobody else called her Tempe.

"Tell me what it means, Booth," she pleaded.

His hand rubbed the back of her head as her name ran through his bloodstream, hammered out a thousand times in tin. An intense anger, unexpected, crept through him. She deserved so much better.

"I don't know," he said. "I wish I did."

I wish I could make them stop hurting you.

Author's note #2:

I'm quoting Eugene Ionesco. As always I adore any feedback good, bad or indifferent. Thank you for reading.