Thanks for all of the really nice reviews guys, I appreciate it so much! I'm really glad that you're all enjoying the story, looks like there were a bunch of us that liked the Gravedigger concept. Hope you keep enjoying it!

17 hours left

Booth was walking circles around the metal room, inspecting every niche for some sign of weakness.

"We have the tape recorder, which takes two double A batteries, a flashlight, which takes four double A batteries, a pencil, a pen-"

Brennan was slowly emptying out her purse one item at a time and placing things in piles based on categories in her head. Booth wasn't listening to the inventory coming from the center of the room. He was beginning to feel like a caged animal as cold panic rose up in his chest, threatening to choke him. They'd listened to the message only moments ago, but it seemed like days had passed since then. How long had they been unconscious? How much time did they have left? His watch was gone and so was his cell phone. They could have barely any time left for all he knew.

"We have my wallet with numerous credit cards-"

Booth spun to look at her, his eyes wild. "What are we going to do with that, charge our way out of here? For that matter, what are we going to do with any of this stuff? We're buried alive in a gun vault Bones, we're not packing for summer vacation!"

Brennan looked up at him calmly. "I'm cataloguing our collective belongings to see if there is anything that can be used or combined to help us. Its what Hodgins and I did last time and it worked. I see no reason to deviate from a known method for handling this situation."

Booth stared at her for a moment, her calm helping him to fight his panic back down. Without another word he walked over to the center of the room and sat down across from her, the flashlight shining an odd, amber light up at the ceiling between them.

"We have a bottle of ibuprofen, two Power Bars, a small notepad…" She trailed of as her hand made contact with something foreign and she gazed down into her purse in disbelief. She lifted the item out and Booth stared in shock for a moment as he realized in the odd light of the room what she held.

"That's my gun." Reaching out he took it gently from her hand and looked at it like he'd never seen it before. "Why would he leave us with my weapon?"

Brennan shrugged one of her shoulders. "He's long gone by now Booth, I'm sure he didn't feel very threatened by you being armed in here with just me."

Their eyes locked as a horrible realization hit them at the same time. Booth popped the clip out of the gun, confirming their suspicions.

There was only one bullet.

Popping the clip back in he handed the gun back to Brennan in disgust, standing up to resume his pacing. "That sick bastard."

Brennan laid the gun gently down with the tape recorder. "He's banking on one of us killing the other to extend our own air supply."

Booth didn't look at her. "Yeah, well, he doesn't know us very well."

"He knows that we know the addition of a second person makes the air go twice as fast. One could easily extend the 24 hour air supply to as much as double depending on when the second person was eliminated."

He stopped at her words and looked down at her. "Yes, Bones, he knows that we know that, but he obviously doesn't understand what it means to be partners and that we're not likely to kill each other anytime soon."

She looked back down at their pile of useless belongings, frustration bubbling just under her surface. "Not for much longer."

"What?" She had mumbled it, but the room was deathly silent and it had come through loud and clear. He walked over to her and stood so she had to crane her neck to look up at him. "What did you say?"

"I said not for much longer, referring to our soon to be ex-partnership. We agreed that we both might benefit from a reassignment while we were in Sweets' office."

He crouched down so he could meet her at eye level. "I don't remember agreeing to any such thing." His eyes were hard as steel. He was only half lying, he remembered snippets of the conversation, but had no recollection of actually agreeing to end their anything.

"Well, you're suffering from a head wound, amnesia is a common side effect."

Her expression was so unflappable, he wanted to reach out and strangle her, but instead he got up and walked to the corner of the room. He had to put some distance between them.

Leaning against the wall he crossed his arms, leveling her with the look he used when he was questioning a suspect. "Why would I agree to losing my partner? We catch bad guys Bones, why would I want to fix what isn't broken?"

"I can't trust you Booth."

He couldn't keep the exasperation out of his voice. "You can't trust me? Me?"

"If the roles had been reversed, I would have contacted you personally to tell you that I was alright. You neglected to do that and I'm now left to question whether our partnership was ever as strong as I'd originally believed it to be."

Booth pushed himself from the wall so he could pace again, suddenly needing to burn the energy that anger was building within him. "You know Bones, I can't win here. I put you on a list of people to be contacted about my assignment, and suddenly I'm the bad guy for you not knowing. The real guy you should be mad at is Sweets, you know, the person who was actually responsible for leaving you in the dark."

He stopped pacing in front of her so he could meet her eyes. "Not to mention that the whole reason I was "dead" is because I took a bullet for you."

She flew to her feet at his words, her own anger crackling around her like electricity. She looked him dead in the eye. " For the last time, I didn't ask you to take a bullet for me Booth. I appreciate that you would go to any lengths to protect people in the line of duty, but that doesn't give you a free pass for everything else."

His eyes were like daggers as he took an angry step toward her. "You know what Bones, I didn't just throw myself in front of a bullet because it was my duty."

"Well, why did you then?"

"Because…I…" He bit the words back, feeling low and cowardly that he couldn't say them even now, when they were god knows where buried under god knows what.

Because I love you. I'm so in love with you I can barely breathe.

"I'm listening."

He ran an angry hand through his hair and walked back to the other side of the room again. "Because you're my partner and that's something that goes way beyond simple duty. You protect your partner as you would protect yourself." He crossed his arms over his chest again. "You aren't working with someone else, okay, you just aren't."

"I'm not your lap dog Booth, I don't just come when you call and do what you say. I'm a world-renowned forensic anthropologist you know, I had a career that was doing just fine before you came into the picture. I'm tired of you trying to call all of the shots, and when things really mattered, you disappeared."

Booth threw up his hands in aggravation. "I did not disappear Bones, I was on an assignment."

She tightened her hands into fists at her sides, her voice coming out in a yell. "You died on me Booth! For a week you were dead, and I was left broken and alone and I can't trust that you'll never do that to me again!"

The moment that she'd yelled the words she wished she could take them back, but they hung around them in the room like heavy smoke. The look in his eyes made her heart pound and she turned away from him, walking to the opposite corner of the room from the one he was currently occupying.

"Bones-"

"Just, please, stop." She bit the words out, cutting him off before he could say anything that might make her lose her composure more than she already had. They were going to get through this and she didn't want them saying anything that would complicate things even further once they were free. She'd already had to fight with the decision to break their partnership, but his death had hurt her so badly she knew that she couldn't stay behind that line that partner's don't cross any longer. If she had to work with him even one more day, her heart was going to shatter.

He looked big and strong across the tiny room from her, his face cast in shadows that did nothing to dampen his handsomeness. If they didn't make it out of here, if the team didn't pay the ransom or couldn't find them in time, she didn't want her last moments to be spent in humiliation after admitting to feelings that she had for him, feelings that he obviously didn't share if he couldn't even find her important enough to tell her he had been alive.

She slid to a seated position in the corner, hugging her knees to her chest. From his vantage point, he thought she looked like a frightened little girl and he had to fight the urge to take her into his arms and tell her that it was going to be alright.

"We just have to wait it out Booth. They will find us and everything will be fine. This will all be over soon. It's probably best that we don't keep talking, we're wasting air."

Booth lowered himself carefully to a seated position as well, one leg straight out in front of him and the other bent. They stared into each other's eyes for a moment, so much unsaid and hanging between them.

And then the flashlight flickered and went out.