It might be short, but it is indeed an update. And it didn't take me two months to update! Whoo!

I was rather surprised that no one caught my error in the last chapter, which I found last night and quickly changed. I had them discussing her pregnancy... and in the same sentence she was drinking a glass of wine. Wow. Way to go, Jill, right?

Anyways, I hope you enjoy this chapter :)

He tried to ignore the woman who was trying to keep up with him as he pounded up the stairs to their floor of the apartment building. She had completely and utterly refused to go to Angela's, no matter what he said or did, and she only complied with the request to stay there tonight on the condition that she get to come back to the apartment with him right now, and see what was going on.

Frustration already sending him reaching for the end of his rope, he rounded the corner to find an assortment of techs gathered around outside the apartment.

"Where was it?" Bones asked, pushing past him suddenly. He bit back a growl of annoyance, but could only follow her as she joined the group of men and woman that surrounded their doorway.

"Didn't find anything inside," a young Latino woman informed them in a thick accent, "But this here," she pointed up to a camera mounted on the wall—the security camera for their floor, which was a few feet to the right and angled so that it could see all of the doors, not just theirs—"This was tampered with, and we found an add-on hooked to the side, barely noticeable, that was transmitting its own signal."

"So someone was using the security camera as a ploy to get their own images?"

"Right. And it was aimed—" she turned and pointed at their door, "—Right smack dab at your doorway."

She frowned. "So he didn't get inside, but he wanted to see..." she trailed off, her eyes flashing to him with sudden fear, "He wanted to see when we were home."

Booth gritted his teeth and turned away from her stare. He felt like an idiot for not having this checked out sooner. He was a sniper turned FBI Agent; he should be able to figure out when someone had reconnaissance on him or his partner. Especially since Sampson had been following her around for ages, taking goddamn pictures of her. He should have paid more attention to outsiders in those months following her assault. He shouldn't have been so focused on her; he should have spread his interests to simultaneously protect her from her own emotions and from outside threats. He had assumed that being by her side at all times would be enough, but he'd been wrong.

"Booth, Brennan!" A voice drew his attention, and hers, to someone that was pushing their way through the crowd. At once, Booth groaned. Just what he needed right now. "Good, I'm glad you both came. This is... really major. I think we need to all sit down and talk about this. All of this."

"Sweets, you were helpful earlier, but right now... we really just need you out of our hair. There's enough going on without you bullying us into talking about our feelings."

The kid's expression fell, and he looked truly hurt by the comment, "Booth, I'm not here to pick your brains. I'm here to figure out who's trying to get to Dr. Brennan."

"Brennan," she corrected absent-mindedly, and the psychologist waved her off, apparently not too caring of the fact he had permission to call her by her informal title nowadays.

"Listen, if we could just sit down... we need to go over all the details. Right now, they're all really spread out, and if we put it all together, I could get a much better handle on this guy. I haven't been over to the Jeffersonian, but I talked to Cam and she said something about emails..?"

To his surprise, Bones caved easily, gesturing for him to turn back into the crowd and following him through it and into their apartment. Booth sighed, yanked his hands out of his pockets, and hurried after them, having no problem with pushing people out of the way in order to keep up.

Inside, Sweets didn't even glance around at her apartment, despite never having been in it before, which gave Booth the frustrating idea that he'd probably already explored it while the techs were searching for bugs and cameras.

Bones settled herself on the couch, and Sweets wisely took the chair and left the spot next to her open for him, which he took quickly, lacing her fingers through his. She looked down in surprise, but didn't pull away and didn't comment on the small gesture.

"Alright, let's start with what we know," Sweets began, "First, we know about Sampson. He followed you around as a reporter, up until you got a restraining order on him." He seemed to be waiting for a response, and Booth saw her give a hesitant nod of agreement to the statement before the psychologist went onwards. "He continued to follow you, from a distance. Prior to the restraining order, he hadn't been as interested, but afterwards... he seemed to increase his focus on you. I took the time, earlier, to look into what other articles he had been working on... and found next to nothing. He was supposed to focus on news in literature, so it's not surprising that he got attached to you, but he only wrote a few short stories about other authors before he simply stopped altogether. I can't know for sure if it was because he simply stopped caring, or if that was the point at which he was killed. Has there been any confirmation on time of death?"

"None," she said irritably. "The body was cleaned with precision and a great deal of care paid toward that very detail not being figured out. All the bugs and particulates Hodgins was able to find came from the scene where the body was located, not the place where Sampson was when he was murdered."

Sweets sighed and nodded. "Alright, so we don't know that detail. If you would be willing to look over some of the pictures taken by our two stalkers, I can discern when our second one began to follow you if you can give me dates for the images that I pick out."

She stiffened, and at once Booth was on the defensive.

"I don't know if that's such a good idea," he said firmly. "Bones and I have had a pretty rough week already, and it's only Tuesday. Try to find... timestamps or something."

"No, I'll do it," she said with a definitive nod. "It will be much faster that way."

"Alright, good," Sweets said, offering her a warm smile. Booth glared, but both of them ignored him. "Now, we know that at some point in July or August he was killed, because there is no August bulletin board. That's where looking through the pictures on the back wall will come in to help us identify when the second suspect began following you."

"Whoa, hold up a second. Back up in that attic?"

"Unfortunately, yes, that is where we will have to go. There are far too many pictures, and arranged far too specifically, for them to be taken down, attached to another surface, and brought here. It could be done, but it would take probably at least a week, with the precision that would be necessary."

"I'm fine with going to the attic, Booth," she said calmly, and he ground his teeth together, biting back a comment as Sweets carried on as though the interruption had never occurred.

"The emails, from what I got from my short talk with Cam, were sent periodically over a period of several months, starting in February. Apparently, both of our stalkers became overly-interested at about the same time. I still hold to my earlier analysis that they worked completely separate of one another, however. Do you happen to have a copy of the emails..?"

Wordlessly, she reached for her bag and pulled out the folded pages, passing them over to him. Booth was starting to feel completely unneeded, and it was starting to get on his nerves. This whole conversation had been between Bones and Sweets, and he had yet to be able to contribute anything useful. It felt like all the evidence was either psychological or scientific, and there was nothing for him to do. And to top it all off, Bones was actually giving Sweets credence for his theories, rather than challenging him at every step as she usually did.

The psychologist read through the emails in silence, his expression getting more somber with each one.

He sighed as he placed the papers back on the table. "Alright, this is just preliminary, but here's what I get from that. Clearly, he is deeply attracted to you. He wants you to be his, and he might even believe that you both know each other very well, and you have therefore betrayed him. In the first two emails, he seems to be writing to someone he knows very well. He shows affection and even fascination. He looks up to you; practically worships you." She shifted uncomfortably, and Booth took the opportunity to put an arm around her shoulders and pull her closer to his side. She didn't object, and he allowed himself one small smile of relief. "In this third email, though," he continued, "He shows clear disappointment and frustration. He feels like you have turned against him, and while he is angry, he still holds on to the hope that things will work out. Now, the fourth email..." he trailed off, frowning slightly as he reached forward and scanned through it one more time before shaking his head. He worried his lip for a second, and then seemed to work up the ability to speak. By then, though, Booth was starting to feel the concern of what the psychologist's clear nervousness might mean. "This one was from May, shortly after you were assaulted. He states that he knows what happened, and that he isn't sorry for it. This... this, uh... Dr. Brennan, this suggests, to me, that he was..."

"Spit it out," Booth snapped out in frustration.

"He was involved."

There was stunned silence, and then Brennan whispered. "He was... he was..." she shook her head, eyes wide, "He what?"

"Judging from the way this is written, and how he refuses to 'apologize' as well as uses it as a threat of sorts... it gives me the idea that he played some role in what happened."

Her face was white by now, and Booth fought off the urge to pick up Sweets and dump him out the door for panicking her.

"Bones?" he questioned nervously, rubbing a hand up and down her arm. She ignored him.

"He told me," she whispered. "On the phone... he told me that... that he would know if tried to tell anyone. I thought... I thought he might have someone watching outside, and waiting for me to come out, so he'd know..." A single tear tracked it's way down her cheek, and then she went very still before she said, so softly that he barely heard her, "Oh, God..."

And then she bolted from the couch and vanished, the loud sound of the bathroom door slamming following only a moment later.

"Bones? Bones, are you alright?" he called nervously from the other side of the door.

"Go away," she half-sobbed.

He rested his forehead against the door, sighing before he turned to glare at Sweets, who was standing awkwardly at the end of the hallway, still somewhat in the living room and looking like he really didn't know what to do or say. It took only three quick strides to place him right in front of the younger man.

"What did you think you were doing?" he hissed quietly enough so that she wouldn't hear. "You totally freaked her out, you idiot!"

"Sorry!" Sweets squeaked back. "I just... you have to understand, this guy is dangerous! She needs to know, and she needs to know all of it, even if it's... bad."

Booth ran a hand through his hair, grinding his teeth together. "Go... sit back down or something, alright? Or leave. I really don't care." He spun back around and went right back to the door, attempting to turn the knob but finding that it was, unsurprisingly, still locked.

"Bones, baby, you gotta let me in," he pleaded softly.

Finally, he heard the lock click, but she didn't open the door. He pulled it open carefully, peering in to find her sitting on the edge of the bath tub, arms rested on her knees, head hanging.

"Oh, Bones..." he murmured, stepping around to sit carefully beside her. "Are you okay?"

"I'll be fine," she said, but her voice was monotone and he knew her eyes were probably still filled with tears.

Much to his relief, she didn't try to push him away when he placed a hesitant hand on her back and began to rub it up and down soothingly.

"I thought it was over," she finally confessed, her voice taut with pain, "I thought... I thought that I was moving on, and that it was in the past, and that it would stop following me."

"It will, Bones. I promise you, alright? This isn't going to change anything. Besides, Sweets might have it all wrong. This guy is crazy... it doesn't mean he was a part of it. He could have just... found out."

She sniffed and brushed at her eyes. "That wouldn't make sense, Booth," she finally managed to say, her voice semi-normal. "Sampson tried everything he could to figure it out, and clearly he didn't. How would this Darrin McAllister have known?" she shook her head, and then murmured before he could answer, "I doubt that's even his name..."

"I doubt it too, Bones. But we'll get him. We're the best crime-fighting team in America, remember?"

She rewarded him with a slight quirk of her lip. It wasn't a full smile, but for the moment, it would be enough.

"Alright, do you want me to get rid of Sweets, or what? We can ditch him and go get dessert over at the Diner or something."

She shook her head. "No. No, I... we can't. I need to have something looked into over at the lab."

He frowned. "What, exactly?"

"I need them to search for cameras there as well."

Poor Brennan. Will this ever leave her alone?