3.
Booth sighed as he hung up his phone.
"What is it Booth?" Brennan asked while pouring them both a cup of coffee in their kitchen.
"Sweets. I tried to call him last night and it rang and rang. This morning it goes straight to voicemail." He put his phone away distressed.
"It doesn't seem like Sweets to not answer." She observed.
"Yeah, I know Bones, that's why I'm…" Booth didn't want to use the word "concerned". Well not out loud anyway.
"Well" Brennan said repouring Booth's coffee in a travel mug. "Maybe you should leave now and go by Sweets place. She wasn't going to use the word "concerned" either but she knew that was what it was. If Booth was concerned, she was concerned.
Booth went by Sweets place and then by his office and at both, found nothing. Standing in Sweets empty office he picked up his cell.
"Angela, I need you to track Sweets cell. No, I it's not good."
Sweets woke to a dry mouth and the sounds of rain outside. His body ached from a dull cut constant pain from the electroshock and a sore back on a crappy bed. His sense of movement had returned but he was still restrained in place causing a great deal of stiffness. He decided against calling out again.
He knew it was morning and began to wonder if anyone would find him. He began to wonder how, Booth would remember where Sweets said he was going, right?
He was distracted as the metal door clinked open again.
"Time for breakfast." Denny announced and unbuckled Sweets from the bed and moved him to the familiar wheelchair. Sweets could move but he decided not to at the moment. Instead he played ragdoll should a moment to run present itself later.
Sweets was wheeled down the hall and tried to observe everything around him as best he could without being detected. He was wheeled into a room with several other patients, four of which were at the table. A plate of food was waiting for him but the cold oatmeal looked anything but appetizing.
The orderly left and once he was gone Sweets perked up in the chair.
"Hey, hey" Sweets called to the other patients at the table. The other two looked too drugged up to respond. "You, what's your name?"
"Don't talk to me." The patient answered. "I don't want no more treatments." He continued looking down and eating his oatmeal.
"Look, I'm not supposed to be here, can you help me get out?" Sweets pleaded. The man slowly turned his head with a drop dead serious look.
"You think any of us are supposed to be here?" The man asked in a tone creepy enough that Sweets was filled with a bad feeling. The man continued, "let me guess, you don't have any family either?" Sweets feeling got worse.
"You want some advice? Eat that, you're gonna need it." The man said going back to his oatmeal. He could hear the orderlies out in the hall talking so he dug in, he was starving after all, but it tasted like wet cardboard.
After the unappetizing meal was gone Sweets was wheeled over to a window. He wondered why for a moment and then considered a dark possibility, they were conditioning him to have to look outside. He noticed his car was gone from out front and wondered what they did with it.
When he was sure that no orderlies were around he slowly turned his seat around. He slowly and laboriously pushed it closer to the door.
"Don't do it." The man from before warned again.
Sweets slowly pushed the chair out into the hall. He saw a set of steps at the end of the hall and testing out his feet for mobility stashed the chair in a corner and slowly descended the steps.
The work was hard on unsteady feet and a near empty stomach. He was down two flights when he heard voices. He rushed behind a door as orderlies past. Once they were gone he came out behind it to stare in a room at a man in a bed. The sight appalled Sweets as he wondered if the man were dead or alive. He was painfully thin and very elderly. Sweets knew places like this got their social security checks in exchange for "care." The old man's chest rose and fell and Sweets exhaled but wondered if the man was living a life he would have wanted to.
Sweets slipped from the room and began down the rest of the next flight. He knew the steps must be near an exit. He was halfway down the next flight when he heard voices coming down from above. He panicked and tried to pick up his pace but all these flights and steps on his tense muscles made it hard.
"Hey! You! Stop!" A voice rang out and Sweets tried to pick up the pace to get down the steps. His wish was granted but not in a way he planned as the orderly pushed him down the rest of the marble steps.
Sweets crashed to the bottom platform having landed on his shoulder which now hurt like hell. The orderly pulled out a radio.
"Yeah Richards. Yeah he was trying to let himself out. Yeah, I'll bring him up, copy, level two treatment understood."
Sweets knew that couldn't be good.
"I don't see what the deal is Booth, maybe he got laid last night." Angela said tapping away on her tablet.
"If Sweets go laid last night he would be texting us all to tell us." Hodgins commented standing off to the side.
"Let's just concentrate shall we?" Booth said. His gut feeling told him that Sweets was not enjoying the morning in the company of a beautiful woman.
"Ah, here we are, his cell is right here. Wait, that's weird." Angela said clicking away.
"What?" Hodgins said now having a hint of concern.
"Did Sweets drop his phone, it's coming up as being at that crime scene yesterday."
"No, I called him yesterday afternoon and he had his cell with him." Booth said his stomach tying itself in knots.
"Let's go." Hodgins said as the pair left, much more worried than before.
"Anything?" Hodgins called to Booth who shook his head. He was bracing himself for finding Sweets body. It was not a sight he was prepared for, Sweets was not discarded garbage.
Booth saw a flicker and looked down to see a red light beeping. He reached down in the pile and pulled up a near dead cell phone. He looked around and saw some balled up material and picked it up as well, he recognized it as the suit Sweets was wearing the day before. Hodgins joined him and soon they found Sweets wallet.
"He was here alright." Hodgins said.
"Or someone was just throwing away his things."
"Then where's Sweets?"
Sweets tried kicking for a while but it left him exhausted as he was put on the table, the same as the night before. He was preparing himself for what the therapy would bring, he was prepared now, he was a trained psychologist, he could beat this.
"It seems that you are more resilient than I thought." Richards said coming in the room.
"They will find me you know." Sweets said threatening them.
"Yes, I'm sure they will, but that's not the point. It's up to you, you see they can find a body, like Kyle Cooper's, or they can find you, though I imagine by the time we're done, your mind will be too."
"I'm a trained psychologist." Sweets said back with a huff.
"Oh I know, but see, every man has his breaking point." Richards said locking eyes with Sweets.
Their gaze was so intense Sweets wasn't prepared for the ice cold water thrown on him. His body seized up from the forceful absorption of the cold. Denny turned a fan on high and pointed it at Sweets.
"There's more than one treatment son." Richards said as he left Sweets shivering on the table.
Sweets clothes were laid out on the platform exam like they would have laid out a skeletal remains.
"What are we looking for, these smell horrible." Wendell observed.
"Well, they came from a dump, so yeah." Hodgins said but it sounded curter than he meant it to be.
"We are looking for particulates. Anything that can help us locate Dr. Sweets." Brennan explained.
Angela was trying to run various locating software on Sweets phone to see what towers he had been pinging off of since the day before.
"Seeley, you don't remember anything you were talking about yesterday?" Cam asked Booth.
"Sweets was talking about how we never listen. Something about an old institution, it was crazy."
"What kind of institutions?" Hodgins asked, his interest piqued.
"Sweets said something about some old place that people would get like, dropped off at or something. Some old nut house." Booth explained.
Hodgins went over to the computer and quickly came up with a list of places and photos of four of them. Booth looked at the screen.
"That one, I think that was the one from Sweets photos." Booth said.
"Danvers. Man, I remember reading about this place. Some crazy stuff went down in there." Hodgins said.
"What like a hundred years ago? Angela asked.
"No, like in recent years. It was in the news about how this whole investigation was getting launched against them but the whole thing disappeared and the place is still running." Hodgins explained.
"So someone paid them off?" Cam said.
"I don't know, you guys never want to hear my theories." Hodgins said shrugging his shoulders.
"Okay so if we presume that Sweets went there, what happened?" Booth asked thinking aloud. They all mentally scratched their heads.
"Well I guess I will go and find out." Booth said headed to the exit.