Chapter Nineteen:
*
1 Month Later
The Dock master who was in charge of the marina watched as two of his newest clients sat on their boat. They had rented the berth for three days, letting him know that they needed to take on supplies and would only be there for a short while. They had mostly kept to themselves for the day that they had been there. They had sailed in early that morning, and had paid cash upfront so he didn't really bother with them too much. Now, he watched from his office as two of them sat on the deck of their boat. He had seen the others leave a few hours ago, two men and a woman. The men looked as though they could win any fight they got into, and the woman was small, but carried herself with confidence. He always wondered about the stories of the people who stopped in his Marina. He ran a busy little docking system, the Bahamas being an almost perfect halfway point to and from anywhere in the Caribbean. This group of people was no exception. He watched the two left behind with interest.
He was a tall, well-built man who seemed to dote on the woman sitting next to him. He leaned towards her often, and was always gently touching her in some way. His hair was bleached blonde, but before long he put on a cap to cover his head. He was shirtless, and showed signs on his back that he had very recently been sunburned. The Dock master presumed they were on some kind of vacation, and had not been long exposed to the raging sun of the Caribbean.
She was as pale as anybody he had ever seen, but he assumed that she had very recently been injured somehow, judging by the bandage on her shoulder and her arm supported by a sling. She wore a large hat and sunglasses, as though she was trying to keep herself from being noticed. Her clothes were inconspicuous. A simple tank top and shorts, but she wore them well. Anyone would notice her, the man thought to himself. She seemed like a very well put together woman. He was a little jealous of the man who sat beside her and who never took his eyes off of her.
He watched as they laughed together at some shared joke.
He watched further, well hidden by the sun's glare off of his office window, as the man reached over for a bottle of something on the deck between them. He proceeded to squirt some of the liquid on his hand and went on to sunscreen the pale woman. He affectionately dabbed her nose and she swatted at him playfully with her good arm. They laughed again.
When he had covered her neck with the screening agent, he kissed her a few times, and his hand lingered on her good shoulder as he said something to her. Whatever he said must have been serious because she just stared at him while he spoke. Eventually she smiled and the two of them kissed slowly and passionately. The Dock Master averted his eyes for only a second, not sure if they would appreciate the attention. He couldn't look away for long though. This couple intrigued him.
He watched still as they continued to kiss. Eventually they pulled apart and he could see them smiling at each other from where he watched. The woman leaned back in her chair, and the man got up to go below deck for something. He returned moments later and handed a bottle of water to the woman. She took one sip and put it down and reached her right hand out to the man as he sat back down on the chair beside her. When he had comforted himself, he took her hand, kissed her fingers and just held the appendage. They remained that way for awhile and the Dock master soon lost some of his interest in them. He really had paperwork to do. Or something more productive than ogle the couple.
He spent hours in his office, tending to other sailors who needed his assistance with one thing or another. The couple had left the deck the next time he looked in their direction. He wondered where they had gone. His imagination strayed into their bed and what they might be doing there, and he wondered if that man knew how lucky he was. Some people had all the luck.
Not long after, he was walking back to his office after connecting the water supply to another boat, when he saw the other members of the mystery couple's crew coming back towards their boat. They each carried a large box of supplies, and he saw that down at the end of the dock, a rental van waited with the back door still open. They must be stocking up for quite a trip, he thought. He wondered where they were headed next. As he walked past them, he nodded hello to one of the men, but the man just ignored him. When the three got to the boat, the shirtless man met them and helped take the box from the small woman's arms and spoke to her for a minute while the other two men dropped their boxes on the deck. The three men went back to take another load of supplies onto the boat, but the woman went below deck.
The Dock master didn't see either woman again that evening, and he hoped everything was okay. Even though he knew nothing about this crew, he wanted to know. He watched again from his office window through the evening, but he never saw the injured woman again. He thought he saw the shirtless man look in the direction of his window once while talking to one of the other men, and the Marina owner ducked away from the window quickly.
He went back to his own boat late in the evening, hoping that maybe again tomorrow he would get a glimpse of the injured woman. Maybe he could think of an excuse to talk to her.
The next morning... he looked towards the boat of the mysterious travellers to see if anyone was moving around yet but...
They were gone.
2 Months after That...
A woman sat on a bench along the boardwalk in Miami Beach. She was waiting for her husband and kids to finish surfing to take them home, but apparently the swells were pretty good and they had asked to stay for another couple of hours. She was happy to stay and wait. She loved people watching along the boardwalk. She always wondered about their stories, and what went on in their heads.
She watched as one couple walked towards her and they immediately commanded her attention. The man was tall and tanned. He wore a ball cap, and sunglasses and she could see dyed blonde hair poking out around the edges. His shirt was only barely buttoned, and his sculpted chest was clearly visible in the sunlight. He was a very good-looking man, the woman definitely noticed him first.
He held the hand of a woman as they walked down the wooden path along the ocean. She was obviously pregnant; her tight fitting clothes did nothing to hide the fact. It suited her, the woman sitting on the bench thought to herself. She could see the glowing smile of the woman as they came closer to her. What a happy looking family.
The man's other hand was attached to the hand of a small blonde boy, he could have been six or seven, the woman couldn't tell for sure. He was a cute kid, and he skipped along as the adults walked at a leisurely pace towards the beach entrance. The boy carried a backpack and seemed in a hurry to get to the ocean.
The man and woman smiled at each other at the boy's antics. As the couple passed directly in front of her, the woman noticed the recently healed wound on the bare shoulder of the lady. She wondered what had happened, that scar didn't look good. It almost looked like a bullet wound, but the lady didn't seem the type for gunplay. That was just another intriguing bit about this couple. The woman walking with the man held her arm close to her, as though she was still having trouble with it. Her hand rested on her belly.
The woman on the bench watched them still, as they stopped when the little boy tapped his father on his arm and whispered something in the tall man's ear when he bent towards the boy. He let go of the hand of the woman and she smiled at the two, and understood some unspoken hint that the boys needed to talk. The boy spoke for awhile and pointed towards a shop just on the other side of the railing, across the street.
The man looked back towards his partner and smiled and whispered something back to the boy. He went over and spoke briefly to the woman and pointed to a food stand slightly up the walkway. She kissed him quickly and headed towards it, smiling over her shoulder at him, still walking slowly.
The boy and the man headed into a jewellery store when they knew the woman was distracted by something to eat. They were in there for quite a while; the woman waiting for her boys had sat down on a bench a few down from the woman watching her. She sat patiently and drank her fruit juice while she waited. She seemed so relaxed and calm; the watching woman wondered how she did it. Some people just didn't let the world get them down.
Eventually the boy and the man came back towards her, but they had doubled back a little bit so the woman wouldn't know what store they had come from. The woman on the bench, watching the interaction between the unknown couple, saw the man tuck a small black box in the pocket of his shorts. The tanned man and his son walked past her again as they approached the pregnant woman sitting on the bench further up the boardwalk. She saw them coming and tried to get up, and the man took her hand and helped her stand with his arm around her expanded waist. He kissed her on the cheek, and took her hand again, and the small boy claimed his other hand.
They kept walking towards the beach and the boy skipped again. The father almost seemed to be skipping as well. Whatever he had just purchased at the jewellery store had made him very happy. The boy too. And probably, very shortly, the woman as well.
They walked towards the beach, and the woman couldn't help but follow them. Not in a creepy way, she was just intrigued. They were adorable. She had never seen a couple more obviously suited for one another, though she admitted to herself that she knew nothing about them.
As they went through the gate to enter the beach area, another tall, strongly built man approached the man who held the hands of his family. The woman and the boy kept going, but the two men spoke briefly and their heads turned ever so slightly in the direction of the woman who was innocently watching the three of them. She noticed the glance and tried to remain inconspicuous as she also entered the beach area.
The unknown woman wondered what was up with the trio. The man who had stopped the other man at the gate had Cop, or Secret Service, written all over him, though he was dressed casually and seemed to be remarkably tanned.
The woman spied her husband sitting on his towel, with his surfboard stuck in the sand and she wandered over to him, wondering where their kids had gone to. He smiled when she approached, and the jealousy of the other couple faded as she smiled back at the good man who was her husband. She laughed to herself, that not every woman could marry Captain America, but she had a pretty close second. She looked back to where she had last seen the other couple, hoping for one last glimpse of them, but...
They were gone.
1 Month after That
Angela, Hodgins, Cam, Wendell and Clark Edison, who had been hired to fill in for the absent Doctor Brennan, sat on the couches of the Jeffersonian relishing in the recently closed case that they had worked very hard to solve. They were waiting for the partners Agent Sullivan and Agent Perotta to join them, but they had already cracked the bottle of malt liquor and were well into it when the FBI Agents joined them shortly after.
Angela noticed that when the partners sat down on one of the couches, their knees were touching ever so slightly. She smiled at them. Her matchmaking making skills were in full effect again. These two appeared as though they were going to catch on a lot quicker than Booth and Brennan had. Her success rate for hooking up FBI agents and their partners was very good so far, and she wasn't going to let these two ruin her streak. She affectionately patted Hodgins on the knee, and when he looked at her and smiled, she nodded towards the FBI Agents. He noticed the close proximity of the two as well, and whispered something into Angela's ear. The artist smiled broadly.
The bottle of liquor went around the group again and the conversation centered on the case and how everyone had chipped in to solve it. They all laughed at Sully's impression of the mother of the guilty man, who had tried so hard to protect her son from Jail. She had gone to great lengths to send them all on a wild goose chase, but the evidence would not lie for the man. He was guilty, and soon would be tried before a federal judge, and all the squints were confident that they had enough evidence to convince anyone of his guilt.
Agent Perotta and Sully continued to pretend that there was nothing going on between them, but all of the squints were trained to notice small details. Cam thought to herself how bittersweet the relationship might be. Both of them pined for another that they couldn't have. She hoped that Sully and Perotta could get past that and just be happy together, if that's what was meant to be, then it would be.
Wendell and Hodgins cracked jokes about the suspects that they had endured and the experiment that had gone horribly wrong, resulting in the smashed out front door of the lab. Cam didn't laugh at that one; she was still a little pissy about it. Mostly about the paperwork she now had to deal with. Again.
Clark sat fairly quietly. Happy that he had not been embarrassed by inappropriate conversation about relationships in the office. He still tried to wrap his head about the interesting dynamic that all these people shared. They were unique and he felt more comfortable all the time being a part of the team.
In the back of everyone's mind, as always, were Booth and Brennan. The two were missed greatly, but Heather Taffet and her crew had gone as deep underground as the couple, and it wasn't safe for them to return. Not one word had been heard from them since the two partners had made their quick and quiet escape into protective custody.
Angela, especially, was keeping track in her head of when their baby was due, and she wondered constantly how the two were dealing with impending parenthood. She estimated that Brennan was just over seven months now, and before too much longer, the cutest baby in the world, in her mind already, would make its arrival into the world. She hoped they were well. It was hard not knowing what was going on with her best friend, she missed her.
In one of the many small wonders of the universe, as though the world had read her thoughts, the phone of Angela rang from where she had set in on the table in front of them all. She glanced quickly at the caller Id, but it said, 'Blocked Caller'. She shrugged at Hodgins and proceeded to answer it, after passing the bottle on to Wendell, who sat to her right.
"Hello?" She answered, not knowing who to expect. Everyone else continued the conversation about the case.
Everyone's attention went back to her when she squealed her response to the caller.
"Oh my God! Booth! How are you guys?"
The Squints and the FBI Agents only heard her side of the conversation, but the mood changed in the room dramatically as the conversation continued.
"Oh no! That's terrible news...How did it happen?...Oh my God....I'm so sorry you guys...How's Brennan holding up?..." Tears came to Angela's eyes as she spoke and everyone moved to the edge of their seats trying to figure out what had happened. It was definitely not good news judging from Angela's reaction. The artist listened and spoke further to their friend.
"So... you guys are coming back to DC for the funeral?... Do you need someone to pick you up at the airport?...Okay. That makes sense that the FBI would cover you...Okay Booth...We'll see you in a few days... Tell Bren we love her, and we all love you too Booth... You're welcome...Bye!"
Angela clicked her phone shut and stared at it in her lap before looking up to every set of eyes in the room staring at her for news of whatever situation had now arose. She took a deep breath,
"Booth's Grandfather passed away yesterday." She paused while sadness passed through the room,
"They're coming home..."
**
**
To be continued...(as if I could end it there...) ;)