Chapter 18: Shoot Me Darling

So half of this has been finished for days. But after watching episode 100 I got so angry, I couldn't write the other half. Finished it finally and I profusely apologize for the wait. Let me know what you think - the fluff has been shaken.

"Booth?" Damn. She had fallen asleep again. Although she had successfully watched the entirety of Bourne Identity, she had dozed off during a boxing scene in Million Dollar Baby. A thoroughly depressing movie, it had her furiously steeping tea over her burns just to give her restless, disquieted hands something to do.

Waking in the flickering light of the television, she squinted to peer at the slightly swaying crack between the curtains that led to a secluded balcony: it was dark. She glared blearily at the television screen and realized she was right at the end of the second run through of the movie she had just fallen asleep to. Gasping in horror at the agonizing death that had her seriously questioning her own ethics as an anthropologist, she quickly flipped channels before angrily turning the set off.

There.

There it was again. That sound.

Booth?" she called again. No one answered. With a sinking stomach she knew instinctively was from fear, she tried standing. It left her weak and out of breath just to swing her legs over the side of the bed.

She walked stiffly, once levering herself up, to the bathroom smelling her underarms in a most unladylike manner along the way.

Flipping the overhead shower on that emptied into the sunken tub, she also filled it with both gritty bath salts and aloe vera until the tub was hissing and foaming with the smell of aloe. Still ill at ease, she returned to the bedroom to check her texts to see where Booth was. Her thumb hovered over the letters; he hadn't called, texted or sent any messages with concierge. They were very irritated with her. She had called…a lot. She desperately wanted to start a new message, but she knew that she could blow his cover with single vibration in his pocket. She ground her teeth. She felt so useless.

Her stomach churned. Stupid movie. So depressing. Passing trays of half eaten room service, she flipped the television back on to a music channel. She cranked it loudly so she could hear it from the bathroom. Shedding Booth's shirt and her scanty panties on her way to the bathroom, Brennan let her hair down on the way and picked up some green tea to steep her burns in with the steaming, vaporous scented bubble bath.

Both the music and the cooling tepid water soothed her. Shampooing and floating in a luxury land of bubbles, she was giddy to realize the tannin and her herbal remedy was working. Her limbs looked almost tan instead of scarlet next to the snowy suds she floated amongst.

"Yeah!" she crowed hearing the first few bars of a familiar song floating through her bathroom and weaving between her splayed fingers as she floated in the water. Without consciously realizing it, she began singing along. By the time she was at the chorus, she was no longer humming and swimming around rhythmically; she was rocking out with flimsy garments of suds covering her modesty, air guitarring and belting her and Booth's song at the top of her lungs to reverberate in the marble bathroom.

I'm hot blooded, check it and see

I got a fever of a hundred and three

Come on baby, do you do more than dance?

I'm hot blooded, hot blooded

She chuckled, as she realized not too long ago she had felt as if she had a fever of a hundred and three. With a gasp, she slipped but laughed in relief as a hand caught her wrist.

"Booth," she squealed, turning to look at him. "Trust me – you don't want to climb into this bath. I smell like a –" With another, louder gasp, she realized then her complete and utter nudity in midst of a stranger, one who was suddenly clamping a cloth over her mouth, his other hand tightening into bruises on her wrist.

Her last rational thought was that he was using a rag doused in trichloromethane, colloquially dubbed as chloroform, and that it was actually 40 times as sweet as sugar.

She gasped awake and realized immediately she was bound. It wasn't the first time she had been; only this time she was tied to the bed with her legs spread apart. They hadn't bothered tying her arms to the post, they had simply knotted the cord cruelly around her wrists and left them lounging over her head. She was mortified at both her naked red body, stripped of any sheets to cover her modesty and the fact that she had let down her guard on a mission. She twisted her head slowly, afraid of what she would find, her genius mind already speeding through rescue, escape and likelihood of survival at a hundred miles a minute. To her instant relief, she saw Booth next to her on the chair. But her heart plummeted (at least it felt such a way if not literally), through her gut when she realized he was bound and gagged with enough rope to the armchair. Enough rope, in fact, to keep the heavy furniture immobile and Booth helpless. He was awake though, and for one shining moment, she saw the relief in his eyes that she had woken, before shame flooded them and he looked away from her spread-eagled body, her legs spread and primed for what she could only guess.

"Booth," she whispered hoarsely, but he furiously shook his head once over his gag, his eyes burning black with fury. She swallowed her dry throat.

"Hello," leered a man, suddenly looming in her vision, and Brennan's eyes constricted as all the lights were suddenly flipped on, flooding her vision, instead of just the glow dim of the bathroom. She looked around and her heart stopped. And picked up in double time.

There were at least seven to ten men waiting in a line, mostly Japanese or of Asian descent, and she even recognized the irritating man from concierge who had let her burn. She realized it now, as Booth probably already had, that she had been allowed to burn on the beach so darkly it would distract her "husband" from their mission. There was a short scream, and the men pushed something through their ranks. It was the young Ms. Li who was sobbing and naked, covering what she could with the ripped scraps of fabric that had so obviously been torn from her. Brennan's stomach flipped. The blood dripped down the young woman's thighs, giving Brennan a preview of her fate. She heard Booth begin to make grunting noises and thrash against the ropes.

"Shove her there," laughed a tall, blonde man with a cruel twist to his almost nice looking features. Brennan recognized him as the waiter who had served them their piña coladas. Her head spun, and not just from the chloroform.

"You were in charge of the smuggling ring?" she gasped around her dry throat, completely desiccated from the water that had been soaked from her esophagus from the saccharine taste lingering in her mouth.

"Pineapples are the perfect vehicle to smuggle coke in," he sneered, kicking the young sobbing Asian woman towards Booth. "Stay," he spat, and she fell to the floor in a pool of her own dripping blood, leaning in exhaustion against the rope wrapped armchair.

"Why?" coughed Brennan, desperately hoping to keep him talking as long as possible. She couldn't think of anything, but was hoping Booth could use the time she was buying him. She knew her impending gang rape was more to torture him than to harm her. Another man in the line laughed darkly and confirmed her fears.

"Let's get this over with. Then kill her. She's got a big mouth."

"And a big brain," the blonde man snapped, glaring over his shoulder, "Which is why you don't run the operation." He smoothed his clean shaven jaw with a finger. "It's interesting," he mused aloud and fell silent. Brennan knew he was toying with her, but she willingly play along to stall for time.

"What?"

"I didn't realize they would let lovers be partners."

"We're not-" began Brennan, but a stunning blow to her cheek left her whirling and disoriented. Booth's scream of rage around the gag didn't help their case. She felt a small trickle of blood run down a cheek, cut from the ring on the man's finger.

"Don't lie," growled the blonde man. "We know you are. The gift basket…"

"The gift basket," gasped Brennan. "You hid a camera?" she blushed as she remembered her and Booth's first activity.

"We were so very glad you never made it to the bedroom," chuckled the 'concierge' darkly. There was a murmur of approval from the line of men.

"I'm done," the blonde man suddenly snapped. "Here's what you want to know FBI," he sneered. "We smuggled the coke and some kid got in the way. Just a punk who had flunked out of college came to work at the shack. He intercepted one of our 'special' shipments. So we shipped him out."

"In pieces," spat Brennan bravely.

"In pieces," said the man with a tone like a lover. It was a sinister and chilling effect that had the men laughing uproariously. With a barked command in Japanese the blonde man thrust his finger at the door.

"I like my privacy. Don't worry boys, I know you all like to 'work' together. In fact, I value your teamwork. I'll leave some for you." Brennan was suddenly panting. She had never been raped. She had come close many times in her line of work and being captured in many countries, but somehow she had managed to avoid it. She didn't want to cry, but she was coming close.

Booth made a gagging sound but Brennan recognized it, against all the odds, as actual words that gave her a bright, shining piece of hope. She let her tears flow freely now, and made sure that while she made the horrified soft whines at her coming agony, she didn't let the panic flood her mind. She didn't want him to gag her but she managed to squirm a few inches higher in the bed and more, real tears of pain fell as her skin shed as it was ripped from her back.

"Where are you going," laughed the man, in a way a clown would laugh at a kids birthday party. "You are pathetic," he threw over his shoulder at Booth, taking his time to peel off his clothes, even his shirt and socks before yanking at the tongue of his belt.

"You don't even have a gun on you. Bad cover FBI. Bad cover." Brennan wasn't sure how Booth had managed to sneak the gun from his lower back into his pants, but she almost laughed at the complete absurdity of it all.

She let out a horrified puff of air as her rapist flung his naked, sweating body on her, his face inches from hers. Terrified, she panted and rooted with her hands behind her head, behind the headboard. She was screaming by the time he began biting her neck viciously, taking the skin between his teeth and simply ripping it away. She was momentarily distracted but finally felt the hook and wrenched forward up in the bed, feeling one of her knees pop from its rotary cuff from her bound ankles which made her scream, but she also managed to avoid the thrust of his narrow, disgusting hips.

"Bitch," snarled the man, taking one of her breasts between his hands and squeezing until just the nipple stood starkly up before he unearthed a knife in a threat. Instead of screaming, Brennan calmly pulled the gun from behind the headboard and held it between his eyes. She dimly could hear Booth cheering.

"Get off," she hissed in a deadly snarl. "And let go." In a desperate panic that confirmed her fears that the leader never met combat without his henchman, he threw himself from the bed. At that very moment, Booth ripped his arms from the armchair, yanking the gag out of his mouth and in one, quick movement, leapt to his numb feet and his gun fell out one of the legs of his khaki shorts.

"You were searched," screeched the blonde man and Brennan, completely confused to how Booth got free, met the scared yet triumphant eyes of tiny Ms. Li, who had slowly sawed through the ropes with a pair of nail clippers lifted from the duffel behind the chair.

"Get away," snapped Booth, but the man's wordless scream of rage had the door banging open as Brennan sat up in bed, feeling her knee twist unnaturally.

"Get under the bed," she said in a low voice, feeling her adrenaline rush intensifying with both the gun in her hands and her near brush with rape. The tiny woman slipped unnoticed in a smear of blood under the bed and crouched with small panting sobs.

The men immediately began mobbing Booth but Brennan, unable to stand, proved a tantalizing target. Three men lay shot within seconds as Brennan carefully aimed for non-fatal targets. Booth had somehow managed to simultaneously knock out two at once before there were screams from the hotel neighbors and the pounding of feet, betraying the struggle in the honeymoon suite to security.

"Covers blown," screamed a man, "move, move, move!" The two remaining men sprinted for the door and Booth managed to knock the three groaning, wounded men who were reaching for their guns unconscious before facing the leader.

"You're coming with me," grunted Booth, his gun trained on his face and the cuffs in his pocket jangling with a dangerous finality.

"Booth!" screamed Brennan, seeing the last man emerge from behind a potted plant. The shot rang out as Booth grunted before clasping a hand to his side. The blonde man managed to swat the gun out of Booth's wavering hand before Brennan's shot rang out without her sentient knowledge. The man behind the plant crumpled; she knew this man, at least, wouldn't be getting up again.

"This is how it's gonna go," laughed the blonde man maniacally, and Brennan saw, to her horror, that he was using Booth as a shield. Booth had both hands clasped to his bleeding wound, and Brennan realized it was because the bullet had hit one of his major organs. Her mouth went dry and she unwaveringly raised her gun again. But the blonde man had chosen a good shield. Both shorter and leaner than Booth, none of his body was presented for a target. "I'm gonna get out the door," laughed the man on edge, "then I'm gonna let your sweetheart crumple and die in the doorway while I make my escape. No one suspects me. I'll walk out the front door as cool as you please."

"I…" started Brennan, but already he was retreating. Booth's eyes caught hers.

"Do it," he said with a forceful voice. It astounded her that he could so clearly read her mind even now. Summoning up the last of his strength, he offered her one more little boy smile. "Come on Bones," he said with a nod. "Do it."

"I love you," she whispered, the tears dripping quickly away from her field of vision.

"Sweet," sneered the voice, heading even closer to the door. "Goodbye my love," he simpered.

"I couldn't have said it better," snarled Brennan and without closing either eye, she carefully aimed and shot within a second.

With a quick, clipped cry, a man fell to the ground.

And his hair wasn't blonde.