The next two hours passed slowly. The fire was put out, glass and debris had been cleaned up and Booth's body was at the morgue by now. It took Angela nearly twenty minutes to get Temperance away from Booth. She wouldn't leave his side.

After catching her breath from crying on Hodgens and calming enough to speak and be understood, Angela walked over to Brennan and knelt down beside her. She put a hand on her shoulder.

"Sweetie, you need..." she gasped a sob, "...you need to let him go."

"No. No, Ange," she looked up at her with tears rolling down her face, "I can't."

"Yes, you can." she put a hand on her friend's hand and squeezed it, "You're not alone."

Angela sat there for fifteen minutes, weaning Brennan away from Booth's body while fighting off impatient M.E. She held her grieving friend as they loaded the sheet-covered body into the van and drove away to the F.B.I. morgue. She rocked Temperance gently as they sat there on the ground, shushing the way you do for a crying baby. Angela can be quite maternal at times, especially when it came to her friends.

As the clean-up crew did their job with the glass and the now windowless police cruiser Booth had driven there, Cam, Hodgens and Dr. Sweets all left for the Hoover building where the scientists could use the crime lab and Sweets could do some paperwork to keep himself busy since he knew he wouldn't be able to fall asleep anytime soon after what he had just witnessed. Angela decided to ride home with Brennan and the F.B.I. security detail which had been appointed to her by Deputy Director Cullen, Agents Takota and Dolby. Takota stayed posted just outside the entrance to the apartment building and Dolby was to be in the hallway outside her front door. Angela went inside with Brennan, who seemed to have cried herself out, because all she did was stare silently into space as she sat down on the couch.

"Do you want me to stay, sweetie?" Angela asked.

"I think I need to be alone right now, Ange." Brennan finally spoke, her voice horse and gravely.

"Okay," she kissed her friend's forehead, "call me the second you think you may possibly need me. No ifs, ands or buts."

Brennan nodded and Angela walked to the door, and as she reached for the door knob, heard Temperance say "Ange."

"Yeah, Bren?" she turned back to look at her.

"Thank you." she said.

Angela smiled then turned and left.

For a while Brennan just sat there on the couch, wishing he was there to lean against like he always had been before. She wished she could feel him take her into a 'guy hug'. Most of all she wished she could hear that nickname. She got up and walked into her bedroom and went strait to the nightstand where Brainy-Smurf and Jasper were sitting next to her alarm clock. She snatched them up in one hand and left the room, headed to the liquor cabinet and pulled out the scotch that she kept reserved for Booth, and only Booth. It was his favorite brand and choice proof. She sat the bottle and her figurine collection on the coffee table on her way to the stereo where she scanned her CD shelf, running her finger over each one and stopping on the album "Double Vision" by Foreigner. She took it off the shelf, removed the CD from the case and placed it into the stereo. Clicking a few buttons, she put the first track, "Hot Blooded" on repeat.

Hearing the song made her smile. "A guilty pleasure." she laughed with a tear in her eye.

It was the song they had danced around like fools to. Right now, she didn't feel the embarrassment that she usually felt when thinking about that moment. Right now she would give anything to have that moment back. Any moment with him for that matter. Not feeling much like dancing, Temperance retired to the couch, grabbed Jasper and Brainy-Smurf in one hand and the scotch in the other. She laid the figures on her knee, removed the cap to the scotch and took a large gulp strait from the bottle. Looking at the little toys in her lap, she started to feel a pain in her chest. She paused and stared at the bottle in her hand that was missing almost a quarter of it's contents.

Taking another swig, she capped the bottle and sat it on the table and pressed a button on a remote that sat next to her and the music stopped. Any more liquor and she wouldn't be worth anything in the morning and she had work to do helping to sort the unidentified remains from Limbo at the Jeffersonian. And any more of that song and she wouldn't be able to contain her tears. She leaned back into the couch and placed her hand over her eyes, fingers spread slightly. She wished so badly that he had never become so protective of her. He nearly died once saving her. He got so close, in fact, that he seamlessly faked his own death.

"Why didn't he learn the first time?" she asked the empty living room.

Then it hit her like a ton of bricks...

She used a stealth tip Booth had taught her to sneak past Agent Dolby who was posted outside her door. She cracked the door open and tossed a small, jingling key chain down the hall, and when the agent walked down the hall to investigate the strange sound, she slipped out the door and silently sped down the hall in the opposite direction. She wanted so badly to thank Booth for all of the tips. Even if it was just a few things, it was enough to complete this mission. After using the same trick to sneak past Agent Takota who was outside the complex, she got in her car, thankful she had been picked up that morning, and drove to the Hoover building.

Walking through the halls at a quick pase, Brennan saw her target, Doctor Sweets, walking up ahead, going in the same direction. He was the one who hadn't informed her that Booth had faked his death. She wanted, needed, to know if he was faking again. She couldn't take this, not knowing was killing her.

Upon catching up to Sweets, she grabbed his shoulder, forcefully turning him to face her, and pinned him against the nearest wall, obviously startling the young man.

"Is he dead?" she asked with pain in her voice and pure anger in her eyes.

His blood-shot eyes told he had been crying, "Doctor Brennan -?"

"Is Booth really dead?" she cut him off in a tone more stern and angry sounding than before.

He looked into her pale blue eyes that were now full of tears, and regretfully said "Yes."

She pushed him harder into the wall, "If you are doing another sick experiment, I swear I will -"

"Doctor Brennan..." he cut her off, "...he's gone."

At this point her bottom lip was beginning to quiver slightly and tears streamed freely down her face. She released him from the wall and turned to walk away but Sweets saying "Doctor Brennan," made her stop in her tracks, though she didn't bother to turn to face him, "if you need to talk, my door is always open. Not as your psychologist, but as your friend."

He watched her walk away, neither of them saying another word.

********

Brennan pulled into a parking spot outside her apartment building. She snuck back into her apartment the same way she snuck out, and once inside, took Brainy-Smurf and Jasper to the bedroom with her and sat them back on the redwood nightstand. She laid down across the width of her bed on top of the turquoise sheets and sighed deeply as her legs from the knee down dangled off the side of the bed. Before she knew it she was seduced by the calm that came after a long hard cry and started to doze off. Suddenly awoken by a cloth covering her nose and mouth. Her eyes sprung wide open to see the man she recognized as Randall Arkay, standing on the other side of the bed and looking down at her with a twinkle of hatred in his green eyes and a cocky smirk on his mouth. She tried desperately to pry his hand from her face, but with his free hand he pinned both of her wrists to the bed. Pulling her legs up, she caught his neck between her ankles and squeezed as hard as she could, causing him to drop the rag and release her wrists. She held on to his neck as long as she could until he pried her ankles apart. Flipping over and off the bed, getting to her feet, Brennan swung a punch at him and he took it in the eye. Realizing that the phone was ringing, she dashed for the phone on the nightstand but he grabbed her by the hair, pulling the fist-full of her brown waves back and her head with it. He wrapped her in a hostage-hold and she struggled against his tight grip. She kicked a coat rack over into the dresser, knocking various makeup, lotions and her jewelry box onto the floor. Holding her head back, he injected something into her neck, causing her to almost instantly go limp. As her phone started to ring again, he threw her over his shoulder like a cave-man, accidentally dropping the syringe, and carried her out of the bedroom. When passing the breakfast-bar that separated the kitchen from the living room, she glanced through double vision at the phone that was continuing to ring and for a moment thought that she saw "Booth" across the caller I.D. screen, but blacked out before questioning what she saw. He casually walked through her front door as if he wasn't doing anything wrong, and right past her unconscious protection detail.