Chapter 5

Booth woke before the alarm the next morning. Rolling over, he turned it off before pushing himself out of bed and donning a pair of sweatpants. Quietly, he walked out to the living room to begin his workout, gritting his teeth against the pain in his shoulder as he held his arm against his chest while doing his first set of crunches. Of course, he had to settle for only doing bicep curls with one arm, but that did not stop him. And when he reached his push up sets, he simply started them with one arm, refusing to change his routine because of some silly injury.

"You know, you should probably go easy on yourself for awhile," a voice remarked. He turned to see Brennan standing in the doorway in one of his dress shirts. He smiled at her, thinking of how beautiful she looked wearing his shirt, her long, toned legs displayed prominently from beneath the white fabric.

"If you go easy, you'll never get anywhere," he told her, his breathing heavy.

"If you don't go easy, you might never heal, and then you definitely won't go anywhere," she said, approaching him. "Let me see your shoulder."

"It's fine." He tried to move it to prove his point, but he simply ended up wincing in pain. She raised her eyebrows.

"It doesn't seem fine."

"It just hurts a little. I was just shot; it makes sense that it would."

She looked over his arm carefully. "Well at least you don't seem to have reopened the wound," she observed. "You still need to be careful."

He grunted noncommittally. "I'm going for a run. Feel like joining me?"

"Are you listening to a word I'm saying, Booth?"

"It's just a run. Nothing to strain my arm."

Brennan sighed in resignation. "Fine. Let me go get changed."

After their run, Brennan helped Booth wrap his shoulder so that he could take a shower before taking one herself. Once they were both dressed, she changed his bandages, happy to note that the stitches were all still in place despite Booth's inability to follow the doctor's advice and take it easy.

They stopped for coffee and bagels, arriving at the Jeffersonian just before 8:00 to find Cam, Hodgins, Angela, and Fisher already there. "Nice of you to join us, Sweetie," Angela remarked, watching Brennan walk in with Booth at her side. "Did you have a good night last night?"

"Have you discovered anything else?" Brennan questioned, ignoring Angela's question. Booth took her coffee from her hand as she pulled on her lab coat, handing it back to her when she had placed the garment over her shoulders. She took another large swallow of the liquid before handing it to him again as she pulled on latex gloves and joined Fisher on the platform.

"I was just about to do a closer examination of the bones," Fisher announced.

"Okay, good. Hodgins?"

"I'm finishing up my analysis of the burnt material surrounding Lauren Earl."

"And?"

"And I found nothing of significance. Some cotton fibers and wood, likely from whatever was used to build the fire. The accelerant was gasoline."

Booth nodded. "I'm going to get a list of everyone who owns property in the area that Hodgins pinpointed last night. Hopefully we can link one of them to Earl." He sat down at the computer which he was now thinking he should claim as his own and logged in. As he worked, he glanced periodically up at the podium, assuring himself with each glance that Brennan was still there, that she was still safe. He knew that nothing was going to happen to her here, but that did not stop him from worrying.

By lunchtime, he was starving and no closer to finding Earl than he had been at the beginning of the day. He had a list of all people who owned property in the twenty-five square mile area that Hodgins had provided, but he had not yet been able to find a link to Earl. So far, he had worked his way through about half of the two-hundred person list. He sighed and rubbed his eyes. Glancing up at the platform yet again, he saw that Bones was still hard at work. Pushing himself up from his chair with a grunt of pain when he accidently jostled his left arm, he approached the platform and swiped his card to step on.

"Come on, Bones, let's go get some lunch," he told her. Surprisingly, she went without complaint; she simply turned around, nodded, and followed him out of the lab. As they walked to the car, he asked, "So, did you find anything new?"

"No. There are a number of injuries on both victims, but they all simply indicate chronic abuse, something we already knew. There is nothing on the bodies which gives any indication of Earl's current whereabouts."

"Hey, we're going to find him, okay?" Booth cupped her chin in his hand, forcing her to look up so that she could see the sincerity in his eyes. She nodded, walking around the SUV to enter on the passenger's side. As Booth opened the door, he glanced into the car and suddenly noticed something which chilled his blood.

"Bones, I want you to turn and run as far away from this car as fast as you can," he told her, his eyes wide with fear as he stared at the blinking red light under the passenger's seat. It was barely visible from his current vantage point; in fact, it was a miracle he had noticed it, but he was extremely thankful he had.

Without hesitation, Brennan turned and sprinted away from the SUV, Booth following close behind. He threw an arm around her shoulders as they ran, knocking them both to the concrete just as the roar of the explosion sounded behind them, growing louder as it echoed off the concrete walls of the parking structure. Brennan felt a wall of hot air rush over them as they lay prone on the ground, Booth's body on top of hers, shielding her as always. She looked up at him, noticing the fear which shadowed his normally warm chocolate eyes, and she automatically wrapped her arms around him, somehow knowing that in that moment, that was exactly what he needed.