I've decided to shorten the contest to five questions.

Name all of Althy's siblings

Althy and Zach's Halloween costumes.

Who hires Jonah and Haley?

What is Nancy's relation to Althy?

How old is Althy when she meets Zach?

I figured this will be easier than the ten I originally had planned.


Chapter 26

Portugal boy

The day following the snow storm was also the day of our state review. But the down drop on that was we caught a case. A little boy was found, the boy was alive, someone else wasn't as lucky. Zach calculated that the boy and the dead body were dumped in the park early the previous night. The body was cold from the weather, the boy was cold too. We put him in my office and turned the heat on, while my lab stayed cool.

His name started with a D. That's all Booth was able to get out of him before he was given to me. He had short black hair and deep brown eyes. He had big square-oval glasses that covered a huge part of his face. I handed him a cookie.

"Are you alright D..?"

"Don...Don..." he accepted the cookie and I sat down next to him on my couch. He was wrapped in a blanket and my very warm winter jacket. "Donato" That was the last I heard of his sweet little voice

"Nice to meet you Donny, I'm Althy." he nodded "Can you tell me how old you are?" he didn't respond. "Ok, I'm going to hold up ten fingers and you put down as many fingers as you want until they add up to your age, ok?" he nodded and I held up ten fingers. He counted each of them twice then with his cold, shaking hand put down three fingers. He was seven. "Ok Don, you sit tight, I'm going to get you some hot chocolate."

Booth was waiting outside of my office. He needed something, closure, reassurance, news of some sorts.

"Anything,"

"He's quite traumatized and barely speaks. I can tell you his full name is Donato and he's seven. I have already begun doing forensic work, but DNA on the body won't be back for a while."

"Thanks." I nodded and began walking away "Hey where are you going?"

"I promised a little boy some hot chocolate." Angela had begun doing facial reconstruction and Cam had some flesh to work with. I walked past a bored looking Dr. Brennan and Zach. They currently had nothing to do. So they agreed to watch Donny while I got him some hot chocolate. It seemed interesting how I would end up taking care of the kids that would get brought in. I didn't mind. It was simply practice for when I have my own kids…sort of.

I got him the hot chocolate and entered my office. Zach was reading Donny a book while Dr. Brennan had gotten another blanket to put over him. "Hey Donny, did you have fun with Zach and Dr. Brennan?" he nodded and I gave him the hot chocolate "It might be a little hot so be careful." He began to blow on it. He seemed a little overwhelmed with so many people coming over to be with him.

"Do you have anything?" asked Dr. Brennan

"The toxicology is running, so is the DNA. I can check on the fingerprints Cam pulled of the uh…cadaver, but I don't know if we'll get a match." I checked my computer, no matches it was still running. "Nothing yet"

"Can you isolate the search to a specific database?" asked Dr. Brennan as Zach went back to reading the book.

"I can,"

"Check for immigrants coming from Spain and Portugal." I inputted the data into the computer and waited.

Only minutes after I inputted the date I got a match. "His name is Enrique Marques, citizen of Portugal. He has a wife named Ileana, they have a son Donato. They immigrated here five years ago that would make Donate two at the time. "

"You got all of that from his father's immigration database file?" asked Booth walking in.

"Most of it," I told him "You can see the resemblance between Donato here and his father." Cam came in and filled me in. I hadn't seen the body. But as Cam explained most of the body was a mix of flesh and bone, luckily for us the stomach and the hands remained fleshy enough for fingerprints and toxicology. I filled her in.

"What about the mother?"

"Ileana…there is a current address listed." I said and wrote it down and handed it to Booth.

"Let's go Bones." called Booth.

"Zach the bones." said Dr. Brennan.

"Yes Dr. Brennan." replied Zach and turned to Donato "Sorry it appears that the story will have to be continued at a later date." He got up and left.

"Do you have everything you need?" asked Cam

"I do, I only need to check on what I have running. So if you would sit with this adorable boy."

"Uh." but I had already dashed into the lab to check on what I had running.

Cam looked at the boy and gave a weak smile. She watched as he took a sip of his hot chocolate and adjusts his glasses.

I came back oh…five minutes later and Cam left, rather quickly I might add. Angela gave me a copy of her report and met Donny. She then had to help reconstruct an ancient tablet recovered from China.

Donny finally began to warm up. So I helped him remove all the blankets and the jacket leaving just one blanket over him a cute blue blanket that I had given him. He had short, messy brown hair that complemented his dark eyes and his small nose.

"Did you like the hot chocolate?" I asked taking the now empty plastic cup and tossing it into the trash. Donny only nodded again. This was going to be harder than with Betty. With her it seemed like she wanted to talk and she did, but she was just shy. Donato was going to be more difficult. He was much more traumatized, that much was clear.

"Would you do me a big favor and draw me a picture?" he nodded slowly and tilted his head in confusion. "Draw anything you want. Anything that's in your head," I gave him a stack of markers and a paper. "I'll be over here at my desk and when you finish you can give it to me." He nodded again. He was doing a lot of this.

Email, what did I have? One frantic email from my mother, an email from my brother Peter telling me he was gay and he's met the boy of his dreams. It was a bit of a shocker I have to admit, but not unacceptable. I think I knew all along actually. I replied back saying that I was happy for him and that I wanted to meet his boyfriend. I also wished him luck telling daddy. Dad was solid in his beliefs…As I sent the email and moved on to the next Donato handed me a picture "Your all done?" he smiled. I figured he was finished. "Let's take a look."

We sat down on the couch together and he moved closer to me. His drawing was scary. There was lots of black everywhere. There was a cage and a small figure and two bigger figures were inside it. There were bad looking men two of them with awful faces with what I guess was some sort of weapon. The sky was a deep blue and instead of the moon was a red evil looking circle. "Are you hungry?" He shook his head cheek to shoulder, cheek to shoulder. "Ok, I'm going to talk to my friends and when I comeback we'll go get something to eat, deal?" he nodded. I grabbed the drawing and handed it to an arriving Booth.

"What is this?"

"It's pretty self explanatory." I replied. "He wants to talk, but he's afraid," Booth was horrified "See the black marker where the mouths should be. It's rather obvious that he was frightened into silence somehow…."

"Is it possible that he saw his father die?"

"At this point I can't speculate on anything, but in my professional opinion I doubt the people who did this particularly cared for the mental wellbeing of this boy." Booth agreed.

"We stopped by the house. No one has been there in at least a week. The mail pile was pretty high. We'll find out where they worked." We chatted for a few more minutes. After a while Donny tugged on my top, "Lunch, I didn't forget." I told him. "I'll see you later Booth we're going to eat lunch." On our way to the Jeffersonian cafeteria we picked up Angela and Cam.

We got lunch and sat down to eat in the cafeteria. I wasn't too hungry so I settled with a chicken Ceaser salad, Angela got herself a slice of Pizza and Cam ate her sandwich and Donny got a big Hamburger. I thought that would be the safest thing since we didn't know if he had any allergies.

"Cause of death will be confirmed by Zach as stabbing…sort of…"

"Sort of?" questioned Angela

"Someone took a knife and sliced the….person's throat ear to ear so it's not really a stabbing more of a...slicing."

"Let's not discuss the case with him so close to earshot. He's been traumatized enough." I added. The two women nodded. "Cam how's Michelle?"

"She's good, she's excited about her winter formal dance and she needs me to help her find a dress for."

"That sounds nice." said Angela "But you don't sound very happy."

"Well…she's failing History and I told her that unless she brought up her grade she wouldn't be able to go."

"That seems logical to me." I added taking a sip of my coca cola.

"I don't know what to do to help her."

"Sit down with her." said Angela "Help her get through the work, it could just be that she has a bad teacher. I know I had this dinosaur for a teacher in Geometry. He was awful and because of that I got a D. Then I had a really great Algebra teacher and I past with an A."

Donato finished his hamburger and we headed back to the lab. Booth had talked to the boss of Donny's mother and her friends at work. According to them Mrs. Marques had discovered something fishy about the software manufacturing company. The company sold software to big businesses only, the software was anti-virus things and company emails. She found out something. Booth and Brennan went to talk to the big people in charge of the software company. Hopefully the DNA would be able to tell us something.

Dr. Brennan wanted to take Donato in for the night. He again nodded and went with her. He was a sweet little boy and I hoped that I would be able to get him to talk.

Zach and I had dinner, while Jack and Angela went to dinner with her father. After dinner we decided to sit down and watch the Star Trek movie that just came out on DVD.

"Come on, come on." called Zach hurrying my along.

"You're excited, it's adorable." I had grabbed my laptop and sat down next to him on the couch infront of the big TV. I needed to get some work done and to keep track of the things running in the lab.

Zach put the DVD in just as the phone rang. "I'll get it." I grabbed it and answered. "Calloway…Dr…Dr. Brennan slow down….ok better. What? No, no do you have anything for him….give him markers and paper….give him juice….no juice…ok how about hot chocolate? Doc you really need to get more kid friendly drinks at home. Alright call Booth and ask him to bring some comic books over anything. Donny needs to know that you're not going to hurt him and you just want to help with out actually saying it. Words aren't as important as actions in this case….Feel free to call me if you need anything..." I hung up and let out a deep breath.

"Is he alright?"

"He fell and when Brennan tried to help him up he lost it. She is trying to calm him down. I think she's succeeding."

Zach smiled and pressed play on the remote and the movie began.


Yay ok now this is a little bit like Betty's story but it isn't. She was less traumatized and well I wanted a little boy whose mommy they find.

Next time….

A very nasty lady comes to the Jeffersonian and she is determined to ruin every single person that works there. Why? Well she has to do a security review and she needs to make sure that everyone is genuine. But there are some things that no one wants to surface from their pasts…..

Please answer the questions first person to get all the answers...or most correct wins a cameo of their choice: Either in the story, or in an Author Chat with me at the begining of the chapter. Keep reading. THere is more to come.