A/N- Hello again, everyone! I know I promised a faster update, but things sort of didn't happen that way. Finals week ended up being a lot more pressure than I was counting on (which was all worth it after I got my grades back, by the way) and then I was counting on having free time in the days before I went home... but it turned out that packing up my dorm room was a LOT more complicated than I had been expecting. Long story short, I didn't get the chance to actually work on finishing up this chapter until this week. I hope you all aren't too annoyed with me.
Enjoy the chapter; I still own nothing.
Chapter 20
October 25th, 2011
"I can't do this," Brennan whispered. Angela looked up from the magazine she was pretending to read in the seat beside her, and then reached over to place a reassuring hand on her knee.
"He's going to be fine, sweetie."
Brennan laughed softly through the tears building up in her throat. "That's exactly what we said last time," she whispered.
"And he was," Angela reminded gently.
She just shook her head. "But first… first, he was…" she couldn't get the word out, and she buried her head in her hands out of frustration. It felt like her heart was being strangled, and there was a dark place, a hold within her very soul, which was slowly working itself open. It was going to swallow her whole, and drag her back into that place she had lived in for two weeks, all those years ago.
She couldn't survive that. Not a second time.
Her hands immediately fell to naturally caress her rounded abdomen. She couldn't do this alone. She couldn't do this without Booth by her side.
He had promised her, damn him! He had promised that this wouldn't happen…
"They said it was his arm, right?" Cam asked tentatively.
Brennan nodded, not looking up. His upper arm. That couldn't be that bad, right? They would patch him up, and he would be just fine. Probably a cast for a few weeks. Nothing life-threatening.
Except they weren't telling her anything.
Why weren't they telling her anything?
There were a lot of things a bullet could hit on its way through an arm. He'd lost a lot of blood…
Shaw was fine. They knew that much; she was already settled in a room with a broken wrist and a few broken fingers all placed in casts. They'd patched up her scars and given her pain meds, and now Sweets was with her.
Now all they could do was sit here, in this horrible waiting room that she had been in far too many times, and hold out for answers that she might not even want to receive.
"Someone should call Rebecca," she said softly.
"I'll do it," Cam volunteered heavily, getting to her feet. "…Does anyone want coffee?"
Angela and Wendell nodded, and Hodgins raised his hand in indication.
"Brennan?" Cam asked tentatively.
"No thanks," she murmured, and Cam stepped away and walked down the hall, heels clicking loudly on the tile floors.
A nurse walked by, and Angela's head tilted up. Then she was on her feet, "Nurse!"
The woman turned around and looked at Angela expectantly. "We're waiting on news about Seeley Booth. Special Agent Seeley Booth."
"Are you family?" the nurse asked, looking between their different faces.
"My friend is pregnant with his child," Angela said impatiently, gesturing to Brennan. "We need to know where he is; what's happening."
The nurse slowly shook her head, glancing at Brennan and taking in the bulge of her stomach. "I'm sorry, I don't have any information for you. You can try at the main desk for an update, but I'm not sure how much you'll get if none of you are direct… family." Her gaze lingered on Brennan's ring-less finger before she hurried away.
Angela stood there for a second, and then twisted her ring off of her finger and, seizing Brennan's hand, slipped it on to hers. "Come on," she said, pulling her up to her feet. "We're going to go get answers." Brennan didn't argue, as they travelled up the hallway. "You're engaged to him, got it?" Angela added pointedly. "You're his fiancé. They'll have to tell you… Excuse me, Miss?"
They stopped in front of the main desk, where an overweight woman was seated behind a bulky computer, a pencil tucked behind her ear.
"My friend needs to know where her fiancé is," Angela announced abruptly.
"Name?" the woman asked on a sigh.
"Booth," Brennan cut in. "Seeley Booth."
The woman tapped away on her keyboard, and Brennan's heart fluttered. Angela squeezed her shoulder reassuringly, but she could barely feel it over the weight hanging over her.
"He's in surgery now," the woman drawled as simply as though she were sharing news on the latest change in weather. "That's all I've got for you. If you go to our waiting room, someone will be out to find you when there's more information on his condition."
They stood there for a second, and Brennan could feel herself trembling in place until Angela placed a guiding hand on her shoulder and pulled her away. "They'll be out to tell us soon," she said. "It will all be fine." But Brennan was barely hearing the words. Her thoughts were rushing, and she was remembering it all. Every last detail of those two weeks, from the moment that the nurse had come out and announced his name to the moment when she had seen that dummy fall out of his casket.
The world had stopped for two weeks. Reality had gone away, and she had entered another universe—one without Booth present in it. Right now, she was standing once more on the threshold, staring over the edge into the blackness and knowing all too well what lay below.
"I'll die without him," she whispered, barely aware that the words had crossed her lips. Angela's grip on her arm tightened, and she pulled her down into new seats in the waiting room, away from the others.
"He's not going anywhere," Angela answered fervently, but the quiver in her voice told Brennan that she did not fully believe what she was saying. After that, she stared at the opposite wall or the floor in front of her feet and did her best to ignore every attempt at conversation.
Eventually, Angela stood and moved back to the others, accepting a coffee and talking to them in an undertone for a long time before she eventually returned to resume her silent vigil by Brennan's side.
At five o'clock, when they had been waiting for almost two hours, Cam and Wendell departed to pick up some food for the group. Hodgins called and checked up on Michael and the sitter. Sweets made an appearance, filling them in on Shaw's condition. Brennan didn't engage in the conversation, but she listened.
Shaw was fine, Sweets said. There was a lot for her to handle, though, and it could be awhile before she was back in the field.
He asked for an update on Booth, and discovered that there wasn't one.
Silence reigned, after that.
Brennan refused the offer of food when Cam and Wendell returned. The others picked at bagels and cheese sandwiches, drinking their cold coffee and making quiet conversation. She wasn't hungry or thirsty. She didn't want conversation. All she wanted was Booth.
They said he had been shot in the arm. Just the arm. What was taking so long?
They said he was fine.
Told her she should go home and get some rest. Surgery had been successful and he would survive. Physical therapy for a few weeks. Some bandages that would need changing. Those were the sorts of things she was expecting.
She didn't go home. They told her to, and Angela and the rest of the team tried to insist upon it, but she refused to leave. Claiming a couch in the waiting room, she finally accepted the offer of food and coffee just to stave off the natural bodily urges and remain at her post. Angela volunteered to stay, but Brennan sent her on her way.
She fell asleep on the couch.
In the morning they told her he was dead.
"Seeley Booth," a clear voice called through the haze. Her gaze shot up at once.
A nurse, a young, blonde woman with her hair in a bun and glasses perched on her nose, was looking around the waiting room.
"The family of Seeley Booth," she repeated, and the others stood and gathered together. Brennan found herself on her feet, and a moment later she was directly in front of the nurse.
"Where is he?" she demanded.
"Mr. Booth has exited surgery and is being moved to his room at this moment. He will make a full recovery."
The world spun around her, but it was her voice that was speaking, saying, "I need to see him. What room is he in?"
"I can take you there in just a moment," the nurse said patiently, smiling.
Brennan did not yet feel the relief that she had been expecting. She needed to see him… she had to be sure…
"First, though… you must be his fiancé?"
Brennan frowned, and Angela interjected, "Yes, she is."
"Okay. We can't allow all of you in to see him at once, so to start I would suggest if you visited him on your own." Brennan nodded automatically. "Now, he sustained a single gunshot wound to his left arm. The bullet was lodged, which prompted the surgery, but was extracted."
"He's okay, though?" Cam asked, cutting in. "No lasting nerve damage..?"
"He should make a full recovery," the nurse confirmed, and Brennan heard the collective sigh of relief from the group that surrounded her. She was still processing, herself. "If you follow me," the nurse was saying. "Mr. Booth should be settled in his room, now." They started up the hall, and Brennan barely noticed that the others had naturally remained clumped together behind her. "He may take a little while to wake up from the anesthesia," the nurse continued. "And when he does a doctor will come by to check up on him. But for now…" they climbed a flight of stairs. "You can sit with him while you wait."
The door was only the third down, and the nurse led the way in, waiting from Brennan to come through the doorway before sidestepping back through and shutting it gently behind her.
He was swathed in the blankets, but there were only a few wires coming from him. Not like the last time. The chair squeaked when she sat down and scooted it up by his side. Fingers trembling, she found his hand and engulfed it in both of hers, squeezing gently as she felt the warmth and the steady thrum of his pulse.
She couldn't have avoided the tears even if she had been trying.
Despite her touch, he did not stir. She watched the steady rise and fall of his chest, her breathing falling in sync with his as she let this new reality wash away the one she had been picturing in the terror of the past few hours. He was alive. He was right in front of her, heart beating, lungs expanding, brain functioning. He was going to wake up soon and talk to her and it would all be okay.
Everything was going to be okay.
~BxBxBxBxBxB~
October 26th, 2011
A gentle squeezing in her fingers stirred her into wakefulness, and she blinked slowly and became aware of her surroundings. She had been sleeping with her head rested on the edge of the hospital mattress, arms tucked under her chin for support.
Booth's hand was in hers, and he was staring at her with half-open brown eyes, his fingers gently squeezing around her hand.
She sat upright at once, gripping his hand back. "Booth?"
He had woken yesterday, but only briefly before the medication pulled him back under.
"G'morning, Bones," he said heavily, his voice slightly slurred with sleep and the effects of medication. She breathed out a sigh and scraped the loose strands of hair out of her face.
"You're awake," she stated in relief. "Did… did you just wake up? I need to get a doctor… You're not in any pain, are you?"
He smiled dreamily. "I'm fine. Just opened my eyes a couple of minutes ago. Looks like I… got shot, doesn't it?"
A shiver ran involuntarily through her. "Yes, you got shot. The bullet… lodged in your humerus. There was quite a lot of bleeding, they told me."
He was silent for a while, his head tilted to the side as he watched her while he thought. "Sorry, Bones," he murmured at last.
"For what?" she demanded, leaning forward and brushing his brow. He was warm, but not to a worrying degree. His eyes were bright and his hair soft. The machines continued to beep at their natural thrum in the background.
"Scaring you," he answered hoarsely. "I don't… I don't really know what happened… we had the two guys that were guarding her secured, and then… the window…"
"They were about to trade shifts," Brennan said cautiously, unsure of how much she should tell him. He still hadn't seen a doctor; they had said that when he woke up he would need to see a doctor… "That was why more of their team showed up."
"And they opened fire on my team," Booth followed. "Rodney… what happened to Rodney?"
Brennan swallowed. "I'm going to get a doctor. You need to rest, and you should be looked at…"
"Bones," he said seriously, more awake now than before. "Don't do that. You never do that. Just tell me straight out."
She sighed and closed her eyes. "Rodney…" she wasn't sure of the names, usually, but she remembered this one specifically from the hushed conversation she had been a part of with Sweets and the others earlier this morning, before she had returned to Booth's side. "Rodney didn't make it, Booth. I'm sorry."
He closed his eyes, his head falling back heavily into the pillow.
"Where's Shaw?" he asked finally.
"She's fine," Brennan reassured at once. "She has a room a floor below us… just minor injuries. Sweets says she's going to be fine."
Booth nodded. "Good. And the rest of the team?"
"Everyone is fine. Any other injuries were minor scrapes or were caught by the bullet-proof vests."
"I'll have to talk to Rodney's family… he was just newly engaged…"
Brennan swallowed, and Booth's hand brushed over the ring on her finger as if he had just remembered noticing it. She had just remembered it herself, with those words.
"Something I don't know about?" he asked softly.
"Angela," Brennan replied quickly, clearing her throat. "She gave it to me. So that they would ask less questions about… you and me. When we were still trying to get information about where you were."
"I see. It looks nice on you."
She blinked and averted her eyes. "Yeah." What else could she say?
The ring felt heavy and foreign on her finger, and somewhere, Rodney's fiancé was receiving the news. No, she had no idea what else to say. Not yet, at least.
"How's the baby?" he asked, glancing towards her abdomen.
"She's fine. Same as before."
Neither of them seemed to know what else to say. There were so many thoughts and questions swirling around in Brennan's mind, but she didn't know how to verge any of them as possible topics of conversation.
The door opened, and the doctor Brennan had met briefly, the day before, stepped into the room, smiling cheerfully and carrying a clipboard.
"Nice to see you awake, Mr. Booth. How are you feeling today?"
Booth pushed himself into a better upright position, wincing. "Well my arm hurts, but I'm pretty sure it's supposed to do that when someone puts a bullet through it."
The doctor reached out her left hand and shook his somewhat awkwardly. "I'm Dr. Keller," she said. "There's just a few things we need to go over. Would you like your fiancé to stay?"
He didn't correct her use of the word, much to Brennan's relief.
"Anything you tell me will make more sense to her," Booth assured, gripping Brennan's hand a little more tightly. She squeezed back.
"Alright, then. We successfully extracted the bullet, which lodged in the upper portion of your right humerus." She pulled out an x-ray and held it up to the light, pointing out the bullet to him. He grimaced slightly. "It was caught mostly in the side of the bone, rather than embedded in the marrow, and that made the operation a little simpler. Nonetheless, you've had a number of transfusions. You should count yourself lucky, though." She pointed to the area on the x-ray just to the right of the dark spot which was the bullet. "A centimeter over, and you'd have cut this artery."
Brennan's eyes fell to the floor, and she could feel Booth's eyes on her. She hadn't known that. Up until now, she hadn't had a chance to see the x-rays at all.
A centimeter. The difference between surgery and five-seconds-until-death.
She felt a squeeze in her hand, and looked up to meet his soft brown gaze, a sincere, apologetic smile on his lips. She managed to return it, and then focused on the doctor once more.
"You'll need to stay with us for two, possible three, more nights, and then we'll get you into a rehabilitation program and you'll be in a cast for a few months. It might take a while for your arm to function the way it used to, and you may notice some permanent changes, but overall you're in good shape for a full recovery."
Booth nodded. "Thanks."
"I'll have the staff bring you some food; pudding cups and water should be a good starter with you just waking up."
He brightened. "Pudding sounds excellent."
When the doctor was gone, they sat in silence for a long moment.
"Eventually you're going to have to give that back to Angela," he commented at last, nodding towards the ring.
She twisted it around her finger a fraction, not nodding but not disagreeing, either.
He was looking at her thoughtfully, and she cleared her throat.
"We should be home, soon. So that's good."
"Yeah."
Neither of them mentioned marriage. Neither of them mentioned bullet-holes. Neither of them brought up the last few days. They just sat together, hands still clenched as one, until eventually a light knocking signified the arrival of their friends.
Cam, Angela, Hodgins, and Wendell came in as a unit, bubbly and loud and emotionally. There were hugs and cheers and laughter, and Angela grinned wickedly at her ring on Brennan's finger, as though she had already declared success in her meddling.
"Glad to see you awake, man," Wendell said, clapping Booth on his good shoulder.
"Have any of you seen Shaw, yet?" Booth asked, looking around at the group. They all shook their heads.
"Sweets has been keeping us updated; with her awake and treated we were sort of more worried about you," Cam explained.
"And then Sweets insisted that we all go home and get some sleep. Dr. Brennan stayed, of course." Wendell added.
Booth nodded. "Right. But… Shaw is fine, right? Has she given a statement or anything, about what happened?"
The group shared a glance between themselves, and Brennan kept her gaze focused on her and Booth's intertwined fingers.
"We don't know," Angela supplied. "But… we can find out for you."
"That would be good. I'll… I'll need to talk to her myself. As soon as I can. We have to get this case closed. Before… anything else goes wrong. There haven't been any developments, have there?"
"No," the others answered together, a mixture of regret and frustration.
"Where's Culver?"
"Booth," Brennan murmured, squeezing his hand. He frowned, and she continued earnestly, her voice low and serious, "We can work on the case later… you need to rest."
He stared for a long moment, like he hadn't understood what she had said. "Bones, I have to close this case. You understand that, right?"
"We, Booth. We have to close this case. Just… not today."
"They tried to kill Shaw. And me. They're not going to stop. Not until they're behind bars."
She opened her mouth but couldn't find the words. She wanted to talk sense into him, convince him that he was being crazy and that he needed to rest and heal and keep his stress levels down. He needed to come home and be with her and go through his physical therapy. He needed to stay with her, no matter what happened. He needed… to stay away from this case that had almost killed him. But their friends were standing around awkwardly and he had a fire in his eyes that said he wasn't going to give up.
Brennan squeezed his hand and looked away.
"Mr. Booth, here is your… pudding." The nurse paused in the doorway and then put a hand on her hip. "What is this? There are too many of you in here. Everyone out; Mr. Booth needs peace and quiet."
The others hovered a moment and then said their farewells and moved towards the door. Brennan stayed put, sitting stiffly in her chair as Booth was presented with the pudding. The nurse gave her a look, but nodded to herself after her gaze located the ring perched on Brennan's finger.
"Do you still think one of the women was behind Kaminski's death?" he asked when they were alone, as he popped a spoonful of pudding into his mouth.
"Booth," she sighed.
"What?"
"Don't you think you're… rushing back into this? You got shot."
"Exactly. All the more reason to work this case into the ground, Bones. As soon as this case is closed, we won't have to worry about anything work-related."
"But you don't have to be the one that solves it. The rest of the team, Culver, the FBI… they can handle this case. They can get it closed… they don't need us, now. We've given them all we can from the lab. Now it's just a matter of putting it together and chasing down the suspects."
"Right. I've been the lead agent on this murder investigation all the way through. It's only a matter of putting it together, now, and that's what I do. That's my part, Bones. Do you honestly expect me to believe that you're going to stop working cases because of this pregnancy?"
She scowled and lowered her head. She heard him sigh.
"Bones, I love you. You have to understand why this is important to me. You'd feel the same way, in my position."
"And you'd feel the same way in mine!" she countered, meeting his eyes again with a fire burning in her gaze. "You wouldn't want me getting back out there after nearly dying. Watching me go straight back to the case would kill you and you'd do everything you could to keep me away from it."
Booth said nothing for a long moment. "I have to do this," he whispered at last. "I need to talk to Shaw and I need to talk to Culver. And we, you and I, need to put these clues together, once and for all."
A sigh fell heavily from her lips and then she managed a pained smile. "Fine. But… we're staying here, in the hospital. We can talk through this and figure out the clues, but if you insist on working on it right now… then we are staying here and getting you the treatment you need while we solve this case."
He grinned. "See that, Bones? Compromise."
She couldn't help but chuckle. "Yes. Compromise."
"So. Before Shaw went missing, where were we?"
"Narrowing down suspects. We had just decided that Tania was the most likely suspect, and that Taylor must have fled when she found the body."
"Alright, then we have some agents go out and pick up Tania for questioning."
"And we stay here, at the hospital," Brennan intoned.
He laughed. "Yes, Bones. Compromise, remember? If we could sneak in a laptop, though…"
She nodded slowly. "That could definitely be arranged. But for today… we relax."
He hesitated and then leaned up to kiss her on the lips. "Deal."
~BxBxBxBxBxB~
October 28th, 2011
"Agent Booth," Jimmy greeted him. "Glad to see you're still kicking."
"You know me," Booth agreed with a chuckle. He and Brennan were sitting, squished together but upright, in his hospital bed with the computer shared between their laps, looking at Jimmy and the dark walls of the interrogation room behind him. The view slid to the side and adjusted and then they were looking down the length of the table, with Jimmy on the left and Tania seated stiffly on the right.
"Why am I here?" she demanded. "And what's with… that?" she added, gesturing at the computer.
"Agent Booth couldn't make it here personally," Jimmy filled in with a disregarding wave of his hand. "We just have a few questions for you."
"I've already told you everything," she insisted with a groan. "Now you're just wasting my time. What am I supposed to tell my husband about where I've been this afternoon?"
"I'm sure you'll think of a suitable lie," Brennan interjected. "You must have had excellent practice by now."
"Bones," Booth hissed in astonishment, on the verge of laughter. She bit her lip and looked sheepishly away.
Tania huffed indignantly.
"That's not our problem, Mrs. Henson," Jimmy continued. "We have reason to believe you killed your lover, Mr. Kaminski, when you went to see him the day of his murder."
"What?" she snapped. "That's… absurd! Why on earth would I kill Nathan?" She leaned forward. "Nathan didn't care that I was married. And he was working on a huge case; the biggest break of his career! He didn't need to worry about… blackmailing me or whatever it is you think my motive would be. He just liked sex. Maybe a little too much, but my God he was good at it with all the practice he got. And I was all the happier for that fact."
"If your husband finds out about your affair it would destroy your marriage and cut you out of an enormous amount of wealth," Jimmy pointed out. "That's a lot of risk based on trusting a guy like Kaminski."
"My husband…" Tania wavered and then she slapped a palm down on the table. "My husband has been seeing a woman for over a year now, okay? He's been seeing her right in our own damn house and since I started seeing Nathan… he started paying more attention to me."
"But your husband doesn't know about your affair," Booth pointed out.
"Oh, please! Of course he knows! He's not stupid; he's known for ages and it put some of the fire back into our marriage. I was starting to see Nathan less and he was starting to see her less. We were finally making progress, for the first time in years."
"Then why all the secrecy? Why did you keep trying to ensure that we didn't inform your husband?" Booth demanded.
She sighed. "It's not a real affair if we know, but don't talk about it. Neither of us acknowledge what's going on. That's how it works. And eventually… we can just pretend this whole thing never happened and be perfectly happy pretending that neither of us found out about each other."
"She's not serious," Brennan murmured.
"I think she is," Booth muttered back.
"Hey, it wasn't all that easy!" Tania snapped. "Me and my husband have been… struggling for a long time now. But we're making it work, unlike all those couples that up and get divorced at the first inkling of an affair."
"Right. Because cheating always brings people closer together," Booth said under his breath. "Listen, Mrs. Henson, this isn't making you look any less guilty."
"Well then you should let me finish. After Nathan was killed, things only got worse for me. I was planning to break it off with him myself, but when he died… I'm afraid I got emotional and angry and our marriage was on the rocks for weeks. He's going to file for divorce and I've been trying to figure out a way to stop him."
"And how do you know this?"
"Because, I know everything that happens in that house! I know everything that he does and I know that he called his lawyer two weeks ago and that he's been hiding the mail from me and that he stopped seeing that girl months ago, right around when Nathan died."
Booth frowned. "Why would he stop seeing her?"
"How the hell would I know? I don't ask him for his reasons. I just know that he stopped seeing her. Maybe he figured out my affair was over and he cut off his, too. But then he pulled away, even without her around, and I think we're done for."
She blinked away tears for the first time. Through everything with the murder of her lover, she had never shown much real emotion. But now, at the revelation that her world was turning upside down and her fortunes vanishing, she was finally showing some emotional pain.
It was almost disturbing.
"Don't you get it?" she exclaimed when none of her interrogators said anything. "I've lost everything because Nathan was killed. I had no motive and certainly no happiness from his death!"
Booth glanced at Brennan.
They were wrong and they both knew it. She hadn't killed him and they were back at square one. In the interrogation room, Jimmy closed up with a few quick questions and then shut down their web chat on his way out. Booth and Brennan sat in the hospital room and mulled over the turn in events.
"Maybe the husband wanted Nathan dead," Brennan suggested.
"Possible. But it works better for him to call her out on the affair while he's still alive. And if he was trying to frame her for it, to get rid of her, he'd have done a better job of it. There really is nothing pointing to her. Or anybody else, for that matter…"
"Nothing but that security footage. And we can't seem to get any evidence linking the crime to anyone who was in that apartment."
"I think what we need to do is go back to that apartment."
"We aren't going anywhere," Brennan argued with a scoff. "You're staying right here."
"Fine. You can go check out the apartment and tell me what you find."
"It's still a crime scene?"
"Yeah, you'll need to go get the key from my office, but they haven't rented it out to anyone new. It's still a part of a major crime investigation. The landlord was sort of pissed, actually."
Brennan laughed. "I bet. Well… if I do find something in that apartment that can give us a fresh lead, then he won't have to worry about it for much longer. But… we're still going to wait until you're back at home. I'm not leaving you here alone. No matter how hard you try to make me."
"Bones, I think you don't understand the concept of a hospital. You see, these nice people in white coats save my life and keep me going until eventually—"
She shoved him on his good shoulder and he laughed, poking her in the ribs until she was scooted all the way to the far side of the bed. "Booth!"
"This compromise thing is going to kill me, woman."
"You better get used to it now, because I'm not going anywhere."
He tilted his head to the side. She saw his gaze slip to the ring that still sat on her finger: the pretty and unnecessary weapon of deceit which she had failed to get rid of thus far. Angela was refusing to take it back until they were out of the hospital and Hodgins seemed to only be amused by the exchange.
For a second, she considered cutting in with something, anything, that would dissuade him from the idea that was blossoming. She still didn't believe in marriage… right? That wasn't something that was going to change. It was still archaic. It was still unnecessary.
The only thing that had changed… was that it now sent nervous flutters to her stomach. And she couldn't quite bring herself to hate that fact.
~BxBxBxBxBxB~
October 30th, 2011
It was Sweets who ultimately accompanied her on her visit to Kaminski's apartment. The crime scene looked much the same as it had on her first visit; the furniture was in the same places and there was a large, semi-cleaned stain on the carpet where Kaminski's body had been laying. His clothing had been bagged up and numbered markers dotted their path as they walked gingerly through the place.
"What exactly are we looking for?" Sweets asked hesitantly, glancing around and wrinkling his nose. The apartment had acquired a layer of dust and an odd smell.
"We're looking for anything that might tie this murder to one of our suspects. Something that we wouldn't have noticed before, but that makes sense with all the evidence we've found since our initial search," Brennan answered, repeating verbatim what Booth has told her earlier that same day, after he'd gotten settled into their bed. He was back at the house for the first time since the shooting and she tried to stave off the reminders of the panic that came with leaving him alone there. He was healing satisfactorily, according to his doctor. He should be fine on his own, resting while she was away. When she got back, she'd make sure he took his medication and they'd have a home-cooked meal.
Yes, it was all going to be fine.
"Should you even be at a crime scene?" Sweets asked, glancing at her bulging stomach.
She scowled and turned her back on him, looking more closely at some trinkets on a shelving unit. "I'm perfectly capable of walking and observing."
"Sorry," he said hastily.
She didn't acknowledge it, snapping on a pair of gloves and taking down a picture frame. She opened the back with some minor difficulty and found what she'd been expecting; there were multiple photographs piled up under the top image.
"What's that?" Sweets moved to peer over her shoulder.
"Previous girlfriends," Brennan suggested with a shrug, passing it off to him. He flipped through the stack, pointing out a few faces that he recognized from suspects they had already talked to. The others, the ones at the back of the frame, were all girls from probably years earlier. None of them stood out. Kaminski had moved past them years ago, most likely.
They kept looking, Sweets putting the frame back together and returning it to the shelf.
Brennan moved around the corner and into the bedroom. This was not a room she had seen before; Booth had done an actual sweep of the apartment, but she had remained with the body in the main room until they had left to question the neighbors.
The bedroom held no answers. It was small and squished and the only furniture appeared to be the bed itself. A shelf on the wall had been functioning as a sort of nightstand, with a lamp and a an alarm clock but not much else. There were a few scraps of paper and she looked through them, but they all said very simple, vague things. They were just notes written before he went to sleep. Pick up milk tomorrow. Call Ed back about the radiator. Do laundry this weekend. Need more printer paper.
There was a book on the floor, tucked just under the edge of the bed. She knelt down and picked it up. It was a copy of the Bible. On a hunch, she let if fall open and discovered a folded piece of paper tucked into the pages, about three-fourths of the way into the book. Frowning, she pulled out the paper and unfolded it.
A list was written with precision, double-spaced in thickly penned handwriting.
Juan Ortiz.
Reggie Morton.
Caleb Smith.
Dale Richards.
Eduardo Jimenez.
Taylor Madison.
Rosalinda Harris.
Brennan frowned, using the bed to push herself back to her feet. She set the Bible down on the bed, but held onto the list. "Sweets?"
"In the study," she heard his muffled reply through the wall.
A cool breeze made her shiver as she stepped towards the door and she stopped short and turned to see the curtains billow as the wind slipped in through the half-open window. Perplexed, she changed direction and moved back towards the wall. No one had been here in months; the window shouldn't have been open. Maybe someone had broken in weeks ago, when the scene had been long abandoned… perhaps there was some sort of evidence.
Maybe this was the lead they had been hoping for.
The window was above the fire escape and she knelt again, poked her head out, and looked around, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. There were some crumpled leaves scattered about, a few of them caked with mud.
Hodgins extracting that mud-caked leaf out of the sole of Ortiz's boot flew into her mind. There were only a few of the leaves and no trees they would have come from. They had been caught here, in the frame of the fire escape and on the windowsill. But the team had already ruled out the fire escape as the entry point. It was old and not up to proper standards… the bottom of it was too far up for a person to reach from the ground. Not unless they were a very skilled climber. The building had put in a new fire escape at the end of the hallway, right outside Kaminski's door. Anyone climbing that one would have been caught on the security camera.
Brennan remembered the suggestion, early on, that someone could have used a rope to climb to the balcony. Or to the old fire escape, she thought. She picked up a small handful of the leaves, pulling her head back into the apartment and taking out an evidence bag from her coat. Hodgins could make a match on these and then they could put together the rest of the pieces.
As she began to pull herself to her feet, ready to find Sweets and disclose her findings, she suddenly found a knife at her throat and a gloved hand pushed her back down onto her knees.
So, I like cliffhangers, as you might already know if you read a few of my other stories. I promise that the wait this time around will be more reasonable, though. Also, please click the wonderful, revamped review button and let me know what you thought.
Anybody got any guesses on who is behind all of this? I'd love to hear your theories.
