A/N: It has been a few days since I posted, but real life intervened, of course. Hope you enjoy this newest chapter and thanks to all of you who reviewed, put this on story alert, or checked the 'favorite' box. I appreciate all of it!
Redux
Chapter 5 – No Moment
Bones opened with, "There is no moment to miss," as she approached Lance Sweets, making him look up from his computer screen. Since speaking with Booth and Brennan a few months ago, he'd been revising his book, trying to figure out how to make sense of it now that the original was based on a false premise. It might take some rearranging, but hey, he had a whole year to kill. Right?
"What was that, Dr. Brennan?" he asked, wanting to make sure he'd heard her correctly. Sweets had heard that some natural poisons were slow-acting, first affecting delicate systems like eardrums and hair follicles. He must have been bitten by something that used this kind of poison, because there was no way Dr. Brennan said what he thought she said.
"There is no singular moment, Sweets," she repeated, sitting on a stool opposite the table from him. "I reject your hypothesis on the matter and submit my own: People form attachments because it is emotionally favorable, not because some mythical moment has occurred. Look at Angela and Hodgins: they first tried to get married several years ago, and it finally happened this year. They found their way back together, just as you and Daisy did, even though she was very hurt by your initial refusal to come here. Therefore, there is no moment to miss."
"What brought this on, Dr. Brennan? I thought you were leaving today?"
"I spoke with Booth this morning."
"You can do that?" Sweets asked, confused. "I thought he was in Afghanistan?"
"He is," she replied. "But I spoke to him nonetheless."
"Would you like to tell me what you spoke to him about?" Lance set his computer aside, giving Brennan his full attention.
Simply, Brennan replied, "Yes I would."
Sweets waited a moment for her to continue, but when she didn't he prompted, "And?"
"First I have to tell you about two months ago," she said, keeping her eyes with his as if to read his soul with those intense eyes of hers. Man, Sweets hated it when she stared so intensely, but he knew she did it because she felt threatened or scared. It was her subconscious defense mechanism, to make other people uncomfortable so they didn't challenge her. And it worked, more often than Sweets would like to admit.
Fighting to keep his eyes with hers, he nodded, "Okay?"
"After we told you about our first case," she began, finally blinking and looking away, "Booth told me …" Sweets watched her sigh, tears welling up at the corners of her eyes. "Booth told me he knew. He knew I was the one for him. And then he kissed me."
Ah. He'd been waiting for her to tell him about something like this. "I'm guessing you didn't react very well."
"What?" Brennan asked him, surprised. "How did you come to that conclusion?"
"Dr. Brennan! It was less than two weeks later that Booth started seeing Catherine. The only reason he might have done that, instead of waiting for you like he had been for the past three years, was if you gave him a flat-out, 'No.'" When Brennan's face flinched, ever so slightly, Sweets knew he was right. "It was one of the reasons you wanted to come here, wasn't it?" he guessed.
"I didn't think so at the time, Sweets," she sighed. "But now I know that I hated seeing him so sad every day. It didn't occur to me that the situation would be so easy to rectify."
"What?" Sweets asked, feeling his face crunch up in concern and tenuous hope. "What do you mean? Have you already rectified the situation?"
"Well, not completely. Booth is still stationed in Afghanistan. But I realized some things about myself and I shared those things with him."
"What things?" Sweets asked desperately, scooting to the edge of his stool. How long had he been waiting for something like this to happen? How long had he been watching and hoping one or both of them would make a move to break the stalemate between them?
"I have changed. I am no longer just a scientist, Sweets," she confessed. "I know, I'm a very successful novelist as well. But I'm a human being. Booth taught me that."
"You don't think you were a human being before?"
"Not a very good one," she chuckled, wiping a few tears away from her eye and flinging them away. "Not compared to Booth. Not compared to Angela and Cam and Hodgins. Not compared to you, Sweets."
"Wait, what?"
"It was you coming here that made me change my mind."
Overwhelmed, Sweets sat back in his chair. "I did that? I changed your mind about wanting to be 'more human'?"
"No, don't be ridiculous," she dismissed, and Sweets found himself relieved that his assumptions of Brennan weren't as far off as he thought they might have been the moment before. "You changed my mind about giving Booth a chance, as more than a partner and friend."
Lance felt his mouth drop open in surprise, and there was nothing he could do about it. He wanted to ask her a million questions, but he couldn't figure out where to start. Luckily he didn't have to, because his computer beeped and Cam's voice broadcast into the room.
"Dr. Sweets? Are you there?"
Turning the computer back around, Lance answered, "Yeah. Yes, I'm here. Dr. Brennan is with me."
"So, there's been a little wrinkle in the 'bring Zack back to the hospital' plan…"
"What is it?" Brennan asked forcefully, leaping up to stand behind Sweets so she could see the screen as well.
"He left Hodgins' and Angela's apartment in the middle of the night. And apparently he left a note."
"What did it say?" Lance asked. Even short notes could be indicative of a person's state of mind, especially of whether he intended on returning or not.
"Just that he's still on the case and he'd be in touch, that sort of thing. Angela and Hodgins are flying into DC right now, since there's really no point trying to find him. We've agreed to work on this case in the hopes that it will lead us to wherever Zack's run off to now."
"I leave the camp today, Dr. Saroyan," Brennan told her. "I will be there in three days."
"Wait, what?" Cam asked. "You'll be here, in Washington?"
Looking to Sweets in confusion, Brennan asked him, "Isn't that what I said?"
"It is," Lance replied, still trying to catch up to her. "But Cam is surprised that you're leaving Indonesia. You didn't tell her you were returning to the Jeffersonian, did you?"
"What about Maluku?" Cam asked. "I thought this was your dream find."
Brennan nodded. "You are correct. However, I find that life at the dig site, away from home, no longer agrees with me. I shall serve a smaller role in this operation, consulting from the United States."
"I didn't peg you as someone who would get homesick," Cam said, peering through the screen, like she was trying to make sure it was Brennan and not an imposter.
"Neither did I," the anthropologist replied softly, and Lance felt a sharp pain of sympathy for her.
Clearing his throat to dispel the moment, Sweets said, "I'll help with the case as best I can from here, Dr. Saroyan."
"The connection here is unstable, Dr. Sweets," Bones told him. "This is the first transmission that has gone through in nearly five hours. What if we need your help and we can't contact you?"
Sweets sighed and shrugged. "I belong here, with Daisy, Dr. Brennan. If you'd like, I can recommend several very skilled FBI psychologists that can help you."
"But none of them," Brennan pointed out, "have the same knowledge of Zack's mental condition as you do. And your help has been invaluable in previous cases where we have sought serial killers. You have to come!"
"I'd love to work this case," Sweets said, letting his volume raise to match hers, "but I made a choice, Dr. Brennan. You can't get me to change my mind on this."
Brennan stared at him for just a moment before offering, "I will pay all your travel expenses to Washington and back here. If we have made no progress finding either Zack or the serial killer within a week, I will send you back."
For the second time in five minutes, Lance felt his jaw drop open in shock. "I … Um," he tried to say, searching through Brennan's words for something to latch onto first. "I need to talk to Daisy."
"Fine," Brennan nodded. "But I leave in two hours. You must have made your decision by then."
Lance knew Dr. Brennan was a decisive person. It was one of her most obvious traits. But he felt odd being the subject of her decision. He wanted to do the right thing and make the right decision and he hadn't been this nervous since he'd asked Brennan and Agent Booth if he could observe them for his book. His completely worthless book, at this point, if his earlier discussion with her reflected what was really going on. He'd reserve judgment on that front until he got in contact with Booth to hear his side of the story.
In the meantime, he had a fiancée to talk to. So, Lance stood up, leaving Dr. Brennan to talk to Dr. Saroyan about whatever forensic scientists talk about, and went to find Daisy.
As usual, she was elbow-deep in Maluku Island mud and looking like she was loving the hell out of every second of it. The sight made him smile; she was always so beautiful when she was happy. He didn't want to disturb her, but Brennan had given him a deadline, so he called, "Daisy? May I speak with you for a moment?"
"Huh?" she said, pulling her head out of a square section of dirt she was clearing away. "What did you say, Lancelot?"
"May I speak with you? Please?"
So, they walked around the camp and Sweets told his fiancée about Dr. Brennan's offer. When he was done, he said, "I decided to be with you Daisy. If you want me to stay here, I will. I know it's unfair of me, but I need you to make this decision. Do I go with Dr. Brennan or not?"
The woman looked up at him, that furrowed-brow of concentration drawing his eye as she said, "And in any case, you'll be back soon?"
Nodding, Sweets said, "I promise. And if we're not done with the case within three weeks, I'm just going to say, 'screw it,' and come back anyway. Is that acceptable?"
"Then I want you to go, Lancelot," she smiled, about to throw her arms around his neck until she realized how covered in dirt they were. "As long as we get married as soon as you get back."
Heart overflowing, Sweets laughed and grabbed Daisy, regardless of the mud, squeezing her tight and kissing her fervently. "It's a deal!"
In a dingy Turkish hotel room, the former patient opened a freshly-bought trimmer, plugged it in, and proceeded to give himself a short buzz cut, tendrils of bleached hair falling all around him. Then, he showered, donned a stolen uniform and a counterfeit pair of dog tags, and gathered everything else together. All the evidence of his former identity he packaged into an innocuous looking suitcase, while everything else went into a standard-issue duffel bag, stenciled with his new name.
George Stolowski from Gary, Indiana. George was a demolitions expert returning to limited duty after an unfortunate training accident that explained the gloves he always wore. George hated the fact that the government wanted to send him home for good. He wanted to serve his country, be "in the thick of things", and return to his work, despite medical advice. All George's papers were in order, all the army's records had been altered to back up George's story, and all that was left to do was show up for transport bright and early in the morning.
Freshly jet-lagged from their mini-honeymoon in Paris, Jack Hodgins and Angela Montenegro returned to the Jeffersonian on a Thursday morning, just under two weeks since they'd been there last. "Home sweet home," Jack chuckled, walking hand-in-hand with his wife. "Think Cam's here yet?"
"I am," the coroner called from her office and Jack found it funny there were so few people around that she'd been able to hear him from in there. "And I need your help!"
"What is it, Cam?" Angela asked, leading the way into the office. There, Dr. Saroyan sat behind her computer screen, staring at it intently, and judging by the five spent coffee cups littered around her desk, she'd been staring for awhile.
Concerned, Jack asked, "What are you looking at? Porn?" Turning to Angela, he chuckled, "I bet it's porn."
"Zack's list," Cam replied, ignoring his joke entirely and barely even looking up to greet them. "I know there's a pattern here. I know Zack saw it, but I just can't get it, you guys."
"Don't worry about it, sweetie," Angela said, crouching down by Cam's chair and laying a concerned hand on her arm. "I'll take over for now, okay? Why don't you go try to get some sleep?"
Cam closed her eyes and nodded. "Thank you," she sighed. "I just have this feeling that if we can't crack this case soon, Zack is going to do something stupid and get himself hurt."
"We've got it, Cam," Jack assured her, though he felt about as tired as she looked. "We're all worried about Zack, you know."
"Why couldn't he just stay in the hospital? Why didn't he call me first?" Dr. Saroyan asked, meeting first Angela's eyes, then Jack's. "Why didn't he trust me?"
"Hey," Jack said sympathetically, "he didn't trust us either, Cam. And who knows what really goes on in that weird brain of his?" He sighed, "I had a feeling he was getting too bored in there."
"When did you see him last?" Angela asked her husband.
Ashamed, Jack replied, "Almost three months ago, Ange! I can't believe I'm such a bad friend. I hardly ever go see him, and then when he shows up in Paris, all I can think about is getting him back in that hospital. I suck."
"We all suck," Cam declared, tapping her desk in frustration.
"At least I," Angela said, standing up and heading from the office, "have a plan."
Many hours and many cups of coffee later, Cam had gone home and Angela had stats on all the people on Zack's list: name, place of birth, date of birth, date of disappearance, place of disappearance, and everything else that could be scrounged from the national databases.
"Of all the missing people on this list, only two have ever been found," Angela told her husband. "A little boy named Kevin and an unrelated middle-aged woman named Rose. Their grave was unearthed at a national park near a historical marker. It was a fluke, because the cadaver dogs were actually looking for a missing hiker."
"Alright," Jack replied, rubbing his eyes and taking another look at the list. "So what connects these two people to the rest of the list?"
"I … don't know," Angela said. "But we should ask Cam if there's any way she can get the coroner's reports on these two. Their murders were never solved, so it should be pretty easy to start looking into it. Of course it would be easier if…"
"If we had Booth," Jack finished, smiling sadly when Angela nodded at him.
The artist stared at her big display, and Jack wondered if maybe she was trying to see something visual in the data, some pattern that didn't have to do with numbers and dates and names. Hell, at this point anything would help.
To that end, he asked, "If we take the list at a whole, how many different types of people are there?"
"Well," Angela replied, more sure of herself now that he'd given her a place to start, "we've got male and female. Old and young. Well, that's weird…"
"What?" Jack asked, a tiny glimmer of hope bubbling up in his chest. It wasn't 'eureka', but he'd take it.
"If I sort the records by age, all the youngest victims are male, as are the oldest. See? Kevin, Joshua, Norman, Bill…"
"Do you have ethnicities?"
"Mostly Caucasian or mixed, a few Persian or Hindi," she said. "Light skin, dark hair, as far as I can tell."
"Well, I'm sure Sweets will have more to say about that when he gets back," Hodgins noted, "but it seems important to me. Like, there's four groups right? The very young boys, the old men, the adolescent girls–"
"And the middle-aged women," Angela cried, smiling as she pressed some buttons to make the list rearrange on the display.
"Hmm," Jack said, eyes roaming over the board as he thought. He could do this. It was just data analysis, even if it had nothing to do with bugs or plants or rocks. Jack Hodgins was an expert at getting what he needed to out of data. The problem here was, "I don't think we have all the data, Angela. I mean, Zack made this list while he was in the hospital, right?" When his wife nodded, Jack continued, "I think we should search through all the unsolved missing persons cases for people matching these four descriptions."
"We're going to come up with more hits than we know what to do with, Jack," Angela pointed out. Rearranging the names again, she took a sharp breath and said, "But look at this. The last eight victims by date of disappearance."
Angela let him look over the names, the birthdates, the dates of disappearance, for a minute, waiting for him to see it. What was it that she saw, damn it? He could do this. He could – "Oh my god! It's a cycle! First the teenage girl, then the old man, the middle-aged woman, and finally the young boy. Do you think this is just a fluke?"
"No," Angela replied. "I think this has been this guy's cycle since he started. The first disappearance Zack gave us was thirteen years ago. I'm going to program the search to follow this pattern back as far as it can go."
"We'll still have tons of false positives, won't we?" Jack asked.
Angela shrugged with a smile, "Sure, babe. But it's a start."
"It's a start," Jack agreed, watching as Angela sat down at her computer and started typing like crazy. He was still having a hard time believing that things between them had fallen back together. Some days it felt like he was dreaming, to think that Angela had agreed to be his wife, to think that they were going to spend the rest of their lives together, to think that she was well and truly his family. Other days, he felt like the time they'd spent apart had been the dream, that it couldn't have happened. Not when they were just as close as the first time they'd decided to get married, if not closer.
It had been a nonsensical, stupid, necessary, nightmare of a dream and it had lasted for almost two years. Two years they could have been happy, if only they could have gotten over themselves sooner. At least Jack had been right in thinking all this time that he and Angela weren't over. Despite the fact that she dated other people, seriously at times, he hadn't given up on the idea that she was the one for him.
If it hadn't worked out, he would have felt stupid and insane. But it had. Angela had found her way back to him. The nightmare was over, and their life together was just beginning.
Sighing, Jack repeated, "It's a start."
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