A/N: At the top here, I just want to thank everyone for reading, especially those of you who review, favorite, and follow on story alert. I've never had this much response to a story before, and I can't thank you guys enough. Just eight chapters in and over a hundred people following!
Please Enjoy!
Redux
Chapter 8 – False Assumptions
As Booth drove down the dark desert road, sighing, snarling, and opening his mouth like he wanted to say something, but never did, Zack began to wonder if he had done the right thing. Maybe if he went through the numbers they would work out in his favor? This serial killer had murdered at least forty people that Zack new of. And he was smart. He was diligent and good at covering his tracks if no one had suspected him previously. Depending on his age, he could kill another forty or fifty or a hundred people before he died, because Zack was fairly certain he wouldn't be caught. Zack was unsure, but he had a sneaking suspicion that the lives Booth could save by working here would come up about even with the ones he would save by finding this killer. About even was acceptable, wasn't it?
Zack wondered then if he should think up a name for the serial killer, so he could stop referring to the killer as 'he' since the pronoun was vague and gender-specific. While it was true that the vast majority of serial killers were male, that didn't equal one hundred percent. Plus, since Zack did not yet have any remains to work from, he was not sure whether the victims were killed violently, as males tended to kill, or by subtle means like poison, which females generally favored. Zack hated words like 'tended', 'about' and 'generally', but he'd been working with Sweets and his other doctors at the hospital on getting used to using them. And Zack had never been one to shirk on his homework.
When Booth spoke, it was so unexpected that Zack jumped, "Just how the fu-hell do you plan on getting us back to the US? The army is going to be after you for doing this. Or, they'll have your picture up everywhere, anyways. And I can't just show up, you know. If I'm supposed to be dead for the next few days…"
"I have arranged alternate identities for us," Zack replied, trying to sound confident in his plan, when he was feeling anything but. The whole time he'd been traveling, he'd been working on the initial plan – get into the base, get Booth, get out. The amount of time Zack had spent planning what happened afterward was, while sufficient, hardly putting his mind at ease. But, he couldn't waste another day at the base without someone starting to seriously question his cover story.
"And I have estimated that if we move quickly enough, we should make it to Montreal before global police and military forces have been informed."
Booth gave him a hard look in the darkness before turning his eyes back to the road. "I don't like those ifs, Zack."
"I don't either, Agent Booth," Zack replied, giving him what he hoped was an encouraging smile.
They drove for a few more minutes before Booth startled Zack again, growling, "Shit!"
"What?" Zack asked, trying to see beyond where the headlights illuminated the road, searching the horizon for some danger.
"I left my satellite phone behind. Bones can't get a hold of me."
"That's good," Zack replied, wondering why Booth was getting so upset. "If she made a call, the Army would be able to track our location, thinking I must have stolen your phone before setting you on fire. It's better we don't contact anyone until we reach Canada. Or perhaps if we can find a disposable cell phone for purchase before then."
"We have to call sooner, Zack! The army is probably telling my brother right now that I'm dead! And who do you think he's going to tell first?"
Zack hated these guessing games, when people were involved. It made him really root around in his memory for something relevant to say. Eventually, he came up with, "Your grandfather?"
"Bones!" Booth shouted, quite unnecessarily, seeing as they were in an enclosed space together. "I promised her if I ever had to fake die again, she'd be the first to know."
"So she'll be the first one we call when we can," Zack replied, crunching up his face in confusion. Why was he so upset? "It's going to be fine, Booth."
"Sure," the agent snarled, angrily correcting the Jeep back into the proper lane, "it's going to be fine, eventually. I'm worried about those one or two days where Bones'll be out of her mind thinking I must be dead. I mean she just got up the courage to …"
Zack waited for Agent Booth to continue but he didn't, pressing his lips together in a tight line instead. "To what?" Zack asked.
"To take the leap, Zack," Booth huffed. "To give us a shot. To be with me! Get it, kid?"
"Oh, you and Dr. Brennan have romantic feelings for one another," Zack nodded. He knew all about that. Plus, whenever Angela came to visit, she would update Zack on how well the two of them were getting along and what she thought it meant for their partnership. Zack hadn't really wanted to know this information, but he didn't want Angela to go, so he brought it up every time she came. "I'm glad that's sorted out now."
Booth snorted. "Well it won't be if she thinks I'm dead and completely shuts down. How soon until we can get somewhere we can buy one of these untraceable phones?"
Zack did the calculation in a split second, "Approximately forty hours."
With a grimace and a grumble, Booth kept driving and Zack tried to remind himself of all the reasons this was the right thing to do. He might also have been rehearsing them for when Booth tried to shoot him for messing everything up. But it was going to be fine, wasn't it? It had to be.
When Angela got back to the mansion, pulling her car into the garage over which Zack used to live, Jack met her at the door into the house. "How you holdin' up, babe?" he asked, putting his hand in Angela's and leading her through the hallways and toward the kitchen. "Too tired to eat?"
"Too tired to move," Angela chuckled, collapsing onto a stool sitting next to the kitchen's big preparation island. "But some food would be great."
Jack smiled and pulled a plate out of the warm oven, handing his wife a fork as he set the food in front of her and removed the metal warming bonnet. "Voila."
Angela beamed up at him. "I know you didn't make this, Hodgins," she smiled, "but I could kiss your lips right off your face anyways."
Jack laughed, serving Angela a glass of water before sitting down next to her and watching her eat. The moans she made when the first bite hit her tongue were definitely worth waiting up for her. "Did you and Sweets work anything else out?"
"We've got about five candidates for what could be the first family to become victims," she sighed, leaning in when Jack gently petted her hair. God, he loved this hair! "And we could just as easily be missing a hundred more by using the wrong parameters."
"Don't worry, hon," Jack whispered, rubbing Angela's back and leaning his head against hers. "We'll get it. And supposedly Zack's going to get back in touch with us, so hopefully he'll have something good when he's done with this walkabout he's gone on."
"What if," Angela sighed, taking a bite, chewing and swallowing it before she continued, "he never comes back? What if he decides it's too dangerous to help us and he's never going back to the hospital?"
"Angela," Jack leveled with her, turning his wife in her seat so she would look at him, "Zack's the most rational guy I know. And he's stubborn. If he says he broke out to work on this case, he's going to work on this case. If only so he can declare himself 'King of the Lab'."
A slow smile spread across her lips as Angela took in his words and eventually she kissed Jack. "You're right, sweetie. Though I'm not sure he can declare himself King of the Lab unless he actually comes to work in the lab."
"I'll be sure to mention that when he calls."
Angela turned back to eating and Jack just sat with her, enjoying the fact that there was someone else in his house after the servants had left. It seemed wasteful that it took a full time staff to keep this giant house running just for him. He hadn't minded, though. He had plenty of money, so he might as well give some people jobs. Let the trickle-down effect work its supposed magic. But now it felt better that Angela was here too. Happier. Less pathetic.
Because, let's face it, Jack thought. He'd always been pathetic without her.
Five days after she arrived back in the US, Brennan was working with Dr. Saroyan and Mr. Nigel-Murray on the remains of Rose Johnson, one of the two victims who had ever been found. Dr. Saroyan had finally gotten Hacker to contact the woman's family and get their consent to have the remains exhumed. Brennan found herself wondering what she had ever found appealing about Hacker when he wouldn't even do everything in his power to push the paperwork through. Booth always went out on a limb for their investigations, doing whatever it took to get the case solved. That's what made them such a good team.
"Dr. Brennan," Mr. Nigel-Murray spoke up, gently manipulating one of the bones so that the magnification camera could focus in on it. "Here is the stab wound found during the first autopsy." Then the man chuckled softly. "Autopsy," he repeated, "from the Greek, 'to see for oneself'. Quite fitting in this case, don't you agree, Dr. Brennan?"
"Indeed, Mr. Nigel-Murray," Bones replied softly, examining the slice across the rib. It appeared to her eye consistent with the original cause of death. "Let's continue searching," she insisted, "to make sure no other injuries were missed once this one was discovered."
"Aye-aye, Dr. Brennan," the intern replied merrily and Bones shared a look of shared annoyance with Dr. Saroyan. She still didn't know how to feel about Cam making her spill out everything that was on her mind the other day, but it had been cathartic.
That conversation and the daily updates from Ms. Wick had helped Bones come to terms with the fact that although the Maluku Island find was important and field-changing, it had never felt like Bones' discovery. It belonged to the others, and she was alright with that, especially if she could still be involved from afar. She thought of what her colleagues might ask her about abandoning the dig and she would just have to cite personal reasons, which she hated to be sure. But, she could always boast that one of her students was chosen to be on the team. Ms. Wick was an exceptional, if overenthusiastic, scientist and Bones felt conflicted about being proud of her and being worried that she would treat Sweets like Bones had kept wanting to treat Booth – as less important than her work. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Then, Cam's expression fell, her eyes focused beyond Bones' shoulder, and she whispered, "Uh-oh." Bones turned around, stomach sinking, to see Jared Booth approaching the steps up to the platform.
"Tempe?" he called from beyond the security line, his voice soft. "Can I talk to you?"
Pain was evident on his face and when Bones looked back at Cam, she recognized unrestrained grief in the coroner's expression as well. Investigating murders had given her experience when it came to recognizing that expression and there was only one reason for it now.
"No!" Bones cried angrily, ripping off her gloves and throwing them on the floor. "No! I don't believe you!" Furious that Jared could do this to her, Bones stomped across the platform away from him, heading for her office. Once there, she slammed the door, locked it and collapsed back against it, sliding slowly to the floor. When had she started crying?
A soft knock startled her as she wiped her face dry, followed closely by Jared's sad, "Brennan? C'mon, I promised him I would tell you first."
So enraged she couldn't see straight, Bones threw one of her fists to the side and back, hitting the door beside her and making it rattle dangerously. "There's nothing to tell me Jared!" she shouted through the door. "It's not true. It's a mistake."
"Well," he chuckled a bit, his voice closer like he was crouched down at the seam of the door, near her ear, "then there were two very misinformed soldiers at my house for no good reason this morning."
How could he be laughing, even sadly? How could Jared joke about his brother's death? How could he keep living with this damned familiar pain crushing his heart into a million pieces until they couldn't form a working organ anymore? How could he breathe?
What was it that Sweets had said? He couldn't live without Daisy? Bones couldn't live without Booth.
She might be dying of this, but she wasn't going to break down and sob hopelessly. The word of a few soldiers was hardly irrefutable evidence that Booth was gone. So, her death would have to wait until all the facts were in evidence.
Steeling her resolve, Bones wiped her face one more time, stood up, unlocked the door, and whipped it open to reveal Jared Booth crouching down as she had suspected. With a confused look of surprise and trepidation, he stood up and said, "Temperance…"
"I refuse to get any more upset about this until I see proof, Jared. Find me proof that he's gone, and then I'll believe you."
"You," he asked, flicking his eyes back toward the forensics platform behind him, "you want his remains or something? Because I gotta tell you –"
"I believe that pictures of his remains would be sufficient," Bones blurted out, almost losing her composure when she thought about having to see those pictures. But anything would be better than this clawing unease of not knowing.
"Tempe, there was a fire," Jared sighed, putting his hand on the outside of her shoulder like he thought it might help. "There wasn't much left."
"That's better," she decided all of a sudden, stepping away from Jared's hand and heading for her office phone. "That means there's a better chance it's not him."
"They found him in his quarters! His tags were on the remains, Tempe!" Jared growled at her. "It's him!"
Bones shook her head and picked up the receiver, holding it out to Jared, "Unless his tags were surgically implanted, which I know they weren't, I'm not prepared to believe it's him."
"What would make you believe?" Jared asked. "Bren, I'm just barely holding it together here!"
Shaking the phone receiver at Booth's brother so he would take it, Bones insisted. "Call someone. Have them send me pictures and X-rays of the remains. If I can identify them as Booth, I will believe you."
Jared sighed. "You'll use the same standard as for everyone else, right? Because I couldn't bear it if you told me he was alive only to be proven wrong later. I'd never forgive you for that, Temperance."
"I wouldn't ask you to," she replied, handing him the phone one last time before he took it. As Jared made his call, Angela ran up to the door of Bones' office. Her face was a wreck of emotion, and Bones wouldn't have expected anything less from her best friend, but she couldn't handle that right now. All she could handle was a tense, "Not now," as she shooed her friend away and closed the door.
Six hours later, Jared and Bones had both pulled all the strings (metaphorically) they could think of and now Bones was staring at her computer screen. All she had to do was start clicking and open the images. Then she would know.
The past six hours had felt like years, waiting for calls to be returned, waiting on hold, trying to eat something and then throwing it back up helplessly. Jared was still with her, as was Angela, who Bones had allowed to sit quietly on the couch after she'd tried to ask Bones for the seventeenth time how she was holding up. Anyone could see that she wasn't holding up. Anyone could see that Bones was about ready to start destroying things in a fit of anger, as if taking everything down around her would help.
How? How could she reciprocate Booth's feelings and then lose him to a fire of all things? Booth wasn't supposed to die, and even if it was, his death was supposed to be heroic! He was supposed to die saving someone from the bad guys! He wasn't supposed to die in a damn fire! Therefore, it couldn't be true! Could it?
There was only one way to know for sure.
Taking a deep breath and making sure her waste basket was still at her feet, ready to be used if these images provoked a visceral response, Bones clicked on the first one.
It was a charred femur, broken in half by the blaze, jagged edge pointing up toward the camera. "This is all wrong," she pointed out.
"I know, sweetie," Angela sighed. "Booth wasn't supposed to –"
"No," Bones laughed, pointing to the photograph. "This isn't bone!"
"They identified his dental records, Brennan!" Jared shouted, looking like he was about to hit something and Bones hoped it wouldn't be her glass desk. "How can you sit there and tell me that's not my brother's bone?"
"It's not," she smiled, letting her finger touch the screen, as if she could heft the bone and tell by the feel that it wasn't Booth. "Bone doesn't crack like this in a fire. The patterns are similar, but not the same. This is a very sophisticated replica. I would guess that these bones are made of hydroxyapatite and they are the correct size and shape of," she clicked through the pictures rapidly, "Booth's skeleton. But histological sections would show that these were never living bones. And look! There's no charred tissue! I doubt this was ever anything more than a replica skeleton!"
Bones stood up, laughing and caught Jared in a hug. "He's alive! Booth is alive!"
"Who?" Jared asked, staring at the computer screen as Bones released him to grab Angela in a tight hug as well, laughing at the bewildered looks on their faces. "Who would do this?"
"Oh my god," Angela blurted out. "Which recently escaped mental patient do we know who could pull something like this off?"
"Escaped …" Jared asked, "…what?" Turning to Bones, he asked, "Did she just say mental patient?"
"Zack!" Bones shouted, so giddy with relief that she felt like she could jump up and down like a school girl. Which, by the way, was a phrase with connotations she really resented. "Zack must have made and placed the skeleton!"
"Why?" Jared asked next, but Bones was too caught up in excitement to answer, dragging Angela out towards the others, who waited sadly in Cam's office.
"It's not him!" Bones blurted out, her grin starting to tire her face, even though there was no way she was going to lose it anytime soon. "It's not even a real skeleton!"
Cam, Hodgins, Sweets, and Mr. Nigel-Murray all looked up in various degrees of shock. And then Bones' joy infected everyone and they were all up on their feet laughing and celebrating, until Jared shouted, "Enough! What's going on? I want to know why the hell this happened!"
"It was Zack," Bones blurted out. "Though I cannot guess at his motives."
"I can," Hodgins grinned. "He said he wasn't working this case without Booth."
Jared pointed out, each word more incredulous than the last, "So he faked Seeley's death."
"To get him out. He faked Seeley's death so they won't be looking for him and he can get back here more easily," Cam surmised, and everyone else was inclined to agree. And then everyone wanted to see the pictures, to get a look at Zack's handiwork. Bones felt vindicated when Mr. Nigel-Murray confirmed that the bones were false and Jared finally calmed down enough to laugh about how crazy Zack was and about how they would all probably be seeing both men very soon.
Bones felt something shift inside her that day. Maybe it was because of her heart being crushed and then slapped back together. Maybe it grew back differently, with different scars cut across the old ones. But Bones didn't think much of tissues or organs. It was more important that she felt, deep in her bones, Booth was coming back to her soon and when she saw him, everything else, including this case, would fall into place. No one said she wasn't being a little naïve.
A/N: Aren't you glad I wrapped that all up in one chapter? :) Probably very few updates, if any, this week. But the weekend will roll around again.
Don't forget to review!
