The office was small and was full of file cabinets that were overflowing so that other folders and papers were strewn on the desks and on boxes, equally filed with paperwork. It was wonder how they could have gotten anything done without spending the majority of their time scouring for their papers and files. Even their computers were old.
"I'm Special Agent Seeley Booth. I got a call this morning from a Welshwoman insisting we come in immediately," Booth said, all in one big breath.
"We are all Americans here," the secretary answered disgustingly.
Booth narrowed his eyes in thought before looking to Isabel, remembering the voice sounding a little like hers. "Right, well, we're here now, so we'd like to know everything about the murder here."
"There hasn't been a murder here lately. Are you, by any chance, here from the FBI to look into the dunes?" she asked, looking at a calendar to investigate.
"Yeah. I'm the FBI agent, this is the Forensic Anthropologist, Doctor Temperance Brennan, and this is our consultant from Roswell. She's sort of familiar with the entire area."
"Roswell Sherriff has no jurisdiction here," she answered quickly. "And I'll need her name."
"Yolanda Ramirez," Isabel answered, adopting a long-forgotten name.
"Right, well, the Chief isn't here yet, so you'll just have to wait here," she answered, all sly smiles.
"Who's the lucky man?" Isabel asked, attempting pleasantness.
"No one of your concern," the receptionist answered sweetly.
"Well, we have nothing but time, so, you either tell the Chief that we are here, or we can chat you up about things that you don't want to talk about. Your choice."
"How did you know that he was here?"
"None of your concern," Isabel reciprocated cattily. "Are you going to tell him that we are here?"
She slowly picked up the phone and told the Chief that his guests were here. She nodded curtly to the three and let them. Booth offered the two seats across from the meager desk to the women and huddled in a corner.
"So, you are Temperance Brennan. Enchanted to meet you," he began, admiring her in a way that made Booth shift. "And this lovely woman next to you?"
"Yolanda Ramirez," Isabel answered, smiling coyly. "But I'm married," she swiped the look off of her face as she showed her ringed left hand.
Booth pushed himself off the wall when he looked at it, but put his shoulder back into it when she put it back into a clasp.
"I'm a Roswell consultant. My family used to come here a lot, so I know the area well," she explained simply. "Brennan is from the Jeffersonian."
"I know." He hadn't taken his eyes off of her.
"Who's not a fan of you?" Booth whispered, and only Isabel heard.
"Her team found some traces of sellenite gypsum in a set of bones. This was the first place we thought of. We'll need to study the area to see if there are any clues to lead us to the killer.
"The bad thing is that he is still out there and going after people who helped put him in jail. Which includes Agent Booth and our beloved Doctor Brennan." Isabel was stately in her sentence but knew Booth would be angry at her wording.
"But the problem is that it is a national monument. There is no way I can let you roam freely about the area. Not to mention the fact that there is going to be a missile test today."
"They only last one to two hours. Is there any way to see what's under there without disrupting the park?" Her question was directed at everyone.
"The sand's too instable; we'd be clutching at straws."
"We can study it from the surface. If we find anything on the surface that could be linked to something below, I'm sure Booth could do something to allow us to dig that sole area. I mean, if it's in the Heart of the Sands, most people won't mind if we take down a single dune, and it might not even be that if it's at the base of one. Would that work?" Brennan rationalized.
"You can't disrupt the dunes. The most that you could do is get a warrant to run around on the surface. But that could take weeks."
"Then weeks it'll take," Isabel said, standing up. "We'll see you soon." She left boldly, and neither of the other two dared to oppose her.
"So we need a warrant to only look at the surface?" Liz asked to confirm.
"If we find something on the surface we can probably get a warrant to look underneath," Brennan answered exasperatedly. "We can't look for any disturbances; the wind would have swept away any evidence of it. We just have to look for any evidence, and even then the wind would have picked it up and carried it away. Without a genius, it would take a while to figure how long it would have taken to get there."
"Where's Zach when you need him?" Booth sighed, admiring the steering wheel.
"In an asylum," Brennan answered with no emotion.
Isabel rolled her eyes tiredly before looking to Liz to help after a moment of pension.
"We have to look for it. We probably won't find anything in under the dunes, so we look for the evidence, and take it with us. You can do that, right?" Liz asked, tapping an absentminded Booth on the shoulder.
"Get clearance to take anything off a national monument? It'll be difficult. Anything you find has to be really convincing."
"What about getting that warrant to go anywhere on the monument?" Isabel inquired, playing with a fraying string.
"We have enough evidence to at least investigate on the surface. We just need to call DC and ask them for it. That's the hard part," Booth looked at Brennan wonderingly. "But we have to do it."
"Not unless we can get ahold of those files."
"But you didn't see their faces. How could you know what they look like?" Brennan spoke this time, turning forward, leaving her arm on the console.
Booth reached out and grasped her hand. Isabel didn't notice; she was staring out her window in partial thought. Liz noticed it and remembered Max's and her criminal days in Utah when nothing mattered but using their love to find his son. She thought she felt a tear slip past her lid, but it was dry when she tested it.
"We're going to get that warrant and search that place," Liz affirmed to the other three. "We have to solve this; no matter what's in it for me or Isabel."
"Speak for yourself," Isabel snapped, but when she looked at Liz, she remembered why she loved her sister.
Isabel was tired and extremely hot. She was not enjoying the heat that she had thought she had missed. Seeking shade under a cottonwood, she then picked up sand to have something to do. When she picked it up, she had some flashes of a small child scampering through the area and being told not to by a familiar figure. Isabel had been screaming during the revelation, and Liz was right in front of her, holding her face by her cheeks when she came out of it. When that didn't calm Isabel down, she hugged her and stroked her back. Brennan and Booth ran over to see what they could do, but Liz was already starting to calm Isabel down.
"What did you see?" Liz asked, pulling out of an embrace.
"Alex was here. He's the only one who has been in this spot," she mumbled.
"What can we get from that?" Booth asked, exasperated.
"Nothing. Just leave to me." She turned back to Isabel. "Did you see anything important? Anything at all?" Isabel shook her head slowly. "Do you want to follow it, see if it led to anything?"
"We don't have the time to look after some alien things," insisted Booth, beginning to look about for his next direction. "All of us have to go together, and I won't go."
"Isabel, do you want to go see what we can find?" Liz asked again sharply.
She nodded her head slowly. By this time she had recovered and attempted standing up. "That way." She pointed in a southward direction and slowly began to amble in that direction.
"We aren't going," Booth said with false finality.
"Booth, it might lead to something. If we don't find this out, we might not solve the case or we might find out more about ourselves. We have to go," Liz answered, catching Isabel as she nearly fell.
Brennan slipped her hand into the crook of Booth's arm and nudged him gently. When he didn't respond at all, she mumbled to him, "I don't want to go either, but if they have something, we better go along. They won't stop; I know that much."
Booth sighed, and, in response, lifted his arm to accept hers and moved on. He ignored her thanks and followed the other two.
"You have reached Special Agent Seeley Booth. I'm unable to come to the phone right now, so leave a message after the tone, and I'll get back to you."
Max writhed in pain. "I need Liz," he screamed again. "It's Max, her husband, and I need her to come soon." He was trying to stop himself from screaming to alleviate the worry. "Please, call me as soon as you can." He froze in pain before falling into another fitful sleep, the other three standing over him worriedly, another's son gripping his hand.