I don't own Bones. This is a short story that I have completed so there won't be infrequent updates like my other stories, and if you guys like it I will make a sequel.
Chapter One
Connor swaggered down the street. Usually he skulked along in the alleys but not this time. He had grade A information about a cheating spouse and he was determined to share it to Sherlock. Sherlock was the nickname he gave the crazy PI who gave Connor food and money in return for good tidbits of information. His stepdaughter wasn't hard on the eyes and his son was okay personality wise. The stepmother died a year ago which depressed the shit out of Sherlock. Sherlock seemed better now but his kids spent a lot more of their time with their grandmother who was senile or something.
The project that Sherlock was working on now was super-secret but he liked side cases too. Because of Sherlock, Connor knew that missing dogs and cats could get nice rewards so he started stealing and returning them. He didn't mistreat them; he just needed money and this was a quick and easy way. Connor took a right and sneaked around the house until he found the basement window and jimmied it open. He quietly dropped to the floor and went up the basement stairs and peered out the crack of the door. What he saw horrified him. Two men were beating Sherlock, who was tied to a kitchen chair.
"Where is it?" one of the men snarled. He sounded Russian or German.
"You won't get away with it," Sherlock said confidently.
"We'll see about that," the man said and hit him again. Connor froze. He had to do something. Think Connor think he thought. He remembered where Sherlock kept his laptop; upstairs in his second floor office. The office on the first floor had an old white desktop computer and a sitting area for his clients. All the real work he did was in the small office upstairs. Connor climbed out the basement window and scrambled up a tree branch onto the roof. Thankfully, Sherlock kept his bedroom window open so he could enter. He carefully crept into the adjoining room which served as his office and looked at the computer. He touched the mousepad and the lock screen popped up. Cursing under his breath, he unplugged the computer and took a flash drive with him just in case Sherlock put something in it. He saw Sherlock's phone on the charger and grabbed it. He jammed it all in Sherlock's messenger bag and took off.
The descent from the tree was slower since he had to balance the bag and he checked the window. He saw the German/Russian guy hit Sherlock while the other was nowhere to be found. Connor felt his chest tighten and he quickly looked around. Thankfully, the other one wasn't behind him, like in some horror movie. A peek in another window showed him rooting around in the office. He crawled across the yard and walked to the end of the street before sprinting as fast as he could. He stopped as soon as he saw his target: a payphone. He thanked God they still had some of those. He put two quarters in it and dialed 911.
"911 what is your emergency," the operator said.
"You need to come to 221 Baker Street. Two men are beating up the house owner and I think they're going to kill him," Connor said hurriedly as he looked around. No bad guy seemed to be coming.
"Do you know who the two men are?" the operator asked.
"One sounded Russian or German," Connor said, "I think he had blond hair. Yeah, he did. The other guy had brown hair and I think he was tan."
"How do you know one sounded German or Russian?" the operator asked.
"The window was open," he lied.
"Can you stay on the line please? I know this is scary but police have been dispatched," the operator said. Police he thought, "Shit!"
"Excuse me?" the operator said. Connor hung up. His fingerprints were all over the basement window and in the office. He was screwed. Connor started shaking and he saw a bus coming. He realized that this was a bus station and tried to look all calm as the doors opened.
"Where are your parents?" the driver asked.
"I was at a friend's house but he felt sick so I left. His mom couldn't leave him. We were working on a school project," Connor lied and gestured to the messenger bag.
"What kind of project?" the nosy driver asked as they drove forward.
"We had to do a project on a battle from the Revolutionary War. We got Battle of Bunker Hill," Connor lied again; it was the only battle he remembered at the top of his head.
"Sounds like fun," the bus driver seemed satisfied. Connor nodded. He couldn't wait to get off this bus. There were some other passengers and as the only kid without a parent, he stuck out like a sore thumb. He knew it looked sketchy; why was a nine year old out by himself after nine but desparate times called for desperate measures. He got off at the next stop and waved to the bus driver as he left. He walked in the opposite direction of the bus and bolted. He eventually wound up on his streets. By now it must have been ten o'clock.
At last he found his apartment building and sprinted up the steps. He creeped into his apartment and was relieved to find his dad asleep in front of the TV. He locked his bedroom door and pulled up the computer's login screen. What could be his pass word? Connor's head snapped up when he had an idea. Sherlock's wife's name was Rita and she died a few years ago. He typed in rita2009. It didn't work. He tried again with a capital letter and it didn't work. Then he tried rita09 with a lowercase r, then an uppercase R. The phone lit up. He checked it. It had a blurry picture of him. It must have been his alarm system. He silently thanked God he took the cell phone. If those bad guys found him he'd be dead meat.
He couldn't think since the adrenaline high he had been feeling was wearing off. He tried to remember everything the crazy PI taught him. One thing was to always use codes. He checked the phone but it had a password too. He typed in 7482, Rita's name in numbers and it didn't work. He rattled his brain for a code. What would Sherlock do? He knew everything about everything. He could tell the best stories about old world leaders from Ancient Greece and Rome. Sherlock loved Shakespeare too, the tragedies in particular. Connor never cared for them. There was one Sherlock really liked. He had a poster of the play in his basement. Caesar. Caesar! He jumped upwards and grabbed his notebook from school. The school year was over and he had only kept one notebook since it had plenty of paper left for doodling and writing down ideas for pranks or schemes.
Caesar had that one easy code. The one where you jumped ahead three letters. He carefully wrote the alphabet and wrote the code. He wrote Rita's name and wrote the new letters under it. ULWD. He typed in 8593 and it worked. He nearly shouted in glee but he couldn't risk waking up his dad. He tried applying it to the login.
He tried just about every combination: from everything having capital and lowercase letters, with or without moving the numbers' digits three ahead and three back but nothing worked. He was nearly crying because he couldn't get it to work. He tried passwords where the letters and numbers were used at every other. The phone lit up with his picture every three times he failed.
By one in the morning he wanted to crawl into bed and forget this nightmare but couldn't. He owed this to Sherlock. He typed in 8L9D3A and was surprised when it worked. He quickly wrote it down in his notebook so he wouldn't forget. He opened Word and went through the most recent documents. Their titles didn't seem threatening so he right-clicked the icon to see if Sherlock removed documents from the list. There were a lot of titles he didn't recognize from the Recent list. He read them and was horrified by what he found. They were documents about a human trafficking ring. There were transcripts of interviews, notes, photos, and tables of names of people who were involved. This was worth killing for.
Connor couldn't process any more. He logged out of the computer and tucked it inside the bag and hid it in his book bag. His dad wouldn't go near his book bag since there was "nothing of use in school." He went to bed and woke up three times due to nightmares. At seven he heard his dad leave for work and he left soon after and locked the door. He didn't take the messenger bag with him in case someone tried to steal it from him. He got to the end of the block before he decided he wasn't making such a smart move. What if a burglar found the bag? Then all would be lost. He went back to his room and downloaded everything onto the flash drive he took. Connor tucked the flash drive into his shoe. Walking was uncomfortable but it was better than some pickpocket stealing it.
XXX
"What do we got?" Booth asked. He and his team were standing in the kitchen of 221 Baker Street. Two calls came in about this residence last night. One was about an assault made from a payphone and the other was a neighbor who saw flames and called the fire department.
"Male, in his mid-to-late forties," Brennan looked over the body.
"I can't tell if there was tissue damage since the fire burned this one," complained Cam. The fire started from the body and was contained before it could burn down the house, "I'd need to take him down to the lab to see what I can gather from the remaining flesh."
"I can't find any evidence of eggs or larvae so he must have been lit on fire immediately after his death," Hodgins said.
"Well, the fire could have been what killed him," Brennan said.
"I'd hope not. We got two kids without a father," Booth said.
"We'd have to confirm his dentals to make sure this is the father, Steve Barton," Brennan said.
"What's the likelihood of it not being him?" asked Booth. He paused and looked out the window. He could have sworn he saw something. He shook his head.
"What is it Booth?" Brennan asked.
"Nothing. Probably just a bunny rabbit or a squirrel. Let's take this one back to the Jeffersonian," Booth said.