10.

In thirty minutes the a team was assembled under the darkness of the night. Booth was reinvigorated with the sense of purpose under the guise that Sweets was okay. They now had a "bad guy" to catch. And that bad guy in Sweets mind had something to do not only with hurting several young girls, but one of his people. Booth loaded his gun and donned his vest.

"Sir!" An agent said approaching him. "We have detected movement."

"In the dean's office?" Booth asked following him.

"No, near the entrance." The agent said and Booth wondered where the suspect might be heading.

"Head the teams near the bell tower!" Booth said recalling the church bell's thick rope.

Hodgins & Brennan waited impatiently as they watched Booth leave.

"Should we call Angela to check in?" Brennan asked.

"I tired but no answer. Those two are probably busy fussing over Sweets like a couple of ninnies." Hodgins teased.

Booth nodded as the agents silently lined the stairwell leading up to it. He led the team up the steps, past the levels of bells until they reached the top floor. Booth immediately spied a man by the window, lit by moonlight, handling what Booth assumed was the body by the window.

"Hold it right there." Booth said loudly making the man jump in surprise.

Booth walked towards the man whose shoulders relaxed. Booth noticed it was as though he were glad to be caught.

"Put that down." Booth said motioning to the crumbled body on the floor he suspected to be Melissa Phillips. In some ways he hoped so because it meant it wasn't another victim.

"Sure, I was planning to." The man said tossing the body out the window.

Booth refrained from shooting as the body was dead, and now hung from a noose outside the bell tower.

"Let's go." Booth said handcuffing the man.

Booth had hoped it would be a little more ceremonious, perhaps a fight to ensue so he could get a little relief in punching the man but instead he silently and cooperatively went along.

"Get him to interrogation." Booth instructed the junior agent.

"Now sir?"

"Yes now, I want to make sure we have this thing locked up tight." Booth said in an irritated tone. The junior agent nearly blushed at his mistake.

"Of course sir, justice is always served, right away, uh." The young man stumbled over his words and his embarrassment.

"Let's go kid." Booth said as they left.

"Why can't I move my fingers?" Sweets asked between Cam shoving sips of liquid down his throat. His eyes were now nearly completely open and he was more clearly accessing the situation.

Sweets body temperature had hit 96 so they took the warming blanket away as well as most of the other equipment. He now just had a thick down comforter on him as he sat propped up in bed.

"And why does my stomach hurt?" Sweets asked as the new pains became more apparent.

Angela pulled Sweets arm out softly from under the blanket so he could see his wrapped hands.

"Juice Dr. Sweets?" Cam asked switching from water.

"No, thank you." Sweets said looking at his hands.

"You have to drink something if you want to get better." She warned. "Sweet but non-caffeinated drinks are the best." Cam seemed to hitting the caffeine pretty hard. Sweets wondered what time it was.

"My hands, Dr. Soroyan...and…"

Cam realized Sweets would probably feel more at ease if he were brought up to speed so she sat the cup down.

"I didn't want to worry you Dr. Sweets. You're fine. Your fingers are still numb from the cold. You have second degree frostbite on your hands, your right arm is worse than the left. You have minor frostbite on your feet." She spoke slowly so he could absorb it all. "There's nothing to worry about, you should regain complete use of your hands and feet but it might take up to a month."

She could tell Sweets was weighing the disappointment of not using his hands or walking for a month but that was way better than not at all.

"You may have a permanent sensitivity to hot and cold." She warned. "But that's will vary and it might not happen at all, only time will tell."

"Any cheek, it feels funny." Sweets said.

"Yes, it's very red right now." Cam said knowing Sweets couldn't see it. It will fade much quicker. Your face was laying against the cold floor, however the body tries to keep circulation to the center of the body and the head more than the rest of the body so your body kept circulation there. I would suspect the numbness to fade and less problems with it."

Sweets nodded as he absorbed what she told him.

"Your stomach might be a bit sore. Sweets your body temperature reached a low of about 82 when they found you. That's about two degrees over unrecoverable, or at least very low chances of recovery."

"Oh." Sweets said realizing now the serious situation he had been in.

"Your temperature raised to about 85 when here but only to about 87 a while later. The doctor here, and myself, didn't want to chance it. We recirculated your blood out of your body and back into it after warming it. When that did not give us the results we wanted we initiated a more aggressive procedure called extracorporeal rewarming. This infused warm fluids into your abdomen to increase your core temperature."

"And that worked." Sweets asked to make clear.

Cam smiled. "You're here."

"Thank you." Sweets said suddenly feeling tired. His chest was starting to hurt some, he assumed it was from the procedure Cam was talking about though it all started to get blurry.

"We're glad you're here Sweetie." Angela said holding the bandage that held Sweets hand. "And getting better. I uh…Sweets?"

"Huh?" Sweets asked. The pain was getting a bit worse now. He started to feel like something wasn't quite right.

"Sweets?" Cam asked now alarmed.

She began to push the button to call for help. Sweets eyes began to fade and close. Cam jumped up to get help that wasn't coming fast enough.

"No Sweets." Angela said adamantly as she tried to keep him from sliding off to the side. "Dammit Sweets I promised, I promised…" She said her voice fading and machines beeped in alarming pitches. She didn't hear her phone buzzing with Hodgins calling.

"Aren't you going to ask for a lawyer?" Booth said walking into the interrogation room to talk to Theodore Edwards.

"The only one I know is Phillip Harding. Do you think he'll represent me?" Edwards asked sarcastically.

"Well let's start there, why did you kill his daughter Anna?" Booth asked trying to keep his cool.

"Same reason as the rest of them."

"So you admit it."

"Yes. I have nothing to hide. If you caught me fine, if you didn't I was going to keep at it till I was done. You caught me when I was done. Good timing by the way."

"Another agent almost caught you before I did." Booth was almost proud when he said it.

"I figured someone must have stopped by the cabin. At first I thought it was just an avalanche but then I figured an avalanche wouldn't have stolen my bed sheets." Edwards answered in such a calm tone that Booth found t strange.

"That agent almost died." Booth seethed.

Phillips looked surprised. "I'm sorry about that." Edwards said thinking it over. Booth got the impression he was genuine when he said that. "I had nothing against him. I hope he's okay."

"What about those girls, they…"

"They were monsters." Edwards said his concern fading to absolute hatred.

"They were young."

"There were too far gone." Edwards said sitting up straight, eager to have something to say. "There wasn't a person in this world who would stop them from what they were doing."

"I don't agree with the teasing that they did to your daughter, but what you did was take it too far."

"Teasing? You think this was about teasing?" Edwards asked.

"Then tell me what it was about."

"They raped my daughter." Edwards said and looked away, the memory nearly bringing him to tears. "Yeah, they tricked another girl at the school to help her with directions. If she did that for them, they wouldn't tease that girl anymore. She wouldn't admit to it to the cops of course, but she had to come clean to me." He laughed as though it was supposed to help some. "Yeah, they paid her and got a group of boys to do the rest."

Booth wanted to ask why because it was so unfathomable.

"My business started to go downhill. I asked the dean for a little help on the tuition. I don't know if you much about Wilton Heights but let's just say, I found out they don't do that sort of thing. Once it got out that we had money troubles, well no one wanted anything to do with us. Those parents who invited us over to their mansions, on vacations, business deals, everything, they locked us out cold. Things just got worse after that. They teased Molly more and more but I told her it was going to be over soon, business was going to get better. Stupid optimist I was. Molly went along with me, held her head up high. I guess it pissed those girls off that she wasn't going to break." He paused to look at Booth to emphasize his point. "My guess is they took it too far."

"I went to their fathers. I couldn't prove it since the girl wouldn't speak against the others who put her up to kidnapping Molly. You really want to know what their fathers said agent Booth?" Booth had a feeling he did not but he nodded. "They were practically proud of them. They were proud that their daughters were showing signs of being cut throat business people. In the Wilton Heights world, it was sink or swim. They saw us as sunk."

Booth understood why Edwards implicated the fathers in the murders.

"And the cops, why did you redact the claim?"

"By the time I found out what had really happened, not a random act of violence, Dean Anthony had made me a deal that I could have one month of tuition free if I redacted it. He didn't like it hurting the community. He said I could have one month to catch up. What a joke, I redacted it, a week later that girl came and told me what really happened."

"Why the rope from the school?" Booth asked considering what was left to have an answer to.

"The school's motto, 'the tie that binds'. I came to talk to Dean Anthony about what the girls had done. I was at the end of my rope, so to speak. He didn't care, he wanted his tuition check or we had to get out." He shook his head at the memory. "I was walking by the doors when I heard the bells ring and went into the tower. I suppose you could say it was divine intervention.

Booth was about to preach on the subject when the man continued.

"I had a plan that day. You know when those girls died….one, she laughed. The whole time. She thought it was another one of the girls trying to get back at her. She had no sense of reality."

"Where is your daughter Mr. Edwards?" Booth asked.

"Gone, gone far away." Edwards answered.

"I'm going to need to talk to her."

"Sorry, no can do." Edwards said leaning back in his chair. "Once I had the plan I sold the house, took a little out for the cabin, sent her and my wife away."

"Did she know what you were planning to do?"

"I'm not entirely sure I knew what I was going to do. Revenge I knew, and I knew it would be damaging."

"So you're not going to tell me where they are."

"Agent Booth I gave them the money and told them to go and not look back. I don't even know where they went."

"I don't buy that, you cared for your daughter and your wife. They would want you to join them."

"I knew from what I was going to go thru with that we could never be a family again. With what they did to my daughter, I don't even know if she was able to pick up the pieces again, but I had to give her a shot. And keep it from happening to any other girls like her. Daughters who would have to run into their own home and tell their fathers they had been raped by a group of boys. You ever had someone come to you like that?"

"So you're a martyr in your eyes."

"Agent Booth, do you have a daughter?" The man asked.

The conversation ended.

Booth walked out to the hall to see Brennan and Hodgins waiting as they had been listening in.

"Wow." Hodgins said breaking the silence.

"Booth…" Brennan began but Hodgins cell phone interrupted her.

"Oh hey Ange, I tried to call earlier…what?"

Hodgins closed his phone.

"Sweets went into cardiac arrest."