What He Offered
Chapter 25: Crazy days
Bones muffled a laugh: had Booth really been afraid that Sully would come motoring back into her life someday and sweep her away? How could a man be so blind in some regards, and so insightful in others? He'd seen through her fake resignation to his relationship with Hannah, after all, a resignation she'd always thought so flawlessly acted. Vanity, thy name is Temperance! She wondered if his recounting of his feelings for Hannah was entirely true. She would like to think so, obviously, but there was perhaps an element of revisionary history involved. She decided it didn't matter. The important thing was, whatever he had felt for Hannah, over those hellish eight months, Booth had never stopped loving his Bones.
A Tale of Twin Booths, cont'd
Rumors concerning Brennan's new beau abounded. Given the trench coat and the slouch hat he favored when visiting the Jeff, to say nothing of his furtive manner, it was bruited that he was a CIA spook, with a mission to lure Brennan into collaborating with the dark side. Others who glimpsed him in a well-worn bomber jacket and ratty Washington Nationals ball cap pulled down low over his eyes were persuaded he was a local vice cop working undercover among the city's drug lords and crime syndicates. Micah Leggat, the overnight security guard, reported having investigated suspicious noises emanating from the lab, only to discover Dr. Brennan and a tall, bearded individual laughingly engaged in dancing the fox trot. Only one thing was known for sure about the man: he wasn't Tim Sullivan.
One evening, when she and Vic were having coffee together at the Royal Diner, Brennan received a phone call. From the way her features softened and her eyes shone, Vic had little doubt who was on the other end of the line. "Now? What's the address?" Brennan reached for the nearest scrap of paper, which happened to be the check, and scrawled the information. "Okay. See you soon!"
Vic grabbed the check, and pretended to verify the charges. The address she'd written was located in one of the less affluent parts of town. "I'll get this." He began to push away from the table.
Brennan snatched the check back. "No, no, my treat!"
"So…" he said, studiously off-hand. "Who was that on the phone?"
"Just now?" She glanced one more time at her scrawl, then passed the check and a twenty-dollar bill to the hovering waitress. "That was my… ah… brother."
"Russ is in town?"
"Hm? Oh. Ah, sorry, Vic. I've got to run. See you tomorrow!"
He saw her again much sooner than that. He spotted her dark blue Prius parked in front of a low, red-brick structure that looked like nothing so much as run-down office space. As he slowly drove past, he made out the building's purpose: it was a studio offering classes in ballroom dancing. He pulled into a space, but didn't have long to wait. No sooner had he adjusted his rear-view mirror to surveil the front door, than a tall, slender man, garbed entirely in black from the fedora tipped over his nose to his slip-on Italian-leather shoes, exited and crossed the few yards to Brennan's waiting car. Vic followed them all the way back to Brennan's general neighborhood, and then peeled off. He did not need to witness her actually escorting him up to her condo.
Vic knew he had no business begrudging Brennan any dalliance, but it galled him, even so, to picture her doing the horizontal tango with a lowly dance instructor. If he had had the presence of mind to remember that he and Tim had, themselves, while in college earned extra money by teaching ballroom dance, he would have spared himself some unpleasant mental images, for it was none other than his twin who was, at that moment, seated on Brennan's couch listening to the recently-returned Jay recount her adventures in Maluku and environs.
Tim had been in D.C. already a month, and was subletting a studio apartment in the George Washington University area, not far from the Shall We Dance studio where he taught a few nights a week, mostly for kicks. He had been granted an open-ended sabbatical from the FBI, and was not at all anxious to resume his work there. He and Brennan had had plenty of time to catch up on all their news, and now met frequently just for the pleasure of it. They dined out together in out-of-the-way restaurants, attended the occasional lecture, and even went out jogging when weather permitted. He amused himself, and Brennan, by appearing in various outrageous disguises, which included, but were not limited to, fake mustaches and eyebrows, temporary tattoos, nerdy glasses, bottle tans, and one face-shading hat after another. Vic had, so far, not gotten wind of his presence in town, and that's the way he planned to keep it for the nonce.
As for Jay, she had toured Indonesia for several weeks after the expedition had wrapped up in Maluku, and she was now enjoying another few days' rest and recuperation before taking up her job at the Jeff. The year away appeared to have done her good; she had a healthy, golden glow about her, and an air of ease in herself and a certain serenity. She unbent enough to invite Tim to call her Jay again, and left off addressing him cooly as Agent Booth. It was far from the intimacy of their old days, but an improvement over their pre-Maluku interaction.
When Brennan had to step away for a moment to field a phone call, Jay leaned toward him, and said softly, "Thank you, Tim, for looking out for Tempe these last few months. She's going through a rough patch right now."
Tim smiled. "It's no hardship, Jay. I love your sister."
Jay drew back at this declaration, a bit wide-eyed, and Tim, realizing belatedly that his words lent themselves to misinterpretation, was about to add "as a dear friend," when Brennan returned, and the opportunity was lost.
Some weeks later, Brennan phoned Tim with an urgent invitation to join her for lunch at the Royal Diner. "It's all right," she said, when he questioned her choice of restaurant. "Vic's tied up in meetings at headquarters all day."
Despite this reassurance, Tim took no chances, and when he turned up at Brennan's table, she didn't immediately recognize him. He was newly clean-shaven, with rimless glasses perched on his nose and outfitted in a rusty black suit worn over a combination of black crewneck sweater and collarless white shirt, and, to top it all off, a black cappello romano on his head. When Tim made to pull out the chair across from her, Brennan said, "I'm sorry, Father, but that seat…" She broke off with a shout of laughter. "Oh, sweetie! You're too much! Who're you supposed to be this time?"
"Why, myself, of course, dear child."
Still chuckling, Brennan wiped away a tear. "Thank you, Father Tim. I really needed a good laugh."
"Bad day?"
"Two of them, and going on a third. Let's order, and then, I'll fill you in."
When the waitress had come and gone, Brennan slid a case file across the table. "Look at the victim's photo, and tell me what you think."
Tim saw a caucasian woman, mid-thirties, dark-haired, light-eyed with a stern, no-nonsense expression on her face. "Nice looking. Am I supposed to know her?"
"She doesn't remind you of Jay?"
"Jay?" Tim was taken aback at the question. "No! At least, only very generally. Why?"
"This," Brennan said, tapping the photo with her finger, "is Dr. Lauren Eames, an outstanding surgeon who disappeared eleven months ago. Her bio reads very similarly to mine and Jay's: a professional woman in a medical field, never married, without children, perceived as extraordinarily competent but heartless, robotic. A man whose son she treated described her as 'cold as Antarctica,' and even went so far as to suggest she was capable of mass murder, provided it could be rationalized."
"Whoa! That's harsh!"
Brennan smiled bitterly. "Dr. Eames had no social life, no friends. She did, however, have a man in her life." She reached across the table, and laid her hand on Tim's. "A helicopter pilot who loved her desperately, and told her so, only to have his hopes dashed, even though he was fairly certain she returned his feelings. Are you beginning to see?"
He searched his friend's troubled eyes. "You think Jay's identified with the victim."
"She's over-identified, Tim. When she listened to Dr. Eames' recordings, she thought she heard her own voice. I came into the bones room last night and heard her speaking. I assumed she was just musing out loud, but, Tim, she said she was having a conversation with the victim. And, she's being irrational, denying any evidence that indicates a dissimilarity between them: according to Jay, it's impossible that Dr. Eames was a heroine-user, even though there's incontrovertible proof of it."
Just then, Brennan's minestrone and Tim's grilled cheese sandwich were brought to the table, allowing him a few moments to evaluate when he'd been hearing. He didn't like the implications. When they were once again alone, he ventured, "You're afraid she's having a nervous breakdown."
"I don't know what to think!" Brennan cried. She picked up her spoon, and dipped it into her soup, only to move it round and round the bowl absently. "She's not eating, not resting. It could be a simple matter of exhaustion, of sleep deprivation…"
It was Tim's turn to reach out for Brennan's hand. "Stop stirring, and eat, Brennan. You won't do Jay any good by following her example."
She swallowed a spoonful to please him. "But, I'm right to be worried."
"Yes, you're right. Do you know where Jay is now?"
"At the lab. I set her to cataloguing the cranial fractures for me."
"All right. Here's what you're going to do: stick close to her. Don't let her out of your sight, if you can help it. And, if she does anything at all that alarms you, call me immediately. Don't hesitate. I'll drop everything and come running."
Brennan drew in a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. "Thank you, Tim. I can always count on you."
Tim spent the remainder of the afternoon suffering from what he told himself was a case of mere heartburn, but he couldn't fool himself: his nerves were strung as thinly as Brennan's. He was sorely tempted to steal into the Jeffersonian, find a well-shadowed vantage point and observe Jay from a distance as he had on that day he'd first suspected her identity, now so long ago. But, the risk of discovery was too great; he stayed away.
It was nearly midnight, just as he was beginning to consider the gravest danger safely past, that his phone rang: Brennan. "She's gone, Tim! She ran out! I only left the bone room for a minute, I swear!"
"Calm down, Brennan. Are you sure she's not somewhere in the building?"
"Her raincoat's gone. She's on her way to Woodland, Tim, I just know it. She wrote the address, 1255B Franklin Street, on her note pad, hard enough to leave an impression. I'm going after her, but she's got a head start on me, and, Tim, you're so much closer…"
"I'm leaving now, Brennan. Don't worry. I'll find her. I won't let anything bad happen to her. Trust me." He grabbed his car keys and trench coat, and raced out the door, as if a life, Jay's life, depended on it.