When I'd asked where Brennan was, Hodgins had directed me down to a shooting range on a lower level. Shrouded in dim lighting was a stairwell that led down to a brightly-lit range with human figures hung in racks for targets. Brennan was wearing protective eyewear and a headset, shooting off a standard gun and getting accurate hits. Booth was already down there, but that wasn't necessarily bad. I knew he hadn't aimed to hurt my feelings; he had no way of knowing how I grew up. So I'd decided to let him get away with it. Besides, I'd spent some time talking with Hodgins while he worked to cool down.

"…Who knows better than you how fragile life can be?" Booth asked rhetorically.

"Maybe an Army Ranger sniper who became an FBI homicide investigator?" Brennan posed her question with a snippy tone.

"Ah." Booth nodded. "You looked me up, huh?" He pointed at the gun. "Do you mind?"

"Be my guest," Brennan invited, handing over the gun and moving the headset down around her neck.

"Thank you," Booth said, making a show of being gracious before firing a round at a new target. It was pretty lousy; when the results came up, he'd missed on each bullet.

"Were you any good at being a sniper?" Brennan laughed, seeing the disastrous results.

Booth didn't answer that question. "A sniper gets to know a little something about killers. Senator Bethlehem? He's no killer."

"And Oliver Laurier is?" I scoffed. He's nuts! No way he's strong or stable enough to emotionally manage murder without breaking down about it.

Booth changed the way he held the gun, putting the safety back on and gripping it by the barrel, holding it out to me. "Give it your best shot, kid," he told me, probably trying to make up for offending me earlier.

I took the gun and, unfamiliar with the model, I braced myself with a wide stance and held it with both hands as a precaution. I used to be in an archery club a few years ago at the local community center, and I'd actually been a pretty good shot, so I figured a gun wouldn't be too much different, so long as weight and backlash were accounted for. I aimed for the heart of the new target; the first bullet was a few inches off, so I readjusted my aim and fired the rest of the round. They all hit around the heart; even though only one or two were dead-on shots, all would have resulted in fatality if they were on an actual person.

"Nice, kid," Booth whistled. "The way I read Laurier, he's unhinged. That makes him dangerous."

"That'd be your gut telling you that, correct?" Brennan asked, amused.

"You know, homicides, they're not solved by scientists," Booth said, getting tired of her opposition to following leads based on emotion. "They're solved by guys like me asking a thousand questions a thousand times, catching people telling lies every time. You're great at what you do, Bones, but you don't solve murders. Cops do."

"I disagree with both of you," I informed them bluntly. "I don't think Laurier did it, but I don't think Bethlehem would, either. He strikes me as the type to get someone else to do his dirty work. Even if he is behind it, he's not who we need to catch first."

Booth turned to Brennan. "Isn't it annoying when children may actually be right?"

"So adolescents can solve murders and adult scientists cannot?" Brennan asked indignantly, missing the point entirely. "Cleo Eller was killed on a cement floor sprinkled with diatomaceous earth. Traces of her blood will still be in that cement. One of us is right, maybe neither of us. But if Bethlehem wasn't a Senator, you'd be right there in his basement, looking for that killing floor. You're afraid of him. Your hypothesis is that squints don't solve murders and cops do. Prove it. Be a cop."

Smirking, Brennan hung the headset up and put the glasses away on the shelf they went on. I handed the gun back to Booth. "That was badass!" I exclaimed, impressed with the anthropologist.

Under Booth's instruction, I was lounging on the loveseat in his office in the FBI building and skimming through a book on prolific cold cases in recent history. It only went back to the mid-nineteenth century, but it had some of the popular ones; H. Holmes and the murder hotel, Jack the Ripper and the Whitechapel murders, the Zodiac murderer and his coded messages. You get the idea.

I wasn't sure why, but it was harder and harder to stay mad at Booth for arresting me. I suppose it wasn't his fault to begin with; he was just trying to find Davis' murderer. Sure, Davis was a lousy person, but even if it wasn't for him, the society deserved for the murderer to be caught, and if a seventeen year old girl from a bad neighborhood might be a lead in their case, then they should investigate. Not only that, but the more time I spent with him, I realized Booth wasn't actually that bad of a guy. Sure, he had flaws, but who doesn't? His arrogance and his rude comments spoke for themselves, but he was a good guy working to put the bad ones behind bars, and that made him okay in my book. Besides, he was doing his job protecting me when there might not even be a threat, even though it was inconveniencing him. Or maybe it was the feeling of protection itself that made me warm up to him. It was something I'd never really had, but was deciding I liked. The paternal way Booth had treated me after Brennan and I got him in trouble was welcoming.

I could tolerate being in his protection for a while – even if it meant I couldn't actually go to my residence without giving myself away, I had all I needed at the place I said I lived at, and the friendly way everyone at the Jeffersonian treated me was welcoming and refreshing. In my neighborhood, I'm reputable for being a… well, a bitch, to say it bluntly. They didn't know me as that, though, so it was the first time in a while I'd met someone and they didn't already have a pre-formed opinion of me. Angela had been surprisingly amiable with her reconstructions, allowing me to make suggestions when she had no reason to take my word for it. Zach had been hospitable and kind, to the extent that he knew how. He was very literal-minded, and he didn't quite understand social cues and verbal expressions, so he was trying. Hodgins was a very cheerful person. Even if he was into conspiracies, he was fun and lively person to be around, with a good nature and a high intelligence that balanced each other out. Brennan was pretty awesome, too, of course. I was thrilled that she seemed to like me, as well, if her abrupt protection of me from the Senator's aid was anything to go by, as well as her praise and her respectful acknowledgements.

While I reflected, Booth was leaning back in his chair, watching a home video of Eller and her parents on low volume. His elbow was against the arm of the task chair and his knuckles were propping up his chin, his eyes sad as he really absorbed who Eller had been and what had been taken away when she was murdered. I tried not to think about it too much, because I knew if I really thought about it, it would hurt me, too.

Someone knocked on the already-open door. I turned and straightened when I saw Brennan, closing the book and setting it on the coffee table when she came in and looked to see what Booth was watching.

"They look pretty happy, don't they?" Booth mused softly. "Otherwise they wouldn't turn on the camera, I guess."

Brennan cleared her throat. "Zach said you wanted to see me?"

"Is that something you don't like to talk about?" Booth asked, arching an eyebrow. "Families?" Booth shook his head slightly. "Temperance, partners, they share things, and it builds trust."

"Since when are we partners?" Brennan asked, testing the word out in confusion.

"I apologize for the assumption," Booth said dryly, stopping the home video and giving a document to the scientist.

"You got a warrant to search Bethlehem's place?" She looked up from the document in surprise.

"You were right," I told her. "If Bethlehem wasn't a Senator, the FBI would already have granted Booth a team to go to the basement to look for the kill site."

"But you're wrong," Booth added. "I was never afraid of that guy, and I'm not doing this because you're a genius. I'm doing this for Cleo."

Outside the Senator's house, Brennan and I stood, watching Bethlehem, Thompson, and an officer conversing angrily/calmly on the front steps. I was sure I'd be seeing a few snaps of me in the paper – Brennan, a renowned scientist and authoress, and me, a teenage nobody from the ghetto district – were talking over a media crowd like equals. I'm sure the papers will have something bad to say, likely something along those lines. The media itself was like a three-ring circus, complete with the morons who thought that juggling a running chainsaw was a good idea and that nothing could possibly go wrong with their task. They thronged outside the black gates that Brennan and I had access inside of, so we weren't being shoved, but a few reporters or photographers managed to leak through the security cracks every once in a while.

Thompson held the warrant in his hands and said something, most likely reading it off. Bethlehem's anger only increased and he shouted something, but the crowd outside the Senator's gates was too loud for me to overhear the man's words.

Thompson said something else before storming down the stairs and coming to a stop in front of Brennan and I. "You're making a big mistake," he leered.

I arched an eyebrow, perfecting the art of keeping a cool demeanor. "Is that a threat, Mr. Thompson?"

Thompson shook his head in fury, running off to shoo another reporter off of the lawn. I looked over to Booth, who was in the middle of a fiery argument with Agent First, the officer Cullen had put in charge of the case who would take over in only a few hours.

I felt eyes watching me, and not the annoying media kind. I turned around sharply and found a familiar but unwelcome man pressing against the gates. Brennan looked to see what had caught my attention and sighed in irritation. I stalked up to the gates, getting as close as I dared. "What are you doing here?"

Oliver Laurier, for his credit, spoke with a fairly normal tone. "Look at him," he referenced the Senator. "For all of his politics, he's got nothing. He should have loved Cleo properly, like I would have." He smiled impishly. "Wouldn't you agree?"

I growled. "Oliver, if you stalk me, I will kick your ass," I promised.

I turned back in time to see a large sledgehammer being taken by a forensic unit in a huge, heavy-duty evidentiary bag. "I don't recognize it, that is not mine!" The Senator shouted after the unit.

Booth was by Brennan when I rejoined her. "At least we got the hammer," Brennan said hopefully.

"Yeah, but that's all we've got," Booth sighed dejectedly.

"The cement floor in the basement wasn't the kill grounds?" I asked, confused. I'd had it pegged! I was so sure…

Booth nodded in disappointment. "Yeah, no blood, diatomaceous earth, nada. We needed a trifecta, Bones, Holly. Physical evidence, murder weapon, and crime scene…"

I sighed. While Booth was filing paperwork, he'd let Brennan give me a ride to the Jeffersonian. Here, I could lounge with the scientists for a last time. Booth called it his reward for working the case. Personally, I thought working the case in the first place was enough of a reward. It'd been a one-time experience for me, when the only thing I could do was keep a roof over my head and food in my stomach. College was maybe possible, but even with my intelligence, basic needs came first. I wasn't Superman (and thank God for that, I get queasy if I'm up high for too long), and those priorities wouldn't change.

The plus was that we'd had a long day, and if we fell asleep, there was a platform in the building that had a couple of coffee tables, sofas, and a loveseat, and the Institution had decontamination showers and temporary living quarters in case of quarantine, so if Booth had to stay late, and I got tired, I'd tell Brennan and turn myself in to a bunk, where I'd doze until Booth could pick me up and take me back to the hotel he'd arranged.

Listening to the scientists and artist talk, I was disappointed that this would be the last time I hung out with them. They were fun and friendly and I had to admit, they'd grown on me in the short time I'd known them. They drank from champagne glasses with amber alcoholic beverages while Angela had been thoughtful enough to get me some ice water from the kitchenette. "They won't arrest him?" Zach's eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

"Don't worry," Hodgins told his friend. "If that's the hammer used on Cleo Eller, he'll get arrested." He lifted up his wine glass. "A toast to getting this bastard." He and Angela clinked their glasses and Brennan and Zach joined in. They all looked at me expectantly, keeping their glasses up together (though it took Brennan and Zach a moment to see what they were waiting for). I blinked. "You're not getting out of this one, kid," Hodgins laughed at my surprise. "You're one of us on this case."

I smiled slightly, hitting the glass lightly with theirs. Zach and Brennan, finally allowed to give their arms reprieve, set their glasses on the coffee tables in front of them. "The hammer's not enough," Brennan said, massaging her forehead with the tips of her fingers. Her words were less enunciated than usual, probably due to the alcohol she'd consumed. "He's going to get away with it. Maybe Booth is right… maybe outside the lab, I'm useless."

"Don't say that, Dr. Brennan," I said encouragingly. "Because you got the Senator's DNA, he freaked, and now we know for sure that he was having an affair with Cleo Eller. That gave us standing ground to work on when we finished the investigation. Not to mention that we wouldn't have had a good starting point without your work here."

Hodgins held up the maroon booklet I'd brought him from Laurier's home. "Let's take guidance from the lives of the Saints," he said sagely.

Angela took the booklet from his hands and opened it up to a random page. "Albertus Magnus, Patron Saint of Scientists," she read, smiling at the irony.

"I thought Magnus was the Patron Saint of fishmongers?" Zach stated, phrasing it more like a question.

Hodgins shook his head, versed in legends and mythology. "Two separate entities. Albertus Magnus was the thirteenth century philosopher. The fishmonger saint was a-"

Brennan jumped, her head shooting up. "Fish!" She shouted in sudden excitement.

I bit my lip for a moment. "No, uh, I'm pretty sure he was human."

"Not the Saint," Brennan said quickly. She looked at Hodgins sharply. "You said that diatomaceous earth could be used as a filtering agent."

Hodgins shrugged but answered his boss anyway, confused by the turn of events. "Yeah, for swimming pools, water filters…"

"Or tropical fish," Brennan interrupted. "Oliver Laurier said that Ken Thompson kept fish."

Brennan leapt to her feet, collecting her messenger bag and purse, getting ready to rush off. "Of course!" I nearly face palmed. "What was the most obvious motive that there was, but we overlooked? Eller had an affair and got pregnant and her boyfriend got jealous and angry!" I scrambled to my feet, letting the glass clink against the table as I set it down without much regard. The ice bobbed in the water at the shift. I ripped my sweater up from off of the back of the loveseat and shoved an arm through, grasping at the other side to pull it on.

"What's your hurry?" Angela demanded, looking from Brennan and I in a mix of confusion and exasperation.

Brennan looked sideways at Angela as she started down the stairs of the platform. I rushed after her, jumping the stairs at once. "Thompson read the warrant, he knows we're looking for diatomaceous earth!" Brennan explained shortly. "Get in touch with Booth and tell him where we're going, okay?"

As we left earshot, I heard Angela say, "She didn't actually say where they were going, did they?"

"Ken Thompson's!" I shouted over my shoulder in response.

Brennan and I sprinted to Thompson's home. I wish we had a gun. Brennan and I were both good shots, and I had a feeling this might not end well. Brennan peered in through a window and I rapped on the door. "Stop!" She shouted suddenly. "You can't destroy evidence!" She was talking to someone inside the house.

I looked around for a moment, then saw something of use. There was a window just a foot or so away from the door, and considering where the hinges were, I could reach the doorknob to unlock the door. If he destroyed evidence, a murderer went free. I picked up a heavy ceramic planter from the porch and hoisted it up, then swung myself around and let go. The planter sailed into the glass window and, with a loud screech, the glass broke inwards. I thrust my arm forward through the broken glass and around the window, grasping for the door handle. I did my best, but it still took a couple of seconds to locate and twist the deadlock, then to pry down the handle and pull it away from me.

Pulling away from the window, I caught sight of a short scratch on my forearm where a piece of glass must have cut me. A drop of blood spilled from the injury down my arm. I didn't feel it; my heart was pumping rapidly and my breathing was quick. Adrenaline was taking over my system and for now all I could feel were mental emotions. I didn't feel the sting of the cut or the itching of the blood sliding down my skin.

Brennan pushed through the doorway. Letting her lead, I followed her into the house, where she took the first right into a large room. The linoleum was slippery and shone with some sort of liquid substance, and tables of polished, whitewashed wood held empty tanks, a few with neon gravel still in them. I looked up. Thompson was holding a mostly-empty red carton of gasoline. I sobbed dryly in dismay, although no tears spilled. I was too frightened. The ground, and now my shoes and the hems of my pants, were covered in highly-flammable material, and if Thompson lit a lighter now, then the room, and the house, would go up in flames. It would be quick, but while it lasted it would burn like the fires of hell were fabled to feel. I'd never particularly considered myself easily frightened. This, however, nearly made my heart stop. Eh. Even the best real-life heroes have their limits. I guess this must be mine. I wasn't armed and I didn't know what to do.

"This is a private residence," Thompson sneered. "I don't suppose you have a warrant?"

"We're working with the FBI," I shouted, forcing the words out of my raspy throat. Brennan sent me a worried look and nodded towards the doorway, telling me to go. Not going to happen. Not if she wasn't leaving with me. I was scared, but I wasn't a coward. They were different. Not being scared would be stupid. In all honesty, I didn't care if Thompson burned. Not now. "If we have reasonable suspicion of a crime being committed, we don't need a warrant!"

Thompson scoffed. "What crime?" He leered.

"Destruction of evidence pertinent to a federal investigation," Brennan promptly replied.

"I'm just cleaning up," he feigned innocence. "Is that alcohol I smell on your breath?"

"The linoleum looks fairly new," Brennan observed sharply, boldly, considering he had the deadly weapon of gasoline. "What's underneath – cement? The same cement that was embedded in Cleo's skull when you bashed her head in!"

"You might want to get out of here," Thompson cautioned, his eyes narrowed dangerously.

"I can't let you destroy evidence," Brennan returned.

"How are you going to stop me?" He laughed sardonically and my eyes widened. He wasn't afraid. He didn't care if he died. He just didn't want to be prosecuted. There was something wrong with his head!

"I'll stop you," Brennan declared bravely, but I couldn't see how.

Thompson laughed, sounding borderline insane. "Not before I burn this place down with you in it!"

I looked around desperately as Thompson held up a lighter. One flick of his thumb and the house would fall to ashes. Then I saw it – the smoky grey barrel was just visible from its plaque on the wall behind us. I looked from the Senator's aid to the forensic scientist. We had nothing to lose. I took off at a dead bolt, slamming my knuckles against the protective glass. It shattered, the shards embedding themselves into my skin, but like before, I didn't feel it. It's going to be so much fun later when I'm either dead or feeling the pain. I swirled around, praying to whatever luck there was that the gun was loaded, and turned off the safety.

I saw the room swing around, distorted by the chemicals pumping through my body, and saw Thompson's wide eyes as he realized what I'd done; what I was doing.

I saw the lighter as it flicked on and Thompson prepared to drop it.

I saw the gun lash back against me, flying up into the air. I let go of it and it fell to the floor, turning to pieces. With my dominant hand damaged, my hold had been weaker than normal and I hadn't been able to control the backlash like I had at the shooting range. Thompson's body fell to the floor, limp, but his chest moved up and down raggedly, still breathing, though highly labored. The lighter fell from the sky, the whooshing of air shutting out the flame. Even better, it landed on Thompson, who had carefully made sure no gas was on him.

I fell down to my knees on the new linoleum. "Oh my God," I whispered, clarity returning as the threat of imminent death passed. "I shot him."

Brennan picked up the pieces of the gun, her shoes clicking on the tiles. She slid the barrel back up with a click and reloaded the remaining rounds and aimed it at Thompson once more in threat, seeing as I'd hit him non-fatally in the stomach. My hazy vision refocused. Brennan's chest was heaving as she tried to calm down.

A gasp of surprise left my mouth as I saw the newcomer in the building. He stepped up by me in the threshold and I recoiled. "I don't get it," Brennan was panting at the nearly-unconscious aid. "It wasn't jealousy, it wasn't passion, Cleo wouldn't get rid of your boss's baby and so you got rid of her. What kind of psychology is that? What kind of person are you?"

"Holly," Laurier asked me, drawing Brennan's attention. "Are you alright?"

Brennan swung the weapon around. "Oliver, I understand you're here out of a misguided concern for her safety," she said, her rapidly-spoken words blending slightly as a mix of adrenalin and alcohol hazed her mind, much like mine had been moving in slow motion a moment prior. "But I apparently don't read people very well and you could be in some kind of psychotic collusion with Ken, so I'm going to ask you to go over there and apply pressure to his wound until the police get here, you understand?"

"Okay," Laurier nodded frantically, raising his hands above his head. "Okay." Pause. "Did he kill Cleo?"

"Yeah…"

"Okay," Laurier repeated. "Well, I'm down with him bleeding to death."

I grimaced, cradling my injured limb as the feeling started to return to me. My stomach lurched as I felt the warm blood oozing between my fingers from the injuries to my fist. "Did I mention that applying pressure to a gunshot wound is extremely painful?" I asked, teeth grit.

While Laurier moved to Thompson, Brennan came to me and set the weapon in front of her so she could grab it again if need be. "Holly," she said. "Did you break any bones?"

I winced, shaking my head. "No. Nothing's broken, I'm just cut… It's mostly just a bunch of shallow scrapes, so they'll heal quickly..."

Brennan let me hide my hand against my stomach, covering it with my other arm. Sirens started to wail, getting louder as they got closer. "The police," I said in relief. Hopefully they had some band aids with them… Or at least a damp cloth and a pair of tweezers to pull all the glass shards out with.

When I was in the hospital, it was mostly just preliminary. The nurses took my clothes (since they had flammable material on them) and, with my permission, trashed them, giving me a hospital gown instead. I could live my whole life without a reminder of that night again. It wasn't that I was opposed to having shot a man. In my mind, the man deserved it, and when I'd asked the nurses had been able to tell me that he'd survive through it, so it was better that I shot him and now the Ellers knew what happened and the murderer prosecuted. I was kept overnight, since Booth had a lot of paperwork to do anyway, and it took the nurses a while to get all of the glass shards out of my hand.

By the time they were done, my hand looked a lot more of a bloody mess than it actually was. They washed the blood with a warm cloth and, then it was clear that it was just a bunch of shallow cuts. The worst had stopped bleeding an hour after the glass was out. Just to be on the safe side, since if I didn't let them heal it could damage the nerves, the nurses gave me some thin gloves to wear to keep my hands safe. The one on my forearm that I'd got from the window had been a little worse than I'd anticipated, but it was still fine to just slap a band aid on.

The morning after, I'd been surprised when Cleo Eller's parents came by to see me. They told me the funeral was this afternoon, but they assumed I'd still be either in the hospital or getting my statement taken, so they came by to offer gratitude in person. I had shot a man, after all. They thanked me for risking my life. They thanked me for doing so much to make sure their daughter's murderer wouldn't get away with his crime. And they thanked me for doing what I did to uncover the truth of what had happened to their daughter. They even volunteered to testify my innocence if charges were pressed for shooting, but I told them politely that it probably wouldn't be necessary. I might be in trouble, but I couldn't be convicted for non-fatally shooting a man who tried to light me on fire in self-defense and the defense of another vulnerable party. My justifications, plus Thompson's crimes, would probably make it so I was cleared.

I was really shocked when the Jeffersonian team stopped by. I wasn't too surprised that Booth came with them, or Brennan, considering she and I had both been through the ordeal and only we knew completely how terrifying it had been. But Hodgins, Angela, and even Zach had also tagged along to see how I was doing. I was completely touched by the gesture. Zach had done his best to be supportive by relaying statistics, Angela had given me warm praise and thanks for protecting her friend, and Hodgins had joked about me shooting people. It had been tactless, but I'd found it funny. Brennan had been lighthearted and agreed with my thoughts on the consequences of shooting, and even Booth had backed up our beliefs. Booth himself had ruffled my hair and said that I was practically a junior agent, though I think he was mostly just glad that Brennan and I weren't dead.

The director himself had come by and offered sympathies for the events, although it was clear that he'd been urged to do so by someone else. He didn't particularly like me, you see. When asked, he did tell me that charges weren't going to be pressed. It was my only federal offense and even though it had been on a Senator's aid, it had been justified as self-defense, and it was an added plus that I'd been defending another person. Although I shouldn't be counting on it disappearing from the FBI records, I was told that it would go on file as simply that; a record, and not an offense, with full detail listed so it wouldn't impediment any future choices I made.

So, that was the end of my once-in-a-lifetime adventure with the FBI and the Jeffersonian Institution. I would still be with Booth for a bit – the gang thing had been reassigned, but more investigation had taken me off of the suspect list. I would continue spending my nights at the hotel for Booth's convenience until the gang issue was resolved, and the FBI had sent records to my boss at the bar I worked at establishing that my continued absence until an unidentified date in the future was excused by the federal government and that, no, I was not under arrest or anything detrimental to my work resume.

After reflecting on the events of the past twenty-four hours, I sank down into the soft mattress of the hotel room, my head cushioned by the pillow and my body warmed by the fluffy bedspread, I stretched out my legs and arms, flexing my hand. Turns out, most of the pain had been from the glass. It hurt a bit, but it wasn't too much of a bother and I wouldn't even need the gloves in a couple of days.

The Jeffersonian scientists I'd followed on TV and in the news actually wanted me to be okay. There were FBI agents outside my room and Booth was to be notified immediately if there was any sign of odd activity. Another horrible murderer had been caught and was being booked for trial. For the first time in a long time, I drifted off into an actual, peaceful slumber, a feeling of satisfaction comforting me even in unconsciousness.