Brennan seemed unusually quiet as she led Booth and I to Zach's work space. "What's eating you, Dr. Brennan?" I quipped, quickening my pace to come up to her side.

"I'm afraid Angela might quit," Brennan confided, her voice soft and sad as her eyes kept down to the floor.

Booth snorted. "I'm amazed she stuck it out this long."

"Why?" Brennan asked, giving him a confused look of bewilderment.

"Oh, because she's human."

Brennan and I both stopped in our tracks, turning slightly to give Booth warning looks. Booth put his hands up above his head. "I'm sorry, Bones! It's just that, you know, Angela didn't get the same training that the rest of you got on planet Vulcan."

"I don't know what that means," Brennan said promptly, turning on her heel and starting to walk again.

Booth sighed as we fell in step with Brennan, ending our trek in an exam room. Zach was already there, going over the skeleton. "She's more sensitive," Booth finally rephrased.

"Who's more sensitive?" Zach asked. He didn't look up, staying bent over the child's skeleton as he carefully reviewed his data for anything that might clue us in to another lead in the case.

"Angela," Brennan huffed, affronted by Booth's assessment.

Booth held up his hands helplessly. "What? She likes puppies and kitties and ducklings, and Jell-O shots and, you know – dancing on bars!" Booth whistled a tune (I think it was from The King and I – that musical about the governess and the King of Siam) and did a foolish, thankfully quick jive.

"I know that," Brennan replied snappishly, sending Booth a cold look. "She's my best friend. Angela's not the only person in the world who likes baby animals."

I smiled slightly, probably taking on a slightly dreamy expression. "I love little animals. Puppies, kitties, and ducklings are some of my favorites because they're just so huggable."

"I never got the big attraction," Zach disagreed.

Booth gestured grandly at the grad student. "I rest my case. She's more sensitive."

Zach took a step back from the table and moved his hands to his sides calmly. "We cross-referenced the length and density of Charlie's leg bones with other children his age." Zach paused before correcting himself. "The victim, I mean." Booth crossed his arms defensively over his chest, staying still and gazing down at the skeleton, looking both angry and anxious at the same time. Does he… does Booth have a kid? I never asked… Zach noticed the odd expression. "The thing to do is concentrate on the details."

Booth nodded, forcing his eyes up to Zach and away from Charles' remains. "Let's do that," he agreed, clearing his throat with a cough.

"We found some abnormalities," Brennan began to go into detail about the oddities we'd found. It was hard to bring myself to look at the skeleton, but for an hour I'd forced myself to. The Jeffersonian had brilliant scientists, and they wouldn't have a reason to have me around if I was too touchy to make clinical observations. "They're bowed, and abnormally short."

"Also, the victim shows freezing of the joints at the hip and knee." Zach gestured to the body as he talked, his hands hovering over the small, barren corpse.

Booth didn't respond for a few seconds, blinking several times as though he was running this through a mental makeshift translation program. "Are you saying Charlie was crippled?" He asked after a minute. I nearly laughed; it took him that long to figure it out, and then he still had to ask.

"Disabled, yeah," I said instead of giving in to the humor. "Not crippled. Not the way society thinks of it, anyway."

"His mother never mentioned that," Booth said, unsettled.

Zach started, leaning further forwards to let his hands float above the sternum and ribcage. "The ribs are broken in two places, which is not typical of blunt-force trauma. I attribute it to his medical condition and the brittleness of his bones."

"I agree. What is that condition?" I'd found that Brennan liked to play trivia with Zach to keep him attentive and to prove to her that he was benefitting from the internship.

Not at all out of practice, Zach didn't even blink. "It looks like scoliosis – a bend in the spine."

I spared a look over to the x-rays pinned to a bright white board on the far wall, but tried not to let my doubt show. I mean, obviously Zach has more expertise than I do, so it would be rude to correct him, but still, there were an awful lot of abnormalities for just simple scoliosis.

Luckily for me, I didn't have to bring it up. "I think it's more than that, Zach," Brennan said. Fortunately, her tone wasn't sharp or calculating, which meant that she probably wasn't blaming her intern for being incorrect. "There are multiple calcified lesions on the posterior thoracic vertebrae. That, plus Charlie's short stature and the asymmetric length of his legs, Margaret Sanders may not be Charlie's biological mother."

"What?" Booth's voice was so loud it could have been considered a yell.

I snorted. "Figures. She did love her son, but she made the kinship distinction for her own ethics, not for her consciousness."

Brennan took a slight step back and nodded to Zach. "Test the bones for X-linked hypophosphatemia and Coffin-Lowry syndrome."

Zach nodded in acceptance and started to move to the table to get some swabs and Petri dishes, but Booth flailed his arms desperately. "Whoa, whoa, hold on, press pause, simmer down – just back up to the part where she's not his mother."

While I had to admit that watching him flail was better than most of the reality sitcoms I'd seen on the bar TVs, I took it upon myself to straighten it out before he pulled a muscle or something. "Dr. Brennan and Zach are checking for hereditary defects that are always passed to a child from the biological mother. If Charles Sanders had one, then Margaret lied about being his blood mother."

Margaret choked on the air, a hand flying up to her throat in a fit. "How can you say that!"

"Charlie suffered from a hereditary genetic disorder called hypophosphatemia," Brennan repeated to the distraught woman. "Charlie's real mother would have the same disease, although you do not."

Margaret's chest heaved as she inhaled through her own shock at being found out. She hit the side of her fist weakly against the table. "Never say I wasn't Charlie's real mother, because I was!"

"Biological mother, then," I corrected, rolling my eyes and waving my hand so that she knew I was only agreeing with her to get what I wanted. I had no respect for her at the moment - not as a parent, anyway. Shawn and David knew she loved them, but she lied to children. Children in the foster system, no less, and when you're a naïve adolescent in the foster system, all you ever really want is to know where you belong and what you did that made you not worth your biological parents' time and love. She lied to Charles about his identity and alienated the other children entrusted to her. "You lied to us through your teeth about your relationship to a child, a victim of murder, the murder of whom we are investigating. If we had not run tests, then we may have overlooked the one lead in this case that could actually go anywhere! Would you like to explain that to Dr. Brennan and I?"

Margaret, in her stress, hadn't been getting a lot of sleep and she hadn't been getting all the nutrients she needed, either. I knew from looking at her that it wasn't because of finances; it was simply lack of trying to keep up with herself. Yeah, I don't get maybe as much nourishment as I should on a regular basis, but I don't look sickly. Margaret's eyes were beginning to look bloodshot and she had dark circles under her eyes. Lines on her forehead were pronounced and her clothes had several creases, like she'd washed them but then hung them up to dry or skipped over the ironing process. There was a buildup of oils in her hair - some oils make hair nice and shiny and smooth, but she hadn't washed out the excess.

Now it all seemed to build up into enough pressure to break the dam barricading the truth. With a deep, shuddering breath, Margaret quietly spoke. "I can't have children. That's why my husband left me. So, I took in foster kids."

"Like Shawn and David Cook." Brennan nodded, following along.

"And Charlie," Margaret quickly added, before her volume dropped again. "Though, his name was Nathan. I got him as a baby down in Pittsburgh, ten days old. His mother was arrested on drug charges and Child Services brought him to me. I had him for three weeks. Then the charges were dropped."

"You kept him?" Brennan asked.

"No." Margaret's answer was firm, the first completely solid word she'd given in the whole time we'd been interrogating her. "I gave him back, even though it nearly killed me. I stayed in touch. I bought him things – formula, a stroller, because I wanted to make sure he was alright."

I sent a short glance at the opaque, rectangular depression in the wall. On the other side of the one-way mirror, Booth would be monitoring the conversation, and when we were done here, he could cross check the story. "What was his surname?"

"Nathan Downey." This brought my attention back to the foster mother. The lack of hesitation in the answer, yet the immediate recall suggested that she was guilty and she knew she'd been wrong in taking back the child, but also that she was confident she'd made the best decision she could. "His mother was a drug addict named Janine. Christmas day, I found her dead on her kitchen floor with a needle stuck in her arm. And I could hear Charlie, crying upstairs, so I went up."

"And you took him home," Brennan finished.

"I looked him in the eyes, and I promised him I would never leave him alone again." Margaret's eyes were watery and tear tracks led down her face from her reddening eyes. She drew a shaky, gasping breath. "And he stopped crying! I expected every day for Child Services to come looking. They never did."

"He would have ended up back in the system, anyway," Brennan said softly, her eyes loosing focus for a moment. I filed this for later thought; she must have experienced the system, too.

"I meant to keep him safe!" Margaret suddenly cried, her tone heart-wrenching. She pitched forward, covering her eyes with her hands and letting her sobs jerk her shoulders. "And love him!"

You didn't do a very good job of protecting him, I thought to myself.

Margaret's bawling intensified and her head slid down the length of her arms to touch the table, her fingers interlocking around her neck. Brennan looked up at me with a confused, 'what-was-that-for' expression.

I blinked once before flinching. "Oh, damn. Did I say that out loud?"

"I had to arrest her," Booth said for the third time. He was haggard and weary, and as he entered the office he fisted his black jacket before tossing it haphazardly over the back of a chair.

"The story checked out! The overdose!" Brennan protested. I was right behind her; although my reasoning was slightly different, our desires were the same. I'd noticed that when Brennan got worked up, her voice went up and squeaked slightly. It was funny to listen to, although it was so common in people that it wasn't funny enough to laugh out loud about.

"She confessed to kidnapping," Booth said, his jaw firm in his resolution.

"Margaret Sanders did nothing more than respond to the anthropological imperative – she saw an orphan and she reacted!" Brennan fervently argued, her hands balling into fists and her arms rigid at her sides.

Booth twitched. "This is not a National Geographic study, okay? This is the suburbs!"

"Why would she kill the boy?" I demanded. I crossed my arms, unlike Brennan, but dug my heel into the short bristles of the carpet. "She obviously loved him, despite the legal and ethical conflicts!"

Booth rotated so he was facing us, merely the desk keeping him relatively safe from Brennan's wrath and my cutting glare. "There are situations, right?" No matter how many variations of his explanation he gave, I refused to let it be. How could I? Not when Shawn and David were going to go back into what real hell feels like. "The kid gets sick, he doesn't turn out to be what she wanted. I bet that you could give me a dozen examples of societies that have killed their own young."

"That argument is inapplicable," I shot down his words. "Other societies don't matter. This society, the culture of modern-day Washington D.C. is what matters, and we sure as hell don't kill children just because they knock over their glass of orange juice or scatter toys across the floor. Margaret Sanders swore to protect that little boy and she's positively heartbroken that now he's dead. He was murdered, most likely by someone he trusted. It's bad enough that Shawn and David have lost their brother, now you're taking away not just their mother, but their life and home and you're shoving them back into a living hell!" My voice rose shamelessly as I began to get worked up about it. "You have no idea how bad the system is!"

"Well what do you want to do, hmm?" Booth challenged abruptly, his demeanor instantaneously reverting to snappish and defensive. "Do you want to kidnap them the way that she kidnapped Charlie?"

"No!" Brennan exclaimed, incensed. Oh, there's the little squeak again. "I want you to let them go home to Margaret Sanders!"

"It's not going to happen!"

Upset with the lack of results our antagonizing got, Brennan drove back to the lab, going into her office to cool down. Free to roam now that there wasn't a target possibly nailed on my back, I spent some twenty minutes wandering through the Paleontology exhibit while snacking on some fifty-cent chips from the vending machine. I think I saw Naomi giving a tour to an elderly couple, a news reporter, a tween who was probably doing a research report, and a girl who filed her nails while her nerdy boyfriend absorbed everything that passed out of Naomi's mouth. Well, not really the words; I mean, he was paying really close attention to Naomi, if you get my drift. Which makes him not only a lousy boyfriend, but also on my hit list. Sometimes when I get angry I imagine I have this whole village in my head and I torture the citizens ruthlessly until I feel better. That guy is going in the village, since he was ogling my friend's girlfriend. Well… sort-of-girlfriend, anyway.

After that, I got bored with the fossils and excavated materials and went back to the Medico-Legal lab. Although I was no longer under watch and had no particularly good reason to be there, the guards recognized me and let me into the lab. After standing around by the empty raised platform, I heard Angela's voice drift from her office and went up there.

"Try re-digitizing and resizing," Zach suggested. He was bent over slightly, looking at the monitor from over Angela's shoulder as she sat at her task chair.

"I did," Angela sighed, swiping rapidly at some hair that fell down by her face. "The extrapolation protocol got confused by the spread. Hey, you know Hodgins better than anybody else. So, why is he so bent out of shape about this banquet?"

"What makes you say that?"

Angela lifted her flashy red nails from the keyboard, taking the opportunity to rest her hands a moment. "Because every time someone mentions it, he starts snapping that rubber band around his wrist."

"No," Zach corrected. "I meant, what makes you think I know Hodgins better than anyone else?"

"You're roommates," Angela reminded him.

Zach paused for a moment, like he was deciding whether or not Angela's last statement had been completely serious or a joke. "I live above his garage."

"But you see a lot of each other."

"Not really."

"He drives you to work."

"I've never been up to the main house."

I raised my eyebrows, leaning against the door frame. Even though they weren't looking at me, I extended a hand to Zach. Go on. "The main house?" Angela repeated incredulously, swiveling her chair to see the graduate.

"It's at the opposite end of the driveway, on the other side of the tennis courts, across from the pond."

My jaw dropped for a few seconds before I realized it and closed my mouth. My surprise melted away when I recalled one of my first thoughts about Hodgins. So the surname wasn't just coincidence. "Anything on the identity of Sanders' abductor?" I asked loudly, announcing my presence. Zach blinked and Angela's form jumped slightly. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."

Angela shook her head slowly. "I can't clear up this image any more than it is." She looked at Zach. "Tell Holly what you told me about living in Hodgins' garage."

"What's so fascinating about Hodgins' garage?" I turned my head to look at Booth, who had come up behind me. My attentive habits were slipping as the lab became more familiar to me. I'd give myself a mental lecture later. Booth mimicked my position, propping himself up against the doorframe with his lower arm.

Zach frowned slightly. "There's a bedroom, living room, kitchen, another bedroom, a den, two bathrooms-"

"Great," Booth interrupted, dismissing the younger male's recount. "Quite a garage. Now can we focus on the case?"

Angela ignored Booth. "How many cars does he have in that garage?"

"Including the antique ones?" Angela nodded. "About twelve. And a boat," Zach added as an afterthought.

Angela looked back at Booth and jerked her thumb at Zach, arching her eyebrows and lowering her chin slightly. "Zach has never seen the main house, because the tennis courts and the pond block the view."

I crossed my arms. "So he really is one of those Hodginses."

Zach looked to me and frowned, pursing his lips slightly as he tried to figure out what I meant. "Who are 'those' Hodginses?"

"You know, the Cantilever Foundation Hodginses?" I reiterated with a smirk. How was it that even his best friend didn't know that he was filthy rich because of a family organization, and that, as a result, he was practically everyone's boss?

"Oh my God," Angela gasped.

"The same Cantilever Group that generates more G.N.P. than Europe? That's the one we're talking about, right?" Booth clarified quickly, trying not to get left behind again.

"Single biggest donors to the Jeffersonian," I said with a self-satisfied nod. Everyone's shock was appropriate and amusing.

Booth started laughing as he smiled. He pointed at Angela with a ridiculous glint in his eyes. "That makes Hodgins your boss!"

Angela exhaled, licking her lips and re-adjusting her hair again. "What do you guys even talk about when he drives you to work?"

Zach shrugged slightly, looking chastened, like Angela was mad he hadn't told her about Hodgins' wealth before now. "I mostly sleep. Hodgins mostly yells at the radio."

The captivation of the conversation wore off of Booth and the agent refocused on the loop video on Angela's computer. Booth snapped his fingers for attention and pointed at the monitor. "If you can't see the guy's face, maybe you can grab a reflection."

I did a quick once-over of the image. Glass doors of the mall, shop windows, shining tiles reflecting light, and of course, that businessman's glasses… there were several reflective surfaces, all at various angles of Charles Sanders and the secret kidnapper. It could work. If several separate images could be drawn from those locations corresponding with the angles from the figure, then a computer could input those reflections and logically fill in the gaps. The results could either be way off, or close enough to get a hit. Either way, it wouldn't take long and was worth a try.

Angela tilted her head as she settled her fingers back on the keyboard, biting her tongue slightly as she set to work with a program analysis of the video frames. Zach looked from the computer to Booth in astonishment. "That's a workable idea," he concluded, still shocked.

Booth shoved his hands in his pockets, looking uncertainly from Zach, to Angela, and to the monitor again. He didn't even bother looking to me, as it was pretty obvious by my muffled snickers that I was trying not to laugh at the sheer dumbstruck emotions the others clearly displayed at Booth's sudden progress. Booth frowned nervously. "Well, I'd say thanks… you know, if you didn't say it like it was some kind of a miracle."

Booth went to get Brennan and Zach to collect Hodgins while Angela gathered the image up. Angela leaned forwards in her seat, attentive to the job. "Alright, so you point out some surfaces – preferably flat – that could give a reflection of the kidnapper's face, and I'll be able to digitize and repolarize the collective images while the computer interprets the reconstructive markers and fills in the spaces."

I blinked once, taking the information in stride. Find reflective surfaces, point them out, let her do the rest, and then try to remember if I've seen the resulting image. Simple enough. I pointed at the monitor over Angela's shoulder at several locations. "Right there, the glass doors, then the floor-" I motioned to some tile that shone under the light fixtures. Light could easily reflect down there and it was at a corresponding angle with the abductor's face. "And then, what about that man's glasses?"

Angela found the frames' coordinates and set red boxes around them, then set them to scan and enhance. Then the frame shrank to one side of the screen and the enhanced pictures of the blurry reflections were moved to the black half of the monitor, which quickly lit up white. I watched, entertained, as the pieces fit together. The program took the composites and created a virtual mold, then matched the depths and realigned the fragmented pictures with the outline. The computer then logically filled in the spaces with the same skin tone and edited to paste the whole thing together seamlessly.

The portrait itself was still just a little blurry. Angela realized this and set out on a quest to explain. "By polarizing the image, the computer can interpret the spaces between the white and the dark gaps and fill in the missing pieces."

The contrasts evened out so they were no longer even noticeable. What remained was a splotchy recreation of the abductor's face. I could tell right away that they were an adolescent. "That doesn't look like an adult." The jawline wasn't defined and the cheeks were round with the normal baby fat of a child. Now, there's a line between how I classify adults and children.

While technically, I'm still a minor, physically I'm about as grown up as I'm going to get (maybe I'll get taller, but I'm already pretty tall so it's all good with me if I don't). While there are the changes in looks that someone would get with age, I could pass off being eighteen or nineteen. Maybe even twenty. I don't have any baby fat left and, while my bones aren't as well defined as a male's, they're still more prominent than in a child. The skeletal sutures and bone fusion have all completed as much as they need to be to be comparable to a legal adult's. With children, though, there's so much development yet to be had that it doesn't even matter what the law says. They're obviously children, without having had the years of muscle endurance or calorie burning to grow out of the adolescent image.

Angela nodded, chewing on her bottom lip. "No, it doesn't. Here – when I repolarize the image…" she trailed off, acting on her own suggestion and running the computer.

The photograph came clear, the sharp, strong blur fading as the picture enhanced and the quality wasn't too badly distorted. My head fell to my shoulder in surprise. "Oh my God!" I exclaimed, taking a step back. "That's Shawn Cook – that's Charles Sanders' foster brother."

Through the one-way mirror, I carefully watched Shawn as he drew on the interrogation room table. He'd asked for water and I'd not seen a problem with it, so I'd given his child services advocate the glass of refreshment to take in with him. Shawn had dipped his finger in the water and then let the liquid drip onto the table so that he could draw on the surface without making too much of a mess. Also in the room was the advocate, who was patiently scanning through the causes for Shawn's interrogation, and Booth, who was preparing to lead the questioning. With me in the observation room was Brennan and a juvenile prosecutor with her long hair up in a high ponytail.

"Where were you taking Charlie, Shawn?" Booth softly asked, keeping his hands to himself. That had been under my instruction; when he had not seriously asked for any advice with foster kids before going in (Brennan commented on his 'people skills'), I'd told him to not be hands-y or touch-y. I was surprised he was actually going through with it.

Shawn didn't look up from the tabletop and the water drops. "I brought him to the mall to see David."

Booth nodded understandingly. "I know you brought him to the mall. But we got a picture of you, leading him out of the mall." Booth slid the printed model from Angela's computer over the top of the table to Shawn, who barely glanced up at it, wanting to distract himself with his entertaining drink (or paint, however you want to think of it).

"Have you seen much of this kind of thing?" Brennan asked, her arms crossed defensively. It was obvious she'd had experience in the system. I knew already from Booth talking to Cullen that her parents had disappeared, so it made complete sense.

The prosecutor sent a half bemused, half disappointed sideways glance at the authoress. "I'm a juvenile prosecutor. I wish I could say kids killing kids was rare."

"Where were you taking him, Shawn?" Booth asked again.

Shawn's big eyes finally dragged themselves up to Booth, but he didn't answer the question. "When can I talk to Margaret?"

"After you answer my questions," Booth lied. If I didn't know any better, I'd consider believing him.

"Can he do that?" Brennan demanded, her voice going high again. "Can he really lie to a kid?"

"We're after a child killer, Dr. Brennan." The prosecutor shook her head slightly, the ends of her hair brushing over her neck. "If the child advocate in there doesn't complain, I sure as hell won't."

Brennan raised her eyebrows and uncrossed her arms, one flying to point out the advocate and the other falling to her side in exasperation. "Well what's the point of having a child advocate if he doesn't advocate for the child?"

The prosecutor stopped short, giving Brennan and long, withering look. "I get the impression that you're a little confused as to what side you're on, Dr. Brennan," she said coldly.

I inclined my chin, going to Brennan's defense and coolly staring down at the third woman. "I get the impression you don't understand our emotions. Don't try to pretend, it's just infuriating. I have no ethical issues with violence."

"What emotions?" The prosecutor asked, innocent-eyed and fake. "I haven't seen you show any."

I glared, but stopped myself. A rise was exactly what the prosecutor wanted; she wanted an excuse to make me leave, because she knew that I would do all I could to help Shawn, and that would make her job harder. "Maybe you're just not very attentive," I said sharply instead.

I looked back to Shawn. He looked so lost and sad. Booth looked frustrated, and I almost face palmed for thinking that he'd be able to get something out of Shawn on his first try. I raked my hand through my hair and closed my eyes briefly before steeling myself. I coached my breathing for a moment and plastered on a small smile before moving to the interrogation room door and opening it to step through.

Booth, as I approached the table, was trying a new, more sensitive tactic. He untucked the side of his shirt and pulled it up slightly, showing a pale scar along his side. "Shawn, you know what that is?"

"A scar?" The child asked. Although he clearly knew what it was, he sounded like he thought it was a trick question.

Booth let go of his shirt hem and started to tuck it back into his trousers. "Yeah. I got it when I was playing soldier with my brother, Jared."

Shawn blinked owlishly before speaking. I quietly pulled out the chair across from Shawn and sat down calmly, trying to resist the urge to stick my tongue out at the one-way mirror. So much for the prosecutor trying to get me away from this case. Now I was directly in it. "Did it hurt?" Shawn asked with a little voice.

Booth nodded. "Yeah, it hurt. But… it was an accident, so it's okay now. You got any scars?"

So, so many. I'm really glad you aren't asking me. Shawn didn't reply, just lowered his eyes to his own arm and started to fumble with the shirt sleeve, struggling slightly to pull it down. A couple of round marks, a centimeter in diameter at most, made a little constellation on his arm. My fake smile slipped as I saw the injuries. Cigarette burns. "My dad did it with a cigarette," Shawn said quietly.

I swallowed and had to clench my fists under the table to keep my temper in check. I felt my nails dig into my skin, pinching painfully, and I focused on that. "He shouldn't have done that," I said sympathetically, calmly. "I'm sorry you had to go through that, Shawn."

"Margaret didn't do anything like that," Shawn said next, looking out to the door hopefully. "I love Margaret."

I couldn't reply, too choked up by the little boy's affection and loyalty. Booth set one of his hands on the table, showing Shawn that he was staying in place. "What I need to know is if Charlie had some kind of an accident," Booth said, hushed, like he was sharing secrets and trying to relate. Shawn just went back to staring at the table stubbornly, but he didn't keep playing in the water this time. "Shawn?"

But Shawn wasn't about to talk. Not now.

A/N: Note to ElysiumPhoenix: Thank you! As for the dialogue, I actually use transcripts when I'm writing - a lot of times, clues the character needs are in the dialogue, so whenever I write something based on TV I either find an online transcript or go through and make my own. It takes a lot of extra time, so I'm glad that it's actually helping!