As the methamphetamine high wore off, I was getting somewhat of a hangover as Angela, Brennan, Hodgins, and I all examined the mummified corpse on the exam table. I felt like someone was hitting a sledgehammer against my temples in an attempt to make my skull as difficult to identify as Cleo Eller's.

Hodgins was laughing at the three of us mirthfully. "Crystal meth is made from cold medicine, lye, and the strike pads from matchbooks." He knocked the bottom of a stack of paper against the steel edge of the table to straighten the papers as he smirked, enjoying himself quite a bit too much. "The body was not designed to deal with that kind of assault."

"So I'm finding out," I nodded, yawning tiredly and pushing away the strain on my weary muscles in favor of making accurate discoveries.

Hodgins smiled more sympathetically. "Chamomile tea?" He offered. "It's very soothing."

"No, I just need your results," Brennan denied.

Hodgins scoffed. "How about a stick to pry the monkey off of your backs?" He suggested, getting leveled with a dangerous glare from Angela, Brennan, and I. Hodgins flinched back and let the subject drop in favor of spending more time alive.

Angela was resting in a chair with her elbow resting on the table and the heel of her palm supporting her head. There were dark circles under her eyes. "Are you all sure you need me here right now?"

Brennan huffed slightly. "Payback for showing me 'the good life.'"

The security system beeped once as Booth slid his relatively-new pass card and bounded up the few stairs simply. "Okay!" He exclaimed, unnaturally cheerfully – oh, wait. He was acting normal. It was me that was hung over from chemicals that had the potential to kill me stone dead. "How's King Tut doing?"

"Why must you refer to our victim by the term used to identify an ancient Egyptian King? And if it's simply because you insist on being a silly jokester, then maybe you should at least say the full name." I asked, complaining just to relieve the tension building in my head.

"Because I don't know the full name," Booth said, spreading his arms like I as giving him my best attack. "No one knows the full name."

"King Tutankhamen," Brennan, Hodgins, and I all said in synchrony, giving Booth incredulous looks.

Hodgins shook it off. "The meth found in his lungs and nasal passages matches the meth that totally juiced Angela, Xena, and the good doctor here," he smirked at Brennan as he passed his report to her over the modern mummy.

"Can you please keep it clinical?" Brennan asked, her own hangover making her a bit snappish as she grabbed the report.

"He died of an overdose?" Booth guessed, trying to scrape up what he could from our immature, drug-induced squabbling.

Brennan started to open up the report, but her exhaustion made her clumsy and several pages fell out of her grasp and fluttered to the floor. Booth bent down to pick them up for her and I corrected him while he did so. "Actually, asphyxiation. Meth clogged up his lungs and he suffocated, in terms simple enough for you to understand the first time."

Booth blinked. "So he overdosed with his meth behind the wall," he repeated.

Hodgins shone his little LED pen light at the mummy's sunken cheek. "The space was too narrow for him to squeeze through. He got stuck, the bag broke, and when he gasped for air, he inhaled and died instantaneously."

"Dry air convection behind the wall removed most of the moisture from his body," Brennan completed Hodgins' recreation of the events. "Evidence suggests that he was in the wall for approximately six weeks."

Booth rubbed his hands together, hearing her, but also distracted by his observation of the corpse. "Didn't he used to have hands?" He asked, pointing at a severed limb with a disgruntled expression.

I groaned lowly in my throat. "Oh, you're going to regret you asked."

Five minutes later, Brennan, Booth, and I were in one of the smaller lab rooms. It was cluttered with equipment that had been sterilized and put away neatly, but I wasn't too interested. If I focused on looking at one thing for too long, everything kind of blurred. The severed hand of our mummified body was floating in a water-filled jar with the top screwed tightly on.

I held up the jar with a slightly dizzy smile. "Hey, look. Someone, take a picture and post it online. Tell the internet I got it from Cardiff's BBC base. You know, Doctor Who? The Christmas Invasion, Utopia, Journey's End? And the metacrisis Doctor? I mean, one David Tennant was hot enough, with two, I was surprised no televisions were lit on fire!"

Brennan shook her head at me very slightly, looking up at Booth. "I don't understand what she's talking about."

Booth clapped his hands together sarcastically. "She's being a normal teenager and saying that an actor is very attractive while making references to a weird science fiction TV show."

"Oh. Angela does that a lot, too," Brennan said, nodding and smiling with relief that I wasn't going insane. If I ever go insane, I really hope I don't end up hearing drums in my head all of the time. Although, I have to hand it to John Simm (see what I did there?) – he pulled off the 'insane psychopath' act pretty damn well. The anthropologist took the hand-in-a-jar away from me and set it down on the counter, slowly trying to unscrew the lid. "They're easier to work with dismembered. I've rehydrated them so we can get some fingerprints," she explained to Booth as she pried the lid up carefully.

"Off of that?" Booth coughed, queasily grimacing.

"Yes," Brennan clarified calmly.

The scientist reached into the jar and lifted the hand up gingerly, taking care not to damage any of the tissue. Booth squeamishly looked away, averting his eyes obviously, and talking about something seemingly random. "Have you ever been to Costa Rica?"

Brennan talked distantly. "I was flown down once. They found a human skull twelve thousand years old." She worked the tips of her fingers under the severed point of the skin, loosening the ashen skin from the firm muscle tissue. I wanted to look away, but I couldn't for my own morbid fascination. "Why?"

Booth shrugged, staring deliberately up at the ceiling. Because it's just so fascinating, of course! "I'm finally getting some vacation time. I was going to head off on Thursday. I heard Costa Rica was beautiful."

"Yes," Brennan agreed. "There is fascinating wildlife. Lots of parrots." She began pulling lightly at the fingers and the loosened skin tissue began to slide off, like the seal from a band aid (which is a surprisingly accurate analogy).

Booth cringed, disapproval ringing in his tone. "Oh, I don't like parrots. People should really, really do all of the talking. Hey, maybe I should-" he chanced a glance at us to make sure we were paying attention, but lurched backwards and gagged as Brennan began to stretch the skin around her own hand, cautiously working her latex-glove-covered hand into the skin slip. "Oh, God! What are you doing?!"

Brennan didn't seem to find it odd, so I helpfully quipped, "Aztec soldiers would slay their opponents and then wear their skin over their own as bodysuits. Creepy but cool in an abhorrent way at the same time."

Booth's eyes fluttered shut. He looked sick. "I guess you won't be needing mittens for Christmas, huh, Bones?" Brennan ignored him, instead looking down at the fingerprint software. She pressed the skin slip's index finger against the screen and a green light glowed across the grid in a vertical line as it processed.

"Was there a match?" I asked, yawning widely and covering my mouth with the sleeve of my sweater.

Angela's screen opened a new window as the exhausted artist nodded, her head rocking a bit more than normal. "Yep. His name was Roy Taylor." The screen had a basic government profile and a driver's license photograph was highlighted underneath the facial profile. "Also known as Deejay Mount."

"I don't know who that is," Brennan said, beating me to it.

Angela's eyebrows went up, like she wasn't at all surprised. "Mount is one of the best deejays in D.C.. He used to play at the club. Everyone was wondering what happened to him… I guess his album will really take off after this."

I stifled another yawn. It was nearing five in the morning now and I couldn't believe my luck that Booth had agreed to have more paperwork filed, excusing me from my job again. Otherwise, I'd look like hell at work. Angela sent a concerned look at me. "Are you okay, sweetie?" She asked kindly. "I was just about to go sleep for a few hours. You can probably use the decontamination facilities to shower if you ask the security at the lab entrance for an escort to the chemical or autopsy labs. From there, there's not a passcode to get to the decontamination showers, and when you're done you can dry off and take a nap up on that other platform on the second level," she offered.

I blinked slowly. "Yeah," I said, nodding to myself. I asked Booth and Brennan if it was okay if I went and took care of myself for the next five hours (figure fifteen minutes to get to decontamination facilities from here and get a guard escort and towel, half an hour to shower and get all of the meth out of my hair, and another fifteen minutes to dry off and fall asleep, then four hours to sleep), and they said it was fine and they'd wake me up only in five hours unless there was an emergency. So I thanked Angela and took off (my hair was starting to get all nasty from the drugs).

At a little past ten, I woke up on my own from the rap music that I followed back to Brennan's office. I felt much more refreshed, not to mention clean, now that I was methamphetamine-free. Brennan was looking through files in her office while Booth hung out when I found them. "Angela said rap artists sometimes kill each other over their music," Brennan said matter-of-factly.

"Oh, of course," I said sensibly, getting their attention. I smirked. "People kill for less, and… well… Let's just say that, considering my social status and societal ranks, my intelligence being what it is is like a miracle." I know that that's probably not that accurate, but I'd met several deejays over my years, and none of them had been able to solve a system of linear equations. Or even know what the word 'antidisestablishmentarianism' meant.

Brennan nodded her head slightly with the music. "Listen," she instructed Booth and I, mildly entertained. "You can hear the alpha male asserting himself."

Booth made a face as he listened for a moment before repeating one of the most senseless and vulgar phrases he heard. "Of course… always a nice lyric."

Brennan lifted her lightweight jacket up from the back of her desk chair. "I'm going back to the club to meet the FBI forensics team." She switched a button on her CD player and the music stopped. "I'm getting facts. Holly, you are welcome to come with me."

"That's my cue," I said to Booth, shrugging.

I swear I could feel the FBI agent's eyes following me as I left, turning my back to him and following the anthropologist out of her office. Although not a word had been said as of yet about it, I knew Booth wouldn't just forget all of the marks he'd seen on me. I lied to him, said that that was the worst of it… and yet, still, anyone who's got a heart wouldn't be able to just stop thinking about it when someone they interacted with proved to them, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they'd been hurt, emotionally and physically marked, by people that swore to love and protect them.

Booth honestly didn't seem like the type of person to judge people on things out of their control, and I'm usually a pretty good judge of character. Still… that vulnerable side of me was something I tried to keep tucked away under a locked door at all costs, and that Booth now knew about it, and he'd possibly told others… it just didn't feel right.

"Was it fun coming to the club?" Zach asked. Like a normal person, he hadn't been in the lab at four in the morning. He was just now meeting us at the club with the forensics unit. We were all… ugh… in the wall, not far, but enough to be able to say we were 'in the wall,' trying to find evidence that could explain why the popular deejay thought that the wall was where the 'kool kidz' hung out. Personally, I think that if they spell 'cool kids' with a k and a z then they're more like the 'stupid kids', but whatever.

Zach was reaching in first, holding some sort of image scanner, and Brennan followed, carrying a screen that displayed the results of Zach's scans. I was staying a distance away from them both because I'd assured them that if a spider got on me, then they'd wish it was another dead body instead. The FBI agent (First, right?) was hovering, having a little more trouble fitting through with his broad frame. Zach was pretty small and Brennan and I were both women, so while it was pretty close quarters, it wasn't enough to induce claustrophobia.

"Oh, yes. I love being attacked by idiots, doused with meth that gives me hangover, and finding dead bodies. I can't wait to do it again sometime," I sighed sarcastically.

"It seems so primitive," Zach shared, moving slowly in case the scanner picked up anything. "Being in a crowd of strangers and gyrating to music."

"You've never danced?" Brennan looked to Zach in earnest surprise.

Zach shrugged. He didn't seem like he thought he was missing out on much. I couldn't say I disagreed. "I've been told I look like a marionette in a windstorm."

"You would have fit right in last night," Brennan chuckled.

Zach brightened and looked away from his scanner to look at his boss. "Really?"

Brennan ignored him, instead focusing on the screen from the scans. "There are footprints in the dirt, and termite shavings. Someone was on the other side of him."

Zach craned his neck down the side of the paneling. "Light," he reported. "This leads outside."

"We need to get inside that wall," Brennan told First, expecting him to do something about it.

"Or take it down," suggested a forensics man from the FBI's unit.

"That could possibly compromise evidence." I scowled at the adult in his thirties, at least. "Dude, I thought you were supposed to know what you're doing."

First puffed. "Take them in and show them around," he ordered, not willing to let his inhospitality towards a minor get in the way of a murder investigation.

And that is how, fifteen minutes later, I ended up walking in a wall with Brennan and Zach. This is definitely not a highlight of my life.

"Can we conform to as much forensic protocol as possible?" The forensics man asked pleadingly as I picked up a stick and swatted at a spider's web before continuing.

"Can we play the 'be quiet' game?" I asked in turn. "It's where all of the CSIs have to be quiet and the person who talks first has to go sit in a corner and think about their life thus far."

"We're better at this than you think." Zach sighed at being underestimated once again, but he slowed down slightly to further appease the persistent science agent.

Scuttling and clicking noises made a silent shiver race down my back. It sounded like rodents. "You know what those are?" The forensics guy asked me smugly.

"Rats," I guessed, before realizing that he was probably trying to unnerve me in retribution for being a jerk. "You've got to be kidding. You're trying to scare me with rats? How lame do you think I am? Have you read the papers at all?" I wished the papers would just shut up, but they weren't. After Charles Sanders' investigation, they had found out that I had been the arresting 'officer' of the murderer, and had yet another field day. Luckily for me, not many of the people in my neighborhood were that interested in the paper, but I had no doubt that if a reporter saw me, I'd have a sudden urge to sling him or her into a wall.

I pulled my arms in towards my sides uncomfortably as the dark got more intense. I clicked on my own flashlight and shone it in front of me, lighting up Brennan's back, and then looked to either side. "Careful with the equipment, Zach!" I called helpfully. "The walls are getting narrower." If I stood up completely straight and parallel to the walls, my sweater would graze against the walls.

Zach was holding both a scanner and his own little flashlight, which had so far been illuminating anything that I could trip over. I've got a great sense of depth perception and spatial awareness, so if there was anything large enough to bother me, I remembered where it was and measured how long it took for us to move past it once Zach's light was no longer on it. Zach slowed without warning and I nearly bumped into Brennan, who had to catch herself sharply on the walls to keep from knocking over Zach. Zach straightened out and shone the flashlight at the walls on either side of him. "There are footprints. And marks on the wall, like it's been scraped."

I blinked and moved my flashlight to the wall, angling it so the light ran past the side. I was surprised that we'd missed the evidence quite literally right next to us, but, then again, we'd been looking towards the ground. The metallic crimson of dried blood smeared the wall to my right. "Blood! We can try to get some scrapings and get them to Dr. Hodgins for DNA analysis."

"I see something," Brennan called, angling her flashlight down by some pipes. I couldn't see what was catching her attention because we were at different angles. "Can I retrieve?"

The forensics guy wasn't very frosty anymore; I think he actually shivered as he looked away from the blood on the wall. "Yeah," he said, knocked off his game by the disturbing picture beginning to form. He handed Brennan an evidence bag from a dispenser around his waist.

Brennan turned it inside out and used it to pick up whatever it was she'd seen before pulling the seal opening back over it and zipping it tightly shut. I shone my light through the translucent bag. It was a little charm shaped like a heart with dried blood on it.

"Ooh," I said, smirking. "Looks like someone may have just unintentionally given us a means of identifying another person."

Brennan had the charm she'd found resting in a shallow grey tin for examination. The better light showed that the charm had ripped off flesh, not just been the unlucky makeshift bandage for a cut, and appeared to be jewelry. I didn't know what kind for sure; I'm not big on the jewelry front, but I had next to no doubt Angela would be able to identify it.

"So apparently there's a rivalry between Mount and this guy, a deejay by the name of Rules." Booth said, not paying much attention to Brennan's little jewelry examination. I leaned against the rail casually, my back angled at the wall of the domed-shape Medico-Legal lab.

"He was at the club last night," I recalled, sharing conversationally. "I remember because I thought about how he probably spelled it with a Z just to seem cool, when really it just makes him seem illiterate. Did you bring him in for questioning?"

"Ah, no," Booth said, looking up at the ceiling. I don't blame him, it's just so fascinating. "I don't have enough yet. I go in too soon, then he could run."

Angela smiled, not too affected by the morbid lab as she slid her keycard and joined us on the exam platform. Seeing Brennan squinting and working, she veered over to her friend to curiously watch over her shoulder. "Wow. Now that is a beautiful piece. Is it zirconium or a diamond?"

Brennan frowned down at the charm. "I'm a bit more focused on the dried blood and flesh at the moment."

Angela sighed like now would be a very good time to declare 'woe is me.' She looked to Booth suddenly, her eyes sparkling lively. "Do you buy Tessa jewelry?" She asked, prodding around happily.

Booth rolled his eyes to mask discomfort with annoyance. "I really don't want to talk about that right now."

Angela nodded, humming in understanding. "Too much of a commitment," she said sympathetically. "I just thought, because you two were going away-"

"You're going away somewhere? With Tessa?" I asked Booth suddenly, taken by surprise. I'm surprised that I didn't lose my balance and fall right back down backwards over the railing and off of the platform. I lifted my hands to make frantic 'wait' gestures. "Seriously? You are going on vacation with a beautiful, sexy lawyer?" A stupid grin grew on my face. "Something tells me you'll want to get this wrapped up before the weekend officially starts."

Booth glared at the floor. "Do you have anything yet?" He demanded crossly of Brennan, sulking.

Brennan exhaled slowly, leaning back and uncurling her body. "Given the rate of air convection and the degree of dehydration of the flesh, I'd say they were there at the same time."

Angela cringed, looking down at the charm with pity. "It must hurt like hell to get that thing ripped out of your belly button."

Brennan looked up at Angela, put off. "I thought it was an earring."

"Look at the size of the stud!" Angela clucked. "I had one of these before they became totally Miami divorcee."

Hodgins triumphantly clanked a glass jar on the table by Brennan's tin, grinning, satisfied, as he slipped the security card back down the neckline of his lab coat. "Good news. I was able to pull some particulates."

"Uh, are those…" Booth squirmed uneasily.

"Eyeballs?" Hodgins supplied with a devilish smirk at Booth's discomfort. "Yeah. Two types of foreign materials were in the eyes – low density polyethylene residue and methamphetamine crystals."

"Polyethylene?" I repeated, narrowing my eyes in concentration. "The bag the meth was in?" Hodgins nodded.

Brennan flagged down another forensics technician and held her examination tin gently but firmly, careful not to drop it. "This can be cleaned now," she said, handing off the tray before returning to the examination table with Roy Taylor's body.

Angela sent a wistful look at the technician as he carried the jewelry off for cleaning and inconclusive analysis. "Yep, that's a real diamond." She looked back to Booth. "Hey, why don't you get a belly button ring? That's not that much of a commitment."

"Yeah, that's great," Booth said shortly, although it was clear he was just saying it so the matter would be dropped.

"The inside of the lips were damaged by the teeth. This was not an accidental inhalation," Brennan said, her voice carrying surprise at the realization. "The methamphetamine was pushed against his face with force. Someone was trying to smother him."

"Which would explain how the meth got into his eye. I mean, I'm not a druggie or anything, but I'm pretty sure that that is not how you get high." I said smartly.

"So he didn't O.D.," Angela confirmed, sighing down at the body sadly. "He was murdered."

"So we need to find out who owns that belly button ring." Booth said, relieved that now we had a solid lead to follow.

Angela leaned over the technician's shoulder, watching him carefully clean the heart-shaped charm patiently, then brightened. "Hey, this ring's got an engraving. It says 'Luv Rules.'"

Hodgins quirked an eyebrow at Booth. "Well, at least you know who to ask first."

Hip hop has never really been my favorite type of music, although I don't particularly dislike it. There are few genres of music I actually dislike; if I don't like a song, it's probably more because of the lyrics. But there was something irritating about the song playing on medium volume in the deejay's studio/loft as we stepped in. I guess I can just attribute it to the meth hangover's brutal treatment of my head.

I looked around. The studio was sort of plain. There were some shelves around the plainly painted walls with bookends supporting thin cased CDs and a counter with a little bell to ring for service, but there was no one actually in the shopping area. The floor, linoleum tile, was a dark tan that was a kind of nice color to look at.

Towards the back, behind the counter, was a door marked 'personnel.' I shrugged and approached, making my way nimbly around the counter and trying not to focus on many different things at once. I have a feeling it'll be a few hours until I can do that again. Brennan started browsing the music CD selection and Booth tapped a few keys on the cash register while I knocked. "Hello! Visitors!"

"Yeah. It's open," a masculine voice lazily called from inside.

I reached down to the doorknob and twisted, pushing forwards harder than necessary. "Would you look at that, it really is open," I said to the figure who was in the rotating chair. He wore jeans that were way too loose and his feet were kicked up on his desk. He was looking over the back of a CD and almost completely ignoring the three of us.

"FBI Special Agent Booth," Booth said authoritatively, agreeing with the intimidation tactic.

The man slowly brought his legs down off of the desk and sat up, turning to angle himself to face us. Booth passed me and went to the man's side, his arms crossed, while Brennan and I hung out near the door. The guy scoffed when he looked past Booth and saw us. "What, is the FBI recruiting from America's Top Model now?"

"I'm a forensic anthropologist at the Jeffersonian," Brennan corrected, not grasping the thinly-veiled slight.

I, however, got it. "I'm in allegiance with the Jeffersonian. Why, hoping for a date to America's Got Talent?" Brennan gave me a look of confusion. I just shook my head slightly at her, conveying that I was defending us. She nodded slightly, understanding that it hadn't been a completely random comment.

"They work for the FBI," Booth said sharply.

The deejay, whose face matched the picture of Deejay Rules/Rulz (whatever) nodded, not giving an air of unease. "Yeah, I can live with that."

"Dr. Brennan and Miss Kirkland also discovered that Roy Taylor was murdered," Booth continued.

Rules just kept reading the copyright information in the fine print at the bottom of the case. "So?"

Booth crossed his arms, shaking his head very slightly. Who says 'so' when you say someone they knew was murdered? Apparently this guy. "So," Booth emphasized, "Murder is whacked, see, because those are the rules, Rules."

Rules chuckled softly to himself, standoffishly not bothering to respect us enough to look up from the CD case. "Well maybe he had it coming to him."

"So you and Roy Taylor didn't get together to shoot hoops, I take it," I said, rolling my eyes. Would it kill him to show a little respect? We didn't want to be here, either, and if he was completely cooperative we'd probably be gone in five to ten minutes.

"That sucker ran me down," Rules laughed derisively. "Tried to slam me in one of his tracks, and ain't nobody do that."

"You have horrible grammar," Brennan informed him, making a face of distaste.

"Sounds like he was pretty awesome. It's a worthwhile tactic to insult in a popular song," I acknowledged. "So what happens when they do knock you off your high pedestal, your holiness?" I asked, smothering my voice in sarcasm.

Rules gave me a long look, like he was measuring me up. On one hand, I was working with the "feds." On the other hand, I obviously understood how things worked for his social class via firsthand experience. "I take a piece of them," he finally answered, drawing his eyes off of me. I felt somewhat violated by how long he'd been staring. Creep. "I got in his face one night at the Basement and I told him to disappear, and I haven't seen him since, 'cause he knew to follow the Rules."

I sighed loudly. That joke has to be funny to begin with in order to get old!

Booth laughed lowly, although it was so obviously fake it was nearly funny. "And maybe your girlfriend just made sure that your problem went away." He lifted the heart charm up in a sealed evidence bag for the deejay to take in.

"That ain't my woman no more. I kicked her sorry ass out months ago," Rules dismissed.

"And what is her name?" I demanded, getting fed up. I strode over to his spinning chair, grasped the back firmly, and yanked it to the side. The chair spun and Rules was jerked around to face us. I used my foot to stop the chair in place once I was satisfied with its position. "Look, Romeo, I'm not sure you understand what's happening here. We're what you'd call feds. You're what we call a murder suspect. So when this sort of thing happens, the murder suspect behaves himself and answers our questions with at least fifty percent of the respect that our colleagues give us, or else I get angry and start slapping them around a bit. Now, to be in this business, no matter your illiteracy, you still must understand the way crime works. Someone was killed, and you're going to answer our questions or we'll bring you in for questioning in a much less hospitable environment. If you don't want to answer, well, then, lawyer up, but have the decency to look at us when you insult us. There aren't any hip hop concerts in prison, so take my advice and do as you're told."

"Her name was Eve Warren," Rules said, looking up at me almost languidly. I glared back at him. "What's yours?"

Oh, no. He's one of those guys, that think that a girl threatening them is hot. "I will destroy you. Slowly. What was Eve doing with deejay Mount?"

"Take a guess," Rules scoffed. "I guess it was just his turn."

"Yet she kept your ring."

"It's a diamond. Why would she go get rid of that?"

"Where would she be now?"

"Probably ripping somebody else off. That girl don't care 'bout nobody but herself. You know she got a kid? She don't care about her, neither, just let her brother shoulder that. Bitch."

"What happened to your hand?" Brennan interrupted. I took several steps back to Brennan's side now that Rules was cooperating. The intimidation factor rarely fails me. Rules' wrist was in a supporting cast that had been concealed by his sleeve until I'd started jerking him around. Brennan had noticed before I had.

"I got shot through the wrist a few years ago," Rules answered straightly. Good dog.

Brennan tilted her head, taking in the position and style of the cast. "Shattered the lower radius and the pisiform?"

"Yeah. I got some nerve damage, too," Rules added offhandedly.

Booth shot Brennan a look. He clearly wanted to know why it was important, and thought that Brennan was straying off topic. But he wasn't going to tell her off in front of the rude deejay; that would ruin the 'Good Cop-Bad Cop' that I had started, where if he behaved he was given space and patience, but if he didn't, then he'd get told off by me. Brennan caught the look and extended her arm toward Rules as if further displaying him to Booth. "It's impressive!"

Rules stood up hopefully. "I got shot in the back and through the leg too, you want to see the scars?" One of his hands fisted around the hem of his shirt.

"Leave the clothes on," I ground out, resisting the urge to hit my face with my hand.

"Thanks anyway," Booth said, moving to the side and back towards the door. He made eye contact with me and I inclined my chin to show I understood; we were leaving before things got bad, so if we needed to question the deejay again, he wouldn't be hostile. "Let us know if you hear from Eve."

"I like this music," Brennan told me softly, her head bobbing slightly to the drumbeat of the hip-hop drifting from the speakers.

"The CDs weren't very expensive," I told her helpfully. Her eyes darted to Booth, who was halfway out of the lobby, to a shelf of music CDs.

"Okay, how about this? Deejay Mount trusted Eve because they were sleeping together, so she meets him in the wall, takes the drugs, kills him for Rules, and then he takes off."

Brennan smirked. "You should write fiction," she told him, not amused by the speculation.

"What?" Booth's jaw dropped, affronted. "It's reasonable!"

"It's not based on evidence. It's conjecture."

"Look, I'm positing a scenario. We've been through this before!"

I sighed quietly to myself, watching the city of Washington D.C. fly by outside the window of Booth's SUV. It seemed like our vehicle – No, Booth's vehicle; I won't be around much longer – had its own little storm cloud of misery hanging above it. Everyone outside (the cute couples sharing April ice cream, the kids skateboarding to and from a park, and the seniors playing checkers or bird watching or supervising children) was having a good day, while I was in here, listening to Booth and Brennan argue pointlessly, just because they didn't see eye to eye. Booth wasn't a man of science; it didn't take a fool to see that. Brennan was empirical and her life revolved around facts and trust in her friendships when she went out on a limb. Sometimes they got along because they were united in the goal to save lives; but when they didn't, they argued over the smallest things, and it wasn't pretty.

"Yes, and it always seems to be a waste of time," Brennan argued patiently. "Now, finding a marker on a bone, on the other hand-"

"You know, I think I need a vacation," Booth interrupted, taking deep breaths. His knuckles were white as he held on tightly to the steering wheel. "I think you do, too."

Brennan laughed at the sheer incredulity of Booth's suggestion. "Well, I'm not the one who's snippy."

"Snippy?" Booth chuckled derisively. "What are you, seventy?"

"I see her point," I mumbled.

"I think you should find a nice, relaxing place to go on that vacation." Booth groaned as Brennan's calm demeanor allowed her to quickly transition from bickering to considering ways for Booth to relax and leisurely loosen up. "Somewhere where you can get a massage, and maybe do some yoga."

"I don't do yoga," Booth denied flatly. "Pushups, sit ups, pull ups, that's what I do."

Brennan took this as a type of question. "Yes, but that's more cardiovascular. Yoga deals more with-"

"Why are we talking about this?" Booth questioned, moaning in boredom.

"Because you're tense."

"Because we're talking."

"Well, that's rude," I shared my opinion, but no one seemed to care.

Booth reached over to the radio and hit the on button, then changed the settings from FM to CD. Hip hop with a heavy bass line started to flow out of the stereo system. Booth blinked down at the system in confusion, glanced back at the road, and then sent an accusatory look at Brennan. "You switched my music!" He sounded like this was a felony that he couldn't believe she would dare to commit.

Ugh. Boys and their toys.