I sat on a stool behind the cameras, looking to the front of the TV filming set and watching in interest. I kicked my legs lazily and looked around at the camera crew. I was sitting close enough to watch them and catch detail but far enough away so that people didn't need to rush around me and I wasn't in view of any of the cameras. On the set, Brennan sat in a chair at a slight angle to famous movie producer, Penny Marshall. Although I didn't recognize her by name, she was clearly successful, as her clothes were designer, her purse was from a Vera Bradley hundred-dollar line, and I suspected her dangling earrings had real gems. Meanwhile, I wore jeans and a J.C. Penny's top under a jacket. What's that tell you?

It was kind of fun to watch as the interview began, going live. The spotlight flashed on and Brennan blinked, surprised. It was bemusing to watch her expressions, as she seemed kind of baffled by the entire spectacle of lights and the camera arrangements and the backdrop.

The interviewer was actually pretty nice. She was admittedly preppy and cheerful, but I suppose you have to be to be an interviewer for a major TV channel. It makes you seem more personable, apparently. She wore a black, formal suit and casual makeup and wore her blonde hair down, so she seemed both professional and friendly. She got me a bottle of water while I waited for Brennan to go through the interview.

"I'm here with Penny Marshall, one of the most prolific hyphenates in Hollywood, an actress, producer and director of such hit as A League of Their Own and Big," the interviewer said with a great smile at the camera, introducing the two people she'd be asking questions of. I'd not heard of either of the movies she mentioned. "Her latest project is Bred in the Bone, a thriller based on the best-selling novel by crime-fighting anthropologist, Dr. Temperance Brennan." She motioned with one hand to Brennan, who still seemed like she was more interested in the use of all of the equipment than the actual interview. "Okay, so how did this all come together?"

"I have no idea," Brennan answered truthfully, looking at the cameras curiously rather than the hostess. This elicited a moment of uncertain silence from all three of the women on camera.

Penny picked up the silence, knowing better than Brennan that publicity is important for image and production. "Well, my brother Gary gave me the book, and I liked it, and then this whole bidding war started, and I usually don't get into that kind of thing, but in this case…" she trailed off, as it was pretty obvious what had happened from that point on.

"A bidding war?" The interviewer repeated brightly in excitement. "That's got to be a thrill for a beginning authoress!" She prompted Brennan subtly to say something.

Brennan didn't quite get the memo. "I – wasn't actually there," she said, looking between the interviewer and I, and I realized she was trying to see what I thought she should do.

The interviewer took this in stride, and to her credit, she was good at making fast, non-awkward transitions. "You must be a big fan of Penny's films. Which one is your favorite?"

I made a thumbs-up motion at this for Brennan to see. Yes, go along with it. Brennan looked back to the hostess with more confidence. "I enjoyed her humorous treatment of the time-space paradox."

Cue awkward silence. Well, she didn't mean for it to happen…

The interviewer took a moment, but she finally got it and thought that it was a joke. She laughed and pointed to Penny, saying the name of the movie Big.

Penny looked at Brennan and smiled warmly. "That's very funny," she complimented, also thinking that Brennan had actually been telling a joke. "Time-space paradox," she repeated, amused.

"Penny, who is going to write the script?" The hostess asked.

Brennan's attention snapped from the interviewer to the producer. "Don't I get to do that?" She asked, genuinely confused.

Penny glanced at her. "We'll talk," she promised.

The interview was interrupted by the shrill ringing of a phone, and even though it's annoying to watch when that happens on TV, this time I was actually relieved. Brennan's really the best person ever in my opinion, but she isn't the most socially apt, and even though she had been genuine in what she said, she'd unintentionally made the interview a bit awkward.

Both Penny and Brennan got their cell phones from their pockets, and the hostess now looked a bit stressed. To be fair, she wasn't showing it much. It turned out to have been Brennan's phone, and she answered it, raising it to her ear as she looked over at the main cameraman. "Cut. Stop. Whatever you say," she ordered, and the producer looked over at the interviewer, who shrugged. Brennan listened to the person through the phone. "Well, I want to come with you." She pushed her phone against her shoulder to block her voice from passing through the line. "I have to go, because we have a suspect, and I have to go," she repeated, getting up from her seat and passing between the other two people on live film.

I smiled apologetically to both women as I jumped up and followed after Brennan. I would have said something, but I didn't want my voice broadcasting across America. No thank you.

While Brennan went back to the hotel room to put on a change of clothes that wasn't particular to a TV studio, I went and took a taxi to the hotel Booth was visiting. We'd arranged the night before that I would ask around if anyone had known anyone named Rachel, since Bardue's agency sort of rents out hotels specifically for their purpose sometimes, and Booth had established that they'd be on the roof, drinking wine. Very nice, Booth. Way to go.

I found Booth right away, but he was having a serious conversation with the girl he was talking to – her hair was a soft brown and she wore a bikini. Her nails were painted red and had a white spot on each where there might have been a sort of gem or something (Why does that design seem familiar?) and she wore pretty brown and green earrings, so I figured that that was who Booth had been assigned to see. Seeing as the girl looked devastated and Booth was completely solemn, I chose not to bother them, since he had probably already dropped the bomb.

I gathered up my patience and then walked forward to a group of girls who were sitting at the roof bar, thinking that that was as good of a place to start as any.

I walked up to them. "Excuse me," I said, interrupting their conversation about a movie that about half of them had already seen. They looked to me, and about three out of five seemed irritated, while one looked sympathetic and apologetic, and the other just looked surprised. I wished now probably more than ever that I had some sort of identification card to flash, like a government badge or lab security clearance pass, because it would get their attention in a better way. "My name is Holly Kirkland. I'd like to ask you all a few questions."

A blonde girl looked over at her friend. "What do you think?" She asked, sounding like she really didn't care about what I was asking.

"No, I don't think she's quite there yet."

The blonde woman looked back to me. "You should wait a few years, honey," she said, and even though the term was usually an endearment, it seemed more scathing than it should have been.

I should wait a few years – what the hell do they think I'm asking them about?!

I had a sudden urge to just slink back to the corner of the roof and wait for Booth to finish with his conversation, but that wasn't very helpful, and the reason they keep bringing me along is because of my abilities to get information from people (and to translate from science to layman's terms). Not that manipulation, intimidation, and lying are very good ways to get information, but they work, and it's not like people are going to give me information that incriminates them just because I ask politely.

"No, no," I said quickly. "No, I mean I'd like to ask if you know a woman named Rachel!"

"You'd need to be a bit more specific," the brown-haired woman who had seemed sympathetic had been the only one giving me true attention.

"Rachel Ashaunce?" I said, repeating the name that we'd gotten from our interrogations. "She worked for Aphrodite Escorts."

"I might have seen her around," the brunette said. "Tall, pretty, white skinned?"

"Yes," I said, although that wasn't a very good description. Since we don't know what she looked like for sure because of all of those god-forsaken plastic surgeries, at least the name rang a bell. "That sounds like her."

"Why are you looking for her?" The woman asked, but the others were back to their conversation and mostly ignoring me. I should have expected the question – a "call girl" is a fancy name for a prostitute of a higher rank. The difference is a thin line, but call girls usually work for agencies and therefore it's more of a positive association than the title of prostitute. The point of the matter is that they see many people who have connections and secrets that they may not want out in the open, and so they'd be wary of giving out information about someone in their community.

I invented a lie on the spot, almost ashamed of how easily I did so. "Rachel's my cousin," I lied with my best attempt at an honest smile, which wasn't that bad, actually. "I'm visiting her from San Diego, but she hasn't been answering her phone."

Less suspicious, the woman shrugged apologetically. "I haven't spoken to her in a while. I'm sorry I can't help you." Done with me, she indulged in conversation again with her friends.

I spent another fifteen minutes approaching bikini-clad women and asking them if they had a moment and then asking about Rachel Ashaunce. This didn't go well for me. One woman actually told me to wait until I was legal when I asked her if I could have a few minutes of her time. I slunk back over to the bar of the roof to wait for Booth, buying a lunch of fruit punch and chips with mild salsa.

Booth took up the seat next to me before I really expected it. "I thought you'd be asking about Rachel," he said, raising his eyebrows at me inquisitively.

I just groaned. "I gave up." Booth laughed.

Back to the sunlight.

The Californian beach had golden sand and white and brown and reddish shells over it closer to the waves. The water was beautiful and blue and the big, fluffy clouds overhead cast just enough shadow for me to not get the entire heat of the sun. Booth, Brennan, Trisha and I stood on the sand, looking back and forth between the two teams playing volleyball on the sand.

"There's a pretty good chance one of these leaping losers is our killer," Booth reminded us, looking between the two teams with distaste.

"You always think it's the boyfriend," Brennan stated with equal distaste.

"Well, he loved her, he found out she was a prostitute," Booth justified defensively. "I'd say anyone who plays this stupid game is capable of murder."

"That's harsh," I said with a frown at him. "I used to play volleyball at recess when I was in middle school."

"Being capable of murder and being a murderer are very different," Brennan told me, and… I think she was trying to be reassuring. "You are not a murderer, although from what I've seen, you are quite capable of homicide."

"Wow. Thanks." I said sarcastically, but it was lost on her. Just because I could kill someone if I really wanted to doesn't mean it's okay to be called capable of murder. The truth just doesn't matter in this case, because it's still kind of offensive.

"It seems like you've got this case sewn up," Brennan said, returning her attention to Booth. She shoved his arm, trying to push him towards the volleyball players mockingly. "Why don't you just go and arrest them all?"

Booth rolled his eyes and raised his badge up in the air, yelling out his title of FBI. "Excuse me guys, ladies!" He shouted to the players, but they either didn't hear or weren't paying attention. "Ladies, gentlemen, excuse me?" He called again. This time someone had to have heard, but they just kept ignoring him. "Please?" He tried again, and his shoulders slumped.

I sighed. This clearly wasn't going to work. My shoes sliding over the little traction that the sand gave, I ran into one of the teams and pushed past one of the male players to get to the volleyball as it came over the net. I caught it with my hands and pivoted so the guy who'd been trying to get it couldn't steal it back.

I tossed it up into the air and jumped as it came down, hitting it with an underhand swing. It sailed up into the sky and flew further down the beach. As people started yelling at me in anger, I motioned to Booth and he held up his badge while I shouted over them. "Everyone who isn't Nick Harberson, go get the ball!"

"Go fetch," Brennan prompted.

Grumbling and muttering (and a few were flipping me off), the players grudgingly started to trudge down the beach and away from the makeshift volleyball court except for a sandy-haired man in beach boxers and a white shirt, who looked puzzled and worried.

"Hey, beach boy," I called, waving my arm in a wide invitation. Nick looked after his friends longingly before sighing and coming over.

I plopped myself down on the bench and crossed my legs, leaning back and stretching my arms out over the back of the seat and beckoned the others over. Nick sat down after a moment of debate on the opposite end of the bench and Brennan and Booth stood on either side, while Trisha hovered over the back.

All it took was a question about Nick's girlfriend and he seemed totally smitten for her. "God, she was so sweet," he said wistfully, looking out over the ocean. "I actually thought about getting back together with her, even though-"

"You broke out all the windows in her car!" Brennan accused. Clearly, breaking someone's car windows is really very not okay with her.

"Well, what would you do if you found out your girlfriend was a prostitute?" Nick asked rhetorically, looking up at her and meeting her gaze head-on, and Brennan didn't actually have an immediate reply, but after the moment had passed she gave him a look that clearly conveyed, I wouldn't have broken all of the windows in her car.

"When did you last see Rachel?" Booth asked, changing the topic away from breaking car windows.

"Sandra," Nick corrected, settling into a glum little state of depression. "Her name is Sandra Cane… at least, as far as I knew."

Booth frowned, although I wasn't sure whether it was because of the new alias or because Nick hadn't actually answered his question. "When did you last see Sandra?"

"About a month ago," Nick replied, staring down at the yellow of the beach and digging his toes into the sand. "I was tending bar at a function at the Colonnade."

"Did you speak to her?" Booth asked.

"No. No, I was working," Nick responded, his eyebrows pulling down into a sulk. "So was she." He just looked at the ground for a moment before he looked up. "I didn't kill her," he said.

Brennan shook her head at him. Her eyes conveyed disapproval and complete disappointment. "How could you not know what she was doing for money? Did you even know her at all?" Well, that's a little harsh. Brennan's not used to struggling for money. The foster system put her with families that at least provided for her financially, and then she went to college and got a well-paying job on top of becoming a bestselling authoress. I know because of my community that when you need money, you'll do everything you can for it, and lying and deceit can become second nature if you don't have another option. Most prostitutes don't sell themselves just for sex; they need the money for school or medical bills, but they don't have any other means of getting it.

Nick scoffed humorlessly and looked out over the ocean. "She said she was modeling." He paused a moment and no one said anything, because we could all see he was collecting his thoughts to explain something. "The thing about Sandra is that, as pretty as she was, she was just never pretty enough. She would be all black and blue, and then she would heal and she would look beautiful. I mean, really, really beautiful, and we'd be sure something was going to break for her, and of course it wouldn't, and then she would be back in front of that mirror. And no matter what I said…" His voice got tight closer to the end and he swallowed. "Look… I never knew her. I never understood here. I'm probably the last guy you should be asking about her."

Brennan seemed pretty good with this explanation. She looked over to Booth, silently asking if we were done and Booth held out his arms, exasperated. "He's an actor! Of course he's convincing!"

"I don't know," I said with a twinge of reluctance. Nick seemed sincere enough, but why would an actor be hanging out at the beach? "He's probably not a very good one. I mean, he's out here playing volleyball in the middle of the day, so he probably hasn't been hired." Nick gave me this insulted, pissed off look like he could barely believe I'd said that. "What?" I asked defensively. "It's just a simple observation!"

Brennan, Booth, and I walked just behind Kostov, following him from his office while he walked to his car. The street was still sunny and it was bright and warm outside, almost to the point where I considered going to the store and buying a lighter, half-length jacket with long sleeves if we went back to the mall, just so that I wouldn't be wearing the big, heavy polyester. It's much warmer in California than it is in Washington D.C.. Kostov was in a hurry to get somewhere and he carried his briefcase at his side. Booth tailed on his left while Brennan and I kept just a pace back on the other side.

"Isn't it against your ethical code to have sexual relations with a patient?" I sneered, irritated. You know, federal investigators ask you something, you give full cooperation and tell them everything that is of interest. What do people not understand about that? I get that it doesn't look good to have sex with clients, but it looks much worse to murder them. "Then again, you offered surgery to a minor without first knowing if I was legal or not, so do you even have an ethical code?"

"Sex with patients is frowned upon," Kostov answered with a sigh, and his voice carried to us in the relative quiet of the sidewalk.

"That's why he said the implants were stolen," Booth said to Brennan, except his voice boomed so that he knew for certain Kostov would hear the accusation "There is no way to prove that he was the one who installed them."

"I did not know Rachel was dead when you last visited," Kostov told us with annoyance.

"Rachel, or Sandra?" I asked, glaring at the back of his neck like I could light him on fire if I thought hard enough. "What kind of doctor performs procedures on their patients without first making absolutely sure they had solid documents? Rachel wasn't even her real name, and chances are neither was Sandra!"

"I resent your implications," Kostov told me seriously.

"Who gives a damn about implications? I resent you."

"I did not know Rachel was dead when you last visited," he maintained. "Without the knowledge of the ongoing murder investigation, I was not aware that full disclosure would be necessary. I did not kill Rachel. I made her beautiful."

Brennan's mouth opened and she looked at him in horror. "You mean you took what was unique and particular about her, and you destroyed it!"

"You have a serious neurosis on this subject," Kostov told her as his shoulders rose and fell in a long sigh.

"Do you have a boat?" Booth demanded.

Kostov snorted callously. "I do four breast jobs a day, twenty thousand dollars each, in Los Angeles, California. Of course I have a boat. And that is all you'll get without a lawyer." He added as an afterthought.

Booth held out a hand in the stop motion to Brennan and I behind Kostov's back and we stopped walking while he continued, keeping on to his car. "So what do you do, huh?" Booth called to his back in a parting shot. "Pay him in hair plugs?" I rolled my eyes. Probably true, but lame.

Warm, sunny stretch of road along a California street, palm trees planted along the median, with a dark blue-black Mustang giving a forensic anthropologist, a federal agent, and a seventeen-year-old a ride. Familiar scene? Well, the federal agent is in the backseat, the anthropologist has claims on shotgun, and the seventeen-year-old is driving. Still sound familiar?

Wind from the rolled-down window made the strands of hair that had escaped my ponytail fly around my face. I had the driver's seat pulled forward slightly to make up for the difference in height between myself and Booth and so that I could see more over the hood of the car. The radio was on but turned down, fading into background noise as we talked, finding possible scenarios. We had no reason good enough for a warrant on any of the people we'd questioned and it seemed now that a lead would be difficult to find. Basically, as much as we hated it, we were at a standstill.

Oh, yeah. Did I mention that my frustration was tempered by cheer that I'd gotten a license?

"Scenario number one," Booth hypothesized. He leaned forward between the front seats, his elbows resting on either one. "Prostitute gets breast augmentation from plastic surgeon in return for sex. She threatens to tell on him."

"Plausible," Brennan nodded shortly, looking out the window unhappily.

"Scenario number two, jealous boyfriend finds out his girlfriend's been having sex with a bunch of other guys and commits a crime of passion, then is sincerely sorry about her death because it hadn't been premeditated, but it had been an accident." I pitched in.

"Exactly," Booth said. One hand pointed at me for a minute. "Which do you like?"

"Neither," Brennan said bluntly.

Booth sighed. "Because there's no real evidence."

"Unless you count a volleyball," Brennan agreed, reminding him of his claim that any volleyball player is capable of murder. "It sounds like you're getting ready to quit," she added, hearing the hint of frustration.

"Quit?" Booth repeated. "No. It's just, the deputy director wants me to hand the case over to the LA field office. We're supposed to give Agent Finn what we've got, and go home, back to our own things." Which is a lot more dismal for me than it is for you.

"What? No! Forget it," Brennan protested. "You don't even like Agent Finn. You think she's an idiot."

"Bones, the whole case is a bust," Booth exclaimed, throwing his head back and slumping backwards into the seat. "It's a blank! I mean, we don't have anything. We checked her apartment, nothing. There are no pictures, nothing. We don't even know what she looked like. We don't even know her name."

"It's like she lived on the world instead of in it," Brennan agreed, her eyes dulling before she strengthened her resolve in determination. "Cullen is calling us back because he thinks Holly and I have reached a dead end. You have to tell him he's wrong."

"Pull over," Booth ordered firmly.

I sensed the serious turn the conversation had made and when we reached the next wide median, I slowed the car and pulled up to the side of the divider, parking the car but leaving the keys turned in the ignition.

"Is he wrong?" Booth asked, watching Brennan intensely.

Brennan looked away from Booth and frowned at the dashboard. "We know we're looking for someone who grew up in New England and moved here about eight years ago. Her leg was crushed in a car accident when she was thirteen," she slowly listed off.

I took my hands off the steering wheel and rested one hand on my leg and set the other on the edge of the window. "She was on a boat shortly before she was murdered. We know some of her names and some of her faces," I contributed, although I couldn't help but share his frustration and her disappointment.

"But that's all your stuff, okay," Booth said. When I looked off to the side to see Brennan and he, he seemed genuinely upset. "Usually by now we know more about my stuff."

"We have separate stuff?" Brennan asked, sounding hurt.

"Yeah," Booth said, but when she started to look away from him, he hurried to explain. "You do the bone and science stuff and find out what you can about how they died. What sort of weapon was used and how they were attacked. Usually by now I have a feel for the person. What they wanted. How they felt. What was going on with their lives. Holly's sort of in the middle between the two. She gets information and she knows how to use it against the suspects to get us more to work with, and she knows about what you do and she can do that, too. But with this girl, there's nothing."

"She thought she was ugly," Brennan sighed desolately. "She did everything she could to make herself beautiful, and all she did was make herself more invisible."

"Everyone wants to be recognized and people get ashamed of themselves so easily. They want to be remembered for their hair or their clothes or their body. They do what they can to achieve that, but by making themselves the general picture of perfect, they lose what makes them unique and interesting, which makes them easier to forget." I lifted my hand up to support my head, my elbow against the edge of the window. "It's why I dislike uniformity and things like plastic surgery. You're only taking away someone's identity." Damn, I thought to myself. I'd better be careful, or Brennan might start thinking I'm a philosopher.

"Everybody in this city thinks they're ugly, and nobody is." Booth scoffed and turned to glare out the window. "I'm starting to get why you hate anonymous death so much."

"We were born unique. Our experiences mold and change us. We become someone, all of us, and to have that taken away by murder, to be erased from existence against our will, it's just…" Brennan stopped abruptly, turning her face away from Booth and I, rubbing her forehead with her fingers like she had a headache.

"Evil?" Booth suggested.

"Unacceptable," Brennan corrected. "These bones you bring me, I give them a face, we say their names out loud and Holly and my team and I find why they died and how it happened. I return them to their loved ones, and you two go and arrest the bad guy. I like that," she finished sincerely, looking back to Booth and I.

"So do I," I agreed. It's very satisfying to prove to people that no matter what you do, no matter how well you justify it to yourself or how hard you try to cover it up, that murder isn't okay and to force them to own up to what they did. It's rewarding to be able to present people with the information that devastates them, but that I know they'll need in order to accept it and have closure later.

Brennan scowled. "I feel like we should be arresting these doctors, because whether or not they killed her they… they still erased her."

"Well, maybe I could… hold off calling for a day," Booth offered with a small smile. I guess he likes it when we have these heartfelt conversations that we'll probably deny we had later.

"It's not good enough," Brennan told him while I put the gear back in drive, getting ready to drive again.

"You're welcome," Booth chuckled.

I pushed down on the gas and pulled away from the curve, then sped up as I resumed driving down the road, glancing at the speedometer once as it hit forty. Brennan's phone rang the generic tone and she got it out from her pocket to answer it, shifting in her seat. She held it to her ear and said, "Brennan," then pulled it away and set it on speakerphone.

Zach started talking on the other end of the line just as Brennan put it on four-person conversation mode. "The murder weapon is a larger version of the surgical implement used on the victim's jaw."

"You compared the bones to the marks left on the jaw?" I asked, surprised. I hadn't thought about that, but it made sense. In one of our scenarios, the suspect was the plastic surgeon who'd done the work on her skull, so the marring to her cranium could have come from his instruments, and if it was a crime of passion, he'd have grabbed at whatever was handy. "That's brilliant."

"It was Hodgins," Zach corrected. "Well, Hodgins quoting you, so it was us. Go team!" I smiled for a few seconds at the hurried exclamation. "But get this, according to the National Plastic Surgery Association, there's only one surgeon who does this procedure."

"Tell me he's in LA," Brennan requested, a smile growing on her face as I took the time to glance at her before going back to the road.

"He's in LA." The call ended and a second later, Brennan's phone beeped with a text.

Brennan looked at the screen and read what it said to me. "Dr. Henry Atlas, Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills."

I pushed down on the gas a little harder, speeding up a few miles per hour.

Dr. Henry Atlas's office was peaceful and pretty blank, aside from several framed photos on the wall – one of which, I noted, was of a boat. He sat in the chair behind his desk while Brennan took the chair across from him. Booth and I preferred to stand up so that we could look around and intimidate him.

"I'm ethically bound to ask you for a warrant before revealing the identity of any of my patients," Atlas stated calmly, although his hands were out of view, like he was fiddling with his thumbs or something and didn't want us to see.

"Alright, that's fair," I said with a sigh, moving behind the surgeon in order to lift a finger over my lips to quiet Brennan before she could remind us that we did, in fact, have the warrant already. "So, different question. The jaw procedure that Dr. Brennan described, is that…?"

"My innovations, yes," Atlas nodded. "There is an adage in my business: you can't alter the bone. I've proven it incorrect even to my patients."

I stared down at him. His goal… had been to mutilate the bone in the first place? "Why would you even want to?" I breathed, actually unable to understand that in any situation.

"How many have you done?" Brennan demanded, her voice colder, catching what he'd said even though she didn't verbally react to it.

"Perhaps half a dozen," Atlas stated, purposefully being vague. "If you get a warrant, I will release the names of my patients. Otherwise…" he trailed off with a shrug, knowing that he didn't have to vocalize the rest of his sentence.

"Do you use special operating instruments?" Brennan questioned curtly.

"Yes," Atlas answered, his tone even and measured, like he knew that we'd be interested in these instruments in particular. "I designed them myself, specifically for the procedure."

"Have you patented them or shared the design with anyone?" I asked, barely able to look at him without feeling revulsion. It mystified me how someone could do surgery that changed bones just for the sake of changing bones and proving people wrong.

"Not yet."

"He's waiting until he has enough success stories to cash in," Booth accused with a roll of his eyes.

"Well, he's going to be sure of one success story," Brennan sniffed in disdain.

"That's right," Booth agreed, lifting a picture from the file and sliding it onto the desk. "Here we've got a Sandra Cane, Rachel Ashaunce, Candace Hayden." He paused for a moment before asking, "Do any of those ring a bell?"

Atlas sighed heavily like we'd asked him the same thing a thousand times before. "As I have indicated-" he started, irritated.

"Search warrant? Here," Booth interrupted smoothly, tossing the bound file from Brennan's bag on top of Rachel's photograph. "Oh, and to collect your surgical instruments," he added as an afterthought.

"You'll…" Atlas stared at the warrant in horror before looking up at us to protest. I sidled up beside Booth, my arms crossed. "You'll shut me down! You will cost me a fortune!"

"The only ones we require, Dr. Atlas, are the ones you designed yourself," I told him with a glare. "Although, in case it didn't occur to you, if it were necessary to take all of them, we wouldn't particularly care about a glorified beautician with a knife and surgical tools when we're investigating someone's murder."

Atlas moved the warrant over to the side and looked down at the picture, upset. "She told me her name was Susan Shepherd." Resignedly, he pushed his chair back far enough to bend over by the drawers. He pulled the lowest one open and then came back up clutching a grey tool box. Tenderly, he set it on the table and opened it up so that we could see how it opened. Inside were the surgical tools he'd designed.

"Brilliant," Brennan said simply.

Brennan and I took the surgical tools back to the Californian lab and found blocks of molding clay to make imprints of at various angles. We each took several blocks and half of the tools. The pale grey slabs were fun to hit with the tools. I'll admit I probably enjoyed it more than I was supposed to. I mean, the first time I stabbed the clay with one of the silver metal tools, I had a very strong urge to shout, "Who's on top now, bitch?!" but I contained it well with only a smile escaping.

Brennan found the tool that matched the marks on Rachel/Sandra/Candace/Susan's bones. Just our luck, it was one of the last that she tried. We got the warrant to get a forensics team out on the boat and found DNA evidence, and another officer spoke with the people that worked with Henry Atlas and got recorded and written testimonies that there had been an argument. Things were really coming together nicely, so later, when we had Atlas in custody, I was in a much better mood, and therefore I wasn't as inclined to punch him in the face as I had been earlier. On the other hand, I was a little disappointed that we'd be leaving LA soon, but oh, well. We came here to solve a murder, and that's what we've nearly done.

Atlas had his lawyer, a brown-haired and tanned woman in formal wear and a pencil skirt with a light briefcase, with him next to him at the long rectangular table in the police station. Atlas was a lot more worried now than he was before – he had rolled up his shirt sleeves a few times and he seemed flushed.

"We have the murder weapon," Brennan stated, and although she was definitely pleased to have caught a break in the case, her dislike for plastic surgeons hadn't eased any. "We have trace evidence from your boat."

"We have testimony from your staff that you argued with a woman that you knew as Susan Shepherd shortly before she died," Booth added his own information that went along more with FBI than science. While Brennan sat down across from the lawyer, Booth and I were both standing.

"So what you need now is a confession," the lawyer stated calmly, not breaking a sweat. Well, it's good for Atlas that she at least knows what she's doing.

"Yeah, that would be great," I nodded honestly, looking from the lawyer to Booth. "I can go get some paper and a pen, if you're just willing to write it out and not drag out the process," I offered. I think I'm noticing a trend – the only time I offer to fetch things for people is when I'm trying to help them incriminate themselves. Hm…

"My client isn't an idiot," the lawyer said with a pointed look at me. "He will not confess to a crime he did not commit."

I shrugged. "Suit yourself."

Booth crossed his arms, playing the tough-cop as he leaned impressively against the doorframe. "Your patient list is what is known as an, uh…" Booth fumbled for a minute, trying to remember the title.

"Letter list?" I suggested, then frowned. "No, that's not right. It's a list with the title "list" and a letter in front of it. Oh, right. A-list," I finally remembered, hitting my forehead lightly in disbelief as to how long it took me to recall that.

"Yeah, an A-list," Booth agreed, snapping his fingers and pointing at me. I smirked. I love it when I'm right. "Oscar winners, supermodels, super-agents, moguls. So how is it that a call girl makes the grade?" He asked interrogatively, emphasizing the term "call girl" with thinly-veiled disbelief.

The lawyer looked from Booth to Atlas and folded her hands in her lap, her back stiff and in perfect posture. "You can answer that, Henry."

"I did Susan's procedure pro-bono," Atlas explained quickly.

"Why?" I demanded. "You were striving to alter her bones. You'd better have had a good reason."

"She volunteered," Atlas defended himself, raising his hands up to shoulder height and leaning back in his seat, away from me.

I scoffed and glared at the wall, looking away from the surgeon while Brennan glared straight at him. "She was a guinea pig," she said bluntly and coldly.

"How did you meet her?" Booth asked, which was a good thing, because if he hadn't steered the topic away from dangerous waters then I think Brennan and I would have taken the surgeon's arms, dragged him off of federal grounds, and then beat him senseless. Atlas didn't answer right away; he looked down at the table and rubbed his forehead. "Aw, come on. I mean, Susan didn't just walk right into your office, did she?"

The lawyer sighed quickly and looked at her client in exasperation. "Oh, just tell them, Henry," she advised wearily.

"Through another call girl," Atlas finally answered, looking back up at us. At first, he looked at Brennan, but quickly decided not to when he saw the icy look she directed at him. "One I used regularly. Sometimes these girls from the high-class establishments start to have expectations beyond the professional."

I rolled my eyes. "Well, you know, since when is hiring a prostitute for sex considered professional? Get some perspective. So this other girl thought you were going to marry her?"

Atlas nodded, slightly calmer now that we weren't trying quite so hard to peg him for murder. "Something along those lines, yes. So I made a change, and I started requesting Susan."

"Did you trade plastic surgery for sexual favors?" Brennan asked, shifting and raising her crossed arms to the top of the table.

"Obfuscate, Henry," the lawyer recommended.

"We did each other favors. It went fine for a few months," Atlas confessed.

"Until Susan wanted you to marry her, too," Booth predicted, looking at Atlas for confirmation.

"No," Atlas denied firmly. "In my opinion, Susan was becoming addicted to plastic surgery. I refused to do any more procedures." Well, to be fair, that does fit with what the boyfriend told us before, about Susan being unable to be satisfied with her appearance. "That's what my staff saw us arguing about."

Brennan leveled a cold gaze at him. "What was Susan like?" She asked, and I detected the slightest challenge. It only took me a minute to understand; she was trying to decide whether or not he was to blame for her anonymous death, or whether he had taken the time to learn a bit about the girl he was having sex with.

Atlas shrugged slightly, taken by surprise at the seemingly irrelevant question. "She was the girl next door. Simple, healthy. The girl before Susan was the opposite – very flashy," he added. There we go. That's a little helpful. "What she wore was designer – though she didn't wear more than the essentials. She had expensive handbags, diamonds in her incisors, diamonds in her fingernails."

I frowned. Booth caught it, too. "Bones, didn't Hodgins find a fingernail?" He asked the anthropologist.

"Yes," the scientist replied slowly. "With a fake diamond in it."

"Susan was the "girl next door" type," Booth slowly repeated what the plastic surgeon had said.

"It wasn't her fingernail," Brennan said with a small smile growing as they found the next lead.

"Jealously," I mused. "We thought of that but we didn't look past the boyfriend." I looked back at Atlas sharply. "What was the name of the girl before Susan?" I waited a moment but Atlas did not seem inclined to respond. "Come on, man. The flashy one?" I said, using his own words. "You know… wore little fancy things?" I motioned vaguely to my chest. "Bikinis and halter tops and the California beach-girl look? With diamonds in her fingernails?" Booth and Brennan were both looking at me in amusement. I rolled my eyes. Did I really just sound weird enough to stare at?

"Tell them what they need to know, Henry," the lawyer urged.

"Hold on," I said, holding up my hand. The fingernail wasn't Rachel's. It belonged to another call girl. The one I saw with Booth had red nails and a white spot, like a gem – or a diamond. "Booth," I looked to the agent. "It was the girl you met with."

Booth called to arrange a meeting with the call girl he'd met earlier on the roof of our hotel. Brennan and I sat on stools by the bar. I had a glass of ice water while Brennan held a margarita with an olive and a little prop umbrella. We looked across the roof through the people to watch Booth as the girl found him and sat in a red chair across from him with a smile.

"It's hard to believe what people will kill for," I said softly, watching the girl with pity.

"She killed Rachel for the affection of a man who never wanted her to begin with," Brennan agreed. "She made her life worse instead of better, so what was the point to it?"

FBI agents who had been hanging out in the wings came forward to either side of the call girl and she stood up, compliantly holding her hands behind her back while they handcuffed her. For just that moment before the agents took her away from him, the woman leaned toward Booth so her hair brushed his shoulder and she whispered something to him. When she pulled back, looking at him searchingly for an answer, he smiled and nodded, and she let herself be led away.

Booth met with Brennan and I a few minutes later when we strayed from the bar to the edge of the roof. Brennan and I had our hands grazing the top of the rail and we looked out over the city lights, glowing neon in the darkness of the just-passed sunset. "She thought Atlas was going to take her out of that life," Booth said sadly, appearing on the other side of me.

"But he wanted the girl next door," Brennan sighed before reluctantly admitting, "You were right. Jealousy."

"Well, it's an old story," Booth shrugged modestly, stuffing his fists in his pockets. "I bet your fifteen hundred year old friend back home heard a version. Leslie thought Rachel was stealing her man, so she killed her."

"What did she ask you?" I asked suddenly, unable to help my curiosity. What had a murderer asked him to which he'd actually smiled and replied in the affirmative? "She asked you something, right after she was arrested. What was it?"

"She asked me-" Booth paused and his hands came up to the rail, trapping me between the two adults. A soft breeze made my hair lift up around my shoulders and fly across my cheeks before settling again. "She asked me if I thought she was beautiful." We just let that sit for a minute, as none of us seemed to know how to convey what we felt about that with words. "Oh, and I got one more thing. I had the bureau search for adolescent girls that were injured in car crashes in the upper northeast ten to twelve years ago." Booth took one hand away from the rail and reached to his back pocket, unfolding a piece of newspaper and handing it to Brennan. "The daughter's right leg was crushed."

Brennan took the paper and held it down and to the side so that I could read it, too. Local Woman Killed in Car Crash, Daughter Survives. "Allison," Brennan breathed, contented that she finally had a true answer, but also saddened by the picture of the pretty little girl in the black-and-white photo who looked nothing like the woman whose murder we'd investigated. "Her name was Allison Holmes."

"Her father and her brother are still alive somewhere in Bangor, Maine," Booth added, knowing that the information wouldn't be in the article. "We will return the remains."

Brennan looked to the FBI agent from the newspaper clipping. "Thanks, Booth," she said sincerely, touched.

"Well, Bones, you do your thing, I do mine," Booth answered with a slight shrug, like that was the answer and it was really all there was to it. "And Holly's in the middle of us."

Brennan looked back at the picture again. "Look at her," she whispered sadly.

"Yeah," Booth agreed, his voice low. "She was a pretty little thing."

A/N: Gah! I'm sorry it took so long to update. School started and time just slipped away from me. But, to make up for it, I'm posting two chapters at once, so enjoy!