Booth, Brennan, and I all sat in front of deputy director Cullen's desk while he stood over us from the other side, looking down on us and surveying the situation critically. Booth and Brennan both kept their heads down, but I didn't see any reason to. Yes, he's a powerful man, as the deputy director, but we weren't in the wrong. Hey, I'm the minor that was nearly murdered by someone in the government while investigating a homicide and kidnapping. I don't need to get scolded for self-defense.

"Well, at least nobody got shot," Cullen groused, dragging his hand down his face in apparent misery. "Probably because she didn't get a gun 'til the end of it," he added, pointing at me.

I rolled my eyes. "Really? We're still not over that? He was trying to light us on fire!"

"Sir, why is Carl Decker's home being watched by U.S. Marshals?" Booth asked, lifting his gaze from the ground to his boss now that the lectures were over. Yes, let's move on to the important things now.

Cullen rolled his eyes. Clearly, we weren't quite grasping how stupid it was to attack U.S. Marshals, even though we had no way of knowing who they were until they'd already tried to kill me! Nevertheless, he answered the question, probably having known it was coming around sooner or later. "Carl Decker's a federal witness under witness protection. He's scheduled to appear before a grand jury in two days."

"Is it a mob thing?" I asked, training my eyes on the director as he began to settle down. Even though he wasn't as tense as he'd been when we'd been escorted in, he wasn't comfy enough to sit down and act like a normal person.

"Decker designs body armor for K.B.C. Systems," Cullen started to explain, not looking directly at me. He should be ashamed he yelled at an attempted murder victim. I vaguely recognized the company name, but just well enough to know that they designed outfits for soldiers. "He says they knowingly sent defective armor to Iraq." Oh. Well, that's pretty serious. "Justice department believes him, so they moved him to a safe house."

"Does the justice department think that Decker is in danger from the company?" Brennan asked with a little scoff.

"He thinks he is," Cullen said with a little, irritated shrug. "They want him to testify, so they play along.

"Does Decker know that his wife has been killed and his child has been kidnapped?" Booth asked, a little edge developing in his voice.

"No," Cullen said firmly. "And they don't want him to know."

"Why?" Brennan demanded incredulously.

I sighed and rubbed my forehead. "Because K.B.C. Systems involves war and mercenaries and U.S. Marshals. If they think they're going to go under, they're going to do whatever they can to keep Decker from testifying. Abducting his child is a surefire way of keeping him quiet, out of fear for his son's life. This case just got a hell of a lot more complicated and dangerous."

"From their point of view, there's nothing to be gained from him knowing," Cullen agreed with me for possibly the first time ever. I should get a card later at Hallmark to commemorate this day.

I stood up from my chair so suddenly that it scraped against the carpet and was pushed back behind me. "Except maybe Decker chooses not to testify, and they don't torture and murder his child! Shouldn't that be his choice, as the father of the kid that is in serious danger?" I demanded, nearly yelling. I understand why the government makes these sorts of decisions in principle; but in practice, it's so inhuman it's infuriating.

"The justice estimates that K.B.C. Systems is directly responsible for thirty deaths and hundreds of injuries," Cullen argued against me coldly. "They're taking a larger view. It's complicated."

"His wife is dead, and his child is missing," Booth interrupted, taking my side. "That's really not so complicated, sir."

"No one is stopping you from investigating those crimes," Cullen said, spreading his arms like he was showing he was defenseless.

"He's a material witness. I need access to him."

Cullen stared down at Booth. He was determined not to relent or give in on this one. "We know Decker didn't kill his wife. He was in custody of U.S. Marshals, so start looking someplace else. It's a harsh reality, Booth. Deal with it," he added, looking straight at me.

I kept my expression neutral but lowered my arms to my sides, projecting an image of perfect calmness despite the anger and bitterness I felt. "Then kick me off of the case." I said in a soft challenge, locking eyes with Cullen to show I wasn't intimidated by him.

"Holly, what are you doing?" Booth groaned softly, covering his face with his hands. This is really not his day. Brennan didn't say anything, although that in itself was a sign that she was bewildered.

"You want off of the case." Cullen repeated like he couldn't believe it, and then he chuckled heartily. "This is coming from the girl who invited herself into the FBI, saying that she could handle it."

"I am perfectly capable of handling it," I said with a steely tone. I tried not to let it show how angry I was that he thought I was actually scared. Hell, I took out an armed U.S. Marshal on my own! "But if you won't let me do anything useful, then I'm wasting my time and I might as well just go back to my job. You tell us to investigate a murder and a kidnapping, but won't let us access any useful suspects."

"It is a logical decision," Cullen argued against me with a raised eyebrow, curious despite his better judgment about where this was going.

"Yeah, sure," I said with a roll of my eyes. "But only if you take it out of context!" I took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling for patience before looking back down. "There is an eight-year-old child who has been abducted because his father is testifying against a company that provides armor for soldiers in Iraq. If mercenaries have that child, then they won't care about ethics. They won't see a terrified child. They'll see a tool that they can use to keep themselves empowered. You won't let us access the father, who is the only link to those mercenaries, and our best chance of getting that boy safely home – that is, if he isn't already dead. On top of that, if we do find them, we aren't even correctly prepared, because you refuse to acknowledge that K.B.C. Systems won't play fair. If we find the location and go in, your men will be stepping into a slaughterhouse. The mercenaries will shoot to kill – hell, the U.S. Marshals on your side tried to kill me today and I wasn't even armed! How do you expect us to work this case with due diligence if we can't even protect ourselves?"

Cullen watched me for a moment after I finished speaking. He was surveying me and sizing me up, and I was slightly out of breath for giving that entire speech with only a few breaks for breath. My fists were clenched at my sides. He took a moment before he spoke solemnly and with an arched eyebrow.

"I may regret this, but if you're that bound and determined, then arm yourself."

I wasn't entirely sure I'd heard right. Was he telling me to get a firearm?! I raised my eyebrows and my fists unclenched before I actually thought about it. "What?"

Cullen pulled his glasses off of his face and folded them up neatly, setting them on the desk next to his closed laptop. "High-profile case like this one, with a high risk, and Booth will need all the help he can get." He looked over at Booth. "You get her registered for rights to carry a concealed weapon and get her a standard bureau-issued gun." He looked back at me sharply. "This is just for this case."

In Booth's van and driving back to the Jeffersonian, I had a big smile on my face. My arms were crossed and I was smiling right out the windshield and at the car in front of us (a red Cadillac with North Carolina plates). At my side was the weight of a standard, FBI-issued firearm, half-hidden from sight by my sweater. This is like a dream come true. I have a gun!

Well, okay, so it's only for this case, and the circumstances are far from pleasant, but hey, for once in my life, I'm actually packing heat!

"I'll stay on Paulina Decker's remains to see if that leads somewhere," Brennan volunteered from her spot in the passenger's seat.

"Yeah," Booth said with a nod. "Holly and I'll talk to the victims' families – at least, the ones who aren't under federal protection."

Brennan sighed and twisted slightly in her seat to look back at me over the edge of the car seat. "Do you think a corporation would actually kill a woman and kidnap her child?" She asked me. I frowned at the clear upset and frustration in her voice.

"If they're proven guilty, they're sued billions of dollars, and that's not even counting the lawsuits filed against them. There have been times when people were killed for twenty dollars," I said, averting my eyes. Although my answer was indirect, it gave her the truthful response she'd been seeking.

"Do you believe the boy is already dead?" Brennan asked Booth after a moment, looking over to him and tugging slightly at her seatbelt, the only giveaway that she was nervous about finding the child already dead.

"I have to assume that he isn't," Booth said, using the driving as an excuse to look away from her and out the window, checking the side mirrors.

"Why make that assumption?" Brennan asked, shaking her head softly.

Booth sighed and he took a minute to answer. For a moment I thought he wasn't going to, and personally, I wouldn't have blamed him. "Because it gives me something to look forward to instead of dread," he finally said, anxiety repressed in his voice. "Given a choice, I like to avoid dread."

"Okay." Brennan looked back to the road and nodded slowly to herself. "That's logical."

"Is it?" Booth asked, surprised by her dictation.

"Why dread something that hasn't happened yet?" Brennan asked, looking back at him for a moment as she posed the rhetorical question. Booth and I had no answer.

Booth sat behind his desk while I sat in a chair that was angled to see his computer monitor, which he'd turned on its stand so that we could both watch the home videos that we'd gotten from Decker's home. Booth had his head resting on one hand while with the other he tapped his desk to a simple four-beat rhythm. I looked up and down between the computer screen and and the piece of paper that I had pinned to one of the clipboards lying around in Booth's office, a pen in my hand while I drew pointlessly, trying to occupy my hands so I could focus on the voices of the recording.

"Am I going to ride a bike?" The little boy – Donovan – had a voice higher than mine, and it was sort of quiet. Unlike the voice of his mother, he spoke English without a hitch, while his mother had a heavy Russian accent. Clearly, he was born here in America and was raised with American cultures. I looked up again. He was sitting on a bike with black training wheels and a horn on the handlebars. The bike was simple; the eight-year-old was probably only six or seven in this video, so there were no gear shifts or special additions to the bike, other than a set of reflectors. He wore a plain white helmet and his mother had insisted that he strap on some bicycling pads over his elbows and knees.

"Are you really asking? Or are you just stalling?" Carl Decker was American, with his head shaved and his face sharp and angular. He was tall and muscled in a lean, athletic sort of way – not like a football player; more like a cross-country track team sort of way. He wore jeans and a button-up plaid blue shirt in this video, like it was just a casual day at home with the wife and son. Unlike his son, his voice was riddled with tension and I could hear the slight tremor, even through the lower quality of the video tape.

"Uh, stalling," Donovan mumbled to his father after a moment, sounding almost unsure about his own words. I filled in the shading of the thin headband on my little anime character.

I glanced up as Decker rubbed the back of his neck before clapping his hand lightly on Donovan's shoulder. "Yeah, I thought so."

I lifted my hand up to look at the generic manga schoolgirl in mild satisfaction. I'm terrible at drawing real people, but after having to find something to do to pass the time when I'd finish tests at school, I'd gotten pretty good at sketching cartoons. My anime girl looked like she'd stepped out of Ouran High School Host Club with her elaborate dress, spiraling curly hair, dangling earrings, high-heeled shoes, and soft blush. Don't judge me!

"What are we hoping to learn from this tape?" I asked Booth, giving up on my drawing and the recording. I set the pen on the clipboard. "We already know that Decker didn't torch his wife and abduct his son." Booth gave me this disappointed look and I felt an urge to "redeem" myself. I hate feeling attached to people. "I'm just wondering what we're going to get out of the videos."

Booth sighed. Well, at least he's not declaring me a lost cause, I thought wryly. "We put faces to names, we get a sense of the humans and predict how they act. Come on. You're a junior agent, remember? What is the tape telling you?"

"Carl Decker has an irrational fear of his son being injured," I stated factually, tapping the end of the pen lightly against my paper, making little ink dots appear along the edge of my drawing.

Booth paused the video and leaned back in his chair, frowning at me as he crossed his arms. "Being afraid of his child being hurt isn't irrational," he said defensively – probably because he fears for Parker's safety. How could he not, working as a homicide investigator?

I sighed. "No, not most times. You wouldn't be scared of Parker's safety if he was going to do something harmless – go on a carousel, or play with a toy. Carl Decker is displaying several tics that are cluing me in to his anxiety over something as simple as Donovan Decker learning to ride a bicycle."

"Well, he could fall over," Booth reasoned logically.

I shook my head. "No, it's more than that. Donovan's using training wheels and it's clear that he himself is ready to ride the bike." I paused and frowned, trying to think of how to explain. I'd gotten too used to not having to explain my conclusions since I graduated high school early and adults stopped breathing down my neck to "show my work". "Learning to ride a bike is like a rite of passage between an adolescent of society and the adolescent's guardian. It has anthropological significance in our community as more than the mechanics of learning to ride a bicycle."

"Really?" Booth asked, leaning forward slightly in interest.

"Yes." I replied, nodding seriously. "On a basic level, it's a child learning to ride a bike with someone who has taken on the task of protecting that child. On a cultural level, it's much more symbolic. The guardian is passing on knowledge to the child that the child will need to have at a later point in life. It's also showing that the guardian has accepted that the child has grown up and matured, because in a way they're showing the child an easier way of leaving." I pointed at the paused frame of the video, looking for the examples displayed in the stilled image. "Carl Decker is tense. He's crossing his arms over his chest, which is a sign of defensiveness-" I'm so going to regret explaining that the next time I cross my arms out of defensiveness. "-He's rubbing the back of his neck, touching his mouth-"

Booth interrupted me before I could add the few more that I'd noticed. "So he's nervous. What does that tell you?"

I nodded slightly to show that I understood that he wasn't being rude, just trying to hurry me up because of the time sensitivity of the boy's situation. "Now look at Donovan. He's relaxed on the bike; his feet are on the pedals and his hands on the handlebars. He's wearing the equipment his mom wanted him to wear even though he's scratching at the elbow pads occasionally. He's uncomfortable with them but he knows it's important to his parents that he wear them. He's not nearly as nervous about it as his parents."

Booth lifted his head slightly arrogantly like he thought I'd missed something important. "So why was the boy stalling, then?" He asked, probably thinking I couldn't answer. Either that or he wanted me to explain why I knew that Donovan wasn't actually the one stalling. I don't know with Booth – sometimes I understand him well, but times like now, when it's about me, I can't quite figure it out.

"He's not," I said, shaking my head, triumphant that I'd won this one, even if I hadn't been able to tell why he'd been questioning me. "The father is. He keeps asking if he's ready or not, and at least some part of him is hoping that Donovan will say that he's not, and he wants to wait a while. Donovan understands that, even if it's not quite at the same level of complexity, and he's allowing his father to be more comfortable before he challenges his nerves."

Booth smiled a little. Whatever sort of test he'd had set up, I'd clearly passed. Well, at least I didn't flunk FBI-People-Reading-101. "Hodgins is right. Psychology is definitely one of your 'unusual hobbies,'" he said, making air quotations as he coined the phrase I'd used at Arlington National Cemetery just after we met.

I rolled my eyes. "Me and my unusual hobbies," I said in exasperation, with a slight smile.

Booth pressed play on the video again and I looked back to my drawing, making little revisions as I listened to the voices silently.

"All right, ready?" Carl Decker asked on the recording, his voice holding a note of stern finality, telling himself he was going to stop stalling.

"I'm okay," Donovan declared.

"Be careful, Donny!" Paulina fretted on the screen, biting down on her manicured fingernails anxiously.

"Don't make him nervous, Paulina," Decker chastened softly as I added a bit more shading to the earrings.

"Push me, dad." A bit more shadow to the shoulder to accentuate the lighting. "Let go, dad." Thickening the line of the heeled shoe in front. "Let go!"

"Not yet," Decker insisted, his voice shaking.

"Let me go, dad. Let me go!"

"Not yet! Run along with him, Carl!"

"I can do it!"

As I added some more volume to the long hair of my sketch, Carl Decker started laughing onscreen. "He's doing it!" He repeated that phrase in adoration for his son and relief that everything had turned out okay.

Paulina looked at the camera, frowning nervously at her husband. "Be careful! Now how will we get him back, Carl?" She asked, strands of her ginger hair whipped out of its bun by the wind.

"That's the real question," Booth agreed with a sigh. "Now, isn't it, Holly? How do we get the boy back?" I didn't answer, although I was thinking along the lines of doing what we've been doing – but faster and better.

Not long after, a tall, blonde woman was escorted to Booth's office. I didn't know who she was, until she greeted the both of us with teary eyes and a thick Russian accent, made heavier by her stifled crying. Maria Semov, the aunt of the little boy and the sister of the murder victim, let me motion her down into a seat while Booth moved the monitor back so she couldn't see that we were going through their home videos. He stayed on his side of the desk while I sat next to her in another chair, staying mostly silent aside from introducing myself.

"They left this morning," Maria started, before her blonde hair fell in her face. Her reddish roots were showing because she hadn't taken the time to style her hair the way she had in the videos Paulina had taken, and her cheeks were tear-stained and reddened. "Very early, about five a.m.." Her words were clipped and I could see she was struggling.

At this rate, I seriously doubted she could speak fluently in English, especially with how much difficulty she was having keeping her thoughts together. This is one of the worst cases of grief I've seen, but I can't really blame her. Her sister's dead and her nephew has been kidnapped.

I chanced a look at Booth before looking at Maria again and softly interrupting her in slightly clipped but coherent Russian. "Мисс, я хотел бы предложить возможность говорить в свой родной в то время как я служу в качестве переводчика для Вашего удобства и комфорта," I said, after a moment of calling up to surface the memories of the classes I'd taken and how I'd learned. In one of my foster families, the dominant language had been Russian. Trying to understand what they were ordering me to do, I signed up for some classes at the community college and I learned by immersion and study at the library, as well. I wasn't completely fluent, but I was passable and I would be effective enough at this. Miss, I'd like to offer the option of speaking in your first language while I serve as a translator for your ease and comfort.

Booth just gave me this look of surprise and confusion and if we didn't have Maria in the office with us, he probably would have asked what the hell I thought I was doing. But Maria nodded, sniffing and pressing her hand over her mouth to quiet her cries for a moment, composing herself again. "Спасибо,» she thanked me. "Они уехали рано, потому что Донован на сборной по плаванию. О, Боже!" They left early because Donovan is on the swim team. Oh, God! She exclaimed again, covering her face with her hands for a moment before she swallowed and looked up again, setting her hands in her lap.

"They left early this morning because Donovan is on his school's swim team," I translated for Booth, looking briefly from Maria.

"You speak Russian?" Booth asked me, shocked, looking between Maria and I like he was trying to understand what had just happened.

"Yeah," I said, almost sheepish, even though I had no reason to be. "Didn't I mention?"

"No!" He shook his head fervently.

"Oh." I paused for a moment. "Well, I speak Russian."

It was only thinking of it from Booth's point of view that I realized how surprising that was. I'd never mentioned it, but I was always very good at languages. I know several and, at my age, that's quite an accomplishment, but it never took all that much work. I studied, sure, but I never stayed up all night working. They just came easily.

Booth shook his head at me, clearly having noticed this already. "You and your sister were close?" He instructed me.

I relayed it over to Maria after a few seconds of thought, getting back into practice. "Были ли вы и Полина закрыть?" Were you and Paulina close?

Maria nodded quickly at this. "Да. Когда Полина и Карл разделены, она и Донован пришла, чтобы остаться со мной." Yes. When Paulina and Carl separated, she and Donovan came to stay with me. She sobbed dryly again, but it seemed like she was too dehydrated for her body to produce more tears. "Это ужасно," she added sorrowfully. This is terrible.

I looked back to Booth and translated. "Yes, they were. When issues in the marriage arose, Paulina and Donovan went to stay with Maria."

"Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt your sister?" Booth spoke in a normal volume, but he was directing his speech at me now, apparently trusting my linguistics abilities.

I translated this for Maria and she responded quickly, quite sure of her answer, which almost gave me pause. "Она должна быть Карл. Может быть, он боялся, что она возьмет Донован от него." It must be Carl. Maybe he was afraid she would take Donovan from him.

I actually paused before restating it in English back to Booth, asking a question of my own as gently-phrased as I could. "Будет ли она это сделать?" Would she have done that? There would be a motive, although Carl Decker had been under watch by U.S. Marshals… still, it might be worth looking into if Paulina had harbored those intentions.

"Кол-Никогда." No. Never. Maria answered firmly and certainly. Even though she didn't like Carl Decker, she was confident that her sister had trusted him.

"Hello?" Booth interrupted my thoughts by snapping his fingers once and raising his eyebrows at me. "What's that in English?"

"Paulina would not have deprived Carl of the right to see Donovan, however Maria believes that a fear of exactly that happening could have motivated him to – attack," I finished lamely, remembering at the last minute that Maria could still understand English, she just wasn't utilizing that skill at the moment. How do you tactfully say, "kill her sister and abduct her nephew?" You don't, that's how.

"You don't like your brother in law," Booth instructed me to translate, which I did obediently.

Maria's response would definitely have me thinking about it later. "He is supposed to be brilliant, I know," I repeated in English just after Maria finished speaking, staying mindful of the FBI agent who wouldn't appreciate not knowing what we were saying. "But he is cold and angry. Everything has to be just so," I said, carefully saying exactly as she had, committing it to memory.

"Why did Carl and your sister separate?" Booth asked me.

I repeated it in Russian to Maria, and she paused after her sentences so that she could give a lengthier explanation without overwhelming me. She must have detected the clear clip of my Russian that I had heard in her English. "Paulina said he was having an affair," I repeated after her. "I thought, "Who would want him?" But she found credit card receipts from a motel he went to once, twice a week." Paulina spoke the last of her explanation quickly and with no little amount of bitterness, which I left out of my tone when I repeated it to Booth. "When she confronted Carl, he was furious. He wouldn't talk about it, so she left him."

Maria jerked forward, startling me as she grabbed my hands. I tensed completely but was unwilling to snap at her when she was so distraught and upset that she couldn't even speak English fluently. "Please find Donovan," she begged, once more using English so that there was a clear conveyance of desperation and pleading. "Find my sister's boy."

I looked back at her for a moment with a neutral expression. I can't promise we'll find him alive… but I will find him. We both will – me, because of my sense of justice, and Booth out of care for children based on his love for Parker. "Даю вам слово," I swore, completely serious, my eyes darkening. You have my word.

Booth and I went to the K.B.C. Systems' headquarters next, and I got to proudly show off my sidearm while we logged in as visitors to interview the company's CEO (a Trent Seward guy) in the company of his attorney. We questioned them in this huge conference room around a round table, and we were at opposite ends, so it wasn't exactly a friendly meeting. The setting made it actually kind of awkward to talk across the room.

Seward smirked when Booth asked about Carl Decker. "Carl Decker is not only a disgruntled employee," he started with an irritated roll of his eyes. "He's a… a…" he looked to the attorney next to him for assistance. "What's the term?"

The attorney snorted. "As a lawyer, the legal term is "nuts and a pain in the ass.""

"Oppositional defiance disorder and paranoia is what I read," Seward frowned, looking over at the attorney in confusion.

The attorney nodded sideways at him. "Like I said: nuts and a pain in the ass."

"You read paranoia where?" I asked Seward sharply, having caught that. They had made a file on Decker? "You had Carl Decker investigated?" Caught with the full disclosure policy, the attorney sighed to the CEO and lifted a manila file from among her other papers and pushed it across the table with her fingers. I caught it just before it fell off of the table and opened it, looking at the first paper, which was full of Carl Decker's basic information.

"He's making extremely damaging allegations against the company," the attorney tried to justify.

Seward was quick to jump in with, "False allegations."

I rolled my eyes. "Typical. A woman is dead and her son is in danger and all you care about is your company." I could barely conceal my disgust with them and I didn't even try to hide it from my eyes as I looked back at them and shook my head in disapproval.

"We are thinking of the bigger picture," Seward said, raising to the defense like I'd predicted he would.

"No, you're really not!" I shouted with a glare, cutting him down now that I'd provoked him into opening up for it. It bothers me how I manipulate people so that I can justify attacking them, either verbally or physically, but I opted not to think about it just then. "It's wrong that the defective armor was sent to Iraq, but that armor has been recalled. Some people are dead, some are injured, but nothing can be done about it. In the meantime, a child is in present danger and may be being tortured for information he doesn't have, because your stupid company decided that one family was worth your stupid reputation!"

I stood up, my chair pushed back so abruptly that it was knocked over onto the back with a thud. Both of the K.B.C. Systems' representatives looked shocked and taken aback, but a split-second glance to Booth told me that not only had he predicted my outburst, but he didn't completely disagree with it, either.

I have a firearm. If I keep yelling, they'll perceive me as a threat.

I breathed deeply and threw the compilation on Decker to the table next to Booth. "I'm going to go wait outside," I said flatly. Booth gave me a miniscule nod, and without even picking up my chair, I stormed out of the room, slamming the conference room door behind me.

Booth and I got back to the Jeffersonian not long after. Booth hadn't been pleased with K.B.C. Systems, either, apparently, as when he came out the doors and beckoned for me to follow him back to the SUV, he was grumbling in irritation under his breath. With the car in a tense silence, broken only by Maroon 5 on the radio, we drove back to see Brennan, but we didn't exactly get the nicest greeting.

"Where have you been?" Brennan demanded upon seeing us, pulling her brown hair out of the collar of her white lab coat as she shrugged it back on, already having latex gloves pulled over her hands. Her tone was sharp and accusatory and I frowned flatly, having hoped for a more enthusiastic greeting rather than a harsh "where have you been?".

"We're acting as field agents," Booth claimed defensively, clearly as disappointed as I was with our welcome. "We were out in the field. What did you find?"

"A piece of an ear in the victim's mouth," Brennan said, with no little amount of attitude. Well, even the best of us have short tempers when we have the crisis of a missing child to solve.

"Mm. Appetizing," I drawled glumly, walking behind Brennan and Booth and keeping up with their pace slowly enough to not step on their heels while at the same time not falling behind.

"It looks like she bit it off. It could tell us something," Brennan elaborated, pulling her ID card and its lanyard up from under her shirt to swipe it on the security system of the platform. "What did you find?"

"A lot," I said, holding my chin up indignantly. There was no need for the scorn on our work.

"No reason for the attitude," Booth added, seemingly agreeing with me and giving Brennan a look of irritation.

"I beg your pardon?" Brennan scoffed, pulling the ID card from its clear plastic envelope with the tips of her fingers. "Attitude?"

Booth shoved his hands in his pockets and I crossed my arms, deliberately hanging back a bit so I could still hear but not get the brunt of the verbal retorts if Booth said something stupid... which really didn't seem that unlikely. No offense. "Well, it's not like you've been doing all the work and we've just been kicking back."

Brennan sighed. "Okay. What have you found out?" She asked, sounding like she thought she was being patronized, but at least now she didn't have as much of a rude tone.

"The victim and her husband were having marital problems," Booth announced, clearly satisfied. "She found motel receipts. I got security tapes from the parking lot. I thought Angela could use her Fat Recognition Program on them."

"Mass Recognition Program," I corrected.

"You know what? Whatever," Booth said, waving it away. "Maybe we'll be able to figure out who Decker was seeing behind his wife's back." The tension between the two as the evident crisis rose in priority seemed to increase. "Is Angela in her office?"

Brennan shrugged, not gracing him with a verbal response, and he rolled his shoulders back before setting off to walk to the stairway leading up to the second floor to Angela's office. "Remember to keep English, kid," Booth called over his shoulder. "Yell if you need something."

"Yes, father," I returned sarcastically, just to spite him a bit.

Brennan held up the tibia of Paulina Decker while Zach held a paper report and I stood across from Brennan and next to the intern, the table separating the two of us from the anthropologist. Brennan lifted the tibia up in front of her face to closely examine it for anomalies while she half-listened to Zach as he reported, "According to the FBI pathologist, there was no smoke in the victim's lungs." The bones were now stripped bare and cleaned, due to Zach's beloved flesh-eating beetles. I swear, he loves those things like most people love puppies or kitties.

"Meaning?" Brennan prompted us. Sometimes I felt like I was still in school, but technically she was Zach's professor.

"The victim was already dead when she was burned," I stated evenly, looking away from the skull and to the ribcage, having a bit of difficulty not matching the skeleton to the anxious mother from the home videos.

"There was clotting in the lungs as well," Zach finished, and I looked over to him in alarm. Super genius half-anthropologist half-engineer graduate student say what?

"That's not at all disturbing," I said, looking back to Brennan as she set the tibia down and cocked her head at Zach, now giving him her full attention.

"For clotting to occur, superheated air would have to be drawn into the lungs," Brennan started, moving quickly around the end of the exam table and looking over Zach's shoulder at the report, analyzing it to see if it really said what he was saying, a look of pure surprise etched across her face.

"Which wouldn't have happened if she were already dead, so something else must have caused the clotting," I concluded, crossing my arms and throwing my weight to my other leg, bothered. What would explain that?

Booth's shoes thudded as he came to the side of the platform from the stairs, folding his arms and setting his elbows on the floor of the raised exam area. "Angela is ready with the tapes," he declared.

"The broken teeth could have resulted from particularly violent seizures," Zach tried to suggest, effectively ignoring Booth.

The FBI agent wasn't too surprised that he went completely unacknowledged, which was actually kind of sad. "Epilepsy?" Behind Booth, the state department woman – Miss Pickering – was taking swift, small steps down the stairs with a clipboard pressed to her side and her hand on the rail, her eyes concentrating on the first floor. When she reached the ground, she started towards the platform. Wonderful, we have to deal with her now.

"Actually, seizures aren't always caused by the most commonly-perceived explanations," I said, stepping back into my empirical personality and looking to Booth while I explained why his theory was pretty lame. But I'm doing it nicely. "Seizures, also known as acute muscular contractions, can be induced by poisoning, a sudden rise or fall of blood sugar levels, a-"

"Is this a good time to speak with Miss Kirkland?" Pickering interrupted, and I heard her heels clicking as she approached the platform to stand next to Booth, looking to Brennan as she asked.

"Hey!" I snapped, annoyed. "If you want me for something, you ask me if you can have my attention, not Dr. Brennan or Agent Booth or anyone else!"

She didn't even flinch, but Brennan glanced at me sympathetically, understanding my frustrations. She looked back to Pickering with a very pointed glare. "Considering that you had to interrupt her to ask, it's probably not a good time. Take Hodgins," she suggested instead, before bending down to look at the thoracic vertebra region, around where the lungs would have been.

The entomologist didn't realize that by stepping onto the platform, he'd also stepped into an ambush. "I demand a lawyer!" He exclaimed.

Pickering didn't even look at Hodgins. "I don't need Dr. Hodgins, I need Miss Kirkland."

"Yeah, and I need you to address me when you want me for something, but we don't always get what we want, do we? If I demand a lawyer, does that mean that I get out of it too?"

Brennan looked up at that and nodded at Pickering decisively. "If that's the case, we all demand a lawyer," she commented.

Pickering gave a very false smile but tried to seem polite anyway. "I'll wait for Miss Kirkland."

"If you never get around to actually asking me for my attention, then you'll be waiting for a very long time."

"Why aren't you interviewing me?" Hodgins crossed his arms in anger.

Pickering opened her mouth but thought better of what she was going to say. "It won't be necessary," she said instead, before turning on her heel and beginning to walk off towards the hallway with the offices on the first floor.

"I knew it," Hodgins snorted, shaking his head. "They think my dossier is complete. They think they know everything about me." As Brennan and I shared a look, genuinely concerned about his mood swings, Hodgins raised his voice and yelled across the lab at the retreating woman. "Well, they're wrong!" He shouted.

I rubbed my forehead with the heel of my hand. "A minute ago you were demanding a lawyer to get out of talking to her. Now you're complaining because they don't want to?" I complained. "Jesus, you men are confusing sometimes."

"Just be happy they're leaving you alone," Zach advised Hodgins, slightly jealous that Pickering was leaving the entomologist alone while she harassed him for an interview.

"Yeah, I'm happy," Hodgins sneered, crossing his arms in annoyance while he glared at Pickering as she left his sight. "Don't worry, I am ecstatic."

"You really don't sound ecstatic," I told him honestly, smiling slightly. I enjoy being around everyone here – their personalities are interesting and they don't try to lie about themselves without a very good reason, even though I'd lied to them by omission about myself. Hodgins jerked his shoulders at my comment, but didn't insist that he was happy.

Booth rolled his eyes at Hodgins before looking back to Brennan, still leaning against the platform and watching us through the silver metal rails. "Now, the ear you found. There's no way it's her own ear, right?" He asked, purposefully getting the track back onto the case.

"How could it be her ear?" Brennan countered with a frown of confusion.

"That's what I'm saying!"

"What?"

I laughed a little. "Okay, that's some miscommunication. Basically, unless she's a circus contortionist, there's no way in hell that she managed to somehow bite her own ear."

"Chromosome tests make it male," Hodgins added from a quick, short glance at Zach's folder, which apparently had the results of all of the tests that Brennan had had run on the evidence and the body.

Brennan nodded to show she'd heard that and then looked back to me, her eyes piercing in their intensity. "Seizures," she prompted, reminding me of what I was saying before Pickering had shown up and interrupted me.

"Right. Seizures could be to sudden low blood pressure, electrocution, infection, head trauma, lack of oxygen to the brain… brain tumor, although that's unlikely, given the victim's health," I finished what I had been saying earlier, slightly unsure, and looked to Brennan to see if I was correct and if I'd missed anything, but Brennan looked absolutely astounded. "What?"

"Electrocution," she whispered. "The broken teeth, the fractures, the clots in her lungs. She was electrocuted."

I frowned and crossed my arms. Electrocution… the word echoed around in my mind. "That much damage to the teeth could only result from multiple violent spasms," Zach said with a frown, his eyebrows knitting together as he looked over the skeleton in a new light.

I raised my fingers to my mouth without thinking, biting at my fingernails for a moment before saying, "That's it. She was tortured. Donovan Decker is in much more danger than we thought." I covered my face with my hands and sighed. The little boy's mother was tortured when she could have fought back. God knows what they'll do to a helpless child. An eight-year-old probably wouldn't even survive what his mother did.

"Why would they do that to her?" Zach asked.

"To find out where her husband was," Hodgins answered, his gaze flicking between Booth and I. "Right?"

Booth nodded grimly.

A/N: I'm sorry this update took so long! Life's getting the better of me. Anyway, six days since my last update I'd have updated twice, so here's two chapters now.