I noticed Booth coming into the bone room and held out a hand to him, looking up. I pulled the light blue face mask back away very slightly, straining the elastic, and warned him, "Don't come in without a mask."

Brennan and Zach didn't look up from their meticulous task, letting me handle the matter while Zach held the tray completely steady and Brennan angled the surgical saw. What looked like specks of dust flew up into the rays of light given by the overhead lights as the skull was sliced expertly.

Booth stopped by the door obediently and didn't ask why. Apparently his message was more pressing. "I spoke to the city development office. The garden is scheduled to be excavated next week for construction. My guess is we interrupted a gangbanger moving the body of two murder victims."

"Excellent," I said neutrally.

Booth was slightly taken aback and didn't expect the praise. "Really?" He shuffled his feet and shoved his hands in his pockets.

"Yes. Excellent explanation for some of the facts," I elaborated, bursting his bubble. He frowned, put out, and I smirked, even though he couldn't see through the plastic mask. "Why would a gangbanger bury victims with a rosary?"

Booth puffed defensively. "Did you find any gunshot wounds?"

I waved at Brennan and Zach and left them in the room by the table. Once I was several feet away, I pulled the elastic from the mask from over my ears and slid the mask down around my neck. "Bone dust," I answered Booth's unspoken question. "It's dangerous if inhaled and can cause several serious chronic medical conditions. That's what the masks are for." I leaned against the side of the open doorway opposite him. "No gunshots, just head trauma."

Booth looked over at the scientists and frowned slightly. "They really like this part, don't they?"

I shrugged, caught between them. I don't want to help Booth make judgments, even inadvertently, because of my friendship with Zach and my admiration for Brennan. At the same time I don't want to dissatisfy Booth by not acknowledging him, because if it weren't for him I wouldn't even have this opportunity. "We like answers. The scientific procedure is interesting and educational."

The saw stopped and we both looked to see Brennan picking up the sawed off portion of the cranium and setting it gently under a microscope. I could see the monitor from the doorway but I wasn't close enough to make completely accurate observations.

Brennan pulled her mask away from her face, done with the cutting. "Localized staining on the endocranial surface, indicating…" she prompted her pupils expectantly.

Without realizing it, my mouth opened to answer and I saw Booth watching the exchange with a bit of amusement. "Subdural hematoma." I looked back to Booth and shrugged. "She asked."

"The head wound caused internal bleeding, but death was not instantaneous," Zach elaborated, extrapolating from the data. "She may have been conscious for a while after the assault."

"But there's no sign of bone remodeling," Brennan noted as a revision. "She died soon after." She turned it over curiously and Booth, Zach, and I watched attentively. She pulled the mask down around her neck and as a result, her voice was clearer and easier to hear. "There's patterning on the ectocranial surface. Whatever weapon was used, it left a mark."

"Can we extrapolate the pattern with a mold?" I asked. I didn't see why not, but I was sure there had to be some situation or another in which making a mold and reverse-engineering a mostly intact skull wouldn't work.

Brennan pursed her lips slightly in consideration while the end of her ponytail was blown over her shoulder by the vent. "Possibly," she acquiesced. "We should look into it, although I haven't seen anything that leaves those marks before."

Booth jerked his head slightly to the side and we walked, Zach sending us off with an excuse that he was going to clean up from the station. I nodded and gave him a little wave before following the FBI agent and anthropologist.

"...Gang unit's going to bring in the leader of Mara Muerte, and we'll see if we can identify the gangbanger that got away," Booth was telling her when I slowed my footsteps, falling in behind them in the rhythm that we'd established a while back, not even meaning to. It had just sort of happened without any of us really realizing it. I'd found my way into the Jeffersonian's daily motions with an unnerving lack of difficulty.

"Why would a gang leader cooperate?" Brennan asked in confusion, skeptical.

I smirked. She's brilliant, but she couldn't figure that out? We have no way of ensuring that he'll do as we say, and it's just a whim, but we can threaten to press charges or entertain him with conversation enough. "Well, maybe if we say please and thank you."

Brennan twisted to look at me over her shoulder, continuing to walk smoothly with a gracefulness that I envied. "You know that book I'm reading about getting along with your coworkers?" She reminded me with a slight displeased frown of discouragement. "It says that sarcasm is never helpful. I could lend it to you if you want."

I shut up pretty easily at that. "Woah. Sorry, Dr. Brennan. I'll make sure to tone down my personality a bit more," I promised her sarcastically, before realizing that I'd done just what she'd suggested I stop doing. I hit my forehead with the heel of my palm. "Sorry! Damn, it's just a character flaw, I guess."

Hodgins rounded a corner and nearly plowed straight into Booth, who turned to an angle and sidestepped him, shuffling his feet until Hodgins walked harmlessly past and he stepped up next to Brennan. I winced as Hodgins nearly ran into me as a result before spinning and joining me in the pursuit of the rapidly-walking adults.

"I found spodoptera, ornithogalae and tetranychus urticae on the suspect's shoe and on the victim," Hodgins started, cutting off Booth before the second word (immediately following 'the') of his next sentence managed to escape his mouth. "I also found notonectidae and corixidae. It's aquatic fauna typically only found in and around ponds and streams."

"No ponds or streams at the burial site," I pointed out.

"Yeah." Hodgins nodded to the side at me before continuing. "Here's the kicker - there was also evidence of genetic material from a franklinia alatamaha on his shoe." Hodgins was clearly very excited. I was seriously considering getting an entomology textbook just so I could look up his terms.

Booth held up his hands in painfully mock surprise. "You're kidding. I'm in shock!" Although he wasn't facing me, I had a strong suspicion he was rolling his eyes. "Frankie Alabama, you say?"

Brennan frowned at him disapprovingly. "Did you hear what I said about sarcasm?"

"Of course not, Dr. Brennan. Even if he did, he clearly disagrees and believes he's right," I answered for her, getting a bit more patience for my favorite adult.

"He always thinks he's right," Brennan shared with me like it was new news. She rolled her eyes and huffed in frustration. Booth glared at me for omitting him from the conversation and turning his partner against him. I smirked.

"That's because he's a man." I nodded, satisfied with the factual information, and quickly got another glare from Hodgins and shrugged. "I can't help it if you can't handle the truth."

And that's about as truthful as I get. Once, when I was in middle school still, a teacher asked a question about probability in samples. There were two people of opposite sexes with generic names in the example and the man thought his results were more reliable. The teacher asked why and I, at the ripe age of ten in the eighth grade, had answered that it was because he's a man when I was called on. While this had made all of the girls, plus the male teacher, laugh, apparently he had actually been looking for the answer that the male student's answer was more reliable because he had tested a larger sample.

True story. I wasn't even trying to be smart.

Hodgins abandoned his task of glaring at me in order to pursue his lead, much like we were pursuing the other adults, who, if I didn't know better, were trying to run away from us. "It's a rare flowering plant that hasn't been seen in the wild since eighteen hundred. The only known specimen in this area outside a specialized botanical garden was given to Senator Alan Corman as a gift." Hodgins passed a manila file to Booth as, at the mention of the word 'Senator,' Booth spun on him and stopped, narrowing his eyes as a 'don't start playing games with the government again' threat.

Booth quickly gave me that look when I grinned and clapped my hands enthusiastically before wringing them down in front of me. "I love going after Senators!" It was the best way ever to start my crime-solving hobby, in my opinion. Maybe going after the president would have been more entertaining, but there would be a lot more men in black with guns and glasses and a lot more legal technicalities. Plus, if I'd suggested the president was a murderer, Booth probably would have shot me right then, with his degree of fierce patriotism.

Booth didn't take the file, instead motioning for Hodgins to settle down with his hands. "Whoa. Just simmer down there. We're going to check out the botanical garden first," he decided, giving Hodgins a stern look not to argue.

Hodgins smirked. "Fine." He shouldn't have given in so easily. "It's at the White House." There we go!

I laughed and held out my fist. Hodgins chuckled and gave me a fist-bump. "Yeah!" I cheered.

Booth eyed us, disgruntled, and more than a little unhappy about the situation. "You two should do that even less than normal people. It's weird." He wagged his finger at Hodgins scoldingly. "Stop corrupting the kid. She's my junior agent-squint, not your junior conspiracy theorist."

"Girls, don't fight," I snickered. There are just too many shots being offered in this conversation.

Hodgins rolled his eyes. "Make sure to keep your eyes open for backswimmers and water boatmen while you're there," he instructed helpfully. "Remember, the notonectidae can be different colors, so-"

Booth clapped his hand on Hodgins' shoulder blade and pushed the entomologist in front of him, steering him off. "Ha, nice try, pal. You're coming with us."

Hodgins' eyes lit up again and he brought his hand up eagerly. "I call shotgun!"

"Let me know how that works out for you," I sighed, having tried that before with Booth and Brennan on the way to Little Salvador.

Unfortunately, although predictably, Hodgins didn't manage to get shotgun. Brennan had slid into the seat before Hodgins even stood a fighting chance, and the entomologist now sat beside me in the back seat, fuming to himself. "I called shotgun!" He complained. "What does it mean to a society when the niceties are no longer observed?"

"Apparently it means that grown men complain like petulant children," I shot back simply for the hell of getting into a witty argument. Usually comments like that get me into a physical fight, but it's nice to talk to someone (read: Jeffersonian team plus Booth) who actually reply in kind and indulge me.

"Xena, don't act like you don't enjoy the whining. It's not like you don't do your fair share," Hodgins sulked.

"Yes, but I'm a teenager. What's your excuse?"

"Kids, kids, grow up, both of you," Booth told us both, glancing at us shortly through the rearview mirror.

"You're not my father," I muttered rebelliously, crossing my arms and staring out the window.

"No, but I am a father, so I can say for sure that you're both acting like children."

"Again, what's his excuse?" I jerked my thumb at Hodgins.

I heard Booth sigh loudly and saw him rolling his eyes in the rearview mirror. "Behave, Hodgins. Stop picking fights with minors." I sent Hodgins a smug little smirk. "Okay, look, we've got two bodies, alright? One is unaccounted for. We've been shot at, and now we know that there's a gang member walking around a U.S. Senator's place. Any theories?"

Brennan and Hodgins both shook their heads mutely. I shrugged noncommittally.

Booth let go of the steering wheel with one hand and threw his hand in the air. "Come on, guys! Let's think of it as a puzzle, and there's a missing piece."

Brennan smiled and looked over to him, rewarding the analogy. "I like puzzles. I find them relaxing. I just finished "The Anatomy Lesson," Rembrandt."

Booth didn't give her a reaction that she was looking for. He just looked at her flatly for a minute. "You're kidding… right?"

"No," she replied, frowning like she understood that he wasn't taking her very seriously. "What do you find relaxing?"

"I restore vintage cars," Booth replied, smiling slightly and stretching his fingers for a moment when we stopped at a red light.

"I like reading," I commented. "If anyone's interested."

"I know what I find relaxing," Hodgins hinted, doing a poor job at attempting subtlety.

Booth sent Hodgins a short-tempered glare through the mirrors. "Everybody finds what you find 'relaxing' relaxing," he pointed out snidely.

In retaliation, Hodgins made a face at Booth when he thought the FBI agent couldn't see him. "Senator Corman is a big supporter of business leaders in Central America. That means supporting repressive regimes that use death squads to silence any opposition from the working people which are the same people who flee to the States."

"You think the homicides are the work of a death squad?" I asked, looking over at Hodgins in mild alarm. Death squads, like mafias and gangs, are not the type of people that you want to trifle with. A death squad is basically a group of assassins-for-hire that work within a larger crime group, but unlike mafia hitmen, they aren't very organized. A hitman might set up a sniper; a death squad is more likely to do a home invasion. They use force and work in a group so they're difficult to overpower.

Hodgins just tilted his head to me and shrugged, not saying yes or no, but his own suspicions - that the murders had something to do with illegal immigration - were quite clear.

Booth praised Hodgins although the conspiracy theories are probably grating on his nerves. "Okay, that's great, that's good. Let's focus. It's good because now we have a link between Corman and the Salvadorans."

I looked at Booth and shook my head in confusion, holding up my hands. "Hang on. Back up. Now you, of all people, think a senator murdered two people?"

"I just think we've gotten another piece of the puzzle, that's all." He stuck to the analogy.

"... Have you driven us into the Twilight zone?"

Senator Corman and Senator Bethlehem, in their treatment of Brennan and I, were complete opposites. Where Bethlehem was cold, derisive, and eager for an excuse to shoo us away while making comments about my ineligibility, Corman was calm, welcoming, and amiable, not remarking on our lack of federal credentials and not just allowing, but inviting Booth to bring both of the scientists and I onto his private property. Maybe some of the difference could be because we'd been investigating the death of a woman he'd been having an affair with, but I think Bethlehem was probably just an unfriendly person.

We were granted the respect of having both the senator and his wife attend to us and they showed us through the gate and offered us a walk through their personal gardens. Senator Corman wasn't dressed for a meeting, but not exactly for Saturday barbeque, either - expensive clothing line, but an outdoorsy look with button up flannels and slacks. Mrs. Corman, his wife, wore a floral skirt and a light blue blouse, her blonde hair tied up in a bun on top of her head. Her wedding ring was clean and frequently polished and she had a thin necklace chain around her neck. Well, at least her marriage is going well.

The large estate had a plethora of Hispanic and European gardeners from lower socioeconomic classes. Most wore jeans or shorts and light-colored tee shirts, hair either short or tied up out of their flushed faces from the heat. The trees were trimmed and kept to a border around the yard and the grass was cleanly cut, bushes trimmed, and flowers planted and taken care of. Weeds had been pulled and I couldn't see any dandelions.

I had a juice pouch that Mrs. Corman had given me. Apparently, they have a son my age who drinks them, so she'd run to the kitchen on gotten me one while she gave the others lemonade glasses. "Because of my husband's official work in El Salvador, we've formed a bond with the country and the people," she explained. Booth and I walked next to each other between the senator and his wife, with Brennan and Hodgins looking around for their biological evidence and walking slightly behind us.

Corman puffed out his chest a bit in pride. "In fact, we have several Salvadoran immigrants working here at the house. I've actually sponsored quite a few for citizenship."

"Citizenship screening would keep out members of death squads," Hodgins grumbled to himself. When I looked back to shake my head at him subtly, he was trying to light the senator on fire with his eyes.

Booth coughed pointedly. "Hodgins…"

Corman's eyebrows drew together and he narrowed his eyes at Hodgins. "Just because I'm anti-socialist, doesn't make me pro-death squad," he curtly dismissed.

"Senator Corman, the Jeffersonian has found evidence that a gang member has been on your property recently," I interrupted before a squabble broke out and knocked the politicians out of our favor.

"We employ twenty staff members, give or take," Mrs. Corman started. She moved to place her hand on my back maternally, but I flinched back deliberately and she withdrew.

"All of our staff members are either legal aliens or citizens," Corman elaborated, as his wife broke off to pull her limbs back to herself. "Our house manager's in charge of hiring and managing them."

Booth reached into his pocket and unfolded a page from Angela's drawing pad of the gangbanger I'd chased through Little Salvador. "Do you recognize this man?"

Corman looked at it for a minute before shaking his head slowly. "No. I assume he did something worse than trespass on my property?"

"Is your house manager from El Salvador?" Booth asked instead of answering the question.

Mrs. Corman nodded. "Yes."

"Agent, you didn't answer my question," the senator edgily pointed out.

I looked between Booth and the senator and sipped some more juice. Ooh… someone should interrupt before this becomes a catfight. "We're investigating a death, Senator Corman," Booth replied after looking up to the sky in stress. "You understand why I can't talk about it."

That seemed to diffuse the situation sufficiently, but just in case, I stepped in. "Would you mind if we showed the sketch to your house manager?" If he was in charge of hiring the employees then he'd be more likely to recognize the perpetrator.

Corman nodded to me professionally. "Of course."

"Franklinia alatamaha," Hodgins exclaimed, his voice rising in tone as he pointed off to some of the shrubs. "It's beautiful!"

Mrs. Corman smiled in delight. "Yes, isn't it?" She crossed her arms for something to do with her hands. "We're the only people cultivating it privately."

Brennan sped up and moved to the other side of the senator, placing him between herself and Booth. "Senator, do you have a pond on the property?" She asked calmly.

"Yes, on the other side of the shrubs," he answered, not questioning why she was asking. Admittedly it did seem a bit irrelevant - aside from that we had an entomologist with us. "It's small."

"Could Dr. Hodgins take a look at it?"

"Of course, be my guest," he allowed. I slowed down so I fell back from Mrs. Corman and joined Hodgins before pointing off to a small pathway lined with garden stones that led through the garden. He nodded and veered away from the group and I sped up so I got back in line again.

The Senator continued once Hodgins was out of earshot. "Logan, come say hello!" He called, and beckoned to a young man my age wearing a light blue shirt and jeans with a rip by the knee. "We have guests." Logan said something else to one of the gardeners before brushing his hands on his pants and stepping up towards us as the senator motioned for us to stop. "Our son, he's studying landscape architecture. He likes to supervise the men sometimes." He turned to his son. "Logan, this is Special Agent Seeley Booth from the FBI and his associates, Dr. Brennan and Miss Kirkland."

Logan was solidly built and taller than his mother, standing at nearly six feet tall, and he had light brown, dark blonde hair that curled to the tops of his ears and brown eyes. He was tanned like he spent a lot of time in the sun. He spoke without a Spanish accent. "What's the FBI doing here?" However he'd spoken to the gardeners in Spanish. English was probably his second language, seeing as his parents are both Spanish, but he'd probably been learning English since he started school. Given over a decade of practice by immersion, it makes sense.

"They would like to ask Hector some questions," Corman explained, rather formally considering he was talking to his child.

"Yeah. Hector!" Logan nodded, cooperative, and turned at an angle to us, calling out to one of the men overseeing a pair of gardeners. "¿Ven, hablarmos para tu?"

Hector looked over to us and inclined his chin to show he'd heard. He, unlike the rest of them, wore a business suit, making him stand out like black on white. He, like the rest of the gardeners, was Hispanic. He had short black hair compared to Logan's dusty brown.

A moment later he came over. "Yes, sir?" He nodded respectfully to the Cormans.

Booth held out the sketched drawing again. ""Hector, I'm Special Agent Seeley Booth. Do you recognize this guy?"

Hector looked at it for a long moment before he looked back up to Booth, meeting the agent's eyes. "No, I don't think so."

Logan peered over the manager's shoulder and tilted his head, squinting at it before looking over to me. "That could be Jose," he said, blinking in surprise. "He works here sometimes as a gardener."

"Really?" Hector frowned in distaste and passed the sketch back. "I don't think so."

"Jose who?" I asked Logan, ignoring Hector now that he was proving useless.

"Jose Vargas," the boy answered promptly.

Mrs. Corman set her hand on her son's shoulder. "Logan, Agent Booth said he was in a gang," she gasped. I was a little worried she would start crying.

"A gang?" Logan repeated, his face twisting in confusion. "No, absolutely no way! Jose's a nice guy - you know, a wife and kid."

I opened my mouth to ask if he knew where the wife and child would be at this point, but Hodgins beat me to the punch as he came tromping through the pathway again and yelled out to us. "I found both backswimmers and water boatmen!"

I closed my mouth and snapped and pointed over at the entomologist, looking meaningfully at Booth. "Did you recently do some planting over there?" I asked Hector, raising my eyebrows at the possible lead. He replied in Spanish that no, he had not done any particularly recent gardening over in that area.

"What is it?" Booth asked me, looking between the house manager and I.

Brennan spun around and started walking off towards Hodgins where he stood at the mouth of the pathway. She passed him without so much as a wave for us to follow and instead Booth and I just exchanged a mildly exasperated look before jogging after her, him slightly ahead of me.

"Can I borrow a trowel?" Brennan asked when I saw her next by the side of a small (maybe five by five?) little pond with some koi fish swimming around obliviously. She was knelt in the extremely healthy-looking, rich soil and it stained the knees of her jeans.

"Gladly," Hector replied, grasping one from the hand of another of the workers and passing it over to her.

"Gracias," Brennan thanked offhandedly, gently dragging the side of the miniature shovel over the adipocere, shoving it off to the side and clearing a small patch. I watched anxiously through the gap between Booth and Hector's shoulders and sighed, looking off to the side when I saw the pale off white of bone as the dirt tumbled around through the hollowed eye sockets. Brennan looked up and her expression, disappointment mixed with relief to finding another lead, was a bit difficult to read. "Looks like we found the second body."

Hodgins lifted up his tray with the dishes of particulates and insects (one of which was still sluggishly inching around - mostly because it was a slug. Ew) and lowered his eyes to one in particular as he turned his back to the table and started to move towards his microscope. "Puparia casing of tineid moths puts the time of death of this one at about a year, six months before the girl."

"Heart-shaped pelvic inlet and long projections of bone into the rib cartilage suggest we have a male over sixty," Zach decided, bending over the table.

"Anthropometrics suggests Hispanic origins," Brennan added helpfully from where she was leaning over the skull.

"We've reassembled the rosary found on the young woman. The carving of fire in the centerpiece is an archetypal symbol found at an area of El Salvador since the Chaparrastique volcano erupted in seventeen eighty-seven."

"History. Cool," I remarked, glancing over at the patched-up rosary sitting innocently in a shallow jar in Goodman's hands. "Does that suggest where the female victim is from?"

"Yes, actually," the archaeologist answered, sounding a bit pleased that at least one person was paying attention to what he said with a verbal reply. "A village called Milagro de la Paz in the southeast of the country."

Brennan looked up suddenly from the table but her eyes didn't meet anyone's. "I was there three years ago," she murmured softly. I barely heard but I don't think anyone was supposed to. She was having one of those moments like she was reliving or remembering something horrific. I really didn't want to know everything that she'd seen. I'm perfectly fine not experiencing anything worse than I already have, although with my luck, it's probably gonna happen sooner or later. "Identifying the victims of death squads."

Angela approached her friend almost hesitantly and she extended her hand towards the anthropologist's shoulder before she stopped herself, deciding that now wasn't the best time to talk about it. I know that this case must be a sensitive topic for Brennan and it would be good for her to vent to someone, but ideally not with all of these people around and in such a sensitive environment. Instead the artist withdrew her hand back to the spiral binding of her sketchbook.

"I finished the sketch of the woman," she said, smiling softly as she turned it around so that Brennan could see, trying to elicit a reaction. "She was pregnant, starting over in a new country, so I gave her a smile and made her look hopeful."

Brennan glanced at it and I noted that she looked away quickly. "Thanks, Angela." I didn't want to see - it was bad enough that I already knew that Cleo Eller had been murdered just because she was pregnant. I don't need to associate the picture with the skeleton I examine so soon after not only being in a violent, brutal SWAT raid, but also after being kidnapped and assaulted by someone that had been more than capable of snapping my neck at any given moment.

"Let's clean the bones," I suggested, trying to subtly veer the topic away from the woman's life before her death and, therefore, the death squads, for Brennan's sake. "That may help to identify cause of death."

I looked over at Zach just to see if he had any objections. I know what I'm talking about but still, I'm like a preschooler and they're the big kids in high school. Zach wasn't looking at me, but rather holding up a magnification lens over the pelvis. "I think I just found it," he corrected me.

I slid along the side of the table, my fingertips brushing the steel edges as I sidled up about a foot away from him and leaned over to see through the magnifier at the right angle. "Gunshot wound," I explained, not looking up because I knew Goodman, Angela, Brennan, and Hodgins would all hear. "Looks like copper on the intact casing… but where it was blasted in the gunpowder explosion it looks steel."

"Military issue," Hodgins mused and I practically heard the smirk. "Those are the kinds of weapons that gangs like."

Brennan scowled at the skeleton and snapped her latex gloves off with a lot more force than was actually necessary. "They escape from the death squads and wind up being killed by the same weapon that they were running from."

She sounded calm but I suspected that inside, she was seething.

I knocked on the apartment door firmly and waited a moment but got no reply. Ceding to Booth, I stepped back and gestured to the door. Holding his gun in one hand (although the safety was still on), he twisted the handle and stepped inside the threshold.

I looked around. Logan had been able to provide Jose's address and Booth was gambling that the gangbanger might be here, since he's not exactly the brightest crayon in the box if he's mixed up in Mara Muerte to begin with. However, Brennan and I were taking a less violent take on the situation and we half suspected we'd find Jose's wife and child, so we'd opted not to storm the place. The only reason Booth had gone in first was because he had the gun and he insisted.

"FBI," Booth called authoritatively, his loud voice projecting and echoing in the empty room. "Make your presence known."

Acting on the side of caution, I repeated his words in Spanish. If Jose's family were illegal immigrants it was possible they either didn't speak English or understood very little of it. "Oficina Federal de Investigaciones. Haga su presencia."

Booth lowered his gun as he moved towards a table while Brennan and I fanned out over the room, the three of us moving into a lopsided triangle. Brennan picked up a simply framed photograph. "He's got a family. A baby," Brennan commented quietly. "Is anybody here?" She raised her voice. "You don't have to be afraid."

Booth gave her a look. "Of course they're gonna be afraid, Bones. I have a gun."

Ignoring his quip, I repeated after Brennan in Spanish. "¿Hay alguien aquí? Usted no tiene que tener miedo."

Brennan delicately set the photo frame down and picked up another one in its place. "Milagro de la Paz." Something in the photograph must be recognizable from the time she spent there. "That's where the victims are from."

I reached out slowly and pressed my fingertips against the side of a little baby's bottle, filled more than halfway with milk. It was still warm to the touch. Although it wasn't hot it was definitely too warm to have been sitting for very long, or it would have cooled to room temperature. "They were here recently, a few minutes ago at most."

"They're still here," Brennan sighed. The frame clicked as she replaced the second picture on the tabletop.

"How do you know?" Booth looked over to her in mild alarm but I crept forward. The apartment was small and uncrowded and the maroon peeling wallpaper seemed too nice to have been that way when they moved in, in this particular neighborhood.

"They're prepared for this kind of thing," I reminded him as I stepped around the table and to the edge of the family room, brushing my hands against the wall and knocking every few feet for a hollow spot. "They come from El Salvador, and they hid from death squads. They must have learned to build hideaways - cubbies, fake walls." I knocked again to emphasize the point but the wall sounded solid, so I moved on out of the living room.

Booth followed quickly, irked that I'd moved out of his line of sight. I took an immediate left and followed the wall into the laundry room, where I could see the cables connecting the electrical cords in the wall to the washer, which rattled on in the background, vibrating my feet. "And what makes you so sure they didn't run out the fire escape?"

Brennan snorted and I got the distinct impression that she was rolling her eyes. I slid along the wall, pressed up to the wallpaper and moving along the perimeter of the wash room. "She has a baby, Booth. Do you really think she'd risk an accident like that?"

I knocked again and this time pulled myself back from the wall, blinking before knocking again in the same spot. "This is hollow," I murmured triumphantly, gliding my fingers along the immediate area, looking for a latch or crevice.

Booth stepped up behind me, his gun out towards the wall in case it opened, and he held out a hand in warning over mine. Recoiling from the possibility of touching, I pulled my hands back before realizing I'd done exactly what he'd intended. "Hold on a minute there, kid. Let's just pretend that I'm the cop for a second, okay?"

I rolled my eyes but stepped back and crossed my arms as he found a crack in the wallpaper and pulled down. Stepping back quickly, the trapdoor-like device that had seemed like a solid wall fell to his feet and he raised his other hand to his firearm again in a threat.

A woman was curled up into herself, sticky tears sliding down her cheeks while she sobbed dryly as she saw the gun. Upon closer inspection, she wasn't curling in on herself, she was trying to keep her infant out of harm's way.

I growled low in my throat and stepped forward, raising a hand to the barrel of Booth's weapon and shoving it down so it faced the floor. "Can't you see she's terrified?" I hissed before turning back to the broken hideout. I knelt down and tried to speak in the most calm, soothing manner I could manage. "Señora! Señora! No vamos a hacerte daño! Usted y su bebé está a salvo con nosotros." I urged her to calm and assured her of their safety before I heard her try to stop sniffling. "Estamos buscando a José." We're looking for Jose.

"Yo no - yo no sé nada!" I don't know anything! She stammered slightly over her words in her fright.

"What did she just say?" Booth snapped at Brennan.

Brennan handled his harshness well by not responding directly to his aggression. "Holly said that we just want to talk to Jose. That they'll all be safe, and they have nothing to fear from us. She said she doesn't know anything that we want to know."

Booth's lips curved in an unpleasant snarl and he stepped forward, glaring down the woman and as I stared up at him in anger, her sobs renewed themselves. "Do you wanna be deported?" He demanded roughly. I get that he's frustrated but the way he's speaking - it's clear he's threatening her and his tone is scaring her. The baby started to softly wail along with his mother. "Do you wanna see your baby again? Because if he was born here, he doesn't have to go back with you! We can keep him!"

"Damn it, Booth, what's wrong with you?" I snapped, rising to my feet and stepping between the FBI agent and the crying mother and child.

"Booth, stop!" I was relieved that Brennan agreed with me. The other woman stepped up behind Booth and set her hand on his shoulder, pulling him back a few feet from the immigrants. "She's frightened enough."

"Bones, we have a double murder on our hands!" Booth stressed with plenty of emphasis.

"Yeah, I got that, Sherlock!" Yelling wasn't going to help the situation, and I knew that, but he was just being so ridiculously infuriating! "But she didn't do it and we're the good guys, not the death squads. We help and we find the real murderers, we don't terrorize innocent people!"

I was pleased to note the faint trace of shame when he looked away from me. It was unreal that in a moral argument, I won while Booth, the down-to-Earth father, was wrong. "Just tell her what I said, okay?" He ordered. "Tell her we're calling immigration, and tell her we'll get to Jose."

"No!" I was seriously offended that he was commanding me to do that and the only reason he was going through me was because he didn't speak the language. We've been working so well in tandem with the same goals that I guess I forgot how different we are in a more fundamental sense. "I absolutely will not terrify her any more than you already have!"

Booth rounded on Brennan like he hoped the other Spanish-speaking woman would do something to help him. Brennan's gaze was firm and stern. "She's lived with terror and intimidation her whole life. I'm not going to add to it." She was resolute, thankfully.

Booth took a deep breath and looked at her beseechingly. At least he respected me enough to understand that he crossed a line with me and that I was not going to budge. "You know, you're acting like I'm going to hurt her or something. I'm just trying to get a little information."

"We're in Washington D.C., not Guantanamo Bay," I muttered irately. "We don't get information by leering and shouting at bawling women and infants."

Brennan was almost pleading as she tried to meet Booth's eyes. Once she succeeded, she got her point across fairly well just with her wounded expression and Booth was unable to look away. "Please… I am asking you as a favor, not to make me do this… to scare her. Please."