I didn't see Booth for the better part of a week.

Five days, six if you counted the afternoon after the funeral, and I hadn't gotten a word from him or the FBI.

It's not like it was a shocker - I'd always known that I'd go too far, someone would bring a stop to the allowance of an unqualified teenager investigating federal crimes, or Booth would just get tired of me in general. Still, I'd been hoping for a bit of a warning before my weekdays stopped being spent in a lab or on the field with the FBI and went back to working at the bar, either ignoring or rejecting the passes made by drunks and trying to keep the younger employees from getting near anyone too shady. All the same, I was unreasonably disappointed that it seemed to be over.

Until I came to work early one morning and Andy was waiting for me by the door, ushering me inside, leaving the door to the bar ajar, and pointing me to a booth not far from the entryway, where a very familiar face was sitting.

Since going to the club with Brennan, when she'd accidentally started a fight and I'd thrown a man into a wall, revealing the mummified remains of a murdered deejay, I'd understood that just because she was a very sciency person, it didn't mean that she was a stranger to alcohol, especially when she was with Angela. But once she'd recruited me, shown her Jeffersonian pass to my boss, and led me out to the car, I'd seen that her loyal assistant was shoved into the back seat behind the passenger's most certainly did not seem normal. While I closed the passenger's side door and pulled the seat belt across my chest, I looked over my shoulder to get a good look at Zach trying to rearrange his gangly limbs to get more comfortable and frowning, unsettled and slightly frustrated by his inability to get comfy.

Although I was still disappointed that Booth wasn't involved in the Jeffersonian's newest assignment, I was taking what I could get, even if it involved getting into a golf cart beside Zach and being given a bumpy ride towards the middle of a large fairway. Personally, I was just pleasantly surprised they were still recruiting me for anything, even if it wasn't federal.

"So what about this was so sensitive I couldn't learn in the car?" I asked, leaning slightly back. We were in one of those four-seat golf carts, with two seats facing forward and two seats facing backwards. The person on the front left drove while Brennan sat next to him, and on the other side, Zach and I faced where we'd come, him behind the driver and myself behind the other scientist. Apparently this case was particularly special, because Brennan had told me that I should wait and ask again by the crime scene due to what Dr. Goodman had told her regarding the information. I had just nodded although I didn't really get who she thought was going to overhear us in a moving car with the windows rolled up.

"A plane carrying several Chinese politicians was crashed into the field," Brennan explained to me, now that we were in what was deemed a 'safe zone.' Even the cart's driver wore a Jeffersonian ID tag. "Apparently it wasn't foul play, but there is the issue of making sure everyone is who the Chinese government says they are."

"Ah. Governments again." I nodded with a slight sigh. Although those do tend to be interesting in my (admittedly limited) experience, I dislike dealing with the officials that come with it.

"We'll be meeting with agents from the F.A.A., the N.T.S.B., and the local police," Brennan added as more of an afterthought.

Zach crossed his arms over his chest but leaned forward so his elbows touched his knees. "Usually Booth handles those people," he grumbled softly.

I raised my eyebrows at him, although I was seriously amused by that little comment. I guess that even though Zach is much better off than I am in the world, Booth's protagonizing, almost paternal attitude towards people younger than him still managed to catch him on the hook as he had me. "Plane crashes don't really go to the FBI," I reminded him with a shrug. "And besides, Booth's not in the right division."

"But why not?" Zach argued, crossing his arms in a sulk. I had to smile when Zach pouted, even though it irritated me when most other people did that. "F.A.A. stands for Federal Aviation Administration. The N.T.S.B. stands for National Transport Safety Board. That sounds federal to me, and F.B.I. stands for-"

"Federal Bureau of Investigation," I interrupted, finishing his sentence for him with a slight grin. "Yes, I have spent ample time learning about the bureau. However, the FBI doesn't need their ego swelled, so let's not get hissy when they give us a longer leash, yeah?" I know the FBI does let the Jeffersonian do a lot of work without being nosy, and they usually only involve themselves on the cases they issue, but the main point is to give Zach a reason not to get irritable with the crime scene team. I have no doubt it would be hilarious, but Brennan might get annoyed with it.

Zach kept his arms crossed and skulked, staring at the field behind the car with a pout. "This is the third time in a row we've investigated without Booth." I waited for a minute and was not disappointed. "I don't like it."

"Yes, I noticed." I assured.

"Why?" Brennan asked from the front, her voice laced in confusion and slight irritation. "He mostly ignores you." So she's not irritated by Zach, just by Booth's attitudes towards most of her colleagues.

"Ignoring me is Booth's way of acknowledging my presence," Zach explained confidently. I twisted around and Brennan and I exchanged a skeptical glance. Zach saw it. "It's a guy thing."

I sighed, shaking my head slightly, but decided it would be better to take it up with Booth than the apparently very gullible intern.

The golf cart slowed down once the plain evened out and Zach, Brennan, and I had to get out and duck under the police tape posted around a pretty large area, using trees and the backs on forensics and CSI vans as posts. I winced when I saw it and stepped over a piece of skewed metal. The sky was slightly grey just overhead, like there'd been smoke. What seemed like a small, private jet or airplane had crashed in something that looked, from this point, not too different from a nosedive. It was not a pretty scene, but the emergency responders must have taken care of fires, smokes, et cetera, and the crime scene team had already done significant work with moving rubble.

"Dr. Brennan?" Someone asked. He was maybe in his middle to late twenties with a vest labelling him as part of the crime scene unit assigned to the crash.

Brennan nodded. "Yes," she confirmed needlessly. It was hard to miss the nod.

"I'm Ian Dyson with the NTSB," he introduced, moving like he was about to offer to shake her hand. He took another glance to crash site and decided that maybe it was a bit out of place and he pulled back.

Brennan glanced to Zach and waved one hand in my general direction. We were a bit behind her, and Zach was still sulking with his feet dragging slightly when he walked and scuffing the grass. I was standing next to him in a bit of support, although I was more amused than I was upset with him. "These are my assistants, Zach Addy and Holly Kirkland."

I must be more popular than I thought, because Dyson didn't even blink at me. Hm… I guess there is a pro to the cons of being publicized. At least people are questioning my youth less.

"At approximately zero four hundred last night, a private jet with five passengers on board reported horizontal stabilizer trouble, two hundred miles southeast of Norfolk." Dyson's airplane talk meant very near nothing to me, but I nodded like I understood. "Yeager Airport in Charleston tracked them for thirty minutes until they dropped off the radar screen at zero four thirty. The plane tried to make an emergency landing here." Obviously, that didn't work out so well. "It clipped some trees and slammed to the ground." He looked away from us to more accurately point over past the crash. "We found another mostly intact body over near the trees. The rest is bits and pieces."

Zach fixed the man with a very sharp, analytical gaze. "What makes this one of our cases?" He demanded, a lot more aggressively than he probably should have been.

Dyson blinked once but thought that he must have heard wrong. "I beg your pardon?"

Zach gave him a patronizing smile. "We're kind of special. We're elite. We don't sort through just any set of bodies."

Dyson looked like he honestly couldn't believe what he'd just heard come out of the scrawny boy's mouth. "It was a state department flight with a bunch of VIPs on board," he voiced indignantly, coming out slightly strangled. "Is that special enough?"

Zach narrowed his eyes slightly, detecting the hostility, and unfortunately didn't back down completely. "I apologize if I have offended you. Usually we have an FBI agent who mediates our interpersonal encounters."

Dyson fixed Zach with a really pissed off glare before stalking off rather deliberately. Brennan gave her intern a stern look and I just chuckled. All of that sass, though.

Dyson was soon replaced with a female forensic technician wearing the Jeffersonian emblem across the chest of her jacket. She held two pieces of bone in her hands, both looking to be from a cranium. "We found another skull," she stated needlessly, more out of etiquette than necessity.

"Two skulls," Zach corrected her within seconds of looking at the bones in her hands. "Those pieces are from two different skulls." The woman looked down slightly and blushed, a bit embarrassed to have been wrong.

"It's alright," I told her with a shrug. "I didn't get that, either." It just seemed unfair that Dr. Brennan's students, who had actually gone to college and/or medical school and had a reason to be here, felt belittled by someone who seemed to trust my opinions while he second-guessed theirs.

"Zach, we don't need Booth to mediate our interpersonal encounters," Brennan told her assistant, looking to the woman in acknowledgment before losing interest in her. The girl ducked her head and shuffled off back to her team. Brennan paced across the field, trusting Zach and I to tag behind her, while she reached the remains of what looked like the cockpit of the plane. "Pilot, copilot," she analyzed, looking over the corpses. The acrid scent of burned flesh and decomp made me cringe. "That brings our count to six. Three mostly intact sets of remains, one partial, and two fragmented."

"Obviously, bodies are burnt to a crisp, but no dermis, very little soft tissue, indications of high impact trauma, burst fractures to the lower thoracic and lumbar vertibrae are consistent with injuries caused by the vertical impact of the falling aircraft…" Zach looked after Brennan, slightly disheartened, as she doubled over to look through the grass with her sharp eyesight. "Should I keep talking as though you are paying attention?"

Brennan didn't answer, instead picking up a fragmented piece of bone about three inches long and a few centimeters wide at one end, narrowing to a blunt point at the other. "What do you make of this?"

"Femur fragment," Zach decided after a moment.

I raised my eyebrows. "It was in the plane crash, but there's no charring. No fire? No plane crash?" I stopped myself before I could ask any more questions, but the alarm had already been raised.

"What are the odds?" Brennan asked me rhetorically.

"Of a crashing plane falling directly on a human being?" Zach clarified, before making a skeptical face. "One in… ten million," he figured.

"Well, you heard the human calculator." I smirked at Brennan as she turned the bone fragment over in her hands, observing it for any further anomalies. "Coincidences are overrated, anyway."

I really wanted to pull my legs up under me but something about the atmosphere of the archaeologist's office made me refrain. Dr. Goodman's office wasn't homely like Angela's, or professionally comfortable like Brennan's, or even relaxed and spacious like Booth's. Yes, the furniture was mostly the same as Brennan's, but the organizations were different and there wasn't as much light. There was the overhead light panels and the lamp on his desk. The colors weren't bright and varied, but all toned down to more natural, earthy hues. The room just seemed a lot more strict, which I suppose fit Goodman's responsibilities as the supervisor of the Jeffersonian.

The office was fairly large, but the spacy quality was lost due to the number of bodies shoved into the room. Goodman sat with his back ramrod straight in his desk chair, completely serious. I sat next to Zach on the light brown, orange-tinted sofa to the side of the room, and my posture was uncharacteristically perfect. I understand deportment's necessity in a workplace, but I've never particularly cared about it. I don't work here, anyway. But this office just makes me feel subordinate and like I'm going to get my hands whacked with a ruler if I don't.

Brennan and Angela were in chairs scooted back away from Goodman's desk while Hodgins stood with his arms crossed at Zach's end of the couch, waiting for the information. Even the conspiracist seemed unusually sobered by the circumstances.

"The information that I'm about to tell you must not leave this room," Goodman intoned somberly, his hands clasped in his lap, looking around the room. I felt oddly like we were all in trouble with the teacher due to his infuriating calmness. I nodded out of habit but didn't look directly at him, much more interested with a seam in my jeans. A patch on the thigh of the material was slightly darker than the rest. Oh. These must have been the ones I wore when McGruder kidnapped me. I very specifically remembered blood dripping onto my leg from my mostly-healed injuries.

Hodgins wasted no time in rebelling. "I am philosophically imposed to institutional secrecy in all its' forms."

Hodgins would have been the punk in our odd collection. Angela probably would have been the cheerleader, Booth the football player, Zach the nerd, Brennan the science geek, and I probably would have been the stereotypical outcast. Hm. It's a scarily accurate analogy.

"Fine." I was surprised that Goodman agreed so easily but then he added, "Get out."

Hodgins scoffed quietly but didn't move.

Goodman had his answer, so he continued on his initial track. "Two communist Chinese trade attaches were on that plane when it crashed - both high-ranking party men."

"Well, obviously we shot it down," Hodgins snidely interjected.

Goodman ignored Hodgins before the entomologist got on his nerves. "The F.A.A. and the N.T.S.B. can prove that it was an accident." Well that was definitely pointed. I hope Hodgins got that message. "Also on the manifest was an American business man, a pilot, and a copilot. Five people."

"Er," I started to say, as intelligently as it is possible to stutter.

"Dr. Goodman, we found six sets of human remains in the wreckage," Zach took the words out of my mouth and I shrugged.

"Not to mention three bone fragments which were not on the plane," Brennan reminded Zach, but the information was given to Dr. Goodman effectively as well.

Goodman met the eyes of the anthropologist seriously. "Is there any chance those bone fragments were on the plane?"

Angela raised her eyebrows at him like she was wondering if he was serious. I gave Goodman a look. "With all due respect, why would there be bone fragments on the plane? Carry-on luggage? Icebreaker? Party favors?"

"Everything on the plane burned. They were untouched by fire." Admittedly, Brennan's reasoning was much more scientifically sound than my own.

"Hmm," we could hear the archaeologist hum in consideration before he came to a quick decision. "Then forget about the bone fragments for the time begin. The state department is extremely anxious to find the identity of that sixth person. No one wishes this to become an international incident; therefore, this is our only priority."

I looked to Brennan, alarmed, hoping that I wasn't the only person who seriously disagreed with this. I was not disappointed, although she spoke up without even the prompt of looking at me. "I disagree!"

"For the love of God," Goodman sighed. He should have seen this coming. "Why?"

"Because the plane crash was an accident," she stressed. "The bone fragments were not!"

"How do you know?" He leveled this look at her like a he was just daring her to give an insufficient answer. His priorities don't lay within justice; they lay within the Jeffersonian and his bosses, which is the main reason why he and Brennan don't always work in tandem.

"Zach and Holly found unusual cut marks," she answered promptly.

I wondered what the odds were of being excluded from this conversation. Considering the glance I was just given by Goodman, probably somewhere between zero and nil.

"Cut marks congruent with dismemberment," Zach specified.

Goodman held his face in his hands for a moment before looking up to deal with the science nerds and their plus one. "People, one hour ago, I received a call from the secretary of state requesting that the unidentified extra passenger be our first priority."

"Since when are politics more important than murder?" I asked, looking up to Hodgins as I stated my question before looking to Goodman. "I mean, honestly I feel like I'm going to have a book thrown at me for disagreeing with you, but those priorities seem a little skewed."

"I'm not saying please," he ground out irately. Maybe we've pushed a bit too far. "I'm not being reasonable." Yes, I noticed. "I'm making the decision. First and foremost, identify that sixth body!"

"Have you got it, or do you want it explained again?" I asked the FBI agent sitting across from me bluntly.

"No, I've got it," he nodded. I raised my eyebrows and he sighed before proving it. "The plane goes down, boom, there's an extra body on board which you really don't care about, because you're more interested in these bone fragments that you found on the ground."

I nodded and pushed the stainless steel tray across the table of the bone room, currently devoid of any bones. The bone fragments were all resting in containers to keep them from eroding or being attacked by the air and particulates in the room. "Exactly. And Brennan and I sent the message to the FBI because Goodman doesn't want to open the investigation until the sixth body is identified. But you should know that the longer we wait, the colder the murderer's trail gets."

So… yeah. Brennan and I totally went behind the back of the man who was, overall, in charge of both of us. It was my idea to call Booth, but Brennan was the one that had the phone, and through the FBI we snuck Booth into the Jeffersonian, and while Brennan stalled with Goodman in establishing components of the research, I briefed the FBI agent on the situation while trying not to seem to happy to see him.

"So far, there's fragments from a skull, vertebrae, and femur." I pointed to each of them as I listed the original locations of the anatomy.

"There's not much to go on." I understood that the statement was meant more as a cautionary warning that with little evidence, not too much could be done.

"There's more," I assured him. "There are cut marks on the fragments. Whoever they belonged to was hacked apart. Maybe hacked wasn't the cause of death, but he or she was definitely hacked."

"Hacked to little bits." Booth winced in pity for the victim and whistled quietly.

I shrugged and pushed the tray back out of the way. "Actually, Zach says that they were hacked into medium sized bits. We're not quite sure how the victim was turned into little bits yet."

"Okay… and I'm here why?"

I sighed dramatically. Damn it, Booth, you disappoint me. "You failed the common sense course in the FBI academy, didn't you?" I asked sarcastically before actually answering. "Dismemberment, plus little, bite-sized bits of human, it's a murder."

It struck me right then how much I'd changed from when I first met the man I was casually talking about homicide with. I never used to say things about murder unless it was in the papers. I never had anyone to talk to it about, because no one except me cared at the bar and I'm not stupid enough to go talk to some random stranger in the street of the crime hotspot of D.C.. Instead of finding a way to do something myself I was trying to get help. And not just help from someone who couldn't fight, but from a fully-grown man who I'd seen kill people and be violent. Working on these cases, with these people - it's improved my trust in others and made me better able to understand people.

Booth didn't seem to realize I was having an inner epiphany or something of the like. "Well, the FBI doesn't have jurisdiction at a golf course."

"Then who does?"

"I don't know." I rolled my eyes. Helpful. "Try the P.G.A.," he offered, before he seemed to get his 'realization' face and his expression turned to a pleased grin. I took one look and then sighed, looking the other way. "You've gone a while without me and now you miss me," he deduced, still with that stupid silly smile.

"Zach misses you," I corrected him, wasting absolutely no time. "Not me."

Booth's smile fell. "What? But Zach and I don't even talk!"

I gave him a very pointed look. "Yes, I know. Someone seems to have convinced him that it's a male bonding ritual of sorts."

"Maybe he's right?" Booth suggested, lifting his shoulders.

I glared at him. "No, he's not, and letting him believe that is rude."

"It could be," he argued. "You wouldn't know."

"You told him it was so that you didn't have to talk to him," I accused, crossing my arms.

Booth gave up on trying to cover up. He huffed. "It was nicer than shooting him."

I growled under my breath before speaking up again and deliberately changing the topic back to the matter at hand. "Goodman has ordered everyone involved to investigate the extra body rather than the murder victim. Even I can't get out of this one because I'm working under his employees' allegiance."

Booth shrugged helplessly to me before he smirked. "I guess you'd better get on that, then." I looked up to the ceiling, trying not to scowl. I understand his authority only goes so far, but still, it was incredibly frustrating. And when I looked back, that stupid wide grin was back. "Next time, you know, if you miss me, then pick up the phone. Call me, we'll do lunch or something."

It really was nice to hear he wouldn't mind seeing me if I got lonely, but I knew that my pride and my own defensive habits of isolation wouldn't let me. Instead I scoffed. "I do not miss you."

"Yeah, you miss me." He gave me the winning smile. "Come on."

"I do not miss you!"

Booth persisted. "Say it!"

The security guard at the Jeffersonian leaned into the room. "Agent Brennan, Miss Kirkland," he interrupted, clearing his throat. I sighed imperceptibly in relief that I was saved from that argument. "You have a visitor."

I stood up as Booth pushed his chair away from the table. "You miss me," he reminded me.

"I don't."

"You miss me!" He followed me out of the bone room, still chanting the phrase. I'm not sure if he's teasing or genuinely trying to bother me, but it's probably the former. "You miss me!" As he passed the security guard, he lowered his voice, but I could still hear. "She missed me."

Our visitor turned out to have requested Brennan, too, and she came in only seconds after Booth and I. The visitor was a man in his twenties, maybe early thirties, and he stepped forward and held out a hand to Brennan with a smile. "Dr. Temperance Brennan."

"Uh, yes," she answered, looking over at me for a minute.

After shaking her hand, the visitor moved on to me, waving slightly. "Miss Holly Kirkland. I know you don't like touching." I widened my eyes slightly and looked up at Booth in alarm.

"It's not exactly every day I meet someone who introduces me to myself, so you can understand why I'm going to proceed to demand rather rudely who you are," I stated, giving him the benefit of warning before blinking and demanding, "Who the hell are you?"

He smiled at me patiently, not deterred by my reactions. He was tall, wiry, lean, probably athletic. He had blue eyes, a bit duller than mine, and dark blonde to light brown hair that reached past his ears in gentle waves. He seemed very personable and cast the atmosphere into a friendly, peaceful vibe. He looked up to Booth. "Special Agent Seeley Booth." And back to me. "To answer your question, I'm Jesse Kane."

Booth raised his eyebrows skeptically but he groaned softly. "You're Jesse Kane?"

"You've heard of me?" Jesse smiled, pleased.

"Well, I haven't," I interrupted, looking between the two men curiously.

Booth looked to me and tried to cover up the exasperation and irritation that Jesse had made him feel. "Jesse here is sort of an expert in missing persons' cases."

Jesse nodded in agreement. "I've done some writing on missing persons laws and investigative techniques, inner-agency cooperation, jurisdictional dispute, and that kind of thing," he explained. "I heard about the bones you found at the golf course."

Brennan smiled apologetically, shaking her head slowly. "I - I really can't talk about that."

Jesse smiled knowingly. "I don't mean the Communist Chinese on the plane."

I felt for a moment like everything froze and I blinked several times before realizing exactly what he'd just said and the contradiction to what he was supposed to know. "Hang on, what?"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Communist Chinese-" Booth started, but was interrupted by Jesse before anything important about the topic could be put out there.

Jesse ignored Booth for the most part and instead seemed to be talking to Brennan and I. Hang on… missing persons' expert? Maybe he's talking to us because our 'parents' ran off. That was a common issue with Brennan and I - both of us had had 'families' that ran away. "Those pieces of bone you found at the golf course… I'm pretty sure that's my dad."

Wong Foos is a good restaurant to go to if you want a quick conversation and a meal in one go. Booth is friends with the owner, Sid, so we were easily seated in a booth out of the way and towards the back, and aside from ordering drinks, we didn't have to order our meals. This is one of those rare restaurants where the staff is so good that they can take a look at you and decide what you want to eat before you even look at a menu. My first time coming here was with the entire Jeffersonian team and Booth. It feels like a lot longer ago than it actually was.

Lunch was on Jesse at his own insistence, so I had no qualms with digging into a delicious Chinese entree that Sid had decided I'd really like. He wasn't wrong, to be honest. Still, while the four of us ate hearty meals to make up for the irritable mornings that we'd had (Well, that Brennan and I had had, at least), Jesse explained his situation. He seemed to have no issues with my rudeness earlier. To be fair, any sane person would have reacted the same way, I imagine.

"My expertise in missing persons' investigations derives from one thing." Jesse paused slightly for dramatic effect. "My search for my father. He went missing five years ago during a trip to his cottage in Virginia Beach."

I tried to say something but remembered I was eating, so I motioned with one hand to Brennan, who said it for me with more or less the right words. "What makes you think these bone fragments come from your father?"

I swallowed and pointed at her with my fork. "Yes, valid question, but still not what I was wondering." I pointed at Jesse instead. "You do realize that the question of national security is still out there?" I felt like I had to make sure no one had forgotten that. "Any time you want to answer that, go on ahead."

Booth looked over at Brennan and nodded seriously. "He's not supposed to know about the Chinese."

Jesse ignored the two of us and instead answered Brennan. "My investigations led me to conclude that my father was murdered in the area and his body disposed."

"What did the police say?" Brennan asked curiously, tipping her head to the side and engaging him.

Jesse snorted, the first un-gentlemanly thing he'd done since we'd met. "They gave up four years ago."

Booth took a long, deep breath, preparing himself for stress. "Because there was no evidence of foul play."

"The investigation was bungled," Jesse corrected with a steely tone. He didn't want to argue. To him, he knew what he knew. … And if it was wrong, then fuck the world, he was sticking to it. "The city police didn't have the manpower, the state troopers said it was a federal matter, and you guys," insert disdainful wave in Booth's general direction, "Suggested a private investigator."

Booth took the slight to the FBI personally. "It was not bungled, okay, because there was no evidence of foul play!" He turned to Brennan sharply. "It's a common story, okay? A guy goes in for a pack of cigarettes, and ends up renting out snorkeling gear in Guam." Seeing as he was clearly vying for Brennan's attention and belief against Jesse, and I liked - trusted, for that matter - Booth a lot more than I did Jesse, I decided against pointing out that for a common story, I'd never heard of it.

"If you're not involved with the FBI, you don't have a right to judge how they deal with a situation," I pointed out to Jesse, almost apologetic. To be honest, I sympathized. I did want to know what had happened to my most recent parents, even if they hadn't exactly been the best. And figure Jesse actually loved his father and grew up with him, the injuries left would have been far worse than the sense of betrayal I'd gotten from the three adults that pretty much left me for dead.

Jesse looked at me, his attention changing to include me more. Put bluntly, I was surprised he was paying as much attention to me as he was, but I suppose when you're an investigator, you investigate who you try to talk to. He wants Brennan's confidence so he would have read up on her to make sure she was legit, and there was no way he missed internet and tabloids mentioning me.

Jesse met my eyes and spoke about Booth like the agent wasn't even there. "He doesn't know what it's like to lose a parent. You do."

I pushed my plate away, only half eaten, appetite lost. I fixed him with a cold, emotionless gaze. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Your parents left and then your brother," Jesse persisted, not getting the message.

"I lost people. People who never knew me, nor did I care to know them," I snarled. "Signing some papers and offering up housing doesn't make a parent. Love and support and actually being there makes a parent."

"How do you even know about that?" Brennan asked, leaning slightly away from Jesse. I wasn't surprised that she and he and ended up sitting together - Booth and I were generally more distrustful than she was, and besides, I just prefer men I know to men I don't. Still, I was pleased that she was helping to defend my privacy to some extent. "That's not your business."

"No offense meant to either of you." Jesse's words backtracked but nothing else about him did. "Dr. Brennan is a writer and a well-known scientist. Miss Kirkland, you're a minor celebrity in the D.C. area and have been for the last months. It's all out there. The both of you, you're both one of us."

I rolled my eyes. "I don't have time for this. One of us?"

"People whose loved ones have simply vanished." Jesse gave us both sympathetic looks. The only thing that kept me from snapping again was that it wasn't pity. "In your cases, it was both of your parents and older siblings."

"Okay, how do you know about the Chinese?" Booth interrupted again. I wasn't sure whether he was irritated by the insults to the FBI or by Jesse's persistence in bothering Brennan and I. Probably the former. He snapped his fingers for Jesse's attention. "Do not look at Dr. Brennan or Miss Kirkland, okay?" I didn't blink at the formal address. He was probably just keeping that boundary clear so that Jesse didn't think it was okay to keep getting up in my face and shoving memories down my throat. "Whether you like it or not, this is an issue between you and the FBI."

"If body parts are found in roughly the area where my father disappeared, I'm going to know about it." Jesse was oddly calm and I had to wonder how many times he'd done something similar to this before. "Radio chatter, the internet, the local law enforcement. That's all I'm prepared to tell you." He looked over to Brennan imploringly. "Do you mind if I ask you how many bone fragments you found?"

"Yes, I do." Although Jesse had her intrigue caught, Brennan was sticking to her rules. "I don't discuss ongoing investigations."

"She doesn't discuss ongoing investigations," Booth repeated, but with a touch of aggression. I gave him a two-second look and raise of my eyebrows. Was the reiteration completely necessary?

Jesse sighed. "Fair enough, Dr. Brennan." He slid her a pair of large manila envelopes tied shut, the edges stretching with the sheer amount of papers inside. "These are my notes from the last five years. Every lead, every clue, every person I have ever talked with is here." He pat the top envelope for show.

"And why would Dr. Brennan care about that?" I nearly sighed at Booth. Dear God. The dominance war continues.

Jesse leveled an expression at Booth that pretty much told him to smarten up. "Because it will at least give her a candidate to eliminate." Brennan tipped her head towards Jesse in a silent acknowledgment that he had a point. "My father's medical records, pictures, last known whereabouts - even a connection to the golf course. Also, my phone number, but don't worry." He gave a smirk. "If I don't hear from you, you'll hear from me." He stood up, made a courteous bow, lifted his jacket from the edge of the booth, and walked away with it draped half-over his arm.

Booth huffed as he walked away, glaring at the retreating figure and then at the thirty dollars left on the edge of the table for the tab. "Wow! Pushy."

Brennan stood up to leave, but leaned over the table to snidely suggest, "Maybe he discovered that being pushy is how you get cops to pay attention," before making a similar exit as Jesse, save for a lack of curtsy or bow.

Booth held up his arms in a surrender motion. "What is she hawking at me for?" He complained to me.

I shook my head with a silent sigh before looking back to him. "The Chinese, the plane crash, that's all geopolitics. Those bone fragments, though - that's murder. Will you help?" I asked, looking to him hopefully. Not only because of the case - but because I wanted to do another case with him.

Booth tried to keep the smile from forming on his face. No such luck for him. "Well, you know," he coughed into his arm, still trying to act cool. I just raised my eyebrows and dealt with it. "I guess, if you're really asking me, I guess I could, you know, fudge it with my boss to make it look like it was attached to the Chinese plane crash thing."

I smiled in genuine relief. "Thank you."