I suppose most people don't get paid to kneel on the floor to stare at skeletons just over the top of the table, but it works for me, so I'm good with it.

I couldn't be part of the excavation team that recovered the skeleton, which was a bit upsetting. Truthfully, if I was asked, I would have probably opted out of it anyway, but since my injuries prohibited it, it had more sting. It took hours for a full team to get all the bones they could find out carefully without damaging them. They were frail and brittle, and Zach and I put them through the same four percent solution to clean them as we had with Warren Granger's bones. The aerosol peroxide cleaned them, but the odd color remained.

"If they're degraded, it's very subtle. They've been well-preserved," I decided, standing up from the linoleum when my knees began to ache. "I think the discoloration may just be because it's so old."

"This is a very old skeleton," Brennan agreed decisively, nodding her head in agreement on the other side of the table.

Zach stood at the foot of the table, his eyes narrowed slightly as he used his fantastic memory to catalogue every detail of the bones that he could. "Male, mid-thirties," he stated. He sounded confident, but I knew Brennan would correct him if she disagreed.

Yes, the three of us were hogging the skeleton and surrounding the table, but we're the bone people here. It's what we're supposed to do. It's not like we were keeping all of the evidence on lockdown. Hodgins retrieved what few artifacts had remained with the skeleton and collected particulates that had clung to the bones for what must have been at least scores of years, if not centuries. While Hodgins plays with his dirt, Goodman has been going through the small pieces of articles and deciding what they were for after Hodgins declared what they were made of.

"There's no clothing because it simply rotted away." Brennan shrugged her shoulders up her neck for a moment before dropping again, looking up and down the skeleton in appraisal.

"Buttons!" Hodgins held up a stainless steel evidence tray to Goodman, who reluctantly turned over a small silver square that had turned grey over the years. "Bone for the shirt, pewter for the pants…"

"... Brass eyelets for the boots." Goodman added, taking the tray from Hodgins when the entomologist didn't expect it. He lifted the tray away from the other scientist and walked, balancing it carefully parallel to the ground, to the exam table to show it to Brennan. "A belt buckle, also pewter, and this-" He stopped, pointing to a small dull blue button. "-Is a half-inch button from the Union Army Corps of Engineers."

"By Union Army, you mean…" Zach trailed off in a polite prompt.

"Civil War," I breathed before Goodman had the chance, looking over the skeleton with a new reverence. "These bones must be nearly a hundred and fifty years old." I couldn't stop myself from laying emphasis on the words - God, this was an incredible find. These were the types of bones that belonged in heavily-guarded museum display cases, with black velvet cushions and red lasers for thieves to ninja through, only to fail anyway because the moment they touch the display, an alarm goes off.

I've never been interested in fighting in the army. I mean, if I had to, then I wouldn't try to desert or weasel out of it; it is a noble cause, but the army enforces uniformity. My sense of self is something I hold very dearly, and something like the army, which challenges it, would force me to adapt to a difficult mindset. I can respect that others were and are veterans and not want the same for myself, just like I can respect that Booth is Catholic and choose to remain Atheist. The point is, anyone who fights for the country automatically deserves respect from others, because they risked their lives in sometimes miserable conditions and learned to adapt to protect American freedoms. This skeleton is worth that much more in museum value for it.

"That, plus the fact that Hodgins found diamond dust on this skeleton, too?" Brennan pursed her lips for a moment and her chest heaved as she exhaled reluctantly. "I think Marni Hunter was killed in a Civil War era tunnel."

I had a very strong urge to tell her not to jump to conclusions, but decided that, no matter how necessary it may feel now, it probably wasn't worth it.

"The pellets we found at the site are commonly known as bird shot." I looked up to Hodgins again, blinking, as the evidence that this was a real archaeological find grew. "Pellet size twelve, point seventy-three inches in diameter, made of lead."

"Also Civil War vintage," Goodman added, just in case there was any doubt. "The spread pattern suggests not a shotgun, but a muzzle-loaded pistol like a LeMat."

"A pistol developed in eighteen fifty-six, right?" I puzzled for a moment. The high school Civil War unit mentioned weaponry and I was sure I'd heard of a LeMat before, but there were a lot of important dates in American history.

Goodman nodded, though, so I guess that I'd been right. He looked to Brennan before he said anything, pausing for just a moment to get her assent. "If you don't mind some conjecture?"

Brennan pursed her lips thinly for a moment. I know she dislikes hypothesizing, but she must have learned by now that Goodman, as an archaeologist, had a difficult time stopping from doing so. "You're the boss."

Goodman pushed the hem of his suit jacket away so that he could slip his hands into his pockets. "This fellow knew something of value was being stored," he theorized.

"Came down with an accomplice," Hodgins contributed helpfully. All four of us - Brennan, Goodman, Zach, and myself - all turned our heads to stare at the entomologist in surprise. He loved science and had been terrified when Booth said he would "make an FBI agent out of him yet", so it was a shock that he was now doing it without prompting. Hodgins realized it and shook his head frantically. "I… apologize, I've been hanging around Booth way too much." He even took a step back to physically distance himself from the conversation.

Nevertheless, I still had to agree with Hodgins at least a little bit. "He has this way of weaseling into your subconscious, and you don't even realize until it's too late," I told the entomologist sadly. Booth had played a large part in the development of my tactfulness and I hadn't realized it at the time.

"It's a valid hypothesis." I looked to Brennan as she acknowledged Goodman and Hodgins' assessment, stunned that she was agreeing with it, until she added, "No doubt, one of many."

Zach looked like he was struggling not to say something until he blurted, "They argued. One killed the other for the treasure. Doesn't that mean the vault will be empty when we find it?" … I was left trying and failing at not smirking at the two horrified squints. Zach took a deep, regretful breath. "Oh my God, they got me, too."

"Watch out," I told Brennan mirthfully. "You're next."

Brennan kind of frowned at me like she didn't appreciate it, but Zach looked honestly concerned. Goodman continued his own conjecture in higher spirits than before. "If the vault had been looted years ago, the artifacts would have surfaced, been sold off. It must still be down there," he mused in answer to Zach. "I'll pull all the city plans from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. We have to save what we can. Is there any way to discover who these bastards are?"

Brennan looked away from Goodman and unfolded her arms, gesturing to the top of the skeleton. "Zach, take a cast of Marni Hunter's skull. See if we can be specific about the murder weapon."

"Overmeyer said that he found the medallion in a blonde woman's territory," I said thoughtfully. We hadn't pursued that lead as thoroughly as we could have. "He's still in custody. We should see if he can give Angela enough detail to sketch of rough image of the woman, and if we don't recognize the result we can run it through the system."

I held up Marni's cranium on a tray and raised it up to eye-level, staring back at the bone carefully while Zach set the clay mold onto a tray. After scrutinizing the fractures and spidering cracks on the side of the skull, I glanced over to look at the mold, gently lowering the tray back to the table.

"It's amazing," I mused, looking at the dull blue clay. "It doesn't look like anything specific, but the imprint is obvious on clay."

"It's a "T."" Zach stated, frowning down at the mold discontentedly, not sharing the same opinion of it. "It's not a knife or a hammer that I've seen before."

I shoved my hand into my pocket surreptitiously, reaching for the pill bottle I kept with me. "Well, maybe it's not a knife or a hammer. Virtually anything can be used as a murder weapon in some way or another. We know it's a pointed instrument with a unique edge."

The door clicked and the doorknob turned. I pulled my hand out of my pocket, forsaking the pain pills for the moment and instead stepping to the side of the table and turning to see Booth leaning his torso into the room.

He waved a videotape in the air with one hand. "Marni Hunter's fiancee found some raw footage of her documentary."

Brennan's office television was small and sat on a green metal cart, but it was easy to see. Booth pulled the cart over next to the side of Brennan's desk so that Brennan could watch from behind it and Booth and I could watch from in front. The picture was slightly grainy, but it wasn't because of the television. I highly suspected it was because of the cameras.

Marni had a yellow headband on to keep her hair up and tame, and she wore a long-sleeved shirt under a thick navy green vest to keep warm in the underground. The film showed her walking through the tunnel and talking to the camera, held in front of her by several yards.

"A dark labyrinth, a warren of tunnels and fissures, forgotten coal cellars, sewer lines, storm drains, sub-basements, access shafts, easements and crawlspaces, some as old as the city itself." Marni listed off everything that she could think of. Instead of looking professional, she looked like she was trying to be an adventurer, putting her hands on the walls on either side of her and grinning excitedly. "Why would anyone venture down here?"

"Didn't the fiancee tell us that she worked alone?" I asked, interrupting the rhetorical narration. I don't need a recording to tell me how large the underground system is. I've been there; I get the picture.

Brennan met my eyes, about to ask the same question that I had been thinking. "Who's running the camera?" She wondered aloud.

"... Shelter for a place to hide from the evils of the world. Others are looking for treasure." Marni emphasized her point by holding up a very familiar medallion. I almost did a double-take in surprise. She had been making a video about the hidden vault under the city, not documenting the underground society peacefully.

This just served to frustrate Brennan, who, since the beginning, had seemed to believe it was likely Marni hadn't meant to harm or exploit anyone. She's honestly thought Marni wanted to educate society, and now she was being proven wrong. She reached across her desk for the remote, aimed it at the television set, and hit pause. "Look, she might have started out to make a documentary about the homeless, but she wound up using Harold so that she could loot the treasure!"

"You just can't trust anyone these days," I said with a shrug of my shoulders. "Marni thought she could profit, so she tried to. In the end, it got her killed. Maybe she should have been taught better, but murder was a bit harsh."

"Press play again," Booth told Brennan, motioning with one hand to the television.

Brennan was obviously still unhappy, but I couldn't offer her whatever it was she wanted to hear. She pressed play on the remote like she'd been asked.

The frame continued. Marni lowered the vault seal. "And who are these treasure hunters? Not the homeless, who scrounge for bits of metal. Some are Civil War enthusiasts."

"-And some are remarkably handsome adventurers!" A young masculine voice interrupted off of the camera. Marni scowled at the person out of sight, and the camera was turned around quickly with a lot of shaking. Kyle held the camera out with one hand and Duke leaned over his shoulder, sticking out his tongue and raising his hands in the peace signs on either side of Kyle's shoulders. Kyle grinned like an idiot before mocking remorse, pretending to sob. "I am so sorry!"

"They said they never went underground," Brennan objected, her eyes widening at the two fools on screen. Though they were shrouded by darkness, they were still easy to make out.

"The son of a bitch lied to us," Booth growled, honestly shocked as he straightened up in the chair, glaring at the television. I could see his shoulders set in determination and frustration.

"Just a thought - why are we always so surprised when we're lied to?" I asked out of nowhere. Both adults looked to me with confused frowns. It wasn't like they didn't understand, more like they didn't get why it was relevant. I held up my uninjured arm in surrender. "I'm just saying, we know someone's responsible for murder and obviously they're not going to up and tell us, so why are we always so stunned when we're lied to?"

Brennan and Booth both looked at each other in response to my question. Brennan raised her eyebrows reluctantly and nodded to me in credence.

Zach held the weapon mold to Brennan for her to see, and instead of just looking, she lifted it out of his hands, turned it to see from a different angle, and squinted at it in concentration. Zach stood watching over her shoulder, a bit out of place with her intense focus and lack of acknowledgment. "The murder weapon is a kind of sharp-edged instrument with a handle, but not a hatchet."

I lifted my shoulders in a quick shrug and tapped two fingers against the platform railing. "It's probably some sort of climbing gear," I said, thinking about it rationally. "Kyle and Duke lied to us because they needed to cover themselves. They probably killed her when she wanted to go public with the vault."

Booth hung up his phone, flipping it shut against his shoulder. He called up through the rails to the platform, "Those climbers haven't been back to their apartment since we talked to them last."

"I think Holly's right." Brennan made me smile even before she had finished her statement. "I think the murder weapon was a climbing ax." While Brennan wasn't looking, I threw a victory fist in the air.

"How about this," Booth suggested mildly. "While exploring those tunnels with Marni Hunter, those climbers, they find something valuable. Marni wants to put it in her film, those climbers want to take it for themselves. Wham on the head, smack - down the shaft."

Brennan crossed her arms, reluctantly indulging the theories. "Logical to think they're down there now, emptying out that vault."

I let my arm drop back down to my side, bubble of triumph burst. "In which case, we need to get there as fast as we can to keep them from selling off priceless national mementos in the black market." It was obvious to me, but it needed to be emphasized, especially because Goodman would probably kill us all if we disregarded the vault in favor of the murder.

Angela scanned her card, sighing loudly to get the attention of everyone else. She held a large sketchbook, the paper and sketch facing her body and out of sight. She stepped up the stairs and circled around to the front of the examination table. "That was a total bust," she announced as she moved.

"Harold couldn't provide you with a description?" Booth questioned in surprise.

Angela scoffed. "Yeah, he provided me with a description alright." She turned the sketchbook over so we could see. Her drawing was made with pale colors and depicted a familiar-looking woman, but I couldn't recall her name. She was thin and pale. The neckline of a pale blue shirt was low and there were ruffles along the color and her eyes were dark, almost creepily so.

Booth raised his eyebrows. "That's the blonde that Harold keeps seeing in the tunnel."

"That can't be right," I interrupted, shaking my head in disbelief. "I've seen her before somewhere."

Angela cocked her head at Brennan very pointedly. "See, this is what happens when you ask for information from the mentally ill."

"Where did you get that?" Goodman gasped before he had completed sliding his card on the security panel. He jumped up the stairs with more energy than I'd ever seen him possess.

Angela was confused by his enthusiasm and she held the drawing away from her in order to look at it herself. "I drew it."

Goodman pointed at the picture before he motioned with his other hand for Zach to step away from the computer. By the time he was within range of the keyboard, Zach had cleared well off, his hands in the pockets of his lab coat. Goodman commandeered the computer.

"That, Miss Montenegro, is a Raeburn." He was half distracted, pulling up an internet search engine as he tried to explain the significance. "Sir Henry Raeburn painted a number of these studies. Extremely rare now, very valuable - there." He maximized the tab on the computer monitor and then stepped to the side. Although the colors were slightly different, aside from a few very minor differences, Angela had passably recreated the painting.

Looking at it in a new, delighted light, Angela smirked and looked back to her own sketch. "Damn, I'm good."

"No wonder I recognized it. I probably saw a picture when I was in school," I figured.

"Miss Eleanor Urquhart, painted in seventeen ninety-three by Sir Henry Raeburn. Missing since eighteen sixty-two and worth over two hundred thousand dollars." Goodman paused, crossed his arms while staring at the computer, and then connected a couple more dots. "If Harold saw that underground, he's seen the inside of the vault."

I looked between Goodman and Zach, who were both the closest to the computer. "Which means that it's not sealed up anymore." At least if it had been sealed, then the two climbers would have to find the time and means to safely break through into the vault. "There's nothing stopping Kyle and Duke from stealing everything inside!"

"Right, that's good enough for me," Booth declared, turning around towards the double-doors out of the Medico-Legal lab.

He made it only three steps away before Brennan called out to him. "Booth!" He turned back around, holding his arms out in question when he saw that she had no intention of joining him. "It's a labyrinth down there," she explained. "You can't just blunder around in the dark looking for them."

Goodman tapped his chin with his index finger. "Maybe you won't have to," he said thoughtfully.

"I entered all the modern and historical city plans, including ventilation shafts and tunnels, plus the newer schematics." Angela had her tablet at the ready for input and the holograph machine was faithfully doing its job, displaying a 3-D rendering of everything she had found on the underground systems.

There were at least a dozen different layers, with countless twists and turns and curves in blue, yellow, and red. The blue ones seemed to be more exact and in terms of where the turns and edges were, they made the most sense. The red ones, however, seemed shakier; they were the ones with the slight curves and the weird placements of tunnels and forks. The yellow ones seemed somewhere in between the blue and the red; though there were a few places where blue and red overlapped, the most similarities that either color had were with the yellow tunnels.

"There's also oral accounts of tunnel construction and underground passages," Goodman added informatively, his hands in his pockets. He stood next to Angela, surveying the mess of colors, while Booth, Brennan, and I had our own sides of the square pedestal.

"Oh, wow." Booth whistled in appreciation. "All that exists under the city?"

"At one point or another, someone thought it did." I said uncertainly, leaning to one side to try to see at a bit of a different angle. The sheer amount of information, sometimes contradictory, was remarkable.

"Good point, Bones, not rushing off to find those guys," Booth allowed, looking a bit uneasy himself as he realized what he'd been ill-prepared to throw himself into.

Brennan glanced over to Angela, but I got the impression she was pleased that Booth saw her point. "How accurate is this?"

"Blue is modern, near one hundred percent accurate." Angela got the blue lines to light up a bit brighter for a moment. "Yellow is historical."

"Estimated eighty percent," Goodman put in, as Angela made the yellow lines glow neon.

The next to light up brighter was the red. As the crimson lines brightened, Angela said, "Red represents less exact renderings from stories, memoirs, accounts from city workers…" she trailed off, but we got the general idea; stories that weren't able to be proved.

Goodman sighed and shook his head but he narrowed his eyes in determination. "Unfortunately, if the treasure exists, it probably exists in one of the red tunnels."

"Well, we found that Civil War victim near a cave-in. Maybe the treasure's on the other side?" Booth suggested hopefully, still squinting and trying to figure out the crossing lines.

"We can't take that risk. For all we know, the cave-in was just an accident and had nothing to do with the treasure." Goodman narrowed his eyes and looked to Brennan questioningly. "Inductive, reductive, or deductive?"

Brennan considered it thoughtfully for a moment. "... Deductive," she decided, with a nod to finalize the decision.

Goodman nodded once in acknowledgment. "As you wish. Miss Montenegro, please remove all tunnels containing power, cable, or utility lines."

"And fiber optics," Brennan amended.

"Also, steam tunnels and transit access?" Angela suggested. I assume she added that to the list of eliminated lines because no one corrected her, and a second later, about half of the representative lines faded. Most of them were the blue ones, leaving only a couple blue tunnels left, and it took away a couple of yellows as well.

"Oh, what about diamond dust?" Booth offered enthusiastically, enjoying the light show just as much as I was. There's something to be said for neon holographs as entertainment. "You said that there was diamond dust in the old tunnels. There was also diamond dust on the… Civil War guy… so…" By the time I realized that Brennan was sending Booth the irritated glare she reserved especially for him, Booth had already trailed off. "What? I'm not allowed to help now?"

It was difficult not to smile at how irritated both adults looked just because of such a small thing. Their fights were almost childish. Booth might as well just pull Brennan's hair. Isn't that what kids do when they like each other?

"That's inductive logic," Goodman explained to Booth calmly.

"We agreed on deductive," Brennan grumbled, sounding a lot more annoyed than that actually warranted.

"I'm sorry!" Booth didn't sound very sorry, just kind of exasperated that it was such a big deal. "I'm just, you know, trying to think outside your box." He even used his hands to draw the four lines of a square in front of him.

Brennan rolled her eyes and looked back to Angela, the residual frustration fading. "Can you indicate where we found Marni Hunter's body and the Civil War victim?" Angela frowned but she did as she was asked, highlighting both places in question. One of the yellow lines, which had previously overlapped with a blue one, was decorated with a little pink human outline. A red one much further down had a matching green figure.

"Cause, you know, if Marni was killed near the treasure and moved, and the Civil War guy was murdered by his accomplice…" Booth explained.

Angela nodded. "Gotcha."

"Can you connect the two bodies?" Brennan requested. I could see her eyes moving from one figurine to the other. Several times she stopped when the tunnel she was tracing failed to connect the dots in the maze.

In response, Angela started making paths from the individual markers. Lime green lines started overlapping the red tunnels, spreading out from the Civil War victim's discovery site, and pink lines started overlapping the yellow tunnels, moving out from Marni's. There was no site where the lime and pink lines crossed.

"This one's the closest, but they don't meet," I murmured, reaching out to point to the lime line underneath the soldier's site. It wound around towards the general area where Marni had been found, but it didn't come close to any of the pink lines. It was too far underground to meet with the yellow tunnels corresponding with Marni's body.

"There's no way to get there," Goodman objected, seeing the same problem.

"Can you put some more blue lines back in that area?" Booth asked Angela before he noticed Brennan was giving him that look again. "It's just a guess! I'm throwing it out there. Sue me."

There was a blue line that overlapped the tunnel where Marni had been found. As Angela had said, the blue lines were modern schematics, and the city workers who found the body had been following the underground maps with the same information. The blue line stayed level with the dump site, taking several turns, but the blue met with Marni's pink line and turned it purple. The purple met a yellow tunnel just above the Civil War skeleton's marker, turned left, went down, and doubled back, meeting with the lime-colored highlights.

"Somewhere along that line is where the treasure is," Brennan stated, relieved that something had worked, even if Booth had used the wrong type of logic to get to it.

"What's that blue line?" Booth asked, already getting his phone out of his pocket to order an FBI team.

"Storm sewer H-15-B," Angela supplied readily.

Zach ran into Angela's office without knocking, out of breath but pleased about something. "The murder weapon matches a Hanks climbing ax."

I moved the flashlight around to see behind us, walking backwards several paces before turning back around. The good thing about oxycodone is that it's pain relief - I can spin around however many times I want and I'm not going to feel like dying. I kept getting this creeping sense to turn around and watch my back, like someone was sneaking up on me. I couldn't tell whether it was intuition going haywire or just the knowledge that hundreds of people have the sewer systems memorized and could be following us.

"See, this is a time when it would be useful to be armed," I said pointedly to Booth. It was louder than it had to be and my voice bounced off of the walls.

"No, it isn't," Booth disagreed. "We're going to have six highly-trained FBI Tac Team members do the dirty work. We're just going to watch." Contrary to what he said, he had two firearms at his side. I suppose I have to consider myself lucky I'm not being forced to dress up in bulletproof vests anymore. "What's your twenty, Tac Team Three?" He said into the radio.

I really don't get why they have to use numbers (like twenty) in place of words (like location).

"According to this map…" There was a long pause. Pauses aren't good. Well, they're probably lost. "We're… with you?"

I made a show of looking around before catching up and walking between the two other adults. I looked up to Booth and spoke aloud to the radio. "Uh, you might wanna rethink that."

"They aren't with us," Brennan told Booth in complaint.

"I realize that, Bones," Booth assured her, sounding just a bit annoyed. I wasn't sure whether it was at me, for wanting a gun, Brennan for stating the obvious, or the Tac Team for being lost. "Re-orient, Tac Team Three."

"Suggest you wait for rendezvous, Booth."

"Ten-four, Tac Team Three."

Brennan squinted at the cell phone in her hand, map of the underground zoomed in so she only had to focus on one area at a time. It gave off a bit of light on its own, but it meant she was looking at a very bright spot compared to the dimness that our eyes had already adjusted to. "Okay, I bet tick-tock team is here, two levels above us."

"Did you just call them the tick-tock team?" I repeated, biting the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.

"Don't call them tick-tock team, okay?" Booth corrected. "They're Tac Team. It's short for tactical."

"Tick-tock team makes more sense," I argued. It was mostly to pass the time and fill the silence rather than to actually make a point. "Calling them the tick-tock team reminds them to hurry up. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Can I have a gun at least until tick-tock team gets here?" I asked, changing conversation tracks quickly. "I won't shoot rats again, I'll just shoot the psychos with climbing equipment."

"You don't need a gun," Booth argued again. "We're not going to be fighting them, we're just going to arrest them if we find them. Not that we're going to find them if we're lost…"

"We're not lost," Brennan defended her map skills rapidly, almost offended. "The tick-tock team's lost! What are we supposed to do, just wait?"

"We just reconnoiter," Booth corrected, stopping in his tracks for a moment. He shone the flashlight along the walls. He stopped, holding his flashlight over a circular tunnel built into the tunnel wall. It was two feet off the ground, maybe four feet in diameter all around. The entrance was covered in spiderwebs. "In."

I grimaced and whined low in my throat, holding off from voicing my protests. Brennan stored her phone safely in her jacket pocket and tugged her sleeve down over her hand before batting the cobwebs away. Some still clung along the outside, but I wouldn't get hair highlights of spider silk.

Brennan went through first, crawling on her hands and knees through the tunnel. Booth and I waited outside in case it was a dead end, but after a moment, Brennan called back through, her voice echoing. "It's safe. I don't see anything."

Booth nodded and looked through the tunnel with a flashlight. "Kid, watch your back. Be careful and come through in a minute."

I just sighed and made a 'go on' gesture with my hand. This felt an awful lot like an Indiana Jones movie. I was a little concerned as to how I was going to get through - one of my arms is out of commission, after all - but the tunnel was pretty tall. I could probably shuffle on my knees if I kept my head down. It's not good posture, but I can't really afford to be picky.

When it was my turn, I kept thinking that there was going to be some freak spider acromantula from Harry Potter ready to drop down on my head. My knees were hurting from the concrete that the tunnel was made out of and the curve of the ground didn't help. I couldn't stop thinking of that cave-in we'd seen, and I didn't like the thought of it possibly happening again.

Where is all of this fear coming from? I had to wonder in amazement. I never used to be so paranoid or easily freaked out. Maybe it's because Kenton had given me a serious wake-up call as to my mortality, but I've never thought I was invincible.

"Easy. Watch yourself," Booth cautioned. I kept my slung arm close to my chest when I reached the end of the passage and grabbed onto the outer top edge of the circular tunnel with my other hand. Holding on to that, I twisted my right leg out in front of me and kicked against the wall, catapulting myself off onto both feet again. I stumbled. It was far from smooth, but it worked and I was unharmed.

"Wow," Booth remarked sarcastically. "Impressive. Very neat. Stealthy." I shot him a glare to let him know that I didn't appreciate it. "Tac Team Three, this is Booth. What's your six?"

There we go again, with the numbers in place of words.

"Stand by, Booth."

"They're lost," I translated out loud without being asked. I nodded slightly to myself at the confirmation of what I had already suspected.

Brennan turned her flashlight on the tunnel we'd come out in and I caught my breath. Wow. Wherever we were, we had to be getting closer to the right place, because now the tunnels were far wider, making room for large burlap sacks, boxes and barrels. The tunnel was lined on the sides with what must have been supplies and storage from the Civil War era. By now everything was greys and browns with age, and I highly doubted that anything of value remained. No treasure was here, but the boxes probably held things that had been valuable in the nineteenth century.

"They're not lost," Booth corrected for the second time so far, remaining adamant despite what even he had to suspect. He added his flashlight to the waving illumination, but Brennan quickly cast hers down to the ground. She bent down and picked up a small, dust-covered piece from the ground. "What's that, lucky quarter?"

Brennan held it close to her face and changed the angle of her flashlight to light it up. "This could be the missing piece from Marni Hunter's skull." She pocketed the evidence and pat her pocket to make sure it stayed closed afterwards, slowly advancing into the wider part of the tunnel.

"Okay." Booth took a deep breath. "Think she was killed here?"

"That's a… plausible conclusion," Brennan grudgingly allowed, looking around with more concentration. It looked like the tunnel was twenty feet long and then turned to the right.

Of course, Booth concentrated on her noncommittal attitude and sarcastically warned, "Don't get all gushy on me." He held up the radio again. "Tick-Tock Three." He waited for a response.

When he got one, the guy on the other end sounded confused and a little bit offended. "Did you just call us Tick-Tock?"

I snickered quietly while Booth's jaw tightened in aggravation. He wasn't too delighted that he'd fallen prey to the same catchy title that Brennan and I had. "Tac Team Three," he corrected himself clearly, giving me a suspicious look. "Stand by."

Brennan held up one hand over her shoulder, beckoning for quiet. "Do you hear that?"

I focused intently. With none of us talking, in only a couple of seconds it became evident that we were near other people. Metal was clinking together and there were the sounds of things colliding, maybe with the ground?

"Yeah," I breathed, continuing to walk but at a much slower, much more cautious pace than before. "It's not far away." I followed the noise as best as I could and it led me towards the end of the tunnel, but before I reached the turn it seemed like it was coming from my right. I angled the flashlight at the wall where it seemed to be coming from and saw a very thick, old door, rusted, with the bottom encrusted in dirt shoved up against it.

A panel was built into the top half, about two feet wide and one foot tall. I was up to date on my tetanus shot, but was still a bit worried about getting cut by the handle as I pulled it open. The small door on the panel wasn't locked. My hand slid off of it once - it wasn't like a handle, more like a knob that was stuck - but the second time I tried, it pulled free. Either the lock was broken or it had never been completely shut.

There were bars on the inside of the panel, but I could see through the widely-spaced bars into the room on the other side of the wall. It was more like a cavern, and it was entirely lit up. I could see the brown from the floor and burlap from cloth sacks, and I could see tons of gold and silver and bronze and copper. All sorts of precious metals were stockpiled. Most of them didn't seem fashioned or forged into anything actually useful, but the metals alone would be priceless if they were pawned off. There were chalices and frames and goblets on top of sturdier structures, like rotting wooden boxes with treasure inside, and there were yellowed, long scrolls of paper sticking out of one open crate.

"Oh my God," I breathed quietly, awestruck as my heart picked up, beating faster out of adrenaline. We found the vault.

Booth looked in over my shoulder. Looking at all of the light and the reflective golds almost hurt my eyes, but it was too brilliant to look away. My eyes landed on the first painting I saw, almost directly across from the spy panel and facing us. It was the same Eleanor Urquhart painting that Overmeyer had described to Angela. "That's the Raeburn," I whispered to Booth, keeping my voice low. The sounds had to be coming from Kyle and Duke. If they heard us they'd run.

Booth reached around me to the handle on the door. He only pulled once before he realized he wasn't getting in. "This is locked. We've got to get in there."

I looked away from the legendary treasure vault to see what Brennan was doing when I heard soft beeps. They were coming from her phone, which she held in her hands again, pinpointing our location and finding the first way into the vault. "Are we waiting for Tick-Tock Three?" She whispered back to Booth.

"They're lost, they might not find us for a week," Booth dismissed hurriedly.

"Ha," I mumbled triumphantly.

"What?"

"You admitted they're lost."

Booth rolled his eyes. Apparently he was more concerned about the treasure now than he was about anything else, which is totally fine with me. Priorities. "If we go after them, these guys will take off. I want to catch them in the act of stealing."

"Alright." Brennan raised one hand from her phone to point down to the end of the storage tunnel and to the right turn. "We can go in through a door around there." Brennan started walking off first despite that she wasn't armed, which made Booth hurry to go catch up. Reluctantly, I tore my eyes away from the beautiful vault and chased after them, pleased with how much easier it was to hurry than it had been at the beginning of the case.

Brennan dragged her hand along the wall to feel for a door in case it wasn't as easily visible. Booth unstrapped a pistol from the holster of his belt and he held it out to the side. I smiled and took it by the barrel, turning it around in my hands to hold it correctly.

"Holly, when we go in there, you are responsible for whoever is on your left. Okay? You put your gun on him." Booth instructed, very clearly and very carefully making sure that I got the message.

I grinned at the firearm in question, just pleased to not be totally defenseless. "Entiendo. Got it."

"How will she know whether or not to shoot?" Brennan asked, taking the turn in the tunnel ahead of us. She slowed down, her fingers trailing up a barely-visible line.

"Dr. Brennan, if you feel so threatened that you consider shooting, it's generally a good idea to shoot first and question it later," I whispered back to her, completely serious. I get you don't want to kill someone with doubts about their guilt or intention, but if you feel like you're in danger where shooting is warranted, shoot. It doesn't have to be a fatal shot, but you should always protect yourself against someone who poses a threat unless you have a very, very good reason not to.

"And let Booth do the talking," Brennan clarified with a slight sigh.

"Yeah, well." Booth took his other gun in his right hand and with his left, he found the handle of the hidden door. "I took that one for granted."

He yanked open the door quickly and easily. It must have been heavy, as far as doors go, but it pulled open quietly. The gold and silver in the room was astounding - aside from monumental documents, there was enough precious materials to last someone a lifetime of luxurious comfort and whims, and then some. It must have been worth a monetary value of millions or billions of dollars, no matter how many times Goodman says you can't price your national heritage or however the hell he phrased it.

"We should've brought bigger bags," Duke laughed, holding open one of the burlap sacks and shoving in a long, feminine necklace with a deep red stone in the pendant. It might've been a genuine ruby.

"FBI, hands in the air!" Booth yelled, bursting in with no warning. Kyle dropped a chalice he'd been holding and both men dropped their bags. Booth kept his gun on Duke in warning and I followed immediately after him, raising the pistol he'd given me to Kyle.

"Yeah, hands in the air," Brennan repeated, tough. She stepped into the vault now that our safety was secured. Very few people are dumb enough to try to attack people with guns trained on them.

Duke was still kind of shocked. Today he was wearing the same style of jacket as before, but it was red and black instead of blue and black. His hands shook as he locked his fingers behind his head. "W-We're not armed," he stammered, his eyes looking around the room frantically for an escape.

Kyle was much more relaxed about the whole thing. Though his hands were lifted behind his head, his posture was less stiff. "Everybody relax," he laughed. "They don't shoot people for trespassing."

"We do for murder," I corrected, glaring at him and cocking the gun. The sound echoed in the vault and Duke visibly flinched. I revelled in the power that the weapon gave me. It's not that I'm sadistic; it's just that I've felt unhealthily codependent since Jamie Kenton hospitalized me, and being able to easily intimidate two fit men at the same time makes me feel as though I'm not completely helpless.

I should see about getting a gun license through the FBI.

"Murder?" Kyle spluttered indignantly. "What murder?"

Booth kept the gun up with one hand and reached for his belt with the other. "Kyle, I'm throwing you these restraints. Put them on Duke," he ordered, unhooking handcuffs from his belt loop. "Now." He tossed them underhandedly to the duo.

Kyle bent down to the ground to pick up the handcuffs, keeping one arm in the air like he was proving he was harmless. They clinked together when he picked them up and the sound only spurred on Duke's anxiety. "How are we supposed to climb out of here in handcuffs?" He protested.

"Would you rather go out in body bags?!" Brennan demanded abrasively, her eyes burning angrily. "Put on the damn restraints!" I didn't take my eyes off of Kyle, but I nodded slowly in approval and whistled. Booth, on the other hand, looked over me to give Brennan one of those disapproving looks. "Right. Let you do the talking," Brennan mumbled. "Got it."

Kyle fumbled with the handcuffs, now set on edge. One handcuff dangled as he clicked the other shut around Duke's left wrist, held behind the second male's back compliantly. "You think we killed Marni?"

"She was killed with a climbing ax," Brennan explained, taking steps to the side, away from Booth and I and closer to the criminal duo. She moved in a way so that Booth and I could see her at all times, and she could watch everyone else in the vault chamber.

Kyle finally got the second cuff on Duke's other wrist. Duke tried to pull his arms back around to his sides experimentally, but the handcuffs pulled taut and wouldn't allow it. "Duke, sit." I ordered briskly, pointing with the barrel of my gun to a crate just behind him. "Kyle, Agent Booth is going to throw Dr. Brennan another set of handcuffs. She's going to cuff your hands behind your back. If you try to hurt her, I'll shoot you where you stand." It was best to give him that fair warning - God knows, Cullen is already bitchy enough about the shot I delivered to Ken Thompson, a senator's aid who had tried to kill Brennan and I.

Kyle didn't seem to care very much for what I was saying about his own predicament. "Marni was killed with a climbing ax?" He looked to Duke in confusion and creeping suspicion. Damn, he wasn't in on it? While he's still going to be arrested for trying to loot the vault, this wasn't what I had expected.

Booth unlinked the extra pair of handcuffs he kept on his person and caught the chain link between the cuffs, swinging for momentum, and tossed them to Brennan. Brennan caught them with both hands and turned to face Kyle again. "She knew about this treasure. She was going to put it in her documentary, but it would've cost you guys a fortune, so one of you killed her." Brennan paused and looked between the two. "Who's left handed?"

"Bones, you know, it's best to have this sort of explanation after the bad guys are incapacitated," Booth warned, wincing slightly as she shifted, keeping his sights trained on the two climbers.

Brennan looked to Booth in question, momentarily diverting her attention away from Kyle. "Why?"

Kyle took the opportunity the moment he had it, and he knew I couldn't shoot at him with Brennan standing in the way. Kyle lunged to the side and picked up a metal candlestick off of another dull crate and went after Duke, who ducked down, but was unable to shield himself with his hands restrained. Kyle bludgeoned Duke with the candlestick, shouting, "You killed her for this?"

Brennan's expression immediately changed to irritation and she brought her hands up in a pose to defend herself. Duke dropped to the floor from the impact against his skull. I wasn't sure whether or not it killed him, but Kyle wasn't satisfied. As he was rearing up to go after his former friend again, Brennan kicked him low in his stomach. Kyle stumbled back, doubling over. His ankle caught on a bar and he fell backwards.

With a murderer unconscious and a thief thoroughly humiliated, I nodded and lowered the gun, flicking the safety back on. "That would be why," I said calmly.

Brennan's fist unclenched around the handcuffs. "Yeah, well, I'll try to remember that for next time." She surveyed Kyle with a sort of absent curiosity, like his sudden anger was an odd phenomena. Kyle looked up at her, blinking, dazed from his fall and shock setting in.

"You single-handedly regained one of the greatest cultural finds of the century, a glimpse of Civil War life." Goodman praised Booth, Brennan and I when we had gotten out of the tunnel system and back to the Jeffersonian. Kyle and Duke were arrested and there was sure to be a conviction.

"Marni Hunter wanted to document the treasure, not steal it." Brennan stated firmly, looking up from her desk to her overseer. I suppose the revelation, in her mind, was good; this whole case, she'd been hoping that Marni's documentary had been meant as an educational rather than exploitative film. I suppose she was drawing parallels because they were both technically anthropologists, despite being in a different field. Marni was a cultural anthropologist without the degree.

"But Duke wanted the money, so he bashed her head in with handy equipment and threw her body down a tunnel shaft to cover it up." I sighed and rubbed absently at my left arm. It was getting tiring to have to keep it in a sling all the time. I'm lucky my sprain was only a grade two severity - if it were grade three I'd probably go insane.

"Kyle wasn't so innocent himself," Brennan pointed out with a shrug of her shoulders. "He hit Duke in the crypt with a candlestick."

Booth chuckled and smiled. "Kyle… hit the Duke… with a candlestick… in the crypt," he rephrased, grinning up at Goodman happily. I opened my mouth to ask before I realized the reference and rolled my eyes fondly.

Goodman laughed. "That's very good," he told Booth.

"Right?"

"What?" Brennan straightened her posture and looked between Booth and Goodman questioningly, attempting to catch the humor. "What's the joke?"

"Clue?" Booth tried, raising his eyebrows hopefully.

"Wha… What clue?" Brennan didn't get it. I don't suppose she has a lot of board games, but still, who doesn't know Clue? "What clue?" She asked again, this time turning to me and her voice going higher.

Booth shook his head affectionately. "Unbelievable, Bones."

"Clue is a board game," I explained to Brennan, shooting Booth a very mild glare for leaving her out. "It's pretty much a murder mystery game and the players have to put together small clues in the plot contexts to find which character is responsible."

Goodman and Booth kept laughing like fools. I know they haven't had much to laugh about in the last couple of days, but it really wasn't all that funny. They only managed to quiet themselves when Angela leaned against the open door, tossing her hand to the side and hitting her knuckles on the door for attention.

When all four of us were looking to her, she announced: "Harold's being released." She smiled, sincerely delighted, and looked around, expecting us to share the same genuine satisfaction.

"You found a place for him?" Goodman asked in mild mannered surprise.

Brennan nodded, with her own smile creeping up on her face. She must have known about this before now.

Angela must have decided that we all looked happy enough. She stopped looking around to the others and her eyes fixed on me, her expression changing to one of sympathy. She glanced at Booth, like I'd inadvertently reminded her of something. "Hey. I'm taking Holly for a minute. We're going up to my office."

"We are?" I said, narrowing my eyes. Is it a trap? I know I'm not in danger here, but the case was over. Why would Angela want to tell me something in her office rather than right here? And for that matter, why's it so important that I have to be alone? I caught the determined look Angela threw at me and I rose quickly to my feet, looking over at Booth and nodding quickly. "Yes. Yes we are."

It's funny how Angela has us all doing whatever she says. She may not be one for control, but she's definitely got us all on leashes, whether we realize it or not.

"Who's that?" I asked, leaning over Angela's shoulder and looking at her computer. There was a little printer icon in the bottom right panel of her monitor and the printer across the room was heating up, making the noises as it started to pull paper through. While I'm pretty sure I was supposed to be paying attention to whatever it was she was printing, I was more curious about her desktop picture at the moment.

Her desktop background was a photograph of herself and a man standing behind her, hands on her shoulders. He was tall, European, tanned, and had short, golden blonde hair. A black camera strap was around his neck, a big video camera hanging in front of his chest. They looked like they were in the middle of no where. Angela had what seemed like the beginnings of a sunburn on her face and there was a lot of sand and rock. There was almost no vegetation and I couldn't see a single cloud in the picture.

Angela looked at the picture closely and I waited patiently to hear what she'd decide to say. The desktop background was new; yesterday it had been of fish from the aquarium, but then, during the case where the Chinese diplomats died in a plane crash, her computer's background had been of a beach. For all I knew, she had it on rotation.

"That's Kirk. I'm going out to New Mexico with him for a few weeks."

"Boyfriend?" I asked, standing up straight again in surprise. I hadn't realized Angela had a significant other. I'm not surprised - I mean, she's beautiful and intelligent and she's very crafty - but she's not one of the "home is at home, work is at work" types of people, so I'd have expected her to mention it sometime if she was dating. Also, hadn't she been intending to date that guy she met online before we did the pro-bono work on Howard Epps' case? Sure, she said she was "going to have sex," not "going on a date," but it's close enough.

"For three weeks a year… yes." Angela answered softly. The printer made a noise, getting her attention again, and she pushed back her office chair to stand up and get whatever it was that had printed.

I followed her, letting her stay several feet ahead while I pondered over the given information. Why have a boyfriend three weeks a year? If you're happy enough to spend three weeks together, then why not try to make it last longer? I'm sure she has her reasons and I won't criticize her, but the way I see it, if you meet someone who you can trust and respect enough to maintain a healthy relationship with of any kind, sexual, platonic, or romantic, you should try to keep it. Humans are naturally social. Interaction is proven to keep us all healthy and stable and other seemingly important stuff.

Angela turned back around, a crisp sheet of white paper in her hands. She held it so that the side with the ink was facing her chest, preventing me from reading it until she allowed me to do so.

"You said you were like grass," she said, her eyes empathetic. She held out the paper to me, facing downwards. "But you're not, Holly. Maybe I can't boot up your self worth as easily as I can force you to stay at Brennan's, but I can do this for you." I took the paper hesitantly. Spilling my heart out hadn't been me trying to get attention or help; it had been me wanting to make my brain stop working for a little while. It was cathartic and helpful but I hadn't expected anything to come from it.

I turned it over. It was a list, not even numbered - just a list of two dozen or so people. All of the names were familiar, and all of the names were of people who I'd met since I met Booth and the squints. Brennan and Booth were both on the list - so were people who I'd only spent a small amount of time with, like Major and Mrs. Eller, the parents of the murdered senatorial intern from my first case. Come to think of it, as I read the list, I realized that most of the people were family to murder victims, like Maria Semov, George Warren, and the Grangers. Amy Morton - a defense lawyer I'd become friends with - was also listed, although I hadn't seen her since Epps overwhelmed her before I broke his wrist.

"What is this?" I asked, after reading all of the names. I raised my eyes up to Angela, completely baffled.

"It's a list of all of the people that you've helped," she answered seriously. She offered me a sad smile. "In ten years, you may not remember the parents of the murder victims, but I guarantee that they'll remember you. You told them what they needed to know to move on.

"You saved Bren's life when Ken Thompson wanted to light you all on fire. You saved Donovan Decker from what's probably the scariest thing he'll ever experience. You protected Lucy McGruder from her violent husband and gave her a way out. You gave Shawn and David Cook their mother back, and because of you, Ambassador Olivos knows what really happened to her son. You got Skyler Nelson away from an abusive father, you gave Ivy Gillespi the knowledge of what happened to the man she always loved, and Abigail Zealy and Logan Corman know the fates of the people they knew and loved. You kept Booth alive after the bomb went off until the paramedics arrived."

"Angela…" I whispered softly, feeling a bothersome itch behind my eyes. I blinked several times in rapid succession, trying not to let myself start crying, and my throat and chest felt tight.

"Holly, we all care, okay? We'll all remember you and we're not gonna let you just vanish when your internship expires. You've done a hell of a lot more good than you think and now you just need to let us return the favor."