Deputy Director Cullen and I share a somewhat complicated relationship that began when I weaseled my way onto Cleo Eller's murder investigation. Since then, I shot a man in the leg while he was trying to murder Dr. Brennan and I, and he's been giving me grief for it ever since. He likes everything to be black and white, and the way he sees it, I'm too young to really understand what working homicide is like, and he always thought I was too young to understand the danger that came with it. I suppose that being kidnapped was a wake-up call, yes, but Kenton didn't show me things I hadn't known. I'd never thought I was really invulnerable. I'd always known working with Booth was dangerous.

I think his worst nightmare would be me, getting my hands on a loaded gun, which has happened before – multiple times now – and yet no one's ever died, and the only person who got hurt was Ken Thompson. And to be fair, as Catherine Zeta-Jones so delicately put it, "he had it coming."

Brennan leaned against the wall, watching with careful and appropriate wariness as Cullen paced, unable to quite stand still with everything else going on and all the information he was being given. Booth was sat in one of Goodman's chairs, sinking down like he was hoping he'd disappear, and Goodman was standing behind his desk. I had my arms crossed, standing behind Booth's chair and watching Cullen try to handle everything in poorly-concealed amusement.

"Okay," Cullen sighed deeply, worn down by the stress – which was really nothing, compared to what else I'd been subjected to – and rubbed his fingers against his temples like he was warding off a headache. "Let me see if I get this straight. The pirate bones you recovered… came from the Jeffersonian to start with."

"Correct," Brennan nodded, her eyes dull. Cullen wasn't very exciting, just sort of tedious to deal with.

Goodman tensed, crossing his arms in front of him and clasping his hands over his stomach. "Three hundred-year-old bones, stolen from our own pirate exhibit."

"And then recovered by one of your own people?" Cullen added, ceasing in his pacing to stand in one place. I guess he finally realized that the floor wasn't as easy to wear through as he had first thought.

"Dr. Hodgins," I clarified, giving specific credit to the entomologist. Maybe the bones had been stolen, but Hodgins had done everything important to making an actual discovery.

"Who brought them back to the Jeffersonian…" Cullen stared between Booth and Goodman, like he wasn't sure who to blame for the second theft. "Where they were stolen again?"

"Re-stolen," Booth confirmed, uncrossing his legs and shifting in his chair uncomfortably. He cleared his throat.

Cullen shook his head in mild disbelief. "You got a security problem, Dr. Goodman."

Goodman tipped his head to the side in agitation and just barely kept his volume level, but he couldn't keep his tone completely devoid of irritation or sarcasm. "And when I find out who did this, you may have a murder problem."

I held up my hands in a gesture of surrender, taking myself out of it. "Now that is one murder I'll agree not to investigate," I pledged. Goodman and I had our rough spots, but I don't really have a grudge against him. I'd be on his side.

"But I – I'm on top of it, okay?" Booth swore, giving Goodman a long look to tell him that murder is not okay, no matter who aggravating the aggressor is. He turned back to Cullen now that he had that settled. "You didn't have to come down here, sir."

"That's what I thought, until I got a call from someone on the Department of Defense," Cullen returned. By his posture alone I could tell that he wasn't really angry at anyone here, but he seemed tired, worn-down, and exasperated. Maybe even a little aggrieved? Is something going on in his personal life? I'm not close enough to him to ask, but maybe I should go a little easy on him today.

"Defense?" Booth sounded like an echo for a moment, albeit a very startled one. "How do they figure into a murder investigation?"

"Branson Rose," Cullen answered, crossing his arms with an irritation that almost made me proud. "He has friends in high places, and they don't like it when the guy who builds their bombers is unhappy."

"Are they afraid he'll bomb them?" Brennan asked, entirely serious in the inquiry. It was a dry question, and it made me smirk, particularly when no one else found it amusing.

Booth turned in the chair as much as he could. Unlike Cullen, he was able to quickly discern that Brennan wasn't kidding, but he shook his head almost unnoticeably in cue. Brennan was just made more confused by the gesture when she wasn't answered, and Goodman sighed.

"What is that?" Cullen demanded, shooting Brennan a narrow-eyed, wary look that bordered on a glare. "Squint humor? Because I'm not laughing." Booth looked down, not meeting Cullen's eyes, and I made fists at my sides. I hate figures of authority when they abuse their power. Cullen isn't abusing us, but he's intimidating Booth into acting submissive when he never did anything wrong. Still, aggravating Cullen would probably only make the director come down harder on Booth. "Defense doesn't need a reason to go to war, and I'm not about to be their next target!"

"We haven't ruled Rose out as a suspect," Brennan protested the dismissal of the billionaire. Cullen wanted to do what was necessary to get the angry man off of everyone's backs, but Brennan didn't want to let someone get away from potential ramifications.

"Well, of course not," Cullen returned quickly, throwing out his arms. "You're too busy looking for your bones!"

"Let's not make this personal," Goodman commented smoothly, trying to keep things from becoming too heated.

"Who are you kidding?" I asked the archaeologist, rolling my eyes. "In the last month, we've lost bones in an investigation, drawn the FBI into a Navajo drug trafficking issue, Hodgins had made jokes at the government's expense, and I've held a loaded gun. The only way we could make this more personal is if this meeting were in his house!"

"Rose wants to keep playing in the mud, and his big-shot friends are going to see that that happens unless we come up with some answers, fast." Cullen didn't disagree with me even when I had raised my voice, which is what I'd expected. Something was off. He wasn't acting the same way I remembered. Nearly dying does put things in perspective, but it doesn't alter my memories of other people not directly involved.

Booth sighed deeply and set his hands on the armrests of the chair, pushing himself up onto his feet. "At this point, it appears as if the stolen three hundred-year-old bones are being used to, you know, salt the shaft."

Cullen half-nodded in understanding, but Brennan frowned at Booth while trying to understand. "Salt the shaft?" She repeated after him question.

"Yeah." Booth turned around so that he was facing her momentarily to explain. "You know, an investor spends a million bucks. He gets antsy when nothing happens, and then, voila, pirate bones appear and, uh, the golden goose keeps, you know, laying those eggs."

Brennan stared at him somewhere between distaste and offense. "Okay, that is a… convoluted metaphor, Booth." She informed him dutifully after finding no better word.

I felt bad for her and a little scarred myself, so I simplified it in a much easier way for anyone to understand. "He means it's a hoax for monetary profit." I told her with a disturbed glance in Booth's direction.

"Oh, got it." Brennan nodded and then shook her head to shake herself out of it, looking to Booth almost accusingly. "Why can't you be clear like that?" I sent Booth a look, trying to silently convey the I'm the favorite smug message that I was thinking.

Cullen sighed loudly, regaining attention while at the same time relieving a little bit of his own tension. "Assume the bones were stolen-"

"Re-stolen," Brennan amended quickly in the middle of his sentence.

I was a bit surprised that Cullen just worked around the correction, repeating it before continuing unhindered. "Re-stolen so you wouldn't find out they were bogus. How did you?" He stopped and looked to Brennan intently. And maybe it is important that he know how we got the information, rather than just hoping that we didn't snap the bone in the display case on the off chance.

Brennan, however, didn't understand what was expressly being asked. "How did I what?" She asked for clarification.

"From the finger," Goodman answered Cullen for her. Brennan didn't object, probably realizing that he'd just been trying to help. "They didn't get the entire skeleton. Would you like Dr. Brennan to take you through the process?" He offered politely.

Cullen looked down, shaking his head vehemently. "I really, really wouldn't," he groaned. His reaction made me snicker, and the sound seemed to jerk him back into the conversation. He sighed at Booth. "So who do you like?"

"Macy's partner," I answered, an odd echo to my voice only a split-second off in timing. I blinked and looked over at Booth, who had mimicked the action. Then I shrugged and looked back to Cullen. I have got to stop talking at the same time as other people.

"Giles Hardewicke," Brennan supplied for Cullen's benefit.

"Access, motive, ability…" Booth explained loosely.

"And sure, Rose is a pain in the ass," I pointed out, agreeing with Cullen's own problems regarding the billionaire's habit of making things as difficult as possible. "But he's too busy lording over everyone else to actually do anything about his issues."

Cullen hadn't been paying all that much attention to me, but that was fine. He's not my authorization into cases anymore. Now he looked me over carefully, glossing over the black cast on my arm. "I guess you've been healing up."

"Yep." I allowed myself to smirk. I have this ability I've been perfecting where I can make people go from "zero" to "want to strangle" in about two seconds just by smirking, except it only works if the person I'm using it on doesn't like me to begin with. "You're gonna have to keep dealing with me."

Cullen rounded to Booth speculatively. "And she's yours?"

Booth nodded once in confirmation. "Definitely, sir."

The director sighed deeply. "Good luck." Goodman smiled, but tried not to show it.

My jaw dropped indignantly and I threw out my arms. "Hey! What the hell?" I demanded. I could take it in jest, but seriously?! Cullen doesn't even particularly like Booth, but now they're connecting over exasperation with me? What gives?! "Is this about the gun thing?!"

"Dr. Goodman, the FBI will provide whatever help you need to solve your breach at the Jeffersonian." Cullen informed, wrapping things up so that he could leave and go back to whatever it was that he'd been doing before. Goodman nodded once to him in grateful acknowledgment. "You work the partner angle," he commanded of Booth, and I suppose it was a given that those orders were passed to me, too.

It's really too bad for him that he doesn't get to demand things of me anymore.

Despite that Cullen had made the call, I went with Booth and Brennan to talk to Hardewicke again. We took the ferry back out and found Hardewicke at the marina, getting tools to use in his site to keep all of the equipment in working order.

I was beginning to discover that the more often we explained what happened, the more embarrassing it actually was. There's only so much anger you can gather every time you say "our evidence was stolen out of our own lab," and after a while, you just get drained of fury and end up feeling humiliated. I looked away and pretended to pay attention to something else while Brennan vaguely explained the necessary details to the treasure hunter.

"If you lost the bones," Hardewicke said slowly, huffing just a bit as he switched hands to carry the tools. He had a heavy-duty yellow and black toolbox that looked pretty heavy to me. "How do you know they're fake?"

"They – they didn't get everything," Booth said, just as unhappy with the situation as Brennan and I were. He looked to Brennan to see if she wanted to be more specific, but she seemed fine with what he'd said.

"Ah. A stroke of luck for the good guys!" Hardewicke grinned for a moment as he cheered halfheartedly.

Brennan eyed him sideways at the enthusiasm. "We will find out how those bones were stolen from the Jeffersonian," she swore. She didn't outright make any accusations, but the veiled threat was pretty evident.

"You still think I did it, don't you?" Hardewicke guessed with a sigh, throwing a look at the anthropologist. He didn't seem agitated, just a little resigned at being a suspect.

"Why were you going to break up the company?" Brennan asked, going straight to her questions instead of giving what seemed to be a pretty clear answer.

Hardewicke stopped suddenly, the toolbox banging against the back of his right leg. I winced in sympathy, but he seemed too intent to have realized it. Then he let it down on the ground next to him and crossed his arms across his front, laughing deep from his chest. "Let me guess, Katie Ney told you that."

Booth gave the small, calculated smile that he uses when he's not honestly amused. "What makes you think it was Katie?" He questioned.

Hardewicke smirked, nodding his head once. "That was a stock part of Macy's seduction technique," he explained with a fond roll of his eyes. "… And it was very effective. I risk my life down in that hole while my partner stays safe topside…" Brennan listened to him, stony-faced and unamused by Macy's apparent habit of manipulating women. In contrast, Booth's smile turned sincere, bemused. I was more on Brennan's side, although it was so common that it wasn't really worth the energy to be bothered by. "That's how he positioned himself, as the heroic explorer. Which he was, by the way, when it came to the ladies."

"So, your partnership was never actually in any danger?" I tried to confirm. If Macy had been lying, does that mean that the pirate queen should be a suspect, too? And if their business wasn't in danger, then Hardewicke was even less likely to have killed Macy, right?

The treasure seeker immediately became serious, losing all traces of humor and brightness from telling the story. "Till death did us part," he vowed solemnly, crossing his heart with one hand for symbolism. "I'll tell you what – I'm gonna give you guys full access to the books. You don't even need a search warrant." Hardewicke said it with a bit of a challenge in his voice, daring us to find something in there that could incriminate him. "There's not a single way in which my life is better off without Macy. Like I said… I miss the man."

I cocked my head to him, trying to decide how genuine he was. I now realize that my people-reading skills aren't completely sound, but I still think it can't hurt to use them. They failed me once, but the rest of the time, they've kept me safe and well. All I could see when I looked at Hardewicke was grief and anger – at the loss of his brother, and at the man responsible for his death.

"Do you have anything you want to do next week?" Brennan asked me when we were walking into the Medico-Legal lab, turning at the doors and walking along the wall around the open area and towards her office. She had her hands in her pockets, her ID card out around her neck on a lanyard.

The question startled me for a moment before I tried to figure out how to answer. I like to think around Brennan, more so than I do around Booth. It has nothing against either of them, it's just that Brennan tends to be more comfortable in companionable silence, whereas Booth likes to fill the void with the noise of conversation, which makes it hard to focus. I like spending time with him, but there are times, especially now, when not only do I need to think, but I need to be able to do so without him there to cloud my thoughts.

And anyway, I could take a hint, but Brennan usually didn't do the whole "giving subtle hints" thing – if she wanted something, she usually asked outright. It was hard to tell whether she was asking because she wanted to do something herself, wanted me to get out of her home for a while, or just genuinely wanted to know if I had plans for the following week.

I decided after a second that it was probably best to just answer the question the way I normally would rather than try reading too far into it. If I didn't get the message, I'm sure she'd enlighten me. "Dr. Brennan, if you're asking if I have a social schedule, then you must have missed how I've been spending all of my free time in a forensics lab. For months."

"So… no," Brennan guessed, not at all put off by my response.

The casual way she took it had me grinning. "No, I don't," I said clearly. "Why? Is everything alright?" I know she doesn't have family emergencies, because her parents ran away and her brother left her to the foster system when she was fifteen, but I do know that she's still dating David, the man we'd first assumed had shot at her when it had turned out to be Kenton behind the assassination attempts. And if she wanted me out of the way, well… can't hurt to stay gone a little while, right? I could sleep here if need be.

I may not be an adult yet, strictly speaking, but I'm not exactly oblivious, either, and according to Angela, Brennan has enough pent-up sexual tension to power an entire Midwestern city.

Before Brennan could answer my question, though, we were interrupted by Goodman calling from the other side of the exam platform. "Miss Kirkland!" He raised an arm in the air to flag me down, Angela standing on his other side. "May we borrow you for a few moments?"

I hesitated to leave when Brennan had been initiating conversation, but if it weren't for Goodman then I wouldn't have a job here. It's true that I work in the Medico-Legal lab and under Brennan, Hodgins', Angela's, and Zach's supervision, but according to the paperwork, Goodman is my boss. We had a couple of rough patches, but we've gotten over them and they seem to be in the past.

"Go ahead," Brennan advised calmly. I looked her over in concern for any sign that she was brushing something important off, but she just seemed mildly curious. "It's probably important."

I bit my lip, but nodded. "See you soon," I promised. It would be hard not to see her soon, seeing as I've been living with her. We split paths and I walked past the platform and to Goodman and Angela, the latter of whom held a stopwatch with a long string like a necklace in one hand.

"What are we doing?" I asked, glancing to the doors that the two – well, the three of us, now – were paused in front of. The Jeffersonian had a security station behind transparent glass doors just inside, in full view of the doors, the platform, and the catwalks around the loft. We have an entire armed security team, fully-trained. Through the doors, an officer was at a front desk where he could look out easily, chewing thoughtfully on a pen and watching what looked like a security camera on the monitor.

Goodman hummed for a moment before answering me. "Now," he said to Angela, who hit the button on her stopwatch to make it start counting up. He started walking and Angela went at his right side, and out of a sense of obligation, I followed on his left. Then, to me, he added, "We're working a new idea on how the bones were stolen."

"And you need me for this… why?" I asked, pretty sure that the answer wasn't because of my high school course, Thievery from a Federal Institution 101. (Although, if that actually was a class, then I'd probably have taken it just for laughs.)

"Dr. Goodman?" Angela tried when Goodman didn't respond to me in any way. He walked with his hands clasped behind his back. She kept the stopwatch up where she could see it.

"Yes?" The archaeologist answered, his voice sounding almost distant and faraway as if he wasn't paying attention.

"Can I ask – why are we doing this investigation instead of security?" Angela looked over to her shoulder at the security department, which we were walking away from. I looked straight ahead and saw the direction we were going in for what Goodman meant it as – a timed route from security to the bone room.

Oh. That explained why he had Angela get a stopwatch, I suppose.

Goodman frowned and cocked his head to the side, considering what we were doing carefully and only half hearing the artist's question. "We shouldn't walk too quickly," he said in a low murmur, just barely loud enough to hear. "It would arouse suspicion. Neither would our thief."

Angela sighed softly. "I'm happy to help, but we do have actual security professionals-"

"Is there any way to tell if those tapes have been doctored?" Goodman interrupted calmly.

She let her shoulders slump, resigned to not getting an immediate, clear response. Slowly, she said, "Yeah, since they're physical magnetic tapes, not stored digitally."

"I always did like analog better." Goodman smiled grimly and somewhat sardonically. "Now I know why."

Angela had to admit that he had a point with that and she reluctantly nodded agreement. "My point is," she reiterated more firmly. "Is that I'm only an amateur at this, and I'm sure the security department is better equipped, and trained-"

Goodman interrupted her again, raising a hand up to wave at a passing forensic technician. "Afternoon, Paul," he called with a peaceful tone and a friendly lilt. "Best to Susan and Laura. I hope Johnny feels better."

Paul smiled and tipped his head to Goodman. "Thank you, Dr. Goodman," he called as he continued.

Agitated but not working herself up to getting angry, Angela sighed loudly. "Okay, you don't want to talk about it," she stated shortly with an exasperated roll of his eyes. "I get it." We reached the hallway right in front of the bone room and Goodman ceased moving abruptly right in front of the doorway. "Sir?"

Goodman cleared his throat, pushing his hands into his pockets and looking around the inside of the room. "Hit your stopwatch, please, Miss Montenegro."

The stopwatch beeped obnoxiously when Angela made it stop counting upwards. "Thirty-five point six seconds," she read.

"Double that for a round trip," Goodman ordered, doing the math quickly in his head. "That's one minute and ten seconds, leaving approximately thirty seconds to bag the bones and get back."

"Thirty seconds is enough, especially if the thief didn't care too much about the state of the bones," I pointed out. The bones were never secured down, so it would just be a matter of tossing them into a bag.

"Get back where?" Angela asked, now getting frustrated with the lack of actual answers. I coughed slightly and looked over my shoulder pointedly. Angela did the same thing and then saw the security station across the lab that we'd started at. "Oh," she said slowly, getting it. "Huh." She looked back at Goodman and the smile dropped right off her face. "Wow, you must think I'm an idiot," she said, laughing awkwardly.

Goodman took her elbow gently and pulled her away from the door. "I was grandstanding," he said with a hint of apology. "I can be like that."

Angela shrugged her shoulders like she was saying it was no big deal. "So, we find out what guards were on duty during the two thefts, and… we might have our thief!" She offered a bright, enthusiastic grin.

Goodman pulled a list of everyone working security at the Medico-Legal branch of the Jeffersonian, and Booth took the list and ran it. It turned out that one of them, middle-aged Caucasian Eric Hughes, had received a huge bank transfer this morning, and since that seemed as suspicious as anything else might have been, Brennan, Booth, Goodman and I all ambushed the guard when he finished his rounds in the security station.

Hughes confessed right away without trying to pull any stunts. It was a surprising change of pace, but not one that I was going to start complaining about. He was pulled to a low table and forced to sit down with his hands in front of him. I wanted him handcuffed, but I suppose it wasn't entirely necessary.

"I didn't see the harm," Hughes sighed, his shoulders slumped lamely.

"In stealing human remains?" Brennan asked incredulously, her arms crossed imperiously, glaring down at the security guard with barely-suppressed contempt. Personally, I think the man is lucky to still be breathing.

"After three hundred years, it's not like he's got a family grieving for him out there!" Hughes argued. As far as cases went, that was one of the silliest excuses that I'd ever heard. How could he think that's a good reason?

Goodman narrowed his eyes dangerously at the guard, yet another person who was liable to reach out and strangle the life out of the bone thief. "Think of me as a grieving parent," he growled.

Booth exhaled deeply, leaning against a wall and watching the interrogation carefully to keep things from getting violent. "Grand theft, buddy," he warned with a raise of his eyebrows. "You're looking at eight years."

"If I don't kill you," Goodman added threateningly. While usually I see him as a mild-mannered and professional desk worker, I could totally see him committing homicide for this particular offense.

"I know some really cool ways of disposing the body," I added airily, pulling at my hair and twisting the end of my ponytail for something to do with my hands. I was furious that the closest thing I have to a home had been threatened, violated, stolen from by someone who thought "his family has probably moved on" was a good excuse to rob our evidence. If Goodman decided to slaughter the guard, I'd probably help out.

"Come on!" Hughes protested almost desperately, whiny and complaining. "What's a bunch of old bones like that worth? Nothing!"

"How much did you get for them?" I demanded suddenly.

Hughes shifted in his seat uncomfortably and he looked down to the tabletop in front of him, the first sign that he wasn't telling the full truth. "Couple of hundred bucks," he mumbled.

Goodman's frown deepened, towering over the security guard.

"Yeah." Booth scoffed and he looked over at the bank statement printed out on the table and stepped away from the wall. He slid it across the tabletop and further to the guard. He tapped on a statement. "So this wire transfer into your band for ten grand – was that… inheritance?" He suggested sarcastically, giving Hughes a hard pat (that was more like a punch) on the shoulder.

"So, I suppose when you said "nothing," you actually meant that the bones were worth ten thousand, two hundred and a prison sentence." I glowered, stepping closer to use my height as an intimidation factor, hoping that he could feel my eyes burning laser holes through his skull. The man swallowed, so I knew that it worked.

"Who did you steal them for?" Brennan asked after taking a breath, clearly trying to control her temper.

Maybe having three scarily-temperamental people in the same room as the person who enraged them was a method Booth thought would work, but in hindsight, it does not seem like it was a very good idea.

Hughes rolled his eyes mutinously but he dropped his head down to face the table in front of him meekly. "We… didn't really do the name exchange thing," he grumbled.

"Somebody approached you?" Booth questioned harshly.

Hughes nodded, tired. "Yeah."

Booth paced forwards to loom over the guard's shoulder while he set three frontal photographs in front of him in a row. One was of Macy's body on the slab in the morgue, and the other two were normal pictures of Hardewicke and Rose, our main suspects in Macy's murder. "Let's see. Which one was it?"

Hughes looked over them and he seemed to recognize them all, although he pulled a face when he saw Macy's and realized that he was a corpse. "Well… which time?"

Brennan looked over Hughes' head and to Goodman in alarm, whose eyes narrowed in return. Uh-oh. Multiple attempts at taking our evidence. This guy had better hope he gets arrested or he's in for a world of hurt.

"The first time," Booth hissed with heavy emphasis on each word.

"Him." Hughes lifted his right hand up over the edge of the table, but he left his other down on his lap. He rested his finger on the bottom edge of Macy's picture. "But… he looked better."

I scoffed loudly. "Probably because he wasn't dead yet, genius," I snarled.

Goodman inhaled deeply to keep his cool composure and he looked up straight ahead at the wall. "And the second time?" He asked, far too evenly for it to be natural.

"Him." This time, Hughes didn't hesitate before he planted his finger right onto Hardewicke's chest. "Look, guys, I'm cooperating. Alright? I will give back the money, I will quit my job." He looked up to Goodman pleadingly, who still looked torn between committing brutal, bloody murder and sending him to prison so fast his head spun. "Alright, so how's about we just call it even?"

It disgusted me that he thought he could do what he had done and get off, for the most part, scot-free. I slammed my right hand down on the table and bent down to glare at the guard tensely while I used a deceptively happy voice. "How's about you call a really good lawyer?" It looked like he was enjoying it. "It doesn't matter that you're cooperating now – you can be charged with grand theft, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice, permitting that your lawyer can't waive a couple. You're still going to jail, so if you want to spend that money on something in particular, you should probably do that now."

Booth pointed over the table towards Goodman. "You know, you need a better screening process down at the museum," he declared.

Goodman was not amused in the least. He arched one eyebrow at Booth and deadpanned, "Ironic, given we contract that out to the FBI."

Booth opened his mouth to respond to that, but then he had to stop and close his mouth, unable to come up with a good answer. Then he just sort of nodded in agreement that this whole ordeal was just a little out of hand.

We made it out to Assateague Island, catching one of the last ferries running, but we had to hurry because it would be departing again quickly. The marina was almost creepily quiet and dark, but it was easy to find the van we'd been using parked in the nearby lot. Booth drove to the dig site so that we could find and arrest Hardewicke.

Booth parked the van and when the headlights went out, most of the light was lost. Before the platforms around the dig site, there was a place cleared off and furnished with a couple of lawn hairs and a small table, all made in a loose semi-circle and illuminated by a streetlight. As I jumped out of the backseat and let the door slam shut, creating an echo, Booth's gun clicked as he unlocked the safety.

Brennan noticed. "You think he's dangerous?" She asked almost skeptically.

"Grand theft, murder… yeah." Booth gave Brennan a look like he'd thought that the answer was pretty obvious. Bagpipe music played in the back, coming from somewhere around the tunnel shaft, and while it didn't sound all that bad, it was a bit annoying in such a serious context.

"The music," Brennan commented, looking out towards the temporarily deserted platforms. "It's down there."

Booth snorted. "That's not music, that's bagpipes." I frowned – how are bagpipes not music? – and stepped in front of Booth, despite that he felt it dangerous enough to carry his firearm. "Whoa, what are you doing?"

"Giles Hardewicke?" I called ahead to the lawn chairs. Someone was lying back in one, the back of their head and his short hair visible over the top, but completely unmoving. A shiver threatened to run up my spine.

Something's wrong.

I sucked at the inside of my cheek and started to walk faster, disregarding Booth's warning. The silhouette became easier to see when I got closer and the light was hitting him at a better angle, and I recognized it as Hardewicke easily. Besides, who else would be out past sundown?

"Mr. Hardewicke," Booth said loudly enough to potentially jolt him out of a nap.

I slowed down cautiously and walked around, giving the chair a wide berth in case the man in it became violent without warning, but I realized quickly that I didn't have to worry about it unless my life had suddenly collided with The Walking Dead.

Reclined limply back in the lawn chair, Giles Hardewicke's corpse was cold and ashen, aside from a rivulet of blood streaming from his nose down to his jaw. His throat, although pale from lack of circulation, was very clearly marked with purple and blue bruises over his larynx, strangled, and his neck was twisted at an odd angle, spinal cord snapped. His body looked like it had been posed, his legs up and crossed with his feet hanging off the edge of the lawn chair, one hand on his thigh and the other dangling limply on the side.

"Oh," Booth breathed, a strained note in his voice as he came around the corner and saw Hardewicke. I looked over the man's legs to the FBI agent, and when our eyes met, he lowered his gun, putting the safety back on and moving to holster the weapon.

Neither of us bothered moving to check for a pulse.

It should have bothered me that I didn't feel the loss of life as acutely as I maybe should have.

Brennan looked over the body carefully and her face fell as she realized exactly what had happened – the signature method of killing, the Special Ops move to crush the throat and snap the neck. The same person who had killed Macy also killed Hardewicke, meaning that now our killer is a multi-murderer, and we still don't know who it is.

"Maybe… Maybe we're looking for someone else," Brennan ventured after a moment of standing, staring at the corpse in the dark.