When Brennan and I ventured into the lab Zach and Hodgins tended to spend a lot of their time in, we found the other intern seated at a chair, chewing on his lower lip and staring intently at a computer screen as if he thought he'd get the answer if he just stared long enough.

"Zach?" I called, questioning. It was three in the morning. No one was supposed to actually be here – Brennan and I were just weird like that, but it seemed like the institute was quiet, what with all the other departments closed to visitors and most of the staff gone home.

Zach jumped in the chair and twisted to look over his shoulder. He blinked, seeming shocked to see us. "Is it morning?" He asked, surprised.

I laughed slightly. He thought he'd lost track of that much time? Beside me, Brennan smiled softly and shook her head. "No, I couldn't sleep." And while I love sleep but have a hard time getting to it, I had come back to the lab with her when she decided against staying at the apartment all night. "Why are you still here?"

"We're all here," he replied earnestly. "No one's leaving until we figure out what happened to your mother."

Well, if I didn't have my proof that we're all more than just people who work in the same building, then there it was, right there, and in the way Zach said it like it was so simple and obvious. I barely resisted a long, drawn out, 'awwwww.'

Shifting and surprised, but in a good, pleased way, Brennan's smile returned, somewhat hesitant against the reminder that her mother's murder needed to be solved. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me," he disagreed, making a frustrated noise. "I'm failing." I had to wonder that if failing to do really difficult things in a few hours was 'failing', then what would Zach consider 'winning?' "I've gone over every millimeter of the skull and found no evidence of remodeling, which makes no sense because any wound that results in a subdural hematoma that big should leave a mark on the living bone!"

But we know for sure that she died of a subdural hematoma. How could she have had a hematoma if there was no cause?

Brennan frowned and uncrossed her arms before her hands sought out the warmth of the pockets of her pants. "What if the subdural hematoma… started out much smaller?" She suggested.

"And grew over time?"

"Say it took about a year," I volunteered, looking to Brennan for confirmation. "She was running away from a real threat, and couldn't go back without risking putting you and your brother in danger, so for a year, she survived until the hematoma grew too big."

"And the blow itself might not have left a mark on the bone." I turned to see Zach when he offered that part and then back to Brennan, asking with my eyes if we could at least run with that theory and see where it led us. It explained why she'd been left alone for so long when her parents technically could have come back. It let her parents not be totally bad guys.

She pulled her hands out of her pants pockets and rubbed at her forearms, even though they were already covered up by her sleeves. "Show me the surface of the skull directly above the center of the hematoma," she decided to command.

Obediently, Zach rotated in the chair and used the mouse to maximize the view from the picture that we were looking very closely at. "Hundred times magnification," he murmured as he did it. Brennan and I came up on either side of him, leaning in to see the image on the monitor.

"Go to five hundred," Brennan advised more than she corrected and Zach did as she said, moving the magnification level five times higher. The zoom took it in to another pattern on the bone that looked abnormal and off. There were clear indications of fractures and something else that seemed unnatural to me. "See here?"

"There's a fracture pattern on the osteons." I said aloud in answer, already thinking that maybe Zach could make the design of those much smaller fractures and find a match in shape for the end of the weapon that had hit Ruth/Christine and resulted in her eventual death.

Zach leaned in further over the keyboard and the edge of the desk. He could sure do with some coffee. "Is that the result of bleeding into the interstitial spaces?" Her expression a mask of realization, relief, and devastation, Brennan did nothing more than nod in slow, silent confirmation. He looked back to the computer, determined to make more progress. "I can map the fractured osteons. That might lead us to the weapon."

I felt like we'd definitely advanced in our quest for the truth, however cheesy that sounded.

I watched with faint amusement while Brennan made the slow journey from "reading" to "sleeping" on the sofa in her office. She took to the couch immediately and I went behind her desk, grabbing a random book from off of the shelves to read. I tried reading, but I couldn't get lost in the pages and instead looked up every time I heard movement.

First, she closed the book, pushed it onto the coffee table, and leaned back. Then she dragged the thick black blanket off of the back of the couch, unfolding it and pulling it over her lap, leaning into the back cushions. From then, she made a gradual descent from sitting upright to lying down on her side. When she was in that halfway place between wakefulness and sleep, she dragged her feet up onto the couch with her, shoes and all, and weakly kicked the blanket over her legs.

I smiled when I heard her start to snore and pressed my hand over my mouth to stop from laughing. The entire transition had taken maybe thirty minutes. While she was asleep, I took off my jacket, put it on again backwards so that the back was covering up my front and my arms were still through the sleeves, and sat down in her office chair again. It was a spinning chair, but that also meant that the base rocked. I gently pushed it back and forward with my toes while using my jacket like a sleeved blanket.

I didn't look up when Booth came to the door with a cardboard coffee holder and three Starbucks cups, just raised a finger over my lips for him to be quiet. Frowning, because obviously I wasn't asleep, he stepped in further to peer over the back of the couch. He grinned and went around the sofa stealthily, but apparently she wasn't as deeply asleep as I thought, because the new presence jerked her awake.

She pushed herself to sit up, the blanket falling off of her shoulders and down her torso. "I'm awake!" She exclaimed defensively, blinking tiredly.

He just nodded and went along with it with nothing more than a sarcastic, "Yeah, I could see that." He put the coffee on the coffee table and I finally decided that, yes, coffee was worth getting up for. I took note of my page number and put the book down, standing up and stretching. "We caught a break on the DNA in the car."

Brennan perked up, waking up more fully as she was mentally engaged. "You know who it is?" She questioned hopefully.

He winced. "Not exactly."

I shrugged my shoulders, quickly trying to shake my jacket off so that I could put it on the right way again without leaving my arms bare for too long. The only time I'd made an exception to it was in the hospital when I'd had no choice, and in the desert, when it was to be jacketless or die of heat stroke. It wasn't because I didn't feel safe or didn't think I could trust them, because they've both proven to me that not only do they care, but they also won't make a big deal out of something that already happened and they can't change. It was more because sleeves are like a security blanket, and covering up my arms and back makes me feel more comfortable.

"Explain, please." I readjusted the collar and tugged at the hem, pulling it down to my hips while sauntering with as much enthusiasm as I could muster to sit on the couch beside Brennan and claim some coffee. The anthropologist shoved the blanket off of her lap and to the other side.

"See… it's a closed file. Whoever it is, they're in Witness Protection." I blinked. That was not what I'd been expecting. Abruptly, I decided that sleep be damned, and I was too tired for this. I reached forward and took the coffee marked with a sharpie capital "H". There was another marked "B" and the third was blank. I assumed that Booth had labeled the other two as Holly and Bones. This was proven correct when Booth picked up the blank one for himself. "I'll make a request, but they're pretty tight over there."

"What if you had a face?" Angela asked from the doorway. Booth lifted his head to see over the back of the couch and Brennan and I both twisted to see behind us. The artist held up a sketch pad in front of her chest, the finished product of Russ's memory.

"Who's that?" Brennan asked, not recognizing the man Angela had drawn.

He looked distinctive in a way that made me uncomfortable, like I should know him. Russ had told Angela he'd had a beard and moustache, which the artist had drawn accordingly. There was a faint scar along the side of his jaw, and going from his face, he wasn't very lean. His eyes weren't very bright.

"Somebody your father pointed out to Russ when he was seven. Somebody he's still afraid of."

"You're sure?" I asked, drinking some coffee and staring at the picture. I wondered what the odds were that Russ had remembered the same man that the drawing reminded me of. I'd met the guy last year, though, so there was a fourteen-year difference that allowed his features to change slightly, but he still seemed almost the same.

"Pretty sure," she nodded, turning it around and admiring her own work briefly. Really, I couldn't blame her – the closest I can get to drawing real people are stick figures. "This is who he described, and he confirmed it."

"I recognize him," I said slowly, getting all three adults' attention. I had learned the hard way that keeping secrets didn't usually end well for me. I still protected the ones I had, but I tried not to make any new ones. I didn't like being under their scrutiny, but what bothered me more were the memories I was recalling as the sketch took me back to when I was living with my foster family.

"Who is he?" Booth asked, thinking we could go around the system if I remembered his name.

Brennan frowned, half concerned and half upset. "Why do you recognize someone my Dad told Russ to stay away from?"

"Holls, I got a new game I wanna play but it needs at least two people. I could find online players but then I'd have to wear my old headset. Let's do that while Mom and Dad talk to their friend."

"I hate to break it to you, Aaron, but none of them are looking particularly friendly."

"They have to pay him for services, of course they're not that happy. I'm going to hate paying for my own car when I get one. Come on, let's kick some terrorist ass."

I shivered, even though I wasn't cold. It was more the thought of having been close to someone who was obviously dangerous, who was potentially responsible for Ruth Keenan's murder and Max's disappearance into seemingly thin air. "I don't really know him," I said apologetically, somewhat flustered. I had thought I was prepared for whatever came with this case. I hadn't expected it to get any more personal than Russ and Brennan. "But when I was still living with the Kirkland family, before any of them took off, he was there a couple of times.

"I mean, the first time I was alone at the house and he was looking for Aaron's parents, but they weren't there, so he left. And the second time he came around, not long before they vanished, he stayed for over an hour." A flush went up my neck. I felt like I should have made sure I knew who he was before letting my legal brother drag me off and leave him with my guardians. They were the first "parents" I'd actually felt a little bit close to, and if I'd known he was dangerous I'd have called the police the moment he showed up asking about them. "Aaron dragged me to his room and made me play video games with him. I didn't think too hard on it, but now that I'm remembering, he didn't let me stop until that guy had left." And let me say, it wasn't that I was a pushover or listening to whatever he said; it was because Aaron not only knew how to annoy me like a pro, but it was also his laptop and Netflix account that I had used when I wanted media.

"Do you remember his name?" Brennan asked carefully.

I thought back but shook my head. Now that I was actually trying to make a connection, I made the one that involved all three of my former fosters keeping me as uninvolved with the man as possible. How the hell did I miss that?

"He didn't tell me his name," I answered, disappointed in myself just for not asking. Okay, so I've learned to be cautious while working for the FBI, but had I really been that neglectful of my own safety before? "No one did. He just said he was a mechanic." The potential double meaning to that just now hit me and I bowed my hand to stare at my lap. I set my coffee down on my thigh, the heat radiating through my jeans. "I… I assumed he was doing repair work on one of the cars or something." I clenched my free hand into a fist. Did this psychopath really actually tell me he was a criminal without me realizing it?

Angela looked over my head at Booth in grim realization. "A mechanic can also mean a hitman," she voiced aloud. I shut my eyes. This guy who vaguely says he's a "mechanic," whose name I never heard, who I'd never seen before, comes to my house, spooks my family, and when they disappear I didn't even once think back and get suspicious?

Suddenly I had a pretty good idea how Russ must have felt when his Mom and Dad went missing and he realized he might have unintentionally seen who did it, but only known too late to do anything about it.

Thoughtfully, but with a darker undertone that came from this case being so closely tied to her family, Brennan offered, "That could be why he's in Witness Protection, if the blood in the car is his."

The FBI agent looked to me with rapt attention. "What feeling did this guy give you?" He asked intently.

Spending so much time in danger – be it from murder, like more recently, or abuse of any kind, like when I was growing up – made me a pretty good judge of character, or so I liked to think. I still was not a "people person," but until Kenton had slipped past my guard and almost slaughtered me, I'd prided myself on my intuition and grasp on peoples' personalities. I had to figure that, just because one sociopath got past, that didn't mean I wasn't good.

"He creeped me out, to be honest." I answered, rubbing my arms over my sleeves, made entirely uncomfortable. Had I really had a serial killer in my house? Hell, had I really opened my door and let one inside? I could remember feeling the man's eyes on me. I also distinctly remembered resolving to myself not to get too close. "I didn't really think I was in danger, but I wasn't comfortable, either."

"Yeah, well, usually when someone creeps you out, it's for a reason." Booth stood up abruptly from the opposite furniture, coffee tightly in his hand. "I'm going to play hardball with Witness Protection," he declared determinedly, angry and stubborn. It was still weird – nice, but weird – for people to be getting upset on my behalf, because some psycho was near me. "If they don't cooperate, I'm going to put his face in the paper!" He pointed meaningfully at Angela's sketch book while leaving the coffee holder on the table.

Brennan looked up, bewildered by the decision. "Wouldn't you get in trouble for that?" Myself, I was remembering the first case I was on with them and how Brennan blackmailed Booth into letting her onto the field by threatening to release Cleo Eller's identity and picture to the media. The two situations were highly comparable.

"If you do that, I'm a dead duck. What are you trying to do?"

"Blackmail you."

"Blackmail a federal agent?"

"Yes."

"I don't like it."

"It's blackmail," I had jumped in, laughing about the plain complaint. "You're not supposed to like it!"

He offered Brennan and I a tense but still insistent smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Well, I guess we'll find out," he replied, storming out of the office and still drinking his coffee. I'm not the only one who truly appreciates caffeine.

Angela watched him go and whistled lowly, appreciatively. I had long since gotten used to her remarks that seemed ill-timed. "You know what? Sometimes he is just… whew." Smirking, she let her eyes travel back to Brennan. I looked to see what the authoress was thinking, and she was staring at her friend, the initial confusion fading to realization and slight disapproval. Angela tried to look innocent. "What?"

Brennan looked away to try to hide the smile that accidentally condoned Angela's behavior, then looked back up fondly at the artist with an expression that I swear read something along the lines of, you are just too cute, you single-minded friend, you.

Most of the time when I visited Amy with food in tow I brought McDonald's. Today I decided to mix it up and I brought Arby's instead – a full meal and milkshakes for the two of us, and I picked up sandwiches and drinks for her parents, too. Cullen and I still aren't really friends, but I think he's learned that I really do care about his daughter, so we've gone from taking shots at each other and barely being tolerant to being civil.

"You didn't have to bring food for my parents, too," Amy told me with a smile and a hint of a laugh while unrolling one of the Arby's bags with a sandwich, curly fries, and an order of mozzarella sticks (I hadn't known which side she'd prefer so I got both!). "They'd have let you in, even without bribery."

"Your mother, maybe," I agreed. Her mother was much more tolerant of me, having only met me when I was being a support system for Amy in light of her viral chemo failing. The circumstances of our meeting was constantly hanging over our heads. We both knew she probably wouldn't last much longer, but I still visited her in between and during cases, making the most out of what time we had. "With your father, I don't think I can be too careful."

Turns out Amy's more a fan of the mozzarella sticks. I couldn't blame her, they were fantastic. I made a note to buy a couple more orders next time. "So this guy, Russ, he's staying around?" She asked. "If he's Brennan's brother, then is he staying in her apartment, too?"

While I didn't like involving her in cases for obvious reasons, our personal life was another matter entirely. We were fascinated by each other's stories – because I never got to be a typical teenager with friends and parents, and because she thinks my backstory and ordeals are intriguing to hear from a unique perspective. I think that's part of what made us such fast friends – aside from being empathetic to each other, we're genuinely interested by each other, too. Because this case was so personal for myself and the people around me, I left out the gory details and simplified it. I had just finished explaining what had happened in Angela's office with Russ.

In the back of my mind, I thought I was a little proud at how good I was at telling stories while skirting more violent or case-centric details. Talking with Parker came to mind, when I'd had to do the same thing when he'd asked why I was in the hospital.

"No… at least, not so far." Don't get me wrong – just because I have issues with Russ, doesn't mean I don't want the siblings to resolve their problems and reconcile. And really, I think once Brennan gets past her problems, mine will just sort of fade into the background. He's not my brother to be mad at, anyway. "He's got a hotel. I can't agree with what he did when he left her. I just can't. But I think now it's easier for me to judge him for myself, and how he's been since I met him."

Amy nodded and wiped her fingers on a napkin before going for the strawberry shake on the side of the bed. "That's good. I mean, people change." While she enjoyed a drink, I tipped my head skeptically. I don't think people's personalities change. I just… don't. Neither does Booth, according to Hodgins. Amy noticed. "They grow up and mature, at least," she amended more believably. "He was, what, nineteen? Now he's in his thirties. Maybe he regretted it, learned something else he could have done, figured out he was wrong to do it." She shrugged. "Or maybe his life didn't work out all that well, and now he's smarter because of it, and is glad that he didn't have to drag his sister through it, too. Everyone has another side to the story. It's just hard for you to see his because you've practically lived through hers."

I try really hard not to be ignorant, but being told I'm kind of blind to someone's perspective probably would have irritated me if it had come from anyone else. Amy doesn't have a bias – she knows Brennan, but isn't close to her. She has both of her parents, and no siblings. So she really is objective when she says it, and I know she's not saying it for anyone else's favor.

For a sixteen-year-old, she thinks pretty deeply. There's something about the two of us that's forced us to grow up faster than we should have. For her, it's mesothelioma – advanced, metastasized, and terminal lung cancer, given to her by a tainted bone graft when she broke her leg skiing.

"Sometimes it's hard to be on parallels," I admitted. Knowing it and accepting it were different things. Looking down, I bent and played with the straw in my chocolate milkshake. "I can't help but draw lines between Russ and Brennan, and Aaron and I."

Amy nodded like that was understandable. It was eerily like looking through a mirror that was fast-forwarded to the future. "Well, I think you should at least try to be friends with him. I mean, he's important to Brennan. If they reconcile – and I hope they do – then you'll have to spend more time with him."

Yeah, living with her means I kind of have to be decent to the people she chooses to socialize with – her boyfriend and brother would naturally be on that list.

"I think I will." I nodded bracingly like I was preparing myself mentally for it. "I mean, I like him. If it weren't for that, then I wouldn't have a problem with him at all. And he seems to be cool with me, even though I've been kinda rude to him…" I trailed off.

Amy laughed. "Kind of?" She repeated. Well, let's see – I'd yelled at him, threatened him with physical violence, blackmailed him… yeah, okay, more than kind of, and I'm not a very nice person when I'm angry, am I? I offered her a sheepish smile before I started laughing, too.

Zach leaned over and peered at Angela as she brought up the recovered image Zach had put together. "This is the pattern of fractured osteons." It was small, but Angela put it at the end of a sort of pipe to make the most sense in the scenario.

Angela hovered the half-translucent weapon over the recreated skull. "It suggests a blow from the front that grazed the skull."

"A bullet?" Brennan asked, looking to Hodgins instead of the holograph. Again it struck me how personal this case was to her, and no wonder she didn't want to watch the projected simulations.

"There would've been particulates left behind by a bullet," Hodgins told her, dismissing the idea. "Especially fired from a short range."

"It looks like the business end of a tire iron," Hodgins voiced aloud, grimacing slightly as he said it.

Tire irons forever have a negative connotation for us here in the Jeffersonian, ever since Howard Epps. Tire irons had been his weapon-of-choice for bludgeoning young, blonde women to death. He had been on death row, but, as any decent movie psychopath would, he had played his defense lawyer, Amy, Booth, Brennan, and I all like violins, and we ended up finding more of his victims. Because a full investigation had to be conducted on those for the appropriate charges against him, he got off of death row anyway. I had broken his wrist when he tried to touch my hand. I still thought of Amy sometimes, but hadn't seen her since. I felt horrible for what Epps had done to her. Personally I thought she'd been somewhat naïve and idealistic; even so, having that shattered with reality the way it had been was something she didn't deserve to have to deal with.

"No, because we saw that before with Epps's case." Just his surname was enough for everyone to remember that disaster. I pointed at the holograph. "It looked different. The origin of the hit was larger and the force was more centered."

Angela bit lightly on the inside of her cheek before running a simulation. The tip of the weapon, which did admittedly look like a tire iron but didn't match the wound, was pulled back and the skull "repaired" on the projector. "I think the weapon was actually chasing the skull when it landed. I believe that the victim was pulled away at the last second so that most of the force was lost, leaving only the slightest impression."

On the projected image, the skull moved forward just as the weapon struck, making the blow much weaker, and it came up with a much more accurate head wound. The tire iron pulled back and I had to admit that that explained the scenario. While Epps's victims hadn't been able to really fight back, we could still assume that, since Ruth and Max had run away together, Max (or someone else) had intervened.

"That also explains why Zach hasn't been able to identify the weapon," I added, looking through the orange projections to Zach, the closest thing to a weapons expert that we had.

A sharp and sudden rap on the door made us all look to see who it was. Booth was leaning just far enough inside the office to look around and make sure that we were there before he was summoning us. "Bones, Holly. I got what I need from Witness Protection." He showed us a folder for proof and then used it to gesture out the door. "Let's go for a drive."

Well, if that wasn't an engraved invitation to go interrogate the son of a bitch, I don't know what is.

Brennan started to go but then she stopped and shuffled her feet. I ceased moving, worried about her and why she suddenly didn't jump at the chance to go find more answers for her own mysteries. She turned around and cocked her head, looking around at Hodgins, Angela, Zach, and even me, seeming sentimental and touched.

"Everybody… thank you." She appreciated us, we knew that, she praised us all for good work and thanked us for going out of our way when we did, but this somehow felt more personal and all the more sincere. "I…" She swallowed and apparently either couldn't say it or didn't have the words. "Thank you," she said again instead.

Angela's eyes met mine and we both nodded slightly, understanding that Brennan didn't have to say it for us to know what she meant.

As Booth drove the car up the long driveway to the farm where the man – Vince McVicar, apparently – worked, we drove past a barn and a car parked right alongside it. The man himself was visible from where we were, further up closer to the single-story house and standing by a fence, feeding a bunch of pigs their meal in dirty jeans and a checkered shirt. He looked typical except for that I knew better. I remembered him as something else entirely and Russ knew he was bad news.

"Huh," I sighed, looking out to the car parked by the barn. It was a silver Buick with four doors, a two thousand four model. I'm not big on cars, but I recognized it.

"What?" Booth asked, immediately wary because of where we were and who we wanted to talk to.

"Nothing," I said quickly, putting the worry at ease for the moment. "It's just that my foster parents used to drive a Buick like that." I rolled my eyes, irritated with myself for letting my mind wander down memory lane, which I liked to keep closed off with tape and roadblocks. "Remembering stuff from last year's just putting me in a nostalgic place, I guess." I glowered and shook my head. "It's awful."

McVicar must have heard the engine of the SUV because he put down the bucket while the pigs oinked and shoved themselves to the trowel. Turning around to watch, I saw his face again. He looked older than Russ had described for Angela, but almost the exact same to me. Fifteen years and he was still just as recognizable, though.

Booth slowed down the car as it rolled over the gravel road, slightly bumpy. "Okay, now I know you both like to pretend you're the agents here, but just listen to me this time." He says that more often than I think he realizes. No matter what he says, McVicar is giving us those answers. "This guy, McVicar, he might be a pig farmer now, but he used to be a mechanic with ties to the strong-arm crew that your parents ran away from."

"A mechanic?" Brennan looked to the side at Booth. "Like Russ?"

I shook my head darkly. "No, not that kind of mechanic," I corrected. "W.P.P. confirmed that when he told me he was a mechanic, he was actually telling me he was a career contract killer." I thought back to that day when I was sixteen and assumed strangers that were mechanics were really normal mechanics. It burned my pride and my conscious that I hadn't questioned him further to know for sure who he was. "And I just fucking assumed he was fixing the car. Why didn't I question it? There wasn't even anything wrong with the car!"

McVicar leaned against the fence post while Booth slowed the car, allowing it to coast to a stop. There weren't any real parking spaces, so Booth let it stop at the edge of the gravel path a few yards away from the fence. The stretch from us to the pigs was grassy.

While he put a hand on the gear shift to set the car in park, he turned and looked at me over his shoulder. "Look, kid, you can't blame yourself for that. Who expects hitmen to show up at their doors, anyway?" Wisely, I didn't answer with Max and Ruth Keenan. "He told you he was a mechanic, that's all. Most people, when they say 'mechanic,' they mean mechanic. And, you know, if you had realized what he was, he probably would have killed you to keep your mouth shut." He reasoned it out and made it seem so simple.

I met his eyes as the engine died and the keys were pulled out of the ignition. Brennan's seatbelt clicked as she unlocked it and the belt retracted across her torso. "I get that rationally, but I'm still feeling like there's a knife in my back." There's no reason to feel betrayed, I tried to convince myself for what felt like the dozenth time. I didn't even know his fake name! "I let him into my house. You know, the place where I slept." I paused with my hand on the seatbelt. "Are you sure I don't need a gun?"

Booth shook his head in exasperation. "Of all times, we're having the gun argument again now?"

I rolled my eyes. We were still actually arguing about it? Well, then, fine. I pushed my door open and muttered, "That's it, I'm applying for a carrying permit."

McVicar smiled charismatically and when he talked, he had a slight country accent. "Can I help you folks?" The way he pulled off seeming innocent and cheerful made me want to gag.

Booth pulled his gun too quickly for McVicar to do anything but realize that we weren't just your average civilians. "Yeah, put your hands up." He ordered gruffly. The serial killer paused, reluctant to raise his hands, but Booth raised the gun up to aim for his heart. "Do it," he prompted again. Keeping his elbows at shoulder level, McVicar splayed his fingers and held his hands up, palms facing us.

"Booth," Brennan sighed, objecting to the sudden use of force instead of a better way of approaching the situation. I didn't particularly care. I didn't trust the guy as far as I could throw him, and that's probably not very far.

"Check him for a gun," the FBI agent instructed briskly.

"Let me," I growled, volunteering and stalking forward. I half expected him to draw a weapon on me, but I stayed to the side so that Booth could shoot him if he moved to grab me or anything else. "Anything that takes this bastard down."

"What's going on?" Calm but surprised, McVicar kept his arms up but stared in bewilderment. "Wait, don't tell me – you're the Kirkland girl!" He recognized me but didn't have the decency to remember the name of the girl he'd lied to. I shot hatred at him through my eyes. He didn't seem to catch it and instead tried to be concerned. "Is Rosie alright? Is that was this is about?"

I moved behind him so that he couldn't see me and reached up, standing high to wrap my fingers around his upper arms, feeling for a firearm hidden up the sleeves. There were none, but with his arms up, his shirt was pulled high enough to see the grip of a handgun sticking out of his pocket.

"Her name is Rosemary," I hissed, grabbing onto the handle and pulling the gun out of his jeans. I turned it over. Black, sleek, and shiny, it looked like a forty-five caliber Glock with a loaded magazine. I held it up so Booth could see over his shoulder. "Forty-five, I think."

"Huh." Booth narrowed his eyes tauntingly at McVicar, having leverage over him now that he had a concealed weapon. According to Witness Protection, he wasn't permitted to have any firearms on his person aside from maybe a shotgun in his house for self-defense, but he hadn't gotten licensed for even that.

"And another in his boot," I called, straightening up quickly with a second gun in my hand. It looked more like the type of gun I've seen in cowboy and Western movies. "Thirty-eight revolver. I think this is a Colt," I added, turning it over. While pretty, it wasn't the best gun for all practical purposes, but it shot people and looked cool.

"Thirty-eight," Booth repeated again, nodding and keeping his sights fixed on McVicar in case the "mechanic" turned around and went psycho on me. "I'm always right."

Brennan shot him a look. "No, you're not." She disagreed flatly.

"I'm FBI." Booth finally allowed McVicar the advantage of knowing who we were and why we had a gun trained on him. I made sure the safety on the forty-five was on before shoving it in my waistband, keeping the Colt in my right hand in case I needed to shoot him. "I know who you are." That was supposed to tell McVicar that he couldn't hide anything and he shouldn't lie.

Still being weirdly friendly and upbeat for the situation, McVicar barely moved, but he smiled like this was ridiculous and silly. "Stever Beers, pig farmer!" He offered up the alias Witness Protection had given him. "Ask Holly, she'll tell you."

No, no, no. You don't have the right to even talk to me or Brennan.

"Vince McVicar, contract killer," I corrected behind him with a slight snarl. "I'll tell them my brother was so afraid of you that he didn't let us out of a locked room until you were long gone." I snorted, smarting from the lies I'd bought. "Mechanic, my ass."

McVicar stood like stone, becoming rigid until he had more in common with a wall than with a human. "You want to talk to Vince McVicar, you do it through the Federal Marshals."

Well, if I wasn't already pissed off enough at him, then reminding me of Federal Marshals definitely would have done it. My last experience with them had been… trying. Namely, though I was unarmed, they still tried to kill me. Sure, I attacked them first, but we were investigating a homicide and they were sulking around the victim's husband's house looking all suspicious and stuff. Apparently, it hadn't been deemed necessary for us to know the entirety of the case information. But who tries to kill a teenager, anyway?! I pressed the barrel of the Colt against his lower back to express just how much I didn't like it – the safety was on – and ended up hitting the handle of another hidden gun.

"If I do it through the Federal Marshals, I'm gonna have to tell them about a pig farmer who carries two concealed weapons," Booth threatened, putting McVicar in a position where he really couldn't win.

"Three!" I corrected, getting the third from where it was hidden underneath his shirt, the barrel tucked through his belt. "Twenty-two caliber."

"Twenty-two." Booth must have predicted all three guns that I'd found, or at least, the calibers. "I'm always right," he reiterated.

Giving him another, more annoyed glance, Brennan protested again, "No, you're not."

"Yes, I am." He argued. I stepped out from behind McVicar, holding the twenty-two aiming down and the thirty-eight Colt at the man. What, he thought he could kill Brennan's mother and get away with it? Terrify my parents, maybe have something to do with why they left me? I'm supposed to leave them, not the other way around! "No, kid, will you put the gun down?!"

I looked to Booth and waved the Colt carelessly at the farmer. "Would you rather the hitman have the firepower?"

McVicar rolled his eyes when we started arguing amongst ourselves, even though he was currently set to be shot at by two different people if he made the wrong move. "What do you want?" He asked, unimpressed.

Before I could answer with something scathing, Brennan stepped forward. She stayed out of Booth's range but still got his attention. "I'm Ruth Keenan's daughter," she announced, staring at McVicar and expecting him to have a reaction.

He did, but it wasn't one that immediately suggested he had been her mother's killer (unfortunately). "Joy?" Brennan tensed and I glared when he called her by the name she'd been given before her entire family changed their identities. "You're Joy Keenan?" He laughed softly, lips quirking into an ill-fitting smile. It seemed more sinister or unnerving than warm or pleased. "Yeah, I can see that."

"Why were you in my house?" I demanded the farmer after all four of us had taken a measure of privacy and moved to the stables rather than staying out in the open. McVicar had a horse, a gorgeous Palomino, out in the field grazing while we used its shelter for our interrogation. I kept all three guns on my person after confiscating them from the hitman and Booth walked him at gunpoint into the barn. "What did you want with my parents?"

I could never really think of them as being my parents in the same sense as most people use the word in, but legally that's what they were and I need a simpler term for them for the sake of time and appearance in this particular interrogation.

McVicar's expression changed and became sympathetic, nostalgic, and it almost sickened me. I knew he was bad news. I could tell when Russ seemed so genuinely agitated by his mere memory. Now that I thought to wonder I knew Aaron stayed as far away as possible and forced me to do the same. Seeing him in person cinched it. He gave off this vibe – and no, I don't believe in "vibes" as in the psychic or paranormal sense, I mean in the way that subtle cues from his behavior, his tone, his face all add up in my psyche to set me ready to run away.

"Me and Rosie, we've known each other for years." Hearing Rosemary's name shortened so affectionately coming from the person who probably had something to do with her disappearance just made my hands ball into fists at my sides and I glowered. It didn't pressure him into faltering. "Nick and me went out for a beer a couple times. We were all friends."

Then how come you only came by to visit twice the whole time I was there? I challenged mentally, eyes blazing and expression and attitude harsh, but knew that there were better questions to ask.

I shook my head resolutely. I knew what I remembered. I knew there was a connection, between my memories and Russ's firm belief that this man was serious trouble. "I'm not buying it," I stated flatly. "Aaron was afraid of you, like he knew who you were. Why?" So many ridiculous theories bounced around in my head – Hodgins would be proud of me for the ones that were a little more conspiratorial. None of them seemed like they could be rooted in reality, so I wanted a real one.

McVicar ignored the question and switched his attention to Booth. "I don't understand what this has to do with the Keenans." Lies!

I sidestepped so he was just forced to acknowledge me again, but dully noted that he wasn't going to willingly tell me what I wanted to know. Since I had no real evidence, just what I remembered, my best hope was to get him locked up first so that he'd be in a position where telling me wouldn't make things any worse for him.

"Your blood was found in their family car. We know you were there around the time when Ruth was murdered and Max disappeared."

"You hurt lots of people, Vince. You bashed in their heads." The blunt accusation let everyone clearly see how Booth felt about the man, and he had a hard edge to his voice I hadn't heard many times before – I'd almost say it was reserved for the people who tried to kill his friends. I guess hurting Brennan's family and coming near me was a bad enough offense to get McVicar on the same hate list.

The "farmer's" expression became ever-so-slightly condescending. "Well, they never proved that, or I wouldn't be in Witness Protection."

Duh. Do you think we're total idiots? … Actually, he probably does. Bastard.

"Yeah, we know how it works, Vince." Booth called him by his first name with the same annoyance in his voice that I could hear in my own thoughts. He crossed his arms, gun holstered but most definitely still on guard and unimpressed by his attitude. "You rat out your crew and everybody loses interest in a few old murders."

When it was summarized like that, I realized that our justice system is kind of screwed – here, I know you've killed many people for no real justifiable reason, but if you backstab a few people then we can set you up with a fake identity and a safe place with secure legal protection.

Brennan joined the conversation again, bringing herself to open up the conversation herself and redirect it onto finding what McVicar had done to her parents. "My mother was hit on the head."

McVicar nodded. "Yeah. I know." He bent his head down and tapped his head over a long scar starting at his head and going back almost to the top of his right ear. "I was there. Thirty-two stitches."

Booth smirked at him for the damage that had been done to him. The scar looked old, easily dating back to when Brennan's parents had gone without a trace. "She fought back, huh?"

"Ruthie fought back, alright." He agreed too easily, so there had to be something else coming with it. He shook his head. "But not against me."

Brennan shifted uncertainly, unsure if she wanted to ask and know what he would tell her. "Then… against whom?"

He raised his chins lightly. "Your father."

I looked over my shoulder at Brennan and stepped up to McVicar, staring at him in a challenge. I raised my hand and circled my wrist around like I was about to jab him in the chest. "Now you, I can see him attacking. I mean, hell, I wanna attack you. But why would Max attack her?"

The look that he gave Brennan was not a nice one. It wasn't mean, but it was pitying, like he felt bad for her for not getting it as quickly as he thought she should have. "Think about it a second, alright?" He urged, making awful implications.

She looked as repulsed as I would imagine and looked him over again, trying to see what he thought her mother could find attractive. Considering when I looked at him I practically saw a glowing neon sign over his head that said "murderer, liar, generally horrible human being," it was hard to see why Ruth/Christine would leave Max for him at all, especially when they'd pointed out to Russ that McVicar was a bad guy.

"You and my –" She cut herself off, looking a little ill. "My mother?"

He confirmed it just by not correcting her, and then continued to tell his romanticized version of a story. "Me and Ruthie had run off together. Max caught us pulling into a motel outside of Champaign, Illinois. We were nuts about each other, Ruthie and me." I set my shoulders, sizing him up and wondering if I could just fly at him and beat him to the ground. Then again, pretty much everything he did, breathing included, was pissing me off – grammatical imperfections included. He couldn't possibly think it was alright to be telling all of this to her! The only reason I didn't stop her was so we'd have his full story, see if we could discern any clues from it about what had really happened. "Crazy in love."

Booth was keeping near Brennan as if he knew she was going to need someone. I looked back at McVicar, not even trying to conceal the loathing I felt for him. "People like you, you're all snakes. You tell the truth when it's opportune, you lie, you manipulate facts and details." I accused, hoping that it was at least offending him. His nostalgic faint smile faded at the words. "Skip over the cheesy emotional clichés and just tell us what happened in the fight."

He nodded solemnly at the order and looked past me to Brennan, who he seemed to particularly want to harm. "Well, he hit Ruthie first."

Brennan watched him cautiously. "With what?" She asked, making sure he knew the details of the fight in order to prove that he was actually there.

"Tire iron." He confirmed what we'd already guessed. "Hit my arm, caught me in a roundhouse to the head." He motioned up to the scar on his face. "Lights out, baby. I came to, Ruthie and Max were gone. Never saw neither of them again." Booth looked to Brennan, to see if she was buying it, but she didn't notice. "You ask me, Max killed Ruthie and buried her somewhere and vanished. Our plan, once we set up, most likely in Florida, was to bring you down." I crossed my arms, holding him under scrutiny. "Your father is a hard man, Joy," he warned, again calling her by the wrong name.

"Max Keenan robbed banks with as little danger to innocents as possible." I don't condone what he did, by any means, but I have to at least respect him for valuing the safety of others. No one was hurt when the Keenans were in charge of the jobs except for in that one heist that went wrong. "You get paid to slaughter people. I don't think you have the moral high ground to make that declaration."

"My name is Brennan." I turned around at an angle, so I could watch Brennan empathetically but keep an eye on McVicar. I didn't trust him not to attack while my back was turned. She looked so determined, stubborn and insistent that he stop calling her by the name of someone who she wasn't. At the same time, she looked scarily lost, like she wasn't entirely sure he was wrong. "I'm Dr. – I'm Dr. Temperance Brennan."

McVicar scoffed disbelievingly, like he was telling her to just keep believing that, and I sent him the most hateful stare that I could in about three seconds before I looked back to my roommate, mentor, and friend, concerned she was being pushed too far.

She sniffed and stood her ground. I couldn't begin to imagine how she felt, being driven to question who she was. "I work at the Jeffersonian Institution," she persisted, though it was clearly hurting her to keep doing this. "I'm a forensic anthropologist. I specialize in identi…" She trailed off, blinking back tears and catching her breath. "In identifying… in identifying people when… nobody knows who they are. My father was a science teacher, my mother was a bookkeeper…" She talked faster as she started to cry and she rubbed away the tears with the sleeve of her jacket. "My brother – I have a brother. I'm Dr. Temperance Brennan."

Booth looked at her with nothing short of admiration. I guess we'd both sort of just innately understood that she had needed to reestablish who she was to McVicar and show that she had her identity and so please stop screwing with her mind, thanks. Maybe she needed to prove it to herself a little, too.

Now that she had succeeded in making the point for herself, Booth held out an arm and set his hand on her shoulder. "I know who you are," he assured her steadily, being the support that she needed while she started to cry and couldn't seem to stop. "Hey, I know." Gently he pulled back on her shoulder to indicate that she should turn around. She did willingly and stepped up to him, hiding herself against him and shaking. He dropped his other arm tightly across her back, shooting McVicar a cold glare before looking back down to the shorter woman he held. "It's okay. Shh," he cooed. "It's going to be alright."

Thinking about the most traumatizing memory of my life probably wasn't the best thing I could have right then, but the gentle comfort he was giving her and the shushing reminded me of how he'd been when he'd found me in the warehouse, bound by my wrists to a hook hanging from the ceiling, slowly dying of blood loss and surrounded by starving dogs.

I looked away from Brennan. I couldn't comfort her any better than Booth was and I was furious at McVicar for driving her to tears. It felt like something was bubbling up in my stomach, and I turned an enraged glower on the farmer. At that moment, my life's dream was to take out the Colt again and shoot him with it.

"See what you've done?" I growled, advancing on him in an attempt at throwing him off guard. I pointed back behind me to the two adults. "You don't get to decide who she is," I snarled at McVicar. "That's for her to decide."

Just like no one gets to decide for me what I do with my life, or who I am, or who I should be, or what I really want, no one gets to decide that for Brennan, either. They're decisions that individuals deserve to solely make on rights and principles alone. No matter how low he sinks, he cannot strip her of her identity or sense of self.

He looked at me sadly – no, disappointedly, almost empathetic, except it was somehow mocking, too, like he didn't know quite how to make his face look honest or concerned. Like he didn't know what empathy felt like, a warning voice in the back of my mind corrected me, and suddenly I realized that the feeling I got from McVicar wasn't too different from the one I'd gotten from Howard Epps, psychopath on death row; except the shivers I'd gotten from Epps had, of course, been amplified by the convicted charges against him and the dark setting he'd been in.

"What have you been getting into?" He asked, disapproving and somehow thinking that he had the right to feel that way about me. He doesn't have the right to approve or disapprove, or be sad, or excited, or proud of or for me. "Rosie, she was so sure you were really going places." Uh-uh, you don't get to talk about her and use her to make me feel bad. "Why are you still here, in this place?"

Next thing I knew, McVicar was rocking back with his hands over his face and my knuckles were stinging, almost burning with the force behind a punch I hadn't given my arm permission to throw. But damn, I felt good about it.

I was breathing slightly heavier from the duress. "I should do that again, just on principle," I hissed at him, raising my arm in threat that I would do it again if I felt the need, and in light of the shocked and irritated look of the hitman, the soft sound of Brennan trying to stop crying muffled by Booth's chest, and his quiet reassurances, the barn was just too stifling to stay in.

I put my arms out in front of me with my palms open, taking deep breaths and sending out the message of leave me alone. I moved past McVicar warily and to the tall, wide open door to get out.

I felt a little bit guilty for leaving Brennan and Booth in the barn with the psycho, but I was maybe two inches away from actually shooting him with the damn guns I'd confiscated and didn't think it was a good idea for me to stay in there much longer. I considered going back up to our SUV, but it was a short hike away and it would be harder to hear if they needed me back inside. I ended up staring painfully at the silver Buick that reminded me of Rosemary, Nicholas, and Aaron Kirkland.

Once I'd realized I was actually something near safe there, we'd become a sort of typical American family to anyone looking in. It hadn't lasted long. I hadn't really belonged with them, calling them all, even Rosemary and Nicholas by their first names (well, I called them Rose and Nick as they asked, but I sure as hell didn't call them Mom and Dad). Aaron and I got along as well as could be expected, I guess, because we were both done with high school, me because of graduating early and him because he was nineteen, and we hung around the house a lot except when we went out to work and get our own income.

He'd be twenty now, I thought, looking at the Buick and slowly going up to it. With a sigh, I pushed myself up and sat on the trunk.

It was almost impossible to compare my "family" then to my "family" now. I think… I think if they hadn't left, then maybe I would have been content there, at least until I was eighteen. I know that I'm content where I am now. Instead of an older brother, now I have a little one. And Parker and I may never be close, and I can be okay with that, as long as he knows that he has my help if he ever needs or wants it. I know there's a hell of a lot more than biology involved in family, but it does mean something to me.

It means something to Booth, too, because while, yeah, our relationship was stressed for a while there, but it's evened out and we've adjusted accordingly. He's learned to give me my space and not to coddle me. I'm independent. I don't know how to function without that independence. I've learned to give into him a little bit, to indulge him sometimes when he wants me to behave or be safe. And while we're still figuring out how we can interact outside of investigations, I'm living with Brennan, a third party that we both know fairly well and mutually trust.

I have a job now, too. That's something. I mean, I did then, but in this one I'm actually being engaged at a fitting mental capacity. I'm challenged, too, and I can learn from the people I'm around. (Not the murderers, though; bad idea to learn from them.) There's more violence, more danger, and I could've been killed more times than I can count on one hand anymore, and I have a stalker (yippee) but I'm more than just content – I'm happy. I legitimately feel safe in the lab, in Brennan's apartment.

But no, McVicar showed up and with that came a chain reaction, from the 'parents' leaving, to Aaron skipping out on me, to me living on my own and getting involved in gang business, to getting arrested, to meeting all of these wonderful people and putting me in a better place than I'd been in in years. It was hard to be pissed that my life had changed so dramatically when it seemed to have actually changed for the better.

I sighed, rubbing my hands together and then on the knees of my jeans, preparing to go back inside the barn. I didn't trust McVicar not to do any more damage I might want to shoot him for on principle. I happened to look in through the rear window, dusted from disuse but still clean enough to see through. A soccer jersey was stretched out across the back seats, the number seven on the back in big letters and Kirkland written in white.

For a minute, I just blinked at it, really thinking, well, how many Kirklands are there that played soccer as number seven and drove a Buick?

Then I realized that between McVicar terrifying Rosemary and Nicholas into taking off, and that he was a hitman, and that Aaron had played soccer with that number while he'd still been in high school, this was actually the Kirkland family car.

I shoved myself off of the trunk like it had suddenly turned hotter than a clothing iron. Staring at the car in horror, I backed up while keeping my eyes on it until I was several yards away, then turned around and thundered back into the barn, shouting.

"Why is my parents' car abandoned at your farm?!"