The Dare In The Snipe Hunt, 29/30
Title: The Dare In The Snipe Hunt
Author: Landrews
Fandom: Bones, Casefic
Spoilers:Set S1 between 'The Soldier On The Grave' and 'Woman In Limbo', though not based on airdates- the time's a little too stretchy for that :-) and Cullen's still working while his fill-ins transition.
Rating: Adult - some sex/violence, Booth and Brennan canon friendship, Brennan/David, Booth/OFC
Summary: Bones and Booth are kidnapped from the site of a mass burial which contains the victims of a serial killer... or does it? They are thrown into a modern day web of cowboys against indians. Can they figure out who is who in time to stop the killing spree as snipers blanket Washington?
Disclaimers: No profit, 'Bones' and it's characters owned by Hart Hanson/Fox/et al - no offense or statements intended regarding the Lumbee nation or Mara Salvatrucha -
CHAPTERS: One Two and Three Four Five Six and Seven Eight and Nine Ten Eleven Twelve and Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen Sixteen Seventeen Eighteen and Nineteen Twenty and Twenty-One Twenty-Two Twenty-Three Twenty-Four A Twenty-Four B and Twenty-Five Twenty-Six Twenty-Seven Twenty-Eight
Sorry! Wi-Fi issues at B&N, Panera's turns theirs off at lunch, and I didn't want to join the "Millionaire's Club" to get on at Books-A-Million (but I did like perusing their bargain books!) I really did screw up my chapters, dang it. I have two more so depending on how you see it... 30 and 31 of 30 :-) or 30/30 and a sorta epilogue? Hee! Two more chapters to be posted after this, anyway.
*** 29 ***
A car growls around the curve in the drive ahead of her. Tempe raises her hand to shield her eyes and steps onto the narrow grass strip to the side. It plows to a stop beside her and Agent Henson peers up at her through the open driver's side window. “She'll only talk to you, she says.”
“Who?”
“Sarah Martel. You know she worked for the Drydens?”
“Yes, but she was very confident of herself in the lab.”
“Double majored in biology and anthropology. She worked two summers at the Field Museum in Chicago and was registered to start her graduate work this summer.”
"She must have known about the cemetery. MS-13 provided the manpower, and Sam Lyons agreed to fence the remains to the international antiquities market. He needed provenance, even to the black market.”
“But why would Lyons need you, Dr. Brennan? He had a house full of bones. He could've manufactured provenance. Why bother? And how did he arrange it? Time it to get you? Through Stratton?” He hits the steering wheel with both hands. “I've checked the logs and the film. That doesn't work.”
“Booth and I think the oldest remains were Lumbee ancestors, including Europeans.”
“Yeah. Roanoke,” he huffs. “Read Booth's vagued up progress report. And what, Ghilley's 'Guard' was protecting them?”
“Yes.”
He waves her around. “Get in.”
She does, while calling Angela. His car reeks of smoke and fast food wrappers crunch under her boots. He throws it into reverse, and hits the flashers. Out on Gibson, Angela's standing beside her car, next to a mountain of State Trooper. She waves and says “Be careful,” into the phone at the same time as Henson slews the car sideways, crams the gearshift up, and punches the accelerator. Something grinds in protest, but then they are shooting forward.
Tempe hangs up and faces Henson, who toggles the siren on before digging a cigarette from a crumpled box of Winstons. He tucks the it in the corner of his lips, corners hard onto Sweeney, and then starts patting his pockets for a light. “You mind,” he grates.
“Yes,” Tempe says. “I do.”
He gives her a gimlet eye, assessing her level of humor, she supposes, and then crumples the cigarette in his fist. “What.”
“Where were you? Booth went into the woods with a fake FBI agent who turned up in your place, and now he's missing.”
“I got locked in a bathroom.”
It's so not what she's expecting that the words make no sense. Henson steers them around a pick-up truck that's half-pulled off the road for them, swerves to the right to get by a Volvo and turns right onto Seneca, headed for the beltway.
“I got locked in a bathroom at a Jiffy-Mart. Concrete block, no reception. I banged on that door for twenty minutes, I ain't kiddin'. They had to drill the lock out. And then I had two flat tires. My only question is, Lumbee or MS-13? 'cause they're the only guys on my agenda right now.”
***
For the thousandth time, she hurts him to keep him awake. Booth doesn't think he could sleep now if he wanted to, which he doesn't. It's his fucking body that keeps zoning away on him. it doesn't help that his eyes are heavy as stones, that his wrist is throbbing, and that the van is still hurtling along through darkness except for the strobing lights of passing cars or highway lights when they pass through towns.
Except for her “You awake?” and his varied responses, they haven't spoken anymore. The men's voices are only murmurs except when they answer the phone and then their answers are too short, coded, or accented for him to follow.
“Hey,” one of the men says. “They's muffed getting the girl. They's headed to him now.”
Near as Booth can figure, Kiera's sitting perpendicular to him, at his head, her legs stretched out acoss the van. She draws them up. “Sarah didn't know. How did Eppy and TJ?”
Again, that image of blood across a throat comes to him, and the road sounds like rain.
***
The Bureau is chaotic with activity. As Henson whisks her through, Agent Baker leading the way, Tempe glances towards Booth's corner office. The door is standing open and the blinds are open. An intern so young that's he's still tow-headed blonde is tapping industriously on Booth's keyboard, while a woman who can only be a lawyer looks over his shoulder.
Tempe has no words for the urge that she feels to go usher them out and slam the door.
“Dr. Brennan,” Cullen says, joining their march to the interview rooms. “We're going to try putting Agent Baker in with you. He's got the Ghilley case, so he's familiar with the house on South Irwin owned by Lyons.”
Tempe shrugs, looking up at Henson.
He smiles back. “Pissed her off already.”
“Look,” Cullen says. “We need confirmation regarding the identity of the group or the people who held you in captivity and if Sam Lyons was in charge. We need to know her level of complicity, and work from there to make connections.”
Junior Agent Samuels is standing guard at Sarah's door. He gives her an earnest look. “I'm sorry I let Mrs. Dryden out of my sight, Dr. Brennan. If I'd stayed with her, we wouldn't have lost Agent Booth.”
“He's not lost, Agent Samuels, he's just not found.”
“Yes, ma'am,” he utters, seeming completely unconvinced.
*
Sarah is grim. She's staring blank-eyed at the cuffs around her wrists, which are run through a bar in the table. She doesn't look up until Agent Baker clears his throat and says, “I believe you've already met Dr. Brennan?”
She tilts her head up, and her expression lightens. The chain between the cuffs clinks when she tries to raise her hand to tuck her long hair back behind her ear.
Tempe isn't sure where to start. Booth usually does that, or cues her beforehand. She pulls out a chair and sits. She'll start at the beginning, then, like Sarah is a lab work-up. “You are Ms. Pine, correct?”
Sarah just stares at her. Her lips form a straight line of non-communication.
“You were working with Sam Lyons.”
Although her expression is neutral, her eyes are unfathomable to Tempe. Booth would know the emotions there by name and adeptly play them.
“You asked to speak to me, Sarah,” Tempe tries. She acts like she's going to stand. “I'll go request a lawyer for you.”
“No,” Sarah whispers.
“I'm not...” Tempe's at a loss. “...very good at this. I can't just guess, Sarah.”
“Did she take her?”
“Did whom take who?” Tempe says, although that, yes, she can guess that.
Sarah nods. “You know... the child.”
“I don't know.”
“She took the keys.”
Give a little, get a little, that's what Booth been teaching her, right? “I can't give you that information, Sarah, until you give me some.”
Agent Baker snorts. Sarah glares at him.
“You gave information about the burial site at Douglas Point to MS-13 through your husband.”
“I didn't know about it. They came to me.” She clamps her mouth closed and narrows her eyes. If she weren't cuffed to the table, Tempe thinks she'd cross her arms for good measure.
Tempe schools her face, not wanting Sarah to see her confusion. “Who came to you?”
Sarah shakes her head.
“I examined the tractor, Sarah. I saw nothing,” Tempe says. She lets her gaze drift as she recalls the tractor, the faded paint, the scraped rear fender, the decades newer bucket, and then shakes her head, finding Sarah's eyes again. “Out of the ordinary. No one drove it anywhere to use it.”
Sarah's hair hides her face when she looks away, biting her lip. Tears are welling in her eyes.
“Who came to you, Sarah, to make the deal with Sam Lyons?”
“MS-13,” she bites off.
“Your husband? His cousin, Eppy?”
She draws a sharp, shuddering breath, and her eyes are wide when she focuses once more on Tempe. Her cheeks are wet and there's a perfect tear beaded on the corner of her lip until she speaks. “Is TJ okay?”
Agent Baker trades glances with Tempe, his shoulders rising a bare millimeter.
“I'll find out, if you tell me who approached you regarding...”
A sharp knock stops Tempe mid-sentence; Henson bursts into the room. “Gotta go, c'mon, c'mon...” he say, holding the door open and flapping his arm around.
Jumping up so hard, his chair slides back into the wall with a solid thunk, Agent Baker trips over his own feet and stumbles through the door.
Tempe scowls at him and turns back to Sarah Martel. She's crumbling. “They're already looking for your husband, Sarah. For questioning. Do you know where he is?”
Hands twisted tight together, perched on the edge of her chair, hair hiding her face, Sarah shakes her head.
Henson makes an impatient noise.
Sliding her chair back slow, Tempe gets up.
Sarah tracks her movement. For the first time, she looks desperate to Tempe. Impossibly young and desperate. “TJ and Sam promised me.”
“What did they promise you?”
“That she was mine. For me to...” She stops herself.
For her degree, Tempe realizes; maybe for her eventual doctoral thesis, maybe to gain a foothold into a career in cultural or forensics anthropology. When the first of the MS-13 gang members died six months ago, apparently testing the validity of their information, or maybe taking samples to Lyons... “You are... you're a fool, to believe that you could... you committed kidnap, you're an accessory to theft of human remains and murder...”
“Dr. Brennan,” Henson says, his voice cutting through her loss of words and Sarah's undulating, high-pitched cries.
Spinning, Tempe strides out of the room, scooting around Henson, who lets the door fall shut and cut off Sarah's sobs, and runs full-tilt into Samuels. He grabs her arms to steady her. She's spitting mad and tries to twist away from him. She needs a moment. He hangs on. Throwing one hand onto his forearm and the other at his shoulder, she darts under and around, pulling his arm neatly up behind his back, and speaks to the back of his head. “Don't.”
Letting go, she turns and brushes past Baker, who's backed up against the wall, his hands up and open as she goes by.
At the door to the elevator, she closes her eyes and takes two deep breaths before she straightens her shirt and pulls the lanyard holding her ID badges back into place. Henson steps up beside her. “I know where they got their info.”
Tempe raises her brows in question.
“My informant. He cracked Jack Stratton for his info at Douglas Point. He was MS-13. Obviously, Stratton told him more than he told us, and judging from time of death on some of those guys, he knew months before he shared with us. Got their plan all in place first. Still don't know why anyone would fuss so much over a few old bones, though.”
“On the antiquities black market, some of those bones would be quite valuable.”
“Crazy old coots with too much money. I like straight up murder, the paperwork's easier. Are we ready to go now?” Without waiting for her answer, he punches the down button with his thumb.
“Where are we going?”
“Seems someone murdered Eppy Sandoval before Agent Robert Dryden could do it. It ain't so straight up, so Cullen suggested you ride along.”
“He's afraid I'll go looking for Booth, ” she says dryly as the doors slip open and they step inside.
“More afraid you'll find him, whether you're looking or not,” he says, holding the doors open with one meaty hand. “ 'sides that, he's afraid Samuels can't keep up with you by himself. C'mon, boy.”
The boy does, rubbing his upper arm. “I'm supposed to keep you safe, ma'am.”
“I'll try to keep that in mind,” Tempe says.
Part Thirty, Thirty-One and Thirty-Two- COMPLETE!
Author: Landrews
Fandom: Bones, Casefic
Spoilers:Set S1 between 'The Soldier On The Grave' and 'Woman In Limbo', though not based on airdates- the time's a little too stretchy for that :-) and Cullen's still working while his fill-ins transition.
Rating: Adult - some sex/violence, Booth and Brennan canon friendship, Brennan/David, Booth/OFC
Summary: Bones and Booth are kidnapped from the site of a mass burial which contains the victims of a serial killer... or does it? They are thrown into a modern day web of cowboys against indians. Can they figure out who is who in time to stop the killing spree as snipers blanket Washington?
Disclaimers: No profit, 'Bones' and it's characters owned by Hart Hanson/Fox/et al - no offense or statements intended regarding the Lumbee nation or Mara Salvatrucha -
CHAPTERS: One Two and Three Four Five Six and Seven Eight and Nine Ten Eleven Twelve and Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen Sixteen Seventeen Eighteen and Nineteen Twenty and Twenty-One Twenty-Two Twenty-Three Twenty-Four A Twenty-Four B and Twenty-Five Twenty-Six Twenty-Seven Twenty-Eight
Sorry! Wi-Fi issues at B&N, Panera's turns theirs off at lunch, and I didn't want to join the "Millionaire's Club" to get on at Books-A-Million (but I did like perusing their bargain books!) I really did screw up my chapters, dang it. I have two more so depending on how you see it... 30 and 31 of 30 :-) or 30/30 and a sorta epilogue? Hee! Two more chapters to be posted after this, anyway.
*** 29 ***
A car growls around the curve in the drive ahead of her. Tempe raises her hand to shield her eyes and steps onto the narrow grass strip to the side. It plows to a stop beside her and Agent Henson peers up at her through the open driver's side window. “She'll only talk to you, she says.”
“Who?”
“Sarah Martel. You know she worked for the Drydens?”
“Yes, but she was very confident of herself in the lab.”
“Double majored in biology and anthropology. She worked two summers at the Field Museum in Chicago and was registered to start her graduate work this summer.”
"She must have known about the cemetery. MS-13 provided the manpower, and Sam Lyons agreed to fence the remains to the international antiquities market. He needed provenance, even to the black market.”
“But why would Lyons need you, Dr. Brennan? He had a house full of bones. He could've manufactured provenance. Why bother? And how did he arrange it? Time it to get you? Through Stratton?” He hits the steering wheel with both hands. “I've checked the logs and the film. That doesn't work.”
“Booth and I think the oldest remains were Lumbee ancestors, including Europeans.”
“Yeah. Roanoke,” he huffs. “Read Booth's vagued up progress report. And what, Ghilley's 'Guard' was protecting them?”
“Yes.”
He waves her around. “Get in.”
She does, while calling Angela. His car reeks of smoke and fast food wrappers crunch under her boots. He throws it into reverse, and hits the flashers. Out on Gibson, Angela's standing beside her car, next to a mountain of State Trooper. She waves and says “Be careful,” into the phone at the same time as Henson slews the car sideways, crams the gearshift up, and punches the accelerator. Something grinds in protest, but then they are shooting forward.
Tempe hangs up and faces Henson, who toggles the siren on before digging a cigarette from a crumpled box of Winstons. He tucks the it in the corner of his lips, corners hard onto Sweeney, and then starts patting his pockets for a light. “You mind,” he grates.
“Yes,” Tempe says. “I do.”
He gives her a gimlet eye, assessing her level of humor, she supposes, and then crumples the cigarette in his fist. “What.”
“Where were you? Booth went into the woods with a fake FBI agent who turned up in your place, and now he's missing.”
“I got locked in a bathroom.”
It's so not what she's expecting that the words make no sense. Henson steers them around a pick-up truck that's half-pulled off the road for them, swerves to the right to get by a Volvo and turns right onto Seneca, headed for the beltway.
“I got locked in a bathroom at a Jiffy-Mart. Concrete block, no reception. I banged on that door for twenty minutes, I ain't kiddin'. They had to drill the lock out. And then I had two flat tires. My only question is, Lumbee or MS-13? 'cause they're the only guys on my agenda right now.”
***
For the thousandth time, she hurts him to keep him awake. Booth doesn't think he could sleep now if he wanted to, which he doesn't. It's his fucking body that keeps zoning away on him. it doesn't help that his eyes are heavy as stones, that his wrist is throbbing, and that the van is still hurtling along through darkness except for the strobing lights of passing cars or highway lights when they pass through towns.
Except for her “You awake?” and his varied responses, they haven't spoken anymore. The men's voices are only murmurs except when they answer the phone and then their answers are too short, coded, or accented for him to follow.
“Hey,” one of the men says. “They's muffed getting the girl. They's headed to him now.”
Near as Booth can figure, Kiera's sitting perpendicular to him, at his head, her legs stretched out acoss the van. She draws them up. “Sarah didn't know. How did Eppy and TJ?”
Again, that image of blood across a throat comes to him, and the road sounds like rain.
***
The Bureau is chaotic with activity. As Henson whisks her through, Agent Baker leading the way, Tempe glances towards Booth's corner office. The door is standing open and the blinds are open. An intern so young that's he's still tow-headed blonde is tapping industriously on Booth's keyboard, while a woman who can only be a lawyer looks over his shoulder.
Tempe has no words for the urge that she feels to go usher them out and slam the door.
“Dr. Brennan,” Cullen says, joining their march to the interview rooms. “We're going to try putting Agent Baker in with you. He's got the Ghilley case, so he's familiar with the house on South Irwin owned by Lyons.”
Tempe shrugs, looking up at Henson.
He smiles back. “Pissed her off already.”
“Look,” Cullen says. “We need confirmation regarding the identity of the group or the people who held you in captivity and if Sam Lyons was in charge. We need to know her level of complicity, and work from there to make connections.”
Junior Agent Samuels is standing guard at Sarah's door. He gives her an earnest look. “I'm sorry I let Mrs. Dryden out of my sight, Dr. Brennan. If I'd stayed with her, we wouldn't have lost Agent Booth.”
“He's not lost, Agent Samuels, he's just not found.”
“Yes, ma'am,” he utters, seeming completely unconvinced.
*
Sarah is grim. She's staring blank-eyed at the cuffs around her wrists, which are run through a bar in the table. She doesn't look up until Agent Baker clears his throat and says, “I believe you've already met Dr. Brennan?”
She tilts her head up, and her expression lightens. The chain between the cuffs clinks when she tries to raise her hand to tuck her long hair back behind her ear.
Tempe isn't sure where to start. Booth usually does that, or cues her beforehand. She pulls out a chair and sits. She'll start at the beginning, then, like Sarah is a lab work-up. “You are Ms. Pine, correct?”
Sarah just stares at her. Her lips form a straight line of non-communication.
“You were working with Sam Lyons.”
Although her expression is neutral, her eyes are unfathomable to Tempe. Booth would know the emotions there by name and adeptly play them.
“You asked to speak to me, Sarah,” Tempe tries. She acts like she's going to stand. “I'll go request a lawyer for you.”
“No,” Sarah whispers.
“I'm not...” Tempe's at a loss. “...very good at this. I can't just guess, Sarah.”
“Did she take her?”
“Did whom take who?” Tempe says, although that, yes, she can guess that.
Sarah nods. “You know... the child.”
“I don't know.”
“She took the keys.”
Give a little, get a little, that's what Booth been teaching her, right? “I can't give you that information, Sarah, until you give me some.”
Agent Baker snorts. Sarah glares at him.
“You gave information about the burial site at Douglas Point to MS-13 through your husband.”
“I didn't know about it. They came to me.” She clamps her mouth closed and narrows her eyes. If she weren't cuffed to the table, Tempe thinks she'd cross her arms for good measure.
Tempe schools her face, not wanting Sarah to see her confusion. “Who came to you?”
Sarah shakes her head.
“I examined the tractor, Sarah. I saw nothing,” Tempe says. She lets her gaze drift as she recalls the tractor, the faded paint, the scraped rear fender, the decades newer bucket, and then shakes her head, finding Sarah's eyes again. “Out of the ordinary. No one drove it anywhere to use it.”
Sarah's hair hides her face when she looks away, biting her lip. Tears are welling in her eyes.
“Who came to you, Sarah, to make the deal with Sam Lyons?”
“MS-13,” she bites off.
“Your husband? His cousin, Eppy?”
She draws a sharp, shuddering breath, and her eyes are wide when she focuses once more on Tempe. Her cheeks are wet and there's a perfect tear beaded on the corner of her lip until she speaks. “Is TJ okay?”
Agent Baker trades glances with Tempe, his shoulders rising a bare millimeter.
“I'll find out, if you tell me who approached you regarding...”
A sharp knock stops Tempe mid-sentence; Henson bursts into the room. “Gotta go, c'mon, c'mon...” he say, holding the door open and flapping his arm around.
Jumping up so hard, his chair slides back into the wall with a solid thunk, Agent Baker trips over his own feet and stumbles through the door.
Tempe scowls at him and turns back to Sarah Martel. She's crumbling. “They're already looking for your husband, Sarah. For questioning. Do you know where he is?”
Hands twisted tight together, perched on the edge of her chair, hair hiding her face, Sarah shakes her head.
Henson makes an impatient noise.
Sliding her chair back slow, Tempe gets up.
Sarah tracks her movement. For the first time, she looks desperate to Tempe. Impossibly young and desperate. “TJ and Sam promised me.”
“What did they promise you?”
“That she was mine. For me to...” She stops herself.
For her degree, Tempe realizes; maybe for her eventual doctoral thesis, maybe to gain a foothold into a career in cultural or forensics anthropology. When the first of the MS-13 gang members died six months ago, apparently testing the validity of their information, or maybe taking samples to Lyons... “You are... you're a fool, to believe that you could... you committed kidnap, you're an accessory to theft of human remains and murder...”
“Dr. Brennan,” Henson says, his voice cutting through her loss of words and Sarah's undulating, high-pitched cries.
Spinning, Tempe strides out of the room, scooting around Henson, who lets the door fall shut and cut off Sarah's sobs, and runs full-tilt into Samuels. He grabs her arms to steady her. She's spitting mad and tries to twist away from him. She needs a moment. He hangs on. Throwing one hand onto his forearm and the other at his shoulder, she darts under and around, pulling his arm neatly up behind his back, and speaks to the back of his head. “Don't.”
Letting go, she turns and brushes past Baker, who's backed up against the wall, his hands up and open as she goes by.
At the door to the elevator, she closes her eyes and takes two deep breaths before she straightens her shirt and pulls the lanyard holding her ID badges back into place. Henson steps up beside her. “I know where they got their info.”
Tempe raises her brows in question.
“My informant. He cracked Jack Stratton for his info at Douglas Point. He was MS-13. Obviously, Stratton told him more than he told us, and judging from time of death on some of those guys, he knew months before he shared with us. Got their plan all in place first. Still don't know why anyone would fuss so much over a few old bones, though.”
“On the antiquities black market, some of those bones would be quite valuable.”
“Crazy old coots with too much money. I like straight up murder, the paperwork's easier. Are we ready to go now?” Without waiting for her answer, he punches the down button with his thumb.
“Where are we going?”
“Seems someone murdered Eppy Sandoval before Agent Robert Dryden could do it. It ain't so straight up, so Cullen suggested you ride along.”
“He's afraid I'll go looking for Booth, ” she says dryly as the doors slip open and they step inside.
“More afraid you'll find him, whether you're looking or not,” he says, holding the doors open with one meaty hand. “ 'sides that, he's afraid Samuels can't keep up with you by himself. C'mon, boy.”
The boy does, rubbing his upper arm. “I'm supposed to keep you safe, ma'am.”
“I'll try to keep that in mind,” Tempe says.
Part Thirty, Thirty-One and Thirty-Two- COMPLETE!