The Taking: Part 3
Profiler: The Taking, Part 3
Rating: R for violence, sexuality, salty language.
Pairing: Grace/George friendship; Grace/Bailey; some Goat; mostly VCTF friendship.
Fandoms: This is my first cross-over with “Bones.” Temperance Brennance, Seeley Booth, Zack Addey, Jack Hodgins, Camille Saroyan, Angela Montenegro, the Grave Digger, and Gormogon are all property of Hart Hanson, Kathy Reichs, and Fox. I’m just borrowing them for a while.
A/N: This takes place during the imaginary fifth season, with the assumption that the VCTF hasn’t closed. This takes place in a future season of “Bones," though it references the season 3 finale featuring the serial killer Gormogon and the season 2 episode "Aliens in a Spaceship."
For the first two parts of "The Taking," click here:
http://community.livejournal.com/profiler_fans/357825.html#cutid2
Seeley Booth was the first to speak, never mind that this wasn’t his office, his Command Center, or his team.
“Let’s get a countdown started.”
George found an on-line digital clock, set it for ten hours, and placed it in the uppermost corner of the view screen The numbers began ticking away.
“Where are we going to get the money?” Morgan asked. His face looked grey. “I can’t liquidate that quickly and even if I did, it wouldn’t be nearly enough.” He looked at his ex-wife. “The FBI, Grace, can they approve a ransom?”
“The Bureau’s policy is strictly one of non-negotiation and non-payment,” Bailey responded. “There’s no way they’ll front the money.”
“Even if paying is the only way to keep my boys alive?”
“Even then.”
“Okay, so we track him down. Can’t you guys do that?”
“You were tracing the call, George. Can you get his location?” Grace asked, an edge of barely controlled panic in her voice.
“He’s got a scrambler. I got it to within ten miles of the cell tower. Nothing closer than that.”
“What happens now?” Rachel looked over at Booth and Brennan. “After the ransom demand. Does he call again?”
“He never calls a second time,” Booth said. “He makes the demand once and expects the terms to be met. If we make the ransom, he calls back with coordinates for the location where he’s buried his hostages.”
“Does he-“ John was searching for words that didn’t seem to want to come. “Is it always ... you know ... in time? To find them?”
“Yes. The only time the hostages have died is when the ransom wasn’t met.”
“Hodgins!” Brennan shot to her feet. Everyone in the room turned to stare at her.
“What about him?” Booth asked.
“Hodgins can front us the money. He’s got it, he’s always willing to share. If we get the money to the Digger, we have a better chance of sustained contact with him and a better chance to track and catch him.”
“Yeah, but isn’t giving in to this guy basically giving him permission to do it again?” John responded. “I mean, I’m not advocating that we don’t pay, I’m just saying, isn’t there some way to, I don’t know, screw around with his account so it looks like we paid when we really didn’t?”
All eyes turned to George, who was all ready nodding. “Yeah, it’s just shifting data. The problem is, if this guy’s as computer saavy as I think he is, he’s going to catch on real quick and then who knows what he might do to the boys.”
“I’m willing to take that risk,” Grace announced. “I have faith in you, George.”
“But I’m not!” Morgan protested. “Any possibility that the boys will be harmed-“
”-Is better than the certainty of your son’s deaths,” Brennan interrupted.
“Okay, hold it!” Booth announced. “Let’s see if Hodgins is willing to front the money first before arguing the ethics of it.” He looked over at George. “You got a web cam?”
“Is the Pope Catholic?”
“Let me get Hodgins on the phone.” Booth dialed a number but turned his back on the group as he spoke.
Tense silence fell over the group as they waited for Booth to transfer the call to the large video screen. Morgan and Grace were both pacing, though neither seemed to realize they were pacing in step with one another. Rachel had her laptop open and was scanning web pages and search engines for sites dedicated to the Grave Digger. John leaned over her shoulder, reading and occasionally commenting in a low whisper.
“Okay, they’re ready at the Jeffersonian.” Booth handed the cell phone to George. “Go ahead and do your techno-geek thing.”
George laughed and took the phone. Within moments, he had Skype running and a window open showing the lab at the Jeffersonian. A man in his late-twenties with wild curly hair and startling blue eyes appeared on the screen. Under the lab coat, he was wearing a neatly pressed polo shirt and khakis.
“This is Dr. Jack Hodgins. Who am I speaking with?”
George gestured Grace forward. “Dr. Grace Alvarez. I’m familiar with your work, Dr. Hodgins. It’s a pleasure to speak with you.”
Hodgins’ face lit in a smile. “I’m also familiar with your work, Dr. Alvarez. I’m just sorry we’re not meeting under better circumstances. I understand your sons were taken by the Grave Digger this morning.”
“That’s right.” Grace’s voice shook. “He’s asking for two million dollars for my boys. I’m afraid that’s money that neither my husband nor I have available to us.”
“Fortunately that is something I have available to me, and I’m happy to help you out, no strings attached.”
Grace took a shuddering breath and pressed a hand to her mouth. “I don’t- I can’t thank you enough.”
“Yes, you can. Do everything you can to catch him. Doing as he asks will give you the opportunity to interact with him before he disappears underground again. I’ve heard about the VCTF, I know what your solve rate is. Find this bastard. Bring him to his knees. That’s thanks enough for me.”
Bailey stepped up behind Grace. “Dr. Hodgins, I’m Bailey Malone, head of the VCTF. We’d like to take every possible step to insure that your two million dollars is returned to you in full by the time this is all over.”
Hodgins laughed a little and shook his head. “Agent Malone, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way but I’m telling you that two million dollars is like a twenty dollar bill to me. I’m not particularly going to miss it.”
“All the same, we’re going to try to track the money and will even try doing a certain amount of data shifting to simulate moving the money from one bank account to another.”
Hodgins shook his head firmly. “Don’t do anything that might jeopardize those boys on my account. My accountant is all ready moving the money as we speak- all of the relevant information if being sent to you via highly encrypted email. Trace the money but don’t worry if you lose it. I just want you to catch the Grave Digger and get back Dr. Alvarez’s sons.”
Brennan spoke up from her place at the table. “Hodgins, I need you to find all of the relevant data and files from our Grave Digger case. Forward them to Agent Fraley immediately. There was some data in one of those files that was leading us close to his identity. You were working on it when we were abducted, remember? You came to tell me you had a lead when the Digger ran you down. I know it’s fallen by the wayside in the last year or two, but--”
“One problem,” Hodgins replied grimly. “The stun gun wiped my memory. If we were close to an answer, I can’t remember it for anything. Zack’s the only person who might know.”
Booth and Brennan exchanged a significant look. “If we can get you in to see him, will you talk to him?” Booth asked.
Hodgins hesitated just enough to let everyone in the room know he didn’t like the idea. “Zack was working with a serial killer. We don’t know how long he’d been under Gormogon’s sway. Maybe as far back as the Digger case.
“Jack, you know-“ Brennan started.
“No, Temperance, I don’t know!” It was the first time Hodgins had ever called her anything other than doctor, and it made Brennan stare at him in shock. “I find it really hard to put stock in anything Zack has to say. I don’t want to waste time and put the lives of two boys on the line fishing for a lead that might not even be a lead. I don’t- I can’t trust Zack with this.”
“Zack is a scientist, first and always,” Brennan persisted. “It’s not in him to dissemble. I think he’ll help, I really do. Trust me in this. Please.”
“Okay.” Hodgins subsided as quickly as he’d flared up. “Fine, Angie and I will go together. Can you get us clearance, Booth?”
“I’ll make it happen. So Hodgins, you’re fronting the money then going with Angela to see Zack. Cam can forward us the files from the previous Digger cases. On this end, Agent Fraley’s working on tracing the Digger’s cell and his bank accounts in the Middle East; Agent Burke and I are starting a working profile-“
”-And I’m going to attempt to trace the stun gun he uses based on the burn marks he left on Dr. Alvarez and Agent Fraley,” Brennan interjected. “If he’s using a speciality stun gun, it can be traced back to a manufacturer.”
“I’ll call in if I get something from Zack,”Hodgins said. “In the mean time, the money should be ready within the hour.” He looked around at the Atlanta group. “Good luck. I’ll check in soon.”
As soon as the screen went blank, Brennan was on her feet. “Agent Fraley, Dr. Alvarez, I’ll need to photograph and X-ray the stun gun burns on your necks.”
“I’ll go first,” Grace volunteered. “George, you’ll keep on the money?”
“Absolutely,” he assured her. “Let me know when you need me, Dr. Brennan.”
John rose and stretched. “As soon as those files get here I’ll start tracking down some of the people who did pay the ransom. Maybe they can give us some clues about how to handle the boys’ retrieval.”
“There’s a K& R guy who works on all of the Digger cases, Thomas Vega. I don’t like him or trust him, but he’s someone you might want to talk to,” Booth said to John. “If you decide to talk to him, let me know.”
Morgan spoke up from his place in a corner. “What about me? Is there anything- I mean, I know I’m not FBI but surely there’s something I can do to help.”
Grace gave her ex-husband a sympathetic look and shook her head. “Try to get some rest. It’s all a waiting game now.” She rose. “Dr. Brennan, I’m ready whenever you are.”
The two women left the room and the others began their tasks, leaving Morgan sitting in his chair in the corner, hands in his lap, helpless.
***
Despite the fact that she had been using it her entire career, the X-ray machine made Grace nervous. It wasn’t often that she found herself under its camera instead of working the controls. She lay on her stomach on the same table where she X-rayed bodies, the infrequently used lead bib pressing heavily on her back, trying not to think of the mummified body that had lain there just the day before, an early victim of the man who had stolen her sons. Though the table was washed down as many as four times a day with a bleach solution, Grace still imagined she could smell the moldering dust from the mummy’s dessicated skin. It was hard not to gag at the thought.
Brennan was an efficient worker who had little to offer in the way of small talk. Aside from offering Grace a hair tie so that she could pull her hair off of her neck, she had said little as she focused and re-focused the X-ray camera on the back of Grace’s neck for a series of photographs, both with the X-ray and with a digital camera.
Grace heard footsteps enter the room as the machine clicked for the final time.
“That should do it,” Brennan remarked. “Your light box is-“
“Down the hall, third door on your left,” Grace replied, turning over and sitting up to ease the bib off of her. She watched Brennan step around Bailey, who was waiting in the doorway, and head down the hall at a fast clip.
“She brings new meaning to the phrase ‘lost in her work,’” Bailey remarked.
“She’s an amazing researcher. Most people as good as she is are off-beat in one way or another.”
“You’re not.”
“I’m not as good as she is,” Grace replied. She pointed toward the counter. “Can you reach into the second drawer and find a tube labeled Lidacaine?”
Bailey passed over the tube and took a good look at the burn on the back of her neck.
“Nasty burn,” he commented. “Commercial stun guns don’t usually leave marks like that.”
“Brennan thinks he’s using a modified taser, something he rigged up to incapacitate for long periods of time. A normal taser shot is designed to incapacitate for 30 seconds to a minute, just long enough for an officer to cuff a suspect. Whatever the Grave Digger is using put George and I out for a much longer period of time- though we don’t know how long since it also caused short-term memory disruption, something normal tasers don’t do either, by the way.” She moved her hair away from her neck and began dabbing on the cream.
“Let me.” Bailey took the analgesic from her and began smoothing it on the back of her neck. “If he’s using a taser he developed himself, you can bet it won’t have AFID tags. It’ll be harder to trace.”
“I’m sure he developed it himself. There are no taser models on the market that can carry a charge as heavy as the one that knocked us out or can fire two bursts within a short period of time. He’d have to have tased George and I at the same time or within seconds of each other. He’s using a bastardized model for sure.”
Bailey was still applying the Lidacaine, taking his time, and Grace was ashamed to realize that she was enjoying the warm strength of his hands. God, what kind of a person was she, taking time to lament her lack of personal life when she should be focusing on her boys?
Displaying his uncanny ability to almost predict her thoughts, Bailey commented, “You can’t take care of them if you don’t take care of yourself, Grace. It’s a bad burn and it needs to be treated.”
“Taking up telepathy?”
“Good at reading body language.” When she shot him a questioning look, he explained, “You went tense on me.” He ran a thumb lightly down the back of her neck and across her shoulder blades. “Stop beating yourself up, Grace. You’re your own worst critic.”
“Don’t you think I have the right to be? My boys are missing because of me.”
“Explain.”
“You heard Morgan. If it wasn’t for me trying to-” She lowered her voice in an imitation of Morgan, “- keep up in a man’s world, my boys would be safe at home with two parents who love them, not jammed in a container with ten hours of air.” She pulled away from Bailey and began pacing the X-ray room, all nervous energy and contained motion.
“Gracie, I heard a man who’s frustrated, angry, and terrified that he’s going to lose his sons lashing out at his ex-wife. There’s no basis in fact for anything he had to say.”
“They went missing on my watch, not his.”
“Even if they’d gone missing when they were with him you’d still be beating yourself up because you don’t think you deserve those boys.” Bailey’s comment stopped her cold. “You never expected to have children. Those pregnancies were a minor miracle; I’ve heard you say it more than once. You feel those boys are a gift from God, and you feel that no matter what you do you can never really deserve them. And so you’re beating yourself up because your gift was stolen from you, because you didn’t take better care of it by keeping it under lock and key.”
Bailey met her eyes. “Grace, you’ve seen Frances. Look at what happens when you keep a kid under lock and key, when you hold them too close because you’re afraid of what the world might do to them. You push them further away and you both end up miserable.” He took Grace by the shoulders and held her firmly. “This is not your fault. You did all the right things. There is nothing you could have done that could have kept this from happening. If you keep second-guessing you’re going to make yourself crazy. Let go of it.”
He gazed at her until she had to look away, her eyes brimming with tears.
“It’s okay. Don’t hold back.”
“If I start crying I’m not going to be able to stop,” she choked, caught in that awful, awkward space between sobs and gasps.
“The tables float,” he replied, and the little half-laugh, half-sob that escaped from Grace was all it took for the dam to break. She leaned against his chest and sobbed violently, tears soaking into his shirt. He held her until the sobs abated, stroking her hair with an easy tenderness that was a surprise to both of them.
“Feel better?” he asked when she sighed shakily and leaned back to wipe her eyes.
“A little. Thank you, Bailey.”
He found himself skimming her cheek with his fingers. “Any time. Always.”
There was a dangerously charged moment when neither of them was entirely certain what to do, broken only when Brennan walked back into the room and announced, “This isn’t the same stun gun he used last time. He’s changed his M.O.”
I'll hopefully get part 4 posted soon. Summer and no grad school helps.
Feedback. We LURVES it! Show me the money the love!
Rating: R for violence, sexuality, salty language.
Pairing: Grace/George friendship; Grace/Bailey; some Goat; mostly VCTF friendship.
Fandoms: This is my first cross-over with “Bones.” Temperance Brennance, Seeley Booth, Zack Addey, Jack Hodgins, Camille Saroyan, Angela Montenegro, the Grave Digger, and Gormogon are all property of Hart Hanson, Kathy Reichs, and Fox. I’m just borrowing them for a while.
A/N: This takes place during the imaginary fifth season, with the assumption that the VCTF hasn’t closed. This takes place in a future season of “Bones," though it references the season 3 finale featuring the serial killer Gormogon and the season 2 episode "Aliens in a Spaceship."
For the first two parts of "The Taking," click here:
http://community.livejournal.com/profiler_fans/357825.html#cutid2
Seeley Booth was the first to speak, never mind that this wasn’t his office, his Command Center, or his team.
“Let’s get a countdown started.”
George found an on-line digital clock, set it for ten hours, and placed it in the uppermost corner of the view screen The numbers began ticking away.
“Where are we going to get the money?” Morgan asked. His face looked grey. “I can’t liquidate that quickly and even if I did, it wouldn’t be nearly enough.” He looked at his ex-wife. “The FBI, Grace, can they approve a ransom?”
“The Bureau’s policy is strictly one of non-negotiation and non-payment,” Bailey responded. “There’s no way they’ll front the money.”
“Even if paying is the only way to keep my boys alive?”
“Even then.”
“Okay, so we track him down. Can’t you guys do that?”
“You were tracing the call, George. Can you get his location?” Grace asked, an edge of barely controlled panic in her voice.
“He’s got a scrambler. I got it to within ten miles of the cell tower. Nothing closer than that.”
“What happens now?” Rachel looked over at Booth and Brennan. “After the ransom demand. Does he call again?”
“He never calls a second time,” Booth said. “He makes the demand once and expects the terms to be met. If we make the ransom, he calls back with coordinates for the location where he’s buried his hostages.”
“Does he-“ John was searching for words that didn’t seem to want to come. “Is it always ... you know ... in time? To find them?”
“Yes. The only time the hostages have died is when the ransom wasn’t met.”
“Hodgins!” Brennan shot to her feet. Everyone in the room turned to stare at her.
“What about him?” Booth asked.
“Hodgins can front us the money. He’s got it, he’s always willing to share. If we get the money to the Digger, we have a better chance of sustained contact with him and a better chance to track and catch him.”
“Yeah, but isn’t giving in to this guy basically giving him permission to do it again?” John responded. “I mean, I’m not advocating that we don’t pay, I’m just saying, isn’t there some way to, I don’t know, screw around with his account so it looks like we paid when we really didn’t?”
All eyes turned to George, who was all ready nodding. “Yeah, it’s just shifting data. The problem is, if this guy’s as computer saavy as I think he is, he’s going to catch on real quick and then who knows what he might do to the boys.”
“I’m willing to take that risk,” Grace announced. “I have faith in you, George.”
“But I’m not!” Morgan protested. “Any possibility that the boys will be harmed-“
”-Is better than the certainty of your son’s deaths,” Brennan interrupted.
“Okay, hold it!” Booth announced. “Let’s see if Hodgins is willing to front the money first before arguing the ethics of it.” He looked over at George. “You got a web cam?”
“Is the Pope Catholic?”
“Let me get Hodgins on the phone.” Booth dialed a number but turned his back on the group as he spoke.
Tense silence fell over the group as they waited for Booth to transfer the call to the large video screen. Morgan and Grace were both pacing, though neither seemed to realize they were pacing in step with one another. Rachel had her laptop open and was scanning web pages and search engines for sites dedicated to the Grave Digger. John leaned over her shoulder, reading and occasionally commenting in a low whisper.
“Okay, they’re ready at the Jeffersonian.” Booth handed the cell phone to George. “Go ahead and do your techno-geek thing.”
George laughed and took the phone. Within moments, he had Skype running and a window open showing the lab at the Jeffersonian. A man in his late-twenties with wild curly hair and startling blue eyes appeared on the screen. Under the lab coat, he was wearing a neatly pressed polo shirt and khakis.
“This is Dr. Jack Hodgins. Who am I speaking with?”
George gestured Grace forward. “Dr. Grace Alvarez. I’m familiar with your work, Dr. Hodgins. It’s a pleasure to speak with you.”
Hodgins’ face lit in a smile. “I’m also familiar with your work, Dr. Alvarez. I’m just sorry we’re not meeting under better circumstances. I understand your sons were taken by the Grave Digger this morning.”
“That’s right.” Grace’s voice shook. “He’s asking for two million dollars for my boys. I’m afraid that’s money that neither my husband nor I have available to us.”
“Fortunately that is something I have available to me, and I’m happy to help you out, no strings attached.”
Grace took a shuddering breath and pressed a hand to her mouth. “I don’t- I can’t thank you enough.”
“Yes, you can. Do everything you can to catch him. Doing as he asks will give you the opportunity to interact with him before he disappears underground again. I’ve heard about the VCTF, I know what your solve rate is. Find this bastard. Bring him to his knees. That’s thanks enough for me.”
Bailey stepped up behind Grace. “Dr. Hodgins, I’m Bailey Malone, head of the VCTF. We’d like to take every possible step to insure that your two million dollars is returned to you in full by the time this is all over.”
Hodgins laughed a little and shook his head. “Agent Malone, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way but I’m telling you that two million dollars is like a twenty dollar bill to me. I’m not particularly going to miss it.”
“All the same, we’re going to try to track the money and will even try doing a certain amount of data shifting to simulate moving the money from one bank account to another.”
Hodgins shook his head firmly. “Don’t do anything that might jeopardize those boys on my account. My accountant is all ready moving the money as we speak- all of the relevant information if being sent to you via highly encrypted email. Trace the money but don’t worry if you lose it. I just want you to catch the Grave Digger and get back Dr. Alvarez’s sons.”
Brennan spoke up from her place at the table. “Hodgins, I need you to find all of the relevant data and files from our Grave Digger case. Forward them to Agent Fraley immediately. There was some data in one of those files that was leading us close to his identity. You were working on it when we were abducted, remember? You came to tell me you had a lead when the Digger ran you down. I know it’s fallen by the wayside in the last year or two, but--”
“One problem,” Hodgins replied grimly. “The stun gun wiped my memory. If we were close to an answer, I can’t remember it for anything. Zack’s the only person who might know.”
Booth and Brennan exchanged a significant look. “If we can get you in to see him, will you talk to him?” Booth asked.
Hodgins hesitated just enough to let everyone in the room know he didn’t like the idea. “Zack was working with a serial killer. We don’t know how long he’d been under Gormogon’s sway. Maybe as far back as the Digger case.
“Jack, you know-“ Brennan started.
“No, Temperance, I don’t know!” It was the first time Hodgins had ever called her anything other than doctor, and it made Brennan stare at him in shock. “I find it really hard to put stock in anything Zack has to say. I don’t want to waste time and put the lives of two boys on the line fishing for a lead that might not even be a lead. I don’t- I can’t trust Zack with this.”
“Zack is a scientist, first and always,” Brennan persisted. “It’s not in him to dissemble. I think he’ll help, I really do. Trust me in this. Please.”
“Okay.” Hodgins subsided as quickly as he’d flared up. “Fine, Angie and I will go together. Can you get us clearance, Booth?”
“I’ll make it happen. So Hodgins, you’re fronting the money then going with Angela to see Zack. Cam can forward us the files from the previous Digger cases. On this end, Agent Fraley’s working on tracing the Digger’s cell and his bank accounts in the Middle East; Agent Burke and I are starting a working profile-“
”-And I’m going to attempt to trace the stun gun he uses based on the burn marks he left on Dr. Alvarez and Agent Fraley,” Brennan interjected. “If he’s using a speciality stun gun, it can be traced back to a manufacturer.”
“I’ll call in if I get something from Zack,”Hodgins said. “In the mean time, the money should be ready within the hour.” He looked around at the Atlanta group. “Good luck. I’ll check in soon.”
As soon as the screen went blank, Brennan was on her feet. “Agent Fraley, Dr. Alvarez, I’ll need to photograph and X-ray the stun gun burns on your necks.”
“I’ll go first,” Grace volunteered. “George, you’ll keep on the money?”
“Absolutely,” he assured her. “Let me know when you need me, Dr. Brennan.”
John rose and stretched. “As soon as those files get here I’ll start tracking down some of the people who did pay the ransom. Maybe they can give us some clues about how to handle the boys’ retrieval.”
“There’s a K& R guy who works on all of the Digger cases, Thomas Vega. I don’t like him or trust him, but he’s someone you might want to talk to,” Booth said to John. “If you decide to talk to him, let me know.”
Morgan spoke up from his place in a corner. “What about me? Is there anything- I mean, I know I’m not FBI but surely there’s something I can do to help.”
Grace gave her ex-husband a sympathetic look and shook her head. “Try to get some rest. It’s all a waiting game now.” She rose. “Dr. Brennan, I’m ready whenever you are.”
The two women left the room and the others began their tasks, leaving Morgan sitting in his chair in the corner, hands in his lap, helpless.
***
Despite the fact that she had been using it her entire career, the X-ray machine made Grace nervous. It wasn’t often that she found herself under its camera instead of working the controls. She lay on her stomach on the same table where she X-rayed bodies, the infrequently used lead bib pressing heavily on her back, trying not to think of the mummified body that had lain there just the day before, an early victim of the man who had stolen her sons. Though the table was washed down as many as four times a day with a bleach solution, Grace still imagined she could smell the moldering dust from the mummy’s dessicated skin. It was hard not to gag at the thought.
Brennan was an efficient worker who had little to offer in the way of small talk. Aside from offering Grace a hair tie so that she could pull her hair off of her neck, she had said little as she focused and re-focused the X-ray camera on the back of Grace’s neck for a series of photographs, both with the X-ray and with a digital camera.
Grace heard footsteps enter the room as the machine clicked for the final time.
“That should do it,” Brennan remarked. “Your light box is-“
“Down the hall, third door on your left,” Grace replied, turning over and sitting up to ease the bib off of her. She watched Brennan step around Bailey, who was waiting in the doorway, and head down the hall at a fast clip.
“She brings new meaning to the phrase ‘lost in her work,’” Bailey remarked.
“She’s an amazing researcher. Most people as good as she is are off-beat in one way or another.”
“You’re not.”
“I’m not as good as she is,” Grace replied. She pointed toward the counter. “Can you reach into the second drawer and find a tube labeled Lidacaine?”
Bailey passed over the tube and took a good look at the burn on the back of her neck.
“Nasty burn,” he commented. “Commercial stun guns don’t usually leave marks like that.”
“Brennan thinks he’s using a modified taser, something he rigged up to incapacitate for long periods of time. A normal taser shot is designed to incapacitate for 30 seconds to a minute, just long enough for an officer to cuff a suspect. Whatever the Grave Digger is using put George and I out for a much longer period of time- though we don’t know how long since it also caused short-term memory disruption, something normal tasers don’t do either, by the way.” She moved her hair away from her neck and began dabbing on the cream.
“Let me.” Bailey took the analgesic from her and began smoothing it on the back of her neck. “If he’s using a taser he developed himself, you can bet it won’t have AFID tags. It’ll be harder to trace.”
“I’m sure he developed it himself. There are no taser models on the market that can carry a charge as heavy as the one that knocked us out or can fire two bursts within a short period of time. He’d have to have tased George and I at the same time or within seconds of each other. He’s using a bastardized model for sure.”
Bailey was still applying the Lidacaine, taking his time, and Grace was ashamed to realize that she was enjoying the warm strength of his hands. God, what kind of a person was she, taking time to lament her lack of personal life when she should be focusing on her boys?
Displaying his uncanny ability to almost predict her thoughts, Bailey commented, “You can’t take care of them if you don’t take care of yourself, Grace. It’s a bad burn and it needs to be treated.”
“Taking up telepathy?”
“Good at reading body language.” When she shot him a questioning look, he explained, “You went tense on me.” He ran a thumb lightly down the back of her neck and across her shoulder blades. “Stop beating yourself up, Grace. You’re your own worst critic.”
“Don’t you think I have the right to be? My boys are missing because of me.”
“Explain.”
“You heard Morgan. If it wasn’t for me trying to-” She lowered her voice in an imitation of Morgan, “- keep up in a man’s world, my boys would be safe at home with two parents who love them, not jammed in a container with ten hours of air.” She pulled away from Bailey and began pacing the X-ray room, all nervous energy and contained motion.
“Gracie, I heard a man who’s frustrated, angry, and terrified that he’s going to lose his sons lashing out at his ex-wife. There’s no basis in fact for anything he had to say.”
“They went missing on my watch, not his.”
“Even if they’d gone missing when they were with him you’d still be beating yourself up because you don’t think you deserve those boys.” Bailey’s comment stopped her cold. “You never expected to have children. Those pregnancies were a minor miracle; I’ve heard you say it more than once. You feel those boys are a gift from God, and you feel that no matter what you do you can never really deserve them. And so you’re beating yourself up because your gift was stolen from you, because you didn’t take better care of it by keeping it under lock and key.”
Bailey met her eyes. “Grace, you’ve seen Frances. Look at what happens when you keep a kid under lock and key, when you hold them too close because you’re afraid of what the world might do to them. You push them further away and you both end up miserable.” He took Grace by the shoulders and held her firmly. “This is not your fault. You did all the right things. There is nothing you could have done that could have kept this from happening. If you keep second-guessing you’re going to make yourself crazy. Let go of it.”
He gazed at her until she had to look away, her eyes brimming with tears.
“It’s okay. Don’t hold back.”
“If I start crying I’m not going to be able to stop,” she choked, caught in that awful, awkward space between sobs and gasps.
“The tables float,” he replied, and the little half-laugh, half-sob that escaped from Grace was all it took for the dam to break. She leaned against his chest and sobbed violently, tears soaking into his shirt. He held her until the sobs abated, stroking her hair with an easy tenderness that was a surprise to both of them.
“Feel better?” he asked when she sighed shakily and leaned back to wipe her eyes.
“A little. Thank you, Bailey.”
He found himself skimming her cheek with his fingers. “Any time. Always.”
There was a dangerously charged moment when neither of them was entirely certain what to do, broken only when Brennan walked back into the room and announced, “This isn’t the same stun gun he used last time. He’s changed his M.O.”
I'll hopefully get part 4 posted soon. Summer and no grad school helps.
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