Dr. Wu returned and Booth watched as the two scientists finished prepping and packing the remains.
They had just finished when Booth’s cell phone chirped. The agent on the line gave him Brennan’s travel information.
“Got you on a United flight leaving at nine,” Booth told her.
Brennan glanced at her watch. “That should be fine — thanks. I need you to stop by the hotel to pick up my bag, of course.”
“Of course.”
Booth’s intention had been to call a car for her and get back to work; but she had obviously made the judgment that Booth was her ride to the airport, and he decided now was not the time to rock that particular boat.
He simply nodded and Brennan went back to talking to Dr. Wu.
Least you can do, he told himself.
After all, he had dragged her to Chicago and had not been on hand to meet her when she arrived. He’d better see her off, or there would be hell to pay at some point.
Women never forgot things like that, in Booth’s experience, and men usually didn’t even know they were supposed to remember them.
But Booth knew this much: Brennan was helping him, and he needed to reciprocate, out of professional courtesy, if nothing else.
Brennan picked up the box and Booth took a step toward her, but she shook her head. She had it, and his trying to help would be misconstrued. She would believe that he was thinking he was stronger, and should therefore carry the box for her.
Okay, so she wouldn’t really be misconstruing his thought process — just the reasoning behind it. Wasn’t that he thought she was weak: he just liked to help people, even science squints who felt they had to prove their worth every second.
Dr. Wu handed him her card. “If you have any questions, Special Agent Booth, anything at all, feel free to give me a call.”
He accepted the card, the doctor’s hand brushing against his.
He smiled at her, grateful for any friendly gesture from an attractive female.
She returned the smile. “Call anytime. My home number is on the back.”
“I appreciate that.”
Brennan, fairly testy, said, “This box isn’t getting any lighter….”
Shaking hands with Dr. Wu, Booth said, “Thank you for everything. The Field’s been most hospitable.”
“Our pleasure,” she said, but to Booth it sounded like My pleasure….
Over by the door, Brennan let out a little harumph and Booth ran to get the door for her. His mind was whirling with what was correct to do for a modern female, and what wasn’t….
At the car, he opened the trunk and she set the box inside. She got in on the passenger side before he had time to work out whether he should risk getting it for her or not.
Soon Booth was battling his way through Lake Shore Drive traffic on his way back to her hotel. The ride passed in relative silence, driver and passenger lost in thought, Booth mulling how the hell he was going to track down a killer about whom he knew next to nothing….
Parking the Crown Vic under the hotel’s canopy, Booth got out, flashed his ID at the valet, and said, “Official business. Leave it here. We’ll be back soon.”
The valet, realizing there would be no tip, nodded at Booth and looked away.
As he followed Brennan up to her room, Booth sifted the pieces of what he knew.
The suspect who had delivered the skeleton was white. Was he the killer or just an accomplice?
Brennan and Dr. Wu thought they had parts of four people — all victims of the killer?
One of the source bodies for the skeleton had been dead for over forty years — an old victim, or a piece robbed from a grave to throw them off?
As the anthropologist packed her bag, one thing was clear to Booth: he had no shortage of questions… just a surfeit of answers.
Well, maybe Brennan and her squint squad could come up with something back at the Jeffersonian. He felt tired, bone-tired (appropriately enough), and it didn’t look like he’d be catching up on sleep anytime soon.
Brennan checked out and they put her duffel in the trunk alongside the box of bones, and Booth got them on the expressway toward O’Hare Airport.
After a few minutes of silence, Brennan asked, “Are you going to ask her out?”
The question took Booth by surprise. “Ask who what?”
Though she said nothing, he could feel her eyes on him. He took it as long as he could before he turned to look at her.
“Dr. Wu,” Brennan said. Her voice and her face were expressionless, her tone equally blank. “I know I’m not the best person at picking up signals, but even I could tell she was practically throwing herself at you.”
“Well, if so, I missed it,” Booth claimed, not even convincing himself…
…although it didn’t feel bad, having Brennan corroborate his theory.
Brennan stared straight ahead.
“I dunno.” He shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should give her a call.”
“I’m right?” Brennan rolled her eyes, and then seemed to burrow down farther in her seat.
“Want to get something to eat?” Booth asked her. “There’s time before your flight.”
“Not hungry.”
They lapsed back into silence.
Booth was entering the serpentine access to the airport, when his cell phone chirped in his pocket.
“Booth.”
“Woolfolk. God, I’m glad I caught you.”
The agent was breathless.
Booth frowned. “What?”
Booth listened as the other agent spoke.
When Woolfolk finally stopped, Booth could only manage two words, “Oh Christ.”
He clicked off and turned to Brennan, who frowned, clearly not liking the lines she’d been reading between.
“No bones are going on that flight today,” he told her glumly. “Not you… and not that box in the trunk, either….”
4
Temperance Brennan’s irritation existed on dual levels — neither one, she knew, particularly rational.
She wasn’t exactly jealous over Booth’s saying he might call Dr. Jane Wu. That, after all, was none of her business. And why should she care?
After all, they had no real relationship beyond work, had never dated, never even gone out for a drink together….
Okay, so the handsome FBI agent in her novel, Bred in the Bone, had borne a greater likeness to Booth than she had intended. In her mind, Booth had been in the mix, the fictional agent a composite of Booth, several other agents, and her imagination.
When her staff had called her on the character’s being Booth-And-Only-Booth, she had pooh-poohed the idea; but Angela — whose mission was to fix people up with each other and make everybody and everything happy and nice — had jumped all over it, despite Brennan’s protestations.
If Brennan found herself rolling her eyes over Booth’s knee-jerk response to the attractive Dr. Wu, her own knee-jerk response, about someone she had on occasion worked with, only made her shake her head… at herself.
If forced, she’d have described her relationship with Booth as more of… a brother and sister thing (to which Angela would not doubt gibe, “Right — like in the Ozarks!”). Even if she felt the feelings Angela attributed to her, however, Brennan knew such a relationship would be unprofessional; and professionalism was as close to a personal code as Brennan had thus far formed.
Besides, she was not in the right place in her life for any kind of male-female connection.
What bothered her most, though, were her envious feelings about Dr. Wu. The Field Museum anthropologist — whom Brennan liked and respected — saw what she wanted and went right after it, an approach that had always been out of reach for Brennan… at least when it came to male-female stuff.