He turned to her and his expression was conciliatory. “We’ll find you something suitable in Chicago.”
The elevator doors opened. They had the car to themselves, but that didn’t encourage conversation, and they stared at the floor indicator like strangers awkwardly avoiding each other.
She considered her dilemma.
If Booth had done the sensible thing and arranged the transfer of the skeleton, she could be doing the work in her own lab back home, with all the support and bells and whistles and her own bed at night, too. With her own bedspread.
But that was spilt milk under the bridge, right?
“Field Museum,” she said.
“What? How — would they have a lab? Aren’t they the dinosaur place?”
She smiled. “Spoken like a true eight-year-old.”
He shrugged. “Look — I’m not exactly the museum type.”
“I noticed.”
Ignoring her dig, he said, “Over by the lake, right?”
“Yeah. Not the aquarium and not the Museum of Science and Industry. The Jeffersonian has a good relationship with the Field. If you like, I can call Dr. Goodman and—”
“No. Leave it to me. You need to see the bones where they were dumped, or should I have ’em moved to the museum?”
“You have photographs of the crime scene?”
“Does a dog have fleas?”
“Then go ahead and move the skeleton. Save us time.”
They got out at the first floor and Booth had his cell phone in hand.
By the time the valet brought his Crown Vic, he had pulled strings to get her a workroom at the Field Museum. Bureau agents would transport the skeleton to the museum and it would be there not long after they arrived, if not sooner.
As they sped down Lake Shore Drive, Booth behind the wheel, Brennan hanging on for dear life as he dodged traffic, she couldn’t help but wonder if this was how she was spending her last moments on the planet.
“Are you trying to get us killed?” she asked when he missed a delivery truck by less than a foot.
“I’m in a hurry,” he said. He shook his head. “Would you please make up your mind?”
“About what?”
Booth flashed a glare, but it wasn’t wholly unfriendly. “Are you timid, or foolhardy? I can never quite peg that.”
“That’s because I’m a riddle wrapped in an enigma.”
“Oh. Good to know…. But I’m in a hurry ’cause I also want to know something else — specifically, what’s in that goddamned note.”
“Uh… what ‘goddamned’ note would that be?” she asked.
“The note on his — or her — foot.”
She frowned. “A toe tag, you mean?”
Booth shook his head. “Something else.”
“You didn’t read it?”
“I wanted to keep it all together until you got here. I know what a stickler you are about stuff like that.”
“ ‘Stuff’ like evidence?”
“Look, Bones, I am not a moron. I just know you want the whole picture. And I know enough to preserve the evidence at any crime scene… littering or not. Cut me a break.”
She blew out a sigh. “I didn’t mean to snap at you… Just tired…. But why didn’t you just carefully remove the note and read it?”
“Because this was… you know… bones. And you always get after me when I touch something. Now you’re going after me because I didn’t touch something? How do I win with you, anyway?”
Brennan wondered why she and Booth could not get through five minutes without sparring. Angela claimed, in her Cosmo psychology 101 shorthand, that it was “sexual tension.”
Brennan had another theory.
She knew damn well she spent too much time with dead people — who after all didn’t talk back — and her social skills were rusty. Still, that didn’t mean she needed to work at having an extended relationship with every man who crossed her path, which sometimes seemed Angela’s aim for her.
“Sorry,” she muttered to Booth.
The dead were less complicated, easier to communicate with, and at the end of the day, she might actually help one of them find their way home, back to their family.
How many live people could she say that about?
Certainly not Pete, her ex. If anything, she had only managed to help him become more lost in life’s tangle. But blaming herself about that was dumb — truth was, Pete had a pretty good head start at losing his way before he met Brennan.
All she knew was, at this moment on her personal path, Temperance Brennan was a lot more comfortable with the skeletal remains she’d be meeting at the Field than with ninety-nine percent of the living men around her. She glanced at Booth — present company excepted.
Sometimes.
Booth spent the rest of the drive explaining to Brennan about his missing witness, Stewart Musetti, and his concerns about the ID of the skeleton that would greet them at the Field.
They were met at the entrance of the museum by an attractive Asian-American woman about as tall and slender as Brennan. The woman wore a white lab coat over a red V-neck blouse and black slacks, her raven hair hanging to her shoulders. She had wide-set dark eyes, a straight nose, and small, perfect white teeth that gleamed when she smiled, which she did as she extended her hand.
“Special Agent Booth, I’m Dr. Jane Wu.”
He shook her hand and gave her that big puppy dog grin of his. Predictable.
“Very nice to meet you,” Booth said. Then, nodding toward Brennan, he said, “This is—”
“Dr. Temperance Brennan,” Dr. Wu said, shaking Brennan’s hand, too. “Your reputation precedes you. I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to finally meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” Brennan said.
“You’ve heard of her?” Booth asked the Field scientist.
Dr. Wu nodded. “Dr. Brennan and her staff at the Jeffersonian are respected worldwide for the work they do.”
Booth summoned half a grin. “Well, I know Bones here is one of the best, but I didn’t know her rep was so—”
Dr. Wu interrupted Booth again, staring wide-eyed at Brennan. “He calls you ‘Bones’?”
Brennan smirked at the FBI agent. “Yes, and I’ve repeatedly asked him not to.”
Dr. Wu gave the FBI man a disappointed look, and said, “How can you be so disrespectful, Special Agent Booth?”
He found the rest of that grin and shrugged. “Well, we’re friends… sort of… certainly colleagues, and—”
Holding up a hand to silence him, Dr. Wu said, “Special Agent Booth — if they made baseball cards for anthropology, Dr. Brennan’s would be a Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card.”
Shaking her head and wincing at their host, Brennan said, “I have no idea what you just said.”
Dr. Wu grinned. “That’s all right. I understand that you have no need to speak ‘guy’… but I am conversant in their native tongue. Have to be, around this town — let’s just say I’ve explained your value in terms a man can understand.”
“Yeah, and I get it,” Booth said cheerfully.
Brennan, who found Dr. Wu’s attitude a little patronizing toward her partner, said, “That wasn’t exactly a compliment, Booth.”
“Sure it was. She compared you to—”
“No, I meant compliment to you.”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me. I get what she was saying.”
Dr. Wu’s cell phone rang and she fished it out of the pocket of her lab coat. “Yes?”
She listened for a moment, said, “Thanks,” and ended the call.
“Sorry,” she said to them. “But that was my boss telling me your package just came in through the back door. Would you like to see it?”
“Yes,” Brennan said.
Skirting the information desk, the box office, and the short lines of people waiting to get in, Brennan and Booth followed Dr. Wu to the right, where she unlocked a door and hustled them through.