Disclaimer: Oh boy, if I owned Bones…Lord, Booth would never wear pants again. Oh no, siree -- she gets this really stupid faraway look--Yes, right. No, I don't own anything. Don't sue me, it'd be pointless.

Summary: "That's an exquisite necklace, Dr. Brennan. Reminds me of a good friend of mine, she had a necklace just like that one. It was stolen. And from a bank no less. It made the Chicago nightline," Mrs. Roth said to Booth. "I always told my husband 'there's no safety in safe deposit boxes'." A new lead takes Temperance Brennan closer to her father and Max Keenan's dangerous past too close to her daughter.

Author's Notes: I want to thank atrosie for the beta, the poor thing is going to suffer me for a while.

Feedback: If you read this chapter and think it has absolutely no redeeming features, let me know so I can improve and do better next time. If you read it and like it (if you like anything, even if you just like one sentence)let me know because each word from you means the world to me.

Seriously, reviewers are the soul of this place. You guys/girls rock.

Above all, I really hope you enjoy this,

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Chapter One

The Game in the Gem

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Booth and Brennan found Mrs. Margaret Roth in the living room of her mansion, dispensing instructions to a grim-faced maid.

"Dear, we don't want to offer Sissy Taylor the opportunity to point out any imperfections again, do we?" The maid shook her head. "Last time you started off wonderfully with the swan napkins, but I noticed that towards the end they looked a tad disheveled. We can't have that again, can we?"

Booth cleared his throat as he slipped his ID from his breast pocket.

Mrs. Roth turned towards them. She was 45-ish, hairdresser-blond and Chanel-stylish, a bonafide classy socialite.

She glided over to them with a hostess-perfect smile. She glanced briefly at his badge before saying, "Agent Booth, yes. You said you wished to ask a few questions about Bryant?" She shook his hand with a firmer grip than Booth would've expected.

"Yes. This is Dr. Temperance Brennan, she's with me in the investigation."

The investigation had started, informally, three days ago, when a couple of meth-heads with a bad case of the twitches and no electric appliance to dissect decided to dig a hole in their back yard—which was Woodland Park because that's where, they explained, the 'Purple Scorpion had landed' and where they'd parked their van.

You'd never find two more enthusiastic diggers. They went at it like truffle-sniffing pooches with OCD, they were four feet down when they stumbled on—or over—Bryant George. Once a landscapist, now a heap of smelly bones.

Mrs. Roth then turned to Brennan, sculptured eyebrows frowning. "Doctor?"

"Anthropologist," Brennan replied.

Mrs. Roth scanned her face curiously. "You don't look like an anthropologist." Mrs. Roth swept her right arm, encompassing the living-room's couches. "Please, take a seat."

Booth sat on a couch that he gouged was worth more than his car. Bones sat next to him, Mrs. Roth took the opposite couch.

The entire living room looked like a walk-in auction of antique furniture at Christies. The air inside smelled of old money and women's perfume. Booth drew the line at antique—classic, really—cars; he didn't want to sit on a couch that had more history than the Booth family.

"You've got a beautiful garden, Mrs. Roth," Bones said, looking through one of the twin bay windows that flanked the oak fireplace.

Booth felt grateful for Bones' subtle introduction of the reason for their visit, a strange contrast to her patented, brutally practical chase-cutting technique: Your landscapist was murdered. Do you have any idea why?

"The symmetry is impressive."

Aha, Booth thought. That's why she had noticed the garden. She never just liked something, there was always a clever, scientific accountability for it.

"Yes, I owe it all to Bryant. He is a brilliant young man. I don't understand why the FBI's here," she said.

Yes. Brilliant. Right. Ideas for cosmic symmetric gardens must've poured when he was riding a cocaine wave. Bryant George could have bought himself a two-way ticket to Madagascar on Coke Miles. How Bryant had managed to hide his habit so well was a mystery.

Booth rubbed his chin and winced. "Bryant is dead, Mrs. Roth. Your garden was the last one he worked on."

Mrs. Roth hand moved from her lap to cover her mouth. "Oh, no. That is. . .how?"

"We're not sure yet," Bones said.

Booth waited for the initial shock to subside. "Did you notice anything strange when he worked for you? Did he look stressed? Under pressure?"

Booth thought Bryant had been offed by a dealer with little patience for green-fingered bohemians. However, why would any dealer waste time getting 10 cubic-feet of dirt over a drug kill?

Mrs. Roth glanced up at the frescoed ceiling as if the past were showing there, like a Sunday matinee. "I don't know . . ."

Bones leaned forward, placing her elbows on her knees. "Shoddy people coming to visit him?"

Mrs. Roth looked at her. "I'm sorry, I—" Mrs. Roth's eyes flickered down.

Booth followed Mrs. Roth's gaze to the centerpiece of one of the gazillion necklaces Bones seemed to own: a green circular-shaped stone that now glowed as it caught the edge of a morning light-rectangle stretching from the bay window.

Mrs. Roth's mouth parted, her eyes fixed on the gem. "That's an exquisite necklace, Dr. Brennan."

Bones gave Booth a sidelong glance before turning to Mrs. Roth. "Thank you."

"I'm sorry. It reminded me of a good friend of mine—she passed away. She had a necklace with a gem just like that one. An emerald." She smiled, reminiscing, never taking her eyes off the stone.

"Oh."

Like the old poker player he was, Booth spotted the telltales on Bones' face: mouth slightly parted but no words coming out because she didn't know what—if—she should say anything. That stood for Confused Bones.

She didn't understand how another human being could veer off topic and into the past, especially when the topic related to a pile of remains and especially for something as unrelated and inconsequential to the present as a gemstone.

"This isn't a real emerald," Bones finally explained, running her thumb over the gem.

Mrs. Roth nodded, lost in thought for a millisecond.

"Adry adored emeralds, especially if they were hers," she added with a delicate chuckle. "Unfortunately," she continued, "it was stolen ten or fifteen years ago. And from a bank no less. It made the Chicago nightline," Mrs. Roth said to Booth. "I always told my husband 'there's no safety in safe deposit boxes'."

A smile of agreement was all Booth could do while he thought about Max and Ruth breaking into a safe deposit box where 'I Love Emeralds' Adry's necklace was and how—by some twisted path—the same necklace had ended up around Bones' neck. But Bones said it was a fake. He glanced at her, she was sickly pale and staring at Mrs. Roth.

Not good. Not good. Something was very wrong.

Booth ended the interview a few minutes later.

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Margaret Roth's manicured nail, painted a soft pink, pressed "#1" on the study's telephone-slash-fax machine and waited for the exclusive direct line to her brother's office.

He picked up with a 'Maggie' because only Margaret knew that number.

"I just saw Adrienne's emerald necklace. Yes, that necklace. I know jewelry, Martin. Diamonds were missing but it was the same necklace. On the neck of an anthropologist." Margaret straightened the edges of the phone while her brother talked.

"It had a bent rose petal next to the emerald, I saw it when they left. I'm positive." She made sure all the edges—the phone, the writing pad, the pencil holder—were aligned. "Doctor Brennan. Came by asking about Bryant, the landscapist. No. No."

She ran her finger over the edge of the desk, checking for the slightest particles of dust. "She stared at me, Marty. As if she knew something. What are you going to do?"

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"Bones, Bones—wait up!" Booth trotted to catch up with Bones, who was making a beeline for their SUV. "What—?" She yanked open the door, slipped inside and slammed it close. "Ok. We'll talk inside the car."

Booth climbed in and Bones said, "I believe there is a fairly strong possibility this necklace is the same one Mrs. Roth was talking about."

Her back was straight, her eyes staring ahead and hands flat on her thighs.

Booth pulled out of the mansion's driveway, hand clutching the steering wheel. He fidgeted in his seat; it took a lot of evidence to get Bones to speak with that amount of conviction. "You said it wasn't real."

She shook her head, lips pressed together in disappointment. "I assumed it wasn't because of the card. 'Happy 16th Anniversary. One day I'll get you a real one. Love, Matthew.' I found it after they left, hidden in a double trapdoor in our shed."

She reached for the nape of her neck, felt for the clasp and slid off the necklace. She studied the green gem and the metalwork. "I shouldn't assume anything anymore."

"Well said, Bones. Let's put that into practice right now and let's not assume that's stolen. Hmmkay?"

She didn't look at him; instead, she reached for her jacket's pocket. Out of the corner of his eye, Booth caught the glint of the silvery dolphin.

"Bones." He looked at her.

He hadn't seen her like that since she held her mom's dolphin belt buckle in her hand. It amazed Booth just how easily the confused and vulnerable 15-year-old Tempe emerged from the assertive, independent Bones. Even if she knew now why her parents had left, that same information had reopened the wound. They hadn't disappeared. They left.

She held the dolphin in one hand, the necklace in the other; she studied both, glancing from one to the other as if she were making a comparison. And maybe she was. Good man. Bad man.

There was a sniffle, a deep breath and then her voice. On the edge of cracking. "I saw the. . ." She ran her thumb over the dolphin, face half-turned towards him. "I can't understand how. . ."

Her gaze flickered around. Searching, Booth thought, not for the right words that expressed her feelings, but for any word. A crease of frustration appeared between her eyebrows. She couldn't say what she thought so she shook her head, denying both the inner turmoil and the need to get it out of her chest.

"It's ok, Bones. Just—it'll be ok."

"No. Don't say that."

She took a deep breath and then exhaled the air and with it, all trace of the emotional intensity she'd displayed before.

"I'm tired of hearing it." She popped open the glove compartment and stuffed the necklace inside like a pair of slimy rubber gloves.

She pocketed the dolphin like loose change.

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"There is a fifth dimension," Jack Hodgins said, pointing his chop sticks at Angela, a dangling noodle caught between them. "David Lang is my proof." He tipped his head back and lowered the noodle into his mouth.

Angela frowned. "Who?"

Without removing his eyes from his plate of fried rice and spring rolls, Zack explained in a monotone: "David Lang was a farmer who disappeared in a corn field in 1880, according to his wife. It's a proven hoax. And it's based on a short story by the science fiction writer Ambrose Bierce. The Difficulty of Crossing a Field. I read it when I was six-years-old."

He looked up at Angela then. "He did not," he said, with the kind of jaded patience of a person who knows facts, knows science and knows Hodgins, "fall into the fifth dimension."

Hodgins scoffed. "You're regurgitating a spoon-fed truth, m'boy. Status-quo vomit, that's what it is."

"Great—and that's the end of my lunch," Angela said, pushing her half-eaten pork to the center of the table. She took a swing from her water bottle. "Bierce. Didn't he disappear too? Went off to Mexico to make buddy-buddy with Pancho Villa?"

Hodgins nodded readily as he chewed. "Bet his bones are somewhere in the Sonora desert."

Zack finished his fifth spring roll and dabbed the corner of his mouth with one of the strewn napkins on the table. "All those stories about"—he made inverted commas at both sides of his face—"mysterious disappearances are explainable. Just like Doctor Brennan's parents. No fifth dimension involved there either."

That's when the same Doctor Brennan entered the lab, striding purposely towards them, Booth lagging behind her. He was talking on his cell phone, one hand on his hip, and looking pretty frustrated.

"Beck-man. I want to talk to Beckman. Tall guy, blue eyes. Snorts when he laughs, loves to tell fart jokes. That Beckman."

Brennan stopped in front of Angela. "Ange, did you input the data on the skull to determine a possible murder weapon?"

"No, I was—" she pointed at her unfinished lunch.

Brennan glanced at the table, noticing the food for the first time. "Let me know when you can show them to me on the Angelator."

She turned around and headed to her office, leaving Angela, Jack and Zack trying to figure out to where the wind was blowing: Booth-Brennan Bickering or Cam-Brennan cat-fight.

Hodgins gave the matter little thought. "Brennan looked different. . ."

Booth's voice rose. "First day on the job, lots of extensions. I know, Judy—Lucy. Lucy. Just patch me through to Beckman. I know you can do it, I'm rootin' for ya. Just press the right button." He winced, pressing an imaginary button in front of his face.

"She wasn't wearing the necklace she left with," Zack said. The comment said more about Zack than about Brennan's terseness.

Angela stood up and joined Booth, heading for Brennan's office.

Zack and Hodgins sat in silence for a moment, hearing Angela, Booth and Brennan's voices in a succession of quick-fire questions-answers.

"What if we could examine Ambrose Bierce's bones." His eyes grew wider. "What if the Mexican Government sent them here. What if they're in Limbo?"

For once, Jack Hodgins agreed. He stopped chewing, blue eyes as wide as Zack's. "Dude, that'd be awesome."

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"Bren, what is going on? Where's the necklace you had on this morning? Did you get mugged?" Angela seemed to understand it all at once. She gasped and looked at Brennan, who was perusing her email inbox with unusual interest. "Oh my God, honey, you didn't beat up the mugger, did you?"

"Booth has it, Ange." She opened up an email and started tapping at the keyboard.

Angela glanced at Booth. He was loosening his tie and the first button of his pink shirt.

"Beckman? Finally. This new girl you got there in reception—" He made a circle in the air with his hand, a Hold-on-a-Sec gesture. "Who are you?" His knees buckled, one arm shot up to skywards in a mock religious plea for help. "Leonard Cobbs . .. the janitor." He scratched the back of his head as if he were trying to start a fire with friction. "Nonono, don't reroute me to reception. Not Lucy again, Leonard. Please, have mercy."

Angela shook her head, eyes closed like a pretty Asian robot with an information overload. "Booth, could you please tell me what is going on?"

"Give me one second." Booth pressed his phone between his cheek and his shoulder. "Bones," he said, pointing with his raised eyebrows at a puzzled Angela. Booth's attention returned to phone. "Leonard, Lenny, tell me you know Albert Beckman."

Brennan sighed and understood. You explain it to Angela before she freaks, I'm busy right now. "I believe my father stole that necklace approximately fifteen years ago. I wore stolen jewelry during my first conference at the Jeffersonian."

Booth's back straightened, he recoiled his neck in surprise. "He's with you? Right now? Smoking, right. Hiding from his wife the FBI Agent. Right."

He turned to Angela and Brennan, grinning.

"Al? Listen, I need some kind of jewelry expert." Booth took out the necklace from his jacket's pocket.

Angela stared at him, then at Brennan who was now with her hands poised on the keyboard, eyes fixed on the screen but not typing.

Angela's shoulders slumped. "Bren, sweetie. Are you sure?"

Brennan's gaze fell from the screen.

"Well, Al, if the guy's in Antwerp squinting at diamonds then he's not of much use to me here in Washington, is he?"

Angela skirted around Brennan's desk and leaned on the edge, placing her hand over Brennan's wrist. "Talk to me, sweetie. Don't keep it all in, ok?" Brennan nodded but kept quiet and didn't look at Angela. "Maybe you're wrong. You could be wrong, right?"

They both looked up at the sound of Booth's cellphone snapping shut.

"There. Done. Tomorrow we're gonna take this," he dangled the necklace from his index finger, "to one Ulysses Fisk so he can put this matter to rest. We're not going to worry about anything yet, are we, Bones?"

Angela and Booth waited a response from Brennan. She in turn looked around her office, her hand still on the keyboard.

"I have work to do."

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Three feet from her doorway, Temperance plopped her briefcase on the floor with a huff. She'd been fishing around for her keys all the way from her car. She hadn't found them yet, even thought she'd grazed their steely edge twice, because her mind was engaged in two tasks.

First one, anticipating the enjoyment of a hot tub sprinkled with Seabreeze bath salts, a cold beer, music and George's case file (which she had surreptitiously stashed in her briefcase while Angela made her a herbal tea). Getting rid of the tightness in her chest, the stiff neck and the seeds of a headache nestled behind her eyes, that was her prime objective.

Second one, the determined—partly conscious, partly subconscious—deflection of thoughts related to the necklace she had always believed to be a hidden wedding anniversary present and to the autopsy photographs of McVicar.

The crude job the weapon had done to the flesh and what it all said about her father, the man she had once thought she knew: slicing and piercing a man's neck with a sharpened toothbrush so her daughter could find him was ok.

She pulled out the keys and glared at them. When she got to her door, she saw that it was ajar, feeble moonlight filtering from her window.

She froze and listened for a burglar still inside. There was only silence, a distant car horn, a dog barking. She pushed open the door and stepped inside.

The blow came from her right, from a man hidden behind her door. Her keys flew from her hand. She stumbled back, hand instinctively reaching for that spot on her temple that felt like it had been cracked open. All her training—the jabs, kicks, the deflecting combinations she'd learned—gobbled up by searing pain and dizziness.

Reality fragmented, as if she were on a train coming in and out of intermittent dark tunnels.

A tug forward, from the lapels of her coat, then a shove backwards, into the wall besides her doorway.

The train burst out of the tunnel. She mustered up all her strength and channeled it to her right knee.

"Almost unconscious and still feisty," the man said. His hand clasping her knee, grip as hard as a vice. He had caught it just before it crashed into his crotch.

Another tug forward and another backward—stronger this time. The back of her head smashed against the wall. She could picture the crack widening, fissure lines snaking all the way over and down her skull to her neck.

Then it stopped. She coughed. He leaned into her.

"You're playing a dangerous game, Doctor Brennan," he said, his mouth grazed her left ear. Temperance felt his warm breath at the same time she felt the cold edge of a knife on her throat. "Don't do anything stupid."

To Be Continued . . .