A/N:

For the purposes of my universe, I assume that Bones' "The Change in the Game' and Castle's "Always" are contemporaneous, even though the Bones episodes air a year ahead of Castle. So, this story takes place a few days after Bones tells Booth she is pregnant, and Beckett is reinstated (but with a month's suspension). Nothing after Castle's "After the Storm" or Bones' "The Change in the Game" happened...

Theoretically, you should be able to follow along just fine if you've only seen one of the two shows, but I'll try to add in enough detail to help without bogging things down...

Chapter 1:

He can't get over the feeling that something is wrong.

Special Agent Seeley Booth is not a thinker. That isn't to say he is dumb - far from it. But a lifetime of training, first in bootcamp, and then later Ranger School, Sniper School, and finally the FBI Academy have beaten the habit out of him. Thinking is too often contrary to operation efficiency, he's learned, in bureaucracy-speak. So what's left is gut - a sense of things below the conscious, where it can't interfere with training, but can still keep you from getting yourself dead.

His gut is going wild now.

But he's thinking too, and that's the problem. So much has happened in the last few days*, and he's worried that it's all throwing his gut out of whack. He wonders if this is how his partner feels, her brain going a thousand miles an hour all the time, and how she can possibly function if it is.

Not that he's going to ask her.

Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan, anthropologist extraordinaire, best-selling author, partner, and soon to be the mother of his child, gets off the elevator first, leading him down the hall to her place. They've spent every minute of the last few days together, ever since their last case wrapped up and they rushed to the hospital for their friend Angela's labor. It's late and dark, the hallway lights are turning everything into a muted orange, and still he can't figure out what's wrong. Of course, there are issues - they went to dinner specifically to talk about the whole truckload of issues that stand between them now - but it's something else that's tickling his hindbrain and revving up his fight or flight response.

He dismisses it - it's just nerves about the pregnancy and the still unknown quality of his relationship with Bones. But as he tells himself that, it won't go away.

"Booth, I think you still have my keys," Bones says in front of him. She's staring at him. He reaches into his pocket, remembering that she let him drive, even though they'd taken her car. He hated driving the little Prius almost as much as he hated riding in it.

He fishes her keys out from around his poker chip and his phone, and just as he does so the latter begins to ring. He goes to hand her the keys and retrieve his phone when it all converges and he knows, right then, what is wrong. The lights in her apartment are out.

His life has hinged on lesser observations.

He pulls back the keys and quickly shuts down the phone unanswered. Instead, his hands come up with his gun, pointing it immediately past his partner towards her door.

"Booth, what are..."

"Shhh... behind me, Bones," he says, reaching around and moving her out of the way so that he is between her and the door. It took two years at the beginning of their partnership for him to bang into her head that her foyer light should always be on when she isn't home, but like anything, once Brennan had learned that, she'd learned it well. It has never been off since. There is someone hiding in that dark apartment of hers.

He looks back at her. She's grasped the situation, isn't arguing. He shifts his weight, gets ready to kick down the door.

"Booth, that's a steel core door with two four-inch bolts. You can't kick it down."

"When did you get that?"

"You insisted, remember? After Taffet?"

"Okay, I'm going to give you the keys. Unlock the door and open it, but don't push it all the way open and don't go in. Gun goes first."

"I know, Booth."

She keeps saying his name, some deep part of his brain notes. She does that when nervous, but he doesn't think she's nervous about an intruder. She normally wouldn't be, but everything's changed in the last few days, and now he doesn't know.

She unlocks the first bolt quietly, and his phone pings with a text message. He checks the phone. The text is from Hacker.

CALL ME ASAP. GOT REPORT BROADSKY ESCAPED LEAVENWORTH.

He puts the phone back. Nods to Bones to continue. He knows it's not Broadsky on the other side of that door. He's guessing now that there is no one on the other side, but he'll go through first with his gun in position regardless.

Bones has the second bolt released, and gently moves the door in about an inch before sliding back along the wall. He crouches low - if there is someone waiting for them the shots will come at them where his center mass should be - and pushes the door open.

He's through the door, clearing the room left to right as he moves in a crouch to the back of the couch. No bullets pass over his head as he hits his first stop. The bedrooms are down the hall and harder to clear, so he moves first to the kitchen. He glances through the doorway into the dining room. It is cast in long shadows from the streetlights outside and all the lines of the room have gone hard and ugly. He can't see anything.

Go in or keep going? Training says you never leave an uncleared room behind you, but he's still stuck thinking, and so he ignores training and moves on. No one shoots at him as he moves past.

The kitchen is different.

Someone has been here - a single accent light left on is testament to that. It forms a shrine of light in the center of the kitchen counter. Dead in the center is a single sheet of crisp white printer paper. He won't have to look - he knows what it says.

"Bones, it's clear." He holsters his sidearm, knowing he doesn't have to check the rest of the apartment, but worried that what he has found is worse. He walks over to the piece of paper as Bones comes into the room behind him.

"Booth?"

She stands next to him. "Tag, you're it," she says, reading from the paper. "What does that mean?"

"It means we're running out of time already," he says. She questions him further with her eyes, but he ignores her as he pulls his phone out and stabs the number for Hacker.

"Booth," Hacker answers on the first ring, "I just got word..."

"He was here," Booth interrupts his boss. "What happened exactly?"

"Here? Where's here?"

"Brennan's apartment. There's a note. When did he escape?"

"I'll send a team over, don't touch anything," Hacker says, and Booth suppressed an urge to snort. "DOJ says he escaped sometime around two pm, during a prisoner transfer. Killed two inmates, apparently, before doing so. I'm yelling at the DOJ now as to why we..."

"He's after us, sir, Brennan and me."

"Come in immediately, we'll get you under protective custody..."

"No sir, I can't do that. But can you get a detail for my son and his mother, and one or more for the Jeffersonian staff? It's Bones and me he wants, but..."

"Yes, Booth. But why can't you come in?"

"He wants us to do this by his rules, sir. We play by the rules and it's just Bones and me at risk. We don't play, and he'll come after everyone else until we do play."

"Booth, that's ludicrous. We don't play games with..."

"Sir, I'm going to hang up now. Get the details and the crew here to Bones' place. We won't be here when they are. I'll contact you in a few hours. If you don't hear from me in twenty-four hours, he got us."

Booth hangs up before Hacker can speak again, and calls a second number.

"Hodgins," he says when the phone connects. "Mogul."

There is a pause before Hodgins responds, "Done. Sorry... High Dive."

"Good. Good luck, Hodgins."

"You too, Booth."

"Booth, what is going on?" Bones asks when he hangs up again.

"Bones, do you trust me?"

"Implicitly, of course, Booth. I have found..."

"Okay," he interrupts. He takes her hand. "Things are going to get really crazy for a bit, and I'm going to ask you to do some weird things. I promise, when we get time, I'll satisfy that infinite curious brain of yours and answer all your questions, but for now, I need you to do whatever I ask, no questions, no hesitation? Can you do that?"

He feels her tense up for a second, but she makes her decision quickly. She nods.

"Good. Go grab clothes and toiletries and stuff. Enough for a few days, comfortable and inconspicuous, if you can. Any cash on hand you have too. I'm thinking we have three minutes."

"Three minutes until what?"

"Until people start trying to kill us, Bones."

A/N: Don't worry Castle fans, chapter 2, with your favorite couple, is coming in just a few minutes...