Disclaimer: Bones and its characters belong to their rightful owners.
Authors Note: Ack! Sorry for the late update. I've just been so busy with school (it started up just this previous week D:) and I haven't had time to update any of my stories properly. This story in particular is a priority, since Season 9 airs in three days! Whoot! Whoot!

Special thanks to all of you awesome reviewers: DarkMousyRulezAll, iheartlife, darkorangecat, AutumnOlivia, danamontana, gracewright, ladykale1985, and Guest. You guys are all amazing! :D

"Angela," Booth spun on his feet, pinning down the computer whiz with his wide brown eyes. "I need an identity of our truck driver now."

The young woman nodded. "Right. On it." She glanced from her controls to her screens with quick, darting looks and licked her lips nervously.

Booth turned back to Hodgins. "Could you find any prints? Did he leave anything else behind?"

Hodgins set the two petri dishes on the nearest table and shook his head ruefully. "No, sorry, the only prints I found on the handle belonged to Doctor B. and Sweets. He must've opened it with his…hook." He raised his hands weakly to waist-level and dropped them heavily back to his sides. "The only thing I found was the particulates that linked him to the previous murder…but that doesn't rea—wait." The man's thoughtful gaze strayed back to a minor screen beside them. Hodgins' blue eyes lit up as a thought struck him.

"What is it, Hodgins?"

The entomologist gestured at the frozen image of a gray blob kneeling by Booth's mangled SUV. "Look. He's holding onto the side of the vehicle in order to stabilize himself." Booth squinted at the grainy image and nodded slowly. Sure enough, he could make out a faint blur of gray on the roof of his car where the man's hand would have been.

"He might've left some prints there. We wouldn't have been able to get any from the door handle since he…uh, opened it with his hook" Hodgins repeated with an odd expression, as if he still couldn't believe what he was currently saying. "I only found particulates there. But his real hand touched the side of the SUV." A loud bang announced the sudden arrival of the clumsier investigators from the Bureau.

"Aw man… Are you serious? Now they decide to be punctual?" Hodgins muttered under his breath. His once electric expression faded into a sneer of mild distaste. The young man's shoulders slumped at the prospect of sharing the piece of evidence. He brought his hands to his face and suppressed a loud groan.

"What?"

"Your suits won't let me near the vehicle." He sent a hostile glare towards the FBI special agent through a gap in his fingers. "They'll rip it apart before I can dust for more particulates." The entomologist's voice was muffled and clearly disdainful.

Without even tearing her eyes from her modifications and calculations, Angela spoke up for the first time. "But didn't you just prove that the murder and Sweets' kidnapping were connected?"

"Oohh…" Hodgins dropped his hands and peered at his wife. "That would give us—"

"What!?"

Angela finally pulled her gaze from her whirling computer screens to glare at the entomologist. "Shouldn't you go get Cam?"

"Right!" The ginger doctor started suddenly. "Cam. Go find Cam. Murder. Sweets. Cam!" He turned on his heels, practically running out of Angela's office, bawling "Dr. Saroyaaaaan" as he went along.

"Would you mind explaining?" Booth asked again with a scowl, starting to feel a little cross at the combination of missing a teammate and being left of the Jeffersonian loop.

Angela returned her focus back to her flashing screens but graced the FBI agent with an answer. "We were only able to have access with your old SUV until your people took it over as evidence for an investigation regarding a federal agent. But since Hodgins proved the two crimes were connected—Sweets and the murder—we can claim back your SUV. Murder investigations always take priority over abductions. At least at the Jeffersonian they do. By the time Cam gets through with them, Hodgins'll have enough time to do, you know-"

"His bug and dust stuff," Booth finished and turned back to what Angela had pulled up on her screens. "Did you find anything? It looks like you just zoomed out."

The computer genius sent the federal agent a withering glare. "I didn't just 'zoom out.' I applied a filter, doctored the images, and combined multiple stills to provide a relatively three-dimensional image." With a click on her control pad, the screenshot of the accident seemed to unfold outwards and upwards on the screen to form a sort of holographic box on the screen.

Booth suppressed a gasp. "Woah."

"Yeah," a slow smile flickered across the woman's face. "No 3-D glasses required."

"Were you able to get a better picture of who took Sweets?"

"Now, I wasn't able to get a readable face from our pirate, but I can get the next best thing." Angela's tongue subconsciously flicked the corner of her lips as she concentrated on the lifelike image. "Look at the truck—maybe we can get information from it."

The federal agent nodded slowly. "I see where you're going. If we can get its information, we might figure out who it belonged to. I doubt our Captain Plunder was the owner of it, but we can find out who he stole it from."

Angela's dark eyes scanned the three-dimensional tractor trailer on the screen. "It looks like…the truck was from…Barrie trucking."

"The book store chain?"

Angela shrugged. "Hey, he just needed something big. This certainly fits the picture."

Booth's gaze returned to the screen. "It could take them weeks to sort through their driver claims. Barrie is a big company—it's there anything else you can get me?"

The young woman suppressed a confident smirk. "How about the company's personalized ID tag on the truck?"

Booth felt his jaw drop. "Angela, you are amazing."

"I know," the brunette smiled as she zoomed in on the modified image of the truck. Both of the crime solvers stared at the blurry gray numbers on the side of the cab in silence before Angela entered a few keys that reduced the fuzz and presented a legible code.

"JBR12271904," Booth murmured aloud as Angela navigated to the Barrie database. "The JBR stands for the company. Can you get anything from the numbers?"

"Once I hack into their network, I can see who was last assigned to this particular truck and then you can go do your stuff, big guy."

Booth nodded uncertainly. "Most likely the truck will have been stolen. Captain Murder already stole the hook—based on what Sweets had said earlier in the van," Booth paused, "it's likely that he stole the truck as well." Booth groaned and rubbed at his eyes. Although he had repeatedly assured his partner that he wasn't facing any ill-effects from the concussion, his brain still felt like it was pounding in his ears. "If the original driver put up a fight, we might be dealing with a double homicide." Booth felt an uncomfortable twist in his gut. And that's not even counting what that monster might have already done to Sweets.

"Here—I got this guy's information. He's uh, a John Davy. Huh, from the D.C. area, too. They even have a pic—wait…uh oh…. Didn't you say the truck driver had a scar on his chin?"

Booth looked up at the painfully familiar image of the driver and groaned again. For perhaps the fifth time that case, the federal agent uttered another "I don't believe this…"

For roughly half a second, Sweets had the inane idea that if he stayed completely silent and pressed himself further into the mast, perhaps the pirate-murder wouldn't see him. Perhaps he had already forgotten about his prisoner.

No such luck. As Sweets tried to adjust himself into as small of a shadow as possible, his shackles jangled loudly. The young man glared heavenward with mashed lips in order to stop himself from muttering a few choice words. From the shadow where the psychologist could discern the faint outline of a man with a hook a distant laughter rumbled. Sweets winced and tried to suppress the shudders that were tingling up and down his back.

"It seems we have a stowaway on our ship."

A cloud sailed slowly across the moon and darkened the exhibit room. Sweets closed his eyes and sighed softly under his breath. If he starts on the pirate jokes, kill me now. A creaking sound echoed below him and it sounded as if his kidnapper was attempting to board the ship. Sweets' eyes popped open immediately and he glanced around the dark room with wide, unseeing eyes. The cloud had yet to move and the automatic light from the hallway had switched off.

He was alone.

In the dark.

With a potentially deranged killer who possessed a complete and utter obsession with pirates. Hook or no hook, Sweets was not in a very savory position.

A louder creaking sounded to the young man's left. His spine stiffened considerably as he stared blankly with desperate eyes over his shoulder. The mast was too large to see around and the room was too dark to make anything out clearly, but his ears were still functioning. He held his breath, ignoring the fierce pounding in his chest, and waited for something to happen. From perhaps ten feet away, he heard a faint groan—not of ancient wood, but from an exerting man. There was a slight thump and labored breathing as the man recovered from his ascent. Sweets frowned slightly. He hadn't remembered stairs or a ladder by the exhibit when he and Booth had visited previously that day. His assailant must have come by scaling the side of the ship—which, for some reason, did not make the young psychologist feel any better.

All right. Think like Agent Booth. This guy has to be totally strong to climb up the side of this ship. Sweets paused and frowned mid-thought. Wait a minute. How did I get up here then? The psychologist pictured the dizzying multistory drop below him. Oh man… He must be really strong then.

The young man's assailant had steadied his breathing, but Sweets could hear the metallic rattling to his left as the larger man rustled through various objects, trying to find something specific. There was a light grunt and then a faint hiss as it sounded like a match striking a rough surface. Immediately a light exploded in Sweet's peripheral vision, stunning the young man for a moment. The sudden flash momentarily blinded the doctor and he averted his gaze with his left eye scrunched closed.

After a moment of acclimation, Sweets slowly lifted his stare to face his assailant. The murder had transferred the lighted match to a possibly antique sallow candle, which lit the man's scarred face with a sickly, pale glow. Sweets greedily absorbed every detail of the man, judging by the shallow guttering of the candle that he only had a few moments of light. The psychologist was fairly surprised to note that his kidnapper was not significantly older than he was—perhaps only a year or two his senior, judging by first appearances. The long, snaking scar down the older man's chin confirmed that he had been the truck driver who had nearly run them over previously that day. Perhaps either self-conscious about his marring or merely itchy, the murder slowly raised his hook to his face and positioned it right over his scar. The sharp glint of the few scraps of corroded metal seemed to stab Sweets directly in the eyes. He lowered his gaze, both from pain and a feeling of sickly uneasiness. The psychologist hadn't been imagining it; the man in front of him truly possessed a hook instead of a hand. However, the hook wasn't the only thing that was bothering the young man. Something about the man's wide, glittering eyes seemed vaguely familiar, but Sweets was unable to recall why at the moment.

"Don't you remember me, Lance?"

Icy needles prickled down Sweets' neck and spine and the young man stiffened dramatically, ignoring the slight jangle of the manacles behind him. It can't be… The psychologist's dark, wide eyes scraped as forcefully as any hook across the man's face.

"J-Jack…?"

The man smiled wildly, revealing a mouthful of uneven teeth.

"This is Agent Booth of the FBI. Open up," the man demanded, holding his weapon tightly with bloodless knuckles. He was standing with raised hackles in front of the most recent address of a certain John Davy, who was currently the first and only suspect in the murder of an artifact dealer and the kidnapping of a federal agent. Booth counted slowly to three before kicking the already dilapidated apartment door down. He rushed inside the room, followed by several of his own hand-picked agents.

The muscular federal agent muttered a few light curses under his breath at the uninhabited room. The window wasn't even open—evidently Davy hadn't recently fled the scene; he had been gone most likely since the accident.

"Sir, what should we look for?" a small voice piped up at Booth's side.

Booth surveyed the room with a sigh and ran a jerking hand through his short hair. "Uh, anything that could possibly tell us where he has Sweets." Agent Shaw nodded dutifully. She had been one of the first agents to volunteer for the almost unofficial mission. "Let me know if you find something." The petite agent nodded again and disappeared around one of the corners of the apartment.

Seeing his partners all engaged in some aspect of the search, Booth decided to phone back to the Jeffersonian and see if anything else had been discovered.

"Angela? Did you find anything on Davy for me?"

"Uh, I'm still working on that—but everyone else found something for you." Angela's voice sounded distant as if she was far from her cell phone. Hodgins' loud voice suddenly poured out of the speakers and Booth had to hold the phone away with a wince. Evidently the entomologist was bad at using speaker phones.

"Hey, I did actually find some prints on your SUV right in that spot where the pirate-murder's hand was." Booth winced at Hodgins' term for Sweets' kidnapper. "But unfortunately Angie wasn't able to find a match for him in the system."

"He's clean so far and his prints aren't in any federal database," his wife added from what sounded like across the room.

"But good news—the fingerprint from the roof of the car matched sort of to a partial print on the dead artifact guy."

"Partial? Sort of?"

"Well, it was a partial print. What do you expe—"

"Anyway, Dr. Brennan also found something," Angela interrupted her indignant husband quickly.

"What'd she find?"

"Uh, she said—what?—that the man was—say that again—wearing the hook—wait, we knew that already, Sweetie." Another muffled female voice from Doctor Brennan could be heard through the phone as well.

Booth's forehead furled in confusion. "Can you just put Bones on the phone?"

"Gladly," Angela sighed exhaustedly. Evidently the forensic anthropologist had already previously attempted to explain her find, but the artist simply didn't get it.

"Booth?"

"Hey! Bones! What'dya got for me? Good news, hopefully."

Brennan's monotonic and calculating voice filled Booth's ears. "Based on the depth of the bone damage, the weapon—"

"The hook," Booth interjected.

"Ye-es," Brennan answered slowly, slightly irritated at being interrupted. "The weapon severely damaged the hyoid and went deep enough to leave indentations on the C4 and C5 vertebrae."

"Meaning…?"

"The murder was wearing the hook when he killed Artice Jones."

"Sorry, Bones, but I already had that in my notes."

"I doubt you took time to prepare notes on this case," Brennan stated blankly. Booth rolled his eyes up to the ceiling and suppressed a sigh. He wandered over absently to a coverless table with a few dusty frames perched on top. "Besides, I don't think you understand what I'm saying."

"Alright…?"

"Hodgins confirmed the calculations. The force required to damage the C4 and C5 vertebrae so severely is extremely huge. It would have been necessary for the hook to be securely fastened onto the murderer's arm. If he simply placed it over his arm, the weapon would have been unable to cause such major damage because it would have been secured well enough. Therefore, your murderer does not possess a left hand."

Booth froze in the middle of inspecting one of the frames. "Wait, so you're telling me that whoever took Sweets actually has to wear a hook because he doesn't have a real hand?"

"Amputees and those born without certain appendages are not forced by society to hide the—"

"Thanks, Bones," Booth cut his partner off again. "Hey, did Angela ever get any more information on Davy?"

There was faint chatter on the other side of the phone line as Brennan was no doubt discussing Booth's question with her best friend.

"I'll return the phone to Angela," Brennan announced. However, she hesitated and Booth could hear the woman's uncertain breathing. "Bring Sweets back," she stated firmly before handing the mobile device back to Angela.

Booth swallowed nervously and directed his gaze towards the last photo frame on the table. Unlike the others, this silver frame was carefully dusted and the picture inside was protected by a thick sheet of glass.

"Tell me you found something on Davy."

Curious as to why this particular photo was treated so differently from the others, Booth picked it up gently and carefully scrutinized the image.

"Well, he doesn't have a record for his adult years, but quite a few bad things happened in his childhood."

"Like sealed record bad?"

There was something off about the photo. The image itself was innocent enough. A taller boy dressed in a tattered red coat held a cardboard sword at his partner's throat with a triumphant smirk. The other child was a smaller, slender boy in a green cap with a wide grin. The older child couldn't have been more than eight and the younger was only four or five. After studying the older boy for a few moments, Booth slowly came to the conclusion that the child was Davy.

"Not exactly. He was what you could consider a veteran of the system. Bounced around in fifteen or so homes before he was adopted by a—wait, never mind. False alarm. Make that sixteen homes."

Booth squinted at the younger child's wide smile and suddenly everything seemed to whirl in realization. Where had Booth seen that goofy, lopsided grin and those shinning chocolate eyes before? Across the coffee table and at the Diner. Especially when someone complimented a certain psychologist's work.

Oh no…

"I know how Sweets is involved."

Oh, gosh. I'm so rotten at writing Dr. B. D:
I hope you enjoyed it! :D