The Burden of Proof

4. Misleading Evidence

"Keep your hands off of my things!" Brennan spat out, slapping his hand away from the equipment.

"Hey! You touch my stuff all the time!" he cried out.

Angela, Cam and Hodgins, forced bystanders, looked at each other.

"Oh! Like you let me touch your siren? I don't think so."

Couldn't they realize how incredibly dirty they both sounded?

"Because the siren is not a toy!" he grunted.

"Oh! And a five hundred thousand dollar scanning electron microscope is?" she bit back.

"Well, not when you say it like that..." he mumbled.

"Kids, that's enough!" Cam cut their bickering short.

"Aaaaaanyway..." Hodgins dragged out. "I ran mass spec on the paint we found on the victim... Dead end."

"Well, we had to try something," Cam commented. "Ok, what's next?"

"No, I mean," Hodgins interrupted. "it was Dead End, the name of the paint color. Actually, Angela found it. It has a unique chemical signature."

Brennan was bored, which bothered her. She had never been bored with a case before. She took a glance at Booth. He was flattening his tie. She looked back at Cam, who was listening to Angela explain how she was running a wide search on the companies that sold the paint.

They talked about that freaking paint for what seemed like eternity. And she wondered why she was still standing there. She had plenty of work to do. She looked at Booth again, about to ask him if he needed anything before she went ahead and lost herself in Limbo. He was still touching his tie. Maybe he was fishing for compliments. It was a pretty tie, after all.

"Nice tie," she told him.

He turned to her.

"Oh!" He flattened it again. "Thanks. Catherine gave it to me."

So? I give you ties all the time. I even found your precious belt buckle online. And it took me forever, too.

She snorted.

"What?" he asked her.

She looked at the tie. Yeah, it wasn't that nice. The color was wrong for him, anyway.

"She doesn't know you very well, does she?"

"Why?"

She semi-pouted, semi-grimaced. Then raised her eyebrows, looking down at it.

"Meh."

She shrugged.

He got the message.

"You just said you liked it!"

Right. Uhm...

"I was being sarcastic," she replied.

And she excused herself out of the room.

"Does it..."

"SHHH!" he shushed her loudly.

She glued her lips together and looked around –not that she could see anything- to make sure everything was still quiet.

She lowered her voice to a whisper and asked again, without him rudely interrupting her this time.

"Does it have to be so dark?"

"Yes," he replied right away. "We don't want the suspect to know we're waiting for him in his office, do we?"

"I guess not."