He...or she since it was kind of a small build, beat the box with what looked to be a bat, spray painted black. But then they'd picked up the concrete flagstones decorating the edge of the box and finished it off later.

Then about five mail trucks later, there was my dad sweating his ass off to put a new mailbox up.

Which led us to today as I walked up to the camera and picked up the card like Booth had asked me to do.

Shaken, I pushed the computer off my lap and got up to pace my bedroom.

It took all of five minutes of me doing that before I was slipping my feet into a pair of Crocs, grabbing my keys and walking out of the house.

It was late, well past midnight.

Booth wasn't set to be back at home for another eight hours, but I couldn't just sit at my house. Not after seeing the pure rage in the man or woman that'd taken out my parent's mailbox.

My first stop was to my parents' house, just to make sure that everything was okay.

There was a mailbox now, the same one that my father had put up on the photos I'd just seen.

The truck was loud, so I didn't put the camera card back into the camera like I wanted to.

Instead, I drove around my parents' house using the oil road path that led to a couple of oil derricks that were at the back of their property.

They were used to the sounds coming and going down the road, at least lately.

The rig behind their house was lit up like a Christmas tree. Men worked tirelessly all over the place, and not one of them noticed me as I turned around in their rig's lot and went back the way I came.

My eyes stayed on the road as I drove past my parents' house once again, but they strayed to Dash's parents' house for a few short seconds, and I could've sworn I saw someone on the front porch.

But without actually stopping and turning around, I wouldn't really know.

Then again, I didn't really care.

Dash and his parents were weird.

So weird that I went out of my way not to talk to them just as much as I went out of my way not to talk to Dash.

I shifted into second gear, then third, as I passed the spot in the road where I'd hit the deer the day before...or whenever the hell it was. I was back asswards due to not sleeping well.

My stomach, however, wasn't hurting.

After the initial surprise of having been gored by a deer, it only ached lightly like a scratch...or a piercing.

A large piercing, yes, but nothing more than that.

I was 'lucky' according to the doctor, that I had so much fat on my stomach, otherwise it could've gotten hung up in my abdominal muscles and been a complete different story.

Blah blah blah. So much fat my ass.

My eyes roamed the area as I passed it, annoyance surging through me that I even had to do it at all.

The area around my parents' house was completely residential but for this one section of woods right before you turned out of the subdivision.

It was as if all of the deer population chilled out in this one area, making it nearly impossible not to see a deer where they really shouldn't be.

The bells signaling I had a call started to ring in the cab of the truck, and I had to juggle the phone, the steering wheel, and the gear shift as I answered it.

People who drove sticks got used to driving with their knees, sadly.

"Hello?" I answered over the loud rumble of the engine.

"Where are you?" Booth asked without any pleasantries.

"Uhhh," I hesitated. "Why do you ask?"

"Because, according to a buddy that lives on your parent's street, he just saw my truck driving down the road like a bat out of hell, and he wanted to know if there was something wrong," he expounded.

I looked down at the speedometer.

"I'm going thirty, not 'bat out of hell' speed," I informed him.

"So you are out," he said. "Why?"

I blinked.

"Since when did you become my mommy?" I asked him.

He sighed.

"I'm not your mommy," he sighed. "I'm worried about you because you're usually in bed by ten pm, and it's a little past twelve thirty am."

I pursed my lips and down shifted as I came to the stop sign at the end of my parent's street.

"I was going to your house," I said. "I looked at those pictures on the camera card."

There was silence for a few long moments, and I used those to my advantage to pull out onto the road that would lead me to Booth's, where I immediately shifted through the gears.

"What'd you see?" He finally asked.

I told him exactly what I saw.

"Shit," he growled. "Could you make anything out on the guy?"

"He was in black. And he kept his face averted the entire time," I remembered. "The only thing I was able to pull from it was that he was on the shorter side. Maybe five foot six or so. He didn't come much over the top of the pole that held the mailbox up."

I turned my blinker on, caught the wheel with my knee, and then took the phone away from my ear as I turned down the road that would lead me to Booth's place.

"...is there. Make sure you don't scare her," Booth finished once I put the phone back up to my ear.

But then my phone died in the next second, going completely black like it'd been doing a lot since the accident.

It must've taken a hard fall or something, because now it turned off without warning, and this wasn't the first time it'd done that.

With nothing else to do but wait for it to come back on, I finished my drive back to Booth's, pulled into the driveway, then pressed the garage door button and pulled neatly into the garage.

Once in, I pushed the garage door button once again, then got out and rounded the front of the garage.

The garage was neat and clean, not a single thing cluttered the floor.

I shook my head at Booth's cleanliness.

In the garage, not anywhere else.

He had two places in his whole entire house that were clean.

He'd been the same since I'd met him a very long time ago.

His garage and the kitchen.

Both of those places were so immaculate that you could eat off the floor.

But when it came to his other rooms, I wouldn't trust anything about them.

I used the penlight on my keys to point me to Booth's room, not surprised to see the table still in the same spot as the night before.

He'd pushed it in front of the TV in the living room, giving us a place to eat seeing as he didn't have any chairs.

I stepped over a pair of boots that I didn't recognize just inside the hallway and kept going until I got to the room we'd slept in the night before.

I pushed the door open, walked to the bed and deposited my still dead phone, and hurried to the bathroom.

This time I did turn on the light.

And almost screamed out my fury.

Because there, on the pole that held up the shower curtain, was a plethora of women's lingerie.

"What. The. Fuck," I growled, throwing the bedroom door back open.

It was then I saw the woman in Booth's bed.

"You have," I said, looking at my watch less wrist. "About fifteen seconds to explain exactly who the fuck you are before I throw the biggest fucking bitch fit this world has ever seen. Then beat the shit out of you."

I finished that rant on a near shout.

Footsteps pounded down the hallway towards Booth's room, but I never took my eyes off the beautiful woman in Booth's bed.

Naked.

She had the blanket up to her chest, covering what were probably beautiful breasts.

Her hair was short and platinum, ending right around her chin.

Her eyes were hazel, and her beautiful white teeth made me want to punch her in the face.

She floundered for words as her mouth opened and closed, but nothing ever came out.

I hit the light switch, turning on the ceiling fan light just as the door at my back opened emitting a bleary eyed Aaron.

He looked between me and the woman in the bed three or four times before he shook his head and walked back out of the room.

I turned back to the woman, choosing to see why she was there before I went after Aaron to see why he was out of the hospital when I specifically remembered Booth saying he'd be there for at least another month.

My phone chose that moment to come back to life, and I walked around the edge of the bed, all the while glaring at the woman.

"Hello, asshole," I said into my phone, knowing exactly who it'd be without reading the screen to confirm it.

"What are you doing?" He asked. "Did you hang up on me?"

I laughed.

"Oh, no. I didn't hang up on you. But would you have told me that there was a woman in your bed if my phone hadn't died?" I asked sweetly, a bitter taste in my mouth.

"I told you my ex-wife was there for the night," he said. "And not to scare her."

I pursed my lips.

He might have said that.

I hadn't heard it all, though.

"How convenient," I hissed, narrowing my eyes at the woman that was now smiling.

Now that I was able to see past her nakedness, I realized who it was.

Knowing who the fuck it was didn't make the hurt any better. In fact, it only intensified.

"She's getting married tomorrow," he sighed. "And I would've told you, but it was last minute. By the time I knew, you had already told me goodnight."

I growled in frustration.

Then, for good measure, I hung up on him for real.

Then, I left.

I couldn't stay here.

I didn't think I could ever stay in that bed again, either.

The more I thought about it, the more upset I got.