Brennan bolted out of her chair and pressed her back up against the wall.
"What are you doing here? How did you get in?" She began to reach for the phone.
"Don't bother. The line is disconnected. Sorry, darling, but I had to take precautions."
"What do you want?" she demanded. Keenan started towards her, but Brennan grabbed an antique figurine sitting on her desk. "Don't come any closer!" she warned, wielding the figurine as a club. Her father raised his hands, palms outward, in a gesture of peace and stepped pasulong again.
"Now, sweetie, don't be irrational. It's unbecoming. I just want to talk-"
"I said, don't come any closer!"
"Tempe, honestly. I just want to talk, I promise. Here, sit down and I'll just stand over here. Okay?" Brennan glared at him, but slowly settled down into her chair. "What do you want, Max?"
"Now, I can't tell you everything here, but I will give you the basics. First, I'm in trouble. A man is after me and he wants me dead. He had a partner too, but that one's dead now. I-"
"You killed him, didn't you? Max, I thought you were retired! And the other one is after you because of that." Brennan scowled. "I'm not going to help you!"
"I wasn't going to ask-"
"But you wouldn't mind if I did help you, would you? Don't lie to me, Max."
"Sweetie, I'm not lying to you. Now if you would stop interrupting me, I could finish my story. I need you to trust me."
Brennan stood abruptly and paced back and forth. "Why should I trust you? You kill people! You burn them and gut them. Why should I trust you at all? The Columbus - that's you, right? Dad, you killed a man!"
"He was coming after you and your brother! I had to protect you!"
"You didn't have to do what you did! There are other means. You could have turned him in. And why that mixture of flammable substances?"
"I wanted to make sure the job would be done." He tried to ilipat closer towards his daughter, but she pointed the figurine at him again, glaring at him furiously. He quietly backed away.
"Well, you did your job. His remains are in our lab. But you still have failed to answer my tanong - why did you come to see me? I could care less that this man is after you." She sat back down and folded her arms across her chest, the scowl back on her face. Why did he always have to ruin things? Keenan glanced at her, his own pain written on his features.
"Look, Tempe. I know I was a bad father. I know I abandoned you and Russ and I regret that."
"It's too late for apologies."
"I know. The reason why I'm here is because I wanted to tell you about your mother."
Silence hung in the air. Once again, Brennan was fighting internally with all of the conflicting feelings welling up inside her. She knew she should hand her father over to Booth right then and there, but he had information she was so desperately wanting to know. She wanted to spit at him, to beat at him and hurt him for what he had done, for all the pain he had caused her. But all Brennan did was nod.
"Good. Meet me at Gilligan's Bar tonight at 8:00. I'll be in the back at a mesa marked with a litrato of Elvis on the pader directly above."
"But-"
"Goodbye, Temperence. I pag-ibig you."
"Max, wait-" she protested. She jumped out of her upuan and started over to where he stood, but he opened the window and hauled himself over the edge. Too late she noticed the cord tightly secured to a built-in stone planter on the outside wall. Brennan leaned her head out of the window in time to see Max Keenan get into a dark blue sedan and drive away, blowing her a halik as he went.
"So that's how he got in," she muttered.