When a woman’s burned body is found in a car with signs that her child was kidnapped, Brennan and Booth suspect the father, Carl Decker. But things get complicated when Decker turns out to be in the Witness Protection program.

Brennan and Booth investigate the origins of a decomposed body that's been found in a local alley and determine it's the remains of a shy teen with an alter ego.

Booth and Brennan investigate when a dug up corpse is found in the back of a gang member's car. While being questioned, a drive-by shooting allows him to escape. Booth and Brennan follow the clues, which lead them to an empty grave and another body in a grave at a wealthy senator's house, where the gang member used to work.

Brennan and Zach investigate a small jet crash that was carrying some Chinese diplomats and a woman. At the crash site, Brennan finds some bone fragments that do not belong to any of the passengers, but might belong to a man who has been missing for five years. Although ordered to work only on the diplomats, Brennan and her team go rogue to try to discover the identity of the extra bones.

When Brennan decides to give online dating a try, she ends up the target of a shooting at the local restaurant where she's meeting her date. The resulting investigation reveals that the shooter could be connected to either of the two cases she's currently working on.

Brennan and Booth stumble upon a subterranean world of homeless people when they find the remains of a filmmaker in the ventilation shaft of an underground tunnel.

While on vacation, Angela's boyfriend goes missing . When a skull shows up, she asks Brennan for help in identification, concerned it might be her boyfriend or the female guide who went missing with him. The investigation leads the team to a violent boyfriend, the local sheriff and ultimately to a counterfeiting ring setup in the desert.

A human finger bone found in the clutches of a drowning victim leads to a search for buried treasure.