Booth and Brennan’s next case leads them to a crime scene where a human carcass has literally melted into the dashboard of a charred truck. As the team investigates the case, they discover a gunshot wound in the victim, but learn that neither the fire nor the bullet was the cause of the victim’s death. Additional clues lead them to a local high school where the victim’s wife is a teacher. As a student-teacher relationship begins to surface and a pattern takes shape in the lab, the team is able to track down the murder weapon and solve the crime. Meanwhile, Sweets resists the temptation of allowing his feelings for Daisy to interfere with helping her pass a government psychological evaluation, and Hannah attempts to break the ice and warm up to Booth’s son Parker.

Brennan gets a glimpse into her own life when the body of a brilliant and career-driven surgeon is found in a rough neighborhood with multiple fractures in her skull and no indication as to how or why she was there. While the team investigates the case objectively, Brennan struggles to separate her own life from the victim’s as she perceives many parallels between them the more she learns about the victim’s past. Meanwhile, evidence found at the crime scene brings the team closer to solving the case, but it’s Brennan’s unique perspective that propels her to retrace the final events of the victim’s life. With the reassurance of a new friend and Jeffersonian security guard, Micah Leggat, Brennan makes a discovery about herself and learns a lesson about taking chances.