Authors Note: This was written for the Mentalist Big Bang over on LJ. Special thanks to miss peg for the cheerleading (and art, that can be found linked to on my journal) and sprl119 for the wonderful beta. Seriously, the woman is a miracle worker. This story is fully written, and I will post as I get a chance, there will be a total of 15 chapters.

Runaway

She watched as Craig dropped before her, too stunned to speak. How had this happened to her? How had she been so thoroughly fooled? She went to him, wanted to make sure that it was really happening. He pulled off her necklace, the one that he had given her, and the last little bit of her died inside.

She stood outside the cabin as cops came, watched them mill around. Was this what she looked like at a scene to the people who were in shock? To the victims? Like insects at a garbage dump, marking everything and ignoring everything at the same time.

She heard someone laugh and shuddered. How could someone laugh? Her fiancé, lie or not, was in the cabin on the floor, dead. Her boss, a woman she looked up to more than anything in the world was on her way to the hospital, gunshot wound to the shoulder, hopefully nothing lingering or fatal , and everyone else…

She knew someone should call Cho and Rigsby and Jane, but she couldn't make her hands reach for her phone, heavy in her pocket. She saw Hightower out of the corner of her eye, crouched down talking to her children; they at least would be ok.

She knew she should do something, talk to someone, she was going to have to give a statement to someone, tell about what she knew, about her relationship with Craig, if that was even his name. Would he be able to get a job with the FBI if that wasn't his name? Could working for Red John give you access to the power required to fake your identity so perfectly?

She knew they would ask her questions about what they had done together, how their relationship had progressed, why they had gotten engaged so quickly, why they were getting married so quickly. And she would have to tell her parents. Tell them that her fiancé, the man that she loved, thought she loved, was in league with a serial killer.

And she couldn't do it.

She stepped off the porch and walked towards the gate, she didn't know where she was going, she just knew that she couldn't stay here. She walked out the gate, no one noticed her. Past the police car sitting in the driveway, surrounded with more insect like cops paying her no mind, scuttling around in the dirt that surrounded the cabin.

She turned up the road, heading in the opposite direction of town. She didn't want to run into anyone. She didn't know what lay in that direction, walking up the mountain, but she knew that it was the only way she could escape.