Hello there!
Firstly, thanks to Guest for your review. Glad to hear it's so "urgent" ;D
This is mostly a recap of the events leading up to "White as the Driven Snow". I hope I'm accurate in recounting them, it's been a while since I saw the episodes. Feel free to correct me if I get something wrong.
Lisbon might a bit OOC towards the end, but cut me some slack, please. Otherwise, the story wouldn't work out.
Please let me know what you think of this!
Enjoy - TheReflection
To her, it seemed as if an eternity had passed.
It had all begun with dinner at a sushi restaurant with Osvaldo Ardilles in his tasseled loafers and his claiming to be monitored. In her opinion, all he was was being paranoid. She still had told the Rigsbys to look into it, and they had, ultimately finding the same Osvaldo Ardilles dead, bound to a comfy chair, a knife sticking out of his chest.
Grace Rigsby had found out that Osvaldo Ardilles had not been wrong and not the only one being bugged. The Rigsbys' phones, hers, Cho's and Jane's as well as the phones of a few other ex-CBI-employees had all been listened in on for a while.
Their search had led them back to an old friend – J.J. LaRoche. Albeit unwillingly, he had agreed to helping them in order to fulfill his longing for a drama-free life. What he'd gotten was a bullet to the chest. He'd been searching an old storage-room and stepped right into a trap. A wire connected to a gun had fired at him seemingly of its own accord and he'd died in Rigsby's arms. LaRoche's dog would have to live ownerless from now on. She pitied it a little.
Grace and Wayne had been attacked then, in their own home, shot at in the presence of little Maddie. Rigsby had managed to lock himself in a closet with their child, Grace had scared the intruder away, and all three of them had made it out unscathed.
The Rigsbys, seeing how they knew the most about the case, had been ordered to Austin, into the headquarters of the FBI, hired as consultants on said case. They gathered suspects from old case files and begun gathering info about those. She'd even had to apologize to one of them because she'd dug into his "privacy" without being authorized. She'd hated herself and that scumbag of a man in that moment.
Then Grace had vanished. Wayne had been out with Jane and Cho, and she'd been taken straight from their hotel room. Needless to say both Rigsby and Jane went completely nuts.
Once they had found only Haibach had the possibility to be behind this crime and had wanted to gather forces to search for him, Wiley had come up and told them that a man had announced himself at the entrance desk. No other than Richard Haibach himself.
It had been clear from the beginning that he knew more than he let on. He'd come in showing them evidence that he'd had no chance of doing anything to Grace, giving them signatures of fellow bus riders and the driver as well as a video of himself on said hour-long bus ride to Austin.
And then he'd said, if he'd have to guess, he'd say Grace was somewhere far away. Rigsby had attacked Haibach, shouting at him, and shoving him against a wall. Cho'd had to drag him away.
And Jane had very openly threatened him. He'd said he had nothing to lose. It made her sad to hear that, for she'd hoped maybe he had found something else to live for, now that he'd returned to the US.
Haibach had lawyered up, and they'd had to let him go.
And then, suddenly, both Jane and Rigsby had gone. As soon as she'd noticed their absence, her stomach hand grown cold. Something was up.
Of course she couldn't know it was Jane who was posing as the lawyer's chauffeur, and that he didn't take the right exit onto the highway, and left said lawyer stranded at the side of a street in order to pick up Rigsby and have his way with Haibach.
All she knew was that Abbott thought she and Cho knew and he was blaming them, accusing them of helping. She was angry, because this wasn't supposed to happen anymore. It had been the old ways of the CBI, Jane messing up and getting her suspended, reprimanded and even fired.
This was not supposed to fucking happen anymore, she thought grimly, but kept a straight face and went on with telling Abbott she hadn't known. She could see it in his eyes that he didn't believe her.
So, when he finally let her and Cho go, she got into her own car without telling anyone, thinking What the hell, I'm probably going to get fired again anyways and stepped onto the accelerator as hard as she could.
It was a long drive. And it was going to take a lot of luck on her side to get anyone out of this mess alive on her own.
She didn't want to drag Cho into this, deniability and all. And seeing how she hated Abbott's guts in that moment, she didn't want to ask for his help.
She was well aware it was pure stupidity. But then, who was there to care about it?
Lisbon certainly didn't. All that mattered to her was getting to them in time to do something to help them.
