Lisbon
"Damn!" The vulgarity spilled from a woman's hectic mouth as she scrambled to clean up the paper towels. Her inner critic harassed her, "There's too many, there's no way you could get this done! They're going to catch you!" If she was weak she would have felt the need to cry, but if there was any word to describe Agent Lisbon it wasn't weak.
Van Pelt walked cautiously into the bathroom careful to not interrupt something that might be inappropriate or embarrassing, "Oh hey," her boss greeted her with hands behind her back sheepishly standing in front of the trash can, "What are doing here so early?"
The question sounded more like a guilty child inquiring as to the parents arrival rather than a friend simply making conversation, "I came in early today just to get some work done," the young woman explained suspiciously.
Van Pelt
"I'm not stupid. I may be young and thought little of in the office but I am not stupid," she declared to herself. She could see the bloody paper towel that fell out of the trash resting just behind Lisbon's right foot and she noticed the smudged red stain on her face.
"Are you ok boss?"
Lisbon looked down and noticed the one that fell. Her heart sank to her stomach and she sensed a worthless dread of defeat, "Yeah, I'm fine."
A pause. A terrible, awkward pause filled the air and pounded on the ears of both women. Lisbon wanted to find an excuse for Van Pelt to leave, and the latter wasn't going to be the first to blink. Grace had always been trying to figure out how Jane did it- figuring out everything about somebody with merely a glance and only one or two questions. She had always attempted to recreate his mindset and embody it as her own but never succeeded. In the past it had always been because either Jane had beat her to it or it wasn't an important enough situation. She decided to focus as hard as possible to riddle out her boss's odd behavior.
It didn't take very long though, "Boss, there's blood dripping on the floor behind you. Do you need me to get the first aid kit?"
If she said yes it would mean she needed to be helped by her employees and she wasn't powerful enough to be in the position that she is in. If she said no Van Pelt would grow even more curious and bring her story to the rest of the team. And the last person in the world she wanted to hear about this little mistake is Jane.
"Yeah," she said hardly audibly. She kept her arms behind her back.
Jane
The drive to the CBI building was uneventful. There were only three cars he passed on the way and that's no fun. There weren't enough people to make jokes about. At least one guys was worth a small amount of attention. From further down the road Jane spotted a car swerving in and out of lanes. He sped up to see if the man was drunk, distracted, or just dumb. It turned out that he had both hands on the wheel but with his thumbs he was holding open a comic book. The pizza faced nerd had to be no older than 19. Poor boy, he's going to get into a wreck like that one day.
As the devilishly handsome consultant strutted down the hallways he checked his babysitter's office to find a backpack and car keys, but no Lisbon. He knew she was coming right back so he put on a pot of muddy dirt water for her return.
"Oh, hello Grace. What are you doing here so early? Trying to impress Lisbon?" he joked. She let out a small chuckle and brushed right passed him and removed the first aid kit. He knew something was wrong.