A/N: Hey, sorry it's been so long since my last update! Both me and my beta have been getting heaps of school work lately, so I haven't had much opportunity to write! Then I went on a three week holiday to America (which was amazing! AND I GOT TO SEE THE SET OF THE MENTALIST! It was SO AMAZING!) But, finally, here is the next chapter!

Disclaimer: I don't currently, and never will, own the Mentalist :(

Chapter 4

The five members of the serious crimes unit sat around a table in Director Bertram's office.

They had spent the last hour explaining to him, in detail the events of the past couple of days, everything from Lorelei's arrest to the discovery of Darcy's brutally disfigured body. It was now late afternoon, and Lisbon could barely believe that it was the very same day she'd visited Jane at his house.

"So you're telling me Agent Darcy was a spy for Red John?" Bertram clarified, eyebrows raised.

"Yes," Jane said sternly. "She shot Lorelei for no reason, we were both cooperating. And then she told me it would be her word against mine, who did I think you'd believe."

"Well Jane, she has a point. You're not even working for the CBI right now. In fact, none of you are," he pointed out, scanning the room of stony faced agents. "Is that the only evidence you have against her?"

Jane sighed in defeat. Then a gasp from Lisbon drew everyone's attention.

"Yes, there is something else," she cried, eyes wide. "Before Lorelei was arrested, Jane called me. He told me to make sure no one from the CBI had contact with him, because it could compromise his attempt to catch Red John. Only a couple of minutes later Wainwright suggested we should reach out to Jane, help him out. He was about to call him, so I hinted that Jane had everything under control. The only person he would have told about that would be Darcy."

"So…?" Bertram prompted.

"So Darcy was the one who told Red John that Jane was playing him. If Wainwright told her I said Jane was fine, she would have worked out I'd had contact with him. She warned Red John, that's why he wasn't in that car."

"Or Wainwright told him," Bertram suggested.

"Wainwright was tied up in the back of the car, then shot and killed, Jane recounted. "I know Red John doesn't treat his minions too well, but I'm pretty sure if Wainwright was working with him there wouldn't be any need to tie him up in the first place. He wouldn't have known he was about to be shot."

"True, true," Bertram nodded thoughtfully. "But what if Red John was never planning to meet you anyway?"

"That's also possible, but when I met Lorelei at that car she seemed certain I had no intention of joining Red John. Before that she'd believed me, I'm sure of it."

"Okay, so maybe Darcy was working for Red John," Bertram conceded. "That's kind of good isn't it? I mean, now he no longer has a mole in the CBI."

"Before I probably would have agreed with you," Jane said. "But I'm not so sure any more. I think he's even more powerful than we originally thought. He's probably already got someone else spying on us. Probably numerous people."

Bertram sat in silence for a moment, weighing up his options, his head rested on his hands. On the one hand, sitting in front of him was a team of rogue agents, who had on many occasions been completely willing to defy direct orders in their mission to find Red John, and been manipulated and controlled by an individual far to close to the case than was wise.

But, on the other hand, they were the best team in the whole of the CBI. And, as he had always said, Jane closed cases. That was a fact. There wasn't a team in existence who would work harder on this case than they would.

He raised his head, looking at the anxious faces in front of him, staring back. He sighed, then delivered his verdict.

"I will reinstate you all, including Jane," Bertram addressed Lisbon. "But only because you're team has the most experience working the Red John case. However, if any of you do anything that could reflect badly on the bureau, you won't be getting another chance."

All simultaneously breathed a sigh of relief, finally breaking into smiles for the first time that day. With the exception of Cho, of course.

"Thankyou," Lisbon beamed, clasping Director Bertram's hand in gratitude.

"Just don't mess it up," he told them as they filed out of his office.

The team sat at the table in the bull pen. Even Jane had left his couch, an indicator of just how serious this investigation had become.

"We should start by examining everything in this whole building," Lisbon suggested.

"But that's pointless," Jane retorted. "There is no way Red John would have left any evidence whatsoever unless he wanted us to have it. He would have been even more careful than usual given he was actually inside the CBI."

"We should still give it a shot," Lisbon told him. "Besides, maybe the danger of being caught distracted him, and he did something out of the ordinary."

Jane didn't seem convinced, though he didn't bother complaining since he knew it would make no difference.

"Rigsby, I want you and Van Pelt to check the surveillance footage. Even if it has been switched, it's possible something was missed.

Cho, you look around Darcy's office, see if there's anything there that could help us. Jane and I will go take a look at her house."

As the team filed out of the room to begin their search, Jane remained seated, deep in thought. Lisbon watched him for a few moments, though he seemed oblivious to her gaze. She returned to her seat, resting her elbows against the table, her palms on her chin.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked, concerned at his sudden lack of interest in their investigation.

"It's just that, well, before his spies had always been fairly important. A secretary at the CBI, an FBI agent. But Darcy? She was the head of the CBI. She was powerful, she could have done virtually anything." He sighed, then continued. "Suddenly I'm feeling like anyone I meet could be working for him. Anyone, from random people on the street to people I've been working with for years and years. For all I know, you could be working for him."

Lisbon sat in silence, considering his concerns. At first she was tempted to just assume he was being paranoid and move on. But she had to admit, he had a point. She thought about everyone they'd come into contact with in the past few years. None of them seemed like candidates for Red John's followers, but then, neither did O'Laughlin, Lorelei, Rebecca or Darcy.

They were all so different, and yet he had chosen them. The more worrying thing about them, though, was the fact that Jane had never suspected them. Somehow she had always felt safe because of Jane's skill at reading people, working out their personalities after knowing them for just a few minutes. Yet he hadn't picked any of them as minions for Red John.

It was so easy for him to get to them. For the first time she began to wonder whether they were in way over their heads. He could kill them at any moment, with no warning. He could track their every move, and they would be none the wiser. He seemed impossible to beat.

And then there was the other thought that had been bugging Lisbon for a while now. Red John's followers seemed never ending. Whenever one was killed, another would be ready, just waiting to infiltrate some of the most secure organisations in the country. She couldn't help wondering what would happen to them all when Red John was finally killed.

Sure, some would be arrested, and some would go back to the lives they'd lived before he'd entered them. But surely his closest friends wouldn't be able to let the lifestyle of a serial killer's assistant go. What if, once he died, another stepped up to his place? What if it was a never ending cycle that could never be stopped?

But she knew these weren't the sort of scenarios she should be considering. They had to keep the investigation going.

She turned back to Jane, a look of understanding on her face. "I know all this is hard. And you're right; anyone we meet could be working for Red John. They could even be Red John. But worrying about that isn't going to catch him. We need to stay focused."

He nodded his head in agreement, and together they set off to investigate Darcy's house, praying for something, anything, that might move the investigation forward.

Van Pelt and Rigsby stood beside the CBI employee in charge of monitoring the security cameras. He was a slim, twig like figure, with wide rimmed glasses and a slight stammer. Whilst he was awkward around people, his computer skills were astounding.

"I-I've checked all t-t-through the footage, and you were right," he informed them quietly, his head tilted to the ground as he spoke, his fingers twitching as he clasped his hands together. "The f-footage from a couple of m-months ago was lifted and placed where the footage from t-today should be. I w-w-wouldn't have noticed it if you hadn't pointed it out, whoever d-d-did this is very skilled."

"Is there any way you can track whoever changed the footage around?" Van Pelt asked hopefully.

"N-normally, it would be easy. Most p-people don't cover their tracks on the internet very efficiently. But t-t-this guy, he's smart. He's bypassed about ten different servers from all over the w-w-world, making it impossible to find even the state he's in."

"Well, is there any footage that he missed? Something that doesn't fit?" Rigsby suggested.

The guy sat himself back down in front of the dozens of screens, typing on his keyboard at lightning pace. Numbers in green scrolled down the screens, as the computer whizz typed in code after code. Even Van Pelt, who had a reasonably good understanding of computer software, was completely confused by the whole thing. Rigsby just stared, awestruck.

Within a couple of minutes the young man turned back around, facing them once more.

"There is absolutely n-nothing out of the o-ordinary on any of the cameras. Your guy must be some sort of c-c-computer hacker, or at the very least knows someone who is."

Van Pelt and Rigsby thanked the young man, who returned to his high speed typing, and left with no new insights at all.

Cho had turned Darcy's office upside down in his search for clues, and the place had begun to look like a herd of rhinos had been let loose inside. Every folder on the bookcase, every file in the cabinet and every sheet of paper lying on her desk had to be sorted through. This task had taken him about three hours, and very little had been achieved in this time.

Although he had found a rather interesting cardboard box, with 'Jane' written on the front in black marker, which contained every complaint ever filed against him. Needless to say, reading the contents of this had made Cho smile for the first time that day. Well, more likely that month.

He had then moved on to her computer, clicking folder after folder. At first they had contained information on every single case worked on by every single team in the entire CBI, but as he dug deeper, he found documents of a much more interesting nature.

A folder labelled 'private' held a detailed analysis on every member of his team, everything from their day to day behaviour and work on cases to a comprehensive outline of their personality traits.

He continued searching the desktop, then moved to internet activity. A number of emails had been sent to a variety of accounts, some work related, some personal, and some encrypted. Cho copied the addresses down, moving the mouse across the screen to the button entitled 'history'.

Darcy had deleted the history, but not efficiently enough for it to be untraceable. Cho used the computer skills very few knew he possessed to recover the most recently viewed websites.

The majority had been news sites, and some others were related to various cases. But a suspiciously large number were blogs and news updates on the Red John case. He would have expected one or two Red John related searches, but certainly nowhere near this many. And definitely not three or four times every single day.

The SUV came screeching to a stop outside Darcy's house. It was a lavish looking place for a former FBI agent, even for the agent in charge at the CBI. It was a neat, two story building, with a small, white stone balcony above the entrance, which was also white. The garden was manicured neatly, with shaped trees and roses lining the property.

Lisbon wondered to herself where Darcy might have earned the sort of money to keep a place like this so neat. It was certainly a possibility that Red John had contributed to this fund, rewarding Darcy's loyalty.

She followed Jane up the pebbled path to the entrance. She almost commented on their lack of keys, though before she could speak Jane had pried the door open with a safety pin. It swung open welcomingly.

The hallway, too, seemed expensive, with marble flooring and a high ceiling. Lisbon would never have picked Darcy as the extravagant type, but as she moved further and further into the dwelling, she began to realise just how mistaken she'd been.

They passed the kitchen, dining and lounge rooms without bothering to stop. If Darcy had left any evidence of her secret life, it would be in her bedroom or study.

The bedroom was the first one they came to. It was furnished simply, a queen sized bed in the centre of the room, chest of draws on the side wall and a matching wooden wardrobe opposite.

Lisbon began emptying the wardrobe, and Jane mirrored her at the chest of draws. Within moments the floor was completely littered with clothes.

Jane began pulling the draws out one by one, investigating each one for a hidden storage compartment. Lisbon climbed inside the wardrobe, tapping the walls, ear pressed against them, listening for a section that sounded too hollow.

Once the walls had been cleared from suspicion, she moved her attention to the wood above her head. She moved her fist up, rapping hard with her knuckles. The whole piece gave way, and she narrowly avoided being hit by the falling shards.

"Good work Lisbon," Jane praised with a smirk. She seemed unimpressed.

Together they sorted though the piles of wood.

"Here," Jane called across to her, holding a sheet of paper above his head in victory. Lisbon turned to see his discovery, though froze, distracted by something just behind his head.

"Hello, I'm here," Jane waved his arms about, trying to regain her attention. When she didn't react, he turned his head to see for himself what she was so fixated on.

And found himself staring down the barrel of a gun.

A/N: Sorry about the cliffy! It's getting intense! I'll try to update as soon as possible! And pretty pretty pretty please review!