6. LIKE A PRISONER
She was standing right next to his car, with her arms crossed, tapping her left foot while she waited for an explanation. He started to stutter one, but she stopped him with a wave of her hand.
"Don't," she commanded. "We'll talk later. I'm sorry, Mandy. I'm sorry he came here to bother you."
"That's ok," Mandy replied, somewhat surprised she had been addressed at that moment.
Sam Bosco's widow had been watching with some kind of uncanny amusement, and she took Lisbon's apology as a hint to go wherever she had meant to go when she told Jane he needed to leave. What both didn't know was that Mandy was thinking of how much that had looked like a married couple's exchange, and that she found a great deal of comfort in the fact that, clearly, Lisbon couldn't have returned her late husband's feelings, seeing as she was already in love with somebody else.
As soon as she was gone, though, Lisbon could not leave any of that for later. She pulled Jane by his arm, forcing him to take a step closer to her, and started hissing at him, afraid to talk too loudly.
"What the hell are you thinking? You need to stay away from this!"
"Why?" he demanded to know. "What is going on? You know I won't rest until I find out."
"Jane," she said, forcing her voice to come out as calm as possible with a deep breath. "If I told you my life depended on you staying away from this, would you stay away?"
She saw Jane's eyes grow wider, and he lowered his head to take a better look at her face.
"What do you mean your life depends on it?" he asked, ready to study her reaction.
"Answer my question," she said firmly. "Would you stay away if you knew it was the only way of keeping me alive?"
As she looked intently into his eyes, hers started to water ever so slightly, and Jane knew that, whatever was going on, it was not her life which was in danger, but the life of someone she cared deeply about. That, however, only made him want to help her even more. He took a deep breath, taking a step back from her.
"Yes," he said, "of course I would."
His answer was nothing but heartfelt; he would do whatever was necessary to save her life. He judged it better, though, to leave out the little detail that he knew that not to be the case, which rendered his promise useless. She nodded, taking in the sincerity of his answer and doing her best to believe he would forget about all that from now on. She then turned around and walked slowly back to her car, throwing one last look in his direction when she shut the driver's side door and started the car.
Jane waited for about a minute to leave in the same direction her car had headed.
"There you are," Van Pelt said enthusiastically. "Now that Lisbon is away you just disappear, don't you?"
Jane shrugged.
"No one to shout at me if I do, are you going to shout at me, Grace?"
She smiled, shaking her head.
"I think I know what he's doing," Cho said, still looking at his computer attentively.
"What who's doing?" Rigsby came into the bullpen asking, with a half-eaten donut in hand.
"Jane, when he disappears," Van Pelt clarified.
"So what is it?" Jane challenged.
"You're looking into the bomb in Lisbon's car," Cho answered with confidence. "We had to drop the case for lack of evidence, but you couldn't stop looking."
"Why didn't you tell us, man?" Rigsby asked. "We would've helped you."
"I confess I tried," Jane hedged, "but there was nothing to look. Whoever did this disappeared without a trace."
"Like you'd be satisfied with that," Van Pelt doubted.
"I'm not," Jane shrugged again. "But I just couldn't find anything to go on. Lisbon doesn't know anything either. The only thing left for us to do is to wait and see if this son of a bitch is going to try again. And hope to catch him before he manages to do anything."
Jane hoped the team would be satisfied with his excuses; he was now sure that, whoever had attempted against Lisbon's life, had also hurt Van Pelt to make a point, and now Lisbon was scared he could try to kill whoever tried to help her find out who he was. So it was safer to have the team stay away from it.
As soon as he could "disappear" again, he would go check up on her. He had followed her to her place, but he had to make sure she was still there and that she was fine.
After going to the Boscos' residence, Lisbon decided to go home. She felt exhausted, and didn't really know where to go or what to do. She also didn't know what Michael Lane would ask of her next, or what he would do next. She felt like a prisoner in her own mind, waiting for her captor's next command. And maybe this prison was even worse than being locked somewhere; she wanted badly to cry, because she realized she couldn't find peace with all that was happening, and that nothing was more important in life than finding peace. Without peace, you could never rest, you could never even sleep at night.
The sun was fading when the ringing of her cell phone brought her back from her thoughts, and she instantly started shaking when she saw the unidentified number on the display.
"Hello," she answered, her voice almost failing her.
"Teresa, you need to get him out of the way, do you understand? Otherwise I'll have to do it myself."
"No!" she begged, almost crying with despair, but she heard it as the line went silent.
He was gone. And she couldn't know for sure that Jane was going to stay out of it. She couldn't bet his life on it. She couldn't risk having Lane kill him because of her. But what could she do? She had spent too many nights trying to think of plans that would help her get rid of this man, that would have him end up in jail like the criminal he was, but she felt that her hands were tied at the moment, and she couldn't even tell anyone about it, because Lane would know, and he would do something about it. He could have killed Van Pelt, she knew that; the only reason her colleague was still alive was because Lane had only meant it as a warning. The next time he did something like that, the target would not survive.
Lisbon realized she was sitting on the floor, with her head resting in her hands, crying. The only time she could remember feeling this lost was when she was just a kid, and her mother had just died, and her father had given up.
And then the bell rang, making her jump.
Her first reaction was to pray it wasn't Lane. Or that it was. Maybe she could surprise him and disarm him, maybe she could turn the whole game around. He would sense a gun, but maybe he wouldn't sense a pocket knife – so she took the one she had once apprehended from Tommy after he had gotten involved in a fight at school and tried to use it. She still had it; who knew it would ever come in handy? She hid it in her sweatshirt's sleeve and approached the door cautiously, drying her eyes with a rough movement of her other arm.
Lisbon decided it was dangerous to stand in front of the door to check the peephole, so she just approached enough to unlock the door and let it swing open, and prepared herself to use the knife against her visitor. She was shaking, but she had no difficulty slipping the knife from her sleeve to her hand and opening it, and when the silhouette of a man stepped into the apartment, she jumped in his direction with the knife at the ready.
"Lisbon!" Jane yelled, hiding behind his left arm, which ended up on the way of Tommy's pocked knife.
When Lisbon realized what had happened, she broke down again. Jane closed the door behind him, then held his arm to stop the bleeding, still unsure of the extent of the injury, but not really in pain probably due to the adrenalin of the scare. He approached her.
"Lisbon, what's going on?"
"What are you doing here, Jane?" she asked amongst her tears. "Go away!"
Letting go of his arm, he held both her shoulders, looking around. The place was a mess, she had circles under her eyes, which were red, and her face was swollen from crying. He felt a sudden urge to protect her, to hold her, and he did so. Too weak to fight, Lisbon simply fell into his arms and cried a little against his chest. Until, a moment later, she dried her tears, coming out of his embrace, and seemed to regain control of herself.
"Let's get that bandaged," she said, businesslike.
As they sat in her kitchen, while Lisbon took care of the wound she had inflicted on him, Jane studied her. He had never seen her so emotionally unstable. The cut wasn't deep, it was just a scratch. But it had stained his shirt and suit jacket, which had been removed to make it easier to clean the cut. They were in silence for a long time, but it wasn't awkward. In fact, Lisbon seemed grateful for not having to talk and for having something to put her mind into for the moment. She was the first to speak, though, when she finished bandaging.
"There you go. Now tell me, what are you doing here?"
Jane looked at her for a moment without answering, as he put his shirt, vest and jacket back on.
"Just checking if you're ok, of course," he said, in a matter-of-fact voice.
"Why?"
"Because there is someone trying to kill you. Someone who put a bomb in your car."
She sighed.
"Someone who tried to kill Van Pelt when she seemed to have a lead on…" Jane was interrupted by Lisbon's hand against his mouth.
"Shhhhhhhhhh!" she hissed, then whispered. "Shut up, for God's sake…"
Lisbon was pleading, and Jane had never seen her so desperate. He shook his head.
"Let me help you," he whispered back.
"The only way you can help me is staying away from me and from all this," she stated, still whispering. "I'm begging you, again…"
They were very close, and Jane felt the urge to hold her again. He wanted to remove that angst from her features, that pain from her eyes. Then her phone rang, making both jump in place and her eyes widen. The next thing Jane knew, she was running for it, and he started running as well. She clearly wanted him not to see who the caller was, so he jumped next to her and they got into a physical fight for the phone.
"Jane, stop!" she asked, but he ended up with the phone.
Seeing as it was an unidentified number, there was nothing else left for him to do but answer.
"Hello?"
"No!" Lisbon shouted, jumping him for the phone.
Both fell to the ground in struggle, and Lisbon managed to have her phone back. She was lying on top of Jane and holding both his arms together with one hand when she was able to bring the phone to her ear. But then, she noticed the call had already ended.
"What did he say?" she asked.
"Nothing," Jane said, struggling to free himself. "He said nothing! Who's he?"
"None of your business," she said, letting go of him and starting to get up.
"Wait a minute!" Jane demanded, pulling her by her arm and making her stay with him on the floor. "Who's this guy? Is he the one trying to kill you? Why does he make you so nervous?"
"You're an idiot!" she said, fighting tears. "Why did you have to pick it up?"
She was shaking almost out of control now, and, not knowing what else to do, Jane tried restraining her in his arms.
"Nothing's gonna happen," he tried to calm her down, realizing she was now worried about him. "It's gonna be okay, we'll figure it all out…"
Exhausted, Lisbon let herself fall back into Jane's embrace, as he did what he could to soothe her and calm her down, by stroking her back with one hand and her scalp amongst her hair with the other, as he said comforting words which she pretended to believe in just for a moment, just for a little while, until she ended up falling asleep.
Jane awoke with a sense of coldness around his body, like something was missing. He quickly recognized his surroundings, as memories of the previous night came back to him. He remembered watching Lisbon fall asleep in his arms, her whole body slowly letting go and becoming heavier against him as she relaxed. But he never noticed himself becoming sleepy after that.
"Lisbon!" he called out as he got to his feet.
Only silence greeted his ears. Shaking his head, he looked around the living room. He found her phone under the table; the display said it was nine AM. He looked everywhere for her keys, but they were gone. He opened the front door and saw that her car was gone as well. Cussing to himself, he entered the apartment again, with his hands on his head, trying to understand why he hadn't woken up when she had, how he had let her leave, and now he had no idea where she was. He started searching everywhere for any clues on where she might have gone.
He knew she had left to go after the man who had called the night before, he just didn't know where; until he did. Of course. How had he not thought of that before? What a better place to meet the man who was trying to kill her than that one? He didn't spend another minute thinking; he left for his car and, as soon as he had put it into drive, he pulled out his phone and dialed Cho, who picked up on the first ring.
"Cho, listen to me. I think Lisbon is in trouble," Jane grinded through his teeth as he sped through traffic.
"What?" Cho asked.
"I can't explain why or even how but I need you to have a team at the old factory where her car blew up," Jane growled as he pushed his foot harder down on the pedal.
"We're on it. And Jane, don't do anything…" Jane snapped his phone closed before Cho could finish.
He knew he was pushing his luck by speeding, but at this point he would be more than happy to pay a damn speeding ticket instead of having something bad happen to Lisbon. Only a few minutes had gone by when Jane pulled into the empty lot and looked toward the building.
