Explanations

Chapter 9

This was one of the nights Jane had decided to sleep on the sofa at the CBI. His mind had been working overtime trying to decipher the coded words, thus making it difficult for him to relax and sleep.

Instead he fell into a fog of strange images.

He was running, hurrying through a series of long hallways, being chased by a faceless stranger. Jane tried several doors, but they were all locked. He just had to keep running and running, but the mysterious entity seemed to be closing the gap. And just as two cold hands were about to reach out and grab him, Jane tried the last door. It opened and he burst in and then slammed the door.

And Jane found himself unexpectedly in Lisbon's office.

Breathing heavily from the chase, he felt safe at last, until the sight of her made him stop in his tracks.

Lisbon sat behind her desk, studying an opened file. Unaware of his presence, she continued her reading. She was wearing her usual black pantsuit uniform, except the contrasting white button shirt seemed to be short a top button, creating a deep 'v' in the front. Golden streams of light from the opened window played over her glistening hair and vulnerable face as she glanced up.

And her eyes collided with his.

It became even harder for him to catch his breath at the sight of her alluring eyes and rose-tinted mouth.

"Jane," she said, giving him a hesitant welcome. Her smile was so lovely and warm that it pulled something deep in his chest, "What are you doing here?"

His head was filled with optimism; one, because he was no longer being chased, and two, he was alone with Lisbon.

He walked slowly towards her, "I've been trying to outrun my demon."

"Oh?" Lisbon lifted one eyebrow, "And were you successful?"

"Yes, and I've come to a realization, Teresa."

A glint of surprise showed in her eyes as two bright spots appeared on her cheeks. She knew this was something personal. She stood up and came around the desk to come face to face with him. Though feminine and petite, her boundless energy and sheer presence seemed to fill the entire room.

He was unable to look away at her riveting eyes.

"So, tell me what that is," she said, sounding more like a request than a demand.

It was difficult for him. He exhaled deeply.

"It's just that this past year...I've been emotionally running...running away...from life."

She looked confused.

"Oh-kay, so what does this have to do with me?"

He berated himself for being so vague with his words. Why doesn't he just tell her what needed to be said? He's certainly thought about it enough. He swallowed hard as she looked questionably at him.

"But I wasn't running away...instead, I was running towards something," his eyes looked so clear now, "I was running towards you, Teresa," he admitted, " because...I'm in love with you."

It had been actually easier to say than he had thought. And when he did, he felt he could breathe again, too. His gaze swept over her face, looking for a reaction. As he waited, he felt his own heart pounding frantically in his chest.

Lisbon turned away flustered. Then she returned his gaze with a direct one of her own.

"I'm in love with you back."

Jane was rarely one to be caught surprised, but this time he was.

And it caused knots of excitement and pleasure to tighten inside of him.

Wordlessly, he moved closer to her, and slid one arm around her small waist to steady them both. Lisbon could barely breathe as she gave him a responsive shiver.

It was all the answer he needed.

Jane pulled her against him and lowered his mouth to hers.

His mouth moved over hers in supple, intimate angles until he found the perfect alignment that made her weak all over. Her body felt warm and smelled so sweet as she threw her arms around the back of his neck and molded herself to him. His hands moved up and down her back slowly, pressing her even tighter against his chest.

He loved the feel of her mouth, the lingering touch of her hands. Breathing deeply he continued to twist his mouth over hers in long, searching kisses, pulling her in to allow no space between them, when suddenly..."

PLOP!

The dream evaporated as he landed with a thud and felt the hardness of the floor on his backside .Groaning, he opened his eyes and realized he had fallen off the sofa. It was very early in the morning and obviously he had been here on the sofa for most of the night.

He needed to get ready for another day before the other agents came in. With that thought in mind, he picked himself up from the floor and gathered the blanket that had fallen alongside him, the one that had previously been covering him. As he folded the blanket, he paused.

Blanket?

Where had the blanket come from?

.

Lisbon had managed to come in almost at the crack of dawn, anxious to get to work. She had made progress with the Bellini investigation, but still, it wasn't moving forward.

Last night she had given the FBI forensic anthropologist a photo and measurements of Marco Bellini's face. Just now she received an email back from them with the digital file of Bellini's facial reconstruction attached. She stared at the face, thinking it looked nothing like the Marco Bellini she and Jane had met at the restaurant the other day.

At the thought of Jane, she allowed her mind to wander a bit. He really was an enigma; annoying and smug on one hand while funny and charming, and brilliant on the other. She pretended not to notice that she had given more positive qualities to him than negative ones.

But, it wasn't as if anything would develop anyway. He was busy chasing Red John and she had a job. No...a career that consumed her life. She was smart enough to know that Jane was using her to get information about Red John. She was mainly being used as a means to an end.

Yes, she needed to stop getting the warm fuzzies when she was with him. Once he solved the Red John case, he would be gone.

Just don't leave without saying goodbye, she wistfully internalized.

A commanding male voice from behind her interrupted her musings, "Any progress so far on the Bellini case, Agent Lisbon?"

Lisbon looked up to see Director Minelli standing above her desk. She blinked twice and then was able to quickly switch to the case.

"Yes, Sir. I've just received a generated image of Bellini's original face," she informed him, as she handed the photo over to Bellini, "I now plan to run the photos through our databases to see if it matches any cases with the FBI and also with the Sacramento Police force."

"Good work," Minelli told her, "and what are your plans this morning regarding waking Jane up?"

So she was not the only one who could instantly switch topics.

"Sir?" Lisbon pretended to look confused, although she wasn't.

When she had arrived this morning, she had seen Jane asleep on the couch. Knowing there was an old blanket in the stockroom, she had retrieved it and laid it over him. It was nice seeing him at peace with the world.

Minelli was going to answer, when Jane suddenly appeared at the doorway. And in his hand he held two Styrofoam cups of what she figured were filled with tea.

"I'm here, although slightly late," Jane said, as he sauntered into Lisbon office and put the cups down.

He looked bright and relaxed. It was the first time in months that he did not have insomnia.

"I hope you have a good excuse for your tardiness," Lisbon teased, liking that he had been kind in bringing her tea. She was beginning to prefer it over coffee.

"I do," Jane quipped, "I had been abducted by aliens. Then after being transported to the Mothership, the aliens decided NOT to suck out my brains, so they sent me back home. That took some time, but at least I made it back here."

The answer was so ridiculous. Minelli remained stoned-faced but it made Lisbon smile, her eyes sparkling.

He watched Lisbon and Jane exchange happy expressions.

So it's like that, Minelli thought.

.

Now alone in the office with Jane, Lisbon had updated him as to the previous identity of Marco Bellini.

"The plastic surgeon did a good job with him," Jane commented as he handed Lisbon the picture back.

"Well, now that we know what Marco Bellini originally looked like, we now also have his real name, too."

"I'm all ears," Jane told her as he sat down, "well, not all ears.. not the part that is identified as my mouth. I need that for speaking."

Lisbon's mouth curved slightly as she took photo out of her file to show him. It looked like a passport or ID photo and it almost perfectly matched the computer-drawn image.

"His real name is Stefano Abelli," she told him, "he's a fugitive, wanted on kidnapping, extortion and murder charges."

Jane leaned forward to look at the photos, "go on."

"We believe Bellini -that is, to say, Stefano Abelli- was the point man in the kidnapping of 21-year-old Claire Havington seven years ago." Lisbon now shoved a picture of a lovely blonde-haired teenage girl in front of Jane, "The kidnappers were waiting for her at home when she came back from school. They ended up cutting off a tip of her right ear to leave for her father as evidence that they had abducted her."

"Her last name is Havington?" Jane wondered, "Where have I heard that name before?"

"Raymond Havington is her father."

"The casino owner?" Jane questioned.

The infamous Raymond Havington was owner of the Double Down Hotel and Casino, approximately 20 miles outside of Sacramento. He was noted as being one of ten of the richest men in the world. And he didn't achieve that from playing nice.

"Yes, " Lisbon continued, "Anyway, Havington later got a call from the kidnappers demanding 8 million dollars in cash in six hours or his daughter would be killed. He did as he was told and met them at the designated location. After the handover, they were to tell him where she was buried, which was in a wooden storage shed in Glen Woods."

Lisbon next slid another picture for Jane to view. It showed the teenage girl, curled in a corner of the wooden shed, her hands bound and right earlobe bandaged. She was obviously dead.

"Her father was too late," Lisbon sounded very clinical, although her eyes saddened, "His daughter didn't survive the captivity in the shed. The kidnappers had used a makeshift pipe for fresh air and given her bottled water, but this was in the middle of a hot, humid Sacrament summer. I don't think they meant for her to die...but it doesn't change the result."

Jane solemnly nodded, trying not to think about his daughter's last minutes of life, "They didn't take into account her terror. That fear would have increased her breathing, thus increasing her need for more oxygen. In turn it would have caused her to become more dehydrated, with moisture escaping quickly from her body with each terrifying breath."

The image was unbelievably morbid.

"The poor girl," Lisbon shook her head back and forth, "it must have been a horrible death."

Though Jane was not a multi-millionaire, he could relate to this Havington guy on one level. He knew what it was like to lose a daughter. It was like the joy and sunshine had been sucked from your life. He tried to force himself back on the case and then something Lisbon said hit him oddly.

"Wait..." he said, "you've used the word 'they' several times in describing the kidnappers. So it wasn't just Stephano Abelli involved in this. There was more than one kidnapper."

Lisbon spread out a new array of photos.

"Meet the rest of the murderous crew," she announced, "Ralph Stevens, Maggie Linn and Cathy Lowell."

Jane burned each photo into his memory bank before he looked back up at her, "So the three other kidnappers are still at large?"

She nodded, "These three actually used to work for the rich casino owner Raymond Havington. Stevens was a casino supervisor and the two females were casino waitresses. They all disappeared the day of the kidnapping and haven't been heard from since."

"So we are to assume that just like Stephano Abelli, the three used part of the ransom money to have extensive plastic surgery done, and then later bought new identities," Jane concluded.

"That feels just about right," Lisbon agreed, " And I think that's why Abelli's, or rather Marco Bellini's, house was burnt down," she added, "the warning was not for us, but for the other three kidnappers."

For one of the few times in his life, Jane was wrong, but he sure wasn't going to point it out.

"So the killer isn't finished yet," Jane said, moving the conversation forward, "for some reason, he's after these kidnappers of Claire Havington."

"Seems to be. And there's more," Lisbon said.

Jane grimaced, "Why am I not surprised?"

"But you may like this news," she lightly hinted.

Jane was alert.

"Oh? Well, I could certainly use some, besides the news of me working alongside you, of course."

Lisbon wasn't taking any of this to heart.

" Since when did you start being flirtatious?" she asked.

"I'm not a flirt, I'm an optimist...and I'm positive about that," he jested.

She laughed.

Oh god, Merton thought as he listened in, how annoying these two can be.

They are so nauseatingly adorable.

It was almost reason enough to kill them right now.

Merton disgustedly turned off the listening device, at least for a few minutes.

His ears needed the rest.

From his cheap motel room in the poorly kept residential area of Oak Park, Merton next focused his attention to the screen on his computer and stared at the facial reconstruction of Bellini on his laptop that Lisbon had downloaded onto her computer.

This re-creation of Bellini was rather good, Merton thought. The picture showed a fuller, fleshier, more lived-in computer generated face of Bellini than Merton had remembered. The forensics department should be commended.

He was also impressed with the progress that Lisbon and Jane seemed to be making. They were well on their way to breaking this case wide open, which in turn, will lead him to the other kidnappers.

And Merton would be there, every murderous step of the way.

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(A/N: Hey, this is season one, I had to find a way for Jane and Lisbon to get in some kind of smooching! *winks*)

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