Disclaimer: The Mentalist doesn't belong to me, no money made

Waiting Calls

I'd never known how long three hours can be.

I watched the light move over the walls of my cell, all thoughts of safety forgotten, and wondered how I had never seen how unbelievably strange and wonderful the turning of the Earth is; how I could have wasted even one evening without watching the clouds grow rosy cheeks and puffy brows, and never noticed how much space there is between us down here and the sky up there.

Nothing happened.

Finally, when I was staring into the orange glow of a city night dry eyed, hoping to get a glimpse of a star, the phone rang once more.

At first, I just sat there, like I had already left this mundane world in which there are things like phones and people calling, expecting you to pick up when you're there.

But when the phone didn't stop ringing, I moved away from the window and walked over to where the noise was coming from. My fingers were numb, but I managed to bring the receiver up to my ear.

"Yes." My throat felt raw. My voice rang false in my own ears. I had fully expected to never hear it again.

"Emma?", a woman's voice said, loudly. "Thank God you're still there, I was afraid you'd take matters into your own hands!" I realized it was agent Lisbon talking to me, and my heart thumped loudly in my chest. "Are you alright? You don't have to worry any more, we got him!"

In the background, I could hear men shouting and the loud voice of a woman trying to talk over it all.

I sat down on the floor because my knees gave in. "You... got him?", I whispered, and now I was crying for real.

Three days had passed since "they got him". This had left me with sufficient time to calm down enough to grow bored and rather annoyed by how in the dark I was being kept.

For example, what was that supposed to mean, "we got him"? Did they catch him, or did they succeed in shooting him? Was he hit, or shot dead? Was he in jail or in the morgue?

It wasn't like whatever happened to Red John was of no consequence to me, I reflected morosely – if there was to be a trial, I was surely going to be called upon as a witness. If he was dead, I was one of two people who could identify him. Additionally, I didn't know whether my name had been in the news – my television only played DVDs, after all, and there was no radio. If it had been, going to college was going to be tough, at least for a few months.

Also, the fact that I'd just disappeared for ten days without so much as a word to the people at the café didn't sit too well with me. At the time, my job had been pretty far down the list of my priorities, but it seemed like it was back on top after all, now that I could tick off "staying alive". The boss was not going to be happy. Hopefully, he had not found anyone else yet.

So when the phone finally rang, I was slow to answer it out of pure spite. After staring at it ringing for 13 times, I picked up halfway through the fourteenth ring. The sound died abruptly.

"Yes?"; I said, rather more polite than I felt like doing.

A small silence greeted me, and then a male voice answered, almost reluctantly.

"Ms. Jane?", it said. "This is... Patrick Jane, from the CBI."

Another pause followed.

What a strange way to begin a conversation when you're a professional, I thought. When he hadn't said anything else for an uncomfortably long time, I jumped in.

"Yes, Mr. Jane, I remember. What is it?" I asked, and added, when a scary thought struck me, "How's agent Lisbon?"