It only took thirty minutes to get there.
The GPS unit guided them to a place in the foothills near the Sacramento River, an expansive but run down ranch which housed a rambling old mansion that looked like it had been built during the Gold Rush days tucked between the hills.
They pulled up in front of the house with the headlights dimmed, the only audible sound the muffled crunch of the tires on the gravel drive. Cho killed the engine and they climbed out of the car, staring at the shadowy monstrosity before them.
"SWAT's fifteen minutes out," Rigsby reported, shutting his phone.
Lisbon raked her fingers through her hair, debating whether to storm the castle gates immediately, so to speak, or to wait for the SWAT team to arrive.
"Think it's a trap?" Cho asked.
Lisbon considered this. It was a valid question. They'd followed the GPS blindly, but they didn't have any assurance that it hadn't been a plant by the men who'd taken Jane. She didn't believe this, however. The oblique reference to the 'Great Zambini' that had led her to the device was classic Jane. More of concern to her was the notion that the GPS could have been taken from him and that this wasn't actually where he was. "No. I don't think so," she said finally.
"What's the plan?" Van Pelt asked.
Lisbon bit her lip. She had to be smart. It had never been more important to make the right decision. Only, which was the right decision – waiting for SWAT or going in immediately? Either way, they had no idea what they were getting into. Jane had been taken over three hours earlier- logically, waiting the fifteen additional minutes wasn't likely to make much of a difference. It would be more prudent to wait for SWAT, but every fiber in her being was telling her to act now. Besides, SWAT were the best of the best, but there were always a lot of them and you could only be so quiet with that many rustling bodies moving through the shadows with semi- automatic weapons. And then there was her team. Despite how many times she'd insisted to Jane they were cops and it was their job to put themselves in danger, big sister instincts died hard, and she suddenly hated the idea of putting any of her team in Red John's sights for even a moment.
"Don't even think about it," Cho said, reading her thoughts on her face. "There's no way we're letting you go in there alone. We know what we signed up for." Rigsby and Van Pelt nodded their agreement.
This decided her. "Okay. Cho, you're with me. Van Pelt, go around the house and cover the back. Rigsby, I'm sorry, but I need you to stay here and wait for SWAT. Once they get here, get them organized and come in behind us, but don't come in guns blazing, okay? If we're going to have any advantage over Red John, we need to have at least some element of surprise on our side. We go in quiet, and we go in fast, got it?"
Rigsby stayed at the car, looking huge and tense, and Van Pelt slipped off into the night with a grim look on her face.
Lisbon could feel Cho at her back as she climbed the steps to the front porch, her gun drawn and her heart in her throat. When they reached the front door, she muttered a quick prayer and tried the knob.
Locked. She turned to Cho. "Can you take care of it?" she whispered.
He peered closely at it. "I think so."
Long, dreadful seconds ticked by as Cho jimmied the lock.
It popped open.
Lisbon entered first, stepping lightly in hopes of avoiding any creaky floorboards. The house was quiet and dark. There were no streetlights near the isolated house, and no moon that night to illuminate the darkened rooms, so they had to move forward as best they could in the near blinding darkness. They came upon an ornate staircase leading to the second story, and Lisbon motioned for Cho to search the upstairs. She would take the ground floor.
The living room and dining room were empty, full of darkly expensive furniture and nothing else. The only evidence of human habitation was a half-empty glass of wine set on top of a massive grand piano that dominated the first room.
Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness by this point, but nonetheless she tripped over something just inside the swinging door when she entered the kitchen. She bit off a yelp of surprise and swore under her breath instead. The floor was slippery and she had to move carefully to regain her footing. She bent down to examine what she'd tripped over, and realized it wasn't a something, after all. It was a someone.
Two someones, in fact.
She recognized the prison guard uniforms first. Two men, both young, with dark hair. They looked enough alike to be brothers, rendered more alike by the identical wide grinning lines where their throats had been slit. The floor was sticky with their blood. Neither of them could have been older than twenty-two, she reflected sadly. God. What was he like, that he could have attracted and corrupted these two young men so thoroughly, and then disposed of them so easily; so untrusting that he'd destroyed two disciples loyal to him to preclude any possibility of betrayal, yet secure in the knowledge that he could always attract others to the sticky web of his will? It didn't even look like they'd struggled.
She swallowed convulsively, praying with all her might that she wouldn't find Jane in a similar state.
There was nothing that could be done for the poor twisted souls on the kitchen floor, so she stood and moved silently across the kitchen. It held nothing else of interest except a white door near the corner of the room. It was probably just a pantry, she thought nervously. She checked it anyway.
The moment she laid her hand on the door handle, she knew that this was what she was looking for. Her blood thrummed in her ears and her heart was beating a rat-a-tat-tat against her rib cage. Despite her religious background, she didn't usually go for what Jane called the 'hoodoo voodoo' part of Christian mythology that Grace put so much stock in, the part that dealt with speaking to relatives beyond the dead and miracle healers, but as certainly as she knew her own name, she knew there was evil on the other side of this door. For good or ill, after all these years, she was finally going to face Red John, and she was going to find him behind this door.
She touched the cross on her neck and checked the clip in her gun. At the very least, she had God and a Sig Sauer on her side, which she figured shortened her odds. She shifted her grip on her gun and opened the door, ready to end this once and for all.