Chapter 10 : if it's the last thing that I do
Jane dials Lisbon's number. He keeps his eyes carefully on Red John. Playing this unbearably intimate game with Red John required carefully placing Lisbon in a locked corner of his mind. In that corner is his long held knowledge of her clear eyes and forthright mind, along with new knowledge of the taste of her skin under his lips, the gratifying way her breath catches as he touches her, the myriad of ways she speaks without words.
Jane does not hold his breath as the phone rings. Lisbon answers.
"Jane?" Her voice brings back all the unwise things he'd rather be saying to her.
"Hey Lisbon," he says instead. He chooses to sound offhand.
"Jane, thank God. Where the hell are you?"
"Ah. God and hell in the same sentence, Theresa. You must be worried. I'm sincerely sorry about that."
"You'd... vanished," she says slowly. "I couldn't reach you." He imagines her head tilted. She sounds less furious than he would expect. She can tell something is wrong.
Jane fixes Red John with his eyes.
"Yeah, look here's the situation," he says to Lisbon. "Everything between us happened much too fast. What I need - I need some time to get reacquainted with myself. In the end you're not family to me and whatever happened I let my family go too soon. The truth is I was settling for second best. But family is too important to overlook."
"What are you saying, Jane?"
"I lost myself, Theresa. Tonight I had too much to drink and I drove myself home. I could have killed someone. It is clear that I need some distance. So please just leave me be for a while."
"Jane-" Lisbon starts.
Red John abruptly seizes the phone. He cuts the call. Jane is momentarily concerned that Red John perceived the palpable untruth in the exchange with Lisbon, but Red John only smiles, satisfied to have startled Jane. Apparently Red John isn't omniscient, which comes as a relief.
Red John leaves the room. Jane is alone with the curtains and carpet, all this cheerful light and color. Jane lies back and contemplates the ceiling. He determinedly does not think about Lisbon and the team.
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After Jane hangs up unexpectedly Lisbon lets out a breath. She lowers herself to sit on an edge of Jane's bed. It's dark out and the large windows over the city have no curtains.
"Too soon for a trace," says Cho sticking his head into the room. "Sorry boss."
The SOCO is painstakingly scouring the floors for traces or fibres or cookie crumbs - something small. He has magnifying goggles on his head and a pair of tweezers at the ready.
"It's okay," says Lisbon to Cho. "It seems like this is all a waste of our time. Jane's just taken himself off on a little exploratory trip. Damn him." She shakes her head.
"Right," says Cho after a quick pause. "Well good to know. I'll call Rigsby and Van Pelt and fill them in." He makes no further comment.
Lisbon turns to the SOCO. "You can go home," she says. "Thank you for your assistance. I needn't say that this still needs to be kept quiet."
"No ma'am."
Lisbon continues as the SOCO leaves, perhaps uncharacteristically. "Jane needs to get reacquainted with himself, or some drivel. Maybe that's understandable. I should have seen it coming."
"Always gotta be an enigma," says Cho. "It's his thing."
"You're right," Lisbon sighs. Cho takes his phone out and goes to make the call to Rigsby and Van Pelt.
Lisbon can see herself reflected in the glass of the windows. She's going to get Jane back.
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The ceiling is embossed with wildflowers. Jane counts them with the seconds. Half an hour later Red John saunters in. There's a lightness to his step which Jane recognises immediately.
"I didn't mistake you, Patrick," says Red John warmly. "Your friends in the CBI have stopped looking for you."
Jane smiles.
"I'm pleased to hear it," he says. "It was the only way to ensure us time. I want to have the space to honor having a family again." He swings his legs around and places his feet on the floor as he sits up. The handcuffs clink against the bedhead. He slides toward the head of the bed.
Red John sits beside Jane tentatively. His movement is ludicrously young and almost shy, but his face is immobile. Jane feels brave.
"These handcuffs, John. They're cutting off my circulation. I was wondering-"
It's a mistake. Red John brings his face so close to Jane's that Jane can see the tiny veins in the whites of Red John's eyes.
"Do you think I am a dim-wit, Mister Jane?" Red John says. His breath is sweet and his tone mild but there's no mistaking his anger. This is not the time to forget that Red John is a killer. Jane's best play is to stay alive to make another play.
Jane trusts Lisbon to save him, but he hopes she makes haste.
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Jane's absence has never been more apparent than when the team is seated in Lisbon's living room.
"At least we know he's alive," says Van Pelt.
Lisbon has been thinking "he's alive, he's alive, he's alive," for the half hour since the phone call.
"How do we know Jane's not telling the truth?" says Rigsby. "Sorry boss."
"He said he was sincerely sorry. No way Jane would say that to me. He called me Theresa. He was annoyingly off hand but in a different way to his usual. It was just all wrong."
"Makes sense," says Rigsby.
Lisbon goes on. "There was a message, caught up in all those words. He said he was reacquainting with someone. He said I wasn't family, I was second best." She pauses, thinking.
"So he's reacquainting with family," prompts Cho.
"He talked about my mother, about drink driving." Lisbon looks around the team. "What do we know about Jane's mother?"
Cho shrugs. "I didn't get that far."
"I can get his birth certificate from Public Health," says Van Pelt. "He was born in California?"
Cho nods assent.
"Right, get on it," says Lisbon. She's thinking, always, "stay alive, stay alive, stay alive."
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Red John paces the room.
"This is our mother's house," says Jane to establish a link. "Tell me about her."
"She was imaginative. She was pretty. Like you are. She was brutal."
"Ah," says Jane.
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"Jane's mom is a Vera Reid," says Van Pelt fifteen minutes later.
The sun is rising through Lisbon's windows. Van Pelt is on her laptop at the table. Everyone is bleary eyed.
"She changed her name back to Reid eighteen months after Jane was born," says Cho, looking over Van Pelt's shoulder.
"Cold," says Rigsby. "Leaving a kid behind like that."
"There's a brother," says Van Pelt. "Born 13 months after Jane. Named John."
Lisbon turns to Van Pelt. "John?"
"John Jane?" says Rigsby.
"John Reid," says Van Pelt. "He went with the mother."
"Where is the mother?" asks Lisbon swiftly.
"She sold the home she shared with John and purchased a residence in a Sonoma retirement community," says Van Pelt. "She died two months ago."
It all falls together impeccably. "That's where Red John has Jane," says Lisbon.
"Red John has multiple aliases," says Van Pelt. "Would he make the mistake of taking Jane to his mother's house?"
"Jane is Red John's brother," says Lisbon. "This is about family. This is where John would take his brother. Let's go."
Lisbon's finally doing something to save Jane and it sings in her veins.
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