From One-shot,. the story has been promoted to multi-chapter, although I'm not quite sure how many more you'll have; Many of you asked for a sequel, and so, I thought about giving a bit more of space to Annie and the marvelous Jisbon romace we're still waiting to see in "reality"; I'm well aware that this chapter will be a bit diffeernt from the others, with less roanace between our favorite duo, and it will be even a bit shorter (like, probably, chapter 11 as well) but I felt that, before to go any further (because I'm not sure how many chaptars are left) I had to write this thing first, so, please, don't be too mad at me, and remmeber that I can't write soem Menatlist stuff without anything romantic in in, so, wait and hope, and you'll be rewarded...
As always, thanks to everyone who, with reviews, or putting my and the story on alert or on fav, gave me resons to go on with this story.
And, please, keep in mind: I still don't ow the mentalist...
A little after the six months anniversary, while only the team knew about the wedding, Red John decided to strike again: in Los Angeles, he had spotted a nice brunette, who was in vacancy with her boyfriend, and, as soon as Antony had left her alone to get her an ice-cream, the man behind the mask had took away from him Ziva, letting then Jane know he was the one having her.
That same day, Tony was sitting on Jane's couch at the CBI headquarter, looking at his feet, hands in his brown-blond hair, with no tear left to cry over the woman of his life, who was, probably, already dead. Seeing him in this state, made Jane remember the day following his first wife's death, and how important Teresa was for him, how losing her could have been the first step into losing his mind all over again… only, this time, he knew that it's be once and for all.
But there was something in Antony's eyes, something that said that he believed in Ziva, that he knew she was going to come back to him. Jane didn't want to keep up false hopes, but a part of him didn't know if it was right or wrong, telling the poor man, who was younger than him, that his beloved was probably gone by now.
"You don't know Ziva, who she is, what she is capable of – Tony opened his eyes and looked at Jane, full of hope, and sure of what he was telling – if this man has been that crazy to take Ziva, he's not going to make it"
The poor man kept repeating the same things over and over, and Jane thought that, like him until few months before, the young Dinozzo was driven by vengeance, that he just meant that, given the occasion, Red John would end as his victim. Less than a day later he first met Tony, he understood what he really meant; for the precision, he understood as soon as Dinozzo's phone rang, and the young man frantically answered it. As soon as he was walking across the room, nervous but somehow relieved, the whole team was around him.
"Ziva doesn't know where she is, she asks to trace the call. - He just told Lisbon, who was, like the others, at open mouth: had the killer finally made a mistake, or was it just the doing of some copycat? – No, no, I'll tell them you have all the time… no, Ziva, you don't need to… it's not up to you! Ziva, how many times do I have to tell you… ok, ok, I'll tell them that, are sure you are ok? No, I'm not…. Ok, ok, as you want… no, no, I'll tell them, ok, yes, I said, ok. How many times do I have to tell you? No, it's not how you're supposed to say that, sorry… ok, ok, I'll tell them, yes… Ziva, how am I supposed to keep it from the boss? No, I'll not tell your dad… Ziva, I don't even talk with your dad in the first place!"
As soon as Rigsby gave them the address, Ziva closed the call, saying she needed quiet to take back control; while the CBI team left, Tony joined them, and, smiling a bit, of a sad smile, muttering something that Jane told he hadn't understood correctly.
The woman hadn't said that much over the phone, not even to her boyfriend, claiming she needed to rest a bit and she wanted to be left alone until they weren't there. The team assumed that, somehow, she escaped; while they drove towards the point where Ziva had been traced, they even thought that, maybe, it wasn't really Red John, but just a copycat or something like that, but., since Red John had himself contacted Jane to make sure he knew her was the one having the girl, it still didn't make any sense; the only option left was that the killer had really made a mistake, allowing the woman to escape. When they finally reached the "crime scene", they understood that they were, on many fronts, wrong.
Inside an old warehouse, the found Ziva, a brunette in her middle thirties, busy hugging her knees and crying a lifetime of tears, who, even if in clear shock, seemed to ménage to maintain a certain degree of composure; she was bruised and wounded, there were signs of cord on her wrists and ankles, evidence that she had been tied up, but, worst thing, on her neck a small red sign was making good show of itself, demonstration, along with a single, small drop of scarlet blood that someone had, indeed, tried to hurt her, to kill her, with a knife. She didn't say a word, only, with her head, indicated them a point in the dark, opposite to where she was; when they got closer to the point she had indicated, the whole team remained speechless, and Jane understood that the word muttered by Tony, the word he thought he had misunderstood, was really what it looked like, and, in his mind, everything made sense; Red John had really make a mistake, because he had taken the wrong person. Tony had really said the word "Mossad"…
They weren't suppose to officially know this particular, thought, but the couple decided to share it; apparently, Red John had decided to take away a woman on the spur of the moment, and, in doing so, he hadn't realized that he was kidnapping a special agent currently in force at the Naval Criminal Investigation Service (where she was partnered with whom they found out was her boyfriend, Special Agent Antony Dinozzo), a special agent who had previously been employee as a Mossad top-level agent, an agent of the best secret service of the world…. There was a weird, twisted kind of irony, in the fact that Red John had been found there, on the cold soil, in a pool of his own blood, murdered by his own knife in the same way he was planning of murdering Ziva, killed by that same woman...
Jane collapsed on the soil, knees in that blood, as pale as never before, hiding his face with his palms, and the only thing Lisbon could think of was holding him from the back, head on his shoulder; while Tony took his girlfriend in his arms, Jane cried all the rears he hadn't cried in the years between the death of his beloved ones and the one of the monster who had took them away.
"It's over, Patrick, it's finally over…" as his wife said so, Jane allowed himself to rest in her chest, in her petite form, still crying.
Almost 24 hours later, Lisbon called Jane into her office, and forced her husband to sit on the sofa; kneeling in front of him, she crossed her arms on his knees, resting her head on her elbows, filling him on what the team had found out about the so-called Red John, spending the previous two days awake.
Jonathan Louis Stern was 42 years old at the time of his death, a middle-low working class of downtown LA, a worker in a small garage, with history of abuses as a child, an higher QI that no one gave a damn about; apparently, Stern had passed years going from foster home to foster home, collecting a criminal record as long as the Bible, with offences that went from robbery to theft to burglary, from maltreatment of animals to harassment, with a few issues with drugs, something that, eventually, ended bringing him to Juvenile… until he become a legal adult, and seemed to have taken the good road, leaving his old life behind.
Nothing was more far from the truth: everything Jonathan had gone trough had made him develop psychic problems, who didn't get along too well with his already existing violent tendencies; he started to fantasize about killing people, to hurt them as he had been hurt as a kid, and even more. One day, he gave up, making those fantasies real, hoping that he would have stopped them in the first place. Obviously, he was wrong, and even Stern was aware of this fact, since there were clues that he had been tried to receive help from doctors first, hoping that they could understand his problems and stop him before it was too late, seeing behind the mask of the poor little hurt guy, and, alter, to few psychs as well, thinking that, just looking at him, they could say who he was and what he was doing, stopping him: they didn't, making him understand that they were all frauds.
At this point, he no longer felt guilty, but only craved the feel of the blood of his victims, not any longer driven by the need of getting rid of his fantasies, but simply by the thrill he felt while looking life abandoning the bodies.
Jane, it come out, wasn't one of the psychs he had contacted, but was a psych, a fraud who assumed to know everything there was to know about Red John; he enraged the psycho to a point that Stern had decided to destroy him beyond repair, and what better way to break a man than taking away from him what he cares about the most?
Killing Jane directly had never been part of Stern's plan; even if breaking him wasn't enough, even if he wanted to see Jane dead, he didn't want to kill him; he just wanted to drive the man so insane, to make him feel so guilty for the loss of his family, that he had to see the suicide as the only available option, and when it didn't work, Red John forced the battle of wits to begin, becoming better with each strike, telling Jane that each murder was his own fault…the more he killed, the better he got, until he kidnapped the wrong person.
As she finished the story, they both remained in silence, Jane looking in the void, his hands holding his pants firmly, Teresa looking at him with wet eyes. Without breaking eye-contact, she cupped his face with her hands, forcing Jane to look into her eyes, blue meeting green.
"Don't you dare, Patrick – she said sweetly but firmly, repeating the words a second time to make her point – don't you dare to think it's your fault. Stern had a choice, and no one but him told him he had to kill all those people."
"I know, but, still…" he cried again, as he tried to explain her how he felt, but, standing, she abruptly stopped him from going any further, lifting her voice of an octave at least, so mad that tears were leaving her yes.
"Patrick, no, no one forced him to become a killer! Nothing justifies what he did! Do you know how many times my dad beat me and the boys while he was so drunk that after he didn't even remember it? I've lost count, Patrick, but look at us; we didn't fill our criminal records! – She got back on her knee, taking his hands on her owns, looking into Patrick's eyes once again – Before you cross paths, he was already killing. He killed more than we thought, Patrick… pleased, just, please, don't think it's your fault."
As their eyes locked, Patrick lifted Teresa from her spot, making her sit in his lap; as they hugged like for eternity, as he hold her like for dear life, he kissed the top of her head, finally relieved., whispering into her hair. "It's over; he'll never threaten our lives, never again, never again…"
It was almost morning when they made it home, after they had finished all the paperwork of the case, with Hightower allowing the whole team a couple of days of rest, so that they could really relax for the first time in years, knowing that Red John wasn't going to hit again, never…
As they hugged in bed for the rest of the day, the tensions of the last few days finally gone, both Teresa and Patrick decided it was time to maintain the last promise they had made to Annie: with Red John gone, there wasn't any longer a reason for not having a real, proper family…
AN: For the ones of you who don't know it, Ziva David and Tony Dinozzo are two of the main characters in the CBS Show "NCIS"; A former mossad agent turned NCIS liason firts and agent Later the first, a former detective turned ncis special agent Tony, there had been hint of roamnce between the two of them for seasons and seasons, with nothung really said about what could go on between them...