A/N: Okay, so your patience is finally being rewarded with some answers in this chapter at long last! Lots more to come in the upcoming chapters. Hope you enjoy!

Chapter 37 – Breakfast & Blake

Lisbon awoke to an origami rose placed on the pillow beside her. She smiled instantly at the sweet gesture, a memory occurring to her of a frog Jane had made for her on one of their first cases. She frowned as a recollection of an origami bird also came to mind that he had slipped into her pocket, a grin plastered on his face as he looked back at her as he walked off as she noticed it. Somehow there was more intimacy in the way he looked at her and she knew for certain that this latter memory was more recent. She grinned upon realising that her memories from her time in Austin were coming back to her at last.

After showering and dressing she walked into the kitchen, May in charge of what looked like enough breakfast items that wouldn't have been out of place in an upscale hotel. 'Wow' she laughed. 'This is a lot of food.'

May Minelli looked over her shoulder as she fried off some bacon, 'I know, I've gone a little overboard but...well Virgil mentioned that you all have a long day today and that this might be your only chance to eat.'

'An army marches on its stomach after all' Virgil chipped in from behind Lisbon before carrying an empty plate to the sink. He turned to look at her. 'So, how'd you sleep, Teresa?'

Unable to hide a blush as she recalled a certain part of the night before that made her pulse race. She cleared her throat, 'Um...good...very good, thanks for putting us up.'

Minelli raised a questioning eyebrow and nodded slowly. 'Mmm. Good. You'll need to be well rested for today.'

Averting her eyes she looked around the kitchen, 'Where's Jane and Reynolds?'

'Reynolds was up at dawn for breakfast. Military training I assume she's never got out of. She's in the living room waiting on the call from Dawson. Jane's on the deck out front.'

After grabbing some breakfast Lisbon checked on Reynolds first.

'No news yet?'

Reynolds shook her head. 'Not yet. Hopefully soon.'

Lisbon sat down beside her. 'Tori, are you sure you want to do this today?'

'I've met him before. It'll be okay.'

'Yeah but that was before you knew what a sadist he truly was. If he has any suspicions you've turned against him then-'

'I know what I've signed up for, Agent Lisbon. I know the risks involved' she interrupted.

Lisbon nodded gravely, seeing the same fierce look of determination to follow through on her plan that she used to see in Jane when he talked about Red John. She knew it was pointless to argue further. 'Okay. Once we know where the meet is then we'll see what kind of back up we can provide. I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure you're not going in there blind.'

'I know you will' Reynolds replied. A small smile graced her lips. 'I'm glad I made the right choice in coming to you with all this. No matter what happens today I know you and Jane will see this through and get justice for my sister.'

'I promise you we will' Lisbon replied emphatically. 'But my first priority today is to make sure we all come out of this alive.'

She smiled softly as she leaned on the doorway, Jane sitting on the deck looking out to sea, a cup of tea on the wooden floor beside him. A stack of papers lay in his lap and a pen in his hand, his face so set in concentration she wasn't sure he'd heard her approach.

He suddenly bent down and scribbled something on the sheet in front of him. As he turned to the next page he smiled and said, 'Are you going to watch me all morning or are you actually going to talk to me?'

'Didn't want you to distract you' she beamed, making her way beside him.

He looked at her a tad salaciously, 'Well I suppose that is a possibility.' They grinned at each other and she leaned down, kissing him softly on the lips. 'Good morning. Thank you for the flower.'

'A rose for a rose. Morning, Teresa' he replied softly before going back to the paper in front of him.

She sipped the coffee in her hands and lifted the sheets he'd finished with that sat by his side, noticing names besides the letters. 'You've worked out the cipher?'

He nodded, 'I did. Quite simple really. The Tyger by Blake. I suppose they put enough encryption around the original code that they thought it unlikely anyone would crack it to get to the secondary cipher.'

'And if somehow the drive fell into unknown hands and it was decrypted-'

'Then only those who knew it was held by a Blake Association member would figure out a way of cracking it. If Bertram died or was murdered somehow before Blake was discovered then the drive would probably have been investigated but even if it was decrypted-'

'It would still keep the association names secret.'

'Precisely. Until it was handed to a Blake Association member who could work out what the cipher was.'

Lisbon scanned through the names he'd decrypted so far. 'You've got ticks against all of these. I'm assuming this means they've already been caught.'

'Yeah' he sighed, 'I have to say Abbott did quite an outstanding job tracking them down.'

He looked out to sea, frowning before he wrote another name down.

Lisbon smirked, 'You're doing this by memory? By counting the letters in the poem and writing the corresponding letter?'

'Yeah, why?' he replied nonchalantly, looking down at the page.

'That's...-'

He dazzled her with a grin. 'Vastly impressive?'

'I was going to say a little showy' she frowned, smiling.

He laughed softly before his expression turned serious as his eyes went back to the page.

Jane, what is-'

He held up a hand to stop her as his frown deepened. Slowly he wrote letters in front of him, pausing after each one. She could almost see him counting the letters in his head, double checking he'd decoded the correct name.

He put his pen down and looked up at her. 'Well...here's one Abbott certainly didn't catch. Interesting' he said seriously.

Lisbon leaned over and her eyes widened in surprise. A. Schultz FBI was scrawled against a set of numbers.

Lisbon stammered, 'Schultz? Abbott's boss? The woman who wants to arrest you today?'

Jane leaned back in his chair, tapping his pen to his lips. 'It would appear so.'

'But how did she escape detection in the first place?'

He picked up his teacup and took a sip. 'Hardly surprising that there would be a couple who slipped through the cracks. She was in a fairly powerful position even back then. And she was in charge of Abbott's team, right? Probably got them out of the country or told him they'd been cleared by her personally before suspicion arose.'

'What else?' Lisbon asked as she noticed Jane struggle with a quandary.

'When Abbott came to me with his job offer he said it wasn't his decision to bring me back to the States to work for the FBI. He said it was the higher ups that wanted it.'

'So you think it was Schultz's idea to offer you a job? But why if she was part of Blake?'

'A ploy to get me back into the States. Perhaps as payback for McAllister. Only wanted me back so she could get rid of me.'

'Okay, if that's the case then why-'

'Didn't she do it at the time?' He shook his head, 'I don't know. Maybe she was afraid of the ripples it would cause if I'd died in FBI custody straight after being brought back to work for them. Maybe she decided to wait a while so it wouldn't look so suspicious. The deal first offered to me by Abbott gave them the right to throw me in jail if I stepped out of line.' He smiled knowingly at her, 'After all I have a bit of a reputation for not following orders or procedures.'

'Don't I know it' Lisbon smiled back.

Jane continued, 'So she may have been waiting for me to either screw up myself that would give her the right to put me in jail if I had signed that deal or let me rot in a detention suite if I didn't. Either way eventually it would be easy enough for her to stage some kind of accident or suicide. Or she may just have been happy for me to be locked away under her watch.'

'You said before you got the deal sweetened. Apart from asking for me to work with you, what else?'

'All charges had to be dropped. No parole.' He grinned. 'A few other...minor indulgences. A supply of tea, transportation, that kind of thing.'

'So that's why you have an Airstream?' Lisbon smirked.

'You remember the Airstream?!' Jane asked excitedly.

'No...Sorry. Long story, I heard from Reynolds that you had one.'

Jane nodded but his expression remained confused. He decided to press on without being sidetracked. 'Okay. Anyway, I was able to get the FBI to agree to my own terms after a little while in detention. Used Bertram's thumb drive as a bluff. Told Abbott at the time that I'd decrypted the names and that there were some on it that he hadn't caught. Threatened to go with it to the press.'

'So he agreed?'

'Not right away. He'd have to have gone to Schultz for that decision.'

Lisbon smiled, 'I'm sure it was a hell of a shock to Schultz to be told that information.'

Jane chuckled, 'Yeah, I'd like to have been a fly on the wall to see it.'

'But hang on, she must have known it was a bluff if her name is on the list.'

Jane tilted his head from side to side. 'Perhaps. Most likely. But how was she going to explain that to Abbott? She was in a Catch 22 situation. If she told Abbott the list was bogus then he'd have grown suspicious of her being so certain. Abbott's smart, highly intuitive. He might have started to rethink his initial orders, wondered how she could be so sure. Blake was over, last thing she would want would be for Abbott to get the bit between his teeth again about it. Or perhaps at first she thought I really had decrypted the drive but was keeping the information about her being on the list close to my chest. Perhaps she was expecting me to blackmail her with it if my first gambit didn't work. In any case she couldn't risk calling my bluff.'

'You never had a conversation with her about it?'

Jane shook his head. 'No. I dealt with Abbott mainly. I guess in the end she decided to see how things played out. Let me work for her indirectly, get Abbott's appraisal of me, watch me from the inside if you will. After a while I'm sure she realised I was definitely bluffing but the deal had been made by then. And I...well we...solve a lot of cases. It's helped her up the ranks. Maybe she decided in the end it was more useful having me working as an asset to advance her career than getting rid of me.' He laughed mirthlessly. 'Until now that is.'

Lisbon shook her head slowly as they both looked out to sea. 'So, she's behind all of this?'

Jane remained in silence, his eyes on a seagull diving into the water.

'Jane?' Lisbon prodded, turning towards him.

He spoke quietly but determinedly. 'No. Whoever is behind this has got her to put that warrant out for me. And they are the one that's responsible for your abduction, not her. But I'm sure she knew about it beforehand. They must have something on her. Either this Blake Association link or something else from her past, possibly whatever it was that made her join the Blake Association in the first place.'

'Some crime or cover up she was involved in that a Blake member got her out of?'

He nodded.

'I still don't understand why this is happening now though, after all this time has passed.'

Jane nodded, his lips curling into a smile as he continued to watch the ripples of the waves in front of him. 'That, Lisbon, is a most excellent question.'

Reynolds appeared in the doorway and cleared her throat, gaining Lisbon and Jane's attention. 'Dawson just called. Meeting set for noon in Sacramento. He's calling me back in an hour with the exact location.'

Lisbon looked to her watch. 'Damn it, doesn't give us much time to get there to scout the location.'

Jane rose to his feet immediately. 'Then we better make a move soon if we're going to make it, we'll call Abbott from the road to fill him in.'