A/N: I continue to appreciate all your kind and encouraging reviews! Sorry I'm not updating as often as I'd like, but I hope you enjoy it when I can.

Chapter 5

"He was here," said Jane in a daze. "And we didn't even know." He got out of the vehicle, the cool morning air rousing him as he touched the red wetness on the outside of his window. He sniffed his finger, his tension dropping as he gratefully smelled only paint.

"Rigsby," said Lisbon into her mic, quickly pulling herself together, though her pulse was still beating loudly in her ears. "Did you see anything weird last night?"

"No."

"Were you sleeping?" asked Cho, just to be sure.

"Well…I'm not saying I didn't doze off a time or two, but…hey, what's going on?"

"Come out here and we'll show you." Cho's eyes had never left the smiling face on Jane's window, the shock of seeing the terribly familiar calling card of the serial killer taking him back in time. He frowned.

"You okay, Madeline?" asked Lisbon.

There was no answer, and Lisbon's heart stuttered in her chest. "Madeline? Madeline! Something's wrong, Cho," she said, glancing in the rearview mirror, but Cho's hand was already on the door lever, and he'd hopped out and was running across the street to Hightower's house before she could say another word.

"Rigsby, check on Hightower!" she yelled into the radio.

"I'm going," he replied, having heard the fear in his former boss's voice. Lisbon, dealing with a full morning bladder and a stomach that seemed to have ballooned over night, took a little more time than usual to ease herself out of the driver's seat. Jane, still outside the car, preoccupied with Red John's artwork, only glanced up when Cho exited the vehicle. He hadn't heard the conversation inside the cab.

"Cho?" he said, startled by the abrupt slamming of Cho's door. He looked through the window at Lisbon, saw her face in the pale morning light, contorted by physical and emotional distress. He was just moving to go around to her side when the sound of a speeding car drew his gaze. The van had come out of nowhere, and it stopped with a squeal of brakes right beside their SUV.

Jane watched in horror as a muscular man, dressed from head to toe in black, jumped out of the open backseat door of the unmarked van, grabbing Lisbon from behind, his strong arms pinioning hers to her side. Instantly, she struggled and kicked backwards, but it all happened so fast, and her reaction time with her unwieldy belly was not up to her pre-pregnancy speed.

"Jane!" she screeched, and the sound ripped into his heart like a knife.

By the time Jane made it around the SUV, she was already inside the van, and it was speeding away from him. He had to throw his body hard against the SUV to avoid being hit as it zoomed past.

"Teresa!" he cried, his voice hoarse and unrecognizable in his own ears.

Coming to himself, he got into the driver's side of the SUV, bringing the engine to life at the same time he floored the gas pedal. It lurched forward, and he clutched the steering wheel in a death grip. Though it was still somewhat dark, the van's lights weren't on, and he squinted into the dimness, trying to find it. The brake lights gave it away as it squealed around the corner toward the freeway entrance.

"A van took Lisbon!" he shouted into the radio, praying Cho and Rigsby were listening. "I'm following it toward the I-5 West ramp."

"What?" came the other men's voices in unison. But Jane was too focused on the van to reply. Another car pulled in front of him at the freeway entrance, and Jane mashed on the brakes and the horn at the same time, narrowly avoiding slamming into its rear end. He'd lost valuable time, and he watched helplessly as the van sped up the onramp and out of sight.

Unfortunately, it was too early for rush hour traffic, giving the van an unimpeded entrance to the freeway. As Jane emerged onto I-5, his heart dropped into his stomach, for it seemed that every third vehicle on the early morning road was a white van of some kind. Delivery vans, food trucks, carpool vehicles, hotel-airport shuttles—he felt like Indiana Jones looking for Marion's basket in a sea of similar baskets. His eyes desperately scanning the speeding cars ahead of him, he became suddenly aware of Cho and Rigsby talking through the open Walkie on the console beside him.

"Jane! What's happening? Where the hell are you?"

"I—I'm on I-5. I can't find her. I don't know where they took her. I've lost her," he said in anguish, his eyes blurring. It wasn't until he tasted salt that he realized that frustrated, terrified tears were streaming down his face. He wiped them away with the back of a shaking hand. Vehicles were exiting right and left off the freeway, and now, every van had its lights off as daylight lit the world in California gold. It took him another two miles of driving alongside vans that were emblazoned with one business or another to realize that it was hopeless. She was gone.

He took the next exit and re-entered going the opposite way, back toward Hightower's house. He would need the help of his friends now, although he had nothing to give them that could help find her—no license plate, no description of the driver, not even the make and model of the van—nothing. Her abductor had been wearing a ski mask, and he'd said nothing that might help Jane identify him.

By the time he'd made it back to where Cho, Rigsby and Hightower (in her bathrobe) stood on the front porch of Hightower's house, Jane felt the beginnings of a total breakdown. It was happening again. He was losing another wife, another child, and it was all his fault. He was shaking all over with fear and adrenaline, and he sat in the SUV, his head on the steering wheel, the tears pouring unabated now down his morning-stubbled cheeks.

He jumped as Rigsby knocked on his window.

"Jane!"

He moved as if in a daze to open the door, then felt his legs give way as he stumbled out of the vehicle. Rigsby caught him before his could melt to the pavement.

"Hey, easy. Sit back in the car. Breathe…"

Jane distantly realized, as the world went black around the edges, that he was likely hyperventilating. He found himself sitting again in the driver's seat, his feet resting now outside on the SUV's running board, Rigsby pushing his head down between his legs, encouraging him to take deep breaths.

Madeline, smelling of her familiar jasmine soap, was suddenly beside him, her soothing hand patting his back like she might her own child.

"Shhh," she kept saying softly. "Relax, breathe. That's it…"

After what seemed like an eternity, Jane lifted his head. His friends were looking at him with deep concern, barely containing their impatience as they waited for him to pull himself together enough to tell them what the hell had happened to Lisbon.

He told them all he remembered, his voice hitching over the frustration in his voice. They'd gone to check on Madeline, he realized, which was why Cho had left so quickly. Hightower hadn't answered their calls because she'd been in the shower. It was all a series of unfortunate events, events which had distracted them enough to allow Red John to see his opening and take his beautiful wife and unborn child from right under his nose.

"What'll we do," Jane asked brokenly.

Rigsby looked around the upper middle class street.

"Someone is bound to have a security camera aimed at their front porch," he said. "We'll get their footage, get a better description of the van. Then there are street cams, business cams—we'll find her."

Jane nodded vaguely, and he realized he was still in shock, still frozen to the car seat when somewhere in the rational side of his brain, he knew he needed to pull himself together and find Lisbon, that time was of the essence. He also knew that when his brain finally kicked in, he'd be unable to stop the images of all the past crime scenes he'd witnessed of Red John's—especially his first wife and child's. He'd be forced to imagine all kinds of horrors that Lisbon might be facing at that very moment. Yes, it was so much easier to stay frozen, to—

"Hey! Snap out of it," said Cho, actually snapping his fingers in front of Jane's face.

Jane jolted out of his daze and looked up blearily at Cho.

"Lisbon's out there somewhere, and we need you awake and on your game."

Jane nodded, and Cho was satisfied that Jane was getting it together. Jane stepped down onto the pavement on shaky legs, his friends on either side to help.

"You okay?" murmured Hightower.

"No," said Jane, his old spirit suddenly back. He would not give in to madness, to oblivion. "But I will be, as soon as I find her and kill that bastard once and for all."

Hightower met the other men's eyes, saw their shared fear reflected back at her.

Xxxxxxxxxx

Once Lisbon had been maneuvered into the van, it took everything in her not to continue to struggle, to fight. But it wasn't just herself she had to worry about, so she allowed her captor to push her to the metal floor, to zip tie her hands and feet, to throw some sort of dark cloth bag over her head. He efficiently searched her pockets, removing her sidearm and cell phone, the latter of which she heard clatter on the street as someone tossed it out the window.

She felt the van speeding up, knew that Jane was likely following them. She shifted uncomfortably, unable to find stability as she was thrown all over the place with the vehicle's sharp turns and jolting accelerations. Her full bladder was definitely going to be a problem soon, and she willed her body to hold on, trying to use the biofeedback skills Jane had taught her back when her morning sickness had been at its worst.

No one spoke in the cab of the van, and she wondered if Partridge was driving. In those brief moments before her head had been covered, she'd seen no one else in the back besides the muscular henchman. The bloody face on the window seemed to indicate Red John himself had been there; she didn't think his ego would have allowed a surrogate to taunt Jane like that.

"Looks like we lost him," said Muscles after about ten minutes of the smooth feel of freeway travel.

Lisbon's heart plunged into her stomach, and she felt tears forming in her eyes.

No, she said to herself. You can't let yourself give up hope like that. Think of the baby. Of Jane.

"Hey," she called in what she hoped was the direction of the driver. "I really need to use the bathroom. It's sort of urgent right now."

"We're almost there, Teresa," said Bret Partridge's disembodied voice. Even though she'd been halfway expecting it, the familiar nasal cadence brought a chill to her spine.

"Where's there?" she asked, swallowing her fear, pleased her voice didn't tremble.

Partridge chuckled. "You'll see. Patience. What's that phrase—hold your water? I guess that really applies here, eh?" Somewhere to her left, Muscles joined him for a sycophantic laugh. It occurred to Lisbon that, despite Partridge's serial killer status, he was still the socially awkward nerd she'd always thought him to be, at least on the surface. She was having a hard time rectifying the old Partridge with this new, sadistic model. He'd created the perfect persona for himself to mask the devil within.

"Why did you take me? You could have killed all of us last night and been done with it. Jane said you were through messing around."

"Oh, I am, Teresa. But after thinking about it some more, I've decided to revise my plan a bit. I'm sure you'll be pleased—at least partially," he said mysteriously.

She tried to keep him talking, hoping to get some clue as to what his new plan was, but he brushed her off with increasing annoyance, until she lapsed into tense silence. "Almost there" turned into about thirty minutes longer, when she felt them exit the freeway and turn onto a quieter side street, then surprisingly, a bumpy, unpaved, curvy road. She wondered glumly how Jane and the others would be able to find her.

They came to an abrupt stop, and Muscles cut off the ties on her ankles, then pulled her to her feet.

"Bathroom, please," she begged, gritting her teeth and tightening her nether regions. Next thing she knew, she was thrust into what she assumed was a Port-a-Potty, her hands quickly freed of the ties before the door was shut in her covered face. Escape secondary in her mind, she sat and relieved herself, lamenting the rigors of pregnancy. Her stomach rumbled in hunger as she pulled up her stretchy pants, and she was painfully aware now that she hadn't eaten since a snack late in the night. The baby was clamoring within her for sustenance.

She stood a moment in thought, removing her headcover and blinking in the morning brightness coming in through the small plastic windows at the top of the structure. Her phone was gone, they had her gun, and she couldn't fight without risking hurting her baby—those were her liabilities at the moment. But she still had her mind, and she knew Partridge. At least she once had. More than that, she knew every Red John case almost as well as Jane did, knew something about his past, the way he thought, according to her extensive criminal psychology training and experience. This could only help her, at least until he decided to kill her, which she had no doubt he would. He wanted to hurt Jane, he'd said.

Once her most pressing bodily function had been seen to, she could better keep her wits about her, wait, evaluate her options once they landed at their final destination. A pounding on the door made her jump, and she opened the latch and stepped out into a new world. They were away from the city, as she'd suspected, and nearby, water lapped gently against a grassy shore. It had a fishy, briny smell, and she guessed they were likely in the marshlands of Solano County, where the San Francisco Bay met the Sacramento River before breaking off into tributaries of muddy sloughs and into another Bay, Suisun.

This area was mostly state property, and when she'd been with the CBI, they'd worked cases out here from time to time—it was a prime location for dumping bodies. The only civilization she knew of out here were a few duck hunting clubs and private residences, along with a Fish and Game office. It wasn't hunting season, so most of the clubs would be deserted this time of year, and the only draw was for the occasional fisherman. It was a rarity for California, a place so desolate and mostly untouched by the encroachment of people.

Muscles grabbed the black bag from her hand and pulled it roughly over her head again, and she stood obediently, allowing him to zip tie her wrists behind her back once more. She was pulled onto a boardwalk, and by the way it moved beneath her feet, she knew it was a boat dock of some kind.

"Step down," ordered Muscles, and he helped her lower herself into what she immediately found was a small boat of some kind. She sensed that the two men had come aboard, and after she was shoved onto a bench seat, the boat's motor roared to life, and the boat moved smoothly over the calm water. Though it was early summer, morning on the water was chilly, and she was grateful she was wearing her lightweight leather jacket. It took about ten minutes to navigate the slough before they stopped at what she assumed was another dock, for the boat rocked as Muscles jumped out to tie it down.

"Here we are," said Partridge cheerfully, "home sweet home. Take her to her room and be sure she's comfortable and locked in tight."

"I'm really hungry," Lisbon ventured, since her captor was sounding so hospitable. Muscles helped her up onto the boardwalk.

"Ah, yes. Eating for two. Don't worry, Teresa, you'll find I'm a very affable host, at least for now. I'll see you're properly fed. And have you been taking prenatal vitamins? That's very important for the health of the unborn."

"Yes," said Lisbon, taken off guard by the question. "I am."

"Good. I'll see to it you're given one every day. Nothing's too good for that precious cargo you're carrying. By the way, do you know if you're having a boy or girl?"

"No. It's uh, going to be a surprise."

"How fun."

By then they'd arrived at the door of a structure not far from the little dock, so she surmised they were likely on Grizzly Island, a 9000 acre wildlife preserve surrounded by bays and sloughs, far away from anyone that might help her. She tripped slightly up a ramp, but Muscles steadied her, and she found herself being pushed inside a door, then down a long corridor and through another door. Her hands were promptly released again, and she was left alone in a room of some kind, the door locking with finality behind her.

"Don't try anything stupid," said Red John's henchman through the door.

"Where's Partridge?" she asked. "What does he want with me?"

"Who's Partridge?"

"Red John," she amended.

"Only Red John knows that answer. But whatever it is, you should count yourself very lucky, being in his favor. Your breakfast will be here very soon."

"Yeah," muttered Lisbon, taking the bag off her face. "Lucky me."

She was in a simple room with a twin sized bed and high transom windows, too small to fit through, even if she could reach them. It smelled dusty and long unused. There was a nightstand, upon which rested a lamp and two books: a collection of classic poetry, and the other, with the familiar face of Brett Stiles smiling at her with twinkling blue eyes. His first published book, if she remembered correctly, simply entitled, Visualize. Her mouth twisted wistfully. Stiles had been a charlatan, a crook, and probably a murderer, but there had been something charming about him that she couldn't help but like in spite of herself. Had he not been blown up in Jane's guest house years ago, he'd have died soon after in prison. She imagined he would have preferred his dramatic death, and he certainly would be appreciating the irony that she was stuck in this room with his prosaic words for company.

Another door opened to a Jack and Jill bathroom, but the door to the adjoining bedroom was locked from the other side. This was a hunting clubhouse, given its location and the duck décor. Pictures of mallards and wood ducks in flight hung on the cheap paneled walls, and the bedspread was hunter green. A ceiling fan would provide air circulation

She paced the ten steps that spanned the small room several times, worrying about Jane and how afraid he must be, contemplating her likely fate at Red John's hands. She ached for him, wishing she could tell him she was okay, that she wasn't afraid for herself. She felt the movement of her baby, a flutter and a slight pressure against her belly, as if he knew she was thinking of him.

"It's okay," she said, her hands slipping beneath her shirt to soothe her restless child. "Daddy will find us." God please, let him find us, she finished to herself.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

A light knock on her door startled her awake, and she sat up, disoriented for a moment at her surroundings, at the ease with which she had drifted off earlier when she'd just told herself she'd lay down for a minute. Before she could respond to the knock, she heard the key in the lock, and it swung gently open. Lisbon's eyes widened as she recognized the beautiful woman carrying a tray of bacon and eggs and sour dough toast.

"Agent Lisbon," she said in that soft, subdued voice Lisbon remembered. Her vacant gray eyes were the only thing that gave away the fact she was blind, for she carried the tray confidently, deftly balancing the steaming cup of tea and orange juice with no apparent trouble. Behind her in the doorway, Muscles watched vigilantly.

"Rosalind," Lisbon replied, trying to wrap her mind around this stunning development. "It's been a while."

The redhead smiled. "Yes. And it's so nice to hear a familiar voice, besides Roy's, of course."

She walked further into the room, stopping when her knees bumped into the bed. "Here, let me get that," Lisbon offered, taking the tray from her and setting it on the bed.

"Thanks. I'm still getting to know the place. But it's been so nice being here with Roy. He explained everything you know, about the huge misunderstanding between him and the CBI. When he could finally clear his name, he came to get me."

"He did," said Lisbon, mindful of her words, since Muscles was paying rapt attention to their exchange. The gun he held, pointing straight at Lisbon's head, was clear warning that she should watch what she said.

"Yes. And I was glad for the chance to bring you breakfast, to thank you, and let you know that I hold no ill-will against you or the CBI, especially because of all you've done to help us. Of all you're going to do."

She smiled again, her expression reminiscent of that long ago day when Lisbon and Jane had first met her in her home, and she spoke of her love for Roy Taliaferro. She'd had no idea that her lover had been a serial killer, confirmed by the smiling face over the bed she'd shared with him, but could never see.

Lisbon was speechless, the dark truth of Partridge's "new plan" beginning to dawn upon her. Rosalind continued in her pleasant way, oblivious to Lisbon's churning thoughts.

"I don't know if Roy told you, when you two were making arrangements, that I well, that I can't have children." It had obviously been hard for her to finish her sad confession.

Lisbon swallowed, her heart pounding, her eyes watering with the shock of her situation. "No, he didn't," she managed hoarsely.

"That's why this baby—your baby—is such a blessing to us. We'll take wonderful care of you both, and we'll protect you from that monstrous, psychopath Patrick Jane. I'm so sorry for what he did to you, how he—he hurt you this way. And I understand, truly, why you can't face a child conceived in such a violent way. You and Roy were both hurt by Mr. Jane—we all were, really, by his slanderous accusations. But you're safe here until the baby is born. He'll never find you, I promise."

"But Rosalind," Lisbon began, unable to let this pass, to let her believe the lies Red John was feeding her. But Muscles' gun wavered to point ominously at Lisbon's stomach, and she bit back her denial. "Thanks for the breakfast," she finished lamely.

"You are so very welcome," said Rosalind with a smile. "I hope you like chamomile tea. I know coffee isn't good for the baby."

"It all looks great. I'm—I'm really hungry."

"I'll leave you to it then. Please, just knock on the door if there's anything else you need."

"Thanks," said Lisbon dully.

When the door to her prison closed again, Lisbon collapsed back onto the bed, her hunger momentarily forgotten.

A/N: Thanks again for reading! Some of you might remember this familiar setting, which came from my first long Mentalist fic, "Red Ryder." It's fun to have come full circle. My life is pretty busy these days, but I will try to update when I can. In case you don't hear from me before Christmas, I wish you all a merry one!