A/N: Here's my New Year's gift to you! I hope it finds you well and grateful like I am that 2020 is over. Blessings to you all (PS: I know my chapter 5 post had some issues when I first posted, but it's fixed now, so if you haven't read thyet, please go back and read that first.)

Chapter 6

"I want to speak to Red John!" Lisbon yelled at her prison door, knocking for emphasis. Then she remembered Rosalind. "Uh, Roy. I want to speak with Roy! Somebody, open the damn door!"

But after a few minutes of this, no one came, and she tiredly went back to sit on her bed. Her pregnancy always made her feel tired physically—or maybe it was the lack of caffeine these days—but her mind was swirling. Naturally, her thoughts went to Jane, and she could imagine him desperately trying to find her, though it comforted her to know that if anyone could figure out where she was, it was him. But then she contemplated Partridge's reasons for keeping her alive, and if what Rosalind said was true, at least this baby bought her about four months of time, no matter how afraid she was to go through the rest of her pregnancy here. Without her husband. Without a hospital.

But she couldn't think about that. In order to get through this, she had to focus on right now, and how to possibly escape. With that in mind, she got up to try on the door again.

"Someone, please!"

She'd lifted her hand to pound on the door, when it suddenly flew open, and she stumbled backward a few steps, face to face with the serial killer himself. But she couldn't think of him like that. This was her old colleague, Partridge, and if she focused on that fact, maybe she wouldn't be frozen with fear. She forced herself to stand up straight, lift her chin, and look him in the eye.

"Teresa, you have to stop upsetting yourself," he said, without much true emotion. "It's not good for the child." He shut the door behind him, just before she caught a glimpse of Muscles, who took his place just outside. "Now, you wanted to see me?"

She swallowed. "Yeah. Rosalind told me you want my baby. Is this true?"

"Right to the point. You always were a straight shooter. I guess she couldn't help but let the cat out of the bag, but she's just so excited."

"This isn't really about my baby though, is it? It's about Jane."

Partridge looked at her closely, and she forced herself to maintain eye contact. Before her gaze he dropped the guise of the nerdy forensics guy, becoming the arrogant, cold-hearted killer of her nightmares.

"Of course it is. I gave him the chance to back off, offered him an olive branch, but he wouldn't let this go. You could actually blame a lot of deaths on Jane, when you think about it. He forced my hand so many times. Hell, I even told him through my emissary once that he should get on with his life. I encouraged him to give up. I thought that now, with a wife and child on the way, he would finally heed my warnings. I was quite willing to go into retirement permanently. Kristina was just a loose end I needed to tie up, then I was done. It's a sad thing that he's forcing me to take another family from him because of his silly desire for vengeance."

Lisbon felt her jaw drop at his madness. Wisely, she didn't contradict him. You can't argue with a madman, she thought. "So, once my baby is born, what becomes of me?"

Partridge smiled then. "You were always so polite and respectful with me, Teresa, even while Jane mocked and ridiculed me, and that's why I didn't kill you, though I had many opportunities. But now…well, let's just say a child only needs one mother, right?"

Lisbon ignored the horrified squeeze in her heart. Focus, Teresa, she told herself. This wasn't really news, was it? She'd guessed her fate already. "You could have killed Jane too, but you didn't."

He looked oddly sheepish, gave the first genuine smile she'd seen since he'd kidnapped her. "Yeah, you got me there. I admit I enjoyed the game, the challenge he presented. He has a brilliant, though overly-confident mind. If I'd killed him too soon, what would have been the fun in that? He's the only person I've ever known who could match my wits. But now, I want something different for my life. You, Jane and I are of an age-you get what it means to want to settle down, start a family. In another few years, that might not be possible. With Rosalind and a new baby, I can do that now, thanks to you and Jane."

He moved closer to her then, and it took everything in her to stand her ground, though she felt her legs begin to tremble. He reached out, smoothed a lock of her hair between his fingers, seemingly fascinated by its softness. His breath on her cheek was redolent of the same herbal tea her husband drank. It was an eerie, sickening coincidence.

"You and Jane have always been beautiful people," he said softly. "The child you're giving me will be beautiful too, no doubt. I can offer you some comfort though, Teresa. He'll be taken care of, given everything a child could possibly need and want. In return for this gift you're giving me, I promise that when the time comes, your death will be quick and relatively painless. Rest assured, I've reserved all the pain for your husband."

He let go of her hair, then turned to leave. "If you need anything, just knock politely on the door. There's no need for pounding or shouting. Someone will come to see to your needs." His hand was on the doorknob when she found the nerve to speak again.

"Wait—I, uh…you don't have to do this. Let me talk to Jane, convince him to stop coming after you. I agree with you, this obsession with vengeance has never been good for him, for anyone. Let me go, and I promise I'll get him to leave you alone. Your taking me was bound to be a wakeup call for him."

Partridge chuckled. "Nice try, Teresa, but you and I know Jane better than anyone don't we? He will never give up, not till he's lost everything important to him, including you and the baby. A man like that doesn't deserve to have it all, not when he sacrifices the gifts he's been given a second time for the sake of his own selfishness. Besides, I promised Rosalind a baby, and I never go back on my promises. But rest easy now. Just worry about taking care of yourself and that little bundle of joy you're carrying. Rosalind will be here soon with your lunch."

He left then, closing the door behind him with a gentle click. She could hear the lock engaged on the outside of the door, heard his tuneless whistle fading away down the hall. It was all she could do not to succumb to the hopeless tears that were threatening. Instead, she grasped the cross at her neck and said a fervent prayer.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxx

"We lost sight of them once they got on the freeway, though we know they were headed southwest," Rigsby informed Jane. They were back at the Rigsby's home, analyzing the street video footage Cho was able to obtain with a few phone calls and his FBI credentials.

"I've been looking up any properties in the area in the name of Red John's aliases, including Bret Partridge," added Grace, sitting at her desk, eyes on her computer, "but I'm coming up empty so far."

Rigsby stood behind her, watching with fascination as she did her thing.

Jane felt numb. Still in shock, he supposed vaguely. This was good, he thought, since panic would probably have been the next emotion he'd be feeling, if he allowed himself to dwell on what might be happening to Teresa and their baby.

Cho's phone rang, and he answered it. It was Hightower.

"That's good," Cho was saying. He paused, listening intently. "Thanks. Yeah, I'll tell him."

Jane looked over at Cho, eyebrows raised in question.

"Hightower put a BOLO out for the van, but that's all she's allowing her people and the state police to do. She knows to keep the reasons private. The apparent Red John copycat killing of Kristina Frye is still all over the news though. Someone might connect the search to that, but we need to use any resources we can, right?"

Jane nodded. He was seriously considering asking for the National Guard to join the search, if that would help.

"I'll call in the Sacramento branch of the Bureau if we need to," Cho continued. "So far, Rigsby and Van Pelt are doing everything they would at this point."

"Thanks, Cho. I know you're all doing what you can. I just wish my mind would clear so I can think. I feel so…fuzzy still."

Cho nodded, his face impassive, though his dark eyes were filled with sympathy and concern. "If you have any hunches we can use, let me know."

"Yeah," said Jane, his hands gliding over his stubbled cheeks and into his riotous curls. He went to the window, stared bleakly out at the park across the street from the Rigsby's home. He yearned suddenly to be out in the fresh air, desperately needing to clear his head.

"I'm going for a walk," he announced, holding up his phone to indicate they should call with any updates.

His friends, used to the strange intricacies of Jane's brilliant mind, merely nodded and let him go without question. The moment he left the room, they all looked at each other with concern. And fear. Time was ticking away, and Red John was not known to take prisoners, or at least ones that returned undamaged. They all knew what was at stake without voicing it, and Rigsby squeezed his wife's shoulder, remembering from past experience what it felt like to have had her taken, the helplessness, the supreme terror.

Grace reached up to touch her husband's hand, knowing what he was thinking about.

"We'll find her," she said. Rigsby bent and kissed the top of her head, praying she was right.

Jane moved past the playground filled with small children, too young to be in school, the pain of seeing them too much to bear. He took deep gulps of air. Despite their being in the city, it was fresh and clean from the nearby bay. It was helping, and he began to feel the cobwebs falling away. He found himself in front of a small duck pond, watching a boy and his father laughingly feeding the quacking inhabitants from a bag of stale bread. That could be he and his son one day, he thought, and felt his eyes water with the beginnings of despair. He sat on a park bench, feeling the numbness beginning to fade, his mind beginning to work again. Resolutely, he pushed aside his fear and tried to focus.

It was still early, but Grace wasn't making any headway into finding likely places Red John might have taken Lisbon, and somehow Jane knew she wouldn't find it, not that way. No, it would take some of his own logic, his own hunches, as Cho called them. For one thing, he knew he had to go back to square one now, since all he'd believed and accepted about Red John had been tied up with Thomas McAllister. He thought back to his old list of seven suspects. All of those men had been linked in some way, either through the Blake Association…or Visualize.

Jane's eyes widened. Visualize.

He'd always known there'd been a connection there, between Red John and the religious cult, dating back to the late 80's when Red John worked on a Visualize-owned farm in Elliston, California. He was certain two of the men found dead there had been killed by Red John, although he'd just been a young man then, no doubt lost, easily seduced by someone who seemed to have all the answers. Someone like the late Bret Stiles.

When Stiles had been killed by the bomb blast that had taken out most everyone on Jane's list, he'd purposefully forgotten all about that Visualize connection, worthless information taking up space in his mind after he'd killed McAllister. Stiles had been responsible for several murders himself, but he'd never gotten his own hands dirty. A young man from Visualize might have stood out to the cult leader if he'd taken down two bad apples running the doomed farm. Jane had worked these theories out in his mind years ago, but Stiles had proven untouchable, and, in fact had helped Jane along the way with insight into the serial killer or with actual information that moved Jane's investigation along. Whatever the Visualize connection between the two, Red John had obviously struck out on his own.

Reaching back into his Memory Palace, it wasn't much of a leap for Jane to guess that Red John had been a protégé of Stiles while he was in Visualize. Stiles had probably given him more dirty jobs, since Red John seemed to enjoy killing so much. But somewhere along the way, Stiles might have become disturbed by Red John's dark proclivities, and perhaps he pushed him out of the nest, told him he was ready to start his own following. There were indeed similarities between Red John's cult and Stiles's—the use of hypnosis, the mental manipulation, the focus on the cult leader as being almost god-like, one with enough charisma that people would kill for him, die for him. Members of both cults could be found heavily embedded in law enforcement, as if the two of them had tracked along parallel courses. It was uncanny, really. And, as Jane had always believed, there were no coincidences.

Suddenly energized, Jane rose to his feet, almost running back through the park to the Rigsby's. He ran up the steps to their house, opened the front door without knocking, and jogged into their home office. He didn't even bother excusing himself as he broke into his friends' conversation.

"Who's running Visualize now? Is it Jason Cooper?" he asked Grace, his nervous excitement palpable in the room.

"Visualize?" Grace and Rigsby repeated at the same time.

"Please. Could you just check for me?"

"Uh, sure," she replied, startled. She opened a new tab on her computer screen, did a search for the cult's website. She clicked her way through the menu to the leaders of the church's Inner Circle. "Jason Cooper? No. It's Charles Leben."

A picture of the man came up, and Jane nodded. "He was in Stiles's Inner Circle once upon a time. What happened to Cooper?"

It took a few minutes to find the right man on the internet, but Grace managed to pull up an article dated three years before, where the newly crowned leader of Visualize, Jason Cooper, had died under mysterious circumstances.

Jane smiled, clearly onto something. The others' interests were immediately piqued. "As I recall, Leben is a dud of a man. No way he has the charisma to lead a cult of any kind. My guess, he's a figurehead, maybe the COO really. What else has Visualize been up to lately?"

A few more clicks of Grace's fingers on the keyboard, and she was telling them about Visualize's recent history.

"They seemed to have downsized since Stiles's death. No more training camps. No more university. We don't have access to their private records, of course, but it looks like membership has dropped. They certainly haven't been in the news much over the past few years. With Stiles out, the implications of tax fraud, murder, and moblike behavior haven't been in the news lately. It's like the whole cult has gone completely underground."

"Yes," Jane whispered. "Yes. I think I know what Red John's been up to these past three years."

"He lost the Blake Association, so he took over Visualize?" Cho guessed.

The exhilaration Jane always felt when he solved something, when he was right, came bubbling up within him.

"You wanted my hunch, Cho. There it is. Grace, check out Visualize's property holdings in California," Jane said, and Grace didn't even blink at his demanding tone; Jane's excitement was contagious. "He likes to be out in nature, away from everyone," he added, remembering Dumar's farm as well as the one in Elliston.

"This might take me awhile."

"Cho," Grace said, "could you give me clearance to tap into the FBI database? Everything is airtight secure here, I promise."

Cho got up from his place on a nearby couch and joined her at the computer. He typed in his password, then made a quick call to DC, confirming he was accessing information from an unusual location. He certainly didn't want the FBI showing up on the Rigsbys' front porch.

Tense, anxious, Jane began to bounce on his heals a little. Rigsby looked over at his friend, concerned he'd gone too quickly from shock to hysteria.

"Hey, Jane. You want a drink or something? Why don't we get out of here for a bit, let Grace work. Maddie should be up from her nap soon, and we'll have no peace then."

Jane allowed himself to be led to their kitchen. "Tea," he said. "Tea would be great."

"Not anything stronger? We've got scotch, or beer."

"No. My head's finally clearing; I need to keep my wits about me."

Rigsby nodded, set the tea kettle on to boil. "Grace has a bunch of different teas in the cupboard to the left of the stove."

Grateful for something to do, Jane went to the cupboard, his eyes skimming over the selection. Choosing good old oolong, he removed the box and went to the refrigerator for milk.

Cho showed up a minute later, putting on a pot of fresh coffee without asking. Given their long night and the excitement of the morning, he figured they were all due for a boost about now.

"Anyone want a sandwich?" asked Rigsby, predictably, his mouth already filled with potato chips.

Cho actually smiled. "I've missed you, man," he said sincerely.

Soon the three men sat at the kitchen table, silently sipping their drinks and eating sandwiches or munching on cookies. Jane took a phone out of his pocket—it was Lisbon's, the one her captor had thrown out the window. Jane had used his own phone's family app to track its location, had found it not far down the road from Hightower's house before they left for San Francisco earlier. It was pretty scratched up, and had a small crack in the screen, but it was still useable. It sure would have been nice if they hadn't gotten rid of it; they could have found her by now.

He frowned at the PIN secured screen, before pressing the most likely four numbers Lisbon would use. He got it in two tries. The first had been their wedding date, the second, the baby's due date. Naturally, that would be it, he thought with a smile. He stared at his wife's screensaver—a picture of her last sonogram. Not even out of the womb, and she already had baby pictures on her phone.

He'd never invaded her privacy this way, but he found himself looking through the old texts between them, asking one another to pick up milk, or ice cream, or, her latest craving, donuts. There were random texts telling her he loved her, and vice versa, or mentioning a movie one of them would like to see. Benign, ordinary things that made him want to bawl like a baby. In looking through her saved pictures, he found a video marked: For Jane.

Heart pounding, he rose from the table without a word and went into the living room to be alone. With a shaking hand, he pressed the play arrow. Lisbon's beautiful face appeared, and he immediately realized what it was. Law enforcement officers, military, any first responders—often left goodbye videos for their loved ones on their phones, just in case.

"Hi, Patrick. If you're watching this and I'm not dead, quit snooping around on my damn phone." She grinned, and his heart stood still. "Ok, if you're not snooping, then I guess I must be-"

"Hey," interrupted Rigsby who had appeared as if by magic next to where Jane sat on the couch. "If that's what I think it is, you don't want to watch."

Startled, Jane hit pause and looked up.

"I made that mistake when Grace and I were still with the CBI. Trust me, you don't want to go there."

Jane looked back down at the still picture of his wife, wiped at tears he hadn't realized had spilled over.

Almost relieved, he exited the video and went back to the home screen. He looked up at his friend in gratitude. "You're probably right. Here. Keep this for me, would you? I don't trust myself."

Rigsby grinned, pocketing Lisbon's phone. "We're going to find her, Jane. Don't give up hope."

And then, from the office, came Grace's excited call: "Guys! I think I found something!"

A/N: Thanks for reading!