She called Jane.

"Teresa," he said, his voice low and sleep-rasped. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

She was weak with relief that he'd answered. She'd told herself very firmly about a dozen or so times that Carter's disappearance was Red John's doing. That there was barely any room for doubt. But a small voice in her head had whispered that Jane would have found it easier to execute his plan of vengeance if he got Carter away from the prying eyes of the FBI first. She'd had him assess the security protocols—he could have easily kept a few pieces back from his comments so he would have an opportunity to exploit them himself at his own convenience. But if he had done this, she was reasonably certain he wouldn't have answered her call in the first place.

"Are you at the hotel?" she asked without preamble.

"Yes," he said, alerted by the tone of her voice. "What's wrong?"

"I'm going to come pick you up. Timothy Carter is missing from the FBI facility."

Silence. "I'll see you soon," he said finally, and hung up.

xxx

Jane was quiet on the drive. Never a good sign. But Lisbon was too preoccupied to spare much thought to what new and horrible plan Jane was sure to cook up in response to this latest salvo.

Agent Darcy met them at the entrance to the facility.

"What happened?" Lisbon demanded.

Darcy had dark hollows under her eyes. "Security cameras blacked out for fifteen minutes," she said crisply. "When they went back up, Sally Carter was dead in her cell. Ten guards killed. And Timothy Carter nowhere to be seen."

Lisbon sucked in a breath. "Jesus."

"We need to see the bodies," Jane said shortly.

"Looks like he shot his way out," Darcy said, leading them into the recesses of the facility. She walked them through the scene, retracing the steps Carter must have taken on his way out.

None of them spoke much, walking through the carnage. The guards were almost all in pairs, killed by shots to the head or chest as they rushed down halls to respond to the threat, spread out between Timothy Carter's cell and the main entrance. Obliterated as nothing more than inconvenient obstacles.

Bizarrely, Sally Carter's body was staged as a suicide, complete with a handwritten note. Lisbon read it, feeling sick to her stomach, then handed it to Jane. "What do you make of it?"

His eyes moved over the page rapidly. She had no doubt he was committing the contents to memory, his mind analyzing every possible shade of meaning. But he only handed it back to her and said, "Not sure."

Timothy Carter's cell offered even fewer clues. The guard just outside the door had been strangled with a bedsheet, his gun and keys lifted to stage the rest of the escape.

Jane said very little while Lisbon and Darcy discussed the likely sequence of events and possible avenues of escape once he cleared the main entrance.

"We're setting up roadblocks," Darcy said, her mouth a grim line. Lisbon recognized the look of self-recrimination in her eyes, for having had this happen under her watch. Lisbon could relate. Darcy continued dismally, "We don't expect much will come of it, though. He had too much of a head start."

"Have you already taken photos of all the bodies?" Jane asked suddenly.

Darcy blinked at him. "Yeah. The forensics team is still finishing up, but they should have most of the photos uploaded to the server now."

"Are there any cars missing from the parking lot?" he asked.

"Missing?" Darcy echoed.

"The officer whose keys he took," Jane said impatiently. "Or any of the other ones he killed, for that matter. This place is miles away from anything. He had to leave here in a vehicle. Are any of the guards' cars gone?"

Darcy looked chagrined that she hadn't thought of this herself. Though to be fair, it was still only quarter to five in the morning and she had almost certainly gotten even less sleep than Jane and Lisbon. "I'll look into it," she promised.

"What about the security footage?" Jane asked. "Any idea how he took out so many cameras at once?"

Darcy shook her head. "Techs are still working on that."

Lisbon made a mental note to tell Van Pelt to look at it as soon as possible, but not to tip her hand to the FBI without discussing it with the team first. She rubbed her temple. She could feel a headache forming behind her eyes already, and the day hadn't even started yet.

xxx

They stayed at the scene another two hours, then headed back to the office.

Lisbon drove. "Jane…" She hesitated.

"I know what you're going to ask me, Lisbon," Jane said, looking out the window.

"We must have been wrong," Lisbon said. "Timothy Carter has to be Red John, right? How else could he have escaped like that?"

"With the real Red John helping him, of course," Jane said.

"That doesn't even make sense," Lisbon protested. "All the guards were killed on the way out. If Red John had been coming from the outside, one of the guards would have raised the alarm when he first entered the building."

"Not if he was disguised as another guard or had some other fake credentials that made it seem like he was authorized to be there. He would have only had to get through the main entrance and past three guards on the way in. The rest were reinforcements who showed up when someone sounded the alarm," Jane said. "Let's take the reverse—if Timothy Carter staged a brilliant one man escape, how did he take down all the security cameras down from inside his cell?"

"He could have had an accomplice on the outside," Lisbon said. "Someone with advanced technical skills."

"That could be true even if Timothy Carter isn't Red John and Red John broke in to help him," Jane said. "It would make sense to have a third man on the outside in any case."

"But if Carter isn't Red John, why break him out in the first place?" Lisbon asked. "Why not just kill him like he did to Todd Johnson and Rebecca Anderson? Or Sally Carter, for that matter?"

"That is an excellent question," Jane said. "I must conclude that Red John wants us to believe Timothy Carter's confession. He wants us to believe Carter is Red John."

"Why, though?" Lisbon said. "It's the same question as before. Why would he suddenly be okay with someone else claiming his work as their own?"

"Because we got close this time," Jane said. "Very close. And maybe…" Jane hesitated.

"What?"

"Maybe he feared for his life," Jane said reluctantly. "Didn't like being on the other end of that telescope."

Lisbon grimaced. She always hated these reminders of Jane's intention to do violence, but she had to admit he had a point. "What about Carter? Why would he risk letting Carter go free after putting him in jail and killing his wife?"

"Carter is dead."

"That makes even less sense. If he wanted him dead, why not just kill him in jail like he did to Carter's wife? It would have been far less trouble than helping him escape."

"Because it works to Red John's advantage if every law enforcement officer in the state thinks that the killer they're hunting for is Timothy Carter. Red John will bury the body somewhere it will never be found. And if we had accepted Timothy Carter's confession, we would have spent the next twenty years searching for a dead man, firmly convinced that he's our man. Meanwhile, Red John will continue to kill people right under our noses, utterly assured he's safe from capture, because we're looking for a man with a different name and a different face."

Dammit. She hated it when Jane's outlandish theories made sense.