AN: Do I think Kirkland is RJ? I think it would be very easy, which is why I am hesitant to go with my initial instinct. Of course, like many people have pointed out, maybe Bruno knows we'll all think that, and Kirkland really is RJ.
Damn you and your mind games, Bruno Heller.
Just kidding! But can Jane and Lisbon kiss now? Pleeease?
Keep in mind people...Lisbon doesn't know what we know about Kirkland! And if he is RJ, then clearly he can be very charming and persuasive. And I think it would be too much of a temptation for him to not make a play for Lisbon. Besides, they do funny things on The Mentalist...remember Kristina Frye? I thought the only thing Jane felt for her was contempt, and then he went and asked her out.
This is also where I am exercising dramatic license...I just saw the extended preview for Red Sails, and some of it just isn't going to work for me. Like Jane in a cowboy hat, for example, among other things.
Disclaimer: They continue to be not mine.
Coffee and Confessions, Part II
Jane had been gone for three days before she got the phone call from Bertram, telling her that Lorelei Martins had escaped from the supermax facility located a few hours southwest of Sacramento.
Although she knew it was coming, she still closed her eyes and hung her head. He had succeeded, then. She wasn't sure if that was better or worse than him failing.
"Please tell me Jane had nothing to do with it," Bertram was saying, clearly under a massive amount of stress. "Please tell me he hasn't left your sight in the past twenty four hours."
She couldn't lie, especially when it could be so easily verified. "I haven't seen Jane in three days, sir."
On the other end of the line, Bertram swore loudly. "I don't suppose there's any chance he's not involved with this." It wasn't a question, so she didn't answer.
"Get your people on this," the director said after a brief pause. "I'm having Brenda put their pictures all over the news."
"Sir," she interjected quickly. "Do you have any proof Jane was involved? If you don't, it seems a little presumptuous to-"
"Lisbon, you and I both know Jane is behind this," Bertram interrupted. "The longer we wait, the less change we have of finding either of them."
"Yes, sir," she said quietly, knowing this was a fight she wouldn't win.
After Bertram hung up, she sat with her head in her hands for a few minutes. Though this wasn't quite her worst nightmare, it wasn't far off.
She wondered how many betrayals she could go through and survive.
With a deep, bracing sigh, she pushed up from her desk, smoothing her hair back. Her legs felt like rubber, her heart like lead.
The bullpen was bustling with activity. Cho glanced up at her as she walked in the room. Whatever he saw on her face apparently alarmed him.
"What happened?" he asked with his usual directness.
She clung to his stoic demeanor, using him as her rock. He had been with her longer than anyone, and she relied on him far more than she let on. She was grateful that he liked to be where he was, and hadn't applied to be head of his own unit. Not yet, anyway.
Her thoughts were rambling, and she tried to marshal them. The rest of the team was looking at her now, too.
"Lorelei Martins escaped from supermax this morning," she said, emotionlessly as possible.
After her three detectives exchanged mildly horrified glances, they all turned to stare at Jane's conspicuously empty couch.
"Director Bertram feels strongly that Jane is involved in this somehow," she went on, her own eyes looking at the worn leather.
"No shit?" Rigsby muttered.
"He did ask me how to break into a supermax," Cho said to the team at large. "I told him it was impossible."
"Apparently it's not," she deadpanned.
There was a loaded silence as everyone wondered what their next step was. "Find them, people," she finally said.
For the rest of the morning, they put together a timeline on the whiteboard, complete with pictures. As best she could, she avoided looking at Jane's picture, his green eyes seemingly mocking her.
Around noon, she heard someone call her name from the entrance to the bullpen. Turning, she saw Kirkland, looking very serious.
Quickly, she crossed the room to stand in front of him. "Mr. Kirkland," she said, "I'm afraid you've found us at a very bad time. Did something new happen with Volker?"
He blinked. "Volker?" Kirkland shook his head. "That't not why I'm here, Teresa." He nodded towards the whiteboard behind them.
She frowned. "Why is Homeland Security involved in this?"
"Do you know who we keep in supermax prisons? The worst of the worst. There are definitely people in there with ties to known terrorists. It makes the government very nervous when inmates start escaping." He scanned the board again.
"Are you taking jurisdiction from us?" she demanded, as defensive as she ever was when someone was threatening her cases.
"Not at all," Kirkland assured her. "Lorelei Martins isn't a terror suspect, after all. I'm just here to act as a consultant. And to figure out how this happened."
"Just what I need," she muttered to herself. "Another consultant."
Across the room, Grace was setting up the phone monitoring equipment. Kirkland followed her eyes. "Have you tried contacting Jane yet?"
"His phone is off," she said. "At least for now."
He nodded. "Do you know who he's working with? I'm sure you've figured out that it's impossible to break someone out of a facility like that all on your own."
Lisbon shrugged. "His phone records should be here soon. It was more difficult than we expected to get a warrant for them. As of yet, we don't have any definitive proof that Jane was even involved at all."
Kirkland held her gaze. "But you don't doubt it, do you?"
She smiled without humor. "Not for a second." There was a moment when she regretted saying it, a second where she felt like she had betrayed Jane when it had become second nature to defend him to the death.
But his picture hanging on the crime board told her that ship had already sailed. The best she could do now was to make sure it was her team that caught him. What she would do then was beyond her, but it seemed imperative that she was the one that found him.
Kirkland lightly touched her arm. "It'll be alright, Teresa," he said.
Unexpectedly, her phone rang. Jane's picture flashed on the screen.
"Grace!" she practically yelled. "He's calling."
Within a few seconds, they had set up the tracing software. "Keep him talking for as long as you can," Grace said. "We need two minutes to get a lock on his location."
Hands shaking slightly, she pressed the answer button.
"Jane," she said, her even tone of voice surprising herself.
"Hello, Lisbon," he responded, as lightly as ever.
"What are you doing?" she asked, eyes on the tracking software.
"Oh, you know," he remarked nonchalantly. "Taking in the scenery." He paused. "I assuming you're tracking my call."
"That seems pretty likely, given the circumstances," she said slowly.
"Then I'll keep it short. I'm just calling to let you know that I'm alright, since apparently that was a big sticking point for you when I was in Las Vegas."
She was a silent for a moment. He was calling to reassure her? "That's very thoughtful of you," she said.
"Someday, Teresa, I hope I get the chance to apologize properly for all of this." His voice was wistful now.
"Me, too," she all but whispered.
There was another pause. "I do love you, you know," he said, and she knew exactly what his face would look like.
Suddenly, she was angry. She had worked with him for ten years, and been in love with him for almost that long. Apparently, he felt something for her as well, but the only time he could tell her was before he pretended to kill her or when he had done something so illegal that he was facing the wrath of the entire federal government?
"No, you don't," she said, without thinking. She could hear the edge her words had, the hurt.
He hadn't expected her response. "Excuse me?" he said.
"Maybe you think you do, when it's convenient for you. Or maybe you do according to your own stupid terms. But you don't, not really." She took a deep breath. "So I'm letting you take your words back again, since you will anyway."
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the rest of the team staring at her, shock evident on their faces. She didn't have the liberty to regret the very public venue she had chosen to have this conversation in. Besides, it was certainly keeping him talking.
"At what point did I take it back?" Jane demanded, and she heard the echoing anger in his words.
"That would be when you pretended to not remember saying it," she said, voice dark.
"Really?" he asked, incredulous. "You want to talk about that now? You have an amazing sense of timing."
"Thanks to your latest stupid idea, Jane, I think that now is about the only time we'll get to talk about it." Grace's computer beeped, telling her that she had kept him on the line for long enough.
He seemed to realize at the same time that he had let the call go on too long. "Time to go, Teresa. I'll talk to you soon."
There was a click, and the line went dead.
She closed her eyes for a moment, then forced herself to look at the team, straightening her shoulders. "Well?" she asked, using her boss voice. "Where is he?"
After another second of staring, Grace spun back to the screen. "Close to Bishop. I'd guess he's making for the Nevada border."
"Not anymore he won't be," she said. "He knows we tracked his call. He has to change his plan now."
No one said anything still. She felt a wave of annoyance. "So go find him before he manages to slip away again!" she shouted at the team.
Her anger seemed to galvanize them. Cho and Rigsby grabbed their jackets, heading for the exits. Grace picked up the phone, alerting the Bishop police department, and setting up road blocks.
Eventually, she and Kirkland were the only ones left. She turned back to him, her expression daring him to say anything about what had just happened.
He was smirking, just a little. "That was a hell of a stall tactic, Agent Lisbon."
She was grateful for his humor. "Whatever gets the job done, right?"
"Absolutely," he said. "Remind me to never get on your bad side."
"So," she started, "are you coming with me or not?"
"To Bishop?" he asked. "Absolutely."
XxXxXxXxXxX
Five hours later, they pulled into the city of Bishop, close behind Cho and Rigsby. Jane hadn't made contact again, and the road blocks hadn't yielded a thing. It didn't help that they had no idea what he was driving - the Citroen would have been far too obvious.
Kirkland had been on the phone a few times, his expression intense. "I might have something for you," he said once, by way of explanation. "but I'm waiting until I know for sure. No sense in getting worked up about nothing."
Which, of course, got her worked up.
She parked the small SUV in front of Bishop's tiny police station and exited the vehicle. Cho was waiting on the sidewalk.
"Van Pelt says Bishop PD has started to interview potential witnesses. It's a small enough town that there's a good shot someone saw them."
Lisbon nodded, pausing to let Kirkland catch up with them.
"So what do you think his next play is?" he asked. "Clearly, you know him better than anyone."
She rolled her eyes. "Honestly, I have no idea. He does stupid things when it comes to Red John leads. I can tell you that his main objective is to get Lorelei to give him Red John."
Kirkland frowned. "Do you think she will?"
"Beats the hell out of me," she said. "Jane seems to think she will, that he can turn her. All insane plans aside, he's usually right about things like that."
Cho spoke up. "So let's assume he's taking her somewhere to talk. He's not going to get too far away from California - he'll need to be in the state to get Red John, and the further away he goes, the more difficult it'll be for him to get back."
Kirkland's phone rang again, and he narrowed his eyes at the number. "Excuse me," he said.
She and Cho walked into the police station, both thinking of potential hideouts within the road blocks that had been set up. They were too unfamiliar with the area, though. It didn't help that Bishop bordered a national park, with thousands of acres of forest.
She refused to think that it was impossible, however. That would get her nowhere.
"Agents," came Kirkland's voice. "I just got off the phone with a friend of mine from the CIA. He owed me a favor, so I had him track Jane's cell."
"It was off, though," Cho reminded him.
Kirkland smiled. "The CIA has some fun toys, Agent Cho." He turned to Lisbon. "Anyway, the signal is coming from a hotel room about an hour south of here."
She beat everyone back to the vehicles, where she waited impatiently, hands tapping on the steering wheel. Kirkland joined her, hurriedly typing an address into the GPS.
Lisbon ran the sirens until they reached the outskirts of the tiny, no name town where Jane's signal was being broadcast from. They pulled into the parking lot of the hotel, throwing gravel and dust.
They had called the front desk on their way in, and had confirmed that a blonde man and a dark haired woman had paid for a room in cash a few hours before.
Kirkland was out of the vehicle before she had unbuckled her seat belt, unholstering his weapon. "I'll take the front door," he said. "You go around the back and make sure that no one goes out the window."
"Shouldn't we wait for Cho and Rigsby?" she asked, pulling out her own gun. "They're not far behind us."
"You think we can't handle your partner and one other woman?" He raised an eyebrow.
It was a fair point. She didn't think Jane was armed, and even if he was, he wouldn't shoot her.
Probably.
She nodded her understanding, circling the building quickly. Adrenaline pumping, she waited with forced patience.
There was the crash of splintering wood as the door was kicked in, then a shout of "Police! Freeze!"
Her eyes scanned the back of the hotel. There was no movement. Tentatively, she took a step back towards the front.
Abruptly, three gunshots rang out in the silence of the afternoon, coming from the room Kirkland had just entered.
She sprinted.