Lisbon is the one who finally pulls away.
"C'mon," she says briskly, but he catches the way she dashes at her eyes as she says it. She nudges his shoulder with hers. "Help me with this fence. Then we can catch up properly."
He dutifully holds up the fence while she hammers it back into place. He glances at the horse, still greedily tearing up mouthfuls of grass. "Nice ride," he says. "Yours?"
"More or less," she says. "Name's Maggie. She's a mean old thing," she adds fondly.
"But she'd follow you to the ends of the earth," Jane surmises, realizing on further inspection that Maggie is keeping a weather eye on him under the guise of stuffing herself with grass.
"We get along," she says with a smile. "I've purchased her affection with an endless supply of apples and sugar cubes."
He shakes his head. "This from the woman who was afraid of a little old deer."
"I have a rifle now," she says. Sure enough, Jane can see the butt of a rifle sticking out of a long leather case threaded beneath one stirrup on the saddle. "I can protect myself from any particularly menacing deer. Though I'm pretty much used to them, now. And I got a head start getting used to horseflesh when you gave me that pony."
He shakes his head. "You and your guns."
"How'd you get here?" Lisbon asks. "You popped up out of nowhere. Did you hitchhike or something?"
"I've got a pickup. I left it down by the gate."
"Well, drive it along the road up to the house," she says. "I've got a little cabin round the backside of the pond, but the road doesn't go up that way. Just leave it by the house and I'll meet you there."
Jane is unhappy at the prospect of a separation, no matter how brief. "Is it safe?"
She nods. "Don's all right. I just need to let him know you'll be staying with me."
Jane hesitates, still reluctant. "Can't I come back with you? I can pick up the truck later."
Her face softens. "All right. We can walk back together. I need to get Maggie settled in the barn, and then we can walk up to the road and get your truck."
They walk back hand in hand, Lisbon leading Maggie. Maggie tries to bite him.
Lisbon gives him a sugar cube to ply her with. Maggie delicately accepts the sugar cube from his hand. Then bites him. Jane snatches his hand away, nursing his arm, which is going to be sporting a large teeth shaped bruise the next morning. Lisbon strokes the horse on the nose affectionately. "She'll warm up. She's obviously figured out you're an acquired taste."
They stop at the barn. Jane watches as Lisbon removes the rifle from its holster, then expertly untacks the horse and checks her hooves for stones. Finding none, Lisbon sets out a bucket of water for Maggie to drink from while Lisbon fetches the currycomb and brush and sets to grooming her. Jane watches in fascination as Lisbon brushes and combs her coat to a glossy sheen, a process which involves a lot of Lisbon murmuring silly nothings into Maggie's pricked ears. The devil creature obviously revels in the attention, her body twitching in pleasure as Lisbon fusses over her.
When Maggie had been groomed to Lisbon's satisfaction, they leave her with a bag of oats and head up to the house. When they reach the front porch, Lisbon pats him on the arm. "Wait here."
Jane reflexively tightens his grip on her hand. She squeezes back. "I'll only be a minute. Trust me."
She goes and finds her boss working in one of the paddocks behind the house and brings him down to meet Jane. She introduces Jane as "her old friend, Patrick." Don doesn't ask questions. He nods curtly at Jane and shakes his hand with a firm, callused grip.
They run into three other ranch hands on the way to the road, herding cattle. One about nineteen, obviously in awe of Lisbon. One married and friendly. The third a couple years younger than Lisbon and clearly half in love with her. His eyes track their joined hands. "Who's this?" he asks, shooting a disgruntled look at Jane.
"This is my friend, Patrick," Lisbon answers.
The hand, whose name is Jeremy, continues to stare at Jane malevolently. "Friend, huh? I thought you and I were friends, Teresa. You never hold my hand."
"We've known each other a long time," Lisbon says placidly. She makes no move to let Jane go.
"Don't take it personally," Jane says. "I knew her for ten years before she let me hold her hand. You just need to have patience."
"Ten years?" Jeremy repeats in dismay.
Lisbon waves them off. "We'll see you later."
They leave the hands behind and Lisbon pulls Jane up the road. "It will probably make life easier if you get them to like you," she says mildly.
"Duly noted," Jane says, hearing the subtle warning in her voice. He resolves to launch a charm offensive to shore up goodwill among the locals at the earliest opportunity.
They get back to the car. Lisbon holds her hand out for the keys. Jane hands them over wordlessly and climbs into the passenger seat. Lisbon slides in beside him. "Thought maybe you might have traded up after finally leaving that old blue bucket of bolts behind," she says with a smirk as she puts the keys in the ignition. "But I see you've gotten yourself another rusty—" Before she can finish the thought, Jane puts his hand behind her head and stops her with a long, desperate kiss.
His brain shorts out when he feels her soft mouth under his. When he finally recovers some semblance of his wits, both his hands are buried in her hair and her hand is on his cheek. They're both breathing heavily. Jane feels as though he's traversed several galaxies in the last several minutes. He smiles self-consciously, but doesn't let her go. "Sorry about that," he says weakly. Possibly the biggest lie he's ever uttered in his life. "I just—wanted to clarify my position."
"Thank you," she says, smiling. "That does make things clearer." She quirks an eyebrow at him. "Perhaps I should clarify my position as well?" He nods dumbly, too quickly. She leans forward and kisses him back.
They drive up and park the truck up by the house. Then Lisbon takes him by the hand again and leads him to a little cabin tucked away behind a hill, with a little pond out front. The view is spectacular, the rolling grassy hills stretching up to snow-capped peaks in the distance. Jane doesn't know if he's ever seen a sky so blue. "I'd like to clarify my position further," she says, stepping closer to him and fingering the button on his shirt.
Jane clears his throat. "Come to think of it, I have a few points I'd like to clarify further as well."
They go inside and remove each other's clothes with quiet, desperate efficiency, then tumble onto the soft flannel sheets on Lisbon's bed.
After, Jane cooks for her. She doesn't have an oven, but she has a little stove and enough food in the cupboards that he manages a respectable meal.
Lisbon eats like she's starving. "I had to lose a lot of weight for the con," she explains.
Jane is alarmed. "You can't afford to lose weight."
"Believe me, I wasn't happy about it," Lisbon says, slathering another slice of skillet cornbread with butter. "But it seemed the easiest way to convince people I was really dying." She explains that a local doctor friend in Cannon River helped her with the con. Blake had come after her twice since she moved to Cannon River. She killed one, arrested the other. But they clearly weren't going to stop. So she had to figure out a way to deal with it without endangering her brothers and the team. Thus, the con.
"Who knows?"
She devours half the slice of cornbread in one bite. "My brothers. The team. Abbott."
"Abbott?" Jane asks with a frown, remembering the man who was responsible for dismantling the CBI and breaking his favorite teacup.
"I spoke with him after I caught the second guy. He helped me get set up here."
Jane sits back. "You're not just in hiding," he realizes. "You're working a con. A different con."
She nods. "One of the Blake leaders is here. We want to catch him."
His eyes don't leave hers. "How can I help?"
Xxx
Jane continues to stay in Lisbon's little cabin and manages to get himself hired as a hand at a neighboring ranch. Lisbon finds this amusing. He doesn't take to the work quite as quickly as she does, but he gets by. Lisbon finds his complaints about the unexpected exertions of his new job amusing as well. He does not, however, complain about the other unexpected exertions that have come along with this new life. He grows absurdly fond of flannel sheets and the sound of meadowlark song outside her window in the morning.
Through a careful campaign, he manages to win over the other hands at Don's ranch (even the recalcitrant Jeremy) as well as the hands at Skylark Ranch, where he's working now. His strategy mainly revolves around buying his fellow workers vast quantities of beer, telling entertaining tall tales, and losing carefully calculated amounts of money in games of pool and poker to each of his new companions in turn. Lisbon shakes her head over this, but has to admit the strategy is effective.
Don's ranch and Skylark Ranch bookend the ranch of Jay Somerset, the Blake leader Lisbon has identified through months of careful research. Somerset has amassed a vast fortune through the management of various military contracts and bought the ranch as a vacation home. He leases the land around it to the neighboring ranchers for grazing.
Don, it turns out, has lost a son. The son was in the army, killed in action by friendly fire. Lisbon suspects Somerset of orchestrating the event to protect his military contracts and to conceal war crimes perpetrated by the son's commanding officer. They believe the commanding officer is also Blake. When Jane learns this, he puts his hand on Don's shoulder and sits beside him on the porch steps for a long time in silent solidarity.
It takes them three months to bring down Somerset. They collect evidence on several of his cronies as well, and by the time they see the FBI lead Somerset away in cuffs, they have amassed enough information to take down another whole arm of the Blake organization.
They celebrate over a beer in her little cabin, the flannel sheets rumpled in the background. When her phone rings, Lisbon gets up to answer it. He watches her straighten her posture a bit as the person on the other end starts talking.
"Abbott?" he guesses when she hangs up.
She nods, stunned. "He—he offered me a job. As a special agent for the FBI working with his team in Austin." She looks over at him. "He offered you, one, too." She clears her throat. "If, you know, you'd want that."
"I assume this job comes along with a pardon," Jane says, eyebrows raised.
"Yeah. He knows what you've done here. He said he'll arrange all the paperwork."
He considers this. "Think they'll give me my old couch back?" he wonders aloud.
She laughs, but half a sob escapes partway through. She turns to him, eyes shining. "If they don't, I'll buy you a new one."
He stands up and picks her hat up off the table. "Well," he says, placing it on her head and tilting her chin up so he can look into her eyes. "If we're moving to Texas, guess we'd better bring your cowboy hat."
She slides her arms around his waist and looks up at him, her grin wide and real and untainted by tears. "We?" she emphasized. "We're moving to Texas?"
"Sure, why not?" He tips the hat back and gives her a long, sweet kiss. He grins down at her. "Let's see what kind of trouble we can make."