A/N: Ok, so thanks so much for the lovely reviews I got last chapter, and here's the next one ^_^ Now I haven't had much time to check all this and make sure it sounds ok cos I wanted to get it published before I go away on holiday for two weeks, so here it is. Hope it's ok ^_^

Chapter 2. Numbers.

'What numbers did he say again?' Van Pelt asked, her hand resting on the corner of her desk as her swivel chair was turned to face me.

I let my head fall back into the couch cushion frustratedly with a heavy sigh. 'Thirteen, five, nineteen, seven and zero.'

Van Pelt echoed the numbers back, more repeating them to herself. My eyes twitched over briefly to see Rigsby and Cho looking slowly from me to Van Pelt. Lisbon stood leant against my desk, her legs crossed over and her fingers softly tapping the wood. Her head was bowed in thought, her dark hair like curtains, gently touching her cheeks.

'A seven digit number...' Van Pelt mused, 'What numbers have seven digits?'

'The ones with seven digits,' I mumbled. My chest was beginning to ache with the continuous heavy beat of my heart. While I knew that Kristina had thoroughly managed to piss me off before she'd gone missing, I knew we had to save her. I couldn't let Red John claim another victim.

'It could be a telephone number...' the young agent continued, 'Maybe it's a reference number...'

'To what? That number could be anything. I don't think we're going to find out by suggesting all the things it could be. If we do that we'll be cleaning up a corpse.'

Van Pelt looked a little taken aback, 'I was just trying to think of the options, Jane.'

'What do you suggest we do then?' Lisbon asked me.

'I don't know,' I replied weakly, 'Just...give me a minute.'

'For what?'

'To think!'

I closed my eyes, pushing my head into the padding of the couch a little more. My fingers trailed lightly over my forehead. My brain was aching. There were too many things that the number could represent, and we were on a limited clock. I didn't know how long we had. I knew that Red John wouldn't harm her straight away. He would wait for me to find at least a few more clues before he began to move forward. But still...the clock was ticking.

'You called me, Lisbon?' I heard Madeline Hightower's voice ring through the silence. Great. Someone else to start asking me repeatedly what I'd been told. Her loud, high-heeled footsteps telling me she was stood next to Lisbon. I heard Lisbon shift slightly.

'There's been a new development in the Red John case. Jane got a letter this morning.'

'From...Red John?'

'Yes.'

I could feel Hightower look at me worriedly, a look which wondered whether I was ok. I didn't open my eyes, or move my lips to reply. I was trying to think.

'What did it say?'

The rustle of an evidence bag. Lisbon handing it over. She hadn't given it over to forensics yet because Hightower needed to see it first. The silence that followed was a little uncomfortable as Hightower read through the words on the paper, right down to the red smiley face at the bottom. I could see it perfectly, like I was reading it for the first time.

'This needs to go to forensics,' Hightower said.

'Yeah, just about to do that,' Lisbon replied.

'Good.'

She gave me another look.

'And we got a phone call from him as well,' Lisbon informed her.

'Yes?'

'He gave Jane five numbers and hung up.'

Hightower attempted to address me, '...Jane?'

I ignored, beginning to form a mental picture of the numbers, lining them up in my mind's eye, hoping that visualizing them might help. 13, 5, 19, 7, 0.

'Jane?'

I heard her whisper 'Is he ok?' to Lisbon.

Maybe the numbers were a code. There were so many codes that included numbers... but I could try the most simple...numbers to letters of the alphabet?

Thirteen...M? Yes, M.

Five was E.

S...and G.

Mesg? No. Unless Red John couldn't count the letters of the alphabet properly, that wasn't it. Oh...but wait...what if...

Keeping the E and the S in mind, I counted thirteen and seven from the end of the alphabet for the letters on each end of the word.

My eyes shot open and I looked around at everyone...who were looking at me a bit worriedly.

'I've got it,' I announced.

'...You do?' Lisbon replied, her eyebrows creasing together slightly. I briefly noted for no apparent reason that her hands were now in her pockets.

'Thirteen, Five, Nineteen and Seven. N, E, S, T. Nest.'

'Nest!' Rigsby declared triumphantly, hitting the desk with his fist, causing Van Pelt to jump slightly. '...What does that mean?'

My face contorted with thought. 'Nest...nest...nest,' I murmured quietly. 'A house...a home?'

'What relevance does that have?' Lisbon enquired, narrowing her eyes.

'Well, that's where he and Kristina could be. His home.'

'And how, do you suppose, are we going to find his house when we have no information about him at all?' Lisbon asked, putting a downer on my mood.

'Lisbon. Don't burst my bubble. I'm figuring it out.'

Five minutes later I was still trying to ignore what Lisbon had said. There had to be some way we could figure this out. I mean, how hard could it be? I was clever. Very clever. My brain could handle the task of figuring out where a mysterious serial killer, whom we had no current, real information about, grew up...yes...

I groaned inwardly.

'So, when do you think Mr. Jane will figure out the first...second clue? I mean, I didn't make it that hard, did I?'

Kristina didn't seem to even dare turn her tearful eyes to look me. I sat beside her, trailing my hardened, callused finger across the blade of the knife I had grasped in my fist. I heard a soft moan echo weakly from her dry, cracked lips, where a gag parted them. I revelled in the fear I had brought to this woman, knowing that it would bring Patrick Jane running. I flipped the knife and balanced it on my index finger perfectly. I leant forward, causing my chair to creak slightly under my shifting weight. I pushed Kristina's chin up with the flat edge of the blade and surveyed the emotion that she conveyed to me through the look in her reddened eyes. She didn't seem to want to let the tears escape. They pooled behind her lower lashes, threatening to, but never over spilling. I brought my thumb up roughly and pulled at the flesh beside her eye, causing the tears to fall from the glistening green pools. She sobbed weakly as the moisture tumbled down her cheek. I sat back, letting her head fall again.

'I need ideas. What do you think should happen when he gets here?' I asked her, starting to fiddle with my knife again. 'I could...shoot him as he comes through the door...though that would defeat the object of killing off those students for him...and what would I do then? If he was dead? No, that won't work. I could kill you as he comes through the door. Well that seems a little pointless. I might get caught... What was that Kristina?' I leant forward looking up through the curls of hair that lay each side of her face, 'You think I should kill you beforehand and leave before he gets here so his whole effort was pointless?'

I leant back into my chair, nodding, holding my dulled knife up to the light. 'Interesting.'

Kristina whimpered. I could almost feel the beat of her heart as it became panic-stricken.

'There's got to be another meaning behind the numbers,' I told myself. Red John wouldn't have left a clue that was simply of no use to me. I had begun to pace the floor before my desk. My shoes squeaked as the soles rolled over the floorboards. Hightower had left to sort out the forensics and return to her paperwork, but I could tell that the repetitive sound of rubber on wooden panels was becoming irritating to Lisbon, Rigsby, Van Pelt and Cho. They were all sat at their desks except Lisbon, who sat at mine, her feet up on the work surface. I could see she was twirling a pencil between her fingers, and she gave out a low huff as she watched my stride.

'Come on Lisbon, think of anything else those numbers could mean,' I encouraged her.

She sighed. 'I don't know.'

'Think!'

'What do you think I've been doing for the past half hour? Slowly letting my brain stagnate?'

'Could have fooled me...' I muttered.

She glared at me, but I continued to pace, unfazed.

'Five numbers...seven digits,' I murmured. While I hadn't included the zero in my code deciphering, it had to have some relevance. Maybe it was put on the end to be able to give another side to the code.

'What has seven digits, Lisbon?'

She shrugged pathetically. 'I don't know...a date?'

I stopped pacing and looked at her blankly.

'What?'

'13th May 1970?'

'Yeah...?'

'What would have happened forty years ago?'

'I'm no fountain of knowledge Jane, stop looking at me like that.'

I averted my gaze to Van Pelt and commanded her to type the date into the computer search engine. Maybe the all knowing internet would provide an answer. I perched myself on the edge of my desk, tapping my foot on the floor with an impatient rhythm.

'No, nothing I can see,' Van Pelt told me.

'Hmm...maybe we should ask the Quantum Lords? They're bound to know,' Lisbon murmured. I could tell she had one of those bemused smirks on her face.

'Don't be silly Lisbon,' I replied seriously, recalling the case where we had to deal with the mental patient.

'...Sorry.'

I could still hear the smirk in her voice though.

'We could...check the FBI database,' Van Pelt suggested, 'For possible crimes or birth records from that day.'

'See, Lisbon. Our Junior Agent has better suggestions than you...' I told Lisbon, 'And she clearly recognises that the Quantum Lords don't exist.'

'Ha. Ha.' Lisbon muttered.

I looked over my shoulder to see her cross her arms frustratedly. It was the first time I smiled since receiving the letter from Red John.

'O...kayyy,' Van Pelt murmured, logging into the FBI database and typing in the search criteria, 'For the thirteenth of May 1970...oh wow...'

Everyone leant forward in their seats.

'What?' I asked promptly. When Van Pelt used that kind of tone, it meant a bad 'wow', not a good one. Van Pelt shook her head softly.

'Well...on that day, there was a huge homicide. Eight innocent people were gunned down on Knight's Parkway. It doesn't look like the case was ever closed...'

Silence filled the room for a few moments.

'Who were the victims?' I asked softly.

'Um... Jessica and Michael Lynn, John Sachs, Emelie Jose, Evelyn Immerson, Harrison and Jodie Guy, and Jonah Haig.'

'Did any of those have sons or daughters?'

'No...apart from Evelyn Immerson. She had a daughter, Alayna.'

I heard a gentle sigh melt from Van Pelt's lips. 'She was only six...no one should have to lose their mother that young.'

And suddenly something struck. Something I had heard. It was more than a ringing bell, it was a crashing cymbal.

Tyger, Tyger burning bright...in the forests of the night... but it wasn't night that Red John had meant. It was Knight. Knight's Parkway. Something terrible, violent, had happened in Knight's Parkway, something nobody was ever supposed to forget.

'Lisbon?'

'Yes?'

'Um, you know when I said that Red John didn't say anything when we met?'

'Yeah...'

'I was lying.'

'That figures.'

'Why?'

'Because you always lie.'

'Not always,' I replied indignantly.

Lisbon snorted with laughter. I scowled.

'Anyway...' I diverted the conversation back to its original purpose quickly.

'Mhm.'

'He whispered the first two lines of a William Blake poem to me.'

I looked back at Lisbon's perplexed expression. 'The Tyger.'

'O...kay,' she replied slowly.

'Tyger, Tyger burning bright in the forests of the night,' I recalled to her, 'I think he meant Knight's Parkway.'

Lisbon nodded slowly, bringing her legs down from the desk, 'So...that was the first clue?'

'I guess so.'

'Which you withheld from us?'

'Well...yeah. I thought it meant something else.'

'What, you thought you'd figured out who, or where Red John was?'

'...Possibly.'

'And so you thought you would go find him all on your own?'

'Well...'

She stared at me for a moment, before she brought two fingers to pinch the bridge of her nose. Her hand then ran through her hair, causing her fringe to lie awkwardly across her forehead.

'God, you're not a superhero, Jane!' she spoke frustratedly, 'I wish you would learn that! You know full well what happened the last time you went after him on your own,' Lisbon was starting to get angry. I couldn't really figure out the reason. I hadn't actually done anything. Maybe she was just...on her time of the month or something.

'You nearly got yourself killed. I would've thought it had hit home. I would've thought you'd have respected what I'd said!'

'Um...Lisbon? I...haven't actually done anything yet.'

I heard a few coughs from behind me. I briefly looked over my shoulder.

'You would've done though, wouldn't you?'

'I...well...' Lisbon got up from her seat and began to leave, 'No! I wouldn't!' But it was already plain as daylight that she didn't believe me as she kept going towards her office. She was right though. I knew what I had been planning to do, and she'd read me like a book. Either I was losing my touch or I was becoming ignorant to how...ignorant I was becoming. I got up, briefly looking at the team before heading in the direction of Lisbon's office.

I think, for the first time, I actually stopped to knock before I dared enter. I knew she'd be even more angry...frustrated, if I simply walked in.

Knock, knock.

There was a pause before I heard the words, 'Come in'.

I slowly pushed the door open and put a foot forward to enter.

'Oh, it's you,' she muttered, 'I thought it was someone else because you knocked... Go away.'

'Lisbon, I'm sorry...' I offered, stepping further into the office.

'Jane, you've only ever been sorry about one thing in your entire life. How do you expect me to believe you now?'

I let out a deep breath.

'You know how much this means to me, and how much people can get hurt. I never want you to get hurt because of what I am, and that's why I try and do it alone.'

'If you wanted to do it alone, why did you even bother joining the team? It's called a team for a reason. We work together. We look out for each other. I wish you could see that that's what we're trying to do for you as well.'

I bowed my head, scrutinizing the worn toe of my left shoe. Her tone softened as she continued.

'Look, I know how much this means to you. I know what lengths you're willing to go to. But I just can't let you do whatever you want! I don't know whether any of what I say will stick one day, but I'm going to keep telling you. No matter how much you think you can go it alone, you will always need someone. It doesn't matter what for. But I can guarantee that you will not survive to catch Red John if you continue to be so careless.'

I thought about it for a few seconds.

'...Ok.'

'Ok?'

I nodded. 'Ok.'

'I'm sorry; did you just accept what I said?'

I nodded again.

Lisbon looked at me suspiciously.

'Really?'

'Yes.'

'You're lying aren't you?'

'No, I'm not. I understand.'

Lisbon still looked a little unsure. 'So...you agree to work with us now, instead of against us?'

'Yes.'

'Ok...' she nodded decisively, 'Thank you.'