A/N: It's taken a while, but here's chapter 3. I was on holiday for two weeks, then I've been spending the last week trying to get into the rhythm of the new school year, but hey.

Chapter 3. Knight's Parkway.

I jumped from the black CBI SUV, my shoes landing on cracked, faded concrete with a slap. Slamming the heavy door behind me, I surveyed the street that stretched before the nose of the car.

Knight's Parkway.

The years had been unkind to what I knew had once been a sweet, idyllic place to live. Wide cracks that began at the toes of my shoes ran, criss-crossing, all the way along the road, right up until the last house. Dry, dead leaves tumbled across my path with the breeze as I stepped forward, the rustle of them and the sound of the breeze whistling in the fractured woodwork of the houses the only sounds. Creepers wound their way up the house walls, pulling apart the panels and devouring the structures whole. The roof tiles were crumbling, with plants beginning to poke out of the gaps.

I couldn't describe it, but there was a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. Like...the fact that my feet were even touching this ground was bad luck. I swallowed down the dryness that the air had given my throat. Lisbon came to stand next to me, along with Cho and Van Pelt.

'Nice place,' Lisbon murmured.

Slowly, we began to make our way down the street. It felt like if we moved any faster, the whole place would come crumbling down around us.

I could tell that the three agents around me were getting ready to pull their gun at the slightest sign of movement from anywhere along the street. I knew that Red John wouldn't be here. It was too soon. And even if he had been here, he would be long gone.

'Number seven, yes?'

'Mhm...' Van Pelt answered.

'What makes you so sure the connection is with Evelyn Immerson?' Lisbon asked.

'Because she was the only one with a daughter, or child for that matter,' I replied, more concentrating on trying to look through the excessive amount of creepers and overgrown gardens that were covering the house numbers.

'Your point being?'

'I'll bet any money that Evelyn Immerson was Red John's grandmother, and Alayna Immerson is his mother.'

'But why would he give us a connection like that?'

'I don't know, Lisbon. I really don't know. But I can't imagine it's going to lead us anywhere. He's probably changed his name by now.'

Stood before me now...or stood crippled before me now was the slowly degrading structure of number seven.

'Here we are,' I murmured.

I placed my hand on the peeling white picket fence gate, ready to push it open and enter, when Lisbon suddenly stopped me.

'Wait! Jane. Don't you think one of us should go in first? We're armed. You're not.'

'He's not here Lisbon. He's gone,' I replied, looking back at her. She looked unconvinced though.

'I'd feel better if I wasn't watching you walk into a potential death trap.'

'I would say the same about you,' I replied stubbornly.

'Jane, come on. Just let one of us take the lead,' Van Pelt started. Cho remained surprisingly silent.

I huffed. 'Fine.' Reluctantly stepping back, Lisbon nodded at me. A sign of thanks.

I watched her step forward, trying the gate with her thigh before noting that the hinges where too rusted to move anywhere. At which point she took to kicking it down with the force of a small, vicious pony.

'Always the discreet,' I murmured.

'Shh,' she shot back at me, pulling her gun from the holster.

'Well I don't see any point in being quiet now. The sound of the gate being splintered probably alerted anyone to our presence.'

Lisbon ignored me and continued up the path, pushing branches out of the way one-handedly and trampling the undergrowth, keeping her CBI issue glock pointed steadily before her.

As soon as she reached the front door, I felt a nervousness begin to build in my stomach, and my pulse doubled. I wasn't even sure why. I knew nobody was going to be there...

But something...just something made me fearful of what might happen if Lisbon was stood at that door. I was suddenly itching to run forward and pull her back or something. Pull her back from what? Dry rot? My feet were twitching forward. I saw her reach for the door. I stepped up to the gate. She pressed her palm flat to the door. My hands went into my pockets and came out again, resting on the fence. She pushed the door wide open and I found myself jogging up to her.

'What?' she looked back at me, her gun still pointing ahead.

'Uh...nothing,' I replied quickly.

She frowned, and turned, beginning to walk into the crumbling remnants of the house. I took a deep breath, pulling myself back together, then followed Lisbon's trail.

Cho and Van Pelt shared a puzzled look before shrugging and moving forward themselves.

The heavily worn, and rotting floorboards creaked beneath my feet as I slowly manoeuvred around the house behind Lisbon. It was clear that someone had been in here. There were crushed shrubs lining the floor, and footprints in the thick layer of dirt visible through the plants. As Lisbon cleared each room, I peeked over her shoulder and studied the contents, looking for something, anything that would help us forward with finding Kristina. Nothing stuck out yet. Stepping back out into hall, spot-lit with light that trickled through the gaps in the ceiling above, I felt a sprinkle of something on my forehead. I looked up, rubbing my face over. There was a weakened section of plaster ceiling above my head that was still just about secured, not yet crashed through by a sprouting plant. I moved forward quickly, out of the zone which would eventually be crushed by the material above.

'Uh...Van Pelt, Cho? Watch that ceiling,' I warned the two agents behind me. They both looked up at the plaster that was giving them a snow-like sprinkling of dust. They swiftly moved out from underneath it.

'Jane?' Lisbon called.

I searched the area around me, wondering where she'd gone.

'Come in here.'

I followed the sound of her voice, and the smaller footprint trail in the dust, soon finding her in a small room off to the right, through an archway of shrubs. Stepping inside, I surveyed the room. I could imagine what the room possibly could have looked like, when the peeling, plain cream wallpaper had been new, and the ceiling had once been present. It would have been a study, judging by the dust covered desk in the corner, and the cabinets of old writing equipment and books. It would have been a history honey hive if the fungi and bugs hadn't got there first, gradually destructing everything that would have once compiled to a perfect, cosy, and welcoming house. There were books here that were far older than 1970, antiques of the time, let alone now.

But I took my mind off of that to study the stool which stood in the centre of the room. It wasn't something alien to the house, the wood was damp and rotting, but the crisp white envelope sat on top was. Kicking a stand-less globe out of my path and into a deep pile of dirt and dust in the corner, I moved towards the stool, my heart beginning to up the pace again. My shoulders twitched backwards, responding to a strange tingling sensation down my spine. I swallowed down the itchiness that the thick, musty air caused to my throat. I read the front of the envelope.

Again, addressed Patrick Jane.

'Put some gloves on before you handle that, Jane,' Lisbon said from behind me.

'Since when do I use gloves?'

'Doesn't matter. You will now. Let's preserve the evidence shall we?'

She pulled a pair of thick latex gloves from her jacket pocket and waved them at me.

Grimacing, I took the gloves and pulled them over my hands awkwardly, immediately hating the feeling that they gave. I turned back to the envelope, flexing my hands frustratedly in the gloves. I coughed into my sleeve slightly, the dust irritating my throat. Taking in a deep breath, I slid the envelope off of the stool and turned it in my rubberised fingers. I lifted the unglued seal and slid a small card out of the envelope's embrace. Noting a small reddish-brown smudge in the top right-hand corner of the card, I looked at the back for anything else, but nothing marred the clean whiteness of the opposite side. I could feel three expectant, curious, anticipating stares burning into my back as I found the writing on the front and read over it slowly.

Here lies the soul of Patrick Jane. 15th April 1969 - 21st June 2002. Killed in battle. Unmissed. Unloved.

I reread twice before I felt tears stinging at the corners of my eyes as the words sunk in. Anger and sorrow filled me up to the brim. A tear dripped, so loud in the quiet, crumbling room, on one of the latex gloves. I quickly remembered who was stood behind me and sniffed quietly, looking up at the ceiling until the tears receded.

'Jane?' I heard Lisbon call my name.

'Uh...yeah...' I replied, my voice only a soft, barely audible sound. I swivelled on the spot and looked at the agents stood before me, 'Let's go.'

'Hang on, what's on the card?' Lisbon frowned.

'Nothing, let's just...get out of here before the house collapses on us, eh?' I changed the subject, my voice still quiet as a mouse as I proceeded to walk between Lisbon and Van Pelt and out of the door.

'What do you mean nothing?' Lisbon tried to ask, but I left, ignoring her questions.

As I stepped back out into the slightly more brightened day outside, the sun beginning to warm the air, I cleared my throat. I looked over the street, still trying to efficiently clear the thin rims of tears around my eyes. I knew what Red John meant.

My soul had died on the day that he had killed Angela and Charlotte. And he knew it. He knew it all too well, and that's how he always knew the exact workings of getting under my skin and dislodging my confidence. Whether it was a phone call or a letter, or even just a word, it was carefully handpicked by him to have just the right effect on me.

I squinted against the rapidly brightening sun, and I could feel my skin beginning to burn underneath my black three-piece suit. I didn't wait for Lisbon, Van Pelt and Cho to stop discussing what was wrong with me, or what had been on the letter while still standing in the study of number seven. I made my way back towards the SUV, clambering in and dreading the moment when they would all pile in and begin to question me. Or maybe it would be one of those times where everyone stayed silent and Lisbon dragged me to her office when we got back to interrogate me seemingly kindly, but made me fidget and feel uncomfortable as I was slowly forced to choke up my feelings. Either way, I didn't look forward to it.

I stared down at the card clutched between my fingers for a while, before finding a collection of evidence bags in the backseat of the SUV, and slipping it into one, delivering into a jacket pocket. I peeled the gloves from my hands with a snap and wiped my sweaty palms on my pants. The heat inside the car was beginning to fry me, and I felt continuously more and more uncomfortable. I saw Lisbon and the other two finally exit the house, stepping over the trampled gate on the way out and back to the SUV.

I wound down the window and breathed in all of a cool breeze that I could, chilling my body from the inside out. I could imagine myself sinking into the couch and just napping for a while, trying to think of what might happen when I finally found Kristina, and possibly Red John. Would he be able to escape again? Or would I be able to catch him because I wouldn't be attached to an antiquely big chair with cling film? I would say that I felt we were on a verge, and that we were getting so very close to discovering who Red John was anyway, etcetera, etcetera, but last time I thought that, we lost the main lead to the man himself. It was never a safe business to be involved in the Red John case on any level, and therefore it was never a safe business to follow a trail of clues to try and find him. But he knew by now that I would risk my life to find him. I would die, if I had to. I felt a wave of emotion ripple through me again. God, that couch seemed more appealing than ever right now.

'Jane, you're not leaving this office until you tell me what was on that card and what you're thinking. You said you would let us take part in this with you. Keep your word.'

I grimaced. It had been the second option. Silence in the car and a session with Lisbon in her office. I stood before her desk, silently weighing up the options.

1. Run from the office with the card in my pocket, with the faint hope that I might be able to outrun CBI's best senior agent.

2. End up telling Lisbon everything about the card and the meaning, and she seeing another chunk of my emotionally wrecked inside.

3. Be my stubborn self and just refuse to let her in on the clue, telling her that I didn't care if I had to stay in her office, and ask her for a cup of tea when she finally left for something like a toilet break.

Knowing my luck, and Lisbon's strong will, however, it would probably end up being option two instead of one or three.

'I know this case is very personal to you, especially now that Kristina has gone missing as well,' Lisbon continued.

I narrowed my eyes, 'What, you think the fact that Kristina's in danger makes this more personal? Why?'

'Well...you like her. It's obvious. And you asked her out.'

I didn't have the time or energy to point out that I detected a slight hint of jealousy amongst the professional tones of her voice. 'Well yeah but...hang on, how do you know about the date?'

'I must be psychic,' she smiled, but it was soon gone as she continued what she was originally saying. 'But anyway, you promised that you would involve us this time. Keep us in the loop, so that we could help you and offer support. You may think that what is on that card is personal and for your eyes only, but it's also evidence, and it can help us forward. So...please? May I see the card?'

I huffed. I looked into Lisbon's pleading face, trying to decide what I wanted to do. But those beautiful green eyes of hers didn't take their time in breaking through the defences I had to stop myself giving her the card, so I found my hand in my pocket, around the evidence bag. My finger traced the outer edge of the card slowly before I finally gave in and handed the card over.

'Thank you,' Lisbon replied, taking the bag.

I heard her murmur the words under her breath as she read. I watched her features contort into a frown. 'What's this supposed to mean?' she asked, looking up at me.

'Lisbon, the 21st June 2002 was the day my wife and child were killed.'

A sympathetic expression replaced the frown. I'd almost grown fed up of the looks, and the apologies that I received when the worst mistake of my life was brought up.

'So...by saying Here lies the soul... he means...'

'Yes. He means that my soul was killed on that day, because of how he wrecked, and screwed up my life and threw it away like a ball of paper in a bin,' I finished bitterly.

A/N: Goes without saying...