Authors Note: Sorry this took so long. I got hijacked by a fic for Simon Bakers old series The Guardian. But here it is now, so I hope you all enjoy. This chapter fueled by french-fries dipped in vanilla soft serve. Cool and delicious. A good way to beat the 100 degree heat at midnight. Not betaed, so all mistakes are mine. It's also very late, so although I've read this through, I'm sure there will be some.
Disclaimer: Right, so if I know I've said it before, but if I owned them, I wouldn't be sitting in bed sweating right now. I'd have an A/C that actually cooled the whole house.
Earlier That Day
He didn't think he could put up with another day of this. They had been following Red John's leads all week and were getting nowhere. There was a very simple explanation for this. He was behaving himself. He promised Lisbon that he would be on his best behavior for this case. It was silly really; he didn't even know why he had done it. Only the look on her face when she had asked…he just couldn't tell her no.
And now he was regretting it. He wished he could take it back. He was sitting in 'his' chair, the one he had commandeered from the sheriff's office when they had first got to this tiny little Podunk town. It wasn't as nice as his couch back home in Sacramento, but then, what was? He was contemplating saying to heck with it all when Rigsby came into the small office that the team was using waving a piece of paper. Another clue. Another hint. Another dead end. Another colossal waist of time. He didn't even bother getting up out of his chair. Oh the contrary, he snuggled further down into it, closing his eyes.
"Hey, we got another letter from him." Rigsby said handing the letter to Lisbon.
"Ok everybody listen up. 'My favorite CBI team. I'm sad to say that this week is almost over and you are still no closer to finding me than you were at the beginning of the week. I grow tiered of this game. I will give you one last chance.' And there's an address, same as before. Ok, who wants to go this time?"
"I'll go." Said Cho standing from the chair he'd been occupying.
"Alright, Cho, take Rigsby. Van Pelt, come with me, we still need to question the man who lives at the address he sent us yesterday. Jane, who do you want to go with?" Lisbon asked, turning to him.
"I'm just going to stay here, thanks. It's all a waste of time." Jane muttered from his chair.
"Whatever Jane." Lisbon said, sticking the latest letter in the board with the other 6 that had sent them to this horrible little piece of earth.
He sat in the chair for an hour, dozing a little bit, but not actually sleeping. He would have stayed there longer had he not gotten a crick in his neck and had to get up to stretch it. Lacking something else to do he decided to look at the letters tacked up on the board in the small room. He looked at them, for the first time really. Sure he's glanced at them before, but he hadn't actually stared at them, compared them. He did that now, just looked at each letter up close, then backed up and looked at them all together. He rearranged them on the board, but them in a circle, in a horizontal row and a vertical row. The last thing he did was stack them on top of each other. And that's when he noticed it. There were parts of each address visible through the stack of papers. Jane didn't know how he'd done it, make the address visible through 6 pages of typing paper, but Red John had given him the real address.
He thought about calling Lisbon and letting her know, but knew what would happen if he did. She would tell him to stay there and he wouldn't listen and she would still beat him there, and then he'd have no chance to extract his revenge on Red John. So instead, he would go first, then he would call her. After he had done what he wanted to.
He checked around to see if any of the sheriff's nosy men were lingering about. If he didn't know better he'd say that Lisbon paid them to make sure he stayed in line and didn't go anywhere unsupervised, but that wasn't like Lisbon. She was the more scare them half to death and threaten them with their lives if he miss behaved type. Yes that was more like his Lisbon.
He was almost home free when Lisbon and Van Pelt came walking in the front door to the sheriff's office. No way for him to hide now, it was too late.
"Hey Jane, where you going?" Lisbon asked, as if knowing he was trying to make an escape without telling her, going against his promise to behave himself.
"Men's room." Jane said the first thing that popped into his head.
"Well hold it till we get to the restaurant for dinner. We can discuss the case over burgers and fries, Cho and Rigsby are meeting us there."
They headed out to the black SUV that Lisbon preferred. There was no way for him to take his car without arousing her suspicions. He would just have to wait until they were all eating and take a set of keys from one of them.
The guys were already at the local dinner when the rest of them got there and it didn't take long for Jane to figure out that Cho had the keys to the smaller blue SUV that the team had brought. Jane knew that there was no way he could lift the keys out of Lisbon's front pants pocket, they were just cut to close and to tight for him to be able to do it without having to make out with her first. Cho on the other hand, he would be easy.
Standing next to the short man at the jukebox he slipped a finger into his pocket and hooked it around the key ring and pulled it out. Now he just had to wait for the right moment to make his escape. They all sat around the large table off to the side of the room; back a ways from the door and ordered burgers and fries. Well, Lisbon ordered a salad instead of fries, and Rigsby ordered two burgers which caused Van Pelt to start to lecture him on the amount of fat and cholesterol he would be consuming. This was the perfect time.
Rolling his eyes at them and with a quick look to Lisbon, Jane got up and headed to the men's room like he'd said he was doing earlier. He walked towards the men's room but switched direction at the last minute when he was sure that Lisbon was caught up in the conversation between Rigsby and Van Pelt. He quickly got in the SUV and drove off, knowing he had at least a ten minute head start before Lisbon would realize he was missing.
He drove towards the old factory on the outside of town. It had stopped being used in the 1980's but was still standing and in relatively decent condition. They had driven by it on their way into town, but Jane hadn't given it much thought. Now he wished he had. He remembered that there had really only been one building, surrounded by a chain link fence in poor condition, with a gate, that if Jane was correct, was missing it's lock, and lots of broken windows.
Not only was the gate not locked, it was standing open when Jane got to the factory. This should have been a sing, but Jane ignored it. He was too close to his ultimate goal. He'd been playing nice all week and it was starting to wear on him. He was itching for revenge, he wanted to go in there and kill Red John, and he didn't care if he was killed in the process.
He reached under the passenger seat and pulled out a large hunting knife that he had stashed up under the seat, almost in the cushion. He knew it was risky, but he never knew what car he was going to be driving when he finally caught up with Red John. He held the knife in front of him as he entered the building, he wasn't sure what to expect, but it certainly wasn't the sight he saw in front of him.