The next morning, Lisbon went downstairs in search of coffee and found Jane at her kitchen table, drinking tea and reading her newspaper.
He handed her a cup of coffee. "You don't have any food in the house."
"I have food," she said defensively, leaning against the counter and taking a sip of her coffee. She paused—he'd made it exactly the way she liked it.
"A box of granola bars and one cup of expired yogurt is not food, Teresa," he said reproachfully.
She shrugged. "I'm not a big breakfast eater."
"I nearly drowned yesterday. I need breakfast. Is there somewhere around here a person can get a decent plate of eggs?"
Lisbon thought of the diner they'd taken to frequenting after their visits to the shooting range, but balked at the idea of taking him to their regular hangout. All the staff knew them there, and she couldn't face any complicated explanations this early in the morning. She took another sip of coffee. "I'll take you to Marie's on the way to work," she promised. "We can pick up pastries for the whole team."
Jane was peering at her legs. "Do you always wear a football jersey to sleep in?" he asked abruptly.
"Most nights," Lisbon said, most of her attention still on her coffee. "Why?"
Jane shook his head. "I'm the idiot."
Lisbon frowned. "Excuse me?"
"Last night, I was wondering which of us was the idiot who allowed this separation between us to occur. But now I realize it was me. I'm the idiot."
"How do you figure that?"
He gestured at her bare legs. "Either I was an idiot for breaking up with you, or I was an idiot for letting you break up with me. Either way, I'm the idiot."
Lisbon flushed. She set her mug down on the counter with a jarring clatter. "Be ready to leave in ten minutes."
xxx
Jane followed her around the office all morning.
"So what happened between us?" he asked, picking up a chess piece from the set in her office and examining it. "Because I'm having real trouble accounting for my idiocy, here."
"For God's sake, Jane," Lisbon said irritably. "Would you please drop it?"
He looked up at her. "It pains you to discuss it," he said, surprised. He looked at her intently. "Did I break your heart?"
"Of course not," Lisbon snapped. "Now, please, shut up. I've got work to do."
"But—" Jane began.
She caught sight of Rigsby walking past her office. "Rigsby!" she called desperately.
Rigsby poked his head into her office. "Yeah, boss?"
"Take Jane with you to talk to the firefighters," she instructed.
"Sure, boss," Rigsby said easily.
"Teresa, one of those firefighters tried to kill me last night," Jane said indignantly. "And now you want to let them have another go?"
"Maybe this time you'll see them coming," she retorted, and shooed him out of her office.
xxx
Rigsby came back from the fire station without Jane, extremely harried.
"What's up, Rigsby?" Lisbon asked when he came back into the bullpen. She was sitting with Van Pelt at her desk, going over recent financial statements of their victim.
"Kippers," Rigsby said shortly, taking a seat at his desk.
Lisbon frowned. "Excuse me?"
"Kippers," Rigsby repeated. "Jane put kippers in one of the firemen's pockets and accused another one of sleeping with the victim's wife. Talk about kicking a hornet's nest. The entire squad is pissed as hell."
"That's good, right?" Cho said. "Jane pissing people off. Just like always. Gotta be a good sign."
"Where is Jane?" Lisbon wanted to know, anxiety rising in her chest. Had Rigsby left him alone with twenty angry men built like tanks?
"He went to the park," Rigsby said. "Wanted to go for a walk. I wasn't about to stop him. After—" he stopped abruptly and determinedly avoided making eye contact with Van Pelt.
"What'd he do?" Cho asked,
"Nothing," Rigsby mumbled.
"Come on. He did something to piss you off after he pissed off the firemen," Cho said. "What'd he do, hit on Van Pelt?"
"Excuse me?" Van Pelt said, startled.
"Of course not," Rigsby snapped. "Just—he started asking a lot of questions."
"About you and Van Pelt," Cho said sagely.
"No! Well—yes," Rigsby muttered. "Not just about me and Van Pelt. He wanted to know about all of us. About the whole team. But, uh—"
"What?" Cho demanded.
Now Rigsby avoided meeting Lisbon's eyes. "He, uh, he asked a lot about you, boss."
Lisbon felt her face turn red. "About me?"
"He wanted to know if you were seeing anyone. Asked me what your favorite kind of ice cream was, when you were last in a relationship, stuff like that."
"Oh, boy." Cho sat back in his chair and shook his head. "Trust Amnesia Jane to go straight for Pandora's Box."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Lisbon demanded.
"Jane's always had a thing for you," Cho said matter of factly.
Lisbon stared. "Excuse me?"
"He's got a thing for you. But he's so tied up in his quest for vengeance, he's never let himself fully open himself to the idea of pursuing you the way he really wants to," Cho explained. "But with his memory of Red John gone, there's nothing in his way. Guess he decided to go straight for the prize."
"That is so romantic," Van Pelt sighed.
"But that's not—Jane's not—I'm not—" Lisbon spluttered. "That's completely ridiculous!"
"I dunno, boss," Rigsby said thoughtfully. "It kinda makes sense, when you think about it."
Lisbon's face flamed. "No, it doesn't!"
Van Pelt shook her head. "They're right, boss. Remember how jealous Jane got of Bosco?"
"And Walter Mashburn," Rigsby said, nodding wisely.
"Jane was the one who tried to get me to go out with Walter Mashburn in the first place," Lisbon protested.
"Yeah, because he wanted the reassurance of knowing you weren't interested in anything serious with a guy like that," Cho said. He looked at Lisbon and shook his head. "You'd better brace yourself, boss. I'll bet you anything he's going to try to charm you with some elaborate gesture any day now if he doesn't get his memory back soon. I mean, remember the pony?"
xxx
Lisbon escaped shortly thereafter, deeply unsettled by the team's observations. She decided not thinking about or acknowledging the possibility of any other observations they might have left unsaid was by far the most prudent course of action.
Instead, she went to look for Jane. God knew what kind of trouble he could get into in his current state without anyone to look after him.
She found him in the park, sampling ice cream flavors from his favorite ice cream cart.
His face lit up when he saw her. "Teresa! Come here, you must try this peanut brittle ice cream. It's delicious."
She let him buy her a cone of the peanut brittle ice cream, then steered him over to a bench by the pond.
"What's the matter?" Jane said, licking his ice cream. "You look worried."
"I am worried," she told him. "I don't like you wandering off by yourself in this state. Rigsby said you pissed off a bunch of firemen. What if you'd done that when Rigsby wasn't around to watch out for you? The killer could have been in that room, Jane. What if he'd tried to come after you when the others weren't looking?"
Jane shrugged. "You're the one who sent me there in the first place."
"Yes," Lisbon said. "With Rigsby. I knew he wouldn't let anything happen to you."
Jane rolled his eyes. "I don't need a babysitter, Teresa."
"I think you do. At least for the moment. Someone tried to kill you last night, remember?"
He shot her a look. "Is that supposed to be a joke?"
She sighed. "I just want you to be careful. You're not yourself right now."
Jane brightened. "Does that mean you're willing to watch out for me yourself?"
"Fine," Lisbon said, getting to her feet. "But I've got work to do. Come on, I want to check out the house where our victim rescued that guy from the fire the night before he died."
"Lead on," Jane said, and finished his ice cream.
xxx
"What exactly are we looking for?" Jane asked, trailing after her in the burnt out ruins of the abandoned house half an hour later.
Lisbon shrugged. "Not sure. Rigsby said it sounded like something was off about the way that everything that went down that night. He said the incident report looked suspect and our vic wasn't operating according to protocol. Maybe something happened that night that connects to his death somehow."
"His fellow firefighters said he liked to play the hero," Jane told her. "But the one who was sleeping with his wife said he wouldn't trust Satterfield to have his back."
"Huh," Lisbon said, picking her way carefully up the charred stairs. "Do you think the wife's lover could have done it, then?"
"I don't think so," Jane said with a frown. "He seemed more interested in the wife than in Satterfield."
"Jealousy's a pretty classic motive for murder," Lisbon said.
"I know, but I mean—his focus was on the wife, not on the husband. He just wants to be with her."
"So maybe getting the husband out of the way gives him a clear path."
"No. He's happy about having a clear path, but he doesn't feel guilty. He really loves her. He only spared attention to Satterfield because he made her unhappy."
"If you say so." It was weirdly reassuring to hear Jane dismiss the obvious motive in favor of something less mundane and almost certainly bound to be more convoluted.
"So the team doesn't know you and I used to be together," Jane said conversationally. "Did we have a clandestine affair?"
"Not exactly," Lisbon said, frowning at the singed carpet in the master bedroom. "But we kept it quiet."
"Why?"
"Jane, can we focus here?" Lisbon said, exasperated.
"Fine, but we're revisiting this conversation later," he warned. He picked up a charred plastic mask from the bedroom floor. "What's this? Think it's from some kind of kinky role play or something?"
"Could be," Lisbon acknowledged. She couldn't see what was sexy about a guy in a rubber mask that looked like it belonged to a comic book villain, but her many years as a cop had left her very nearly beyond shock about such things.
Jane's look immediately turned speculative. "Hm, not your cup of tea, eh? What is it that flips your switch, then? Cowboy? Cops and robbers? Absent-minded professor?"
"Oh, my God, Jane," Lisbon groaned. "Please stop."
"Now this is my kind of mystery," he said with glee. "Not to worry, Teresa. I'm certain I'll crack this particular case in no time."
"Can you please just find the killer instead?" Lisbon pleaded.
"Spoilsport." Jane wandered into the bedroom closet and rummaged around a bit.
Lisbon found a doll covered in gray ash. She brushed it off as best she could, but it was a lost cause. She straightened, the doll still in hand. "Find anything back there?"
"There's a safe," Jane called.
She went into the closet and found Jane spinning the tumblers with his ear pressed to the safe. "You can crack safes?" she asked doubtfully. She couldn't remember ever seeing him do so before, but it did seem to fit in with the rest of his admittedly strange skill set.
He frowned and didn't answer right away. "I can't crack this one," he said after a moment, sounding annoyed. "Can we go talk to the guy that owns it?"
xxx
They went to talk to Tom Wilcox, the man who owned the house that had burned down, and returned the doll to his daughter.
When they got back to the office, Jane wandered around the bullpen annoying the team while Lisbon caught up on some paperwork in her office. Once the rest of the team had left for the day, Jane came into her office with two cups of tea and took a seat on her couch.
"Come sit by me," he said. "I made you tea."
Lisbon was suspicious because, well, it was Jane, but she went to sit next to him and accepted the tea.
"I have a plan," Jane announced.
"Yeah?" Lisbon said, taking a sip of her tea.
"I know who the killer is," he said confidently.
"Who is it?"
"I'll tell you tomorrow," he said, brushing this off as a matter of little importance. He held out a slip of paper. "Show up at this address at 9:30 am, and I'll have the killer gift-wrapped for you."
She took the scrap of paper and inspected the address scribbled in Jane's familiar scrawl. "Gift-wrapped, huh?"
"That's right."
"Okay," Lisbon said, tucking the paper into her pocket. When she raised her head again, she found Jane alarmingly close, his head bent towards her like he was some kind of vampire about to take a bite out of her neck. "What are you doing?" she said, startled. She leaned away from him, but he only moved closer and breathed deeply.
"What the hell, Jane?" she snapped, and shoved him away.
"Are you sure we aren't married?" he asked, straightening.
"What the hell kind of question is that?"
"Van Pelt smells like lilacs," he informed her. "And the faintest hint of citrus."
"Uh…okay?"
"Cho smells like library books and cherry Icee."
"You've been running around smelling everyone on the team?"
"Rigsby smells like Cheetos and a whole host of other things best left undescribed," Jane went on.
"So what?"
"Smell is the sense most closely associated with long-term memories," he told her.
"Oh," Lisbon said, her annoyance draining away. "You thought smelling the team would help you remember them?"
"Yes. But it didn't work with anyone except you."
"With…with me?"
"Yes. When I smell Rigsby, all I smell is Cheetos. Same with the others. But with you, I smell cinnamon and something spicy and this smell that's just you, underneath it, and I get this feeling."
Hope sparked. "You remembered something?"
He shook his head. "Nothing concrete. Just this feeling."
"What kind of feeling?" Lisbon asked, not entirely certain she wanted to hear the answer.
"It's hard to describe. Sort of…safe and warm and cozy and excited and calm all at once, with a kind of longing feeling underpinning the whole thing. Kind of like someone took an egg-beater to my brain, but in a good way."
"How can someone take an egg-beater to your brain in a good way?" Lisbon said, exasperated. She desperately tried to ignore the rest, but the words played in a loop in her brain. Safe and warm and cozy and longing…
He grinned at her. "You tell me."
She experienced her own egg-beater-like sensation at the sight of his smile, but she pushed the feeling away. "But you remembered something."
"Yes. The warm and cozy feeling. That's why I asked again about being married."
"I'm not following."
He shrugged. "It felt like a married feeling."
Lisbon felt like she'd taken a sledgehammer to the gut. Angela. He was remembering Angela. And mixing her up with Lisbon because of the crossed wires in his brain. "I see," she said, her voice clipped.
He looked at her intently. "So why did we split up, then? That feeling doesn't go along with a break up."
She scrubbed a hand over her face, suddenly exhausted. "I told you. It's complicated."
"And I told you that's nonsense. So what's the story?"
"Look, it's not what you're imagining. It's not like we had some big dramatic break up," she told him. "We were never together properly in the first place."
He frowned. "What does that mean?"
She shrugged. "We had sex. Provided each other companionship."
His frown deepened. "Friends with benefits? That doesn't sound like you." He mulled this over. "It doesn't sound like me, either. Why weren't we together properly?"
"In short, your paranoia, and my annoyance with your way of dealing with that paranoia."
"My paranoia? About what?"
Lisbon hesitated, unsure whether it was wise to tell him in his current state. "You lost your wife and daughter in a very traumatic way. You've never grieved for them properly, because you're obsessed with getting revenge. You're obsessed with finding their killer. It's your whole life. There's not a lot of room for extracurriculars. And you're afraid of their killer coming after me if you and I get too close."
"So…what? I'm so determined to go mano a mano with a psychopath that I shut everyone out of my life?" Jane said, incredulous.
"You have me and the team," Lisbon told him. "But you keep us at a distance."
He sat back, looking stricken. His brow furrowed, and Lisbon recognized the look he got when he was thinking deeply about something. He sat in silence for several moments, then said abruptly, "Thank you for telling me." He got to his feet. "I'll see you tomorrow at 9:30. Don't be late." With that, he left.
Lisbon drank the rest of her tea without enthusiasm.