Six months later

Lisbon sat at her desk and attempted to concentrate on typing the summary report that accompanied each team's audit review, but her mind kept drifting away from the words on her computer screen to float through the gray fog that had taken up residence in her skull for the past six months. Nothing so sophisticated as actual thought existed in the gray space. It was a maelstrom of half-formed worries and unarticulated fears, along with a sick-making feeling of longing she hadn't experienced since she was a girl. Perhaps grief was a better word, but she'd long thought what other people called grief was more akin to homesickness. Grief was an all right word to describe the sharp, lancing pain to the chest, or the feeling that you might throw up when you heard bad news, but it didn't seem to capture the strange, disorienting feeling of having suddenly lost your bearings and no longer having a complete grasp of your surroundings. Of the sense that sights and smells around you were all wrong, that the pervasive missingness was reflected in the physical environment, not merely some vague internal sensation imperceptible to the rest of the world.

She'd been spending a lot of time in the gray space lately. It was becoming a problem. She could manage to focus well enough when she was in the field or interrogating suspects. But she had trouble paying attention in meetings, and she often drifted when working on administrative tasks.

The annual summary report was a case in point. She had to exercise no creativity in how to document Jane's outlandish stunts, because there were no stunts to document. Her mind would slide from a perfectly respectable non-stunt bit of exemplary police work by a member of her team right on over to some crazy thing Jane had done before he left, and then she'd start wondering what he was up to and if he was taking adequate care of himself and—well. That was the nature of the gray space.

She recognized in an intellectual, detached kind of way that the amount of time spent in the gray space wasn't exactly healthy. She made a few half-hearted attempts to pull herself out of it and reconnect with the world. She would check in with the team, try to catch up on paperwork she'd been having trouble completing because she kept spacing out. Call her brothers. She'd even tried going on a couple of dates recently. She mustered up the energy to go to a restaurant and get drinks a few times. She suffered through mindless small talk and even managed to feign attention most of the time. But it was so much work that she gave it up. Emotionally healthy behavior had never been her strong suit in the first place, so why start now?

Instead, she went on long walks in the cold and started stopping in at church at times when she knew it would be mostly empty. She prayed a lot for Jane.

She'd called him frequently the first few months. Sent him text messages. But true to his word, he hadn't responded to a single one. This fact still galled—she'd been convinced he wouldn't be able to maintain radio silence. Hadn't really believed that he would cut off contact so completely. He'd nixed the burner idea, but he was Patrick Jane, for God's sake. He could have sent her coded messages in the newspaper, at least—that sort of thing was right up his alley. Instead, he'd done exactly what he'd said he was going to do, and she was furious at him for it. God, she hoped he was okay.

A knock on her office door pulled her out of the gray space. She looked up and Rigsby popped his head in. "We've got a hot one, boss. John Doe dumped behind a dumpster in Midtown."

"I'll be right there," she said, closing her neglected report and getting to her feet. "Grab Cho and I'll catch up with you in a minute."

When the three of them got to the crime scene, Van Pelt was already there.

Lisbon's friend Pat from the coroner's office greeted her cheerfully. "Hey, T."

Lisbon smiled despite her dour mood and allowed herself to be swept into her friend's enthusiastic embrace. "Hey, Pat. Good to see you."

When they broke apart, she glanced down at the dead body at their feet. It had no face. "Ugh," Lisbon said, grimacing. "What did that?"

"Shotgun," Pat said. "From about six inches away."

"He's a John Doe," Van Pelt said. "No match on the prints, no ID…no face."

"There's a lot of blood," Cho said. "He must have been killed here."

"Robbery?" Van Pelt suggested.

"There's an interstate ramp a block from here. Our friend could have come from Oregon." Lisbon turned to Pat. "Give us twenty minutes with him, then you can bag him."

"No hurry," Pat said with a shrug. Then, as though just remembering something, she turned more fully towards Lisbon, concern etched on her face. "Hey, sorry about Jane, by the way. That's too bad."

Lisbon had a strange sense of disorientation at the sound of Jane's name, like she'd stuck her head inside a bell just as it was struck. Her heart picked up speed. "Too bad about what?"

"That Jane got arrested." Pat must have seen on her face that she hadn't known. She hastily elaborated. "I heard it from some guys in Vice. He got busted for assault, fraud, narcotics, resisting arrest. In Vegas."

Vegas. He was in Vegas. Vegas was so close. She could drive there in under ten hours. Pull some strings, have every cop in town knock down doors until they found him.

"That's terrible," Rigsby said.

"We should do something," Van Pelt said.

"Like what?" Cho asked.

"I dunno," Van Pelt said. "Try to talk to him, I guess. See if he needs help. It's been six months. Maybe he's changed."

Suddenly Lisbon was so angry with Jane she could barely see straight. "Call him if you want," she said, her voice cold. "Maybe he'll listen to reason for once in his damn life. But I wouldn't hold my breath."

She turned her attention to the dead body at her feet.

xxx

When they got back to the office, Lisbon was irritable and distracted. She snapped at Van Pelt when she came in to tell her about a potential lead. Then she sighed and suggested the two of them go down to Sac PD together by way of apology. Van Pelt brightened and they drove over to Sac PD headquarters.

Van Pelt had been right. It was a good lead, and a promising start to the case. But when they finished interviewing the witness, Lisbon turned to Van Pelt and said abruptly, "You take the car back. I'm gonna walk, take some personal time."

"Walk?" Van Pelt said, startled. "But—" She checked herself. "Okay."

"I'll see you later," Lisbon said, and went out the door.

She ended up down by the river. It was a cold night, and she walked with her shoulders hunched and her coat belted tightly around her waist. But she didn't stop walking.

Jane had been arrested. Assault, fraud, narcotics, and resisting arrest. Had he been hurt? Was this all part of his grand plan, or was he really in trouble?

She didn't know. Either way, she wasn't going to call him. He wouldn't answer anyway. She'd tried too many times to make him see sense. She was done. He knew where to find her if he needed her.

She walked six miles in the dark. When she got home, she fell into a deep sleep and did not dream about Patrick Jane.

xxx

She didn't go into work the next morning. She called Cho and told him she was taking the morning off and would be back in the office later in the day.

She went to Marie's for breakfast. Flirted a little with the guy she always saw in there with his laptop. But when he opened his mouth to ask her out, hope in his eyes, she cut him off before he could get the words out. She had to go, she explained. She would see him around.

She decided to walk over to St. Mary's church. It was a beautiful day, the sun shining, the air cool and crisp, and all the trees a bright, vivid green. St. Mary's wasn't the church where she usually attended mass, but it was a beautiful space in the style of the old missions, and she'd started coming here a lot to pray in the quiet over the past six months. Lit candles filled the church even when daylight streamed through the stained glass windows. There was something comforting about those small flames. They represented dozens of unseen hands, each lighting a single flame to remember someone lost or reach out to someone in need, even when logic said they were beyond reach. And even when the owners of those unseen hands got to their feet and left the sanctuary to go about their day, the flames of those small but many gestures cast a lingering light that shone on.

Lisbon crossed herself and took a seat in a pew about halfway back from the altar. She closed her eyes and prayed.

"This is God," a voice boomed from behind her, far too loud and close to be spiritual in nature. "What is it now?"

Lisbon nearly jumped out of her seat. She turned her head and there he was, straightening up in the pew behind her, disheveled and laughing and beautiful.

"You scared the life out of me," Lisbon said, trying to calm her racing heart.

Jane was still laughing. "I crawled on my hands and knees all the way from that door," he said, chuckling. "But it was worth it."

Funny, how after not seeing him for six months, she could still be goaded into a desire to strangle him within the space of ten seconds. "What are you doing here?"

He folded his hands and leaned his elbows on the back of the pew where she was seated. He was so close.

He beamed at her. "It's good to see you. How have you been?"

"Worried sick, is how I've been," she snapped. "And then you pop in here like some kind of lunatic, playing games, asking me how I've been."

Jane raised his hands in a placating gesture. "Okay. Just…stay calm. It's important no one sees us together."

"Why not?"

"My plan worked. Red John reached out. He wants to give me a new life."

"Red John wants to give you a new life," Lisbon repeated.

"Yes. As his disciple. He wants to turn me."

"And your plan is to what, go along with that?"

"Of course. I have to let him lead. He thinks I'm the fish and he's the fisherman."

"Unless he sees the truth," Lisbon said flatly.

"I'm giving him his heart's desire," Jane said. "He'll see what he wants to see."

"Or not," Lisbon countered. "You're not as good at hiding yourself as you think you are, Jane. Why can't you see this is never going to work? Your plan is stupid. It's not even a plan."

"So you keep telling me." Jane paused. "But you will help me, right?"

"What am I supposed to do, say 'no?'" Lisbon groused. "God, you're despicable."

He handed her a burner phone. "Take this. It's clean. I'll call you when the time comes. Tell no one."

Lisbon stared at the phone in her hand, outraged. After six months, now he chose to take her advice about the burners?

"I hate you, Jane." She turned around only to find he'd disappeared again. She raised her voice. "I hate you!"

xxx

She braced herself to wait days or weeks before she heard from him again, but he called her on the burner later that night.

"There's been a development," Jane said when she picked up.

"Where are you?" she demanded.

"I'm back in Vegas. I just talked to Red John's minion."

She felt sick at the thought of Jane casually conversing with one of Red John's creatures, but she swallowed back the desire to insist that she join him in Vegas so he'd have someone to watch his back. "And?"

"Red John wants me to bring him a gift."

Lisbon frowned. "What kind of gift?"

"Ah—turns out he has something specific in mind."

"What's that?"

"Uh—you."

Lisbon stopped short. "Me?"

"Your dead body, to be precise."

Lisbon waited for the punchline. "Okay…"

"So I was thinking I'd stop by the office tomorrow night and kill you," Jane said. "Much easier to sneak a body out of the CBI under cover of night, don't you think?"

"I wouldn't want to inconvenience you," Lisbon said sarcastically. "Why don't you just come to my apartment and do the job where there won't be so many pesky witnesses?"

He chuckled. "Because, my dear Teresa, witnesses are kind of the point."

She told him a dozen more times in the next hour that this was a bad idea, but somehow by the end of the call, she'd agreed to fake her own death the following evening.

"Perfect," Jane said cheerfully. "It's a date."

xxx

Fortunately, Lisbon was busy with the John Doe case the next day, so she didn't have too much time to dwell on her impending demise.

And then, when she returned from her last meeting of the day, there was Jane, talking to the team in the bullpen as though he'd never left.

Her heart picked up speed. His back was to her, but she'd know those golden curls anywhere. "Jane?"

He turned, a flash of anxiety crossing his face before he mustered a strained smile. "There you are."

She tilted her head in invitation and pushed open her office door.

He followed her inside, but when the door swung closed behind her, instead of drawing a gun loaded with blanks, he crossed the room in two strides and swept her up in a bear hug.

Lisbon's brow crinkled in confusion—this hadn't been part of the plan. God, she hated it when he improvised. Still, she hugged him back. Despite everything, she was so glad to see him, and she'd missed the feel of him, the smell of him—

He was holding her way too tight.

"Jane?"

He tore himself away and blinked twice, very rapidly. Finally he drew the gun. "Good luck, Teresa," he said hoarsely. "Love you."

She stared at him. What the hell?

He grimaced and raised the gun.

Lisbon put up her hand to stop him. "Hold up. What was that?"

Jane blinked. "Uh…Lisbon," he said in a stage whisper. "I'm supposed to shoot you now."

"Oh, no you don't," Lisbon said, crossing her arms over her chest. "Explain yourself."

"I, uh…" Jane shifted on his feet, deeply uncomfortable. He was still holding the damn gun.

Lisbon huffed and took it away from him. She set it down on the desk behind her, then turned to face him. "Well?"

Jane swallowed. "Well, erm…I guess I'm kinda hyped up…emotions running a bit high…"

"Yes?"

He blew out a breath. "Look, obviously I'm in love with you and have been for some time. I really didn't mean to say it like that just now, though. I know the timing isn't ideal—"

"Not ideal?" Lisbon's voice rose to a distressingly high pitch.

Jane moved on hastily. "Right, I should have chosen a better moment, this isn't exactly the romantic scene I had in mind for the occasion. But I haven't seen you in so long and I missed you so much and you still smell as amazing as you always do, and you give really good hugs, Lisbon, did you know that?"

Off her expression, he only started talking faster. "Anyway, you do give really good hugs, Lisbon, there's no point denying it, and your hair is really soft, and holding a gun really freaks me out, Lisbon, let alone pointing one at you, and sometimes enough is enough and I just had to say it in case something goes wrong, because it's the truth, and you deserve to hear it and—yeah. I love you. Obviously."

"Obviously?" Lisbon said, outraged.

Jane stared at her. "Well…yeah. I mean, what do you think this whole thing has been about?"

"Vengeance! Murder! All the things you've been telling me it's about for years."

"Well, yes, it is about those things, too," Jane said, placating. "But I wouldn't have left if it wasn't, you know. For the other thing."

Lisbon recoiled as if he'd slapped her in the face. "You wouldn't have?"

"I told you, I needed to get myself unstuck," Jane said. "So I could move on. With you."

"You left that last part out, Jane," Lisbon snapped. She advanced on him. "Change of plan. I'm going to kill you."

He backed away. "Ah, Teresa, aren't we getting a little off track here?"

She jabbed him in the chest with her index finger. "And whose fault is that?"

"Well…mine, I suppose," Jane admitted.

She pointed out the couch. "Sit down."

"Teresa, we're kind of on a schedule…"

"Sit!" she barked.

Jane sat.

Lisbon paced in front of him. "Okay, first of all, we're not going through with your ridiculous lack of a plan. I'm scrapping it right now. No fake deaths."

"But Lisbon—"

Lisbon cut him off. "You're supposed to meet Red John, right? Where and when?"

Jane eyed her warily. "Tomorrow afternoon. In Vegas."

Lisbon nodded brusquely. "Okay. So here's what we're going to do…"