q***Sorry it's been a little longer since the last update. SPOILER WARNING for this one: This chapter has spoilers for the Season 4 finale. Read at your own risk.** And thanks for the reviews :)
Lisbon started awake, shaking off sleep for the tenth - or hundredth - time. Despite incessant trembling and growing anxiety, she couldn't seem to keep her eyes open. She was standing back-to-back with Jane, arms tightly crossed, every muscle braced against the current of cold air that was steadily blowing past them from the overhead circulator.
They'd been leaning that way for several minutes. Their prior stance was too awkward to maintain once they both caught the permanent shivers, and they'd been walking around at intervals. At one point, Jane moved his handkerchief onto Lisbon's head, but it fell off and she wrapped it around her fingers instead.
"Are your eyes closed?" he asked, startling her again.
"What? -No."
He used his best command voice: "Open your eyes, Lisbon."
"It's dark in here!" she grumbled.
"Yes," he sighed.
"Hey - how'd you know my eyes were closed?" she challenged.
"Just a guess. My eyes were closed."
She stomped her feet half-heartedly. Her toes were curled up inside her shoes. Jane wished he could produce a pair of woolly socks and a blanket for her. For both of them. If nothing else, at least he could keep her talking.
"Hey, Lisbon?"
"Yeah?"
"How long would we have to be in here to get frostbite?"
"I don't know. Not long if it's still below freezing." Her throat hurt, and she was tired of seeing her breath materialize in front of her.
"I wonder how long we've been in here?"
"Feels like an hour," she croaked. Neither of them reached for their phones. They'd been checking them somewhat frequently at first, but it became harder to hold them steady, and tougher still putting Jane's phone back together after he dropped it on the cement floor.
He prodded, "I think we need to walk around some more."
"I'm pretty tired, Jane," she groaned. "Aren't you?"
The truth was that both of them were suffering from muscle fatigue, stress, and adrenaline overload. "We have to stay awake," he told her. "Keep moving and stay awake." He stepped forward and sluggishly paced across the room. Lisbon followed suit, feeling alarmingly uncoordinated, but she was sharp enough to realize that Jane hadn't noticed it.
This is so stupid, she thought, this whole situation. Walking around perked her up, jump-started her brain again. For a while she had just let herself zone out. Jane must have done the same, because they hadn't spoken for several minutes at a time.
Fear was creeping back in. She'd known they could die if they weren't discovered, but she didn't know how long that could take and she had chosen not think about it. Now, the realization that she was losing control over her motor skills ratcheted her emotions straight up the mortal fear scale. Funny how freezing to death wasn't on anyone's wild phobia list. At least not anyone Lisbon knew.
To distract herself and possibly put things into perspective, she thought of her own phobias, things she had been deathly afraid of at one time or another. Ridiculously unlikely things, like swimming in the ocean and seeing a giant shark coming toward her. Or being chased through dark woods by a snarling pack of wolves: a childhood fear she couldn't trace. Losing her footing and falling unexpectedly from a high place. She'd had dreams about those things. Probably lots of people had.
But who dreams about getting locked inside a freezer to die beside a dead man and a bunch of slaughtered cows?
All of this went through her head at lightening speed, which was a whole lot faster than she was walking around the room. She wondered what Jane was thinking about. She knew it must be driving him crazy not to be able to cook up a scheme to get them out of there.
Being totally honest with herself, she acknowledged that a lack of greater control in this situation was one of the more frustrating aspects of the whole thing - for her. Anger was how she usually wore fear she couldn't turn around. There had been times in her life when she had felt powerless in one way or another. Losing her parents at a young age and spending her growing-up years raising her siblings. Being held at gunpoint, on more than one occasion. Being shot by someone she knew. Losing a friend and former lover to a violent psychopath.
She looked over at Jane. They had that psychopath in common.
"What?" he asked her. Unconsciously, she had stopped walking.
"Nothing," she lied, but it was for his own good. An outburst would throw him off the scent: "Jane! I will not be in a survival movie with you!"
Jane stopped now, regarded her quizzically.
"We're not in a movie, Lisbon."
She rolled her eyes and resumed her attempt at wearing a path in the concrete floor. If they didn't make it out of this, who would be called in to make the formal identifications when their bodies were found? Someone on their team? Someone in her family? Jane didn't have any family.
"Well. It may not come to that," she assured herself.
"What?"
She hadn't realised she'd spoken aloud. "Oh - nothing."
Jane appeared to be seriously concerned that she might be losing it. She attempted a smile. Yes. Real, in-the-moment fear was a different animal altogether than wild fantasies about being eaten by sharks.
On the other hand, she considered, wouldn't knowing you were about to be devoured by a shark be a worse fate than this one, in-the-moment?
She realized she was being morbid. But seriously, when is the time to consider this stuff, if not now? She could take a not-so-wild guess at what Jane might be thinking about. Her thoughts returned to serial killer Red John, and the horrible possibilities that might still lie before her if she and Jane made it out of this alive. It had been some time since she first suspected that her friendship with the Consultant might put her life in graver danger than she had expected from her job.
Over the years, she had seen proof enough of his obsession with Red John. Though she knew Jane's motive was to catch and kill the man who killed his wife and daughter, it seemed Red John's motives for following the life of Patrick Jane (and allowing him to stay alive) were purely fanatical. The psychopath actually maintained that he was fascinated by his victim's devotion to tracking him down.
And then a few months ago Jane had gone off the grid; no one at the CBI had heard from him until he'd been away for half a year. He contacted Lisbon in secret, confiding in her that his absence was part of a plan to reel Red John in, by persuading him that he was ready to become his disciple. A few days after that meeting, Red John demanded that Jane kill Lisbon, as proof that he had adopted the serial killer's worldview. Jane immediately understood that the request was to call his bluff. Red John had proved in no uncertain terms that he recognized Teresa Lisbon was significant for Jane; and at the end of the day, the anonymous but well-connected killer displayed his supreme omniscience by taking the life of one of the CBI's highest-level figures, one who had been with them for a comparatively short time.
When the standoff was over, Red John remained alive and unseen; and neither Jane nor Lisbon were physically harmed. But Lisbon was not naive enough to think that Red John had lost interest in using her to accomplish whatever endgame he had in mind for Patrick Jane. And she didn't doubt that he could get to her if he decided to do it. That certainty, along with her familiarity with the killer's crimes and methodologies, had inspired more real fear in Teresa Lisbon than she would ever openly acknowledge.
Lisbon knew - or thought she knew - that Red John had absolutely nothing to do with the case that had brought them out to Pete's BBQ in St. Claire County. But for Jane... ridding the world of the depraved serial killer was his only defined goal in life; Lisbon was grieved every time she was reminded of it. So, what if he died before he accomplished that?
She knew that must have occured to him already. That could be why he's so quiet. Maybe he's thinking about it now.
Well, if they were going to die - and they were doing what little they knew to prevent it - Lisbon realized it would do them absolutely no good to spend their last conscious thoughts on regrets or what-if's.
Think of something comforting, she instructed herself. Her mind went blank, but in no time she was mentally singing the words to 'the chicken soup song.' It had been her niece's favorite when she was four years old. Teresa's brother Tommy played it everywhere they went together: at home, in the car, in Auntie Resa's house. Annabel had memorized all the lyrics. Carly Simon, maybe? That had been ages ago.
But now Lisbon couldn't concentrate on the song because of all the racket outside. What was that? It sounded like shouting. But the fan was too loud. She turned toward the door.
Suddenly her arm was linked with Jane's. "Lisbon! Do you hear that?"
"Shh!" she heard it, and her heart was racing.
"Someone's coming!" he said excitedly.
"Thank God!" she whispered. Relief flooded over her, then stopped abruptly as Jane squeezed her arm. "What if the someone coming is someone coming to move the body?"
Her blood would have run cold if she wasn't already freezing. In that instant she wanted to go for her gun, but she knew she couldn't get a grip on it. Everything was so eerily quiet; so still and surreal.
The next moment they heard a small popping sound. And then the lights flickered on.
Slowly blinking in the glare, they were rooted to the spot, squinting at the cracked doorway. A gun appeared first, followed by a man in a khaki uniform. And then things started happening very fast.
The gun was holstered as two more uniforms appeared in the door. Someone shouted about calling an ambulance, and Lisbon and Jane were ushered from the freezer into the dining hall. It had grown dark outside, but they could see the outline of their SUV through the front doors. One of the uniforms appeared with emergency blankets and draped them across the pair's shoulders. The two huddled together and answered a few questions from the local Sheriff, who was attentive but clearly very irritated that he hadn't been informed of their presence in his town until someone with CBI had called to report them out of reach.
"What time is it?" Lisbon asked.
Someone spoke up. "8:15."
A few minutes later, two ambulances arrived behind blaring sirens. Jane and Lisbon were made to lie on stretchers while emergency medical personnel produced special warming blankets and took their vital signs. They were pronounced to have body temps around 94 degrees, and were given intravenous fluids for probable dehydration.
Their mutual relief at being rescued - and being warm! - prevented both from protesting all the attention they were getting.
it was decided that one of the ambulances would stay behind to transport the body of the deceased, as the forensics team was already en route to the scene. So, Jane and Listbon were loaded into the other ambulance, to be transported to the local ER for a more complete examination. One of the medics explained to them in a bit more detail:
"Mild hypothermia can have all kinds of complications: dehydration, hypoglycemia, cardiac arrythmia. The attending physician will probably stagger out a couple of EKGs, and maybe admit you overnight."
Jane mumbled something grumpily. Lisbon thought she shushed him.
Another EMT began applying something like hot water bottles to their necks and armpits. The warmth felt so good that they both dozed off until they were started awake by the ambulance braking at the hospital.