A/N: Thanks for all the great reviews! Now, by popular demand, Jane and Lisbon together again—at least for now. Hope you like this chapter. A little more angst, I'm afraid.

Chapter 4

She was waiting for him back in his apartment, and it tugged at his heart to know that she'd used the key he'd given her earlier in the week. He tried to ignore the brief flash of pain at the thought that someone was waiting for him at home again, and while it couldn't be his wife, he was still a little overwhelmed that it was Lisbon.

She sat on his couch in the living room, and he immediately assessed that she'd just been sitting there awhile, deep in thought. He avoided her eyes at first as he shut the door behind him and walked into the small kitchen, but he would have wagered she'd been crying a little. He was a coward not to look at her, so he covered it up by putting on the teakettle.

"Tea?" he asked. And for once, there wasn't the double entendre that always came with that question now.

"Please," she said, her voice slightly hoarse. She cleared her throat and resumed staring at the shaded window.

He went through the motions of getting out two cups, two saucers, two teabags, two spoons. The silence was deafening, fraught with tension, uncertainty, and fear. Before the water had even boiled, however, Lisbon spoke.

"Where have you been?" she asked. Her tone wasn't accusatory; she really wanted to know.

"I had lunch with LaRoche." He grinned with sudden, inappropriate humor. "That could be a cooking show: Lunch with LaRoche."

"What did he say?" She wasn't amused; definitely not a good sign.

He sighed and looked at the back of her dark head as she remained facing away from him. "He naturally asked about the gun. I told him where I'd gotten it. He gave it back to me and didn't seem too concerned about it. You must have smoothed the way for me."

"Good. I told him I'd already known about it. I—"
"You what?" Jane turned off the whistling teakettle and came out of the kitchen, furious for the second time that day.

"I told him we'd talked about it when you'd first gotten it. He seemed to buy it, and it was a good way to cover your ass. But please, try to reign in your gratitude," she finished sarcastically.

"Dammit, Teresa, you shouldn't have lied for me. Never lie for me. That's why I keep my questionable actions hidden from you—I don't want you in that position, risking your job for me. No wonder that bastard smiled at me. He caught us in a lie!"

"What?" she looked stricken, her face pale.

"I left your name out of it completely, even when he asked me directly if you knew. Shit. I can't believe I didn't catch what he was doing." He laughed humorlessly. "I told him the truth too…well, at least about the gun."

"It's not like I haven't lied for you before, you know, covered for you after one of your stupid schemes. I didn't see a reason to start now."

He ran both hands through his hair, closing his eyes as he sighed. "I've never asked you to lie for me."

She barked out a surprised laugh. "You want to rethink that statement?"

"Okay, I don't like it when you do, when it gets you in trouble or endangers your job. I always want to protect you from that."

Her expression suddenly softened and she rose, walking over to him in an almost sultry way, her eyes upon him. He couldn't prevent the jolt to his heart as she approached him, eyes all smoky and enthralling. She stopped a hair's breadth from him where he stood in the entryway.

"Stop protecting me," she said, her small hand reaching up to touch his slightly stubbled cheek. "Stop taking the weight of Red John upon your shoulders. You have an entire team of state agents specifically trained for maniacs like this. Maybe if you tell us all you know, we can help you. I can help you."

His hand went up to press hers against his face, then to slide it over to his mouth so he could kiss her warm palm. "There's nothing to tell," he said.

"Bullshit," she said softly. "Tell me," she whispered against his lips, her hands holding his cheeks as she began a delicious assault on his mouth. Her tongue snaked inside and she felt his hands go to her waist, then lower, to push on her bottom. The kiss took a passionate turn as he took a more active role, grinding his pelvis into hers, a soft growl coming from deep in his throat. Lisbon chose that moment to wrench her mouth from his, kissing a sensual path to his ear.

"Tell me all your secrets, Patrick" she breathed, feeling him quiver a little at her hot breath. She nipped at his ear lobe. "If you want more of this, you have to give me a little encouragement." She ran her fingers through his hair, playing with his soft curls.

His hands came up, stilling hers at the wrists and setting her back a little so he could peer into her lovely green eyes. He was breathing heavily, but he knew sexual manipulation when he felt it.

"I've never known you to use sex as a weapon," he said, his own eyes slumberous and slightly dazed.

"Better than a Colt .45, isn't it?" she said, taking his mouth again and dragging him over to the couch. Jane knew that once she had him on his back he'd be a goner.

"No," he said, resolutely disentangling himself. "You can torture me all you want Agent Lisbon, but I'm not talking."

She evaluated what she'd managed to accomplish in about five minutes. His eyes were dilated, his chest moving in and out at swift pace, his hair disheveled from her busy hands. Just a few minutes more, and he'd be at her mercy. She advanced on him again, but he held up his hands defensively.

"Stop right there. I can't believe you're doing this. This is really beneath you, Teresa."

She smirked. "You could be really beneath me."

His lips quirked in spite of himself. "I won't be manipulated this way."

She raised an eyebrow. "The way I see it, you're so used to being the manipulator that you've forgotten how it feels to be on the other end. Not too fun, is it?"

"No, but that doesn't change how wrong it is to bring this behavior into the bedroom. By either of us."

They were both suddenly very serious, and Lisbon looked at him sadly. "I came to a conclusion today. I can't be with you if you won't tell me what you've been keeping from me. All of it. Everything that you know in your heart I want—no, deserve-to know. So until that happens, there will be no more of this—any of this—between us. We'll go back to being all business, not even friends with benefits. Do you understand what I'm saying, Jane?"

"You're sexually blackmailing me," he said in disbelief. She almost took back her words at his hurt expression.

"Yes. Yes I am. I don't have anything else to bargain with here. If I fired you, you'd just leave and continue to keep your secrets. I saw what happened with Bosco when you were shut out of anything Red John related, so that would be a pointless endeavor. You'd just go rogue and do whatever the hell you wanted without me standing beside you to give you some semblance of restraint. You're leaving me no choice."

"And what do you suppose I'll do if you stop having sex with me? Come running back to you like some horny teenager, begging for a quick feel in the backseat? I remained celibate for seven years, Lisbon. I could go seven more if I have to. But here's another choice—how about just trusting that I know what's best for us? That I'm trying to pro-"

"Stop beating that dead horse," interrupted Lisbon angrily. "How about you trusting me? You think I can't handle hearing the truth? I don't think that's it at all. At the risk of beating another dead horse, I won't mention again how you're afraid I'll prevent you from going after Red John on your own. So it comes down to this. Either you want me, or your secrets. You can't have both." She felt her heart pounding within her breast, her hands perspiring. She couldn't believe she'd given him this ultimatum, and now she was scared to death he wouldn't pick her, that his obsession with Red John would be what killed their relationship, as surely as it had killed his wife and child.

"Why are you doing this to us?" he asked, heartsick. He thought of the past seven years when he'd been alone except for his friends in the CBI. He remembered his daily dread about going home to an empty apartment, a cold place where he rarely got any sleep. These days, he rarely slept all night at the office anymore. Most of his nights were spent cuddling with Lisbon. Now she was going to take away the one thing in his life that gave him peace.

Her eyes softened, and she touched a tentative hand to his vest-covered chest. "Because we can't go on this way. We've been living in a fantasy land, avoiding reality. No Red John case in months has allowed us to be—"she caught a sudden flicker in his eyes, and her own eyes widened in horrified realization. "Jane? Something has happened with Red John, hasn't it?"

He closed his eyes against her probing gaze, and she dropped her hand with a sob. "Oh, my God! This is worse than I thought. I assumed you'd just been keeping clues from me. But it's more than that, isn't it?"

"Lisbon—"

"Has he killed someone else I don't know about?"

Jane remained stoically silent, and he wouldn't meet her eyes. He went back into the kitchen to see if he could salvage the tea. Lisbon stood where he'd left her by the door, her entire body shaking now, tears and the little mascara she wore sliding down her cheeks.

"Who, Jane?" she asked desperately. "You'd better tell me now or I'm walking out this door, you hear me?"

"I hear you," he whispered, but his voice seemed to echo in the small kitchen. He opened the refrigerator for the milk. If she'd been able to see his hands, she'd see the slight tremor as he poured some into his tea cup. He reached for the kettle and filled the cup with the hot water, then dropped his Earl Grey tea bag into the mixture, dunking it absently.

The slamming door made him jump, and a little hot water spilled over on his hands. He dropped the cup, watching dispassionately as it shattered into the sink.

She's finally done it, he thought numbly. Gotten mad enough to slam a door.

He reached for the remaining cup, and started the process all over again. He willed his mind to go blank as a buffer against the anguish that lurked just beneath a thin wall of control. When he at last brought the cup to his lips, he didn't even care that the tea was too cold for his usual taste. He swallowed it down anyway.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Thirty minutes later, and Jane was sitting at his small kitchen table, J.J. LaRoche's file open before him. If Red John were to blame for his family's death, Jane thought, LaRoche was to blame for the death of his relationship with Lisbon. The bastard would pay, as surely as would Red John when Jane finally caught him. And while LaRoche's crimes weren't deserving of a death sentence, the least Jane could do was kill the man's career. That would be a suitable punishment for meddling in Jane's affairs.

On the inside of the folder was stapled a picture of LaRoche, more than likely the official photo on his CBI ID card. His face was solemn and blank, his eyes void of emotion, rather like a shark's, in Jane's opinion. On the page of personal information, Jane was momentarily nonplussed to see what J.J. stood for: John Jacob. John. An ironic coincidence, of course. John was one of the most common names on the planet, after all. He wondered why the man didn't just go by John. Skimming through his family tree, he figured out why. His father had also been John Jacob LaRoche, so his family had done what many did with a junior name—given him a nickname; in this case, his first two initials, rather than the more diminutive Junior.

He saw that LaRoche was ten years older than Jane, which took him a little by surprise; he'd assumed they were about the same age. His vital statistics were off by about twenty pounds, indicating that the file hadn't been updated in awhile. His father had died twenty years ago, a retired rice farmer from Louisiana. He had no siblings, and he had moved his mother to California to be with him, likely so he could take care of her and still be close to his work. She'd lived with him in Sacramento up until her death about five years before.

He sifted through the rest of LaRoche's file, past various commendations for solving difficult cases, tracing his rise to Senior Agent from Tulane law school graduate, to his post-university move to California and his recruitment by the CBI. He couldn't find in the records the reason behind LaRoche's desire to move from Louisiana, but he'd made quite a name for himself in Northern California criminal investigations, working in the San Francisco DA's office as a young attorney. All in all, there wasn't much of interest to Jane, not even a hint of impropriety or any investigations by internal affairs. The man was just as boring on paper as he was in real life.

He'd never even been married, but there was an information sheet on a red-haired woman who had obviously been important to him; the CBI did background checks on the significant others of their top agents. The date stamp on the background check was from six years ago.

Jane studied the woman's picture, noting her name and last known place of business. Jessie Lynch was full-bodied and rather pretty, with sparkling blue eyes and mischief in her smile. She and Jane were the same age. He wondered what had happened between them, and instantly Jane realized that he'd likely stumbled onto his enemy's Achilles heel. Maybe the best approach was not through some career ending set up—although Jane still hadn't ruled the idea out completely. No, maybe the way to ruining LaRoche was through his heart, if one in fact beat inside the cold man's chest. Jane grinned to himself as a plan began to take shape. Not even the great investigator, John Jacob LaRoche, Junior would know what hit him…until it was much too late.

A/N: I hope I successfully tapped into that scary, obsessive side we only see when Jane is confronted with a Red John case. LaRoche has messed with Jane's life, broken up his relationship with Lisbon, albeit inadvertently, not to mention still delving into Jane's personal Red John investigation. I don't see Jane sitting still for that, do you? Any thoughts out there?