Chapter Eighteen: A Bad Feeling
Lisbon paced the lounge like an OCD zoo tiger. At the corner, she stopped and looked at her phone.
Ring, she commanded.
It didn't.
Lisbon spun on her heel and resumed pacing.
Her footsteps were hollow taps in the near-empty room. Most of Durenko's employees had been sent home for the night. The CBI tech people hadn't arrived yet.
At the moment, it was just Lisbon, Hoskins, and a few random department heads left mingling in the lounge. Van Pelt was still upstairs, getting her computer groove on. The rest of the building was dark and ghostly still. The sun had gone down over half an hour ago.
Lisbon reached another corner. She scowled at the phone.
Ring.
Nothing.
She paced.
Forty-five minutes had passed since Lisbon had called the Carmine Valley PD and requested that an officer go check out the Jorsten house. In the meantime, she'd replayed Jane's message three more times. She still couldn't decipher any hidden clues or meanings, but the feeling it gave her reminded Lisbon of bad things:
The creepy tickle of spider legs across her skin. That sick sensation of "about to fall." The ache of certainty and dread at a fresh crime scene, when she came across those first few drops of blood, and knew – just knew – that a body was waiting around the corner…
Lisbon shook her head, refusing to go there. Not yet. Her hand tightened around the cell phone, which remained infuriatingly silent.
All she wanted right now was to hear Jane's voice in her ear. Jane's voice, telling her that the strange phone call had been some vital part of one of his schemes, key move in a grand master plan to trap Paul Jorsten's killer:
"See, Lisbon, he had to BELIEVE I was really dialing the FBI…"
Jane's voice, saying he was already back at the office, and where was she? Because Rigsby had ordered pizza for everyone.
Lisbon would never tell Jane how she'd gotten worked up over nothing and sent the police to go check on him.
He would find out, anyway, and laugh at her over-reaction, but also be touched by her concern.
She had the whole conversation planned out. All she needed was for the phone to ring…
Lisbon gave the device her deadliest, I-will-shoot-to-kill look.
Ring, damn it! Ring, ring, RING!
It rang, and she almost dropped it.
"Lisbon," she blurted, fumbling to get the phone in position.
"Uh, Agent Lisbon, this is Officer Ryan Kelly with the Carmine Valley Police Department…"
Her face fell. Not Jane…
"…I'm at the residence of Paul and Laura Jorsten, and we have a situation here."
Lisbon's stomach dipped a little. "What kind of a situation?"
The officer hesitated, and Lisbon's stomach did a full-fledged nose dive.
"Agent, are you driving right now?"
"No," she said sharply, urgency and cold dread making her voice sound mean. "I'm not driving. Just tell me what's going on."
"Well, it appears to be a double-homicide…"