A/N: I'm sorry it's been a while. This chapter is very long, and I really wanted to portray the right kind of emotion within the words. Let me know if I succeeded! ;)

Disclaimer: Not mine.

CHAPTER 10: The Story

Three long and agonizingly painful days after the murder of young Matthew Grammar, another killer was yanked from the shadows by Patrick Jane.

Matthew had a girlfriend named Annabelle. A nice, level-headed girl who got straight-A's and was always polite to anyone and everyone. The girl had an older ex-boyfriend named Jason, who was apparently still bitter about their break-up. One night, the ex-boyfriend in question followed Matt and his buddies to the bowling alley and ambushed "the guy who stole his true love" or something along those lines. Jason was high as a kite and drunk beyond belief. It was a wonder he could even recall what happened the night of the shooting.

Matt's funeral would be Lisbon's first time out of the house since arriving home from the hospital. Not exactly a joyful outing. She and Grace struggled with a black dress. Van Pelt was worried she may bump Lisbon's sling and hurt her. Lisbon kept insisting she was fine, that she couldn't even feel the pain in her arm anymore, yet Grace was still extremely cautious.

"Matt was such a good boy," Lisbon commented out of the blue a few minutes later while Grace helped her with her hair. "That Jason kid must have been really screwed up."

Grace pinched a piece of Teresa's raven-black locks and rolled it into the hot curling iron. "Rigsby told me that Jane had to be physically removed from the interrogation room." She almost smiled as she said this, as though she were proud.

Lisbon's jaw dropped. "What? Why?"

Grace released the curl and rolled another. "Apparently he was getting up in Jason's face, yelling and cussing at him." She shrugged. "Rigsby told me that he has never seen Jane like that. He must have been really worked up."

"Why would he do that?" Lisbon demanded.

Grace smirked. "Do you seriously need to ask that question?" When there was no response, she sighed and went on. "He knew how much the death of Matthew affected you, and upset you."

"Did Rigsby tell you that?"

"No, but come on, boss. It isn't exactly rocket science."

Lisbon sighed. There was complete silence for a few minutes while she watched the younger redheaded agent curl her hair for her. Suddenly, a thought came to Lisbon out of absolutely nowhere. "He thinks I'm going to try again, doesn't he?"

Grace said nothing. She just continued to style her boss' hair.

"Is that why he's been so damn worried about me lately?" Lisbon asked her.

"Boss, he's worried about you for the same reason we all are." She released the last curl and set the hot iron down. "We almost lost you. It upset all of us, and we were all completely confused and scared and worried. But if I'm being honest, it really did hit Jane the hardest." Grace applied a thin layer of hairspray to Lisbon's curls. "He fought with practically every nurse who tried to kick him out of your room after visiting hours. He literally never left your side the entire time you were asleep. He even ditched work every single day until you were awake and home."

Lisbon fell silent, stunned. Sure, she knew Jane had been worried. Not that worried.

"He even carried around your note everywhere he went," Grace went on.

"The note!" Lisbon exclaimed. "Asher told me I wrote a note! I keep forgetting to ask Jane about it! How could I forget about it?"

"Oh, yeah. I'm sure he still has it. He seriously carried it around at all times. Anytime somebody wanted to read it, he would snatch it back as soon as they were finished."

"Why?"

Grace shrugged. "I guess he wanted a small piece of you, something to hold onto, just in case you..." She trailed off, eyes falling to the floor again.

"In case I had died," Lisbon finished in a flat tone.

"Yes," Van Pelt confessed sheepishly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

Lisbon turned her wheelchair around so she was facing Grace. "If I ask you something, will you promise to tell me the truth, and nothing but the truth?"

"Of course."

She took a deep breath. "Is there something that everyone isn't telling me?" Teresa asked. "I mean, is it really a huge mystery to everyone as to why I jumped, or are you all just telling me that so I won't be reminded of anything... atrocious?"

Grace took a seat at the edge of the bathtub, wringing her hands together. "It really is a mystery," she told her boss. "The night that it... happened, we were all gathered around the meeting table in the bullpen, eating closed-case pizza." She shrugged, smiling sadly. "You left for the night and never came back."

Lisbon glanced at the clock on the wall. They had about thirty minutes before Matt's funeral was expected to begin. "Will you tell me the story?" she asked quietly. "No one has ever told me what happened, what really happened, in full detail. I want to know."

Grace's eyes flickered to hers. "It's a pretty depressing story. Are you sure you want to hear it before a funeral?"

Teresa swallowed. "I think I can handle it."

Grace scanned her boss' facial expression with doubt. "It was just a regular day," she began slowly. "We had just closed a case. Cho brought in pizza for us all. Rigsby was making bad jokes. I was pretending to think they were funny. Cho was eating in silence, watching everyone. You and Jane were arguing about something irrelevant. Everything seemed so normal."

Lisbon decided against mentioning to Grace that she remembered everything about that night up until she went to sleep. She wanted to hear the story in Grace's perspective.

"You left for the night with a smile on your face," Grace went on. "I think you were happy with the way the day turned out. We caught a serial rapist."

"I was glad that he wouldn't be able to hurt anyone ever again." She recalled the extraordinary feeling of handcuffing the bastard.

Van Pelt smiled. "Right. We all were. Anyway, you seemed to be feeling great. You were smiling and laughing and making fun of Jane. That's why we all found it so strange when you didn't show up for work the next day. No phone call or text message or anything like that. Very unlike you."

Lisbon folded her hands anxiously, setting them in her lap.

Grace was fidgeting, too. She played with the lace of her pretty black dress without looking up from the floor. "We got a call first thing in the morning. The niece of a well-known politician was killed just outside of Malibu. You still hadn't' shown up and we were beginning to worry. Cho tried calling you several times. Your cell went straight to voicemail. He even tried the landline. You never answered."

Lisbon could feel her heart beating faster and faster. This was almost like the beginning of a horror story. The kind that made you sick with anticipation.

"That was when Jane told us to go, that he'd catch up with us. He was going to stop by your place to check on you." She paused, noticing Lisbon's pale expression. "Boss, are you sure you want to hear this?"

"Yes, I'm sure. Keep going," Lisbon barked.

"When you didn't come to the door, he broke in. He searched your entire apartment. Don't ask me how he found you, but he did. He found you at the bottom of that canyon, which was about a mile from your place. Your car was at your apartment building, so you must have walked. You walked a mile through those little woods behind your apartment building and-" Grace stopped in mid-sentence. "Boss, are you okay?"

Lisbon's throat had suddenly gone dry. "Jane found me?" she whispered. She had no idea. Even when Grace mentioned that it had been Jane who went to her apartment, it hadn't really clicked. Now she understood.

"Yes," Grace said gently. She dropped her eyes again. "He called me immediately. He said that you had a pulse, that you weren't dead yet, but I could tell he was panicked. His voice was cracking and he was screaming at me, demanding we hurry up and get back into town. We were already about an hour and a half outside of Sacramento. He had to handle the paramedics and the questioning all by himself."

"I had no idea that Jane was the one that found me." Now that she thought about it, it had never really occurred to her that she didn't know who found her.

"We should probably get going," Grace suggested, clearly eager to get away from this subject.

"Yeah," Teresa murmured as Grace wheeled her out of the bathroom. Grace didn't carry Lisbon down the stairs like Jane had. Instead, she went on one side of Lisbon and acted as a crutch for her. Then, Grace brought the wheelchair down the stairs, helped Lisbon into it, and rolled her down the ramp that led to the parking lot.

For a brief moment, Lisbon's mind had been steered away from the fact that she was absolutely dreading this funeral. How was she supposed to build up the strength to say goodbye to her beloved godson?

X

"It really was a lovely service," Jane commented quietly as he rolled Lisbon's wheelchair to Grace's car. Rigsby and Cho were catching Grace up on the latest case at Cho's car. Grace always did research at Lisbon's apartment on her laptop. She couldn't technically be out in the field all the time but she still liked to help out any way she could.

Lisbon nodded in agreement. "Yes, it was."

He stopped in front of Grace's car. "How are your appointments coming along?" he asked, changing the subject.

"They're pretty tedious, but I expected no less," she said as she allowed Jane to help her into the car. "So, I heard you almost threw a punch at that Jason kid."

He rolled his eyes as he buckled her in. "Is that what Grace told you?" He chuckled. "Nah, it was merely a... firm talking-to. That's all."

"Whatever you say." She briefly brushed away a dried tear that she realized she had failed to get rid of earlier, during the service.

Jane pretended not to notice as he smiled gently. "I was extremely unhappy," he explained slowly. "I was absolutely furious when I found out that all these lives were shattered simply because a jealous teenager had too much to drink." He sighed. "Jealously. That was the motive. Sick, right?"

The look on her face told him he had stepped over a line, that he'd said too much. On instinct, he brushed a loose strand of hair from her face without thinking and nearly cringed at his blunt actions. "I'm sorry for your loss," he whispered. He dropped his hand to his side and began to walk away, back to his car, when she called him back.

He stopped, turning to face her.

"You never told me that it was you who found me."

The small smile that had been fixed on his face vanished altogether. His blood turned cold and his breaths began to shorten. He didn't respond to her accusation.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked him.

"What difference would it make?" He glanced around himself. A group of Matthew's grieving friends strolled by, shoulders slumped. Kristen and Peyton walked hand-in-hand through the parking lot, faces red and blotchy. "You really want to do this here?"

"No, I don't," she admitted. "But I know that the only way to get you to talk is to force it out of you because for some strange reason, you still don't trust me. Regardless of what you say, Jane, I know you don't."

His jaw dropped involuntarily and he scoffed. "Are you trying to be funny?" he hissed as he moved toward her. "Is this some sort of demented test? Because you are one of the only human beings on this entire damn planet that I do trust."

"Then why won't you talk to me about what happened? Why do you always change the subject?"

"It was one of the darkest days of my entire life," he blurted. "It's difficult for me to even think about, Lisbon."

She fell silent, glancing down at the ground.

"I have to go," he said, shoving his hands in his pockets and walking away as the painful memories came flooding back to him.

X

Cho hung up the phone. "We got one. Politician's nineteen-year-old niece was murdered just outside of Malibu. We'd better get moving."

"But Lisbon still isn't here," Grace pointed out, gnawing on her bottom lip nervously for the umpteenth time.

"Try calling her again," Rigsby chimed in.

"I'm telling you, it went straight to voicemail. She isn't picking up the landline either." He shrugged into his jacket. "Only one solution. Phone's dead and she overslept."

"Lisbon doesn't oversleep," Rigsby contradicted.

"Yeah, or let her phone die!" Grace said. "I think we should do something.

"You guys go," Jane suggested. "I'll go to Lisbon's place and drag her out of bed. Like Cho said, she must have overslept, or maybe her car isn't running or something."

"Great. Rigs, Van Pelt, you're with me. Let's go." Typical Cho, taking charge. He grabbed his firearm and tucked it into his holster, glancing at the other two agents. Then, he sighed. "Guys, I'm sure she's fine," he insisted, because he had to. "She can take care of herself. Right now, we need to get to Malibu. Let's go."

Grace and Wayne exchanged a glance but didn't argue with their colleague. Instead they grabbed their guns and cell phones and followed Cho to the parking garage.

Jane wasn't far behind them. After rinsing his teacup and saucer, he made his way down to the parking garage. He unlocked his car and climbed in, jabbing the keys into the ignition and driving away from the CBI.

He couldn't help but think that it was strange that Lisbon hadn't even called. What was even stranger was that her phone was off. Dead, he assumed. Very unlike Lisbon.

He reached her apartment building and got out of the car without even bothering to lock it as he walked toward the staircase. He caught sight of her car in its usual spot. So she was here. He took two steps at a time and rapped three times on her door. "Lisbon!" he called through the door. "Playing hooky is no excuse for an uncharged cell phone."

He waited. No response.

That's odd, he thought as he knocked three more times. "Lisbon, open up! I know you're in there."

Nothing.

He crossed his arms, perplexed. "I'm coming in," he warned as tried the doorknob. He was surprised to find it unlocked. "Lisbon?" he called out as he swung the door open.

No answer.

He shut the door and looked around himself, finding that he was beginning to worry. "Lisbon, answer me!" he all but pleaded as he walked toward the staircase. He placed a hand on the railing and began to ascend the staircase. "Wakey, wakey!" he sang, chuckling a bit nervously. He was at the top of the stairs now. "Lisbon?"

There were three doors in the narrow hallway. Two on the left and one on the right. He pushed the one on the right open. Her bathroom. The light was off. No, she was not in here.

The first door on the left was a storage closet. Obviously, she wasn't in there.

There was one last door. It had to be her bedroom. He gripped the knob, pausing with anticipation. What if she wasn't in there? Where could she be? Or worse. What if she was in there, and there was a reason why she wasn't answering her phone or responding to his shouts?

Jane twisted the knob and threw the door open.

The bed was empty.

That was when the panic really set in.

He took a step inside her bedroom, peeking into her closet. Her suitcase was sitting on the top shelf. Her phone was lying on the nightstand. Dead.

This didn't make sense. Her car was here. Her phone was here. Her suitcase and personal belongings were here.

She was gone.

He searched the apartment thoroughly for any clues of her whereabouts but found nothing useful.

Then, he snatched her keys from the living room coffee table and checked her car. He found an old, empty paper Starbucks cup in the cup holder. That was it.

He was getting desperate. He pounded on her neighbors' doors. None of them had seen Lisbon.

Damn it!

Jane began pacing along the sidewalk. This didn't make sense. Where the hell could she possibly be?

Something caught his eyes as he paced and he glanced up.

His heart dropped to his feet.

Behind the apartment building, there was a large patch of trees. It didn't exactly classify as a forest, but the trees seemed to stretch for a good mile or so.

And to Jane's horror, a huge flock of birds were circling the treetops.

"No," he whispered. He forced his legs to move, forced them to move faster, and suddenly he was sprinting. He had never run so fast in his life. He never thought he had the ability to run so fast. Yet here he was, flying over the soil and frantically shouting Lisbon's name.

Tears stung his eyes but he refused to let them spill. For all he knew, those damned birds were circling a dead coyote, and Teresa had been picked up by a friend earlier this morning because she was having car troubles.

Jane used the birds as a guide, trying to get to whatever it was they were preying upon.

When he was directly below them he stopped, completely out of breath. He hunched over, placing his hands on his knees for support and breathing hard. He looked up at the birds, squinting as the sunlight blinded him. What the hell? He was directly below them, and there was nothing. Was there a rotting animal around perhaps? He had no idea what the birds were circling but to his relief, Lisbon was nowhere to be seen.

His heart stopped.

Nowhere to be seen...

He glowered at the ledge of a cliff as he inched toward it, biting his lip so hard he drew blood. Please. No.

He took a deep, ragged breath and peeked over the edge.

"LISBON!"

A/N: Sorry, that was kind of a cliffhanger (literally). Let me know what you think!