Well, this is it, the last chapter. I thank everyone who took the time to read the entire story. It was fun to write and I hope you enjoyed it too. Have you figured out what's going to happen?

Sweet Persuasion

Chapter 18

A One Way Journey

Claire gently pushed Jane down into his beach chair, his eyes still transfixed by the burning koala bear. He had kept it safe for so, so long, but now it was just part of the smoldering embers. Claire saw him staring into the fire and had to regain his attention.

"It's time to go and be with Angela and Charlotte."

Jane dragged his eyes back towards the voice that beguiled him. Claire was so close he could have embraced her.

"I have something with me that will help you go to them" Claire said, reaching into her large beach bag. She straightened up and held a small pistol in her hand.

"Take it Patrick. It's ready for you. Don't keep them waiting."

Patrick's dull eyes shifted away from Claire's face and beheld the gun, not with acceptance, but with disgust. He hated guns, always had, still did, even tonight. He couldn't use it. Not happening.

"No. No guns."

"But you have to Patrick!"

"No! No guns!"

Claire was flustered. No one ever said no to her. How could Jane resist her now at this critical moment? What could she do to make him take the gun willingly? She couldn't shoot him. He had to do it himself.

"I have a way…" Jane said softly, surprising Claire. He bent over and fumbled with the bag beside his chair. When he pulled his hand out of the bag, he was holding a large knife.

"This way" he said dreamily.

Claire couldn't contain her joy. This man surprised her! Obviously her sessions with Jane had paid off in spades! Now he was in charge of his special day completely.

"Very good Patrick, I'm impressed. And what will you do with that knife Patrick?"

Jane stared off beyond Claire's face, into the fire and then, searching beyond its flames. On the other side of the fire he could see the ocean, dark and rolling slowly to shore in the moonlight. Far away, people walked the beach, unaware of the tragedy unfolding nearby. Jane looked and smiled, seemingly seeing the faces of old friends, all above the dancing flames. Yes, now was a good time.

Patrick leaned back in his beach chair, needing time to compose himself and get in the right frame of mind. When he was settled, he took the knife and turned it in the flickering light of the fire. It shone brightly, an orange glow on the sharp blade. He put the knife on his knee then turned the cuff of his linen shirt back, folding it once, twice, three times to just below his elbow. Then he did the same with his other sleeve. Claire watched him with fascination.

"Very good. You can do it Patrick, I'm proud of you" she said softly, almost with love.

Jane picked up the knife and ran his finger across the blade, avoiding the sharp edge. He waited, mouthing something to himself. Claire could only guess what he was saying. Was he praying, apologizing to Angela and Charlotte, talking himself into acting? She had to be patient, keep her mouth shut to give Jane the space he needed to do the deed. Claire came closer to the beach chair, then squatted down until she was kneeling in the sand, her back to the flames so she could see everything up close, her cell phone in her pocket, ready for the selfie she desperately wanted to take of Jane once he was dead by his own hand.

Jane contemplated the knife, then turned to face Claire.

"Why are you here?" he said clearly, as if seeing her for the first time tonight. He seemed surprised to see her here on the beach. Jane's question confused Claire. Just how far gone was he mentally that he only just now really saw her? That blue cream was potent stuff.

"I'm here to help you on your way. Think about me like a conductor on a train. I'm going with you, but not taking the trip. I help you every step of the way, but in the end you leave on your own" she said kindly.

Jane smiled. For the first time all evening he broke out in a euphoric laugh. This all made so much sense now, and Claire was the guide who took control of the situation. As Jane laughed, so did Claire, happy to see she still had the ability to make people do what she wanted them to do.

"Are you happy Patrick?" Claire asked, surprised at his gleeful outburst at the moment of his imminent death.

"So happy. Thank you for everything" he said before suddenly taking the knife and slashing it across his left wrist, a deep gash that instantly produced a gush of rich red blood. Claire sucked in her breath, thrilled by his swift, confident cut. He seemed to feel no pain. As the blood dripped off his fingers, he put the knife in his left hand and once again, before she could speak, he ran the blade across his right wrist, a geyser of blood erupting from the wide gash and spurting across his lap. He studied his wrists, then dropped the knife into the sand.

Turning to face Claire, he grinned maniacally. "That wasn't so bad" he said, his smile faltering as the moments ticked by. Gradually he slumped farther down into his chair, his head falling softly against the back of the beach chair. All was quiet save for the crackling of the flames. Claire cautiously felt his wrist for a pulse. There was none. Now she reached into her pocket and pulled out her cell phone. She moved closer to the chair and kneeled beside Jane's body, holding her camera out and smiling like a beauty queen, capturing the moment for her trophy case back at her apartment. Checking to see if the photo turned out in this low light, she switched off her phone and stood up, facing Jane for one last look. His face was slack, content.

"Happy travels Mr. Jane. Say hello to Angela and Charlotte from me" she said sincerely. When she turned around to walk away, she stared directly into the barrels of three guns, all aimed at her. Lisbon slowly approached, her gun and badge held out as she commanded Claire to drop to her knees with her hands behind her head.

"What's all this about? I was walking on the beach and found this man dead on his lawn chair!" Claire said calmly, startled. "Can't you see he needs help?" she said as the first real prickles of concern entered her heart.

Rigsby and Cho came around and grabbed Claire's hands and while Cho restrained the young woman, Rigsby cuffed her, and none too gently.

"You! I know you!" Claire shouted, recognizing Cho and Rigsby from the interview she had at the Clinic.

"Why are you doing this to me? I only came over to see what was wrong with this man and I think he killed himself!" Claire shouted, surprised no one believed her. More bodies came out of the darkness. Van Pelt and the two other police officers emerged from the far side of the fire, guns at the ready. Claire continued to struggle against her restraints as Rigsby and Cho each held one of her elbows.

"Claire Claire Claire" Patrick Jane's voice boomed behind her, scaring the shit out of the nervous woman. Claire reeled around and stared at the man who was, minutes before, certifiably dead.

No longer slumped in his beach chair, Patrick Jane stood with his hands on his hips, the last of the blood dripping off his fingers. He was very much alive.

"You can't be alive! I saw you dead in your chair! I saw the cuts on your wrists, you slit your own wrists!" Claire screamed, in a panic now as Rigsby began to pull her away from Jane.

"Ever hear the phrase, "there's magic in the moonlight?" Jane teased Claire. "Well, it's true."

Claire fought against Rigsby and Cho, hysterical with surprise and rage. "You're supposed to die!" Claire screamed, angry that Jane had defied her plans for him. Now Claire was surrounded by many more officers, all heavily armed and unimpressed with her hysterics. She was dragged away from Jane by the officers from the CBI, her protests echoing off the water as she was forced back to the parking lot and shoved into a police car.

Lisbon walked up to Jane with a sly grin on her face, while Van Pelt handed Jane a cloth to wipe off his hands.

"I must say, that might have been your best scam ever. Even I was scared for a minute when you slit your wrists" Lisbon admitted to the beaming man.

Jane shrugged and stretched out his back muscles. He had been quite tense for the whole performance. "I take that as a great compliment, thank you Lisbon. I'm glad my friend in the Magic shop called you to tell you about the con, otherwise it would never have worked."

Van Pelt stared at Jane's ghastly wrists. "How on earth did you pull it off?"

Jane smiled with satisfaction. "It really wasn't so difficult. First, we were outside in the dark, with only a fire for light. That worked to my advantage. Easier to fool Claire with my props."

"Howie said you'd bought some special props and that no matter what happened we shouldn't interfere" Lisbon said. "I gotta say, that was hard to do considering what we could see."

"And I thank you for your restraint. I needed to convince Claire I was really going to slit my wrists" Jane said.

"Mission accomplished on that" Rigsby said with a smile as he rejoined the group.

"Go on…how did you do it?" Van Pelt asked again.

"It was remarkably easy. As any special effects technician will tell you, most wounds in a film are made of latex, rubber, fake blood and pumps to make the blood spurt. I went to my favourite magic shop on the way here and my good friend Howie has some professional grade prosthetics. Here, look" he said, as he scraped at his skin, lifting an edge up and pulling. The whole surface of Jane's inner forearm pulled away from his real skin, leaving a sticky residue behind.

"Fake skin!" Van Pelt said in wonderment.

"Fake skin filled with fake blood. Then you take a similarly fake, dullish knife, cut the latex open, and voila, blood gushes out and people faint. Pretty cool, yes?" Jane said gleefully.

"Very cool" Lisbon agreed, marveling at Jane's ingenuity. He pulled at the bloody fake skin on his other arm and placed it on his chair.

"Ok, but how did you resist the blue cream that Claire has been drugging you with?" Van Pelt asked.

Jane unbuttoned another button on his now blood soaked shirt. He pulled his shirt down at the back and reached around to scratch at the surface of his skin. Again, gradually, a large flat piece of fake skin lifted off his back, leaving pink perfect skin underneath, un-tainted by the blue cream.

"I believe that's evidence" Jane said, carefully handing it to Cho along with both pieces of prosthetic forearm skin.

"That latex will be saturated with the cream Claire used, and it will match whatever she's been using on me and her other victims" Jane said with satisfaction.

"How did you know? When did you know it was Claire?" Lisbon had to ask.

Jane pulled his shirt back on and walked back towards the house with Lisbon, Cho, Rigsby and Van Pelt. By now the beach was crawling with cops, the firepit surrounded by yellow police tape flapping in the cool wind.

"I had no idea it was Claire, not at first. She was just a really good therapist as far as I was concerned, but two things didn't sit well with me. First, there were the nightmares."

"No offense Jane, but you always have nightmares," Lisbon said carefully.

Jane smiled. "No offense taken and yes, I do have a lot of nightmares, but I know what those nightmares should look like. These were completely new, a total change from what I usually suffer with. At first I wanted to forget them, but they were about Charlotte and Angela, and believe me, any nightmares about my family, I should pay attention to."

"Was there something odd about them?" Van Pelt dared to ask.

Jane walked along in silence for a moment. These people weren't prying or being voyeurs. They cared about him. Why not tell them the rest?

"In every dream created by Claire's drugs, Charlotte was holding a bear. Sometimes the bear was small and brown, sometimes larger and pink. One time it was very big and blue. At first I didn't question it, because it was a nightmare, but then I realized that Charlotte didn't care about traditional teddy bears. She had a koala bear, a soft grey one, that I gave her one year and it was her absolute favourite. She called it Sydney, and she went everywhere with it. It was special. So if I dreamed about Charlotte, I should have seen her with Sydney, not a run of the mill teddy bear."

"I don't get it" Rigsby said, confused by all this talk about bears. Toys were toys, right?

"If I was having a real nightmare, one that originated in my mind, Charlotte would have been holding a koala bear, not a teddy bear. I realized the nightmares were manufactured, produced perhaps by drugs or suggestion. The only person who was getting close enough to me lately was Claire. Then I caught her putting on plastic gloves before she began massaging my shoulder. Why would she need to do that? Have you ever seen a therapist put gloves on to do a massage? Something wasn't right, so I bought a tiny recording device and hid it in my pants pocket and recorded our last session. She did drug me unfortunately, but when I played the recording back while I was driving, I knew I had her."

"So that's why you didn't answer my calls? I was so worried about you Jane" Lisbon said, a bit miffed at his silence.

"I had to get going to Malibu and needed the time to shop at the Magic store. If I had gone to the office and played the recording for you I would have lost my lead time. I also knew that at no time was I going to kill myself."

"Jane, she had a loaded gun!" Lisbon shouted as they neared the front of Jane's property.

"A gun I was never going to have to use. As she wanted, I 'killed' myself" Jane said with air quotes. "That was her goal, whether I used her gun or something else."

"What did she throw in the fire?" Van Pelt asked.

Jane stopped and stared at the young woman. "Did you guys see that?"

Everyone nodded, yes.

"Wow, I didn't know you were there already. I was holding a grey koala bear. I told Claire how much Charlotte loved it and she grabbed it and threw it in the fire."

"Oh God no!" Lisbon cried, horrified at Claire's cruelty.

Jane stood in front of Lisbon and smiled at her compassion for him.

"Relax. It wasn't Charlotte's koala. It's safely taped in a box in the house, far away from lunatics. I bought the other one on the way here. Claire wouldn't know if it was the right one or not."

"So what's going to happen to Claire?" Cho asked. "She technically didn't kill anyone."

Lisbon shook her head. "No, she didn't kill anyone, but she tormented people while they were drugged, filled their minds with death, and counseled them to kill themselves. That's against the law. The fact that she used noxious substances on her victims is a whole separate crime in itself. I am willing to bet that she'll never stand trial, but will be sent to a mental institution on the recommendation of the Judge. She's a danger to society and has to be kept safely away from vulnerable people. I don't think she'll ever be free again, at least that's what I'm going to suggest in my report" Lisbon said.

"What I don't understand is why she kept Frank's will. What good did that do her?" Van Pelt asked.

There was general silence. This was news to Jane, as he hadn't been told about the wedding shrine or the evidence at the Clinic, not yet anyway.

"Claire had Frank's will?" Jane asked. Van Pelt nodded.

The small group of CBI agents had reached the front of the beach house. Jane leaned against the bumper on the SUV. Jonathan Giller came to mind.

"Birch is desperate to buy Frank Rollins' house for the land it sits on. We need to speak to Giller again, but this time find out if he had any kind of romantic relationship with Claire. Either she was hiding the will to allow Giller to sell the property and get a fat commission as a gift from her, or she was keeping it hidden until she could produce it and show Frank had willed his property to her" Jane guessed. "She'd be very rich while giving Birch and Giller the finger. I'm betting that was her motive."

"We'll check the phone records for Claire and Giller. Any connection will show up pretty quickly. And if she coerced Frank into signing away his house to her, that would be a motive for her to encourage him to kill himself" Lisbon said, seeing everything fall into place.

"Either way, she's a lunatic and I'm happy to say I survived her. And now, let's go home" Jane announced, but he had to do a few things first.

"Wait for me?" he asked Lisbon.

"Sure. Cho, you drive the SUV back to Sacramento. I'll see all of you tomorrow. Thanks for the good work" Lisbon said to all of her people. Claire was already in shackles, on her way to a secure facility to be examined by psychiatrists to see if she was even fit to stand trial. She wasn't. The court would sentence her to lifelong incarceration in a mental hospital in another State.

Jane went back inside the house and made sure everything was put away and secure. He took a fresh shirt and casual pants out of his bag and quickly washed up, then got dressed for the trip back home. Finally, he walked to the room at the back of the house and ran his hands over the box housing the soft grey koala bear that Charlotte had loved so much. He was going to turn and go, but then, walked over to the box and picked it up. Lisbon was sitting in Jane's car when he came outside, placing the box on the step while he locked his front door. She watched with curiosity as he reverently placed the box in his small trunk. Then he sat in the car and took one last look at the house.

"Time to go" he said softly, then pulled away and headed down the hill leading to the highway.

Lisbon let Jane drive in silence for a long time, then decided to ask what he had put in the trunk. He didn't turn his head but kept looking straight ahead.

"Charlotte's treasures. Her favourite books, some trinkets, and her koala bear."

Lisbon sat with that information for a few minutes, then had a thought.

"Why are you taking them out of your house now, after all these years?"

Jane quickly turned his head and gave Lisbon a small smile. "When Claire threw the fake koala bear in the fire, I realized I had no control over the real bear. What if something happened to it some day? A fire, a flood, a tornado? I'll feel better if it comes with me. I can put it into a safety deposit box, or under your bed, whichever is safer" he smiled, relieved he wouldn't have to worry about where Charlotte's treasured koala bear would be. Lisbon smiled at his suggestion.

As Lisbon watched the miles fly by, an unsettling thought worried her mind. Jane had been drugged over and over recently in an intense attempt to alter his thinking and kill himself. How was that going to affect him going forward? Did those suicidal thoughts still pose a danger to him when he was at one of his low points? Sneaking a look at her Consultant every now and then, Lisbon was relieved he had survived Claire tonight, but would Claire's influence ultimately cause his death some desperate, lonely night in the future?

"Spit it out Lisbon" Jane said kindly, knowing she was preoccupied with a worrying thought. "You're thinking out loud again."

"It's nothing."

"It's something. Get it off your chest so we can enjoy the rest of the drive back to Sacramento."

Lisbon blushed. Dammit, how did that man do that? Jane turned his head and stared at Lisbon, willing her to just say it and be done. She soon cracked under his glare.

"It's just, I'm worried about you, that's all" she admitted.

"You're always worried about me, or mad at me. What's different this time?"

Lisbon paused, then decided to just say it, get her worries out in the open or Jane would niggle at her all the way back to the city.

"The drugs. Claire has been using a lot of drugs on you, without your knowledge mostly, and telling you to kill yourself. Those thoughts are seeded in your mind Jane. How do we deal with that?"

Jane gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. There it was. Talk of his willingness to kill himself. Lisbon had a valid point, the drugs had messed with his subconscious, creating nightmares that didn't resemble his usual torments. He took his time to formulate an answer for her.

"First of all, over time the drugs leave my system. Whatever suggestions she made, I didn't follow through because I have a reason to stay alive. Claire didn't take into account my need to find Red John and kill him. And, yes, years ago I came close on several occasions to killing myself, but I didn't. I got help, Dr. Miller helped. So will Claire's suggestions finally come to pass? No they won't. She failed because she didn't really know me. So please Lisbon, relax. Claire failed."

Lisbon smiled slightly, acknowledging his answer. Jane would always be teetering on the brink, his obsession with Red John his lifeline. Whatever happened after Red John was caught or killed would be a worry for another day. Considering what he'd just been through, Jane seemed at peace, happy even with the events of the night. Lisbon decided she'd allow herself to feel the same way. The good guys had won, the bad girl was caught.

It had been a nerve wracking evening, with the dramatic take-down of a maniac. In the process no one got kidnapped, shot or lost. For once.

And for that, Lisbon was very grateful.