Chapter 2

Red Tulips In The Window

Jane ran his fingers through his hair, his hands dragging down over the taut skin of his face, feeling the sweat beginning to bead his forehead. He was trying to think of something, he was trying to think of anything, anything other than what he had just been hit with.

A picture. A poem.

A song.

Anything at all.

Anything that didn't show him her face. Anything that stopped him from hearing her scream. Anything that would put her out of his mind because if he ever wanted to see her again he knew that he could not think of her now.

But he has her. He thought, unable to stop his mind from running rampant and showing him all manner of things he could not bear to see. He has her, just like he had them. He'll kill her, just like he killed them.

A carnival of wild, grotesque images was playing out in his mind, each one desperately chasing after the last and flooding his mind in an endless sea of images that streamed past, one after the other, a hideous carousel of demented images running on fast forward.

He could feel himself swaying on the spot as he closed his eyes, overcome and overwhelmed. His hand leapt out, fingers biting into the nearby desk, scattering pieces of paper across the floor as he used it to steady himself.

He allowed himself to sink to his knees, head in hands, elbows braced against the floor as he took several deep, rattling breaths and attempted to avoid being sick.

His skin was clammy, slick with sweat and burning as though he had a fever. He shivered violently and wrapped his hands around his stomach forcing himself to think.

She's not dead. She's not dead yet. He hasn't killed her yet. He hasn't taken her from you yet. You can still get her back. You can still see her again. You can still tell her...

He would not lose her. He would not lose another woman that he loved.

It was that realisation more than anything else that returned any semblance of his wits to him. Sitting suddenly bolt upright he took a deep breath, feeling the air draw in through his mouth, following it down his windpipe and feeling the oxygen settle in his lungs where it travelled to his brain and allowed one single flair of beautiful lucidity to filter through him.

He loved her. She was his. He would not hurt her, because she was his, because he would protect her, because he would find her, because he had to.

"I'm always going to save you Lisbon..."

He had promised her that. He owed her that. She had been saving his life for years. Just by being her, just by being there for him, always. When he saw how his world crumbled only by removing her from it he knew, he knew he more than cared for her, he knew he trusted her with more than his life; with his secrets, he knew he loved her, he knew that he needed her. And he knew that he would save her now, as she had saved him. He had to. Otherwise what was the point?

He closed his eyes again and concentrated. Allowing everything in his head to simply fall away. The thoughts. The memories. The flashbacks. All gone. Leaving nothing but black. Any empty slate. When his eyes fluttered open again, he had control of himself once more.

His heart rate had returned to normal, flat, smooth and assured in his chest, his breathing was level, even and composed and his mind; his mind was as sharp and clear as it always was, as it needed to be.

He got to his feet once more before descending from the den and emerging on the landing.

The usual trickle of people coming in and out of the elevators flowed passed him, like a river bending around a rock, vaguely aware that it was there but not considering it worth investing his time in.

He slipped past them, through the kitchen and in to the open-plan working space that hosted most of their operations. Grace was sitting at the computer at her desk while Cho and Rigsby argued about the benefits of different types of guns and ammunition, the standard issue nine millimetre against a larger, less accurate weapon.

Striding across the room to where the large whiteboard sat, with the details of the last case they had worked drawn up across it, he grabbed the corner and pulled it, causing it to rotate and reveal the other side, clean.

Seizing a large red marker he scrawled across the board,

Coffee and donuts on me. Let's go.

He turned back to see them watching, Rigsby with hopeful longing, Grace with a raised eye and faint disbelief and Cho with his usual expression that varied little season to season.

Smiling, he winked at Grace and, without another word, picked up the jacket that lay on the couch behind them and headed for the lifts, knowing they would follow, and knowing that he needed them to.

The little coffee-shop he proposed to lead them to was only a few minutes' walk away, a favourite haunt of most of the agents in the CBI at one time or another, but it was a world away from the large red-brick building where he was beginning to suspect that the very walls had eyes and ears and that somehow, they all fed back to Red John.

He needed them somewhere he could trust. And he no longer trusted the CBI. The people, or the place, and he was not willing to take any chances.

As predicted, by the time he had chosen a table and put in their usual order, the three of them had filtered into the cafe and had found him, sitting around him without question.

"What's the occasion?" Rigsby asked, watching Jane carefully, and drawing Cho and Van Pelt's eyes to him as well,

"We have a slight situation." He told them mildly, pausing as their coffees arrived and flashing an easy smile to their waitress, waiting until she had left before he said, "And I didn't want to discuss it at CBI."

He picked up one of the sachets of sugar in the little bowl in front of them and stirred it in to his tea.

"Why not?" Van Pelt asked, at the same time Cho said,

"What is it?"

Smiling slightly as he toyed with the delicate silver spoon in his cup he told the swirling amber liquid within,

"Because, Red John has eyes and ears everywhere and I wanted to be somewhere he wasn't." He murmured evenly,

"Red John?" Grace repeated, surprised, "What's going on, why are we-"

"What's happened?" Cho broke in roughly, not having touched his coffee while the other two had added sugar and milk to theirs, eyes fixed on Jane.

"Red John has Lisbon." He replied quietly, voice barely louder than a whisper.

They reacted as he had expected them to, Cho in stoic silence, reclining in his chair, seemingly emotionless while his eyes flared and gave the game away, Rigsby yelped in horror and upset the cup of coffee, sending the dark liquid scampering to the opposite corners of the table and Grace's mouth dropped open as she leant forwards and whispered,

"What?"

"Red John has taken Lisbon, he's holding her hosta-"Jane repeated in a measured voice, looking up at them properly now and making eye contact,

"Are you saying that a notorious serial killer has kidnapped Lisbon and is threatening her life while you waste time bringing us out for coffee?" Cho demanded harshly,

"It wasn't a waste of time. Red John has people inside CBI, inside everywhere, and I don't want him knowing what we know." Jane replied smoothly, "I had to get you out without arousing suspicion and I had to find somewhere nearby that we could talk."

"OK," Cho said, again being the voice of the three, the one the other two had temporarily lost to shock, crossing his muscular arms over his chest, eyes glittering, he went on, "So talk."

"Wait a minute." Grace broke in, eyes darting wildly between the other three, "We should tell someone, get everyone else involved, have them help."

"No." Jane said flatly, shaking his head, "That's the one thing we can't do."

"Well why not?" Rigsby put in, eyes flickering towards Grace for half a heartbeat before ploughing on, "The more people we have involved the more evidence we can go through, the more leads we can find, the more chance we have-"

"Of getting Lisbon killed." Jane replied, eyes meeting the other man's across the table and holding them in place for a moment before he lowered them slightly and said, "If there's one thing we can do right now that will be guaranteed to get Lisbon killed, it's that."

"But why, Jane," Grace protested, eyes wide, "Maybe this is what he wants. To isolate us. To cut us off. If we had CBI involved-"

"No." Jane said, louder than before, the sudden jump in the pitch of his voice causing Grace to jump. He lowered it again, almost apologetically as he went on, explaining, "The only thing Red John loves more than killed people and causing them pain is playing games. He likes thinking he's in control. He likes pulling strings and watching us dance to his tune. And the longer we do that; the longer we play this game of his, the longer we have to find her, because the longer he'll keep her alive, to keep us playing."

"You're sure about this?" Grace whispered,

"As sure as I can be about anything." Jane replied softly, he hesitated a moment before asking, "Why do you think he's left me alive for so long? All these years I've only come closer and closer to finding him, I've only caused him more and more grief so why? The easiest thing to do, the best thing to do, the thing he should have done was had me killed and he hasn't? He hasn't. And why?

Because I make a better opponent than I make a victim. Because he enjoys playing with me. Because he's enjoyed watching me dance for him since he murdered my family. Because he knows that I'll keep playing his game until one of us is forced to kill the other.

Because I keep playing the game..."

He had looked to each of them in turn, eyes wide, certain, there was no trace of doubt, there was no hint of the fears that were gnawing away at him. There couldn't be. He needed them on his side. He needed them to play by his rules. He needed them to play by Red John's rules.

He had them. He had all three of them. But it was Cho who voiced their decision,

"Alright. So what do we do?"

"We wait." He replied softly, "We wait for him to contact us."

"What?" Grace demanded, an edge to her voice, "While he has Lisbon somewhere, and he's threatening her; we just sit here and do nothing and wait for him to call?"

"Yes." Jane replied tautly, turning to her, "He needs to think that he's running this. He needs to feel like he's in control. That we are just puppets at the ends of his strings, helpless."

"Aren't we?" Cho asked with his usual bulldozer's tact.

"No." Jane replied softly, "We are playing the game not the hand; we are biding our time. We are playing a long game."

"So we wait?" Rigsby asked softly, watching Jane with a guarded expression.

"We wait." Jane confirmed.

And wait they did. Half an hour and a second round of drinks passed. Then an hour. Then two. He was toying with them, Jane decided. He was watching them. He had thrown them all together in a confined space and now he was turning up the heat and the pressure and making them stew in their fear, in their doubt and in their pain, waiting for the cracks to show.

The first ones did after an hour had passed with nothing but tea and coffee and an uncomfortable silence that had become almost tangible, passing between them. Finally, Rigsby stood up and announced he needed some air, shouldering past them and heading from the cafe. Grace sat as though carved from stone and, eventually, and wordlessly, Cho seemed to decide that he needed the same thing and followed Rigsby.

When they were alone, Grace, who had barely said two words since their conversation had ended, turned to Jane and whispered,

"How can you be like this?" her eyes flashed as she went on, without waiting for any kind of answer or questioning as to what she had meant, "You've known her for years, you've worked with her for years, been by her side every day, all day, for weeks at a time. She relies on you, she trusts you, she cares about you. I thought you cared about her too..." she trailed off and when even that failed to provoke a response in the deep, empty blue eyes she went on, a hint of disgust colouring her words now, "How can you be so calm? And so distant and so cold?" she hissed,

He leant in then, unable to stop himself, finding a sudden need for her to understand, "Because if I'm not, if I let myself think for once single second that he has her; if I think about what that could mean, about what he could do to her, at any moment, and how powerless I am to stop him...I'll go mad." He whispered tersely, watching her surprise at the sudden twisted passion and desperation in his voice, "And then we'll never find her," he went on, "And she'll die. And I can't let that happen Grace. I won't let that happen." He said, holding her gaze as she watched him carefully seeing a strange emotion stir within his eyes before he lowered them, gazing into the depths of the half empty cup of tea in front of him as he murmured, "And so I have to be calm, and distant and cold; because I have to be rational. I have to think. I have to save her..." the last words came out as a breathless whisper, eyes unblinking, focussed on drowning themselves in the deep dark liquid in front of him, "And the only way I can do that is to treat this like any other case, to pretend that it doesn't matter, that she doesn't matter. Because she does matter. She matters more than anything right now, and if I let myself know that, then I can't do this. And I have to do this." He paused a moment before going on, seemingly unable to stop, "I have to lock away my feelings because, because my feelings won't help her now. Because my feelings are the reason she's in this mess in the first place. My feelings will get her killed..."

When he finished he pushed himself away from the table and left Grace sitting alone at the table, shocked.

It was another hour and twenty minutes after that, when they were all together, gathered awkwardly around the table once more, that the phone rang.

After glancing around the deserted cafe and between the taut faces of the remainder of their broken team, Jane put the phone on speaker in the centre of the table and answered it, wordlessly

"Patrick," the cool voice murmured sleekly, "Long time, no speak. I see you've got the gang back together, well done," they glanced among themselves but none of them answered, "That's alright. That's good. I suppose it's only natural. When in crisis, stand together. What was the phrase now, divided they fall? Well, stand you should, together, bigger and stronger...But then, the bigger they are, the harder they fall, isn't that right Patrick?"

No-one answered, though Jane felt his muscles tense for a fraction of a second before forcing himself to relax once more.

"Rather grim lot Patrick," he observed drily, "And here you used to keep such cheerful company." He paused before adding, "It's a shame Patrick, the turn your life has taken, it used to be filled with so much light and now all I see is darkness."

"You rang?" Jane prompted evenly,

"So I did. And, as you so rightly infer with that ever-so impatient tone, I rang for a purpose. What you can do to get your Lisbon back." He paused a moment before allowing a light laugh to bubble from his lips, "That is what you want, isn't it?"

"We want proof of life before we want anything else." Cho put in bluntly,

"Well, at least someone knows what he wants. But then, you always did..." they could hear the smirk playing about the words, "Very well, I'm sure she won't mind, she doesn't have a lot planned for today at any rate. Teresa, play nice, say hello..."

"Jane," the voice, her voice, unmistakably hers, sent a bolt of electricity up his spine and through his nerves, heightening his senses and making the urgency and desire within him almost painful, "Jane, whatever he wants, don't give it to him, don't give the crazy son-of-a-bitch any-"

They all winced at the sound of flesh striking flesh and the faint, muffled cry that accompanied it.

The sleek, honeyed voice took on an icy cast as it observed, "I did ask you to play nicely...I'm asking you to play nicely too Patrick, and now you know what happens if you don't."

"I'll play nicely." Jane promised meekly,

"Very good," the voice simpered,

"What do you want?" Jane asked lightly,

"What do I want?" the voice repeated, pensive, "What do I want?" he considered for a moment, before shrugging and saying, "I want lots of things Patrick, and you make it such a broad question, it's hard to choose." Jane began to add to his earlier question but the silky sounds issuing from the phone in the centre of the table cut across him, "Right now Patrick, right now, I want to ask you a question."

"Ask away." Jane replied in a measured tone, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms comfortably across his chest,

"How does it feel Patrick?" the poisonous hiss whispered, "How does it feel to know that you are solely responsible for the pain and suffering and the deaths of everything and everyone you've ever loved?"

The faint half-smile that had flickered across Jane's face died.

"Your wife. Your daughter. And soon enough, Teresa Lisbon..." he went on smoothly; apparently blissfully unaware of the effect he was having on Jane,

"Everything that has happened in their neat, simple little lives, anything they could have to complain about, is all down to you."

Jane felt his muscles tauten, his face seemingly calm and expressionless as his hands balled themselves in to fists.

"You recall I'm sure, Patrick, the story of King Midas?" he whispered, with a tinge of sadistic delight playing about his words now, "He wasn't happy with what he had, and so he asked for more. And more he received. The gift of being able to turn anything he touched in to gold. But it was a cruel gift. A curse, if you will. You know this story, don't you Patrick?"

"I've heard it." He replied, forcing himself to keep his tone as light as possible,

"Well you remind me of King Midas, Patrick," He was informed sleekly, "You were greedy. You weren't happy with what you had. You wanted more. You always wanted more; you always had to push everything you had, everything you did too far. You tricked the devil himself into giving you more than you deserved and like our good King Midas, you only discovered the razor edge to that gift when it was too late.

Because you see Patrick, everything you touch, everything you get close to, everything you love...Dies.

And not quickly. Slowly. Painfully.

It's like a poison. It sinks in under their skin at the first touch, and as you grow closer, as you expose more of yourself, as you open more of yourself up, it seeps through their veins, and when they decide to let you in to their deepest darkest secrets, when they decide to take you into their hearts, when they decide to let themselves love you, then it spreads to their heart. And it blackens, and taints and corrupts them.

And then it kills them.

And then they die.

Because of you, Patrick. All because of you. Always because of you.

So tell me Patrick, tell me, how does it feel to know that? Well? How does it feel to be the cause of so much pain, and so much destruction? How. Does. It. Feel?"

"How do you think it feels?" Was the cracked and broken response,

The smile was palpable in the next words, "Well I can't imagine it feels very good. I imagine it feels quite bad. For you. Not for me. I am not burdened by these feelings. I am not burdened by love. It makes me feel good when those closest to me suffer, because they suffer for me, they suffer gladly for me and their pain makes me very happy, very happy indeed."

"What do you want?" Jane asked tonelessly,

"You think you're special, don't you. You think you were given some gift, don't you? You think that you are the only one who is smart enough to catch me. But you're no different from anyone else. In the end, they're all the same. They all crumble the same; they all die the same way, with fear in their eyes and a scream on their lips. And they all plead with me. They all beg me for mercy. They all ask me what I want. What they can give me, what they can do for me, what they can possibly offer to make me spare their pitiful little lives.

No-one's made me an offer I can't refuse yet."

"What, do you want?" Jane repeated, an edge creeping inadvertently into his tone,

"What indeed?" he murmured, "What could I possibly want, what could be enough-"

"Tell me what you want. Now." Jane snapped, showing the first signs of breaking since this conversation had began,

"Or what?" was the taunting response,

"Or I'll hang up this phone." Jane hissed,

A laugh was his only response for what seemed like an eternity before it finally faded enough to say, "Well then I'll kill her."

"Yes, you will." Jane answered softly, "And then the game is up. Because neither of us has a reason to keep playing. And we fade back in to the dreary little routine of cat and mouse. No push. No prize. No chase. Just steps. One after the other. You tell me what you want, or I'll leave this game, I'll leave now."

"You're bluffing."

"If I am, then it's your move." Jane replied, "If I'm not...It's still your move."

He hesitated for the longest time before the move was finally made,

"Tell me Patrick, Teresa Lisbon, how much does she mean to you, truthfully?"

"Everything." Was the taut, whisper,

"Everything?" he repeated sleekly, "You value her above everything else right now? You wouldn't swap her for the whole world?"

"No..."

"Prove it."

A/N: Thank you for reading! Please leave a review! (Also, just a quick note to say that I'm not sure when exactly this will be updated as I'm kind of writing as the fancy strikes me :) Keep an eye out!)