Disclaimer - The Mentalist belongs to Bruno Heller and CBS. Not me. Obviously.

A/N - Hello once again. Another chapter has arrived! Thank you for all your reviews and support for this story so far. You truly are wonderful, and I hope you like this newest instalment as well!

~ Chapter Three ~

Sweet Dreams

Exhaustion was nothing new to Patrick Jane. With his relentless hunt for Red John, his work for the CBI and his own battle with insomnia, Jane rarely knew how it felt to be well-rested. In fact, he had lived like that for so long that he was pretty much used to the feeling now.

This situation though…this was really starting to wear on him, even going beyond his normal exhaustion. Jane supposed that it was a combination of worry, fear, the head injury and whatever drugs they'd had him on that was making him so damn tired, but that realisation didn't make him feel better. In fact, it made him feel much, much worse, because somehow he doubted a nap would help him this time.

By Jane's best estimate - since he didn't wear a watch - the drugs had taken about an hour to wear off after his initial, very painful awakening. His head still ached but his mind was clearer somehow, his thoughts at least a little more coherent. With coherency, however, came an alarming increase in panic and stress, and Jane found himself wishing he was almost back in that dissociative state brought on by the drugs.

In fact, the only reason he was glad that wasn't the case, was the little boy currently wrapped in his arms.

Liam.

Jane made sure to keep his body still and his breathing even, just in case the young boy was still asleep. He'd dropped off not long after Jane had woken up, and Jane thanked his lucky stars that at least something was going his way. As out-of-sorts as he felt, a hysterical and upset child would only add to his problems. On top of everything else, he had to somehow keep Liam calm. A task, of course, made infinitely easier with the child asleep.

Jane sighed and used his free hand to rub tiredly at his eyes, careful not to jostle the kid.

Now he had to be the strong one. The protector. He scoffed slightly; it would have been amusing had the situation not been so dire. He was the last person who should be protecting anyone. Usually, he was the damsel in distress and his knight in shining armour - Lisbon, of course - was the person who protected him.

Even on his better days, Jane knew he was a poor fighter. Oh, he could protect himself well enough, keep himself more or less in the running if it came down to a fight, but his policy had always been to run as soon as he had the chance. And after glimpsing the size of these goons, Jane knew, even if they hadn't been armed, he would have stood no chance in a fight against them.

Taking a moment to shove that thought right to the back of his mind, Jane glanced around the room. His eyes had finally adjusted to the darkness, and he could make out the door over to his right. There didn't appear to be a handle on it, nor any lock. When Jane had been unconscious, Liam had apparently tried to open the door but had got nowhere. Jane suspected that it was bolted shut from the outside, although he would have to inspect it more closely when the boy woke up.

Even if there was a lock to pick though, somehow Jane doubted that there was something in this room he could use in the room to pick it. The room was small and empty. Jane guessed that it used to be a large storage closet or something, the sort you would find in most office type buildings, but whatever supplies it had held had been long gone. Now it was just him, Liam and the darkness.

For now, he had to content himself with running through the suspect lists for who had done this. Despite his earlier assertion that they had been there to kidnap the boy, he still couldn't work out why they had taken him alive rather than killed him. It didn't make any sense…

"Patrick," came a quiet voice. The boy was no longer asleep then. Damn.

"Yes Liam?" Jane replied gently, his gaze dropping to his side.

"Do you think they've left us here to die?"

Jane sighed deeply, but he didn't answer immediately. Unfortunately, Liam seemed to be a smart kid, and Jane had always been rather against lying to children.

Jane considered the question though. On the one hand, being left for dead certainly wasn't a pleasant thought, and it would no doubt make the kid panic. On the other hand, the thought of the kidnappers returning wasn't particularly reassuring either…

"No," Jane replied softly, making his mind up to stick to his instincts. "I think they'll come back. They need us for something."

"Why would they need us?"

"I don't know, kid," Jane replied, and honestly, although he had hundreds of theories running through his head, thousands of possible scenarios, he still didn't know.

Judging by the five o'clock shadow Jane could feel on his face, they had to have been locked up in this dark room for hours now, and yet still there had been no appearance from the 'goons' who had kidnapped him and Liam. No explanation. No demand.

Nothing.

Truthfully, it was really starting to annoy Jane. Yes, he was still scared, and a part of him hoped that the kidnappers had gone for good. Another part of him, however, a part that the fear couldn't quite supress, really wanted to just understand what the hell was going on.

He'd always been curious, even as a child, but ever since Red John had taken his family, had destroyed his world, knowing things had become an obsession. A need, a way of dealing with the one thing he hadn't known, the one thing he hadn't seen coming…

"I'm scared," Liam whispered from his side. Even though it was quite stuffy in the room, Jane could feel tremors wracking the young boy's frame.

"I'll protect you," Jane replied, his heart thudding. He had no idea how he was going to do it but he would keep his word. He pulled the boy closer to his side. They would hurt Liam over his dead body.

"Anything?" Lisbon asked, clenching her fists as she tried to supress the urge to pace the bullpen until she'd worked off the nervous energy that had been a problem for her since the moment Jane had called her. Damn the man. Even when he was trying to be a pain in the ass, he still somehow managed it.

Cho shook his head. Lisbon felt a slight pang at the obvious regret in the usually stoic agent's face. There she was, getting annoyed at Jane, when for all they knew, he could be dead, lying in a ditch somewhere…

"Dammit," Lisbon muttered. She ran a hand through her hair in agitation as she forced the thought of Jane's dead body far to the back of her mind.

"Rigsby? Van Pelt?" she asked, turning to her other agents.

"No, Boss," Rigsby replied.

"Sorry, boss," came the soft reply from Grace, and Lisbon fought the urge to growl in frustration.

They had nothing. Nada, as Jane would say. Zilch.

Well, not exactly nothing. When Lisbon had first arrived at the fruit stand, the scene had been a mess. Two bodies had been found, one that was clearly the fruit stand owner, the other a young woman, both dead from a single gunshot to the chest.

There had been no sign of Jane.

His car had been there, just like he'd said it would be, the door wide open and the key in the lock. He'd almost escaped, she'd quickly realised, even before the scene had been properly processed. Damn.

She'd stared at the scene for a long time after that realisation, trying to piece together what had gone down. In the end it had been Cho who had convinced her that they would be better regrouping back at base.

"Dammit," she muttered as she stared at their newest case board, Jane's picture front and centre. It was as if Jane had disappeared off the face of the Earth. SAC PD had set up a perimeter around the area they knew he'd been taken from, but the kidnappers, and Jane, had been long gone by the time anyone else had got there.

"Right," she said, taking a deep breath as she made her decision. "Get his case files and old client lists then. We'll start there."

"Patrick?"

"Yes, Liam?" Jane replied.

"I…I'm tired," the boy admitted. "But I'm too scared to sleep."

Jane felt his heart constrict slightly as he saw tears well in the boy's eyes.

"How about I tell you a story?" Jane offered gently, shifting to get them both more comfortable.

"A story?"

"It always used to help me when I couldn't sleep," Jane admitted.

"I…I don't know," Liam replied unsurely. "No one's ever told me a story before."

Not for the first time, Jane wondered about the boy's parents, though he kept his curiosity solely to himself. He didn't want to make the boy any more upset than he already was.

"But I tell wonderful stories," Jane said softly, careful to keep his voice level. "Stories that are magical and can help scared little boys forget about all the scary things."

"Magical?" The boy sounded unsure at that, but in the end his fear and exhaustion seemed to overtake everything else. "Okay…"

"Wonderful," Jane said, shifting the boy into a more comfortable position by his side. "Okay… Once upon a time, there was a little boy called Jane – "

"Jane?" Liam interjected. "But Jane's a girl's name"

"Not always," Jane said, supressing his smile. "Are you ready to hear more?"

There was a cautious nod, and Jane took that as licence to continue.

"Now, Jane was a very smart little boy, but he always got into lots of trouble. He wasn't a bad kid though, not really. Just misunderstood."

At Liam's frown of confusion, Jane moved quickly on, though he could help but smile slightly as he continued to speak.

"Now, this little boy didn't have a home," Jane continued, keeping his voice soft and even. "Instead, he lived in a trailer and travelled all the carnival circuits around America. He used to help his father with shows, but sometimes he'd get time off and he got to go on some of the big rides at the carnivals. His favourite was the big wheel. He liked to stay on it all day, closing his eyes as it went round and round...

Jane glanced at the little boy and saw that his eyes were already drooping. Good.

"Doesn't that sound nice, Liam?" he continued softly. "Round and round, high in the air where the birds fly and no one can hurt you. You're safe on the wheel, Liam. Safe as you go round and round…"

Jane trailed off. Liam was already fast asleep, mouth slightly open as he leant into Jane's side. Jane shifted to get more comfortable, careful not to wake the young boy.

Jane sighed. Well, that was one problem solved, at least for the moment. Now all he had to do was find a way out of here without alerting their kidnappers or putting Liam in any kind of danger, and then everything would be just peachy…

A/N- So what did you think. I find myself less than pleased with this chapter for some reason, but I'm sick of fiddling with it now. Sorry if it isn't quite up to my usual standards, but I hope you liked it anyway. Thanks for reading!