When he next saw Lisbon, she was back at the hospital. Furthermore, she was smiling.

"Cho's being released from the hospital tomorrow," she informed him, beaming.

"That's great," he said, smiling back. "Are you going to adapt the rotation of visitors to a schedule more suitable for visiting his apartment?"

She shook her head. "His mom is coming to stay with him."

Good. Maybe that meant Lisbon would finally get some rest. "Bet he's excited about that," Jane remarked.

"Yeah. He's convinced she's going to drive him crazy before the week is out. It shouldn't be for too long, though. The doctors say he can come back to work in a couple of weeks."

"Ah, I see the real source of your excitement," Jane teased. "You're a harsh taskmaster, Lisbon. The poor man was shot, and all you care about is getting him back to work as soon as possible."

She swatted him on the arm. "Oh, hush. It will only be light desk duty to start. I won't set him to carrying heavy stones uphill until he's been back on the job at least a couple of days."

"Hm. Perhaps I'd better warn him about the drudgery to come. Encourage him to continue milking this whole getting shot thing for as long as he can."

She shook her head at him, but she was still smiling.

Jane looked at her, a soft smile on his own face as he watched her. Things couldn't be that bad if Lisbon was smiling like that. He felt hopeful for the first time in what felt like weeks. Maybe things would be all right now.

Xxx

After that, Jane had thought things were going well. Cho was improving every day, much to everyone's relief (especially Jane's—he'd grown accustomed to guilt, over the years, but he had to admit the prospect of bearing up under the added burden of guilt would have been rather daunting if Cho had actually died. As it was, it was only a millstone of middling weight around his neck. Nothing he couldn't handle).

Cho's mother, as predicted, did indeed drive Cho crazy, riding roughshod over him regarding everything from physical therapy to his eating and sleeping habits. Cho bore up well, seeming to recognize there was nothing to do but endure this treatment with patient stoicism until it passed. Rigsby found all this highly amusing.

Lisbon continued to fuss over her favorite patient, but she was spending more time at the office now and the steady stream of baked goods had slowed to a mere trickle. Jane interpreted this as a good sign. She still looked like she wasn't getting enough sleep, but he felt hopeful that her sleeping habits would improve once Cho was back at full speed again.

The Friday after Cho returned to work, Jane was lying on his couch when Rigsby and Van Pelt returned from interviewing a suspect in their latest case. Lisbon had gone with them, wanting to look at the scene again, but she didn't appear to have come back with them. Jane had been waiting expectantly for the trio to return, pondering his chances of being able to convince Lisbon to grab a bite to eat with him after she came back from the interview and had finished all her paperwork for the evening. He thought his odds were pretty good. Lisbon's defenses were always lower after she'd been shut in her office doing paperwork for a couple hours. Plus, tomorrow was Saturday, so she wouldn't have to worry about having a late night. He might even be able to tempt her to go listen to some jazz with him at a nightclub a few doors down from the restaurant he'd picked out.

"How'd it go?" Cho asked. He was on desk duty—Lisbon hadn't set him on the stone carrying regime just yet.

"Good," Rigsby said. "Case is closed. The mother confessed."

"Where's Lisbon?" Jane asked, craning his neck to look around Rigsby's hulking frame to see if she was coming in behind them.

"She said she was calling it a day. Left straight from the crime scene," Van Pelt informed him.

Jane blinked. "She went home?"

"I guess."

"It's only four o clock!" Jane said incredulously. Lisbon never left early.

Van Pelt shrugged, apparently not thinking it at all odd that their boss had elected to skip out of work early. "It's Friday and Monday's a holiday. I guess she wanted to get a head start on the long weekend."

Jane huffed, feeling put out. He settled himself back down on his couch, considering this development. Perhaps Lisbon had decided to take his advice and get some rest? It was unlike her to blow off closed case paperwork, even on a Friday night, despite the fact that he always tried to convince her it could wait until Monday morning. She hated leaving things undone. Said she couldn't enjoy the weekend with paperwork was hanging over her head. Besides, she always insisted it was better to be prepared, because they never knew if they were going to catch a case first thing next week, or even over the weekend, and then where would she be? He shifted on the couch, suddenly unable to get comfortable. Something wasn't right.

He lasted five minutes, and then he got up. "Well, if the boss is skipping out early, I guess that means we can go, too," he announced.

Cho didn't look up from his book. "Leave her alone. Let her have the weekend."

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about, Cho," Jane said primly. "I'm merely following the example of our fearless leader and getting a head start on the fun and frivolity to be had this fine weekend."

"Okay, but don't come crying to me when Lisbon punches you in the nose for showing up at her place uninvited and ruining her Friday night."

"That's not going to happen," Jane said confidently. He'd honed his reflexes well over the years—these days, he was much better at dancing out of the way at the critical moment when he managed to anger Lisbon to the point where she was ready to resort to physical violence.

He went to Lisbon's apartment, hoping to catch her curled up on the couch reading a book or watching TV (preferably in one of those jerseys she favored. Not that he noticed such things).

She wasn't home.

That was fine, he told himself. She was probably just running errands. She'd been so busy lately it made sense that she might need to catch up on household chores and the like.

He pulled out his cell phone and hit number one on the speed dial. "Hello, Lisbon, it's me," he said cheerfully. "Wondering if you want to grab a bite to eat later. I waited for you at the office, but Van Pelt said you'd gone home for the day. I have to admit, this woman of mystery act you've got going on here has me intrigued. Leaving early? What's next, a secret lover and a plot to assassinate a foreign head of state? Talk to you soon."

He waited on her front step for about a half an hour, but he got fidgety after awhile, so he picked the lock to her apartment and let himself inside.

He unearthed Lisbon's teakettle and made himself a pot of tea. He drank his first cup standing, wandering around the ground floor of her apartment, perusing her bookshelves and committing her CD collection to memory. He selected a volume from her shelves and poured himself a second cup of tea, and then he settled down on her couch to wait.

Two and a half hours later, he was starting to worry. He tried telling himself that he was getting worked up over nothing. She could be out shopping, having dinner with friends, or decided to go to the movies. She could have a date. But Lisbon hated shopping, the people she socialized the most with were the team, and she'd been so busy lately he couldn't imagine when she would have found time to schedule a date without him noticing it. Especially not one that warranted leaving work early. He distracted himself with this line of thought for longer than he cared to admit to himself. Finally he came to the conclusion that even if she had somehow met someone, planned a date, and left work early for it all without him realizing it, she would have come home to get ready first, and she hadn't done so. Besides, he'd called Lisbon over three hours ago, and she always returned phone calls promptly. Even when she was pissed at him, she didn't avoid his calls. She was more likely to call him back and yell at him over the phone if she discovered some misdeed of his. Like, say, breaking into her apartment without her permission, for example.

He called her again at ten. "Hi, Lisbon, it's me again. Where are you? I'm starting to get worried. Please call me back."

He lay back down on the couch, but couldn't get comfortable. Lisbon had terrible taste in couches. First that one in her office with more springs than stuffing that he'd had to replace, and now this one with this armrest that was too high and too hard to comfortably rest one's head upon. The woman needed a keeper, Jane thought grumpily. She needed someone to look after her, to make sure she didn't work too hard, ate regular meals, and acquired some decent furniture.

As the clock ticked its way towards eleven, he thought again about where Lisbon might be. He was going to feel like a fool if she stumbled in here with a date in tow. A deeply relieved, jealous fool.

At one am, he gave up on the couch. He made himself another cup of tea, and then meandered upstairs to Lisbon's bedroom.

He felt more calm the moment he entered her room. The space smelled like her. He hesitated only a moment, and then he crawled into her bed, choosing the side he could tell she usually slept on. This was more like it, he thought, burying his nose in her soft, sweet-smelling pillow. He was worried over nothing. She would come home any minute now, and she would yell at him for crossing boundaries and what the hell was he thinking, breaking into her apartment. There would probably be hitting. But that would be okay, because that would mean she was there, and each blow would be a reminder that she was alive and well. Maybe someday, he thought idly as he drifted into that place between consciousness and sleep, there would be a time where he would wait up for her and she wouldn't hit him. Maybe instead she would crawl into bed next to him and curl into his side. He didn't allow himself to think about such things with his conscious mind, but there's only so much control a man can exert over his dreams, after all. He fell asleep with a half smile on his lips, imagining her there with him.

When he woke up, sunlight was streaming into the bedroom and Lisbon was nowhere to be seen. All his tension from the night before returned tenfold.

He called Grace.

"What's the best way of filing a missing persons report?" he asked without preamble when she answered the phone with a sleepy hello.

"What?" Van Pelt said, startled out of her sleepiness. "What's wrong? Who's missing?"

"Lisbon is missing."

"What do you mean, Lisbon is missing?" Van Pelt asked, sounding taken aback.

"I mean, Lisbon didn't come home last night, and she's not answering her phone."

"How do you know she didn't come home?"

"Because I was here last night, obviously, and she never came home."

There was a long pause. "You're living at the boss's apartment?" Van Pelt asked finally, sounding both shocked and fascinated at the same time.

"Of course not," Jane said impatiently. "If we were living together, presumably she would have told me where the hell she was going instead of leaving me here to worry about her all night."

"I didn't even know you and Lisbon were together," Van Pelt marveled, obviously sidetracked by what she considered a fairly significant revelation.

"Grace, focus. Lisbon and I are not sleeping together. I came over and broke into her apartment to wait for her last night, but she never showed up."

"Oh," Van Pelt said, sounding almost disappointed, but also like the idea of Jane breaking into Lisbon's apartment without her consent made a lot more sense to her than the thought of Jane and Lisbon carrying on some kind of clandestine affair. "Right. But Jane, just because she didn't come home last night doesn't mean anything's wrong. She might have had a date or something."

"I thought of that," Jane said. "But she didn't return my calls."

"No offense, Jane, but if she was having a good enough time that she went home with the guy, calling you back was probably pretty low on her priority list."

"Grace, when, in all the years you've known her, have you ever called Lisbon without receiving a call back within two hours?" he asked skeptically.

"Never," she admitted reluctantly. "But it's not outside the realm of possibility, you know."

"I will grant you that, but can we focus on what's probable, rather than extreme possibilities?"

"Fine," Grace agreed. "What do you think happened to her?"

He swallowed. "I don't know. I started to worry that maybe Red John had taken her."

"I don't know, Jane," Grace said doubtfully. "Why would he take her?"

"He knows she's important to me."

"Okay, but why not just kill her, if he wanted to hurt you?"

"If he takes her but doesn't kill her right away, that prolongs the game for him. He can savor my suffering over a longer period of time."

"I don't think so," Grace said. "If he took her, I think you'd know it. I think he would have sent you some kind of sign or something to make sure you were good and worked up about it."

This was actually rather reassuring. "You're right," he said, feeling some of the pressure in his chest loosen ever so slightly. "You're right, he would have sent me a message."

"Honestly, Jane, I think you're overreacting to this whole thing," she told him. "You don't have any real reason to think something's wrong, do you? Maybe she just went to the beach or something."

"The beach?" Jane repeated, as though he'd never heard of such a thing.

"Yes, the beach. It's a long weekend, after all, and she's been working like crazy. Maybe she just wanted to get out of town, decompress."

"I don't know," Jane said doubtfully. "Maybe we should put out one of those alert thingies on her car, just in case."

"Alert thingies?" Van Pelt repeated. "You mean a bolo? I don't think that's a good idea. She'll kill me if she gets pulled over just because you are being a big worrywart."

"Fine," Jane huffed. "If you're not going to help me, I'll just call the police myself."

She sighed. "Jane, it's too soon. Think about it rationally. Lisbon is a grown woman who has every right to take off without consulting anyone, and there's no evidence that she was taken anywhere against her will. The police aren't going to take this seriously until at least seventy-two hours have passed."

"Do you have any idea what a psychotic killer can do to a person within seventy-two hours?" Jane demanded.

"Jane, calm down. You're freaking out over nothing," Van Pelt said flatly. "I'm sure Lisbon is fine."

"That makes one of us," Jane muttered, and he hung up on her.

He spent most of the morning calling all the hospitals in the area to ask if they had any patients answering to Lisbon's description. He also called Cho and Rigsby, but they reacted in much the same way Van Pelt had. They all seemed convinced that Lisbon had decided to take a much-deserved break. Didn't they know her at all? When was the last time Lisbon voluntarily took a day off to do something purely frivolous? Even if it was the weekend.

By early afternoon, he'd exhausted his list of hospitals and urgent care clinics and was rattling around the apartment, at a loss as to what to do. He called her three more times on her cell, and twice on her office phone, just in case she'd ended up back at work. Finally he hit upon the idea of calling one of her brothers to see if she might have mentioned in passing if she was meeting with someone the previous evening.

He found Tommy's number in the address book in her desk.

"Tommy, it's Patrick Jane," he said by way of greeting.

"Patrick, hi," Tommy said, sounding surprised. "Uh, what can I do for you?"

"Have you heard from Lisbon lately?"

"Sure," Tommy said, bemused. "She called me yesterday."

"She did? What time was this?" Jane demanded.

"I dunno, around four-thirty, I guess."

"What did she say?"

"Not much. Just that she was going out of town and not to worry if I didn't hear from her for a few days." A note of tension crept into his voice. "Why? Is something wrong?"

Jane breathed a sigh of relief. Grace had been right. Lisbon hadn't been kidnapped, she'd just gone out of town. "No, nothing's wrong," he told Tommy, not wanting to worry him unnecessarily. Now that he knew Lisbon had left under her own power, there was no need to put her brother though the worry and anxiety he'd been experiencing for the past twenty-four hours. "I was just trying to reach her and couldn't get hold of her so I thought I'd check and see if you'd heard from her. Did she mention where she was going?"

"No," Tommy said. "Just that she was going out of town."

Jane grilled him for a few more minutes, but it was clear Tommy knew nothing else useful about Lisbon's whereabouts. Finally, he told Tommy to say hi to Annie for him, and said good-bye. He hung up the phone feeling deeply relieved.

That feeling lasted all of about ten minutes before he started second guessing everything he'd learned. Tommy had said Lisbon had gone out of town, but that didn't explain why she wouldn't have returned his calls. Especially as he'd left her about a half a dozen messages by this point.

By the time two more hours had passed, he'd convinced himself that Lisbon had been forced at gunpoint to call Tommy and tell him that she was leaving town so no one would suspect anything was wrong.

What followed were two of the most wretched days Jane had ever experienced. He stayed at Lisbon's apartment in the bleak hope that she would turn up eventually, not having the first clue where to look for her and not knowing what else to do.

When she didn't come home Monday night, either, Jane was convinced the worst had happened.

It was a terrible night. He hardly slept, and when he did, he was plagued by dreams of Lisbon being taken away from him. The time in between dreams was even worse—he was forced to face, in those dark hours, exactly what his life would be if Lisbon didn't return alive and well. His first thought, of course, was Red John. The killer must know by now what Lisbon meant to him. It would be like him to take her from him, to hurt him in this way. But the more he thought about it, the more he was convinced Grace was right. If Red John had taken her, he would have wanted to claim his victory. He would have sent Jane a message, or left his gruesome signature somewhere for Jane to find. Still, there were a lot of killers out there, and Lisbon had been responsible for putting a lot of them behind bars. Any one of them could have decided to go after her for revenge.

Needless to say, this was not a reassuring thought.

He was at the CBI camped out on his couch early the next day. He clung to one last shred of hope that Lisbon would turn up for business as usual. The same shred of hope that signified his tenuous hold on what was left of his sanity, incidentally. If she didn't come in, he was going to force Van Pelt to hack into surveillance footage for every camera in the state until they found what had happened to her.

Lisbon arrived at the office at 7:53 am, her messenger bag over her shoulder and a large mailing tube under one arm. The bullpen was deserted, except for them; the rest of the team hadn't arrived yet. "Morning, Jane," she said cheerfully in passing. "Did you have a good weekend?" She didn't wait for him to respond as she continued into her office, calling back over her shoulder. "I hope you haven't spent the last three days on that couch. You need to get out more."

Jane stood up, dazed. He moved towards her like a sleepwalker, or perhaps like a desert wanderer succumbing to the pull of an especially tempting mirage.

She dumped her stuff on her desk and turned when she heard him behind her. She did a double take. "Jeez, what the hell happened to you?" she asked, sounding taken aback. "You look terrible."

He didn't answer her, not trusting himself to speak. He crossed the room in two strides and gathered her to him in a rib-cracking hug before she knew what was happening.

She circled her arms around him and tentatively hugged him back. "Jane?" she said uncertainly. "What's going on?"

He didn't let go of her. "Where the hell have you been?" he asked, his throat tight.

"Huh? Oh. Lake Tahoe."

"Lake Tahoe?" he said, the same way he would have said "Hades?"

"Yeah. A friend of mine has a cabin up in the woods around there and she said I could use it for the weekend."

He closed his eyes. "Why didn't you answer your damn phone?"

She patted him awkwardly on the back. "It doesn't get service up there, and then the battery died because I forgot to set it not to search for a signal." She pulled back and looked into his face. "Jane, what's happened? What's wrong?"

He shook his head, unable to answer, but continued to stare at her with haunted eyes. He held onto her, gripping her shoulders to remind himself that she was there, that she was real.

She looked at him as though he'd grown a second head, but didn't pull away.

They were interrupted by a chorus of 'good mornings' as the rest of the team filed into the bullpen and started firing up their computers.

Jane released Lisbon at last. He stalked back to the bullpen and collapsed on his couch, feeling exhausted. Lisbon trailed after him, hovering awkwardly between the desks.

"See Jane, I told you she was fine," Van Pelt said cheerfully. She turned to Lisbon and smiled brightly. "Did you have a good weekend?"

"Fine," Lisbon said distractedly. She jerked her head towards Jane. "What's with him?"

"He had a bit of a nutty when you didn't come home on Friday night," Van Pelt explained.

"He was ready to call out the National Guard to look for you by Saturday morning," Cho put in.

"When I didn't come home?" Lisbon repeated blankly. She looked at Jane questioningly. "How did you know I hadn't come home?"

"Oh, he broke into your apartment to wait for you," Van Pelt said helpfully.

Lisbon's eyebrows shot up to her hairline and Jane looked down at his hands. Van Pelt was officially off his Christmas list.

"Okaaay," Lisbon said slowly, her eyes on Jane. "How was everyone else's weekend?"

Jane didn't stay to be regaled with stories of the rest of the team's holiday. He stood abruptly and exited the bullpen. He headed for the stairs to the attic, feeling Lisbon's eyes on his back the whole way there.

He was shaking, he noted clinically. He really ought to do something about that. Call one of his biofeedback tricks into use. He took a few calming breaths, but it didn't do much good. He started pacing the attic to work off his nervous energy instead.

Lisbon left him alone to sulk for about a half an hour before he heard her light step outside the door. She knocked hesitantly on the open door. "Jane? Can I come in?"

He gestured for her to enter.

She came in, but stayed near the door, as though she was afraid she might spook him if she came too near. "I listened to your messages," she said quietly. "I'm sorry I worried you."

"It wasn't your fault," he said shortly. He stopped pacing and leaned against the desk, scrubbing a hand over his face. "It's my problem, not yours. I'm the paranoid one who was freaking out over nothing, to use Van Pelt's words."

"I would have called you, if I'd known."

He looked down. "I know."

She crossed the room to lean against the desk next to him. She bumped his shoulder gently with hers. "You want to tell me about it?"

He shrugged. "Not much to tell. I couldn't reach you and I panicked."

She raised her eyebrows at him. "And broke into my apartment?"

"It seemed like the logical thing to do at the time."

She shook her head. "Only you would think breaking and entering was the most logical course of action in this situation."

"You weren't answering your phone and no one knew where you were. I thought if I went to your apartment I could just wait you out."

"You stayed at my apartment all weekend?" she said, exasperated.

He winced. "Yeah. I, uh, slept in your bed, too."

To his surprise, she actually laughed at this. "I guess that's appropriate, in a way," she said dryly.

"What do you mean?" he said, surprised.

She eyed him critically. "Well, you've obviously got the hair for it. You already help yourself to the food and beverages in other people's homes. I suppose sleeping in other people's beds is just the next step in the progression. It makes sense that if you were going to be a fairy tale character, you would be Goldilocks."

He smiled despite himself. "I did think to myself that your bed was just right."

She ignored any possible double meanings in this statement. "I heard you called my brother, too."

Boy, everyone was ratting him out today. "He told you?"

She nodded. "Tommy called a few minutes before I came up here, wanting to check in on me. He thinks we're sleeping together now, by the way, so thanks for that."

"Does he?" Jane said, intrigued.

"Yeah, I think he thought we had a lover's spat or something. He figured you pissed me off and I was ducking your calls, but that you were just pathetic enough to go into stalker mode and try to find me even if I was avoiding you."

Jane considered this. "Doesn't sound too far off."

"Hey. I wasn't avoiding you. I just went out of town."

He looked away. "Right."

She touched his sleeve. "Come back downstairs. I have something to show the team that I think you'll be interested in."

"In a minute," he told her. He felt raw, exposed. He wanted another moment to compose himself.

"Okay," she said, straightening and heading for the door. "Don't be long, though, or I'll start without you."

"I'll be right down," he promised.

She paused in the doorway. "Jane?"

"Yes?" He looked at her, a bright spot in the gloom.

"Thanks for worrying about me," she said softly.

He gave her a twisted, sad smile. "Always."