Lisbon took Jane's advice. She buried herself in her research on water projects for the next week. The rest of the team was in and out of the office as they all followed their own leads. After another week at Visualize, Jane had had enough of Bret Stiles and had turned his mind to other things.

He spent a morning on his couch, thinking. In the afternoon, he wandered into Lisbon's office.

She looked up when she heard him. "Hey."

She looked frustrated, he observed. Despite his encouragement, he could tell she was beginning to despair of ever finding evidence to back up her theory on the water projects. She was close to giving up on the whole thing. "Hey," he returned.

She raised her eyebrows at him. "What's up?"

"I've been thinking," he began.

She hid a smile. "That's never a good sign."

He ignored her. "We've been trying to consider every angle on the Red John case, right?"

"Yes," she said warily. "What's your point?"

"Well, we've missed something."

"Stop right there," she ordered him.

He paused. "Why?"

"Because if there's another set of questions out there about Red John that we don't have any answers to, I'm not sure I want to know about them," she said. "My brain has already reached its saturation point with what we already know we don't know."

"Your grammar grows confused."

"You know what I mean. I don't know if I can take any more layers to this mystery."

"Fine. Have it your way. Forget I said a thing."

She sighed. "Just tell me."

He didn't wait for further encouragement. "You know what question we haven't been asking?"

"What?"

"How Hightower figures into all this."

"Hightower?" Lisbon said, confused. "What does she have to do with anything?"

"Aren't you curious to know what her relationship is to Red John?"

Lisbon blanched. "You think Hightower is one of Red John's people?"

"No," he assured her.

"Oh, thank God," she said, her color returning. "I mean, I suppose she could be—"

"—But you liked her and you'd prefer not to lose faith in every person you've ever trusted outside the team," Jane finished.

"Yeah," Lisbon admitted. "What made you start thinking about her?"

"She's another person who doesn't quite fit the pattern."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm curious why Red John went to so much trouble to frame her for Johnson's murder."

"He was trying to pin it on her to divert suspicion from O'Laughlin," Lisbon pointed out. "That's not so strange."

"If that was the case, why would he spend so much effort to find her after she escaped?"

Lisbon shrugged. "He doesn't like to lose."

Jane shook his head. "But her escape made her seem all the more guilty. It all he wanted was for her to take the blame for Johnson's murder, he should have been content to let her run off and stay hidden in the shadows, propping up her image as a guilty murderess."

"He didn't do that, though," Lisbon reflected. "He came up with an elaborate plot for Gupta to track her down through records at the Cash in Motion. And when that didn't work out, he sent O'Laughlin after her at that cabin."

"Exactly. Why did he bother? Why not just let her go?"

"Maybe he thought she might come back later and cause trouble for him," Lisbon suggested.

Jane shook his head. "Unlikely. Pretty much everyone at the CBI except you and your team was convinced she was guilty. And coming back into the open would have left her pretty vulnerable. He would have known she wouldn't have wanted to risk that. She would have stayed hidden, if only to keep her kids safe."

"What's your theory, then?"

"Maybe she had something he wanted."

"Like what?"

"I'm not sure. Information, perhaps."

"What kind of information?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "I suppose it's one more thing to add to the list of things we haven't figured out about him."

She sighed. "Why does it seem like every time we think we've learned a little more about him, it only seems to expose more elements that we know nothing about?"

"Like the many-headed snake," Jane agreed. "Every time you cut off one of the Hydra's heads, it grows back two more."

"What a comforting analogy," Lisbon said dryly.

He smiled. "Forgive me my comforting analogy."

"I've forgiven you for far worse," she said, giving him a small smile of her own. "I guess I can let this go, too."

"You're too good to me, my dear," he said.

Her smile faded. "The many-headed snake," she repeated wonderingly. "Jane, that's it."

He raised his eyebrows. "What's it?"

"This thing with the water projects," she said. "I've been driving myself crazy trying to find a single company that has connections with water projects near all of Red John's original kills. But what if it isn't one single company? What if it's a group of companies?"

"You're thinking that Red John has been running a business sheltered by several shell corporations?" Jane asked.

She nodded. "Look, Cut Iron Properties is the name of the business associated with the project that originally got us thinking about this connection, right?"

"Yes."

"We already knew Cut Iron Properties had characteristics of a shell corporation," Lisbon said. "It had a P.O. Box as its mailing address and it isn't registered as a fictitious business name with the state. I haven't been able to find any evidence of tax records for a company under that name, either."

"Go on."

"I've been operating under the assumption that Cut Iron Properties was a lone dummy corporation concealing a single legitimate construction business. But now I'm starting to think it would make more sense if he had several companies that he uses as a front."

Jane considered this. "That would imply that he's not simply a worker employed by someone else, using assignments as a cover for his exploits. He's likely very high up in the organization. Possibly the owner."

"That would fit into what we know about him, wouldn't it? He always wants to be in control. If he owns the business, or businesses, he wouldn't have anyone to answer to. He would be the one calling the shots."

"The layers within layers aspect of creating multiple shell corporations would appeal to his need for secrecy," Jane reflected.

"Exactly. It would give him added protection if anyone thought to connect his business activities to his killings."

"I think you may be on to something, here," Jane told her.

Lisbon rummaged through her stacks of files and pulled out three folders. "Look. Here are the three companies that I've been focusing on. I thought one of them was the key, but none of them matched up entirely with what we know about Red John's activities. When you look at them all together, though, the timelines for the projects matches pretty closely to his kills, especially for his early murders."

Jane looked at the names marked on the three files. "Steele Industries, The Eisen Group, and Free Cloud Corporation."

"Right. I've only been able to link Cut Iron Properties to one other project in the whole state, but these three have had each had several major projects over the past fifteen years that overlap with the sites of his kills."

"Huh," Jane said, still staring at the files, bemused.

She looked up. He had a strange look on his face. "What is it?" she asked him. "Does one of these names mean something to you?"

He shook his head. "No. None of them stand out when you look at them one at a time. But when you put them all together, there's definitely a pattern."

Lisbon looked at the names again. "What pattern?"

"The names. Steele Industries. The Eisen Group. Free Cloud Corporation," Jane repeated back to her.

"What about them?"

"Eisen means iron in German," he told her.

She looked at him sharply. "As in 'Cut Iron?'"

"Yes. And steel is an iron alloy."

"What about Free Cloud Corporation?"

He took a pencil from her desk and wrote out 'Free Cloud' on a post it note. Then he rearranged the letters beneath them.

"Clou de fer," she read aloud. "French?"

He nodded. "It means 'Iron Nail.'"

"Oh, my God," she breathed. "Jane, this is it. We know where he works."

"Not quite," he reminded her. "We still don't know which is the parent corporation that serves as the basis of operations for these companies, or who runs it."

"Meh," she said dismissively, and he had to smile at her adoption of one of his pet phrases. "That shouldn't be so hard to find out, now that we know for sure there's a connection."

"Two breakthroughs in two weeks," Jane said musingly. "Looks like the team is on a roll."

"We're closing in on him," she said with satisfaction.

"Just don't forget what happens when you try to kill the many-headed snake," Jane reminded her. "It can come back to bite you from a direction you don't expect."

"I'm not going to kill this particular snake," she told him. "I'm going to arrest him and make sure he rots in jail."

Jane remained silent, not wanting to diminish the light in Lisbon's eyes by opening up an old argument. She hated Jane's fixation on revenge, but he couldn't find it in himself to explain to her that regardless of his personal views on the issue, he really didn't think they were going to have a choice in the matter in the end. Back when Cho had been in the hospital and Lisbon had first expressed her newfound determination to catch Red John, he had had a moment of fear that Lisbon had developed a dangerous obsession with revenge to rival his own, but now he realized Lisbon had never expressed any desire for revenge. Her entire focus was on preventing Red John from harming anyone else. Cho's injury had been a catalyst which had sparked her to new heights of determination to achieve this end, but she had never wavered in her intended approach.

To Jane, it seemed laughably naïve to assume that if they caught him, Red John would go quietly. Jane had no doubt Red John would ruthlessly slaughter any enemies in his path rather than surrender his freedom. For his part, Jane thought grimly, he intended to take down not only Red John, but any of his people that threatened him or the people he cared about. If he wanted to win the day, he would have to be exactly as cold and ruthless as Lisbon did not want him to become. He could imagine her disappointment and sense of betrayal so clearly he could feel the sting of them as acutely as though she had already turned away from him. He couldn't allow himself to be caught up in thoughts like these, though. He had to be prepared to take down Red John's people before Red John could take his. He would do whatever it took to protect those that remained precious to him. No matter the cost.