His memory was hazy, afterwards, about how he'd gotten to his car. He didn't remember leaving the bullpen. He had a vague recollection of taking the stairs three at a time—the thought of waiting for the elevator was unimaginable.
He did remember driving his car through the streets of Sacramento, running every red light between the CBI and Lisbon's apartment at seventy miles an hour.
He parked somewhat askew in front of a fire hydrant, and sprinted up the front walk to her apartment. He seized the handle and tried to turn it, but to no avail. Dimly it occurred to him that it was a good sign that the front door was locked, but he was beyond reason at this point. He pounded on the door wildly with fist and open palm. He called her name, half yelling, half sobbing.
It was taking an eternity for her to answer.
He couldn't bear the waiting. He fumbled in his pocket for his set of lock picks, nearly dropping it in his haste. He drew the tools out of the case, but when he tried to apply them to the lock, his hands were shaking too badly for him to have any hope of success opening it.
The door swung open and Lisbon was there, sleep-tousled and barefoot, her oversized jersey slipping off one shoulder and her gun dangling from one hand.
She did not look happy to see him. "What the hell, Jane?" she complained. "Do you have any idea what kind of racket you were making? I have neighbors, you know."
Jane hurried inside and bolted the door behind him.
"Somebody better be dead," she grumbled, setting her gun down on the desk by the door.
She had barely gotten the words out before he closed the distance between them and crushed her to him.
She stiffened. "Jane? What's going on?"
He couldn't answer right away. He just held her to him, breathing in her familiar spicy scent, savoring the feel of having her cranky, warm softness in his arms, the life thrumming through her.
She put her arms around him automatically, sensing his anxiety through the desperation of his hold on her and instinctively seeking to comfort him despite the fact that she had no idea what had upset him so badly. "Jane, seriously, what's going on?" A note of tension crept into her voice. "Nobody actually died, did they?"
He shook his head mutely, but didn't relinquish his hold on her.
She relaxed against him. "Well, that's a relief."
His heart was beating wildly against his ribcage and he was sure she could feel it thumping erratically against her own chest.
"Hey," she said softly, tightening her arms around him. "It's going to be okay, Jane."
He drew a ragged breath and buried his face in her neck, trying to get control of himself. She was fine. He'd made it in time. She was fine.
"Shh," she murmured, bringing one hand up to stroke the back of his head, her fingertips tangling in his hair. "It's gonna be fine." She continued on in this vein, making soothing noises and murmuring soft words of reassurance without knowing what, exactly, she was reassuring him about.
He listened to her voice and felt her steady heartbeat beneath his. He breathed when she breathed, and eventually his panic subsided to the extent that he could fractionally loosen his hold on her.
She leaned back in his arms so she could look at his face. She gave him a little half smile, and he took another steadying breath. He leaned forward and rested his forehead against hers, his fingers locked together at the small of her back to keep the rest of her close. It appeared he was going to have to do this letting go thing by degrees.
Though he would have been content to remain locked in that moment forever, assured of Lisbon's safety by the warmth of her body pressed against him, there were certain matters he needed to attend to.
Pulling himself away from her was like slowly peeling off a band-aid—every inch of him protested the removal, but he managed it eventually. Well, mostly. Not quite willing or able to let her go entirely, he slid his hand down her arm and slipped his hand into hers.
Then he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket with his other hand and called Cho.
"Hey, it's me," he said when Cho picked up. "I'm at Lisbon's. Can you come over?"
"Is the boss okay?"
"Yes, but I need you here. No need to wake the others for the moment, though. Can you come?"
Cho didn't waste time asking questions. He'd heard everything he needed to in the tone of Jane's voice. "Be right there," he said, and hung up.
Lisbon had listened to this exchange with wide eyes. "Why did you call Cho? Are you going to tell me what's going on now?"
He sighed. "Yes." He drew her over to the couch and tugged her down next to him, keeping a firm grip on her hand.
Now that he'd gotten himself more or less under control and didn't seem to be in such danger of coming apart at the seams, Lisbon was getting impatient. "Well? What's happened?"
He met her eyes. "I figured out the message from Red John."
"You did? What was it?"
"The message is that he's coming after you."
She frowned. "After me?"
"Yes. You're the lamb."
"What? That doesn't make any sense."
"It does, Lisbon. You're the Lion and the Lamb. It's the only explanation that makes sense."
"The Lion and the Lamb? What the hell does that even mean?"
"In the Bible, the Lion is the Lamb," Jane explained.
"Since when are you an expert on the Bible?" she demanded.
"It's an important piece of literature. And I tend to remember things once I've read them, if you recall."
"You've read the whole Bible? And you remember it?" Lisbon seemed to be stuck on this point.
"I don't have it memorized or anything, but I could quote a few of my favorite passages and I could probably hold my own in a debate with most biblical scholars."
She shook her head. "Unbelievable."
"As flattering as your faith in my memory palace is, can we focus here?"
"On your wealth of Biblical knowledge?"
He ignored her. "I'm sure you studied Revelations in Catholic school."
"Of course," she said automatically, still looking skeptical about Jane's supposed expertise on the Good Book.
"In Revelations, the Lion is the Lamb. He's the one responsible for saving everyone. He's good and gentle, like a lamb, but with the strength of a lion. That's you."
"No, that's God," she corrected him.
"It's a metaphor, Lisbon. Red John sees this whole thing as a drama playing out on a great stage."
"Between you and him," Lisbon said. "I have nothing to do with it."
He shook his head, incredulous that she couldn't see the absurdity of that claim. "You're one of the players in this thing, Lisbon, whether you like it or not."
"As a bit part, maybe," Lisbon said doubtfully. "It's you Red John is interested in. I'm only on his radar because of my connection to you."
"That's exactly the point. You're a central figure in my life, therefore you have become very interesting to him."
"Even if that's true, it's a pretty big leap from that to the idea that the lamb he sent has anything to do with me."
"No, it isn't. The Tyger and the Lamb, Lisbon. The lamb is the counterpoint to the tiger. Red John has assigned himself the role of the tiger, a bodily representation of evil. If he was casting about for an equivalent representation of good, I'm sorry, but you're the obvious choice."
"I'm not that good," she said flatly.
"Of course you are," he said, exasperated.
"I'm really not," she muttered.
"Compared to Red John, you are, Saint Teresa."
"Anybody's good, compared to Red John," she scoffed. "And I've always hated that nickname."
"You see my point, though. The nickname, the cross you wear, the lives you save—they all support what I'm saying."
She drew her hand away from him. "This is why you drove over here in the middle of the night and practically broke down my door?"
"Yes. I needed to warn you."
"You couldn't have called?"
He shook his head. His heart was still beating at an unnatural rate. "What if you hadn't answered?"
She stared at him. Then she stood up and scrubbed a hand over her face. "I didn't realize how much this has been affecting you."
"Of course it's affecting me! Red John threatened your life."
"No, I mean the whole thing. I know you want to catch him, but focusing your entire being on this search has never been the best thing for you."
Jane was honestly confused. "What the hell are you talking about?"
She bit her lip. "Maybe I shouldn't have let you stay on this investigation."
"Are you crazy?" Jane demanded. "Of course you should have. You need me."
Lisbon held her ground. "You're too close to it."
"Of course I'm close to it. He killed my wife and child, and now he's threatening you. How could I not be close to it?"
"That's exactly my point. You need to take a step back, get some perspective on this whole thing."
"My perspective is perfectly clear," he said coolly.
She shook her head. "Your skills are invaluable to the team, Jane, and you know I'd be sad not to have you with us, but maybe that's selfish of me. I should be thinking about what's best for you."
"The best thing for me will be when he's not in our lives anymore."
"Not if it tears you apart in the process. I still think having the team focus on the Red John case exclusively is the only way we're going to catch him, but I didn't fully consider what it would do to you."
"It hasn't done anything to me," Jane insisted.
"It's enabling your already obsessive behavior. You always become completely irrational whenever Red John is involved, there's no point in denying it."
Jane resisted the urge to grit his teeth. "I am not being irrational. You're the one being irrational. I experienced a breakthrough on the case, and you're harping on insignificant details."
"Jane, you came rushing over here in a panic because you got this crazy idea in your head that Red John thinks of me as some sort symbolic figure from a William Blake poem."
"I didn't get a crazy idea in my head, I deciphered a clue. You are the lamb. It's perfectly obvious Red John intends to come after you."
"No, it isn't," she said, exasperated. "Red John sent you a stuffed animal, Jane. That's all we know for sure right now." She went to the desk to get her cell phone and started dialing.
Jane followed her. "What are you doing?"
"Calling Cho and telling him he doesn't need to come over here."
He snatched the phone away from her. "Oh, no you're not."
She made a grab for it but he kept it out of her reach. "You shouldn't have woken up Cho over a paranoid theory you came up with in the middle of the night."
He went to the kitchen and opened the fridge, tossing the cell phone into a pitcher of orange juice and ignoring the expletive this produced from Lisbon. "Yes, I should have. Cho knows a lot about security. He can help us figure out what to do."
"Jane, you're overreacting."
"Like hell I am. Red John threatened your life, Lisbon."
"I told you—"
He cut her off. "Open your eyes, Lisbon! You're in danger. The fact that you refuse to see that is scaring the hell out of me."
She set her jaw. "We've had this conversation. I know the risks."
"It's different now. I always knew there was a possibility that he would mark you as a target, but now it's actually happened. He has you in his sights. It's only a matter of time now before he comes after you. The only hope we have of keeping you safe is if you recognize how valuable you are as a way for Red John to get to me."
She snorted her disbelief. "Yeah, right."
He stepped closer to her, prepared to do whatever it took to prove to her the truth of his words. Even if it meant crossing a line he'd sworn to himself he would never cross while Red John was still a threat to her. He cupped her face in his hands. "I'm not going to let him take you away from me," he said fiercely.
Lisbon locked eyes with him. Unconsciously, her lips parted as she watched him warily, clearly uncertain as to what his next move might be.
He bent towards her, closing the distance between them, his gaze focused on her soft mouth.
There was a brusque knock at the door and Lisbon retreated like a startled colt, pulling away from him and going to the door. Flustered, she opened it without even checking the peephole.
Jane sighed inwardly. Had she even been listening to a word he'd said? Clearly he hadn't gotten through to her.
"Hey, Cho," she said.
"Hey," Cho said. He stepped inside and shut the door behind him. His eyes flicked over Lisbon's jersey. "Nice outfit."
Lisbon flushed but otherwise ignored the comment. "I'm sorry you had to come all the way over here."
"Not a problem." He looked at Jane. "What's up?"
"It's nothing," Lisbon assured him. "Jane is…" she paused, trying to think of a tactful way to describe what, exactly, Jane was.
"Lisbon is convinced I've finally cracked," Jane informed him.
Cho looked at him levelly. "Have you?"
"No. I solved the mystery of the stuffed lamb."
"And?"
Jane gestured to their fearless leader. "Lisbon is the lamb."
Cho looked back at Lisbon. "That's not good."
"Cho, tell him the whole idea is completely ridiculous."
"Why do you think Lisbon is the lamb?" Cho asked Jane.
"The lamb represents innocence and purity. The essence of good."
"I'm not an innocent child, Jane," Lisbon said, annoyed. "I'm a grown woman."
"It's not the age that matters, it's the purity of spirit."
She scowled. "I have a dark side, you know."
He rolled his eyes. "Please. I bet you've never done so much as cheat on your math homework once in your life."
The stony silence that met this comment was all he needed to know that he was right. That was Lisbon. Honorable to the core.
"I rest my case. Lisbon the goody two-shoes is the perfect opposite of Red John the evil tiger."
"I've done bad stuff," Lisbon said mutinously.
"I don't think that's the point, boss," Cho said.
Lisbon threw up her arms in exasperation. "This is absurd! In no way do I resemble a lamb. Red John's message has nothing to do with me."
Jane shook his head. "You're in denial."
"I am not," Lisbon protested. She turned to Cho. "Jane hasn't been getting enough sleep and he came up with this crazy idea that totally freaked him out, that's all."
"Let's let Cho be the judge of whether it's crazy or not, shall we?" Jane suggested.
Lisbon assented, and Jane explained his theory to Cho, who listened attentively.
"See?" Lisbon said when he'd finished. "Jane's freaking out over nothing."
Cho shook his head. "I don't think so. What he's saying makes sense."
Lisbon looked at Cho as though he were Judas. "No, it doesn't."
"Think about it, Lisbon," Jane said. "Killing a child is not his usual M.O. and he's given us no indication of any particular child he might plan to target. Red John likes his opponent to be fully engaged before he moves in for the final blow. If he were targeting a specific child, he'd want to give us a sporting chance of figuring out who it is. That makes the game more fun for him. There is nothing about the lamb that points us in the direction of a particular child."
"Or we just haven't figured it out yet," Lisbon said stubbornly.
"Think about it logically. What does he have to gain from killing a random child at this stage in the game? Sure, he could just be planning to feed off the guilt we'd inevitably feel at the realization that our investigation inadvertently put a child in danger, but would that really be enough? We struck a serious blow to him when we discovered the Irene Gregson connection. He relied on her to help him recruit disciples and we took her out of commission. I'm betting that loss was deeply personal to him. He'd want to strike back in a way that is just as personal to us. Targeting you serves multiple purposes. One, it removes the leader of a team that has been a source of great irritation to him and sends a pretty clear message to the rest of that pesky team to back off. Secondly and most importantly, taking you away would sideline me completely. The entirety of the threat against him would thus be removed, all in one fell swoop. You, my dear, are the lynch pin of this little group. Without you, everything would fall apart."
Lisbon opened her mouth to object, but Cho cut her off. "Jane's right, boss. The tiger and the lamb balance each other out. Red John wouldn't have chosen a lamb that didn't have equal symbolic weight."
"Listen to the English literature major, Lisbon," Jane urged her. "He knows of what he speaks."
Cho grimaced. "I thought you were never going to tell anyone about that."
Lisbon ignored this. "You still have no proof that the lamb is supposed to be me."
Cho and Jane exchanged glances.
"What?" Lisbon demanded.
Cho sighed. "Look, William Blake poetry aside, it doesn't exactly take a genius to figure out if you want to get to Jane, you're the easiest way to do it."
Lisbon stared at him in shock.
"You guys are close," Cho continued. "Red John has to know he cares about you."
Lisbon swallowed. "Okay, fine, we're friends. I guess it's not exactly a secret."
Jane could tell Cho was about to point out that friends didn't usually write each other romantic poetry and hastily spoke up. "Plus, the lamb has green eyes. Just like you."
"That's a coincidence."
"No, it isn't. It's a clear message that you are the intended victim. Which is exactly why we need to stop arguing about this and figure out how to keep you safe." He turned to Cho. "Where do we start?"
Cho surveyed Lisbon's apartment. "We should do a bug sweep," he decided.
"I did one when I came home," Lisbon protested.
Cho shook his head. "You left work late. You were probably tired. You might not have been as thorough as usual."
Lisbon muttered under her breath, and agreed to the bug sweep with the air of someone humoring two unruly children.
Due to Jane's insistence on checking every nook and cranny in the place at least twice, it took them over two hours to finish. By the time they were done, Lisbon was even crankier than she had been at having been woken up in the middle of the night in the first place. "See?" she said irritably when their final search yielded no hidden surveillance devices. "No bugs. Now that we've all established that, you can both go home and we can all get some sleep."
Cho shook his head. "You shouldn't be alone tonight."
Lisbon didn't have the energy to argue. "Fine. Sheets for the guest room are in the hall closet. Help yourself. We'll talk about the rest of this in the morning." She looked at Jane. "I trust you'll be fine on the couch," she said sourly.
"Certainly, my dear," he said, though he wouldn't have said no to an invitation to share the bed with Lisbon and her jersey.
She muttered something distinctly unflattering to him.
He settled in on the couch and watched her climb up the stairs.
He'd always known the idea of sharing the bed idea would be a non-starter.
