Pike had made good on his promise to wine and dine her tonight. Teresa wasn't a high maintenance girl - quite the opposite. Still, it felt good to get dressed up once in a while. And Marcus looked handsome as ever in his sport coat and dark jeans.

"Thanks again Marcus. I'm sorry we had to put this off."

"It's OK," he winked, "I asked a different girl out instead last night. Jealous?"

Teresa was good at these games by now. Jane had trained her well for flirty banter. "Oh yeah? What's her name?"

Pike visibly struggled, in an over-the-top manner, to come up with a viable answer. "Uh… Gladys… Egg…bert."

Lisbon bubbled with incredulous laughter. "Gladys Eggbert?!"

Marcus threw his hands up, grinning and giving up. "Well, it's the best I could do. I'm a terrible liar." He laughed at himself.

"I'm glad you're a lousy liar." She was truthful about that. It was exhausting trying to pan for the truth with Jane. Agent Pike was much easier to read, and by association, also easier to trust.

Marcus shifted in his seat, and rested his elbows onto the table, leaning closer to her. "Actually, there's something I wanted to tell you."

He proceeded to share about a promotion he'd been offered. A wonderful step up for his career, but one that required a move to the DC office. Teresa's reaction showed how surprised she was about the DC part.

"I'm turning it down though." He reassured.

"You can't do that, Marcus. It's a great opportunity!"

"Look, Teresa, I'm not a kid. I've been married and divorced. I know when something's real, and when it could get serious. I feel that way about us." His honest eyes were dark with sincerity. "Do you? Feel that way?"

"Yeah, I do." She wasn't lying. Though her mind was swirling with concern about what he may say next.

"Look, one thing I know is that when you feel that way about someone, you've got to hang on. Because it doesn't happen very often."

Ignoring the voice in her head that whispered you're right, they may run off to a tropical island without you for two years, she said: "Marcus you cannot turn down this job. They're not gonna offer it to you again."

"I know. It's okay."

"No, it's not. But… at the same time, the truth is that I don't want you to go. I really don't."

This was so hard. And just when they were getting to know each other.

"What if you came with me? What I'm asking is, what if we went to DC… you and me… together? What would you think of that Teresa?"

He took her hand, as she looked at him tearfully and sincerely, unsure what to say.

Lisbon was completely knocked for a loop by this news and by Marcus's question. She was still in the throes of all the intense emotions one gets at the start of a relationship. That 'puppy-love/honeymoon period' when everything is amplified by newness, flying hormones and endorphins. So, she was honestly crushed at the thought of him leaving.

And she couldn't allow him to stay, on her behalf, either. That would hardly be fair. They'd only known each other for a week or two - hadn't even gone on more than three dates. Hardly enough time or investment to ask him to alter a life decision of this magnitude. She didn't want that responsibility. What if things didn't work out, and he passed up a marquee career move for nothing?

But then, the same could be said for option B. It seemed foolhardy to uproot herself (again) to follow a man she'd only just met, despite any magnetic feelings she may or may not have. Plus, though she was truly attracted to Pike, and though he was truly a good man, she couldn't shake the feeling that some of her emotions may be getting stirred up or skewed by her lingering yearnings for the fake psychic she'd left behind on the couch tonight.

She managed to keep part of her brain engaged with whatever the topic of conversation was, for the rest of the night; though she honestly couldn't recall a single word outside of the surprising DC news and the even more surprising proposal Marcus had pitched.

After kissing the agent goodnight on her front doorstep (she was much too overwrought with confused emotion to spend the night at his place again), Teresa left her purse and keys on the kitchen table in an uncharacteristically messy pile, slowly ascended the staircase and peeled off the black dress she had dug out from the back of her closet for the night. It was one that she had bought on a trip to Seattle during her lonely years in Washington, after having spent the night before reading Jane's letters by the fire.

She had dreamt of wearing it to a celebration dinner with him someday in the sunnier future. A day when they could maybe be together, and maybe act on some of the things he'd brought up in his deeply personal notes. But life had been so different since they'd both arrived in Austin. Jane was sparkly and gorgeous as ever, but they weren't as interlocked as they had been before. And the Jane who had written her all of those intimate letters hadn't shown himself until just recently, after weeks of distance and the typical smokescreens she'd come to expect from Jane at the CBI.

Her lingering hopes were all moot anyway. Jane was with Kim now. His recent softening towards her was probably only about friendship. Or maybe guilt at having dragged her to Austin - Jane had always been exceptionally good at guilt. Besides, she had Marcus to distract her, now.

He was quite distracting, too - dark and handsome… honest and attentive… no games, no tricks… But there was that part about having been married and divorced. Teresa briefly wondered if that relationship had been rushed as well? Could she really consider up and moving across the country with a man she had just met? Whirlwind romances weren't really her style. She usually liked to analyze things for a time - years maybe - before entertaining a commitment the size of what Marcus was asking. What if she was jumping into things because of pent-up boredom leftover from the Washington years? Her thoughts were further polluted by her frustrations about Jane. She had lived for two years without his mischievous eyes and spontaneous smile, and she hadn't liked it. How could she leave him, willingly, now? And on a romantic whim? Then again, if she left, she wouldn't have to watch him undress Kim with those eyes anymore.

Teresa showered, dressed for bed, and proceeded to watch her ceiling fan turn for the length of the night.

After a few days, the weight of the DC situation seemed to have lifted a little, and Teresa and Marcus were leaving a movie theater arm-in-arm, chatting happily. They had just seen the classic film, East of Eden.

"I liked it!" She lied, figuring it was still too early in the relationship to admit to having zero interest in something Marcus seemed absolutely jazzed about.

"You fell asleep!" He laughed.

"That's how you know that I liked it!" She bubbled, laughing away her embarrassed surprise that she'd been caught napping during the show.

Marcus stopped to look at her, with excitement. "Listen, it turns out my old band is playing a gig downtown tonight."

"You were in a band?!" She said, with all of the star-struck admiration he was hoping to unleash in her with the confession.

"I never told you I was in a band?" He glimmered, knowing he had been holding that back for just the right occasion - like when he was hoping to convince her to move across the country with him.

"What did you play?"

"Bass… vocals…" he gestured nonchalantly.

"Oh, you were so cool! Let's go!"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah!"

"OK let's go! We'll need a cab…"

While Pike looked for transport, Lisbon got a phone call, but promptly sent it to voicemail. Jane, I don't have time for games right now, she thought.

"Hey," she called out to Marcus, sweeping the blonde consultant's contact photo from her mind, "About that question… About DC… I've been thinking about it really hard, and I want to say yes, it's just…" she squirmed self-consciously. "I've been so independent my whole life. It's a big decision for me." She hoped he would empathize.

"I understand one hundred percent. Take your time." He smiled comfortingly. "There's no deadline."

"Thank you!" What a relief to not be pressured - or badgered, or teased, she thought.

"You're welcome!"

"So, are you gonna get on stage and sing?"

They both giggled, as Lisbon whipped out her phone again, silencing it, with agitation.

The phone rang a third time.

"Jane this better be important!" She barked.

"It is. I'm heading south on Trinity between sixth and seventh. I need back-up fast!"

"What's going on?" Her heart jumped to her throat; Jane sounded serious.

"A girl's been abducted." He whispered.

Teresa made her sincere apologies to Pike - she had really been looking forward to seeing him onstage! - and left quickly to go find Jane, not fully convinced that there was actually an abducted woman at all.

"You need to trust me - there's something off about this guy." Jane had a crazy look in his eye that made her nervous. This was always when he went off the rails, grasping at straws and wasting the team's time.

"You know what, you jerk? I was on a date and you knew it. You did this to screw it up!" At least, she really wanted that to be true.

"You were on a date?" Jane was both irritated with himself for slipping when it came to reading Teresa, not knowing about the date, and at having interrupted part of her time with the man who seemed to be so good for her. Plus, he didn't want to deal with the crackling he felt in his heart at the reality that he himself could never be that man.

Lisbon didn't believe there was anything to Jane's supposed suspicions about the heavy-set middle-aged white male they were following too closely. It would be just like him to derail her time with Marcus on purpose - for his own amusement, if nothing else. Still, she decided to humor him, just to get it over with.

But when they found the man holed up in an abandoned house, it turned out there absolutely was something to Jane's concerns. In a back room, lay a young woman in her teens or twenties, barely breathing.

Jane immediately and desperately began speaking to the girl, trying to will her to stay conscious until help arrived.

Lisbon was gutted at seeing Jane's absolute distress over the girl's mortal injuries. She had never seen the man more desperate to save an innocent life; had never seen her partner more attached to the idea that he had gotten there just in time, when the cold reality was that they'd gotten there just moments too late.

She could guess what he might be thinking: Maybe if he had been courageous enough to follow the man and confront him without Lisbon's strength beside him?

She knew what her own thoughts were saying: Maybe if she had jumped more quickly to help, rather than trusting her misplaced cynicism.

But none of that mattered now. It was too late.

Jane was despondent when the girl stopped breathing - still speaking to her, as if his hypnotic tones could bring her back.

"Jane she's gone." Lisbon murmured with pained empathy.

"I know, I know." He sniffled, completely devastated at his inability to save her. He had never been good with powerlessness. Why couldn't this be the one time he got to the crime scene in time to avoid the presence of a corpse?! He hated being surrounded by death and murder, but this was so much harder - he'd seen the life in her eyes. He'd seen her fear… her desperation to stay alive. This was so much worse.

Teresa had no words, only her trademark look of empathy. It had been years since she'd seen such a look of regret and heartbreak on Jane's face. Lisbon's heart went out to her partner. She felt terrible for having doubted him. Her conflicted heart was even more troubled after being reminded of just how big his heart had always been. Sure, he wrapped himself in a smiling, confident shell, but inside he was so vulnerable… and a truly good man. She had always seen that, but had allowed herself to forget, during the oddity that had been their time in Austin together. Her thoughts still swirling, she called it in.

The next day, Lisbon followed a lead to the dead girl's roommate. The victim was in her twenties and from LA. She was supposed to be going to Europe for a modeling gig. The contact was someone named Jesse.

While Lisbon took furious notes at the girl's apartment, Jane helped Thaddeus, the man whom they'd followed, to remember what had happened, on the night he claimed to have found the girl by the side of the road, somewhere in the outskirts of town.

Wylie projected an interactive map on the big screen as Jane guided the witness through his own thoughts. Patrick soothingly led Thaddeus' through his memories of finding the victim, wounded, in the middle of nowhere, while Wylie mapped the story onto the interactive GPS.

Kim watched, amazed, as her secretive yet amazing boyfriend and the young tech wiz pinpointed a specific GPS coordinate, hoping to find the place where the young woman had been, in the moments before she had been found. This was not 'beach Jane' at all, but she found herself just as attracted to this version of the man. Before she could tell him that, Lisbon exited the elevator - only to be abruptly escorted back into the lift by her old partner, excited to follow up on this newly-mapped lead, with her help.

Teresa pulled some notes out of her bag, and stood beside Jane, apologetically waving a goodbye to Marcus, who had been waiting to surprise her with a take-out lunch.

Blinking at the spread of Thai food on the table before him, Pike looked over to Fischer, who was still gazing, quite longingly, at the closed elevator doors, through which her favorite blonde had just blown her a kiss. "So. You hungry? I've got a ton of food here?"

Kim laughed in camaraderie with the art agent, as the two temporarily-abandoned partners talked shop over a still-mostly-warm lunch.

Later that afternoon, with more of the 'abducted girl' case now in focus, Abbott and Lisbon were walking side by side in the hallway.

"So, Lisbon, I hear we may be losing you to Pike and the DC office? Got a call early this morning asking for a reference?"

Teresa took a moment to answer. She was stunned that Abbott knew anything about her DC offer.

"I honestly don't know, yet, Sir. The job has been offered, and Marcus and I are both enthusiastic about the idea of the two of us remaining in the same time zone." She laughed, venting her anxiety on the subject. "But I haven't decided yet."

"I see. What does Jane think about this?" Dennis didn't imagine that the consultant could possibly be okay with the idea. His apparent relationship with Fischer notwithstanding, it was painfully obvious that he still relied heavily on, and cared deeply for Lisbon.

"If he has something to say, he'll say it. But so far, he hasn't." Teresa answered somewhat defensively.

"Well, maybe he doesn't know?" Abbott added gently.

"He's a psychic." She waved away the excuse. Jane had always said she was translucent to him. He had to have seen it in her eyes. He always did.

"A fake psychic." Dennis reminded. "My guess is: if you haven't told him, then he probably doesn't know." With a shrug, the supervisory agent disappeared into his office.

Damn it. Abbott was right. She was going to have to come clean about this with Jane. And she'd been meaning to - truly, she had. But it was going to be the most difficult conversation she'd had in years; Worse, even, than when she'd backed out on Greg.

Not only did she worry about the level of pain she may read in those sparkling blue eyes of his, but she also didn't want Jane to see her own conflicted emotions about things. He was happy with Kim, and she didn't want to inject any guilty questions into his psyche if he were to sense her significant levels of still-present affection for him.

She also had to admit to one other fear - one that may actually be her biggest concern of them all: What if she couldn't let herself leave after having the conversation with Jane? Then what? She would stay and watch him love Kim, hoping that relationship would fade? Stay and try to exist, sad and alone? Stay and remain a pathetic sidekick? She hated the lack of clarity she was experiencing over this. Part of her wished she could just sneak off to DC in the middle of the night and be done with it - no conversation at all. But she couldn't treat Jane that way, not after their years of partnership… not after their years of friendship… not after all they had meant to each other. She knew what being cut off like that felt like. She couldn't do that to him.

Steeling herself for the future conversation, Lisbon packed for home with practice phrases swirling through her consciousness, preparing her words for the softest impact possible; Second-guessing herself the whole way.