Big Bang Fic: Runaway Chapters 5-9
Chapter 5
She was standing in the cabin. Lisbon was next to her, and she could tell Hightower was behind her. The door opened, light flooded in, blinding her. She put her hand up to shade her eyes and saw Craig, standing there, smiling. He’d always had a charming smile.
She started to move towards him when his face started to melt away, the handsome features and charming smile that she was used to was melting into a bare skull. No, not a skull: a hideous red face, a smile, in blood. Hovering over Craig’s body, which also started melting until all that was left was the face.
“It’s Red John!” she heard a shout from beside her. Hightower and Lisbon started shooting, and the smiley face started spouting blood everywhere. It was all over her, staining her hands. She looked down and saw her hands melting where the blood had landed on her. She started screaming.
Then suddenly she was on the floor; Lisbon’s face appeared above her, thin, pale, almost ghost-like.
“It’s your fault!”
“What?”
“You killed me!”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“You let him in, you let him do this to me. You killed me!”
Her voice was grating, screeching, and suddenly she was a crow, big and black with flapping wings.
The talons on Lisbon’s feet, the crow’s feet, started ripping at Grace, the sharp beak started picking at her face. Grace threw her hands up, trying to protect her face from the bird.
Cawing invaded her ears. It was all she could hear. All she could think about was the bird, the pain, the horror, the sadness.
And then it was gone and all that was left was an empty wasteland, dry and barren.
There was no one, nothing, and she felt hollow. This is where she belonged. Far from where she could hurt anyone. Far from those that she loved and had let down.
Chapter 6
Jane was annoyed. He knew that the people on the team would be pissed off at him for shooting Red John, but still, there was no way that not even one of them had come to see him when he was in jail. He was in Sacramento for crying out loud!
He’d tried getting information from the officers that had processed him, but they had stone walled him. And that annoyed him. He was in a cell by himself, not being allowed to interact with the other inmates due to his status as a consultant for the CBI. There was some bull about him being a target for vengeance seekers, but he thought that was ridiculous. Who would want to kill him? He was charming!
He lay back on his bunk. There was a sliver of window through which he could see the sky. It was blue, bright blue. He thought, for maybe the first time, if this was really what he had wanted. Sure, Red John was dead, but he’d thought that he would get more praise for it.
No, praise was the wrong word. He thought that the team would come to him, come see him, tell him that it was ok that he’d killed someone in cold blood because of who it was. It was Red John, so it was okay. But, no one had come.
Here it was the second day. The only person he’d seen was a public defender. He had a thought that he should just represent himself, but he didn’t think that would help any. Sure he could smooth talk a jury, but he didn’t know the ins and outs of the law like an actual lawyer.
He could hear other inmates out in the yard: shouting, yelling, a metallic clang that made him think that they were playing basketball. He wished he was out there, not that he would be able to play. He never had been athletic, not even as a teen.
He wondered what had happened up at the cabin. He’d not been able to call Rigsby or Cho before the cops showed up. To be honest, that wasn’t the first thing he had thought about after killing Red John.
As he sat there he’d thought that he would have a sense of relief, a sense of peace that the man who had caused him so much pain and suffering was now dead by his hand, but it hadn’t come.
And now he was sitting in this jail cell, listening to the clanking of bars through a door with a window less than twelve inches square and a slit through which his food got shoved three times a day. He was just closing his eyes to nap-what else was there to do?-when the door to his cell banged open and he jumped, nearly falling off the laughable shelf that was called a bed.
“Lawyer’s here.” The guard said, motioning for Jane to stand. He groaned. He disliked handcuffs. The ones that the guard was holding were not ones he could easily get out of as they shackled his hands to his waist.
They walked down the hall, the guard standing closer than Jane would have liked, and into a room that was almost as small as his cell. Jane was forced into a chair that was bolted to the floor. His hands were cuffed to the table, which he noticed was cemented and then also bolted to the ground.
“Hello, Mr. Jane.” The man (Jane refused to call him his lawyer) said. He was small, thin framed with thin hair. Too young to be of any real use in a capital murder case, which Jane was almost certain his case would turn into, he was nonetheless what the court had seen fit to present him with.
“Hello.” No need to be impolite at least, even if Jane didn’t care for the man.
“I’ve got news on your co-workers for you. I thought you might be interested.”
Jane sat in his chair, trying to look uninterested, but he was anxious to hear what the lawyer had to say. “Are they coming to see me?”
“No.” There was a pause, and Jane could tell there was more to his answer than a simple denial.
“Teresa Lisbon is still in the hospital.” The man looked down at his hand folded in front of him on the table. “She’s in good condition, but she’s not been released. And Grace Van Pelt is still missing. There are no leads on that. And Kimball Cho and Wayne Rigsby are both on desk duty pending a full investigation.”
Jane didn’t say anything, still processing the lawyer’s words. He had spoken like Jane had known that Lisbon was in the hospital or that Grace was missing. What had happened at the cabin after he’d started talking to Red John? Hadn’t Rigsby and Cho gotten there in time? He’d had faith that they would fix any mess that came out of the simple mistake that he’d made in determining the identity of the mole.
“What happened?” He finally spoke, voice soft, as if in shock.
“You don’t know? I thought they had told you when they brought you in.” The lawyer spoke, disbelief that this man, the famous Patrick Jane, didn’t know what had happened to the people he surrounded himself with. “That FBI agent, Craig O’Laughlin shot Agent Lisbon and was then shot and killed by Agent Van Pelt and Madeline Hightower. And then Agent Van Pelt just disappeared from the cabin they were all in. No one knows where she’s gone and there haven’t been any leads since the last time she used her ATM card to clean out her bank account.”
Jane didn’t say anything. He was thinking. How had things gone so wrong? Sure, he knew that he would end up in jail, but he didn’t think that Lisbon would get hurt, that anything would happen to the people on his team. They had backed him up, followed his every lead regardless of the rules or consequences, and he had let them down. He hadn’t thought past killing Red John, and now it was too late to do anything else.
Chapter 7
She was warm, but not hot. There was a cool breeze that smelt like summer, and she could hear a bird singing. She didn’t want to open her eyes; she wanted to snuggle down into the bed and the covers and stay there forever.
But she had a nagging feeling that something was wrong. That something wasn’t what it should be. She slowly opened her eyes and looked around.
She didn’t know where she was. She sat bolt upright in bed, her heart pounding. She remembered shooting Craig; she remembered taking a bus; she remembered going to the diner, but then nothing.
Had Red John gotten her? But no, Jane had surly taken care of that. And this room…It was white, with soft blue accents and creamy lace curtains fluttering in the breeze. The bed she was in was soft and clean, and she wasn’t restrained in any way. The furniture had a pleasant worn look about it that suggested antique without shouting it.
She noticed that she was still wearing her clothes, though her shoes had been removed. She looked down at them and grimaced. They were covered in dirt and grime and were wrinkled beyond belief.
She was surprised by how shaky she was, as if she hadn’t eaten in a while, and she wondered how long she had been in this room, and as long as she was on the subject, where the room even was? There was a mirror over the dresser, and she glanced in it quickly before turning away. There were dark rings around her eyes, and her cheeks looked sunken and pale. She ran her hands through her hair and was shocked at how brittle and dry it seemed.
She looked down at her shoes and had no desire to put them on. They looked heavy, and she didn’t feel she had the energy to even slide her feet into them. As she sat there contemplating her shoes, she heard a nose outside the door. She knew she should get up, knew that she should raise a defensive stance. But she simply couldn’t make her body do it.
All of her training was telling her that she should get up, hide, grab something to defend herself. But there was another voice-one that was louder than the rest-that told her it just didn’t matter. That she had run away because her training as no longer reliable: that she couldn’t trust her judgment; that she shouldn’t care what happens to her.
The internal war was still going on when the door swung open and a middle aged man with thinning hair and khakis came in. He smiled when he saw her sitting up.
“Hello there,” he said walking towards her and sitting in a chair that was positioned near the bed. “I’m glad to see you’re awake. We were a bit worried when you collapsed in the diner.”
She stared at him, trying to process what was going on, what he was saying, what she was doing here, in this room.
When she didn’t say anything the man continued. “I’m Dr. Michael Ryan; I came to Starlight after I retired. I used to be a busy doctor with a bustling family practice in San Francisco, but I realized I just wanted to slow down. I spend most of my time now putting Band-Aids on knees and making the occasional house call for sore throats. You’re the most excitement we’ve had around here in years.”
“What happened?” Her voice was hoarse, scratchy, and it hurt to talk.
“Well, you collapsed in the diner, which scared Mable half to death. We brought you up to my house-I’m just across the street-and I looked you over.” He passed, letting her absorb what he had said. “You are seriously dehydrated and it looks like you haven’t eaten in quite a while.”
Grace nodded, slightly. She knew that she hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since before the incident at the cabin. She wasn’t sure how long that was: she’d lost track of the days when she’d thrown her phone away. She didn’t need it. She was going to leave that life behind.
She should never have gotten off that bus. She should have just ridden it until she keeled over.
“I gave you some IV fluids, but only enough to get you going again. I thought you might want to tell me what’s going on first.” Dr. Ryan pointed at the bandage on the back of her hand that she’d not noticed before.
“What day is it?” She needed to know. She needed to know how long she had been away, how much time she had before the team came looking for her. She needed to know how long it had been since she’d killed Craig: how long it had been since her world came crashing down on her.
“It’s Friday.”
Friday. Four days since the cabin. Four days since she’d thought she was in love. Four days since she found out that the man she was going to marry was a minion for Red John. He’d been using her, and she’d been an all too willing accomplice.
“Now that you know a bit about me,” Dr. Ryan’s voice broke into her thoughts, “Why don’t you tell me a little bit about you.”
“Um…” She hesitated. Four days was a long time. A long time for the team to be looking, a long time for the word to be out that she was missing. “Grace. My name is Grace.”
“Nice to meet you, Grace. Would you like some food? Mabel makes a mean meatloaf, or chicken soup if you’d rather.”
“I’m not really hungry.” The talking was getting a bit easier, but her voice still sounded odd in her ears.
“No such luck. Doctor’s orders: you need to eat and drink. Unless you’d like to go to the city.”
She felt her heart start pounding. She couldn’t go there. A hospital wouldn’t take a first name and smile; they would want to know who she was. And the team would be looking for her in places like that.
“Soup would be nice.” She stood, legs unsteady.
“Shoes first? The road is a bit rough over to the diner.”
She looked down at her shoes. They still looked so heavy; she just couldn’t bring herself to put them on.
“Or, I’ve got some slippers that might work for you.”
She nodded. Slippers would be better. She didn’t want to eat, didn’t want to live, but she would, if only because she didn’t know what else to do.
Chapter 8
Rigsby sat on his couch, laptop open on the coffee table in front of him. Grace had been gone almost a week. OK, four days, but in the world of missing persons it might as well be a year. He felt helpless. He didn’t know what to do. Give him a burned out shell of a building, and he was in heaven. He could tell you the path of the flames, the point of origin, the ignition source…but missing persons? He was hopeless at it. He didn’t like the waiting, the not knowing, the eventual outcome. He knew the way it worked. If you didn’t find a person in 24 hours, the chances that you ever would decreased. If you did find them, they were usually dead.
But he couldn’t think of that. Grace hadn’t been abducted; at least, he didn’t think so. He’d been trying to follow the investigation, but it had been hard to get any information. He had the TV in front of him on mute, the news on. He was trying to see if they mentioned her today. He had thought for sure there would have been more media coverage. Not that there hadn’t been media coverage of the case. Man, had there been coverage of the case.
Red John had been splashed all over the news, and Jane had gotten his fair share of media time. The first day, that seemed like all it had been. Old footage of Jane’s TV interviews, old clients, professing that he was some sort of God, or better. And then talk of his wife and daughter. All the pain he’d been through. They had even managed to track down some of the first people to work with Jane at the CBI. They all called him a crack pot, half unhinged, and a nut case just waiting for the opportunity to strike. One channel had managed to get a hold of Minelli, not that it had done them any good. All he said was that Jane had been an effective consultant who had helped catch numerous dangerous people.
And then there was the incident at the cabin. The camera crews were kept far enough away that they hadn’t really been able to see anything, but any time there was an officer involved shooting there was always press. And when it was cop on cop…
The only time Grace had even been mentioned in the first day was as a side note, that one of the agents accused of shooting the FBI agent had gone missing. They didn’t even show her picture. How the hell were they supposed to find her if there was no media coverage?
He’d started his own investigation of sorts, at home, by himself. He had googled the town that she’d used her ATM card in. It was out in the middle of nowhere, about an hour by car from the cabin. He didn’t think she’d walked there. It would have taken her all night to get there if she had. He didn’t know how to track down anyone she might have hitchhiked with, and didn’t know how else she would have gotten there.
He looked at the google map again. There was a bus station in the town she’d been in. But the busses went everywhere. And what if she’d stayed in the town? He needed to get there and talk to people, try and figure out what was going on.
He nearly jumped when there was a knock at the door. Closing his laptop and turning off the TV, he made his way to the door and looked through the peep hole.
“Cho,” Rigsby said, opening the door, “What are you doing here?”
“Good to see you to.” Cho replied. “Boss wants to see us.”
“We’ve been put on administrative leave, remember?”
“Lisbon doesn’t care.”
“Isn’t she still in the hospital?” He asked as he grabbed his keys and locked the door.
“Yeah.”
“Couldn’t she have just called?”
“She didn’t think you would come on your own.”
“What?!” He followed Cho down the outdoor hallway of his apartment and down a flight of stairs to the parking lot.
“She wants to talk about Grace and Jane. She thinks we need to work things through.”
“Work what through?”
“Both shootings and the disappearance.” They were next to Cho’s car, and he motioned for Rigsby to get in.
“Why are you driving?”
“Because I want to actually get there.”
As they climbed in the car Rigsby scowled at Cho. “And why wouldn’t I get there?”
“Lisbon thinks you’re spending too much time obsessing over the wrong thing in this case.”
“What?!” Rigsby exclaimed again, feeling a bit blindsided.
“She wants to make sure we’re all looking for the right reasons.”
Rigsby didn’t respond to Cho’s last comment, just glared out the window as they pulled onto the freeway and headed toward the hospital. He loved Grace, how could that be the wrong reason for wanting to find her and bring her back?
Chapter 9
Grace felt uncomfortable sitting in the diner. She’d shuffled across the street with the doctor, seeing the town as if for the first time. The street was quiet, and though there were a few cars parked, there were none driving down the street. The weather was warm, but not too hot. The diner was not the only building on the street: next to it there was a general store and a bank. It looked like a town you’d see on TV, not something that you would see in real life.
Dr. Ryan had insisted that she sit by a window, saying that she needed the sunshine. When the soup came, she took a tentative first bite, not realizing how cold and empty her stomach had been until the first bite of hot liquid flowed down her throat. She had a sense that the food was good, but couldn’t seem to truly enjoy it. It was simply nourishment: something to keep her going when she didn’t want to be.
She noticed those details she’d missed the first time she was here. The walls were butter yellow and the laminate on the chairs looked like rainbow sherbet. The table that she sat at had a worn top; though she could tell at one time it had been speckled and flecked with black and white.
After sitting for a bit, only having eaten half of her soup, the waitress-the same one from before-brought her a check. Panic set in on her. She vaguely remembered pulling all of her money out of the ATM in the town she’d gotten on the bus at, but she didn’t know what had happened to it. She didn’t have a purse or a bag; she’d had a small wallet in her pocket, just her debit card, a credit card and her license when she had gotten to the cabin. She didn’t know where she would have put all the money she would have pulled out.
Just as her heart felt like it was going to beat out her chest, Dr. Ryan appeared next to her.
“I found this in your coat pocket. I thought you might want it.” He handed her her wallet and a paper bag. “I didn’t count it, but you might want to find a better place to keep that than in your pocket. It’s a miracle that you didn’t lose it on the way here.”
In the bag was the money she had just moments ago been panicking about. She didn’t know how much was supposed to be there, but she got the feeling that she wouldn’t find any of it missing. Grace pulled out a twenty and placed it on the table. Getting up she looked around. She didn’t know where to go.
“Is there a hotel in town?” She asked no one in particular.
“Sure is, Hon, right upstairs.” The waitress said, smiling at her.
It somehow didn’t surprise Grace that the diner also doubled at a hotel; it seemed to be that kind of a small town.
“Would you like a room?” The woman asked when Grace didn’t say anything.
“Oh, um, yes. That would be fine.”
“My name’s Raeleen. You need anything just ask. You got a bathroom in the room with you, so you don’t have to share. Go down the hall up the stairs at the end, it’s the first door on the right. Got a number two on it.” She handed Grace a key and turned to help a customer who had just walked in.
“Grace,” Dr. Ryan’s voice called to her as she was walking away. “Please take care of yourself. I know you need a lot of rest, but please don’t forget to take care of yourself. This town can be an amazing sanctuary as long as you need it to be.”
Grace looked at him and nodded. He was being so kind to her. It was as if he could read her mind, that he knew she needed to be alone, to run away. eGrace thought she should ask about rates, or if she should sign something, but she didn’t: just walked toward the hallway that had a sign saying bathroom. Up the stairs and to the right, and she found her room. The window in this room looked over what had most likely been the back yard when the restaurant below was a house, and the garden was overgrown but lovely all the same: the flowers and shrubs clearly left alone to develop as they will without a forced structure being imposed upon them. Even from above she could see the pail yellows and greens that made up the garden. Splashes of white and pink punctuated the depth of tangled bushes. She turned from the window and looked at the rest of the room.
She didn’t have any clothes to put in the dresser, but she put her wallet in the top drawer and the bag of money next to it. She sat on the bed and then lay down. The ceiling was old plaster and there were a few cracks in it, but the paint was new.
The bed smelled slightly dusty, as if it hadn’t been used in a while. Grace was ok with that. It seemed fitting that she was in a disused room. She was disused. She closed her eyes and saw Craig, the cabin, the flash of a gun. Without knowing it, she started to cry.