They were in the office when he got the first bit of news. Making cards stand on end, making pens and coins disappear and reappear from improbable places. Stupid human tricks.

"Hey." Lisbon was surfing the web. It was a slow day. "You remember that girl from the Chesterfield case, Francesca..."

"Frankie," Jane corrected, without looking up from his house of cards.

Lisbon looked at him over the top of her laptop. "O-kay," she drawled. "Frankie Estacado? Looks like she just filed a restraining order against Bradley."

His eyes flickered up to hers over the red bicycle back of the card he'd been holding. Restraining orders were worthless, they weren't enforceable until it was too late and they most often only enraged the person they were directed against. In Bradley's case, that could be deadly. He'd already talked one girl to her death. Then again, Frankie Estacado was a strong personality. Somewhat of a high threshold. It might not work. Or he might be too busy building his reputation back up again.

Which was wishful thinking. Jane started to lower the card onto the structure. "He's out?"

Lisbon gave him another look and was about to say something, but Van Pelt tried to be helpful and beat her to the punch. "He was released earlier in the week. The judge threw the case out because of a lack of physical evidence and the misconduct on the part of the investigating officer..."

Blah blah blah. Jane already knew all of this, which Lisbon knew of course, but the fact that Bradley had been going after Frankie was new information. At least, that he had been going after her strongly enough to make her file a restraining order.

"... poor girl."

"Poor who?" Enter Rigsby, stage left, with coffee. Jane swung up and around, nipped a cup of coffee from the tray without looking to see whose it was. "Hey..."

"I'm going for a walk."

They all fell silent and stared at him when he came back into the office, cup dropped into the bin just at the door.

"What?" Smile. Blue eyes wide, innocent.

More staring. Rigsby shook his head and dropped his eyes first, then Cho. Then Van Pelt, who seemed to be trying to understand. Lisbon last. She knew there was something deeper going on but didn't yet have the clues to figure out what, yet. She would, though. He had no doubt of that.

Instead she just shook her head at him. "I don't want to know what you're up to, do I?"

"I'm not up to anything."

It was true. He wasn't up to anything, but he had needed a walk to calm his nerves and think of what to do. He hadn't come up with anything he would have called a solid plan yet, but he had a few ideas. He needed more information before they were implemented. And none of that was anything that the rest of the CBI needed to know. This wasn't their case. Considering what they dealt with, he hoped it didn't become their case. But he still wasn't up to anything, not in the way that Lisbon thought.

Not that she believed him, which he supposed was a valid point of view. "Right." Back to the laptop. And back to whatever it was they had been working on in between cases, cold cases, filing reports. Boring things. Jane went over to the couch and stretched out again.

Restraining order. He could get a copy of the restraining order by looking over Lisbon's shoulder on the laptop, that didn't bother him. What bothered him was what Frankie wasn't telling the police, what she might not have thought important enough to talk about or what might have simply been embarrassing. He was coming into this later than he wanted to be. After things had hit the ground, things had been cleared away. And he didn't know

One leg came off the couch, his shoulders lifted as a file landed on his chest. Lisbon was standing over with her eyebrows arched and her lips twisted in a way that showed she wanted to smile, but couldn't. "I didn't give you that," she said, and walked on.

"Give me what?" he murmured after her.

His feet hit the floor as he sat up, one smooth motion rotating around the center. There wasn't much to the restraining order. First he had made threatening phone calls, two of which she recorded. There were witness accounts of people in her building who had been there when she had walked up, who said that he was following her. That was it so far. It hadn't escalated yet.

Jane flipped through the transcripts of the phone calls, dropped the file back on Lisbon's desk, and walked out again.

Rigsby looked at his straightened back, looked over at Lisbon, blinking. "What was that about?"

Hands in his pockets, staring up at her apartment building. She was inside; he had seen her moving at the window and her car was in its space in the parking lot. Whether or not he was going to approach her or just leave his little gift at her door, he was still deciding that when the young woman came to the door and gave him a suspicious and attracted look.

"Can I help you?"

He smiled. Bright, sunny. Handsome. "Sorry. Patrick Jane," he offered a hand, which she took. "CBI. I was part of the team that kept an eye on Frankie when she was testifying."

Her eyes widened. Instant trust, instant transformation from suspicious but attracted to eager to please. "Is this about the restraining order? Did Bradley..."

"As far as we know he's done nothing to violate the restraining order, but I thought I would come by..." He held up the bag, allowed the plastic to slip down the side of the box a little. Advice. Material goods. He allowed her to fill in the blanks in her mind. "Make sure she was all right."

See? I'm a good man. A nice man. You want to tell me what her apartment is. Let me in. Let me in to see her.

"Well, she's upstairs... here."

What a nice young woman.

She led him into the door with the keypad, up the stairs to the apartment. A small studio apartment with a view. There was the smell of candles burning from under the door, something nice. Vanilla scented. Footsteps going in what sounded like a circle in the apartment, pacing back and forth. She was thinking about something. He remembered how she had looked when she was going to testify, calm. Steady. Her movements had been deliberate, not like the choppy imprecision he heard now. He looked over at the young woman whose name he would never ask.

"Thanks." Smile. Turn away. Knock on the door. "Francesca?"

Heavier footsteps towards the door. The name had dragged her focus to him, to the door as she yanked it open and pointed a finger at him. "It's Frankie, you... Oh."

His eyebrows lifted, his lower lip pushed out bare milimeters. Her lips parted for some sort of exclamation that never made it to a breath, eyes widening, fingers clenching just a bit on the door as she held it open and leaned. Now, in the next moment, hips cocked at an angle to twist her chest the opposite way, highlighting what there was of her cleavage in that t-shirt and jeans and bare feet, one heel cocked up to give a better angle and more tautness to her legs. Showing off, she was. Though she wouldn't have said so and wasn't even aware that she was doing so.

"Hi."

"Hi. What are you doing here?" She was also blocking the doorway and his access to her apartment.

"I come bearing gifts." Bag. Box, inside. "Merry Christmas."

She took it. Stared at it, then at him.

"I would have wrapped it, but, I wasn't really sure what kind of bow went with..."

"Mace."

Frankie was looking at him again, eyebrows upraised. The expression reminded him of Lisbon, but with fewer calluses. The amusement was displayed in the open, the bemusement as well. She hadn't yet been in the world enough to know to hide. God, she was young.

"Yes."

"This is mace."

"I heard about the restraining order."

Her eyes flickered down to the space between his shoes and her feet, shamed. She let the bag slip from her fingers until they were only curled around the handle and her other hand slid down the door as she straightened her head up again. "Come on in," she sighed, turning away, letting him close the door behind them. She was ashamed, because she couldn't protect herself. Even when she had had CBI eyes on her she hadn't been ashamed that she couldn't protect herself. This was different.

Her apartment was warm, erratic. There were Christmas lights hung on the walls but by the age of the tape and tacks that held them there they had been there all year around. The posters were still in frames on the wall but there was also a bulletin board covered in papers, phone numbers, photographs. A length of false hair and beads glued to a barette and pinned through one of the holes to the cork. The music came from a stereo almost as old as the one in her house, but smaller, harder music than what had been on her shelves at home. Her bed was made, thick comforters, pile of pillows, none of them matching. A couple of stuffed animals. Everything in this room had meaning for her. Nothing was bought and arranged from a set in the store, everything was matched to emotional value, not colors. This was her safe haven. She didn't go out much, she preferred to be surrounded by what was familiar and comforting.

And Bradley had violated that, somehow. That was why she was ashamed, or afraid or both. She hadn't been strong enough to protect her core. He looked back over at her as she crossed the room to set the mace on the little table against the kitchen nook. Studio apartment. He wondered if she preferred it to something larger or if it was an expense thing.

"So, what is this?"

"Hmm?" Blink. "It's mace. You spray it in the other person's..."

"No," her arms folded over her chest, one hand gesturing between them. "What's this? What's going on here?"

His expression barely changed but he watched her watch the retreat and regret the words almost immediately after she said them. He told himself that her regret didn't matter. "You put out a restraining order on Bradley Chesterfield. I thought you could use some more effective protection."

He saw the retort, something sexual no doubt, on her lips before she decided not to say it. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"Tea?"

"Yes, please."

She already had the water in the kettle. Turned on the stove, set the kettle on, pulled out a couple of tea bags from a small tin and set them in a couple of mugs. Her hands were steady, at least. Her movements as graceful and strong as they had been the first time. She recovered quickly.

Cream and sugar in small, hand-made bowls. Possibly made or purchased by a family member; it seemed like the sort of thing an older female figure would give. She handed his cup to him with just a brush of fingers more than necessary. Testing the waters. He could feel her her eyes on his face as she did so, but his expression didn't flicker. Polite smile, polite nod and comment of thanks, taking a sip. Flicker of disappointment, hurt, or both in her eyes, but she settled back into her chair.

"Bradley came to see me the day he got out of prison," she said, after a stretched-out period of silence. "He told me that I was an evil bitch for spreading lies the way I had, and that he was going to teach me a lesson. The usual arrogant jerkoff crap. I didn't pay much attention to it until he started calling me and kept calling, he wouldn't stop. I think whenever he got mad about what happened, about the fact that he actually got sent to prison for what he did, he'd call me and yell at me for it, or leave nasty messages on my voice mail. I got the number changed..."

She hadn't mentioned that in the restraining order.

"But he found out my new number too. Then he started following me home. Like he was working himself up to do something."

Her voice was steady. Her hands were steady on the cup but she didn't look at him, she looked down at the table between the edges of their cups. Lost in thought, which under any other circumstances would have been benign, but with this conversation he didn't like where her train of thought was going.

"He still believes he doesn't have to take responsibility for his actions."

"Yes."

"But he does." She did look up at him then, eyes narrowed, trying to figure out what note, what tone that was in his voice. "He will be held accountable for his crimes."

The corner of her mouth quirked up in a smile that tugged at the corners of her eyes and made her face tired. She was far too young to be that cynical. She opened her mouth to say something but whatever it was she either didn't think it was worth saying or thought it was too wicked a thing to say, and her gaze dropped again between them on the table. His fingers twitched. Under any other circumstances he would have reached out to lay a hand on her wrist and speak some soothing words but with what had passed between them last time he didn't dare.

"Nothing's going to happen." Words alone wouldn't help enough, but they would help. "Nothing's going to happen to you."

There was that half smile again, the smile that wanted to be a real smile but was too tired and didn't have enough hope in the world to manage it. She hadn't smiled like that when he'd first met her. The stalking had shaken her, but not in ways that would be obvious; everyone around her would be commenting on how well she was bearing up and how strong she was. And she was strong. But that didn't mean she wasn't vulnerable, too.

And his usual avenues were closed off to him. He pushed the box a little closer to her. "If he comes close enough, spray first and ask questions later."

"You realize this means you can't sneak up on me anymore and watch me sleep."

There was a moment of a smile that held no warmth in it. "I don't think that's really a great loss for you."

She tilted her head at him, gave him an arched-brows narrow-eyed look that wondered what that smile had been about. He didn't enlighten her. Although she was one of the few who had noticed when he wasn't smiling despite the stretching of lips and the baring of teeth, that didn't mean he owed her any explanations.

"You could always sleep with me again."

He was sure she had waited until his next sip of tea to see if he would choke on it, and he almost did. Not that she would be able to tell. Raised eyebrows right back at her and calmly finishing his sip and setting the cup down before he answered.

"That wouldn't be wise." Avoiding any language that might indicate that he regretted or was dismayed by what happened. Whether or not it was true he didn't want to give that impression, not and have to deal with the consequences if, by some chance, she had set on him. But she didn't get upset, no thin-pressed mouth or watery eyes, no tight grip on the teacup or white knuckles. She had anticipated this. Clever girl.

"I'm twenty two years old, Jane, I'm not supposed to be wise."

The corner of his mouth twitched up a bit. "But I am."

"Mm." She shrugged, leaned back in her chair. Casual and calm, easy. She hadn't expected to get him into her bed, but she had wanted to try. Even not knowing what had brought him to her door or whether or not he had anyone in his life. He did still wear his wedding ring. Assuming she didn't remember the news articles or read about him on the internet, she had no way of knowing whether or not he was married. Interesting. "Not so wise as to keep out of my bed the first time." And she looked directly at him when she said it.

"That..."

"... was a mistake?"

A little more of a smile there. "I was going to say a bad judgment call on my part. I shouldn't have taken advantage of you like that."

She just laughed. Not a silvery delicate and very artificial laugh or even a laugh that pretended to be older than she was; she was amused. And from the look on her face she considered that statement naive. "It was a bad judgment call... it was probably against protocol," she corrected herself. "But if anyone was taking advantage of anyone... I knew you were curious about me. I didn't exactly push you away or say no, and you look like the kind of guy who listens to a no. I had fun. Did you?"

He blinked. "Yes."

"Good."

Neither of them touched their tea, now. The silence that built up between them was awkward, full of the things that they wanted to say or do and weren't. What had he came here to do, anyway? Deliver a message of an offer of help and a spray-bottle of mace? He had done that. He should go. "I should go," he rose, smooth and calm. "Thank you for the tea."

She did walk him to the door, all five or six feet. He turned in the doorway but couldn't think of anything to say, and she leaned against the edge of the door again with that same small smile on her face. His eyes tracked over her body again, reading her language. More cocky, more self-assured, almost as she had been the first time they'd met. Less beaten. Less cynical and callused. So at least there was that, then. She would recover when this was all over, and she'd be all right. He just had to keep her alive until he'd dealt with Bradley. And as he thought that he realized he had made his decision already.

"I'll see you around." He flashed her the bright, brilliant smile that melted hearts and probably other, lower aspects on most women, then turned and headed down the hall. He didn't hear her door close until he was almost at the stairwell.

He was on his way to his car when he saw the boy, and he should have suspected it from the beginning. Young man in the car, hood up, engine running, sitting outside the apartment building. Watching it. Maybe watching him. The car wasn't familiar but that didn't mean it wasn't a friend of someone else in the building, but it nagged at him. And things that nagged at him usually warranted closer looks...

Except his phone rang. He blinked, startled out of his thoughts and the worrying at the back of his mind over what Frankie thought about what they had done and if she was disappointed by his lack of initiative the second time, if she would pursue him. "Hello, Lisbon."

"Jane, where are you?" She had that irritated note in her voice that she got whenever he wasn't where he was supposed to be. He even smiled a little.

"Running a quick errand."

"Well, get back here. We're waiting on you."

"Yes ma'am." The boy could wait. The car was an older model Ford, economic, not all that fuel efficient but in good working condition. The kid was probably a student waiting for someone. He didn't matter.

Jane got into his car and put put putteted away, leaving Frankie and her too-direct eyes behind him.

He knew they were wasting time with this briefing. Everything about the murder-suicide screamed crime of passion, which meant that no matter how much they tried to cover it up after the fact the guilty party would have left signs all over the house. They didn't need him for the briefing, or the debriefing either. Or the interrogations. Of course, he was part of the team, he'd attend. But that didn't mean he had to look as though he was paying attention.

"... I need everyone to be careful on this one. By the book as much as possible..."

Because the press and the politicos would be watching. Jane knew the drill. He didn't care half as much as everyone else on the team did, but he knew it. And he went along, inasmuch as it made life easier for Lisbon and the rest of them.

At the moment he was going along with the idea, at least, of being present for the briefing. He was perched on the edge of Van Pelt's desk, scrolling through the campus reports on her web browser. Not that he expected there to be anything, or at least he hoped there wasn't anything. But until dear little Bradley Chesterfield was far removed from Frankie (and it did occur to him briefly to wonder when he had come to be so decidedly protective of her) he was going to keep an eye out. Just a little bit. Just to make sure she was all right.

"Jane? Are you even paying attention?"

"Of course I am." Scroll down through the last entry again. At least until Lisbon's hand clapped over the keyboard.

"Then what did I say?"

"You said that we should approach with caution, be polite, throw the book at them."

Lisbon gave him her exasperated look. "Everything by the book."

"Whatever." Wait a minute. Go back. That looked familiar. That was Frankie's building.

She reached over him and turned the monitor off. "Look at me, Jane."

He did. Complete with petulance and irritation. He'd been reading that, and he had the feeling it was important. She gave him an even more exasperated look for his trouble. "I need you on board with this. And I need you all the way on board." Which meant, pay attention, Jane. The comment about her relying on him too much came to his lips and was swallowed back.

"I'm on board."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

She finished her briefing and kept glancing over at him, knowing that he had lied about paying attention. That didn't matter. As soon as everyone was off to their respective tasks he slipped into the chair before Grace could, flipping on the monitor scrolling back down to the news article he'd been reading. It was the second down from where he'd left it.

A young woman was assaulted today at her off-campus apartment at three thirty-five in the afternoon. Just after he'd left. Immediately after he'd left. The boy in the car. He should have looked closer. Details were sketchy. ... treated for minor injuries and released.

He threw Van Pelt his most artificially brilliant smile. "Thanks, Grace." And then he was gone.

Jane ignored his ringing phone and even made a show of turning it off as he got into the hospital with a smile of apology. If Lisbon asked he could always tell her that he'd been made to turn off his cell phone, which was true. The rules of the hospital forbade them.

"Hi," with another bright smile for the receptionist. "My name is Patrick Jane, I'm with the CBI. A woman was brought in a little while ago, a victim of some assault, she was a key witness in a case a few months ago and the defendant was just released from prison, they sent me over to make sure he hasn't been up to his old tricks." Smile smile. It was all true, every bit of it, except for the being sent part. He'd taken that initiative on his own.

Besides, the receptionist had the hard-edged look of someone who had been in the medical field a while, particularly in emergency. She sat behind this particular desk as though she owned it, shoulders set firmly into the chair, and she was wearing someone's one-year chip on a string around her neck. A string, not a chain. She had been through hard times in the last few years, and those times likely involved abuse either for herself or for someone else. A nice man in a position of authority looking out for a young woman and willing to listen to her story would resonate.

"Of course... she was released already..."

"That's all right, if I could just have a look at her file, or maybe you could tell me if her injuries were consistent with being grabbed or shaken. He would have been close to her, tried to get her to come with him or intimidate her in some way. She doesn't intimidate easily, I'm afraid, and that would make him angry."

The receptionist smiled, proud and maternal. Her daughter, then, might be the owner of the chip. "No, she doesn't intimidate easily. I can't let you look at her file, but I can tell you..." evidently he'd gotten there quickly. She pulled a file with brightly colored tabs out of the stack next to her. E, S, T. For Estacado. It was the right file, she was in earnest. "Bruises consistent with being grabbed, yes, on her arms. Some facial trauma but nothing serious. Bruises and cuts, mostly, it looks like. A sprained or jammed wrist..."

That smile meant something, now. He leaned over the counter and broadened his own into a grin. "What?"

"She claimed, and from the way she acted when they brought her in here I'd say she was telling the truth, that she broke her wrist on the guy's head."

Broke my wrist on his damn fool head, was what she would have said. Good girl. Jane smiled. "Thank you. I'll let them know, they'll probably have someone swing by her apartment just in case." No, he hadn't needed to tell her that, but it made a friend.

"You can see for yourself, if you want."

"Thank you," he leaned over again as she turned the file around to face him. It was all pretty much as she had said it, with the exception that the wrist was fractured bad enough to be put into a cast. He had a sudden image of her brandishing the cast like a weapon at him if she became frustrated with him. She would threaten to hit him with it, and would, too, if he annoyed her enough.

The receptionist was giving him a curious look. He smiled sweetly at her. "Thank you for letting me look. Good luck to your daughter," he said, was rewarded by her widening eyes and jaw dropping open, and left.

No cop car outside her door, but campus security patrolled every ten to fifteen minutes or so. It was the best they would do, given the givens. What were the givens, he wondered.

She would have pressed charges, wouldn't she? She wasn't the type to back down because of fear of personal safety (which he sometimes thought was foolish) or fear for the other person (which was rare enough that he noted and admired it in her). She wouldn't give over her life to an ideal version of him, the belief that so many women had, that a man could change his abusive habits. Some could. Most couldn't. Even he still succumbed, when he didn't watch himself, to his own bored impulses.

She would have tried to press charges, he amended in his own mind. Without a witness it was only her testimony, and Bradley would have had the best lawyers his family money could buy bringing charges against her in return. Slander. Filing false report. She was hysterical, they would say, she had a vendetta against him, she was irrational. Perhaps she hadn't wanted to bother with the expense, both financial and emotional, of a trial. Perhaps he could understand that, too.

He sat perched more than actual sitting, hands in his coat pockets, one foot on the front fender of his car. He could see a light on in her window but no movement through the tree branches. Reading in bed, maybe? Sitting down to eat. She looked like the sort of girl, her room had looked like the sort of room that would host a carpet picnic. She would be engaged in the activities that most reassured her, which would involve comfort food and blankets or some other sort of tangible warmth, and music or a film on her laptop or a book that held some sort of emotional value for her. For a moment he toyed with himself, pulling to mind the titles he'd glimpsed in her room and running through them to see what fit.

It was all self-torture, of course. Filling his mind again and again with images of this vibrant woman and her energetic young life that he had touched once, however briefly. That was now under threat, by his doing, the sight of him outside her home having evidently incited young Bradley to a rage. He would remain on the periphery of her life, as was appropriate. Which didn't mean he couldn't look in on her now and again.

Patrick Jane looked down to the tips of his boots and smiled a little to himself. Time to go home.

"Don't you have an actual job to go to?"

He looked up at her, brows lifted, blue eyes wide and innocent. It would have charmed, well, maybe 70% of women he tried it on. She seemed to be one of the lucky few. "What do you mean? I'm eating lunch." Half the city away from the station, yes, but still. He could have been out on a scheduled break. And he held up the apple to prove it.

"Bullshit."

But the corner of her mouth twitched up, and she didn't press further for an explanation. Or point out that he'd been turning up around her classes and her place of work, and her apartment for that matter, at random points pretty consistently for the past ten days. Keeping an eye on her. He wondered how many of those times she'd seen him. She wouldn't be approaching him with those words in that tone if it hadn't been enough times to make her wonder.

"You're following me, aren't you."

There, now. That answered that question. "No I'm not," he told her. Just to be contrary.

"You're like a five year old. Fine, you're not following me, you just happen to like the same ..." she shook her head, dropping her gaze, and he grinned. Triumphant and smug and just a bit gleeful. All right, he was like a five year old in some ways. Rocking back and forth on his heels, just once. "What?"

"Nothing."

"Bull." She narrowed her eyes at him. "What are you up to, Patrick Jane."

She reminded him of Lisbon. Playful suspicion, knowing better, except Lisbon didn't know better all the time. She liked to think she caught him out all the time, but she didn't. Most of the time. If it mattered. He wondered how often Frankie would catch him out at things, except that that would require being around her long enough for her to notice.

"Now, why would I be up to anything?"

"The mace you gave me works perfectly fine, you know."

He blinked. "Good. I didn't..."

"Ah, see, there you go away again." Her finger was pointing at him and he didn't follow her line of reasoning.

"Excuse me?"

"Your face. When ... you go all still like that. And your eyes go cold and you've stopped pretending, it means I was right. I ..." He filled in the last words for her, said something right. But she didn't say them. She just narrowed her eyes at him again and watched him with what was starting to be an unnervingly perceptive gaze.

Don't be ridiculous. A few accurate guesses does not make her that perceptive.

She opened her mouth to say something else but shut it again, wide eyes. Biting her lip. He'd been staring too long, and he smiled so she wouldn't remember what just happened. "I didn't mean to scare you," he said, and it sounded false probably even to her. "I just wanted to make sure you're all right."

Just like that. She folded her arms over her chest. "I'm fine, Mister Jane."

"All right."

And then he waited for her to go.

He wasn't disappointed. She watched him for a few moments and then started to walk backwards, keeping her eyes on him until she absolutely had to turn around and walk to her next destination, which was her next class if his memory served him right. He didn't know what that was, although the only reason he hadn't looked it up so far was because he was sure he could find out if he needed to. He watched her duck and weave her way through the student population, teachers, relatives, friends and prospective students, job and army recruiters. Busy campus. All of it so familiar to her she could probably spot who a person was and what role they played in it all. Amazing, the way the human mind worked. The way her mind worked.

She was gone. He watched the men and women mill around, hands in his pockets, thinking.

"Why?"

His eyes widened, disingenuous. "Was I not supposed to? She hasn't made a complaint against me, has she?" No, she hadn't. She wouldn't, which meant that Lisbon hadn't called him into her office to discuss Frankie. Someone else on the campus had seen him, had reported him to Lisbon, had done something. Perhaps Grace had figured out where he went, or Cho. He wouldn't credit Rigsby with that much imagination.

"No, she hasn't, but someone else made a report about a man matching your description harassing women on campus this afternoon, Jane..." She sighed. Her exasperated sigh.

His eyebrows arched. The smile stayed in place but the easy, amused cheer was gone. He wasn't playing around anymore. Lisbon didn't notice yet but his entire focus was now on making the person he had decided was responsible for it all pay for what he had done. She'd notice when he was done. And she was still waiting for an answer. "I..." he spread his hands, innocent. Truly innocent, this time, since he hadn't done whatever it was specifically that he was accused of. "I don't know what to tell you. I went to the campus to talk to one woman, which I did. She didn't seem harassed."

"One woman. While we're trying to work a case, you go and talk to one woman on campus who probably doesn't have anything to do with the case."

Well, he couldn't argue with that, and didn't try. Lisbon still didn't know who he'd been to see and he wasn't going to give her any hints or suggestions. Perhaps she should have, she was the one who had given him the file after all. Perhaps she didn't know him as well as she thought. Grace looked up at him and started to say something, but changed her mind halfway there. And when he looked back Lisbon was still waiting for an answer.

"I don't know what to tell you, Lisbon. It's all a lie. I went to the campus with the intention of speaking to one woman only, an acquaintance. I did, and then I left. Are there any other women complaining?"

"No. Which is the only reason we're having this conversation in the open instead of in an interrogation room. The complaint was made by a young man on behalf of a woman who says she was too afraid you would arrest her to come forward."

Jane was practically beaming. "Well, then, it couldn't have been me. I don't have the power to arrest anyone. I don't even know how to make a citizen's arrest."

Lisbon rolled her eyes. "Just... stay away from the campus, all right? They have no proof on the harassment charge but until it's dismissed, I don't want to hear about you going anywhere near there. Your friend can meet you wherever you want to meet, but not there."

"Whatever you say," he smiled.

Grace's eyes tracked him for a moment as he went over to his couch, then went back to her computer screen. From the look of it she had the web browser history pulled up. He wondered if she was clever enough to make the connection. He thought that she probably was.

Silence. That was what he noticed the most, despite the fact that the hustle and bustle of the squadroom was unchanged. Despite the fact that he was standing on the right side of the one-way glass right now watching Cho get his confession. The other man was, in his own way, very skilled. It was all white noise. It wasn't what Jane wanted to hear, what Jane wanted to hear was that Bradley Chesterton was either out of the country or behind bars, put away somewhere where he couldn't touch Frankie. Somewhere that he could think long and hard about what he'd done, and suffer for it appropriately. But he wasn't hearing that, in any form or fashion. All he heard was silence.

"Looks like you were right," Lisbon told him, glancing up at his expression as the suspect broke down in interrogation.

Jane barely twitched. "Mmm."

There was a knock on the door. Grace poked her head in at an acknowledgement from Lisbon. "Sorry... it's a phonecall for Jane."

"I'll be there in a minute." And then he caught the expression on her face. "Oh."

"What?" Lisbon glanced between them.

"I really think you should take this," Grace started to say, but he was already past her and down the hall, catching the first words of her explanation to Lisbon on the way out. That would be a long talk.

"This is Jane."

"You sound like a girl."

That was Frankie. And she sounded weak, tired or scared, something. She didn't sound good. "Are you all right? Where are you? Are you home?" Rapid fire questions, free hand groping for a piece of paper and a pen. He could have a car there within minutes.

"Shut up and listen, okay? I don't know how long I have until I pass out, and..."

Heart pounding, adrenaline pouring through his veins. Clarity of mind, focus. He had to maintain focus. "What happened? Let me call a..."

"What did I just say? Shut up and listen, and how stupid do you think I am, anyway? I already called 911, they're on their way." Her breathing was shallow but steady and unimpeded, so whatever it was hadn't affected her lungs at least. There was an echo to her voice, a hallway or a bathroom. Was she in her apartment? This phone didn't have a caller ID display, dammit. She was still talking. "... thought I would just roll over, the stupid bastard."

Bradley. Of course. Everything settled, then, crystalized into the certainty of Bradley Chesterton's death and Frankie's survival. She would live and that manipulative little scumbag would die. No question, it was simply the way things would fall out.

"What did he do, Frankie?" Quiet. Calm. Be calm. "What did he do to you?"

"Nothing permanent."

His methodology had been rape and overpower, destroy. Drive a girl so mad with grief and despair that she would take her own life. Frankie was made of stronger stuff than the boy was used to. She wouldn't have gone down easily, she would have resisted. "Did he hurt you?" Silence. "Frankie?"

Her voice was weak and thready, fading in and out. "Nothing they can't stitch back together. Should paint a white streak in my hair, look like the Bride of Frankenstein."

That wasn't funny. "That's not funny." He didn't even know what the Bride of Frankenstein looked like. "Frankie." More silence. He heard noises in the background, thumps. Footsteps. Was Bradley coming back? "Francesca!" And when she didn't respond he knew she'd fallen unconscious. Her full name always got her attention. The emptiness of sound roared in his ears. His hand was shaking. Stitches meant cuts, cuts meant slices, slicing meant blood. Blood on the walls. Just like before. And just like before, he would get there too late. Just in time to see the blood on the wall, not in time to do anything about it.

Voices in the background. They were as unimportant as the voices around him and yet a part of his mind latched onto them. They spoke of things like blood loss, breathing and airway, constriction, mobility. There was another voice, mixed in with them. Her voice. She was saying something. And then one voice became much clearer, not hers.

"Is this Patrick Jane? Hello?"

"Speaking." He snapped back to focus. "Yes, I'm here."

"Mr. Jane, this is Julie, with emergency services. Miss Estacado suffered numerous shallow cuts to her arms and torso, and she's lost a lot of blood, but she doesn't appear to have any other injuries. We're taking her into emergency now, but she wanted me to let you know that she should be all right."

He smiled. Just a little bit, but that hadn't been what she would have said. Her words would have been shorter, more clipped, and possibly included some profanity. Frankie could be very blunt and outspoken when she felt she had to make a point.

"Thank you, Miss Julie," he said, shoulders falling again. Hands smoothing out, no longer trembling. "Does she want me to meet ..."

"Her parents are going to meet her at the hospital; she seemed to feel it was important we let you know before you freaked out." Sounds of metal on metal. They were travelling. "We're loading her into the ambulance now."

"All right. Thank you." He listened until she hung up the phone. And then, for a moment, he just stood there and breathed.

It wasn't that simple, of course. Bradley wouldn't stoop to causing physical harm unless she had seriously provoked him, not with a knife. He would try to overpower her with force of personality at first, and when that didn't work he would get up close and personal. Physically restrain her, not beat her but perhaps try to immobilize her in some way. Pin her down. And once he had her pinned down...

The boy's image of himself was tied in with his image of what a man should be, charismatic and dominant. In his mind women wanted him, the only reason he wouldn't have whichever one he wanted was because they were lying to themselves or playing hard to get. Frankie was a challenge to him. She had defied his authority and his self-styled charisma, she had refused him at every turn. He would want her sexually as well as physically, and then he would show her in the only way he knew how that he had total life-or-death control over her. He would try to make her kill herself.

But she wouldn't. She had no interest in him, she was disinclined to listen to his suggestions or his opinion of her worth. She was more confident than most women her age, at least in Jane's experience. Which meant that he would try to destroy her another way, by destroying her in the public eye and faking her suicide. She would be viewed the same way her friend had, and perhaps other women before that. A tragedy, a woman unhinged by her adoration for a young man who realized too late the depth of her lust for him and refused her further advances, prompting her to take her own life rather than be without him. It made Jane sick just to think about it.

But it did, at least, give him an idea of what to expect when he went to Frankie's apartment.

Grace went with him. Their current case was all but wrapped up, they didn't need him. Or her, she insisted. Lisbon rolled her eyes at both of them but okayed it. He would have gone anyway but it would make things easier all around if she knew what was going on.

Poor Grace. She had gone with him not knowing why he was worried or about what, only that he was. That he had been looking into Francesca Estacado for some reason having to do with the last case she had been a part of and now he was heading to her apartment as fast as his poor little car could take him. She didn't even complain about his driving or crack any jokes about how at least he wasn't blind this time. She didn't say anything at all.

The door was open when they arrived. Just enough to see that emergency medical services had kicked the door down, hammered it in, something to that effect. It would have to be replaced, the lock, at the very least. There had been a short struggle over by the bed. Jane kept his hands in his coat pockets, went over to look.

"We should get CSU down here..." Grace started, but the sound died away and by the tone in her voice she knew her protests would have little effect at this stage. Jane wasn't interested in what CSU would find. He was only seeking confirmation of what he already knew. The rumpled state of the bedsheets; she always pulled up at least the top cover to give the appearance of neatness, maybe for aesthetics. There was no large stain of fluids, nothing. He would have used a condom. Nothing in the wastebasket, he checked, turning things over in the bin with the tip of a pencil. No, he'd been smart enough at least to take that away with him. But the vantage point of kneeling down in front of the wastebasket gave him a view of the bed that he hadn't had before. Two drops, small enough to be overlooked. Distinctive enough to tell him what he was looking at and what had happened.

Grace followed his view. Even if all she saw was the rumpled bed linens her imagination was good enough to give her an idea of what happened. He heard her sigh and say something as he headed into the bathroom where most of the blood was.

The tub was still full of water. The tub, and the bathroom floor, where she'd crawled out. Water stains soaked the carpet beneath his feet; she'd crawled to the phone. First to call 911, then to call him. Had she anticipated that 911 dispatch would call him? He hadn't even thought to ask them to let CBI know. The blood was diluted, pinkish and brighter red than dried blood should have been. The carpet was gray and faded where she'd lain on it, dripping. Impressions still where the emergency crew had knelt, put down their equipment, worked to stop the bleeding. The razor blade that lay next to the tub, still bloody and crusting over, was out of place in the apartment. Maybe the sort an artist would use, not the sort that should have been in the bathroom, and she didn't keep any art supplies in the apartment beyond a few colored pencils. It would still look like a suicide attempt. The whispers would have already started.

"Jane..." Grace touched his arm, startling him out of his thoughts. "We should get CSU down here. You can give your statement, with hers, it should be enough to get him." Poor Grace. She knew what he was thinking. Some of what he was thinking, anyway. Not all. He didn't want her to know that part of it; he wanted her to keep her innocence as long as possible.

He smiled over his shoulder at her before turning, wan and tired. Let her think that was all it was. "Of course. You're right." He gestured towards the door, ever gallant, letting the lady precede him. "Shall we?"

The day passed. The lovely receptionist with the troubled daughter called him to make sure he knew she'd been brought into emergency, and then again to tell him she hadn't even needed surgery, just massive transfusions. She expressed sympathy that his friend was so troubled and was confused at his insistance that it wasn't attempted suicide.

They had her on a suicide watch anyway. Jane's face turned to ice. He knew what they would do to her.

One well-meaning counselor called him to make sure he hadn't been harassing her. Given the charges against him, still pending, and their history. He explained his side of the matter and the counselor didn't call again. Jane removed himself from the rest of the team so that he didn't snap Rigsby or hurt Lisbon out of a misguided sense of peevishness.

He went to visit her once, but she was asleep. Bland on top of bland colored walls, colored sheets, scratchy cotton. Cheap linens. Restrained to the bed with soft cuffs to make sure she didn't try to get up and pull out her IV. Forty eight hour suicide watch, her chart said. He snorted, kept his hands in his pockets, and left as quietly as he'd come in.

When this was all over, he'd buy her a Blackberry. Or an iPhone. Whichever her preference.

Her phone was slim and red and well suited to her. It amused him that his number, well, the CBI's number was nowhere to be found. Neither was Bradley's. But he had no doubt that her number was programmed into his phone, and that he would answer if she called. It would be pretty disconcerting to be called by what the boy would think of as a dead woman.

He'd called her fifteen times in the last three days. That really did get Jane's goat.

Someone picked up, and there was a moment of silence and breathing. "... Francesca, I told you..." He called her Francesca. Of course he did.

"Hello, Bradley."

Silence again. The sounds in the background faded; he was walking away from whatever it was he'd been near to. The television, perhaps. Out to the balcony of the apartment he lived in, much nicer than Frankie's, no doubt. And he didn't have to share it with anyone. "Who are you? How are you ... how did you get ahold of this phone?"

"You mean, how did I get your number? It wasn't on the phone, I had to do a little digging." Who I am isn't important. He brushed past the subject as easily as brushing some lint off his lapel. "Doesn't matter. Bradley, I want to be sure I have your attention, and I want to be very clear that you're listening to me at all times. Do you understand?"

"I..." he started to agree, and then stopped. "You have my attention, anyway, who are you?"

"That's not important." And it wasn't. "You lost, Bradley. Francesca Estacado is alive and talking to the doctors at the hospital. They found the little mess you left for the police to clean up and she's giving a statement. They'll take a full rape kit at the hospital, match it to the evidence you left behind." Sterile words for a very messy situation. Jane was ... he didn't know what this was feeling. It was cold. It was sharp. It pricked him to go on. "There isn't anything left for you to do but turn yourself in, Bradley. You will be caught eventually, you will be tried, convicted. You're going to spend a very long time in a very small cell with one window and a bucket."

He took a breath, finally, as the other end of the phone erupted in curses and sputtering. No, this wasn't his style, it wasn't his way. Too blunt. Too... something. Save that for the climax. As it were.

"Bradley? Are you listening to me?"

"I don't know who you think you are, but you can't get away with threatening me like this..."

Jane spoke right over him. "It's not a threat, dear boy, it's a fact. You've made quite the tidy career out of finding women weaker-willed than yourself to prey on, taking what you want from them and discarding the rest. How many women have you killed that way?"

"Those char..."

"Never mind. You wanted something different from Frankie, didn't you, though? Did you finally realize that taking advantage of those weaker than you only makes you weak and pathetic? Did it finally penetrate that seething mass of cowardice you call a mind that you might advance as a person if you stretched yourself a little? Or were you too scared and too angered by a woman who saw right through you, who could match and surpass you in every aspect?"

"How dare you..."

"Dare? Did I do something daring? I assure you, it takes no daring at all to speak the truth about a petty criminal such as yourself. You might as well call turning in a shoplifter daring, because that's all you've done. You're a thief and a liar, Bradley. And barely even that."

Indrawn breath, but no response. Jane took a breath himself, but slow. Even, easy. Cold. He had to be cold, and found it too easy for anyone's comfort but perhaps his own.

"Bradley? Are you there?" He could all but hear the boy's angry flush, see his throat bob as he swallowed. He did hear the swallowing sound. "Listen to me, Bradley. Listen to me very closely." But now his voice was low and soft, friendly. Smooth. The tones rising and falling, carrying the other boy's will with it. Too even to be sing-song, too flowing to be a normal speaking voice. Bradley didn't have to have a high threshold or strong will to overpower frightened, lost girls. He just had to be able to push the right buttons.

"Listen, Bradley, and think about what you've done. You've overestimated yourself, you've pushed when you should have let go, and now you're finished. It's all over, Bradley. It's over for you now, and when word gets out about what you've done you won't stand a chance against her. She'll tell everyone what you've done, and she'll be unassailable. Everything you worked for, everything you worked so hard to achieve will be lost in the face of what you've done, and you'll be nothing but a user and a coward your whole life. Someone who couldn't get a willing woman but had to rape her instead, someone who had to fake her suicide to cover it up. The act of a desperate man. And you couldn't even get that right. You'll be a joke in the newspapers for the next two weeks, fodder for the late night comedians, and then you'll simply be gone. As though you never existed."

Jane looked up to the balcony where the shadow of a man-shaped figure was too close to the edge. Everything flew into sharp focus, his senses attuned to higher frequencies than anyone could sustain, even him. But the victory of it was driving him, the triumph of a nasty little murderous bastard getting his comeuppance. He hadn't felt so powerful in some time, a feeling that he craved not quite as much as the feeling of victory when he finally found Red John, but close enough. Close enough that it kept him at the CBI. Lisbon never really understood that.

"You're finished, Bradley." He made a quiet certainty of it, so certain that it wasn't even worth making a fuss. "It's over. There's nothing left of you, now."

It was like soothing someone to sleep. From fury to insecurity to despair within five minutes. Bradley Chesterton didn't even scream on the way down, though the crunch at the end was audible both through the phone that dissolved into static in his ear and a hundred or so feet in front of him. Jane walked forward to stand at the edge of the blood pool that stopped inches from the toes of his worn brown boots and stare. Just for a moment. He had to allow himself this moment of satisfaction.

Then he could walk away.

Jane volunteered to go break the news to Frankie, once they discovered the body. Lisbon looked at him oddly for it, but unlike the last time (or the time before that. Or the time before that, when he'd been standing with the woman who'd just shot her husband) she didn't seem to be able to connect the dots. Or maybe she just decided it was a waste of time arguing with him when there was blood already on the ground.

If Frankie knew what he'd done she gave no sign. She still hadn't expected to have access to her cell phone, he'd had to get that from the property clerk at the hospital, so there was nothing to connect him to the call or the nose-dive Bradley had taken off of the balcony. A missing phone, a hospital error. He'd make it up to her later.

She nodded when he told her, and stared at her hands folded in her lap. Her normally beautiful skin did not pale well. "So... that's it, I guess. It's over." She frowned. "Hard to believe it's over."

"You'll be all right," he told her, halfway hoping she would simply believe it.

"Eventually, yeah," her fingers plucked at the stitches along her arm. It would scar, most likely. Her other hand twisted in the blankets in her lap and he tried not to notice, for her sake. "I just can't believe..."

Watching her was almost physically painful. In the span of a few short days she had changed from the fierce, clever girl he had come to know and admire into someone exhausted, worn down, squirming in her seat and visibly ill at ease with herself. She had been one of the few women he would have said who was comfortable with their bodies and radiated that kind of confidence and now she was fairly turning inside out in her own skin.

One women in four, he remembered reading, has been raped. He thought of the first three other women who came to mind, Lisbon, Grace. Her. Now he wondered. He hadn't, before.

"They'll release you in a day or so..." he started to say.

"Yeah, after they realize I didn't try to kill myself," she snorted. Now she sounded like her old self. But she still couldn't look at him, turning her face towards the window, her lap, the end of the bed. The buzzer on the wall, the door. The light. Anywhere but at him. "And I'll go home and come back in a week or two to get the stitches out and..." She didn't seem to know how to finish that.

"And you'll heal," he said quietly, with as much strength and force as he felt comfortable expressing. "It'll take time, but you'll heal." From what was done to you. That thing that neither of them were talking about. If Jane had had it to do over again he would have made it last longer, now.

Frankie nodded, still pulling the fabric up and wrapping it around her knuckles. Smoothing it over her lap and then plucking at it again. It hurt to watch her. And he didn't want to leave her alone. He didn't understand what was happening to her or what questions to ask. It was a strange sensation, not knowing what question to ask or what to say, how to reach her. He had always known, before, always. Now he didn't trust his own instincts. More information. He needed more information.

"Frankie?"

"Mm?" She didn't look up.

He tried to get her attention. "Francesca..."

It got her attention. Her eyes snapped open, wide and dark and furious, trapped and panicked. She lunged at him out of the bed, pulling at her restraints, her IV. He had to grab her arm to keep her from pulling it out and that was a mistake, because she flailed harder and managed to smack him in the face. "Don't call me that! Don't you dare call me that! My name is not..."

"Frankie!" he said at the same time, overriding her. "Frankie, Frankie..." Shh... One hand on her arm, holding the IV in, the other trying to get her arm back to her side. "Frankie, it's okay. It's okay. You're safe. You're safe now."

As much better as she had been before this, now she had seemed that much better a few minutes ago. Her breathing was ragged, she was sobbing, tears pouring down her cheeks as he could never have imagined before now. He felt guilt, strange guilt. He'd meant to get her attention and not cause this kind of backlash. He felt worry, or maybe fear. She was a different person now, a stranger, timid and afraid, and he didn't know what to do. He wanted the old Frankie back, and then in the next moment he felt ashamed for wanting her not to be what she was, a person who had suffered a great trauma. He knew better than that.

"What's safe?" she sniffled, wiping her nose on the shoulder of her hospital gown. "I don't know what's safe anymore. I'm supposed to be able to take care of myself. I'm..." Tears choked off whatever she meant to say. She leaned into him as he found himself pulling her into his arms, holding her steady if only so she wouldn't shake and flail about so much.

"I don't know who I am anymore," she mumbled into his shirt. "I ... lost the pieces of myself somewhere back there. And I can't find them."

He held her tighter, because it was all he could think of to do. He didn't know how to answer that question, as much as it sounded familiar. It was a different kind of trauma from what he was thinking. From what he was now feeling, holding on to her as though she could fill in the pieces of himself that he had lost, back there. He didn't know what to say.

"You'll ..." So trite. Too trite. "It'll..." Too banal. "It hurts. I know it hurts. But you're strong. You're strong, and you're smart, and you'll find your way through this." His fingers stroked through her hair, over her shoulder again. The back of her shoulder, skirting around the damp spot. "I know you will."

"I don't feel strong," she mumbled. "I feel ... I don't know. Hollowed out. Like ... scooped." Two fingers made a hooking motion through the air between them.

"You will, again. You'll fill up that empty space again, in time. You were hurt, but you're still here. And you can heal. And you will. In..."

"Time." He thought he heard a smile in her voice but didn't dare pull back enough to see. They still hadn't said the word. He wondered if she would ever tell him outright what had happened. "Yeah. I know."

"Good," he murmured. "That's good."

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