Chapter 1: The Question That Shatters His Mask
The tea kettle was a new purchase, a sleek stainless steel thing that looked alien on her stovetop. It whistled with a sharp, desperate sound that matched the tempo of her pacing. Teresa Lisbon stopped, took a deep breath that didn’t quite settle her nerves, and poured the boiling water over the leaves in the ceramic pot. The scent bloomed instantly: Lapsang Souchong. Smoke and pine and a faint hint of campfire. He loved the stuff. She’d driven to three different specialty shops across Austin to find it, which was ridiculous, and she knew it was ridiculous, but every part of this plan was built on a foundation of carefully curated ridiculousness.
She’d changed out of her work blazer into a silky top the color of slate. It felt unfamiliar against her skin. Vulnerable. The living room was too quiet, just the low hum of the central air and the slow tick of the clock on the wall. A single lamp by the worn leather couch pushed back the darkness, casting long, serious shadows. The case file—a mundane burglary ring they’d already mostly cracked—lay on the coffee table like a prop. It was an excuse. A flimsy, transparent excuse for him to come over after hours.
Headlights washed across the front window. Her heart did a hard, painful thump against her ribs. She stood frozen in the middle of the room, then forcibly made herself move to the door before he could knock.
Patrick Jane stood on her porch, his hands in the pockets of his tailor-made pants, a faint, inquiring smile on his face. The smile didn’t reach his eyes. It never really did, not since Red John. “Lisbon.You summoned. I was in the neighborhood, allegedly.”
“Come in.” She stepped back, her voice tighter than she intended. “I have the file.”
“Ah, the thrilling saga of the stolen microwave ovens.” He glided past her, his presence immediately expanding to fill the quiet space. He noticed everything.He always did. His gaze skimmed the new kettle, the tea set for two on the counter, her clothes, the precise tension in her shoulders. She saw his perceptive mind filing it all away, but he said nothing. He took a seat on the couch, one arm draped along the back, a picture of casual ease that was completely manufactured.
“Tea?” she asked, already pouring.
“You hate Lapsang.”
“I don’t hate it. It smells like a forest fire. But it’s your favorite.” She brought the cups over, sat not beside him but in the armchair opposite. Putting the coffee table between them felt necessary. She handed him the file.
His fingers, long and deft, closed around it. But he didn’t open it. He just looked at her, the lamp light carving planes of light and shadow on his face. “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” she said, too quickly. She stood, picked up her cup, and moved to sit on the couch. Not at the far end, but closer. Just a little closer than she usually did. The worn leather sighed under her weight. “Just busy lately. We haven’t had time to talk.”
He watched the space she closed between them, his blue eyes unreadable. He took a deliberate sip of the smoky tea. “Busy with Agent Pike.”
It wasn’t a question. She studied his profile, the sharp line of his nose, the set of his jaw, looking for a crack in the facade. There was nothing. Just that infuriating, polished calm. “Pike’s a good agent. We’ve been coordinating on that interstate fraud ring. It’s paperwork hell.”
She took a breath, steeling herself. “I actually heard from Grace today. And Rigsby.”
That got a flicker of genuine interest. A small, real smile touched his lips.“Really? How are the lovebirds?”
“They’re good. Really good. They sent pictures. The baby looks just like him, but she has Grace’s scowl already.” Teresa smiled into her cup. “I’m glad they finally got to be together. It was a shame they had to wait so long.” She paused, letting the memory settle. “It was hard, you know. Telling them they couldn’t both stay on my team if they pursued things. I hated doing that.”
“You were following the rules,” Jane said, his voice neutral.
“Bad rules,” she said, pressing forward. “I was glad when the CBI finally changed them. The FBI doesn’t have that same restriction, you know.”
He hummed, a low, non-committal sound. His finger traced the rim of his cup. “I’m sure there won’t be a problem. You and Pike are in two different departments. Very sensible.”
There it was. The faintest tightening at the corner of his eye. A minute tic in the muscle of his jaw. The idea of her with Pike bothered him. It was there, buried under layers of practiced nonchalance, but she saw it. The sight gave her a dangerous shot of courage.
He turned his head to look at her fully. “If that rule hadn’t been in place at the CBI,” he asked, his tone deceptively light, “was there anyone you would have dated?”
She held his gaze, her heart hammering against her ribs. She shrugged, aiming for casual. “Yes.”
He studied her, his mental gears almost audible in the quiet room. She could see him running through possibilities, old colleagues, forgotten faces. His eyebrows lifted slightly. “Ah. It was that kid in the mailroom, wasn’t it? What was his name… Josh? All the women in the office thought he was hot.”
Teresa burst out laughing, the sound startling them both. “God, no. He was a child. Way too young for me.”
“Senior Agent Manelli, then.Distinguished. Sixty years old, but he had a certain… gravitas.”
“Stop it,” she said, swatting his arm, her laughter fading into a warm, nervous energy.
“Agent Laroche? A solid man. As wide as he is tall. Bald. A domed head you could see your reflection in.”
“You’re impossible.” She took a sip of tea, buying a second. The steam warmed her face. She kept her eyes on the dark liquid. “For your information, the guy in the mailroom wasn’t the only one the women talked about.”The air changed. The playful tease evaporated, leaving something sharper, more delicate. She felt his attention focus into a single, potent point. He didn’t move. He just waited.
She put her cup down on the table. The ceramic click was too loud.Her hands felt empty. She folded them in her lap, then unfolded them. The silky fabric of her blouse felt suddenly flimsy, too intimate against her skin. The confession, held for years, was a live wire in her throat. She swallowed it down, the bitterness mixing with the smoky tea. It was too much, too soon. The air between them felt charged and fragile, like one wrong word would shatter everything. So she tried a different tactic.
She pulled back, just an inch, putting space between them on the couch. “What’s next for you?” she asked, her voice softer now. “Now that Red John is… now that it’s over. Have you ever considered… I don’t know. Moving on?”
Patrick’s eyes, which had been fixed on her with an unsettling intensity, drifted to the middle distance. He gave a slight, almost imperceptible shrug. “I’ve considered seeing someone,” he admitted, the words careful and measured. “Casually. But I doubt I will ever buy a house and settle down, if that’s what you mean.”
“Is that something you’d even want? Something serious?” She heard the hopeful note in her own voice and hated it.
He deflected smoothly, turning the question back on her like a polished mirror. “Are you serious about Pike?”
Teresa looked down at her hands. “I don’t know. We’ve gone on a few dates. He’s asked me to be exclusive. I told him I’d think about it.” She glanced up, searching his face. “He’s a good man.”
“He is,” Patrick agreed, a little too readily. “A good, solid man. Someone who could give you the life you deserve.”
She arched a brow. “And what life do you think I deserve, Jane?”
He didn’t answer immediately. She saw his knuckles whiten where he gripped his teacup, the porcelain threatening to crack under the pressure. He took a slow, deliberate sip before speaking, his tone artificially light. “You deserve a man who is solid. Who can support you. Who is loyal, and who puts your needs ahead of his own.”
Teresa sipped her own tea, the warmth doing nothing to dispel the sudden chill in her chest. She grumbled under her breath, “If I wanted that, I’d get a dog.”
Patrick froze beside her for a split second, the cup halting just before his lips. Then he finished the motion, swallowing. “Don’t sell Pike short,” he said, his voice tight. “He could make you very happy. You could have a house. A family. A stable home with a man who loves you.”
She frowned, turning fully to face him. The lamplight caught the flecks of gold in her green eyes. “It seems like you’re trying to push me at Pike the same way you pushed me at Mashburn all those years ago.”
“That was different,” he said, a flash of genuine emotion breaking through the calm façade. “I pushed you at Mashburn so you could have a little harmless fun.Pike is your choice. A serious choice.” He looked away, focusing on the dark window. “All I’ve ever wanted is for you to be happy, Teresa.”
The sound of her name in his mouth, so rarely used, hung in the quiet room. It felt like both a caress and a dismissal. The space between them on the leather couch, which had felt so charged a moment before, now felt like a vast, uncrossable gulf. The confession was still there, a live wire now coiled tightly around her heart, but the moment to release it had passed, replaced by the stark, painful outline of the future he was so carefully drawing for her—a future that stubbornly, definitively, did not include him.
Patrick set his teacup down on the coffee table with a soft, final click. He smoothed his waistcoat, a familiar gesture of retreat. “I should head home,” he said, his voice devoid of its usual melodic lift. It was flat.A door closing.
He stood and started toward the door.
A hot, sudden wave of anger broke over Teresa, washing away the paralysis. She shot to her feet. “Damn you, Patrick Jane!”
He stopped. He slowly turned, his expression one of pure, unguarded shock. She was just as shocked at her own outburst, at the volume, at the raw fracture in her voice. But the dam had broken. She didn’t care.
He was frozen in place as she advanced on him, the few feet of carpet feeling like a battlefield.
“There is no way,” she said, each word a sharp, measured chip of ice, “that you are as oblivious as you are pretending to be. Why are you being evasive?”
“What am I evading, Lisbon?” he shot back, a current of frustration seeping into his tone, cracking the calm. His eyes were dark pools, finally showing a ripple.
She stepped into his personal space, close enough to see the faint lines at the corners of his eyes, the quick pulse in his throat. “Do you think I’m blind? Do you think I don’t see your face when I mention Pike? The way you go still, the way you get that… that infuriatingly pleasant mask? What is that?”
“I am trying,” he said, the words bitten off, “not to interfere in your life.”
“You’re making decisions for me!” Her voice dropped to a quiet, seething rage.“Again. You’re deciding what’s best for me, what I can handle, what I deserve. You don’t get to do that.”
“I am trying to protect you!” he shouted, the sound startling in the quiet room. His composure shattered, leaving only stark, raw emotion.
“I do not need you to protect me!” she shouted back. “I can protect myself!” She spun away from him, running a hand through her hair, trying to catch her breath, to find her center. Her back to him, she asked, the fight leaching into exhausted confusion, “What are you protecting me from, Jane?”
She expected another deflection, another sharp retort. She braced for it.
When he spoke, his voice was so soft it was almost inaudible. The fight had drained from him completely, leaving something hollow and achingly vulnerable in its place. “From me.”
Teresa turned. She stared at him with wide, disbelieving eyes. Of all the answers—of all the lies, the jokes, the psychic nonsense—this was the last thing she expected.
“Why?” The word was a whisper. “Why would I need protection from you?”
He looked at her then, truly looked, and she saw a terrifying honesty in his gaze. It was like watching a building collapse in slow motion. “You are a good person, Teresa. A fundamentally good person. You want a solid, normal relationship. A house. A family. Something… whole.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I can’t promise you that. I have blood on my hands. My own. Other people’s. It doesn’t wash off. I hurt people. I hurt you, without ever meaning to. I am not a good man.”
“That’s not an answer,” she pressed, stepping closer again, drawn into the gravity of his pain. “What does that have to do with you and me?”
A bleak, humorless smile touched his lips. “Because I want things,” he said, the admission seeming to cost him. “I want things you would never want. Things that would… disgust you.”
The words hung in the air between them, ugly and final. Teresa stared at him, the heat of her anger cooling into something sharper, more analytical. This was a confession, but it was a cage of his own making. She didn’t move, didn’t flinch.
“How do you know that?” she asked, her voice dangerously calm. “How do you know what would disgust me? Have you ever once bothered to ask me what I want?”
He blinked, thrown by her reaction. She wasn’t running. She was standing her ground.
“I want to protect you,” he said, but the words sounded hollow now, a child’s excuse.
“From what?”
“From me.” He took a step toward her, his usual grace replaced by a predatory intent. His voice dropped, losing its melodic charm, becoming low and dangerous. “I want to protect you, Teresa. I want to own you. I want to possess you. Every thought, every breath. I want you to be so mine that the idea of anyone else even looking at you feels like a violation.”
He took another step, and she instinctively stepped back, her shoulder blades meeting the cool plaster of the wall. He closed the distance, caging her in. The scent of his cologne and the Lapsang smoke was suddenly overwhelming.
“Angela,” he breathed, the name a sacred and poisoned thing. “She understood. We were from the same skewed world. We scammed, we manipulated, we took what we wanted. There was an underlying selfishness in us both. An understanding. We knew how to protect ourselves from each other.” His eyes bored into hers, blue fire in the lamplight. “You’re not like that. You’re good. You’d break.”
“You don’t know that,” she whispered, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs.
“When I think about taking you to bed,” he continued, his lips inches from her ear, his breath hot on her skin, “I don’t imagine gentle. I imagine tying you to my bed. I imagine forcing your body to respond to me, to my touch, my mouth, my cock. I want to hear you beg me to make you come, and then beg me to stop making you come because you can’t take any more. I want to turn you into a submissive, whimpering mess that only knows my name.”
He stopped, jerking his head back as if recoiling from his own words. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to master his breathing, which came in ragged pulls.
Teresa’s own breath was shallow. A cold fear spiked through her, but beneath it, coiling hot and undeniable, was a thrill so potent it made her knees weak. Her eyes were wide, not just with shock, but with a dawning, terrifying comprehension.
“Do you love me?” she asked softly.
He flinched as if struck. “Don’t ask me that.”
She pushed away from the wall, eliminating the last inch between them. The heat of his body seeped through the thin silk of her blouse. She lifted her chin, meeting his tormented gaze. “Do you love me, Patrick?”
“Teresa, don’t—”
“That’s all you have to do,” she interrupted, her voice gaining strength.“Just say no. Deny it. Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t love me, and I will never, ever mention this again. I will walk out that door tomorrow and build that solid, normal life with Pike. Just say it.”
He stared into her eyes, and she saw the war within him—the fear, the desire, the bitter, aching loneliness. She saw the exact moment he lost. A muscle in his jaw jumped.
He whispered it, a curse and a prayer. “Damn you, woman.”
His hands shot up, catching her upper arms in a grip that was almost painful. For a terrifying second, she thought he was going to shove her away again. Instead, he used that grip to yank her forward, slamming her body flush against his. The air left her lungs in a sharp gasp.
And then his mouth was on hers.
It wasn’t a kiss. It was a claiming.A devouring. There was no tenderness, no tentative exploration. His lips were fierce and demanding, his tongue sweeping into her mouth with a raw, desperate hunger that mirrored the chaos inside her. She tasted the faint bitterness of the tea, the darker, essential taste of him. A sound escaped her, a muffled whimper lost against his lips.
She kissed him back. Not with submission, but with a fury that matched his own. Her hands flew up, tangling in his hair, pulling him closer. He groaned into her mouth, the vibration shuddering through her. One of his hands left her arm, sliding down her back to clutch her hip, grinding her against the hard, undeniable proof of his desire. The other hand fisted in her hair, tilting her head back to deepen the kiss even further.
It was a collision. Years of restraint, of hidden glances and stifled words, exploded into this single, brutal point of contact. His teeth scraped her lower lip. She bit back, a small act of defiance that made him growl and press her harder into the wall. The lamp rattled on the table.
He broke the kiss, breathing raggily, his forehead resting against hers. His eyes were wild, dark with need.
“Tell me to stop,” he ground out, the words harsh. “Tell me to leave. Now. Or I swear to God, I won’t be able to.”
Teresa looked up at him, her lips swollen, her body singing with a desperate, unfamiliar ache. She saw the monster he feared he was, and the shattered man she knew he was. She wanted both. She wanted all of it.
Her silence was her answer. Her hands, which had been fisted in his hair, slid down to cup his jaw, her thumbs tracing the sharp line of his cheekbones. Her gaze held his, steady and unflinching. “Do you love me, Patrick Jane?” She asked again.
A ragged sound tore from his throat, “I do. I’ve tried to stop but I can’t. I can’t.” He breathed in a rueful voice that was part relief, part surrender. A smile crossed her lips as she pulled his head down to hers. He kissed her again, but this time it was different. Softer, but somehow more devastating. It was a kiss that tasted of confession. His hands moved from her hair, from her hip, to frame her face, his thumbs brushing away the dampness she hadn’t realized was on her cheeks.
He walked her backward, never breaking the kiss, his mouth a desperate, hungry anchor. Her calves hit the edge of the worn leather couch and she tumbled back onto it, pulling him down with her. He followed, his body covering hers, a delicious, crushing weight. One knee slid between her thighs, pressing up against the core of her, and she arched into it with a sharp cry he swallowed.
His mouth left hers, trailing hot, open-mouthed kisses down her throat. He found the first button of her silky blouse. With a sharp, precise tug, he ripped it open. The delicate fabric gave way with a series of quiet pops, baring her skin to the lamplit air. She gasped, not in protest, but in sheer, shocked arousal. He didn’t ask.He took. And she loved it.
“Is this what you want?” he murmured against her collarbone, his voice a dark rumble she felt in her bones. His hand pushed the ruined fabric aside, his palm rough and warm against her breast. He squeezed, not gently.“This? Me, treating you like a thing I need to break apart?”
“Yes,” she hissed, tangling her fingers in his hair, pulling his mouth to hers. “Stop talking, Jane. Just… fucking show me.”
He made a sound like a snarl. He shoved the blouse from her shoulders, pinning her arms briefly before she wrestled them free. His own clothes became a frustrating barrier. She fumbled with the buttons of his waistcoat, her fingers clumsy. He sat back, kneeling between her thighs on the couch, and tore it off, sending buttons skittering across her floor. His shirt followed, pulled over his head and discarded. The sight of him, bare-chested and breathing hard, was almost too much. He was lean, defined, pale skin marked with old, faint scars—a map of a violent past. She reached for him, but he caught her wrists, pinning them above her head with one strong hand.
“No,” he said, his eyes glittering. “You don’t get to lead this.”
He used his free hand to unbutton her pants, yanking them and her underwear down her hips in one brutal, efficient motion. The cool air hit her wet heat, and she shuddered. He let go of her wrists to strip her completely, leaving her naked and exposed on the dark leather. He stared, his gaze a physical caress that felt more intimate than any touch so far. “Look at you,” he breathed, a raw reverence in his tone that conflicted beautifully with his actions. He leaned down, his mouth finding her breast, his tongue circling her nipple before he sucked it deep into the heat of his mouth. She cried out, her back bowing off the couch.
He moved lower, his lips and tongue charting a burning path down her stomach. He hooked her legs over his shoulders, his breath hot against her inner thighs. “You’re soaked,” he observed, his voice thick. “For me.After all that. After everything I just said.”
Before she could answer, his mouth was on her. There was no gentle coaxing.