Here is the last chapter of Redhead. I enjoyed writing it, it had been in my head for a while, and I'm very glad to be able to amuse certain people with it. Y'all know who you are.

And I still don't own anything.

"You want me to what?"

"Director," Lisbon said. "She's a good agent. She's had a tragedy in her past that she never had the proper counseling for, and that is what got her involved in this anyway. She's never aided Red John in anything that harmed the CBI. Bosco's team getting killed, that was somebody else. She was in the dark about O'Laughlin. She risked her life coming to us because she hates the part of her life that belongs to him."

"She's a Red John accomplice!" Bertram said, slamming his hand down on the table.

Lisbon jumped up. "Shhhhh!" He raised an eyebrow. Lisbon cleared her throat. "Sir." She sat back down. "You are a man who is very concerned with politics and PR. Arresting an agent for manslaughter is one thing. Arresting a member of my team as a Red John accomplice?" She held her raised her hands slightly off the desk, palms up. "So much worse."

"And why did you come to me?" Bertram asked. "You always go running off with a Jane plan without my knowledge."

"Jane…" Lisbon cocked her head slightly. "Jane doesn't know."

Bertram's eyebrows shot up. "Jane doesn't know."

Lisbon shook her head. "I didn't think that would be the best idea."

Bertram looked at her for a long time. Then he sighed. "What exactly…and I mean exactly, do you need me to do?"

Lisbon took in a breath. "Today, you're going to receive an anonymous tip that there is a body at the apartment complex where Van Pelt lives, right outside her place, in the bushes. Take Van Pelt in for questioning yourself, we can't get another team involved, and she's going to confess. Then leave her alone for a few minutes. When you come back, you'll find her dead with slit wrists."

"But really, you will get her out of the building and she'll go into witness protection."

"Yes," Lisbon said. "I feel that she still could help us in finding Red John, and here she'll be safe."

Bertram sighed. "I don't like the conspiracy." He drummed his fingers on the table. "Have you talked to Witness Protection? We don't have Red John in custody, and usually that is reserved for people whose testimony is certain in coming."

Lisbon nodded. "I…I know a few who owe me a favor."

Bertram looked at her strangely again. Then he let out a heavy sigh. "Okay, I'll do it," he said. "But – if this gets out…"

"It won't," Lisbon said firmly.

"You're a good agent, Lisbon," he said. "But you need to pay more attention to your team."

Lisbon blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Van Pelt has been acting oddly all morning," Bertram said. "She looks distracted…guilty even. I noticed that on one walk through the room. You should go and ask her – publicly – if anything is bothering her."

Lisbon got it. "Right." She stood up. "Thank you, sir. Thank you very much."

Most of it went according to plan. Lisbon asked Van Pelt if she needed to talk about something. "I thought you were ready to be honest with me," she said, "but you're hiding something, I can tell." Van Pelt had looked just as startled as Lisbon had hoped.

Rigsby used the phone that Cho picked up at the store and an Irish accent to call in the body, and Bertram sent another team to investigate. When news of the body was brought in, Bertram showed up and asked to speak to Van Pelt. Jane was too busy being thoroughly startled to notice that Rigsby and Cho weren't great at pretending to be surprised.

Van Pelt's address was listed as the site of the murder. Bertram made a public scene in demanding that she go to interrogation and talk to him. He emerged from the room ten minutes later, angry and fired up. "Well, she confessed," he said angrily.

Lisbon and Cho jumped up to protest, Rigsby right behind them. Jane sat up on his couch and started.

After a few minutes of yelling, Rigsby stormed down to the interrogation room with Bertram right behind him, telling him to stay out of it. It seemed as if the whole CBI building shook with his screams.

They brought her body out on a stretcher, her skin, pale with fear, looked deathly as she played dead, trained in the same technique Jane had used to fake his death in prison years before. Her wrists soaked the sheet and her clothes with the fake blood.

Somewhere between the interrogation chamber and the front door, two people in uniform approached the workers carrying the stretcher and took over. Van Pelt's body and the two carriers entered a van.

"Okay," Rigsby said. We're clear.

Lisbon pulled the sheet off of Van Pelt's face and she sat up, gasping as she dared to take a normal breath for the first time in nearly ten minutes. "Did we do it?"

"It all happened so fast," Lisbon said, pulling off her blonde wig. "No one had time to think."

"You wouldn't be the first Red John accomplice to kill herself," Rigsby said, looking in the review mirror and offering a smile. Lisbon had told him about Van Pelt that morning – she couldn't have pulled this off without Jane unless Rigsby and Cho were involved. He was handling it, for now; she imagined that he was going to break down sometime later, but that was understandable, given that she'd killed herself in an interrogation chamber.

"Where exactly are we going?" Van Pelt said.

"The home of a U.S. Marshall," Lisbon said. "I've known her for years; she's going to help you."

Van Pelt sighed. "I still don't like having a grand conspiracy all on my account."

"Well, you don't really have a choice anymore," came a voice from the far back of the van. "You've already put so many careers at stake for you."

"Oh, my God," Lisbon said. "Jane…what are you doing here?"

"Oh, come on," Jane said. "It was obvious you were planning something. I didn't know what, but you were planning something. None of you are particularly good lairs."

"Jane," Lisbon said. "I'm going to need you to…"

"Remain calm?" he said. "Not freak out?" He let out a laugh. "Please, Lisbon, my emotions are my own." He looked at Van Pelt. "I have to say," he said. "I never pegged you as someone who would help out Red John. You always seemed to have a good, good heart."

"She does," Lisbon said, "that's why…."

Jane waved a hand to dismiss her, looking back at the redhead, who, for all her training, looked terrified. They stared at each other for several seconds. Rigsby glanced in the mirror. Lisbon couldn't think of a thing to say.

After a moment, Jane sighed. "I don't hate you, if that's what you're wondering."

"But she-!" Lisbon protested, before she registered what Jane had said.

Van Pelt looked up. "You don't?"

"Nah," Jane said. "You had nothing to do with my wife and daughter's death, that much I can tell just by looking at you. And your distress at O'Laughlin's death was genuine. My guess, you were roped into Red John sometime after that tragedy that you had in your past. But you have a good heart, I was right about that, and you fell out of his good graces when he discovered that he couldn't totally brainwash you. Am I right?"

Van Pelt swallowed. "You're good."

"And Lisbon," Jane said, shifting his gaze to the woman seated in front of him. "You kept this from me."

"You're a loose cannon," Lisbon said. "You're unpredictable. How was I supposed to know you'd be all forgiving?"

Jane shrugged. "I guess I'm still full of surprises, then," he said, grinning. "Good, wouldn't want this job to get boring, now would we?"

Under an overpass, in traffic, Lisbon, Van Pelt, Jane, and Rigsby hopped out of the van and into another car. Cho jumped from the other car into the van. The exchange took less than fifteen seconds.

At the Marshall's house, Rigsby and Van Pelt exchanged a tearful, long hug good-bye. "You come back," he whispered. "After we get him, you come back."

"I will," she whispered back.

Rigsby walked to the door, looked back, and exited the house.

Jane walked up to Van Pelt, and, to her surprise, gave her a quick hug. Then he pulled back, looked her in the eye, and said, "your information. It will help us get him. We'll find him, we'll cut him open, and we'll watch every last drop of blood drain out of him while he writhes in agony. Because of what you told Lisbon," he said. "Which I assume she'll be telling me as soon as we get out of here."

Van Pelt smiled. "I appreciate your forgiveness," she said.

Jane opened his mouth to say something else, but then opted out of it. He nodded to Lisbon and left the room.

"Boss," Van Pelt said, choking out the word. "Thank you. Thank you so much."

Lisbon smiled, surprised at how wet her own eyes were. "You be safe," she said. "And come back, okay?" Damn, she wasn't used to being this emotional.

Van Pelt nodded, then moved in for a hug. It was rare Lisbon wanted a hug, so she made the most of it, wrapping her arms tightly around the redhead. "You did the right thing," she whispered.

Van Pelt was smiling when they broke apart. "So did you."

"So," Lisbon said, leaving the house on foot with Jane. "You just forgave her, like that?"

"Eh," Jane said. "She was young, like I said. She's just the personality to get caught up in something like that. It almost worked again with Bret Stiles, and that's almost a decade later. But she'd learned by then. I suppose I should have suspected something then, but…" he shrugged. "She's a good girl. She just fell in with the wrong people. And hey, she turned her life around."

"You wouldn't be so quick to forgive if she'd had anything to do with your family's death," Lisbon said.

"Are you trying to make me angry with her?" Jane said. He stopped and turned to face her. "Are you so sure that I was going to go after her with a knife or something that you're trying to provoke me just so you can be right?" He shook his head. "Narcissist."

"I'm not a narcissist!" she protested, jogging to catch up to him when he took off at a fast walk. "I'm not!"

"Okay," he said, putting his hands in his pockets and facing forward. "You know, I'm thankful, actually."

"Yeah?" Lisbon said. "How so?"

"Now we have a very good chance at catching Red John. And we're finally one step ahead of him. And Van Pelt had nothing to do with any of my personal pain. It all worked out, actually."

Lisbon rolled her eyes. "Of course you'd say that."

"Of course?" He raised an eyebrow. "Just moments ago you were convinced I was going to feed Van Pelt to a provoked Great White."

"I never said that," she protested. Jane shrugged, grinned, and they kept on walking.