Ronnie Masters | the MENTALIST (COMPLETE)

BLOODSHOT : pt II

Since this episode was just randomly related to Jane's past I decided to rewrite it to give Ronnie some more presence in the story, which means I'm entirely reworking it, and the second half of the episode has more originality which means I'm building it from scratch. Thanks for your patience and I hope it's worth the wait!

The next three hours involved Ronnie dropping into a deep sleep after the exhausting emotional onslaught while the team worked to figure out why Ranger Kyle had been strapped to a bomb and murdered.

Cho had done enough research to find out that Kyle Brandon had been reported missing the night before from the prison where he'd been held since his arraignment for the murder of Kara Palmer and attempted murder of Nicole Gilbert. Prison security had done their evening rounds and found his cell empty apart from the body of his murdered cellmate, and one of the prison guards missing. Cameras had recorded the missing guard giving Kyle a medical staff uniform to wear and then the system logged the guard's passkey being used to exit the building, as well as a probationary prison nurse's ID being used by Kyle.

How the ranger had gone from being voluntarily broken out of prison to very involuntarily being cuffed to a bomb outside of the CBI was the next question.

A preliminary background check on the missing prison guard had revealed that he was single, no existing family members, and was up to his eyeballs in student loans and car payments. That information was enough to support the theory that the guard had been bought off—his compliance in return for voided debts and money to run with. Van Pelt was monitoring his bank accounts and cellphone, but as of yet had caught nothing.

Cho and Rigsby had gone to speak with the prison administrators to get an idea of the guard's behavior and personal life, only learning that he was a quiet young man who was trying to make ends meet, but had been a nuisance to the schedule because he was too timid to work the grounds at night.

Being anxious about the hostility of his work environment would lend to being enticed by the offer of not having to be a prison guard anymore.

After that, Rigsby and Lisbon had gone to speak with Carla Masters. When they'd suggested that she'd somehow had Ranger Kyle broken out of prison and murdered him before her daughter's eyes from within the women's correctional facility, the psychopath had laughed. She'd made no claim to the incident and had no interest in whether or not Ronnie had survived the explosion, far too concerned with whether or not Lisbon was going to get her a deal to be released. On top of that, she either genuinely didn't remember Ranger Kyle Brandon or she made a very convincing show of lying about it.

That was about the point that Ronnie had woken up.

Blinking away the haze of the dull headache and the aching throb of her shoulder, she found Jane sitting in the chair next to her, patches over his eyes and a walking stick clutched in his hand. His head swung exaggeratedly in her general direction when he heard her shifting about, trying to get her bearings, and somehow he convinced her to help him break themselves out of the hospital and go lay around in recovery at the CBI instead.

And that was how Ronnie found herself shuffling towards the bullpen, blind-as-a-bat Jane hanging on her arm, when Lisbon caught them. The boss threw her hands up in aggravation, marching to her two subversive agents with furious vigor. "What the hell? What on earth are you two doing here?" She ignored Jane entirely and swept her eyes over Ronnie, observing her partially hunched frame, the inward curling of her left shoulder, and the frightening paleness of her face. "Masters, go sit down before you collapse on my floor."

"Thank you, ma'am." Ronnie weakly deposited Jane's arm into Lisbon's and stumbled away to find her desk before she threw up. All the blood was rushing from her head and causing a powerfully piercing pain to beat through her skull, and every movement of her left arm felt like the appendage would split from her body.