Fic: Remain Faithful, part two [White Collar]
Part 1 /
What's Past Was Prologue
The team takes photographs of everything in the apartment when they go in to place the bug. Peter goes through them on his laptop, sitting at his kitchen table, pretending the house isn't too quiet, too empty. El isn't upstairs in bed already and he feels the difference in the air that never stirs to anything except his own motion.
He has to move out of the house or he's going to go insane missing her. It took him a week to really believe she'd left, but he still feels her all around him because they made the house their home together. Christ, he was a fool, a worse fool than if he'd fallen for another woman. He sees it now: he abandoned El in place and expected her to always be waiting, whenever he felt like paying attention to their marriage again.
He's tried calling her at work. She screens his calls. He doesn't think playing stalker would be so funny when she's divorcing him as it was when he first wanted to ask her out. The single most horrible outcome he can imagine is getting a reprimand and a suspension, and being pulled off the Moreau case after screwing his marriage up because of it.
There's nothing left except catching Kate.
Maybe he can put his life back together afterward. He can't do anything until the case is closed, though. Peter's certain of that on a gut level.
Caffrey is the key. Everyone misses that. Caffrey's Kate's Achilles' heel, her soft spot, her mistletoe. Kate won't or can't give him up.
Find Caffrey, find Kate.
He's found Neal Caffrey, right back in New York, working a straight job and keeping a suspiciously low profile. Getting the warrant to search and bug Caffrey's apartment cost Peter a favor he doubts he'll enjoy paying off, but it's worth it. His team went through Caffrey's place the day before and now he has photographs to go with the dry reports and audio surveillance transcripts.
Peter's transfixed, so much so he forgets about El's absence.
Even on a poor laptop screen, the paintings are breathtaking. Peter feels a little stupid. He never put together that the sketchbooks and half-finished paintings abandoned on the occasions he or someone else in law enforcement draw too close to one of Kate's boltholes or the hand drawn cards she leaves for him - too often in his motel room or car or his baggage - aren't her work. They're Caffrey's.
God, Caffrey's good; it's almost a slap in the face. Kate was stealing Rembrandts and sleeping with a young Da Vinci. How in hell has he missed this? Peter knows though: it's Caffrey's almost too handsome looks. Just like everyone else, all Peter has let himself see is eye candy, Kate's boy toy, someone who fills out a tux and looks the way Kate needs an escort to look. He's been stupid.
Some things make more sense now. Kate Moreau wouldn't keep anyone around just for his looks, not even someone madly in love with her. She can find a man the way a drunk can find a drink, but Caffrey's a genius, someone not so easy to replace. Caffrey's got the brains and the talent to go with his looks. He's the one responsible for the frankly amazing forgeries she's used in some of her cons and thefts, not that Peter will ever prove it. But it isn't even that Caffrey is an asset to Kate's lifestyle. No, it's more.
Peter knows Kate inside and out, her favorite coffee, her ring size, her dislike of asparagus. He understands abruptly: Caffrey's part of Kate's cache, one more rare and amazing acquisition. The old cliché of stealing a heart is nothing but the truth when it comes to Kate and Caffrey.
Except Caffrey isn't with her now. Peter narrows his eyes. Maybe it isn't necessary to know to make the case, but he can't help wondering why. He knows Kate, though. She isn't willing to let anything go. She's going to keep on looking for Caffrey until she has her prize back. If this is part of some long con, she's still going to contact Caffrey sooner or later.
He opens another window, this one with a surveillance shot of Caffrey on the front steps of his apartment building, dressed for work, warily surveying the street. They need to keep the surveillance light and at a distance or he'll make them, even if he is looking for Kate instead.
"Why did you leave her, kid?" Peter asks in the silence of his mostly dark kitchen.
The photograph offers no answers.
Maybe Caffrey got sick of life on the run after three years of flitting back and forth from Europe to North America with stops in Brazil and Argentina, Hong Kong, and the Middle East. It doesn't seem likely.
"What did Kate finally do?"
Did she hurt him? Stupid question. As far as Peter's pieced together, Kate's hurt Caffrey more than once. Could someone have threatened Caffrey enough to make him run all the way back to New York?
Why hide from Kate?
A shiver hits Peter. There are only a few things he can imagine would send a man running from the woman he loves. Drugs, human trafficking, or murder spring to mind. None of them are anything Peter ever thought Kate would stoop to doing. If she did though, if she did... He needs to stop her. Cons and theft are one thing, active harm is another. But he hasn't heard even a whisper of such things about Kate.
He knows one thing, though: Kate doesn't let go easily. She'll be looking for Caffrey, whether to win him back or shut him up.
Peter rubs the frown lines deepening between his brows. It feels warped to do this, but he's going to help Kate Moreau find Caffrey. When she does, he's going to arrest her and send her to prison. It's the least he can do after all the pain he has put El through because this case. He feels a badly for Caffrey, but he has to do it.
Hope Leaves a Scar
Peter's late and Elizabeth isn't surprised, not after he canceled their regular lunch date. No matter how he tries, he still gets caught up in cases. Sometimes he has to work. Even in White Collar, sometimes lives or at least livelihoods depend on him.
She's perfectly content to wait. Unlike many women, she's not embarrassed to dine alone or worried if anyone thinks she's been stood up. She looks good, she feels good, her meal will be delicious even if she eats it alone. A little quiet time for herself over a meal she didn't cook is well worth appreciating however it occurs.
The glass of white wine she ordered while waiting has a lovely taste. Crisp and delicate as spring with a scent reminiscent of pears. She'll ask the waiter to recommend what would go well with another glass and take a taxi home.
Her thoughts are on a reception Premier Events is coordinating. The invitations will need to be made out by hand; the client wants the personal touch. The client wants calligraphy too. Elizabeth puts her wine glass down and spins a silver salad fork in her fingers. She's going to have hand cramps before she's finished with those invitations. Yvonne is a perfect assistant and her other workers all more than competent, but none of them can do calligraphy of the quality necessary for this.
Peter arrives less apologetic than distracted, confirming Elizabeth's suspicion that he's been caught up in a case. He looks energized and exhausted at once, a state she remembers him inhabiting well. She smiles despite herself as the waiter shows Peter his seat opposite her and Peter pauses to kiss her cheek before taking it. He smells faintly of cologne and his face is smooth; he shaved before showing up, one of those little things Peter's always done that she loves.
"I know I'm late."
Her watch shows it's only been twenty minutes. "Enough to notice, but you could still chalk it up to traffic," she agrees.
"From the Federal Building." Peter's voice is dry as a good sherry as he mocks the idea he could get away with lying to her.
"Maybe you were somewhere else?" Elizabeth teases. His smile warms her insides. Despite all her doubts - along with her sister's and her parents' - she's beginning to believe they can try again. It was never his love for her she doubted after all. Of course, Peter's not perfect, but what man is? For the last three years, Peter has tried everything to win her back except offering to quit the Bureau, which isn't something Elizabeth would ever want him to do.
"NYPD are not cooperating," Peter admits.
Elizabeth hesitates but finds herself asking, "You've got an investigation that involves the police department?"
Peter's face does something strange. Elizabeth reads alarm and a hint of shame in the flickering emotions that cross it. He opens his mouth to answer twice and says nothing each time. Her eyebrows go up, because Peter doesn't waffle much and almost never with her. He wants to hide something, she realizes.
Before she can prompt him for an answer, Peter's phone sounds. "I've got take this," he says.
"I know."
Elizabeth sips her wine and glances through the menu the waiter discreetly provided when Peter arrived. She tries not to listen to Peter's side of the conversation but inevitably hears things. Truthfully, curiosity does play into it. Deciding what to order does not compare to the White Collar division's cases when it comes to interesting her.
"Any leads on Caffrey at all?" Peter demands.
The name sounds familiar to Elizabeth. She knows it, though not so well as the one she remembers linked to it. The wine no longer tastes so fine and her appetite disappears under a wave of bitter anger. Damn Peter. Caffrey was the beautiful artist, Kate Moreau's lover, the one Peter used to trap her. Damn him. Damn them both.
Did a brown-out just hit? The dining room, aglitter with crystal and china and silver, dims. Candles flickering out would explain it, but in truth the lights are still as bright. It's all in her head. Elizabeth gulps down the last of the wine and sets the empty glass down jerkily, the base clinking against a butter knife's blade. The small sound draws Peter's attention from his phone call. He finishes quickly, meeting Elizabeth's stony gaze while he speaks, and she focuses on the blue glow from the phone's screen that reflects off his jawline until he puts it away.
"You're chasing her again," Elizabeth states.
"No."
"Don't lie, Peter. You are very bad at it."
"I'm not chasing Kate Moreau."
Ignoring the sinking feeling in under her heart for the moment, Elizabeth demands, "Tell me."
"She escaped yesterday."
"They want you on the case."
"NYPD want me off the case, actually," Peter replies, an irony Elizabeth can't parse yet. "I found her. She's dead, El."
How horrible that even that isn't enough, Elizabeth thinks. It isn't enough to make her forgive. It isn't enough to make Peter give up. Nothing will ever be.
"I found her in Caffrey's apartment. Someone shot her. Caffrey's gone. NYPD thinks he did it. El, he didn't. I know he didn't."
Despair doesn't bubble. It seeps, it's a taint that contaminates and spreads, unseen, until everything that seems fine is really poisoned under the surface.
"I should back off, but I know - I know this guy. He's not a killer. He's smart and talented and he visited her every week, El, every week without fail. Then he disappears. No. I don't buy it. That's why she broke out and I'm afraid that if he's not on the run, then whoever killed Kate has him."
Obsession's a stranger thing than depression. Stranger than passion. It's a fire that can burn without fuel. Elizabeth has watched it catch hold of Peter before. It seems so unfair she has to see it again. All of it, all the force and brilliance and determination that make Peter who he is, the very things Elizabeth loves about him, are shifting before her eyes, but not back to her.
Peter talks about Caffrey for the next ten minutes, repeating or testing new arguments for Caffrey's innocence, along with worry that he's in danger. It's a mystery too and Peter loves a mystery.
The hurt's almost deeper than when she left him.
All Peter can think of now is Neal Caffrey.
She expects Peter will find the artist. He caught Kate eventually. She almost hopes he fails, though. Almost hopes Caffrey's dead, but that shames her, so she hopes instead that he makes a fool of Peter. The way she feels like she's the fool here.
Peter used to tell her about the things Kate was suspected of doing; the men she seduced or fooled or outright stole from and Elizabeth wonders detachedly if Kate's infidelities hurt Caffrey the way Peter's obsession did her. It's funny, but Kate Moreau never tried to seduce Peter, not that there aren't so many other ways a man can betray a marriage. Sex is not everything, even between lovers. She feels something like sympathy for Caffrey, reflecting on that. This pain, her pain, is in no way his fault. She bites her lower lip, sinking her teeth in hard and tasting her lipstick, and doesn't let any of the things she's feeling spill out. No, not yet, not until she's home where no one can see.
Her mind races.
She remembers the surveillance photos of Caffrey. Hard not to remember a face that classic. Elizabeth's job and her own taste brings her in contact with the finest things and the most beautiful people in New York. Caffrey could out shine all of it on the surface.
Peter could never fall in love with Kate Moreau, Elizabeth acknowledges, even though Kate was so many of the things Peter admires. Kate was smart and beautiful, but she was still on the wrong side of the law Peter reveres. Elizabeth has always been able to read when Peter was attracted to someone, even when he doesn't know it yet, and though she's never seen Peter and Caffrey together, she thinks he has all the attributes to spark Peter into another obsession. And Caffrey isn't a criminal...
She listens as Peter talks about Caffrey's art and it's clear as glass that he's attracted by Caffrey's talent.
Funny how she can hear it in Peter's voice, in his expression, in the language of his body now, and see transparently what he doesn't know it yet himself. She knows him so well, but she can never hold him. She loved Peter too easily, he never needed to outsmart her to have her, never presented him with a mystery, never flirted with danger or needed him to save her. She never saw that that's what he wants: someone basically unattainable on some level. Kate was a criminal; Peter could never have her. Caffrey's not a criminal, but he's an artist, and if he's as good as Peter says, that will always hold a place in him that Peter can't touch. She can see it now, that essential male want for what can't be grasped. Peter will repeat himself, and his mistakes, and for the last three years, she's been doing the same. Peter will always be a good man, but all the courting, all the love, it's all been because she left him. This is the worst day she's had in years.
Of course, the attraction may be moot. Elizabeth has no idea if Caffrey is bisexual. It really doesn't matter if Caffrey would accept or reject Peter's interest though, not to her and Peter's relationship. The one she sees now she should have cut off three years ago. She's not going to go through this again.
Love doesn't conquer all. Love just makes failing hurt more.
"Peter," she interrupts him. "I'm going home now."
She drops enough money from her purse on the table to cover the cost of her wine, a tip, and anything Peter may want to order.
"What?"
"I don't think we'll do this again. It's not working. Nothing's different."
"I thought - " He's bewildered. The shock will wear off and he'll get a little angry, but Elizabeth steels her heart and straightens her spine. One of them has to face reality. They've both been spinning their wheels.
"Please don't call me for a while." She manages an ironic smile. He won't. Once Peter gets the bit between his teeth, little can stop him. He'll fall so deep into this case he won't even remember her most of the time. "I need some time away from you."
"Is this because I was talking about Caffrey?"
"Yes and no."
"He's in trouble, El. Am I supposed to ignore that?"
Yes, she thinks, he's nothing to you or me. But Peter wouldn't be the good man he is if he thought that way.
"No," she tells him gently. "You're supposed to do what you do best. That just doesn't include being married or with me anymore."
No More Second Chances
Three months of watching and everyone on the case is burned out and bored. Peter's brainstorm is looking more like a fizzling drizzle. The agents in the surveillance van lean on their elbows in front of the monitors and fight to keep heavy-lidded eyes open. The summer sun turns the inside of the van into an oven, cooking the odors of sweat, cologne, and everyones' lunches into their clothes, their skin, and the equipment. Peter's just as guilty as any of the junior agents; he's zoned out, just waiting out his shift since it's his op. Even the bug in Caffrey's apartment fails to offer anything interesting. He's the quietest guy most of them have ever listened in on. Sometimes he sings while he's cleaning, but he doesn't talk to himself, and his phone calls tend to revolve around ordering take-out and quick work-related conversations. Paulson is the only one who has even heard him curse; one morning he burnt himself on a hot pan and dropped it on his toe.
Caffrey curses in Russian, German, French and Spanish, along with good old Anglo-Saxon, according to the translators who listened to the recording. It's impressive, but it's been weeks since he did anything that interesting. He isn't even limping any longer.
The bug isn't placed particularly advantageously. They're all used to spats of static along with the long stretches of near silence when Caffrey's painting. Caffrey plays a lot of jazz and classic Rat Pack songs. It could be worse, listening to Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald beats ear-splitting death metal, after all. If he has a girlfriend besides Kate, or friends at all, Caffrey keeps them away from his apartment. On the whole, watching and listening to him isn't the worst assignment in the FBI, but it's boring.
It would be a break in routine to go into the apartment again. He half wants to, though it's a risk they can't take. Peter wishes he could just stand inside though and absorb the feel of the space, soak in what it could tell him about Caffrey. He wants to see what Caffrey's painting now, with his own eyes, not a color-skewed picture on a pixilated laptop screen. It's frustration, of course, rasping away his patience until he's tempted to spook Caffrey just to see where he runs.
Hell, Peter's tempted more and more to just walk up to Caffrey and ask him where the hell Kate is and why he's hiding from her, since it's become clear over the last month that's exactly what Caffrey's doing.
Paulson opens a can of soda with a shish-snap and gulps some down. She gestures to the cooler holding more but Peter shakes his head. What goes in must go out and the convenience store a block over is going to charge the Bureau rent on the washroom there soon.
It would be a hell of thing if they blew the surveillance because someone had to take a piss. It would be just like Kate to catch them out that way too. Peter imagines walking into the washroom and finding a note from her on the mirror over the sink. He almost chuckles, picturing the laughter that would gleam in Kate's eyes.
Idly, Peter wonders if Kate loses her masks when she and Caffrey make love. Does Caffrey get to see the real her behind those big blue eyes? A flash of what Caffrey must look like hits him and Peter's breath hitches.
He shifts uncomfortably in his seat, masking his body's reaction to that thought by peeling his sweat-sticky clothes loose from his skin. Where the hell did that come from? He's always been aware of how beautiful Kate is, but he's never wanted her before. Peter grimaces at himself. It isn't Kate, he realizes, it's the idea of her and Caffrey together.
Damn. It's just because he hasn't been with anyone since Elizabeth left him, he tells himself.
The rustle of someone moving around, then the radio and the plaintive lament of But Not For Me playing doesn't stir any of them out of their lethargy.
Not until the apartment door opens again, the radio is switched off, and they hear Kate Moreau's voice.
"I've missed you so much, Neal."
Peter jolts out of his half-doze and glares at the other two agents who somehow missed seeing Kate Moreau make her way into Caffrey's apartment. Without Judge Walters' warrant for the bug in the apartment, they still wouldn't know she's there.
"Get back up here, no sirens, unmarked cars, and cover every damn exit on this place," Peter orders. He's not letting her get away after three months watching, after three damn years running her down. "Send someone up to the roof too."
Kate's like a cat, she runs up.
The bug gives them Caffrey's voice.
"Kate."
The sounds that come next can only be one thing, bodies pressed to each other and a passionate kiss. Peter imagines them embracing, the way he saw them once on a rainy Parisian street, before Kate caught his reflection in a patisserie window, grabbed Caffrey's hand, and ran away, laughing.
"You shouldn't have come here."
"I had to."
"You lied to me." Caffrey's voice is so quiet. There isn't even any anger there, just a crack of sorrow. "You used me."
"Neal. I love you."
"Until the next con."
"No more cons. I'm done. We can be together now."
Paulson rolls her eyes, but Peter can see it's getting to her too. Paulson's another romantic; two divorces and she still believes in true love. Peter does too, and Kate sounds sincere, but Kate always sounds sincere, she's a con. Peter hopes Caffrey doesn't fall for it. Wishes he could warn Caffrey not to believe her. Stay cynical, kid, he wants to say.
"Why should I believe you?" Caffrey's moving around the apartment, maybe pacing, and there's a rattle from the Venetian blinds. "Why come back now? What do you want?"
"I want you to come with me."
"I have a life here."
"We can have a life together." It must not be enough. Caffrey doesn't answer and Kate begins to plead. "I know I hurt you. I lied about so many things... "
"So what's changed?"
Peter hesitates, because he wants to hear it too. What happened? What finally made Neal Caffrey run away from Kate Moreau, when every other time she left him? Did she think he'd always be faithful? What made him leave, what made her come to him? What's different this time? Is anything?
"Me."
"Kate - "
"I love you, Neal. I never lied about that. I'll never lie to you again."
Peter checks his Glock, making sure he can draw it smoothly from his shoulder holster and not hang up on the vest. Sweat runs down the center of his back. It's not all the smothering heat. It's excitement. Adrenaline. In a minute he's going to win.
After three years, he's going to beat Kate Moreau. Kate the Great, the Queen of Cons. It's exhilarating.
"Anyone fucks this up and I will make sure you spend the rest of your careers interviewing alien abduction freaks in Roswell," he tells his team.
"We got it, boss," Jones, his youngest agent, says with a flash of teeth.
"Let's go."
Six floors up and he's trying not to pant. He lets Jones kick in the door.
Kate and Caffrey are silhouetted, two figures so close they're one, against the apartment's windows - those windows are the reasons Caffrey chose it, there's an easel set up to take advantage of the light - wrapped in each other. She's wearing a deep red dress and Caffrey's in a suit from work, the dark color framing her. They almost glow, too beautiful to be real: Caffrey with his long artist's fingers framing Kate's face and Kate with one hand curled round Caffrey's shoulder and the other tangled in his hair. They're like a painting themselves.
They both flinch as Peter and his team pour into the room, but they don't move, cleaving tighter, holding their last kiss until Jones pulls Caffrey away from her and Paulson turns Kate to face Peter.
"Agent Burke," Kate says. A toss of her head settles her long hair over her shoulder and she smiles at him, rueful and defiant. "I'd offer you a kiss too, if you weren't a married man."
"Katherine Moreau," Peter says as he closes the cuffs around her wrists, close enough he can smell her perfume, the same perfume she left on a negligée she hid in his suitcase once, "you are under arrest." The rest of the Miranda warning almost recites itself.
She leans into him and whispers, "I hope you didn't forget your anniversary again for this."
He didn't have anyone to celebrate it with this year and abruptly Peter's elation is all gone, replaced with weariness and anger.
"Pat, get her out of here," he orders.
Kate looks surprised for a microsecond, then sways away under Paulson's guidance, like she's a date on her arm not a suspect under arrest. She ruins the effect at the door when she drags her feet and half-turns, breaking the con's cardinal rule: looking back. Peter knows she doesn't see him, just Caffrey. He thinks, shocked, she does love him.
Caffrey is standing, his arms wrapped around himself, watching as Kate's led away, still limned by the sunset. His eyes are the only color in his face, electric and intent, giving away the tension he's otherwise reigning in. The effort not to react to what's happened thrums off him. Jones hovers cautiously beside him, ready to stop Caffrey if necessary.
"Kate," Caffrey calls abruptly, arms loosening, and it looks like giving up, "I love you too."
And She Is Not With Me
"I found a new place yesterday," Neal tells Mozzie in the dragging silence after he can't cry anymore. Kate's dead, Kate's dead, Kate's dead. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, you don't want to know, and, hey, it's New York, scoring a great place is always a conversational topic. Kate's dead, he has a new apartment, one of these things is not like the other. He clutches at his elbows and rocks himself like that will keep him from flying apart in a thousand shattered pieces.
"You know you can stay as long as you need, mon frère."
Neal shakes his head like he can shake away the truth. Thinking is bad. He longs to retreat into comforting emptiness.
Mozzie's the best friend Neal's ever had. He only knows him because of Kate, of course, and Kate's dead. This is all a replay of what happened when Kate left him the first time. Only Kate's dead, and it's not the same at all, no one broke his fingers, no one took his paintings, no one died before. No one died until Barcelona. It's not even the same place Mozzie put him up then. This is an actual apartment; the first time Neal ended up relying on Mozzie's generosity, when Kate betrayed them both, it was a storage unit.
The flooring between his feet is darker than everywhere else. He spilled the coffee Mozzie made. The smell is suddenly horrible. He feels dehydrated, a husk of himself. The tape holding the splint on his finger is dirty gray at the edges and peeling away. Neal picks at it with his good hand, peeling it up and smoothing it back into place. Now it won't stick. He wants to unstick the last week of his life.
"I see you found some clothes."
"I did."
An entire walk-in room full of elegantly tailored suits and anything else he could imagine. Neal suspects if he thinks of something he wants and accidentally mentions it where June can hear, it will soon show up. The way she looks at him would be creepy if there was a sexual component, but there isn't, and she isn't. She sent a bag of things with him, along with keys to the front and back doors, the loft and the studio, so he could move in whenever he wants. He realizes he came back to Mozzie's and conked out on the couch without telling him about her. He was just so tired and relieved and now it means nothing. Maybe nothing will ever again. He can't think past the awful pulse of Kate's dead, Kate's dead, Kate's dead.
He makes himself say something and only hears it after. "June Ellington."
Mozzie rolls with the seeming non sequitur. "Byron Ellington's wife? They say she's got two fortunes in that mansion of hers: everything he painted and everything he bought."
"Guess so," Neal agrees blankly. He can't care, though the day before he'd been entranced by the gathered beauty on June's walls and scattered through her Riverside mansion. Just imagining it all would have turned Kate on, made her eyes bright with want.
He didn't know it then, that Kate's dead. Kate's never going to con again. Never lift another painting. Never pull Neal into bed after he's created a forgery for her and let him paint her skin with his stained fingers. Never laugh. Never brush his hair out of his eyes.
Kate.
"You met her?"
June. June. Mozzie's talking about June. Not Kate. Kate's dead. Neal doesn't need to remind himself, but he can't stop it, it's all he can think.
"Yeah. Yesterday." If the newspaper article is accurate, Neal was charming and being charmed by the famous painter's widow at a thrift store while someone killed the woman he loves. The food he ate earlier threatens to rise up. He concentrates on breathing in and out slowly, thinking of nothing else but filling and emptying his lungs. His eyes are so dry they burn.
Kate was dying and he was sipping coffee with June. Why didn't he know? How could Kate be dead without Neal knowing? His whole body trembles. "I - " He doesn't remember what else he meant to say.
"Neal."
He jerks his gaze up and tries to figure out what Mozzie has been saying. He hasn't heard any of it, isn't sure how much time just disappeared from his experience. Agony and denial are a vortex in his head, sucking in everything else, a roar of pain drowning out everything else. Thought can only gasp and then is pulled under again.
Mozzie's arm is around his shoulders. He doesn't know when Mozzie pulled him in so close. He can't think, he just hurts, a million wishes and if-onlies flying through his brain, careening off each other. What if he'd told Kate on that last visit? What if he hadn't sworn he wouldn't be back, what if he hadn't said good-bye when she wouldn't tell him what Fowler wanted from her? What -
"Neal," Mozzie says again and shakes him a little, still holding on as he does so, gentle yet firm, "will she give you an alibi? June? 'Cause the filthy cops are going to try to screw you over and pin Kate's murder on you."
Should he care? Kate's dead. They can lock him away. They can put him down. What does it matter? Everything's over. Neal almost says as much, but the words dry up in his mouth, caught like dry tinder as a flicker of anger catches inside him. If he goes down for Kate's murder, the bastard who did it will get to walk away without paying.
Kate's dead and Neal wants the man responsible to suffer for that, for the life he cut off and the light that snuffed out inside Neal.
Hollow, he repeats the words echoing through his brain. "Kate's dead." They'll never slow dance by candlelight again or slurp cereal at the same breakfast table, both with bedhead, surly and mostly silent because neither of them are morning people.
"I know," Mozzie murmurs to him. "I know."
He's been repeating it over and over without even knowing it. He didn't think he could cry anymore, but the words pull more tears from him. Everything inside Neal is tearing loose. He's too hot and shuddering with cold at the same time. If he tried to stand, his knees wouldn't hold him up. The flash of anger that gave him a moment of strength is gone like smoke.
Mozzie awkwardly pats at his back and swears and maps out plans to find the man who took Kate from Neal and destroy him. "She'd want revenge," Mozzie finishes matter-of-factly.
"I want him in jail," Neal declares, surprising himself along with Mozzie. He's told Mozzie all about Fowler and the badge he's flashing around town. "No killing. I want him arrested."
"Death's too easy," Mozzie agrees. "I can see the irony too. You want to use the Man to get him. That's inspired, especially since neither of us has enough money to hire a hit. The problem is finding a cop who isn't part of the plot - "
"Agent Burke." The name spills out without benefit of thought. Burke's the only one Neal can trust. He knows that. Burke with his pretty wife and perfect life will understand what Neal's lost. Burke knows how amazing Kate is. Was. Neal gulps in air so hard he's nearly hyperventilating.
Mozzie sits back and stares at Neal in shock. "The Suit? The one who put Kate away?"
"Yeah." Neal scrubs the wet tracks from his cheeks with the heels of his hands, blinking to clear his eyes. Kate's still dead. He still wonders how he's breathing. It shouldn't be possible. If he hadn't left Kate in Barcelona... They could've gone anywhere, done anything. If only Neal had the nerve to stick with her then, she wouldn't have needed to find him, and Burke would have never caught her. They could be drinking coffee at that little café in Paris, the one Kate loved. He'll never wake Kate to the smell of coffee again. It should be impossible.
He says, "He's good."
Kate didn't believe anyone was really good, but she admitted Burke might be the real thing.
Some cops get frustrated and cut corners. They decide they know a criminal is guilty and if they can't find the evidence to prove it, they'll create it. Not Burke. No dirty tricks for Peter Burke; Kate swore he watched her walk out of another agent's frame job once without trying to stop her.
When he caught Kate, it was fair and square.
Burke doesn't cheat on his wife or his taxes, and he won't be bought. He's smart, but that's not why Neal thinks of him. It's because Kate always sounded a little wistful about Peter Burke, like he stood for something she would have liked to believe in. Burke's clean.
Threats won't scare him off.
Burke's honest as almost no one Neal knows is. He keeps his word. Normal, boring, straight as a ruler according to Kate. Burke has the house, the dog, a career he's good at and a beautiful wife. Neal sort of envies him.
Peter Burke's the kind of guy you could trust.
He never had the guts to say that to Kate though, even while they were spinning pie in the sky plans to each other through prison Plexiglas.
He feels sick, remembering, wanting to have those moments back. He wants so much and it's all gone. Kate's gone and he'll never know what she really felt.
Kate never cared for anything she could have without taking it away from someone else. She swore she'd change. She promised. They were going to go to San Francisco. Every week they talked about it. They'd get one of those Victorian houses, but not one jam-packed in a row with too many others. There would be a front yard, with a picket fence, and a backyard. He'd buy a lawnmower and cut the grass and paint back there sometimes. They were going to get a dog. Kate wanted a German Shepherd; Neal wanted a Golden Retriever. He's a fool: it was never going to happen, but he wouldn't have cared, as long as he had Kate.
"You think he'll help?"
Burke will help, because he's a decent man, and because Kate got to him too. Neal's sure of it. He'll understand that there's never going to be a little girl with Kate's laugh and it's so wrong Neal can't breathe. He curls his hands into fists so tight the tendons twang.
"Yeah, he will, Moz." He has to. Someone has to, because Neal doesn't know how. He paints pictures and he's utterly useless to Kate now. Another sob catches in his throat. He wants Kate back. Tears are plopping on the floor again. He doesn't even try to stop them.
"Then how are you going to get in contact with him without getting busted by some crooked agent working with him?"
Fowler. That bastard. The thing is: Fowler scares Neal. He has no idea how to deal with him. That's why he needs Burke.
Neal covers his eyes and shakes. He doesn't know. He'll never brush Kate's hair for her again. She'll never rub his shoulders after he's spent the night painting. They'll never go back to that private beach in Spain where they sunbathed nude and she laughed at where he burned. His life is an expanse of nevers and lost chances stretching in front of him, with no path or goal without Kate.
He'll never slide a ring onto her finger. He never asked her. All the times they talked about what they'd do once she was free and Neal never asked her. He was always too afraid of how she'd answer.
"Neal - "
"I don't know," he says.
He'll never know. He's a man waking up to find his handful of fairy gold is nothing but withered leaves.
~*~
Diana hands Peter the file solemnly and he knows she's already aware of the contents. She's conscientious; she probably talked to the M.E. as well as obtaining a copy of the autopsy results.
He balances the manila folder between his fingers. "What's in here?"
"Cause of death GSW to the head," Diana replies.
"And?"
Diana doesn't fidget. That doesn't mean nothing gets to her, but she has a hard-won poise that's matched by a core of inner strength. She meets Peter's eyes directly.
"Dr. Warner found burns and ligature marks on her wrists and ankles, bruising commensurate with being tied to a straight chair, and an injection site on her right arm."
"Kate was right-handed."
Diana nods. "Blood work came back positive for sodium pentathol." She straightens her shoulders. "She didn't shoot up while she was tied to a chair getting punched in the stomach. Someone interrogated her." Diana chooses her words precisely. Her reports are always excellent, clear and concise recreations of events, facts presented and conclusions drawn, with no confusion allowed. She says 'interrogate' because it's important to the case: pain is a torturer's purpose but an interrogator's tool. There's a reason behind Kate's murder beyond just killing her.
In fact, Peter's coming to believe Kate's murder is just a footnote to what the killer wants.
Peter opens the file and goes through it, picking out the details that support the M.E.'s summary to Diana. The burns were made with cigarettes, the bruises with fists, the marks on her ankles and wrists from some kind of industrial strength twine. The twine stands out to him. He has the forensic report on the apartment memorized already. No twine was found there. He knows every horrible thing done to Kate and there's a part of him that would like to see whoever is responsible suffer exactly the same pain. He likes to think he would be as appalled if the victim had been a man - he would - but the idea of hurting a woman, any woman, goes against everything he believes in.
"Whoever did it cleaned her up before they left her there."
"That's what Warner thinks."
A small curl of relief opens inside when he reads Warner's conclusion that there was no sexual component to Kate's death. The violence is disgusting enough as it is. It's a small thing, but Peter hates the thought of her being molested too. The twine, the painting, the torture, all of it was premeditated, and not an attack of opportunity. The absence of an assault confirms Peter's conviction that whoever killed her planned it from the beginning.
Peter's no profiler, but he can put a few things together. Whoever killed Kate knew her well and predicted exactly where she would go when she escaped. It points to someone manipulating her into doing it too, so they could get at her. They also knew how to clean up a crime scene: don't bother trying to hide what it is, just remove everything useful to an investigation.
Yet, in a barren apartment with no furniture except a straight chair, the killer didn't bother policing his brass.
"Think they got what they wanted?" he asks.
"Either that or they got all she knew."
He nods because that's the same read on the case he has. "Ballistics came back too." That file is thin. The make and caliber of the bullet can only tell them so much until they can match it to the weapon used to fire it. What it does say, along with that spent cartridge, isn't anything Peter likes. ".40 S&W."
The same caliber is loaded in Peter's Glock. Smith and Wesson developed it for the FBI.
Diana sums up his own feelings about that. "Sonovabitch."
Part 3
What's Past Was Prologue
The team takes photographs of everything in the apartment when they go in to place the bug. Peter goes through them on his laptop, sitting at his kitchen table, pretending the house isn't too quiet, too empty. El isn't upstairs in bed already and he feels the difference in the air that never stirs to anything except his own motion.
He has to move out of the house or he's going to go insane missing her. It took him a week to really believe she'd left, but he still feels her all around him because they made the house their home together. Christ, he was a fool, a worse fool than if he'd fallen for another woman. He sees it now: he abandoned El in place and expected her to always be waiting, whenever he felt like paying attention to their marriage again.
He's tried calling her at work. She screens his calls. He doesn't think playing stalker would be so funny when she's divorcing him as it was when he first wanted to ask her out. The single most horrible outcome he can imagine is getting a reprimand and a suspension, and being pulled off the Moreau case after screwing his marriage up because of it.
There's nothing left except catching Kate.
Maybe he can put his life back together afterward. He can't do anything until the case is closed, though. Peter's certain of that on a gut level.
Caffrey is the key. Everyone misses that. Caffrey's Kate's Achilles' heel, her soft spot, her mistletoe. Kate won't or can't give him up.
Find Caffrey, find Kate.
He's found Neal Caffrey, right back in New York, working a straight job and keeping a suspiciously low profile. Getting the warrant to search and bug Caffrey's apartment cost Peter a favor he doubts he'll enjoy paying off, but it's worth it. His team went through Caffrey's place the day before and now he has photographs to go with the dry reports and audio surveillance transcripts.
Peter's transfixed, so much so he forgets about El's absence.
Even on a poor laptop screen, the paintings are breathtaking. Peter feels a little stupid. He never put together that the sketchbooks and half-finished paintings abandoned on the occasions he or someone else in law enforcement draw too close to one of Kate's boltholes or the hand drawn cards she leaves for him - too often in his motel room or car or his baggage - aren't her work. They're Caffrey's.
God, Caffrey's good; it's almost a slap in the face. Kate was stealing Rembrandts and sleeping with a young Da Vinci. How in hell has he missed this? Peter knows though: it's Caffrey's almost too handsome looks. Just like everyone else, all Peter has let himself see is eye candy, Kate's boy toy, someone who fills out a tux and looks the way Kate needs an escort to look. He's been stupid.
Some things make more sense now. Kate Moreau wouldn't keep anyone around just for his looks, not even someone madly in love with her. She can find a man the way a drunk can find a drink, but Caffrey's a genius, someone not so easy to replace. Caffrey's got the brains and the talent to go with his looks. He's the one responsible for the frankly amazing forgeries she's used in some of her cons and thefts, not that Peter will ever prove it. But it isn't even that Caffrey is an asset to Kate's lifestyle. No, it's more.
Peter knows Kate inside and out, her favorite coffee, her ring size, her dislike of asparagus. He understands abruptly: Caffrey's part of Kate's cache, one more rare and amazing acquisition. The old cliché of stealing a heart is nothing but the truth when it comes to Kate and Caffrey.
Except Caffrey isn't with her now. Peter narrows his eyes. Maybe it isn't necessary to know to make the case, but he can't help wondering why. He knows Kate, though. She isn't willing to let anything go. She's going to keep on looking for Caffrey until she has her prize back. If this is part of some long con, she's still going to contact Caffrey sooner or later.
He opens another window, this one with a surveillance shot of Caffrey on the front steps of his apartment building, dressed for work, warily surveying the street. They need to keep the surveillance light and at a distance or he'll make them, even if he is looking for Kate instead.
"Why did you leave her, kid?" Peter asks in the silence of his mostly dark kitchen.
The photograph offers no answers.
Maybe Caffrey got sick of life on the run after three years of flitting back and forth from Europe to North America with stops in Brazil and Argentina, Hong Kong, and the Middle East. It doesn't seem likely.
"What did Kate finally do?"
Did she hurt him? Stupid question. As far as Peter's pieced together, Kate's hurt Caffrey more than once. Could someone have threatened Caffrey enough to make him run all the way back to New York?
Why hide from Kate?
A shiver hits Peter. There are only a few things he can imagine would send a man running from the woman he loves. Drugs, human trafficking, or murder spring to mind. None of them are anything Peter ever thought Kate would stoop to doing. If she did though, if she did... He needs to stop her. Cons and theft are one thing, active harm is another. But he hasn't heard even a whisper of such things about Kate.
He knows one thing, though: Kate doesn't let go easily. She'll be looking for Caffrey, whether to win him back or shut him up.
Peter rubs the frown lines deepening between his brows. It feels warped to do this, but he's going to help Kate Moreau find Caffrey. When she does, he's going to arrest her and send her to prison. It's the least he can do after all the pain he has put El through because this case. He feels a badly for Caffrey, but he has to do it.
Hope Leaves a Scar
Peter's late and Elizabeth isn't surprised, not after he canceled their regular lunch date. No matter how he tries, he still gets caught up in cases. Sometimes he has to work. Even in White Collar, sometimes lives or at least livelihoods depend on him.
She's perfectly content to wait. Unlike many women, she's not embarrassed to dine alone or worried if anyone thinks she's been stood up. She looks good, she feels good, her meal will be delicious even if she eats it alone. A little quiet time for herself over a meal she didn't cook is well worth appreciating however it occurs.
The glass of white wine she ordered while waiting has a lovely taste. Crisp and delicate as spring with a scent reminiscent of pears. She'll ask the waiter to recommend what would go well with another glass and take a taxi home.
Her thoughts are on a reception Premier Events is coordinating. The invitations will need to be made out by hand; the client wants the personal touch. The client wants calligraphy too. Elizabeth puts her wine glass down and spins a silver salad fork in her fingers. She's going to have hand cramps before she's finished with those invitations. Yvonne is a perfect assistant and her other workers all more than competent, but none of them can do calligraphy of the quality necessary for this.
Peter arrives less apologetic than distracted, confirming Elizabeth's suspicion that he's been caught up in a case. He looks energized and exhausted at once, a state she remembers him inhabiting well. She smiles despite herself as the waiter shows Peter his seat opposite her and Peter pauses to kiss her cheek before taking it. He smells faintly of cologne and his face is smooth; he shaved before showing up, one of those little things Peter's always done that she loves.
"I know I'm late."
Her watch shows it's only been twenty minutes. "Enough to notice, but you could still chalk it up to traffic," she agrees.
"From the Federal Building." Peter's voice is dry as a good sherry as he mocks the idea he could get away with lying to her.
"Maybe you were somewhere else?" Elizabeth teases. His smile warms her insides. Despite all her doubts - along with her sister's and her parents' - she's beginning to believe they can try again. It was never his love for her she doubted after all. Of course, Peter's not perfect, but what man is? For the last three years, Peter has tried everything to win her back except offering to quit the Bureau, which isn't something Elizabeth would ever want him to do.
"NYPD are not cooperating," Peter admits.
Elizabeth hesitates but finds herself asking, "You've got an investigation that involves the police department?"
Peter's face does something strange. Elizabeth reads alarm and a hint of shame in the flickering emotions that cross it. He opens his mouth to answer twice and says nothing each time. Her eyebrows go up, because Peter doesn't waffle much and almost never with her. He wants to hide something, she realizes.
Before she can prompt him for an answer, Peter's phone sounds. "I've got take this," he says.
"I know."
Elizabeth sips her wine and glances through the menu the waiter discreetly provided when Peter arrived. She tries not to listen to Peter's side of the conversation but inevitably hears things. Truthfully, curiosity does play into it. Deciding what to order does not compare to the White Collar division's cases when it comes to interesting her.
"Any leads on Caffrey at all?" Peter demands.
The name sounds familiar to Elizabeth. She knows it, though not so well as the one she remembers linked to it. The wine no longer tastes so fine and her appetite disappears under a wave of bitter anger. Damn Peter. Caffrey was the beautiful artist, Kate Moreau's lover, the one Peter used to trap her. Damn him. Damn them both.
Did a brown-out just hit? The dining room, aglitter with crystal and china and silver, dims. Candles flickering out would explain it, but in truth the lights are still as bright. It's all in her head. Elizabeth gulps down the last of the wine and sets the empty glass down jerkily, the base clinking against a butter knife's blade. The small sound draws Peter's attention from his phone call. He finishes quickly, meeting Elizabeth's stony gaze while he speaks, and she focuses on the blue glow from the phone's screen that reflects off his jawline until he puts it away.
"You're chasing her again," Elizabeth states.
"No."
"Don't lie, Peter. You are very bad at it."
"I'm not chasing Kate Moreau."
Ignoring the sinking feeling in under her heart for the moment, Elizabeth demands, "Tell me."
"She escaped yesterday."
"They want you on the case."
"NYPD want me off the case, actually," Peter replies, an irony Elizabeth can't parse yet. "I found her. She's dead, El."
How horrible that even that isn't enough, Elizabeth thinks. It isn't enough to make her forgive. It isn't enough to make Peter give up. Nothing will ever be.
"I found her in Caffrey's apartment. Someone shot her. Caffrey's gone. NYPD thinks he did it. El, he didn't. I know he didn't."
Despair doesn't bubble. It seeps, it's a taint that contaminates and spreads, unseen, until everything that seems fine is really poisoned under the surface.
"I should back off, but I know - I know this guy. He's not a killer. He's smart and talented and he visited her every week, El, every week without fail. Then he disappears. No. I don't buy it. That's why she broke out and I'm afraid that if he's not on the run, then whoever killed Kate has him."
Obsession's a stranger thing than depression. Stranger than passion. It's a fire that can burn without fuel. Elizabeth has watched it catch hold of Peter before. It seems so unfair she has to see it again. All of it, all the force and brilliance and determination that make Peter who he is, the very things Elizabeth loves about him, are shifting before her eyes, but not back to her.
Peter talks about Caffrey for the next ten minutes, repeating or testing new arguments for Caffrey's innocence, along with worry that he's in danger. It's a mystery too and Peter loves a mystery.
The hurt's almost deeper than when she left him.
All Peter can think of now is Neal Caffrey.
She expects Peter will find the artist. He caught Kate eventually. She almost hopes he fails, though. Almost hopes Caffrey's dead, but that shames her, so she hopes instead that he makes a fool of Peter. The way she feels like she's the fool here.
Peter used to tell her about the things Kate was suspected of doing; the men she seduced or fooled or outright stole from and Elizabeth wonders detachedly if Kate's infidelities hurt Caffrey the way Peter's obsession did her. It's funny, but Kate Moreau never tried to seduce Peter, not that there aren't so many other ways a man can betray a marriage. Sex is not everything, even between lovers. She feels something like sympathy for Caffrey, reflecting on that. This pain, her pain, is in no way his fault. She bites her lower lip, sinking her teeth in hard and tasting her lipstick, and doesn't let any of the things she's feeling spill out. No, not yet, not until she's home where no one can see.
Her mind races.
She remembers the surveillance photos of Caffrey. Hard not to remember a face that classic. Elizabeth's job and her own taste brings her in contact with the finest things and the most beautiful people in New York. Caffrey could out shine all of it on the surface.
Peter could never fall in love with Kate Moreau, Elizabeth acknowledges, even though Kate was so many of the things Peter admires. Kate was smart and beautiful, but she was still on the wrong side of the law Peter reveres. Elizabeth has always been able to read when Peter was attracted to someone, even when he doesn't know it yet, and though she's never seen Peter and Caffrey together, she thinks he has all the attributes to spark Peter into another obsession. And Caffrey isn't a criminal...
She listens as Peter talks about Caffrey's art and it's clear as glass that he's attracted by Caffrey's talent.
Funny how she can hear it in Peter's voice, in his expression, in the language of his body now, and see transparently what he doesn't know it yet himself. She knows him so well, but she can never hold him. She loved Peter too easily, he never needed to outsmart her to have her, never presented him with a mystery, never flirted with danger or needed him to save her. She never saw that that's what he wants: someone basically unattainable on some level. Kate was a criminal; Peter could never have her. Caffrey's not a criminal, but he's an artist, and if he's as good as Peter says, that will always hold a place in him that Peter can't touch. She can see it now, that essential male want for what can't be grasped. Peter will repeat himself, and his mistakes, and for the last three years, she's been doing the same. Peter will always be a good man, but all the courting, all the love, it's all been because she left him. This is the worst day she's had in years.
Of course, the attraction may be moot. Elizabeth has no idea if Caffrey is bisexual. It really doesn't matter if Caffrey would accept or reject Peter's interest though, not to her and Peter's relationship. The one she sees now she should have cut off three years ago. She's not going to go through this again.
Love doesn't conquer all. Love just makes failing hurt more.
"Peter," she interrupts him. "I'm going home now."
She drops enough money from her purse on the table to cover the cost of her wine, a tip, and anything Peter may want to order.
"What?"
"I don't think we'll do this again. It's not working. Nothing's different."
"I thought - " He's bewildered. The shock will wear off and he'll get a little angry, but Elizabeth steels her heart and straightens her spine. One of them has to face reality. They've both been spinning their wheels.
"Please don't call me for a while." She manages an ironic smile. He won't. Once Peter gets the bit between his teeth, little can stop him. He'll fall so deep into this case he won't even remember her most of the time. "I need some time away from you."
"Is this because I was talking about Caffrey?"
"Yes and no."
"He's in trouble, El. Am I supposed to ignore that?"
Yes, she thinks, he's nothing to you or me. But Peter wouldn't be the good man he is if he thought that way.
"No," she tells him gently. "You're supposed to do what you do best. That just doesn't include being married or with me anymore."
No More Second Chances
Three months of watching and everyone on the case is burned out and bored. Peter's brainstorm is looking more like a fizzling drizzle. The agents in the surveillance van lean on their elbows in front of the monitors and fight to keep heavy-lidded eyes open. The summer sun turns the inside of the van into an oven, cooking the odors of sweat, cologne, and everyones' lunches into their clothes, their skin, and the equipment. Peter's just as guilty as any of the junior agents; he's zoned out, just waiting out his shift since it's his op. Even the bug in Caffrey's apartment fails to offer anything interesting. He's the quietest guy most of them have ever listened in on. Sometimes he sings while he's cleaning, but he doesn't talk to himself, and his phone calls tend to revolve around ordering take-out and quick work-related conversations. Paulson is the only one who has even heard him curse; one morning he burnt himself on a hot pan and dropped it on his toe.
Caffrey curses in Russian, German, French and Spanish, along with good old Anglo-Saxon, according to the translators who listened to the recording. It's impressive, but it's been weeks since he did anything that interesting. He isn't even limping any longer.
The bug isn't placed particularly advantageously. They're all used to spats of static along with the long stretches of near silence when Caffrey's painting. Caffrey plays a lot of jazz and classic Rat Pack songs. It could be worse, listening to Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald beats ear-splitting death metal, after all. If he has a girlfriend besides Kate, or friends at all, Caffrey keeps them away from his apartment. On the whole, watching and listening to him isn't the worst assignment in the FBI, but it's boring.
It would be a break in routine to go into the apartment again. He half wants to, though it's a risk they can't take. Peter wishes he could just stand inside though and absorb the feel of the space, soak in what it could tell him about Caffrey. He wants to see what Caffrey's painting now, with his own eyes, not a color-skewed picture on a pixilated laptop screen. It's frustration, of course, rasping away his patience until he's tempted to spook Caffrey just to see where he runs.
Hell, Peter's tempted more and more to just walk up to Caffrey and ask him where the hell Kate is and why he's hiding from her, since it's become clear over the last month that's exactly what Caffrey's doing.
Paulson opens a can of soda with a shish-snap and gulps some down. She gestures to the cooler holding more but Peter shakes his head. What goes in must go out and the convenience store a block over is going to charge the Bureau rent on the washroom there soon.
It would be a hell of thing if they blew the surveillance because someone had to take a piss. It would be just like Kate to catch them out that way too. Peter imagines walking into the washroom and finding a note from her on the mirror over the sink. He almost chuckles, picturing the laughter that would gleam in Kate's eyes.
Idly, Peter wonders if Kate loses her masks when she and Caffrey make love. Does Caffrey get to see the real her behind those big blue eyes? A flash of what Caffrey must look like hits him and Peter's breath hitches.
He shifts uncomfortably in his seat, masking his body's reaction to that thought by peeling his sweat-sticky clothes loose from his skin. Where the hell did that come from? He's always been aware of how beautiful Kate is, but he's never wanted her before. Peter grimaces at himself. It isn't Kate, he realizes, it's the idea of her and Caffrey together.
Damn. It's just because he hasn't been with anyone since Elizabeth left him, he tells himself.
The rustle of someone moving around, then the radio and the plaintive lament of But Not For Me playing doesn't stir any of them out of their lethargy.
Not until the apartment door opens again, the radio is switched off, and they hear Kate Moreau's voice.
"I've missed you so much, Neal."
Peter jolts out of his half-doze and glares at the other two agents who somehow missed seeing Kate Moreau make her way into Caffrey's apartment. Without Judge Walters' warrant for the bug in the apartment, they still wouldn't know she's there.
"Get back up here, no sirens, unmarked cars, and cover every damn exit on this place," Peter orders. He's not letting her get away after three months watching, after three damn years running her down. "Send someone up to the roof too."
Kate's like a cat, she runs up.
The bug gives them Caffrey's voice.
"Kate."
The sounds that come next can only be one thing, bodies pressed to each other and a passionate kiss. Peter imagines them embracing, the way he saw them once on a rainy Parisian street, before Kate caught his reflection in a patisserie window, grabbed Caffrey's hand, and ran away, laughing.
"You shouldn't have come here."
"I had to."
"You lied to me." Caffrey's voice is so quiet. There isn't even any anger there, just a crack of sorrow. "You used me."
"Neal. I love you."
"Until the next con."
"No more cons. I'm done. We can be together now."
Paulson rolls her eyes, but Peter can see it's getting to her too. Paulson's another romantic; two divorces and she still believes in true love. Peter does too, and Kate sounds sincere, but Kate always sounds sincere, she's a con. Peter hopes Caffrey doesn't fall for it. Wishes he could warn Caffrey not to believe her. Stay cynical, kid, he wants to say.
"Why should I believe you?" Caffrey's moving around the apartment, maybe pacing, and there's a rattle from the Venetian blinds. "Why come back now? What do you want?"
"I want you to come with me."
"I have a life here."
"We can have a life together." It must not be enough. Caffrey doesn't answer and Kate begins to plead. "I know I hurt you. I lied about so many things... "
"So what's changed?"
Peter hesitates, because he wants to hear it too. What happened? What finally made Neal Caffrey run away from Kate Moreau, when every other time she left him? Did she think he'd always be faithful? What made him leave, what made her come to him? What's different this time? Is anything?
"Me."
"Kate - "
"I love you, Neal. I never lied about that. I'll never lie to you again."
Peter checks his Glock, making sure he can draw it smoothly from his shoulder holster and not hang up on the vest. Sweat runs down the center of his back. It's not all the smothering heat. It's excitement. Adrenaline. In a minute he's going to win.
After three years, he's going to beat Kate Moreau. Kate the Great, the Queen of Cons. It's exhilarating.
"Anyone fucks this up and I will make sure you spend the rest of your careers interviewing alien abduction freaks in Roswell," he tells his team.
"We got it, boss," Jones, his youngest agent, says with a flash of teeth.
"Let's go."
Six floors up and he's trying not to pant. He lets Jones kick in the door.
Kate and Caffrey are silhouetted, two figures so close they're one, against the apartment's windows - those windows are the reasons Caffrey chose it, there's an easel set up to take advantage of the light - wrapped in each other. She's wearing a deep red dress and Caffrey's in a suit from work, the dark color framing her. They almost glow, too beautiful to be real: Caffrey with his long artist's fingers framing Kate's face and Kate with one hand curled round Caffrey's shoulder and the other tangled in his hair. They're like a painting themselves.
They both flinch as Peter and his team pour into the room, but they don't move, cleaving tighter, holding their last kiss until Jones pulls Caffrey away from her and Paulson turns Kate to face Peter.
"Agent Burke," Kate says. A toss of her head settles her long hair over her shoulder and she smiles at him, rueful and defiant. "I'd offer you a kiss too, if you weren't a married man."
"Katherine Moreau," Peter says as he closes the cuffs around her wrists, close enough he can smell her perfume, the same perfume she left on a negligée she hid in his suitcase once, "you are under arrest." The rest of the Miranda warning almost recites itself.
She leans into him and whispers, "I hope you didn't forget your anniversary again for this."
He didn't have anyone to celebrate it with this year and abruptly Peter's elation is all gone, replaced with weariness and anger.
"Pat, get her out of here," he orders.
Kate looks surprised for a microsecond, then sways away under Paulson's guidance, like she's a date on her arm not a suspect under arrest. She ruins the effect at the door when she drags her feet and half-turns, breaking the con's cardinal rule: looking back. Peter knows she doesn't see him, just Caffrey. He thinks, shocked, she does love him.
Caffrey is standing, his arms wrapped around himself, watching as Kate's led away, still limned by the sunset. His eyes are the only color in his face, electric and intent, giving away the tension he's otherwise reigning in. The effort not to react to what's happened thrums off him. Jones hovers cautiously beside him, ready to stop Caffrey if necessary.
"Kate," Caffrey calls abruptly, arms loosening, and it looks like giving up, "I love you too."
And She Is Not With Me
"I found a new place yesterday," Neal tells Mozzie in the dragging silence after he can't cry anymore. Kate's dead, Kate's dead, Kate's dead. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, you don't want to know, and, hey, it's New York, scoring a great place is always a conversational topic. Kate's dead, he has a new apartment, one of these things is not like the other. He clutches at his elbows and rocks himself like that will keep him from flying apart in a thousand shattered pieces.
"You know you can stay as long as you need, mon frère."
Neal shakes his head like he can shake away the truth. Thinking is bad. He longs to retreat into comforting emptiness.
Mozzie's the best friend Neal's ever had. He only knows him because of Kate, of course, and Kate's dead. This is all a replay of what happened when Kate left him the first time. Only Kate's dead, and it's not the same at all, no one broke his fingers, no one took his paintings, no one died before. No one died until Barcelona. It's not even the same place Mozzie put him up then. This is an actual apartment; the first time Neal ended up relying on Mozzie's generosity, when Kate betrayed them both, it was a storage unit.
The flooring between his feet is darker than everywhere else. He spilled the coffee Mozzie made. The smell is suddenly horrible. He feels dehydrated, a husk of himself. The tape holding the splint on his finger is dirty gray at the edges and peeling away. Neal picks at it with his good hand, peeling it up and smoothing it back into place. Now it won't stick. He wants to unstick the last week of his life.
"I see you found some clothes."
"I did."
An entire walk-in room full of elegantly tailored suits and anything else he could imagine. Neal suspects if he thinks of something he wants and accidentally mentions it where June can hear, it will soon show up. The way she looks at him would be creepy if there was a sexual component, but there isn't, and she isn't. She sent a bag of things with him, along with keys to the front and back doors, the loft and the studio, so he could move in whenever he wants. He realizes he came back to Mozzie's and conked out on the couch without telling him about her. He was just so tired and relieved and now it means nothing. Maybe nothing will ever again. He can't think past the awful pulse of Kate's dead, Kate's dead, Kate's dead.
He makes himself say something and only hears it after. "June Ellington."
Mozzie rolls with the seeming non sequitur. "Byron Ellington's wife? They say she's got two fortunes in that mansion of hers: everything he painted and everything he bought."
"Guess so," Neal agrees blankly. He can't care, though the day before he'd been entranced by the gathered beauty on June's walls and scattered through her Riverside mansion. Just imagining it all would have turned Kate on, made her eyes bright with want.
He didn't know it then, that Kate's dead. Kate's never going to con again. Never lift another painting. Never pull Neal into bed after he's created a forgery for her and let him paint her skin with his stained fingers. Never laugh. Never brush his hair out of his eyes.
Kate.
"You met her?"
June. June. Mozzie's talking about June. Not Kate. Kate's dead. Neal doesn't need to remind himself, but he can't stop it, it's all he can think.
"Yeah. Yesterday." If the newspaper article is accurate, Neal was charming and being charmed by the famous painter's widow at a thrift store while someone killed the woman he loves. The food he ate earlier threatens to rise up. He concentrates on breathing in and out slowly, thinking of nothing else but filling and emptying his lungs. His eyes are so dry they burn.
Kate was dying and he was sipping coffee with June. Why didn't he know? How could Kate be dead without Neal knowing? His whole body trembles. "I - " He doesn't remember what else he meant to say.
"Neal."
He jerks his gaze up and tries to figure out what Mozzie has been saying. He hasn't heard any of it, isn't sure how much time just disappeared from his experience. Agony and denial are a vortex in his head, sucking in everything else, a roar of pain drowning out everything else. Thought can only gasp and then is pulled under again.
Mozzie's arm is around his shoulders. He doesn't know when Mozzie pulled him in so close. He can't think, he just hurts, a million wishes and if-onlies flying through his brain, careening off each other. What if he'd told Kate on that last visit? What if he hadn't sworn he wouldn't be back, what if he hadn't said good-bye when she wouldn't tell him what Fowler wanted from her? What -
"Neal," Mozzie says again and shakes him a little, still holding on as he does so, gentle yet firm, "will she give you an alibi? June? 'Cause the filthy cops are going to try to screw you over and pin Kate's murder on you."
Should he care? Kate's dead. They can lock him away. They can put him down. What does it matter? Everything's over. Neal almost says as much, but the words dry up in his mouth, caught like dry tinder as a flicker of anger catches inside him. If he goes down for Kate's murder, the bastard who did it will get to walk away without paying.
Kate's dead and Neal wants the man responsible to suffer for that, for the life he cut off and the light that snuffed out inside Neal.
Hollow, he repeats the words echoing through his brain. "Kate's dead." They'll never slow dance by candlelight again or slurp cereal at the same breakfast table, both with bedhead, surly and mostly silent because neither of them are morning people.
"I know," Mozzie murmurs to him. "I know."
He's been repeating it over and over without even knowing it. He didn't think he could cry anymore, but the words pull more tears from him. Everything inside Neal is tearing loose. He's too hot and shuddering with cold at the same time. If he tried to stand, his knees wouldn't hold him up. The flash of anger that gave him a moment of strength is gone like smoke.
Mozzie awkwardly pats at his back and swears and maps out plans to find the man who took Kate from Neal and destroy him. "She'd want revenge," Mozzie finishes matter-of-factly.
"I want him in jail," Neal declares, surprising himself along with Mozzie. He's told Mozzie all about Fowler and the badge he's flashing around town. "No killing. I want him arrested."
"Death's too easy," Mozzie agrees. "I can see the irony too. You want to use the Man to get him. That's inspired, especially since neither of us has enough money to hire a hit. The problem is finding a cop who isn't part of the plot - "
"Agent Burke." The name spills out without benefit of thought. Burke's the only one Neal can trust. He knows that. Burke with his pretty wife and perfect life will understand what Neal's lost. Burke knows how amazing Kate is. Was. Neal gulps in air so hard he's nearly hyperventilating.
Mozzie sits back and stares at Neal in shock. "The Suit? The one who put Kate away?"
"Yeah." Neal scrubs the wet tracks from his cheeks with the heels of his hands, blinking to clear his eyes. Kate's still dead. He still wonders how he's breathing. It shouldn't be possible. If he hadn't left Kate in Barcelona... They could've gone anywhere, done anything. If only Neal had the nerve to stick with her then, she wouldn't have needed to find him, and Burke would have never caught her. They could be drinking coffee at that little café in Paris, the one Kate loved. He'll never wake Kate to the smell of coffee again. It should be impossible.
He says, "He's good."
Kate didn't believe anyone was really good, but she admitted Burke might be the real thing.
Some cops get frustrated and cut corners. They decide they know a criminal is guilty and if they can't find the evidence to prove it, they'll create it. Not Burke. No dirty tricks for Peter Burke; Kate swore he watched her walk out of another agent's frame job once without trying to stop her.
When he caught Kate, it was fair and square.
Burke doesn't cheat on his wife or his taxes, and he won't be bought. He's smart, but that's not why Neal thinks of him. It's because Kate always sounded a little wistful about Peter Burke, like he stood for something she would have liked to believe in. Burke's clean.
Threats won't scare him off.
Burke's honest as almost no one Neal knows is. He keeps his word. Normal, boring, straight as a ruler according to Kate. Burke has the house, the dog, a career he's good at and a beautiful wife. Neal sort of envies him.
Peter Burke's the kind of guy you could trust.
He never had the guts to say that to Kate though, even while they were spinning pie in the sky plans to each other through prison Plexiglas.
He feels sick, remembering, wanting to have those moments back. He wants so much and it's all gone. Kate's gone and he'll never know what she really felt.
Kate never cared for anything she could have without taking it away from someone else. She swore she'd change. She promised. They were going to go to San Francisco. Every week they talked about it. They'd get one of those Victorian houses, but not one jam-packed in a row with too many others. There would be a front yard, with a picket fence, and a backyard. He'd buy a lawnmower and cut the grass and paint back there sometimes. They were going to get a dog. Kate wanted a German Shepherd; Neal wanted a Golden Retriever. He's a fool: it was never going to happen, but he wouldn't have cared, as long as he had Kate.
"You think he'll help?"
Burke will help, because he's a decent man, and because Kate got to him too. Neal's sure of it. He'll understand that there's never going to be a little girl with Kate's laugh and it's so wrong Neal can't breathe. He curls his hands into fists so tight the tendons twang.
"Yeah, he will, Moz." He has to. Someone has to, because Neal doesn't know how. He paints pictures and he's utterly useless to Kate now. Another sob catches in his throat. He wants Kate back. Tears are plopping on the floor again. He doesn't even try to stop them.
"Then how are you going to get in contact with him without getting busted by some crooked agent working with him?"
Fowler. That bastard. The thing is: Fowler scares Neal. He has no idea how to deal with him. That's why he needs Burke.
Neal covers his eyes and shakes. He doesn't know. He'll never brush Kate's hair for her again. She'll never rub his shoulders after he's spent the night painting. They'll never go back to that private beach in Spain where they sunbathed nude and she laughed at where he burned. His life is an expanse of nevers and lost chances stretching in front of him, with no path or goal without Kate.
He'll never slide a ring onto her finger. He never asked her. All the times they talked about what they'd do once she was free and Neal never asked her. He was always too afraid of how she'd answer.
"Neal - "
"I don't know," he says.
He'll never know. He's a man waking up to find his handful of fairy gold is nothing but withered leaves.
~*~
Diana hands Peter the file solemnly and he knows she's already aware of the contents. She's conscientious; she probably talked to the M.E. as well as obtaining a copy of the autopsy results.
He balances the manila folder between his fingers. "What's in here?"
"Cause of death GSW to the head," Diana replies.
"And?"
Diana doesn't fidget. That doesn't mean nothing gets to her, but she has a hard-won poise that's matched by a core of inner strength. She meets Peter's eyes directly.
"Dr. Warner found burns and ligature marks on her wrists and ankles, bruising commensurate with being tied to a straight chair, and an injection site on her right arm."
"Kate was right-handed."
Diana nods. "Blood work came back positive for sodium pentathol." She straightens her shoulders. "She didn't shoot up while she was tied to a chair getting punched in the stomach. Someone interrogated her." Diana chooses her words precisely. Her reports are always excellent, clear and concise recreations of events, facts presented and conclusions drawn, with no confusion allowed. She says 'interrogate' because it's important to the case: pain is a torturer's purpose but an interrogator's tool. There's a reason behind Kate's murder beyond just killing her.
In fact, Peter's coming to believe Kate's murder is just a footnote to what the killer wants.
Peter opens the file and goes through it, picking out the details that support the M.E.'s summary to Diana. The burns were made with cigarettes, the bruises with fists, the marks on her ankles and wrists from some kind of industrial strength twine. The twine stands out to him. He has the forensic report on the apartment memorized already. No twine was found there. He knows every horrible thing done to Kate and there's a part of him that would like to see whoever is responsible suffer exactly the same pain. He likes to think he would be as appalled if the victim had been a man - he would - but the idea of hurting a woman, any woman, goes against everything he believes in.
"Whoever did it cleaned her up before they left her there."
"That's what Warner thinks."
A small curl of relief opens inside when he reads Warner's conclusion that there was no sexual component to Kate's death. The violence is disgusting enough as it is. It's a small thing, but Peter hates the thought of her being molested too. The twine, the painting, the torture, all of it was premeditated, and not an attack of opportunity. The absence of an assault confirms Peter's conviction that whoever killed her planned it from the beginning.
Peter's no profiler, but he can put a few things together. Whoever killed Kate knew her well and predicted exactly where she would go when she escaped. It points to someone manipulating her into doing it too, so they could get at her. They also knew how to clean up a crime scene: don't bother trying to hide what it is, just remove everything useful to an investigation.
Yet, in a barren apartment with no furniture except a straight chair, the killer didn't bother policing his brass.
"Think they got what they wanted?" he asks.
"Either that or they got all she knew."
He nods because that's the same read on the case he has. "Ballistics came back too." That file is thin. The make and caliber of the bullet can only tell them so much until they can match it to the weapon used to fire it. What it does say, along with that spent cartridge, isn't anything Peter likes. ".40 S&W."
The same caliber is loaded in Peter's Glock. Smith and Wesson developed it for the FBI.
Diana sums up his own feelings about that. "Sonovabitch."
Part 3