Composition in Black and White (part two) 2/
1/
Day three started later than Elizabeth expected, but day two had ended earlier than she had thought as well. Peter had actually come home, which was one thing she hadn’t been expecting at all. In all their years together, Peter had spent quite a few all nighters on far less important cases.
Albeit, none of them were quite this stressful and none of them had impacted on Peter’s health prior to his determined all nighter, either. Despite his convictions otherwise, she knew he was still hurting, and she knew he had either forgotten or refused to take the prescribed pain meds the hospital had given him. She was betting on the latter with an added dose of the former. Either way, it had been a bit of a shock when he’d dragged himself home at nine the night before. He’d looked ragged, tired and in pain. It was the closest she’d ever seen to seeing her husband broken as she’d crossed the room to wrap her arms around him and hold him for a moment. Just hold him and breathe him in and listen to him breathe.
In all the years he had worked for the bureau, she’d been on the receiving end of a half dozen uneasy agents on her doorstep informing her that something had happened to her husband. He’d been poisoned and kidnapped, shot and concussed (more than once). She’d had similar instances where Peter had called to say something had happened to Neal, and on those nights too, Peter had always come home shaken and a little unsure. Angry and resilient.
She never really got over any of them. She pretended she did, and in a way, they didn’t affect her as much as they did when they first happened. But all the same, they added up.
They were going to need a vacation after this. Regardless of Peter’s workaholic stature, they needed a break, an extended break; a long-service-leave type break.
“I can’t find him, El,” Peter had whispered last night and suddenly El had been wrenched out of her reverie in an instant and she’d pulled back to take Peter’s head in her hands and she had stared up into his eyes.
“You will,” she’d said, and in the darkness of their bed, as Peter had fallen deep into an exhausted sleep, El found herself facing the first time she had ever seen real fear in her husband’s eyes, real doubt, that maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t.
The look was gone when Peter woke the next morning, dressing quickly and leaving barely without pause, his conviction seemingly returned. But all the same, as Elizabeth dressed herself, forcing herself to continue the daily routine of managing her business - if only to keep her mind busy - she couldn’t help but remember that startling look in Peter’s eyes, and the moment where the idea Neal might not make it home, became suddenly all too real a possibility.
***
Even with the help of a computer cutting out a lot of the ground work, trying to trace any threats he’d received over the years was like trying to find a needle in a haystack; a single viable threat in a haystack full of threats.
There were more than Peter thought and he was glad that they had bypassed his knowledge for so long. Many of them were useless. After all, he worked White Collar. Most of those he convicted had some form of gift for the gab, and thankfully, a lot of them were just gab. But this was very real, and he couldn’t seem to make the connection he was after. It was all about the letters, but he couldn’t find anything that matched. He had half the probies working through the case files with him, the other half chasing up viable leads, but the leads were small and often useless and everything seemed to go nowhere.
And the whole time he was completely aware of the sound of the clock ticking on the wall, on his wrist, clicking over in the corner of his computer screen.
Every minute ticking away another moment where Neal was still lost, still needing them to find him and with it, every minute ticking away another minute where it was more likely they were searching for a body than their friend.
So he worked.
He turned another page and he slid another cleared file into the box on the side of his desk and he reached for another one.
They had cleared a lot of cases in the last three years, and given that Neal was also a target, that’s where they’d started, cases where their man knew Neal as well as Peter. It was a start and Peter knew it could go further back, but right then, the focus was on the last three years. If this went any further into his past and Neal was paying the price for something he had no part in - then Peter didn’t know if he could forgive himself.
The only other option was that Neal was paying the price for something he himself had done, and the notes to Peter had just been that, informing the handler on Neal’s leash that the leash was about to be yanked out of his hands.
Peter sighed and ran his hands down his face.
What on earth had either of them done to get into this? What could they have avoided? What could they have done differently?
“Agent Burke?”
Peter looked up sharply. Blake was standing in the doorway.
“What is it?”
“A possible lead?” he said, nervously.
“Tell me.”
Blake nodded and stepped into the office.
“I don’t know if you’ve already thought of it or not, but I was just thinking and something Neal said came back to me.”
Blake shifted nervously for a moment before he cleared his throat. The man would be utterly useless in any sort of undercover op, but he was a good researcher, an avid worker and he had a keen mind.
“Neal said once that the reason he sent gifts to agents on stakeouts when you were chasing him, was because it was about the game. About making sure both sides were playing and aware they were. He said sometimes half the fun of a con is making sure someone is aware you’re pulling it. I was just thinking, the notes, they were sent to show us something had happened each time. The robbery, bringing in one of the suspects, taking Caffrey, the notes were there to make sure we know it’s him. It’s part of their game. It’s showing their moves.”
Blake looked hesitant but Peter was gripping the plastic evidence bag hard, the young agent’s words echoing in his skull as he stared down at the first note. The notes were about showing their opponent’s moves.
Moves.
Games.
Notes.
Keller.
“I know it’s not much sir, but what if the notes weren’t exactly threats but moves?“
It was something Peter was sure everyone had thought over at least once. They’d been focusing on the meaning behind them but perhaps in all the wrong ways. Saying it out loud was perhaps the best way to think them out. What if they were overthinking it? What if it really was that simple? And if it was, so simultaneously complex.
They were moves.
This is my turn, now it’s yours.
“No. It’s something,” Peter said, blithely, standing up. “Look into it, Blake, look into everything. I’m going to check with a source.”
Blake nodded and followed Peter out the door as he started down the stairs. His body still ached and moving so quickly was probably a bad idea, but he needed to find Mozzie, he needed to look him in the eye and know for sure whether or not Matthew Keller had risen his head after nearly twelve months underground.
***
Mozzie had long since moved past meeting Peter in the park. But, given that he had already been in the park when the Suit had called, well, it made sense.
He at least had the courtesy to not force the Suit into a ruse. He didn’t have the time to set it up.
Rory Roadkill had stuck around for all of thirty seconds of the original meeting, and taken Mozzie’s money to tell him that no one was up to saying anything about Neal. Still. It had been over thirty six hours and no one seemed to have heard of a call to arms, a threat, even. It was silent. No one he knew was talking.
All they had was a sentence from one of June’s contacts and that was it.
It was driving him nuts.
“Tell me that this has nothing to do with Matthew Keller.”
To give it to the Suit, Mozzie genuinely hadn’t seen him approach until he was standing over him, bearing down on Mozzie’s smaller stature. It wasn’t at all polite, really.
And the man was ten minutes early, too.
“Come off it, Suit, do you really think that Keller could pull off something like this? He doesn’t have enough friends,” Mozzie said with all the disdain he could muster. Peter still didn’t look satisfied as he sat down.
“That’s not an answer.”
“Of course it’s not. Because Keller’s not the answer to our question. I already looked into it, Suit. He hasn’t surfaced and if he was behind it, then someone would say something. Everyone knows about Neal and Keller’s rivalry. It’s one of those known things. It’s practically a sport given the betting involved.”
“He couldn’t have paired up with someone to pull this?” Peter pressed.
Mozzie bristled.
“No.”
Peter let out a frustrated huff.
“Then who could? Honestly, off the book, who could possibly hate Neal this much to take him like that?”
“What makes you think it’s Neal?” Mozzie scowled. Peter at the very least, had the decency to look uncomfortable.
“You’d tell me if there was something he’d been hiding, wouldn’t you, Mozzie? If there’s something that could help this case - “
“I’m appalled at your opinion that you’re the only one trying to find him.”
“He’s been acting off for over a week, Mozzie. If that has any connection to why Neal was kidnapped, then tell me, now.”
“It’s got nothing to do with it!” Mozzie replied. The Suit’s expression didn’t change and Mozzie’s own anxiety clenched. He’d wondered briefly whether Neal had worn his waning façade into the Den, and it appeared he had. He knew trying to make Neal make his decision was going to be hard. It was why he’d started selling the treasure now, in tiny doses carefully released. Getting him back into the idea of their last big score slow and steady. He knew Neal was still hesitant, still loved his life in New York, and now that he was almost free, he was more willing to the idea of boosting their coffers a little bit; the itch of freedom making his other temptations a little harder to keep at bay. As long as Peter remained completely unaware (so far so good, or so it had seemed) Mozzie had been sure that Neal could have his cake and eat it, too. After all, they’d spent the better part of four years collecting the ingredients and guarding them well enough they practically deserved it.
No, this had nothing to do with the treasure. It was too well guarded, and if it had been, the letters would have been for him and Neal, not Neal and the Suit.
“You sure Mozzie?”
“You want it signed in blood or something? I don’t know why Neal was off, but as far as I’m aware it’s got nothing to do with this. He would have told me if there was something wrong.”
“Like the note?”
“He told me about the note. And the tail.”
“And you’re sure it’s not Keller?”
“Sorry to disappoint you, Suit, but Matthew Keller is so far underground even Otto Lindenbrock would never have come across him. Besides, Keller couldn’t have pulled this off. He’d need friends, and Keller was never that popular in the playground. This feels bigger. It has to be bigger, Suit; look at how they grabbed him. No gun or muscle man for hire is going to agree to trying to kill a Fed. Even they’re not that dumb. Who ever is running this is big. They’ve got reach. They’ve got leverage. This is dangerous.”
It was the only thing Mozzie felt right in figuring out. This went way beyond anyone that Neal had ever worked with. Even in those stretches of time where the kid had gone running off and getting himself in trouble it had never been like this. Whoever had taken him had goons; loyal, dangerous goons and the only type with that sort of upstanding loyalty were bonded in blood and a singular paternity.
One of the best things Mozzie found (and similarly the worst things) about the Suit, was that he was able to understand scatters of information and put them together in a big picture with startling ease. It was what had helped him catch Neal, it was what helped him keep on top of Neal and it was one of those qualities that Mozzie both admired and hated, because it was fantastic to see in action, and also painstakingly hard to keep ahead of a lot of the time. And it didn’t help that over the last four years, the Suit had learned his own breed of shorthand putting together Neal-and-Mozzie shaped information.
Mozzie watched as comprehension crawled over Peter’s face and then his expression darkened.
“You trying to tell me you think Neal was taken by the mob, Mozzie?”
Mozzie didn’t nod or shake his head he just frowned and plucked his glasses off his face, reaching into his pocket to pull out a handkerchief and started cleaning them.
“Which one is up to you, Suit. This guy has a crew, and he didn’t advertise or hire them. They’re brethren. June says it’s about a favor and lesson, that’s all her contact could find and better than anything would tell me. The only place you’re going to get a crew big enough and still not have them question you when you say crash into a fed’s car and steal his consultant, is in organized crime.”
“This isn’t a conspiracy theory, Mozzie.”
Mozzie slipped his glasses back on his nose and Peter’s worried frown came back into focus. For all his concern, Mozzie couldn’t stop the annoyance breaking through. He stood up and this time it was his turn to look down on Peter.
“You think I don’t know that? Neal’s my friend, too, Suit. Or perhaps you keep forgetting that. It’s not my fault he’s missing.”
One step too far. Horace had said anger was a short madness and he watched the anger clamber for space over Peter’s face. If they didn’t get Neal back soon this madness would no longer be short. In himself or the Suit.
“So now we’re passing blame are we?” Peter asked, his eyes narrowed.
“Only where it’s due, Government Man,” Mozzie scowled. He couldn’t stick around any longer. He took a step away. Peter was still scowling.
“I’ll call you if I know anything,” he said to the other man, who was still sitting on the bench and staring at him. Mozzie couldn’t stand it any longer. He turned around and as the afternoon sun peaked through the smog, he let the crowd swallow him as he tried to fight the dozen or so emotions battling out for their own slice of the action, and Mozzie couldn’t figure out which one to let take over first.
Not that any of them were going to be any help.
He had a friend to find.
***
Signing out Against Medical Authority was a hell of a lot harder than Jones expected. It had seemed simpler for Peter; there had been less hassle and less glaring. In Jones’ case, there had been two forms and this ill-frowning nurse watching as he’d signed them. The hard part was getting his hands on those damn forms. He asked for them twice, wincing as he’d tried to sit up properly and been laughed at by the attending nurses. It had taken blackmail to get Blake down from the bureau and give him the boost he needed to get the forms.
Normally he didn’t like pulling rank, but he was going insane doing nothing. There was only so many times he could try to pay attention to the pointless crap on the TV and only so long he could ignore the circumstances of his incarceration, whether it be Neal’s abduction, or the pain ricocheting halfway around his chest every time he inhaled (or exhaled) and the itching burn of the cast on his arm.
He wasn’t expecting anything substantial, he knew he what he was getting himself in for, but until he knew a little more about what the hell was going on and they were one step closer to getting Neal back.
And while he’d been expecting to be met with more resistance back at the bureau than he was even at the hospital, he wasn’t really expecting Hughes to go at him the way he did.
Still, as Blake drove him back to his own apartment, Clinton couldn’t help the feeling of victory he had at the box full of case files he had in the back seat.
He may not have been able to return to any sort of duty in the building (“it’s bad enough having one agent running around the place when he should be on leave, Agent Jones, I won’t be having two! Especially when the second can barely stand up, let alone even think about running!”) He wasn’t off the case completely, and in the end that’s what mattered.
***
“How are we doing on that facial recognition?” Peter asked, looking up at Diana.
“Nothing’s come up yet. We’re still running it,” she replied, watching him. He looked tired. Out of all of them, she knew Peter was the one taking this the hardest; he was their leader, the man in charge. He was Neal’s handler, his friend, and Diana knew Peter was blaming himself for so much that could not have been his fault in the slightest. But that was Peter; he was a man who liked to keep his friends safe, especially in a job when it wasn’t always a certifiable possibility. It had happened once before, he’d almost lost Neal in a bust and Peter hadn’t taken it well. He’d been careful before, in no way had she ever worried about putting her life in Peter Burke’s hands. But since Neal had almost died six months ago, that care had taken one step further up the scale. Nothing extreme, nothing that had worried her; in a way it had just made Peter more… Peter.
Now though, now all that care had come to nothing. Peter hadn’t expected it, he hadn’t foreseen anything like this, and she knew he was feeling it.
It was written all over his face, in the cuts and the ugly bruise that had settled over the side of his face, mottling the skin purple and green. It had been three days.
She could still remember the moment of panic that had run through her when she’d looked through that front window and seen Peter slumped against the door with blood running down his face, not moving. She could almost still feel that unsettling terror that had taken hold of her for a moment as she’d taken in the sight in front of her. It hadn’t felt real, and in a way it still didn’t. She wasn’t heartless, but after what she’d seen in her lifetime, sometimes she couldn’t help but wish maybe she was. How it somehow might make it easier. Christie liked to joke that she kept her frailties locked behind iron doors and grating bars so that no one could get at them, not even herself. In some ways, her girlfriend’s words seemed to ring true. It only helped that Christie had the key and had stopped her from locking the doors again like they had been after Charlie’s death.
But that didn’t stop her from closing the doors every now and again.
Peter sighed and Diana watched as his face relaxed for a moment as he closed his eyes briefly and then opened them, looking up at her. His expression tightening again.
“See if anything comes up with Organized Crime’s database. The Little Guy seems to think we may be dealing with a mob hit.”
He sounded unsure as he said it, but Diana knew he wouldn’t have voiced the results of Mozzie’s slanted logic if it didn’t hold any weight, and given the circumstances, Mozzie’s slanted logic had a right mind to be a better hit on their radar than anything they’d tried so far.
All the same, a mob hit?
“A mob hit? What on earth did Neal do to get in with the mob?” She asked watching Peter carefully. He looked just as disconcerted as she felt. “The only connections to Organized Crime Neal’s ever had was because of us. Right, boss?”
Peter shrugged, but he didn’t look infuriated with Neal, so that had to be true. Although, he didn’t sound quite as accepting as he spoke.
“Mozzie says Neal’s innocent, he seems to think it’s got something to do with me. But he would. He and Neal can do no wrong, especially when they’re up to something wrong. But it makes sense, what he said. He seems convinced that the way they took Neal required loyalty you only get with the families, and I think he may be right. I want to look into it, anyway.”
“I’ll get on it, Boss,” Diana nodded.
“I’ve been looking into Luccson as well,” Diana continued. “I’ve been going through the transcript logs forensics sent up. There’s a lot there, but they found a bunch of communications from Luccson to an unknown ISP. IT have tried to track it down, but apparently whoever he was talking to online knew how to bounce their signal around a whole lot, they lost track of the signal somewhere in Russia, which makes sense with the Kandinsky connection, but they make mention of a couple of New York locales, so they were definitely in the area, and by the sounds of it, Luccson definitely knew who they were. Or at least a middleman.”
“Dammit,” Peter swore and Diana shifted her weight to her other foot as Peter leant back in his chair. She could practically see the thoughts clambering across his brain - if only he hadn’t shot Luccson then… then Neal could be dead already instead of missing and he might never have told them who hired him. They could have wound up right back here anyway.
“You did what you had to do, Boss,” she said quietly and Peter nodded.
***
“Yeah. Is there anything else in the transcript?” Peter asked.
Diana made a pointed face.
“Yeah. From the looks of it, Neal was right when he said they would have offloaded the artwork quickly. There’s mention of a meet the morning after, about 10am Tuesday. It doesn’t mention where, just an old locale, but I’m going through the transcript as Forensics sends it up, so I’ll let you know if I find anything else.”
“Thankyou, Diana,” Peter said. She held his gaze a little longer but neither of them said anything.
Peter felt tired. Weary.
How could they still have so damn little?
Finally, Diana broke their gaze and nodded to herself. She had a tight clench of determination in her jaw.
Of all the probies Peter had ever ran through the offices, Diana had always been the best of them. She was proud, determined, brilliant. Smart. Oh so smart. And a little savage. She loved her country, and her job and her team.
If anyone could help him lead them to find Neal, it was Diana.
Peter just wished he had more faith that they could.
And that fact was a terrifying.
Peter watched her head back down to her desk before he sighed, slumping forward and rolling his shoulders, trying to sooth the aching muscles.
But no matter how brilliant a tem he had, he was beginning to hope that someone would step forward to claim the crash, claim the plan as their own and reveal their intent. He wasn’t sure what was driving him mad more - the fact that they had Neal, or that they had Neal and he didn’t know why. Why they took him, or who they were. All he knew was that it wasn’t Mozzie, and that Neal was in very real danger and it was killing him not knowing a thing. There was no trace.
And so far they had worked through nearly three days of solid work with little more than a dozen or so case files with possible leads that seemed to be going nowhere, and taking far too long to get there. The worst part was it could have been any of them. This whole plan had been too well orchestrated for it to be in any way easy. They had to investigate every possible lead they could until they reached a point where they could prove it wasn’t them.
There was simply a lack of sustainable evidence. It was all hanging on identifying their mystery driver and even with his tattoo nothing had come up so far. From all the footage they had of him every angle was too distorted or there was a reflection on the car windows to get a good shot of it. So it was down to the man’s face, a profile and a shadow of anything else.
If it was any other case, they’d be scrounging for a lead. Or, in a stroke of brilliance, Neal would come up with the key to it all. The irony wasn’t lost on Peter; the one case they needed Neal, was the case they needed to solve to find Neal. The knowledge burned and Peter buried himself a little deeper into his files.
They had a SUV that crashed into his Taurus, kidnapping Neal out of the backseat and dragging him into a black sedan that seemed to disappear into traffic. They had three notes, delivered by couriers who found the letters on their delivery log but not in the system. They had courier clerks denying any sort of bribery payment to have the deliveries listed, no matter how they were threatened. They had a stolen Kandinsky. They had a forged Kandinsky that was painted by an assistant manager for the gallery she worked at and where the painting was stolen that they couldn’t pin down on a timeline. They had a dead thief, and a mystery man running the entire charade and they were no closer to piecing it all together than they had been before Neal had been taken.
And no matter how good his team was, Peter was beginning to panic.
***
It had something to do with the paintings.
It wouldn’t leave Peter alone.
It had something to do with them, he was sure of it; they were the start of it all. It had to have something to do with them.
The issue had to be he wasn’t asking himself the right questions.
So he started asking himself all of them.
Why those paintings? Out of all the art in Manhattan, why were those two works chosen to start this whole thing? It wasn’t anything to do with Neal. Neal was Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. He didn’t deal in expressionism, or Der Blaue Reiter or especially abstractions. Or at least he hadn’t in Peter’s history. He obviously knew about them, he knew a lot. He knew about almost all art the same way he knew about sixteenth century Danish astronomers, even if sometimes he mixed them up with fifteenth century Dutch astronomers. Neal prided himself on knowing the important parts of practically everything. Even after three and a half years he was still amazed at times at just how much Neal knew about things that never seemed relevant at all until they came across them in a case and then all he had to do was look at Neal and that mouth would open and the important facts would just spill out like a volcano.
It’s times like that where Peter really understands Neal’s worth, it’s that brain of his that made him impossible to catch until Peter had stopped staring at what that brain had spurred, and had listened to Diana and aimed instead at Neal’s heart. He’d caught Neal because he’d used Kate against him. It was his heart that made him beautiful and charming and willful. It was his brain that made him brilliant and criminal.
And if anyone else knew that, then what damage could be done.
But they clearly didn’t.
They didn’t know because they had hurt him, they had crashed through an intersection and taken him by force and it couldn’t have been something to do with using Neal’s skills because they could have easily killed him. But they hadn’t somehow, but they had hurt him. Needlessly. If they’d known about Neal, they could have taken a very different road and still taken him.
They knew nothing about Neal.
Not properly. Not even his reputation, because it was as ingrained in his reputation as it was in Neal. Neal was a gentleman criminal. One of the old souls who disliked guns and was witty and charming and could have you sign away your life’s work but instead stole it while you weren’t looking because Neal knew the burden of a man’s own guilt and embarrassment. And he never stole from anyone who couldn’t notice it missing.
Neal wasn’t cruel.
And they hadn’t known that.
They’d just taken him. They’d threatened him, sent a letter to his house; they’d tailed him, followed him - and then they’d taken him and it felt so impersonal to Neal it felt strange and it was driving Peter mad.
This could all have almost been about Peter. Or Diana or Jones as it was about Neal on that very first day when Peter had received that note.
Except that Neal had picked out the forgery.
Neal had been the one to pick out that there was more to the heist than just one painting going missing.
Maybe that was it.
Maybe that had been the push that came to shove and started all this?
Peter sighed and rubbed his eyes, hunched over his kitchen table.
He felt like he was dragging himself around and around in circles. Everything felt connected in some way, he just couldn’t figure out how.
They had two paintings, a theft and a forgery swap that could have been the night of the robbery or it could have been earlier. No one had noticed.
They had a dead thief, a forger who knew nothing about who she was working for except said dead thief and a payment that could have been for one or both of the robberies from a puppeteer that they were still searching for.
Who may or may not have been someone that Peter had wronged. He didn’t know.
It could have been a past case, or it could have been someone like the Architect, showing off, but with a more dangerous flair.
And it all started with those paintings.
It was all about a favor and a lesson.
But what was what?
***
The call came in the next morning when Peter was halfway out the door, his arms full of folders he’d taken home to peruse and his cell phone buzzing in his pocket. It took a few hazardous moments before he retrieved it, a single ring away from voicemail.
They had something.
He almost broke half a dozen laws on the trip in, and the moment Peter entered the office Hughes didn’t wait a second. He left his office and called Peter up with a short sharp bark and the two finger salute.
He was looking at Peter with a solemn expression on his face as Peter closed the door behind him. The look on his Hughes’ face had his stomach twisted six ways to Sunday and clinging to his hope by the tips of his fingers. The phone call from Morrison hadn’t been long, but it had been explicit.
It had to have been about Neal.
He knew this had to be about Neal. Everything was about Neal.
Until they found him, that was Peter’s oath, an oath to himself, to Mozzie, to June and Elizabeth, and most importantly, to Neal.
Peter shut the door and turned to face his superior as Hughes settled himself on the corner of his desk.
As Peter stared at the old man, waiting for him to speak he couldn’t help but take in that Hughes looked just as weary as he did, and he’d been working Neal’s disappearance since the afternoon it happened, on the clock, off the clock, around the clock.
Hughes sighed.
“Peter, Organized Crime had a walk in this morning. Nikolai Volkov. Do you know him?”
Peter braced himself, hands on his hips and he nodded.
“Russian, runs his own little crime syndicate. We busted him for art theft, what, six years ago?”
Hughes nodded, still frowning.
“He went away for five, got out two months ago. He walked to the front desk this morning and said he needed to confess. Ruiz has spent the last hour with him. Ten minutes ago he told us he knows where Caffrey is.”
Peter felt his stomach make a drop for his shoes and then, in a sudden change of mind make a break for freedom out his mouth. He swallowed, hard.
He knew where Neal was, but in what condition remained painfully undisclosed. Peter forced himself to take a breath before he spoke.
“Did he say where?”
Hughes sighed, and offered Peter a small shake of his head, his arms bracing him against his desk.
“He hasn’t yet. He’ll only tell you, apparently.”
Peter almost tripped over his haste to get the words out.
“Then let me talk to him. Which floor’s he on? I’ll get it out of him.”
Hughes took a moment and frowned even deeper than he had before.
“I don’t like this, Peter. It feels like a set up and Ruiz agrees with me.”
“Ruiz hates Neal.”
“Caffrey’s not got anything to do with this. I want him back just as much as you do, Peter, but this stinks like a set up and if you’d been sleeping the last week you’d agree with me. We have to be careful about this.”
Peter scowled; he was almost to the edge of being careful. He was almost at the point of being reckless, off-the-grid-helping-Mozzie reckless. That was saying something, and he knew it. That knowledge was the only thing keeping him from actually doing it.
“Let me in, let me get the address, after that we can be as cautious as you want. Just let me find him.”
Hughes sighed and glanced down in the bullpen, where agents were milling about; more than half of them were looking for Neal. He turned back to Peter and Peter spent the next ten seconds painfully searching his face for any sign of what he was about to say. Finally the man gave in.
“Get the address, Peter. But no further. If he baits you, for God sake don’t bite.”
***
The walk down to Organized Crime had Peter’s heart pounding in his throat the whole time. His brain was awash with niggling possibilities about Neal, where he was, who had him, why they had him - what they’d done to him.
It was almost a damn miracle in itself when Peter let himself into the interrogation room and didn’t drag him out of the chair and slam him up against the wall. Instead he calmly walked over to the table and threw the folder down in front of him. He didn’t open it, it didn’t even have anything to do with Neal, he’d just needed something to hold onto on the walk down - but Volkov didn’t know that. He also didn’t need to know that Peter knew if he sat down he’d start shaking. That wouldn’t help either. He braced himself against the table and looked down at the man sitting in front of him.
“You said you’d only tell me, well here I am. Where is Neal Caffrey?”
Volkov looked up at Peter, a pleased look across his old face. He’d been through the mill, Nikolai Volkov, he was weathered and wily, white hair and sharp grey eyes. He reminded Peter of a bird of prey. His hands were folded neatly in front of him and he spoke with a calm, perfectly accented voice.
“Agent Burke, how pleasant it is to see you.”
“Where is he?” he asked again, and for the most brief of seconds it took all of Peter’s restraint not to lash out as the man smiled.
“Come now, Peter, we must talk! After all, there is much to discuss - ”
“We talk after you tell me where Neal is. Not before.”
Volkov smiled, tight and simultaneously taunting. Peter’s ears rang with Hughes’ warning and he could feel his own brain thrumming with the truth of it. There was more to this, which is why it almost shocked him when Volkov smiled again, leaning back casually in his seat.
“Very well then, I see you drive a hard bargain, Peter. I surrender.”
The old man paused for a moment and in that space Peter genuinely had no idea what to do or say. He felt off kilter. This wasn’t how it was meant to go. There was more to this than met the eye. That fact sunk deeper into his brain as Volkov smiled and opened his mouth again, leaning forward to get closer to Peter.
“You can find your friend in warehouse thirteen, Agent Burke. In my shipping yard. I do, however, suggest you hurry - ” The man smiled, eyes flashing - “he has been on his own an awful long time.”
The sudden thrill that ran through Peter went immediately cold and his stomach made another bid for his shoes, sinking like a stone. He was barely aware of moving until the handle of the door was clutched in his fist and he was face to face with Ruiz as he was about to enter.
Peter stormed past and out the door, feeling the slam behind him like a wave. He stared at the young agent still standing guard in the corridor.
“How long has he been in here?”
The kid blanched and then realized who Peter was talking about. Probies these days, honestly.
“He walked in a seven minutes past five this morning. Everyone had to be called in.” The young man finally managed. Peter glanced down at his watch, it was quarter to eight, Neal had been alone for almost three hours. What that meant made Peter’s terror spike. Neal had been with them for four days, the fact they’d got no message, that he’d not escaped was hard enough, but three hours alone…
Neal was nothing if not vigilant about staying alive.
Peter took a breath in and faced the young agent.
“Three hours - he’s been on his own for three hours.” The agent stared at him not quite understanding the implications at hand. Peter pulled his phone out as he pushed past the kid and headed back towards the elevator.
“Diana, get a team prepped, I want them ready to leave ASAP.”
“You got a location boss? ” She sounded hopeful.
“Volkov’s shipping yard, warehouse thirteen. Get Cooper to get us an address, tell him to stay at his desk. You can meet me and Blake at the car.”
“Gotcha boss, ” Diana murmured, hanging up as Peter neared the end of the corridor.
Neal had been on his own for three hours, three hours longer than the four days he’d been missing.
Peter started to run.
***
The shipping yard of Nikolai Volkov was a sprawling mess of interconnected warehouses, some in complete and utter disrepair, others fully functional and almost alien in how polished and mechanical they were.
Peter’s hands were cramping with how hard he was grasping his steering wheel as he lead the cavalcade through the shipping yard. The car shrieked as Peter slammed his foot on the breaks and pulled up outside the yard long warehouse with a giant peeling 13 falling off the side of it’s rusted out walls.
Peter was the first out and stood in the shadow of the car as the others pulled to a halt around him. The front door of the warehouse was partially open. There was a foot wide gap of darkness into the warehouse itself, but that open space felt like an invitation. It felt chilling in the complexity of it. Like Volcov had planned it.
He probably had, this whole thing felt eerily like a game.
A puzzle.
Peter liked mysteries. He loved the challenge, proving his worth. But this was different. This wasn’t just winning the satisfaction of a completed puzzle at the end. This prize was sacred; this was Neal.
“It’s like he’s inviting us in,” Diana murmured as she stopped next to Peter. Peter’s throat was dry as he tried to answer. It came out as a croak.
“We find him, Diana.”
She nodded.
“Hughes called, the warrant came through. We’re fine. He’s sending a bus, just in case.”
Peter felt his stomach jolt even though he knew it was actually a smart order. Given the way Neal was taken, it was likely to be needed.
He hoped. Dear God, let them have this. Let them get him back…
“Good.” He croaked.
“Blake, Fenley - open the doors. Morrison, King, you two cover them. When you’re ready!” Diana ordered, stepping away from Peter, one hand on her gun, the other pointing to the other agents. Peter took a deep breath in and waited. Diana had this covered.
Peter watched as Diana counted down with her fingers, everyone silent, guns ready as the two Agents braced themselves against the door and pulled.
The door shrieked as it was rolled aside, straining against the concrete and sending up a wave of chipped paint and dirt and the heavy smell of paint stripper and dust.
Peter’s heart sank as he stared at what was inside.
“Shipping containers. It’s a warehouse in a shipping yard, of course there was going to be shipping containers,” Peter heard himself murmur, not really consciously aware as he stared at the maze that awaited them.
He looked to the grouping agents. Taking back control.
“Split into groups, you two follow Blake and start with the left half of the building, Diana, take the back row there, King, Morrison - You’re with me. You open every container, you hear. We find Caffrey and we find him today. Got it?”
“Got it, Peter,” Diana said, leading Agent Fenley to the back row of shipping containers that Peter had pointed to. Peter watched her go for a moment before turning back to the two Agents waiting for his orders. Blake was leading his two Agents towards the right end of the warehouse. Peter turned to King and Morrison.
“Start here, we’ll work backwards. Keep an eye out for signs of habitation. We clear each and every container in this room.”
The pair nodded as they walked up to the first container. The first three were unlocked and despite himself, Peter found his nerves pounding and a rush of building excitement thrummed through him as they pulled open the door to shine their torches inside. Each time he was disappointed.
They found crates filled with scrap newspaper clippings in the first container. The second yielded the same and as they busted open container after container with the same crates full of nondescript shredded paper Peter’s nerves started to fray. And the worst part of it, beyond the taunting pointlessness of the paper was the fact it wasn’t leading him any closer to his incentive: Neal.
They’d been there for what seemed like an hour before Blake’s voice crackled through the radios.
“Agent Burke, I think we found him.”
Peter’s heart nearly jumped into his mouth at the sound of the young agent’s voice.
“Where are you?”
“North east corner, second row back.”
“I’m on my way.”
“Yes Sir.” Blake’s voice echoed just as Peter started to run back the way he had come. Turner and Laurence were standing by the opposite container as Peter neared. Fenley was standing closer, holding the bolt cutters he’d been using with Diana. Diana was next to Blake who was cutting through a lock with his own pair of cutters.
“How do you know he’s in there?” Peter asked as he crossed the distance between Blake and Diana, just as Blake was unlocking the door of the storage container.
“This,” Diana said, holding out what Peter recognized as a present tag tied with bright blue ribbon. His name was written on one side of the tag, exactly like Elizabeth did with all his birthday presents. The paper was plain white and exactly like the notes.
On the other side was a single word.
Check.
Peter’s heart started to pound.
The door of the container shrieked as Blake pulled it open. Behind him Peter could hear the sound of the accompanying Agents standing ready, their guns drawn in case this was all a trap.
And it felt like one.
Peter held his breath as he followed Diana into the container and the temperature seemed to increase. It was hot and stuffy and the air felt thick. The room was dark and stacked with crates. Peter held his breath as he entered, his gun in front of him, eyeing the dim light and the space behind the crates. Three steps into the container he had room enough to see over the first row and his stomach dropped. Neal was slumped on the floor, on his side and completely motionless. Behind him he heard Diana shouting to bring the Medics in, but Peter wasn’t going to wait. He holstered his gun and clambered around the crate to the prone man. Neal’s hair was black and stiff with blood and as Peter crouched down, he almost reflexed away as he touched him. Neal’s skin was clammy and as Peter turned him, rolling him onto his back in the hot air he bit back every swear and every ounce of roiling irrational anger ready to break through.
“Where are the Medics?” he shouted, glancing up to catch Diana’s worried look.
“They’re coming, Boss,” Diana murmured, but her gaze wasn’t on her superior, it was on the unconscious man in front of them, on the filthy shirt stuck to his skin and black with dried blood, on the white pallor of his skin and the near non existent rise of his chest. Diana stared down at Neal, and Peter tried damn hard not to, not to really take in the dark stream of clotted blood behind Neal’s ear and the clammy cold of his skin as he held his partner’s head. Four days, four days since he’d been dragged out of Peter’s car, and nearly four hours since Nikolai Volkov had left Neal to die.
Too little too late, Peter couldn’t help but think, praying he was damn wrong as he tried to hold onto the faint beat of Neal’s pulse under his own fingers.
There was a bustling rush of noise as the Medics entered the container and wove around Diana to get to where Peter was cradling Neal’s head in his lap.
“Help him,” he murmured as the girl in blue knelt down next to him. She looked at him with a sad solemn look in her eyes that Peter knew would haunt him just as much as the sight in front of him.
“We’ll do our best,” she said, moving closer and sliding her hand behind Neal’s head to take him off Peter.
“You’re going to have to move aside, sir,” she said and Peter nodded, extracting himself and trying to stop the irrational part of him that wanted to stay exactly where he was.
***
next
Day three started later than Elizabeth expected, but day two had ended earlier than she had thought as well. Peter had actually come home, which was one thing she hadn’t been expecting at all. In all their years together, Peter had spent quite a few all nighters on far less important cases.
Albeit, none of them were quite this stressful and none of them had impacted on Peter’s health prior to his determined all nighter, either. Despite his convictions otherwise, she knew he was still hurting, and she knew he had either forgotten or refused to take the prescribed pain meds the hospital had given him. She was betting on the latter with an added dose of the former. Either way, it had been a bit of a shock when he’d dragged himself home at nine the night before. He’d looked ragged, tired and in pain. It was the closest she’d ever seen to seeing her husband broken as she’d crossed the room to wrap her arms around him and hold him for a moment. Just hold him and breathe him in and listen to him breathe.
In all the years he had worked for the bureau, she’d been on the receiving end of a half dozen uneasy agents on her doorstep informing her that something had happened to her husband. He’d been poisoned and kidnapped, shot and concussed (more than once). She’d had similar instances where Peter had called to say something had happened to Neal, and on those nights too, Peter had always come home shaken and a little unsure. Angry and resilient.
She never really got over any of them. She pretended she did, and in a way, they didn’t affect her as much as they did when they first happened. But all the same, they added up.
They were going to need a vacation after this. Regardless of Peter’s workaholic stature, they needed a break, an extended break; a long-service-leave type break.
“I can’t find him, El,” Peter had whispered last night and suddenly El had been wrenched out of her reverie in an instant and she’d pulled back to take Peter’s head in her hands and she had stared up into his eyes.
“You will,” she’d said, and in the darkness of their bed, as Peter had fallen deep into an exhausted sleep, El found herself facing the first time she had ever seen real fear in her husband’s eyes, real doubt, that maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t.
The look was gone when Peter woke the next morning, dressing quickly and leaving barely without pause, his conviction seemingly returned. But all the same, as Elizabeth dressed herself, forcing herself to continue the daily routine of managing her business - if only to keep her mind busy - she couldn’t help but remember that startling look in Peter’s eyes, and the moment where the idea Neal might not make it home, became suddenly all too real a possibility.
***
Even with the help of a computer cutting out a lot of the ground work, trying to trace any threats he’d received over the years was like trying to find a needle in a haystack; a single viable threat in a haystack full of threats.
There were more than Peter thought and he was glad that they had bypassed his knowledge for so long. Many of them were useless. After all, he worked White Collar. Most of those he convicted had some form of gift for the gab, and thankfully, a lot of them were just gab. But this was very real, and he couldn’t seem to make the connection he was after. It was all about the letters, but he couldn’t find anything that matched. He had half the probies working through the case files with him, the other half chasing up viable leads, but the leads were small and often useless and everything seemed to go nowhere.
And the whole time he was completely aware of the sound of the clock ticking on the wall, on his wrist, clicking over in the corner of his computer screen.
Every minute ticking away another moment where Neal was still lost, still needing them to find him and with it, every minute ticking away another minute where it was more likely they were searching for a body than their friend.
So he worked.
He turned another page and he slid another cleared file into the box on the side of his desk and he reached for another one.
They had cleared a lot of cases in the last three years, and given that Neal was also a target, that’s where they’d started, cases where their man knew Neal as well as Peter. It was a start and Peter knew it could go further back, but right then, the focus was on the last three years. If this went any further into his past and Neal was paying the price for something he had no part in - then Peter didn’t know if he could forgive himself.
The only other option was that Neal was paying the price for something he himself had done, and the notes to Peter had just been that, informing the handler on Neal’s leash that the leash was about to be yanked out of his hands.
Peter sighed and ran his hands down his face.
What on earth had either of them done to get into this? What could they have avoided? What could they have done differently?
“Agent Burke?”
Peter looked up sharply. Blake was standing in the doorway.
“What is it?”
“A possible lead?” he said, nervously.
“Tell me.”
Blake nodded and stepped into the office.
“I don’t know if you’ve already thought of it or not, but I was just thinking and something Neal said came back to me.”
Blake shifted nervously for a moment before he cleared his throat. The man would be utterly useless in any sort of undercover op, but he was a good researcher, an avid worker and he had a keen mind.
“Neal said once that the reason he sent gifts to agents on stakeouts when you were chasing him, was because it was about the game. About making sure both sides were playing and aware they were. He said sometimes half the fun of a con is making sure someone is aware you’re pulling it. I was just thinking, the notes, they were sent to show us something had happened each time. The robbery, bringing in one of the suspects, taking Caffrey, the notes were there to make sure we know it’s him. It’s part of their game. It’s showing their moves.”
Blake looked hesitant but Peter was gripping the plastic evidence bag hard, the young agent’s words echoing in his skull as he stared down at the first note. The notes were about showing their opponent’s moves.
Moves.
Games.
Notes.
Keller.
“I know it’s not much sir, but what if the notes weren’t exactly threats but moves?“
It was something Peter was sure everyone had thought over at least once. They’d been focusing on the meaning behind them but perhaps in all the wrong ways. Saying it out loud was perhaps the best way to think them out. What if they were overthinking it? What if it really was that simple? And if it was, so simultaneously complex.
They were moves.
This is my turn, now it’s yours.
“No. It’s something,” Peter said, blithely, standing up. “Look into it, Blake, look into everything. I’m going to check with a source.”
Blake nodded and followed Peter out the door as he started down the stairs. His body still ached and moving so quickly was probably a bad idea, but he needed to find Mozzie, he needed to look him in the eye and know for sure whether or not Matthew Keller had risen his head after nearly twelve months underground.
***
Mozzie had long since moved past meeting Peter in the park. But, given that he had already been in the park when the Suit had called, well, it made sense.
He at least had the courtesy to not force the Suit into a ruse. He didn’t have the time to set it up.
Rory Roadkill had stuck around for all of thirty seconds of the original meeting, and taken Mozzie’s money to tell him that no one was up to saying anything about Neal. Still. It had been over thirty six hours and no one seemed to have heard of a call to arms, a threat, even. It was silent. No one he knew was talking.
All they had was a sentence from one of June’s contacts and that was it.
It was driving him nuts.
“Tell me that this has nothing to do with Matthew Keller.”
To give it to the Suit, Mozzie genuinely hadn’t seen him approach until he was standing over him, bearing down on Mozzie’s smaller stature. It wasn’t at all polite, really.
And the man was ten minutes early, too.
“Come off it, Suit, do you really think that Keller could pull off something like this? He doesn’t have enough friends,” Mozzie said with all the disdain he could muster. Peter still didn’t look satisfied as he sat down.
“That’s not an answer.”
“Of course it’s not. Because Keller’s not the answer to our question. I already looked into it, Suit. He hasn’t surfaced and if he was behind it, then someone would say something. Everyone knows about Neal and Keller’s rivalry. It’s one of those known things. It’s practically a sport given the betting involved.”
“He couldn’t have paired up with someone to pull this?” Peter pressed.
Mozzie bristled.
“No.”
Peter let out a frustrated huff.
“Then who could? Honestly, off the book, who could possibly hate Neal this much to take him like that?”
“What makes you think it’s Neal?” Mozzie scowled. Peter at the very least, had the decency to look uncomfortable.
“You’d tell me if there was something he’d been hiding, wouldn’t you, Mozzie? If there’s something that could help this case - “
“I’m appalled at your opinion that you’re the only one trying to find him.”
“He’s been acting off for over a week, Mozzie. If that has any connection to why Neal was kidnapped, then tell me, now.”
“It’s got nothing to do with it!” Mozzie replied. The Suit’s expression didn’t change and Mozzie’s own anxiety clenched. He’d wondered briefly whether Neal had worn his waning façade into the Den, and it appeared he had. He knew trying to make Neal make his decision was going to be hard. It was why he’d started selling the treasure now, in tiny doses carefully released. Getting him back into the idea of their last big score slow and steady. He knew Neal was still hesitant, still loved his life in New York, and now that he was almost free, he was more willing to the idea of boosting their coffers a little bit; the itch of freedom making his other temptations a little harder to keep at bay. As long as Peter remained completely unaware (so far so good, or so it had seemed) Mozzie had been sure that Neal could have his cake and eat it, too. After all, they’d spent the better part of four years collecting the ingredients and guarding them well enough they practically deserved it.
No, this had nothing to do with the treasure. It was too well guarded, and if it had been, the letters would have been for him and Neal, not Neal and the Suit.
“You sure Mozzie?”
“You want it signed in blood or something? I don’t know why Neal was off, but as far as I’m aware it’s got nothing to do with this. He would have told me if there was something wrong.”
“Like the note?”
“He told me about the note. And the tail.”
“And you’re sure it’s not Keller?”
“Sorry to disappoint you, Suit, but Matthew Keller is so far underground even Otto Lindenbrock would never have come across him. Besides, Keller couldn’t have pulled this off. He’d need friends, and Keller was never that popular in the playground. This feels bigger. It has to be bigger, Suit; look at how they grabbed him. No gun or muscle man for hire is going to agree to trying to kill a Fed. Even they’re not that dumb. Who ever is running this is big. They’ve got reach. They’ve got leverage. This is dangerous.”
It was the only thing Mozzie felt right in figuring out. This went way beyond anyone that Neal had ever worked with. Even in those stretches of time where the kid had gone running off and getting himself in trouble it had never been like this. Whoever had taken him had goons; loyal, dangerous goons and the only type with that sort of upstanding loyalty were bonded in blood and a singular paternity.
One of the best things Mozzie found (and similarly the worst things) about the Suit, was that he was able to understand scatters of information and put them together in a big picture with startling ease. It was what had helped him catch Neal, it was what helped him keep on top of Neal and it was one of those qualities that Mozzie both admired and hated, because it was fantastic to see in action, and also painstakingly hard to keep ahead of a lot of the time. And it didn’t help that over the last four years, the Suit had learned his own breed of shorthand putting together Neal-and-Mozzie shaped information.
Mozzie watched as comprehension crawled over Peter’s face and then his expression darkened.
“You trying to tell me you think Neal was taken by the mob, Mozzie?”
Mozzie didn’t nod or shake his head he just frowned and plucked his glasses off his face, reaching into his pocket to pull out a handkerchief and started cleaning them.
“Which one is up to you, Suit. This guy has a crew, and he didn’t advertise or hire them. They’re brethren. June says it’s about a favor and lesson, that’s all her contact could find and better than anything would tell me. The only place you’re going to get a crew big enough and still not have them question you when you say crash into a fed’s car and steal his consultant, is in organized crime.”
“This isn’t a conspiracy theory, Mozzie.”
Mozzie slipped his glasses back on his nose and Peter’s worried frown came back into focus. For all his concern, Mozzie couldn’t stop the annoyance breaking through. He stood up and this time it was his turn to look down on Peter.
“You think I don’t know that? Neal’s my friend, too, Suit. Or perhaps you keep forgetting that. It’s not my fault he’s missing.”
One step too far. Horace had said anger was a short madness and he watched the anger clamber for space over Peter’s face. If they didn’t get Neal back soon this madness would no longer be short. In himself or the Suit.
“So now we’re passing blame are we?” Peter asked, his eyes narrowed.
“Only where it’s due, Government Man,” Mozzie scowled. He couldn’t stick around any longer. He took a step away. Peter was still scowling.
“I’ll call you if I know anything,” he said to the other man, who was still sitting on the bench and staring at him. Mozzie couldn’t stand it any longer. He turned around and as the afternoon sun peaked through the smog, he let the crowd swallow him as he tried to fight the dozen or so emotions battling out for their own slice of the action, and Mozzie couldn’t figure out which one to let take over first.
Not that any of them were going to be any help.
He had a friend to find.
***
Signing out Against Medical Authority was a hell of a lot harder than Jones expected. It had seemed simpler for Peter; there had been less hassle and less glaring. In Jones’ case, there had been two forms and this ill-frowning nurse watching as he’d signed them. The hard part was getting his hands on those damn forms. He asked for them twice, wincing as he’d tried to sit up properly and been laughed at by the attending nurses. It had taken blackmail to get Blake down from the bureau and give him the boost he needed to get the forms.
Normally he didn’t like pulling rank, but he was going insane doing nothing. There was only so many times he could try to pay attention to the pointless crap on the TV and only so long he could ignore the circumstances of his incarceration, whether it be Neal’s abduction, or the pain ricocheting halfway around his chest every time he inhaled (or exhaled) and the itching burn of the cast on his arm.
He wasn’t expecting anything substantial, he knew he what he was getting himself in for, but until he knew a little more about what the hell was going on and they were one step closer to getting Neal back.
And while he’d been expecting to be met with more resistance back at the bureau than he was even at the hospital, he wasn’t really expecting Hughes to go at him the way he did.
Still, as Blake drove him back to his own apartment, Clinton couldn’t help the feeling of victory he had at the box full of case files he had in the back seat.
He may not have been able to return to any sort of duty in the building (“it’s bad enough having one agent running around the place when he should be on leave, Agent Jones, I won’t be having two! Especially when the second can barely stand up, let alone even think about running!”) He wasn’t off the case completely, and in the end that’s what mattered.
***
“How are we doing on that facial recognition?” Peter asked, looking up at Diana.
“Nothing’s come up yet. We’re still running it,” she replied, watching him. He looked tired. Out of all of them, she knew Peter was the one taking this the hardest; he was their leader, the man in charge. He was Neal’s handler, his friend, and Diana knew Peter was blaming himself for so much that could not have been his fault in the slightest. But that was Peter; he was a man who liked to keep his friends safe, especially in a job when it wasn’t always a certifiable possibility. It had happened once before, he’d almost lost Neal in a bust and Peter hadn’t taken it well. He’d been careful before, in no way had she ever worried about putting her life in Peter Burke’s hands. But since Neal had almost died six months ago, that care had taken one step further up the scale. Nothing extreme, nothing that had worried her; in a way it had just made Peter more… Peter.
Now though, now all that care had come to nothing. Peter hadn’t expected it, he hadn’t foreseen anything like this, and she knew he was feeling it.
It was written all over his face, in the cuts and the ugly bruise that had settled over the side of his face, mottling the skin purple and green. It had been three days.
She could still remember the moment of panic that had run through her when she’d looked through that front window and seen Peter slumped against the door with blood running down his face, not moving. She could almost still feel that unsettling terror that had taken hold of her for a moment as she’d taken in the sight in front of her. It hadn’t felt real, and in a way it still didn’t. She wasn’t heartless, but after what she’d seen in her lifetime, sometimes she couldn’t help but wish maybe she was. How it somehow might make it easier. Christie liked to joke that she kept her frailties locked behind iron doors and grating bars so that no one could get at them, not even herself. In some ways, her girlfriend’s words seemed to ring true. It only helped that Christie had the key and had stopped her from locking the doors again like they had been after Charlie’s death.
But that didn’t stop her from closing the doors every now and again.
Peter sighed and Diana watched as his face relaxed for a moment as he closed his eyes briefly and then opened them, looking up at her. His expression tightening again.
“See if anything comes up with Organized Crime’s database. The Little Guy seems to think we may be dealing with a mob hit.”
He sounded unsure as he said it, but Diana knew he wouldn’t have voiced the results of Mozzie’s slanted logic if it didn’t hold any weight, and given the circumstances, Mozzie’s slanted logic had a right mind to be a better hit on their radar than anything they’d tried so far.
All the same, a mob hit?
“A mob hit? What on earth did Neal do to get in with the mob?” She asked watching Peter carefully. He looked just as disconcerted as she felt. “The only connections to Organized Crime Neal’s ever had was because of us. Right, boss?”
Peter shrugged, but he didn’t look infuriated with Neal, so that had to be true. Although, he didn’t sound quite as accepting as he spoke.
“Mozzie says Neal’s innocent, he seems to think it’s got something to do with me. But he would. He and Neal can do no wrong, especially when they’re up to something wrong. But it makes sense, what he said. He seems convinced that the way they took Neal required loyalty you only get with the families, and I think he may be right. I want to look into it, anyway.”
“I’ll get on it, Boss,” Diana nodded.
“I’ve been looking into Luccson as well,” Diana continued. “I’ve been going through the transcript logs forensics sent up. There’s a lot there, but they found a bunch of communications from Luccson to an unknown ISP. IT have tried to track it down, but apparently whoever he was talking to online knew how to bounce their signal around a whole lot, they lost track of the signal somewhere in Russia, which makes sense with the Kandinsky connection, but they make mention of a couple of New York locales, so they were definitely in the area, and by the sounds of it, Luccson definitely knew who they were. Or at least a middleman.”
“Dammit,” Peter swore and Diana shifted her weight to her other foot as Peter leant back in his chair. She could practically see the thoughts clambering across his brain - if only he hadn’t shot Luccson then… then Neal could be dead already instead of missing and he might never have told them who hired him. They could have wound up right back here anyway.
“You did what you had to do, Boss,” she said quietly and Peter nodded.
***
“Yeah. Is there anything else in the transcript?” Peter asked.
Diana made a pointed face.
“Yeah. From the looks of it, Neal was right when he said they would have offloaded the artwork quickly. There’s mention of a meet the morning after, about 10am Tuesday. It doesn’t mention where, just an old locale, but I’m going through the transcript as Forensics sends it up, so I’ll let you know if I find anything else.”
“Thankyou, Diana,” Peter said. She held his gaze a little longer but neither of them said anything.
Peter felt tired. Weary.
How could they still have so damn little?
Finally, Diana broke their gaze and nodded to herself. She had a tight clench of determination in her jaw.
Of all the probies Peter had ever ran through the offices, Diana had always been the best of them. She was proud, determined, brilliant. Smart. Oh so smart. And a little savage. She loved her country, and her job and her team.
If anyone could help him lead them to find Neal, it was Diana.
Peter just wished he had more faith that they could.
And that fact was a terrifying.
Peter watched her head back down to her desk before he sighed, slumping forward and rolling his shoulders, trying to sooth the aching muscles.
But no matter how brilliant a tem he had, he was beginning to hope that someone would step forward to claim the crash, claim the plan as their own and reveal their intent. He wasn’t sure what was driving him mad more - the fact that they had Neal, or that they had Neal and he didn’t know why. Why they took him, or who they were. All he knew was that it wasn’t Mozzie, and that Neal was in very real danger and it was killing him not knowing a thing. There was no trace.
And so far they had worked through nearly three days of solid work with little more than a dozen or so case files with possible leads that seemed to be going nowhere, and taking far too long to get there. The worst part was it could have been any of them. This whole plan had been too well orchestrated for it to be in any way easy. They had to investigate every possible lead they could until they reached a point where they could prove it wasn’t them.
There was simply a lack of sustainable evidence. It was all hanging on identifying their mystery driver and even with his tattoo nothing had come up so far. From all the footage they had of him every angle was too distorted or there was a reflection on the car windows to get a good shot of it. So it was down to the man’s face, a profile and a shadow of anything else.
If it was any other case, they’d be scrounging for a lead. Or, in a stroke of brilliance, Neal would come up with the key to it all. The irony wasn’t lost on Peter; the one case they needed Neal, was the case they needed to solve to find Neal. The knowledge burned and Peter buried himself a little deeper into his files.
They had a SUV that crashed into his Taurus, kidnapping Neal out of the backseat and dragging him into a black sedan that seemed to disappear into traffic. They had three notes, delivered by couriers who found the letters on their delivery log but not in the system. They had courier clerks denying any sort of bribery payment to have the deliveries listed, no matter how they were threatened. They had a stolen Kandinsky. They had a forged Kandinsky that was painted by an assistant manager for the gallery she worked at and where the painting was stolen that they couldn’t pin down on a timeline. They had a dead thief, and a mystery man running the entire charade and they were no closer to piecing it all together than they had been before Neal had been taken.
And no matter how good his team was, Peter was beginning to panic.
***
It had something to do with the paintings.
It wouldn’t leave Peter alone.
It had something to do with them, he was sure of it; they were the start of it all. It had to have something to do with them.
The issue had to be he wasn’t asking himself the right questions.
So he started asking himself all of them.
Why those paintings? Out of all the art in Manhattan, why were those two works chosen to start this whole thing? It wasn’t anything to do with Neal. Neal was Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. He didn’t deal in expressionism, or Der Blaue Reiter or especially abstractions. Or at least he hadn’t in Peter’s history. He obviously knew about them, he knew a lot. He knew about almost all art the same way he knew about sixteenth century Danish astronomers, even if sometimes he mixed them up with fifteenth century Dutch astronomers. Neal prided himself on knowing the important parts of practically everything. Even after three and a half years he was still amazed at times at just how much Neal knew about things that never seemed relevant at all until they came across them in a case and then all he had to do was look at Neal and that mouth would open and the important facts would just spill out like a volcano.
It’s times like that where Peter really understands Neal’s worth, it’s that brain of his that made him impossible to catch until Peter had stopped staring at what that brain had spurred, and had listened to Diana and aimed instead at Neal’s heart. He’d caught Neal because he’d used Kate against him. It was his heart that made him beautiful and charming and willful. It was his brain that made him brilliant and criminal.
And if anyone else knew that, then what damage could be done.
But they clearly didn’t.
They didn’t know because they had hurt him, they had crashed through an intersection and taken him by force and it couldn’t have been something to do with using Neal’s skills because they could have easily killed him. But they hadn’t somehow, but they had hurt him. Needlessly. If they’d known about Neal, they could have taken a very different road and still taken him.
They knew nothing about Neal.
Not properly. Not even his reputation, because it was as ingrained in his reputation as it was in Neal. Neal was a gentleman criminal. One of the old souls who disliked guns and was witty and charming and could have you sign away your life’s work but instead stole it while you weren’t looking because Neal knew the burden of a man’s own guilt and embarrassment. And he never stole from anyone who couldn’t notice it missing.
Neal wasn’t cruel.
And they hadn’t known that.
They’d just taken him. They’d threatened him, sent a letter to his house; they’d tailed him, followed him - and then they’d taken him and it felt so impersonal to Neal it felt strange and it was driving Peter mad.
This could all have almost been about Peter. Or Diana or Jones as it was about Neal on that very first day when Peter had received that note.
Except that Neal had picked out the forgery.
Neal had been the one to pick out that there was more to the heist than just one painting going missing.
Maybe that was it.
Maybe that had been the push that came to shove and started all this?
Peter sighed and rubbed his eyes, hunched over his kitchen table.
He felt like he was dragging himself around and around in circles. Everything felt connected in some way, he just couldn’t figure out how.
They had two paintings, a theft and a forgery swap that could have been the night of the robbery or it could have been earlier. No one had noticed.
They had a dead thief, a forger who knew nothing about who she was working for except said dead thief and a payment that could have been for one or both of the robberies from a puppeteer that they were still searching for.
Who may or may not have been someone that Peter had wronged. He didn’t know.
It could have been a past case, or it could have been someone like the Architect, showing off, but with a more dangerous flair.
And it all started with those paintings.
It was all about a favor and a lesson.
But what was what?
***
The call came in the next morning when Peter was halfway out the door, his arms full of folders he’d taken home to peruse and his cell phone buzzing in his pocket. It took a few hazardous moments before he retrieved it, a single ring away from voicemail.
They had something.
He almost broke half a dozen laws on the trip in, and the moment Peter entered the office Hughes didn’t wait a second. He left his office and called Peter up with a short sharp bark and the two finger salute.
He was looking at Peter with a solemn expression on his face as Peter closed the door behind him. The look on his Hughes’ face had his stomach twisted six ways to Sunday and clinging to his hope by the tips of his fingers. The phone call from Morrison hadn’t been long, but it had been explicit.
It had to have been about Neal.
He knew this had to be about Neal. Everything was about Neal.
Until they found him, that was Peter’s oath, an oath to himself, to Mozzie, to June and Elizabeth, and most importantly, to Neal.
Peter shut the door and turned to face his superior as Hughes settled himself on the corner of his desk.
As Peter stared at the old man, waiting for him to speak he couldn’t help but take in that Hughes looked just as weary as he did, and he’d been working Neal’s disappearance since the afternoon it happened, on the clock, off the clock, around the clock.
Hughes sighed.
“Peter, Organized Crime had a walk in this morning. Nikolai Volkov. Do you know him?”
Peter braced himself, hands on his hips and he nodded.
“Russian, runs his own little crime syndicate. We busted him for art theft, what, six years ago?”
Hughes nodded, still frowning.
“He went away for five, got out two months ago. He walked to the front desk this morning and said he needed to confess. Ruiz has spent the last hour with him. Ten minutes ago he told us he knows where Caffrey is.”
Peter felt his stomach make a drop for his shoes and then, in a sudden change of mind make a break for freedom out his mouth. He swallowed, hard.
He knew where Neal was, but in what condition remained painfully undisclosed. Peter forced himself to take a breath before he spoke.
“Did he say where?”
Hughes sighed, and offered Peter a small shake of his head, his arms bracing him against his desk.
“He hasn’t yet. He’ll only tell you, apparently.”
Peter almost tripped over his haste to get the words out.
“Then let me talk to him. Which floor’s he on? I’ll get it out of him.”
Hughes took a moment and frowned even deeper than he had before.
“I don’t like this, Peter. It feels like a set up and Ruiz agrees with me.”
“Ruiz hates Neal.”
“Caffrey’s not got anything to do with this. I want him back just as much as you do, Peter, but this stinks like a set up and if you’d been sleeping the last week you’d agree with me. We have to be careful about this.”
Peter scowled; he was almost to the edge of being careful. He was almost at the point of being reckless, off-the-grid-helping-Mozzie reckless. That was saying something, and he knew it. That knowledge was the only thing keeping him from actually doing it.
“Let me in, let me get the address, after that we can be as cautious as you want. Just let me find him.”
Hughes sighed and glanced down in the bullpen, where agents were milling about; more than half of them were looking for Neal. He turned back to Peter and Peter spent the next ten seconds painfully searching his face for any sign of what he was about to say. Finally the man gave in.
“Get the address, Peter. But no further. If he baits you, for God sake don’t bite.”
***
The walk down to Organized Crime had Peter’s heart pounding in his throat the whole time. His brain was awash with niggling possibilities about Neal, where he was, who had him, why they had him - what they’d done to him.
It was almost a damn miracle in itself when Peter let himself into the interrogation room and didn’t drag him out of the chair and slam him up against the wall. Instead he calmly walked over to the table and threw the folder down in front of him. He didn’t open it, it didn’t even have anything to do with Neal, he’d just needed something to hold onto on the walk down - but Volkov didn’t know that. He also didn’t need to know that Peter knew if he sat down he’d start shaking. That wouldn’t help either. He braced himself against the table and looked down at the man sitting in front of him.
“You said you’d only tell me, well here I am. Where is Neal Caffrey?”
Volkov looked up at Peter, a pleased look across his old face. He’d been through the mill, Nikolai Volkov, he was weathered and wily, white hair and sharp grey eyes. He reminded Peter of a bird of prey. His hands were folded neatly in front of him and he spoke with a calm, perfectly accented voice.
“Agent Burke, how pleasant it is to see you.”
“Where is he?” he asked again, and for the most brief of seconds it took all of Peter’s restraint not to lash out as the man smiled.
“Come now, Peter, we must talk! After all, there is much to discuss - ”
“We talk after you tell me where Neal is. Not before.”
Volkov smiled, tight and simultaneously taunting. Peter’s ears rang with Hughes’ warning and he could feel his own brain thrumming with the truth of it. There was more to this, which is why it almost shocked him when Volkov smiled again, leaning back casually in his seat.
“Very well then, I see you drive a hard bargain, Peter. I surrender.”
The old man paused for a moment and in that space Peter genuinely had no idea what to do or say. He felt off kilter. This wasn’t how it was meant to go. There was more to this than met the eye. That fact sunk deeper into his brain as Volkov smiled and opened his mouth again, leaning forward to get closer to Peter.
“You can find your friend in warehouse thirteen, Agent Burke. In my shipping yard. I do, however, suggest you hurry - ” The man smiled, eyes flashing - “he has been on his own an awful long time.”
The sudden thrill that ran through Peter went immediately cold and his stomach made another bid for his shoes, sinking like a stone. He was barely aware of moving until the handle of the door was clutched in his fist and he was face to face with Ruiz as he was about to enter.
Peter stormed past and out the door, feeling the slam behind him like a wave. He stared at the young agent still standing guard in the corridor.
“How long has he been in here?”
The kid blanched and then realized who Peter was talking about. Probies these days, honestly.
“He walked in a seven minutes past five this morning. Everyone had to be called in.” The young man finally managed. Peter glanced down at his watch, it was quarter to eight, Neal had been alone for almost three hours. What that meant made Peter’s terror spike. Neal had been with them for four days, the fact they’d got no message, that he’d not escaped was hard enough, but three hours alone…
Neal was nothing if not vigilant about staying alive.
Peter took a breath in and faced the young agent.
“Three hours - he’s been on his own for three hours.” The agent stared at him not quite understanding the implications at hand. Peter pulled his phone out as he pushed past the kid and headed back towards the elevator.
“Diana, get a team prepped, I want them ready to leave ASAP.”
“You got a location boss? ” She sounded hopeful.
“Volkov’s shipping yard, warehouse thirteen. Get Cooper to get us an address, tell him to stay at his desk. You can meet me and Blake at the car.”
“Gotcha boss, ” Diana murmured, hanging up as Peter neared the end of the corridor.
Neal had been on his own for three hours, three hours longer than the four days he’d been missing.
Peter started to run.
***
The shipping yard of Nikolai Volkov was a sprawling mess of interconnected warehouses, some in complete and utter disrepair, others fully functional and almost alien in how polished and mechanical they were.
Peter’s hands were cramping with how hard he was grasping his steering wheel as he lead the cavalcade through the shipping yard. The car shrieked as Peter slammed his foot on the breaks and pulled up outside the yard long warehouse with a giant peeling 13 falling off the side of it’s rusted out walls.
Peter was the first out and stood in the shadow of the car as the others pulled to a halt around him. The front door of the warehouse was partially open. There was a foot wide gap of darkness into the warehouse itself, but that open space felt like an invitation. It felt chilling in the complexity of it. Like Volcov had planned it.
He probably had, this whole thing felt eerily like a game.
A puzzle.
Peter liked mysteries. He loved the challenge, proving his worth. But this was different. This wasn’t just winning the satisfaction of a completed puzzle at the end. This prize was sacred; this was Neal.
“It’s like he’s inviting us in,” Diana murmured as she stopped next to Peter. Peter’s throat was dry as he tried to answer. It came out as a croak.
“We find him, Diana.”
She nodded.
“Hughes called, the warrant came through. We’re fine. He’s sending a bus, just in case.”
Peter felt his stomach jolt even though he knew it was actually a smart order. Given the way Neal was taken, it was likely to be needed.
He hoped. Dear God, let them have this. Let them get him back…
“Good.” He croaked.
“Blake, Fenley - open the doors. Morrison, King, you two cover them. When you’re ready!” Diana ordered, stepping away from Peter, one hand on her gun, the other pointing to the other agents. Peter took a deep breath in and waited. Diana had this covered.
Peter watched as Diana counted down with her fingers, everyone silent, guns ready as the two Agents braced themselves against the door and pulled.
The door shrieked as it was rolled aside, straining against the concrete and sending up a wave of chipped paint and dirt and the heavy smell of paint stripper and dust.
Peter’s heart sank as he stared at what was inside.
“Shipping containers. It’s a warehouse in a shipping yard, of course there was going to be shipping containers,” Peter heard himself murmur, not really consciously aware as he stared at the maze that awaited them.
He looked to the grouping agents. Taking back control.
“Split into groups, you two follow Blake and start with the left half of the building, Diana, take the back row there, King, Morrison - You’re with me. You open every container, you hear. We find Caffrey and we find him today. Got it?”
“Got it, Peter,” Diana said, leading Agent Fenley to the back row of shipping containers that Peter had pointed to. Peter watched her go for a moment before turning back to the two Agents waiting for his orders. Blake was leading his two Agents towards the right end of the warehouse. Peter turned to King and Morrison.
“Start here, we’ll work backwards. Keep an eye out for signs of habitation. We clear each and every container in this room.”
The pair nodded as they walked up to the first container. The first three were unlocked and despite himself, Peter found his nerves pounding and a rush of building excitement thrummed through him as they pulled open the door to shine their torches inside. Each time he was disappointed.
They found crates filled with scrap newspaper clippings in the first container. The second yielded the same and as they busted open container after container with the same crates full of nondescript shredded paper Peter’s nerves started to fray. And the worst part of it, beyond the taunting pointlessness of the paper was the fact it wasn’t leading him any closer to his incentive: Neal.
They’d been there for what seemed like an hour before Blake’s voice crackled through the radios.
“Agent Burke, I think we found him.”
Peter’s heart nearly jumped into his mouth at the sound of the young agent’s voice.
“Where are you?”
“North east corner, second row back.”
“I’m on my way.”
“Yes Sir.” Blake’s voice echoed just as Peter started to run back the way he had come. Turner and Laurence were standing by the opposite container as Peter neared. Fenley was standing closer, holding the bolt cutters he’d been using with Diana. Diana was next to Blake who was cutting through a lock with his own pair of cutters.
“How do you know he’s in there?” Peter asked as he crossed the distance between Blake and Diana, just as Blake was unlocking the door of the storage container.
“This,” Diana said, holding out what Peter recognized as a present tag tied with bright blue ribbon. His name was written on one side of the tag, exactly like Elizabeth did with all his birthday presents. The paper was plain white and exactly like the notes.
On the other side was a single word.
Check.
Peter’s heart started to pound.
The door of the container shrieked as Blake pulled it open. Behind him Peter could hear the sound of the accompanying Agents standing ready, their guns drawn in case this was all a trap.
And it felt like one.
Peter held his breath as he followed Diana into the container and the temperature seemed to increase. It was hot and stuffy and the air felt thick. The room was dark and stacked with crates. Peter held his breath as he entered, his gun in front of him, eyeing the dim light and the space behind the crates. Three steps into the container he had room enough to see over the first row and his stomach dropped. Neal was slumped on the floor, on his side and completely motionless. Behind him he heard Diana shouting to bring the Medics in, but Peter wasn’t going to wait. He holstered his gun and clambered around the crate to the prone man. Neal’s hair was black and stiff with blood and as Peter crouched down, he almost reflexed away as he touched him. Neal’s skin was clammy and as Peter turned him, rolling him onto his back in the hot air he bit back every swear and every ounce of roiling irrational anger ready to break through.
“Where are the Medics?” he shouted, glancing up to catch Diana’s worried look.
“They’re coming, Boss,” Diana murmured, but her gaze wasn’t on her superior, it was on the unconscious man in front of them, on the filthy shirt stuck to his skin and black with dried blood, on the white pallor of his skin and the near non existent rise of his chest. Diana stared down at Neal, and Peter tried damn hard not to, not to really take in the dark stream of clotted blood behind Neal’s ear and the clammy cold of his skin as he held his partner’s head. Four days, four days since he’d been dragged out of Peter’s car, and nearly four hours since Nikolai Volkov had left Neal to die.
Too little too late, Peter couldn’t help but think, praying he was damn wrong as he tried to hold onto the faint beat of Neal’s pulse under his own fingers.
There was a bustling rush of noise as the Medics entered the container and wove around Diana to get to where Peter was cradling Neal’s head in his lap.
“Help him,” he murmured as the girl in blue knelt down next to him. She looked at him with a sad solemn look in her eyes that Peter knew would haunt him just as much as the sight in front of him.
“We’ll do our best,” she said, moving closer and sliding her hand behind Neal’s head to take him off Peter.
“You’re going to have to move aside, sir,” she said and Peter nodded, extracting himself and trying to stop the irrational part of him that wanted to stay exactly where he was.
***
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