Author's notes: This story takes place a few weeks after the series Finale of Chuck and after White Collar season 3 episode 'Checkmate' since they aired the same month according to Wikipedia.

Additional Author's note/disclaimer: This is the first story I've ever created a cover for. The cover is designed to look like the painting stolen in this story and, in order to recreate an image that looked like the painting, I had to copy and manipulate two images which are not mine.

First, the background of the cover was created using a photo taken by Boris Mrdja, named Montenegro startrail. They have given me permission to post this image even though they don't usually allow manipulation of their photos. Check them out on deviantART; their photos are amazing!

The ship image in the cover also comes from a deviantART user: King Kummerton. The image is aptly called 'ship' and located in their scraps.

Aside from those two images, the rest of the cover is my own work. The image manipulation and text additions were all done by me, using Microsoft Word.

Chapter 1

The Nazi treasure had been found, again, and Keller was behind bars, again. New York's White Collar division considered it a win, even if their favourite cop and robber team were on the verge of breakdown.

And then a one-of-a-kind painting vanished from a residential apartment overnight. It wasn't an ordinary painting either, as the owner was a CIA agent charged with protecting and analysing it. This was not common knowledge. What was common knowledge was that the owner had strong-armed the FBI into working with 'their' security team.

A little warning would have been nice. Maybe then, Neal wouldn't have been completely unprepared for when Chuck and Sarah walked through the door. Instead, he could only duck his head behind the computer screen and hope they don't speak to him.

Sarah barely spared him a glance as she stormed off, obviously not happy about working with the FBI. Neal hadn't been happy about it at the start but, he had grown to like the work and the agents. Peter was smart and could keep up with him, Diana could give as good as she got and Jones was a grounded voice of reason.

The bad part about picking the desk near the entrance was that it was often the first desk that people spotted. And, sure enough, Chuck chose to walk over to his desk and start talking to him.

"Excuse me." He shouldn't have looked up. But, he hadn't been able to resist and Chuck ended up getting a good look at his face.

Chuck's eyelids fluttered as he flashed and his whole manner changed from uncomfortable to shocked.

"Bryce?" he questioned in a harsh whisper, "I thought you were dead!"

"Not here!" Neal whispered back. He stood up and began walking down the hall. He found a secluded spot where they could talk between rows of files.

"What are you doing here, Bryce?" Chuck asked with his voice low.

"First, Chuck, my name is Neal Caffrey. Secondly, I'm undercover!"

"In the FBI?"

"Originally, I was investigating another agent's disappearance." He had been placed in prison days after healing because Kate had requested an audience where she broke up with him; their code for trouble. He had looked into her disappearance, witnessed her death and gotten wrapped into her case. And now Neal Caffrey was up for commutation, after which he would have to leave this life behind for his next mission.

"Okay," Chuck said in a drawn out way, "and how did that go?"

"Well, I ended up in possession of a really awesome Nazi treasure, only to give it up to a killer who kidnapped my partner's wife. Now my partner's mad that I had it in the first place and I don't know how to make up with him. How about you, Chuck? What have you been up to lately?"

"I lost the Intersect, got it back, in-between which Morgan and Sarah ended up downloading it and it did massive damage to their minds, had to win over my wife again and saved General Beckman's life. Oh, and now Bryce Larkin has came back into my life."

"You say that like it's a bad thing," Neal said, feeling slightly hurt that Chuck would put it that way.

"No," Chuck responded quickly, "it's not a bad thing. Just an annoying thing because no one thought to tell me."

"Undercover," Neal repeated, hoping that Chuck would catch on that he wasn't allowed to contact them. In addition, contacting Chuck was like sending up a flare that he was alive which would put everyone Neal Caffrey knew in danger.

"Fine," Chuck pouted.

"We should probably think of a cover story for why we're back here," Neal pointed out as his phone began to ring. "One sec."

"Neal." It was Peter. "There should be a Charles Carmichael somewhere in the office. You think you can take him to see the crime scene?"

"I think I could do that," Neal responded confidently, "but, what about my anklet?"

"Stay with Carmichael and it shouldn't be an issue," Peter responded, "and you'll report whatever you find to Jones."

Neal hung up and found Chuck looking at the screen of his phone.

"Says I'm supposed to work with Neal Caffrey," he said, "and that Sarah'll stay here and work with Agent Burke." He smiled and showed Neal the message. "It also says that I'm to watch myself because he's a known forger and conman."

"What can I say," Neal responded with a shrug. "I'm that good."

Peter didn't like working with people outside of his office. Most were untrusting and weren't as interested in solving the case as they were interested in keeping and forwarding their own careers.

And there were those he had unpleasant histories with. Ruiz was one. Rice was another; he certainly wasn't going to trust any of his people to her again.

Shaw. He really didn't like Shaw. Revenge messed people up and Shaw certainly was an example of that.

But, none of them would cause his heart to stop the way it did when Sarah Bartowski walked through the doors of White Collar. Her husband, this was Peter's first time actually seeing the man instead of a photograph, stood listlessly behind her.

Their eyes locked. He could see the moment of recognition on her features, the surprise and anger. His chest hurt in remembrance of the last time they met. It had ended with her stabbing him through with a knife.

"This is an FBI office and we're in plain view," he informed her in a level voice as she stormed into his office. The calm was easy to call on when his blood started rushing and he spent so long as Peter Burke that he sometimes forgot that he had another side, a deadlier side. "You do well to think before you act."

"Kieran Ryker," she hissed, her hand twitching. She had hidden weapons which she could use to kill him but, he knew she wouldn't act just yet. Not unless he gave her a reason to. "How are you still alive? I stabbed you myself."

Peter sighed.

"And didn't your husband shoot Shaw?" he asked, rhetorically. They both knew he had and they both knew that Shaw survived.

He motioned for her to take a seat.

"Look, about what happened with the baby," he said, "Shaw contacted me and I was expected to do something. If I hadn't, it would have been suspicious and he would have attempted to track me down."

"So?"

"I have a wife," he stated, "and a life here. My main mission has always been infiltration of the FBI. I pass information, get undercover agents out of scrapes and cover up things that we don't want people to know. Sometimes I take other missions, like the one in Budapest where I was your handler, but mostly I stay here and live Peter Burke's life."

Sarah didn't know what to say to that. This man in front of her was different to the handler she knew. Then again, he was a CIA trained spy.

"You tried to kill me," she reminded him, "and what about the baby?"

"Shaw contacted me," he repeated, "I was expected to act. I acted. Taught you a valuable lesson too."

"What was that?" she asked haughtily.

"Trust your team," he responded in a serious tone, "don't go running in without any backup just because you don't want anyone to know your deep dark secrets. It'll get you killed."

Her only response was silence, because he was right. She had almost gotten herself killed. But, she still didn't know whether she could work with this man.

"The mission in Budapest, it was CIA sanctioned. But, it was a covert operation. If we got caught, they would deny all knowledge of us. That's why they told you it wasn't when you decided to check. The CIA couldn't officially say that they were planning to kidnap an heir to a massive fortune," Peter explained. He needed her to trust him, if only a little, so he added, "if you had handed her to me, I would have brought her home to my wife and we might have raised her. Or we might have handed her over to someone else. Either way, it was better than handing her over to the CIA. You realised that too."

"They couldn't guarantee her protection," Sarah said. It was why she had handed the baby to her mother because the CIA didn't know about her and the baby, her little sister, would be safe. "Say I believe you, now what?"

Peter breathed a sigh of relief.

"You can't tell anyone that I'm CIA of course," he said, "no one here knows that I work for the company and I'd like to keep it that way."

"Fine," she responded, sitting back and crossing her arms. "But Chuck will recognise you on sight."

"There's a way around that," Peter said and he pulled out his phone to call Neal. He didn't know why she was so confident of that, but he didn't want to risk a confrontation with the man who tried to kill Shaw.