Disclaimer: White Collar is the property of Jeff Eastin and USA Network. OCs are my own. Story is my own.

A/N:Alrighty everyone, here is my newest story! I just adore my OCs in this one, and I really hope you all grow to love them as well. A far warning to everyone is that the rating is for mention of drug abuse, alcohol use, swearing and some minor mentions of sex in later chapters. Please enjoy, and leave a review!


There was something oddly poetic about having a two mile radius in a city like New York. In one aspect, it was a beautiful testament to solitude. When hundreds of thousands of people were rushing and running about your city, trying in vain to make this appointment and the next, scheduled ten minutes apart and ten city blocks from one another, you could lazily meander down the same streets and paths you took every day, knowing exactly how many feet you walked from one corner to the next. On the other hand, it was a terror worthy of the literary talents of Stephen King. The rest of the world got to live their lives. They got to try the coffee at the shop five blocks away instead of just two. They got to shop at the stores twenty minutes from their homes, not just fifteen. They drove up to Jersey or down to Florida and could schedule cruises to the Caribbean, the Bahamas, Alaska. They could go down to Long Island for a day on Montauk Point, or drive upstate to enjoy the fresh air and get back in touch with nature. Best of all, they could do all of them without a heavy hunk of plastic chafing their legs.

Neal Caffrey was rounding the same corner for the fourth time. It was a Saturday morning and the sun was high in the sky, warming the already-bustling city of New York. In such a city, all those walking the streets were so invested in themselves that nobody noticed the man aimlessly wandering a two mile path. He noticed all of them, however, because when you only had two miles to walk and already know all the stores and shops and restaurants nestled into that little radius, the most entertaining thing to do was people watch.

Neal noticed the business man with a fresh-from-the-cleaner's suit, his newspaper tucked under his arm and his cell phone stapled to his ear, completely oblivious of the his coffee cup leaking the drink down his suit's lapel. He noticed the mother, clearly a tourist, with a toddler in her arms and another tugging at the hem of her peasant skirt as she pointed out the ten thousandth pigeon hopping along the sidewalk. He noticed the jogger zig-zagging through the crowd, her ponytail bouncing and her lips moving soundlessly over the lyrics of the song assumed she was hearing from her headphones. He noticed the teenage boy with a book open in his hands, narrowly avoiding a collision with the jogging girl and the peasant-skirted woman's screaming child. And, most importantly, he noticed the young brunette with torn-up jeans and streaks of pink buried in her braid. He noticed the particular swing of her hips when she walked, the way she tapped her fingers against her leg as though there were some invisible miniature drum there that only she could hear. He noticed the way she kept tucking wisps of hair neatly behind her ears, the way she quickened her pace when she crossed the street, the way she slammed her feet against the pavement when she returned to the sidewalk.

Everything about that slim brunette seemed oddly familiar; her walk, her posture, her demeanor in itself. The large tattoo of a raven- or was it a crow?- on her upper left arm certainly threw him off, but the toned canvas the portrait laid on looked about right. The beat up canvas bag that hung off her shoulder and the buttons that lined the strap were both trigging their own sets of memories.

Neal was so caught up in his remembrances that he hardly noticed he was following the girl, turning where she turned, weaving through the sea of faces to keep up with her. It was only when a gentle beeping from his least favorite fashion accessory sounded that he was even aware of how far she'd taken him.

"Damn," Neal muttered, glancing down as though to curse at his anklet. His eyes shot back up in time to see the brunette cross the street again, tossing a glance over her shoulder quickly before focusing ahead again. He watched her swing open the glass door of a shop on the other side of the street, pulling it closed behind her and disappearing inside. Neal shifted his weight from one foot to the other as though the change might make it easier for him to see the name of the establishment.

Regal Ink was painted in black and red lettering across the front window of the shop. Neal noted the name before turning on his heel and hurrying back home, hoping that Peter had not been alerted of his quick slip outside his radius.

Two miles was truly a poetic distance in this lovely New York City.

"Morning," Peter greeted as he walked past Neal's desk in the bullpen. Neal jumped, his hand flying to the mouse of his computer so that he could quickly close the page he had been sifting through. Peter paused, giving him a strange look to which Neal responded with only a smile and a hello. "You okay?"

"Fine," Neal replied. "You just surprised me."

"Okay," Peter said slowly. He began to walk away, but paused for a moment and glanced back. "What were you looking at?"

"Just doing a little bit of research," Neal said, content with the fact that, technically, he wasn't lying to his friend. Peter thought for a moment, then decided it was best not to ask any additional questions and continued his path to his office. In his absence, Neal visible relaxed and let out a sigh of relief as he opened his browser history and clicked the latest link.

Regal Ink, Neal found out, was a newer tattoo shop. It had been in business for just a little over five years and was founded by a man named Dan Byrne, who, instead of featuring his own picture on the website, preferred a website banner based around a photograph of his arms crossed over his chest, the focus on the picture lying on his two full tattoo sleeves.

Neal searched through the profiles of all the other artists at the shop. There was Michael Hagan, Caleb Clark, Mitch Young, and Severen Moore. The only female artist on the list was Lucinda "Lucie" Martinez, who, with her sun kissed skin and wavy raven locks, was definitely not the girl Neal was looking for.

"So she's not an artist," Neal mused under his breath. He knew that there was a possibility that she did not actually work at the shop. He'd seen a tattoo on her arm, and therefore knew that she might have been going in just to have another done. Disappointed, Neal returned to the main page, scrolling up and down and looking for some link that might lead him to his girl. Finding nothing, Neal moved the curser, readying to close out of the screen, when he saw some fine print at the bottom of the page, the words just a shade lighter than that of the blood red background. Webpage design by Lily C.

Bingo.


Working for the FBI had its perks. Sure, there was the bland-tasting coffee, which always wound up too cold too fast, and the suits that pulled in all the wrong places, and the ties that would never stay tied, and the late hours and early mornings and the boring, humdrum, tedious paperwork that took hours upon hours to finally complete. But there were also the resources. The databases that held countless names, the searches he could do to find people in those databases and see a list of both alleged and confirmed crimes they've committed. Whenever one Neal Caffrey poked his head into Peter's office, this was the perk that Peter loved the most.

Neal often found places outside of his radius that he liked to go. There were plenty of art museums and special exhibits that he had asked to go to, and although the higher ups didn't like to extend the dog's leash, it was doable so long as there was an agent there to hold it. It was not uncommon for Neal to come and ask to be escorted to some special event. Those events normally were not tattoo parlors, and Neal was normally not as secretive about them as he was about Regal Ink.

First, Neal had asked, "What do you have going on this weekend?"

This was Peter's first clue the ex-convict was up to something. When he answered that he had no plans, Neal asked if Peter might be able to escort him somewhere just outside his radius.

"How far outside?" Peter had questioned.

"Just a block," Neal replied. Peter asked where he wanted to go. Neal said "a shop". Peter asked what kind. Neal skirted around it for a good minute before blurting, "It's called Regal Ink."

Peter said he would think about, and Neal left for the bullpen. So now, sitting in his glass-walled office with his chilly coffee and a stack of untouched paperwork at his side, Peter was thinking about it. He thought about it, and he thought about the FBI's criminal database. He thought about regular search engines. He thought about how the two could be used together.

When he typed Regal Ink into the Google search bar, Peter was only half-expecting a tattoo shop to show up on the top of his results. After all, the name sounded like such a place, but Neal Caffrey? At a tattoo parlor? Wanting to break up his perfect skin with a permanent portrait in metal-based ink? It was preposterous. Unless, of course, one of the artists listed had a criminal past that overlapped with Neal's. Peter opened the database on his computer and started typing in names.

Yeah, working for the FBI definitely had its perks.


"So what is it that I'm looking for?" Mozzie was standing with his hands gripping the back of the chair across from Neal's seat. The younger man glanced up, shaking his head.

"Her name is Lily," he said. "I don't really want to go into detail until I know that it's her."

"Well, you are going to have to tell me who she is if I'm supposed to find out," Mozzie replied. He drew the chair back and lowered himself into it. Folding his hands on the table, he leaned forward and raised his eyebrows at his friend. "So?"

Neal rose from his seat without saying a word and crossed the room. He pulled a book off of a shelf, flipped through it and then returned it. He took another one and breezed through the pages before returning it as well. The third book he took he opened to the middle and removed something from between the pages. He set the book back in its home before going back to the table and slapping the thin envelope he'd taken in front of Mozzie. Mozzie lifted the envelope off the table and eyed Neal carefully. Neal nodded once and Mozzie lifted the flap of the envelope and let its contents spill before him.

There were three photographs there, all old Polaroid's with yellowing edges. The first showed a little boy, not more than three years old, with Neal's sparkling eyes and then-unruly brown locks. He was bent beside a baby carrier, and the child of about one, perhaps less, inside was staring up at him with stormy gray eyes. The only indicator of the baby's gender was the pink polka-dotted bow resting on her dark hair. The second picture was of a thirteen year old Neal and a girl of about ten standing on either side of a dolphin-shaped fountain. The last picture was just of the girl. She looked about thirteen and was sitting cross-legged on the floor with a guitar in her hands. With the way that her eyes were turned down, scanning over what he thought to be a page of music on the floor in front of her, Mozzie assumed she did not know her picture was being taken.

"Is this…?"

"That's her." Neal then pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket and slid it across the table to Mozzie. On it was a rough sketch of a raven in flight, a few stray feathers dancing beneath its wings. "I also saw a tattoo that looked something like this on her arm."

"I'll see what I can do."


The fact that Neal was looking into a tattoo parlor was stuck at the forefront of Peter's mind. He had run every name of every artist at the shop through the FBI's database and had found absolute zero matches. This, of course, came as both a comfort and an irritation- a comfort because he now knew Neal was not looking into someone from his criminal past, but an irritation because this was the first time in months that Peter had absolutely no clue as to what the young man was planning. With a thousand questions in his mind, and Neal pressing for an answer, Peter decided it best to check out Regal Ink on his own.

The inside of the shop was filled with the buzz of needles and the heavy scent of ink lingered in the air. A great round desk, painted a scarlet red, sat at the front, with some red plastic chairs lining the closest walls, only two of which were currently occupied. Beyond the desk Peter could see various tattooing stations. At the moment, two of the artists were at work, another was sketching at their personal desk, and another was lazily flipping through a magazine. There was a slender but tough-looking man standing behind the big red counter. He was wearing a button down shirt the sleeves of which he'd rolled up to show off his tattooed arms. He had glanced up briefly when the little bell above the door jingled at Peter's arrival.

"Just a second," the man had said, nodding towards the plastic chairs. Peter settled into one and watched as the man rifled through various papers, stuffing them into folders and envelopes which, Peter assumed, he then crammed into drawers unseen by the customers. Moments later, a very familiar little man came hurrying into the shop. The man at the counter glanced up again. "Just a second."

"I'm here to see Lily," the little man blurted. The tattooed man quirked an eyebrow, but didn't ask any questions. Instead, he glanced back to the shop.

"Hey, Sev," he called, and the artist that was sketching glanced up. "You seen Caffrey?"

"She's in the back," Peter heard the artist, Sev, reply.

"Go get her," the man behind the desk ordered. "Someone's here for her."

Peter straightened in his seat. He'd heard, and said, the name Caffrey so many times he could give it its own unique meaning- 'pain-in-the-ass', 'trouble', 'unpredictable'. He had never, though, heard the name thrown at anyone other than Neal. He looked over the little man waiting at the counter. What was Mozzie here for?

Peter was just rising out of his chair when Sev returned with a young woman following behind him. Sev returned to his station while the woman, pushing brown and pink hair behind her ear, continued to the counter.

"You rang," she said, coming to stand beside who Peter assumed to be her boss. The man motioned towards Mozzie.

"He wanted you," he said. "I have to go finish some work. Pop in before you leave."

"You got it, Dan," she replied. Dan disappeared into the back of the shop and the woman leaned forward over the counter. "What can I do for you?"

"You're Lily, right?" Mozzie asked. The woman raised her eyebrows.

"Yeah," she drawled. She seemed as though she was going to say more but she caught sight of Peter. She tilted her head towards him. "Do you have an appointment?" she asked. Mozzie turned around, eyes widening when he saw the agent standing mere feet away from him.

"Uh, no," Peter stammered. He glanced between Lily and Mozzie before getting an idea. "I actually needed to talk to him."

"Okay," Lily said slowly. "Are two here together or something?"

"Or something," Peter replied. He gave Mozzie a look at would accept no arguments. Mozzie looked back and forth between the agent and Lily before settled his gaze on her.

"How much does a tattoo here cost?" he asked. Lily shrugged.

"Depends on the size, where it is, how much coloring- if any-, lettering and the like," Lily rattled. Mozzie nodded, taking this in, and then pointed to the raven tattoo on the girl's left arm.

"What about something like that?" he asked. Lily turned so the picture was clearly visible. The bird was flying without a destination, some feathers falling from its wing and over the scripted words- fly me home.

"This one was about sixty because of the all detailing," she explained. Mozzie nodded.

"Thank you," he replied. Lily smiled and nodded. Mozzie reached in his pocket and pulled out something folded many times. He slipped it across the desk before turning and walking out, Peter close behind him.

"You've got five minutes to explain what just happened in there," Peter said almost as soon as the door of the parlor closed behind them.

"Neal asked me to come," Mozzie stated simply.

"He's been asking me if he could come," Peter said. "What's this all about? The girl?"

"Yes," Mozzie said.

"Who is she?" Peter demanded.

"You'll have to ask Neal," Mozzie replied.

"Who is she?" Peter repeated.

"Look, I could tell you," Mozzie said. "But you should really find out from him."


The double finger point was famous in the FBI White Collar Division. Neal had had it directed at him multiple times. Half of them had been from Hughes, especially on the days when Neal had gotten particularly out of line. Another half came from Peter on almost a weekly basis. Still another handful came from agents here and there who just wanted to poke fun at how closely the higher ups watched him. But today's was from Peter. And it was serious.

Neal followed a good few feet behind Peter after the double finger point had been delivered. When they arrived in Peter's office the older man motioned for Neal to take a seat, and so he did. Peter settled himself behind his desk and folded his hands in front of him, eyeing Neal from the short distance between them.

"So," Neal said, dragging the 'o'. Peter took a breath and then threw Neal a question.

"Who's Lily?"