His Last and Greatest Score
One day, a month after the funeral, Peter found himself at June's front door. He'd been walking aimlessly, trying to clear his head so he could take a fresh look at the Mortensen case, and his feet had carried him there out of habit. He tried to turn away and head back to the office, but then he gave up and knocked. Footsteps echoed inside the house, and June opened the door. When she saw who it was, she broke into a smile. "Peter! To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Oh, I was just in the neighborhood," he said. "Thought I'd bum some of your excellent coffee. If it's not a good time-"
"For you it's always a good time," she said, standing back to let him in.
He paused at the foot of the stairs, looking up.
"It's all the same up there," she said softly. "I haven't had the heart to go through his things yet. Do you want to look?"
He thought about it, but he wasn't ready. It was bad enough at the office where every corner seemed to hold a Neal shaped space taunting him with its emptiness. He shook his head and followed her into the kitchen.
They sat in silence while the coffee brewed, but it was the comfortable silence of two people who have shared something that no words can express. While she was pouring the fragrant brew, June suddenly said, "I was thinking of selling this old place."
Peter looked up in surprise. "Really?" This house was like an extension of her body. He couldn't picture her anywhere else.
"Yes. I was going to buy a condo, but I don't think I can do it." She sat down and sipped her coffee. "This house is full of memories, and that's not a bad thing. In the end, our memories are all we have."
Peter lifted his cup. "To good memories."
"And absent friends," she added.
Their cups met with a clink.
"Mozzie still comes by sometimes," June said after another moment of silence.
Again Peter was caught by surprise. He hadn't seen Mozzie since that awful night in the hospital morgue. The eccentric little thief didn't even visit Elizabeth anymore. "How is he?" he asked.
June sighed. "He's quiet. Mostly he stands on the balcony and stares at the city while drinking Neal's wine collection one bottle at a time."
"No more conspiracy theories?"
"Not that he'll tell me about. I suppose that's good. He's coming to terms with it, but…"
"But he'll never be the same again," Peter finished for her.
She stared into her cup. "None of us will. You know, I keep thinking about the last thing Neal said to me."
"What was it?" Peter asked.
"'I love you.' It seemed odd at the time. We'd been having a drink together, he and Mozzie and me. I got up to leave, and I told him I would see him tomorrow. All of a sudden, he hugged me, and he said 'I love you'. I got the oddest feeling that he was saying goodbye. As though he knew." She shook her head. "Silly, I know. I'm starting to sound just like Mozzie."
"Maybe not," Peter said. "I had a similar conversation with him a couple days before…it happened."
June's eyebrows rose, and an amused smile quirked her lips. "He told you he loved you?"
Peter snorted. "No. We were arguing about the case. It was the same argument we'd been having for weeks. I wanted to pull the plug. Things were getting too dangerous, but Neal wanted to see it through at any cost. I asked him…I asked him if his freedom was worth his life. And he looked me in the eye, and said, 'Maybe it is.' Scared the hell out of me. Ever since then, I've been wondering. Did he mean that he was willing to die, or that he was planning to die?"
June considered this for a moment, and then she said slowly, "Maybe he decided this was the only way out."
"But he was about to be released." Peter's hand clenched around his coffee cup until his knuckles were white. "He'd kept his end of the bargain. The FBI would have honored the contract. I would have made sure of it. He had earned his freedom."
June looked at him with an expression that was half sad and half amused. "You're a good man, Peter Burke," she said, "but you will never really understand con-men. Take it from someone who's run with the best of them. Earning things holds no appeal for men like that. They only treasure what they steal. Byron always said stealing my heart was the greatest heist of his career. Well, maybe this was Neal's."
Peter thought about that. It felt right. "Neal Caffrey's last score," he murmured. Worth more than everything else he'd stolen in his life combined. Worth his life.