"Dammit!" Peter banged his fist on the table. It had all been a decoy. A setup. He had been so close to catching the Dutchman and he had slipped through his fingers. Again. He was beginning to tire of this game of cat and mouse.
He ran a hand through his prematurely greying brown hair, attempting to calm himself when through the smoke and haze caused by the bomb he saw Diana walking briskly towards him. The look on her face gave Peter the uneasy feeling that this wasn't going to be good. But word of this most recent failure to catch the notorious Dutchman couldn't have traveled up so fast, could it?
He hastened towards her, not wanting her to get involved in the mess caused by the bomb going off when he had triggered the booby trap in the safe, but before he could utter a word she stopped him with a single sentence. "Caffery escaped."
"Neal?" he groaned. "But that doesn't make sense! By now he must have had only four months left. Why did he run now?" His mind had already started looking for explanations and answers.
"Don't know that Boss." Diana replied. "But the Marshals requested for your assistance specifically."
"Mine?" he looked suspicious. "Why?"
"Maybe because you were the only person who ever managed to put the infamous Neal Caffery behind bars?" Diana suggested, smiling.
Peter shut off the engine and slumped in the seat of his Ford. It had been a long day. The meeting with the Marshals had not gone well. He had been irked with them for letting Caffery get away and had failed to reign in his frustration and had let a snide remark slip once… Or twice. Then there had been the usual orders of starting the man-hunt: the posters on every bus stand and Airport, the red flag for all of Neal's aliases, and the calls at all his previous hide-outs. But there had been no sign of the con-man. It had been a hell of a long day.
Looking forward to an appetizing dinner and the safe refuge of his wife's embrace he mustered up the strength to open the door and drag himself into the house. "Honey I'm home!" He called out, managing to not trip over the excited dog that had rushed out to greet him.
"Satchmo! Leave daddy alone." Elizabeth chided the poor beast. "Oh Honey you look tired! Is everything alright?" She exclaimed taking in her husband's haggard appearance and pulling him in for a hug.
"Hmm…" Peter murmured into his wife's lush black hair. "Caffery escaped."
"Neal Caffery? That explains why you look like as if a truck ran you over," El chuckled ruffling her husband's hair. "Don't worry you'll get him back, just like you did before." She consoled him with a quick peck on the lips.
"I know that honey," Peter said, a smile tugging at his lips at his wife's attempt to cheer him up by boosting his ego. "But what I can't understand is why he ran now. He had only four months of his prison sentence left."
"That's it? Four months?" El's forehead creased as she thought about it. "That doesn't seem very smart of him."
"And you and I both know that Neal Caffery is nothing if not smart." Peter agreed.
"Well Honey, then there has to be a reason that he ran. He had to have been troubled or motivated by something to pull a stunt like that. You find that reason and you'll find your man." El made one last observation before moving into the kitchen to fix some much needed dinner.
As Peter flopped down on the couch his wife's words kept running through his head until he fell into a restless slumber.
