Chapter 1

"Damnit, Neal!"

For the third time on the drive home from work that night, Agent Peter Burke swore out loud to an empty car. Only this time he slammed his hand against the steering wheel, his anger only growing with each curse, rather than diminishing.

Great. On top of a foul mood he now had a sore hand. He hated bringing the emotions of the job home with him. Usually the commute home was the perfect setting for shaking off the remnants of a bad day. His wife deserved better than sitting across the dinner table from a surly and preoccupied Fed who couldn't leave his work at the office. But this . . . this thing going on with Neal wasn't a daily annoyance he could casually dismiss.

That afternoon had seen two near-miss disasters involving the FBI's most unusual consultant.

When Peter heard, felt and saw that warehouse explosion, his gut twisted in an admixture of fear and guilt. Neal! As he, Diana and Jones had raced to the inferno, his thoughts alternated between God, let him be alive and Why did I let him go? He is not an agent! Before he even had time to feel relief at the sight of the former con-man groggily moving from a prone position, Peter realized that Vincent Adler was on the verge of placing a bullet between Neal Caffrey's eyes.

In that moment, he only dimly registered Adler's raging threat as he pointed his gun at a dazed Caffrey. The words screamed in anger – "You won't get away with this!" – found an echo but a different meaning in the federal agent's own mind as Peter Burke aimed his weapon to save Neal's life.

As much as it had pained him to know the priceless and long-lost art was gone forever, that disappointment was more than offset by the knowledge that his consultant – no, friend, he admitted – was alive and in one ever-unruffled piece. And then, at seeing that one, lone, burning fragment of canvas drift towards the ground, Peter's hard-won calm disappeared in an instant as his mind quickly put the puzzle pieces together.

This is from Neal's painting of the Chrysler Building. How did it -?

Neal's paintings were blown up in the warehouse? Why or How did Caffrey's work get in there with-?

Caffrey's work was there instead of the Nazi stolen treasures! So where were-?

Oh, God. He took it all. And burned his own art as a decoy.

And the final piece that Peter himself refused to acknowledge, Neal has betrayed me.

How could two and two not make four? The sequence of events that must have happened laid itself out like a child's sum. Neal Caffrey had remained true to form and stolen the irresistible art and jewels. And the only thing worse than the theft itself was the realization that Peter's idiotic belief that it wouldn't have happened was wrong. Agent Burke's personal hurt had quickly turned to icy anger as he informed the con-man that he had discovered Caffrey's deception.

As he pulled in front of the house, the federal agent continued to review the final moments of that afternoon in his mind. As he expected, Caffrey had denied he'd committed the theft, but then he'd had the gall to move their conversation from the professional to the personal:

"I've never lied to you. I'm not lying to you now, Peter. I didn't steal the art."

Those blue eyes hadn't ever fooled him before and they weren't going to now.

"Well, I think you did!"

Something had flashed across Caffrey's face and those eyes seemed to darken before the consultant turned his back on Peter. When he turned back to issue his challenge, "Then prove it," it was as if time had reversed itself. The head of the White Collar division's crack team was looking at the face of the man he had arrested seven years before. This was not the face of a friend, but an opponent.

As he put his key in the look of the front door, he could only wonder, How do I tell El?

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Neal returned home to his apartment for the second time that day, more questions churning in his head now than two hours before. Why had his father suddenly reappeared? Why the theft and the switch? Why give it back to Neal? And not least of all, What did he want?

He shrugged off his jacket, loosened the tie, and poured himself a glass of Vietti Barbera d'Asti La Crena. The Piedmont red - a bargain at $42 – had a silky texture that would go down easy.

As he moved out to the balcony, a figure detached itself from the shadowed corner.

"I helped myself to the Anslema Barola, I hope you don't mind."

Matching pairs of blue eyes stared at each other, differing only in age.

"Hello, Son."

"Hello, Dad."

tbc