"Never injure a friend, even in jest." Cicero

.***.

It's hard running your own business, harder still to get a reputation as good as the one Elizabeth Burke had garnered for herself. Being in the Keys had been…amazing. A chance for her and Peter to reconnect, to get away from the freezing New York winter, to get away from everything. But her first day back could not have been more hectic.

When Peter walked in the door (late, but El didn't really notice the time) she was on the phone with one of her girls and put up a finger to stave off anything Peter might say, to show that she'd be done in just a minute.

"That sounds great, Shelia." She said, already drawing the phone away from her ear. "Yeah…no, I'm sure it'll be fine. Thanks. Bye." She hung up the phone and heaved a sigh, raising an eyebrow to her husband. "How was your day, hon?"

It was only when the words had gotten completely out of her mouth, irretrievable, that she really saw Peter for the first time. He looked tired, frustrated, angry, and stood staring at a spot on the counter as if it was the most important piece of evidence in the world. "Peter?" She murmured, putting a hand on his arm. "What's wrong?"

Where to start? He wanted to get everything out – he and his wife had no secrets, and, besides, he wanted, needed to talk to somebody about this, and who better than his best friend?

"A man in NYPD died." He said, except that's not really what he wanted to say. It was awful that the guy died, for sure, especially a guy with a wife and family, but that was the end of the story. The very end. "And…and Neal might have had a part in killing him."

El put her hand over her mouth. "No." She said, shaking her head. "I can't believe that! Neal killed somebody?"

"By proxy is still killing." Peter muttered darkly. "He cut his anklet and ran out on Organized Crime. They couldn't take the chance he'd do it again and blow their cover – this is a sting they've been planning for months and they put him in the penitentiary. The guy they were after killed the cop."

"Why'd Neal run?" Elizabeth asked, sitting in a chair, all the work she'd been meaning to catch up on the farthest thing from her mind. She had come to feel protective of the handsome young con Peter had been bringing around, come, she thought, to know him. This information left her confused about all of her assumptions.

When Peter didn't answer, she asked again, harder this time, "Peter? You asked Neal why he ran, right? You heard his side of the story?"

"I got the call about the cop right before I went in with him." Peter defended hotly. "And what can he say? He saw and opening and he took it. Ran out as soon as he had the chance. It's my own fault. I shouldn't have trusted him to begin with."

"Honey…" El sighed, reaching out to touch Peter's arm, unsurprised but hurt when he jerked his arm away from her. "Peter, you need to hear him out. You can't just let it end like this."

"I'm not going back there, El. I just need to put this all behind me." Peter was still so angry. The red hot pain of betrayal boiled hot in the pit of his stomach and he felt like he wanted to punch something, hurt someone like he'd been hurt by the smiling young man he'd spent so much of his life chasing. Well, the joke was on him.

"You need to go back there!" A quirky high voice called from the back door, the one they always kept locked, the one that, apparently, Mozzie could pick like it was child's play.

Peter opened his mouth to say something about breaking and entering, about being an FBI agent and able to get him arrested, and then shut it again, a small soft something opening in his chest and spilling its warm contents out. It was only later that he would identify this as hope – hope that Neal hadn't run at the first opportunity, hope that whatever Mozzie had to say would change his perception of the con.

"What do you know?" El asked, quicker than Peter, already half out of the chair. Mozzie stood half-shrouded in darkness, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, eyes flitting from Peter to his gun, discarded, unloaded, on the counter.

Mozzie seemed about to split – and, if it had been anyone other than Neal, he probably would have – but Peter literally saw him gather up whatever courage he needed to take the last few steps over to the table.

"Okay, I haven't been able to establish any real contact with Neal, but I managed to get this much." He put a file on the table, tapping it compulsively with his finger. "You need to look at this, and then look into Organized Crime, and catch that guy who shot the cop. Obviously. Neal's broken up about it. I no longer trust you, Suit, but he still does. Only reason I'm here." Mozzie crossed his arms, uncrossed them, went back to tapping the folder.

"Why don't you just break him out yourself?" Peter asked, reaching for the folder only to have his hand flicked away by the other man.

"I wanted to. Had the whole thing planned out before he even got comfy, but for some reason he likes his job with you or something. Said that if you came back and found him out of the FBI's hands and out of the penitentiary you'll never trust him again. Personally, I don't see what the harm is in that."

Peter was studiously not looking at El, who was staring at him with a smirk on her face, a self-congratulatory little smile. Elizabeth always prided herself on being a good judge of character, and Mozzie's words had confirmed what she thought she'd known about the con artist.

Peter would take more convincing though. He had the proof that Neal was guilty – the cut anklet, the running, the shot cop – and no hard facts at all that he was innocent. In his mind, after being found liable of a federal offence, it would always be guilty until proven innocent.

"Fine." Peter said, leaning back in his chair and staring hard at Mozzie. "What do you got for me? Does anything in that file take back the fact that there are now two kids out there without a father, the fact that I put my entire career on the line for Caffrey and he ran out the second I had my back turned?"

"I think it does." Mozzie said calmly, and El put a hand on her leg, her signal for him to calm down before he did something he would regret.

Peter bit his lip before he let the other words spill out of him. At work, he was known as the one who was calm even as buildings crumbled around him, calm when stings went south and hostages were involved and lives were on the line. Why was it that Caffrey always brought out the emotional side of him, the side that could be compromised so easily?

For years he had rejected anyone who had tried to partner with him. He worked alone, or he worked with agents under him, and that was it. No exceptions. He knew of partnerships that worked out well – more than a few, in fact, and he knew that lifelong friendships were made out of working the beat with a guy for years on the job. But he couldn't allow himself to become one of those people.

He'd seen a man run into the middle of a bank robbery to save his partner, seen one dash into a burning building, another one literally took a bullet to the chest. Peter knew that, with El, his best friend, the love of his life, waiting at home, there was no way he could do that for someone else, and how could he ask another man to do what he refused to?

Neal had changed all that. Peter would never admit to El or anyone else the effect the younger man had on him. Suddenly he felt vulnerable, protective of this smooth, charismatic, silver-tongued con. Protective like a man felt for his partner…like a father felt for his son.

The pain in his heart when he'd found that memo could not be summed up in things as simple as words. Betrayal combined with terrible disappointment, and Peter didn't know if he could feel that again without going crazy.

If he looked into this affair and it turned out, after everything, that Caffrey was a traitor and a coward, that his flight and inaction had caused another man to die…well, Burke could do without that disappointment in his life.

"But what if you're wrong?"

Peter jerked his head up until his eyes met Mozzie's, almost totally obscured behind his glasses. He raised an incredulous eyebrow – did the man just read his mind? – and Mozzie could offer only a half-shrug in reply, eyes still totally serious. "What if you're wrong?" Mozzie repeated.

"I'm not. Once a criminal, always a criminal." That was years of FBI talking, not Peter Burke, but the words were out there and he couldn't take them back, even when he felt El pull her hand away as if burnt by his harsh words.

And suddenly Mozzie's eyes flashed with anger and indignation. His hands, which had been tapping a nervous rhythm on the folder, lay flat and eerily still. "You don't get to say that about Neal. He's a good man and I think you know that. You know exactly who Neal is."

Except Peter didn't, did he? The Neal he thought he was coming to know wouldn't have gone out of his two-mile radius days after Peter left.

"If you don't do this, I'll break him out myself. I can do it easy, and we'll run and even you will never be able to find him." Mozzie pushed himself away from the table, leaving the folder behind, a parting gift that Peter may not deserve. "He's too good to rot in jail, and I won't let him. You shouldn't, either."

Peter stared at the folder as Mozzie fled the kitchen, the door slamming shut after him as he bled into the night. This must be what that guy meant about woods diverging in a yellow wood.

He could forget about the folder, throw in the trash and gently convince El that they were better off without a young con in their life. He could go to the Bureau and eat crow and say that he should have never taken an art thief to investigate art thieves. He could forget about the handsome young man he'd chased for years and attend that policeman's funeral and put the last six months out of his mind.

Or he could open the folder, which could lead…anywhere. To long nights and hard questions, to an answer that he may or may not want to ever find out for himself. He could find Caffrey guilty…or he may uncover corruption within the walls of the Bureau that he wanted so badly to believe was never above the law.

El was mercifully silent. Peter didn't think he could take it if she chimed in now, as he stared at the folder. It came down to the difference between the easy decision and the hard one.

Let no man ever say that Peter Burke, FBI, was afraid to get his hands dirty. He took a deep breath and pulled the folder to him, aware of El letting out a breath of her own as she lay her head on Peter's shoulder to look at the contents of the folder.

And there, on the first page, was something that made Peter know he'd made the right decision, something that made him get up right then and call Jones to ask him to start digging now, they had a con to free.

Because on that first page was a weather report for the night Caffrey was supposed to be involved in that sting. Circled in damning red ink was the temperature for Manhattan which had hovered, on the early January night when Peter had been soaking up the rays, right around two degrees below zero.

.***.

Wow ya'll. The number of reviews for just one chapter was staggering. Hope you can enjoy this chapter before the new episode comes on tonight.