Disclaimer: I don't own White Collar.
Fly, Fly Away
Chapter 3
Peter Burke has not had a pleasant night. Neal's call in the middle of the night prompts Peter to spend an hour checking missing person reports and confirming with NYPD that there were no reports of Lily Well's kidnapping. He also confirms with his agents that no one matching the young girl's description had been seen at Simon's apartment.
Now Peter faces the tough choice: would he call Wells and alert him that his daughter might be a potential victim, or even a potential suspect, knowing that it could blow their only lead? Wells was too personally involved to take the case, but Peter had kept the prosecutor updated as a courtesy. A courtesy he could no longer afford. Wells had convinced the SEC he wasn't protecting his brother-in-law, but Pete thinks he's capable of protecting his nephew and certainly his daughter. He assigns two agents to watch Wells' house and tried to go back to sleep.
In the morning, he takes Diana to interview the girl. Neal is at home, putting together the fake ID's. Jones reports that a young woman fitting Olivia's description slipped out of Simon's apartment around four am and successfully dodged three agents. Simon's phone records have produced nothing, but Neal's text came from a pre-paid phone that hasn't been used since. These kids are being careful.
Legally, Peter has no right to interview Lily without her parents present, but he manages to convince Wells to allow himself and Diana to speak to her alone. She isn't a suspect, he assures the prosecutor, for now.
Lily sits in a chair, fidgeting, but she seems to relax as soon as her father leaves the room. Peter makes a mental note of it; he'd expect the opposite.
"Lily, can you think of anything you might know that would help us find the people who broke into your vacation home?" Diana begins gently.
"No, I was here, with my mom that night."
"Is there anyone you've met recently that seemed odd or suspicious?"
"No."
"Are you friends with a young woman named Olivia? Olivia Lawson."
"There's a girl at my school named Olivia. Not Lawson. And we're not really friends. She's a senior, but she was in my drama class."
Peter hands her the picture of Olivia, "Do you recognize this woman. She might be a friend of Simon's?"
Lily glances quickly at the picture and shakes her head, "I don't know very many of Simon's friends."
As they leave the house, Peter is frustrated by their lack of progress.
"I think she was deflecting too much."
"Maybe, but was she lying or is she just being a teenager?" Diana replies. "You know boss, Amelia had a blonde wig and green contacts. Maybe she's planning on disguising herself as Lily and using both passports."
"It's possible. We really need Neal to get more out of Simon."
At the loft, Neal is trying to get more out of his mark, while he and Mozzie prepare the passports. It's not as easy as Neal hoped it would be last night. Simon will only communicate via text. He offers Neal an extra $10,000 if the three passports can be delivered at midnight tonight.
He calls Peter, "Do you want me to stall the kid?"
"No, you can Mozzie can deliver?"
"Yes," Neal says shortly. Peter isn't supposed to know that Mozzie is helping him with the forgeries, but of course he does.
"Move it up, then. Let's see if these kids make any mistakes when they're in a hurry."
Simon has selected the same bar in the financial district for the exchange. Neal is about fifteen minutes early, checking for anything amiss. He spots Diana in a cocktail dress in one corner. He doesn't see Simon, but he does notice one of the kid's drinking buddies from the previous night. The other intern appears to recognize him; then ducks out to make a call. If Simon has his friends scouting the meet, he's being smarter than Neal expected.
He walks in at exactly midnight, orders a drink at the bar and casually walks over to Neal's table.
"I, uh, have the cash," Simon pulls an envelope from his jacket and sets it on the table, his hand resting on it as if he's not sure how to prevent Neal from simply stealing his money.
"I have your passports," Neal sets his own envelope on the table and pushes it towards Simon. Simon nervously checks the passports; Neal smoothly checks the cash.
"Uh, nice doing business with you," Simon says, and offers his hand to Neal. As Neal shakes Simon's hand, he can see Diana subtlety shake her head in the corner. The FBI isn't moving in. They need Simon to lead Neal to his accomplice.
Neal tails Simon late into the night and the early morning. Simon leaves the bar and takes a cab to a nearby club. He stays a little while and ducks out the back door, down an alley and around into a new bar. The kid isn't exactly good at this, but his strategy isn't bad. For four hours Neal follows Simon in and out of clubs, not entirely sure if the kid is trying to avoid being followed or just trying to have a good time. Despite what he knows, Neal is tempted to just give up and go home when three am rolls around and he's watching Simon flirt with yet another drunken coed.
His patience is finally rewarded at 3:30 when Simon takes the subway towards his apartment, but jumps out after two stops. Up on the street, the kid hails a cab. Neal just manages to get the cab's number and calls Peter.
Ten minutes later, Peter picks him up, having already got the cab's destination from dispatch. Simon is headed out of town to a small airstrip.
"Jones just called. Lily Wells snuck out of her house sometime tonight. She left her mom a note."
"I thought you had agents watching the house?" Neal asks.
"I did. She must have had help." Neither of them voices the worry that Lily didn't leave willingly.
"I hope they haven't left yet," Peter says as they arrive at the small airstrip. There are seven hangars and no sign of Simon or anyone else.
"It's not quite light yet," Neal says.
Peter and Neal agree to split up and Neal jogs down to the leftmost hangar. It's locked, but he hears nothing inside. The one after that is the same. But when he stops outside the third hangar, he hears a quiet repetitive sound, like some sort of pump. And then the groaning of something like a massive garage door opening.
He could run around to the side of the building facing the airstrip, but a tall cyclone fence is strung between the hangars. Instead, he pulls a lock pick out of his pocket and jimmies the door. Peter doesn't have a warrant, but certainly a missing fifteen-year-old qualifies as exigent circumstances, right?
Inside the hangar are half a dozen planes. One has been pulled around to the fuel pump by the open hangar door. In the dim light, he first spots Simon manning the fuel pump. Then he catches sight of Amelia standing near the wing with a checklist. She's moving calmly, efficiently through pre-flights while the plane fuels. The Wells girl, Lily, is in the back of the plane. Neal tries to figure out how much time they have, how long it will take Peter to arrive at this hangar. When Amelia sets the checklist inside the plane, and climbs up the steps, Neal decides he has to make a move.
"George?" Simon recognizes him first. "Is something wrong?"
Amelia knows something's wrong; she waves Simon back towards the plane before the words are out of his mouth. He can see the wheels turning in her head as he walks towards her. He only needs a minute or two for Burke and his agents to catch up. She lets him get close; she's on the bottom step, eye level with him.
And then, quick enough to catch him off guard, she pulls a gun on him, barrel to his head. There's no gun Neal hates more than a gun in the hands of a desperate, hotheaded kid. Her eyes are scanning the runway, and the fuel meter. She reaches over to the plane's controls and throws a switch without looking.
"Simon, shut off the fuel line and disconnect it."
"You don't want to do this," Neal says. The gun is a Beretta M9, military issue. She holds it like someone who's fired it before, but there's something off.
"Shut up."
"You aren't really going to look me in the eye and blow my brains out," he says smoothly.
She turns to look directly at him for the first time in the dim light, "Sure I a…" her eyes widen as the words die on her lips. It's more than enough of an opportunity for him to wrench the gun away from her.
"Next time you point a gun at someone, make sure it's loaded," he smirks, but she isn't even paying attention.
"Nick?" How the hell does she know that name? She looks around, "What are you doing here?"
"Olivia Lawson, Simon Allen, you are under arrest," Burke's voice interrupts from the other side of the plane.
"You're with the feds?" Neal isn't quite sure what to say. He's never met this girl, but she knows him, or at least she knows Nick Halden. And there is something familiar about her.
A/N: So they've caught the bad guys, now what? I don't like to give too much away, but chapter 4 is where I crack this story wide open, so to speak! Thanks to everyone who's read so far, and especially those who reviewed. I haven't had a beta-reader in a while, so if anyone is interested let me know in a review.