Lie a Little Better

by Writings of Stardust

Soulmate AU. Special Agent McKenna Anderson is a strong fixture in the White Collar Crime Division. She ends up in a strange relationship with someone she'd normally be trying to catch when Neal Caffrey becomes her consultant. Upon finding her soulmate, things get infinitely harder. She never thought she'd have to choose between being a cop and being a criminal... until she did.

6. We Made the Age-Old Prom Night Promise

Chapter Six – We Made the Age-Old Prom Night Promise

Kate invited Neal into the house yet again. She has a bad habit of doing that. I made myself some coffee, she got herself a can of soda from the fridge, and although we offered beverages to Neal, he got himself a glass of filtered water from the tap. Although I don't like her in the field, it's not unusual for me to run my cases by Kate for her different perspective, so Neal and I sat down at the table while she listened to us explaining what was going on.

"She definitely knew who we were talking about, and she's barely two blocks away from where we found our homeless vet, but I have trouble pegging her for the kind to kill a known mob relative." Maria liked to write dirty, but she seemed like the kind to keep her hands physically clean and primly manicured with stiletto-style acrylics. That her nails had actually been filed to a curve was irrelevant.

Kate drank thoughtfully from her already half-empty can. It had been somewhat of a long story, especially when Neal and I kept jumping in to take over from each other. "Actually," she said, sounding like she was going to contradict me. "If I was going to kill a mobster, I'd think she's in the prime position to do it."

"What do you mean?"

Kate just looked at me for a minute like I was being dense again, but then she turned her head to Neal and said, very clearly, "Hey, Neal. Was she hot?"

Neal grinned. "Very." I blinked and pushed down the irritation in my stomach.

My sister pointed at Neal when she looked at me as if to say 'see?' "Would you be willing to meet her alone if she implied she wanted to get busy?"

Now that it was pointed out, it seemed painfully obvious, to the point that I was smacking myself inside for not having figured that approach out sooner. Neal and I looked at each other, both of us a little bit surprised, and simultaneously replied, "Oh."

"You know, your little sister just developed a means of getting a mobster alone to kill him." I couldn't tell if Neal said it to bother me or to illustrate a point about Maria, but it did both. Either Kate's been listening too closely to me when I rant about work, or she's secretly devious.

"And if Katie can do that, then maybe Maria isn't much of a stretch." Warily, I took a long look at Kate. She saw the suspicion in my expression and smiled widely at me, blinking cutely and raising her soda back up to her face like she hadn't done anything to ring the warning bells.

My con artist sat up straight, lifting his elbows from the table. "I think we're dealing with a shell game." He announced, looking around the table. While I wasn't expecting it, he snatched my coffee mug from right in front of me. My eyes went wide. Kate giggled at my expression and I turned a narrow-eyed scowl at her. She pushed her soda can across the table towards Neal, and he added his own glass to the collection.

"Props. Nice." Kate looked on in interest.

I stared right at her and pointed directly at my coffee. "He took my coffee." No one takes my coffee.

Both of them ignored me. I didn't really appreciate it. You don't just take someone's coffee, especially not when they're pretty much addicted to it. Neal framed the drinks with his hands. "Mine's Paul, the dead mob guy. The mug is Maria, and the can is Steve." I looked up to the ceiling and wiggled my phone out of my pocket to check my email while he played with his toys, but Neal saw me and took my phone right out of my hands. I froze, hand still in the air over the table. "Phone is the Bible," he added cheekily.

Again, I looked straight at Kate and registered my issues with her. "He took my phone."

This time Kate did something about it, but she didn't look like she was trying very hard. "Stop taking Kenzi's things," she scolded. I almost regretted asking, because she used on us the tone she used on five-year-olds. "Unless you take her gun next, you're putting yourself in danger." I probably should have been offended, but Kate was likely correct about that.

"Make Maria the salt and give me my coffee!" I commanded, dropping my fists onto the table.

Neal stubbornly met my eyes. "Maria's the coffee," he reiterated. He was enjoying bothering me – I could see the playfulness in his eyes, but once you take my coffee, it's no longer a game. "Watch." He looked down at his props, the drinks all sitting around my phone. "We'll start with Paul, who, for some reason, reads Maria's book and realizes the healing Bible's worth a hell of a lot of cash."

I dragged my fists off of the edge of the table and slid down in my seat, crossing my arms unhappily but reluctantly watching the presentation. "It's a Book of Hours," I corrected spitefully. Neal ignored me.

"But it's also Barelli's pride and joy." Are we talking about a book or a child? "He doesn't want to risk Barelli's wrath, so he gets-"

"He gets Steve to steal the Bible, promising to let him heal his dog," Kate interrupted, filling it in for herself, and damn, she sounded so proud of herself for contributing. It was adorable. I think she doesn't realize sometimes how much she helps me with my work, even if it's not put on official record.

"Plausible deniability," I gave my input. That was a pretty smart move from Maria… but, just to be clear, just because I was making note of her intelligence didn't mean I held anything near appreciation for her.

"If it doesn't work, then Steve takes the fall." Kate's proud little smile dropped into a frown at the unfairness of the scam. "That's just evil," she complained. That's the real world.

Neal animatedly moved the cups around, moving "Steve" from the middle of the transaction and to the far left, then pushing "Maria" into the middle. "He takes the Bible from Steve…" He pulled my phone around the soda and then dragged it over to his water. "Calls Maria to make the deal, and something happens."

"The deal goes wrong, or Paul decides to cut out Maria to make the profits –" His smile widening mischievously, Neal was holding out his hand between his water and my mug, acting like was about to literally shove my coffee out of the arrangement. "If you knock over my coffee," I growled threateningly, "I will shoot you right here."

Neal moved his hand out of the way. Kate looked exasperated at how hard he was trying to get under my skin. "Well, whatever it is, Paul ends up dead," he moved the water to the edge of the table, "The Bible goes missing," he flicked my phone and sent it skidding back to me, away from the other props. "And Steve never even met Maria." He took the can and the mug and moved them further apart.

"And Maria gets away clean with a very expensive Book of Hours." I drew the final conclusion and took my coffee by the handle, dragging it back to me, both as Maria coming with the Bible-slash-cell phone and as me wanting my caffeine back. I slipped my fingers through the curve of the handle to pick it up, but when I raised the cup from the table, a neatly-folded twenty-dollar bill was sitting just underneath it. I was sure that that hadn't been there before. Kate laughed while I looked back at Neal. "Okay, how did you do that?"

"Never tell your secrets," Kate advised Neal, still chuckling at my expense.

My eyes lit up and I put my coffee down to the side, picking up the money instead. I waved the cash at Neal tauntingly. "Consider this a fine for no one impersonating the FBI," I said while smugly shoving it in my pocket.

"Huh?" Kate questioned, looking confused, which was normal, because you really had to have context to understand what I'd just said.

"That's okay." He shrugged. "It's yours anyway."

"What?" Neal smirked at me and he held up my wallet, lifting it off of his leg and over the table. My eyes widened and my hands moved to my pockets, patting my slacks even though I could very clearly see that my wallet was no longer on my person. "Hand it over!"

Kate looked between us, puzzled. "What did I miss?"

"Wallet, coffee, phone – pick on Kate!" Emphatically, I gestured to her while I stood up from the table, legs of my chair scratching at the floor. Neal handed over my wallet willingly and I shoved it back into my pants, along with my phone, and realized that I probably should watch what he was doing more carefully. He must've lifted them after we got here, because everything was where it was supposed to be when I dropped my keys in. "You know – the woman without the power to arrest you!"

"I'd have given it back," Neal vowed earnestly.

"Your hands stay out of my pockets!"

"Guys!" Kate raised her voice to get our attention again. Her hands were out of sight under the edge of the table, but if I knew her, they were on her hips. We stopped arguing and gave her our concentration again. "How're you going to get Maria for possessing the book?"

Good question.

I dropped my head and rubbed at my temples with my index and middle fingers. "I could probably get a warrant into her home or office…" It would take some work, but I could probably get it passed. The problem was that Maria was going to be expecting that. "But if she's a smart person, which she must be, then she's not going to keep it close to her." I propped my chin up on my fist, elbow on the table again, looking to Neal for a suggestion. Maria liked him – he flirted with her, they clearly thought they had a connection. She might actually trust him, since she knew him beforehand- oh. "Oh," I said out loud, getting more excited. "Oh."

Neal leaned away from the table and held his hands up innocently. "I haven't taken anything else of yours, I swear."

"She recognized you!" I dropped my hand from under my head. "Neal Caffrey, master forger."

He held up a finger in protest. "Alleged."

"Whatever." I waved it off with my hand. "If she has the book, it links her to the murder. She'll want rid of it. We have all of the normal means locked down tight, and Barelli's obviously keeping an eye out. If she thinks you might be interested in getting in on the scheme…"

I thought that Neal would just immediately jump at the chance to run another con, especially one that pretended he was double-crossing me. It seemed like the kind of thing he'd find funny. Instead, he didn't – he looked contemplative, but a little worried, his lips frowning slightly. "Convince her I'm pliable…" he sounded almost unsure if it was something he actually wanted to help plan.

Kate looked excited at the prospect. "So you guys can find some street contacts – even Barelli, since it's to get his Bible back – and get word out that he's back in business." She was looking at me and expecting me to react in some way. Probably trying to measure how much trust I had in Neal that he wouldn't actually get back into the business.

He was slowly disagreeing. "That could take time to reach her," he pointed out. "And there's no guarantee."

Kate's shoulders slumped, but it was only for a second before she was back in the game. "Well, if you're not going for indirect, then why don't you just ask her out?" She suggested, looking over his face meaningfully and then glancing towards me, trying to tell me something.

I just wasn't too sure that Maria was going to fall for the seduction ploy. It seemed almost too overused, thanks to the plots of popular media. "You actually think that'll work?"

"Is she in love with someone else?" She was giving me a look that told me she very strongly thought I was being obtuse. And maybe I was, just a bit – but I put my all into my investigations, so forgive me for wanting to avoid something that would cause me emotional distress. It's really, really weird to think of a suspect and, instead of feeling impassive or annoyed, to feel jealous.

"Not according to legal documents or social media," I said, grudgingly resigning myself to being jealous, because Kate had a point; this would work, and it didn't have to be a Disney love story, just a little bit of sexual tension and some convincing acting. This was the kind of job that struck me as Neal's favorite – playing games and flirting with beautiful women.

"Then yes," the daycare provider nodded very quickly after I'd said that, making Neal and I both look at her in question. Is there something you'd like to tell me, Katie? That didn't quite make me feel better, but it did take my mind off of my new dilemma long enough to smile and teasingly ask just that.

---

Neal chose to take Maria out to a very expensive uptown restaurant well-known for their wine collection and their appetizers that started at twenty-seven dollars. I'd say this for him: he clearly knew how to treat his dates to a night out, especially if he was actually providing a distraction so that FBI agents could sneak into their house to scout things out and drop some hearing bugs.

I listened with antsy legs and hands, wanting to move around and do something rather than sit around, while Neal toasted a glass. Probably the Mélisse he'd ordered for the two of them. "To history," he proposed. "Old and new."

I started to crack my knuckles to help get rid of the fidgetiness in my fingers, but knew with a sort of sense of just understanding myself that if I were in that restaurant under different circumstances – say, Neal and I pretending to be a couple again – then I'd have been calm and relaxed and enjoying myself, playing up the role of a smitten lover with a doting fiancé, pleased with myself because I'd be where I want to but shouldn't be, and comfortable because I'd be with a friend in a nice place, drinking classy wine and being the adult version of a Disney princess.

"How does an FBI agent get a table here? It's like a six-month wait." Arrogantly, I thought at her that the FBI had managed to get this table. Of course, typically, we weren't allowed to pull the "federal agent" card for dining reservations, but that was permissible, given that this was for an undercover thing.

"Well, an FBI agent doesn't." Neal laughed quietly, his humor too controlled for it to be real. "Don't forget, I had a previous life."

"Oh, yeah. Do you believe in reincarnation?"

"You could say that." He managed to stay vague, even in their vague metaphors comparing alter egos and criminal activity to facets of Buddhist religion. He easily turned the question right back at her. "How about you? Who were you in a previous life?"

"Same person I've always been. With nineties' hair," she added with a self-deprecating scoff.

"I doubt that." He sounded so sweet, defending her from herself, and his voice was so kind. Of course there were people talking around them, but the bug was on Neal, so his voice was the clearest, and Maria, being the closest to him, was also easy to understand. "Let me see your lifeline." There was a second of no response from either in which she must've been hesitant. "Come on," he coaxed. "It'll help fill in the blanks."

"You're not seriously going to read my palm right now, are you?"

Diana's voice was even louder than the volume through either of our headphones, so when she started speaking, a little bit surprised but mostly impressed, I didn't have to move to take mine off to hear or respond. "I didn't think he'd be so smooth." She was drawing some letters into the fabric of her skirt without seeming to think about it; I looked for a second and saw a "T" and a "Y." She was drawing her girlfriend's name. That was cute. "He's kinda suave."

"No ring… between that and the callouses, I'm guessing work got in the way?"

I swallowed. I had noticed. I didn't want to notice. Thanks for making me notice again. "Whatever you say," I muttered, tapping my fingers over my upper arm, not doing anything nearly as cute as drawing the name of my girlfriend over my skin.

"No ring for you, either."

She looked with more focus to me than to their conversation, seeming a little concerned by my attitude. "Are you alright?" She asked, and where I suppose a lot of people might ask for courtesy, with Diana, I never had to wonder if she was actually worried. If she wasn't worried, she wouldn't have asked. She's very honest and blunt in that respect, and easy to understand.

"No." He softly agreed. "Prison got in the way."

"I'm fine," I lied without pause, because I'd be damned if I told her what the problem really was.

"So it must be weird for you, working for the FBI." That was prompting a turn of conversation, and hearing her say anything about the bureau caught both Diana's and my attention. The priority of work won out over personal cynicism for my excuses, and Diana turned her concentration back to eavesdropping.

Neal's voice sounded leisurely but a little unwilling to commit to any particular feeling towards his partnership with the bureau. "I don't know. It's always interesting to read from the other team's playbook."

"The other team," Maria repeated selectively. "I thought you were out of the game."

He is, I reminded myself sternly before my brain got ahead of me and started taking the past tense too far and let me flip out, questioning his loyalty again, because no, I could only freak out about one thing at once and currently that one thing was the strange want to be the one Neal wined and dined.

"Oh, I am. Retired and rehabilitated."

"Have you found your missing Book of Hours?"

"Not yet. You know anyone who wants to buy one?" That was said so smoothly, and it was right on the edge between an excusable question (we had suggested someone might go to her about it) and a code for asking about the more lucrative business she was running.

"Maybe." She was cautious and noncommittal, too, and probably for a very good reason. She might've suspected that Neal had a listening device on him, or maybe she wasn't sure yet that she wasn't being played. Which she totally was, but that was beside the point. "Looters approach me all the time… so do buyers." Well, that felt a little like a hint. "It's a very attractive offer."

"It sure is."

One of them sighed loudly, and glasses shifted on the table. Something rustled like a menu being unfolded and the plastic protective covering being bent.

"Surprise me," Maria said with a challenge, a teasing inflection to it that wasn't the same kind of teasing as when I reminded Neal of how many times he'd been caught on the run, between Burke and I. This was a much less innocent kind of teasing, and it made me bite down on my tongue.

"Oh, you sure? I might order something you don't like, and then where would we be?"

"I trust you." Probably a mistake on her part. "After all, you work for the FBI." Oh, there it was. That was a dig. That was a very definite jab.

Fulfilling his role of the bureau's double-crosser expertly (almost scarily expertly), Neal didn't respond directly to that. He was quiet for a while, probably intensely looking into her eyes, measuring her up or conveying some secret, subtle message. Then his voice, low and questioning, asked, "More wine?" and I could almost envision the delighted spark lighting up in Maria's eyes.

"Now you read minds?"

"The question is, do you?"

I took off my headset abruptly. I couldn't take any more of it. It might just have been me overreacting, but it felt like I was listening to foreplay with words, because Maria was teasing and purring and seductive and Neal wasn't by any means discouraging her – in fact, he was egging it on, and it was painful to listen to for a handful of reasons, none of which I felt like exploring.

"Keep with them. I'm calling Derek." Derek had gone to Maria's block in his own car to meet us there, and as soon as the warrant was approved, he snuck into her house. He was supposed to call when he was out, which he hadn't done yet, so he was still inside. I pressed his speed dial on my phone and threw myself against the back of my chair while Diana nodded to show she heard.

It took a few rings, but my brother did pick up his phone the first time that I called, and I was so relieved to hear his voice over Maria's that I almost jumped up for joy. I couldn't wait until I heard Kate's. "What's up, my liege?"

"Maria's libido, that's what," I mumbled, objecting once again to her excessive come-ons. Well, they felt excessive to me, anyway. Before I was questioned by my other teammate, I asked him pretty much the same thing. "What've we got?"

"It's not bad for a college professor." The way he said it, 'not bad' equated with 'not possible.' "She's either a crook or a trust fund baby."

"I'm going with crook," I decided without a second thought, because not only was she a criminal, but it felt nice to accuse her of things like that when I couldn't do anything else to vent out the frustration and envy that made me feel like I had a fever.

"Ah!"

"What?" Alarmed, I pushed my heels against the floor of the van and shoved myself up a little higher where I'd slumped down.

He sounded apologetic for spooking me. "Almost knocked over a vase. I caught it." Good. That would be a little too obvious of a sign that someone had been in her home, and obvious wasn't exactly the goal here. He hummed in consideration. "It's not a bad place to drop a bug, either…"

"Boss!" Diana's voice was louder, and my forearm stung when she reached out and smacked me when I didn't pay attention to her fast enough. I looked at her, wounded, and leaned away. "Tell him to finish up fast." She pointed at the earphones still over her head. "They're leaving."

I looked up in exasperation. That was so not the evening plan that we gave Neal. "Why doesn't he distract her to keep her away?" Distracting is something Neal is very good at. And Maria was apparently very good at distracting herself just by looking at his body, so together, they should've been able to kill hours.

"She invited him back to hers," Diana nodded towards the wall of the van closer to the restaurant meaningfully, and it took me a second.

"Why- oh." Instead of being annoyed at our time being cut, I was feeling that jealousy reach a crescendo it hadn't hit before. This was really getting horrific. I wasn't sure why it was so bad, except for maybe because Neal was absolutely not someone I should become involved with, and, ah, forbidden fruit and all that. "Son of a bitch," I swore, crossing my ankles. I tried to light the equipment around us on fire with my eyes. What, so eyeing him over his clothes wasn't enough for her?! She probably didn't even realize just how incredible of a person he was, just saw a hot man she wanted in her bed.

Diana sighed loudly, making it clear that she was objecting to whatever was about to happen, and then, for some reason, brought it down on herself by asking the one thing she apparently didn't want to ask. "Okay," she said, running out of patience. "What's really wrong?"

"I'm fine!" I said too quickly, because I wasn't used to lying to my family, and I was far too close to Diana to be around her and be prepared at all times to put on an act. Even if I'd been anticipating the question or my rapid response, she was very good at reading people, especially people she knew well, and part of being my probie meant that she spent a lot of time with me.

Her eyes widened. "You're jealous, is what you are!" As she realized, instead of scolding me or giving me a lecture on why Neal was unattainable and it was so abhorrently unprofessional, she started chuckling. Then, as that subsided, she started full-out giggling.

"Diana," I said, looking up, furious with myself. If I were her, I'd probably have been laughing, too, but it's really not amusing when I'm the one being laughed at. "Start driving the van to her street." The equipment tended to work with the best connection the closer we were, and we also wanted to be around if Neal needed us and things went bad.

Amusing herself by replaying the sentences over in her head, Diana kept bursting into giggle fits. "Yes, boss," she managed to say in the middle of one of them, taking her headset off of her head while being careful not to let it mess up her neatly-straightened hair. I shot a glower at her darkly, almost wishing I could light her on fire (or at least have her zapped with static electricity, fire might be overdoing it a little bit) for thinking it's just so damn hilarious.

---

"After you," Neal offered, holding the door open for Maria to cross the threshold into her own home, acting like the perfect gentleman since escorting her to her own car. I counted it a miracle that I wasn't already humming the lyrics to aggressive Taylor Swift songs.

"Some wine?" She returned, uplifted and lofty. Haven't you had enough? I thought snidely, paranoid that she was either trying to get him drunk or drug him.

If the thought of being roofied occurred to him, he decided it was okay to take those chances. "Why not?"

The general sounds of light switches being flipped, cabinets opening, and footsteps treading on carpet as they moved around the house was the only thing I heard for a couple of minutes. I resisted a yawn and rubbed at my eyes with the heels of my hands. Then there was the clinking of thin glasses and the sound of a cork being pulled.

"So." Maria drew it out, her voice sounding like she was pouting enticingly. "What should we talk about?"

I had never had any dates go like this one was, but, to be fair, my motives were usually fairly straightforward, and both of these participants had motives that were all over the place, like bendy straws from Denny's.

"There's this story about these two spies… a French Duke and an Italian Count." Neal's voice was already so smooth and melodic that it was easy and soothing to listen to, even though I was sitting in a surveillance van and listening to him wine and dine another woman. Then there was the timbre of mystery and ambiguity that he used to be vague and pull off deceitful double-crossing. "They were sworn enemies who spent the entire year trying to kill each other, but on New Year's, they got to ask a question that the other had to answer truthfully."

"Yes," she recognized the story and seemed amused that that was what he chose to talk about. "The trick was asking the right question, because you might never get another chance."

"I always thought that honesty is a more challenging game."

"Honesty is a more challenging game?" Derek repeated, throwing his voice to try to match Neal's pitch as he mocked in disbelief. "How come my dates don't go like this?"

I snorted and was unable to resist the jibe. He was the one that asked. "Firstly, because you haven't dated anyone since a couple months after you met my sister." It wasn't an exaggeration. Not a single date, but plenty of puppy dog eyes when she wasn't looking, and it was just as cute as it was sickening. "Secondly, because you don't say things like honesty is a more challenging game."

The phrase itself was so strange. It was something that most people would disagree with, but on many levels, I understood exactly what he meant. It's easier to keep to yourself, it's easier to lie than it is to tell the truth, and it's easier to have dishonest relationships than it is to have trusting ones. It's so scary to put oneself out there that it can be preferable to lean towards lies.

"Because nobody actually talks like that," Diana reminded me as if she thought I'd actually forgotten that this wasn't a movie where people could get away with speaking with those phrases and implications.

I had to contradict her, because this wasn't a movie, but Neal was still saying those things and Maria seemed totally cool with it. "They do in Neal Caffrey's world." And if that sounded bitter… well, half of the time I wished I had more experience in his universe, and the other times I just wished I could drag him all the way out of it.

I tuned back into what I was hearing through my headphones. "This wine needs to breathe," Maria explained. "I'm going to get a decanter. Why don't you put some music on?" Her high stilettos clicked hard on the floor when she moved to a room with wooden tile rather than smooth carpet, but Neal stayed in the room that he was in.

"What are you in the mood for?" He called out to her from the room that he stayed in, probably looking around at whatever music she had available.

I didn't hear what she said back – it was too far away now for the microphone Neal was wearing to pick up on it, but I was sure one of the other bugs would've gotten it, we'd just have to play it back to hear the recording.

Neal chuckled at whatever it was she told him. "Surprise you," he murmured.

---

As the time progressed, I got more and more tense. It was varying directly with how long Neal spent in that house. We may have planted bugs, but I really, really wished that we'd also thought to put in cameras. The antsier I got, the more looks I got from Diana, and a couple of times Derek had even reached over and put his hand over my knee to stop my leg from bouncing.

When I had gone undercover with Neal as his fake fiancée, it had been fun, but it hadn't been emotional. It had been pretending to be stupid in love, which I knew how to do, but mostly I'd just been enjoying the dancing and keeping watch to make sure no one was stalking us. Even kissing him hadn't elicited a very strong emotional reaction at the time, but knowing that he was in there with Maria while we couldn't keep an eye on him brought the jitters and the envy. I'd have been surprised if my eyes hadn't turned green by the time I got home.

I had to listen through my headset while they went through a discussion on the classical music of Tchaikovsky versus Handel, the influence of the French revolution on the works of Halévy, and the wine that she'd uncorked a bottle of for their 'date.' I couldn't even think it without putting air quotations around it. I mean, I like music and wine, but I wouldn't hold a ten minute discussion on the merits of classical composers from hundreds of years ago. I was ready to bang my head into the wall, but finally the discussion was subtly rerouted back to the Book of Hours, and now the desire to slam my head into the nearest blunt object was significantly lower.

"Ten years carrying the same Bible. It's like stalking God," Neal mused as they looked at the picture that Maria had chosen to keep. Well, for all I knew, their eyes were glued on each other, but I was choosing to believe that they were looking at the photograph.

"If it wasn't for the monks' devotion, we would have lost one of the most significant works of Greek literature forever." Maria may have been a criminal, but she was also a history professor, and her admiration of history was clear when she said that. Even if she didn't value it over money, she still clearly appreciated it.

"It's stunning."

"I agree." Maria's voice dropped down into a very quiet purr, but she was evidently still very close to Neal, as I could still hear her speaking. "You know what?" Unbidden, my mind started replacing the picture of the recording equipment with images of Maria invading Neal's personal space, standing up on her toes to whisper into his ear and mouth along the line of his jaw. I curled my fingers into my thighs and felt my fingernails scratching down. "I don't trust you."

"Smart." He kept his voice even, thankfully, but there was something else in the way he sounded that I couldn't identify, and it made me feel very unhappy. Why, why, why couldn't this emotional epiphany have come after this case? My feelings decided to have the worst possible timing. "I wouldn't trust me, either."

Diana cleared her throat. She wasn't even a little bit discreet about turning up the volume on her headset so that she could hear them as well as possible, since they were deciding to get all up close and personal and whispery. "Boss, we may have a technical problem," she announced.

My rationale was saying I should just let it play out and trust Neal, because that's the only feasible option I really had, but alternatively, my hands were itching to throw open the doors and go search for the Bible myself, probable cause or not. Anything to get her away from Neal. The muscles in my hands were starting to cramp from how tightly my fists were balled up.

"That's one way to put it."

"Let's play… the spies' game." Her words were slightly broken up like she was busy doing something else with her mouth. I kept reminding myself that punching the equipment was not going to help. "I'll ask you a question…"

"And I have to tell you the truth," Neal guessed, filling in the rest. He didn't sound quite as affected or, ah, lusty as Maria did. What the hell? He's supposed to be seducing her, not the other way around.

"And you have to tell me the truth," Maria confirmed, languid and soft.

"Okay." He played along like he was supposed to, but the way he was speaking to her still made me envious. Reminding myself it was an act didn't really help, because it reminded me that he was just that good of a liar. Even if he ever spoke to me in the way that I wanted, how could I possibly trust it to be real? It was the same argument I had with myself over every other aspect of our relationship, but romance was that much more vulnerable. "Make it a good one."

After a stagnant pause in which all I heard was heavier breathing, Maria started speaking again. "Which Neal Caffrey are you?" This time, her voice sounded so close to the bug that she had to be pressed up against him. Derek put his hand over the back of my fist, reminding me that whatever I was upset about, I needed to chill out. Easier said than done. "Are you working for the good guys, or are you working a bigger game?"

I know I wasn't imagining that Diana leaned closer, intent on hearing the answer, but none came. And after about ten seconds, I started to get worried. I reached over to the volume control and turned it up, right as static started clicking in my ears loudly and obnoxiously.

"Son of a bitch!" I shouted, ripping the headphones off. The short was so much louder than their speech had been. I felt nearly deafened by it, and then developed an insta-ache in my ears.

Diana smacked the top of the box. "What happened?"

"He killed the signal," Derek sighed, looking darkly towards the doors of the van and rubbing his hands together in his lap.

We all somehow managed to lean back in our chairs, giving up on the audio link to the inside of the house at the same time. There wasn't anything we could do aside from seeing how it would play out and trusting Neal… trusting the man I was just remembering that I didn't know how to trust. Oh, great.

"Do you think he's… taking her up on it?" Diana hesitantly asked, sounding concerned.

"No, he wouldn't." I said it flatly because I knew that it could be argued, but I didn't want to think about it, much less believe it. He knew what I was risking by letting him do this. He knew what he was risking if he decided to try to run. He wouldn't hurt himself or betray me like that, would he? "She probably knew he was bugged," I went on, thinking optimistically. "Check the other frequency. Are the others coming through?"

Derek pulled his headphones back on. Diana just moved to hers and changed the frequency to the first of the bugs that had been planted around the house, not just on Neal. Derek did the same while Diana held the headphones against the side of her head to hear without putting them on. Diana switched to another while Derek turned up the volume, scowling.

"No." He looked shocked as he confirmed it. "They're not."

"There we go, then." I crossed my arms, but then got too restless and stood up from my chair, slipping out through the gap between my space and Diana's. "She got us. He's working with us." With me, I added silently. We'd been trusting each other, at least at work. I let him into my house; my sister has him over for television and dinner some nights, and he helps her plan kids' birthday celebrations. Betraying me would be betraying Kate – Kate is too kind and too sweet to betray. "He wouldn't backstab us like that."

They took the "us" as being the FBI, but I really meant "us" as in myself and Kate.

---

At ten the next day, I was called into Hughes' office by means of a call sent to the landline at my desk. I stared unhappily at the phone for an entire two minutes after I hung up because I'd heard Ruiz's voice in the background saying something to Hughes, and I really didn't want to go to that office. It takes energy to have those massive standoffs. Energy that I was kind of lacking in.

The only reason I could think of for Eric being in the WWCD was Ignacio's death, which was undeniably connected to my case. After staring for an additional thirty seconds, I stood up slowly with weary bones, felt my knee pop and shook my leg out, and I psyched myself up to be a sharp-tongued bitch if need be on the walk there.

"How did you know she was in on it?" The director asked me, getting my report of what was going on with our case in person. I stood in front of his desk with my hands clasped in front of me attentively while he sat behind his desk, the light from his computer screen casting an extra glare onto his face.

"A mix of behavioral cues and, ah, intuition." While I couldn't say 'intuition' on a file, Hughes got what I meant. Most agents understood what it was like to have that instinctual feeling and how strong of a lead it felt like.

"Hm." His eyes lingered on me and then turned to the dumbass on my right, standing in a similar fashion to me in deference to the older man. "Ruiz?"

"I checked Paul's credit," he confirmed, sneaking a flash of his eyes over to me. "He was wired ten grand from a shell corp in Gibraltar, owned by your, uh, lady professor."

"Did you get his credit report from your lady agent or your gentleman scientist?" I couldn't help but to ask him rudely, questioning yet again his habit of specifying when the sex of the person in question was female. If Maria was a male, he'd have just said "professor." And it wasn't just Maria – he'd been doing it to everyone, colleagues to prisoners, since before I met him. Part of his overall misogyny.

Ruiz opened his mouth to reply to me, no doubt something like asking if I learned something from my 'bitch' sister or 'bastard' brother, the way he'd done the last time this had become an issue. Really, by now people should just know to never, ever let us in the same vicinity, but he caught Hughes watching him carefully, suggesting he not do it, and he shut his mouth with a click of teeth.

"How'd last night's fishing go?" The director looked back to me, making us take turns as though we were kids still learning how to share. He could learn how to share civility, I mused, but unlike most kids, he's not sharing by not taking it. "Get any tape?"

I hesitated for a split-second, but with Ruiz in the room, there was no way I was going to say that Neal had sabotaged his own bug, even though we had the proof that he did it for the sake of the investigation. "There was an equipment failure," which wasn't exactly a lie, "But Caffrey says she has the book. She'll sell, but only to him."

"Of course he'd say that," Hughes puffed out, looking over at a picture framed on the wall. "Terms?"

"Two hundred fifty thousand, wired to a Swiss account." I steadfastly refused to look at Ruiz, even when I saw him in my periphery scoffing and whirling to face me incredulously. I knew the numbers were high. "Neutral sovereignty. And, of course, under a fake name."

"No way!" I felt my mouth twitch. I'd been speaking to my boss, not my brat. "What if he cuts a deal with her and runs off with the book?" Ruiz pointed out the door and looked at Hughes intensely, fighting a good argument with a healthy passion. Of course, since it was against my cause, it was naturally a terrible argument, no matter how tactical.

"He won't," I swore.

"We don't have another choice." Hughes looked up at Ruiz gravely over the desk. Being told down, Ruiz moved back from the boss, but became no less argumentative. "I don't need another dead body washing up in the river." The boss man gave me the nod of approval that I was used to. "We'll set up a dummy account."

"What if she takes a shot at Neal?" I queried, trying to think this entire thing through. "She'll notice a vest. She's already killed at least one person that we know of." He's supposed to be under my protection. I'm a really bad protector if he gets shot on my watch, aren't I?

Ruiz looked up at the ceiling. "I wouldn't lose any sleep over it," he drawled his advice.

I looked at Hughes and, completely honestly, confessed, "I can't do this." He looked a little taken aback. I took a deep breath in, and then exhaled deeply, nodded to myself that I was as relaxed as I was going to get, and turned my entire body to the homicide agent. "Listen, you imbecile, what the fuck is your problem with me?" As calm as I was going to get. Not actually calm. "You got what you wanted. You got my job," I snarled in his face. "Hell, you've probably sent flowers to the jackass that did this to me!" I motioned to myself, gesturing over my stomach meaningfully. "Why don't you just screw off and get your nose out of my business?"

He turned right back on me and didn't even pause before he threw himself right back into it. Hughes groaned and leaned back, covering his ears. Ruiz didn't notice. I don't think it was possible to block out Ruiz, since he sounded like a pig and squealed as loudly as a dozen of them.

"You're the idiot who wants to give your pet convict access to two hundred fifty thousand dollars, a pretty face, and an almost-priceless Bible, and you actually expect that anyone else has your back?" He summarized it all in the worst way possible on purpose. "Why do you trust him?"

"He is my consultant," I lowly defended, because Neal is not his informant to question, and my relationship with him is not Ruiz's concern or under his control. "And I daresay I know him better than you do."

"Yeah, you probably know him a lot better." Callously, he laughed. It was harsh and mean and sounded like it must have hurt his throat. "You know, since I don't fuck my CIs."

My eyebrows threatened to disappear into my hair. Even Hughes had a visceral reaction, his mouth opening and his jaw gaping at Ruiz for the gall he had in throwing something like that around. It wasn't the kind of thing taken lightly. My jaw dropped of its own volition for how offended I was.

"Excuse me?!" My voice went up both an octave and a decibel.

He didn't even have the wisdom to backpedal! "You heard me, Anderson!" He barked. "Are you actually surprised? An agent gets a criminal out of jail with about a hundred people ready to jump and chase him and a month later she's risking her professional standing on – what, on his word?" He sneered. Could've given Severus Snape a run for his money. "There's no way there's not really good sex in it for you."

Wow. This is… I can't…

I went deathly quiet for about five seconds, and then I was back at his throat, but this time in a much more alarming way.

"For your information, Ruiz, who I choose to invite into my bedroom is none of your business." My voice was very low in volume. Unwittingly, Hughes was leaning across his desk to hear better. Ruiz's eyes were suspicious and his arms were up, alarmed by the change in my tone to a much darker, much more threatening note. "I refused to let you into my bed, but by no means did I station you outside the door to be a guard dog, so this thing where you're pissed at me for having any interaction with the opposite sex where I told you 'no' needs to stop. This is the twenty-first century. I'm just as human as you are – arguably more so, if you have to be reminded of that.

"Secondly, if I were fucking Caffrey, that's all it would be. By no means does pleasure affect intelligence, and I'm not the mentally compromised piece of work you expect me to be." I started to snarl. "I was written down because I was tortured, not because I had a good lay." Ruiz should know. He was one of the people who was supposed to investigate it before the case went cold, and he saw the crime scene photos – the pictures of what had, at the time, been my own home.

I turned my head to Hughes, choosing to be cold because the alternative was hot as a volcano, smothering Ruiz under my ashes. "If you'll excuse me, sir, I need to go inform my consultant of the risks he's been signed up for, while Ruiz learns to stop projecting his habits on to me."

Hughes started to look at Ruiz to say look what you've done but he met my eyes with the same respect that he'd held for me even before this encounter. "You're dismissed, Agent Anderson," he allowed, shooting Ruiz a look not to argue.

"Thank you," I emphatically said in goodbye as I whirled around on my heel, hair flying and whipping at my neck.

"Go on," Ruiz bitterly snarled at me as I retreated to stalk out of the office. "Teach your puppy some more tricks!" My face was burning hot and I swear I wanted to bite him. I hadn't wanted to bite someone since elementary school. "Make sure he knows 'come!'"

That was lewd and pathetic enough for Hughes to decide that he needed to intervene. "That's enough, Agent Ruiz!" He raised his voice to snap.

I turned around as I was walking backwards and raised both hands to Ruiz, flipping him off with both. "Go fuck yourself!" I shouted, giving absolutely zero damns about that I was in my boss's office, and given the circumstances, I don't think he blamed me for it. I reached behind me to grab the handle, yanked at it until it opened, and then I pulled it shut behind me so hard that it slammed and made me jump, just because those doors were heavy and loud.

As soon as I was out, I covered my mouth with a hand and whimpered. This was really what I was reduced to? The bureau's example of a white-collar mistake, working side-by-side with a felon who can't be trusted and screwing him on the side? Sleeping my way up in ranks? Fucking great. As if it wasn't hard enough to get where I am – how can I commandeer any respect from people around me if other divisions are spreading rumors that I got where I was through sex and seduction? I could pretend I didn't care, but it hurt. Sex isn't something to be ashamed of, but when it's taken and used as a means of ostracizing and tearing someone down, it makes them feel horrible, because sexuality is such a strong part of our identities as humans.

I can't let him see me hurting. He'd feel like he'd won or proven something. Eric wouldn't give up if my reactions goaded him onwards. I sniffed before I started tearing up and I lowered my hand from my mouth, balling my fingers up into a fist and brushing back the hair that was framing my face. I turned to my right to leave the hall and retreat to the safety of my own office, but stopped short.

Neal was leaning with his back against the wall and his head turned so that his ear was closer to it, and I knew that the walls really were not soundproof. I scraped my teeth along my lower lip. He had the kindness to look apologetic, knowing he shouldn't have been listening in to a meeting with my boss, much less one that devolved into such an abhorrent disaster.

"How much of that did you hear?" I asked, wondering if, by some small miracle, he'd have heard little enough to not know who Ruiz was calling my "puppy." If he didn't know the assumptions being made about us, then I might have actually considered the whole divinity thing.

He kept his face somewhat neutral. "I'm being shot at later?" He said a little unsurely.

That was established before anything else started. "So the entire God damn fight." I covered my face with my hands and wanted to keep my expression hidden, but knew that I couldn't. That wasn't how adults got to handle their problems. I sniffed again and dropped my hands. "Lovely. At least you know what's at risk for both of us." Neal was blocking my way to my office. My office is the safest, most solitary place in this building that I have. The second best thing is going to my car and either going to Kate or going to a martial arts dojo downtown to blow off steam. "I'll email you the PIN when you're in place."

"First they're sending me back to prison, next they're giving me a quarter-million taxpayer dollars in an off-shore account." He pondered aloud, standing up and approaching me. I wanted to step back or put my hands out to ask him not to, but right now I didn't want to show any weakness, and even discomfort was admitting to not only Neal and Ruiz, but to myself that I was hurting from the accusations. "I guess that shows how much confidence the bureau has in you."

My shoulders fell. Right then, I didn't want to run from him. A switch had been flipped by that subtle reminder that I still had the confidence of the bureau. It was just a few people who didn't like me, but I still had my position, my freedom, and my capabilities backed up by all of the people who mattered, and that notion was what I had needed to hear. I had to stop myself from running forward the short distance between us and locking my arms around him.

If he were Derek or Diana, I wouldn't have had to refrain.

Would I be holding myself back if I hadn't just endured that meeting in the office?

Thanks, you son of a bitch, for fucking with my self-confidence and making me second-guess myself.

"And how much I have in you," I added, gently taking the wrist of one hand into the palm of the other in front of me. It needed to be said – the bureau was trusting me because I was good at my job, and I was taking faith in Neal, but if it backfired in my face, then I was no longer given that benefit of the doubt. Ruiz's mouth would do a lot more damage if that was the case. "I'm going home until the operation," I said, looking down to the carpet because I couldn't keep looking into his eyes.

His eyes were so beautiful, and so expressive, but I could never be sure if they were telling me the truth. Conversely, I was almost always sure they could tell when I was trying to pass off being dishonest, and I didn't want him to pick up on anything that I wasn't saying, to him or to anyone else.

"Kenna." I started to turn around, even though I heard him speaking, trying to get me to look back to him. When I didn't, he lunged forward and caught my shoulder in his hand. I sighed and looked back over my shoulder. "I'm sorry," he tried to say, looking for all the world like he meant it, too.

"Don't bother." I said without much fight. "It's not your problem to apologize for." He could be Neal Caffrey or the Zodiac Killer or some guy who committed petty theft, and Eric would still be the same. It was me that was the problem. "It's just a matter of not taking anything lying down." I let out a long breath and looked to his hand, brushing him off of my shoulder physically as much as verbally. "Nothing I said actually made a difference."

That, possibly, was the worst part – knowing that I could make such a difference where other peoples' lives were concerned, but I couldn't do a damn thing to help myself out of this.

---

Kate got home around the normal time from her daycare and came straight into the living room when she heard the sexy music playing through the speakers on the television. You really need to work on your timing, I directed at her mentally when she came running into the room to see what I was watching. Then she recognized the actors on the screen when the music faded and the camera panned out, and she relaxed instantly. I had the feeling I was about to be scolded for watching pornography in the living room, so that had been a close one.

"Hey." She dropped her keys down on the island between the kitchen and the living room, which clattered on the marble. "What're you doing back?" She asked, reaching behind herself to the rack of paper towels. She ripped off a couple of squares, folded them up, and then looked down at her shirt. There were several spots of paint on it, ranging from dark colors that mixed to look black to the brightest yellow that burned my eyes. Grimacing, she just tossed the paper towels away, resigned to putting it through the wash.

Kate didn't like getting all sweaty and gross, but she loved to play with the kids at recess and even indoors. She offered a daycare and babysitting service, not a school, so it's not like she had a responsibility to teach them basic geometry or arithmetic. Her hair was a bit of a mess and needed to be re-brushed, her pants and shirt both needed to be washed on high with a lot of Tide stain remover, and she looked ready to fall over, kicking off her shoes even while she got a bottle of water out of the fridge. No one could say she didn't enjoy her job, but while she enjoyed it, it was exhausting.

I had already taken to my two first forms of comfort: food and television. One of my favorite shows was playing, and I was almost through the third episode since I'd gotten home, with five minutes left in runtime. My thigh was almost burning from the big bowl (or small mixing bowl, depending on how you want to look at it) of beef-flavored ramen, the cure to my anxiety.

"I need to calm down before I can handle watching Neal chat up a bitch professor and cut his anklet for real." Cut his anklet… for real. That thing was the one thing that kept this balance in place. It was his assurance that he was safe, that someone always knew where we was – yet, even though it was an insurance, he hated it. Meanwhile, I liked it for the fact that, not only did it keep him in check and protect my reputation in the bureau as a credible agent, it meant I could protect him. If he was hurt or threatened, I could find him in minutes just by calling the US Marshals' office. "He could run," I stated desolately to my ramen.

The movement in the kitchen stopped, even the tiny little snaps of the breaking plastic on the cap seal of her water. "If he could run," she said slowly. The only thing that didn't quiet down when I'd said that was my television. "Why haven't you put another tracker on him? Like, a subdermal one?"

Nah. That, too, felt a lot like treating Neal like a dog that needed to be chipped. "I don't think he'll run," I said, because he had to realize I'd catch him, and he would only make his prison sentence worse. This time he wouldn't be given the offer of working it off outside of the jails. "I also don't know the policies on subdermal trackers in humans. But I don't think he'll run." I looked up and stared intently at the gold-haired man on my television screen and reminded him, "That doesn't mean that he won't run."

Given my history, that could've been me talking about either Neal or Satan, since I tended to talk at my television when I was stressed.

Kate didn't say anything after that, but her water bottle crinkled as she drank. Then her footsteps moved behind me and I heard her protest in disbelief, "Is that three ramen packs in the trash?"

She caught me at a bad time, with a fork loaded with ramen noodles in my mouth. "Comf'rt food," I mumbled, covering my mouth with my other hand.

My sister took another long look at the television, realized I was watching one of those episodes, and shook her head. I saw it in her reflection on the screen, now that she was standing close enough. Her hands dropped down from over the back of the couch and her fingers moved to my shoulders, lightly squeezing. "And comfort television."

I stabbed my fork in the direction of the program. "This is good stuff."

"The ramen I'll agree with." She sounded amused. "The TV seems a little sacrilegious, which is ironic, considering this case of yours."

I blinked. "How so?" I leaned my neck back as far as possible to look up at her. It was like seeing her face upside down, and she looked down to see me, and must've been getting the same effect.

She picked up her left hand from my shoulder and pointed emphatically at the screen while the blonde woman in the background started kissing on the speaking actor's neck playfully. "You're watching the apocalypse raining down on a pair of brothers meant to represent the Archangels Michael and Lucifer while they watch a DVD in which the Archangel Gabriel stars in a Casa Erotica porno, and you don't see how this is a little bit sacrilegious?"

Well, when she summarized it like that, yeah, it sounded a little sacrilegious. Was it just because this was a go-to comfort show for me, or was it me rebelling against the nature of this case? More accurately, was I rebelling against Neal? Maria? The idea of Neal flirting with Maria any more? This whole thing where I wanted his hands off of her and onto me was really starting to fuck with my head.

I do not remember giving my brain permission to start wanting another human in any sort of non-platonic capacity.

"It's a good kind of sacrilege," I opted for in the end, because no matter what the reason was, it was still cheering me up significantly.

Kate laughed. "Whatever that means." If my mouth wasn't already stuffed with more ramen, I'd have made a wry joke about letting God strike me dead if I didn't have a point about this being quality entertainment. "Why are you so stressed if you don't think he's going to run?"

It's not only that I'm worried he'll run. I'm also worried he's going to touch her and kiss her and God forbid actually let her seduce him into crime, let alone her bed. Very aggressively, I attacked the ramen in my bowl again.

Kate picked her hands up again from my shoulders, realizing something she said had been taken badly and elicited a more violent response. Damn sister knew me so well she'd probably figure out I was jealous if I wasn't careful enough.

"Trust isn't exactly my first instinct," I muttered, barely moving my mouth because even telling a lie of omission to my sister felt wrong. "Occupational hazard."

Kate moved around the side of the couch and sat down next to me on the sofa on the other cushion. Her paint stains were dried already, anyway. "You've been sticking up for him this far. What's gotten your panties twisted now?" Ah, the care and compassionate expression of concern within the Anderson household.

"Not Caffrey, that's for sure!" I replied way too quickly, Ruiz's insults and the humiliation burning in my face far too fresh for me to take any reminder of it easily.

Kate leaned back, startled just by the intensity. "Oh. Okay, um… okay." Cautiously, she pulled her legs up onto the couch and sat crisscross. One of her knees and ankles fell over the side because she was trying to face me. "Um… that response was a little fast there, do you want to… tell me something?"

Kate knew the extent of my problems with Ruiz and had met him once before in a horribly disastrous occasion that led to the forced separation of the two of us by another agent when he'd said something crude about her in front of me. I could tell her what he'd said without having to explain to her the things that I didn't even want to admit to myself, and she'd understand why I was so angry. Who wouldn't be angry at being accused of allowing my integrity and dignity to be compromised for the sake of bedding someone?

I took a deep breath so I wouldn't yell. "I had to see Ruiz."

"Eric Ruiz?" She already had a dark look coming over her face.

"Twice," I added.

"Oh." She covered her surprise that she hadn't heard about it already and instead remained very practiced and calm. Dealing with children gave her patience; being my family gave her the knowledge of how to actually get me to talk. "Was he a jerk like usual?"

"More so!" And I really hadn't even thought that was possible. Judging by the 'are you kidding me' look on her face, apparently Kate hadn't known it was an option, either. Complaints just kept coming out of my mouth now that I had someone safe to complain to. I dropped my fork into my ramen and let it sit in my noodles while I ranted. "Aside from all of the slights against my professionally, he semi-publicly humiliated me in front of the director, anyone who heard while they were walking past the office, and Neal, whom I didn't even realize was outside the door!" It was doubly embarrassing because Neal heard the jeering and rumors made up that included him, too.

Kate looked particularly vicious. "Where does he get off in putting you through that?" She dragged a hand restlessly through her hair and caught her fingers on some tangles, so she withdrew her fingers from her ponytail quickly before it got worse. "He's already gotten what he wanted! Why doesn't he just leave you alone?!"

It was really heartwarming to see someone else get so upset on my behalf. It validated what I was feeling and reminded me that there was someone in my life who actually, really cared about me, about my emotions, and knowing that made me feel a lot less volatile.

"Well, that's what I asked, but according to him, it's because he doesn't approve of me screwing Caffrey." And there was the reason for the quick flare of my temper previously. Kate went from looking bloodthirsty to looking kind of confused in two seconds. "Which I'm not," I hastily added, and she quickly nodded along with me to verify that that hadn't been the part she was confused about. "But it's great to know what the other units in the bureau think," I said as a stingy afterthought, picking up my fork and stabbing it back into my ramen, twisting it around meanly and taking out my violence on the food.

Kate rubbed her hand over her mouth and under her nose, thinking hard on something. I recognized that look – she was thinking deeply. I prepared myself for something unusually thoughtful, coming from either of us.

"I really wish I knew what to say to make you feel better," she earnestly looked into my eyes as she said this to make her point. She was being truthful and supportive. "But, in this situation, I don't really think there is anything I can say, because… you can't change what they think… and correcting them usually just reinforces it."

I nodded dully. That was a lesson I learned a long time ago. People believe what they want to, whether or not it's the truth, and they'll manipulate the facts to justify it if need be.

"You know, sometimes I feel like you should just embrace it, you know?" Kate laughed and uncrossed her legs, pushing gently at my thigh with her sock-clad feet. Her socks were mismatched. "Except sleeping with an informant probably isn't very strongly encouraged."

"No," I agreed, finally able to see a little bit of humor. There was nothing funny in the way that Ruiz thought of me, or the context in which he chose to bring it up. His form of address was reprehensible and I swear to God, I won't even care if someone starts saying disgusting lies like that about him after what he did to me today, but the idea of being so worked up because of a situation that hadn't even happened? That was kind of silly. I cleared my throat. "If you stay and watch with me, I'll turn this off and put on Glee," I volunteered.

At the mention of her favorite show, Kate perked up. "Now that I can get behind!" She announced, and I gave her the remote so that she could choose an episode herself.

Fifteen minutes later, the bowl that used to hold my ramen was empty and on the coffee table, while I was stretched out sideways on the couch with my legs spread so that Kate could lay between them, leaning back onto my front with her hands clasping mine and occasionally knocking my knuckles together to see how long it would be before my hands got sore.

---

The most exciting thing about the surveillance van today was that it was a different van, this time equipped with a camera aimed to the opposite street from the top of the car, and a monitor with the live recording was installed along the top of the wall. Also, instead of using the usual headset to listen to recording devices, Neal and I were both wearing connected earpieces. His was recording and playing back to me, but the microphone on mine was turned off so he wouldn't be distracted. Ruiz, whom I was still treating with an icy shoulder and an unwillingness to speak to, was with Derek, Diana, and I in the van, Derek sitting in the driver's seat, prepared to move the car to follow Maria's red sports car.

Ruiz snorted. I hated when he did that. It made it harder to pretend that he didn't exist. "Look at him," he muttered hatefully, glaring at Neal on the screen.

I couldn't resist snubbing him again, not when he was bitching about my consultant. "Oh, no, watch him walk," I complained, shaking my head at the monitor, pretending to be completely aghast. "What the hell does he think he's doing? Everyone knows walking is a severe infraction."

Ruiz looked sideways at me through the corner of his eye. I felt him turning his attention to me and steadfastly refused to reward it with my focus. "The son of a bitch should be in leg irons if you ask me."

"No one asked, and no one cares." I dropped my arms where they were crossed in front of my chest. "Why are you even here?" Ruiz had invited himself along, been the one setting up the camera when we'd gotten the van to bring it out to the scene Neal and Maria agreed on, and I couldn't think of a damn reason other than harassment.

He looked at me and held himself arrogantly, pleased to have gotten me to engage with him. "I want to be the one to point it out when this entire idea blows up in your face," he spat haughtily. "Trusting Caffrey's the dumbest idea you've ever had. You think he likes being told to sit, stay, lay down, fetch, fuck?"

My expression darkened steadily, and it got worse as he progressed to barking out commands. I was going to turn it around on him and start telling him to quit being such a bitch and play dead, but Derek must've seen from my face that I was about to get nasty and cut in before I made it worse.

"Hey, Eric." Derek twisted around from the front seat and looked back at the three of us standing in the back of the van. When I looked at Derek, I saw Diana, and realized that she had inched away from Ruiz and I before we started fighting and she was caught in it. Derek leveled an unimpressed, cautionary look to the other agent. "I think it's time you cut it out."

Diana coughed. "Agent Anderson has our full respect and cooperation." She looked straight at Ruiz. "She is our team leader. The White-Collar Crime Division hasn't had a higher solution rate in years before she became our boss. This isn't the first time she's trusted Caffrey and it's never come back before."

I calmed down a bit when I heard my team defending me, that desire to tear down Ruiz replacing itself with a much calmer anger that was easier to control. I couldn't let them do the entire job – that would normally be what I'd do, but Ruiz would never let me forget I'd let Derek and Diana protect me rather than responding myself, yet it was reassuring to know that they had my back, even when the homicide agent was making such vile and inappropriate comments at me.

"Not to mention that this continued problem you seem to be having with her is beginning to feel an awful lot like harassment," Derek added from the front seat. He sounded far too cool, and I realized the threat he was making before he'd even actually made it. "Do we need to call OPR?" OPR, or the Offices of Professional Responsibility, handles the investigations into bureau members and mediates inter-agent disputes when official complaints are filed. OPR investigations can range from being spoken with to being temporarily suspended, depending on the grounds. Ruiz narrowed his eyes at Derek at the question and Derek continued, pressing intentionally on the buttons that he knew would piss off Ruiz the most. Knew I loved him for a reason. "What's your obsession with her relationship with other men, anyway? You jealous or something?"

"Keh!" I could have told him that that would be badly received. Ruiz balked. "I need her like I need a-"

"Don't finish that sentence," Diana cut him off with an evil glower, crossing her arms in a dare.

With my composition and pride regained, I very quietly and very civilly asked, "How much longer is your wife out of town for?"

Made uncomfortable by what he perceived as an attempt at friendly chatting, Ruiz crossed his arms like I was attacking him with my decency. The wedding band on his ring finger was covered up by his arm as soon as he realized it was still visible. "I'm not making small talk with you, Anderson."

It was far too late for him to back down. I was out for blood. I was just so completely sick of being undermined and insulted and attacked when the worst thing I'd done to him was exercise my right to say "no." He had no right to take it out on anyone but me if he wanted to be petty and immature, but he was directing it at Neal, now. What was next? Even if I wasn't fighting on Neal's behalf, where did it end if he got away with attacking my consultant? Did he attack Diana? Derek? Kate?

"I'm just curious," I said mildly, remembering to keep paying attention to my earpiece in case Neal said something that read like a call for help. "You know, since you're having an affair."

You could've dropped a pen. Derek didn't quite do that – he dropped his phone instead, it just slipped out of his hand as his muscles went slack in shock – but it still worked out well, making it more dramatic and impressive. I observed my fingernails casually, noting that I should go to a salon to have them redone. Normally I just had Kate do them, but my acrylics needed to be filled in.

It was long enough for Derek to curse quietly and pick up his phone before Ruiz actually replied. His face got all red in fury and stony as he tried not to give anything away, and he was probably wondering who I was to speak to him like that. "Who the hell are you-"

"Your deodorant," I said flatly, looking right at his face and peering curiously into his eyes, questioning how easy it would be to say the right thing and cause his spontaneous combustion. "It's for women. And you've always been a bit of a misogynist, so there's no way you'd wear that if there were any other choice, so you must've spent the night at another person's house – a house where only women live, because otherwise there'd be masculine products." I really couldn't care less about Ruiz's relationship, but Eric lived for double standards. He would make a fuss with his wife in a second if she cheated on him, but he likely saw no moral issue with fucking another woman while his wife was away. "If you'd planned on spending the night somewhere, like with a family member or friend, you'd have taken an overnight bag unless it was because of an emergency, in which case you wouldn't've come to work today. Therefore, tell me I'm wrong when I say you're having an affair."

He opened his mouth at me, then closed again, grinding his teeth and looking like a fish. I smiled and said as much. He reacted to that by stepping up close, invading my space. Our chests were almost touching, his toes less than an inch from the front of my boots. "Are you threatening me?" He hissed. It sounded like he was threatening me with the way he said it.

"Not at all," I responded calmly, letting my voice fluctuate like an open book. "I don't give a fuck that you can't keep it in your pants. I'm just proving that I'm the better investigator than you are, and that if I really wanted your job, I could get it just by going through the motions, and our supervisors all know that. Otherwise, the potential mob hit would've been handed to you. Mob affiliations are taken so much more seriously than stolen books." I delivered each sentence like a wound, quick and precise. There were my own personal issues and stipulations with getting his job, but if it weren't for the people I cared about and the difficult problem of a psych eval, I could make it my ambition and kick him so far off of his pedestal that he'd need a telescope to see me, and that was something he evidently needed to be reminded of. I enjoyed every second of watching his face go from aggravation, to violence, to a dark scowl, and then settle on an internally-seething rage level that made his forehead and cheeks turn red, his jugular and Adam's apple standing out against his throat.

If screwing him up like this and enjoying every second counted as sadism, I was very much a sadist.

"Agent Johnson is right," I tacked on, not quite finished. Defending my competence was great and all, but there was still the matter that I was unwilling to let the very principle of attacking me go down unscathed. "You're harassing me with your continuous jabs and insults, and your obsession with whomever I may be sexually involved with. I now have at least…" I pretended to make a list by ticking the fingers on my left hand. "Four witnesses, between Agents Johnson and Berrigan, Director Hughes, and the consultant who heard your unfounded accusations earlier today. Either you learn to treat me with the respect I deserve as the superior agent – no, as a human being – or I file a complaint to OPR."

That was me warranting Derek's own threat and utilizing a department that usually caused me trouble. If they were going to help me get Eric off of my ass, though, then fine. I'm so completely one hundred-percent done letting him yank my hair and twist my arm and try to push my fingers backwards. "See, I appreciate my team trying to step in and help me." I looked back over my shoulder at both of them. Diana was looking amused at the smack down. Derek looked more like he was torn between getting popcorn and decking himself out in body armor. I smiled at them both affectionately before looking back at my fellow human being. "But I really don't need them to defend my rights. I can be a cut-throat bitch if I want to be. Agent Ruiz." I made myself smile very slightly, being intimidating in a way he was entirely unused to. "Don't make me want to be."

Contently, I looked back up to the monitor, feeling more successful just today than I had in the last month. Finally putting the prick in his place felt good. The camera picked up Maria as she stepped down from the front porch of her house, wearing a long, elegant burgundy dress. She looked like she was going on another date, and a Prada purse hung off the crook of her elbow. As she left her house and turned towards the driveway, Neal walked down the sidewalk to meet her and came within the camera's field of vision. He looked over her shoulder discreetly.

"We have a visual." I could see that. Diana said it to a recorder as she pushed down the button to capture her voice for the record. "Fiametta's come out of her house."

I reached to the earpiece half-hidden by hair that had come loose from my ponytail and tucked the wire firmly around the shell of my ear. Neal and Maria, on the monitor, made friends quickly, Neal looking up the front steps on the side of her porch and holding his arms out to her as she stepped down, a hand lightly pressed on the banister.

"Hey," she said in a fairly impartial greeting, but the camera was telling me there was a wicked smirk playing on her lips as she walked right into Neal's arms like she fucking belonged there and oh, no, not this again…

He closed his arms around her. "We have a chaperone," I heard him whispering to her, using the hug as a diversion. "White van over my left shoulder."

As I watched, the hug became far less innocent in mere seconds. He stood over her and stretched his arms down, running his hands along her back and then across the dip in her spine, over the swell of her hip and down her thigh, kissing at her neck as he had to bend down to reach her legs. Maria giggled and her fingers curled into talons against his back while he unnecessarily slowly felt up her thighs, gliding up her dress sensually.

I felt a little bit nauseated, I was so annoyed and unsettled, and I figured that maybe it was a good thing we hadn't been watching them on camera in her house last night after all.

Diana laughed at the two while Neal felt her up, pressing himself close to her body and returning to nipping at her neck. "What happened to not mixing business with pleasure?" She asked to make her own entertainment when none of us said anything, just watched Maria get felt up by my consultant.

"He's patting her down," I said, and I prided myself on my ability to be heard and understood when I spoke while keeping my teeth tightly bit together. It really helped me stop from snapping or saying something I'd regret later. It's a pat down, I kept reminding myself. He's protecting himself, making sure she's not armed.

Even Ruiz looked put off by the… thoroughness. "Need a cigarette after that pat-down," he grunted.

"Need tequila every time I hear your voice," I responded to hearing him bitch on autopilot.

"You're clean," he murmured to her in confirmation. "Thank you." Maria hummed. "Your turn," he invited, because turnabout was fair play, but suddenly there was a mantra of 'no no hands off no' playing in my mind that wouldn't shut up. I touched my pockets inconspicuously for something to hold onto instead of bruising my own palms while repressing my jealousy, and found a fountain pen I'd used to sign out the bugs earlier. I pulled it out of my slacks and held it in both hands to squeeze.

When Maria's hands moved with lightning speed up to his collar and yanked him down to kiss her, hard and passionate and about half a dozen other adjectives' worth of energetic, that mantra in my head became twice as loud. Neal molded to it effortlessly, dropping his hands to her hips and making a soft, pleased noise.

She was far more thorough than she had any reason to be. I squeezed the pen hard. Both hands traveled enthusiastically over his front, feeling him up through his shirt and them roaming his back down to the waistband of his pants. She wedged one of her feet between his to feel for a gun holster by his shoes while she – oh, come on, you can't seriously think he's hiding a weapon in his hair – and then get your hand out of his pocket, woman, you can feel just fine when your hands are where I can see them.

"What's that?" Still making her own light of the situation, Diana pointed at the monitor. It wasn't hard to guess what she was pointing at, especially not with the earpiece that I was listening to – the surprised but muffled 'oh!' Neal made that Maria swallowed down in that forceful kiss was a particularly telling soundtrack. "Is she making sure that's not a gun in his pants?"

Crack! I looked down as the pressure in my hands broke and my fists flew into each other, both holding a broken near-half of an ink pen. The black ink itself spilled out onto my jacket. Ruiz looked over at me and huffed, wanting to say something but having learned his lesson the last time he tried. I shoved both ends of the bleeding ink pen back into the pocket, since ink was washable, and pulled the sleeves past my hands before I started working my arms out of the coat.

"No arms." Maria stopped, finally, after what felt like an eternity, and Neal's breathing had picked up. She smiled sweetly like a high schooler with a crush. "So, where's my money?" Make that a mid-thirties gold-digger. That was harsh but I am more than welcome to say mean things in the privacy of my own head.

"Where's my book?" Neal put his own question towards her.

Her smile faded to be replaced with seriousness and a daring glint visible in her smile. She looked predatory, like she hungered for the excitement of a chase and the triumph of crime and thrill. "You ready?"

"When I cut the anklet, my friends in the van are going to know I'm running." They were still holding each other. It was cute in a way that made me want to rip them apart and snap Maria like I'd just snapped the pen. So… maybe not exactly cute, in my opinion. "Can you lose them? Because I'm not going back in."

"I've been chased by the Carabinieri, drug cartels in Bogota-"

"I get it, you're good." Rather than waiting for her to list all of her "accomplishments," Neal cut her off and pulled out a pair of scissors slowly from the deep pocket of his pants. Maria must've felt it (I highly doubted there was anything on him that she hadn't felt) but they probably agreed on him bringing scissors last night.

Neal bent down onto the ground in front of her and Maria took a step back, reaching into her brown Prada and pulling out the car keys. She held them up and the lights on the car hidden in the alcove of a driveway flashed while it unlocked. The conman pulled up the leg of his pants, worked the scissors in between his sock and the strap of the tracker, and cut through the anklet. The broken piece fell to the ground.

Nothing can be made totally tamper-proof and applied humanely, so instead, it was the technology that worked better than the crime. While fairly easy to remove, as Neal had just demonstrated, the second that there was damage to the wires that ran through the strap, it sent off the alarm signal to the US Marshals' office, and they alerted the right people.

"With all due respect, Neal," Maria said kindly as he rose from the ground, dropping the scissors down onto the sidewalk next to the anklet. My heart thundered to see the proof that he was free. How tempting would that be? Was the indignity of being tagged and tracked twenty-four-seven enough to convince him to take his chances? Was the realization that it really was that easy going to give him any more ideas? "We could make quite a fine pair."

He looked right at her, but was not flirty or excited this time, instead looking over his shoulder in paranoia. I figured he was trying to give Maria the mental image that we were loading up our guns and calling in reinforcements. "With all due respect, Maria, shut up and drive." That made me swallow nervously. It was all an act, but to play a part, it's best to identify with it, and he was doing an exceptional job. "I'm getting rid of this."

We had talked about it ahead of time, but Neal still made me anxious when he took the earpiece off and threw it down on the ground. Having learned my lesson before, I quickly unhooked the wire from around my ear and took it out, so when he slammed his heel down and crushed the bug against the concrete, I didn't get a bunch of static in my ears.

Completely stunned by our lack of reactions and purposefully kept out of the loop, Ruiz predictably had a fit. "He cut the tracker!" He yelled, pointing at the monitor as Neal and Maria jogged to different sides of the car to get in and make a vehicular getaway. Eric looked ready to have an aneurysm.

"Mm-hmm," I said, rocking on my heels and putting down my undamaged earpiece next to the recording equipment. It wasn't like a radio, so it wasn't wrapped around behind my neck and wound through the collar of my shirt or vest. "Right on schedule."

Ruiz drew himself up tall. "You knew about this?!"

"Of course." I smirked at him, still in charge, still the superior agent who took risks and actually got the job done in a timely manner and cut the losses to save lives and money. "Had to convince Fiametta he's rigging the system."

Ruiz gaped. "What if he really is?!"

I motioned for him to calm down, which I knew would really irritate him, if he wasn't worked halfway up to high cholesterol and heart attack risk anyway. "If my word isn't enough for you," this goes for you, too, irrational side of my brain, "There's over a dozen unmarked vans in the area, loaded with agents. The local police has choppers ready in the sky at our command. There is nowhere for either of them to hide." They wouldn't even get as far as the county line, if that far, before Maria got impatient and decided she wanted her money. I pointed to my agent in the driver's seat and leaned against the wall, spreading my legs a couple of feet apart to brace with momentum during acceleration. Riding in a moving car without a seat wasn't too unlike riding a subway, but less smooth. "Derek, drive. Follow at two blocks' distance."

---

"This is weird." I paced in the back of the van the moment that the car had given that final lurch as the brakes kicked in and stopped it. "What are they doing here?" Maria chose to drive to a fairly public location about a mile downriver from Ignacio's crime scene. I rubbed my hands together. It wasn't particularly secluded, it wasn't out of the way. It was right out by the water.

"What do you mean?" Derek turned sideways, leaning against the driver's door while his legs stretched out over the passenger's seat. I noticed Diana eyeing his shoes on the seat with a distinct lack of appreciation. "They never actually passed off the book and money."

"Well, yeah, but doing it here?" She was supposed to be smarter than that. Ruiz stepped in front of me and tried to block me off, but I gave him a hard shove with one arm that send him stumbling back to the side. "His anklet is cut and she knows there's an alarm. If anything, she should've started driving out of state. Instead she tries the river?"

Diana shrugged her shoulders, stretched one arm out to the side, and raised the other to scratch at the top of her shoulder blade. "The river's where she got rid of Ignacio," she offered, closing her eyes as she reached the itch and just supplying ideas of significance.

The river is her dumping site. I looked to the doors of the van in horror. Diana didn't seem to immediately realize the true relevance of what she'd said, but my overactive mind and instilled protectiveness had me jumping to the conclusion, and my bones told me it was right. She'd driven here because the water eroded trace evidence, such as DNA, and the river was where she killed her victims. It was such a public place that it was almost impossible to pinpoint a suspect, as long as she stayed away from cameras.

I threw myself at the doors past Ruiz. He got out a noise that sounded so stunned it was more like a half-strangled "what- Anderson?" before the doors were flying open and I was jumping out of the surveillance van, forsaking my own rule about people not being seen coming into or out of the van in favor of sprinting.

Thanks to my own orders, Derek had followed Maria's car here at a distance, but said distance had been a mistake. I looked ahead at the turn-off by the riverfront pier and pushed myself to run faster. We'd already been here too long, taken too much time to come to the conclusion, and it wasn't a marathon. I didn't want to pace myself, I wanted to push myself for all of the energy I could get.

My legs hurt from suddenly being forced into action, and my feet pounded against the concrete achingly. I pumped my arms until I got within a block, and then I got my gun from the holster, sparing a second of vision to look at the gun and turn off the safety, holding it out with that arm as fixed in place as possible.

"Paul decided that he wanted the money and the book!" Maria shouted, voice carrying in the wind, out of the car.

I turned around the corner to see the red car parked up sideways along the edge of the street, right by a set of wooden stairs that led down to a small beach by the edge of the river, littered with rocks and plastic and weeds. Both of them were out of the car, Neal holding up the Book of Hours and Maria with a small gun trained on him.

Her purse, I realized, about to smack my forehead. He didn't check her purse. Neal was covering his chest with the scripture while Maria looked like her arms were shaking with duress. Neal, however, was unsympathetic.

"Yeah, that's what happens when you get greedy," he retorted swiftly, raising the book a little bit higher. Maria pulled the trigger on her weapon and I saw the flash before I heard the explosion of the gunpowder in the barrel, but I stopped running towards them and pulled up my pistol, looking at her over the top and aiming.

Neal fell down to the ground. It wasn't like in the movies, where it seemed like everything moved in slow motion so that the viewer could get the full effect of the scene. It happened fast, where he jerked back from force and fell over to the side, still clutching the Book of Hours. I trained my sights on the professor, who moved the barrel of her gun down to Neal as he laid still.

"Drop the gun!" I shouted, making her look up. Instantly, I saw the transition from cocky, self-righteous, and hypocritical betrayer to the caught, deer-in-headlights look of the betrayed. She curled her lip and started to step to Neal. "Drop it!" I snapped again, having no moral qualms with shooting her. "Now! You think you can shoot anything else before you're dead?"

Feet behind me from other people whom had finally understood what was going on made my moment a little bit brighter. More guns aimed at her changed Maria's tune. The criminal looked behind me and, with a roll of her eyes, turned to face us, holding her gun out to the side.

"On the ground!" I instructed, approaching with my range still aimed for her chest, prepared to shoot if she made any sudden moves. The perfect picture of a pissed teenager, Maria acted like she'd been caught sneaking out of the house rather than trying to kill someone. She straightened her hand huffily and the gun slid out of her fingers, falling down onto the ground and thankfully not going off. I reached behind my back to motion to whoever was nearest behind me. Derek and Diana both ran forward, Derek replacing his sidearm where it was meant to be and getting his handcuffs from his belt. Diana kept her weapon trained as insurance for Derek's safety.

I didn't even take the time to put my gun away, just heard Derek starting to recite the Miranda Rights, and ran to my friend. Neal was slowly drawing his knee up, groaning softly, and when I heard that pained noise, I almost cried in relief, tossing myself down onto the ground next to him. The Book of Hours over his chest had a hole punched into the front, but the bullet and its case were both still embedded in the thick cover and the front pages. Setting my gun down by my knee, I immediately took the book away and put it to the side.

"Caffrey, you alright?"

I was already pressing a hand over his chest, feeling for injuries or blood, but his shirt was dry and his chest firm. Definitely not bullet-riddled.

"Cutting it a little close there, friend," he answered, grimacing and wheezing slightly. His voice was up there in a squeakier register, the wind knocked out of him both from the bullet and the rude meeting his back had had with the ground. I bit my lip and took my hand off of his chest, reaching to put my gun away with the safety back on.

"You're okay, though?"

He nodded, shutting his eyes for a minute. He shifted on the ground, then held up both hands hopefully. I leaned over him, watching as his bright blue eyes opened again. I rocked back on my knees now that I knew he wasn't falling unconscious and gave him my hands. Neal pulled on me to sit upright and he stretched his legs out. He gave my hands an extra squeeze before he let go and moved his arms to prop himself up.

Panting, he looked down at the Book of Hours in his lap. "This enough divine intervention for you?"

I looked at it after him, considered, and then denied it. "I call that physics." He looked up at me, pretending to be upset, but that melted away in favor of an exhilarated smile that I returned, climbing up to my feet and offering him a hand to get back up.

Tires squealed and smoked, pieces of tiny rocks were sent flying and bounced on the ground. Neal brushed his hands down his shirt and then bent over to pick up the Book of Hours. Ruiz had since joined the commotion, deeming it worth his time. I glared at him as he approached and I positioned myself between he and Neal while a black vehicle pulled up next to Maria's and a mobster hopped out of the passenger's side.

"Right," the snarky bastard said a few feet away from me. "Now Barelli."

I really only had the energy to hate someone as much as I hated he and Maria one at a time, and considering Maria just tried to kill Neal, Barelli was going to have to settle for me not quite wanting him incarcerated even half as much as I normally did. "How'd your cub scouts figure this out?" I asked him on the principle rather than actually caring. I couldn't say I hadn't been expecting him to show up. I gave Neal's arm a pat and he touched my shoulder gratefully before he stepped out of the way.

"I've got one of those police scanners," Barelli admitted freely. Ruiz took offense and he took a step forward as if about to start trying to take bites out of the shorter man. I was willing to let him, but Barelli just threw him a look, smugly asking him to try. Ruiz ground his teeth and moved away. "She's Paulie's shooter?" It was weird to hear a mobster speaking about family with nicknames. He looked at Maria as Derek tightened the handcuffs, forced against the hood of her car with her arms held behind her back. "Some kind of lover's quarrel?"

"Business transaction gone bad." I slipped my hands in my pockets and arched my back, standing on my toes and stretching. I couldn't wait for a good night of rest and a bit of sleeping in, this time without the additional tossing and turning. "Hate to break your heart like this, but your nephew decided to go freelance."

"It's sad." Ruiz didn't sound particularly like he cared for Barelli's sake, even though the point fit, and he looked at the mobster with apathy. "If you can't trust family, who can you trust?" It was mostly rhetorical, and probably a comment to the code that organized criminals tended to live by within their communities.

"That's bad news for your wife," I flippantly declared.

Barelli looked at Ruiz, then me, and saw the bad blood between the interaction. He rolled his eyes. I swear, he looked like he saw this kind of thing all the time. He probably did with his own henchmen (or whatever the politically correct term was). "If you guys are done, I'd like my Bible back." Just because we were working together didn't mean I should take Barelli lightly, and when he said 'if,' it was pretty heavily implied that he wanted it back regardless of whether or not we were willing to give it. "Mass starts in an hour."

"Would it kill you to say thank you?" I griped. I had put myself through a lot of drama to get that one little book for him. My consultant had been shot at retrieving that book for him, and he couldn't even muster up some at least feigned gratefulness?

Barelli placed his hand on his chest. His body jerked like he was choking or having palpitations, and his mouth opened slightly, face screwed up in a melodramatic attempt at saying 'thanks.' It was hard not to kick at his shin in payback.

"Of course, I guess it would." Barelli smirked and dropped the act. "Alright, just remember I'm checking out that restaurant this Friday, and it had better be an actual restaurant." The man made a motion like he was crossing his heart and swearing. "Neal, pass it over." I gave it a few seconds, but then looked over my shoulder. "Neal?" The CI had snuck off to a few yards away, looking out over the river and not realizing that he was being summoned. I stomped my foot and called him louder. "Neal!"

He twisted around and hurried back. "What?" He looked between Ruiz and Barelli, expecting one of them (or both) to be the reason that he was wanted.

I looked him over. He didn't have the Book of Hours in his hands, and it wasn't the kind of thing easily shoved into a pocket or hidden in a shoe. "What do you mean, what?" I asked, exasperated with his antics. "Give it over."

He looked honestly wide-eyed. "I gave it to some FBI guy," he answered, looking over behind us at the agents that had come to escort Maria to a squad car. Maria looked positively murderous as she stared at Neal as if she could telekinetically kill him just by letting her eyes bore hard enough into his back.

"Some FBI guy?" I repeated, having a hard time buying that Neal had given such a priceless thing to an FBI agent whose name he didn't even know. "That seems unlike you." I looked at him carefully, trying to determine what I was missing from the situation.

"Think you can get it over on me?" Barelli's casual tone like a guy at a beach rapidly became the growl of someone easily angered and dangerous, but Neal didn't flinch. "You'll wish you were never born, pal!"

"I seem to be getting this speech a lot lately," he remarked, unaffected.

"Just shut up, Barelli." Ruiz told the mobster, and for once I could agree with him on something – Barelli talked way too much.

While Ruiz and Barelli both stared down and up at each other respectively, Neal caught my eye speedily and winked. I blinked. Yes, I was right, he was up to something. The man then looked back to the other two and watched them go back and forth as if it were a tennis game.

"No, you stay off my back, fed. This book is my rightful property."

"As rightful as the civilians' facilities you threaten your operations into?"

"This ain't over 'til I get my Bible back, sonny!"

"Where is it, Caffrey?" Nostrils flaring and forehead creasing, Ruiz turned on Caffrey, releasing his anger at Barelli on the innocent bystander. Well… relatively speaking, anyway. "I'll let Barelli give you a ride home!"

Neal defenselessly put both of his arms to display how weak and helpless he was. "I'm telling you guys, I don't know! No one knows, apparently!"

"Ooh," I said, eyes widening as I finally realized what it was I wasn't remembering. The hint Neal snuck into his protest probably helped, and I got the attention of both overly-aggressive idiots. I was just glad I wasn't in a confined space with them. Then I'd either have to concuss myself or kill them both. Or let them kill each other, which they might. "No one never gave me my windbreaker back."

Ruiz, of course, dismissed it immediately. "Guess you'll just have to get it yourself, eh, Anderson?"

"I know where the book is," I stated confidently, placing my hands on my hips and sassily looking at Ruiz. Not looking so stupid or dependent on others now, am I? Saying that and then not immediately spilling turned out to be a mistake, because both looked at me like I was a steak. I tried not to let it show how disturbing it was that I felt more like a piece of meat than a sentient human in that moment.

---

My hunch turned out to be right, and I was proud of myself and Neal for where we ended up. Barelli's church, the original home of the Book of Hours, had its belongings all back in place – and one former veteran and his dog were being granted the closure they wanted from it, Steve sitting on the mezzanine by the altar with Lucy up there with him. Steve had one hand on the book, the other petting down Lucy's back from her neck to the base of her tail, which was wagging back and forth happily.

"Hey, pal!" The warm feeling in my chest dissolved like salt in hot water when Barelli shoved past me, knocking into my right shoulder and not seeming to care. I stumbled into Neal as a result and, wincing at the mobster's fury, the conman caught me quickly, one hand on my elbow and the other at my side. "What're you doing with my Bible?"

"I've told you," I shouted down the aisle at him, any sense of camaraderie gone with being shoved past like that. "It's a Book of Hours!" Then I looked back up at Neal, who was staring at me in amusement with a quirked eyebrow. Suddenly I realized I was holding onto his arms still and I let go, smoothing down his sleeves for him. "Thanks for that."

"You're not the first woman to fall for me," he joked, and it was uncomfortably close to the – ugh – affection and romantic attachment – that I was feeling, so instead of dignifying it verbally, I just rolled my eyes and reminded myself that blushing was not an option.

Steve obviously gathered that Barelli was bad news, even if he hadn't seen him before. He took his hand off the top of the book and held it up, offering it to the man with no trouble. "She would've died without it. If I'd-"

"Not so fast, whacko!" Barelli snatched the book away, despite apparently not being over it. I swear, he has the maturity of a spoiled child half of the time, and the other half, he has the patience of a bounty hunter. "Do you know who you're messing with?" He loomed over the sitting man and I approached from behind him.

Reaching out roughly, I yanked Barelli's shoulder back, tearing him off balance and out of Steve's space. "Knock it off," I scolded. Steve wasn't doing anyone any harm, and it wouldn't kill him to actually be charitable once in a while. "It's back in the church, so just leave him alone. Stop being such a bully."

"No, I'm not just gonna let this go!" He argued back at my face. At least he wasn't one of those people who turned away and then started muttering under his breath… He looked ready to fire up another sharp snap at me, but Lucy hopped down from the mezzanine and padded to the mobster, licking at the hand held tensely at his side. It distracted him enough that he turned his back to me again, forgetting that we were kind of trying to fight. "Eh? Oh, hey, sweet girl."

Barelli shrugged my hand passively off of his shoulder and lowered himself down onto his knees, taking his hands and moving them to both sides of Lucy's head. He buried his fingers in her fur and scratched behind her ears while she yipped at him thankfully. I looked at Neal in complete bewilderment. He just lifted his shoulders.

"Her name's Lucy," Steve said, patting Lucy's hindquarters. Her tail smacked his arm on accident, but she didn't stop wagging so hard that her ass was wiggling with it.

"Lucky Lucy…" the man alliterated, placing a hand on top of her head and smoothing down the fur he'd lifted up. "She don't look so good," he saw, touching her muzzle lightly and then rewarding her cooperation with a pat to the flank. She wasn't panting as much now, I noticed with a bit of relief. Lucy getting sicker would have been a sad ending. "What's the matter with her?"

"She's been sick," Steve said sadly, but then his entire disposition was so much more optimistic than he'd been in the past couple of days, and it was an inspiring transition to see in person. "Until today."

Barelli looked up at Steve, his anger quelled. "I've got this vet in Yonkers," he debated with himself before saying. Steve looked up, surprised at the complete turn of his temper and behavior. "He saved my pug from diabetes. Wanna take a ride, go see him? Have her checked out?" I'd have normally put my foot down there and said there was absolutely no way I was going to let Barelli get Steve into one of his cars, but he seemed so calm and genuinely affectionate towards Lucy that I wasn't too worried. Besides, waiting to get someone alone in a car with the pretense of helping them was low, even for Barelli. He was a fairly honest guy, even if he did like to mince words and turn phrases. It was Neal I had to watch out for.

Steve nodded. I couldn't really see any way he wouldn't do something that would help his dog. He was as much Lucy's as Lucy was his. "Okay," he said, and Barelli patiently waited while Steve put his hands down on the mezzanine and pushed himself up slowly, body old and not quite working properly. The slight favoring of his left leg went uncommented on as he clipped Lucy's leash onto her pink collar, and Barelli held out his arm in invitation to go down the aisle first. Steve made a clicking noise and Lucy took the instruction, starting to walk forward.

That is the most unlikely friendship I have ever seen, I thought, amazed. I mean, dogs are awesome, I never doubted that, but I'd never seen their amazingness work like that before. Damn. Barelli clearly had a hidden adoration for dogs, because he walked with his fingers trailing on Lucy's back whenever the dog trailed behind Steve's heel.

"I was going to give it back," Neal interrupted my marveling at the two as they left, sidestepping to stand next to me and watch them leave. "After-"

"I know," I said, feeling very serenely calm and wanting the feeling to last a while. Maria was going to prison for a very, very long time, Lucy would get medical care, one of Barelli's operations was down, and, most importantly, even though he had the opportunity to try to run, Neal hadn't betrayed my trust by making the attempt to ditch the law.

"How'd you know?"

"You like dogs," I stated simply. I'd learned it from watching him with Cinnamon, and then with Lucy. "And I'm far more inclined to trust you than I am Barelli, so of course I stuck up for you," I added, because it needed to be said. I'm inclined to trust him. I tried it today, more so than I had before, and it played out well because he held up his end of the bargain.

"Yeah, why'd you do that, anyway?" He asked, looking at me skeptically and probably remembering all of the reasons why someone could reasonably argue that I shouldn't take his word or vouch for him any more than I already had.

"I hate people that push others around." I would have pointed out Barelli, if the men were still in the church building with us, because he was a prime example of just that. "And I'll take a stand-up crook over a crooked killer any day."

He thought about that for a short time, and then he gently nudged my arm with his elbow. "I told you it's a healing Bible," he gloated.

"Not this again," I complained, throwing my head back but taking it in jest. It was a friendly argument. I was still feeling those happy, anticipatory butterflies fluttering around in my stomach and chest, and I felt like something small could make me laugh. "She'll get better because she's being taken to an actual vet."

"Not enough smiting, lightning, and apocalyptic visions for you?" He prodded, repeating what I'd said the first day of the case.

"Nope." I grinned with my tongue caught between my teeth while I tried not to laugh with him. I reached down for his hand, aborted and grabbed his wrist, and gave him a short tug to get him walking. We started to head for the doors after the others to get his new anklet on and go home. "Not enough people have been struck down in flames."

"I prefer to take my miracles where I can get them." Although I had actually had to remind myself not to grab his hand, Neal negated that decision when he caught my wrist like I'd done to him. Except when he did it, he slid his hand down over mine and slipped his fingers against my palm. I was surprised, but lightly curled my fingers around his hand.

I guess before I got any ideas, a couple of agents followed us in from the front of the church doors, Derek being one of them and dramatically holding up a box. I jerked my hand away from Neal so quickly that my arm hurt, but I swore that the others hadn't had the chance to see us holding hands like a couple.

"We have the honors?" I asked, taking my turn to elbow Neal.

Neal took one look over at Derek and his dramatic carrying of the box, holding it up like a prized trophy as he carried it straight to the convict, and he held out his hands to offer a welcoming embrace. "She's back!" He declared, sounding more delighted than I'd have thought. Maybe he liked the extra security and safety more than I'd thought.

Or maybe he's acting again. I withheld a sigh and looked away from him at the pews before I could think too hard or start to get sad. I wanted to preserve this feeling like I could walk on water or reach up and touch the clouds. Cases didn't always end this happily. I had certainly never gotten to take my venting as far as arresting the target of my jealousy before. Something that didn't fit into the color of the seats caught my eyes and my vision snapped back to the dark blue.

"Is that my jacket?!" I exclaimed, running behind Neal while he bent down and pulled up his pant leg for the anklet.

"I told you," he returned, being a smartass while he could. "He works in mysterious ways." While he was clearly referring to God, it seemed much more likely that it was actually the work of "no one" that had gotten both the Book of Hours to Steve and proceeded to leave my jacket here for me to find.

I picked it up carefully, but what I hadn't expected was for it to be neatly folded. It was, at least, a polite way to return clothes that he'd taken and then used to commit a crime with. If nothing else, he had manners… when he chose to employ them, that was. Though it was folded, it wasn't zipped, so I swung the windbreaker around my arm and pushed my hand through the sleeve, rucking it up around my back to put on.

It didn't smell like cigarettes, which was a relief, because Kate would've killed me if she thought I was smoking, especially if I then proceeded to wear smoky clothes into the house. Actually, the strongest thing I could smell was a sort of neutral but clean smell, like laundry detergent. Oh, he washed it overnight, and I didn't know if that was to be polite or to eradicate as much evidence as possible. Then, just over that, there was something like cologne, which I didn't recognize, but didn't really care about. I'd already made the decision to pretend not to be aware of the less-than-legal activities that the Dynamic Duo got up to, as long as they weren't actively causing trouble.

While Derek crowed triumphantly about putting the tracker back on Neal, Neal dropped his pant sleeve over the anklet and picked up his leg, swinging his foot back and forth. "It felt weird for my leg not to be chafing," he said, probably deliberately making a reference to the first time he'd complained to me about it.

Suddenly remembering my iPod, I pushed my hand into the left pocket and pulled it out. The screen lit up with a message left on the lock screen as soon as I pressed the power button to make sure that it was still working. (Although I don't know what kind of person would destroy an electronic but still be kind enough to fold up my clothes for me, I mean, seriously.)

Make a harder passcode. –Odysseus

"Ha!" I said out loud. "Challenge accepted," I added more quietly, with a wicked grin, turning back around to my colleagues. I felt another burst of pride erupting in my chest as I looked over them, Derek laughing at Neal's expense while Neal tried to pull up his sock under the strap on the anklet. "Ready to go, guys?"

---

Call me anxious, but after seeing Neal shot at from point-blank range, I was reluctant to let him take public transport with strangers, and after we got everything sorted at the FBI offices and confirmed that his new tracker was accurately marking his position, I took him back to June's myself, giving him a ride in my FBI wheels, and I felt much better in general about knowing where he was and seeing to it myself that he wasn't at all injured or trying to sneak off without telling anyone.

"Thanks for the ride." He leaned close to the window, looking up as far as he could before it was blocked by the frame of the door to try to see the top of June's mansion. I was pretty sure it wasn't possible. His seatbelt retracted quickly across his chest and he looked at me, casually nodding towards the front porch. "Hey, you wanna come in?"

"What for?" I canted my head curiously. I mean, if he gave me a good enough reason, sure. We were past the point of drawing firm boundaries between work and home – mostly because Neal had no preconception of such boundaries and he and Kate both took my idea of such a thing and shattered it. Where I could invite him into my house and not care, because I knew Kate would be happy (ish) to see him, I didn't really think that applied in vice versa. I didn't know June that well, and it was her property.

"Italian roast?" He suggested. I smiled and looked down to the steering wheel reminiscently. Italian roast coffee was a joke between us since he'd been a smartass about it.

I pointed out the windshield to the oranges coloring the darkening blue of the sky. "The sun's going down," I stated needlessly. It would be night soon, so really, what sense did drinking coffee make? Coffee wasn't going to help me sleep, just keep me awake and give me more time to waste on Tumblr or YouTube.

"When's that ever stopped you?" He asked me seriously. I kind of shrugged. He had a point. Coffee was a drink for all times of the day, in my opinion, but it had seemed like a reasonable excuse at the time. He pushed himself up in the chair and got his knee under him, bracing his forearm along the headrest, and leaned over the space between our seats. "The sunset's gorgeous from the roof," he promised enticingly.

---

With a mug of hot, expensive coffee in my hand, probably imported from somewhere in Europe, I stood by the door out to the roof and looked over the top of the wall around the balcony. The cream, tan, and white colors of the outdoor garden and swimming pool area were earthy but bright, and beyond that I saw the swirling of thin cirrus clouds over a gorgeous mixing of reds, oranges, and navy blues as the sun drifted further down over the horizon, setting here and rising again on the other side of the world.

"That is pretty," I admitted, admiring the view Neal had lured me up here with.

He agreed with a murmur, standing next to me, looking out the door. It was a slider made of glass that he'd pulled the long, thick, embroidered curtains back from so that we could see. Emeralds and forest greens and gold outlined the picture of the sunset through the panes of glass.

"I might get around to painting it one of these days."

"You paint?" I started to look at him in surprise, but I realized that was a pretty stupid thing to ask. Of course he painted. He painted forgeries, I knew that. "Original work?" I specified, looking out to the sunset again before back to Neal, whose face glowed with the perfect lighting that brought out shadows from his jaw onto his throat. "For fun?"

"You can't copy another artist without knowing how to make your own art," he shared, looking down at me. I met his eyes and nodded slowly. I'm not the artistic type, but I tried to understand and I think I got what it meant – or at least pretty close to it. You have to know yourself as a person to act like you're anyone else, right? It felt like the same applied to the fine arts. Neal would know. I looked down into the swirling coffee and saw it in new light as a blend of colors and effects.

Then I raised my head again and looked to the sunset instead of my consultant with metaphorically opened eyes. The colors were great, but now I saw the contrasts and the comparisons between them, the differences between their places and the palettes that shades had in common. The blending was like God had taken a Photoshop editor to the sky, the hues like a painter had layered more strokes of their brush over particular areas where the color was richer and darker. The cirrus clouds misted over them like an accent, done elegantly in light, sweeping drags of a pencil across a canvas.

I blinked and looked at my coffee, which was less overwhelming, and instead of seeing it as a work of intricate art, I looked at it and I saw coffee. Just… coffee. Not intrinsic, not ethereal or idyllic. Just a drink I may or may not be somewhat addicted to.

I had to wonder if that was how Neal saw things all the time. Was that how he was able to lie so convincingly? Seeing every small piece of the puzzle, not just the bigger picture? Was it how he created such convincing falsifications that he was only ever nailed on one specific count?

Whether or not it was how he managed to make such a good criminal, it was still fascinating to think he thought in that detail and poetry all the time. How could he manage it? I'd have long since gone insane. I like hedonism and simple pleasures that don't require thoughts much more complex than if I watch X more episodes of A, how many of B can I watch before I have to get up? As long as he wasn't up to illicit activities, I'd love to see how that could come together, how something so serene and incredible from the outdoors could be gathered up and concentrated and copied down onto a piece of paper, and all by hand.

"There's a mall nearby. It might be out of your radius, but I can go with you to pick up supplies." I offered it with a small voice, because this moment here felt like it was more intimate than his hot and heavy make-out session with the killer. Before heating my tongue and stinging my throat again, I asked, "Got any more wise sayings?"

He cocked his head towards me and considered. "Imagination is more important than knowledge," he tried, but he couldn't keep his face straight because he was trying not to smile, and not trying hard enough to force it down. Albert Einstein. "But, I dunno, knowledge certainly helps."

I giggled. "I don't think that last part was included," I objected.

He held himself up, pretending to be affronted for being called on inaccuracy. "What've you got?"

I thought about meaningful quotes, but the first thing that came to mind was Corinthians, and I'd had enough of religion to last me a long while. Then there was music, which I lived for, but I didn't really care to get all sappy, and those were lyrics, not the educational or novel-originating speeches born from the wisdom of people a long, long time ago.

"Mm," I started to shake my head, protesting that he please not even ask me. "I'm not really poetic. I don't collect quotes from books or fortune cookies. If I need life lessons on feelings or knowledge, I learn them myself. Usually the hard way," I added with a chuckle that started out forced. Then I realized that was true, and when it came to something that was actually important, I didn't cut corners or do things the easy way.

Neal looked down. He'd taken off his shoes when we'd gotten here and his socks slid on the hardwood floor between the sliding door and the kitchen space. "Is that…" He sucked on his lip like he wasn't sure he really wanted to ask. I stayed quiet, patient. "What you meant in the office, about being tortured…?"

I 'hmph'ed. The only thing about feelings I had learned from that torture was exactly how much pain the human body could withstand before it started drifting in and out of consciousness. "No." I decided not to share that with Neal, though – the man was so sensitive to violence that it turns out he had known Maria had a gun, but had been through so little personal experience with firearms that, even though he lifted the extra clip, he forgot about the one still in the magazine. I had laughed until my face turned red. "No, I meant real, physical torture."

I looked down at my shirt past my coffee and decided, what the hell. I was in a more sharing mood than I'd been in in a long time. Because of how the room was designed, there was a kitchen island just a couple of steps to the side of the doors outside, so I walked over there, put my half-full cup down, and then worked on my jacket, rolling my shoulders back to shake it off.

I wasn't proud of the marks that had been left on my body. I wasn't ashamed of them, either. They weren't medals, they weren't stripes, they weren't signs of glamor and honor; yet, as much as they weren't any of those things, they also weren't representative of something shameful or hateful. I was a victim. There. That was it. I was a victim, and I loathed being victimized, detested the reminder with every fiber of my being. There was no escaping the wake up calls when they were left permanently on my body.

No one was going to take them away. I had never been completely infatuated with my body but I hadn't had physical self-image issues to note until those scars had been left. My body couldn't heal itself any further, a doctor wasn't going to be able to remove the scar tissue, and for God's sake, a sweet, romantic man showing me some kindness wasn't going to take away the pain or the wounds, and his touch wouldn't make me any more whole than I had been five minutes ago.

Zarra would have wanted me to live, not to hide away or let society pressure me into changing the decisions I made. If my scars had been made from anything else – an appendectomy or something – I wouldn't have hesitated to let Neal see the proof. Being the victim of a heinous crime made me a fighter, not a damsel. I had survived. I was just also paying a steep cost for the continuation of my life, which he would hopefully never have to understand.

I threw my jacket over to the marble island, Zarra in mind. She had never been such a large presence in my new life before Neal. I took her advice to heart a lot now that my consultant was part of my routine. She had raised me, shaped me into who I was. I owed it to her to see it through, not to back out.

I raised my eyes to the thief. Neal's face reflected his concern and his bemusement, unsure what I was doing or why I was doing it. Torture was the topic that had led to me beginning to take off my clothes, so he was expectably wary. Untucking my button-up shirt around the waistband of my slacks, I pulled it up higher and bared my midriff, swallowing tightly in my throat and holding my clothes out of the way.

Although a gentleman, Neal's eyes inevitably fell to the exposed flesh, and it took no time at all for his attention to drift to the silvery scars that stood out on my skin. Most were several inches long. The largest one stretched from close to my navel to my hip, the scar tissue widest over the muscle of my abs and narrowest as the wound had shallowed. I had to look away. Neal took a step closer and I steeled my reflexes, rolled my shoulders back, and shivered.

If it was uncomfortable to be the subject of his attention with my shirt up while he stood in front of me, it was somehow worse when he lowered himself into a kneel, reaching for me. I stayed still, anticipating the heat of his hands long before his deft fingers touched my sides, sliding his palms over the contours of my waist to hold me gently. The artist sat before me on his knees, sank back, and hungrily drank up the sight.

He took his right hand from my body. I held my breath until he was touching me again, running experimental fingers across the scars on the left side of my abdomen, testing the texture and the give of soft, pliant flesh.

His other hand slid down and grasped my hip possessively.

"That looks…" He was lost for words for once. Bitterness swelled in my throat. Of course. The man could chat up a killer with no problems, but seeing a woman whose body had been flawed left him speechless. Well, I sure felt sexy. I kept holding my shirt up but started to want his hands off of me.

"Bad?" I cut in when he didn't finish his sentence. Bad was the general consensus, and hell, even I agreed. Creamy, toned skin was marred by the marks of a knife. If Neal thought he was seeing bad, just in the physical imperfection, then he would never be able to perceive the true hell that I was thrown back to with every look in a mirror. It wasn't just an imperfection, it was a memory.

It sucked that I had to carry it with me. I was glad that it hadn't killed me. I was relieved and grateful for every extra day I got. It gave me more time with Katie, more time with Derek, the chance to meet Diana and earn her friendship and trust, the opportunity to meet Neal and rediscover feelings and experiences that I hadn't had in years. Neal woke up potent jealousy and blinding fear and red-hot rage worthy of Bruce Banner. He also made me see things in a new light. He wasn't able to "fix" me and truly, I didn't actually need fixing, just therapy and closure, but what he could do was show me that there were beautiful people out there too, a fact I'd started to forget when I surrounded myself with pain.

I hadn't expected the self-deprecating voice to come out of my mouth. I had intended to sound snide or sarcastic. Instead, I was just vulnerable and angry. Neal laid his right hand across my abs, fingers splayed widely, and leaned forwards, touching his forehead to the bottom of my ribcage. My breath hitched. My hands tightened in my shirt.

Neal stroked his hand down my front with the utmost care. "I was going to say amazing," he corrected in a reverent murmur. He turned his head to flutter his breath over me and I leaned my head back, reaching for his hair with one hand and balling up the hem of my shirt in the other. "They're signs that you survived when someone else didn't want you to." The conman pressed his lips to a scar and dragged a damp, slow kiss over the trail it followed. "And that's awe-inspiring."

I didn't want his hands off of me anymore.

I threaded my fingers through his thick, dark hair and cradled his head, even as he leaned forwards and nuzzled against my side in a way that would have been ticklish if it'd been his hands. Neal stayed kneeling, rubbing his hand in a small circle between the waistband of my slacks and the line where he could feel the lowest rib bone. My eyes shut of their own volition and I wanted to disappear, pause the universe where it was, with the tender touch of a gentle thief stealing away my nerves, even if it was just for a moment.

Mindful of how tightly I held, I fisted my hand in his curls, twisting his short hair around my fingers. "He didn't want me not to survive," I whispered, rocking my head back and sighing softly to the darkening skylight. "He just wanted me to stop living."

I felt every breath my informant took, heard every quiet inhale and felt every exhale caress my sensitive skin, and he touched another slow, compassionate press of smooth-talking lips to me. I was more than surviving. The intimate touch was a component of human life. I had fought so hard to keep mine; I deserved the benefits. I had the right to feel the vital signs of another living being whom I was free to connect with, to feel like I wasn't alone in this hell of a world that the rest of us were forced into.

I wanted to hold Neal's head to my throat and feel his breath on my neck while he tongued at my pulse point. I wanted to spread my legs and feel the fit of his hips between my thighs while he rocked. I wanted to arch my back and feel the planes of his chest pinning down my breasts. I wanted my feet to be cold and my neck to be sore and for my eyes to sting with tears and my walk to be awkward and off-centered the next morning.

And, after a bullet had come so perilously close to ending his life, it wouldn't have surprised me in the least if he wanted something similar. If he wanted to feel my hands in his hair, guiding his mouth to where he should kiss and suck. If he wanted to feel legs wrapped tightly around his waist with heels digging into his lower back. If he wanted to be held so tightly and overwhelmed with sensations so that he could barely speak.

I was lightheaded, and not just from arousal.

He moved to stand up, slow and tense. He moved like I longed to be moving, with the slow stiffness of someone who both didn't want to move and whose body protested the action. I unwrapped his hair from my fingers and let go and admired how he looked, face a little flushed, hair messed up and imperfect. Gorgeous. From one knee to his feet, he kept his hands on me, unwilling to stop gliding his talented fingers over both blemished and picturesque skin.

Neal lowered his head and I looked up. Our foreheads touched. Just a little more, an eager, tiny voice in my head cheered. Please, Neal, give me the okay to have you. My sense of responsibility was misplaced, but not so badly that I was going to risk any confusion over who had the veto power. He had to make the first move. It had to be Neal asking McKenna, or it was handler asking parolee.

He was just as affected as I felt. When he swallowed, I saw his Adam's apple moving in his throat. I reached for his sides to mirror the way he held me, and in response, he brought me a little closer. Neal encouraged me close enough so that I could feel the evidence of his desire against my thigh.

"Did he succeed?" Neal asked croakily, throat tight and voice coarse.

Lust and gratification were what mattered to me, but I'd have been an idiot not to recognize and value the kindness, the compassion in his face that didn't look like it could possibly have been fake. The acceptance in his touch, the openness of his expression, the invitation in his actions, and the warmth in the smallest gesture of stroking his thumb over my waist were all genuine and caring. His beautiful blue eyes had to be being truthful.

I pressed my fingers into his shirt and itched to move. "I don't think so," I breathlessly answered, unable to focus on his eyes. I kept looking down to his mouth, imagining the taste of his full, pink lips, recalling the unclear sounds he made as Maria made his mouth her own territory. My weight shifted and I rubbed my thighs together subtly.

Just like that, a dam broke. Neal's eyes darkened and then it wasn't my personal space or his air, but it was the space that we shared and the breaths that we traded. His breath ghosted my face and his mouth slanted over mine and the first kiss – the true first kiss, the first kiss we'd had that was us, not characters, not an act, not choreographed or discussed – was sloppy and insistent and passionate all at once. He opened his mouth to run the soft muscle of his tongue over the inside of my lower lip and I jumped, startled but oh, yes, interested. He chuckled and clumsily tried to deepen it to make out, hand rising to my face and cupping my cheek, but bumped our noses together instead. It was a new dance, and we were bound to stumble.

I giggled and pecked the corner of his mouth, lifting my hands to the back of his neck, and I parted my lips to nibble my teeth over the plush, soft, wet upper lip. Neal moaned quietly and his mouth opened, breath mixing.

Explorative fingers drifted away from my waist and skipped up over my bra, focused on their end goal. A large hand slipped into my hair and blunt fingernails scratched up the back of my neck, pushing fingers up through strands that he rubbed, feeling the texture.

I whimpered softly as Neal pulled his hand back and took my hair with it. He bared my throat and hovered over me intimidatingly, yet left my neck unattended. He tasted like rich Italian coffee while my toes curled in my boots.

His hair was so soft. I highly doubted it would stay anything resembling styled or combed for very long, if no one stopped us. I pulled on the strands by his neck and he let out a throaty hum, tilting his head back and to the side. I latched my mouth to his neck, pressing my body up against his. I rubbed my hips forward against his hard-on and was rewarded by him fisting my hair, making a loud, appreciative moan. I hummed against his throat, leaving wet kisses over soft, breakable skin until I reached a part that made Neal pant, a soft hollow under his jaw.

I sucked on that sweet spot that turned him on and followed it up with soothing lavishes of my tongue afterwards, alternating between suckling and kissing while Neal tightened his hand in my hair and groaned. Such pretty sounds. I'd been right; they were excellent. They were so much better when they were for me, asking for more, requesting my attention and my time and my efforts to make him feel good. Those sounds that fell from his lips got me going.

I wanted more and I wanted satisfaction and I wanted an easier way to create friction for us both. Conveniently, my memory pointed out the bedroom's alcove a very short walk away, where a double-sized bed sat waiting to be used. Getting in his bed, under his sheets – "Ah," I sighed against the taste of his throat, the heady mix of cologne and soap and a uniquely Neal-ish flavor and a bit of sweat, too. I wanted to be in his bed. More than that, I wanted to writhe and moan on his bed and have as much of my DNA in it as Neal's. Make it our bed for a night.

It wasn't much of a surprise. I had wanted to get my legs around him from the get-go.

Neal's right hand groped down my side, feeling for a grip. My shirt had fallen down when I'd stopped holding it up, instead eager to jump into Neal's arms and make out. The artist copped a feel of my ass through my pants and then picked up my thigh, hooking his hand underneath my knee and holding my leg up to his waist. I whimpered and pushed my hips against his. He tossed his head back and moaned. Somewhere along the line, he must've picked up on how big of a turn-on that was, because he did it again, opening his eyes and grinning cheekily at me.

"Bed," I all but commanded, pointing over his shoulder in the right direction.

His grin widened. Neal bent his knees to get lower than me, but before I got any clever ideas about him on his knees, he stood up again, strong arms wrapped around my middle and under my thighs. It was a feat I wouldn't have expected from him. 'Feel up his arms' became the next item on my agenda.

"This is not the mode of transport I was suggesting!" I squeaked in protest, laughing despite myself and tightening my legs around his waist. I clung to his shoulders.

Neal chuckled. "But Kenna, I need you." He huskily whined against my throat, burying his face into my neck while he carried me across the hardwood floor to the alcove under the shorter skylight. The artificial lights from the kitchenette and parlor lit the way to the black comforter and white-cased pillows.

The deep, rough timbre of his voice surprised me and spurred me on. That's officially added to my private materials, I thought dazedly. "You can have me," I found myself answering, babbling and tightening my legs, cursing the choice not to wear a dress or a skirt or something that could've just been pushed up out of the way. "Christ, Neal, please have me!"

That elicited a growl. "You're mine tonight," he declared, lowering me quickly down onto the bed. "Mine." I bounced and scrambled backwards, getting up to the pillows, and my hands flew to the collar of my shirt, desperate to get the buttons undone. Neal crawled up after me on all fours, slinking up between my spread legs and raising himself up on his knees.

"Yours," I promised, working the buttons out and loosening the fabric with every touch. Neal started from the bottom up, running his hands over the insides of my thighs first as he sought out the hem. My legs trembled and he laughed sensually. The tent in his trousers made me question why my clothes were his first priority. "Take 'em off," I gasped, getting the last button and ripping my arms out of the sleeves, throwing my shirt over the edge of the bed.

While Neal leaned back on his knees, unbuttoning and unzipping his pants, I twisted my arms behind my back to unclasp the hook of my brassiere, then pulled the thin straps off of my shoulders and pushed it only as far away as to get it off of the bed. Neal pushed the trousers down his hips and groaned in relief.

I reached up for his shirt and helped out, nipples pebbling in the cool air. There was an air conditioner in the alcove, which didn't help, but it would keep us cool when everything else burnt hot. I pulled at his tie, loosening the part around his throat before I got to the buttons on his shirt. I wasn't so great at taking off someone else's neckties, so I did the part I was good at and stripped the shirt, pushing the sides apart and baring his chest.

I absorbed the sight like I was starving for it. Neal pushed down his boxer shorts and reached up to his neck, ripping off the tie and getting rid of it before he rolled his shoulders. Muscles rippled underneath his skin, through his shoulders, pecs, abs, and biceps. For someone who didn't look very intimidating in his clothes, Neal was in fantastic shape. I felt down his chest, scraping my acrylics cautiously over his nipples and harder down his six-pack. Neal pushed me down against the bed and cupped the back of my head with a hand just to further cushion the landing.

I propped my knees up and kept my thighs wide to give him room. I felt willingly caged and absolutely protected. I couldn't get my own pants off fast enough, and I helped Neal get out of his own. My underwear was wet and my sex ached and every part of me was unsatisfied. I felt hazy and drugged, like when my fever spiked to the high point before the sickness broke, except in this case my fever was heady arousal, the high point would hopefully involve Neal as close to me as was physically possible, and the sickness was the pent-up sexual tension I'd been carrying around for well over a year.

"How long has it been?"

We were both panting, both gasping with shocks whenever someone hit a new spot. He hovered over me, supporting himself with an elbow on the bed to the side of my left shoulder, and we kissed like teenagers, unsophisticated and out of breath and giggling with nerves and excitement. I almost didn't realize he'd asked a question.

"Um…"

I tried to think of the actual date, but it was lost on me. Fuck. Last time I'd gotten a good fuck had been before my life took a turn downhill. It'd been with, um, with a local investigator in a city I'd travelled to, requested by the PD to consult on a series of murders with the same MO and signature. My specialty. The fact that I wasn't even sure I remembered his name correctly was enough to know that while the sex had been satisfactory, it hadn't been meaningful. It'd been way before my "involuntary surgery," as I liked to call it. I didn't have tons of sex, but if there was a time since I lost my virginity that I had gone longer without a partner, then it would've been when I was still sixteen or seventeen. I would try anything – er, anyone – once, but no partner had ever had a trait that lured me back, unless the sex was a side-effect of dating.

Neal chuckled, eyes sparkling. He looked up from my chest, his cheek pillowed against my breast while he fondled the other in his hand, repeatedly catching the hardened nipple with his thumb. Each time made a deliciously sweet jolt zip through my chest and race between my legs. "That long, huh?"

I slipped my fingers along his upper back, knocking one of my raised knees against his side in retribution. He didn't need to find it funny. "Been busy," I answered vaguely. I wanted him to take me and bang me into the sheets, not start talking about the obstacles in my emotional recovery. That would sure be a hell of a turn-off. "But I get tested regularly. I'm clean, and on birth control."

There was an expectation of reciprocity which Neal didn't fail to pick up on. "Work-release physical," he replied, gliding up my body and feeling up my thighs, warm hands caressing every inch of skin several times over. He explored my calves, my thighs, my stomach, my sides, my chest, my arms. "I'm good. Condoms in the drawer."

"Good," I echoed. "How long?"

He groaned into my throat and I turned my head to the side, baring more skin and letting my chest heave. My eyes fluttered shut. Neal sank his teeth calmly into the pale color of my throat and then licked over the indentations. Reaching for the table by the bed, I felt along the front for the handles and yanked out one of the drawers a little too enthusiastically.

"I was in prison a long time," he answered, sitting up and holding himself higher over me. I sighed softly and dropped my arms, lying prone on the mattress. "It's definitely been a while."

Over four years, I concluded to myself, fighting off a wicked smirk on my face while Neal distractedly ripped open a box of condoms. He checked the individual packaging on the first one he took out to make sure it wasn't tampered with, then tossed the rest back in and didn't bother closing the drawer. I stretched my calves and curled my toes, shuddering. The promise of being Neal's first in years delighted me more than I cared to admit.

"I told you, you can do whoever you want," I couldn't help but remind him. It was still relevant; I wasn't a necessary fuck. His work-release was just as safe, no matter if we went through with this or if we both took cold showers and I went home.

Neal tossed the condom onto the pillow next to my head and lowered himself down, arching his back, bringing his mouth to my ear. "Did it occur to you," he started to ask, with as nonchalant a voice as he could possibly feign with a raging erection and a naked and keen partner before him, "That maybe there's only one person I want to have?" He nipped at my earlobe.

I moaned loudly, bringing my hands up to his back and scratching my nails down his shoulders. It was unclear, even to me, if the response was to the touch or the words.

"You're the first one I've wanted since that was done to me," I hissed, holding his head down and pushing my breasts up against his chest, the pressure good but not enough. "The first man or woman I've even wanted to take to bed and you have no idea how infuriating it is that you're such a flippant and flirtatious bastard. I hated watching you seduce that bitch almost as much as I hated that she shot at you."

Possessively, I worked a hand between us, reaching for his thighs and inching my hand up, dragging my fingernails because his breath kept catching, his body kept quivering every time he felt them. "I'm yours," Neal promised, gasping. I held an arm around his neck and rolled him over, straddled his thighs, and looked down at the extraordinary man offering himself up to me. "I'm all yours, Kenna."

I knew it was all pillow talk, the sort of things you say that you don't actually mean once you've climaxed and hit that orgasmic cloud, but it was still sexy, still satisfying; still another build-up to the promise of intimacy that I craved.

Neal's body was gorgeous, my own personal Adonis. I told him as much, but he couldn't respond, was busy making those dirty, precious sounds as I used my mouth and hands. I definitely worked out that jealousy that built up from Maria. I could feel the wiry muscles under his skin when he moved, flexing and stretching to arch his back, to raise his arms above his head, to cover his eyes with his forearm once when it got to be too much and he let out a pitched cry. I leaned down in concern and nuzzled at his chin, gentling my attention and expressing it in closed-mouth kisses to his face and hands until, with a strangled voice, Neal begged for more. I teased so many pleas and cries of my name from his lips that I lost count.

For the time being, we were the centers of each other's worlds, and it was incredible.

I let him move me onto my back again. I trusted him enough to give him that control. He ripped open the condom and slid it on with a long hiss. I cooed at him enticingly and wrapped my legs around his hips preemptively, holding him as well as I could while he held himself over me. I cupped his cheeks and kissed him, slower and sweeter, while we became reacquainted with what it felt like to be so close. Years for him and he still took it slow, didn't want to push me harder until I was adjusted.

"Ah…" I moaned out, positively needing to vent the exquisite pleasure I was being subjected to.

"I know," Neal gasped between thrusts. He reached for my wrist and pinned my right hand above my head and out to the side. "I know, Kenna, I know." He repeated it like he got stuck in a rut and laced our fingers together, holding my hand against the mattress. He rocked in deeper, harder, and ripped a muffled yell of his name from my throat. Neal squeezed my hand. I squeezed back and held his hand for as long as he wanted.

The night was sexy and fun and moving, and safe and close and genuine. I forgot how long it had been since any sex had measured up to having Neal as my partner. Even a night curled in with Katie could never compare to this mix of lust and passion, the fulfilment and satisfaction of human contact that we both desperately needed, yet that neither of us really knew how to ask for.

When it was over, I felt the exhaustion crashing over me in waves. Neal trembled. I was concerned maybe this, in addition to being shot at, had been too much in one day and cleaned us both up as much as I could without a shower, pulled the blankets up over him, and stroked his hair until he had stopped shaking. Neal vehemently insisted that he was feeling excellent and I was being overprotective, and once he was yawning, he seemed to genuinely be alright. Then I turned onto my stomach, shoved my arms under the pillows under my head, and fell asleep slowly, peacefully, while watching Neal's serene face as his breathing evened out.

We never did get around to taking his socks off. I did get the cold feet that I wanted, until I wised up and pushed my toes under Neal's legs in a fit of impishness while he slept. Most importantly, my lace-up gloves never came off. The strings from my wrists to my elbows were never so much as loosened.

---

I gave myself to a boy who said he would love me, but a week later, I wished I hadn't. I'd had some beer and a fight with our parents (again) and being loved felt like a fucking miracle. It wasn't, not in that way. He's sweet and I could do worse, but I should've realized sooner that a 17-year-old boy's not exactly Prince Charming, and he's not my soulmate, literally in flesh or figuratively in spirit. I want to be angry and say he took something from me, something I can never get back, but I never really bought into the "virginity is holy" thing to begin with, and whether it was him or someone else, I was bound to lose that naïve association with love and lust someday. I'm glad it happened sooner rather than later. And besides, if I hadn't wanted to let him, he wouldn't have gotten the chance. I just hate myself a little for making that decision without thinking it through.

The people who told you to wait for the right person so it would feel great? They're fucking liars. I could've been fucking John Stamos and it still would've hurt. Just because the boy thinks he's a special snowflake doesn't make him your "one in a million." The sex was bad. Holy fuck, it was terrible. It was rough, clumsy, and he may've figured out how to please himself, but he was horrible at pleasing me. I'd have finished myself off later but I was too sore. I knew it would be uncomfortable, especially after the first time, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't supposed to hurt that much.

I learned sex isn't love, and that it's not as big a deal to share your body with someone else as it used to be. I may wish I'd had a better frame of reference for the future, but my body's still my own. I don't feel intimately connected to that guy and I probably won't be doing anything like that again… at least, not until he looks up how to turn on a member of the opposite sex. My point is, don't let others commodify you. Live. Whether that means skydiving, or being celibate, or having sex with every single pretty face you ever see, live your life the way you need to. When/If you meet a real Prince or Princess Charming, if they're the one you should commit to, then their love won't be dependent on your dedication to not living your own life.

Just don't make the same mistake I did and think physical gratification has anything to do with love, alright, McKenna? I'm starting to wonder if making love is even real or if it's just a term coined by the church to convince girls like us that we need to be ashamed of our sexuality and submissive to the studs that we would've been married to at 16 a few hundred years ago. He promised he would love me, but he doesn't, not really, and I can be okay with that. What I can't be okay with is you having experiences that are natural and great and that are supposed to be wonderful, all while confusing them for something they're not. Sex is innately human and powerful. Just don't think for a second that someone who wants to see you naked also wants the responsibility of holding your heart. The two are entire worlds apart.

Hope you miss me… and live better than I did,

Zarra L

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A/N: Chapter title comes from Lucy Hale's "From the Backseat."

This is the most NSFW thing I've ever written, so reviews are definitely wanted and appreciated!