The Extortionist

When the infamous Extortionist hits NYC, Peter's got his hands full – between leading the investigation no man has completed, protecting his pregnant wife from a kidnapper gunning for her, and keeping Neal under control. Can he keep the inevitable from happening, or will he end up enlisting Neal and Mozzie in a quest to retrieve what has been taken from him?

Chapter VII

"Excuse me, are you an employee here?"

Mozzie looked up from his book, blinking wide, deer-caught-in-headlights eyes at the woman. "More of an assistant, really." He stood up and straightened his shirt, glancing backward at where Elizabeth was. "An intern, if you will..." He held up a hand. "If you would excuse me for just a moment..."

He took off into the back room, finding it empty. A small wave of panic shot through him until he spotted the bathroom door locked with the light on. She must have been in there.

A new worry arose inside him; how was he going to deal with that customer? He hadn't the slightest idea how to plan events!

He waited for a minute, pacing back and forth, but the Suit's wife didn't look to be making an appearance any time soon. Reluctantly, he grabbed a pen and pad, took a breath, and stepped back in the main room with the impatient customer.

"H-hi," Mozzie stuttered, pressing the button on the pen nervously. "Mrs. Sui- Burke, won't be present for a while yet. I'm not exactly educated in the art of, um, event-planning, but I'd be glad to help you with anything amongst my capabilities."

The woman smiled, though it wasn't as warm as she might have been expecting it to appear. He didn't expect any expression to look becoming on the woman's pale, pinched up face. He remarked inwardly that she looked as if a toddler grabbed her nose and pulled it, holding it there for days.

"I suppose that wouldn't be a major setback," she muttered, taking a seat at a small table and gesturing for him to do the same. He followed accordingly, sitting and picking up a large book he'd seen Elizabeth use the day before. Hopefully there was some kind of manual or to-do list he could harvest information from. Mozzie was disappointed to find schedules, dates and arrangements in neat scribblings that meant nothing to him.

He looked up at the woman sitting across from him, rather uncomfortably. "Hello. I'm M... Michael Forger." He fought back a grimace at the awful alias he'd just bestowed upon himself without a thought. Michael Forger? How could he have been so stupid? He was now cursed with the false name for the rest of the evening.

The woman grinned falsely, shaking his hand fleetingly. "I'm Millicent Ghirard."

He smiled just as falsely as she, not even looking up from the book he anxiously flipped through. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Ms. Ghirard. Can I call you Millie?"

"No," she answered quickly, sending a sharp self-scolding through his system.

"Right. My apologies," he resigned, clicking his pen furiously. His agitation grew as he found no comfort in the pages of the thick book. Mozzie knew that he couldn't lose this sale for Elizabeth, or he'd be sent back to take inventory.

So, "Michael" took a breath and asked, "So, how can I help you today, Ms. Ghirard?"

The woman pulled a notebook out of her rather-voluminous purse and opened it, clicking a pen of her own. "I'm planning my daughter's birthday celebration. I worked with Mrs. Burke for my first wedding, and everything was lovely save for the groom, so I thought I'd like to work with her again." The woman scanned the room around them. "She still works here, right?"

He raised an eyebrow, then nodded. "Oh yes, she still works here. She's just... Well, turns out she's, um, expecting... And so, she is in the back, just, um..." His voice trailed off, and Millicent didn't ask for further explanation. Letting the question go, he approached the topic of the actual event again. "So, how old is your daughter?"

She laughed bitterly. "She's 16, and every year shows."

He shrugged. "Teenagers. They're so..." He searched for the word, but couldn't find one.

Honestly, he had no idea how he had even planned to finish that sentence in the first place.

So he sat awkwardly, shifting his weight and clicking his pen. When the silence was getting too long, he let the sentence finish itself and continued with the job at hand.

"What's her name?"

"Susan," she grumbled. "but, for some reason I can't understand, she asks her little delinquent friends to call her Sooze. Why she does it is beyond me. Susan is a perfectly good name!" the woman ranted. Mozzie didn't interrupt; it bought him time until Elizabeth returned. He just pretended to write things down as she spoke.

"Her grandmother was named Susan! It's a lovely name, is it not?"

Mozzie looked up. "Susan," he echoed, nodding. "It means 'the lily'."

"I'm allergic to lilies."

"Me too," he stuttered quickly, unsure of exactly how to speak with this woman without setting off sirens. With the conversation becoming dangerously dull, he sighed and again redirected the conversation. "What kind of interests would you say your daughter is into?"

She squinted at him. "She's always talking about the "music" she listens to, which is really just garbage, if you ask me." He wanted to inform her that he, in fact, wasn't asking her, but decided to let her go on. "She always wears and decorates things in black. Everything she owns is painted or covered with black. She has a piercing in her tongue that I've begged her to take out, but of course she won't listen to me! The girl has to talk around a giant silver ball in her mouth! She sounds like she's talking with her tongue hanging out of her mouth!"

"Ms. Ghirard!"

Mozzie breathed a sigh of relief at the sound of Mrs. Suit's voice behind him. He was tired of playing therapist with her customer.

However, the look on her face made his blood run cold. Her skin was pale and her eyes looked spent, as though her sickness had taken a great toll on her. Mozzie offered her a weak smile, but the menacing expression he was sure accompanied his from behind was probably enough to make him disappear.

"Mrs. Burke," Millicent greeted her briskly. "It's lovely to see you. I've already had the pleasure of meeting your assistant." Mozzie looked away from the two pairs of eyes staring him down.

He turned and grimaced at the customer. "It's more of an internship-"

"Mozzie," the usually-happy voice whispered calmly. He turned and looked into the woman's burning blue eyes and at her flushed cheeks. "Could you go file these away for me?" Elizabeth grabbed some files from the countertop next to her and handed them to him not-quite-lovingly. He frowned and took them to the back room, catching Ms. Ghirard's questioning of her calling him "Mozzie" and stifling a guilty laugh.

After running through some precautions with Diana, Neal found Peter in his office, staring at his desktop, eyes void of emotion. "Hey, Peter."

He looked up, leaning on his fist thoughtfully. "Oh, Neal. What do you need?"

Neal shrugged, sitting in Peter's spare chair and propping his feet on the desk. "Nothing. What are you looking at?"

Peter was silent for a moment. "Just old kidnapper files. He's only taken three females from the bureau before."

Neal shrugged. "So?"

Peter turned his chair to look at him, arm extended to tap the edge of keyboard slowly. "So, how do we know he'll take the bait?"

Neal glanced over at the screen. "Because he's taking all women this year, according to Mozzie's and my estimates."

Peter looked at him in concern. "I mean, how do we know he won't go after wives instead?"

He sighed. "Peter, Elizabeth is-"

"I'm not the only agent with a wife, Neal," he snapped. Neal fell silent.

He huffed. "I'm sorry. It's just-"

"Stress?" Caffrey supplied, received with a nod. "Just relax. Everything will go as planned. Diana's got too many friends and family members; too much federal history, to pass up on. We just have to keep everyone else safe for one more night. That's all."

Peter opened his mouth to speak, but stopped short. Neal was right. He needed to stop fussing and devote himself to this case before anyone else got hurt.

"It just doesn't feel right," he said grimly.

Neal shook his head. "Not yet. What's gonna feel right is when we have this Extortionist behind bars and these cases are over and done with." He set a hand on his friend's shoulder casually. "You're the only one that can get us there, though."

Peter met his eyes, then nodded. "I guess you're right."

Neal grinned, standing up. "Of course I am."

"Moz!" Elizabeth called out, waving farewell to their last customer of the day. "We're closing up! You want a ride home?"

Mozzie appeared before her, fumbling with a pen. "I wouldn't mind it."

She opened the door, allowed him out, and followed. Locking the door behind them, she led him to her car and left him to let himself in. Turning the key, she started up the car and flipped the radio on, though the volume was low. She didn't turn it up, because she had a question for Mozzie that she couldn't ask anyone else.

"Mozzie-"

"I didn't know what to do!" He pulled his seatbelt on anxiously. "The customer just walked in and you were still in the bathroom, so I tried to talk to her, but I called her Millie, and told her Susan meant lilies – how was I supposed to know she was allergic?"

El blinked at him, wide-eyed. "Moz, it's okay. I was going to ask you a question."

He let go a heavy breath and relaxed in his seat. "Oh. Well, ask away, Mrs. Suit."

She stared out the window and contemplated her question until she couldn't wait any longer.

"Why are Neal and Peter having you do this?"

He fell silent. "I know you know, and I need to know why they're so worried about me."

Mozzie rubbed his hands together. "I'm not sure I should say..."

"Please, Mozzie," she implored. When they reached a red light she turned to look him straight-on, her arresting blue eyes weakening his resolve to say nothing at all. "It's scaring me."

He sighed. She would eventually find out anyway, and who was he to keep something so important from her? He opened his mouth to answer her, but was interrupted by her cell phone going off.

She cringed at the sound, pulling the phone out of her pocket and answering the call. "Hey, hon."

"Hey, El," Peter's voice boomed into her ear. She quickly turned down the volume on the side of the phone an returned her ear to the receiver.

"-expect to be home?"

"I'm sorry, can you say that again?" she asked, eyeing Mozzie as she spoke.

"Sure. I was just asking when you expect to be home?"

She exhaled. "Soon. I'm just dropping Mozzie off."

Peter chuckled. "Of your own will?"

She just laughed and left the question unanswered as Mozzie avoided her gaze, deepening her concern. "What's the plan for dinner?"

"I was thinking Chinese, if you're feeling up to it."

She grimaced. "Man, I wish I was. How about we go out another night? I'm not actually all that hungry."

"Yeah, I can survive with a sandwich. And then we can continue what Neal so rudely interrupted..."

She blushed. "We aren't expecting company, right?"

"Usually doesn't matter if we're expecting it or not, but no. We should be home-free."

Chuckling, El stopped at Neal's place, where he had initially hinted at dropping him off. "I'm dropping Moz off. Be there in a few."

"Great. I love you."

She blew a kiss into the phone and hung up. Mozzie hastily exited the vehicle, and Elizabeth sighed, lying back in her chair. She just couldn't catch a break with that guy.

Peter smiled as Elizabeth walked in, swinging her keys around on the keyring. "Hello, beautiful."

She returned his grin, wrapping her arms around his neck. "Hello, handsome. How's the kidnapping case going?"

He smoothed her hair behind her ear as she loosened his tie. "All the bugs are pretty much worked out. One more day and we'll have our kidnapper."

"Hm," she hummed, leaning in and kissing him briefly. She smoothened his suit with her palms and whispered, "Then you can stop worrying."

He kissed her nose and asked, "Who's worried?"

"You are." He could tell she was considering further questioning, but she seemed to decide against it. "So..."

"So..." he said quietly, hands sliding down her sides and resting at her waist. "How about you and I spend some time..." He began trailing kissing from her ear down to her neck. "...alone?"

El smiled, kissing his cheek. "After dinner. I'm starved." She stepped just out of his reach and giggled mischievously, walking toward the refrigerator. Peter squinted, walking up behind her and sliding her jacket off her shoulders, and proceeded to massage them. Craning his neck, his lips grazed her cheek, then traveled to her chin, until he was kissing the corner of her lips. This eventually proved too distracting for her, so she turned and caught his lips in hers, stepping away from the kitchen.

They didn't get around to eating any dinner that evening.

Sorry for such a late update! Life has been crazy, and every bad thing that could happen seems to have been thrown at me. Forgive me, and read this before you plan my death.

I think this is one of my favorite chapters thus far. We've got Mozzie out of his element (a rare thing), Neal and Peter (of course ;D), the usual drama of being kept out of the loop, and cute Peter/El moments. Hopefully you guys like it, too.

Who's excited for Shoot the Moon? I can NOT wait! Being the fangirl I am, I have a feeling I'll be squealing (that rhymed) all Tuesday night. What do you guys think?

Oh, and P.S.: Do you think Mozzie's gonna crack and tell El what's going on before Peter does? No one wants the Burkes to be at a bad place in their relationship, but hiding a kidnapping threat is kind of a biggie. We'll see.

Thanks for reading! Leave a review and tell me what you like, and what you don't. I don't bite.

* *-TheSongbird341-* *

DISCLAIMER: I don't own White Collar. I would probably screw it up somehow, so be glad that I don't own it.