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Collar 2.6:On His Part


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Peter lifted his hands and began walking toward the door, willing Neal to do the same, wanting to buy them some time. In a situation like this, time was hope. Time was the chance for something to change. All of his training told him to find a way to make this work. At the moment, he only saw one or two possible outcomes, and neither one looked good. He moved carefully out onto the rooftop patio, his eyes scanning into the dark night for something, anything to get them out of this.

So maybe leaving the gun behind wasn't the best idea, Burke.

He pushed the uselessly negative line of thought away while Kate stepped out behind them. As he turned to watch her, his hands still lifted, he caught sight of his partner's expression… and almost wished he hadn't. What he saw in that young face chilled him to the bone.

It had been painful to watch Neal suffer the doubts of the last few days; more painful still to see him confronted with the truth from Kate's own lips. What he saw now, though –

What he saw now was a dead man walking. No hope sparkled in those uncommonly blue eyes, no life danced in that expressive face. Caffrey may as well have been lying in a box; his breathing was certainly shallow enough. He was beaten. Giving up.

As if hearing his thoughts, Neal's head swung slowly toward him, and he blinked a couple times, almost as if he had forgotten Peter was there. With a frown of recognition, he whispered hoarsely, his voice already failing him. "Sorry, Peter. You were right…"

Peter spoke involuntarily, reaching for his friend. "Neal…"

The gun motioned a threat. "Back off, Burke."


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Diana Berrigan looked up from her book as her girlfriend walked into the dimly lit living room. For a moment she frowned, blinking back from the reality of the murder mystery she was reading – but then her dark eyes grew concerned. "Oh, hey, sweetie – did I wake you up? I wanted to read for a while, I thought this light was far enough –"

The blond shook her head, blearily, clearly doing her best to not bother waking up all the way. She held out a flat rectangle as she shambled toward Diana, doing a passable although unintentional impersonation of the living dead. "Phone," she mumbled. "Twice. Thought it might be important." Clearly this wasn't the first time it had happened in their relationship, and certainly wouldn't be the last. Being attached to an FBI agent had its more difficult aspects, but then, she supposed all jobs had something that made them annoying at times. Berrigan jumped up to take it from her, and slapped at the pockets of her sweatpants.

"Oh! I am so sorry, I thought I had it with me–"

"S'okay." Christie began the shuffle back to their bedroom, stopped, turned to shuffle back and give Diana a quick kiss before shuffling on once more. "G'night," she yawned. "Love you."

The brunette chuckled at her. "You too. Good night. And sorry!" She called the last apologetically as Christie left the room, and her partner waggled her arm over her head dismissively as she disappeared through the doorway. After watching the blond leave, Diana looked down at her phone. The number wasn't familiar, but it had called twice… and then on cue, with a quiet little 'ding', a text appeared.

Lady Suit. Get to June's.

She frowned at it, shook her head and looked out the window. Lady Suit? There was only one person she knew who would text at this hour with that cryptic a message. And since there was very little love lost between the gnomish con man and the gorgeous agent, she had a feeling she couldn't afford to ignore it. He wouldn't dare call if it weren't… damn it. What have you gotten into now, Caffrey? A few ideas clicked in her brain, and she moved.

Almost without realizing how she got there, she was in her bedroom, leaving the lights off as she pulled on jeans and a shirt. It wasn't until she took her gun out of the dresser drawer, checked it with a soft click and slipped it into her shoulder holster that she heard stirring in the blankets behind her. "Diana?"

She moved to the other side of the bed. "It was important, you were right. I've got to go out for a bit." Kissing the other woman sweetly on the forehead, she heard a sigh.

"Okay." There was a shade of something uncomfortable in the not-so-sleepy now voice, and she felt a soft hand trace her side. "And you need your gun?"

Diana took a deep breath as she stood. "Don't worry."

The sound from the bed wasn't exactly a laugh. "Right. You're just going to the corner store..." They were both quiet for a moment, and then the agent turned to go. She was at the door when Christie spoke again. "Hey, Diana?" Berrigan paused, her jaw tight, waiting. Christie tried, but she struggled with being an agent's partner more than Diana was completely comfortable with.

"Yeah, baby?"

There was another pause, a long indrawn breath, another sigh. "Let's be careful out there, okay?"

Teeth glimmered a grateful smile in the dark. "Will do. Love you." She waited until she got to the apartment stairs before pulling out her phone again, making a quick call as she ran for the car.


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"Shut up." Kate glanced quickly around the roof, choosing her angles. "And don't move." Peter tilted his head as he watched her, carefully bringing back the hand he had stretched out toward Neal.

"Trying to figure out where you're going to stage this little fantasy?"

"I said, shut up." She took a few steps toward the parapet and glanced quickly over, her lips compressing as she checked something that seemed to be hanging there.

"Yeah, I can see that it would be tough to get us over that…" He made his voice sound almost annoyed as he played for time. "You know, I still can't see how you would sell Neal shooting me. I mean, sure, we get on each others nerves, but don't you think that if he was going to, he would have by now?"

"Burke-"

The tight warning in her voice joined with whitened knuckles on her gun hand convinced the agent to pull back. He lifted his palms a little higher, glanced around without moving his head.

Neal, however, appeared to be beyond caring. His voice was weary as he said, "Let him go, Kate. This is really between us, isn't it?"

Her eyes darted to him, and she looked only a little surprised. "How very noble, Neal. But if I were to let anyone go, it would be you. I mean, seriously… who do you think the feds would believe if I got caught? The con man or one of their own? You think they ever really trusted you?" His eyes narrowed a bit, stung, but she carried on. "Not that you gave them a lot of reason to, between chasing after me and the music box." Her expression became more calculating. "And, after all, he's the one who caught up with you by finding me when you couldn't." She almost laughed. "Let's face it. You're a bit of an also-ran at this point, handsome."

The young con man flinched at her tone, his eyes falling from hers to stare down at the rooftop, and Kate motioned with the gun. "Get back. Closer to that wall." Peter took half a step backward when he heard it.

Sirens. Two. No… three.

Closing fast. He tried not to smile. "Uh-oh. Sounds like we're going to have company. How many of us are you ready to kill, Kate?"


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Mozzie dropped the second phone and spoke into the headset he was wearing. "Trey. I'm back. I'm sending you the generator now –"

His fingers danced over the keyboard, his eyes darting as he scanned the information he was sending. "Yes. Yeah, I think it'll work. Especially since they set it all up as a dummy to begin with. These are obviously bogus numbers for the accounts… exactly, yes! If they aren't set up to check theirs, they don't need to check ours… right." He hit enter with a minor flourish. "You're sure the delivery paths are right? You can change them around enough and still keep track of…?" He nodded needlessly as Trey mumbled on about working around various obstacles. "How much did they have to cash out to do that? What? He did it all up front?"

The little man shook his head. "Well, God bless Ponziland. Right… All I have to say is that he sure as hell had a lot of faith in – you did? Good. Great. Thanks, Trey. How long will that take? Okay." He was about to break the connection when his eyebrows lifted. He suddenly looked around his room, as if agents might appear out of the woodwork. His hand automatically cupped over the mouthpiece. "Hey, Trey – look, man, you need any ID? Clean passport?"

Moz nodded as he rolled back on his chair, pulled open a drawer and sifted through a stack of at least eight little folders. Most were shades of blue, some were burgundy, one was green. He was shuffling through them when he stopped, listening. "Well, that's all well and good, but I don't think that Farsi is going help – yeah. Not right now, anyway." he nodded, tossed the blue folders back in and dug through the drawer for a minute. Ah, here we go." With a triumphant expression he pulled out a black cover. "How would you like to travel with diplomatic immunity?" He listened for a minute, shrugged, and tossed the passport back into the drawer, closing it with a click. "As long as you're covered. And no, thanks, I don't even want to know." His eyes darted toward the window and his lips tightened as he heard not too far-off sirens. "Good luck, man. I'll be waiting for the tracking."


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Kate's eyes flashed as the sirens grew louder. "Oh, please. This is New York. You don't know if they're coming here…" But her expression betrayed her as she glanced over the rooftop, and Peter saw her hesitation as the sound drew closer. He pressed his advantage, taking a step forward, shortening the angle between him and Neal.

"Do you really think, Kate, that we don't watch this apartment? That we haven't been watching it especially closely this week?"

He hoped to God that it was true. That it actually was his people speeding down the street toward them.

"Once you came waltzing out here with a gun, and we had our hands up - don't you think someone watching would have noticed?"

Her anger flared as they heard the squeal of tires in the street below. "Bastard! Why do you always have to get in the way?" Still, the gun in her hand swung to point at Neal, and her voice was cold as ice when she spoke. "But I can't help but wonder… maybe you've been pulling a scam on me all this time, Caffrey. Maybe you've been working with them since before you came to Adler…" There was a bare moment's hesitation, and Neal's eyes went wide as he stared down the barrel of her gun. Then her finger tightened on the trigger, and several things happened very quickly, as time slid into slow motion…

Neal's eyes widened as he looked up at her, and realized she was pulling the trigger. That she was going to kill him. Something snapped and a flush of anger, red-hot, pushed his pain away, tightened his jaw, lit his eyes with raw fury. He began to lunge forward-

Peter saw her hand tensing, jerked sideways, grabbed Neal as he leapt and pulled him behind himself. He saw the expression of disgust and anger on her face as he interfered with her plans once more, and heard the explosive retort of her gun-

boom

Kate growled a cry of animal fury into the night, pulling the trigger as Peter dodged in front of Neal, pulling him out of harms way. Anger made her eyes grow wide and cold, vicious as she pulled the trigger again, and yet again. Burke grunted as pain blossomed across his chest and he went down, toppling backwards against Neal, who tried to catch him as he fell.

boom

boom

Neal felt Peter jerk back against him, once, twice, three times. He caught his friend under the arms as he began to tumble backwards with a brief cry, and partially broke his fall to the ground. In the darkness, with Peter pinning his legs, all he could see were the stark holes ripped into the agent's jacket.

"No, God, no. Peter!" His hand touched his friend's face in the dark. "Peter –"

He heard footsteps running across the roof, and others running up the stairs. By the time he looked up Kate had thrown a bag over the side, had hooked a line to her belt and was down the side of the mansion. By the time he looked back to the door, Berrigan was leaping through the door, her gun out, covering the roof. Half-blinded by the darkness outside, her voice was harsh. "Where is she?"

Neal pointed, and the agent ran to parapet, looked over. "Damn." Hitting a button, her radio crackled to life.

"Go for Jones."

"Clinton, she went down the East side. Be careful, she's armed."

"Got it." He yelled orders, and the radio crackled once more. "Is she alone?"

"Yeah." There was a momentary relief in her voice, and she could practically hear him nodding.

The woman moved carefully toward Neal. From where she was, she could hear yelled instructions, more sirens, and calls in the night… but up on the roof, it was deadly silent. Everything happened so fast – yet in the few seconds it took, Diana's eyes had adjusted enough to see Peter cradled across Neal's lap, lying still. She ran to his side. "Oh, God… Boss?"


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