Chapter Ten

"Were you able to track Neal's phone?" Peter asked as he approached Jones' desk.

Except for the two of them, the White Collar offices were deserted just as they should have been on a Saturday afternoon. Peter had picked his phone up three times on the way from Riverside Drive to make the calls he needed to make, but he hadn't made any of them. He told himself there was no reason to get everyone in an uproar if he could find Neal quickly, but the reality of the situation was that even though he'd just found out about it, Neal had been missing for nearly twenty-four hours. If he was running, he could be anywhere by now and if he'd been kidnapped, the chances of recovering him would have drastically fallen in that time period. Walking past Neal's desk, neatly squared away for the weekend, Peter had gotten a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. There was a very real chance that he'd never see Neal sitting there again, leaning back in his chair like a cocky schoolboy, tossing that silly rubber band ball of his. He had pushed that thought out of his mind, hoping against hope that Jones would have something for them to work with.

"No, I wasn't" Jones replied, looking up from his desk, "the battery must be dead. But I did get its last location."

"Where?" A last location was at least somewhere to start.

"I have it at 93 14th Street-that's a block away from June's-at 5:38 yesterday afternoon." Peter had hoped for something a bit more recent; that was only moments after June had seen the black SUV pull away from the curb. Jones looked at him in question. "But why use his phone to find him, boss? He has a tracking device strapped to his foot."

At Peter's silence, Jones looked concerned. "Doesn't he?"

"As far as I know he does," Peter said, "But I have reason to believe it might be transmitting false information. That's why I wanted to use the GPS on his phone; to verify his location."

Jones didn't look pleased and after a moment of typing at this keyboard, he spoke. "According to his tracker, he's," Jones frowned, studying the screen. Peter glanced at the now familiar layout of Neal's apartment on Jones' computer.

"In the bed," Peter supplied, knowing full well Neal was not in the bed, nor even in his apartment for that matter.

"Then just go over there and verify-" Jones stopped and looked at Peter in sudden understanding. He pursed his lips. "You've already been there, haven't you?"

"Yes," Peter confessed, "and even though the tracking information said he was there, he wasn't."

"So you figured you'd try to locate him by his phone," Jones supplied, now seeing the problem more clearly. "Have you contacted the Marshal Service?"

"Not yet," Peter replied. When Jones' eyebrows raised questioningly, he continued. "I just want to see if I can find him first."

"Look, boss," Jones protested. "if the anklet isn't giving accurate readings, you have to alert the Marshal Service. Maybe it's just a malfunction, and they can reset it or something."

"It's not malfunctioning," Peter said. He knew what he was going to say was going to sound bad. It was bad. But he'd already pulled Jones into it, and if he were going to get his help, he'd have to tell him what they were dealing with. "It's operating on a half-hour loop. Every half hour, it starts over and plays the same twenty-nine minutes over again."

"A loop?" Jones stared at him incredulously. "How long have you known this?"

"I called you after I found out," Peter looked at his watch, "so forty-five minutes, give or take?" He knew it was give; he'd suspected a full half hour before he'd made the call. "I called you, and then went to his apartment just to be sure."

"So his tracker's been tampered with, and his phone is dead." Jones' eyes narrowed. "Caffrey's in the wind, isn't he, Boss?"

"He's missing," Peter corrected, "right now that's all I know. Mozzie and June don't think he ran; they think someone took him."

"Took him?" It was the second time Jones had echoed Peter's words. "Of course, that's what they'd say," he scoffed. "They'd say anything to keep him out of trouble."

"Yes, they would," Peter agreed, "but I don't think that's what's going on here; I believe they're sincere. Mozzie is the one who tipped me off that something was wrong. He called the house looking for Neal. If he hadn't, I'd have never given the tracking data a second thought. He also gave the number to Neal's other phone. See if we have better luck getting a location from it."

Neal might disable his FBI phone, but he'd have no reason to disable the other one. He'd never dream that Mozzie would give the Feds the number to his burner phone; that went against everything Mozzie. That, of course, spoke to the level of concern the little guy was experiencing with this situation.

Eyebrows raised, he did it again. "Other phone?" Three times was enough.

"Please, Jones," Peter snapped, his stress level increasing with each passing moment, "Stop repeating everything I say. I know you're not an idiot and know as well as I do that Neal carries two phones. Check the number. See if you can get a location, a text, a call, anything that might tell us what's going on here."

"Okay, boss," he said, "Give me the number."

Peter read the digits and waited impatiently.

"Can't track this one, either," Jones said after a couple of moments, "but the last location is the same as the other one: 93 14th Street." He looked up at Peter, brows furrowed. "There's no way batteries in two separate phones died at the same time," he commented. "Someone's removed them so the phones can't be traced."

"Can you get anything else?" Peter asked, "Texts, a call log?"

"I don't know," Jones said, "these phones are tricky, depends on what company issued the numbers. Let me see if it's through any of the major carriers." The moments seemed to pass slowly as Jones' fingers flew on the keyboard. It took a few minutes, and a few dead ends before he was able to get something.

"Here we go," Jones said, then after a moment, "Surprisingly little activity on this phone. If this is any indication of Caffrey's life outside the office, it's pretty non-existent. No voice mail or text messages," he continued, "and calls only to one number; the same number that's called him five times since yesterday evening." He looked up at Peter. "I'd hazard a guess that's Mozzie."

"Yeah," Peter confirmed. "he's tried to call him but couldn't get an answer."

He'd wanted a lead; a text or call that would give him something to go on, but part of him was relieved that there was nothing incriminating on Neal's phone; anytime he pulled up a rock in his CI's life he feared what he might find. He didn't want to believe that Neal had conned him, had broken their deal and run. But the alternative to that wasn't good either. If Neal had run, at least he was alive. If he hadn't, and someone had taken him, that wasn't necessarily a given.

"Well, there's nothing helpful here, either," Jones confessed. "What makes June and Mozzie think someone took him?" He asked. "Other than not wanting him to be a fugitive on the run?"

"June said that two men approached Neal on the curb when he arrived home after work yesterday," Peter told him, "They were talking, she looked away, and when she looked back, they were leaving, and Neal was nowhere in sight."

"And she thinks they kidnapped him?" Jones asked skeptically. "Did she give you a description of them, of their vehicle?"

"Dark suits, dark glasses. Black SUV. They looked like agents," Peter informed him reluctantly, Mozzie's words still playing in his mind. "June thought I'd sent someone to pick him up for some reason; that's why she didn't pay that much attention." He shook his head. "When Neal didn't show for a meeting last night, Mozzie just thought he was working late, but when he called the house this afternoon and talked to Elizabeth, he realized something was wrong. He went to June's, found out about the mysterious agents Neal had left with, and deduced that Neal had been kidnapped; either by some government agency or people posing as such."

"That sound like Mozzie," he said, "But it's more likely Caffrey found a way to beat the anklet and decided to run, and those guys were his ride out of town. I'd guess if you haven't called the Marshal Service you haven't notified Hughes, yet, either have you?"

"No."

Peter knew that he was letting his personal feelings interfere with his job, and Jones' expression said he knew it as well. It was the reason interaction outside the office between agents and CI's was so strongly discouraged. Peter understood the wisdom of those unspoken rules. Criminal Informants were that; criminals. And as such, they could not be trusted to simply abide by the rules they were given. They had to be closely monitored and controlled; boundaries had to be set and strictly enforced. Leniency or leeway was likely to be exploited and therefore shouldn't be granted. That was the job of a handler. Having a personal connection with a CI, seeing them as anything other than an asset to be managed, would only make it more difficult to do the job effectively.

But things with he and Neal had started off outside the rules from the beginning. They'd had some kind of personal connection well before Neal became his CI. Take out sent to stakeouts, cards on holidays and birthdays. For some reason still unfathomable to Peter, Neal had sought a relationship with the man pursuing him. That connection was the reason the agreement had been proposed, and taken up, in the first place. But during the course of working together, it had grown to be more than just a connection; it had become a friendship of sorts. Of course, he'd never intended to be friends with Neal Caffrey; it had just kind of slipped up on him.

"You need to call him, and the Marshal Service," Jones pressed. "They might be able to reset the tracker. If he'd cut it, they'd already have been alerted so he must still have it on. But I doubt that will be the case for long. If they can get a location, we might be able to find him before he disappears. If he hasn't already."

Peter knew that what Jones was saying was true. He also knew that a call to the Marshals should have been made the minute he'd suspected something was wrong with the tracking data. Now, better than an hour and a half had passed since he realized Neal was gone and the call was still unmade.

"Jones," A thought had suddenly occurred to him. "if the phones were at 93 14th Street at 5:38 yesterday afternoon, then most likely Neal was there too. That would have been just after June saw the black SUV leaving her house. What traffic cams are in that area?"

"There are red light cameras," Jones said, "so if they ran a traffic light we might be able to get a plate."

"You can check," Peter said, "But I doubt they did. Everything was quiet. June didn't hear any altercation, and they didn't speed away from the curb."

It sounded more like a friendly rendezvous than a kidnapping, but Peter was grateful that Jones didn't verbalize the fact.

"I can pull up the Thruway Authority and see what they have in place," he volunteered. "They record all vehicles; not just the ones committing a violation."

"Okay, do it," Peter said, "Check footage for any adjacent intersections and see if you can spot the vehicle June described. Maybe we can get a shot of the driver or a plate to trace. Something."

Peter didn't like the desperate tone that had crept into his voice. Now that he'd told Jones that Neal was missing he knew he could only delay the inevitable for so long. He was going to have to make the calls soon; he just wanted to have something to tell them, something that made Neal MIA and not AWOL.

"They have several," Jones said, "and since we have an exact time and location to start with, it shouldn't take too long to check footage from the traffic cams along that route."

"Start looking through them," Peter directed, "I'm going to go up to my office and run all of Neal's known alias and see if anything pops up, just in case."

Just in case what? Peter thought. In case Mozzie was wrong? In case he was wrong? Just in case Neal had conned both of them? Mozzie's belief that Neal was in trouble, that he hadn't run, was the tipping point; it was the deciding factor in Peter's decision to wait, to investigate, to give Neal the benefit of the doubt. But what if Neal knew that convincing Mozzie would go a long way in convincing Peter? What if that, too, was all a part of a long con?

"So which is it?" Jones asked him, "Do you think someone's taken him or do you think he's run?" Jones' question was sincere. "What does your Caffrey Radar say?"

Everyone in the department knew that no one could read Neal Caffrey better than Peter Burke. What did he think? What did he want to think? And how could he tell the difference between the two?

After a moment's contemplation, he gave his answer. "I don't think he ran," he said, "but I just want to cover my bases in case I'm wrong."

"You better cover more than your bases, boss, if he has run, there's going to be hell to pay when Hughes finds out."

"I know," Peter sighed. Hughes had given him a lot of leeway with Neal, probably more than he should have. But he liked the results the team, with Neal's help, produced. "Check the traffic cameras and see if you can find that SUV. I'll be back down and help you go through the footage. We can cover it twice as fast."

Ten minutes later, Peter was back, his search turning up nothing. All of Neal's aliases had all been silent. Of course, if he had one clean identity that Mozzie knew about, he could have half a dozen that he didn't.

"I think I got it," Jones said, "Here at this intersection." Peter leaned over and examined the screen. Black SUV, tinted windows. No visible images. Neal could be driving the getaway car, or hog-tied and stuffed in the back, for all the camera capture revealed. "It's the only black SUV, so its got to the be one June saw." He looked at Peter, "I can keep looking, checking traffic surveillance along all possible routes and maybe get a shot of the plate." He paused. "But you have to make the call. I understand wanting to give Caffrey the benefit of the doubt, but no matter what's happened, he's off anklet; you have to report it. The longer you delay, the more explaining you're going to have to do." He paused. "Especially if he's really done something stupid."

"Give me Mozzie's number," Peter said. "I want to see if he's heard from Neal or turned up anything from his sources about where he might be. If he hasn't had any more luck than we have, then I'll make the calls. If Neal is in trouble, the more people looking for him the better I guess."

Jones gave Peter the number, but before he could finish dialing Mozzie, his phone rang.

Peter looked at the screen in alarm; Hughes. His section chief wouldn't be calling him unless something was wrong. With the current Caffrey situation, something was wrong, but things must be more wrong than he knew if Hughes was calling him on the weekend.

Peter took a deep breath. He was afraid both he and Neal were out of time.

"Burke."

"Where are you?" He knew by the tone of Hughes' voice that the news wasn't good.

Peter only hesitated a moment. "I'm at the office, sir, why?"

"I just got a call from the NYPD; they're investigating a robbery at the Danford Building down in Queens; facial recognition flagged Caffrey on the security footage."

Peter felt his heart drop. "What?"

"Robbery, Burke, in Queens," he snapped, "and according to the Marshal Service, Caffrey's anklet is offline."

Hughes. NYPD. Marshal Service. Well, the cat was out of the bag now.

"Shit," Peter said beneath his breath, then, more vocally, "When?"

"They got the call about half an hour ago," Hughes said. "NYPD is on the scene now, and the Marshal Service is trying-" He stopped suddenly. "Why are you at the office?" His voice was sharp with suspicion.

Peter hesitated. He didn't want to lie, but he didn't want to tell the truth, either.

"Damn!" Hughes exploded, "you knew Caffrey was up to something, didn't you? That's why you're at the office. What the hell-"

"Look, sir," Peter interrupted, trying to explain, "I just had a feeling something was wrong, so-"

"Get your ass over there," Peter held the phone away from his ear as the section chief roared. Even Jones could hear him. "Do you know the flack the agency is going to catch over this? This is your mess to clean up, Burke; Caffrey was your responsibility. I want to know how the hell he did this, who helped him, and I want him found! Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," Peter replied. "What was the target, sir?" He asked. "What did he take?"

"His target was the Danford Diamond Exchange Company," Hughes spat, "And he took six million in unmarked, unregistered, diamonds. Get over there now, Burke." He hung up before Peter could say another word. He snapped the phone closed.

"I take it Caffrey's done something stupid?" Jones commented.

The good news was that Neal was alive; the bad news was that he'd just stolen six million in diamonds and if he ever saw him again, it would be to put him back in prison. Peter clenched his jaw in anger. "It would appear so."