Peter checked his gun at the desk, assured the duty officer he had no back-up weapon or anything else apt to be used as a threat against him, signed the visitor form, and then followed one of the deputies through the heavy security door.

They walked down a hallway lined with cells. Most, Peter noticed, were empty. Apparently there weren't currently many prisoners in limbo at the federal holding facility. Of course, the transports back to the prisons would have already left for the day, and this section was only for short-term holding. There were different wings for those who would be staying longer.

The guard finally stopped at the last cell on the left and unlocked the door. "You want me to stay?"

Peter shook his head. "No, no need."

The other man nodded, pulled the door all the way open, and then headed off back down the hall toward the reception area.

Peter stepped into the open doorway and stopped there, looking inside. Neal was on the bunk, but sitting up, pressed into the corner. His legs were drawn up, arms around his knees, his head down.

"Neal?" Getting no response, Peter stepped all of the way into the cell. "Neal."

Neal finally moved, raising his head to look up. The light in the cell wasn't bright, but it still highlighted the bruising along the side of the younger man's jaw. And as Neal shifted, the bandages on his arms and hands were visible under the drab grey jumpsuit he wore.

"How are you doing?"

Neal shrugged, leaning his head back against the wall, eyes closed. "Let's see. Since Monday, I've been kidnapped, tased, beaten, drugged, and threatened with a gun. I had to jump off a boat into the ocean to get away, where we were stalked by a shark. I've spent most of the last two days drifting in a flimsy life raft. Finally got back to dry land, only to find there was an arrest warrant out for me. So then I was handcuffed, stripped, cavity searched, and locked up." He finally opened his eyes and looked up. "I guess you could say it's been a hell of a few days." He paused, with a short, bitter laugh. "And all I did was go to lunch!"

"Yeah." Peter sighed. "Look, they said they'll have a new anklet here in the morning."

"Right."

"Neal…"

"Will you answer one question for me?"

"Sure, if I can."

Neal moved his legs until he was sitting cross-legged on the bunk and looked directly at Peter. "Did you even try calling Sara before you slapped the 'escaped' tag on me?"

"I think it was pretty much simultaneous," Peter admitted. "I told Jones to call the marshals and then I called her office number." He sighed and leaned back against the built-in table across from the bed. "By the time Jones found that file on your phone, and a few other pieces started coming together… well, I never thought to call the marshals to remove the arrest warrant."

The smile on Neal's face was soft, sad. "I used to have this dream that someday, when something went wrong, you wouldn't automatically assume the worst of me."

Peter had to take a deep breath before answering. "Neal, we'll get there."

"Before Tuesday?" Neal shook his head slowly and leaned back, closing his eyes again. "Somehow, I don't see that happening."

"It's a hearing…"

"Right. Where they can do anything from close my case – to send me back to prison for life. Given recent events, I know where I'd place my bet."

"I don't know that it's that dire. They can also commute your sentence."

"Let's say my luck hasn't been the best recently."

Peter found he really didn't have an answer to that, so he changed the subject. "We'll want to get your full statement in the morning, but is there anything you can think of that might tell us where these guys were headed before you jumped ship?"

Neal looked up again and shook his head. "They didn't say anything about their travel plans. If they kept going, I imagine they'll wind up in Europe, maybe Portugal. But I kind of got the feeling that the trip to deep water was probably just so they could get rid of Sara and me."

"Anything you recall about the boat that might help?"

"When we went overboard, I saw the name. It was the Penelope Ann, out of Nantucket. Of course, it's not exactly hard to paint a new name on a yacht."

"Well, it's something. I'll get someone to check it out. Anything else?"

"I don't know. Between being knocked out, and drugged, and getting no sleep, everything's kind of jumbled."

"Yeah, Sara couldn't recall many details tonight either."

"You got her out of town safely?"

Peter nodded. "Jones called. They made it to her friend's house in the Hamptons. He said there was no sign of anyone tailing them, but he was going to stay until morning."

"Good. And June?"

"Diana took her to a hotel for the night. She's booked on a flight to Tampa in the morning. And we've got a team watching the house for tonight, in case anyone shows up there."

"That's good."

"Do you think you'll be able to describe the men who took you in the morning? Or maybe sketch them?"

"I'll try. Oh, and you might want to look for a marshal named Ryan. He's the one they met who had the key to the anklet."

"Is Ryan a first or last name?"

"I don't know. That's just the only name I heard. And maybe he's not even a marshal himself. I never really saw him."

"But he must have connections at least to get a key." And that put leaving Neal here, under the US Marshals' authority, in a different light. "I'll be right back."

He hadn't meant to fall asleep, he really hadn't. But despite their recent problems, Peter's car was familiar, comfortable. All he remembered was leaning back against the headrest, intending to close his eyes for a minute…

He came awake when the car stopped, and he heard Peter cut the engine.

Except this was definitely not where he thought they were headed.

"When you said you wanted to start on my statement, I thought we were going to the office."

"It's the middle of the night, Neal. Actually, almost two o'clock in the morning. Not prime office hours."

Neal just stared up at the house. He'd been here so many times, but that was… before. "You know Elizabeth doesn't want me here."

Peter sighed, opening his door. "I'm not asking you to move in, Neal. But I'm responsible for you until the new anklet comes. And I'm still hoping for a couple hours of sleep."

Neal watched as Peter got out of the car, started toward the house, and then came back to the car, opening Neal's door. "Come on, let's go."

"This is a really bad idea."

"Do you want to spend the night in holding?"

"Well…"

"Rhetorical question. Let's go."

Neal sighed and slowly extracted himself from the car, following Peter up to the front door. He waited while Peter unlocked the door, disengaged the security system, and then stepped aside.

Satchmo came running up, tail wagging. While Peter turned his attention to resetting the alarm, Neal knelt down, getting a big, sloppy kiss for his efforts. "Hey, Satch. Yeah, I've missed you too."

Peter had moved past him, heading toward the kitchen. With one more good scratch for Satchmo's ears, Neal got to his feet and followed.

Peter was at the refrigerator. "Want a beer?"

Neal shook his head, sinking down onto a chair at the table. "I don't think my stomach could handle it."

"Iced tea?"

"Yeah, that'd be great."

Peter poured two glasses and came over to the table, sliding one across toward Neal. "Do you need something for your stomach? Like Tums, or the pink stuff?"

"No, that's fine. It's just, after two days of seaweed and syrupy seawater, I don't want to push it too much."

"Right." Peter pulled out a chair and sat down. "Are you up to talking?"

"Sure."

"Jones gave me the bullet points from what Sara told him on the way to the Hamptons. And we'll get your full written statement in the morning. But I want to hear your take on the highlights."

"The highlights." Neal paused for a sip of his tea, taking an extra moment to wipe at the condensation on the outside of his glass. "I wasn't lying to you on Monday. Sara called and asked me to meet her for lunch. I didn't know why."

"We tracked you to the Chantilly café."

"Right. It's a place Sara knew. I got there first, ordered some wine. The only thing strange when she got there was that she was wearing jeans and a baseball cap."

"I wasn't sure she even owned something like jeans," Peter admitted.

"Like I said, it seemed a little strange. But she said she just had the morning off. And then she said she thought she'd been followed a few times."

"Could she identify the people following her?"

"I don't know. We didn't talk about that."

"All right. I'll check with Sara on that." Peter made a note on a pad that he'd had out on the table. "Why did she go to you with this?"

"The first time she noticed something, we were still together. And she thought she might have seen someone outside of June's one time."

"So she thought they might be watching you too."

Neal nodded. "I never saw anything though, and I'm usually pretty good at spotting a tail."

"But she's sure this has to do with those Donnelly files?"

"Well, that's definitely what the guys who took us wanted to talk about. And the timing fits for when Sara acquired the files, and the tails started."

"I don't understand why she didn't just bring this to me."

"She wasn't sure if it was your jurisdiction. And she wanted to warn me that these guys might know about me."

Peter nodded, taking a big drink of his tea. "All right. You read the files on the card?"

"Some of it. Enough to know that if it was all true, it was big. I mean, the deputy police commissioner running his own little force within a force? I told Sara that as soon as we finished eating, she should come with me to talk to you."

"So you were coming back to the office?"

"That was the plan. But some other people had a different idea."

"They picked you up at the café?"

"Yeah. We tried to get to a busier area to blend in with the crowd, but there were at least seven guys, and two vehicles."

"We tracked down a SUV and a panel van."

"I did try to call you."

"Yeah, Jones found the call, but not until later the next day. My phone never rang."

"It was a long shot. I couldn't exactly stop, so I was trying to dial by touch while we ran."

"But you managed to hide your phone."

"I figured if Sara and I managed to get away, I could always go back for it and get the files. And if we didn't… well, the phone would be the next logical step after the tracking anklet."

"Okay, so these guys caught up with you."

"We tried to fight, but there were too many of them. And they had Tasers. I remember seeing them get Sara, and then they were coming at me. I sort of came to at one point, lying in the back of the van. That's when they were talking about this guy, Ryan, and they removed the anklet."

"You're sure they had a key?"

"Pretty sure. He said he had a key."

"All right, we'll get a quiet search of the US Marshal database in the morning, see what we can find."

"They gave me something, some kind of drug in a needle. The next thing I knew, we were being carried to a boat. I think it was the Madison Avenue bridge area."

"Captain Shattuck got us the GPS information for the vehicles, and we found the traffic footage. We had teams interviewing around the area, but that was just earlier on Wednesday. We were two full days behind you."

"Well, the next thing I knew after that, I was waking up on a yacht."

"The Penelope Ann."

"Yeah. Sara and I were locked in a cabin, cuffed and tied up. At one point they took us up for a little chat – with fists and guns. I only got one name, Gavin."

"But you can sketch them?"

"Definitely. Those are faces I won't forget."

"We can match the faces with the names we got from the prosecutor, see if any of them match."

"Prosecutor?"

Peter nodded. "Yeah, it turns out that Barry Koontz, the guy Sara recovered the miniature from, had testified in a grand jury hearing."

"Against Donnelly."

"Exactly. What did the men who were questioning you want?"

"They wanted to know where the original card was. And the documents that were scanned onto it."

"The original? So what we found in your phone…"

"A copy, after Sara got the files decrypted."

"And the original?"

Neal shook his head. "I don't know. You'll have to ask Sara."

"So she didn't tell Donnelly's men."

"No. They finally locked us up again, and said we had one more chance to talk in the morning. But it didn't take much to figure that they weren't taking us out to deep water just for fun."

"Right. Toss you overboard, and we'd never know."

"That's the way I figured it. Anyway, it wasn't hard to get out of the cuffs. We waited to make sure they'd settled in for the night, then went out the window. I grabbed one of the survival rafts, and we went off the dive deck into the water. After that, it was a lot of ocean, and one hell of a storm."

Peter's eyes went wide. "That storm on Tuesday…"

"Let's say it's not something I recommend experiencing on the high seas in a small raft."

"I'll take your word for that."

Neal just nodded. "Wednesday afternoon, we saw a ship on the horizon. As it got closer, we paddled like hell to narrow the distance as much as we could."

Peter pointed at Neal's bandaged hands. "That's the result?"

"Yeah, raw and blistered. But they either picked up the emergency beacon, or saw the flare; I guess I didn't ask. The cook spoke French, so we could communicate. They called the Coast Guard, and the service sent a cutter. But then I guess they ran our names, and there must have been an alert, because then they brought in a helicopter."

"We had an inter-agency alert out."

Neal leaned back in his chair and sighed. "Because you had a fugitive."

Peter nodded slowly. "Neal, I'm sorry…"

Neal waved that off. "It's done. Look, can we go after Donnelly?"

"That's going to be hard. We're still waiting on word whether we can get access to the grand jury proceedings. Without Koontz to testify, that may not even matter."

"You've got all of the documents on the card."

"But they're not the originals. Without something more, there's no way that those scans are going to stand up."

"That's what they kept asking Sara and me about – where the originals were."

"And I assume she doesn't know."

"Peter, she only found the SD-card because it was hidden behind the miniature she was recovering. She wasn't there looking for documents."

"Right. Look, we'll get your statement, and Sara's. Combined with the kidnapping, maybe there's something the prosecutor can do."

"Peter, we can do more. Let me go in…"

"What's going on?"

Both men looked up as Elizabeth stepped off the stairs and into the living room.

Neal took a deep breath and pushed his glass away. "Elizabeth. I know I'm not welcome here." He looked over at Peter before continuing. "I wasn't given much of a choice."

She turned her attention to her husband. "Apparently you've solved your missing persons case. Is Sara all right?"

Peter nodded. "She's fine, though still in danger."

"Well, that seems to be a common theme around here," Elizabeth said, continuing to the kitchen.

"She's right," Neal said, his voice pitched low. "Too many people have been in danger. We need to do something about this one."

"Neal, we can't just go after someone like Donnelly half-cocked," Peter countered, his own voice barely more than a whisper. "If his people know who you are, then you're in danger too, and I'm not going to make it worse. We'll put all of our information together tomorrow, maybe see what Shattuck has been able to find. Then we'll come up with a plan."

"Peter, please. I may not have much time left, and I don't want to waste what little I have."

That brought Elizabeth back toward the table. "What does that mean, not much time?"

Neal looked to Peter for help, but the agent didn't appear to be in any hurry to answer. "There's a hearing next Tuesday," he started.

Elizabeth looked between the two men. "I know."

Neal nodded. "Peter says the outcome isn't pre-ordained, but I figure there's a pretty good chance that I'll be back in prison by Tuesday night."

"We don't know what's going to happen," Peter insisted.

"You're not going to try and rush into something, are you?" Elizabeth asked.

Peter got to his feet, reaching out for his wife's hand. "Hon, everything the last couple of days, it was related to a case Sara was working on. Honestly, I don't even know yet if it's a Bureau case at all. And no one's rushing into anything." He kissed her cheek, and then turned back to Neal. "All right, I need to hit the bathroom, then we'll talk this through some more."

Neal could only watch helplessly as Peter headed for the stairs. He allowed himself a brief moment of hope that Elizabeth would follow…

She didn't.

The silence that followed dragged on for hours. Well, at least a minute or two, though it seemed like hours.

Elizabeth finally pointed at his hands. "What happened?"

He had no idea how much Peter might have told her over the last couple of days, but it didn't seem like he had talked to his wife since the resolution of his and Sara's ordeal. So maybe a very brief overview was safe. "Sara and I were kidnapped on Monday. They put us on a boat, and I think the idea was to toss us overboard, but we managed to escape. Then we spent the last couple of days on a survival raft."

"And this was really related to Sara's work?"

"Yeah. For once, it had nothing to do with me, except that I was there when they came for her."

"Not a pleasant experience anyway though, was it."

And there it was – the elephant in the room had just stomped on his head… "No," he admitted. "Not at all." She made no move to say anything, so he finally took a deep breath, held it a moment before letting it out, and then continued. "I'm not going to ask you to forgive me. I know that's expecting too much. But do you at least believe that I would never – never – have done anything that I knew would put you in danger?"

He realized he was actually holding his breath, waiting for her answer.

Elizabeth finally nodded, very slowly. "I do believe that, Neal. But you did hurt people."

"I know."

"Do you remember when I told you I thought your heart was good, but you make bad decisions sometimes?"

"I remember. And sometimes even when I make a good decision, it takes me too long to get there." He paused, swallowing hard against the lump in his throat. "Peter and Mozzie were my best friends. I just… I can't even tell you how hard it was to choose between them. By the time I decided to stay…"

"You were really staying?"

"Yeah, I was. But it was too late. The right decision, the wrong time, and you paid for it." He took a chance, stepped a little closer. "Look, they'll have a new tracking anklet in the morning, and I'll be out of here. And after Tuesday, one way or another, I probably won't even be Peter's problem any more. You never have to see me again."

And then, miraculously, she was turning toward him, looking right at him, a soft smile on her face. "It's too late for that, Neal. You're part of our lives, for better or worse. And while there have definitely been some worse times, there have been a lot of better times too."

"Elizabeth…"

She wrapped her arms around him, leaning against his chest, and he lost all track of what he had meant to say. "Peter will figure this out," he finally managed to choke out. "That's what he's the best at."

She just nodded, and there was really nothing else he could say.