Author's Note: Sorry for taking so long to post this chapter. I've had major summer reading work to do and this basically got pushed to the side until my cable went out a couple days ago and I couldn't do anything else except use Microsoft Word. This is the second-to-last chapter of the first part of my story; the second part is episode two of season one, Threads (still not sure if I should write that part yet).

Disclaimer: I do not own White Collar, nor am I making any profit off of this.

~oOoOoOo~

Neal didn't really know what he was getting himself into.

He thought he should just wing it, as the saying goes. He'd done it numerous – hundreds – of times before he was sentenced to prison. Neal never took a complete look at the consequences of what might happen if his plan failed; doing so might make him more skeptical, or bring bad luck to the whole plot. Moz would often reprimand him for being "reckless" and Neal would think that his best friend sometimes sounded like a very uptight, straight-forward federal agent.

Neal told him that one time – Moz wasn't very happy.

And, of course, this time was just like any other time. Grabbing June's car keys and a camera he drove out to the warehouse.

He hadn't thought of what might happen if his tracker didn't go off, if Peter didn't get there before The Dutchman and his men probably killed him, if he was sent to jail even if Peter did make it and arrested the other conman (he was outside his radius, after all).

But a realization of all of the possible outcomes came to surface in Neal's mind when he was grabbed by some of The Dutchman's overly large and menacing henchmen and pulled inside the warehouse. Neal's head whipped around much like when someone is on a fast ride and they want to see everything around them but the ride's moving too fast for them to look – the henchmen walked, almost ran, to Hagen's plexiglass encased office in the back of the warehouse with Neal looked around every which way trying to look at the printing machines and the stacks of Spanish Snow White books.

The guarantee of a SWAT team and an entire swarm of FBI agents closing in on him if he ever went outside his radius never sounded more pleasant than it did right then.

When he was thrown into the office Neal locked the door as quickly as his con artist fingers could turn the lock. Putting on a smug expression and a cocky smile he acted like his life wasn't being threatened just then, like there still wasn't a chance that they could pull him out and kill him. The FBI probably wouldn't mind as much if that happened. He was just another resource for them to put to use, a liability at the most. If he got into trouble or got hurt, it only made them angrier than usual.

Neal couldn't think of anyone at the Bureau that would be genuinely sad if he was killed. Peter might be disappointed and lightly overcast for a few days but after awhile he'd get over it – he was, after all, just a conman. Elizabeth and June might be two of the few that would be saddened by his death, and then there was Moz, who'd probably keep any pain and depression that came up inside for no one to know about. Showing emotions could get a conman in trouble, and vulnerability was one thing the two of them didn't like to show amongst strangers.

His thoughts of possible and impossible funeral guests were cut short when he and the warehouse's other occupants heard sirens. Hagen's expression turned deadly when he spotted Neal's tracker but the growing fear of getting killed had washed away from Neal's mind when he heard the sirens outside the metal doors – Peter, who probably didn't consider him to be anything more than a criminal, had shown a type of loyalty that conmen don't often see nowadays: the kind where, even if people came from different backgrounds, careers and places, it didn't mean that you should die a horrible death for it.

Neal proudly sat on top Hagen's wooden desk, smoking a Cuban cigar, looking smugly at the chaos he'd created and glad he wasn't part of it any longer. He almost felt the same way he did whenever he pulled off a con, that rush when he realized he'd succeeded and ran off with his prize.

He also felt that this was a much better way to boost an ego than simply stealing a Spanish Victory Bond.