Okay, I'm really sorry about the delay of this chapter. It wasn't my intention to leave you all hanging this long, but I must admit that the announcement from USA Network confirming the only 6 new episodes in Season 6 has caused me to spend pretty much all my waking hours fighting for our beloved show. I hope you are all joining White Collar Closure on this mission.

Thanks for the many lovely reviews - you're all amazing! Anyway, back to the story...

WARNINGS: Mmm... not really this time, I think.

Usually it would easily take 15-20 minutes for Peter to get to the White Collar office due to traffic, but at this early in the morning it didn't take much more than 10 minutes. However, Peter hardly recalled the trip afterwards, because he had spent the entire time trying to get Mozzie to talk on the phone, but it had been futile. At some point he thought he heard someone talking on the other end, but he couldn't hear much. It seemed like Mozzie was gone, though the connection still appeared to be open. Peter felt frustrated. So close to - and yet so far from - getting useful information.

Peter spotted a free parking space across the street, pretty much right in front of the FBI building. "Doris Day Parking", he thought to himself and smiled a little when thinking back to the day he had explained that phrase to Neal and Jones. He grabbed his phone and made sure not to disconnect the call by coincidence, before he ran to the lobby, got on the elevator and reached the 21st floor.

He was happy to see that Jones had already made it there as well, and Diana was on her way as soon as Theo's nanny showed up. Jones explained to Peter that he had set up the tracking of the call, and they had already narrowed it down to an area east of Beacon, about 1½ hour drive north of New York City. But it was a rather large forest area, and the mobile service was not that good around there which meant that the signal kept pinging between towers quite far from each other.

Suddenly their attention was pointed towards Peter's phone which he had placed on the table in the conference room. It sounded like someone was there.

"Hello? Mozzie? Mozzie, are you there?", Peter said, eagerly waiting for a response.

He repeated Mozzie's name a couple of times and checked the duration of the call – it had been about 18 minutes since he had last heard any words from Mozzie.

As soon as Neal got to the end of the house and ran in the direction away from there, everything became a dark mess of plants, trees, stones and other things he couldn't see. The moon had been out earlier, but it was gone at the moment, and with no light at all Neal had no chance of knowing where he was going. He only knew that the house was behind him and he was trying to get as far away from that as possible. He could hear the men clearly, not far behind, and once in a while he almost got caught by one of the beams from the flashlights. He almost stumbled a couple of times. He had to slow down! Crashing to the ground because he couldn't see shit would do him no good right now.

He stopped for a moment. He was still clutching the meat hammer in one hand and the knife in the other, and it was too dangerous. If he fell, he could end up stabbing himself. He stuffed the knife in the back of his pants, actually cutting through the fabric to make sure it would stay there. He decided to hold on to the hammer – just as a precaution – and a few minutes later that turned out to be a very good decision.

Neal was shuffling through some high grass, feeling his way along some bushes with thorns, probably black thorns, he thought, since he knew they usually grew places like these, when a beam of a flashlight suddenly fell upon him.

"I GOT HIM!", the guy yelled. "He's over here!"

Neal jumped up, ready to run, but his t-shirt got stuck in the bushes. He was desperately trying to free himself, when he turned around and saw the guy coming straight at him. At the same time as Neal pulled away from the thorns, ripping his t-shirt, he swung his arm with the hammer aiming for the guy. He hit the hand with the flashlight which flew several feet away, and his aim had apparently been perfect, since the guy didn't even try to hold back the scream that left his mouth when the hammer collided with his hand.

The abrupt attack from Neal completely caught the man off guard. This was enough for Neal to take off in another direction, away from the now loudly cursing guy. He hadn't even had time to register who of their captors it was. Instead he was deeply focused on trying to see where he was running. He gave away too much noise, he thought. Where ever he ran, he kept stepping on branches and dead leaves, breaking and crushing everything beneath his feet, and the noise sounded awfully loud in Neal's ears.

At one point the moon came out again, and Neal paused close to a tree, trying to get a view of his surroundings.

"Neal! Hey!", a whispering voice sounded from somewhere close by.

"Mozz?", Neal quickly scanned the area in the direction of the voice.

He noticed a brief glimpse of a mobile display and ran in that direction, while keeping an eye over his shoulder, watching for any signs of their captors or the flashlights. He could hear them, but he couldn't see them. If Neal felt he had been making a loud escape it was nothing compared to their captors. They definitely didn't try to be quiet. Good. That gave Neal and Mozzie an advantage.

He reached a tangle of roots.

"Mozz?", he whispered.

In the same second someone grabbed his left arm and roughly pulled Neal down. He almost stumbled, wincing a bit when his foot scraped over the edge of a root. Mozzie shoved the phone in the hands of Neal and almost inaudibly said:

"The Suit's on the phone!"

Neal let the hammer fall the ground and grabbed the phone, held it to his ear, and quietly said:

"Peter, are you there?"

He couldn't hear much. It sounded like someone said "oz", but the reception was really bad, and after a few more tries of getting through to Peter, Neal gave up. He kept the phone to his ear, though, just in case, but instead he directed his attention to Mozz.

"Are you okay?", he asked his friend.

"Yeah, Neal – I'm okay. You?"

Mozzie sounded almost breathless. Neal figured it was the adrenaline. He felt the same way. Okay, he had been running, too, but still. The adrenaline was definitely flowing through his system.

"I'm fine", he said.

"What's the plan?", Mozzie asked.

"We get away from here!", Neal stated the obvious.

"Yeah, well... Even though that brilliant mind of yours usually works fast, I'm already ahead of you on that point", Mozzie said and pointed at the phone in Neal's hand.

"Do we wait for the cavalry to show up?"

Neal shook his head.

"We are too far away for that. James and his goons will find us long before that if we stay here. We have to split! If they catch us together, we're screwed."

Mozzie hushed at Neal and pulled him further down. A few seconds later the headlights from the car swept above them, and the car was slowly approaching their hiding place.

Neal whispered to Mozzie:

"Whoever James has made a deal with is coming at 9 am."

Neal looked at the phone shielding the light from the display with his hand.

"It's 4:50 now. That's 4 more hours, and we don't know when...", he paused, "or if... Peter and the others will find us."

The car drove by slowly not too far away, and they both ducked down, keeping quiet. They could still hear yells and other sounds from the men looking for them somewhere further away, but as long as they didn't appear to be directly approaching their hiding place, Neal felt secure enough to continue the conversation.

"I say we keep moving towards the main road, but on each side of this dirt road. We didn't drive on this one that long, so it can't be far", Neal said.

"I think there's a ditch running along the road", Mozzie added. "I'll follow that one, but Neal...". He hesitated.

"What?", Neal inquired.

"I agree we can't stay together, but we also cannot be far from each other. We don't want to get lost in the woods. We have no idea where we are, what's in there."

"Don't get paranoid, Mozz!", Neal smirked at his friend.

"I'm not. I'm thinking logical here", Mozzie argued.

"I know what you mean", Neal calmly said, "and you're right! We stick together, yet we don't stick together."

"Who gets the phone?", Mozzie asked.

Neal chanced a look at the display. The call was still on, but the battery was running low. He brought it back to his ear.

"Peter, are you there? Can you hear me? Peter?"

"Peter?"

"Neal?!", Peter said loudly and grabbed the phone, holding it closer, but still on speaker for Jones to listen along.

"... orest... don't know...", was what they heard. Both Peter and Jones strained their ears.

"...hind this... ames... nine...", it was definitely Neal trying to tell them something.

When he quieted for a moment, Peter quickly, almost yelling, told him to keep the line open, that they were tracking the call, but they needed more time.

"... battery...", was the next word they managed to decipher from Neal through the crackling connection.

Peter grimaced and swept his hand across his face. No, not now! They didn't have an exact location yet.

"... hurry!", was the last word they got from Neal, before the call was ended.

Peter sighed deeply, a little frustrated. At the same time Diana entered the room.

"What have you got?", she asked.

"We just lost the connection", Jones said and explained what they had managed to gather from the phone call.

A couple of other agents were coming into the office thanks to Diana, who had called in their colleagues while spending her time waiting for the nanny. Peter summoned them all to the conference room. He was happy to see how each and everyone of them seemed to be just as eagerly ready for a break-through as he was.

After a brief meeting, in which they had discussed the conversation with Neal and Mozzie, they all set to do various tasks.

Some were following up on the tracking. Some set to look for what was in the area they had already narrowed it down to, and others started looking for traces of James.

Neal had said "nine", which could mean several things. Road number 9, a part of an address, 9 bad guys, 9 o'clock... They had to look for anything and everything with a 9, but if Neal had referred to the time it could be something happening at 9 this morning. Peter looked at his watch. That gave them less than 4 hours.

He called up Missing Persons and gave an update on the latest development. They had been working on the surveillance during the night, and they had a lead on a van which had actually been going in the same direction, up north, but they had lost it when it left the city. They had, however, been able to get a license plate, but they had turned out to have been stolen from another car.

Peter decided that he better call the Marshal's Office, too, and he tried to sound as authoritative as possible when he quickly informed them that they now had proof that Neal had been kidnapped and was not an escapee. Okay, to be honest they didn't have real proof right now, but the phone call from Mozzie and Neal was good enough for Peter. He certainly knew that Mozzie turning to the FBI was enough proof that they were really in trouble. He thought back to the day that Neal and he had dragged Mozzie into the office under the threat of him being arrested if he didn't comply. Yup, Mozzie and Neal were most definitely in trouble!

When Peter disconnected the call to the Marshal's he noticed a text message from Elizabeth. She would call off the moving van and wouldn't leave for D.C. until she knew that Neal and Mozzie were safe.

Peter texted her back, only three words: "Love you, hon!"

"Love you, too. Go find them, Peter.", El wrote back a few seconds later. I'm working on it, he thought, and I will.

Jones knocked on the door to Peter's office, and Peter put his phone down on the desk to focus on the job. They had a lot of work to do, and they had to find Neal... his friend... and Mozzie as quickly as possible. Agents from Missing Person's would be joining them in a few minutes, and for once Peter was happy to take advantage of their experience in cases like this one. Peter was good at finding forgeries – and Neal, which in this case was a major advantage – but he did need the skills of the trained agents from the other division.

Jones handed him some papers and they set to work.

Neal disconnected the call.

"What are you doing?", Mozzie asked. "We should've kept the line open!"

Neal shook his head.

"It's better we save the battery. They can still trace it."

He started texting, writing a brief summary of what he had been trying to say on the phone. They were in a forest area far from the city, James was involved, Neal was part of a bargain, the names that Neal had caught during the commotion earlier, and finally that something was going down at 9 am. He paused for a moment, took a deep breath and then finished the text message with a simple command: "Find us!"

Before he pushed the send button, Mozzie grabbed Neal's arm with the words "Oh-oh..." and pointed over Neal's shoulder.

Neal looked up and realized that their captors had closed in on them. At least two flashlights were quickly approaching their hiding place, and the voices became louder. One was obviously following the ditch, one was on the road, and soon Neal and Mozzie would be caught right between the two of them.

The light from one of the flashlights hit the ground not far from Neal's feet, sliding close by. He quickly pushed the send button on the phone, not knowing if the message went through, turned off the display, and pushed the phone under some roots. Then he hurriedly shoveled some leaves upon it.

He grabbed Mozzie by the shoulders, tried to focus on his face in the dim light from the moon. The flashlight beam coming from the man walking down the road swept by inches from them.

"Run!", Neal ordered in what could best be described as a yelling whisper. And they did!

TBC...