Lie a Little Better

by Writings of Stardust

Soulmate AU. Special Agent McKenna Anderson is a strong fixture in the White Collar Crime Division. She ends up in a strange relationship with someone she'd normally be trying to catch when Neal Caffrey becomes her consultant. Upon finding her soulmate, things get infinitely harder. She never thought she'd have to choose between being a cop and being a criminal... until she did.

25. I'm Imprisoned, I've Been Living a Lie

Chapter Twenty-Five – I'm Imprisoned, I've Been Living a Lie

June wasn't there to let me in, but the cleaning service was, and by now she recognized me. Alexandra let me inside with a pleasant wave of her feathery duster and locked the door behind me while I tapped an envelope from the porch against my hand. I climbed the stairs up to the penthouse suite carelessly, mostly just excited to see Neal. We had the day off and since Katie was seeing to the administrative duties of owning her own daycare, I thought I'd take my boyfriend to an art museum that was out of his radius.

There was a light on underneath the door. Once I knocked, I only had to wait for a few seconds. Neal pulled it open, already dressed in a comfortable-looking button-down and slacks, hair styled neatly and with a subtle hint of cologne wafting from his throat. I smiled and pushed up onto my toes. Mozzie was visible over Neal's shoulder, playing chess versus himself on his own portable game board on the dining table.

"Hey, Moz!" I called to him cheerily, in such a good mood that even the typical banter sounded like fun. Turning my smile to Neal, I offered him the plain white mail envelope. "This was waiting for you out on the front door. There's no return address, but it has your name."

Neal glanced down at it but didn't seem too invested. Slim fingers plucked it out of my hand while I stood up on my toes again. Neal turned his head so I could give him a kiss on his cheek before brushing past on my way inside.

"Thanks, sweetheart," he told me with a warm smile that reached his eyes. I patted his shoulder and pulled my arms in through my sleeves, stripping my hoodie over my head. It was a thick coat, plain black with Aida! written in bolded white across the front, a token from Broadway.

Ever since spending the few days living with Neal while my house was being fixed, I'd been that much more comfortable at Neal's. It turned out that a lot of my worrying about cohabitation had been for nothing. We had a lot of the same preferences, and the excuses we had for spending time together were limited as it was, so it was hard to get fed up with each other. Both of us preferred to have the air conditioner on and leave us a little cooler (better than sweating), and both of us preferred to keep things orderly. He dealt with me tossing my layers over the couch since he knew I'd pick them up before I left.

"Ew," Mozzie declared, staring at me with the same look of revulsion since he'd looked up in time to see me plant one on Neal's face. "The two of you are disgustingly domestic, have you noticed?"

It was like having a teenager be appalled that his parents did, in fact, kiss one another. I pulled out a chair and sat down across from Mozzie while Neal padded up the room in his white socks. "I don't think he appreciates our romance," I told Neal thoughtfully, smirking.

"I don't think so, either," Neal agreed, grinning at Moz. "He can make the rules when we're in his house." Just to bother his friend, he set a large hand on my shoulder and bent down on my other side, kissing my cheek right in front of Mozzie.

"The suit in my house," Mozzie retorted. "Ha!"

I rolled my eyes. "What are you guys up to today?" No point in interrupting their time together, and if Neal had plans with Mozzie, then an unscheduled trip to the museum wasn't really necessary. I could always phone Diana and see if she and Christy wanted to meet somewhere.

"Still at a standstill working on the music box," Neal reported with a disappointed sigh.

I pursed my lips. That was not what I had meant. Not everything has to be about the music box. Admittedly it seemed like more and more had to do with it, though.

"Realists don't fear the results of their study," Mozzie quipped while pushing around the pieces on his chessboard.

"He's being a fortune cookie again," I whined to Neal, expecting him to do something about it.

Neal looked down at Mozzie with a little bit of feigned annoyance. "Why don't you find me more favorable results, Dostoyevsky?" Slipping a fingernail into the slight crevice between the fold of the envelope and the glue strip, he started to rip it open.

Sighing, Mozzie looked up from his game and crossed his arms on top of the table. "I've hit up everybody who would or could know about the damn music box," he affirmed, looking irritated that things weren't going our way. Normally I would share the feeling, but it was my day off. I wanted to enjoy it, not get sucked back into concerns about Fowler and Kate Moreau. "Nothing's coming up."

"The more we talk about music boxes, the more I want to destroy music boxes! Is it just me, or is anyone else getting absolutely sick of the obsession with this thing?" I looked between both boys expectantly. Neal looked like he was seriously considering smashing some. Mozzie just looked like I was being too impatient. I had stopped even winding the music box I kept my rings and pins inside because I didn't want to hear the tune. "I mean, Fowler and Kate, Alex, and now it's even spreading to us."

My boyfriend (I love thinking that) grimaced. "Don't think of it as an obsession. Think of it as a case. Just… not one you can file a report on," he advised oh-so-helpfully. I gave him a very flat look. It was hard to consider something a case when it missed the very crucial part of casework that involved full explanations.

"That's just the way you like them," I said shortly and wittily, then nodded to Neal's mail. "Who's it from?"

Instead of answering me, Neal looked from the back of a cardstock New York postcard and checked out the chessboard. Not Mozzie's – his own, the one he had set up on a small nightstand table which had been stationed decoratively in front of the wall adjacent to the sliding door out onto the rooftop. The pieces almost never seemed to move. It could be an entire week between one change and the next. I frowned. Honestly, I'd kind of assumed that it was decorative, not practical.

"Ah, your anonymous chess opponent again," Mozzie said knowingly.

I held up my hands for everyone to stop and backtrack. Neal went forwards, literally, striding over to the table and moving a black knight further towards the center of the board. "Wait, what's been going on?" I asked. They had forgotten to tell me anything about an anonymous chess player.

"Neal's been getting postcards with chess moves." Mozzie explained to me, giving me what felt like a slightly longer story in a very simple note. I surveyed him skeptically, wondering if there was an aspect I wasn't being told while Mozzie turned around in his chair to watch Neal study the chessboard and inquire, "Why aren't you more curious about who's sending them?"

Neal rolled his shoulders. "I like the mystery," he answered vaguely.

"Your sister's missing and you can't find the one thing that looks like it might free her. Your relationship is known to all of two people because if anyone else finds out, you're both toast. One could say there's enough mystery in your life." His friend's flat expression and deadpan tone fell on seemingly deaf ears to Neal, but I found myself nodding along with Mozzie, in complete agreement – for once. I was just glad that he hadn't slipped in some hidden comment on how his soulmate mystery, the one everyone carried with them, could have already been solved if it weren't for my withholding information, but when Mozzie had claimed to be unwilling to have anything to do with that, he had been serious. "Where's the postmark from on this one?"

Without checking the card or its envelope, Neal murmured, "There isn't one." He still seemed focused on the board, intent on something about the way the pieces were positioned.

Mozzie and I both shared alarmed glances with each other over the table. "There isn't one?" Mozzie repeated, voice rising. "As in, someone hand delivered this card to your door?"

I shuddered, shoulders jerking. The thought of someone coming up to Neal's door, but with intentions shady enough to keep their identity concealed, spooked me more than I would have liked to admit. I was very shakable where home invasions were concerned, and although the penthouse hadn't been invaded, it was only one step away from porch delivery to picking the lock.

"This is odd," Neal remarked offhandedly.

My eyes practically bugged out of my skull. "If someone is anonymously hand-delivering things to your doorstep, odd is a little bit of an understatement!" I rubbed my eyes and felt my good mood seeping away. It had been nice while it lasted. Work didn't ruin my mood, but I had been looking forward to a day with as little stress as possible. "Why didn't you tell me about this?" I switched to asking, scolding. "Someone knows where you live."

"Your definition of odd and our definition of odd vary. It's all in the perspective," Mozzie announced. It was hard to tell if he was being literal or philosophical. I decided that both was probably a safe bet.

"The other cards have all been blank." Neal turned around to the table and held up his postcard. New York City was still written in the top left corner in red, but the cover was a building that stretched widely in both directions from the front entry. White pillars on both sides of the doors helped it live up to its Gothic Revival style and trees were planted and tended to on both the right and the left. Long posters, ruffled and unsettled by a breeze, draped down in scrolls from their mounts high over the ground floor. "The new one has a picture of the Museum of Natural History on it. A good mystery makes life interesting."

Mozzie frowned cynically. "You know the old Chinese curse, may you live in interesting times?" He asked sardonically.

Neal half-smiled. "That's the first of two curses," he reminded.

"What's the other one?"

"'May you find what you're looking for,'" my artist quoted with a smart smile, clearly believing that by embracing the mystery, he was just facing the lesser of two evils with a graceful approach.

I pointed at him. Mozzie was bad enough, but Neal, too? "If you're going philosophical on me, I will stop letting you watch existential television dramas in my presence," I threatened. I only tolerated them because I got to play with his hair while he laid down or because he rubbed my feet on autopilot while he concentrated on the TV, but I could just as easily get him distracted with some art documentary with the same results.

They both acted as if I wasn't continuing my habit of complaining whenever one of them started quoting proverbs or lines from dead people. "What's the move?" Mozzie questioned.

Neal turned his head back to look at the table again, narrowing his eyes. "Knight to D-seven," he replied apprehensively.

Mozzie had had his elbows propping up his hands, but when he listened to Neal's tone, he lowered both arms to lay flat on the table. "You've done this move before, haven't you?" He asked lowly.

Something sparked. The gears turning in Neal's mind made a connection. He swung back around to face us, leaning over the table. "Moz, I know who I'm playing," he realized aloud. "Keller. This is our last game."

Keller. Being career-oriented towards criminals, my first memory of the name was someone whom I didn't want to consider having been out front of June's and Neal's residence sometime between his arrival at home the night prior and my visit.

"Matthew Keller?" I specified with an uneasy turning in my stomach.

Mozzie pointed at me. "That's the one."

His reaction wasn't nearly negative enough. Matthew Keller was no H. Holmes or Jack the Ripper. Hell, he wasn't even a Tobias Køhler. There was nothing to suggest he got off on his crimes or went out of his way to kill people for the sole purpose of murder… but he made his presence known, loudly, and he was clever enough to get away with having a wide reputation without being caught. Keller was primarily a white-collar criminal. That was how he classed himself, anyway, yet he didn't quite seem to understand how that categorization worked, because he bumped himself from white- to blue-collar with practically every crime he committed. His motivations where white, but his methods were blue.

Keller was quite a character. I'd never met him and never been assigned to his case, but he was the kind of person I would have tackled head-on any other time, before I had a civilian CI to worry about and a department that wasn't going to back me up as a whole thanks to my demotion. Classy and high-maintenance, he went for the gold. Literally. His victims were typically killed quickly and efficiently, without elements of torture or psychological sadism, but that didn't take away from that he was a dangerous acquaintance to have, and the idea of Neal and Keller playing long-distance chess tickled me in a lot of bad ways.

"What the hell are you doing, playing chess with Matthew Keller?" I lifted my voice into a yell and scolded Neal, who seemed disappointingly unaffected. "That's like playing chess with James Moriarty!" Not to mention that he wasn't just playing chess, but Keller had hand-delivered it!

"We've met a few times," Neal answered, blinking his blue eyes, not as wise to how problematic this could get. I would have to enlighten him on that. "Started playing chess a while back, but we never finished our game. He's like the blue-collar version of me."

I wanted to take his collar and (as compassionately as possible) smack his head against the wall. Don't compare yourself to this guy! You're so much better than him! "He's a killer!" I exclaimed, because that was an important part.

"He's a smart guy," Neal defended, although said nothing to refute Keller's status as a homicidal freak.

"He's a killer!" I reiterated in disbelief. Neal, defending a murderer? What? Was Mozzie going to ask about the FBI training process? Was Fowler going to call me up and apologize for being a bitch? Were fluffy animals falling from the sky outside? All I could come up with was that it must have been one hell of a chess game.

Mozzie looked at me, exasperation written on his face, and asked, "Do I need to explain moral relativity to you again?"

"Do I need to explain humanity to you again?" I threw back heatedly. There was no call for being friendly pen pals with Keller! Keller had been here within the last twelve hours because he was playing a board game with Neal!

Realizing I wasn't going to relent, Mozzie huffed. "So Keller is back in New York," he reasoned. I crossed my arms and glowered, discontent with most of the situation. The thought of that bastard anywhere near my friends set me off. "What next?"

"Figure out what he's doing here," I cut in before Neal could do more than open his mouth. I challenged him with my eyes to contradict me. He looked down sheepishly. "Arrest him, if possible," I added to Mozzie sternly. "You said that postcard was different?"

Neal held it up again. "It's the only one hand-delivered, and the only one with the picture."

I inhaled deeply. Well, at least that was a small consolation: Keller had only very recently started making unnerving and uncalled for trips to June's front porch. God, just the thought of him coming close to Neal while my artist was sleeping upstairs made my skin crawl. "People like Keller are always very deliberate with their hints. Let's go to work today."

Neal's face fell. "But we're not due to go in today!" He objected, throwing in a cute pout for good measure. Well, now you know how I feel! This entire morning is just a letdown in the Safety and Caution department! "Don't we get days off anymore, or is that a thing of the past?"

"I want to look into the museum and see what the significance is," I determinedly held myself straight and picked myself up from my chair. No matter how alarmed or comfortable Neal was with his buddy, I was not going to tolerate it, either as an FBI agent or as his lover. "If you'd like to hang out here, playing chess with your psychotic opponent and listening to Moz being dreadfully philosophical, be my guest!"

Mozzie started to look offended but then just gave up and nodded. He couldn't argue either of the descriptors.

Neal's shoulders slumped. He set down the card and its envelope by Mozzie's chessboard. "Kenna, it's like seven in the morning, on a Sunday! No one else is going to be in!"

I held up a fist stubbornly. "Justice never sleeps!" I declared, insistent. The office may not be busy, but it didn't just shut down because of what day of the week it was. There would be enough people there to function as a fully-qualified WCCD unit, I could assure him.

---

"It's nice that you decided to join me after all," I told Neal with a silly, happy grin across my desk, folding my hands underneath my chin.

Neal frowned. "I couldn't let you come to work all alone," he justified, sounding as though leaving me to sort through Keller's new interests was just as bad as committing some heinous crime. "Who's going to have your back if I'm not here?"

I smiled at him warmly. He knew perfectly well that I wouldn't have been alone. None of my usual partners were around to help out, but the FBI contained a lot more than just three agents. The unwillingness to stay home while I looked into a potential threat was sweet. Very sweet.

My computer loaded a news article first on the search results when I typed in the name of the museum on the postcard. "Ah, this must be it." I turned my screen so Neal could see from the other side of my desk. "The museum was robbed Friday evening and an arrest was made almost right after – civilian Manuel Campos."

Neal bent over to read without sitting down. "They caught him stuffing his backpack," he summarized about an entire paragraph's worth of press writing. "He's out on bail."

Switching over to the FBI digital archives, I looked up the man's name and found the more detailed case against him. There were very few Manuel Camposes in our system. Neal's frown deepened while I just shook my head. Campos needed to get out more if his end goal of robbing a museum had been for some relatively worthless items when there were much more expensive displays to steal from.

"What the hell does he want with antique cork ducks, wax-sealed supply lists, and soil samples?" I scoffed.

"Not just any soil samples," Neal corrected me. Evidently that was worth being more precise about. "Sealed French samples from the private collection of Dr. John Bartram, the father of American botany."

I leaned back. Stealing those… huh. The components that set a bunch of dirt apart from the dirt in modern-day France would've been the chemicals and the subtle forensic evidence. I couldn't think of any reason why someone would want those in particular, but the weirder the crime, the harder it was to solve – I refused to believe Sherlock Holmes that it was actually the other way around.

"Either he has something very specific in mind, or something is wrong here," I concluded.

"We could go talk to him and find out," Neal suggested, pointing over to the open doorway.

I didn't jump onboard right away. Campos was presumably at home, since his bail had been put up right after his arrest, but while he had clearly committed a crime, I couldn't see how that tied him to Keller. What was it about stolen French dirt, corks, and supply lists that would appeal to Neal's frenemy? Could it be a deliberate misdirect? It wasn't hard to figure out that Neal was working with the feds, and maybe he had just wanted to send us on a goose chase while he pursued a more serious action.

Even worse, what if it wasn't a misdirect, but instead a clever diversion? What if the entire point of leading us to Campos and the museum theft was to get us out in the open? Did Keller want Neal for something – want to stage up some setting where Neal was injured or implicated? Or maybe he had predicted that I would get involved and was trying to play an angle against the fed that held his acquaintance's leash.

I didn't know Keller any better than Neal did. Having actually interacted with him, I guessed that Neal would have something of an idea for how the blue-collar rival played. "Do you think Keller is involved, or is he just pointing you to it?" I questioned, second-guessing the pen pals' relationship. "I mean, some guys, they treat opposition like a game. If he's playing chess with you, he almost certainly does, so maybe he's thinking of this as something funny to show his friend."

Neal shook his head, tightening his mouth subtly. "Keller is not my friend," he stated firmly.

Well, in that case, Keller probably wasn't trying to help out Neal by attacking his handler, and if the postcard wasn't a joke, then it probably wasn't supposed to be anything physically against my consultant, either. No henchman working for Keller would be dumb enough to try anything with an agent right at their mark's side, and Keller wasn't bold enough or dumb enough to do something himself out in the open. I hoped.

"Then let's go see what we can find out," I sighed. This had all the makings of a real brain-twister. Keller was going to be a pain in the ass, I could already tell.

---

We walked from the nearest parallel parking space down the few blocks to Campos' address. He was on the opposite side of the street, but the neighborhood was residential and it was a crowded place of one-story houses, small gardens, and shared driveways. A few mailboxes were in disrepair. These things aside, it was still a sunny, friendly place, with family-friendly cars parked both in driveways and off of the curbs, many homes with yard decorations and growing gardens, and painted trellises up the siding of the houses.

"What's the big deal with ducks, supply lists, and soil?" I asked Neal, unable to get those out of my head. What was even the point? It was such a weird list.

Neal cocked his head while he considered. "The supply lists are ancient and for someone to know they're here, they were probably on display," he reasoned. "It's probably the wax that was more important."

Right, the wax they were sealed with. Wait, no, hold on, that doesn't make sense, either. "The wax?" I repeated skeptically.

"Yeah," Neal confirmed animatedly. "Wax can be used in a lot of ways, especially in…" He glanced to me to make sure I was listening and he caught himself before he said something to imply he had experience he shouldn't. I raised my eyebrows and tried not to laugh at the "oops" expression on his face. "… Certain capacities that you may want to be able to claim you don't know about," he muttered, turning to stare at the sidewalk.

I snickered but touched his back, guiding with a hand over his lower spine. "Not wanting to know and not needing to know are very different." He might have to tell me eventually, and I wanted him to be prepared for that. I sucked on my tongue, cheeks drawing in, and huffed. "I want to stay with you tonight."

"Okay," Neal said a little bit too quickly. I glared at him for being so enthusiastic. He laughed. "I'm not going to object."

I rolled my eyes. I should've known that he would assume I wanted to stay over for the usual reasons. We weren't in a typical situation, so was it really weird that my motivations were atypical? "Game or not," I went on, making sure he got the message. "I don't like that he has your address."

The light came on. "So… you don't want a date night, you want to sleep with a gun under your pillow," he interpreted with exasperation. Was it sad that I might have actually, literally slept with my gun underneath my pillow?

"If you don't convince me to sleep on the bed, it'll actually be just under the couch," I said impishly.

"That must be him," Neal said off-topic, nodding towards a Hispanic man coming up towards his house from the adjacent block with brown paper bags full of groceries, wearing jeans and a plaid shirt. He came up to the crosswalk while the engine of another car prompted him to look around. "Look, much as I think it's sweet that you want to be my bodyguard, it's a little much. If Keller wanted me dead, I'd be dead. End of story."

"No, not end of story," I argued. I wasn't going to put Neal's safety up to the chance that Keller's temperament was the same as it was during a game of backgammon. "Keller's not unlike some other guys I've gone up against in the past, and I'm not taking the risk that you'll be hurt because he has some temper tantrum."

Campos looked both ways and was satisfied that the engine was far enough away. As he walked out, the roaring behind me got louder. I looked over my shoulder and stopped walking. A black minivan sped up, rocketing over a speedbump and flying along, tires skidding. I put my arm out in front of Neal to get him to stop, protective even though we weren't in the street.

"Whoa!" Neal stopped and turned away from the car, watching it in shock. Campos heard the engine getting closer a lot faster than it should have and looked up. It had been on the other end of the block when he'd started into the crosswalk. Now it was less than half that distance. "He's got to be going fifty," Neal worried.

As the car passed us, I could see the back as well as the front. I looked for the license plate number to refer them to the NYPD for reckless driving, but there was none on the back. That was when I realized I hadn't seen any on the front, either.

"No plates," I warned, because not having any legal means of identification was only a signal of sinister intent.

Campos was struggling to keep his groceries in hand, but he dropped them intentionally and started at a sprint. I ripped my gun out of the holster and flicked off the safety while raising it up to aim with both hands (we were in a residential neighborhood; kids lived here, I didn't want to hit anyone, just the car). Campos wasn't in shape and his dead run wasn't too much faster than my heavy jog, but he would've been fast enough if the automobile hadn't sped up again, slamming on the accelerator and veering to the left side of the street to hit him.

I fired a shot towards the car's tires. In response, Neal clamped his hands over his ears and ducked behind me. That wasn't just speeding and reckless endangerment – that was attempted vehicular assault. The first one popped and hit something, but it most likely ricocheted, because none of the tires seemed affected.

The second noise wasn't as loud as my gunfire, but it was more sickening. A loud crunch and the screeching of brakes led to the man's body being rammed into and then thrown up over the top of the car. Limply, he rolled off the back and collapsed onto the asphalt motionlessly, the car speeding up again and turning so sharply that it went up on two wheels.

Someone who had come outside to see what was going on screeched and woke up the neighborhood from its morning tranquility. I kept firing at the car for as long as it was in sight, and I knew I must have hit it at least once. My aim was excellent. The issue was that it wasn't enough to make the car stop, and although I did think to shoot at the back and shatter out the rear window, the car was already turning, and I couldn't see anyone in the backseat, just the shadow of a driver in the windshield.

I lowered my gun and looked at the man lying in the street. "Here!" I started shoving my gun at Neal, forcibly wrapping his fingers around the handle. Neal whined in his throat in protest but took it with more stability, adjusting his hold. "Don't shoot anyone, just shoot at the car if it comes back!" I hated putting him in that position, but Campos needed immediate attention and I knew for a fact, thanks to his threatening skeet shooting, that Neal was an excellent marksman – just as good as I was, so I could trust him to be responsible with the weapon.

I raced out into the street, making a beeline to the man lying on his side. The white door to his address slammed. Another screech. A Latina woman with her black hair bound up covered her mouth and started shrieking and sobbing. I yelled over her to call an ambulance, the police.

Campos's leg was twisted brokenly. Bone didn't pierce through the skin, but there was very obviously a severe break in his femur that bowed the muscle. He was unconscious, blood at his mouth, his breath coming in rough, raw gargles. I leaned over his mouth and listened to his breath, decided it sounded like there was blood in his lungs, and correspondingly opted to leave him on his side so he was less likely to choke.

While I did what I could to stabilize any injuries, a man from the neighbors came out asking to help. Neal came to join and stood over us, looking everywhere for the car to make a repeat performance. Neal held my gun with one hand long enough to chuck his phone at the neighbor and told him to call Derek's cell phone number, telling him to report an attempted murder and an immediate medical emergency. Then I sent him inside to collect damp cloths and the materials for a makeshift splint. Neal kept guard (I would've let him help, I knew the gun made him uncomfortable, but I didn't trust anyone else with the firearm) while the neighbor and I splinted Campos' leg to help ensure that the broken bone wouldn't pierce any arteries.

I hated myself for feeling so useless and making a damn splint when the man's chest was already coloring lividly and blood was dripping down his face, with obvious head and internal trauma, but I wasn't a doctor and I did what I could, even though it wasn't much. I did more for the neighbors that came running out than I did for Campos; knowing I was an FBI agent helped them calm down and feel safe a lot more than it helped my patient.

---

"Yes, sir." I knocked a pen back and forth between my fingers and held my desk landline up to my ear. "Thanks for letting me know." While a troubled-looking CI knocked on my door, I replaced the phone on the receiver and waved him inside. Neal pushed the door shut behind him and slowly walked up to sit down across from me.

I put my head in my hands over my desk and sighed deeply. If I'd had any doubts about this being one big headache waiting to happen, they were put to rest now. My day off had very quickly become a very important work shift. Caffrey, Dorsett, and now Keller, all in one year. Sure, it sounded great in theory, but in practice, I really could have gone another few months without taking on another big name.

"That was the hospital," I told Neal wearily, shoulders fallen. Robber or not, Campos shouldn't have been a victim of vehicular assault. "Campos died on the operating table. Severe internal trauma included several broken ribs, one of which punctured and collapsed his lung." I had done what I could, and probably done a bit to keep him alive long enough for the ambulance, but he'd been coding before they even got to the emergency ward. The only way I could have done anything more was if I'd been trained in giving improvised tracheotomies and had been able to staunch internal bleeding I wasn't even certain existed. Rubbing my hands down my cheeks, I looked up to my consultant, who looked even more upset than when he'd come in. "Internal bleeding made it messy, but fast. His wife didn't see the driver, and NYPD is out of leads. Tinted windows, no plates, common model. Is this Keller's handiwork?"

Neal hesitated. "He's always been less sophisticated," he reluctantly nodded, hanging his head afterwards and worrying his thumbs over the sides of his hands. "To him, vehicular murder is just as entertaining as a cipher… or a game of chess," he added. I rolled my eyes. "There's a reason Keller's never been caught." Because anyone close to him gets silenced.

I hadn't been exactly content to just wonder to myself the extent of Neal's familiarity with Matthew, but now I had a professional obligation to start thinking deeper into it. "Tell me about your interactions with him," I instructed tiredly, resigning to listening with as little judgment as possible. Neal didn't always have the luxury of being too picky about his company. Safety had to come before ethics, especially if Keller had ever been in a position to hurt him.

Neal pursed his lips and lifted his shoulders as if to say that it was all really very simple and it was a short story. "We met at the Grand Casino in Monaco while both working the world backgammon finals," he told me a little bit guiltily, looking past me to the window to check the reflection, making sure we were still without company. "The last thing I heard about him was that he ran an airport robbery in the middle of Stockholm."

Confirming what he'd heard, I bobbed my head. Once Campos had been hit, I'd sent word to Diana to look into everything recent about Keller and his movements. It seemed prudent to be on top of things, especially if he wasn't just passing through. The last thing I wanted was to be blindsided by him.

"He threatened staff unloading a plane full of gold and drove off in the middle of the daylight," I explicated further, unable to help but sound a little like an angry parent. Honestly, Keller was crude in his methods, so their effectiveness drove me a little bit mad. "No one followed him because he had gotten his hands on a lot of toy explosives, and everyone thought they'd go off if they got too close. He's a real charmer," I snorted, and then threw up my hands. "And you met him playing backgammon."

With wide, innocent eyes, Neal said, "It was simpler times."

Of course it had been. It would've been years ago, before Fowler, before the music box, before me, before prison – before Peter caught up with him after years of trying and held him accountable for forging the bonds to a company. Hanging out in casinos, enjoying simpler cons and basking in the heady success of getting away with what he shouldn't have. Maybe they were simpler, but they were also lacking in a lot of the components of life that I couldn't have tolerated being without – friends, a home, connections, and any sort of honesty or responsibility.

"You know, most people, they go to casinos and they meet friends. One-night-stands." Sardonically, I ticked off some options on my hands. "Sometimes the odd celebrity! You," I pointed at him decisively. "You go gambling and you manage to make pen pals with an internationally-wanted psychopath." No one would ever be able to say that Neal Caffrey did things halfway. Having a similar thought, Neal smiled sheepishly. "Congratulations; I don't know whether to applaud or scold you."

He held up a hand to give his two cents. "If you have to do either, I'd prefer the one with less negativity."

He was just impossible sometimes. His cheeks were dimpled with a hopeful smile that I wouldn't get on him too badly about his choice in company, hesitantly giving me a charismatic and toothy grin. All he needed to go with it was a rose pinned to his lapel and he could've been asking his crush to prom.

"Campos's bail was posted in the wife's name, but I don't think she could've come up with the money so quickly," I moved on reluctantly, letting it pass – at least for the time being. Being Neal's girlfriend was a lot more work than it seemed on the surface. I had to choose my battles carefully and keep in mind that we were practically from different worlds, where different rules applied.

He wasn't surprised in the least. "Keller probably paid off the bail so he wouldn't be in custody," Neal theorized. "Easier to get rid of him."

Right, yeah. It bothered me a little bit that Neal could so quickly come up with a good reason for murder, but he wasn't exactly sheltered, especially not since someone ended up dead in a lot of the cases we took. Sometimes we were the ones that came closest to being the murder victims, a fact which still shook him to the core on occasion – though he was intent on letting as few people know as possible.

One person was dead already, and the body count would only rise if Keller was permitted to continue through America unchecked. "What does Keller want with ducks, wax, and dirt?" I asked, wrinkling my nose. It seemed like such an unsavory list. What was he going to do, open up an exhibit on dust?

Neal started to shake his head, as clueless as I was, but just before he started to follow through, he stopped, lips parting with a soft inhale. His tongue darted out and was pinched between his teeth, eyes focusing in on the mug of coffee and looking through the ceramic, really thinking of something completely different. His expression lit up but he appeared hesitant to commit.

My chair squeaked as I sat up on the edge and crossed my arms on the table. "Alright, I see the lights turning on in there, pretty boy. Spill," I instructed.

Neal looked away, avoiding my eyes. That, more than anything else, told me that he was about to tell me something that he knew I wouldn't be very impressed by. "It was a bet Keller and I made a long time ago," he led with, cringing when I predictably huffed. A bet. Great. That's how all the bad decisions seem to start. "To counterfeit a bottle of wine owned by Ben Franklin."

"Wine. Should've guessed." Sarcastically, I flicked my middle finger against the pen I was still holding, listening to the full story but unable to resist the easy quip.

Shooting me a look to shut up about his vices, Neal continued. "Queen Marie Antoinette gave Franklin a bottle of Château Du Mons. It's rumored to be in private hands, but it's never gone to auction. The point is, the Franklin bottle can't be counterfeited."

In that case, it didn't make much sense to make a bet on which of them could pull it off. Instead of pointing this out, I arched an eyebrow. "And why not?" I prompted. It was probably some technicality that they thought they were clever enough to work their way around – Neal as a masterful forger and Keller as a professional at threats of all kinds, they probably figured they could manage it (or, in Keller's case, get someone else to do it for them).

"Chemical compounds," Neal said simply. I blinked at him. He expounded. "Cesium one thirty-seven wasn't in nature when the bottle was corked. It wasn't released until we dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan." I gestured for him to go on, signaling that I was following along, while making a small mental note that he included himself as part of America. Yet another point to that he grew up an American before he changed his name and got up to all sorts of unsanctioned mischief. "The compounds scattered and spread across the world. Anything bottled after the bombing will have cesium traces. The Franklin bottle doesn't."

"And you can't just move the alcohol from an older bottle, even in a vacuum, because it tampers with oxygen saturation." I snapped my fingers. "Interesting." Although it still didn't explain what the hell kind of skewed sense it made to make that bet when it wasn't even chemically feasible.

Neal smirked. "May the best forger win."

Or the one with the most ability to get the actual bottle and then claim to have made it themselves…

Shaking my head in disbelief, I put down my pen on the table and went to start dismantling Neal's pride. He did not need to seem so pleased by his own challenge when it had resulted in someone dying. His ego had better not get in the way of this investigation. Luckily, I knew all I'd have to do to keep that in check was remind him that Keller had already crossed a line between white- and blue-collar offenses.

"I have the utmost respect for your white-collar games," I started to diplomatically promise.

Scowling at me, Neal cut me off. "No, you don't," he accused.

"You're right, I don't," I quickly confessed. "But I was trying to be polite." I didn't think that there was any game or rivalry worth committing crimes for. They were crimes because they hurt people. Admittedly it was worse to kill someone than to steal their wallet, but while some offenses were more serious, that didn't make some of them condonable. The list of excusable reasons to commit legal violations was short, and their personal entertainment wasn't on it. "He's the killer. Even if he didn't kill Campos, he is still a killer, and I want him in custody before more people are hurt."

---

It seemed like I had the fortune of speaking to the manager of every alcoholic auction house in New York State before I finally hit the gold with one that actually claimed to have the famous Château in their lists, and I wasted no time before I politely asked… and then demanded… that the manager travel to the FBI for a face-to-face chat. The man was stuffy over the phone and balked at the idea until I threatened to come to him with a warrant. I didn't specify what kind of warrant I'd get because I wasn't too sure at the time, but it did the trick.

If I'd thought he'd seemed stuffy on the phone, then that was nothing compared to how he was in person. He dressed similarly to Neal when the latter wasn't wearing one of June's late husband's suits – dark trousers, a button-down, and a vest, but where Neal's were intentionally tight and well-fitted to show off his body, the manager of the auction wore his close looser. He was portly and stout, somewhere between his early and late fifties, and already had thinning and lightening brown hair. His vision was corrected by thin, metallic-framed prescription glasses, and his attitude left a lot to be desired.

Still, I had to try to be polite, as a civil servant. Sometimes I wished I had thrown in the towel on the bureau and just become a bounty hunter instead. They didn't get in trouble for being mean when it was called for. I had to be smarter about holding my tongue, which was the last thing I wanted to do when confronted with this whiny little man.

"Mr. Cattigan-" I left the conference room door open and walked in, having dreaded doing the interview once Diana had come and told me that I should talk to him first, because she might say something she shouldn't.

Cattigan held himself higher, arrogant. "Sir Roland Cattigan," he amended me stiffly, British accent haughty and offended.

"…" Wow, already off to a terrible start. I yanked out a chair with my foot and sat down in it, sitting at an angle to the manager of the auction house. "Right, whatever, I saw a man be hit with a car today, I'm not feeling very obliging." In fact, I really wanted to restart with another statement of 'Mr. Cattigan.' "What do you know about the Ben Franklin bottle of Château Du Mons?"

Immediately after asking, Sir Cattigan puffed up and held his chin higher. "More than most, I'd certainly say. It is currently in the safe legal protection of Weatherby's Fine Wines' collections. A seller will be presenting it on Friday and we will be adding it to our auction."

I added the days up very quickly in my head. That wasn't very long; if Keller's point was to get it passed in the auction as authentic, then he'd be out of town before Saturday morning even dawned. "I want the seller's name," I said firmly. If Keller was using his own, then great; that would be plenty of probable cause to seize it. If not, then it was another lead to get to him.

Cattigan narrowed his bushy eyebrows at me. "May I ask why the FBI wants to know?" He primly said, clearly suspecting me of something sinister.

"It's a forgery," I told him bluntly, enjoying the way he spluttered, personally insulted. "And it's connected to the murder I mentioned," I offered as an afterthought. There. I thought those were both pretty good reasons.

After staring at me for a few seconds with his eyes incredibly wide, Cattigan reached up to slide his glasses off of his face and scrubbed at the lenses with the hem of his grey tweed vest. "It's quite impossible that the Franklin bottle is anything but legitimate," he defended unconvincingly. I looked up to the corner of the room the same way that the exasperated characters looked at the cameras on The Office. "The bottle-"

"Can't be faked," I cut in. "Blah, blah, I heard."

"My seller would wish to remain anonymous." The manager pushed his glasses back up onto his face, the translucent plastic pads covering up the pale impressions that his lenses were leaving on his nose. His voice had such a tone of finality to it that I understood it was more of a refusal than just a comment.

"Sucks to be him," I said reproachfully, warning him not to be difficult.

Cattigan scowled at me for my lack of compassion. "Tell me, Agent," he said staunchly, holding his back perfectly straight, his arms looking stiff as he rested his wrists on the edge of the table. "Do you fancy yourself a wine aficionado?"

Oh, for God's sake. I could've slammed his head into the table happily. What was it with people who constantly seemed to think that murder paled in comparison to their businesses and reputations?! I was never going to hold alcohol higher than I held human life, no matter how old or rare the drink was.

"Not personally, but do you see this?" I held out my hands above the table, palms together. Cattigan leaned forwards and peered at my hands as I opened them, slowly spreading them and showing the empty air I'd been cradling. "These are all the fucks I care to give," I announced grandly.

Going off of the look he graced me with, which was quite similar to the way the Westboro Baptist Church looked at openly gay people, I had just cursed his firstborn.

"I understand you have a reputable business to run, but I'm far more concerned with the lives and safety of citizens who are apparently now being run down with suburban cars," I said pointedly, trying to give him a little bit more perspective.

Which didn't work the way that it was supposed to. He shifted in his chair and angled himself sideways to me, his objectionable priorities becoming crystalline. "You're seeing sideways," he accused.

I'm the one seeing sideways?!

I almost smacked my head into the table. I would have, if it weren't for the tactic that occurred to me just in the nick of time before I dropped my face towards the wood.

I leaned forwards, bringing my shoulders with me, and settled in on the table sideways, elbow up on the desk, using my fist to prop my head up. "Have you ever contacted the LaMontagne family in Europe?" I asked languidly, crossing my legs and using the toe of my shoe to knock the chair side to side. "You know, they're fancy and elite and have a lot of money? I know for a fact that the matriarch has a taste for old wines, and you've got one of the most reputable auctions in North America."

Cattigan pursed his lips when I dropped the name and he was careful of how he answered, very picky with how he addressed the topic I'd brought up. "Without violating the confidentiality agreements between myself and my sellers, I can't answer that the way you'd like, Agent." He scratched the side of his nose. "I can, however, say that I am aware of the name and find it preposterous to think that anyone carrying the name has anything to do with any forgeries or manslaughter."

Well, that bit's at least somewhat nice of you. The LaMontagne reputation proceeds them in certain circles. He mistook my meaning, though, and misinterpreted the reason why I was asking.

"I'm not sure you understand the difference between murder and manslaughter. You can't use them interchangeably." I told him, turning down my lips. "I have personal connections to the LaMontagne family," I threw out there for whatever effect it may have had. "And I know quite a bit about your business, so if you could refrain from treating me like a fool, that would be awesome, thanks."

And we were back to being defensive and righteously affronted. "My palate is insured by the lords of London for a million euros!" He wasn't boasting, exactly – his tone wasn't right for that – but he was certainly trying to make a point about his own dignity or integrity or whatever. "You may understand the subtleties of my business, but your loyalties don't have the same ties."

Did he expect that to bother me? I was proud of that, given what his priorities seemed to be! "Right, because I value human life more than I value stuffy bottles of Château." He squinted at me cynically. "I really don't like people like you, sir – privileged elitists who brag about their taste and class are annoying enough, but when you start prioritizing your minor struggles over the deaths of other peoples' loved ones, I get really done, really fast. I'm going to make this very simple for you." I uncrossed my legs and crossed my arms in front of my chest. "You give me a name, or I shut down your business – and, yes, you will have to inform your clientele – and search your offices very, very thoroughly with a court-issued search warrant."

Cattigan's eyes looked filled with a longing to reach between us and throttle me to within an inch of my life, yet his dignity prevented him from causing a scene. Shifting, he clenched his fists and the muscles in his arms tightened underneath his shirt sleeves. His face turned a little pinker as he took slower breaths, doing self-control holds of his breath.

"I don't know the seller," he grudgingly confessed, glaring icily at me for wrangling it out of him. "But the broker for the bottle is a woman named Grace Quinn." I smiled sweetly at him. He was not impressed. "Are you satisfied?" He snapped temperamentally.

"No," I retorted, getting mouthy. "But I am thankful for your… cooperation." That word might have been a stretch, all things considered.

---

I rocked back onto my heels, standing right in front of Neal's desk and smiling down at him over the top of his computer monitor. Locking my hands behind my back, I waited for him to look up. I was staring at his thick, dark brown hair for almost a full minute before he finished drawing on a post-it note that he'd stuck onto the top of a written statement regarding the vehicular attack. When he looked up at me, he smiled cheekily like he hadn't left me waiting.

Not today, Neal! His attitude in the workplace wasn't going to get to me today because I had already gotten to vent some of my frustration out onto Cattigan. "I have the broker's name!" I announced proudly, beaming down into his gorgeous blues and holding my arms out in celebration.

Neal blinked and started to give me a smile. "That was fast," he said bemusedly.

"I got irritated."

"That explains it." Neal smirked. "Didn't take you very long."

I scowled down at him. Okay, so maybe he was just as capable of getting under my skin as he had always been. "Shut up," I snapped eloquently, and then went back to grinning, determined not to let him take away my triumph. "Grace Quinn owns a wine cellar called Bin Nine-Oh-Three uptown. Very nice, very exclusive, and my bet is that getting to her is crucial to getting near Keller."

Just like Neal, Keller had a notorious eye for beautiful girls. Unlike Neal, Keller didn't see a problem with using them as shields, so while I did want to talk to Quinn under the assumption she was in on it, I also wanted to make sure she acted alright. I wouldn't have put it past our killer to be forcing her hand under duress.

"Excellent." Neal put down his sharpened pencil and moved his wrist surreptitiously to cover up the shaded pink post-it, thinking maybe I hadn't already seen it. As long as he was getting his work done, I didn't care. I wasn't completely guilt-free of doodling during boredom. "Let me go talk to her."

I leaned back, perturbed, and corrected, "Don't you mean us?"

Neal sucked in his cheeks, making his face narrower while he shook his head. I felt more than a little excluded and pushed my hands into my pockets. "If you ask around with a badge, you'll scare Keller away," Neal explained, looking a little too mirthful as he took in my put out expression. "He's a rat. He likes toying with me, but if he thinks the FBI are getting wise to him, he'll back away before you have anything more than circumstance for the prosecution. I'll tell her I'm representing a client who's interested in the bottle, and see what I can dig up." He lifted one shoulder, smiling reassuringly at me.

I sighed. What a disappointing turn of events… I couldn't argue with Neal's logic, and though I hated the idea of letting him go after anyone even possibly connected to the psycho on his own, that was part of the deal of his work-release: having a CI who could use his skills to get information that agents couldn't.

I had no grounds to refuse him, but that didn't mean I had to be happy about it. And I wasn't. Fussing about it for a few seconds, looking in other directions unhappily, I bounced harder on my heels until I finally realized I didn't have a better alternative.

"You promise to be careful?" I asked in defeat.

Neal graced me with a much sincerer smile; a subtle turn of his lips, a warm expression in his eyes. "Promise," he vowed emphatically.

I fidgeted. "Share what you find?" I also asked.

My consultant stuck his right hand up and pressed his left over his heart. "I swear."

"Don't approach Keller without backup if you see him." I established. It seemed like common sense, but I couldn't be too careful with Neal.

He kept doing his mocking pledge. "Cross my heart," he vowed, and then cracked a grin and actually crossed an 'X' over his heart.

Did he think he was helping? He was actually making me more nervous by not taking it seriously. "Okay," I said, gripping the edge of his desk and wishing we weren't in public, just so I could smack his face lightly and then kiss his lips gently. "Be very safe, and very careful."

---

I opened the door expecting to see Katie, but found my consultant instead. "Neal," I said, surprised, stepping aside on impulse to let him enter. Giving me a modest smile, Neal came through the front door and let me close it behind him. "Hey…" I hadn't expected him back so soon, and doubly expected him not to show up right at my house. I'd kind of expected a phone call, not a house visit.

Once the door was closed, Neal reached for my face, taking both of my cheeks in his hands and tilting my head up. "Hey, beautiful," he murmured sweetly, dipping his head down to meet our lips softly.

I raised my hands up to his shoulders and passively held on, rubbing my left hand along his throat, following up to the back of his neck and curling my fingers through his hair loosely. The quiet sound of kissing was nearly all I could hear in the quiet, and the heat of his hands flooded my face, making me feel pleasantly feverish. As our lips parted and he touched our foreheads together, I let out a contented, breathy sigh.

I swallowed and released his hair. "How did your meeting go?" I asked, unwilling to let him go, but my house wasn't as secure as his, as Fowler had aptly proven twice, and while I expected Katie home at any time, Neal was proof that just because I expected someone didn't make them the next person to come by.

Neal had the same thoughts, and after turning his head to bump our noses fondly, he stroked my cheeks with his thumbs and dropped his hands from my face. "I didn't find anything on Keller," he said, sounding disappointed. He looked around the hallway. "Hey, where's Katie?"

"Out with Dana," I answered. "We have the house to ourselves for however long it takes her to get back from Dana's."

"Dana Mitchell?" Neal asked, eyes glimmering brightly with recognition.

"That's the one," I said, crossing my arms and smiling slightly.

"Huh." He shrugged it off. "Good for them."

Dana and her husband, Captain John Mitchell, had been the victims of a scheme trying to deflect the blame for grand larceny from a state department employee and onto some innocent citizens. It came to my attention through Katie, who was Dana's friend from back when they went to the same high school, and it was the first time I'd met John. Neal and I had solved the case, and with a little help from Mozzie… and his car… took down the person responsible and exonerated John.

"How long would it take him to forge the bottle?" I took a deep breath and hooked my thumbs through my pockets, looking curiously up at Neal through my fringe. I'd already changed out of my suit and into some comfier civilian clothes, but I'd go get redressed if I needed to.

Neal's face was uncertain. "I don't know," he admitted. "It depends on how much he had done before the museum heist." I motioned to him that it was okay. I didn't expect him to have all the answers about someone else's crime. For all we knew, Keller didn't have anything started before using Campos to get the supplies. Conversely, he could have had everything but the wax, soil, and cork materials already finished. "Did you find anything?"

I held my arms out like a target. "Nothing on him in America." Which meant that we couldn't use the convenient excuse of other charges or a Wanted tab on the FBI website to just nab him whenever we saw him; we needed probable cause even just to hold him for seventy-two hours. However, I had figured out his motivations for taking on their counterfeiting bet now as opposed to when it was actually made, or later on, when his opponent wasn't an FBI associate. "But," I said sharply, and Neal looked up optimistically. "I do know why he's trying to put an expensive bottle to auction. There's a hit on him from the Russian mob."

"Really?" Neal gasped and his eyes widened. There wasn't as much admiration for Keller as there had been before he'd been wanted dead by a foreign mafia. "Wow."

"The gold he stole in Stockholm was bankrolled with Russian mob money." I smirked as I explained. I felt like this was karma at its finest. Maybe that would teach Keller not to threaten people with toy bombs. "He probably took it without knowing who it belonged to…" Although having someone killed right in front of an FBI agent was a pretty bold and ballsy move, so maybe he wasn't all that smart and knew exactly who the gold belonged to… "But the Russians are really not happy. They felt cheated that he left the continent without paying up."

"If they catch him now, they'll kill him," Neal said with a worried frown – not so much for Keller, but for the murder of another human.

It made me feel warm that he was still so opposed to murder, even the murder of someone who had killed more people than we even knew of, so I pretended not to be enjoying the irony quite as much as I actually was. "Right, so why draw attention to himself? Answer: he's using this forgery to get enough money to not only give them the original amount, but extra to cushion that he skipped out on them."

"He's going to pay off the debt with the money from the bottle," Neal agreed, convinced.

"We have to find him first," I said stubbornly, and not entirely free of concern, nor was it simply out of possessiveness for the claim of having caught Matthew Keller. If the Russians found him first, then they'd kill him, and they'd quite possibly do it painfully. I wasn't going to say that Keller didn't have it coming, but as a decent human being, it was my responsibility to at least try to prevent it from happening. I'd rather he be chained up and locked behind bars than slaughtered. "If the Russians do, then he's dead; if he pays them back then he's given out a fraudulent bottle for hundreds of thousands of dollars."

"Something tells me that finding him won't be an issue," Neal sighed. I perked up. He produced a slip of a trifold flyer from the inside pocket of his blazer. It was a dark rust-colored advertisement. "I found this in Quinn's. It was hidden between the pages of a book."

I took what he was offering. It looked like it belonged to a history guide's tour group, highlighting their stops. "A brochure?" I turned it over to see the back and unfolded all three sides.

"Look at what's circled."

On the second third of the front side, the calligraphy of a bar's name was circled with red ink. The black "King's Crown" was inscribed inside a light brown oval, and the tail of the K underlined the word "King's." To the right and close to the fold of the thick paper was 8:00 PM in the same colored pen, handwriting slow and deliberate but with some characteristics of generally messier and faster penmanship.

"King's Crown, a tavern once frequented by George Washington, was long since buried and now lays under Water Street." I read the summary underneath the name and then darted my eyes back to the time. That was as clear a message as any. "Eight PM." I checked my watch. We had more than enough time to get there. "Let's go."

I pushed the ad back to Neal so that he could keep it and I could go get my gun and a jacket to protect my arms from the chill as the sun set. Neal took it without objection, but he seemed surprised by my initiative. "You're coming with me?"

Avoiding spooking Keller was one thing, but there was no way in all of the seven hells that I was letting Neal go meet with him on his own. He didn't have to know I was a cop, if that would keep him in town long enough to get him on something official. Plenty of people carried guns without being law enforcement – himself included.

"I don't trust him alone with you," I told him flatly. If he refused to take me with him, then I might have actually handcuffed him to some furniture and made Katie scold some sense into him. "We don't have to tell him I'm a fed."

---

The King's Crown tavern had long since been sucked down out of the city's modern landscaping, but it was a lot easier to access than usual – the corner of Water Street had been pulled into some construction site, leaving a large chunk of the neighborhood looking unsightly and eerie, especially once night had fallen and we were seeing our way via the streetlights and warning tubes of light lining the edges of the dangerous property.

There was a bright yellow No Trespassers! sign pinned to the ten-foot-high wire fence posted in the soft ground right along the edge of the cement sidewalk, but the construction crew had to have some way to get themselves and their equipment inside, so the fence had plenty of entry points. I looked at the sign angrily until it occurred to me that we had probable cause to trespass – we had good reason to believe that a crime (incidentally, trespassing) was in progress, so as a federal agent, it was practically my duty to trespass to apprehend.

The floor was covered in soil, flooring all pulled up, ground raked and dust puffing out under my shoes in the lighter areas. It wasn't completely disorderly, but it was chaotic in the way that only construction zones can be, with hardhats on a rack and only in an order that made sense to their wearers; CAT machines turned off and hauntingly looming over the lot, shadows casting dark shapes on the ground that moved spookily when a car's headlights roved across the block; objects and tools which would play integral parts in the building set around in an order according to when and where they would be needed.

I stayed very close to Neal's side, my gun tucked in a shoulder holster underneath my blazer. I'd pulled on a black coat over my civilian clothes, skintight, ripped, dark jeans, and a tight-fitting grey shirt with lace shoulders and midriff. The straps were concealed by my extra layer, but I could feel the pressure of the suspenders being yanked on my shoulders and uncomfortably pressing against my breasts reassuringly. There was a reason I usually wore a belt holster instead.

We walked towards the corner of the block, looking down to avoid stepping on anything. I was particularly on the lookout for snakes, rats, or sharp objects. Hands between us, fingers loosely wrapped up in each other's, Neal and I looked around intently. I was beginning to worry that we had come into a trap or a bluff when something clanged loudly – the fence, as something was thrown hard against it.

We both looked to our left. Against the ground near the fence, a shadow moved, like a human arm. The human himself was obscured from view by the shadow of a stack of metal sheetrock.

In between the two of us and the man against the fence was a construction pit. It had to be over ten feet both ways, was square-shaped, and had yet to be filled in. A long steel beam less than a foot wide crossed it, three feet of either side on the opposite edges of the pit. It would theoretically be safe to walk across, if your balance was kept… it looked too heavy for someone to shove in the time it would take to walk across.

I eyed that beam and memorized where I was relative to it. Someone could come bolting across, or it could become a shortcut in a pursuit.

"Matthew Keller!" Neal called, knowing full well who was waiting for us and trying to get our attention.

The quiet chuckle made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. "So you got my postcards," a Scottish brogue drawled humorously, a casual lilt to his tone that reminded me unsettlingly of someone who wasn't taking anything around them seriously, who saw consequences as below them.

Neal advanced. I tightened my grip on his hand to slow him down. He may have personal experience with Keller, but I was calling the shots. If I decided it was too dangerous, Neal was getting out. I had the experience with killers, and a lot can change in a murderer in the at least five years since they last saw each other.

"Thanks for keeping in touch," Neal called across the pit to our adversary, his foot still forward like he wanted to bolt for the man, itching to do something.

"We never did get to finish our game." Keller sounded pouty and disappointed, a kid who was told to go to bed before their TV show was over. "Aren't you curious to see who wins?"

He stepped out of the shadows, taking slow but long strides out into the open lighting of the streetlight to the left of the pit, over the side of the fence. His face looked narrow and clean-cut, hair short and dark, in the outline of a suit like Neal's preferred variety. I'd thought he'd look taller. I also thought the first time I'd see him, I'd be able to make out his face more clearly.

Neal tightened his mouth and stared across the pit with disapproval. "Not anymore," he said firmly.

Keller smirked. The subtle turn of his lips wasn't as easy to read as his demeanor from our distance. He turned his head more to me, looking at me. I felt like I was on display. The killer licked his lips. "Since when does it take three to play chess?" He asked with a curious tilt of his head.

I growled low in my throat. He was going to address me while he talked about me, not Neal. I am not a possession. "It's not exactly traditional chess when your move involves mowing down a civilian in broad daylight," I sneered. A warning bell went off, telling my body to flee; last time I'd been so mouthy to someone like Keller, I had been attacked. Køhler might have left me alone after he escaped if I hadn't been so rude. "Manuel Campos died in surgery this morning."

He leaned his head the other way on his shoulders and spread his legs, standing with a wide stance that spoke of comfort and confidence. "I'm sorry, who?" He asked smoothly, intentionally ignorant.

I could practically see Neal's mood darken. "Your thief," he said pointedly, voice louder and a touch deeper. "He had a wife."

"Still afraid to get dirty, huh, Caffrey?" Keller asked, clucking his tongue. His voice itself wasn't scary – actually, it was slightly higher than Neal's, and his accent was pleasing to my ears. It was just the fact of who he was that made it a sound I didn't like.

"Violence requires no imagination," Neal calmly dismissed, writing it off as a brutish activity with no intellectual rewards, not just a preference for pacifism. The lie was given away by the tightness of his grip on my hand. I could feel his palm getting warmer and sweaty. He was nervous, no matter what he said to Keller. "Anyone can use a gun."

"Or a car," I snidely revised. "Given the circumstances."

Keller lifted his arm and looked at his wrist. He played with the cuff of his sleeve while he played around with us. I knew that's what he was doing – playing. "That's why you'll always be second-rate," he stated sadly, presumably to Neal. "You're too weak to do what's necessary to get what you want."

And you're strong? Well, beat me. After everything that my psycho Norwegian killer had done to me and the fallout from that, both personal and professional, I was completely sickened by anyone, least of all some pathetic bastard like Keller, treating me like I was the subpar one because I would rather honor life than commit homicide just so I could live comfortably. I took my hand away from Neal in spite of that he tightened his hand to keep his hold.

"Kenna, don't," Neal hissed.

I wandered up to the edge of the metal beam over the pit and glanced across to Keller. Yes, he was still several feet away from the edge. And he didn't have a firearm out. I stepped up onto the edge and held my hands behind my back, walking out one foot in front of the other. Two steps on the steel, and I was balancing over a pit deep enough to break a bone or two if I fell.

"I feel like I should point out that violence is crass and simple." I stated to Keller brazenly, keeping my feet centered on the beam as I walked across. My heart thudded just from survival instincts. Every step felt precarious, even if I had a few inches on both sides of my foot. All it would take was one slip… "It's a very shallow victory when you have to win a fight with blood." It measured your ability as a caveman, not as an evolved member of a species. Halfway across the beam and Keller raised his chin to me, narrowing his eyes. I kept going, locking eyes with him in a challenge, a shiver of delicious adrenaline racing up my back. "I think anyone who gets what they want through force is pretty God damn pathetic."

I safely hopped off on the other side of the pit and freely stalked up to Keller, taking away the space and standing within a foot of him, peering at him. We were the same height. If I was any taller, then it was because of our shoes. Brown eyes looked back at me with a sort of fascination that reminded me of someone looking at a special needs child.

I raised my proverbial hackles and turned my back to him, a blatant insult that I wasn't afraid of him. I held my arms out and called across the pit to Neal, "He's not very scary up close!"

Predictably, my comment on violence being pathetic made no lasting effect, and as soon as I bit my tongue and smirked at Neal, I had something cold being shoved into the small of my back. Neal couldn't see the gun hidden behind me, but he looked as anxious as though he could, and he put his hands up to his head in surrender.

"I could shoot you right here for nosing your way in," Keller told me, growling meanly. I smiled insolently, showing him my expression over my shoulder. He pushed the barrel of the gun harder against my spine. I felt satisfaction for having revealed his true colors. He would kill me with no remorse; he wasn't as gentlemanly as he liked to believe. "It's cheating to get help, Caffrey."

Keller kept the gun on me with his left hand, and with the other, he took my right arm and held it away from my side. In contrast to the firearm, his hand was gentle and warm, like a friend or a lover. I suspected he didn't want to risk me pulling another gun on him, and since he wasn't actively breaking my wrist, I didn't rip my arm away.

I knew better than Neal or Keller that my life was in the latter's hands, and for the life of me, I couldn't think of a single time in the last year that I had felt more alive. Not drinking, not sex, not buffets of my favorite foods, or entire pots of coffee and sleep deficits had given me the same rush, the same consciousness of my own mortality. People like Keller ran from their vulnerability. I embraced it. Taking the ultimate control of my own life by putting it in someone else's hands was a thrill, if not a secure one; I had no intention of letting Keller pull the trigger, but in some twisted, masochistic way, I enjoyed being where I was.

"I may be a bit unimaginative sometimes, but I think little would be more satisfying than harming you while your man can't do anything but stand by and watch." The Scotsman said conversationally into my ear, glancing across the pit at Neal and leaving him in suspense, wondering what was being said. He smirked at my boyfriend. "I think that's pretty pathetic, sweetheart."

Something in Keller's face was the last straw for Neal. He bounded up to the edge of the pit, took a leap, and landed solidly, impressively, right on the beam, and stalked forward, rolling his shoulders. If anything was going to interrupt, I expected it to be the cocking of the gun. Instead, it was a shrill beeping that frantically went off.

We all stopped, Keller even loosening his gentle hold on my wrist, and Neal bit his tongue. He pulled up the leg of his pants to show the tracker. The green light had turned and was rapidly flashing a panicky orange, emitting a shrieking assault on our ears that echoed over the construction pit.

Neal stopped, visibly conflicted. On one hand, his tracker being activated would bring police screaming right to us, which could catch Keller. On the other, more risk to Keller brought more risk to me, too.

"Oh, I, uh, I should've warned you," Keller delightedly bounced. "But we're, ah, at the edge of your leash." How did you even find out his perimeter? "You might want to take it easy. Imagine how I felt when you, of all people, were working for the feds." He whined.

I held my left arm out, opening my fist, indicating for him to stop where he was. Surreptitiously, I also twisted my left foot behind my right, posing as if I was about to curtsy. "Don't," I told him easily, despite that there was a bullet ready to fire into my back. "I have the situation handled." Keller snorted as if I was joking. Neal leaned onto his back leg, licking his lips fearfully. I rolled my neck and spoke directly to my vicious holder. "You know, I really don't like people like you. It's not the first time I've had a gun at my back. And it's really your own fault for not making sure I couldn't do this."

The polite criminal's kind hold of my arm served as his enemy, because in a second, I had acted. He had no chance to prepare for any kind of assault. I'd been so compliant that he hadn't thought anything more than a gun was necessary to ensure the continuation of such obedience.

After yanking my arm away, I spun, using the ankle behind the other to drive the twist. Once my feet were spread again, I was facing Keller. Simultaneously, I grabbed at the barrel of the gun and shoved it down towards the dirt so it couldn't hit any of us. Closing my fist, I slammed the heel of my hand into the side of his face, striking over his cheekbone and close to his eye. Keller's head was thrown back. I ripped the gun out of his hands, unloaded the magazine, and stuffed the cartridge into my pocket. I gave the unloaded pistol a toss and sent it flying into the pit.

Keller raised his head from his hands, feeling over his face. "On the other hand," I said, smirking at him. I didn't take out my own gun, but felt like I'd proved my point: I was not just Neal's pretty face. "If you'd like to set off your tracker, Neal, we can tell the police that this idiot was trespassing. There's a sign over there."

"Trespassing?" Gingerly touching his cheek, Keller's face fell. "What do you think you're doing?" He sounded truly disappointed in me. "That's weak."

Neal chuckled with relief that I was safe, and it was a little amusing that I'd hit the guy in the cheek. "Hey, if it works…" He took another precautionary step backwards, avoiding setting off his tracker.

"Neal…" Keller grimaced and checked his fingers for blood. There was none. I wasn't wearing anything on my hands that could have cut him, and I hadn't hit hard enough to give him that bad of a broken face. He would've definitely felt it if I had, and checking would not have been necessary. "You're clutching at straws here."

Neal shrugged. He didn't really care if Keller was impressed. If it worked, it worked. "They caught Al Capone on tax evasion," he pointed out.

Keller exhaled through his nose, touching one final time at his face before he got over it. His ego was probably more injured than his body. "You flatter me with the comparison," he said humbly, taking a quick bow. Then he glared at me. "You know, it kind of hurts to be beat like that."

You expect me to care? You threatened me with a gun! "Sucks to be you," I retorted flatly.

Keller broke into a sideways grin at Neal and chuckled. He looked back to me with eyes full of mirth. "Yeah, you'll do alright," he decided.

I tried to stand taller. "For what?" I asked threateningly. I wasn't going to be another playmate.

"Let's play the game." The man wiped his hands on his trousers and looked between Neal and I enticingly. "Up the stakes."

Neal and I both shared an apprehensive look with each other. Upping them couldn't be good. How much higher could they get when people were already dying for them? "What are the stakes at now?" I asked, open to either of them answering. There was still a degree of information I was lacking that was all built on their former alliance.

Keller waved it away as unimportant. "Oh, now it's an intellectual pursuit."

"To do the impossible and forge an un-forgeable wine," Neal elaborated, louder, still standing over the middle of the pit, unwilling to complete the path and unwilling to stand back and retreat.

"Exactly!" Keller pointed at Neal's chest and took one single step past me, towards the pit, but made no motion to get any closer. If he had, I'd have body checked him, full-on tackle football style. "I want you to play the game. I want to know who's best." Whoever can go longest without committing homicide seemed like a good measurement of that. Keller cocked his head and held a hand out to me demonstratively. "I'll even let you have your cat burglar girlfriend accomplice here."

"Oh, you'll let me?" Neal asked incredulously.

I scoffed. "Just try to stop me."

With a pleased grin (he was not having the appropriate reactions to me and I didn't like it), Keller lowered his hand towards hand-shaking height and wiggled his fingers, inviting me to take the formal invitation. "Doesn't take skill to smack a gun out of someone's hand. You talk big, but do you even have claws?"

Would you like me to scratch your face so you can find out?

I aggressively moved closer. "You're going to become very closely acquainted with them, if you're not careful," I swore, holding up my hand to strike again.

Keller mocked me, "That's what I like to hear in a rival, Kitty."

"I don't know as you realize it, but I will punch you again."

He made a deal of brushing himself off and lolling his head back, stretching. Then he stretched his jaw, moving the muscles in his cheek, feeling the ache from the hit. My eyes sparkled delightedly as he made a face of discomfort.

"Sorry, but in this match, violence is just the hissing." Keller condescendingly smiled at me. At least he put some effort into pretending to have sportsmanship. "Claws are the smarts." He tapped his temple wisely. He raised his voice but kept his eyes locked on me. "Learn to follow through, Caffrey. That's always the part you seem to have the most trouble with."

He turned his back to leave. Neal and I both looked at each other and had an argument while Keller retreated with leisurely slow steps to the fence and the encompassing shadows. I could have arrested him, but trespassing was a weak charge, and with a good enough lawyer, Keller could get out of it like a slippery little weasel. Technically, his citizenship still laid in Scotland, so he could also go that route unless we had something more serious.

I wanted to lock him up for murder, Neal probably wanted to lock him up for attempted murder (of me), but both of us wanted him locked up for longer than three days, so I just shook my head slightly and Neal nodded, though he looked frustrated.

The footsteps changed direction. We both saw Keller coming back, this time holding a Belgian vintage canvas bag. His hand was wrist-deep inside and he took out a bottle too quickly for me to react by pulling my gun. The bottle was empty, still had the paper wrap around the circumference. He tossed it to Neal. My CI ducked and reached out to catch it without moving his feet out of his radius.

"Now, let's play." Keller nodded. That bottle was significant somehow. Maybe that was the same kind of bottle that he'd used for his counterfeit copy? "Your move."

This time, when he melted into the surrounding darkness, his footsteps faded out, picked up again with louder, crunching gravel, and grew too far away and too varied in sound to have just been him faking it. Sure that he was gone, I turned back to Neal and motioned for him to get back on his side of the pit, jumping up onto the beam to walk back across. I ground my teeth the whole way. Letting the bastard just walk went against everything I knew. I was supposed to hold him for the seventy-two hours and dig up more dirt, not let him walk for the purpose of letting him commit more white-collar crime to arrest him on those, instead.

Although forgery was definitely more serious than a misdemeanor.

I leapt off and stuck the landing. Neal was quick to wrap me up in his arms, holding one arm tight against my upper back and the other around the back of my head, keeping my face pressed into his neck. I touched his back kindly, feeling along his shoulder blades while he relaxed, his heart coming to the same conclusion of his mind that I was okay. His shakes subsided, held back until we were alone, and he picked his head up from on top of my hair, breathing deeply.

"I really wanted to punch him again," I whined into his neck.

He laughed uneasily.

He didn't let me stray more than a few feet from him on the entire walk to his penthouse, keeping our arms locked tightly, pulling his own closer to his body and limiting the leeway I had when I started getting too distracted to keep up.

---

I squinted at my computer, groaned, and threw my head down into my hands. This website wasn't being particularly helpful, and neither of the two friends I'd emailed at New Scotland Yard had gotten back to me. Despite that New Scotland Yard isn't actually in Scotland, I knew that Scotland and the UK had close ties, and any officers at the Yard were more likely to have easy access to quick, accurate information on extradition request policies than I did. I'd also sent something to my friend Emily, who had transferred to Interpol from the Quantico base, but my message had been forwarded back to me with a message that she would be answering all emails at her earliest convenience. Which meant she was probably undercover or injured or something.

I made a mental note to check on that. If she was injured, she might be too far overseas to go visit, but I could always Skype or have some flowers delivered or something.

What I could glean from the FBI's online website and the internet was that the likeliest clause we could get to hold Keller was if we got a request for provisional arrests from his country of origin. All I had to do was get someone in the Scottish law enforcement to send one of those over to us, officially deeming him a flight risk, and I would politely oblige with feigned shock and arrest Keller. Then we'd hold him in custody until things could be worked out internationally, which could take up to three weeks? Something like that. There was a reason I needed to talk to someone who actually knew these things.

Knocking on my door was nice, but the purpose was defeated when it was pushed open. I didn't even look up, but clenched my jaw until my teeth hurt and said tightly, "For the last time, if you want dating advice, use Cosmopolitan! I'm busy trying to manipulate international extradition laws to catch a psycho!"

"Dating advice from you seems like it would defeat the purpose," was the responding quip. My head jerked up. That was not the voice I had been expecting. Neal stood half inside the doorway, a witty grin on his face, his bright teeth over his plush lower lip trying not to snicker.

"Oh." I released my fists and sat up straight, grateful for the distraction from the web. If I'd known that Scottish law was going to be so relevant, I might have actually studied it at some point – no, I'd just been all, well I know exactly what I need to do, I'm gonna join the fucking FBI, America's got more serial killers than anywhere else, I'll never be bored. "Hey." I smiled meekly. "Sorry, I thought you were Derek coming back again."

Neal took me talking to him as an invitation (he wasn't entirely wrong) and came further inside, slipping the door closed behind him. He pulled out a chair.

"I think it's starting to really sink in that Kate's his soulmate," I told Neal, relaxing. I wasn't a gossip queen, but I didn't think it really counted as gossip when it was about our mutual friends and an important event in their lives that we were both privy to through their choices. They'd been soaring in the honeymoon stage for the last several weeks, and I was pretty sure the condoms I'd thrown at them both while Katie moved in with him and I moved in with Neal had been put to good use, but now that they were both being faced with the reality of its permanence, they both, and Derek in particular, were starting to get a little nervous. "And he thinks that Kate has these really high expectations, when really she's just super psyched that this time it's someone she can trust and someone that I trust, too."

Yeah, that was another thing; she had started asking me if it was okay if she went out with friends and then specified who they were. Me being insistent that Fowler was dirty before he, surprise surprise, turned out to be dirty, had left an impression that I was trying to shake. After the first couple of times, I cottoned on and stopped saying "yes, of course" and started saying "it's your decision, and it doesn't inconvenience me one way or the other."

Neal folded his hands and leaned his head onto his shoulder. "Katie's a wonderful girl," he stated plainly, and I was certain that he meant it. "And I don't think Derek has a lot to worry about, as long as he treats her well." He breathed and thoughtfully considered. "You know… she's a romantic, but she understands how reality works, and he's still gonna go above and beyond that, too."

Yeah, I know. I'd caught him looking up when Katie's favorite musical group, StarKid, was going to be in the city, preferably on Broadway, when he was supposed to have been checking his email.

"Yeah, just go tell Derek that," I urged, half-serious. Maybe he might actually believe it if it came from more than one person – and someone whom, at that, wasn't practically obliged by friendship bonds to tell him that of course he'd do fine. Or it might be a guy thing. I don't know, as long as it got him to stop freaking out over nothing.

Neal smiled proudly. "We are very lucky men," he announced affectionately, staring at my face. His smile widened, dimples imprinting in his cheeks when I started to blush.

"Yes, you are," I agreed, mostly for Derek's sake. I could think of half a dozen things I had done wrong or was still doing wrong that Neal didn't deserve to deal with, but Katie was truly as close to perfect as I thought anyone could be. I cleared my throat and tried to stop blushing. "Um, Diana got back to me on Cattigan's stores. He got Keller's forgery early this morning."

Now, where is it… um… I stared blankly at my desk before I made an "ah!" noise and moved aside the same book on warrant law that I'd leant to Neal right after he was released. I'd been looking into it (not the chapter on exigent circumstance) to see about the policies of alien travelers and their arrests.

Underneath the book was the laminated photograph. It was a bottle that looked like the same shape and size as the one Keller threw at Neal, but it was filled with alcohol that sat calmly through the glass. It didn't look special enough to be worth as much as it apparently was… or even worth the trouble that Keller was going through to recreate a copy of it… but it was definitely wine.

"Wow," Neal said, impressed, holding the picture up underneath the light of the overhead. He was seeing something more remarkable than I was. "It's good."

I'll take your word for it. I didn't want the whole explanation of how great of a forgery it was. "It's our only evidence that links him in any way to Campos' murder, and yet it's locked down tight in a vault." I planted my chin on my fist. "We can't get to it, and it's just increasing my desire to punch him in the face."

Neal waved the photo and fanned a breeze at his other hand. "Unless we can use another reason to convince him to take it out of the vault," he said slowly, peeking at me to see my reaction.

I rubbed my eyes. "We can claim it's a fake all we want, but even waving around some big names like last time won't convince him to let us get our hands on it."

"We can submit a Franklin bottle of our own," Neal tentatively suggested. I eyed him warily. He grew more excited and wriggled in his chair, re-crossing his legs. "There's only one in existence, right?" He practically thrummed. I nodded the answer he knew too well already. "If I turn in a fake that's just as good as Keller's, they'll have to test them both."

Well… I wasn't too psyched about giving him the go-ahead to engage Keller by participating in their bet, but if it was a foolproof way of getting Keller's version where I could get it and use it as evidence against him, then I didn't have much of a choice, professionally.

"What kinds of tests do these entail?" I asked carefully, giving it some timid thought.

"Standard stuff." Neal promised. Exhaling deeply didn't do the trick, so I narrowed my eyes at him. It still took him a couple of seconds before he realized that I didn't know what "standard stuff" was. "They carbon date the cork, run a molecular test on the wax, spectroscopic refraction on the glass-"

It sounded like a bunch of superficial analyses to me that didn't even open the wine. In that case, I didn't need him to list the entire gambit. "But nothing that compromises the integrities, right?" I interrupted to save time.

Guessing my concerns, Neal shook his head quickly, hair flopping with him. It resettled normally but I still thought it was cute. "No, not at all! Everything would still be admissible in court. His bottle will pass those, and so will mine." Overconfident much? I thought about teasing. "That'll force the auction house to run a cesium test. They don't like to run them because they're so expensive, but it's the only way to determine the age of the wine in the bottle without opening it."

"You force them to run the test, then it'll fail," I reminded him importantly before I got the point and almost smacked myself. "But then so will his, which proves it's counterfeit, and we can get him on that."

My consultant smiled at me, a little shyly for having planned a con in which he committed crimes to prove someone else was committing crimes. "Yeah… it's not murder, but it's a start."

It was a better start than I had. I glowered at my email home page. I'd keep on that path and see if it would lead anywhere, but once Keller was done, he would skip town. We needed to get him before then. "How long will it take you to forge your own?" I asked in the interest of time, already planning a way to phrase it so Hughes was less objectionable.

He broke into a secretive smile. "I already got a man on it," he confided, winking. I rolled my eyes. Of course he did. Way to get your extracurricular activities condoned, Neal. And Mozzie. "Wanna come by later and see?"

---

I thanked Neal courteously for holding the door for me and was already pulling off my jacket as I came inside. I twirled around and right after he had twisted the deadbolt, I had my coat in my arms and was kissing his cheek. Neal laughed and turned his head to kiss mine, too. At the last minute, I turned my face so he kissed my lips and I giggled against his. Kissing him was heady, and without Alex Hunter getting in the way, I could happily do it any time I wanted… while we were in private.

We stood in the doorway, kissing chastely, while I stripped his jacket off of him. Mozzie was over at the table, his back to the door, working with a reading lamp angled down at the table. White cords ran up to his ears, so it wasn't shocking that he didn't hear us, but I distracted Neal from calling too loudly for his friend's attention by persistently chasing after his mouth, possessively refusing to stop kissing him for more than a few seconds at a time. Neal rolled his shoulders back and threw his jacket in the other direction to grab me tightly in his arms, showing off his strength in an uncommon display by picking me up and spinning me around, then carrying me a few feet past the couch before setting me down again.

Not that the play wasn't fun, but the fruits of my… I didn't want to call it labor, because that has a very not-fun connotation, but my efforts came in the form of skipping over to the table, leaning over Mozzie's shoulder, and saying loudly, "How's it coming?"

Mozzie positively shrieked, spinning around so quickly that he almost knocked himself and his chair over, wielding a pair of metal tweezers like a weapon. His face looked so terrified that I doubled over and practically fell myself, howling in laughter.

"Moz!" Neal scolded, lowering his hands to indicate hushing up the volume. I cackled madly and bent over the table, sliding over to the nearest chair. Neal sent me a betrayed look for taking advantage of kisses to scare his friend. I gave him a thumbs-up. "Overreact much?"

"Those are tweezers," I panted. "What are you going to do, tweeze an intruder?" I started laughing harder all over again, pounding my fist on the table while both men looked at me with disapproval ranging from an amused "you minx" to "you Satanist."

Mozzie picked up his hand and glared at me through his glasses, twitching anxiously. I wondered how many times I could do something like that before I had to start feeling guilty about the associated health risks. "The Shonobi ninja can fashion a weapon out of anything!" He scathingly replied.

"But you're not a ninja!" I snorted unattractively at the thought of him spinning down a rope from a skylight.

"That's exactly what I want you to believe!"

Neal braced himself with an arm against the table. I eyed his arm and tried not to be too obvious about wanting to feel up his bicep, the rippling, strong muscle under the flesh as he flexed. I loved when he wore the tighter sleeves. "How'd the bottle coming?" He asked resignedly, forced to suffer with the knowledge that his girlfriend and best friend were probably never going to be traditionally nice to each other.

"Oh." Mozzie flicked something on his glasses. For the first time I realized that he was wearing an attachment to the arm of the frames that functioned as a magnifying glass. He turned the magnifier up out of the way and put down his vicious, fearsome tweezers of mass destruction. I snickered into my fist and Neal sent me a look to behave. "I, uh, I paid off a guard at that Maritime exhibit for a French cork made before the industrial revolution."

"Is this our newspaper?" Neal leaned down, sliding some inked paper off of the table and rustling it as he read the headline. I saw his shoulders arch, the scapulae standing out elegantly in his back, and looked away. Clearly my brain was not in an appropriate enough mindset to let myself keep looking. "The New York Gazette from seventeen eighty-five."

"They use it for insulation in the walls of the Colonial Ale House," Mozzie said proudly, holding his chin high and awaiting praise from Neal for his innovation.

He got it. "This's perfect," Neal praised, clapping him on the back.

I felt really left out, and attributed it to my own karma for making Mozzie fear for his very life for about three seconds. I covered my mouth with my hand in case I started to giggle again, but I seemed safe. "It is?" I asked, risking it.

Mozzie leaned back, mournfully surveying the table. The bottle stood upright, perfectly centered in front of him. "Well, almost." I thought it seemed uncharacteristic for him to so willingly admit to a flaw in one of his designs. "There's still an egg missing from our basket." Oh, so it wasn't a flaw in his design, just his inventory. That made more sense.

"Wax," Neal murmured. Mozzie nodded agreement solemnly.

"Okay, then we get wax. Wal-Mart has lots." I suggested it seriously but already supposed that it wasn't going to be that easy, or Mozzie would've already collected it. And, whoop-de-doo, both of them rolled their heads to look at me like I was being intentionally dense. "What kind?" I asked, now the one resigned.

Mozzie seemed happy with my exasperation. "Preferably eighteenth-century beeswax from the Château Du Mons vineyard," he said with the attitude of someone asking me to pick up some Ben and Jerry's from the store.

I blinked once, twice, and then sarcastically said, "Oh, yeah, that should be easy. I think they sell some at the mall." Neal smiled and tried to hide it by looking down at the table, but I still saw the peaceful turn of his lips, the lift of his eyes, and instead of snapping at him for it, I just admired him.

He made a cute little giggle before he could talk normally again anyway. I liked that he didn't try as hard to maintain his poker face when he was around me and Mozzie. It meant he felt safe with us, like he didn't need to hide his personality, and I enjoyed just reveling in the knowledge that he had people to feel safe and comfortable with.

"Grace, Keller's broker, has a few Château Du Mons in her vault." Neal rubbed at his chin while he looked up, the ghost of a grin still hovering on his lips. "How much wax do we need?"

"Not much," Mozzie optimistically promised. "I can make it work with just a few shavings." Exactly what are you doing with this wax? Well, sealing the bottle… how come you need so little to make an effective seal? How large are these shavings? "How's the security there?"

The discussion took an entirely unexpected turn, but Neal didn't seem blindsided by any curveballs. "Good," he reported dully. "A keypad with a rotating code, a biometric scanner plate-"

"Oh, so you can just-"

"-With a pulse monitor."

Mozzie winced and sighed. "Oh… that makes it trickier." I unfolded my arms and stared between them in shock. Were they – were they really doing this right in front of me? It wasn't that long ago that Mozzie wouldn't even look at me, and now he was discussing their full intention of committing a crime in the presence of an FBI agent sitting right next to him?! Sometimes I missed the days when my friends gave me plausible deniability. "So how do you get in?"

"Um, you don't break in," I testily suggested, on edge and a little offended. I mean, sure, I wasn't going to arrest my friends, but they could at least pretend I still had more loyalty to my work ethics than I apparently did. "Because it sounds really risky and not like a good idea, even a little bit!"

"No, we can't break in…" Neal told Mozzie, who looked down and snapped his fingers unhappily.

"Thank you."

"We ask Grace to open the door." Neal looked back up with a cocky grin.

Mozzie and I both were skeptical of that claim. I'd like to have seen him try! "You made that good of an impression?" Mozzie cynically questioned, likely about to ask exactly what they'd talked about that warmed her up to him so much.

"No," Neal responded, and sent me a reassuring look that he was on the same terms with Grace Quinn that he was with any other woman that wasn't me. "But for my client, who can buy from the auction."

Oh, so now Mozzie has a role to play. Cool. I couldn't help but be a little worried, though, after Moz's frankly alarming acting for Melissa Calloway as June's family attorney. I smiled pleasantly at Mozzie in a gesture of wishing him good luck. He was looking right back at me. And so was Neal.

… Oh.

I huffed and my head fell back. "Oh, great," I moaned. "I'm going to be doing the conning thing again." Mozzie nodded factually, like it actually wasn't a decision that I got to make, and Neal made big, hopeful eyes at me. "No?" I tried, just to see if they would actually take it as an answer.

Neal's adorable attempts at the puppy dog face ceased instantly and he scowled with as much amusement as it was possible to scowl with. "That's your favorite word, isn't it?" He inquired.

"You want to talk about my favorite word? Because I say yes a lot, especially where you're concerned," I sassily returned. It wasn't even an innuendo – although I certainly could've made it one just by wiggling my eyebrows – but I genuinely seemed to have a hard time telling Neal flat-out no.

"We're not breaking in, we just walk in and you'll be shown around… with me. And we're not stealing anything," Neal persuaded unconvincingly. I glowered. You were just talking about how to break in and steal wax. Don't you dare tell me you have no intentions of committing theft. It was hard to see how stealing some wax compared to catching a killer, but the principle stood. "Of value," he amended quickly, seeing my stubborn expression. "You heard Moz, all we need are some wax shavings. It's like taking a lock of hair from the floor of a barber shop."

Ew, I balked, and thought personally that it was kind of a weird distraction. Hair cells were dead anyway. I certainly liked playing with Katie's and Neal's enough, so obviously it didn't bother me until it had been cut off. Still, what a weird simile.

I adamantly sat still. They were going to have to try harder. If one of them would just like to remind me that we were trying to catch a murderer and prove that they had their priorities right, then I would possibly consent to being an accessory to their crime.

Mozzie puffed irately, residually ticked about the whole scaring thing. Which I was totally going to do again if I got the chance. "Do you want to force the cesium test or not?" He asked rationally.

I shrank back and looked away from them both, staring at the window meanly and blaming it for my moral frustrations. "I do…" I grumbled.

"Alright," Neal soothed coaxingly. "We can call this a grey area." I held up a hand to tell him to shut up. That was not helping. "It's not doing any car slamming, just… dressing up, playing with other dressed up people, drinking fine glasses of Port…"

Oh, yeah, sounds like a great time for you. It just wasn't my idea of having a blast. "I don't think you have the right to call a grey area," I sniffed. If they got to call grey areas, then nothing would ever be white or black anymore, and while most things were colored in hues, there were a few that were strictly off-limits. Again, it was the principle. Those were important, damn it.

Mozzie held up his hand to ask to speak and didn't actually wait to be called on. Katie would've trained him to hold his tongue until he was given permission to speak, if he were four years old. "If lawyers can call grey areas, then I'm going to go ahead and call it a grey area," he declared.

I cocked my head, taking note. Interesting. Implying you're a lawyer. The more times law and lawyers came up, the more convinced I became that Mozzie actually had a somewhat legitimate history of law school before he decided to go all… Mozzie-ish. There really wasn't a better word for it.

Whether he realized he'd given something away with a slip of the tongue or just honestly suddenly realized something, I'd probably never know. I just got to see Mozzie widening his eyes and looked up at Neal with reservations. "Ooh, unless she doesn't know enough about wine," he shared with his friend. "That could be a little telling."

"I can – I can get the name and look to get in, and I know how wine tastings work." I motioned again for them both to slow down and addressed Mozzie while I tritely established that I was a perfect candidate for this role – it was just a matter of not wanting to. "I've been to a lot, believe it or not," I added to Moz.

"Not," he said under his breath.

I huffed and slunk down in my seat, covering my front with folded up arms and petulantly looking away. I wasn't going to win and I knew it, but whoever said that good people conceded gracefully to defeat had clearly never been in my position. If I was too graceful, I wasn't putting up enough of an argument for the law's sake.

With it decided that I would be going, I straightened my legs under the table and crossed my ankles. "I don't like Port," I complained to be a pain for them to deal with. I had to get the last word. Truthfully, it was more to be a pain in Mozzie's neck than anything else, but I wasn't fully willing to say that, even to myself.

Shaking his head and wondering what he'd just gotten himself into, Neal patiently reminded me, "It's a wine tasting, love, there'll be other options." I stopped sulking quite so much when he called me his new choice of pet name, but as soon as I realized, I started to scowl with renewed determination.

---

We stood outside of Grace's office, waiting for her to finish a phone call inside after her secretary led us to the hall. Grace Quinn was a broker who only took upper-class clients, and she had her own winery storage. The building was used in exhibits and similar displays on several occasions throughout the year, and the hefty pay that she received from her clients allowed her to keep the space to herself without needing to rent it out.

Neal fussed with my clothes. I was wearing the same chiffon dress I'd worn to go to the tennis club with Melissa Calloway and Wayne Powell, except this time, instead of wearing sandals, I had on short black suede boots with three-inch heels and a lightweight, loosely-knit scarf with shimmering glitter woven into the pinks and greens. It could wrap twice around my throat, but I'd wound it once tightly and then taken both ends and tied them in front of me like a necktie, the longer end of the scarf in front.

"I do know how to dress myself, thanks," I promised Neal, a little annoyed by how he seemed unable to leave my scarf alone. It did not need to be perfectly centered, and the sleeves of my dress were perfectly fine how they were.

"I'm just trying to help," he said defensively, brushing my hair out of the way while his fingers lingered in the folds of soft, light-catching yarn. "I know this isn't really your thing."

I pushed his hands away. My hair was styled the way I wanted it. If Neal expected me to pull off a con, then he should know that I can do my best when I am most comfortable. If I was comfortable in a teddy bear suit, then for best results… well, no, actually that didn't work in context, but my hair was such a little thing that it shouldn't have really mattered if I wanted it in pigtails or braids; it was fishtailed over my shoulder and it would stay that way.

"I can do the job perfectly well," I assured, losing patience both with him and with Quinn for leaving us to wait. Hadn't Neal made an impression on her with his wealthy and private connoisseur client?

"Doesn't make it something you enjoy," Neal pointed out to me, but he stopped screwing around with my scarf.

I locked eyes with him and rebelliously off-centered the hanging tails of my scarf. He puffed through his mouth.

"That part's true," I admitted with a smirk as I trailed my fingers over the edge of the fishtail. I liked feeling the braids in my hair after they were made – it was making them that was the pain in the ass.

Neal wound his arm around my shoulder and moved to stand next to me instead of in front of me. "Then the sooner we get Grace to show us to the cellar, the sooner we can get you back into your favored clothes again," he promised. I was going to hold him to that. I slid under his arm and into his side, leaning my cheek onto his shoulder while we waited. He lowered his voice. "Some long sweatpants and one of my silk shirts, okay?"

"I've already agreed to what you want, you don't have to keep bribing me with the most comfortable clothes in your closet." Yeah, I was one of those women who liked to wear their boyfriends' shirts. Neal seemed to have zero problems with it.

The locked office door clicked. Neal and I sprang apart to maintain our façade of client and hired assistant. A blonde woman peeked out and smiled at us both, showing pearly teeth beyond bright red lip gloss. A burgundy scarf covered her neck and she wore a champagne-colored dress to her knees, accompanied with white pumps. Quinn's hair straight down, as long as her chin, and her eyes were bright green highlighted by winged mascara.

Her face lit up. "You made it!" The mascara really made her eyes pop. Her mouth stretched into a wide grin and her scarf's ends both dangled over her back, wrapped twice around her throat. I hadn't realized scarves were in season. She left her office door open while she came out, her shoes clacking loudly on the linoleum floor, and held both arms out. "You must be Miss LaMontagne." She hugged me, perfume flooding my nose, and pecked my cheek overly friendlily. "It's lovely to have you."

A classic technique of getting information out of people was to match their tone, so I kissed both sides of her face enthusiastically and held my hands on her shoulders, mirroring her embrace of me. "Call me McKenna, please," I invited.

"Grace Quinn. I hear you're a lady of quite discriminating taste." We shook hands, her filed nails pressing lightly into my palm. Both of us glanced over at Neal, who rocked back and looked pleased that he had matched his client with someone she was already getting along with. Quinn warmly looked back to me. "I hope we find something to your liking today." I'm sure we will… not what you think we will, but we will. "Oh, I love your dress. Is it French?"

"From a boutique in Versailles," I confirmed, looking down at it.

"Versailles," Neal said aloud in fitting surprise, nodding appreciatively. "Really? How much was the shipping?"

June's donations aren't enough for you now? I didn't think she was letting him keep that much of the seven hundred he was getting to pay for housing and food. International shipping was pricey, and clothes like he enjoyed were much worse.

"None," I said, smiling at Quinn. "I bought it in person."

Quinn waved me into her office. I happily went inside, walking slowly as it wasn't my space so that she could easily overtake me once she and Neal were in, as well. Glasses of champagne were already prepared on her desk, near her phone line. Either she'd been multitasking or she'd been leaving us to wait a little longer than necessary just to impress with some alcohol right off the bat.

She handled them by the neck and passed one each to Neal and myself, and kept the third, with significantly less in it, for herself. It must've been nice to run her own business; she got to make her own rules, and drinking on the job was permitted, according to her rulebook.

"We'll be starting with a nineteen eighty-five Château Pétrus Pomerol." Grace curved her lips and raised her glass in a toast. The two of us gingerly touched the bodies of the glasses together, drinks swirling around inside.

I sipped at mine while Neal tucked his free hand away in his slacks pocket. "That was a great year for fine drinks," he said admiringly. "You're not holding back." At least in this instance, he wasn't wrong. The wine was rich and tasteful, and that was all I really sought out in a wine, but it also reminded me of the particular kind of flavor that went along with a lot of fancy talk from my parents that I never really understood.

Quinn nodded her agreement with Neal casually, swallowed, and lowered hers down to her stomach. "What do you think, McKenna?" She asked politely with an expectant smile. I imagined it wasn't very often that she got poor feedback.

Surprising Quinn and I, Neal opened his big mouth to talk, looking into the glass as if scrutinizing the very molecular makeup. "I'd say it's woodsy," he began. I almost rolled my eyes at how quick he was to fall into the habits of old aliases… especially Steve, whom you still think I don't know about. I was saving that one for a good reveal; Nick Halden had been a nice surprise. Well, I say nice. It was nice for me to see his reaction. "With a medium body and hint-"

I cleared my throat and sent a stare at him, mildly conveying him to mind his place. I pay you to do your job, I scolded mentally, and luckily, the humor I couldn't quite suppress over my internal lecture was fitting for the context of an advisor and client whom had known each other for a long time. Not to be me. If I paid you to be me, then I wouldn't have even had to come and you could've taken care of this yourself while I played with my Corgis on my veranda.

Neal looked between us and then hid his face by looking down. "Sorry…"

"No, go on, McKenna," I played, motioning and sharing a secretive smile with Quinn, who giggled, lips at the rim of her glass. "I'm curious of your opinion."

"Alright, you've made your point," Neal told me, not finding it as funny as either of the women. He drank heartily while Quinn covered her mouth and chuckled.

Smiling with satisfaction, I turned back around to face the broker and gave "my own" opinion. "The use of wood is made evident by the broadness of the flavors," I started to say, and nearly made a face. When did I turn into my mother? For the first time in years, I heard the similarity between my voice and hers. "There's a long persistence in the mouth, and the taste opens up well in the glass." Not that you'd be able to compare it to how it tastes before you open the glass, because we're not going to drink straight from the bottle because that's not classy enough.

I knew my recitations had impressed her, though, because she seemed pleasantly surprised. Had she thought that Neal was bluffing about his client? I mean, he was, but she didn't know that. "I would agree."

I coughed into my elbow and put down my half-empty glass on her desk, carefully moved far away enough from the edge of the table. I still wanted to stay at least a little bit sober for the duration of the afternoon. My eyes lingered on the post-it note next to her closed laptop. It just said nine, and in the same handwriting that wrote the "8:00 PM" message on the brochure by King's Crown.

Turning back to face her, I put the note out of my mind as well as I could. There was more to it that I wasn't getting, but I doubted I could pry it out of her. Anonymity was a selling point for people in her business.

Tactfully, I clasped my hands in front of my chest. "I've been reliably told that you have a more substantial, and, uh, exclusive collection," I started, visibly confident but truthfully a little unsure that I was approaching it right. I hadn't been in this environment since I'd been eighteen, and I hadn't been the one doing this part.

Quinn showed her teeth again in a one-sided, smug smirk. "Well, a LaMontagne would certainly know," she jested. I faked a sheepish expression and nodded. "Would you care to accompany me to the vault?"

When I appeared interested, I wasn't faking.

---

I held my hand in my purse, moving my wrist back and forth to make it look like I was searching for something. The contents of the handbag rummaged around to make a convincing sound like it, too. Quinn led me down the stairs into the basement cellar, hand on the railing delicately. While twisting my wrist, I held onto the end of a piece of tape in a rolled-up dispenser and pulled it slowly out, trying not to let it make any noise.

We reached the bottom of the stairs in front of the vault. A tall, steel doorway was guarded by a passcode entry pad in addition to the heavy door handle. Quinn turned around and looked up the dual flights of stairs we'd just descended, realizing that we'd lost someone in the process.

"Your friend's not coming?" She asked me, blinking.

It was strategic. Neal was scouting out the rest of the gallery and the wine tasting to see if Keller was around without the scrutiny of the person who had the authority to call security. At the same time, I was the trusted and nonthreatening face of a potential buyer who would sabotage the security preventing Neal from getting into the vault on his own.

I couldn't tell if it was one of those days where I hated or loved my job.

"I really don't need a babysitter," I pointed out to her, raising an eyebrow. I ripped the tape off against the spiked razor-like edge of the dispenser and wrapped two fingers around a slick tube of lipstick. While I angled it so that the lipstick covered the clear, see-through tape, I took my hand out of my purse. "Ah-ha!" Like I'd finally found what I was looking for. I bent one finger to stick the tape to my palm, out of sight, and uncapped the lipstick. "We spend too much time together anyway. As you saw, he's beginning to think we have the same name!"

I applied a fresh coat of dark pink lipstick over what I was already wearing and popped and licked my lips, then casually dropped the tube back into my little bag.

Quinn covered up the pad with one hand while she entered the code with another. I heard three small beeps, so that was how many digits there were, but other than that they were on the lower half of the number set, I couldn't tell which ones. I went to the door and opened the handle as the light above the pad turned green, and I held the door for her. It was heavier than it looked.

"Let me," I said, making a sweeping gesture with my right hand, propping the door open wide with my left, palm turned away so that she couldn't see the tape. "Bienvenidos."

Quinn curtsied a little and walked in over the threshold. "Thank you," she told me respectfully.

I looked up to the stairs again, saw no one watching, and pushed my shoe up against the door to keep it open. I peeled the tape off of my palm and pushed it down over the latch, smoothing the adhesive over the door to hold down the mechanism so it wouldn't get the chance to lock again, even when the system was reengaged. I moved quickly and after a last brush of my hand, I moved my foot and came inside, letting the door close slowly on its own behind me.

Quinn flipped on a light, bringing on several overheads in a chain reaction. The wine bottles were dark greens and deep reds close to where we were standing at the entry, organized by type, with labels on them with the details. The light basked us in a yellowish glow that took on some hint of the colors of the bottles. It was pretty, kind of like mood lighting.

The broker held her arms out to show off the rows and rows of champagnes in cabernets. "As you can see here, our security system is state-of-the-art. It's preposterous to think any outside competitor could manage to worm his way inside."

No, it's not. All it takes is a little bit of an inside job. I looked over my shoulder at the door. With that attitude, she wouldn't even think to check. With her security system, even if she suspected me, she wouldn't check for something so dumbly simple as tape on the lock. She'd check for electronic fraud or something.

"Oh, do elaborate, please," I said, and jokingly added, "With any luck, I might manage to understand half of the vocabulary."

---

We didn't have to wear nametags, which was a relief. I didn't recognize any of the names I heard dropped, and some people did insist on talking to me, but at least they didn't flock to the LaMontagne and start chattering about wines that I would struggle keeping up with. I stood in the corner of the cleared gallery room where people were mingling, standing guard over the vault surreptitiously in the meantime. The stairs descended from the other side of the room, and I knew Neal had already snuck downstairs to take advantage of my premeditated tape job.

I looked at my watch and then sipped from my glass, feeling terribly out of place. It was ironic, really – the place that people of my backgrounds were supposed to stereotypically be, and I felt like everything I did stuck out like black on white, thinking my hair was wrong because no one else was fishtailed, wondering if I was in the wrong social circle because I was among two people under forty, nervous that the French dress was inadequate for the setting.

I was trained to arrest Keller, not to taste wines and act like I had never stopped owning my parentage.

"I haven't had a Pinot this old since my wedding," some woman said to her companion whom she was trading opinions with, swapping stories back and forth of the richest champagnes they'd ever had the delightful privilege of tasting. They'd have been disgusted by the beer I kept in my house.

So would my parents… it's been forever since I thought this much about them…

Looking down at my proffered beverage from Quinn, I sighed, let my shoulders fall, and ducked my head, the tail of my braid loosely molding to the curve of my shoulder. I wished I could've blamed my straying thoughts on the influence of the wine, but I'd been going back to it for months, more and more since I met Neal, and especially since speaking with Cattigan. I could have been stone cold sober and I probably still would've been thinking about my estranged family.

I pressed my tongue to my molars and resigned to stop drinking. Sobriety was going to be a better look on me in case my tongue started slipping. I was already being loose-lipped by using LaMontagne as my alias, and Quinn's recognition of it had already told Neal that it wasn't some generic or television-inspired name, like Hastings had been. I wasn't so opposed to telling him my backstory anymore – he already knew the worst part of it – but part of me wanted to pretend just for a little bit longer like I had privacy and could separate who I was from who I was supposed to have been, if other people had gotten their way.

As I raised my eyes from the drink, I caught sight of a head of hair disappearing down the stairs. I stilled into a human statue for a second before I sprang into motion, setting down the glass on the nearest table and dashing for the steps.

"Excuse me," I called, seeing the back of a man's short-haired head and then Quinn's more recognizable blonde hair and dark, satiny dress. "Miss Quinn! I have a question about the Château Pétrus-" I stopped halfway down the stairs behind them when both of them turned to look at me. For the second time in twenty-four hours, I was face to face with Matthew Keller.

Keller was in a grey tux, dressed for the occasion of an elite wine tasting party, a drink in hand. I feigned a polite smile to him, since Quinn could see my face. She couldn't see his, though, his back to her to look at me, and he looked up my body at the dress and raised his eyebrows at my face, unimpressed with my hasty interruption. I had very few doubts that he had intentionally tried to slip into the vault, knowing that this would have been a prime time for Neal to steal components to the forgery.

"Oh." I looked apologetically at Quinn and smiled some more at Keller, this time genuine. I was smug to have caught him before he succeeded in outing Neal. "I'm sorry to interrupt."

"Oh, please," Keller said, dismissing it as nothing. "It's company."

Without blowing that we knew each other, I couldn't do anything but let him take my hand, brushing his palm warmly over the back of my knuckles and raising my hand to his face. We were uneven on the steps, myself higher than he, which just made it easier for him to kiss the back of my hand with soft lips, slowly giving me back my arm, looking up at me through his eyelashes with a smirk. He kept his left hand holding onto my right wrist.

Grr. I hate when killers are attractive.

"Do I know you?" Keller asked me, narrowing his eyes.

Quinn was watching us both closely, prepared to mediate. I dared him to make it necessary. "I can't think of how," I said, pretending to be completely oblivious.

"Is everything alright, Miss LaMontagne?" Quinn asked over Keller's shoulder, addressing whatever had sent me running down after them. Keller recognized the name. I'd have been more shocked if he hadn't, but the amusement in his expression made me want to hit him even more than I already did.

The two of us shared a look. LaMontagne? He seemed to be asking. I forced some fire into my eyes and returned with a silent threat that if he dared to out me to the broker, then I would make him pay for it. I doubted she was aware that she was working with a homicidal fugitive, and to enforce it, I twisted my hand around to hold his wrist similar to the way he was holding mine. I could probably break his bones from the angle I had.

"Everything's great," I told her reassuringly, squeezing Keller's hand tightly.

"Hm." Keller dragged his teeth over his lower lip and then nodded decisively. Simultaneously, he started to dig his fingers into my wrist. I bit my tongue to stop from either verbally protesting or pulling away. He was stronger than he looked. "Yeah, I guess you just have one of those faces." Touch of a lover – the hell was I thinking?! I seethed. Well, he started it. I returned the favor, and I had the advantage of acrylic fingernails. The bastard was probably going to leave bruises. He extended his glass to Quinn. "Mind filling this up for me?"

She nodded quickly, skirt sweeping over the backs of her knees. "Of course," she dipped her head, and, looking at us a few seconds longer with confusion for the obvious tension, padded up the stairs past my side, leaving both killer and cop on the stairs alone.

I could just shove you backwards and see if you get badly hurt, I contemplated, trying to decide if that was stooping too far close to his level. Also, if he did leave bruises, then couldn't I use those as evidence that I was responding to assault? Self-defense.

Keller released me first. I let go of him and yanked my arm away, hissing and holding my wrist close to my body. The long gloves to my elbows were covering any discoloration or prints, but I rubbed over them and glowered. Keller blew on the indentations of fingernails in his skin, then shook his arm out.

"LaMontagne," he repeated my alleged surname, staring me up and down again. "Yeah, I see it. I saw you, too." Although I was questioning how annoyed I should be that Keller thought the name that wasn't technically my name fit me, he cocked his head. The entire thing was a game to him, and he was such a dangerous opponent, one with such a violent history, that I was eager to meet him halfway and play along to my inevitable triumph. "You came in with your friend. Where'd he get off to, anyway?"

As if you don't know. "I'm not his keeper, and if he needed one, then I'd have someone else doing it," I lied. "Who do you take me for?"

Talking with him on the stairs was surreal, like the construction site had been. He wasn't dumb enough to pull a gun on me here in public (which was good, because he probably wouldn't let me do the same trick twice), but if I announced that I was anything more than Neal's conniving partner in crime, then he was going to blow the whistle on Neal. We were at a stalemate that practically forced us to be civil with each other, a situation which I had never gotten myself in with a serial killer before.

Keller licked his lips and looked down at my shoes. He chuckled and shook his head to the side. "I'm wondering, personally – call it a curious inquisition – what would happen if I asked a security guard to check the vault, right now." I cocked my head and crossed my arms.

"You wouldn't dare," I growled, conscious of how close we were to other people.

"Wouldn't I?" Keller smirked. "What does that do to your public image if Little Miss LaMontagne is an accomplice to a fed's errand boy breaking into somebody's private property? Not to mention what it would do to your pretty boy." I glowered. Keller was hitting me where it hurt – but not through threatening Neal. That was a bark, but if he were going to bite, he'd do it quickly. He knew exactly who I was. Would Neal have figured it out if he hadn't met me as McKenna Anderson?

He thought he had me. I leaned quickly to my right and caught myself on the wall, blocking his path, and Keller twisted his lips up mirthfully, knowing that for whatever I might say, we were at an impasse. It was play. He wasn't going to be hurt unless I hurt Neal, and while he wouldn't have hesitated in my position, I wouldn't risk it.

"You compromise the vault, you delay the auction," I reminded him lowly, searching for any deterrent. "No matter how curious you are," I grit my teeth, "You won't have the chance to find out before the Russians catch up with you."

"You think I'm afraid of those big, butch Europeans? Nah." Keller snorted, rolling his eyes. He was taking them a little too lightly, in my opinion. And to think – I had wanted to keep you safe from them. Not from a legal court, but from the mafia, yeah. The chess player rubbed his chin, crossing one arm. "They got the brutes, yeah, sure. What they don't have is my smarts. I can stay three steps ahead of them, easy." He shrugged.

"You're very arrogant," I observed cuttingly. "Do you really care to test it?"

Keller condescendingly leaned forwards and stepped up. He grabbed onto the rail and set his toes on the stair I was standing on, pulling himself up and balancing on the front of his feet. At an even height – almost, I was taller with my heels on – he smirked at me, our faces only a few inches away.

"Life is full of little games, and everyone gets bored of playing safely sooner or later." I pressed harder against the wall to keep that arm still and tightened my free hand into a fist. I didn't want him to see that I was starting to get perilously close to shaking – and I enjoyed every precious second of my composure being knocked. It had been too long since I was the center of attention of a dangerous monster, one who could kill me without remorse, without a second thought, and it made me recklessly thrilled.

I shivered. Keller leaned forward and rocked up on his toes to speak into my ear. His lips brushed the shell of my ear while I stayed stock still, unwilling to back down. "What about you, Kitty?" Matthew asked tauntingly, his Scottish brogue and the cocky lilt making my knees feel weak. It was so hard to explain, I didn't think I ever could, but while I'd have really liked to drive his face into the wall next to my hand, his breath warmed the side of my face. "Are you tired of playing with the good guy?"

I could've assaulted him, yeah – I also could've thanked him for a rush that no drug could have ever replicated. Being recruited by Matthew Keller. I was oddly flattered.

Keller leaned back and looked into my eyes with that self-assured, infuriating smirk. "What will the cops find when they look inside?" He asked, pretending to be clueless, wishing to draw it out of me.

A door closed. Both of us jumped, but Keller was the one with the more precarious balance. Reacting as if he were anyone else, I quickly grabbed onto him so he didn't fall, one hand fisting into his collar and the other closing around him, fingers splaying against his middle back.

The coast was clear. It was the door to the vault, Neal leaving. I was glad it had taken him a while, because I dreaded to think what might have happened if he'd come out while Quinn was leading Keller down. "A cellar full of dusty, overpriced wine," Neal said, sounding angry right off the bat.

Knowing exactly what it looked like, Keller smirked at me, tongue-in-cheek.

"Looks like you're out of time," I told him rudely, giving him a shove backwards. If I got any closer to him, we'd have been kissing. He needed to get out of my space. I liked the ecstatic and dangerous adrenaline hit that I got from him, but unique and threatening or not, Keller was still someone I detested. Keller caught himself on the lower step.

Neal fixed his blazer, shooting fiery knives at Keller through his eyes. "Oh, by the way, Kenna, I forgot to tell you – he's a big fan of himself." Neal stormed up the stairs to meet us and he stopped at mine, inserting his arm between his rival and I protectively, drawing me to the opposite side of the stairwell. "What did he do to you?"

Neal could pull me away, but Keller and I were still locked in eye contact. I touched my wrist without thinking, the one that still ached with forming marks. Keller's smirk widened. On many levels I hated myself for reacting to him the way I was. It wasn't desire or longing or admiration; it was a thirst for what I'd been removed from without my consent, built up over time, desperate to prove everyone else wrong, eager to up the stakes… for myself. Not for Neal. I would never jeopardize Neal, no matter how much I shook, how my knees quaked like I was going to faint, at the thought of another hit, like a junkie in withdrawal.

"Nothing," I told Neal, not looking away from Keller, because the truth was he hadn't done anything to me – just held my hand really hard, but I was a big girl, I could handle it. Everything else was what my own twisted and traumatized mind was doing to itself, and Neal couldn't separate me from that any more than I could train him out of thinking like a conman. "They should make muzzles for people like him. Dogs make less noise."

Neal's arm around me was strong and tight, and he saw Keller watching and tightened his grip. Suddenly I wasn't just the accomplice; I was like the prize, the center of a tug-of-war that went beyond comparing their abilities, and I didn't even know where to begin with that.

"By the way, I heard somebody mowed down a citizen. Right in front of you and your FBI agent." Keller cut me out again to talk to Neal. I was relieved. Then he winked. I can't wait until you find out I am the FBI agent. "You might wanna avoid getting too close, Miss, or the agent just might shoot you."

If who I used to be ever catches up to who I am now, you might be right. A year ago, if I could've come forward in time, I'd have kicked my own ass all the way to Atlantis.

"Rumor through the grape vine is that she got a little trigger-happy and started blasting up the tires." He pursed his lips and tutted as if he had any legs to stand on. He'd been content trying to shoot me through the back the night before. "What a shame."

He started to leave. Neal was just determined to keep him away from me, so he just held me to him and watched through narrowed eyes as Keller climbed back up the stairs. I leaned into Neal, startled and shocked by everything that had just happened. Did I need to go back to therapy? Possibly, because I clearly still had issues. With Neal taking us out of our isolated exchange, I felt reason returning.

He saw me trembling. I grabbed onto him as a first impulse. I can't let him leave like that. I couldn't let him leave thinking he'd won me, that he had anything I wanted, that there was even the slightest chance I would ever, ever, leave my mate for him, of all people.

"How's your face feeling?" I called after him scathingly. "It's a real pity the makeup can't cover all of it."

I had to look for it to see, but the shadow of a bruise was visible under concealer that hid away the damage from the typical eye. Keller stopped on the stairs, chuckled darkly under his breath, and then started climbing again, moving at what felt like an infinitesimally slow rate.

When he was out of sight, and out of earshot, I shuddered, letting myself truly react to everything else. What the actual fuck just happened? "Okay… last night I wanted to hit him with my fist, now I want to hit him with a car," I told Neal, both being honest and venting and acting like nothing had gone down, like he hadn't missed anything of importance to me, so he wouldn't worry or think Keller had some sort of power over me. So he wouldn't think that my desperation and unfair trauma had rattled some self-preservation instincts.

"That would be suitable karma, alright," he agreed tightly, not quite as low now that the threat was gone. Neal looked at me in my eyes, very intent to see as much of my feelings as he could, and offered a small smile. "Just imagine how I feel."

"We're gonna take him down," I promised, needing to do so now not just for Neal or for Campos – for myself. I didn't know what would happen if he got away, but I had the sickening thought that I would be relieved, and if that wasn't going to completely abhor me of myself, then nothing was going to.

---

Who do you think I could manage to become if I took off?

I'm miserable. I hate it here. I hate what my life has been. I hate what my family is pushing for it to become.

What if I cut my ties? What if I changed who I was and reconstructed myself into who I like?

Adaptability has always been a strength of mine.

There are so many people I could choose to be. Rowan. Sierra. Mikayla. Michelle. Lucy. Jean. Ella. Lorelai. Selena. Even after making one choice, the options are endless.

If I change who I am and take away all that makes me hate my life now, I probably won't even be me anymore. I guess I'm okay with that. At least all of those other women get to choose who they turn into. I want that freedom. I deserve that freedom, just like everyone else, even if that means that I have to run away from people I wouldn't mind keeping with me.

This is the day that I begin to die, because this is the first physical proof that I want to stop being Zarra. I'm sorry to all the people who might be hurt because of this decision (though there aren't many).

I can't imagine how much this is going to hurt you someday, McKenna.

I suppose one day, I'll find out.

This is the beginning of my end.

Love (and remember),

Zarra LaMontagne

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A/N: Chapter title from Lucy Hale's "Extra Ordinary."

Next chapter: Keller's plans become clearer as a wine auction heats up. While wrestling with who she is and what she wants to be, McKenna reveals to Neal a huge secret about her past - one that she fears might change how he sees her.

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