Chapter Twenty-Eight – Trouble Is the Truth Keeps Slipping Out

It's still within the first twelve hours of his kidnapping, I reminded myself, trying to comfort myself. Statistically, there was still room for optimism for safe recovery. Unfortunately, just reminding myself that Neal had been kidnapped sent a cold shudder up my back. Yet another remembrance that my darling wasn't near.

On the edge of the conference room table, my phone started to vibrate. I turned to it, checked the ID, and sighed. I couldn't keep this a secret from her… she'd find out one way or another that Neal was taken, and she deserved to learn about it and then be comforted about it by someone who loved her and would say what she needed to hear, which included the truth of the danger. I didn't want her to think it was outside the realm of possibility that Neal would be hurt; she needed to be prepared in case, God forbid, he actually was.

I answered and held the phone to my face. "Hey, Katie," I said tiredly, glancing to the window. It was already the early morning. "I know I didn't come home last night. I'm not with Neal…" And there it is. I chickened out at the last possible second, grinding my teeth. I couldn't tell her over the phone. I couldn't tell her at all, not until we had more to go on. She'd panic, she'd cancel her work day at the daycare, she'd run here to the WCCD and sit around being anxious because there wasn't anything for her to do. "… But I'm safe. Now is a really bad time."

Kate had let me take my pause without trying to fill in for me or start a conversation, which I had appreciated in the moment, but when it took her a little bit to respond (I knew she was there, I heard her breathing), I recalled our usual conversational tics and realized that it was atypical for her.

"Okay," her voice said to me, slow and deliberate, before I could worry that something was wrong, that maybe it wasn't Kate who had called. "If I can give you one sentence, it will be that we have a visitor and I highly recommend you get your ass in gear to come see him."

The swearing conveyed the message that it was important, but Christ Almighty could've been a visitor and I still wouldn't have dropped my case to go running. My case wasn't just a stolen piece of paper or a misplaced jewelry set. It was the threatened life of my best friend. "When I say 'now is not a good time,' I mean that it's not a good time for anything," I strongly told her. "Unless Fowler himself is in our living room, I don't have the capacity to care."

She sighed, irritated. "I'm going to take a wild guess and say that whatever's raising your voice has something to do with Mr. Clean, who just decided to show up at our front door and come in uninvited." Now that I paid more attention to her, my sister sounded harried and upset. "He seems agitated."

Mr. Clean? What the- Oh. Mozzie. When Neal and I had introduced two of our favorite people to each other, things had… not gone too smoothly, and although Mozzie seemed to have acquired a secondhand fondness for my sister, Katie felt no such emotional attachment for Moz. If anything, she felt an obligatory tolerance since he helped keep our house safe.

"That's his normal state," I promised her. Mozzie being agitated wasn't something to be concerned about. I tended to be more suspicious when he wasn't agitated about one thing or another.

Kate huffed. The tone of her voice changed like something was partially muffling it. So she was trying to keep the phone call a secret, huh? I tried to imagine the two of them in the kitchen, Kate on the landline, Mozzie curiously studying the ceramic bowl we kept our keys in and trying to decide if it was of any monetary value. I had scarcely seen stranger things.

"I don't mean paranoid. I mean fidgety and anxious."

Huh. Yeah, that was a little weird. Mozzie used to be fidgety and anxious around me, but when he got used to me, his trepidation regarding my career wore off. It didn't make sense that he would be nervous around Katie, not when he had already met her once before and seemed to like her more than he liked me most days.

I sighed and rubbed my forehead, glad that the room had emptied out. This wasn't an ideal conversation to have in the FBI. This wasn't an ideal conversation to have, period. "Then have him come to me," I stressfully suggested. "I'm trying to handle a thing here."

A moment passed in which I guessed Katie was mocking me. I tried to confirm it. I got my confirmation when I got to mouth the entire last two sentences of my dialogue tauntingly before Kate started to talk again. "Hold on, let me run that by him. Hey, do you feel up for a visit to the FBI building?"

I rolled my eyes. That was a dumb question to ask someone like Mozzie. Sure enough, in the background of the phone call, I heard him snorting and loudly laughing. "Ha, ha!"

"That was so loud that even I heard it," I warned Kate before she could relay it. I was a little impressed with Mozzie's apparent volume capabilities.

"Yeah, he's not going there," she safely concluded.

"Tell her it's about Neal," Mozzie helpfully put in from a little further away from the phone. For him to be that audible, I'd have to switch up Katie's position in the mental image that I had conjured. I adjusted that for visual purposes.

"He says it's-"

Kate didn't need to say a damn thing. I heard that from Mozzie and nothing else mattered; it was about Neal, of course nothing else mattered, how could anything else matter more? The one thing that would have me running out of work was Mozzie bringing by information that I'd need to know about Neal's whereabouts, and likelihoods be damned, Mozzie knew something.

"I'm on my way," I fervently promised, checking my pocket for my car keys. There wasn't time to take a taxi. Derek and Diana would have to tame the lions without me for a short time.


I let myself inside – it was my own home – and strode across the hall without stopping to divest myself of my jacket or shoes. Mozzie and Katie were audible in the kitchen. Keyring over one finger, keys swinging in a rapid circle from my hand, I entered the room they both occupied and walked right up to the kitchen table where they both sat. In too much of a hurry, I failed to take a seat, instead merely standing behind Kate.

Mozzie had seated himself around the rounded table with his back to the fridge, at a good position to see someone entering the area. Kate had chosen the spot directly across from him – incidentally as far from him as she could be while remaining at the same piece of furniture. Mozzie's hands were in his lap and he wasn't touching anything, but Katie was hypervigilant.

"You never told me your name." She stated, narrowing her eyes at him. "Or what you even do, aside from bug sweeps."

Behind her, I placed my hands gently on her shoulders and leaned down, pushing my lips against her right cheek. Kate tilted her head to the side so that I could, but her attention was on Mozzie. I stood up straight, bracing myself to lean over my sister with my hands shifted to the back of her chair, and I peered at the conman over the top of her hair. It was lovely to have her so near, to touch her face and feel that she was still warm and healthy.

"I know that." Mozzie very evenly answered, candidly nodding and then pleasantly explaining, "It was intentional." I rolled my eyes and shook my head at him. He was going to invoke Kate's ire, and if he wanted to remain a guest in our house, it was best not to do that – especially because I would rather continue being able to utilize him as a source of information. "Neither have you," he said, turning the conversation around to her.

She cocked her head, uncertain she bought the motives behind the reciprocation. For a few seconds, I wasn't sure that she was even going to answer. Kate must have tentatively decided to grant him the benefit of the doubt, because she replied with honesty. "I work at a daycare. I started it myself, actually. It's my own."

This wasn't anything Mozzie didn't already know. If he hadn't gathered it somewhere along the line from myself or from Neal, then it definitely came up as a result of the fights I had with Fowler that got me kicked out of home. Mozzie must've, for once, caught onto the socially correct thing to do and pretended that he didn't know about an aspect of her life that she hadn't told him herself.

"I thought that daycare was a front for Suit to indoctrinate the young minds of tomorrow to the narrow-minded and in-the-box thinking of the federal government." Mozzie stated, surprised that it wasn't.

I covered my eyes with my hand. Or maybe he just doesn't realize yet that you get what you see with Katie.

"Again with the indoctrination," I grumbled. He was a fan of that word, wasn't he?

Kate puffed. "Not everyone has nefarious ulterior motives," she chided. "Or ulterior motives at all, for that matter." She glanced to the side and put her chin on her fist, elbow on the table, checking the clock on the wall. She couldn't have made it clearer that she was ready for this visit to be over.

Mozzie chuckled as if Kate had just made an endearingly embarrassing error. "Ah, naïveté. So sweet." Katie's expression darkened when she heard the teasing tone and Mozzie sniggered. "I bet you believe in the moon landing, too."

That one got to even me. "Wait, what?" Mozzie looked a little smug that something had managed to rattle me, but then I saw that Kate was ready to strangle him and remembered that there was a time-sensitive reason that he was sitting in a federal agent's kitchen. I held up my hand and nixed the undoubtedly insane conspiracy he was about to uncover. "No, forget the moon landing, what's up?"

We transitioned into a meeting of business smoothly. There was no fumbling for a change of topic. Even Katie calmed, knowing that anything that drove Mozzie to my door would be something I needed to hear, and she didn't want to take away from something important – especially not something she knew involved her favorite ex-con.

Mozzie took a cheap phone out of his pocket and put it face-up on the table. It was one of several that he just cycled through. He had one phone that he kept on him for longer periods of time, and Neal and I were the only people who I was sure had that number. We were only to use it in emergencies, which was how I had got hold of him when Fowler had faked his soulmark. While not a twenty-dollar burner from a drugstore, it was an older model of a Smartphone, which meant it was relatively easy to get his hands on, whether or not he had legitimate finances.

"I received this recently." He said primly, folding his hands back in his lap, not exactly comfortable at my table.

I looked from him to the phone. He'd never invited me to touch his phone before. He used to go out of his way to keep it out of arm's reach. I picked it up and brightened the screen. It was opened up to an email-enabled app where some junkmail was displayed in the inbox.

A travel agency's logo opened the email and it was followed with flowery blue font. "Elite Voyages," I read from it. "Come frolic with us." The slogan was followed up with the same generic information that might be on any other travel agency's site. It was an introduction to the company, then some eye-catching sweepstakes offers, and the perks of signing up for the mailing list. I lowered the phone and stared blankly at Mozzie, scowling. This is what he dragged me out of work for? "Oh, no, you got spam. I'll alert the president."

Mozzie scowled right back at me and raised a hand to gesture at the phone. "Look at the email address."

When his expression remained serious, I did as I was told. The email address was just an average Yahoo account, but the name in the beginning made me pause. "Dante Haversham…"

"It's the same alias I gave when Neal introduced us," he reminded me imperiously. I nodded. I recalled perfectly fine. The question was, who else would have known to send an email to Haversham? No one but Neal, who was the only other person there when the identity was created, and there was no reason for Neal to be sending Mozzie junkmail unless there was a clue within the Elite Voyages message. "See, some things do have secret meanings and ulterior motives," he smugly finished to Kate, looking entirely too pleased.

Swallowing tightly, she put her hands up jerkily in surrender. "Okay. Okay," she repeated, a little louder and higher. "I'll buy it this one time. Is Neal okay?" She tipped her head back to see me, fully acknowledging me for the first time since my arrival.

I hesitated, then ducked my head. "I don't know," I admitted, just going for it. Kate would kill me if I lied, and I needed to save time, not impede myself by creating excuses. "But that's a distress signal." I pointed at the phone and then passed it back across the table to Moz.

Elite Voyages, huh?

Katie quietly asked, "McKenna?"

I nodded, exhaled, and felt my molars with my tongue. When I felt like I could explain quickly without sounding too angry or manic, I summarized it for her and Mozzie both. "Neal went for what he thought was an undercover op with Rice, except she had an alleyway deal set up with Wilkes. Wilkes – that's the bad guy – didn't honor his end, so now we have no Neal and no Lindsay, which makes her negligent, irresponsible, and an all-around bad person and makes me the hero again, which is why I'm ditching so fast."

I shrugged my shoulders haplessly, putting on a fraudulent smile. I could pretend that I was okay. I could pretend that I wasn't scared half to death. Mozzie's expression was dark and brooding, contemplating either if there was some way he could help behind the scenes or how likely it was that feds were ever going to stop screwing Neal over. Mozzie could handle me being freaked out. I knew he could, because he'd done it before. He knew what to say to get my head back in the game, for Neal's sake. Katie, however… Katie needed to see someone composed, not someone terrified.

"I've got a team to run," I excused with a smile, rubbing my left hand over her left shoulder. I pressed my thumbnail into the back of her neck, scratching gently at the collar of her shirt, and nodded to Mozzie with appreciation.


Keeping the rest of the bureau out of the loop when it came to Mozzie was a real trick. It required some creative uses of half-truths and mincing words from both Neal and myself, as well as the occasional crafty misdirect when someone asked a question that couldn't be easily explained. This time, without Neal to fence the information through, there was no way around it: Mozzie would have to be a known variable for getting the tip to look at Elite Voyages.

I called it in to Diana, who redirected me to Rice without thinking about it. She was busy talking with the technicians about arranging a centralized face and mass recognition program through traffic cameras near waterfront locations. Much as I hated letting Rice be in my inner circle, Neal came before any grudges, so I clued her in and gave her an assignment like she'd wanted. I think having something to do made her feel useful, which helped alleviate the guilt and awkwardness from being kicked out of command.

When she asked, I said to focus on the New York branch. Elite Voyages had several offices. I forwarded the email to her and had her ask someone to trace the IP address. It was sent through the office located in central Manhattan, and because Neal would have had to somehow communicate with someone there to have the email sent to Mozzie, we concluded that he had wound up there in person at some point and slipped Mozzie's alias onto the email list while attending to whatever Wilkes wanted. Wilkes was too smart to give him free access to a computer or phone on his own, and if he had, then Neal would've contacted me, not sent his friend junk mail. She questioned where I got the information to begin with, and I told her that I had gotten it from a reliable source who preferred to remain anonymous in exchange for his aid and cooperation. Rice was disgruntled, and, worried that she'd mention it to someone else, I told her that he was a harmless character who functioned as an off-the-record confidential informant for me on several occasions.

Then, for good measure, I asked her if she wanted more information on him so that she could get him kidnapped, too, and get two for two on my CIs. That shut her up very quickly.

I reentered the bullpen, already taking my jacket off. Any time the air conditioner wanted to kick itself on would be very convenient. "Whoever makes progress is getting gift cards!" I called to get the attention of anyone who had something for me to work off of. It was an effective promise, since I was somewhat known for making games or rewards when we seemed stuck on a case. Many times, I would pick up cool pens or ten-dollar vouchers and wave them around until someone did something to earn them.

To my dismay, the only one who seemed to react was the one person I most wanted to throw punches at. With her hair slightly mussed, Rice looked up from over Derek's desk, which I chose to just assume she'd asked permission to use, and waved at me. My shoulders slouched, but, remembering that I'd given her the most promising lead, I went to her side.

She didn't waste time. If she had been this concerned with efficiency instead of power, she'd have avoided the hassle of making illegal trade-offs. "Two hours ago, Caffrey goes into Elite Voyages asking for the itinerary of a Thomas Loze."

The name meant nothing to me. It wasn't one of the bureau's known aliases of Neal, and I'd never heard Mozzie go by anything like it. It had no relation that I knew of to Moreau or to Fowler, either, so for Neal to be asking about it, it had to be because Wilkes demanded it.

Rice pushed down on the keyboard and brought up a formerly-minimized downloaded photograph. My heart leaped and I reached forward on impulse, trying to get to Neal, but caught myself and grabbed onto the edge of the desk instead. The photograph was from a camera tucked into the corner of the room, and it showed Neal sweeping the front office with his eyes while standing before a blonde receptionist, who was doing something on the computer. I looked over the small picture desperately. Neal was okay. He was unharmed, as far as I could see. His tie pin was missing and it laid askew against his chest. His shirt was untucked from his slacks and his hair was messy in a way he never would've come into the office without fixing and he looked exhausted, but he was okay.

Or… he was okay, two hours ago.

I swallowed thickly and hoped that Rice would continue exercising her recently-acquired social skills and not comment on how affected I was by the still frame. "What's the significance?"

"I pulled a file from Interpol," she explained, reaching up and swiping curly hair out of her face and forcing it behind her ears. "Thomas Loze happens to be a favorite alias of Edward Riley."

Damn it. Now that was a big shark, right up there with Dorsett… not quite as high on the ladder as Keller, but far too high for me to want Neal going anywhere near him. "That name I know," I murmured, clearing my throat. "A go-to for rich criminals who want something really valuable moved really, really discreetly. Very violent, very dangerous, and it's a very bad idea to mess with him. Which is probably why Wilkes is having Neal do the snooping, and probably pulling off whatever stunt he's got planned."

"Wilkes is planning a rip-off," Rice surmised, and I nodded my initial agreement. Why else would Wilkes need a front man, unless he wanted to do something he knew would piss off Riley without eliminating the fence entirely? If he intended to murder Riley, then Wilkes wouldn't need to have someone else go to cast suspicion away from himself.

At least if Neal was a front man, then he was – albeit temporarily – safe. That would buy us time. Neal, I had to admit, was a good target for this sort of thing. He was known well enough in the criminal world, and even if Riley didn't recognize him, then after the scam, he would know Neal was clever enough to pull it off on his own, meaning that he didn't immediately accuse anyone else. Once Wilkes had what he wanted, he got the pleasure of executing someone who'd wronged him in the past. It was a double-win for Wilkes.

For as long as Neal was serving as the decoy, he was safe. Wilkes wouldn't kill him until he'd used him, and that meant we had a small window in which we could intercept Neal and make a plan to turn the tables. The first idea was to just grab him and pull him out at the very first opportunity, but then I remembered the reason Rice was here in the first place. Neal would cooperate if his life was threatened, but there was one other way to get him to do what he was told that didn't involve threatening him, and that was to threaten someone else, someone innocent.

Lindsay was Wilkes' insurance policy to get Neal to behave – that was why he hadn't let her go to Rice. Also, because he's a twisted monster, but that wasn't the point. As long as he had a purpose for Neal, then Neal and Lindsay were both safe.

"He's using Neal as his front man. If it goes wrong, Riley attacks Neal and Wilkes gets away clean." I gestured at the computer. "This is why he kept Lindsay. Neal doesn't cooperate, he injures the girl until he does."

"Riley's on an inbound flight from Sydney. He touches down at one." Rice checked her watch, worrying her lower lip with her teeth.

I nodded slightly. It wasn't even noon yet, but I had no idea when Neal was going to arrive. Assuming he came through the international terminal, I could station enough agents in civilian clothes to cover all of the entries, and I could take the one nearest to the drop-off lane. Wilkes would stay as far as he could from the scene.

"I'm going to the airport," I decided, folding my jacket over my arm. "I'll be waiting for Neal whenever he shows up. I'll touch bases, let him know what's going on. Keep going with the search for Lindsay." I swept around to hurry out and to my car. After taking a few steps, I realized that my footsteps had shadows. I turned around abruptly to the redhead on my heels, who leaned back in surprise. "What are you doing?" I bluntly questioned.

"I'm coming with you!" She declared. I snorted. As if. I didn't want her anywhere near Neal, no matter who was in charge. Rice reached out and grabbed onto my arm before I could turn my back to her. "I'm not as coldhearted as you seem to think!" She raised her voice. "Look, I realize I messed up, but I don't want him dead!"

I stared at her. She seemed earnest enough, even as I glared. At the least humane level, she could've wanted to go just because her ass would have more cover if she also helped recover the civilian she got kidnapped. If I let her come, she would have to be really stupid to put him in harm's way.

"Fine," I growled. Rice had initiative, if nothing else, and the more assistance I had, the better, no matter who it was coming from. "You come with me, you do as I say. Fetch Diana and bring her, too. Take your own damn car."

I turned to leave and this time, Rice didn't pursue in close quarters. If I had to let her into my car, had to have her sitting in the passenger seat where Neal usually rode, I'd have clocked her regardless of the destination.


I did what I planned once inside the international arrival terminal. The airport was big and busy, but we had more than enough agents at our disposal to feel confident that someone would spot Neal when he came in. We also collaborated with security and the TSA, showing them photographs of both men we were looking for. We told them that one was to be considered dangerous and not approached, and that the other was a civilian being forced to act against his will, and that while he wasn't a threat, it was absolutely imperative that either myself or Diana got in touch with him.

I knew Neal, and I knew Wilkes… well, as much as anyone could know someone else through studying behavior. My guess that Neal would enter through the first accessible entrance was correct. Although no cars stood out to me when they drove past in the far left lane, as I watched through the window, I saw Neal come into view on the sidewalk beside the lane where cars could pull over and deposit people close to the doors.

My heart jumped. It hadn't been too long since I had last seen him, less than a day ago, but I couldn't control the way my heartbeat pulsed in my ears and I could feel the thumping in my throat. My lover was safe and alive. How could I not be ecstatic? After he was in such a perilous position with Wilkes, inaccessible for over twelve hours, it was truly a dream to see him again, within my reach.

I drank him in through the Plexiglas window. He didn't notice me. I had shed my belt, holster, and blazer to appear less like a fed, and I kept my head down, hair unbound and spilling down over my shoulders in thick waves. It obscured me from close scrutiny from someone outside just in case Wilkes was still hanging around in a car. Neal wasn't looking for anyone – or, at least, it didn't seem like he was – so he didn't see the familiar silhouette lurking behind the glass.

He wasn't looking too much better than he had in the photograph from the Elite Voyages security cameras. Neal walked smoothly, but his left arm was held a little more stiffly, which I definitely catalogued and made a note to check. His face had more color than it had had in the photo, his tie had been fixed to hang straight, and he'd drawn his hands repeatedly through his hair in an attempt to tame it without products. Over his hair was a hat, but instead of the fedoras he liked, it was some sort of driver's cap. All in all, he looked fantastic for someone who'd been abducted, and had I not been so familiar with his usual preferences, I wouldn't have thought there was anything odd about his clothes or hair.

I smiled longingly, letting a long breath escape from my chest, and slipped to the left, slinking around the beam in front of the wide floor-to-ceiling window and hiding behind the wall closer to the door. I stayed a few feet away, but watched Neal enter, one hand in his pocket, raise his eyes briefly to the electronic board announcing arriving flights, and start to take a right.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," I called to him. Several people were within mere feet of us, but he recognized my voice instantly and his shoulders sagged. The comfortable way he postured melted away in a second, the tension that held him like that gone. "But I saw a mockingbird in the park." I mocked Mozzie playfully and held my tongue between my teeth.

Neal looked to the window, checking for a car within view, but whatever vehicle had dropped him off wasn't there anymore. He walked over to me where I leaned on the wall. "There's no need for the tricks, Kenna. Wilkes isn't here."

I smiled at him gently and moved a step forward to meet Neal as he came over. He stopped, arms down, and laughed nervously in relief. I smiled up at him, blinking away feelings that threatened to bring relieved tears to my eyes. He was so close, so real, and his voice was steady. It was nice to hear his low chuckle instead of the hurt noise he'd made on the phone.

I reached for his left arm and smoothed my hand down his sleeve. Neal turned his head to watch. I pressed against his bicep, cupped his elbow, and then slid my hand down his forearm. Neal raised his hand and I grasped his wrist after feeling his entire arm. There was slight localized swelling on the outside of his upper arm, close to his shoulder, but nothing else concerning.

"I'm okay," he said softly.

I nodded. I could see that he was. Biting my lip, I leaned forward and wrapped my arms tightly around his middle, pressing my forehead to his shoulder and hiding my face as tears clouded my vision. Neal embraced me just as suddenly, one arm flying tight around my lower back while the other went behind my neck, cupping my head over my hair. He held me to him just as securely as I held him, feeling his warmth through our clothes. I felt his hand shift in my hair and then he pressed his cheek against the side of my head, looking down my back and sighing contently.

Slow footsteps joined from my left. My vision was fully encompassed by the shadows of Neal's neck and shirt, but I could take a guess at who would stand right beside us. "We're here to help you get out of this mess, Caffrey."

Neal's arms tensed as if he thought I was in danger of being taken away. He picked up his head and glared. "That's kind of ironic coming from you, Agent Rice."

I took my hands off of his back. Neal dropped his arms and I moved a respectable distance away. The first time we were in private, I'd be right back on him without hesitation, and it would take a crowbar to pry me off… but just because I could see he was okay didn't mean that we were out of the woods. Lindsay was still being used as leverage and Edward Riley was about to touch down in our city.

"Hear that?" I asked Rice snidely, unable to resist making another shot. I wouldn't have to be having a teary reunion with my artist if she had just been a decent human being without being shouted at in front of a ton of our colleagues. "He's as done with you as I am." Rice turned pink and looked away, but she stuck it out and stayed where she was. I looked back to Neal and felt myself relaxing again just by seeing him. It was a struggle not to touch him just to reaffirm that he was there. "I hope you have a really good plan for getting whatever it is he wants from Loze, because Loze is actually Edward Riley."

"Damn," Neal muttered. I raised my eyebrows. I rarely heard him swear, so I took that to mean that he didn't have a superb plan worked out. "No wonder Wilkes doesn't want to be anywhere near this."

"Yep. You're a front man." I stated like I was congratulating him and stuffed my hands into my pockets so that I wouldn't just take any excuse to reach out and feel his shoulder or hand. The two of us immersed ourselves in our own discussion, cutting Rice out without intending on it.

"If I don't get his briefcase to Wilkes by four, he'll kill Lindsay," Neal solemnly relayed.

"Proof?"

"Her guard wasn't wearing a mask. And he has a silencer." He grimaced. I nodded slowly, covering my mouth. I knew how much Neal hated guns.

"He never had any intention of letting her go." I smiled sadly at Neal. We would fight to get her back no matter what Wilkes wanted, but it had to suck to be shoved into a case where he wanted to get someone back home only to learn that her captor just intended to murder her for the fun of it, no matter what went down before then. I wasn't surprised, but I hated that he had to be exposed to those kinds of people. "Like I said." I added pointedly to Rice, "This is why is pays to listen to agents who actually know what they're doing."

She looked rattled. Seeing that, I kind of regretted speaking that last sentence without first seeing her reaction to Neal's revelation. "But you saw her in person?" She checked, tightening her hands and lacing her fingers. He confirmed it with a nod. "Where?"

Neal didn't roll his eyes. He rarely did when he was speaking to anyone but me. It was sometimes like he had trained himself not to be so casually rude to people, just in case he was targeting someone dangerous as a mark. I was an exception; someone he was comfortable enough with to feel totally free to be a jerk sometimes. Lucky me.

"I don't know," he said testily, with the same tone of voice of a person who would be rolling their eyes if they could. He flicked his gaze at her for a second, irritated and dismissive. "They tased me." Rice looked suitably chastened and she cringed. Neal looked back to me, the irritation leaving his handsome features as he reached forward thoughtlessly and took one of my hands in both of his. "Please tell me you're close to finding her."

I hesitated to take his hand, but then decided to hell with it. Rice could just go fuck off if she wanted to report me. If she drove a stake in for something as innocent as hand-holding, I would press harder for legal ramifications for what she'd done. I wasn't as seething mad now that we knew where Neal was, now that I could hold his hand, but I still wasn't going to let her get off of the hook for that.

"We know what kind of building she's in and that she's close to the water, but that's still a lot of ground to cover," I informed apologetically, stroking my free hand down the back of one of his, rubbing over his knuckles and the soft skin.

"Her guard was eating mushu pork from a restaurant called Walk of Fire," he remembered helpfully.

"That's a Chinese takeout place near the boardwalk," I turned my head to say to Rice. Not being from the city, she would need to know. She could take the information back to the search teams, they could narrow down their canvas search. It could've been a misdirect, but if they never intended for Lindsay to leave, they probably didn't count on Neal paying much attention to their takeout containers. "That helps," I told Neal gently, praising.

He squeezed my smaller hand in between his. "Hey, I'm staying here," he said quietly, sucking on the inside of his cheek nervously. "If you don't get to Lindsay in time…" He let it hang. We all knew what would happen to the girl if Wilkes didn't get what he wanted before the FBI could intervene.

I held my breath and looked up at his eyes. They were sharp and clear, conscious of his decision. I couldn't argue with him, not when it really was his choice and I couldn't stop him, short of cuffing him, but I didn't have to like it. Neal wasn't looking very eager about it, either, but he did seem resolute. He was going to stay on Wilkes' leash, return to a man who could put a bullet through his head with a smile, for the sake of some nineteen-year-old – the child of the man who ensured his four-year stay in prison.

"Rice, go," I forced through my teeth, biting down on my tongue. I had to remind myself over and over that I couldn't kiss Neal, that I couldn't go for the full "reuniting lovers" experience, in such a public place. God, I wanted to kiss him. He demonstrated the values I held most sacred and found most attractive, and from the utterly sincere look in his eyes, he wasn't doing it just so he'd get special treatment from me. He genuinely cared what happened to Lindsay.

Rice leaned back and looked between Neal and me. I clasped his hand tighter in case she had anything to say. "What are you doing?" She asked, stunned. Either it was because I wasn't arguing about Neal remaining at risk or because I was sending my ally away. I didn't care less. I just wanted the time alone to talk with my best friend.

I snapped at her. She was ruining the moment. She was making me think about her when I should've just been treasuring the few moments I could steal with my boyfriend before I had to continue the search and he had to deal with Riley. "I don't have to answer to you, remember?" While I glowered meanly at her, I held tight to Neal's hand. He gave me a squeeze. I took a deep breath. "I'm briefing my consultant. You go gather up a search team and focus on the areas closest to the restaurant. Now."

I didn't have to say it again. Neal and I both watched her leave, reaching for her phone to make the call to Derek, who was in charge of the grid search. She left through the front doors to go out to the car in the parking garage outside the terminal. Left in a sea of people who wouldn't know to be aware of the way we held onto each other, we laced our fingers and held our hands between us.

"Wow," he remarked mildly. "What did you do to heel her?"

I flushed in a (misplaced) sense of pride. "Chewed her out in front of the WCCD," I answered, standing up taller and laughing breathily, still amazed to be standing right in front of him. Remembering a device in my pocket, I slipped a hand into my trousers and took out a small bug. "Keep this on you at all times," I lectured shortly, holding it up for him to look. I turned it over, showing just how unimpressive it was, and then I stretched my fingers on the other hand. Neal took the cue and let go, and I reached for his wrist and slipped the bug into the folded cuff of his sleeve. "It's a transceiver. This gadget actually works both ways – Diana's going to stay near and keep an eye on you, following the tracking signal, so she and I can both talk to you, and you can talk to us. She's got an entire team on backup, but they'll be staying out of the way. Don't do anything stupid."

It was going to hurt to leave him, but really, aside from myself, I couldn't have chosen anyone I trusted more to protect Neal, except for maybe Katie or Derek, but one didn't have the know-how and the other was preoccupied.

"Too late," he joked, smiling at me weakly. I tried to frown, but couldn't quite manage it, and instead took up his hand again. "I'm glad you're here. I was really starting to worry. I wish I could kiss you," he wistfully pined.

I sucked in on my lip and nodded. "I wish you could, too," I whispered back. Nothing sounded more appealing than holding his hand to my side and pulling him down by the collar for several long, sweet kisses. Nothing except taking down Wilkes, rescuing Lindsay, and escorting him safely home, that was. I swallowed. We had to start doing something, whether it was talking strategy or parting ways, before I lost my self-control. I decided on the former, giving his hand a tug and leading him to the left, heading toward the terminals. "Come on. We need to figure out a way to get the briefcase without also getting Riley out for your blood."

"We?" Neal checked, eyebrows flying up. He sped up and matched my pace.

I made a scoffing noise. Had he really thought I wouldn't be using that particular pronoun? It was becoming my favorite as of late – we were significant others; we were in this together; we were being targeted by Fowler. I had stood by him when Fowler made him look like the culprit of the diamond heist. I had remained loyal to him, even when Fowler started coming at me because of my alliance with the forger. I had not requested, but insisted on having his back when confronted with Matthew Keller. We was right – we were a team.

"I'm not leaving until you've only got one homicidal wacko to deal with," I confirmed bravely.

Neal dryly chuckled. "This is what true friendship should be about," he celebrated sarcastically.

I stubbornly continued to lead. I knew we could find a private place to plan if I got to one of the TSA guards. They could take a look at my badge and give Neal and I a safe place to confer, and any resources we'd need to encounter Riley with as much safety as we could possibly get. He might put up a fight if a fed suddenly confiscated his luggage.

"You have really strange friendships if they all go like this."

A third person joined us, slipping out of the crowd and seeming to just materialize without warning on Neal's other side. Neal was practically a magnet for people in this airport. At first, I thought it was Rice, and I made to snap at her again. When I looked around Neal to the newcomer, I relaxed. Neal stopped, and when I felt my hand start to pull, I turned back to he and Mozzie. So we're just going to stand out in the open, then. Fine.

Mozzie had a talent for hiding in the crowds and slipping through the cracks. I had no idea when he'd arrived or how he had found out that we needed to be at the airport, but part of me was glad that he had. I fully intended to detain Riley, get the goods, and pass them to Neal, with neither of them being so much as ten feet close to the notoriously-vicious fence. Still, even with a plan and the promise of TSA backup, it was a comfort to have another friend in the vicinity, especially one that would help me keep Neal seeing reason. With Mozzie around, Neal was more likely to keep his heroics limited to what he could accomplish without being murdered.

"I don't care what you're doing here," Mozzie stated calmly, putting forth to begin with that his priorities were with his friend, not with Lindsay. While the agent and Samaritan in me protested and recoiled, the part that had panicked and flipped on Rice and repeatedly betrayed the bureau for Neal's sake was glad that someone with such firm objectivity towards the goal of Neal's safety was present. "As your friend, I must insist you pull the rip cord."

Neal was delighted. "You got my message!" He stated the obvious, grinning at Moz.

"It's thanks to that message that we found you," I pointed out, realizing belatedly that I had neglected to mention how we'd managed to show up at the right place at the right time. I gave him a literal pat on the back for the cleverness of signing Mozzie up for the electronic newsletter.

Mozzie looked up at his taller friend and saw the driver's hat. I had also skipped past that. Mozzie made a disgruntled face. "What's with the driver's outfit?"

Neal pursed his lips and sighed. "I'm about to rob Edward Riley," he summarized for Mozzie, looking moderately uneasy as if it was only just sinking in for himself.

"The Edward Riley?!" Mozzie's eyes went wide and he raised his voice, not far from yelling. Neal and I both hurriedly shushed him. Moz shook his head incredulously, tensing up to fight or flee just at the mention of the name. "What's your plan, a gun in the glove compartment?"

"Of course not," I scolded Mozzie, rubbing my hand on Neal's upper back reassuringly. "Neal's smarter than that." And he hates guns, but personal preferences aside…

Both of us looked to Neal expectantly, Mozzie with his feathers still ruffled. I crossed my arms and waited. Neal hummed uncomfortably, slipped both hands into his pockets, and looked over the top of Mozzie's head towards the digital flight arrival board, pretending to be oblivious.

Neither of us were falling for it – Neal's social aptitude was anything but lacking. My jaw dropped and Mozzie threw his arms up. "That's your plan?!" Mozzie freaked out. "A gun in the glove compartment?!"

"It's a long story," Neal sighed. "One way or another, I'm taking his briefcase."

I looked over my shoulder when someone bumped their elbow into my back. It was just someone with earphones in who wasn't paying attention to where they were going, but I still turned back around to them, more cautious than before. "No one's taking anything if we all get arrested for suspicious behavior – you know, like standing around and saying how we're going to steal someone's briefcase, for instance."

Mozzie reached out and grabbed at Neal's sleeve. "Surely, you won't do this," he said slowly, trying to talk sense into the persistent conman's thick skull. "Because you're not suicidal."

"Thanks for the pep talk," Neal wryly muttered, freeing his arm from Moz's grip.

Mozzie leaned back, huffed, and went at Neal's shirt again, catching a stronger hold. "But," he said, and it looked like it pained him to contribute. "What if he gave it to you? And… was happy to give it to you?"

I made an aggravated noise in my throat. Mozzie was talking nonsense again. Had he hit his head at some point? Gone insane, started hallucinating? Maybe he was older than he looked and the dementia was beginning to set in. If Riley had something valuable enough for Wilkes to want, then he wasn't going to just grin and hand it over while singing a happy tune. I would have better luck going for a friendly picnic with Matthew in Sing Sing.

Neal, however, held a hand out, telling me to be patient. He cocked his head at Moz and the beginning of a smile started to curl his lips. "Zigzag scam?" He guessed, a gleam catching in his eye.

Mozzie nodded and slipped a hand into deep and wide pockets. He took out a couple of spare billfolds that I almost didn't want to look into. "One for me, one for you." Giving one to Neal, he looked in the other pocket and took out wire-framed glasses. Biting his tongue, he carefully took the pair he wore off of his face, replaced them with the new set, and tucked the others away. "Time to get into character," he clucked, smiling slightly.

Neal flipped open the billfold and scanned the inside. I glanced up at the ceiling exasperatedly. Nothing he said would possibly convince me it was anything but a fake ID. My boyfriend sent me a somewhat guilty wince and tried to look cute to get out of the eventual rebuke. Mozzie cleared his throat. The only difference between the two pairs of glasses were that the former pair had more red in the frames, and the new ones looked black. The color change was barely even noticeable.

Neal checked out how his friend had changed his outfit, dropped his hands to his sides, and said mockingly, "You're a chameleon."

"I can hardly recognize you," I agreed flatly.

Mozzie's cocky smile was quickly turned into an insulted scowl. "Stuff it and listen while we fill you in," he commanded, pointing at me imperiously with his finger. I shared a look with Neal in which he nonverbally begged me not to say anything too inflammatory.


I only gave security a minimal explanation of why we needed a room, but when I brought up Edward Riley, they were happy to cooperate, and seemed relieved that I was the one who was going to deal with it.

The plan for the con was simple. Neal, Mozzie, and I were playing different characters, all from different law enforcement units. Neal was resurrecting Nick Halden, Mozzie was enlisting Dante Haversham, and I was tentatively calling Eleanor Hastings back into action. Eleanor's original character didn't fit the role, but since I controlled her, I chose to ignore her original purpose and put her to work as an officer.

Riley had something in his suitcase. It was something Wilkes wanted. Logically, it was something that someone else would want, too. Out of Nick, Dante, and Eleanor, one of us was going to find a reason to want to keep it for ourselves. Another would be reluctantly convinced by their unfortunate "situation." The third would have a dramatic moral struggle so that it didn't seem too easy. Riley, to save his reputation as a reliable middleman, would hopefully give whatever it was over willingly in exchange for not having the whistle blown on his lucrative cargo.

First, we had to set up a room where we could unlock his suitcase and look through what was inside, as well as have our scam run its course without good-meaning officers throwing us off course or arresting us without understanding what we were doing. A private room was arranged and unlocked for Neal and I to set up while Mozzie scoped out where would be the best place to intercept Riley, both for distance and for our own safeties.

"This place brings back memories," Neal chuckled, looking around the empty room. White linoleum and plain walls greeted us, devoid of furniture. A brown closet door was tucked into the far wall. Windows were lined up on the adjacent wall, overlooking the disappointing view of a portion of the runway.

"How so?" I asked distractedly, going straight to the closet. We'd already been informed that we could find foldable furniture inside. If there was anything else we needed, someone from security would handle it. They wanted Riley away from the public, and wanted to assist the bureau to take down a criminal.

"Well, this is our place," Neal reminisced, looking out the window and tapping the glass. I opened the brown door and turned on the light inside. It was brighter than I expected, but the room was larger than I had predicted. Collapsible white plastic tables and folded metal chairs were up against the dark walls, cleaning supplies were stored on shelves, and mops, brooms, and dustpans were kept in the corner reserved for the janitorial staff, as well as a rinsing station in case there were any eye- or skin-related accidents with some of the more corrosive cleaning solutions. "Way back. First day, remember?"

I stepped into the closet. Neal's shiny black shoes, scuffed from the rough treatment of the last day, clicked after me on the linoleum flooring and joined me in the small space. I remembered the Blancanieves books, and Neal looking so adorably surprised and apologetic when he realized he'd been hitting on a lesbian, and his skilled tongue reverting between English and Spanish to flirt with me, teasing, testing his limits.

"You've attached more sentiment to this room than I have," I informed him unapologetically. I wanted to strangle Neal last time I'd been here. At the moment, the very thought of touching him with harmful intent seemed unthinkable; I'd rather slice my own skin open than tighten my hands around his throat for even a second. "This is a big closet. Help me move the table out?"

"The plastic ones don't usually weigh much," Neal said, unabashedly weaseling his way out of doing heavy lifting. I rolled my eyes and turned around as Neal shut the closet door. I frowned. Neal smiled and came closer, purring. "Which means it won't take long to move them around."

"So we have time to spare?" I asked, raising my eyebrows, holding out my hands.

Neal brought up his hands underneath mine and pulled them to his body, setting both of my hands on his hips. He looked down to me with a persuasive grin and touched his forehead to mine. Convinced that I wasn't going to try to move, he let go of my hands and brought his to my face. The artist slipped his thumb over my mouth, pressed gently over my lips, and brushed back my hair. Beautiful blue eyes wandered from my lips to my eyes and he stretched down…

Fireworks exploded. His lips were dry and hot and when he pressed them to mine, he did so with a slow, passionate burn, letting me feel what he wasn't saying. I tightened my hands into my hips before I realized what I was doing and uncurled my fingers. Neal made a soft growling sound and the hand that had disappeared after fixing my hair rematerialized at my waist, tugging me up against his body and flattening against my back.

"Those are the only bruises I want," he mumbled when I hurriedly apologized. His breath came heavily. There was something more to his mood than just having me alone in a spacious closet, probably something he'd been repressing for a while – fear, relief, anxiety, all manifesting itself in a way that felt more comfortable than stress or anger or tears.

Much as it turned me on to hear him say, it was still sourly indicative of there being other bruises on his body, which made me sad to hear. I could tolerate him having bruises willingly received in a heated session, but any other context was unacceptable. Did he really think he could all but tell me he was injured and have me just pass it over?

It wasn't the time or place to get too busy in the closet. Practicality aside, I'd much rather take him home, see to bruising and swelling, and – if he wasn't too badly discolored under his clothes – make love to him gently, careful not to let it hurt. Neal might need rough and quick, but if he expected me to be the rough one, then I couldn't do it, not right after having been fearing for his life. I didn't vent like that. I couldn't. I saw him in danger, I wanted to protect him, smother him in tenderness and affection. Being mean or leaving marks would feel too close to harm for my comfort. I always had that issue. When I saw really bad cases, no amount of teasing or mocking would convince me to smack Katie's arm, even just in jest.

"You're okay," I promised him, doing as he wanted and leaving a hand on his hip. I refused to tighten my grip again, and he didn't ask. Okay. Maybe he knew how I got about hurting people, about doing corporal harm. Bruises were little, but phrase them as "bursting blood capillaries" and they sounded more serious. "You're okay. I'm here. You've got me."

"I've got you…" he whispered, seeking out my eyes and sealing our mouths together again.

His kisses became less fevered. They became slow, soft. Neal broke our lips apart, took his mouth to my throat and suckled on my neck, tentatively pressing his teeth to the flesh and leaving tiny indentations. I fisted my hand loosely in his hair and he picked me up by my thighs, carrying me to the rinsing station, and sat me on the edge of the counter. This put me at his height and he wrapped his arms around me, stepping in between my knees.

I expected him to… I don't know, do something. Maybe reach for the buttons on my shirt, or grind his hips against my thighs. He brought me right up to the edge of the counter, fitted tightly between my legs, but didn't do anything like that. He just held me close with his arm across my back, the other roaming my body, touching where he could. He stroked my hair while he kissed me, touched my side, my stomach, the swell of my breast, the curve of my hip, the top of my thigh, the back of my calf. He just touched me, reassuring himself I was there, I was alive, he was with me and he was safe.

His large hand swept around my both the curves and the harder edges and he sucked on my lower lip, unwilling to stop kissing. I let him have what he needed. I needed it, too, and I enjoyed that we needed the same thing. I touched his face, mostly, caressing his cheek and jaw, but several times I kept coming back to where I knew there was a small injury on his arm. I wrapped my legs around him to hold him where he was and smoothed my hand down his back, over his shoulder blades, up strong shoulders and around to his chest.

"This is how I managed it, you know," I whispered, as Neal gave me a break to breathe and gave another kiss, flush against my neck, and made a path of closed-mouth kisses up to my jaw. "You being God-knows-where, maybe alone, possibly hurt, definitely scared. I kept reminding myself that as long as I stayed calm, I'd get you back, and I could have this again. This intimacy and security."

He sharply inhaled. I cradled his head in my hands and nuzzled my nose against his cheek. He pushed the side of his face against mine, keeping his warm cheek against mine, the beginnings of stubble scratching gingerly on the lower side of my face.

"Why do you put up with me?" He whispered, turning his nose against my neck and hiding his face.

I stroked one hand through his hair and held the other to the back of his neck, protecting a vulnerable spot and proving that I wouldn't hurt him. He was so sweet, so vulnerable… so needy, too, sometimes, but he liked to hide that, pretend that he wasn't. After all, what kind of con artist was needy? Neediness, clinginess, got cons ruined, got conmen in danger. He was slowly learning it was okay to need things in front of me, even the unnecessary things, like intimacy and closeness and embraces. I wasn't his mark, and he wasn't going to scare me away. I was his girlfriend. It was my privilege to help him with his concerns and insecurities.

He deserved an honest answer, so I tried to think of one. Why did I put up with Neal? Because he made me happy, duh. Because having him out of prison meant that a lot more of the people who deserved to be there were going in. Because Katie liked having him around. I put up with him because the good outweighed the bad by a landslide and because he's my best friend. He made my life better. He made me happier. He made my transfer to the WCCD feel like a good thing, because it gave me him. He made me question who I was and what I was becoming and how I could still wear my badge with any sort of honor, but I was a better protector and provider for Katie because of it. I was a better protector and provider for him because of it.

"Because…" I paused, chuckled mirthlessly, and kissed his temple. "Because in a lot of ways, you make me feel like a better person than I actually am."

Neal picked up his head and whispered in my ear that that wasn't possible, that I was better than I thought already and didn't need him, but that the feeling was mutual and sometimes knowing that they would disappoint me discouraged him from certain choices.

Our time was interrupted by the PA system. The loud feminine voice announced, crackling through the system in the closet, that an inbound flight from Sydney, Australia, was now landing and would be emptying shortly. Neal and I both took deep breaths, looking up to the ceiling after the automated system. My long hair was loose and mussed, the strands pulled and clenched by Neal's hands as he fought to feel like he was doing enough to embrace me.

Tentatively, I sought out his eyes again. We had a commitment to Mozzie, to Lindsay, to be where we needed to be. "That's Riley's plane," I breathed, trying not to sound so upset.

Neal lifted his hands to my face and held my cheeks as he kissed me, firmly enough to make my toes curl. "I promise," he mumbled against my forehead, kissing there, and then the tip of my nose, and then both cheeks. "When this is all over, and I take you home, I'll make you feel like a princess."

I didn't need the royal treatment and I hadn't asked for it. "It's my turn to be supportive," I objected, reaching for his belt loops and tugging on them. I let my voice slip into a whine while Neal pecked the frown away. "I'm not the one who was kidnapped." And I was really looking forward to spoiling you for a change.

He went for my hands, picking up my wrists and holding my hands up. He started with my right hand. "You already support me," he pointed out faithfully, holding the back of my hand to his lips and then turning it over to kiss my palm. "You're the only one who's still here." He laid down my hand on my thigh with care and repeated the treatment on my left hand. "Except Moz," he allowed, lips drifting over my knuckles with a feather-light touch. "But I don't think you and Moz are in the same category."

I let him make me laugh, awarding him a small giggle as he gave me one of his breathtaking, infatuated grins, as if he could hardly believe what we'd done, how we were with each other, and all we'd done was shown how much we cared.


Mozzie and I made eye contact on opposite sides of the baggage claim, both of us standing by as if we were waiting for our suitcases to pop out onto the conveyor belt. Disembarking travelers kept picking up their things, gathering their companions (be they children or adults), and leaving, taking a right at the silk rope in front of hired chauffeurs. Most of them stood stoically and held signs in their hands, advertising who they were driving for. Neal had a white cardstock board with Riley's alias' surname written on it in all capitals.

It took a while. Riley was one of the last to leave the security checkpoint, but when I caught sight of him, there was already a briefcase in his hands. I made a quick glance at Mozzie to see if he recognized the guy that had just come into the claim station, but Mozzie was already covertly looking around in that overly-paranoid way of his. He'd noticed.

Riley bypassed the conveyors entirely, which made our job a little bit easier. It took away some of the anticipation when he stalked straight to the drivers, where 'Loze' was being held up at eye-level on a board. The fence was a tall guy, standing at Neal's height, but he was built broad and stocky. His fists were almost twice the size of mine, arms and torso thick and muscled. Dirty blond hair was a little messy from the long plane ride, but it was too short for the unruliness to have a negative impact on his appearance. The pale green eyes were sharp and mean, and they locked in on Neal, who smiled courteously and reached for the briefcase.

"Let me take your case for you," he volunteered, but when Neal came close to touching the handle, Riley turned his shoulders, pushing the briefcase behind his legs and away from Neal. Simultaneously, I looked up to Mozzie and tapped the side of my nose swiftly, disguising it by rubbing my cheek with my wrist.

"Just take me to my car," Riley muttered, staring at Neal's suit in distaste.

Mozzie had started at the far end of the claim belt, but he walked quickly and Neal was slow in nodding and holding out an arm in the direction of the doors. With the two of them both working to get Mozzie on the scene, Riley was held back for an extra few seconds. It was long enough for the shorter man to get within earshot and call across the cluttered station, "Thomas Loze?"

There was a delay between hearing the name and realizing that it was supposedly his own, but the delay was short and subtly hidden. Riley turned around guardedly. He probably questioned why anyone would be wanting his alias, who didn't technically exist, but didn't assume it meant real trouble. Why would someone who knew who he was not use his real name?

Mozzie held out one of the wallets with the fake IDs. It concerned me that he'd happened to have two of them on his person. Either he carried them around all the time or he had planned to run a con on Riley since before he showed up at the airport to wait for Neal, in which case he must have, on some level, anticipated that he would need to pretend to be an authority figure. I didn't know which case scenario I found more alarming.

He held out the credentials long enough for Riley to see, but not long enough for him to scrutinize. He spoke with the confidence and passive aggression that a lot of feds would use on suspects without thinking, and thankfully, he had also had the sense to change more than just his glasses (but if I didn't want to think about why he had the fake IDs, I didn't even want to acknowledge that the tailored suit change existed, because that was a level of foresight-slash-convenience I didn't want to consider. Damn con artists).

"Agent Haversham, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement." Mozzie pushed the badge back into his blazer and looked meaningfully down to the suitcase. Neal lowered the sign to his left side and reached into his pocket with his right hand. I pushed myself away from the short metal stands between baggage conveyors and went to join them, coming to Riley from the other side and cutting off a quick sprinting escape. "Word is, you're bringing something into the country that we should know about."

Riley tried the charm. He laughed, yet it came out a little harshly. "Is this a joke?" He asked, voice loud and a little easygoing. He wasn't nearly as good at the charisma game as Neal was, and although I probably wasn't as charming as the latter, I definitely could've won someone over a lot faster than Riley could ever hope to.

"Do I look like I'm joking, Elvis?" Mozzie asked callously, rotating his wrist in front of his face to draw attention to his stern (and slightly pissed off) expression.

Quietly, Neal drew his attention to his own false ID. "Agent Halden, joint task force."

I walked up behind him with my hands behind my back. I had no false alias to fall back on, but I was dressed like a fed and I had the attitude down perfectly (for some mysterious reason), so we were betting that if I introduced myself like one after the boys did, it would be taken for granted that I had my own badge, just elected not to show it.

"Hastings," I introduced, sounding dully bored. "Foreign Affairs."

Neal pointed with the corner of his billfold to the briefcase, which Riley held behind his back again at the motion. "We're going to need you to open the case," Neal said gravely. Riley squared his shoulders and looked around, seeking an exit route. There wasn't one; we were all too close to him, and I pushed my jacket back just enough so that he could see my holster. I made sure not to reveal that there wasn't actually anything in the holster (airport security), but it had the desired effect. Riley swallowed and stared back at Neal confrontationally, but didn't make a move. Neal held his arms out helplessly. "It doesn't have to be a scene if you don't want it to be."

Attacking agents would only get him in bigger trouble, so Riley gave in unhappily. "Okay," he said tersely, taking the case out from behind him and holding it out for Neal. "You guys really want to do this?" He phrased it like we were going to regret it or something. Neal didn't react, just patiently took the offered case. "Knock yourselves out," he snorted.

I wasn't so sure we wouldn't find anything. Wilkes was mean, but he was also deliberate, and he wouldn't put himself in the crosshairs of so many feds and break so many laws at once if he wasn't acting on solid information. Hopefully – for Lindsay's sake – whatever was in the suitcase really was incriminating, and Riley was just trying to psych us out so he could leave without being caught.

It wasn't going to work. He thought he was playing us, but we were already playing him. I had to hand it to Neal and Mozzie – they deserved their props for the thoroughness of their cons and the way they quickly thought on their feet to adapt to circumstances, availability of resources, and even my presence, giving me a role that hadn't previously existed, but that would only strengthen the act.

"Let's go," I encouraged, reaching out with an arm to block Riley from doing a double-take and fleeing. Neal and I very briefly met each other's eyes. Neal allowed the barest hint of a smirk to show before he shut it down entirely, fixing his character firmly back in place.

As we shepherded Riley towards the secured room off of airport security, it occurred to me – and not for the first time – that I would be truly terrified of what the two could accomplish if Neal and Mozzie set out with malicious intent. Now that I was helping them, I felt dangerous and witty and secretly thrilled, as if I were untouchable.

I knew that rush would wear off. It always did. It was like stealing cookie dough from the fridge, or staying up past bedtime and not getting caught; enticing, promising more mischief and more rewards if you just pushed your limits, did it again. You got away with it last time; why not reward yourself with the prize you'd already proven you can reach? The thing about doing it with the law was that it was five times headier and ten times as dangerous, and that knowledge added to the cynicism and self-loathing that I always felt after breaking my vows and double-crossing the agency I'd given so much for.

I thought the temptations and the risks were bad when I'd started sleeping with my consultant, but now that I had crossed some sort of line where I would break the law with just a few complaints and get ensnared within cons run on dangerous criminals, I realized that I had had it good then. Sleeping with my CI didn't make me a criminal, it just made me a poor role model and a bad agent. What I had become, though… Fowler, Moreau, and, to some degree, Neal and Mozzie, had all pushed me to becoming a criminal.

Zarra had become McKenna to be a new person, so she wouldn't have to fight to be one person while she was still in name and legality another. McKenna was suffering from the same difficulties. I felt like I had two alter egos. One was a cop and the other ran with Neal and Mozzie whenever it was convenient for me and my goals.

The question then became how much of it was external influences, and how much of it was just inherently me? Was I doing the best I could in situations out of my control, or was I better suited to crime than to law enforcement?

The potential answers scared me, but none more so than the idea that no one could answer them but me. How could I trust myself to give truthful answers when I wasn't even sure what kind of person I was anymore?


Riley unlocked the case himself to cooperate. Neal had barely opened it, sterile latex gloves on his hands, before Mozzie was snapping at Riley to lean over the edge of the white table, flecks of grey in the plastic. "Palms on the table!" Mozzie slammed one of his own hands down for emphasis. Riley grumbled something rude and bent over, bracing both hands on the edge of the table where we could see them.

He shifted his weight to one leg and rolled his eyes.

Neal moved around the contents of the suitcase. I decided Mozzie probably wasn't dumb enough to push too far on Riley and walked to Neal's side, observing. Deft hands moved aside a pair of trousers, a golf polo, a change of white socks, and boxers. To the left side of the case were toiletries, including a toothbrush with a cap, a black comb with several prongs bent, and a small tube of mouthwash.

I tipped my head and watched the suitcase instead of Neal's hands. The inside was lined with black suede glued along the interior. When Neal pushed the clothes to the other side, nothing remarkable fell out of any pockets, but I bit my tongue skeptically. This was Wilkes' big score? No, there had to be something else, something we were missing.

"This looks like it's just an overnight case." Neal picked up the socks and held them up for Mozzie to see. His voice was level and casual, but obviously, there was some trepidation. There had to be something for us to use as the ruse to get it away from Riley. I doubted he'd believe we were dying to get our hands on the rare toothpaste… Colgate Whitening.

Riley smirked thinly. "When this is through, I want badge numbers." He stated flatly. Although he was looking at Neal and I, Mozzie made a face full of panic as he realized that we didn't have legit badge numbers to give him – well, I did, but he and Neal didn't. "You can't prove probable cause," Riley challenged.

I tightened my jaw. I really want to hit you. I could prove whatever I liked… yeah, okay, that wouldn't hold up in court, but exactly how hard would a judge press to have me sentenced for lying to him? It's legal to lie to suspects in an interrogation, but this was stretching it and might even be considered an abuse of power. Not to mention that I was collaborating with known con artists outside of the bureau's knowledge.

The fence wasn't done. "It'll be all of your asses on platters!"

Mozzie reached his limit. I rubbed the back of my neck when I saw it coming. He was too far away to cover his mouth or kick his shin. "Shut your hole and kiss wood, Riley! Yeah, we know who you really are!" He shouted, pointing at the man's back. Eyes narrowing flintily, the much larger male turned his head to stare at Mozzie, nose flaring threateningly. Mozzie backed up as he was suddenly the focus of that ire, moving to put myself between he and Riley.

"Way to go, Haversham," I complimented sassily, clapping my hands slowly.

"Really?" Neal asked his friend with a soft sigh.

Mozzie took a deep breath, let it out quickly, and then held a hand over his stomach like he was going to be sick. "I just said that to a guy who enjoys killing people with his bare hands," he hissed at Neal and I. Riley looked on, the intimidating glower replaced by something akin to disbelief mixed with amusement.

Pinching the bridge of my nose, I replied, "You're friends with someone who carries a gun. You're pretty safe for the moment."

It was painstaking, trying to figure out what to do next. Now that Mozzie had freaked on Riley, it was entirely possible he would have fewer qualms about trying to hurt us. Hopefully Mozzie didn't realize that airport security had taken away my sidearm… That stupid suitcase was to blame. If it weren't for whatever was being smuggled inside that we just didn't get, then Lindsay would be safe, Neal would be as safe as he'd been last week, and I wouldn't be within ten feet of someone I should've been trying to arrest, but instead intended to let walk.

"Damn this," I muttered, reaching roughly for the briefcase and picking it up by the sides. Neal moved his hands out of the way and I turned around, holding it over the floor, just a second away from dumping it out. Neal could shake out the clothes, I could check inside the zip-up shaving kit, we could see if there was anything hiding. Smugglers could be crafty.

Riley picked up a hand from the table and pointed at me abruptly. "Hey, you damage my property, I'm gonna sue!"

Oh, yeah? I turned my head slowly and locked eyes with him, face completely blank. He and what army was going to sue me? Yes, because Edward fucking Riley was going to take an FBI agent to court and win. With all we had on him? That trial would not go the way he wanted. It was an empty threat and I knew it, and he had to know it, too; FBI agent or Foreign Affairs agent, I was still not someone he would get so mad at as to go through the American legal system, for Christ's sake.

"Oops," I said in a solid deadpan, foregoing my original plan of dumping out the contents. I let go of the sides of the briefcase and send it crashing down to the off-white floor. Riley grit his teeth, slammed his fist down on the table, and turned his head to look away from me.

When the table shook from Riley's mistreatment, the briefcase landed on the linoleum with a much louder crash than I'd expected. It closed, but the impact bounced the lid back up. The lighter contents bounced and the comb flipped up on one end, almost falling out.

So that hadn't really helped anything, but I felt a little better.

I bent down to pick it up and went ahead with my plan to search everything more thoroughly. When I pushed open the top again, instead of looking down into a case of clothes and hygienic supplies, I was looking at the interior backing, which had popped out when the case landed. The side that had been glued to the edge of the briefcase had rows and rows of cuts in the suede, each wide and deep enough to hold cards. Each of these cards were gold-colored. Very much interested, I pushed it back further and looked at the inside. The real lining was velvet, not suede, and it had slots cut in it, too. The entire suitcase was filled with gold cards that shone as if they were made of actual gold, and they were cleverly hidden by a little false materials and glue.

Snarky and annoyed, I sought out Riley's eyes. "Oh, look at this," I said monotonously. "Look at all of this probable cause."

Neal crouched down next to me and looked for himself. He whistled. "Wow." Money was always a motive. I should've known.

I picked the entire case up and showed the hidden compartment to Mozzie. "Pure gold," he admired, holding his hands behind his back lest he get a bit too excited. "Think they're preloaded?"

"I don't know," Neal shrugged, but then he gave Mozzie a very serious look. The odds suggested that they were definitely preloaded. What would Wilkes do with a bunch of empty cards? It's not like they were worth much. The shine from sunlight reflecting into the window behind us caught the cards and made them flash. Oh. "Load them up with a couple hundred thousand each…"

I clapped my hands. "This is easily millions of dollars, not counting the actual gold of the cards." When both men looked at me as if I'd gone off the deep end, I pointed out the glare from the metals. It wasn't just a good dye job – they were actually made out of gold. "If you take one out and look at the writing, I'll bet it's in Russian. There's a bank in Russia that's issuing credit cards made of actual gold. Each card, preloaded or not, is worth roughly sixty-five grand." Which would add another several million.

We all looked over at the fence to see if he had anything to say for himself, but he was steadfastly looking at the wall in the opposite direction. That was an answer enough.

"I want my lawyer," he opted to say when no one else asked a question.

"Oh, you'll need him, Chachi!" Mozzie declared boldly, feeling brave.

This is our play, then. Money. Easy enough. Any one person could come up with a handful of uses for that much money in under a minute, especially anyone as well-versed in manipulation as conmen. And con-women, I amended.

Neal reinforced Mozzie by closing the briefcase, leaving the gold cards and their hidden compartment free inside without sticking the adhesive back to the lining. "I'd say you're staring down ten years, easy," he remarked offhandedly, giving me a light elbow to the ribs. "Like that Field guy, hey, Ellie?"

I raised my eyebrows but had to admire the expertly-forged authenticity. Neal made it seem so much more believable, throwing in references to our older cases and using nicknames for my alias I hadn't even realized he'd thought of. If we were friendly enough to be using nicknames, then for the sake of the act, I'd play along.

"You weren't paying enough attention to that report, Nick. He's got fifteen before he even applies for parole." I nonchalantly lied. Field wasn't doing any time in prison because Hagen had had him murdered to keep his mouth shut. Riley didn't need to know that, and sticking with a name and case we were both familiar with made it less likely that we'd accidentally contradict each other. "Serves him right for bringing in all those counterfeits, I guess. Call the cavalry, Haversham. I'll see about getting this one a nice, comfy place in holding."

I rolled my sleeves up and grabbed at the wrist of each glove with the opposite hand, snapping them off and balling them up to toss out. I liked my taller, elbow-length gloves because they didn't pull off when I had to take latex on and off at crime scenes. Mozzie took out his cell phone, all business, and started to press buttons. He made a calculated glance up, caught the shine of the silver locks on the case, and slowed, keeping the phone screen out of Riley's eyesight.

"Imagine what you could do with just one of these babies," he said longingly, eyeing the latch.

Neal chuckled. "It'd make a great night out with the girlfriend, that's for sure."

"And the best care in the state," I said, biting my lip and looking down at the briefcase for a moment longer than strictly necessary, holding the wadded-up gloves in my left hand. The first person "Eleanor" thought of was Avery, whom I had sort of shot. Non-fatally, but shot, nonetheless, and the physical therapy alone was going to be a nightmare for him. He was going away for a long time, but he still had the right to medical care, and those bills were going to pile up. I did a little reinventing, changing the story, and convinced Eleanor to act as if she hadn't been the one in the vault who had to shoot Avery; Avery was her business partner who had been attacked by a fed whose name she didn't even know.

Just like that, in less than thirty seconds, we had staged ourselves for the scam. We'd mentioned some motives and two of us took it more seriously than the third. Mozzie had yet to do anything more with his phone, biting his lip, watching the case as if maybe the cards would come jumping out and "conveniently" fall into his wallet on the way.

Neal noticed that Mozzie wasn't listening anymore. He snapped his fingers once and stared at his colleague questioningly. "Call it in, Haversham," he prompted, nodding to the phone.

Mozzie shifted and lowered his phone, unable to bring himself to do it. "It's just, I promised-" He stopped, shook his head, tried to pick up his phone… and then failed to dial it for a second time. "I promised Sarah that necklace, with the diamonds!" He exploded, face set with misery.

Neal looked over at Riley, mimicking secondhand embarrassment as "Dante" fell apart and had an ethical crisis in front of someone we were trying to arrest. Riley was listening intently, turned back to us and observing our little argument with interest. Yes. He's buying it. Neal grimaced at me and I shrugged slightly. I didn't know how to get Dante to calm down. Hell, I could rarely get Mozzie to calm down.

"So?" He asked Moz quietly.

Mozzie choked. "So?! So, she's gonna leave me, man!"

My eyes flew wide as Eleanor caught on. Her heart made a giddy little leap for her throat but she swallowed it down. She was already in over her head with Avery as it was, and the last thing she needed was another reason to get in trouble. "Whoa, no way, Haversham," I hissed, reaching for his wrist and holding tight to his arm until he looked at me. "You can't really think it's okay. This is all evidence!"

Releasing him, I held both arms out to the table and swept my hair back. "I – I could pay off all Avery's hospital bills," I reasoned lowly, shooting a furtive dart of my eyes in Riley's direction and assuming he couldn't hear me when I spoke more quietly. "But you don't see me getting too tempted. We have a job."

Neal reached for the case and shut the latch firmly, making the little click echo in the almost-empty room. "You're both thinking too much," he declared, sealing the briefcase. "Don't do this to yourselves. Just call it in, I'll finish this up."

I pursed my lips. "C'mon, Nick," I tried to persuade, leaning up against his shoulder. "Alex would love one of them. She's always had expensive tastes." Funnily enough, I didn't say it to prod at Alex – I just knew her tastes because of what she'd said to me about her hotel… was it already yesterday morning? Whatever.

"She does," Neal agreed, stepping away from me and looking down. "But that doesn't matter. I'm not with Alex anymore, I'm with Kenna."

I pursed my lips. He seemed so serious and stern, like he was trying to make a point, tell me something. I hadn't been trying to prove anything or convince him to say anything. If he told me that he and Alex were over, then I believed him. Alex was just the first woman whose name was associated with Neal, other than myself, and it was more comfortable to use someone else's name in the third person than my own.

"So? I bet Kenna enjoys Alex's tastes, too," I reasoned, pretending to remember who Kenna was. "Isn't she some diplomat's kid?" Mozzie looked between Neal and I as we went back and forth, the con getting a little too personal. Neal knew who I was, how I grew up as a daughter of the one-percent, but for all Mozzie knew, I was just making stuff up about myself to intentionally make it more abstract, save our covers and make it easier to act. "She's probably used to the stars, too."

"Listen," Riley interrupted, piping up from the side of the table. He was smirking. That look on his face was smarmy and infuriating, but it meant that he was doing exactly as we wanted. I crossed my arms at him – Eleanor wasn't inclined to listen to any smuggler dumb enough to get caught – and Mozzie held his head a little higher, hopeful at his tone. "This is my suitcase, right?" He gestured to it. Neal nodded slowly and suspiciously. "So…" he shrugged with forced relaxedness. "Maybe I left it on the plane."

We were getting what we wanted, but just to be on the safe side, I feigned cluelessness for a moment, pointing at the case. Obviously he hadn't left it on the plane; it was right there.

Riley's face twisted into an irritated frown. "What, have I got to spell this out?" He asked.

The message clicked. Mozzie took in a quick breath and his face lifted. I swallowed and looked at the outside of the briefcase. Those hospital bills aren't going to pay themselves… Neal seemed to be taking his girlfriend's parentage into serious consideration, having some ethics dilemma that rocked him back and forth. Mozzie and I partnered up, looking at him pleadingly. If we weren't all in agreement, we'd be arrested along with Riley for going bad.

Taking a long look at my pleading face, "Nick" conceded slowly. "… Alright," he said uncertainly, waving at Mozzie. "Call it in. Tell them Loze was clean and we cut him loose."

Mozzie nodded enthusiastically. Riley started to chuckle as if he'd pulled something over. I'd already sent him through a metal detector and knew he wasn't armed, so although it was unsettling, it wasn't too alarming. Riley slid his hands off the edge of the table and sauntered around. Mozzie stepped further away, honestly skittish, and Eleanor gave him access to the briefcase cooperatively.

"You guys are alright," Riley commented with a false sense of camaraderie. He caught my eye as he leaned nearer, unlocking the case and propping the top up. The fence winked and I summoned an appropriate blush to my face by recalling an embarrassing time when Mozzie assumed I was Neal and walked right into the bathroom to talk. Thank God for shower curtains. "I've got to get home somehow, right?" Riley slipped one of the cards out of the hidden slots and then pushed the rest of the case to me. Clicking his tongue, he tucked the card into his back pocket and left the rest of his belongings.

He saw himself out of the room with a relieved gait, checking both ways when he opened the door and then deciding he was good to go. I got out the pager I was loaned as soon as his back was turned and informed the security guards to let Riley go, lying and saying that we didn't have anything to hold him on.

If we did turn in the cards, then they had to go in as evidence through the chain of command. We wouldn't be permitted to take them to Wilkes, and Lindsay would be killed. Officially, I would never have been here – I would've left right after Rice, according to Neal's and my own statement. No one would fault Neal for stealing gold cards under duress, especially when he was stuck between Riley and Wilkes, both of whom would be happy to shoot him, and just in case, he'd lie and say he had no idea what was inside the briefcase. I, as a federal agent who hadn't been kidnapped, wouldn't be given that leniency.

Mozzie let out a long breath. Had he even been breathing since Riley had come closer to get into the briefcase? He bent over and held a hand over his chest, feeling his heart rate. "That's the closest I've come to death this year," he related to me sorrowfully.

"Alright!" Neal let out a quiet cheer and wrapped his left arm around my shoulders. He bowed his head to press a quick kiss to my temple. It was sweet and it was over in a second. The feeling of his half-embrace was gone almost as soon as it had come, and he was closing up the briefcase to take it to Wilkes. "Thanks for your help, Kenna. We couldn't have done it without you, Moz."

Mozzie held out a grabby hand for the case. "Could I-?"

"No," I interrupted, giving him a very hard and stony look. My phone buzzed in my pocket and I pulled up my shirt tail to reach it. "Don't even try." The screen was already on with a notification. I read the message I'd just received and saw the address tag, identifying who the number belonged to. She must've gotten it from Diana, I groaned, not too pleased that Rice had my personal cell. "That's Rice. She's already redirected several search units."

Finding Lindsay now would just be a matter of time. Wilkes wasn't going to be able to get her out because we had closed in too tightly. The problem was that there was still ground to cover, and by the time we found her, it was entirely too possible that her life could have already been stripped away.

I bit my tongue and looked from Neal to the briefcase. Neal was still going to take that to Wilkes. If I left, I wouldn't get to see Neal again until he had already confronted a very angry and very sociopathic monster. Lindsay was important. Saving the victims of people just like Wilkes was my calling in the bureau, the aspect that attracted me in the first place and the reason that I stayed… but what kind of partner was I if I let Neal do this? Could I take his place, or would Wilkes know who I was? Would he listen? Would he kill Lindsay just on the principle of Neal not holding up his part of the show? How could I call myself a provider for the artist if I sent him out into something I knew could get him hurt?

Neal reached for my chin and lifted my head until I looked at his eyes. "Go on," he urged, indicating the door. Moving forward swiftly, he planted another kiss on my forehead. "Go help them find Lindsay," he whispered, stroking my jaw with his thumb. I pushed my head into his hand, unwilling to leave. "I can handle Wilkes from here. And I may have promised her that the best agent in the entire bureau was personally searching to find her."

Here, he gave me an adoring smile paired with clear, innocent eyes. He was challenging me not to make him into more of a liar than he already was, and he knew that, as much as I wanted to shield him, there were already people prepared to do that. Lindsay was alone and defenseless, and if anyone needed me, it was her. Neal still had the transceiver, he had Diana on call, and he had several teams' worth of federal agents ready to listen to him and Diana, in prime positions to close in and protect him.

I couldn't stay with Neal all of the time, I realized; I held his custody, but he was an adult. He had the option of taking safety and he was making the decision to stay on the case. For Lindsay. The best thing I could do to support him was to find Lindsay before she was hurt. I could provide him with a lot of things, but my first responsibility was to be his partner, not his caregiver.

I smiled tensely, sadly, and nodded. Personally and professionally, different variables were obligating me to prioritize Lindsay. Well, time to resurrect the blue-collar specialist and join the grid search. I lifted a hand to his face and touched his cheek. Neal nodded slightly. He knew what I was thinking. Be safe. I hadn't known it was possible to care for someone the way I cared for Neal, but he amazed me yet again by proving me wrong. It was even more intense, swelling like a balloon in my ribcage, as he put the life of another person before his own.

"Flatterer," Mozzie accused Neal, who nodded and wholeheartedly agreed. Then he gave me a winning, photogenic grin.

"I know he's a flatterer," I stated while Neal pretended to look apologetic. "He always says something nice when he wants me to do something."

"Today, I want you to be the hero and get the girl." Neal prompted, proving that he did indeed want something. He hefted up the briefcase under his other arm. "But instead of riding off with the princess, remember to come back to the knight with the shining credit cards."


Rice and I led our team on the ground. I'd been searching for over an hour, going through the grid, Rice and I splitting up to take more ground, each of us with a few armed agents. Even the two of us had to wear Kevlar vests in order to join the manhunt. There were no delusions – the people who found Lindsay had guns, which Neal had confirmed, and they would shoot to kill.

Her bright hair bounced on her back and shoulders as the younger agent stalked up the side of the street with me. "We get any closer to Walk of Fire and we'll get further from it," she reported in exasperation, glancing to the downloaded map on her Smartphone to confirm. We were almost parallel to the boardwalk, and we could see the Hudson River from where we were, as well as several smaller boats belonging to tourists and locals.

Speaking of boats – a low timbre bleated from over the river, and the cold breeze from over the water blew at us, flinging my ponytail strongly to the side. Rice held her hair down to keep it from flying in her face. "And that sounds like the horn," I complained. "Where's the building?"

"I hope you're feeling lucky," she expressed with growing dismay. "It's almost four. Caffrey's out of time."

I checked my watch. It was three fifty-nine. I lowered my right hand and raised my left, holding it up to the earpiece wrapped around my collar underneath the bulletproof vest and tuned into the right station to talk to my consultant. Truthfully, I wasn't feeling very lucky at all. Most people whose boyfriends are abducted aren't generally those with luck on their side.

"Neal?" I asked, calling loudly in case the wind was going to fight me for dominance over the microphone. "Neal, can you hear me?"

It took a second. I'd spent most of the time searching on the streets with the earpiece turned off so I didn't have to hear everything Neal was doing. I needed to dedicate my focus in case I walked past something noteworthy, too distracted with worry for Neal. I wasn't sure how hard it was for him to hear us, but his earpiece wasn't hooked on a wire. Even if it was, his hair would've been too short to hide it, so he had to conceal it in his clothes, only checking it once in a while. If Wilkes saw it...

"Tell me you've found Lindsay," he eventually answered.

I frowned and shook my head. My lack of answer should have been one on its own, but I said it out loud anyway. "Not yet." I dragged my other hand through wind-whipped, tangled hair, looking around so quickly I almost got dizzy. I wanted to sit down; I probably needed something to drink. When was the last time I'd eaten? I couldn't remember.

This street looked just like the last one, and the one before that, and the one before that. The buildings were unremarkable. They didn't have signs, they didn't have colors. They were bricks and stones, lights off, not inhabited, and the few tourists we'd seen had taken looks at the federal agents with vests and guns and veered clear (after taking photos with their damn phones, of course. Gotta love the twenty-first century).

"It's four, Kenna," Neal told me. I checked my watch. The minute hand had changed. It was four on the dot. "I'm already here." Already at the rendezvous? Wilkes was watching him. He couldn't stay talking for long or the guy would notice. I wasn't sure how he was buying time to shield his hands and face as it was, but it wouldn't last without him being hurt.

"Then deflect, distract, or stall," I instructed, trying not to sound too anxious. Something Mozzie had told me a while ago – second-guess yourself and the con becomes twice as dangerous – came to mind. I wished I could pull Neal out, but if he tried to leave… he had already gone too far, gotten too close to Wilkes. All it would take was him trying to back out and Wilkes would shoot him in the back faster than my agents could train their guns. "You're good at all of those. The moment he gets his hands on the cards, Lindsay's as good as dead."

I heard Neal take a deep breath, but he didn't say anything else. He was probably moving the microphone somewhere inconspicuous, for his own good. I imagined he was composing himself as I simultaneously looked around, Rice helping me to canvas the buildings and dismiss them as we hurried past them, somewhere between speed-walking and jogging. It was a pace that let us actually look before we were past them, but it didn't feel fast enough.

A car door slammed and I jumped, only to realize I'd just heard it through the earpiece. Feet crunched on gravel. "Right on time," a stranger's voice said silkily. "I love that." His tone was jeering, taunting. I didn't need a visual to know who that was. The insolence gave it away.

Neal held his ground. "Where's the girl?" He asked – no, demanded – without screwing around. I was so proud of him. His usual indulgence of word play and attitude games was what helped him to stall, and he was putting that aside for Lindsay's sake.

He'd done a lot of things that made me angry, a lot that made it hard to trust him, and a lot that I admired, in one respect or another, but he'd never done something so completely selfless before. If he pissed off Wilkes, he'd be shot. Not arrested, not lonely – shot. Yet he risked doing just that by trying to get information on Lindsay without pleasantries, handling it abruptly and with the same no-nonsense voice I'd have used.

Wilkes hummed, considering. "Unfortunately, I won't be sharing that information with you." He sounded lilting. He'd never intended to… but at least I was right: he'd used Lindsay as leverage to get Neal to play along, which meant that for as long as he believed Neal was a necessary piece, Lindsay was secure. Neal couldn't keep this up for long, but it would buy us a few minutes past four.

I checked my watch. One minute past.

Stay safe, Neal.

"We had a deal, Wilkes," Neal angrily reminded, shoe crunching over small rocks as he took a step forward.

"I lied. Give it to me." There was a bitter pause punctuated by something landing softly. That came from further away from Neal. A clicking echoed as the latches of the briefcase was unhooked, and a few seconds' grace period kept the line silent as Wilkes looked inside. Making an exasperated sigh, he put the case down and cracked his knuckles. "And I thought we had a nice thing going."

Wait, what?! "Where are the cards?" I whispered, too quiet for Rice to hear, scanning over the next buildings. The outside was pale beige, but I gave it a once-over just in case. The outsides weren't always the same colors as the insides, but in this case, there were none of the other architectural anomalies that marked it as the right place.

"You lied, I lied." Neal slipped back into his lazy, cocky, charismatic façade now that he knew Wilkes wouldn't tell him something about Lindsay, using it as a verbal shield. "It's like a dance." My hands trembled while I looked over the next building. It was squished between two others that looked no newer. The dark bricks ranged from an icky, almost brown color to a brighter, clay-like reddish hue. "You pull that trigger and all those gold cards I stole from Edward Riley are gone forever." Neal challenged.

I checked out the heavy door. A foreclosure poster would lead the average passerby to slid their eyes right past. I looked closer. To the right side of the door, there was a narrow stretch of bricks towards the top that looked like a darker color than any of the rest. The dulled colors tapered and wound down as it reached for the ground level.

"The water damage!" I shouted ecstatically, throwing my arm out to the side, hand in front of Rice's chest to make her stop and look. I looked for the other thing – the window was boarded up so we couldn't see its shape, but the foreboding-looking crack in the structure that Diana had pointed out on the video was up there, deepest towards the ceiling and running almost all the way down. Chips of bricks were lying on the concrete right outside the little building which wasn't even safe to live in. "It's the same damage. It's the building!"

Rice puffed in awed surprise. "We've got him," she breathed. I glanced at her. She nodded, steeling her nerves. Simultaneously, we both drew our sidearms from our holsters. She licked her lips while I tossed my head to knock fringe out of the way a final time before we stormed it.

We both moved out of the way and indicated the agents taking our lead to prepare for a raid on the innocuous-looking wall in question. Five heavily-armed and Kevlar-clad agents took up positions, two on the side where the door opened and three behind me on the side of the hinges. The door looked heavy, but it also looked weak and warped. If Lindsay hadn't tried to make a break for it, it was only because of the gunmen inside. This facility couldn't hold anyone trapped on its own.

I headed up the front. If SWAT had been there, they'd have undoubtedly shoved me back, but no one in the assembled team outranked the case agent, and I strongly doubted that any of them had raided more buildings with dangerous suspects than I had, anyway. My former team and my former position had given me a lot of experience that I was relieved I had now. If there was ever a time I was thankful for everything I had to draw on, it was now, with one of the most important people in my life at risk of serious injury or worse.

Before we broke the door down and raised hell, I still had my lover to fear for. I held up my hand in the universal signal to wait. Rice nodded and held her hand up, showing everyone and making sure they got the message, and while our team of seven huddled outside for some serious ass-kicking action, I listened intently to Neal's showdown with Wilkes.

"If I don't have those cards in my hands in ten seconds, I'm gonna make a call, and I'm gonna kill the girl. Then, I'm gonna take my time with you."

An uninvited image of Wilkes shooting Neal in the gut flashed through my mind and I bit down hard on my tongue so I didn't make a sound. A shot like that was lethal, but it took time for the victim to die… and it was painful. The recipient wouldn't be able to run away, much less fight, while torture was inflicted upon them in the meantime. Wilkes was going to hurt Neal over my dead body. Audio evidence against him or not, I'd give the order and have my conveniently-placed team shoot to kill if they had to.

"Five seconds… three seconds… Aw. Now my guys are going to have to kill that nice man's daughter."

I couldn't begin to imagine what was going through Neal's head in that time, but he obviously couldn't give Wilkes the cards. No matter what he did, Wilkes intended to have Lindsay murdered. If he revealed the cards, then Wilkes would just kill him, too. I'd still remind him that nothing he did would've made a difference, just to make sure he didn't spend too much time with that weighing on his conscience. I'd made some tough calls that still haunted me because I hadn't had someone think to tell me what I needed to hear to put them behind me. I wouldn't let this follow Neal around like a ghost.

"Who says they're still your guys?" Neal tried as a Hail Mary.

Wilkes chuckled. "Is that your play? You turned my crew against me? I expected more from you." For someone whose fear factor seemed pretty reliant on his hired gunmen, he wasn't taking this seriously enough. That tipped me off and I tensed, shoulders squaring.

He doesn't need Neal afraid of the muscle because he can kill him himself.

"Someone step away," I snarled, voice hushed, waving frantically for someone – anyone – to leave the raid team and get out their phone. "Now! Tell Agent Berrigan to have the rifles take aim. Wilkes is armed!"

Someone behind Rice, the one furthest from the door anyway, nodded silently and picked up his radio, leaving the team. Making too much noise would alert whoever was inside. I kept looking between the door and that agent as they holstered their weapon and got onto the frequency.

"Who do you think has the gold cards?"

"You left them with my guys?" Wilkes' skepticism was followed by a snort. "You're not that dumb."

"You brought me into this because I bring up the average. Unfortunately, that makes you less valuable. Your men agreed; it's time for new management." Neal bluffed shamelessly. I couldn't tell if he had any physical tells, but going off of his voice, it was a solid performance.

There was just enough of a pause to let on that Wilkes was unsure. "You're lying," he accused.

"Call them, if you think I'm bluffing." Neal airily invited.

Something passed between them. "… I think you're bluffing," Wilkes informed cynically. "Kill her." My heart thudded on my ribs after skipping a beat. He was on his phone already. "And leave the phone on speaker."

We couldn't wait any longer. Neal would never forgive me if I didn't react to something like that, no matter what I was waiting on. Before I could psych myself out of it, I gave the signal to the man across from me. He nodded and whirled, kicking in the door. The locks smashed apart and broke. I shouted, altering my voice to a powerful, resonating alto to get the brawns' attention.

"FBI!"

I turned my gun around in the room, moving directly in. Rice and the agent who'd kicked in the door came in right after me, covering me from the right and left. Someone stood up from a table towards the left side of the room, already reaching for a gun jammed unsafely into his pants pocket. One of the accompanying rescue team members shot him in the arm before he could even touch the holster, and he shrieked, falling down with the momentum of the bullet.

Right in front of the door was Lindsay. The beautiful nineteen-year-old was crying silently, large tears running down her red and puffy cheeks, while a long-barreled gun with an attached silencer was held at the base of her neck. She was forced to sit down on an uncomfortable wooden chair, her hands on her knees and her wrists bound with zip ties. Her ankles were similarly locked together.

The man standing behind her was big and beefy. The beginnings of a beard covered his jaw but his upper lip was shaved clean. He looked Asian, with dark hair and eyes, and a big hand fisted into the locks of her tangled and oily hair. He pulled her head back and Lindsay choked on a whimper. I had my gun pointed at his forehead before he could even get his barrel directed at any of the incoming feds.

"Put it down!" I snarled, advancing rapidly to show that I wasn't afraid. He'd taken it away from Lindsay's neck to try to aim, but wasn't fast enough. Either he shot at me and gave me a reason to shoot him, he tried to re-center at Lindsay and gave me a reason to shoot him, or he put the gun down. There was really no fourth option that he could go for, aside from suicide, but that would take longer than just trying to shoot at me or his hostage.

Panicky and looking around, the guy literally dropped the gun and put his hands up, stumbling behind Lindsay. He tripped on his own shoelace and fell over. Two agents raced past me on both sides to secure him and grab the firearm. Another pair went to handle the first one and confiscate his weapon.

"Damn it!" Wilkes screamed angrily, making me wince as it came through the earpiece. Now Neal was really in danger.

"Sounds like they've got company." Neal smartly concluded.

I lowered myself down in front of Lindsay, who threw her head forward and sobbed as soon as there wasn't anyone grabbing at her hair. I knelt before her, getting lower than she was to let her feel like she had more power than she actually did.

"Lindsay Gless, my name's McKenna Anderson." I used our full names to help her adjust. I didn't know what they'd said to her, but anything dehumanizing would probably make their jobs easier for them, and she deserved to be treated like an actual person. I reached for her wrists and picked up a Swiss army knife from my back pocket. "I'm Neal's friend," I said, flicking out the blade and showing it to her before going for the zip ties. I cut through them quickly without nicking Lindsay, but I didn't want to hold the knife near her any longer than I had to, so I went ahead and sliced through the binds at her feet, as well, before pushing the knife back in my pants. "Are you okay?"

She nodded frantically. Her long hair dragged and frizzed in a messy rat's nest. I knew from experience that that was the last thing she was concerned about. I straightened my back but stayed on my knees and held my hands up to her. She threw herself at me, draping her arms over my shoulders and crying loudly.

"Sh," I cooed maternally, reaching for her head and tilting my head to the side so she could hide her face in my neck. She hiccupped, getting a hold of herself and working through her panic swiftly, but I still gave her the safe place to rest. There was a nasty bruise forming near her temple and a trail of dried blood ran past her eye and down to her chin at an angle, but it had already stopped bleeding.

A gun cocked. I tensed and held Lindsay tighter before I realized she hadn't responded at all. She couldn't hear it, which meant it was coming from Wilkes and Neal.

"I guess that makes you obsolete."

Neal hummed. "I wouldn't do that if I were you," he mildly advised. "See, I've got friends with sniper rifles, too."

Neal was an amazing actor, but even he sounded scared when there was a gun pointed at his chest. His voice was calm and soothing. Maybe a little relieved, but not afraid. I took out my earpiece as the threat passed. Diana had it under control, and Wilkes' self-preservation was stronger than his hatred of my soulmate.

"You're safe," I promised Lindsay, tucking my nose against her hair and hugging her. Her knees wobbled and threatened to let her fall over. How long had it been since she'd been allowed to stretch her legs? "You're safe, honey."

She sniffed and tightened her hands. One of those hands happened to be bundled up in the back of my jacket, and she'd caught the end of my ponytail in her fist. When she pulled with that hand to sit up, I covered up the flinching with a reassuring smile and attempted to pass off the pricking in my eyes as just overwhelming emotions.

"I-Is Neal okay?" She asked quietly, rubbing under her nose with the back of her other hand.

"Neal is fine," I assured her, thankful that she'd asked. It was a weight off of my own chest to be able to tell someone. To speak it aloud – Neal is fine. "He's with other agents right now."

"We've got Wilkes," my radio spoke from the side of my vest.

I shifted and Lindsay moved with me compliantly, adjusting to hold on without preventing me from getting my communicator. She changed her grip in a way that fortunately freed my hair, but I was still too sensitive to her ordeal to whine about it. "We've got Lindsay," I said into it, holding down the button to open our frequency. "How's Neal?" I asked, just so that she could hear for herself.

The radio static was brief. "He's safe," the other person speaking promised. It wasn't Diana or Derek, but the voice still sounded vaguely familiar. Probably someone in the WCCD, but not one I often worked with. "The cards are secured, too."

As long as Neal is safe, I do not give a single fuck about the cards. They can melt in hell for all I care.

"Tell him Lindsay and I say hello," I instructed cheerily, giving Lindsay a small smile which she returned. Admittedly hers was shaky and seemed more like a wince, but that could be excused. She didn't seem to have any serious injuries, but she'd still have to go to an emergency room.

They sighed and sounded a little annoyed that their new purpose was as a message relay. "He says hi."

A high giggle bubbled out of Lindsay at the tone. I frowned sympathetically and reached up to her face, stroking her hair away from the bruise marring her face. She fixed her gaze on my collar and stared at my neck while I touched her kindly. Everyone deserved kind touches – except for people like Wilkes – and Neal and Lindsay especially were prescribed double doses of them for today.

I'd fought and bitched because I had been denied the responsibility of taking this case on, had been refused the opportunity to revisit my past. Had I known what it would entail, I'd have fought to keep Neal and myself both miles away from it… but, my protectiveness of Neal aside, I couldn't deny to myself that, sitting on the dirty floor of a building in a state of irresponsible disrepair, holding onto a shocked teenager who was going to get to go home to her father, I felt more like the old me than I had in almost two years. The only thing that could have made it better was if my partner had been at my side, sitting down in the dust, arms around both of us, comforting Lindsay in person and holding my hand.


Richard Gless arrived on the scene with an escort from the bureau in a sleek black minivan. Hell or high water couldn't have stopped him from getting out and running to his daughter. Lindsay and I had been standing on the dock looking at the water, my arm around her while she nervously tried to make her hair look more presentable with her fingers. As soon as she heard the car door slam and heard her father shout her name, she was bounding out of my arms.

"Dad!" She shrieked delightedly, sprinting to him. She ran faster than he did and they met closer to the car than to the dock. I leaned back against the rail, arms over my chest, and smiled. Lindsay catapulted herself at Richard's chest and they almost went down, but neither let go.

I stayed with my back to the railing. Their reunion was bittersweet as an onlooker. Without Neal being in danger, Lindsay likely wouldn't have been saved. No matter how glad I was to have helped the girl, I still would have preferred that Neal remain out of risk whenever possible, and the idea that the only time I could have my old job back was when I had to worry about Neal wasn't a pleasant one. I couldn't choose between Neal's safety and my own professional ambitions. I couldn't choose because there wasn't an actual decision to be made – nothing was worth putting Neal in a position in which he would be targeted by people like Wilkes.

I let out a long sigh and looked to my left as another car pulled up. Diana was in the driver's seat. I flashed a short smile in the direction of the vehicle, knowing that Neal himself would be with her. I hoped he got to see the father-daughter moment.

Maybe it was finally time for me to move on. I couldn't hunt killers the way I used to. To get my old job back, I'd have to give up custody of Neal, and there was no guarantee that I could protect him if I relinquished his power of attorney. Unless Neal asked me to hand those powers over to someone else, I was going to fight for them. Even if I waited until Neal was out of the anklet and had served his sentence, Køhler had been a wakeup call. People were pissed at me. There wasn't a line drawn between home and work that kept me safe. If I returned into that line of business, then more killers would have reasons to hate me. If any of them lashed out… well, I hadn't considered that it would happen before it actually had. If Kate had been home and not me, then she would've taken the knives to the stomach, assuming she survived the attack.

It had been fun while it lasted and it had worked when I had fewer ties and fewer vulnerabilities. Now I knew better. I couldn't get higher than a homicide detective if I wanted to keep my family safe. No more work-related traveling, no more chasing serial crimes. I couldn't take the risk of someone else striking at home and taking out their revenge on Katie or Neal.

Possibly, it's for the best. I didn't really believe that, but I could tell it to myself over and over. Nothing was more important to me than my loved ones' safety.

Richard hid his face in his daughter's neck and Lindsay cried, sagging against him. She stopped being strong, feeling safe in his arms. I wondered if my dad even knew I'd been tortured. Did he or Mom ever find out about the hospitalization? Probably not. Mom never would've let me hear the end of it, would've said 'I told you so' a thousand times in between fixing my pillows and pumping me full of morphine, and Dad would have paid my medical bills and tried to convince me to go back to Europe with them.

Would they even care at this point? I couldn't say for sure they'd be proud of me for my career path. I wanted to think they would be – I saved lives, for crying out loud! – but with them, I could never be sure. The only time I ever did right by them was when I was doing wrong by myself simultaneously. If I wasn't living up to my given name (which literally translated to princess), then I was a disappointment. They'd had me for political reasons, not because they wanted a child. I'd had to go through more than a decade of emotional neglect before I realized I was never going to have a relationship like Richard and Lindsay's.

Neal joined me from Diana's car, coming to my left side and turning around to put his back to the waterfront. I reached for his hand and brushed my knuckles against his wrist. Alive and healthy. I could mourn the love lost between myself and my parents all I wanted, but it wasn't going to change anything. I'd have better luck convincing the guarded conman to spill about his childhood than I would being accepted by my parents. At the end of the day, I had a sister who loved me, a boyfriend who would put his life on the line for someone in need, and friends that would stop at nothing to protect their own team. I didn't need much else.

"Where were you?" I asked Neal, pretending that I hadn't been figuratively on the edge of my seat during his confrontation with Wilkes. "You missed all of the fun parts."

Neal crossed his left ankle over his right, carefully standing so that his anklet didn't abuse his other leg. "I got caught up with an old friend," he reminisced nostalgically, stretching his right arm along the rails behind my back. Though he didn't move to touch me, just having that nearness was relaxing.

"Oh?"

"I think I may have burned a bridge," he understated delicately, eyes riveted on the Glesses.

I followed his eyes and watched them. Both were crying shamelessly and the agents securing the perimeter were respectfully giving them their space before they began pushing to take Lindsay to the ER. She seemed like she'd be okay, but it was more or less a standard next step, especially given that she had visible injuries. The ER would also sample various articles of her person – clothes, hair, possibly skin – for DNA evidence of her captors to use as further materials in the prosecution of Wilkes' hired musclemen.

I uncrossed one of my arms and pointed at them, holding my hand out indicatively. "That," I said strongly, pausing, admiring the scene. I didn't usually get a huge emotional relief out of watching them, but later on, it would catch up to me, and I'd nearly start crying myself. "That is good. Scenes like this, they're what made all the trauma of the serial killers worth it."

It was hard to tell how much more I could say to Neal, or when I should stop and shut my mouth. He never stopped me from sharing personal information before, but it was hard to determine when to stop shielding him. The conman wasn't innocent, just… sheltered, I supposed, from the physical cruelties of humans, and I wanted to preserve that naïve shell for as long as I could.

I struggled with it before I sighed. "Sometimes we saved people like Lindsay," I recollected quietly, referencing back to my former division. "Not all the time. There was usually more disappointment." Those were the days when I missed being a rich teenager. Those were the days when I particularly couldn't stand the sight of the soulmark on my wrist, when the trepidation and anxiety over my soulmate's true colors were the strongest. "But the times that it did end well… they made it worth the rest of it."

Neal processed it. He spoke again, but not in response to what I'd said, and I supposed I might hear about it at a later date. When he wanted to approach something carefully, he worked himself up to it, making sure to give himself enough time to think of the most sensitive and least provocative way to do so. "You were kind of in your element on this one."

"Except for the part where an agent got my friend kidnapped," I rolled my eyes and re-crossed my arms, shifting my hands and tightening my posture. "That part's pretty new." I'd have gone insane if it was a regular thing.

Neal thoughtfully looked down to me, taking his eyes away from his new friend and former mark. "Do you miss it?" He inquired, his face open and accepting. Whatever he expected, he wasn't going to make me feel embarrassed or judged because of my answer.

Did he want me to miss it? Did he think I should miss the job when it gave such big rewards? Then again, this job also got me critically injured and left permanent physical and mental scars. Was it crazy of me to pine after the days when I used to be my own idea of a hero, even after it culminated into such a disaster?

I could clearly remember long days and even longer nights. Cup after cup of coffee, just to fuel my eyes enough to stay open and stare at coroner's reports and gruesome photos of crime scenes. Using scented hand sanitizer and holding my hands near my nose so I could smell sugar or mint or really anything but the unsettlingly-familiar smell of a morgue. I also remembered a lot of pain, ice packs, and OTCs – I was always injured in some way. A few times it was from bullets that had luckily missed the mark, sometimes it was from smaller bladed weapons, sometimes it was just a really nasty bruise or two. We always tried to take people down without getting too close, but sometimes we couldn't help it, and I'd get in a fistfight defending myself or a would-be victim.

The job had seemed glorious in its lack of glamor. I wasn't wearing glittery dresses and Cinderella gloves. I was making a difference and coming home exhausted. Those things made it seem perfect.

Bringing someone home always was the best part of the job, but now that I wasn't so fresh into my new lifestyle or so caught up in the drama of murder, I could look back on it and accept that there were aspects that I didn't miss that much, after all. Working in the WCCD made my schedule calmer, more flexible when I needed it to be. I spent a lot less time taking painkillers and a lot more time with Katie. I didn't have to leave the house at two AM because of a phone call. Katie didn't have to wonder if she would ever see me alive again when I traveled hundreds of miles away. I could enjoy a social life when before, I'd been so wrapped up with work that the only people I really talked to were Katie and Derek.

And, if it weren't for Neal and Katie, then I'd give up the WCCD and jump right back into blue-collar, if only to watch Lindsays run into the arms of their hysterically-relieved families.

"I miss this part of it, yeah," I eventually answered, not expressing how I felt about anything else. That was my story to keep, and I'd shared enough.

We watched as one of the female agents came up behind Richard and patiently got the two's attention. Presumably, she started to explain that they wanted to take Lindsay to a hospital. Meanwhile, Rice tied her curly red hair using the vanity mirror in a pair of FBI wheels, using extra pins to combat the breeze coming over the Hudson.

Neal snorted when he saw. "Looks like Agent Rice is ready for her close-up. I heard the camera crew are already on their way."

A little surprised, I leaned away from him and whistled tellingly. Someone was certainly holding a bit of a grudge. Not that I could blame him, but I'd expected that I'd be the most bitter about what had happened. I startled myself by realizing that watching my favorite part of a rescue and standing beside my lover had mellowed out my attitude, and I wanted to stop thinking about her more than I wanted to kick her ass.

"I really don't care," I said honestly. My ambivalence probably wouldn't last long, but it was good news for her. Leading up to the in-office investigation, she could use as little aggression as she could be granted. "She'll need the positivity to brace herself for the whirlwind of inquisition that's going to be coming her way for the stunt she pulled."

The ginger got out of the car, closing up the mirror and pushing it up to the roof. She shoved the car door shut and looked around, putting her hand up over her eyes like a visor. It seemed like a weird salute. When she saw Neal and I against the sunlight, she pointed at us with two fingers of her left hand, rotated her wrist over, crooked her fingers, and moved her attention to her phone.

"Ah, jeez, did she just give us the finger point?" Neal complained.

"I'm getting sick of being given the finger point," I agreed vehemently. It was always followed by something frustrating. "Come on, she's distracted. Let's say goodbye to Lindsay before we see what she wants."

I led Neal towards the two citizens in the street. Richard was in the middle of exchanging words with the agent who'd approached them when we came within a few feet of them. I stopped when Neal did, taking his lead. He had switched sides while he followed me so now he was on my right and closer to Lindsay, subtly forcing more space between himself and Gless.

Richard noticed when the agent saw us and her eyes stayed over the man's shoulder for a bit too long. The greying businessman turned his full body to face Neal. Not me, but Neal. Neal smiled sheepishly and sent Lindsay a warm grin. The brunette smiled back at him, tongue poking out between chapped lips, and Neal reluctantly turned his attention back to her dad, steeling himself against whatever was about to come. The last two days aside, he had dealt a pretty severe blow to the man's company and strongly affected his stocks' worth.

Gless looked Neal over head to foot. "I'm told you're the man responsible for bringing my daughter back," he said stiffly, gradually relaxing as he saw Neal as an equal for the first time.

He'd never spoken to the forger like this. The only times he'd interacted with Neal had been very limited and while Neal was in a bright orange jumpsuit with handcuffs and ankle chains. The outfit stood out, had been branded and associated with prisoners, and automatically placed Neal on a lower rank. Standing before him in a rumpled – but still fabulously well-sewn – suit beside an official federal agent, Neal presented a much different image.

At this, Neal's mouth opened and he started to look at me. I recognized when he was about to deflect and made a stern face towards him, warning him out of it. Neal wasn't my pet; I didn't deserve the praise for training him to do something good. He'd made his choices and done his actions all on his own and had earned whatever reaction Richard had for him.

Prevented from pushing the attention to someone else, Neal turned back to Gless and apologetically tried to start. I doubted he actually regretted what he'd done. Neal didn't really have the sense of ramifications to understand the full extent of why Gless had wanted him in prison. As a result of his cons letting him live with his head in the clouds, Neal had kind of… well, had his head in the clouds for a long time, and his experiences since learning that lesson and being released into the real world had been limited to what he could do within two miles of June's manor. However, Neal liked to be liked, and he hadn't forged the Atlantic Partners bonds with the intention of being malevolent.

"Mr. Gless-"

Richard held up a hand, palm facing Neal, and my partner ceased talking immediately with a click of his teeth. "I'd say we're more than even now, Caffrey." He truced solemnly.

Good man, I thought to myself as Lindsay looked up to Neal, a little shyly remembering exactly who he was and her family's history with him. Lindsay wouldn't have been involved at the time. Hell, she probably hadn't even been old enough to drive when her father had been handling Neal's stunts and the financial fallouts.

"Thanks for… playing round two," she said to him, rubbing the back of her hand as if it were sore. She looked down to avoid his eyes and found the concrete fascinating. Lindsay shivered, but I doubted it had anything to do with the cold. Her abduction hadn't been a game, but evidently her kidnappers had treated it like one and used her to make Neal play along. And Neal had, to protect her.

Again, right as I think I can't treasure him any more…

Neal nodded to her. "Don't mention it." Richard looked confused by what they were talking about, but I shook my head slightly, telling him not to worry about it. He could ask Lindsay if he wanted, but that was over and done with, and I didn't think I wanted to hear a recount of what, exactly, had gone on while I wasn't around to protect them.

The two left us, Richard prompting his daughter to go with him. Lindsay wrapped her arms tightly around herself and let him drape his arm over her shoulders and upper back as they found their way between the car Richard had arrived in and the side of the nearest brick building. They'd get Lindsay checked out at the emergency room and she'd be back home by the time they wanted to go to bed. I watched them leave. It was hard to watch victims I'd saved go, knowing I would probably never see them again. I wanted them to move on, but it was sometimes difficult to accept the conclusion of such a turbulent ride when it came so abruptly.

Dutifully, I took Neal's hand and brought him to Rice. Whatever she wanted to say to him, she'd have to say in front of me, too. Truthfully, I sincerely hoped she'd learned something from this misadventure. One of those things would preferably be that, anklet or not, rap sheet or not, convicts are still human beings, and unless they do something to prove otherwise, they deserve to be treated as such.

Rice touched up her lip gloss with a tube of a thin berry-colored sheen. "Was a hell of a thing you did today," she remarked to Neal, trying not to sound impressed as she smacked her lips, evening the coating of gloss.

"I could say the same thing about you," he said back to her warily, with a much different tone.

Rice slipped her lip gloss into her pocket and held out her hand to shake. "No hard feelings?" She tried optimistically.

Neal clenched my hand in his as if making a point by refusing to let go of me in favor of the other agent. His other hand was swiftly moved into the safety of his trouser pocket. "Don't stretch it," he advised her with a sarcastic faux smile. I snorted and tried to cover my smirk with my hand.

That's right, stand up for yourself.

Rice puffed out her cheeks, looking away from Neal abashedly. There was definitely some reproach in his voice that she picked up on, and luckily for her, she understood that she had more than earned it. While she was distracted, I saw Neal looking down at his ankle. I followed his eyes curiously to see that it was still bare.

Right. It had long since been clipped; he'd been monitor-free for hours and yet had still permitted Diana to drag him back to a scene crawling with federal agents. That was some laudable self-control, even without taking into account that the goal we'd had thirty-six hours ago was to prove to Alex that he could get the anklet off.

I looked at my watch and inhaled sharply. Speaking of Alex… I'd practically forgotten about her with the excitement of everything else. It was impossible to say how long I'd be stuck here, dealing with cleanup, but if she thought we intentionally failed to make the meeting time she'd set, she might not be willing to return to New York any time soon, no matter who Neal tried getting in touch with her through.

Taking advantage of Rice's temporary distraction, I gave Neal a nudge against his ribs with my elbow and stretched my fingers, wiggling my hand out of his. "Go," I whispered, nodding towards the dock. If he stuck near the piers and kept his head down, he could probably get away with a minimal amount of luck required. Then he'd just have to catch a taxi or the subway, and he could arrive back at June's in time.

Neal hesitated, looking around and rapidly sweeping the area for anyone paying too much attention. We were the least of the teams' concerns – they had a crime scene to catalog indoors, in influx of social media buzz from the civilians who'd see something happening, incoming press (if Rice was any indication), and evidence to secure. Neal and I were just the hardworking heroes who'd saved the girl and caught the bad guys – no need to scrutinize us today.

"Go," I murmured again, pushing my hand against his thigh insistently. "Alex won't wait long." If we didn't show, she'd cut her losses and run, just in case I'd changed my mind about playing nice after all. She made me insecure and envious, but she was clever, and she knew better than to take risks she couldn't afford with federal agents.

Neal bit his lip, put on a charismatic grin to not raise suspicion, and bid me a smooth adieu. He also added to hurry up with whatever I had to do, and then the conman was slipping away, returning to the railing by the river with his hands inconspicuously in his pockets. He acted as if he wasn't doing anything wrong by ditching without the anklet, and ultimately, his prowess at acting innocent was what kept anyone from looking at him for too long.

By the time Rice had gotten off of her phone, she had a new look to her expression. She licked her lips, tasted the gloss, and ran her fingers through her hair again, visibly concerned about her appearance. I almost scoffed. She had just played a part in a raid. Someone was alive because of her. How could anyone hold a messy hairdo against her?

"Sticking around for the press coverage?" I presumed. I'd preferred to keep my name off the air when I'd been in her place. Rice had some climbing to do before she reached the peak of my career, but if the investigation didn't knock her too far down, she might get there eventually – if she took heed of the things I tried to beat into her skull.

The redhead opened her mouth to reply, but stopped before she said anything. Slowly, she closed her jaw, looked to the street beneath our shoes, and laughed humorlessly instead. "I probably have a disciplinary hearing to prepare for instead," she confessed, swiping back her corkscrewing curls yet again. I raised my chin slightly. I could respect that she was holding herself accountable. "About how things went down last night-"

Canting my head, I arched an eyebrow and interrupted. "I'm actually in a good enough mood to not want to scratch your eyes out of your face, and you want to ruin it by talking about last night again?"

Rice looked down and pulled at her lip with her front teeth. "I probably deserved that," she chuckled weakly.

"Only probably?"

"… That, too." She took it graciously, even though I had bit my tongue and resolved not to go any further. She'd just made it really easy. Rice looked back to me and swallowed her pride back. The difference between now and earlier was that she'd learned from Neal not to try to shake hands. "Even so, I hope we can work together again sometime, even if you're the one calling the shots. I think there's a lot I can learn from you."

If she was still figuring out how to judge a threat and when it was and wasn't okay to fight for authority and recognition, then there was a ton that she could learn from any agent with more experience. I nodded my agreement but didn't let my ego get ahead of me.

"I'm going to hold it over your head that you said that for forever."

Oh. Well, it could've been worse.

Derek joined us from another vehicle. He cleared his throat and stayed out from between us, looking cautious and suspicious, wondering where the blood was going to start spraying from first. Held with three fingers through the cuff was a tracking device. "I got the anklet, all fixed up and activated and ready to go." He took it off his hand and passed it to me. I made a face but took it anyway – responsibility and all that. Just a little more than three years, I promised myself. It's slow progress, but it's less time with every day. "You just have to adjust the strap and fix it on."

Feigning confusion to buy time, I passed from Derek to Rice. "Didn't your people already get the anklet back on him?" I asked awkwardly, lowering the new anklet down to my hip. So long as it didn't seem like I knew Neal had left without having it put back on, we were in the clear. If Derek and Rice figured that Neal had slipped off without it, they'd keep it to themselves – no one would blame my consultant for wanting space after the day he'd had.

Rice snorted and put both of her hands up, absolving herself of responsibilities where Neal was concerned. "Not me! He's your consultant, remember? You can have him." She gestured towards me. "I think he prefers you, anyway."

All evidence would suggest that, yes, I mentally snickered. "You don't know the half of it," I told her seriously. If she knew how much Neal preferred me – he preferred me enough to hold me, to kiss me, to pledge his loyalties with me and trust me with his freedom – she'd fall over from shock. "Oh, well." I sighed arduously. "I'll go check out the usual suspects." AKA Mozzie and Katie.

"Do you want some help rounding them up?" Derek raised a hand as he volunteered, but the begging look in his face was louder than his offer. He absolutely did not want to go spend his time trying to track down the elusive and annoying Moz.

"Don't bother." I waved it off, not too concerned. Neal knew better than to take off when we were so close to getting that stupid music box, and it wasn't really my business if Mozzie chose to leave town. So long as he didn't push for Neal to accompany him, that was his prerogative. "I'll just give you a text when I've got it on him." I covered my mouth while I yawned and suddenly remembered I hadn't slept in almost two days.

This meeting with Alex had better be pretty quick, or I'm going to have to handcuff her to a chair for a nap-sized intermission.


I let myself into the uppermost level of the manor and closed the door gently behind me. With my eyes shut, I leaned against the wood, a hand flicking the lock on the doorknob. Taking deep breaths, I let my body catch up with my mind. So much had happened since I'd answered the door for Alex in one of Neal's shirts. It felt unreal. Not sleeping definitely hadn't helped the time lapse set in my mind.

I felt two pairs of eyes on me. Alex's prim, picky voice cut accusingly across from the parlor area. "He's late. You're later."

I slowly opened my eyes, finding where she stood in front of Neal by the coffee table and glaring testily. She chose the wrong day to bitch about timing. "It was a long day," I growled, leaving it at that. She didn't need to hear more about a confidential FBI case, and she had no right to know what I was up to in my own life that kept me away from her whims.

I'd already called Katie, checked in, and established that I was going to play Monopoly with Neal before coming home – which had been a code ever since exonerating her high school friend's husband for I'm staying at Neal's overnight. With our phones being bugged and tapped lately, it was always safest to use board games instead of the real reasons. Now, all I had to worry about was Alex.

I went to go join them in the parlor. Alex was left unsatisfied by my vague and indiscriminate answer. "And what's with the outfit?" She prodded at Neal, whose getup was still closer to a driver's uniform than his usual "rat pack" aesthetic.

Neal took my lead. "Long story," he said, shrugging it off inconsequentially.

Alex pursed her lips tightly, unhappy with being left out of the loop, but she knew a losing battle when she saw it. I threw my jacket over the back of the sofa while I walked over to join them and worked at the knot in my necktie, loosening it from the collar of my shirt. I couldn't wait to get comfortable – tie off, bra off, and brush my damn hair. Then sleep. Preferably with Neal within snuggling range.

Neal held out his hands as if in preparation of putting on a show. Alex looked at him with renewed interest, and he grandly pulled up his pants on his left leg. He twisted his foot around on his toes, showing off the lack of an anklet over the cuff of his inky socks.

As Alex started to nod in approval, looking a little impressed that we'd managed to pull it off, I took the anklet out of the deep front pocket of my slacks and turned it, waving it up for her to look. "It's transmitting," I said, tapping the blinking green light on the side, "But it's not on him. In theory, we could leave it here and flee the state." Alex looked a little too ambitious, and Neal frowned at her expression while I sternly scolded, "Which we're not going to do."

"Congratulations," she clapped a few times, infuriatingly amused by my ire. "How'd you do it?"

Wanna make sure we can do it again? Much as I wanted to say it was none of her concern, given what we were asking of her, it kind of was.

"You'd be surprised what a criminal-cop duo can get done in a day," Neal told her, not actually answering her question, and from her fondly exasperated head shake, Alex was well familiar with the deceptive technique. "I kept my promise." He nodded to her. "Now it's your turn."

Alex sighed like she was being put through a ton of unnecessary unfairness by being expected to uphold her end of the deal without first screwing around like cats and mice. Pulling at her neckline with one hand, the long-haired woman reached down her shirt and into her brassiere, taking out a folded origami piece. After a second, I recognized it as the same kind of flower that Neal had found at Robert Moreau's grave – his origami signature.

Do you teach origami to everyone you partner up with? I almost asked, spreading my feet slightly and crossing my arms as if I was about to take a shove. Because so far all you've done with it and me is to stick it on my head like a hat.

She started to hold it out for Neal, but then stopped and slipped it further into her hand, pinching down the folds of the petals with her thumbnail. "I give you this," she warned, clearly conditional, "And we get the music box together."

"No, I told you." Knowing her better than to try to swipe it, Neal kept his hands where she could see them at his sides, talking her out of her cynicism so that he could take it without starting a fight or fostering any distrust. "It's yours when we get through with it."

Alex bent her elbow to hold the origami piece closer to her chest, threatening to take it away. "See, I don't like the sound of that." Her eyes went cool and challenging. I may want to choke her half the time, but I had to admire that she had a backbone. I suppose a black-market fence without a spine doesn't get very far. "We split it, fifty for me and fifty for… whatever you two want with it."

I knew that I wouldn't be too beaten up if I had to lie to her to get what we needed, but it was a little insulting that Alex didn't think I was an agent of my word. We said she could have the blasted thing after we had gotten our use out of it. What did she think that purpose was? Holding it long enough to forge a copy and trying to pass off the fake to her? What did she think was so important about a stupid fucking music box, anyway? If it was dangerous enough to turn a fed to the dark side because the alternative was being bullied by corrupt agents, why would she even want to possess it?

"What're you going to do with half a music box?" Thinking practically, I almost laughed at her logic. "It's not exactly going to play at that point."

The fence turned her icy and cool eyes back on me. Thinking I would intimidate that easily was offensive. I wanted to say something to her like I had said to Rice – something about how she wasn't even a shadow of the scary things I'd seen. If I needed to, I could smack Alex away, literally or figuratively. She was elusive and I didn't doubt she was athletic enough to be fast and agile, but her hands were soft and small. She didn't have the thick skin or callouses from work. I could probably fight her and win, easy – but cunning Alex Hunter would always try to be three steps ahead, too smart to let herself get caught by a weakness she anticipated.

I thought all of this and let none of it show on my face as she bored me with a lecture of what we both already knew. "It's not just the music that's important." Alex narrowed her eyes at me for being dense. "It's made entirely of amber and belonged to Catherine the Great. There's a great deal of financial and historical value, not just in the aesthetic of the gold or the tune. If either of you decide to screw me on this, you know I can make your lives miserable."

That, at least, was true. Alex could cry wolf even without us baring our teeth and it would hurt, but as long as she did that, then there was always my option of arresting her. We held those threats over each other as insurance. All she'd have to do was blow the whistle, and at least two-thirds of the bureau would be ready to arrest Neal and look for proof afterwards. As for me… well, she didn't have anything concrete to show the bureau, but even pushing accusations in my way would throw shade on my reputation and credibility.

"Well, you're just a little ray of sunshine," I mocked.

Neal had been frowning softly at her for the last few moments, and now he shook his head slowly, his eyes and mouth saddened. "When did you become so distrusting?" He wondered mournfully.

Alex smirked bitterly. "I think you know when, Caffrey."

Neal blinked, and when he opened his eyes, they were devoid of the disappointment he'd worn on his sleeve just seconds before. No matter what he told me about his intimacy with Alex, there was obviously something there under the surface that I couldn't touch on. I'd only get there if one of them told me, and since Alex seemed happy to backstab me if given the opportunity and Neal seemed to be of the opinion that talking about his former relationships was going to break up ours, it didn't look like I was going to be given any information.

"That's over now," he told her finally, his tone stonily resolute. "Nice flower."

She exhaled and handed it over, slowly extending her hand. Neal took it from her, slipping the paper out of her slenderer fingers. "I learned from the best," she boasted suavely, looking right up to his eyes. Neal glanced at her, saw the hidden meanings in her gaze, and averted his eyes quickly.

"That's over now," he repeated in the same unrelenting voice.

I doubled over to put the anklet on the coffee table, slowly pressing it to the glass without letting it cling or clang. Then, stretching my arms behind my back, I padded across the floor in my socks to stand beside Neal in body as he remained faithful to me in words. Sending Alex a nasty look to convey exactly how little we appreciated her seductive line, I put a hand on Neal's left shoulder and looked over his right, holding my other hand gently over his hip. I pressed my palm against his pelvis and massaged my thumb down. If I'd been pushed just a little further – if Alex had said one more thing – I didn't trust that I wouldn't have picked up his shirt and pushed the waistband of his pants to hang lower, revealing the passionate bruises on his hips from the closet in the airport.

My co-conspirator unfolded the yellow origami paper, starting with the base of the flower and then working out the creases of the three folds making up petals. I still thought that they looked more like tulips than any other flower I knew of. As Neal smoothed his thumbs repeatedly over the lines in the upper half of the paper, we both read the penmanship formerly hidden in bends and paper craft.

Neal let out a long breath from his mouth and lowered the paper. I leaned my head forward and pressed my chin to his shoulder. "You go halfway around the world chasing something, and the whole time, it's in your own backyard." He let go of the origami with his right hand and reached behind him, his hand finding my thigh. His left hand tightened its grip and crinkled the paper.

"Unbelievable," I muttered, looking up to Alex's face.

She nodded, entirely serious for the first time that night. Her face wasn't jesting or irritated, but rather set in an atypical mixture of worry and defeat. She and Neal probably both felt like they'd been cheated for having worked so hard to track down something so close by.

"See you soon, Caffrey." Alex's heels clicked on the hardwood floor. She lifted her arms through the sleeves of her cotton shrug and flipped her hair over the back. "FBI." She remembered as an afterthought, just to one side of a sneer.


This is it. I'm domesticated. I groused to myself while I twisted my hair, looking into the mirror over the bathroom sink. My reflection was behind Neal's, but I was close enough to watch what I was doing and pull my locks into twin braids to keep them from tangling. White foam covered the lower half of Neal's face and part of his neck while he shaved with an electric razor.

I'd taken a shower while Neal got himself something to eat (Wilkes hadn't been very accommodating), and while I went through my nightly routine over the sink, Neal came in and joined me. Less than thirty minutes after Alex left, we were almost ready to go to bed together like a normal couple.

We'd definitely passed the friends-with-benefits thing a while ago, I reflected; last I checked, only couples shaved and fixed their hair next to each other in the bathroom. Yep. All we need now are some three-foot-tall blue-eyed brats running around. To my credit, I used the term 'brats' affectionately when referring to our nonexistent children.

I finished my braids and then went from the top to the bottom, loosening them up so they didn't pull at my scalp so tightly. Water dripped onto my nightshirt as the tight ponytail holders wrung my hair out, and I could feel the dampness on my fingers. Neal turned off his razor, bent down over the sink, and scrubbed his face with a wash cloth wet with warm water. When he stood up straight, flicking it off of his hands, drops fell from his sharp jawline to his shirt.

"How'd I do on the test this time?" I asked conversationally, rubbing my fingers dry on my fleece pants.

Neal didn't miss a beat. "Hundred on vengeful wrath and productivity, ninety on timing." Well, that puts me at… what, ninety-six? I pretended to consider the merits of that as if it were an actual grade and nodded slowly. Not too shabby for someone out of practice. "You could use some work," he told me mock-condescendingly in the mirror.

I giggled and bumped my hip against his thigh. "I meant in the con." I pushed him out of the way to grab at my hairbrush on the side of the sink and dropped it back down into my duffel on the floor. "I worked out what you're doing," I informed, feeling rather proud of myself for using what I knew of both conmen to see through the coincidences in timing and the increasing frequency with which I was privy to their alleged activities. "Mozzie lets me do these cons with you because he knows I'm supposed to be in on the music box. He's testing me to see if I'm reliable."

Neal raised his eyebrows while he touched his face, patting the underside of his chin and feeling how smooth his skin was. Again, I repeated an earlier sentiment, I'm dating a human peacock. He smiled slightly and admired the mirror. "Who knows what Mozzie really thinks?" He asked mysteriously, rubbing the heels of his hands against his cheeks.

"You're his best friend," I reminded, in case he'd forgotten. Which he might have. It was plausible Wilkes hit him at some point. His hair was thick enough that I might not have even noticed a cut.

"And he's mine," Neal loyally agreed with the sentiment quickly. "But I still occasionally give him a half-truth." Satisfied with his work, he tousled his hands through his hair and decided that a shower could wait for the morning. We were both running on the remnants of adrenaline and terror. Forsaking the mirror, he rotated around, socks sliding easily on the tile bathroom floor. "You're the only person I'm honest with," he vowed to me, picking up one of my hands. "You want insight into his head? He goes to your house to talk to you. You have his phone number – one of them, at least," he corrected himself when I looked skeptical. "He went to you for help helping me. He'll drink, play games, and watch movies with you, pull cons with and for you, and when he calls you 'Suit,' he uses it as a proper noun."

Which was an interesting transition. It wasn't very often, either. When he addressed me directly, it was hard to notice, but when he talked about me to someone else, it became more evident. I wasn't the suit. I was Suit. As in, the special suit, the one that didn't need a clarifying article. I figured it was the closest I was going to get to a nickname from Mozzie.

"Yeah, I noticed that," I agreed thoughtfully while Neal unbuttoned his dress shirt and started to shrug his shoulders, freeing his upper arms from the sleeves. Mozzie still used the term in distaste. When had I become the exception? And why hadn't I noticed it as it occurred? I started to ask Neal if I'd ever done anything to change Mozzie's mind about me or if it had been gradual, but stopped short when the sleeve came down over the bicep of his left arm. "Oh…"

Tiny, irritated puncture wounds stood out against the unblemished flesh around them. Slightly raised and the skin around them slightly swollen, they were the injury I'd felt at the airport. The redness was tightly localized. I had seen similar marks on myself before, with the help of a handheld mirror, but seeing them on Neal felt like a personal attack.

Just as I went to caress his arm and feel if there was still a lot of heat from them, I saw another set on his throat. His collar had been covering those. They were to the left side and close to the back of his neck, made during a stealthy attack from behind. Neal watched my face go through the reactions with his shirt still half-on, his forearms still caught in the sleeves and the material covering half of his back. A white tank top underneath kept me from seeing much of his chest or back, but I was scared there'd be even more.

I held his arm still and leaned down, pecking my lips dryly to the side of the electricity burns. I covered them with my hand and reached for his throat with the other. Neal relaxed, tension easing out of his defensive stance, as he rocked his head to the side and let his arms straighten, the sleeves falling down and the shirt pooling on the bathroom floor.

"Didn't feel too hot," Neal commented quietly while I gave his throat the same treatment I'd given him arm, checking the temperature of the injury site while giving a possessive kiss to the back of his neck. Thankfully, the taser had been used on a lower setting, and though it'd left burns, they weren't severe.

It took me a moment to understand. "… Was that an electricity pun?" I asked dumbly, suspiciously glaring. If his sense of humor was that terrible, maybe he'd deserved to be tased. – But no, Neal hadn't done anything to warrant these attacks, and I knew that. I felt it deep within my bones, along with a simmering determination to protect what was mine, and more than a little bit of shame that I hadn't managed to do that. "Do they hurt?"

Neal shrugged as if he didn't know, but then he answered. I almost asked if he'd been tased before, but I'd had enough near-heart attacks recently and didn't need any more scares. "Kind of stings, I guess," he said, taking it easy on the details. "And itches. And I'm sore."

I wrapped my arms around him from behind and shoved my face against his back, cuddling my cheek into the wiry space between his shoulder blades. Neal arched forwards over the sink, flexing the muscles in his back, and I grumbled, holding on tight and trying to make him stop moving.

"That's generally the result of being electrocuted in any way." The fabric of the wife beater undershirt wasn't as nice as the silk shirt, and while it was okay to sleep in, it wasn't something I cared to use to develop a habit of rubbing my face against something. I stood up and slowly unhooked my arms from around him. It was irrational, but I was scared that if I turned my back for too long, then he'd be taken from me again. "I'm going to go get a couple of ice packs from the freezer. Trust me, they'll help."

Neal nodded his assent and I left the bathroom, going back out into the main suite while he lathered toothpaste on a brush. Looking around carefully, I saw that everything was still in place and we were still alone. No uninvited visitors, be they fences, cops, or serial killers, were lying in wait. The bed was neatly-made, the dishwasher had finished running, and the fridge hummed monotonously.

I walked up to the fridge and opened the door above it. A blast of icy air hit my face and dried my lips. On the shelf in the door were several pharmacy-bought ice packs, frozen for coolness and trapped within thick, dark blue corduroy. I took two of the three for Neal's taser burns and closed the freezer. The ice packs were already starting to numb my hand, so I stopped at the drawers and took out napkins, wrapping them neatly around as another buffer.

For Neal's safety, I secured the room again and nodded contently. I didn't feel like I had enough common ground with June to try to push her into getting heightened security, but as soon as Neal got his own place – whether it was next month or not until the anklet was removed – I was going to insist that he let me handle it. I'd get him good locks, deadbolts, panic buttons, and an electronic alarm system like the one Kate and I had at home. He'd be safe and he'd be happy about it.

It seemed like it was going to be a long time before that happened, though. Neal enjoyed it at June's and the elderly woman adored Neal. When I watched the two together, she treated him as if he'd stepped into her home as a foster resident, not as a convict. Unless something happened to change that, this arrangement would be stagnant for the foreseeable future. By the time the anklet was off for good, no one would be able to say anything about Neal and I sharing beds, where I could protect him whenever I needed to.

And, speaking of the anklet, it was still on the coffee table, the green light blinking at regular intervals. I stared at it and sighed. My responsibilities as an agent were still there, and it wasn't like we were going after the box tonight. The point had been made to Alex. Now it was time to pretend like I wasn't planning anything.

Swallowing thickly, I went to pick it up in my free hand and carried it with me to the bedroom alcove, setting down the ice packs on the bedside table and sitting on the mattress, turning the anklet over. I didn't want to put it back on Neal. I wanted him to be free. Putting something like that on him, especially when I knew he wouldn't fight me, felt like an abuse of his trust – except that was ridiculous. The anklet was more symbolic than anything. Whether it was on or off, Neal wasn't a free man, and he wouldn't be for another three years. If anything, it was a prize. While he wore the anklet, he wasn't as tightly confined.

Neal came to the bedroom, his heavy footsteps giving away his presence before I saw his shadow on the floor. He stretched his arms above his head and arched his spine inwards. Holding up the anklet, I watched him make a point of not acknowledging it as he stepped out of his pants and folded them neatly.

"You know, you should be wearing this," I spoke up when he went to strip his tank top over his head.

He paused. I kept my eyes locked onto the anklet, not wanting to see his face. I knew he didn't like it. I couldn't stand wearing bracelets for very long, and he had this thick, heavy, hot cuff strapped to his leg, made even worse by that he didn't get much of a choice regarding whether or not he wore it. I had to play it safe, and that meant reminding him that he had to wear the tracker… even if it made him mad at me.

Neal saw I wasn't looking at him and he forced me to. With a small sigh, he pulled his shirt off and had it join his pants on the chair. In his briefs, he got down on his knees, entering my field of vision.

"It's transmitting, isn't it?" He asked gently. He didn't sound upset. I risked a glance to his eyes and saw him daring to look hopeful. Placid and docile, he crawled to my legs, crossed his arms over my knees, and leaned against me. There was a very discolored bruise over his sternum, about the size of a fist, colored dark blue with sickly yellow surrounding it before the colors blended with his flawless tan.

I bit my lip when I saw the injury, and if I hadn't been feeling the weight of the anklet in my hand, I'd have forsaken the conversation to move his arms off of my legs, slide off the side of the bed, and gently press on and around his pecs. A hit like that could've fractured something. Neal seemed like the kind of person who'd hide it well when he was actually injured. But he just kept breathing slowly, looking up at me with his head tipped.

"Yeah," I confirmed, twisting my wrist so he'd see the light.

"So…" Neal set his chin down on top of his arms, looking up at me through his eyelashes. I reached with my empty hand for his face and hesitated before I touched him. "If I stay here…" He bumped his forehead against my fingers and I slid my hand into his hair. "… Can't it just stay off until the morning?"

Bad idea. Bad idea. The red flags went up to half-mast.

"Is it really chafing that badly?" I asked, putting concern on my face while I scratched at his scalp. Neal leaned against my knees like a pleased cat.

Neal was so very intelligent – surely he knew I couldn't just let him keep the anklet off. There was little I wouldn't do for him, but giving him the chance to run away and aiding the temptation by not fastening the anklet to him? I'd let him run when we needed to meet Alex, but that was for a purpose. Now that it was over, we had to go back to normal; take the next day off, cite emotional trauma and physical duress, and capitalize on the newest intel on the music box. We had to figure out what to do next, how to prepare for when Alex decided she was ready to aim for it.

Neal didn't wait to shake his head. "Not with socks up under it," he readily admitted. I tightened my fingers in his wavy strands in warning. I couldn't just let him break the terms of his deal. We'd broken them before with the cons we'd run for both of our sakes, but leaving his anklet off? Without a very good reason for doing so? That was asking for trouble. "It would just be nice to have one night to pretend that I'm allowed to be your boyfriend when we're not in this house." He lifted his eyes back to mine imploringly. The skylight was behind me and my back blocked the falling sun from hitting Neal, which made his eyes look like an even darker, richer blue. "Having the anklet on, it's kind of a constant reminder that I'm still serving a sentence."

Duh, that's exactly what it's supposed to do.

With Neal watching me, I didn't feel like I could give him the long explanation. It would seem like I was dragging out an excuse, even though we both knew that I was well within my rights to refuse his request. He was lucky I hadn't already shut it down.

Part of it was the outright neglect of my responsibilities as a civil servant. Giving Neal, who was still atoning for his wrongs in the justice system, the opportunity to run away to some distant island as soon as I was asleep was a major insult to the faith that the citizens put in the bureau and its agents to protect them and their rights.

Another aspect was that I was afraid he might get that idea. I'd be heartbroken if he up and left after taking advantage of my trust and my impatience. Using such a personal pressure point and then digging it in deeper with the closeness and intimacy of how we were positioned… well, that would be incredibly low, even for Neal, but the insecure and paranoid fraction of my brain that still couldn't fathom why he cared so much about being mine wouldn't be reassured.

And by far the largest issue was the power dynamic. When I was the one who chose to get up and stop cuddling, then nine times out of ten, it was because I'd felt or remembered the anklet. It made me very… very uncomfortable in the more intimate settings. Neal was making his own decisions and I wasn't worried about him doing something he didn't want, but it always shoved back in my face that I had so much more authority than he did in the relationship. I had a position of power over him just because I was his handler, and although I did my absolute best never to exercise that authority when we weren't on the clock, it was hard to be hypervigilant about my decisions and how weighted they subconsciously were. If I said no to something he wanted, was it because it risked outing us or just because I could?

So that was it here. If I said 'no' to him… was I doing it because I didn't trust him enough to take the chance, or was it because I simply could, and it didn't feel right? Would saying 'no' be beneficial to him, or would it solely help me feel less guilty about breaking the rules while it simultaneously made him feel less in control?

I took my hands and put the anklet down on the mattress, then covered my face. "It would be really irresponsible of me to fall asleep without making sure you put it back on," I hedged, unsure how to answer. As an agent, I had to make sure it was being worn to bed. As a significant other, I felt obligated to give him his peace of mind and let it conveniently slip my mind until morning.

"What if I swear not to leave the room without it on?" Neal lifted his chin from his arms and reached for my hips, pushing his thumbs into my thighs and pressing in hard circles that could make me sigh and lean back any other time. "Just for tonight, Kenna. Please."

As stupid as it was to be won by something like that, his manners were what got to me. Neal had always treated me with respect. The only times he hadn't were when he was either pissed at me or pushing to see how much wiggle room I was willing to give him, and I had given as good as I got either way. He'd always respected my beliefs, my rights, and my wishes (not counting when he stole the Haustenberg). The continued respect here, in the bedroom… well, he was showing me that he still respected me, respected my career, my professional responsibilities, and my emotional difficulty with catering to a different kind of situation.

Without talking, I moved the anklet from the bed to the drawers on Neal's side. There was no way I wasn't going to go to hell for my poor decisions, but there was very little I wouldn't do for Neal. One day I'd reach a boundary line, but that day wasn't today.

Neal lit up, looking surprised but with his breath taken away. He smiled brightly at me, springing up from his knees and standing over me. He held my cheeks with his hands and kissed me thankfully, stealing away my wits along with my air. The artist pulled back for a second, looked over my face with a completely smitten expression on his, wet pink lips showing his teeth as he giggled. Then he was back to me, parting my lips with his tongue and cradling my neck.

We made out carelessly while working to get up on the bed. Neal soothed the anxious fluttering in my stomach with his kisses and his soft, heartfelt pillow talk against my neck and in my ears. In return, I pushed my legs between his until his knees were holding my thighs and I pillowed his head with one arm. Neal shifted, held me flush to his body, and cuddled up closer, the side of his cheek on my shoulder. I reached down for his leg and stroked his thigh, starting at the back of his knee and gradually getting closer and closer to his underwear.

As Neal got comfortable, sleepily yawning and tucking his hands under my side, I hiked his knee up a little higher and then petted him over the blanket. Trying not to jar him, I stretched my shoulder, feeling clumsily over the bedside table. When my fingers hit something cold, I stopped, snagged the corner, and dragged both ice packs off of the edge and onto the bed.

"Get comfortable," I told him when I shoved one of them underneath his left arm and he jumped, eyes flying wide open. Neal settled back down, locking his hands around my abdomen. The artist wasn't as surprised when I pressed the second pack against the marks on his neck, propping it between him and my arm to keep it held on the area. "What happened there?" I finally asked, slipping a hand between us to rest over his chest.

Neal blinked open his eyes tiredly. "Huh?" I hadn't realized he would pass out so quickly and felt guilty for interrupting again, but he seemed so genuinely pleased with my attention that he didn't even tell me to be quiet. "Oh…" When he realized where I was touching, he rolled back, dislodging the ice pack on his neck, and touched the bruise himself. "Wilkes is definitely the type to hold a grudge."

I pursed my lips. Neal beckoned for me to move to follow him, so I rolled onto my side and mirrored the way we'd been lying previously. I was persistent and fixed the ice packs to account for it. I liked to hold him, but it felt wonderful to curl in against his larger form, head on his arm and hand covering his heart and part of his bruises. I glared at them, willing them to heal and go away. Neal brought his hand up from behind my head and started to toy with the ends of my hair, eyes sliding shut.

At first, my body wasn't ready to go to sleep. My internal clock was used to being up later. Overall, it was being beaten down and silenced by the exhaustion of the past two days. Having Neal's breathing near my head was a promise of safety and ease. I could trust him to look out for me and to wake me if I needed to be awake, just like he trusted me. He knew I would protect him. And now, so did everyone else in the WCCD. After I tore Rice several new wounds to compensate for taking my mate away from me, no one else was dumb enough to try… hopefully, at least.

My mind replayed the hits of the argument for me, a soft, tired smile coming to my face and promising a long night of rest.

I could cover the side of the pillow with my hand and pretend that I was with the man of my dreams.

There was no need to pretend anymore. Neal was really there, alive, well, and happy. God, he was happy – grinning at me, kissing me, keeping me close with his whole body, playing with my hair as his hand gradually stopped moving, dropping down to the back of my head several times before he woke up enough to keep going.

This wasn't a time to be rational. It was a time to be angry, to make her hurt, the way I knew Neal had been hurt.

And he was hurt – he was hurt, and it made me feel queasy and enraged in equal measure – but I could let go of the anger and focus on Neal, now that he was in my arms. Neal didn't need anger. He deserved tenderness and love.

She had to look into him, see how he operated, understand the dangers and how to neutralize them, especially if she wanted to involve someone I loved.

My eyes snapped open as I realized something that had gone completely over my head when I had all but confessed to myself in the morning. I love Neal. My breath hitched like water had gone down the wrong pipe and I drew my knees up higher, curling in to protect myself. I just ended up with even more of me pressed to Neal… whom I love.

"I love-" I said aloud, amazed, awed, and stricken with a rising of desperate affection and desire. For all of a second, it was impossible to keep to myself. Why would I want to? Then it came crashing down when Neal felt me tense and he shifted, picking his head up from the pillow to look down at me impulsively, and I changed what I was going to say when a rush of terror blinded me. "- Your mattress."

Wow, Anderson. That's even dumber than when you used a bookshelf as an excuse for abandoning him in bed.

Stopping there wasn't an option. I was panicked. I was scared. I loved Neal. Neal was the man I loved. Neal, my soulmate, was the one I loved. I loved him in a way so much stronger and more complex than I'd ever loved anyone before, and I had confused it for companionship, for friendship, for exasperation, for annoyance, for lust, for infatuation. How could I let love rule my actions? I was making decisions with the potential to ruin me because I was in love. Love was fleeting and vulnerable and insecure. I was doing everything I hadn't wanted to do – changing my life, throwing my ambitions aside for the sake of my soulmate.

"I mean, I really love your mattress," I babbled, face turning scarlet. There was no way he didn't feel the heat from my blush against his pectoral. "I haven't slept in a long time, so it's – wow. I mean, yeah."

Neal didn't respond. I drove my teeth into my bottom lip and realized I could still taste the mint of his toothpaste in my mouth from his kisses, which had never been so addictive until I had almost lost him for good. Right as I started to feel like I should get out, jump up and run away from what I didn't want to feel, Neal lowered his hand to my hair, releasing long tendrils and burying his fingers in it. I felt the muscles in his chest flex as he shifted slightly to his left and lifted his neck. Then I felt his soft and hot lips on my forehead, right beneath my hairline.

"I love the mattress, too," he mumbled against my skin, stilling contently. Neal's mouth caressed the words delicately and knowingly, as if he could break them or their meaning by saying them in the wrong way.

My eyes stung and I squeezed them shut, turning my face into his chest. He knew. He knew what I hadn't been able to say, and he had said them back – as much as he chose to, that was, committing only as much as I committed to him.

It wasn't until then that I realized how much I wanted his spoken commitments. His I don't lie to you, Kennas weren't enough anymore. I wanted him to mean them more than he meant the murmured, loving words and promises when his voice was broken up by sounds of pleasure and he was so deep inside of me that I couldn't see straight. The implications of his lips when he kissed me, elegantly and skilled like he'd been trained, paying attention to everything I liked, were a start, but they weren't an oath.

Now that I had heard him holding back, I was desperate to break those barriers down. I wanted him to give himself to me, to jump and believe I'd catch him, to prove to me that my feelings weren't one-sided and that he treasured me as much as I valued my precious, beloved artist.

Soulmates have nothing to do with this, I scolded myself over my fit of paralyzed word alterations. I love him and it's more than any superficial tattoo could ever amount to. We're soulmates because the universe knew I would love him dearly, not vice versa. A soulmark didn't cheapen what I felt. A soulmark didn't get to make me feel what I didn't want to feel, and it didn't have any more of a right to take away what I did feel, and as I lectured myself mentally out of that terrified, impulsive defense mechanism, I felt with all of my heart that I was utterly in love with Neal, and I wouldn't give up that sensation for anything.

Not even for my idealized job, which had been making my life miserable lately – getting the love of my life threatened by bastard agents, bringing said agents to my sister's doorstep, making me constantly choose between what I needed to do for my mate and what I should have done for my title. Time to think of a new identity. I envisioned McKenna as an agent of justice when I invented her. I had also been determined to be who I wanted to be, and yet now I was doing the same things my parents had done to me – pressuring myself into being someone else.

If my job made me miserable, it was time to stop using it to identify and judge myself. How well I took care of my loved ones was a much better judge of my character, anyway.

Neal had done as much for me as I had done for him. He deserved to know how I felt. He deserved to know that there was a thrumming passion in my chest that burned hot around him and ached for only him. He had my loyalty, my trust, my friendship, and my love.

I pressed my hand flat against his chest and admired how our skin tones looked together. I was smaller, paler, and he protected me from my demons at night with his larger and stronger body. Then, once the sun rose, it was my turn, and I defended him from anything that would want to take a swing at him, protecting my sweet love, who would never hurt for anything short of self-defense.

"Neal," I said, bravely screwing up my courage. I was ready. I could commit. There was no one else I wanted to commit this part of myself to. "I-"

A quiet snuffling intervened before I could say any more, and I pushed myself up on my elbow and looked to his face. My mate slept peacefully, drifted off with his face calm and relaxed. He swallowed and turned his head to the side, cheek against the soft fluffed pillow, and unconsciously tightened his fingers in my hair.

I swallowed back the rest of what I'd been prepared to say. Maybe it was better. Maybe I was asking for a lot, giving too much. We had a lot of things in front of us that were going to be anything but easy. Alex, Fowler, the music box… Did Neal or I really need to get any more involved, to pledge devotion to each other, when we should've been more worried by things to come?

I watched Neal breathe, in and out, his face as beautiful at rest as he always was. Whether he was distractedly nibbling on a pen, or overcome with bliss as he climaxed, or intently focused on his sketchbook, or grinning around with the excitement of a child, he was the most beautiful thing in the world when viewed through my eyes.

"There's nothing in the world that'll stop me from protecting you," I vowed to him sadly, kissing the corner of his mouth. "But for now, with this, I'm going to protect myself, too."


Some other transfer kid is kind of wealthy because his parents own a chain of casinos. He likes to brag about how no one can beat him at cards and how he can spot a tell a mile away. I knocked him off his horse and told him he wasn't as good as he thought.

It took a while, but I set him up for a nice hustle. He wasn't completely lying; he is good at telling when people are trying to be deceitful, so I had to be stealthy. I went out of my way to be in his vicinity several times, and each time, I planted a subtle, false tell.

Still pretending to be the arrogant, impatient bitch (pretending?), I let him challenge my ego into a winner-takes-all poker game, where I then proceeded to use that fake tell to manipulate him into losing. I totally cleaned him out. Then I winked, made sure he was watching, and did the tell again.

The first thing to know about lying is that you can – and probably will, at some point – get caught in your own webs. When you assume you're invincible, you actually make yourself an easier target. I taught this kid that you should never assume you're the one with the most aces; or, in this case, the highest flush.

I'm laying low in school for a while now, and I've stuffed all the cash I won in a hidden cubby Mom and Dad won't ever find. I'll take it with me when I move my assets. In the meantime, I'm revered in my class with a little more respect. It won't last long, because these things never do, but the transfer learned something from the experience and I feel a little less bored.

See? Secrets and safeties can be useful.

Love (and cheat well),

Zarra LaMontagne


A/N: Chapter title from Lucy Hale's "Lie a Little Better."

Next chapter: McKenna's identities, plans, and problems all come crashing together when she forms a crew with Neal, Mozzie, and Alex to steal the music box. She and Neal lure Fowler back into New York, where he strikes revenge on both of the Andersons for the events of their last encounter.

I'm very excited, but also a little sad - there are only two chapters left!

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