Author's Note: I'm sorry for the absence, I've just been really low lately and it's been hard to find the motivation to write, but I finally managed to get a chapter together and I hope you will like it :)

CHAPTER 8

Peter woke up by a loud bang and he was out of the bed before he had even woken up fully.
He hurried out of the room, stopping by the guest room but finding the bed empty.
His heart started to beat faster, what if the men had found out about Peter's involvement and had now broke in and kidnapped the boy?
The agent hurried down the stairs before he ran to the door and found no sign of forced entry and the alarm hadn't been touched.
He relaxed slightly before he went into the living room where he was met by Satchmo, the white dog was too relaxed for a break in and-
Wait white dog? Satchmo wasn't white.
Peter looked at his dog again and realized that the animal was covered in a white powder.
Suddenly he knew exactly where he would find the kid.
He walked to the kitchen and there the missing boy was, standing on the top of the counter and surrounded by flour.
Neal was looking down at the flour, seemingly lost in thoughts. He was probably thinking about how he would hide the evidence.

"Neal, what are you doing?"

The boy jumped before looking up at Peter with an innocent smile.

"Pancakes"

Neal answered before proudly pointing toward a bowl filled with a pancake batter.
Peter sighed before he saw that the kid had even managed to turn on the stove, wasn't it supposed to be child proofed?
Neal noticed him glancing at the stove and it seemed as if the kid could read his thoughts.

"You just have to press a button before being able to turn it. It's not rocket science Peter"

Of course something as simple as a child lock wouldn't be able to stop Neal.
The kid was smart, but that didn't mean that Peter felt comfortable with having a six-year-old cooking unsupervised.
Peter grabbed Neal and lifted him off the counter and placed him on the floor, he didn't want to risk the boy falling down and hurting himself.

"You can help me cook but you're not allowed to cook without an adult around okay?"

Neal immediately started to argue this decision.

"It's either that or you're not allowed to cook at all"
Peter said, perhaps a little sterner than he intended but seriously why couldn't Neal just follow simple rules without arguing?

In the end the pancakes turned out pretty good, and with Peter's help and supervision the house wasn't burned down to the ground.
The boy happily ate pancakes until he was so full that he couldn't take another bite and Peter managed to get a couple down as well.
He couldn't remember the last time he ate pancakes, he wasn't sure if he had even had pancakes since he moved out from his parents' house.
Peter even placed a pancake in the dog bowl, and Satchmo quickly gulped it down.
As he was cleaning up the mess created on the table, Neal's tiny hand grabbed his pantleg.

"Peter?"

The boy sounded scared and he was just about to ask Neal what was wrong when he heard Satchmo growl behind him.
The agent turned around and saw that his dog had made his way over to the door and was now staring at it, seemingly sensing something or someone on the other side of the door.
It was rare for the animal to react in this way, he'd normally became excited when he heard something outside the door.
Satchmo's behavior was definitely cause for concern and Peter immediately went into his agent mode.

"Stay here"

He told Neal before he started to walk towards the door, and for once the kid actually listened to him.
Satchmo suddenly jumped against the door, emitting a bark which caused Peter to hurry to the door.
When he opened it, Satchmo pushed past him and ran out before he could stop him.
The dog had a good reason for doing this, seeing as a man dressed in black was running away from the door.
Satchmo was close to biting the man's ankle when the stranger managed to slam the gate shut in the dog's face, successfully getting rid of the dog who angrily barked after the escaping man.
Peter's instincts were telling him to run after the man but he couldn't leave the child unattended, so he had no choice but to let the man go.

"Satchmo! Come here!"

The dog didn't look too pleased over the fact that he had to let the stranger run, but he also seemed to understand that there was no other choice.
Satchmo came to a halt on the doorstep, sniffing an envelope that Peter had somehow completely failed to notice.

"Good boy"

He praised the dog before he grabbed the envelope and turned it around, freezing when he saw a very familiar symbol on the front.
It could be a total coincide, smileys were a common symbol after all but it was something distinctive with the way it was drawn and the clear blue colour used.

"Is that the symbol that Scarface thief uses?"

Peter groaned as he heard the voice behind him.

"Didn't I tell you to stay?"

The boy ignored him and instead reached out for the envelope, snatching it from Peter's hands.

"How do you know about Scarface anyway?"
"I read about him in the newspaper"

Neal answered before opening the envelope and taking out its contents.
The kid looked at the paper for only a second before suddenly dropping it to the ground, seemingly in shock.
Peter looked down at the paper, and he immediately found the cause for Neal's reaction.
It was a note for Peter but the text wasn't what caught their attention but the picture attached with a paperclip.
The picture showed Elizabeth, tied to a chair, looking pretty beaten up.

It hadn't been very hard to gather up Jones, Diana and a handful of other agents and meet at the bureau, despite it being their day off.
They were all eager to find this Scarface dude and they were all very eager to help Peter find Elizabeth.
Of course, Peter didn't have a babysitter available so he was forced to bring the child with him to the office.
Neal was still visibly shaken up from having to see his mother in that state and he refused to believe Peter when he tried to assure the kid that his mother was fine.
Sometimes Neal's intelligence was a curse, it would have been so much easier if Neal was a naïve child who believed that adults knew everything.
He felt uneasy leaving the child alone in his office while he went into the conference room to have a walkthrough of the case with the other agents, he just hoped that the kid would stay for once.
The last thing he needed now was to lose the boy as well.
The walkthrough went by relatively fast since they hadn't received that much new information, apart from the fact that there was now a connection between the kidnapping and the man they had been chasing for over a year.
The note didn't give them much except that it revealed the motivation for the kidnapping. It all came down to that damn sketch made of the perp's face.
He somehow found out that Elizabeth was the one to help them create the sketch and he was now demanding for all copies of it to be destroyed.
If they did that then they would have further demands, if they didn't however Elizabeth would be the one to suffer.
It wasn't a tough choice to make, for Peter it wasn't even a choice at all.
He dismissed the other agents before turning around towards the board where the note and the picture was now placed.
Peter hadn't seen Elizabeth in over a week, and now seeing her again in this state made him furious, if he ever came face to face with this Scarface guy then he didn't think he'd be able to stop himself from beating the man into a bloody pulp.
The man had been a pain in the ass when it came to his work but now he had entered his personal life and that was something Peter couldn't accept.
That made him question if the man knew about Peter's connection to Elizabeth or if he was just chosen since he was the lead investigator on this case?
If he did know about their connection, did that mean that Scarface knew about Neal as well?
That thought caused him to rush out of the room and over to his office, thinking that seeing that Neal was fine would calm his worries for now.
His office however was empty and he quickly turned around, scanning the bullpen trying to spot the kid but he wasn't there either.

Peter slowly walked down the stairs and to one of the desks. He had made sure that two agents were in the bullpen working, just to prevent Neal from wandering off.

"Where's Neal?"

He asked them, his voice dangerously low and both of the agents looked up at Peter's empty office in confusion.
The agents looked at each other before one of them tried to stutter some excuse but Peter just left them, not wanting to hear their explanation for letting the kid disappear right in front of their noses.
He stopped in the middle of the bullpen, unsure about what to do.
He didn't think that someone had managed to get in here and kidnap Neal, but that didn't mean that someone hadn't grabbed the boy once he was out of the agents' sight.
Peter closed his eyes, trying to calm his racing heart. He couldn't deal with a kidnapped child as well, things were bad enough as it was.

"Peter, are you okay? You look like you gonna be sick"

He immediately opened his eyes and there Neal was, and he didn't have a single scratch.
Peter placed his hand on the kid's skinny shoulder, as if he had to touch him in order to be sure he was really there.

"Where were you?"
"Bathroom"

He released a sigh of relief before lightly scolding the boy.

"You need to tell someone before you leave"
"But I was fine"

Neal protested and Peter realized that the boy might not understand the severity of the situation.
He crouched down in front of him and placed his hands on the boy's shoulders.

"Neal, I was worried that you had gotten kidnapped, just like your mom"

The kid's smile disappeared and it was replaced with a guilty look.

"Please, always make sure that an adult knows where you are okay?"

Neal nodded and Peter just hoped that the boy really did understand.
The boy surprised him by throwing his arms around the agent in a hug. Peter didn't hesitate to return the hug.
His heart was still racing from the freight Neal had given him and the kid seemed to sense it, because he suddenly felt the need to reassure him.

"I'm fine"

The boy whispered in his ear and Peter couldn't help but smile.