I'm nearly there, one more chapter to go I think - hope people are enjoying reading this as much as I am writing it.
White Collar – Prison Break – Chapter 7
Neal was still tired and aching the following morning, but despite that he found he was in a very good mood, there were lot of reasons he could have given, he'd had almost five hours sleep that night, the bruises on his face were fading fast, with luck he would be back at June's place with a glass in his hand that evening, but the real reason was today was the day all his planning and scheming would be put to the test. It was what he and Peter had most common, they both loved a challenge.
Neal's plan today was to cosy up to Pietre try and find out what Andre had arranged for the take-over of the operation once Andre was out. He'd arranged with Andre to use Pietre as the go between, on the basis they shouldn't be seen together too much. Pietre sentence for conspiracy was up in less than a year so there was no need for him to be broken out whereas Andre was looking at a minimum of another 15 years for murder which explained why he was quick to take up Neal's offer.
Pietre was looking glumly at his tray not eating when Neal found him in the canteen at breakfast.
"Not hungry?" Neal asked sitting down and grimacing as he took a sip of his own coffee; it was as bad as the FBI's coffee.
Pietre looked at him glumly. He looked like he hadn't slept, he had shadows under his eyes, he was unshaven and his hair was greasy. It was quite a difference from a few days ago when they had first met. He had been neatly shaved and clean.
"Are you okay?" Neal asked concerned. He didn't think Pietre was a bad guy from what he had seen.
Pietre glared at Neal for a few seconds, Neal who could normally read people easily, was uneasy at what he saw. Pietre broke the eye contact and looked back down at his tray.
"It's nothing" he told Neal.
"Come on, maybe I can help" Neal told him. Andre looked at him again, but this time it was more searching then accusing or scary or whatever the hell that previous look had been.
"Take me too" Pietre ordered questioningly
Neal considered his reply. If he had really been breaking Pietre out he would have agreed, but taking Pietre along would at best just result in him facing double his prison sentence for trying to escape.
"That's not a good idea" Neal told him gently. "You've only got 8 months left right?" Pietre gave a slight downward nod of with his chin.
"You escape, you'll be looking over your shoulder forever, it's not worth it, believe me" Neal tried to persuade him.
"Then why are you doing it?" Pietre asked suspiciously. Neal hesitated, this was tricky
"I've got a lot longer to go than you, and you've seen how the guards treat me. I'll never make it" Neal said as convincingly as he could, but he could see Pietre wasn't fully convinced.
"There's also woman, she's not going to wait for me. I can't wait any longer, I have to find her" he lied smoothly. The best lies came from truth, it was just this truth was a few years out of date. The pain he felt over remembering when this lie was truth just added veracity to the story. He saw the moment Pietre bought the lie and the small rush he felt offset the pain of remembering.
"Why are you in such a hurry?" he asked Pietre
Pietre glanced across the hall, Neal snuck a look, Grant was looking at them with a gang of men with shaved heads and they were talking to each other quietly.
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed" Pietre quoted
"Yeats" Neal recognised, reminded of Mozzie and suddenly missing his friend so fiercely he felt it as an ache in his stomach. However, he saw an opening to test Pietre on the operation.
"You're worried about Andre leaving." Neal realised. "It's only him going, surely, you'll just be taking over his operation with the others?" Neal asked casually.
Pietre shook his head.
"Andre doesn't trust anyone with the running of it, not even me. When he goes it goes with him" he told Neal glumly. Neal wanted to grin at his success in getting this information from Pietre and wished he could say something to Jones and Diana who as far as he knew were still listening in the van.
Andre looked across at Grant and his new gang, stood up suddenly and left abruptly leaving Neal to stare after him. He felt kind of bad about leaving Pietre in the lurch, maybe he could get Peter to offer him some kind of deal, testimony in exchange for quicker remand on bail maybe.
Grant came sauntering over.
"So you're Neal Caffrey?" he said sitting down. "I knew a friend of yours" he told Neal.
"Really?" Neal raised an eye brown "Who's that?" he asked casually
"Matthew Keller" Grant told him with obvious satisfaction.
"He's no friend of mine" Neal told him. Grant nodded. Neal wondered if this was where the plan fell apart. What did Keller tell Grant about Neal's involvement with the FBI? Keller was not one to consult people he considered lackeys with his plans and he had basically hired Grant to be his watch dog in his plan to kidnap Elizabeth.
"What did he say about me" Neal asked with deliberately casual curiosity
"Not much" Grant admitted "but he thought you were a threat and I know you ratted him out to the Feds to get your friend's wife back". Grant told him bluntly.
Neal thought furiously. It seemed like Grant didn't know the full arrangement at least. Neal had seen his file, Grant was a thug, he didn't have the brains to bluff.
"That wasn't me." Neal denied to buy a few seconds, he shrugged "I've got no love of the Feds, but my friend didn't want to take any chances. People do stupid things for family." He told Grant, which wasn't even a lie.
"Let's cut to the chase" Grant told him "I know you've got something going on. Whatever it is, I want in. You're either working with Andre Dubrek or working out a way to take over, I want in. If you give me a cut me in, I can help. If not, you'll find me and my new friends won't like it" he nodded back to the other table where Neal found they were being watched. Neal smiled at Grant.
"I'm sure we can come to some sort of arrangement, I'll just need a bit of time to work something out" he told Grant.
"You've got until tomorrow" Grant told him. Neal nodded trying not to look too relieved. Grant walked off back to his table.
"That was closer than I'd like" he whispered to Diana and Jones. He spotted Peter on the far side of the hall watching concerned and gave a very small shake of his head to tell him it was fine, they were still on course. Diana and Jones, would update him as soon as he was able to call them without raising suspicion.
Peter watched as Grant went over to Neal and sat down. He watched carefully for Grant to make a move, ready to leap over there to help Neal if things turned nasty. Neal looked totally relaxed but that didn't tell Peter anything. Grant might be threatening Neal with decapitation and he would still have that grin on his face, the one women seemed to find so charming and which Peter usually found was a sign that Neal was up to no good. After a few minutes Grant got up and went back to his table and Peter was able to relax a bit. Neal shook his head when Peter made eye contact, telling him it was fine.
Peter left Mozzie's presents for Neal hidden in the toilet as arranged. It was supposed to contain all the things Neal would need to make the plan work, or at least all the things he was going to get to make the plan work, the rest would be up to Neal.
Neal collected the presents without incident and used his floor washing duties to get the signal interrupter in place. It would be controlled from the surveillance van, switched on after lights out to show footage from the previous day. Though there was a chance they might not even need to use it if Neal could get his hands on the books before then. It almost seemed a shame not to break out now he had the plan in place but for Peter's sake he would try and get the information from Pietre before then. Neal did try and do things the way Peter wanted, it was just that his way was much more efficient as a rule.
During Gen pop Neal sought out Pietre. He wasn't in the Rec area. Neal found him crouched in a corner of the yard on his own. There was no sign of any of Andre's men which was also a bit strange. Maybe Andre had them doing other tasks, getting his affairs in order or maybe he was cutting Pietre out. He walked over to Pietre.
"Everything alright?" he asked. Pietre looked up at him, he looked like he hadn't slept and there was a glassy look to his eyes.
"Andre has always looked out for me, told me what to do, ever since we were teenagers" he told Neal
"He trusts you" Neal agreed, trying to think of a good way to segue into asking where Andre kept the books to his multimillion dollar identity scam without looking obvious. Pietre it turned out had other things on his mind.
"Now he's leaving me here" Pietre said in a strange voice, standing up. He seemed a bit unsteady so it took Neal a second to realise he was holding the shiv made out of mirror from Andre's cell the other day, the one that had been held to Peter's throat.
Pietre slashed out at Neal, fortunately Neal was able to leap back in time that the edge just caught the front of his prison uniform.
"You won't be able to take him away from me if you are dead" Pietre told him with satisfaction coming at him again. Neal heard shouts from other prisoners and a couple of the guards including Peter but didn't take his eyes of Pietre, ready to move as he did keeping out of range. Peter tackled Pietre as he lunged again. Myers piled on top and got him restrained and hauled him away, while another guard restrained Neal too. Neal knew better than to argue, they were just doing their jobs after all and two prisoners fighting equalled two prisoners needing to be restrained.
"Are you okay?" Peter asked concerned. Neal was about to say he was fine apart from his clothes, when he glanced down to look at his torn shift and realised there was red soaking through the slit, he hadn't realised Pietre had cut him.
"I'm okay, it's just a scratch" Neal told Peter sounding a bit more uncertain that he liked. They took him to the infirmary in cuffs.
The infirmary wasn't too bad. Neal spotted his cell mate lying behind curtains in the far bed, reading a magazine attached to a drip filled with nothing but saline, but which he had been told was pumping antibiotics into him for a nasty infection the doctor had discovered on a routine health check and which required him to be kept in isolation in the infirmary overnight, leaving Neal alone in his cell, or at least that had been the plan.
Peter stood nearby as the Doctor examined Neal, pretending to be guarding him but with that mixture of worry and frustration on his face, which always made Neal feel guilty. The Doctor cleaned up the wound, it was just shallow slice across his side, it only needed half a dozen stitches and a new prison uniform to fix him up. Peter and Neal had a few minutes alone while the Doctor went to get him a real shot of antibiotics to prevent infection.
"I'm fine Peter, it's just a scratch" Neal told Peter again trying to pre-empt the conversation he knew they were about to have.
"More importantly, this limits Andre's options, Pietre's going crazy means Andre will have to take the books with him tonight. He can't risk Pietre giving him away." Neal told Peter.
"He might just destroy them" Peter pointed out.
"He's been running a multi-million dollar scam under the noses of the authorities from inside prison, do you really think he'd give up on that now?" Neal asked a touch more scornfully than he intended. The scratch hurt.
"We got a trace on the money he wired, we've already managed to link it back to transfers by 4 specific bank employees, we will pick them up as soon as we lock down Andre. You've done enough." Peter told him, it sounded almost accusing to Neal who was thinking of poor Pietre now locked in the psychiatric ward. He almost missed what Peter was saying
"I want you to stay here tonight. We'll search Andre's cell tonight after lights out, he should have them with him by then, if he is planning to take them with him. If not we might be able to get him through interrogating the employees now we have enough to charge them." Peter told him.
Neal couldn't bear the thought of not seeing this through, going through all this effort with nothing to show for it.
"Peter, don't cut me out now, please. He'll know if I'm not released from the infirmary and even if he doesn't have the books I might be able to get him to confess once he thinks we are out of here or get him to give away something to connect himself. We can get this done tonight, you can be home with Elizabeth by morning. We can put another tick in the win column." Neal told Peter confidently, ignoring the burning from the cut.
He could see Peter was torn. Peter agreed that if the Doctor said Neal was okay then they would go ahead with the plan. Everything was in place and the SWAT team would already be getting ready to surround the prison to make sure there was no real escape taking place. Neal played the guilt card.
"Peter please, don't make me have gone through all this for nothing" Neal pleaded giving Peter his best earnest, puppy dog look.
Peter gave in, on the proviso that the Doctor agreed that Neal didn't need to stay in the infirmary. Fortunately Neal was easily able to persuade the doctor to let him go back to his cell instead of staying in the infirmary. Though a stabbing wasn't exactly the way he would have chosen to go, it actually worked out well as he got an extra 5 hours alone in his cell alone before lights out to finish preparing.
Running through different scenarios in his head, trying to work out every eventuality he could think of. It was something he and Mozzie always did before a big con. It was only marred by the fact that because he had to refuse the offered painkillers in order to keep his head clear which the pain was somewhat distracting.
He managed to doze until lights out. Then he waited another two hours until the majority of prisoners were asleep and then he unlocked his cell. Peter hadn't asked how he was planning to open the cell door. Neal could have simply asked Peter for a key, but he took great pleasure in picking the lock instead, proving to himself that there was still no prison that could hold him unless he chose to let it. Somehow the air in the corridors smelt fresher, just knowing he was out of his cell without permission and that the con was underway gave him a thrill.
"Here we go" he whispered under his breath.