A/N: A late Sunday evening treat to wrap up the weekend. I'm not sure about you guys, but the sun came out and it has been gorgeous here! Haven't spent a bit of it indoors, till I got this nasty cold this afternoon and slept for a good 3 hours. Oh well. *shrugs* maybe I'll re-watch season 1 of White Collar. :) Again! Thank you for all the reviews!

They had dropped Marcelo off at the precinct a little after midnight and continued on to Federal Plaza. Peter pulled into the parking garage. As soon as he threw the Taurus into park, they hopped out of the car and headed for the office. Once they finished up the respective paperwork, they could head home.

Neal made a cup of coffee to keep his blood pumping and sat down at his desk with a quiet sigh. Despite the unexpected wiggle room and the nap, he'd spent nine hours in a car today, and his back was tight. He did all the seated stretches he could think of, and after a quick look around, he decided to keep to himself until it was time to go. The atmosphere in the office was tense and angry. Jones was sipping his java carefully, but he was gripping the mug so tightly that Neal was surprised the ceramic hadn't shattered. Diana was typing so furiously at her computer that he expected to see sparks and smoke begin to drift up from the keyboard. And Peter stalked up to his office and attempted to slam the swinging door.

Nobody spoke. Everyone was trying to be professional and keep working in the face of this setback, but it was easy to see how disappointed and upset they all were. Neal took comfort in the fact that at least he wasn't alone in his anger.

After a mind-numbing hour spent filling out forms for the investigation, Neal was done. He walked up the stairs into Peter's office to find his partner on the phone. Peter saw him and motioned him in with two fingers as he spoke.

"El, honey, please just go to bed. It's after one! You have that big meeting tomorrow. … No, everything's fine, I'm just stuck at the office. … No, I'm gonna hit the gym and then head home. I'll see you in the morning, hon, all right? … Love you too. G'night." He hung up. "Yes?"

As usual, Neal felt a little awkward listening to the Burkes talk, even though he was only privy to half the conversation. Their normal life and exceptional relationship always made feelings bubble up inside him that he would rather leave alone. "Um, all the F80's are taken care of. If you don't need me for anything else, I was going to go home."

"You don't want to join me at the gym?"

"Nah, I'm not in the mood to get all sweaty."

"You sure? You don't wanna take your frustration out on a basketball? If nothing else, it'll help you sleep."

Neal smiled. "Maybe next time."

"Okay. I'll pick you up in, um … " Peter was about to say "the morning" before he realized that it technically was the morning. "Um, I'll pick you up at 9. It's been a really long day."

"Sounds good. See you then."

"Make sure you bundle up. We might have to deal with the remnants of the ice storm they predicted last week."

Neal shook his head. "Weathermen. What's the saying? They're the only people on earth that can be wrong 90% of the time and still keep their jobs?"

Peter snorted at the joke, but otherwise didn't react. Neal hoped he'd lifted his friend's spirits at least a little bit. He left Peter to his paperwork and exited quietly.

Grabbing his coat as he passed his desk, he waved goodbye to his teammates and headed for the elevators. He hit the button and pulled on his coat as he waited for the car to arrive. A whole room full of bad energy and tension after a very long, silent car ride had finally engaged his fight-or-flight response. He had to get out of here. Several restless glances at the squad room and four button mashes later, the elevator finally dinged. He got in, selected the first floor and backed into the corner, trying to consciously relax his shoulders and keep them from seizing up.

Mask firmly in place, he walked through the lobby and waved goodnight to the security guard as he finished buttoning his coat and tying his scarf. Once he was outside in the cold, he felt marginally better. He held out his hand for a cab, but it sailed right on by, sending up a wave of slush. Neal jumped back to avoid getting splattered.

"Damn it." He muttered. He tried to hail another cab, but that one blew past him as well.

Now Neal was irritated. Fortunately, he was an experienced New Yorker. He knew how to handle this. He boldly stepped out into traffic, tweezed a bill between two gloved fingers, and waved his hand while whistling loudly through his teeth. This got the attention of a hungry taxi, which bellied up to the curb and screeched to a stop. It just barely avoided hitting him.

Neal climbed in and pocketed the bill. "Thanks," he said to the driver. "Bellevue, please. And step on it."

"Yes, sir."

Neal had no intention of heading home. He couldn't do anything more to help her, but he at least needed to face the girl he had failed. Well, the system had failed her, but he was working for the system, so it was really the same thing. When he thought about flaws like this, and times like these, he couldn't understand how Peter was able to deal with it. How could you calmly stand by and watch another agency run off with all your hard work and bury it under a rock? It was ludicrous.

The NSA had left the White Collar division with only a few evidence reports regarding Shannon's shooting, in all their annoyingly sparse detail. And all the files they had on her father's line-of-duty shooting, as well as the results of Shannon's five year investigation, were probably being buried right now in the bowels of some NSA warehouse somewhere, never to be seen again. There would be no justice, and no answers. Not only had he let her down, but her private investigation was now damaged irreparably. The FBI had no way to help find her shooter, and the NSA was ready to throw her into the witness protection program and make her give up her life. This was wrong. He had to figure out a way to make it right.

The taxi pulled up in front of the familiar glass doors. Neal paid the fare, tipped the cabbie, and stepped lively through the cold night air. Once inside the foyer, he headed for the 24-hour gift shop to pick up some flowers and then it was into the elevator and up to the ICU. There was an officer posted outside the heavy doors that opened onto the Critical Care area. Through the window behind the cop, Neal could see two more policemen down the hall, standing guard at the door to Shannon's room. They all looked very weary.

"Hi. I'm here to see Shannon Gregory." He had to look up at the officer in order to speak to him. The guy was huge. 6'4", 200 pounds, easy. Neal put on his nicest smile.

"And you are?" The man stood at ease. His fingers twitched, ready to grab his sidearm if need be.

"Neal Caffrey. I'm a consultant with the FBI."

"ID?"

"Right here." Neal set the flowers on a nearby bench and pulled out his badge.

As the officer looked over Neal's credentials, something seemed to click upstairs. "You're the guy that found her?" Neal nodded. "Wow, man, good job. Yeah, you can see her. She's still out, though. The doctors said she's just gonna have to wake up on her own."

"Thanks," Neal said. The officer patted him on the shoulder as he walked past and Neal nodded solemnly, meanwhile counting his lucky stars that the NSA had apparently forgotten to tell the NYPD and the hospital staff that the FBI no longer had the right to be anywhere near Miss Shannon Gregory. The two other cops, having seen the encounter outside and realizing Neal was all right, acknowledged him and opened the door to her room.

Steeling himself, he walked in. Six monitors were going at once. Tubes ran like lifelines into the figure on the bed. Her hair had been pushed away from her face, but some sweaty strands were stuck to her forehead. The click-whoosh of the ventilator and the quiet beeps of the monitors were the only sounds Neal could hear. Shannon Gregory looked nothing like the woman from the night before. She was helpless and still, with pale skin and a blank expression around the breathing tube. And while she technically wasn't at Death's door, she was definitely on the porch steps.

Neal set the flowers down near the small sink positioned in the far corner, and then he grabbed the room's only chair and set it down next to the bed. A knock at the door heralded the entrance of a woman in blue scrubs and a lab coat. Neal got a quick look at her nametag. Under the terrible ID picture it read Angela Sydney, MD, Bellevue Hospital Center, and a line under that added, ICU Attending Physician.

"Hi, I'm Dr. Sydney," she said. She was a few years older than Neal, with kind eyes and a ponytail of ash blond hair. "You are?"

"Neal." He stood and shook her hand.

"Ah, yes, the FBI guy! Well, thank you for saving my patient's life."

Considering what bad shape Shannon was in, Neal wasn't sure he agreed with the doctor's word choice. He glanced back over at the bed.

The doctor picked up on his worry. "I know it looks bad, but the respirator is only a precaution. She had a bad reaction to the anesthesia due to conflicting medications. There was a bottle of painkillers in her purse. We didn't find it until after she had the reaction, but we were able to treat her immediately. You know, Mr. Caffrey, if you hadn't come back for her when you did, I'm sure this would be a different story." Neal still wasn't convinced, but the doctor went on. "Um, I realize this is a difficult thing to talk about, but we haven't been able to track down any of her family. Would you be able to take charge of her personal effects?" she asked, and smiled knowingly as her gaze flickered between her patient and the consultant. "Although, I guess it's probably a little early in the relationship for you to be carrying her purse for her, huh?"

Neal was polite. "Well, I suppose you could say that. I only met her last night."

Dr. Sydney furrowed her brow, creasing her pretty face. "Oh, I thought… Well, never mind, then. But I'm sure I can trust you to look after her things, right?"

"Of course you can trust me," Neal said with a warm, practiced smile.

Dr. Sydney smiled back. "Excellent. Well, feel free to stay and talk to her. It does help, you know. I'll have a nurse come up with her belongings. You can take them home for her." She finished checking the monitors and made some notes on the chart before slipping it back into its plastic holder at the foot of the bed. Before she headed out of the room, she turned and looked over her shoulder. "I'm sure you already did this, but just in case you forgot, please turn off your cell phone." Neal nodded. She left and the door swung shut behind her.

Neal, on finding himself alone with Shannon, did the only thing that made sense to him. He sat down in the chair and took her hand.

Xxxxx

Peter sighed through his nose as the taxi in front of him stopped again. The trip to June's was taking longer than usual this morning. The navigation system in the Taurus had helpfully informed him that an accident and some road work were creating gridlock, but its "alternate suggestions" weren't speeding things up very much. At the rate this traffic was moving, he'd be picking Neal up at noon. He took the suggestions mindlessly anyway, though. He had too many other things to think about. After a bit of sleep and explaining things to his wife this morning, something had started nagging at him. It wasn't some inconsistency in Agent Alston's testimony, or even lingering frustration at the NSA completely cutting them off. It was something else entirely.

Neal had obviously stumbled onto something big. The safety of the entire nation was at risk somehow, which explained why the NSA was involved. But just the idea that this was a national security issue sat wrong in Peter's head. How on earth had something supposedly so big and serious culminated in such a relatively small event? Issues like this, in Peter's experience, had a bit more flash and bang. They didn't generally resolve themselves with alleyway shootings during ice storms. Besides, this shooting didn't even succeed in killing its victim. That in itself was fishy. And if their working theory was right, and Shannon's attackers had been the same people who killed her father – without leaving any evidence of foul play – then why the sloppy work now with the daughter? Well, either the girl had taken them by surprise by fighting back, or the sloppy work had been a deliberate ploy to fool the NYPD. The police would do their best to investigate what, they would assume, was a mugging gone bad. They wouldn't find any clues, the case would get lost among the thousands of others they had to deal with, and it would go cold.

Neither of those ideas made much sense to Peter. As he sat in stop-and-go, he went back to the beginning. What did he know and trust? The list was short: his gut, and Neal's instincts. Neal had realized – too late for his own high standards but realized nonetheless – that the guys at the bar had been sent to eliminate Shannon Gregory. And Peter's gut told him that this had nothing to do with the NSA, or national security, or the murder of Shannon's father. It was much simpler. They'd been looking at this all wrong.

Seeing he was on Neal's street, he pulled up with a hard stop in front of June's. As soon as the maid let him into the mansion, he dashed by her as politely as possible, hurried up the grand staircase three stairs at a time, rapped on the door to Neal's loft, and checked his watch. 9:15. Well, that wasn't so bad. The door was unlocked, so he went right on in, expecting to find Neal seated at his dining table, reading the newspaper and drinking some coffee. Somebody was indeed seated at Neal's table, but it wasn't Neal.

Mozzie was slumped in one of the wooden chairs, his phone sitting on the tabletop before him. He was staring at it with intense concentration, as though he could make it ring through force of will alone. He looked up as Peter entered.

"You're not Neal!" Mozzie exclaimed at the same time as Peter said, "Where's Neal?"

Mozzie shook his head. "I don't know. I can't get a hold of him. His phone keeps going directly to voicemail."

And Peter figured it out. "Neal's got to be at the hospital with Shannon."

He turned to leave when Mozzie shouted, "Stop! We've got this all wrong, Suit."

"I know."

Mozzie's mouth fell open in surprise. It wasn't often he and Peter agreed on something. "How'd you figure?"

"Shannon was out looking for the professional killers who took out her dad, but her hit was amateur hour. It was sloppy and it didn't even work. If she'd run into the people who killed her father, she'd be dead. Her investigation wasn't what got her in trouble; it was something much simpler, and much closer to home." Then Peter frowned. "What made you decide we weren't on the right track?"

"I didn't just 'decide it.' I have proof. The word on the street is that there's a snitch that's gone into hiding, and there's two grand waiting for anybody who can find her."

Peter scratched his head. "What does that have to do with anything?"

Mozzie rolled his eyes. "Note the particular object pronoun associated with the antecedent 'snitch' in that last sentence."

It took Peter a few eye blinks to meander through that grammatical thicket, but he came out the other side quickly. "Shannon Gregory … is a snitch. Or at least, somebody thinks she is, and put out a hit on her. You're positive about this."

Mozzie nodded.

"Yeah. Moz, I hate to break this to you, but that's called 'hearsay'. It's not proof."

Mozzie looked utterly offended. "Oh, gee, really? I had no idea," he snapped. "Of course that isn't proof. I do have a law degree, thank you very much." He took a moment to smooth down his feathers, metaphorically speaking, and collected himself. "I did some digging, and I found out who contracted the hit. A certain Dr. Darius Mitchell, DDS."

"A dentist?"

"No, he's a super-villain. Yes, he's a dentist."

"All right, all right," Peter said, holding up a hand. "And his connection to Miss Gregory is…?"

"That name, with the accompanying DDS, was at the bottom of a bill sitting on Shannon's desk. It was dated the day she got shot."

"How do you know this?"

"I have my ways."

Peter nodded. "Fair enough. Do you know why he would be looking for her?"

"Not yet. I came here to talk to Neal."

"Then we'd better go to the hospital. Come on, you're riding with me. I'll call Diana and get a warrant for the arrest of Dr. Mitchell."

A/N Does the style of attack make more sense now? A little more credible?