~ o O o ~

A Place Called Home

Chapter 3

~ o O o ~

"If it isn't 'Nick Halden'," a familiar voice said; and the next moment, someone helped him up and he stared up at none other than Agent Peter Burke of the White Collar division.

"Just going for a midnight run around the Guggenheim, I presume?"

~ o O o ~

"Peter," Neal said distractedly, looking back over his shoulder one more time. But Keller was nowhere to be seen. "What a small world." His voice came out a lot shakier than he had gone for.

He had a fleeting thought about just making a run for it, but Agent Burke seemed to sense that and put a hand on his shoulder to make sure he stayed put.

Neal tried to shrug the hand off, but Peter held on tight. Not that he needed to. Neal was safest where he was right now and he wouldn't risk leaving that safety. After all, Keller might be lying in wait for him just waiting to catch him alone and ram a knife into him.—And what a strange thought that was, associating a fed with safety! But when it came down to it, a murdering maniac trumped even the feds any day.

Neal realized that Agent Burke had been talking to him while he had gone through his options in his mind, and was now looking at him strangely.

"Uhm . . . Come again?"

"I said, you're going to have to come with us," Agent Burke repeated, still not letting go of him.

"Yeah. I figured." Get me out of here, he didn't say. But that's because he didn't have to—Peter was already leading him to his car.

~ o O o ~

Back at the bureau Peter put Neal in the interrogation room and sat down opposite him. The kid hadn't said a word on the whole drive back. He had just had a zoned-out expression on his face and even now Peter had a hard time getting him to pay attention to the interview. He seemed nervous, kept fidgeting and looking over his shoulder. Well, he should be nervous. If he was in league with the group of thieves, he could be sent to juvie for a long time.

Not that they had any real proof. They had found nothing on him, no paintings or forgeries, nothing that could connect him to any crimes. But Neal didn't have to know that . . .

"So, Neal," Peter began. The kid's eyes, that had just roamed the room, snapped up at Peter's use of his real name. "You gave us a fake name, huh?"

To Peter's surprise, it only took about half a second for Neal to school his expression again. "That's what my friends call me. Neal, Nick—pretty similar, don't you think?" He flashed a smile, showing his perfect white teeth.

"Don't get too cocky, kid. Obstruction of justice, ever heard of that?"

"It's just a name," Neal shrugged. "It's not like it makes a difference what you call me." He kept smiling at him, but the smile looked rather brittle and as if it took a great effort to maintain it.

Not for the first time tonight did Peter think that, most likely, something went wrong with that heist. Something more than Neal getting caught. He had agents checking the security cameras of the museum to make sure none of the paintings had gone missing. They would know soon enough.

"So, since you're no witness this time—what were you doing in front of the Guggenheim museum in the middle of the night?"

"Must have been sleepwalking," came the prompt response.

"Sleepwalking? That's what you want to go with?" Peter asked incredulously. Neal was seriously off his game tonight if he really thought that would fly as an excuse. He had been much more believable as the casual witness who just wanted to go home to his parents for dinner. Of course that was when Peter had still thought of him as a more or less normal teenage boy.

But before Neal could answer that, Jones came in and signaled Peter to follow him out of the interrogation room.

Once outside, he began to report, "The security cameras have been tampered with. Three paintings went missing. One Monet, one Van Gogh and a Degas."

"What? How could they have pulled this off? We were right there the whole time!"

"That's not the worst part," Jones interrupted him and from the look on his face, Peter could tell that he wouldn't like what he was about to say.

~ o O o ~

After Agent Burke had left him alone, Neal tried to get his thoughts sorted out. They kept coming back to the horrible images of a huge pool of blood, a dead body on the ground and a knife that was being wiped clean on a handkerchief. But he had to stay focused right now—Agent Burke could be back any minute. He thought over what he knew . . .

Fact #1: They knew his real name, which meant that they knew other stuff about him, too.

Fact #2: They couldn't really pin anything big on him. He could have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It would have been very coincidental and no way would Agent Burke believe that, but it was within the realm of possibility. And that meant that he could sell it if he could just get his act together. Innocent until proven guilty and all that.

Fact #3: He couldn't roll on Keller. Keller would find out and then he'd come after Neal and kill him, too. Because apparently, that's what he did to people who got on his nerves.

And, fact #4: If the feds sent him back to foster care, Keller would easily be able to track him down there. So maybe he should try and escape while it wasn't too late.

But how? Through the window wasn't an option. The White Collar division just had to be on the twenty-first floor. Probably so that suspects couldn't escape through the windows. And it wasn't exactly the kind of place where you could easily blend in as a teenager.

That's when another thought struck him. What if Keller already knew that the feds had picked him up and waited for him outside? And even if that wasn't the case,—Neal had absolutely nowhere to go. He would have to leave the city or else risk Keller finding him. Suddenly, spending the night in lock-up didn't seem like such a bad thing after all. Maybe he should provoke Agent Burke enough so that he'd lock him up . . .

In that moment, Agent Burke came back into the room, a serious expression on his face.

"I know you're somehow involved in all this, so just make it easy on all of us and tell me what happened, and then I can try and help you."

That sounded like good cop and bad cop all in one. But one thing Neal had learned early on was to never confess to anything, so he tried to adopt an innocent expression as he replied, "I'm sorry. I don't know what you're talking about."

"I'm talking about three stolen paintings and Frank Davis, stabbed to death near the museum where the break-in occurred."

A knife rammed deep into Davis's guts and twisted hard. A body sinking to the ground. Eyes that are opened wide and staring lifelessly up at him. And a crazy gleam in Keller's eyes . . .

"I would help you if I could," Neal said quietly and even meant it. He cast his eyes down looking at his hands that were folded in his lap.

Peter sighed. "Neal—you have got to give me something here if you don't want to end up in juvie till you are eighteen."

Neal's head snapped up at that. "I don't even have any stolen paintings! If I had stolen them, wouldn't you have found them on me?"

"Three paintings go missing, a body turns up, and you come running into our arms—literally. You can see how it doesn't look good for you."

"What, you think I killed him?!"

"No. But I think you might have an idea who did," Agent Burke said and then added as an afterthought, "And I also think you know about those missing paintings."

Neal definitely couldn't confess to having been a part of the break-in. But maybe if he told them about Keller, the feds would take care of Keller for him and Neal could go back to living on the streets in peace.

"Look, Neal," said Peter who obviously took his silence to mean he didn't want to cooperate. "I can't help you if you don't help me."

Peter really seemed to want to help him and Neal started to believe that maybe he could, so he gathered up his courage and began hesitantly, "So, theoretically speaking, say I knew something about . . . something."

He cast a quick look at Peter to gauge his reaction and got a half encouraging, half expectant look in return.

"In that case it would be really dumb of me to blurt that out to some fed—eral agent. I mean that could make me a target of the guy—or woman—who killed that man. Theoretically," he added again for good measure.

Peter looked him straight in the eye, making it almost impossible for Neal to look away from him, and said in a calm and reassuring voice, "Whoever's behind this—they can't get to you here."

When Neal didn't say anything to that, he continued, "I'll make you a deal. You tell us what you know, I keep you safe while we do our jobs and put whoever did this behind bars, and once they are in prison, they won't be able to come after you anymore. How's that sound?"

Keller in prison did sound like a good idea. "Would you go arrest him right now?" Neal asked.

"Depends on what you can tell me. But if you know who killed Frank Davis—yeah, we'd arrest him as soon as possible."

Which meant that this could all be over and done with by morning. Agent Burke would probably send him back to foster care, but it wasn't like he hadn't escaped from there before. Making a decision, Neal spoke up again, "I know who killed Davis."

Or was it really such a good idea to turn Keller in? Keller knew people. What if he could get someone else to come after him?

"Who did, Neal?" Peter's patient voice penetrated his thoughts.

"Matthew," Neal said, unsure of himself once more.

Keller's eyes bore into him, his voice calm and collected as if he were talking about the weather and hadn't just taken a man's life in such a brutal way, "He was a real pain in the ass, huh?"

"Does Matthew have a last name?"

Neal mumbled something under his breath.

"What was that?"

"Keller," Neal said a bit louder and then took a deep breath before he repeated more confidently, "Matthew Keller."

~ o O o ~

The interview that followed was like pulling teeth. Neal seemed to switch back and forth between being honest and helpful, and . . . not being helpful at all. While Peter suspected that his behavior was most likely due to his own involvement in some of the cases, it was starting to get ridiculous.

For example, Neal heavily insinuated that Keller had also been responsible for the art heists they had been trying to solve, but whenever Peter tried to get specifics, he would get shifty and avoid a straight answer. He wouldn't tell him who painted the forgeries the thieves had used to replace some of the real paintings, and Peter seriously couldn't tell if he simply didn't know or just wasn't in the mood to tell him, hiding behind phrases like "in theory" or "allegedly". All in all, Neal turned out to be as much of a headache as his alias Nick had been.

What Peter had found out so far was that Neal had—allegedly—been out for a walk (yeah, right!) by the Guggenheim museum, when he had witnessed Keller kill Davis. At least Neal had told them where to find Keller and the stolen and as of yet unfenced items, which was all they needed to know for now, anyway.

So that's how Peter found himself bursting into Keller's apartment together with his team in the middle of the night, ready to make an arrest.

. . . But all they found was an empty apartment.

~ o O o ~

Neal briefly considered trying to con the agent Peter had left him with when they had been done with the interview. But he really wanted to stick around until he knew that Keller was safely behind bars. He could always run away later, be it from the center or from juvie, which sounded like an easy enough place to break out of, too—it's not like it was a maximum security prison or anything . . .

But at the moment it seemed like it would be back to foster care for him anyway. Agent Andrews was currently on the phone, trying to get a hold of someone who could come and get Neal. Which probably wasn't the easiest thing to do at—Neal glanced at his watch—two o'clock in the morning.

How long could it take to go arrest a guy, anyway? Shouldn't they have been back by now?

In that moment Neal's cell phone buzzed and when he took it out, he had a text message from an unknown number. He didn't need a number to recognize who it was from, though.

You really shouldn't have done that, kiddo.

TBC . . .

~ o O o ~

Thank you again for all your wonderful reviews—you guys make my day! I hope you enjoyed the new chapter and as always, I'm looking forward to hearing from you.