It had gone midnight and Neal was stood staring at a half-finished painting resting on his easel. A painting he had promised Peter he'd provide for him so they could replicate the stolen one.
What was he doing?
He was supposed to be focusing on Kate, not buddying up to FBI agents. Moz was right, this was way too risky for them.
He was unsure what it was about Peter that made Neal say yes to him, but that something was dangerous if he was going to take this painting for Kate. It needed to stop, starting with the forgery he was in the middle of now.
Well, he wasn't going to throw away a perfectly good replica. After he finished it, then. He'll back off once it was completed, no matter how interesting he found Peter and his investigation.
With that decision made, Neal picked up his paintbrush and continued with the forgery whilst internally picking a date to rob the gallery of Kate's favourite painting. As Moz had said, it needed to be sooner rather than later if he wanted to keep off the FBI's radar. Fraternising with Peter had been foolish, but that was going to stop now. He'd leave he and Elizabeth to flirt 24/7 and stay the hell out of it, even if he did find watching Peter become ruffled funny.
He wondered what Kate would say if she knew how much time he'd been spending with Peter. Even though it had only been a couple of days, an hour or so with the law was too long, and Neal had hung out with the agent for more than an hour.
He glanced across at the clock hung on the wall and, seeing that it was gone midnight, put down his paintbrush. He might as well try and sleep, even if he had been finding it elusive tonight. He could plan better tomorrow, after he'd hopefully slept on the matter to wake with a clearer head. Maybe he could give Moz a call so they could rehearse the heist one more time.
The plan was to get the staff of the gallery to remove the painting from its room, making it much easier to take. Using the blueprints Neal and Moz had identified a storage room near the back of the building where the painting was most likely to be placed once it had been taken down. What they couldn't agree on, though, was how to get the painting out of the room in the first place.
Moz had suggested having someone touch the painting, but that was the unlikeliest of solutions now that someone had already done that at the very same gallery. And anyhow, Neal had argued, there was no guarantee that staff would actually take the piece down.
There had been a very brief debate about whether to damage it slightly, but the pair had quickly agreed that it was too risky for the painting. Neal didn't want Kate to have a tainted masterpiece and Moz had refused to be the one damaging if they did go through with it.
That left Neal's newly formed plan, one he hadn't shared with Moz yet. He reckoned that, being a small gallery, they wouldn't carry out cleanings and restorations regularly because it tended to be expensive. They probably didn't even have staff capable of maintaining the conservation of the pieces in the first place. If Neal and Moz posed as a company that announced that their desired piece needed cleaning, they'd be able to take it themselves. Moz would have to be the one to interact with the staff, though, since Neal had apparently decided to be besties with Elizabeth.
Yet another thing he was regretting. He ignored the faint pang of guilt at the thought of the potential repercussions for Elizabeth if he and Moz succeeded in the robbery.
As he climbed into his small bed, he stared up at the dilapidated ceiling, pulling a face when he spotted mould growing in the far corner. He and Moz needed to go soon, otherwise the likely infection he'd develop would be the least of his worries.
Amazingly, Neal slept reasonably well and he'd woken up with a new determination to get out of New York as soon as possible, even if he did love the city. He swung himself out of bed and absently grabbed his phone, padding over to the tiny kitchenette in the corner. While the kettle was boiling, Neal was frowning down at his phone. An unknown number had texted him a few hours ago, instructing him to meet someone near Elizabeth's gallery.
Neal wasn't sure what to make of it. It could be an innocent wrong number, accidentally texting him instead of a wife or husband or something. But the naming of the very gallery he was planning to steal from had thrown him, making this text appear as a thinly veiled threat.
But it was impossible for anyone to know what he was up to. He and Moz had only ever discussed it in this small apartment, and Moz would have used some sort of code to identify himself in the text if it was him. And besides, he would have known if his unusual friend had changed numbers.
Which meant he was back to the potential threat-that-wasn't-a-threat-because-who-else-knew. He supposed the only thing he could do was go to this meeting, which was to start at 8pm. Neal supposed that nothing bad ever really happened at 8pm: at least it wasn't midnight. That gave him the rest of the day to scheme with Moz.
8 o'clock rolled around soon enough, and Neal left Moz in his apartment to go over the blueprints of the gallery and make sure nothing had been missed. Moz had agreed with the plan to pose as conservationists, though he was a little less enthusiastic about being the front man. Still, it was the best plan they'd come up with and so Moz had promised to find uniforms and fake IDs once he'd found a van to use as a means of removing the painting once it had been allocated to the storage room.
It was for the best he didn't know about this meeting, Neal had decided. He would have become paranoid for no reason and insisted on leaving then and there. And that was not going to happen, not while he didn't have Kate's painting in his possession.
He reached the gallery twenty minutes later, and the closer Neal got the more he slowed down. He couldn't see anyone ominous. Nobody was encasing themselves in the shadows and glaring at him. The place was deserted, as far as he could tell. Neal stopped outside the entrance to the gallery and glanced up at the door, absently noting that it closed in an hour. It was strange that it stayed open so late, but Neal wasn't there to quiz the staff on their opening hours.
Ten minutes later and Neal had taken to leaning against the side of the gallery, his back to an empty alleyway. He was glanced down at his watch and sighed, wondering if he was wasting his time. Perhaps it really was a wrong number.
"Hey, Caffrey, sorry to keep you waiting."
Perhaps not.
Neal stiffened at the voice behind him, and he suddenly regretted not telling Moz where he was headed. When he turned around, Matthew Keller was there, studying him with a coy smile.