Disclaimer: This story is written for fun, not profit


Peter brought some sandwiches from the deli downstairs into the conference room that had become Neal's most immediate holding room. Neal looked at the sack. "So I take it we're not going out for lunch?"

Peter ignored him, and handed sandwiches to the other agents, gesturing them out of the room with his head.

Neal reached for his sandwich. "Okay, but this room's getting kind of stuffy."

The small pile of folders Neal had been leafing through had been pushed to the side. Peter reached for it and pulled it to him. "You've been in a lot smaller rooms for a lot longer."

"True." Neal inspected the ingredients of his sandwich. "Eventually, Peter, you're going to have to let me go somewhere."

"Yes, I am. And I suppose I'm going to have to watch you." Peter opened the top folder and leafed through its contents. Nothing he saw lessened his suspicions. Rather the opposite.

"Ew," said Neal, eyes sparkling from behind the pastrami. "And here I thought we were getting along so well."

"You do understand what will happen if you run?"

"Peter, I told you I wouldn't run, remember?"

"You said it right before you showed me the stats on that broken tracker on your leg. You meant you wouldn't run because you wouldn't be able to."

"So what happens to me?"

Peter sighed and unwrapped his own sandwich. "What do you suggest? I'd be curious to hear your idea of where we can put you overnight that you can't escape from."

"Oh-kay," said Neal, "and anyplace I name is the last place you'd want me."

Peter couldn't help but grin. It was always a game, with Neal Caffrey. "Or not, if that's what you're expecting." If only this game didn't have so much at stake for Peter.

"So really anything I say won't matter. You know what I think you should do?"

"What?" Peter bit into his sandwich.

"You should take me home." Caffrey gave him his widest smile. "Let me have dinner with you and Elizabeth."

"Oh, that's not going to happen."

"Why not? If you don't trust me to sleep in June's guest room, how about yours? I promise not to complain about the thread count on the sheets." He spread his arms. "This will be great." He was like a little kid promised a day off from school.

"There are more problems with that plan than I can count." Peter was abruptly tired of the game.

Neal dropped his arms back to the table. "Because I am so very dangerous."

They were both silent.

Neal stared at his sandwich. "Peter, I don't want to spend the night locked up. I've had enough of that. Project Runway's on tonight. This isn't my fault."

Against all sense, Peter believed him. Not that it mattered. He knew Neal was plotting. And, given the case file Neal'd been studying, he thought he knew what he was plotting.

"Hughes wants to send me back to Riker's, doesn't he?" Neal asked with dread in his voice.

There it was. Peter gazed at Neal for a long moment, sizing him up, bringing in everything he knew about Neal Caffrey. Would Neal really play him the way Peter thought he was? He decided to test his theory.

Peter slapped the file folder shut. "You'd like that, wouldn't you."

Neal blinked. "Like it? Are you crazy? The last time –"

"The last time, you didn't dare break out because your tracker was working. This time it would be different."

Neal looked up, regarding Peter with a searching gaze. "What is it you think I'm planning?" He looked aside, through the glass walls, toward Hughes's office. He brought his wide-eyed gaze back to Peter. "Peter, please don't let them send me there."

"Don't throw me in that thar briar patch?" Peter slid the folder toward him. "Interesting case file you were studying, earlier. I thought it was odd that you wanted to review forgery cases from hard copy files instead of on the computer. But if you're on the computer, we can bring up your viewing history and see what you were interested in, can't we? That one," he nodded at the folder, "you had on top. The Dali forgery at Riker's. What do you know about it?"

Neal paused, as if he didn't understand why this was relevant to the situation at hand, or, ankle. Still he managed a jaunty tone. "Dali was scheduled to give a talk at Riker's and had to cancel. As an apology he painted them an original painting and it hung in the lobby of that very building I was in until someone replaced it with a forgery."

Peter nodded. "Some staff members there confessed and were convicted."

"But the original was never recovered," Neal said with a small grin.

"That's what's in the file. What else do you know?"

Neal leaned back. "Nothing, yet. But it's an interesting case, don't you think? And it's always good to have leverage."

"You realize this makes it look like you're planning something at Riker's."

"Does it?" Neal spread his hands like an innocent man. "I told you what I was planning. Leverage. Information if I can find some. At the very least, the promise that the White Collar Crimes division of the FBI will give the case renewed attention.

"For if you ever end up at Riker's again."

"Yeah." Wide, earnest blue eyes.

Maybe so. But it didn't mean Neal's actions couldn't have two purposes.

Peter fixed him with his own most serious look. "If I tell Hughes this, that's the last place you'll ever go." And it didn't say thing one about whether Neal had caused the tracker's failure or not.

Neal bit into his sandwich. "If you say so."

Back in the AD's office, Peter watched Hughes pop a couple of antacids. "They can't find any evidence of sabotage at Dispatch," Hughes said, washing the pills with coffee. "The unskippable tracker seems to have gone the way of all unsinkable ships. What have you got?"

Peter rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't think he did it. If he was going to turn the GPS off, he would've done it at night, when he'd have a head start on us."

"What's this about him planning some scam out at Riker's? He could have thought he'd end up there again."

Peter glanced back at Neal. "He was studying the case file on the Dali at Riker's. I think he's got something planned for there." It wasn't a lie. Peter most certainly was not trying to play his boss. He had not been spending too much time with a con man. He was telling the strict truth.

"Well, he's never going there, then."

Peter nodded, hiding his triumph with a worried frown. "So we're back to 'where'. You know, wherever he goes, I'm going to be a wreck tonight, worrying about him. I think I need to stay and sit on him, myself."

Hughes's smiles had a lizard-like quality to them. "My thoughts exactly. I've decided what we're doing."