A/N: A few days after the last chapter, during Company Man

Chapter 4: "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face"

(Jim Butcher)

As Mozzie sat in Neal's apartment swirling around a rather lovely Shiraz he thought about his long-time friend. Mozzie wasn't worried about his fellow conman per se, he was just … professionally concerned. Yeah, just concern from one man in the business to another. Well if you could call getting in bed with The Man being in the business that is. But that was all just a temporary solution whilst Neal searched for Kate, all just one long con he assured himself once again. And now the con would continue whilst Neal searched for her killer.

Mozzie just hoped their reputations wouldn't be completely tarnished by the time this was over and that Neal would actually want whatever this was to be over. Neal was uncomfortably chummy with the Suit and conmen couldn't afford to get emotionally attached in a long con - Mozzie determinedly ignored his unlikely friendship with Mrs. Suit and ongoing Parcheesi championship with the enthralling June.

Anyway, professional concern; he had been recruited to inform the bureaucratic pigs if Neal were to do anything stupid and while he would usually and very openly baulk at the very idea of narking he understood the Suit's worries. Neal was impulsive at the best of times but now he could be completely out of control even if he appeared to be coping. While The Suit may consider himself an expert on Neal Caffrey conman extraordinaire Moz felt quite comfortable in the knowledge that he knew the real Neal the best. He knew the man behind the mask and so he could recognize that Neal was understandably struggling to cope with losing Kate; he knew that from friendship and years of building up trust not obsessively reading files! He knew because it was he who had stayed over a couple of nights since Neal had returned from the jaws of the oppressor and he had heard his friend's near hyperventilating and bitten back screams whilst he had pretended to be sleeping. On a very rare empathetic moment Mozzie had gotten up to rub his best friend's back whilst he was, nightmare induced, vomiting – and then disinfected that hand repeatedly whilst informing Neal of the alien life forms hidden among us – after all that's what friends are for.

"Moz, what are you doing here, apart from drinking my wine that is?" speak of the devil.

"Well since you made me work with the Lady Suit and I found the sheet music in her bag, I thought you would want to uncover the governmental cover-up together." He said this with his laptop already open, fingers poised above the pre-sanitized keys.

"Sorry Moz as compelling as governmental cover-ups sound I'm wiped. Feel free to stay and uncover the little green men though" Neal offered with the knowledge Moz would probably stay anyway, "How was teaming up with the Man… or the Woman?"

"'The most terrifying words in the English language: I'm from the government and I'm here to help'" Mozzie answered dryly and with distaste.

"Ronald Reagan" Neal called back from the bathroom and as he walked across from the closet to his bed Mozzie could see the minuscule scarring on his back that was at first glance indiscernible. The thing with perfect recall though is that Mozzie knows what a normal back should look like and Neal's doesn't. When Mozzie had asked Neal about it though he had been completely stonewalled and abandoned for 3 days in Moscow without his personal Russian translator - or clothes. He hadn't asked again.

"The world of corporate enslavement more tiring than we assumed?" Mozzie inquired about Neal's rather early retirement – turning down working to find Kate's killer must mean he was exhausted. Although Mozzie and Kate had never really warmed up to each other, Mozzie had spent enough time with the sickeningly in love couple to recognize the true feelings they had for each other. Mozzie had known Neal for a long time and when he had started seeing Kate he had such a sparkle in his eyes that Mozzie had known the poor kid was in love, it was unfortunate he was right about guys like them not getting happy endings.

"Our tail pulled a gun on me when I was on my way back to the office" Mozzie's eyebrows quirked with interest, "So I spent the rest of the day planning how to break into my new boss's office to get the documents he's been shredding and trying to support someone who I've only known for 2 days and I don't' have enough energy to search for the love of my life's killer" Neal sounded frustrated with himself now but Moz thought it was not with today but all the days since Kate died almost 7 months ago.

"'Being human is not seeking perfection', Neal" Mozzie attempted to comfort albeit with some discomfort himself.

"George Orwell. And I'm not sure he meant it as a comforting phrase but thanks, Moz. I just, I need to sleep this off."

Mozzie took that as his invitation to leave or shut up as Neal climbed into bed and was almost immediately asleep. Mozzie continued to work so he could quell his 'professional concern' and as he made some interesting discoveries, he most certainly did not watch over his young friend whilst he slept.

~WC~

When Neal had left for work that morning he had been bemused to find his best friend uncomfortably dozing over his laptop after apparently feeling obliged to watch over him. Neal loved Moz despite his rather plentiful quirks and he was one of the most loyal people Neal had ever met which was impressive considering how he earned his money.

The planting of the scanner on Kent's shredder had gone down without a hitch earlier today and all they now needed to do was have Kent come after Jessica when Peter just happened to mention her during their current meeting. Neal was uncomfortable with using a civilian as bait but apparently the FBI had protective custody down.

As they were awaiting the agent that was scheduled to pick up Jessica for her protection Neal felt the vibrations of his phone.

"Neal, are you sitting down or standing?" Mozzie

"What's this about Mozzie?" Neal inquired as he continued to search the street for the Fed Car that was going to come.

"Sitting or Standing?"

"Standing, Moz"

"Well, you might want to hold on to something then" that was slightly foreboding, "Neal…Peter knows Diana has the music box".

What?!

Mozzie was still talking, "I'm sorry Neal but the trail stops with Peter".

Neal happened to look over at Jessica at this moment and caught sight of the pen with Kent's password in her bag and abruptly hung up on Mozzie mid-sentence. His anger latched onto the much-deserving new target.

Snatching it out from her bag he demanded with not a hint of his usual charm, "Why do you have this Jessica?"

"I...I saw it on your desk a-"

"What did you do?!" he talked right over her bumbling excuses.

Now that she was discovered and cornered she self-righteously explained, "I wanted him to know how he felt"

"Poison" Neal surmised, "Where did you put it?"

"In his daily vice" She answered acrimoniously.

"Peter's in there!" He held himself back from yelling at her and as she stood there somehow looking both unrepentant and contrite he was already carelessly barging past the sudden blockage of pedestrians in his haste to reach his…Peter.

He dashed over to the front desk of the building and as he tried to get the security guard to let him up to Kent's floor without throttling the man he kept seeing flashes of Hayes body; of Jessica's description of how he had died; of imaginings of Peter dying from that damned Armagnac.

This is taking too long! When the security guard turned around to call Kent Neal took his opportunity and charged for the lifts ignoring the guard's pleas and expertly leaping the security barrier. He ran into the conveniently open lift and breathed out a big sigh of relief when the doors closed just in time for the guard to be blocked out from stopping him. Adrenaline was coursing through his system and he was eerily calm as he dismantled the lift control panel and hot-wired it to take him up to the top without any of his usual care to be discrete. Peter better not make any snide comments about my misspent youth for at least a month Neal burned off some excitement by thinking only half-jokingly. He felt strangely detached from the situation in front of him as though it were happening to someone else and as he travelled up in the agonizingly slow lift he absently wondered if he was in shock.

However when the lift all too chirpily announced that he had reached the top floor Neal jolted back to reality as fear flooded his veins. What if he was too late? He didn't think he could deal if Peter - the one man who actually believed he could change - died so soon after he lost Kate.

After briefly rationalizing to himself that the longer he waited the lower Peter's chances were he took the first step out of the lift and quickly broke into a sprint towards Kent's office. His stomach turned at the sight that met him; Peter was collapsed on the floor, unconscious. He hastened to lift the older man up by the shoulders and dragged him back to the lift banging on the button in the hope it would somehow make it appear faster.

Neal looked down in concern and relief as Peter began to stir and he mumbled in a semi-conscious state, "Go back". When he realized Neal either hadn't heard him or had ignored him though he insisted with more strength and grabbed at Neal's arms, " Get Kent! "

Neal looked down at the indisposed man as though he had grown a second head and explained somewhat exasperatedly, "Peter, you're dying! We don't have time" Neal may be a notoriously non-violent gentleman criminal but going back to drag out the murderer responsible for Peter's current life/death experience seemed like a bit of a no-brainer to him. However when Peter turned his own puppy dog eyes on him and beseeched, "We never leave a man behind" Neal couldn't find it within himself to refuse and quickly ran back to grab the man, if he didn't move him with as much care as he had Peter well he must have been tired.

Finally the lift arrived and with it the paramedics but the queasy feeling in Neal's gut didn't go away. And as he was proved right and had to watch the paramedics inject Peter with an adrenaline pen he thought this could be me, this could be Peter having to watch as I get wheeled away if I collapse like Bancroft prophesied. He resolved then and there to tell someone about what was going on with him - at the right time.

And then his phone rung.