All rights go to the creators of White Collar, the usual blah blah blah. Thank you all for the glowing reviews! Oh and I've been trying to figure out how people get that line break, because I know I get so confused when people jump from different people with no line break, and I want to apologize for doing that you guys!
Neal was chatting with a girl from his History class when he saw the suit that was tracking him down. They were on their way to Art class when Neal saw Peter Burke, the federal agent in charge of his case; leave the room with a project they had done the week before, one that had his handprint all over it. It was a paper mache cast of his hand, and painted on it was the skyline of New York.
Neal had to do his best to break the cover of a charming young man as he hid his panic. He had to get home, to Mozzie. If the suits knew his alias that meant his cover was blown. And that meant he had to leave, quickly.
As hard as it was to not give into fear that every time the door opened in each of his classes, to run away. But it was not a Fed, and he made it through the day with only minimum panicking. The only thing that gave away that any of his teachers knew anything was the jump his art teacher stuttered over his name. He already figured the FBI had talked to her so they could get his art project.
The moment when the last bell rang, Neal dashed out of school as fast as he could without drawing any suspicions. He raced up the stairs in the apartment building and threw open the door, but quickly shutting it and locking it behind him.
"Neal? Is that you?" He heard Mozzie call out from the kitchen.
"Yea. Mozzie, we have a problem." Neal called back, and walked swiftly to where the balding young adult was sipping some wine.
"What's wrong?" Mozzie asked, secretly hoping that Neal was just have personal life problems, instead of the kind of problem that could really screw both of them over.
"The suits found me. I don't know how, but they did." Neal told him, panic in his eyes.
Mozzie's eyes grew wide, and he stood up abruptly. "Okay, we need a plan of action. We can hide out at Wednesday for a while! Go pack your things, I have some things to burn."
Neal nodded, and went to his room. He was about halfway done packing his art supplies into a bag when he remembered something important.
"Mozzie!" Neal shouted as he ran back into the kitchen to see Mozzie lighting a match above a pile of shredded papers.
"Gah! Neal don't do that when I'm playing with fire! You know what happened last time!" Mozzie shouted, startled and dropped the match on the pile of papers.
"Yea, your right, we don't want to blow up another warehouse." Neal muttered. "But we have another problem. I left the safe at school."
Mozzie's eyes widened for the second time that day. At the beginning of the year, Neal, with the shorter mans help, had installed a safe in his locker to keep any real paintings that were too hot to sell right away, but cool enough to keep them. They contained quite a few big name pieces.
"You do realize that although my safe's are pretty much impossible to pick, the FBI does have mini explosives for this kind of thing." Mozzie said slowly.
"Yea I know, but there's only one way to get it." Neal said, taking a seat at the table, as far away as he could from the pile of burning paper.
"You mean going back to school?" Mozzie asked. "That's crazy! We can just brake in tonight and take the safe! Its so much easier."
"Mozzie, you hacked into the school security system before I even enrolled there. There are few blind spots, and all of them are plain walls with no possible entrances or exits." Neal argued. "And we don't even know what the patterns of the security guards are. Usually we have a few weeks ahead of time, but we can't pull one right now. Plus, if the Feds show up tomorrow and discover the safe yanked out of my locker, they will know for a fact that I was guilty. If I go to school tomorrow, I can remove the safe carefully and put the wallpaper on the back up again."
Mozzie looked down at the now just smoking ashes of paper. They had disabled the smoke detector in the kitchen a while ago because of Mozzie's pyrotechnics obsession, so the smoke didn't set it off.
"Alright, but I can pull you out of school early. Is there anything else you need to grab?" Mozzie asked, sighing in defeat. He had a bad feeling about this plan.
"I need to stay for Art class. I have a few forgeries in progress in there. It gets starts at 12:30, I think you can pull me out at 12:45 to be safe." Neal explained.
"Okay, I'll be there. Now go finish packing. I will move everything to Wednesday while you are at school." Mozzie ordered. Neal flashed a nervous smile and hurried back to finish up.
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Peter was typing on the computer when Jones came in.
"Got something for me?" Peter asked without looking up.
"Yep, we got a match." Jones told him. "But there's a small difference than what we originally thought."
Peter looked up at Jones, who was holding a blue file. Jones extended his arm to let Peter take the file quietly.
Peter opened the file to see a young kid, no older than 10, with shaggy dark hair that went down to blue eyes. Well, one of them. One of the eyes was swollen shut and there was a large cut on the kid's cheek. The name on the file is what caught him off guard.
"Neal Bennett?" Peter asked out loud. Jones nodded.
"When the kid was ten, he was taken from his home and put into foster care. A mugger killed his mother when he was five, and his father was arrested for child abuse when he was ten." Jones explained. "Neal was put into a foster home once he got out of the hospital, but ran away two weeks later. That was also the time he found out that his father had escaped from prison. Both have been missing since."
Peter just sighed as he looked at this file. Most criminals came from a broken home, and he couldn't help put feel some pity for the kid.
"Run facial recognition against the school." Peter order, closing the file.
"Already done." Diana said as she entered Peter's office. "He's enrolled at the school under the name Nickolas Holden. Straight A's, perfect attendance, and marvelous comments from all of his teachers, except his math teacher. The man just mentioned something about how Nick, or rather Neal, never pays attention in class."
"Okay. Get a team together and meet me in the conference room in five. We need to make a plan of action to grab this kid tomorrow." Peter ordered. Diana and Jones nodded, and went to do his bidding.
Five minutes later, about fifteen agents, including Diana and Jones, were in the conference room.
"Okay guys, I have permission from Hughes to take Bennett while at school. We are going to go in at 12:35 on the dot. The kid is in his Art class then. He is at the corner farthest from the exit and its one the second story of the building." Peter told them. "Hughes issued us fake guns. They look real, but they don't fire any bullets. We don't want to endanger any other children from the school."
The team nodded. Peter smiled, they were going to get that kid.
I'm so sorry it took so long to pop out this chapter. I've had it written for a few days, but never found the chance to type it. It was about halfway done before I had a paper due and crap like that. Plus its hard to type when your parents are constantly telling you that its just a waste of time and no one really reads it. I'm going to probably pop out a few more chapters soon, just for a little teenage rebellion. Live long a prosper!