Chapter Text
As a freelance CI, you got to spend much more time with Neal without having to sneak around. Although you weren’t exactly pleased with spending so much time with Peter at first, you’d warmed up to him over time and considered him a good friend. (You still preferred his wife.) Where the WCCD team was concerned – well, you were just glad that Diana and Cruz hadn’t been on Neal’s case way back when. They were kinda scary.
The debriefing was pretty normal for a case of insurance fraud. You and Neal had found ways to communicate and distract each other from the boring overviews of things that were of really no interest whatsoever while the rest of the agents sat up straight and raised their hands to ask questions like good little students. Peter had made it against the rules to text during meetings, so you and Neal had started to write letters onto each other’s hands under the table. After that, he started making you sit on opposite sides.
He had yet to pick up on that you were tapping out messages to each other in Morse code.
Don’t look. Ruiz is in white-collar.
Of course, your first impulse was to look, but con artistry taught you to rein those in. You carefully tapped your fingers on the table, just hard enough to be deliberate but light enough not to make a noticeable sound to the agents on either side of you.
Does he look mad?
It was a well-known fact that Ruiz was not part of the cheering section for the WCCD. In fact, he jeered even in team-building sports that you were forced to attend. He tried prying incriminating information out of you when you ran into each other in the cafeteria. He tried to bully Neal away from crime scenes. He was a decent agent, and knew how to get the job done, but he was not a nice person, and if it was fair to say that he was anti-Peter, then it was an understatement to say he was anti-Caffrey, no matter which Caffrey was in question.
Neal caught your eye and raised an eyebrow. You tilted your head very slightly. With those two tiny gestures alone, he had asked you if you were asking a serious question and you had admitted that Ruiz practically always seemed mad.
“Y/N,” Jones said your name suddenly, wry and a little amused. Oh. They hadn’t figured out the Morse code yet, but at least one person had seen you and your brother making eye contact.
“I’m paying attention,” you said, giving Jones a winning smile and batting your eyelashes flirtatiously. “Neal said the painting’s a forgery, the provenances were proven to be forgeries, and now we just need to know who fenced the real one.”
Jones chuckled. “You’re a dangerous woman sometimes, Miss Caffrey.”
“You flatter me,” you responded with a smile.
Neal chuckled, leaning back in his chair. He’d taught you most everything you knew, but the body language and the lines you used for flirting had been taught to you by Kate.
The open conference room door was pushed open wider. You, along with everyone else in the room, turned your heads to see Ruiz.
“Eric,” Peter greeted, holding a folder closed with the spine against his palm. “Looking particularly morally indignant today, I see. How can we help you?”
Ruiz, grinding his teeth and glowering at Peter, crossed his arms and held his chin high, not taking the bait. “We have guests in my department. They’re experts from Quantico.” You and Neal both shared another look, and you beat out a rapid note to him with your fingers.
So he’s saying he’s not an expert?
Neal started to grin but caught himself, looking back up at Ruiz with a very serious and understanding face.
“They want to borrow a Caffrey,” Ruiz finished, very intentionally not looking at you or your brother. Peter smiled secretly behind his hand. He did like that his CIs were known to consistently be the best.
Neal pushed his chair out from the table in a move to stand up. “I’m getting more popular!” He declared pleasantly.
“Not you,” Ruiz snapped shortly.
Both of you turned to stare at the homicide investigator with wide eyes. You pointed at your own chest. Neal pointed at you, seconding the silent question. Neal was well-known for how well he performed undercover. When you went into the field, it was, more often than not, as an observational consultant or a distraction for Neal to get past a suspect. Because Neal was essentially an indentured servant while you had never been convicted, the bureau preferred to place him in the more dangerous situations. Using you made them more vulnerable to liability lawsuits. As such, Neal was the go-to for anything dangerous, and you were more commonly the criminal version of Diana.
Still, you smiled delightedly, showing your best charismatic glee. “People are noticing I exist!”
Peter came over to your chair, put a hand on your shoulder, and stated to Ruiz, “You don’t want her.”
You looked up at him, wounded and a little insulted. The stinging feeling faded when you saw how concerned and guarded Peter was and you realized he was just worried about you. Nevertheless, he was interfering in your opportunity to do something interesting for once.
“Why don’t you love me?” You demanded of him solemnly.
Peter didn’t miss a beat. “My wife is superior to all other beings.”
“Good answer,” Diana snickered.
The camaraderie and easygoing comedy just annoyed Ruiz even further. “What do you want for me to borrow her, Burke?” Ruiz asked impatiently. “I could bring the Quantico guys up here, but they’ve already set up shop with a bulletin downstairs. I will if I have to. We need an informant and yours fits the bill. She’d be perfect if she wasn’t a criminal, but we can’t do better.”
Your first thought wasn’t very polite, so you went with a second one. “It’s innocent until proven guilty, Eric,” you chided, using his first name because you knew it would press his buttons. “I’m an angel. If you look at me in the sunlight you can see a faint impression of my ethereal halo.”
“Actually,” Peter said with a very innocent and amicable face. “Y/N isn’t obligated by any contract to work for me. Unlike Neal, she has the right to make that decision herself. If you want her to make a temporary position in violent crimes, all you can do is present the details to her and let her choose.”
Ruiz looked incredibly upset that he couldn’t just get a leash to yank you around on from your supervising agent, but while Peter was the agent who supervised your consulting work, the FBI didn’t have leverage on you the way they did with a lot of their informants. Mozzie and Neal were always very, very meticulous about keeping your record clean, especially once Neal was officially on a wanted list.
To rub it in, you stood up gracefully and folded your hands in front of you. “Let’s go,” you beamed at Ruiz. “I wanna meet the team from Quantico. Maybe I can ask them about the programs at the FBI Academy.”
Ruiz snarled as he stepped aside to let you lead the way out. “You can’t join the FBI.”
“Innocent until proven guilty,” you sang, winking at a grinning Diana on your way out.
“You just wait,” Ruiz threatened. “You’ll slip up one day, Caffrey, and I’ll be waiting.”
“Oh, my,” you said in hushed surprise. “Are you going to stalk me like Peter stalked Neal? This is exciting. I can lure you out to Paris when I’m actually in Brussels, and I can send you some champagne and a reminder to go home to your wife before your anniversary.”
“Shut up and walk!”
“I missed you,” you sniffed, your eyes tearing up. You blinked and let them roll partway down your face, falling onto Neal’s turtleneck and wetting his shoulder.
“You have no idea,” he whispered back, taking you by the shoulders and holding you at arm’s length. He smiled with pride and affection. “You look so much older.” You blushed. You’d last seen him at seventeen, and now you were twenty-two.
“You’re one to talk,” you said, prodding his cheek. “You look ten years older.”
“Yeah, but I’m still pretty,” he charmingly said.
“And modest,” you agreed dryly.
Both of you stared at each other for another minute, hardly able to believe that after so long, you were finally back together. You were going to thank Moz next time you saw him, possibly with a bottle of wine worth hundreds of dollars, because nothing he had ever done for you had ever meant as much as this – as letting you be the first person to welcome Neal back into the real world beyond grey prison walls.
“If you ever get arrested again,” you vowed emotionally, “I’m going to make you bleed.”
You, like your brother, had all the skills to charm at least ninety percent of the people you met – you simply didn’t like people the way Neal did, and you generally kept to yourself. There were very few faces in the violent crimes division that you recognized, even including Ruiz.
He took you to a conference room. It was the same layout as the WCCD, and had several floors’ worth of ceilings and floors caved in, you would then be in the same space as your team, yet again. This room was fuller than the one you’d just left, filled with a tall and lanky man in a sweater vest, a tall and dark-haired man who might as well have boss written on his forehead, a big and strong-looking black man, a slim and pretty blonde woman, and an older European man sitting down around the table. They all had guns in holsters at their waists, even the one that looked like he belonged in a university. Peter carried a gun, and you could shoot just as well as any agent, but Neal’s attitude towards weapons had made you wary around them.
“Hotchner, I got just the kind of girl you asked for,” Ruiz announced, leaving the door wide open. You made yourself look far more comfortable than you felt – when you looked uneasy, people tended to treat you like you weren’t qualified for whatever it was you wanted. “Y/N Caffrey.”
The teacher’s aid turned to you and looked over your face with intent curiosity. “Any relation to the art forger?”
You waved with a smirk. “My brother was never convicted of any art forgeries.”
The oldest man turned a smug look on the blond, who smiled at you apologetically and nervously, and he started chewing on his lip. The guy sitting next to him slugged his shoulder, laughing.
“Reid’s mouth runs almost as fast as his brain,” he said to you, giving you the same sort of handsome smile your brother often flashed. Unlike with Neal, you could tell his was sincere. “SSA Derek Morgan. That’s Spencer Reid.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Caffrey,” the boss of the unit said, reaching over the table to shake your hand. “We’re sorry to pull you from your team.”
“Don’t be. No insurance fraud is interesting unless Sterling Bosch is involved,” you answered jokingly, waving it off. It was no secret that insurance fraud was your least favorite crime to look into, despite having – allegedly! – had a hand in it before. “So, I’m dying to know what kind of criteria you listed to make this grunt think oh, I think she fits the role perfectly.”
The old one raised his hand, then pointed to himself. “SSA David Rossi.” Rossi lowered his arm and looked at you seriously. “What do you know about La Cosa Nostra?”
You frowned slightly and didn’t care if they saw. The last time anything had come up with organized crime, your brother had almost been killed, and you’d fought for your life against a hired muscleman. “The Italian mafia hasn’t had as threatening a presence in America since around the time the Patriot Act was put in place,” you summarized, just to prove you knew what you were talking about. “The Russians have been a more current threat – and trust me, I might know a guy who the Russians dislike, and they’re definitely scarier than the Italians.”
“We’re not so sure about that,” the blonde woman put in with a grimace. “There have been several murders in the Harlem area that have key signs of enforcers carrying out the crimes.”
“For various reasons, we believe that this is the work of a La Cosa Nostra family.” The boss nodded slightly to Reid, who perked up.
“We have our suspicions about the Gambinos,” he said, tapping a pencil against his forefinger with a slight smile. “Although they’ve been generally more in the shadows since Richard Kuklinski’s arrest and subsequent conviction, they’ve left a distinct signature.”
Derek nodded in corroboration. “What we need is someone to get in with the Gambino’s Don. He’s a traditionalist – he won’t trust men without years of rapport we don’t have time to build. Without completely burning a real agent’s identity, we can’t offer out one of our own.”
The boss met your eyes gravely. “I won’t lie to you, Miss Caffrey; this is dangerous. You’re under no obligation. Agent Ruiz brought you to us because he believes you can do the job. As the sister of a con artist, you must realize how hard it can be to pretend to be someone else, even under threat of death.”
You smiled wryly. “Just the sister of a conman? Hypothetically, my brother and I were on our own for years. Try asking yourself how no one knew who I was until I told them.”
“Ha!” Ruiz interrupted loudly, pointing at you. “You just confessed! I told you, Caffrey, you and your brother’s arrogance-“
“Actually,” Derek intervened, raising an eyebrow at Ruiz skeptically, “She said hypothetically.”
Smiling briefly at Derek, you continued to speak. “I understand danger, Agents. One of my brother’s former employers tried to have me killed to send a message. So.” You clapped your hands excitedly and broke into a smile, hoping that the butterflies in your stomach would dissipate sooner rather than later. “When do I start?”