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It wasn’t often that Eliot Spencer got telephone calls at all, much less an international call from the San Lorenzo country code. There were only a few people he still knew in San Lorenzo, and even fewer of those had this particular phone number.
Curiosity as much as anything else made him turn away from his conversation with Parker and Hardison to answer the call with a simple, “Yeah?”
“Commander Spencer?”
Eliot had to smile, however briefly, at the familiar tone before he sobered again, wondering what had led to this call. “General Flores.”
Across the table from him, Parker and Hardison looked up, wearing identical expressions of puzzled concern.
“I apologize in advance for the nature of this call,” Flores said. “But I felt it necessary.”
“Necessary?” Eliot frowned, though Flores couldn’t see it. “For what?”
There was a pause, and he wondered if he’d lost the connection. “Sir?”
The voice that answered didn’t belong to Flores. “Hello, Eliot.”
Eliot’s grip on the phone tightened. “What do you want, Moreau?”
“Moreau?!” Hardison squeaked behind him. A muffled thump suggested that Parker had elbowed him to keep quiet.
“Kate’s dead,” Damien Moreau said.
Eliot bit back a curse. “How?”
“The private plane she was aboard exploded before takeoff.”
Eliot’s free hand clenched into a fist. “What happened?”
“That’s what you’re going to find out,” Moreau told him. “For her sake, if not mine. And if her death was deliberate, then-”
“Don’t finish that sentence,” Eliot said, warning clear in his tone.
A quiet chuckle came from the other man. Then, “Time for me to return to my Tombs. The general’s courtesy only extends so far.”
“Damien,” Eliot said, oddly familiar in this moment of shared grief. “I’m sorry.”
There was another pause before he exchanged farewells with Flores, ended the call, and returned his cell phone to his pocket and turned back to his friends.
“Whatever Moreau wants, he ain’t getting it,” Hardison declared. “We’re done with him. Right?” He looked from Eliot to Parker. “Right?”
Parker ignored him. “Eliot? What does Moreau want?”
“He wants me to find out why his sister died.”
“Sister?” Hardison stared at him, eyes comically wide in apparent shock. “He has a sister?”
“Had,” Eliot corrected grimly. “She was on a private plane that exploded on the tarmac.”
Both Parker and Hardison flinched at that bare statement, but Hardison could be like a pit bull with its jaws locked on something. “Sorry to hear that. But-”
“No buts, Hardison,” Eliot snapped. “I owe it to Katie to find out what happened, and I will.”
“Why is Katie so important to you?” Parker might not have Nate Ford’s strategic mind, but she could often pierce to the heart of a matter. She certainly had this time.
“She’s why I got away from Moreau,” Eliot answered. Parker’s expression told him that wasn’t enough of an explanation, and he blew out a breath before he added, “That thing I did, that I told you not to ask me about?”
Parker nodded. “The worst thing you ever did.”
“It didn’t bother me when I did it,” Eliot admitted. “Not much, anyway. But the way Katie looked at me after…” he trailed off, horrified blue eyes flashing as brilliantly in his memory as they had at the time.
“She never looked at me the same, after, and I couldn’t stand it. So I left. Sometimes I think it’s only because Katie liked me that Damien let me go.” He shook off the memory and glared first at Parker, then, longer and harder, at Hardison. “So I’m going to find out what happened. You don’t have to help, but I’m gonna be on the next plane to New York.”
“We’re going with you,” Parker said at the same time Hardison said, “Of course we got your back, brah.”
Eliot fought to keep his expression stern. It was a difficult battle in the face of loyalty he still didn’t entirely feel he’d earned. But then, maybe that’s what friendship was about.
#
When he first saw the pathetic remains of the airplane Kate had been aboard when it exploded, neatly laid out on the hangar floor like some obscene jigsaw puzzle, Neal Caffrey almost collapsed. He caught himself with an exhaled whuff, prompting Mozzie to ask if he was okay.
He wasn’t.
He had to be.
“Yeah,” he said, straightening and taking the final few steps to bring him alongside the wreckage. “Yeah. Kate was sitting on the left side, by the window.” And there was nothing left of the left side, much less the window.
“Definitely not an accident,” Mozzie said.
“Did you ever think it was?” Neal asked, in a tone made sharp by dulling grief and new-burning anger.
“No.” Mozzie’s tone was quiet now, and Neal accepted the apology in it, forced himself to look at the remains once more.
“Mechanical failure wouldn’t cause an explosion by the door,” he mused aloud.
“I bet it was set to explode the plane in mid-air,” Mozzie said.
“It went off early.” And I would’ve been aboard if it hadn’t.
The thought almost felt like a betrayal of Kate, and Neal shoved those feelings aside as Mozzie spoke again.
“Or somebody set it off early.”
Neal didn’t want to focus on that possibility. He scanned the rest of the wreckage. “What about the black box?”
“What about it?” Mozzie asked. “The whole tail’s missing.”
“Excuse me.” It was a male voice, authoritative. Neal shot a glance at Mozzie.
“You said the guard’s route takes fifteen minutes.”
Mozzie shrugged. “That’s not the guard.”
“Who are you?” The same voice sounded again, and now Neal could hear two - no, three - sets of footsteps as well.
“Follow my lead,” he whispered to Mozzie, then straightened and turned to face the newcomers. They were three men, one in an FAA jacket, the other two in suits that weren’t as tailored as his own.
“What are you doing in here?” FAA asked.
“We’re with Sterling Bosch,” Neal replied, and glanced at the badge dangling from the man’s jacket. “You’re Roy?”
“Where you been, Roy?” Mozzie chimed in. “Unlike you, we’re on a schedule here.”
“Sterling Bosch? Insurance?” Roy asked, frowning. “No one told me you were coming. Wentlow Holdings was handling the claim.”
“They were,” Neal said, giving the second word the slightest emphasis. “Where’s the cockpit voice recorder?”
“That’s been logged with NTSB in Washington,” Roy said. He looked at the two men with him. “Gentlemen?”
Now Neal focused on those two men. The dark-skinned one stood an inch or so over six feet. The other, Caucasian, man was slightly shorter than Neal, but had a physical presence that made him seem larger.
“You’re NTSB?” Mozzie asked. Neal hoped he was the only one who heard the skepticism in the question.
“Yes, we’re NTSB,” the taller man said with a glare. “You got a problem with that?”
“No, no, of course not,” Mozzie said. “You’re just … not what I would’ve expected.”
The black man raised a sardonic eyebrow. “They even let black people be president these days.”
“Settle down,” the shorter man said, his tone pitched to be soothing. “He didn’t mean it like that.”
“I hope not. Or we’re going to have to review Sterling Bosch’s contract.” The dark-skinned man glared at Mozzie.
“We’d like a copy of the recording,” Neal interjected smoothly. No need to make this situation any more confrontational, after all. “You can send it to my investigator, Sara Ellis.”
He withdrew Sara’s card from his pocket, offered it.
“Naw, man,” the dark-skinned man said. “You have to fill out a form 6120, and make sure you attach a copy of your policy dec page. You can find it on our website.”
“Thanks for your help, Roy,” the shorter man shook Roy’s hand. “Appreciate it.”
“Anytime,” Roy said. “I’ll lock up behind you.”
Neal decided that in this case you referred to all four of them, and turned toward the hangar door.
“Did you get what kind of form they wanted?” Neal asked when they were safely out of earshot of both the hangar and the other two men.
“Doesn’t matter,” Mozzie said. “I know someone who knows someone at the NTSB. We’ll get a copy.”
Neal could only hope the recording would hold some clues.
#
“What’s Sterling Bosch’s involvement in this?” Eliot asked as he and Hardison walked back toward the hotel they’d chosen for their headquarters while they were in New York. He loosened his necktie, trying as he always did not to remember that time he was almost hanged for something he hadn’t done.
“Not a damn thing, far as I can tell,” Hardison replied, paying almost more attention to his phone than to where they were walking - as usual. Eliot yanked Hardison to one side, out of the path of a dog-walker with four large breed dogs heading their way.
“So who were those guys at the hangar?”
“No idea,” Hardison replied absently. “Best dressed insurance rep I’ve ever seen, though.”
Eliot frowned. “The pretty boy in the suit?”
“Suit? That wasn’t just a suit, Eliot.”
“It looked like a suit to me. Even had a tie and tie bar, too.”
“Naw, man,” Hardison said, finally looking up from his phone. “That was a Sy Devore suit.”
The name meant nothing to Eliot. When Hardison didn’t seem inclined to say more, he prompted, “Sy Devore?”
“Sy used to outfit half the grifters in New York,” Hardison said. “Never thought I’d see one of his suits in person.”
“And you didn’t mention that before?” Eliot demanded. “Dammit, Hardison.”
“So? What difference does it make if they’re running a con, too?” Hardison asked philosophically. “They stay out of our way, we stay out of theirs.”
“Except this isn’t a con, Hardison.” Eliot pronounced each word carefully.
“That was, at the hangar,” Hardison said, and Eliot’s fist clenched. He had to remind himself not to hit his friend.
“They’re running a con that might be related to whoever killed Katie,” Eliot bit out. “I want to know who they are and where they are. Find them for me.”
# CHAPTER #
For the first time since he’d started working with Peter Burke, Neal was relieved when the door to the FBI building closed behind him at the end of the day. He breathed deeply of the early evening air, exhaling slowly and hoping the day’s stress went with it.
If he never had another assignment like the one he’d completed today, Neal would count himself a fortunate man. Pretending to kill someone wasn’t easy - even when that someone was someone he didn’t particularly like, and even when that someone pulled the trigger herself.
Still, the complications that had come with that assignment had kept his mind off the search for Kate’s killer, and for that he had to be grateful, at least a little. The pain of grief dulled a little more every day, but his resolve to find whoever had killed her never wavered.
Without the cockpit voice recording, Neal was at a standstill. Mozzie had contacted his friend whose friend worked at the NTSB, but so far there hadn’t been a response, and Neal was getting antsy.
Later, Neal would remember that antsy feeling and blame it for why he found himself slammed backward against a brick wall before he realized anyone was even close to him.
He held out his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Look, I don’t know what you want, but-”
“What were you doing at the hangar yesterday?”
Neal blinked at the question, and gave his full attention to the man who was pinning him to the wall with an arm across his chest. After a moment, he recognized the shorter man from the NTSB, and the cover story he’d given flashed in his memory.
“Sterling Bosch Insurance,” he said. “Investigating the crash.”
“Never seen an insurance rep in a Devore suit before.” The man glared at him, and Neal forced himself to meet the other man’s gaze without flinching.
“Some of us have excellent taste.” Neal offered his most charming grin.
“Too bad you didn’t have an excellent cover story, too,” the man shot back. “Sterling Bosch isn’t involved in that investigation at all - not the main carrier, not the excess carrier, not at all. Hate to ruin a Devore with bloodstains, but I will if you don’t tell me the truth. Fast.”
Neal glanced around, realizing that this man had yanked him into an alley, and more specifically into a spot where there were no cameras in eyeshot and far enough away from the street that no one would notice them.
Neal had made a lifetime of lying, but in this moment, he figured truth was his only chance at survival.
Not that he’d make it easy for his assailant anyway.
“I’ll tell you if you tell me,” he said. “The NTSB doesn’t exactly have a rep for assault and battery.”
“You first.” His assailant grinned, a predatory expression.
He hadn’t moved otherwise, but something in the very air around him had changed, and Neal fought to keep from flinching.
“All right, fine,” Neal said. “Can we have this conversation like rational adults?”
He looked down at the arm across his chest, then back at his assailant, questioning.
“Yeah, all right. Not like we can’t find you again later.” The man stood back and Neal straightened his suit while he considered what to say. The truth, yes, but how much?
After a long moment, Neal settled on, “My fiancée was on that plane when it exploded.”
The man’s expression shifted from the promise of violence to assessment. Neal didn’t allow himself to think the threat had passed. Then the man spoke.
“You’re Nick.”
Neal stared at him, the name shocking him as nothing else so far had done. “How do you know that name?”
“Last time I heard from Katie, she said she was with this guy, Nick, and things looked pretty serious.”
“They were,” Neal said. “Who are you, exactly?”
The man appeared to debate for a moment, then gave a slight shrug. “Eliot Spencer.”
Neal knew the name, of course - a retrieval specialist with a black ops background and a violent reputation that was hardly spoken of at all, and with furtive glances and shivers when someone did manage to whisper it. But that raised another question.
“How did you know Kate?”
“I used to work for her brother.”
“Brother?” Neal repeated in disbelief, sure now that this was some kind of con – though he had no idea what the purpose of it might be. “Kate didn’t have a brother.”
The other man - Spencer - grinned without humor. “More that she didn’t want the brother she had. Can’t blame her for that.”
Spencer sobered. “Probably shouldn’t be havin’ this conversation on the street. I got a room at the Iroquois in midtown. We can talk there.”
Neal grimaced and decided to be honest once more. “No, we can’t.”
Spencer raised one eyebrow. “Why not?”
“Outside my range.” He tugged at his left trouser leg. Spencer glanced down, but didn’t seem surprised at the sight of the tracking anklet.
“Thought you listed a little left,” was his only comment. “Where, then?”
There was only one real choice, though Neal hesitated to make it. Finally, he said, “My place.”
“Mind if my friends join us?”
“Friends?” Neal asked, wary. What else was Eliot Spencer going to drop on him?
“You met one of them already.”
“The black man from the hangar,” Neal realized. “And the other?”
“She’s just here to jump off One World Trade Center.”
Which made no sense to Neal, but seemed to be all that Spencer was going to say on the subject. He gave in with as much good grace as he could muster - and a soupcon of sarcasm, because he couldn’t resist.
“As long as they’re housebroken.”
#
Twenty minutes later, Neal closed the door to his apartment behind Spencer and his companions. In addition to the dark-skinned man who’d been with Spencer at the hangar, a lithe blonde woman had joined them. Spencer introduced them in turn as Hardison and Parker.
“Wine? Beer?” he asked, and chose not to take offense as Spencer scouted the room and the other man pulled out a small electronic device to scan it. He would’ve done at least one of those things himself, after all.
“Beer,” the woman said.
“Same.” Spencer said as he finished his circuit of the apartment.
“Heathens, both y’all,” the other man said, affection clear in his tone. “Wine, thanks.”
By the time Neal had poured the wine for himself and the black man – Hardison – and opened two bottles of beer, his guests had taken seats at the table. He distributed the drinks before resting his hands on the back of an empty chair.
“Before we get started,” he said, “you need to know. My name’s not Nick Halden. It’s Neal Caffrey.”
“Seriously?” the woman asked, her tone disbelieving. “Neal Caffrey?”
“Yes,” Neal said cautiously. Her eyes held a little too much craziness for his liking. “Why?”
“You got to the Raphael before I did.”
Neal offered her a relaxed smile. “Not according to a jury of my peers.”
She almost snarled, and Neal had to wonder just what kind of insanity he was dealing with.
“Let it go, Parker,” Spencer said. “You don’t like Raphael, remember? Too light and bright.”
“That’s true,” the woman - Parker - admitted. “Caravaggio’s much better.”
“Wait,” Neal said as he realized exactly who he was talking to. “You’re that Parker? I’m a big fan - especially the Lion of Gilgamesh. Beautifully done.”
Parker scowled, and Neal decided that maybe the rumors were true - maybe Parker really was insane.
“Did Katie know who you are?” Spencer asked, bringing Neal’s attention back to the present.
“She did. I told her when things started to get serious.” Neal swallowed down the lump that threatened to form in his throat and met Spencer’s gaze. “What about you? Did you and she…?”
“Hell, no,” Spencer declared. “She was just a kid when I met her, and her brother would’ve killed me if I’d so much as looked at her funny.”
“Brother.” Neal shook his head. “She never told me about him.”
“You don’t want to know.” Hardison didn’t look up from the laptop he’d opened the moment he sat down.
“Yes,” Neal countered. “I do.”
“If you don’t already know the name Damien Moreau, you’re better off not knowing it,” Spencer said, and took a swallow of beer.
“Does that mean I’m better off not knowing you?” Neal asked before he thought.
“You would’ve been, once,” Spencer replied. “I’m not that guy anymore. What do you know about Katie’s death?”
“What we know so far is this.” Neal finally sat at the table. “She was forced to work with Garrett Fowler, an FBI agent, to try to find a music box.”
“A music box?” Parker sounded more curious than anything else. “Why?”
“It’s made of amber, and was taken from Catherine Palace when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union.”
“By itself, it can’t be worth much,” Spencer said. “A couple hundred thousand, maybe. What’s special about it?”
“We don’t know.” Neal didn’t try to keep the frustration from his voice. “We stole it from the Italian Consulate a few months ago, and … it’s a music box. One of the cherubs is missing, but otherwise it looks just like the photos of it.”
“Let us take a look,” Hardison suggested. “Another set, or sets, of eyes can’t hurt.”
“I would,” Neal said. “But it’s gone.”
“The hell, Caffrey?” Spencer said. “You let somebody else steal it from you?”
“I didn’t have a choice,” Neal shot back. “Let the FBI log it into evidence or go back to supermax, and I figured that if the FBI had it, then at least whoever was pulling Fowler’s strings didn’t. But that’s not what I meant. It’s gone from the FBI.”
He rose and crossed to the shelf where he kept his notes from his search for Kate’s killer. He leafed through the folder and found the photos he was looking for.
“This is the music box we stole.” Neal dropped the photo of the music box - gold leaf accents highlighting the amber, cherubs at each of the four corners of the second tier - onto the table between Spencer and Parker.
“And this is the one that was put into the FBI vault.” He dropped a second photo on the table. This one showed a two-tier box of plain, unadorned amber.
“They stripped it,” was Parker’s assessment. “That was dumb - easier to fence, maybe, but worth lots less.”
“It’s not the same box,” Spencer said. Neal supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that Spencer noticed that immediately. “See the corners, here? They’re not fashioned the same in this one.”
“So they switched it out,” Hardison concluded. “Why?”
The question brought all the thoughts that had been clouding Neal’s mind into sudden, sharp clarity. He could only hope his hunch was correct. “Because Peter’s looking for her killer, too.”
“Peter?” Hardison repeated. “Would that be this Peter?”
He tapped a couple of keys on his laptop, and a moment later, voices echoed from the machine.
Yeah? It was a male voice, Neal could tell even through the static. Familiar, but he couldn't place it immediately.
Peter Burke is here. Neal recognized Kate's voice immediately, and couldn't help flinching. Across from him, Spencer's expression had gone from interested to stony.
Why is Burke there? The man spoke again.
Does this this change the plan? Kate asked.
Yeah -
Static cut off whatever else the man had been going to say, and Neal felt again the shockwave from the explosion, the heat of it on his back.
He swallowed, hard. Hearing Kate’s voice again was even more of a gut-punch than seeing the wreckage, as was the knowledge that he would’ve been on that plane, too, if it hadn’t been for Peter Burke ate at his insides.
“Is this Peter Burke and the Peter you’re talking about the same guy?” Hardison asked.
“The guy who caught me.” It was a simple statement, unvarnished by his pretense that he’d effectively turned himself in. “Now he’s my handler.”
And my friend, he finished silently, still surprised by that realization.
“And you think he’s looking for whoever killed Katie, too?” Spencer asked.
“I do.”
“Then get him here, and the music box,” Spencer said. “We need to know everything he knows.”
#
It was with more nerves than he would ever admit to that Peter Burke approached the building at 87 Riverside Drive. The call from Neal had been brief and to the point.
"I know you have the music box. Bring it to my place."
"How did you -?" Peter began, but Neal had ended the call before he could finish the question.
So he'd made excuses to Elizabeth, called Diana to ask her to bring him the music box, and now he faced the gated entry to the building where Neal lived, the music box in a duffel bag he carried in his left hand.
He heard the footsteps a moment before he heard the voice. "Looky there, it's the Suit from the Black Lagoon."
Peter turned to face the new arrival. "Mozzie. He called you, too?"
"Brilliant deduction, Einstein," Mozzie said. "Are we gonna stand out here all night?"