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Prologue
Peter was having lunch with his wife and his CI at a trendy outdoor bistro not far from the Federal Building. It was just months into Neal’s tenure of being hobbled and attached to a stern, no-nonsense FBI handler. The young felon seemed to be making the best of his situation, but Peter still had his doubts about how long this façade of humble obedience would last before he’d be carting Neal back to Sing Sing again. Elizabeth had come to like the amiable and handsome young man, and she hoped her husband was wrong, but even she was smart enough to know that the possibility of recidivism was real regarding someone who was as elusively slippery as quicksilver.
“If he fucks up, that will make him a three-time loser, and it will buy him much more than four more years in prison,” Peter had told her just days after he and Neal had taken down the Dutchman and the convict on work-release had been awarded a consultant’s badge.
“And if he goes rogue, that would be such a waste of intelligence and raw talent,” he added with a serious expression that perhaps had a hint of actual apprehension and concern for Neal the man rather than Neal the criminal. It seemed that it was very easy for a charming con artist to have people become invested in his welfare. The world had borne witness to a raft of worried people Neal had left behind.
“Hon, you always said that Neal was smart, so would he be foolish enough to risk his future?” El had asked her not quite convinced husband.
“Yeah, I’ll concede that Neal is brilliant, but he can also be an impetuous hot mess with tunnel vision,” Peter grumbled. “The way I see it, if he manages to find and grab his girl, he’s going to do something stupid and wreck his future.”
“Maybe you’re more of a good influence on him than you think,” El mused. “He was just a boy when you started chasing him. After three years and then almost four more in prison, Neal’s become a mature man, and I believe he respects you. So, just keep doing what you’re doing to keep him heading in the right direction.”
“I think, according to Neal, Kate is true north, and he doesn’t even realize how skewed his orientation to the future has become. How am I supposed to compete with that?” Peter really did sound resigned.
Elizabeth didn’t have an answer, so she held her breath as the weeks turned into months and Neal remained by Peter’s side. She knew the unusual arrangement between the two mismatched partners was sometimes hard on her husband, a dedicated proponent of law and order who, quite often, had to balance bending the rules just short of breaking them to keep Neal from self-destructing. But it was hard to stay mad at someone she knew to have a kind heart and his own set of scruples. She didn’t truly believe Neal would ever intentionally hurt the people he loved, and she suspected that this complicated felon had come to love her and her husband in his own way.
But Peter had his own case of tunnel vision. For him, Neal was a do-over project and, as his handler, Peter was the mentor/architect of a new and improved model. Sure, he liked Neal—who wouldn’t, but anything more than a sense of paternal concern never crossed his mind. Or had it?
Almost One Year Later
Now it’s another time and another lunch, but it makes Elizabeth begin to wonder. She finds herself recalling those early thoughts and discussions as she watches her husband and his CI talk shop about their latest case on a sunny afternoon. Just minutes before, their waitress had blushed a deep pink when she brought their order to the table and Neal had awarded her one of his blazing smiles.
“Does that just come second nature to you, like breathing?” Peter remarked with a raised eyebrow at Neal.
“What?” the con man asked innocently.
“Charming everything in a skirt,” Peter answered before shoring up his statement with a slight nod of his head towards a nearby table where three young women were surreptitiously casting glances in Neal’s direction and then giggling and whispering amongst themselves.
Neal shrugged and grinned. “It’s just innocent flirting, Peter. People do it all the time.”
“I always took you for a one-woman man, Neal. Isn’t a certain blue-eyed brunette supposed to be the love of your life?” Peter felt obligated to twist the knife because he was irritated by Neal’s cavalier attitude.
The grin disappeared from Neal’s lips. “And if you’ll recall, you advised me to forget about her and move on because she dumped me.”
“I did say that,” Peter admitted, “but when have you ever listened or taken my advice?” Peter insisted on being an ass.
Elizabeth quickly intervened to get them back on track because Peter could sometimes be like a runaway freight train and cause havoc without meaning to.
“It seems that Neal has captured someone else’s attention, as well,” she said quietly as the two squabbling men followed her gaze to a lone male diner two tables over. That patron was a tall, good-looking specimen of manhood decked out in a three-piece suit that could have been the standard upscale uniform for a successful businessman or a Wall Street trader. He was dark and handsome like Neal, and probably close to him in age. When Neal followed Elizabeth’s line of sight, the stranger smiled at the con man and gave an almost imperceptible nod of his head. Neal returned the gesture before turning away.
“Unbelievable!” Peter hissed. “What’s the trick, Neal? Do you just send out pheromones in all directions to see what you can catch in your net, and gender doesn’t matter to you at all?”
“What’s your problem, Peter?” Neal asked as he cocked his head and studied his handler intently. “I never envisioned you as homophobic.”
“I’m certainly not – well, that!” Peter answered vehemently.
“Well, then what has you so scandalized and all in a tizzy?” Neal knew he had gained the upper hand in this annoying discussion, so he wasn’t about to let Peter squirm off the hook easily. He could give as good as he got.
Peter took a deep calming breath. “It just seems very crass and superficial to instigate any type of relationship with a come-hither look. It’s shallow and meaningless.”
Neal narrowed his eyes. “Maybe some people just want a brief hookup without any strings attached, and not what you term a ‘relationship.’ Ever hear of Tinder? Not everybody is looking for love with hearts and cupids, Peter. Sometimes it’s much more basic than that,” a determined young man kept baiting his lunch companion. After all, Peter had started it by sniping about Kate.
“That seems rather sordid, Neal, and you’re nothing if not a gentleman. So, I’m not buying that you’re into one-night stands, be it a male or a female,” Peter challenged.
“You seem pretty sure of your facts, Buddy,” Neal kept up the badgering. “But tell me, would it matter if I was a hit and run lover? Is that a verboten practice written somewhere in the regs for an FBI consultant? And why would you even care about my love life? It’s really none of your business unless you’re the one who’s interested. I can certainly be the gentleman you think I am and woo you and Elizabeth with flowers and love notes. Maybe, deep down, that’s what you really want but are too much of a coward to ask. That would explain why you’re acting so jealous of innocent strangers here on the street.”
Peter’s face had morphed into the rictus of anger, so Elizabeth quickly intervened. “Boys! Enough! Obviously, this isn’t a discussion for a public lunch. Since something innocent has somehow gotten completely out of control, I think we should get our food to go and you two can return to work and your neutral corners. Maybe tabling this insipid discussion until later will allow for cooler heads to prevail.”
Later that evening in his own home, Peter was still peeved. “El, he was lying to me! I know he was. Neal’s not seeing anybody because he’s too busy trying to track down Kate. When Neal sets his sights on something, he becomes so focused that everything else becomes all white noise in the background, and that would certainly exclude any extraneous new love interests.”
“Well, Hon, everything he said was all hypothetical, so it really wasn’t a lie,” Elizabeth said in Neal’s defense. “But he did raise a valid point. Why are you concerned about who he sees when he’s off the clock?”
“He may be off the FBI’s clock, but he’s still my responsibility and I need to know exactly what he’s doing when he’s out of my sight,” Peter said as if that was a given.
Elizabeth was thoughtful. Her husband’s unreasonable anger could be a tell that even the great Peter Burke’s gut didn’t detect in his own character. Perhaps there was some truth to what Neal had insinuated. After all, Neal was a con man with the skill to read people and know what they desired even before his mark realized it. Was Peter’s concern more than just a type of mentoring oversight?
That was food for thought, and Elizabeth found herself fantasizing scenarios that were very carnal in nature. She was a bit surprised at her wanton meanderings because it was so unlike her to contemplate a walk on the wild side. Her relationship with Peter was solid, but expanding its boundaries a bit was rather tantalizing, even if it was just all whimsy on her part. Again and again, she found her mind returning to Peter’s curious overreaction. If her instincts were right, her staunch white bread husband would have to come to a certain conclusion himself. That would definitely entail a giant leap of faith on his part.
~~~~~~~~~~
Of course, all of Peter’s fears were right. Neal wasn’t playing the field; he was playing his own dangerous and convoluted game to rescue his girl and leave New York City in the dust. What was so frustrating for a dedicated FBI agent was the unbelievable fact that someone in his own Federal backyard was facilitating the escape, and all of Peter’s anger became directed at a man named Garrett Fowler, who he later found to be merely a pawn in the scenario. However, that was after Peter had sent a bullet on its way towards a colleague's chest, thankfully protected by a Kevlar vest. Neal seemed capable of turning his handler into an unrecognizable entity who, in the heat of the moment, threw caution to the wind. Later, Peter would see himself become a pleading supplicant at an airport hangar cajoling Neal not to leave him, and when had Peter Burke ever become that needy? It all became a moot point when Neal’s future was almost cut short, and Kate’s actually ended.
Much to his frustration, Peter’s involvement in the catastrophic finale was put under the microscope, while a devastated young lover was reincarcerated. It wasn’t fair; it wasn’t right; it was just horribly cruel. Eventually, an aggressive and determined handler sorted it out, but the big question remained, front and center—could Neal be sorted out? Much of his psyche had to be as splintered as the myriad of burning debris scattered on a tarmac. Was Neal now so damaged that any potential future with Peter as a mentor became an impossibility? Had Peter become the enemy in Neal’s eyes because any real trust had been completely swept off the table? So many questions without answers, and the new Neal wasn’t into sharing. His smile was still there, although much less sincere, and his brain was still functioning so they could solve cases, but the essence of who he was had changed.
“He’s suffering mentally, El, probably having flashbacks to that horrible day,” Peter said miserably, and Peter did know how that felt. At night in bed with his wife, he could still see the stupendous inferno before him and smell the pungent odor of burning jet fuel. It had actually permeated the wool of his topcoat, and although a thorough dry cleaning had removed the smell, it wasn’t sufficient to erase the memory, so Peter had donated it to Good Will.
“Neal pretends that he’s fine, but he won’t talk to me about it, so I don’t know how to help or even what to say,” Peter told his wife after his CI’s first week back in the saddle.
“It’s hard for him, Peter, so just give him some time to process his grief in his own way,” El advised.
That answer didn’t satisfy someone who was a dedicated fixer. “You’re good at talking about feelings, El, so maybe you could try to get him to open up,” Peter said hopefully.
Elizabeth sighed. “Hon, you were there that day and experienced the terrible tragedy with him, so that is a very powerful thing that binds you two together. Right now, all you can do is just be there for him, Peter. No advice, no pity, no cowboy up—just offer your big, strong comforting presence so he knows he’s not alone.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to be anywhere near me outside of the office,” Peter worried. “I think he’d rather get solace from June or Mozzie before he’d ever welcome me with open arms.”
“Well, you won’t know unless you’re the first to make an overture,” Elizabeth said sensibly. “Now it’s time for you to cowboy up, Agent Burke. Neal needs you.”
So, that was how Peter found himself climbing the three flights of stairs to Neal’s loft on a Saturday evening without calling ahead to his CI. Anklet data told Peter the young man was home, but a text or a phone call before a drop-in would give a reticent host time to create excuses to nix an impromptu visit.
Peter knocked softly once, but when that didn’t produce any results, he rapped harder twice more. Eventually, he heard shuffling and the door creaked open to reveal the person that he wanted to confront. Neal was dressed in old sweats and his hair was a tangled mess, as if he had been compulsively running his fingers through it. His blue eyes were heavy-lidded and almost glassy, and Peter could detect the smell of liquor engulfing him like a pungent cloud.
“It looks like you’re having a little party, Buddy,” were the first clumsy words out of Peter’s mouth. He was really so bad at this!
The obviously inebriated man cocked his head and studied his handler like a bug under a microscope. “It’s a Saturday, not a workday, Peter, so why are you even here?”
“I thought you might like some company ‘cause you can’t have a party with just one person,” Peter replied as he pushed his way in.
“Well, too bad for you because the party’s over, so you should just go back home,” Neal replied slowly to avoid slurring his words as he kept the door held wide open.
“Not happening,” Peter said adamantly as he ignored Neal, brushing past to begin rummaging in a kitchen cabinet to find a glass tumbler for himself. He then retrieved the fancy bottle of Glenlivet from the table and poured himself a generous two fingers of the expensive Scotch.
“You don’t mind sharing, do you?” an uncomfortable Peter asked, realizing too late that what he just said was a double entendre. ‘Yep, just jump right into the deep end of the pool headfirst, Peter Burke,’ he silently mocked himself.
Neal had turned and was staring. “Since I can’t legally throw you out because this isn’t my house, and obviously I’m not capable of physically throwing you out, I guess I’m stuck with you,” he said with a crooked, sarcastic smile that looked more like a grimace. “But I would think that Elizabeth is better company than me, unless she has an event and you’re lonely. Isn’t Satchmo enough companionship for you?”
“I want to be with you tonight, Neal,” Peter stressed.
“Why?” Neal asked as he closed one eye to get Peter into focus before plopping down gracelessly on the sofa beside his handler. As he slouched back into the cushions, all his limbs were lax and splayed out, so he resembled a sad marionette whose strings had been cut.
“Well, because you’re someone special in my life, and I want to be here for you and give you whatever you need,” Peter answered lamely.
“Yep, I am special,” Neal agreed softly. “I’m Special Agent Peter Burke’s Special CI because I solve cases for him and catapult his closer rates into the stratosphere.”
“It’s much more than that,” Peter objected. “I care about you, Neal, and I want you to know that.”
“Are we having a moment, Peter?” Neal smirked. “We are, aren’t we. We’re having a moment.”
“Neal, I’m serious. I can’t make this tragedy better for you. I wish I could have somehow foreseen how it was going to play out and intervened before you lost the love of your life. I can’t imagine that kind of loss, but I promise I will get to the bottom of it and make sure justice is done. Kate will be avenged, and you can help me do that, but we do it my way. I don’t want to lose you if you’re impetuous and you go off half-cocked. You’ll wind up back in prison and that would be such a waste. So, please talk to me about what you know, so we can start to make things right.”
After that long-winded plea that came from the heart, Peter waited for a response. However, none was readily forthcoming. When he turned to look at Neal, he saw the suffering man had his head thrown back on the sofa and his features had softened in repose, effectively erasing the deep lines of stress. He looked younger and more vulnerable after an overindulgence of an elixir meant for forgetfulness had rendered him totally oblivious to everything around him.
“Oh, Neal,” Peter breathed out softly as he let a gentle hand stroke the side of Neal’s face. “I’m so very sorry. You deserve so much more than what life has handed you. I would give a part of my soul to make it somehow easier for you.”
Neal stirred restlessly under Peter’s touch and gravitated toward a comforting warmth his unconscious body felt beside him. Before a gruff FBI handler knew what was happening, he had his arms full of a pliable and unaware con man who mumbled something incoherently as he snuggled close. Peter froze for an instant and watched the slight quivering of Neal’s eye lids, probably a sign that a bereaved man was seeing images in his drunken dreams. Peter could only hope they pre-dated that fateful day on a cold tarmac on the Hudson. It felt foreign and strange, but Peter eventually allowed his right hand to start at his burden’s shoulder and begin rubbing soft, massaging circles down to his slim waist. The touch was meant to be soothing, but it caused a completely different sensation down in Peter’s nether regions. He was becoming aroused and that was never on the agenda tonight!
Much later that evening, Peter returned home where Elizabeth was waiting.
“How did it go?” she asked eagerly.
“It didn’t, at least not the talking part,” was the curt answer she received, and Elizabeth was wise enough not to press her obviously distressed husband for details. But Elizabeth was very intuitive. That came naturally after ten years of marriage to a man she could read like a book, so she formed her own conclusion. There was only one thing that could knock her purposeful husband off his stride, but maybe he wasn’t ready to talk about that either.
Eventually, time blunted the pathos in a grieving man, and Neal was almost back to baseline. He never confided in Peter, so a savvy handler had to read between the lines to recognize the signs that his impetuous young friend was on his own crusade to achieve justice for Kate. It almost ended in tragedy, but finally the two partners agreed to form an alliance to get the job done.
Fast forward to more subterfuge because Neal still wasn’t completely invested in this trust thing, a concept so unfamiliar to his nature. Peter began to wonder if Neal even completely trusted Mozzie. A con man was a con man, after all, and when the chips were down, those kinds of people often only looked out for number one. But Neal managed to redeem himself in Peter’s eyes when he readily gave up every bit of a stupendous windfall to rescue Elizabeth from the likes of evil Matthew Keller. Actually, Peter’s wife had rescued herself, but, in the grand scheme of things, a handler and his human responsibility still had issues to work out.
“Hon, Neal’s still a work in progress. Don’t give up on him now,” Elizabeth pleaded in the young man’s defense. “Matthew Keller is the real villain, not Neal.”
Peter strove to be stern but fair and he concentrated on the initial concept of reworking someone into a better version of himself. A determined mentor forced himself to sublimate everything else while he took Neal apart in his mind like a broken toy that had to be fixed and reassembled correctly. Hopefully, the new creation would stand up to the most rigorous testing and prove that it was strong and reliable and could endure.
Of course, there was the expected pushback from time to time, but Peter stayed firm. Elizabeth thought this crusade to build Neal 2.0 was a bit cold and sterile, but perhaps it was a way for her husband to avoid facing his true feelings. But she had concerns when Peter developed doubts about his success and sought an outside opinion. Philip Kramer almost destroyed the two partners down the road.
Peter was like a man possessed by some unknown force in the universe when he gave Neal the nod to disappear and escape Kramer’s clutches. He became very conflicted because he knew he was responsible for setting a debacle in motion. Neal had become a friend, and the almost reformed criminal had been on the cusp of reaching the finish line before he was pushed into a corner. Peter had spoken glowingly on his behalf to the Federal board that could have set him free. With a certain amount of hubris, Peter made them aware that a dedicated and tenacious handler had assumed the role of Pygmalion to successfully transform a former felon into a law-abiding member of society. But now, thanks to Peter’s own past insecurity, Neal was forced to go on the run again. Somehow, Peter had to fix this horrendous misstep.
“Find him and bring him home, Hon,” Elizabeth told her soulmate. “You can’t feel at peace with yourself until you make it right.”
And that was exactly Peter’s reason for traveling halfway around the world to a tropical island with no extradition treaty. But Neal’s redemption wasn’t really Peter’s first thought as he found himself letting his emotions take charge while impulsively clinging to Neal in a small tower on Cape Verde. Pressing that warm and supple body to his own made Peter take stock of his uncharacteristic response. Suddenly, Neal stopped being a version of a wayward son. Maybe that had once been the case, but now he had become an object of desire, and Peter had never suffered such pangs of guilt in his entire life. It was so wrong for so many reasons, and Neal could never be aware of just how close his mentor had come to falling over a precipice.
Even though Peter had the best of intentions, Neal did become aware of his rescuer’s emotional dichotomy not long after their reunion. Peter’s desire was laid bare the next morning as he watched Neal emerge from the turquoise waves of the Atlantic after his morning swim. He was toned, sun bronzed, and glistening like a mythical selkie of Scottish lore, and in Peter’s eyes, he was beautiful beyond words. Neal had thrown a towel around his neck as he entered the airy villa, but he stopped midstride when he saw the expression on Peter’s face. Peter couldn’t decipher the look on his friend’s, but he wouldn’t have been surprised to see cynicism or even contempt.
“Neal,” was the only word an embarrassed and compromised former handler managed to utter in shame.
The instinctual object of his desire finally smiled softly and said in a melancholy tone, “I know, Peter, but we can’t. We can’t do that to Elizabeth.”
That was enough to snap Peter back to reality. “No, you’re right,” a mortified man uttered as he turned away from temptation, wondering when a convicted felon possessed greater moral scruples than an FBI Agent with a loving wife.
The rest of the time spent on an incarnation of Fantasy Island was dedicated to figuring out a way to bring Neal home. It was a type of rewind to a safer version of themselves, and with intuitive little Mozzie always hovering nearby, it was prudent to just pretend a certain poignant moment had never happened. Neal was good at that; Peter not so much.
When Peter returned home to Brooklyn, El detected something was out of kilter with her husband during their first night together in bed. Peter had always been an ardent lover, so she never had any complaints in that department. But after his return from his island adventure, Peter was like a demon, taking her wantonly with a sense of urgent passion, not just once, but several times during the dark hours of the night. He kept repeating that he loved her, over and over, as he stroked her soft curves and tantalized the erogenous parts of her body before pushing his rigid penis into her inner core. The sheets were wet with his ejaculate and there were bruises on her body, so the couplings were intense and even a bit rough. When nature dictated that a driven man was finally satiated beyond his capacity, Elizabeth turned to her lusty lover in the dim light.
“Tell me,” she whispered softly.
“Tell you what?” Peter asked just as quietly as he flipped onto his back to face the ceiling.
“Tell me what happened on Cape Verde,” Elizabeth encouraged, intuiting that Peter’s metamorphosis was somehow connected to Neal.
“I told you,” she felt her husband shrug. “Kramer’s bounty hunter shot Neal in the leg to keep him from running and Collins was intending to bring him in. But I managed to barter an old ‘Most Wanted’ felon for a younger one, so Neal got a pass from the powers that be in the Bureau in exchange for Rob MacLeish.”
“Sounds exciting but dangerous,” El commented dryly.
“Well, a bit, but in the end, everything turned out okay,” Peter said carefully.
“Did it?” El asked gently.
“Yeah, sure. Neal is back where he belongs with no prejudice, so he’s still my CI.”
Elizabeth refused to let her husband off the hook. Something was definitely not right, so she rolled her body close and used her fingers to turn Peter’s face to hers. “Hon, you wear your emotions on your sleeve, so I know something is bothering you. I think it concerns Neal, and I want to know if it’s some kind of guilt. Did something happen between the two of you? We’ve never had secrets between us, and that’s what makes us strong, so trust me now. Tell me what happened.”
“Nothing happened, El,” Peter whispered, “and that’s the truth, I swear.”
“But maybe you wanted it to?” a wise wife pushed.
Peter closed his eyes and sighed deeply. “Yeah, I think I did, and I feel so damn guilty for ever entertaining those thoughts. The worst part is, now Neal knows and that’s going to be really awkward.”
El waited a few beats to parse this confession. “Maybe Neal already knew, Hon. Do you really think he’ll make life difficult for you while you’re on the job? I just don’t see him using that as something to hold over your head like a form of blackmail. That’s not who he is.”
“Maybe not, but it’s now been exposed and let loose like a sin from Pandora’s box, so we can’t just hope to shove it back into obscurity again,” Peter said forlornly. “Maybe Neal can pretend because he’s good at compartmentalizing, but me, not so much.”
Elizabeth laughed. “You’re so easy to read, Hon, open and honest to a fault, and so unlike your furtive con man. But that’s your appeal and what I’ve always loved about you. I’m curious to know which one of the two of you instigated this thing that’s finally been exposed to the light of day.”
“Like I told you, there was no thing, maybe just a goofy longing look from me and a gentle rebuff from the object of my desire. Hon, I swear, it was a moment of temporary insanity on my end.”
“Neal actually turned you down?” El sounded astounded when she heard the facts, maybe more annoyed than jealous that her big, strong, and virile husband had been rejected.
“Yeah, he had more sense than me in the moment. Go figure,” Peter replied sheepishly. “He was quite the gentleman and said we could never hurt you that way.”
Suddenly, El seemed pacified and was smiling. “Neal is such a sweet soul, just as I’ve thought from the beginning. You shouldn’t feel guilty for loving him, Peter. I think I fell in love with him the first day he arrived on our doorstep.”
“I don’t think you’re using the word ‘love’ in the same context as me,” Peter mumbled wryly.
“I think I am,” El whispered kittenishly as she planted a sweet kiss on the tip of her husband’s nose. “It took you awhile, Hon, but I think we’re finally on the same page.”
Epilogue
Fate is a fickle bitch. Almost as if it had been predestined from the start, before a sublimated desire was ever given a chance to grow and flourish, everything came to a screeching halt. The promise of a new relationship on the horizon was interrupted by a heart-wrenching death that blindsided everyone. Now Peter was definitely a changed man as a result of the horrible cataclysm. After Neal’s “murder” at the hands of Matthew Keller, the joie de vivre seemed to have permanently abandoned a dedicated FBI agent’s life. His existence would have felt hollow and empty if he didn’t have the solace of his family, including a new son that he called by the name of another. A man in mourning went through the motions at work and tried to embrace acceptance and peace, but those were elusive concepts to internalize. There wasn’t any real closure because Peter hadn’t been able to finish what he had started almost four years ago, or even go forward with a new and promising dynamic. Instead, it was like a long literary saga missing a last chapter or a satisfying epilogue.
But Elizabeth knew her husband—every slight nuance, every farfetched notion, every impetuous thought that flitted through his head. One year later, she knew long before Peter that the Burke family was going to be taking a trip across the Atlantic to renew an acquaintance with a special someone integral to their lives. Because somehow the circle remained unbroken, and maybe the act of loving someone meant forgiving them, accepting them for who they were, and not trying to change them. And, amazingly, Elizabeth was good with that.