Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Chapter 1

“Hi there, beautiful,” said Neal to the early sixteenth-century celestial globe in its temperature-controlled display case. “You sit tight, and I’ll have you out of there in no time.”

He broke a couple of sports cold packs and set them on the pedestal to cool the ambient air and confuse the alarm system, then pulled off his gloves with his teeth, to better handle the glasscutter.

The library of the exclusive gentlemen’s club where the globe was displayed was all dark, well-oiled leather and teak cigar stands, and the weight of history was thick in the air. It was easy to imagine the scene a hundred years ago, when thieving had been less of a technical challenge and more of an art. Of course, one still got points for style in Neal’s opinion, so he finished scoring one arc with the cutter and moved its pivot so, with a little free-hand work at the lower point, the resulting hole in the glass would be heart-shaped. It would make extracting the globe trickier, but it was worth it.

He used the suction cups on the cutter to prize the glass free, set it carefully aside, and was just about to liberate the globe when the earpiece he was wearing clicked to life.

“Mockingbird to Blue Jay,” said a hoarse voice. “Do you read me?”

Neal rested his hand on the ice pack to cool his fingers. “What is it, Moz?”

“No names! And you need to vacate the birdhouse. I repeat, vacate the birdhouse. There are cats in the yard!”

Neal immediately abandoned the preliminary niceties and went directly for the globe. No point caring about the alarm if the cops were already here. “What kind of cats? NYPD?”

“Lions! Sabre-toothed tigers! Feds!”

“It’s a coincidence. Someone must have seen something and called it in.”

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

Neal didn’t respond. Mozzie’s bad feelings were legion and not to be taken seriously. “How much time have I got?”

Dammit, the heart-shaped hole was a fraction too small to easily extract the globe. He angled the base to the side and tried again.

“Depends if you want to get away,” said Moz sarcastically.

Which raised an interesting alternative. Neal smirked, anticipating Moz’s likely reaction. “Not necessarily.”

Mozzie spluttered in his ear. “Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no, don’t do it, Neal. It’s not worth it.”

“No names, Moz.” The alarm wailed as Neal finally managed to free the globe without damaging it. He swathed it in silk and put it safely in his bag. The glass heart, he left on top of the empty case. It wasn’t Valentine’s Day, but he still wanted to show his appreciation to his pursuers for their hard work.

Heavy footsteps sounded in the hall outside as he scooped his tools into his other bag and dived for the window, and then he was out in the warm night, the bag with the globe looped around his neck, and the other hooked over his shoulder, making climbing the side of the building in the dark delicate, challenging work. He scaled a drainpipe up a floor and hung the bags over a gargoyle, then grabbed his ID and a tie, and jimmied the window.

The feds had interrupted his heist. There hadn’t been any chatter on the police band, or Mozzie would have heard it, which meant they must have been tipped off somehow or it was a weird, cosmic coincidence. Besides, Neal had left his cold packs behind, and there was a faint chance, despite the condensation, that the FBI could get prints off them. “I’m going back in.”

“You’re crazy,” said Mozzie. “I want nothing to do with this.”

“Would you relax? I’ve got this.”

“Ha!”

Neal shut the window and looked around. The room was an unassuming staff kitchen. He disconnected the earpiece and tucked it into his pocket, then stripped off his black turtleneck to reveal a slightly rumpled dress shirt. He knotted his tie and turned on the light.

The counter was piled with the day’s newspapers and an old baseball cap. He put on the baseball cap, bundled his turtleneck into the trash, and examined his reflection in the window: medium build, plainly dressed. He could slip back into the crime scene, retrieve the cold packs and be out before anyone noticed.

He turned off the light and waited for his eyes to adjust, then let himself into the hallway and descended the stairs noiselessly. Agents were scurrying around like ants, this way and that, and while most were wearing blue FBI windbreakers, not all of them were. It was easy enough to shadow one of them back into the library.

Neal casually snagged a couple of evidence bags from someone’s pocket as they passed and was about to go over and grab the cold packs when a tall, harried-looking man strode in the door, his beige coat flapping.

Hardly anyone so much as looked his way, but the energy in the room shifted; the other agents’ bustling intensified, and the casual conversations quieted to a murmur as they concentrated on their tasks. “Hurry up with that,” growled one man to another.

One of the windbreaker drones, a serious-faced woman, her long black hair in a ponytail, went up to Beige Coat. “Boss, you’re gonna love this.”

Her voice was rich with amusement.

“What’s Caffrey done now?” asked Beige Coat.

“He left you a gift.” She led him to the empty case where the globe had been to show him the glass heart.

Neal halted at the sound of his name. The FBI’s arrival wasn’t a coincidence or a fishing expedition after all. They knew he was here. He changed strategy smoothly. If he showed any sign of uncertainty, he’d give himself away. He took out his ID.

He didn’t know what they had on him. They might even recognize him on sight. But no one had spared him a second glance so far, and high-stakes gambling was where Neal came alive. He blew out a silent breath and strode over to the pedestal.

As he did, one of the other Windbreakers called Beige Coat by name, so at least Neal had that to work with. Neal walked right up to Beige Coat and held out his hand. “Agent Burke, I presume.”

Burke and the lady Wind Breaker had been joking quietly about the glass heart, but at the interruption Burke turned, instantly alert. He accepted Neal’s handshake, his grip dry and firm without being obnoxious, and sized him up with a narrowed gaze. “Who are you?”

Up close, Burke seemed taller. He was late thirties, good-looking despite his dowdy clothes, and his piercing brown gaze seemed to see right through Neal’s confident façade. This guy is smart, it said. Don’t mess with him.

Neal opened his mouth to recite the name on his fake ID, but under Burke’s scrutiny somehow, ridiculously, he blanked. He couldn’t remember his alias. He could barely remember his real name.

“Interpol,” he said, and handed over the ID. It was chancy, inviting Burke to study it close-up: he might recognize Neal from the photo, or guess the ID was fake. He could even decide to call Interpol to verify his status. But Neal kept his nerve, and it paid off.

Burke flipped the ID open and read out, “Special Agent Chris Gates, Art Crimes.” He glanced up. “What are you doing here, Gates?”

It wasn’t the collegial welcome between law enforcement agents that Neal expected. If anything, Burke was bristling, though he covered his hostility with impatience. For a split second, Neal doubted the wisdom of his chosen course of action: Agent Burke FBI would not take kindly to being made a fool of. If he found out who Neal really was, he’d show no mercy.

On the other hand, at least he wasn’t questioning Neal’s credentials.

Neal took back his ID and tried charm. “Same as you. I’m after Caffrey.”

“Really,” said Burke flatly. “And what, pray tell, led you here.”

It was a good question. Neal had no idea what intel had brought Burke’s team to the Emerson Kedgley Club, nor how much the FBI knew, and he couldn’t afford to let slip any clues that might alert them to his current project. He slid his hand into his pocket and activated the earpiece, hoping the reception would be clear enough through the fabric of his pants that Moz could take any necessary precautions.

“Well, Agent Burke,” he drawled, to cover Moz’s no doubt shrill enquiry as to what was going on and to bring him up to speed, “as it happens, I found a lead in Caffrey’s hotel room. A sketch of the celestial globe.”

“Neal doesn’t leave clues,” said Burke. “He’s not sloppy.”

“Let’s just say he wasn’t expecting me to drop by.”

Burke’s gaze sharpened to laser intensity. “Are you telling me you’ve seen him? You’ve actually met him? There was nothing about that in the Interpol reports.”

He sounded almost hungry.

Neal took off his cap and ran his fingers through his hair, feigning sheepishness. “He must have got wind I was on to him. When I got there, the room was empty, he’d just cleared out, but I found the sketch in the trash and put two and two together.”

The serious-faced female agent raised her eyebrows at Burke. “That’s still closer that we’ve ever gotten.”

“Diana’s right,” said Burke grudgingly. “And he slipped through our fingers again tonight.”

“He could still be in the building,” said Diana. “We have all the exits covered.”

Burke tilted his head. “It’s possible. Knowing Caffrey, it’s just as likely he had a hot air balloon tethered to the roof or tunneled his way out with a spoon.”

“He is an slippery sonofabitch.” Neal waved his cap, gesturing to the room at large to distract from the smirk he couldn’t quite hide. “How about you? What led you here?”

Burke’s head jerked up, just a fraction. “Anonymous tip.” It was obviously a lie, but there was no way to call him on it, and Burke was already changing the subject. “Where is this hotel room? I want to see it—if he ran off in that much of a hurry, he might have left something else behind besides the sketch, even if it’s just a fingerprint.”

Refusal wasn’t an option.

“I’ll take you there,” said Neal, straightening his tie that was already straight. Hoping Mozzie was cleaning the place now.

Burke nodded sharply and looked around. “Where’s Jones?”

“He’s monitoring the perimeter, boss,” said Diana. She was attractive, with fantastic cheekbones, and her hands were bare of rings, but she barely spared Neal a glance, too focused on Burke and the case.

Meanwhile, Neal was secretly brimming with self-satisfaction: not only had he successfully stolen the globe and hidden it where he could collect it once the heat had died down, but he was about to get a personal escort through the FBI crime scene perimeter from the agent in charge. Mozzie was probably having a heart attack, and there was a high chance Neal was going to have to burn one of his favorite aliases before the night was through, but it was worth it. He could dine out on this for years.

Via walkie-talkie, Diana summoned a tall agent, maybe ex-military, who carried himself with an air of solemn responsibility. Burke’s second in command, apparently, because he gathered the other agents around to listen as Burke announced, “We’re searching this building, top to bottom. If Caffrey’s still here, I want him.”

Diana grinned. “That’s hardly news, boss.”

“Hush, you.” Burke swatted her with the sheaf of papers he was holding, maybe building plans. Then he pointed at Neal. “Give me half an hour to finish up here, and we can go.”

“I’ll help,” said Neal.

“All right.” Burke assigned teams to different areas, and everyone scattered to scour the building. Wow, the feds were pulling out all the stops for him—it was flattering in a way.

Neal was teamed up with Jones. They dutifully swept the floor in silence, checking every closet and hiding place, no matter how unlikely. Unsurprisingly, they turned up nothing more than a lot of cleaning equipment and a small bundle of weed, which Jones tossed into an evidence bag.

Neal did his best to assume an air of disappointment when Burke called the search to a halt with, “Okay, everyone, I’m calling it. He’s long gone. Diana and Jones, you finish up here. Where’s Gates? Let’s go—we’ll take my car.”

Didn’t Interpol outrank the FBI? In character, Neal pursed his mouth at Burke’s overbearing attitude, but he followed the guy out past six different agents—and those were just the ones he could see without blatantly scanning the area.

Burke drove a black Ford Explorer. He got behind the wheel without waiting, while Neal hung back and surreptitiously put his earpiece back in. “Moz, have you cleared out the hotel room?”

“I’m doing it now,” said Moz, sounding aggrieved. “Neal, did you have to—”

“Yes,” said Neal under his breath, cutting him off. “And hurry. Agent Burke and I are on our way.”

“You’re insane,” said Mozzie.

Neal grinned, tapped off the earpiece and put it back in his pocket. Burke would notice if he wore it; he was sharp and suspicious, and he hadn’t exactly taken a shine to Neal’s Interpol alter ego. Neal blanked his expression and climbed into the passenger seat.

Burke had already started the engine. He took off before Neal had his seatbelt fastened, following Neal’s directions to an uptown hotel.

Neal sent him a curious look. It should have been better now it was just Burke—only one federal agent to fool, and he was theoretically distracted with driving—but he was practically bristling with attention, and Neal didn’t feel safer. He felt like a sample smeared on a microscope slide.

He cleared his throat and forced himself to relax. “Anonymous tip, really?”

The corner of Burke’s mouth twitched. “Chris Gates.”

“That’s me.” Neal leaned back in his seat and stifled a fake yawn, so as not to seem too vigilant.

Rain was dotting the windshield, and Burke flicked the wipers onto intermittent. “I don’t recall seeing your name on any of the Interpol reports. I thought Caffrey wasn’t a priority for you guys.”

“I wasn’t exactly assigned to the case.” Neal laced his fingers together and injected self-consciousness into his voice. “It’s more of a, uh, hobby.”

“You’ve gone rogue.” Burke glanced at him, searchingly.

“I had some vacation days owing.” Neal was betting Burke understood how addictive the chase could be. He might resent a rogue Interpol agent blundering into his crime scene, but he’d get it.

And yeah, there went his eyebrow, lifting in recognition. “Vacation days. And you’re using them to chase Neal.”

Neal suppressed a shiver at the casual familiar use of his name. “Not chase. I’m going to catch him.”

“Hmm.” Burke sped up to make an orange light before it turned red. There was only the sound of the tires, the thrum of the engine, and the occasional rhythmic swish of the wipers.

“Did you really get an anonymous tip?” asked Neal in a low voice, in case the third time would be the charm.

Burke’s tongue came out to wet his lips, and he took one hand off the wheel to reach into his breast pocket and hand Neal a business card. “Come and see me at the office tomorrow. I’ll show you what we’ve got.”

Neal ran his thumb along the edge of the card to the point at the corner: Special Agent Peter Burke, New York White Collar Unit. A miniature FBI seal. Federal Plaza. There was no way in hell Mozzie would countenance Neal’s continuing this charade and braving the New York FBI offices, and trusting Moz’s risk calculations had kept Neal alive and out of prison this long. On the other hand, something had brought Burke to the Emerson Kedgley Club tonight, of all nights. He knew something. And if Neal was going to finish this project and dig himself out of his current debt, he needed to know what.

He pocketed the card. “Tomorrow, then.”

Chapter 2

The moment Peter tapped the light switch in Caffrey’s luxury hotel suite—of course it was a suite, and with a million dollar view, no less, and plush champagne-colored furnishings—he couldn’t think beyond the fact that Neal had been here. He’d lounged in that chair, slept in that bed. Used the bathroom. Maybe walked barefoot on the plush carpet.

It made him real in a way crime scenes never had.

Peter pulled on a pair of cotton gloves and started poking around. Gates stood motionless by the door. Right, he’d probably gone over the place earlier. “How did he pay for the room?” asked Peter. “Stolen credit card?”

“He checked in under the name Steve Tabernacle,” said Gates. “It’s an alias.”

Peter glanced at him. “We don’t have that one.”

Gates didn’t say anything. Didn’t gloat. Didn’t offer more.

“Was he alone?”

“According to the receptionist, yeah.”

Peter turned back to his investigation. Whether Gates wanted to catch Neal to make his career or he was fascinated by Neal’s brilliance, either way, Peter got it, but it wasn’t the kind of thing he could enquire about without giving himself away. They were LEOs; this wasn’t supposed to be fun.

He went to the writing desk in the corner. “Where’s the sketch?”

“Back at my place,” said Gates. “I’ll bring it when I come to the FBI tomorrow.”

Peter nodded without looking, trying instead to focus on the details of the room but hyperaware of Gates’ watching him, taking his measure. Maybe seeing more than Peter wanted him to. “You find any prints?”

“Nope.”

Peter gripped the desk leg and angled the glossy wooden tabletop to the light, squinting at it. Nothing. He straightened. “You’re right, he cleaned up after himself. I can’t imagine how he came to leave the sketch behind.”

“It was balled up in the corner behind the wastepaper basket. He must have missed it.”

“But you didn’t.” Peter was impressed, despite himself.

He’d said in the car that Neal wasn’t a priority for Interpol, and Gates hadn’t corrected him. The truth was, Neal wasn’t a priority for the bureau either. Peter’s bosses wanted the White Collar unit to focus on Wall Street and cases of political corruption, and leave art thieves to the police. Neal wasn’t violent, and half the time he operated off-shore. He was technically within White Collar’s purview, but well down the list. But Neal was pulling ever more technical and elaborate jobs, sometimes lucrative, sometimes whimsical, and Peter had all but memorized the Interpol reports and those of various European agencies. He knew Neal; he could catch him. So his team was pursuing Neal anyway, and as long as other cases kept ticking over, Peter’s boss would continue turning a blind eye. If they hit a brick wall in their other investigations—well, going rogue was all very well, but it didn’t give you access to the kinds of resources Peter was using to having at his disposal.

*

El was leaning over the new dining table, paging through artist portfolios and making notes on a legal pad, when Peter arrived home. She was wearing a soft blue t-shirt and yoga pants, at odds with her frown of concentration. “Hey, hon.” She finished her bullet point and dropped her pencil, her expression clearing. “How’d it go?”

Peter shook his head. “We’ll get him one of these days, but not today.”

“Well, did he at least leave you a present?” El moved into his embrace, resting her hand over his tie. Her eyes danced. “Cookies? Jewelry? A fingerprint?”

Peter snorted. “Two hairs on a hotel pillow, which may have been deliberately planted, and the hole he cut in the glass case—it was in the shape of a heart.”

“Aww, that’s sweet. He is flirting with you.” She grinned.

Peter resisted the urge to deny it. They had an unspoken agreement that he could continue his pursuit of Caffrey, however many nights it kept him late at the office or in the field, however many case files he brought home and studied, just so long as El could tease him about his alleged obsession. It was El who’d labeled it a mini-crush, and Peter had relayed the term to Diana, if not the rest of his team. (Diana had laughed and said, “Duh!”) All the same, Peter couldn’t let an accusation of flirting pass without some defense. “He has no idea who I am. For that matter, I don’t know him either. I could have walked right by him in the street today, and I wouldn’t have had a clue.”

“Yeah, you really need to get a visual. A nice glossy surveillance photo to hang over the bed.” El reached up on tip-toe and kissed him. “Good evening, Agent Burke. Welcome home.”

“Mm, good evening, Mrs. Burke.” He pulled her closer. “It’s good to be home. Has Satchmo been behaving himself?”

“He was gnawing on the bannister so I crated him, and when I went to let him out, he was fast asleep.” She pulled away and went into the kitchen. “If you want to spend time with the puppy, you have to come home before his bedtime,” she called over the sound of the kettle being filled and put on the stovetop.

There was no recrimination in her tone, and when she came back, Peter nodded. “You’re right. Tomorrow, I promise. How goes the search for next month’s featured artist?”

El was the assistant manager at an art gallery downtown. She wrinkled her nose. “I still have three portfolios to review tonight. Sorry, hon.”

“So in fact you’re saying it’s a good thing I didn’t come home earlier, because you would have had to clear the table for dinner.”

“Well, when you put it like that—”

“I have some work to do too.” Peter gave the open folios a cursory look—none were to his taste—and went upstairs to change and make notes based on what he’d learned that evening.

The bathroom smelled faintly of El’s favorite bath salts, and there was still condensation on the mirror. Peter stripped off and showered absently, thinking about Caffrey’s hotel room. Wondering where he was staying now he’d been ousted. Had he switched to another hotel? Left the city? Found some kind of a safe house? What would be his next move?

Peter toweled off and went to the bedroom to find an old t-shirt and shorts. Then he grabbed his laptop and sat on the bed, logging into the FBI network. He opened his Caffrey Notes file and added:

Steve Tabernacle – add to list of aliases, get Di to run the name
No safe house: cross-ref luxury hotel registrations with list of aliases for dates NC known to be in town
Chris Gates

He paused, saved, and closed his laptop.

Gates had been a little edgy, a little too charming. That could be down to the inevitable awkwardness of overlapping jurisdictions, or because he was so invested in the Caffrey case, he was working it on his own time. Anyway, there was no denying he was smart, determined and personable—plus, based on Peter’s assessment, not too trigger-happy. If Interpol was going to come barging into Peter’s crime scene, it could have been worse.

Peter still wasn’t giving up lead on the case without a fight. He had to catch Neal soon, and he had to catch him first.

Chapter 3

Neal arrived at Mozzie’s New York fortress of solitude, nicknamed The Multiplex due to its inordinate number of computer and CCTV screens, around one in the morning. He’d only been there a couple of times, due to Mozzie’s fear he might be followed.

The facilities were basic and functional: one fraying brown couch littered with newspapers; a scrap of carpet covering most of the floor; an alcove with a twin bed; a kitchenette with a breakfast bar, boasting an antique microwave, a small, noisy fridge, three cereal bowls and assorted mismatched cups; and thick cables snaking across the floor to the command center, which comprised four large monitors, hooked up to various computers and other pieces of arcane equipment that only Mozzie understood. A bonsai on the windowsill was the only frivolous detail.

Neal’s suitcases were dumped carelessly on the floor by the couch, along with a crumpled pair of rubber washing-up gloves and a cleaning rag, which Moz had presumably used to wipe down the hotel room. It was a fair bet Neal’s belongings, in particular his clothes, hadn’t been afforded the respect they deserved. He was going to have to get his hands on an iron.

Over everything, a silent alarm flashed, bathing the otherwise dim room in an intermittent blood-red glow. Mozzie hit a switch to cancel it and pulled off his chunky padded headphones as he swiveled to face Neal. “Exactly how many crimes did you confess to tonight?”

His toupee looked like a dead squirrel, but Neal held his tongue. He was going to need Mozzie if he intended to escape from this mess unscathed; this was no time to annoy him.

“Only credit card fraud, but I had to burn Steve Tabernacle.” Neal helped himself to a pair of cotton gloves from a box on the desk. “I need a clean fingerprint-free sheet of paper and a pencil.”

“Only one—how restrained!” Mozzie rummaged in a drawer and handed him a sketchpad and the stub of a pencil. “Tell me you got the celestial globe.”

“It’s in a waterproof bag dangling from a gargoyle on the exterior of the Emerson Kedgley Club. I’ll get it in a few days, once the heat’s died down.” Neal sat at the breakfast bar, flipped the pad open to a blank page, smoothed it to erase any existing prints, to be on the safe side, and started sketching the globe. “Moz, I think I’ve met my arch nemesis.”

“The fed.” Mozzie’s tone matched his disapproving scowl.

“Special Agent Peter Burke.” Neal stopped sketching, his pencil frozen at the apex of a curve as he remembered something. “Dammit.”

“What?”

“I forgot the cold packs.” They were the reason he’d gone back in, in the first place. Now the FBI might be able to get his prints. Well, that was even more reason to visit Burke at his office tomorrow, to find out. It wasn’t like they would compare an upstanding Interpol agent’s fingerprints with those of an art thief.

“That isn’t like you,” said Mozzie.

“That’s not all,” said Neal, and told him about blanking on his alias when he’d first met Burke.

Mozzie stood up and began pacing the cracked linoleum. “This is bad, very bad. Neal, you have to avoid this man at all costs.”

“I can’t, Moz. You know I can’t. The feds burst in with no provocation tonight, and they must have had a reason. I need to know what it is, and whether they’re going to show up next time. If I don’t get the rest of the items, I can’t pay Alex back by the due date.” Neal tore the sketch from the pad, ripped off the top of the sheet so the make of pad would be harder to identify, and balled the sketch up tight. He even dropped it on the floor and stood on it. “Besides, if I don’t go, Burke might put two and two together and realize I’m me.

“Suits don’t have that much imagination,” said Mozzie.

Having spent an hour in Burke’s company, Neal wasn’t so sure, but he’d long since learned not to feed Moz’s paranoia. “Maybe not, but why chance it? Give a man a glimpse of what he wants most in the world, and he gets greedy and lets down his guard. That’s as true for feds as it is for any other mark, and if there’s one thing Burke wants, it’s evidence. Let’s give him some.”

“The private files of Interpol Agent Chris Gates.” Mozzie’s eyes lit up despite his usual tendency to caution. He’d always had a penchant for unconventional creative projects. “The ultimate work of fiction.”

Neal picked up the sketch again and smoothed it out, so it would look as if he really had found it secreted behind a wastepaper basket. He went into the kitchenette, where Mozzie kept a store of stationery in one of the cupboards and slid the crumpled sketch into a plastic sleeve. That done, he gathered the necessary supplies and took them back to the breakfast bar. “It can’t all be fiction.”

“What are you talking about? Why on God’s green earth would we give them anything real?”

“Because he’ll know, Moz. At least some of it has to overlap with what they already have on me, and since we don’t know what they have, we’ll have to wing it.”

Mozzie dangled his mouse by its cord, letting it spin, the red LED light flashing like a smaller version of the alarm. “I can’t believe you’re seriously considering doing this.”

“You want me to tell Alex I can’t meet my obligations?”

“No, but—” Mozzie sighed, conceding defeat. “Trust you to back yourself into the most dangerous corner possible. What do we need to include?”

*

The next morning, Neal presented himself for inspection. He’d chosen an off-the-rack suit and American shoes.

“Chris Gates, travel weary Interpol agent.” Mozzie studied him carefully. “Explain the tie.”

“Gift from an ex-girlfriend.” It was the truth; the tie was the first thing Kate had ever shoplifted. Neal fingered the claret-colored silk.

Mozzie hmphed. “It would be more convincing if it had a few stains.”

“I’m not staining my tie,” said Neal. “Are we good?”

Mozzie passed him the briefcase, containing the fake Caffrey file. They’d stashed a few other pieces of equipment in a secret compartment. “Are you wearing the earpiece?”

“I’ll take it with me and put it in when I can.”

“You can claim it’s a hearing aid.”

Neal shook his head. “I wasn’t wearing it yesterday. Burke would notice.”

“You give the Suit too much credit,” said Mozzie, “but your caution is commendable. Stay in touch, all right? If I haven’t heard from you by noon, I’m triggering all the smoke alarms in a three-block radius to give you an escape route. And then scanning you for implants.”

“I’ll be fine.” Neal stood before the mirror on the wall by the door for a final check and slid on a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. He was Chris Gates, rogue Interpol agent on the trail of a brilliant art thief, and he looked the part. Even the slight shadows under his eyes, from staying up all night working on the file, were in character. Was there anything he was forgetting? He patted his breast pocket: wallet, ID. He was good. “Okay. Here goes nothing.”

*

The White Collar unit of the FBI was like any other office—desks, swivel chairs, computers and stacks of file folders, a coffee machine—except that it was swarming with FBI agents and there was a Most Wanted board on the wall. Neal kept his game face on, adjusted his glasses and looked around for Burke.

He was up on the mezzanine in a glass-walled office, standing next to Diana, the attractive, no-nonsense agent from the night before. They were reviewing a file together. Hopefully, one that didn’t include a photo of Neal.

Burke looked up, saw him and beckoned, and Neal took a breath and ran up the stairs to meet him.

“Gates,” said Burke in greeting. He looked alarmingly self-satisfied. “Good news. The Steve Tabernacle alias paid off—we’ve got Neal staying at luxury New York hotels during three prior heists. He must like those Egyptian cotton sheets.”

“Who doesn’t? You’ve been busy.” Neal was starting to regret having been so forthcoming.

He regretted it even more when Diana added, “You know what else? He had company for two of those visits. He’s got a girlfriend. She checked in under the name Alison Tabernacle—we’re assuming that’s an alias too.”

“Huh.” Neal tightened his grip on his briefcase. He and Moz hadn’t foreseen this. And even if he were willing to throw Kate to the wolves, he couldn’t admit anything or provide an overt misdirect about another woman, because there wasn’t anything about his love life in the work of semi-fiction that was Chris Gates’ Caffrey File—and that was supposed to be a complete catalogue of everything Chris Gates knew about Neal Caffrey. His scope for improvising was completely shut down.

In the absence of other options, he evinced mild surprise. “Really? I’ve been tailing Caffrey for three months, all over western Europe, and I haven’t seen any sign he’s working with anyone.”

Burke shrugged. “The most recent incidence of the mystery woman was last year. Maybe they split up.”

He said it easily, as if he were relating a curious piece of trivia and not talking about real people’s lives. Neal gritted his teeth, expecting the usual wave of regret and pain at thoughts of Kate, but apparently his system was overloaded with managing the current situation, because he hardly felt a thing.

“It’s a shame we don’t know more about her,” Burke continued to Diana. “If we could find her, we might be able to flip her, make her a cooperating witness, especially if they’ve broken up.”

At least that was one thing Neal didn’t have to worry about. Kate would never turn on him. He licked his lips, guarding his reactions.

“Okay,” said Burke to Diana, “you follow up on the evidence from last night. Let me know if we get anything.”

“On it, boss.” Diana closed the file she was holding and arched an eyebrow at Neal. “Nice tie.”

“Thanks.” Neal was too distracted to flirt back. He needed to get himself in check, take control of the situation. Especially since Burke’s attention was back on him, his smile warm and eager.

“You see what we can do with just an alias?” said Burke. “What else have you got for me?”

It was too late to abort now. Neal held up his briefcase and tapped it. “I’ve been tailing Caffrey for six months, all over Europe. I have plenty. And I’m willing to share if you’ll let me be in at the kill.”

A frown flickered across Burke’s face. “There’s not going to be a kill. Caffrey isn’t known to be violent, he’s not a danger to anyone. I’m going to arrest him, clean and simple.”

“It was a figure of speech,” said Neal, quickly. “I’m not really a gun guy either. So, do we have a deal?”

Burke studied Neal a minute, sizing him up (making Neal’s heart skip a couple of exhilarated beats; had he just given himself away? He mentally charted the fastest route to the stairwell door), and then clapped him on the back. “Come on, I’ll buy you a cup of FBI joe, and we’ll give inter-agency cooperation a try.”

*

Neal and Mozzie had argued all night about the file. “You can’t tell them that,” Moz had squawked, repeatedly.

“Would you relax?” said Neal finally. “This is ancient history. What does it matter if they know how I stole the Gaugin two years ago?”

“You’re showing off.” Mozzie looked disapproving. “The more they know about your MO, the more they can extrapolate, man.”

“But I’ll be there to guide their extrapolations in the wrong direction.” Neal had been sanguine, but now, with his work spread out on Burke’s desk, subject to Burke’s piercing perusal, and a growing list of notes on his notepad, he wondered if Moz hadn’t had a point. Burke was obviously itching to get working on some of those leads, and not all of them were deliberate red herrings.

“The Antioch manuscript?” Burke glanced up, eyebrows raised. “Are you sure about that, Chris? It wasn’t on our radar.”

“Eighty percent sure,” said Neal, cursing internally. “It’s a hunch, but—”

“No, no, you’re right.” Burke was examining the photos, reading the fake report. “Brilliant and daring—it’s got Caffrey’s fingerprints all over it.”

Neal froze, wondering if Burke had identified him after all and was playing some twisted mind game, appealing to his vanity to make him reveal even more. But no, that was genuine admiration in the agent’s voice, Neal was sure of it.

Neal forced his façade back into place just as Burke glanced up smirking, looking almost proud of Neal’s exploits—until he too caught himself and wiped his expression clean. Mostly. “This is good work you’ve done here.”

Neal shrugged. “I showed you mine…”

He kept his posture relaxed and his ego firmly in check. He got it now: Burke’s initial wariness hadn’t been suspicion of Neal’s cover nor disdain for Interpol; he’d been territorial. And if he didn’t share now, Neal had no more cards to play and this whole risk would have been for nothing.

Burke stared at him a moment longer, just long enough to make Neal sweat, then he tipped his head in capitulation and picked up the phone. “Jones, bring the Caffrey file to the conference room. Yes, all of it.” He hung up and got to his feet, rubbing his hands together with ill-disguised glee. “We’re going to need a bigger workspace.”

Neal got up too and took advantage of the move to step forward and check out Burke’s desk. “That’s your wife?”

“Elizabeth. We’ve been married coming up on two years,” said Burke, smug and with good reason. A stunning brunette grinned out of the photo frame in a cheap t-shirt and jeans but with depths of humor in her eyes. A flaxen puppy sprawled on the grass beside her.

Neal looked away. He’d never expected to find himself jealous of a G-man.

Chapter 4

Chris was openly skeptical about the FBI’s coffee machine, so Peter took him down to Federal Plaza and they bought lattes from the cart there, and when they got back, Jones and Diana were dumping all four boxes of Caffrey files on the conference room table.

Peter had forgotten to introduce Chris earlier, so he made a point of it now. “Jones, this is Chris Gates from Interpol. Chris, Jones.” He put his hands on his hips. “And you’ve met Diana, my probie.”

“You should be honored.” Diana patted the nearest box. “He’s very selective about who he lets work on the Caffrey case.”

“You could even say possessive,” said Jones, bringing the innuendo.

Chris lowered his voice, playing along. “Wait, I thought Agent Burke was married.”

“That’s why it’s star-crossed,” said Diana, with a smirk. “That and the fact Caffrey’s a criminal, and we’re going to catch him and put him behind bars.”

Peter’s face heated, and he shook his head. “That’s enough, you two. Get out of here.”

Diana laughed outright, and she and Jones left the room. Chris watched her go.

“Don’t get your hopes up. She has a girlfriend,” said Peter, glad to change the subject to someone else’s love life. He opened a box and took out the top file folder. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

But before they could get started, Jones hurried back in. “Peter, we’ve had a call from Eric Dunham of Eric Dunham Capital. Says he had a nineteenth century painting worth seven-hundred thousand that’s been stolen and replaced with a forgery.”

Peter sighed and put the file back in the box. “Caffrey’s going to have to wait. Wall Street takes precedence,” he told Chris. “You want to ride along?”

“Sure.” Chris straightened his glasses. “Why not?”

*

In the car on the way to Dunham Capital, Chris glanced across at Peter. “Does Wall Street always take precedence, even when it’s an art theft?”

“Yeah.” Peter tapped his thumb against the steering wheel. “We scratch their backs, sometimes they give us a tipoff about insider trading, or we find signs of dirty dealings in the course of our investigations. White Collar covers financial and art crimes, but the pressure from on high is to focus on the former. You must know the drill.”

“Oh, absolutely,” said Chris. “There’s a reason I’m chasing Caffrey on my own time.”

“You’ve gathered some useful intel on him,” said Peter. “Why share it with the FBI instead of the Interpol agent assigned to the case?”

“You said it yourself,” Chris was staring straight ahead through the windshield. The corner of his mouth tilted. “Caffrey’s not dangerous. And the Interpol agent assigned to the case—”

“Laurie Fox.” Peter recalled the name from the reports.

“Yeah,” said Chris. “Let’s just say she has something of a scorched earth policy. We don’t really get along.”

Peter swallowed. He could picture it all too easily: Agent Fox and her team swarming a museum, their weapons drawn, catching Neal in some felonious act; Neal ignoring the demand to remain still and running for it; a bullet catching him unawares. Blood everywhere. The life and brilliance draining out of him.

A death certificate crossing Peter’s desk.

He sucked in a breath. “Then we’d better catch him first.”

*

Dunham's corner office was well-appointed and aggressively patriotic, from the signed photo of Donald Rumsfeld to the three American flags. Dunham himself was on the phone when they arrived, pacing behind his desk, apparently in the process of firing someone and not mincing his words about it. He was broad-shouldered and bullish, with short-cropped blond hair.

While they waited, Chris drifted over to a glass case along the internal wall, containing various items of sporting memorabilia. Peter stood still, watching Dunham, assessing him and, since he apparently felt no need for privacy, listening in on his side of the call.

It was at least another minute before Dunham disconnected and turned to them. “FBI?”

“Special Agent Peter Burke.” Peter made himself step forward and offer a handshake, though he baulked at their disrespectful treatment so far. “This is Chris Gates from Interpol.”

Chris glanced up from the display case. “Mike Tyson’s boxing gloves. You’re a collector.”

“From The Bite Fight,” said Dunham, proudly.

“Mm.” Chris’ eyebrows conveyed polite distaste, and Peter had to suppress his own grimace.

“You say you’ve been robbed,” he said, forcing them back on track. “A painting?”

“It’s next door.” Dunham led them through a door next to the display case, into the adjoining boardroom with plush leather chairs around the table and a crystal decanter and whisky tumblers on the sideboard. On the wall hung an oil painting of a gladiator standing over his vanquished foes who lay bleeding in the dust while an audience looked on. It was housed in an ornate gilt frame.

“Cheery,” muttered Peter.

But the grisly scene captured Chris’ attention. “Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Pollice Verso,” he said, stepping closer. “Nice.”

“According to my insurance appraiser, it’s a forgery,” said Dunham. “Sometime in the last six months, someone has stolen the original.”

Under normal circumstances, Peter would have taken the painting to one of the bureau’s experts to verify the claim, but Chris was already leaning in, examining the painting closely.

“Your appraiser’s right. It’s a good likeness, but the brushwork indicates some hesitancy, here and here, and there’s too much yellow in the background. It should be pinker.”

Peter went over to see where Chris was pointing. “You’re familiar with the original?”

“It was displayed in London’s National Gallery a few years ago, before being returned to a private collection.” Chris stood back, giving the gladiators one last critical perusal, then turned to Dunham. “Do you have the provenance certification?”

“We’ll also need to talk to whoever initially authenticated the painting,” said Peter. “Have you or your staff noticed any signs of a break-in?”

“No,” said Dunham. “My assistant, Trudy, will give you the papers and contact details. Let me know when you’ve found the guy, okay?” He went back into his office and closed the door.

“Charming guy,” said Chris.

“He’s a prince,” said Peter. “Come on, let’s go find Trudy.”

“Wait.” Chris moved the decanter and glasses to the conference table, took a Swiss army knife from his pocket and knelt up on the sideboard below the painting, where he efficiently released it from its wall brackets.

Peter went to help lower the heavy canvas’ to the table. “What are you looking for?”

“It’s a forgery—maybe the forger left some kind of signature.” Chris flashed a smile. “It’s what Caffrey would have done.”

“No doubt about that.” Peter eyed the painting through narrowed eyes. “You think this is his work?”

Chris shook his head. “Please. Caffrey would have done a better job of color-matching the original.”

The back of the painting didn’t have any helpful messages or signatures, but Chris pointed to a few narrow indentations around the edge of the frame. “These marks are from a knife or some other tool he used to lever the original Pollice Verso out of its frame.”

“Then he put the forgery in its place,” said Peter, catching on.

“Less likely anyone would notice if he used the original frame.” Chris ran his fingertip along the outer edge of the painting, where it met the back of the frame. “It’s professional quality work. I’d lay money they took their time.”

“Inside job?” Peter peered at the tiny gouges along the top of the frame, where Chris hadn’t touched. They weren’t fresh; there was dust in the indents. “It was a couple of weeks ago, minimum.”

Chris looked where Peter was pointing, nodded. “Yeah. You’ve got a good eye.”

It wasn’t the first time Peter had been complimented on his attention to detail—he’d built his career and his solve rate on it—but that was usually the kinds of details found when combing through files for the third or fourth time. He usually left physical evidence to the professionals. So the acknowledgement felt good, especially coming from a colleague who was so clearly an expert. Peter put his hands on his hips and looked down at the forgery, considering the case. “So Dunham’s right about the painting being stolen. I guess we don’t have to look far for a motive.”

“About as far as the next room,” agreed Chris, jerking his head toward the door to Dunham’s office.

Peter picked up the forgery. He’d get the tech guys at the bureau to go over it too—who knew what they’d turn up. “Come on. Let’s hope the assistant’s more helpful than her boss.”

Trudy was not, in fact, a great deal of help, which was infuriating given Dunham had called the FBI, not the other way around, but then Chris smiled at her and she smiled back and unbent long enough to give them everything they needed: the original certification and a comprehensive list of everyone who had security access to the floor over the previous six months. The boardroom didn’t have its own security system, so anyone could have gone in.

“Does that smile always get you what you want?” asked Peter, as they walked back along Wall Street to the car.

“Honey, flies.” Chris gave a smug shrug and checked his watch. “Hey, listen, I have to make a call. See you back at the FBI?”

Peter checked the time too. “If you want, but I’m meeting my wife for lunch in twenty minutes, and you’re welcome to join us.”

Interpol agents moved around a lot. It had to be a lonely life, and Chris was a good guy with an eye for art. Peter was pretty sure he and El would get along like a house on fire.

Something flickered across Chris’ face—wistfulness or doubt, Peter wasn’t sure—but he smiled. “Sounds great. Give me a couple of minutes?”

“No rush. El works at a gallery in mid-town. I’ll let her know to meet us.” Peter unlocked the car and placed the gladiator forgery carefully into the trunk.

“Or we could meet at her gallery,” suggested Chris. “I’m always interested to see new art, and I know a great little Japanese place in a basement on West 35th.”

“Izakaya Mew. El loves that place.” Peter himself wasn’t a fan of sushi, but he could take being outnumbered with good grace if it made El happy. “Sounds like a plan.”

Chapter 5

The painting was a massive seascape in teal and blue, with a subtle Pacific motif and truly magical light that seemed to shimmer through the water. It was also too close to the doorway.

“A few inches to the left,” El told her assistants Des and Isaac, who dutifully moved it along.

Anahera, the artist, folded her arms. “But the shadows—”

“Don’t worry, babe.” El patted her shoulder. “We’ll fix the lighting. I promise, it’s going to be great. Des, that’s perfect. Only one more to go, which is just as well, because I have a lunch date.”

“Let me guess,” said Des. “A tall, dashing FBI agent?”

“And an Interpol agent of indeterminate height,” said El. “Two for the price of one, today.”

“Well, that’s just greedy.” Des pouted, while holding the painting steady so Isaac could fix the brackets to the wall.

They’d just finished placing the last work in the series when Peter and another man walked past the gallery’s plate glass window on their way to the door. “Okay, guys.” El clapped her hands to get Des and Isaac’s attention. “Break for lunch. We’ll sort out the spotlights and troubleshoot any other issues when I get back, okay? Anahera, you don’t have to worry. It’s going to be amazing, really. One day I’m going to be boasting to people about how I put on your first New York show and you never looked back.”

“Thanks, El.” Anahera smiled through her nerves. “I hope you’re right.”

Des came over, dusting his hands on his jeans. “You’re new to the city, right?” he asked Anahera, offering a handshake. “Me and Isaac are getting shawarma, if you want to come with. We can show you around.”

“That sounds great, actually.”

El gave Anahera’s shoulder one last squeeze and went into the main room of the gallery to greet her husband and his new colleague. “Aw, look, it’s the Neal Caffrey Joint Task Force and Fan Club! You must be Chris.”

Chris blinked at her joke and shot Peter a sly teasing glance. Then he leaned in and said, “Yes, indeed. It’s a great pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Burke.”

“Oh, please, call me El.” She beamed, liking him instantly. He was slimmer than Peter, but still well-built. Along with his dark hair and blue gaze, the heavy-rimmed glasses gave him a Clark Kent-ish appearance, someone you could count on—not a boy scout like Peter with his moral bedrock, but determined and loyal. And he and Peter had hit it off with unprecedented speed. El half-wished she could ask Des his opinion—her own gaydar wasn’t very reliable. She hadn’t had a clue Peter might be bi until he came out to her on their third date.

Chris caught her speculative look and raised his eyebrows as if to ask, Well, what do you think?, and she blushed slightly, because his smile was downright gorgeous, and turned to Peter. “So where are we going? Do we have a plan?”

“Chris suggested Izakaya Mew,” said Peter.

“Ooh, sushi! Good call.” El sent Chris an approving look, and laughed at Peter’s expression. “And you, my dear husband, are going along with it because you love me, right? Right. I’ll get my purse.”

“I promised Chris we could take a spin around the gallery before lunch,” said Peter.

“An art lover?” El turned to Chris again. “Are you a collector? Should I have my sales hat on?”

“I have a small collection, but I’m not looking to buy anything at the moment,” said Chris easily. “I got a little over-extended.”

“Aw, that’s a shame. We have some great pieces in, especially if you’re into abstract expressionism.”

“I noticed. The de Kooning in the next room is fantastic.”

“Isn’t it, though? Okay, docent’s hat.” El took off her swipe card on its lanyard and gave it to Peter. “Hon, could you get my purse from my desk? I’ll show Chris around.”

Peter dutifully headed to the back of the gallery, and Chris’ gaze followed him until Chris seemed to catch himself and bring his attention back to El. “All right. Show me what you’ve got.”

“Let’s start through here.” El ushered him through the arched doorway into the room with the de Kooning and several other works. She’d curated the collection herself, so when Chris openly admired not just the paintings but the way they were arranged to play off each other, she took the compliment personally.

They came to stand in front of a work by a lesser-known artist. “You can see the Kandinsky influence,” said Chris.

“Yeah, the tones are a lot like his improvisations.”

Chris was studying the painting with an acquisitive intensity, which didn’t lessen when his blue eyes met hers. A faint flutter started in her stomach. She cleared her throat and said the first thing that came to mind. “That’s a beautiful tie.”

Chris’ expression froze into a polite mask. He picked up the end of the pink and lilac silk tie, regarded it for a moment, then dropped it. “It was a gift from my ex-girlfriend. She got the house and the car, I got the tie. Well, actually, she got the art. There was no house.”

“I’m sorry.” El gave a sympathetic grimace and privately revised her assessment of Chris: not gay then. Perhaps bi, like Peter. “Working for Interpol must be hard on a relationship.”

“I move around a lot,” he agreed, and rested his hand lightly on the small of her back to guide her to the next painting. She swallowed.

She was a happily married woman, a New Yorker, with a lot of friends, and she’d lived a full and adventurous life, but Chris’ casual touch was like a magnet aligning her nerves, drawing all her awareness. If she were single— or better, if she and Peter were a different kind of couple, less traditional and monogamous, she’d be considering a three-way fling.

But Peter took his marriage vows seriously, and so did El. She moved away, not so fast as to indicate offense, but enough to demur, and Chris didn’t bridge the distance between them again.

Chapter 6

Neal sat with Peter and Elizabeth, the three of them crowded around a two-person table in the busy sushi bar. In theory it was just like any other con, Neal smiling and exercising his charm, but Peter and El weren’t like other marks. Neal was used to targeting the ruthless, jaded holders of vast fortunes or extensive estates; the greedy, whose hubris generated convenient blind spots; or rich older women who treated him as a beautiful prize to add temporarily to their collections. He felt no compunction about adjusting the bottom lines on their balance sheets. Their feelings were simply tools to be used against them.

The Burkes were down-to-earth wage-earners, and so friendly that, if they’d been anyone else, Neal would have suspected them of running their own con on him, but he’d already given Peter what he wanted—a look at Chris Gates’ files—and Peter hadn’t cut him loose. Instead he’d invited him to lunch with his wife.

Well, whatever. Access to the FBI’s files aside, they had nothing worth stealing. There were a few pieces at the gallery which might have tempted him, but he liked El, and Neal didn’t steal from people he liked.

He’d put his hand on her back at the gallery. It hadn’t been a calculated move; Neal generally refrained from hitting on married women when their husbands were around, and that went double when the husband in question was a federal agent! But from the moment she’d moved out of reach, he’d been acutely aware that he hadn’t had sex since Kate left.

“So, what brings you away from the office?” El asked them, once their food had arrived. “I thought you’d be mesmerized by the Caffrey files until I had to call to remind Peter to come home and sleep.”

“Wall Street case,” said Peter. “Art forgery. But Chris took me through his case notes on Neal this morning, and there’s some good stuff there, maybe half a dozen fresh leads. How long did you say you’d been chasing him?”

“Three months,” said Neal. “Italy, France, Iceland and here. He gets around.”

“Didn’t you say he pull a job in Monte Carlo last month, honey?” asked El.

“Suspected,” said Peter. “There was no solid evidence. His trail didn’t lead you to Monaco, Chris?”

Neal swallowed a piece of sashimi. He didn’t want to talk about Monte Carlo. “He gave me the slip in Iceland. You know how it is: I’m good, but Caffrey’s better.”

“Kid’s a goddamn genius,” said Peter, gruffly. “Imagine what he could do if he went straight.”

“Yeah, but then he wouldn’t get to play hide and seek with you two.” El grinned at Chris. “You’ll have to come to dinner, so I can show you Peter’s Neal Caffrey shrine.”

Peter colored. “I don’t have a shrine.”

“A big wall of crazy, just like in those serial killer movies. Pushpins and thread connecting all the newspaper clippings and conspiracy theories,” said El, teasing him. She winked at Chris. “No, don’t get your hopes up. It’s actually just a bookshelf. Every time a report comes in that Neal’s pulled a heist, Peter buys a book.”

“To celebrate?” Neal sent Peter a quizzical look, joining in the teasing, but secretly he was wondering how deep the agent’s fixation ran. Peter was astute, with good intuition, and so focused his gaze could probably cut through steel. That was obvious after spending five minutes with the guy. And while it was flattering to have all that attention turned in Neal’s direction, and the recognition of Neal’s talents made his nerves sing, it was also a looming disaster that would strike terror into the hearts of lesser men. Neal had no way of knowing how many of the leads Peter had gleaned from the Chris Gates file were decoys planted to distract him and how many genuine ones, which would otherwise have gone undetected by the FBI. He only hoped the payoff would be worth it.

“Ha! No, I’m just trying to figure out what makes him tick.”

“Okay, so what kind of a book do you buy to commemorate the theft of a sixteenth-century celestial globe? Astrology?” Neal speculated aloud. It was a risk to even raise the question. If Peter researched the globe and somehow connected the dots, it would make Neal’s next few jobs all the more perilous. But it was worth it for the insight into his pursuer, and he was genuinely curious to know.

But Peter shrugged the question off. Maybe El had been exaggerating.

“How about you, Chris?” said El. “Any shrines in your closet?”

Neal tilted his head, pretending to consider. “No shrine, but I do have my share of souvenirs.”

“Just so you know,” said Peter, “I’m probably going to be working this Dunham thing for the next couple of days. I know you’re officially on vacation, so I’ll understand if you don’t want to—”

“No, no, I’m happy to help out.” It was a chance to familiarize himself with the other side’s playbook, as well as cementing his standing with Peter. Neal did not want to miss out on his quid pro quo with the bureau’s files on him. He adjusted his glasses and offered an awkward smile. “It’s fun working with a partner again. It’s been a while.”

Peter smiled back without reserve. “Yeah, me too. Great.”

El beamed at them both, as if giving them her blessing, and started enthusing about a new artist who had an upcoming show at the gallery. “It’s opening Thursday night,” she told Neal. “You should come, if you’re still in town.”

“I’d love to.” If nothing else, he could use his appearance there to provide an alibi for his next heist.

“Okay, well, I should get back to work.” El leaned across to give Peter a peck on the lips. “Remember what I said last night, hon: if you catch Neal, I want to meet him, even if I have to pose as an FBI agent to do it.”

Neal laughed in surprise, raising his eyebrows at the two of them.

“Yeah,” said Peter drily. “I’m sure Chris doesn’t think that’s at all weird.”

El grinned. “This is New York. Weird is the new black, right?”

“No argument here.” Neal sat back, basking in the irony and admiring the Burkes’ banter and their confidence in their relationship. If El liked to flirt with her husband by invoking another man’s name—a criminal, no less—who was he to judge?

*

“For the love of sweet baby fur seals, what were you thinking?” said Mozzie, when Neal got back to the Multiplex that evening and casually announced he’d helped solve the Dunham case and had lunch with the Burkes. “This was supposed to be a simple in-and-out operation, a Rothko, if you will, and you’re turning it into something by Escher!”

“I was maintaining my cover. It just happened.” Neal dropped onto the couch, turned sideways and put his feet up, and took a healthy bite of the sandwich he’d brought with him. He felt great: he’d bounced back from his brain-blank of the previous night to nail the role of Interpol agent, completely fooling Peter and earning his trust by pitting him against a common enemy, actual Interpol case agent Laurie Fox. He’d also ably assisted with Dunham’s arrest, thus ensuring his welcome when he returned to the FBI tomorrow to see his files.

Mozzie pushed off from the desk to bring his swivel chair closer so he could loom more effectively. “You’re playing with fire, Neal! The fed’s already obsessed with catching you—if he finds out you conned him and his wife, too, there’ll be hell to pay.”

“Peter’s not like that.” Neal took another bite and chewed, ignoring Moz’s squawk of outrage at the informal nomenclature. “He’d be impressed. You worry too much.”

Mozzie scowled. “Conservation of paranoia—every outrageously over-confident action has to have an equal and opposite reaction.”

Neal laughed and filled him in on the details of the Dunham case.

Mozzie held up his hands. “Wait, wait, wait. If he was the one who forged the provenance, why call in the FBI? Surely you’d go to PC Plod to rubber stamp your paperwork.”

“I guess he didn’t count on me and Peter.” Neal got up, rolled up a newspaper from the counter, and smacked the cockroach climbing the wall by the window, leaving a smear. He wrinkled his nose and tore off the corner of the newspaper to clean up, then threw the whole lot in the trash. “Weren’t you going to call an exterminator?”

“Only one of the companies passed my security vetting process, and they’re booked up through next month,” said Mozzie sulkily. “It’s not like I have a major infestation—it’s just one or two. Think of it as part of the New York experience.”

“Well, it shouldn’t be.” Neal considered himself reasonable and adaptable, but compared to the upmarket hotels he was used to, the Multiplex was lacking, and cockroaches were several bridges too far, as far as he was concerned. He went back to his dinner, but he’d lost his appetite, and Mozzie’s next words only served to cement that position.

“If you don’t like it, you can always find other accommodation. Oh, no, I forgot. You can’t. The FBI is probably monitoring every hotel in the Tri-State Area.” Mozzie swiveled back to face his array of screens. “Oh look, you have another message from Alex.”

In lieu of answering, Neal picked up a copy of Le Monde and scanned the headlines.

“Neal, you’re going to have to talk to her sooner or later. She knows where I live, and I do not want her coming to exterminate me!”

“I know, Moz. I’ll call her now.” He took out his phone and, as he dialed, tried to access the good humor that had carried him through the day, but ended up mostly faking it.

“Caffrey,” said Alex, before he could say anything. “Where the hell have you been?” There was enough vitriol in her voice, it was a wonder his cellphone didn’t burst into flames.

“Hi, Alex. Nice to hear from you, too.” Neal aimed for soothing warmth. “Have you been well?”

“Oh, fuck you, Neal. You stole my money and vanished, and you think you can make it all right with a few pleasantries? Think again!”

“Come on, Alex, you know me better than that. I wouldn’t steal from you. It was a loan, and I’m going to pay you back by the due date, I promise. No need to get worked up.”

“Worked up?! I had fifty thousand dollars in a suitcase under my bed, and I came home to find an IOU in its place! This isn’t a game, Neal. I needed that money! You stole it!”

“Borrowed.” It was an important distinction; Neal didn’t steal from his friends.

“Whatever. I’m done with you.” Her scowl was audible.

Neal stood up and went to the painted-out window, trying to see through the scratches in the paint to the street outside. It was nearly dark, and despite a long day detecting with the FBI, his senses prickled to life. Cat burglars were notoriously nocturnal. “Don’t be like that, Alex. You’ll get your money back. When have I ever let you down before?”

“Uh, Copenhagen? Chicago? A whole of lot places starting with C, now I come to think of it.”

“Well, not this time.”

“It’s too late, Neal. We’re done.” There was an alarming finality to her tone. Neal didn’t want to lose her as a friend, nor as an underworld contact, not to mention that, if she were pissed enough, she could do serious damage to his reputation and then no one would do business with him.

“Trust me,” he said, but it was too late. She’d already disconnected. He deleted the call from his phone’s logs, out of habit, then tossed the device onto the couch. “Well, that went well.”

“Hell hath no fury like a thief with an unexpectedly empty coffer,” observed Mozzie, who’d been openly listening in to Neal’s side of the conversation. “Even your famed silver tongue can’t work miracles.”

“She’ll get over it once I’ve paid her back,” said Neal, convincing himself as he said it.

Mozzie scrunched up his face. “Maybe throw in a gift basket.”

Neal sighed. “Well, if we hadn’t taken her fifty grand, we couldn’t have financed our search for The Ambassadors Collection, so it wasn’t as if I had much of a choice.”

“Hey, I’m not the one you need to convince.” Mozzie swiveled back to his monitors and brought up an image of Holbein’s The Ambassadors and, in another window, their acquisitions list with strikes through the items Neal had already collected. “What are you going after next?”

“The Museum of Natural History has a polyhedrial sundial in its collection,” said Neal. “Currently not on display.”

“Can you do it with the feds breathing down your neck?” Mozzie frowned. “That Suit of yours is proving more dangerous than I thought.”

“Piece of cake.” Neal picked up his phone and flopped back down onto the couch. “I’m going to use his wife’s exhibition opening as my alibi.”

Chapter 7

El arrived home at eight having worked late on the gallery’s financial accounts and, despite that, feeling more upbeat than she had in months. She shut the door before Satchmo could make a run for it—he really should be in his crate by now—hung up her coat and came into the dining room, the puppy trailing along like an adoring entourage, to find Peter adorning some FBI files with attractive multi-colored Post-It notes.

“Hey, hon,” said El. “Sorry I’m late.”

“Oh.” Peter looked up, blinked and glanced at his watch. “Whoa.”

“Time flies when you’re having fun, huh?” El grinned at his expression. Apparently he’d been as caught up as she had. Which probably meant whatever he was working on had something to do with Neal Caffrey. “What are you doing?” she asked innocently, seeing if he’d confirm her theory.

“Flagging discrepancies between Chris’ file and ours, to discuss with him tomorrow. We’re getting close. I can feel it.” He didn’t say Neal’s name; it was implied.

El shook her head in amusement and went to the kitchen to put last night’s leftovers of chicken cassoulet into the microwave. While it heated, she crouched down and made a fuss of Satch, rubbing his soft little ears between her fingers, and letting him cover her with puppy licks. “Sorry I was out late, baby. Once this exhibition opens, I’ll have more time to play with you, I promise.”

He responded by play-biting her thumb, his tail thrashing like a weed-whacker.

“No,” she told him firmly. “No biting. Bed-time for little puppies.” She clipped his leash on and took him out onto the patio, then crated him with a fresh bowl of water. “Sleep well, baby Satch.”

She washed her hands and dried them on a gold-colored towel that hung on a hook by the oven. It was part of a set, a house-warming present from her and Peter’s best friends, Sonja and Terry, who had moved to London four months earlier: not just another country, but worse, a different time zone. Despite all of their best intentions, the thrice-daily phone calls and emails had been tailing off. Sonja and Terry were busy adjusting, traveling, meeting new people, and El and Peter had their respective careers, plus a new puppy. And El didn’t want to go on about how much she missed them, for fear they’d hear it as reproach.

But today had been good, overriding the unsettling feeling that turning thirty had marked the start of a process of gradual attrition, close friends moving away, changes, goodbyes. The lunch with Chris had been both nostalgic and new, and given Peter didn’t bother making friends, most of the time, it was unusual.

El ladled the cassoulet into bowls and carried it through to the dining room, where Peter had heard her coming and was hastily stacking the files and putting them aside. She set the food on placemats and said, “So, Chris is fun. And very easy on the eye.”

“He’s a good guy. Good agent.” Peter looked up, eyebrows raised. “What are you thinking?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” El sat down and picked up her spoon, trying not to laugh. “Maybe that I could distract him while you run off with Neal?”

Peter shook his head. “You’re incorrigible. I thought I was supposed to be getting Jennifer Anniston’s attention, so you could snaffle Brad Pitt.”

“No, that’s for when I’m done with you and need a change.” El let her grin escape, and then, as Peter made a puppy-eyed face, laughed. They could joke about crushes and affairs; it had been a running gag with Sonja and Terry, too, all of them threatening extravagant infidelities, secure in their commitments. El knew Peter would never cheat, just as she knew she wouldn’t. “I hope I didn’t give Chris the wrong idea about us.”

“Or maybe you hope you did,” said Peter, still playing the game. He waggled his eyebrows.

El took his free hand and squeezed it. “Did he really give you some new leads? That’s promising.”

“There’s even a witness in SoHo I didn’t know about. We’ll interview her tomorrow. Who knows where that will take us.”

“Just promise me you’ll be careful.”

Peter smiled, brimming with confidence. “It’s not dangerous. Neal isn’t violent.”

“Not so far,” said El. “But you don’t know. People get desperate when they’re cornered.”

Peter brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. “I promise.”

Chapter 8

The tide of El’s breath shallowed, and Peter, lying in bed with his eyes shut as he tried to make the best of the last few minutes before their alarm, gave sleep up as a lost cause. He sighed and let his eyes open, and yes, the curtains were glowing with suppressed daylight. A car door slammed in the street outside.

El yawned and rolled to face him. “’Morning.”

“Yeah,” said Peter, momentarily mistaking her greeting for a description. He blinked. “’Morning.”

She slid her hand across his belly. “You okay?”

He turned his head to see her, to appreciate her concern. “I didn’t—” He bit off the complaint. She didn’t need to know about his restless night. He didn’t want to worry her. “I’m fine. It’s just something Chris said.”

“About Neal?”

Peter couldn’t remember when Neal Caffrey had become “Caffrey” in his marriage, let alone “Neal.” They talked about him like a troublesome relative or an absent friend whose life choices were ill-judged but amusing. His name came so easily to El’s lips, even here in their bed. Peter braked that train of thought, cleared his throat. “He said Laurie Fox, the Interpol agent assigned to Caffrey’s case has a reputation for shooting first, asking questions later.”

El found his hand and wove their fingers together in the warmth beneath the covers. “You’re worried about him.”

Peter inhaled involuntarily and turned it into a yawn. There was nothing accusatory in her tone, but he knew his concern for Neal wasn’t normal. He shouldn’t be lying awake in his marriage bed trying to figure out how to protect a criminal from law enforcement. He shouldn’t be thinking about him at all, only how to catch him. “I love you,” he told El.

“I know. Back atcha.” She leaned in and kissed him softly. “You’re coming with Chris to the exhibition opening tomorrow night, aren’t you?”

“Mm. Wouldn’t miss it.”

El snickered and snuggled close. “You’ll like this one, I promise. It’s nowhere near as abstract as Rachel Schumer’s show.”

“You don’t have to sell me,” said Peter, although his enthusiasm was at a low ebb. It wasn’t just the art; something was going to happen soon on the Caffrey case, he knew it. He couldn’t afford to get distracted. But this was El’s night. “A chance to see my beautiful wife in her element—no way I’m passing that up.”

“Okay, well, good.” She pulled back a little, surveying him, and grinned. “It’s okay, hon. If you have to escape to the surveillance van after an hour or two, I’ll understand.”

Peter pulled her close again, focusing on their kiss, shutting out everything else. Their alarm began to beep.

*

The stakeout teams’ reports were the same as the day before and the day before that: no sign of movement, no sign of Neal. Peter tossed them back into his in-tray, then logged in to check his email. The system was still working its way through start-up screens and accessing the FBI network when Hughes came to stand in his doorway. “A word, Peter?”

They went into Hughes’ office, which was never a good sign. If it was good news, Hughes would have told him right off the bat, instead of dragging him in here and telling him to shut the door after him. Peter steeled himself.

“The Caffrey case,” Hughes said, without preamble. “You have two surveillance teams working it?”

“Down from three.” Peter hoped it would sound responsible and frugal, but it came out defensive. He knew what was coming.

“And there’s still no progress.”

Had Hughes read the stakeout reports himself? Peter couldn’t ask. “These things take time. We’re close—I know we can catch him.”

“You have forty-eight hours, then I’m pulling all resources. It’s time to turn our attention to some higher priority cases.”

Peter appreciated the our, the shared responsibility, but it didn’t change the message. He shook his head instinctively. “A week,” he said. “Give me a week, and I guarantee we’ll get him.”

Hughes let out a long sigh.

“We have new leads, now. Chris Gates from Interpol is sharing information, and we’ve already found several—”

Hughes held up his hands. “Four more days, and that’s it. And if you don’t catch him, Peter, after all this time and expense—I don’t have to tell you, it’ll look bad for both of us.”

“Yes, sir.” Peter hardly heard him. “Four days.”

*

Chris showed up at 8:30 on the dot, and Peter wasted no time hustling him up to the conference room and getting started. Going over the FBI’s Caffrey files with him was like seeing them fresh. Chris laid out his own notes again for comparison and then pored over every page of Peter’s records in chronological order, crime scene by crime scene, as if memorizing their contents. Peter, sitting beside him, reading over his shoulder, saw the gaps, the taunting mysteries and unexplained escapes.

Chris finished one file and opened the next, this one from the Galleria d’Arte Moderna Palazzo Forti heist in Verona. A glossy photo slid onto the table from a hotel, and Chris gave it a cursory glance, swept it back into the folder and started to turn the page, but Peter plucked it out of the file and surveyed it anew.

It was a blurry, black and white CCTV still from the hotel, and in it was Chris himself, standing at the reception desk, smiling at the receptionist. Peter pointed. “It’s you.”

Chapter 9

Neal’s breath caught. Peter was sitting at his shoulder, the accusation like a cloud around both of them, and even if Neal could make it as far as the conference room door, there were literally dozens of agents between there and the exit. Any misstep could spell the end. In the back of Neal’s head, Mozzie was squawking “I told you so!” via a dozen colorful literary and Murphy’s-law allusions. But Peter went on:

“The Carabinieri must have mistaken you for Neal. I’m impressed, Chris—you got close.”

A huh escaped Neal’s tight throat. He took the photo and made a show of studying it to buy a few seconds while he blocked out Mozzie’s imaginary panic attack and his own avalanche of relief, then set out to build on Peter’s assumption. “Oh, yeah, Verona. According to room service, I missed Caffrey by less than thirty seconds. He made a quick exit out a fourth-floor window.”

“He does that.” Peter sounded more sympathetic than suspicious. “And then he disappears, just like the other night.”

“He’s an elusive sonofabitch.” Neal steeled himself to glance up, and nearly sighed with gratitude. Peter hadn’t done the math. Neal’s identity as Chris Gates was a protective camouflage too effective to penetrate, even when faced with solid evidence. And it wasn’t that Peter was stupid or generally oblivious; his blind spot was simply the belief that they were on the same team.

Peter trusted him.

A familiar euphoria flushed through Neal’s veins, the thrill of a successful con, the knowledge that nothing and no one could stop him. He limited his external reaction to the corner of his mouth turning up in wry self-deprecation and grabbed the opportunity with both hands. “I don’t think I even bothered writing it up for my file. Room service couldn’t give me a description. After all this time, we don’t even have a conclusive ID beyond those partial prints. Which begs the question, how did you know he was going after the celestial globe?”

Peter sat back and licked his lips. This was clearly the moment of truth, the point where he decided whether to take Neal into his full confidence. Neal’s heartbeat thudded in his ears. He twitched his eyebrows, embodying the eager young Interpol agent of his cover.

Then Peter made a gesture, the formal, FBI equivalent of the last pin in a lock clicking into place, and Neal was in. Peter’s theory spilled forth. “What else has he stolen lately? A cylinder sundial, an antique terrestrial globe, an Order of St Michael medallion—all European Renaissance era, none of them worth a great deal on their own. Not by Caffrey’s standards, anyway.”

Shit. Neal had smugly believed half of those had gone undetected by the law, and yet, presumably there were crime scene photos and police write-ups for every single one in the boxes they hadn’t got to yet, in this very room, and Peter with all his books and attention had made the connection.

Neal closed the Verona file slowly and turned fully to face him. Maybe this was a test. “You think there’s a pattern, or is he on some random spree?”

“It’s not random.” Peter pushed his chair back and went to the window to look out. “There’s a collector in Cleveland offering a million dollars for a genuine recreation of the tableau in Holbein’s The Ambassadors. You know it?”

“I’m vaguely familiar.” Neal could feel the last few grains slipping through the pinched neck of his cosmic hourglass. He should be leafing through the files, gathering all the intel he could and getting out, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Peter’s back, his broad shoulders covered with a plain white business shirt. Something was weighing on his mind, maybe something even more valuable than whatever the FBI knew.

Peter turned and folded his arms. “He only has two more pieces to get—the polyhedrial sundial and the torquetum—and they’re both here in the city.”

“That’s it?” Neal frowned, as if racking his memory. “I’m trying to picture the painting. Isn’t there some kind of Persian rug?”

“Turkish. He picked one up in a castle in Edinburgh in May. Left a bouquet of roses and thistles in its place.” Peter pointed to one of the boxes. “Police file’s in there.”

Neal nodded. “Right, right. I must have missed that one. And you don’t think you’ll have scared him off with all these near misses?”

“Neal? No chance.” Peter laughed, but his fond amusement from the day before was missing. Something had changed. “He could cut his losses and go after some high-end artwork instead, but he’s put a lot of effort into this Holbein thing. And you and I know he’s not the kind of guy who can walk away from a challenge. It’s what he lives for.”

“Yes, he does.” Warmth bloomed, seasoned with pride. The recognition felt good, not to mention the respect. That was what the flowers and glass hearts were about, after all—a lure to capture someone’s notice, to find his match in wits and dedication. To tease his way to notoriety.

Peter came and perched on the edge of the conference table next to him, arms still folded. “The next few days, he’s either going to hit the New York Hall of Science or the Museum of Natural History. We’ve got eyes on both, and when he strikes, we’ll be waiting. We can get him safely out of Fox’s crosshairs.”

“And then it’s all over.” Neal could wait them out. He could get an extension on the loan from Alex and wait until another case drew the feds away. Or, as Peter said, he could drop the Holbein treasure hunt entirely and turn his sights on some other prize. But where would be the fun in that?

Peter was staring at a point somewhere near Neal’s shoulder, a crease between his eyebrows. He smelled of soap and laundry detergent. Not a cologne guy. His wedding band caught the light. “Yeah,” he said. “Then it’s over.”

Neal cleared his throat, distracted. Forgetting for a moment why he was there. “You okay?”

“Yeah, of course.” Peter inhaled and straightened, his gaze focusing. “We’re on a deadline, that’s all. And you know, I have vacation days too, but El’s called dibs.”

“So we should get back to work.” Neal reopened the Verona file, though he was fairly sure there was nothing new there.

“Yeah.” Peter pushed off the table, seemed about to sit down, then paused. “You want a coffee?”

By which he meant FBI swill. Neal stifled an anticipatory grimace. “Sure, thanks.” If nothing else it would give him a few minutes alone with the files. His brain automatically started calculating how to maximize the opportunity, so Peter was at the door, before he thought to ask, “The Holbein—did you get that from one of your books?”

Peter looked over his shoulder. “Take a look in box number four.”

*

Once opened, box number four wasn’t, strictly speaking, a file box. Instead it was a collection of souvenirs: a photo of the thistle bouquet; the glass heart cut out of the display case, still in its evidence bag; a forged Fiorentino portrait medal made out of foil-wrapped chocolate, which had taken several days because foil was a terrible working surface and Kate kept stealing his chocolate; an empty packet that had once held gourmet French bonbons; other mementos Neal had left, or photos of same, stretching back nearly to the start of his career. There were one or two unfamiliar pieces; clearly the FBI wasn’t one hundred percent on identifying which crimes Neal had committed. But they’d amassed a lot. And a bagged postcard of Holbein’s The Ambassadors.

Neal picked it up by the evidence bag and turned it over. It was addressed to the White Collar division of the FBI, the barely legible postmark indicating it had been sent from New Jersey two weeks ago. The message was short, written in sharpie: Neal Caffrey’s shopping list. And a Best Before date. The same date as the IOU Neal had left Alex.

Only three people knew the significance of that date: Neal, Moz and Alex.

Down on the office floor, Peter turned away from the coffee machine, a mug in each hand, and headed for the stairs. Neal stood up, pulled out his phone and pretended to take a call. “You’re kidding me,” he said, pitching his voice just loud enough to carry to the door. “Well, yeah, I saw a couple, but it’s New York, what do you expect?” He listened to nothing for a few seconds. “You know, some notice would have been nice. Fine. I’ll be there in half an hour.” Another pause. “Twenty minutes.”

He fake hung up and ran his hand through his hair, frowning, as Peter walked into the room. “Listen, I’m really sorry. I’m going to have to cut out for a bit. My hotel just called—they’re having a small cockroach problem, and they’ve getting fumigated this afternoon, and as it turns out, I’m allergic to the chemicals those guys use, so I have to get my stuff out of there pronto.”

“You want Jones to give you a ride?”

“No, no, it’s fine. I’ll grab a taxi. Give me an hour or two to find somewhere else, and I’ll be back on task.”

“Okay, well, in the meantime, how about Diana and I go follow up with that eye-witness we identified yesterday, unless you want me to wait till you’re back.”

“Go for your life.” Neal started for the door. “I look forward to hearing how it went.”

Peter nodded. “You know, Chris, if you need somewhere to stay, El and I have a guest room.”

Neal stopped, briefly tempted. The agent’s offer was casual and friendly, and Neal could almost taste the cool triumph of sleeping in an FBI agent’s house and living to tell the tale. But it would complicate matters, and Neal didn’t want to take advantage of Peter’s kindness any more than he had to. As Mozzie had said, some lines shouldn’t be crossed. “Oh, thanks, that’s a generous offer, but I’m good. I know a place.”

“If you’re sure.” Peter put his hands on his hips. “We’ll reconvene here after lunch, then. I have some discrepancies between our files I’d like to work out.”

Neal smiled. “See you then.”

*

“Why are you here?” asked Mozzie, when Neal let himself into the Multiplex. “Is the perilous charade over? Can we turn our attention back to the pressing matter of larceny now?”

“It’s not over.” Neal came to stand over him and folded his arms. “Moz, did you tell anyone—anyone at all—the date of the IOU I left Alex? The date we have to finish this by?”

“Do I look like some kind of Judas? I would never let such sensitive information pass my lips. Besides, who exactly would I tell?”

“That’s what I need to find out. Someone informed on me to the FBI.” Neal rolled his shoulders and took out his phone. If it wasn’t Moz—and Neal trusted his denial implicitly—then it had to be Alex.

“I know Alex was pissed, but narcing to the pigs? That’s not her style.” Mozzie was appalled. One of his computers beeped, and he swore and hit a few keys, closing a pop-up alert. “You know, if Kate hadn’t stolen your stash in the first place, we wouldn’t be—”

“She didn’t steal it. I told her everything I’d done, all the art, was for her. She just took me at my word.”

“So she conned you.”

Neal scowled. Mozzie’s view of Kate had always been jaundiced. “I don’t want to talk about it.” He called Alex.

“What do you want, Caffrey? I’m in the middle of something.”

“Who did you tell about the IOU?” It came out snappier than was politic, but Neal didn’t have time to be nice.

Alex sighed impatiently. “I didn’t tell anyone. I traded it away.

“You sold me out?”

“You stole my money! I had to give him something.”

“Who’s ‘he’? It’s Keller, isn’t it?”

Mozzie, who was on his way to the kitchenette, turned at the mention of Keller’s name, his eyes widening. Neal waved him aside. He’d explain later.

“I’m in a meeting,” said Alex sharply.

“Alex.”

“Hang on.” There were some muffled excuses, and the sound of a door closing. “Okay, fine. I fenced a piece for Keller. The fifty grand was his. He took the IOU as payment.”

“And then snitched to the feds.” Neal’s blood ran hot with indignation. Keller should be the focus of his fury, but Keller didn’t owe Neal a shred of loyalty; Alex, on the other hand, was supposed to be on his side.

“Keller wouldn’t—” Alex clearly wanted to deny the possibility, but they both knew Keller would do anything, up to and including murder, if it suited him. He was a master of the long game, an ex-associate, now a rival, and his history of violence and careless collateral damage was well-known. This was the first time Neal had been directly in his sights, and it felt even more dangerous than being targeted by the FBI.

He couldn’t believe Alex had done this to him. “After everything we’ve been through, everything we were to each other.”

“What everything?” Alex sounded exasperated. “You dumped me for Kate, and stole my money.”

“So that’s why.” The bolt of righteous indignation was small comfort.

“No, Neal. This wasn’t revenge—it was business. I did what I had to do to survive.”

“You could have warned me.”

“You didn’t take my calls,” said Alex, infuriatingly reasonable. “You know, Caffrey, one of these days you’re going to have to take some responsibility for the messes you get yourself into. That silver tongue can only get you so far.”

“Thanks for the life lesson. It’s been great talking to you.” Neal jabbed at his phone to disconnect and threw it onto the couch. “Well, fuck.”

“Neal, I hate to say it, but it might be time to abort the mission.” Mozzie had poured himself a bowl of cereal and was standing by the breakfast bar. He gestured with his spoon. “We can get the money some other way, pay back the debt and get out of Dodge before all the avian metaphors come home to roost.”

“No.” Neal scowled and kicked the couch leg. “If I give up now, Keller wins.” And all the hard work he’d done infiltrating the FBI, befriending the agent on his case, distracting him with charm and false leads would all be for naught. “I’m not letting Keller run me out of town. I’ll finish this.”

“Or die trying,” said Mozzie.

Neal summoned his most confident grin. “A little faith, Moz. A little faith.”

Chapter 10

Peter and Diana took Peter’s car to Queens, walked up three flights of stairs and knocked on an unassuming apartment door. Lacey Tepper, their witness, answered, and when they flashed their badges, she let them in without question and offered them coffee, which Peter and Diana both refused.

Peter let Diana take the lead, while he covertly surveyed the woman’s living room, assessing her credibility as a witness. It was a small studio apartment cluttered with books; small amateur watercolors adorned the walls haphazardly, as if someone had thrown them and they’d stuck; and a litter tray in one corner and a smattering of toys indicated the presence of a pet that was apparently hiding out of sight.

Tepper herself was a pretty, heavyset woman in her late forties with an engaging twinkle in her eye, who reminded Peter of Joan Jett. Her workstation had been situated squarely in the path between the elevators and the CEO’s office, from which the gold chalice was stolen. It was well within the bounds of possibility that Neal, being Neal, might have paused mid-heist to flirt with her.

The theft had flown under Peter’s radar, but Chris had been positive Neal was responsible. His files included the police report, in which the NYPD officers working the case eliminated Tepper as a suspect but listed her as a possible eye-witness. However, the theft had occurred on her last day of work for the company and wasn’t discovered until the following Monday, by which time Tepper was out of state. According to the file, Office Simons tried calling, then marked her down as “Unavailable for Questioning.” Chris had flagged her as a potential lead.

It was a longshot, but the only way Peter was going to catch Neal in the scant few hours allowed to him by the grinding FBI machinery was if he grasped at every available straw and hoped that one led somewhere good.

At least Tepper seemed willing to talk, and being in her own space, comfortable and relaxed, would likely help her recall. Diana was smart and competent, and there was no question that most female witnesses responded better and provided more accurate accounts in the presence of a female agent. All the same, Peter couldn’t help comparing this excursion with yesterday’s rapid-fire annihilation of the Dunham case with Chris. A completely unfair comparison.

“Late last year you did some temp work for Steele Matheson and Associates,” Diana said, getting to the point. Tepper nodded agreement. “Do you remember your last day at the firm?”

“Sort of.” Tepper sounded uncertain.

Diana and Peter exchanged glances. They had reason to believe the robbery was conducted during working hours, but memory was a delicate thing. Any inadvertent suggestion could confuse her recall of her actual experiences.

“What do you remember? Anything you can tell us might be helpful.”

Peter tried to be patient while Tepper rambled about going to lunch with the other admin staff.

“But I came back early. There were some reports I wanted to finish before I left.”

“Did you see anyone?”

“I don’t think so. Just the regular stuff, and the A/C repair guy.”

Peter stifled his reaction, holding his breath.

“The A/C guy?” repeated Diana.

“Yeah. A real cutie. But he had a security card around his neck, so he’s probably not who you’re looking for.”

“Our guy has a long history of forging security passes and cards,” said Peter.

Tepper blinked. “Oh. Right.”

“What can you tell me about him?”

“I don’t know.” Tepper frowned, thinking. “Uh, he asked if I’d noticed any problems with the heating.” She shrugged. “He had a toolkit and a radio on his belt.”

“And you never gave a formal statement to the police,” said Diana.

“They never asked,” said Tepper. “I was in Missouri for my sister’s wedding. It was a madhouse—my brother-in-law is coeliac, and the caterers just could not cope.”

Diana smiled politely. “But you know about the theft.”

“A gold chalice, yeah.”

This was getting them nowhere. They were wasting precious time. “Well, if you think of anything else, please let us know,” said Peter, giving her his card.

Tepper’s face fell. “Sure, of course. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help.” She walked them to the door, and they were halfway down the hallway when she gasped behind them. “Oh, wait, I just thought of something! I had a calendar of the Bayeux Tapestry on my desk, and he recognized the picture.”

The hairs on the back of Peter’s neck raised up.

Diana was less impressed. “Was it Haley’s comet? Because that’s pretty well-known.”

“I don’t remember. Hang on.” Tepper disappeared into her apartment, and came back a minute later with an old calendar. “October, right? It was this one.”

The glossy picture depicted a jumble of boats and soldiers on horseback, with Latin writing stitched above the scene.

Peter glanced up. “And the A/C guy identified it on sight?”

“As the arrival at Pevensey. He said—he said the original’s even more beautiful.” Tepper pressed her hand to her temple. “I can’t believe I forgot that. I’m only thirty-eight—I’m too young to be losing my memory!”

Peter caught Diana’s eye, and she took out a notepad. “We’ll need a description,” she told Tepper. “Anything you can tell us.”

“Anything at all,” said Peter. Maybe they’d finally caught a break.

*

On the way back to the office, Peter told Diana to run the description. “But check with Steele Matheson and Associates and their landlord, too. See if they had any problems with their A/C that week, and if so, what company they used.”

“You got it.” Diana made a note in her notepad, then raised her eyebrows. “He recognized the tapestry. You think it’s a coincidence?”

“No, I think we just got our first real description of Neal Caffrey, but I want to be sure.” Peter tightened his grip on the steering wheel. His own eagerness and the pressure from on high were combining to make him susceptible to false leads, he knew that. He had to guard against it.

All the same, he couldn’t wait to tell Chris the lead had paid off.

*

There was an email with attachments from Terry in Peter’s inbox. Peter opened it and found himself looking at vacation photos from Paris and Berlin: Sonja elegantly dressed and wielding a glass of champagne, with city lights in the background; the pair of them grinning in front of the Brandenburg Gate.

Sonja keeps saying we have to lure you guys over for a vacation, Terry had written, so here, consider yourself lured. It’s just like a postcard, but with surround-sound and fucking incredible food. How’s life in the Big A? You good? Caught any crime lords lately?

There followed a couple of paragraphs about their London apartment, Terry’s new job, and the challenge of meeting new people. They’d joined a wine-tasting club comprised entirely of ex-pats from various countries, he said, and Sonja was trying to find a book group.

Peter tapped out a two-line reply. Terry was his best friend, but Peter had never been great at long-distance. He preferred shooting the breeze over poker and a few beers, going to a baseball game, or dinner with El and Sonja. Companionable activities that didn’t corner him into talking about himself, with the attendant requirement that he examine his life or mental state. He didn’t want to dwell on how he was doing, let alone try to articulate it into heavy chains of words. He had El, the puppy, and the White Collar team, and in some more abstract sense, he had Neal. His life was plenty full.

And now there was, if only temporarily, his partnership with Chris, which felt almost like a vacation in itself. The rest of the White Collar team humored Peter about his Neal Caffrey fixation, teased him for it as if it were some nerdy wild goose chase he were personally imposing on them, instead of a legitimate case, but Chris actually shared Peter’s fascination. There was an easy rapport between them too, a rhythm, and Chris and El had hit it off pretty well. Previously, El had been the sociable one, introducing Peter to all kinds of people she’d met through the gallery to see if any would click, but Chris was Peter’s find. Being Interpol, he would inevitably move on once the case was over, but maybe they could meet up when he was in town again.

Jones knocked sharply on the doorframe, and Peter abruptly hit send on his email and locked his computer screen. “What’s up?”

“I just got off the phone with ERT. The cold packs from the Emerson Kedgley Club the other night—we might have something?”

“Prints?”

“No, the condensation eliminated the fingerprints. But according to Wayne in ERT, that particular brand of cold pack is imported from Europe, and there are only three stores in Manhattan that stock it.” Jones passed him a file folder, with a photo of the cold packs, the original packaging, and a printout of the store names and addresses.

“Good work. Follow up with the stores. I want credit card receipts and CCTV footage if they have it. If you have any problem with the warrants, talk to Diana.”

“On it.”

Peter rubbed his hands together. The tide was turning. “You’d better look sharp,” he murmured, looking again at the photos of the cold packs. “I’m coming for you.”

*

Chris got back an hour later, when Jones was showing off the fruits of his investigation. He walked into the conference room and glanced at the screen, then did a double take, his eyes widening behind his glasses. “Who’s this?”

The CCTV still showed a short Caucasian man in a trench coat, his face largely obscured by his hat-brim and dark glasses. “According to his credit card, he’s Henry Whitman,” said Peter, “but I think that’s an alias.”

Chris took off his glasses, cleaned them fastidiously, then put them back on and blinked at the screen again. “You think that’s Caffrey? He doesn’t exactly have the physique of a cat burglar.”

“You’re right about that.” Peter leaned back in his seat, enjoying the chance to show off their progress. “But Whitman was caught on camera last week purchasing an expensive European brand of cold pack—the same brand that was used in the celestial globe heist two nights ago.”

“We think he’s Caffrey’s accomplice,” said Jones.

“Wow. That’s quite a find.” Chris came to stand at Peter’s shoulder, his hands in his pockets.

“Yeah.” Peter pushed his chair back so he could see Chris’ face. “We track down Whitman, we’re one step closer to finding Neal. Diana’s cross-checking hotel reservations throughout the city as we speak.”

Chris smoothed his tie absently, as if reviewing his mental files for evidence one way or the other, then took out his phone. “Maybe I can help with that. I know a guy, has a lot of street contacts.” He dialed. “Hey.” He paused. “Yeah, yeah, it’s Chris Gates. What do you know about a Henry Whitman? We suspect he’s an associate of Neal Caffrey.” He paused, listening, then his face fell. He shook his head at Peter and said into the phone, “You sure? Okay, well, call me if you hear anything, all right? And hey, do me a favor and don’t spread it around, okay? Need to know only. Thanks, man.” He slid his phone back into his pocket with a sigh. “Nada. Maybe there’s no connection after all. I mean, I thought Caffrey worked alone.”

“That’s what we always assumed, but there’s a lot we don’t know.” Peter looked back at the figure on the screen. He was too adept at avoiding the cameras, his credit history too sparse. He was definitely some kind of criminal, Peter was sure of it. “We only just found out about his girlfriend, Alison Tabernacle—maybe he has a partner, too. Some of his exploits would have been damned difficult to pull off solo. Of course, if anyone could, it would be Neal.”

Chris smirked. “All right. So let’s find him. What else do we have?”

“Nothing,” said Diana, coming into the room. “No trace. The credit card leads to a PO Box, which has hardly been used, and he did an expert job of avoiding the cameras at the store. We can’t run facial recognition on what we have.”

Chris’ reply, a mild “Dammit!” was more than a little half-hearted, and Peter grinned, despite his own frustration. Chris was the kind of competitive guy who liked to find all the leads himself, an independent operator. Peter could relate to some degree—but then, Chris wasn’t under the same kind of time pressure as White Collar.

“Don’t worry,” said Peter. “Diana and Jones are on it, and they’ve worked miracles before. Besides, I haven’t told you our best news—that witness you flagged gave us a description.”

“Wow, that’s fantastic.” Chris’ smile was genuine this time. “What did she say?”

“Late twenties, brown eyes, olive skin, short curly dark hair. Maybe Italian. She’s working with a sketch artist now.” Peter signaled to Diana and Jones to leave and get on with their search, then grabbed the remote and turned off the presentation screen. The Caffrey boxes were still clustered on the table, two of them open from earlier, and the post-it flags he’d adorned them with last night were calling to him. “Let’s finish going through the files, and then we can relieve the team in one of the surveillance vans for a shift, if you’re up for it.”

“Perfect.” Chris took off his jacket at slung it over a chair back.

Peter stood up to follow suit. “Great. Now, where were we?”

Chapter 11

Neal spent the next few hours going through the files with Peter, extemporizing explanations for the discrepancies between the FBI documents and Chris Gates’ records.

He’d left Mozzie at the Multiplex, scouring online news sites and underground forums for any indication of Keller’s whereabouts. Neal was holding out hope Keller was still in Europe, where his interference in the Holbein project would be necessarily confined to long-distance narcing, rather than active, in-person interference, but the odds weren’t good, and this was no time to get caught up in Keller’s mind-games.

The last thing Moz had said before Neal left to return to the FBI was a strong exhortation to Neal to make himself some new aliases. “You don’t know how long Chris Gates is going to hold.” Neal had waved him off with an airy, “Later, you worry too much,” but now he was going to have to make one for Mozzie too. Henry Whitman was burned, and Mozzie’s reaction to the news (“Where are you? Merciful Mother of Popcorn, are you seriously calling me from inside the Heart of Darkness?”) had been anything but serene.

Neal shook himself back to the present. The FBI—and Peter, in particular—had game, and he needed his wits about him to keep up. At least two things had gone right: Peter had offered up a visit to the surveillance van, unprompted, and Lacey Tepper had convinced the Feds with her testimony. He made a mental note to send her a thank-you gift and turned his attention back to the files, as Peter pointed out a minor inconsistency between an FBI crime scene report and Neal’s own documents. Ironically, in this instance Neal’s was the more accurate, so he spun a line that included a pinch of flattery and deferred to their interpretation. And so it went on.

“The forced lock on the stairwell door at the Accademia in Venice—that wasn’t in the official incident report,” said Peter, taking out the next file and opening it to a page flagged with a post-it note. “Where did you get that detail?”

“I looked at the floorplan.” Neal evinced modesty. “It was Caffrey’s most likely exit route. The door wasn’t alarmed, but he didn’t have time to pick the lock, given the speed of his escape. I called the museum and asked the head curator to check the lock, and I was right.”

“Were there any prints?” Peter looked hungry.

“Nothing useable.”

“Our lab has nearly patched together a full set of prints from all the partials. Of course, it would be great to have something to confirm them against. But still, that’s good, resourceful work.” Peter gave an approving nod and stood up. “Hang on a minute.” He disappeared out the door and returned a minute later with a roll of blueprints, which he unfurled onto the remaining clear portion of table with a flourish. “Okay, here’s the New York Hall of Science, and the Museum of Natural History’s here. Let’s see if we can predict his routes in and out.”

Neal went over, looked down at the familiar lines and markings spread out under Peter’s capable hands. Discretion, while generally overrated with regard to valor, had some merit when you were incognito in the opposition’s territory, he reminded himself. “Well, let’s see... which one’s the Hall of Science? This one?”

It was another hour before he managed to wean Peter away from the floorplans and they’d reconciled the two accounts of Neal’s exploits to Peter’s satisfaction. Neal sat back and stretched his neck out with a sigh, not bothering to smother his yawn: poring over files was actually pretty draining, especially when coupled with maintaining his cover.

But Peter seemed bizarrely energized by their negligible progress. He reached for his jacket. “Come on. We can discuss the implications of all this while we’re in the van.”

Neal grabbed his own jacket and followed, curiously. He’d never seen the inside of a government surveillance van before, and his imagination was lit with elaborate images inspired more by science fiction and airplane cockpits than anything based in reality. He told himself as much, on the way, but the van was still a disappointment: two narrow metal counters crowded with computer equipment and headphones, three roller chairs, and a handful of paperclips, most bent out of shape by bored FBI hands as they waited for something to happen. There were a few shreds of paper napkin on the floor, too, and a battered old Rubik’s cube lurking behind a radio receiver. The whole space was redolent with the pervasive scent of stale fries and old fish.

Peter seemed oblivious to the smell. After a cursory handover, he dismissed the agents on duty, both of them glazed-eyed and nearly monosyllabic from the tedium of their shift, and plonked himself into the nearest chair with apparent cheer, donning the headphones and fixing his gaze on the screen.

This gave Neal ample opportunity to scope out the CCTV angles on the Museum of Natural History. His best approach was immediately obvious: on the other side of the building from the entry route he’d traced out for Peter on the blueprints, there was a service entrance in a niche. It was only visible to one camera, and if Neal remembered correctly from his casing of the museum a year or two back, he could sneak up to the door without being caught on any of the other views. It was perfect.

He took out his phone and, under the guise of fiddling with it, sent a brief text to Moz: I’m in. W77th. 40 min.

He was slipping his phone back into his breast pocket when Peter glanced over his shoulder. “Settle in. Make yourself at home.”

Neal did, taking the nearest chair and a pair of over-the-ear cushioned headphones that, disturbingly, were still warm from their last occupant. He grimaced and adjusted them away from his skin as much as possible.

Peter put one cushioned earpiece back and, without taking his eyes from the screen again, said, “There are still a couple of things I don’t get about your dossier.”

Neal felt a tickle of irritation, and the implacable metal walls pressing in. It was one thing to be alone in a confined space—he’d spent plenty of time in closets and air-con vents, pressed between door and wall or curtain and wall, braced in awkward positions under vehicles and even, once, in an 18th century crypt—and another thing to be trapped with a partner. He’d shared tense breathless moments with Alex, Kate and even Moz, as law enforcement or security swept the adjacent room or area. But Peter was law enforcement, and he took up so much space. His long legs meant his chair was, by necessity, angled sideways, and even with his gaze directed elsewhere and his tone amiable and relaxed, Neal felt spot-lit. He took a deep, silent breath and talked himself down. It wasn’t a trap. Peter trusted him. This was probably what passed for stakeout small talk. “What kind of things?”

“You knew about his alias but not his girlfriend?” Peter’s raised eyebrows were audible.

“He was travelling alone in Europe, I’d stake my badge on it,” said Neal. “No girlfriend, no Henry Whitman. In fact, hey, what if Alison Tabernacle wasn’t even the same girl each time? Maybe he just used the same alias whenever he had a guest?”

“Maybe.”

“What’s the other thing?”

“Oh, you left out the Raphael job in Prague.”

“Oh, right.” Of course a summary of Neal Caffrey’s feats should include the Raphael. It wasn’t as if there was any doubt he’d been the culprit. Neal had shied away from including it because it remained a sore spot, a reminder of Kate, but Peter was right: if Gates were any kind of investigator, which he clearly was, he should have covered it exhaustively. He opened his mouth to spin some kind of excuse—

“You know, that’s when we first found out his name.” Peter sounded like someone reminiscing about an old friend. An old, dead friend.

“Yeah.”

“I was there, you know. After you guys got wind that he was in the neighborhood, the Bureau sent me over to catch him. They were still pissed about the Rodin. So yeah, I was there, at the Wallenstein Palace. Three in the morning, I saw him jump from a balcony, then vault over an eight-foot wall like it was nothing, evading a dozen police officers, Interpol and me. Maybe he had springs in his shoes.”

“That was you?” Neal remembered that night. He’d looked back from the safety of a deep shadow and seen someone watching from the balcony. He’d also sprained his wrist while vaulting, so it was gratifying to hear that had gone undetected. Peter glanced around, and Neal realized his response made no sense coming from Gates. He clarified. “I heard the FBI sent someone over to work the case. You’ve been after him that long?”

“And it never gets boring.” Peter resumed his patient vigil, apparently sincere despite the lack of action. “And yeah, that was the heist where he left a thank-you card: Sorry for the inconvenience, love Neal Caffrey. Showing off. You know, if he ever finds a partner who can rein in those reckless impulses, we’re sunk.”

“That would be so much less fun.”

Peter snorted. “You couldn’t make this shit up—I bet Hollywood would bite. You want to go fifty-fifty on the movie rights?”

“I think Caffrey should get a cut too, don’t you?”

“If we don’t allocate him one, he’ll just go ahead and steal it.”

Neal laughed. “You know him so well.”

“Feels like it. Sometimes I—” Peter trailed off, leaning forward to peer at the screen.

“Got something?” Neal injected some hopeful fervor into the question.

“Nope. False alarm.”

“You were saying…?”

“What? Oh, nothing.”

The conversation lulled, and Neal amused himself devising three more entry routes into the building, until finally someone knocked on the van.

“What’s that? Who’s there?” Peter lurched up out of whatever meditative state he’d fallen into—“Chris, you’re on lead. Don’t take your eye off those screens. Don’t even blink.”—and answered the door to a pizza guy.

“Delivery for G. Mann,” said the youth, glancing past him to the cluttered interior. “Oh, hey, is this like a surveillance van.”

“No one here ordered a pizza.” Peter went to slam the door, but the pizza guy stopped him.

“It’s from Neal Caffrey. Pre-paid.”

While Peter sharply questioned the guy, Neal took out a handful of Mozzie’s USB sticks and slotted one into each of the computers in the van, as discreetly and efficiently as possible, putting on a show of bored professionalism in case the pizza guy happened to see him do it. Making sure to wipe them clean of prints once they were in place.

The distraction lasted just long enough. He sat and twisted in his chair to study Peter’s monitor as if it were a painting he planned to forge from memory, just as Peter finally got rid of the pizza guy and dumped a pepperoni and olive pie on the counter.

Neal smirked. “I guess dinner’s on Caffrey.”

But rather than opening the box, Peter took out his phone and dialed the number printed across the lid, patiently confirming the order was legit and asking how it had been placed, all the while watching the surveillance feeds with palpable care.

“What, you think he drugged the pizza?” asked Neal, once he’d hung up.

“Nah. More likely he’s trying to distract us. Or just showing off.” Peter flipped up the lid and took a slice, all while continuing the urgent business of watching nothing happen onscreen. “El calls it flirting.”

Neal laughed, remembering Elizabeth, her eyes dancing, teasing Peter about his shrine. “Why am I not surprised.” He gave up all pretense of helping with the stakeout, took a slice for himself and regarded Peter with amusement. “Maybe she’s right.”

Even in the low lighting of the van, the back of Peter’s neck went distinctly pink, but he changed the subject and began telling Neal old stakeout stories. After a while, Neal reciprocated, making up details with liberal abandon.

They finished the pizza. It grew dark outside. There was nothing on the screen but street lights, the imposing frontage of the museum and the less impressive sides and rear. Occasionally someone walked past with their dog, or a security guard did a circuit, as if to test they were still awake. It was a quiet night, a Thursday. No one was going to rob the Museum of Natural History tonight.

Neal missed his earpiece; without Mozzie’s commentary, it was too easy to sink into Chris Gates’ life and let his guard down. This life really wasn’t so bad.

Peter finished a story about a junkie diamond thief, who he’d caught with the help of a concerned drug dealer, and while Neal was wondering if this evening, too, would one day feature in a stakeout anecdote, Peter fell silent. He was still facing the screen, implacable as a sphinx, but perhaps not seeing what was in front of him. Trusting Chris Gates to pick up the slack.

The air in the van was warm and the back of Neal’s neck prickled.

“You know, El says she ought to be jealous.”

The soft words punched a hole in the cool clarity of the con; confusion rushed in, and Neal’s pulse stuttered. He glimpsed the rueful curve of Peter’s mouth, and held his breath. Was Peter talking about him? Had Elizabeth’s banter extended beyond thieves and cons to the young Interpol agent Peter was working with? Was he making a pass?

“Says I’m obsessed with Neal’s case file, that I’d bring it to bed if she’d let me.” The confession was low and dreamy, weighted with genuine emotion. This wasn’t a game. “She might be right. There’s something about the guy that gets under my skin.”

The reality was a confusing mix of cold disappointment and heat. It wasn’t Agent Chris Gates that had captured Peter’s fancy; it was Neal, his real self as laid out in a series of criminal exploits and narrow escapes. A case file. The irony of it tasted like blood.

He opened his mouth and exhaled silently, all his senses tingling—aware of the steady tide of Peter’s breath, the texture of his suit pants and how they pulled across his thighs, the contrast of his crisp shirt cuff with his wrist. Aware of his own pulse.

Peter cleared his throat, apparently snapping out of his reverie. “That’s just between you and me,” he finished, sounding embarrassed. “Since you’ve been chasing him too, I guess I thought you might understand.”

“Oh, I do, trust me.” The lure of the forbidden, the intense twist of mutual observation and the elegance of applied logic. Neal understood all too well. Just as he understood he was in serious danger of losing himself if he continued this deceit any longer. Any condescension he might have ever felt for the FBI was long since overturned.

He cleared his throat. “By the way, I wasn’t going to say anything, but the hotel I planned to switch to is booked up tonight. Any chance the offer of the guest room’s still open?”

Peter threw him a quick glance, but Neal was ready for it, his eyes fixed dutifully on his monitor, innocent in every respect. “Of course, of course, happy to have you.” Peter’s briskness rang hollow, but Neal was pretty sure that was residual self-consciousness, rather than lack of enthusiasm. “I’ll call El and let her know.”

Chapter 12

El was taking her fourth batch of mini-muffins out of the oven when she heard the front door and voices. “I’m in the kitchen,” she called.

Chris opened the door and stopped, apparently dumbstruck, and El looked around the room, seeing it through his eyes: the empty flour packets and bowls stacked in the sink because the dishwasher was already full, the counters crowded with trays and racks of cooling savory petit fours and bite-sized sweets, and a few jars that had been ousted from the fridge to make way for hors d’oeuvres that needed to be kept chilled. There was a stack of full Tupperware boxes on the stool because she’d run out of room. It was a chaotic scene, especially for one in the morning.

“It’s not always like this. I’m supplementing the catering for the exhibition opening tomorrow. Our budget’s a bit limited.”

“It’s—” Chris opened his mouth, obviously searching for something polite to say, but staring at the most recent tray of muffins as if hypnotized. “I remember this from my childhood.”

He said it lightly, but El could tell it wasn’t an easy memory. “Your mom used to bake?”

“Not my mom. A family friend. My mom wasn’t well—Ellen practically raised me.” He snapped his mouth closed, as if startled to have said so much.

“I’m sorry.” El picked up the cooling tray and offered him one. “Ellen did a good job. She must be proud.”

“We haven’t spoken in a while.” Chris regarded the sugar-crusted lemon mini-muffin in his hand, his wistful expression only partially obscured by his glasses, then popped it in his mouth. Eyes half-closed, he chewed, swallowed and licked his lips. “Mm, I’m pretty sure it’s the same recipe.”

El dragged her gaze away and busied herself cleaning up, feeling bad about ogling the man while he relived innocent memories. It didn’t help that he was painfully good-looking, had discarded his jacket and tie, and was savoring her baking with pleasure and an intensity that echoed in the hollow of her chest. “So, taste tester, what do you think?”

“They’re perfect.” He cleared his throat. “Thanks for letting me stay.”

It was a signal, cutting off the moment and returning the conversation to a practical level. El turned back to him, her smile bright. “It’s no trouble. I’m guessing Peter’s upstairs clearing the clean laundry off the guest bed.”

“Something like that.” Chris’s grin was saranwrap thin, and perhaps the brief bout of nostalgia had made his isolation more pronounced, but he had the air of a man who hadn’t been hugged in months—probably not since his girlfriend ran off with the art collection. El folded her arms to resist the temptation to ruffle his hair.

“Can I get you a drink? You must be dying after so many hours in the van. What’ll it be—juice, coffee, beer, wine? Cocoa with little marshmallows?” She tinged the last with irony, so he wouldn’t detect the truth of her sudden urge to mother him, but his gaze sparked anyway, with humor and something else, admiration perhaps, which squeezed her heart.

It was probably just as well Peter chose that moment to bustle in. “Did someone say cocoa?”

He’d changed into a t-shirt and sweatpants, and he helped himself to a cooling mini-muffin from the tray and stuffed it into his mouth before El could stop him.

She moved the tray away and balanced it on the phone book. “Hon, those are for tomorrow night. If you’re going to be a locust, at least try a batch that hasn’t been taste tested yet.”

Peter stopped mid-chew. “Sorry.”

She snickered and rolled her eyes. “I should have expected you guys would come home hungry after your stakeout and taken proper precautions. Some kind of alarm system or, I don’t know, a bank vault on a time lock.”

Chris bit his lip, obviously smothering a smile, and El winked, playing the flirting game as if he were any other acquaintance standing in her kitchen, Terry, say, or Des or Isaac. As if she weren’t actually attracted to him. Which she wasn’t, she couldn’t be. They’d barely met, and she didn’t have time for crushes.

She took out her last clean pan and put some milk on to heat for cocoa. It was a good thing Chris was an Interpol agent, destined not to stay in one place for long. Usually her marriage gave her a reasonable immunity to the appeal of other men, and on the rare occasions that defense failed, she’d learned to keep her distance. But Chris was in her house, about to sleep under her roof, and her boundaries were never at their best at one in the morning.

“Actually, we’ve already eaten,” said Peter behind her. “Neal sent pizza.”

“To the van? Wow, that’s a new one.”

“But he didn’t send dessert,” said Chris, deadpan. “I’m sure he would have, if he’d known it would protect your baking.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t send champagne,” said El, stirring the milk to stop it burning.

“Maybe next time,” said Chris.

“Too obvious.” Peter took a half-empty jar of pickles from the counter by the fridge, started eating them with his fingers, then offered the jar to Chris, who shook his head. Peter fished out another, dripping vinegar on his t-shirt as he ate. “Anyway, Neal will be the one drinking champagne if we don’t catch him soon. Hughes is pulling the plug.”

“Oh, hon.”

Chris slid his hands into his pockets. “How long have we got?”

Peter checked his watch. “Thirty-three and a half hours, give or take. I was sure he was going to strike tonight.” He grimaced at El. “I don’t know if I’m going to make it to your art opening tomorrow—sorry.”

El shook her head. Peter never enjoyed gallery events much, and she’d be spending half the evening behind the scenes anyway. And she knew how frustrated he must be about Neal.

“That’s a shame,” said Chris. “I was looking forward to the show—and the refreshments.” He flicked El a glance, but his focus was on Peter and the case.

“Hey, you’re not on a deadline like I am. If you want to go as my proxy, by all means.” Peter gestured magnanimously, and Chris nodded.

“I might do that. Let’s play it by ear. Maybe we’ll already have Caffrey in cuffs by then.”

“We’d better get him soon. I’ve got a lot riding on this.” Peter put the pickles back on the counter and rubbed his hands together. “Anyway, that’s tomorrow’s problem.”

“You’re right.” El poured the hot milk into three mugs and stirred in some cocoa powder, then topped the drinks with mini-marshmallows as promised. “Some hot cocoa, a few hours’ sleep, and things will look better in the morning.”

They went and sat around the dining table, removing Peter from the temptation of El’s baking, and of course the conversation soon came back to Neal Caffrey.

“Maybe Henry Whitman will lead us somewhere,” said Peter.

Chris replied in kind, and El sipped her hot chocolate, interjecting occasionally, but mostly just observing. Peter had a loyal team, people he trusted who would do whatever he asked, but he was responsible for them—their lives and their careers—and he took that responsibility seriously. He’d never had an equal partner. Chris had only been around a couple of days, but he was his own man, just as determined and dedicated as Peter, and apparently just as entranced by Neal’s mysterious charm. The two of them had fallen into a rhythm already, looking to each other for confirmation or answers, as they explained the developments in the case to her. Exchanging amused smirks at Neal’s impudence. It was adorable, and helped El set aside her own untimely feelings. Chris was here for Peter, not her.

As if to illustrate that point, when Peter next took a mouthful of cocoa, Chris paused and watched, the same avid light in his eye that buyers often sported at the gallery. He licked his lips, then spoke into the conversational lull, his tone perfectly normal. “No luck with the witness description? What was her name—Lucy?”

Peter lowered his mug, oblivious. “Lacey Tepper. We found a few possible matches in the database, but they all have alibis for one or other of the jobs we know Neal pulled.”

Chris sighed. “Well, we’ll come up with something.”

“You’ll need your wits about you, then,” said El, pushing her chair back. She collected the cocoa mugs and took them into the kitchen, while Peter showed Chris upstairs, and if she took a moment to imagine them kissing at the top of the stairs, Chris’ eager mouth pressed to Peter’s, both of them breathing hard, well, there was no harm in a little private fantasy, and absenting herself from the picture was probably wisest, given her current frame of mind.

Chapter 13

El came into the bedroom, pink-cheeked, tooth-brushed and moisturized, while Peter was sitting on the side of the bed staring at nothing. She wore a slight frown. “Did you bring Chris’ bag up earlier?”

“He doesn’t have one. His hotel’s being fumigated for roaches, and he’s allergic to the chemicals they use. There was a mix-up that meant he couldn’t get his bags out.”

“Hm.” El climbed up on the bed and knelt behind Peter, making the mattress dip, and then her hands, small but with the strength of practice and concern, began kneading his shoulders. “You okay, hon? You seem kind of out of it.”

“There’s something I didn’t tell Chris.” Peter leaned into her massage, as if to counterbalance his guilt. “You know how we said Neal sent pizza to the van? Well, the order came with a message for Peter Burke.”

El’s hands stopped moving. “Neal sent you personally pizza? And you didn’t say anything—did you think Chris would be jealous?”

Peter didn’t reply. He hadn’t told Chris because—because it was unprofessional. Except that Peter himself hadn’t done anything wrong, it was all Neal’s doing; it was Peter’s reaction that was unprofessional. And it was a lead, too: Peter knew in his bones there was something there—however Neal had found out about him, had learned his name, that was the key to catching him. But when he’d tried to casually mention the matter, the words had formed a knot in his mouth, tangled and private. He’d overshared his feelings, but not in a way that implicated Neal. Did that make him complicit?

“Are you going to tell him?” El’s voice was curious, not a hint of judgement.

Peter turned, hitching his leg up so he could see her face. “I have to.”

Time was running out, and they had almost nothing.

“You don’t want to.” She kissed his lips, the gesture full of trust and confidence, and Peter breathed in and tried to be the man she believe him to be.

“I’ll tell him tomorrow.” There was no way around the awkwardness now, the question of why he hadn’t mentioned it earlier. The truth was that chasing Neal had become a game, and it was the best damn game Peter had ever played. He wanted to win, sure, but he didn’t want it to end.

*

When he came downstairs the next morning, El was making breakfast, and Chris was kneeling on the living room floor, playing with the puppy, his dark head bent as he tried to coax a rawhide chew toy out of Satchmo’s mouth, which action was naturally interpreted as an invitation to play tug-o’-war.

Peter stopped in the doorway, smiling despite the pressure he was under. The scene was so domestic and innocent, with Satchmo falling on his side, the toy still clamped between his teeth, and Chris laughing and indulgently rubbing between the puppy’s flaxen ears.

“I see you’ve made a friend.”

Chris looked up and pushed his hair off his forehead, almost knocked his glasses off in the process and then had to defend them from Satch. “Hey, good morning.”

Given the absence of baggage, Chris must have been wearing the same clothes as yesterday, but he nonetheless contrived to give the impression he’d made a beeline from a menswear store to their living room. And yet, despite his perfectly groomed appearance, he seemed quite at home in Peter’s living room, palling around with Peter’s dog. Like one of the family.

Peter gave him a hand up and, once he was on his feet, clapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s see what’s for breakfast.”

After cereal, toast and two cups of coffee each, El wished them a good day, took Satchmo and departed for the gallery via doggy daycare. Peter cleared away and stacked the dishwasher, then grabbed his car keys. “Time to get back to the salt mines.”

“Actually, I thought I’d go see if I can rescue my bags from my hotel.” Chris wrinkled his nose with catlike fastidiousness. “I’d like to change, if possible. And I should check in with my CI and see if he’s turned up anything on Whitman. Meet you at the office?”

“You sure I can’t give you a ride somewhere?”

“Nah, it’s no trouble.” Chris held up his phone. “Here, I’ll give you my number, and you can call if anything happens. And I’ll try to find somewhere else to stay tonight—”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Peter. “Stay as long as you like. We’re happy to have you.”

“I don’t want to impose,” said Chris, but it was a polite demurral rather than an excuse to leave.

Peter accepted it as such—“That’s settled, then.” —and gave him a spare door key so he could bring his bags back to the house.

*

Peter’s good mood lasted until he reached the office and saw Summers and Singh standing by Jones’ desk, conferring over a case file with Woodford from Organized Crime. Peter went toward them, gave Woodford a professional stink-eye and, stopping a few yards from their confab, beckoned Singh over. “Why aren’t you in the van, on the Hall of Science?”

“We’ve been reassigned.” Singh’s forehead creased nervously. She was fresh out of Quantico, still proving herself, and obviously reluctant to be the one to break the news to him, but she kept her chin level and met his eye. “Hughes said we’re wrapping up the Caffrey case, and Organized Crime is starting an operation against a drug-smuggling ring. They need us to scrape up enough evidence for a search warrant.”

“I had another 24 hours,” snapped Peter, but it wasn’t her fault. Peter sighed and ran his hand over his head. “Dammit.” Neal had pulled jobs in broad daylight before, and he’d already identified the vans as FBI surveillance. If he knew they weren’t watching anymore, he could be making his move right now, but the bureau didn’t care about torquetums or polyhedrial sundials. They weren’t especially valuable, and they didn’t belong to anyone with clout. “I understand,” he told Singh. “You didn’t get any movement overnight?”

“Nothing.” Singh made a sympathetic face. “Sorry, Agent Burke.” She started to turn back to Woodford.

“Not your fault,” Peter told her retreated back. “Wait, are the surveillance vans still in place?” Maybe they would act as a bluff, scarecrows for art thieves. Or maybe Peter could take advantage of Neal’s supposition that he was unmonitored.

Singh swiveled on her heel. “Yeah. Jones and Berrigan are pulling a double shift at the Hall of Science, and Young’s on her own at National History.”

Peter nodded and pulled out his phone. “Jones, what can you tell me?”

Jones corroborated Singh’s news, and added, “I sent Agent Young home. She’d been at Natural History all night, and it wasn’t like she could go in without backup if anything happened. I logged into the feed from the other van, and Diana and I are monitoring cameras at both sites from here.”

“But no one’s actually onsite at National History?”

“Yeah, sorry, Peter. We just don’t have the manpower to cover 24-hour shifts anymore.”

Jones himself had been there since midnight, Peter knew. Neither of them referenced that, but Peter made sure his gratitude was apparent in his tone. “Okay, Chris and I will take National History.” They’d have to follow up with the pizza company by phone, which wasn’t ideal, but if he complained to Hughes about the loss of resources, Hughes might decide the stripped-down operation was no longer viable and halt it completely, and given their lack of progress, Peter didn’t have anything to use to persuade him otherwise. “Are you and Diana able to hold your positions for now?”

“Of course. Young said she’d be back at ten. I’ll get her to step in and relieve Diana.”

“I’ll send someone else as soon as I can, to give you a break. Thanks, Jones.”

“We’d better hope he makes his move soon,” said Jones. “We can’t cover both sites like this for long.”

“He will.” Peter tried to rally his confidence, that sense that he knew Neal and could predict his behavior, but his faith was at a low ebb. “He has to.”

Chapter 14

“Where in the name of Greta Garbo have you been?” Mozzie was at the breakfast bar with a polka-dotted bowl of multi-colored cereal, carton of soy milk in hand, mid-pour.

“You don’t want to know,” said Neal truthfully. He dropped his jacket on the couch, then thought better of it. He couldn’t change yet. He might need an excuse to absent himself later, and the fictional saga of hotel fumigations and unattainable bags was proving useful in that regard. He picked up the jacket, shook it out, and draped it more carefully. “I’m here now. Are the devices transmitting?”

“Against astronomical odds, your insane plan to infiltrate a government surveillance van, Trojan horse in hand, is indeed bearing fruit.” Moz put the soy milk in the fridge and carried his cereal back to his workstation. He hit some keys, and the screens filled with surveillance footage of the Museum of Natural History. “I can access the feed.”

“Can you delay it?”

“I’m offended you’d even ask. I have access; I can do what I want.” Mozzie swiveled his chair to face Neal. “You’re really going to steal the torquetum under the nose of your pet fed?”

“I have to pay Keller back ASAP.” Neal shrugged. That he could wait one more day and Peter would have moved on to another case was beside the point; he had a plan and an alibi in place. Why stop now?

He went to the kitchenette and poured himself a glass of water, and they went over the strategy again: once it was dark, Mozzie would set a thirty minute delay on the lone camera on the rear door of the museum. Then Neal could go in undetected, bypass the alarm system, liberate the torquetum and be at Elizabeth’s gallery opening by the time the feds saw him going in. Neal Caffrey would continue to impress everyone with his escape skills, and Chris Gates would be standing in front of Peter’s wife when he got the call from Peter that a crime was in progress; no one could suspect him. It was perfect.

He dusted off his tie, pleased.

“What’s that—pollen?” Mozzie peered at his chest.

Neal followed his gaze. “Puppy fur.” Less than an hour earlier he’d been in the Burkes’ townhouse, with its unremarkable furnishings and everyday clutter: dentist reminders on the refrigerator, Elizabeth’s baking stacked in Tupperware on the counter, Peter’s cheap shaving soap in the bathroom, his shelf of Neal Caffrey-inspired reading. The drift of short blond dog hairs on his tie was a memento of that other world, and who he’d pretended to be there. He changed the subject before Mozzie could interrogate him further. “Any news on Keller’s location?”

“Nothing conclusive, but there’s a good chance he’s in town.”

Neal sighed. He was twenty-seven years old, and he’d been in the game for nine years, his career ranging from running small-time cons to pulling million-dollar heists. He was a professional, able to improvise his way out of just about any situation. But Keller was unpredictable: he had no sense of loyalty, no respect for the usual unspoken agreements between associates. He would do whatever it took to win, up to and including murder. Knowing he might be around set Neal’s teeth on edge and added urgency to the Holbein job—not just to pay Keller back, but to get it done and leave town before Keller could screw things up for him. “Remind me again why borrowing money from the bank of Alex seemed like a good idea.”

Mozzie opened his mouth, and Neal raised a hasty hand to stop him.

“Rhetorical question, Moz.” The day had started so well—playing with the puppy, breakfast with the Burkes, shoring up their trust in him—but he couldn’t afford to get comfortable. “Still no word from Kate?”

“Funny you should ask.” Mozzie went to the breakfast bar and dug a postcard out of a pile of newspapers. “It arrived yesterday. The postmark’s from Portugal.”

“What does it say?” Neal didn’t wait for an answer; instead he went and took it from Mozzie’s grasp. The card’s message was penned in Kate’s clean, no-nonsense lettering:

Sorry, Neal. It’s over.
p.s. I’m not in Portugal.

Neal tried to rearrange the words with his eyes, discern some kind of code or hidden meaning, but he couldn’t. It was what it was. “So, that’s that.”

“You okay, man?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Neal dropped the postcard in the trash and went to get his equipment ready for the heist. “I can’t decide what to leave the feds this time.”

“Uh, how about nothing?” Mozzie sat at his keyboard and typed something, making half a dozen windows flicker in and out of existence faster than Neal’s eyes could process them. “I thought you were going to paint up a Matryoshka doll to look like your fed.”

“I was, but I haven’t got time.” The Matryoshka doll idea seemed childish now; a taunt to embarrass Peter in front of his colleagues. After the last few days, Neal’s impulse was to leave a more genuine gift, a private message, maybe a book for Peter’s library, but anything too personal was risky. He didn’t want to blow his cover yet. And he could hardly provide the one thing Peter wanted above all: Neal himself in cuffs. “Maybe I’ll just take flowers.”

“The universal language,” said Mozzie approvingly. “That saves me the trouble of vetoing the doll. Besides, your plan to fill it with candy was just disturbing—it’s like you expected him to eat his own entrails.”

Neal snickered and carefully folded his suit for the gallery opening, to pack into the gym bag along with a turtleneck, climbing shoes and his glass cutter. He’d pick up a long-stemmed rose later.

Then his phone rang. He held up a finger to silence Moz and answered. “Yeah?”

It was Peter.

Chapter 15

El counted up the boxes of baking as Isaac and Des carried the last stack in from her car to the gallery’s kitchen. “Thanks, guys. I’d tip you in muffins, but I’m saving them for the opening tonight.”

“That’s okay,” said Isaac. “You pay us in actual pay.”

“They smell great, though. They’re making me hungry.” Des batted his eyelashes. “You could buy us pizza for lunch.”

“Dude, we can buy our own pizza.” Isaac made an apologetic face at El and dragged Des into the main room of the gallery to set up tables.

El grinned to herself, then paused. The invocation of pizza reminded her of Neal Caffrey sending pizza to an FBI surveillance van, addressed to Peter, and Peter’s flustered reaction when admitting it. It was one think to tease Peter about his crush, or imagine him kissing a handsome young Interpol agent, but the possibility of his flirtation with Neal Caffrey, master thief moving out of the realm of fiction, into real life, was quite another.

A professional thief probably wouldn’t respect wedding vows any more than he respected property rights. And Peter was definitely attracted to him, despite their never having met. He’d never shown interest in other women, but Neal was something else entirely—an irresistible puzzle, a dazzling fantasy, a challenge.

El went to her office and printed out the catering checklist she’d made for the opening. She tried to distract herself with ticking off cases of champagne and juice. It didn’t work.

Neal had found out Peter’s name, had known where he was. He must have seen him. Was it a question of research or stalking? Knowing what she did about Neal, that his carefully planned and flawlessly executed heists were invariably combined with shameless risk-taking and charm, either seemed possible. And if he’d seen Peter, seen how smart, sexy and adorably easy to tease he was, not to mention how obsessed with Neal’s case, it seemed equally possible that Peter’s fascination was reciprocated, in whole or in part.

Which meant Neal’s investigation might well extend to her.

El put down the checklist and went through to the gallery. There were only one or two people browsing the artworks, their scarves bundled in their hands. A middle-aged man in a suit and carrying a briefcase seemed captivated with the de Kooning. Could that be him? She’d always expected Neal would be younger.

As she watched, the man checked his watch and left, his pace quickening as he disappeared up the street.

What if Neal Caffrey decided to rob the gallery, to show off? He’d probably do it right in the middle of the opening too, under everyone’s noses. But Chris was coming to the opening. He’d catch him, a mix of triumph and gallantry making him—

No. It should be Peter who caught Neal. If El were being robbed, it was disloyal to think of anyone but Peter saving the day. El reimagined the scene, firmly rewriting it in her mind. It took some effort. Oh dear.

It didn’t matter who caught Neal—someone had to, and soon. The case was messing with Peter’s head, and Chris’ presence, which was entirely due to the case, was messing with hers.

El stomped back to her office, feeling off-kilter and cranky, and tore a piece off green paper off her memo cube. She wrote a small, discreet note: Neal Caffrey, if you directly or indirectly cause harm to my gallery or my husband, I’ll make you sorry. El Burke

Feeling foolish but nonetheless determined, she stuck it to the safety glass window in the security door between the gallery and the back offices, and hoped no one else would notice.

Chapter 16

Neal received another call when he was about twenty yards from the surveillance van where he was meeting Peter, this one from a blocked number. “Yeah?”

“Well, well, Neal Caffrey.”

“Keller.” Neal stopped in his tracks, his free hand clenching. “What do you want?”

“Actually, I’m calling to offer you a deal.” The oily confidence of the words and the clearly audible smirk that accompanied them lit a fuse in Neal’s chest, but he tried to snuff it out.

Was he in range of the van’s cameras? Could Peter see him? In his fury, he couldn’t think clearly enough to be sure. To be on the safe side, he went to lean on the iron railing along the side of the museum grounds and maintained a relaxed façade. “You don’t have anything I want. I already know Alex sold me out and I owe you fifty grand.”

“Oh, I’ll let that slide. Forget the money.”

“In exchange for what?”

“I’m planning a job. I need a safe cracker. You can pay me back out of your cut and still turn a juicy profit.”

He said juicy with such relish, it made Neal grimace. The fuse burned hotter and faster. “I work alone. I’ll get you your money.”

“By the 19th,” said Keller. “If not, you’re joining my crew.”

“That’s never going to happen.”

“Oh come on, Caffrey, it’ll be fun—like old times.” Keller paused like a twelve-year-old bully deciding where to land his first punch. “So, how’s Kate these days? Still enjoying the Riviera?”

Neal snatched the phone away from his ear and disconnected, resisting the impulse to hurl it into the bushes beyond the iron railing, but only barely. Fucking Keller and his mind games. He always knew how to goad him, and Kate—oddly and inexplicably—had always excused his behavior, her expression reasonable and edged with dry irony, the underlying message being that Neal was no better.

Neal was better. He had a code. He had lines he wouldn’t cross and friends he wouldn’t betray. And no way in hell was he going to join Keller’s crew. Which meant he had to get the torquetum and the polyhedrial sundial, cash in the Holbein collection and leave town ASAP.

He took a deep breath and stared at the railing, the nobbled black paint and small spots of orange rust. Was Kate in the Riviera? Had she been? Why did he care, when she’d taken everything and left him. It was over. (Her words.) Everyone kept insisting there were other fish in the sea—maybe it was time to find one.

He gave himself a mental shake, put his game face on and went to join his latest mark in the surveillance van.

Peter glanced up to say hi when Neal came in and shut the door behind him, then immediately resumed staring at the monitor as if in a trance, a hungry cat watching a mouse hole.

Neal took the same chair as yesterday, letting the double vision of the con settle into place: his working with Peter, bonding with Elizabeth and the puppy that morning, sleeping in their house and eating breakfast together, the comfortable web of friendship overlaid with and muted by the numerous calculations that formed his plan to outwit Peter and his team professionally and leave him in the dust.

This was a con. He couldn’t afford to let his guard down. He couldn’t care.

The van was exactly the same as yesterday, barring a faint tang of citrus in the air. Further visual investigation revealed a scrap of bright orange peel and a few pale strands of pith that had escaped being cleaned away. There were some sticky fingerprints on the metal counter too. To spare his clothes, Neal covered the prints with a much doodled-on FBI memo regarding overtime meal breaks. He glanced at the security footage on his screen, preparing himself for several hours of uneventful waiting, but his nerves were on edge from Keller’s threats and the low flutter of pre-heist anticipation, and every sound Peter made—from the huff of a sigh to the faint creak of the chair as he shifted his weight—seemed to whisper against the inside of his ear, leaving a shivering trail.

Neal licked his lips. Peter’s whole raison d’etre was to lock Neal away: he was a hunter, a predator, the enemy. Somehow, that only made him more magnetic.

He’d admitted to being obsessed with Neal, that Neal got under his skin, but Neal was in disguise—he couldn’t test the bounds of that.

Peter sighed again. “Something I didn’t tell you yesterday.”

“Mm? What’s that?”

“Neal.” Peter paused, and for a frozen second, Neal thought he’d been busted. His skin turned to ice from head to foot, and he tensed all over. But Peter didn’t even look at him. “The pizza Caffrey sent us—it was addressed to G. Mann, but it came with a message.”

Neal looked around. Since Peter hadn’t mentioned the message last night, Neal had assumed the pizza company forgot to include it. “What kind of message?”

“‘Bon appetit.’ Addressed to me personally. He knows my name.”

“Which means—”

“Which means he’s close. Watching us.” Peter’s clothing rustled, and his tone turned restless. “If we weren’t stuck here, we could follow up with the pizza company, find out where the order came from.”

“You can’t get someone from the office to do that?”

“The brass is starving us out.” The chair creaked again. “I’m running out of time.”

It was barely noon, the cameras relaying daylight and innocent museum-goers, tourists and schoolkids.

Neal slowly turned his chair to face Peter: his legs were bent by necessity, in the confined space, his ass forward on the seat so he could slump. Broad shoulders slightly hunched. The back of his neck flushed. He shifted in his seat again, clearly frustrated. Surveillance like this was grunt work, and there were leads he needed to follow up, but he didn’t have the resources. Yesterday he’d enjoyed the stakeout, fueled by determination and optimism. They’d swapped war stories and lazy observations. Today he was trapped.

And Neal was aware of every inch of him, plus every inch of his own body. The air between them felt taut and charged. Neal licked his lips, seized with the spirit of recklessness and bad ideas. “You’ve got to relax, man.” The words formed of their own volition. “I could—I could help you out.”

Peter whipped his head around, sacrificing precious screen time, and met Neal’s eye. To his credit, he didn’t recoil or pretend to misunderstand. “Are you serious?”

Neal shrugged. “You can keep your eyes on the screen the whole time.”

He forced his breathing to remain steady. The offer had spilled out impulsively, a reckless attempt to relieve his own tension, maybe to earn another wild anecdote from his time undercover in an FBI surveillance van, but now he’d made it, he desperately wanted Peter to accept. He wanted Peter Burke’s cock in his mouth. Saliva pooled under his tongue. The con fizzed in his bloodstream. He swallowed, his ears tingling, awaiting the sound of a zipper.

Peter’s eyes were dark, but that could have just been the dim light of the van. There was no other indication he was tempted. “Listen, I think El and I gave you the wrong idea about us when she was teasing me.”

“I could pretend to be a cat burglar. She’d give you a pass if it was Caffrey, right?” Neal tried to inject some humor into the line, but he was already turned on, and the scratch in his own voice tangled with the outrageous proposition and twined catlike around his nerves, amping up his arousal.

Peter went pink and licked the corner of his lower lip. For a second, a fraction of a second, it seemed possible he would agree. He even turned side-on to the monitors and regarded Neal, attentive, unflinching. Maybe wondering if Neal were messing with him. Then he scrunched up his face, embarrassed. “Hey, you can’t hold my rambling yesterday against me.”

“No, I get it.” Neal reined himself in at once. Adjusted his glasses. Forced a lid on his arousal. “Forget I said anything.”

Peter nudged one of the rollers on Neal’s chair with his foot. “Not that I’m not flattered.”

He turned back to his monitors, apparently dismissing the matter from his mind, and Neal tried to do likewise, to calm the thrum of his body. God, he needed to get laid. He could try his luck with Elizabeth—there had definitely been sparks, and he could already anticipate how their bodies would fit together—but she didn’t deserve to be conned into bed. Peter was fair game, but El wasn’t actively working to imprison him. She’d been kind. And besides, being alone with her was dangerous: he instinctively trusted her, and his history kept rising to the surface.

No, the heist itself was all the excitement he could hope for tonight.

Peter’s phone rang. “This is Burke. Hi, Jones. What’s up? Okay, thanks, I appreciate it. No, no, you go and get some sleep. We’ll see you later.”

He disconnected and threw his phone on the file folder in front of him. “Jones pulled in a favor and found a couple of agents from Missing Persons to babysit the Hall of Science. We’ve got both sites covered. He and Diana are taking a break.”

They were going to so much trouble to catch him, Neal almost felt bad. “What’s our next move?”

“Ball’s in Neal’s court. Anyone else, the pizza would have meant ‘I see you, and I’m out of here.’ From Neal, it’s a challenge, but with the resources we have, all we can do is wait.” Peter ran his hand over his hair and added heavily, “If we don’t get him tonight, I’m off the case.”

“Well, fingers crossed,” said Neal, and changed the subject with a casual question about a case Peter had mentioned the day before.

*

Seven and a half hours and two coffee runs later, Peter was mouthing off about baseball, and Neal’s ability to feign interest was wearing thin. It was dark outside and, according to his watch, time to make his move. He cleared his throat, interrupting a detailed description of some Yankee player’s batting style, and said, “Uh, my hotel said my bags would be decontaminated by now. I should go pick up my other suit for Elizabeth’s gallery opening.”

“No problem. Jones is due any minute.” Peter’s eyes never left the screen. He looked settled in for the evening.

“You’re not going to the opening?”

“Not really my thing. El will understand. You can be my proxy.”

“Okay, you got it.” Neal stood up and stretched as well as he could in the confined space. “I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah, back at my place.” Peter’s glance was clear and unself-conscious, the morning’s proposition forgiven and forgotten. Not a hint of suspicion, either.

“If you’re sure that’s still okay.” Neal paused by the door. “Call me if anything happens.”

“Of course.” Peter tapped his phone, where Neal’s number was stored.

Neal let himself out into the cool night, half-relieved the pretense was over and half-regretful. Despite the sports talk, Peter was good company, sharp and wry, and his commentary on internal FBI politics had been enlightening.

Still, Neal had a job to do. The Museum of Natural History tonight, the Hall of Science tomorrow, and then he could cash in his hoard for a million bucks, pay off Keller, and go somewhere distant and sunny for a much-needed vacation. Mozzie would like that.

Speaking of whom… Neal rounded the corner and ran up the steps of the hostel, where he’d rented a room earlier under a new alias. He nodded to the guy on the desk, climbed the stairs to his room on the second floor, and fished his gym bag out from under the bed where he’d stashed it earlier. Everything he needed was right here, up to and including the rose. He took his earpiece from the inner pocket of the bag, put it in and tapped it on. “Earth to Mozzie, come in Moz.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, no names?”

“I thought you said the connection was secure.”

“It’s encrypted, but that’s still no reason to tempt fate. Are you set?”

“Yeah. Did you delay the camera?”

“Sixteen minutes and thirty-eight seconds ago, as agreed.” Mozzie hummed a moment. “You sure you want to do this today? We could wait till the heat’s died down.”

“Can’t.” Neal relayed Keller’s message. “Besides, I’ve got the heat under control.” His blood was humming, his brain fully alert. He just had to go in, disable the museum’s alarm, grab the torquetum from its place in the Astronomy and Navigation through the Ages exhibition and stash it here in the hostel, then change and get to the gallery before Peter called. He had plenty of time.

He could already picture Peter’s rueful admiration that Caffrey had eluded him once again.

He pulled on his black turtleneck, gathered his B&E equipment into a small backpack and left via the window at the end of the landing so the guy on reception wouldn’t see him leave. It was starting to rain, occasional fat drops. He wasn’t cold, but if it got any heavier, he was going to regret not bringing a jacket.

“Maybe I should snag that de Kooning before we leave town,” he said as he scaled the wall and approached the service entrance to the museum.

“This is about Kate, isn’t it?” muttered Moz. “Some people drink their way out of a heartbreak. You steal your way out.”

“Everyone needs a hobby.” The de Kooning wasn’t about Kate; he just didn’t want Elizabeth to feel left out. He pried the face off the keypad on the service door and hotwired his entry, then slipped inside and wiped his shoes with a cloth so he wouldn’t leave tracks, doubly important given the rain.

The alarm beeped softly in the dark. Neal took a flashlight from his pocket, stuck it between his teeth and concentrated. The system was a Defender ZA9K, and if he got the sequence wrong, the siren would go off, the infrared CCTV would kick in, and Peter would come racing in, and then they’d end up playing cat and mouse around the museum, blowing Neal’s alibi, his cover and probably his chance to get the torquetum.

He had twenty-five seconds. He did it in twenty-three, then let out his breath in a rush. His heart was racing; he was invincible. “I’m in. Which way do I go.”

“Down the hall to the right, then through the—Wait, why can’t I—” There was the faint clicking of a keyboard, and Moz’s voice rose half an octave. “I’ve lost eyes on the FBI van. I’m blind, Neal. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. Maybe their signal’s down for some reason.” Neal clicked off the flashlight and listened, but there were no sounds in the dark. The next security guard round wasn’t scheduled for another half hour—he’d learned their routine from Peter.

Then his phone rang, echoing off the marble floors, shattering the silence and making him jump. He scrambled to answer it. “Yeah?”

“Chris, it’s Peter. Neal’s here, he’s inside. Jones found some kind of interference with our camera feed, and we’re going in now. How far away are you?”

“I’m stuck on the subway. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Neal’s heart started pounding. “Good luck!” He hung up. “Moz, the FBI are coming.”

“Neal, you have to get out of there!”

“I’m not leaving without the torquetum.” Peter couldn’t catch him. Peter didn’t even know who he was. Neal started running down the hallway.

“In that case, the most direct route is through the third door on the right and past the curator’s office.”

“I know, Moz!” Neal skidded on the polished floor as he caught the door handle and let himself into the Authorized Personnel Only area. He’d spent hours studying the blueprints. “I know the way!”

“You always say that, but what about the time you turned right instead of left and had to spend the night hiding behind a sarcophagus while British bobbies searched the building?”

Neal snorted. “Heist now, reminisce later.”

Chapter 17

Jones arrived less than half an hour after Chris left for his hotel. He looked tired, but his shirt was pressed. He must have come directly from home. “Hey, Peter. Anything?”

Peter shook his head. He was starting to lose faith. The whole day seemed like a misguided fever dream, from the endless nothing on the monitors to Chris’ left-field offer of casual physical release, impersonal, obviously driven by a need to let off steam himself. Apparently Interpol, with its slinky international agents, had a different office culture from the stolid FBI with its bad coffee and stress balls. What chance did he, Peter Burke, have of catching a sophisticated international thief like Caffrey? Maybe he’d been fooling himself this whole time, leading his team on a wild goose chase. “You know, you don’t have to do this.”

By Peter’s calculations, Jones had pulled four ten-hour shifts in the last 48 hours. Above and beyond.

“You need backup, I’m here. Besides, we should run out the clock.” Jones sat down and typed something at the computer Chris had just vacated.

Peter sipped his latest cup of coffee, trying to make it last. It was tepid, but it still tasted good and the caffeine provided a welcome lift. He checked the time in the corner of his screen. “Martinson and Chase will be wrapping up at the Hall of Science soon, and we don’t have anyone to relieve them. Let’s redirect the feed from there, and keep eyes on both.”

“You got it.” Jones started typing, then muttered a huh under his breath. “Peter, there’s some kind of interference. Give me a minute.”

“What are you talking about?” Peter blinked, but forced himself to stay focused on the monitor in front of him. Any inattention could mean they missed the moment Neal made his move.

Jones was typing again. “Yeah, someone’s installed a Trojan and put a delay in the feed, just for one camera.”

Peter let himself look. “Can you correct it? Fast forward.”

Jones did, and there in the grainy black and white footage was a lean black-clad figure, loping casually up to the service door, face averted, and doing something to the alarm.

Adrenaline washed through Peter. This was it. Neal Caffrey. “Alert the security guards,” he told Jones, then he grabbed his phone from the counter, called Chris and filled him in. “How far away are you?”

“I’m stuck on the subway, somewhere in the West 30s,” said Chris. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Good luck!”

Peter hung up. Jones was still talking to security, and it was too late to call in a SWAT team. By the time they arrived, Neal would be long gone. Peter shoved open the van door. “You take the periphery. I’m going in.”

“Peter, you need back up!”

“We have to get him.” Peter didn’t wait for an answer. Neal wasn’t violent, and on his own, Peter had the element of surprise. He checked his gun in its holster and ran for the front door of the museum.

*

Behind the scenes was a rabbit warren. Peter knew that, and since he also knew exactly what Neal was going after, he took the public route even though it was longer, treading swiftly with his hand on the butt of his service weapon, his trail witnessed by dozens of dead animals and skeletons.

The Astronomy and Navigation exhibit was in a separate room. Peter stopped in the doorway and took stock. A reproduction of the night sky was printed on an inverted dome, like a planetarium, the constellations marked with outlines of zodiac signs. Filling the center of the room, a large replica sailing ship took pride of place, model sextants and other navigational equipment arrayed on its deck for visitors to try out, its rigging bound tight so as not to tempt small children to climb. Its plain mast towering. There were no windows in the room through which a thief could escape.

Neal was still here, Peter could feel it. He spared a moment to be glad Chris hadn’t arrived yet—that this moment, the first time he laid eyes on Neal, would be private. It had been a hell of a long time coming, and he needed to catch him personally, to justify the hundreds of man-hours spent on his case, all those missed dinners with El, his own obsession. He needed Neal to acknowledge his victory.

He held his breath, straining his ears past the hot thrum of excitement. Everything was quiet and still, eerie like the scene in a movie before the hero stepped into another universe. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled.

He skirted the ship to the display case that had housed the torquetum and now bore a simple circular hole—no fancy heart shapes this time—and an impudent long stemmed rose. “Neal? You might as well come out. There’s nowhere to run.”

The night held its breath.

Peter peered around the room, drawn in soft charcoal by the glow of the display cases. Neal wasn’t behind the ship, and none of the other shadows were big enough to conceal a lurking thief. But he was here, Peter knew it.

Something about the sailing ship caught Peter’s eye. He climbed aboard and took out his flashlight to examine the deck. There was a drift of fine white dust. Peter glanced up. Maybe some noise drew his gaze, maybe it was luck or fate. There was a crack in the ceiling, just above the mast, an access hole with its cover askew, and as Peter watched, the crack slid closed without a sound, turning invisible.

Neal was up there, probably hiding in a ventilation duct—the ultimate cat burglar cliché. Did he think Peter wouldn’t follow? Because Peter was a solid FBI agent with no sense of adventure? He could think again.

Peter fastened the catch on his shoulder holster to re-secure his sidearm. He put his flashlight in his teeth and toed off his shoes, pulled off his socks. He reached up and found a handhold, too high for children, but no doubt used by museum staff to rig the sails, and hauled himself up, hoping like hell the replica ship was robust enough to bear his weight. He didn’t want to have to explain to the museum director or to Hughes that he’d broken one of the exhibits by climbing on it. But it was solid, and after the first few feet there were footholds, and the ascent was surprisingly easy.

With one arm clamped around the top of the mast, he eased the access hole cover up and aside. It was still a good foot above his head, and he couldn’t see a damned thing up there, but he reached into the cavity, felt around the smooth dusty metal of a duct—and then his questing hand caught something hard and curved wrapped in fabric and clamped on tight. A leg. An ankle. Peter had him.

Except that right then a rush of chemistry flowed between them, or electricity, a circuit completed, and it erased every thought from Peter’s head.

The leg didn’t kick out or try to free itself, and Peter flushed head to foot, his palm prickling with sweat, barely aware of the ache in his shoulder. Distantly he knew he should drag Neal out, back, down. What was he waiting for? But the chase had been so sweet, and in this strange, liminal space, it felt like they were on the same side. As if capturing and containing Neal would be the real crime.

The lights came up abruptly, dazzling Peter, and the outline of Scorpius regarded him with a judgmental eye. From the foyer beyond the Astronomy exhibition room, Jones’ voice rang out. “Agent Burke. Did you find anything?”

The ankle Peter was holding, Neal’s ankle, twitched.

Instinctively, Peter let go. He looked down to see Jones’ approach, steadying himself on the side of access hole. “No.”

“No sign of him at any of the exits. The night security guards are on the main exits.” Jones stopped at side of the sailing ship and looked up quizzically.

“I had a hunch. It didn’t pan out.” Peter began his descent into an icy sea of regret and self-doubt. What was he doing? This wasn’t some kind of star-crossed romance. I could pretend to be a cat burglar, Chris had offered, and Peter hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but the suggestion had infiltrated his instincts, his commonsense. Not Chris, who was pleasant enough, a good colleague, a friend—no. Neal Caffrey, impossible and forbidden. Neal teasing him, exasperating, naked and turned on.

Peter swallowed bile. Jones was delivering an update, not suspecting a damned thing, saying SWAT was ten minutes out, but Peter could hardly hear him, too busy scrambling for a way to salvage his career and his badge. Christ, what a fuck up.

Chapter 17

Neal took the air duct to an office full of files and science books, snuck into the hallway, grateful for the soft silent soles of his climbing shoes, and escaped out the window, scaling up to the roof, heedless of the rain, which was falling steadily now. He staggered over to the elevator housing and crouched down, leaning against the wall, dragging air deep into his lungs. His phone vibrated with a text message from a blocked number: WHAT IS HAPPENING?!?!

Neal closed his eyes. His ankle still tingled, his brain was scrambled. Something miraculous had just happened, and he needed a minute to get his head around the enormity of it. Peter letting him go. But first he had to get clear of the museum before any more federal agents arrived. He tapped his earpiece back on. “Hey.”

“Where are you? Are you okay?”

“Roof. I need to get the torquetum to the hostel, change and go back in as Gates. Do you have eyes yet? Is my exit clear?” He zipped open the bag, made sure the antique device was properly wrapped and padded, and pulled out his rappelling gear, looking around for somewhere to secure a line.

“Are you out of your mind? Do you have a concussion? Neal, you can’t go back in. You’re burned. They know the computers were hacked! They’re going to be suspicious of anyone who’s been in the surveillance van! You’ll be their prime suspect!”

“And if I don’t salvage Chris Gates, they’ll know it’s me for sure, and then they’ll have a description. More than a description. They can put up composites at every airport and bus terminal.” Neal tried to sound logical, but he knew he wasn’t thinking like a con. He didn’t care. He had to see Peter.

“So we’ll get a car. I’ve been thinking of investing in a yellow cab anyway. Those things are practically invisible. We can forge a medallion.”

“I haven’t got the sundial yet. Without that, we can’t cash in the Holbein collection, and I’m still in debt to Keller.”

“Neal, it’s the FBI, not some amateur sleuths! It’s time to get out.”

“I can’t.” Neal hooked a carabiner around the straps and started his descent into a thick stand of bushes growing close to the museum wall. He’d show up on the cameras if anyone cared to check later, but that couldn’t be helped, and right now, there was no one in the van. So long as he kept his face averted, it wouldn’t give the FBI more than they already had.

*

The museum was teeming with law enforcement by the time Neal returned in his crumpled Interpol agent clothes. He asked one of the junior agents Peter’s whereabouts, even though he already knew he’d be in the Astronomy exhibition room, and then hurried there, arriving appropriately breathless, stopping in the doorway to wipe his rain-obscured glasses with a handkerchief.

Peter was conferring with Jones, both of them serious, Jones shaking his head. “No, you need to take a break, Peter. Diana’s due back on shift in half an hour. We’ll go sit on the Hall of Science and call you if Caffrey puts in an appearance.”

“The case is over.” Peter was angled slightly away, and Neal couldn’t read his expression, couldn’t tell if he were stalling Jones on purpose.

“Not till tomorrow morning,” said Jones. “Besides, I want to see if anyone’s interfered with the computers in the other van.”

Peter sighed. “Okay, go.” Peter rubbed his neck and, as Jones turned to the exit, caught sight of Neal. “Hey, Chris, you made it.”

Neal slid his glasses back on and tucked his handkerchief into his pocket, moving closer, all the bustle around them fading into the background. “Peter, what happened? Did you get him?”

Peter was lightly flushed and tight-mouthed, displaying none of the admiration or fond exasperation he usually showed when faced with Neal’s crimes. Sealed up like a bank vault. “He got away.”

“Damn, that’s too bad. Did he leave anything?” It was a shameless bid to elicit a smile. It didn’t work.

Peter gestured toward the broken glass case without looking. “See for yourself.”

Neal took a few steps in that direction, pretending he didn’t know what to expect, and saw a pair of ERT techs swabbing and fingerprinting everything in sight. Beside them, spread out on the floor, was a blue canvas sheet on which a number of evidence bags were laid out, including one containing the rose. “Aw, flowers this time. That’s romantic. You know, he probably left them for you, Peter.”

Silence behind him.

Neal reviewed the crime scene further, trying to get into character, to connect with Peter. “He smashed the case. That’s not like Caffrey. He must have been in a hurry.”

Still Peter didn’t stay anything. Neal turned back to catch his eye, but Peter was evasive. His air of authority was in place, but he was wearing it like a shield now, hiding behind his rank. He was compromised, and he knew it.

Neal’s fingers twitched, instinctively wanting to touch him, the off-the-rack suit as tempting as fine silk. He reached out with his voice instead. “Hey, are you okay?”

Peter folded his arms, his jacket taut across his shoulders, his knuckles white. He looked away, back to the ship in the middle of the room, and his gaze flicked up at the mast. “I’m screwed.”

“Hey, we can still get him.” Neal moved in again, closer now, awareness humming under his skin. Forgetting for a moment that his cover was a lie. “It’s not too late. Between the two of us—”

“It’s too late for me.” Peter finally met Neal’s eye, his gaze blank and distant. “Caffrey’s all yours. If we find anything tonight, I’ll hand it over to you tomorrow.”

Neal wondered if that were true, if Peter really would help Chris Gates and Interpol capture Neal. It shouldn’t matter, but for a moment, that question absorbed him more than the problems Keller posed, or even Kate’s defection. “I’m sorry.”

Peter shrugged and turned away. “Not your fault.”

Chapter 18

The opening was a rousing success. Anahera was chatting with Josephine Fraser, an art collector and regular patron of the gallery, both of them nodding and smiling, and most of the other attendees were circulating, contemplating the paintings with interest and discussion, or seeing and being seen.

Isaac, Des and their friend Grant, who’d all inexplicably dyed their hair blue-black for the occasion, carried around trays of drinks and hors d’oeuvres. El went to the kitchenette to check on the refreshment supplies, and took a moment to fix her hair, then went back to pour some more champagne, her gaze snagging on every unfamiliar male face under the age of sixty. Could Neal Caffrey be here? Was he that bold? Surely he had better things to do, like tormenting her husband.

It was a relief to see Chris make his way through the throng. If Neal tried to make a move now, she had a law enforcement officer on hand to stop him. Chris was wearing the same suit as that morning, but even so, he looked sophisticated and dashing, right at home in the New York art crowd.

She went to meet him, knowing he’d attribute her pleased smile to the successful event. “Chris, I’m glad you could make it. Where’s Peter? Still stuck in the van?”

“He said he’ll see you at home.” The words were light, but Chris’ serious expression sent a different message.

El drew him behind the refreshments table in the back corner. “What happened? Is my husband all right?”

“Caffrey struck again. He got away with the torquetum,” said Chris.

“Oh dear.”

“I’m sorry, I should have been there.”

“Why weren’t you? I thought you guys were staking out the museum together.”

“All afternoon, but I wanted a change of clothes for tonight. I was most of the way to my hotel when Peter called, and by the time I got back, it was too late.”

“So the investigation’s over?”

“Almost. Agent Jones and Agent Berrigan are staking out the Hall of Science for the rest of the night. Peter said he wasn’t in the mood for a crowd and asked me to convey his apologies.”

El frowned. With a deadline looming, it wasn’t like Peter to call it quits, leaving his team in play. That wasn’t like him at all. She opened her mouth to ask if he were really okay, but Chris was reading the note she’d put up for Neal Caffrey, so instead she blushed. “I know it’s silly.”

“Not at all,” said Chris. “Knowing Caffrey, he could be here right now.”

“Yeah, I figured if he’s stalking Peter, he might…” She pulled a face and they both surveyed the throng of people. “It would help if we knew what he looked like.”

“Peter got a description yesterday—he didn’t tell you?” Chris continued scanning the room. “I can’t see anyone here who fits it, though. Maybe that kid with the tray.”

“That’s my assistant Des. He’s not a mysterious international art thief!” El grinned at the thought. “You know, if Neal were here, he’d probably be hanging around the de Kooning—that’s our most valuable piece right now. Maybe I should point a hidden security camera at it, or attach a tracker or something.”

Chris laughed. “I think your talents might be wasted here. Ever considered joining the FBI and working with Peter?” His smiled faded. “Anyway, Peter took tonight pretty hard. I should give you guys some space. Besides, I really need a change of clothes—“

“You’re not staying?” Despite herself and her worry for Peter, she didn’t want Chris to leave. “At least come take a look at the show and have a lemon muffin.”

But he was glancing at the note on the door again, and his next smile didn’t reach his eyes and had too many teeth. A salesman’s smile. “You know, it’s a shame you guys are so perfect together, or I’d stand a better chance of convincing you to run off with me to a tropical island.”

Warmth rose to her cheeks, but she wrinkled her nose.

“Europe?” he tried.

That was more appealing. “Leaving Neal Caffrey and Peter to chase each other happily ever after?” For a second, she let the fantasy form in her head. Then she released it, letting it float away like a balloon. “Chris—”

“No, I know. Anyway, my vacation days have run out. I’m due back in Paris.” He dug into his pocket and handed her a key. The spare key to the townhouse. “Thank you for this. You’ve been very kind.”

[This is as far as I got, partly because I couldn’t work out a way to get them all together. The rest is in note form and pretty vague, sorry.]

Chapter 19 (Peter)
Peter sent them all home and got behind the wheel of his car, but rather than starting the engine and driving home to his wife, like a respectable upstanding federal agent and husband, he stared blindly through the windshield as the enormity of what he’d done crashed over him. After a moment, he covered his eyes, feeling sick.

He’d had Caffrey. He’d had him, and he’d let him go and lied to his team about it. He didn’t even know why. Just that he hadn’t been able to drag him into the light, not in front of Jones and everyone.

After the Peter-clasps-Neal’s-ankle incident, Peter is shaken, feels like he’s going crazy, talks to El.

Crisis/freakout. In love! /o\ Talks to El: screwed everything up, out of control.
E: You have an affinity for him.
P: That’s—yeah. (nail on the head: Affinity, but Neal is whimsical, audacious, drawn to the knife edge, and Peter is responsible. He knows this about himself: he’s not colorful or extravagant. The most exciting thing about him is El. And yet, somehow, he’s convinced that he and Neal are compatible. In a different life, they would have been friends.)
E: Why Neal? Out of all the people you’ve chased, all the files that have crossed your desk, what’s so special about him?
P: He’s having fun. I don’t know—(beat) it’s like it’s a game to him, and he’s brilliant at it, and he loves it. And I can’t look away. (beat) I’m sorry, hon. I should take myself off the case. What am I saying—Hughes has already done that.

Peter calls Chris: “Caffrey’s all yours.” (Should be good news, but throws Neal.)

Meanwhile, Jones has fingerprinted every inch of the van and discovered Chris’ fingerprints match Neal’s partials. Diana shows up at the Burkes’ with the news (keeping it off-book to protect Peter); Jones goes to the Hall of Science to guard the final score.

Peter is incredulous, furious. Calls Chris: “We need to talk. I have files, ones you haven’t seen. They can’t go to Fox.” Sets up a meet.

Shows up empty-handed.

Peter knows, and Neal knows he knows, but neither acknowledge it. They meet outdoors, somewhere dark, lots of escape routes. Connection & understanding humming between them, despite Peter’s sense of betrayal.
P: Neal Caffrey has to leave town. If he stays, either I arrest him, or I’ll lose my job. I’ll be a laughing stock.
N: I know. *beat* Peter— *beat* One of my other cases just heated up, and I have to head to Rome. Call me if Caffrey makes a move, okay? I’ll let you know if I hear anything.
Peter: Keep in touch.
(But he knows it’s goodbye.)

An hour of moping later, Jones calls Peter re “Caffrey” breaking into the Hall of Science. During the phone call, there’s a gunshot. (Jones: Not sure. There’s a security guard in there. He must have shot Caffrey.)

Neal POV:

Hall of Science, a few minutes earlier. Neal finds Keller stealing the polyhedral sundial, ie, the final piece of the Holbein collection. Keller admits he anonymous-tipped the FBI about Neal. He doesn’t want $50K, he wants the rest of collection  $1M.

Keller shoots a security guard and runs with the piece, leaving Neal to do emergency first aid. Neal calls Peter.

Peter: I thought you left town.
Neal: I’m at the Hall of Science. Officer down.
P: Who?
N: Security guard.
P: (shamefully relieved that “officer” isn’t Chris Gates, snaps) I’m already on my way.
N: Bring an ambulance.

Security guard touch-and-go when Peter and paramedics arrive. Neal’s still at the scene, covered in blood. For a moment, Peter feels sick—never should have let Caffrey go, this wouldn’t have happened. Then he meets Neal’s eye and knows he didn’t do it. Takes him home to clean up. (Still really angry about the whole thing, though!)

Peter gets off phone with Jones. Puts his phone on the table, recording. Unofficial interrogation, El is there too.

Peter: Where’s the sundial?
Neal: I don’t have it. Did the security guard make it?
Peter: He’s still in surgery. And the sundial is gone. You were at the scene. You hid it somewhere.
Neal: I was pretty busy trying to stop a guy from bleeding out.
Peter: After you shot him.
Neal: You know I don’t like guns. I can get you the guy who really did this, Matthew Keller.
Peter: You want to make a deal. After everything, you think you’re just going to walk away from this. (pissed, and also panicking because Neal knows and Peter knows he knows that Peter let Neal go)
Neal: Hey, it’s not like I shot someone. [blood on hands, no gunshot residue]
Peter: Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t. You sure as hell did a hell of a lot of other things.
Neal: (turns off recorder) You don’t want to put me away, Peter.
Peter: It’s Agent Burke to you. (turns recorder back on)
Neal:
Peter turns it off again: (citing phone call with Jones) My boss wants to charge Neal Caffrey with felony murder.

El listening in, says he needs evidence that Keller was the shooter, and to get that, he needs Neal.

P: You think we should work together, after everything. He lied his way into my life. He invaded my house! E: You invited him. P: Because he said he was Interpol. E: Because you like him. P: Why aren’t you angry?

Hughes orders more time to catch NC. “Work with NYPD homicide.”
Peter to Hughes: If NC wasn’t the shooter, and he helps catch the guy who did it, can we cut him a deal? (Clutching at a way out)

Keller contacts Neal, tries to trade Neal’s incomplete collection for the debt.
Peter and Neal work together for real, to take down Keller.

(Moz horrified, manages to stay off radar. M: We need to leave. / N: I can’t leave now. Peter thinks I’m a murderer. (beat) M: Why do you care what they think of you? N: Moz, if I leave town now, Keller wins. That’s what he wants me to do.)

Neal helps Peter get Keller, working together like Butch and Sundance… then, once they’ve succeeded, steals the final piece from FBI evidence (replaces with forgery?) and walks out.

Neal leaves the complete Holbein collection on display at El’s gallery.

(And then, somehow, they all figure out a way to be together. \o/)