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Maybe there was something more about Peter's ability to find Neal again and again, something more than brilliant deductive skills. Of course, Peter wouldn't figure this out on his own - applying the same brilliant deductive skills to his own person met with failure every time.
*-*-*-*
"Boss, have you seen Neal?" Lauren asked, poking her head inside Peter office. "I need him to take a look at something."
Not taking his eyes from the file he was reading, Peter replied: "Break room. He's making coffee."
"Thanks!"
But before Lauren could run off again, Peter continued: "And tell him two sugars, not one! Two!" Lowering his voice and wrinkling his forehead, he muttered: "I do not need a frickin' diet!"
Lauren raised her eyebrows. "Okay! Whatever you say."
That should have been a clue - yet, it wasn't.
*-*-*-*
"Jones!" Peter bellowed from his office.
"Yeah?" Jones replied, slightly out of breath from running across the office.
Peter glared at him. "Go and tell Caffrey to stop pestering Lauren! And I don't care what she said to him, or how she said it, or if she rolled her eyes! This is the FBI, not kindergarten!"
Jones raised his eyebrows. Peter noticed that people had been doing that a lot around him lately. It was kind of annoying.
"And where is he?" Jones asked uncertainly.
"Who?" Peter frowned.
"Caffrey?"
Peter hmmed. "In the archive, of course! Where else would he be?!" Sometimes he wondered how his agents even got their jobs.
Jones nodded, but he gave Peter the fish eye. "Of course."
As clues went, this one was wearing an exclamation point, yelling "Look at me!" And again it went unnoticed.
*-*-*-*
In the end it was Elizabeth, who not only clued Peter in, she literally rubbed his face in it. Yeah, she was awesome like that.
Setting plates on the table, Elizabeth called from the dining room: "Honey? Where's Neal?"
Peter harrumphed and poked at the eggs he was scrambling in the pan. What was it with El and Neal's whereabouts lately? She kept asking Peter about where Neal was and what he was doing as if she was quizzing him or something. Peter didn't know what it was about - but he was not about to ask her. She was giving off these "You should know" vibes that never bode well. Maybe he would ask Neal, that would be safer.
"In the cab, headed over here," he called back, then poked at the eggs more harshly than he probably should and almost dribbled them all over the oven. "He'll be here right in time for breakfast." Quietly, he added: "I don't know how he does that."
When Peter looked up from the pan, he noticed El leaning against the kitchen doorjamb, arms crossed over her chest. She was looking at him expectantly.
"What?" Peter asked, eggs dripping from his raised spatula.
"How do you know that he'll be here in time to eat breakfast with us?" El asked. She was using her talking-to-idiots voice.
Peter frowned, turning her question carefully this way and that, examining it for missed clues. He came up with nothing, so he turned back to his eggs. "The cab is turning into our street right now," he responded absently, concentrating on scraping the eggs from the bottom of the pan before they became a lost cause. "No tip for the driver, though. He's been driving like maniac all the way over here, Neal even spilled..." Wait a minute!
Forgetting the eggs, Peter turned back to El, looking at her blankly.
She raised her eyebrows. "Yes, honey?"
"Neal spilled coffee on his tie," Peter finished weakly.
"What coffee?" El asked gently, as if that wasn't a tricky, tricky question.
"Starbucks? The skinny vanilla latte that Lauren's been raving about the whole week?" Peter was starting to feel really uncomfortable. "What's going on?"
El smiled at him. "Honey, lately whenever I ask about where Neal is, you know not only his whereabouts but what he is doing. In detail. Even when you haven't talked to each other on the phone," she added before he could say something.
Waving the dirty spatula, Peter frowned. "Nonsense, utter nonsense! That's impossible. What are you saying? That I've got some Neal attuned radar in me? Some ESP?" Peter snorted.
In that moment, the front door banged. "Hello? I let myself in, hope you don't mind!" Neal called, his steps coming closer. "Peter, I need you to drop me back at June's! That stupid driver made me spill my coffee and I'm all sticky now!"
El's look became pointed and Peter's eyes widened. Oh... Oh, crap!
The End