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“So, in reality, and opposed to all you’ve heard, all you’ve learned, the day, each day around earth’s rotation, is actually four separate days. Which, when studied and applied to things outside the linear makes sense in ways your mind heretofore can’t even conceive. There is a reason the world is divisible by four.”
Mozzie was on a roll. El had kissed them goodnight after dinner and went to put the baby down over an hour before. Peter, for reasons he hadn’t quite sorted, was humoring him, finding his wilder and wilder gesticulations somehow soothing.
“Four corners of the earth…” Peter supplied.
Mozzie beamed. “Yes. And four seasons in a year, four limbs on our bodies. The facts are there if you only open your eyes to it, if you only…” he paused, losing his thread… finally. “I’m sorry, what was the question again?”
Peter sighed. “I honestly can’t remember. I think it was something about whether or not you thought that… that maybe Neal had… had you know… faked his death. But how that question got us here, got us to Time Cubes and what was it before that? FEMA death camps? The whereabouts of D.B. Cooper and, I think there was something in there about lazer-eyed cats? I don’t know. I think I might have blacked out there for a minute, and you still haven’t answered the question.”
Mozzie smiled wistfully. “Well, I assumed that was a rhetorical question, so I thought I’d test how long you could hold out on a conspiracy theory bonanza.”
Peter looked at his watch, hiding his own smile. “Twenty-three minutes. I lasted twenty-three minutes this time. A personal best.”
“You’re getting there.”
“But, what do you mean you thought it was a rhetorical question?”
“Come on, Suit, this is neither of our first rodeo in the Neal Faking His Own Death front. I’m sure by now you’ve gotten the clues he left specifically for you? You’ve sorted them out. Hell, maybe you even know where he is…”
Peter stood there with his mouth open, speechless. “I thought I was seeing things that… that I had imagined… in my grief… in my…”
Mozzie stopped smiling. “I know. Believe me, I know. What were your clues?”
“I got a whole cargo crate of clues, you?”
“A bottle.”
“That was your clue? That was you?”
“That left it on your porch? Yeah. Once I got that, I didn’t need anything else, and I didn’t need the bottle either, so I thought you could use it.”
“Mozzie, it was the bottle that lead me to the crate, lead me where I needed to go.”
“Yeah?”
Peter smiled. “You think Neal knew that?”
“Knew that you’d need me? Doesn’t everyone?”
Peter tried to glare at him. “You’re going to help me bring him back?”
“The only thing that will bring him back is knowing we’re all safe, that the Panthers are all locked up.”
“You up for it?”
“LIke as a CI?”
Peter put on his jacket. “Something like that.”
Mozzie followed him to the door. “I have conditions.”
“You and me both, buddy. You and me both.”