White Collar fic: Shelter on a Foreign Shore (2/2)

[sholio]

Part One


9.


Diana had nothing new to report, and Kramer's number was still going to voicemail. It would be just his luck, Peter thought, if Kramer was on vacation this week.

And for the life of him, he couldn't figure out why he was trying so hard to protect Caffrey. He ought to have dumped this whole mess on the local LEOs hours ago, let them put out an APB on Neal and haul his ass back to prison. But he kept thinking about Neal on the couch, open and vulnerable and so heartbreakingly young ... I'll hand this all off to the LEOs the very minute it starts to look like things are going sideways, he told himself. No stupid risks. Neal can damn well deal with the consequences.

He picked up his Glock at the house. He also dug in the kitchen drawers until he located the almost-unused house key and locked the doors -- the last time they'd bothered was when they'd gone away for a few days to visit Peter's mother. Definitely a different lifestyle than New York City, that was for sure.

Then he saddled Ness and, with Satchmo romping alongside, headed into the woods.


***


"You are such an idiot!"

Brian, unbothered by his sister's fit of temper, looked up from unscrewing the back of Mrs. Sawyer's network router. "Au contraire, sister mine. I'm the only one in the family who has any sense, apparently. Hand me those wire clippers."

The Miller kids were at the Sawyers' for the afternoon; Brian was upgrading their home computer network, and the two girls had been sent along because their parents didn't want them home alone. Not that either Brian or Jess were paying much attention to their little sister at the moment -- Susie had wandered off to play with the Sawyers' cat.

"You could get Aunt El and Uncle Peter in a lot of trouble," Jess sulked, handing the tool to her brother.

"Yeah, if you were really worried about Aunt El you would've called the police like a sensible person." Brian snipped a length of wire from the spool of cable in his other hand. "If they're hiding a fugitive, they deserve what they get. This is why we have laws." He looked up at his sister. "You're the one who wants to be a detective."

Jess crossed her skinny arms. "Being a detective is about solving crimes and helping people, not -- not slavishly following every stupid law."

"Like the ones about not stealing people's stuff and escaping from prison?"

"You're impossible," Jess said. "I'm going over to apologize." She stomped off.

"Take Susie with you!" Brian called over his shoulder. "You're supposed to be watching her. Actually, you're getting paid to watch her, if you'll recall."

The Sawyer place was a short walk from the Burkes' via the horse trail network. Even with her younger sister slowing her down, it didn't take Jess long to walk it. The Burkes' car was in their driveway.

"Uncle Peter?" she called. "Aunt El? Neal?" Holding Susie by the hand, Jess trotted up the steps to the porch. When she tried the kitchen door, she found it locked, which made her pause in surprise. No one out here ever locked their doors.

She peered through the window but saw no one inside. Satchmo didn't seem to be around, either; whether he was in or out of the house, the dog never missed an opportunity to beg shamelessly for petting from a visitor.

Investigating the barn, she found Ness missing along with his tack. The barn had also been cleaned out of anything interesting or clueful, at least as far as she could tell. There was no sign that "cousin" Neal and his friend Mozzie had ever been there.

"I guess we missed a bunch of stuff," she said to her sister, leaning on the fence in the sunshine and petting Pepper. "So now what?"

"I want to ride a horse," Susie said.

"Sure." Jess brightened. "Let's go look for Uncle Peter. Do you want to do that?"

Susie was cheerful about the idea, and going back to the Sawyers' -- and Brian -- didn't appeal right now, so Jess saddled Pepper. Susie was too little to ride by herself; Jess boosted the little girl up to the saddle, then mounted behind her.

Jess wasn't entirely sure where Uncle Peter had gotten off to, but she knew where she wanted to go: back to the mill. Neal had been acting altogether too strange when they were down there this morning. She had a hunch, and she wanted to look for clues.


***


Peter kept his eyes open and his hand loose on the reins, ready to drop them and go for his gun if he needed to. But the forest was peaceful as usual, hushed and serene in the afternoon heat. The only sounds to break the stillness were the cicadas' hum and the wind stirring the leaves above his head.

He tied Ness outside the mill and did a cautious circuit, gun in hand. There was no sign of recent disturbances that he could see, but generations of Apple Corners teenagers had left a well-beaten path to the broken-out window that served as the primary entrance to the ruins.

Peter tried to put himself in Neal's place. Two nights ago -- he'd be scared and bleeding and possibly lost. He might not have eaten since the day before. He was in a completely unfamiliar place, out of his element and still reeling from his girlfriend's death.

Peter looked around, trying to see the area through strangers' eyes. The bridge was clearly visible just down the river, hazy in the afternoon heat, which meant that the mill was visible from the bridge, too. He didn't even notice it anymore, it was so much a part of the familiar scenery on the drive home. But to a stranger, especially one from the city, it must really stand out, an island of decaying civilization in a seemingly endless sea of trees.

The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that Neal had not hitched a ride directly to the Burkes' farm. He was too suspicious and too damn sneaky for that. Either he'd walked out from town, or he'd had his ride let him off somewhere that wasn't near the farm, not admitting to his true destination. In either case, it was likely that he'd walked over the bridge, and he would have been able to see the mill easily.

Gun in hand, Peter followed the little path to the window. He was no master tracker, and it was beyond his abilities to pick out an individual set of footprints from the path's chaotic welter. But he paused before climbing over the windowsill, looking carefully for anything out of place. And he found it. Letting the gun dangling from his fingers, Peter brushed the back of his knuckles against the rusty brown stain on the sill.

Maybe one of the Apple Corners juvenile delinquents had cut him or herself on all the broken glass around here.

Or maybe Neal, bleeding and desperate, had climbed through the window two days ago.

Inside, the mill was as much of a deathtrap as it looked like from the outside. Those parts of the floor that looked solid enough to walk on were littered with beer bottles and cigarette butts. The damp air stank of mold. Black holes gaped between the rotted floorboards, and the sound of rushing water could be clearly heard, coming up from below. Part of the mill overhung a channel of the river, an old millrace diverted many decades ago. He tried not to think about the consequences of a misplaced footstep or a rotten board that chose that moment to give way.

Above him, the mill had the open, echoing quality of a cathedral, albeit a ruined cathedral with sunlight shafting through dozens of holes. It was darker than he'd expected, especially after the dazzling brilliance of the clear afternoon. Peter wished he'd thought to bring a flashlight from home. Although, given the choice between wielding a flashlight and a gun, he figured he'd rather go with the gun.

The kids from Apple Corners came out here for fun? This town obviously needed a skate park and a few more after-school programs.

Once again, he summoned up his mental Neal-vision. A stranger, especially a tired, hungry, injured stranger, wouldn't have wanted to spend a lot of time exploring a dangerous, ruined building. If he had something to hide, he'd want to hide it where random kids would be unlikely to find it -- even a city kid ought to be able to tell that this building got regular visitors -- but he wouldn't want to spend a whole lot of time searching for a good hiding place. Also, it was likely that Neal didn't plan to hide it for very long.

The thought occurred to Peter that Neal might have come back to retrieve it before clearing out of town, in which case his search was pointless. But he hadn't come all the way down here to give up easily.

Somewhere near the river, Satchmo barked.

Peter went still, listening. Outside the window, he heard the little rustling and creaking noises of Ness shifting around on his tether. Satch barked once more and went silent. Perhaps he'd flushed a squirrel. Peter risked a quick glance outside the window, but could see nothing amiss. Maybe it was a squirrel, maybe not -- but it was a useful reminder that he ought to hurry.

He left the window, keeping to the more stable-looking floorboards along the wall. He quickly realized that his task was hopeless. The inside of the mill was a crazy-quilt of shadows, with hundreds of blank gaps where timbers or stones had fallen in, where vines and roots had forced their way between the cracks. Peter wasn't sure of the exact size and shape of the music box, but it couldn't be too big if Neal had carried it while fleeing across the state. There were infinite hiding places.

Ness let out a low whicker and a snort. Peter paused again, listening, and this time he heard rustling and the sharp crack of a twig breaking somewhere on the other side of the mill's crumbling wall.

He drew his gun and crept to the window. The rustling stopped, then began again, slow and stealthy. Peter heard someone hush someone else with a quick, hissed Shhhh.

There's more than one of them.

Then someone giggled, a little-girlish giggle, and Peter closed his eyes for a moment, and holstered his gun.

When he appeared in the open window, he had the satisfaction of seeing Jessica jump. She was holding her little sister by the hand.

"Hi, Uncle Peter," Susan chirped.

"Hi," Peter said wearily. "What are you two doing here?"

"We're looking for treasure!" Susie announced.

"Shhh!" Jess hissed at her sister. "You're not supposed to tell him that!"

Peter fixed Jess with a look.

"Oh, come on," Jess said. "Don't tell me you aren't doing the same thing. This Neal person is an escaped crook, right? And he stashed some of his loot here, didn't he? I saw the way you were looking at him when we were here earlier today. You're totally onto him."

Among other things, he couldn't honestly say that there was no "treasure" hidden in the mill since he had a strong suspicion that the music box was there, so Peter fell back on adult-authority fiat. "You know your parents hate it when you kids poke around the mill. You're not allowed in here unsupervised."

"You're standing in it right now, Uncle Peter," Jess pointed out.

Peter tried to remind himself that he, too, had been thirteen once. It was not very helpful. He clambered over the sill. "I'm going home and so are you. Where's your brother, anyway?" Brian, at least, had some common sense.

"He's fixing Mrs. Sawyer's computer this afternoon. And I couldn't just leave Susie by herself."

"No, clearly not," Peter sighed.

"We can't come all this way and not go in there."

"The only place you're going is home." Then he thought about the kids walking through the woods alone, with Fowler and God knew what else out there -- "No, wait, new plan. Come on back to my place, and I'll give you a lift home."

"I'm not five," Jess protested.

"Then don't act like it."

Pepper was tied up beside Ness. Jess gave the big, unfriendly gelding a wide berth, especially when he pinned back his ears, and hoisted her sister onto Pepper's back. "Why do we have to go home? Can't we stay here? I promise we won't do anything risky."

"No, you're going home, because there's a very dangerous man in the woods right now," Peter said as he mounted Ness.

He realized his mistake when Jess's mouth rounded into a delighted "O". Peter wondered if all the young of the species were born with no sense of self-preservation. "And what that means is you and your sister need to stay far away from the woods until it's safe again. And you're not supposed to come down here without telling an adult where you're going, anyway." Good God, he thought, I've turned into my father. When did that happen?

Jess nudged Pepper into a walk. "I bet I know who the dangerous man is."

"I bet you don't."

"It's Neal, right? He's not your cousin at all. He's --" Jess lowered her voice into a conspiratorial whisper. "-- an escaped felon."

Peter winced. "That's an issue for the grown-ups to deal with."

"Brian is the one who called the FBI," Jess added, with the glee of a younger sibling tattling on an older one. "I would never have."

Shit. Well, that explained where Fowler had come from. Sadly, it actually was what he would've wanted -- under most circumstances. Peter wished El was here. She was so much better at this things than he was. After all these years of trying to impress upon Pattie's kids that they were supposed to like and trust the police, that breaking the law meant you were a bad guy and bad guys could never be trusted -- he didn't even know how to begin to explain that, in this particular case, some of the cops were bad guys and the escaped felon was kinda, sorta, not really such a bad person after all. (But only this time! And no other times! Really!)

How many shades of gray could kids understand?

Apparently his silence was making Jessica nervous. "You're not mad, right?"

"No, I'm not mad. Calling the FBI was the right thing to do." Under general circumstances, anyway.

"It was?" Jess said in disbelief.

"Yes, it was. Your Aunt El and I shouldn't have been hiding an escaped felon in the first place."

Jess looked crestfallen. "So why did you?"

How could he explain to a thirteen-year-old kid what even he couldn't figure out?

"I know Neal from a long time ago," he said at last. "Back when I was still with the Bureau."

"You worked with him? No, wait. You caught him." Jess looked thoughtful and fascinated. "What'd he do? Is he a bank robber? A murderer? Brian said he stole stuff. Did he ever kill people?"

"Do you really think I'd let him stay with me and El, and hang around with you kids, if he'd killed people?"

"So he's a bank robber, then."

Peter had to laugh. "Where did this bank robber thing come from?"

"Well, obviously he did something big, if the FBI is looking for him. And if he didn't kill anyone, then it's the other big thing I can think of."

"On TV, maybe," Peter said. "In real life, there are a whole lot of things people do to earn the interest of the FBI. Neal is an art forger and a con art --"

He knew as soon as the words "con artist" started coming out of his mouth that it was a mistake, but he didn't snap his mouth shut quite fast enough.

"A real life con artist?"

Shit.

"That is so cool." Jess was nearly bouncing on the horse's back in glee. She squeezed her sister around the waist. "Did you hear that, Susie? Wow. Just like in The Sting, right? And Leverage? Is that what it's really like? Did he pull off heists? Did he steal a million dollars?"

"It's not like that in real life," Peter said, rallying. "Look, Neal lived a high-rolling con-artist lifestyle for awhile, it's true. And then his crimes caught up with him and he was sent to prison --"

"I bet it was all Casino Royale and stuff," Jess said giddily. "He totally looks like James Bond, doesn't he? And not the Daniel Craig James Bond, but like the sexy kind."

El and Pattie were going to take turns killing him for this.

"Neal Caffrey is neither a role model nor proper boyfriend material," Peter said, trying to wrench the conversation under some semblance of control.

"I wish you'd told me! Being a con artist, that's like, hardly breaking the law at all, right? Especially if he only stole from bad people, which he probably did, right?"

What TV shows was Pattie letting her watch? "You're never going to get into the FBI with an attitude like that, young lady. Come on, let's get you home, okay?"

As they entered the Burkes' pasture, Jess said, "Oh hey, is that Neal?"

Someone was on the porch of the house. The figure stood up at the sight of them and trotted down the porch steps. It definitely wasn't Neal. Ginger-red hair glinted in the sun: Fowler.

"Jess," Peter said quietly, "stay on the horse." He dismounted, leaving Ness saddled, and laid a hand on the butt of his gun.

Fowler stopped halfway to the pasture, and twitched back his jacket so that Peter could see that he was carrying.

"I just want to talk, Burke!" he called. "One cop to another."

Hot anger washed through Peter. He took shallow breaths, got himself under control. "You want to talk? Put your gun on the ground and we'll see."

"Sorry, I can't do that. Not until you put down yours."

"Yeah," Peter said, "not happening."

"Look at it from my point of view, Burke." Fowler's hand hovered near his gun, but didn't touch it. "You left the Bureau under a cloud of suspicion. Now you're harboring a wanted fugitive who also happens to be one of the last cases you cleared. What am I supposed to think?"

Peter's vision clouded red. "Are you seriously accusing me of -- what the hell are you accusing me of, Fowler? Just come out and say it."

Fowler kept his voice placating. "I'm not accusing you of anything. As far as I'm concerned, you're most likely an innocent victim in all of this. I know Caffrey probably tried to sell you a line of his usual bullshit --"

"Oh, you want to talk bullshit?" Peter snapped. "Why don't we start with why an OPR agent is suddenly turning up on a fugitive-hunting detail? Why don't we talk about the fact that the U.S. Marshals are looking for Neal in an entirely different part of the state? Yeah, Fowler. Just because I'm out of the Bureau doesn't mean I don't still talk to them."

Fowler's smile had slowly given way to a stonelike mask. "All the more reason we need to talk," he said.

"Jess," Peter said softly, flicking his gaze away from Fowler for a brief instant to the girl on the horse. Jess looked white-faced and terrified. "Take your sister and --" He was about to say "ride home" until he remembered she'd be alone there. "Ride over to the Sawyers' and stay there."

For once, there was no arguing, no backtalk. "Do you want me to call the police, or -- or something?" Jess asked in an equally soft voice.

He was tempted. But the hell of it was that Fowler had a point. Fowler was an FBI agent in good standing. Peter was an ex-agent who'd been hiding a fugitive for two days. The trail of flyers that Fowler had spread around Apple Corners did more than turn the entire town into a Neal-hunting force: it completely discredited any attempt Peter might make to insist that he didn't know Neal was on the run -- not that he liked the idea of lying to the police anyway.

"No. I'll be fine. I can get help if I need it. Just go to the Sawyers' and stay inside with your sister and brother."

He was expecting an argument -- he could see her gear up for one, and then deflate. "Okay," Jess said, and wheeled the horse around with an arm circling her sister.

Peter spread his hands out to the sides. "Okay, Fowler. It's just us now. You want to talk? Let's talk."


***


"... I've got it. We can pull a skycap swap on him."

"That's great, Moz," Neal said. "All we need are three uniforms and a baggage cart that we don't have. Oh, right -- and an airport."

Mozzie crossed his arms and sulked. "Is it my fault if all the techniques I've ever learned were developed for the civilized world?"

They'd been discussing their plan, such as it was, during the drive back to Apple Corners in a brand new stolen car -- Alex's grand theft auto skills were definitely getting a workout on this trip. The one thing they'd been able to agree on so far was that if they managed to make a mark out of Adler, without getting caught by either Adler or the authorities, it'd be the con of the year, if not the decade.

"Just drawing him out of hiding is a huge coup -- and a huge opportunity," Alex said, tossing back her hair and letting her arm hang out the window. "I'm glad I let you two talk me into this insanity, because this is a chance we can't possibly pass up. Getting one over on Adler and getting a fortune into the bargain ..."

"Still planning on keeping the music box?" Neal asked.

"Well, obviously. I'm not doing this for my health, you know."

"I don't suppose you're going to tell me what's so special about it."

"No," Alex said.

Neal sighed and leaned back, watching the fields roll by outside the window. "The problem is, Adler's the sort of mark that requires weeks or months of preparation. We have no time, no resources and no money."

"Excuse me?" Mozzie patted the duffle bag on the seat beside him. "This is not full of chopped liver, you know."

"Pardon us," Alex said. "Almost no resources."

"We could also leave a message for the Burkes and let them sic the FBI on Adler," Neal said.

This suggestion was met with stony silence.

"They've obviously started on the brainwashing," Mozzie told Alex. He leaned forward from the backseat and patted Neal's arm. "It's okay, man. We'll get you straightened out."

"I'm not brainwashed, Moz."

"Incidentally," Alex said, "it would be much easier to plan the con of a lifetime if you'd tell us where the damn music box is. It's almost like you don't trust me or something."

"Well, let's see, the last time you had the music box, you ran off with it."

"No, Caffrey, the last time I had it, I was giving it back to you."

"And now you're giving it to Adler."

"Are you seriously holding a grudge about that?" She softened a bit. "I told you, Neal, I would never have agreed if I'd known what he'd done."

Neal plucked a receipt from the stolen car's cluttered dashboard and began idly folding it into a star. The glimmerings of a plan were forming in his mind; he tried to seize it before it could slip away. "What if we pull a Benedict Arnold?"

"But that's a tricky one," Alex said, "because you need a guy on the inside to be your trait --" She broke off, and gave both men an approving glance. "Why, gentlemen, I'm impressed that you have such a low opinion of me."

Mozzie leaned forward and gripped Neal's shoulder. "Good to have you back, my friend."

"Not so fast," Alex said. "As the designated front person, I'd like to point out that we still have quite a few whys and wherefores to work out. This is a con that really works better with more than three people."

"But we can do it with three," Neal said. "We have the important slots filled already. There's the traitor -- you. The betrayed friend -- me. And Adler's never met Moz, so he can play cop or coroner or whatever we need."

"There's something else we need," Alex said. "The music box, the actual music box, or a facsimile that can fool Adler. And he's not an easy man to fool."

She gave Neal a pointed look. He smiled. "All in good time."

Alex huffed a sigh.

"What's our endgame?" Mozzie asked. "Best-case scenario, we leave Adler thinking you're dead and holding the bag for the cops, but this isn't as easy as, say, switching a suitcase of cash. There's only one music box."

"And we'd need to get Adler off the scene as quickly as possible," Neal said. "Actually, since he's wanted on a variety of warrants, we don't even have to set him up -- all we have to do is maneuver him into position for the actual cops to pick him up. As opposed to you pretending to be the cops."

"That'd take split-second timing to avoid getting caught ourselves," Alex said.

"And I'm supposed to be the concerned citizen turning you all in?" Mozzie protested. "You want me to go into a police station? Are you insane?"

"Oh come on, Moz, it's Mayberry. There are probably three cops total."

"It also leaves us shorthanded again," Alex said. "Neal and I can probably do it on our own, but it would be a lot less risky if we had another person."

Neal grinned, brilliant and infectious. "What if we have someone else fetch the police for us? Someone perfectly innocent-looking, someone who's known to them with an excellent reputation in town?"

Alex's eyes met Mozzie's in the rearview mirror.

"Just so I've got this straight," Mozzie said. "You want an FBI agent and his wife to help us run a con? In full or at least partial knowledge of what we're up to?"

"Ex-FBI agent," Neal said.

"You're right," Alex said to Mozzie. "He's brainwashed."

---

10.


Peter let himself and Fowler into the kitchen, offered Fowler a beer and took one for himself. No point in not being polite to the man who might have ruined his life and, furthermore, might be about to kill him. It gave him time to think, at least. It also put him at a disadvantage because Fowler still had a hand free to draw his gun, whereas Peter didn't, but Peter was fairly confident that he could drop the bottle in time if Fowler did go for the gun. And looking harmless made people underestimate you; it was something he'd taken advantage of, more than once, back in his FBI days.

Fowler's eyes kept flicking between the prosthesis and the scarred side of his face. The scrutiny set Peter's teeth on edge, though, as far as he could tell, it was neither pity nor threat assessment. He couldn't read the look on Fowler's face at all.

"Let's go out on the porch," Peter said. Upon reflection, he locked the door again behind him. The last thing he wanted was Fowler running around unattended in his house, or being able to set a trap for El.

Strange how the old, cautious habits crept back in -- or perhaps were never gone in the first place.

He ushered Fowler to the old couch on the porch, and sat on the wicker chair opposite. For a moment his mind's eye saw Neal and El sitting on the same couch, Neal telling them about Fowler -- had it only been yesterday morning? Peter felt as if he'd lived months in the last day and a half.

"You wanted to talk. So." Peter gestured with his beer. "Let's talk."

Fowler nodded. He took his cell out of his pocket, powered it off and then laid it on the floor by his feet. After a moment, he followed with his gun. Both were within reach, but not readily accessible. "Good faith gesture." He nodded to Peter.

Peter thought about it a moment, and then followed suit.

"I need your help, Burke," Fowler said simply.

All that Peter could do at first was stare at him. "You. Need my help."

"I'm in over my head," Fowler said. "And I know you have a reputation as a straight shooter, a stand-up kind of guy."

"Funny," Peter said, and he could hear the bitterness welling up in his voice -- all the bitterness that he'd swallowed, that he held down around El, that he tried to pretend wasn't there: the old anger that he'd run across the state to leave behind. "That's not what the FBI's reports on me say."

Fowler closed his eyes, opened them again. "You know I was involved with that," he said.

"I've done some research."

"I know you have," Fowler said, and a cold chill raced through Peter's stomach. "Yes, Burke, I led the OPR investigation into your conduct at the Queens warehouse fire."

Peter clenched his jaw, fighting so hard to control his voice that he barely recognized it. "You made me look like a fucking incompetent. You left the families of dead friends of mine believing that I had something to do with the deaths of their fathers and brothers and husbands."

"I wrote what I was told to write," Fowler said quietly.

Peter set down his beer bottle with extreme care -- his hand was starting to hurt, the way his grip kept tightening on it. "By Adler?"

Fowler's head snapped up. "Caffrey told you."

"Caffrey told me a lot of things. He said Adler's behind all this, Adler's pulling the strings. Your strings."

Fowler rolled the beer bottle, beaded with condensation, between his broad palms. He said nothing.

"Adler had me taken out of play," Peter said, trying the words to see if they made any more sense spoken out loud.

"Yes," Fowler said.

"Why?" The word exploded out of him, along with pent-up rage and guilt and frustration. "I wasn't involved with the investigation of his crimes. I wasn't looking for him. I never knew him as anything other than a name in the newspaper until two days ago. Why me?"

"Because he knew your reputation," Fowler said. "And because you're the man who caught Caffrey, which everyone said couldn't be done. A young Vincent Adler, was what they called him. Adler had plans for Caffrey, and the last thing he wanted was you getting in the way. You weren't supposed to survive the fire, Burke, but you did, so --"

"Damage control," Peter said, and Fowler nodded. "He took me out three and a half years before Caffrey escaped prison. Are you seriously telling me Adler's game is that long?"

"He's Vincent Adler," Fowler said, as if that was all the explanation that was needed. And maybe it was.

The casual cruelty of it staggered him. "He destroyed my entire life as an afterthought. Just on the off chance that I might get in his way."

"Now you know who you're dealing with," Fowler said. "I've been with the Bureau since I was twenty-three, Burke. In some ways Adler's not even a patch on the ugliest things I've seen -- you too, I'm guessing -- but in other ways, he's in his own category. He's soulless, and I don't use that word lightly."

"So what the hell are you doing working for him? Playing his games? Or is this a game, too?"

"No," Fowler said, with enough vehemence that Peter caught himself unwillingly believing him. "I didn't want this, Burke. I didn't want any of this. And now I'm in too deep to get out."

Peter leaned back in the chair and studied Fowler. "What's he got on you?"

"My wife died a few years ago. Was murdered, actually." His voice was calm, but fine lines of strain tightened his face like piano wires under the skin. "It ... messed me up a little. I guess you can probably understand. Adler -- long story short, though I didn't know it was him at the time -- he fed me leads, pushed me into a position where I got a chance to ... "

"Take revenge," Peter said softly.

Fowler nodded. "A few days later I got a package. Videotape and some photographs. I've been running on Adler's leash ever since."

Peter ran his hand through his hair. "And why are you telling me this? Me, of all people?"

"I'm telling you this because you had Caffrey with you for two days, and if anyone knows where he went, or what he did with that damn music box, it's you," Fowler said. "The music box is what Adler wants. It's what he's wanted all along. And it's a bargaining chip I can use to get away from him."

"Even if I had it, I'm not just going to turn the music box over to --"

"And because you understand," Fowler said. "You do, don't you? You know what it is to hate someone so much that you'd do anything to see them go down. I saw that look in your eyes when you looked at me. But I'm not the one behind the warehouse fire. Adler is."

"You manipulative son of a bitch," Peter murmured.

Fowler spread his hands. "I'm not jerking you around, Burke. I'm putting myself in your hands because I don't think you'll turn me in, and you needed to know the whole story so that you know I'm not your enemy. We both want the same thing. If we work together, we can take Adler out of the picture."

"Take Adler out of the picture," Peter repeated. "You mean kill him? Set him up? What are we talking here, Fowler?"

"I'm talking justice," Fowler said.

"No, you're not. You're talking vigilantism. I've never believed in that kind of thing."

"You can't take Adler down through regular channels," Fowler said. "He's too connected. I could give you a half-dozen more names in the Bureau that are in his pocket, and those are just the ones I know about. Why do you think no one's caught him in the years he's been gone? Every time someone tries, they find themselves reassigned to the boondocks of Kentucky, and that's if they're lucky. As you know."

"So -- what? We saddle up and string him from the highest tree in the county?"

"We stop him before he hurts anyone else," Fowler said flatly. "We use the music box and Caffrey to lure him in, and then we end this."

There was a long silence, broken only by the wind in the trees and the sound of the horses in the pasture.

Adler had orchestrated the warehouse fire, ended Peter's career, killed three good men. He'd killed Kate. God only knew how many other lives he'd destroyed along the way. He was dangerous and elusive, and anything they did to him, he'd earned a thousandfold.

And yet Peter knew better than to delude himself that Fowler was offering justice. Maybe Fowler had managed to fool himself, but he was suggesting revenge, pure and simple. Fowler was talking gang warfare. Nothing honorable, nothing clean.

Peter had devoted his life to upholding the principle that a civilized society did not run on such things. That there were better ways. Just because someone had wronged you or you believed they were a bad person didn't give you the right to engage in eye-for-an-eye vengeance.

Even if it was tempting. God, it was tempting. If he tried this the legal way, he'd not only be risking everyone he cared about, but taking the huge risk of Adler simply getting away, disappearing again as he'd done before. And all the harm that Adler did from here on out could have been prevented if Peter had been willing to flex his principles a little.

A little? Peter thought. More like a lot. More like -- everything.

He looked down at the prosthesis resting on the arm of the chair.

I can do this, and it might even be worth it to the world in the long run, having Adler out of it, no matter the cost. No more people ending up like me. Like Caffrey. Like Kate. But it will have cost me something the warehouse fire didn't, something that losing my arm and my career didn't.

It will have cost me me.

It was one of the hardest decisions he'd ever had to make. And when the decision was made, he didn't feel triumphant -- just tired, and guilty, and dirty. "No," Peter said. "Not like that."

"Burke --" Fowler began.

"I said no," Peter said. "You told me you know other names in the Bureau, other people Adler's got dirt on. He's got friends, Fowler, but so do I. We take this to people I know, get an investigation going. We clean house at the FBI and start drawing a net around Adler. I think I can probably get Caffrey to turn state's evidence --" okay, a long shot, but he'd gambled long shots before and won. "-- if we can find him. You want my help? I'll help you, but only if we do it my way."

He'd looked away from Fowler as he spoke, and when he looked back, he found himself staring into the barrel of Fowler's gun. For an instant he almost burst into hysterical laughter. When Peter's eyes flicked down to his own gun and cell, Fowler said, "Don't."

Peter knew he should be furious, but there was something so absurd about the situation that he couldn't quite achieve it. "So what was all that, the sob story? You making it all up? Trying to play me?"

"No," Fowler said. "Every word was true. And is true. Come on, Burke. You want to see Adler taken down as much as I do. Doing this on my own is going to be a hell of a lot harder. I need your cooperation, your help."

"And you'll have it. I promise you that. As long as we do this the right way, the legal way, rather than running off, playing vigilante and getting ourselves killed. Put the damn gun down, Fowler."

He could see that Fowler was thinking it over. Then, slowly, Fowler shook his head, and gestured with the gun. "Get up."

Peter rose, his mind spinning, looking for angles, ways to turn the situation to his advantage. Fowler gestured him off the porch, then picked up Peter's gun and tucked it into his waistband. He kicked Peter's cell under the chair.

Fowler tilted his head towards Peter's car. "Get in. You'll drive."

"Where are we going?"

"To talk to Adler," Fowler said.

"Oh, come on, man. Don't do this."

"I tried my damnedest to give you a chance," Fowler snapped. "Adler knows Caffrey was staying with you. He knows where you live. You think he's going to ask you about it nicely over coffee and cookies? Open the car door or play things my way."

Peter opened the door, his jaw set.


***


Since Apple Corners' downtown had only one street and two traffic lights, finding Pattie's bakery was not difficult. It was the bakery. Very simple.

Alex pulled into the tiny parking lot and squinted at the door. The afternoon was sliding towards evening, the white brilliance of midday fading into the ruddy shadows of day's end. "Their open sign is still out, but probably not for much longer. Good for us."

"And that's not so good for us," Neal said, pointing to one of Fowler's 8.5x11 printouts of his face, taped next to the OPEN sign. "I can't just walk in. One of you guys needs to see if Elizabeth is around."

Alex raised her hands. "Don't look at me. I've never even met her."

They both looked at Mozzie.

"Oh, fine. Send me to do your dirty work. How much do you want me to tell her?"

"Just get her to come out here where I can talk to her," Neal said. "If she's still at work, then it must be close to her quitting time."

Mozzie looked around several times, then opened the car door and rolled out into the parking lot, looked around again, and darted around behind the bakery. After a moment, Alex stretched back and slammed the door, which he'd left open, probably in the expectation of a fast getaway.

"That was about a dozen times more conspicuous than if he'd just walked in the front door."

"I know," Neal said. "That's Mozzie all over."


***


Most days, the end of the afternoon was El's favorite time at the bakery. The midday rush had tapered off to a few stragglers -- today there were a group of girls sipping tea at one of the handful of tables, and Lily Kraus, the retired schoolteacher who lived out past Webb Road, dithering over the remaining pies. El and Pattie had had time to straighten and clean, and now it was peaceful and quiet, sunlight slanting in the window as the day wound down towards closing time. Pattie, as usual, had left El to manage the counter while she went in the back with her part-time cook and started the prepwork for tomorrow's baking.

But today El was too tense to enjoy it. She'd taken out her phone a dozen times, queued up Peter's number, then put it away without dialing. Peter was a trained FBI agent, she reminded herself. He'd handled himself in shootouts and hostage crises. He never took unnecessary risks or went into situations that he didn't think he could handle.

And she'd thought she was done with this -- the worry and fear, the long nights of waiting. El closed her eyes briefly, then opened them and swiped her rag across the already spotless countertop. At least she could have a clean bakery.

"I think Bill would love the peach," Mrs. Kraus said. "We had a peach tree when we were first married, you know -- my little sister used to climb the tree and pick the peaches for us. We all told her she was going to break her neck..."

El smiled. "My sister and I used to do the exact same thing. Only it was the apple tree in our front yard. We used to terrify Mom." She began wrapping up the pie, then nearly jumped out of her skin when something touched the back of her arm.

"Sorry," whispered a voice at her elbow. She looked down at the top of a bald head. There was a total stranger crouched below the counter, out of sight. No -- it was the man who'd been in their barn this morning. Peter had said his name was Mozzie, hadn't he?

Mrs. Kraus broke off in the middle of another peach-related anecdote and leaned forward, squinting over the top of her bifocals. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, fine -- just tired, I guess." She shot Mozzie a series of baffled glances while making Mrs. Kraus's change. As soon as the door closed behind the customer, she leaned down and whispered, "My husband is looking all over for you two. Is Neal with you?"

"Outside," Mozzie whispered back. "In the car."

"What car? You didn't have a car before."

Mozzie hesitated a moment and then whispered, "Don't ask about the car."

El decided that sounded like good advice. "Why are we whispering?"

Mozzie pointed towards the kitchen.

"That's just my sister and Leon."

"Trust no one," Mozzie whispered.

El struggled with her smile. "Did you come in here just to warn me about Pattie?"

"Neal wants to talk to you."

El blinked at him, then undid her apron and slipped into the kitchen. "Pattie? I'm sorry, hon -- is it okay if I don't stick around to close? A friend from out of town is here to see me -- you remember Mozzie, you met him this morning."

Mozzie paused in mid-scuttle to give her a betrayed look.

Pattie shooed her out, to the tune of El's promises that, no, she already had a ride home and yes, she'd say hi to her friend and to Peter's cousin -- apparently word about the cousin had gotten around already -- and there would be full confessions later, promise.

The car was a little beat up, a little dirty, and very un-Neal-like. El had never seen the driver before, but she looked like a person Neal would know: very polished, very New York. She definitely wasn't from Apple Corners.

El slid into the backseat, sandwiched between Mozzie and a large canvas duffle. "Neal," she said, reaching forward to squeeze his shoulder. The smile he gave her was sudden, spontaneous and heartbreakingly sweet. "You worried us," she said. "Taking off like that."

Neal's smile faltered, and he said, with levity that seemed forced, "I'm guessing worry wasn't Peter's first reaction."

"Well ... it needed a little time to sink in." On a whim -- sometimes you just have to go with your gut -- she leaned forward and kissed his cheek. "But he really is concerned about you, Neal. We both are."

Neal looked like he'd had his train of thought completely derailed. He reached up a hand to lay his fingers lightly against his cheek.

"This is touching," the driver said, with a bright grin that showed a lot of teeth. "Really, it is. Shall I drive us out to the farm?"

"No, Alex," Neal said sharply, and Elizabeth got the impression that they were picking up a conversation that had been going on before she and Mozzie got into the car. "We're not using the Burkes' as the location of the swap."

"Why not?" Alex challenged, pulling out onto Main Street. "It's perfect: isolated enough for our purposes, but not so much that Adler would sense a trap."

El cleared her throat politely to remind them that some people in the car were being left out of the loop.

Neal closed his eyes and pinched the skin between them, clearly staving off a headache. He looked tired. "Elizabeth, we'd like to nail Vincent Adler once and for all. Get him out of the way where he can't hurt anyone, ever again."

"That sounds good," El said cautiously.

"And we need your help to do it. Don't worry. This won't be hard and it won't be dangerous."

"You want to use our farm in a sting?" Elizabeth guessed.

Alex smiled. "Sting. I like that. It's the traditional sense of the word, you know."

"Will the police be involved?" El asked, glancing between them. "Because yes, I don't want this Adler guy running around loose any more than you do, but I'm not going to help you with anything illegal."

Both Mozzie and Alex immediately looked shifty. Neal said, "Yes, the police will be involved. That's part of what we need you to do: call the authorities for us."

She reached for her phone, startled. "What -- now?"

"No!" all three of the con artists chorused in alarm.

"Oh." But she didn't put away her phone. "I can't agree to anything without talking to Peter first, all right? Anyway, I need to call and let him know that I'm not at the bakery. If he shows up and doesn't find me there, he'll be very worried."

"Show me what you're dialing," Alex said.

"She's not double-crossing us," Neal told her.

"I don't know that. Let me see."

El selected Peter's preset and held the phone over the back of the seat so that Alex could see it. She may as well not have bothered: Peter's number went to voice mail. She tried again. Same result.

Neal twisted around in his seat, his brow furrowed. "He's not answering?"

"No." El tried her best to think of a logical, reasonable explanation that did not involve her husband being in mortal peril. "Maybe he's at the mill and can't get a strong signal."

"The mill?" Neal repeated.

"Yes, it's an old water mill on the river behind our place --" El remembered even as the words left her mouth that what Peter was doing at the mill was checking up on Neal. She liked Neal, but perhaps, just perhaps, telling him that Peter was investigating him while sitting in a car surrounded by Neal's criminal friends was not the best idea. "Anyway, it's where he said he was going to be," she finished. "And now I can't get in touch with him. I don't like that."

They were crossing the bridge right now; she actually could see the top of the mill through the trees.

"I'm sure he's fine," Neal said. "He's Peter. But just in case -- Alex, stop the car."

"What, in the middle of the road?" Alex coasted onto the shoulder as soon as they were off the bridge. "Is this good enough for you?"

"Good enough," Neal agreed. He leaned over the back of the seat and put a reassuring hand on Elizabeth's arm. His smile was charming. "Elizabeth, I think I know where this mill is -- I went there this morning with Peter and the kids. I'll go check and see if he's there, okay? And I can meet the rest of you at the farm."

"I guess so," El said. There was something about his smile that she didn't quite trust.

"Oh, the hell you are," Alex snapped. "You're up to something."

"I think it's reasonable, under the circumstances, to find out where her husband is," Neal said. "You guys can work out the details of your parts in the exchange, and I'll meet you at the farm, like I said."

"Uh-huh." Alex opened the door, dropped the keys on the car seat and stepped out. "I'm coming with you. You two, don't go anywhere. We'll meet you right back here."

"There's no need for this, Alex," Neal said, his smile becoming fixed.

"There's every need for that, especially if you're doing what I think you're doing, which is retrieving the you-know-what."

Neal sighed. "Guess I'll see you two shortly," he said, and he and Alex vanished off into the woods.

Elizabeth and Mozzie were left sitting together in the car. It had certainly been a strange couple of days, El reflected. "Um, so," she said. "Your name is Mozzie, right?"

"Your clever interrogation attempts won't work on me, Mrs. Ex-Suit."

El looked after Neal and Alex. Maybe it wasn't too late to go with them.

---

11.


"Turn here," Fowler said.

They hadn't gone far. Peter pulled off the road, onto a small dirt track that cut back behind the Burkes' lower pasture. They were still on Burke land, though Peter doubted if Fowler knew or cared.

At Fowler's command, Peter parked behind a stand of trees that screened them from the road.

"Now what?"

"Now we wait."

They only had to wait for a few minutes before an engine purred in the still afternoon air, and a gleaming black Mercedes bumped carefully down the rutted track and parked behind Peter's car.

"Out," Fowler said.

Mouth dry, heart pounding, Peter obeyed. They were isolated here -- no houses visible in any direction. The trees shielded them from passing motorists. In this farm country, occasional gunshots were not uncommon: farm kids plinking at cans, hunters after small game in the woods, farmers shooting starlings.

The door of the Mercedes slammed. Of the four men who got out, there was no question which of them was Adler: slim and dapper and elegantly dressed in a perfectly tailored suit that probably cost as much as Peter used to make in a year. The other three were obviously muscle.

"That's Larssen behind him," Fowler murmured, as he gestured Peter forward at gunpoint.

Fowler had said Larssen was former Special Forces. He had the graceful carriage of a fighter by inclination and training, a man who knew how to handle himself in a fight.

"Frisk him," Adler told Larssen.

Peter submitted to a rough pat-down. Larssen unceremoniously stripped off his prosthesis and tossed it in the grass, then fastened his wrist to one of his belt loops with a zip-tie.

"Nice," Peter said, falling back on sarcasm to avoid succumbing to sheer panic. "I bet you steal blind men's canes, too."

"Shut up."

Fowler watched all of this, gun in hand, his craggy face impassive. Peter knew better than to appeal to him for help, but he wondered, if he made a play, would Fowler back it? Or would he take Adler's side?

"No need to be unpleasant, Julian," Adler said with an easy smile. "We're just going to have a chat. I'd like to keep it civilized and mutually productive." He paused, then added, "As long as possible."

"You're after Neal Caffrey, right?" No point in being evasive, about the basic stuff, at least. Fowler would have told them that much.

"That's right," Adler said. "Do you have any idea where he is now?"

"No clue. He cut and run after Garrett here showed up and chased him around my house. Stole his car too."

Fowler's mouth tightened.

Adler glanced at him. "Oh, there might have been some hasty actions, indeed. We'll address that later. Do you have any idea where he might have gone?"

"No clue," Peter said. "And that's the truth. If you know Caffrey at all, you know that getting a straight answer out of him is impossible if he doesn't want to give you one. He's been feeding us lies and half-truths for the last two days. God knows where he is."

Some of his anger was genuine. Neal had cut out knowing Adler was on his trail. Elizabeth-- Peter forced all thoughts of Elizabeth from his head. Adler was here, with him, so El was probably okay, for now. Nothing's going to happen to her. I won't let it.

"Think back, Peter," Adler said. "Anything you can tell me, any clues he might have dropped. Someone he knew? Someone he was going to see? A place he mentioned?"

His buddy-buddy tone infuriated Peter, but he locked his jaw and forced his emotions down. "Not that I can remember," he said tightly. "Look, before you even ask, I don't know why Neal ran to me. We aren't friends. We talked once, four years ago."

"Desperate men can't afford to be choosy," Adler said, his eyes cool and steady on Peter. It made Peter think of something cold-blooded, unblinking -- a snake or a lizard. "While he was with you, did he have anything else with him?"

"Like a music box?" Peter said. Adler blinked slowly. "Yeah. I'm not an idiot. I know what you're after. And the answer is, no, I never saw any such thing. He told me you wanted it and said that he didn't have it."

"I know he does," Adler said. "He stole it at my behest."

Well, that wasn't really news: he'd figured Neal was lying about not having the box. "He didn't have it when he was with me," Peter said. "But if he did have it -- and I'm not saying he did -- I think I know where he might have put it."

Fowler gave him a quick, sharp glance. Yeah, surprised you, huh? Peter thought. Maybe if you weren't a backstabbing bastard I'd have already told you.

"Where?" Adler said.

"Oh, hell no. I'm not an idiot, remember? I know how this works. I'll take you there, and then you're on your own."

He was playing with fire, he knew. Sweat trickled down his back under his shirt. But there wasn't anything he could do except play this out. He guessed that the odds of Adler letting him go, unharmed, were vanishingly small. But the longer he could stay relevant, make himself necessary, the longer El would have to notice that he'd gone missing and call the police, and the longer that he'd have to try to get through to Fowler.

"Very well," Adler said. He sounded amused. "We can play it your way. Back in the car."

Peter stood his ground. "Not the car. We can walk to it."

"I hope you aren't trying to con me, Peter," Adler said mildly.

"No. No cons. There's an abandoned building back in the woods." Peter nodded in that direction. "This old road connects to a network of riding trails, and we can walk to it. I don't know for certain that Neal hid something there, but I do know that we went riding in the area, and he acted odd."

Adler raked a glance over his two henchmen. Then he nodded. "Julian, Roberts, take him there. Stay in touch. Don't give him an inch." A tiny smile. "He might look like a washed-up amputee to you now, but remember that he used to be with the Bureau."

I'll show you washed-up, you son of a bitch, Peter thought. "Can I put my arm back on?"

"No," Adler said.


***


"Wait!" Alex snapped, and when Neal paused, looking over his shoulder, "If I'd known we were going to be hiking in the damn wilderness, I wouldn't have worn these shoes!"

Neal grinned. Seeing Alex off her game was a rare treat. "Next time I'm on the run, I'll make sure to arrange things so that you're not inconvenienced."

Alex stumbled and slithered up the trail until she caught up with him. "You know, I should probably call Adler and give him an update on my so-to-speak progress. The longer I'm out of touch, the more suspicious he'll be when we make our move."

"Go on, then. Call him."

"Come on, Caffrey. Don't keep shutting me out. We're partners."

Neal raised his eyebrows at her.

"Okay. Perhaps not quite. But in this, at least. You've never been a team player, have you?"

Neal laughed. "You just don't like being the one who doesn't know all the secrets, rather than the one keeping them."

"I've been very up-front with you, Neal."

"Says the woman who won't tell me why she wants the music box so badly."

Talking to Alex helped keep his mind off Peter. Neal could think of a lot of reasons why Peter might have gone suddenly incommunicado. None of them were good. He told himself that it wasn't any of his business anyway, except that it boded ill for the success of any plan that he might be able to pull off.

Alex sighed, and stumbled again as her heel caught on a root. "Oh, for --" She took off the shoes and carried them, padding along in her nylons and making much better time. "All right," she said. "Quid pro quo. You stop hiding the music box from me, and I'll tell you what it's hiding and why Adler wants it. Deal?"

"Deal."

They walked in silence through the growing shadows on the path. Alex's stocking-clad feet made so little noise that Neal had to keep glancing over to make sure she was there.

"What's in the music box is an encoded map," Alex said at last. "It leads to a lost treasure -- a treasure for the ages. Adler's been searching for it for a very long time. So have I."

Neal couldn't help laughing. "You're serious. A treasure map. All of this is about a treasure map?"

"It's not just any treasure map. It's a clue to the location of a sunken U-boat that went down off the East Coast back in the forties, full of plundered artwork from museums all over Europe. And no one knows it's there. It's the holy grail, Neal."

"Worth killing for," Neal said softly. "Worth killing Kate for."

"For Adler, apparently, it's worth doing anything."

"And for you?" Neal asked her in a gentle tone.

Alex didn't answer.

The mill loomed out of the woods. Neal caught Alex's arm and waited a moment, but there were no sounds, no signs of life. He led her around the side, to the trail that led to the window.

"I don't think Burke's here."

"It doesn't look like it, no," Neal said, and smiled at her. "But the music box is. Quid pro quo, Alex."

He climbed over the sill. Alex just rolled her eyes when he offered her a hand over the sill, and shimmied inside with cat-burglar grace. She looked around at the hanging cobwebs, the floor tilting and revealing dark gaps with the sound of rushing water beneath.

"Well, this is extremely unpleasant." She started to put her shoes on, then looked around at the floor, a mosaic of holes to trap an unwary high heel, and gave up in dismay. Pointedly, she stayed as close to the window as possible. "Whatever possessed you to come here in the first place?"

"I wasn't thinking clearly." Now that he could see a little more of the mill's inside, he was amazed that he hadn't fallen through one of the holes in the floor when he was stumbling around in the dark, half out of his head with shock and blood loss. St. Jude, patron saint of hopeless causes, had clearly been looking out for him.

"I hope you can remember where you left it," Alex said, from the window.

"Believe me, I made careful note of it." His memory for a place he'd cased was razor-sharp. Carefully he picked his way around the gaping holes in the floor, all too aware of the river below him, and -- sending up a silent hope that no spiders or snakes had moved in -- slid his fingers into the space between two loose boards. His fingertips brushed soft fabric, and Neal cupped his hands around the square shape of the music box in its wrapping, sliding it out.

It filled his hands, heavier than it looked for its size. Kate's scarf was wrapped around it, dark blue silk with inlaid gold patterns. Neal could still see the scarf lying against her dark hair, and he had to fight his way free of the image, so vivid that he could almost have reached out and touched her. It left his heart seared like fire.

"Is that it?" Alex asked, her voice tense and eager.

Neal flipped back a corner of the scarf to reveal a gleam of gold, then paused when Alex held up a hand. She leaned out the window, then spun back, putting a finger to her lips. "Neal, I hate to be a killjoy, but someone's coming."

"What? Who?" Let it be Peter. He didn't particularly want to talk to Peter, especially not here, but it beat the other alternatives.

He saw Alex blanch, and then she was coming his way, recklessly fast, stumbling over fallen timbers in the mill's darkness. "Three men," she said in a soft, urgent voice. "I don't know two of them, but one's Julian Larssen, muscle for hire. He's bad news."

"Fowler mentioned him. He's with Adler. Damn it!" His hands still filled with the music box, Neal looked around. Besides the window, he could see no unblocked exits from the mill. Most of the windows were boarded up, those that weren't boarded over were choked with ivy, and the door was completely blocked where part of the roof had collapsed. The interior of the mill, however, was fairly open; the machinery had long since been moved out, and aside from a few fallen beams, there was nowhere to hide -- nowhere that would stand up to inspection if they planned to come inside, anyway.

Then he looked up, and another thought occurred to him. "Hey, Alex," he whispered, "how are your cat-burglar skills these days?"


***


After several tries at engaging Mozzie in conversation, and one extremely unwise attempt to peek into his bag, Elizabeth started a game of Tetris on her phone. Every so often she tried Peter again.

When the phone rang, she almost dropped it and her heart leaped. But the caller ID was Jessica. El tried to scrub the disappointment out of her voice. "Hi, Jess, sweetheart. This isn't really the best time --"

"Aunt El, I'm worried about Uncle Peter," Jess said, and El leaned forward in her seat.

"Why are you worried about him, honey?"

"Because the last time I saw him, he was going to talk to that FBI guy and he didn't look happy about it," Jess said. "Uncle Peter told me to ride over to the Sawyers' place. So I did, but I rode back over just now and he's gone and so is this Fowler guy. And he left Ness saddled in the paddock, which he never does, and he's not answering his phone either. Is he with you, Aunt El?"

"No, honey. He's not with me." El took a deep breath, steadying her nerves. "You said you're at our house?"

"Yeah. I brought Pepper back."

"Stay there." El leaned forward over the seat back and picked up the keys. "I'll be there in a minute."

"Hey, wait," Mozzie protested. "We're supposed to stay here."

El slid into the driver's seat. "I need to go get my niece."

"You can't go changing the plan at the last minute. See, this is why we don't work with people we don't know," Mozzie appealed to the heavens as El pulled onto the road. "Why did I go along with this madness in the first place?"


***


The mill came in sight as the afternoon shadows lengthened across the woods. Larssen gave it a skeptical look. "I'd like you to think carefully before you try a double-cross, Burke."

"I'm not double-crossing you. Like I said, though, I'm only playing a hunch here. Your guess is as good as mine whether there's anything hidden inside."

"Well." Larssen gestured with the muzzle of his Colt 1911. "You first, then."

Peter jerked his chin at his hand, still ziptied to the waistband of his jeans. "I'm supposed to pick it up with my teeth?"

Larssen laughed. "Nice try, but I'm not stupid. Look, don't touch. Let me know if you find anything. And if you're just wasting our time -- you'll regret it."

Peter struggled over the windowsill -- it was inelegant, but not impossible -- into the shadowed interior of the mill. With the evening shadows growing deeper, it was even harder to see anything inside the mill than when he'd looked around earlier in the afternoon. And harder to avoid the gaps between the dangerously unstable floorboards. One false step and he'd plunge through into what he expected was probably a tiger trap of old pilings and shards of rusty metal, not to mention the risk of becoming trapped in the fast-moving current through the old millrace.

"Lovely place." Larssen climbed inside, staying near the window and keeping his eyes, and his gun, fixed on Peter.

"Yeah, it's a real vacation spot." Peter moved through the area he'd explored before, making a show of looking at each loose board and hole in the wall. "This would go faster with two, you know. Or with hands ..."

"Yeah, right," Larssen said. "Stay where I can see you."

Peter closed his mouth and worked on coming up with a plan. So far, stalling for time until El got worried enough to call the police was about the only thing he could think of.


***


Not for the first time, the thought crossed Alex's mind that things were always more interesting when Neal Caffrey was around. It was one of the things she loved most about him. One never knew when one might end up climbing the inside of an extremely unstable structure with gunmen at the bottom of it.

The beam that was supporting her weight began to shift. She could feel it -- just the tiniest bit of movement, but she could tell, with an expert's touch, that it was about to accelerate as the rotted ancient wood pulled out of the wall. Her toes found secure purchase on a wider, more stable beam, and she let her weight ease off the unstable one, feeling it settle, for now, back into its timeworn socket.

A fall would probably mean tetanus at the very least. Being perforated with bullets would, of course, be the worst-case scenario.

She and Neal were about fifteen feet off the ground, and hadn't fallen yet. However, Neal was lagging behind; it was a measure of how much difficulty he was having that he let her lean over and give him a hand onto the rafter next to hers. Normally he could climb things like a cat, but even on the ground he had been favoring his side. Climbing the inside of the mill had done him no favors: he was pale and struggled to control his heavy breathing in order to stay quiet.

It didn't help that he was carrying the music box in one arm, tucked against his side. Her one attempt to offer to take a turn climbing with it had been rebuffed with a polite but uncompromising smile.

Below them, the one-armed guy was making an unconvincing show of poking through the debris along the walls, and, not coincidentally, putting more distance between himself and Larssen.

Alex leaned across the space between them, balancing carefully as she reached to touch Neal's hand and tap in Morse code, WHO?

PETER, Neal tapped back.

Really? That was the infamous Peter Burke, scourge of Neal Caffrey's existence? Alex looked down again, thoughtful. She still didn't think he looked like much, certainly not like a man who could put someone like Neal to ground. And no one had told her about the, well. Disability. Apparently there was more to this story than Neal had shared.

But Peter Burke's problems weren't their problems, and Burke, however intriguing a conundrum, wasn't her top priority. Getting out of this damn mill was. She looked away, around, and finally up.

The lower parts of the mill were now entirely in shadow. A few shafts of reddened sunlight still speared through the upper windows and gaps in the walls, but soon those, too, would be dark, and they would be left clinging to the rafters in a near-impenetrable gloom.

On the brighter side, no one had bothered to board the upper windows, and the ivy wasn't as dense up here. Also, part of the roof had slumped, exposing a large section of the reddening evening sky. Alex thought it ought to be possible to climb out without being seen. It would be easy except for the risk of falling through a rotten section of roof.

Alex reached out again to touch Neal's arm. She pointed. He nodded. Go case it, said his twirled hand gesture. At least she assumed that's what it meant. Neal and Kate had had something that was close to their own private language, but Neal and Alex improvised depending on circumstances. It had always been the way with them.

She didn't do the cat-burglar stuff much anymore. Fencing was better money for less risk and effort. But she liked to keep her hand in, and she still worked out. Supple as a gymnast in her bare feet, she climbed the wall, finding fingerholds and toeholds on the stubs of collapsed rafters and the jutting, poorly mortared stones. There had been a catwalk here once; she could see where it had pulled away from the wall. It was probably part of the tangle of debris littering and half-blocking the floor.

Alex looked down from a narrow window, its glass long gone if it had ever had any. Below her was a narrow strip of unstable-looking roof, darkness gaping between holes in the shingles, ivy creeping across it like a plague. Night was coming on faster than she liked; the sun reddened the upper branches of the trees, already slipping away from the mill. Through a screen of foliage, she glimpsed Larssen's accomplice -- hired muscle, no brains to speak of; she knew the type -- pacing along the crumbling mill wall.

She was confident she could manage the climb. Neal she wasn't so sure about. Even leaving aside his present condition and the fact that he was carrying the music box, he'd been different since he got out of prison. Less sure of himself. And uncertainty was the one thing that a cat burglar -- or someone drawing upon the skills of one -- couldn't afford.

Turning to look down, she could barely see him on the rafter, his dark head turned down. Below them, Larssen was talking, though she couldn't hear what he was saying. Alex waved until she got Neal's attention, his face a pale blur in the growing shadows, and gestured at the window.

Neal shook his head and pointed down.

At times like this, she really wished for something like Neal and Kate's private gesture language, or the uncanny telepathy that he and Mozzie shared sometimes. Alex did the best she could, stabbing a finger viciously at the window. I am going right now, whether or not you come with me, asshole.

Neal shrugged, and waved her off. Go on, the gesture said.

Without the music box? she thought. You've got to be kidding. But Neal's attention was off her and once again fixed fast on whatever was happening below with Peter Burke and Larssen. And she could see him tensing up to do something. Knowing Neal, probably something dangerous and highly unwise.

The sensible thing to do was go out the window. Gripping the wall with her toes and the edge of the window with her fingertips, Alex hesitated, torn between her well-developed sense of self-preservation and a host of conflicting urges.

Below her, the sounds of a scuffle erupted. In the dusk, she couldn't see what was going on below, but then Neal, watching in increasing agitation, did exactly the sort of thing she'd been dreading.

---

12.


El turned into the driveway of the farmhouse, halfway expecting to see Peter's car and know that their nightmare was over. But there was no car. She did, however, see Jessica sitting on the top rail of the paddock fence, swinging her legs. Satchmo, lying below Jess's feet, raised his head.

Jess slid off the fence and ran to embrace her aunt. El felt the girl stiffen when Mozzie got out of the car as well.

"He's a friend, honey," El said. Jess still looked skeptical. "Why don't you tell me what happened?"

Jessica's explanation of events was rather confused, but El got the important bits: Peter had sent Jess away and then must have driven off somewhere with Fowler.

"Maybe they're in the woods," Jess said. "We could look."

"No one," El said firmly, "will be looking in any woods." The first thing to do was to check Peter's gun safe. If the gun was missing -- well. At least she'd know a little more about Peter's current situation and state of mind. Mozzie and Jess trailed her to the porch, where she turned the doorknob, then rattled it in surprise. The kitchen door was locked.

But we never lock the door! was her first startled thought. Then she realized that she was not actually sure where her key was. The last time she'd seen it was probably that time they'd gone to visit Peter's mother last year.

"I can't get into my own house," she said in disbelief.

"I can," Mozzie said, reaching into his pocket.

El seized his wrist hastily. "No!" Whether he planned to blow up her front door or pick the lock, no one would be doing anything illegal to her house without her permission. "There's a spare key around here, uh -- somewhere." She did have a vague recollection of hiding one. But where? Under the mat? In that hanging basket, maybe?

"Aunt El?" Jess said. She straightened up, holding a cell phone. "It was under one of the chairs."

El took it from her. "This is Peter's." The Good Ship Optimism was rapidly taking on water and foundering. It might be time to get the police involved. "Jess, where are your brother and sister?"

"At the Sawyers'. Actually, they might be home if Dad's picked them up already."

"Good," El said. "That's where you're --"

She stopped, and held up a hand to forestall Jess's protest. El was familiar with the sound of traffic on the highway, and the change in engine pitch when a car turned into their driveway. She looked up quickly at that familiar sound, hoping for a moment that it might be Peter's Taurus, but it was the purr of a more powerful engine. A gleaming black Mercedes nosed into their driveway. No one in Apple Corners owned a car like that.

El reached for the kitchen doorknob automatically. Once again it failed to turn.

Peter, we are having a SERIOUS TALK later about locking your wife out of the house. She looked around for Mozzie, about to take him up on his offer of opening the door for her, but he'd melted away as if he'd never been. She blinked, then gave Jess a little shove.

"The barn. Quick!"

They dashed across the yard with Satchmo at their heels. Any doubts Elizabeth might have had about the dire intentions of the black car were laid to rest when its tires spun on the gravel and it lurched forward, skidding to cut them off.

El backed up, pushing Jessica behind her as the car doors opened. One of the men was Fowler, with a hand hovering over a suspicious bulge in his jacket -- El hadn't been married to an FBI agent for all those years without being able to recognize a concealed weapon when she saw one. But the man in the backseat, slim and dapper in an expensive-looking dark suit, radiated a sense of menace that turned El's stomach cold.

"Mrs. Burke," he said politely, and smiled. It wasn't a pleasant smile. "My name is Vincent Adler. I believe we have a few things to discuss."

El swallowed, her throat as dry as bone. "My niece -- she's just a kid. Please let her go."

"That might be one of the things we discuss." He held out a hand. "Phones, please."

"Aunt El?" Jess asked.

"Do what he says, sweetheart," El said firmly, hoping and praying that it was the right decision. She handed both their phones to Adler, who dropped them to the gravel and stomped on them.

"Hey!" Jess said. "All my friends --"

"Hush, sweetie." El laced her fingers through her niece's smaller ones and squeezed.

The thought dawned on her that Adler must not have seen Mozzie, because none of the men showed the slightest inclination to search for him. Perhaps Neal's odd little friend would call the police. Or ... something.

"This farm is a nice, private place." Adler glanced at the barn. "Why don't we talk in there."

Fowler, after a slight hesitation, reached into his jacket and brought out the gun she'd known he had. El's stomach climbed into her throat. She could never remember being more terrified in her life. Jess was quiet and subdued, staying behind her aunt. Her hand was cold in El's.

"You should know the police are on their way," El bluffed. "This quiet farm isn't going to be quiet for very long."

"Really? I doubt that." Adler's cold eyes seemed to see right through her to the bottom of her limited ability to lie. He smiled a very thin-lipped smile and dialed a number on his phone. "Larssen," he said, and raised his eyes to meet Elizabeth's. "Peter Burke just became redundant. I think his wife will be much more cooperative, and less dangerous. Please make it look at least somewhat accidental."


***


Peter turned his head when Larssen's phone rang. Larssen listened to the person on the other end, and all that he said was, "I understand."

Well, that can't be good. Peter could read between the lines just fine. He had a feeling that his time to stall was rapidly running out.

To Peter, inside the shadow-cloaked mill, Larssen was little more than a silhouette against the evening light outside. The darkness was growing with alarming rapidity, and Peter was increasingly afraid to move, all too aware of the water rushing below him. He contemplated the possibility of luring Larssen into one of the holes in the floorboards. That'd be easier if he could locate them himself ...

"No music box, eh?" Larssen said. "I figured you were lying. Gotta give you points for trying, though."

"I told you it was a gamble," Peter pointed out, backing up in the gloom. He tried to keep his voice low, modulated, his hostage-crisis voice. Even if he was the hostage ... "What about you, Larssen? Do you think you chose the right side? Adler's obsessed with the music box. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to be standing at the right hand of an obsessed and ruthless man."

Larssen snorted and stepped away from the window into the shadows, calmly pursuing Peter through the mill. This would have been a perfect opportunity to set a trap ... if only he could think of one. "Do you have a better offer?" Larssen asked, in a bored tone that made Peter think of a cat toying with a mouse.

Keep him talking, Peter told himself. Larssen moved as silently as a cat, too. Special Forces, Fowler had said. When he wasn't talking, Peter had no good way to locate him. "I still have connections at the Bureau," Peter said. "Highly placed ones. I can broker a good deal for you if you're willing to flip on Adler. Better than anything he'd give you."

Larssen laughed. "You're trying to cut a deal? What's the matter, Burke -- forgot you're not an agent anymore?"

It still hurt with a sharp whiplash pain. Don't let him bait you. "You're a smart guy, Larssen. You've been in this game long enough to know how Adler's kind operate, and what happens as soon as you're no longer useful to them."

Larssen didn't answer. Where the hell is he? Peter twisted his wrist in the ziptie; the plastic had cut deep into his flesh, and it was slippery with sweat or blood.

Larssen came very suddenly and quietly from the darkness on his right, and pain exploded across the side of Peter's face. Peter went down hard, unable to catch himself, though he instinctively tried and nearly dislocated his shoulder. Larssen had hit him with the butt of the gun, he realized muzzily, as he squinted up through half-closed eyes and found himself looking down the barrel.

Larssen lowered it almost immediately, and sighed. "An accident, he says. A bullet would've been quicker." He glanced around the interior of the mill. "Well, if an accident it's going to be, this looks like a nice convenient pla--"

A large heavy object, trailing a fluttery streamer, came out of nowhere and cracked Larssen in the side of the head with a loud musical twong. Peter stared in dazed confusion as Larssen went to his knees, dropping his gun, and the thing that had hit him went the other way, coming open and spilling its shiny guts all over the floor with a lot of melodious little jingles.


***


"What did you do that for!" Alex shouted in fury from her perch at the apex of the mill.

Neal gave her one of his innocent shrugs, and, as Alex boggled at him, began to retrace his climb down the wall.

Looking down, Alex could see the gleam of the music box's components, scattered on the floor. She couldn't see Larssen's gun anywhere; it must've fallen through into the river below. Larssen, still reeling from the blow to the head, was scrambling to pick up as much as he could of the music box, scooping it into Kate's scarf. "Roberts!" he bellowed.

Neal's feet touched down. Larssen, still unarmed, dashed for the window and tossed the scarf-wrapped bundle to his accomplice. Neal sprinted after him, found himself looking down the barrel of Roberts' gun, reversed direction and dived out of sight behind the bulk of a collapsed roof beam leaning against the wall. Muzzle flashes lit the gloom with brief, blinding flares of light. Peter scrabbled weakly to drag himself deeper into the shadows.

And Alex had given away her own position when Neal's utter stupidity with the music box had wrung a shout from her. She hated to leave him there -- idiot or not, he was still her friend -- but she couldn't possibly climb down without getting shot, and she was a perfect target up here, framed against the dying sunset light.

So she went out the window.

The crumbling wall was no more stable on the other side, and she threw caution to the winds in favor of reckless speed. Her descent was more of a controlled fall; she ripped several fingernails and avoided falling through the lower section of roof by sheer luck -- she heard shingles pattering down behind her as she slid down the ivy-covered wall. If any of this is POISON ivy, I'll be regretting it for weeks. But it's better than being shot.

She landed badly, twisting her knee, and gasped in pain. Sloppy, she told herself. She was out of practice and not used to doing this barefoot; it gave her a little too much sensitivity in her feet, made her flinch away from toeholds that could easily have supported her. At least Roberts and Larssen were still on the other side of the mill for the moment, preoccupied with Peter and Neal. Alex supported herself on the wall, looking around at the river and the darkening woods, and realized that she had no idea where she was, and little confidence in her ability to retrace her steps to the road, especially at night.

Drop her in the middle of Paris or Madrid with no shoes, no money and no idea where she was, and she'd have herself nicely outfitted and ensconced in a comfortable hotel room within an hour. The forest primeval was a different story.

She heard Larssen's footsteps before she saw him, and had to pick a direction, any direction. Her knee almost went out from under her at the first step. She clenched her teeth, focused through the pain and dashed into the woods. She had to stop before she'd gone too far, and turned around, leaning on a tree and looking back the way she'd come. As long as she remained still, she ought to be safe enough.

As Alex watched, Larssen dragged a few dead branches to the base of the wall she'd just climbed down, then leaned in and flicked a lighter. The dry branches went up quickly, and the flames spread easily to the dead leaves of last season's ivy.

Roberts must be doing the same on the other side, because she could smell the sharp reek of smoke drifting around the corner of the building.

Oh my God, she thought. They're burning it down.


***


Neal dived into the shadows along the wall and patted himself down hastily to make sure he hadn't been hit. He hadn't.

He peeked around the fallen beam that he was using as impromptu cover. The darkness hid him, but it hid everything else too, turning the interior of the mill into a maze of booby traps. Larssen and his henchman were having a quick conference outside the window, and Neal clearly heard the words "... burn the place." His breath caught. One inconvenient body or two -- it was all the same to men like Adler and Larssen.

Alex was right. He'd lost his mind. And in that brief moment of insanity he'd thrown away the music box. It was the only weapon he'd had at hand ... but now he'd delivered it straight into Larssen's hands, and hence to Adler's. Neal didn't give a damn about the box itself, not compared to Kate's life, but it had been the only leverage he had, the only thing he could use to bring himself face-to-face with Adler --

-- or, he realized, he could simply follow Larssen. The box could still be useful to him, because with the music box in hand, Larssen would sooner or later lead him straight to Adler.

Adler was within his grasp at last. So close. Rage and hatred welled in Neal's chest, an inky tide filling up his soul, leaving no room for fear or anything else. He couldn't die here, because he had to live in order to get that betraying, murdering bastard.

He found a fingerhold on the wall, a toehold. He was Neal Caffrey, damn it, escape artist extraordinaire. He hadn't escaped from supermax and survived everything he'd gone through since then just to die an inglorious, anonymous death in a burning building. He had a score to settle.

"Neal!" Peter called softly from the shadows.

Neal paused, a few feet off the ground. He had, in honesty, forgotten all about Peter, his hatred of Adler blocking out all else.

"Neal?" There were little scuffling sounds as Peter sat up. His voice sounded thick.

He didn't have to answer. Leave. Stay. Leave. There was no chance Peter could climb the wall. What could Neal do but abandon him or die with him? The scales teetered -- revenge for Kate, balanced against Peter's life...

He caught the first whiff of smoke, seeping through the cracks in the damaged walls.

"Neal!" Peter snapped, and this time Neal glimpsed him in the shadows, leaning against the wall. His hand was still tied to his waistband; blood glistened wet and dark on his face. And Neal's resistance collapsed. There was only one option he could live with. He dropped to the floor, already calculating alternate escape routes that might be navigable by a man with one arm and a head wound of unknown severity. "Yeah," he said. "I'm here."

"Oh, thank God. I thought they shot you." Guilt coiled in Neal's stomach -- no, just climbing out and leaving you behind, that's all. "Don't come over here," Peter added quickly. "Get out. Find Elizabeth."

"She's fine. She's with Mozzie." Though doubt niggled at the corners of his mind: could Moz and Elizabeth have been picked up by Adler's thugs? No, thinking about that would do him no good. He had to trust in Moz's paranoia and gadgetry to see them through.

"What's she doing with Mozzie?"

"Long story." Neal stepped on something that rolled under his foot, nearly sending him to the floor. Leaning forward, he brushed it with his groping fingertips: one of the cherubs from the music box. Neal caught it right before it rolled between the floorboards into the rushing black water underneath.

The water ...

Peter coughed on the thickening smoke. "So, if you're not leaving, a little help here?"

Neal pocketed the cherub and hastened through the smoke, leaping over a gap in the floorboards that he noted absently for future reference. Flickering flames had already begun to light the gloom in the mill; the place was going up like a Roman candle. On the other hand, now he could see a bit. The plastic of the ziptie was drawn tight into the flesh of Peter's wrist.

"Knife," Peter said, coughing again. "In my pocket. I can't reach it, damn it."

Neal slid two fingers into Peter's jeans pocket, lifting the pocketknife with a delicate flourish. "Do I owe you dinner and flowers for that?"

"You owe me less joking and more untying."

The plastic of the ziptie parted with a snap, and Neal gave him a hand up. Peter wobbled, but shook off Neal's attempt to steady him. "It's fine, I'm loose, now let's get out of here."

Above them, the ceiling groaned ominously. "Uh, yeah, one escape route's on fire," Neal said, covering his mouth with his sleeve. Smoke burned his throat. "And the other one's being covered by goons with guns."

"Shit. Sorry." Peter flexed his swollen fingers and looked up. His features were drawn tight in the flickering glow of the flames, sweat and blood slicking his forehead as the heat grew oppressive. His face was very pale, and he reached up to touch the stump of his missing arm -- it looked like an unconscious gesture. "Any ideas?"

"Well, since you mention it --" Neal pointed down. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the roar of the flames. "Where does the water go?"

"I have no idea." Peter's face went even paler, contrasting sharply with the dark swatch of blood down the side of his face. "Oh, no, that's not a good plan --"

"If the water gets out somehow, so can we."

"Or we'll be trapped. Burned and drowned --"

"We'll burn for sure if we stay here." A tremendous crack from the timbers of the ceiling underscored his words. "In fact --" Neal looked up, read the looming danger and gripped Peter's shoulder. Dragging Peter with him, he dived for the gaping black space between the floorboards, just as the ceiling came down on them.

---

13.


If she thought about it at all, Elizabeth didn't think of herself as a violent person. She believed firmly in the rule of law, in letting the proper authorities handle matters, and in resolving one's differences in a calm and reasonable manner. Besides, in spite of the self-defense classes that Peter had insisted she take, she knew that she couldn't go up against a trained assailant and win.

But little Elizabeth Jean Montgomery had been a scrappy kid. She and Pattie had climbed apple trees, learned to shoot their boy cousins' .22 rifles, skinned their knees and scraped their elbows and went swimming in the gravel-pit swimming hole. They'd also liked boys and skirts and looked forward to getting to wear makeup and high heels, and little Elizabeth Jean had once punched a cheerleader in the face for calling her sister ugly.

Little Elizabeth Jean hadn't been afraid of anything.

Apparently all it took was hearing Vincent Adler order her husband's death to strip away twenty years of maturity.

El went from docile hostage to screaming Valkyrie so fast that Fowler never knew what hit him. The open palm of her hand cracked into his nose. She wouldn't realize until later that she'd learned and internalized this in the self-defense classes she'd taken -- strike with the flat palm or side of the hand or the knuckles; the nose and groin and neck are sensitive targets -- but she'd known it by instinct when she was thirteen and punched Lily Braun in the face for insulting her big sister.

Fowler was a trained FBI agent and also a big guy with a fairly high pain threshold, so a great deal of his frozen reaction was mere surprise, especially when she followed up the face strike with a karate chop to the neck and then knocked the gun out of his hand.

-- and then El realized that she had no idea what to do next. The fury that had powered her so far began to drain out of her, washed away by a rush of cold reality. Jessica -- she hadn't even thought about Jessica, and there was still another man in the car, the driver, now scrambling out with a gun in his hand.

"For God's sake, what's the matter with you two, it's a housewife and a kid!" Adler snapped.

Elizabeth and Fowler stared at each other. There was blood smeared across his upper lip. He could easily have stopped her, but he hesitated, and she didn't question her good fortune; she seized Jess by the hand and dashed for the barn.

Even with a slight head start, they shouldn't have made it. Fowler had a gun; Adler's driver had a gun; even Adler himself, muttering "If you want something done right ..." drew a small pistol from beneath his impeccably tailored jacket. But fate, in the form of Mozzie, intervened.

A metal canister arced over their heads. El caught a glimpse of the Pringles logo on the side, and thought What on -- before it hit the ground and erupted in a cloud of smoke.

With Adler and company choking and gagging in the expanding smoke cloud behind her, El and Jess skidded into the horse paddock. Mozzie's head popped up in the hayloft. He was wearing what looked like a World War II army helmet and carrying -- was that a crossbow?

"What," Elizabeth gasped. "Was that tear gas? In a Pringles can?"

"It only looks like a Pringles can."

"Aunt El." Jess tugged at her hand. "Pepper and Ness are still saddled. We could ride them."

El managed to stifle her first response, which was Oh dear. She'd always been scared of Ness, her husband's big, bad-tempered black gelding. Peter kept telling her that her fear made him skittish, and if she could get over it, Ness would let her ride him. Apparently she was about to find out, because she'd just found something that frightened her more than Ness.

"Yes, that's a great idea; go, go," she said, giving her niece a shove, and called up to Mozzie, "Will you be okay?"

"I eat danger for breakfast, Mrs. Ex-Suit."

"I'll take that as a yes," El murmured, and ran around the corner of the barn.

Jess, now mounted on Pepper, had managed to catch Ness. Both the horses looked panicky, and Jess herself only slightly less so, but she was holding together remarkably well, especially for a thirteen-year-old. "I'll hold him while you get on, Aunt El," she said. "Be careful. He wants to kick."

El nerved herself and mounted. Ness was a lot bigger than her own little Ladybug, and she could feel his powerful muscles bunched under her. When Jess let go of the reins, there was a moment when El thought he was going to bolt.

"Just keep him firmly in hand, Aunt El. That's what Uncle Peter does. Don't let him have his head."

"Thanks," El murmured. But Peter seemed to be right about Ness, because now that she was on him, he didn't seem to be fighting or trying to throw her. She pointed his head towards the woods, and urged Jess ahead of her.


***


"Goddamn it," Adler wheezed. The gas, whatever it was -- not exactly tear gas, probably something homemade from the look of the canister it had been packaged in -- was dissipating quickly on the breeze. His driver, coughing, ran into the barn after whoever had thrown the gas canister. There was a series of thumps and a strangled yell.

"Get that little bastard in the helmet," Adler snapped at Fowler, and then his phone rang -- worst possible timing, as always. It was Larssen, so he ducked behind the Mercedes to answer. "Yes, what?"

"Got the music box," Larssen said, typically laconic.

"Thank God. Finally something is going right. Are you at the mill?"

"Yes, and Caffrey and Burke are no longer a problem. All that's left --"

There was a scuffling sound, a thump and then nothing.

"Julian?"

The call was disconnected.

Adler stared at it for a moment. That wasn't good.

In fact, this whole thing was turning into a clusterfuck. No, check that: it had been a clusterfuck from the moment Caffrey and Moreau got involved. The smart thing would be to cut his losses, round up his people and get out of here. But he was so damn close to the music box, so damn close.

If you want something done right, he thought furiously.

He looked speculatively at the remaining horses in the pasture. He was a good rider, and all he had to do was follow the woman -- she'd lead him where he needed to go. That big bay mare ought to do...


***


Where the trail split -- one way going to the Sawyers', the other to the network of woods trails, the river and the mill -- the two riders reined in. El had a struggle getting Ness to stop; he wanted to run. She glanced backwards. No one appeared to be following, yet.

"I want you to --"

"-- go to the Sawyers'. I know. That's where Mom and Dad think I am, anyway."

"And call your mother and the sheriff. From the Sawyers'."

"Yes ma'am." Jess turned and looked at the dark path stretching into the woods in front of her, then kicked Pepper into a gallop.

"Be careful!" El called after her. Ness shifted under her, his muscles rippling beneath his sleek coat. The horse was a powerhouse. "We're going to find your daddy," El told him. She knew he couldn't understand, but he twitched an ear back towards her, and came around gracefully when she wheeled and pointed him down the trail that led to the mill.

As Ness stretched out his long stride, El thought that she heard the cadence of hoofbeats on the trail behind her.


***


The river channel beneath the mill was lukewarm and waist deep. Peter and Neal plunged into the water and then floundered upright, water streaming off their hair and clothes. Already fingers of questing flame were beginning to curl around the blackening floorboards overhead.

For the first time in his life, Peter found himself teetering on the edge of a full-blown panic attack. He couldn't breathe. He was trapped. Just like --

You're not in that warehouse anymore, he told himself. That's over. Done. It's in the past.

He opened his eyes and for a panicked instant couldn't locate Neal, until the conman came splashing back from God knows where. Firelight striped Neal's face, and his wet hair was plastered to his skull. "We're going to have to swim for it," he shouted over the jet-engine roar of the flames above their heads. "There's something -- an underwater channel, I think it's the remains of the old millrace. The current's strong but I can't tell if it's clear all the way through."

"Yes, yes, go." Neal should already be gone, damn it, not waiting for him. They were both gasping, the air growing thin and foul as the fire sucked the oxygen out of it. He gave Neal a little shove and stumbled through the water after him. His head throbbed in time to his racing heartbeat. "Go!"


***


The mill had gone up beautifully, the ancient wood bone-dry and the walls latticed with season upon season of dead vines, crackling like tinder under Larssen's hands.

Larssen stepped back and admired his handiwork, the flames climbing rapidly towards the first stars emerging in the evening sky. He'd always liked watching things burn. He'd learned long ago that it was easy and pleasant to destroy. His special forces training had only honed the skills he'd already had. He dialed Adler.

"Yes, what?" Adler snapped.

"Got the music box." Larssen looked down at the scarf-wrapped bundle tucked under his arm. Okay, maybe it wasn't in great shape at the moment, but it could be restored like nothing ever happened. Probably.

"Thank God," Adler said. "Finally something is going right. Are you at the mill?"

"Yes, and Caffrey and Burke are no longer a problem. All that's left --"

There was a thump and a groan behind him. Larssen spun around and ducked just in time to avoid a large chunk of deadwood swinging through the area where his head had been a moment before.

"You are an absolute bastard," the woman in black said between clenched teeth.

"Where the hell did you come from?" Larssen dropped the phone and the scarf-wrapped bundle of music box pieces, and dived for Roberts' gun, but not fast enough.

"Julian?" demanded Adler's small, tinny voice, and then the hefty chunk of wood hit Larssen in the temple, and that was it.


***


Alex poked Larssen with her foot, her impromptu weapon cocked back over her shoulder. He didn't move, so she knelt and checked for a pulse, relieved to find it strong. She made it a general point of honor to make sure that everyone she left behind at the scene of the crime, from security guards to representatives of rival organizations, was still alive when she departed -- for one thing, there was a pretty big difference between the police response to grand larceny versus murder, and certain kinds of trouble she just didn't need.

It was hard to muster sympathy for him, though.

She picked up the phone and hurled it through the window into the flames inside the mill. Let Adler make of that what he would.

"Neal!" she shouted, and then stumbled backwards as the roof of the mill caved in with a tremendous roar. The heat rolled off the burning building in waves.

Alex reminded herself that Neal was much too canny to be trapped and killed by something as simple as a burning ruin. He'd found a way out, all right. He was probably making his getaway right now and expecting her to do the same. The smoke and flames would be clearly visible from the road, and she figured that this place would soon be crawling with whatever passed for emergency services out in the sticks. The idea of entrapping Adler was still tempting, but he would probably have the sense to flee as well. Live to con another day, and all of that.

The heat of the burning mill beating at her, she knelt and unwrapped the scarf. The music box's lid hung askew, its delicate springs and gears exposed. "All that trouble," Alex sighed. Gently she wrapped it up again. Perhaps Mozzie could put it back together again. Or maybe she'd let her grandfather's treasure rest beneath the waves for some other treasure hunter to find someday. Every con had a story of the one that got away. It keeps us sharp, she thought.

Larssen, it turned out, had a pocket full of zipties, of the sort he'd used to bind Peter. Alex made good use of them on Larssen and his companion. Along the way, she relieved them of the gun they no longer had a use for. Then she straightened with the music box tucked snugly against her body.

Now all she had to do was get out of the damn woods before the forest burned down around her. Although, she mused, the likelihood was pretty high that she'd run into a) police, b) Adler, or c) some combination of the above on her way out. Perhaps a bit of strategic planning was in order.


***


Neal staggered out of the water and flopped onshore, half-dragging Peter with a hand fisted in his shirt. "You okay?"

"I'm great," Peter said in a rough voice. His face was chalk-white.

Neal released him, letting him ride out his private demons in silence, and stood up. A thundering crash and wash of heat made Neal look upstream. They'd come out a little way below the burning mill, where the diverted channel of the millrace rejoined the river, but he could feel the heat even from here. Flames reached towards the sky. It was striking and terrifying and for a moment he could only stare, mesmerized --

-- the same way he'd stared at the flaming jet that had become Kate's pyre --

Hot wind swept across them, bringing sparks and the stink of the burning mill. The smell caught him more powerfully than the sight of the flames, sucking him back onto the tarmac. He could see it, hear it, feel it all as clear and precise as if he was still there, as if he'd never left. Kate's face in the window. Adler's voice in his ear, gentle and calm as always, saying, "This is the price of defiance, Neal." A rush of flames, a wash of heat --

The first sob took him by surprise.

The smell of the fire was on him, in him -- in his nose and mouth, in his clothes. He wanted to roll in the river, scrape it off, scrape off his skin if that was what it took. But he didn't even have the strength to do that. All he could do was cry.

He'd pushed it away, fought it back, beaten down the grief with anger, but now there was nothing to hold it at bay, nothing left but overwhelming loss and pain. Kate was gone, borne skyward like the sparks swirling up from the burning mill. He'd never hear her laugh again. Never see her face. Never smell her hair. He hadn't known that anything could hurt so much.

He fell to his hands and knees on the riverbank, choking and nearly retching in an attempt to make it stop. He couldn't. It wouldn't. "I don't," he tried to say. "I can't." And then all he could do was cry, hard painful sobs wrung out of him, until it finally tapered off.

He rested his face on his muddy fists, swallowing, breathing.

Near him, Peter spoke, his voice hoarse and rough. "When I first -- Campfires." He paused, cleared his throat. "Campfires got me. And barbecues."

Neal raised his head and dragged the back of his hand across his eyes. "Barbecues?" he managed to say.

"The smell," Peter said. "Burning ... meat. Grilling season was hell that first year. It's not as bad as it used to be, but it still gets to me sometimes." He turned his head and looked thoughtfully up at the light of the flames from the burning mill. "You know, I used to think I'd panic, if I was ever, God forbid, in a situation like that again."

"You didn't," Neal said. Peter had frozen up a little, but hell, who wouldn't?

"No, I didn't. It was bad, but I didn't lose it." His voice sounded soft and a little surprised. "Good to know."

Neal managed to sit up. He was wrung out and shaky, too tired to feel much of anything, but he made himself look into the flames as Peter was doing. It wasn't evil, he reminded himself. It wasn't a symbol of anything. Just fire, just a natural element, doing what fire did.

"There were -- three other guys in there besides you, right?"

"There were more of us than that," Peter said. "Most got out. Three of us died." His gaze was far away, farther than the burning mill. "I don't remember much of it, you know. Blocked it right out. Psych guy never quite believed me, I think. Kept trying to get me to open up about it. But there wasn't much to open up about. Just flashes. Pieces."

Neal wished for an instant that he had that problem. Kate's death was blazoned into his mind, an indelible image that he suspected he'd carry with him until his dying day. Peter couldn't remember; Neal couldn't forget.

He tore his eyes away from the flames, blinking until he could see more than just blue and white blotches, and looked at Peter instead. Their flight through the water had washed most of the blood off Peter's face, but more was welling to replace it, matting his hair. "How's your head?"

"Hurts like hell, thank you for asking."

"Want me to -- bandage it, or anything?"

Peter gave him an alarmed look. "Don't tell me you have a degree in medicine?" Neal's mouth opened; he couldn't help himself. "That you earned at an accredited institution," Peter clarified, and Neal shut his mouth. "Yeah. That's what I thought. Just keep your hands to yourself, Doctor Caffrey."

"Hey, I handled getting shot way better," Neal said, and he even managed to grin a little.

"I don't suppose you have a phone."

Neal touched his pocket, then patted himself down. "I did." At some point in the reckless escape from the mill, he'd lost it.

Peter sighed and raised his hand to touch the side of his head, which was starting to swell. "We're out of the fire, but still in the frying pan," he said wryly. "Larssen and his fellow arsonist are around here somewhere. And Adler's not far away, unless he's already heading for the hills."

Neal swallowed heavily. "Is Adler ... here? In Apple Corners?"

"Oh yeah. I talked to him. And I'm fairly sure he ordered my death just now."

"Congratulations," Neal said faintly. He looked upstream again. The fire was already starting to die down, the bulk of the structure having collapsed inward. Some of the nearby trees were smoldering and blackened, but right now it didn't look like the whole forest was going to catch on fire.

"Thanks, by the way," Peter said awkwardly. "For -- you know."

"I owed you anyway." Neal ran a hand over his face. He was exhausted; he felt stripped out from the inside, but oddly clearheaded. Kate was dead and that was a huge thing, a staggering thing, something he'd probably spend his whole life coming to terms with, but for the first time he could look at it head-on without shattering. "Damn it. Larssen's probably taking the music box to Adler. If we followed him, we could find him, but he'll be long gone -- damn it!"


***


Elizabeth lost herself in Ness's powerful piston-stride until a voice calling "Stop!" gave her such a start that she almost fell off.

She dragged Ness to a reluctant stop, and he stood with his sides heaving, breathing like a bellows. The air reeked of a heavy, burning-garbage stink, making the horse jumpy. El reached down to rub his neck, then looked past his nose to discover Alex standing in the trail.

"Elizabeth! Nice to see you here," Alex said brightly. She was looking somewhat the worse for wear, and seemed to have lost her shoes; her bare feet were scratched, and looked very pale against the swishing legs of her once-stylish black pants. A heavy-looking bundle wrapped in dark cloth was tucked against her chest. "I don't suppose I could get a ride, by any chance?"

"You'll have to ask the horse," El said. "He has a mind of his own. Where's Neal? And have you seen Peter?"

"I saw both of them not too long ago," Alex said. She cleared her throat. "They're probably around here somewhere. I was just ... about to go look for them."

She seemed suddenly ashamed, for some reason. "We can look together," El said by way of a peace offering.

Ness's saddle was on the approximate level of Alex's nose. El found a fallen tree with a fat bole that Alex could use for a mounting stoop, but getting Ness to stand still was an entirely different problem.

"He might buck," El said, once they maneuvered Ness close enough that Alex could attempt to climb on board. "He does that sometimes."

"How ... lovely."

On Alex's first attempt to mount the horse, something slithered out of the bundle in her arms and thumped to the forest floor. Alex jumped down to pick it up, and El hastily steered Ness away before he kicked her in the head. Not too hastily, however, to see that the item in question was a very large gun.

"It was lying on the ground," Alex said defensively. She started to stuff it back under the wrapped scarf, then changed her mind and tucked it through the back of the wide belt clasped around her narrow waist.

"It might be useful," El offered. Actually, given what had just happened back at the house, knowing that her companion was armed made her feel more secure. If only she trusted Alex a bit more ...

Alex managed to get on Ness's back on the second try. There was no comfortable way to accommodate two full-grown women on one saddle, especially the high-cantled Western saddle that Peter preferred. Alex gritted her teeth and clung to Elizabeth's waist with one arm, clutching the bundle to her chest with the other. El could feel hard things poking her spine.

"Where are they?" El asked.

Alex heaved a sigh that seemed to come from her very toes. "That way," she said, nodding down the trail in the direction she'd just come from. The burning smell was even stronger now.


***


Peter approached the mill's ruins cautiously from the downstream side, with Neal a few steps behind. The heat was still so powerful that it was like a physical force, pushing them back.

"Can you believe it was only this morning we rode out here?" Neal said.

Peter laughed. His head throbbed with migraine-like intensity, the stump of his arm hurt, his lungs hurt, his throat hurt -- and he laughed, he couldn't help it. Endorphins were a wonderful thing. "You're right. Lots of water under the bridge since then ... so to speak."

"I hope Alex got away okay."

"Was that the woman climbing the mill with you? Who was she, anyway?"

"Old friend," Neal said vaguely.

"Your old friends are coming out of the woodwork lately." Peter wiped blood out of his eyes with the back of his hand. His vision kept going double and then back into focus. "You sure El's okay?"

"We picked her up from the bakery. There was," Neal added, "a plan."

"It'd better have been a damn good plan, if you got my wife involved."

"Hey," Neal said, "all my plans are good plans."

That was so patently untrue that Peter just stared at him.

"Well, okay, except the ones that end up with me in prison."

"Or hiding in my barn? Or trapped in a burning building? Or base jumping off the Eiffel Tower's observation deck --"

"I had no idea you knew about that --" Neal hesitated. "... alleged incident."

Pounding hoofbeats got Peter's attention before he could reply. By instinct more than anything else, he interposed himself between Neal and whoever was coming their way. "Hey, Rambo, not that I don't appreciate the sentiment, but hiding might be better," Neal pointed out. "We're completely unarmed, you know."

"Right now, I'm too pissed to care," Peter said grimly.

But as soon as the horse appeared, Peter instantly recognized Ness -- and Ness recognized him, and came running with a happy little whinny completely at odds with his standoffishness towards everyone else. Elizabeth was off the horse's back before he even stopped moving. She half-tackled Peter and he put his arm around her, burying his face in her hair.

"See?" Neal said. "Told you she was okay."

El smiled at him. "I met a friend of yours on the trail, Neal."

"Help would be appreciated," Alex said between her teeth. Ness wouldn't hold still, and she was in eminent danger of sliding right over the horse's haunches onto the ground. Peter caught Ness's reins and held him while Alex half-climbed, half-fell from Ness's back. The burden in her arms was wrapped in a dark scarf with vivid gold patterns that caught the firelight. A very familiar-looking scarf ...

"Is that what I think it is?" Peter asked.

"Oh, Alex, you sneaky little thief." Neal laughed and planted a kiss on Alex's cheek. He attempted to relieve her of the music box, but Alex kept firm hold of it. Peter saw an odd expression pass over Neal's face before he gave up and let her keep it. "Where's Larssen?" he asked her.

"Unconscious and tied up over there." She gestured with her chin, since both her arms were occupied with the awkwardly bundled music box. Sighing, she frowned at Neal. "I think you're a bad influence on me. I should have been long gone. And yet, here I am."

"You just couldn't get along without my company."

"Yes, that must be it. Where's --"

Neal seized her shoulder and yanked her forward. "Alex, down!"

A gunshot cracked as another rider galloped out of the dark into the glow of the fire. Adler, Peter thought in horrified disbelief. And Adler was riding Chantilly, with all the grace and skill of a longtime horseman.

As far as Peter could tell, Adler had missed completely -- not surprising since both gunman and target were in motion. Neal crouched with one hand on Alex's shoulder and a look of pure hate on his face. "Adler," he breathed in a choked-sounding voice.

"Caffrey," Adler purred, turning Chantilly around one-handed and aiming the gun with the other. "I knew I'd see you again. Hand over the music box."

No one moved. Adler's hot gaze swept over the four of them as they instinctively drew closer together. "Well then, I guess I'll start killing your friends. Which one goes first?"

Alex straightened, shaken, and held out the scarf-wrapped bundle. "Actually --"

Neal snatched it out of her hands. Alex gave a yelp of angry dismay. "Caffrey! Damn it!"

The look that he gave her was heavily fraught, and some kind of wordless communication passed between them. Then Neal turned to look at Adler, and grinned one of his manic, reckless Caffrey grins. "You know what's in here, right?" He held up his burden, the broken pieces shifting inside the scarf. "Come and get it!"

He whirled and ran, holding the scarf-wrapped music box.

Adler snarled wordlessly. He kicked Chantilly in the sides. The horse leaped forward, galloping after Neal, flying hooves barely missing Elizabeth.

"Damn it, Neal, just drop it!" Peter bellowed. "That thing's not worth your life!"

If Neal heard him, there was no response. Both of them vanished down the trail past the smoldering ruins of the mill.

Peter whistled to Ness and swung himself up into the saddle. He had no idea what he could do without a weapon, but he wasn't just going to stand around and let Adler kill Neal without doing something.

"Hey!" Alex ran to him. "Here." She was holding something out, and it took Peter a startled moment to realize that she was offering him a gun, butt-first. It was a Colt 1911, the same kind that Larssen had been carrying.

He opened his mouth, then shut it. This wasn't the time or place to question a gift gun. "Thanks," he said, and looked back at Elizabeth, in an agony of indecision. He hated to just leave her here --

El smiled. "Go help Neal, honey. Catch the bad guy."

Peter wheeled Ness around, and took off towards the river after Adler.


***


Running had never really been Neal's thing, but he was young and in good shape, and besides, it was amazing what an excellent motivator being chased by a gunman on a horse could be.

He had a vague idea that he had to go somewhere the horse couldn't follow, but in the dark, the brush under the trees looked impenetrable. He veered towards the river and stumbled into the edge, only to realize that the water would slow him more than it would the horse. He splashed back ashore just as Adler rode out of the edge of the woods. The glow of the dying fire was partly screened by trees, backlighting him with an eerie nimbus.

"Caffrey. I always knew it would come down to you and me in the end." Adler rode closer; the horse's hooves crunched on gravel at the water's edge. "The question is, do I shoot you and take the music box off your corpse, or will you hand it over? It's quite valuable. I really would hate to get it wet."

Neal hoped that Peter, Elizabeth and Alex were taking advantage of the distraction to get way the hell away from here. I'm not sure how much time I can buy you guys. "How about we talk instead?"

"I don't think we have anything to talk about."

"Well, there's Kate, for starters."

"A mistake," Adler said. "The deal, not her death. Dealing with any of you was a mistake that I don't plan to make again."

"But I have something you want," Neal began, and Adler shot him in the leg.

There was more shock than pain. He landed hard and somehow managed to keep a grip on the bundle in his arms. Gasping, he sat up as Adler rode up beside him on the skittish horse. He could feel the heat of his own blood soaking rapidly through a pair of pants that had been new only this afternoon.

"The music box," Adler said. "Now."

Neal held it out wordlessly. The pain was starting to come, and it was bad. "You want it? You got it."

Adler gave him an odd look and relieved him of the bundle. Neal entertained a brief fantasy of pulling him off the horse into the river, but hand-to-hand combat wasn't his forte even when he had two functional legs. He knotted his hands across his thigh, blood welling up between his fingers. He couldn't have run even if he'd thought he had a chance of getting away, but it still might almost be worth it for the look on Adler's face in a minute ...

"So this is what it comes to," Adler said. He laughed. "I win, Caffrey. You lose. Again." He unrolled the scarf in his lap.

There was nothing inside but a bundle of sticks and leafy litter from the forest floor.

"Surprise," Neal said.

Adler stared, his triumphant smile changing to a rictus of horror and rage.

Neal wasn't sure where Alex had hidden the real music box -- somewhere around the mill, had to be. He'd noticed immediately, though, when he'd tried to take the box from her, that whatever she'd put in the scarf was not the fractured pieces of the box. He'd hauled it across half the state; no one knew better than Neal how heavy the music box was.

His face a mask of fury, Adler brought up his gun and pointed it between Neal's eyes.

"Adler!" Peter shouted, galloping out of the darkness.

Adler spun around on the horse, firing as he went. Shooting at a moving target in the dark, he missed completely. "You're a regular pain in the ass, Burke," Adler growled, wrestling the horse around. "The sort that won't go away."

"I've been accused of that before." Peter halted Ness at a distance, and looped the reins over the saddlehorn to free his hand to aim. "I'm making a citizen's arrest. Drop the gun, Adler."

"Go to hell," Adler said.

The two of them faced each other across several dozen yards of riverbank. Neal, lightheaded from pain and blood loss, had the feeling that he was watching two Old West gunslingers having a showdown. Behind Peter, he saw Elizabeth and Alex appear from the woods, then stop, frozen in place.

Adler moved first, a quick twitch of his fingers. At the movement, Peter, with reflexes like lightning, was already firing. It threw Adler off, and his shot went wide. Peter's didn't. Adler pitched off his horse, and the horse, having had enough of this, bolted.

Adler tried to scramble to his feet in the water and fell down again, clutching his shoulder. Even from here, Neal could see the spray of arterial blood. "Son of a bitch!" Peter cursed, sliding off Ness's back into knee-deep water. "I need something to stop the bleeding; does anyone have anything--"

Not for Adler's sake, but for Peter's, Neal picked up Kate's scarf, crumpled and abandoned on the riverbank. He wadded it into a ball and underhanded it to Peter. Then he slumped back, darkness closing around the edges of his vision. His thigh felt like a red-hot poker had been jammed into it.

He jumped explosively when Alex touched his shoulder. He hadn't even noticed her approach him. Looking up, he found himself flanked by Alex and El. "Neal, let me," Elizabeth said gently, prying his fingers away from his thigh.

Neal slumped back and let them do whatever they felt compelled to do. Alex covered him with her jacket. El did ... something to his leg that made his vision white out for a moment. The world spun around him, and he came back to himself with his head in Alex's lap. Peter and El were talking nearby: "... bled out," he heard Peter say heavily, and for an instant he thought they were talking about him, but, no, there had been Adler, and a showdown, or had he dreamed it ...?

"High noon," he mumbled.

"Hush," Alex said, brushing his hair back from his forehead.

Neal opened his eyes. There was still a hint of light in the sky overhead; he could see her dark head framed against it. "The music box." His lips were clumsy and unresponsive. "Where is it?"

"Destroyed," Alex said without a hesitation, without even glancing at Peter and Elizabeth, who were, Neal realized belatedly, within earshot. "Probably melted to slag in the fire."

"Nice swap," he said, drowsy, zoning out again.

He was tugged back to reality by a hand on his shoulder, too big and square to be Alex's. He blinked and found that Alex's lap had vanished from under his head, which was now propped on someone's folded-up shirt. He could hear distant sirens on the road. "Where's Alex?"

"Good question," Peter's voice said. Neal blinked to clear his vision, and followed the arm up to Peter's shoulder and then to his face, a tired mask of soot and blood. "She made herself scarce the minute she heard sirens. What are the odds your little buddy's gone too?"

"They're too smart to get caught," Neal murmured. "Not like me."

Peter snorted.

"Adler --" Neal said. "Wasn't your fault."

Peter let out his breath in a weary sigh, and looked out across the water. "Yeah, well. There's no such thing as a guaranteed non-lethal place to shoot somebody. Anytime you point your gun is a potential kill shot." He sounded as if he was quoting something someone had told him long ago.

"Saved my life, you know."

Peter patted his shoulder awkwardly. "Just returning the favor."

"Guess we're taking turns now?"

Peter laughed, and Neal closed his eyes. The warm, steady pressure of Peter's hand kept him grounded, and he drifted to the sound of the river. Kate was gone. Adler was gone. Somehow, he was still here, so he waited to see what came next.

---

14.


Peter woke with a jolt. The sharp hospital reek of antiseptic, the floaty painkiller feeling, the lingering fire stink in the back of his throat -- for a horrible moment disorientation washed over him, and a sob caught in his chest, nearly sending him over the edge. He brought up his hand automatically to touch the stump of his arm, expecting to find bandages and a fresh, visceral shock --

Instead he found the soft slip of scar tissue, and familiarity, and resignation. He slid his hand up to cup his shoulder under the hospital gown, rubbing it absently, and opened his eyes. Sunlight filtered through the blinds of a generic hospital room in, he remembered now, Syracuse. He'd only been asleep for a few hours, and even with the painkillers, his body felt like it had been beaten. He looked to the side and found El curled up into a ball in an uncomfortable-looking hospital chair, snoring softly.

Different fire. Different outcome. Had he really shot Adler? He probed his emotions. Detachment and a kind of vague disbelief was all that he found. Which was probably going to seem blessedly pleasant once it really started to hit him. He'd never shot anyone in the line of duty back when he was an FBI agent, but he expected that the pattern of adjustment was probably similar for any life trauma.

Well, add it to the pile, he thought with a sardonic twist of the lips. That was living, after all: just one goddamn thing after another.

Hopefully El wouldn't have to endure being married to a felon on top of everything. Would they prosecute? Given the number of illegal things he'd done in the last few days ...

Elizabeth groaned and stirred, and Peter reached out his hand, cupped it over hers. She stretched and opened her eyes, smiled and leaned over to kiss him.

"Good morning, beautiful," Peter said. "You didn't have to stay."

"I wanted to."

The hospital had kept him overnight to observe his head injury and make sure there was no lingering damage to his lungs. Of course, once he and El were done giving statements to what seemed like half the LEOs in this part of the state, there hadn't been a whole lot of night left.

El yawned and checked her phone -- recovered from the farm and mostly undamaged. "Text from Pattie. She says she and the kids found your arm in the lower pasture, undamaged."

"Oh ... good," Peter murmured. One less thing to talk to the insurance company about. "Thank her for me," he remembered to add.

"Thank her yourself," El said with an amused quirk of the lips. "She and the kids are on their way up."

"Oh good," he managed again. "Have you heard anything yet about N--"

But he didn't have a chance to ask about Neal or anything else, because the door opened and El's sister herded a swarm of Miller kids into his hospital room. Jess was bubbling over with the story of the fight at the barn, which Peter had already heard from Elizabeth -- multiple times, as they'd told it to the police -- but he let her go ahead and have her moment of glory.

Brian sulked with jealousy.

"Hey, you could have come with me," Jess said. "I tried to make you come, but all you wanted to do was play with your stupid computers --"

"But thank the dear Lord you didn't," their mother retorted. "It's bad enough having one of you in mortal danger."

She'd brought what looked like an entire day's output of the Good Eatin' Bakery in two very large cardboard cartons; Pattie dealt with stress by cooking. After pastries were parceled around, Jessica was dispatched to take the remainder to the duty nurse's station -- "After all," Pattie said, smiling at her brother-in-law, "they've had to deal with you all night."

"He was perfectly well-behaved," El said, squeezing his hand.

"I wanted to bring Satchmo but Mom wouldn't let me put him in the car," Susie chirped.

"That's okay, sweetie; they don't allow dogs in hospitals."

The veneer of cheerful normalcy made Peter more twitchy than comforted. He wanted to know what was going on with the investigation. Things had to be moving at a breakneck pace inside OPR -- and where was Neal right now, anyway? Or, more critically, how was Neal? He'd last seen Neal taken into police custody, dazed and bleeding. God, they hadn't stuck him in a jail cell overnight, had they ...?

He was roused from his gloomy musings by a nurse tapping on the door. She smiled at the cluster of chattering Millers. "There's another visitor for you," she said, and stepped aside to make way for Kramer.

"Pete," the older agent said, and the two shook hands. "Flew up from DC as soon as I could get away. I should've known retirement wasn't going to stop you from being a pain in my department's collective ... behind."

El shepherded the Millers out of the room so that the two of them could speak in privacy, and Kramer caught Peter up on the latest news from the rapidly developing investigation. Fowler had agreed to make a deal with the state D.A.'s office to bring down the remainder of Adler's organization -- and part of that involved testifying on Peter's behalf in the warehouse fire incident.

Peter thought he ought to feel something about that, one way or another. Relief, maybe. Anger. Instead there was nothing but a great empty lethargy. Nothing that happened at this point would change the fact that three men were dead, his career over. No, wait. Four men. He supposed that after everything, he'd gotten the vengeance against Adler that he'd never wanted. An eye for an eye gets you nothing but lots of people without eyes...

"What about Adler's ... death?" Peter forced himself to meet Kramer's eyes, uncertain what his former mentor knew about that. From the sympathy on Kramer's face, he'd managed to get himself fully briefed, one way or another.

"I don't know much yet. Perhaps I should say, they don't know much yet. Evidence and witness testimony points to self-defense." He gave Peter a sharp look. "Don't blame yourself, Petey."

"There was no other choice, sir," Peter said earnestly. "Things happened fast, but I really believe that I did the only thing I could have done under the circumstances."

Kramer nodded. "I'd like to talk about this more. Later. But you can rest assured that I'll certainly speak on your behalf."

"Thanks," Peter said. It was the best he could have hoped for at this early stage, anyway. Hopefully he and Neal wouldn't end up sharing that jail cell. Speaking of which ...

"How's Neal Caffrey?"

"Caffrey?" Kramer looked like he couldn't figure out why Peter wanted to know. "Well, back in prison, where he should be. Or in the prison infirmary, more accurately. Probably going to see another few years behind bars for doing a runner."

"But he'll be all right?"

"He'll be well enough to stand at his resentencing," Kramer said, and Peter closed his eyes briefly.

"He saved my life, you know. Twice. At a great deal of risk to his own."

"He's a felon, Pete," Kramer said gently. "You two may have had some adventures -- the enemy of my enemy is my friend and all of that. But don't delude yourself into thinking that he's anything other than a felon. Believe me, I've been there. It doesn't end well."

Too late, Peter thought. Too damn late.


***


In the end, between depositions and court appearances and consultations with the FBI, two weeks passed before Peter was able to drive south and visit Neal in prison.

Kramer had given him occasional status reports, enough to let him know that Neal's recovery had been proceeding without undue setbacks. Peter's imagination had filled in plenty of details, probably unnecessary ones, but he really felt for the kid, damn it, incarcerated and sick and alone. Wasn't much he could do about it, though. Neal was already out of the infirmary and back in the regular prison population when Peter showed up to visit. Neal had been released a mere two days earlier, and when the prison guards led him into the visitors' room, he came in stiff and slow, still limping heavily, a pale shadow of his normal polished, cheerful self.

On the surface, he was still Neal Caffrey -- but he was different, too. Closed down. There was a stillness to him, unlike his usual contained, watchful air. He didn't look well. But Peter figured that convalescing from a gunshot wound -- well, two gunshot wounds, technically -- in prison would do that to you. And Neal actually looked happy to see him, which was also a change.

"When they told me I had a visitor, I had no idea who it could be." Neal smiled faintly. "Mozzie's not really the visiting-people-in-prison type."

"Sorry it took me awhile to come," Peter said. "There were things."

"I understand about things." Neal smiled, a ghost of his usual bright grin, but genuinely pleased. "You look okay."

"Thanks," Peter said, because he couldn't really reciprocate; Neal looked anything but okay. "El sent cookies, by the way, but they confiscated them."

"Well, tell her thanks for me."

There was an awkward silence.

"So I hope they didn't throw the book at you for helping me," Neal said.

"Not really. I should've turned you in, it's true. But given what we accomplished --" he threw in that "we" as a freebie; Neal had earned it "-- taking down Adler, Fowler and a bunch of crooked agents along with them, we were able to spin it as the only way things could have gone that would've led to that outcome."

It was more complicated than that by far, and at certain points, Kramer had put his own career on the line to keep Peter out of prison. But Neal didn't need to know the details. They'd all come out of it clean, if only by the skin of their teeth, and that was what mattered at this point.

Neal's smile flickered; it was tired, but it was his real smile. "I think I'm rubbing off on you, Peter."

The sad thing was, it was probably true, which meant that Peter couldn't let him get away with scoring a point. "You do realize," Peter said, "if you'd stayed in and done the time like you were supposed to, you'd already be out."

"And Fowler and Adler would still be at large," Neal riposted back.

"There is that," Peter conceded.

Neal went still and quiet. "And Kate would still be alive," he said in a voice just above a whisper.

Peter looked at the kid, really looked at him: Neal's pallor, his unusually subdued manner. Knowing how put-together Neal normally was, if Peter was seeing it this strongly, it must be bad. It's really hitting him in here, he thought, all of it. Not just the convalescence, but Kate's death, Neal's lengthened sentence -- the future stretched out long and rocky in front of him, and for once in his life he couldn't muster up the will to take control and change it. Maybe it was good that he was going through the adjustment to his new, Kateless life in the regimented environment of prison, where he had someone telling him where to go and when to eat, where he didn't have to make choices if he didn't want to. But it also meant that he was alone, utterly alone, and from the look of him, very quietly falling apart.

"I'll get you out," Peter said, startling himself with the intensity of his conviction.

Neal looked surprised, and then skeptical.

"I'm serious. They're cutting a deal with Fowler; they'll be willing to make a deal with you." And he thought, I'll make sure that they do. Whatever it takes.


***


What it took was getting a job with the New York State Department of Correctional Services as a parole officer.

"Awww, Peter," Neal said when Peter picked him up, along with a shiny new ankle monitor and a list a yard long of things he wasn't supposed to do and people he wasn't supposed to associate with. He was still pale and too thin, but he was also smiling. "You're seeing other parolees behind my back?"

Peter chose to ignore the flippancy and answer the question as asked. "Two of them, at this point. Both kids, nonviolent offenders, just a little too old for juvie." He gestured at Neal's ankle. "There's a definite trend right now towards the monitor system, not just to keep costs down but also to keep kids like that from hooking up with hardcore felons --"

"Like me?"

"-- and ending up just like them," Peter said, refusing to take the bait.

"So where am I going to live? Your spare bedroom?"

"No," Peter said with a small shudder at the idea. "It wouldn't be appropriate, for one thing, and -- just, no. You'll need to rent a place of your own."

"In Apple Corners?" Neal said in disbelief. "Do they even have apartment buildings?"

"Not really as such, but El thinks she's got you a line on a place to stay. Some friend of her brother-in-law's cousin or something like that."

Neal slouched down in his seat. "It really is Mayberry. I'm going to be climbing the walls in a day and a half, Peter, you know that. I'll ..." He was obviously trying to come up with a fate that was dire enough for being trapped in a town with no night life or upscale department stores. "I'll die."

"No, you won't," Peter said. "You'll get to know your neighbors, make friends, live a normal life. Get a job --"

"A job?"

Peter grinned. "Well, you have to pay the rent somehow."

"I don't believe this," Neal said, slouching down until he was almost horizontal in the passenger seat.

Peter decided to take pity on him. "I've been talking to some of my old contacts in the White Collar division about having you consult for them, on a case-by-case basis. It'd be a volunteer thing, but if it works out, they might be able to cough up some money from next year's budget to pay you." The last part wasn't on the table yet, but Peter was willing to gamble that Hughes would go for it once he saw what having Neal Caffrey on their side could do for them. The trick would be keeping him on that side. But Peter was pretty sure he could do it.

Well, mostly sure.

Maybe 50% sure.


***


"Don't think I can't see what you're up to," El said, some weeks later, sitting on the porch with a book in her lap, though she was more interested in watching Neal and two of Peter's young parolees currying the horses, relaxing after a morning of mucking out stables. Neal said something to the kids and they laughed, looking like the carefree teens that they ought to be, rather than the prison-inmates-in-the-making that the court system thought they were.

Peter leaned a hip against the side of her chair. "And what am I up to, Mrs. Burke?"

"Horse-ranch therapy for wayward urban youth. Saving America's kids from a life of crime."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." He almost sounded like he meant it. Maybe, she thought, he actually did mean it, and the whole thing was a big, serendipitous accident. But it gave him purpose and direction, and even more important, it made him happier than she'd seen him in years.


***


Alex didn't take Neal's calls for a long time, and then, one day, out of the blue, she called him. "I heard you turned snitch, Caffrey," she said, but not in a mean way.

He could hear traffic in the background. Voices. He wondered if she was in New York or some other city, and a wave of nostalgia lapped at him. It was good to hear her voice, though. "I hear you and Mozzie have been consulting on the music box."

Neal stayed in regular touch with Moz, via phone and email and various complicated drop-box systems when Mozzie was feeling especially paranoid about the Man listening in on their communications. Mozzie had said that trying to reconstruct the music box's delicate mechanisms when he didn't even know what it was supposed to look like in the first place was like doing a jigsaw puzzle while blindfolded and wearing mittens.

"Should have known the bald pipsqueak couldn't keep his mouth shut," Alex said without rancor. "As I'm sure he's told you, it's well and truly broken. It's nothing but an interesting and rather expensive conversation piece now."

Something in her voice gave him the idea that she wasn't going to stop trying, though. "There's more to that story than you ever told me," Neal said. He took the broken cherub out of his pocket and rolled it between his fingers like a good luck charm, which perhaps it was. He hadn't shown it to Peter. He had to keep a few secrets, after all.

"There always is." Her voice turned soft. "So that's me. What about you? How's life treating you in the middle of nowhere? Mozzie says you haven't found a way to slip your leash yet."

"Not yet." Though, in honesty, he hadn't been looking very hard. If he stuck it out for another three years, he'd get the leash off, all nice and legal, and he could go wherever he wanted. In the meantime, it was unexpectedly pleasant to stop moving for a while. He figured he could find a way to slip the anklet if he really had to, but right now there was something almost comforting in knowing that Peter could find him, and catch him if he fell. Not that he'd ever tell Peter that, of course.

"What do you do all day?"

"Ride horses and teach inner-city kids to ride them too." Alex gave a startled, disbelieving laugh. "Seriously. I do. And, well, consult for the FBI, but obviously you already know that." He decided not to mention that he was also working part-time at the bakery for rent money. Some things Alex and Mozzie didn't need to know.

"I'd lose my mind," Alex said.

"You can get used to anything," Neal started to say, but broke off and sat up on the couch. A furtive, familiar movement out the window had caught his eye.

"Neal? What?"

"Shhh," he said, and walked to the window of the Burkes' living room. He leaned against the window and watched Sue, the fox, trot purposefully across the yard, her fat brush of a tail floating behind her. In the long slant of evening light, she seemed to glow. Peter and El weren't home yet. It was just him and the fox.

Hello again, little trickster, Neal thought, smiling. He didn't believe in omens, but he always had a good feeling when he saw the fox, ever since that first day. El, he knew, had taken to leaving the occasional dog biscuit for her in the woods. Neal was still hoping to see baby foxes, but he hadn't yet. Perhaps next summer.

Something spooked the fox, maybe a horse stamping in the pasture or a car passing on the highway. She took off with graceful bounds, making so little noise that he couldn't hear her at all. It made her seem weightless, hardly tethered to the ground. In moments she'd vanished into the woods.

"Caffrey? Are you still there?"

"Sorry, Alex." Neal's voice was still hushed; it was hard to let go of the lingering sense of wonder, the feeling of being touched by magic that he always had when the fox had gone by. "Something came up."

"Yes, I'm sure your social calendar is very full out there in Mayberry," she said in a dry tone.

Neal laughed. "I stay busy. Don't worry about me."

"I don't waste time worrying about you, Caffrey, it'd be a full-time job if I did." There was a pause, long enough that Neal started to wonder if she'd hung up on him. Finally, she asked quietly, "Are you happy, Neal?"

"Yes," he said, surprising himself. "Yes, I think I am."

~