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White Collar fic: The Family Business (2/2)
Part One
"I don't like this plan."
"You keep saying that." Neal was securely back in his Erik Vestergaard look: all black, hair slicked down. "I figure I'm playing to my strengths."
Peter was in black as well, mustache back in place. "I think we're both playing with fire."
"Backup is right around the corner."
"And ten minutes away." Organized Crime and the White Collar unit had mustered at the nearest unobtrusive staging area that they could find to Solari's upscale neighborhood, which unfortunately wasn't very close.
"You really think this is going to give us enough to move in, Burke?" Ruiz had asked, in a hastily convened council at FBI headquarters. "Pulling in this many people at short notice, on overtime -- it had better go down the way you think it's going to."
If Peter had been a dog, he knew his ears would have flattened. Ruiz could get to him, always had. Hughes intervened. "Considering how long all of us have been after the Solari brothers, I don't care if we're getting tips from Frank Solari's pet hamster. Yes, we're pulling in a lot of agents from barbecues and their daughter's birthday parties on no notice at all. That's the job. They have a problem with it, have them talk to me."
After Ruiz had left, Hughes stopped Peter. "You'd better be right about this Dean woman."
"She'll come through," Peter had said, with more confidence than he felt.
Now he paced. The place where Lorna had said she'd pick them up was a closed insurance office across from a gas station, a short drive from Frank Solari's house. Traffic was sparse on this little side road, but every time a pair of headlights approached, Peter braced himself -- it'd just figure if they got turned in to the local police for suspicious lurking. Between their black clothing and the fact that they were obviously waiting for someone, they might as well be wearing sandwich boards that read I AM UP TO NO GOOD.
"Settle down," Neal said, going through a series of stretching exercises with lazy grace. "You look like you're about to go off and rob someone."
"That's exactly what I'm about to do!"
"How is it," Neal said in wonder, "that you can be so good at certain kinds of undercover work and so utterly terrible at others?"
"There is a reason that I prefer to be on the other end of the stakeout." Peter reached up to his ear. "Radio check."
"Radio's still working, boss," Jones said, and then added after a brief pause, "Just like two minutes ago, and five minutes before that. Also, before you ask, we haven't picked up anything useful from the bugs yet. Just a lot of small talk."
"But you're still receiving transmissions from the bugs."
"Loud and clear. For now."
"Hey, Peter -- showtime," Neal murmured as a set of headlines slowed and rolled to a stop at the curb.
The car was sleek and black, and Lorna was alone in it. The jewels glittered at her throat and wrists, setting off her sleek red evening gown. She looked very young and scared. As soon as Neal and Peter slid into the backseat, she pulled hastily away from the curb.
"It was hard to get away. I told Frank I had to go out for some air. He insisted on sending someone with me, but I gave him the slip in the bathroom."
"If you want," Peter said, "you can let us out on the grounds and then leave. There's an FBI van not too far from here. You'll be safe with them. Inside ... not so much, especially if anyone realizes you're our inside person."
"And then what?" Lorna's hands were white-knuckled on the wheel, but she drove steadily without looking into the backseat at them. "I agreed to help, and I will. My future depends on what happens in there. I'll never be safe as long as David and Frank are out of prison."
Lots of loyalty to her soon-to-be-ex boyfriend there. The problem with turning someone was that if they flipped once, they could always flip back if the other side gave them a better deal. Peter wasn't confident that she'd break the right way when the FBI burst in and started arresting people.
But having her on their side would be a big advantage.
"There's the gate," Lorna said softly, and both men dropped as far down as they could, squeezing into the space between the front and back seats. Peter felt like a sardine in a can, with his face mashed against the back of the passenger's seat and Neal's knee pressing into his ribs. And he hated not being able to see. They would never pass anything but the most cursory inspection; if the gate guard so much as shined a flashlight around the interior of the car ...
But the guard knew Lorna, of course, and after a brief, friendly exchange, the car jolted forward. Neal started to sit up, but Peter, who had been expecting that, hooked a finger into Neal's collar and yanked him back down. He didn't let either of them up until the car stopped moving. Keeping one hand on top of Neal's head to hold him down, Peter raised himself just high enough to peek out. They were behind the kitchens, not too far from where they'd parked the Greatest Cake truck some twelve hours earlier.
Neal made a muffled, annoyed noise and freed himself, popping up like a jack-in-the-box and smoothing down his mussed hair.
"There's a side door here," Lorna said. "No one ever uses it. I've unlocked it from the inside. I'll pull the car around so Frank's man can park it for me like usual, and then meet you upstairs in my room, I guess."
She was trembling. Peter reached out somewhat awkwardly to pat her shoulder, but thought better of it when she flinched away. "Can you go in there and act normal?" he asked. "I'm serious, Lorna. Don't do it if you can't play cool. You've helped us already, and the FBI amnesty offer is still open."
"I'm fine," Lorna said, stiffening her shoulders. "I've been fine all evening." She sounded as if she was trying to convince herself.
"You'll do great," Neal said. Peter couldn't help noticing that she let him pat her arm.
She let them out behind a bush and then the car moved away quietly, its taillights winking in the night.
In contrast to its serene stillness that morning, the house was lit up in nearly every room, and the sound of music could be faintly heard, as well as voices from several people strolling outside. "Jones," Peter whispered. "We're in. Ears open."
"Ears open," Jones said.
They slipped through the door that Lorna had indicated. Inside, they found themselves in a hallway that led to the kitchen, judging from the babble of voices accompanied by clinking dishes and a wave of heat.
"The blueprints ..." Peter murmured, trying to call them to mind. They'd been on the other side of the kitchen before, and it looked different over here. Also, it was a lot easier to memorize one or two specific routes into a building than the whole thing, especially someplace as large and complex as Frank's house. "There should be a stairway just around the -- hey!"
Neal took his arm and guided him the other way, into what had appeared to be a closet but actually turned out to be a side passage. "Let the expert lead," Neal said.
"Of course you'd have a photographic memory for sneaky ways of getting into places."
"It's skill, not talent. Well ..." Neal smiled modestly. "Maybe a little of both."
They ended up in one of the upstairs hallways. Aside from a near miss with a giggling maid and her thug-looking boyfriend, they had no trouble finding the large bedroom overlooking the side garden that Lorna had said was hers. The door was unlocked. Neal peeked inside, then nodded, and Peter pressed close onto his heels into the room, breathing a sigh of relief when the door shut behind them.
Neal double-checked that the drapes were securely closed, and then snapped on a small bedside lamp. Peter glanced around in the spill of warm light. The room was richly decorated, from the embroidery on the bedspread to the little tassels on the lampshade, but barren of personality. It reminded him of a nice hotel room. The only personal touches were a few of Lorna's things: a silky bathrobe tossed over the back of a chair, a makeup kit unpacked on the dresser, a large gold purse hanging on the open closet door.
The urge to search the room was almost overwhelming. Peter compromised with himself by peeking into the purse.
"Oh, Peter," Neal said disapprovingly.
"Let he who is without sin, and a track record of snooping through other people's belongings, cast the first stone." Peter used a pen off a nearby table to poke through the contents of the purse, at least those that could be easily accessed. It looked like pretty typical purse-stuff to him: tissues, a hairbrush, stubs of theatre tickets -- he poked the ticket to see which show: The Lion King.
"I'll remember this the next time that you lecture me about sticking my nose where it doesn't belong."
"I'm Gunnar Vestergaard, international jewel thief." A metallic gleam under the tickets caught Peter's eye. "Just playing the part," he added, absently, as he fished out a key with the pen and then his fingertips. "Hmm. Interesting."
"Looks like a safe key," Neal said, looking over his shoulder.
"Solari said she had a deposit box."
Neal shook his head. "That's not for a bank lockbox. It's an in-wall safe."
"Back at her apartment in the city?"
"Possibly." Neal glanced around thoughtfully, then crossed the room in a few quick steps and locked the door's ornate little handle.
It only took Neal a moment to find the wall safe behind a painting of a fruit bowl. The key fit smoothly in the well-oiled lock, and the door swung open to reveal the glitter of jewels. Familiar-looking jewels.
"Two sets of jewels?" Peter said in disbelief, and then: "No. One real set of jewels, and one fake."
"No wonder she was casually wearing them around the house," Neal said. "Good fakes, though. I held one of the bracelets in my hand this morning and I couldn't tell." He leaned close to the wall safe, snagged a bracelet in his gloved fingers, and looked at it more closely.
"I can't believe she'd leave two jewel thieves alone in a room with the real jewels."
Neal laughed. "But she knows who we really work for. She didn't leave two jewel thieves here. She left two FBI agents."
"One FBI agent and one thief."
"Alleged thief," Neal said cheerfully, "and she didn't know that." He fingered the bracelet.
"Neal," Peter said, "put that back."
Neal obeyed reluctantly. "What's going to happen to Adela's jewelry, anyway? Think it'll just vanish into an FBI lockup somewhere?"
"Probably," Peter said. "Look, Neal, I've been thinking about it, and if I call in some favors, pull some strings, I think I might have a good shot at getting the jewels released to Adela once the actual court proceedings are over." It was a risky thing for him to try -- lots of potential for misunderstandings at the higher levels, given the oddball nature of his involvement in this case to begin with -- but Neal was right, they had to try.
Neal gave him an odd, long look, like he was seeing more of Peter than Peter really wanted him to. Then the doorknob rattled. Neal's eyes went wide and he mouthed, "Lorna." Peter leaped for the closet to put the key back, while Neal closed the safe and lifted the painting back into place.
There was the faintest of little tapping knocks at the door. Peter reached up to smooth his hair down, caught Neal out of the corner of his eye doing the exact same thing, and lowered his hand. He went to let in Lorna.
"You locked me out of my own room!" she whispered furiously. Her eyes darted sideways to the fruit painting and then back to Peter.
"The last thing we need is the wrong person walking in here and finding us," Neal pointed out. "Are we on?"
Lorna took a deep breath and nodded. "Let's go."
They went out into the hall, Lorna in front, the two men behind. Peter didn't like that -- if any shooting started, she'd be right in his line of fire. He touched the weight of his service weapon under the dark Gunnar Vestergaard jacket.
This morning, the ballroom had been an empty shadowy space, as still as an empty cathedral. Now it glittered with lights and echoed with music and voices. Scanning the scattered clusters of people below, Peter found Frank Solari in conversation with someone that he vaguely recognized from a completely different file in the Organized Crime archives. And there was David Solari over in the corner, about as far from his brother as it was possible to be, surrounded by several members of the Marino family. Oh yes, it was a veritable Who's Who of organized crime around here -- none of the really big fish, but a whole bunch of up-and-comers. Peter felt the corners of his mouth curl up in a grin.
"Frank!" Lorna shouted down into the ballroom.
Below them, the babble of conversation grew markedly fainter, as a number of the partygoers fell silent and turned to look up the broad staircase at Lorna with the two men in black behind her. Peter was looking at David Solari, because he absolutely had to see David's reaction, and the rapid blanch of horror did not disappoint.
"Frank," Lorna snapped, and stormed down the staircase. Peter and Neal followed her; to Peter, it felt like walking into the lion's den. "Frank, I found these men upstairs! They said David hired them to steal my jewels!"
Frank, who had started towards her, snapped his head around to look at his brother instead. A number of bystanders who had been migrating towards the commotion suddenly found other places to be. This was clearly a Solari family affair, and no one wanted to get in the middle of it.
"That's absurd," David said sharply. "These men are clearly thieves; they even admit it. They'd say anything. If you can't keep the peace in your own house, Frank --" He reached a hand towards the ill-concealed bulge under his own dinner jacket. "I'll handle the problem for you."
Peter noticed that a few large men in badly-fitting tuxedos had detached from the crowd, some angling towards David Solari, others toward Peter and Neal. At the same time, David's own bodyguards had queued up around him. Peter let his hand drift to his gun. Shots fired would get the FBI on the move as well as an admission of guilt, but he'd rather not have it come to that. C'mon, someone say something incriminating, for the love of ...
"Move that hand and you'll lose it, David," Frank said. "You're in my house. Remember that." Lorna had reached him now, with Peter and Neal close behind. "What's going on here?"
Peter cleared his throat. "I'm Gunnar Vestergaard, and this is my son Erik," he said, and there was a little ripple among the onlookers around them. Oh yeah. These guys have heard of us. The real us, that is ... He could see from the look of startled recognition on Frank's face that Frank had, too. The Vestergaards might be total unknowns in the civilian world, but in the criminal underworld, they were legends.
"My brother hired you to break in?" Frank said in disbelief.
"Blackmailed us is more like it," Peter said.
There was another little ripple. Peter had learned long ago that the old saw about "no honor among thieves" was absolutely true; on the other hand, the guys who came closest to being counterexamples were the mafia types represented in this room tonight. And a lot of it was just simple self-preservation, too -- the guy who took a knife to your competitor's back might do the same to you on another day. Most of the looks directed towards David Solari were not sympathetic ones.
"That's an absolute lie!" David snarled. "You were paid!"
Frank's expression went ugly. "So you admit it? Sending thieves to break into my house -- that's dirty even for you, brother."
"Oh, look who's talking now." The two brothers squared off against each other, and Lorna backed up until she was sandwiched between Peter and Neal. "Like we don't both know you hired those guys to bust heads at my Red Hook operation."
"I wouldn't've had to if you hadn't been moving cash through my side of the bay and not cutting my boys in on it!" Frank shot back.
Jones's voice spoke quietly in Peter's ear. "In case you were wondering, boss, we're getting this loud and clear -- and on tape. Agents are moving now."
Thank God. And they couldn't get here too soon for Peter's peace of mind. Frank and David's argument had escalated in volume -- and in level of accusation; now they were blaming each other for everything that had gone wrong with either of their sides of the business in the last fifteen years, and giving the FBI a nice fat pile of self-incrimination while they were at it. Peter reached around Lorna, touched Neal's arm, and began to herd both of them quietly towards the stairs, putting himself between them and the room as much as possible.
"You double-crossing son of a bitch, Vestergaard!" David bellowed, and whipped around with his gun in hand. Lorna screamed.
Peter had no idea which of them David intended to shoot first, but Peter's attempt to knock Neal to the floor and cover him went awry when Neal tried the exact same thing at the same time. They went down in a tangled knot, along with Lorna, just as the snap of gunshots echoed in the ballroom.
Peter's eyes met Neal's wide ones over the top of Lorna's head. "You okay?" he asked, and Neal nodded a terse affirmative.
"You?" Neal asked.
Peter nodded and looked up to find that David Solari had just discovered the problem with firing a gun in a room where everyone was armed and no one was averse to a little violence. About a dozen different people had drawn on him, and he stood nervously, gun dangling from his hands, looking like he wasn't sure which way to bolt. His bodyguards had closed in around him, and everyone else's bodyguards had closed around them, and Peter got the impression that they were seconds from erupting into an actual shooting war.
The boom of the door being kicked in and the bellow of "FBI! Freeze!" could not possibly have come at a better time.
***
Some time later, the madhouse had mostly sorted itself out. About a dozen arrestees with outstanding warrants had joined the Solari brothers in a circle of armed FBI agents on the lawn, while everyone else had been (reluctantly) let go. To Peter it seemed that none of the FBI agents on the property could manage to do their jobs for five minutes without asking him a self-evident question, but he finally managed to delegate most of it and wandered back into the ballroom to find Lorna sitting on the stairs, looking rather bedraggled. She wasn't wearing the jewelry.
"The FBI confiscated it," she said at Peter's raised-eyebrow look, and sighed, rubbing her arms as if she was cold. "Easy come, easy go, I guess. What's going to happen to me now?"
"We'll need to take a statement, and I expect the D.A.'s office will have a number of questions for you. You may be asked to testify at Frank and David's trials. Would you be up for that?"
Lorna nodded. "I want to help."
Her eyes kept drifting upstairs, towards her room -- and the safe, Peter thought, which even now the FBI was emptying out. He wondered what her plan was at the moment. Probably she meant to wait awhile, make sure the Solari brothers were safely in jail and the heat had died down, then come back and get the real jewels and live the high life somewhere else.
He decided, selfishly, that he didn't want to be around to see the look on her face when she realized that her not-so-little nest egg had been discovered. Easy come, easy go wasn't going to be her reaction at that point, he guessed. He also realized, with slowly dawning suspicion, that he hadn't seen Neal in a while.
"Which FBI agent did you give your jewelry to?" Peter asked, but he had a feeling he already knew the answer.
"Your partner," she said.
Dammit.
Detaching himself from Lorna, Peter headed upstairs two steps at a time. In Lorna's room, he found Diana supervising a couple of people from Organized Crime as they swept the room. The door to the safe was open, the jewels in plain sight.
"Did you just open that?"
"Just now, boss." She held up the key. "No one but us has been in here."
"I don't suppose you've seen Neal around anywhere."
Diana glanced at the jewels, then at Peter, and grinned. "Don't worry. Caffrey hasn't been near those. Actually, he's not here. He caught a ride back to HQ with Jones -- said he'd help Jones get the paperwork started." Her smile morphed into a frown. "Yeah. Caffrey volunteering for paperwork. He's up to something, isn't he."
Peter thought about radioing Jones. Then he looked at the safe with its glittering contents, and thought about a certain elderly widow who wasn't being properly served by the system, and let it go.
"It's just Neal being Neal," he said, and went back downstairs to see about wrapping things up.
***
On Sunday morning, Peter kissed his sleepy wife goodbye and went into the office in a sweater and jeans to get as many loose ends as possible on the Solari case tucked away. It would be nice to take Monday off. Or take a half-day, at least.
As he worked, little bits and pieces from the case tickled the back of his brain, shifting and falling into new patterns. He always liked this part -- when the uncertainty and danger was over, the bad guys safely behind bars, all the evidence in hand, and now it was just a matter of seeing how everything went together. Like a crossword puzzle, or like juggling the numbers on a particularly tricky math problem. I always was an accountant at heart.
As was so often the case, his thoughts kept circling back around to a certain enigmatic CI ... and friends. He wondered if Erik Vestergaard was already on a plane back to wherever he'd come from in the first place. On the other hand, if Peter came home this afternoon to find El preparing dinner for the entire jewel-thieving Vestergaard family, he wouldn't be a bit surprised.
He touched his upper lip, still a bit tender from the glue to hold the mustache on. Playing the part of an international jewel thief had been fun, he'd have to admit ... though never to Neal. But it was also comfortable to slip back into the familiar persona of Peter Burke, not-at-all-international FBI agent.
The Vestergaards. The jewels. Jewel thieves and switchable fake jewels and elderly widows and Neal Caffrey ... Peter found that his hands had been hovering over the keyboard for several minutes without typing anything. He closed the file and leaned back thoughtfully in his chair.
When had Neal made the swap, anyway, the real jewels for the fake ones? Or ... had he?
One person might know. Peter looked up Adela Calabro's address. Somehow it didn't surprise him to discover that she lived in Manhattan, inside Neal's radius.
It surprised him even less when he checked Neal's tracking detail and found that Neal had been there several times in the last couple of weeks. In fact, he was there now.
Maybe it was time to break for lunch.
Adela buzzed him into her building. When Peter tapped on her door and opened it, he found them sitting together on a sleek leather couch, and neither one of them looked surprised to see him.
"Agent Burke." Adela Calabro was a trim white-haired woman who reminded him of June with her air of quiet self-possession. "Would you care for a cup of coffee?"
Peter accepted, though he declined to sit, leaning a hip against the back of the couch. The coffee was the exact same exquisite blend that June used. No big question as to how Adela and Neal had met. Which left a number of other questions, such as ...
"So when did you cook this up, anyway?" he asked. "Helping Erik Vestergaard -- was that just a cover for what you really wanted to do?" Then an even less pleasant thought occurred to him. "Is there any such person as Erik Vestergaard?"
"Oh, Erik's real," Neal said. "His friendship with me is real. We never lied to you, Peter. The part that was left out of the story you heard ..." He glanced uncertainly at Adela.
"The part you didn't hear, I presume, was that the person who originally sought to employ the Vestergaards was me," Adela said without a trace of remorse. "But I discovered that both Gunnar and Erik had retired from the -- jewelry-repossession business. And then David Solari made an ugly business even uglier." Her mouth twisted as if the name itself was bitter.
"When he tried to hire Erik himself." Peter looked sharply from Adela to Neal, another suspicion twisting his gut. "Which was how I got involved. Neal, if one or both of you manipulated David Solari into blackmailing Erik --"
"No," Neal said quickly. "No, Peter. That was all David Solari's doing."
"An unfortunate side effect of my inquiries being a great deal less discreet than I tried to make them," Adela sighed.
Peter snorted. "And all that about the theft being part of a turf war between Frank and David Solari? It certainly sounded plausible, I have to admit. Enough to get the FBI to go for the bait." He knew he ought to be upset, but as it was, they'd brought down the Solari brothers, and both White Collar and Organized Crime were the darlings of the local FBI office. So the way they got there hadn't been entirely aboveboard, and he wished Neal had come clean with him, but, well ... after all this time, it wasn't as if he didn't know you had to ask Neal exactly the right questions, and stay on your toes at all times. And Neal's heart had been in the right place.
"It was at least partly true," Neal said. "It's just that it wasn't the only reason David wanted the jewels back."
"He wanted to keep them close and make sure Mrs. Calabro here didn't get them," Peter guessed.
"Most likely, all he planned to do was sell them," Adela said. "Deprive me of them and turn a profit at the same time." She shrugged. "It hardly matters now."
"Yep. You have your jewels, the FBI has the Solari brothers, the Vestergaards go on about their lives, and everyone's happy," Peter said with sunny cheer, and sipped the last of his coffee. "Right, Neal?"
Neal eyed him, looking very nervous, like a man waiting for a bomb to go off. "Pretty much."
"Things just work out for you, don't they?"
"It's more than just luck," Neal said. He glanced away and then looked up, suddenly serious, meeting Peter's eyes. "Thank you."
Peter contemplated several different responses, but ended up with a nod of equal seriousness. He set down Adela's cup and saucer. "Thank you for the coffee. I hope you don't mind if I pull off one last heist and steal my CI back."
"We can't possibly be working," Neal said, back to wariness.
"Actually, I am, but I needed a break for lunch anyway. You pick the restaurant."
"That sounds too good to be true."
"Hey, as long as it's in my price range ..."
"Ah, there's the catch." Neal rose, and bent over Adela's hand with old-fashioned courtly grace.
She kissed him on the cheek. "Say hello to June for me," she told him, and then shook Peter's hand. Her grip was dry and firm.
In the elevator, Peter said, "Those were the real jewels you took off Lorna, weren't they? And the fakes were in the safe all along."
Neal's quick look was amused, a little startled, and fond, all at once. "What an odd question, Peter. The FBI has the jewels in their evidence room."
"Mm-hmm," Peter said. "Even if we do get an expert to look at them -- not likely with our budget so tight these days -- well, it would be just like David Solari to shake down an old lady for a bunch of fake jewels and never even check if they were real."
"He seems like that kind of guy," Neal agreed.
"Mm-hmm." They crossed the lobby, and Peter said, "Did Lorna know? That she wasn't wearing the fakes?"
Neal hesitated, then shook his head. "I don't think so. She wouldn't have been able to tell by looking, like I can. It's possible that Frank lied to her about which was which. That way, if she'd tried to run off and sell them, which she was probably planning to do even before she met us, she'd have the fakes and he'd still have the real ones."
"No wonder she had no problem giving them back. Pass the fakes back to Adela, keep the real ones for herself ..."
The smile that skated across Neal's lips was a sad one. "True."
"That doesn't mean it wasn't worth trying to save her anyway."
Neal shrugged. "You win some, you lose some."
"And sometimes you go out on a limb for someone and they turn out not to be worth saving," Peter said. "You never really know. It's a gamble."
"How do you know if it's worth doing in the first place?"
Peter managed to catch his eye. "Because every so often you find one who really is worth it. Somehow makes up for the misses."
Rather than answering, Neal put on his hat, tipping it at a rakish angle over his eyes. "Speaking of Erik ..."
"We weren't."
"... he's flying back to France early tomorrow, but he wanted me to pass along an invitation. He'd like to invite you and El out to dinner tonight. A little thank you." Neal grinned. "I'm invited too -- probably to make sure there's no last-minute arresting."
"No one's arresting anyone," Peter sighed. "This time," he added, because, damn it, he couldn't let himself get a reputation as a soft touch in the criminal underworld.
Dinner with con artists and thieves. His gray areas were getting grayer all the time.
But Peter glanced to the right, at Neal with his hands in his pockets, his eyes bright and alert, scanning the street.
They'd done good work this week. Got a few bad people off the street. Helped Adela. Offered Lorna a hand -- and if she'd chosen to play her own game instead, that was her burden.
His elbow still ached where he'd banged it, going down on Frank Solari's polished marble floor when Neal dived to save him at the exact same moment that he'd dived to save Neal.
Worth it? Possibly. Probably. More than likely.
~
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The ending was very sweet with Peter's thoughts on Neal being worth saving and them both trying to save eachother when the shooting started. I too liked Peter's thoughts on the gray areas he has been introduced to since meeting Neal.
Great job!
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I love their different viewpoints (casing the place versus stakeout ;) and how at the end Peter figures out what was going on and still lets him get away with it because that's just the kind of gray area Peter would let Neal get away with on the show, too. (Also: I should have known, Neal was playing another angle from the beginning.) Oh, and nice twist that Lorna was playing her own game - and the resulting conversation between Peter and Neal at the end is the cutest thing ever ("Speaking of Eric ..." - "We weren't." *gg*) as is them trying to save each other. Oh, and also: I really liked them in their undercover roles, and Neal being able to switch from one persona to another in a matter of seconds (oh, and it is *so* them that Neal would just go do that spur-of-the-moment when he realizes she's wearing them, although Peter tried to keep him from revealing himself to Lorna and then, Neal wants Peter not to tell her they are undercover FBI agents but he goes ahead and does so, anyway). In short: so, so much love for this! ♥
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Thanks again for the prompt - it was a really enjoyable story to write, and I got to stretch my writing muscles a little bit in working out the complicated plot. :)
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And the Organized Crime's disorganized files still crack me up!
I'll put this story to my all-time favourites.
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Also the fact that they are saying so many things about themselves and about each other without actually verbalizing it because it's understood by the other...it's so them!
Hee! Yes, this! :D I really love their respect and affection for each other, even if they'd never quite admit it out loud. :)
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Love Peter and Neal posing as father and son and Neal being all excited about casing the house and wanting to steal the jewels. :)
Love the scene in which Peter tries to protect Neal and Neal tries to protect Peter at the same time. :)
Thank you!
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I'm very glad you liked it. :)
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I was going to leave comments on the first half, but then tensions were too high at the end of the first half and I raced on here to see what happened. I like Erik Vestergaard, who seems very much the sort of person whom Neal would respect and want to help. I love Neal manipulating Peter even though Peter knows he's doing it. (And I really enjoyed "He owes me fifty bucks.") I like that Peter is constantly aware that Neal is keeping things back, even if he's not sure what things. They're both very smart men. I like that Ruiz is a bit of a pain but not a villain, that Hughes and Peter are still annoyed at Interpol, and that they use a truck from The Greatest Cake—fine continuity with the series, but not forced or overdone. I love Peter demanding more money.
(As a side note: a recent-model Taurus is now a lower-end vehicle? I suppose it is. I'm looking at our car old, slightly battered cars in the driveway and wondering if they'd be too cheap to pass as rich people's staff!)
I didn't trust Lorna, but she didn't get anyone hurt, and that's the most important thing. You had plenty of drama in the story with only one gunshot and no actual injuries! I love that Adela was the one who originally approached Erik; I really didn't see that coming! I love Peter's reactions to Neal's efforts to do the right thing, and that Neal isn't upset that Lorna wasn't really going straight, because Neal wouldn't be upset.
I imagine Peter and Elizabeth (and Neal!) will have a great dinner with Erik. I hope they hear interesting stories of alleged heists.
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As a side note: a recent-model Taurus is now a lower-end vehicle? I suppose it is. I'm looking at our car old, slightly battered cars in the driveway and wondering if they'd be too cheap to pass as rich people's staff!
LOL. Only compared to a BMW. I may have gone a bit overboard there; the only (vague) impressions of the Hamptons that I have come from TV and a bit of Google image search to see if there are really big mansions out there (there are), so hopefully I didn't go too over-the-top.
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Your last name should be Eastin
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And also: "Have to steal them, I mean. Have to. It's a sacrifice." - lol, so Neal! I can clearly see Peter's eyeroll:-D
Great work.
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No one writes Neal&Peter banter like you do, and this is no exception. But just as good as the fun back-and-forth were their serious discussions about justice and the law. I think you did a really nice job of not portraying it as a case of someone being right and someone being wrong, but as two good-hearted people who see and interact with the world in very different ways.
Favorite moments included and maybe Diana would like a go at strangling him as well, she's been working really hard on this case, she deserves it just for making me laugh; Peter's thoughts about being an account at heart and being glad to revert to being a "not-at-all-international FBI agent," which I thought was someone really good character insight; the whole conversation at the end, including Neal deflecting; and finally Neal and Peter both trying to protect the other, which made me squee. They love each other so much.
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I also really enjoyed seeing someone from Neal's past who wasn't trying to kill him. Someone as friendly and likable as Neal would have made a number of genuine friends, I think, so it was nice to see a character like that.
Exactly what I was thinking! Neal is so gregarious that he must have other friends out there, past and present - he instantly makes friends with June, for example, and seems to charm people wherever he goes, so there must be quite a few people out there who remember him with fondness, and vice versa.
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Mmm, just an excellent read all around. Loved it!
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I love writing twisty plots, but they don't often get quite as twisty as this one did. It was a lot of fun to pull together.
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I also loved Peter being forced to acknowledge that he's not exactly following the letter of the law any more, and that he can be okay with that. I really loved their dialogue, too, it all felt very natural. Um, not that I would expect anything less from your stories ;P
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Thanks
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