sholio | White Collar fic: Escape Artistry

Trying to finish up a few WiPs before I start working on anything new ...

Title: Escape Artistry
Fandom: White Collar
Rating: PG
Pairing: Gen
Word Count: 3900
Summary: Peter's trapped and in need of some assistance making his getaway. Team FBI + Neal; a little light h/c.
Notes: Written for this prompt at the

whitecollarhc Trapped Fic Bash (note: prompt gives the whole plot away).
Cross-posted: http://archiveofourown.org/works/389511

"Neal, stay here," Peter said.

A very young-looking NYPD officer was helping strap Peter into a bulletproof vest while he adjusted an ear-mounted radio. Their FBI backup hadn't arrived yet, not to mention the SWAT team, which meant it was just Peter, Neal, and a small cluster of NYPD assembled on the plaza outside the Sloan Gallery, which was currently infested with armed jewel thieves.

"Don't argue," Peter added hastily when Neal opened his mouth to do exactly that. "I have a gun. So do the bad guys. You don't. Officer," he said to the young woman who'd been helping him with his gear, "this man is a consultant, not an agent, and if he tries to charm you into letting him follow me in there, shoot him. In the foot," he added, then ducked under a yellow strand of police tape and jogged towards the building.

The officer looked anxiously at Neal.

"He was joking," Neal said. "Really. He thinks he's funny."

Peter vanished into the building, which left Neal with nothing to do but fidget while watching the NYPD trying to calm down a handful of terrified gallery employees. He should have tried harder to talk Peter into taking him. Peter didn't know the layout of the gallery. Neal did. He, Moz and Kate had cased the place thoroughly some seven or eight years ago. So far as he knew, the gallery still had a forged Monet hanging cheerfully on its wall. On the other hand, trying to figure out a way to explain to Peter that he knew his way around, without admitting how he knew, while Peter was busy doing his "me FBI, you civilian" routine -- it wouldn't have been easy.

Diana's car screeched to a halt on the cordoned-off side street below the plaza. She jogged up to Neal with Jones in tow. "Where's the boss?"

"Where do you think?" Neal glanced towards the gallery's facade, which gave away no hint of what might be going on inside. "He wouldn't wait."

"Damn it. Someone get me a radio! And a vest!" Diana barked, and people scrambled without asking about her qualifications. Diana generally had that effect. "One of the gallery employees says the jewel thieves had explosives with them," she added to Neal, and he felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. "There's a bomb squad on the way. SWAT is still a few minutes out. And someone has to go play hero ..."

"Whereas you're sensibly going nowhere near the place, of course," Neal said, looking pointedly at the vest she was strapping on.

Jones appeared out of nowhere and handed her a radio. "Bomb squad's almost here."

"About time," Diana said, buckling the straps one-handed and lifting the radio to her lips.

She'd no more than opened her mouth when a muffled explosion blew all the glass out of the building's windows. Dust billowed out and glass fragments rained down on the plaza.

For a moment the assembled group could do no more than stare at the building in shock. Then Neal lunged in that direction. Diana seized him by the arm and dragged him to a halt.

"Peter --" Neal said, turning to her in desperate appeal. "Diana, Peter's in there."

"Yes, and so are at least two armed jewel thieves." Diana keyed the mic on the radio. "Boss --"

Something in the building's foyer caved in with a tremendous rumble. One of the glass doors was knocked off its tracks.

"Boss," Diana said. Her voice barely faltered. She kept firm hold of Neal's arm. "Peter. Agent Burke."

There was no answer. Neal took a deep, shuddering breath. It was Peter. He had more lives than a cat. He was fast and clever and definitely much, much too smart to be anywhere near an exploding bomb or a collapsing ceiling --

Neal's phone went off. He reached for it and almost dropped it when he saw the caller ID. "Peter!" At his shoulder, Diana snapped to attention.

"Neal," Peter said, and coughed. He sounded hoarse and breathless, but very much alive. "I hope you're still on the outside of the building where you should be."

"Is that Peter? Ask him where he is right now and what on Earth he was thinking," Diana said.

"I heard that," Peter said. "I take it Diana's there."

"Diana and Jones are here, yes. Peter ..." Neal hesitated for an instant. "That was one hell of an explosion," he said, and what was supposed to be a laugh didn't exactly come out like one.

"You're telling me," Peter said. "I lost my radio, among other things. Do any of you have blueprints for this building?"

"Blueprints?" Neal said, in the general direction of Diana and Jones, and Jones took off like a shot.

"Give me that." Diana took the phone away from Neal. "Have you ever heard of waiting for backup?"

Whatever Peter said in response made Diana laugh. "Where are the bad guys?" she asked.

"Hey, that's my phone," Neal protested.

Diana put it on speaker rather than giving it back, so Neal heard, "-- probably dead, but I don't know where the other one is. Can't see worth a damn in here. How are those blueprints coming?"

"Jones is getting them," Diana said. "At least wait for backup, would you?"

"All I'm trying to do right now is get out," Peter said. "The lights are out, and there's a couple tons of roof between me and the front door --" He paused to cough again, and this time it went on a little too long, with a wet, ripping undertone. Diana and Neal traded a worried glance.

"Peter," Diana said suspiciously, "are you hurt?"

"How about I worry about that part, and you get those blueprints and find me another way out of here."

"Where are you?" Neal asked, conjuring up a mental image of the building's layout.

"In a little side gallery off the main one," Peter said. "Right side of the foyer. At least I think that's where I am. I may have been thrown a bit."

Diana mouthed an incredulous "thrown a bit?" at Neal, who lifted a shoulder in a small shrug: It's Peter, what am I supposed to do about it? "So help me, boss," Diana said, "if you're hiding something important from us -- like, say, two broken legs -- I will tell Elizabeth."

Peter laughed, but it started him coughing again.

"We'll get some people in there, boss," Diana said. "Fire department's on their way, and we have half a dozen agents doing nothing but covering exits --"

"No!" Peter snapped. "It's completely unstable. I can hear the walls creaking and groaning. No one comes in, and that's an order. I just need to get out."

Jones arrived just then with a roll of blueprints and spread them out on the plaza. He, Neal and Diana knelt around them, although Neal barely saw them: he was busily building a three-dimensional mental image of the gallery from his trips with Kate.

"The room he's talking about must be one of these two." Diana stabbed her finger at the blueprints.

"The diamond exhibit that the thieves were after is here." Jones traced a line with his fingertip. "Damn, this place is like a maze."

"Peter," Neal said, "there should be two doorways off the room you're in, one leading to the foyer --"

"That one's blocked."

"Okay, you'll have to go the other way, then. There's a small door into another of the exhibition rooms. Do you see it?"

"I can't see anything. As I believe I mentioned, it's dark in here." There was a sharp intake of breath, a soft curse. Diana frowned, and Jones looked up sharply.

"Is he hurt?"

"I really hope someone's setting up a cordon around the building in case the other perp gets out of here faster than I do," Peter snapped. "Okay, I'm in the other room. What's here?"

A forged Monet, among other things, Neal thought. He forced himself not to think about all that art damaged, destroyed ... what kind of short-sighted Philistine would blow up an art gallery, anyway? "There's a door leading to a stairwell and a second-floor fire escape. There are ground-level emergency exits, but not close to you."

"Damn it!" Peter hissed between his teeth, and there was a silence.

Neal looked up from the blueprints. "Peter?" Diana said tensely. "What is it?"

"Just a slight problem," Peter said after a moment, his voice strained. He coughed again. "Neal, that stairwell you mentioned? I can't get to it. There's a fire in the way."

"The gallery's on fire?" Neal repeated, his eyes going wide.

Diana threw up her hands in the air. "Peter, would you tell us these things?"

"I didn't know it was on fire until a minute ago," Peter said testily, and then broke off coughing -- a ragged, wet-sounding cough. "At least now I have some light," he muttered, more softly. "Neal, I'm going to need another way out."

"Where the hell are those fire trucks?" Jones wanted to know.

"I'll find out," Diana said ominously, and rose from their huddle around the map.

"NYPD's coordinating the response," Jones called after her. "Talk to Lieutenant Hopewell."

"Neal?" Peter said.

Neal took a deep breath. "Okay, forget the hallway. Keep going straight instead --" He closed his eyes briefly, visualizing himself there. "-- through two more small exhibit rooms. That'll take you to a big storage space behind the main gallery, and from there, to the loading dock."

"That's the nearest exit? You realize this place is on fire, right?"

"It's the fastest way out, since most of your exits are blocked." Although Kate had used the air shafts. The blueprints didn't show most of the ones she'd found, though -- Neal wondered if things had been renovated in the last few years, or if maybe Kate had found some later additions that weren't in the plans --

Peter swore suddenly, and Neal heard the sharp crack of two gunshots in rapid succession -- through the phone, and, simultaneous but more distant, echoing across the plaza.

"Peter!" Neal and Jones shouted at once. A visible commotion had erupted among the NYPD halfway across the plaza, with Diana at the middle of it.

A few seconds of silence followed, though it felt like about ten years, before Peter said, "Found the other thief."

"You get him?" Jones asked. Neal could hear a faint echo of his own weak-kneed relief in Jones's voice.

"No," Peter said tersely.

Jones took a breath and stood up, touching the holster at his hip. "Neal, you go ahead and talk him out. I'm going around to that loading dock you were talking about and give him some backup."

"Did you hear me tell him not to come in here?" Peter appealed to anyone who was listening. "Did anyone hear that? Neal, is whatever makes you disobey me contagious? Because I think the whole department's catching it."

"Not to defend Caffrey or anything, boss," Diana said, arriving just in time to hear this, "but we've always been a little --"

"Insubordinate?"

Diana grinned and shook her head. "The SWAT team is assembling now," she said to Jones, "and the NYPD are headed around back. They've got the exits covered."

Jones nodded and took off for the NYPD command center at the edge of the plaza.

"I don't know why I even bother giving orders anymore," Peter muttered. There was a series of thumps and clunking noises in the background.

"Thank you for the vote of confidence, boss." Diana's dry tone almost failed to betray her worry. Almost. "Did you get him?"

"No, but I'm pretty sure he was heading for your loading dock."

"On it," Diana said, and picked up the radio. "Jones --"

"Also," Peter said, over the top of Diana talking to Jones, "I'm trapped. I ducked into some kind of storage room when he shot at me, and he slammed the door on me and jammed it somehow. I can't get it open. Ideas?"

For a man facing impending fiery death, he sounded remarkably calm. Or maybe, Neal thought, trusting in his and Diana's ability to get him out. "Which storage room?" Neal asked, checking the blueprints. Based on Peter's earlier location, it was almost certainly the one Kate had used as a base of operations during her recon. Neal had been inside briefly, but that was years ago.

"I don't know!" Peter snapped, some of the strain starting to show. "It's a storage room, it's full of junk, and it's dark."

Diana was still in a rapid-fire exchange with Jones. Apparently they were trying to get some people into the building via the loading dock. "Peter," Neal said, "does the room you're in have an old furnace?"

There was a clatter. "If that's what I just walked into, then, yeah."

Definitely the same one. There was no sign on the blueprints of the air shaft Kate had used, but Neal decided to trust that it was the blueprints that were in error. "Peter, behind the furnace there's an old, disconnected air shaft. It leads to a vent on the side of the building. It ought to be pretty much a straight shot out." Unless someone had bricked it up in the last eight years ...

A moment of silence; some clattering. "Found it," Peter said. "This might be a tight fit."

Right. Peter was bigger than Kate. "I can find another way --"

"No," Peter said, and there was some rustling and a soft, pained grunt. "This is working. I think. A vent, you said?"

"Yeah, just go straight ahead and you should come out at the side of the building." And he hoped like hell that he hadn't just directed Peter into a deathtrap. Still, Kate had gotten in and out pretty easily that way. It didn't connect to the rest of the building's ventilation system -- it was just one of the many odd little additions and appendixes that older buildings tended to pick up over the years.

"I think I can see light," Peter said.

Neal scrambled to his feet and snatched up the blueprints. "Peter's on his way out," he told Diana, and dashed off to the edge of the plaza.

Sirens were audible as he circled the building with Diana and a handful of FBI and NYPD in tow. The vent cover was still where Neal and Kate had found it -- Thank God -- and Neal started prying it up. He could smell smoke now, a sharp burning-garbage reek, and bruised his fingers trying to rip it off. Diana gave him a hand.

"Peter?" Neal said. He reached a hand into the air shaft, and Peter's fingers brushed his. Between the two of them, he and Diana helped Peter out onto the street.

Peter was a mess, with blood down the side of his face and his suit and hair covered with plaster dust. His left arm was cradled against his chest, and when Diana tried to reach for it Peter swatted her away with his other hand. "No," he said simply, and closed his eyes, letting his head clunk against the wall.

"So, about waiting for backup next time," Neal said as the street filled up with fire trucks.

Peter opened his eyes and squinted at him. "Are you seriously giving me the 'be careful' speech?"

"Well, clearly not, since we're well past the need for the speech at this point," Neal said. He attempted to brush some of the plaster dust off Peter's shoulder but managed to do little more than smear it around. "Admit it, you know you'd be lecturing me until my ears bled if I'd done something like that."

The corner of Peter's mouth quirked. "I'm a trained professional."

"Uh-huh."

"Nice job with the navigation, though," Peter added, and his smile warmed. Then he added, "You not only have a built-in GPS, you can navigate like one, too."

"Thanks, I think," Neal said, and wondered if he could find a quiet moment to chuck the blueprints through a window into the flames. Because Peter was Peter, and sooner or later he was going to look at the blueprints and think about his escape and put two and two together.

... and damn, there was a really nice copy of a Monet burning up in there. One of his better pieces, as evidenced by the fact that it hadn't been detected all these years. One of his few perfect crimes, in fact ... at least until a certain FBI agent went and got trapped in the gallery. There was a part of him that seriously considered trying to run in and rescue the painting ...

... considered, and discarded, because first of all, it would look perhaps the tiniest bit suspicious, and second, he'd just managed to get Peter out; having to be rescued himself wasn't on his agenda for the day.

And also, as the paramedics descended on them, Neal realized that he didn't really mind about the painting all that much. Well, okay, yes, he did mind. He should've gone back to visit it at least once -- if he'd known that it was going to get blown up and burned --

"Sir, you'll need to move away from the building," one of the firefighters said, herding him off.

But when it came right down to it, Neal thought, looking over his shoulder at the paramedics clustered around Peter, what he'd almost lost in the building had put the loss of the painting -- and every other painting in the gallery -- into perspective.

Not that he planned to admit it, of course.

***

Smoke inhalation, a broken wrist and a few cracked ribs ended up landing Peter with a week of medical leave. Naturally this meant that he pestered the White Collar unit a dozen times an hour by text, phone and email, bombarding them with reminders, questions, requests to have files sent over to the townhouse, and so forth. Depending on the level of painkillers in his system, these ranged from useful and timely (if annoying) comments on the details of ongoing cases, to long, rambling, misspelled emails that Diana was saving in a special folder labeled (to the amusement of everyone else in the office) "BLACKMAIL MATERIAL".

"I don't think this is what Hughes had in mind when he took you off active duty," Neal remarked when he and Jones showed up after work with a box of cold case files that Peter had asked them to pull for him.

"What? I'm taking advantage of the down time." Peter waved them inside and Jones set the box on the coffee table, next to a stack of file folders and -- dammit, Neal thought, was that a corner of the blueprints from the gallery, peeking out from under the files? They were following him around. He should've burned them when he had the chance.

"We were just about to sit down for dinner, and El made lasagna -- there's more than enough for everybody. Stick around awhile."

Jones begged off; he had a date. Neal tried to escape as well, but found himself corralled by the combined forces of both Burkes.

"Thank you," El murmured as Neal, succumbing to the inevitable, went to help her make a salad.

Neal stifled a grin. "Is he driving you crazy yet?"

"Only a little bit. It'll be nice to have some distracting company."

"I can hear you both, you know." Peter wandered into the kitchen, file folder in hand. He had his "bird dog on a scent" face on. Neal wondered if it was too late to slip out the back.

"What are you doing in here?" El asked cheerfully, and snapped a towel at him. "I told you, dinner is on me tonight. Go play with Neal in the living room. Neal, would you entertain my husband so that I can finish before we all starve?"

Neal was starting to get the distinct impression that he was being tag-teamed, especially since he could see El grinning as she chopped peppers for the salad. Sighing, he snagged a glass of wine and followed Peter back to the living room.

"I was just finishing up the report on the gallery explosion," Peter said, and, with a leading expression: "Damn shame about all that art..."

"It's really the NYPD's case, not ours," Neal said, refusing to rise to the bait.

"True. And the jewel thieves are accounted for, the gallery fully insured -- I guess all the loose ends are tucked away."

"Yeah," Neal said. "Well, there wasn't really much to this one, from our perspective. Er, I mean other than the ..." He nodded to the cast on Peter's wrist.

"Little details?" Peter said, flashing him a grin. "And speaking of little details." He touched the file folders holding down the blueprints. "As I was writing my report, I did a little research. You know what I found?"

"Evidence of substandard postwar building practices?"

"No ... well, perhaps a little ... but most interestingly, my emergency exit from the building doesn't seem to be on the blueprints."

"Maybe you're looking at the wrong part of the blueprints," Neal offered with wide-eyed helpfulness. "It's easy to get turned around in the dark."

"Uh-huh. I checked both sides of the gallery, actually, just to be sure. That air shaft I escaped through? It's not on there. Which brings me to a fascinating question." He paused, looked at Neal expectantly.

Neal decided that anything he could say here would probably be a worse move than just keeping his mouth shut, so he waited.

"How the hell," Peter said, a smile flickering around the corners of his mouth, "did you make such a damned lucky guess?"

Neal let out his breath in a little huffed laugh. "You know me," he said, and reached for his glass of wine. "Lucky guesses are my stock in trade."

Peter held his gaze, suddenly serious. "In this case, as it happens, your lucky guess saved my life. So ... I think we can close the book on this one."

Working one-handed, he rolled up the blueprints -- Neal reached out to help him slide them into a cardboard tube. Peter set it aside, and the folder beside it.

"Although," Peter added, "speaking completely hypothetically ... if someone were going to break into the Sloan Gallery, what do you suppose might be worth stealing in there?"

"An exhibit of jewels that are now somewhat damp," Neal pointed out. "For one."

"But they weren't there six years ago."

"This is a strictly hypothetical discussion, right?"

"Oh, absolutely." Peter's eyes sparkled. "Besides, even if there was a theft -- not that anybody ever reported one -- the statute of limitations has almost certainly run out by now. I was thinking it might make an interesting topic of discussion over the lasagna."

"In other words," Neal said, trying not to laugh, "El's curious too."

"We both enjoy heist movies," El said from the kitchen door. "Dinner's ready, by the way."

Neal laughed. And, over a slice of El's excellent lasagna, he spun them a hypothetical story of a gallery heist and a Monet.

~