White Collar fic for the wcpairings exchange: Cold Grave

[sholio]

Title: Cold Grave
Fandom: White Collar
For: semisweetsoul in wcpairings
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Peter, Neal, Team FBI; past Neal/Kate
Word Count: 16,000
Beta/cheerleading: frith_in_thorns (Thank you!)
Summary: Neal races the clock to unravel a mystery from years past, with his and Peter's lives hanging in the balance.
Cross-posted: on AO3 and 2 parts on LJ: Part one / Part two

Author's Note: The Rossville boat graveyard is a real place, but this is a heavily fictionalized version -- let's say it's a fictional place based on a real one. In particular, the real version is less deserted than its fictional analogue (my research indicates there's a night guard; don't go sneaking around after dark!), and I've taken a lot of liberties with the geography.





Rain was falling lightly, a cold gray mist, when Peter let Neal out on the curb, around the corner from the Queens service garage where he was meeting their forger. Under the harsh streetlight, Neal looked pale; Peter told himself it was just the contrast with the black leather jacket that Neal was wearing.

"Radio check," Peter said.

Neal raised his watch to his lips. "Big Brother is watching."

Diana's voice said dryly in Peter's earpiece, "Tell him that's it's Big Sister, and she's listening."

Peter grinned and relayed the message. Sobering, he added, "We'll be as close as we can get. The van's a couple blocks over; I'll park across the street. If you need to be pulled out, tell them you've got a hot date and you have to get going."

Neal rolled his eyes. "It's not my first time at the rodeo."

They were stringing a net around a forger and smuggler named Rick Mason. Neal had made contact with a member of Mason's crew, and had established himself as a fence and general broker of "goods of uncertain provenance". Now it was time to meet the boss and set up the buy. In a few days, if all went well, Peter hoped they'd catch Mason with his hands full of forged cash, blood diamonds, or whatever he was up to his elbows in this time.

Peter still didn't feel easy about sending Neal in. Mason was dangerous. He had some nasty priors and had gotten his start as mob muscle in Chicago, before his desire for career advancement had led to Mason hastily skipping town and looking into better entrepreneurial opportunities on the East Coast. This was a casual meet and there was no reason to expect things would go badly; Neal knew what he was doing, and Peter supposed that he ought to save the pre-operation nerves for the actual takedown, days later. Still, it was hard not to be tense about Neal walking into the lion's den. Peter wasn't content to sit in the van on this one; he wanted eyes on Neal, and he wanted to be close enough that he could run across the street in seconds if things went bad.

"Stop staring at me," Neal said, leaning back in through the open door. Rain frosted his slicked-back hair and glittered on his eyelashes. His breath smoked faintly in the air. It was autumn, when the days were glittering bright but the nights were wrapped in a damp, clammy cold. "I'll be fine. Of course, I am doing all the work ..."

"Right, because I'm just sitting here keeping the car seat warm." It was easy to slip into their familiar byplay, and it eased the knot in his stomach somewhat.

"You've got my back," Neal said casually, and before Peter could respond he slammed the car door and sauntered off, settling into the cocky swagger that was part of his somewhat piratical Nick Halstead persona.

"You know I do," Peter murmured.


***


The night was sharply cold. Neal shoved his hands in his pockets as rain trickled down his neck. At least he didn't have to worry about ruining these clothes. With this much grease in his hair, he felt like he was trying out for a bit part in West Side Story.

The service garage's CLOSED sign hung out, but the door of the main service bay was cranked up halfway, with light spilling out beneath. It was the sort of mom-and-pop operation that used to be all over the place before the chains started putting them out of business. Neal's contact, Roscoe, ran the garage along with his dad. Both of them were the kind of guys who'd come up through the mob years and had their own ways of teasing along the garage's meager income. Papa Roscoe ran a little betting parlor in the back. Roscoe Jr. was into rougher stuff; according to the rap sheet in the file Neal had looked at, he'd messed around with muggings and grand theft auto before falling in with Mason's bunch.

Roscoe wasn't Neal's kind of guy, but he was the kind of buddy that Nick Halstead cultivated. Neal allowed himself to sink beneath Halstead's personality, and his smile when he saw Roscoe hanging around outside the garage door was not forced.

Across the street and down a bit, a car pulled up: Peter, who had presumably circled the block so as not to come from the same direction as Neal. Out of the corner of his eye, Neal caught the glow of a cell phone as Peter pretended to make a phone call. Or, for all Neal knew, maybe it was an actual phone call: Hi, hon, don't wait up tonight ...

Somewhere out of sight, Diana and Jones would be listening from the van. Neal recognized the tense, waiting hush, the knot of mingled excitement and fear in the pit of his belly. Even after working with the FBI for years now, it was still not so different from running a con. The only difference was that he still wasn't used to working with a crew this big. Or with this many rules ...

"Yo, Ross." He greeted Roscoe and bumped fists. They'd hit it off -- or rather, Ross had hit it off with Nick. Some of Neal's pre-con jitters were his own, but some were Nick's, gearing up for a job that Neal knew was never going down ... but Nick didn't.

He'd never tried to explain this aspect of running an alias to Peter. The big trick to making a lie convincing was believing it. Neal was pretty sure Peter wouldn't understand. Still, there were times when Neal watched Peter undercover and could tell that Peter was doing it naturally, even without being aware of it. Peter, Neal suspected, would have been running the New York underworld by now if he'd gone into crime rather than law enforcement in his mid-20s.

On the other hand, Neal could only imagine how terrifying it would have been to accidentally get on the wrong side of a Peter-run mafia. Perhaps it was just as well that the worst he had to worry about along those lines was disappointing Peter and getting That Look.

He had to stop himself from a betraying glance over his shoulder at Peter's car, which meant that he wasn't properly in the spirit of the con. He let Neal submerge beneath Nick again, and followed Roscoe into the garage, ducking under the half-raised door.

It was good to be out of the rain, at least. There were two cars parked inside: a long black Lincoln, still glistening with water droplets like tiny diamonds, and a nondescript Ford, a typical suburbanite's commuter vehicle. It was obvious that the garage had given up any pretense of doing actual mechanical repairs; those parts of the floor not occupied by the two vehicles were taken up with a cluster of beat-up chairs and an old, sagging couch, where a small group of men and one woman were playing cards. Neal recognized Mason from his file photo as he stood up. Rick Mason was a big man, 6'4" or 6'5" and solid muscle, but he moved with light grace -- he was built like a tiger, not a buffalo. He had a blond buzz cut, and reminded Neal for a disconcerting instant of Fowler.

Neal didn't think he'd paused or given anything away, but Mason paused too, for just a second.

"Hey, boss," Roscoe said. "This is Halstead, the one I told you about."

Neal put out his hand; it was engulfed in Mason's huge one. "Izzat right. You're the fence, huh?" Mason had a lazy way of speaking, eyes half-lidded, but Neal guessed from the way the man moved that he could snap into action in a heartbeat. His face was inscrutable, impossible to read, but Neal was uncomfortably aware of the intense way Mason was examining him, like a butcher looking over a steer on the auction block.

"I'm the man who gets done what needs done," Neal said, and he kept watching Mason, wishing he could get a better read. "Heard you might be looking to move a few things."

"I might." Mason went on studying Neal, then flicked a glance out into the dark, rainy street. "C'mon, let's talk on the road."

Undercover or running a con (same thing) was like riding a unicycle on a tightrope. One false move and you'd fall off, and you had to make a hundred split-second course corrections. Neal shaped the words of the emergency pullout code on the back of his tongue -- but no, that was stupid, he didn't know what Mason was planning and he'd probably be in more danger if a bunch of FBI agents charged in here waving guns around. Mason was packing heat; Neal could see the bulge under his jacket. Getting caught in the crossfire would not improve his situation.

"I thought we were talking here," Neal said.

"Plans change," Mason returned. "Emile, Jeanne." Two of the card players rose, a man and a woman, so similar in appearance that they could almost be twins, and were probably brother and sister. Both were broad-shouldered and heavyset.

"Hey, man, he's cool," Roscoe said. He was clearly nervous, picking up bad undercurrents. Neal ran his mind back, fast, through the start of the conversation. He hadn't done anything to tip them off, at least nothing he was aware of.

"You stay here," Mason told him, and Roscoe retreated, shoulders hunched, looking miserable. Mason opened the door of the Lincoln and smiled at Neal -- thin-lipped, not particularly reassuring. "No worries," he said. "Just business. Get in."


***


"You want us to move in, boss?" Diana asked in Peter's headset.

"No, he hasn't given us the signal ... damn it." Peter watched the long black car back out of the garage and glide away from the curb, hoping that his timing wasn't too obvious. "Follow them, but from a distance. I'll see if I can keep a visual tail. Let me know if I go the wrong way ..."

He trailed off at what he was hearing through Neal's transmitter. Now that the car was accelerating into traffic, Neal had just given the pull-me-out signal. Peter cursed under his breath, and tried to close the distance between their cars.


***


Neal found himself sandwiched uncomfortably between Mason and Emile in the backseat. Jeanne was in the driver's seat.

"Care to tell me where we're headed?" Neal asked.

"You'll find out shortly." Mason gave Emile a nod, a short jerk of his chin. "Check his chest."

Emile gripped Neal's jacket and pulled it open. "Hey," Neal snapped. "You think I'm wearing a wire? What the hell?"

"Take your jacket off," Mason said.

Neal shrugged out of the leather jacket, leaving him in a black T-shirt. He submitted to being patted down.

"He's not wired, boss." Emile examined the jacket and came up with nothing but the burn phone that Neal had been using for his cover identity. "Not packing either."

"Did Roscoe tell you something?" Neal demanded, putting a hard edge in his tone. "Because I didn't come here expecting the thumb screws."

"No transmitters I can find," Emile said.

Mason glanced over Neal speculatively; his gaze lingered on Neal's wrist. "Give your watch to Emile."

Neal took a deep breath and slipped the watch off. Peter was listening, and this was a damn good time to send a distress call. "I got a hot date later, so I hope you're not taking me way the hell to the middle of nowhere." He had to force himself not to glance out the rain-splattered rear window. It wasn't like he'd be able to recognize Peter's headlights anyway. He just had to trust they were back there.

"Your date will have to deal with it. Toss 'em," Mason told Emile. The muscle cranked down the window enough to shove everything out -- jacket, phone, watch. Neal forced himself not to react. Peter knows you gave the signal. Peter knows you're in trouble.

"Now that we're alone," Mason said, and he gave Neal a tight, insincere smile. "Nice to meet you at last, Caffrey."


***


Peter cursed aloud when the jacket fluttered out the window as the black Lincoln took the expressway on-ramp.

"Boss --" Diana began.

"I know. There's not a damn thing we can do right now, though." Short of putting a flasher on the dash and pulling them over -- but that was unlikely to end well. He pulled closer to the Lincoln, committing its taillight pattern to memory. These weren't ideal conditions for a tail, but on the plus side, the rain and darkness would make it harder for Mason to notice the same pair of headlights behind him. "I'm going to stay on them if I can. You guys keep a ways back; you're pretty conspicuous. See if you can figure out what the hell went wrong." He heard the edge in his voice and tried to push down his anger, knowing it was mostly worry. No one had screwed up. Maybe these guys had heard something on the street. Maybe one of them had met Neal before. "I'll keep you updated where I am."

"Jones says he's got your car's GPS."

Ah. Technology. "Or you could do that."

"We're going to lose you on the radio if we get too far apart," Diana said.

"Switch to phone, then."

"Will do. And boss --" She hesitated for a moment, then said, "We'll get him back."

The radio went quiet. Peter spared a hand from the steering wheel to pop out the earbud.

We'll get him back. They damn well better.


***


It was chilly in his T-shirt, even with the car's heater blowing warm air into the backseat, but Neal knew that wasn't why he had to fight down the urge to shiver. "You've got me mixed up with someone else."

"Cut the shit," Mason said. "I know who you are and I know you're snitching for the feds. And you're probably wetting your pants right now, so relax. I'm not gonna hurt you." He smiled again. Neal wished he would stop doing that. There was no warmth or humor in Mason's version of a smile; it was simply a baring of his even white teeth. "Actually, the thing is, there's something you can do for me."

"Oh?" Neal said warily. That sort of comment rarely led to anything good, but at least it didn't mean he was about to be shot and have his body dumped in the harbor.

He hoped.

"You know Kate Moreau, right?" Mason said, and Neal felt as if he'd been punched in the stomach. All his breath was gone.

"Yeah, that's right," Mason said, and his eyes glimmered for a moment at the reaction Neal hadn't been able to hide. "You know who I'm talking about."

It was like rolling with a punch: breathe through the pain, until he got his breath back and could answer smoothly. Even after all this time -- months rolling into years, time tempering the pain into a bittersweet ache -- he still stumbled when something came out of nowhere and reminded him. "She's dead," Neal said, cutting straight to the hard part, like ripping off a scab from a half-healed wound.

"Really?" Mason raised his brows. "Hmm." He sat back thoughtfully, chewing on a strip of loose skin at the corner of his fingernail.

He hadn't known that, Neal thought, which meant he hadn't known Kate well. Still, couldn't the FBI have worked up better intel? For a moment Neal was viciously angry at Peter, at all of them ... but then it drained away. The FBI wasn't omniscient. And Neal hadn't known, either.

But Mason had recognized him ... "You know me," Neal said. "But I don't know you." And he was good with faces; he'd have remembered if he and Mason had crossed paths.

"You were in prison at the time," Mason said. "Your girlfriend worked some jobs with me. She was good. Talented."

Neal felt the corner of his mouth tug in a smile that wasn't faked. "She was."

"Too bad she took something that belonged to me," Mason said. There was a dark undercurrent in his tone, and Neal's smile froze.

"Look," Neal said, getting his verbal feet under him once again. "Whatever went down between you and Kate, it was years ago, and it had nothing to do with me." Their weekly conversations at the prison had stuck to light topics: nothing heavy, nothing incriminating. Kate had told him about harmless, innocent things -- the movies she'd watched, the sunsets she'd seen. He'd never asked what she was doing for cash or whether she was still in the life. There was no way they were going to open up a topic like that when they were both hip-deep in prison guards.

"Nice try. I was hoping you could tell me where she was, but since that's not happening, you're going to get back what she stole." Mason leaned forward and told the driver, "Jeanne, you know where to go."

"Already going that way," Jeanne replied.

Mason settled a big, possessive hand on Neal's shoulder. "Sit back and enjoy the ride."

Like he had a choice.


***


As they approached the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, Peter speed-dialed Diana on the car's console. "Looks like we're headed to Jersey."

But they were not; instead they crossed Staten Island and then turned south on 440 before reaching the Goethals Bridge. "Okay, now I have no idea where he's going," Diana said.

"There are marinas down here. Maybe we were wrong about Neal getting made; maybe Mason is just a suspicious bastard and he's taking Neal to show him the merchandise." Or maybe Mason wanted a quiet, secluded location with no witnesses -- but Peter wasn't going to think about that. He'd make sure he got there in time, anyway. "Where are you?"

"No idea," Diana said. "Jones talked Blake into taking a shortcut."

"It is shorter!" Peter heard Jones say in the background.

"Yes, except GPS doesn't know about road construction," Diana shot back. "We're trying to intercept you, boss. It's a work in progress."

"Good luck with that. We just took an exit." He'd almost missed it. Mason changed lanes without signaling, and it was all Peter could do to swerve over to the exit without being pasted by oncoming traffic. If Mason had noticed, then Peter had just blown the tail. They were in an industrial part of town with few places to pull off and not much traffic to make his presence less suspicious. A gas station plaza came up on the right and Peter pulled off, noting the turn that Mason made in front of him.

"I don't know where I am. Orient me, Diana."

"Arthur Kill Road," Diana reported. "Oh hey, the ship graveyard is right around there."

"The what?" Peter pulled out again -- he didn't dare let Mason get too far ahead -- and made the same turn Mason had made. Fortunately it was a long straight road and he was able to identify Mason's taillights far ahead of him.

"It's a scrap metal yard. Lots of old ships, everything from oil tankers to turn-of-the-century fireboats. I kayaked down the shore one time with a friend and we poked around the boats at high tide."

"You kayak?" Peter asked. He was driving alongside a corrugated sheet-metal fence. A crane loomed behind it, eerie in the rain.

"It's good exercise," Diana said. "Blake, that's a one-way street!"

Peter tuned out the argument; he had a bigger problem. He'd taken his eyes off Mason for one instant and lost the taillights. Where had they gone? Mason had turned off somewhere. Then he caught a glimpse of the black Lincoln as he drove past; the car was idling on a pullout in front of a metal gate. In Peter's brief glance, he saw someone in the headlights, hunched against the rain as they unlooped a chain holding the gate shut. And then he was past.

He didn't bother going much farther, just pulled off at the first convenient place, a trash-strewn gravel lot with utility vans parked in it. He waited a moment, the time counted off in the pounding of his heart, then pulled back around. The car was gone and Peter parked in front of the gate, which had been pulled shut and padlocked. Rain, falling heavily now, beat a tattoo on the roof of the car.

"I think I'm going to have to go on foot from here. What's the backup situation?"

"We're on our way to you, Peter," Jones said. "Maybe five or ten minutes out? And we have more agents inbound from Manhattan."

For whatever good it did him. "Stay in touch," Peter said. He patted his service weapon, and then took a deep breath and opened the car door, leaving his car to block the escape route.


***


The rest of the ride had been silent, until they pulled off and waited for Emile to open the gate. Then Neal said, "I hate to break it to you, but I've never been here before."

"That'd be a shame, if it's true," Mason said. He blinked slowly, like a lizard or a sleepy cat. "Seeing how then I'd have no use for you, and all."

"Well," Neal said, "since you put it that way."

Jeanne pulled through the open gate. Emile locked it behind them and slid back into the backseat.

"Are you planning to tell me what I'm looking for? Because that would be a lot of help." Stupid mouth. Still, it was a fair question.

"She never mentioned anything to you." Mason had a way of turning queries into flat observations.

"We didn't really have an opportunity." Neal kept the mask on. He'd never even had a chance to touch her, let alone talk about ... anything. In a way he was over it, and in a way he'd never be.

They jolted slowly over a brutally rough road surface, but not very far before pulling to a stop. Neal squinted out the window. He couldn't see much. There were floodlights, some ways off, blocked by big dark shapes of machinery and stationary vehicles. The rain lent everything a painterly softness.

When Mason opened the door, cold wet air washed in, and Neal shivered, goosebumps lifting on his bare arms. Mason slid out. Neal waited until Emile prodded him in the ribs with a small automatic.

It was even colder out of the car. Rain flattened his hair and plastered his T-shirt to his chest. "I'm not going to be much use to you if I keel over from hypothermia."

Mason just snorted. The rain didn't seem to be bothering him much. Neal looked around. At first he thought it was a harbor -- the big dark thing looming near them, blocking the light, was a dry-docked ship, an old tanker of some kind. But he could see light winking through great holes in its body. Not a harbor, but a wrecking yard. These weren't ships in port; they were the ruined remains of ships that had seen their better days decades ago.

And he had definitely never been here.

"Seriously, I don't know what I'm looking for. Give me some hints here."

"Moreau worked with me on a bond-forgery project," Mason said, and Neal had to fight back a small, slightly bitter smile. Bonds. It was always bonds getting him in trouble.

"She was good at those." He'd taught Kate forgery techniques using bonds as learning items.

"She was," Mason allowed. "Too bad she walked off with the entire haul. A hundred million in forged Taiwanese bonds. None of them have ever been passed off anywhere; I never had the chance. Which means no one's looking out for them, especially now, when the whole project is a few years out of date."

"You must have really pissed her off," Neal said, and got another poke from Emile's gun. "What makes you think she hid them here?"

"Because a couple of my guys saw her come down here, more than once, while we were still working together. She's got a hide-hole around here somewhere. We're just not sure where."

Neither was Neal, but he figured Mason was probably right. This was another thing he'd taught her: stashing items in out-of-the-way places. And he, in turn, had learned it from Mozzie, though he'd already been doing it automatically even before Mozzie helped him refine the technique. Together they'd found a hundred little drop sites around the city where stashes of cash, IDs, and valuable or easy-to-liquidate items could be hidden. Kate had laughingly compared it to a squirrel hiding nuts.

Mozzie ... hmm. Neal wondered if Moz knew some of Kate's more recent drop sites and boltholes. Still, Mason probably didn't know about Mozzie, and he didn't want to get Moz involved unless there was no choice.

"I hate to break it to you, but I was doing a four-stretch when all of this went down."

"I know," Mason said. "At least, I knew she had a boyfriend in prison. I was paying attention when you got out, but then you went off to snitch for the FBI. Imagine my surprise when you walked right into Ross's place tonight."

"Imagine my surprise," Neal shot back. He chafed at his arms. His teeth were starting to chatter. "I'm not kidding about the hypothermia here. If you want my help, you're going to need me upright and talking."

"The faster you find it, the faster you can get warm and dry. Jeanne, stay with the car. Emile, you're with me." He gave Neal a thin, cold smile. "All right, Caffrey. Sing for your supper."

Neal took a deep breath and started forward into the long wet weeds beside the pavement, acutely aware of Emile's gun at his back. He clenched his teeth to stop them from chattering, and resisted the urge to tuck his freezing hands under his arms. Peter, if it's not too much trouble, backup would be nice.


***


Peter closed the car door as quietly as possible. He could hear voices somewhere ahead, muted to a mumble by the white noise of the rain.

He screwed in his earpiece and tucked the radio handset inside his jacket where it would hopefully stay at least somewhat dry. "Radio check," he murmured, but there was no answer. Diana and Jones were still out of range. The cell phone was much less practical for staying in touch during field operations, but he had it if he needed it.

Miserable weather. His hands were already so cold that he fumbled when he drew his gun. However, the rain would cover the sound of his approach as long as he was careful. He ducked under the gate's crossbar and stayed in the weeds at the edge of the road. It had been paved once, but time and weather had fractured the concrete. Broken glass glittered in the rain. For the first hundred yards or so, he followed a sheet-metal fence made of corrugated panels like the one he'd driven past earlier; then the metal gave way to a chain-link fence that dead-ended at the shoreline. Peter crouched down in the shadows behind the last sheet-metal panel.

The road ended in a wooden barricade with weeds growing up around it. The black Lincoln was parked there. The engine was purring softly, and the headlights gleamed in the rain. Peter could make out the shadowy figure of a single individual sitting in the driver's seat, smoking a cigarette. Otherwise, no one seemed to be around.

Beyond the wooden barricade, a rocky, overgrown bank sloped down to tideflats. Channels of open water gleamed between mudbanks where autumn-dry grass bowed beneath the rain. And everywhere Peter could see, there were dead ships moldering away: some raised up on timbers, others sinking into the mud. The tide must be low, but it would be turning. The lights of Jersey glimmered through the mist and rain.

He couldn't see Neal anywhere, but he caught snatches of voices and, once, the sparkle of a flashlight in the salt marsh. They were down there, among the ships.


***


One of Neal's feet sank into the mud with a squelch. These shoes were going to be a lost cause.

They'd picked their way down the bank and now they were in an eerie labyrinth of dead ships. The place stank: the peculiar mud-and-fish stink of the ocean was overlaid with diesel and the tarry smell of treated lumber. Mason carried the only flashlight in the group, its beam dancing across the mud and hiding as much as it illuminated. Dark water glittered in open leads between the ships, capable -- Neal was sure -- of swallowing a man without a trace.

Complaining had gotten Neal nowhere, but despite the cold and mud and stink, he found that he was getting caught up in the treasure-hunt aspect of the night's business. Somewhere out here, Kate had walked before him. He might be placing his (tragically ruined) shoes where her feet had trodden, the footsteps long since erased by tides and time.

Except, no. Given the entire junkyard to choose from, Kate wouldn't have wanted to wade through the mud.

Neal paused, ignoring, for the moment, the looming presence of Mason and Emile. It was a puzzle, that was all. He could solve it -- he, who had known Kate better than anyone. It was only a matter of backtracking, putting together the clues and the guesses and all her little tells and tricks that he knew so well.

Assuming he wanted to. And that was the question, wasn't it? Finding the bonds was no guarantee of a safe passage out of here. Actually, it would make him totally expendable. And they were in a very isolated location.

If Peter or Mozzie were here, this would almost be fun -- well, okay, no; nothing could make this fun. Maybe on a sunny day, when a brisk wind off the ocean scudded clouds low across the water ...

The mud settled under him, and he had to yank his feet out again. And hip waders. Definitely hip waders.

Mason said in a lazy voice, "If you need some persuasion, I'd be happy to have Emile motivate you."

Neal forced himself to shift mental gears from treasure-hunting to finding a way to lose these two in the marsh so that he could make his way back to dry land and find a way to contact Peter. "Kate was cautious, bordering on paranoid," he said. "The bonds won't be near shore; she'd be too worried about teenagers or urban explorers finding them."

Actually, there was no way Kate would have gone any farther out in the marsh than she had to. Neal's brain was running on two levels as he picked his way along: what Kate had most likely done, and what he could get Mason to believe that she'd done.

She would have wanted the bonds to be well-hidden but not too difficult to retrieve. Neal wondered if she'd figured him into the equation. Would she have placed them somewhere that she thought they were likely to be found by Neal and Mozzie -- or not? He wasn't sure; he didn't have as clear a read as he'd like on her state of mind while he was in prison. They had talked about the future, but always in generalities. Talking specifics hurt too much.

That bottle was a promise of a better life, he'd said to Peter, years ago. What Kate got was a guy locked away for half a decade.

He never knew -- never had a chance to know -- if she'd resented it as much as he'd sometimes feared: having to put her life on hold, waiting for a boyfriend who was working his way through the eternally slow grind of a stretch in the federal pen. And she had waited; that meant a lot. But what was she thinking when she came to this desolate place, carrying the box of bonds?

He didn't know. He knew what he hoped for, but he honestly wasn't sure. On his own end, some of his stashes had been placed with Kate in mind ... and others hadn't. Which sort was this?

He was jolted out of his thoughts by the sudden bark of a gunshot, in the direction they'd come from, followed rapidly by another.


***


Crouched in the wet grass in the fence's ink-pool shadow, Peter studied the lay of the land. It was going to be tough, if not impossible, to get past the car and down to the mudflats without being seen. It would also leave him caught in a pincer between two opponents -- not something he wanted. Which meant neutralizing the person in the car before going down to locate Neal.

Procedure told him to wait for backup, but a constant nagging voice in the back of his head kept telling him, louder, that Neal was in danger. He couldn't leave Neal out there all alone.

He waited for a gust of wind to sweep over them, rattling the grass and driving the rain before it, and then he moved as swiftly as possible from the shadow of the fence -- crouching, crabwalking -- to the bumper of the car. He worked his way along the side of the car, with his gun in one wet hand, and touched the door handle on the front passenger side. Waited again, heart pounding. There was no way to be sure, from this angle, what his target was doing. He was gambling that the door wasn't locked; if it was, his fumbling would almost certainly give him away.

Carefully he eased up on the handle. He got lucky. It popped open.

Peter opened the door and, in the same motion, rolled around it and lunged into the front seat.

"Son of a bitch!" yelped the woman in the driver's seat, and her hand shot out, knocking Peter's gun aside. He wasn't expecting her to move so fast.

They grappled in the awkward confines of the front seat. She was wide-shouldered and strong, but Peter was both stronger and bigger; however, in these close quarters he wasn't able to take full advantage of it. He managed to brace his knee against the doorframe, giving him enough leverage to flatten her in her seat and wedge his gun into her ribs. "FBI; you're under arrest," he gritted out.

Apparently she wasn't getting paid enough to get shot over it, because she stopped struggling immediately, to his relief; he didn't actually want to hurt her. Keeping the gun pressed against her side, he got a hand free to reach for his cuffs. His fingers were cold and clumsy; he fumbled the cuffs, had to try twice. He'd barely diverted his attention for an instant, but she moved under him and suddenly she had a small pistol in his face and she was squeezing the trigger.

Peter recoiled instinctively, flinging himself backwards. The gun went off and stars sparked in his vision; it was a sensory overload, noise and muzzle-flash and pain exploding in his skull. The cold shock of landing in wet grass jerked him back to himself. Somehow he'd managed to hold onto his gun, and he raised it through pure instinct as she scrambled across to the passenger's side. Seeing the muzzle pointed at her, she ducked hastily backward, and Peter rolled to the side and scrambled away from the car in an awkward sort of crab-crawl. His ears were ringing and he could barely see. He couldn't tell how badly she'd hurt him, and didn't dare stop to find out. The liquid trickling down his neck might be rain or blood.

She fired after him, but the shot went wide. Peter half-staggered, half-fell down the bank, stumbling through the knee-deep weeds. His foot snagged on something -- a tangle of wire or a piece of flattened fencing -- and he went down on his face, rolling the last few yards and catching himself on his hands in the mud. At some point he'd lost his gun, but this seemed like the least of his problems at the moment. Touching his face to reach for his radio, he found that he'd lost that, too, and his hand came away sticky with something too hot to be rainwater or mud.

This is why you wait for backup, Burke.


***


When the gunshots rang out through the night, everyone's attention was off Neal for a moment. And he bolted into the marsh.

It was stupid; he knew this even as he did it. The only illumination came from the eerie glow of reflected citylight, and the distant gleam of the scrapyard's floodlights between the hulks of the boats, painting the mudflats a patchwork of stark gray-white and inky black. If Peter were here, Peter would be pointing out the all-too-plausible chance that he was about to get himself mired in a sinkhole, or stumble into a tetanus-laden deathtrap.

But it was better than being shot. Near-certain death versus a risk of possible death -- he'd take those odds.

He sprinted into darkness, his feet finding the way over mud and tangled weeds and trash. He ran along the ancient waterline of a crumbling barge, its iron flashing stripped off and probably sold for scrap, leaving only the underlying wooden structure that was now falling apart. The floodlights in the scrapyard striped the world through the barge's exposed ribs: black and white, black and white -- like prison bars; like the flickering frames of an old movie.

A gunshot cracked off the salt-weathered wood above his head. Neal flinched and ducked.

"Idiot. Don't kill him," he heard Mason snap. There was, however, a promise of a world of hurt in those words.

He scrambled into the barge. The floor was rotting, old decking falling apart in the ship's hold. Darkness gaped between the boards. He was glad, suddenly, of the cold; at least he didn't have to worry about snakes and spiders.

Much.

A rusty iron ladder led up. Neal climbed it quietly and emerged into the rain. The upper deck was even more badly rotted, and he crouched partly to avoid being seen and partly to spread out his weight and reduce his risk of falling through.

From up here he had a decent view over the marsh. He could see Mason and company, all too close; he could see the headlights of the black Lincoln shining through the rain. Between two cargo containers, a spark of light moved. Someone else. Peter? Neal squinted; it was hard to be sure in the rain, but he didn't think so. He was pretty sure it was Jeanne, on her own hunt through the marsh. For Peter? Or something else?

A wave of uncontrollable shivering reminded him how precarious his situation was. He was exposed on top of the barge, not only to the weather but also, potentially, to Mason and crew.

Peter would no doubt point out that if there was one thing Neal was good at, it was jumping off high places.

Great. Since the real Peter wasn't around to snark at him, he now had an inner Peter voice to do it for him.

Backup anytime now, Neal thought, edging very carefully along a solid-seeming spar across the barge's rotten midsection. He froze when it creaked under him; luckily the sound was lost in the patter of rain. Of course, that wouldn't save him when it broke under him and he was impaled in a tiger-trap of broken slats.

The next ship wasn't that far away. He wondered how far he could get hopping from ship to ship.


***


Peter had lost some time. He knew it only because he didn't remember how he got from lying in the mud to where he currently was: crouched inside an abandoned tanker. Like many of the other derelicts, it had been nibbled away as if by giant iron-eating ants. Most of its side plates had been removed for the metal they contained, but enough remained to provide a sort of rudimentary shelter, though rain swept in when the wind changed. Through the tanker's ribs, Peter watched flashlights bobbing on the mudflats. They kept doubling and then coming back together as his vision went in and out of focus.

Diana and Jones had better get here fast. Speaking of -- He patted himself down and found that he'd lost his phone, too. It and his gun were back there in the muck. Wonderful job so far, Agent Burke, he thought grimly. But backup was on the way, and they knew approximately where he was, if not his exact position.

And Neal was out there somewhere.

That was the thought that got him moving again, lurching to his feet and leaning against cold metal until everything stopped spinning. His head was splitting. He touched it gingerly and felt blood on his forehead and matting his hair. It wasn't life-threatening, though -- at least, he was still alive, so probably not. (Something told him there was a flaw in that logic, but he couldn't exactly figure it out at the moment.)

Anyway, he needed to find Neal. And he could do that. He'd done it before -- at least twice and probably more, depending on how you counted and who was doing the counting. He was the world expert in Neal-finding. He practically had a PhD in it.

Some might say it was impossible to find Neal in the dark and the rain, somewhere on a deserted mudflat with bad guys hunting them. But that was why no one had ever found Neal before Peter had done it. They'd said it was impossible. Peter knew that there was no such thing. Neal had patterns; he left clues. It was just a matter of anticipating how Neal would think.

And what would Neal be doing now?

Up, Peter thought, wiping blood out of his eyes. He'd go up.

He tilted his head back, scanning the rain-washed tops of the old ships, the collapsed smokestacks, the piles of barrels and cargo containers and heaps of timber and scrap iron. There was a lot of up. The crane seemed like the most likely, Neal-esque option, but it wasn't close; it was parked behind the sheet-metal fence, back on dry land. Neal would probably have climbed it if he could have, but he was most likely trapped out somewhere in the marsh.

Peter scanned the lumpy silhouettes, willing his blurring vision to focus -- and saw something move against the Jersey lights, in a way more purposeful than the wind could explain. He couldn't help grinning. There you are.

The shape -- Neal -- moved cautiously, paused, moved again. He hesitated, and Peter realized in horror that Neal was going to jump. Peter knew his body language well enough to guess.

He didn't have any way to get Neal's attention. Or ... did he? The only thing still in his pocket was his keys. Maybe he could catch the light -- or wait, no, there was something better: Peter had a tiny flashlight on the key fob. (Eagle scout. Be prepared.) It was the size of a modest pencil stub and produced a tiny, thin beam of light that could illuminate about a square inch. El had once remarked that he'd never find a use for it.

You said that about the sextant too, hon, Peter thought. He very stubbornly did not consider the possibility that he might not make it back to El, because clearly he was going to. He wasn't even in that much trouble. (Well, okay, a little. But backup was on the way.)

Neal jumped.

Peter watched with his mouth open. Admitting this to Neal would, of course, be tantamount to disaster, but there was a part of him that would never get tired of watching Neal do things like that. Of course, there was a much bigger part of him that went small and quiet in horror, waiting with held breath for the moment when Neal's grace and speed would fail him, when that sharp mind and the secret, hidden beauty of Neal's heart would be shattered by a careless step.

But Neal cleared the space effortlessly -- well, without apparent effort, anyway -- and landed atop a nearby shipping container. He took the impact with his knees, bending smoothly and barely making a sound.

There were times when Peter had to wonder if Neal was the result of some sort of classified experiment to create the perfect cat burglar. Those were the sort of thoughts that probably meant he'd been spending too much time around Mozzie. (Which was basically any time spent around Mozzie.) But. Still.

Neal recovered from the leap, hesitated -- Peter could imagine the look on his face as he plotted his trajectory, the gears turning behind his eyes -- then executed another jump from the top of the container to the deck of another ship. All Peter could see was the ship's silhouette, stark against the dull sulfurous glow of the city lights on the low bellies of the clouds, and he couldn't tell what kind it was; it might even date back to the age of steam, because he was pretty sure that was a smokestack listing behind a crumbling pilot's cabin.

As before, Neal caught himself gracefully, his body absorbing the impact like a spring compressing and uncoiling. He started to straighten --

-- and vanished from sight.

There was absolutely no mystery about what had happened; the crash was loud as a gunshot in the night. Peter's heart leaped into his throat. Whatever ancient timber Neal had thought would hold his weight on the derelict ship ... hadn't.

Deep in the night-black canyons between the ships, a flashlight swung around: Neal's hunters drawn by the sound.

And suddenly Peter found a new use for the little flashlight in his hand. Rather than flashing it at Neal, he turned it towards that brighter light. In case that didn't get their attention, he kicked the metal side of the tanker. They couldn't have missed that hollow boom, and by the way their flashlight swung toward him, they hadn't.

Yeah, come get me. Meanwhile he fixed the location of the ship in his blurring vision. There had been no further sounds. Either Neal was sensibly keeping quiet, or -- well. There was no "or".

They only had to hold out for a little longer, until backup arrived.


***


"I can't raise Peter," Diana said as the van pulled to a stop. "Not on the radio, not on his cell. Where's our backup?"

"Inbound," Jones reported. "Still a few minutes out."

Blake parted the plastic curtain separating the cab of the van from the communications center. It had been a light crew; they weren't expecting to do any heavy lifting tonight. Just some routine surveillance, and then home.

Well, the job was nothing if not unpredictable. Diana checked the clip in her service weapon and looked around at the others. One senior agent and one kid who'd just lost his probie status (though everyone still sent him to get coffee anyway). On the other hand, Blake was a fine agent-in-training, and there were very few people she trusted as much as Jones at her back.

Rain drummed on the van's metal roof. "Where are we, exactly?" Diana asked.

"Parked behind Agent Burke's car," Blake said, which wasn't exactly what she'd meant.

Jones leaned forward and pointed to the satellite map he'd pulled up. "We're here, at one end of this little road. The scrapyard's on our right and there's more of it straight ahead."

"And somewhere out there," Diana murmured, "we have an unknown number of hostiles, and Peter and Neal."

Jones gave her a lopsided smile, drawing his own service weapon. "You ever notice how many of our missions involving Caffrey end up like this?"

"In a junkyard in an October downpour? I think this might be a new one." But Diana was smiling as she unlatched the van's door, admitting cool damp air and the clean smell of rain.


***


Neal liked to think that if he'd been completely on top of his game, he'd have gauged his landing better. As it was, his muscles were seizing up with cold; he was at the "can still fake it by burning adrenaline" point, but he knew from experience there was only so long that would last. Getting somewhere safer (and warmer) was becoming an overriding priority.

Or maybe it was just that he'd made a few successful jumps and was getting cocky.

He had a instant to think he'd made it before the decking snapped underneath him and he plunged into darkness.

His first coherent thought was OhfuckOW.

Followed closely by: That was really loud, wasn't it?

He squirmed a bit, which produced more ohfuckOW, but also reassured him that all his parts were still attached, and he could still feel all of them. Even the ones he didn't want to.

He was also in water. Very cold water, seeping through the tight black jeans that were part of his Nick Halstead persona. He supposed he should be thankful for small favors -- the jeans had provided a little more protection than his usual sartorial choices. And he wasn't ruining one of Byron's suits.

He was half-standing, half-sitting, wedged at an angle in a cradle of broken boards. One of his legs was messed up, but it was hard to tell how badly without being able to examine it, and his arms were pinned. He had to wriggle a bit to make sure that the jagged board-end which felt like it was sticking through his kidney was, in fact, only jammed into his back, where it had probably left an amazing bruise but hadn't impaled him.

Mostly he was cold and terrified and couldn't move. Which was definitely bad enough, given that people with guns were hunting him and he'd just sent up a big flare saying I'M OVER HERE.

Also, he was pretty sure the water was creeping higher on his thighs, which meant either it was rising, or he was sinking. He had no frame of reference; everything was pitch-dark except for a brighter patch directly overhead where he'd fallen through. He could glimpse more stripes of the sky -- dull orange, dimly reflecting the city's lights -- through other gaps in the ceiling farther down the interior of the ship. Rain fell lightly on his face.

A stupid, betraying thought skirted around the edges of his mind: Peter, please come.

Which was ridiculous, because Peter had no idea where he was. Maybe it had been Peter they were shooting at earlier, in which case Peter had problems of his own. Or maybe Peter was miles away, caught up in a snarl of Brooklyn traffic, snapping at Diana and Jones over the radio while he tried to unravel Neal's trail. Neal smiled slightly at the mental image. It was better than thinking too hard about his current predicament.

One problem at a time. He'd had plenty of experience getting out of tight spots. He went limp (difficult, when he was shivering right out of his skin) and carefully eeled first one, then the other of his arms free. Now he could feel around and get a better idea of his situation. One thing he already knew: there was a beam across his chest, pinning him in place. He was fairly sure that he could get free of it, though, by doing another Houdini impression and slithering downwards, until he could duck out. First he needed to find firm purchase for his feet, which were sunk in mud. Right now most of his weight was being supported on his hips and back.

This was probably one of those situations where you weren't supposed to move until properly trained paramedics could immobilize and rescue you -- but, well, that wasn't going to happen, was it?

He got his left foot braced against something solid underwater. His right leg still wasn't responding properly, but he was too numb from cold to be able to tell exactly what was wrong, just that the whole leg was weak and something sharp and hot twisted when he tried to move it. Running a mostly-numb hand down his thigh, he couldn't feel enough to even tell what was wrong. Not like it mattered anyway -- there wasn't much he could do, and his first priority was getting out of the water anyway. He leaned his weight on his left leg and began to slid down, scraping his chest against the beam. He discovering that he was less numb than he'd realized when ice-cold water soaked through his underwear; he couldn't stifle an involuntary gasp.

Something splashed not too far away. Neal froze in the most awkward possible position -- he'd gotten down far enough that his chin was pressed against the beam, and the water was lapping around his belly, lifting the edge of his T-shirt. Rats, maybe? Would that be a good thing or not? He heard more sloshing, then a thump and a muttered curse, which let him know that it definitely wasn't a rat, but something far worse and far more deadly.

He went silent and still, hardly daring to breathe. Then Peter's voice called softly, "Neal?"

He really shouldn't even be surprised anymore.


***


As soon as he was fairly sure he had Mason's attention, Peter had wedged his tiny flashlight at hand level to give them a target to head for (and to shoot at), and then slipped off into the marsh.

Or at least he'd tried to. He was dizzy and the ground kept being in the wrong place. Also, getting to where he'd last seen Neal wasn't a simple matter of going straight. He had to pick his way around deep channels of water and sucking mud that threatened to swallow his legs.

And the water was getting higher, covering the mudbars, lapping around the hulls of the derelict ships. The tide was coming in. Peter had to wade the last stretch, feeling his way with his feet, hoping not to stumble into anything over his head. He found the ship at last by running into it.

He called Neal's name quietly. He wasn't sure if he expected a response, but he crumpled a little inside when Neal softly answered out of the darkness, "Good timing."

"Thanks. I try."

Peter fumbled his way inside, and had to lean against a listing timber until a wave of dizziness passed. He thought he felt the wooden post shift when his weight tilted against it, but it was hard to distinguish the instability of the wreck from his own shakiness, especially in the dark.

"Neal," he whispered, "where are you?" All he could feel was a jumbled tangle of boards that had slumped inward.

"Just give me a minute," Neal's soft voice came from the darkness. Neal's teeth clicked together -- chattering -- and his voice was tight. "I can get out on my own. Escape artist, remember?"

There were small shifting noises that Peter couldn't quite identify. "How stuck are you?"

"Been worse," Neal muttered. There was a small splashing sound from somewhere in the depths of the ship.

A sudden gunshot, not far away, made Peter jump. His head cracked against something and for a moment all he could do was hold onto the post that was now the only thing keeping him upright. When stars stopped exploding in his vision, he peeked out of the wreck. He couldn't see anything, but he could hear voices, too low to determine what they were saying.

"Peter!" Neal whispered from the darkness.

"I think they found my decoy."

"How close are they now?" Neal asked softly.

"Can't tell." Peter pressed the palm of his hand against his forehead. His head felt too big for his skull. "How's the escape artistry coming?"

"Working on it."

Peter felt his way deeper inside. The ancient ship's bilge was awash in ankle-deep water, covering an unstable layer of silt that years of tides had deposited on top of the rotten hull. Had there been this much water a few minutes ago? His ankle twisted under him, and he wished now that he'd kept the flashlight rather than using it for a distraction. He suspected that he wasn't thinking as clearly as normal. "Where are you?"

"Here," Neal said, almost under his feet.

Peter crouched in the water, reached out through a snarl of broken boards, and his fingers brushed bare, wet skin. He closed his hand around Neal's forearm; it was ice cold to the touch. "You're -- naked?"

"I don't have a jacket. They threw it out of the car. And I'm also up to my chest in ice water."

Peter confirmed this by feeling down Neal's body. "What are you hung up on?"

"I don't know," Neal said, sounding frustrated. And cold. His teeth were chattering so badly that Peter was having trouble understanding him. "I can't see and I can't feel anything with my hands and my legs won't move and I can't think."

"Calm down," Peter told him.

"I'm not uncalm."

Actually, Neal was probably calmer than he should be given his situation, Peter thought as he felt around Neal's chest in the frigid water. Neal was tilted at a steep angle, leaning on his back with his legs under something. "You said you'd been in situations like this before?"

"Trying to get me to incriminate myself?" Neal said.

"Neal, most of your adult life is one long string of incriminating incidents. There's not much else to talk about."

Neal didn't answer; his teeth clicked together.

Peter wished that thinking was a little easier. His head throbbed in time with his heartbeat. "Tell me what you did the last time," he said. There was a drop-off, either a hole in the hull or a deeper compartment of the bilge, and he slid forward with care, until he was up to his waist beside Neal in the water. The cold made him gasp, though it also cleared his head a little. He was acutely aware that the searchers were no doubt closing on this area after realizing the other one was a decoy.

"The last time I was tangled in a rope harness hanging head-down above a twelve-story drop to -- allegedly a place I wasn't supposed to be," Neal ended in a mumble.

"So what'd you do?" Peter started to move one of the boards, then stopped when everything around him creaked ominously. It was like the world's most terrifying game of Jenga.

"Squirmed out. I'm good at squirming out of things."

"I've noticed," Peter said. This failed to net the desired response of wounded innocence. If only he could see; that would make all of this a lot easier. Plunging his arm up to the shoulder into the cold black water, he discovered that Neal's legs were wound up in -- wire? Cable? No wonder he was having trouble moving his legs. "Neal, I need you to move your right leg toward me."

Neal tried it, and gasped in pain. Peter winced as the cable tugged tight, trapping his hand against Neal's thigh.

"I think my leg's hurt," Neal mumbled. He was slurring a little. Not good. Peter could feel cold lassitude dragging at his own limbs, slowing him down.

"Your leg is wound up in some kind of steel cable, and I need to get you loose."

"Oh," Neal said, in a sort of slow, dazed surprise. "Is that all? How many times around?"

"I can't see it. It's definitely over your thigh --" Peter managed to get his hand free, probably taking some skin off, but he didn't really feel much. "And it's tangled a couple of times around your lower leg."

Neal tilted into Peter, and suddenly quite a bit of his weight was in Peter's lap. He did a weird boneless thing with his lower body, and he spilled even more heavily onto Peter. Reaching down Neal's leg, Peter found that he could no longer feel the cable.

"I have no idea how you just did that."

"Told you, good at squirming out of things. I just need to know which way to squirm."

Peter managed not to laugh by reminding himself that Neal was halfway into hypothermia and probably not in total control of his mouth. Well, less control than usual. The water was lapping higher on both of them.

"C'mon," he said, getting an arm around Neal's chest and dragging Neal after him. Then he stopped, with both of them still in the water, as a flashlight beam stabbed suddenly into the interior of the ship. It seemed searingly bright to his dark-adapted eyes. Peter gripped Neal's T-shirt and dragged them both down, deeper into the water. Dimly he was aware that Neal didn't seem to be shivering as much anymore, which was bad, but getting shot would be worse. Neal's head was close to his own; he could feel the warmth of Neal's breath brushing his cheek.

The flashlight swung away, and danced over the gaps in the hull. Its crazy, patternless movements made Peter's dizziness and nausea surge back. He closed his eyes for a moment.

"There's blood here," someone said. Mason. Peter remembered cracking his head on the post -- damn it. "You said you shot him in the face? How is he still running around?"

Peter hadn't even been sure that Neal was still tracking until Neal murmured in his ear, "Shot in the face?"

"Shhh," Peter hissed back, very quietly.

"I definitely got him. With any luck he'll drop dead on his own," the woman's voice replied, low. "I don't think Caffrey's still here, boss."

Something brushed Peter's temple, very lightly, like spider legs. Peter flinched. He must have made a noise, because Mason said, "What was that?"

Everyone outside the ship fell silent. So did Peter; he didn't even dare to breathe. The only sound was the falling rain, and the dripping of water everywhere. In the stillness, Peter felt the same light touch dance over his cheek, and finally realized that it wasn't spider legs at all; it was Neal lightly feeling his face. Neal's fingers brushed his nose, and Peter raised a hand out of the water, caught Neal's wrist, and yanked his hand down.

Outside, Mason's voice said, "Jeanne, go back and wait at the car. It'd be just our luck if one or both of them slips around us and steals it while we're out here. Emile, get in there and have a look around."

"Me?"

"You're the one who let Caffrey get away in the first place."

Once anyone started shining a flashlight around in here, Peter suspected that he and Neal would be immediately visible -- and sitting ducks, unless they got out of the water. Which they were going to have to do very soon anyway. Peter was the only thing holding Neal up at this point, and he could feel himself listing sideways. If they didn't get out of the water, they wouldn't be in any shape to run or fight. Or even to stand up.

He started easing out of the hole onto what passed for solid decking. The water was definitely rising, the tide coming up; the water was up to his elbow when he braced a palm on the silt-covered boards. He dragged Neal along with an arm around Neal's body. Neal was trying to help, but his movements were clumsy, uncoordinated.

This isn't going to work. There was nowhere to go -- nowhere to go quietly, anyway. They couldn't move through the water without making noise.

The beam of the flashlight swept into his eyes; Peter ducked quickly, pulling Neal down with him, behind one of the half-fallen beams.

If only he had his gun.

Emile cursed softly as he waded into the ship's derelict hulk. Black water rippled in the flashlight's beam, and reflected water-patterns shimmered across the ship's exposed ribs. There was enough backwash of light that Peter could see Neal's dark, wet head beside his own. The tangle of fallen timbers between them and Emile made a black lattice against the flashlight's glow. Coming closer. They didn't have much time.

Peter tipped his head against Neal's, and murmured into Neal's ear, so softly that it was little more than a release of breath, "I'm going to distract him. Be ready to run."

Neal's eyelids dipped. The lashes were beaded with water. Peter gave him a sharp shake. "Wake up, Caffrey," he whispered. "Get ready to go."

Neal's head moved in something that might have been a nod.

Peter slid his arm away from Neal and wrapped his hands around the end of a broken board. His fingers were going numb. He clenched his teeth. Waited until Emile was looking away.

Then he sprang, erupting from the water and charging forward with the board held in front of him like a jousting lance. It slammed into Emile's sternum and plowed the gunman into the side of the ship. There was a crack of splintering wood. The gun and flashlight sailed separately into the water and sank. The flashlight's beam still gleamed through the water, filling the interior of the ship with weird, wavery shadows.

The jarring shock of the collision, transmitted up the length of the board, sent Peter staggering as the pain in his head spiked and his vision briefly whited out. "Run!" he managed to rasp in Neal's direction. Hopefully Neal was still together enough to be able to do it.

Then Mason was on him. Peter hadn't realized how big Mason was; reading his file and seeing him from a distance hadn't been adequate preparation for Mason's overwhelming presence. He wasn't a giant, but he was powerful. Peter managed to block his first blow with a forearm, but Mason slammed a fist into the side of his head and that was too much for his concussion. Peter fell to his knees, retching weakly.

He looked up to see Mason drawing a gun, and then Neal plowed into Mason from the side, uncoordinated but furious. They both went down in the water, thrashing. Mason had the upper hand by far, though; Neal was all flailing fists and no strategy at all. Mason drove a knee into Neal's stomach, then punched him in the face. Neal went down in the water.

Peter struggled to his feet, grabbed the nearest board that wasn't attached to anything, and swung it at Mason's head. He missed; there were at least two or three of everything, and the wavering, uncertain light made his disorientation even worse. And it sank into his bruised brain that all three of Mason were pointing guns at him now.

"You must be the FBI agent that Jeanne shot." Mason climbed to his feet, seeming little the worse for wear, aside from being wet and muddy. He gripped Neal's T-shirt with one powerful hand and hauled Neal to his feet. Neal was reeling, half-limp. "Emile, get up. You're not hurt that bad."

Emile thrashed his way to his feet, coughing. "I think this sonuvabitch broke my ribs." He fumbled his way to the flashlight and, retrieving it from under the water, began searching for his gun.

Peter stood with his head hanging and the broken board dangling from his hand. You've mishandled this from the beginning, he told himself, but there was little heat in it. There hadn't been a good way to handle it. He couldn't have left Neal out on the tideflats by himself; he just couldn't.

Mason gave Neal a sharp shake, like a terrier with a rat. "Are you snitching for him, Caffrey? Is this the agent you're working with?" He turned a cold grin on Peter, and Peter saw that there was a thread of blood running down his chin. Neal had managed to split the bastard's lip, at least. "How do you feel about finding the box for me now, Caffrey?" he asked, giving Neal another shake.

Neal, Peter thought, looked like hell. Peter hadn't been able to get a good look at him when they were in the water, but the fall had left him scraped, battered and bruised. The cable had done more than just wrap around his legs -- his jeans were hanging in shreds around his right calf, and the water dripping from the tatters was dark with blood.

Peter tried not to think about the consequences of wallowing in filthy New York muck with gunshot wounds and lacerations. That was a bridge to be crossed once they got through the next few hours.

Or the next few minutes.

Emile splashed up to them, shaking his gun. "I know these things work fine if they're wet, but how about full of mud?"

"Stop whining," Mason ordered. "We've got Caffrey, and it looks like we've got some leverage, too." He lowered the gun to point at Peter's leg. "So, Caffrey, every human being has two knees and two elbows. That gives you four chances to do the right thing."

Neal sucked in his breath and seemed to come awake. His face was dead white in the flashlight's glare, patched with mud and blood. A bruise, probably from Mason's knuckles, bloomed darkly across his cheekbone; his eye was swelling shut. "I know you want the box, but I --" He seemed to loose his train of thought, shook himself and got started again. "I can't help if I don't know where it is."

"You got a three-count to figure it out," Mason said. "One --"

"Wait!" Neal's voice went sharp with desperation. "I just -- I just have to think, okay? I -- I can't -- Let me have a coat, at least."

"He can have mine," Peter said.

He approached under the muzzle of Mason's gun, and handled his sodden, muddy coat to Emile, who snatched it and tossed it roughly in Neal's direction.

"Didn't mean yours," Neal mumbled, holding it uncertainly.

"Put it on, Neal," Peter said. Neal clumsily obeyed, and Mason shifted his grip from Neal's T-shirt to his arm. "What does he want?"

"Box," Neal said, fumbling with the jacket's buttons.

"Yours?"

"Kate's," Neal said. His eyes were downcast, staring at the water around his feet, or into the past.

"Oh." Peter let out his breath on a long exhalation.

"I don't know where it is. Didn't even know she had it."

"Can you find it?" Peter asked, trying to ignore the gun pointed at him, the hostile stares.

"I don't know," Neal said. He swallowed. "I think -- maybe."

"See? That's more like it." Mason waved the gun between the two of them. "Let's go see."


***


Neal blinked water out of his eyes. Things had gone kind of hazy, and his limbs felt like rubber, but following Peter's orders was second nature now. Peter would probably have laughed if Neal had said that, but there was a big difference between Peter telling him to do some random thing that, in Neal's opinion, didn't really need doing in the first place -- and Peter telling him to do something and meaning it. In the latter case, habit took over.

Help me, Kate, he thought. He shoved his hands into the pockets of Peter's jacket, seeking some additional, marginal warmth, and tried to make his fuzzy brain focus. His right leg kept trying to buckle every time he put weight on it, but the pain helped drive out some of the fog in his head.

He had to assume that Kate would have wanted him to find the bonds. Or, at least, that she would have used the techniques he'd taught her, plus her own unique embellishments.

"Closer to shore," he said, hating the way his voice slurred.

Mason gestured with the gun for Peter to go ahead of them. The water was high enough now to cover most of the mudbars, which meant there was no good way to tell where was safe to walk. And Peter wasn't walking steadily, or in a straight line. Neal still couldn't tell how bad he was hurt, but that wasn't just mud on his face.

He wished he'd thought to ask Peter if Diana, Jones, and the rest of the cavalry were right behind. Although, if they were, they should have shown up already.

Focus. Think. His thoughts were wandering off in all directions, scattering like drops of blood diffusing into an endless black sea. He wasn't sure if he could pull them all back together again.

Focus. And he seemed to hear it, as well as think it, as if someone (Kate) had whispered in his ear. For an instant he saw her, pale skin and dark hair, a flicker in his peripheral vision.

Hallucinations were, he guessed, not a good sign.

But he felt more comforted than alarmed, the same way the cold water didn't really feel cold anymore, but rather syrupy-smooth against his skin. It rolled slowly out of the way of his feet as he pushed through it.

"Focus," Kate/not-Kate whispered.

He wished she'd just tell him. That would be easier than having to puzzle it out on his own. But then, they'd always liked playing games with each other, pitting their wits against the other's. It was something Neal had always loved. He enjoyed the company of smart people: Kate, Mozzie, Peter. People who didn't just give him things, but challenged him instead. At first it was him setting up challenges for Kate, but as time went on, she'd met him game for game, heist for heist. Before Copenhagen, before prison, they'd spun in interlocking circles of cooperation and competition, playfully outdoing each other, creating ever-grander plans and ever-more-creative heists.

Focus.

But it wasn't that Kate who'd come here, the Kate of the infinite dreams and the thousand-dollar hamburgers. It was a Kate whose boyfriend was in prison, who was taking jobs with sleazeballs like Mason to keep from having to work a nine-to-five filing papers or fetching coffee. In the end, she'd been playing Mason, and she'd walked off with a haul worth a cool hundred mil. But she'd never spent it. A rainy-day account, Neal thought. A hedge against a better future.

Yes, she'd meant it for both of them.

And she'd come here thinking ... what? She'd come here on a sunny day, he thought, and he closed his eyes, pushing through the drag of the black water and the undertow of the past. He could almost see it, the tide low and the grasses bending beneath the salt wind, the derelict vessels tilting at drunken angles as they sank slowly into the marsh. She'd parked at the gate and walked back here, with the seagulls' cries like a distant lonely soundtrack to her private thoughts. It felt lonely here, even though it was right in the middle of the biggest megalopolis on the North American continent.

She stood in the long weeds: he could almost see her, looking out across the glittering water to the Jersey coast, black hair whipping in the wind, the box tucked under her arm. And then she went -- where?

It would be somewhere that she didn't expect to be disturbed for years. Somewhere she didn't think kids would find the box. Somewhere the owners of the scrapyard would be unlikely to tear apart and crush for scrap.

"I know where it is," he said aloud, half to himself.

"Good for you," Mason said shortly. Neal had almost forgotten he was there, but a sharp jerk on his arm brought him back to himself abruptly: back to the cold, the drizzling rain, the gluey mud clutching at his shoes. Back to Peter, who glanced over his shoulder with a look that was muzzily concerned. The side of Peter's face was dark with blood, streaked through with rain.

Right. Peter had been shot. And it was Peter's jacket currently wrapped around Neal's shoulders, providing some small protection from the cold. Peter was in his soaked shirt sleeves.

One of Peter's legs slipped; he sank up to the knee and struggled to pull himself out. Neal tried instinctively to move forward to help, but Mason's grip was like iron. Emile made no move to help either, just hung back, gun in hand.

"Gets deep there," Peter muttered, struggling back to shallower water.

Neal wondered if Peter had a plan. Peter was good at plans. Except right now, Peter seemed to be having enough trouble just staying upright. Once they found the box, they were both going to die; Neal had little doubt of that. Peter could probably take Emile, but he couldn't take Emile and Mason, not with Neal to worry about too.

His eyes drifted to the pool of dark water that had almost swallowed Peter.

"Hey!" Emile said sharply.

Neal wasn't sure what had caught Emile's attention -- something on the shore -- but for that instant, both Emile and Mason were distracted from their prisoners. Seize the moment, Peter, Neal thought, and he turned around, grabbed hold of Mason and stepped into the deep water, dragging Mason down with him.


***


Diana made her way carefully down the slippery rocks. She and her little team had found one person so far, a woman. At Diana's bellow of "FBI! Freeze!" she'd groaned "There are more of you?" and then submitted to handcuffing.

A shout and a sudden scuffle, below her in the marsh, caught Diana's attention. Gun in hand, she waded into the water and plunged to her waist. Gasping, she backed out. "There are deep spots," she called up the bank to Jones. "Be careful!"

Her flashlight illuminated two people struggling. "FBI!" Diana shouted, and one of them gave up and went down in the mud and water beneath the other. The one on top, she recognized as Peter only when he stood up. He was soaked and covered with mud.

"Are you all right?" Diana called.

Peter opened his mouth to answer, but just then someone splashed to the surface of the dark, open water between Diana and Peter. "Mason!" Peter snarled.

"I've got him," Diana said. Jones arrived just then, and between the two of them they dragged Mason to shore. He put up a fight, but shoving his face under the water helped with that.

When Diana looked around, Peter was gone again.


***


It was dark down here. Still and cold.

Mason had struggled free of Neal's weak grip and stroked for the surface. Neal didn't have the strength to follow him. Besides, there was something peaceful about just waiting here, drifting.

He stretched out a hand and wondered if he could feel Kate's fingers brush against his, if she would be warm or cold.

But Kate wouldn't take his hand. She shook her head and smiled a little sadly. "Not yet," she mouthed.

And then other hands were on him, strong and rough.


***


Peter hauled Neal out of the water and both of them tumbled unceremoniously into the sticky mud. Neal's skin was cold and waxy. Peter shook him, which was probably not an approved first aid technique, but he wasn't sure if he could even sit up himself and he knew he didn't have enough strength in him to do CPR. His head was splitting open. "Neal!" he barked with all the breath he had.

Neal's body contorted and he started coughing and spit out a mouthful of dirty water. He blinked, but his eyes were unfocused.

Peter held onto him, trying to keep him out of the water and mud, until Diana pried his hands away. "Come on," she said. "We need to get both of you warmed up. There's an ambulance and more backup on the way."

"Peter -- shot," Neal mumbled. Diana bundled her FBI jacket around him, on top of Peter's jacket. Then she looked into Peter's face and said his name.

Peter blinked at her. He hadn't even tried to get up. Sitting in the mud seemed like a good option right now. Someone else could take over. His head hurt horribly.

"Come on," Diana murmured, handing Neal off to Jones, who was half-carrying him. "Peter, give me some help here. You're too big to carry."

"Think I'll stay here," Peter said.

"Oh, no you won't."

His next recollections were disjointed, flashes of rain and rocks and, once, falling down and jarring his head and losing everything for a while.

When things coalesced into coherency again, he was in the van, huddled on the floor next to the heating vents. He and Neal were buried under every dry thing Diana and Jones had been able to find: jackets, emergency blankets, even an old rug covered in dog hair that Peter was pretty sure had been in the trunk of his car. Diana was crouching next to Peter, doing something unspeakably painful to his head. "Stop that," he told her, and tried to push her away, or would have, if his arms hadn't been buried under about fifty pounds of random laundry.

"Peter, be quiet and let her bandage you," Neal said without opening his eyes. His head was tilted against the wall, his face very pale under patches of mud and his hair a mess of spikes and tufts.

"This is just a pressure bandage to help control the bleeding until the paramedics get here," Diana said.

"Neal's bleeding too," Peter pointed out.

"No I'm not," was Neal's mumbled answer.

"Yes, you are. Your leg."

Neal blinked, and squinted against the light. "Really?"

Diana removed enough blankets to get a look, and hissed between her teeth. Peter couldn't see what she was looking at from his angle, which was probably just as well. "How can you not feel this?" she asked, and did something that made Neal squawk.

"Well, I felt that," he said with a wounded look, pulling his limbs back under the blankets like a turtle retreating into its shell.

Blake stuck his head in from the cab of the van. "Ma'am, Mason says he's going to sue us for making him stay out in the rain."

"Oh, I'll give him something to sue about," Diana growled, getting to her feet.

"Don't do anything to get the Bureau in trouble," Peter called after her. Diana tossed him a grin over her shoulder and vanished after Blake.

Peter rested his aching head carefully against the side of the van. Outside, he could dimly hear her chewing out Mason -- he couldn't catch the words, but the tone came through loud and clear. "How are you doing over there?" he asked Neal. "Honest answer."

"Says the man who's been running around with a head injury and not saying anything," Neal retorted. He coughed, and a spasm of pain crossed his face. "If you really need to know, I feel like my lungs have been packed with mud. Maybe they have. And the warmer I get, the more bruises I find."

His words were still a little slurred, but he seemed to be fully coherent. They had a little time before the paramedics got here. "So what's in the box that Mason wants?" Peter asked.

Neal groaned and closed his eyes. "Interrogation time?"

"Just curious," Peter said. "Mason's going to spill sooner or later. I'd like a heads-up on what we might have to deal with."

After a long enough pause that Peter thought Neal might have fallen asleep, he said quietly, "Forged bonds."

Peter had to laugh. "Always the bonds with you, huh?"

Neal smiled faintly. "I didn't forge these. Not that I'm admitting anything involving any other bonds."

Peter grinned. His head still hurt, he was still filthy and felt as if he'd never be dry and warm again, but he was too tired to really care all that much. There was something very peaceful and companionable about the silence. Not far off, he heard a siren. That'll be the paramedics.

And he asked, because he wasn't sure if he'd get another chance: "Do you really know where she hid them?"

There was another pause, then Neal blinked sleepily. "Come on, Peter. Do you really think I wouldn't tell the guy with the gun pointed at your back exactly what he wanted to hear?"

It wasn't precisely an answer, but then the back doors of the van opened, flooding the space inside with cold air and emergency personnel, and there was no more time to talk about it.


***


Four days later, Neal was lying on his couch with a book, buried under blankets. He was still cold all the time. They'd said it was psychosomatic and would go away eventually, but in the meantime he'd been cranking the heat and wearing sweaters.

He was also taking a heavy-duty course of antibiotics and was supposed to stay off his leg as much as possible. Unfortunately, lying down hurt his back, which had been bruised black and blue from the fall. Right now he had his leg propped up and was trying to ignore the fact that, as usual, everything hurt. Even his face hurt, though the bruises were starting to fade.

He'd spent the first night in the hospital, mostly just so the medical staff could keep an eye on him; none of his injuries were anywhere near life-threatening, but they were worried about the dunking and hypothermia. Peter had been examined, given antibiotics and painkillers, and released into Elizabeth's care -- but instead of going home, he'd wandered into Neal's room, looking like hell, with a row of butterfly bandages along his hairline. The other bed in the room was empty. Peter had flopped down on it and fallen asleep.

"I guess he's not leaving," Neal had mumbled to Elizabeth from under his mound of warm blankets.

"Probably not," she said with a smile, and settled in between the two beds with a book.

By now, the novelty of actually getting time off was starting to wear off and leave Neal bored and restless and -- not that he'd admit it -- kinda-sorta looking forward to getting back to work.

Of course, there were projects to attend to in the meantime -- one of which seemed to be paying off right now: Neal raised his head at a brisk series of taps on the door. One long tap, four short, one short, pause, two long, three long ... Morse code, Neal realized, and let him get as far as "THE MOCKINGBIRD --" before calling, "C'mon in, Moz."

"I wasn't finished," Mozzie said, letting himself in. "And that's not the countersign."

"Your knuckles are going to be bruised." Neal sat up stiffly, wincing. Mozzie was carrying a paper bag with a wine bottle poking out the top -- a cheap wine bottle. "I take it there's something else in there?"

"Please. As if I'd be caught dead drinking this swill." Mozzie discarded the camouflage bottle and extricated something else: a flat metal box, discolored and tarnished and just big enough to contain --

"The bonds." Neal grinned, his discomfort and boredom forgotten. "Was it where I said it'd be?"

"It was. Taped to one of the main supports." Mozzie shook his head. "That's some impressive chutzpah. Talk about hiding in plain sight."

"But who's going to think of climbing a crane?" Neal's grin widened. "Did you climb the crane?"

"Don't be ridiculous. I paid off a fourteen-year-old pickpocket of my acquaintance." He laid the box in Neal's hands. It was still banded with layers of residual glue from the tape that had held it in place. "I haven't opened it yet. I thought you should be the one."

Neal's smile fell away, and he carefully pulled off the lid. Inside were layers of plastic, and underneath, neat stacks of crisp new bonds. He could still smell a ghost of the printer's ink.

Mozzie took one carefully by the edges and held it up to the light. "Good work," he murmured.

Neal nodded. It was great work. Kate had truly been a respectable forging talent.

"You realize they're going to be impossible to sell now that the FBI knows about them."

"I know." Neal took back the bond, returning it to the others, and reverently placed the lid back on the box. "I'm sure we'll find something to do with --" Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Hastily, he stuck the box under one of the couch cushions and shifted his weight onto it. Mozzie vibrated anxiously in place; Neal pointed at the rack of wine bottles and Mozzie hastily scuttled to retrieve a bottle. He was examining it with a look of intense fascination when Peter came in.

"Mozzie," Peter said. "Neal. How're you doing?"

"Oh, a little better, I guess," Neal said feebly, making an attempt to look meek, pathetic, and barely capable of getting up, let alone going back to work.

The alert sparkle in Peter's eyes let him know that Peter was totally onto him. It was good to see that expression there again. For the first day or two, Peter had been missing so many of Neal's jokes and references that it had left Neal worried that the brain damage might be permanent, which was a thought that didn't bear thinking about. Now that Peter was a little less drugged and sore, he seemed to be back up to full processing capacity.

"Well, to help you convalesce, I come bearing a care package from El." Peter held up a bag. "Soup, muffins, I'm not sure what else."

"Ooh," Mozzie said, snatching the bag. Peter made a halfhearted attempt to hold onto it before it was pulled away.

"That's not for you," Peter said. "Unless you've fallen into a bog recently."

Mozzie ignored him, rummaging in the bag. "Are these gluten free?"

"I don't know. You'll have to ask my wife."

"Ooh, excellent point." Mozzie whipped out a phone, ignoring Peter's look of despair, and speed-dialed. "Mrs. Suit? I have a question --"

"So how's the head?" Neal asked, pointing to the bruising on the side of Peter's temple. "I don't see El, so I take it you're cleared to drive again?"

Peter touched his forehead reflexively. "Yeah, it's feeling a lot better. No more headaches and dizziness. I'm cleared to work, too -- just in time for the weekend. We're both scheduled to come in on Monday." He looked carefully at Neal. "Think you'll be up for it?"

"Oh ... maybe," Neal said, sinking into the couch cushions. "I guess so." He coughed a couple of times, pathetically. Peter looked unimpressed.

"Mrs. Suit says we're invited over for dinner tomorrow night," Mozzie called.

"I didn't think she was inviting both of you," Peter muttered. "Although, considering my wife, who knows." He leaned on the back of the couch. "I talked to Diana this morning about the Mason investigation, by the way."

"Oh?" Neal said, trying to look vaguely interested and not, say, concerned that something might have been mentioned about a teenage pickpocket climbing a crane.

"Yeah, Mason's lawyered up and not saying much, but Diana said his gang are rolling over like little dominos in return for plea bargains. We should have enough to get Mason off the street for good." A slight smile crossed Peter's face. "Even without any incriminating boxes. You feel like a trip back down there, once we're both up to a hundred percent?"

Mozzie, having finished his conversation with Elizabeth, had drifted closer, pointedly pretending not to listen.

"I doubt there'd be any point," Neal said to both of them. "I don't think it's out there."

Peter raised his eyebrows. "No?"

"No. I'm pretty sure Kate never hid anything on any of those old derelict ships," Neal said. "You could take a team of FBI agents out to the scrapyard and search for weeks, and you wouldn't find a box of bonds."

"Mmm," Peter said. "Sure of that, are you?"

Neal shrugged. "I do know Kate."

Peter gave him a long, I know you're up to something, Caffrey look. Neal returned his best Who, me? innocent expression. Finally Peter half-smiled. "Well, I'll let El know you're looking better. Coming over tomorrow?"

"Wouldn't miss it."

Still wearing that inward-reflecting half-smile, Peter let himself out.

"You gonna tell him about the box?" Mozzie asked, after Peter's steps had died away on the stairs.

"Oh, eventually." Neal grinned. "No need to spoil his fun yet, though. He loves figuring things out about me. Giving him a nice, harmless little mystery to solve will keep him busy and out of Elizabeth's hair until he's back at work." He shrugged, and added, "He gets better faster when he has something more exciting than the New York Times crossword to work on. If he needs a clue, I'll find a way to drop him one."

Mozzie squinted at him. "I really don't know how to feel about this Suit thing sometimes, Neal."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Neal said, and went back to his book.

~

Comments

[leonie_alastair]

This is a delight - I loved Neal and Peter's trust in one another, and that Neal figured out where Kate put the bonds. Great work!

[sholio]

Thank you! :) This was a fun story to write -- I've wanted to do something set in the Rossville boat scrapyard ever since I first read about it (even though the real thing is probably not much like I've depicted it here).

[veleda_k]

Oh, this is fantastic. The plot is excellent--tight, well drawn, exciting. We can really feel the danger the guys are in, even if we're confident in their ability to think their way out of it.

It's also a really original plot. The bare bones are familiar, but there are so many unique elements. And one of those elements is Kate. It's amazing how there she, despite being physically absent. And then Neal's hallucination of her is so powerful. I love the way you wrote Neal's feelings for her, that she's still such a part of him. And that last bit with not-Kate, I have a thing for that kind of thing. It's the kind of thing I would love to see actually filmed, though I can picture it quite well in my mind.

And I love the interplay between Neal, Mozzie, and Peter at the end. Lots of fun, and very right for all of them.

[sholio]

Thank you so much! :) It's been awhile since I've written a plot-oriented heist fic, but I always really enjoy that. The recipient asked for Neal/Kate as one of their pairings, and I enjoyed weaving those elements in, since I haven't written that much fic dealing with them. I'm glad her presence is a tangible element of the fic; I was hoping for that.