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Three Times Neal Ran (and one time he was found) – 7. Abandon
Title: Three Times Neal Ran (and one time he was found) – 7. Abandon
Index Post: [Fic][White Collar] Three Times Neal Ran (and one time he was found) – Index
There's a phone tapping against his forehead.
It takes Neal a while to realize that. Separate the physical sense of the phone bumping his skin from the aural quality of rain on the pavement. When he separates that, he still has to bring the phone down to eye level, stare at it in his hand, work through how it got there and what it's meant to be doing, now. Then he flips it open and stares at its indicators – two bars, a sliver of battery – and the jumble of numbers and letters on the buttons.
Think. There's a reason for this. There's a way he can use this to his advantage.
What is it?
A car rumbling down the street outside startles him, gets him scrambling back into the dark recesses of the garage and huddling there, frozen except for the shivering. He remembers running, remembers fear, remembers–
Oh. Right.
He needs to call Peter.
Mozzie likes to lament that these days, no one remembers their friends' numbers. They trust it all to contact lists and smartphones, as if the technology can't be lost, stolen, hacked, or turned against you. Anyone Mozzie has trained knows better; gets an encyclopedic memory for numbers and addresses, trains in muscle memory for anyone they might need to contact until they can dial blindfolded, drunk, without feeling in their thumbs, and strung up by their ankles over a sharkpit.
Neal is mostly not any of those things, but dials anyway.
The phone barely has a chance to ring before the other end picks up, sounding wound-up and short-tempered. "Peter Burke."
The speed takes Neal by surprise. Jars what little forethought he'd scraped together right out of his mind. He opens his mouth, but can't remember what he was supposed to be saying – Hey, maybe; maybe there's details on the case that he needs to share, but what was he working on, a moment ago?
He'd been looking for Kate. Peter didn't approve of him looking for Kate.
There's a palpable sense of annoyance from somewhere, and it wanders back into Neal's awareness that on the other end of the line, Peter is dealing with a missing-or-fled consultant and probably a Bureau manhunt and now an unknown caller from an unknown number who's just breathing into the phone. His voice gets sharper faster than Neal's ever heard it. "This is Special Agent Peter Burke, FBI. Who is this?"
Words don't come.
In the background he hears – or thinks he hears – someone saying start a trace, thinks he hears the black strap of tension humming out of the interference on the line.
"No police," he says, and feels a yellow snap of surprise lash out and catch him, factory-direct from the phone to his brain. Bright florescent lights, bland Bureau walls, and if it weren't for the pounding in his head he could believe he was there now; the faint background scent of Bureau coffee and paper files and some clerk's leftover lunch, Chinese and deli sandwiches for the agents working late, and the salt of the sea. Salt of the sea and a storm breeze. Sirens.
"Neal?" Peter says.
"No police," he repeats.
"Neal, where the hell–"
He's gone.
"–the hell do you think you're going with that?"
Neal stops and turns. Wind and rain are whipping over the balustrade, and he's holding something – he looks down, and sees a box of flares in his hands; yellow-and-black striped box, with CAUTION in big, bold letters across it. He looks up again. "Mozzie, now really isn't a good time."
"You're setting off a flare in the middle of a thunderstorm," Mozzie says, and blusters up to him. A moment later he's jerking the box out of Neal's hands, tossing it down onto a table, turning back to him. "Leaving aside the absolute futility of that, you think you can just send up a flare and Peter will see it before Collins will? You know Collins is on the island!"
"He's not looking for a flare," Neal says. Mozzie doesn't buy that.
"You think the NYPD doesn't know how to trace a call?"
"NYPD." Neal seizes on that. "That is who's after me? It's the NYPD?"
"It doesn't matter!" Mozzie is working himself into a state, now. "What matters is that you're only safe as long as you're off the radar. This–" he gesticulates over the flare box, "is not staying off the radar!"
"I can't just hide forever and hope everything will work itself out without me," Neal snaps, reaching for the flare box. "I have to do something."
"Yeah. Something. Not this." Mozzie interposes himself between Neal and the box, spreading his hands. "Neal, you have to listen to me. I'm the one keeping you safe, here. The Suit might have wanted you to run, but when you ran, you came to me. Do you remember that? The Suit can't protect you!"
"Then what do you want me to do?" Neal demands. "You said we had to find Peter. If we get to Peter, we can end this."
"I remember telling you to find Peter, not make it really obvious where you were hiding."
"Well, what do you suggest?" Neal's temper spikes. "I already broke into his house! It didn't help."
Mozzie stills, as much as he ever stills; he's got that look on his face, the one he put on when Neal told him he'd told Kate the stash was in San Diego, the one he put on when Neal told him he had the art manifest. "This is about that, isn't it? You still feel bad because I had you break into the Suit family safe."
"What?"
"Neal, I have only ever tried to help you," Mozzie says. Neal's not too angry for that to hurt, but it doesn't hurt enough to drown out the anger.
"I know that," he says. And he does. But it's not the point, and it's not–
"I know you think this isn't helping," Mozzie says, and turns around to pick up the flares. "But it has to be done. Now. We need to ditch this, and–"
And the flare box buzzes. Mozzie drops it.
Both of them step back, eyeing it with fear. Neal looks to Mozzie, then crouches down – carefully, carefully – and eases the lid open. The box is empty but for one thing.
Brown paper, German lettering. Sawdust soaked in nitroglycerine, formed into sticks, wrapped into a bundle, stashed carefully away as on a German sub.
Dynamite.
"Neal," Adler says, and the sirens outside have gone silent but are still flashing bright. The night breeze is soaking-cold, the glass spread across the livingroom like an early, brutal frost, and behind him, Peter reaches for his gun.
"Neal," Peter says, and Neal startles. His fingertips are numb, and something is biting into his palm. After a moment he realizes it's a phone. "Don't hang up."
He swallows, two or three times. "Yeah."
"We're tracing the call now to get a read on your location. We can't do that if you hang up again. You understand me?"
You think the NYPD can't trace a phone?
"Yeah," he says. "I understand you."
Peter exhales. "Start telling me what happened."
"You weren't there," Neal says. "You didn't see it happen."
"This again?" Mozzie asks, hands splayed over the dynamite as though he can keep it calm. "You're talking about Kate and the plane." Then, when Neal doesn't confirm that, "You're talking about the U-boat."
Neal doesn't agree or disagree.
"I had your back on that," Mozzie says.
"You almost got me blown up, shot by Adler, and arrested by Peter," Neal says. "And then you tried to bully me into choosing between my life in New York and my friendship with you."
"I shared the score of a century with you," Mozzie says. His voice is angry, hurt. Same things Neal is feeling; almost the same reasons. Like they're the same person. "The Neal I knew – the Neal I worked with, for all those years – he would have been happy." Something occurs to him. "You were happy."
"No. I wasn't," Neal says.
"Yes, you were." Mozzie's hands land on the flare-box lid, the dynamite forgotten. "You could have backed out at any time, and I would have gone and fenced the treasure without you. But you were in it. You didn't say 'No'. You said, 'We take our time, we do this right.' And don't think I didn't see the look on your face when you walked into a warehouse piled high with art and jewels!"
That's wrong. That isn't right at all. "You weren't there."
"Neal, I'm you!" Mozzie yells.
Feels like he's on the run, again. Backed into a corner, no way out, no way through. Alone. "Then why are we doing this?"
"You know why Kate left you?" Mozzie demands. "Why – why you and Alex will never get together? Why Peter still doesn't trust you, why Sara broke up with you?" He's working himself up into a declamation, now. "Because you don't know how to tell the truth. You only know how to tell people what they want to hear, and I get that. I'm the only person in your life who does."
"Okay – stop," Neal says, and reaches for the dynamite. He doesn't know if they bluffed with wires sixty years ago, and hasn't bothered to find out; Mozzie would be disappointed in him, if he knew. Know everything. But he'd had bigger things to worry about, and then it hadn't mattered, and then they were running. Running in place, mostly. But running.
"You know what this is about?" Mozzie asks.
"I don't care," Neal says. He needs something sharp. Wire cutters, preferably. Anything that cuts. Scissors, a knife, a reciprocating saw. "I need to focus. Stop talking."
"No. I won't stop talking." Mozzie is still standing above him. "You backed yourself into a corner because for once in your life, you couldn't have everything you wanted, and you had to make a choice. That's why you're upset. You couldn't choose between the score, and New York."
"Don't," Neal warns.
"You couldn't choose between the score and Adler," Mozzie presses on. "New York and Kate. You always want to have it all, and then you choke, and–"
"Stop," Neal says.
"Yeah, well," Mozzie says, "we can't all be Neal Caffrey." He stands. "Some of us have to sacrifice to get what we want. Some of us sacrifice a lot to help you get what you want! You dragged your heels until Keller came looking for the treasure, and we had to hand over almost everything – and after all that, I still got you out of New York when your fed friends couldn't give you the life you deserved, and after all that, you're still blaming me for what happened?"
The dynamite is ticking. "No, Mozzie, no, I don't blame you–"
"Yeah. Well," Mozzie says again; not so much words as a verbal roadblock, cutting off that bridge. "I still have your back. Whether or not you want it."
Midas, Neal thinks. Died of hunger because he wished for riches beyond compare. Couldn't eat gold. There's no Enigma, here, no keyboard to accept his answer, and the dynamite is counting down to something.
He looks up at Mozzie. "Why?"
Mozzie is watching him. "You know why," he says.
"I don't know why," Neal says, and startles. There's no dynamite, but there's an auto-shop door and a counter and a tire display, and he hadn't meant to say that out loud. Or, he had, but not into the phone, not–
The battery is dead, the line silent and empty.
Outside, the wind is picking up.
"I don't know," Neal repeats, into the silence. Then he eases himself up, testing the environment, ready to duck if anyone levels a gun at him. He eases to the door and presses his ear against the metal, holding his rough breath in his chest; one, two, three, and over the hammering of his heart, he can hear noise on the street.
I don't know.
Know everything.
Here's what he knows:
He's alone.
He's somewhere in a neighborhood without a lot of night traffic, but with a police presence which may or may not be looking for him. He's cold, injured, and hallucinating, not thinking clearly. He's called Peter, and Peter knows he's in trouble, and Peter is looking for him. He's not on his anklet. He's been running.
Here's what he doesn't know:
Whether the trace was completed; whether Peter knows how to find him.
Whether whoever's hunting him knows.
How long he's been crouching in this auto shop; what kinds of hours the shop owner keeps, what hour it is, whether the shop has a silent alarm.
How long he's going to last, blacking out and coming to, stumbling on an injured leg and with no idea when was the last time he's slept, drunk, eaten.
How easy it'll be to pick him off the moment he's detained by anyone.
How easy he'll be to detain.
There aren't a lot of things you can trust in this world, and of the things you can trust, you have to know how far they're trustable. Right now, he's willing to trust Peter to the limits of FBI-capable response and human endurance; trouble is, he's been on the run for a long time, and he knows how far back those limits can keep a person. The NYPD is thick on the ground, and instinct says not to get caught, and instinct has gotten him this far.
His instinct says, run.
He runs.
Index Post: [Fic][White Collar] Three Times Neal Ran (and one time he was found) – Index
( )
There's a phone tapping against his forehead.
It takes Neal a while to realize that. Separate the physical sense of the phone bumping his skin from the aural quality of rain on the pavement. When he separates that, he still has to bring the phone down to eye level, stare at it in his hand, work through how it got there and what it's meant to be doing, now. Then he flips it open and stares at its indicators – two bars, a sliver of battery – and the jumble of numbers and letters on the buttons.
Think. There's a reason for this. There's a way he can use this to his advantage.
What is it?
A car rumbling down the street outside startles him, gets him scrambling back into the dark recesses of the garage and huddling there, frozen except for the shivering. He remembers running, remembers fear, remembers–
Oh. Right.
He needs to call Peter.
Mozzie likes to lament that these days, no one remembers their friends' numbers. They trust it all to contact lists and smartphones, as if the technology can't be lost, stolen, hacked, or turned against you. Anyone Mozzie has trained knows better; gets an encyclopedic memory for numbers and addresses, trains in muscle memory for anyone they might need to contact until they can dial blindfolded, drunk, without feeling in their thumbs, and strung up by their ankles over a sharkpit.
Neal is mostly not any of those things, but dials anyway.
The phone barely has a chance to ring before the other end picks up, sounding wound-up and short-tempered. "Peter Burke."
The speed takes Neal by surprise. Jars what little forethought he'd scraped together right out of his mind. He opens his mouth, but can't remember what he was supposed to be saying – Hey, maybe; maybe there's details on the case that he needs to share, but what was he working on, a moment ago?
He'd been looking for Kate. Peter didn't approve of him looking for Kate.
There's a palpable sense of annoyance from somewhere, and it wanders back into Neal's awareness that on the other end of the line, Peter is dealing with a missing-or-fled consultant and probably a Bureau manhunt and now an unknown caller from an unknown number who's just breathing into the phone. His voice gets sharper faster than Neal's ever heard it. "This is Special Agent Peter Burke, FBI. Who is this?"
Words don't come.
In the background he hears – or thinks he hears – someone saying start a trace, thinks he hears the black strap of tension humming out of the interference on the line.
"No police," he says, and feels a yellow snap of surprise lash out and catch him, factory-direct from the phone to his brain. Bright florescent lights, bland Bureau walls, and if it weren't for the pounding in his head he could believe he was there now; the faint background scent of Bureau coffee and paper files and some clerk's leftover lunch, Chinese and deli sandwiches for the agents working late, and the salt of the sea. Salt of the sea and a storm breeze. Sirens.
"Neal?" Peter says.
"No police," he repeats.
"Neal, where the hell–"
He's gone.
(iii)
"–the hell do you think you're going with that?"
Neal stops and turns. Wind and rain are whipping over the balustrade, and he's holding something – he looks down, and sees a box of flares in his hands; yellow-and-black striped box, with CAUTION in big, bold letters across it. He looks up again. "Mozzie, now really isn't a good time."
"You're setting off a flare in the middle of a thunderstorm," Mozzie says, and blusters up to him. A moment later he's jerking the box out of Neal's hands, tossing it down onto a table, turning back to him. "Leaving aside the absolute futility of that, you think you can just send up a flare and Peter will see it before Collins will? You know Collins is on the island!"
"He's not looking for a flare," Neal says. Mozzie doesn't buy that.
"You think the NYPD doesn't know how to trace a call?"
"NYPD." Neal seizes on that. "That is who's after me? It's the NYPD?"
"It doesn't matter!" Mozzie is working himself into a state, now. "What matters is that you're only safe as long as you're off the radar. This–" he gesticulates over the flare box, "is not staying off the radar!"
"I can't just hide forever and hope everything will work itself out without me," Neal snaps, reaching for the flare box. "I have to do something."
"Yeah. Something. Not this." Mozzie interposes himself between Neal and the box, spreading his hands. "Neal, you have to listen to me. I'm the one keeping you safe, here. The Suit might have wanted you to run, but when you ran, you came to me. Do you remember that? The Suit can't protect you!"
"Then what do you want me to do?" Neal demands. "You said we had to find Peter. If we get to Peter, we can end this."
"I remember telling you to find Peter, not make it really obvious where you were hiding."
"Well, what do you suggest?" Neal's temper spikes. "I already broke into his house! It didn't help."
Mozzie stills, as much as he ever stills; he's got that look on his face, the one he put on when Neal told him he'd told Kate the stash was in San Diego, the one he put on when Neal told him he had the art manifest. "This is about that, isn't it? You still feel bad because I had you break into the Suit family safe."
"What?"
"Neal, I have only ever tried to help you," Mozzie says. Neal's not too angry for that to hurt, but it doesn't hurt enough to drown out the anger.
"I know that," he says. And he does. But it's not the point, and it's not–
"I know you think this isn't helping," Mozzie says, and turns around to pick up the flares. "But it has to be done. Now. We need to ditch this, and–"
And the flare box buzzes. Mozzie drops it.
Both of them step back, eyeing it with fear. Neal looks to Mozzie, then crouches down – carefully, carefully – and eases the lid open. The box is empty but for one thing.
Brown paper, German lettering. Sawdust soaked in nitroglycerine, formed into sticks, wrapped into a bundle, stashed carefully away as on a German sub.
Dynamite.
(i)
"Neal," Adler says, and the sirens outside have gone silent but are still flashing bright. The night breeze is soaking-cold, the glass spread across the livingroom like an early, brutal frost, and behind him, Peter reaches for his gun.
( )
"Neal," Peter says, and Neal startles. His fingertips are numb, and something is biting into his palm. After a moment he realizes it's a phone. "Don't hang up."
He swallows, two or three times. "Yeah."
"We're tracing the call now to get a read on your location. We can't do that if you hang up again. You understand me?"
You think the NYPD can't trace a phone?
"Yeah," he says. "I understand you."
Peter exhales. "Start telling me what happened."
(iii)
"You weren't there," Neal says. "You didn't see it happen."
"This again?" Mozzie asks, hands splayed over the dynamite as though he can keep it calm. "You're talking about Kate and the plane." Then, when Neal doesn't confirm that, "You're talking about the U-boat."
Neal doesn't agree or disagree.
"I had your back on that," Mozzie says.
"You almost got me blown up, shot by Adler, and arrested by Peter," Neal says. "And then you tried to bully me into choosing between my life in New York and my friendship with you."
"I shared the score of a century with you," Mozzie says. His voice is angry, hurt. Same things Neal is feeling; almost the same reasons. Like they're the same person. "The Neal I knew – the Neal I worked with, for all those years – he would have been happy." Something occurs to him. "You were happy."
"No. I wasn't," Neal says.
"Yes, you were." Mozzie's hands land on the flare-box lid, the dynamite forgotten. "You could have backed out at any time, and I would have gone and fenced the treasure without you. But you were in it. You didn't say 'No'. You said, 'We take our time, we do this right.' And don't think I didn't see the look on your face when you walked into a warehouse piled high with art and jewels!"
That's wrong. That isn't right at all. "You weren't there."
"Neal, I'm you!" Mozzie yells.
Feels like he's on the run, again. Backed into a corner, no way out, no way through. Alone. "Then why are we doing this?"
"You know why Kate left you?" Mozzie demands. "Why – why you and Alex will never get together? Why Peter still doesn't trust you, why Sara broke up with you?" He's working himself up into a declamation, now. "Because you don't know how to tell the truth. You only know how to tell people what they want to hear, and I get that. I'm the only person in your life who does."
"Okay – stop," Neal says, and reaches for the dynamite. He doesn't know if they bluffed with wires sixty years ago, and hasn't bothered to find out; Mozzie would be disappointed in him, if he knew. Know everything. But he'd had bigger things to worry about, and then it hadn't mattered, and then they were running. Running in place, mostly. But running.
"You know what this is about?" Mozzie asks.
"I don't care," Neal says. He needs something sharp. Wire cutters, preferably. Anything that cuts. Scissors, a knife, a reciprocating saw. "I need to focus. Stop talking."
"No. I won't stop talking." Mozzie is still standing above him. "You backed yourself into a corner because for once in your life, you couldn't have everything you wanted, and you had to make a choice. That's why you're upset. You couldn't choose between the score, and New York."
"Don't," Neal warns.
"You couldn't choose between the score and Adler," Mozzie presses on. "New York and Kate. You always want to have it all, and then you choke, and–"
"Stop," Neal says.
"Yeah, well," Mozzie says, "we can't all be Neal Caffrey." He stands. "Some of us have to sacrifice to get what we want. Some of us sacrifice a lot to help you get what you want! You dragged your heels until Keller came looking for the treasure, and we had to hand over almost everything – and after all that, I still got you out of New York when your fed friends couldn't give you the life you deserved, and after all that, you're still blaming me for what happened?"
The dynamite is ticking. "No, Mozzie, no, I don't blame you–"
"Yeah. Well," Mozzie says again; not so much words as a verbal roadblock, cutting off that bridge. "I still have your back. Whether or not you want it."
Midas, Neal thinks. Died of hunger because he wished for riches beyond compare. Couldn't eat gold. There's no Enigma, here, no keyboard to accept his answer, and the dynamite is counting down to something.
He looks up at Mozzie. "Why?"
Mozzie is watching him. "You know why," he says.
( )
"I don't know why," Neal says, and startles. There's no dynamite, but there's an auto-shop door and a counter and a tire display, and he hadn't meant to say that out loud. Or, he had, but not into the phone, not–
The battery is dead, the line silent and empty.
Outside, the wind is picking up.
"I don't know," Neal repeats, into the silence. Then he eases himself up, testing the environment, ready to duck if anyone levels a gun at him. He eases to the door and presses his ear against the metal, holding his rough breath in his chest; one, two, three, and over the hammering of his heart, he can hear noise on the street.
I don't know.
Know everything.
Here's what he knows:
He's alone.
He's somewhere in a neighborhood without a lot of night traffic, but with a police presence which may or may not be looking for him. He's cold, injured, and hallucinating, not thinking clearly. He's called Peter, and Peter knows he's in trouble, and Peter is looking for him. He's not on his anklet. He's been running.
Here's what he doesn't know:
Whether the trace was completed; whether Peter knows how to find him.
Whether whoever's hunting him knows.
How long he's been crouching in this auto shop; what kinds of hours the shop owner keeps, what hour it is, whether the shop has a silent alarm.
How long he's going to last, blacking out and coming to, stumbling on an injured leg and with no idea when was the last time he's slept, drunk, eaten.
How easy it'll be to pick him off the moment he's detained by anyone.
How easy he'll be to detain.
There aren't a lot of things you can trust in this world, and of the things you can trust, you have to know how far they're trustable. Right now, he's willing to trust Peter to the limits of FBI-capable response and human endurance; trouble is, he's been on the run for a long time, and he knows how far back those limits can keep a person. The NYPD is thick on the ground, and instinct says not to get caught, and instinct has gotten him this far.
His instinct says, run.
He runs.