Title: Locked Up
Author:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
walking_tornado
Artist:sheenianni
Beta:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
firesign10
Fandom: White Collar
Pairing: Sara/Neal
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: none
Wordcount: ~6200
Summary: A tip in London sends Sara back to New York on the trail of her missing sister.
(click on image to go the art masterpost)
Notes:
Many thanks tosheenianni for her patience and to the mods of ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
wc_reverse_bb for the extension. A huge bag of candy to my beta, firesign10, for another amazing turn-around! Remaining mistakes are mine.
AO3
NOW
Neal
The phone didn’t ring more than once before Neal snatched it up, setting his glass down too hard so that the wine sloshed and spilled onto the kitchen table. The call display flashed an 866 number Neal didn’t recognize.
“Sara?” He knew he must sound desperate. The spilled wine spread out until it reached the edge and began to drip like blood onto the floor. He ignored both it and the potential stain on June’s wooden floor.
“Collect call from Joanne Charles,” an automated voice announced. “Do you accept the charges?”
“Yes. . . Joanne?”
“Neal?”
His heart rose to his throat as a confusing mix of relief washed over him at hearing Sara’s voice. Fear at how scared she sounded quickly followed.
THEN
Sara
“Peter, please.” Sara willed all the desperation she felt into those two words. It must have been somewhat effective because Peter winced.
“I can’t. You know I can’t,” he said. His voice was firm, but he shifted his eyes away from her before he finished.
“Just five minutes. Just to talk.” She hated having to beg, but her requests through the usual channels had been denied.
“Sara, she’s a protected witness. In an ongoing investigation. I can’t get you in to see her.”
“You could,” Sara insisted. “If you— ”
“I would need a damned good reason to question their star witness.”
“She's my sister!”
He shook his head and she knew what he was going to say before he spoke. “It’s not enough. We don’t even know if your source is credible.”
“Well, you would if you questioned her.” Sara knew the edge of anger in her voice was the wrong tack to take, but it slipped out anyway.
“Sara . . .” Peter pursed his lips together and regarded her silently. She could see him search for something to offer her. “I can probably arrange a meeting once she testifies,” he said, following an uncomfortable moment of silence. “I can put in a request to speak with her. After the trial.”
The room wavered as her eyes teared in frustration. That could be months away. “Peter . . .”
“That’s all I can do.”
Neal had arrived by the time she strode out of Peter’s office. She didn’t want to see him. Not now, with her eyes all puffy and her face flushed in barely suppressed anger. The plan had been to get Peter’s help and be gone before Neal sauntered in. Failure on all counts. He hadn’t seen her yet, but she’d have to walk past his desk to get to the elevator — either that or take a detour around the office to avoid him and be even more conspicuous.
Showing off for anyone who might be watching, Neal expertly flipped his hat down his arm, and Sara felt the action tug a twisted smile. Seeing him hurt.
“Sara,” Neal said, and the hat rolled to his desk, already forgotten. He took a step towards her and then stopped. She wondered what he saw in her face.
Sara, will you marry me? She still heard the echo of his words from the Empire State building. She had the clearest memory of him before her on one knee, and she felt the sharp knife of regret as she wished, again, for it to be real.
At least now she was too angry, thanks to Peter, for it to be awkward.
“Neal.” Sara’s greeting was clipped and curt, and she slowed but continued on her way to the elevators. She paused at the glass doors out of the White Collar division, and then turned back to regard Neal.
He was not going to like what she needed to do.
Neal
Neal flipped his hat down the length of his arm, a fancy trick that usually earned him a few smiles from the agents around him, all hard at work on interminably boring mortgage schemes or whatnot. This time no one even noticed. They were all busily trying to appear as though all their attention wasn’t focused on Peter’s office. He’d frequently had cause to thank their appalling lack of subterfuge, but now that they played on the same team, he’d been sharing some tips so their obviousness wouldn’t impinge his cover. Looks like a refresher would be useful. He’d have to talk to Peter about setting up a training workshop. Clinton at least had improved. With enough work (and a bit of tarnish to those straight-laced morals) Neal could make a decent con man out of him.
“You owe me.” Neal froze. It . . . sounded like Sara. Neal couldn’t see the face of the person in Peter’s office, but he knew, quite intimately, the silhouette that stood there.
Peter’s response wasn’t nearly as loud, but from his body language, Neal figured it was something along the lines of, “Maybe I do, but no.”
The muffled voices from Peter’s office became louder. It didn’t take an expert to deduce Sara’s mood, the strident voice, the big, abrupt gestures. When she cared, she cared passionately. And Peter appeared to have placed himself in her way. Interesting. With a sudden spin, Sara pushed open the glass door and strode out, mouth pinched tight, eyes determined.
God, she was beautiful. Neal automatically flipped the hat again as he processed Sara’s return. Sara had been in London, last he’d heard. He glanced at Clinton, who was long past being impressed by Neal's tricks, and who was currently immersed in a pedantic fraudulent check case. Neal had glanced at the folder yesterday afternoon — a novice criminal who wouldn’t get far — and decided it wasn’t interesting enough for them to bother with, unless Peter insisted.
“Sara,” Neal began as she came closer.
“Neal. Not now.” She didn't stop as she strode towards the elevator. Then she seemed to reconsider. Her step slowed and she stopped to turn back to him.
“We should catch up later,” she said, and Neal was captivated by eyes that shone with intensity.
“I think I still owe you a dinner,” he offered. A twitch of her cheek betrayed that she was biting the inside of her lip, and he felt an overwhelming urge to help fix whatever was wrong. Just as she was about to say something — hopefully an explanation — her focus shifted to Peter who’d walked out of his office, and then the anger in Sara’s eyes was back.
“Perfect. I’ll see you tonight,” she said. Her eyes flashed again towards Peter who was making a bee line to Neal’s desk.
“Tonight,” Neal agreed, as Peter walked up.
“Sara . . .” Peter began, but Sara cut him off.
“You made your position perfectly clear, Agent Burke.” Neal suppressed a wince at the coldness of her tone. “Neal,” she said before turning to walk decisively to the elevator.
Neal took a step to follow her, but Peter stopped him.
“Neal,” he called. “Neal,” he repeated louder, with a two-fingered summons, when Neal made no motion to comply.
“Peter, what did Sara —”
“Neal.” This time it was a warning to shut up. “The Peterson case,” Peter deflected. “We’re going to interview the —”
“Peter! Sara?”
Peter shook his head, but didn’t appear surprised. “Neal . . .” It was impressive how Peter could use one little name as a shorthand to so many meanings. This time it was a plea to be reasonable.
“What did Sara want?”
“It was a private matter,” Peter said.
“She seemed pissed.”
Peter huffed a laugh, and looked towards the elevator with apparent regret. “Oh, she was.” He studied Neal a long while, much as Sara had done. “I can’t say any more. It’s a personal matter.” The regretful half-smile he gave Neal might have been meant to soften the blow. It didn’t. Sara’s personal matters were no longer his. Neal understood, but it stung. Then again, he’d never paid much attention to boundaries, and Peter knew it.
“She’s here unofficially, still working out of London, so she won’t be staying long,” Peter said. “Just don’t do anything stupid.”
***
The candles lent the room a soft, seductive glow. Neal studied the room with a small frown, then nodded in satisfaction as he lit a single additional candle above the mantlepiece. Perfect. To one side of the kitchen table, a bottle of sparkling dry Vouvray rested on ice, to complement the Coquilles St-Jacques in the oven. Reminded, Neal took two long strides to the oven and flicked on the light to see the cheese bubbling but not yet browned. Soon.
The knock at the door—too light to be Peter, not hesitant enough to be June, and Mozzie, of course, never bothered to knock—brought a smile to his face. He'd missed her. He understood why she had to leave, and it seemed like their timing never had been right, but now he was looking forward to this meal with an eagerness that surprised him. Part of that was finding out what she and Peter had argued about. He’d never been able to resist a mystery and Peter’s warnings had done nothing but heighten his need to know: a fact Peter was well aware of, if today’s irritated sighs and renewed lectures on the letter of the law were any indication.
Sara’s smile made Neal’s breath hitch, but he covered with the ease born of a lifetime of play-acting. Then she was in the room and he was hit with the overwhelming desire to paint. Copper swirls and laughing reds, with a bright, soft brown. Gorgeous.
“Let me take that,” Neal offered, and he draped her coat on the bed.
“The place looks beautiful,” Sara said, and Neal gave her a self-deprecating shrug.
“How’s London?”
“Things are good. Really good.”
“Anyone I should know about?”
“Yeah. Sort of. Nothing serious.” In the awkward silence that followed, Neal stared. Her hair was longer, and fell in soft curls like Botticelli’s Venus, but darker. . . more like Klimt’s Danae. She was dressed impeccably, as always—a Dolce and Gabbana if he wasn’t mistaken. London seemed to agree with her. He thought again, as he had so frequently since she’d left, of the look in her eyes as he proposed. A perfect moment.
They had never been very good at small talk and as Neal poured her a glass of the Vouvray, she went straight to business. “I need a favor.”
Neal set one of the Coquilles in front of her. “So I gathered. What did Peter do?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head, clearly not wanting to discuss Peter. “It’s just—”
The door opening startled both of them. Neal hoped his glare conveyed a fraction of his irritation.
“The water delivery vans in this city have learned far too much from Il Principe. Machiavelli would be pleased. Did you know . . .” Mozzie took three steps into the room before he stopped and blinked at Sara. “Sara’s here!” he said with surprise.
“I noticed,” Neal said, as he walked to the door. “The better question is what are you doing here. I thought we were meeting in the park tomorrow.”
“Mmmm,” Mozzie said noncommittally. “I should go.”
Neal bit off a quip in favor of holding the door open for his friend’s quicker exit.
“Actually,” Sara said,“Mozzie should stay.”
“What?” Neal said in shock, but Mozzie spoke before he could frame a better question.
“Excellent!” Mozzie quickly seated himself at the table, and poured himself some wine into Neal’s glass. He turned up his nose at the creamy seafood that steamed in front of him, and pushed it away with a muttered, “Lactose—are you trying to kill me?”
“Sounding better and better,” Neal muttered as he put aside his hopes for the evening, but neither was listening to him.
“I need your help,” Sara said again. “Yours and Mozzie’s.”
“You have it,” Neal said, volunteering them both. Helping her had never been in question.
The relief in her eyes at his simple statement more than made up for the strangled cough from Mozzie who set down his wine glass with more noise than was strictly necessary. Sara smiled with too many teeth now, and Neal knew he wouldn’t like what was coming next.
“I need you to get me into a federal prison.”
“Into a federal prison,” Neal repeated, but was drowned out by Mozzie’s bark of laughter.
“Hah! Very funny,” Mozzie said. He had stood up to refill his glass, emptying the last of the Vouvray.
“I need to talk to an inmate,” Sara continued.
“Far be it for me to jump through big brother’s hoops, but have you requested to—” Mozzie began
“Yes!” Sara said, and then took a breath before continuing so she wouldn’t vent her frustration on the only two people who might help her. “Yes. I sent in a request, and a second one, and I called the warden.”
“And you talked to Peter,” Neal added with a nod, connecting the dots.
“Yeah. And he said no, like the others.”
“Now I am intrigued,” Mozzie put in, “and terrified. Our government is behind the abduction of thousands of dissenters, and once FEMA gets its evil claws on—”
“Not now, Mozzie,” Sara said, and to Neal’s surprise, Mozzie stopped his imminent rant. Sara looked pleadingly at Neal. “My sister. Emily. I told you about her.”
“Disappeared when your were thirteen, yeah, I remember.”
“After all these years, I have a lead.”
NOW
Sara
Sara feared that Neal wouldn’t accept her call. He was bound to be upset, but she hadn’t been able to wait any longer, and with Mozzie’s fake id in her pocket and the latex fingerprints he provided, any action she took wouldn’t be tied to her real self. It was freeing. Creating a fake police record for her fake self had been no trouble for Mozzie, and he took childish delight in regaling her with her alter-ego’s purported life of violent crime. Joanne wasn’t someone Sara would want to mess with.
The phone line crackled, and she knew someone was listening in to her conversation with Neal. There was no expectation of privacy here.
Her breath hitched before she spoke. “I think I made a huge mistake.” She’d thought she’d had realistic expectation about how hard this charade would be. She’d been wrong.
There was nothing to do but think, most often about things she didn’t want to think about. It would have been pleasant to read but like everything else, library privileges had to be earned, and she simply hadn’t been there long enough to prove herself, either to the warden or to her fellow prisoners. How had someone as dynamic as Neal been able to stand the enforced idleness for four years? Her testimony had been a part of what had locked him away. She’d had a lot of time to think about that since she’d arrived.
Sara’s knees jumped restlessly as she sat on her thin mattress and listened to her cellmate complain that her smuggled phone had been seized so that she could no longer talk to her sister. Sara recognized the faster cadence that signified the woman had taken something recently. A few days ago her roommate begun trying to pimp her out to the second shift night guard. The faked camaraderie had taken more ominous overtones as the woman’s plans developed.
“I won’t do it.” Sara had shaken her head, without taking her eyes from her roommate, whose array of crude prison tattoos writhed as she flexed her arms in her orange jumpsuit.
“You will. Hell, it’s not so bad, I’d do him myself but he has a thing for redheads. Five minutes and we have ourselves a cell phone. I know you’d like one. You can talk to that fancy lawyer of yours.”
“No.” Sara wondered what expression was on her face, because the woman’s eyes narrowed and the cajoling tone shifted.
“You think you’re better than me, bitch?”
THEN
Neal
“What kind of lead?” Mozzie asked.
“An inmate, Lillian Perling, right here in New York, knows where she my sister is, and I can’t get in to see her.”
Neal frowned. “But Peter. . .”
“Could do it, but he won’t. Please.”
“If Peter had said yes,” Neal said, “you weren’t going to come see me.”
Sara gave him a small, sad smile. “No.”
He’d expected it, but it still hurt. “I thought we were friends.”
“It’s just . . . you have this tendency to distract me. I can’t be distracted. Not now. Besides, the last time we spoke, you proposed,” Sara said, acknowledging the elephant in the room with a patina of bravado that Neal clearly saw through. “How you going to top that, Caffrey?”
That elephant was crushing them both. Make it real. He heard the unspoken words. But with everything going on, and having to regain Peter’s trust after things with his father fell apart, he didn’t want to put her in harm’s way; he cared about her too much to tangle her up in his mess.
For once in his life, he didn’t take the dare. “What do you need?”
“I need a cover, and a way to get into the prison.”
“Easy to get in,” Mozzie said. “It’s the getting out again that’s more difficult.”
“Neal did it.”
“No,” Neal said. He’d planned the escape for years, painstakingly laying the necessary groundwork — more of a habitual exercise to pass the time, and one that he hadn’t really intended to use. Until Kate’s last visit it had been just a backup in case he might need an out someday. But the thought of Sara behind bars. . . “There’s got to be a better way.”
“Dammit!” Sara paced a step backwards, holding her arms stiffly, as if it was taking every effort to stop from screaming. The lack of poise was disturbingly un-Sara-like. “I need to talk to her!”
“Give me time to come up with something,” Neal asked.
“There isn’t—”
“Two days,” Neal’s hands came up in a combination of placating and pleading. “Give me two days. Prison is . . . not a place you want to be. Give a couple days to come up with something else.”
“Fine.”
NOW
Sara
“Where are you?’ Neal asked. Hearing his voice, the first friendly voice in weeks, almost brought her to tears. She blinked them back. They were watching her, the guards and the inmates. I’m out of my depth, she thought, but remained quiet. She rubbed at her shoulder, where bruised had begun to turn her skin into a painful palette of colours.
On Thursday the inmates in protective custody spend time in the courtyard, Care was taken that they never mix with the general population. She’d seen Lillian Perling from a distance—or at least she thought it was her. She simply hadn’t worked out how to speak to the woman, until now.
“You’ve been assigned to clean Ward Six,” the warden had told Sara on her second day of incarceration (not including the week she’d spent in county jail while waiting for the cogs of justice to grind her up). She just nodded, and he regarded her without speaking for longer than was comfortable.
“The request came through your lawyer,” he scanned the paper in front of him. “Haversham,” he read. Sara perked up at the name. She hadn’t asked Mozzie to help, other than with the new id, but she was grateful that he had. She hadn’t yet figured out a way to talk to Perling, but proximity would definitely help. “This isn’t going to do you any favors in here,” the warden continued. “You haven’t been here long enough to get work assignment. Be careful. Stepping on toes in here is dangerous.”
She took note of his words but it was two more days before she began her first day of her work assignment and heard the first rumblings of trouble.
She could hear her cellmate’s indignation from clear across the cafeteria. “Who the hell did Red Riding Hood do to get that?”
***
Ward Six housed solitary confinement as well as those in protective custody, and the prisoners in this block had no contact with one another. It was several days of observation before Sara was able to make herself an opportunity to contact Lillian Perling.
The corridor echoed with only three sets of steps: the guard’s, Sara’s, and an older inmate’s. The elderly woman bore a jagged scar down her cheek. She never introduced herself, and Sara never asked.
“Here,” the guard said. One room was open on the left side of the corridor, The one further down the hall would have to be Perling’s, Sara thought, unless the old blueprints she’d found had been upgraded. By the look and smell of the place, she thought not.
She hated the smell of solitary: piss and bleach. Cleaning the cells was that much worse. Bodily fluids, excrement . . . no matter how much she cleaned she could still smell it. But the solitary cells, this one in particular, were near Perling’s. It was easy, despite her nerves. She tripped coming out of the cell and stumbled into their cleaning cart, sending her supplies rolling to the floor, having angled it so that they rolled just past Perling’s cell door. With a curse and a grumble, the guard ordered her and her co-worker to pick it all up. As she gathered up an errant sponge, she slipped a scrap piece of paper under the door. Simple. “I need to talk to you about Emily Ellis,” it read. First contact.
Neal was still on the phone, waiting for her answer.
“Oh,” she tried for nonchalant, holding her voice steady by force of will, “I’m in the Supermax. My plan worked.”
THEN
Neal
“Out with it,” Peter said.
Neal frowned and glanced askance at him as they crossed a busy New York street on their way to interview an elderly victim of the latest variation of mortgage fraud. He thought over the last few minutes of conversation and then realized he’d been holding up his part as if on autopilot, with pleasant, faked interest. It would have fooled anyone but Peter.
“Out with what?” Neal asked. Prison custodial and kitchen work was mostly handled in-house, but delivery personnel could be a way in, and if he could arrange for Sara’s inmate to be on hand during the deliveries. . .
“Stop,” Peter said, and punctuated the order by snagging Neal’s arm. “Do you even remember what case we’re working on?”
Neal had only a moment of blankness before he helpfully supplied. “The Parsons mortgage fraud.”
Peter didn’t appear mollified. “Where’s your head at?”
Neal briefly considered his answer, but because it was Peter, he opted for the truth.
“Why couldn’t Sara get permission to speak to the inmate?”
“Dammit! I knew it. Neal, leave it alone.”
“I can’t.”
Peter clenched his jaw and glared at Neal, as if weighing the pros and cons of telling him against letting Neal ferret out the information on his own.
“The person she asked to speak to is isolated for her own protection until she testifies,” Peter said, fixing Neal with a withering stare. “She can't have visitors.”
“So it’s a federal case.”
“Neal.” Peter's tone was a warning.
“But you could get permission to see her.”
“What part of not able to have visitors wasn’t clear? I can’t just go invite myself into a criminal investigation.”
“Why not?”
“Neal, like I already told Sara, no.”
Neal didn’t say another word and fixed on his poker face. Peter looked at him suspiciously the rest of the morning. And well he should: Neal had never been able to resist the challenge of a no.
***
Neal didn’t often feel the need for violence, but he felt it now, like heat was bursting from his eyes.
“You let her go in alone?!”
Mozzie jumped up involuntarily when Neal banged open the door to his apartment. Mozzie sat back down and gulped his wine to recover from Neal's outburst.
“Let her? She asked for a new ID, and I provided one. Would you rather she'd gone to Devlin?”
“I didn’t want her to go at all.”
Mozzie paused, as if considering his words. “Is it really your decision?”
“I’ve been in prisons,” Neal began.
“And of all people,” Mozzie cut in, “you should know about the drive to find a missing loved one.”
Kate. He'd broken out to find her. And now Sara had broken in. Yes, Neal understood, but now, like Kate, Sara was missing and in danger. He struggled to remain calm while barraged by the panicked feeling of déjà vu.
“I didn’t want her there.”
“I know,” Mozzie, said in a soft, quiet voice. “But she would have gone, even without me. At least now we know her alias, and it’s solid.”
It did little to mollify Neal, but he knew Mozzie was right: it was out of his hands now, and he needed to focus on getting her back. It may have taken years of preparation for him to escape, but he wouldn’t leave Sara in there that long.
NOW
Sara
“Are you okay?” Neal asked, and Sara couldn’t tell him the truth.
It had taken her by surprise to realize that her co-worker on the Ward Six cleaning detail had a regular arrangement with the Wednesday morning guard. In retrospect, it shouldn’t have. The problem appeared to be endemic in this facility. Two days ago, when the guard was occupied, and the cameras in the rightmost hallway were “broken” again, she scurried to Perling’s cell.
“Lillian? I need to talk about Emily.”
“Who are you?” Perling’s voice gravelly voice could barely be heard, but it was enough to quash Sara’s faint hope that the woman she sought might in fact be her sister under an assumed name.
Sara ignored Perling’s question. “Did you see her? I met someone in London who said you and she. . . I was told you knew what happened to her.”
The silence stretched until Sara thought she wasn't going to get an answer.
“Six, seven years ago.” The scratchy words stopped as the woman cleared her throat before continuing. “I knew Emily. We were working at a bar in Baton Rouge. . . no. . . Indianapolis. I don’t remember where exactly. She might not remember me either; we were pretty strung out at the time.” The woman laughed.
“Where is she?” Sara asked, and hoping she hadn’t betrayed her desperation. It had been well over a decade since she’d talked to her big sister.
“Don’t know.”
“You have to know!” Sara remembered Peter questioning her information’s validity and she gritted her teeth. After the lengths Sara had gone to talk to this woman, she had to know something.
“Don’t know who you are, chickie, but I don’t have to do shit.” Perling snorted a disdainful laugh. “We weren’t exactly friends. She was working for that bastard, same as me, only I got out. She didn’t. Might still be there for all I know, though I doubt it.”
“What did—” A forceful hand in her back slammed Sara face-first into the closed metal door of Perling’s cell.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The guard snarled. The man must have less stamina that she’d expected.
“Nothing,” she squeaked.
Her knee, then her shoulder, hit the ground forcefully as she was thrown down.
“They’ll ask,” Sara said, breathing hard as the guard’s hand crept to his stun gun. “They’ll ask where you were. Letting me talk to a protected witness. Without you noticing.”
“That’s right!” Perling’s ill-used voice called from inside her cell. “And I’ll be sure to tell the feds that we had a nice chat.” Sara silently thanked the woman for the unexpected support.
The guard glanced at his “date” who was watching them from a distance as she adjusted her clothing. She held up her hands in the classic surrender pose. “Oh hell, no,” she said. “I’m saying nothing, I want no part of whatever they’re doing.”
Sara waited for the guard to decide whether it was riskier to kill them both or to leave them alive.
“The feds would take it badly if something happened to their star witness,” Sara added, hoping she wasn’t overselling it. “They’d want to look into every nook and cranny.” She hadn’t been there long enough to learn relevant details, but she sure as shit knew there were any number of things that the staff didn’t want scrutinized. “I won’t say anything.”
The guard delivered a few more warning kicks and undisguised threats, but Sara made it back to her cell alive that time.
***
“Are you okay?” Neal repeated, and she heard his worry. It would be that much worse if she told him everything.
She blinked at the phone for a second or two. She wasn’t sure what to tell him and she was working on a scant hour of sleep. She could mention that one of the guards might happily see her killed to ensure his trysts weren’t tattled to the FBI, and that she didn’t trust her roommate not to be the one to do it, but Neal wouldn’t be able to help with that, and she didn’t want him distracted from working to get her out of there.
“I . . .” Her mind raced as she spun possible scenarios. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of Mozzie.”
“He hasn’t been answering his phone.”
“Yeah, I got that. . . The woman in the cell wasn’t my sister.” She hated saying it out loud. “But I think she might have information on Peter’s investigation.” She shook her head to clear the cobwebs. “No. Not Peter’s. The FBI’s. My sister was involved with . . .” Her brain caught up with her words just in time and she shut up. If Perling was in protective custody, Emily could be in danger, and blurting out that she might be a witness to whatever crimes the FBI was investigating could put her in more danger. “I need to talk to Peter.”
Neal
“You need Peter?” Neal repeated, recognizing that it was a request for extraction. I’m going to get you out, Neal wanted to say, but with communication in the facility so heavily scrutinized, such a declaration would make their rescue many times harder.
“Hang in there,” he said instead. Knowing this wasn’t what she needed to hear. “I’ll visit you as soon as I can,” he said, hoping she picked up on his meaning. Her voice was off, and he had trouble reading it. He desperately wanted to see her.
“Visit. . . Yeah, that would be nice.” He breathed a sigh of relief as she confirmed she understood.
“Working on it,” he said. He heard the noise of voices in the background, yelling for someone to hurry up, and hearing Sara say goodbye made him wish to reach through the phone and shake someone. He kept the phone to his ear a long time after the dial tone sounded.
***
Peter wasn’t pleased.
“You did what?!” Peter’s angry yell had sent Satchmo slinking from the room, with his ears back and tail tucked between his legs. Neal wished he could do the same. The kicker was that he agreed with each of Peter’s accusations.
“You don’t think the tip she received is credible?” Mozzie asked finally. He spoke into the silence, picking a single nugget of information out of Peter’s diatribe once Peter had finished.
Peter wore the granite face he'd donned ever since Neal had explained the situation. “No.”
“Why not?” Neal asked.
“The timing. It’s all too coincidental. And Sara agreed with me on that when we talked in my office.”
“She did?”
“Mmm hmm,” Peter said. “But she said it didn’t matter; she had to track it down anyway.” Peter’s lips pressed into a thin line, but Neal nodded. Like Mozzie had said before, he understood the impulse.
Peter slammed his fist on the table, letting off steam before he exploded, and then deliberately crossed his arms and sat down. “If I get her out, find a way to prove her innocence, she could still be sent back to prison for obstruction. It’s an election year. The governor’s going to go heavy against anyone who might tarnish his hardline prison headlines.” He thought for a minute. “You said her sister is involved with a cartel?”
“Looks that way,” Neal said.
“I’ll see what I can do to get in to see Sara. But this goes through official channels.” When they didn’t immediately agree, he pushed. “Neal?”
“Of course!” Neal said with his most trustworthy expression, not letting his eyes flit to Mozzie’s. Like before, Peter didn’t look as if he believed him.
Sara
She didn’t see who started the fight. As she walked in single file through the hallways towards the courtyard for their outdoor time, the line stopped moving, making her nearly walk into the inmate in front of her. A commotion could be heard up ahead, and the guards barked at them to hit the floor. Sara complied, as did the others around her. She kept her face to the floor as instructed but strained her eyes sideways, like everyone else, to get a glimpse of what had happened. All she saw were the steel-toed boots of guards in riot uniforms rushing to break up the altercation. Eventually her group was ordered on their feet and back to cells. She followed with the rest until the guard beside her pushed her into the women’s showers, following close behind.
Shit. Shit-shit-shit! She’d seen the signs, the glances, the cocky, smarmy grins, and she’d taken pains to be in sight of as many people as she could. Self-defence might merit solitary if her opponent were a prisoner. Against a guard there would be no solution: fail and be assaulted, possibly killed; succeed and be beaten, possibly killed. So she chose.
Her elbow caught the man on the cheek, and a well-placed knee would have brought him to the ground had he not been wearing a cup. She supposed it was standard protection, and at least it would still hurt, just not as much as she’d wanted. Instead he merely staggered backwards. A distraction. As it was her knee, already a mottled brown from her fall outside of Perling’s cell, would have layered bruises tonight. If she survived.
“Stop! Sara!”
Sara, not Joanne. She froze. As the visor lifted, she saw familiar blue eyes.
“Neal?” She stepped forward and his arms around her were all she could have hoped for.
“We don’t have much time. Mozzie and Peter are the distraction.”
“Peter?”
“He doesn’t exactly know about it,” Neal admitted. He pulled out a second set of clothing from the bottom of the garbage bin. How he’d got it there—probably via Mozzie—would be among the long list of questions she had. Later. Now she said nothing as she pulled on the outfit, pushed down the visor, and followed Neal out the door.
***
That night, after a shower in Neal’s apartment, she had just finished supper and was tucked into a plush reading chair when Peter walked in.
“Tell me you had nothing to do with it,” he demanded, not noticing her but walking up to Neal.
“I had nothing to do with it,” Neal replied, as requested. She smiled to hear him sound so convincing. Peter glared at him, skeptical.
“I couldn’t talk to Sara,” Peter said. “There was no record of Sara Ellis there at all.” His eyes narrowed. “And then the prison went into lockdown.”
“Hi Peter,” Sara said with a small smile and a hesitant wave. His eyes widened, and then he turned to look angrily at Neal.
“Peter,” Sara said, preempting him, “this wasn’t Neal’s fault. This was all me.” She wasn’t used to seeing Peter looking at her with the same mixture of anger and frustration he reserved for Neal.
“Sara, what were you thinking!”
“I was thinking about my sister,” she said. Peter waited for her to continue. “Perling doesn’t know where she is now, but she was alive—five years ago,” she admitted, “and working for the same people Perling was. That ring you’re trying to take down. . . if you find her she could help. Perling said to try Baton Rouge. Or Indianapolis.”
Mozzie chose that time to walk in. He was grinning from ear to ear. “Well that was fun . . . and terrifying. Daniel in the jaws of the lion. Did you see—” He stopped when he noticed Peter. “Suit.”
Peter glared at him before turning back to Sara. “Five years ago?”
“Yeah.” Her shoulders sagged; she knew a lot could have happened in five years.
“Okay, I’ll look into it,” Peter said finally. “But let me handle it.”
That was one promise Sara had no hesitation about making. Knowing Peter was searching for Emily was the next best thing to finding her. She smiled at Neal, who returned it. Maybe she had time to deal with that elephant.
End
Author:
walking_tornadoArtist:
sheenianniBeta:
firesign10Fandom: White Collar
Pairing: Sara/Neal
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: none
Wordcount: ~6200
Summary: A tip in London sends Sara back to New York on the trail of her missing sister.
(click on image to go the art masterpost)
Notes:
Many thanks to
sheenianni for her patience and to the mods of wc_reverse_bb for the extension. A huge bag of candy to my beta, firesign10, for another amazing turn-around! Remaining mistakes are mine.AO3
Locked Up
“Something I’ve learned: things get stolen and people go away. Most of the time you don’t get ’em back.” — Sara Ellis, Season 4, episode 4
NOW
The phone didn’t ring more than once before Neal snatched it up, setting his glass down too hard so that the wine sloshed and spilled onto the kitchen table. The call display flashed an 866 number Neal didn’t recognize.
“Sara?” He knew he must sound desperate. The spilled wine spread out until it reached the edge and began to drip like blood onto the floor. He ignored both it and the potential stain on June’s wooden floor.
“Collect call from Joanne Charles,” an automated voice announced. “Do you accept the charges?”
“Yes. . . Joanne?”
“Neal?”
His heart rose to his throat as a confusing mix of relief washed over him at hearing Sara’s voice. Fear at how scared she sounded quickly followed.
THEN
“Peter, please.” Sara willed all the desperation she felt into those two words. It must have been somewhat effective because Peter winced.
“I can’t. You know I can’t,” he said. His voice was firm, but he shifted his eyes away from her before he finished.
“Just five minutes. Just to talk.” She hated having to beg, but her requests through the usual channels had been denied.
“Sara, she’s a protected witness. In an ongoing investigation. I can’t get you in to see her.”
“You could,” Sara insisted. “If you— ”
“I would need a damned good reason to question their star witness.”
“She's my sister!”
He shook his head and she knew what he was going to say before he spoke. “It’s not enough. We don’t even know if your source is credible.”
“Well, you would if you questioned her.” Sara knew the edge of anger in her voice was the wrong tack to take, but it slipped out anyway.
“Sara . . .” Peter pursed his lips together and regarded her silently. She could see him search for something to offer her. “I can probably arrange a meeting once she testifies,” he said, following an uncomfortable moment of silence. “I can put in a request to speak with her. After the trial.”
The room wavered as her eyes teared in frustration. That could be months away. “Peter . . .”
“That’s all I can do.”
Neal had arrived by the time she strode out of Peter’s office. She didn’t want to see him. Not now, with her eyes all puffy and her face flushed in barely suppressed anger. The plan had been to get Peter’s help and be gone before Neal sauntered in. Failure on all counts. He hadn’t seen her yet, but she’d have to walk past his desk to get to the elevator — either that or take a detour around the office to avoid him and be even more conspicuous.
Showing off for anyone who might be watching, Neal expertly flipped his hat down his arm, and Sara felt the action tug a twisted smile. Seeing him hurt.
“Sara,” Neal said, and the hat rolled to his desk, already forgotten. He took a step towards her and then stopped. She wondered what he saw in her face.
Sara, will you marry me? She still heard the echo of his words from the Empire State building. She had the clearest memory of him before her on one knee, and she felt the sharp knife of regret as she wished, again, for it to be real.
At least now she was too angry, thanks to Peter, for it to be awkward.
“Neal.” Sara’s greeting was clipped and curt, and she slowed but continued on her way to the elevators. She paused at the glass doors out of the White Collar division, and then turned back to regard Neal.
He was not going to like what she needed to do.
Neal flipped his hat down the length of his arm, a fancy trick that usually earned him a few smiles from the agents around him, all hard at work on interminably boring mortgage schemes or whatnot. This time no one even noticed. They were all busily trying to appear as though all their attention wasn’t focused on Peter’s office. He’d frequently had cause to thank their appalling lack of subterfuge, but now that they played on the same team, he’d been sharing some tips so their obviousness wouldn’t impinge his cover. Looks like a refresher would be useful. He’d have to talk to Peter about setting up a training workshop. Clinton at least had improved. With enough work (and a bit of tarnish to those straight-laced morals) Neal could make a decent con man out of him.
“You owe me.” Neal froze. It . . . sounded like Sara. Neal couldn’t see the face of the person in Peter’s office, but he knew, quite intimately, the silhouette that stood there.
Peter’s response wasn’t nearly as loud, but from his body language, Neal figured it was something along the lines of, “Maybe I do, but no.”
The muffled voices from Peter’s office became louder. It didn’t take an expert to deduce Sara’s mood, the strident voice, the big, abrupt gestures. When she cared, she cared passionately. And Peter appeared to have placed himself in her way. Interesting. With a sudden spin, Sara pushed open the glass door and strode out, mouth pinched tight, eyes determined.
God, she was beautiful. Neal automatically flipped the hat again as he processed Sara’s return. Sara had been in London, last he’d heard. He glanced at Clinton, who was long past being impressed by Neal's tricks, and who was currently immersed in a pedantic fraudulent check case. Neal had glanced at the folder yesterday afternoon — a novice criminal who wouldn’t get far — and decided it wasn’t interesting enough for them to bother with, unless Peter insisted.
“Sara,” Neal began as she came closer.
“Neal. Not now.” She didn't stop as she strode towards the elevator. Then she seemed to reconsider. Her step slowed and she stopped to turn back to him.
“We should catch up later,” she said, and Neal was captivated by eyes that shone with intensity.
“I think I still owe you a dinner,” he offered. A twitch of her cheek betrayed that she was biting the inside of her lip, and he felt an overwhelming urge to help fix whatever was wrong. Just as she was about to say something — hopefully an explanation — her focus shifted to Peter who’d walked out of his office, and then the anger in Sara’s eyes was back.
“Perfect. I’ll see you tonight,” she said. Her eyes flashed again towards Peter who was making a bee line to Neal’s desk.
“Tonight,” Neal agreed, as Peter walked up.
“Sara . . .” Peter began, but Sara cut him off.
“You made your position perfectly clear, Agent Burke.” Neal suppressed a wince at the coldness of her tone. “Neal,” she said before turning to walk decisively to the elevator.
Neal took a step to follow her, but Peter stopped him.
“Neal,” he called. “Neal,” he repeated louder, with a two-fingered summons, when Neal made no motion to comply.
“Peter, what did Sara —”
“Neal.” This time it was a warning to shut up. “The Peterson case,” Peter deflected. “We’re going to interview the —”
“Peter! Sara?”
Peter shook his head, but didn’t appear surprised. “Neal . . .” It was impressive how Peter could use one little name as a shorthand to so many meanings. This time it was a plea to be reasonable.
“What did Sara want?”
“It was a private matter,” Peter said.
“She seemed pissed.”
Peter huffed a laugh, and looked towards the elevator with apparent regret. “Oh, she was.” He studied Neal a long while, much as Sara had done. “I can’t say any more. It’s a personal matter.” The regretful half-smile he gave Neal might have been meant to soften the blow. It didn’t. Sara’s personal matters were no longer his. Neal understood, but it stung. Then again, he’d never paid much attention to boundaries, and Peter knew it.
“She’s here unofficially, still working out of London, so she won’t be staying long,” Peter said. “Just don’t do anything stupid.”
The candles lent the room a soft, seductive glow. Neal studied the room with a small frown, then nodded in satisfaction as he lit a single additional candle above the mantlepiece. Perfect. To one side of the kitchen table, a bottle of sparkling dry Vouvray rested on ice, to complement the Coquilles St-Jacques in the oven. Reminded, Neal took two long strides to the oven and flicked on the light to see the cheese bubbling but not yet browned. Soon.
The knock at the door—too light to be Peter, not hesitant enough to be June, and Mozzie, of course, never bothered to knock—brought a smile to his face. He'd missed her. He understood why she had to leave, and it seemed like their timing never had been right, but now he was looking forward to this meal with an eagerness that surprised him. Part of that was finding out what she and Peter had argued about. He’d never been able to resist a mystery and Peter’s warnings had done nothing but heighten his need to know: a fact Peter was well aware of, if today’s irritated sighs and renewed lectures on the letter of the law were any indication.
Sara’s smile made Neal’s breath hitch, but he covered with the ease born of a lifetime of play-acting. Then she was in the room and he was hit with the overwhelming desire to paint. Copper swirls and laughing reds, with a bright, soft brown. Gorgeous.
“Let me take that,” Neal offered, and he draped her coat on the bed.
“The place looks beautiful,” Sara said, and Neal gave her a self-deprecating shrug.
“How’s London?”
“Things are good. Really good.”
“Anyone I should know about?”
“Yeah. Sort of. Nothing serious.” In the awkward silence that followed, Neal stared. Her hair was longer, and fell in soft curls like Botticelli’s Venus, but darker. . . more like Klimt’s Danae. She was dressed impeccably, as always—a Dolce and Gabbana if he wasn’t mistaken. London seemed to agree with her. He thought again, as he had so frequently since she’d left, of the look in her eyes as he proposed. A perfect moment.
They had never been very good at small talk and as Neal poured her a glass of the Vouvray, she went straight to business. “I need a favor.”
Neal set one of the Coquilles in front of her. “So I gathered. What did Peter do?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head, clearly not wanting to discuss Peter. “It’s just—”
The door opening startled both of them. Neal hoped his glare conveyed a fraction of his irritation.
“The water delivery vans in this city have learned far too much from Il Principe. Machiavelli would be pleased. Did you know . . .” Mozzie took three steps into the room before he stopped and blinked at Sara. “Sara’s here!” he said with surprise.
“I noticed,” Neal said, as he walked to the door. “The better question is what are you doing here. I thought we were meeting in the park tomorrow.”
“Mmmm,” Mozzie said noncommittally. “I should go.”
Neal bit off a quip in favor of holding the door open for his friend’s quicker exit.
“Actually,” Sara said,“Mozzie should stay.”
“What?” Neal said in shock, but Mozzie spoke before he could frame a better question.
“Excellent!” Mozzie quickly seated himself at the table, and poured himself some wine into Neal’s glass. He turned up his nose at the creamy seafood that steamed in front of him, and pushed it away with a muttered, “Lactose—are you trying to kill me?”
“Sounding better and better,” Neal muttered as he put aside his hopes for the evening, but neither was listening to him.
“I need your help,” Sara said again. “Yours and Mozzie’s.”
“You have it,” Neal said, volunteering them both. Helping her had never been in question.
The relief in her eyes at his simple statement more than made up for the strangled cough from Mozzie who set down his wine glass with more noise than was strictly necessary. Sara smiled with too many teeth now, and Neal knew he wouldn’t like what was coming next.
“I need you to get me into a federal prison.”
“Into a federal prison,” Neal repeated, but was drowned out by Mozzie’s bark of laughter.
“Hah! Very funny,” Mozzie said. He had stood up to refill his glass, emptying the last of the Vouvray.
“I need to talk to an inmate,” Sara continued.
“Far be it for me to jump through big brother’s hoops, but have you requested to—” Mozzie began
“Yes!” Sara said, and then took a breath before continuing so she wouldn’t vent her frustration on the only two people who might help her. “Yes. I sent in a request, and a second one, and I called the warden.”
“And you talked to Peter,” Neal added with a nod, connecting the dots.
“Yeah. And he said no, like the others.”
“Now I am intrigued,” Mozzie put in, “and terrified. Our government is behind the abduction of thousands of dissenters, and once FEMA gets its evil claws on—”
“Not now, Mozzie,” Sara said, and to Neal’s surprise, Mozzie stopped his imminent rant. Sara looked pleadingly at Neal. “My sister. Emily. I told you about her.”
“Disappeared when your were thirteen, yeah, I remember.”
“After all these years, I have a lead.”
NOW
Sara feared that Neal wouldn’t accept her call. He was bound to be upset, but she hadn’t been able to wait any longer, and with Mozzie’s fake id in her pocket and the latex fingerprints he provided, any action she took wouldn’t be tied to her real self. It was freeing. Creating a fake police record for her fake self had been no trouble for Mozzie, and he took childish delight in regaling her with her alter-ego’s purported life of violent crime. Joanne wasn’t someone Sara would want to mess with.
The phone line crackled, and she knew someone was listening in to her conversation with Neal. There was no expectation of privacy here.
Her breath hitched before she spoke. “I think I made a huge mistake.” She’d thought she’d had realistic expectation about how hard this charade would be. She’d been wrong.
There was nothing to do but think, most often about things she didn’t want to think about. It would have been pleasant to read but like everything else, library privileges had to be earned, and she simply hadn’t been there long enough to prove herself, either to the warden or to her fellow prisoners. How had someone as dynamic as Neal been able to stand the enforced idleness for four years? Her testimony had been a part of what had locked him away. She’d had a lot of time to think about that since she’d arrived.
Sara’s knees jumped restlessly as she sat on her thin mattress and listened to her cellmate complain that her smuggled phone had been seized so that she could no longer talk to her sister. Sara recognized the faster cadence that signified the woman had taken something recently. A few days ago her roommate begun trying to pimp her out to the second shift night guard. The faked camaraderie had taken more ominous overtones as the woman’s plans developed.
“I won’t do it.” Sara had shaken her head, without taking her eyes from her roommate, whose array of crude prison tattoos writhed as she flexed her arms in her orange jumpsuit.
“You will. Hell, it’s not so bad, I’d do him myself but he has a thing for redheads. Five minutes and we have ourselves a cell phone. I know you’d like one. You can talk to that fancy lawyer of yours.”
“No.” Sara wondered what expression was on her face, because the woman’s eyes narrowed and the cajoling tone shifted.
“You think you’re better than me, bitch?”
THEN
“What kind of lead?” Mozzie asked.
“An inmate, Lillian Perling, right here in New York, knows where she my sister is, and I can’t get in to see her.”
Neal frowned. “But Peter. . .”
“Could do it, but he won’t. Please.”
“If Peter had said yes,” Neal said, “you weren’t going to come see me.”
Sara gave him a small, sad smile. “No.”
He’d expected it, but it still hurt. “I thought we were friends.”
“It’s just . . . you have this tendency to distract me. I can’t be distracted. Not now. Besides, the last time we spoke, you proposed,” Sara said, acknowledging the elephant in the room with a patina of bravado that Neal clearly saw through. “How you going to top that, Caffrey?”
That elephant was crushing them both. Make it real. He heard the unspoken words. But with everything going on, and having to regain Peter’s trust after things with his father fell apart, he didn’t want to put her in harm’s way; he cared about her too much to tangle her up in his mess.
For once in his life, he didn’t take the dare. “What do you need?”
“I need a cover, and a way to get into the prison.”
“Easy to get in,” Mozzie said. “It’s the getting out again that’s more difficult.”
“Neal did it.”
“No,” Neal said. He’d planned the escape for years, painstakingly laying the necessary groundwork — more of a habitual exercise to pass the time, and one that he hadn’t really intended to use. Until Kate’s last visit it had been just a backup in case he might need an out someday. But the thought of Sara behind bars. . . “There’s got to be a better way.”
“Dammit!” Sara paced a step backwards, holding her arms stiffly, as if it was taking every effort to stop from screaming. The lack of poise was disturbingly un-Sara-like. “I need to talk to her!”
“Give me time to come up with something,” Neal asked.
“There isn’t—”
“Two days,” Neal’s hands came up in a combination of placating and pleading. “Give me two days. Prison is . . . not a place you want to be. Give a couple days to come up with something else.”
“Fine.”
NOW
“Where are you?’ Neal asked. Hearing his voice, the first friendly voice in weeks, almost brought her to tears. She blinked them back. They were watching her, the guards and the inmates. I’m out of my depth, she thought, but remained quiet. She rubbed at her shoulder, where bruised had begun to turn her skin into a painful palette of colours.
On Thursday the inmates in protective custody spend time in the courtyard, Care was taken that they never mix with the general population. She’d seen Lillian Perling from a distance—or at least she thought it was her. She simply hadn’t worked out how to speak to the woman, until now.
“You’ve been assigned to clean Ward Six,” the warden had told Sara on her second day of incarceration (not including the week she’d spent in county jail while waiting for the cogs of justice to grind her up). She just nodded, and he regarded her without speaking for longer than was comfortable.
“The request came through your lawyer,” he scanned the paper in front of him. “Haversham,” he read. Sara perked up at the name. She hadn’t asked Mozzie to help, other than with the new id, but she was grateful that he had. She hadn’t yet figured out a way to talk to Perling, but proximity would definitely help. “This isn’t going to do you any favors in here,” the warden continued. “You haven’t been here long enough to get work assignment. Be careful. Stepping on toes in here is dangerous.”
She took note of his words but it was two more days before she began her first day of her work assignment and heard the first rumblings of trouble.
She could hear her cellmate’s indignation from clear across the cafeteria. “Who the hell did Red Riding Hood do to get that?”
Ward Six housed solitary confinement as well as those in protective custody, and the prisoners in this block had no contact with one another. It was several days of observation before Sara was able to make herself an opportunity to contact Lillian Perling.
The corridor echoed with only three sets of steps: the guard’s, Sara’s, and an older inmate’s. The elderly woman bore a jagged scar down her cheek. She never introduced herself, and Sara never asked.
“Here,” the guard said. One room was open on the left side of the corridor, The one further down the hall would have to be Perling’s, Sara thought, unless the old blueprints she’d found had been upgraded. By the look and smell of the place, she thought not.
She hated the smell of solitary: piss and bleach. Cleaning the cells was that much worse. Bodily fluids, excrement . . . no matter how much she cleaned she could still smell it. But the solitary cells, this one in particular, were near Perling’s. It was easy, despite her nerves. She tripped coming out of the cell and stumbled into their cleaning cart, sending her supplies rolling to the floor, having angled it so that they rolled just past Perling’s cell door. With a curse and a grumble, the guard ordered her and her co-worker to pick it all up. As she gathered up an errant sponge, she slipped a scrap piece of paper under the door. Simple. “I need to talk to you about Emily Ellis,” it read. First contact.
Neal was still on the phone, waiting for her answer.
“Oh,” she tried for nonchalant, holding her voice steady by force of will, “I’m in the Supermax. My plan worked.”
THEN
“Out with it,” Peter said.
Neal frowned and glanced askance at him as they crossed a busy New York street on their way to interview an elderly victim of the latest variation of mortgage fraud. He thought over the last few minutes of conversation and then realized he’d been holding up his part as if on autopilot, with pleasant, faked interest. It would have fooled anyone but Peter.
“Out with what?” Neal asked. Prison custodial and kitchen work was mostly handled in-house, but delivery personnel could be a way in, and if he could arrange for Sara’s inmate to be on hand during the deliveries. . .
“Stop,” Peter said, and punctuated the order by snagging Neal’s arm. “Do you even remember what case we’re working on?”
Neal had only a moment of blankness before he helpfully supplied. “The Parsons mortgage fraud.”
Peter didn’t appear mollified. “Where’s your head at?”
Neal briefly considered his answer, but because it was Peter, he opted for the truth.
“Why couldn’t Sara get permission to speak to the inmate?”
“Dammit! I knew it. Neal, leave it alone.”
“I can’t.”
Peter clenched his jaw and glared at Neal, as if weighing the pros and cons of telling him against letting Neal ferret out the information on his own.
“The person she asked to speak to is isolated for her own protection until she testifies,” Peter said, fixing Neal with a withering stare. “She can't have visitors.”
“So it’s a federal case.”
“Neal.” Peter's tone was a warning.
“But you could get permission to see her.”
“What part of not able to have visitors wasn’t clear? I can’t just go invite myself into a criminal investigation.”
“Why not?”
“Neal, like I already told Sara, no.”
Neal didn’t say another word and fixed on his poker face. Peter looked at him suspiciously the rest of the morning. And well he should: Neal had never been able to resist the challenge of a no.
Neal didn’t often feel the need for violence, but he felt it now, like heat was bursting from his eyes.
“You let her go in alone?!”
Mozzie jumped up involuntarily when Neal banged open the door to his apartment. Mozzie sat back down and gulped his wine to recover from Neal's outburst.
“Let her? She asked for a new ID, and I provided one. Would you rather she'd gone to Devlin?”
“I didn’t want her to go at all.”
Mozzie paused, as if considering his words. “Is it really your decision?”
“I’ve been in prisons,” Neal began.
“And of all people,” Mozzie cut in, “you should know about the drive to find a missing loved one.”
Kate. He'd broken out to find her. And now Sara had broken in. Yes, Neal understood, but now, like Kate, Sara was missing and in danger. He struggled to remain calm while barraged by the panicked feeling of déjà vu.
“I didn’t want her there.”
“I know,” Mozzie, said in a soft, quiet voice. “But she would have gone, even without me. At least now we know her alias, and it’s solid.”
It did little to mollify Neal, but he knew Mozzie was right: it was out of his hands now, and he needed to focus on getting her back. It may have taken years of preparation for him to escape, but he wouldn’t leave Sara in there that long.
NOW
“Are you okay?” Neal asked, and Sara couldn’t tell him the truth.
It had taken her by surprise to realize that her co-worker on the Ward Six cleaning detail had a regular arrangement with the Wednesday morning guard. In retrospect, it shouldn’t have. The problem appeared to be endemic in this facility. Two days ago, when the guard was occupied, and the cameras in the rightmost hallway were “broken” again, she scurried to Perling’s cell.
“Lillian? I need to talk about Emily.”
“Who are you?” Perling’s voice gravelly voice could barely be heard, but it was enough to quash Sara’s faint hope that the woman she sought might in fact be her sister under an assumed name.
Sara ignored Perling’s question. “Did you see her? I met someone in London who said you and she. . . I was told you knew what happened to her.”
The silence stretched until Sara thought she wasn't going to get an answer.
“Six, seven years ago.” The scratchy words stopped as the woman cleared her throat before continuing. “I knew Emily. We were working at a bar in Baton Rouge. . . no. . . Indianapolis. I don’t remember where exactly. She might not remember me either; we were pretty strung out at the time.” The woman laughed.
“Where is she?” Sara asked, and hoping she hadn’t betrayed her desperation. It had been well over a decade since she’d talked to her big sister.
“Don’t know.”
“You have to know!” Sara remembered Peter questioning her information’s validity and she gritted her teeth. After the lengths Sara had gone to talk to this woman, she had to know something.
“Don’t know who you are, chickie, but I don’t have to do shit.” Perling snorted a disdainful laugh. “We weren’t exactly friends. She was working for that bastard, same as me, only I got out. She didn’t. Might still be there for all I know, though I doubt it.”
“What did—” A forceful hand in her back slammed Sara face-first into the closed metal door of Perling’s cell.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The guard snarled. The man must have less stamina that she’d expected.
“Nothing,” she squeaked.
Her knee, then her shoulder, hit the ground forcefully as she was thrown down.
“They’ll ask,” Sara said, breathing hard as the guard’s hand crept to his stun gun. “They’ll ask where you were. Letting me talk to a protected witness. Without you noticing.”
“That’s right!” Perling’s ill-used voice called from inside her cell. “And I’ll be sure to tell the feds that we had a nice chat.” Sara silently thanked the woman for the unexpected support.
The guard glanced at his “date” who was watching them from a distance as she adjusted her clothing. She held up her hands in the classic surrender pose. “Oh hell, no,” she said. “I’m saying nothing, I want no part of whatever they’re doing.”
Sara waited for the guard to decide whether it was riskier to kill them both or to leave them alive.
“The feds would take it badly if something happened to their star witness,” Sara added, hoping she wasn’t overselling it. “They’d want to look into every nook and cranny.” She hadn’t been there long enough to learn relevant details, but she sure as shit knew there were any number of things that the staff didn’t want scrutinized. “I won’t say anything.”
The guard delivered a few more warning kicks and undisguised threats, but Sara made it back to her cell alive that time.
“Are you okay?” Neal repeated, and she heard his worry. It would be that much worse if she told him everything.
She blinked at the phone for a second or two. She wasn’t sure what to tell him and she was working on a scant hour of sleep. She could mention that one of the guards might happily see her killed to ensure his trysts weren’t tattled to the FBI, and that she didn’t trust her roommate not to be the one to do it, but Neal wouldn’t be able to help with that, and she didn’t want him distracted from working to get her out of there.
“I . . .” Her mind raced as she spun possible scenarios. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of Mozzie.”
“He hasn’t been answering his phone.”
“Yeah, I got that. . . The woman in the cell wasn’t my sister.” She hated saying it out loud. “But I think she might have information on Peter’s investigation.” She shook her head to clear the cobwebs. “No. Not Peter’s. The FBI’s. My sister was involved with . . .” Her brain caught up with her words just in time and she shut up. If Perling was in protective custody, Emily could be in danger, and blurting out that she might be a witness to whatever crimes the FBI was investigating could put her in more danger. “I need to talk to Peter.”
“You need Peter?” Neal repeated, recognizing that it was a request for extraction. I’m going to get you out, Neal wanted to say, but with communication in the facility so heavily scrutinized, such a declaration would make their rescue many times harder.
“Hang in there,” he said instead. Knowing this wasn’t what she needed to hear. “I’ll visit you as soon as I can,” he said, hoping she picked up on his meaning. Her voice was off, and he had trouble reading it. He desperately wanted to see her.
“Visit. . . Yeah, that would be nice.” He breathed a sigh of relief as she confirmed she understood.
“Working on it,” he said. He heard the noise of voices in the background, yelling for someone to hurry up, and hearing Sara say goodbye made him wish to reach through the phone and shake someone. He kept the phone to his ear a long time after the dial tone sounded.
Peter wasn’t pleased.
“You did what?!” Peter’s angry yell had sent Satchmo slinking from the room, with his ears back and tail tucked between his legs. Neal wished he could do the same. The kicker was that he agreed with each of Peter’s accusations.
“You don’t think the tip she received is credible?” Mozzie asked finally. He spoke into the silence, picking a single nugget of information out of Peter’s diatribe once Peter had finished.
Peter wore the granite face he'd donned ever since Neal had explained the situation. “No.”
“Why not?” Neal asked.
“The timing. It’s all too coincidental. And Sara agreed with me on that when we talked in my office.”
“She did?”
“Mmm hmm,” Peter said. “But she said it didn’t matter; she had to track it down anyway.” Peter’s lips pressed into a thin line, but Neal nodded. Like Mozzie had said before, he understood the impulse.
Peter slammed his fist on the table, letting off steam before he exploded, and then deliberately crossed his arms and sat down. “If I get her out, find a way to prove her innocence, she could still be sent back to prison for obstruction. It’s an election year. The governor’s going to go heavy against anyone who might tarnish his hardline prison headlines.” He thought for a minute. “You said her sister is involved with a cartel?”
“Looks that way,” Neal said.
“I’ll see what I can do to get in to see Sara. But this goes through official channels.” When they didn’t immediately agree, he pushed. “Neal?”
“Of course!” Neal said with his most trustworthy expression, not letting his eyes flit to Mozzie’s. Like before, Peter didn’t look as if he believed him.
She didn’t see who started the fight. As she walked in single file through the hallways towards the courtyard for their outdoor time, the line stopped moving, making her nearly walk into the inmate in front of her. A commotion could be heard up ahead, and the guards barked at them to hit the floor. Sara complied, as did the others around her. She kept her face to the floor as instructed but strained her eyes sideways, like everyone else, to get a glimpse of what had happened. All she saw were the steel-toed boots of guards in riot uniforms rushing to break up the altercation. Eventually her group was ordered on their feet and back to cells. She followed with the rest until the guard beside her pushed her into the women’s showers, following close behind.
Shit. Shit-shit-shit! She’d seen the signs, the glances, the cocky, smarmy grins, and she’d taken pains to be in sight of as many people as she could. Self-defence might merit solitary if her opponent were a prisoner. Against a guard there would be no solution: fail and be assaulted, possibly killed; succeed and be beaten, possibly killed. So she chose.
Her elbow caught the man on the cheek, and a well-placed knee would have brought him to the ground had he not been wearing a cup. She supposed it was standard protection, and at least it would still hurt, just not as much as she’d wanted. Instead he merely staggered backwards. A distraction. As it was her knee, already a mottled brown from her fall outside of Perling’s cell, would have layered bruises tonight. If she survived.
“Stop! Sara!”
Sara, not Joanne. She froze. As the visor lifted, she saw familiar blue eyes.
“Neal?” She stepped forward and his arms around her were all she could have hoped for.
“We don’t have much time. Mozzie and Peter are the distraction.”
“Peter?”
“He doesn’t exactly know about it,” Neal admitted. He pulled out a second set of clothing from the bottom of the garbage bin. How he’d got it there—probably via Mozzie—would be among the long list of questions she had. Later. Now she said nothing as she pulled on the outfit, pushed down the visor, and followed Neal out the door.
That night, after a shower in Neal’s apartment, she had just finished supper and was tucked into a plush reading chair when Peter walked in.
“Tell me you had nothing to do with it,” he demanded, not noticing her but walking up to Neal.
“I had nothing to do with it,” Neal replied, as requested. She smiled to hear him sound so convincing. Peter glared at him, skeptical.
“I couldn’t talk to Sara,” Peter said. “There was no record of Sara Ellis there at all.” His eyes narrowed. “And then the prison went into lockdown.”
“Hi Peter,” Sara said with a small smile and a hesitant wave. His eyes widened, and then he turned to look angrily at Neal.
“Peter,” Sara said, preempting him, “this wasn’t Neal’s fault. This was all me.” She wasn’t used to seeing Peter looking at her with the same mixture of anger and frustration he reserved for Neal.
“Sara, what were you thinking!”
“I was thinking about my sister,” she said. Peter waited for her to continue. “Perling doesn’t know where she is now, but she was alive—five years ago,” she admitted, “and working for the same people Perling was. That ring you’re trying to take down. . . if you find her she could help. Perling said to try Baton Rouge. Or Indianapolis.”
Mozzie chose that time to walk in. He was grinning from ear to ear. “Well that was fun . . . and terrifying. Daniel in the jaws of the lion. Did you see—” He stopped when he noticed Peter. “Suit.”
Peter glared at him before turning back to Sara. “Five years ago?”
“Yeah.” Her shoulders sagged; she knew a lot could have happened in five years.
“Okay, I’ll look into it,” Peter said finally. “But let me handle it.”
That was one promise Sara had no hesitation about making. Knowing Peter was searching for Emily was the next best thing to finding her. She smiled at Neal, who returned it. Maybe she had time to deal with that elephant.
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Date: 2018-01-14 10:58 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2018-02-02 02:30 am (UTC)From: