Chapter 21 Bonus Content

Baltimore, MD. January 11, 2004 – Sunday afternoon

"Mom!" Henry called out when he saw her in the train station. "You look great."

She'd been about to say you're welcome, expecting him to thank her for picking him up. Had she misheard? Maybe he'd meant it was great to see her.

But to say she looked great? Noelle Winslow knew she looked good for her age. New acquaintances often expressed surprise that she had a twenty-seven-year-old son. However, this afternoon she wore an old pair of faded jeans and a comfortable green sweater. She'd forgone makeup and didn't expect anyone to comment on her looks.

"Welcome home, sweetie," she said in response to her son's effusive greeting. She hugged him gently.

His left arm was in a light cast and a sling, and Noelle helped carry his luggage. The broken arm was one more reason she hadn't expected Henry to be quite so cheerful.

Could she attribute his good spirits to having spent the weekend with Neal?

Once they were in her car, she raised the subject. "Right before Christmas I asked you to find Neal. It seems you knew where he was already. How long have you been in touch?"

"Always," he replied smugly. "Ever since I found him the first time."

The simple, straightforward answer on this topic was so unlike Henry that she glanced his direction for a moment. His smile was a little sloppy, and it wasn't like him to get drunk. The last time she'd seen him like this was when he'd broken his leg as a child. "What did the doctor give you for the pain?"

The drug Henry named was the same one that had made him silly and chatty at age ten. He frowned. "I took a pill before getting on the train. Neal insisted, said I'd be jostled and stuff. Makes me sleepy and then..." he gestured vaguely.

"Talkative," Noelle supplied.

He nodded. "Good thing I asked you to pick me up and not Dad."

Yes, her ex-husband was the type to take advantage of the situation. Honestly, though, she was struggling to hold back questions of her own. Henry was so secretive these days, and she wanted so much to understand why. And of course there was Neal. He'd answered a few days ago when she'd called Henry's phone, and it had been astounding to hear his voice for the first time in more than twenty years.

She put those questions aside until Henry was more himself. For now she focused on the practical. "What do you plan to wear to work tomorrow?"

He looked puzzled.

"Your dress shirts and suit jackets won't fit over the cast. I can remove a sleeve from one of your shirts if you want. Fortunately your grandmother insisted that all of her children learn the basics of sewing."

"That sounds very domestic of her," Henry said, disbelief clear in his voice.

"Very entertainment industry," Noelle corrected. "Quick costume changes meant torn hems and dangling trim. She learned how to make repairs when she was an actress."

Henry was silent a moment and then asked, "Do you still have my Halloween costume, the pirate one?" He'd dressed as Captain Hook his last year of high school. "That shirt would work."

She probably did still have it, and the cream-colored shirt with the billowy sleeves and ruffle at the wrists could accommodate a cast, but... "Your father..." She trailed off.

"Hates anything he thinks is effeminate, yeah."

"Do you really want to push his buttons, especially at work?"

"Especially at work," Henry confirmed. A moment later he asked, "You didn't tell him, did you?"

"Tell him what?" Noelle asked as she changed lanes. They needed to take the next exit to retrieve the pirate costume from her townhouse.

"That you know Neal's in New York." Henry scowled. "He hates Neal."

Noelle's ex-husband had always hated Neal. If he'd felt that way about an innocent child, how much more would he despise what Neal had grown into? "I did a search on Neal Caffrey," she said.

Henry chuckled. "Let me guess. You found a charming artist, forger, and cat burglar who's been on the most-wanted list of the FBI and Interpol."

"And he works for the FBI now?" Noelle still struggled to wrap her mind around it.

"Yep."

A horrible idea snuck into her mind. "You didn't..." She took a deep breath and started over. "Did you participate in his crimes?" Would Henry go that far to upset his father?

That brought a bark of laughter. "Not the forgery. Definitely outside my skillset. I may have taught Neal the stuff Dad taught me, like picking locks, but I didn't graduate to cat burglary. Woulda been fun, though."

Thank goodness Neal had given that up. He had, right? The FBI wouldn't let him continue those activities. "I didn't tell Robert, but my mother is another matter. I couldn't keep a secret like that from her. She's barely restraining herself from showing up on his doorstep."

"She doesn't know where he lives." A pause. "She doesn't, right? I didn't tell anyone."

"You know your grandmother. She has fond memories of her time in New York and her stint on Broadway. She would go there fully expecting her grandmotherly radar to lead her to her missing grandchild."

"Just like in the movies," Henry agreed. "And for her it'd probably work."

Noelle nodded. Irene Caffrey was officially retired from acting, but she seemed to be imbued with eternal Hollywood magic. "Your grandfather and I convinced her to give Neal time to get used to the idea."

"I'm working on it," Henry said. "Telling him stories about them. Showed him where they live."

"Is that what you were doing when you disappeared after Christmas?" Her first thought when he left the family gathering early was that he had a significant other he wasn't ready to introduce to the family. Her next guess was that he'd planned a distraction for his cousin Angela, who had been struggling through the first Christmas following her father's death. Naturally, Henry had been keeping multiple secrets. "Did you sneak away to introduce Neal to Angela?"

"Seemed like a good first step. I'd been telling them stories, so it felt like they already knew each other. And don't pretend you disapprove. You guessed what I did because it's exactly the kind of thing you and your siblings would have done."

"Hmm." Noelle pretended to be absorbed in checking both ways before turning left at the stop sign.

"Well?"

"You have a point," she admitted.

###

"Wait!" Sara Ellis rushed toward the parking garage elevator as the doors started to close. "Thanks!" she added as the doors opened again. She stepped inside. "Henry?"

It's not that there was any doubt this was her boss. But Henry Winslow usually wore an expensive, fashionable suit. Today... The suit was still there. He wore black wool trousers and a matching jacket. But the jacket was perched over his shoulders, worn more like a cape. And instead of his traditional, crisp white button-down shirt, he wore a billowing poet's shirt. A blue tie was draped around his neck, untied. His left arm was in a cast and sling, explaining the untied tie.

"Do you want me to help with..." She gestured toward the tie. The shirt had a collar, so in theory the tie made sense, although an ascot would have been better. Now that she thought about it, the Hermes scarf she was wearing would be perfect. She tugged it off and held it up. "This seems more congruous."

"Sure." He held his chin up while she tied the scarf around his neck. "Do I look like a corporate pirate?" he asked when she was done.

"Very dashing," she said. "All you need are boots and a sword. But your father..."

"Oh yeah," Henry agreed. "He's going to hate it. Ruffles," he added, in a good impersonation of Robert Winslow's scoffing tone.

Robert had outdated ideas about gender roles, and he would absolutely hate the idea of his son wearing a poet shirt. But what he'd hate even more was how a seemingly feminine garment highlighted Henry's masculinity. Robert would be jealous and simultaneously afraid of wearing something similar. Being intimidated was what would send Robert into stratospheric levels of anger. Sara wondered whether she could arrange to work a case in the field today. She didn't want to be in the office when Robert turned into a volcano that spewed rage.

The elevator stopped and they stepped out on the floor where they worked. "There are some interesting rumors about how you broke your arm," Sara said.

"What's the wildest one?"

"That the FBI was interrogating you and things got out of hand."

His answering grin added to the pirate resemblance. "I was defending Win-Win's honor."

They stopped at the kitchen area to get coffee, and naturally Henry received many speculative looks.

In other circumstances, Sara might have ducked out of sight, but things were different now. She'd had a screening interview with Sterling-Bosch on Friday and they'd scheduled a longer phone interview for next week. With any luck she'd move to New York soon, and that meant she could be less cautious in her current job. "Can we chat in your office?" she asked. "I have some nosy questions."

"Sure," he agreed. "No promises to answer the nosy questions, but you can ask them."

With the door to his office closed behind them, Sara took a seat. She waited as Henry settled in at his desk, awkwardly opening up his laptop with one hand and entering his password.

"What's on your mind?" he asked after he'd logged in.

"I get the temptation to annoy Robert. He truly deserves it. But usually you're more subtle. And usually you wait till the end of the day, when most of us are gone or on our way out. You... well, you shield us from him. So why are you waving a flag in his face first thing in the morning?"

"Allen Winston threatened to fire me last week, after this happened." Henry glanced at the sling. "Said I was being irresponsible."

"Were you?"

"No more than usual. Certainly not more than the company founders were. If I'm called on the carpet today to defend my actions, I'm not going meekly. I've played by their rules for long enough."

"Do you plan to quit?"

He shook his head. "Surprisingly, I want to stay. But I want it to be on my terms. If they can't accept me at my most out-of-the-box and outrageous, we should part ways now. I have big ideas for this company, ideas like working with the FBI, and it's time to start putting those on the table."

Sara nodded. Everything Henry said fit with her experiences working with him. "And?" she prompted, certain there was something else.

"When both of my arms were still functional last week, I did a few magic tricks. It reminded me of the importance of misdirection."

"You want the leadership distracted," Sara guessed.

"Especially Robert." Henry lowered his voice. "I was helping someone when I broke my arm. Someone Robert hates. I don't want him to discover who I was with."

It crossed Sara's mind that Henry might be closeted and hiding a boyfriend. The long list of things Robert didn't approve of included gay people. "If you keep Robert focused on you and your pirate garb, he won't think about who you were with last week."

"And that means he won't lash out at my friend," Henry added. "This is someone who's just started a new job, a whole new life. He needs stability. Given Win-Win's reach and resources, Robert could undermine him, maybe even get him fired. I'm not letting that happen."

Sara nodded. She wanted to ask about the friend, but her nosiness did have limits. "How can I help?"

Henry tossed around ideas for getting his team out of the office for the day, and Sara joined in the brainstorming. When they had a plan they both agreed would work, Henry said, "Thanks. I owe you."

"Enough to give me some time off? I'd like to take a trip to New York in a few weeks." If all went well, she'd be invited to interview there.

"Any leads on your sister?" Henry knew about Emily, who'd run away from home more than a decade ago. Her parents had traced her path to New York City, but then the trail went cold. A big reason Sara was interviewing with Sterling-Bosch was that if she relocated she'd be able to spend more time looking for her sister in person. It was too bad Winston-Winslow didn't have a New York branch.

"Nothing new," Sara said.

The look in Henry's eyes said it all. If Sara hadn't located her sister with all of the resources available to her at Win-Win, chances were that Emily wasn't going to be found alive. "But you still have to try," he said. Henry didn't have siblings, but he seemed to understand.

"I have to try," she agreed. Then, wanting to toss off the bleak mood, she added, "Maybe I could catch up with your friend while I'm there. If you wanted to pass along a message without Robert knowing about it, nothing beats a face-to-face conversation. No emails or phone calls to trace that way."

She expected Henry to shoot that suggestion down immediately with a nice try, or a joke about how he wasn't going to sic one of Win-Win's nosy investigators on his friend. He surprised her by looking thoughtful, smiling, and saying, "I'll think about it."

###

Neal and Sara?

The thought kept returning to Henry throughout the day. It made him smile while facing down the company leadership, which served to enrage Robert even more. Especially when Allen and the other leaders backed down and gave Henry the green light to move forward with some of his ideas. Maybe he could open a New York branch sooner than he'd expected.

Back home in his apartment, Henry managed to open a beer one-handed, sat on his sofa, and returned to the thought of Neal and Sara. He liked the idea of bringing them together. And he especially liked the idea of Neal moving on from Kate.

Neal and Sara. Henry started making notes. He'd plan an innocent meeting between them, something that would highlight how much they had in common.

Yes. Playing matchmaker would be fun.

A/N: Happy holidays! Over the next couple of weeks I'll be posting a set of short stories that aren't part of this AU. I plan to return to this series in mid-January.