Seattle, WA. Saturday evening. June 26, 2004.

Neal had been looking out the taxi window for the right place to stop, when the cell phone the FBI had given him vibrated. He looked down to see a string of text messages he didn't recognize. It looked like Angela had been texting Henry from this phone while Neal had been disguising himself as his cousin.

The newest message read: Angela still with u?

Neal responded: On her way to u.

Robert still around?

Following me.

Where?

The taxi came to a stop and Neal looked up. The crosswalks were teeming with people. "What's going on?" he asked the cab driver.

"Mariners' game just ended."

Neal closed his eyes in frustration, and for a moment he wished Peter had come along on this trip. He would have known the baseball team's schedule and could have warned Neal about this complication. Normally the Pioneer Square area wasn't very busy this time of night. As people left to head home to the suburbs or to upscale condos in other downtown neighborhoods, all that should have been left were the few people who lived in the area, straggling tourists heading back to their hotels, an assortment of panhandlers, and maybe a couple of drug dealers plying their trade. There were plenty of dark alleys between hundred-year-old buildings, plus the bus and train tunnels. He'd thought he could lead Robert on a chase without endangering anyone else.

He hadn't counted on cheering sports fans flooding the streets. Robert probably wouldn't do anything like shooting into a crowd of people in order to kill him, but Neal couldn't be sure. It had been so long since anyone had contact with Robert, he could only guess at the man's state of mind.

Several texts had rolled by unanswered as Neal considered his options. His phone rang, and when he answered Henry said, "I'm at the restaurant. Where are you headed?"

"Angela's safe?"

"She's on her way to her apartment. Where are you?" Henry demanded.

"Pioneer Square. I'm going to the Underground." Neal hung up as Henry started to swear. He directed the driver to take him to the location where the Seattle Underground tour started.

"Last tour was almost an hour ago," the driver protested.

"I'm just meeting someone there," Neal said. He sent one last text, this one to Tricia, letting her know he'd be late for the next check in. At nearly 9pm in Seattle, it was minutes away from midnight on the East Coast. A few blocks away from the Underground tour entrance, Neal had the driver stop. Paying in cash with a generous tip, Neal hopped out and sprinted toward the entrance. It was locked, but he had time to pick it and get inside before Robert could catch up.

In the late 1800s, a fire and frequent flooding prompted the city of Seattle to fill in the first several blocks of downtown, turning first floors of buildings into basements. The current streets were twelve feet or more above the original streets. It was still possible to walk through parts of the original downtown, now underground. The space had been abandoned, and then forgotten for decades. When Neal and Henry had taken the Seattle Underground tour back in 1999, they hadn't been able to resist returning after hours for an epic game of hide-and-seek. Neal was certain he could keep Robert chasing him long enough for the Feds to arrive. He wasn't sure if they'd be able to find him, though. Cell coverage probably wasn't great down there.

Six months of Tuesday Tails had prepared Neal for this. From the beginning he'd easily lost the FBI agents who tried to tail him, but had realized that losing them in the first few minutes wasn't much fun. The trick was to get far enough ahead to plan out his next move, tease his pursuer with a glimpse of him, and then lose his tail again.

In his black slacks and black T-shirt, fading into the shadows was easy for Neal. Robert's lighter clothing had worked for disappearing into crowds of tourists in their light-colored summer wear, but in the tunnels he stood out more than Neal.

Making people like him was such an integral part of being a con artist that encounters with Robert had always been disconcerting. Once he'd become aware of the hatred under Robert's initial pretense of acceptance, Neal had tried over and over to discover a way to improve Robert's opinion of him, but to no avail. Even more troubling was this experience of pretending to be Robert's son, and still fearing for his life. The last time he'd encountered Robert was three years ago, and then the man seemed disappointed and annoyed with Henry, but not murderous. Being passed over for the Winston-Winslow CEO role while Henry was chosen to be groomed for the job had caused Robert to show his true colors.

Maybe Neal was lucky not to remember his own dad. James couldn't hurt him the way Robert twisted Henry's heart these last few months.

About fifteen minutes into the chase, Neal hid behind the door of an old bank vault. This was the longest he'd gone without letting Robert see him, and the man's frustration was growing. "Why don't you quit hiding and face me like a man?" Robert yelled.

Neal eyed his planned escape route with dismay. The doorway that he'd used five years ago when he'd been here with Henry had collapsed, perhaps a casualty of Seattle's earthquake in 2001. He could probably make his way over the pile of bricks partially blocking the passageway, but what would he find in the next room? As quietly as he could, he slid toward the opening and tried to look through. He saw a light, which meant another clear passage used by the tour. "Get rid of the gun!" Neal responded in an impersonation of Henry. "Make it fair. Then we'll talk."

Crawling over the bricks wasn't easy. He should have worn jeans for this, not dress slacks that snagged and tore on the ragged edges of the crumbling masonry. He was almost over the bricks when the unstable pile slid under him, dumping him on the ground on the other side. The bricks continued to slide, and he covered his head but couldn't protect the rest of his body. Fortunately the bricks weren't falling far, only giving him bruises rather than breaking bones, but moving out from under them was going to be noisy and slow. Things might have turned in Robert's favor.

"Hi, Dad." Henry's voice. Not Neal impersonating him, this time. Henry was really here.

How had he found them so fast, ahead of the FBI? He couldn't have GPS tracking equipment on him. Neal really needed to find out who was helping Henry. Neal started rising up from the floor, letting the noise of the falling bricks distract Robert from Henry.

"Both of you," Robert said. "I should have known. You don't have what it takes to face your old man on your own."

Before Henry could respond, FBI agents swarmed in. Robert complied with their order to put his gun on the ground, and was surprisingly obedient as he was cuffed and led outside.

Henry scrambled toward Neal, brushing away bricks and helping him stand. "You okay?" Henry led him back toward the lighted area and Neal let himself lean on his cousin until they found a place to sit down. "You look like you were hit by a ton of bricks."

"Very funny." Neal looked at the cuts and scrapes on his legs. Nothing major, but he'd be in some pain tonight. "Listen, you've got to stop avoiding me. I can help."

"Yeah, almost getting shot by Robert was amazingly helpful."

"I can move the Masterson case along faster. We need to wrap it up before Angela's supposed to be back in school."

"I saw what's happening online. That your doing?"

"With Mozzie, yeah."

An agent approached them. "We need to talk to you about what happened in here."

Henry stood. "Of course. But first he should get some medical attention."

The agent trained her flashlight over Neal and then told a colleague to bring a first aid kit. Once someone was cleaning the cuts on Neal's legs, Henry walked off with the agent.

Distracted by the questions from the medic, Neal could hear only snatches of Henry's conversation. He heard his cousin say "Neal Caffrey" and "my cousin" and "take care of him" before the agent nodded and walked toward Neal.

"All right, Henry," she said, "let's get your statement and then we'll get you a ride back to your hotel."

"What?" Neal looked back toward where Henry had been, but his cousin had disappeared. "I'm Neal Caffrey."

"He said you were a practical joker. I understand this has been a stressful ordeal and you want to unwind, but I need you to be serious here. Mr. Caffrey showed us his consultant's badge. Please don't try to confuse things."

"I'm not. Hold on." Neal took out the hazel contacts. Then he stood, feeling the ache in his abused muscles. He pulled out his wallet. "See for yourself."

The agent saw credit cards and a New York driver's license in Neal's name. She held up the license, shining her flashlight on the picture to compare to Neal. "If you're Neal Caffrey, then who the hell was that and how did he get your badge?"

"That was my cousin Henry Winslow, and he has some experience as a pickpocket. He probably took my badge when he helped me walk over here."

"Mathison!" the agent snapped. Another agent strode over. "Where did our alleged FBI consultant go?"

Mathison looked surprised. "He said he was feeling claustrophobic, so I sent him upstairs. He's waiting out by our cars."

"Double check on that. If you see him keep him in place, even if you have to restrain him."

But Henry was long gone. He'd left Neal's badge inside one of the FBI agent's cars. The agent swore up and down that his car had been locked. Neal shrugged and said Henry had experience breaking into cars, too.

On the ride to the Seattle FBI offices with Agent Mathison, Neal wondered why Henry had disappeared. With Robert under arrest, they were safe now. The best thing Henry could do was give his testimony about what had happened tonight.

It wasn't until Neal got inside the Bureau that he put the pieces together. The flurry of activity in the office wasn't indicative of a team preparing to interrogate a suspect. This was more like preparing for a manhunt. Therefore he was disappointed but not surprised to hear that Robert had escaped.

"How?" he asked when the agent in charge broke the news.

"Please, sit down," Agent Yoshida said. His office remained an oasis of calm compared to the chaos of the manhunt. "From what I can tell, an imposter in an FBI jacket joined the team shortly after they arrived on the scene. He volunteered to wait outside watching the underground entrances, and he helped our agent lead Robert Winslow away when they emerged. After the agent unlocked the car, the imposter knocked him out, unlocked the prisoner's cuffs, and disappeared. Robert Winslow drove off in the agent's car, but just far enough to get lost in a crowd. He left the car with a hotel valet and disappeared."

Neal nodded. "This morning Agent Burke told me he suspected Robert has an accomplice. It sounds like he was right." That explained why Robert had been so docile when he was led away. Neal had always thought Robert would go down shooting. But Robert had known he wasn't going down. He must have gotten word to his accomplice at the same time Neal was contacting the Bureau.

"Just one accomplice?" Yoshida asked.

"I doubt there are many people he would trust," Neal said.

"His son, perhaps?"

"Henry was with me and your agents when Robert disappeared," Neal pointed out.

"Keeping my agents busy and distracted with a false story. And now he's nowhere to be found. You have to admit it looks suspicious."

Now Neal faced a dilemma, because Henry wasn't the only one who had picked someone's pocket. Neal had swapped phones with his cousin. Until Henry noticed and tossed the device, he was carrying the phone the FBI had given Neal, the one they used to track him tonight. Did he trust the FBI with the means to locate his cousin? "He's hiding from a deranged father who wants to kill him. I think he's justified in wanting to disappear."

"How did he even know where Robert would be?"

"I told him. I was texting him on my way to Pioneer Square," Neal said.

The agent shook his head. He glanced down at his notes a moment and then looked at Neal again. "You work for Peter Burke?"

"Yes, sir."

"I handled a few cases with him, when he was first starting out as a probie in D.C. He was impressive, and I've heard good things since then."

"He's a good agent. A good person," Neal said, trying to keep his praise in terms that Hughes would approve.

"And Henry is family, and I'm a stranger. I get it. But remember you work for the FBI. You bought into the Bureau and what we do. We bring a lot to the table. We could help you and your family, but not if you shut us out."

It was much the same message Neal had tried to convey to Henry. He studied the agent, using all of the skills he'd gained as a con artist in reading people. Then he pulled out Henry's cell phone. "I swapped phones with him. It won't take him long to notice, but until then you can track him. He has the phone you were using to track me."

The agent stood and opened the door to his office, and yelled, "Mathison! Get that GPS tracking gear up here."

Mathison had barely plugged in the equipment when Henry's phone rang. Neal could see the calling number was the phone he'd slipped into his cousin's pocket. He picked up the phone, aware of two FBI agents listening, and said, "Henry, are you okay?"

"Peter just called this number, demanding to know if you were okay. Took me a minute to convince him I wasn't you. Nice job on the lift, by the way. I never noticed you taking my phone."

"Robert got away."

"Yeah. I saw him driving off as I reached ground level. I made sure the agent wasn't too badly hurt and then tried to follow."

"He left the car at a hotel."

"So we have no idea where he went. Damn it, Neal! You put yourself at risk like that, and for what?"

"We almost had him. Next time –"

"No, Neal. No next time. You need to stay out of this. I can't believe Peter let you get involved in this case."

"I'm not working Robert's case. I'm on a missing person's case, looking for you." When there wasn't a response, Neal continued, "You don't have to be alone in this. I've been giving this a lot of thought and have some ideas you need to hear. Please. You have to stop shutting me out."

"Or you'll keep taking ridiculous risks," Henry grumbled. "You know I'm going to ditch this phone, right?"

"Yeah, I know you'll fall off the radar again. But you know how to contact me. Postcards aren't exactly cutting it, man. I'm not the only one who's concerned. Your mom is making a good show of it, but she's worried about you."

Neal could hear the lapping of waves. Henry must be near the boat he was using, or even on it. "I don't want to shut you out," Henry said. "Give me a little more time. I need to think things through, revise my plan."

"I could help with the plan. Hell, the FBI and Win-Win all want to help. You don't have to do this alone. Just come back and talk to me."

"I can't go home. I can't lead Robert back to my family and friends. Staying on the move, staying alone, that's the safest for everyone."

"Everyone but you." Another long pause. "Henry?" The line had gone dead. Neal put the phone down and looked at the agents. "He ditched the phone."

A/N: The Seattle Underground is real but probably not extensive enough for the chase described in this chapter.