Neal's loft. Tuesday morning. July 13, 2004.

When Peter and the other agents left at 9am, Neal still had a couple of options left. One of them had to pull through for him. First was Travis, who was coordinating with Julia Winslow to track the kidnappers. Travis called as Neal and Diana were walking upstairs to Neal's loft.

"What did you learn?" Neal asked.

"There's a phone registered to Jason Ford that seems to have been turned off since Sunday. Shortly after it stopped connecting to the network, the phone we identified as being used at JFK was purchased and registered as belonging to Jason Ferrari. He bought it with cash. No credit card to trace and the billing address he gave is phony."

Neal opened the door to his loft, and followed Diana inside. He put his phone on the dining table. "I'm putting you on speaker so Diana can hear. You said the phone was purchased Sunday, by someone using the alias we associate with Ford. Can you track him?"

"Sometimes," Travis said. "He turns the phone on and off sporadically. The pattern Julia identified contains an obvious empty spot: Long Island. It looks like he turns the phone off when he nears the bridge going there, and turns it on again as he's leaving. We believe that's where he's staying, and he's keeping his phone off there because he doesn't want to be tracked."

"That narrows down the search area," Diana said. "Were you able to run the plates on his car?"

"Yeah, it looks like someone stole those plates off a yellow VW Beetle. We asked the police to keep an eye out for those plates, but if he realized he was being followed last night he may have switched plates again."

Neal paced around the table. "Can you tell us who Ford's been calling, or who's calling him?"

"Most calls are to another phone purchased at the same time. This one is registered to a Robert Hyde. Robert Winslow used Mr. Hyde as an alias a few months ago, right?"

"Right. Have you been able to track that phone?"

"Up until last night it had the same kind of pattern we saw with the other phone, always going dark when approaching Long Island. Then it popped up at JFK very early this morning, and in Chicago when I was talking to Julia."

"He's heading west. Did he get Henry out of the way to go after Heinemann first?" Neal asked.

"Possibly. In Chicago there was a significant withdrawal made from that secret bank account of his. It could be to pay for travel, or to pay someone off, or some of each. I've got a clerk going through records of flights from JFK to O'Hare to look for Robert and maybe identify the alias he's using to travel under."

It was good, but it didn't help him find his cousins. Neal didn't think Jason Ford would kill them, but he might be convinced to leave them locked up someplace on Robert's assurance that someone else would look after them, but where they would actually be left to starve.

Putting pressure on Ford could be the key. After ending the call to Travis, Neal called U.S. Marshal Annina Brandel to tell her that the man who had been watching the mansion earlier that month and who was suspected of hacking into the marshals' email had added impersonating an Air Marshal to his list of crimes.

"We don't take that lightly," Annina said. "If you have evidence, I can issue a warrant for his arrest."

"The security footage isn't clear enough to prove it's him, but I'm working on getting evidence. If we can find him, I'm sure we'll also find the uniform he was wearing. In the meantime, can you send an email mentioning what we suspect and the plan to file charges against him? I want him to be scared."

"I can do that," she promised. "I can't file a warrant, but I can issue an advisory that we want to find and question him."

Next Neal checked with attorney Lawson Hunter in Austin. This time Neal didn't use the speaker phone, going out on the balcony so Diana wouldn't hear.

"We can't press charges," Lawson said, "but my expert here said we could file a restraining order. At least we'd have it on record that Jason Ford has a history of harassing Henry."

That was a double-edged sword. It would make Ford nervous, but Henry would be furious to be named as a victim in the order. Neal's loyalty had been to Henry for seven years, but now it seemed the best way to help his cousin was by breaking his promises. "Do it," Neal said.

Back inside, Neal sat at the dining table. Elbows on the table, face in his hands, he tried to think of any other resource or option for helping his cousins. He was running out of ideas. He put his arms on the table and laid his head down on them.

He didn't fall asleep, but he was lost in thought when his phone rang again. He rubbed his eyes and squinted at the caller ID. "Hello," he said, uncertain if it was really her.

"Neal, dear boy," said his grandmother.

"Dressa. Are you still in Switzerland?"

"Yes, we are. The talks are going well, but Noelle's in quite a state. Henry came to see us off, you know."

"Yes, I know."

"It was very sweet of him, and he promised he'd stay in touch. He was supposed to call Noelle on Monday and he didn't. She wouldn't normally be such a worrywart, but with everything going on with Robert... Well, she tried calling, and couldn't reach Henry, not by phone or by email. That was worrisome enough, and then I checked in with Paige. She seems a little lost sometimes, and I'd been concerned about leaving her alone. Tomorrow's the anniversary of when David..." She took a breath that sounded like a sob at the thought of her son's death.

"Right," Neal said. "What did Paige say?"

"I didn't talk to her. Some stranger answered the phone, and then Graham Winslow was there. He said Paige was sleeping. It was nice of Graham to be there, but it's odd, isn't it? I asked to talk to Angela. She'd planned to go home and stay with Paige, but Graham said she wasn't there. He wouldn't really explain why he was there, or where Henry and Angela are. They must be together I suppose, in whatever mischief they're up to, if Graham is with Paige."

"I think you're right." Neal was grateful that Irene sounded somewhat befuddled. If he just confirmed what Graham and the FBI had led her to believe, he wouldn't have to distress her.

Unfortunately, the befuddlement had been Irene showing off her acting skills. "I think that's what I'm supposed to think. Now tell me the truth," she insisted. "What's happened to them?"

It was surprisingly difficult to evade when Irene Caffrey wanted answers. Or maybe not so surprising. She'd had years of practice dealing with Henry. "I wish I knew. No one can find them. Most people think they're off on some adventure and went out of cell phone range."

Irene sniffed disdainfully. "You don't believe that any more than I do."

"No. At first the FBI thought they might have been abducted by someone who wanted to influence the Ambassador, but that doesn't seem to be the case. No one's tried to contact you, right?"

"No one at all. We've been left distressingly in the dark. Please tell me you aren't going to contribute to that. I don't like being in the dark."

Neal sighed. "I'm sure Robert's behind it. There's a whole FBI team focused on finding them, and we've learned a lot in the last twenty-four hours."

"You'll find them?" Irene's voice held a mixture of determination and worry.

"Yes, I will," Neal promised.

"And you'll be careful."

"Yes, ma'am." After they said their goodbyes, Neal checked his watch. Almost 10:30. He considered his options, and realized he was down to one. He called Peter.

###

Elizabeth Burke checked her Burke Premiere Events email account again. Still no new messages.

That's how it went when you opened a business. Sometimes you couldn't keep up, and other times there were lulls. She was between events. Her next one wasn't for another week, and she'd already done as much as she could this far in advance. She didn't have any meetings with new clients until tomorrow.

She'd walked Satchmo, vacuumed, gone grocery shopping and wanted something more intellectually stimulating to do. She checked her personal email, and saw a message from a former college roommate. Lisa worked at a radio station in Boston, and had news about the group Urban Legend. It had been several weeks ago that El had looked at their site at Lisa's suggestion. She visited again and saw several more photos and music clips had been posted.

She also read a series of posts by the group's agent and fans about recent missed and canceled performances. Lisa had heard a rumor the singers were missing. They hadn't been seen since Saturday night, and their agent couldn't give any definitive information regarding where they were or when they'd be back.

El read the latest information on the site. Was this a publicity stunt to get more attention for the band, or were they really in trouble? It was very much like the questions Peter had about Henry and Angela's disappearance.

Scrolling through the photos from recent performances, El noticed these were much higher quality. Last time she'd visited the site, the singers were little more than a blur. Now you could get a sense of what they really looked like. El shook her head. She was so worried about Henry and Angela and Neal that she was seeing them instead of Shawn, Grace and Neal Legend.

Neal Legend. Wasn't it interesting that he also spelled his name N-E-A-L? Usually you saw N-E-I-L.

She played some snippets of their songs. The audio on her laptop was tinny, but the Legend brothers did remind her of Neal and Henry. She'd heard them sing a couple of times. There was the morning they stayed over and Neal played his guitar while she fixed breakfast. And then Henry sang at their cabin. Had she ever heard them sing together?

She looked at the photos again. It wasn't just her imagination. They really looked like –

The front door opened. Peter was home? He hadn't said anything about coming home for lunch, and it was early. Normally he had lunch at noon or 12:30. It was only 11:15. "Hon, is everything okay?"

Peter tossed his suit jacket on the sofa. "I hope so. Neal called. He wants to talk, but not at the Bureau. He asked if he could come here."

###

When Neal called to say he was ready to talk, Peter felt like a heavy load had been lifted from his shoulders. Finally, Neal was going to trust him with the secrets he'd been keeping. Leads on the disappearance of his cousins were quickly drying up, and hopefully Neal's additional information would point the team in the right direction.

On the drive to Brooklyn, Peter started to worry. These secrets must be a big deal for Neal to have kept them so long, and to have agonized so much over telling Peter. And he didn't want to talk about them at the office. Had he withheld something that could jeopardize his immunity deal with the FBI?

El picked up on his worry as soon as he got home. She asked if Neal had eaten anything at their breakfast meeting and Peter thought back. "An egg, I think. Some toast? Mostly he picked at the food."

"I'll put together something and see if we can tempt him to eat a little more." Then El was bustling in the kitchen, pouring juice into a pitcher, brewing coffee, and arranging cheese and crackers and fresh fruit on a plate.

"Thanks, hon," he said and pulled her close for a moment after she'd placed the food on the table. "What would I do without you?"

She reached up and kissed him. "Fortunately we don't have to find out." Then she slipped out of his arms to return to the kitchen. He followed, taking the plates she handed him, while she carried juice glasses. She picked up her laptop to get it out of the way, but didn't close it. "Do you remember –" she started, but was interrupted by a knock on the door. She put the laptop down on the coffee table as Peter hurried to the door to let in Neal and Diana.

Neal noticed El and walked inside to greet her. "I didn't know you'd be home."

"I can get out of your way," she said.

"No. Stay. I'd like you to hear it, too."

Peter raised a brow at that, and asked Diana in a low voice, "Did he get any rest?"

"Depends on your definition, I guess. He made some calls, sat at his table and brooded a bit. Got another call and then called you. I curled up on the sofa and decided to read rather than nap. In his state of mind I wanted to keep an eye on him. I could imagine him being impetuous and deciding to let me sleep while he chased after a lead."

"Smart. You're getting good at reading him," Peter said, glad that Neal had picked her as his guard yesterday. Diana had continued to impress both Peter and his team. Tricia raved about her this morning, and Jones complained that her resume hadn't been among the set he'd reviewed for their probationary agent opening. "There's a guest room upstairs if you'd like to take a break."

Her eyes lit up. "I mean this in the most professional sense, but I could kiss you right now."

Peter introduced El, who was wonderfully calm about the unexpected guest as she led Diana upstairs. Peter guided Neal into the dining room and encouraged him to try the snack El had provided. He was pleased to see the kid actually eating, even if he seemed too preoccupied to taste the food.

When he heard El walking back downstairs, Peter asked, "Ready?"

"More like resigned." Neal took a deep breath, and started with, "You know that Henry found me when I ran away from home. I'm sure you wondered what we were doing the next four years we traveled together."

"Wondered, and worried," Peter confirmed. "You didn't include anything from that time in your confession, and that means you don't have immunity for it."

"It was small-time stuff compared to what I did later. We started with a few cons, getting free meals or even a hotel room out of it. We picked some pockets, but usually convinced the owner of the wallet he or she had dropped it; if we did it right, we'd get a cash reward for returning the wallet. We got by, but we weren't exactly rolling in money. The first several weeks we were more likely to sleep in Henry's car than in a hotel. But Henry had a plan."

"Of course he did," said Peter, trying not to show how stressed he felt about Henry's plan. Henry was rash at twenty-seven. He was probably more reckless when he was twenty.

"When he dropped out of college the first week of his senior year, he got a refund of his tuition. That was his emergency fund. He did want to finish his degree eventually, so we almost never touched that money. We traveled somewhat randomly around the country, or so it seemed to me. We hit several music festivals, and between those we visited music stores where Henry tried out the guitars and confirmed that I was decent on guitar and better on piano or keyboards. Sometimes he gave me and others in the stores lessons on playing the guitar like a pro. Finally he found a place that had the guitar he wanted at a price he was willing to pay. It helped that he impressed the store owner with his skill and really laid on the charm; he got a good discount. Shortly after he bought the guitar, he let me in on the plan."

"Busking?" Peter asked, thinking back to Neal's recent arrest.

"Sometimes. That was a fallback if things got tight. Usually it was me as the busker, because people had more pity on a kid. At eighteen I preferred to be perceived as grown up, but I understood that coming across as younger than my age was sometimes an advantage. We usually had something else going on, like performing in a club. We made a lot of contacts, and that brought more opportunities. We'd fill in if a group had a musician or backup singer who couldn't perform. Song writers asked us to test out their songs in clubs, and we had a sideline recording demos. We were skilled at picking up different styles, so if a song writer wanted to pitch a song to a specific group, we'd emulate that group's sound for the demo. There were times the group would pick up the song because they liked the demo and then would ask if we were available to perform backup on the official recording. For a while we were in the background of multiple pop and rock songs on the radio. Even country. Henry's not a big fan of country music, but he has a great voice for it, and his guitar style worked well for crossover artists." Neal actually smiled at a set of memories Peter could barely fathom.

"This... is not what I expected," Peter said. "You... A rocker, really?"

"Pop, angst rock, ballads, a little folk music. Henry taught me the old Irish folk tunes that our grandfather had taught him, and a few songs from old musicals our grandmother starred in. But yeah, rock and pop had the most demand so that's what we specialized in."

"But you're..." Peter gestured toward Neal. "You're this clean-cut, polite charmer. How'd you convince anyone to hire you as a rock musician? I just don't see it."

"I do," said El. "I can see Neal as a young Paul McCartney." She grinned at him. "I'll bet you drove the girls wild."

Neal shrugged. "Henry more than me. Mostly I was his sidekick. He applied what he'd learned in his psychology classes to our performances, drawing a strong reaction from the audience. He developed a charisma that he still uses to take charge of situations, but on stage it was really powerful. He learned early on how to handle groupies, turning them away without turning them off, so we kept them as fans. The more we made a name for ourselves, the more chances we had to perform as our own duo, like as a warm-up act."

"This name you made for yourselves..." Peter prompted. This had to be where the secret aliases came in, because none of Neal's known aliases were musicians.

Neal still wasn't ready to give up those names, apparently, because he kept going with the story. "We tried to keep it low key. We were making enough money that we could pay our way and even save a little, replacing what we'd spent from the emergency fund. Fame wasn't in the cards for us. The last thing we wanted was to get enough attention that Win-Win noticed us. We had fun, we were comfortable, and we were safe. Henry kept his promise to call home once a month, and he always timed it for when we were about to leave wherever we'd been staying so we'd be hard to track. The people we were hanging out with respected our privacy. A lot of the people we met who were also traveling from gig to gig had their own demons they were hiding from, so they understood when we didn't want to talk about our backgrounds. For a long time we were mostly on a first-name basis with other musicians, and we were paid in cash or trade. If a club manager put us up in a hotel, maybe bought us a meal, we were satisfied."

At last Peter understood how Henry had eluded Win-Win for years, and how the marshals had never found Neal. "You're sure Henry hasn't just gone back to that life?" Peter asked. "Sounds like a good way to escape from the pressures he's been under, and to distract Angela from her grief right now."

"No, it doesn't work like that," Neal insisted. "A cardinal rule was that we never called attention to ourselves in a way that would cause people to link our real selves to our stage personas. That's always been a top priority for Henry, and when Angela replaced me it was important to her, too. Until this year, only one person outside of the three of us knew us by both identities. I'm telling you how we disappeared, and why we disappeared, so you'll understand that isn't what's going on now."

"Why didn't you share your musician alias when we granted you immunity?"

"It's more a pseudonym. I don't think of it as an alias, because it wasn't for criminal purposes."

"You weren't breaking any laws?" Peter still didn't get why Neal had kept this all a secret if it wasn't criminal. He wasn't eluding the marshals anymore, and Henry had gone from hiding from Win-Win to working for them.

"Rarely after that first year. At least, we weren't knowingly breaking the law." Neal shrugged. "When I was eighteen, I didn't know you should pay taxes on cash or bartered income. I probably wouldn't have cared if I did know. Taxes fed the system, and in my eyes the system had failed me. It wasn't about the money, Peter. It was about disappearing. We each had a reason we needed to hide, and those reasons still exist. That's why I don't want to share those pseudonyms with the Bureau. Can't we run the names ourselves? You'll see Henry and Angela aren't playing hooky under those identities, and you can tell the Missing Persons agents the results without putting those pseudonyms in the files."

Peter shook his head. "The minute I run those names through the Bureau databases, they're in the official logs and tied to the case. Neal, I'm just not getting it. Frankly, I'm relieved to hear that you and your cousins were spending your time on something so innocent. Is this what you were really up to over Christmas, performing with your cousins?"

Neal nodded. "That's why I didn't tell you. Well, teasing you about what I might have been doing was fun, too, but mostly I didn't want you to find out about that part of my life. I didn't want it in my file."

"Why does it matter if this goes in your file?"

Neal ran his hands through his hair. "I'm not explaining it right."

El stood up and brought her laptop back from the living room. She woke it up and turned it around for Neal to see. "It wasn't just Christmas. You're performing on a regular basis, aren't you? You'd stopped for a while, and there were even rumors you'd died when you disappeared from the music scene, but recently you've been making a comeback. With an official site and this kind of press, did you really think you could keep it a secret?"

Neal looked at the screen and took a deep breath before looking up at El again. "How long have you known?"

"I just figured it out this morning."

Peter leaned over to view the screen. "I remember this site. You were looking at it a few weeks ago over breakfast while I talked to Joe. Urban Legend." He scrolled down the page and saw a picture of Neal with a guitar, captioned as being from a performance in Miami. "No wonder you were exhausted. You told me you were gambling to pay for college. Why didn't you tell me you were doing this? I'd have been a lot less worried."

"There isn't much money in it. Not unless you have professional representation and a recording contract."

"Then why do it? I thought art was your passion. Is music what you really want to pursue? Is that why you haven't told anyone about getting into Columbia?"

"No. Music's just a hobby, really." Neal stood up. "Remember when I told you I was working another case? It wasn't about where I was born; that was a misdirect. This is the case. We met a lot of aspiring singers and musicians over the years, Peter, and we heard a lot of stories about how they were taken advantage of. There's a record company that's cheating people. More than that, they're dashing dreams and ruining lives."

"Masterson Music." It was coming together. The searches in Neal's browser history. The case file Henry had hidden at Win-Win. The corporate evil Mozzie was looking into. "Why didn't you just tell me about it? We could have made it an official case."

"I wanted to solve it on my own, to show everyone that I can do the job without you holding my hand. And by doing it off the books, I had a shot of keeping our pseudonyms a secret."

Rather than ask yet again why the pseudonyms needed to be a secret, Peter leaned back in his chair and looked at Neal.

"I'm with Peter on this one," El said. "Why the secrecy?"

Neal leaned against the bookcase. "For Henry and me, it was a game. We did it for fun, to earn enough money to get by, and then later to keep in touch with contacts who could tell us what Masterson was up to. It's different for Angela. Music isn't my passion, but it is hers. She loves it, and has the talent to go pro. But you remember what my grandfather said at my birthday party, about how he left the life of itinerant Irish musicians to become an ambassador? He can't accept one of his grandchildren going back into that life. As long as no one knows Angela is Grace Legend, she can get away to be a musician without distressing him. That means she's careful, Peter. She would never schedule a performance and a family obligation at the same time, and then skip out on the family. That would cause the family to look into where she's gone, and then she would lose her release valve."

"You really don't think Edmund could be brought around to accept her choice?" El asked. "Even if Irene and Noelle worked on him, too?"

"Maybe. But if anyone finds out she's Grace Legend, then Henry and I are exposed as Legends, too. For me, it's about having an escape route. None of my aliases were as secure and established as the Neal Legend identity. People in my old life knew me for my ability with art or forgery or theft, but I didn't share anything about being a musician. Some knew I could play, but not that I could perform like that. If I needed to, I could disappear into the Legend identity at the drop of a hat, and have time to create a new alias before anyone could find me."

"Because you have a flight instinct," Peter said. It was finally making sense. In fact, he was having to restrain himself from reaching out and grabbing Neal to keep him from making a run for it now. The kid's nerves were showing and he was probably using his con artist skills to protect himself from looking as vulnerable as he felt. "Knowing you still had one hidden identity in your pocket helped you through the stress of joining the FBI. As long as you believed you could still escape, you didn't panic about all the changes in your life."

"Something like that," Neal said with a tired grin.

"You know you're safe now, Neal. You don't have to run from me. I'm on your side."

"So can we run the Legend names through the database and prove Henry and Angela aren't hanging out at some hotel or resort?"

"Not so fast. You didn't tell me why Henry needed an alias to disappear into."

"Does it matter? You get the gist, right?"

Peter frowned. "I think it does matter. For weeks you've been dancing around secrets whenever we've talked about the Robert Winslow case, and now you seem to think he's behind your cousins' disappearance. If you want me to believe that, I need the full picture."

Neal stepped forward, bracing his hands on the back of a dining room chair. He looked down, his hair falling into his face. "Peter..." He met Peter's eyes. "Dad, please, if I tell you this, you have to keep it out of the FBI files."

Neal had called Peter Dad before, but not like this, not in this desperate, hopeful, pleading tone. It grabbed hold of Peter's heart and twisted, and he finally understood Neal's compulsion to obey when called Son. Right now he wanted to do anything to keep Neal safe and free from the worry that obviously burdened him. Under the table, El grabbed his hand and squeezed. And instead of saying what should have been his automatic response as an agent: We'll see, or As long as he didn't break any federal laws, Peter answered with the assurance of a dad, "I promise."

A/N: In her notes for this chapter, Silbrith pointed out that Neal is gaining power over Peter by calling him "Dad," fulfilling a request Neal had made back in the story Caffrey Conversation. In that story, Neal complained that Peter had most of the power in their relationship, and now things are becoming more balanced. She also asked if Neal is aware of how much power he has over Peter in this chapter when he calls him "Dad." My opinion is that he realizes it affected Peter, but doesn't grasp the full extent.