Burke Townhouse. Tuesday morning. July 13, 2004.

After all this time, Neal had disclosed things to Peter he'd thought he'd never share. He'd given up his last alias and his heart pounded with the panic he felt at losing his best and easiest escape. The trust he'd just shown Peter was more than he'd have ever imagined when he'd gone to work for him back in December.

But that still hadn't been enough. Now he was going to spill some of Henry's most closely guarded secrets. "He's going to hate me," he said despairingly.

"No," said Elizabeth. "Not Henry. He loves you. Speaking from experience with my sister, I can tell you that even if he's angry at first, in the end he'll understand and forgive you."

Peter stood and rested a hand on Neal's back. "It'll be okay, Neal. Just tell us. Get it over with and stop torturing yourself."

Neal nodded, and stood up straight. "Henry was sixteen when his parents got divorced. He and his mom moved out of his dad's house, which was near Win-Win, to live in a townhouse close to the university where Noelle was teaching. As he got settled into his new neighborhood, he noticed one particular guy kept showing up. It was a stranger, about four years older than him, and Henry became convinced this guy was following him. He told Noelle about it, and of course Win-Win was the first option that came to mind for looking into it, so she called Graham. Graham believed Henry's father would be the most motivated to make sure Henry was safe, and he assigned the case to Robert."

"What did he find?" Elizabeth asked.

"He said he didn't notice anyone who matched the description of this guy, and found no evidence that Henry was being followed. He claimed it was something Henry made up to get attention."

"He was crying wolf," Peter said.

"Exactly. After Robert made his report he asked to speak alone with Henry. That's when he said that if Henry seriously believed he was being followed, it was a sign he was unstable, and that Noelle probably couldn't keep custody of a kid who was mentally and emotionally disturbed. Henry didn't know much about custody laws, and he believed it. If he kept claiming he was being followed, not only would Noelle and Graham think he was a lying, spoiled brat, but he also might be taken away from his mom."

"Oh, that's despicable!" Elizabeth's eyes were shining. "To do that to his own son. How could he?"

There was no good answer to that. "For the next couple of months, Henry didn't see anyone following him. He almost started to believe he'd been imagining it. He'd been anxious much of that year, taking summer school to keep his mind off his parents' arguments leading up to the divorce, and then taking extra classes in the fall. He was on track to graduate a year early, and before spring break of his last semester he'd been accepted into Columbia. Shortly after he told his Winslow relatives about that, he noticed the same guy following him again. His best guess was that Robert was being a control freak. Robert hadn't liked his son being out of his sight after the divorce, and the idea of him going away to college early was even less acceptable."

"What did Henry do?" Peter asked.

"He didn't think he could tell anyone this time, not without evidence. He joined a photography club, giving him an excuse to carry a camera around, hoping to get pictures of the guy following him. But this guy was elusive. It was like he had been trained by Robert."

"Or by Win-Win."

Neal nodded at Peter. "At the time, Henry didn't think Robert would risk using a Win-Win employee for this and the guy following him was college-age, too young to be a full-time employee. Henry didn't know the company hired college interns. But Ford wasn't the only one trained by Robert, and Henry came up with a plan for dealing with him."

"Hold on. Jason Ford was the one following Henry?"

"Yeah," said Neal. "He's been loyal to Robert for a long time. It isn't going to be easy to convince him that Robert's the bad guy in all this."

"How long did this last, Ford following Henry?"

"Off and on ever since Henry was sixteen."

"Then you'd seen him before," Peter said. "That's how you were able to provide a drawing to Travis before he went undercover."

"Right. Looking back, I realize that Ford has never done anything to Henry, other than report back to Robert and generally freak us out. At first I was terrified of him, because Ford was the only thing Henry ever admitted being afraid of. But over time I realized that it wasn't really Ford who scared Henry. Robert was the monster in all this."

Elizabeth's eyes widened. "What did Robert do?"

"Robert expected his son to follow in his footsteps. He started a training program early, long before the divorce, to make Henry into the best investigator possible. He taught Henry how to think like and outsmart criminals, including lock picking and pickpocketing and surveillance. He made sure Henry knew how to tail someone, and how to lose a tail. When Henry failed or didn't measure up, Robert was harsh. He didn't make any allowances for Henry being young or new to investigative work. In Robert's mind, Henry had been bred for this, and nothing else was as important."

El looked appalled, but Peter took it in stride. He'd heard this part before.

"That's what fed Henry's fear. He thought this might be a test by Robert. If he failed, if he let this other guy catch him, he didn't know what Robert would do. Maybe Robert had instructed Ford to beat Henry up, to seriously hurt him or even kill him. After all, if Henry washed out at these skills Robert prized, then Robert had no use for him. Or maybe he'd hurt someone Henry loved as a means to teach him that he needed to step up his skills to become worthy to be Robert's successor. As a result, Henry was terrified of being caught by Ford and was determined never to go to work at Win-Win."

"I'm surprised he did," Elizabeth said. "I know he was blackmailed into it, but I never imagined how traumatic it must have been."

"That's why you said you'd rather go to prison than be the reason Henry ended up working for his father," Peter added. "Graham probably helped him settle in, or it's hard to imagine how he could have handled it."

"You're probably right," Neal said, grateful that Henry had Graham's support to offset what Robert would have put him through. "Anyway, Henry didn't get any conclusive photos to show he was being followed in high school, and his mom worried his obsession with the camera meant this was more than the hobby he'd claimed it was. So he gave up photography and took a different approach. He turned down Columbia and accepted an offer from the furthest school he'd applied to: the University of Texas in Austin. He even went there early, taking a couple of summer classes while he settled in. He thought he was finally beyond the reach of his stalker. But right after he got out of the hospital when he was twenty –"

"Wait," Elizabeth interrupted, asking why Henry had been in the hospital.

Neal explained how Henry had saved Shannon Hunter's life. As he told the story he watched Peter, hoping to impress on him that Henry might be impetuous, but he was good and worthy of the FBI's help. Back in the spring Noelle had wondered if, as Neal's father figure, Peter was also somewhat like a father to Henry in his role as Neal's big brother. He hoped that was the case. Henry needed every advantage he could get now.

"That poor boy," said El as Neal explained his cousin's panic when a former roommate described a man who'd stopped by looking for Henry. The stalker had followed him to Texas.

Peter stood up, and Neal took that as a good sign. Peter would often start out sitting as he let a case come together in his mind in a meeting, but he tended to stand and walk around as he worked out a plan for action. Peter was putting the pieces together now, saying, "That's when he started going by Shawn Hunter. He was hiding from his stalker, and from Robert."

"And from Noelle and Graham, because he knew that Robert would get Henry's location from them if they knew. They still believed Robert was genuinely concerned for his son. It took a long time for them to realize Robert was actually obsessed with controlling Henry." Neal took a deep breath, and then divulged the rest. "When Henry heard about the stalker appearing in Austin, the only reason he didn't run is that Lawson's sister Miranda offered room and board and physical therapy if he'd stay and work for her. She had a small recording studio, and she gave Henry singing lessons to strengthen his lungs after the drowning and a bout of pneumonia. At first he did office work, but she learned he was gifted on the guitar and used him in some recording sessions. From his time with her and the exposure to professional musicians, he learned a lot about performing, and a couple of times a musician had asked Miranda if her nephew Shawn would fill in at a local gig if they were short a guitarist or backup singer."

"He took you there when he found you," Peter guessed. "Miranda helped you recover and she learned you were a lot like Henry. You could sing and play a guitar, too."

"Yeah, but you're jumping ahead. When Henry told Miranda he had to leave, she did him one more favor. She put the word out that a kid named Shawn Legend was a fantastic, reliable musician and she'd vouch for him. That helped him get work whenever he needed it, and it turned into an alias that he could disappear into. Every once in a while if he had to use one of his credit cards or had any other reason to suspect his activities had been picked up in Win-Win's systems, the stalker would show up. Henry made a point of making sure I saw the guy, so I could identify and watch out for him, and then we'd slip away as the Legend brothers. We were careful not to use those names or to perform when the stalker was around, so he never found out what aliases we were using."

"That's what Henry's been doing these last few weeks to fall off the radar. He's been using the Shawn Legend alias. Robert never found out how Henry eluded him all those years ago, did he?"

"That's right," Neal said. "Henry was goading Robert into looking for him, and into taking risks to prove that Robert could keep up with his son."

"You and Angela have been part of this?"

"It was a two-birds-with-one-stone kind of thing. Henry hid from Robert, and Urban Legend gained enough momentum and notoriety to start getting Masterson Music's attention. The idea was to get an offer from them. That would bring us inside to negotiate a record deal, and we could use that opportunity to get proof of how they're ripping off their artists. We don't care about being blacklisted, so we can go public with what Masterson is doing. I guess we'd be whistleblowers."

"Except Angela might care, if she wants to be a professional musician," Elizabeth pointed out.

"Yeah, that's a relatively new development. I'm still working out how we protect her from the backlash."

Peter was pacing now. "Are you certain this isn't a faked disappearance, to get attention for Urban Legend?"

"I asked Mozzie the same question." Seeing Peter's surprised expression Neal added, "I brought Mozz into the Masterson con a few weeks ago and he took the role of Urban Legend's agent. He's been in charge of the website and generating buzz about the group online. A disappearance sounds like something he'd come up with, but he promises that isn't what's happening. He has no idea where they are. Peter, please, I know how it looks to the FBI, but I swear, it has to be Robert. He used Jason Ford as the stalker all this time, and now they've taken it a step further, actually kidnapping Henry by abducting Angela first as the lure."

Peter nodded. "I agree. He's escalating from a crying wolf scenario to a prodigal son."

"What do you mean?" Elizabeth asked, mirroring the question running through Neal's mind.

"He started by planting the idea that Henry's an unreliable witness. The kid claimed to be in danger, but he could never prove it. As a result, Henry's less likely in the future to ask for help, because he thinks he won't be believed. He never reported the stalking again, did he?"

"No. I talked to Lawson this morning and he's going to file a restraining order against Ford on Henry's behalf, even though I know Henry will hate being identified in the report as a victim."

"Good move. You think Ford doesn't realize how damaging his role in this is, right? He thinks he was helping a father keep an eye on a wayward son, and is part of some kind of intervention now."

"I suspect that's how he's justifying his role in this, and I want to chip away at that delusion."

"I'll make sure Travis and Jones help with that." Peter stood next to Elizabeth's chair. "Here's what I think is happening. Henry succeeded in pushing Robert to the breaking point. We thought Robert would hear about Heinemann and use it as an opportunity to follow Henry. Instead he got ahead of us and waylaid Henry, and he's out for revenge."

Neal took a sharp breath, not wanting to think of what Robert might be doing to Henry. Would he survive?

"Neal, I think this is psychological revenge. He lured Angela and Henry away, making sure it looks like they disappeared willingly. I think he plans to hold them long enough for the disappearance to make the news. This afternoon we plan to splash their pictures in the media, asking if anyone has seen them. I suspect that by tomorrow morning we'll find them. They might show some signs of being drugged, but otherwise they won't be harmed, and won't be able to tell us where they were. They'll claim they were kidnapped, but the evidence will point to them taking the drugs willingly. It will look like they went partying, got high, and now they want to get out of trouble with their families by pretending they were abducted. It discredits Henry with Win-Win, and he may eventually confess to something he didn't do to get the press and FBI off his back. Again he's a victim, but no one believes him. To the world he'll be the prodigal son, crawling home after his misadventures to beg forgiveness, and welcomed by a generous family."

"Outsiders will say his family was too easy on him," Elizabeth added.

Thinking of his proud, brave cousin who had kept him safe and led him on adventures and been like a brother to him, Neal felt sick. "It will destroy him."

"Not if I have anything to do with it," promised Peter. "Now that we understand what Robert is doing, we finally have a shot at stopping him."