Theo Guy's studio, New York City. Sunday afternoon. July 25, 2004.

Neal and his cousins spent most of Sunday at Theo Guy's studio. They were joined by Samantha Weston, Cassie Blanca and the musicians June had arranged for backup. According to their contract Urban Legend was supposed to be working on an album, and Masterson rep Charlie and their PR liaison Theresa stopped by to check on their progress and to take photos.

Michael Darling had agreed to let them use the Christmas song he'd written. They recorded two versions. The first featured only Urban Legend, and the second included Local Devastation lead singer Ty Merchant on vocals, and Michael Darling on piano.

"At the end of this year we're going to release a recording of last night's concert," Ty said. "If you don't actually produce an Urban Legend album, I'd like to include this song as a bonus track on our album."

The cousins agreed with his suggestion, thrilled that their experiences would be recognized in an actual, released recording.

Around 5pm the backup musicians and singers headed home. Henry stretched and prowled around the room while Theo mentioned options for tweaks to the recording. Angela listened with rapt attention, more relaxed than Neal had seen her in weeks. This was the part of music she loved – the theory and small, intimate performances. She appeared ready to work with Theo for hours. Henry, on the other hand, looked like a caged lion searching for an escape.

"Henry, are you good with letting Angela handle things here?" Neal asked.

Coming to a stop, Henry glanced at Angela. "Yeah. I guess you don't need me."

She gave him a crooked smile. "We'll always need you, but I've got this covered."

Henry turned to Neal. "I haven't been to Weston's music shop in a while. You wanna drop in?"

Neal agreed and they walked outside to hail a cab.

On the way to the music shop Henry said, "You never told me about you and Yvette."

"Not much to tell. It was a mistake, on both of our parts. I let myself believe she really wanted me, but she was looking for the closest thing she could get to you. For a few days I lived the fantasy."

"Fantasy?"

"Of being... I dunno... Better than you? Most of the time I was happy being your kid brother, traipsing after you, but sometimes I wanted out of your shadow. If Yvette had changed her mind, decided she really preferred me to you... But that obviously wasn't the case, and I couldn't delude myself about it for long."

Henry was silent the rest of the drive. When they got out of the cab, he walked into the bar instead of the music shop. He plopped down at a table and ordered a shot of premium Irish whiskey. Neal requested a glass of wine and a couple of appetizers. After the food arrived, Henry finally spoke. "I didn't mean to make you feel inferior. I never thought of you as anything other than my equal." He drank the whiskey. "Well, potential equal. I was older and wiser, but I always knew you'd catch up."

"It wasn't like I resented you," Neal said. "Not really. I was grateful for everything you'd done and had a blast with you most of the time. It's just that you had so much charisma that sometimes I was in awe. Most days I knew I'd catch up, like you said, but every once in a while I had doubts." He ate a couple of steamed mussels. "It's not an issue anymore, in case you were wondering."

Henry tried the onion rings and ordered another whiskey. "What I don't get is why you didn't say anything about Yvette. When you met Kate you wouldn't shut up about her."

"I loved Kate. With Yvette... Well I described her as an anvil that crushed me like a cartoon character, and Peter guessed right away that it was my ego that got squashed, not my heart."

"Hold on. You talked to Peter about this, and not me?"

Neal shrugged. "Right place, right time. You were in the wind, and Peter... Well, Peter was here."

Henry drank the second whiskey and raised his hand to call the waiter over.

"Listen, it's not a big deal," Neal said. "We're both grownups now. We have different careers in different cities. It's not like when we were living out of your car or sharing an apartment at DePaul. But you'll always be like my brother. Nothing's going to change that. And getting drunk isn't going to change the fact that Peter's someone I trust, someone right here I can talk to. Back in January you were all for making Peter a father figure, remember?"

"Maybe I didn't think through the repercussions."

"He hasn't replaced you."

The waiter stopped by the table. "Another whiskey, sir?"

Henry looked at Neal. For the first time, Neal felt like the older brother as he said, "Check, please."

###

On Monday Angela went back to Theo's studio. They thought someone should make a show of being there working, in case a Masterson rep stopped by again. Henry went to the Federal Building with Neal and Yvette.

Ilsa Hughes also joined the morning briefing, and Neal was surprised to see the difference in her husband. Normally Reese Hughes seemed stern and humorless, but around his wife he softened a bit and smiled more.

After the briefing, Ilsa met with Jones and Yvette to review the Masterson contract, which Travis had downloaded from the scanner. Today's Yvette wasn't the silly girl she'd played at Masterson. She was focused and driven. She turned down an invitation to go to lunch with Neal and Henry because she wanted to keep working.

"There's a good Chinese place down the street that delivers," Neal offered, and with Henry, Peter, Jones, Travis and Tricia, he joined the legal experts for takeout in the conference room.

As they ate, Ilsa described what they'd found so far. "The terms are clearly unethical, and some parts are on sketchy ground, legally. I don't think you could get a conviction against the company for drafting those terms, but the musicians who signed these contracts should be released without penalty. We can definitely accomplish that. I'll start the paperwork to set the process in motion."

"That's great news," said Neal. "Helping musicians was always our main goal."

"But are you saying Stan Masterson skates by?" Henry asked. "After everything, he's still a free man?"

"It would be next to impossible to prove that he had a hand in the exploitive terms within these contracts. His background isn't law, and he could easily claim ignorance of the details of their standard agreement," Ilsa said. "However, these contracts do promise certain shares of profits to the musicians, and I understand the company hasn't lived up to their end of the deal."

Peter put down his chopsticks. "Now that we know the rates promised in the contracts, we can subpoena financial statements from Masterson. From what Julia Winslow tells me, proving that Masterson underpaid their clients will be a slam dunk. Stan will lose his job over that alone."

"Still not jail time," complained Henry.

"There's also the piracy," Peter said. "That in combination with everything else proves there's more going on than could be excused as sloppy accounting. It proves an intent to break laws and to defraud clients. The fact that Stan has led the negotiations with the pirates and met with them personally proves he's culpable. That's where we'll get the conviction."

"It will take time and patience," Ilsa warned. "These cases can drag on for a long time, especially with the powerhouse legal team he'll assemble in his defense. But in the end, the evidence is irrefutable. I'll work with the prosecutor myself on a plan of attack to make sure we get a conviction."

"Plus we can charge the company with threatening businesses like Theo's studio," Travis offered. "I don't know if we can prove Stan was behind it, though."

"We'll have our best interrogators talk to the people in the company who are responsible. It's very possible they'll point to Stan as the instigator," Peter said, "especially when they realize that Stan's the focus of other charges. They'll have less incentive to protect him if they realize he's already going down."

"I'm definitely looking forward to those interrogations," added Tricia. "As soon as the news breaks about the charges against Stan and Masterson Music, my top priority is going to be contacting people we suspect were victims of the extortion. I'll gather all the details and make sure they get justice."

"I've got the lead on contacting the musicians on contract with Masterson Music," said Jones. "In addition to criminal charges, they may want to file a civil suit for damages. If I find enough victims, I wouldn't be surprised to see the company put together a hefty fund and offer a settlement."

Everyone had finished eating. Neal gathered up the remnants, and Henry helped. When they were disposing of the trash and recyclables in the breakroom, Neal said, "This is a win. With everyone involved up there, and all the charges we're going to bring against Masterson, he's going down."

"I know," said Henry. "And we couldn't have pulled all of this off, not on our own. You were right to involve them. But there's still something missing."

Neal had been afraid of this. Justice – as defined by the FBI – wasn't enough for Henry. He knew so many of the victims, he couldn't help taking their suffering and losses personally. He wanted Stan to suffer in return. Now. "Give it time," Neal advised. But he understood where Henry was coming from. It had already taken years to get to this stage. "It's out of our hands now, but the progress won't stop. In the end Stan will pay for what he's done."

Yvette interrupted. "I've got to catch my flight back to Austin," she said. She hugged Neal. "Thanks for including me in your crew. This was the most amazing experience. I'm in awe of Ilsa Hughes. This morning when I mentioned how much I enjoyed helping with the case, she complimented my work. She actually said I have an affinity for entertainment law." Yvette closed her eyes in a moment of bliss. "And that's not all. She said she'll introduce me to people at the firm where she used to practice, and she'd be willing to mentor me. This has been the best summer ever!" She squealed softly and then hugged Henry, too. "I even forgive you for ignoring my blatant crush all these years." She rushed away before he could answer.

"I think I'm not engaged anymore," said Neal.

"Theresa will be happy," Henry said. "She told me it's easier to market singers who are single. At least when they're young and good looking, like me."

"And here I am, younger and better looking."

###

Around noon on Monday Mozzie kicked off the plan that he, Neal and the Suit had outlined Saturday. He met with a snitch in one of the companies that was a front for music piracy, and warned him that the FBI was showing interest in them. "Watch out," Mozzie had warned. "Suddenly piracy is a big deal for the government. Someone has plans to clean things up and then base a re-election campaign on it."

The snitch scurried away to warn his superiors, and Mozzie called Neal. "The cuckoo has landed."

Then Mozz went online to do more research. He'd noticed the music memorabilia in Stan Masterson's office. Lots of autographed album covers were framed on the wall. Other offices had music-related artwork, but nothing looked as personal as what he'd seen in Stan's office. Some of those autographs were signed to Stan.

It didn't take long to figure out that each time Stan needed an infusion of cash, he sold a rare, stunningly expensive piece of memorabilia. It's how he got the startup cash to buy his first record company, and how he'd financed the expansion of Masterson Music over the years. Signed album covers were the least of his collection, which purportedly included pages of sheet music penned by Mozart himself.

Mozzie's heart fluttered at the thought of getting his hands on that. He looked up information about Stan's home, learning that a state-of-the-art display room had been added shortly after the home was purchased two years ago. It even had a fire suppression system that sucked all the oxygen out of the room.

He wanted to call Neal and plan a trip to Chicago. Together they could break into Stan's house and plunder that display room. The man didn't deserve such treasures. Depriving him of his fortune in memorabilia now would also make things more difficult when Stan was arrested. How would he fund his defense if he lost the items he'd sunk his fortune into?

Unfortunately he already knew what Neal would say. No breaking-and-entering unless it was part of an FBI case. No conning Stan out of his fortune, either.

Mozz sighed, filled with a sense of ennui. The longer Neal worked for the suits, the less likely it seemed that he'd return to the adventure-filled days of yore. If only he could go back in time, before Neal joined the Feds, and pull off this one score. Or perhaps cloning was the answer, creating a version of Neal less restricted by a desire to please his FBI overlords.

That reminded him of the test he'd run with a strand of Henry's hair. The cousins were a close biological match. Closer than cousins, truth be told. More like half-brothers, due to the fact that their mothers were identical twins. But the cloning theory had been a bust. Neal wasn't Henry's clone.

But Henry... He was certainly more of a rebel than Neal these days. He lacked Neal's skills at safecracking, alas, but he was probably more fixated on Stan Masterson and more open to alternative definitions of the term "bringing him to justice." Stan deserved more than simply being arrested.

Sure enough, Henry had several interesting ideas when Mozzie called him.

###

"Listen, you don't need me. I'm out of here," Henry said.

Neal wished he could say the same, but he was stuck in the office for the duration of the op. This time Travis took the lead. His contacts in the telecommunications industry had informed him that the hotel where Stan Masterson was staying was upgrading their telephones. Technicians would be going from room to room later that afternoon, swapping out old phones for newer models. Travis had one of those phones in the lab and was placing a Bureau bug in it. Then he'd don the uniform of the technicians contracted by the hotel. He'd do the swaps of phones on the floor Masterson was staying on.

When Mozzie's rumors caused the music pirates to panic, the hope was that they'd call Masterson to talk about their options. If they called the room phone, the bug would pick up both sides of the conversation. If they called his cell phone, at least the recording would get Masterson's comments. Henry had suggested using the cell phone blocker his father had used at Enscombe to increase the chances of a landline conversation. Peter had Jones looking into the legality of using the blocker under the warrant they'd been granted, but he said it wasn't likely to be approved.

Both Neal and Henry had volunteered to go undercover to replace the phone. It wasn't exactly rocket science. The most technically complex aspect was placing the bug, which Travis would complete any moment now.

"No," had been Peter's immediate response to the idea of either cousin entering Masterson's hotel room. "You've gotten too much press as Urban Legend to take the chance. If Masterson sees you, he's likely to recognize you. That will make him suspicious, and we'll lose our advantage."

And so Neal was confined to the office, where Peter could keep an eye on him. Henry was another matter. He wasn't an employee and wasn't under arrest, meaning he was free to leave. Around 3pm he announced he was bored. "I should see what Angela's up to," he said. "She's at Theo's studio, and Michael Darling's supposed to be giving her lessons on some kind of keyboard technique. If I don't keep an eye on them, that track we recorded might turn into an instrumental featuring the two of them, and listeners will be deprived of my vocals."

When the elevator closed on Henry, Peter asked Neal, "Why do I get the feeling there's something he isn't telling us?"

"He's not bored," Neal said. "He's antsy. Sitting and waiting has never been his strong suit. If he stayed here, he'd drive us all up the wall."

"You don't think he's up to something?"

"He's always up to something, but he wouldn't do anything to endanger the op. He knows you're right that Masterson would recognize us – especially Henry. Being interviewed by Tom Brokaw isn't exactly keeping a low profile."

"I'm torn between wishing I'd sent you along to keep an eye on him, and being glad you're not getting dragged into whatever he's going to do next."