Penn Station, NYC. Sunday morning. January 11, 2004.

Neal carried both suitcases into the train station, while his cousin trailed behind with his left arm in a cast and sling. Henry had a laptop case over his right arm, and his ticket in his hand. They both wore jeans, Henry's in classic blue, combined with a red cotton shirt and a brown bomber jacket draped over his shoulders. Neal went for a monochromatic look, with a black turtleneck under a black wool jacket.

"Pain pills are with your laptop, right?" Neal asked.

"Yeah, I got 'em." Henry scowled. "But they make me sleepy."

Neal placed the luggage on the floor when they reached the line to check in. "It's okay. Your mom's picking you up when you get to Baltimore. If you're too tired to drive, it won't matter."

"I don't like this. You taking care of me. It's supposed to be the other way 'round."

"We look after each other. This time it's my turn." Neal shoved the luggage forward a few feet as the line moved.

"Peter'll look out for you while I'm healing. I wasn't sure if I liked him at first, but I've decided he's one of the good guys."

"Uh-huh." Neal shoved the luggage again. The pain medication didn't just make Henry sleepy. He was loopy, too. Good thing Peter had volunteered to help.

"We gotta be nice to Peter today."

"Yeah, I'll be sure to thank him for taking care of your rental car."

"I could have flown back," Henry grumbled.

"And you'd have been jostled boarding and deplaning and throughout the flight. I checked last night and there weren't any first class upgrades left. In business class on the train you'll be more comfortable." Even on the train, there would be jostling to endure. Neal was grateful Henry had given in gracefully, more or less, to the suggestion to take a pain pill this morning after toughing it out yesterday. The fact that Henry had been in pain last night was probably why he'd been receptive when Peter called to see if they needed any help.

They reached the front of the line and checked Henry's luggage. Neal hung around the station for another half hour, until the train arrived.

"Remember, you gotta be nice to Peter," Henry said as he stood up.

"Yeah, you already told me. Got your ticket?"

Henry pulled the ticket out of his laptop case. "You aren't listening. We didn't get him a card, so you gotta be nice to him. Does he like cake? Maybe you can have a slice."

Neal walked beside Henry to the doorway leading to the trains. "What are you talking about?"

"It's his birthday."

"Wait. What?"

Henry joined the line to board the train, while Neal stared after him.

Manhattan, NY. Sunday morning. January 11, 2004.

After dropping off Henry's car at one of the rental agency's Manhattan locations, Peter hailed a cab. On the drive he wondered what he was getting into. By calling last night and showing up this morning, Peter had made the point that he was someone who wanted to help and could be relied on to deliver that help outside of business hours. But that wasn't enough for Henry. He wanted Peter to do more, and had been annoyingly vague about what was supposed to happen next.

El had promised she had plenty to keep her busy, with a cake to frost and a lasagna to bake for tonight, and said she didn't mind if Peter spent a few hours of his birthday with Neal. Not that Neal knew today's significance. Peter had made it clear when he'd joined the Manhattan office that he didn't like having a fuss made over his birthday. Therefore Hughes and his assistant didn't order a cake or pass around a card to sign or give any other clues to the team.

As the cab parked in front of the Ellingtons' mansion, Peter paid the driver and slid out of the back seat. He stood on the sidewalk and weighed his choices. Walking a block to where he'd parked his car and driving home would be the easy way out. Going inside the mansion was what Henry wanted him to do, but that would feel awkward. Neal wouldn't be back yet from Penn Station, because he was waiting with a conveniently loopy Henry who needed to be watched until safely onboard the train. So Peter was supposed to intrude on June and Byron, two people he barely knew?

The front door opened, and June stepped outside. "Peter, do you have a moment?" She looked as uneasy as he felt.

"Of course." He climbed the steps up to the door, where a maid stood waiting for his coat. He handed it to her with a thank you, still not used to being in a house with staff for things like that. He wasn't supposed to tip her, was he?

June led the way to the parlor where her husband waited in his wheelchair. Byron looked tired, worn down by the disease that was expected to kill him soon. Beside him was a man Peter didn't know, dressed in green coveralls with Acres HVAC embroidered over the breast pocket. The coveralls were worn, with frayed edges on the cuffs, but they were impeccably clean and pressed, with a precise crease down the front of the legs.

"This is Peter Burke," June announced. "He's the FBI agent we mentioned, the one who gave our tenant Neal a second chance. You'll meet Neal shortly, and he's vouched for Peter." Turning to Peter, June added, "Jeremiah called us yesterday because his brother was roughed up. When we told Neal and Henry what had happened, Henry thought we should ask for your help. We invited Jeremiah here to convince him to talk to you."

Jeremiah stood up. He was about five years younger than Peter, and six inches shorter. "My brother has a record, and the cops in our neighborhood like to hassle him. Byron and June..." He shrugged. "They said you'll listen."

"I'll listen," Peter agreed. "No promises that I can do anything if your brother broke the law or violated his parole."

When they were all seated and drinking the best coffee Peter had ever tasted, Jeremiah kicked off the discussion by explaining that his older brother — Jebediah Acres, known as Jeb — used to be part of a crew with Byron, running cons and thefts. Like Byron, Jeb had been arrested and done time, and then had turned his back on his old life.

Peter's gut told him it hadn't been that simple, and it gave him an uneasy feeling about the challenges that lay ahead for Neal when his old friends came calling. The fact that Jeb had been hurt and Jeremiah was desperate for help meant something had gone wrong, something they hesitated to describe to an FBI agent. Peter hoped he wouldn't end up looking like the bad guy on his birthday, arresting Jeb after the real bad guys had already done a number on him. Sometimes in the black-and-white world of law enforcement, that's how things went. He could put in a good word with the prosecutor though, if Jeb cooperated.

"I own the business," Jeremiah explained, gesturing to the company name on his coveralls. "When no one else would hire an ex-con, Jeb worked for me. He hated asking for help, and didn't really like working on furnaces, but he settled into it. Sometimes he'd hang with friends from the old days, but he promised they were just talking. He doesn't break into places anymore."

"He was never all that good at it, anyway," Byron added. "Couldn't crack a safe or even pick a pocket without getting caught no matter how many times I tried to teach him. But you could trust him. At the end of a heist he'd hide the loot for us and we knew he wouldn't take it and run. The money was always there when the heat was gone and it was time to split it up."

Byron continued talking for a while, introducing a little levity with stories about Jeb, and glancing toward the hallway occasionally. It didn't take an FBI agent to figure out he was stalling until Neal arrived.

Peter let him stall, because he could tell where Jeremiah's story was heading. Jeb's troubles were a cautionary tale for someone tempted to keep his hand in his old life while turning over a new leaf. Neal needed to hear the results of Jeb's actions, and to see how the repercussions impacted Jeb's family.

When Neal arrived, Byron introduced him to Jeremiah while June refilled everyone's coffee. Even though Neal had already heard most of the story last night, it was different witnessing Jeremiah's pain in person. That made it more real, in much the same way that meeting a victim made a bigger impact than reading a case file.

Byron nodded at Peter, who turned to Jeremiah and said, "You think someone tried to force Jeb to reveal where some old loot was hidden."

Jeremiah nodded. "Or not so old. His friends pressured him to hide stuff for 'em. They'd promise him a cut, and he said he wanted to use the money to pay me back." Jeremiah closed his eyes and bowed his head. "He's been doing it for years, and I made it easy for him. My company has keys to lots of buildings in the city. I assigned businesses to him, places I never even visit unless there's an emergency and he's not around." He looked up again. "I wanted him to know I trusted him."

"How'd you find out what he was doing?" Neal asked.

Jeremiah's voice was rough now, and full of emotion. "Found him unconscious in the alley behind our office yesterday afternoon. Someone'd beaten him up bad. He came 'round before the ambulance got there and confessed. Told me where he kept the list of what he hid and the hiding places." Tears had gathered in Jeremiah's eyes. "He's not gonna make it. The doctors say they can't fix the damage, and he won't last more than a few days. He's scared that people will come after me and my family. That they'll hurt us, too, to find out where he hid their loot."

"Must be tempting to take it and run," Byron said. "With everything he hid, you could set your family up for life someplace else. Jeb suggested it, didn't he?"

"Yeah. He knew I couldn't do it, though. That's not the example I'm setting for my kids."

"You could recover the loot yourself, leave it someplace, and call the cops with an anonymous tip?" Neal suggested. Peter supposed it was a good sign that Neal's thought was to turn over the loot, even if the method wasn't what the Bureau would sanction.

"That's what I had in mind when I called Byron for help. I didn't know..." Jeremiah looked regretfully at the wheelchair.

"I'm not up to that kind of thing anymore," Byron said.

Peter saw the smile tugging at Neal's lips and asked him, "You think you could have gotten away with it?"

Neal nodded. "If Henry hadn't been slowed down with the broken arm, we could have pulled it off together. It was tempting to partner with someone else, but I didn't want to leave Henry alone. He was in a lot of pain last night."

"He wasn't in any pain," Peter said, as the scope of Henry's plan became clear to him. Crafty devil, manipulating them all behind the scenes.

"What?" Neal still didn't know he'd been conned by his cousin.

"He was faking it, to keep you out of this. To make sure you didn't jump into a course of action that could get you arrested. Tell me something. When you considered who you could partner with for this, did my name even cross your mind?"

"Yeah, for a moment maybe, but I didn't see how that could work."

"Challenge issued and accepted," Peter replied. "I'm going to show you how to save the day without breaking the law."