White Collar fic: Cold Night
Title: Cold Night
Fandom: White Collar
Pairing/Rating: Gen, PG
Word Count: 3600
Summary: It was the sort of situation that was made to go FUBAR: swirling snow, below-freezing temperatures, and a standoff on a turnpike overpass in Jersey. Written for imbecamiel's prompt here at collarcorner.
Cross-posted: http://archiveofourown.org/works/291403
It was the sort of situation that was made to go FUBAR: swirling snow, below-freezing temperatures, and a standoff on a turnpike overpass in Jersey.
Peter skidded the Taurus to a halt behind the flashing red-and-blue lights of his police escort when the police car turned sideways -- for an instant Peter thought they'd lost control and slid on the slippery roads, but then he saw that the police car was blocking the road, stopping traffic. As soon as Peter stepped out of the sedan, the wind bit through his wool overcoat as if he had nothing on.
Neal whistled and turned up the collar on his own coat. "Well, this is fun," he shouted above the wind.
They were on a small trunk road, an overpass above the freeway with no on-ramp. Below them, Peter could hear the roar of rush-hour traffic. The early winter darkness was already upon them, shrinking visibility to a patchwork of headlights and blue winter twilight.
The police car's door slammed. The sergeant who was Peter's liaison with the Jersey police jogged towards them, something dark and bulky in his hands. "They've got your guy cornered on the bridge," he said, and handed Peter a bulletproof vest. "He's armed."
"Great," Peter murmured. He started to shrug into the vest, then shook his head and handed it to Neal. "Civilians first," he said when Neal tried to protest, and left Neal struggling with the buckles while he followed the sergeant back to the police barricade.
Neal caught up at a jog, snapping the vest into place. "Peter, I can talk to him," he said breathlessly.
"No."
"C'mon, Jankowski's not a violent guy. He's just scared. Let me try."
Neal had gotten to know Jankowski pretty well during the last few days undercover. Peter frowned at him. "All right," he said reluctantly. "But I'll be right behind you, and Neal, if things start going bad --"
"I'll get out of the way. I know. I don't want to get shot, Peter. But I also don't want a bloodbath out here, and I know you don't either."
Peter acknowledged this with a shrug, and, reluctantly, let Neal go in front of him. One of the other LEOs passed him a vest.
"Jankowski?" Neal called. "It's me, Caffrey."
"Stay back!" Jankowski shouted. "I can't trust you! I can't trust anyone!"
Jankowski was a small-time forger who'd gotten involved with a Mob-run smuggling ring. Neal had been cultivating his acquaintance for the last week, until one of Jankowski's mafia friends had tipped him off that Neal was with the FBI. Jankowski had jumped to the conclusion that the feds were after him, not realizing that he was a stepping stone to bigger targets, and ... well. Here they were in a blizzard.
"Come on, man, don't be an idiot." Neal's voice slipped into the light hint of Brooklyn that he'd been using in his undercover role. Peter wondered if he was even aware he was doing it. "Yeah, I flipped and turned informant. It beat jail time. What am I gonna do, go around waving a card that says 'I snitch for the FBI'? But it doesn't mean I was setting you up for a fall."
Though you're doing a great job of it yourself, Jankowski, Peter thought, squinting through the blizzard to see Jankowski waving around a .38 S&W like it was a kid's toy. On top of everything, the guy didn't know a damn thing about guns. Neal claimed Jankowski wasn't violent, but Peter didn't believe there was any such thing as a truly nonviolent person. Everyone was capable of violence when they were scared out of their mind.
"I don't believe you!" Jankowski yelled. "You've been lying to me all along!"
"I haven't told the truth about everything," Neal conceded. He edged along the guardrail, and Peter followed him a few steps behind, with his jaw clamped shut on the words Neal, get back here. "But I've been straight on the important things, man. I'm not out to get you."
Peter could hear the ring of sincerity in his voice. Hopefully Jankowski could as well. Neal liked Jankowski; he'd said so in Peter's kitchen over beers. There but for the grace go I, he'd said with a wry smile. He's a good guy, Peter. He's made a few bad life choices, that's all.
Good guy or not, Peter didn't like the way he was waving that gun around. Glancing over his shoulder, he could see the police snipers hovering nervously. He hated being out here in the middle of it all, hated Neal being out here even more ... hated the way his fingers were going numb on the butt of his gun ... hell, there wasn't a single thing about this situation that he didn't hate.
"Do you think I'm stupid? You don't show up in an FBI agent's car and then tell me you're on my side!"
Peter saw it coming, but it still happened too fast to stop. Jankowski halted the gun in mid-swing and fired. Neal staggered into the guardrail. Peter lunged for him, but Neal, carried by his own momentum, flipped over the guardrail and vanished into the swirling snow and the rush-hour traffic below. Peter's hand closed on empty air.
For a single frozen instant, Peter would swear that his heart literally stopped. "Neal!" he bellowed, looking down. All that he could see was a stream of headlights and taillights, a seething traffic-swarm into which Neal's fragile human body had vanished.
Oh God ... there's no way he could have survived that ...
Around him, there was a sudden whirl of activity, police rifles and shotguns coming up to point at Jankowski -- who seemed as startled by his own actions as anyone else. He dropped the gun and went to his knees, hands on his head. Peter registered it absently, but all he could think about was Neal.
"Man down!" he shouted, dashing back along the guardrail and looking for a way down. "We need an ambulance out here! And stop traffic down there!"
"You want us to shut down the Jersey Turnpike at rush hour?" the sergeant repeated in open disbelief. "On what authority?"
Peter scrambled over the guardrail. His feet, wearing only inadequate dress shoes, sank to the ankles in slushy snow. Without breaking stride, he whipped out his badge and waved it at them. "You see this? You see what it says, right, these letters reading FBI? Shut down the damn turnpike right the hell now!"
He scrambled down the steep embankment, falling to his knees and picking himself up and falling again, and he knew even as he did it that he was too late -- they could shut down the turnpike and it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference, because it'd already been -- what, thirty seconds? a minute? since Neal fell, and the traffic would have reduced him to -- no, not thinking about that. This was Neal, Neal Caffrey; he had the luck and reflexes of a cat. He hadn't been ground to a pulp on the turnpike. That wasn't his fate. Couldn't be. Wouldn't be.
Peter skidded into the concrete barricade at the foot of the embankment. The gust of wind from each passing car slapped his face and blew his hair back. Loose snow swirled around him. He couldn't see a thing except the staccato flash of headlights. "Neal!" he yelled, leaning over the barricade, scanning the road. He couldn't see. For one crazy instant he imagined himself vaulting over the barricade, flashing his badge -- and then, he supposed, getting bowled over by a dozen cars in rapid succession. How long had it been now, a minute, minute-and-a-half? Too long, too damn long.
He tried calling Neal's phone and got an out-of-service-area message. Bile climbed his throat. Peter took a breath to steady himself, and called Neal's tracking detail.
"Yes, we've got a strong signal, Agent Burke," said the reassuring voice on the other end of the line. "He's traveling south on the Jersey Turnpike. Just a second, let me get you an exact location."
Peter tried to wrap his mind around the words. "Did you say -- traveling?"
***
I'm not dead, Neal thought in amazement. How am I not dead?
He'd felt the impact of Jankowski's bullet, like getting punched in the stomach. Then he was falling, and he had an instant to imagine in gruesome detail what would happen to his body when he hit the traffic, or, more accurately, when the traffic hit him. He slammed into something hard, knocking the breath out of him, and his whole body went rigid -- but then he started to slide, and instinctively flung out his hands, arresting his motion. Wind battering him, pelting him with snow that stung like sand.
Neal risked lifting his head, and glimpsed a sea of red lights in front of him. Taillights.
I'm on top of a truck.
It was brutally cold. He couldn't feel his fingers, nor draw a full breath. Neal guessed that he had minutes, maybe only seconds, before his numb fingers lost their grip and he tumbled under the wheels of the traffic behind his serendipitous ride.
Somehow he'd survived what should have been instant death, but he was still in a whole lot of trouble.
One of his hands slipped -- he felt skin tear; the top of the truck was ice-cold metal, flash-freezing his palms. He slid another few feet before a fit of panicked scrabbling managed to stop him again. He had to signal the driver, or get off the truck, or something. Neal scuttled sideways, crablike, and peeked over the edge of the truck. He glimpsed rows of slats, open to the truck's dark interior. Animal transport, maybe? If animals could ride in there, so could he. And maybe, if there were animals, it would be warm.
He leaned down as far as he could, gripped the slats with one numb, bleeding hand, and tugged. After some yanking, the whole panel moved with a jolt and slid sideways, opening enough of a space that he could lean over and crawl inside, headfirst. He tumbled painfully to the floor of the truck, and for a few moments he just lay there, hurting and freezing and unable to move.
Eventually he got some breath back, and pulled himself up to a sitting position against the side of the truck. His teeth were chattering violently, his hair and even his eyelashes full of snow. He reached under his coat, patting himself and trying to figure out if Jankowski's bullet had hit his vest or flesh, but his hands were too numb and too sticky with melted snow and blood to be able to tell. It still hurt to breathe, but not too badly. Presumably, if he'd been hit, he wasn't in immediate danger of bleeding to death. The cold was more of an issue.
Looking around, he realized that he was on the top level of a multi-story trailer for transporting some sort of medium-sized animals -- pigs or sheep, maybe. Whatever they were, there weren't any in here now. Yeah, he thought miserably, because even the cruelest farmer wouldn't put a hog out on a night like this. There was nothing but some filthy straw, frozen down with muck he didn't want to think about.
Neal fumbled for his cell phone, but it was gone. At some point in the fall or the mad scramble for safety on top of the truck, he'd lost it. The light on his anklet glowed steady and reassuring, though.
Come on, Peter. His shivering was violent and nonstop. You can find me even when I don't want you to. Work your magic.
***
Peter commandeered a police car, because the impact of the flashing blue and red lights would be a whole lot more intimidating than his little dashboard-mounted light in the Taurus, and he needed speed. There might have been some complaining from the direction of the police sergeant whose car it was, but Peter snapped, "Take it up with my boss," and slid into the driver's seat, holding out his hand for the keys.
Now they were tearing down the turnpike in a blizzard, veering around cars, skidding in the snow piling up on the shoulder.
The sergeant clung to the passenger-side door. He'd gone slightly green. "It's not going to help your partner if we wipe out on a Mac truck," he said through clenched teeth. "Slow down a little."
Peter ignored him, driving with his cell clamped between his shoulder and ear. He read off the nearest exit number to Diana, who was back at the White Collar division on Peter's computer, with Neal's tracking data in front of her. "How close?"
"Another mile or so. You're closing fast, and he hasn't taken an exit. Just keep going."
"Needle in a haystack," Peter muttered, because complaining was better than focusing on all the horrific images that his mind's eye kept throwing at him. They were chasing the anklet, but there was no guarantee that Neal's foot was still in it. Or, worse, no guarantee that the foot was still attached to the rest of Neal --
"Jones just got your patrol car's GPS," Diana said. "Clinton, can you turn that monitor -- Okay, Peter, we're going to try to navigate you to --" He heard Jones say something in the background, and Diana said, "Wait, wait, you just passed him."
"I did?" Peter hit the brakes; the front end of the car slewed around, and the sergeant crossed himself. What'd I just pass? A couple of little commuter cars, a taxi -- could that be it? Wait ... He glimpsed a whole row of semis over in the right lane. Right lane would've been under Neal when he fell, and the top of a semi trailer was a good big surface to fall onto -- Peter felt his lips draw back in a fierce grin. Oh, yeah, partner. Your luck strikes again, doesn't it?
But if Neal was clinging to the top of a semi truck, they might only have minutes to get to him before he passed out from hypothermia -- or Jankowski's bullet -- and lost his grip. How to find the right truck?
***
Neal could feel himself starting to drift. Get up, he told himself fiercely, in an inner voice that sounded suspiciously like Peter's voice, and staggered to his feet. Maybe he could signal the driver somehow, or at least get to a warmer place -- wouldn't it be more sheltered directly behind the cab of the truck? He stumbled towards the front of the trailer, then lost his footing and went down in the frozen filth. June's gonna make me pay for this suit ...
At least the bulletproof vest offered a little additional warmth, underneath his stylish but completely inadequate coat. Everything hurt, though: ears, nose, cheeks, hands, feet ...
Peter, where are you?
But the immediate thought that followed was: Yeah, and how's he going to get to you, dumbass? Neal was in the back of a truck careening down the freeway. It would be a wonder if Peter could even catch up -- well, okay, given how Peter drove under normal circumstances, maybe not that much of a wonder. But then what? The anklet wasn't a magic leash that would pull Peter to him. I gotta signal him somehow, let him know where I am.
Except he didn't have anything to signal with. "Smoke signals," Neal said through chattering teeth, "start a fire," and then he began helplessly giggling, and oh, this was bad, this was really bad. He was still rational enough to realize that he wasn't entirely rational, which, paradoxically, was worse than being completely out of it.
Think. Think. His coat wasn't doing much anyway, and Neal shrugged out of it -- the wind bit into the arms of his suit jacket like a thousand stinging bees, and he bit his lips. Isn't disrobing a sign of severe hypothermia? Does it make a difference if there's a good reason? He tried to tie the coat around the slats in the side of the truck, but no longer had enough dexterity in his fingers, and for a disastrous instant he almost lost his grip and sent the coat sailing into the night. Instead he wrapped the arms of the coat around his own forearms, using his teeth to hold on when his fingers wouldn't grip. The tails of the coat fluttered through the slats like a flag.
And so they found him in the morning, frozen in a deeply strange position ... must have been hallucinating ... He fought down another inappropriate giggle. The thing to do, if he knew no help was coming, would be to pull in the coat, wrap it around himself and huddle for warmth. Maybe he could survive until the trucker pulled off for a cup of coffee at a truck stop somewhere down the road.
But help was coming. Peter would find him. All he had to do was send a signal, and Peter would see it. Neal clung to that thought, closed his eyes, and hung on.
***
"Did you see something move?" Peter asked.
"Something on the side of that hog truck," the sergeant agreed.
Neal. Let it be Neal. Peter maneuvered the patrol car nearer. Something was fluttering from the side of the truck. A piece of cloth? A blanket? Most likely, it was a tarp or something similar that had been inadequately tied down.
But ... if Neal was on one of those trucks, and he wasn't too badly hurt, then he was smart enough to signal for help. Trust your partner, Peter thought, and his inner voice sounded an awful lot like Neal's sardonic tones.
He pulled alongside the cab of the truck, and gave the driver a couple short bursts of the siren, crowding him. The driver looked startled and took the next exit. "Diana," Peter said as he followed, "please tell me Neal isn't sailing on down the freeway right now."
"Nope," she said. "You're right on top of him, boss."
Sometimes gambles do pay off. But the question of Neal's physical state still left Peter with a knot in his stomach.
The truck driver pulled off onto the shoulder of the exit ramp. Peter pulled over behind him, and was out of the police car before the wheels stopped turning.
The driver was already fumbling out his paperwork as Peter jogged up beside the cab of the truck. "I don't know what I did, Officer, but --"
Peter waved him to silence and flipped open his badge. "Special Agent Peter Burke," he shouted over the wind and the traffic. "I need to look in your trailer."
He was braced to be asked for a warrant, but no fight ensued. The driver, eager to make himself useful, threw open the back of the truck, and the sergeant joined them with a flashlight from the patrol car.
"There's nothing back here, though, Officer," the driver said. "I just dropped off a load of hogs. This is the empty leg of the drive."
The beam of the flashlight revealed nothing more than heaps of frozen straw. No sign of Neal. Peter's heart dropped to the toes of his soaked, muddy shoes. But ... wait. No sign of anything that might have been fluttering out of the truck, either. He looked up. The ceiling was low ... "Is there a level above this one?"
Moments later, they were clambering into the upper level of the truck. This time, the sergeant's flashlight instantly picked out a figure leaning against the truck's slatted side.
"Neal." Peter skidded on the icy floor and almost pitched headfirst in an attempt to reach him.
"You're so predictable," Neal said through chattering teeth, and Peter caught him as he collapsed.
***
Peter shoved Neal into the back of the patrol car and slid in after him. He stripped off his wool coat and wrapped it around Neal's shoulders.
The trunk of the patrol car slammed, and the sergeant passed him a musty-smelling blanket through the open door. "Hospital?"
Peter nodded, and bundled Neal in the blanket. As the car pulled back onto the road, he asked, "Are you hurt? Can you tell?"
Neal's reply was unintelligible. Peter started checking him over, pausing briefly on Neal's swollen, bleeding hands. "Shit, Neal," he murmured, and opened the bulletproof vest as Neal made little protesting noises. "Does this hurt? How about this?"
"Ngh."
"That's not an answer." Peter prodded and was rewarded with a muffled "Ow."
"Looks like he shot you in the vest. You've got some lovely bruises, maybe a cracked rib or two, but no leaks as far as I can tell." Relieved to find nothing immediately life-threatening, Peter tucked him back into his cocoon of blanket and coat, then put an arm around him for extra warmth. With his free hand, Peter reached for his phone. "Hang on, I need to call Diana and Jones, let them know you're okay."
Neal's mumble sounded like "easy for you to say", but then it was drowned out by cheerful whoops from the other end of the connection, which even Neal heard; it brought a smile to his bloodless lips. Diana promised to handle Jankowski's booking; there was a slight frisson of threat in her voice. Peter hung up, grinning. He had the best team ever.
"Worried you?" Neal murmured, leaning into Peter's warmth.
Peter took Neal's scraped hands and tucked them gently under his shirt for additional heat. "Nah," he said. "I wasn't worried for a minute."
~
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Fandom: White Collar
Pairing/Rating: Gen, PG
Word Count: 3600
Summary: It was the sort of situation that was made to go FUBAR: swirling snow, below-freezing temperatures, and a standoff on a turnpike overpass in Jersey. Written for imbecamiel's prompt here at collarcorner.
Cross-posted: http://archiveofourown.org/works/291403
It was the sort of situation that was made to go FUBAR: swirling snow, below-freezing temperatures, and a standoff on a turnpike overpass in Jersey.
Peter skidded the Taurus to a halt behind the flashing red-and-blue lights of his police escort when the police car turned sideways -- for an instant Peter thought they'd lost control and slid on the slippery roads, but then he saw that the police car was blocking the road, stopping traffic. As soon as Peter stepped out of the sedan, the wind bit through his wool overcoat as if he had nothing on.
Neal whistled and turned up the collar on his own coat. "Well, this is fun," he shouted above the wind.
They were on a small trunk road, an overpass above the freeway with no on-ramp. Below them, Peter could hear the roar of rush-hour traffic. The early winter darkness was already upon them, shrinking visibility to a patchwork of headlights and blue winter twilight.
The police car's door slammed. The sergeant who was Peter's liaison with the Jersey police jogged towards them, something dark and bulky in his hands. "They've got your guy cornered on the bridge," he said, and handed Peter a bulletproof vest. "He's armed."
"Great," Peter murmured. He started to shrug into the vest, then shook his head and handed it to Neal. "Civilians first," he said when Neal tried to protest, and left Neal struggling with the buckles while he followed the sergeant back to the police barricade.
Neal caught up at a jog, snapping the vest into place. "Peter, I can talk to him," he said breathlessly.
"No."
"C'mon, Jankowski's not a violent guy. He's just scared. Let me try."
Neal had gotten to know Jankowski pretty well during the last few days undercover. Peter frowned at him. "All right," he said reluctantly. "But I'll be right behind you, and Neal, if things start going bad --"
"I'll get out of the way. I know. I don't want to get shot, Peter. But I also don't want a bloodbath out here, and I know you don't either."
Peter acknowledged this with a shrug, and, reluctantly, let Neal go in front of him. One of the other LEOs passed him a vest.
"Jankowski?" Neal called. "It's me, Caffrey."
"Stay back!" Jankowski shouted. "I can't trust you! I can't trust anyone!"
Jankowski was a small-time forger who'd gotten involved with a Mob-run smuggling ring. Neal had been cultivating his acquaintance for the last week, until one of Jankowski's mafia friends had tipped him off that Neal was with the FBI. Jankowski had jumped to the conclusion that the feds were after him, not realizing that he was a stepping stone to bigger targets, and ... well. Here they were in a blizzard.
"Come on, man, don't be an idiot." Neal's voice slipped into the light hint of Brooklyn that he'd been using in his undercover role. Peter wondered if he was even aware he was doing it. "Yeah, I flipped and turned informant. It beat jail time. What am I gonna do, go around waving a card that says 'I snitch for the FBI'? But it doesn't mean I was setting you up for a fall."
Though you're doing a great job of it yourself, Jankowski, Peter thought, squinting through the blizzard to see Jankowski waving around a .38 S&W like it was a kid's toy. On top of everything, the guy didn't know a damn thing about guns. Neal claimed Jankowski wasn't violent, but Peter didn't believe there was any such thing as a truly nonviolent person. Everyone was capable of violence when they were scared out of their mind.
"I don't believe you!" Jankowski yelled. "You've been lying to me all along!"
"I haven't told the truth about everything," Neal conceded. He edged along the guardrail, and Peter followed him a few steps behind, with his jaw clamped shut on the words Neal, get back here. "But I've been straight on the important things, man. I'm not out to get you."
Peter could hear the ring of sincerity in his voice. Hopefully Jankowski could as well. Neal liked Jankowski; he'd said so in Peter's kitchen over beers. There but for the grace go I, he'd said with a wry smile. He's a good guy, Peter. He's made a few bad life choices, that's all.
Good guy or not, Peter didn't like the way he was waving that gun around. Glancing over his shoulder, he could see the police snipers hovering nervously. He hated being out here in the middle of it all, hated Neal being out here even more ... hated the way his fingers were going numb on the butt of his gun ... hell, there wasn't a single thing about this situation that he didn't hate.
"Do you think I'm stupid? You don't show up in an FBI agent's car and then tell me you're on my side!"
Peter saw it coming, but it still happened too fast to stop. Jankowski halted the gun in mid-swing and fired. Neal staggered into the guardrail. Peter lunged for him, but Neal, carried by his own momentum, flipped over the guardrail and vanished into the swirling snow and the rush-hour traffic below. Peter's hand closed on empty air.
For a single frozen instant, Peter would swear that his heart literally stopped. "Neal!" he bellowed, looking down. All that he could see was a stream of headlights and taillights, a seething traffic-swarm into which Neal's fragile human body had vanished.
Oh God ... there's no way he could have survived that ...
Around him, there was a sudden whirl of activity, police rifles and shotguns coming up to point at Jankowski -- who seemed as startled by his own actions as anyone else. He dropped the gun and went to his knees, hands on his head. Peter registered it absently, but all he could think about was Neal.
"Man down!" he shouted, dashing back along the guardrail and looking for a way down. "We need an ambulance out here! And stop traffic down there!"
"You want us to shut down the Jersey Turnpike at rush hour?" the sergeant repeated in open disbelief. "On what authority?"
Peter scrambled over the guardrail. His feet, wearing only inadequate dress shoes, sank to the ankles in slushy snow. Without breaking stride, he whipped out his badge and waved it at them. "You see this? You see what it says, right, these letters reading FBI? Shut down the damn turnpike right the hell now!"
He scrambled down the steep embankment, falling to his knees and picking himself up and falling again, and he knew even as he did it that he was too late -- they could shut down the turnpike and it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference, because it'd already been -- what, thirty seconds? a minute? since Neal fell, and the traffic would have reduced him to -- no, not thinking about that. This was Neal, Neal Caffrey; he had the luck and reflexes of a cat. He hadn't been ground to a pulp on the turnpike. That wasn't his fate. Couldn't be. Wouldn't be.
Peter skidded into the concrete barricade at the foot of the embankment. The gust of wind from each passing car slapped his face and blew his hair back. Loose snow swirled around him. He couldn't see a thing except the staccato flash of headlights. "Neal!" he yelled, leaning over the barricade, scanning the road. He couldn't see. For one crazy instant he imagined himself vaulting over the barricade, flashing his badge -- and then, he supposed, getting bowled over by a dozen cars in rapid succession. How long had it been now, a minute, minute-and-a-half? Too long, too damn long.
He tried calling Neal's phone and got an out-of-service-area message. Bile climbed his throat. Peter took a breath to steady himself, and called Neal's tracking detail.
"Yes, we've got a strong signal, Agent Burke," said the reassuring voice on the other end of the line. "He's traveling south on the Jersey Turnpike. Just a second, let me get you an exact location."
Peter tried to wrap his mind around the words. "Did you say -- traveling?"
***
I'm not dead, Neal thought in amazement. How am I not dead?
He'd felt the impact of Jankowski's bullet, like getting punched in the stomach. Then he was falling, and he had an instant to imagine in gruesome detail what would happen to his body when he hit the traffic, or, more accurately, when the traffic hit him. He slammed into something hard, knocking the breath out of him, and his whole body went rigid -- but then he started to slide, and instinctively flung out his hands, arresting his motion. Wind battering him, pelting him with snow that stung like sand.
Neal risked lifting his head, and glimpsed a sea of red lights in front of him. Taillights.
I'm on top of a truck.
It was brutally cold. He couldn't feel his fingers, nor draw a full breath. Neal guessed that he had minutes, maybe only seconds, before his numb fingers lost their grip and he tumbled under the wheels of the traffic behind his serendipitous ride.
Somehow he'd survived what should have been instant death, but he was still in a whole lot of trouble.
One of his hands slipped -- he felt skin tear; the top of the truck was ice-cold metal, flash-freezing his palms. He slid another few feet before a fit of panicked scrabbling managed to stop him again. He had to signal the driver, or get off the truck, or something. Neal scuttled sideways, crablike, and peeked over the edge of the truck. He glimpsed rows of slats, open to the truck's dark interior. Animal transport, maybe? If animals could ride in there, so could he. And maybe, if there were animals, it would be warm.
He leaned down as far as he could, gripped the slats with one numb, bleeding hand, and tugged. After some yanking, the whole panel moved with a jolt and slid sideways, opening enough of a space that he could lean over and crawl inside, headfirst. He tumbled painfully to the floor of the truck, and for a few moments he just lay there, hurting and freezing and unable to move.
Eventually he got some breath back, and pulled himself up to a sitting position against the side of the truck. His teeth were chattering violently, his hair and even his eyelashes full of snow. He reached under his coat, patting himself and trying to figure out if Jankowski's bullet had hit his vest or flesh, but his hands were too numb and too sticky with melted snow and blood to be able to tell. It still hurt to breathe, but not too badly. Presumably, if he'd been hit, he wasn't in immediate danger of bleeding to death. The cold was more of an issue.
Looking around, he realized that he was on the top level of a multi-story trailer for transporting some sort of medium-sized animals -- pigs or sheep, maybe. Whatever they were, there weren't any in here now. Yeah, he thought miserably, because even the cruelest farmer wouldn't put a hog out on a night like this. There was nothing but some filthy straw, frozen down with muck he didn't want to think about.
Neal fumbled for his cell phone, but it was gone. At some point in the fall or the mad scramble for safety on top of the truck, he'd lost it. The light on his anklet glowed steady and reassuring, though.
Come on, Peter. His shivering was violent and nonstop. You can find me even when I don't want you to. Work your magic.
***
Peter commandeered a police car, because the impact of the flashing blue and red lights would be a whole lot more intimidating than his little dashboard-mounted light in the Taurus, and he needed speed. There might have been some complaining from the direction of the police sergeant whose car it was, but Peter snapped, "Take it up with my boss," and slid into the driver's seat, holding out his hand for the keys.
Now they were tearing down the turnpike in a blizzard, veering around cars, skidding in the snow piling up on the shoulder.
The sergeant clung to the passenger-side door. He'd gone slightly green. "It's not going to help your partner if we wipe out on a Mac truck," he said through clenched teeth. "Slow down a little."
Peter ignored him, driving with his cell clamped between his shoulder and ear. He read off the nearest exit number to Diana, who was back at the White Collar division on Peter's computer, with Neal's tracking data in front of her. "How close?"
"Another mile or so. You're closing fast, and he hasn't taken an exit. Just keep going."
"Needle in a haystack," Peter muttered, because complaining was better than focusing on all the horrific images that his mind's eye kept throwing at him. They were chasing the anklet, but there was no guarantee that Neal's foot was still in it. Or, worse, no guarantee that the foot was still attached to the rest of Neal --
"Jones just got your patrol car's GPS," Diana said. "Clinton, can you turn that monitor -- Okay, Peter, we're going to try to navigate you to --" He heard Jones say something in the background, and Diana said, "Wait, wait, you just passed him."
"I did?" Peter hit the brakes; the front end of the car slewed around, and the sergeant crossed himself. What'd I just pass? A couple of little commuter cars, a taxi -- could that be it? Wait ... He glimpsed a whole row of semis over in the right lane. Right lane would've been under Neal when he fell, and the top of a semi trailer was a good big surface to fall onto -- Peter felt his lips draw back in a fierce grin. Oh, yeah, partner. Your luck strikes again, doesn't it?
But if Neal was clinging to the top of a semi truck, they might only have minutes to get to him before he passed out from hypothermia -- or Jankowski's bullet -- and lost his grip. How to find the right truck?
***
Neal could feel himself starting to drift. Get up, he told himself fiercely, in an inner voice that sounded suspiciously like Peter's voice, and staggered to his feet. Maybe he could signal the driver somehow, or at least get to a warmer place -- wouldn't it be more sheltered directly behind the cab of the truck? He stumbled towards the front of the trailer, then lost his footing and went down in the frozen filth. June's gonna make me pay for this suit ...
At least the bulletproof vest offered a little additional warmth, underneath his stylish but completely inadequate coat. Everything hurt, though: ears, nose, cheeks, hands, feet ...
Peter, where are you?
But the immediate thought that followed was: Yeah, and how's he going to get to you, dumbass? Neal was in the back of a truck careening down the freeway. It would be a wonder if Peter could even catch up -- well, okay, given how Peter drove under normal circumstances, maybe not that much of a wonder. But then what? The anklet wasn't a magic leash that would pull Peter to him. I gotta signal him somehow, let him know where I am.
Except he didn't have anything to signal with. "Smoke signals," Neal said through chattering teeth, "start a fire," and then he began helplessly giggling, and oh, this was bad, this was really bad. He was still rational enough to realize that he wasn't entirely rational, which, paradoxically, was worse than being completely out of it.
Think. Think. His coat wasn't doing much anyway, and Neal shrugged out of it -- the wind bit into the arms of his suit jacket like a thousand stinging bees, and he bit his lips. Isn't disrobing a sign of severe hypothermia? Does it make a difference if there's a good reason? He tried to tie the coat around the slats in the side of the truck, but no longer had enough dexterity in his fingers, and for a disastrous instant he almost lost his grip and sent the coat sailing into the night. Instead he wrapped the arms of the coat around his own forearms, using his teeth to hold on when his fingers wouldn't grip. The tails of the coat fluttered through the slats like a flag.
And so they found him in the morning, frozen in a deeply strange position ... must have been hallucinating ... He fought down another inappropriate giggle. The thing to do, if he knew no help was coming, would be to pull in the coat, wrap it around himself and huddle for warmth. Maybe he could survive until the trucker pulled off for a cup of coffee at a truck stop somewhere down the road.
But help was coming. Peter would find him. All he had to do was send a signal, and Peter would see it. Neal clung to that thought, closed his eyes, and hung on.
***
"Did you see something move?" Peter asked.
"Something on the side of that hog truck," the sergeant agreed.
Neal. Let it be Neal. Peter maneuvered the patrol car nearer. Something was fluttering from the side of the truck. A piece of cloth? A blanket? Most likely, it was a tarp or something similar that had been inadequately tied down.
But ... if Neal was on one of those trucks, and he wasn't too badly hurt, then he was smart enough to signal for help. Trust your partner, Peter thought, and his inner voice sounded an awful lot like Neal's sardonic tones.
He pulled alongside the cab of the truck, and gave the driver a couple short bursts of the siren, crowding him. The driver looked startled and took the next exit. "Diana," Peter said as he followed, "please tell me Neal isn't sailing on down the freeway right now."
"Nope," she said. "You're right on top of him, boss."
Sometimes gambles do pay off. But the question of Neal's physical state still left Peter with a knot in his stomach.
The truck driver pulled off onto the shoulder of the exit ramp. Peter pulled over behind him, and was out of the police car before the wheels stopped turning.
The driver was already fumbling out his paperwork as Peter jogged up beside the cab of the truck. "I don't know what I did, Officer, but --"
Peter waved him to silence and flipped open his badge. "Special Agent Peter Burke," he shouted over the wind and the traffic. "I need to look in your trailer."
He was braced to be asked for a warrant, but no fight ensued. The driver, eager to make himself useful, threw open the back of the truck, and the sergeant joined them with a flashlight from the patrol car.
"There's nothing back here, though, Officer," the driver said. "I just dropped off a load of hogs. This is the empty leg of the drive."
The beam of the flashlight revealed nothing more than heaps of frozen straw. No sign of Neal. Peter's heart dropped to the toes of his soaked, muddy shoes. But ... wait. No sign of anything that might have been fluttering out of the truck, either. He looked up. The ceiling was low ... "Is there a level above this one?"
Moments later, they were clambering into the upper level of the truck. This time, the sergeant's flashlight instantly picked out a figure leaning against the truck's slatted side.
"Neal." Peter skidded on the icy floor and almost pitched headfirst in an attempt to reach him.
"You're so predictable," Neal said through chattering teeth, and Peter caught him as he collapsed.
***
Peter shoved Neal into the back of the patrol car and slid in after him. He stripped off his wool coat and wrapped it around Neal's shoulders.
The trunk of the patrol car slammed, and the sergeant passed him a musty-smelling blanket through the open door. "Hospital?"
Peter nodded, and bundled Neal in the blanket. As the car pulled back onto the road, he asked, "Are you hurt? Can you tell?"
Neal's reply was unintelligible. Peter started checking him over, pausing briefly on Neal's swollen, bleeding hands. "Shit, Neal," he murmured, and opened the bulletproof vest as Neal made little protesting noises. "Does this hurt? How about this?"
"Ngh."
"That's not an answer." Peter prodded and was rewarded with a muffled "Ow."
"Looks like he shot you in the vest. You've got some lovely bruises, maybe a cracked rib or two, but no leaks as far as I can tell." Relieved to find nothing immediately life-threatening, Peter tucked him back into his cocoon of blanket and coat, then put an arm around him for extra warmth. With his free hand, Peter reached for his phone. "Hang on, I need to call Diana and Jones, let them know you're okay."
Neal's mumble sounded like "easy for you to say", but then it was drowned out by cheerful whoops from the other end of the connection, which even Neal heard; it brought a smile to his bloodless lips. Diana promised to handle Jankowski's booking; there was a slight frisson of threat in her voice. Peter hung up, grinning. He had the best team ever.
"Worried you?" Neal murmured, leaning into Peter's warmth.
Peter took Neal's scraped hands and tucked them gently under his shirt for additional heat. "Nah," he said. "I wasn't worried for a minute."
~
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