Chapter Text
He didn’t want to leave New York again, but it was becoming a necessity. Maybe he could spend a few months in Paris and then return home quietly. Home. New York was home now, and he had to flee it. Neal sighed silently, he wanted to stay, even if that meant stopping committing crimes.
But at the moment, he needed to get one of his spare aliases and meet up with Mozzie at the airport.
Neal made his way through the storage spaces, following the same path he had when he had hidden his things a few years ago. He stopped in front of the storage door and pulled out the key to unlock it. No need to pick the lock when he had the key.
After a moment, he was pulling up the garage-like door and stepping inside to find his bag.
Muffled sounds startled Neal from his thoughts. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone else in the building; it was abandoned and the middle of the night. Whoever was here wasn’t likely to be good.
Neal swiftly grabbed his bag and slowly moved out of the room so he could close it back up. The sounds were far enough off that whoever it was wouldn’t hear him, but he was careful to make as little sound as possible anyways.
Neal was headed out of the building, getting closer to the commotion he had heard, but staying as far from it as possible when he heard a pained voice say, “Killing me won’t bring back your brother.”
Ice shot through Neal’s veins. Whatever was happening, they were going to kill someone. It wasn’t his fault and it certainly wasn’t his problem, but someone would die, and he knew he couldn’t let that happen.
“Shut the hell up.” A lower, gruffer voice snapped, followed by a thump and a whimper that made Neal feel like he’d been stabbed through the heart.
Neal moved into action, spurred by the pain he had heard from the first person. As far as he could tell, the man had been kidnapped. There only seemed to be one kidnapper, which made luring him away easier.
Neal stayed out of sight as he inched closer to the room the two were in. It was another abandoned storage locker. Neal needed to cause a distraction without letting them know he was there.
Glancing around, he saw the air vents that ran through the hallways above the storage rooms. They weren’t big enough to crawl through, nor would Neal risk them being strong enough, but they could provide the perfect opportunity to create a distraction.
Neal looked into the vent and saw that it went straight across the top of the line of rooms to the opposite hallway. A well-timed crash could lead the kidnapper all the way to the other end of the building for a few minutes.
Neal ran to the other end of the vent, still listening to ensure that the kidnapper was still occupied and wouldn’t spot him. He stretched up to pry off the air vent slowly, flinching when the rusty metal squeaked, but it wasn’t loud enough to draw attention.
He grabbed some loose junk lying around the hallway; bits of wood and metal, anything that was small enough to fit into the vent was shoved in. He kept one smooth block of wood and then looped back around to the other end of the air vent.
The kidnapper was still loudly moving around the room and Neal took a deep breath before starting the distraction. He dragged an old moving cart over to be underneath the air vent so he could be a few inches higher off the ground and stood on it, praying that it wouldn’t move.
Neal took the block of wood and forcefully pushed it into the air vent, sliding it across the bottom like he was playing a game of shuffleboard.
The wood slid straight and crashed into the stacked junk at the other end of the vent, pushing it out and causing it to loudly smash into the floor.
“What the hell was that?” Neal heard the kidnapper exclaim.
The sounds of footsteps left the room and Neal didn’t wait to round the corner and get inside; he’d only have a few minutes before the man came back.
In the center of the small room, tied to a chair, was a thin man with a broken pair of glasses and blood running down his face from a cut on his forehead.
Neal grabbed a knife from a metal rolling table, one that would normally be used in a kitchen, and tried not to gag at the thought of what the kidnapper was going to use it for.
The guy in the chair was unconscious, his head lolled forward. Neal rounded the chair and carefully sawed through the rope binding him, dropping the knife as soon as he was done. The man slumped forward and Neal grabbed at his shoulder so he wouldn’t fall out of the chair.
When Neal moved back around to the front of the chair, blue eyes looked back at him. They were glazed over, definitely still feeling the effects of whatever had happened to him, but Neal hoped he would be coherent enough to follow directions.
“C’mon, I’m getting you out of here. Can you stand?” Neal quickly whispered.
The man hesitated and then nodded. Neal grabbed one of his hands and leaned over so he could wrap an arm around Neal’s shoulders. They both stood back up together and Neal knew he was carrying most of the man’s weight.
He could hear the kidnapper moving back towards them, so Neal half dragged the semi-conscious man into the hallway and around the corner to the back exit. Just as they left the building, Neal could hear loud swearing from behind them, but he didn’t stop moving.
There was a small, dirt side street that ran parallel to the road and led away from the building, but it lied on the other side of a copse of trees. It was one of the reasons that Neal had chosen this building for his run bag in the first place.
This time, the trees provided cover as they made their way to the car Neal had driven to get there.
Twenty feet from the car, the man passed out again and Neal had to readjust his hold so that they both didn’t collapse to the ground. Neal dragged the man over to the backseat of the car, leaning him up against the rear wheel as Neal pulled open the door. It wasn’t an easy feat to maneuver the man into the car without injuring him further, but Neal got him in and threw a seatbelt over him, just in case.
Within seconds, Neal was in the driver’s seat and swiftly driving away, making sure to follow the side street for awhile before daring to cross back over to the main road, lest he be seen by the kidnapper.
Panic set in as Neal got onto the highway. He had re-kidnapped a kidnapping victim. He needed to get the man to a hospital. He needed to tell someone about the man that was going to kill the guy. All of which would put himself at risk.
Neal glanced at the man in his backseat through the rearview mirror. The sight made his heart ache. He couldn’t leave him on his own, even if it did mean he could be caught.
Feeling more reckless than he had in ages, Neal pulled out his cellphone and hit the fourth speed dial, one he never used on a tracible phone but always programmed anyways.
The call connected.
“Peter Burke.”
"Peter—" Neal said, relief flooding him. Peter would know what to do.
"Caffrey?!" Agent Burke growled, more alert now.
"Listen," Neal rushed to say, cutting off anything Burke might have said. "I need your help. I just stole a person."
Burke took a sharp breath. "You kidnapped someone?!"
"No." Neal said firmly. "Someone else kidnapped him, I just stole him back. He's hurt."
"Caffrey, where are you?"
Neal took a deep breath. This was it. If he told Peter where he was he'd be caught. But it also meant that the man that did this would be caught. And at the moment, that seemed much more important. Mozzie could yell at him for it later.
"I'm in Pennsylvania. I'm taking him to Rosewood Memorial Hospital. We were in the abandoned storage locker facility and I think the guy that did this to him is still there somewhere." The panic was apparent in Neal's voice as he explained.
"Alright. I'll send people to check it out. Someone will meet you at the hospital." Peter promised and Neal let out a bit of the tension that was in his shoulders.
"Okay." Neal hung up before he could change his mind about his actions. He was still speeding through the empty streets to get to the hospital with the man in the back seat.