White Collar: An unofficial novel - part 8

The two spiders

Every possible piece of information on paper was spread across the whole table of the conference room. Had Peter collected the whole team all like this when he escaped from prison? He had to ask him sometime.

"...the Marshal was one looking for Franklin at six-thirty this morning and he's an M.I.A. They've got a two-hour head start. We cannot let them get to Franklin before we do. If they catch him fleeing, they will shoot him. Jones?"

"I'll check the airports, transit in and out of the city."

"Good. Diana?"

"I'll put photos in circulation and cross-reference with his FBI aliases."

"All right, I want to canvass his friends and family, so let's move."

People filed out of the room. Neal took the folder that has caught his attention from the beginning. He leaned on the table next to Peter.

"Franklin was a good agent," he said. This was no bad apple making people's life hell for no reason.

"He was," Peter nodded. "Top in his class. 12 years of service."

"FBI medal of valor. That can't be easy to come by."

Peter agreed to that too. His friend had not got one as far as he knew, but this Franklin had, then something was very strange when an agent like that was on the run and a shooting target for the Marshals.

"What happened?"

"He had an inappropriate relationship with his C.I."

"Really?" Neal smiled. It made the good agent a little more human and less of a superhero. Besides, it was a bit funny that there were some things about relationships the Bureau did care about after all. Most people had ideas about who should be allowed to date.

"Yes."

"How inappropriate?" Maybe 'inappropriate' did not mean what he thought Peter wanted to imply.

"Do you want me to draw you a diagram?" Peter replied.

"No." So, Franklin and his C.I. had had sex. That meant that Peter would not get in trouble with their friendship, at least not for that reason.

"He fell in love with her," Peter explained. "He got caught. And they sent him down to bank fraud."

There was a gap in the story of how he became on the run, but that mattered little now.

"Well, then, she was his first stop," Neal said.

"Well, maybe. She's his former C.I. They broke it off when he got transferred."

Neal showed him the file he was holding, which was the information on the C.I. A beautiful brunette named Rebecca Vidal.

"She has three known aliases," he pointed out to his handler. "She knows how to hide someone. I mean, come on, Peter. If you went on the run—"

"I wouldn't go on the run."

Naturally, Peter would say that.

"Yeah, but if you did..." Would he not search him out, asking his pet convict to hide him?

"Yes, I'm sure it'd be your fault," Peter huffed. "Let's move."

Peter drove to the car parlor where the former C.I. worked.

"Rebecca Vidal, please," he asked the woman behind the reception desk.

"Sure. Just one minute."

"She works here in..." He noted that Neal was not behind him but on his way to the cars. "...Sales," he finished and hurried after Neal before the kid suddenly had sold, stolen, or even worse: buying a car. They were all expensive sports cars, he realized. He glanced at a Ferrari that cost more than he would earn in a lifetime. But damn, they were beauties, all of them.