Chapter Five

WCWCKEJAEWCWC

Neal and Chuck only gave me the basics of their history together with a few specifics such as their university and Chuck's name. Piecing it all together into something more was going to be up to me.

Learning Neal had been presumed dead to the team explained the surprise and almost hostile reactions, but it only proved to worry me more. If Neal had been injured so badly, what was this history with these people he was so keen to hide?

It didn't take long for us to run out of viable conversation topics with them being so secretive, so I suggested we reconvene with our teams in the office.

Changing the location to the car, Chuck managed to change the conversation topic to New York City at large. Allowing it, I figured I would make do with what I had already gathered and see how much of the story I could find on my own.

Reaching the office, I left Neal at his desk where Mozzie was quick to claim a familiar face. Chuck walked with me to Hughes' office, but my boss insisted on handling the situation alone which freed me to my own research.

Settling in behind my desk, I started up my computer while jotting some notes on a sheet of paper to remember what points I was researching: Larkin, Stanford University, Charles Bartowski, Burbank, seeing how the names of his teammates connected, and hopefully unlocking the big secret of what bound them together.

When my system was humming, I keyed Chuck's name into the government employee database. Immediately getting a hit, I found most of it blacked out with allusions to heroics and extremely classified data.

Intrigued, I put the names and descriptions of his teammates through with a few additions from his file to get a Colonel John Casey of the NSA, Sarah Walker Bartowski of the CIA, and Morgan Grimes, a trainee of the NSA. Like Chuck's, the files were mostly blocked but alluded to high profile work. This wasn't a group of criminals, or even just some agents, these were Washington elite level agents.

Glancing down at Neal, I wondered how this tied into him. He'd been showing a hidden side of community service recently, but could that go so deep as this was hinting? Did he work for the government before I accepted his deal with me?

Feeling even more curious, I looked for the name Larkin at Stanford in conjuncture with Bartowski's time there. Bryce Larkin, a 4.0 student in accounting and computer engineering who excelled at track. It was like discovering he had another life. Here, Neal was normal living in a fraternity, going to classes, hanging out with his best friend, and training in sports for team competitions.

Drawn deeper into the web, I quickly worked backward to find records of a kid growing up in Connecticut. Everything seemed normal there too. Bryce was raised with a younger sister by two loving parents, he had a nerdy interest in comics and video games, enjoyed being outside and active, and a few incident reports at his school noted him for getting into a little trouble for standing up to bullies on the playground. What had happened?

Redirecting my search, I put Bryce Larkin into the government employee database just to see what would turn up. I'm not sure if I was surprised or not, but I was glued to my computer as I read between the blacked out words. The files were full of tales equally heroic and legendary as his counterparts. Neal was one of them.

When I finished scouring what records I could find, I decided to randomly put Mozzie's description into the database. He was a close friend of Neal's and the presence of these other agents had actually drawn him into our offices. There were a lot of results, but one had a redacted image and limited descriptions about a deep cover operation in the criminal underground. It could be Mozzie, but there was no way to prove it.

Even though I was probably reaching, I chose to put June into the database. Everyone else seemed to be getting hits, so why not check her out? Nothing came up. Laughing to myself, I was glad at least something worked like expected. Then a hit came up. She wasn't a direct government employee, but she was connected through some umbrella agency. There was enough data to acknowledge her existence, but nothing overly filled in.

WCWCQUINISWCWC

I shifted nervously next to Chuck. This felt a little like being called to the principal's office. Hughes was staring at me, barely blinking as Sarah explained the situation. Hughes' clearance was high enough for him to be told about my identity as Bryce Larkin and how I was CIA.

"You're a spy?" Hughes asked me. It was the first thing he had said directly to me.

"Yessir," I responded quickly, mouth stumbling a little over the double 's'. I clasped my hands tighter together since they were out of sight behind my back. The pressure was grounding and kept me from saying unnecessary things.

"I guess this isn't the strangest thing to happen in this office since you've arrived, Caffrey," Hughes commented to my confusion.

Not the strangest? What was the strangest then? Was it the party with the models and our attempt to lure out 'the Ghost'? Or was it the one with the stolen healing Bible?

"That's probably true," I mused. I was curious what Hughes thought was the strangest though. Was it Mozzie being in the FBI office? Peter would probably rank that pretty high up.

Sarah still had things to say. She assured Hughes that my work as Bryce wouldn't affect my contract with the FBI and that I fully intended to serve out the remainder of my time.

"Yay," I muttered under my breath. Because, as great as working with the team was, I didn't really want to serve out all four years. That hadn't really been the plan when I signed the contract.

Hughes looked at me for a moment and I smiled back.

"Caffrey, you better not get Burke hurt because of this spook business," he warned. "Otherwise, I'll be calling the NSA. There are a couple of people who still owe me favors."

I glanced over at Casey. "Are you someone who owes Hughes a favor, Casey?"

"No. Comment," Casey growled out. Hughes didn't react either. Now I would be forever questioning whether Hughes was able to get Casey to take me out.

"You don't make a good dinner companion, Larkin. You're not as pretty as you think you are," Casey growled out.

It seems I said that out loud. Still, he didn't have to say that.

"You don't have to laugh," I said to Chuck, who was still grinning.

"Yes, I do. Casey made a joke."

"I always make jokes. You all just don't understand them."

"Threatening to shoot someone isn't a joke," I countered.

"Speaking of," Hughes started. He then said that I wasn't allowed a gun, which was perfectly fine by me.

Ten minutes later and we were dismissed. I breathed a sigh of relief as we left the office, no punishments or paperwork sent my way. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Chuck smile at me.

"What?"

"You like it here. At the FBI."

"Yeah, so?" I wasn't trying to hide it. After Stanford, it was difficult to show when I liked things. After all, I wasn't the best person. I'm still not.

"It's good for you." Chuck didn't bother to say any more than that. At least Sarah told me they were heading back to my apartment for the afternoon.

My desk had papers piled up, waiting for me to read and sign. Inside the glass fishbowl that was Peter's office, I could see him at his computer.

"He hasn't moved since you guys got back," Jones said when he spotted me looking up. "He must be researching something."

Peter's face didn't have the serious expression it usually did when he was looking up information for a case. So what could he be looking at then? I watched him the whole afternoon and also hacked into his internet history.

My heart stopped for an instant when I saw my name. My history. And Chuck's too. It seemed Peter had managed to use the little information we had given him to uncover almost everything.

He even searched Mozzie and June!

I glanced back up at the agent in the glass office. Peter was skilled, even by CIA standards, and I was lucky to get a chance to work with him.

"Come on Caffrey," Diana called from across the room. "I need you to process my case so I can close it! Jones already did his part!"

Jones grinned at me. I huffed but go on with it.

At 5:00pm, the door to Peter's office opened and he walked down. It was time to go home.

WCWCKEJAEWCWC

I spent nearly my entire afternoon collecting everything I could on Neal… or Bryce to use his real name. Each detail answered questions and created new ones.

Once I'd run through as much as I could find and read around the blacked out pieces until my eyes crossed, I sat back in my chair to contemplate what I'd found.

A glance towards Neal showed him studiously observing his computer as seriously as I had been. Perhaps he'd hacked my computer and was following my activities, he could be intrigued by a case, or more likely he was pretending to be busy to avoid explaining the day's happenings…

These people from his past had caught up causing his biggest secret to be revealed. I had no doubt Hughes had been made aware more officially through their meeting next door in addition to my own discoveries. It was a long to handle for a day so I couldn't blame him if he was trying to avoid any more confrontations.

Twisting my pen between my hands, I fidgeted with it while I thought. However, observing my friend wasn't bringing me any closer to dealing with the reveals myself.

Approaching it analytically, I decided to weigh the pros against the cons.

First, the cons. Neal was an undercover agent who held an important status in the black ops world. That meant danger followed him with potential threats worse than Keller. Being an agent, his assignment could end up forcing him to leave and there wouldn't be a guarantee we'd ever see or hear from him again. Worst of all, his records proved he had been allegedly killed multiple times in addition to various other injuries ranging from minor scrapes to torture.

Shuddering, I happily shifted to the pros. Neal was an agent. He worked in a different field of government, but he wasn't technically a criminal so I wouldn't have to worry so much about his activities. In addition, he had training in combat and weapons so he could take of himself in most dangerous situations reducing another huge area of concern. But best of all, this meant I was wrong.

He was a con and a man.

Neal was a con. Everyone believed Neal Caffrey was his real name, no one forgot his criminal history or his need to learn how to play by the rules, and the potential bleak future of a prison cell wasn't just a joke. Until today, I had believed the lies just as surely as everyone else still did.

Bryce was the man. He'd given his life to prevent horrible things from happening, he'd risked it all to do the right thing, and he went behind my back to protect others while working to keep it secret to protect his cover.

Smiling, I realized I was more proud of him for his secrets than I had been before. Neal Caffrey was a con worth knowing, and Bryce Larkin was a man worth the risk.

WCWCWCWC

When it was time to leave, I approached Neal's desk as usual and asked if he was ready to go yet.

Asking for a few moments, he began shutting his programs down. "It's not often you're actually ready to go at five."

I easily commented about the day not being normal and his hand missed a step so he hit the commands on his keyboard again to complete the process.

Trying to hide the tremor in his hands while he shuffled his remaining paperwork away, he teased. "I think that's a good thing." He was afraid of my reaction.

Waiting, I let him finish his routine and put on his things. Then when he moved to stand beside me, I surprised him by patting him on the shoulder before leading him out with my hand resting on his opposing shoulder.

We didn't talk much on the drive home. I offered dinner as an escape from his house guests, but he asked for a rain check as Chuck had some things to talk about.

Pulling up at his curb, I locked the doors to prevent his escape before turning towards him. "First, I want to know the important things. If anyone's in danger, if you have to leave, or just if you need to talk even if you can't say everything. Second, if you do have to leave, I want you to remain in contact. Even if you have to do those little postcards from random places around the world, you need to let me know you're okay. Do you understand me, agent Bryce Larkin?"

At first he was surprised and stared back at me, but then he smiled softly with a nod. "Yeah, I understand you."

As he left, I knew we were going to be alright with our friendship stronger for the truth.

WCWCWCWC

When we were going to bed, Elizabeth asked me why I had been quiet all evening.

She couldn't know the whole truth, but the basics would suffice. "Neal's a spy. They're all spies."

Thank you, everyone, for reading, reviewing/commenting, voting, leaving kudos, following, and choosing to favorite :D

I appreciate everyone who voted! There is three for "Inheritance," one for "Triple Trouble," and two for "Persuassioned." Next up is Inheritance and then Persuassioned will follow as my oldest and longest story. It will be a long while before I take votes again due to the combined length of these stories, but I'll be using that time to build some more stories for you to enjoy later :D