Chapter One

Aliases

Nora paced frantically across the apartment, phone clutched tight in her hand as she desperately willed Mozzie to call her back. Diana excused herself to put out a BOLO on Mozzie, and Peter attempted to reassure her that they would find him.

It was nearly an hour before Diana returned, face grim as she pulled Peter out into the hall, speaking in low tones that Nora couldn't hear from her spot by the balcony. They spoke for a long while, and worry gnawed at her stomach as they shot concerned glances toward her. When Peter returned to her, he put a hand on her shoulder, and Nora did her best to prepare herself for the worst.

"Dispatch got a call for a John Doe matching Mozzie's description with a single gunshot wound to the chest." Nora's heart constricted painfully in her chest, and she pushed a hand to her mouth, unsure if she wanted to puke or scream. "Nora, breathe. He was alive when EMTs arrived on the scene. They said he's in surgery now."

"Can we go…?"

"Of course." The car ride was agonizing, silent save for the call Peter made to the Marshals before they left her radius to temporarily extend her range. Nora couldn't decide which would be worse: if it was Mozzie, or if it wasn't. If it was, her closest friend could be dying on a hospital bed because they weren't fast enough to find him. If it wasn't, and he still hadn't called her back, he could be dead already.

Once they finally arrived at the hospital, Peter flashed his badge, asking about the John Doe who'd been brought in. The officer who had arrived first on the scene was called over to speak with them. He ran down the facts of the case professionally, sounding quite disinterested, and Nora wanted to scream again.

"Did he have anything on him?" Peter asked.

"No ID," the officer explained, handing Peter a bag of all the items that had been on the John Doe's person. "Just a couple bucks, a MetroCard, some receipts, and a cell phone."

Peter turned to Nora, but she was already a step ahead of him, dialing Mozzie's number. The phone in the bag ran, and something in Nora crumbled. "That's our guy," Peter sighed.

"Do you have a name?" the officer asked.

Peter opened his mouth, but Nora cut him off. "Ivan Bliminse," she lied. Peter's brow furrowed, but he didn't say anything. The officer wrote that down, and the Nurse who was watching silently noted it as well.

Peter questioned the officer about witnesses and possible suspects, but it wasn't a particularly long conversation. The officer excused himself, and Nora and Peter took a seat with nothing to do but wait for news. "Ivan Bliminse?"

"Moz wouldn't want his real name in the system."

"Do you even know his real name?" She didn't answer. "Why Ivan Bliminse?" She shrugged, not inclined to explain. They waited and waited, until Peter's phone buzzed. "I need to go touch base with Diana," he sighed, looking at the screen.

"Peter…"

"I'm not asking you to go." This surprised her. He was leaving her unsupervised outside her radius? After what she pulled earlier? Still, she wasn't going to question his kindness. "Let me know if you hear anything." She nodded, and he left her.

Hours passed, and Nora felt numb. At some point – Nora lost track of the time – a nurse called for the family of Ivan Bliminse and explained that he was out of surgery and stable, but comatose while he recovered. Eventually, Nora was allowed in to see him. It was painful, seeing him hooked up with tubes and wires keeping him alive.

Peter returned late in the afternoon as the sun was setting over the city. "Nora," he said softly, "we have to go." She didn't move, staring out the window. Peter came up behind her. "He's in a medically-induced coma. There's nothing you can do for him here. But there's something you can do out there." She turned to face him, swallowing hard. "Come on."

Reluctantly, she left Mozzie and followed. Back at the Bureau, in Peter's office, Peter handed Nora a file. "Our suspect," he said as she flipped it open. "His name is Julian Larssen."

"This is who shot Moz?" she asked softly, fighting back the wave of emotions that roiled through her at the sight of his face. But it would do no good to lose her head (again) and do something stupid (again). She needed to stay calm, for Mozzie's sake.

"We think so." She read over the write-up, all the snippets of information the FBI had on the man. "And according to Fowler, he's the right-hand man behind whoever's been manipulating you, Kyle, the music box. Everything."

She nodded, swallowing hard. "Where is he now?"

"He's gone to ground." Naturally, as criminals tend to do after committing a crime. "If he's smart, he'll leave town, and we need to make sure that doesn't happen." She could feel Peter's scrutinizing eyes as he regarded her for a moment. "How'd you stay ahead of me when I was after you? And don't say good looks and charm."

It was meant as a joke, and she appreciated the effort, but she wasn't in much of a joking mood. "Aliases," she admitted. "I had several."

"I kept burning them," he noted. She remembered that all too well; it had been annoying at the time…

But could prove useful to them in this case, she realized, the faint hint of a smile tugging up the corners of her lips. "And I kept making new ones." Peter's smirk mirrored her own. Clearly, they were on the same page. She flipped the file for him to see. "This passport. I recognize the work. It's a forger out of Belgium."

"Larssen doesn't forge his own IDs?"

"It's not easy," she allowed. "You need specialized equipment, ink, paper." She licked her lips, a swell of hope burning in her chest. "If we burn all of his aliases, he'll have to have new papers made by someone here in the city."

"Exactly." Peter rounded his desk. "I'll work up a list of all of Larssen's aliases and start shutting them down. Put him on every watch list until he has no way out of New York."

"And I'll talk to the forger community to make sure he can't buy another one," she added. It may have been a bit easier said than done; nothing makes cons scatter faster than someone they know is working for the law, but she was reasonably sure she could convince them…

"Wait," Peter said as she was turning to leave. He had that look in his eyes that said there was a clever idea tumbling around his head. "What if we let him buy one? One that we pick." She smirked; it wasn't every day Peter showed off his devious side, but when he did, it was usually a good time.

"Leave it to me," she assured him and set out to get to work. It was a good distraction, setting up the pieces. She went the whole nine yards, even going as far as making some nice, high-quality business cards.

It wasn't hard tracking down the forgers over the next couple of days. She only had to go after the best of the best, after all. Larssen wouldn't settle for less than perfection. Some faces, she knew, it was best to slip the cards to inconspicuously, otherwise they would spook. Others, she flashed a smile and handed over the card covertly. Others still, she talked to directly.

Eventually, she had a room full of forgers, confused and reluctant as they waited and milled about. She made her entrance. "Alright," she called, drawing all eyes to herself. "I think that's everyone. Thank you all for coming."

"What's this about, Caffrey?" Devlin, who they'd conned when Mozzie's not-girlfriend Gina went missing a couple months before, asked dryly.

She pulled a photo of Larssen from her purse and held it up for all of them to see. "The man in this photo is gonna come to you looking for a new identity," she explained. "When he does, I want you to make him the best ID that you can."

"What's the angle?" a woman named Angela asked, brow furrowed. She didn't trust Nora all that much before her arrest, much less now that she was working for the feds.

"I'm gonna tell you what name to give him," Nora explained pointedly, handing over the photo so it could be passed around. "Justin Springer."

"Come on, Caffrey," Devlin sighed, studying the photo. "It's bad for business." He handed the photo back to Angela and started for the door.

"It's not for me," she called after him, freezing him in his tracks. "It's for Mozzie."

Angela licked her lips, face somber. "Is this the guy who…?" News traveled fast in the criminal underground, it seemed, and Mozzie was beloved by most of the forger community, even if Nora wasn't.

"Yeah."

Devlin turned back around slowly, struggling for words for a moment. "You want a New York ID, or out of state?" She smiled. If Devlin was on board, she knew the others would be too. They all listened patiently as she explained exactly what she needed done.

It was late by the time Nora was able to make it to the hospital again. Nora was exhausted, but she knew she wouldn't be able to sleep without checking in on Mozzie, as if her presence alone would be the difference between his living or dying, irrational as that was. She didn't expect to fall asleep in the chair next to his bed, however.

She was woken again by the sound of a few loud, erratic beeps that quickly fell back into a regular rhythm. Her eyes fluttered opened, and it took her a second to notice Mozzie, fingers tugging at the tube in his nose. She jolted forward, gently pulling his hands away.

"Don't pull it out, bud," she urged softly. "Don't pull it out." He looked around, confused and scared as she took a seat on the edge of the bed. She was on the verge of happy tears, relief threatening to swallow her whole. "Hey."

"They did it…" he muttered, voice hoarse from disuse. "They finally got me." Nora laughed despite herself. It was such a Mozzie thing to say. "What happened?"

"Bullet missed your heart by two millimeters," she explained gently.

He wouldn't meet her eyes. "That's because I don't have a heart."

She laughed again, unable to do much else. "Look at the bright side," she prompted. "You're not dead."

He fiddled with the hospital ID band around his wrist. "No, it's worse," he decided. "I'm in the system."

"Not exactly," she said with a shrug.

He looked closer at the tag. "Ivan Bliminse…" He stared at her for a moment, trying to work it out. "Invisible Man? That's apropos."

Nora was silent for a moment before sighing and pulling the photo out of her bag again. "Look, I hate to ask you this, Moz… but I need you to ID your shooter." She hated forcing him to relive something like that, but it needed to be done. "Can you…?" She held it up for him to see.

He stared at it for a moment, eyes still a little glassy and unfocused. "I can't."

"Okay," she muttered softly, tucking it away quickly in her pocket. "We can do it later."

"I can't remember."

"It's okay." She rubbed soothing circles between the tubes on the back of his hand with her thumb. "We're going to find him." Eventually, a nurse came in to check on him, bantering a little as she fussed about him before she pumped him full of more painkillers. He went out quickly under their effects, and Nora stayed with him until he was fast asleep once more.

She walked through the dark streets as she headed home, rather than catching a cab. She needed the time to clear her head, to think. As she walked, she called Peter. "Hey," he greeted, answering on the first ring. "Diana's taken out the last of Larssen's aliases. How's your end?"

"Mozzie's awake."

"That's great. How's he doing?"

She smiled a little. "He quoted Nietzsche to a nurse," she explained with a laugh. "He's gonna be okay."

"Good." Peter hesitated for just a second. "Nora, can he ID Larssen?"

"No," she sighed. The scuff of a shoe caught her ear from behind, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. She played it off casually, coming to a stop and fiddling with the ends of a curl. "No, he doesn't remember."

"Alright. Well, we've hit Larssen hard."

"It's his move," she agreed. She hung up, holding the phone just so as she moved to stow it that she caught the reflection behind her in the dim glow streetlight. She could just make out a dark figure behind her in the split second she was able to catch a glimpse, and she would have bet anything it was Larssen. There was only one way to find out.

She walked casually, as if nothing was amiss, and ducked into the next alley she came to. The figure was far enough back that she had a few seconds to work. She abandoned her bag next to the wall of the alley and ducked into a shadowed doorway to wait. The man stepped into the alley. Of course, there was the chance it was just a random mugger looking for a helpless woman to make an easy score, but Nora couldn't be so lucky.

No, it was Larssen alright. He stooped to investigate the bag, and Nora stepped out of the shadow. She knew, of course, that this was about as stupid and reckless a thing as she could have hoped to do. Nora wasn't strong enough to fight him off, and she wasn't armed. If he pulled a gun on her, she would well and truly be screwed.

"Coming after me now?" she asked calmly, stopping behind him with her arms crossed. His back stiffened as he stood back upright, and he turned to face her.

"I'm not after you."

"Tell me why you shot my friend." He was silent for a moment, studying her like a cat studies a mouse. His movements were fast, and she had no time to react as he struck, grabbing her by the arm and pinning her to the wall with ease. Her heart hammered furiously as he glared down at her. Pain bloomed in her biceps where his fingers dug in, and she knew she would have bruises to show for it.

"Your FBI friends are making it very hard for me to leave the city," he growled. "I'd like you to change that."

"You want me to help you?" she spat.

He shoved her harder against the wall, squeezing tighter, nails biting into her skin thought the thin, silky fabric of her blouse. "I wanna make a deal."

She swallowed hard, glaring with as much intensity as she could muster. "There's nothing that you can offer me.

His face twisted into a snarl, one of his hands reaching up to wrap around her throat, but just as he squeezed tight enough to suggest the hint of a threat, he shoved away from her, letting her sag against the wall as he calmly pointed a gun at her stomach. "I was hired to kill your friend," he explained evenly. "What if I deliver you the man behind the curtain?"

"Not even that." There was no hesitation. No second to consider it. The man would see no help from her. And no mercy. She would either see the full weight of the FBI bear down on him. Or he would simply kill her and be done with it.

He sighed, licking his lips as he stowed the gun away. He was a man desperate, but apparently not so much that it made him stupid. "Well, I guess you'll never know who ordered the shooting. Or who killed Kyle." With a last hard look, Larssen turned and stepped out of the alley as if nothing had happened, leaving Nora trembling behind him.