6If Agent Phillip Kramer was naïve enough to actually think that Neal Caffrey was going to come quietly with him too DC then he was dead wrong.
It was no secret that Neal was a fantastic escape artist, that if he put him mind to it he could break out of just about anything, it was a simple fact. It was a lesser known fact that the only reason Neal had ever stayed in the custody of anyone was because he let them keep him and that at any stage, if he so wanted, he could be gone by morning.
The only reason that Neal stayed in prison was so that after he served his sentence he would be a free man again and go back to his life of crime without fear of being caught again, he would have been smarter this time and knew that he would have never been charged on anything again. But then he broke out to find Kate, because he couldn't be there anymore, he put his plan into action, the one that he'd had up his sleeve since the end of his first month. His escape plan went off without a hitch.
When it came to Peter, it was different. Neal hadn't been lying when he told him that he was the only one who could stop him, on the runway the day that Kate was truly lost too him. Neal also knew that Peter had taken a chance on him and that if he ran then Peters career could go down the drain with him, so he stayed. He could have run, he knew how to cut his anklet, both versions, and could have successfully run away within a month of getting them but he wouldn't do that too Peter and more particularly Elizabeth.
However he didn't owe the same curtesy to Phillip Kramer, after all he was the one that was trying to take Neal away from his home for his own selfish reasons. Neal knew that when Kramer came to pick him up for his first day of work for the DC office, that he simply wouldn't be there and will have been long gone. After all, Neal wasn't just going to sit there while Kramer ruined his life and any of his chances of being anything other than a criminal.
But first he needs to start setting the wheels in motion, get a plan ready. Mozzie will help him, Moz had always had his back and been the little devil on his shoulder, leading him, rather easily into the darker path. They would need money and Neal while knew he still had had the U-Boat treasure, they didn't have the time needed to liquidate it without people getting suspicious. There were always his various bank accounts, the ones which held the profits of his trade, in locations around the world from Switzerland to the Cayman Islands. Each holding millions of dollars, each holding enough money to start a new life. Neal trusted Sara enough to not spill the beans on Victor Moreau so at least he didn't need a new alias and although he would miss Sara he knew that she wouldn't go with him and decided that he would leave a letter for her, a final goodbye.
Now there was the question of where to go, he didn't agree with Mozzie about an island paradise, he figured that he would get bored quickly, although it wouldn't be a bad idea to stay on a small tropical island without an extradition policy for the first year while the heat cooled down from his escape. Maybe after that he could find a French Chateau, a fixer upper, one with a vineyard so they could produce their own wine. After all, Neal loved France.
His first port of call was to get a hold of Mozzie, a new burner phone would work the best. He needed his small friend to get things rolling so they could be ready to leave out of DC by tomorrow because he knew that Kramer would take him away this afternoon and that they would be in DC before the day was over. The next thing was to pack his things, get permission from June to take Byron's suits with him and tell her goodbye, and maybe give her a forwarding address because he thinks that she would be the one that he would miss most in New York.
Five years later, Neal Caffrey had been dead for four of them, killed by an FBI sanctioned bounty hunter by the name of Collins, escaping a small pacific island. Victor Moreau on the other hand was a successful and wealthy entrepreneur who ran a small vineyard in the Bordeaux region with his friend and business partner Bob. Phillip Kramer had had a rather unlucky turn, he had been publicly fired after an investigation into him due to the escape of Neal George Caffrey and his subsequent death. He had been labelled a corrupt agent and lost everything he had, mainly due to his own selfishness and a few incriminating documents supplied by one Dante Havisham. Collins was serving life in prison for the murder of Neal Caffrey when dozens of island residents claimed that he shot the, rather peaceful, man they knew as Robert Parker in the back without even trying to bring him in alive, he was also investigated and was revealed to have shot and killed a number of other fugitives without having even tried to bring them back into custody. Peter Burke now lived a quieter life with his wife Elizabeth and their son Neal, as ASAC of the New York White Collar Division. And every year on the anniversary of Neal's first arrest he received a bottle of Chateau Moreau Bordeaux with a hand drawn card from his old friend Vic.
A/N 1: So I've been watching a lot of White Collar lately, re watched the whole series, and I was thinking about it and I had this theory that Neal is simply too great of an escape artist and only ever stays anywhere is because he wants to and if he wanted, he could walk away at any stage and escape. I also wanted to give an alternate version of how the end of season 3 played out, one where Neal knew that Kramer was going to take him away from New York and put together a real plan before Peter told him to run, and one where Peter wouldn't get any of the blame.
A/N 2: This was sitting on my work computer and I gave it a quick read through after having completed it a few months ago. Although I didn't change much, I did give it a good edit and fix some grammatical errors. I'll leave the old one there for a little while and if anyone would like to give me some new criticism, then that would be nice.
22/02/18