HACKED: a White Collar fanfic

Chapter Sixteen

I was allowed to go have lunch by myself from 1pm-2pm, or at least I would've been by myself until Neal caught me on my way out. I had been on my way to a little cafe a block awayfrom theFBI building, when he called out my name.

"Yes?" I said back and kept walking.

He fell into step next to me. "Where are you going for lunch?"

"Just a cafe."

"May I join?"

I would've preferred if he didn't but it would be rude to say no after all he's done for me, so I nodded my head.

We walked in silence until I completely lost my footing over something. I came tumbling down.

"Blair? Are you okay?" Neal asked, with a concerned look in his eyes. He helped me stand up.

When I put my weight on my left knee, a sharp pain shot through it. I hissed in anguish slightly and nodded. "Just peachy."

He raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

I knew I wasn't going to fool him, but I insisted I was fine. I simply didn't have time for a hurt knee.

Limping along slightly, I made it to the cafe with Neal still worriedly staring at me.

"What? I'm fine." I stopped and crossed my arms.

"Sit down, Blair. Let me get food for you."

Well, I wasn't going to say no to that. "Alright, I'll have a Caesar Salad, please."

"Coming right up." He strode away to the counter. I watched him flirt with the cashier. She was a very pretty looking with blonde hair, brown eyes girl with multiple ear piercings like me. She seemed quite into him as well, which was understandable. Neal was absolutely gorgeous and if I was a lot older, I might've had a crush on him as well.

As I continued to watch them, I heard someone mutter, "She's put a virus in it. What am I supposed to do now?" A pause. "Take her out? You do that yourself." A click and then silence.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a guy with a buzz cut sitting with sunglasses on, in front of a computer. Even with the short hair and sunglasses, I'd recognize Carter anywhere.

My heart stopped. From what I could tell, Carter sounded like Enigma or at least he was working for him. But Carter was practically a grandpa with how good he was with computers. He couldn't download something with out crashing his computer and needing me to fix it. This certainly wasn't the Carter I knew.

Neal came back with our food. "Here you go, Bla-"

"Don't say my name." I hissed, quietly.

"Are you Okay?" He put down the food and sat in his seat.

"I'm great but we need to leave. Right now." I got up.

"What are you doing? What's wrong?"

"I will tell you outside but we have to go. Now." We left swiftly, leaving our food. It was New York City, so no one even bat an eye towards us.

"Alright, we're outside, what's wrong."

I took a deep breath and everything I said came out in one sentence. "OkaysoIcreatedavirusthatIdownloadedintoeverybanktotrytofindEnigmaandIjustheardCartertalkingaboutitinsidethecafe."

"Whoa, slow down. Say that again slowly."

I explained again, this time much slower and enunciated all the words to get my point across. "Okay, in the ten minutes you were gone, I created a virus to track down Enigma and just now I saw Carter talking about a virus inside the cafe and taking someone out."

"I'm sorry, you created a virus? Does Peter know about this?"

I shifted my weight to the other foot. "Well... no. I did this in the ten minutes you were gone."

"That's pretty cool that you did it that quickly but you have to tell, Peter."

"Yea, I know."

"So you saw Carter in there?"

"Yes."

"And you heard him say stuff about the virus and taking someone out?"

"Yes."

"And you're positive he was talking about you?"

"Well, who else created a virus?"

Neal ran a hand through his hair. "Well this is great."

"I do hope you're being sarcastic because I'm pretty sure being killed would hurt and I'm not into pain." I folded my arms across my chest.

"We gotta tell Peter."

"What? No! He's gonna kill me for doing that behind his back!"

"I've done things worse and I haven't died at his hand yet."

"He likes you. I don't know how much he likes me."

"Trust me, he likes you. If you don't tell him, I will."

"Gosh, you're sounding like a fed. No wonder Agent Burke really likes you."

"I'm serious, Blair. If you die..." He trailed off.

"If I die, I die. So what? It's not like I got anyone left, Neal."

"Don't say things like that." He places a hand on my shoulder.

"Why not? It's true."

"Blair-"

"Listen, I'll go tell Agent Burke if you stop."

"Fine."

"Good! Let's go!" My voice came out way to exuberant for my liking. I doubted my fake exhilaration fooled anyone.

"Hold on, we still got about 35 minutes for our lunch break. Is there anything else you'd want?"

"To be honest, I'm not hungry anymore. Can we just go back?"

"I thought you'd want to procrastinate telling Peter about the virus?"

I shrugged. "Might as well get it done and over with."

He held an arm out to me, which I took. "You're brave." And with that, we started making our way to the FBI headquarters.

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Hello everyone! I'm back from my trip, and I'm sorry to say that I didn't get much writing done during it. I barely had any service or time for that matter for writing but this is finally published. The end of the book should be coming pretty soon in less that ten chapters... Maybe. But of course I don't actually know because I didn't plan out what was going to happen in each and every chapter. However, don't be sad when this book ends because I'm planning on writing a second!

Please vote if you enjoyed this chapter and let me know in the comments what I could do better, nicely please. I appreciate all and any constructive criticisms.

Also let me know if there are any plot holes that I should fix. I will be editing the book at the end so if it's just a spelling mistake, I will probably find it. But if it's something that's confusing or doesn't make any sense, please message me and I'll fix it.

Thank you all so much!

-Julia Stone