Author's Note: Here is chapter two. Readers, meet Neal's sister, Natalie Caffery. Natalie Caffery, meet my readers.

Natalie: Screw this. I'm only here because you invented me. If you didn't have control over me, I wouldn't have let Neal enter the state.

Me: What are you forgetting Natalie?

Natalie: I wouldn't have let Neal enter the state, oh powerful, wonderful master of things controlling my existence, imaginary as it is.

Me: That's right! I own your hide. Disclaimer please, product of my imagination and psychological problems stemming from being an only child who was jealous of my cousin because I wanted an older brother.

Natalie: Skye Flying does not own White Collar; it belongs to USA and its creators. She only owns me and other unrecognizable characters. She does not own references to any recognized characters, books, products or amazing cars. She also doesn't own Suits or Harvey Specter, despite how much she wants to. Finally, Skye Flying doesn't own the lyrics or music to Missy Higgin's amazing, fantastic song, Secret; she just listens to it on repeat while writing.

Me: You make me sound psycho Natalie…Thank you!

Natalie: Of course master.

Thanks to my super Beta who I'm so sorry I forgot last chapter, Sara Caffrey, also known as Kate. Check her out, give her love, she keeps my language "T."

Enjoy Readers! DON'T FORGET TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE DATES!

Chapter 2-The Cop and the Engineer

Three Months Ago…

March 12, 2012, Montrose area of Houston, Sunrise

Orange sunlight began creeping through the large bedroom window of an apartment on West Alabama. It was a large bedroom, several stories above the street. Out the window, the sun could be seen rising over the downtown skyline. The bedroom itself was orange, a brilliant, ridiculous mango orange that was only toned down by the black comforter that lay forgotten on the wooden floor. The room was silent except for the blue heeler who lay between the bed and the nightstand as his legs ran in their sleep, scratching the wooden floor with his nails. No television was in the room, but two computers sat charging on the short bookshelf in the corner opposite the door.

At exactly 6:30, loud music filled the room via the docked iPod.

"You were from the North, I was from the South
We were form opposite places, different towns
But I knew it was good and you knew it was too
So we moved together like a ball and chain
Minds becoming two halves of the same
It was real, but in shadows it grew
Cos you've got a secret don't ya babe?"

The fair young woman in the bed began groping for the off button on her alarm. Once successfully changing the setting on her alarm from her iPod to FM Radio and then to the nonstop drone of AM morning radio, she tried to sit up and get a look at the radio only to be prevented by strong arms around her waist. The woman smiled, giggling and rolling her eyes.

"Rob, you have to let me get up! I need to go for my run and if I don't go soon I won't have time."

The dark skinned young man next to her laughed. He was awake, but he kept his eyes closed and his arms, well toned from his years as a detective in Houston's Crime Reduction Unit, firmly around the wriggling woman.

"I'm sorry, Miss,' he began teasing as he opened his eyes, "I can't let you go. I have substantial evidence to believe that you are a flight risk and must be kept in custody."

The young woman stopped wriggling and laughed as her lover pinned her down on the bed.

"And what evidence have you compiled against me, Officer Rob?" the woman teased.

Rob smiled down at the young woman. "You see Natalie, I am much too comfortable with you in my bed and I won't be letting you leave until I get my morning kiss."

Natalie groaned, burying her face into her pillow, a red blush appearing across her pale face. "At least let me brush my teeth! I'm going to taste horrible and you're going to leave me after only a month of marriage!"

"You wound me wife!" Rob play pouted. "You feed me much too well to for me to leave you over something as something as silly as your rank morning breath."

"You're not going to let me up until I kiss you are you?"

"Not by a longshot dear."

Natalie rolled her eyes at her husband. "Fine, I'll kiss you, but I'm warning you I have terrible morning breath."

"Don't care," Rob said as he pressed his lips to Natalie's, smiles gracing their faces as his chocolate colored fingers intertwined with her milky white ones, their new wedding bands clacking together as they continued the kiss.

After finally escaping her husband, Natalie changed into a pair of jogging shorts, a sports bra, and an old t-shirt. Grabbing her iPod and keys, Natalie plugged in and began her daily run. Legs pumping, the drum of her music pounding against the ear buds, Natalie relished in the rush she felt throughout her body as she pushed herself to go faster. Her worries, stresses, anger, and nightmares stamping into the pavement as she continued to run around the park.

Natalie had had that dream during the night. She was ten years old again and her mother had just died. Neal was nowhere to be found because he was in prison and she was alone in the world. The nice couple she had been staying with for almost five months was trying to comfort her, but her mother was gone and so was her brother. The fear, grief, and anger immediately began eating her from the inside, and then, like every time she had had the dream in the past twenty years, she was her mother. She was alone and dying. She felt pain everywhere in her body and there was a little girl next to her. The little girl was trying to tell her about her field trip to the science museum and she wanted to make the child happy. Listening intently, she tried to pay attention, but all that she could feel was pain.

Natalie pushed herself harder. The first step in preventing breast cancer was maintaining a healthy diet, exercise routine, and abstaining from alcohol and Tabaco. Natalie refused to die the same way as her mother. She would do everything she could to prevent breast cancer. She refused to lose one of her breasts just to lose her life as a frail, broken shell of the woman she had become. Neal may have left them alone, breaking their mother's heart?, but she would remember her mother as the beautiful, graceful woman who scolded her mischievous son and corrected her unmannered daughter.

The dream, like always, had scared her awake, leaving her sweating and heaving for oxygen. It had been months since she had last had the dream, but Natalie couldn't help but smile at the difference of this dream: Rob was there.

Rob had been holding her in his arms, stroking her hair as she tried to calm down. He hadn't asked questions or demanded she leave the room, he was just there, and she had never wanted any more than that. The next thing she knew, her alarm was going off and her new husband was teasing her, trying to steal a kiss in the Saturday morning sunrise.

Natalie smiled as she began to turn a curve. Saturdays were nice. She would go for a run and then around 10am Rob and she continued their tradition from dating life, going to the movies before making lunch together. The past two months had been the happiest in her life. She was married to a man who asked nothing of her other than that she love him back as completely as he loved her. She had earned the job that she had been dreaming of since taking chemistry fifteen years earlier and nothing of her old life burdened her any longer. She had cut the cord and started to forget the pain she had experienced for years, when she had blamed her brother for the problems of childhood. To be honest, when she had finally sent Neal a letter right after her high school graduation, telling him that she missed him and did not blame him for all that had happened when their mother had died; her life had started looking up.

Natalie was nearing the last curve of the circular pathway in the park near her apartment. It was a good run. She felt energized and despite the heat, the slight breeze created by her forward momentum was cooling. She began her cool down, stretching as she walked back home, but as she began to cross Montrose at the "Walk" signal, some idiot speeding down the street in a yellow sports car, made her jump back to the side walk.

March 12, 2012, Natalie and Rob's Apartment, Houston

Rob and Natalie were debating who to leave Jax, their blue heeler, with during their honeymoon. While they had been married for almost two months, they had decided to take their honeymoon in August so that they could go to London for the Olympics. Since they had met at Tarpon's Mediterranean Bar and Grill in 2008 as Michael Phelps scored his record breaking victory, it seemed like the best place to celebrate their nuptials. They had taken a mini-honeymoon, a five day vacation to New Orleans, but both were excited to go to the opening ceremony and watch the Olympians in person. It had been that pull to the games, and Natalie's deafening cheers as Phelps set his record, that sealed their fate together. Rob had reasoned that any girl who could be that excited about someone all the way in China winning a medal for their country had to be worth knowing.

"We could leave him with Bobbie; she would love to have her baby back for a couple of weeks." Natalie suggested as she finished constructing her sandwich.

"But he'll come home all stinky from those other dogs!" Rob wined.

Natalie laughed at his pouting. "Do you have any other suggestions?"

"My parents?" Rob supplied with a teasing smile.

Natalie turned crimson. "We can't do that! He scars your mother half to death every time he gets up to move. Your father is going to come home from work one day to find either Jax roasting your mother or your mother digging Jax's grave!"

"We could leave him with my brother. Joseph would love to get out of my parents' house and the apartment is a lot closer to St. Thomas. It can save the environment!"

Natalie thought about it for a moment. Joseph was nice enough and she was sure that he would take care of Jax, but he didn't have the best track record.

"I don't know Rob. This is the same kid who we had to take to pick up from a rave because he shot a firecracker out of his ass. I love your brother, but I'm not so sure I trust him to leave the apartment in one piece and our dog alive."

"That was over a year ago. He'll be fine here; I guarantee it. If the apartment isn't in one piece when we get back, I'll clean up everything myself." Rob offered an undeniable smile on his handsome face.

Natalie bit her lip for a moment. She knew that she wouldn't be able to hold out for very long, but she was still apprehensive. Joseph had improved since he was sixteen, when she had first met him, but he was still that stupid sixteen years old at heart.

Sighing, Natalie gave in. "Fine, he can stay here, but he cannot bring anyone home and he must make sure that Jax is put above everything."

"Don't worry; I'm going to make sure he knows all the rules." Rob replied, kissing her cheek as they sat at the island.

"He sleeps in the guest room too. I'm sorry, but I don't think I could sleep in our bed again knowing that your brother had been it."

"Of course! Do you really think I want to sleep in the same bed as my brother? I had to share a bathroom with him growing up! I can't imagine sharing a room, let alone my bed!"

Natalie giggled as her husband's eyes went wide with fear, but she knew that she owed him and explaination. Sadly smiling, Natalie took Rob's large hand.

"You haven't asked me about last night." Natalie stated.

Pushing a loose hair back, Rob replied, "I interrogate people for a living. I know when someone wants to talk about and incident and when to let them come to you."

"I want to tell you. You know the basics, I guess, but you should know the whole story, especially if you are going to be sleeping with me for the rest of our lives.

"The dream I had last night was one that I have been having since I lost my mom. I'm ten years old again and my mother just died, falling asleep as I told her about my field trip. I start feeling all the emotions I felt at that moment and then I'm in my mother's body, fighting pain while trying to pay attention to the little girl talking my ear off. I miss my son and I worry for both of my children. You know the basic story I guess: my brother was in juvenile hall, we had left my father when I was four, and my mother was in a bed at MD Anderson, knowing she would be dead within a few months. I was taken by CPS and shuffled through a few foster homes until I was twelve and finally got to see my brother again.

"He was doing so well Rob. I was so happy that he was working hard and being the brother I remembered from before Mom got sick. He had sent me a letter telling me that he was going to try to get custody, but I knew what happened to teen parents. My brother would have to put his life on hold for six years and I couldn't ask that of him. He was about to finish high school and he deserved to go to college, art school, or become an actor, not get stuck raising me. I told him so, but he didn't want to hear any of it. I drove my own brother into being a con artist like our father Rob. I blamed myself for years, but I finally got over it. I stopped blaming Neal for the crap that went down when we were kids and I forgave him for becoming a con, but we don't really talk that much.

"I sent him an invitation to the wedding, and I know he couldn't come, but he didn't even send me a card or give me a call. I know that we are distant with each other, but I was a little disappointed; Neal's the only family I had left in the world, and I had seen how you and Joseph are with each other and I wanted to have at least a tiny bit of that relationship with my brother. I wanted there to be someone who could tell an embarrassing story about a younger me and walk down the aisle with me. I get that Neal can't be here, I accepted that years ago, but I was hoping that he would at least give me a call to say congratulations." Putting her plate in the sink and leaning against the counter, Natalie smiled with a chuckle. "I actually tried calling him and I called his handler at the FBI about a week before the wedding, but he didn't want to talk; he just let my call go to voicemail. I left a message at his house, but he never called me back."

Rob smiled. "Thanks for telling me."

A brilliant grin fell over Natalie's face as she hugged her husband, "Well, I guess I finally understood last night that you're always going to be there. Before I got to Leonor's when I was fourteen, I never felt I could rely on that many people. I kept thinking for years that I was alone, but then I found you, your family, and I let the walls come down. I don't think I could live without you now."

Rob felt his heart swell with joy, pulling his wife tighter against himself.

"I don't want to live without you, Nat."

Present Day

June 23, 2012 Natalie and Rob's Apartment

Natalie jumped back against the curb as a black Camry sped down West Alabama. Regaining her composure, Natalie crossed the street to her building, walked up the stairs, and entered her apartment, sweat from her run making her skin shine in the light. Walking into the kitchen in search of a water bottle, a fluorescent green post it note on the island caught her attention. It read:

Got called in to work.

Won't be long; meet me at the movie theatre at 11.

Natalie smiled. Her husband was a committed detective, but she occasionally worried. Rob focused on gang related crimes, mostly drugs, sex trafficking, guns, and graffiti taggers, but occasionally he had to go undercover to bust drug or sex trafficking chains. Right after Natalie had first met him, he disappeared for almost a month. She had felt like an idiot, thinking that she had scared them off after their first date, but after getting a frantic phone call at three in the morning, he had apologized for not calling her back. He explained that he couldn't say much about the case, but that he had been undercover and had only wrapped up the case and received his private phone back a few hours earlier. Then, realizing that it was "3 o'fuck in the morning," he began to quickly apologize for the odd hour of his call.

When Rob had told her that he would call back later in the day, Natalie had immediately told him his call was fine, explaining that she had not yet gone to bed because she had only just finished calculations for an experiment she was scheduled to perform that afternoon. He began asking her about her job, explaining what he legally could of his as a detective. After explaining her job at Marathon Oil as a Chemical Engineer specializing in the development of petrochemicals and safer pipes for extracting oil, Rob had flirtatiously asked if she could explain some of the basics behind making meth and other drugs. Natalie still isn't sure how she had done it, but somehow she had managed to tell him in her weariness that she "would love to teach him everything possible about the chemistry of drugs over dinner at the Hyatt."

Natalie giggled at the memory as she returned the water pitcher to the fridge and headed to the bathroom for a bath. Five months of marriage had been blissful, but she hadn't taken the time to take a long, warm bubble bath in a few weeks, but it wasn't even 8:30 in the morning yet; she had time before she had to meet Rob and a bath seemed like a wonderful idea.

Saturday, June 23, 2012-FBI Headquarters, Houston, TX

Rob impatiently tapped his foot as he waited in the uncomfortable plastic chair at the FBI. Rob didn't mind being at the FBI; he often worked closely with the FBI to conduct drug or sex trafficking busts in the city that spanned out of the state, but he hated waiting. It was incredibly boring and a waste of a perfectly good Saturday morning. He could have made a big breakfast or taken Jax to the dog park before leaving for the movie. Living with Natalie had made him an even more of an early riser than he had been before they moved in together after the wedding. In five months, Natalie had only slept past eight in the morning a handful of times: several times where when she was trying to make calculations that were not working out correctly and had stayed up late to figure them out, once when she caught a cold, a few times after midnight movies together, and then the day after she had sprained her ankle tripping down the stairs because Jax had gone crazy in the stairwell. The alarm rang at 6:00am Monday through Friday and at 6:30am on the weekends. Initially Rob slept in until 9:00am on the weekends, but after discovering the amount of work his wife managed to get done during the two and a half hours that he slept, he started getting up by seven, about forty-five minutes before Natalie arrived back from her daily run. In that time he could shower, make breakfast, and read a few chapters in whichever science fiction book he had picked up.

Every few weekends, he and Natalie took Jax to the dog park for an hour before going to a movie between 10am and 2pm. It was a nice routine. Saturdays were no longer just time for him to go to movies and the bar, they were relaxing and fun, but occasionally, Rob was called in on a case. Before his early rising days, being called in was irritating because it made him wake up early, but over the past few months it wasted his Saturdays waiting for others who were running late as well. On top of that, the FBI building was almost always overflowing with a certain level of superiority. Some FBI agents thought that city detectives and cops were below them, but it was a small pain. Rob was an officer of the law. He stopped drug and human trafficking, helping Houstonians and their kids to be safe, but dammit all to Dallas, if the FBI kept him waiting ten more minutes, he was leaving.

At that moment a skinny, short, underdressed probie with a stack of folders was speeding towards him. His hair was a mess, his shirt miss-buttoned, and his forehead glistening with sweat.

"Mr. Wade?" The kid asked.

Rolling his eyes as he stood up to full height, almost a foot above the novice FBI agent, Rob corrected him, "Detective Rob Wade, Houston Police Department Crime Reduction Unit." Offering his hand out to the younger man added, "What can I do for the FBI today."

"I'm sorry, I don't quite know, but Agent McDonald said everything you need to know is in here. He also instructed me to tell you that the FBI needs your help because of your expertise and experience in gang symbols. If you'll follow me, I can take you to see your superior and Agent Burke."

Pictures of Natalie and Rob can be found on my Flicker Account, Skye Flying. I'll also be adding pictures of the apartment and locations in Houston that the characters visit.