Neal was sitting at his desk inside a relatively quiet Atlantis PD when he received the notification on his phone. It wasn't a typical arrival day, and he could tell by the heading of the message that it wasn't a typical arrival or departure notification. People had been coming in a lot over the last couple of weeks, but what he read on his screen made him freeze in his seat. He dropped the pen he'd been tapping against a stack of files on his desk and held the phone with both hands. Rachel Turner has arrived in Intake.
What was he supposed to do? Go meet her there? Show her around Atlantis? Insist that she be sent back or locked up for however long she was supposed to be sticking around? Neal hadn't seen Rebecca, no, Rachel since the day she'd said goodbye to him in FBI headquarters. The last image he had of her in his mind was her laying on the street with a bullet wound to her abdomen.
Swallowing slowly, Neal's eyes lifted from the screen to glance over to where Peter was talking to someone by the coffee maker. He either hadn't received the message at all or hadn't seen it yet. There was a gut reaction to call him over and tell him that she was here, but a second later he thought twice about it and decided that he didn't want him to know. Not yet. Peter would hover and insist on being there when she and Neal were in the same room together. No, Neal knew that this was something he needed to do alone.
He didn't even bother to take his coat with him, but stood and slipped out of the office out the back, not wanting to draw any attention from Peter asking where he was going. Neal didn't have an ankle monitor anymore, but Peter still had ways of trying to keep tabs on him whenever he could. He walked quickly down the couple of blocks to the base and took the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator up to the Intake offices. His heart was already beating in his chest even before he took the stairs two at a time. He didn't see her waiting in the hallway or outside offices, so Neal stepped inside to see if he could find her.
"Hey, yeah, I received a message that a Rachel Turner just showed up in Intake?" He asked and held up his phone briefly.
"She's still being questioned, but second office on the right," the agent told him, and he was already heading down the hall. He slowed down just before the office door and knocked lightly before stepping inside. He saw her look up at him, and he wasn't sure what to say. It was when he noticed the agent programming a very familiar looking device that he almost but not quite cracked a smile.
"Rachel," he said and took a step inside the office. "Looks like they're not wasting any time," he said with a nod towards the anklet.