At The End Of The Day
19 OCTOBER 2007
CROWN VICTORIA AT THE DOCKS
02:14 PDT
Casey shoved Chuck into the front seat, slammed the door, and hustled around the car to the driver's seat. He hadn't precisely been walking on eggshells around the other man, but Chuck would have admitted, were he capable, that there had been nary a "moron" or a "numb-nuts" heard since they'd discovered Fidget's body.
The noise of the engine turning over startled Chuck. "What are you doing?"
"Getting you out of here. Buckle your seat-belt."
"We can't!" Chuck bolted upright, his stupor forgotten. "Sarah! She's still in there with Peyman and Carina…and Bryce."
Casey rolled his eyes and activated his watch. "Guinevere, what's your twenty?"
It took a moment, but Sarah's voice crackled to life from both men's watches. "Situation in the warehouse is secure. Waiting for clean-up teams. Take Stargazer and get him out of here."
Stargazer, Chuck realized. His code-name. So she wasn't alone—but she hadn't used a distress phrase. He had a vision of Sarah standing over the inert bodies of Peyman Alahi and his men, gun pointed straight at the ringleader and her hair blowing in the wind.
He tried to savor that vision. It was so much better than the others blitzing his mind.
"Roger that, Guinevere." Casey put the car into drive as Chuck collapsed back against the seat. Guinevere, Stargazer, and…
"Casey, what's your call-sign? For the radio?"
"Bourne."
Chuck goggled. "Like Jason Bourne? How come you get a cool super-spy name, but I have to make do with some daydreaming—"
"Not Jason Bourne. Color-Sergeant F. Bourne. Now shut up and let me drive."
Chuck would have rather have kept talking. When his mouth was moving, he was less likely to flash through the horrific images he'd witnessed in the warehouse. Or, more morbidly, the contents of his last flash, which had spilled every bit of data the government had on Fidget into him. And there was quite a lot of info on Fidget Bernstein. Chuck probably knew him better than his own mother at this point.
He wished brain-bleach had been invented. He wished he could control when the Intersect flashed. He wished he'd never met the doomed Fidget Bernstein. He wished even more that he'd never met Carina Miller, that she'd never climbed into his car and taken him hostage.
Hell, at this point, he even wished he'd never met Bryce Larkin.
"Going to sit there all night, Bartowski?"
Chuck blinked. Casey had pulled into the parking lot of their building, and had turned off the car. He held his keys, twirling them around one thick finger.
"Oh, right," Chuck said, and climbed out of the car.
He quickly came to regret that. The human body could only take so much abuse before it began to rebel and all of Chuck's limbs went on strike before he'd so much as reached the elevator. He gritted his teeth and forced himself forward, trying to walk normally. By the time Casey unlocked the door, Chuck's body was a giant tremor, and he wanted nothing more than to dump himself onto the first semi-comfortable flat surface and lose a few hours to the oblivion of sleep.
He sat down on the edge of the couch, put his elbows on his knees, and settled to wait, facing the front door.
Casey, already peeling tactical gear, paused in his bedroom doorway. "As always I'm not sure I want to know, but what are you doing?"
"Waiting for Sarah." Chuck kept his gaze on the door.
"Walker's going to be wrapped up in site clean-up for hours, and if she's smart, she'll go straight home and sleep," Casey said. "Do yourself a favor. Go upstairs and get eight straight. But for the love of all that is holy, shower first. Plenty of time to yell at you in the morning."
The word shower triggered Chuck's sense of smell—he reeked to high heaven and back. So he went without protest. It took him four times as long as usual to shower. He couldn't seem to keep a good grip on the soap. It kept squirting through his shaky hands, leaving little divots of soap in the cracks between the tiles. Chuck had no doubts that Casey, who believed in military precision in everything up to and including living quarters, would have something to say about that when he saw the damage. He didn't care. He stayed under the blistering stream of water until his skin had shriveled and he felt weaker at the knees than usual. Then, and only then, did he step out and wrap a towel around himself.
He came out, dressed in pajama pants and a T-shirt, to find Casey working at the kitchen island. Wordlessly, the other man put a plate in front of one of the stools and pointed at it. Eat.
A peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a baggie of chips. Hardly the dinner of champions. Still, under other circumstances, Chuck would have found the meal touching. Now, he just numbly began to eat. When he finished the sandwich, Casey placed another in front of him and sat down with his own food.
"Talked to Walker," he said after Chuck had made inroads into the second sandwich. "Scene's secure."
"Did she get Bryce?"
"Wily bastard slipped out the back before she could nab him. Or so she says." Casey scowled at his own baggie of chips.
"And Carina? Did Carina make it?"
"Pretty sure that whatever Carina is, she's impossible to kill." Casey rolled his eyes at Chuck's impatient look. "Carina survived. Didn't even get shot."
"And do they…" Chuck put the uneaten remains of his sandwich back on the plate and stared at the countertop. "Do they know who shot Fidget?"
Was it Carina? He longed to ask, but asking somehow might make it real. Even worse, had it been Bryce?
"Walker says he got caught in the crossfire."
"Then why was he in the hallway?" Chuck demanded, anger flickering through him. It was the first emotion besides horror to fully penetrate the semi-fugue state. "If he got caught in the crossfire, he'd have been in the main bay with all of the other victims. And a gunshot between the eyes? That's a pretty damn lucky shot, don't you think?"
Casey finished his sandwich and wiped his hands on his napkin. "Your first death?" he asked, in a tone usually used to inquire about the weather.
Chuck felt the eaten portion of his sandwich threaten to make a second appearance. He forced it back. "No," he said, and blinked when he realized that he had meant it. Where had that come from? His first death had been the guard. Hadn't it? Technically, Casey was asking about Fidget, but the guard could be included in that category—
Thwbt. Thwbt. Two patches of red across a T-shirt, morbid badges. The unmistakable stench of cordite.
"No?" Casey asked. "You ever watch somebody else die, Bartowski?"
Chuck blinked slowly. Why did his head suddenly weigh twice as much as usual?
The guard's eyes were still open when he toppled to the ground. Sightless, open, staring. Accusing.
"I don't know," he said, surprised again when every word came out the honest truth.
Thwbt. Another bullet to the head, for good measure. Small caliber, just an innocent hole between the eyes—it had even missed the rimless glasses—
"Bartowski?"
Chuck blinked a third time and shook away the echoes. "What?"
Casey just gave him a look.
His head still felt far too heavy, and now he had a flurry of new images running through his brain. "I don't want to talk about it."
"That's a first." Casey crossed to a cabinet and withdrew a bottle—Johnnie Walker Black. Comfort in a bottle, Chuck figured, raising both eyebrows when Casey got out not one glass but two. He set one of the glasses in front of Chuck, poured a generous three fingers. "Don't tell Walker."
"Thanks, Casey," Chuck said, once again surprised that he meant it. He knocked back half of the glass. The burn was cleansing, cathartic, painful as hell. He didn't cough.
"I'm going to kip. You get eight straight, Bartowski, or it's both of our asses on the line for the midday briefing." Casey polished the last bit of his own scotch and set the glass in the sink. "Walker's going back to her place. She said to say she'll see you in the morning. Now go get some damn sleep."
He closed his door behind him just a hair harder than necessary. Chuck toyed briefly with the idea of staying out on the couch, sitting and watching the door until Sarah arrived, just so that he could prove Casey wrong. But what use was that? He couldn't will Sarah to come over with just the power of his mind. And there was no use calling her—for what? He was a grown man. He shouldn't have to run crying to Sarah Walker every time there was some little problem, like a mewling kid that couldn't tie his own shoes.
He'd just have to man up.
Chuck finished the whisky in one final slug and went upstairs, crawling into the bed. He pulled the covers up to his chin and tried desperately, desperately to shut off his brain.
No such luck.
He could almost physically feel the mattress move as his demons climbed into bed with him. Instead of the usual faces, however, these ones had new masks: Jill Roberts. Carina Miller. A dead guard. Bryce Larkin. And finally, last but definitely not least, Fidget Bernstein, wearing a red hole in the middle of his forehead like some twisted, morbid bindi.
It was going to be a long night.
19 OCTOBER 2007
BACHELOR PAD
10:37 PDT
Chuck felt something brush his cheek. "Five more minutes, El."
Again, something soft, something light against his cheek. He irritably moved to bat it away—and something grabbed his wrist.
"Okay, okay, Ellie. I'm up. I'm up. Geez."
He shifted his grip without opening his eyes, grabbing the hand like he always used to as a kid and twining his fingers through—wait, that was definitely not Ellie's hand. Ellie's hand certainly didn't have this many calluses.
Chuck thanked his lucky stars that the hand was at least feminine.
Still, he took a second before he opened his eyes. "My, Casey, what girly hands you have. And I must say, the blonde hair is really working for you. If I didn't know better, I'd swear you were Sarah."
The solemn look shifted to a smile.
"That's better," Chuck said, but he didn't smile back. "A much better way to wake up, overall."
"You're eloquent this morning," Sarah said as she gently freed her hand from Chuck's grip. She crossed her arms and pillowed her chin on her wrists, staring down at him.
Chuck shrugged without sitting up. Every part of his body ached, either from exhaustion or from the hell he'd insisted on putting it through lately. But it beat being cold all the time. "I had a lot of time to think between the bouts of insomnia and the nightmares."
Instantly, Sarah's smile faded, and Chuck regretted having said anything.
"So let's talk about this," Sarah said before Chuck could make any more mood-killing statements.
He attempted innocence. "What about?"
"Chuck, you're sleeping on the floor." Sarah pinned him with a no-nonsense stare. "Not only that, but you wedged yourself in a corner when you have this nice big bed up here." She thumped the stripped-down mattress. She was lying on her stomach across the bed, her arms resting on the edge so that she could look down at him over the side. The pose was strangely reminiscent of a teenage girl, and hard to reconcile with the visions of Sarah looking fierce and deadly in a Tactical Dress Uniform, a gun clutched in her hand. So many personas for one woman. How did she juggle it all?
"Too much space," Chuck said, and pushed his poor body into a sitting position. "Couldn't sleep—it was easier on the floor. Blocked in."
"You didn't have any trouble sleeping in Athens or on the couch at Ellie's, and there was just as much space there."
Chuck closed his eyes and rested his aching head back against the cool wall. About four hours before, he'd given up the ghost and had crawled with all of his bedclothes into the narrow space between his queen-sized mattress and the wall. It reminded him of his bunk in the bunker, of how he would burrow each night into his sleeping bag and try not to think about tomorrow. Then, and only then, had he gotten a few precious hours of sleep.
"What time is our briefing?" he asked, forcing himself to focus on the subject at hand.
"You've got awhile. Here." Sarah propped herself up on her elbows so that she could rummage behind her for something. She handed Chuck an icepack. Chuck took it and studiously avoided eye contact with the view down the front of her tank top. He winced when he set the icepack against the bump on his forehead.
Sarah glanced at the floor again, biting her lip. Something was clearly bothering her, but Chuck didn't have the energy to press the issue. So he sat, holding the ice pack until his fingers hurt from the cold, and waited. "Pretty clever," Sarah finally said, nodding over at the whiteboard that Chuck had propped up between the closet and the end of the bed. It formed the partition he'd needed for his own psychological comfort. "But now I'm wondering if we should just requisition you a smaller sleeping space, like a box. Or maybe a coffin? You could go goth."
"I'd rather have a casket."
"What's the difference?"
"Leg room."
"Um, okay." Sarah levered herself up. "You should get ready for the day, so I'll leave you alone. Are you feeling okay?"
He'd maybe felt worse five times in his entire life, but Chuck forced a smile. "I'm fine."
"If you say so. Can you be downstairs in thirty? We need to debrief from last night before we report into Washington. And Chuck?
"Be very careful what you say about Bryce."
Chuck stared at her until she'd vanished downstairs, the icepack in his hand forgotten.
19 OCTOBER 2007
BACHELOR PAD
12:47 PDT
"And that is all you have to say, Agent Bartowski?"
"That's what happened, ma'am." Chuck swallowed, hating that—on top of everything else—his throat had gone drier than the Gobi Desert the moment General Beckman and Director Graham had popped up onscreen. "Major Casey and Agent Walker found me, Casey got me out of there while Agent Walker went off to secure ex-Agent Larkin. I didn't make contact with ex-Agent Miller or any of the hostiles after separating from ex-Agent Larkin."
"Very well." General Beckman looked displeased, but Chuck had never seen her appear otherwise. "We have all of your statements and we've confirmed with the clean-up squad that the situation with Alahi is contained. Mr. Alahi himself has already been transferred to a federal prison for holding until his trial can begin."
A picture of Peyman's mug shot filled the monitors. He looked haggard, worn out—exactly how Chuck himself felt.
"Agent Bartowski," Director Graham said, "in light of recent events, we believe it prudent that you remain in the presence of Major Casey and Agent Walker for the next seventy-two hours."
Chuck kept his neutral expression up, but inwardly, he groaned. He'd been looking forward to seeing Morgan's new place. Oh, well. They'd just have to move their game night to the Bachelor Pad instead. "If you think that's best, Director," he said, and winced when his phone rang. He heard Casey's growl, saw Sarah's eyes widen, but he still pulled the chirping device from his pocket. When he checked the view-screen, he blanched white. "Excuse me, I really have to take this."
"Bartowski," Casey said under his breath, his eyes bulging.
Chuck gave him a helpless look. "I'm sorry, General, Director. It's just, it's Agent Davenport, and—"
"Ah. Say no more, Agent Bartowski. We can finish this briefing without you."
Chuck cast a grateful look at the CIA Director, who was marginally cuddlier than the General, and fled outside. He pressed talk. "Uh, hey, Agent Davenport, how's it going? What? Y-yeah, things here are great—no, I'm fine. Wait a second, how on earth do you know that?"
Twenty minutes later, Sarah slipped out the front door. "Briefing over?" Chuck asked without looking back.
"For a few minutes now. When you didn't come back, I thought I'd come and—"
"Find me curled up in a fetal position, sucking on my thumb?" Chuck failed to put humor in his tone, though he twisted his face into a smile before he looked back at her. "Nope. Only mildly sweating. A light sheen, if you will. Which is perfectly understandable, California being somewhat warmer than Siberia and all."
"Progress," Sarah said.
"Not really. I've spent the last few minutes chanting that you and Casey are right inside and if I scream, you'll come kill the big, bad space monsters for me. Pathetic for a grown man, right?"
Sarah finally stepped up to join him at the railing, overlooking the quadrangle below. "Considering that you were stuck underground and can count the number of people you saw on one hand…I'd say that's not pathetic at all. Give it time."
"One thing at a time?" Chuck asked, his smile growing a little more real.
"It's good advice for a reason. What did Agent Davenport want?"
"For me to call her Gwen." Chuck turned his attention back to the quad, which was empty—everybody else in the complex was probably at work, he figured. "News of our recent adventures worked their way up the grapevine."
"Really?" Sarah shifted to mirror his stance. "That shouldn't have happened. Your name should have been removed completely—"
"It was, sort of. But Gwen put everything together anyway. Did you know that they're calling me Carmichael in Washington? And nobody's sure if I'm NSA, CIA, or just a ghost?"
"You said you liked the name."
Chuck vaguely remembered mentioning his old Bond-style name during their hours-long dinner in Thessaloniki when they'd been waiting until they could board the ferry. "Well, thanks."
"No problem."
"Either way, Gwen caught chatter about our stunt with Peyman and our little jaunt to Chinatown, and she's less than pleased. Technically, I'm supposed to stay in an 'analyst' position, which means avoiding guns, knives, and assorted danger. If it's going to make me scream, the general consensus is that I should stay away from it."
"Oh, I don't know about that. It really depends on what kind of screaming you're doing."
That surprised a laugh out of him. "Ha," he said, finally ripping his gaze away from the courtyard and smiling back at Sarah. "Does that mean you're offer—wow, and please forget I even started to say that. Talk about ignoring professional boundaries."
Sarah said absolutely nothing.
"Anyway," Chuck said, flushing bright red and staring down again, "Gwen might be coming out to assess our situation for herself. I'm supposed to tell you thank-you from her, for sending your reports in so quickly."
Sarah shrugged. "Least I could do, seeing as she's the main force keeping you out of a bunker."
"Yeah, and one of the reasons I'm going into therapy." Chuck's expression turned grim. His fingers gripped the ironwork railing tightly as he straightened up. "So, thanks for that."
"I never pushed for you to go into therapy. If Agent Davenport—Gwen—wants you to go into therapy, that's a solution she came up with on her own. I only highlighted in my reports that you were coping after so long in the bunker." Sarah looked troubled. "I tried to play it down, honestly."
"Either way. Effective a week from Wednesday, I'm meeting with an agency shrink. Congratulate me, I just became an ex-prisoner of war. The 'enemy' stuck me in a bunker for five years of solitary confinement. I'm getting my dossier messengered to me."
"A therapist would be good for you, Chuck."
"Sure." Chuck unclamped a hand to scratch the back of his neck. "I'll get to spill all about my fake life to a therapist who'll turn around and report everything to the next head on the totem pole so that I can be psycho-analyzed even more than I already am."
"Or," and Sarah put a hand on his arm, "you could look at it as a way to beat back some of those demons."
It was like she'd been in the bedroom with him the night before, when his demons had been tangible personifications, crowding around him so closely that he'd eventually crawled onto the floor to get away from them. Thinking of those demons brought up a question that shamed him only because it had been the driving factor behind his insomnia. It was inconsequential next to the fact that he'd witnessed one death and stumbled upon another. But it had kept him up nevertheless.
"Sarah," he said, pushing the words past the lump that had once been his throat, "Carina said something yesterday."
A shutter fell over Sarah's features. The expression of concern shifted to a wariness he hated, and her eyes once again became unreadable. He'd get more of a response from a cardboard cutout.
"What did Carina say this time? Before you say anything, you should know Carina really can't be trusted. She's unpredictable and she's always working an angle."
"It was about you and Bryce," Chuck said. "Earlier, you told me to be careful about what I said about Bryce. Are you trying to protect him because you two were—"
"Hey, you two!"
Both Chuck and Sarah jolted and looked over the railing. Carina waved gaily back, wearing a short black trenchcoat that thankfully covered more than her top the night before had. Had she sneaked in or had she strolled right on through? Chuck couldn't claim to know. "Can I come up?" she called.
Sarah regained her composure first. "Uh, sure. Elevator's over there."
"What is she doing here?" Chuck hissed when Carina had headed toward the elevator. "Why isn't she in federal custody?"
"Relax, Chuck. She apologized for the mess last night. And she wanted to apologize to you in person."
"She had a gun to my neck!"
Sarah's expression darkened. "She didn't want to kill you, she just wanted to mess with me. It's why she couldn't take out all of Alahi's men by herself last night. She didn't think protecting you in a shoot-out would be too good a time."
"Your friends have an interesting interpretation of a good time," Chuck said. He shifted his stance so that instead of leaning forward against the railing, he could prop himself against the front wall of the apartment and cross his arms. It felt easier to glare that way.
Sarah rested one hip against the railing and crossed her arms right back at him. "I'm sorry, what was it you were doing when Carina found you?"
Chuck's jaw firmed. "That wasn't a good time for anybody."
Unless you called seeing your ex and getting your heart ripped out through your nose a "good time." In which case, the whole night should be declared a huge barrel of laughs.
"Stalking your ex, Chuck? Really?"
"Hey, at least my ex isn't—" Movement to Chuck's right made him leap and flail about in a poor imitation of a judo stance. By the time he ceased moving, Carina and Sarah were watching him with oddly identical expressions of suppressed amusement. He tried to cover by running his hands through his hair. He scowled. "Great. You. Welcome to the Bachelor Pad. Would you like the grand tour before or after you kidnap me? I'm sorry—'take me hostage.' Technicalities, you know."
"Aw, Chuckie, c'mon. No hard feelings." Carina reached up to ruffle his hair, laughing when he flinched away.
Chuck's eyes held no humor. "Did you shoot Fidget?"
He expected a flat, honest answer. What he didn't expect was for Carina to roll her eyes and mutter, "I wish." In a louder voice, she said, "Peyman's men got him before I could. I was just going to shoot him somewhere non-lethal, teach him a lesson."
Chuck added Carina to his list of people to not piss off, just after Sarah and before Casey. "Why was he in the hallway?"
"Because I didn't want his blood going out everywhere and giving away my position." Carina crossed her arms and leaned her shoulder against the wall next to Chuck so that she could watch both him and Sarah. "It's bad form to shoot a guy in the head when he's that smart. He was scum, but he could've been useful at a future date."
It was the closest thing to remorse he would receive. For some reason, knowing that made him feel better. Something loosened in his chest; he stood up a little straighter. "Thanks for playing straight with me."
"No problem. Thanks for convincing Sarah to tell 'em to give me my job back."
Chuck squinted. "What? I didn't—"
Sarah sprang forward and, to Chuck's surprise, wrapped one of her arms through his. He gave her a what-are-you-doing look, but she was too busy beaming at Carina. "Did you want to say good-bye to Casey? He's inside, and you barely got to see him while you were here."
"Casey would prefer I didn't. Tell him we'll always have Bogota?"
"First Prague, now Bogota?" Chuck wondered. "Is there any place you two haven't desecrated?"
Carina just laughed at that. When her cell beeped, she pulled it out and smirked. "Looks like my ride's here. Walk me to my car, you two?"
Though Chuck had no desire to step into all of that open space, Sarah had latched on pretty tightly to his arm, giving him no choice but to go along. They took the stairs down rather than the elevator. "You two seem to be on good terms," he said as they descended. He'd never have believed it. No way would Sarah have let Carina off the hook after getting him kidnapped the night before.
"That's because we spent an hour beating each other to a pulp," Carina said, matter-of-factly. "It's very therapeutic."
Chuck looked from one gorgeous, unmarked head to the other. Not a hair was out of place. "Right," he said. "Because you two clearly came back from a brawl. Uh-huh. Pull the other one, will you?"
"Chuck." Sarah glanced around to make sure nobody was around. Without another word, she lifted the hem of her tank-top.
"Ouch," Chuck said, wincing. The purpling splotch just below her ribs looked far worse than anything he'd collected over the past couple of days. He glared at Carina. "You did that?"
"My, my, my." Carina smirked. "Sounds like Sarah Walker's found herself a champion."
Sarah rolled her eyes at her friend.
"How come I can't tell that you two beat on each other?" Chuck demanded. "Your faces look perfect."
"First thing you learn in spy school is all about makeup." They strolled through the entrance gate toward the street as Carina smirked over at Chuck. "It's really handy for first dates and Halloween alike. Ooh, look, there's my ride. Just a sec, Colin." Carina waved at a vintage Mustang Shelby. "Really must fly, but I wanted to say my good-byes before I left."
She hugged Sarah first, murmuring something into the blonde's ear that had Chuck's ears perking up—especially since Sarah replied in fashion. He kept his expression neutral until Carina turned to him. "I'm sorry," she said, actually sounding like she meant it, "that I got you involved last night."
He could stand up to anything but sincerity. Even though Chuck called himself a sap and knew he was likely being played, he sighed and extended a solemn hand toward Carina. "We got out of there alive, so no harm, no foul. We'll just pretend the whole thing never happened and never, ever do it again, deal?"
"Deal." Carina ignored the hand to give him a hug. She stood on her tip-toes to whisper into his ear, "Take care of my friend, or I'll kill you. Got me?"
Chuck's voice rose half an octave. "Understood."
He squeaked and scrambled backward when Carina let him go. "Look me up next time you're in Miami," she told them. Chuck and Sarah watched the redhead saunter away toward the classic muscle car.
"That her boyfriend?" Chuck asked as Carina draped herself over the driver.
Sarah shook her head. "Probably just a mark."
"Poor schmuck," Chuck decided. "Carina's going to make his life hell. Though I wouldn't mind being used that way for—hey! What is with you and punching people?" He rubbed the abused spot, glaring, though it hadn't hurt. "First Carina Derevko grabs my ass, now you're hitting me. I'm just about fed up with women, you know that?"
Sarah's look clearly stated what she wasn't going to: you started it.
Before she could go back inside, Chuck touched her arm, lightly. It was enough to make her tense.
Chuck just stuffed his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders forward. He had to say it now, he knew, or it would never be said. "What did you mean, be careful what I say about Bryce? Are you trying to protect him because you two were partners?" He took a deep breath. "Or because you two were more than partners?"
It really was amazing just how quickly the temperature could plummet. Sarah didn't move, but the entire world with all of its cursed people and all of its bloody space vanished, leaving him all alone with an ice queen. An ice queen that had previously been his partner and protector. The fury on her face alone could cure the world of its melting ice-caps problem.
"Where the hell," she said, her voice almost guttural, "do you get off asking me that?"
Chuck had to fight every fiber of his being not to deploy the Morgan, an old standby when dealing with the irate female. Through sheer force of will, he kept his feet planted. He had to know. "It's an honest question. Are you trying to protect Bryce because you were in love with him?"
Sarah gave him a disgusted look and half-turned. Chuck held his breath.
Eons stretched before she answered. Chuck's panicking mind pictured civilizations being born, dying in a blaze of glory. New planets. Supernovas.
Finally, Sarah said, her voice far too measured, "His country wasn't the only thing he betrayed when he blew that compound."
Chuck hunched his shoulders forward. The same feeling from the car the night before, when Carina had declared Bryce and Sarah a little more than partners, threatened to crush his chest. So it was true. She hadn't denied it.
Breathing suddenly became impossible.
Sarah startled him by grabbing his sleeve and yanking. They headed down the sidewalk, two frigid feet of space between them. To a casual observer, Sarah looked calm, relaxed. Chuck knew enough to see the tension stretching her into a whipcord, ready to strike. She still had the ice queen face on, but he could see emotions boiling beneath the surface. Was this the part where she dragged him someplace secluded and killed him?
Lord, he hoped not.
When they were a suitable distance away from the apartment complex, heading into the park, Sarah began to mutter without looking at him or really moving her lips. "I'm only going to say this once, Chuck, so listen up. Bryce and me…it was complicated. And quite frankly, none of your damn business."
"I—"
"Let me finish. Bryce betrayed more than his country when he blew that compound. He betrayed me. Whatever we had or didn't have, it was over at that moment. You're supposed to trust your partner when you can't trust anybody else, and he betrayed me."
Don't ever trust anybody, Chuck. Rule number one of being a spy.
Maybe Sarah and Bryce weren't that alike after all.
Sarah, meanwhile, hadn't finished. "But more importantly, he betrayed you."
"What?" This had Chuck stopping in the middle of the sidewalk. Without looking back, Sarah grabbed his arm and hauled, pulling him into motion. "What are you talking about?"
"When I said be careful of what you say about Bryce, I meant that you're still under suspicion because he blew up the compound. People were injured badly that night, and you—"
"And I helped Bryce get those heat-scans," Chuck said, his fists clenching.
"And you're not in the clear, not remotely. They're still watching you like a hawk." Sarah apparently figured they were far enough away from the apartment. She all but shoved Chuck onto a park bench, but instead of sitting down herself, she stood in front of him, her fists clenched. "It's awfully convenient, isn't it, that the Intersect would go to you, the guy who helped Bryce out."
Indignation made Chuck sputter. "I'm innocent! You know that!"
"Exactly." Sarah folded her arms. "I know that. But they're going to need convincing. So, like I said, be careful what you say about Bryce."
"I was worried," Chuck blurted out before his brain could think to halt his mouth, "at first. That you and Bryce were working together to pass the Inter—to sell me to the highest bidder." Sarah's eyes widened, shock shifting quickly to fury. "But I'm not anymore! I swear, I stopped thinking that before we even got to Radomsko, okay? Except last night…I couldn't sleep, and it was making me crazy, thinking about the things Carina said, and knowing Bryce got away again. I couldn't help it. It just made sense that maybe you two were working together because you were in love or something. He's been there every step of the way, Sarah. He was in Athens, he left that note in my pocket—"
"What note?" Sarah demanded.
"It's not important right now—"
Sarah leaned down so that she was right in Chuck's face. "What note?"
She looked about two seconds away from grabbing a random body part and squeezing. To spare his abused body any further torture, Chuck shoveled both hands through his hair. "It was a name. The first night I got back, I had a panic attack. I took off my jacket in the waiting room at the hospital, and when I came back to fetch it, there was a note in the pocket. It was weird because I always keep things in my pants pockets, not my jacket pockets—"
"What name?"
"Phillip Dartmoor. Does that ring any bells?"
He could see Sarah carefully, systematically searching her memory, but she shook her head. "Did you flash on it?"
"No. I'm going to run a database search." Chuck shook his head and tilted forward to rub his hands over his face, oblivious to the fact that Sarah had to step backwards or be head-butted in the stomach. "Bryce showed up last night like some avenging angel to get me out of there, and it only made sense if he knew about my tracker, but only you and Casey know about that—"
"Or he could have been following you," Sarah pointed out quietly, finally sitting next to him on the park bench. "Let's face it, Chuck, you wouldn't exactly notice a tail."
Chuck peered sideways at her through his hands. "How about you teach me that, first thing Monday?"
"Done."
"So if Bryce has been following me, and the two of you aren't secretly in cahoots, that actually makes more sense. Especially given what he said about you and Casey."
Sarah shook her head. "You know what? I don't actually want to know what he said."
"Probably for the best. But I hope you see why I was worried."
Sarah sighed. "I do."
Chuck lowered his hands and wiped his palms on his jeans. They'd wandered into the heart of the park. It wasn't brimming, but there were enough people enjoying the mid-October warmth to make him cautious. Still, overall, it wasn't terrible. "What's his endgame, Sarah?"
"I don't know."
"Last night he made it seem like he was…looking out for me."
"He could be protecting you for his own interests," Sarah said, her voice dull. "He could be, as you said, prepping you to be sold to the highest bidder. There's no way to read his mind when he's decided to play something close to the vest. You know that."
Chuck nodded. "Yeah. I know that."
"So even though it makes you feel better to think that maybe your friend might just be looking out for you, remember that he probably has ulterior motives. And keep your guard up."
Chuck scowled. "I hate this."
"I know."
"I just want to know why he did it, what he's doing now." He hated, more than anything, that he would never look at his best friend, his college wingman, the same way ever again. He'd never be able to look at Bryce and not see that dead guard's unseeing stare or the terror on Fidget's face before Chuck had deflected the gun.
"Frankly, a lot about this life sucks," Sarah said, resting her elbows on the back of the park bench so that it looked like two friends relaxing in the sunlight. "There's a lot of hurry up and wait, a lot of not knowing, a lot of guess-work that never pays off. You'll hurt people, and you'll tell yourself it's okay because it's for the good of the country, but at the end of the day, the country won't know the first thing about anything and there will still be a hurt person out there. You need to have a thick skin, and you need to learn to be able to cope."
Chuck stared straight ahead, letting her words run through his mind. Like Casey, there wasn't going to be a "there, there, it's all okay" speech. No band-aids applied, no kissing the boo-boo to make it all better. What they did now was real with actual, tangible consequences. No turning back.
It made Chuck vaguely ill, but he couldn't help but appreciate the beauty of such a straight answer.
"I think that's the most I've ever heard you say," he said, finally turning to look at her.
"I can't take credit. My mentor at Quantico gave me that speech pretty much word for word. It's something every spy needs to hear."
"Does that make you my Mr. Miyagi?"
There was a long pause before Sarah answered. "Honestly, I…wouldn't know."
Chuck goggled at her. "With kung fu moves like yours, how can you have missed out on 'The Karate Kid' all these years? That's it, we're watching that tonight. Consider it a spy mission."
Tension eased out of Sarah's shoulders as she laughed, a genuine chuckle. "We can't tonight. You're coming over for dinner, remember? Ellie's cooking for all of us."
"Oh, right." Twin knots of nerves and excitement clustered in his stomach at the thought. He would get to see his sister later. He would get to eat Ellie's cooking again. Chuck had missed his sister worse than he would have mourned a severed limb, but after years of MREs, he could privately admit that he missed her cooking just as much. His mouth watered. "Well, we'll have to do it soon. Because this is a grievous error and must be fixed as soon as possible."
"If you say so." Sarah shifted her attention to where a group of frat boy types had started up a game of ultimate Frisbee.
Even so, Chuck caught the look before she hid it completely. "What is it?" he asked, unconsciously shifting toward her.
"Nothing." Sarah twisted a smile onto her face, but it didn't reach her eyes, so the move was entirely worthless. "Just thinking that by the time we're done with this assignment, I'll be a complete geek."
"Nerd," Chuck corrected. "We prefer the term nerd. But that's not really it." When Sarah turned to him, surprised, he shrugged. "You're not precisely an open book, and I doubt you'll ever be, but give me some credit. I have had plenty of opportunities to study the Tao of Le Walker—or Walker-Tao if you prefer—and something's definitely up."
"Nothing's up," Sarah said. But Chuck watched an internal debate take place. He figured this was one of those times to sit back and wait rather than trying to talk it out of her. He was right. "I owe you an apology."
"For?" This was news.
"For almost taking your head off back at the curb back there. You brought up some very valid concerns and I nearly severed three of your major arteries and punched you in the neck."
"That's…oddly specific," Chuck said, hoping that his sudden need to lean away wasn't too obvious. "Apology accepted. And I should apologize, too. Questioning if you had a sexual relationship with Bryce was over the line. It's not my business. So I'm sorry."
He longed to ask. Even if it wasn't his business, he was burning with curiosity.
A couple of good-looking people like Bryce and Sarah, all those high-octane situations, life and death day in and day out, how do you expect them not to get together?
Only the reminder that they were mature adults and that Sarah could kill him with her pinky kept him silent. Realistically, he'd probably never know. Just one of the many facets of Sarah Walker that he wouldn't ever get to see.
One of the facets of Sarah Walker that he was glad he did get to see was her smile, like the one she gave him right now. "Apology accepted, though not necessary. I'm the one that handled the situation badly. You more than explained yourself, Chuck."
"I'm glad."
"C'mon, let's go back. Casey'll be wondering if Carina's killed us and dumped our bodies in the ocean or something."
But Chuck waited a few seconds before he forced his aching body off of the bench. "Whatever happened to the diamond?" he asked as they strolled along, considerably less frosty.
"Messenger picked it up this morning."
"Where'd you hide it?"
"That would be telling. I, ah, I made a few calls to help Carina out."
"I get that, but why did she thank me?"
"Well, I can't have her think I've gone soft, can I?" Sarah, to his utter surprise, threaded her arm through his again. "That'd just be sloppy."
Chuck gave her a droll look. "If you left any bruises on her anywhere near as massive as that lovely mark you yourself are sporting, the last thing she can accuse you of is going soft. Think she'll be back?"
"Probably. She's got radar for when life is getting too boring or predictable."
"Fantastic."
They headed back toward the apartment, two friends enjoying a sunny afternoon in the park. Chuck tried not to let on that he was focusing every part of his being on the arm Sarah had wrapped through his. Hard to believe that the so-called Bunker Boy had come even this far, though he knew he had miles to go before…just before. Thinking about what lay ahead wearied him, but for right now, he could enjoy the sunshine and the companionship.
A thought from Sarah's good-bye to Carina occurred to him as they approached the gates to the apartment. "So," he said, "where'd you learn to speak Polish?"
Sarah just smirked.
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