Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face,
tho' they come from the ends of the earth!
Earth and Sky
17 NOVEMBER 2005
WITH SARAH
09:54 GMC/UMT
Sarah felt the sand between her toes, the fine, soft grit of it, the way it gave slightly under the pads of her feet as she ran. The way the power in her calves increased to make up for the shifting surface, the way her thighs and center adjusted. God, she loved running on sand, more than any other surface on the planet. She had a trail she liked in Rock Creek Park near her unobtrusive little apartment in DC, and the Grand Canyon would always provide splendor for a good sunrise jog, but nothing in her mind would beat the beaches of San Diego. Even if she'd been Jenny Burton then—and what an awkward ugly duckling stage that had been—she'd loved those beaches.
Cabo San Lucas came pretty damn close.
She could feel the sun on her bare shoulders, just beginning to hit full strength. It was already hot, and only just after dawn. By noon, it would probably be sweltering. Perfect. She'd find a beach chair by the pool and let the sun kiss her to a gentle shade of brown. And she'd let Bryce appreciate every inch of the bikini she'd packed—or rather, every inch of what said bikini didn't cover.
That thought made her frown as she glanced toward the sand next to her. Bryce loved the beach almost as much as she did. He'd spent his summers growing up in the Vineyard, she knew, which meant he could appreciate a good beach. Even if it was a New England beach. The fact that he hadn't joined her on her run was…unusual. Maybe he was taking the vacation seriously, even if it seemed out of character for him to miss a run. Oh well. Who was she to judge? She'd faced death, delirium, and boredom with Bryce, so she understood how his mind worked in all of those cases. But maybe she'd just have to learn about vacation Bryce, too.
It excited her that there was still so much to learn.
Proving that he did indeed have the ability to read her mind, she heard the muffled sound of running footsteps close behind her. The hair on the back of her neck rose—not her danger signal, or spider-sense or whatever the hell Bryce called it, but the cool tingle of anticipation she'd started feeling very early in their relationship whenever he approached. Today it was like a sizzling, almost welcoming punch low in her abdomen.
So she turned without slowing her pace, and jogged backward. Her greeting died on her lips.
It wasn't Bryce's perfectly coiffed mop that flopped in the breeze as he ran, but a military buzz-cut. And the eyes that smiled at her weren't crystal blue, but rather, brown, and much, much warmer.
"Hey," Chuck greeted her before she could say anything. "Need a partner?"
Sarah felt her heart rate trip, and knew it had nothing to do with the run. Unbidden, her face smiled right back. It was a variation of the smile she used to stun hapless men into doing her bidding. Only this time it came automatically and without the intent to manipulate. "Finally," she heard herself say. "What took you so long?"
Chuck shrugged. "Had other things to do. Not as important as this, though." He matched his pace to hers, and Sarah turned so that she was jogging forward with him. "Sorry to keep you waiting."
"I'm glad you could make it. I was worried." Had she been? What on earth had she been thinking at all? She couldn't remember. All she knew was that she was glad, infinitely so, that he was there at all, that he was smiling like that, and all for her.
God, Samantha, you utter sap.
Instead of calling her out on her extreme cheesiness, Chuck just smiled down at her. "You worry too much."
"I know, it's a bad habit."
Chuck nodded sagely. "Of which you have many."
Sarah pushed him. He stumbled sideways, laughing. "Speaking of bad habits…" He trailed off, his grin lighting the whole beach once more. "I thought we were working on your violent ways, Sarah."
She loved the way he said her cover name, the way his voice dipped on the first syllable. "Dunno. Guess you just bring out the worst in me."
"Do I?"
"You're being very enigmatic."
"Really? I thought I was an open book." Chuck's eyes sparkled.
"Oh, sure, an open book written in Sanskrit, maybe." Sarah rolled her own eyes. "What's your secret, Chuck?"
He wasn't even puffing and out of breath. And he filled out a T-shirt far better than he did a parka and snow pants. Even if it was the faded old Harvard T-shirt that she was positive was sitting back in her closet in DC. She used it as a sleep shirt. Chuck used it to look pretty damn good. He shrugged; the T-shirt flapped in the breeze. "Who says I've got a secret?"
"There's something about you…"
"I'm just so damn adorable. Even Bryce Larkin thinks so."
Sarah rolled her eyes. Mentions of Bryce, who had filled her with such anticipation earlier, now soured in her stomach. She felt the prickle of storm clouds beginning to form in the sky behind them, but ignored it. She was in Cabo, she was running on the beach, and she had a cute if mysterious man keeping her company. Don't spoil it, she told herself.
"You just have an answer for everything, don't you?" she asked Chuck as they continued to run. The terrain of the beach had changed. Rock began to poke through the sand, and the waves crashed against dark boulders sticking out from the water with the noise of thunderclaps.
Chuck regarded her seriously for the first time since he'd joined her on her run. "I'm not sure." His voice was quiet, with a hint of vulnerability that hadn't been there before.
"What? Why not?" She didn't like vague answers. They led to far too many possibilities, and even the best agent couldn't cover every possibility.
Now, Chuck smiled. "It's not my head, Sarah. It's yours."
"What?"
"I live in a bunker in the middle of nowhere." Chuck spread his arms wide to include the entire beach as they continued jogging, ever onward, ever toward some goal Sarah couldn't see. "It takes three planes, jumping out of one of those planes, and snow shoes before you're even considered to be in the neighborhood. But that's okay, I don't seem to mind the lack of space, though it drives you insane. Which one of us came up with this beach? Which one of us is from San Diego?"
"I'm not from…" Sarah flushed a dark shade of red. When had she begun blurting out details about herself to the lowest bidder? She covered by scowling. "It's not in my head, it's too real."
"Maybe your head is a scary place."
"You can't be from my head. You're too real," Sarah said. She slowed her pace, which was unusual. Being deep in thought usually meant she just ran harder. Now she changed her path, moving right next to the water's edge. "Look, even the ocean, it's real. This isn't a dream. I'm in Cabo, you're running on the beach with me, and look!" She kicked up a spray of water.
Chuck laughed, recoiling backward as the arc of water hit him. "Wow, you're bossy."
"You keep pointing out my faults," Sarah said. "That's hardly fair."
"Well, it's your head. Maybe you should have it examined—hey!" Chuck laughed again as she kicked more water at him. "Oh, come on, talk about not being fair!"
But Sarah felt something slick and dangerous, something exciting, begin to spread from her middle. Giddiness sped through her, making her oddly light-headed. The anticipation from earlier paled completely in the face of this tug behind her belly button, this insurmountable yearning that seemed to sing out from everywhere inside her.
She gave Chuck a sultry smile and slowly began to back up, enjoying the way eddies of sand and water swirled between her toes. Water lapped against her ankles, and her calves and knees, and finally the tops of her thighs.
Chuck watched, his face absolutely inscrutable.
Sarah shrugged to herself, just a little bounce up and down of her shoulders. He'd get the message eventually. She spun on the spot and walked forward until the water hit just above her midriff, soaking her running pants and lapping against the bottom of her sports bra. Then, and only then, did she turn and give Chuck her best come-hither look. "So? Are you coming or not, hmm?"
The wolfish grin should have looked out of place. The swagger shouldn't have worked for such an open, honest character, but her pulse skipped a few beats. Especially since he didn't race across the water like some demented cartoon, as she knew many men would when she used that particular expression. No, he kept his eyes on her the whole way, so that she could feel shivers of electricity race up and down her arms and shimmer down her back. He seemed to know his affect on her, for he smirked.
Okay. She'd let him have his fun. For now.
When he was about a foot away, he stopped. The downward slope of the sand made him that much taller, so that her nose rose up to his sternum rather than his chin. The sunlight surrounded him like an aura, making his skin glow. From this distance, she was practically wrapped in his scent over the salty tang in the air: government soap, light sweat, and the exhilarating undercurrents of something essentially male.
Sarah's mouth went dry.
If they were in her head, like he claimed, he wouldn't have a single problem reading her thoughts. He proved it by smirking.
It was the smirk that did her in. Probably. She was already insane for being here at all, wherever here was: her head, Cabo, San Diego, Siberia. She'd stopped knowing the instant Chuck had shown up and smiled at her. It didn't matter one damn bit where they were. She dug her foot into the sand just as a wave crashed over her shoulders and launched herself at him.
They went down in a rumble of seawater and entangled bodies. The current dragged them up toward the shore. If it hurt Chuck at all, he certainly didn't complain. He kissed her back with the same intensity, one hand tangling in her hair (why she'd worn it down for her run, she had no idea, but she could be grateful now), the other hand at the small of her back to pull her closer. She wrapped herself around him as if he could vanish at any second. This need wasn't fueled by adrenaline, there wasn't somebody showing up to kill them at any second. She just wanted, oh, God, she didn't think she'd ever wanted this much.
She felt Chuck's laugh rumble up his chest. He dragged his head back and laughed louder. "You're trying to drown us."
"Not really." They'd somehow ended up mostly on the shore, with Chuck on his back looking up at her, her body splayed over his and the waves swirling around them both. She didn't know how they'd gotten there. She didn't care. "If I wanted to drown us, we'd be dead."
Assassin.
It was an ugly word. The ugliest word in any language on the planet. She should know: she knew quite a few damned languages.
The storm clouds from the west drew nearer.
But Chuck didn't seem to notice the clouds or the rocks. He just gave her that smile, the one that had made her heart stutter into her ribcage the day before. "Who says I can't save us both if you try to drown us?" he asked. "I already did, after all." He untangled his fingers from her hair to hit the side of his fist against the wet sand as an example.
"Why is it your job to save us?" She wanted to purr when that hand moved to her shoulder and began to caress, even covered in gritty sand.
"I don't know, Sarah." Chuck smiled and began to kiss her, his lips trailing down her neck to her shoulder. "It's your head, not mine."
"You've really…got to stop saying that," Sarah said, her concentration broken. "I think you're single-handedly trying to drive me to go see a shrink—"
"Hey, crazy lady, shut up and pay attention, will you?" Chuck smiled against her skin as his mouth moved lower. "I'm trying to work here."
"Oh…right. Carry on." The man had a great point. Why on earth was she talking when there was the definite offer of sex, no danger necessary, just a couple of consenting adults on the sand? She dove into the prospect with a fervor that matched Chuck's, her hands roaming freely.
Goosebumps rose over every blessed inch of her body, warmed only by his hands. She'd never felt wanton enough to be so…indecorous when people might happen on them at any second. Right now, she didn't care. She just wanted more. It became some kind of a frantic, laughing battle as she tried to pull his shirt over his head without breaking the kiss; he pounced and rolled, taking her with him and pinning her. She didn't care if the sand was everywhere, or that the water on his skin was salty, making her thirsty.
She'd probably never get tired of this. Ever.
When she wormed out of her sports bra, flinging it to the side, he groaned happily.
Neither of them noticed the sun vanish almost completely, plunging the day into gloom. They paid no attention whatsoever to the first hesitant raindrops falling from the sky. The winds picking up absolutely did no register.
It wasn't until lightning slashed across the sky, and a few drops turned to a sheet of angry, stinging rain, that they realized that there might be something else going on. Chuck unfortunately lifted his head, his hands stilling. "Uh-oh," he said, blinking as rainwater ran down his face in rivulets and dripped onto her chest. "Guess that's my cue."
"For what?" She didn't care about rain or storms. Not when she was so close to…well, so close.
But Chuck, much to her everlasting disappointment, rolled off of her and climbed to his feet, leaving her wet, and cold, and practically naked in the middle of the sand. She gaped as he simply picked up his sopping shirt and pulled it on. "Gotta go," he said.
"Go? Go where?" What the hell?
Chuck shook his head. Even with his hair so short it was practically invisible, he sent rainwater slinging this way and that. He gave her a disbelieving look, as if she were the idiot for not getting it, rather than him. "Do you not see the storm, Sarah?"
"It's kind of hard to miss."
"And it doesn't mean anything to you?"
"It's a storm. Storms happen." Dammit, she really was going to explode. She could feel the pressure building with nowhere to go, leaving her absolutely frustrated and alone. "C'mon, Chuck, we can—"
"Nope, we can't. No time."
"Why not? It's just a little rain."
"Because the storm means, Sarah Walker," and Chuck gave her one last bone-melting smile, "it's time for you to wake up."
In a frozen bunker thousands of miles from Cabo San Lucas, surrounded by the scent of Charles Bartowski, Sarah woke with a gasp.
18 NOVEMBER 2005
BUNKER 77142135
01:12 OMST
She bolted upright in the bunk, ignoring the cold air that rushed in over her arms. It was dark enough so that she couldn't even see three fingers in front of her face, but she still peered into the darkness like it might have some answers for her. "What…the…hell?"
Sarah Walker did not have sex dreams about a guy she'd only just met. Hell, Sarah Walker didn't have sex dreams, period. Sarah Walker barely had sex.
So what on earth was all of that about? Had her dream-self really been this close to doing the nasty with her partner's best friend? Sarah pushed both hands through her hair and took a deep breath, trying to calm her racing heart (and other parts of her anatomy, really. Dream Chuck was an excellent kisser). Maybe she should take her dream self's advice and go spend a few hours talking to a shrink. Surely the kind of thing she'd just experienced wasn't normal.
Bryce, always a light sleeper, stirred in the bunk above hers. "Sarah?" he murmured, sounding half-asleep. "Something the matter?"
"N-no." She couldn't quite hide the stammer in her voice, and wanted to curse.
Bryce of course picked up on it. "What's wrong?"
"It's nothing. Go back to sleep."
"Bad dream? It wasn't the—"
"No," Sarah cut in, knowing exactly what he was about to ask. If he mentioned the words "Red Test," she'd suffer flashbacks of jewelry hitting the pavement, the greasy feel of her finger on the trigger, the damning boom and recoil of the gun in her hand.
Some nameless woman, dead because of an order.
It had been that moment when Sarah Walker had started hating guns.
She squeezed that old pain back into its corner. Her eyes had adjusted to the almost total lack of light in the room, enough for her to make out details. Had the bunker grown smaller while she slept? It certainly felt like it.
"No, nothing like that," she said, keeping her voice even. "Just had a weird dream. You should just go back to sleep. I'm going to go raid the kitchen. I'm a little wired."
"Okay." And just like that, Bryce dropped back into sleep.
She wasn't envious of the ability, as it was something that she shared. Field agents never knew when the next opportunity to rest would come. They could drop off to sleep in the middle of a war zone if the need arose.
Of course, they could also wake up and be ready to stab you in the ear at the same instant. The ability to sleep at will didn't automatically make one a morning person.
She took a deep breath to calm her fluttering stomach. Bad idea. She was still buried in the sleeping bag from the waist down, which meant that she could smell Chuck everywhere. That had been the reason for the odd and erotic dream, nothing else. Well, maybe that and exhaustion. Of course, it could also be the job. Their last mission had almost gone horribly wrong, and she hadn't still adjusted her headspace around what might have been. Yes, her job, and the stress. Clearly, that was it.
Belatedly realizing that she was shivering with just her long-johns exposed to the bunker air, she shoved her arms into the sleeve of her parka. It took a minute of a pep talk—she hated the cold—to convince her to swing her legs out of the sleeping bag so that she could pull her ski pants on over her thermal legwarmers. She shoved her toes into her boots.
After a dream like that, she needed a drink. She always carried something, even if it was usually only used when one of them had been shot. No gunshot wounds today, thankfully, but after the one-two punch her mind had delivered, imbibing was a necessity. She'd just go out to the kitchen and drink there where Bryce wouldn't wake up and wonder. She'd likely have the room to herself, as Chuck probably kept to a rigid schedule and would be trying to sleep—poor guy—in his desk chair.
She spotted the worn box of cards sitting on one of the room's tiny shelves, and pocketed it. A few hours with whiskey and solitaire sounded like a good idea. Hoping not to wake Bryce again, she eased open the bunk room door—
"Oh, you're awake."
Sarah's mind flittered through fourteen different curses she'd learned over the years, each growing more vicious. Her head shot up from where she'd been watching her step in the darkness.
And there he was, the current star of her very bizarre dreams, huddled into that gray army parka and sitting not five feet away at the tiny kitchen table. He was working on something clamped in a vise, a soldering gun perfectly at home in his hand. And he was smiling at her, somewhat nervously.
Her pulse skidded. She cursed again and bought time by closing the bunk room door. "I thought you were asleep," came rather stupidly out of her mouth. Why the hell aren't you? She wanted to ask. You should be sleeping, and I should be drinking and not thinking about you and how good you smell, damn it.
Another smile, slightly self-deprecating, as he holstered the soldering iron. "I can't seem to sleep."
Probably, Sarah thought, because Bryce had kicked him out of his bed.
"Figured I'd use up the extra energy." Belatedly, Chuck seemed to remember himself. That odd chivalry kicked in again; he rose to his feet, stooped forward slightly because the ceiling was so low. Sarah wished he wouldn't do that. She didn't really need to be reminded at just how much space there wasn't. She took a deep, silent breath.
"Can I, um, get you anything? I can heat you up some Spaghetti-Os." He gestured at a small range built into the wall by the room's tiny sink. "I don't recommend the MREs I usually eat, though come to think of it, you might not mind them so much. They're actually pretty tasty." He looked sheepish, and wasn't that just adorable? Stop it, Walker. "They're just, you know, the only thing I have to eat, so I'm kind of tired of them—"
If she didn't stop him, he'd probably just keep going until he talked himself into going out into the cold and killing her a bear to eat. Did they have bears in Siberia? The way the geek across from her babbled on, he'd probably find out soon. "It's okay," she said, her smile coming unbidden despite the lack of space and the strangeness still making her head spin. "I'll just have an MRE."
"All right. Pick your poison. We've got—oh."
Hoping that if she sat down, Chuck might do the same, Sarah snatched an MRE and plopped down at the table. They'd never be anybody's first choice of meal—anybody sane, that is—but she'd been stuck with nothing but MREs for days before. She had no idea how Chuck survived. Didn't he miss real food? Space? Other humans? Any of that? Why was he so damn cheerful when she'd very well start screaming, silently, and never stop?
She kept that to herself as she assured Chuck she was fine, and that she'd been through the drill before, so he asked about her nap instead.
It took every ounce of self-control she possessed not to flush the color of a police siren. "Actually," and her voice probably only sounded nervous to her, which made her grateful that Bryce wasn't around to call her on it, "yes. The cot's actually pretty comfortable." Damn it, she'd used "actually" twice. Always a tell. So she covered as she messed with her drink packet: "Bryce is out for the count."
"I wouldn't trust that if I were you."
What? Had Chuck formed suspicions of Bryce in the past ten hours? He'd seemed to adore the ground his friend walked on. Sarah stilled. "Why not?"
"It's by far the dodgiest of the entire variety. Here, I'll mix up my specialty."
Oh. He was talking about the drink, not Bryce. This was bad—she really needed to clear her head. Maybe she should get out of here, grab her snowshoes and maybe go for a run.
In the middle of the night. In the woods. In Siberia. In November.
Okay, she'd had better ideas.
She worked through the MRE quickly. Though she'd had a couple of high calorie chews during their trek, even the memory of food was distant. Eating gave her something to do, an objective where she wouldn't likely embarrass herself or let the man currently puttering around his tiny kitchen know that she'd been envisioning him mostly naked on a beach thousands of miles away. She flicked glances at him as she ate. Her dream self had picked up quite a bit of detail in his face—unsurprising, since the inability to not place a face right away could mean death for an operative—but she hadn't caught just the trace of mawkishness in his movements, or the way that he tilted his head slightly to the left. The first likely from an unexpected growth spurt and clumsy adolescent years. The second, if she had to guess, she'd blame on years of computer usage.
He dug out an empty gallon container of some type and filled it at the sink.
"So what is it you do, Chuck?" she asked once most of the MRE had been demolished.
He seemed to be concentrating pretty deeply for somebody whose only task was filling a water jug. "I'm an analyst. I analyze various data sources to make sure they're not being used by terrorist groups to pass encrypted messages."
In Russian? Wow, Bryce's friend must be even more brilliant than she'd thought.
"Sounds important," she prodded.
"I guess."
Since she had a basic grasp of Russian thanks to a few weeks in Monterey—Airman Stephanie Wilkins this time—she asked about his hobbies. If he was anything like Bryce, he had a few of them. And hey, it couldn't hurt to work on her Russian with a master.
Except Chuck's hands never slowed as he continued making his specialty, whatever that was. "Say what now?"
What the hell? It hadn't been that difficult of a question unless…he didn't speak Russian. That meant that they'd stuck some guy who didn't speak Russian out in the middle of a bunker in Siberia to analyze data. Something he could have done from any computer in the world.
"You don't speak Russian?" she asked, just to make sure he just hadn't heard her right.
"Nyet."
Cute. But puzzling. "So why do they have you stashed in the middle of Siberia?"
Here's the confession, Sarah thought. Chuck really was a mass murderer, but too brilliant of an analyst to let go, so they'd stashed him where he couldn't do any damage.
He turned slowly, shaking the gallon container almost absently. "One of life's greatest mysteries." His smile seemed resigned. "There were two guys here before me, and two with me at separate points. They all listened to Russian chatter and the like, but me, I'm an English-only kind of guy with the occasional foray into bad Spanish." Again, cute. "I've no idea why they 'stashed' me here." He raised his free hand to make air-quotes.
She ignored the gesture. Bryce made fun of her word choices all the time; it was just part of her life. "Aren't you at least a little bit curious?"
"Not really. My theory is that they spent too much money on me to just let me go when I apparently failed spy school, so…to the wilds of Siberia it is."
If Chuck and Bryce had graduated together, Chuck would have been at the Farm at the same time as her, since the Farm had been her home, on and off, for a good five years when she wasn't away at school. More off than on, admittedly, as the government had delighted on sending her to every training imaginable. Beautiful blonde assassins don't come a dime a dozen, one of her instructors had pointed out once. Sarah had almost used her bare hands to show him why.
But she would have at least seen Chuck sometime. Unless they'd had him in a specialized program—maybe for his data analysis? She ran through the options even as Chuck made a show of pulling out juice tumblers and pouring. He offered her the glass first, of course. Chivalrous to the bone. She wondered if he'd left some sort of girlfriend behind.
It took her a moment to recognize the taste of the orange drink since she had to go all the way back to childhood to do it. "Tang? Really?"
"Really. I live off of this stuff. It's what they give astronauts, you know." He probably didn't even realize he was doing it, but as Chuck screwed the lid back on the gallon, he laughed. Just a little, self-deprecatingly and proudly at the same time. He was a guy tucked away where nobody would find him, days from civilization, and he was still just geeky enough to be happy to drink what the astronauts did.
Sarah's heart swelled even as her mind asked, "What the hell?"
She almost didn't hear Chuck's next statement. "It's the only thing they never forget to send, which is good because the water tastes like crap."
Ah, there was the bitterness. She was both relieved and sad to hear it.
"Do you actually like Tang?" She wasn't sure she did. It was far too sugary. Next time, she'd take her chances with the water.
"Brent used to add vodka to make it better, but me, I'm a whiskey man, myself."
"Oh, are you now?" Suddenly remembering her original purpose for coming into the kitchen, Sarah unveiled the flask. She poured more than a prudent amount into her cup—the Tang really was disgusting, and she was still getting occasional flashes of dream Chuck. At least it was keeping the kitchen somewhat warm.
Their fingers brushed as Chuck took the flask.
"You're my hero."
She had to smile at that. She was hardly anybody's hero. "I aim to please."
"To spies?" Chuck raised his glass.
She clinked her own against it. "To spies."
"It's been years since I had real whiskey," Chuck said after they'd taken a drink. Well, Sarah had downed half of her cup in one swallow, but she wasn't going to confess that. "Real whiskey," Chuck clarified, "not the crap Paul used to drink. I miss it."
She couldn't imagine a life like that, spent so far away from everything. If she wanted to get rip-roaring drunk off of any alcohol of her choice, there was a liquor store right down the street from her house. And if she was on a job…well, what she wanted on a job didn't matter.
"So what do you drink if not water or whiskey?"
"Tang. Lots and lots of Tang."
Sarah wrinkled her nose at the orange concoction in her glass. The whiskey made it tolerable, but only just. "You're a stronger person than me, then," she said, meaning it.
She wasn't expecting a bitter laugh. It made her tense. "Am I? You're out in the line of fire, kicking butt and taking names."
Hardly, Sarah thought. If she was out in the line of fire, people were just dying. A bullet could end your existence just like that, and it didn't even have to be aimed properly.
"Doing something active," Chuck went on, "while I just sit here on my butt and drink Tang."
The man lived a solitary existence in the middle of nowhere, cut off from everything he knew. Bryce had mentioned a sister, and Sarah didn't figure Chuck got more than a few words with her every week, if even that. They hadn't even had the decency to get him a properly sized bunker where he could walk around without needing to hunch all of the time. To be fair, Chuck was almost freakishly tall, but it rankled. She made sure to meet his eyes. "Sit here apart from all of your friends and family and life, and continue to work for the people who put you here because you believe in justice enough to keep going," she said. "Don't put yourself down."
That startled him. He sat silently for a minute, his mouth working but no words coming out. She waited him out because it was easier to let him lead the conversation. Meanwhile, where the hell had that come from? And what had happened to Sarah Walker, she of the few words? Her old instructor had once claimed that she could make a mime look like a chatterbox.
"I notice you didn't mention the Tang," Chuck said.
She shrugged to cover her nerves. "Like I said, you're a stronger person than me. And my life is not like…" She had to search her memory for a proper reference, as that was Bryce's forte, not hers. "The Bond movie you make it sound like."
It was Bond, right? Her damn near photographic memory had better not make her look like an idiot.
"Probably for the best," Chuck said.
"Why's that?" If she didn't do something with her hands soon, she'd start babbling. So Sarah pulled out the deck she'd pocketed earlier, and waved it at Chuck. "Cards?"
"Sure. And I'm just saying, a woman who, um, well…" Chuck paused and took a deep breath. The next bit came out in a rush. "A woman who looks like you has a very low life expectancy in a Bond film. Especially if she's so obviously on the side of good. It's like an unwritten law. Bond's good colleagues tend to die. Unless you're Miss Moneypenny. Or M."
A woman who looked like her? Though she was under absolutely no illusions about the effect she had on the average male, Sarah's hands stilled in her shuffling. She quickly covered with a laugh and began to deal before Chuck could take notice. At least the warmth suffusing her kept the bunker's everlasting cold out. "Why can't I be Bond? I mean, we've progressed in gender equality, haven't we? Bond could be a woman."
A snort. "Hello, Bond would clearly have to be Bryce, duh. Those chiseled looks, the blue eyes. Total Bond."
It was said so matter-of-factly that she glanced over. She was ninety percent sure that Chuck was heterosexual, judging by his physical reactions to her, but…well, that ten percent nagged at her.
"Something you want to tell me, Chuck?"
"What?"
"Is there something you want to tell me about you and Bryce?"
Chuck froze. Everything about him just stopped. His Tang glass halfway to his lips, he stayed absolutely still and stared at her. Ten seconds passed. Twenty.
Oh, my God, Sarah thought before the sane part of her could chime in, I broke Chuck Bartowski.
Wait a second. What?
"Chuck?" she asked, hoping that he hadn't just fallen asleep with his eyes open somehow. She was a pretty boring person, she knew, but he'd seemed interested up until a moment before.
Before she could snap her fingers in his face, Chuck jerked back to motion, quickly shaking his head and looking at her as though in a fog. "What? What? About me—and—and Bryce? Oh." Realization dawned; instead of being offended, he actually laughed. "No, nothing like that. We've been friends for years, and I know what a great guy he is. Very James Bond like."
Sarah didn't know enough about James Bond to confirm or deny that. Bryce Larkin had his fair share of problems. He didn't like the world to know about them, but they existed.
"And you have to admit," Chuck went on, "the guy does have a pretty face."
And killer eyes, and Bryce Larkin was obviously interested in her. So why had she been frolicking on the sand with Chuck, who, though attractive in a geeky, "aw shucks" sort of way, was supposed to be less conventionally handsome than his blue-eyed friend?
Why can't you ever just make things easy? Her brain asked her.
Because that would just make too much damn sense.
18 NOVEMBER 2005
BUNKER 77142135
03:14 OMST
"And my queen of hearts beats your jack of spades, which means…" Sarah raked the "pot," which was in reality just a mixture of bolts and small parts that Chuck had scrounged up from around the bunker, closer to her.
"How do you do that?" Chuck stared at the card in his hand, absolutely puzzled, and then back at her. "I mean, they don't teach mind-reading at Quantico these days, do they?"
If they could, Sarah thought, they would. Anything to give their little duckling agents an edge. But she just shrugged and smirked as she took the card from him. "Not telling."
"Oh, come on, that's not fair. You've out-bluffed me seven times in a row. I know. I counted." Chuck crossed his arms over his parka and did his best impression of a kid in a full-out sulk. "You have ESP, don't you? You should just tell me and put me out of my misery."
"If I do have ESP, telling people about it would just be stupid."
"Oh, sure, they'd try to lock you up," Chuck said agreeably, the sulk disappearing. "But you're forgetting two things."
She doubted that. She could recite all of her locker combinations going back to the seventh grade. Sarah Walker simply didn't forget things.
Still, she gestured at him to continue.
Chuck leaned forward. Maybe the whiskey was getting to him—they were each on the third glass of Whiskey-Tang, as Chuck had started to call it. His movements were getting just a little bit erratic, a hair slower. She could feel her own thoughts loosening, though she'd cut back on the amount of whiskey after the first drink.
"Thing one," he said, poking a finger up. "You're Sarah freaking Walker, a.k.a. Bristow of the CIA. They put you in a cage, you'll not only be out in less than a minute, but every guard in the compound would be flat on his face, unconscious or dead. But man, what a way to go."
She laughed, more at the flood of warmth that flushed through her rather than the apparent idolatry on his face.
"And thing two," Chuck said, a second finger joining the first. He stared at both fingers for a second, seemingly baffled as to why he'd be holding them up, before he apparently remembered his own train of thought. "Even if you do have ESP, you can tell me. You know why? I live in a bunker. Who'm I going to tell?"
He spread his hands wide exactly as he'd done on the beach. She felt another flash of heat, this time completely different, and in a completely different region of her body.
"You have an excellent point. Chuck?" Sarah deliberately leaned forward, some evil part of her enjoying the way Chuck's eyes followed hers. He mirrored her action, a smile prickling at the corners of his lips. "I don't have ESP."
"Aw." He stuck his lip out, pouting. "I was kind of hoping you did."
"So I can read your mind?"
Interestingly, that started a blush around Chuck's neck. Maybe she should dial it down. The poor guy hadn't seen a woman in a year, after all. As much as these little tells of his thrilled her on an elemental level, it wasn't personal. He was bound to react this way to any female that walked through the door because biological imperative demanded it.
"Well, that's a little off-putting," Chuck said, and she barely suppressed her frown. "But no, I meant, if you had ESP, you could have something cool like telekinesis or pyrokinesis in addition to your telepathy."
"Pyro-what?"
"The ability to control fire with your mind. Though you'd probably want the ability to create fire, too, or you'd just be a god among insects. Or rather, goddess." Another flush, this time faint.
"Um, okay," Sarah said, since she didn't understand any of that. Except about the ability to control fire with her mind. What it had to do with insects, she couldn't possibly fathom.
Less than twenty-four hours in Chuck Bartowski's company, and she was already getting used to the fact that there were a lot of things about him she couldn't fathom. He'd be happy to explain, she knew, and had several times. But it made her feel a little…dumb, and disconnected, to have to ask all of the time. So she nudged the cards at him. "You going to deal or not?"
"Fine, fine." He picked up the deck and shuffled easily, his fingers far less incapacitated by the cold than hers. As always, he offered the deck to her to cut, which she did with a smile, and dealt out two cards, one for each of them. "Your bet, Miss Walker."
Sarah pretended to squint at the card Chuck held up in front of his forehead, facing her. He squinted back. "Two bolts," she said, tossing them in.
Amusingly, Chuck immediately reached out to straighten the bolts on the able, lining them up as he did every time. For that reason alone, she always made sure to splash the pot. He squinted at her again, his frown deepening. "Two bolts?" he asked. "That's it?"
Sarah shrugged and made an "eh" noise, laughing when Chuck mimicked both the motion and the sound. "I believe it's your bet, Mr. Bartowski."
"So it is." He carefully set two bolts next to the ones she'd tossed in, and added three more.
"Sure you want to do that?"
"Oh yeah." The grin he shot across the table was surprisingly cocky. It made her remember the beach all over again. She covered a shiver by taking a drink. "Gonna see my bet, Walker?"
Sarah just made a point of sighing aloud as she parted with three more bolts. She let Chuck think that the three of clubs in his hand was hot stuff—until they both lowered their cards to the table.
"Oh, come on!" Chuck crossed his arms and pouted again. "A four. You beat me with a four. How is that possible?"
"Well, in this game, just like life, a four is higher than a three and—"
Chuck grinned. "Smartass."
From anybody else, the name would have brought on hurt or aggravation. With Chuck, it was like a compliment, a mark of an equal or a peer. She smiled. "Thank you. My deal?"
"Sure, though I don't know why I bother." Chuck stuck his lower lip out and sighed dramatically. Before she could even finish shuffling the cards, he set his remaining five bolts into the pot.
"I didn't even give you your card yet," Sarah said, frowning.
"Let's just say, I'm testing a theory. What's the matter? Afraid to meet my bet? Gonna fold?" He made clucking noises, even going so far to flap his arms like a chicken.
Sarah deliberately splashed the pot with her ante and hid her smile when Chuck scrambled to line all of the bolts up. She shuffled, let him cut the deck, and tossed their cards onto the table, face-up. Chuck's card was a ten of diamonds. Sarah pulled the ace of hearts.
"Ha!" Chuck stabbed a finger at her.
"Why are you acting all triumphant? I won."
"Yeah, but that just proves my theory that you have x-ray vision." Chuck pushed away from the table, wiping his hands on his pants as he rose.
"Where are you going?"
"To get more bolts from the office."
Sarah frowned. "That's cheating!"
"My bunker, my rules." Chuck flashed her a quicksilver grin as he turned to go. As he did so, he happened to glance at the mirror over the stove. His eyes met hers, and he gave her what she was beginning to suspect was his patented goofy grin—before he realized exactly what the mirror meant. He whirled. "Speaking of cheating!"
"What?" Sarah asked, giving him an innocent look. She fought the desire to laugh, shoving it all behind a poker face.
"Nice," Chuck said sarcastically. "You were able to see every single one of your cards, weren't you?"
"More or less," Sarah managed to say before she did something that she hadn't done since college: she giggled. She slapped both hands over her mouth, but it was too late. The first damning giggle escaped. The rest of the flood was muffled by her hands, but the damage had been done.
Chuck rolled his eyes, but she could see the smile folding up at the corners of his mouth. He plopped right back into his desk chair and mock-glared at her, which only made her giggle harder. When he lunged across the table, she froze, but he only scooped up half of her winnings. "Hey!"
"You won these by cheating, which means they're not yours." Chuck stuck his tongue out at her.
She stuck hers out right back. "Don't do that again. I've shot people for less."
"I'm sure you have. Now, we're playing real Texas Hold 'Em, and I'm going to keep my cards under the table where you can't read them."
"Unless I've got a mirror on top of my shoe," Sarah said innocently.
Chuck narrowed his eyes at her again. She saw his eyes dart down once, as if he was tempted to check, but he held her gaze. "I'm going to have to watch you like a hawk all the time, aren't I?"
"Probably," Sarah said, though she had no idea how he could possibly hope to do that from inside a bunker. Or why he would want to at all, stuck inside a bunker or no. Once he escaped this tiny Siberian prison, Chuck Bartowski was meant for great things, and Sarah was meant for whatever the government wanted next. And never, she thought a bit sadly as she watched him shuffle the deck to deal out Hold 'Em, the twain shall meet.
"What's the matter?" Chuck looked up from the cards. "You just got really morose all of a sudden."
Had she? Sarah straightened and hastily schooled her expression closer to neutral. The alcohol must be affecting her more than she had thought. "It's nothing," she lied, and mentally scolded herself for slipping so much. "Deal the cards, Mr. Bartowski."
He looked at her from under his eyelashes and flashed her a smile that made her traitorous heart do a slow roll in her chest. "Yes'm."
No comments:
Post a Comment