People are like stained-glass windows.
They sparkle and shine when the sun is out,
but when the darkness sets in,
their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.
- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
Stained
27 SEPTEMBER 2007
SAPSAN UP TO ST. PETERSBURG
08:58 YEKT
Those fucking assholes.
Sarah didn't look up; she wasn't sure she would be able to face what she saw in the mirror yet, so she kept her gaze focused with laser sharpness on a blotch in the sink in front of her. If she looked two inches to the left, she would see her thumb resting against the sink's lip, and she would see it shaking like the rest of her: controlled, minute shakes that only one standing very, very close to her could see. This wasn't the entire body-quaking, teeth-chattering sort of shaking, this was almost quivering or little spasms, and she had been suffering through it for the past three hours. Ever since Chuck had told her it had been five years.
Not three.
Five years.
Five fucking years.
What the hell?
It made her want to hit something. No, it made her want to kill something. Something high-up and official, and messily, too. She wouldn't ever claim to have a calm center, though she believed in having a certain economy of motion—she had seen too much turmoil in her life to ever believe she could be calm, rational, or normal—but she didn't think she'd ever experienced this amount of pure fury before.
The famous claim was seeing red, but Sarah knew now that that was wrong. She wasn't seeing red. She was seeing white. A white haze over everything, explosions of white at the edges of her vision that made her tremble harder, while her heart pounded and her head felt both like a two-ton brick and far too light at the same time, and the back of her throat seized up and her stomach clenched and her hands shook.
Forget kill something. She wanted to destroy something. She wanted to pummel something with her feet and her fists until it was nothing but ashes and atoms, and then she wanted to destroy those, too. She could physically taste the anger on her tongue, like adrenaline.
She'd put up a good face for Chuck. She'd kept her calm; she'd patted his knee and told him that she was going to help him. And she had meant every word she'd said, though maybe the bolstering smile, the one she'd had to use a lot since they had stepped out the front door of the bunker, hadn't been quite what she had been feeling at the moment.
Now, Sarah kept her head down, her gaze still focused on the sink. She imagined there was probably a line outside waiting to get into the restroom on the Sapsan, but she didn't give a damn. She would stay standing right here, leaning forward, her hands planted on the sink, until the edge of the maw of fury dulled and she would be able to keep up the calm façade Chuck needed to see right now. It didn't help that her body was craving sleep like a meth addict without a fix, but she had been through worse and she would get through this.
You held it together better than I ever would have if I'd been stuck with limited interaction for three years.
Five.
They had you there forfive years? You told me you'd only been there a year when Bryce and I came to see you.
They had me somewhere else before that.
What the hell?
They had laws against this sort of thing. They had whole Geneva Conventions against it, in fact. That was why they kept two prisoners to a cell in prisons and only reserved solitary confinement for severe punishment.
Only, apparently, they reserved the same treatment for agents who hadn't done a single fucking thing wrong.
Another swell of rage started behind her belly button and made her grip the sink to keep her knees from buckling.
She'd made a promise. Agents weren't supposed to do that. Agents didn't make promises because they might be ordered to break them at any given moment. But she had. She had looked Chuck full in the eyes and sworn to him that he wasn't going back into the bunker again.
And the minute the government got their hands back on Chuck, they would put him back. Maybe even in the same bunker, since it had great connectivity and Chuck was comfortable there and nobody would expect it. No, that was stupid: they would want to keep him close, so that scientists could study him and pick apart his brain and figure out why this highly-theoretical Intersect had worked on him when the docket had said it would kill most of humanity.
The thought made her want to shake for a whole different reason. Bryce had taken a huge risk with his own damn friend, hadn't he?
They would throw Chuck back into a bunker, and this time, he would be guarded and unavailable to anybody, let alone her. There was no other way around it: the Intersect was too valuable, and Chuck had access to too many secrets. She was just a lowly officer in the CIA, and she had burned through most of her contacts already to get Chuck out of the godforsaken bunker. She didn't have the resources to keep him out of a second one once the government dug their talons back into him.
But, and the little voice was like a tempting poison in the back of her mind, she did have the resources to keep him out of it forever. Keep him away from everything. They could just...run. She knew how to vanish without a trace, she had the training to go off the grid for months or years at a time if she wished. Sure, it would be difficult, but it would be worth it for Chuck to have a real life. She would miss some aspects of her own life, but the sacrifice on her side was actually minimal. Who did she have? She had Bryce, who had blown up the Intersect, risked his best friend, and had sent her on this spiraling path. She had Digital Dave and the boys in logistics, all of whom feared her anyway. There was Carina, but she could see Carina any time. The DEA agent would get a thrill going off the grid to find her just to have a few mojitos together.
Quantified, her life had very little, possibly even less than Chuck's, and he was the one that had been in the bunker for five damn years. So it wouldn't be much to run, not for either of them. They'd have each other, which for her was enough. She had no idea if she would be enough for Chuck, but she figured he would prefer having her with him all the time and experiencing the real world, living among people again and remembering how to be human. Would it be enough of a trade for the feeling of constantly needing to look over their shoulders to make sure the government hadn't caught up?
She knew the answer to that.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Somebody knocked on the door to the bathroom, making Sarah look over. "One moment," she called back in Russian, making sure she used the Moscow accent. The lack of grumbling on the other side told her that this was the first knock, and she hadn't missed any in her anger. Even so, her time was running out. She'd been away from Chuck for too long, and she had to make her decision.
Take Chuck, and run. Be branded a traitor. Live in constant fear and paranoia and danger, but Chuck would be free.
Take her chances with the government. Be lauded as a patriot. Safety for Chuck, but he would be back in the bunker.
The government really had them both over a barrel. Damned, Sarah thought again, if you do. Damned if you don't. Why the hell wasn't there a third option? Chuck hadn't done anything wrong. He'd been a good worker for five years, cheerfully and efficiently doing everything the CIA had asked him to, and this was how they had repaid him. And would continue to repay him.
Why the hell didn't his rights seem to matter? Why was nobody but her looking out for him? Sarah felt another surge of anger and this time indulged it, driving the side of her fist into the wall. It hurt. She didn't care.
Wait a second.
Rights.
Agents had rights. That was why they signed contracts; hell, even she had signed a contract with the CIA on her eighteenth birthday, though she knew it was more for show than anything else, that the CIA had made her do many things that would never be recorded on any books anywhere. They did it to put her in the system and on the payroll, but it existed. And if Chuck was anything like her, they would have done the same thing for him. Which meant that he was in the system, which meant...
Sarah looked down at her right hand, finally, at the smart phone she'd lifted from the man sitting beside her in the train compartment.
Maybe there was a third option.
She dialed the number from memory. Just like always, it rang three times and then the line picked up. Nobody spoke.
Sarah waited ten seconds, like she was supposed to. "Good morning, Jean-Claude." It was a little odd to switch to French after using so much Russian lately, but she managed.
"Ah, hello, Miss Crookshanks. I didn't expect to hear from you this soon."
"Fortuitous circumstances." Sarah very carefully lifted her left hand from its death-grip on the sink and pushed it into the pocket of her jacket. The plan was risky and would probably never work, but the fact that she had one, that there was indeed a third option, made her stand up a little taller. The exhaustion came back stronger than ever, but she had a plan. "We'll be arriving on the 11:04 Sapsan."
"Most excellent. Shall I arrange for a car to pick you up?"
"We'll take a cab. Is everything in order?"
"Retrieving your plane from Warsaw was not easy, but it has been done and will be ready to go for you."
"Wonderful."
"It is an interesting color, no?"
"It's cheerful. I like cheerful." Of course, she probably wouldn't feel cheerful ever again, but that was a different matter. Sarah took a deep breath. "I'll add ten percent to my payment for a favor."
"No need, Miss Crookshanks. I shall be glad to do any favor you wish, as I believe I still owe you one for Belize."
Sarah paused. She'd forgotten about Belize. "Thank you, Jean-Claude," she said, pinching the bridge of her nose. The exhaustion, both from having slept very little in the past three days and from her fits of fury, coupled with the terror and uncertainty of just how stark and huge everything she was now doing, had made constant tears a veritable option. She felt the telltale prickle and burn of them against the edges of her eyelids and wanted to tell Jean-Claude not to be nice to her right now, that she couldn't bear it. Instead, she cleared her throat and gathered her will. She let Agent Walker take over and pick up the slack that Sarah-Sam had dropped. "The favor is going to be a strange one."
"The best favors are, no?"
"Very true. I need you to use your contacts to get a file to an FBI agent."
There was a pause on the other end of the line. "That is indeed a very strange favor, Miss Crookshanks."
"I know."
"But no matter, it is small repayment for Belize. Whose file, and to which agent?"
It took a moment of searching her memory, but she recalled a Christmas party a couple of years into her time at Harvard. Graham had brought along the recruits staying at the Farm over the Christmas holiday, just for a night on the town and a chance to unwind, and he had made sure they all had drinks, even if Sarah hadn't been of drinking age yet. She had met Director Lansky there, which had led to him requesting her for his program in the Secret Service the minute she had finished up at Harvard, but apparently that wasn't going to be her most beneficial contact of the night.
"The agent's name is Gwendolyn Davenport," she said now, remembering the introduction and her own curiosity about what an inter-agency liaison did. Graham hadn't liked the woman at all, but Sarah had. "She works for the FBI, and she runs the—"
"Yes, I know of her," Jean-Claude said.
Sarah wasn't surprised. Jean-Claude knew everybody. "And you already have the file in question."
"You want me to send this Charles Bartowski's file to Davenport?"
"Yes. No return address."
"Naturally not. Would you like to include a note?"
"See you soon. Sign it Crimson Radcliffe."
"Cryptic," Jean-Claude said, and Sarah could hear a pen scratching in the background. Though the man worked with computers to falsify passport and ID papers, she knew he preferred writing with a silver ballpoint pen, and that his notes were in chicken scratch so hard to read, it was often mistaken for code. "But fitting. Another Harvard alum?"
"You know you're not supposed to be asking those questions, Jean-Claude." She had to smile. She'd come up with the code off the top of her head, so she wasn't offended that it was easy to crack. There was a slight chance that Gwen Davenport might remember their conversation at the Christmas party, but Sarah doubted it. Still, she couldn't get more specific. Hopefully, she would get a chance to explain. Even more hopefully, she wouldn't be wearing prison stripes while doing so.
"Ah, yes. I forget these things, it must be my age."
He had maybe ten years on her. "Or your incorrigibility. You'll be able to get that file sent?"
"By the time you get to St. Petersburg, it will already be on Agent Davenport's desk."
"You're wonderful, Jean-Claude."
"I am. I will be waiting for you at the airport, personally."
"What? Jean-Claude, you don't have to do that—"
"Nonsense. I want to meet the young man who has so captivated the young Miss Crookshanks."
"He hasn't—"
"Au Revoir," Jean-Claude said, and hung up.
Sarah pulled the phone away from her ear. Was it really that obvious, that even her contacts were picking up on her—love was too strong, infatuation too scary, so she settled onthing—thing for Chuck? Granted, Jean-Claude had an edge over the others, as she had contacted him fifteen months before with the request to have paperwork ready for herself and Chuck at a moment's notice. But still.
She pushed that thought aside and focused on what was supposed to be important. She'd set Chuck on a path, hopefully getting his case the attention from a representative that it deserved. She had no way of being sure she could trust Agent Davenport, but she was out in the cold, and beggars couldn't be choosers. And maybe it was petty as hell, but she enjoyed the fact that she'd set a woman on Chuck's case that she knew Graham didn't like. After all that Graham's administration had done to Chuck, she wanted to do worse.
Chuck. Crap. Sarah checked her watch and swore under her breath, this time in French. She'd left him alone for too long, with a bunch of strangers in the compartment. She'd seen the beginning onset of a panic attack just earlier that day. How the hell could she have forgotten that, and risked it already? She had to get better at pushing her emotions to the side, which meant no more of these little fits.
She indulged herself for only a quick second more to look in the mirror, and wished she hadn't. "Death warmed over" would have been an improvement.
"Suck it up, Walker," she told herself, and went back to go see if Chuck was all right.
27 SEPTEMBER 2007
PULKOVO AIRPORT
11:48 YEKT
"Um, Sarah, I hate to point this out, but the terminals are that way," Chuck said, pointing past the line of taxi cabs outside the gate and at the two large terminal buildings in the distance.
The encroaching tiredness made her reply a little short. She could only hope that Jean-Claude had packed the energy bars she had requested into their supplies, as she could use a serious bit of protein. "We're not flying commercial."
Confusion spread over Chuck's face as Sarah climbed into one of the golf carts set off to the side. She would have preferred one of the cars meant for the tarmac, but that was more likely to attract attention, so the golf cart would have to do. Besides, it was easier to hotwire, which she set about doing, grateful that the day wasn't too cold. Chuck might be sweating a little in his parka, but he didn't seem to mind the discomfort, and she hated hotwiring engines with cold fingers.
"Are we hijacking this?" Chuck sounded alarmed. "Wait, we're not hijacking a plane, are we?"
He really did have a lot to learn about being inconspicuous, Sarah couldn't help but think. His alarm was kind of adorable, though. "No," she said, and started the engine. It felt nice to sink back into the driver's seat. Finally, something she could control. She'd been on public transportation ever since they had dumped the snowmobile, and it always made her feel edgy. "I just don't want to walk all the way to the hangar. C'mon, get in." She thought about it for a second. "And hold on."
She needed something to wake her up, after all.
Maybe, she thought when they finally spun into the hangar, going up on two wheels for a split second, she should have gone a little slower. Chuck looked a bit seasick, though he didn't complain about it. She almost wished he would, as it would be better than his general dolor and hopelessness.
She grabbed an oilcloth from the backseat and wiped down the steering wheel, tossing the rag to Chuck. "Fingerprints," she told him, and did a sweep of the hangar, checking every sniper-likely corner and the shadows around planes to see if any of them were hiding any agents. She had a feeling they were still ahead of the CIA and the US government, as the perfect place to nab them would have been to box the taxi in, force it into an alley, and black-bag them both, but it never hurt to be too cautious. Her plane sat at the mouth of the hangar, evidently ready to go. Between them and the plane stood a tall man in a black coat.
The exhaustion abruptly ebbed down to a dull ache. Sarah felt the smile spread without realizing it, and took off. Laughing, Jean-Claude caught her in a hug. "You didn't have to come!" Sarah said, punching his shoulder. She'd switched to French without thinking about it. "I told you I was fine with dealing with customs myself!"
"Sometimes we all need a hand. It's already taken care of."
"What would I do without you?"
"Your life would be much emptier," Jean-Claude said, smiling. "But then, it's the same for everybody."
"Were there any problems with the file?"
"None, it's all taken care of. Gwen Davenport will find it on her desk when she comes in to work in the morning."
"I owe you one," Sarah said, and hurried on when Jean-Claude opened his mouth to protest. "I do. It means a lot to me."
"We're even. You rescued my wife, I've helped your man."
"He's not my man," Sarah said just as Chuck, carrying her rucksack and blinking, joined them. She turned guiltily, but Chuck's face told her he didn't speak a word of French.
"Bonjour," he said.
Okay, Sarah's brain corrected, maybe one word. And in a terrible accent. But it was still vaguely adorable, given that Jean-Claude was probably the first person he'd talked to in person in years besides her and Bryce.
"Oh, right," she said, smiling over at Chuck. He didn't even seem particularly nervous, but that could have been his own exhaustion dulling that edge. The poor guy just looked so worn out. "Chuck, this is Jean-Claude. Jean-Claude, this is—"
"Peter Rogers. It's an honor to meet you, Pete," Jean-Claude said. Chuck's brows drew together as he shook the other man's hand until Jean-Claude held out an envelope. "Your documents."
"What?" Chuck asked. Sarah, who had received the same type of envelope from Jean-Claude a few times, watched as he unearthed and dropped a passport and new social security card. They looked completely authentic and even a little worn, as if they'd been used before, which was always a nice touch Jean-Claude added to his forged documents. "What?"
Since he looked at her for an explanation, Sarah cleared her throat. Jean-Claude Gestreaux was the European equivalent to NCS, as he was better with documents that Interpol might see on a daily basis, so a lot of the European-based teams preferred outsourcing for his services rather than trusting the home office. And like any good forger, he dabbled in the gray, which was why she liked him over the techs at the NCS. But she didn't really want to explain any of that to Chuck, so she kept it simple. "Jean-Claude's what we call a grease-man. He's the one that arranged airport security to let us in. The best in the business, right here."
And since the authenticity of the documents Jean-Claude regularly forged had saved her life a few times, she really wasn't kidding.
"Always glad to help my favorite face," Jean-Claude said. "Don't forget your own papers."
She was never sure what she was going to get with Jean-Claude, so to see a completely normal name (he'd forged papers for her as Odessa Cleveland once, and for some reason, it had worked perfectly) threw her a bit. "Diana Rogers?" she asked, just to make sure. The last name was the same as Chuck's, as she had requested, but she had been expecting something less ordinary, like Credenza or Emmaline.
"Clever, isn't it? You mentioned that he liked comic books," Jean-Claude said, switching to French. Sarah nearly answered in English, since he was being rude, but the Belgian continued, "So this is the man that has captured the interest of my favorite face."
"He's a friend," Sarah said, raising her eyebrow again. "He's in a rough spot."
"The same rough spot he's been in for...fifteen months?" Jean-Claude's eyebrow went up in a perfect mimicry of her own.
"It's complicated. But we do need to hurry."
"Understandably. The next time you two are in Bruges, you will stop by? Marlene would love to meet the love of her rescuer."
She must have been tired, as Sarah felt a blush start to heat her cheeks. She willed it back. "Perhaps. Thank you again, Jean-Claude."
"It was my pleasure. I assume the usual applies? The last time we saw each other was in Hamburg and I've never seen his face before?" Jean-Claude nodded over at Chuck, who was still studying the passport.
"Of course." Sarah reached over very carefully and touched Chuck's sleeve, hoping he wouldn't jolt and give away the effects of the bunker even more than the hunched shoulder and constant glances at the door and ceiling already did. The less Jean-Claude knew or realized about Chuck, the better. She trusted him—she wouldn't have used him otherwise—but there was no way to be sure. He jumped, but it was only a little. She gave him an apologetic smile. "We'd better move out."
"What? Oh. Oh, sure. Right." Chuck turned to Jean-Claude, ever polite. They shook hands. "Thanks for the new identity. I appreciate the name."
"No problem. Sarah—oh, my apologies, Diana." Jean-Claude steepled his fingers together and made a little bow. "I shall be in touch."
"I'm sure," Sarah said, smiling. It would likely be the opposite way, and they both knew it.
"Look for my bill." Jean-Claude gave her one last grin, his teeth bright against his face, before he seemed to melt back into the hangar. She heard his whistle long after he'd vanished from sight. There, she thought as she turned, keeping a hand on Chuck's forearm, goes the most cheerful human being I know.
"Our ride's this way," she told Chuck, heading toward the plane she'd bought eighteen months before. She loved having a plane of her own, even if keeping it in Europe meant there wasn't much opportunity to get out and fly it. Bryce had learned helicopter piloting during their training, but Sarah had preferred the traditional flying lessons. It made long flights much easier to know that she could land the plane safely if something were to happen to the pilot. "If I know Jean-Claude at all, it'll be cleared and ready to go."
She was right. Jean-Claude had seen to almost every detail: the clothing and luggage she had requested, the fuel, bagged food for the next forty-eight hours, even a couple of bottles of American Coke sitting in the cup holders, perfectly chilled. She climbed into the cockpit and let out a happy sigh. Her body might be so weary she ached, but she had her plane back. She hit the toggle and let the tower know their designation and destination.
"All right," she said, moving the headphones so that only one earpiece fit over her ears. The depressing thing was that she needed to; if the tower had been alerted to be on the lookout for her plane, she might need every sense she had available. She had registered the plane under another identity, and it was unlikely that the CIA knew about it. They would have already been waiting beside it when she and Chuck arrived, she figured. But it was better to be cautious. "We're good to go."
"Just like that?" Chuck asked, and she looked over at him, forcing a smile for his benefit. He seemed more comfortable inside the plane, most likely due to the confined space. And at certain angles, his face seemed oddly disproportionate to the rest of his body. His cheekbones were strangely sharp for somebody so thickly built.
She focused past that. "I'm in black ops. I know how to travel, ah, expediently when I need to." She was still holding her Diana Rogers paperwork, she realized, so she held that out. "Hold these. Whatever you do, don't touch anything."
Chuck nodded. She turned to do the last of the pre-flight checks. "So, uh," Chuck said, clearing his throat. "Same last name, huh?"
"Yeah. Same last name." Stupid, Walker, she thought when yet another infernal blush threatened to spread. What had she been hoping? That he wouldn't notice or comment? And she was being an idiot. This was just a cover, the same as any false identity or cover she had been taking up since before she could walk. There was absolutely no reason to feel self-conscious.
Apparently, she wasn't the only one. "What's our, uh, cover? Rocking a little brother-sister identity action?"
She almost wanted to laugh. Nobody in the sighted world would buy them as siblings, not with her porcelain complexion and his much duskier skin tone. "More like husband-wife," she said, "since we look nothing alike." She eyed him out of the corner of her eye for a second, and made up the first story that came to mind. "You're in software, your product is selling well. I'm your extreme sports-loving wife that you met six years ago when mutual friends introduced us."
"Wow. Detailed. How come you're the extreme sports-lover in this situation?"
Because I doubt you've ever used a hang-glider to break into a Colombian drug lord's compound and then rappelled down the side of a building, Sarah thought. She figured that probably wasn't the nicest way to remind him of his time stuck in a bunker, so she said, "Because I'm the one flying the plane." Since married couples were usually asked about children, she barreled on, "We left the little ones with...Uncle Bryce while you had to be in St. Petersburg to meet with clients. And now we're taking a second honeymoon through Eastern Europe. I've always wanted to, and Pete can't say no to Diana."
There, she thought as she taxied out, that was a pretty solid cover story. Though if she felt anywhere near as awful on her actual honeymoon as she did now, it was going to be a short marriage.
Chuck sounded amused. "Can't he now? Good to know."
"It is, I think. Hold on." Chatter sounded through her headset to let her know she was cleared to proceed to the airstrip. She acknowledged it in a Russian accent—no need to make things easier for the CIA later by being an American at this point—and began to taxi. The farther the plane drew away from the hangar, the more she could see the nerves take over Chuck, making him twitch and clench his fist against his trousers.
Finally, the dam broke. "So, um, uh, how good a pilot are you? What are we talking about here? Every once in a while, recreational type flyer or more hardcore stuff? Like, look out, MIG, while I fly upside down, flip you the bird, and maybe get a Polaroid to treasure the memories?"
Well, that was oddly specific, but she didn't want to look stupid by asking about it, so she just said, "Relax, I'm a great pilot." She would have said more, but the tower contacted her then, letting her know she was cleared to take off. She acknowledged once more and turned a full-watt smile to Chuck. "Ready for take-off, Chuck?"
He looked scared to death, but also like he was trying not to be. "Sure."
"Excellent. Let's do this." Sarah pushed on the throttle and sent the plane down the runway. Last chance for the CIA to stop them easily, she thought, but there was nothing between them and the end of the tarmac. She felt a spike of adrenaline break through the weariness, pulled back the throttle, and they hit open air. The cloud ceiling was pretty high, and Jean-Claude had left weather and sky reports for her with her pre-flight checklist, so she wasn't anticipating a bumpy ride—a blessing, since Chuck seemed plenty nervous as the plane did its climb. He stuck by his promise not to touch anything, which she appreciated. She wasn't a perfectionist, but the less that went wrong on this journey, the better. On the other hand, though, maybe something should go wrong. Things were going too smoothly, apart from her brief rage fit in the train bathroom earlier, and Chuck's near panic attack. Of course, maybe disaster should wait. She could think of worse places for it than alone in a Cessna over Russian airspace, but not many.
"I'm rapidly changing my mind about this whole Bond thing. I'm starting to think you're way cooler than Bond," Chuck said, breaking the silence once she had reached cruising altitude. His knuckles were no longer striped pink and white on the door handle, she saw.
That, as much as Chuck's words, made her grin, but the grin faltered when she looked down at the parka. The plane was going to get warm fast for him, and there wasn't anybody but them around, and no reason to freak out. It was time.
"I had Jean-Claude pick up some clothes for you," she said, keeping her voice completely casual. "They're in the back. I told him you were tall, but...I don't know exactly how well they'll fit." Or if they would be baggy enough. But anything would be better than the mummy-shirt and parka at this point.
She saw Chuck take a deep breath, but all he said was, "Fantastic." She had to lean over to avoid being elbowed in the head as he climbed into the back of the cockpit, as he was lanky and ungainly, but she didn't mind. She heard rustling behind her that indicated he was going through the clothes. For a full ten minutes, she could hear nothing from the back of the plane over the engine noise. She didn't look back. She desperately wanted to, just to make sure Chuck wasn't simply sitting in one of the back seats, having given up, but she kept her gaze resolutely forward. She needed Chuck to trust her, and to do that, she needed to do everything she could to earn that trust.
But damn did she want to peek.
"I think we may need to toss my old gear out the window," Chuck called, sounding a great deal more cheerful than she expected.
"We'll burn it when we get to Athens," she called back. She glanced down inadvertently, and spotted the toes of Chuck's boots, all that she could see of him. "There's shoes, too."
She'd been expecting some general acknowledgment; she was not expecting for Chuck to burst out laughing. The noise startled her so badly that she whirled in her seat, already reaching for her gun. "What? What is it?"
Chuck said something. She didn't hear it.
Oh, she thought, my God.
Her first thought was sheer annoyance at herself for not demanding Chuck remove the parka the minute they left Siberia because—damn. Hot damn, even. Apparently the parka and the ski pants had been hiding quite a bit. She'd heard of the phrase "hiding your light under a bushel" but—damn. Holy hell. That was some light. The version of Chuck that appeared in her dreams occasionally, the dreams she was never telling anybody about, didn't even come close. Sure, the sweater and jeans were a little baggy, but even that couldn't hide the fact that Chuck had a body most athletes would kill for, swimmers especially. Apparently the work-out she had interrupted in the bunker wasn't just a one-off deal, if the toned and muscular build had anything to say about it.
Her second thought was that if she'd thought they'd had problems before, they were nothing compared to now. She was pretty sure she had just forgotten anything and everything in her brain, and that included how to fly a plane. Normally, she might not have been too upset about that, but some sardonic part of her couldn't resist pointing out the irony of crashing and burning in a horrible accident before getting her hands on a piece of that because she was so frazzled by...that.
And, oh, God, even her thoughts weren't making any sense anymore. In two seconds, she was going to start drooling.
"What is it?" Chuck asked, and the question broke through Sarah's haze of shock.
She controlled the reflex to jolt, and hoped that the blood didn't rush to her face. Apparently she remembered enough about flying a plane to know how to handle the controls, for she automatically changed her grip. "Nothing," she said, and wanted to wince. Was that her voice? When the hell had she started sucking on helium? And for that matter, when had she turned into an awkward teenager with a huge crush?
She knew the answer to the second, but it didn't make things any less comfortable. And now on top of everything, there was a steaming hot serving of lust.
She was so doomed.
"You're staring," Chuck said.
"No, I wasn't."
"Oh, come on. You totally were."
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Chuck raise his eyebrows and wiggle them, grinning as he teased her. The smile escaped before she could stop it. "I wasn't staring," she said, and cleared her throat. It felt awful to lie, even over something this minimal, so she added, "Precisely. I've just—I've never seen you without the Eskimo gear."
And if I'd known exactly what you looked like without it, she couldn't help but think, my dreams over the past two years would have been a great deal more...explicit. This really was like her birthday come early for her imagination.
Face it, Walker. If you weren't moonstruck before, you're definitely gone now.
Crap.
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