1 FEBRUARY 2008
GRAND SAVILLE ROOM 707
15:37 PST
“So, this is cozy.” Chuck leaned forward until his chin rested against his chest. He would have leaned back, but he had tried, and had knocked heads with Casey so hard that the other man had growled. “Is this normal? I mean, despite living in Siberia, I know nothing about Russians. Do they usually tie up people like they’re going to drop them on the railroad tracks and blow the train brakes?”
“Your mouth is moving,” Casey said. “You might want to see to that.”
Chuck fell silent, but unfortunately, being quiet allowed his brain more time to think and he’d already counted the number of horrible ways that he and Casey could die. He had no desire to revisit that list. So he eyed the guards left in the room, all of whom wore tailored suits that told Chuck their drug and gun running businesses were going well. They all carried semi-automatics. “Hey,” he said to them, wishing he spoke better Russian—or Russian at all, really. “Is this normal? Do you, like, tie all of your captives up like this?”
“Shut up,” the guard said in a thick accent.
“I’m gonna take that as a yes.” When Victor Federov and his flunkies had come around the corner, there hadn’t been time for Chuck and Casey to dive for cover. To give Ilsa a chance to get away, they’d come forward and put down their guns. Chuck imagined that Sarah was somewhere cursing both of them, but it couldn’t be helped.
At least, he hoped she was somewhere cursing him. The fact that she’d sent the warning to his phone meant she could be in trouble, too.
“Knock it off,” Casey said.
He raised his head. “Knock what off?”
“You’re twitching, and it’s pissing me off. So knock it off.”
“Shut up, both of you,” the guard closest to Casey said.
Chuck wanted to point out that he expected better hospitality at the most expensive hotel in Los Angeles, but in what was probably a moment of sheer mind reading, Casey jerked. His back hit Chuck’s since they were hogtied back to back like something out of an old Saturday morning western with, of all things, the ropes that held the curtains. The NSA agent might consider the move a light tap, but it took Chuck a few seconds to get his breath back. He took the hint.
He hoped Sarah was okay. They hadn’t heard gunfire. That had to be a good thing, right?
Even so, most of the Russians were out searching for Ilsa and any accomplices that might have come with Chuck and Casey, which was worrying. Or, at least, he assumed that that was what was happening. He didn’t know how Ilsa had done it, but by the time the Russians had neutralized Chuck and Casey, she had vanished completely from the alcove.
“Great,” Casey had grumbled as they’d been hauled to Victor Federov’s rooms and tied in place with the curtain pulls. “We let the Frenchie get away.”
Chuck suspected Casey was rather pleased about that, but he kept silent on the subject.
At least there hadn’t been any Russkie jokes yet. They also hadn’t been shot. The two may have been related.
“So, O Major, my Major, how do we get out of this one? Is there some secret NSA trick to get out of these ropes?” Chuck asked, keeping his voice low.
“Working on it,” Casey said. “And have a little more respect for Whitman.”
“Yes, sir.” Chuck would have given a sarcastic salute, but his hands were pinned to his side. Behind him, Casey let out a noise that was halfway to a growl, but apparently decided to let it go. They remained silent, the bored guards watching. Chuck spent his time wondering what Sarah was up to. Was she going to drop in from the ceiling tiles? Ninja her way in through the window? Fight off a legion of bad guys with Katanas?
“Chuck.” Casey’s voice was low almost to the point of being inaudible. “Listen close, but don’t act like you’re listening.”
Chuck deliberately looked up at the ceiling tiles as if there were something interesting up there. “What’s up?” He tried to speak without moving his lips. The words came out a bit slurred, but he’d sounded more incoherent in the mornings at the apartment pre-coffee, and Casey had never had any problem understanding him then.
“Any slack on your side? Move slowly.”
It felt absurd, but Chuck began to wiggle. “Not really.”
“Damn it.”
An idea struck. “You ever run a three-legged race, Casey?”
“Why the hell would I? What’s wrong with the two legs I got?”
“Point, but isn’t there some principle we could apply here, maybe? If we work together…”
“I don’t know. I—” Casey broke off as the door opened and Federov came back in. The crime boss, however, only said something in Russian to the guards and vanished into the hallway again. Both agents watched him go.
“What’d he say, Ca—Badenovski?” Chuck asked in a normal voice, so the guards wouldn’t think he was being too quiet after talking for pretty much the entire time he’d been tied up.
“Shut up, moron,” Casey said.
“It hurts me when you stereotype me, Casey.”
Chuck felt Casey twitch, and he nearly jolted when he realized Casey was suppressing a laugh. A second later, the too-quiet talking started again. “They’re looking for Ilsa and ‘a blonde.’”
“Sarah,” Chuck breathed.
“Rest easy, she’s fine.”
“That’s a relief.”
“Probably calling in everything up to a stealth bomber and misappropriating government resources like nothing else for your skinny ass, but fine.”
“I highly doubt Sarah is going to turn L.A. into a nuclear wasteland just because of me.”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night, Bar—Cousin Sascha.”
Chuck almost shook his head, but remembered that the guards had no idea they were communicating. Instead, he sighed under his breath. “I can’t believe,” he said, “that it was my name that gave us away. Stupid Cousin Grigory. Did it never occur to them that I might have taken Rosa’s name when I married her?”
“What the hell are you blathering about?”
“I don’t know, anything to distract myself from the fact that a Russian oligarch is currently using the upholstery to tie us up and my girlfriend might be on the phone getting nuclear codes to come save us.”
“Now you see what I have to worry about every damn day.”
“Every damn day you get to work in an underground government base with every type of weapon imaginable. Your life must really suck, Casey.”
He felt Casey jerk again, another laugh. “Any ideas other than some doofus picnic game?”
Something started to form in the back of Chuck’s mind. “Maybe. You think you can get us out of here if I get us loose?”
“If we have the element of surprise.”
“Gotcha. Should we wait for Sarah?”
“Negative. The sooner we get out of here, the better.”
Chuck slowly turned his head, eying each of the guards in turn. Two of them picked their fingernails, obviously bored. One sneaked furtive looks at the wide-screen TV on the wall. None of them paid Chuck and Casey any attention. Confident in that, Chuck began studying the hotel suite.
The door ahead of him led to Victor Federov’s bedroom, and it was closed; therefore, not a viable escape option. They’d been tied up back to back and left on stools beside the couch, in the center of the room. Not much cover, he deduced—the couch, if they could get it between them and the guards, and the kitchenette, with its waist-high countertop that blocked it off from the rest of the room. Chuck could see only two egress points: the balcony and the door. There were two guards between them and each of the points. Chuck was more worried about the ones between him and the door, as he didn’t fancy going for a swim, assuming they survived the trip to the pool.
“Casey,” he said, speaking lowly again. “I think I can get us loose.”
“Yeah?”
“We’ll have to move quickly, but on the count of three, get to your feet, standing up as straight as you can.”
“Got it.”
“One…two…three!”
The guards immediately turned as Chuck and Casey shot to their feet. “Casey, now! Jump!”
Casey obeyed, possibly because he didn’t think about who was giving the order. As the other man jumped, Chuck forced his own weight down. He splayed his legs wide like a hockey goalie going for the save, so that Casey wouldn’t land on his calves, and dropped. He felt his upper arms erupt with flame as the friction literally burned, but he popped clear of the rope and immediately rolled forward.
Casey didn’t miss a beat. He kicked out, foot swinging in a wide arc. Chuck heard the thud of the foot hitting the guard’s jaw, but he didn’t stick around to find out. If he stayed still too long, the guards would have a target, and they were already far too open in the middle of the room. To buy himself time, he snatched up the remote from the coffee table and flung it at the second guard’s head. By the time it hit, Chuck had already leap-frogged to his feet and was scrambling toward the door.
No luck. Two guards blocked his way. Chuck swerved mid-run, ducking forward just as a guard tried to grab him. The breeze ruffled his hair as the guard missed. Chuck spun in place and back-tracked, dodging around the guard again. Games of freeze tag and their tactics really did stick forever, he had time to think as he dodged yet again.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t considered the guard’s buddy. Something grabbed him from behind in a huge bear hug, pinning his arms to his side. “Casey!” Chuck shouted, struggling.
Again, he was out of luck. A quick glance told him Casey was fighting off two guards of his own.
“Hold still!” the guard holding Chuck grunted.
Chuck only fought harder, especially when the guard he’d dodged picked himself off of the ground and began heading toward Chuck. Across the room, Casey let out a grunt; apparently, he was faring just as well as Chuck.
The guard in front of Chuck pulled his gun from his holster. Chuck struggled anew.
“No guns!” the guard holding Chuck said. “Too loud!”
“Very well, we do this Russian way.” The guard holstered his gun and pushed up his sleeves. “No need to worry about his face, eh? Is not pretty anyway.”
“Hey, I happen to think I have a very pretty face,” Chuck said, trying to jerk free. He almost stilled when he realized what he said. “Uh, I meant manly. Manly, manly face.”
“Is okay. Won’t recognize it when I’m done,” the guard said, actually pulling on thick, ornate rings like an old school bouncer.
“Hell,” Chuck said. The guard had a point, and Chuck discovered right then that he was fonder of his face than he had thought. In a move of more desperation than finesse, he kicked up with both legs and shoved his feet into the guard’s chest. That guard tumbled back with a curse. Chuck and his guard went backward with more of a shout. The impact jarred Chuck, but it surprised his guard into loosening his hold, and Chuck needed no more invitation than that. He rolled free, his hand darting out and closing around something before he realized what it was. And then he was running, nearly tripping as he tried to gain traction on the carpet. It didn’t matter where, just as long as it was away.
As a result, he ran to the tiny kitchenette, blocked off from the rest of the hotel room by that countertop. Casey broke free of his own guards. As one, the two of them each vaulted over the counter, ducking before the Russians could stop caring at the idea that guns were too loud.
“Casey!” Chuck slid the gun he’d lifted off of his guard across the kitchen tiles.
“Excellent. Stay down.” Casey snatched up the gun and rose to his feet, aiming at the nearest guard. If Chuck craned his neck just right, he could see the NSA agent smirk. “Don’t move.”
There was a curse, possibly from the guard whose gun Chuck had stolen.
“Drop the gun,” one of the guards said, “or we shoot!”
“Not in this lifetime, Commie.” Casey adjusted his stance. “You drop your gun.”
There was a pause as everybody in the room considered this. Finally, Chuck, huddled against the counter, voiced what everybody was thinking. “Are we in a Mexican standoff with the Russians, Casey?”
“There’s four of us, and only two of you,” a guard said.
“Excellent math skills, Sherlock.” Casey’s smirk was pure sarcasm now. “But these firearms are just so darn loud, aren’t they? Would hate to wake the neighbors.”
“Drop the gun!”
“Not happening, Pinko.”
It was only a matter of time, Chuck figured, until the Russians remembered that they had at least one, if not a legion, of cops in their pockets, cops that would be willing to get them out of any firearms violations if they did shoot Chuck and Casey. So while Casey quipped and the guards waited for backup, Chuck began to search everything he could from his vantage point. The counters were clean, with only a washrag, a coffee service tray, and remains of a cold-cut sub on one, and some brochures on another. No luck there. Chuck edged forward and moving quickly, moving quietly, began to rifle through the counter under the sink.
“Damn,” he said to himself as Casey cracked a joke that would have made Gorbachev cry, “how much do these guys drink?”
He nearly shoved aside one of the many bottles of vodka to try and see if there was anything in the back that could help him. His hand froze halfway.
An idea formed.
A horrible, horrible idea.
“I’m so going to hell for this,” he said, and grabbed the first bottle of vodka. His hands were shaking a little as he wrenched off the cap and, still moving quietly, scooted across the kitchen floor. He could only hope none of the Russians noticed his hand sneak up and grab the sugar packets from the coffee tray, and the washrag.
Just as he finished his ministrations, the door to the hotel suite burst open. Victor hadn’t returned, but the other guards had.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Chuck said, popping to his feet, hands empty, before the shouting could begin. “Everybody, let’s just calm down, okay? No need for violence here!”
“Says who?” Casey and one of the guards asked at the same time.
Chuck gave Casey an intent look and hoped the other man could read his thoughts. “They outnumber us six to two.” He glanced at the door as it opened again. Not Victor, but another hungover Russian. He sympathized. “Make that seven.”
“I’m not putting my gun down,” Casey said.
“Let’s face it, they’ve won, we’ve lost. It’s time to fall on our swords.”
Casey scowled. “A little gunplay and you start running for the hills, Charlene?”
“Charlene, because I’m a girl? How original.” Chuck turned to the guards, keeping his hands in the air. They had been watching the back and forth with mild interest. “Look, there are more of you than there are of us. This isn’t going to end without getting messy, and I don’t like messy. We’ll surrender, I promise, just…don’t hit the face, okay? Not my face. Anywhere but my—” He realized there was a part of his anatomy he was just as fond of, and broke off by clearing his throat. “Not my face, okay?”
“Very well,” the leader of the guards said. “We accept your terms. No face.”
“Hey, I didn’t say I accepted the nerd’s terms!” Casey said.
“We can work with this,” the guard said. He turned to his buddies and gave a little laugh, jerking his head at Casey. “His face, we can hit.”
“Hey!”
“It’s only fair, Casey,” Chuck said. “You didn’t agree to the terms.”
He wondered if anybody else heard Casey’s growled “Bartowski” except him and possibly any small creatures in the vicinity.
“But yeah,” Chuck said, and stretched both hands forward, offering his wrists to be tied up, “we’ll go quietly. With honor. Like the, uh, honorable people we are.”
The nearest guard moved to wrap the rope around Chuck’s wrists, despite the fact that Casey shifted and pointed the gun straight at that guard, not relenting. Chuck waited until the rope had almost touched his skin before he took a step back, pretending reluctance.
“One thing,” he said, hoping he came across as more of a dissembling nerd than he sounded at the moment. “Let’s not front here. You’re going to kill me, and I don’t know if it’s Russian custom, but here, we grant a last request before we deep-six somebody.”
“We do that,” one of the guards said, sounding affronted. Chuck heard mutterings about, “Not just a bunch of communists” from the back, and figured his time was short.
So he plowed on. “In that case, I have a request.”
“What? What is it?”
“A cigarette? I am jonesing for a—for a drag. It’s been hours, man.” Chuck put real desperation in his voice, aware that Casey was probably doing his hardest not to stare at the fact that he’d essentially grown a third arm. “Just one smoke, that’s all.”
The guard looked around at his buddies, puzzled. Meeting only shrugs, the guard reached into his own pocket and withdrew a pack of cigarettes, offering it and a lighter to Chuck.
“Thanks,” Chuck said. He screwed up his courage, hoped it didn’t look like he didn’t have the first clue what he was doing, and put the cigarette between his lips. His hands were still shaking as he lit the tip. Please, he thought, please don’t cough, please don’t cough, please don’t cough.
Of course, he coughed. And his eyes watered.
Oh, God, that was foul.
Still coughing, he doubled over, wheezing. And even though his vision had blurred, he wasted no time. He flicked the lighter on and lit the washrag. As was his luck, it took a second for the flames to catch. He hadn’t soaked very much of the rag first.
“Are you okay, man?” a guard asked, since Chuck had dropped out of their line of sight behind the counter. “They’re just Marlboros.”
“Yeah,” Chuck said, and coughed. He cleared his throat and pounded his free hand against his chest. “I’m fine, I’m fine, I promise. Also—”
He straightened. And every Russian in the room—and Casey—froze when they saw what he was holding. Chuck’s voice sounded different when he said, “Here’s how it’s going to be. I’m not unaware of the irony of throwing this at you even though the Soviet Union is no more, but if you let Casey and me go, I won’t.”
There was a pause as the guards looked at each other in confusion. The one nearest him voiced the question: “Won’t what?”
“Throw it at you,” Chuck said, his brow crinkling. “What part of that was hard to—never mind. You let us go, I don’t throw this. If you don’t put down your weapons on the ground in the next ten seconds, I throw this. If you try to come after us, I throw this. Are you getting the picture yet?”
He really hoped they didn’t hear his knees knocking together, as that would be counterproductive to the image of the badass he was trying to portray.
None of the guards moved. They were staring in fascination at the flicker of flame working its way up the washrag Chuck had taken from their counter.
“Are you nuts?” Casey said under his breath.
“It’s possible,” Chuck said. He turned toward the Russians, took a deep breath, and said, “My offer expires in ten seconds. Nine. Eight.”
At seven, two of the guards set their guns down.
At six, Chuck began to sweat harder.
At four, he began to pray.
At three, two more guards joined the first two.
At two, another did.
At one, Chuck felt a bead of sweat slide between his shoulder blades and down his back.
The last two guards set their guns on the ground.
Chuck’s knees dissolved, but he kept his back straight. “Excellent choice. We’ll be leaving now. Sorry to take time out of your day, gentlemen.” He belatedly realized he was still holding the cigarette and hastily began to search for an ash tray.
Casey grunted, stole the cigarette from Chuck, and crushed it under his foot. “Move it, moron,” he said quietly. He clamped a hand down on Chuck’s shoulder to guide him from the room.
They headed for the door, Chuck fighting bone-melting relief every step of the way. How had none of them called his bluff? Sure, he’d put sugar in the Molotov cocktail to help it spread, but he didn’t really want to blow anybody up, even if they were planning to kill him. So to just walk away without having to use this new, scarily-aflame weapon in his hand…
He’d spoken too soon. They barely cleared the counters, heading into the main part of the hotel room and toward the door, when the door itself opened.
Victor Federov filed in with two men, this time armed with submachine guns.
Chuck and Casey stopped in their tracks.
Victor’s eyes raked over both of them, pausing at the gun in Casey’s hand, and finally stopping on the flaming rag atop the bottle of vodka in Chuck’s. He went still, silence fell, time stretched to a breaking point and past it, and Victor simply turned to the men with him and said, “Shoot them.”
“Holy sh—”
Chuck barely felt himself go backwards. He was vaguely aware that something had grabbed him across the chest, something like an iron band. But the minute the words came out of Victor’s mouth, it seemed like reality disconnected itself. He watched in absurd slow motion as Victor’s guards raised those scary, almost insect-like rifles, aiming them at Casey, at Chuck.
If even one of them didn’t miss, Chuck would be almost as good a colander as Sonny Corleone.
He dropped the Molotov cocktail. It fell in the same timeless loop as everything else, tumbling end over end. The flames even looked pretty.
The band over Chuck’s chest tightened. He felt himself stumble, his foot dragging, but it didn’t seem to matter because he was still being pulled backwards at a frightening speed, even in the half-paced reality that now made up his world.
The guns continued to swing upwards, those muzzles growing larger and scarier with every millimeter.
The bottle thudded as it hit the toe of Chuck’s shoe and dropped to the carpet, but it didn’t break.
Chuck, and Casey, hit open air.
He would never recall precisely how it happened, save that one moment he was going backward and there was a jerk, and then there was nothing. His stomach imploded and jumped into his throat, and he had one wild second to look around and realize, So this is what it feels like to fall off of a building.
And then, of course, he was too busy falling.
Time slammed back into place, hard. He was dropping through empty air, his stomach upside down, his organs gone, nothing but a pit of sheer terror inside. He might have let out a scream. The ground was coming toward him, fast, alarmingly fast, too fast—
No. Not the ground. The pool. Casey had thrown them both toward the Grand Saville’s giant pool. He had only a split second to process that thought, to make his body rigid, arms at his sides, toes pointed. From this angle, the pool seemed impossibly blue, almost serene…
The impact hurt like hell.
It was like sprinting into somebody at a dead run, but far, far worse. He went from open space, heart clinging to his uvula, body suspended, to crashing through what felt like a brick wall. The deceleration as he hit the water threatened to rip him apart at the edges. He didn’t hit the pool bottom, but he abruptly stopped knowing which way was up. Everything around him was blue and blurry, and there wasn’t any air. He clawed blindly, fighting to get to oxygen even though he had no idea where it could be.
Something latched around his arm. Panic almost made him suck in an instinctual gasp, and he immediately began to struggle. Thanks to the water, he couldn’t see anything. So he lashed out, and kicked, fighting an unseen enemy. Whatever had a hold on him, however, wasn’t having any of that. They tugged, relentlessly, pulling on him.
His head broke the surface. Even as he sucked in his first breath, he was still fighting, still trashing around even though his limbs felt like lead and his head felt light and his shoes dragged at his feet. He wasn’t going to make it this far just to be taken by the Russians—
The grip on his arm changed to a head-lock. Chuck continued to thrash, fighting blindly with the water in his eyes, until he heard, “Bartowski! Relax, it’s just me!”
Abruptly, he stopped. “Oh. Uh, right.”
“You okay? Got your faculties about you?”
“What? Yeah, I mean, yeah, I’m good. I—” Chuck rubbed his eyes and looked around. A glance up at the balcony, the same one Casey had tossed them both over, suddenly made him light-headed.
“Let’s move. They’re not going to be stunned by our stupidity for too long, and I’d rather not be sitting ducks.” Casey was already hauling ass to the side of the pool, as if they hadn’t made the most death-defying leap in the history of the planet. Chuck belatedly hastened to follow. His entire body was shaking, huge quivers that had nothing to do with cold.
And it wasn’t over yet, he saw. He glanced up at the balcony again. “Casey, we’ve got company!”
Victor Federov stood on the same balcony Chuck and Casey had just abandoned, a gun in hand. Even from this distance, that gun looked terrifying. The Intersect hadn’t said anything about Victor being a crack shot, but Chuck didn’t like his odds.
Around the pool, those who had been enjoying the oddly warm February day began to scatter. Chuck and Casey’s plummet hadn’t made them scream, but there were shrieks of terror now.
Chuck swam faster, hoping that Victor was a terrible shot, hoping that his absurd streak of luck would hold up, that it would allow him to get to the edge of the pool and maybe to safety. He almost didn’t hear the familiar thunder of combat boots on pavement, but what happened next was unmistakable.
“FBI!” somebody shouted through a megaphone. “Freeze! Put your gun down and your hands in the air!”
Chuck and Casey stopped in shock. Fifteen or so black-clad figures appeared beside the pool, their guns pointed at the seventh floor balcony. And leading the way, carrying AR-15s and kitted out like the FBI agents, were Sarah and Ilsa. Why Ilsa had a gun, Chuck didn’t know, but he didn’t think he’d ever been so glad to see Sarah in his life. His eyebrows shot into his hairline.
Beside Chuck, Casey apparently forgot to keep treading, and bobbed for a second, almost disappearing under the surface. The NSA agent quickly regained his stroke, looking a little wet and a little more gob smacked but ultimately fine. Overhead, Victor Federov evidently decided fifteen FBI agents were too much for him. He set the gun down. Down by the pool, half of the FBI squad broke for the hotel at a run to go arrest Federov.
Sarah, meanwhile, crouched and gave her partners a wide-eyed look. Victor was apparently the FBI’s problem now, as Ilsa and Sarah paid them no heed. “What the hell are you doing,” Sarah said, “in there?”
“How else? We jumped,” Chuck said, and hauled himself over the lip of the pool. He pulled himself to his feet and marveled that he could stand at all, thanks to a combination of relief and fading adrenaline. “They were going to shoot us, so we jumped.”
He looked up to see all of the color drain from Sarah’s face. “What?”
“Well, it was either get wet or get shot and possibly blown up thanks to numbskull here,” Casey said as he climbed out. He hadn’t taken his eyes off of Ilsa.
“We chose to get wet.” Chuck saw Sarah almost teeter off of her feet as she looked from the balcony, seemingly miles overhead, and back to her partners. Chuck read her face an instant before she acted. “No,” he said, holding up a hand. “Stop, don’t. I’m all—”
Spoke too late, he thought as Sarah practically tackled him in her relief.
“Wet,” he finished, and sighed as that didn’t stop Sarah at all. “Figures.”
1 FEBRUARY 2008
GRAND SAVILLE PARKING LOT
16:27 PST
“I still don’t get why you two lunatics didn’t wait for me,” Sarah said as Chuck huddled in a blanket. Though he’d insisted that he was fine, dropping seven stories into the water was apparently something that required an extensive medical check, which meant Awesome had shown up in Castle’s ambulance and had done extensive checks over Chuck and Casey, neither of whom wanted the attention. At least Sarah had stopped hovering, as she’d been on the phone for the past twenty minutes. “We just went to get more backup and were almost there. There wasn’t really any need for you to join the swim team.”
“We didn’t know that,” Chuck said. “And despite Casey’s assertions, I was not at all close to blowing us up.”
“You dropped a Molotov cocktail on your own foot.”
“But the bottle didn’t break. It was carpet.”
“I never know what a day with you is going to be like,” Sarah said, but she wasn’t grumbling now. She lowered herself until she was sitting on the back of the ambulance next to him. After Awesome had checked him over, Chuck had chosen to sit there quietly and stay out of the way while Sarah dealt with things and Awesome called Ellie. It had been a good vantage point to watch the FBI lead away half of the Russian mob, and to observe Casey and Ilsa’s absurd dance where they talked to each other without talking to each other.
Sarah nodded over at the other couple now as she sat. Casey was leaning back against one of the pillars by the hotel’s front door, his arms folded across his chest and his face inscrutable while Ilsa spoke. “What’s going on with them?”
“I don’t know,” Chuck said. “I can’t read lips, but I think they’re working things out. As you put it yesterday, she hasn’t slapped him, and that’s a good sign.”
“It is.”
“What did the bosses say?”
“Oh, that wasn’t them. I think Graham’s playing golf today, and Beckman’s got other plans, so neither of them answered when I called. I was talking to the FBI techs—they seized Federov’s assets, including the plane they were supposed to take on their honeymoon.”
“Oh?” Since something in Sarah’s tone told him there was more to the story, he gestured for her to go on.
“It seems Victor was planning to fake his own death—and plot Ilsa’s real death at the same time—in some kind of plane crash. They had the black box already recorded.” Sarah tilted her head, possibly trying to eavesdrop on Casey and Ilsa. “Looks like you and Casey were supposed to have been on that plane, too.”
“If you hadn’t come along,” Chuck said, mustering up a smile for her.
“Or you hadn’t done your little swan dive.”
“Hey, I’m okay. The awesomest doctor on the planet even said so.”
“You’re insane,” Sarah said, but she was laughing out of what he suspected might be sheer relief. “For both your little vodka bomb trick and for letting Casey haul you out a window. Where on earth did you learn how to make a Molotov cocktail?”
“From Senor Molotov himself, of course.” Chuck flashed his sunniest grin. “Or, um, Wikipedia.”
“When would you have ever—you know what? I’m probably better off not knowing.”
“Probably wisest. Awesome’s telling Ellie about Casey’s and my little ‘swan dive’ as you called it, so expect the Ellie-pocalypse later.”
“Can’t wait.”
Sarah and Chuck looked up as one as Casey broke off from Ilsa. It was impossible to read his face and tell if the conversation had gone well. But that was pretty par for the course with Casey, Chuck reflected. He had two settings, really: neutral angry and angry.
This was more of a neutral angry, which lifted Chuck’s hopes a bit.
Casey squinted at Sarah for a moment before abruptly turning toward Chuck. “Bartowski, can I talk to you in private?”
“I’ll go try calling Beckman again,” Sarah said, and abandoned the field, though she shot Chuck an exaggerated grin and wiggled her eyebrows as she left.
Chuck had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. “What’s up, Casey?”
“Two things. First, I left something for you on your desk at Castle.” Casey scratched the back of his head. Like Chuck, he hadn’t changed clothes, though he hadn’t taken the blanket Awesome had offered. “Friend of mine finally got in touch. It’s about that info you requested back in D.C.”
It took Chuck a second to put it together. “About Phillip Dartmoor?”
“Yeah, left it on your desk. Manila envelope. Didn’t look at it yet.”
“Well, thank you, Casey.”
“And for the second thing.” Casey suddenly seemed to have difficulty meeting Chuck’s eyes. “Any chance you could make yourself scarce?”
“Right now?” Chuck asked, his eyes widening. He looked around at the FBI personnel still crowding the parking lot. “Why? Does somebody suspect I’m the Intersect?”
“No, that’s not precisely what I meant.” Casey cleared his throat. Chuck knew for sure now that he wasn’t imagining things: Casey was uncomfortable. “Can you make yourself scarce later? From the apartment?”
“From the—oh.” Chuck’s eyes immediately cut to where Ilsa was making a big show of not watching them, a few feet away. “Oh-ho. I guess that’s the end of all of this frog talk, huh?”
“Shut it, Bartowski.” There was a pause, and Casey sighed. “We may have worked things out.”
“Excellent. Good for you, Casey. And it’s no problem, I can stay at Castle or something. Place is all yours.”
Casey surprised him by raising an eyebrow. “At Castle? You serious?”
“Why wouldn’t I be? We keep some very comfortable cots there.” He’d sneaked down for catnaps on those cots during his lunch break a few times whenever he’d been up too late playing video games with Morgan, or working on his computer. If Casey wanted the apartment to himself, that was the perfect opportunity for Chuck to test some Mass Effect on his huge, high-def office monitors.
What Graham and Beckman didn’t know was going on behind their firewall couldn’t hurt them, right?
“Okay, then,” Casey said, shaking his head.
“What?”
“Nothing. Thanks, Bar—uh, Chuck.” Casey awkwardly patted him on the shoulder and started to head back to Ilsa. He seemed to remember something halfway there, and turned. “It’s going to be awhile. We’re going out to dinner first, so you know, no rush or anything.”
“Thanks, Casey.”
“Good work today, Chuck,” Casey said, and left.
Sarah reappeared, holding two cups of coffee obviously nicked from the lobby. “Just talked to Devon,” she said. “Casey’s going to take off with Ilsa, and we’ll ride back in the ambulance.”
“There’s words you never want to hear,” Chuck said, but obligingly climbed to his feet.
1 FEBRUARY 2008
BACHELOR PAD
17:48 PST
Chuck pushed open the door to his place and nearly had to grab his chest to make sure his heart hadn’t stopped. In the haze of all of the events of the day—waking up in Sarah’s bedroom, discovering the truth about Ilsa, threatening a bunch of Russians with flame and vodka, landing in the pool—he had nearly managed to forget that there had been a marathon drinking session at the Bachelor Pad, but the evidence was here in spades. They hadn’t turned off the video game before they’d rushed off, so the TV displayed the “idle” screen, which leaked blue light onto the cesspool of bottles, food wrappers, gun cleaning kits, and the full ashtray that had once been their coffee table.
The bottle of Jim Beam lay on its side, where one of them must have knocked it over on their way out the door, and the whole place reeked of the spilled alcohol. Thankfully, the bottle had been mostly empty.
And in a few hours, Casey would be bringing Ilsa home to this.
“Well, great,” Chuck said. He’d intended only to grab a quick shower, pack an overnight bag, and head to Castle. Now it looked like he would have to add tidying. It really was the least he could do, as Casey had saved both their lives earlier that day.
So he dragged the trash can out of the kitchen, cleared off most of the coffee table into it, sorted out the weaponry. When he went to return the different guns to Casey’s closet, he spotted the unopened pack of candles Ellie had brought over a few days before, and thought, what the hell? It couldn’t hurt. “You had better appreciate this,” he said to the absent Casey as he set a few out in the living room and scattered them around Casey’s room.
He threw all of the bedclothes into the washer, and cleaned up the spilled drink, tossing the rest in the trash with a token grumble about hangovers and vacuumed the living room quickly. They weren’t slobs, which meant it didn’t take much to clean the kitchen, though he did scrub the counters until they shone, and cleared most of the outdated takeout from the fridge. A quick spritz of air freshener around the place, another gift from Ellie, cleared the rest of the alcohol smell out nicely.
By that point, the sheets had finished washing, so he tossed them in the dryer and went to take a shower. He grabbed his discarded messenger bag from the night before and ran upstairs in a towel. He had awhile until Casey and Ilsa would likely return, but he had already seen Ilsa in a towel and he didn’t want to return the favor, in the event that the others did come back early. Ilsa did much better than him in the “wearing only a towel” department, he thought.
While he dressed, he sorted out his messenger bag, including the files he’d brought home to work the night before, mostly on Federov and his boys. Those would need to be shredded now that they had more than enough to arrest Federov. Awesome’s engagement ring, he set off to the side until he could figure out a good hiding place. He didn’t figure Ellie would root through his room any time soon, but he didn’t want to take chances. There were a couple of files on Kanichen and Krolik enterprises that he could still check over, so he put those back in the bag to take with him. Something had to break in the Ezersky case soon; apart from stumbling over Jill’s scientist-oriented cell and the dead ends that had led to, they had no other leads on what Fulcrum’s endgame might be.
When he pulled his shirt over his head, his gaze fell on the secondary computer monitor, which showed the idle screen from the Kingdom of Athinei. Sitting in the middle of the screen, chewing her own toenails, was his vampire gnomeling, Schnookie.
“Well,” he said, “at least she’s not eating her earwax this time.”
Since Schnookie had been feeling neglected lately, and he had time, he sat down to level up a couple of times as an apology. It really had been awhile since he had given her any attention, he saw: he had more than a week’s backlog of messages from online friends. The raid requests puzzled him, as he’d deliberately muddied Schnookie’s statistics when he’d built her, solely to mess with Sarah (even if Sarah wasn’t nerdy enough to understand the insult).
The minute he came away from being idle, a new message popped up: wanna raid?
Why not? He had a little while before Casey and Ilsa got back. Barefoot, hair drying from his shower, he settled in to adventure through Athinei. When the dryer buzzed, he took a short break to put sheets on the bed, but they were still raiding when he returned. A couple more minutes shouldn’t hurt. A couple of minutes turned into five, which turned into ten, which turned into a blissful blank state in which time had no meaning at all.
Until, that was, Chuck heard what might have been a throat clearing.
Busted.
He typed in a quick apology to his party and turned, half expecting to see Casey standing over him with his arms crossed over his chest and an annoyed look in place.
It wasn’t Casey. It was Sarah. And instead of looking annoyed, she was positively beaming. In fact, her smile generated more wattage than the Hoover dam. Chuck nearly had to blink at the brilliance before he saw all of Sarah. Or more specifically, what she was holding.
Sarah’s smile only broadened when Chuck took in the engagement ring box in her hand.
Chuck’s mind went absolutely blank, except for the words: Oh, crap.
Sarah looked down at the engagement ring in her hand, and the sheer glee all but bubbled. Her eyes shone, but all she said was, “Really, Chuck?”
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