AFTERMATH

The elevator dinged, the doors slid slowly open, and Sarah Walker stumbled slightly as she stepped out of the elevator. She pulled the strap of her purse back up a little higher on her shoulder and sighed. Her door, at the far end of the hallway, seemed a million miles away. Sure, it was good spycraft to have the room farthest from the elevator and closest to the stairwell, but on a night like tonight, she really resented the long trek down the hotel's plush hallway.

"One foot in front of the other," she muttered.

Chuck liked to compare her usually silent, graceful movements to a cat – but then he was given to clichés. Right now she felt more elephant than cat as she trudged down the hall, wearily grabbing the wayward strap of her purse and pulling it back up on her shoulder.

She reached in her purse and dug around for her keys. Her instructors at the Academy would be chagrined. A good spy would have found her keys while still in the elevator, rather than fumbling for them as she went down the hall. 'Remember,' she could almost hear Old Man Caruthers intoning. 'For a spy, there is no safe place. You must always be alert and ready for the lurking ne'er-do-well, the unexpected ambush.'

Well, to hell with Old Man Caruthers. She pulled out the keys and found the one for her room. She was tired. No, beyond tired. Dead.

The word brought her up short. Dead. How many of her classmates from the Academy were dead because they got careless when in a supposedly safe environment?

Bryce. Bryce was dead. If she closed her eyes, she could still see them carrying his lifeless body away. Which is why she refused to close her eyes. It had been only hours, yet it seemed a lifetime ago.

Had Bryce gotten careless? Was that why he was dead? Or was it because he was distracted? Distracted by a simple shake of the head delivered by a former lover on a beautiful beach at a simple yet beautiful ceremony.

Carelessness. Distraction. She halted the key just before it slid into the lock. Reaching up toward the top of the door, she slid a hand up the doorframe.

It was gone! She froze. Slowly, silently, she slipped the keys back into her purse and removed her Smith and Wesson 5906. With her thumb, she reached up and flipped off the safety.

Slowly, she crouched down, keeping her eyes and her gun trained on her door. She reached down, her eyes finally following her free hand. There! She carefully picked up the long blonde hair from the carpet in front of her door: the hair which she had carefully placed in the doorjamb an inch below the innocuous scratch on the door as she was leaving her room.

Her fatigue forgotten, she rose slowly and took a step back away from the door. She twirled the hair between thumb and forefinger, and then let it drop.

She slipped to the side of the door, a part of her noting with quiet amusement that she was once again Chuck's 'cat.' Adrenaline had banished the clumsy elephantine movements.

She took a deep breath, flattened herself against the wall, and licked her lips as she reached slowly over and laid two fingers and a thumb on the doorknob. As slowly as she could manage with her heart pounding in her ears, she turned the knob – quarter turn… half turn… full turn… The knob stopped. The door – her door – was unlocked. There was no doubt in her mind that she had locked it when she left, just as there was no doubt that she had placed the hair in the doorjamb.

She shifted slightly to get in the proper position. In her mind, she went over the layout of the room. She systematically catalogued each piece of furniture, each potential hiding place, each line of sight.

She took a deep but silent breath and did a mental countdown: three… two… one…

Now!

She threw the door open, dove through the doorway and kicked at the wall to the right. She sensed more than saw the figure sitting at the end of her bed. She tucked and rolled, hurtled to the left, and ended in a crouched firing position, the barrel of her gun pointing intuitively at the figure's chest. Her instructors had drilled it into her, 'With a snap shot, always go for the center of mass.' Her finger was already squeezing the trigger. Another fraction of an ounce of pressure would send fire and lead hurtling toward the intruder, followed by a second bullet and then a third – the three shot pattern ingrained in her at the Academy.

"Aaaaiiiieeeee!"

Her finger jerked away from the trigger and her arm twitched reflexively upward, pointing the barrel of her pistol at the ceiling.

The familiar brown eyes were as wide as saucers and the equally familiar brown curls seemed darker against a face from which every ounce of blood seemed to have drained.

The tension drained out of Sarah's shoulders and she slowly lowered her gun. With a twitch of her thumb she flipped the safety. Her breathing became labored as the adrenaline leached out of her system.

Standing, she stuck the gun in her waistband and frowned down at the man cringing on her bed. "Chuck, what are you doing here?" she yelled. She took a deep breath to regain her composure and said softy, "Chuck, I could have killed you."

She swallowed the lump which threatened to climb up out of her throat. A fraction of an ounce of pressure. It had been that close. The tiniest twitch of her finger and…

She shivered as a chill ran up her spine.

"I'm… I'm sorry," Chuck squeaked.

Sarah took two more deep breaths and willed her heart to stop beating quite so loudly. It was hard to hear.

She walked slowly across the room and sat down next to him on the bed. She reached up and ran her fingers through his hair. She twirled her finger… the very finger that came within a hair's breadth of ending his life… in one of those funny animal-shaped curls.

She laid a head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. "God, Chuck, don't ever do that again."

She lifted her head and opened her eyes to find his face mere inches from her. She looked into his eyes and was surprised not to see the fear she expected, the fear that would have mirrored her own, but… pain?

Furrowing her brows in confusion, she pulled away just a little. "Chuck… Chuck, what's wrong?"

"I'm so sorry, Sarah," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "I… I wasn't thinking. I didn't mean to scare you like that."

She choked back a laugh. Scared her? She had come this close to putting three bullets in a neatly spaced pattern in the center of his chest, and he was concerned that he had scared her? Maybe that was it. Maybe he didn't realize how close he had come to death. To having his life-blood oozing out onto her sheets while she…

She shook her head to clear that image from her mind and looked into his eyes again to see… what? What was that look?

Dammit, why did Chuck have to be so different from other men? Desire, lust, hunger – she had seen those often enough in the faces of men to recognize them easily. But not him, not Chuck. Oh, he wanted her. He had phrased that eloquently with the language of fevered kisses in a certain motel room in Barstow. But the desire, the lust, the hunger never dominated. There was always something else in his eyes. He looked at her in a way no other man ever had. Dare she hope that was what love looked like?

That look, that indefinable look, that terrifying, soul-filling look was there in his eyes, but also… concern? Once again, she had to bite back a laugh. Only Charles Bartowski could come so close to death and think, not of himself, but of his potential killer.

Chuck reached up and gently stroked her hair. She felt tears starting to well up in her eyes and jerked her head away, embarrassed. Dammit, she was not going to cry in front of him. She was just tired. That was it. She wasn't this emotional. She wasn't one of those sobbing, simpering, weak women she so despised.

Chuck cupped her cheek in his hand and gently guided her face back to his. His eyes were so soft, so expressive, so tender. She felt like she was falling up and into them.

"I could have killed you," she whispered.

"Shhh," he said softly. He slid an arm around her and pulled her close to him. She buried her face in his shoulder. "You've had a long day," he whispered. "You're tired. You've been through alot. I… I wasn't thinking." He gently stroked her hair and she pressed tighter against him.

Finally, reluctantly, she pulled away from him, but not so far that she couldn't still feel his warmth. There was a dark patch on his sleeve, evidence of her tears. She sniffed and wiped her eyes. "I don't know what's wrong with me," she said.

"I should go," he said. "You're tired. You've been through a lot."

He stood and took a step away from her. Sarah reached up quickly and grabbed his arm. "Chuck," she pleaded, nodding at her still-open doorway. "Just shut the door."

***

Author's Note: Thanks, as ever, to my editor, Poa.

I felt like writing today, but I forgot the thumbdrive with Buy More Bomber on it, so I decided to write one of my fluffy little Charah stories. This came out instead.