A/N I had 2000 words written in this story yesterday morning. Last night I tried to open it and the file was corrupted. I had to rewrite the whole thing. Got to be more careful about making copies, but these chapters just go so fast it's hard to keep up.
"What the hell was that?"
"Do brain waves normally do that?"
"Can he be un-crashed?"
"Heinrich is standing by."
Who is Charles Carmichael?
Daniel Shaw pondered the question ceaselessly as he drove around the city, checking out his allotted portion of all the places Carina was known to have visited. It was mostly busywork, since the whole point of it was to keep her from visiting any of them again, but Murphy's Law for spies says that the safehouse you fail to bug is the safehouse the enemy will end up using.
Not that Carina was an enemy, exactly.
Who killed my wife?
Daniel Shaw didn't mind busywork, he liked to think while he drove, and he had a lot to think about. For the first time in several years he could look at the picture of his wife, taped up there by the rearview mirror, without that ever-increasing sense of guilt. Five years of research, leads, mountains of data that had come to nothing until Charles Carmichael stepped in, turning seemingly-random events into missions, and failures into successes.
Who was he? What was he?
He thought of his wife often. He thought of Carmichael often. She comforted him. Carmichael frustrated him, almost as elusive as the people Shaw needed his help to destroy. Who gave the order? Only Carmichael's wife was in residence, and the gentle, psychologically traumatized savant she was so protective of. Carmichael himself was constantly in motion, controlling his army of drones, a network of allies and accomplices that didn't even know whose will they worked, accomplishing in a day what takes ordinary agents a year. The man was a firehose of information.
If only he could be made to focus more on the things that drove Daniel Shaw—who killed my wife? Who gave the order?—but you couldn't make a man like that do anything he didn't want to do. Shaw thought back on how they responded to the slightest threat to Chuck.
Or could you?
Daniel Shaw pondered the question ceaselessly as he drove.
The room was dimly lit, the inhabitants drowsing quietly, at peace. The door opened, the darkened room beyond casting no shadows of the figure that entered soundlessly. As it crept ever nearer their sleeping forms, it reached up, lifting something from around its neck, twisting it between its hands in preparation. As it approached the side of the bed one of the people in it threw up a hand suddenly.
Ellie took a step back in surprise, hand to her throat, barely managing to restrain a small yelp of surprise.
Chuck put a finger to his lips, pointing exaggeratedly at his sleeping wife.
Ellie replaced her stethoscope around her neck, and pointed to her watch.
Chuck held up his hand again, fingers spread.
"I don't need five minutes, Chuck," said Sarah, eyes still closed. "I can get ready in two."
Chuck looked down at her, then up at his hand. He brought it down, waved it in front of her face.
"My eyes are closed, Chuck."
"Then how…?"
She sighed, and lifted her head to look at him. "Well, I suppose I could say that I heard the flexing of your carpal tendons, but you probably wouldn't believe me and you'd start another of those interminable 'Rambo vs. Dumbo' discussions that you and Morgan so enjoy, but since I'm not Morgan, I'll just say I peeked and let it go at that. Be back in a jiff." She swung herself out of the bed without shifting the light blanket covering him, and walked off toward the bathroom.
Chuck looked at Ellie. "Did you see her peeking? I didn't see her peeking."
"She says she peeked, she peeked." Ellie lifted the edge of the blanket, flipping it off him and folding it in practically the same motion. "Now you have to make yourself presentable, the General's going to want to see you looking all compos mentis."
Chuck swung his legs over the edge of the bed. "Well, that's going to take a lot longer than five minutes, sis, especially with my wife hogging the aaand she's back." He hopped off the bed, making sure to keep it between him and Mrs. Ears-like-a-hawk, glaring at him. "I think I'll just go race off and make myself presentable for the General."
Ellie looked Sarah up and down. "You're incredible."
"Why? Because I really did hear the flexing of his carpal tendons?"
Ellie threw the folded blanket onto the bed. "No, because you went to the bathroom so quickly! How do you do that?"
"Oh, that." Sarah shrugged. "Live fire exercises. You want to join me next time?"
"Good afternoon, team," said General Beckman cordially. "What is the status of current operations?"
"With the assistance of Agent Shaw we were able to visit all our targets in the time allotted, General. If we assume Carina's tracking my phone, then she should know she has only one place left to go."
"I think we can safely assume she's been tracking you, Sarah," said the General. "I've been reviewing her mission reports and her growing fixation on you is quite evident. If it becomes any more pronounced we'll have to pull her from the field entirely, like we did with Agent Shaw. Devotion to a partner is one thing–" under the table Sarah squeezed Chuck's hand "-but obsession can get your entire team killed."
"We worked with Agent Shaw on a number of missions and he performed well."
"Yes, and don't think we haven't noticed. Your team is the only one that's managed to keep him under control and get the kind of performance out of him that he used to be capable of, although I'm sure the fact that you have the same enemies in common helps."
"Excuse me, General," said Chuck, "But what is Shaw obsessed about?"
Beckman took her time, considering how to answer the question. "I suggest you ask your wife sometime, Chuck. She knows more about it than I do." Chuck looked at Sarah, while Sarah looked at the fascinating fake wood grain of the table top until Beckman came to her rescue. "I'm glad to see you looking recovered from your experiences, Chuck. I hope you're none the worse for the wear."
Chuck looked up. "Thank you, General, but, uh, there was no wear to speak of, General. I heard Sarah say 'Now' and then I was looking up at Ellie, staring at her watch."
"Hmm, yes, her little…experiment." Beckman turned her gaze on Ellie. "I trust the results were what you expected."
"They were perfect, General. I gave myself a little margin of error, but I didn't need it. Everything came out exactly as I expected."
"Which was what, exactly?"
"The timing, General. The interval between when Sarah said 'Now' and when Chuck woke up." Ellie held her hands up, a little apart. "I overlaid that same interval over the trace-cell mission recordings. If we put Sarah's 'Now' at the same time as the flash-bangs exploding, Chuck woke up just as the fourteenth floor flashed that first new pattern, only this time without Carmichael sitting on top of him."
"Yes, you mentioned that theory earlier."
"Exactly. I believe that Charles Carmichael needed to tap into Chuck's creativity in order to solve the puzzle on that floor. In a sense he rebooted him. Carmichael was the dominant persona in the vault, but unfortunately Chuck pushed him out before he could tell us what plans they made there."
Ellie looked justifiably triumphant, but General Beckman was less than pleased. "This is a disaster."
Sarah nodded. "I have to agree."
Ellie looked at her in shock. "What do you mean, you agree? You have your husband back! You could barely walk a straight line when you got here."
"At what cost?" Sarah snapped. "Get a husband, lose a best friend? Well I'm sorry but I'm not going to pay that price. She's out there alone, with the world's most dangerous intel in her pocket and the world's most dangerous bad guys in hot pursuit, and the one figment of a man's imagination that knew anything about it apparently put himself out like a candle." Sarah slapped the table-bang!-for emphasis. "She's already had one partner up and vanish on her, I'm not going to let it be two."
"Do you really think so little of me?" asked Chuck.
"What? No! I was talking about–"
"Charles Carmichael is my creation, everything I could ever hope to be." Everything that you deserve. "Do you honestly think that the man I aspire to be is someone who would just leave his friends in the cold like that?"
All three women shook their heads.
"No," said Beckman.
"Never," said Ellie.
"Not in a million years," said Sarah.
"Then you have to believe like I do, that Carmichael left us something, some clue, because I know that's what I would have done."
"Find that clue, Chuck," said Beckman, "And do it soon, because in a few hours the doors start coming down. You have to find proof that she's not a traitor before that happens."
The place to start was at the end. "If we made a plan in the vault, the logical place to expect me, I mean him, to drop a clue about it would be right outside." They watched as the team moved backwards to the door. "You checked the message for a note?" He didn't wait for the inevitable 'yes' before asking, "What's she touching?"
Ellie didn't look up. "According to Stanley's report, the outline of the object in her pocket is consistent with a three-pronged electronic key before the vault, and with a high-density, encrypted flash drive after."
"You made a security man do a high resolution analysis of the contents of those pockets? Man, talk about NSFW!"
"Focus, Chuck!"
"And not on the pants," added Sarah.
Chuck winked at her. "Aren't we picky. Wow, we weren't in there long, were we?"
"No. Not long enough to leave a note inside. They checked the boxes you opened and even for tracings in the dust. Nothing."
"No tracings?"
"No dust."
"You want me to go forward now?" asked Ellie.
"Doesn't seem to be much point to keep going backward," said Chuck. "But, you know, due diligence, and all that."
"'Due diligence' my cute behind," said Ellie with a snort. "You just want to see the fourteenth floor."
"I'll let Devon worry about the state of your behind, sis. You guys have to admit you've been playing the place up for—wow, is that simple puzzle or what?"
"Even Casey thought it was trivial," said Ellie.
"I just figured it out, going backward," said Sarah.
"Must be easy, then. Ow!" He rubbed his arm as they came out the door on the floor above, laughed, and pointed at the floor. "What's he pointing at?"
Ellie put up a graphic of the floor plan.
"What's this, computer colors? But how does the-oh, duh. Stupid me." Chuck watched as the flashing pattern on the screen matched the pattern he'd deduced from the way they walked the floor. The second pattern was even easier, and by the time they were coming out of the door to the fourteenth floor he was wondering why everyone thought this Stanley guy was such a genius. "Well, that was a waste of time. Play it forward, sis, we'll go back to the vault and take it from the top."
When the call came through, General Beckman pounced on it with an eagerness that was unbecoming in a senior officer. "Talk to me, Ellie. Where are Chuck and Sarah?"
"I sent them home, General. Chuck was right, Carmichael left it literally in plain sight, but only Chuck had the right pair of eyes."
"What did he find?"
"This." Ellie's image winked out, replaced by Chuck, looking nervous. Ellie spoke off camera. "You ready?"
He nodded. "Do it." Whatever he told her to do wasn't recorded. The agonized stretching of his face, a whole-body spasm confined to a few square inches, was quite evident. When it ended Beckman knew she wasn't looking at Chuck.
"My name is Charles Carmichael. I am being pursued, so listen carefully. Everything that Agent Carina Miller has done she has done on my authority…"
"Not that you have any," thought Beckman as she listened to him giving instructions for when and how to bring her in, accurately predicting Beckman's every move. She noted the current time in the corner. Too little, too late.
"In the event that this message should fail to make it on time, Carina will be thrown upon her own resources, and those of her friends. Fortunately, there are plenty of old houses in Washington." Chuck smiled. "Carmichael out." Chuck fell out of camera range. Beckman heard sounds of feminine distress before someone cut the recording.
Ellie came back. "There's your proof, General. Now we know that Carina isn't a traitor."
Beckman smiled. Carmichael's plans and their own had dovetailed perfectly."Oh, we know more than that, Ellie. He know exactly where she's going to be. We just have to wait for her to be there."
Morgan was bustling-that was the only word for it-as he came in the door of the B&B late that night, or early that next morning. He bounced up the stairs two at a time and…stopped. He didn't see a light in his room, no glow under the door. Was Carina not here? She said she would be.
He smacked himself in the head. Of course, she's asleep. He opened his door as quietly as he could, using the screen of his phone as a flashlight. No one was sleeping in his bed. He slapped at the lights.
"Martin Carmichael in on site."
"Noted. Now we wait."
Morgan went over to his desk and put down his bag, sighing his disappointment. Then he turned to close his door and noticed a folded piece of paper on the floor. Someone must have slipped it underneath, probably Mrs. Pendergast telling him about new guests. He bent and picked it up, and knew he was wrong. It was in Carina's handwriting.
Please find me.
A/N2 Oh boy, I can't wait to find out what happens next!
Oh, uh, yes, well, see you next time, as soon as I figure out what that is. Any thoughts on that? Anyone? Bueller?
