For notes and disclaimer, please see part one.
Here's a couple things you might need to know or maybe you just forgot: Casey's pleasant morning with Ellie at the gun range gets interrupted when he's summoned to the Castle. Beckman is there along with her own security team because they're arresting Casey for kidnapping his daughter. Casey doesn't know what's going on, and Sarah and Chuck are sure he's innocent. Alex isn't the only one apprehended, as Ellie is asked questions about her father by her kidnappers.
Morgan called "Big Mike" Tucker, the manager of the Burbank Buy More, and informed him that traffic was absolutely atrocious. There were accidents galore and it was bottle-necked and there was construction. The more thickly he laid it on, the more Big Mike, who was absently munching away at something-probably at his Subway English muffin breakfast sandwich-wanted to get off the phone.
And that was fine with Morgan. In fact, that was the whole plan. See? He could be a spy, too.
If only the rest of them could see that.
Morgan huffed as he pulled his Nerd Herder into the visitor's lot at the Westside Medical Center Emergency Room. He straightened his tie as he climbed out, crossing towards the entrance. He smiled broadly at the woman behind the desk, Donna. "Hi, there." He hoped he sounded suave and debonair. Because, if he could talk like a spy, too, how cool would that be?
She glanced up, smiling politely, but with disinterest. "Can I help you?"
Morgan cleared his throat. Okay, so he had to work more on his Connery. "Yes, ma'am. I'm looking for Dr. Ellie Bartowski. Is she working this morning?"
Donna frowned, shaking her head. "No. It's my understanding that Dr. Bartowski is off today."
"Huh. Well, see, I'm her neighbor, sounds like she left her TV on and, boy, is it blaring. I tried knocking, tried calling, but she's not answering. Are you sure she didn't get buzzed in?"
Donna hit a few keystrokes on her computer, but she still shook her head. "I'm sorry. Dr. Bartowski wasn't paged."
"She wouldn't have, like, just popped in to say hi to somebody, would she? Pick up a paycheck? Clean her locker? Something...?"
Donna hesitated.
Morgan, his confidence fading fast, retreated to his normal geeky self. "Listen, Donna," he said, reading her name off her ID badge, "my name is Morgan and I'm her brother's roommate, okay, and I'm tryin' to look out for her, ever since, y'know, the thing with Devon, and I really don't want the landlord getting all weird at her, y'know? Can you just page her? Just once, for me? Over the PA system, not, like, her actual pager pager."
She grinned at his bumbling attempts. "All right." Picking up the telephone, she pressed a few buttons. Her voice echoed through the ER. "Dr. Bartowski to admitting. Dr. Bartowski, admitting."
Morgan smiled at her. "You are lovely, thank you."
"You're welcome," she said softly.
He waited in the waiting room. It was pretty apt, he decided. But after ten minutes, he didn't hear Ellie's voice, didn't see her cruising about the halls in scrubs with a stethoscope around her neck. He glanced back at Donna, who just shrugged. "Guess she's not here, huh?"
She shook her head.
"Okay." He waved a little before ducking back into the morning sunshine. He slid his cell phone from his pocket, calling the name on his first speed dial.
"Yeah, Morgan, you find her?" Chuck asked eagerly.
"That's just it, buddy. She's not at the hospital."
There was silence on the other end of the line for a minute.
"Maybe she's, like... getting her hair done? I mean, that can take a whole long time. Or she's shopping or out for a run or something... Just away from her cell phone?"
"Yeah, you're probably right," Chuck admitted. He was probably just being a worrywart. It just bothered him, that they couldn't reach her, particularly after Casey's request. "Sorry to send you out of your way."
"Hey, you know I'd do anything for you and Ellie."
Morgan could easily hear the smile in Chuck's voice: "You're the best, buddy."
Sarah took a moment, pushing her chair back from the computer terminal she was working at.
Chuck glanced over at her. "You okay?" he asked quietly.
"This doesn't even remotely make sense. All Casey's done is been protective of Alex since he found out," Sarah whispered.
"It's awfully convenient. There's no surveillance cameras in Kathleen McHugh's neighborhood, no ATM cameras, no traffic cameras. There's absolutely nothing that can definitively point to Casey except for a partial print?"
"And Kathleen's statement," Sarah said, wheeling the chair further back to snag a folder from the conference table behind them. She offered it to Chuck.
Chuck eased his black high-top Converse sneakers up on the counter, tipping back in his chair slightly as he opened it.
The report was signed off on by some agent he'd never heard of, and the name didn't trip the Intersect. Justin Sullivan. He'd remember it, though, from now on.
I was contacted by Kathleen McHugh at approximately seven thirty this morning, who stated that her daughter was missing. Upon my arrival at the scene, it was clear that there had been a struggle in the upstairs bedroom at the home in an otherwise sleepy subdivision. Ms. McHugh indicated that she had discovered her former paramour was living after being led to believe that he had died in a military accident in 1989. She became aware of his existence shortly after an incident where she was taken hostage within her own home and suffered an injury about the head. Upon coming to, she stated that a man was hovering over her and, once her memory cleared, that she recognized him as one Alexander Coburn, her former lover and father of her child, nineteen year old Alexandra "Alex" McHugh.
Ms. McHugh stated that she had since seen Mr. Coburn lurking around the premises since then and came to see him at the Pie Shack, the establishment where her daughter works to help pay for her college expenses. Ms. McHugh did not confront Mr. Coburn at any point due to his size and military background. However, it is her feeling that Mr. Coburn is behind the disappearance of her daughter.
After processing the crime scene, it was determined that a fingerprint found on the exterior windowsill of the missing child's bedroom belonged to one John Casey, Colonel, USMC currently assigned to the NSA on a top secret assignment of vital national security importance, reporting to General Diane Beckman, DNI. Colonel Casey is the current working alias of Alexander Coburn, father of the missing child.
Chuck slowly looked up at Sarah. "I don't see how this is enough to arrest Casey."
Sarah cautiously looked at the other agents milling about the Castle. It was nicer when it was only occupied by herself, Casey and Chuck. She wasn't used to having all these extra people around. "Keep your voice down, Chuck," she reminded gently.
"And," Chuck said, whispering, "I talked to Casey after the incident. There's no way she remembered him. There's no way."
"We should go talk to her."
"There's an idea! There's a very good idea."
Sarah quietly and quickly logged out of her computer, grabbed her jacket and her purse, and walked casually with Chuck out of the Castle.
Casey sat in the interrogation room like a stone. He'd undergone a grueling questioning session for three hours where all he'd done, all he could do, was proclaim his innocence. Because it was the truth. But now, the only thing he could do was worry.
Who'd taken Alex? Why would someone want to take her? What did she have that could be valuable?
He closed his eyes as he wondered just how much intel his former commanding officer had been able to share with the Ring about the existence of his former fiance, of his daughter. Maybe this was some kind of payback for taking down the Ring Director? The Ring was still around, still as deadly as ever. Like with any company, where there was an executive director, there was a board as well. And, seemingly, the board had just replaced the director in the former one's absence.
Paris hadn't been completely for naught. Shaw was dead. Chuck had proven he could be a spy, a real spy. Casey felt some kind of pride regarding the kid's ability to protect himself, to protect Sarah. He knew that, when it mattered, when it really mattered, Chuck would be able to pull through and do what needed to be done, no matter how unseemly.
But, he knew, too, that Chuck didn't wish to be put in that kind of a situation ever again and, really, neither did Casey.
But those situations often found spies. Much like this one he had found himself in the middle of currently.
Chained to the desk in his own interrogation room, where he'd harassed, cajoled, and nearly tortured others for information before. He wondered if this was some kind of cosmic payback.
Opening his eyes again, he shoved his personal thoughts into the dark, deep recesses of his heart. He needed to look at the current events rationally, to detach himself from the more personal aspects and look at the matter through spy eyes.
It was, without a doubt, a personal attack. But, it would've been enough to just kidnap his daughter. There would be no need to frame him for it, not without some other, ulterior motive.
Not unless whoever took her wanted to break up the team.
The team worked better as a single, cohesive unit. If they'd learned anything from having Shaw around, it was that. The three of them together, Chuck, Sarah, and Casey, they were nearly unbeatable.
But, now they were separated. He was facing a possible court marital. And Chuck and Sarah were probably out there... trying to save him.
There was something else going on, something big, and nobody wanted them to see it. "Hey!" he called out. He jerked at his restraints, feeling the metal pull against his wrist. "I need to speak with General Beckman! Right now!"
Ellie sat on the floor, her head against the cold wall. She wasn't entirely sure how long she'd been questioned, but it had been a while. A long while. Too long a while. Her head pounded. She was sure it was from a combination of reasons, the questioning, the kidnapping.
But, if Chuck could do it, so could she. She could be cool under pressure.
If Sarah could do it, so could she. She could find that inner strength.
If Casey could do it, so could she. All she needed to do was bide her time and stay calm.
The problem was, no matter how hard she thought about cookies or cakes or pies, her thoughts kept coming back to the harsh, glaring reality. She'd gone through more than her fair share of near-misses in the past year. The first one, she'd had Casey at her side, through the entire thing. The second, she hadn't been intentionally targeted. It had just happened. The third, it had been another random encounter. If she'd just left the bar three seconds sooner, maybe nothing would've happened.
But this... This time, she'd been singled out, away from Casey.
She couldn't press the button on her watch. She could barely move her wrists at all. The ropes were tight, nearly cutting off her circulation. No matter how she tried to loosen them, no matter how she tried to cut them, she couldn't. And she wasn't nearly dexterous enough to maneuver her fingers to find the button on the watch. The angle was just impossible.
Sarah could tell that Chuck was about to blow. She could see the vein in his forehead throbbing in the rear view mirror of her car. She could see the tightness of his jaw, the redness in his face. "Chuck..." They hadn't been able to talk to Kathleen, or even to get close. The CIA was under orders to keep Chuck and Sarah specifically at bay, so they had adjusted their plan.
"Nobody saw anything. Nobody. How does that happen? You figure, somebody's got to have a dog that needed to do some business, even at really early in the morning, right? You figure... somebody had to have seen something. Or heard something!"
They'd interviewed every neighbor on the street and hadn't come up with anything to help Casey.
But, Sarah quickly shifted gears, changing lanes.
"Uh... Castle's not this way."
"No," Sarah said. "But home is."
"What's at home?"
"Casey's internal security cameras."
"What?"
"Casey's got the apartment complex wired for sound, doubly on the exterior angles after I told him about Lester and Jeff hanging around shortly after he started seeing Ellie," Sarah explained. "We'll access Casey's logs, prove that there's no way he could've slipped out in the middle of the night or early in the morning to do this."
"You're a genius!"
Sarah just smiled at him. "Plus, it'll give you a chance to see if Ellie's home now, too."
"Ellie..." Chuck pulled out his cell phone, dialing her number again. "C'mon, sis," he muttered as he listened to the rings.
"You've reached Dr. Bartowski. I'm sorry I can't come to the phone at the moment."
"Dammit," Chuck muttered, hanging up.
"Still nothing?"
"You don't think that's... a bad sign, do you? I mean... Morgan had a point this morning, she could be doing any number of things that are normal and well within her right to do."
"If worst comes to worst," Sarah said, "we can always activate her beacon."
Chuck nodded, feeling somewhat better.
She sighed heavily. She didn't have a father! How hard could that be to understand? Her father died, honorably, in service to his country. Her father was a patriot, a Marine. It was starting to get under her skin, thinking about what her captor had said.
The door opened again and that same black-haired man entered. The one who looked like he could be so gentle, so kind. The one with the easy smile, the one she almost wanted to smile back at. But, as soon as he opened his mouth, she realized he was not a kind anything.
He carried a file folder under his arm. "I'd like you to meet somebody, Alex," he said cordially.
She looked at him quizzically.
He dragged a folding metal chair across the floor.
She winced at the sound it made.
He eased into it, sitting directly in front of her. He opened the file, pulling out an eight-by-ten glossy photograph. "This... is your father. The man you know as your father. Alex Coburn, war hero, right?"
She nodded. She'd seen that photo hundreds of times. It was taken shortly after he'd enlisted.
"Here's the thing, Alex. You've met him."
"No, I haven't," she insisted.
"You have. So have I." The next photo he removed was one of Casey and Ellie. "You've even met his girlfriend."
Alex slowly shook her head. "No, that's-"
"John, right? John Casey?"
She looked up at him, at the smugness, at the creepiness in his expression.
"It's okay. You can admit it. See, John Casey didn't exist until 1989. Before that, he was Alex Coburn. He chose black ops. He abandoned you, he abandoned your mother... but now he's figured out who you are. He's brought the new would-be missus by for a chat and a cup of coffee."
Alex was shaking. There was no way he could be her father. There was no way she could know her father without realizing that it was her father. He was just a nice patron, a nice patron who took an interest in her schooling, who occasionally asked how her family was. He wasn't the only one who did that. There was retired Mr. Reynolds, who came by for coffee with cream and a slice of chess pie every Thursday. There was Mike, a beat cop, who took his coffee black, much like Casey, and who had a slice of whatever was handy...
But, seeing the photos next to each other, she was starting to see the resemblance. She was starting to see the same eyes, the same nose, the same mouth.
The scar was new, but everything else... everything else looked exactly the same.
"What must that feel like?" he asked, his voice cold and unfeeling. "To have your dad drop in without knowing he's your dad?"
Alex slowly looked up at him, her face a vision of turmoil.
Beckman watched him through the one-way mirror, seeing his agitated state. He kept calling out for someone, for his team, for her. He needed to talk with someone, someone with authority, someone who would understand. And that hadn't meant her security crew who she'd tried to send in. And she wasn't entirely sure where Chuck and Sarah had gone except to say that they were "running errands."
The discipline issues in the team were staggering.
With a heavy sigh, she entered the room.
Casey immediately stilled and snapped to salute.
She enjoyed the quiet for a moment before returning the gesture. "At ease, Colonel. As at ease as you can get," she said, glancing at his left hand attached to the table.
"Ma'am."
"Before you say anything, let me remind you of an incident... an incident where I told you that you were on extremely thin ice with regards to your career. Do you remember that day?"
He nodded.
"I told you one more move like that again, and you would be permanently removed from service. Do you recall that conversation?"
"Yes, ma'am," Casey said. It had been the absolute worst day of his life.
"Then, what the hell did you do?" she demanded.
"Ma'am, I didn't do anything. I did not take my daughter."
"I had to turn over the internal footage, the video surveillance from the apartment to the agent in charge of this investigation this morning. While I was permitted to view said footage, there's nothing that proves definitively that you remained in your quarters all night."
He started to shake his head, to answer, when she cut him off again.
"I'm not finished, Colonel! When where you going to tell me?"
"Ma'am?"
"About your personal relationship with the Intersect's sister?" Beckman noted well that it was the first time that Casey looked guilty. Her eyebrows slid up her forehead. "How do you think it makes me look? To be blindsided with this information from the CIA. Not your team, not you, but the damned CIA?"
Casey mentally rewound his day. There was nothing untoward in the courtyard that moment. Or the night before. There's no way they could've discerned that information from the past twelve or eighteen hours worth of footage. "Who else knew?"
"Doesn't matter! Someone from Central Intelligence knew and told me!"
"With all due respect, ma'am, I think it is important."
When she got out of this-and it's definitely a when and not an if-Ellie decided she was going to have Casey teach her more about self-defense. And she was going to pay way more attention. Not that the gun range lessons would help with this situation, but, in the future, it would be more beneficial to know some basic moves at the very least.
Her first question was going to be how to get her hands freed from ropes. She wouldn't be able to practice any of those maneuvers, not until the rope burns healed, but she could learn the theory before putting it into practice.
The door opened and slammed again and she was face to face with her captor, the sandy-haired man, again. "Where's your father?" he demanded.
"Your guess is as good as mine," she admitted.
"That's not good enough. You have to know how to contact him."
"Look, my dad is paranoid. I told you all of this in our first interrogation. I do not know where he is!"
"But, you talk to him?"
"Rarely," she admitted.
"Has he ever mentioned anything to you about the governor?"
She looked at him, absurd. "Come again?"
"The governor! Has he ever said anything to you about the governor, about where you could find it."
"Finding the governor?" she asked. "Oh, sure, that's an easy find."
"It is?"
"Just need a car," Ellie said with a nod.
He banged on the door twice. "Bring the cars around!" He looked back at her. "Where is it? What can you tell me about it?"
"About the governor?"
"Yes!" he said, clearly frustrated.
"Well, for being a staunch Republican, he married into the darling family of the Democrats, the Kennedys." Ellie wondered where the snark was coming from. Casey must've been rubbing off on her more than she'd realized before. "I imagine those dinner table conversations are-"
The frustration boiled quickly into anger, and his closed fist connected with her face.
She saw stars. She'd never fully known what that phrase had meant until she was sitting there, seeing the white lights explode in front of her eyes. And, she was fairly certain her mouth was bleeding.
Chuck and Sarah descended into the Castle without the video footage from the apartment. It had already been removed from the secure servers, and if Casey hid them in some personal storage folders, Chuck hadn't been able to find them in two hours.
Beckman glanced up when she heard their footsteps. "Well, it's about time, you two," she said, her arms akimbo. She looked at the rest of the agents in the confines of the base. "Everybody else, out."
No one immediately moved for the exits.
"You heard me!" she said, her voice thundering. "Out!"
The agents quickly dropped what they were doing and headed back up towards the Orange Orange, passing Chuck and Sarah on the stairs.
Beckman was shooting daggers at the two of them with her gaze.
Sarah swallowed hard. "General, if you'll give us a moment to-"
Another piercing glance from the tiny woman, however, and Sarah quieted.
Both watched, puzzled, as she crossed towards a computer terminal, pressing a few keystrokes. All of the screens within the Castle changed from the various images to the Directorate of National Intelligence logo.
"Fix this," she said.
"Wh... General...?" Chuck asked.
Some of the keystrokes she pressed included opening Casey's door.
Beckman grabbed the keys from the conference table, tossing them at him. He caught them easily. With a pert nod from her, he set about freeing himself.
"Something's got to be up," Sarah said. "This feels wrong."
"Casey's an overgrown boyscout. He'd never do anything like this, not unless it was ordered by you," Chuck said, looking at Beckman.
"There's no proof to back up your feelings," Beckman said. "To fix this, I need evidence. I need to be able to take it back to the higher-ups and show that Casey had nothing to do with this. I can't take your emotions."
Casey emerged from the cell, joining them in the conference room. "We're missing something. A big something. This was a distraction. Somebody wanted us chasing our tails."
Before any of them could say anything else, an alarm sounded through the Castle, and one of the screens with the logo was overridden by a security beacon.
"That's one of our watches," Sarah said, glancing to see if she'd accidentally hit hers. When she realized she hadn't, she grabbed Chuck's wrist. "Not us. You?"
Casey immediately began punching in keys on the computer, pulling up the information. Ellie's driver's license photo appeared on the screen. "Dammit," he muttered. "She's in a warehouse, shipping district."
"It was a shell game, this whole time," Sarah said, shaking her head. "Alex was never the real target."
"I told you to look after her!" Casey growled, rounding on Chuck.
"I was a little busy, big guy, thinking you were in real trouble and I was trying to help!"
"Enough!" yelled Beckman. "Until such time as we can suss out your innocence properly, Colonel Casey... I'm leaving you in the custody of Agent Walker."
All three looked at each other dumbly for a half a second then turned to the General.
"I'm letting you go. As officially as I can," she said. "Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't let any agent near a mission this personally charged. However, knowing what I know about each of you, you work better under these circumstances. Get moving! You've got two civilians to rescue now."
Stay tuned...
Lines from the next installment:
On the screen she could see, very clearly, Alex, in a similar room, in a similar situation. Her eyes widened with a new fear as she looked up at her captor.
"Watch," he said with a sneer.
Alex winced as the black-haired man entered, in a smart-looking suit. The man held a gun to her head, pressing it to her temple.
"We had you pegged all wrong, Dr. Bartowski," came his cold, calculating voice through the monitor's speakers. "Your brother isn't one for personal pain, but he's been trained. He's been uploaded with the 2.0. He can handle it, whatever we throw at him. You? You're just a doctor. I mistakenly thought you could be broken easily. Well played, Ellie. I was wrong and that doesn't happen very often. I will always be the first to admit it, when it's true. So, there's a new plan now," he said, cocking the gun.
Alex whimpered, closing her eyes tightly.