Author's Note the First: Surprise! I bet none of you expected this update to appear. All credit goes to Frea for this chapter. I looked it over and wrote one part. 100 cool points to the person who guesses what I wrote. Hint: It's not what you might suspect. In fact, I bet nobody guesses it. Mwuahaha! Also, don't you just love how I'm claiming to be the author?

Frea's Note: Lost a bet. Go figure. Thanks to Ayefah for helping me out while I was writing this, and to that one guy, the one with the face.

Break and Enter

24 APRIL 2006
THE DESERT JEWEL
19:37 AST

A dust storm had erupted just after lunch, ensuring that Sarah felt a film of dirt and grit caked over her skin as she made her way back to the Desert Jewel. It had the benefit of darkening the slim strip of skin visible under the niqab she'd taken up as a disguise, at least, but it was an annoyance. She alternated between tourist and local, and the latter meant a judicious layer of makeup on her hands, reapplied regularly because she always managed to sweat through it, and brown contact lenses. She'd used a rinse and an eyebrow pencil to darken her brows, which helped, and she spoke the language like a local, but all of her knowledge couldn't keep her from feeling vaguely racist whenever she adopted this garb.

Today, though, today it had been worth it.

In the elevator, she shouldered the worn rucksack she had carried in by hand back to the hotel. She probably should have switched back to tourist Sarah, as she looked too rundown to be any of the hotel's high-class clientele, but she was impatient to get back to the room. After two weeks in Dubai, she wanted to get this over with. And thanks to her efforts that day, it might be over sooner than she thought.

The minute she made it inside, she peeled off the niqab. "Hello?" she called.

No answer. Carina must be doing recon, Sarah figured. She'd likely expected Sarah to take longer than she had. Others complained about Carina, but Sarah knew better. The redhead worked just as hard as the rest of them; she just preferred not to let others know about it.

The thought made Sarah grin. She'd hit pay dirt and had gotten the drop on Carina? It totally made the grit and grime worth it. She left the rucksack on the table, the main pouch wide open so that Carina would spot the camera nestled inside. With that done, she went to grab a shower.

Carina hadn't come back by the time she emerged, freshly scrubbed, so she sat down at her laptop to upload the pictures. There were a few new emails: one checking in from Agent Pennyweather, a couple of spam messages her filter had ignored, and finally, one from Chuck. She saved this for last and tried not to equate it in her mind to savoring the final piece of chocolate in the box.

It was only a note to let her know that the package was ready for a name, followed by a line that Sarah had to Google. She had a feeling that even if she were into pop culture, she probably wouldn't have heard of the movie Quick Change, so it worked out for the best. She sent a name, a picture, and a smiley face back in reply since she wasn't the clever or witty type, and asked how he was doing.

Cold was the reply. But good.

Wish I could be cold for once, Sarah replied, as the heat had been miserable that day.

This time, the smiley face came from Chuck.

Carina came bouncing through the door. "My contact emailed," Sarah said without looking up from the laptop screen. "Package is ready."

"And hello to you, too," Carina said. Her white dress was tinged with the red sand of the region, and she had a parasol dangling from her wrist like some kind of high class snob from the early 1900s. The smirk, however, was purely twenty-first century as she dropped her overlarge sunglasses on the table next to Sarah's elbow. "When did greetings go out of style?"

"I don't know. You should Google it."

"Mm, too much work." Carina stripped off a pair of lace gloves. "How comes you always email Bunker Boy? His honey tones just not warming up your ear canal, Walker?"

Sarah squinted at her partner. "Are you drunk?"

"Okay, that one you can have. It was a lame joke." Carina continued shedding layers—the ridiculous hat with the expansive brim, the jewelry that Sarah hoped was paste, her strappy sandals—until she wore nothing but her dress. "Question still stands."

"Pass. I got you a present."

Carina's eyes lit up with fake amusement. "Is it a puppy?"

"Better."

"You lie. Nothing's better than a puppy."

Like either of them would know the first thing about keeping a puppy alive for more than a day, Sarah thought, but she just smiled and shook her head.

"Okay," Carina said, taking the camera from her, "maybe sex is better than a puppy, but you didn't get me sex, Walker. I know you too well. I've almost come to terms with the fact that I take second place in your heart to the oh-so-mysterious Bunker Boy."

"Just look at the pictures."

"Fine." The sigh that Carina heaved would have made Oscar winners jealous. She settled in, propping her feet up on the edge of Sarah's chair, to flick through the pictures on the camera's memory card. Sarah knew the minute her friend had arrived at the photo in question, for Carina's eyebrows shot up into her hairline. "Ooh-la-la, Walker. What was a girl like you doing in a place like this?"

"Embroidery," Sarah said, her tone dryer than the Arabian desert all around them.

"I hope I at least get a scarf out of it." Carina continued to page through the pictures, going quiet in that way that suggested her brain was scheming or something vaguely nefarious, which seemed to describe Carina's entire existence, in Sarah's opinion. Finally, the redhead set the camera down on the table, popped her neck, and rose to her feet.

"What are you doing?" Sarah asked as Carina moved toward her bedroom.

"It's a good start," Carina said, "but we're going to need to a little more than that. Time to take matters into our own hands."

"It worries me when you say things like that."

25 APRIL 2006
THE DESERT JEWEL, SUITE 1802
23:54 AST

Sarah bent over her friend's bicep, leaning in close to make sure that the stitches were small enough not to leave a permanent scar. She would have called it an act of good friendship, though with the way Carina was going on, she was starting to reconsider.

"All right, all right," Carina said. "Sweet hell, woman. I solemnly swear that the next time we have a mission where one of us has to play the honey-pot stripper, you can do it. If you'd wanted it so badly, all you had to do was ask."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Okay, for one—I wasn't commenting on your ability to strip, Carina. God."

"Well, you're serving up quite the side of judgey-judgey with your medical aid over here."

"All I said was that maybe, next time you're playing a stripper, you might not want to knee the high-roller with five bodyguards in the face. That's all." Sarah closed up the final stitch with a competence that spoke of many times working with Carina and sat back to admire her handiwork with a sigh. "You're lucky the mark had already left so your cover wasn't blown."

"We got what we needed and we got to kick ass. What are you complaining about?"

Sarah debated arguing exactly why it was a bad idea to start a bar fight in a foreign country when they only had a forty-eight hour window to pull off a job—Pennyweather had emailed her to tell her that her time with Chuck was almost up—but decided it wasn't worth it. "Never mind. Forget it. We need to be focusing on the mission anyway. I'm going to go get some sleep."

"Oh, c'mon, Walker, it's our last night in Dubai. We should live it up."

"We should sleep is what we should do."

"Does Bunker Boy know how not-fun you get? Or are you waiting to surprise him on the honeymoon?"

"You're awfully fixated on Bunker—on my contact," Sarah said, narrowing her eyes at her friend. "Somebody who didn't know better would say you're jealous."

"Maybe I have reason to be. After all, this mysterious guy is going to help us rob a bank in Dubai and I don't even know his name."

"I'm vouching for him, and my neck's on the line just like yours."

"Maybe I don't trust you."

"That's rich. I'm the one who should be doubting you. After all, Pakistan was whose fault, again?"

"On a dare from you," Carina said, picking up her tumbler and tossing the contents back with barely a grimace.

"At no point did I say, 'I dare you, Carina, to test the security cameras by doing the Macarena.'"

"My memory says otherwise."

"What about Tajikistan?"

"Fluke."

"Uruguay?"

"Curiosity."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Uh-huh, right. Look, my source is good and he's trustworthy."

"You're just saying that because you want to get into his pants."

She was not, and Carina knew it, but Sarah glared at the whiskey bottle, picked it up, and poured herself a shot. She told herself it wasn't nerves over the fact that they were going to rob a bank—in freaking Dubai —the next day, but lying to herself had never been easy. "'Atta girl, Walker," Carina said. "Saves me from drinking alone."

"I'm doing this because you'll just go out and start another bar fight if I don't drink with you," Sarah said, pointing at her friend. "It's self-preservation, nothing more."

Carina snorted. "Just keep telling yourself that, blondie."

26 APRIL 2006
THE DESERT JEWEL, SUITE 1802
11:48 AST

Whoever had written that rule about only being young once and making the most of it had never fully understood the true consequences of whiskey, Sarah was convinced. Though the painkillers she'd downed with breakfast had dulled the edge of her headache to an almost-tolerable pounding, she still felt a vicious spurt of temper flare up as Carina decided between the red hat and the black.

The redhead didn't miss the micro-expression; instead, she smiled, one half of her thin lips canting up in that feral sort of amusement that Sarah had always hated. That same look had preceded the stitches above her eyebrow in Barcelona, and at least three demerits added to their records at the Point, if not more. "Gotta say," Carina said, adjusting the loose overcoat she wore over her sundress, "that hangover-temper thing you've got going on is really helping you get into the bodyguard character, Walker."

Sarah figured she'd only prove Carina's point by telling her to shut up. "Are you ready?" she asked instead of replying to Carina's childish taunts.

"What do you think—the red hat or the black?" Carina tried on the two hats in succession, tilting her head and pouting in turns. They'd decided that she would play an heiress. It would be up to Sarah to stand behind her and look stoic (Carina's argument for it had been that Sarah had perpetually been in a bad mood over the whole Bryce fiasco anyway, so why not just call herself Method?). Sarah wore dark, nondescript clothing, aviators, and an annoyed look, while Carina had decked herself out in Chanel and other name brands that Sarah's discerning eye catalogued with some envy.

"Why do you need a hat, again?"

"Bunker Boy's going to have access to the overhead cameras and I don't want him seeing my face," Carina said. Sarah gaped at her friend; Carina had once stormed a compound wearing nothing but a bikini in full view of local news cameras. Anonymity had never been a thing with her, so why did it matter now?

The satellite phone clipped to her belt vibrated. "Speaking of Bunker Boy," Carina said.

"I'll take this outside," Sarah said, heading for the balcony. She closed the sliding glass door behind her—like that would stop Carina—before she dropped into the patio chair and answered the phone. "Walker."

"Hey, Sarah." Chuck's voice sounded rusty, like he hadn't used it in a while. There was, as always, a warmth to his tone that Sarah liked. "Sorry. Uh, Agent Walker. Hi, Agent Walker."

"You can call me Sarah," Sarah said.

"Oh, good. I'm, um, glad, Agent—Sarah. Oh! This is Chuck—Chuck Bartowski, by the way, if your sat-phone doesn't have ID or anything—"

Sarah couldn't stop the smile, so she deliberately kept her back to Carina, still inside the suite. They'd packed up all of their belongings and had stowed them at drop locations, so it was just the redhead left inside with the gear for the mission. "I know it's you, Chuck."

"Oh, okay," Chuck said, sounding relieved. "I'm just calling to see if the mission's still on."

"Why? You haven't got cold feet, have you?"

"Uh, kind of stuck in Siberia."

"Oh. Right. Yeah, I can see—"

"But I am so ready to help you rob a bank, Sarah Walker," Chuck said in another lightning flash mood swing. "I've got the package all cued up to deliver and everything. It's a beauty. Their techs are going to be writing academic papers on it for months. And you know, I'm doing the banking industry a favor by exposing a weakness, too."

"You're a regular hero," Sarah said, smiling a little.

"Nah, just tech support." Chuck's voice was dismissive. She wondered if that was normal, but there wasn't much time to contemplate it because he went on, "Got a timeframe for when you'd like the package delivered?"

"Well, my partner is having a hard time picking a hat, so it may be awhile."

"Bryce is wearing a hat? Tell me it's a fedora. I've always wanted to see somebody rob a bank in a fedora."

"Different partner," Sarah said, shaking her head. She'd emailed Chuck quite a bit since coming to Dubai—short, impersonal notes to let each other know of the other's progress—but she had to wonder at some of Chuck's non sequituers. "Bryce is on the outside for this one."

"Oh, okay."

"How long does the package last?"

"Twenty-three minutes, give or take. Forty-seven if you don't want the spinning rims."

"And how long does it take to deploy?"

"Two minutes, twelve seconds. I really am that good."

"Okay, tell you what, I'll call you just as we're about to go in, you can deploy the package, and we'll be all set."

"Perfect. I await your call, Agent Wal—Sarah."

Sarah bade him good-bye with another promise to call and headed back inside. "For God's sake, Carina, go with the black. Can we go now?"

"Patience is a virtue, Walker," Carina said emerging from her suite with the red hat on. Sarah rolled her eyes. "And how is your lover?"

"My contact is ready to go and anxious. We clear here? Everything wiped?"

Carina held up a gloved hand. "Like I don't know how to clean up a scene. What do you think I am, a rookie?"

"Not even going to dignify that with a response." Sarah picked up her go-bag, the only thing left in the suite apart from her and Carina, and headed for the door. She cast a glance about as she did so. For all of her sarcastic commentary to Carina over the past couple of weeks about wasting tax payers' dollars, the hotel suite had been a nice place to stay. A girl could get used to such a life of luxury. It certainly beat some of the crappy safe houses the CIA had forced her to hole up in during missions. Maybe her transfer to the DEA wouldn't be so bad after all.

"Farewell, home sweet home," Carina said, clapping Sarah on the shoulder as they left the suite. "Let's go rob a bank."

26 APRIL 2006
FIRST PERSIAN GULF BANK
13:12 AST

Carina Miller, Sarah had learned, could become anybody under the sun. That wasn't terribly significant in their line of work—Sarah could do exactly the same thing, and had many times—but where it differed was that every reiteration of Carina came with one thing in common: a penchant for chaos. It was as much a part of her as the blood and DNA that would make up anybody else. Because of that, when Carina sashayed her way into the bank on her Manolo Blahniks, Sarah felt more tension than usual running up her spinal cord. Every flirtatious, sugar-laden smile Carina gave the clerks made Sarah tense up just a little bit more. It helped sell her cover as a bodyguard, she supposed.

"Oh, her?" Carina asked the teller before she glanced over her shoulder at Sarah, eyes full of fun. "I'm afraid she has to stay with me. Carol's been my bodyguard for two years now—my husband insisted. He worries about me, you know."

The lobby of First Persian Gulf Bank was grand, opulent and luxurious in a way that veered dangerously close to tacky. Sarah had been in there multiple times during recon, usually wearing wigs or hijabs to partially obscure her face. In addition, she'd studied the blueprints extensively, so she knew where every exit was, where the silent alarms lay, and even how many security guards would be making their way through the lobby on their rounds. It didn't stop her from feeling like a wire pulled taut, ready to snap or snap back, especially since Carina's eyes had taken on that extra sheen of fun right before they'd headed inside the bank. She got off on this kind of mission, Sarah knew, while Sarah needed the promise of a good fight to get that adrenaline kick.

"I'll need to see some identification from your bodyguard, Mrs. Bishop," the teller told Carina.

Sarah did her best not to look happy about it as she handed over her passport, which had her listed as Carol Alianovna, a Russian national. The teller input a few numbers into the system—which made Sarah nervous, but Chuck's virus should be working by this point—and handed the passport back with a brief, courteous nod.

"Very well, your information checks out," the teller told Carina.

Carina's smile ratcheted up a notch. "That's wonderful news, darling."

"If you will wait here, somebody will be here to escort you back to your safety deposit box immediately." The teller managed one smooth smile, though Sarah could tell Carina's incessant flirting had rattled him, and vanished rather quickly.

"Hold this for me, would you, darling?" Carina asked, handing Sarah her clutch before she bent to fix the hem of her skirt. When she straightened, she asked, out of the side of her mouth, "Third guard, twelve o'clock. That new?"

"I saw him," Sarah said.

"Problem?"

"Shouldn't be." Sarah handed the clutch back with a smile and a polite, "Mrs. Bishop, ma'am," in a Russian accent. She then shifted her stance back to parade rest—let them think she was ex-military, it fit the profile—and waited with a stony expression on her face for the teller to return, ever wary that somebody might discover the virus that Chuck had used to infect the bank's computer systems at any moment. Everything looked normal, which, like Carina's calamity-causing nature, put her back up. Part of her recognized that after the last few disastrous missions with Bryce, she just expected the worst to happen. The fact that it hadn't yet just made it worse.

The teller returned with a tall man in a well-tailored suit. Neither Carina nor Sarah gave any sign that they recognized him. "Mrs. Bishop," the teller said, "this is Mr. Faisal. He'll be escorting you and Miss Alianovna back into the private viewing room."

Carina's mouth made an O of surprise. "We won't actually get to see the deposit boxes ourselves?"

"I'm afraid it's against our policy, ma'am."

"Aw, shucks. I was so looking forward to seeing all of those shiny deposit boxes together. Very well. Mr. Fazzal, was it?"

"Faisal, ma'am," Mr. Faisal corrected without a single outward sign of contempt for the "Ugly American" stereotype standing in front of him.

"Mr. Faisal, then," Carina said, correcting herself with a girlish giggle. "Lead on. Oh, this is exciting, isn't it, Caro?"

"Yes, ma'am," Sarah said, and followed Carina and the bank employee out of the lobby. They had to go through the metal detector, which made Sarah edgy. Coming in to a bank robbery like this with no gun almost made her feel naked, but she gave no sign of it as she set her cell phone and other possessions in the small dish, and walked through the sensor.

She also gave no sign that any of this felt familiar as they left the metal detector behind and headed into the middle of the bank, though she'd studied the blueprints of the bank every night, and knew the location of everything, down to the final potted fern. The bank's floors were marble, veined with pink and edged with gold. There was no sense of urgency about them as they followed Mr. Faisal, though Sarah knew this to be one of the busiest banks in Dubai. Everything seemed calm, smooth, and quietly efficient. They walked down a hallway lined with monitors, most of which showed the news from several different countries around the world. Sarah made sure to let her eyes focus on the monitor showing the Channel One news report from Moscow, as that would have drawn Miss Alianovna's eye. She was about to look away, ready to focus on the mission once more, when the monitor cut abruptly to black.

No, not entirely black, she saw. In the middle of the monitor was a colon and a close-parenthesis symbol. A smiley face. She blinked, and it disappeared, so quickly that she was almost convinced she was seeing things. But when it happened again two monitors down, she understood it: Chuck.

She felt a little of the tension ease. Chuck had found a way to let her know that the virus had taken hold, and even better, that he was watching over them. Mr. Faisal hadn't spotted the fluctuating news monitors, and Sarah wasn't sure if Carina had, but that made Sarah feel a lot better as she followed her partner and the unfortunate employee that had been chosen—Chuck's work, again, as part of the virus he'd delivered had brought Mr. Faisal's name up on the rotation to escort Sarah and Carina back to the private viewing room, which was a nice area surrounded by a curtain.

The minute Mr. Faisal left them alone, with the promise to fetch Carina's box for her, Sarah began checking for cameras in the curtained area. "Clear," she said.

"Oh, thank God." Carina immediately dropped the honeypot act. "Best part was he didn't even recognize me."

"Well, he wasn't exactly focused on your face last night." Sarah crouched down and removed the plastic dummy gun from her ankle holster. It felt downright silly, but it looked real. She tossed a second gun to Carina, who fielded it one-handed, and gave her friend a nod. "Ready?"

"Oh yeah." Carina's grin came on slowly. "Since you won't put out, I have been dying for some action."

Sarah really hoped that wish literally wouldn't come true. "Nympho."

"Prude."

"God, I love working with you. Okay, here he comes."

Mr. Faisal, carrying the shoe-box sized metal box, stepped in through the curtain with a polite smile on his face. "Here you are, Mrs.—" was as far as he got before Sarah stepped up behind him from where she'd been waiting beside the opening, and pressed the gun to the underside of his jaw. He froze; Sarah clapped a hand over his mouth before he could shout.

Carina held out the rather risqué (and perfectly in focus, Sarah was proud to say) photograph of him in the embrace of a stripper. "Hiya," she said. "Ready to become an accessory in the greatest bank heist of your life?"

Mr. Faisal, son-in-law to the owner of the bank and definitely not a man who should be cavorting with strippers, took one look at the photograph, the redhead, and then the blonde, and did the smart thing: he put his hands over his head and nodded.

Author's Note the Second: What happens next? Does Carina finally wear Sarah down and they run off together? At least that's what I hope happens next, but something tells me Frea won't stand for that. She'll probably want to write something good and reasonable. Stay tuned to find out what that is.

Thank you for reading and we hope you enjoyed!