A/N: Thank you to everyone who has reviewed thus far, and everyone who has set up alerts for this little story of mine. I'm so glad so many people seem to really enjoy this!
Act 2, which spans the entirety of Season 2, deals mostly with Carina's mission to Mexico. Chapters 8-14 will center on Operation Python from all sides, but there will be a lot of character development with Carina. From here on out, my chapters will usually span multiple episodes from the canon, so I'll state in my A/N up front which ones are covered in the chapter.
Chapter 8 covers Chuck Versus the First Date, Chuck Versus the Seduction, and Chuck Versus the Breakup.
Insert standard disclaimer that no profit is being made off this writing, and the writer does not own the show Chuck.
Chapter 8
Bryce was a spy; you're an asset.
Anything you perceived was me wanting him to think I like him. I assure you, I have no feelings for Chuck. He's just an asset.
Chuck stood at his doorstep holding his keys. Opening the door to step inside was a much bigger task than it should be, because he knew Ellie would be waiting on the other side to ask how the date went. If he didn't know his sister any better, he'd swear she was part bloodhound because of her ability to sense trouble. Earlier in the evening, she sensed his extra excitement about the upcoming date, and while she didn't pick out his clothes for him like she had on his first 'first date' with Sarah, she did point out to Devon that Chuck's plans for the evening were a 'proper date'. Too bad this proper date had to end with him being stuck as the Intersect for the foreseeable future, unless they were able to recover the Cipher. The freedom he felt when he woke up that morning had blown away like a weak fog.
Even without knowing the real reason behind his frustration at the spy world ruining another date – not to mention the loss of the Cipher putting his freedom from said world in jeopardy – Ellie would be able to tell something had gone wrong. Once she latched on to that, she'd be like a terrier: his sister wouldn't give up until she got at the reason the date went badly – if not the real reason then a lie he made up about his relationship with Sarah.
He grimaced as he slid the key into the lock. If there was one part of this job he'd never get used to, it was the lying, especially to Ellie. Sarah and Casey kept saying that if Ellie really knew about his second life, she would be in danger from someone kidnapping her to use against him – hence the lying. Keeping Ellie safe was the only reason he put up with the dishonesty. With one final sigh, he plastered a smile on his face and pushed the door open.
Devon was resting in one corner of the couch with one foot propped up on the coffee table and his arm around Ellie, who seemed to be resting more on her fiancé than the couch itself. The television was on, but they both looked to be more asleep than awake, and certainly not paying whatever was on that much attention. They must have had particularly trying shifts at the hospital, because they were still in their scrubs. Chuck tried to close the door silently and sneak past them, but a squeaky floorboard woke his sister.
"Chuck?" Ellie murmured sleepily as she lifted her head, "Why are you back so early? Is everything ok?"
"Oh, hi, El. Sorry about waking you up," he deflected as he straightened up. "Yeah, everything's fine. We just decided to call it an early night. Sarah has an early…conference call…with the corporate office of her new job."
Ellie, more awake now, opened her eyes a little wider and sat up off Devon, who exhaled as the pressure on his chest released. "New job? When did Sarah get a new job? What's she doing?"
Chuck searched for the best way to answer. "Well, she got a job at the new yogurt place in the Buy More plaza…Orange Orange it's called. She's the store's manager now, so it's a bit of a promotion and gives her a lot more freedom with her schedule. She has a conference call early tomorrow with the corporate offices so they can get to know her a little better."
Ellie narrowed her eyes and looked closely at her brother. "You look upset, Chuck. What's wrong? Did something happen on the date tonight?"
Of course I couldn't sneak past Ellie without her noticing. Why would even one thing go right for me today? "It's nothing, sis, I promise."
That did it. Ellie sat fully up and stared her brother down. "Charles Irving Bartowski! You can't fool me. Something's going on. When did we start lying to each other?"
Chuck grimaced at the shame her persistence brought on. After a moment of thought he opened his mouth to reply, but just as he did, his new phone rang. It took him a minute to recognize the ringtone, but as soon as he did he remembered his instructions. "Oh, sorry, Ellie. This is my new Nerd Herd on-call phone. Is it ok if we finish later?"
Ellie just rolled her eyes and nodded, but she responded with, "Don't think we're through here! I still want to know what's going on!" As he walked back to his room, Chuck distinctly heard his sister mutter "Buy Morons" as she snuggled back into Devon.
"Intersect support. How may I help you today?" Chuck remembered the phrase General Beckman told him to say when his special phone rang. He heard a breathless computer-altered female voice respond: "Yeah, um, hi. I need to know everything you have on a minor Fulcrum agent with ties to the cartels named Evan Saxton."
The flash hit Chuck with an almost physical impact. He saw Saxton's picture, images of bodies the man had killed, a map of networked Fulcrum sites all over Mexico. After shaking his head clear, he looked around to make sure neither Ellie nor Devon was walking down the hall. "Oh, oh, wow. Um, this guy has his fingers in just about all of Fulcrum's major sites in Mexico. There's a network of locations he's involved with in Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta, Cancun, and Cabo San Lucas. All of those sites are linked to a control compound in Tijuana." A lack of breath from the recitation of the facts finally made him stop.
Carina stopped what she was doing as if she ran into a wall. This just got a lot bigger. I have to go all over Mexico now? "Where was the second city? Wait, how the hell did you input that information so quickly?"
Caught off guard, Chuck had to think quickly: "Puerto Vallarta. Fulcrum has a refinery and cash collection site that doesn't have the same physical security of the others, and I…was sitting at my computer when you called, so I just typed in the key words. It's a simple search function," he laughed nervously.
Carina pursed her lips at the shaky explanation, but she was in a hurry, so she let it slide with a quick "Thanks," as she hung up.
Carina walked down the stairs toward the party's main gathering with her arm interlinked with that of her mark. The black floor-length evening gown she wore lightly traced the floor as she stepped down. Her agent side loved formal affairs that allowed her to wear expensive gowns, shoes that cost more than the average person's mortgage, and makeup that gave her the look of a runway model. Her tomboy side, the one she never showed anyone, would much rather have lounged at home in sweatpants and a t-shirt, or if she was going out, find a good pub where she could have a good drink and a quiet conversation.
She turned to her mark and kissed his cheek while her right hand caressed his collar. His ego got a boost at her public affection, but he saw neither her disgust nor the bug she clipped to his shirt collar. Despite the revulsion she always felt when she had to seduce someone she'd much rather shoot, she couldn't deny the thrill of being on another deep-cover mission, as rusty as her skills might be.
Her last two missions had been failures, and with the time she'd spent hanging around the Washington office, she wasn't anywhere near the top of her game. Still, she mused as her mark left her to go off to the bar to meet one of his cronies, if this op goes well, I'll be right back in form.
Her mission folder told her that Evan Saxton – Fulcrum's liaison to the cartel money operations – would be her first target. If she could get into his computer, she could figure out how to attack Fulcrum from the bottom up.
Two weeks before:
The wind breezed through her hair as she stood on her balcony, watching the Pacific waves break on the rocky shore below her. Her green satin robe blew around her, but she took no notice. The noisy spring break tourists frolicked in the distance as the sun set, but she took no notice. The sounds of Acapulco cabs driving the streets created a dull roar behind her, but she took no notice.
Carina turned and walked slowly through her new villa. Six months ago her DEA cover – Cassandra Williamson – would have been perfect, but now, she was only working to work. She threw herself into this cover, because she had nothing else. Pretending to be one of the idle rich, divorced from her millionaire ex-husband with nothing but time on her hands would have been her dream cover once upon a time, but now it just seemed empty. Still, it was the ideal cover for this mission: she could keep odd hours and attend parties without raising any suspicion. Keeping the operation in tourist destinations reduced the chances of anyone looking twice at an American.
Her villa was luxurious in the extreme. Expansive and open, it provided the DEA technicians a blank slate for hiding communications points, weapon caches, and first-aid kits. She strolled out of her room and looked down over the balcony into the great room below. Two stories of floor-to-ceiling glass overlooked the beach below the villa. On the upper floor, the interior balcony with its wrought-iron bars and polished wooden railing functioned as an open hallway, connecting each of the four ensuite bedrooms and the stairs to go down to the main level. Naturally, Carina occupied the master, both because it was the biggest and because it had been secretly fitted with an extra weapons cache and an escape down to a motorized sailboat moored in a protected cove accessible only by that path and from the sea. She spread her arms on the balcony and gazed down.
The two-story great room was the focus of the entire villa. Centered on two-story floor-to-ceiling windows, the room backed to the kitchen and a main-floor study. Two-story columns both supported the interior balcony and the roof of the entire villa. The kitchen was perfectly appointed, which she had insisted on. A breakfast bar in a half circle faced the great room with a sink toward the cooking area. Three suspended lights in cylindrical shades down reflecting on the granite countertops. Behind the breakfast bar, the main wall featured double wall ovens, a gas countertop range, and a stainless steel side-by-side refrigerator. Cooking was her secret hobby, but most of her deep-cover missions didn't give her the chance to practice.
The only thing she noticed about her new home right then was the echo of a sudden sneeze. As opulent as the residence was, it was empty. She sighed. Such was life. Carina went back into her room, opened her closet door, and started flipping through her wardrobe, searching for the right look to put on that evening.
Present
She cooled her heels at the bar on a swiveling chair, sipping some fruity pink drink and waiting to hear some kind of clue over her nearly-invisible earwig about what Saxton and his buddies were up to. The third meathead was just walking back to his seat with his tail between his legs when she heard voices in her ear.
"…When are they getting the package back?" Strange. Cartels usually call their products 'merchandise'.
"…Soon, Jose. It's being well-guarded."
"…What's so special about this thing anyway?"
A snort. "…Fulcrum needs it for their new project in Los Angeles."
"…What new project?"
"…I haven't heard much, but they think it's finally going to help them start human testing." Carina had to fight to keep her eyes from growing wide. What are they going to start testing on humans?
"…Madre de Dios! Human testing?"
"…That's what I hear, my friend. This is much more than just smuggling. We will speak more later. For now, I have an extraordinarily beautiful date that misses me desperately."
Hearing that, Carina turned in her swivel chair and pretended to search out her 'date'. Once she established eye contact, she winked at him and blew him a kiss. It slightly nauseated her to be this affectionate to a rogue spy out to overthrow the government, but she swallowed back the bile and made him think she was ready to fall flat on her back for him.
Evan's companion slapped him on the shoulder and gestured for him to go back and join her. He grinned and swaggered back over to where Carina was waiting. Neither of them noticed the bug.
Casey and Sarah stood at attention in front of the monitors in Casey's apartment. The two of them were due to carpool over to the Buy More plaza soon. Chuck was already at the Buy More, having an early shift today. Sarah hid her lingering excitement at the upgrades behind an impassive mask. She couldn't tell if the new cover job or the new Castle facility was more exciting. No more hour-long showers to get the corn dog smell out of my hair, she gleefully thought to herself. Just as soon as it appeared, however, the smile faded.
"General, why didn't you want Chuck present for this meeting?" She asked formally.
Beckman looked down her nose at Sarah before answering "I needed to speak with the two of you alone. The asset's services have been requested by another agency which contributed data to the Intersect. It seems they would like to get some use out of it."
Casey didn't exactly flinch, but out of the corner of her eye Sarah saw the muscles in his shoulders tense at the news. "Ma'am, how exactly is this other agency going to get data out of the Intersect without compromising his identity? We still don't know how far Fulcrum has penetrated."
Beckman's barely-concealed eye roll almost made Casey quail. "The asset now has a dedicated cell phone that will ring whenever the other agency's people need to run a question through the Intersect. For his protection, the phones on both ends will digitize their voices so neither can recognize the other later on. Because this new operation only requires the asset to flash and inform the person on the other end of the line, you two will not need to provide Mr. Bartowski any security. Thus, whenever he has a call on his new phone, the two of you will need to move out of his vicinity."
Sarah blinked in surprise. The explanation made sense, but being excluded from a new mission of Chuck's was unexpected. "Will there be set times for these calls or could it happen anytime?"
The general looked at Sarah like she was regarding a particularly dense child. "Since the operation in question is ongoing, we must assume a call could come in at any time, Agent Walker. Will that be a problem?"
Sarah shook her head in response. "No, ma'am. No problem at all." Casey grunted.
"Good. Dismissed." The tiny general cut the link abruptly, leaving her two subordinates to stare at each other.
Chuck looked through his closet, not really paying attention to the clothes on their hangers as he puzzled over Beckman's words. That morning, the General had called him with a final reminder to make sure he was alone if his new phone rang. He tried to get information out of her about where Carina's new mission really was, but she refused to give him an answer. Every time he tried to bring it up the General looked over her glasses at him and scowled. Eventually he gave up, but at the end of the call, she looked him squarely in the eye and said "Mr. Bartowski: I know you're upset about Agent Miller's disappearance, but I can't give you the answers you want. All I can say is that if you look hard enough, you might be surprised at what you find." With that riddle, she ended the call with all her usual politeness.
He scanned the closet for the outfit that he wanted to wear that evening. His first real date with Sarah was something he had to get right. He shoved Nerd Herd Chuck to the side. Charles Carmichael wasn't going on this date either, so he pushed all his mission clothes to the other side. No weapons, no aliases on a real date. Finally, his eyes fell on just the right clothes for the evening. Bingo.
Carina let Evan lead the two of them stumbling up to his villa. He was stumbling because of a truly staggering intake of tequila – which she subtly encouraged – at the bar while Carina's was due to extensive DEA training on how to feign intoxication. Evan fumbled with his keys before collapsing against the door at the hilarity of his failure to open it. Carina, laughing as hard as he was, grabbed the keys and opened the door.
After several minutes, Evan managed to stand again and enter his villa. Carina closed the door behind them and while her mark shouted to his servants that they were to be left alone, she slipped the front door key off the ring and slid it into her handbag. In the same motion, she pulled out a small metal object which she carefully hid in one of her palms. Servants? Either he's really wasted or he really wants to impress me, Carina thought to herself.
When Evan heard her laughter stop, he turned. All of his movement stilled as Carina walked up to him, the sway of her hips like a metronome. His eyes tracked her movements until she was halfway up the marble curving staircase, at which point she glanced back over her shoulder, eyes smoldering, and asked in a husky voice, "Am I going to your bedroom alone?" As she started making her way up the stairs again, Evan seemed to regain the power of movement and almost raced her to the top. Taking Carina's hand in a gesture his inebriation deemed suave, he led her into his bedroom before Carina slipped away. She guided him until he was facing her with his back to the bed.
When her arms snaked around him he could barely think, and when her lips met his, all higher brain function ceased, which is why he didn't even register the pricking pain of Carina's twilight dart on his neck. He thought his sudden descent onto the bed was the aggressive opening move of a lover, and fell asleep with a smile on his face that had Carina shuddering to herself.
"What a creep." She hurriedly undressed him to his – she gagged on the bile in her throat - thong before dragging him to the top of the bed and getting him under the covers. After a quick search, she found a bigger box of condoms than she had ever seen before in the nightstand. "Someone thinks highly of himself," she muttered as she tore open half a dozen, shoving the flimsy latex in her purse and leaving the wrappers scattered around. Her final step was prying his cell phone casing apart and carefully implanting a bug that would relay not only both ends of any conversation, but would also act as a GPS tracker. Finally, she withdrew a small bottle of perfume from her bag and sprayed it around the bed.
Assured her mark would be out for the night and wake up thinking he had been a real stallion, she grabbed her handbag and slipped quietly out of the room. After trying a couple doors on the upper floor, she found his office. Carina quietly donned latex gloves as she walked over to the computer, which Evan luckily left on. She pulled out a custom DEA thumb drive with several not-commercially-available programs. Popping the device into one of the computer's ports, she waited while the first program hacked through Evan's pathetic password controls.
TequillaMustang? Really? Carina just rolled her eyes while a second program began transmitting the contents of Evan's hard drive to the computer in her own villa. While that was going on, a third program sent the IP information to a technical facility where analysts would compile a profile of Evan himself.
When the light on the thumb drive blinked off, Carina took the device out of the computer, which promptly returned to its idle state. She grabbed her handbag and quickly exited the villa for a scalding-hot shower and a short night's sleep.
What Carina didn't know was that the analysts who looked at the same data from Evan's hard drive as well as the intercepted communications from the bug were actually a single analyst, based in a secret base below a frozen yogurt ship in a Los Angeles mini-mall. When Carina placed the bug in Evan's phone, it automatically linked to a computer in Castle and created a folder only said analyst could access, in which it created a new file for each conversation it recorded. When she started transferring the data off Evan's hard drive, it followed the same pathway and created more files. The analyst in charge of reviewing the data did so at night, after his other duties.
The next morning, Evan woke up slowly. The headache currently throbbing in his skull felt worse than any hangover he could remember. It took a very long time to get his bearings, but as he gingerly pushed himself up in bed, his senses began breaking through the fog to send information to his brain. He could smell perfume all around him, which was usually a good sign. While he couldn't feel any body heat, his hands did encounter at least two torn condom wrappers – another good sign, he thought with a smirk. Finally, he got his eyes open. He was definitely alone, but that wasn't uncommon and made the morning easier for him. No excuses to make to get some random woman out of his house. He carefully swung his feet over the side of his bed and looked down at the rumpled suit lying on his floor. His still-bleary eyes landed on something strange: he picked the jacket up and examined the small electronic device clipped to the collar.
The obscenity he shouted rattled the windows.
Smack! Thump! Wham! Sarah gave the heavy bag the CIA was gracious enough to install in her hotel room another hard right cross, followed by a left heel to where the target's face would have been. Her fury still burned intensely, despite being well into an extended session of pounding on her imaginary targets. Graham, Beckman, Casey, and even Chuck all came in for their fair share of imaginary punishment during her workout. Her black athletic pants and blue sports bra had long since gotten soaked with sweat, as had her gloves.
Two quick jabs to Graham's stoic face for not trusting his protégé, even after a year of taking care of his precious Intersect. She'd left her gun at her hotel room because you don't bring a gun on a real date, but at a restaurant there were any number of weapons she should have been able to access, and would have if Casey hadn't driven through the window. She drove her left knee into Graham's imaginary gut and followed that up with an elbow chop where the back of his head would have been. Then he had to go and get himself blown up with Fulcrum's Trojan horse Cipher. A spinning kick finished him off.
Sarah smiled sardonically and adjusted her aim down on the bag to give the pint-sized General Diane Beckman a black eye. The smug bitch took every opportunity she could to remind Chuck that he was nothing more than a skin-covered computer to her. The shortsighted woman couldn't even see when the mission's success depended on Chuck's intuition making connections a machine could never make. Even when the team achieved its mission goals because of Chuck, Beckman never forgot to let them know what they did wrong.
Sarah spun her right heel into the lower third of the bag for a side blow on the imaginary woman and then grunted as she drove her fist right where the General's nose would have been. Rather than go in for another spinning kick, she gave the General a fist straight to the forehead to knock her out.
She paused to take a deep breath while she sized up her next opponent. She started her bout with the imaginary Casey by jabbing high with her left hand, following that with a hard right cross to the jaw. Casey started out their partnership by trying to kill her, trying to turn Chuck against her, and while things had gotten a lot better – he had even called her his partner under truth serum – after that, he took every chance to belittle Chuck rather than trying to help build his confidence. Thanks a lot, partner, she grunted mentally as she spun a kick to where Casey's temple would have been.
Last and least rationally, she mentally sized up a fight with Chuck. Sarah cursed him as she pounded the center of the bag. In the space of a few months, she'd gone from feeling she was in top form as an agent to being willing to shoot another CIA agent just for following his own orders to take her asset to a secure bunker. Something about the curly-haired nerd had gotten through her defenses and changed how she looked at her job.
Sweat dripped into her eyes, blurring her vision and forcing her to strike blindly. She spun and landed the back of her fist to the side of the bag as she remembered how much she wanted to go on the date just to spend time around him, and they'd gotten so close to having their second real kiss at the restaurant. Stupid nerd making me feel all these…feelings!
Angrily cuffing the stinging sweat from her eyes, Sarah stepped back and planned another attack. She crouched low and feinted with her left, bringing her right in for a huge cross, but the effort tugged some hair loose from her ponytail. As it brushed in front of her eyes, she lost sight of the bag after impact. In the effort of brushing the hair out of her eyes, she missed the momentum of the bag carrying it around her side. The bag representing Chuck Bartowski hit her hard enough to knock her flat on her ass.
Graham was dead. The beta Intersect was destroyed. Chuck was still the only Intersect and she was still his handler. They were back to square one. Too exhausted to get up and fight again, she looked at the swinging bag and sighed aloud, "What the hell am I supposed to do now?"
Evan stalked around his villa's office. I'm gonna make that bitch pay, he thought to himself angrily. Only a government agent would have access to the kind of bug and tranquilizer she must have administered to him. Combined with the tequila, he never stood a chance. She would have been able to do whatever she wanted for hours at a stretch, although he could find no evidence of anything out of the ordinary. Even his computer did not look disturbed. Still, the bug was enough.
Upon realizing what happened, he called his most trusted deputy and ordered him to look over footage from the club, identify the agent, and learn anything and everything possible about her. After a day, the agent returned to him with some highly interesting information.
Cassandra Williamson was actually a DEA agent, and according to some highly-placed Fulcrum informants, she was on a mission to take Fulcrum down via its funding sources. The agent also sent a list of alias documents she was issued before her current mission. She had been observed drinking a morning coffee every morning at one of the cafes on the Zócalo square before shopping and swimming. The café would be the best place to get her. He made a phone call to a cartel assassin, giving the date, time, and location. Evan followed that up with an email of the target's picture. Perfect, he thought with a malevolent scowl, no direct Fulcrum involvement.
Just before he left for dinner, he sent a message to his Fulcrum superiors.
Unbeknownst to the Fulcrum agent, his conversation was automatically related to a server in Los Angeles where it waited for review. Chuck clanked down the stairs from the Buy More's entrance to Castle after his shift ended. He couldn't use the Orange Orange because Sarah had gone home immediately after her cover shift ended. When he asked Sarah about going on a date that night – to reinforce the cover, of course - she murmured something about going home for a workout. It appeared he had no chance now of possibly recapturing some of the interrupted magic from their second first date.
He sighed in resignation as he walked over to the bank of computers in Castle's main area. That magic seemed further away than ever, with Sarah's devastating denial to Roan. She must have known he was still wired to them, and wanted him to hear that so he stopped trying to date her for real. Having Bryce show up as soon as Banacek was incarcerated cemented that particular notion. The Chuck Bartowskis of the world always lost the girls to the Bryce Larkins.
With that happy thought, he logged in and pulled up his folder for Operation Python. When he started listening to the first recorded conversation, he paled and immediately brought up General Beckman on Castle's communication lines. "General, I'm really sorry to bother you like this, but there's a situation in Mexico…"
Sarah sat on a chair by one of the windows in her hotel room looking out over the city. It's just not fair! The kiss they shared at Casey's under Roan's watchful eye was one of the two most passionate kisses she'd had. I am so screwed. To have a kiss like that and then not be able to get more was akin to not eating for days, sitting down at a banquet for ten minutes, and then being forced to get up and leave the room.
The most surprising thing about the last couple weeks was Casey's quiet support when Chuck was going to be extracted. He gave her the time to go say goodbye to Chuck before extraction, which by the subsequent events, had given her time to save him.
As if her situation regarding her asset wasn't complicated enough, the whole reason they got to share that incredible, passionate, all-consuming kiss that still got her a little hot under the collar when she remembered the way his hands caressed up and down her…snap out of it, Walker!...the whole reason they got to have that was because Chuck got orders to seduce a mark.
The only good that came out of that mission, other than the kiss, was that Chuck got to see things a little more from her side of the world. He got to experience what it was like to lose a little of yourself to another cover and pretend to have feelings he really didn't in order to seduce that…skank! Lou, Banacek, Jill – she'd seen a picture of Jill when Chuck was in the shower on one of their cover dates – what was it with this stream of brunette skanks? She saw the consternation in his eye as the elevator door closed, but she also saw that he didn't exactly break that kiss either.
She sighed and started to get up, but then saw Bryce on the phone receiving orders. Stupid Bryce. Stupid Chuck got me to go on a real date, then laid the kiss on me before kissing that brunette skank, and of course Bryce has to show up and complicate things even more. Why would I think I could even catch a break?
A passing car honking at something below and brought her attention back to the window. What the hell am I going to do? I'm getting a crush on my asset – the nerd who kisses like no other – the same asset I'm sworn to protect. I don't even know how to be a real girlfriend. All Bryce and I had was a friendship with benefits, but that's all I've ever needed. If I was Chuck's real girlfriend, he'd expect me to open up and share even more about who I am, and if he knew who I was, the people I've killed, seduced, and exploited, he'd run screaming to the hills.
I could lose my job – my life! The CIA is the only thing I know. It's all I've done since I was in high school. If I get kicked out because I let something develop with Chuck, what could I even do with my life? If I got reassigned because I let something develop with Chuck, I'd still be a spy, but a spy without Chuck, never knowing if he was safe or even alive. Process of elimination: Spy Sarah wins out over Real Sarah. As always.
Carina sat at her usual table outside her favorite café, letting her morning cappuccino cool in front of her while she planned her next move. The Intersect technician told her that Evan was much better-connected to both Fulcrum and the cartel than she thought he was originally, but she still didn't know how high he was in the hierarchy. She reached up and brushed an errant strand of hair blowing in the breeze and re-checked first the bulge in her handbag where her Sig rested, then as she crossed her legs she felt the brace of six throwing knives she strapped to her thigh, also still securely in place.
Carrying weapons when trying to look like a female tourist was exceedingly difficult, but she managed it. Rather than by her ankle, where she usually preferred to keep her knives strapped, the strappy sandals and dress forced her to carry them on her thigh. The dress, ending a couple inches above her knees, was a vibrant sapphire. It rose above her waist in a broad V-neck style, which gave her shoulders freedom to move and twist should she find herself in a fight.
A beam of sunlight came through the buildings to hit her dress, reflecting the blue around her, and her mind flashed back to that morning. She was walking along the beach, one of her favorite pastimes whenever she was anywhere with a beach. Maybe someday, if she could survive her career, she could retire and move somewhere with a beach and invite Chuck for a walk with her. I bet he'd look delicious with some canvas pants and a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, some metal framed sunglasses…Oh yeah he would. Yummy!
Just as she got out to the middle of the curving shoreline, she happened upon a dark-haired woman sunbathing on a faded blue Adirondack chair. She looked over her shoulder at where she was on the beach before turning to the woman and politely asking,
"Excuse me?"
The woman looked up at her and replied "Yes?" with only a slight accent.
Carina looked slightly bashful before continuing, "I'm sorry to bother you, but could you possibly take a picture of me here?"
The woman smiled and got to her feet. Carina got her cell phone out and after keying the camera function, she passed it over. The woman stepped back as Carina posed by the water with her sandals draped over her shoulder. After the camera snapped, her erstwhile photographer handed the phone back and Carina almost gasped at how good the shot turned out: the wind whipped her hair around her face, and the ocean behind her mirrored both her dress and her eyes, giving her an ethereal quality. Completely unintentionally, she ended up looking like a professionally posed model. Maybe one day I can give this picture to Chuck.
The woman noticed Carina's shy smile and smiled softly. "He's very lucky," she said enigmatically.
Carina looked up in surprise. "Who is?" she asked a little too quickly.
"The man you want to send this picture to."
"How did you know there was someone?" Carina was a little uncomfortable with how easily this total stranger was reading her emotions.
"Your smile just then," the woman responded as she adjusted her sunglasses, "was the smile of someone imagining a very specific reaction. He's very lucky, and I hope you have the courage to give him this picture very soon."
Carina just stared. "Thank you," she breathed finally. Her photographer smiled and went back to her sunbathing, leaving Carina to her inner turmoil.
Something seemed a little off about the normally bustling café. The waitress who had taken care of Carina every morning that week wasn't there, and the café seemed quieter than most days. Carina took a small sip of the liquid and tried to clear her mind.
She flagged a passing waitress and asked where Alejandra was. The woman shrugged and replied that she wasn't sure, but she thought Alejandra was caring for her sick mother. Carina maintained a concerned expression while her mind went into overdrive.
She knew Alejandra was an orphan who lost both parents to cartel violence. Something is very wrong here. Carina pulled her special phone out of her handbag to make a call, but just as she was bringing it up, the shiny metal case she bought for it slipped out of her hand and fell to the floor. Muttering under her breath, Carina leaned over to pick the phone up. That simple act saved her life as a barrage of automatic weapons fire tore into the counter above her, directly where she had been mere seconds before.
She dove under the table and scrambled behind the counter. Without risking a glance at who was shooting at her, she scrambled through the swinging doors back to the kitchen. As soon as the doors closed behind her, she sprang up and hurriedly put on a spare white cook's jacket, the better to hide the bold blue of her dress and blend into her surroundings. She grabbed a sturdy pot off a hanging rack and waited just beside the door.
Carina counted three voices shouting above the rest out in the café: one female who seemed to be shouting orders at two male voices. One of the men burst through the door with an AK-47. It was not his lucky day, as he picked the opposite direction from which she was standing to check first, and didn't see the heavy, copper-bottomed pot swinging toward his skull.
Once he hit the floor, Carina started to move over to him to take his weapon, but the second man was quicker through the door than she expected. He charged through like an NFL linebacker, leading with his shoulder, which struck her in the back and sent her stumbling out of the way. She ducked around a kitchen island, trying to present a lower target profile. Ducking around a corner, she had to jump back as a burst of fire pinned her down. Time was running out, and the cook's jacket blocked access to her knives. She glanced behind her and saw a block of cutlery under another island that she could just barely reach. She leaned over and grabbed two thick steak knives before turning back to where the gunner was waiting for her to emerge.
Under the island she used for shelter, there were large metal mixing bowls. Not perfect, but they'll do. She grabbed the largest one and stood suddenly, hurling the bowl at her attacker's head. The distraction it provided was enough. She ran around the island and launched a roundhouse kick at the man's gun, knocking it out of his hands and sending it skittering across the floor. He glared fiercely at her and assumed a fighting stance. The man lunged in rage and managed to land one punch to Carina's cheek, which staggered her back, but she managed to shake her head and clear the wooziness enough counterattack.
Carina spun the knives in her hands to provide maximum range and started her attack. She faked a stab with the left, and as her attacker twisted aside, protecting his right, his left opened up for her real thrust, which sent the second steak knife directly into his heart. He just had time to grunt in pain and surprise before his body fell to the kitchen floor.
One left. A tall, slender brunette woman kicked the swinging door aside and marched in with a huge Desert Eagle pistol leading the way. Her attention was drawn to the two bodies on the floor, which gave Carina enough time to aim and throw her remaining knife into the woman's gun arm. The cannon clattered away as the woman grasped the wound in pain.
Carina followed that up with a high kick that snapped the woman's head back. The punch she absorbed earlier still had her woozy, but the wound she inflicted kept the odds evened. Her assailant quickly took a martial arts stance. Carina tried to shake the remaining cobwebs from the haymaker she'd absorbed earlier, but the effort took her attention off for just a second, which gave the other woman just enough time to begin her assault. Carina absorbed a quick jab to the gut, but countered with a flurry of punches that her one-armed attacker was powerless to defend against.
Just when Carina had the woman reeling, she lashed out with a roundhouse kick that knocked Carina backward. By sheer chance, her hands landed on an industrial-sized container of pre-ground pepper used by the cooks as well as a large peppercorn grinder for customers' use. Hiding them both behind her back, she waited for her attacker to make a move. When the woman launched in with her uninjured arm, Carina swung with the jar of pepper, sending a cloud of the pepper directly into the woman's face. While she was frantically wiping her eyes, sneezing, and coughing, Carina swung the pepper mill like a baseball bat and landed a devastating blow on the base of the other woman's skull. She dropped to the floor, unconscious.
Carina slowly walked back out to the restaurant, found her handbag, and pulled out her cell phone. She dialed the local DEA office for a cleaning crew to take care of the dead goon and arrest the two unconscious ones.
Carina strode wearily up to her villa, exhausted by the day's events. Saxton must have figured something out. Those goons – especially the woman – were a little too professional to merely be cartel street muscle. She had to tie things here up and move on to Puerto Vallarta.
As she walked up to the door and started to unlock it, she noticed it was already unlocked. Her senses were immediately on high alert. She never left her residences unlocked. She reached into her bag and withdrew her Sig, then tossed the bag to the ground inside the foyer. After silently closing the door, she unstrapped her shoes and laid them carefully to the side as well.
With nothing on her bare feet to give her presence away, she slowly checked the main floor. The study and kitchen area were clear. Just as she made her way to the glass facing the ocean to check the terrace, she heard the telltale cocking of a gun behind and above her.
"Cassandra my dear, how nice of you to join me this evening. Or should I say, Agent Carina Miller of the DEA." Saxton's smug voice, almost dripping in its false sweetness, gave her stomach a churn. He knew who she was. Saxton was indeed connected to Fulcrum to be able to get her main cover identity. Carina straightened and held out her gun hand to show him she was placing the weapon on the side table.
She turned and faced him. "Saxton. What gave me away?"
He smirked at her acceptance of the situation. "You placed the bug well, but carelessly forgot to remove it on your way out." Enjoying the power he had over the female agent, he lowered his weapon. "You seem to have collected a significant amount of information that used to be in my possession, but even your agency's computers will have a hard time hacking it."
Carina folded her arms and returned his smirk. "Is that so? Then why are you here?"
"I'm here to kill you, of course. You know far too much already. To make it even more poetic, you're going to make it look like a suicide. Death by overdose? The DEA agent, pretending to be a wealthy divorcee, gave in to the very substances she was trying to control. Such a pity!" he affected a sincere tone for this last.
Carina just stared at him. He raised his gun hand again and pointed it directly at her. "I need you to move upstairs slowly. I have everything you need for your 'suicide' already set out for you." He gestured with the weapon.
Knowing she was caught and needing to buy some time, she slowly ascended the stairs. Once at the top, he motioned for her to move toward the master suite. She purposefully dragged her feet, which irritated him so much he walked up behind her and poked her with the gun barrel. That was just the opening she needed.
With a savage growl, she kicked backward at his knee, which snapped in a direction knees were never intended to bend. He howled in pain and tried to fold inward on himself, only to encounter her uppercutting fist with his nose. The sound of the nose breaking reverberated around the upper hallway. Carina grabbed his gun hand and slammed the wrist against the nearest column until the weapon flew out of his nerveless fingers and fell to the floor below. She landed an uppercut directly on his chin, then spun and kicked his stomach so hard he reeled backward. The move gave her enough space and time to slip a couple of throwing knives out of their holster on her thigh.
Despite the extent of his pain, Saxton was still lucid enough to see the nearby vase on the hall table. He picked it up and threw it at Carina, which she dodged, but the maneuver still cost her enough time that he was able to charge her and knock her to the ground. He stepped hard on each of her wrists in turn, forcing her to let go of each knife. She got up, but he was ready with a blow to the side of her head. Still somewhat shaky from the fight earlier, the attack made her off-balance enough that she reeled down the hall.
Saxton picked up one of her knives and started to charge her. At just the right moment, Carina swung the door to the upper terrace open and his momentum carried him outside. There he used the knife to try and slash Carina, but she was too quick and dodged each of the moves. She was rapidly weakening from the dual bouts, which her adversary was quick to exploit.
In a short time, he forced her backward until she was leaning back over the terrace railing with an eighty-foot drop onto the rocks below. His hand encircled her throat, and the sheer malice in his eyes was enough that Carina started flashing back over her life. I can't believe this. I am actually going to die.
Just as she gave up hope, her hair started flying around in a man-made breeze. From above the villa, a helicopter with the word Policia on the side slowly descended. Carina could see the black-clad members of the assault team sitting on the side rails with their assault rifles pointed directly at Saxton. A voice on a bullhorn called "Release her and lay face down with your hands on your head or you will be shot."
Saxton looked Carina in the eye and said with more hatred than she had ever heard in anyone's voice, "Fulcrum wins." With that, he let her go, climbed the fence, and to Carina's gasp, jumped.
Chuck stood looking around his room, his eyes fell on a pair of sunglasses on the desk. They weren't his, but there was a Post-It note stuck to them which read "For a real spy". Bryce left these. Great. What will happen if I put them on? Will they overwrite my brain – again? He put the glasses on and looked in the mirror to see how they looked. Not bad. Sophisticated, even. "Carmichael. Charles Carmichael," he affected in a Connery impression.
That was the wrong thing to say. The glasses activated and ran through an abbreviated Intersect upload. After the upload released him – which was really the best way to describe it, as his movement was frozen during the upload – he fell down to the floor just like after he uploaded the first Intersect.
"I hate Bryce Larkin," he mumbled weakly. As his head lulled against the floor, his final thought was of her, I wish I could still talk to Carina.
A/N 2: I've gotten all my chapters ready to go, so if there's enough of a positive response, I can start posting twice a week now. If you leave a review, let me know if you'd rather I keep posting once a week or if you'd like me to kick it up to twice.
Next time on Chuck Versus the Night Shift:
After the truck drove off, she got into the elevator and rode upstairs. When she got back to her apartment, she put the box down and gasped out a breath. As she bent over with her hands on her knees, her eyes fell on the 'Buy More' logo running in a stripe around the outside of the box.
Carina walked through the doors feeling distinctly ridiculous. Her missions required any number of unusual disguises in the past, but this was something entirely new. If I ever meet that Intersect nerd in person I'm going to shove his face through a pizza for this. She tugged the brim of her Domino's cap down further over her eyes so the security cameras couldn't get a good look at her face.
