A/N This episode has no Sarah up to this point, but that's all better now.

Casey was getting really tired of swinging his mop, so the trill of an incoming voicemail from his special pocket was more than welcome. He knew what it was, or at least should have been, and pulled it out to verify.

EEOL. Casey grunted in appreciation, deleted the text, and tucked the phone back into its hiding place. A message in an unbreakable code on an untraceable call from an encrypted phone. Should be safe enough. No one told Casey the code but no one had to, that was the beauty of it. An enemy couldn't overhear a secret that was never spoken.

And they wondered why he grunted so much.

So Eagle-Eye was Off Line. About time. Bartowski must not have informed Base that they'd changed their call signs. A tiny screw-up in the scheme of things, but it felt good to have something to razz the kid over while he scrubbed toilets in the first floor men's.

Most people thought John Casey was just obnoxious. Casey preferred to think of it as 'training by ordeal.'

Sarah was in a hurry, so she drove more slowly than usual, even though her Porsche was well known to the highway patrols hereabouts. Or it had been. She'd been gone two years, after all, and she may have fallen off the unofficial list of People Not to Mess With. Probably not, men tended to remember her. She had no time or desire to find out.

Base had called to alert her hours ago to the operation her husband was running, on his first day on the job, even though she was at a remote location. A high priority op, in response to a Ring op of equally high priority. Casey and Chuck, alone. His very. First. Day.

She shorted a class, and skipped a meeting. They'd forgive her. Or not. She didn't think about it much, she was operating on instinct now. She'd call it a hunch, but she wasn't big on hunches. More of an itchy feeling she got when words like 'Ring' and 'Chuck' appeared in the same sentence.

Now she was considerably more than halfway from here to there, places where speeds were not measured by aircraft but by more conventional, down-to-earth means. She had no time to play games with the police today. When her phone went off she wasn't about to pull over to answer it.

"Telescope, we have a situation."

She smiled, but for all the wrong reasons. Pressed her foot down, for all the right ones.

Bring on the planes.

Chuck checked a second time that the access into the Intersect area was closed, and shut the closet door. Gratefully he took the bag off his head and put it in the drawer of the desk in the plainly furnished office, where it would stay until he would need it tomorrow. There wasn't supposed to be any surveillance but then he wasn't supposed to get kicked out of Stanford either, or be working as a janitor as a cover for his real work. If there was one thing life taught him it was that life rarely went as it was supposed to.

He checked the monitors by the door. Only someone passing by at the wrong time could see him step out of that room, so he had to make sure no one did. The section of hallway on the other side was covered by only two cameras, which were looped with a view of the empty hall whenever he used the door. As far as the rest of the world was concerned this room was never used.

Slightly more than halfway to the first floor men's, where Casey was supposed to reacquire Bartowski and get him back into his cover, his phone went off again, not the trill of a text, but a regular call. "Hello?"

"Kaleidoscope, we have a situation. Our courier reports that the package has been intercepted."

Casey almost snarled. "By who?"

"Unknown at this time, Kaleidoscope. We have a description of a large man, African-American–" Casey rolled his eyes at the politically correct terminology. Are people really that afraid of words? "—and dressed in a custodian's uniform."

Muffin? Which was perhaps jumping the gun a little, as Muffin was simply the only black janitor Casey'd seen so far. He'd seen quite a few today, none close, just coming within range of his situational awareness and then out again. Now that he thought about it, he realized that he'd seen only a few janitors, over and over. Keeping tabs on him. "On it." He shoved the mop and bucket into an alcove and promptly forgot about them.

"Telescope has been notified and is en route."

Heh. Walker's probably been en route since the op started. Time for plan B.

"Casey," called Chuck softly, as if his bodyguard was somehow hiding his large frame inside the first floor men's somewhere. No bodyguard. No janitor's outfit to put on over this suit.

Time for plan B.

No knock this time. "Sir, we have reacquired Tough Guy."

Dimples switched the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other in relief. "Excellent news, Babyface. When and where?"

"Sweetcheeks spotted him in the Westside cafeteria, dressed in a suit, wearing a nametag that said 'Charles Irving.'"

Dimples frowned. "Not an alias I've ever heard of. I'll have to run it through the db, see if it's a cover anyone's used before. Was Ladyfeelings anywhere in sight?"

"Negative, sir. He's has been under continuous surveillance as per your instructions."

Running feet in boots warned him, and Babyface turned as another man slammed into the door jamb, panting. "Sir, Ladyfeelings is no longer on station."

"You two, bring in Tough Guy. Now."

First thing Casey had to do was find Muffin. There could be other black janitors but start with the one you know. The guy could even be innocent.

Wouldn't that suck?

He raced to an interception point, glad for his cover for once, and its janitor's keys that let him take stairs unavailable to ordinary folks. Hopefully Muffin would go back to Interiors Maintenance rather than try to drop the package himself. It was the only hope they had.

He left the stairwell, walking quickly and—yes! Reagan was in his Roadster and all was right with the world! "Hey, Muffin," he said, as casually as a slightly out-of-breath person could.

"Ladyfeelings." Muffin sounded surprised, but he stopped, that was the important thing. "I thought you'd be on the roof by now."

If he meant to put Casey at ease with some kind of feeble joke, he failed dismally. All Casey got was the knowledge that they had indeed been watching him. "I would have been, but I went by the mailroom and found that I'd lost my card. A Get Well card for my Uncle Bob." Muffin wasn't ready for the comment, and Casey was watching his face.

Then Casey was hitting his face.

Muffin wasn't called Muffin for nothing, and hit back.

Neither man was big on finesse. They hit. They took hits. They absorbed pain and bulled on through, until one of them could take no more.

At least, that was the theory.

In practice, Casey couldn't wait that long. Whether there were any other traitors in IM or not, he was low man on the totem pole. Muffin could get away simply because the others trusted him more. And he had to get back to Chuck. No way Walker would show her face around the two of them.

Suddenly Muffin stumbled forward and sagged in his arms, struck from behind. Casey eyed his aider and abettor, a slim brunette with large sunglasses covering half her face. "Nice outfit, Walker."

Sarah Walker even smiled differently when she was in character. "Had it in the car, just in case. What's his deal?" Together they dragged Muffin into a stairwell and Casey cuffed him to the railing. "I'll let you know when I find out myself," he said, frisking the other guy. Paper crinkled. The envelope Casey sought was intact, and he handed it off to the only courier he could trust on sight. "Take that to Base."

No! I did what I had to do. "I have to get to Chu-Eagle-Eye."

Casey sighed. Ladyfeelings. "If Bar-the moron did what he was supposed to do he's perfectly safe on the other side of the building, probably gorging on soda and junk food and watching videos on his phone. He can wait, but something they want this badly won't."

Sarah snarled. Duty. Bad enough she couldn't run, or do anything to draw attention to herself. Now she couldn't even kick Casey's ass if something happened.

Casey shut the door after her…and ducked. Muffin's large fist parted his short hair but hurt nothing more sensitive than that. "Out of my way, Marine. I have a date to keep, with a hot brunette."

Casey grinned, and clenched his hand. "She's taken, but she's got five brothers I'd like you to meet."

Sensors in the wall detected the beacon in Sarah's earring, and the automatically looped footage of an empty hall took over on the monitors no one was watching anyway. The hot brunette slipped into the empty office and triggered the mechanism, free at last to hurry.

Minutes later, a hot blonde left.

"Muffin did what?" No reply. Chuck looked around, trying not to let his anxiety show. Sure he was supposed to wait in this public area for pickup but eventually someone was bound to notice that his 'coffee break' was going on just a little too long. Plus he was running out of money and the vending machines were really expensive.

Someone entered the room, and as always he flicked his gaze to assess the possible threat. Crap. A janitor, taking the bag out of the bin. Chuck immediately got up and headed for the coffee station. If he was lucky the guy would just take the bag and leave.

"Hey, Tough Guy, you look good in a suit."

So much for luck. "I'm sorry, were you talking to me?" Chuck scooped up some of the plastic knives as he turned. Sure the CIA valued him and was more than willing to protect him, but they didn't think he was as absolutely necessary as they used to, and they didn't know that the Ring was in the building. His wife did, though, and he just needed to hold them off until she arrived.

"I'm afraid so, Mr. Irving."

A second voice. I definitely should have pushed for the analyst job. He turned suddenly, flicking out plastic cutlery into reaching hands almost as fast as he saw them.

"Ah-!"

"Garammit to hell!"

Chuck dashed for the door, tripping over chairs and sliding across table tops, right into the arms of a third man waiting for him. He dropped, leaving the guy holding his suit coat as he slithered out of it. He fell backward between the man's legs and kicked him in the ass, pushing his opponent forward and himself toward the door at the same time. A year and a half as the Intersect had taught him just so much about running away.

"Chuck!"

"Sarah!" No, she was not in the hallway. She was in the cafeteria with three large angry men. Spiffing! With no time to flash, he just took the last knife in his hand, scrambled to his feet and stabbed it at the back of the man he'd just kicked.

Of course the guy turned around and literally caught him in the act. "That's cheating," he said as he started crushing Chuck's wrist to powder.

Chuck almost didn't care. "And your two friends double-teaming a woman isn't?"

The big guy turned to watch. "I like cheating." He pulled a tube out of his pocket, flicked off the cap at one end. A blowgun, low-tech equivalent of a tranq pistol that didn't look like a tranq pistol, wouldn't set off any of her built-in alarms. All his two friends had to do was get Sarah to hold still for one second. He raised it to his mouth.

The pair split up, moving to either side of her.

Sarah paused to assess the threat, unaware of the true danger.

Chuck wrapped his free arm around his captor's head and swung his legs up, spoiling his vision, balance, and aim. As they fell to the ground together, Chuck realized that distracting his wife at that moment might not have been the best idea.

The big guy struggled to push Chuck away. "Get off me, stringbean!"

Chuck struggled to hold on. "Stringbean? What kind of an insult is that?"

His opponent let go of his wrist and shoved Chuck off him with both hands. He rose unharmed, but the blowgun in his hand wasn't so lucky, so he dropped it and curled his hand into a fist. "Old school."

Chuck raised his hands, elbow hurting, head swimming. He looked at his arm, and the blowgun dart sticking through his shirt. Damn. "That's…so unfair."

He fell into darkness, the last thing he heard the sound of his wife's voice, calling his name.

A/N2 There is a part of Virginia where the signs on the I-95 say 'speed measured by aircraft', or some such.