One or two more chapters to go.

Chapter 21

It was a good thing that Sheldon Cooper had never been in Bernadette's car. Penny would have been peeling him off the headliner. First, the car was littered with fast food containers, empty water bottles, scraps of post-its with notes scrawled on them and what she hoped were empty Petrie dishes.

And then there was the basic issue of speed. Whatever Howie had said to her had lit a fire under her tail and she had dragged the two women out of the mall as fast as she could. For a little girl, she was strong. Her foot was very heavy as well.

"Bernadette, slow down! What did Howard say to you that's got your panties in a knot?" Penny was in the backseat, leaning over the front seat watching the speedometer hit 40, then 50…on a very busy commercial thoroughfare.

"He said something was wrong with Sheldon and to get back there right away!"

"Step on it! You're going too slow. Faster…faster…pull over and let me drive!"

"Raj? What's wrong? Where's Sheldon?" He saw the tears and the missing Sheldon and put 2 and 2 together. He was only an engineer but he got 4.

Sheldon/Penny apartment

He'd only been gone a minute or two at the most. What could have happened?

"Raj, where is Sheldon? And why are you crying? It's not that bad. I'm sure Penny can explain it or…where's that damned phone?"

"He went to his room. He has the phone. All he does is listen to that damning voicemail that has hurt him. Howard, if someone as sweet as Penny seems to be could do this to Sheldon, what does it mean for me and Aisha? Or you and Bernadette? I thought what they had was 'real' but now? Women are so…so…unfathomable."

Howard just shook his head. The subject was too complex to deal with at the moment. He went to Sheldon's door and knocked.

"Sheldon, it's Howard and I'm coming in," and opened the door.

"You're in my room. No one is allowed in my room. Get out, Howard. That's a strike. No, that's TWO strikes!"

Sheldon didn't look up. He was sitting on the edge of his bed (their bed; Penny had nagged him into getting a queen sized bed), folded over on his knees with Penny's cell phone against his forehead, listening to the voicemail over and over..

"Sheldon, buddy, I need to look at that cell phone for just a second and then I'll give it right back, okay? I need to do some validation studies. Something's not right here."

"Yes, Howard. You are right. Something's not right. You are in my room. No one is allowed in my room. Here, take it and go. I've heard enough to do me a lifetime. People like me don't get women like Penny. It was an anomaly, an aberation, a one-off, and now it's over."

He tossed the phone in Howard's general direction. His friend who'd never even played T-Ball made a catch worthy of a major leaguer.

"Okay, Sheldon. I'm leaving. Don't do anything rash, okay? Just stop and think. Consider it a problem and set your mind to it. I'll be back with my findings."

He walked quickly back into the living room and opened up Sheldon's laptop and entered some code and the number of the phone that had dialed Penny's and waited. "Raj, quit your sniveling. I need your help. I have a cell phone number but it's listed to CalTech, nothing more. I need a hack, buddy."

Raj, happy for something to do with his mind, shoved Howard out of the way and started entering code and soon the screen was filled with lines of code that seemed to scroll endlessly.

And then stopped and a data field was highlighted.

Bernadette, bless her heart, managed to arrive at the apartment building without getting a ticket or into an accident. Penny had leaned over the backseat and pointed out every gap in the traffic and urged Bernadette to 'stomp on it…blow his damned doors off…get me home…"

The car hadn't even come to a complete stop and Aisha had the door open and Penny crawled over her and out onto the sidewalk and then ran up into the building.

'Something was wrong with Sheldon'. Could they have been any vaguer?

The sprint up the 4 flights of stairs winded her and she fumbled with her keys when the door opened and Raj stepped outside, putting his fingers across her lips to silence her.

"We don't want Sheldon to know you're here yet until we've completed our investigation. So far it looks like you've both been maliciously punked but we've not finished with it yet. Please, Penny, sit and don't speak. We must know the truth before you see him," he whispered and then pointed to the stairway landing and went back inside.

Inside, Howard was on the phone with Dr. Eric Gabelhauser, their boss and a willing participant in what he'd mentally dubbed 'Experiment in Payback'. He held off Raj's questions with a hand held in the universal 'stop' sign.

"Okay, then you are in agreement. This is beyond the pale and certainly warrants extreme retribution. To recap, you will handle the expulsion and the cancelation of Dr. Von Marburg's lecture series immediately. We…we'll pick up the pieces and hope Sheldon can pull it together. It was a shitty thing to do, Dr. Gabelhauser, not just because he's blind."

He hung up the phone and Raj looked at his friend with 'new eyes'.

"Howard, I leave you alone for 2 minutes and you've organized a counterstrike of such magnitude? Surely Sheldon is not the only Mad Genius in town. You've enlisted the Department Chairman? Evil, Howard, purely evil but so warranted."

"He's my friend. They both are. And it seems that there are surveillance cameras in the office…"

"Where is he? I've waited long enough out there, Raj. Where is Sheldon?" She threw open the door and stalked in, looking every inch the Queen P of Age of Conan.

Raj intercepted her and she almost punched him.

"Penny, wait! You must know what has 'gone down' before approaching your paramour. That evil woman from Germany has engaged in unprofessional behavior and she has suborned a student to aid her. It is being taken care of by my Mad Genius friend but you must sit and be quiet whilst Howard tells you all that has happened and will happen."

Bernadette and Aisha walked into the apartment, huffing and puffing. Bernadette immediately demanded an explanation while Aisha simply walked over to Raj and hugged him. America was a strange land with strange people. She wasn't sure if leaving India was a good idea after all.

Penny stared at a spot on the carpet where she'd once spilled grape juice and forgotten about it while Howard and Raj filled her in on what had happened. She wondered how Sheldon could be so quick to believe the message until Howard played it back. Now she understood. The caller had played to his weaknesses and nailed the whole thing tight with the blind crap.

Penny looked at Howard with tears in her eyes when he explained that the 'perp' had been caught on a security camera that automatically came on when either of their access codes were not used to unlock the door. Raj had hacked the university database and found out to whom the cell phone had been assigned.

Dr. Gabelhauser would do the rest. The student had been identified from the security footage and facial recognition software and the cell phone was registered to Dr. Freya von Marburg, visiting professor and lecturer – well, soon to be 'former' visiting professor and lecturer.

"Where do they live? Can you find out? I need to talk to them. I want to ask him 'why'. I already know why the Nazi Bitch put him up to it. She and Shel have history and she's trying to bust us up. Find out where they live, please? Do it for me."

Penny stood and thanked Howard and Raj and nodded to Bernadette and Aisha. "Aisha, we'll hit the malls tomorrow when I'm in a better mood. Right now I have to explain all this to Sheldon and pray he believes me."

Penny knocked lightly on their bedroom door and then went in and closed the door behind her. It was bright and sunny in the room and she could see Sheldon's face and the wet tear tracks when he looked up at the doorway and her heart broke for him.

Penny crossed the room and knelt before Sheldon, her hands on his shoulders and her forehead resting against his. She could feel the hitch in his breath as he tried to control his emotions.

"Sheldon, we were punked. Raj and Howard found out who switched our cell phones and why. It was the guy I blew off at faculty orientation. Freya-Slut hooked up with him and he used her cell to call my cell and leave that horrid voicemail. He broke into our office and switched phones while we were in class. It was all a lie, honey. Just a horrible lie to break us up so that woman could get her claws into you."

Sheldon grabbed Penny by the hips and leaned back onto the bed, pulling her with him so that she was laying full length against him. He nuzzled her neck and sniffed back tears.

"This is a social situation with which I have no basis or experience to aid in understandong. I thought it was true, Penny, and I'm sorry for not trusting you but he said things that I knew were true in the past. I'm sorry for doubting you for even one millisecond."

"I love you, Sheldon Lee Cooper and…and I want to be your wife. Will you marry me, Shel? Will you be my husband and the father of our children? Will you come visit me at the California Women's Correctional Center on 'conjugal visit' weekends?"

"Yes, Penny, yes! Wait! Visit you where?"

"I'm going to be going to jail, Moon Pie, because I'm going to castrate that sonofabitch and then I'm going to skin that scrawny blonde bitch and roll her in salt and laugh. Maybe I could plead insanity because I'm really crazy about you, Doctor."

A/N: Sorry for the brevity but I had issues with my Dell laptop hunk 'o junk and had to get my neighbor to transfer files to my new laptop and I got to go out of town and do a convention again. Viva Las Vegas! And no, I'm not a hooker.