Morgan navigated the maze of hallways, finally arriving at the finishing room to see the empty vat and Sarah handcuffed and shackled to a chair. She looked so small in the middle of the room as she slumped sobbing and straining at her restraints.

Morgan and Sarah could hear a military helicopter outside, then small arms fire, then silence.

"Looks like Casey brought in Beckman after all," Sarah said weakly under her breath. "One last win for Casey before I kill him."

Morgan ran down the stairs, grabbed the keys at Sarah's feet and started to unlock her cuffs. As soon as he finished unshackling her feet, she sprinted up the shorter stairs that ran to the edge of the vat. When she reached the top of the steps, she slowed. It was completely empty and the three large valves that opened to drain the chemicals sat closed. She fought the urge to jump into the vat. Clearly, there was nothing left of Chuck to dive in after and the longer she waited here, the further away Casey would get.

She ran down the stairs and confronted Morgan.

"Where's the van?" she seemed to look right through Morgan.

"I can't believe Casey did this," Morgan said weakly.

"The van. Where is it," she repeated. Her stare was cold. "I have business to tend to."

"It's out front, but..."

Sarah ran up the stairs and headed for the door she saw Chuck walk through just minutes before. She hesitated for a second before she turned the door handle. Minutes ago his hand had opened this door. She saw him and now he was gone. Her knees suddenly felt weak, but the image of Casey standing there with his .45 steadied her.

She opened the door and headed down a hallway. Morgan was right behind her.

"Where am I going?" she asked. If Morgan hadn't studied the layout with Chuck, he would be lost too.

"Follow me," Morgan said as he broke into a sprint down the corridors of the factory.

They burst through the front doors of the plant and headed for the van. "You'll have to find a different ride home," Sarah said. "You don't want to be around when I find Casey."

"You forget, Chuck was my best friend," he grabbed her upper arm to punctuate his point. Sarah looked to his hand on her arm, then directly back to his face. He let go.

"Fine. Come if you want. But stay out of my way," Sarah warned.

"I'll drive," Morgan said.

"I don't think so," Sarah moved around to the driver's side. "I want to catch him, and frankly we have a much better chance of that with me behind the wheel."

Morgan followed her around to the driver's door. "And exactly how are you going to find him? He could be anywhere by now," Morgan said with as much courage as he could muster. Sarah froze, her hand on the handle of the driver's door.

"But, luckily you have me. And, I have an idea," Morgan waited for a moment. When he was certain Sarah wasn't going to wheel around and kill him, he continued. "When I was with Verbanski Corp. she had me chipped. She has all of her operatives chipped. If you can figure out how to isolate Casey's signal, we should be able to track him down with the equipment in the van."

Sarah turned and looked at Morgan. He took a step back and his eyes widened slightly. He jumped as she spoke, "You drive."

Sarah entered the rear of the van and sat down at a terminal to try to figure out how to track Casey's signal. She started with by filtering according to proximity. There was one signal about a mile out and heading away. Morgan started the van, dropped it into drive and sped out of the parking lot. "Where would you like me to go?" Morgan asked.

"Give me a minute... Here. It looks like he's heading ... back to his apartment? Surely he must know I'll look for him there?" She looked out the side window of the van. "What could he be thinking?"

"So, back to Echo Park then?" Morgan asked.

Sarah heard him, but something on one of the other monitors had a taken all of her attention. "Morgan? What's this?" She pointed to a still of the video feed from inside the factory.

"You... um. That's... ah. You don't want to watch that," Morgan said looking into the rear view mirror and guessing what Sarah was referring to.

"Why is this up? Why did you record this?" They both knew it wasn't standard practice to record missions. Best not to have some of the things they had to do on missions surface years later.

"I was on strict orders from Chuck," Morgan spoke quickly. "He was very clear. He wanted this video uploaded to the site he bookmarked 'no matter what'."

"So you sent this?" Sarah spoke quietly. She backed up the video and played it starting just before Casey put three slugs into Chuck's back. She watched frame by frame as he toppled over the railing and plunged into the vat. Nothing. The bubbling and churning of the liquid in the vat obscured any sight of him. She backed it up and ran it again, watching him as he disappeared into the vat of acid. She stopped the video just as the Bentley's agent lost his arm in the swirling liquid. That didn't strike her as a very smart thing to do at the time and the replay didn't make it look any more intelligent. He couldn't expect the ball or the chip would survive the acid?

"Where did Chuck have you send this?" Sarah asked Morgan.

"I don't know. I just uploaded it to the site Chuck had marked then I came running in to you as fast as I could."

Sarah clicked on the link Chuck set up for Morgan. It directed him to a file sharing site connected to V.I.C.T.O.R. Sarah tried to access Chuck's computer creation to see if she could find out where this video went. It took two tries, but the name 'Emma Mary' with her birth date, including hour and minute, spread between each letter of the name worked as she suspected.

Once inside V.I.C.T.O.R. it was a little difficult finding her way around. She was nowhere as adept as Chuck at cracking computers, but her years of watching him sip Chardonnay and type at the keyboard gave her some insights. The thought of Chuck lost in the reverie of hacking sent a wash of sadness over Sarah. She tried to see the V.I.C.T.O.R.'s interface through her tears. Despite the fact that she could barely see, she was able to trace the path of the video surprisingly easily. Chuck sent it everywhere. YouTube, Vimeo, and a dozen other video sharing sites simultaneously. All with the title, "Death of the Intersect".

"Chuck knew he was going to die," Sarah said. "He did this to protect us."

"What?" Morgan divided his time pretty evenly between the road and watching Sarah work in the rear view mirror. "What do you mean?"

"He set it up so that when you uploaded this video it would instantly create hits in every espionage agency in the world – legitimate and otherwise. Everyone who might have an interest in the Intersect knows Chuck is dead."

"That's why he wrote the letters," Morgan said.

"What letters?" Sarah looked up from the computer terminal.

"Yours is on the table under my copy of Entertainment Weekly," Morgan said.

Sarah lifted the magazine and saw four envelopes, one for her, one for Chuck's mother, one for Ellie and one for Emma. She picked up Emma's letter first, paused for a moment, then ran her fingernail along the fold on the side.

She slid the letter out slowly and recognized Chuck's handwriting immediately.

My precious Emma,

You need to know that you are the best gift anyone could ever wish for. I know you're going to be an amazing woman. Beautiful and brave like your mother, and funny like me (at least I think I'm hilarious) I know you'll have the best of both of us. I want you to know that your happiness and safety have always been the most important thing to me. Everything your mother and I do, we do to make sure your healthy, happy and safe. If I don't get a chance to say all of this to you in person, keep this so you will always know how much I love you and your mother.

Love Always,

Dad

Morgan stopped looking in the rear view mirror. Obviously, Chuck had written more in the other letters than he did in his and Morgan wanted to give Sarah some privacy. Even though he didn't look, he could hear her sobs. He wanted nothing more than to say something to comfort her, but words failed him.

Sarah picked up the letter addressed to her next. She held it up and smelled the envelope. It didn't smell like Chuck. It didn't smell like anything. Sitting up a little straighter in her chair, she examined the lettering on the front of the plain white envelope. 'Sarah' in cursive, almost perfectly centered.

She wiped a tear from her cheek and once again slit the end of the letter open with her fingernail to slide the letter out. Before she unfolded it, something on the monitor in front of her caught her eye. Casey arrived in the courtyard was heading to the apartment Alex and Morgan shared.

"Morgan, is Alex home?" she asked.

"I think so. She was going to try to put together a new plan for the wedding seeing as the Chicago wedding turned out to be a bust."

"Call her and tell her to get out of the house," Sarah said.

"You don't think Casey would hurt his own daughter?" Morgan asked.

"No. He doesn't have any reason to hurt her, but he has to know that once you tell her what he did, she'll never speak to him again." Sarah watched the tracker as Casey moved into Morgan's apartment. "I don't know what he plans to do, but you need to get a hold of Alex and make some excuse for her to get out of the house."

"I'll call, but we're going to be at the apartment in two minutes. Less if I can hit some lights," Morgan began fumbling for his phone.

"Two minutes, got it." Sarah began rummaging the van for guns an ammunition. She couldn't find anything except the tranq gun Chuck let Morgan use on missions. "Didn't Chuck bring anything?" she said, more to herself than to Morgan. She looked over the tranq gun again. "Of course he didn't. This'll have to do."

Morgan slipped his phone back into his pocket, "No answer."

"Did you leave a message?" Sarah asked.

"I wasn't sure what to say. I didn't think a voice mail was the place to tell the woman I love her father executed my best friend."

Casey had moved out of the apartment and into the courtyard. Then, from the courtyard to into his apartment. She knew he was arrogant, but he had to realize the danger of hiding in plain sight when the C.I.A.'s best assassin was looking for him. It is possible he wanted to die, she thought.

Sarah looked down at the letter in her lap, unfolded it and read.

Tears flowed over her smiling cheeks as she read the words her husband wrote her.

Author's note - I see two more chapters to this story. I have one almost finished and the other planned. Thanks for reading this far. I hope the last two chapters make this story worth your time. As always, thanks for the reviews and comments. Please try to avoid spoilers in the reviews (like Chuck's death) as I would like some of this to be a surprise.

Thanks,

Eric