A/N: Thesis defense went well. I didn't fail. (There were only two possible outcomes.) So maybe now I can fix all the stuff that isn't working in the next chapter.

Chapter 37: Chuck and Sarah vs Themselves (and others)

December 8

Cincinnati, Ohio

2200 CST

"Chuck," Sarah said, shaking him, "wake up. It's your turn to drive."

Chuck started awake, every muscle in his body tensing as his eyes tracked around, searching the unfamiliar interior of the ratty used car they'd purchased with $300 cash once Sarah had landed the Corvair. It was a matter of tradecraft, Sarah had explained. Renting a car would expose them to security cameras and credit checks, and it was safer all around to purchase a cheap used car, which they would abandon once the mission was complete... or so Sarah said. Chuck wasn't convinced. Their purchase was an old Cutlass Supreme with no airbags and a bare minimum of the safety features Chuck would normally have demanded of transport for his wife and unborn child. The exterior had once been green, but rust discolored what looked like half the bodywork that wasn't made up of Bondo. On the 'bright' side, it did have a totally boss Styx 8-track stuck in the player. The engine worked, at least, though they were spending more on fuel than Chuck felt was reasonable. This mission was on a shoestring budget, given their hotel rooms in Lubbock, renting hangar space now at a second municipal airport, this one in a small town near the border between Ohio and Indiana. It was adding up quickly, eating into their funds, and he was becoming worried they'd end up stranded with no money to get home. He shook budgetary concerns out of his head. They were at a gas station in a large city, which he assumed was Cincinnati. It was about the right time.

"You okay?" Chuck said. Sarah shoved the keys into his hand and hauled herself out, knuckling her back. Chuck poked his head out the window. "Sarah, what's up?" he said, jingling the keys.

She leaned against the Cutlass and raked her fingers through her hair. "Don't worry, just carsick."

This wasn't particularly reassuring. "You, carsick?" he asked, barely hiding his disbelief.

Sarah glared at him and sighed. "Fine, it's not carsickness. It's stupid morning sickness, which is all your fault by the way for knocking me up in the first place."

"I didn't hear you complaining at the time," Chuck quipped.

She ignored it. "I need some crackers or something."

"Oh, right," Chuck said, and turned to root through the back seat. "I packed supplies: crackers, some Funyuns, a bunch of grapes, and some caffeine free sodas," Chuck frowned, "none of which are anywhere to be found..."

"Sorry," she said with a sheepish bob of her shoulder. "I got the munchies while you were asleep."

Chuck grinned. "You or the baby?"

Sarah found herself grinning back, despite her bilious stomach. His grin was as infectious as ever. "Probably a little bit of both," she said. Sarah snorted a laugh and then instantly regretted it when her stomach lurched.

"You want me to go grab you something from the Foodmart?"

Sarah turned suddenly. "No!" she said in a fierce whisper. "Security cameras, Chuck: bad idea."

Chuck frowned and shook his head. "You weren't worried about that before? Won't they be able to spot us on the tapes from that gas station a couple hours ago?"

"Only if they subpoena the security tapes from every gas station in the state, which is highly unlikely, but we're finally in Cincinnati. Every place in the city isn't much easier to do, but it's not completely outside the realm of possibility."

"Isn't that a little paranoid?"

There was a twinkle in her eyes. "You're not paranoid when they really are out to get you, babe. And the question you should be asking is 'am I paranoid enough?'"

Chuck arched an eyebrow. "Babe?"

Sarah shrugged. "I was trying it out. No good?" She grinned and slid across the hood before he could respond, opening his door and shoving him across into the driver's seat.

Chuck used the opportunity to pull her into his arms and plant a kiss on her, but Sarah shimmied out of his grasp. "What's wrong?"

"PDA attracts attention, scootch over," she said.

"Come on," Chuck complained, situating himself behind the wheel. "You're being beyond paranoid. I like taking care of you, and now, I can't even get you snacks or make out with you a little?"

"Just drive," Sarah said, squeezing his knee to soften the sharp tone of voice she used. She hadn't meant to snap at him, and Chuck followed orders with only minor grumbling, pulling out of the gas station. "We need to find the seediest motel we can, one that hopefully doesn't have security cameras in the parking lot."

They drove in silence for a few minutes. "What about that one?" Chuck said, pointing. "There's a sign for hourly rates, probably means no cameras?"

"Yeah, looks promising," Sarah said and opened the glovebox for her S&W while he was still turning into the parking lot. Chuck arched an eyebrow but didn't say anything when she ejected the clip, checked that it was fully loaded, reloaded and slipped the weapon into the waistband of her jeans at the small of her back.

"Worried the clerk is going to get fresh with you?" He said.

Sarah rolled her eyes fondly. "Yes," she said deadpan. "That's it, exactly. I'm definitely not being paranoid again, definitely not."

"Knock 'em dead, sweetie," Chuck said. "Only, you know... not dead dead. We're trying to keep a low profile, you said. I should probably go pay for the room," he said in realization. "You'll stand out like a sore thumb. I should as least come in there with you."

Sarah shook her head. "Nuh-uh," she said and levered the passenger door open. "I put the odds on the lobby camera actually working at 50/50, and if the NSA figures out we were here, hotel tapes will be the first thing they go after. Too risky to get caught on surveillance feeds together."

"Wow," Chuck said. "You are really super par—"

"If you call me paranoid again, I'm cutting you off for a week."

Chuck locked his mouth shut theatrically, and Sarah laughed, striding for the bullet-proof glass enclosure where the night clerk was absent-mindedly watching a wall-mounted television. He kept the motor running, and Sarah came back a few minutes later. "Any problems?"

Sarah gave him a quick peck on the cheek. "I ever tell you how great it is knowing that you aren't just with me because of my looks?"

"It may have come up in passing," Chuck said. "Gross flirts?"

"I'm going to boil the room keys once we're inside," Sarah explained, tossing them on the dash. "My instincts tell me I don't want to know where they've been. He picks his nose with impunity as well."

Chuck wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Ugh, this is one of those times I wish I didn't trust your instincts like I do. Did you scope the cameras?"

Sarah nodded and scrubbed her hands on her jeans. "The monitor was in plain view. Two in the lobby, one pointed across the parking lot at the ATM outside the check-cashing place, and one more covering the vending machines. Signal was grainy, probably still using an old VHS system. We should be good here."

"Leave the guns in the car?" Chuck inquired, and Sarah shook her head.

"No way," she said, "I don't like the look of those two standing by the lobby."

Chuck glanced in the rearview mirror. "What about them? Which ones?"

"White, mid-twenties," Sarah craned her head, and pointed, despite the breach in tradecraft. "Probably junkies, meth most likely," she went on. "One of them propositioned me on the way into the lobby."

"What?" Chuck said.

"Hey," Sarah shrugged it off. "It's a pay-by-the-hour dive motel; you really want to leave the ordnance in a car trunk held together with twine and a prayer?"

"That's not what I was asking 'what' about," Chuck said.

Sarah patted him gently on the shoulder. "I know. I was trying to change the subject." She frowned and leaned forward to peer out the windshield. "I think that's our room. 221, second from the end of the building." They ferried their bags and the black, matte plastic guncase up into the room quickly, still, not as quickly as Chuck would have hoped, but Sarah insisted that overt hurry would stand out to anyone who happened to see them.

Once in the room, Chuck and Sarah took stock of the situation, which was worse than expected. A roach skittered across the carpet and stopped, seeming to peer up at them quizzically for a moment before resuming its trek without the slightest change in velocity or trajectory. Sarah growled and sprang, stomping the insect before it could traverse the expanse of grungy carpet.

"Well," Chuck said, "you did want the seediest motel you could find, so congratulations."

Sarah shrugged. "I've seen worse."

"I don't believe you," Chuck shot back as a second roach made its way out from under an improperly tacked down corner of the carpet, completely unconcerned by its brethren's untimely demise.

"Well, I'm not saying it's not in the top five," Sarah said. "Seriously though, we need to talk."

"Uh-oh," Chuck said. "That's never a good way to start a conversation."

"Sit down," she said, plopping the gun case down on the table. Sarah popped the latches and pulled out a long, rolled-up document of some kind, blueprints maybe. She was careful to relatch the guncase and set it on the floor out of the way before spreading out the rolled-up paper.

"Where did you get that?" Chuck wanted to know.

"You were asleep in the car, and you looked so cute that I didn't want to wake you," Sarah explained. "I broke into the hall of records and swiped this. It's the blueprints for the plaza where the president is giving his speech. What exactly do you remember from the flash?"

Chuck had listed it all down on a notepad before they left Arizona, and pulled it out of his traveling bag. The potential assassin's name —Gus something— some vital statistics, like height, weight, hair color, eye color, left handed not right. "We've been over this; what's up?"

"Something isn't sitting right with me on this one. It's been what, four months since your last Intersect refresher, right?"

Chuck thought about it. "Yeah, that sounds about right. It was a few weeks before we ran, just before the stuff with Shaw went pineapple shaped. What's up?"

"The NSA and the CIA have this data, too," Sarah said, thinking aloud, "they have for months. Can you tell me what triggered the flash? It's just odd, isn't it, that you would flash on the TV coverage of the president, and there's information on this plot in the Intersect? And there has been for months? That's enough time they might have already stopped it, and we wouldn't know because your information could be out of date. They'd try to keep it out of the papers most likely."

"I didn't think of that," Chuck said. "Why didn't you say something earlier?"

Sarah shook her head, upset with herself. "I'm just not used to the idea the Intersect could be wrong. Neither are you, it's been right so often that I just never thought of it. There's something else."

"Go on," Chuck said. "What's up?"

"This could all be an elaborate trap, for you," Sarah explained. "And me as well, 'cause I doubt Beckman and Casey stopped looking for me just because Myers let me take a leave of absence. If they already caught this guy, with at least four months lead-time, we have to assume its at least a possibility—I worked with Secret Service for a while. I know they're really good on the investigative side, as well as the president-protecting side—so what if they've already caught this guy? Beckman could be staking out potential trouble-spots that have already been taken care of on the chance you'll flash and come in working off of out-of-date intel."

"Okay," Chuck said. His blood had gone cold. "If that's true, though, how do we know? How can we test it? If they haven't caught this guy, and we don't try to stop him... I don't know if I can live with that."

"I know, Chuck," Sarah said, "and that's the problem. We're our own worst enemy here, and Beckman knows it. That thing in Chicago will have clinched it for her and Casey. If it had been me, I probably would have done the same thing. We just can't help ourselves."

"I guess... we could just go back home and try to forget about this?"

Sarah's grin was a sad one. "I don't buy that for a minute," Her hand fell unconsciously to her stomach. "I don't think I could take having to explain to Chuck Jr. how Mom and Dad let the President get killed, could you?"

"Chuck Jr?" Chuck Sr. asked. "Did we decide on that? What if it's a girl?" his eyes narrowed. "Did you find out something and haven't told me?"

Sarah laughed briefly, "Chuck, remember?" She held up her thumb and forefinger half an inch apart. "Macadamia nut." She shook her head. "I don't have any inside information, trust me."

"Of course," Chuck said, and chewed his lip after a moment. "Sorry for getting sidetracked. "How can we know if we're saving the president, or walking into a trap?"

Sarah pointed to the blueprints. "That's why I grabbed these," she said, pulling a Sharpie marker from her purse. "If they're in a standard deployment," she explained, "there should be Secret Service sharpshooters here, here, here, here, and... here. Or something similar."

Chuck whistled softly through his teeth at the marks she made on the blueprints. "That's a lot of snipers. Would we really make that much of a difference?"

Sarah nodded. "I recognized the name," she said. "Gus Berentz. That's why we're here."

"You did?" Chuck asked. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"Bryce and I worked with him once," she said as if the words were being drawn out of her. "It's not exactly a cherished memory."

Chuck reached across the table and they linked fingers. "What happened?"

Sarah let out a long sigh and looked him in the eye. "He went rogue, tried to kill us. It's not..."

"What's wrong?" Chuck said. "If you don't want to tell me you don't have to—"

"Bryce and I were in bed at the time," Sarah said a little peevishly. "I try not to rub past relationships in your face, so I didn't want to say anything."

"Oh," Chuck said, and that was all. He fell worrisomely silent.

"... anyway, Berentz is nearly as good as Casey with a sniper rifle. The Secret Service is set up for a standard threat. Some idiot with a deer rifle, not a military-trained sniper," Sarah said. "Or if we get there and spot them in this formation," Sarah tapped the map of the plaza, "they are. We can eyeball that tomorrow morning, but Berentz could maybe make that shot from better than a mile, if he had the right kind of hardware. Setting up a perimeter like that would be all but impossible downtown in a major urban center. There just isn't the manpower to cover every possible sniper perch with line of sight to the target."

"So, we need, what, three plans, right?" Chuck said. Sarah frowned at him, so he went on. "One in case they're not alerted to this guy, one in case they are, and one in case he's already caught, and they're setting up on us." Sarah nodded, but she was still frowning. "What's wrong, you're frowning at me."

"You want to talk about Bryce," Sarah said accusingly, "but you're closing me out. I shouldn't have said anything."

"No, I'm not," Chuck said. "I'm glad you felt comfortable enough to tell me. It's the past, you know how weird my relationship with Bryce was, and your relationship with him wasn't any simpler, and so can we just set it aside? I need to concentrate on this mission."

Sarah nodded. "I know... just. I know you're not okay with what happened. Part of you still thinks I was going to run off with Bryce, and that with him getting shot, I just sort of ended up with you by default."

"I don't think that," Chuck protested. "Bryce told me that himself before he died. He said you weren't coming with him."

Sarah nodded. She hadn't known that. "Good for him," she said. "I wasn't. I don't think I ever told you that, did I?"

Chuck grinned slowly. "No, I don't think you did. I kind of figured you weren't going anywhere after that though. That whole 'if you want to keep it, put a ring on it,' speech really stuck with me."

Sarah blushed. "I still can't believe I actually said that," she said, fighting back giggles. Finally, she mastered the impulse. "Don't bottle things up, okay? I know exactly how unhealthy that is."

Chuck nodded, "Yeah, but when you finally let go, you really let go. That part was fun."

Sarah's eyes twinkled and dipped down to her stomach briefly. "But not without consequences." She chewed her lower lip and toyed with her hair. "Although, now that I'm already pregnant, we don't have to worry about birth control anymore..."

Chuck blinked. "Hey, no fair! No distracting me, we've got a mision to plan out."

"We've got," Sarah checked her watch, "ten hours before we need to head out for the speech," she said. "I think we can spare one of those if I get you too 'distracted.'"

Chuck growled under his breath. "You are a dangerous woman," he said, "in more ways than one. No tomfoolery, this is serious business here!"

"So is this," Sarah protested and unbuttoned the buttons at the top of her polo shirt. Chuck immediately reached over, pulled the collar closed, and started re-buttoning Sarah's shirt. This was part of her plan, of course, and Chuck fell for it hook line and sinker. She grabbed his wrists and applied an Aikido technique. Chuck blinked and found himself pinned to the table, Sarah astride him.

"You know, when you're right, you're right," Chuck managed to mumble out the side of his mouth while Sarah kissed him.

It was closer to two hours before they got back to planning. Given the grungy nature of the motel room, Chuck and Sarah both needed a shower afterward, which they still couldn't seem to keep under forty-five minutes. Despite the motel's hot water giving out after ten minutes. Chuck and Sarah stayed up late so Sarah could run Chuck through a crash course in the methodology of the Secret Service; although her knowledge was several years out of date, there wasn't a whole lot that had changed in that time. They didn't use the bed, after Chuck mentioned seeing some special on TV a few years ago about motel beds. Sarah doubted it was as bad as Chuck thought, but oddly enough the bathroom was the only part of the room that seemed to have benefited from cleaning recently, so they dumped their spare clothes into the tub as padding and curled up atop it. Sarah awoke to find herself being poked in the back by her husband as usual, but they were both too stiff in other ways to do anything about it.

Chuck was shuffling in a pained circle around the carpet in his stocking feet when there was banging on the door. He was still hunched over like an old man, but he made for the door. Sarah beat him to it, S&W appearing as if by magic in her fist. She tried to shoulder him out of the way and answer the door herself, but Chuck glanced through the peephole before she could close properly.

Sarah glared and poked him in a pressure point in his back that straightened him up with a muffled curse. She grabbed his ear painfully and went up on her tiptoes to whisper harshly in his ear. "Didn't I teach you anything? Look from the side of the peephole, to make sure its not an enemy agent on the other side waiting to shoot you!"

Chuck rolled his eyes. "It's the clerk," he whispered. "I recognize him from last night. Probably just wants to make sure we're checking out."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "No, he probably thinks I'm fresh meat, and don't have a pimp so he can muscle me out of my night's earnings."

Chuck blinked rapidly, trying to catch up to that leap in logic. "Do what now?"

"It's a pay by the hour motel, Chuck," Sarah hissed. "What else is he going to think?" she waved her pistol vaguely. "I'll handle this; you stay out of sight."

Chuck fumed silently, but did as she said, hunching down to the far side of the door so that he would be behind the door when it opened. Sarah kept the chain latched, keeping the door between herself and the motel clerk.

The man wasted no time. "Business do okay? I give a lot of the girls a discount on rooms if they're repeat customers."

"Not interested," Sarah said. "I'm just passing through."

"You sure? I got an arrangement here with some guys, for protection, like," the clerk said. "Ain't gonna cost much on your end. I can make sure you get treated real nice." Chuck's fists balled tightly from his hiding place behind the door.

Sarah glanced at him and knew she needed to end this fast. Her husband was many things, but good at following orders he was not, especially in this sort of a situation. She nudged him with her hip and shot him a sharp look and a shake of her head. Thankfully, the motel clerk was too busy trying to stare straight through the weave of her t-shirt. "I said no and I mean no," she said, starting to close the door in his face. The man put his foot in the gap between the closing door and the frame.

"Now, don't be like that, girly," the man leered. "Hand out a couple freebies, and you got this place for the whole week, free and clear." Sarah grit her teeth. She pulled back the hammer of her S&W and tilted it so the clerk could see, before pointing it vaguely south of the man's belt buckle.

"Five seconds, and I make you a Castrati," Sarah said.

"You want to explain that to the cops?" the clerk said challengingly, and Sarah laughed.

"They're your balls," she said, pulling the silencer from her jeans pocket and screwing it into place, outside of the clerk's field of vision. Sarah had a change of heart at the last moment, and dropped the barrel of her pistol still lower before squeezing the trigger. The silencer was a good one, but she hadn't stopped to replace her standard hollowpoint rounds with subsonic variants so that only the sound of the semi-automatic's slide clicking back and forth would be heard. It was distinctly the sound of a gunshot, though muffled effectively enough that no one outside of a hundred yards would hear it.

Chuck shot to his feet. "What did you do?"

The clerk staggered back ward, screaming his head off and clutching his foot. Sarah held up a hand for silence and shoved Chuck back down next to the door. She dropped to one knee, pistol in both hands in a secure firing position, facing into their room.

"What's going—"

Two men came out of the bathroom, to Chuck's astonishment, one with a sawed-off shotgun, the other carrying a baseball bat. They were more surprised, when Sarah's silver-plated pistol barked again. The crack as her bullets went supersonic was a counterpoint to their sudden screams of pain. She ignored one particularly ingrained part of her training, and didn't place her shots center-mass, partially in deference to Chuck's sensibilities on the subject, and partially because if they didn't get out of here before the police showed up, three dead bodies were a lot harder to explain that three mildly shot-up dirtbags. Sarah's hands moved almost automatically after the split-second's decision not to kill them, and she squeezed the trigger twice in rapid succession, putting two bullets into the arm of the man with the shotgun. The wannabe-Reds player charged, and Chuck lunged forward to meet him, with a smoothness that meant he had flashed. Sarah just stopped her trigger finger from squeezing a third time while Chuck was obscuring her sight picture.

Chuck grabbed a chair from the table and flipped it upside down so that the four legs stuck out like the prongs of a fork. The man with the baseball bat swung, and Chuck caught the length of oak easily, snapping his wrists to trap the other man's weapon more fully. He yanked the chair to the side and the baseball bat went flying. Chuck took another step forward and thrust the chair in front of him like a lion-tamer. One of the chair-legs poked the now unarmed man in the solar plexus and he toppled backward, and fell over his compatriot, who was on his knees, clutching at his wounded arm and trying to reach for the dropped shotgun.

Chuck plowed ahead and slammed the chair down, plopping himself into the seat above the gunshot man and kicking the shotgun away. Sarah grabbed Chuck by a handful of curly hair and pointed her gun at the sprawling former wielder of a louisville slugger, growling angrily in her husband's ear. "Don't ever jump in front of someone shooting a firearm again, Chuck. I almost shot you!"

He blinked and looked sheepish. "Sorry, I wasn't thinking. Just..." Chuck shook his head. "What the hell's going on? How did you know these two would be—"

Sarah shook her head. "No time. We'll talk in the car. Grab something to tie them up; we've got to move now."

Chuck glanced around and spotted a lamp. He yanked it out of the wall and Sarah tossed him a knife; Chuck cut the cord free and used it to tie the hands of the one who'd come in with the baseball bat. Sarah had the other man pinned to the floor with the tip of her silencer in the back of his neck, so Chuck darted to the bed and started a cut with Sarah's knife. In short order the two men were bound. Chuck scampered around, throwing things into bags and heading for the front door.

Sarah stopped him, and hoisted the cased rifle. "Bathroom," she explained, leading the way. Chuck frowned but followed. There was now a hole in the wall with drywall dust everywhere, leading into the adjoining room.

"What?" Chuck said helplessly.

Sarah grunted. "For future reference, the next time I say we need a seedy motel," she said, taking in the entirety of their room with a shrug. "This is too seedy. Come on." She got down on her hands and knees to crawl through the hole that had been gouged through the sheet-rock behind the cabinet that hid the sink piping, shoving her gun case ahead of her. Chuck followed, lugging the rest of their bags behind him. Sarah helped him to his feet and led the way through a mirror image of the room they had just left, though empty and mostly-empty pizza boxes, beer bottles and cigarette butts ruined what little charm their previous accommodations had had.

She rushed to the door and peered through the peephole from the side, as she'd admonished him about earlier. The clerk was no longer screaming, and Sarah put her head to the wall, cupping her hand to help channel the sound. She would have grabbed one of the empty tumblers strewn about, but she didn't trust them to be clean. The sound of a door cracking and the chain parting told her all she needed to know, and Sarah led the way out onto the upper floor of the motel balcony, tugging Chuck behind her at a run. They were down the stairs and throwing everything in the Cutlass by the time the clerk figured out their end-around. Sarah spotted the gun in the man's hand and crouched, using the car for cover to squeeze off a pair of rounds. The range was long for a pistol, especially with the silencer, but the clerk dove back into cover and Sarah slipped into the passenger seat while Chuck started the engine.

He yanked the wheel over and their tires squealed as they burned rubber out of the parking lot. "What the hell was that?" Chuck shouted, the adrenaline finally getting the better of him. "How did you know they were coming in from the bathroom? What is going on?"

Sarah shook her head and ejected the clip from her S&W, grabbing a fresh clip from the glovebox. "I should have spotted it earlier. The bathroom was too clean. They must have had that hole cut before-hand and then cleaned up after themselves. The whole bedroom was disgusting. God, we were lucky they thought I was a hooker," she breathed.

"Lucky how?" Chuck demanded.

"If they'd come through the wall while we were asleep in the bathtub, we'd have been killed, Chuck," Sarah said. "They were afraid of surprising me with a john as a potential witness. Turn left up here," she said.

Chuck was still trying to wrap his mind around the sudden burst of violence. "Who were they working for? The Ring? How could they have found us?"

She put a calming hand on his knee. "Shh, Chuck," she said, "it wasn't the Ring. They were just petty criminals."

Chuck spared a glance from the early morning Cincinnati traffic. "What, why did they..."

"Pretty new girl at the seediest motel in the city," Sarah said, "gets a room for the night as late as we did, companion stays in the car. All of these things make them think I'm a working girl and that I was working last night. They were in the room next door, probably heard us go at it, which confirmed their suspicions as much as they needed it to. They try the hard sales pitch in the morning, but they don't take any chances, send in the two goons I spotted last night."

Chuck blinked. "That was the same two guys?"

She nodded. "Yeah,like I said: motel too seedy. Next time, we'll just sleep in the car."

He rubbed his eyes, massaging the bridge of his nose. "Well, that's a great start to this mission," he finally said to fill the silence, if nothing else. "You know, I hate to say it," Chuck muttered, "but if you were a little less gorgeous, my life would be a lot simpler."

"That's why my dad made me dress frumpy and get fake braces in high school," Sarah admitted.

"Those were fake?" Chuck said in shock.

Sarah nodded. "Of course. You think a con-man can afford braces? Keeping up with copies of the orthodontists files every time we switched identities would have been a huge headache." Chuck digested this tidbit, and she pointed suddenly. "Pull in up ahead," she said, and turned to grab her bag from the back seat while Chuck found a parking spot in the Target lot. It wasn't difficult, seeing as the store had only opened an hour or so ago. Sarah came back from her excursion into the wilds of the Cutlass' back seat with a black wig and a screwdriver. She whipped the wig on and tossed her head.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

She brandished the screwdriver at him. "We need new wheels," Sarah explained. "These are burned. Those idiots will eventually try to cut deals for themselves, and somebody might have called 911 with all the shooting. Better safe than sorry. Wipe down the interior while I find us a car."

Sarah pulled up a few minutes later in a newer car. "Won't the owner miss it?" Chuck asked.

She nodded. "Of course they will, eventually, but they work here at the store," she pointed. "It's definitely a risk. Hopefully, they're here through the afternoon at least. Maybe we'll have time to drop it back off before it's missed."

They transferred their things quickly, and made their way, careful to obey all traffic laws to the part of town where the President was due to speak in just a couple of hours. The streets closer in were shut down in preparation, and Chuck and Sarah found a parking garage three blocks distant from the plaza, more than six-hundred yards, still well inside Berentz's potential range. Before letting him out of the car, Sarah glued a heavy false beard to him and tugged a Bengals cap down low over his brow.

"Now what?" Chuck asked.

Sarah thought about it. "It's better if we're not seen together," she remarked, putting the finishing touches on her own disguise. "You find a bar. I think I saw one back down the block a ways, take the guncase. I'd be to conspicuous with it in the plaza. I'll scope out security on the speech and assess which plan we use."

"Text me if we need to run. I'll meet you with the car," Chuck said.

Sarah considered. "Okay, that's a good fallback." She paused with one foot out of the car. "Are you okay? You're shaking."

"Maybe a bar's a good idea. I could use a drink," he said. "Just nerves probably. That thing at the motel... I'm still processing, I think." A pause. "I almost lost you."

Sarah leaned back in and kissed him on the cheek. "It'll be alright. Love you."

Chuck watched her go with a horrible, sinking feeling, before wiping down the interior of the car and retrieving the cased Remington 700 hunting rifle with high-powered scope from the trunk. It looked enough like a bass guitar case, that he was confident carrying it around, the real source of his nerves was something else entirely. The idiot incident with the thugs at their motel just underscored how crazy they were merely to be attempting this. Calling in to Beckman had seemed logical, but with no real way to follow up without getting caught, now they were caught in a worse trap, their own best tendencies working against them. The president was at risk, and that was something that he felt honor-bound to do something about, and he knew Sarah felt the same way, risks or not. Chuck finally realized that the odds were in favor of him and Sarah winding up getting mistaken for the real assassin. He hoped now that Sarah was right, that the Intersect was out of date, because what was a better outcome? Getting caught and thrown in a bunker by Beckman, or being shot by the Secret Service by accident? He was in an impossible position; without proper intel, he couldn't know what was the right move to make, and neither could Sarah. And what if Berentzwas loose out there somewhere, well outside the radius against which it was possible for any protective agency to guard?

Chuck rubbed his temples where his Intersect migraines usually started. He had a headache now, but this one he couldn't blame on the computer in his head. He really did need a drink, but he couldn't do that, could he? He needed to be sharp, mentally.

Chuck found the pub Sarah had mentioned and sidled up to the bar, found a stool and sat gratefully, cased rifle leaning against his leg. "What'll it be? Beer?"

"Little early for that yet," Chuck heard himself say, feeling utterly divorced from his body. This wasn't what he had signed up for. In point of fact, he hadn't really signed up for anything, had he? He tried to squash that thought. He may not have put pen to paper, but that day in the Intersect chamber he had had a choice, not much of one, of course, but there it was. Just like today, not much of a choice, but still a choice. "I'll have a Sprite."

"7up okay?"

Chuck frowned. "Yeah, whatever," he said, and for once, started acting like a spy. He scanned the bar for threats, points of entry, egress, through the mirror behind the bartender, his eyes made a sweep. He looked for reflective surfaces and found them, using them to take stock of his surroundings without appearing to do so. He shuddered involuntarily when he spotted a familiar face coming out of the ladies room.

This was ridiculous; this was impossible. He froze into his stool and attempted to become invisible through sheer force of will. There had been some thoroughly improbable coincidences in his life, like the time he and Ellie had stumbled across a weapons designer poisoned by a former Olympic gymnast on the streets of Los Angeles. Sure, he was a student of coincidence on a grand scale, but this was too much! What in God's name was Carina doing in Cincinnati?

TO BE CONTINUED...

A/N: Chapter 38 will be a while. I'm struggling to make it not sucky and super-plotholey (that's a word, right?) We'll see how it goes writing tomorrow.