A/N: More story.

Jeux Sans Frontières

Chapter Six: Kill or be Killed

Chuck paced the small room for a few minutes after Lou left.

But his long legs and the smallness of the room made the pacing maddening, a matter of too many short trips, so he stood for a moment, then decided to stretch out on the bed. He interlaced his fingers behind his head and stared up at the dingy ceiling.

He tried to focus, to concentrate, to put the day in mental order.

That morning, he got up, showered, shaved, dressed, grabbed his bag, and strolled across campus to the Gates Building. Never would he have suspected that by the morning's end, he would be hidden in Pivot's San Francisco safe house, waiting to be moved, waiting to lose his name, his identity, himself.

He thought to call his sister but he had left his phone in his bag. The bag, as far as Chuck knew, was still in the Gates Building, although perhaps Agent Walker and her minions had it by now.

With an effort, he turned his mind away from thoughts of his sister, her inevitable worry and terror about his fate. He did not want to think about Jill: that was awful in another way, the brutal fakery of it, of what he believed she felt for him.

The prospect of a change of identity and of undergoing testing by Pivot he also did not want to dwell on, although it would perhaps be prudent to do so.

His mind finally settled on the redheaded dancer, the one who'd danced with him at the frat party. Who had she been? It had never occurred to him that she could have been part of some plot against him — but it did now. He tried once more to conjure that night, the dances with her. He could recall her short hair, her green eyes, and…

And what?

...He closed his eyes tight and tried to use his isolation and the silence of the room to his advantage, to create an inner stillness. He could recall her body pressed his, not in revealing anatomical detail, but clearly enough to understand why his memory of her was so saturated in sexiness. Her dress he could not recall in detail, except he was almost certain it had been black, with a deep neckline and short skirt. Maybe there'd been sequins? There were glints, flashes. But maybe that was embellishment by his drink-addled memory.

And then he remembered something new — at least it felt like a memory. A fragrance, heady, wonderful, familiar. It was the scent of the woman's hair.

It was the scent of Lou's hair.

The shampoo.

It was the scent of the woman's hair and Lou's hair. Perhaps that's why it had affected him so when he smelled Lou's hair — because the scent was familiar to him, a known-but-forgotten fragment of a bewildering, bittersweet memory? Maybe the panic and confusion of the dash from the Gates Building with Lou had kept him from realizing that he had smelled the scent before?

Whatever the explanation, he was certain: it was the same scent.

But the woman had not been Lou. The redhead was decidedly taller, curvier.

Chuck unlaced his fingers, lifted his feet, and swung them from the bed, onto the floor, no longer supine but now sitting on the edge of the bed where he sat before with Lou.

He leaned his elbows on his knees and let his head hang down.

Nothing made sense to him. He could not render fully intelligible what was happening to him, what had been happening to him, for a year. He had been a mark, not a boyfriend, not a best friend. He had been surveilled and studied, planned for, targeted, and all the while he'd been completely ignorant. The bull's eye in the Gates lab had been so much more symbolic than Chuck had understood. He'd been standing on one for months and months.

Suddenly, he felt cold, a chill went through him, and his hands began to shake. A delayed reaction to all the adrenaline, the panic, the confusion. The shaking traveled from his hands to the rest of him. He grabbed the bedcover and stood, pulling it off the bed and wrapping it tightly around him. After a few minutes, the shaking eased, ended, and he felt warmer. But he kept the bedcover around him.

As he stood there, the door opened and Lou slipped into the room. She looked at Chuck and grinned.

"You okay?"

"Yes, I just got cold, shaky."

"It happens. I'll get you something sugary to drink. That'll help. We can stop on the way — although," she gave Chuck a serious look — "you will need to stay in the car. Is that clear to you?"

Chuck nodded and unwrapped himself from the bedcover.

"Alright, Chuck. Once more: come with me." Lou opened the building's backdoor, looked out, then pushed it open. "Let's go."

Outside in the parking lot was another van, this one black. Lou opened a side door and Chuck climbed in. "We need you back here for a while so that your face doesn't show on any traffic cams."

She slid the door shut and a moment later was in the driver's seat. She grabbed a navy baseball cap from the passenger seat and pulled it on, the visor low on her face. She glanced back at Chuck and gave him another grin. "I called ahead and they're going to make dinner for us. Candles and everything."

The van's engine roared to life and Lou eased the van from the parking lot and into the early afternoon traffic.

Thirty minutes later, Chuck drained the last of the root beer from the can. He did feel better. Lou stopped at a gas station and got the Coke and a deli sandwich. She split the sandwich with Chuck.

Though it felt bizarre, they made small talk as they drove, chatting about visits to San Francisco and their favorite places near Stanford. It felt almost like a date, except Lou was in the front, Chuck in the rear, and Chuck was not nervous — or he wasn't date nervous. He was nervous, but it was latent-fear-of-death nervousness.

Eventually, predictably, their talk grew less small.

"So," Chuck said, affecting a carelessness he did not feel, "where are you taking me?"

Lou glanced back quickly. "Have you ever been to Point Arena?"

Chuck shook his head. "No, to be honest, other than LA and San Francisco and Palo Alto, I've hardly been anywhere in California. Isn't there supposed to be a lighthouse there, at Point Arena?"

"Yes, and it's beautiful. But we won't see it, or it's not likely. We'll be heading to a place in the surrounding countryside. A small horse farm. Isolated but beautiful in its own right. We'll be staying in the barn — but, as you'll see, that's a lot better than it sounds."

"What about your place near campus, your apartment?"

"Not mine anymore, Chuck. But nothing in it was really mine. It was all staged, planned, in case I needed to convince folks I was a not-too wealthy Stanford student. All I left behind were some cleaning supplies, some cosmetics, some shower stuff. Nothing I can't easily replace."

"Even the Brazilian Joia?"

Lou looked at him, assessing him. "You like that better than I do, I think. I believe I have more at the farm, though, and, if you're nice to me, I'll be sure to use it."

Chuck smiled but the smile was partly forced. Superimposed on his glance at Lou was the redheaded woman, and the superimposition confused him.

Lou kept the assessing look. "What can you tell me about your parents, Chuck?"

"My parents?"

Lou nodded.

"Um, there's not much to tell. They abandoned us when we were little; my sister and I, and we grew up in foster care — until Ellie was old enough to take care of us. It wasn't great, although Ellie was. She kept me sane through all the changes, our clothes and few belongings dragging behind us in Glad bags. Funny, they never made us glad. Ellie searched for our parents for a while — her boyfriend's uncle is a PI and did the work for her for free. But he never came up with anything, not even a scrap of a clue. He said it was as if they'd been abducted by aliens." Chuck forced another smile.

Lou kept her eyes on the road but nodded. "What work did they do — before they vanished?"

"Dad was a professor at UCLA. Mom worked for a law firm as an investigator — the firm specialized in tax law. Ellie could maybe tell you more. I hardly knew them as employed; they were just Dad and Mom. Ellie says I look like Mom but act like Dad; the reverse is true for her. I don't remember well enough to agree or disagree."

"Sorry, Chuck, that's tough."

"You must have known that, though, right?"

Lou glanced at him in the rearview mirror for a second before looking back at the road. "Yes, I knew the facts; I didn't know how you felt about them."

They rode on for a few minutes in almost companionable silence. Chuck shifted his eyes from the road ahead to the rearview mirror, searching out Lou's eyes.

"What happened to Alpha?" Chuck asked.

Lou flicked her eyes to the mirror, to Chuck's eyes, then flicked them down. "He had to make another trip to Stanford. The Library there donates discarded books to the soup kitchen. Alpha unloaded the books you were riding with and then went back to get the rest."

"Oh, I see," Chuck said, unsure that he did. He waited a moment then asked another question. "You said they would make dinner for us. I take it they don't include Alpha?"

"No, they are Charlie and Delta, an older couple who oversee the farm."

"Are they Pivot too? Pivoteers?" Chuck raised an eyebrow.

Lou chuckled. "Thank God no one's thought of that title. Yes, they are part of Pivot. Not agents, like me, but...important. And Delta can cook, really cook!"

"That's good," Chuck said, "because that half a deli sandwich is running out already." As if on cue, his stomach rumbled.

Lou heard. "Me too. That's the thing about deli food: an hour after you eat it, you're hungry for more."

Lou laughed at her own comment, and Chuck laughed too, but more at her pleasure than at her comment.

Casey walked back into Lou's apartment bedroom, wiping his hands with a paper towel.

Walker was standing again by the made bed. But on it, she had dumped the contents of a drawer and was looking at them as if they were a writhing mass of snakes. The drawer was hanging from Walker's hand, its vacated spot in the dresser a rectangular hole behind her.

On the bed was a profusion of lingerie, a rainbow pile of lace. Casey tried not to stare at it, but it was impressive. It had been neatly folded and most of it still was. A plethora of styles: a host of somethings that were nothings.

Casey looked back up at Walker. "Is that a clue?"

Walker pulled her eyes off the lingerie and looked at Casey. As usual, her face was stone. "Quite a collection for a coed."

Casey grunted. "Kids these days…"

Walker's eyes flashed blue. "She's my age, even if she is tiny, Casey."

Casey grunted again. "So what is it about hers that has your knickers in a knot?"

Walker shrugged. When she spoke, her voice was monotonic. "I wonder if we're looking at Bartowski's future."

Walker slid the lingerie off the bed and back into the drawer, minimizing contact with it, then she put the drawer back in the dresser. She slammed it closed.

"Did you find anything, Casey?"

He put the paper towel in one jacket pocket and fished something out of the other.

He held up a piece of paper with something typed on it. "I made a copy of what was stenciled to the bottom of the trash can, in the kitchen. It struck me as...odd." He made a face. "I have no idea if it means anything."

"What is it?"

"The trash can belongs...belonged to a soup kitchen. I checked it."

Walker looked surprised. "Yes?"

"Yes."

"Let's go. I called Roberts from the bathroom, sent her the photo. She saw Palone talking to Chuck once, maybe twice, but no more than that. Neither Roberts nor Larkin thought her suspicious at the time. They're following up on her on campus."

Casey nodded. "I guess Bartowski must've talked to lots of people. He seems like some kind of social butterfly." Casey's disapproval rang in the term. He chewed the words over then shifted his feet. "When are you going to talk to Director Graham?"

Walker was silent for a moment or two before she answered.

"As soon as I can tell him something definite."

"Bartowski is definitely gone," Casey offered.

Walker ignored him.

Alpha slowed and guided the white van onto the dirt road. He checked his watch. He was probably an hour ahead of Beta and Bartowski. He drove along the road. On one side of the road was a white, wooden fence, in good repair.

After a couple of minutes, he turned in a driveway. The white fence stood on both sides of it, leading to a matching gate. Above the gate was a large square sign: Horseplay Farms.

He stopped short of the gate and rolled down his window. Reaching out, he punched a button on an intercom box that was attached to a single white post.

"Yes?" a cultured male voice responded after a few seconds.

"It's Alpha. Beta's an hour behind me with the package."

"We know. She called. We're already gathering things for dinner. Be sure to park in the garage and shut the door, so that your van is out of sight."

"Will do."

A whirring sound was audible and the gate began to swing back. Alpha waited and drove through it, toward the picaresque farm in the distance.

Jill led Bryce Larkin through the doors of Funchess Hall, the building that housed University Activities.

Bryce followed Jill's bottom as she walked. He enjoyed bedding his female partners, enjoyed partners with benefits. All the pluses of an actual girlfriend with almost none of the minuses. Jill was perhaps on the mousy side, given Bryce's tastes, but, still, she'd do.

He admitted to himself that it annoyed him that Jill seemed to have feelings for their mark, Bartowski. Clearly, Jill was not as professional as she seemed to think. Not as professional as Bryce.

Still, she'd do. She'd do until he could get Walker to sleep with him. He'd been working on that for months but without any luck. But he was sure of himself, his looks, his charm. He would wear her down; he was wearing her down. The last several weeks she'd been different. He was getting to her.

When he did, he would part ways with Jill. Who needs a mouse when you have a lioness? Bryce was rather proud of himself, the word: 'lionness'. He'd thought of that on his own.

Bryce laughed silently. Bartowski seemed to have a thing for mice: first Jill, now this Lou. Each to his own depth. Bryce laughed silently to himself a second time, proud of himself a second time.

"We're getting close, Chuck," Lou said loudly, rousing Chuck from his reverie. He'd been staring out the front window for a while but seeing nothing.

"Oh, okay," he responded, at first not fully paying attention. Then he sat up straighter, caught Lou's eye in the mirror. "What can you tell me about her?"

"Her? Who?"

"Agent Walker. Does she have a first name?"

"Sarah. Sarah Walker. Although there's practically zero chance that's the name she was born with."

"What about Lou Palone?"

Lou did not look at him but he saw her fidget. "Not my real name, Chuck."

"Will you tell me your real name?"

"Chuck, look. I told you I would tell you what I could. Telling you about myself is not something I'm prepared to do. Yet. Let's see what the next few days bring and then, maybe, you can ask me again."

Chuck was not sure why, but he decided to push. He was tired of being passive. "Well, if you won't tell me about yourself, then tell me more about Agent Walker, Sarah Walker, my tormentor."

Lou sighed. "Okay, you ask and I will answer, how about that? I can't say she's my favorite topic, but I suppose I understand why you're curious."

"How long has she been in the CIA?"

"I'm actually not sure," Lou responded, shrugging, "probably six or seven years. We don't know what her real name is or what her recruitment date is. Her file is buried deep in Langley. We think only Graham himself has access to it. But she started young, that's clear. She's about my age — a year or two older than you. Of course, in one sense who knows how old she is: this job ages you."

"Has it aged you, Lou?"

"We're not talking about me, Chuck." She reached up and pushed the visor of her cap away from her eyes, and gave Chuck a smile of warning.

"Right. So, what's she supposed to be like? She seemed, um...cold to me."

"She doesn't seem cold, Chuck, she is cold. Or she seems cold — because she is cold. Her nickname in Langley is Ice Queen."

"And she's roughly our age but she...kills people?"

"How old do you have to be to kill someone, Chuck?"

"I don't know, but older than anyone has ever been, I think. You just don't do that. You don't kill people." Despite his words, the anger he felt toward Walker returned. Sentences bounced back and forth inside his head.

Lou gave Chuck a significant look. "Sometimes, you have no choice. Kill or be killed, Chuck."

"I suppose so, maybe. Maybe. — How does she normally do it, when she does it?"

Lou was lost. "Do it?"

"Kill people. Terminate them."

"She's gifted with knives, although she...makes do with what her circumstances supply. She is a weapon. But her weapon of choice is a knife; she prefers to kill in close-up."

"Close-up? Gifted?" Chuck echoed the words. "And that's the woman chasing me? Basically, she's a pretty version of the Terminator, but with less human warmth?"

Lou fidgeted again, looked upset into the rearview. "You think she's pretty?"

"Don't you?"

Lou shook her head hard. "Given what I know about her, no, I don't. I find her too awful to see her as I might if I didn't know who, what, she is. You'd be better doing the same, Chuck. Keep thinking Terminator, not Sarah Conner, despite the first names, the blond hair."

"Knives, huh?" Chuck asked after a moment, his voice edgy.

Lou nodded.

He cleared his throat. "I don't even shave with a razor blade. I use an electric razor. Butter knives intimidate me."

"If she comes for you, Chuck, — and she'll be coming, don't doubt it — that's why we have to create a new life for you — , if she comes, it won't be with a butter knife — or an electric razor."

Chuck sat back, shut up, stopped asking questions, and Lou drove on.

Casey looked out his car window at the soup kitchen across the street. He'd give Pivot credit: that did not look like a safe house. A line of homeless folks stretched out from the door, stragglers for lunch.

Casey turned to look at Walker. She had not spoken since they left Palone's apartment. She spoke now: "I'm going to get out, cross the street and go in. I'll wait a couple of minutes to do so. You take the car and drive to the rear. Make sure no one gets out, gets away."

Casey sighed.

"What?" Walker demanded.

"If Bartowski comes out the back, should I kill him, end this?"

Walker took a minute. "No, take him alive. If anyone is going to kill Bartowski, it's going to be me."

A/N: The End of Book One: The Pirc Defense. This story will be told in Four Books. Things will begin to open up as we move through Book Two: Pivot.