A/N: Thanks for all the responses. We now continue our fourth arc, The Will to Believe.


The Missionary


Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life & bid thee feed,
By the stream & o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, wooly; bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?

— William Blake, The Lamb,
Songs of Innocence and Experience


Chapter Twenty: Extended Selves


The car's engine screamed as Sarah's foot pegged the floorboard.

Natalie screamed too, despite Chuck's attempts to soothe her.

Headlights flashed by, passing, and others lit up the interior of the car from behind. Sarah knew that the headlights closest behind were the SUV's lights, the Sinaloa soldiers who had been assigned to kidnap the baby. Her car was fast enough, nimble enough, she realized, to keep the SUV behind them when maneuvers were required — but not fast enough to outrun the powerful SUV on long straightaways. The growl of its engine was audible behind her, a deadly animal giving chase. She decided against the highway; she braked and turned onto a side road, one that led to another sparse neighborhood on the outskirts of Tijuana.

She heard the SUV's tires squeal as the driver fought to slow the heavy vehicle and duplicate her turn. She roared away from the intersection, taking advantage of the SUV's weighty imbalance.

Chuck glanced back. "That bought us some space."

With a sharp nod, Sarah jerked the wheel at the next intersection among the houses, waiting until her turn was completed to drop her hand and snap off her lights. She blinked, trying to adjust to the dark, steering more by her memory of what she had briefly seen before turning off the lights than by the weak, ambient moonlight, decreased by clouds. There were no streetlights to aid her in seeing, but that meant there were none to help the SUV driver see her. She slowed down a little, mainly to decrease the noise of the engine, and she turned again at the next intersection. The SUV had slowed at the previous intersection, idling as the men inside tried to locate them.

They had created space between themselves and the men, but they had not yet gotten away. The streets were rough and, as Sarah continued along them, getting rougher. A neighborhood of houses had given way to a neighborhood of shacks.

She found a spot just off the road, beneath a tall tree with a thick canopy of leaves. The ground beneath it looked like a pool of ink — the leaves shaded the ground from the moonlight.

Sarah parked the car and shut the engine off. She craned around, and Chuck did too, both of them looking for headlights. Sarah realized that Natalie was not crying. The motionless quiet seemed to soothe her, as did two of her fingers which she was sucking on intently.

She had her other hand buried again in Chuck's hair. Sarah felt a flash of playful envy. Chuck's curls had attracted her attention many times since she first saw him in the Buy More.

"She's quite taken with your hair, Chuck," Sarah whispered.

He turned to her, his eyes, she saw, watering. "She likes to pull it and she's way stronger than she looks."

Sarah allowed herself one soft but tense laugh. "She's as strong as she sounds?"

Then Chuck laughed, carefully, beneath his breath. "Yeah, absolutely. Girl's all lungs and biceps and pigtails."

Chuck stopped laughing abruptly.

The SUV was creeping along, its lights now off too, trying to find them in the dark but in the intersection almost a block away. They both held their breath as the SUV slowly crept past the intersection and went out of sight.

"We need to get back to the highway, head north. If we can get back into the city proper, they might give up on us because of the number of witnesses and the presence of police. These suburbs are like stagecoach stations in the wild west, few witnesses and fewer law enforcement officers."

Chuck gave her a puzzled look. "You're a fan of Westerns?"

"No, I'm not really a fan of any film genre. I haven't seen many movies at all. But I did see Stagecoach, as a kid."

Chuck grinned as Sarah started the car and pulled back on the street. "You should tell Casey. Did you notice that picture of John Wayne on his apartment wall?"

"You mean the only picture on his walls?"

"Yeah, guess so."

Chuck was quiet then he spoke again, but this time he was barely audible above the engine. "Look, she's asleep."

The little girl was asleep, her head nestled into Chuck's shoulder, her eyes closed. Sarah smiled and felt something move inside her, like a soft tug in her chest.

She refocused on her driving.

She turned the opposite way from the SUV, heading roughly back toward the highway. A car's headlights appeared behind her, but, after a panicked second, she realized they were not the headlights of the SUV. It was a sedan. It was gaining on her but not quickly. She still had her lights off, although she thought the sedan must be able to see her.

Another car turned onto the street ahead of them, again not the SUV. It was another sedan. Sarah left her lights off. The second sedan approached slowly, flashing its lights at her, a Samaritan gesture. Sarah flipped her lights on. As she did, the sedan suddenly whipped across the street in front of her, cutting her off. The first sedan, the one behind her, imitated the tactic, cutting her off in the rear.

She stomped the brakes, stopping. Chuck braced himself and Natalie with a hand on the dashboard.

The flashing lights were not a Samaritan gesture.

Amazingly, the little girl stayed asleep.

"Shit, Chuck, I'm sorry. I didn't think…"

Before she could finish her sentence, she heard a voice, a shout, in English. "Don't move!"

A man got out of the sedan in front of them, on the far side, the driver's side. He had an assault rifle in his arms; she could see him clearly in her headlights. Chuck could too; she heard his sharp intake of breath.

Doors closed behind them. A man got out of the passenger side of the sedan in front of them, lolling slowly as he emerged, like a man at a friendly picnic, not at an armed hostage-taking.

He stood up and walked slowly toward them, fearless. Sarah swallowed hard. The fearless ones were the worst.

He stopped at Sarah's window and knocked on it, rapping it with the knuckle of the bent middle finger of his hand. Sarah lowered the window.

"Hello, there." The man's voice was scaly, shiny, the auditory equivalent of a slow, moving snake. "Who are you?"

Sarah heard Chuck react before she did: "Huh?"

The man squatted down and looked into the car. His eyes were small and the whites of them were more yellow than white, his irises almost black. The night itself seemed to be staring into the car.

"You now belong to the Jalisco Nueva Generacion, CJNG, for short. I don't know who you are, but if Sinaloa wants you, I suppose we do too."

His sentences seemed to glide, the words to coil and stretch as he spoke them.

"A child," he said as his eyes finally left Sarah and shifted to Chuck and Natalie. "We heard rumors. Sinaloa fools."

There was a sudden explosion; the car shivered, a boat on water. Sarah jumped, as did Chuck. Natalie woke up and began to cry.

The man blinked once but otherwise did not react.

After a moment, he dropped his chin, flattening his gaze. "The Sinaloa looking for you are no longer, no longer looking. I don't know if you crossed into our territory deliberately or not, but you caused Sinaloa to trespass, and for that, there is only one penalty, and they have paid it.

"A shame about the vehicle, though," he pursed his lips, "Sinaloa pays dearly for those tanks, and I prefer to take them for my own when possible."

He stood up again.

He motioned to the car behind him and Sarah heard doors closing. He bent back down. "We will lead you; follow my car. The other car will follow you. If you try to escape, remember that we have weapons sufficient to destroy a customized Sinaloa SUV. Give me your phones."

They did. He walked back to his car. Sarah felt Chuck's eyes on her. "What are we going to do?"

She answered in one word, allowing the man's explanation to carry all the rest of the weight.

"Follow."


They traveled a couple of miles on back streets until the lead sedan pulled into the remains of an old service station.

A rusty Pemex sign hung from only one chain off a pole in the front, so that the logo had to be read bottom-to-top, not left-to-right. A garage door went up, bright lights showing inside. The car in the front parked to the side, leaving the garage door unblocked. Sarah realized that she was supposed to drive inside.

She did, stopping the car and cutting the engine.

Inside, four men, all with automatic rifles, gathered around the car. One gestured at her with his rifle to get out. She waited for a beat until she heard a door open and close. She turned to see the man who had spoken to them before coming toward them. Her instincts told her that he was the leader. They also told her that he was a bad man, a seriously bad man, but that very quality also put him in control of the others.

Sarah told Chuck to wait to get out. He nodded but spoke quietly, without any gesture. "These guys are known for cannibalizing some victims…"

Sarah heard him but did not react; she opened her door and put up her hands as she got out.

The man walked to her. "You are lovely. What is your name?"

"Sarah Walker."

Sarah had been thinking furiously as the small, three-car parade had traveled, about what she should do. She decided to go with the truth since if CJNG had heard rumors about the baby, they could make inferences about who might take the baby from Sinaloa.

"Agent Sarah Walker, CIA."

A murmur rippled through the men, who had now been joined by others from outside. The leader shot the group a look and the murmur died.

"A US Intelligence agent. Not standard for kidnapping, but then, the whole world has become chaotic, has it not?" He did not wait for an answer. "Tell the man in the car to get out; I want to see him and the baby."

Chuck did not wait for Sarah to relay the order; he heard it and obeyed it. Natalie was awake but not crying. Sarah heard Chuck speaking to her, sotto voce, soothing her.

Sarah spoke as he got out. "This is my partner, Agent Kurt Oldham."

It was the name of an older agent who had helped Sarah during her time at the Farm, now long dead. She made sure she said it distinctly enough for Chuck to hear it.

"The baby, as I take it you know, is the grandchild of a US General, General Stanfield. She was kidnapped by Sinaloa; we were trying to rescue her."

The man smiled. "What is the expression — from the frying pan into the fire?"

Sarah did not blink. "You could come out of this with his thanks, not his enmity. This kind of thing's not your style. Do you really want to inherit a Sinaloa scheme?"

"There's another expression," the man said, a hard glint in his eye, "sloppy seconds. I suppose some men have no objection, but…" he shrugged, examining the three of them with deep indifference. "I need to decide what to do. Until I do, we will keep you here. Mateo, put them in the office after you search them."

One of the men stepped forward quickly, obediently, gun pointed at Sarah. He looked at Chuck. Chuck carried the baby around the front of the car. The man handed his gun to the leader, then frisked Sarah. Laughter, suggestive, traveled from man to man. Then the man frisked Chuck. He put all the guns he found on the concrete floor, then he took his rifle back from the leader.

The man gestured, a nod of his head, toward a door in the rear of the station.

"Wait," Sarah said carefully, "we have a backpack in the car with things in it for the baby. We need it. Search it, but we need it."

Chuck chimed in. "Is there water back there, and is it safe for the baby?"

The men seemed amused by Chuck's concern, by the fact that he was carrying a baby. The leader motioned to another man who fished the backpack out of the rear of the car, through the broken window. He opened it and checked it, all the pockets, before nodding at the leader. The leader nodded at him and the man handed the backpack to Sarah.

"There is an old stove back there that has one working burner, at least," the leader said, "and a refrigerator full of bottled water and beer."

Mateo led them to the door.

Inside was a well-lit, surprisingly clean room. A threadbare loveseat was beside the door. A desk stood in the center of the room, and against the back wall was an old refrigerator — it looked like it had been part of an Andy Griffith set — and an old stove. Above the stove was a wooden shelf, with a small cast-iron frying pan, an old copper saucepan and a cheap aluminum kettle. Beside the stove was a rusty, deep-basin sink.

Mateo stood by the door as they went in, then stepped back outside, closing the door.

Chuck was still cooing at the baby, keeping her entertained. Sarah opened the backpack and looked inside. She had seen its contents before, although the sight of Natalie first reacting to Chuck had distracted her. There were bottles, a couple of cans of formula, unopened, a small blanket, diapers, and a couple of changes of baby clothes.

Chuck walked to Sarah and handed Natalie to her. Sarah took the girl awkwardly, although Chuck did not notice. He turned and crossed to the refrigerator.

Sarah's heart pounded in her chest far faster and more violently than it had all evening.

Never had Sarah Walker held a baby.

The small, warm body clinging to her felt utterly alien, utterly strange.

And it felt familiar — familiar not as memory but as something else, something older than memory, something earthy and rooted past knowing.

Chuck opened the refrigerator door. Inside, as the leader said, was bottled water, bottles and bottles of it on one shelf, and cans of beer on the one below it. Otherwise, the refrigerator was empty. Chuck opened the top door, the freezer. It was empty.

Shutting the door, Chuck shrugged. "Should I put some water on, warm it for her, for the formula?"

"You know how to do this? Feed her?" Sarah asked, shaking free of the primordial spell.

Chuck nodded uncertainly. "Think so. There was a woman who worked at the Buy More. Anna Wu. She got pregnant and after her maternity leave, her boyfriend would sometimes bring the baby in to see her. She would feed the baby in the breakroom at lunch. Her…um… milk didn't ever really come in well, and so the baby had to supplement with formula…early. Sometimes she ordered me to help her when our lunch breaks overlapped."

Sarah eyed him.

"She was small but mighty," Chuck explained. "I did what she told me. Anyway, I have a little experience."

Chuck turned on a burner on the stove. Sarah put the backpack on the desk and walked to him, carrying Natalie, who seemed wholly preoccupied with one of Sarah's earrings. The burner quickly began to turn orange. Chuck reached up for the saucepan from the shelf. He put it on the burner then went back to the stove, took a bottle of water out, and poured some into the pan. He put the bottle down and then turned to Sarah.

"I can take her. You look a little panicked."

Sarah blushed. "I'm new to all this."

Chuck raised an eyebrow. "Riiiight. Bond, Jane Bond, not Goose, Mother Goose."

It took Sarah a moment.

She frowned at him. "I guess so. I was an only child. So no younger siblings. I've been an agent for a long time; I don't have any…ordinary friends."

Chuck was listening, but he walked past her to the desk, taking a can of formula out of it. He opened the plastic lid, then pulled off the metallic seal with a pop. He walked back to the stove, stopping to look closely at Natalie.

"She seems okay. Luckily, she has no idea what's happening." Chuck looked at the closed door. "Any idea how long they will leave us here?"

"No, none. That man, the leader, he's impossible to read."

Chuck nodded. "Yeah, except for the danger and murderous competence that rolls off him in tidal waves."

"Yes," Sarah agreed, "except for that."

Chuck returned to the stove, watching the pan of water for a moment. "Oh," he said before facing Sarah, "sorry about the cannibalism thing. The Intersect served that up and it was out of my mouth before I realized what I was saying."

"Did the Intersect recognize any of these men?"

"No, bad as these guys are, these sicarios," he paused and Sarah nodded at his word, "none of them seems to have made it into the Intersect, not even Fearless Leader."

He turned back to the stove. Steam was beginning to rise from the pan. "It'll be ready soon."

Chuck went back to the backpack and fished out a bottle. He unscrewed the nipple and handed it to Sarah. She took it hesitantly, unsure how to hold it or whether she could touch the rubber part.

Chuck used the scoop in the formula to measure some out, then put it in the bottle. He dipped a finger quickly in the water, then poured some of it into the bottle. He reached out and Sarah gave him the nipple, still holding it stiffly. Chuck put it on the bottle, then gave the bottle several gentle shakes. He pulled his jacket sleeve up and shook a few drops onto the inside of his wrist. "I think it's warm enough but not too warm."

Chuck held out the bottle. Sarah shook her head. "No, no, not me. You." Chuck shook his head. "She's calm. No reason to shunt her around. She likes your earrings. Just sit down in the desk chair, tilt her back in your arm, I can help, and put the nipple to her mouth."

The two of them made uncomfortable eye contact for a second, then Sarah sat down. She leaned the baby back, cradling her in her arm, then she took the bottle from Chuck. She put it in Natalie's mouth. It seemed like she was not going to take it, then, all at once, she latched onto the bottle and began sucking. After several gulps, the baby sighed. Sarah looked up at Chuck, smiling.

He was standing over her, smiling down at the two of them. "See, you're a natural."

Sarah didn't blush, but she felt a warmth move up her body, and she snuggled the little girl closer to her. Chuck sat down on the nearly empty desktop. He rubbed his head.

"Is it bothering you, the Intersect?" Sarah asked softly, trying not to disturb the nursing baby.

"No, not really. It's just the…enormity…of all this. That little girl's life is in our hands. How do you do it, live this way, with other lives caught in the balance?"

Sarah looked down at the baby. The girl's eyelids were half-closed, heavy, but her nursing was still intense. The baby sighed again, seeming to radiate sleepiness.

"You don't get used to it, exactly. In a way, you forget about it. Or, not forget about it, you just force it into the background. You can't let that be your focus. Your focus has to be the next step, the necessary means to your objective, not what hangs on achieving it."

Chuck looked at her. "But what if what hangs on it is literally in your arms."

Sarah looked down at the baby again and felt the living, drowsy warmth against her chest. "I don't know, Chuck. We've got to find a way out of here. We have to save her." But even as Sarah said that she yawned a bit.

"I know. I know."

Chuck paced around the desk, examining the room. Sarah could tell that he was hoping to prompt the Intersect, but with no luck.

"Chuck," Sarah said softly, "stop pacing. You're making me dizzy and Natalie's making me sleepy, and neither is good, given our situation. Talk to me."

Her eyelids felt as heavy as the baby's.

Chuck bit one corner of his bottom lip. "Talk to you?"

She nodded vigorously, using the gesture to combat her sleepiness.

"Ask me something, anything." She didn't think about what she said; she just said it.


Chuck was having a hard time.

He had turned away from Sarah and the baby.

Seeing Sarah Walker with a nursing baby in her arms was a visual, conceptual discord. It seemed to freeze his thoughts; It just didn't make sense.

This was the woman who had put a gun to his forehead, who had orders to kill him that she was going to obey. This was the woman he had wanted worse than he knew he could want a woman, and then, moments later, believed he hated. This was the woman who was a trained assassin, a trained seductress.

This was the woman who kissed him better than he had ever been kissed, kissed him beneath a moon that, in memory, seemed to reflect not the light of the sun, but the heat between the two of them. This was the woman who kept showing up in Intersect's exact dreamland replays of that night.

The date.

"Would you have done it, shot me, executed me, that night, in the back of the car?"

Sarah was suddenly awake. The baby was fully asleep, no longer nursing.

"Chuck, I…" She felt a rush of emotion — but no accompanying rush of words. "I…"

He asked the question with his back to her. He turned to look at her. She could not meet his eyes. She looked down at Natalie.

"Would you believe me if I said no?"

Chuck answered her question with a question. "Are you saying no?"

Sarah did not look up. "No."

There was silence, then Chuck said. "Hold it. I don't understand. Did you just say no?"

"No, I'm not saying no. I don't know how to answer your question, Chuck."

"You have no answer?" He sounded exasperated. She did not look up; instead, she put the empty bottle on the desk, adjusted the baby in her arms after the change of position, and gently moved a stray lock of hair off the baby's face.

Sarah was stalling, Chuck knew, doing it all while thinking about his question, but seeing her do all that with the baby made Chuck react, his thoughts and feelings twist like haywire. He had been having enough trouble all these weeks rendering sexiness and deadliness coherent, both her, simultaneously. But how to add maternal to that list?

He boggled.

"I don't know how to answer." She replied, haltingly. "I had my orders. Orders were always my thing, the axis my life spun around." She paused. "I believed I was going to follow them. I told myself I was following them. But I did things before we went out, things I didn't normally do, things that made no sense. And I've never followed seduction orders in the way I followed them that night — if I was following them. Maybe I was, maybe I wasn't." She seemed genuinely confused. "I did pull out my gun; I did put it to your head, but…"

"But what?" Chuck asked, curbing his exasperation. Sarah still did not look up, but he saw her dip her head slightly, something he now knew marked a special introspective effort.

"But I can't tell you what I intended, at that moment. My…head was so full of things, and I had my orders, and I…" She trailed off and finally looked up at him. "I remember the moonlight, and — "

The door opened and Mateo entered the office, his erect walk indicating a shift in his manner. He looked at the three of them, then focused on Sarah for a moment. He smiled malignantly

"The boss has other concerns." He said abruptly, his English good but not as cultured as the leader's. "Sinaloa's not happy about losing their sicarios, their car. So, it will be a while before he gets to you. And if I have to babysit, I'm going to enjoy it." His eyes zeroed in on Sarah, his rifle held waist-high and pointing at her. "Give him the baby."

Sarah looked at Chuck, her eyes telling him not to resist, to comply.

He nodded subtly, but felt the Intersect shift inside him. As Sarah stood and put the baby in his arms, walking around the desk, he heard a phrase in his head, but not in his internal voice. It was Zarnow's voice. "Colorless green ideas…, colorless green ideas…"

The phrase repeated and repeated as Sarah walked toward the man.

Chuck had Natalie tucked in one arm. She was still sleeping. Sarah reached Mateo. Chuck could see his face over Sarah's shoulder. He was staring at her, not paying any attention to Chuck.

Without looking, Chuck backed to the stove. Mateo gestured Sarah to the threadbare love seat. Sarah nodded and walked to it. Mateo spoke: "Undress."

The word was Spanish but the Intersect translated it as it was spoken.

The Intersect felt like a magazine of explosives inside Chuck. He seemed to extend through the room, not just incorporating Natalie in his arm, but Sarah standing by the loveseat. They were him.

Sarah put one hand to the collar of her blouse, the buttons. Mateo followed that hand, hypnotized.

And then Chuck, in one smooth, unified and thoughtless motion, reached up for the frying pan without looking, grabbing its handle exactly, and threw it with a strength and accuracy he did not know he had, a nasty big-league pitcher delivering the high heat.

The phrase completed soundlessly on Chuck's lips as he let go: "...sleep furiously!"

The iron pan smacked Mateo's head with a meaty sound and he dropped like a stone.

Sarah moved immediately, reaching to grab Mateo's rifle from where it had fallen onto the floor. But as she bent down, the door opened.

The leader was standing there, gun in hand, his men behind him. "Please, don't, Agent Sarah Walker. My apologies. I had the car turn around; I feared I would be too late," he paused, considering the frying pan and the blood running from Mateo's head, his eyes flicking up in surprise at Chuck, "but I see you were in good hands."

Sarah was staring at Chuck too — in wonder.

Chuck himself wasn't entirely sure what had happened.


A/N: I've been trying to catch up with reviews and am still working on it. I hope to finish the arc this week.