The Nerd Versus the P.I. Family
By Steampunk . Chuckster
A/N: Thank you for the reviews! It's getting harder and harder to find the energy to put words down, folks. Seriously. Hence the delay. But I'm trying. Your words really help though so thanks!
Summary: Sarah Walker has uprooted her life, leaving her job with the LAPD and going it alone as a private investigator, all in the hopes it provides her with less dangerous stakes and a schedule she can control so that she can handle her most important job, raising her toddler, a bit easier. But when the single parent thinks her computer might've been targeted by a criminal, she has to request help from the unlikeliest of sources: The Buy More Nerd Herd.
Disclaimer: I do not own CHUCK, I do not own its characters, I am not making money from posting this.
Two hands clamped down on his shoulders, hard, making him jump, pulling him out of his reverie so effectively, he just barely kept himself from yelping out loud in surprise.
Instead, he spun around and glared a little at his best friend. "Jesus Christ, why?"
"Morgan Grimes, actually. But I am sometimes very Godlike. The beard and all."
"Dude."
"Sorry, sorry. I saw you standing at the desk just staring off into space, man, and I couldn't resist the urge." Morgan held his hands up, a cheeky look on his bearded face. "What's up with you, anyway? You've been all…I dunno…" He wiggled his fingers in the air. "Off in some other world."
"I don't know what that was you just did with your hands, man, but I'm not off in some other world. I have both feet here in this world. Know how I know that?" Chuck asked.
"How?" Morgan crossed his arms and lifted his chin.
Chuck cast his gaze over his friend's shoulder and gestured with a nod of his head. "Jeff is biting a Rick Astley vinyl. That wouldn't be happening in some other world. It could only happen in this one."
Morgan followed his gaze. "Oh what the hell? Jeff! Jeff Barnes! Dude! Take it out of your mouth! God!"
Jeff just looked at them like a dog who'd been caught chewing their owner's slipper, put the vinyl back, and slowly slinked away with his tail between his legs.
"What the hell is he on anyway?" Morgan asked, turning back to Chuck.
Chuck shook his head slowly. "I don't think even he knows."
"So what's up, man? You weren't here, like, all day yesterday. And then I called you to do a little Call of Duty, a little C.O.D. with M.E." He looked way too proud of himself for that. "But you didn't pick up."
"Oh, uh. Yeah, I was at a job yesterday. Off-site."
"Ahhh…Cool, cool, cool. What was this one?" Chuck just shrugged, his mind going back to what he'd been thinking about before Morgan had crept up on him. "A shrug? That's all I get? A shrug?"
"Not that interesting, man."
"Not that—? Chuck! Buddy! All I do, day in and day out, is sell big screen TVs to rich assholes who get to spend their days playing golf and watching NFL reruns while their wives keep their beer hands full." He thrust his hand out as if he was cupping a beer between his fingers.
"Uh huh, yeah, that's the dream," Chuck drawled sarcastically.
Morgan just snorted. "Chuck. My man. You get to go hang out with the police and solve crime with them! Come on! I want to hear about your rad jobs, Chuck! Please! Give me somethin', buddy! I have to live vicariously through you."
"Is that what this friendship is now, Morgs?" Chuck asked, chuckling.
"It might be! It could be!" Morgan cupped Chuck's face between his hands. "Please, Chuck. I'm desperate. What was it? LAPD again? Or was it the FBI this time?"
Chuck laughed and pushed Morgan's hands away. "You're putting way too much importance on what I do, bud. I just helped someonewith their laptop and it took a while. That's all. None of the other Nerds were around when I answered the phone and talked to the customer, so I just went myself." He shrugged as if it wasn't a big deal.
As if he hadn't left a part of himself in that P.I. agency. Or something equally melodramatic.
God, he'd never met anyone cooler. Ever in his life.
Even the way she stood was cool. The way she sat. How she slumped a little in her chair after a few hours passed by. And the way she'd eaten her fries.
It wasn't simply that she was a private investigator, a private eye, a detective, a gumshoe. And that was easily the most awesome thing he had ever heard in his life. He knew he'd been a complete idiot over it for the first half hour at least that he'd been in her office.
And then once he'd recuperated from that, enough to at least function and start his job, things had become more interesting, surprisingly enough. Every moment he'd spent with her yesterday had made him not just admire her, but genuinely like her. She was funny, and she somehow found him amusing enough to bless him with her laughter, sincere laughter that made him feel lighter.
He'd been so confused about the state of her office when he arrived, until a few hours later when she'd decided to trust him with the fact that her agency looked like a tornado had gone through it because she'd been searching for a bug. She told him she was working with the LAPD and DA's office on a case and the evidence had leaked.
He was still trying to wrap his head around all of it.
Chuck could still see the look on her face when he told her the bad news.
It made his chest hurt even now thinking about it.
She'd been angry and ashamed, and then there was worry. And just as quickly, she'd slid a mask over all of it, a professional tenseness to her. He wasn't sure if it was the fact that he was there as much as it was the whole situation. Or maybe that was just her technique as a private eye. It fit with the job. She needed a spine of steel to run a successful P.I. agency.
God, she was so cool.
"What was wrong with their laptop?" Morgan asked.
Chuck shook himself a little. "Just wanted me to check for, uh, viruses." He was acutely aware of the fact that Sarah Walker had let him in when she'd told him details about the bug she'd been searching for, and what might actually be wrong with her laptop. She'd been serious when she'd asked him to keep mum, and with the worry he'd seen in her face in spite of her attempts to push it behind a mask, Chuck had every intention of keeping his promise to her.
"And that took all day?"
"Yeah. Had to break out my ol' pal GreyWolf."
"No way! You used GreyWolf?" Morgan pulled his head back and narrowed his eyes dubiously. "You never break out GreyWolf with customers, man. You haven't gotten the patent on it yet, not that you've tried…" Chuck got a side-eye and he supposed he deserved it. "And you don't trust the potential liability."
"So you do listen to me when I talk about programming stuff."
"Chuck. Best buddy. I'm the only one who does."
"Gee, thanks." He gave the Bearded One his best droll look.
"But you broke out the GreyWolf on a job for this client yesterday and…" Morgan's blue eyes grew big suddenly. "Wait. Waaaait. Oh. Ohhh. Yep. YUP. I know what happened because it's exactly what I would have done." Morgan smacked the top of the Nerd Herd desk. "It was a girl."
"W-What? N—What?"
How in the hell did he even do that?
"It was a girl, Chuck. I can see it in your cute little blush." Morgan reached up to poke his nose and Chuck slapped his hand away. "Ow!" He got a look of consternation for that. "I guessed it. You always get the same blush slash grumpy look combo on your face when you're unsuccessfully trying to hide a girl."
"You don't know as much as you think."
"Probably true." Morgan shrugged. "But you went to see a girl yesterday, didn't you? You let her see your oh-so-impressive GreyWolf, too, didn't ya? Ol' dog."
Chuck made a face. "Never ever do the 'you ol' dog, you' think at me. First of all. And secondly, okay fine. The customer who called and needed Nerd Herd help yesterday was a woman. You're right about that. But—Where are you going? What are you—Morgan? No."
But his friend had already dashed around the desk to the computer and was clicking away.
Chuck braced his palm on the desk and swung himself over it to the other side and tried to pull the shorter man away from the computer. "Nope."
"Too late. Her name is Sarah Walker and I need to know everything about her."
Letting his head fall back, Chuck groaned, letting Morgan go since it was futile now anyway. "Morgan, please stop acting like there's something extra juicy at the end of this path you're following, because it was just an I.T. guy going to do a virus check on someone's laptop. She just so happening to be a beautiful woman. No big deal. End of story."
Morgan narrowed his eyes. "Okay, first of all, man, you know how I feel about the word juicy." He made a grossed out face and shivered.
"Sorry."
"You should be." He composed himself. "And secondly, you said beautiful woman. I heard it! She was beautiful? Oh, man. Chuck. Chuuuuck."
"Shit," he muttered.
He had called Sarah a beautiful woman. And she was objectively beautiful, so gorgeous, in fact, that it had left him stunned when she first poked her head up from behind the filing cabinet she'd tipped against her desk to look behind it for what he eventually found out was a potential bug planted by a potential suspect.
"Tell! Me! Everything!"
"There's nothing to tell!"
Crap, there was so much to tell and he wanted to tell Morgan so bad. This was the one person on Earth who would understand just how freaking awesome it was that he'd spent all day in a private eye's office yesterday, and that said private eye was a badass blonde with eyes that were a kaleidoscope of blues and greys once he'd gotten close enough to actually look in them. And she'd looked back too, which was just nuts. Absolute madness.
"That's a lie, dude!"
"Okay, it's a lie," he rushed out, and he winced, letting out a long breath and slumping forward over the desk. "Oh my God, Morgan, if you'd just met her… She was… Look, I went to her office to help her with her laptop, just like she paid for, and things just felt… First of all, she laughed at the things I said."
"You meant for her to laugh, though, Chuck, right?"
"Yes!" he said, giving Morgan an offended look.
"Oh, good. That's good, man." He nodded sagely.
"She's a badass, too. On top of being the most gorgeous human being I've ever seen in my entire twenty-six years of living on this planet. Dude, she's unbelievably stunning. I'm telling you, my knees almost gave out when I saw her."
"Okay, good sense of humor. Hot. And a bad ass?" Morgan asked, counting it off on his fingers.
"Yeah. And she's nice. She went and bought me food. We sat at her desk and ate and…and we just talked and it felt amazing just sitting there talking with her. She's so interesting. I could talk to her for hours. I did talk to her for hours."
"Does she also have an air of mystery? Because if on top of all of that, she also has an air of mystery, drop whatever the hell you're doing right now and go back to her and marry her. Snatch her up."
Chuck laughed. "Unfortunately, that isn't how this works. And yeah, I guess she does have something of an air of mystery since I don't really know her at all, considering I spent a few hours with her, tops. And she's also a P.I., so I guess that lends to it…"
He jumped when Morgan's hand clamped down on his arm. "SHE'S WHAT?!"
A customer turned and gave them a look. Chuck gave her an apologetic look and she moved on, shaking her head.
"A P.I.?" Morgan rasped. "P as in private, I as in investigator?" Chuck nodded. "OH MY GOD, CHUCK! CHUCK, DID YOU ROMANCE A PRIVATE EYE?!"
More of the nearby people were looking at them strangely at Morgan's outburst.
"Okay, let's just go to my office. You can't handle being in public right now.""Just answer the question, man!" Morgan yelled as Chuck dragged him by the arm to his office near the home theatre room. Once they got inside and Chuck shut the door, Morgan seemed a little calmer, which made Chuck roll his eyes.
"Yeah, she's a private eye. When I called her that, she seemed to think it was kind of funny. Or weird. Or maybe both. But that is her job."
"How is this even—?" He pushed his hands through his hair and shook his head. "You spent all day with a beautiful private investigator, Chuck! What is your life, man?"
"Dude, I know! I know!" It felt so good to actually say it out loud. And to say it to Morgan, who would actually appreciate just how freaking radical it was. A real private eye. And then he realized he needed to do a bit of clean-up. "But hey, wait. Listen. I need you to promise me something."
"Anything, pal!"
"Don't tell anyone. Especially no one here at the Buy More, okay? But…just don't tell anyone, Morgs. Please. Her job is kind of…you know, she has to be discreet. And lots of secrets and… You know what I mean?"
"She's a P.I.! Of course! Everything's on the DL, my main dude. You know me. I can be discreet. Wow. Wowww. This is the coolest thing ever. I have secondhand chills, man. Feel that." He stuck his arm out and Chuck felt the goosebumps on his wrist.
"Yeah. Yep. Feel it."
"Right? Oh, shit. Chuck. So cool."
"I know."
"So what are you going to do?"
Chuck frowned and blinked at his best friend. "Do? What'dya mean?"
Morgan blinked back. And then he thrusted his hands out, palms up. "DUDE!"
"WHAT?!"
"Hot private eye. Badass. Laughs at your jokes. Bought you food, man." Morgan counted off on his fingers again. "And you ask me 'do what'?!
Before Chuck could answer, Big Mike's voice came over the intercom.
"Morgan Grimes to the manager's office. Morgan Grimes … to the manager's office."
The way he enunciated so slowly, emphasizing Morgan's last name, made it easy to fill in what Big Mike wasn't saying. MORGAN GOD DAMN GRIMES GET YOUR ASS INTO MY OFFICE RIGHT DAMN NOW.
"Hold that thought," Morgan chirped, before bursting out of Chuck's office. It was almost like a cartoon where he was standing in front of him and then was gone just like that, leaving only a trail of smoke behind him.
Chuck shook his head and moved to shut his office door before he walked back to his desk and sat down in his chair, spinning it first one way, then stopping it with his Converse bracing against his desk drawer, and spinning it the other way.
He repeated the process over and over as he let himself get lost in his thoughts again, and he finally stopped when he felt a little dizzy.
Weirdly enough, it wasn't her laugh—the way it sounded but also the way her face lit up—or the glint in her eyes when she smiled that he found himself dwelling on. It wasn't the way she pulled the pickles out of her burger to eat them separately after she'd finished everything else. It wasn't even the impressed look on her face when she saw the efficacy of GreyWolf and the fact that he'd built it himself.
Chuck was dwelling on how quiet she'd gotten once he discovered she had been hacked, like the air had been sucked out of the room for her. The idea that someone had been remotely logging her keystrokes, everything she did on her laptop seemed to have her genuinely worried about the hit she'd take, worried about both her and her agency's reputation being compromised by this situation.
He hadn't been able to stop thinking about her since yesterday afternoon when he left her office, but mostly, he couldn't stop wondering about how things had panned out. He had tried to reassure her without crossing any lines, without being unprofessional or butting in. And he meant it when he said he didn't think the LAPD or DA's office would stop asking for her help.
Chuck knew nothing about how her business really worked; he only knew what he'd seen in pop culture. But he had to assume a P.I. was a very helpful ally for a prosecutor and for the police. The street smarts, coupled with the fact that they could get places a cop couldn't get, on top of knowing where and how to look, a skillset a lawyer might not have.
A private eye was the best of both worlds.
Someone had done a lot of work to get that keystroke logger onto her system. And they'd probably done it because they knew she had evidence from certain cases. They knew they were dealing with a big player in the case when they attacked her laptop in particular.
But then he thought there was a good chance they'd done the same with other computers. If they could get into hers, they could get into a prosecutor's laptop at the DA, a cop's computer at whatever precinct.
Chuck had seen the mess at the precinct he'd been working in for a few days. They were pretty cocky with the way their computers sat unattended while they left to refill their coffee or go to the bathroom.
All he would've had to do was walk by and stick a jump drive in the USB and he'd get his keystroke logger in there. And they wouldn't even know it had happened.
Sarah hadn't done anything wrong. She hadn't been careless. She hadn't even left her laptop lying around somewhere. They'd gotten access remotely somehow. It had been a bitch to capture, as easy as he'd made it look, and then to copy and erase it from her laptop had been hard, too. They had a pro on their hands, whoever had done that.
And he was antsy about it.
He didn't want her getting attacked again.
And before he even made the decision with his brain, Chuck was stuffing things into his bag and heading for the door.
}o{
"Rina!"
Sarah looked up from her laptop as Max clambered to his feet from where he'd been playing on his mat with blocks and toddled as fast as he could into the waiting room where Carina was shutting the door to the hallway.
"It's my little man!" The redhead set down her bag and scooped Max up into her arms to hug him tight, lifting him off of his feet and carrying him the rest of the way into Sarah's office. "How are you today, Mister M?"
"How are oooo today, Misser C?"
"Max, it's Miss C. Auntie Carina is a woman." Sarah giggled as Carina shrugged as if it didn't make a difference to her.
"Oh."
"And how's mommy?" Carina asked, smiling at Sarah as the blonde stood up from behind her desk and stretched a bit.
"Don't call me mommy," Sarah groused. Carina just laughed at her for that. "I'm fine. Just trying to finish up checking my emails before I really dive into this work." She laid her hand on the stack of files, physical copies of evidence she'd had hand delivered to her office by two of Casey's detectives after they discovered emailing it was not as safe as they'd thought.
Sarah sighed. "Thank you for taking Max for me until tonight so that I can get some work done on this. I really, really appreciate it. I would ask Mom and Dad but they're out of town for that car show Dad wanted to go to in Carmel."
"Well, I get it. They need to do more fun stuff together. Your mom always talks about how cooped up she is."
"I found uuuuhhh bad d'agon came up from his… hole and he t'ied to bite my ho'se but my ho'se was standing on a b'ock dat was too high for da d'agon. And it went neeeiiighhhhh," Max thrashed his head around and wrinkled his face up as he made his best rendition of a horse sound, "and it won'd da game."
Sarah had been in the same room with him, and she didn't recall any dragons being mentioned, or holes, or a dragon trying to bite his horse… which meant Max had probably just made that up on the spot. She didn't know how that factored into his brain development, but she made a mental note of it.
"Well congrats to your horse!" Carina said without missing a beat.
Max squirmed the way he always did when he wanted to be put down, and Carina knew him well enough to stoop and put him on his own two feet, and they both watched as the toddler dashed over to pick up his horse and hold it to his ear. Then he pulled it away. "HE SAY TANKS!"
The two women laughed, sharing a look.
"Well, Max, why don't you say bye to your mom for now and we'll get going. Let's try to miss the beginning of rush hour, huh?"
"What dat? Rush…?"
"Rush hour, Max." Sarah came around her desk to pick Max up and prop him on her hip. "Everybody who's at work like Mommy and Auntie Carina have to go home at the end of the day, and they all rush onto the streets and freeways in their cars at the same time so that it gets all clogged up."
"Oh. It bad?"
"It is bad. It's kind of the worst."
Max threw his arms around her neck and squeezed. "Okay bye Mommy!" She was forced to put him down as he practically leapt out of her arms, pushing against her. And then he ran past Carina to the door. "C'mon, Rina! We ha' to beat rusk!"
"Hon, it's rush—You know what? Nevermind." Carina shook her head, interrupting herself and then turning back to Sarah as she scooped up the blocks and dropped them into the container Sarah kept stashed in the corner closet with the rest of Max's things she kept here for him if he ever had to come to work with her. When she finished, she leaned in towards Sarah conspiratorially. "Let's keep him innocent and happy where rush hour's concerned for as long as we possibly can, huh?"
Sarah giggled and walked around the desk to hug her best friend. "Seriously, Red, thank you."
"You don't have to thank me. I've had a long crap day. A good dose of that sweet freaking kid is exactly the cure I need."
Sarah made a face. "We both know how much of a handful he can be."
"Yeeaaah, yeah. Being an auntie to Max Walker is way easier than being his mom, though, so I'm good." She grinned cheekily and turned on her heels.
"RINA, COME ON, THE RUSHHKK IS COMEEEENG!"
"I'm comin', I'm comin'! Geeeez!"
Carina threw a look over her shoulder at the laughing mother as she took Max's hand and they went out the door together. "Call me when you're coming to pick him up so I can hide the evidence of all the ice cream and cookies I've fed your child, 'kay?"
And then the door shut before Sarah could respond, or even finish rolling her eyes.
Then she knelt down to roll up Max's play mat so that he didn't have to sit on the hard cold floor, and she stuffed it and the blocks into the closet. She picked up Max's horse then and walked over to stash it in her bag so that she'd remember to take it home. He'd be a wreck tonight if he didn't have Mub the elephant and Hub the horse together with him when he went to sleep.
It had happened before and he'd cried for hours, to the point where she'd been so close to strapping him into the carseat and taking him all the way back to her office so that she could grab it…if only it would get him to stop.
Yawning, Sarah came back around her desk and glowered down at the stack of files. She'd have to protect these with her life.
Thankfully, finding out that she had a keystroke logger in her laptop hadn't gotten her into hot water with Captain Casey, or with the DA. If anything, Casey said, it meant they could build their case against the bastard. He was tampering with LAPD evidence. And when they traced it, they'd have enough for an arrest warrant.
But they still needed Sarah to help them gather more evidence against this "puppet master", and that meant she needed to reschedule that meeting with Kline.
She was just relieved.
Even though this experience had also given her some real paranoia about her laptop. She'd changed every single password she'd ever used on it the second Chuck the Nerd Herd guy left yesterday. Every. Single. Password. She'd added two-step authentication to her email accounts and her online checking account with her bank.
She wasn't screwing around anymore.
And yet, she still felt nervous about opening emails, about logging into anything. She believed Chuck when he said he "cut the strings" and got the logger off of her computer. He wouldn't lie to her. Especially since the LAPD had their best tech heads take that drive where he said the program her attackers used was copied, and they confirmed it was high level keystroke logger software.
But apparently, according to Chuck, they'd done this remotely. Which scared her. How had they done it? They hadn't had to come anywhere near her computer to do it.
She set her laptop to the side and studied the evidence in the files, looking through the individuals who were tied into the crime as potential accomplices, and then she studied what they'd gathered about potential witnesses to the crime as well.
An hour later, she heard the door to her office open.
Damn it, she needed clients, but for some reason, today felt like the worst timing for someone to show up wanting to hire her. Especially after yesterday's mortification and the revealed crack in her armor. She was still smarting.
But then she looked up and whatever tired, frustrated feeling that had been lodged behind her ribcage was gone.
She just barely managed to keep from grinning as he tentatively walked through the waiting room to stop at the doorway to her office, shifting his weight. Instead she simply smiled a little bit, folding her arms on her desk and tilting her head. "Welcome to Walker Agency. I'm Sarah Walker. How may I help you today, Sir?"
With missing a beat, he raised his eyebrows and held up his messenger bag. "Well, I've got some headshots here, and I'd like you to get me into a movie, particularly something more science fiction or fantasy. I'll take a TV show or miniseries. Maybe Wheel of Time or Dune or…I dunno. Just spitballing." He shrugged.
Sarah laughed and pushed herself up to her feet. "This isn't a talent agency, Sir. It's a detective agency. If you wanna get technical, I'm a private investigator rather than a detective. But I answer to both."
"Detective!" He made a face. "Huh! In that case, I think the mechanic I take my car to is conning me. I'd like you to look into it."
Sarah wondered for a moment if he was being serious, but then she took a few steps back towards the window behind her desk and bent one of the blinds to look down at the street below. She was just playacting, peeking down at the street for effect, but then she spotted a tiny little vehicle that looked like a pill capsule or something, red and white, with the words "Nerd Herd" written on the side of it in block letters. "Nerd Herd" was also on the hood.
She smirked to herself. "Your car, huh? Do you mean that little Tylenol capsule parked at the curb down there?"
"Okay, hold on. Whoa. For the record, that's not mine. I-I mean, it is. I drove it here. But it's the Buy More's. I have my own car. My sister borrowed it yesterday and got home too late so I figured I'd just pick it up later…"
Sarah just watched him for a few moments, a smile growing on her face. She'd honestly thought she most likely wouldn't see him again after yesterday. He'd helped her out in a huge way, they'd shared a meal and fantastic conversation, and then he'd handed her his business card and disappeared.
But here he was again.
She smiled once he realized she was pulling his leg and gave her a flat but amused look. "Hello again, Chuck."
"You remembered my name."
"Well, it was just yesterday. And also, it's hard to forget the name…Chuck." She smiled, showing her teeth, and then giggled as he rolled his eyes. "So to what do I owe this pleasure again, Chuck? Did I forget to fill out some paperwork or something?" she asked, dropping the game and strolling back to her desk.
He finally stepped further into the room and halted at the other side of her desk. "No, no. You're all set there. I've got everything I need. I, um, I'm just here for a, um, well…sort of a post-op. Just to check and make sure everything I did yesterday is still… Or, well, I mean, I want to make sure you were satisfied with the job I did. And also, I need to ask if you've had anymore trouble with your laptop or…anything like that."
Sarah tilted her head, watching him curiously as he shifted his weight, a tentative air about him. "I haven't had anymore trouble, no. It's running just fine. Nothing seems off yet." He nodded, looking just as glad about that as she felt. And that, in turn, made her feel comfortable enough to let her filter fall away. "I'm paranoid now, though. Stressed."
"Paranoid and stressed? Wh—" He stopped, realization coming over his face, and she squirmed, feeling the makings of a blush on her face. "Oh. Right. Of course. Somebody remotely broke into your computer so that they could see everything you did on it. Even with how I got rid of the keystroke logger, I get not feeling safe working on your laptop anymore." Before she could respond, he winced, shoving his hands into his pockets in a way that made her pause and wonder. "That's why I'm actually here, if I'm being honest." She frowned in curiosity. "See, there are certain anti malware programs you can install on your device to try to prevent things like key loggers from being used to invade your privacy. But you have a Mac and that's not really all that viable for Macs. But there are ways to keep yourself safe, er, and ways to check your system for keystroke loggers even though the thing is virtually invisible."
Sarah tucked a wisp of hair that had escaped her French braid behind her ear and looked down at her laptop before looking back up at him. "Oh. Okay."
"Sarah, I came because I want to make sure this doesn't happen again. But more than that, I want to make sure you feel safe from having this happen again. I want you to feel like you can trust your laptop the way you did before." She just stared at him quietly, feeling a warmth start to blossom in her midsection. "But I'm gonna write some things down for you. I'm gonna teach you stuff you can do to protect yourself, like doing periodic checks so that you know your system isn't compromised by some asshole with a keystroke logger or some other malware."
He shrugged his messenger bag off and set it down on her desk, starting to rummage through the bag. He pulled out a legal pad and then took a pen out of his pocket protector, setting them down on her desk as well, before shrugging out of his jacket.
Sarah didn't speak, just watching him quietly, wondering what in the hell was going on. And her silence must've gone noticed by the curly-haired I.T. guy because he froze, slowly raising his amber-colored eyes up to meet her blue ones.
"If you have time. I just realized I burst in here and just assumed that it was totally fine for me to take up all of this time writing these down for you. I'm sure you're insanely busy. I-I'm sorry. And it's a Friday which means end of the week catch-up work. Probably. This was super presumptuous. I can—"
"No, wait." She stuck her hand out towards him to get him to stop once she was able to get her bearings a bit better. "I have time. It's okay."
She didn't have time. She had so much work to do.
But more than anything in that very moment she wanted him to stay here. She didn't want to send him away for anything, let alone so that she could do case work. Alone. Instead of being in his presence again the way she'd been yesterday. He'd made such an indelible mark on her in just those few hours they'd spent together at this desk that she'd had trouble falling asleep, her heart thudding against her ribs too hard for her to find peace. Just the way his laughter was so unbridled, the way he blushed when he was on the receiving end of a compliment. How genuinely funny he was. And he was sincere and sweet.
"You're sure?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.
"Absolutely."
He looked at her dubiously for a moment, and then he clapped and rubbed his hands together. "Okay, first thing's first. If you can set up two-step verification on everything you've got that requires a password, that's a good way to prevent these people from getting onto your email or into your bank account. They might get your password, but they wouldn't be able to confirm with a code that's sent to your cell."
Chuck walked around to plop down in the chair beside hers, just like yesterday, and she smiled inwardly scooting her own chair up to the desk and watching him jot it down on the legal pad.
She wasn't sure what prompted her to lean in and watch as his hand moved, fingers guiding the pen against the yellow paper…and she thought about how neat his handwriting was, an interesting mix between cursive and print, almost like he couldn't decide. She wondered if there was someone out there who might do some sort of personality test on him. Was it a lack of confidence or self-esteem? Was he indecisive?
Sarah felt silly and inwardly rolled her eyes at herself.
"Can you read that okay?"
"Perfectly." As she glanced up, she realized she had scooted a lot closer to him, and their heads were bent over the legal pad, close, their noses mere inches away. The air around them sparked with something she didn't understand. "What's next?" she breathed.
Chuck blinked. And then he cleared his throat, pulling back just a bit and turning back to the pad of paper, his movements jerky. "Uh, yeah. Next. What's next? Right. Um."
"I've already done a lot of that. The two-step verification, I mean. Most of my big accounts. After I took the drive with the copy of the keystroke logger program to the LAPD, I went through and changed all of my passwords and added extra steps to verification. I did my business email account first." She leaned her elbow on the desktop and propped her head in her hand, sighing. "I should've done that in the first place. It was careless not to. Look where that got me."
"Hey, no. Listen. Most of us wouldn't ever dream that something like this could happen. Always being on your guard to prevent some asshole hacker from taking control of your laptop and stealing evidence out of your email? Who is like that?"
She raised her other hand up by her shoulder. "Uh, you do realize you're talking to a private investigator, right? It's kind of my job to be looking out for shit like this."
"Is that what your contacts at the LAPD and the DA's office said when you told them about the keystroke logger?" he asked, playing with the pen between his fingers.
She watched him for a long few moments, and then she felt the corner of her mouth tilt up. "No. It isn't."
"So you're still on the case, so to speak?" She nodded. "Mhm. Not to say I told you so, but…"
"You're gonna say it anyway?"
He shrugged and gave her a cheeky look that made her giggle and shake her head. "No," he chuckled. "What I'm really trying to say is that it's easy to take the blame for something like this. Like you should've protected yourself better, or you should've known someone might try to do this. The truth is, I live in this world. I eat, sleep, and breathe technology and electronic devices. And I still didn't think this could be a keystroke logger until GreyWolf caught it. Hours later." He smiled kindly. "Stop beating yourself up. Apparently the cops and lawyers you're working with don't blame you."
Sarah took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I know. You're right." Then, on second thought, she added, "Thank you."
Chuck nodded. "You're welcome." And then he tapped the pen against the pad of paper distractedly. "I'm not gonna lie, I was a little bit…um…well, I was thinking about you. I-I mean, hoping," he corrected quickly, and he pointedly didn't meet her amused look, clearing his throat. "Hoping that what you were afraid might happen, didn't happen. That you weren't cut off from helping the police and the DA because of this bad situation which wasn't even your fault. That would've been super harsh."
"Maybe, maybe not. Leaks are a bad business when it comes to criminal cases like this one."
"You didn't leak anything. Someone stole it. And that's something you can maybe avoid in the future by making sure all of your software updates are up to date…ha, see what I did there? That was totally an accident." He paused and cleared his throat when she gave him a flatly amused look. "Right. Sorry." He shut his mouth, his teeth clicking. "Just, uh, make sure your software is up to date. That's all."
Sarah opened her computer, logged in, and gestured to the screen. "Okay so…what does that do? Updating software improvements or whatever."
"Software updates, by their very nature, are equipped to fix incongruences and holes, improve upon the software. And when your device is up to date, it's a lot harder for hackers to expose those kinks in the system when the updates have fixed them." He paused. "Does that make sense?" She nodded. "And if you have bits and pieces of system that are operating on older updates, it's easier for a hacker to get their claws in there."
"That makes sense," she said as he wrote it down for her. "I'll update everything on my laptop and…maybe I'll stop ignoring the icon that pops up and says 'Update Available' because I'm in the middle of something." She winced.
He laughed. "We all do it."
They stayed that way, bent over the laptop and pad of paper, going through preventative measures, for almost an hour. And yet, Chuck's writing only filled half of the page. In fact, the pen eventually ended up on the pad, the pad pushed away from him on the desk, as they both sat back against their respective chairs and talked, coffee in hand.
"So you're telling me that even with all of the geeking out you did when you found out this was a private investigative agency and that I am a private investigator, you've never seen even one episode of The Rockford Files?" she asked, eyes raised in surprise.
"No, I haven't! I know, I know. I'm ashamed of myself."
"He's, like, the best P.I.! He served time in prison for a crime he didn't commit and then tried to support himself doing private investigative work and only getting crap insurance fraud jobs, until he started picking up cold cases. He's not like the famous P.I.s you're used to, either. He lives in a trailer by the beach and wears cheap clothes. And he carries around a gun he doesn't have a permit for, but only when he has to." She lifted one finger primly, causing him to chuckle. "Unlike me, he tends not to jump in on open cases because he has a distrust for law enforcement after they framed him and sent him to lock-up." She sighed. "Sometimes I wonder if it'll bite me in my ass that I do work with the LAPD. I think yesterday proved that it puts me in a risky spot."
She worried her bottom lip between her teeth, thinking about Max and the whole reason she'd left the police force to start her own private agency in the first place. Sure, she could make her own schedule this way, and had days when she could take him with her to the office, something she could never do at the precinct, for obvious reasons. But the hope had been that she'd be in less danger doing this. And if she kept hopping onto LAPD cases or helping Carina, what was the difference, really?
"I get that." Her eyes flicked up to meet his. "No, I do. Really. Not that I empathize exactly. I can't. I mean, I'm not in any danger setting up folks' WiFi," he said, rolling his eyes. She furrowed her brow at him. "I'm not complaining, don't think I'm complaining. I just mean that yesterday was scary for me and I'm not…you. I'm not the one whose laptop got attacked, privacy invaded. I'm sure you have stuff on there that isn't related to the evidence of that case, stuff that's yours, stuff you don't want people seeing." She must've made a face because he winced. "I'm not making it better, am I? I'm just gonna shut up."
"No," she laughed, putting a hand on his arm. "No, don't shut up, it's okay." She shook her head. "You're right. Yesterday was scary. But more than anything, it really hardened my resolve to get this mother fucker, bring him to justice, never let him prey on anyone else, ruin anyone else's family, corrupt anymore young people out on the streets. Never again."
The Nerd Herd I.T. specialist was looking at her some kind of special way, an almost dreamy glaze to his honey-colored eyes, and a slow smile stretched over his lips. Then he shook his head a bit and furrowed his brow. "You're a badass. Stone cold." And then a grin bloomed on his face and he reached over to grab his pen, smacking it on the edge of her desk a few times. "Just rad. Seriously rad."
She blushed and looked away. "Yeah, well. I like the idea of getting the filth off the streets. These assholes with their fat pockets sending mostly marginalized young people out to do their dirty work. Those kids go to jail and get sent on this path that means being in and out of the clink for their whole lives, and the fat cats count their money with their greasy fingers all the while. It makes me sick."
Chuck slammed both of his hands down on the desk and made a strange growling sound, hunching over, before snapping back up again to beam at her happily. "Oh my God, seriously! You sound just like all of the radical P.I.s in the movies and TV shows. It's just so cool. I can't. I can't deal." He laughed, shaking his head. "You're so awesome."
Sarah giggled and crossed her arms at her chest. Nobody had ever gushed this unabashedly about her work. At least not in front of her. "Are you like this with everything?"
"No! I'm really not! I mean, I dunno. I am very prone to glee. It's a little embarrassing sometimes and probably a bit much depending on who you are. But I've just kind of grown up with these figures of…I dunno, a different kind of heroism than is usually portrayed in popular culture—these private eyes who operate outside of the strict and stringent rules of law enforcement. They bend the rules and skirt protocol and they get the bad guy…or uh, girl."
She hummed in amusement and smiled at him.
"But they were always more like…I don't know, folk heroes. Because I'd never heard of or seen or met an actual private eye. Until yesterday, when I walked through that door." He lifted the pen and pointed at the door to her office.
"So I'm a folk hero now?" she asked, leaning her elbow on the desk again and propping her chin in her hand, tilting her head.
"No! That's what I'm saying! They always seemed like folk heroes and now you've made it…real. And human. And somehow that just made it even cooler?" He narrowed his eyes and shook his head.
"What if I told you that sometimes I slip up and make mistakes?" she asked, an unconsciously flirtatious lilt to her voice.
He lifted his fist to his mouth and bit down on it with a strangled groan.
That made her rock forward with laughter, totally floored by his response.
"You are something else, you know that?" she asked, still laughing as she shook her head in awe at him.
"So I've heard. It's a wonder you haven't kicked me out of here yet."
"Not gonna happen," she said immediately, her filter that was so well-honed and practiced over the years completely failing her. She quickly tried to cover it up, smoothing a polite smile over the beaming grin that had been there and reaching over to poke at the legal pad. "You still have a lot to teach me."
Sarah wondered if he'd seen right through her. But if he did, he didn't let on. He let her have it, instead turning back to the pad of paper and picking it up with a resolute nod.
"Right, of course. We have a lot to cover here. I went through some preventative basics. Now I'll walk you through things you can do to check for this kind of intrusion yourself. Something I suggest you do periodically now, especially if you join in on a case with the police, or you're helping the DA's office."
He cracked his knuckles and rolled his shoulders, shaking his hands out, his antics making something inside of her warm significantly, and then he dove in.
}o{
Chuck had now been holed up in Walker Agency for almost three hours, walking Sarah Walker, a real life private investigator, through different ways she could check to make sure there weren't keystroke loggers on her system. Granted, that wasn't all they'd done. They'd had an early dinner as well, specifically pizza that she'd had delivered to her office.
He didn't know how this kept happening, how he kept ending up in this position with her, drifting away from the topic at hand and just talking about anything and everything, teasing, and eating together…
And then there was that flirtatious head tilt of hers, the smirk, the raised eyebrow. He wasn't really sure how that was even happening, but he saw it, he felt it, and he had good reason not to doubt it. And he'd responded with.a bit of his own flirtation, which had seemed to be received positively.
And then food managed to make its way into the situation, too.
Now he was going over the last step with her, pointing it out on her laptop.
"So you see here, how it pops up with 'Unknown' when you do a search? That can be a bad sign. If the program performing tasks on your laptop isn't known by a program search engine like this, it could be a keystroke logger someone's installed on your system." He'd pulled up an example on the Internet for her to look at. "And if that's the case, you're probably going to have to call someone like me in to look at it and promptly get rid of it if that's what it is," he explained.
She pursed her lips, nodding. "Or maybe I can just call you, instead of someone like you…"
Chuck turned to look at her, feeling the smile growing on his face. She really had him on his toes this whole time. "Yeah. I'm available. You have my card."
A bit of a shy smile came over her face and she turned to look at the laptop again. "Okay. Good."
He felt something between them, lingering, something warm and comfortable. Something telling him to make up another tactic, another thing for her to try off the top of his head so that he could stay here in this office with her, talking to her.
But then a look came over her face. "Wait. Am I paying for this?" she asked, turning to look at him as she pointed at the legal pad.
Chuck laughed and shook his head. She made his toes curl in his sneakers, she was so freaking cute. On top of everything else about her that was just…beyond comprehension.
How could anyone who was attracted to women not be charmed out of their mind by this one? She was everything. More than everything. He'd only known her for two days now and he didn't think a more interesting person existed. She checked boxes he'd never even imagined were possible. All of those conversations a much young version of himself had with a much younger version of Morgan, talking about who their perfect woman would be, who they'd end up with as adults, the kinds of women they'd date… And maybe back then, they'd thought they'd had a chance with women like that.
But now? At his age, after everything he'd been through with dating, the heartbreak and realizations about himself?
To be sitting here with a woman like this, to know she'd been flirting with him, that there was tension here—the good kind of tension that made his heart race and his palms sweat…
Chuck rubbed his hands up and down the knees of his pants, clearing his throat. "Uh, no. No, you aren't paying for this. I just wanted to make sure you were… uh…okay, after yesterday. This whole thing would'a shaken anybody up, even a stone cold badass like you, and I just wanted to make sure things ended up…okay for you. And then this." He lifted the legal pad. "I wanted you to have all of this."
The P.I.'s smile went straight to his core, making it ache in the best damn way. "Really?"
"Yeah. Really."
"Pro bono work, huh? Is that the norm for the Nerd Herd regional I.T. guy?"
"Nope," he said easily.
"Wow, way to make a girl feel special, Chuck."
He chuckled, feeling shy suddenly as he scratched the back of his neck, ducking his head. And because being a goofball was one of his strongest defense mechanisms, he shrugged and narrowed his eyes. "Well, you know, I also was curious to see if I might witness the P.I. eating another meal." She gave him a weirded out look, as if she had no idea where he was going with that. He thrusted a hand out towards her, palm up. "You know, just to see if it's true that a private eye's diet consists of cigarettes, coffee, and the grilled cheese Good Ol' Mel serves at the diner counter across the street for a quarter."
She burst into laughter. "Oh my God, shut up."
"Burger, fries, pizza…" he chuckled, counting them off on his fingers. "I think you've broken the rules there, Miss Walker."
"What can I say? I guess I'm a rebel like that." She grinned at him, hard. "Though I promise you I don't smoke, I don't wear a fedora—no hats at all, actually—and I don't wear ties, crooked, loose, or otherwise."
"I can absolutely see you in a tie," he muttered before he could stop himself. He realized immediately how it had sounded and he narrowed his eyes, blushing vibrantly as she cackled at him.
"What?" she laughed.
"Sorry." He cleared his throat, wincing. "Can you just…ignore that I crossed that line? I crossed a line maybe. We were teasing and it was all good fun and then I saw the line there in front of me and just…" He pumped his arms back and forth at his sides and bounced in his chair, mimicking a happy stroll over said line. It only served to make her laugh harder.
"I won't ignore it most likely, because it was kind of cute, albeit a little weird," she said through her giggling.
"Well shit," he groused good-naturedly, and she giggled anew.
"I'll give you the benefit of the doubt though since you meant to compliment me and I'm a firm believer in the whole 'it's the thought that counts' thing. So I'll allow your cute weirdness, in this case."
He smiled a bit dreamily. "And you know an awful lot about cases… being that you're…a…private investigator. You know what?" He winced and shook his head at himself, climbing to his feet. "I think the best thing for me to do right now is to just get out of here before I completely obliterate any semblance of a good impression I might've made on you and my employer in the last two days."
She chuckled and climbed to her feet. "For the record, every time you open your mouth, you raise the bar for men everywhere, Chuck."
That had been unexpected, and half of his mouth tilted up in a surprised crooked smile, his eyes widening. "That… Well. Maybe I should just quit while I'm ahead, huh?"
But of course he swept his jacket on and knocked the pen off of the desk and onto the floor. "Jesus. See?"
She laughed as he stooped to pick up the pen. But out of the corner of his eye, he caught a strange cube shape lying under the desk. He reached over and snagged it, pulling it out and straightening to his full height, shifting it in his fingers.
It was a block with the letter B on each side. Like for a child. "Hey, a block. You have an area in here for clients with kids or somethin'?" he asked, smiling up at her.
"Oh. Yeah. Well, not really. Sorry. Not kids. Just kid." She smirked and took the block from his fingers, going over to the corner and popping open a closet. He spotted more toys and a mat with farm animals rolled up. "My kid. This stuff is for the days when I need to bring my son to work with me."
Chuck felt like the floor had been yanked out from under his feet. And he was falling all the way down, through each level of the building beneath this one. And he didn't know when or if he'd ever reach the bottom. How would the impact feel …?
He shook himself, realizing how silent and tense and awkward the room had become all of a sudden. "Oh right!" he burst out. "Duh, of course that's why you have a block on your floor. Your son. Cool. Coooool. Makes sense." He thrusted his hand out in a sort of shrug with a strained chuckle.
She had a son. She had a family. She was married. Of course she was married. Of course a woman like this had already found a life partner and had started a family. And here he was trying to decide if he should scrounge up the courage to ask her out on a date. Like an idiot.
His chest ached as he took a step back. But then he realized his bag was still sitting there on its side, looking as stupid as he felt.
No, he didn't feel all that stupid, really. Just gutted. It startled him a little just how gutted.
She was perfect.
Too perfect to be true. Or, well… She was true. She was real. She was human, blond hair, blue eyes, long legs, a smile that made his knees weak, a laugh that lit fireworks in his chest, a sense of humor, kindness, a massive brain and badassery… And she wasn't his. She wouldn't be his. He wouldn't even get a chance to try.
Shit fuck damn.
Chuck snagged his messenger bag and swung the strap over his shoulder. "So listen, you…have my card," he said. "So if you need help with any of this stuff again, just…you know, contact me. I mean it. If you have a question… even if you think it might be a dumb one." He grinned at her, and he thought it might be too big of a grin maybe, because her eyes widened and she pursed her lips, before she gave him a closed mouth smile.
"Thank you, Chuck. I appreciate that." She looked uncomfortable then, her shoulders a little slumped. "And thank you for all of this. It was really kind."
"No, no. It was…nothin'. Nothing at all." It had been everything and he was going to think about it forever, probably. Pulling all his hair out in the meantime. She had a son. And a significant other who was the luckiest freaking person in the entire universe and Chuck was awash with a near-crippling amount of envy. He had to get out of here so that he could put his head through the windshield of the Herder he'd driven here in. Or something equally painful.
"It's been a pleasure, Chuck. I mean, meeting you. It's been a pleasure."
"Yeah," he said, nodding, smiling. "It was really nice meeting you, Sarah."
Chuck closed the distance and stuck his hand out between them. She took it, eagerly he thought, and their hands clasped tightly.
Why why why why why why whyyyyyy?
Whyyyyy?
And then they finally pulled back at the same time. "Take care of yourself." He pointed to the legal pad. "Periodic checks."
"Right. I will." She nodded, that closed mouth smile coming back.
Chuck could feel his body closing in on itself as he back towards the door. "Bye, Sarah."
"Bye, Chuck."
He saw her bite her lip in the split second he stole one last glance at her before he turned on his heel and headed through the waiting room, past the chairs and the coffee machine, and out the door behind which they'd hidden from her landlord just yesterday.
He felt like shit as he stood in the hallway outside of said door, clicking it shut behind him. And he turned to look at the letters on the glossy window. WALKER AGENCY.
Damn everything to hell.
A/N: I know. I have nothing else to say except that I'm working hard to get more out to you sooner than this chapter went out. Thanks for reading and please review! It means a lot.
-SC
