A/N1 A longer chapter.

Don't own Chuck.

Chutes and Ladders

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Hüsker Dü

Sarah had such a great time. The face-off with Jill had given Sarah a chance to say what she wanted to say about her and Chuck, to clarify her understanding of what they were to each other, and if his kisses and caresses (above and beneath the table) could be trusted - and they can! - he was completely and deliriously happy about her clarification. The burgers had been good, the conversation funny and silly and...warm. She liked Morgan and Alex immediately, and even more as the evening passed.

With the exception of her teaching assistant, Jerri, and Ellie, Sarah really did not have friends, not real friends. She had a few other single female teachers she occasionally went out dancing with, but those evenings were often crisscrossed by petty jealousies, or by lecherous, drunken men pawing at her or one of the others, or by worries about their interest in her past (her car, her apartment, childhood). So she did not go out often, did not encourage any real intimacy.

But by the time she and Chuck and Morgan and Alex were done eating, Sarah was ready to call both Morgan and Alex friends. Dinner with friends - and her boyfriend. Amazing! A couple of times, Sarah sighed and physically pinched herself, almost unable to believe it was happening.

Until recently, Sarah's emotional energies were channeled almost completely into her kids, her classroom. That's how she would always be - she loved her kids - but she was finding other people to...love. Go ahead, Sarah, say the word. And last night, as she tossed and turned after Chuck left, she had a thought that left her staring at her ceiling for a long time, in an admixture of hope and shock: a child of her own. Of hers and Chuck's. It was a strange thought, almost beamed into her head from somewhere else. She had never seriously considered a child of her own before: at best, the thought was a reverie, an idle daydream in a moment, infinitely far away. But suddenly, here and now, only a brief while after getting to know Chuck, and the thought seemed...possible. And the possibility seemed...sweet.

Sarah shook her head. She was getting ahead of herself, ahead of them. Last night, after dinner and when Chuck took her back to her apartment, they had parted at the door. Neither wanted to do that, but both knew it was best. It was going to be worth waiting for, being together was. She was sure. Never had she felt such desire, complete and open. So ready to give herself and be given to. But after a few heady minutes of hungry kisses and hopscotch hands, they had each backed up a step and reluctantly said goodnight. Promises were in their eyes.

Sarah had gone inside. She took the folded-up picture of Virginia Monroe out of her purse and looked at it. It made sense to her now, Virginia's behavior. Spies and cons were first-cousins, so to speak. Langston Graham had not been mistaken about Jack Burton's training as preparation for being a spy. Graham had been mistaken about Sarah's view of that training. She had never wanted it and she did not want to go on living it. She certainly did not want to dose it with steroids as going to the Farm would have done. That would have put her so far from normal she doubted she would have ever made it back.

Even in the photograph, distances were evident in Virginia Monroe's eyes. But Sarah had also seen Virginia hugging Sasha, holding Sasha's hand: her eyes had been dancing, not distanced in those moments. Yes, a spy and a mom. What is going on, Virginia? What is your little girl so frightened of?

Sarah put the photograph back in her purse. She went to her room and took off her clothes and got into her pajamas. The black underwear she intended to put under her little black dress was in the same drawer. She had a vision of Chuck rolling her panties down. Her knees went weak and she shut the drawer quickly in an attempt to shut off her imagination.

She went to her closet and moved some boxes around, knick-knacks and odds-and-ends. She pulled one box down, a relatively flat one marked 'photographs'. She took it to the bed and sat down crosslegged. She put her hands on the corner's of the box top and lifted. The top came off and inside was a holster of very expensive knives. They were the one present from her father - other than the instilled conwoman habits, if those could be rightly called a present - she still had. She had once had a bunny he had given her, but she had given it to a troubled little girl who had been in her class a couple of years ago, and she had felt good about it.

Jack Burton was not the sort of conman who carried weapons. Not normally. But he knew what he did could result in violence. There had always been a gun in the glove compartment of the car. And when Sarah had gotten old enough, he had taken her to a friend of his, a master of martial arts, and had him begin to train her. The training was complete, but it had focused on knives, knife combat, and knife throwing. Sarah had gifts - that was immediately clear. And so, for the next few years, her father and she had run cons in a widening circle around the town her dad's friend lived in, returning often so that Sarah could get more training. It had given her something to do in motel rooms when her dad was gone. She worked on forms, carried a thick corkboard around for target practice, got better and better, even on her own.

She hadn't gotten the knives out except for maintenance in a long time - but Perry and the news about Virginia made her think her PI might need a helping hand in some tight spot. She went over the knives carefully and then took a few minutes to run through various combat forms. She remembered, her muscles did. It all came back, like riding a bike. It also got her mind off the underwear in her drawer, Chuck without underwear. She whipped around the room, knives flashing, a dervish in pajamas.

Ok, she thought, so I am not a normal kindergarten teacher.

ooOoo

Chuck headed home after dropping Sarah off. He unlocked the door and came inside, only to find Devon and Ellie wrapped around each other like eels on the sofa. Luckily, the eels were still mostly clothed. Before they could react, Chuck put his hands over his eyes and ran to his bedroom. He knew the way without having to look.

He heard Devon's low chuckle and the sound of a sharp slap from Ellie, then he heard her giggle. "Sorry, Chuck!"

"It's okay, sis. Nothing a few years of therapy won't fix right up!" He heard them both laugh and he laughed too. The real problem wasn't what he saw - or didn't see, Thank God - on the couch, it was what Sarah had done to him and was doing to him.

He was in love with her. He could not deny it. He did not want to deny it. He wanted to shout it, to run to Ellie and tell her. More than anything, he wanted to say the words to Sarah. But he was not sure that they were there yet as a couple, After all, they'd only been 'official' since the conversation with Jill, a few hours. But they had been together all along, since the beginning of that sideways blind date. It was fast - but fast did not mean untrue or illusory. For now, he thought, I will hug the words to me. I hope to say them to her soon.

Thursday, March 30

It turned out that he did not see Sarah on Thursday. They talked on the phone and texted, but she was busy with classroom events and preparing for another Meet The Parents night. She was supposed to talk to the Monroes at the event. Chuck planned to use that time to go to their house and look around again. Sarah was going to text him when they showed up and then let him know when they left. That was supposed to happen Friday in the late afternoon.

On Thursday afternoon, Chuck got a new case. Billy Powell, from next door at the cafe, sent a friend in. The friend had suspicions his wife was cheating on him and wanted Chuck to look into it. Chuck hated that sort of work - the extra-scuzzy side of PI-ing, as Morgan put it once - but he needed the money, particularly if he hoped to keep taking Sarah out. The strange thing was Billy's friend was 81. His wife, the suspected infidel, was 82. Chuck fought back an urge to smile and satisfied himself by putting the case under the heading of The Viagra Caper in his file cabinet.

Friday, March 31

So, he spent Friday morning trailing an octogenarian woman around town. It turned out that it was harder to trail someone driving very, very slowly than someone driving very fast. Several times he nearly rear-ended her. He almost got out to tail her on foot. He might still have rear-ended her. She did nothing suspicious, except practice losing races with glaciers, so he made some notes in his wire-bound notebook, with his purloined putt-putt pencil, and went to the Buy More to get some supplies. He needed batteries for his micro-recorder and some new cleaning cloths for his binoculars.

He used some time to plan more carefully for his Saturday visit to FARMA. At a resale shop, he found a pair of beat-up Carhartt twill coveralls. He still had his sanitation hat. He bought a pair of cheap sunglasses with large dark lenses, and then he found a cheap 2-gallon sprayer at a hardware store. He took it the apartment - Ellie and Devon were out - and he filled it with tap water and then dumped in a teaspoon full of orange food coloring, and a few drops of red, just to deepen the orange. It looked appropriately lethal. He sealed it up, folded the coveralls. and put both in the Vic's trunk with his clipboard, the broken GPS, the micro-recorder and his sanitation hat. He was ready for the next day.

Later in the day, after a do-it-yourself BLT at The Go Fork Yourself, and grabbing some gadgets from his office and putting them in a shoulder bag, Chuck drove to the Monroe's neighborhood. He parked a couple of blocks away and on a different street. He got out and walked to the Monroe's street, his binoculars around his neck. He stood behind a tree at the end of the block and peered through the binoculars. He went down the street and back up, checking every parked car, looking to see who, if anyone, might be in the cars. No dark SUVs. No Perry. No surveillance at all. At least not that Chuck could see. His phone buzzed in his pocket.

Sarah: Virginia and her husband here now. I will let you know when they leave.

Chuck: Okay, going in.

Sarah: Be safe.

Chuck: Will do. Say hi to Sasha for me. Tell her I how much I like the frog.

Sarah: I will. You're a prince.

Chuck went back to the car and put his binoculars away. He got the shoulder bag and headed slowly up the street. He cut behind a house down the block. Moving quickly but circumspectly, he crossed the backyards. Luckily, kids never played outside anymore, so the yards were empty. He had to climb over a fence, but in just a moment he was standing in a corner of the Monroe's backyard. He stood still. There were motion sensors in the backyard, but no cameras that Chuck could see. There was a camera over the backdoor. But Chuck was out of range of it at the moment. He took his computer out of his bag. He checked the wifi signals available.

He initiated a program of his own that allowed him to identify the source of each signal. He pinpointed the signal from the Monroe's. He then used another program to decrypt the password. The password was complicated; it took a couple of minutes, but then he was on the network. The irony that he was tailing a grandmother in order to keep himself financially viable while he could sell software he created for a fortune struck him again. He just hadn't seemed to get himself excited about his programming work anymore or about the AI research he had once done. Something had gone out in him at Stanford, his creative spark, his self-belief, both, neither...something. But standing there, punching keys in the backyard, he felt a glimmer of his old excitement, his old zest for computer puzzles, for programming.

He was able quickly to gain control of the security system. He reoriented the camera over the backdoor so that he could approach. He shut down the motion sensors. He unlocked the backdoor and shut down the interior cameras. He left the computer on the steps in front of the rear door, put on gloves and went inside.

Despite all the security, the inside of the house was normal. Clean, nicely decorated. There were pictures around. Some were pictures of the Monroes by themselves, younger, obviously in love. Others showed the couple later, Virginia pregnant. Then there was a beautiful picture of her holding the newborn Sasha (the shock of dark hair and the light eyes were unmistakable). There were also more current pictures of the family: Matthew, Virginia, and Sasha all smiling. They seemed happy; they were happy.

One strange thing struck Chuck. None of the pictures were in identifiable locations. He looked around through the rest of the house. Nothing out of the ordinary. But then he found the door to the basement. Down the stairs was a computer lab the likes of which he had not seen since his days at Stanford. He stood in amazement, half expecting some Igor in a Stanford shirt to shuffle into view.

Everything was state of the art. Chuck went to one of the monitors. When the screen lit up, Chuck saw the screen full of programming language. He sat down, transfixed. It took him a minute, but then he began to see - the pattern became apparent. The details he would have to work through, but the program was brilliant, cutting edge AI work. He knew he was gaping at the screen. He made himself get up. There was a file cabinet in the basement. Chuck was able to pick it fairly easily.

He almost laughed when he pulled open the top drawer. There was a shoulder holster with a gun in it. Chuck moved the holster. Below it was a small pass case. A CIA badge. Virginia Monroe. The dark website was right. There was no badge for Matthew. No gun for Matthew. But he had been scanning the perimeter, doing Agenty-things.

Chuck's phone buzzed again.

Sarah: Monroes are on the move.

Chuck: Thanks. I will get out now.

Sarah: Come by the apartment later?

Chuck: Sure, you okay?

Sarah: Yes. I need to know you are.

Chuck put his phone in his pocket and closed the file cabinet, relocking it. He shut down the monitor and retraced his steps through the house. He picked up the computer and, once out of sight of the camera, restored the security system to normal. There would be a time gap on the internal cameras. He had to hope no one had any reason to check their feed. He was not sure what he had discovered, if anything. He needed to talk to Sarah, tell her, see what she thought.

ooOoo

Sarah got home from the school and kicked off her shoes. She was awash with relief that Chuck's invasive recon mission had not gone wrong. But since it had, she was curious about what he might have found or seen. She stood for a moment in her bare feet. She looked at the clock. She had time. A shower. Black underwear. The little black dress...

No. She couldn't, not yet. Could she? Could they? They had waited...a few days. It was all happening fast. But she did not feel frightened, she did not have misgivings.

Still, no. Not that she didn't want it. She wanted it worse than she knew how to say. She huffed at herself, resolving against it. She went and changed into jeans and a t-shirt. A few minutes later, Chuck knocked.

Sarah saw him and was relieved anew. She practically jumped into his arms. She kissed him hard, all her anxiety and desire pressing against his lips. He kissed her back, so good, so good. She felt his hands slip under the hem of her t-shirt and all she could think was: yes, yes. Yes.

No. She let go and slid down and off him, giving his neck a quick kiss. They crossed over to her table and sat down.

"Thanks - um, for that." Chuck gestured back toward the door with a motion of his head. Sarah could see his eyes lock on her lips again. She made herself not lick them.

"How should a girlfriend meet her boyfriend when he returns from feats of derring-do?"

Chuck blanked for a second. "Are you implying I am Dudley Do-Right?" Sarah giggled cheerfully in response.

"But, wait, if I am Dudley, aren't you Nell, Nell Fenwick? But she's a redhead…"

Sarah grinned. "I can always talk to Alex…"

Chuck mock-shuddered. "No, we can imagine Nell went blond. But, does that make the Crown Vic a character too, Horse? You know, in the cartoon, Nell was more interested in Horse than in Dudley…"

Sarah shrugged. "I do like your car…"

"Says the woman who owns a Porsche."

"Says the woman who can think of nothing right now but kissing you some more…"

Chuck scooted his chair to her and Nell corrected Dudley on the object and nature of her interests.

ooOoo

"Okay, okay," Sarah said breathlessly. "We need to stop." She pushed her chair a little distance from Chuck's and readjusted her t-shirt. Chuck was lost in a dream, spacey. She snapped her fingers. I love you, Sarah. "Hey, Chuck?"

He re-entered Earth orbit. "Yeah?"

"So tell me about the Monroes."

Chuck related it all to her. She listened closely. At one point, she scooted her chair back toward him and reached into his inner sports coat pocket, pulling out his wire-bound notebook and his pencil. She opened the notebook and started to write with the stubby pencil she pulled out of the wire-binding. Then she noticed the slogan on it. She looked at it and then at Chuck, with a grin and narrowed eyes. He smiled and shrugged - but went on with his story. She made a few notes.

When he finished, she looked at him, her eyes glowing with admiration. "I knew you were brilliant, Chuck. And Ellie told me a little about Stanford, but, wow...To do all that. You are amazing." She loved how pleased he was by her praise, how he straightened visibly in his chair. My boyfriend!

"So what do you think, Chuck?"

He furrowed his brow and she wanted to kiss him. But she made herself resist.

"Obviously, the Monroes are under some sort of protection and are being supported by someone. The cost of the computing power in the basement is astronomical. Someone or some government or something is funding them. Matthew is clearly a programmer and a first-rank one. He's ahead of me...and…" Chuck blushed, "that's saying something. He's working on an AI project, but I did not have enough time to get a full grasp of what he is doing, not even in outline. If I had more time, maybe if I think about it, it will click over, but it's deep stuff. My guess is that he is working on a major project, something big, worth a lot of money to the right people, the right government. I do think he and Virginia are a real couple. I also think Sasha is theirs. My guess is that Perry represents some rival group, faction, government, and that everyone is waiting for Matthew to make a breakthrough…expecting it to happen soon".

ooOoo

Sarah had unconsciously put the end of the pencil in her mouth as she concentrated. Chuck saw it and lost his concentration. She noticed. She left the pencil in place for a beat or two, her eyes suggestive, locked on his. Then she took it out of her mouth. Chuck swallowed hard and glanced away, burning all over. He heard Sarah's soft laugh.

"So, what do you think, Sarah?" He watched as she took a moment to recompose herself. He knew that he was not the only one feeling hot.

"I think that all sounds right. The timetable too. Something happened to them before, some kind of attack. That's what Sasha's dreaming about, what brought them here. There's a lot about this that is strange, that I don't fully understand, but what you said sounds like the basic plot. Do you think we can maybe get together tomorrow, spend the day together? We could work on it some more...and other things."

Chuck wanted to say yes, but tomorrow was the day for Jill and FARMA. He hadn't told Sarah about his work for Casey or that it involved Jill (and Bryce). He wanted to tell her, but he knew Casey was right. This could all end badly, and he did not want Sarah exposed to it. He was also a little ashamed to be tailing his old girlfriend - and he wasn't sure how that would look to Sarah.

ooOoo

For maybe the first time since she had known him, Sarah saw Chuck hesitate. "No, I can't. I have a work thingy, a case I need to follow-up on." He wasn't lying; Sarah could tell. But he wasn't telling her everything. She didn't know quite what to make of it. She was disappointed, though, that he was hesitant. She hoped after the other night, when she had told him everything, he would feel able to do the same. She trusted him, though. She would believe he had a good reason for his hesitancy.

A little later, Chuck left. Sarah again readjusted her t-shirt after she closed the door. She was happy, but she was puzzled. "What is he not telling me?"

Saturday, April 1

Chuck drove by, watching Jill park in the FARMA lot. He went down the street and found a place to park. He was wearing the beat-up coveralls he bought. (Ellie and Devon got called to the hospital, so he took advantage of their absence and changed at home, not in the car.) He already had his hat on, and he had his clipboard too. He got the two-gallon sprayer out of the car, fool of its menacing-looking orange fluid. He grabbed the small toolkit he kept in the trunk. He stuck the broken GPS in the front pocket of the coveralls. He took a minute, adjusting his body, hoping to give the impression of overworked boredom. He headed toward the lobby.

ooOoo

Sarah saw Chuck slow as he passed a parking lot. The lot of someplace called FARMA. A woman got out of a car. Sarah did a double-take. Jill. Jill?

Chuck parked. Sarah did too, well behind him. He got out wearing the old coveralls she had seen him in when he left his place. He had on an LA Sanitation hat. He rummaged in the trunk of the Crown Vic. He took out a sprayer full of a dangerously orange liquid. What is he doing? He sat it down, the pulled a toolbox out of the trunk. He stuffed a gadget into a chest pocket. Then she saw him physically transform. He suddenly had the look of a long-time sanitation man. I am not the only one who can play a role. She knew this was no liaison. She had not thought it was for a moment, even when she saw Jill. But why is my boyfriend trailing his old girlfriend? She watched him go into FARMA's lobby. She sat, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, trying to decide what to do.

What is Dudley Do-Right doing?

A/N2 Will Nell follow Dudley into the house of horrors? Who is Snidely Whiplash? Will the Crown Vic come to the rescue? Some of these questions may be answered in Chapter Fourteen, "Password".

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Z