A/N: *DC reads reviews….turns to the camera and smirks*
Disclaimer: No money...NONE, nada, zip, not a penny, is made from this since neither of us own Chuck.
Casey's monitor came on as he was getting ready for a day at the Buy More.
"Major, are you secure?" Beckman asked.
"Yes, Ma'am!"
"Any movement on the Bartowski front?" Beckman asked.
"I have suggested that he might be able to have a...relationship with Agent Walker if he were an agent," Casey replied, shaking his head at the memory of being tied to Chuck in that hotel room.
"And he didn't go for it?" Beckman asked, shock covering her face.
"The kid has issues, General." He paused and grimaced. "His issues have issues."
"Do I need to send him the hours of surveillance footage I have of her mooning after him?"
"Thought I had cleaned all of those up," Casey muttered.
She gave him a flat look. "Major, you'd have to wipe every bit of surveillance footage clean. Graham's timeline is speeding up and we need to be ready. There is no telling what he'll do to Chuck."
"Copy that, General," Casey replied as the screen went blank. He realized what he had to do. "Christ," he muttered.
}o{
It had been a couple of days since she'd last talked to Chuck. She hadn't been avoiding him as much as she hadn't been seeking him out. He was busy at the Buy More, there had been no new assignments, and things were happening at the Wienerlicious. She grinned. He was going to be so upset that the costumes were going to be gone, and if she was honest, she was going to miss how he tried his best to not notice her legs in them.
"But, Sir, I've worked here since high school," she heard Scooter say. The grin on her face grew. "Well, do you think I could have the name of the new owner of the Orange Orange? I need a job. What do you mean I can move to Topeka and manage the Wienerlicious there? Sir, I'd like to stay here in Burbank, so if I could have the name...?" Sarah didn't look up, but she was wiping the counter where she could see his face out of the corner of her eye. She heard him make a choking sound and she twisted her lips to the side. "I'm sorry?! Can you repeat that? Sarah...Walker...she's the owner of the Orange Orange?" Scooter looked up at her as she gave him a smile and batted her eyelashes. "...What benefits do I get if I manage the Topeka location?"
The doorbell rang and she looked up, shocked by who she saw. She had been avoiding him as well...also not on purpose...
"Hey, Sarah," Devon said, sending her spy senses on high alert. He sounded...doubtful. Devon Woodcomb was many things but doubtful had never been one of them.
Ellie had text her and told her they had worked things out. She had hinted at another girls night, but right now that was the absolute last thing she needed. Between that last chat she'd had with a distraught Ellie and then watching Casey give up on a future with Ilsa, there were too many things running around in her head…and if she was really honest with herself, her heart.
"Everything okay, Devon?" He made a face and brushed her concerns off, but she could see some fear underneath it. "Hey, I'm your friend, too."
And that's when it hit her like a ton of bricks. She was. She was Chuck's friend, she was Ellie's friend, and she was Devon's friend. She had been sucked into this family. It was in that moment she knew, deep down, if Chuck had asked her to run away, not the icky and, frankly, criminal way in which Ilsa had asked Casey, but to legitimately leave this place with him...she might do it. That was terrifying, in several different ways.
"You're Ellie's friend, Sarah. So I'm sure she, um, Ellie must've told you she and I had some problems over our anniversary..." Sarah nodded, hoping he wasn't thinking she would take sides. "Fighting and having that short amount of time we weren't talking made me realize something. Sarah, she's my partner." He wasn't doing it on purpose, but this was hitting Sarah right in the gut. "But...I know I'm an expressive guy, a hugger, loud, bombastic, that's who I am. I accept that. For all that, I can't even compare to those Bartowskis in the emotion...spewing department, and part of me thinks you might... get that."
"God, they're exhausting sometimes," she admitted with a grin. "And they want to talk about everything, and every tiny little feeling and they're just so…"
"Intense?"
"YES!" Sarah said, surprised at how relieved she was.
"I love her, Sarah, I do, and she's the one." He paused. "She and Chuck have been through so much…"
She reached over and put her hand on his forearm. He looked up at her. "Devon," she said softly. "He already thinks of you as his brother. You know what to do. I get you're scared, but everyone who sees you two together knows." He nodded, a soft smile on his face. "Go talk to Chuck."
"You know, you're not fooling anyone," Devon said, looking her in the eye. "Everyone knows how you feel. I think you've got the same problem I have. They are so…." He looked up at the ceiling, chuckled, and looked back at her. "The Bartowskis are a lot, and maybe this isn't humble, but it takes a special person to be with them. Don't doubt yourself, or his feelings for you."
"I don't think we're quite where you two are," Sarah replied.
"Or maybe you are," he said, winking at her, and heading toward the door. "Thank you, Sarah."
"Anytime, Devon," Sarah said. As soon as he left, she slumped. First Ellie and "four feet in", now this from Devon. She and Chuck had to figure out how to walk this minefield without...without setting off a bomb. Because she knew firsthand what happened with them and bombs, and that was the problem, wasn't it?
"Trouble in paradise, Miss Walker?" Scooter snarked.
Sarah turned to him and smiled, honey dripping from her voice. "Enjoy Topeka, Scooter." Scooter dropped his head onto the table. Sarah wasn't sure when she had felt more satisfied in her life.
}o{
"Shawarma girl, incoming," Lester said to Jeff and the two hurried off. Chuck looked up and saw her. He felt Casey come up next to him.
"What are those two numbnuts up to?" Casey asked.
"Probably something pornographic and illegal," Chuck replied. Casey grunted and they both followed Jeff and Lester. Lester noticed them coming, turned, and walked towards Chuck.
"What are you two doing?" Chuck asked.
"Nothing," Lester replied. "We have gotten rid of our camera, we have gotten rid of the lipstick camera, we have nothing left, Chuck. You have ended us."
"I highly doubt that," Casey muttered.
"Say, Lester, uhh...Sarah wanted to know if you wanted to get together sometime next week one of the nights I'm working, just you and her." Lester's eyes grew huge. "Something about getting to know my coworkers better."
"You know, I have to wash my hair," Lester replied, backing up, nearly knocking over a stand. Chuck was nodding. "You know, I think I hear Jeff. Coming, Jeff!" Lester fled.
"What was that about?" Casey asked. Chuck didn't answer, and Casey shook his head as if he had a headache or something. "You know what, I don't want to know. What I do want to know is have you talked to her?"
"No, I haven't because I don't know if I should," Chuck admitted. "Don't think I don't know what you're trying to do."
"Get you two together?" Casey asked, a confused look on his face.
"No," Chuck said, thrusting his hand out toward the stand. "I see the GLG-20 bug, but that's CIA, and hidden pretty poorly." Casey walked over, picked it up and looked at it. "Did I pass your test?"
"Yeah, good job, Bartowski," Casey replied, a little distracted. He looked up at Chuck. "I need to talk to Walker about some mission planning, and you have your own mission." Chuck looked over his shoulder to see that Devon and Morgan were talking. "Go take care of whatever that is." Chuck gave him a look. "Don't worry, Romeo, I have no intentions of trying to make it with your girl."
"Pbbbth," Chuck replied, snorting. "That was the furrrrrrthest thing from my mind."
"Hey, I've already proven the ladies find me attractive."
"You mean the Russian mafia ladies?" Casey growled. "There's the line. It moved. It was further away yesterday. Listen, all seriousness, don't say anything about the NSA thing, okay?"
Casey stood there, and Chuck could see the conflict on his face. "If that's really what you want?" Chuck nodded. "Okay, Bartowski, now go, before the bearded gnome tries to talk to me."
Chuck turned around and headed toward Morgan. "Uh-huh. There's that best buddy of mine." Morgan said, raising his hand for a high five. "Yeah. What's up?" he said in a high pitched voice. "So, I haven't seen Sarah in a while. Have you two...worked out your thing?"
"Our thing?" Chuck asked, confused.
"You know, around Christmas, she was asking me about the hospital thing, and she may have let it slip that...well…" He paused and put his hands on Chuck's shoulders. "Chuck, we're like brothers, and sometimes with all the excitement, sometimes the bull comes out of the chute too fast, and that's okay."
"What in God's name are you talking about?" Chuck asked, his eyes wide.
"Listen, she told me, okay….well, she didn't tell me but I figured it out." Chuck put the pieces together. Sarah was spying, trying to figure out where he had gone, and she made Morgan her target, and Morgan being Morgan...OH GOD! "Listen I told her about the spot behind the ear and maybe she shouldn't be on top."
"MORGAN!" he hissed.
Morgan clapped Chuck on the sides of his arms with his hands. "Buddy, it's okay. Really. She's the only one I told about the ear."
"I'm more concerned about how you think you know!"
Morgan ignored him. "Listen, if you don't want to talk about it, there's something else. I saw an Infinity Ward mailer in the trash."
"I've told you how Big Mike doesn't like you dumpster diving."
"If you would tell me things I wouldn't have to," Morgan countered.
"You're not getting the pre-release demo of the next Call of Duty game." Morgan's face fell. "The last time I lent you a game sampler, it ended up all over the Internet. So this one's gonna stay in my locker, and you can play it when you get some adult supervision."
"Adult super...? Chuck, I'm almost at the age where I should get my prostate checked annually, okay?" Chuck tried not to figure out how Morgan made that jump. "Surely I could be trusted with an advanced copy of the next greatest video game on the planet."
"Do you really believe that?" Chuck asked him. Morgan shook his head. "Have you seen Awesome?"
"I sent him over to the home theater room," Morgan said. "Will you think about it? Remember I helped you with Sarah." Chuck gave him a look, pulled out his phone and shot Sarah a quick text. He found Awesome, who looked to be panicking.
"Devon, buddy, what's wrong?"
"I talked to Sarah," he began.
"Seems to be happening a lot lately," Chuck muttered.
"And she told me I should just come talk to you to… This is one of those rare moments when things are not kosher, Chuck. Oh, man. This is harder than I thought."
"Devon, what did Sarah say to do? Because I find a lot of times, she's right about things." Devon smiled at him, the nerves gone. "What?"
"You two… I'm proud of you, Bro." Chuck felt pride inside. "I know, you hid away for a long time after Jill. But you didn't quit. Maybe you took it at a pace that your sister and I didn't understand, but…" He smiled, straightened, and looked Chuck in the eye. "I've been thinking a lot about the way things are between me and your sister. And you're the man in... in Ellie's family." He pulled a ring out of his pocket and knelt down. "So I was wondering... Can I have your permission... Can I marry Ellie?"
Chuck glanced at the ring, then motioned for Devon to stand up. Chuck pulled him into a hug. "Is that a yes?"
Chuck stepped back and Devon held out the ring like he was offering it to Chuck. "Dude... Yes! Yes! Sorry! I just... You kind of— Uhhh... The knee thing and pulling the ring out like that…" People around them started clapping. Chuck looked around at the people, and saw Morgan snapping a picture. That was going to Sarah, he was sure. "He's marrying my sister, not me." There was confusion on all the faces. Chuck shook his head and turned back to Devon. "Yes, you have my blessing."
"Thank you." Devon said, still holding it toward him. Chuck reached over and gently closed the box. Devon nodded. "Thank you. I mean, it's been in my family for years. This was my great-grandmother's." He laughed and looked at Chuck, a bit of worry on his face. "Ah, you think she'll like it?"
Chuck grinned. "Like it? She'll, she'll love it. I, um, I'm just not sure she'll be able to lift her hand anymore."
"Oh, one other thing. Ellie is a bloodhound when it comes to these kind of things. If I keep this in the apartment, she will smell diamond. Can you hold onto this, just for a day or so, man? I mean, just 'til I figure out how to pop the question?"
"I don't think that's actually a good idea…" Chuck began.
Devon ignored him and pulled him into a hug. "Oh, thank you! Thank you so much, bro." Devon pulled away and pointed at him. "Hey, pretty soon, I'm going to mean that literally." Devon walked off. Chuck opened the ring box to look at it again, and widened his eyes. He was going to have to hide this in his locker. That should be fine.
...He had a bad feeling.
}o{
Sarah looked down at her phone and saw there was a text from Chuck. "Is there something I should know that you and Morgan talked about...like my ear?"
Sarah closed her eyes for a moment. She'd hoped she would never have to tell Chuck about that conversation, but apparently, that wasn't happening. She typed back, "I don't know what you're talking about" and hit send.
"You're somehow worse at lying in text than you are in person." She just smirked at his immediate response, deciding not to even touch that.
Her phone chimed a minute later and this time it was from Morgan. "Apparently it's not me you have to worry about. Don't worry, I've got your back." A picture appeared of what looked like Awesome proposing to Chuck. She rolled her eyes to look at the ceiling. These Bartowskis/Woodcombs were going to be the absolute death of her.
The door opened and there was Casey with one of his looks. The hits just kept on coming. "We have a problem," Casey said. He hesitated a second. "How are you and Bartowski?" Sarah grinned, picked up her phone and showed him the picture. He grunted in amusement. "Appears you were too late."
Sarah ignored him. "What is it, Casey? You look worried." He placed an electronic device on the counter. She picked it up and looked at it. "What is this?"
"No idea, and I...Chuck found it in the Buy More. He thinks I was testing him."
Sarah looked up at him. "Why would he think that?"
"Why does Bartowski think anything he does?" Sarah had to give him that. "We need to call this in…"
"We'll call it in, and figure it out from there," Sarah said, looking Casey in the eye.
"Walker...I got your back, partner." Sarah nodded, and sent the message to her superiors. They got a notification and Sarah punched in a code on the register. The counter opened and a small screen came up. Casey walked over, locked the door, and put the closed sign up. He came back just as the countdown ended.
Beckman appeared sitting, while Graham was standing. Did he always have to stand over her, Sarah wondered? Beckman spoke. "Team, the bug Chuck found is a GLG-20, one of the most advanced counter-espionage listening devices in the CIA arsenal."
"This is a CIA design?" Sarah asked, her mind racing. She thought she was one of the top spies in the CIA, but more and more she was learning exactly how little she knew, and what she did know…
"Figures," Casey muttered where only she could hear him. She knew exactly what he meant. She had been kept in the dark for so long, and she was now getting just enough light to see how in the dark she was. And, it wasn't being kept in the dark for operational security, it was being kept on a need to know basis for control. Sarah didn't like being controlled. In fact, she hated it.
"The GLG-20 is a low-power transmitter," Beckman continued. "In order to avoid detection, it has a maximum range of about twenty yards. Which means there's probably a receiver hidden somewhere inside the Buy More." That sounded just like the bug they put in Chuck's picture.
"We believe it's recently become a favorite of the FULCRUM agents," Graham added.
"So, you're telling us the secret government cabal that abducted Bryce Larkin and came within a hair of figuring out that Chuck's the Intersect is now skulking around the Buy More?" Casey asked, sharing a look with Sarah.
"Our analysts believe between the incident with Bryce at the Buy More and the team you took down at the skating rink, there are multiple FULCRUM agents looking for the three of you. We have deployed other teams to scan the surrounding areas, too, and neutralize the other agents."
"That way if we take out whoever sent those bugs, we don't stand out," Casey concluded. "Nice."
Graham nodded. "We need you to locate that receiver, and find the person who planted it,"
Beckman stared at Casey. "You have 48 hours. If you cannot identify the enemy operative in that time, we will have no choice but to relocate Chuck to a secure government holding facility."
Sarah started to reply, when she swore she saw the tiniest head shake from Beckman.
"Bartowski's time as a civilian may be coming to an end," Graham added. "For their own safety, his family may never see him again." He paused. "It seems your quick mission may finally be coming to an end, Agent Walker." Sarah watched as Beckman reached over and clicked off the feed, her eyes never leaving Casey's.
Sarah spun. "What the hell was that?"
"I'm not 100% sure," Casey admitted. Sarah studied him. He might not be 100% sure, but he obviously had an idea. He turned to her. "Walker, he's not going into a bunker...forever."
"What does that mean?" Sarah asked.
"This may be Beckman's chance to get Chuck away from Graham," Casey admitted.
"And what kind of life is that for Chuck, huh?"
Casey was silent a second and then looked her dead in the eye. "You gonna finish that question, Walker?" She shook her head. "Sarah," he began, and her eyes widened at the use of her first name. "I've got your back." Sarah believed him. Heaven help her, she didn't know why, but she believed him.
}o{
Chuck wasn't even shocked to pull into the Buy More parking lot and find vehicles with emergency lights flashing parked outside. Jeff and Lester had set something on fire, maybe. They were the prime suspects in a money laundering scheme, something to do with a strip club no doubt. It just felt like one of those crazy twists that might happen. After all of these years of thinking they were absolute fucking loser idiots, they were actually absolute fucking criminal loser idiots...maybe a little smarter than he'd thought, but still awful.
But as he got out of his car and stuffed his hands in his pockets to amble over towards his boss, he spotted Jeff and Lester off to the side, Jeff wearing a suspiciously dirty-looking face mask over his nose and mouth and Lester having untucked his shirt and pulled it up to cover half his face.
"Uhhh...Big Mike? What's this?"
"Well, I got good news and bad news for ya, son. Good news is you get a paid day off 'cause hell no I ain't doin' the paperwork to explain this business to the brass. Bad news is there may have been a gas leak, and who knows how long that was goin' on? There are so many suspicious smells in there, I never know whether it's someone's lunch or my lunch or some chemical experiment in the bathroom. Have you noticed how much the men's bathroom smells like meth?" He sent Chuck a look. "Is that just me? I don't know, son. I'm afraid. Say your prayers. I'm too young to die. I watched one of those History Channel specials about World War I and that mustard gas shit killed those guys slowly. I don't want that...I can't—"
"Uh, Big Mike?" he interrupted, spotting people in the building quickly boarding up the windows. They weren't in hazmat suits or anything, just...regular business suits. Which was weird. "I'm sure we're gonna be fine. All right? This sort of thing happens at elementary schools all the time. Heh." He thumped his boss on the back. "Well, I'll see ya later."
"You better be on call the next few days, 'cause you're expected to get your skinny keister back here when this is cleared up, Bartowski!" Big Mike barked after him.
Chuck raised his arm above his head without look back, his thumb up. "Gotcha, Big Mike. Will do. You have a great day, sir!"
The sky was the limit, he thought to himself. And then his phone rang in his pocket. That bad feeling was back then. Almost immediately. He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled it out. Casey's growling face looked up at him. He answered it and put the phone to his ear. "Hey, Casey. Cool news. No work today. You don't have to leave your robe and fuzzy slippers—"
"Yeah, I know. Come around to the loading zone door by the Herder parking."
Chuck frowned, spinning on his heel and staring back at the Buy More. The inspector dudes had finished boarding everything up, it seemed. And while a few folks were outside setting up a boundary with caution tape, the side alley was completely abandoned.
"Uh, Casey...I don't think I wanna go anywhere near that building right now."
"Moron, do what I say! Get over to the door and get in here."
"In...IN? Are you in there right now? And you want me to go in there, too? Oh, hell no! I'm not getting gassed! I have sensitive lungs, Casey! Just because you've probably built up a tolerance with how many times you've probably been tortured by bad war lord guys…"
"God damn it, if you don't get over here, I'm gonna make one of the guys out there grab you. And trust me, I won't be tellin' 'em to play nice." Casey finished with a growled, "Get. Over. Here."
Chuck's eyes widened and he hastened his step towards the side alley, trying to be inconspicuous as he glanced over his shoulder and fast-walked, phone still to his ear. "Ya know, Casey, you could give Scorpion a run for his money…"
"The hell you talkin' about? Just get to the door."
"Seriously? Mortal Kombat? You didn't—Get over here? Really? I mean it was spot…" His voice failed him though as he climbed up onto the loading platform and watched as the door was hefted up for him to duck under. He licked his lips and pulled his shirt up over his face, slowly ducking and scooting inside, only to find a hand clamping down on his collar and yanking him all the way in.
"Hey!"
He was brought face to face with Casey. "We're wasting time."
"Time? Like...we only have a certain amount of time before we all die from asphyxiation?"
"There's no gas leak," Casey grumbled, shaking his head and smirking. "We just needed to get everyone out of the building so that we could look for more bugs and a receiver."
They made their way through the warehouse out towards the main floor of the Buy More and Chuck stopped walking next to Casey, his feet rooted to the floor. "Wait, what? That was a lie? You guys can just fake a gas leak?"
"Yep! Now come on," Casey said, grabbing him by his shoulder and forcing him in front of him, pushing him through onto the sales floor.
"I'm just saying, that's kind of fucked up. Big Mike is out there ready to call his mom and make amends in case there's a mustard gas situation in here and he's gonna die."
"Nah, if it was mustard gas, it could potentially take three or four weeks before the blisters and sores in his lungs and throat would seal his airways, or kill him from a mutated form of pneumonia," Casey replied easily.
Chuck just stared at him for a long time. "You have problems, you know that?"
"You have bigger problems," Casey said with a shrug and that was when Chuck spotted Sarah walking across the floor towards him. The place was swarming with agents, taking pictures of the stacks, going through CDs with fine-tooth combs.
"Hi, Chuck," she said, and he could see she was wearing that mask of hers. She let him see only a small smile of greeting and then it was gone.
"Hey, uh...you all wanna fill me in on what's going on here?"
"We really didn't have a choice, Chuck," she said with a shrug. "Some of your coworkers aren't the brightest crayons in the box, but even they would've been suspicious if a bunch of agents were walking around looking for bugs while the store was open for business."
"Wait, looking for bugs? You…" He squinted at Casey who sent him a small shake of his head. "Wait, that bug I found...That...wasn't…"
"It wasn't one of ours," Casey answered for him. "We've been playin' with EM-50s, kid."
"And the one you found was a GLG-20. That requires a secondary recording device to collect the data." Sarah began to lead him further into the Buy More towards the Nerd Herd desk.
"Wait, what are you talking about? Are you saying what I found… That isn't yours? So whose…?"
Sarah turned on him and brought him to a stop. "Someone is spying on us, Chuck."
"What?"
"Okay, listen carefully. The bug you found was not ours. It belongs to an enemy agent, probably Fulcrum, and they planted it in the Buy More."
A chill went down his spine. "Why?"
"They're looking for the Intersect. They're looking for you." Chuck spun on Casey as he reached into his jacket's inner pocket and pulled a plastic bag full of the same type of device he'd spotted the other day. "We found a total of twenty-nine bugs just like it, but we still haven't found the receiver."
He gaped at Casey for a few moments, then spun back to Sarah. "Uh, I guess...I get why...the extreme measures…" He cleared his throat and rubbed his hands down his shirt. "But now I have to go out there and walk through a freaked out pack of Buy More employees and act like I don't know anything so that's super fun." There was a strange look on Sarah's face, one that made him incredibly uneasy, and she wasn't meeting his eyes which was never a good sign. But he kept talking, all the while studying her. "Good luck dealing with the consequences of making the Burbank Buy More's employees think they've been poisoned with gas, though. Oh wait, that'll be me...dealing with those consequences. So that's fun."
He imagined Lester thinking he could climb walls like Spider-Man...Skip trying to break a keyboard in half with his forehead...Jesus, he needed to make sure they'd all filled out their paperwork with Buy More's HR department or the company would go bankrupt due to ridiculous lawsuits. His head was starting to hurt.
"I better get out there and, uh...Well anyway, good luck with the whole finding the bad guy spy receiver thingy…" He began to back away from them towards the warehouse.
"Chuck, wait," Sarah burst out.
He stopped. "What is it—Oh shit. Shit. Wait. I need to go to the break room and get my sister's ring out of my locker. Not that I don't trust you federal agent types," he drawled, squinting his eyes, "but, uh, that might do better in my pocket or somethin' so…"
"Chuck, before you do that, you should, um…" Sarah shifted her weight.
"What she's tryin' to say, kid, is that the ring is probably not your biggest problem right now," Casey murmured, crossing his arms at his chest. Sarah sent the other agent a look.
"Hey, Casey, can I talk to you for a second? Alone," she half-growled, grabbing the agent by his shoulder and dragging him off. Chuck just blinked after them, confused.
}o{
Sarah had been brainstorming ever since she and Casey signed off with Beckman and Graham after the impromptu briefing in the Wienerlicious last night. She'd barely slept, maybe an hour and a half tops.
That bunker shit smacked of the U.S. intelligence community deciding to take an easier path, selling out, getting lazy, to the detriment of someone who'd sacrificed too much already for this damn country. It was as if Beckman and Graham sat at one of those round decision room tables with their peers and superiors and they all decided to shrug and stop trying. It was a lot easier to just throw "the Intersect" into a heavily guarded bunker dozens of feet underground and leave him there to wither away alone.
It made her want to scream. And here Chuck was, drumming his fingers on the Nerd Herd desk, stressing about his sister's engagement ring. Stressing about the well-being of someone else, not knowing what these assholes were planning to do to him. She wasn't going to let those plans come to fruition.
Maybe this was the perfect time for her to get out like she'd wanted to before. Before Graham sent her here to figure out what Chuck Bartowski's deal was, before he forced her to stay here to continue protecting the guy when they found out what was in his head. She told herself this would be it, her last job for the CIA. Well? Maybe this was going to be the end of all of it.
They'd try to put him away and she'd whisk him off to… God, she'd have to figure that out quick. She needed a plan for where she'd take him. Thanks to her dad, she'd been good at that even before being recruited into the Farm. Now she was even better. It would be an even more bitter pill for Graham to swallow—knowing that he'd trained her to be his best, smartest agent, only for her use those skill sets to escape with the most important person in the world and hide him away from people who would do him harm.
Would needing to live the rest of his life on the run be worse or better than being in a bunker? The insanely robust security he'd have protecting him in the bunker would probably be more effective than one lone AWOL CIA agent. But she also had something extra that they wouldn't have at the bunker—she cared about him, about his safety and his well-being. Enough that she'd betray her country...or whatever. How much did she really care about that these days? Not following orders...was that really betrayal?
She shook her head as she pulled Casey far enough away from Chuck that she figured they were out of earshot. "He can't hear it like that, Casey." She swallowed thickly. "He won't process it. You know how he functions."
"What, you think I'm gonna tell him he's gotta go in a bunker and then laugh in his face?" Sarah shrugged and gave him a pointed look, earning a relenting grunt. "Okay, I deserve that."
"We tell him something like this, we have to do it gently. And you know how smart he is, how quick that brain of his is. He might make a break for it on his own, and how do we protect him then?"
If she was with him when he made a break for it, that was another story. She knew how to disappear. Chuck wouldn't make it out there alone longer than a day, day and a half at the most. He'd be found so fast it'd make his head spin.
These weren't things she was going to be telling Casey. He'd told her to trust him. She did… And yet, with Chuck…? She wasn't sure she could trust anybody, at least not entirely. She had her Plan B, in case Plan A of trusting Casey and General Beckman fell through.
"Well, we can't exactly keep it from him, can we?" Casey asked, lifting an eyebrow, as if asking her if she really thought that'd be the best idea. He was testing her, maybe.
"Of course not." She huffed then, glancing over to see Chuck tilting his head back and staring tiredly at the ceiling. "How do you give a man a life sentence just for being a good guy?"
"This ain't always fair, Walker. But it is what it is. The sacrifice of the one for the good of the many or whatever." He looked over his shoulder at Chuck, too. "Okay, how 'bout you just let me give it a try. I'll break it to him...gentle-like."
She didn't trust him with that, no matter what else she did trust him with. She shook her head vehemently. "No, I don't want to hear your version of it and neither does he. He'll go running for the hills or...it'll just...I dunno, break him. We can't break him on top of everything else he's had to deal with. His sister is gonna be engaged soon, and then married eventually, and he'll have to miss that because of this. It's fucked."
"Look, I get it. Your heart is bleeding at the thought of him in a jumpsuit with a ball and chain on his leg, dragging it around his cell while playing MarioKart day in and day out. Don't sit right with me, either, Walker. Only difference is I don't want to be in that cell with him the way you do. If you catch my dri—"
"Keep your drift to yourself. This has nothing to do with what I want for myse—"
"Agent Walker, Agent Casey. You might want to take a look at this," Agent Phillips interrupted, cutting through them and leading them even further away from Chuck who was now studying the bugs they'd found.
Sarah gestured to him and he quickly put it down, dashing over to join them as they followed Phillips to the screens. "This is a surveillance tape taken during the robbery," Phillips said.
All four cameras were blank. "There's nothing there. Bad guy disabled the security system," Casey said with a shrug.
"Wait," the other agent advised.
Suddenly all four surveillance feed angles sprung to life. Morgan was messing with the security panel for some reason...why in the hell was Morgan in the Buy More at that hour…? The other four feeds showed Big Mike's office and two different angles on the sales floor.
"Hey, that's Morgan! The hell?" Chuck asked, leaning down to get a better view. "Why's he goin' in the security panel…?"
Sarah sighed. "He thought he was turning the cameras off but he just turned them back on again." She heard Casey groan off to the side.
"Hang on, who's that?"
A figure cloaked from head to toe suddenly ducked into the picture in Big Mike's office, crawling up onto his desk. "That's the spy," she said, wondering how these people continued to do incredibly stupid and somehow inadvertently helpful things on a regular basis.
"He's the spy who spies on spies," Chuck murmured. "Why would a Fulcrum agent try to steal Big Mike's fish?" he asked then when it became clear the spy was trying to remove the fish off of the Buy More manager's office wall.
Morgan suddenly appeared in one of the feeds on the sales floor, sneaking backwards, tiptoeing, definitely not looking where he was going...and with the pile of boxes in his path, too.
"Oh, buddy, no. Look ou—Oh God," Chuck breathed as Morgan backed into the pile of boxes and knocked them onto the ground, falling over them.
As Morgan scrambled to his feet again, the spy spun to look, having obviously heard Morgan knock over the boxes out on the sales floor.
"That dill weed seriously interrupted a Fulcrum agent planting bugs. I can't believe it," Casey muttered in awe.
But Sarah was more focused on the spy and the way they'd slipped their hand inside of the fish. "The receiver's in the fish," she announced.
"Marlin, actually," Chuck said, standing up straight again as Casey grunted in agreement. "You would call it a marlin, right?" he asked, pointing to Casey and the older man shrugged with a, "Yeah."
She ignored them. "Look."
Morgan had found Big Mike's office and was inside of it for some reason. Chuck leaned down to watch closely again. "Why's he…? Hold on. Huh…" Morgan was removing the fish, carrying it off camera. "That's...weird. I wonder if he accidentally wandered into Jeff's van and got some fumes of the weird shit that man smokes." He cleared his throat. "But there ya go! See? My job here is done...methinks. So now I'm sure you super-agents can figure out where the maybe high bearded one stashed the fish—marlin," he corrected himself. "Four-foot marlin." He cleared his throat and took a step back, away from the screens. "I'm going to stick around here and grab my sister's ring."
Sarah watched him move away from them and she exchanged a look with Casey. They really had too much bad news to give him. As if one really bad thing wasn't enough.
She followed, feeling Casey's reluctance to join her. But she hurried after the Nerd Herd supervisor anyway. "Hey, Chuck?" He stopped and half-turned towards her, waiting for her to come up beside him, and then he kept moving towards the break room. "Chuck, um, there was no ring in your locker."
He froze mid-step. "What do you mean there was no ring in my locker? I specifically placed the ring in the little box thingy directly inside of my locker for safe-keeping."
"I know. That's what you said. But when we checked all of the lockers, well...um, I took inventory of your locker myself because...well, I didn't…" She told herself to woman up. "I didn't want anyone to find anything that might indicate you're more than...who they think you are." She nibbled on her lip and winced. "There's no ring there, Chuck. At least, there wasn't when I got to it."
"That doesn't make any sense!" he hissed. "What happened to Awesome's great-grandmother's ring?"
"I-I don't know, Chuck. And we can find that out, but we kind of have some bigger-picture concerns right now." She hated having to say it, but it was true.
"What could be possibly be bigger than me ruining the chances of my sister getting married?" he demanded to know, obviously starting to get incredibly frustrated by all of this.
As he pushed his hand through his hair, looking legitimately upset by the missing ring, she knew she had no choice but to drop the proverbial bomb. Shit. "The receiver may contain information indicating that you're the Intersect…" She stopped, not knowing how to do this gently. She couldn't say everything she wanted to say to him with the way she could feel Casey's presence behind her.
Chuck's eyes flicked up over her shoulder and he frowned, before he furrowed his brow at her seriously. "Say it. Say what you're not saying."
Sarah swallowed thickly and darted her eyes off to the side, before slowly lifting them back up to meet his. "If we don't locate the receiver in the next twenty-four hours…"
She paused too long and Casey spoke up behind her. "You'll be stored in an underground bunker for so long you'll forget what fresh air smells like."
A/N: Next chapter….ISH
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-SC and DC
