A/N: Thanks for the reviews! The mission continues...
Disclaimer: We don't own Chuck, we're not making any money.
Chuck's eyes snapped open as he felt her hand at his back. But he didn't move a muscle, he kept his breathing even. A thousand thoughts burst through his already over-taxed mind at once. But the thing he latched onto was that she thought he was fast asleep, and she'd reached out to touch him, to feel him against her palm.
Weirdly enough, it brought him back to when he was a kid, those first months after his mom walked out on them. Morgan's mom had swung by to bring Chuck to one of their family picnics at the park, a chance for him to hang out with Morgan and to just get out of the house for a few hours, something that might distract him. But everyone there knew about his mom and the way they'd been so kind but almost..overly kind...with pity in their faces that was easy for him to recognize even at that age, the whisperings of "how could she leave her family?" and "how selfish, pobre niño", he'd felt very alone and almost a little scared. But Morgan's cousin had brought her dog, a brown terrier mutt named Greg, and the dog sat near him as he plopped in the grass and watched the festivities. He'd reached out and put his hand on its furry back, just feeling it under his palm. It had reassured him and calmed him in a way little else before that had.
Why he thought of that memory in this moment, he wasn't really sure, but he wondered if Sarah needed something from him, if touching him right then was her way of finding reassurance, calm...comfort.
He didn't budge, not wanting her to be embarrassed when she figured he was asleep. Chuck was sure she wouldn't have done this if he was awake, and it made his chest absolutely ache that she'd done it only because she thought he wouldn't know, wouldn't feel it.
But her hand finally went slack and he knew she'd fallen asleep. He very carefully rolled onto his back to glance at her and saw he was right. Her hand was still stretched out over the mattress, bridging the gap between them, her eyes shut, face marked with fatigue, but also there was a certain peace and youth to her beautiful features when she slept. It was a sight he hadn't been gifted with too often.
He could try to actually fall asleep again, but knew it just wouldn't happen. The headache was nearly gone, however. And he had a lot to think about.
Agent Shaw gave him the willies, and he seemed like one of those serial killer types where everyone thought he was really handsome and charming and chill when actually he went out at night and murdered people in their beds.
Chuck knew he was being ridiculous but still, in spite of the unsettled feeling he had around the guy, Shaw was right about one thing.
Chuck was an agent with the NSA. Or, at least, well on his way. And there was still a large part of him that took for granted the fact that his once-handlers would come up with the plans to get them out of a sticky situation. He wasn't going to let Sarah carry all the water this time.
He wouldn't lie around and wait for Sarah to come up with something. He was pulling his weight. This was his job now. She deserved a nap. He'd get whatever information she'd obtained from her phone call with Agent Shaw later, but for now, he was going out to let the sea breeze smack him in the face, let it wake him up and jigger his thoughts a bit, and he'd come up with something.
Sneaking carefully out of the bed, he climbed up to his feet and stepped back into his shoes, looking down at Sarah one more time. A strand of her blond hair had fallen out of the windswept knot she'd tied at the nape of her neck and fell over her eye. He resisted the urge to fix it and turned his back on her, checking his pockets for his key and slipping out of the bedroom to make his way across the suite to the door.
It took him a few minutes to get to the other side of the ship and up the stairs that led onto the topmost deck of the Arosa Empire where the pool was. Two women and a man were splashing around in the pool, and a few others were lying around on the lounge chairs getting sun, chatting or reading books.
Chuck picked a chair far away from the pool that was pushed up against the railing. All he had to do was swivel his hips a bit and he could look out over the Caribbean. And because he was a freaking sap down to the very deepest depths of his soul, Chuck thought there wasn't anything prettier than the color of the water in the midday sun...except for Agent Sarah Walker's eyes.
Shaking his head at himself, he snorted a little and reached up to push his hands through his curls.
He'd spent the first two and a half days of this trip of theirs letting himself fall a little deeper, both for her in general, and into that easy, comfortable pattern of banter they had. Even after all of the strife, the barriers between them especially now that he'd lost her confidence after keeping his decision to join the NSA from her for so long, it was so easy to talk to her. It felt good unburdening himself to her. He did it with just as much readiness as he had before. And it hadn't seemed like she was opposed to it. She was just as open and receptive as before. A warm and safe, reassuring presence when he felt he was on shaky footing.
And then the conversation in the hallway had happened after his three rapid flashes. He wasn't mad at her. She had every right to be worried about him in the field. He had no experience, and especially not in handling missions on his own. She and Casey always swept in to save his life. It took the three of them—and sometimes just two. But he couldn't do this on his own. That much was evident. Whereas Casey and Sarah could, and had for years in their own careers as secret agents. So she was right to doubt his capabilities on this particular mission, even though he knew she didn't think he was totally incapable in general.
But her incessant worry over his safety, and the way she'd been both scared and furious about his decision had made him think twice a month ago after he'd told her. He'd built himself up since then. He was learning. He was training.
And then she'd reminded him just then in the hallway that her doubts in his ability to be a real, full-blown spy were still there. Even if she was trying to make this whole thing work. Even if she was supporting him, even if she agreed to help train him while Casey was recuperating from his gunshot wound.
There was the other part of it, too. The part that almost seemed to be the most important part for her. Her fear that he would become some sort of monster or...less himself...by becoming a spy. Like that was going to be the only option; be a civilian and stay a good person or become a spy and go Dark. Like this would kill whatever was inside of him that had first drawn her to him.
He knew how sure she was about it. He saw it, felt it, in the way she pleaded and argued. But he believed with everything in him that it wouldn't happen. He wasn't alone in this. He had his people with him. He had his family, his best friend. He had Casey… and thanks to her decision to stay in spite of having so many reasons to leave and stay gone, he had Sarah too. How could he become a monster in this spy life when he had so much there to keep him grounded?
Chuck huffed and leaned his cheek against the back of the chaise lounge, staring out past the railing, before he let out a long sigh and swiveled again to toss his long limbs across the chair and recline back a bit.
The first thing he had to realize was that they needed to find a way to get that key and get the hell out of this situation without getting murdered by agents of a terrorist organization. However many of them there were on this blasted boat.
Everything else could come later. He needed to make sure there was a later first.
Like getting into the hold and surveying what was down there.
"Oh, come the fuck onnnnn…"
Blinking at the voice that invaded his thoughts, he shook himself a little and turned to glance to his right where he heard the voice come from. A young woman was draped over a chair about ten feet away from him, giving her laptop a furious look.
"Speed up, God damn it," she hissed at it, smacking the side of the laptop propped on her bare thighs. She fixed the thin strap of her bikini top and Chuck quickly turned to face forward, in case she thought he was staring or something. And he swallowed hard.
He squinted at the people still laughing and splashing in the pool, as if he'd been watching them this whole time. And he kept his gaze glued to them, feeling her long stare on his profile suddenly. Crap. He hadn't meant to have anyone on this freaking deck notice him.
Had she been sitting there when he arrived? He would've picked another corner. Maybe she'd sat near him when he was staring off into the sea deep in thought and he just hadn't noticed.
"Oh, sorry…"
He raised his eyebrows and looked back at her. "W-What—Oh, me? I'm fine. What—?"
"Oh." She smiled shyly. "It's just…" She gestured to her laptop. "I didn't realize someone was sitting near me and I just cursed a whole lot at my laptop." She winced and gave him a self-deprecating look. "I'm not even sure if we're allowed to curse on this cruise. You know, with the whole...wholesome forties theme."
He chuckled. "Um, the brochure said twenty-one and up. So I don't think you really have to worry much."
"Good point." She grinned and giggled. And when he didn't say anything else, turning back to the pool, he saw in his peripheral that she cleared her throat daintily and pulled her laptop close again, going back to work. He heard another, softer, "Fuck" then and glanced over. She caught his eye and gave him a wan smile. "Sorry. My laptop is really slow. It's probably just this whack Boat Wi-Fi." She tilted her head charmingly. "But I have, like, legit work to do."
"Aren't you on vacation? I mean, I'm assuming. People usually do these things for vacation. Not work."
"Oh come on, you don't work on vacation? Everybody says they aren't going to and then they do anyway." She snorted and rolled her eyes. "Especially me. Anyway, not much work I can do on this stupid thing, it's so laggy."
Chuck sat up a bit and scratched the back of his head. He was a bit tentative about doing this because he and Sarah had made a quick pact in the plane before she'd conked out to keep to themselves on the boat, do their best to fly under the radar and not bring attention to themselves. That meant this conversation probably wasn't a great idea.
But computers were something he could figure out. They weren't hard. They were sometimes the only thing he could rely on being good at. He could fix a phone, a laptop, a WiFi signal. Nothing else in his life was nearly as simple as that.
And for once, he needed a win.
So he gestured to her laptop. "Hey, uh...You know, I'm not bad with tech. I mean, I used to do a lot of IT stuff. If you want me to look at it for ya."
She raised her eyebrows at him, then nibbled on her lip and looked at the laptop screen. "Well? Uh… I…"
"No pressure. Just thought I'd offer if you need a hand."
"Are you sure?" she asked, giving him a dubious look. Her features became shy then. "I didn't mean to, like...disturb you or interrupt or whatever."
"Nah, it's no problem. Let me take a crack at it." He got up and walked around to plop down onto the chair next to hers as she beamed and passed the laptop over to him. "So it's slow you said?"
"Uh. Yeah." She turned so that she could drop her legs down off the side of the chair and plant her bare feet on the ground beside his, leaning her elbows on her knees and leaning in close to look at the screen with him.
She explained the way even the simplest things took forever, even sometimes moving the mouse, and he made a few quick checks. It was something he'd solved so many times at the Buy More that he could do it with his eyes closed. But that also meant he could pay attention to the fact that she'd scooted even closer at some point, and that her responses had begun to practically drip with honey.
It was throwing him off, but not really for the reason he thought she probably intended. It had just been a sudden sweetening of her tone, like someone had flicked a switch.
"So, uh, I didn't quite catch your name. I figure since you're fixing my laptop for me…" She arched her pretty eyebrow.
"Ch—" He stopped himself. "Chester. Yeah."
"Chester." She nodded and smiled. "I'm Hannah." She thrusted her hand out for him to take and she held on a little longer than he really knew what to do with. Clearing his throat, he went back to the laptop—very pointedly. "You on vacation, then?"
"Yes. Yep. I, um, definitely. On vacation."
"Very nice. On vacation with...anyone in particular?"
No nearly came out of his mouth he was losing his footing in this conversation so intensely, trying to figure out what was going on, if something was going on. But then he shook his head. "I-I mean, yes. Yeah. I'm here...I'm on the cruise with my wife. Sooo…" So...what? Why'd he end it with a long, awkward soooo… ? As if verbally shaking his finger at her for flirting, or telling her you can stop flirting now. But he preferred to pretend he wasn't even noticing the flirtation. You're just fixing her laptop and then walking away, you jackass, he thought to himself.
"Ah." She pulled back just a little, but that look on her face didn't go away. Shit. "You guys have some sort of nineteen-forties kick or something?"
"It was...uh, the cheapest cruise we could find. So...ya know…" He tapped away, clicking around the screen.
"Really? My cabin's pretty fuggin' expensive," she groused, giggling. "But hey, whatever. It's one way. And I can afford it." She shrugged.
"Ah. Yeah. One way, huh? You're...moving? Or do you mean you're flying back?" His fingers slowed a bit as he sat up straighter, not looking at her but his eyes darting back and forth.
"I'm gonna set up shop in Rio de Janeiro for a while. My dad saddled me with his massive shoe empire, but he never told me where I had to base it. Figured I might try the Cidade Maravilhosa and become a carioca." She smirked and Chuck gave her a blank look. "That's the Marvelous City. It's what they call it. And a carioca is someone who lives in Rio. Basically."
"Ah. Very cool," he said smiling, but he turned back to the laptop, freezing a little. "You're going to live in Rio permanently…"
Oh. Oh, boy…
"Yeah, why not, right? ...Something wrong with Rio? You're going there too, after all," she said hesitantly.
"No, no. No, Rio de Janeiro is… I mean, I've always wanted to. And my wife was game because she's super easygoing and sweet like that. Yeeeaah." Noooooo. This was bad. Or maybe good? Both? He wasn't really intending to make contact with KC or their Sunshine Band. And here he was potentially sitting next to her. And being flirted at by her, to boot. Crap.
"You know what, Chester? I hope you don't mind me saying...but you're actually pretty cute." She leaned her chin on her palm and raised her eyebrows, giving him a closed-mouth smile. And then when she showed her teeth, a chill went through him. Her intentions were clear. And she thought he was married too, which...damn.
"No, I don't mind. My, uh, my wife says it a lot. Yeah." He chuckled nervously. And then he clicked one more thing on her laptop and thrusted it back towards her. "Ta da! Look at that. Super quick, WiFi working perfectly. It was lagging because you had a, um, just a software problem. Sometimes switching WiFi networks causes lagging with this model's software, but I fixed it. Shouldn't be a problem again."
"No way! You fixed it?" She gaped at her laptop and took it, setting it on the lounge next to her hip and clicking around. "Holy shit, it's even faster than it was at my hotel room in Kingston. You're a fucking genius, Chester!"
The look she gave him was very different from the shyness she'd displayed in the beginning and he decided this was as good a time as any to excuse himself and go straight to Sarah. He thought she wouldn't mind being woken up about this. "Oh, hey...s'nothin'," he said, waving it off. "Listen, good luck with the shoe business and the Ciu-Ciu-er-dade Mara—ville...yeah. Okay. See ya."
Chuck climbed up from the chaise lounge and pointed at her. "Nice to, uh, meet ya...there...Hannah…" And then he trailed off and pointed a little more. "Hannaaaahhh…"
"Liu," she filled in for him. "Hannah Liu."
He nodded and waved as he walked backwards away from her. He slammed into the back of one of the chaise lounges and nearly stumbled, but just barely caught himself as she winced, pulling her waving hand back. "Woops! Okay. Yep!"
"You didn't tell me your last name!" she called after him. "Chester…?"
"Wayne!" he called back. Idiot. "Yep. It's Wayne."
And then he hightailed it around the pool and down the stairs as casually as he could. He wanted to sprint back to the cabin, but keeping a low-profile was important, and a six foot four inch man in a patterned sweater vest sprinting around the boat wasn't exactly that.
}o{
"Sarah...Sarah, hey… Sarah…"
She was roused out of sleep immediately by the tone of his voice mostly. She felt him giving her a gentle shake, his hand on her shoulder, and she slipped a hand under her pillow and came out with a knife, sitting up as if she'd never been asleep at all.
"What?" she gasped out, blinking at him. "What is it?"
"Whoa, whoa...Knife unnecessary. You don't need that." His hand closed over hers as she gripped her knife, holding it out to the side, ready to shank the hell out of the threat. She looked down at his large hand curled over hers, so warm...and… She shook herself then and pulled back, pushing the knife under her pillow again and pushing the hair that had fallen over her face back behind her ear. "Sarah, something happened," he said, breathless. "I came right back here to tell you. I figured you wouldn't mind me waking you up. You don't mind, do you?"
"You haven't even told me what happened yet," she said.
"Oh. Shit, right. Sorry. Um...Sorry, I'm a bit frazzled. Lemme just pull myself together." He took a deep breath and she grabbed his bicep, leaning to the side a bit to catch his eyes.
"Just...tell me. Slowly."
"Slowly. Gotcha. Okay. You know h-how we kind of decided we were going to keep a low-profile, not make friends or really even talk to anybody on the boat?"
Sarah lowered her chin a little and looked at him through her eyelashes. That beginning did not bode well. "Not 'kind of'. We absolutely decided that."
"Yeeeaaaah, we did, didn't we?" he drawled with a wince. Which told her quite clearly what he'd just done. She sighed and shut her eyes. "Um. Well. I woke up and you were here—You were here napping. And I couldn't fall back asleep, so I decided to go out and get some air, check out the pool deck, do some thinking. You know? We're—We're partners now, and I need to stop relying on you to come up with all of the answers all the time. I need to pull my weight and—That's-That's neither here nor there, sorry."
"Chuck…"
"I know, I know, get to the point, Chuck. I didn't realize someone was sitting near me and then this young woman with a bikini and a laptop cursed." Sarah raised her eyebrows and he halted, his brow furrowing. "I mean, she was wearing the bikini. And had the laptop...on her lap."
"Yeah, I figured that out," she said crisply, watching closely as he tugged at the tie around his neck. He was blushing. Definitely blushing. And she wondered why he felt the need to add the part about this young woman wearing a bikini. She chewed on the inside of her cheek a little.
"Right. F'course. Um, so anyway, she seemed to be struggling with her laptop and she apologized for...disturbing my peace with her...curses."
"A regular Shirley Temple, huh?" Sarah said through a clenched jaw.
"Uh, w-wha? No. I mean, she was pretty charming. If I'm bein' honest." She'd prefer him not be honest, actually. She'd definitely prefer him to be the opposite of honest. In this case. "Not-Not that charming. Uh. My point… Ahem. I'm almost certain that she is KC." Sarah jolted and stared at him with wide eyes. "And the Sunshine Band. Sarah, she's the key courier, the carrier of the key. Stromberg gave her the key. She's the one."
She grabbed his arm and scooted closer. "How do you know that? Did she talk about it?"
"The key? No. No, no. But I offered to fix her laggy laptop for her." She gave him a tired look and he shrugged self-deprecatingly. "I can't help it. I gotta offer my services when they're needed."
"Do you?" she asked sarcastically, pursing her lips.
"That...didn't come out right. I just—I fixed her laptop, Sarah, okay? You're making a mountain out of a molehill."
"A molehill in a bikini," she grumbled. She couldn't help it. She was just roused out of a nice nap in order to be told that Chuck was flirting with their mark. Someone who was obviously pals with a God damn criminal. Which meant there was a good chance she was also a criminal. At best, her morals existed in a grey area, she thought sourly.
"I was—I was fixing her laptop," he continued as if he hadn't heard her, "and she mentioned that her dad owns a big shoe business. Not a big shoe business like they make shoes for people with big feet like me…" He lifted his foot to the side and she gave him a look. He lowered his foot again and smiled weakly. "His business is—Point is, she's super rich. And she's moving to Rio de Janeiro to base her dad's business there. She's moving there. Permanently. Rich person...permanently settling in Rio. The Ciudad Marvalaloose."
Sarah distractedly breathed, "Cidade Maravilhosa."
"Okay. Fine. I can't do the...whole Portuguese thing." He shrugged. "Which is fine, because I'm not moving there permanently. But. She. Is. Sarah, I think she could be it. The person we're looking for. I mean, the person with the key. She is...the key." She watched as a slow, awed, crooked smile grew over his handsome face. But then he furrowed his brow and narrowed his eyes, looking off to the side. "Wait. Am I making a huge leap here? I mean, some of the people on this boat have to be planning on staying there, right? There are, like, a couple thousand people on this thing, and that's not even counting the crew."
"No, I think…" She let out a rough breath, pushing her hand through her hair. "I think you're onto something, Chuck. At the very least, it's at least a lead. Something we can look for once we get into that hold."
"I just...I can't picture someone that unassuming and down to earth and just, I dunno, nice…" Sarah blanched. "Being the type of person who smuggles a briefcase key for a super bad dude. I mean, she's really endangering her business! And her safety, more importantly."
"Yeah, well… You never know who's capable of what. After all, she flirted with a married man." Sarah batted her eyelashes at him sarcastically.
"N-No, she—Wait, how do you know she was even aware I'm married? I mean, she wasn't flirting!" he attempted, and she gave him a flat look. "Okay fine, she was flirting and she...knew I was married because I flat-out told her I was. I didn't flirt back."
"I don't care what you do, Chuck, unless it's with a mark." She swung her legs to the side and stood up, stretching.
"You flirt with marks sometimes."
Sarah's jaw dropped as she slowly turned to face him. Did he really just say that to her? And he wasn't backing down, either. If anything, he looked pretty pleased with himself. "That is different. The whole point of what I do is to turn their heads to distract them, get closer to what I need. And it's last resort! You were supposed to be lying low, Agent Carmichael," she said, adding that last bit with his name in a particularly mocking tone.
"Oh, ho ho ho." He stood up, towering over her, but she held her ground, nostrils flaring as she lifted her chin and looked up at him. "For your information, I was lying low. I sat in the chair that was furthest from the pool. I was even wearing sunglasses!"
"Oooooh sunglasses, wowwwwwww. Well, Inspector Clouseau, I'm absolutely certain nobody would ever recognize you with thoooose," she snarked in supreme sarcasm.
He pressed his lips together into a thin line and narrowed his eyes in a glare. "Listen, Agent Walker, I wasn't the one who struck up the conversation. I was minding my own business. She talked to me. What am I supposed to do, ignore her?"
"Here's a thought! Maybe don't offer to fix her laptop and then flirt with her."
It was like a lightbulb lit up over his head then, and she had a bad feeling about the smug look on his face. "Hoooold on, hold on. Wow. Okay, whoa. You're jealous."
"Excuse me?" She gaped at him.
"You. Are. Jealous. I didn't flirt back at her. I fixed her computer, gave her the name Chester Wayne, by the way, which is a cover name on top of my cover name, so nyeh, and then I got out of there even though she was definitely interested." He thrusted his hands out to the sides, palms up, in a smug shrug pose and tilted his head.
"Oh, yeah. Must've been that dashing sweater vest," she sassed.
"Hey! I don't look that ba—Okay, it's kind of terrible, isn't it? Why'd they pack this for me? I hate it." He shook himself then and stood straight, glaring at her as if he'd lost his train of thought for a second and just got it back. "Look, I got a lead for us. Sure, it was dropped right in my lap, but ya know, the whole don't look a gift horse in the mouth thing."
"Right, don't look a gift horse in the mouth, just flirt with it unnecessarily."
"You are jealous," he said, and she was taken a bit aback by the genuine surprise in his face.
"I'm not. Okay? But we said we were going to keep off of everyone's radar while we were on this cruise ship, and instead you've put yourself squarely on the worst possible person's radar, Chuck. The person we're going to be stealing from."
He huffed and looked legitimately contrite. "Shit, I know. I didn't mean to. I thought I was just fixing a nice, pretty girl's laptop. I figured it was no harm no foul. I'd fix it and be gone and she'd never recognize me again. Let's face it, Sarah, even with all the workouts I've been doing with Casey and Captain Awesome, I still just sort of blend in with the wallpaper."
Sarah sagged a bit and looked away. She didn't want to say it out loud, but he was very wrong about that. He never had...'blended in with the wallpaper'. He'd stuck out. He was a patch of warm colors in the landscape of black and white that had been her existence for twenty-six years. And since then, that color had touched other aspects of her life; it had expanded, lighting up places in her that had been darkened when she was practically a kid still.
"She'll recognize you, Chuck," she said instead. "It's what you do. You leave good impressions. Really, really good first impressions especially." She let out a huff and shook her head. "You need to keep away from her. Stop giving me that look; this isn't jealousy. I'm sure you weren't trying to flirt with her. This is about the fact that we're going to have to potentially sneak into her cabin, and at the very least look through whatever she is keeping in the hold, to find that key. We can't have her seeing you and interacting with you again. It will ruin everything."
Chuck ruffled his own hair in frustration. "I know. Do you—? No, that's not even…" His voice drifted off and he shook his head.
"What?"
"Nah."
"If you have an idea, Chuck, share it. What is it? I won't judge. I promise. We're a team, here. We need to communicate. Let me hear it."
He pursed his lips. "Okay fine. What if I do see her again and I use the fact that she wants to get in my pants to get into her cabin and then I search it while I'm in there?"
"That's a horrific idea."
"You said you wouldn't judge!"
"I didn't know it was gonna be that bad!" she said with a dramatic shrug. "Are you insane? You get into her room and then what? How do you plan on searching her room without her knowing about it?"
He gave her a blank look. "Okay, so it wasn't the greatest idea. I won't...I mean, I'll avoid her. I'll make sure she doesn't see me again. I won't see her again."
Sarah hated herself for the question that was slamming against the inside of her skull. She walked away from him, rounded the bed, and glanced out of the window at the way the sun glimmered off of the sea. And the words came out before she could stop them. "Do you want to see her again?"
She didn't look at him as she waited for his answer. But she didn't have to wait long.
"Nope." It was such a simple, easy answer. Like he hadn't even had to think about it. He didn't say it with any heat or offense, there was no intensity in it as if he was trying to convince her of something that wasn't true. It was just matter-of-fact. And that was what made her believe him with everything in her. The frustrating sting in her chest was still there, though. "I'm a spy, Sarah. As an agent with the NSA, my duty is to the mission. It's about more than just doing my job; this could help a lot of people, whatever is in that briefcase. Getting that key is my priority. That aside, I like to think I'm at least a somewhat good person with a moral compass. Even if I was interested in Hannah Liu, Charles Villanueva is married to Sarah Villanueva and as that is my name according to my identification and passport, I'm staying faithful to my wife—mind, body, and soul."
She glanced back at him as he nodded once, solemnly. She found herself smiling a little at him, and she knew he'd seen it already so she didn't bother trying to stuff it behind her ever-safe mask. "Sarah Villanueva is a lucky girl."
He puffed out his cheeks and tilted his head. "She is, isn't she?"
Giggling, she shook her head, and then the name he'd given her suddenly clicked. "Wait. Hannah Liu. Did you flash on her? Or on her name? Anything on her laptop, since you were looking at it?"
"No, it was all stuff for her company. The website and everything. I didn't flash at all with her."
Sarah had her phone out immediately. Instead of calling Shaw, she dialed Casey. Technically, this wasn't protocol as Shaw was the leader of the team, he was their liaison. But she wanted to take this to Casey because she trusted him to be discreet. And he wouldn't mind going around the CIA to get shit done.
Chuck came to stand beside her and watched as she brought the phone to her ear.
"Casey, secure."
"Walker, secure."
"The hell you doin' callin' me, Walker? If Shaw—"
"Is he there? Is Shaw with you?"
"No. I'm in my apartment. He's at Castle. He's...always at Castle."
"Well, yeah, he lives there."
"I know. It's weird."
"It really is." She widened her eyes. "I need you to look someone up for me," she said then, getting right down to business. "And yeah, I know, I'm not supposed to be coming to you for—"
"Fuck that. I'm at my system. Who ya got?"
She smirked and put it on speakerphone, setting it on the nearby table so Chuck would be privy to the conversation. "Her name is Hannah Liu."
"Lou or Liu? Like the Chinese spelling?"
Sarah raised an eyebrow at Chuck. He cleared his throat. "Uh, Chinese is my guess. She looks like she could be part Chinese maybe."
"On it. Hey, and thanks for the heads up about speakerphone, Walker. Glad I didn't call Chuck a moron or anything while he could hear."
"You call me a moron directly to my face constantly."
"Heh. I do, don't I?"
"Focus," Sarah said, putting a hand on Chuck's chest to stop him from snarking back at Casey. She shook her head minutely at him and he huffed and pouted a little, nodding. Children. She was dealing with children.
"Pretty girl. Did Chuck flash on her? Or is he trying to get a date with her and we're doing a little vetting, Walker?"
She clenched her jaw as Chuck blushed. She didn't blame him for the blush, but she didn't like it all the same. "She might be our mark, Casey. She might have the key. And we want to know more about her."
"Oh. Oh, shit. Okay. She's, uh, let's see... Yale University. Double major in business and communications with a minor in art history. Useless," he grunted. "Totally useless."
"Yeeeeah, well, she seems to be doing just fine," Chuck said, crossing his arms at his chest. Sarah shot a quick look at him and rolled her eyes.
"Oh, right. And her dad giving her his multi-billion dollar shoe business had nothing to do with how fine she seems to be doing," she responded sarcastically.
"That's messed up. What if her dad died?"
"He didn't," Casey cut in, a thread of amusement in his voice. She hated that he was picking up on something here. She could just tell he was. If he made a crack, she'd steal his wheelchair and crutches and he'd be stuck in his apartment forever, sitting on his couch watching Cheers reruns. "He just retired and handed her the reins."
"Oh."
Sarah shot Chuck a satisfied look and he glared a little.
"What else ya got, Casey?" she asked then, leaning with her palms on the desk and hunching forward. Her leg was starting to hurt a bit now that she was awake. She needed to take some more aspirin.
"She spent time in both Sweden and Germany after Yale, acted as a liaison for her pop's shoe business, but also went totally off the face of the earth for three whole years. I've got nothin' on her from her mid-to-late twenties."
"What's that even mean?" Chuck asked.
"It means someone went through and systematically wiped whatever she did from twenty-five to twenty-eight off her timeline. We've got nothin' in our database on her. No idea where she was living, where she was working. No record of her participating at any level of the operations in Liu Footwear Inc. Quick search doesn't even have her filing taxes. At least not here in the U.S…. I could get Interpol to let me know if she paid taxes in another country, but if we don't have that information, I think whoever got rid of it here got rid of it everywhere."
"She's our girl," Sarah said resolutely, turning to give Chuck a look. How in the hell had he managed to sit near the one passenger out of thousands on this floating city who was transporting that damn key to Stromberg's safe? Out of everyone he could have sat next to… Out of everyone he could have attracted to him…
It was almost like he was a magnet for trouble. She wasn't sure if it was good or bad for a spy to have that power. And then she decided she was leaning more towards bad. She'd like the nerd to stay alive past his thirtieth birthday. Keeping him breathing was kind of her whole point of still even being with the CIA, wasn't it? When she'd been so close to quitting altogether a year ago.
Chuck nodded slowly. "Sure sounds like it."
"How'd you find 'er anyway?" Casey asked.
Chuck opened his mouth to answer—she didn't know what in the hell he was going to tell Casey—but she cut him off, sending him a warning look. "We don't have time. Tell you later. We have an op to plan."
"An op within the op," Chuck added.
"Thanks, Casey. And hey, uh… Don't relay this conversation to Agent Shaw, huh? Please."
Casey let out a "Pfft" and snorted. "Like I would."
They hung up and Sarah straightened her spine, stretching a bit before clasping her hands in front of her thoughtfully. "Now that we know her name, we can check the hold first, see if any of her belongings down there might have the key. But my guess is she's keeping it with her in her own cabin. Maybe in a safe or something."
"Yeah. Yeah, good plan." He paused then. "It's a really good thing I'm super bad at napping, otherwise I never would've found her."
She studied him for a moment, then tilted her head with a bob of her eyebrows. "I suppose so. But I meant it about avoiding her, Chuck. Now that we really know she's in cahoots with Stromberg, that she's delivering the key to Frederick Hasselback once she gets to Rio, whatever charm and niceness you saw her up on that pool deck isn't something you can take at face value."
"Why didn't I flash on her, though? Who the hell would be able to get into federal government files to erase three years of a person's existence on paper? Sure, on the Internet and whatever, but getting rid of tax filings? Wiping an NSA database? What the hell?"
Sarah shook her head. "Maybe she had folks on the inside. Or, if she was close with Stromberg, he had it done for her. Can't have his colleague in crime all over everything because of her filthy rich daddy."
He nodded. "Okay. I'll keep in the shadows better. Which reminds me… how are we getting into the hold?"
"We're going to walk down." She supposed she deserved the look he gave her. "I casually asked one of the cruise staff today how I went about retrieving one of my bags from the hold and she said access to the hold will only be reserved for passengers who are accompanied by a crew member."
"So it is being guarded?"
"Maybe."
"Oooo, we can Assassin's Creed it."
"Is that a video game?"
"Yes, you'd love it."
She shook her head. "Look, whatever that means, if it gets us down into that hold, I'm all for it. But if this is a video game with magic, maybe put the idea on the back burner for now because we need a realistic solution."
"Not magic… just distraction."
They waited for nightfall in the safety of their room, having their meals delivered, eating mostly in silence. She felt the brittleness of the air in the suite, around them, between them. It wasn't the most comfortable few hours she'd ever spent. Everything they'd said to one another and the things that remained to be said hovered over their heads, sat in the space in between them.
She was jealous. And it was stupid and unfair of her. She knew it. But it didn't make her any less jealous. She had no right to be. And yet…
It was just that Sarah had a pretty good feeling that no matter what Hannah Liu had gotten involved in as far as Stromberg was concerned, Agent Sarah Walker the Wildcard Enforcer had most likely done worse during her decade in the CIA. The man who'd overseen the worst of it was dead now, but it didn't make the worst of it go away; it still had happened, she'd still done it.
Having Chuck care for her as much as he had—as much as he so obviously still did—didn't make any of it go away either. It didn't absolve her. If anything, with how wholly good and wholesome and honorable he was, it made it all that much worse. The stark contrast between them was overwhelming in scope. Sure, he'd flashed on her before. He'd seen some of what she'd done. And he hadn't run away. He was still here. He still looked at her with that soft look, and those warm eyes.
She saw the ache in him when he thought she wasn't looking. She recognized the same ache in herself. But she couldn't have him. He'd made her want to be better, and not just to be worthy of him, though that was some of it. But in the meantime, she'd allowed his debilitating lack of self-esteem to guide him into a trap, and he'd given up his freedom, his chance to be a normal guy with a normal life, to date a normal girl and have his family and friends be safe again...because he thought it would make a relationship with her—Agent Sarah Walker—possible.
This was bad for him. They were bad for him. And yet she couldn't walk away completely, because she needed to see this through, she needed to make sure he didn't take the steps she'd taken that had made her what she was now. She could still save him from becoming a spy like her, like Casey. She could save him from her.
When it was late enough and the hallway outside of their room quieted down, the footsteps out on the promenade outside their window finally dying out as everyone went to bed, Sarah and Chuck snuck out of their cabin and made quick work of getting back to the hold.
But when they peeked around the corner, there was no one "guarding" the entrance to the staircase into the belly of the Arosa Empire. In fact, there was no sign of anyone at all.
"Let's not waste this opportunity," she whispered to him. "Come on."
They raced to the doorway and then slowed at the staircase leading down, taking the steps carefully and quietly, just in case there were crew members inside. She twisted her fingers in Chuck's sleeve and pulled him to the right down the hallway at the bottom of the stairs, and they came to another flight that led even further down.
Sarah leaned over the railing and peered down. The hallway that stemmed off of it was very dimly lit with red lighting and angled in the direction of the back of the ship, which made her think that was the way to the engine and boiler room. "I think that's the way to the boiler room…" She lifted her head and pointed back the way they'd come. "It has to be that way then."
"So what you're saying is we must've taken a wrong toin at Albuquoique," Chuck muttered in a Bugs Bunny accent.
Sarah ignored her partner completely, leading him back down the hallway. She peeked up the staircase as they passed it to make sure the coast was still clear, saw it was, and hurried her step around the corner. "Here we are," she breathed, putting her hand on Chuck's chest to keep him from just waltzing into the room. "Wait," she whispered.
She wasn't taking any chances. Straining to listen, she waited to see if she heard any voices, footsteps, any sign of life inside of the ship's hold. And then she peeked inside. There were crates, boxes, massive trunks, an array of possessions that belonged to the Arosa Empire's passengers. But she didn't see any crew members or other passengers.
"Okay, it's clear. Just be careful about what you touch, and be careful where you step."
He nodded as they began to pick their way around the hold. "How do we know what belongs to Hannah Liu?" he asked her, keeping his voice low.
"They mark everything with chalk," she muttered back, peering at the sides of the large crates, tiptoeing around trunks that belonged to a passenger named Gregorious, a passenger named Everton, Martinez, Agassi, Pomona…
"Anything yet? There's a lot of shit down here, Sarah. And this hold looks like it goes on for a whole mile."
"I know. Just keep looking. They keep each person's luggage together, unlike on an airplane where they just toss stuff in there randomly, so look for a pile of stuff labeled 'Liu'... And if you end up super far away from me, just whistle."
She heard him sing, "Give a little whistle…" with two low whistles, and she rolled her eyes, unable to keep from smiling just a little as she stooped to look at the chalk on the luggage. They must have been down there combing through the crates and suitcases for fifteen minutes before she heard the whistle.
Standing to her full height, she hurriedly made her way further into the hold, craning her neck as she looked all around to see if she could spot him. "Where are you?" she hissed.
She heard a thump about twenty feet in front of her and Chuck's parted, dark curls popped up over some double-stacked crates. He waved desperately at her and a chill came over her. What did he find?
Racing around the crates, she stopped cold, her blood chilling immediately as she looked down at what he'd found. She knew immediately why he'd had that look on his face.
"Shit."
"Yeah. Yeah, shit." He came to stand beside her and peer down at the mess. "Big shit."
She saw LIU scrawled on the sides of the giant traveling trunk. That wasn't what bothered her. It was the massive lock keeping it shut that had been crushed, lying in pieces on the floor, rendered useless, and the trunk was wide open, everything that had been inside of it strewn about the place. A crate next to it, also with LIU written in chalk on the side of it, had been jimmied open with some crowbar type object, the wood a bit splintered. The contents had been opened and rummaged through.
"Sarah…?"
"I know," she breathed. "They got here first."
A/N: Thanks for reading! Please leave us reviews. We appreciate them.
-SC and DC
