A/N: Again, work (and a bit of procrastination) conspired to almost make me miss my self-set deadline for updating. We're now on the final stretch of the story, as the good guys are closing in on the villains.

For the umpteenth time – and it never gets old or boring – thank you all for your reviews, comments, suggestions and all round support. Much appreciated and… enjoy!

Casey and Sarah went back to the office the NSA agent used as a base of operations and gave their report to their bosses and change into street clothes. The two directors were understandably furious at the latest turn of events, promising their subordinates all the support they could provide from their end. Ted Roark's involvement simplified and complicated things at the same time, simplified because he was a high profile businessman and was relatively easy to find as long as he stayed in the country and complicated because he had huge resources to draw from, therefore the base for his illegal operations could prove difficult to find.

As soon as the videoconference ended, Sarah began pacing the office. This was the second time she and the CIA had been betrayed by someone she worked with and it made her really mad. She glanced at her temporary partner. He also exuded anger. She could understand. To him, the betrayal of the agencies and the country was an affront to his value system and needed to be dealt with quickly and with extreme prejudice.

The big man suddenly looked up. "Walker, where is Bartowski?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "I told him that he didn't need to come to the debriefing, but he said he'd come up later. He didn't specify when exactly."

Just then there was a knock on the door. Sarah answered it and there stood Chuck, in his truest form, his hands full with three boxes, which incidentally smelled delicious.

"Um, hi," he said. "Is the debriefing over?"

"It is. What have you been up to?" Sarah asked.

"Well, since we found what we were looking for at the party early, we didn't get the chance to sample their buffet. I'm hungry and I figured you and Casey would be as well, so I drove over to the Wienerlicious and got us some food and refreshments." He hefted the boxes he was carrying. "The top one is yours, by the way."

She took it with a smile. "Thank you, Chuck." Then she kissed him lightly on the lips.

Chuck handed Casey another box of food and a huge paper cup of soda, getting an appreciative grunt in return. They'd all just sat down to eat when he noticed that Sarah was barely touching her food. "Are you worried about your parents and Molly?" He waited until she nodded. "I thought you'd made the necessary arrangements."

"I did, but I'd feel better if they had someone to protect them. Unfortunately, Carina isn't even in town."

"I called my Mom and asked her to keep an eye on your folks. She's a veteran agent, so nothing can get past her. Dad has a few cool tricks up his sleeve, too. And then he had another brilliant idea. He knows the perfect safe house for your family. I bet he and Mom are taking them, as well as Ellie and Devon there as we speak. We don't know if Roark recognized me, but we didn't want to take the chance."

She perked up immediately. "What's this place they are going to?"

"It's a horse farm, a fair distance from the city," he replied.

Sarah was quite interested. "Tell me more," she encouraged, taking a big bite out of her hotdog.

"It's run by Uncle Hartley's daughter," he began.

"Hold on! Can't it be traced to your family?"

"No it can't, because Hartley isn't really my uncle. He's a really close friend of my father's. Also, his daughter has her mother's last name. Uncle Hartley jokes that it'd have been cruel to bestow his last name, which is Winterbottom, to her."

"Dr. Hartley Winterbottom?" Casey interrupted them.

"Yes, you know him?"

"According to the bosses, he's pretty much the one responsible for the success of the U Project, as he developed the Serum."

"Never heard of him," said Sarah, leaning closer. This was getting interesting.

"His work is highly classified. Walker here is the first person associated with the Unit to learn of his involvement. His work was already complete when the Unit was formed. They just got the Serum, the pods and their later versions not knowing the source or the people behind them."

"Well, that's good news." She leaned back in her seat, relieved and turned to Chuck. "Your sort-of-cousin can put them all up for a while, right?"

"It's no problem for her," he assured her. "In addition to breeding and training horses, the farm also rents out rooms and bungalows and there are also riding lessons, recreational riding and equine-assisted therapy programs there. No one is going to give the new visitors there another glance." He smiled. "Your baby sister may well get her first horse ride while she's there. Vivian loves kids and I'm sure she'll give Molly the royal treatment."

She fixed him with the playful version of her glare. "Well then, I'll know who to blame when Molly starts asking for a pony."

"My Dad?" Chuck asked innocently. "He'll gladly plead guilty. Seriously, Vivian is family and she's always inviting us all to her farm. She's also an excellent instructor and she'll jump at the chance to make a cowgirl out of your baby sister."

Casey cleared his throat. "I'd like to get back to business now, if you please," he said.

"Finish your dinner first," Chuck told him, getting back to eating his. He'd had the forethought to get complete to-go meals for everyone, since they'd skipped dinner.

"I was thinking," said Sarah suddenly. "Do you remember when we found those vials of the Serum in the cabin, Casey?"

*Grunt* (Of course I do. We had to take some, remember? Where are you getting at?)

"They were most likely supplied by Smith. I don't know how he managed to get hold of them. Maybe he picked them up after the crash, taking advantage of the accident. He had been on the backup team for the mission, so he hadn't taken any Serum and thus wasn't inside a pod when the plane crashed. He could have easily swiped a box of the vials amidst all the confusion."

"I see what you mean," Chuck piped up. "The quantity of the Serum they had was too small to be useful to them, especially if they were indeed planning on raising their own Unit. They needed to replicate it."

"The question is how," Casey added his own two cents. "Roark Instruments does not have a chemical division."

"What would you do in their place, Chuck?" Sarah queried.

"They must be working with a freelance chemist, that's for sure. They would also need to find a way to get the formula for the Serum without destroying too much of it for a chemical breakdown analysis… Crap! Roark's company makes gas chromatography mass spectrometers and they'd actually only need a few drops before they had the basic breakdown! Call your bosses and tell them to ask Hartley how hard it could be to copy the Serum."

"On it," Casey replied tersely and reached for the phone.

Chuck took advantage of his momentary distraction to talk to Sarah, motioning for her to join him in a corner. "Sarah, my Dad said that the Intersect is a supercomputer," he said by way of introduction.

"So? What does this have to do with anything?"

"Roark Instruments has several facilities in Southern California. Their version of the Intersect is bound to have been developed and is probably housed in one of them."

She realized what he was getting at and asked the logical question: "Which one?"

"A supercomputer has certain requirements; clean rooms, control room, main and auxiliary terminals, processor banks, hard drives with cooling towers, power feeds with backups, et cetera. Ideally, these should be arranged around the terminals and the control room. Theoretically, I could take a look at satellite photos of Roark Instruments facilities and offer an educated guess as to the most likely candidates, but I suppose my Dad is the one who can definitively identify the location, since he's been involved from the start. I can give him a call, if you like."

"Do it," she said and noticed Casey ending his call out of the corner of her eye. "What did they say, Casey?"

"They promised to look into it. They're also concerned about the security of the Intersect and they're having everything double-checked. What were you and Bartowski talking about over there?"

"We were discussing ways to narrow down the possible locations for their version of the Omaha Project. Chuck is talking to his father and ask for any insights on the matter. We'll let you know as soon as we have something concrete."

"It's a good idea. The General has already dispatched teams to keep an eye on RI facilities. We're still the lead on this, so they'll let us know if anything pops. The CIA is also looking for Shaw's accomplices."

A light bulb went off (metaphorically) in Chuck's head. He finished talking to his father and hung up after Stephen promised to look into the matter and call him back. "I could help with that," he told Sarah and Casey.

"You? How?" Casey asked.

"Not many people know this, but I used to be a very good hacker. Maybe I could find something, a trace or whatever to help identify those working with Shaw."

"Here's a computer," said Casey, nodding towards one of the workstations in the office. "Knock yourself out."

"Okie-dokie," replied Chuck. "I'll be right back." He jumped up and ran out the door. He returned minutes later with a paper bag and sat at the workstation Casey had indicated. He took a Swiss Army knife from a pocket and used the corkscrew to open the bottle he'd brought in the paper bag.

"Quite the time he found to drink," Casey commented to Sarah.

She smiled. "It's his thinking juice. He drinks chardonnay when he wants to concentrate on something. Well, that or coffee, depending on the time of day."

"Do you think he can come up with something useful?"

"He's helped a lot so far, hasn't he? I mean, he got us the tickets to the party on less than a day's notice. I'm sure he can do more if we let him."

"Just keep an eye on him, Walker. Make sure he doesn't screw up anything. This is expensive equipment we have here and access should be restricted."

"I wouldn't worry about anything. After all, I've seen the equipment he has at work. It's a hundred times more expensive than this. Trust me. He knows his stuff."

*grunt* (whatever)

Chuck took a seat at the computer, flexed his fingers and took a swig of his wine before attacking the keyboard. Sarah wheeled a chair over to his desk and sat down next to him. She watched with interest as he opened window after window and tab after tab with a speed she could barely follow, pausing only to take small sips of his thinking juice. He typed furiously on a browser window he'd just opened and leaned back while a progress bar was filling. "Sarah, can I ask you something?"

"Shoot," she replied.

"Earlier tonight, in the alley behind the hotel, you taunted Shaw by asking him if he thought you were telling the truth. What was that all about?"

"It was a little psychological ploy I decided to use on him. It was spur of the moment, actually, and I don't know if it worked, but it was worth a shot. Basically, I wanted him to start wondering if I was pretending to not recognize anyone at the cabin and if we were already on to him. If he believes his operation wasn't as well hidden as he thought it was, he might make a mistake we could potentially exploit. Did I answer your question?"

"More than," he replied. "Smart thinking, Sarah. Now he'll be looking over his shoulder even more. Some of his partners have already been taken out and others are blown. He can't have that many options left. Plus, he may make mistakes, even if he suspects it's just a ploy to get him to trip up."

"Thank you. Did you make any progress on your end?"

"Some," he admitted. "If his credit card records are to be believed, Agent Shaw has been staying at the Bellagio in Las Vegas over the past few days, celebrating his birthday and getting over his recent divorce. He's charged for playing chips, room service, car rental, generally the kind of charges one would make on vacation in Sin City, yet he was here in LA. I cross-referenced with security footage. He's nowhere to be seen at the time the charges were made on the cards, before and after he was spotted here in Los Angeles. The next step will be to see if whoever manipulated the records left a trail for me to follow."

"Can you do it?" Sarah pressed.

"Maybe," he hedged. "Whoever is supporting Shaw must be a very good hacker since he didn't raise any alarms while hacking the hotel, the casino, the bank, a strip club, bars and the other systems he accessed to plant the red herrings. I'll find him though."

She nodded. He was obviously in his element and she couldn't deny that she found it interesting to watch. In fact, it turned her on to see her boyfriend so focused and intense. She filed it away for the moment, although it made her look forward to their next tryst even more.

Casey's phone rang just a few minutes later. He answered it and listened attentively to what the caller had to say. Finally, he looked up. "Bartowski, your hunch was right on the money," he said. "It's your father on the phone. I'll put it on speaker."

"Go ahead, Dad," said Chuck. "What have you got for us?"

"Let me give you a little back story first," said Stephen. "Back when I won the tender for the development of the Intersect, the configuration my associates and I were proposing was chosen because it was more compact and generally more advanced, given the technology of the time. As it happened, I got to see the configuration Ted Roark was proposing, totally by chance."

"So you know how he would have proceeded. Does it apply to our current situation?" Chuck asked.

"As a matter of fact it does. The technology may have advanced considerably since then, but it appears that Ted stuck to his original, flawed I might add, scheme. His version of the Intersect might work, but I doubt it's as advanced as mine. Anyway, your best bet is the Roark Instruments campus, specifically the central part of the complex in the building adjoining the offices. Fleming, Hartley and I agree that it appears to have been designed to house an Intersect-type system. I'm emailing you the particulars right now. Let me know how it shakes out, OK?"

"Sure thing, Dad," replied Chuck. "See you and the others soon. Take care."

Casey patted Chuck on the back in a unique show of approval. "You did a good job, Chuck," he said, purposely using the young man's first name. "I'll call the General and ask her to get a search warrant and put a tactical team in our disposal."

"Don't you want me to come with you?"

"Just keep on hacking from here. You're more useful here, taking care of the electronic side of the operation. We'll stay in contact, so you can let us know if you dig anything up. Walker, let's suit up."

She followed the big man to another room, where they both changed into black tactical gear, complete with ballistic vests, load bearing gear and helmets with clear visors. Sarah had also put her hair up in a double French braid. She tossed her helmet onto a couch and approached Chuck, who stood up, leaving the computer program he was running to do its thing.

"Take care out there, Sarah."

"I have a lot to come home to," she replied, kissing him sweetly and chastely.

"The tactical team will meet us at the entrance of the RI campus," Casey announced. "They'll have the warrant and everything. You keep doing your thing like we said, Chuck."

"Good hunting," Chuck wished the two of them and returned to the computer. He connected the communications relay to a speaker, so that he could hear everything and checked his progress in locating Shaw's accomplice. He'd made some headway, but the other guy wasn't making it easy, even for an expert hacker like him. "Looks like we may get to have a hack-off," he mumbled. His strategy was bold and he was sure it was going to work, but in order to expedite he'd decided to accept the risk of his penetration of the bad guys' network being detected. While working, he couldn't help fidgeting as he waited to hear the voices of his girlfriend, her new partner and the tactical team over the radio relay. He had faith in Sarah, but it was also natural to be worried about her, since she was going into a potentially very dangerous situation.

In his lair, Laszlo had fallen asleep in his swivel chair, the quiet hum of his computer equipment lulling him into a slumber. His arms hung limply at his sides and a line of drool led from the corner of his mouth to the neck of his sweatshirt as he snored loudly. The state of the place had not improved since Shaw had last been there. If anything, even more detritus had accumulated. Computer games, CDs, DVDs, magazines, the occasional book, candy wrappers, takeout containers, pizza boxes and soft drink cans competed for space on his cluttered floor with some carelessly tossed items of clothing. The sudden blaring of an alarm shattered this picture of tranquility and sent him tumbling out of his chair and on to the cluttered floor.

He got up as fast as he could and focused on one of his computers. "What the hell is going on? Who managed to get this far without tripping the alarm?" The questions were going to have to wait. Preventing the intruder from accessing his files was his number one priority at the moment.

Chuck merely shrugged when a notification popped up, warning him that his intrusion had been detected. He was prepared for such an eventuality. He rapidly typed a sequence of commands into the computer, took another swig of his chardonnay and got back in the fray of the hack-off with Laszlo. "Let's see who we're dealing with," he mused and entered a command allowing him to hijack his opponent's webcam. "Smile buddy, you're on candid camera," he chuckled when the image of a flustered young man appeared on one of the extra screens he'd hooked up to the computer he was using. "And now we have a face." He sent a message to the CIA and the NSA with the image of the other guy.

"Chuck," Sarah's hushed voice came through the speaker. "We're in position and ready to breach. How are things on your end?"

"I've already breached the other guy's firewalls and sent his picture to your people. Right now I'm working on getting his files before he can shut me out. I'm much more subtle normally, but since time is of the essence, I adopted a quicker but riskier tactic. I'll let you know when I have something concrete to share with you."

"OK, gotta go now. See you later."

"I love you Sarah."

"I love you too Chuck."

He smiled, cracked his fingers and went back to working on outsmarting his opponent. Things were looking good. The program he'd written some time ago was working and the first files started arriving to their designated folder. "Spiked you," he said triumphantly as he took advantage of a minute oversight of Laszlo's to complete the hijacking of his system. Now he couldn't be shut out.

"NO, NO, NO!" Laszlo screamed when he realized that whoever had hacked into his system now had the upper hand. No matter what he tried, he couldn't cut off his access. There was only one thing left to do. He got up and physically yanked all the wires he could out of the internet connection sockets.

"Dammit," huffed Chuck. "I had him!" He realized what Laszlo had done. He'd physically terminated the connection to prevent him from copying all his files.

Meanwhile, Casey and Sarah led the tactical team through the Roark Instruments campus. Security didn't give them any trouble at all. The sight of the warrant along with the fully armed tactical team was enough to dissuade anyone from trying something stupid. They reached the building where Stephen believed Roark's Intersect was housed and Casey motioned for one of his men to force the door open. The man swung a portable battering ram and the team filed in as soon as the door was breached.

"Clear," the point man declared.

"Clear," said another. Soon it became apparent that there was not a single soul in the building, most likely.

"Let's keep looking," suggested Sarah.

TO BE CONTINUED