For notes and disclaimer, please see part one.
Here's a couple things you might need to know or maybe you just forgot: Morgan tries to help Chuck sort through his emotions about Ellie's moving on from Awesome. Sarah tries to keep Casey distracted, working out last-minute details with the mission prep right before Ellie drops by for an unannounced visit, to tell Casey that he needs to tell his daughter who he is. The next day at the Buy More, Sarah drops money in the office pool as to how long she expects Casey and Ellie's relationship to last and learns that Jeff and Lester are spying on the apartment complex. Ellie gets ready for a Girls' Night Out.
Club Azure was a swanky place, more upscale than the last nightclub hot spot they'd had a mission in. It was very unlike the dive where he'd been shot. Casey unconsciously rubbed at his chest as he stood behind the bar, his blue eyes cutting a laser-like path from one side of the club to the other. He wasn't exactly fond of the uniform for the club either, but it wasn't too bad. Black slacks, crisp white oxford, azure blue vest. "Still clear."
"He's not supposed to be here for another half hour," Chuck radioed lazily. "I don't see why we have to be here so early. I mean... I get the idea of being prepared, but this is kind of excessive, isn't it?"
"Gives us a real chance to see what the potential dangers are," Sarah responded. She, too, was in the uniform of the club, except instead of the slacks, she had a short black skirt. She breezed about the expansive dining room with a small tray, taking orders and bringing drinks. "Like Casey's entourage."
Chuck sat up a little straighter.
Sarah smiled. "At your seven."
Chuck's brown eyes easily found the three women, dressed to the nines, huddling around a shared table, each pointing, giggling, and holding electric blue drinks.
If Casey ever saw a bottle of Hypnotiq again, it would be too soon.
Chuck managed a slight chuckle. "Looks like Ellie's gonna have... Uh..." He spun around, turning his back towards Casey's fan club. "We have a problem. A major problem!"
"What is it?" Sarah radioed. She was halfway back to the bar, to snag another round of martinis from Casey.
"Ellie-way at oor-day." Chuck had to pause. That didn't turn out quite as nicely in pig latin as he'd hoped. "My sister. My sister just walked in the door!"
Casey turned immediately towards the entrance and watched, his blood running cold, as Ellie joined his admirers with hugs and smiles. He recognized, too, the other new-comer as the round-faced smiling nurse from before.
"What do we do? Thoughts? Suggestions?" Chuck asked.
"You, take a breath. Walker, I need a jacket."
"Wh-what?" Chuck asked, his mind reeling.
She knew exactly where he was going, though. "On it," she said, snagging the drinks from the bar and heading out. She dropped them off at the appropriate table, then stole a suit coat from a slightly drunken patron paying little attention to the waitress or his belongings. "Relax," she murmured at Chuck before heading back to the bar.
Chuck nervously watched her, realizing Casey was gone. For a moment, he had his own flashback to that other club, to that bone-chilling moment when he couldn't find Casey right before the gunshot fired.
But, Sarah eased into the kitchen, and he caught sight, however briefly, of Casey's arm, taking the proffered jacket.
"Is that gonna fit?" Chuck asked.
Ellie smiled but inwardly winced at the chorus of greetings coming from her three co-workers. There was Donna, from ER admitting, Wendy, from radiology, and Bridget, another nurse.
"You have got to see the hottie pouring drinks," Bridget said. "Talk about a tall drink of water!"
"We're trying to get the courage up to ask him for his number. We could all trade days. I'm sure he wouldn't mind!" added Wendy.
Ellie just shook her head. "I'll pass."
"Ellie, really, you should see him first," Donna said, glancing back at the bar. "He's, um..." She frowned. "Where'd he go?"
"Maybe he's on break," Wendy said, rocking up on her toes to try to see the bar area better.
Maybe, Ellie realized, she could stay for a drink and then bow out early. She shifted slightly in her heels. It had been a long day. And she still wasn't entirely sure how she felt about Casey and his inability to tell his daughter who he was.
The more she thought about it, the more a nice, long hot bath sounded appealing. But, they'd just gotten there. Surely, they wouldn't excuse her that early.
"I'll go see if he's hiding up there!" Wendy decided. "Ladies, drinks?"
"Whatever you have looks interesting," Ellie said, noting well that all three ladies had the same neon drink.
"I always have to see the menu. I'll come with!" Mandy said, joining Wendy in her trek to the bar.
"It's good to see you out, Ellie," Donna said softly.
Ellie smiled a little.
Bridget's jaw dropped slightly. "Talk about a tall drink of water..." she said again.
Ellie narrowed her eyes, confused, but not for long. It all vanished when she heard his voice.
"Ellie."
She turned, her eyes wide. "John?"
He smiled slightly, inclining his head ever so slightly. "May I talk to you for a moment?"
She noted that his jacket seemed a little tight. The one he'd worn Friday night had fit perfectly. It seemed odd, out of place, but that wasn't quite as strange as the glasses. She was certain she'd never seen him wear any before, and the retro-looking chunky frames, while nice, made her wonder what was going on. "Um... Excuse me," she managed to say before Casey eased an arm around her and led her out of earshot.
As they walked away, however, they could clearly hear both Donna and Bridget begin hushed, excited whispers.
"What are you doing here?" Ellie asked.
"Work," he said simply, pushing the frames further up his nose only to have them fall down again. The prescription was hurting his eyes, but he'd found them in the interior pocket of the jacket and he knew he'd need a little something extra just for a moment, to make sure that her companions didn't realize she was dating some lowly drink mixer. "I need you and your friends to leave," he said, his eyes again sweeping the dining room.
She slowly looked up at him. "Are we in danger?"
He checked his watch. "Not for the next ten minutes, but I really need you to leave now."
"What am I supposed to tell them?" she asked. "Now that they've seen you... and Mandy remembers you." She gasped. "You're the bartender, aren't you?"
"Please, Ellie, just... take your friends to this place called Dusk. It's an older club, but Raoul, he owes me a favor. Tell him I sent you; he'll take care of you."
"Raoul?" she repeated.
"There isn't much time, Doc," he said urgently.
"I... All right," she said distractedly. She started to turn from him, but he caught her hand. "Wh...?"
He stole a quick, chaste kiss.
She looked up at him, startled.
"You can still be mad at me. Doesn't change how I feel about you." And, a little voice in the back of his head, the one that gave sound to his instincts, the one that had kept him alive all these years, didn't want her to go without knowing that.
Just in case.
She wanted to tell him she wasn't exactly mad, she was just disappointed. Somewhat upset. Annoyed. Annoyed was a good word. As she struggled to get her mouth to work, she watched as a change came over Casey.
She'd seen it before, when he'd gone from being regular guy Casey to Marine Casey. To spy Casey.
He was looking over the tops of his glasses and lifted his watch to his lips. "Incoming."
Ellie spun around. She wasn't sure what it was he'd seen, but suddenly the picture became clearer. She saw Sarah, clearing a table. She saw Chuck, her brother Chuck, at another table, seemingly impatiently checking the time on his watch.
"Go," Casey murmured to her before crossing to an empty table.
Marcus Finch breezed into the club like he owned the joint. He didn't pay any mind at all to the folks there. He was only there for one reason, and one reason only. And that was to make a thrilling business transaction. He was so close to the money, he was certain he could taste it. He wore his favorite suit, the navy pinstripe Armani, his hair slicked back. "Mr. Billings!" he said excitedly as he crossed to Chuck.
Chuck slowly got to his feet, nodding slightly. "Mr. Finch."
"Please, please. Marcus! We're going to be friends, you and I, I can tell."
"Marcus," Chuck amended with a slight incline of his head.
"So, tell me..." He drifted off, clearly waiting for the go-ahead for the first-name privilege to be returned.
Chuck, still reeling from the fact that his sister was mere feet from them, struggled to remember his cover's name. Sarah's voice was soft in his ear, reminding him. "Daniel. Danny. Y'know. Danny's fine. Danny's great, Marcus."
The next voice he heard was Casey's, reminding him yet again to stay: "Steady."
Finch clapped Chuck on the shoulder. "So, tell me, Danny, are you ready for this evening's festivities?"
"Festivities? I thought we were having an exchange. I give you what you want, you give me what I want... we both call the night a win."
"Well, that was the plan," he said with a nod. "But, y'know, I had another offer, one that made me reconsider ours. Not get rid of, just reconsider." He turned, waving at the older Korean gentleman standing on the other side of Ellie.
Ellie who was talking to her friends, who was looking at Casey.
Casey had taken up residence at a table between Chuck and Ellie, to act as kind of a buffer, Chuck was sure.
As he looked back at the additional player, however, and his eyes unfocused. Among the disjointed images, he very clearly saw things he wished he hadn't, including diagrams for nuclear weapons depots.
"Oh, boy," Chuck muttered under his breath.
Ellie tried to figure out what on earth she was going to say to convince the ladies that it was time to leave. They'd just gotten there. And she'd just had a brief interlude with her new boyfriend in front of them.
"Who is he?" Bridget asked, nodding at Casey.
But, did one date a boyfriend make? "He, um..."
"Ellie, you're blushing!" Donna commented.
She brushed her hair back from her face. "It's not... It's not what you think," she said. "We, um..."
Wendy and Mandy returned bearing a blue drink in each hand. "Have you seen these things? They could totally light up the night," Mandy said with a grin.
Wendy, however, picked up on the fact that there was something amiss. "Ladies? What happened?"
Bridget casually nodded towards Casey.
Mandy's eyes grew large. "Dr. B! You and your fella doing better, then? You guys got everything worked out?"
"There were issues with Mr. Gorgeous over there? Bridget asked.
"It's... It's complicated. And I promise I'll clear up the confusion later, but we should probably go."
"But, you just got here," Donna said. "And your hottie over there just got here..."
"He's here on business."
Mandy frowned.
"Business? In a night club?" Wendy asked, concerned.
"Chuck's meeting with possible funders right now," she lied, nodding at the table with her brother. "I just didn't realize that they were doing that here tonight."
All four ladies turned to see and Ellie wished they all could melt into the floor.
That was not stealth-like. Casey would not be happy.
"Chuck's breaking away from the Buy More?" Donna asked, knowing well that the employment issue had long been a thorn in Ellie's big sisterly side.
"He's working on it, some new computer thing, with John... and I really don't want to interrupt or... anything. We should go. John knows this great place that's not too far, that they'll take care of us there," Ellie said, hopeful that they would buy the lie.
The lies, she realized, that everyone around her had perpetuated to her. It was different, now that she was the one executing them. She realized the weight of the consuming, dark guilt, how it tugged at her soul. No wonder she and Devon had drifted apart. How could anyone hold tight to a relationship, a marriage built on a foundation of that kind of shadiness?
She glanced at Casey. She didn't want Alex to hate him someday. She understood why, maybe, he didn't want that someday to be that day, but that someday would happen. And it was easier to rip a bandage off in one fell swoop instead of inching it off, slowly, bit by bit. If she could only get him to see that.
"So glad you could make it," Finch said, bowing graciously at the waist.
Chuck realized that guy was one smooth operator.
"Let's get this show on the road, shall we?" Finch asked, clapping his hands together. "We're going to start the bidding at five hundred thousand. A paltry fee for you guys, I know, but we can't out-bid the Afghani-warlord I've got here on my phone," he said, pulling his iPhone from his pocket. "Great guy. Couldn't make it. No-fly lists, I mean, really?"
Chuck shook his head. "This wasn't the deal we brokered on Saturday."
Finch shrugged. "That was then. This is now. Business is business. Nothing personal," he assured him with that car-salesman smile.
Chuck wanted to say that it most certainly was personal to him, what with his sister standing mere feet from him, but he couldn't. Chuck wanted to say that it was personal to the physicist that Finch seemed hell-bent on auctioning off like some kind of chipped antique plate, but he didn't.
All he could do was nod.
Sarah slowly removed the dishes from an abandoned table. With the move of a long-practicing con artist, she hit the button on her watch, changing her comms to only be picked up by Casey. "Contingencies?"
Casey glanced at Sarah, catching the subtle movement of her ring finger to her thumb, indicating that she'd adjusted her frequency. He did the same. Not that they were cutting Chuck out of the loop, but they needed time to process before they involved the Intersect. "I never figured we'd have an auction," Casey said, mentally kicking himself for ignoring that remote possibility.
"Nobody could've predicted this. Who's the guy?"
Casey eased into a seat. "You don't recognize Yi?"
Sarah glanced again at Chuck's table, angling for a slightly better look at one of the potential buyers. "How certain are you?"
"Hundred percent. Pays to keep up on the world's scumbags," Casey said. "Doesn't take an Intersect to memorize a top-ten list."
"What do we do?"
Casey offered a slight shrug. "Move to Plan B."
"Which is?"
"You'll know when I do," he said grimly.
Mandy finally nodded. "We should go."
"But..." began Wendy.
"Doesn't mean we can't come back here on the next girl's night out," Mandy said. "But I think we should go and I think Ellie should stay."
Ellie glanced up, alarmed. "Me?"
"Business can't last forever," Mandy reasoned.
"Well, no, but-"
"Besides," she said, lowering her voice, "then you and he can work through what we talked about at the Pie Shack yesterday."
Ellie looked from Mandy to the rest of the women, who seemed to be gathering their things, adjusting their purses. "I... okay. Thanks, ladies." She bid her work friends goodbye, accepting a hug from each in turn. As she gave Mandy a squeeze, she whispered to her what Casey had told her, about Raoul.
Mandy grinned and headed out into the cooling night with the rest of the girls.
Standing at the table by herself, she felt a huge wave of relief crash over her, until she saw Casey's face.
Yi's English was passable but heavily accented. "There will be no bidding," he said, reaching his spindly fingers towards Finch's phone.
"What are you talking about?" Finch asked, his good-nature smile fading fast.
"In exchange for the doctor, you get to live, Mr. Finch," Yi said simply, snatching the phone from the younger man's hands.
"Now, hold on a second..." Finch said, frantically looking at Chuck.
"Not to be crass, old-timer, but you and what army?" Chuck asked, chuckling. It was all bravado, and he hoped he didn't have to hold it for long. He reached his hand out, to grab the phone back.
Yi dropped it into a nearly full beer at the table next to theirs.
Finch audibly whimpered.
"Okay, fine, so it's just you and me," Chuck said. "We could play rock, paper, scissors for it. Or, or... Odds and evens. I'm pretty partial to that one. Used to play it all the time with my sister," he said, gently accenting the last word as he glanced past Yi to try to get Casey's attention.
Because Chuck could clearly see that Ellie was still at the club. And Casey, since sitting at the table, hadn't looked back at her at all.
He eased momentarily when he saw Casey swivel. He then tried desperately not to shudder noticeably when the feed came back on with his earpiece.
"Get Yi to clear the room," Casey said before immediately switching the feed off again.
Chuck swallowed hard. "Okay, okay, so those games may be a little juvenile for, y'know, what we're playing for. So, how 'bout this instead? How 'bout we clear the room, huh? There's a whole lot of people standing around here, and they're really starting to cramp my style," he said, tugging at his tie. "There's no need to involve them in any of this, this... dealings... that we're about to be... doing."
Sometimes, even Chuck wished his brain would catch up and surpass his tongue at the speaking part of the job.
Yi actually smiled and, for one brief second, Chuck did, too.
"Collateral damage is what I'm seeking," Yi said simply.
Chuck hoped he didn't blanch.
"C'mon, now, Mr. Yi, this is not..." It was like Finch could see his dollars going up in smoke. "This is not how this negotiation was supposed to go."
Yi briefly tilted his head to one side, then lifted his head again. "This night is just getting started."
Ellie slowly sipped her drink, trying to count to a thousand. She figured that would be plenty of time for the girls to get to their cars and start to drive off. Then she would leave, get in her car, go home, and pray that whatever it was that was going on at the club would end with the good guys winning.
She watched as Sarah flitted around the club, as she delivered drinks and took them back to the bar.
She watched as Chuck talked with those men. It worried her because he'd seem so confident one moment and like her scared little brother the next.
In those moments, she wished he was twelve again and that look on his face was caused by Joey Stillman, who used to steal his lunches, until Chuck helped her whip up a batch laxative cookies. Because brownies, he'd told her, were entirely too cliché.
She watched as Casey spoke quietly into his watch, as he looked so serious, so determined.
She sat up straighter when she felt something cold on the exposed skin of her back. She closed her eyes, struggling to think of something nicer, something calming. Something like peanut butter cookies.
Sarah stopped in mid step when she glanced up, seeing the man standing directly behind Ellie. "Casey..."
"Yeah?" he said, distracted. He was trying to listen to Chuck and Yi's conversation.
"At your nine."
Slowly, Casey looked over. It took every ounce of willpower he had from running across the room and tackling the man to the ground.
Ellie's eyes were closed, she was inhaling slowly, deeply.
He was somewhat proud, for only a fraction of a second, as she was so much better at preventing those Bartowski-family freakouts these days.
Casey switched his radio again so that he could talk to Chuck. It was the hardest thing he'd ever done, and he'd done hundreds of things that he'd thought had taken that title before, but not now. Now, it needed to be said. "Stay cool, Bartowski. Cold as ice."
Chuck wondered what Casey meant by that. He thought he was being pretty cool as it was. Maybe not icy, but definitely hovering right above freezing. Plus, the Colonel's voice had been oddly strained, like something was wrong.
He was distracted by Casey's odd comment and so he only half-way heard Yi say something that remotely sounded like: "Bring her."
Chuck's blood reached Absolute Zero when he saw his sister marching slowly towards their table. As he looked back at Yi, he flashed again, seeing powerful knees and elbows. His emotional state was in such an upheaval at seeing the man with one hand on his sister's shoulder, the other holding something up to her back, that his muscles were twitching to perform a couple Muay Thai moves on the guy responsible. Elderly guy or not, Chuck really didn't care.
Nobody did that to his sister, not when he was around.
Stay tuned...
Lines from the next installment:
Ellie, nearly falling on her wobbly high-heels, watched as Chuck performed moves she'd only seen in those kung-fu movies she'd reluctantly sat through with Devon and his frat brothers back at UCLA. She knew, for a certain, definite fact, that the closest her brother had ever gotten to martial arts had been watching Karate Kid repeatedly as a child.
The things he was doing would've required years of practice. He was performing them like they were nothing, like he'd been doing this his whole life...
Which he had not been doing.
Chuck's kicks and punches and grappling throws were amazing and scary to watch.