A/N the First: Thank you to my awesome beta reader lucky47 for looking this chapter over for me so last minute. Thanks to everybody who's left a review or sent a PM, I always appreciate your feedback! I also appreciate the patience. This story was intended to be nine chapters. It will now be ten, and the ninth chapter is about 80% complete. See you next Tuesday!

Shuffle

It had been ten minutes.

Ten long, unbearable minutes where he hadn't seen a thing or heard a word from Sarah. There was no sign that anything was off outside or in the cabin. Even the woods sounded normal—or as normal as they possibly could to Chuck, who regularly took pride in the fact that he was very much a city boy. But now, up in Lake Tahoe with no idea about what could be wrong, Chuck felt a sweat droplet slide down his back between his shoulder blades and wondered for the fiftieth time what exactly his girlfriend was doing.

"Chuck? Are you all right?" Sophie gave him an odd look, which made sense. She was the actor, not him. He was just a computer programmer who'd happened to wander into the spy world by playing the wrong video game at the wrong time.

"I'm fine," Chuck said, but he crouched quickly to help Vi so she wouldn't get a good look at his face.

Vi evidently didn't notice a thing, as she was focused on rolling the giant snowball that would hopefully become the head of Patrick, their latest snowman. They had a veritable army of tiny snowmen (Chuck supposed some of them were women because Vi had named a couple Daisy and Frun-ca, which he thought sounded vaguely feminine) they had made the morning before, but Vi kept insisting, "Bigger!"

"Okay," Sophie said. "How's that snowman head going, baby?"

"Little bit bigger," Vi said as she grunted and rolled the lopsided snowball over. "Patrick needs to be like a giant."

"That's going to make a ginormous snowman," Sophie said. Her cheeks were red with the cold, her white-blonde hair sticking out from under her blue cap in ringlets, and even though Chuck knew he looked like a frozen mess, he could understand why a lot of people liked Sophie. Even cold from goofing off in the snow with her daughter, she had the movie star good looks. And Vi's eyes, of course.

"Absolutely ginormous," Vi said, nodding. She grunted once more and tried to roll the snowman head over.

"Here, let me help you with that," Chuck said. As he reached for the misshapen lump of snow, though, disaster struck: Vi teetered, wobbling precariously for a split second, and crashed down right on top of the fruits of her labor. Snow seemed to explode around her like a smothered grenade, flying in all directions. Both he and Sophie gasped and reached for her.

Violet, however, took one look at the clumps of snow left over and burst into tears.

"Oh, baby." Sophie scooped her up first while Chuck sat back on his haunches. "Baby, it's okay." She made shushing noises, looking only a little panicked.

Violet went stiff as a board and arched away from her, twisting with her arms outstretched. Chuck winced a little; she'd grown so big lately that that knee to Sophie's side had to hurt, but Sophie didn't even flinch. Instead, she passed the crying Violet over to Chuck with a tiny sigh. She wasted no time clutching the front of his new parka, burrowing in.

'Sorry,' he mouthed at Sophie.

She gave him a 'what can you do?' shrug.

He jiggled his daughter, trying to figure out if it was simply over-excitement or if she perhaps needed a longer nap than usual. Their routine had been completely wrecked by being in Tahoe. He was amazed the break-down had taken this long.

"What's the matter, huh?" he asked, eyeing the woods once more. Where were Sarah and Casey? What was going on? "Does anything hurt?"

Violet hiccupped and let out a wail, sobbing out a name that he finally figured out was "Patrick!" She curled in, making herself as small as possible. "I killed him, Daddy. Patrick's dead."

Chuck met Sophie's eyes over the top of their daughter's head. She turned away, covering her mouth with a snow-covered mitten, and if he were any less freaked out, Chuck might have laughed along. "Hey, no, you didn't kill Patrick," he said. In his pocket, he felt his cell phone buzz, so he bit the tip of his finger to pull the glove off. "What's Patrick made of?"

"Snow," Violet said, sniffling. She wiped her mitten across her nose, which made Sophie wince.

"And what's all around us?" He fished his cell phone free.

Violet looked around, eyes bright from crying. "Snow?" she said.

"Indeed," Chuck said as he glanced at the phone. A text from Sarah: all clear. Stay and play a few minutes.

Relief flooded through him. He set Violet down on the snow and crouched in front of her. In a gruff voice, he said, "Gentlemen—I mean, ladies. We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic snowman. Patrick will be that snowman. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster."

Sophie gave him a puzzled look, but it got the results he sought: Violet swiped at her face again and giggled. "You're silly," she said, giving him a giant smacking kiss on the cheek. "Mom, can you help me? We have to make him bigger and stronger and better, like Daddy said."

In the end, Patrick II (so named in respect to his fallen brethren) was indeed bigger and stronger than his predecessor. Violet pranced around him in delight and tackled Sir, who'd been let out of the house by Sarah, it looked like, giving Chuck and Sophie a chance to stand back and breathe for a couple of minutes.

Sophie was the first to break the silence. "Thanks," she said.

"For what?"

"Letting me crash your vacation a little. I know it's not convenient."

Chuck hunched his shoulders toward his ears. "She's happy," he said, hugging his arms in close. "She likes spending time with you."

Sophie's sigh was long and quiet. "I know. And I want more time with her."

Chuck felt his eyebrows lower. He and Sophie hadn't spoken this openly in…well, years, honestly. Things had been strained when she had been more actively involved, before the audition that would change everything. They'd mutually and silently agreed simply to avoid arguing unless it truly mattered and just focus on raising Vi. At first, when she had been equally involved, it had been like attempting to play a two-player game with a virtual stranger, but lately he'd been carrying the game all by himself. "You do?" he asked.

It took Sophie a moment to answer. "I don't know if it's possible. Not without letting the world know about her in some way."

Casey and Sarah wouldn't like that, Chuck knew. He didn't like it much himself. He didn't even bother to think about Beckman and Graham's reactions would be, as he really didn't want to imagine Washington D.C. as a smoking crater. "Hm," he said.

"But…you should know I have somebody in my life now."

"A serious somebody?" Chuck asked. They both winced as Violet careened into the dog, but Sir just woofed politely and girl and beast gamboled on.

"Pretty serious, yes."

"Does he know about her?"

Sophie shook her head. "I can't help but I admit that I envy you what you have with Sarah. She's good with Violet. So open."

"Open? Sarah?" Chuck nearly started laughing, except he couldn't deny it was a little true. Sure, he didn't know what Sarah thought half the time and it drove him crazy, especially on those nights where they shared his bed with CIA and NSA surveillance. But with Violet, there had never been any real need to guess where she stood. She'd always been kind of an open book. And he knew better than to tell her that. "Yeah, I guess so. Vi took to her right away, and you know how she is."

"Tenacious," Sophie said. Sadness flickered across her face for an instant. "To the point of bull-headed. I'm sorry. She gets that from me."

"Hey, I have my moments." Sarah called him names when he refused to budge on missions after all. "So what's happening with the 'somebody,' then? Is he going to know about Vi eventually?"

"Eventually," Sophie said. "If he, you know, sticks around."

"That might change things for you," Chuck said.

"I have to decide if I trust somebody besides my assistant to know that I have a daughter. It definitely changes things. I envy you, you know, for getting to go to the grocery store without people watching you all the time."

Chuck choked back a bitter laugh. "Yeah, it's nice," he lied, thinking of the two secret agents in the house and the number of times he'd been dangled off of a building by his heels since downloading the Intersect. "Just…a normal guy."

Sophie gave him a puzzled look and he supposed he was failing at acting again. Time to cut and run, he decided. "And on that note, I think I'm gonna go back inside and let you two have a little girl time," he said. But he made it two or three steps before curiosity got the better of him and he turned back. "Hey, Soph?"

"Yeah?"

Chuck licked his lips. "Knowing what you do now, that your career was going to explode, would you…"

Sophie gave him a bleak look, one he completely understood because he'd experienced that emotion in full, acerbic detail right after Bryce Larkin has sent him the Intersect. "I don't know that I would."

"Oh." Chuck felt the old disappointment settle back in.

"It's better for her, not being in the spotlight. She's at least got a chance of living her life outside of a fishbowl." Sophie looked down and kicked at a bit of snow with her boot. "I got lucky. She's got you, and that's all she needs."

Chuck swallowed his answer that Violet deserved her wants as well as her needs, and nodded. "Thanks for being honest," he said, and went inside.

He stripped out of his outer gear in the mudroom, peeling off the snow-covered gloves and unwinding his scarf. "Sarah? You in here?" he called, expecting she'd gone back to the living room, where she could watch over the three of them from that vantage point.

There was no answer.

"Casey?" Chuck asked, poking his head out. The living room was empty, though the TV was still on, bleating cheerfully about a game show coming up. He toed out of his snow boots and his wet socks and, barefoot, he crossed to the bedroom he and Sarah were sharing for the week: empty as well. "Huh."

Dread began to gnaw at his stomach. Had something gone wrong? He'd only received a text, not a call from Sarah, which meant somebody could have grabbed her phone. Frantic, he checked the basement (empty), Casey and Morgan's room (ditto), and finally he barged into the garage.

He found himself staring down the barrels of two very familiar guns.

"Whoa, don't shoot," Chuck said, his hands rising reflexively. Then he blinked. "Uh, Sarah?"

She holstered her gun with an annoyed look. "Yes, Chuck?"

"Why is there a man duck-taped to that chair? No, make that why is there an unconscious man in his underwear duck-taped to that chair?" He'd never seen the man, and the Intersect wasn't forthcoming either. But even as used as he was to their missions going pear-shaped, finding a restrained and mostly naked man in the garage of his sister's time-share cabin seemed like it might be a new low.

"Because." Casey holstered his gun as well, though he looked grumpy.

"Gonna need more than one words as an answer," Chuck said. He moved toward the man—to do what, he wasn't sure, maybe check to see if his pupils were dilating or something—but Sarah put a hand on his chest to stop him. "Sarah? Who is he?"

"He's a paparazzo," Sarah said.

"Is he…dead?"

"Just unconscious. As far as we can tell, he followed Sophie."

The temperature in the garage dropped to even colder levels. Chuck swiveled to look at the door and then back at Sarah. "He was taking pictures of Sophie and—and Vi? He was doing that?"

"We stopped him before he could get too many. Do me a favor." Sarah handed him a cell phone. "Can you break the encryption on this?"

"Y-yeah, give me a second." He had to run to their room to get his laptop, all of his thoughts racing and bouncing. This was a nightmare. They'd talked about what might happen if the news that Sophie had a secret daughter were to air publicly, and the agents' faces had been absolutely grim. So if they'd caught a guy before he could report in, now what? A bunker in eastern Europe? Forced subliminal memory adjustments? It sounded like the plot of a bad movie.

He skidded back into the garage just in time for Casey to let out a ripe curse. "What?" Chuck asked, eyes widening. "What is it?"

"Memory card's attached to his computer, which is on a 3G network. All of the pictures he took were automatically uploaded into an online album."

This time, Chuck and Sarah swore together.

"Maybe I can stop them," Chuck said. He tossed his laptop to Sarah as he ran for Casey and the paparazzo's little netbook. "There's a file on the desktop—uh, I think it's an exe file called NotAKitty," he said. "Hook the phone in and run execute, it'll break through that. Casey, let me see, there might be a way to stop the upload. Was he alone?"

"I tracked his car down. He parked a couple of blocks away and hiked in," Casey said.

"And he's in his underwear because?"

"If he gets away, won't get far in the snow," Sarah said, typing just as fast as he was.

Chuck pulled up the upload program the paparazzo had used and cursed to himself. All of the photos were already online. He moved to the bookmarks folder, where his prayers were answered: the photographer had bookmarked his media upload site and the cookies on his computer meant he'd already signed in. Chuck's eyes widened. There were hundreds of thousands of pictures, the most recent being a couple of bright white pictures that he recognized as the cabin's backyard, and then orange-yellow-reddish pictures that had to be from inside the Nugget casino. In them, Sophie sat at a poker table, drinking a margarita and chatting and laughing with a friend.

"It looks like only a couple uploaded," he said, and the screen changed.

Casey leaned over his shoulder. "What the hell? Did you just delete those?"

"I didn't do anything!" But both men and Sarah watched in astonishment as the snowy pictures of Sophie and Vi vanished, one by one. "What's happening?"

"You tell me," Casey said. The last snow picture disappeared, leaving only pictures from the casino. "Did somebody download those?"

Chuck brought up the log file for the album. "No, only two users have access to this—Mr. Naked over there and a P. Schultz. I'm guessing that's his boss."

"Pat Schultz of Starshine Photography, LLC," Sarah said. When Casey and Chuck looked at her in surprise, she held up a wallet. "He's got business cards for both him—Harry Kresnick—and a Pat Schultz. I'm guessing they're either business partners or that's his boss."

"Well, Pat hasn't accessed this folder." Chuck squinted at the log and jerked when the line about 47 photos being uploaded on that day's date vanished. "In fact, there's absolutely no record of those pictures ever existing in the folder at all. If I hadn't just seen them, I wouldn't believe it myself."

"Pictures don't just delete themselves, Bartowski," Casey said, folding his arms over his chest. "Somebody has to be behind this."

"I'm telling you, they're gone. Like they weren't even there." Chuck gestured helplessly at the computer. "Are they still on the memory card?"

Casey grabbed a battered DSLR camera and pulled up the last image on the viewfinder. "Gone."

"So something's hinky," Chuck said. "Unless Sophie has some kind of digital…angel looking out for her?"

Sarah frowned. "I don't think it's Sophie," she said.

"What?"

"Let me—Casey, take over this, see if you can't break the phone? I got the program running." The spies switched places, Sarah nudging Chuck out of the way as she bent over Harry Kresnick's little netbook. She paged through the photos from the night before. "My guess is this guy followed Sophie up to Tahoe, given that his home address is in Compton, which means he's been watching her this whole time."

"So?" Casey asked.

"So, what time did you talk to her last night, Chuck?"

Chuck thought back. "Uh, right after we got to the Nugget. It wasn't that long. I did the slot machines a little, and it was literally right before your text."

"Text?" Casey asked.

"Never mind," both Sarah and Chuck said. The former checked her phone for something and then paged down. "Uh-huh, just as I thought."

"What?"

"It looks like every picture with Chuck in it has been erased. Look at the time stamps on the files. It jumps about six minutes."

"So what, are you saying that there literally is a digital guardian angel and he or she is looking out for Sophie, Vi, and me?"

"Just you and Vi." Casey made a noise when Harry Kresnick's phone chirped. "Looks like that decryption software worked. For once."

"Hey," Chuck said, insult making him glare.

Casey shrugged. "You were handed the Intersect project to decrypt how many months ago, Bartowski? Good to know your magic works on a phone."

"Quit being a jerk and tell us if he made any outgoing calls," Sarah said.

Casey picked up the unlocked phone and scrolled through. "Just an outgoing text, about twenty minutes ago."

"About Vi?" Chuck asked, his muscles locking up in fear.

"I assume so, but it's just a bunch of exclamation points. No real data, no response from Schultz." Casey's snort made it clear how he felt about improper grammar during texting. "No calls. If he told anybody, it wasn't on this phone or anything he had on him."

"I'll contact Pat Schultz," Sarah said. "See if he has any idea about Violet's existence."

"And if he does?" Chuck asked, eyeing the mostly naked man warily.

"Then we'll contain it."

"Contain it how?"

"Don't worry, he won't feel a thing," Casey said, and Chuck felt himself visibly pale. The NSA agent laughed. "Government drug. He'll wake up in twelve hours with a headache and no memory of the past two days. Relax, nerd."

"How can I relax? There's somebody online—a much better hacker than me, by the way—deleting pictures and evidence of me and my daughter. How are you not freaking out about this?"

"Because right now, it's helpful," Sarah said. She grabbed his arm right above the elbow and even that small touch was enough to make him relax a tiny bit.

"Not looking a gift horse in the mouth?" he asked.

"Prioritizing threats. You need to go back out and keep anybody from coming in here. We've got people coming to take Mr. Kresnick back to his hotel, but right now, we need a decoy. Just go back out, watch TV, and act natural."

"Not really one of my strong suits." Chuck took a deep, deep breath as she pulled him toward the door back into the house. He'd grown as used to missions as he passably could, he thought, but it was never the same thing twice. And the idea that somebody had sneaked in to take pictures of his little girl made his blood want to boil at the same time as knowing he had some kind of unknown digital guardian angel made his temperature drop to subzero. He took another deep breath.

"Are you okay?" Sarah asked.

"No mushy stuff right now!" Casey called to both of them. Sarah flipped him the bird.

"Yeah," Chuck said, ignoring Casey. "Yeah, I'm fine. I just—by god, that man has a lot of body hair. I'm going to see that mental image every time I close my eyes."

Sarah quirked an eyebrow at him. "Bet I can change that later," she said, and Chuck felt over-warm in an entirely new way when he stepped out of the garage.

He was just in time, too, for right as he closed the door behind him, he heard a giant woof and a very snow-covered Sir raced at him, full speed. "What the—no! Down, Sir! Down!" It was an absolutely useless gesture, as the dog ignored him entirely, planting his giant paws on Chuck's shoulders and licking at his chin.

"I hate you," Chuck told him without rancor.

"Daddy!" Violet, considerably less snow-covered than her beloved hound, bounced across the room. She had melting snow in her hair. Sophie followed at a more sedate pace. "We made three more minions for the snow army. It was so cool. You have to see."

"I'll definitely check them out later," Chuck said, shoving the puppy off of him. All three of them froze when Sir nudged around him, nose pointed at the door, and growled. "What the…Sir, no! Bad dog!"

"Is something wrong?" Sophie asked.

Chuck grabbed the dog's collar and tried to pull him away, but the dog wouldn't budge. Why couldn't they have gotten a Pomeranian? "He doesn't like the garage," Chuck lied.

Violet blinked. "He loves the garage. That's where the snowmobile that Major Casey Sir is fixing up. Wanna see it, Mom? It's really cool. Uncle Morgan says this is the year he's going to get it working."

"No!" Chuck said, and both Violet and her mother blinked at him. "What I mean is…uh, who wants hot chocolate?"

"Are you hiding something in the garage, Chuck?" Sophie asked, and Chuck shook his head at her, frantically. "Is something going on?"

"You're acting really weird," Vi said.

"Yes, thank you for that, Megabyte. I appreciate your support, as always." Chuck tugged ineffectually at the dog collar. First thing when he got back, he was putting the stupid dog in obedience training. He should have done that months ago. "I wasn't kidding about the hot chocolate. With marshmallows and everything. Aren't you cold?"

"I wanna see what's in the garage," Vi said.

"No," Chuck started to say.

He was saved by the garage door itself opening. Sarah stepped through, hastily buttoning up her shirt with a sheepish look on her face. "Sorry!" she said, resting a hand on Sir's scruff. The traitor plopped his haunches on the ground. "Sorry about that. I, um, got distracted. Did I hear something about hot chocolate?"

"Oh, boy," Sophie said. "Whoops."

"Happens all the time," Sarah said, waving an easy hand. She scooped up Vi and spun her around. "You're all wet. C'mon, let's go get you a new shirt and some dry socks. Chuck, you got the hot chocolate?"

"Coming right up. Soph, you want any?"

"Actually I probably need to get going. My flight leaves in a couple of hours and I still need to check out of the hotel."

Vi's lower lip wobbled. "You're leaving?"

Sarah set the girl down. "We'll give you a minute. C'mon, Sir."

"Sorry, I tried to distract them," Chuck said when they were safely out of earshot in the kitchen. "I really did. I'm sorry."

"It's okay. His fault, anyway." But Sarah crouched to give the dog a good rub behind the ears. "Casey's checking and the door's locked now. I think the situation's contained. As long as we can get the guy out of here before Ellie and Devon get back, we should be okay."

"And even more importantly, as long as we can get Sophie out of here before Ellie gets back, we'll be golden," Chuck said.

They both went still as they heard the front door open. Sir let out another woof and raced out of the kitchen, and they heard an "Oh!" in surprise.

"I just jinxed us, didn't I?" Chuck asked, closing his eyes.

Sarah stretched up on her tiptoes to give him a long kiss. "Yup," she said. "Let's go face the music."

"Can this day get any crazier?"

"Let's not find out." And she pulled him out of the kitchen.