A/N 4/12/14 - This is for esardi. Because while we didn't always agree about the characters and the stories, he always let me know he was engaged in them through his notes and reviews. He was the penultimate Chuck fan. Back in January of 2013 he made a request of sorts in a review of this story. The other day I was going through some of those old reviews, trying to get re-inspired, trying to reconnect with my readers and Chuck friends, and I stumbled on that review - after I'd already written this chapter. He got his wish. I only wish he was still around to read it.

I understand he fought to hold on to his life. Perhaps I should fight to hold onto this story and keep it going, too.

Thank you to everyone who has dropped me a line over the last several months I've been away from this, and also to my very patient beta readers. You all mean a lot to me.

Mac

I don't own Chuck

Sarah Versus the Farm

Chapter 10 - Who's Yer Mama?

"WALKER," Casey's gruff voice exclaimed, perfectly matching his scowl when he fixed his hard eyes on her from the open front door. "Up and at em'. Briefing in ten minutes."

"Right." Sarah raised a hand to her mouth, stifling a yawn, and looked down at her new friend staring up at her from her lap. "I'll be there in a minute, need coffee."

"Already ahead of you. Figured you'd need it after the night you had. Pot of fresh brewed Kona blend in the coach. Shake it, Walker."

"Shake it?" she asked, with a low growl.

"Hmmg, that's the Corp talkin'. Don't get yer knickers in a twist."

"Knickers..." Sarah grumbled, setting the heavy cat on the floor, "because that makes it so much better…"

She fell face first into her bed with a groan. Three huge, Casey sized mugs of coffee hadn't even put a dent in Sarah's exhaustion. She'd only had about four hours sleep in the last two nights, and training, or not, that combined with the surprising stress of this assignment had wiped her out. She wasn't even sure why Casey had gotten her up for the briefing, because it was essentially a non-starter. No new information. Only a review of what was already planned for the next two days, along with a brief discussion about Chuck's upcoming dailies, and a possible assignment that could come from one of them if the Intersect turned over the right rock. What that could mean from an operational perspective was anyone's guess at this point, and she hadn't considered the possibility of Chuck being put in the field or how he would even make it work with his business, let alone his distaste for the whole idea of being a spy, even though he seemed to be a natural for the job.

The only other major news was that the analysts were almost done with their work, and today would be Chuck's last day doing the daily intelligence assessment from couriered files or at the secure satellite uplink in Casey's motorhome. The only reason she could see for being present was making sure Casey didn't allude to her possible compromise with the 'asset' and protect Chuck's interests, but he'd said nothing. In fact, the complete absence of even any snark about it told her more than anything Casey did say, considering he was needling her about almost everything else. The Marine Major seemed to be avoiding the whole subject, and it made her curious. In the end, not even Diane Beckman's overbearing rudeness or advice about how to 'keep the asset compliant' - which Casey again made a point of not commenting on - could keep her awake, and she was out like a light before she even got the covers pulled over her.

When Sarah finally awoke, and gazed at the bedside clock feeling more refreshed than she thought she deserved to be, she was startled to see it was almost noon and that the covers had been pulled over her. She heard a soft snore and looked down to see Mongo snoozing between her legs. Her head fell back to the pillow with a flump, and she brought her palm to her forehead. "Way to go, Walker, nice job protecting your guy," she muttered under her breath, "You're doing a better job watching after the cat."

She quickly extricated herself from under the bedding and, donning the fleece bathrobe Ellie had given her, headed out into the hall. Voices got her attention, coming from both the living room and the den. She frowned deeply when she saw the crew working in the living area installing hidden cameras and microphones. When she poked her head around the doorway of the den, Chuck looked up at her, guardedly, from where he was watching the two Agency computer wonks, Nikki and Auggie, working on his computer workstation.

"Hey. Good morning. Or should I say good afternoon? Did you sleep well?" he said, forcing a bright smile onto his face that stunned her a little by how much of it seemed genuine given the horrible circumstances he was facing down. The two analysts turned to look at her too, the young NSA techie smiling with amusement.

"Umm, yeah, I did, apparently too well. Hi," she said with a little wave, embarrassed by her state of dress in front of the one dark haired female analyst, before she locked eyes again with Chuck's. "I think I'm getting used to that bed. Did you put the covers over me?"

"Yep. Just returning the favor. We both seem to be zonking out before we make it under the blankets. Nikki and Auggie got here early today, so I thought I'd let you sleep until they were done. They're almost finished. I wanted to make sure I could still use my game servers after they were done meddling with my system."

"We've made the Agency feed stand-alone," Auggie said matter-of-factly, putting his headphones back on and resuming his work, "which only makes sound security sense. I didn't even want to try to interface it with the existing equipment. It would have taken a week to do that. Although, I must admit, your own security is very impressive, maybe better than ours. I've never seen anything like this. Definitely state of the art. Beats the hell out the Roark crap I have at the office."

"It's a highly modified Dell DU-97. Dad and I designed it, and I upgraded it last year. Each blade multi-threads four quad core processors over a custom north bridge. I modified all the software, including the game engines to make it work."

Sarah's eyebrows flew up almost to her hairline and her jaw went slack. Chuck the gaming computer nerd was still taking some getting used to. Then her eyes shot to the drop dead gorgeous NSA analyst who could have been her doppelganger, if not for her short jet black hair. The woman had a hungry look in her eyes, and they were focused like a laser on Chuck.

"Well, it's pretty sweet, Chuck. You and your dad should have started your own company," the blind CIA analyst – who coincidentally could have also been easily mistaken for Chuck's brother - replied, as he typed like a savant. "We'll be out of your hair shortly so you can do your HALO server restore and get your clan off your back."

"Speaking of which, I'd be happy to stay behind and help you with that, Chuck," Nikki interjected, jabbing him playfully with an elbow and a little wiggle of her brows, "The sooner you get it running, the sooner I can kick your ass in a game," she sang. "Are you ready to rumble?"

"Oh, HA," Chuck exclaimed looking with large eyes from his CIA handler to the NSA analyst with a gulp. "I-I'm always up for a good game, Nikki, but I'm afraid recovering the server will be a one man job. I'll shoot you an email as soon as I get it running, and you can either join the good guys - that's us - or you can try to beat them, and suffer the consequences. Or if you'd like to join Team Bartowski for Call of Duty you're welcome any time. I've even designed a couple of badass female skins for the ladies to bring the game into the twenty-first century. It's much more fun watching the opposing team get their butt's kicked when they know who's doing it."

Skins? Sarah looked curiously between the two obvious nerds, raising one eyebrow while the other one dropped. It didn't go unnoticed by either Chuck, or the cute NSA analyst.

"Oh really, this I've got to see," the NSA tech said playfully, placing her hand on his arm, "I hope you gave us some fun clothing options."

Sensing he might be treading through a figurative minefield, Chuck ran his hand apprehensively over his face. "There are: from standard battle dress all the way to something that looks like Lara Croft would wear in her skimpier moments. I tried to create something for everyone."

"Something with a smexy special forces look? Kind of a cross between Lara Croft and Solid Snake? That's what I want."

Solid Snake?

"We have a few like that," Chuck replied a bit nervously, trying to hide a grin after a quick glance revealed Sarah's knitted brows and an incredulous 'huh?' lit up like neon on her face.

"I miss those games," Auggie said, with a touch of wistfulness in his voice. "Still trying to figure out how to get back in the fray and be competitive. It's been a tough technical challenge."

"How do you overcome those obstacles in the real world?" Chuck asked, rubbing the back of his neck pensively. Auggie had shared that his blindness was the result of a relatively recent event, and it seemed it could be possibly something of a touchy subject even though he exuded enormous inner strength.

The blind CIA analyst turned and looked right at him sightlessly, the corners of his mouth turning up. "By sound and tactile feedback, with the help of fancy little laser cane, and of course the more standard white and red model. I think I see what you're getting at, Chuck."

"Yeah, we can do the same in the game with force feedback and a simulated optical device. All we'd need to do is write an add-on with the appropriate API, and you'd be in. The challenge as I see it would be to build a sound texture map to build a sonic 3D space for you."

"I can do that. I'm getting pretty good at seeing with my ears." Auggie tapped his headset with a finger.

"We can do that. Let me help. We can test it, in game. Join my team. I'm sure you'd be an asset."

Sarah almost imperceptibly winced when Chuck said the word asset, but swiftly realized what he'd said held a deeper meaning, that everyone on a successful team was an asset in some capacity, and often referred that way, even a highly trained operative like her. It was a concept that had been drilled into her since day one on the Farm, and suddenly calling Chuck 'the asset' didn't feel quite as bad when she thought of him in those terms.

"I'd like that, Chuck. You're a damned genius, let's do it." Auggie muttered, with a touch of collegial awe.

"Yeah, he is, and a handsome one at that, just like you Mr. Anderson," Nikki agreed confidently, giving the CIA analyst a teasing nudge in the ribs. "I really do wish you could see what he and his dad did with telescopes operated remotely over an Internet satellite feed, Auggie," she said, pointing at the pictures on the wall next to the desk, "the images are extraordinary."

"Thanks for the compliment, but much of that was my dad's doing, Nikki," Chuck replied with a touch of embarrassment, looking at Nikki appreciatively then up at the framed images, "That was a father-son collaboration, and he did most...of...the... hard… "

Chuck's words hung in his throat and he froze. Sarah watched with alarm as his eye's, narrowed, then fluttered and rolled up, and he began to teeter on his feet. She rushed to his side, and grabbed his arm, turning him away from the NSA tech who'd clearly stopped breathing, catching the attention of the other analyst as well.

"Dammit, Chuck, you haven't had anything to eat again yet today have, you?" Sarah asked admonishingly, "Come on you goof, let's get us some lunch." She shrugged her shoulders at Nikki. "The big dope sometimes forgets to eat and gets hypoglycemic. We'll be back in a bit, after I stuff some food into him," Sarah excused, with a wink, as she pulled him bodily, and stumbling from the room. "I'll bring the two of you a sandwich, too."

"Okay," Nikki muttered in reply, dragging the word out, "Thanks."

"What was that about?" Auggie asked curiously, "For a second there, I'd thought all the air had been sucked out of the room."

"Don't know, but it sure looked like more than low blood sugar to me."

-II-

Sarah hesitated for a second outside the door, after pulling Chuck into a blind spot between the cameras, studying him closely. He still seemed to be 'flashing', more intensely than she'd ever seen before. It was very disturbing to watch. Then just when he looked like he was coming out of it, his eyes went wide when they focused on hers, and it happened again. The expression on Chuck's face told her he should have been gasping in pain, but he was silent, his chest frozen in mid-breath, and Sarah thought he would have fallen to the floor if she hadn't been there to hold him up.

After what seemed like an eternity it abated, and as he stared at her glassy-eyed, he muttered, "Don't freak out."

It took a split second for her to regain her own composure from the way he'd said it while gazing at her with large emotion filled eyes. Then Sarah led Chuck quietly past the Company surveillance crew, through the kitchen, and out the back door onto the patio, setting him down in one of the chairs at the table. "What happened? Was that a flash?" she asked with an agitated whisper, crouching down in front of him, holding his hands while gazing with concern into his steadily clearing eyes.

"Yeah. It was a whopper, too," Chuck whispered back, with a small shake of his head. "Biggest one yet. It was an Easter egg, Sarah."

"A what?"

"Gamer's term. A hidden gift left by the programmers, sometimes a secret level or cool weapon in the game, other times only an image or inside joke. I flashed on the symbol under that photo of the Orion nebula. It was huge, and boy does my head hurt."

"What did you see? Are you okay?"

"A ton of stuff. Still trying to process it all. The entire Omaha file, and more. It did something to me, unlocked something, I think." His eyes slowly focused on her, growing large again. "It also told me something else, Sarah." He looked around the patio suspiciously, and then his gaze returned to her, clouded with apprehension.

"It's alright to talk out here, Chuck," Sarah murmured, concern still coloring her voice. She let go of one of his hands she'd been holding and, bringing hers up to his cheek, stroked his temple with her fingertips. "For the time being at least."

"It's not that...Sarah, I don't know...Oh, damn...Sarah..." His voice trailed off, and she saw the fear in his eyes for the first time. Fear of her.

Oh, my God. What did he see? Sarah interlocked their fingers and squeezed, "Please, Chuck, you can tell me. You can trust me. I have to look out after the greater good, but I won't betray you. You're a part of what I swore to protect."

"I know, but you've also done what you had to do, made sacrifices," he said wistfully, with a hard swallow, and then stammered when her face fell, "C'mon, Sarah, I'm a realist. I think I know what you've done to keep my life intact so far, to keep me from disappearing from the face of the earth. You have a good heart Agent Walker. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. But you know you may have to sacrifice me for the greater good. It's the ugly truth."

He did see something. But why me? Why now? "I will always do every last thing I can do to prevent that," she said softly, "My primary job now is to protect you."

"Your primary job is to keep what's in my head from falling into the wrong hands." Chuck's distressed gaze fell, and he closed his eyes.

"It was. My priorities have changed. I need you to believe that. What's in your head is important, but so are you. You're one in a million, Chuck, and I'm not just talking about your ability to host the Intersect."

"Thank you. I'm trying so hard to believe that, Sarah."

"There's nothing to thank me for. I know it's hard, and I know why." Sarah placed her other hand on his cheek, framing his face with them, and made him look into her eyes. "I should be thanking you for showing me something about myself I thought I was incapable of feeling." A small smile crept onto her face when she saw the realization of what she'd said show in his warm brown eyes. "What else did you see?"

Chuck took her hands tightly in his again, like he was holding on for his very life and, looking around again, sighed deeply. "Damn, I hate all this sneaking around. We're going to have to do even more of it now. My dad has a batcave, Sarah, a lab. Honest to God Bruce Wayne stuff."

Sarah couldn't contain the snort from his comic book reference as she stared at him incredulously. "A lab? Where?"

Chuck pointed down.

"Here?"

"Yeah. Under the house. It's accessed from the gun vault, and there's another entrance in the barn."

"Oh, Jeez, Chuck," Sarah breathed. This was a game changer. Who knew what they would find down there, except maybe Chuck. He doesn't want anyone else to know! He didn't even want to tell me! "We have to check it out."

"Yeah. But, Sarah, please, we need to keep this to ourselves, at least for the time being. It could be dangerous for me if the people you work for find out. There are...things...down there."

Dammit, I'll always try to protect you, but I can't make that promise, Chuck. Dammit, dammit, dammit, he was right. "Show me."

"I will, but I think we should wait until Nikki and Auggie leave. They're almost done. And maybe you'd like to see it in something other than a fuzzy pink robe?" he added with a sheepish, pain laced grin.

Sarah looked down at herself with a small smile. "Okay. You're right. We need to try to contain what happened in the den, anyway. Why don't you get some lunch started while I change and get you something for your headache."

"Okay. Ibuprofen, please. Make it a double dose."

"That must have been some flash," Sarah said, her smile disappearing, and the concern showing in her eyes again as she rose to help him up.

"It was. Excedrin headache number forty-seven, as in Agent 47." He smiled thinly when she raised an inquiring eyebrow. "That was a poor attempt at a joke. Another video game. Agent 47 is an assassin, and he has a very nasty habit of giving some folks extremely bad headaches with a pair of long-slide .45 hardballers. Sometimes I do wonder if that will be my ultimate fate," he added with a soft murmur.

"Oh," Sarah replied quietly, her thoughts jerked suddenly inward again as her pursed lips turned down. Now she knew. She'd heard herself called 'a female version of 47' while walking the halls at Langley in the not so distant past, and didn't understand or take any interest in the reference. As far as she was concerned it was probably another disparaging handle like 'the ice queen', and she really didn't want to know the source of the barb. Most of it wasn't really deserved. She had done some wet-work in the past, more than was healthy actually, on some very dangerous assignments, so the reputation wasn't entirely unearned. However most of those times she'd been forced to kill had been unplanned acts of survival, because an op had imploded and she'd been forced to clean it up. Those missions had given her the reputation as the 'fixer', and had ultimately led to the moniker, 'the wildcard enforcer'. With the exception of two circumstances the right people had always ended up dead. Well, in the cold light of reality, they'd all really deserved it.

Assassin really wasn't a part of Sarah's job description even though she knew that part of the spycraft very well and had demonstrated it in an ad hoc way. Because of that, she'd been assigned to TDY with SAD on a few occasions and performed a few real sanctions in the war on terror, although, nowhere near as much as John Casey. Truth be told, she and the Major knew of each other's exploits well, and had even crossed paths on occasion. She'd even played the magnet for him once, from 1200 meters away. She could still picture the small spatters of blood on her white bikini as clearly as if it had happened only moments before. Middle Eastern terrorists had a weakness for nubile, fair skinned blondes, and the CIA had taken big advantage of that fact. Some very bad people had met their demise as a result of both her and the Major's involvement, and for those very reasons, Sarah was still trying to come to grips with the Major's behavior at the cabin, and whether he really thought she had gone rogue.

Her last assignment with SAD on a mission like that had almost gotten her tortured and raped, when it was discovered too late that her terrorist marks were also white slavers. Bryce had been on the DEVGRU team who'd rescued her, assigned to the team to help identify her for the Navy SEALs. She hadn't been given an assignment like that since, and Sarah gratefully suspected Lilly had a lot to do with it. Since that time - right before receiving the mission she was on now - that reputation had led her to being manipulated by a handler who'd used her to kill several people without the proper sanction; more than several. It became the stuff of legends in the halls of Langley, although no one below DD-NCS Graham on up knew it was actually her. The whole affair had been swept under the rug, and her handler burned.

Then there was Chuck, and her obviously illegal sanction orders for him. He'd been deemed that important. Sarah wondered if that was what he'd seen in his 'flash', and possibly all the rest. She shook her head jerkily with veiled dismay as her eyes focused on his again, studying her with worry. "That will not be your fate, Chuck. Not as long as I'm around," she finally, and resolutely replied, fighting back a tremor in her voice.

The thought made her suppress a shiver, as well, and her blood run cold. Someone she trusted implicitly and loved like a father had given her those orders, albeit passed along from someone way above; and like a lightning bolt coming out of the clear blue sky, it struck her. The realization left her suddenly wondering if she could trust anyone anymore, even Lilly, and whether she'd be given that order again if this all imploded, too, and if so, just what she would do. Sarah Walker was 'the fixer'. She swiftly rose onto her toes and, laying her hand on the back of Chuck's neck, kissed him fervently, trying to hide the fear that she knew had appeared in her own eyes despite her training to suppress it.

"I'll meet you in the kitchen," she quickly said, breaking the kiss and retreating into the house, leaving him with a confused look on his face. Sarah paused next to the kitchen sink and a small smile grew on her face. As bad as it all seemed, the memory of their little chat that night in the kitchen, and where it had led, seemed to wash many of those worries away, leaving her more clear headed than she ever thought possible.

- III -

Thankfully it looked like they were able to contain any suspicion about Chuck's Intersect episode from the two analysts, but Sarah wasn't completely sure. There was something odd about the both of them. They were both obviously brilliant, and as gifted analysts had highly developed and adapted senses for esoteric detail, but there was something else. They both had the carefully concealed demeanor's of experienced operators, Auggie in particular. He absolutely reeked of ex-special forces, in spite of his blindness.

After Sarah received the expected text message summoning her to her workstation for the briefing with Lilly and Langston, she learned more, much more. The two analysts were indeed former and current field officers. They'd been handpicked by the DNI for the job. The problem was that Sarah had no idea if she could call them allies or adversaries, and neither did her boss. Her gut was telling her they were people she could trust. However, things had become so convoluted that Sarah was beginning to have trust issues with her own instincts. Some of the new information she was given had only made it worse, and caused her to withhold much of what she'd learned until she could put some more of the edge pieces around the giant puzzle she'd been given.

One revelation in particular had overshadowed all the others, when Lilly revealed to her in full what she'd alluded to only the night before, that one of the two missing programmed CIA deep cover operatives was Chuck's mother. That knowledge had cast everything and everyone under a cloak of suspicion, because if Chuck or his sister knew what had happened to their mother, Mary, or what she'd become, that knowledge could have pushed them in the worst of directions. The new information had left her feeling brittle, distrustful, and alone; and yet at the same time made her feel awful for Ellie and Chuck. She could see why neither of them wanted anything to do with the life she herself embraced.

"How's the headache?" she whispered, when they stood on the front porch, watching the analyst's Company SUV drive away.

"Getting better," Chuck muttered rubbing his temple. "Four ibuprofen seem to be the magic number."

"That's way too much to be taking of that stuff; hard on the liver."

"I know, but I shouldn't take aspirin while I'm flying this much. If I have an accident the blood thinning affects can be dangerous if I get cut or have an internal injury."

"Don't talk like that, Chuck."

"Sorry. Just being realistic. It is what it is. Don't know what else to do about it right now, either."

"Well, the Company doctor will be here to look you over in a few days, maybe she'll have some ideas."

"She?"

"Yeah, she. Adrianna Zarnow. She was one of the two neurologists on the Omaha project. She's going to give you a physical and conduct some tests. We'll have to go to the hospital in Bakersfield to do it - neutral ground - we want to keep the specifics about you locked down, but she already knew you were a candidate." She reached out and took his hand when he nodded in resignation, something she wondered if she'd ever get used to. It was very distressing to see, how he was covering his fight-or-flight response with a substitute that appeared very fatalistic. He looked trapped, and Sarah knew she had to do something to change that. "Come on," she said quietly, tugging him off the porch, "You said there was something you wanted to show me in the barn?"

"Yeah," he breathed, "It's in the-"

He stopped abruptly when Sarah shot him a look of warning with a sharp shake of her head as she led him down the broad gravel driveway to the barn. When they eventually stepped inside the big double doors after the silent walk, he watched her remove a small electronic device from her pocket and pan it around the interior of the barn. "Good. Nothing in here yet. Probably only a matter of time, though."

Sarah watched as Chuck's face fell, and his shoulders sagged. "Please, Sarah. Please don't do this to me. This is my home, my sanctuary. Don't let them turn it into a cage."

Oh, God. Her lips drew into a tight line and the corners turned down, dragging her eyes along with them. Sarah took his other hand and squeezed them both hard. "I don't know what we can do, Chuck, at least not right now. You just became the most highly guarded national security asset we have. You have to be treated as such. I'm sorry. I promise you, I'm going to try to make it as normal as I can, but your life will never be normal again, not as long as you're the Intersect."

Chuck swallowed hard, his eyes searching hers. She could feel him trying to get past her practiced barriers as he slowly nodded. It was getting worse, that trapped look in his eyes, and she knew she wasn't helping him any with her impassive demeanor. "My life was already far from normal," he said dryly, breaking eye contact and releasing her hands. She watched as he turned away, darkly, trying to hide it from her as he walked further into the barn. "Now it's become totally surreal. C'mon, this way. It's in the tack room."

She silently followed him into the tack room, and looked on as he gravely closed the shutters on the one window of the room and, after bolting the door - which surprised Sarah, because who would put a deadbolt on an interior door (?) - he reached for the light switch. Then her eyes got wide when he flipped the switch up and down in a pattern of mixed delays - like Morse code - and the heavy workbench that the English bridle he'd bean soaping for her was lying upon, slid to one side, revealing a concrete staircase. The way Chuck had done it looked like something else was controlling his hand, with scary robotic precision. "Wow."

"Uh, huh." He gestured down the lit staircase with a wave of his hand. "I give you the batcave. Shall we?"

Chuck's eye's grew large as well, when he spied the handgun that had appeared suddenly in her hand at her side as she quickly moved in front of him and led the way down the stairs.

"Is that really necessary?" he asked, watching Sarah's eyes narrow when the workbench at the top of the stairs slid back into place, punctuated with a hiss, sealing them in.

"Uh, huh," she replied flatly, "It is. Stay close."

It was a little startling how modern and large the facility they'd descended into appeared, as they quietly walked down a reinforced concrete walled passage flanked by doors and shelving filled alcoves, with explosion-proof lighting on the walls and ceiling. It certainly wasn't a bomb shelter or cheap construction by any means. The place didn't even look or smell dusty. It smelled clean, and air conditioned, and she could feel, and hear the air moving around them, but it was also obviously unoccupied. Something about all this was making Sarah very uncomfortable, engaging a deeply rooted sense of skepticism and suspicion that chilled her to the core. She observed Chuck carefully, while he examined several of the file boxes stacked neatly in the metal shelves lining the alcoves, and then peered through the wire reinforced windows of a few of the doors. Looking over his shoulder as he did, she saw that one dimly lit room was a small micro-machine shop, and another a very elaborate electronics fabrication lab, complete with a glassed in cleanroom and silicon wafer processing equipment.

"This is amazing," he whispered incredulously, "I can't believe he managed to keep all this a secret from us."

"Spies, Chuck."

"Yeah. I guess so," he breathed, the distress clear in his voice.

Sarah followed Chuck, who was obviously very lost in thought, as he wandered absently down the hallway toward the wide entrance to a large room. She slowly holstered her weapon when they entered a space that could have been easily mistaken for a military command center. A number of large, flat panel monitors on the walls, white tiled, lift-out false-flooring, and three very sophisticated computer workstations with very large, nondescript flat panel monitors were arrayed around the space. Behind a glass wall were the racks of several DU-97 servers. He shuffled from workstation to workstation, all of them powered down, pausing to look at a notebook that was filled with notes and small drawings, in his father's crisp, clean print. "This is weird," he muttered, half under his breath, "it all looks so new."

"Sonofa- ... Uh, Chuck...?"

Chuck whirled around to see where Sarah's stunned voice had come from, and walked through another set of heavy double doors on one side of the room. "Whoa."

"Yeah. This is some collection, curiously modern," Sarah said in a very hushed tone. They'd both been speaking barely above a whisper since coming down here, and her voice had dropped even lower and deeper, as her eyes traveled over a wall of very sophisticated weaponry. There were pistols, and rifles, submachine guns, and assault weapons, almost all of them with sound suppressors on them. On several pegs, were even what looked like very state-of-the-art tranquilizer guns, and the open end of the room it was all in faced out over what looked like a small range with retractable target frames.

One of the four lanes appeared to be very long, lit in pools of light from overhead, receding down what appeared to be a long tunnel. "That's a hundred yards long. There's another hidden entrance at the end out by the backyard fence," Chuck intoned deeply. "Fuck. I can't believe this."

Sarah turned to him surprised. It was the first time she'd heard him swear.

"I mean frak. Sorry about that," he apologized, "I normally have a much better handle on my mouth."

"It's okay. You took the words right out of mine," she replied, a small smile gracing her face.

"Heh. I'm having a very hard time picturing you saying that." He looked up at the display and removed a Beretta 92 with an extended magazine and suppressor from its pegs. "I think this might be my mom's," he said, with a touch of melancholy nostalgia. "She taught Ellie and me how to shoot with one of these."

"With a suppressor on it?" Sarah's small smile was challengingly wry, concealing her careful assessment of his words. Did he have any idea what really happened to her? He might now.

"No," Chuck scoffed, dragging the word out. "These sorts of things are mostly illegal around here. Which raises a whole host of other questions..."

He was interrupted by a loud beep from the other room and his eyes shot to Sarah's. She raised a finger to her lips and, drawing her pistol, shuffling to the edge of the doorway, where she panned it around the 'command center', for lack of a better description. "Chuck, you better come see this," she whispered loudly, walking briskly to one of the workstations while reholstering her Smith and Wesson.

"What the hell?" he exclaimed, when he reached her side and gazed at the monitor. Displayed predominately on the largest tile of the multiple images tiled on the screen, was a live video image of them, staring at the screen. They looked up at the small camera with a red blinking light, and then at each other, their eyes locked for several seconds, before Sarah watched Chuck pry his conflicted gaze away to study the monitor. She could immediately see what he was doing, and it impressed her in a huge way. He seemed like such a natural, like he really did have the spycraft in his blood.

Chuck had already shown it to her, his shared gift for detail and eidetic recall, and he was demonstrating it now, as his eyes scanned the screen and he committed the angle of coverage of every camera to memory. One of the views was of the back patio, and that gave Sarah pause, because she knew that camera wasn't theirs. Comically, another one of the images had a Company technician wearing a well-known security company's uniform, looking into the lens, while he was apparently installing the camera on the front porch. "Are all these wireless?"

"Yes, but the circuit is highly encrypted," Sarah muttered, failing to keep the angry surprise from her voice. "It requires specialized hardware to decrypt the signal. Very specialized. This shouldn't be possible, and why here? Why now?"

"Someone's sending us a message."

"I agree. But who?" Her question was leading. She already suspected who.

"Look around, Sarah," Chuck said, a little astounded, gesturing around the room. "Orion."

"He's not dead."

"That would be one logical conclusion. Another is that he had an associate, or this is somehow automated, which I sorta doubt, but it's still a possibility. I wouldn't put it past him trying to reach beyond the grave. My dad was a very clever guy."

"Obviously. Chuck, your dad also supposedly died three years ago. This place looks awfully clean for being vacant that long."

"Well, you heard the entrance close when we came in. It's hermetically sealed, positive pressure at least, practically a cleanroom. There must be a filtered fresh air inlet and an air conditioning unit somewhere, all this equipment demands a lot of cooling, not to mention a lot of power. Now I'm wondering where it is, and why I don't have a huge electric bill." He grinned a little sheepishly, when he came partially out of his musings, and saw the look of curious fascination on her face. "Sorry. Eight credits short of an engineering degree. I can't help myself sometimes. It's in the blood."

"Like other things," Sarah said softly, smiling enigmatically at him. "It's okay. This is important. Keep sharing." He doesn't quite want to believe it; that his father may have faked his death.

Chuck shrugged, and flushed. Then he moved to one of the other workstations and pulled the keyboard across the desk. He began typing furiously on it, blindingly fast, and windows started to rapidly appear on the monitor.

Sarah's eyebrows shot up. His fingers were a blur. "What are you doing?"

"Browsing the server drives and file trees. Give me a few minutes."

"I'm not sure if we have a few minutes," Sarah replied with exasperation, pointing to a camera view of the front driveway in front of the house on one of the suddenly lit monitors arrayed around the room, displaying the Agency security feeds and much more. "Casey's back."

"Frak. What the hell is it with that guy? Does he have a tracker on me, or something?" Sarah's stone-faced expression was all the answer he needed. "Great, just great. My phone?"

She pursed her lips and nodded a little sympathetically, but not nearly enough. Sarah really wasn't opposed to tracking him, to keep him safe, or so she told herself.

And Chuck blew out a deeply frustrated sigh. "Maybe they don't work down here, I doubt my dad would allow that to happen. He probably RF shielded this place. It's probably a big Faraday cage, protected from EMP."

"Maybe. A dropped signal might be what brought Casey back. It would have set off an alarm."

They gazed at each other for a few seconds, obviously thinking of the same thing, and fished out their phones. After a quick glance at them, their eyes locked on each other again as they showed each other the displays. No service.

"Dammit." Sarah balled her hands into fists in frustration. "We have to get back topside."

"Then gimme just another minute," Chuck stammered, stuffing his phone back in his pocket, "I've got a funny feeling."

"What are you looking for?"

He held up a finger impatiently. "Just a sec." She watched more furious keyboarding, astounded, because the keys were clicking so sharply, and impossibly fast. "Damn," he said under his breath, "Encrypted, a huge block of it, over twenty terabytes." Chuck took a sudden huge breath and blew it out, as he looked her in the eyes. "The good news is that my Halo server is here, too. Should be a snap to restore it from this mirror."

Sarah's chest jumped, thumped, and froze. "WHAT? You're kidding me! Are you telling me what I think you're telling me?"

"Yeah. Sarah, I think it's all here, and more."

"Fuck," she breathed, drawing the word out as she raised her hand to her forehead. Shit! I can't tell anyone about this! It could put him back on a hit list! …Unless he's been on the wrong side of this all along. But why would he show this to me if he was? "How did Auggie and Nikki not find it if it's networked?"

"I'm not sure. But it looks like it's controlled by a router with a hardware firewall down here. I never found it either, but now the firewalling looks obvious from this side of it. It's probably completely invisible from the other side. I'm going to send my game server back up to test it." He kept glancing at her as he typed, the surprise slowly ebbing from his face from her colorful use of the 'F' word.

Sarah looked back at him sourly. Any other circumstance would have probably brought a huge smile to her face. "We don't have time for that, Chuck. We have to get out of here, NOW, before the Major gets too nosy. How do we open those doors?"

"From here, or one of the keypads at the doors. Though, they're also biometric; thumb scanner. Looks like it's almost as easy to lock people in here as it is to lock them out."

I wonder if he's in the system? "Well, we can't go out through the vault," Sarah said, pointing to the monitor. "The door is covered by a camera."

"Might be able to fix that, though. I think we may be able to loop cameras from here, and maybe from my workstation too, once I figure out how to open the firewall."

"Now, you're thinking like a spy, Chuck, but we are out of time. Let's move it," Sarah replied, with practiced smoothness. Now I'm beginning to wonder if you always have.

With another quick flurry of keystrokes, Chuck jabbed the Enter key, while Sarah began to pull him away from workstation, with a vice-like grip on his wrist. "Done. Sent. Jeez, Sarah, at least give me time to get the door controls working."

"Now, Chuck."

"Yes, dear," he answered, with a touch of sarcasm, before Sarah dragged him away from the keyboard with a jerk, and a very hard look on her face. "Who's yer mama?" Chuck stammered, trotting behind her to keep his shoulder in its socket.

I don't give a damn if you think you're being funny, Chuck. That's a place you do not want to go! Sarah pulled him along behind her, her thoughts growing more turbulent by the minute. The sudden realization of the possibility - even if it was a remote one - that this seemingly innocent man might be playing her had thrown her emotions into a spin. She was spiraling, and it was something that had very rarely happened to her.

When they got to the keypad at the end of the corridor under the barn, after examining it for a second, she grabbed Chuck's wrist again roughly when he reached up to enter a code, "What are you doing? How do you know this?"

"I don't... not for sure. The Intersect showed me a bunch of codes, but I'm still sorting them all out." He tapped his head. "I'm only guessing, but I think it's a good one."

"Use the thumb scanner."

"What? That's not going to work! Why would I be in this system?"

Sarah saw his eyes grow large and his entire body tense. "For the same reason you saw all this. Do it, Chuck," she ordered, coolly appraising him.

He swallowed hard and, hesitating at first, dragged his thumb across the small biometric reader on the corner of the keypad. His eyes then grew huge when there was a hiss of air above and the sound of the workbench sliding away with an electromechanical whir. The shock on his face was profound, and very authentic. "Sarah, I think I know what you're thinking," he gasped, "I swear to you, I didn't know about this place before all this. Please, you have to believe me!"

Why would he have told me it was here if he was lying, Sarah asked herself, as she plied the depths of his eyes and read his body language, searching for signs of deception. Revealing this placed him in huge jeopardy. I think he's telling me the truth. "Give me your phone, Chuck."

"Why?" he asked guardedly, removing it from his pocket. "Sarah please, don't-"

Oh, God. He thinks I'm going to off him! She snatched the phone from his hand and, producing a throwing knife, seemingly from nowhere, popped the back off of it with the edge of the blade and removed the battery. Chuck had taken an instinctive half step back when she drew the knife, but made no aggressive physical tells. Then, with a quick glance, she watched his face turn from a mask of barely contained fear to one of puzzlement when she also did it swiftly to her own. "Let's go," she said, stuffing the phones in her vest pocket, before grabbing his elbow and dragging him up the stairs.

When the workbench slid back into place Sarah peered out the tack room door, and seeing the coast was clear tugged him along out into the area between the stalls, and then froze. "It's time, Chuck."

"Time? Time for what?" Chuck's face twisted further into worry. "Sarah, I didn't know-"

"That's not what I'm saying. Yes, you have some explaining to do, but what I mean is that," she said coolly, pointing out the open doors of the barn toward the house. John Casey had just stepped off the porch and was walking toward them. "Desperate times call for desperate measures," she softly uttered, pulling him quickly back into the barn, scanning the open space with a focused gaze, before shoving him up the ladder that ascended into the hayloft.

"What? No, Sarah, if you do this… " Chuck whispered loudly

"We don't have much of a choice," she hissed back, "We've already fallen off the grid, we have to cover it up somehow. Move it, Chuck!"

Sarah pushed him up the ladder as she followed, and then delayed. Taking a step back down, she peeked out the door, and when she saw the Major's foot, dashed up the ladder. Chuck was at the top looking down at her with alarm in his eyes, and when he took her hand, and hoisted her up, she tackled him, sending the both of them tumbling into the loose straw amongst the bails stacked around them. She pressed a finger to his lips. Her eyes narrowed, and the neutral expression of concentration became a wry smile. Then she kissed him, with a carnal intensity that stunned him, and then her when he returned it in kind, and more.

The result was just what she'd wanted; a wild breathy tumble through the hay that there was no way Casey could miss. It was an Academy Award winning performance that was a victory because it was real. It became long, and reverently enthralling, like a prayer at the altar, and to her huge surprise, uninterrupted. It overwhelmed her, and apparently him, too. The danger unleashed a flood of emotions that stood in glaring contrast to anything she'd experienced before. When they finally broke that kiss, panting for breath, she giggled, loudly, and it was as genuine as it could be, despite the doubts that were flying through her head like a swarm of bats.

They gazed at each other, so caught up in the moment, knowing that everything could hang in the balance of it. Sarah could see the worry and conflict in Chuck's eyes and, looking away to center herself, she saw it, and her eyes went wide. On the post right in front of her, above his head, carved carefully in the wood, was a heart with an arrow through it; Jenny + Chuck. Time seemed to stop as she stared at it, and the conversation on the back porch that morning they'd flown back from the cabin caused every single bat to fly suddenly away with a high pitched squeal. Her lips crashed into his again, so wildly untamed. If Sarah had her way, Jenny Petersen was going to be replaced, right here and now, by Jenny Burton. Screw it! I'm in this with him unless I can prove he's otherwise! He deserves the benefit of the doubt from me now that it seems he's seen every skeleton in my own closet and he still kissed me like that!

"Walker! Bartowski! Enough of the tonsil hockey! Get your asses down here, NOW!"

- IV -

It was like standing in front of the school principal, waiting for judgment, final and irrevocable. Expulsion or the paddle. The best of two evils. Chuck had been so freaked out by the look in John Casey's eyes he never even saw his dad's Winchester model 70 and a small range bag hanging from the big man's big, meaty fingers. But something about the look in Sarah's eyes had jerked him back into the moment. She could do that, subtly, like the spoon flying off a hand grenade, with its short metallic song. The woman seemed to always see the openings in any situation, and her way of bringing them to his attention was beginning to solidify in his mind as a sharp jab to the ribs with her elbow.

"Um… Casey? Did you need directions to the range, or something?" Chuck asked, glancing at the .300 magnum in John's hand.

The big man grunted, like he already knew where everything was; and given where he and Sarah had just been, it was completely unnerving. "Seemed like the appropriate tool to use on a running flyboy and his foolish handler," the Major replied, dryly. "Put the damn batteries back in the phones. And don't insult my intelligence by trying to tell me it's for the cover."

"Casey-"

"Nope. Don't even start, Walker. Don't burst my bubble with your CIA B.S. If you ruin this old war horse's vacation with another falsehood I won't forgive you." The Major looked rather pointedly at Chuck. "And you, moron; you shouldn't just send me off to your range with a family heirloom by myself. I know how to respect and treat a fine weapon, but I also expect you to protect her like the lady she is. Don't go giving me any wrong ideas about you."

Chuck's eyebrows shot up much more than Sarah's did, but the Major's words were far from lost on the both of them. The difference was that Sarah's impassive exterior masked a lot of skepticism. What was happening here didn't fit with the 'talk' she and the major had had only last night. There was no way John Casey would approve of her being compromised by the asset (would he?). Therefore, she quickly concluded that either the NSA Major was playing them, or he thought she was controlling Chuck with the promise of her body.

If there was one thing Sarah had learned to do since she was a child running 'the game' with her father, and later as a successful field operative in the CIA, it was to trust her instincts and core intellect. Sometimes that was hard to do, on those rare occasions when her instincts were at odds with the discipline drilled into her during her years of training at The Farm. But on a few occasions her instincts and independent intellect and, yes, even her emotions were what kept her alive when training probably wouldn't have.

The always questioning, skeptical, calculating operative - molded by intense training and, irony of ironies, the ingrained expectation to follow orders, which she always did to the best of her ability - was currently in a heated battle with her instincts and emotions. Right now, Sarah's instincts, and her emotions - something she had a habit of ignoring or pushing down - were screaming at her to trust Chuck, shouting every other thought down. And they were winning. However, her training at The Farm had drilled into her that emotions were something that could also get her killed, or prevent her from carrying out her duty.

That internal battle, made worse by Chuck's big 'flash' and Casey's seemingly contradictory behavior, was causing her to question her own judgment and motives in a way she'd never questioned before.

"Beckman's expecting a call, Walker, so get a damned good explanation ready for why you and the asset fell off the Echelon net. Yer in it up to your neck now," Casey said gruffly, his scrutinizing glare and curious look dragging her away from her own 'flash' of inner-conflict.

"I'm not surprised. All this surveillance left us little choice in the matter," she deflected, her voice low while placing the batteries back in the phones as she spoke. She took Chuck's hand and placed his in his open palm, patting his closed hand after wrapping his fingers around it. "Chuck's freaking out a lot about what we're doing to his privacy. I had to have a private chat with him about it, and I didn't want anyone to know where we were doing it. I was hoping we could keep at least one place available for that by doing this."

"Uh, huh," the Major replied, with a disbelieving and derisive grunt. "Like I said last night, CIA, he's government property now… more so than the two of us," he added, when Chuck shot him an icy glare and turned beet red. "Those are the facts, Bartowski, and you know it. Our briefings should be telling you as much. If it's any consolation, they've been very productive so far."

"So you're government property too, eh, Major?" Chuck asked with incredulity, through gritted teeth.

"Yes, we are," Sarah answered for the Major solemnly, when she saw the angry look on Casey's face, clearly saying, 'well, duh, what kind of stupid question is that?' "Think, Chuck. You wanted to be a Navy officer. You would have been government property, too, willingly, if Bryce hadn't done what he did to you at the Naval Academy."

"And don't forget that," Casey growled, stepping forward to poke Chuck in the chest with a finger of steel. "I'm stuck with your sorry forgetful ass for the foreseeable future, so I may as well make the best of it. Let's shoot this." He held the rifle up with the edge of a smile and a glint in his eye.

What is his game? Sarah thought, after making her awkward leave to contact the General. Can I trust him? Or is he trying to corner me? Why would he play along with me like that? Does he really think I'm trying to handle Chuck that way? And what about Chuck? To think that Chuck might also believe she was handling him like that felt like a crushing weight, and it shocked her just as much that it affected her so. Those conflicted thoughts and many other unanswered questions were dancing a jig in her head as Sarah walked back to the house to place the secure video conference call with General Beckman from her terminal. About half way there her phone vibrated twice in her pocket, indicating a text had come in. Oh, great. That must be her. Let the Inquisition begin, she thought, as she pulled it out to read the message. However it wasn't a message from Beckman. She stopped dead in her tracks, and stared at the message totally perplexed. It wasn't displayed in the standard text format, and all it said in bright green text on a black background was, 'He's telling the truth'.

- V -

"Nice little range you've got here, Bartowski," Casey said dryly when they strode up a small tin covered awning covering a heavy wood, long range benchrest, situated under the trees next to the creek. A handmade wooden rifle rest was sitting on the table with a weathered sandbag in the cradle, and Casey's trained eye had immediately spied a number of different targets around them up against the walls of an embankment marking the one hundred year flood channel of the creek. Wooden frames for cardboard silhouettes and metal knockdown targets were arrayed haphazardly around the flat area, waiting to be set as a pistol shooting stage. Looking downrange from the bench he saw several other target frames and metal poles with steel tilt target gongs, painted bright yellow, at varying yardages from them. The farthest looked quite a distance away, on a hillside, barely visible in the wavering atmosphere caused by the afternoon sun. "That a thousand yards?"

"Yup. A thousand, five-hundred, three-hundred, one-hundred, and fifty," Chuck replied, just as dryly. "Think you can hit it?"

Casey looked at him askance as he set the rifle on the bench with the forearm on the sandbag, and grunted. It sounded like 'Don't insult me', in one deep guttural utterance. "You're damn right I can hit that. Piece of cake. How big is the little one?" he asked, referring to the smaller of the two round steel targets mounted on metal frames, while he pulled a spotting scope from the range bag, "Twelve inches?"

Chuck's eyebrows lifted again, and his eyes got bigger, "Wow. Good eye for an old war horse. Yeah, twelve inches. The bigger one's twenty-four."

Casey's smile was so veiled it was almost invisible. Almost. "What's the zero on this scope?" the big man asked, settling onto the bench to survey the targets through the Leupold glass.

"Three hundred."

The Major looked up at him and raised a brow. "Really? You anticipating the long shot as normal with this?"

"That is what it does best."

Casey grunted. Chuck wasn't sure, but it sounded like one of grudgingly respectful affirmation. "You know, you can't trust her," the Marine said matter-of-factly, after returning his eye to the scope, "She has an agenda, and she's using you to get what she wants."

"And you don't have an agenda?" Chuck said quietly, nearly a statement instead of a question. He pulled a box of cartridges from the bag, and frowned. They were from the vault. "And I'm supposed to trust the guy who broke into my gun vault?"

"Yeah, in this case you should. Sure, I've got an agenda, too; to stop the bad guys. And you, Mr. Intersect, are going to help me do it. Now, Walker, she's another story; a wildcard field operative, through-and-through… and deadly too."

"Says the man holding the rifle like it's a part of him."

"Heh. You're a damn quick study. But don't think for an instant that Walker can't use one of these almost as good as me, numbnuts, and has..." Casey didn't have to even say it had been on people the way he'd stated it. "Don't let the pretty face fool you. And she once worked with Larkin."

"I know what Sarah is, and who she's worked with," Chuck replied, with a little strain in his voice. He was still trying to make some sense as to what would have caused him to finally flash on Sarah's very compartmentalized files when she'd dragged him into that hallway, after he'd seen all the others, and why he did at all. It was like Intersect was trying to cast suspicion on Sarah as much as the Major was. He didn't even want to see them, but something was telling him he needed to, that something very important was buried within them.

Casey was staring at him intensely, studying him, and his eyes narrowed. "Flashed on her, huh?"

"Yeah, finally. Before lunch. I saw your file too, the second I saw your face. I have few illusions about how severely screwed my circumstances are." Chuck held up one of the big cartridges. "May as well check the zero first, Mr. Marine Recon sniper," he said, pointing the hollow point bullet downrange at the three-hundred yard gong.

Casey subtly raised an eyebrow and, accepting the offered magnum round, looked him in the eye. "Listen to me, Bartowski. You watch your back around Walker, capiche?" Slowly racking the round into the chamber, he flipped the bolt down. "Spot me," he said stoically, pointing to the spotting scope and a pair of electronic hearing protectors lying next to it, before putting a pair of the electronic muffs on himself and settling in to take the shot.

"Right on the money," Chuck announced, after the two-hundred grain bullet evaporated, with a clang, on the heavy, hardened steel target three-hundred yards away, dead center, causing it to flip down, and then back up.

Casey smirked, pulling the bolt open and catching the brass as the dust on the bench kicked up by the muzzle blast waffed around him. "Right where the cross-hairs said it would go. You sighted this in?"

Chuck nodded crisply in the affirmative.

"Not bad. Let's have some fun with this, make it interesting. Shall we up the ante a bit?"

"What are you suggesting? A bet? What would we wager?"

Casey shrugged, accepting another cartridge. "Oh, I don't know. Something intangible. How about flight time in that Extra 300 of yours?"

"You mean like a ride? You don't have to bet me for that, I'll gladly take you for one. Might be kind of fun to see if I can get you sick or make you G-LOC."

"Hmng. That would be fun, but no, I meant you let me fly it myself, whenever I want."

Chuck swallowed. "Okay. But that's a significant wager on my part. I'm assuming you can fly it."

Casey scowled. "Of course. You've seen my file."

"Yeah," Chuck admitted, "I wish I could say I had that many Harrier hours. You've had an... interesting career. So what's the challenge?"

"Five rounds on the thousand-yard steel. Most rings wins. If we both hit it every time the fastest one wins. How's that sound?"

"So you think you can hit that gong at a thousand yards on the first shot through that old scope?" Chuck asked a little incredulously, with a shake of his head.

Casey's grunt was dripping with confidence, like it was a certainty. "Yer damn right I do."

"Hiyo. Okay. I like a man with confidence. I'll take that bet, but you're going to have to give me something equally special to sweeten the pot in return, if I win."

"You're not going to win, so name my wager."

"Take the fraking cameras out of my bedroom."

"Heh. Fraking? Not happening, Bartowski," Casey, replied evenly, his thin smug smile turning into a frown. "We're trying to protect you. They stay."

"What's the matter? Afraid you'll lose, Major?"

Casey grunted, disparagingly. "What's the matter, is I can't fly that one by the brass… under any circumstances. So don't ask for it."

"Then at least take the one off my freakin' bed, you've got all the entrances and exits covered."

The smug, cocky smile was back, in all its nearly nonexistent glory. "What's the matter, Bartowski, afraid we'll catch you picking your nose? Or worse?"

The look Chuck returned to Casey wasn't saying frak off, it was indicating something more well known. "Put the 'F' up, or shut up, Casey."

Casey glared at him so intensely Chuck flinched, and then the big Marine snorted. "Fine. Like I said, you're not going to win this bet anyway."

"Probably not. You are the government hitman, after all."

The NSA agent grunted, like he was taking Chuck's barb as compliment, and removed a quarter from his pocket. "Call it."

"Tails," Chuck quipped, as it flipped through the air and landed with a splash of coarse sand between them.

"Your luck is holding out so far," Casey muttered, looking at the cattle skull on the newly minted Montana state quarter. "I'm assuming you want to shoot last."

"Yeah." Chuck grinned crookedly, with a cocky waggle of his brows. "Take a warm-up shot at the five-hundred gong if you think you need it."

"Hmg. Thanks flyboy, but I won't be needing it," the Major said confidently, feeding three rounds into the internal magazine, while Chuck took up position behind the spotting scope.

Reaching down to pick up some gravel by his feet, Casey watched it fall to the ground while he let it trickle through his fingers. Then he clicked the stopwatch below the rifle, and drew the butt of the stock into his shoulder with a roll of his head.

Watching a piece of fluorescent pink survey tape on the target post blow in the breeze, Chuck listened to the Marine's breathing slow, and then stop, followed by the magnum report of the big round going off. Instinctively, he blinked, but had plenty of time to get his eyes back open again as the bullet transited the three thousand feet between them and the metal target in about a second and a half. Whereupon it struck the top edge of the metal plate, and swung it back. Over two seconds later the sound of the ringing steel plate made it back, with a sharp 'plang'.

Casey wasted time, by gazing up at him with a gloating smirk, while he slowly racked another round in with the controlled feed action. "Did my file mention I used one of these a lot in Costa Gravas?" he asked readying the next shot.

"I saw it," Chuck answered with a roll of his eyes, "You're five inches high, and the windage was good. You still have four left, Major."

When the last of the five rounds smacked the plate Casey clicked the button on the top of the watch and smirked, again. "Your turn Bartowski. Five rounds, on steel, in less than a minute and ten to beat me. Good luck with that."

"I hope you're remembering this is my home turf," Chuck said with purposeful humility, while they traded places.

The corner of Casey's mouth turned up. "I doubt it will make any difference, flyboy."

"I think you may be forgetting, I'm a farmboy, too. Did my dossier mention I've been doing this competitively since shortly after my grandpa put a high-power rifle in my hand at the age of nine?"

"No," Casey replied, with a subtle scowl.

"Don't suppose you noticed how new that survey tape looks?"

Casey's scowl deepened.

Chuck smiled at him as he situated himself very purposefully behind the rifle, and then blew through the open action to cool it. His smile was a little predatory, and the Marine sniper narrowed his eyes. Chuck knew every pebble on that hillside, had been shooting from this bench for years, and he'd hand-loaded the rounds they were shooting just for this task. He knew exactly where his point of aim had to be for a myriad of conditions. To look at him casually, most wouldn't have thought so, but he was in his element. Major Casey showed incredible skill with a rifle, having hit the thousand yard plate cold like that with an unfamiliar rifle, but Chuck had the home field advantage. Also, being raised on a farm, shooting a firearm was as natural to him as breathing. Over the years this rifle had become a part of him. He took one quick glance at the survey tape he'd hung on that target pole only the week before, and clicked the stopwatch.

- VI -

Well, that went a whole lot better than I ever could have expected, Sarah mused, while she strode briskly down a path toward the heavy report of rifle fire by the creek. The General had read her the riot act when the conference call began, but her intense anger had slowly morphed into something more satisfied after Sarah explained her plan to 'keep the asset compliant', one that had been closely in line with what the General had suggested the day she'd come to the airport, and had tried to reiterate only this morning. Once Sarah 'admitted' to, and explained the discovered need to manipulate the strong willed Charles Bartowski emotionally, and why she was 'pushing the rules of procedure and protocol' to gain his trust, the video conference had gone much better.

Apparently this was a method the General preferred. Sarah knew, from a conversation with Lilly, that Diane Beckman had once been a case officer in Europe during the height of the cold war. Beckman had a very well known reputation for getting what she wanted as a handler from her foreign agents and assets, and even some of her fellow officers, in a normally very cold and manipulative fashion. Sarah's own instructor, Roan Montgomery, at the school for 'Infiltration and Inducement of Enemy Personnel' at the Farm, otherwise known as seduction school, had been one of those colleagues; working with the General, controlling several agents and assets together, as well as each other when the Berlin Wall fell. Diane Beckman knew what being compromised was, intimately, though it appeared it had happened to her only once. It was something they shared in common.

The chess game Sarah was playing was dangerous, and her opponent formidable, but circumstances had given her no other choice. As distasteful as it felt, she now had to play the role of the honeypot to make this work, and that was how she pitched it, impassively, and with an air of predatory confidence. It wasn't going to help her own reputation in Washington, one that was sorely undeserved, however, it seemed like the perfect course to take since she had accepted the fact she was already compromised. By the end of the briefing she'd been given the official go ahead to pursue a 'cover relationship' with Chuck. The only thing she had to do now was keep the reality a secret, while she tried to determine if the man she'd fallen for was truly the seemingly innocent and sincere man she thought she knew, or something much more dangerous. There were so many contradictions; his protestations to her using her feminine wiles and her body to control him as a ruse only being one of many. If Chuck had been sincere about protecting her honor last night, and deep down she knew he was, her current decision would not go over well with him.

Her mind was in a turmoil about all that. So much conflicting information. Huge secrets. And strange text messages in green font, in essence asking her to trust him. The sound of the heavy rifle report was getting louder, and then silenced. Over the course of the last day, it seemed that just when she felt like she could trust what her heart and brain were telling her, something threw it all off kilter again, like it did when she rounded a thicket of willows and saw Chuck Bartowski with a bolt action rifle in his hands. And BOOM. The late afternoon sunlight was coming cross the scene just right, and she could see the shock wave of the supersonic bullet arcing out into the distance, followed by the authoritative sound of lead on steel a couple of seconds later.

Sarah watched him cycle the bolt, aim, then fire again. A flash of vaporized lead. The target was very far away. She could barely see it, yellow, and round, swinging down, and up. 'PLANG'. She picked up the pace, but tried to stay quiet so she wouldn't distract him. Another shot. So close together. With the same result. Sarah stopped, about thirty feet away, and her eyes grew large, as she watched him cycle the bolt with a thumb and forefinger, like a pro, with intense concentration etched on his face. She imagined that she didn't look much different than Casey, with his mouth hanging open, dumbstruck, while he gazed through the spotting scope.

Two more thunderous shots split the afternoon calm, each of them hitting the target with a loud dull ringing report that echoed across the hills. Then she saw Chuck reach under the rifle and hold something up in front of Major Casey's face. A stopwatch? What the hell is going on here?

"Sonofabitch. You sandbagged me," Casey mumbled with stunned shock, staring at a stopwatch face that displayed forty-seven seconds.

"I expect you to pay up, Mr. Force Recon Sniper, Sir," Chuck said respectfully, smiling thinly, "I know that had to sting, and I'm not the type of winner to gloat... much. So, I'm going to pay up too. Go ahead and fly the Extra anytime you feel like it."

"What!?" Her voice had shot up an octave, and Sarah's mask had completely slipped as she stared at him in abject disbelief. Then she saw Chuck look up at her suddenly, and cast her a guilty smile. Did I just say that out loud?

A/N - Hmm. No flying in this chapter, unless their flight into the hayloft counts. There will be some aviating in the next one.