A/N Probably my least favorite segment of Pink Slip, Chuck at his most foolish. Also Casey being pretty foolish, but in this story I move that onto an OC who can't really be blamed for it.
"Are you near a Buy More?"
"He's forgotten you."
"Don't do it again."
"Why should I ruin your evening?"
Chuck sat at his table, trying to figure out the best way to eat squid. A beautiful brunette–she said her name was Jones but he didn't believe it–sat with him, apparently a couple having a night out, seeing and being seen. "Agent Carmichael, what are you doing here?" she asked quietly.
The question wasn't hers, of course, but it would have looked odd for a well-dressed patron to be chatting with the bartender. The questions had to be kept vague, of course, with everyone on the line, but there should be no reason to mention the Intersect. Still, the question made Chuck uncomfortable. Big or small, and in this environment it could be either, the mission shouldn't need him, but to say that he was here to see Sarah would be embarrassing for both of them. To say to one woman that he was here to see another also made him feel guilty, thank you very much for that, Ellie. "Just…here for the calamari," he said, forcing himself to swallow.
"Plenty of places to get that…um…" Chuck wondered what kind of endearing, Casey-an epithet she'd just swallowed, rather than pass on to him. Otherwise, she was doing a good job copying his style. "This is just a simple courier exchange. Gilles, the guy with Walker, he's the mark. He's meeting with a Ring operative."
"The Ring?" said Chuck. "They killed Bryce."
Jones ignored his outburst. "The moment the Ring courier meets Gilles, we strike. So get out before you spook Javier."
"Javier?" asked Chuck. "Who's Javier?"
"The courier," said Jones in her own voice, since Casey couldn't be bothered to answer. "And why he's telling you all this, I don't know."
Chuck shrugged. "Because he's learned over the years we've worked together that I do much better and can be trusted with more information, rather than less."
She leaned closer, over the table. "I've just been told to get you out of here, my choice how."
Brunette cleavage. Sarah would skin him. Ellie would help. He stared into her…frown. "How?"
"Hot passion or maybe just kick your ass," she said demurely. "I'm considering the latter. This op is a big deal for me, and now I might miss it because of you." She made a face. "Damn. Kicking your ass is out. Okay, hot passion it is."
He leaned in closer, too, and said softly, "There are always video games."
On the other side of the room, a beautiful blonde in a stunning blue dress started coughing, and took a sip of water.
Jones laughed, a light merry tinkle, and placed her hand on his arm. They stood, their intentions, or at least her intentions, very plain. She all but dragged him out the door, but once in the parking lot she shoved him away. "Fine, you're out. Get lost, Carmichael."
"You mean that's it?" asked Chuck. "You're not going to make sure I leave the scene?"
"You've left it," she said. "You can't go back in without looking like someone else, and believe me, no one would mistake you for someone else. I, on the other hand, am a pair of boobs in a dress. Lose the dress, hide the boobs, and I'm in like Flynn."
"No one would ever believe that a woman as beautiful as you was a waitress," said Chuck.
"Aw, that's sweet," she said. "Now get lost so I can change. Hopefully I can get back inside before Cruz shows up." She walked away, toward a large panel wagon in the shadows, presumably mission control.
"Cruz?" said Chuck.
"The courier," she said again. "Javier Cruz."
Chuck flashed, but no one was there to see it. "He's not a courier, he's an assassin," he said, but the lady was too far to hear, and that wasn't the sort of thing to shout across a parking lot. Not to mention that she was clearly not to be trusted with sensitive data, if she was willing to toss target designations around in an unsecured environment.
Casey! He had to tell Casey, but Miss Anger Management over there had taken her transmitter with her. He ran around the back of the building, shedding his fancy jacket and tossing it behind a bush. As he approached the back door he spotted a man dressed in a costume, carrying a guitar case. Feeling vaguely like the Terminator, he scanned the man for size and concluded he was a reasonable match. "Sorry," he said, giving the man a human equivalent of a Vulcan neck pinch and lowering him to the ground gently. "National security."
Feeling mildly relieved that his pants already were a decent match for the suit jacket, and therefore that he would not have to strip the poor guitarist completely, Chuck made his way into the kitchen. Taking some handfuls of water from the sink, he slicked his hair back and walked out onto the floor unnoticed. That was good. All he needed was to get word to Casey, lose the jacket and guitar, and he would be out of there.
Someone pounced on him, a large lady with a headset. "You're late. The others are already waiting for you." She dragged him off to the stage, where the rest of the band, their costumes matching his, waited, tuning up. The spotlight came on, making sure everyone in the room got a good look.
This time Casey was first to recognize him. "Walker, we have a situation."
She looked around to see what he was seeing, but kept any reactions she may have had to herself. "Isn't that the guy you hit?" asked Gilles.
"It was just a slap," said Sarah, distantly. "Not so much for the kiss as for thinking I wanted one." She turned back to her 'date' for the evening. "He could never accept that I loved mariachi music more than him."
Gilles watched Chuck fumble with the guitar. "Do you want me to have my guys take care of him?"
"No," said Sarah. "Just ignore him."
Chuck held the guitar awkwardly in his hands, knowing what it should look like but doubting that it looked what he was doing. He placed his fingers over the strings and plucked at them, wincing at the sour notes.
"He's gonna blow the op," said Casey urgently.
Sarah looked back at Chuck. "Give him a second."
Chuck saw her look, by turns intent, fearful, annoyed, ultimately confident. He looked down at the guitar in his hands and flashed. Instantly it was transformed, and he strummed it perfectly, his hands moving on the body, on the neck, like a lover. Except that something was wrong. When his fingers ran over the frets he could feel them, like little rods. He looked at the neck. Not rods, needles. Or darts. Then he remembered why he'd come back in the first place. He looked up at Casey, mouthing, "Assassin."
Casey saw it, and looked around. "Where?"
Chuck looked around. Without his darts, the assassin's Plan A was out. What would be his Plan B?
Outside the restaurant, a man dressed in the remains of a costume sat up, head aching. His jacket and guitar were gone. Unfortunate. He tore off his disguise and went back for his guns. The deaths were supposed to look like food poisoning, but now they would have to look like lead poisoning.
Sarah saw Casey's alertness increase, and decided to move to a less vulnerable position. "Dance with me," she said, leading Gilles away from their table. "Make him jealous."
Chuck couldn't see anyone who looked like the man he'd taken the jacket from. He couldn't think of any way to signal the information to Casey. He needed a courier of his own, one of the waiters.
"Casey?" he hissed, as loudly as he dared. "Casey!"
Chuck may not have been included in the mission prep but he'd been part of Casey's team long enough for Casey to know something was wrong, and he need to know what, right now.
Chuck saw Sarah dancing with Gilles, saw Gilles putting his hands–! Suddenly the guitar's neck was Gilles' neck, the little darts in his fingers, ready to be thrown if his target should get close enough. His other hand fumbled on the strings, and he fought with his anger.
Suddenly he saw a targeting light slide up Gilles' leg, then Sarah's leg as they danced, then Gilles again, then Sarah. He played faster.
Casey heard the tempo increase. Something was happening right now! He raised his transmitter. "Who's nearest the stage?"
Jones, newly arrived in the kitchen and dressed as a server, grabbed a tray from the stack in the kitchen. "I am, sir."
"Get to the stage, Jones, and have a word with that guitarist. Now."
"On it."
Chuck's fingers were beginning to hurt, typist's fingers no match for the kind of toughness guitar strings required. He saw Casey jerk his chin stage left, and turned that way. A long tube fell out of his sleeve, falling to the floor in front of Agent Jones' eyes.
She looked up, seeing the darts in Chuck's fingers and instantly connected them to the tube. "Gun!" she shouted, flinging her tray discus-like into the guitar, following it up onto the stage to tackle Chuck in a loud and discordant tangle of instruments. Every agent in the place reacted instinctively, pulling out their own weapons and containing the situation with ruthless efficiency.
"Hold fire!" bellowed Casey in his battlefield voice. "Everybody stand down. Not you." He pointed, and the people with eyes on Gilles and his men raised their weapons. Gilles, for his part, had his hands up and kept them there.
Casey went to the stage, where several of his large team had separated everyone and brought Jones and Chuck upright. "All right, Jones, let's have it."
"Sir," she said. "I approached the stage as directed and saw a tube fall from the guitarist's sleeve. That tube." She pointed, and one of the men on stage picked it up and handed it to Casey. "I saw something in the guitarist's hands, like blowgun darts, and I acted, sir."
"Yes, and well done, Agent Jones," said Chuck, reaching up to ruffle his hair.
"Agent Carmichael?" said Jones.
Chuck smiled at her, smoothing the jacket. "Not exactly boobs in a dress, but it did what I needed it to do." He turned to Casey, and reported, "I found the darts on the guitar, I don't know where they are now, but only after I'd started playing. I didn't know the blowgun was in the sleeve."
Casey acknowledged the report with a standard-issue grunt. "What were you trying to tell me, Carmichael?"
"The guitarist was as tall as me, obviously, short curly brown hair, mustache. I didn't see him but I saw targeting lights on Sarah and Gilles before Jones took me down."
"Anybody see anyone like that?" shouted Casey to the room at large. No one answered in the affirmative. "Dammit. Okay. Well, better a blown op than a dead agent." But not by much, apparently. "Good job, you two."
Javier Cruz ducked into the bushes around the restaurant, as back-up agents poured out of the van. One of them stumbled across his disguise, the wig and mustache, and he cursed his bad luck. At least they had not discovered him.
His foot caught on something, and he reached down. A coat? That man, up on the stage, playing the guitar was such great skill but such little passione…that man had taken his jacket, and his weapons. Could this be his own jacket? He felt the material, but nothing felt weapon-like to his fingers. A paper crinkled in one of the pockets, and he felt inside. He kept the paper and dropped the coat, in case it had trackers in it. He aimed the laser sight of his gun at the paper. A receipt from a Buy More, for…cheese balls?
A/N2 I have no plans for Jones to reappear, but then I never do.