A/N So Chuck and Casey, flying coach, managed to get to the café right behind Sarah and Shaw, who had to have taken some official government plane and left at least an hour before them. Right.
Here's part 5 of 6.
"This wasn't a Red Op."
"Lucky guess."
"He wanted to be fired?"
"Oops."
Just outside the casa de Bartowski y Grimes…
"Nobody. Move," said Ellie, in a voice that stopped a few insects as they foraged. She stepped over the sill of the window, latching it shut behind her and blocking it with her body as if there wasn't a perfectly good door on the other side of the room. Which, effectively…there wasn't. "Now," she said, glaring equally at the lot of them. "Who wants to be the first to tell me that this is complicated?"
Three pairs of male eyes traded glances. "Uh," said Chuck, but then his phone rang. With a weak grin, he lifted it to his ear. "Hello?"
Ellie stepped forward and grabbed his wrist, pulling the phone out to where she could hear a man talk. "Dude, you better shut it down. Ellie's gonna be there any second."
Ellie took the phone. "Sweetie, do you know where you need to be? Right now?" She listened for less than a second. "Good, we'll see you soon." She tossed the phone back to her brother and glared at them all. "Well? Complicated?"
"Um, well, no, sis," said Chuck. "Casey's a Federal agent, I'm an agent. Sarah's an agent too, and right now she's alone with a man who we think wants to kill her unless I can get to where she is so I can stop that from happening." He choked to a halt, out of breath.
Ellie watched him gulp air. "And how do you plan to do that?"
"Extensive CIA training, computer-generated reflexes, and a thousand hours of Duck Hunt. My tranq guns are secured at our base, don't worry, I don't use real guns. I mean, normal guns. Bullets and stuff. I can also get whatever intel we have on Shaw, Casey, can you access the computer remotely and have all that stuff load out there?"
"Can I move?" asked Casey, watching Ellie like a hawk watches a much bigger and angrier hawk. "I need to go back to my gear."
"I see a computer right there," said Ellie.
"He needs backup," said Casey. "He needs me with him. I could get, I mean, he could get shot."
"I'm going to Edwards," said Chuck, pulling his coat out of the closet. His gloves and hat fell onto the floor and he scooped them up. "Call the General, get me a ride. They've got a big lead, so I need to be more-plane-than-them. Wish me luck." He gave the room a thumb's-up.
Ellie's memory flashed before her scenes of a MiB doing the same thing, in the van that first time, collecting that terrible phone, outside the restaurant. In her mind those images were overlaid by the reality before her, the mask peeled away, and she saw Chuck's face, his compassion, his terror. He kept her husband safe. He watched over both of them, keeping them safe. The images held her as her brother fled the room, bumping into Devon on the way in. "Sorry. Thanks. Sorry."
Devon stayed where he was, staring at his scary hot wife. "Uh…"
She let Chuck get away. He'd be back. "You two sit there," said Ellie, pointing at the bed. Devon and Morgan sank down, looking like they had just discovered the difference between bravery and the absence of fear. "John, you sit there," she continued, pointing at the computer chair. "I'll get started with these two, but I doubt it will take long to wring them both completely dry and you were right about my brother needing help, so don't waste time."
Up in the air somewhere…
Chuck looked down at the tablet in his hands, a much lighter-weight substitute for the reams of paper he'd have had to take on a commercial flight. This flight, just to get him across the country to a slower connection in DC, was too weight-sensitive. The tablet held everything he had, everything Casey had managed to find of Shaw's career. Many years, many missions, and that was only the stuff they knew about.
All of it would be useless, he knew that going in. He could flash on it all, but nothing in there would have any bearing on what Shaw was doing now. Only in the carefully walled off spaces between those missions, somewhere, would he find what he needed to know.
The tablet buzzed, a final communication coming in.
You're probably freaking out right about now, so cut it out. You don't have time for that. Focus on the mission. Shaw knows about your ladyfeelings, he knows about the thing, he even knows a little about being a spy, but for some reason he's always had this strange idea that you were some kind of idiot. Don't know where he got that from, but use it. Be Chuck Bartowski, the smart guy from Stanford. He won't expect that, God knows I don't.
And don't screw this up. I need you two to come back so I can tell you all about the wonderful night I'm having.
Chuck smiled. He knows me so well. Poor Casey. "Focus on the mission," he said to himself.
"Sir?" said a voice in his ears. "Are you talking to me?"
"No. Just myself. 'Focus on the mission.' Do what I have to do." What only I can do.
"You're a pretty smart guy, that sounds like a good flight plan," said the pilot. "I'll shut up now."
Chuck forgot him immediately, and opened the tracking app. Somewhere far ahead, Sarah's tracker beeped reassuringly in the dark. Follow that and he'd find her. He closed his eyes. He had to go into this fresh.
In another piece of air…
Sarah stood as Shaw came out of the bathroom. "Sit down, Shaw."
"Okay," said Shaw. "I was going to do that anyway." He looked at the gun in her hand. "What's that for?"
Sarah shot him, one dart to the chest. As his eyes closed she said, "I need to sleep, and I don't trust you." When he was out, she shifted his seat to a sleeping configuration. She could have just left him like that and let him wake up as stiff as a board, but that would be petty.
Next morning, in Burbank…
Casey opened his door at the first knock. He'd managed to escape Ellie's custody last night, but only because he had to arrange that jet for Chuck and he couldn't very well do that in front of her. She'd made him promise to continue in the morning and the General had given him permission to keep that promise, within limits.
Ellie, like all the best interrogators (and he'd been tortured by some of the best), looked fresh as a daisy, damn her. Casey had a mug of blackest and bitterest in hand, and waved her in with it. The main room was bare, but for his bonsai and Chuck's computer, still running its program under his care. He sat in the chair, and she started in on him, armed with everything those other two had given up, and a night to think about it.
Sarah stood at the top of the stairs, watching Shaw unsteadily debark. She scanned the landing field reflexively, as dark now as the other had been when they left. Left LA, left Chuck. Left home, to come back to this place, as opposite of 'home' as she could get, on the same planet. "I hate Paris."
"Me, too," said Shaw.
"Don't think that that gives us anything in common, Shaw." Sarah saw a cab approaching. "There's our ride."
"Where to?" asked Shaw. "The embassy?"
"No," said Sarah. "We're looking for a traitor. Until I know how that footage got to the Ring, I'm not going to trust official channels. We're going to the scene of the crime."
Casey's head was spinning, trying to remember what he'd said, what he could say, and what he absolutely must not say. "Did I tell you about the time he prevented World War Three?" No Intersect, just a video game. That should be safe.
"Glad to hear it," said Ellie, "But that's not what I asked."
"I can't tell you that, Ellie," he tried not to whine. "It's classified. I couldn't tell you if you were God. Not without authorization."
"That red-haired woman on the TV?" Great, so she'd seen that, too. "The one with the jet, that you can call up in the middle of the night at an Air Force Base, for God's sake?"
"Yeah, that's her."
"Call her again."
"I would rather set my hair on fire and have you put it out with a sledgehammer," said Casey. "Have you no mercy?"
"I have a brother." And his computer chose that moment to start blinking and making a beeping sound. Casey leapt for the keyboard, faster than he would have leapt on a live hand grenade but not by much. "What's going on?" asked Ellie.
"Captured intel," said Casey. "Chuck had a program running to decrypt it, looks like it finished. I'm gonna have to ask you to–"
"Who is that?" asked Ellie. "I've seen her somewhere."
The screen showed an image of a woman, dark-haired, very attractive, smiling, not at the camera, but at whoever held it. "Maybe you saw her at the, um, around," said Casey, not that it mattered. Once Ellie turned her thoughts that way, the Orange Orange would be exposed, but he wouldn't be the one to expose it. "Her name is Jones."
The image lurched into motion, a home movie slowed to a series of still images by the decryption. The background could have been a lot of places, an old city or an older section of a new city. Wait a minute...
She sat in darkness, her best friend a dead soldier. Another one. She hated this city, once a place she dreamed of, but that was before her dream came true, as is often the case. Now she knew the ugliness that lay underneath the glitz. What she wouldn't give to be able to succumb to the glamour of it all again.
She'd been here less than a week.
On the table, her phone buzzed, an alarm going off. About time. She gathered up her things, few enough and all kept one go-bag for quick and easy departures. She left the bottles where they were, already wiped clean. A warning for the next poor schmuck.
The General had even arranged a driver. At his respectful "Where to, sir?", Chuck opened his app. Sarah's tracker was in motion, but not on a direct line from the airport. Odd. He touched history, and saw a path that webbed a small section of the city. What the hell?
His tablet buzzed. "Hold on a sec," he told the driver, as he opened the message. Jones is a ringer for Evelyn Shaw. It came with some images, smiling Evelyn and shot Evelyn and dead Evelyn, with Sarah looking scared in the foreground.
Chuck gave the driver an address, and told him to hurry.
Sarah and Shaw walked to the intersection, having gotten out of the cab a block early. "I never thought I'd be back here," said Sarah to no one.
"I come back often," said Shaw, "But this will be my last time, I think."
That sounded vague, and vague was bad. Sarah turned to face him, her hand automatically going for her gun. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Daniel!"
A trap! Sarah spun, her gun aimed at a figure just stepping out of the shadows, when she felt a prick in her neck and a burst of fire along every nerve in her body. She locked up, muscles fighting each other.
Shaw moved in front of her, but she couldn't pull the trigger. She lowered the gun when he pushed, her larger muscles pulling down. "Not this time, Agent Walker," he said softly. "Not this time. I'm here to save her this time. You won't get your chance to kill her, not when I'm here to kill you."
"Daniel? What's she doing here?" Sam Jones came into the light, her hair, her appearance so much like Evelyn Shaw's that night that Sarah thought she was seeing a ghost. "She'd better not be the guest you mentioned."
"She's here to kill you," said Shaw, and Jones stopped with a gasp. Sarah tried to force out a negation but the only thing that came out was a low-pitched moan that only Shaw heard. "They think you've been turned. Graham ordered your death–"
"Director Graham?" said Jones, confused. "He's been dead for years."
"Beckman, then. The government," rambled Shaw. Sarah saw the barest flicker as he re-arranged his reality to suit the occasional inconvenient fact. "It doesn't matter. They're all the same, and I'll destroy them all for it. They betrayed the wrong man."
"What are you talking about?" said Jones. "It's me she's after, you just said so. And where's the rest of them?"
"They're not coming," said Shaw with a smirk. "She thought she knocked me out, in the plane, but I took a tranq antagonist in the bathroom. She's got no trackers, no way for anyone to find the body."
"Body? What body?" Jones looked at Shaw trying to pull Sarah's gun from her grip. "Her body? Don't be ridiculous, you can't kill her, we're on the same side."
"Not anymore," said Shaw. "There's only our side, Eve, yours and mine."
Jones frowned. "Who's Eve?"
Shaw let go of the gun. "How about we show Agent Walker how beautiful the river is at night…"
"Who's Eve?"
"Sarah!" Chuck shouted, running up the street.
"Eve, your gun," said Shaw. When she hesitated, Shaw grabbed her bag, pulling out her pistol and throwing the rest on the ground. He stepped around Sarah and put the gun to her head. "Stop there, Chuck. I have nothing against you, but Walker has to die for what she did to my wife."
Jones paused, reaching for her bag. "You have a wife?"
"Had," said Chuck. "Evelyn Shaw, killed five years ago by Agent Sarah Walker, in the last official Red Test ever given."
"But what about my Red Test?" wailed Jones. "I killed that guy!"
"Unsanctioned," said Chuck.
"Unsanctioned?" Jones grabbed her bag off the ground, started hitting Shaw with it, shrieking, "You told me to do it! You said it make me one of the elite, the best of the best! You murdered my dreams, bastard!"
"We all thought you were the mole," said Chuck.
Jones stopped hitting Shaw. "I'm not a mole," she said in total confusion.
"I needed to give Walker a reason to come to Paris," said Shaw, ignoring Jones. "How'd you find us?"
"You may have left her tracker in a cab but you carry yours with you wherever you go." Chuck held up his tablet, with the picture of a toppling Eve glowing from the screen. "I've seen the pictures, Shaw. This is where Eve died." His finger slid along the screen, and a new picture moved over to take its place, a young woman, smiling for the camera.
"That's me," said Jones. "That's Eve? Is that what this was all about? These clothes?" She grabbed her head. "This hair?"
Sarah toppled, pulling Shaw over with her. Eve swung her bag around and caught him under the jaw, snapping his head back and making him let go of Sarah. Chuck ran forward and caught Sarah as Jones drove Shaw back toward the bridge like a berserker, screaming obscenities. Shaw either could not or would not resist her, until the low wall of the bridge caught him behind the back. He grabbed the bag on the next swing and pulled Jones in close. "Stop hitting me."
"Let go of me, you psycho! Maybe my career is dead but you and I are more dead."
"I did all this for you, Eve," said Shaw. "I did everything for you."
"My name's not Eve!" She kneed him in the groin.
Shaw bent, slightly, but he didn't let go, and when he came back up the gun came up with him.
"No," whispered Sarah. She tried to raise her arm but the prolonged stress on her muscles had left them all exhausted. "Chuck…"
Chuck raised her arm for her, slid his arm down to her wrist, her hand. His finger slid over hers on the trigger. "Shaw, don't do this," he yelled.
"Stay out of this, Chuck," shouted Shaw. "This is between me and my wife!" His gun arm came up, dragging Jones in close.
Sarah's finger twitched, and Chuck's finger twitched more. Together they squeezed the trigger, her gun booming in their joined hands. A red spot bloomed on Shaw's chest, followed by another, and then another. Sarah sank to the ground as Shaw stumbled, and Chuck knelt with her, holding her upright.
Shaw fell off the bridge, his hand clamped on Jones' wrist with all his remaining strength. She fell half over the wall, screaming, and Chuck left Sarah kneeling to race forward and grab her arm. Shaw stared up at her, his grip weakening. Chuck was tempted to release the catch on her watch, but Shaw let go first, plunging into the cold, dark water far below.
Jones fell backward, kicking, and Chuck let her go, racing back to hold Sarah before she toppled. He took the gun from her hand, putting it in his pocket, along with the paralyzer. He signaled for the driver, as they waited together, watching a beautiful young woman sob among the shards of her life.
A/N2 A bit long, a bit sad, but this was supposed to be a sad season, even sadder than I made it here. I usually don't make my OCs so important to the story, and Jones wasn't meant to be anything at the start, but then Shaw had to go and save her life. Please drop me a line and tell me what you think of this rewrite so far.