Anna and Lester stared stupidly after Casey as his car shot across three lanes of traffic and the grassy median. He elbowed his way onto the southbound freeway, forcing the driver of a late model Mustang to slam on the brakes. The driver flipped Casey the bird. Luckily for the driver, Casey cared about as much about the gesture as the tracks his squealing tires left on the pavement.

Right now, the sole focus of Casey's attention was Chuck Bartowski. Either he had somehow managed to get his friends away before he was captured, or he had set up a seventy-mile wild goose chase. Even worse, he had set up the chase by putting six figures worth of government equipment into the hands of Wu and Patel.

Casey's face twisted into an angry grimace. Bartowski had better hope that he was heading for some dark hole to be tortured, because if not, once Casey found Bartowski, the dark hole would be a fairy tale by comparison.

After a moment of fantasy involving Bartowski, a length of rope and a ticked-off rattlesnake, Casey's phone was at his ear. Walker answered quickly, anxiously.

"Walker here."

"Bartowski wasn't with the Herder."

"What?!"

"He gave the car to Patel and Wu and fed them a Nerd Herd job in Barstow. It's looking more and more like Bartowski's running."

Casey could almost hear the gears in her head turning. "Somebody still could have grabbed him," she said stubbornly.

"He wouldn't give that car to Anna and Lester by accident. Bartowski knew we'd activate the beacon, and he knew we'd come after it. He's trying to ditch us."

Her initial silence suggested that she had run out of reasons to argue. Her prolonged silence suggested that she had run out of ideas for finding Bartowski.

Casey shifted over a lane to skip past a bright white pick-up. He frowned. Bartowski taking off made little enough sense, but Bartowski taking off without Walker made zero sense. Unless Walker was part of it. Unless Walker was playing Casey as well. She was good enough to pull it off.

That thought evaporated when she finally spoke again. "Casey, do you know why he might be running?" she asked. Her voice was a little quieter and almost vulnerable.

If she was acting, it was a virtuoso performance.

Casey gathered his thoughts. He didn't want Walker to find out about his efforts to distance Bartowski from her, but at the same time, a simple 'I don't know' would just raise her suspicions. He had to tread carefully.

"Now that I think about it, he has been acting a little strangely lately," he said. "He's been getting more and more paranoid, like he doesn't trust me. It happens with assets. 'Long-term field exposure for assets tends to foster a proclivity towards dementia and …'"

"'… psychosis the longer they are subjected to stressful situations beyond their ken.' I took the same training. But Casey, do you really think he took off because he became hyperparanoid from too many missions?

"At this point, I'm not sure we can rule out anything."

"I think we can rule out a mental breakdown. I haven't noticed any symptoms."

The best defense was a good offense. "Maybe you were distracted."

"Distracted?! By what, exactly?"

"A handler should be focused on an asset's mind and not his … other parts." He thought he caught the slightest of hitches in her next breath. He pushed his advantage. "Might have kept you from seeing what was right in front of your nose. Very unprofessional, wouldn't you agree?"

"As opposed to, say, taking out your frustrations on a fellow agent while said asset is missing? And what exactly is your excuse for not noticing any symptoms before now?"

Casey had to give Walker one thing - she was a cool customer when the pressure was on. That was just one of many things that made her a great partner, probably the best he'd ever had.

And that made all of this that much harder.

Casey dodged around a Jeep that was lollygagging in the left lane. He slowed down long enough to shoot a dirty look at the driver, a young man more interested in sending text messages than watching the road. As Casey shoved the accelerator back down to the floor, he said, "Fine, let's rule out a breakdown. Any luck with the surveillance?" he said.

"The CIA agents had to be Fulcrum. They carried Vesper-53's, devices that jammed all the cameras within 50 feet. The cameras out front, inside the store, and covering the loading dock all started recording snow about the time Delgado walked into the Buy More."

"Fantastic. So the good news is that we're sure these guys were Fulcrum. The bad is that we still have no indication who decided to gift them with a little nap, and we haven't got the faintest idea where Bartowski went."

"Well, that's only partially true. A camera covering the west exterior of the store caught a shot of Chuck walking with Jeff."

Finally, they had something. "Bartowski and Barnes left together?"

"Yes. Chuck looked like he was in a hurry. Jeff looked like he didn't have a clue what was going on."

"That last part doesn't mean much. That's pretty much Barnes's day-to-day existence."

"At least we verified that Chuck left on his own."

Casey thought for a moment. "Could Barnes and Bartowski have left in Barnes's van?"

"Nope. I checked. Jeff, Lester, Anna – all their vehicles are still in the parking lot."

"Did Chuck call anybody?"

"No calls from Chuck's phone. I also checked all calls placed from the phones of Chuck's friends. Nothing of note."

"What about locating Jeff or Morgan?"

"Also not picking up. I doubt that's a big deal. If Lester and Anna didn't know anything, I don't think Chuck would endanger any of them by telling them anything important."

"Not to mention that they tend to blab pretty easily. Texts? Email? Bank or credit cards?"

"Casey, I have done this before. Nothing there either, but we're watching."

"Well, he's not going to get too far without popping up somewhere on the grid. Keep on it." He suppressed a growl of frustration and rubbed the back of his neck. "We got anything else?"

"Shafai is in custody, but predictably, she's not talking. The CIA team finished with the Weinerlicious, so I've got them working on obtaining security footage from the various tenants. Maybe we can reconstruct how Chuck left the mall."

"That's pretty thin."

"I'm open to suggestions."

He had none for her, but a few choice ones for the drivers in his way. He slalomed through three more cars, cursing under his breath.

Up ahead, the road started climbing towards Cajon Pass. He started doing the math on how far ahead Bartowski would be by the time Casey got back to Echo Park, and he came up with a simple answer. Too far. Far enough that reeling Bartowski back in wasn't going to be the simple exercise he had envisioned.

Casey had prepared for many contingencies in the hours he had spent on Chuck watch, but had given little thought to a scenario where Chuck fled their custody. Luckily, training sometimes superceded thought, and Casey had an ace in the hole that he intended to deploy.

Sarah hung up her phone with a frown. She didn't like holding out on her partner, especially when Chuck might be in danger. However, since Casey was holding out on her, she found it necessary to return the favor.

Before the Fulcrum agents had entered the Buy More, the store's surveillance network had worked just fine. Cameras captured Big Mike delivering a package to Chuck and the care Chuck took in opening it. The same cameras caught Casey watching Chuck the entire time. Casey hadn't seen fit to mention it, and she could only come up with a couple of reasons why he might omit something that important. Her best guess was that Casey was determined to find Chuck first, without her involvement. More unlikely, but far more frightening, was the idea that Casey had known about the package in advance and didn't want her to find it. Either way, he clearly had his own agenda.

This wasn't the first time Casey had held out on her. In the past, she'd written those instances off as a character flaw. Casey liked to feel superior, so he'd held some things back. She had let some minor things go, even ignored a few not-so-minor things that really bothered her, because she had believed Casey had Chuck's best interests at heart. But with Casey's motives unclear while Chuck potentially was in danger, she wasn't about to be so understanding. She had to get to Chuck first.

She looked down at the Nerd Herd desk, taking one more look at the remains of the packaging that she had retrieved from where Chuck had stashed them. The remains told her little, other than somebody had gone through great lengths to hide the package's origin. The order had disappeared from the Globex delivery system, if it had ever been there. The CIA had brought in the courier for questioning, but initial reports were that he thought it was a legit delivery. Unless they dragged something different out of him, the packaging itself was a dead end.

Sarah had found more useful information from some high-angle camera footage. Somebody had sent Chuck a phone and made a call to him. The audio wasn't available on their network of bugs, as the phone contained the same type of anti-eavesdropping device that her own phone carried. However, she had been able to watch Chuck's reactions during the conversation, had been able to see him go through a range of emotions before hiding the packaging and leaving with a nervous determination.

She was a little worried that Chuck was being blackmailed. The manila envelope could easily have contained photographs to demonstrate how vulnerable his friends and family were. Just in case, she had assigned agents to watch Ellie and Awesome, and she'd assign one to Morgan as soon as she could find him. She was leaving nothing to chance.

Without knowing who the caller was, guessing his game was all but impossible. She was glad to have some idea where the reason for Chuck's sudden departure originated, but really that was just a silver lining. She still had no idea whether he was running away or following instructions.

Frustrated, Sarah replaced the packaging in the file cabinet to avoid tipping off Casey and pursued her only other lead. She walked to the parking lot to try to track Chuck's trail through the forest of SUVs and import sedans.

People tended to walk the shortest possible path, so normally determining where a person was heading was just an exercise in extrapolation. However, she couldn't rule out the idea that Chuck was sharp enough to throw off pursuit by heading in the wrong direction. Casey might underestimate Chuck, but Sarah wouldn't. She knew him too well.

His path pointed to a bank of stores in an adjacent strip. She deliberately took an oblique route further into the parking lot so she could survey the store names and see if any jumped out at her. She spotted what she was looking for almost immediately, nestled between a bead shop and an eBay retailer. Spy Hard was owned by one of Chuck's friends. It was a likely destination.

She had been in the store a time or two, as she had every store in the plaza and the neighboring mall. With Chuck working at the Buy More, this was home turf, and it was her job to know every corner of the complex. She knew the store's owner was Jay Davis, a graduate of a local technical school who'd applied to join several intelligence organizations and been denied. After that, he bounced around a few area companies doing various low-level tech jobs before starting up the store with a small inheritance left by his grandmother. He seemed clean, but right now everyone was a suspect.

Energized by the possibility of finally getting somewhere, her stride quickened. She crossed the intervening distance and pushed open the door to the shop. At the moment, the would-be agent was nowhere to be seen. She took a quick moment to re-familiarize herself with the store's layout, then called out, "Hello?"

For a long moment, there was only silence. Then, she detected movement beyond the maze of bookcases that filled the store. A chair rolled across a hard floor. Something solid was set down on a table. Cautious footsteps grew louder as somebody approached.

Sarah put on her friendliest smile as Jay emerged from between two sets of high bookcases, a nervous expression painted on his face. He stopped at a safe distance. "You're Sarah, right?" he said without preamble.

Her smile faded slightly. "That's right."

"Chuck told me that you'd probably be by. You or a man named John Casey. I was hoping it would be you."

"Why's that?"

Jay paused as if a single misspoken word could lead to something very bad. He finally said, "Because Chuck told me that I could trust you. He said if you gave me your word that you wouldn't let anything happen to me, I'd be fine. John Casey … well, let's just say Chuck strongly suggested I talk to you."

"What can you tell me?"

He eyed her carefully. "Your word first, if you don't mind. Chuck told me that if you give me your word, I should go ahead and tell you everything I know."

Sarah didn't like making deals blindly, but time was wasting and she needed the information. "You have my word," she said. "If you tell me everything, and I mean everything, I'll make sure nothing happens to you."

Jay's shoulders dropped as he took in a relieved breath. He even managed a small smile. "Thank you."

"Tell me what you know."

Sarah followed Jay as he walked towards the register. He said, "Chuck told me that there are two pieces of information that you'd want. The first is that he borrowed my car."

That explained how Chuck was traveling. "I'll need to know the color, model, and license plate number."

Jay punched No Sale and the register drawer slid open. He pulled out a scrap of paper and handed it to Sarah. On it were the color, model and license plate number – in Chuck's handwriting. She shivered. She felt like a puppet. She knew Chuck was smart and that he was starting to get a firm handle on the spy game, but he seemed two or even three steps ahead of her at this point.

As she stared at the sheet, she asked, "What's the second piece of information?"

There was a long pause. She looked up to see Jay's probing eyes on her. "Well?" she prompted.

He took a deep breath. "He knows about the chip in the watch."

The color fled from her face. General Beckman had been right. Chuck was running.

He was running from Sarah.

Jay's two-door hatchback bounced down the right lane of the highway. While the car had probably been a really sweet ride back during the Clinton administration, it had not aged well. The interior had faded from a once-fashionable maroon to a never-fashionable salmon, except in a few places where Jay had patched rips in the fabric with small pieces of duct tape. It accelerated like a gimpy turtle and reeked of Jay's long-kicked smoking habit. Between the large chips in dark exterior paint and the rust that had resulted, the car had become the punchline to the question "What's black and white and red all over?" However, to Chuck, the car was no joke. The car was his best shot at escaping.

Escaping. Chuck stared at the road ahead, hardly believing what he was doing. He was running, not just from Fulcrum, but from the CIA and the NSA.

He glanced down at the watch in the car's cup holder. He was running from a lot of things.

A jumble of emotions swirled through his chest, three parts fear, two parts heartache, one part adrenaline-driven euphoria. The last surprised him. The hunt was thrilling in its own way, even as the quarry. Maybe it was just a naïve excitement from finally taking matters into his own hands, but a part of him was actually enjoying this.

The tricky thing was that he couldn't just fall off the radar. If the trail grew cold, people might get desperate. They might take more drastic measures and go after Ellie and Morgan and the rest, thinking Chuck's friends and family would know where he was. That was unacceptable.

So he had to keep everyone busy chasing him, keep them believing that they were closing in on him while he somehow avoided capture. Since he didn't have the resources the agencies did, he was going to need to take some calculated risks.

Like the damn watch.

He glanced over at his passenger. Jeff slept against the door, drool dribbling down to his chin, his mouth open so wide that Chuck could probably toss small beanbags into it like some carnival game. Jeff wouldn't be sleeping so peacefully if he knew everything that was happening or the part he'd be playing.

One thing was for sure – this was no game. The guns wouldn't have badly-calibrated sights or light beams for ammunition. There would be no slapping another dollar on the counter for a second round if the first didn't go so well. Everyone involved was playing for keeps. Chuck needed to remember that.

It wasn't all doom and gloom. Certain things were in his favor. He had friends helping him. He wasn't an agent, so he didn't think like an agent, which might make his next moves tougher for his pursuers to read.

The biggest advantage was that the discovery of the device in the watch had given him some time to draw up some plans, enough to have a reasonable confidence that his harebrained scheme might actually work. The only thing he hadn't been able to figure out was how to get a head start, and Fulcrum had unwittingly dropped the perfect opportunity right into his lap. He was going to need a few more breaks like that if he was going to come out of this alive.

Up ahead, a green highway sign pointed to his exit. This was the first decision point of many, and he took it without hesitation. Self-doubt was a luxury he couldn't afford.

Occasionally, though, his thoughts turned to Sarah, and self-doubt was all but unavoidable.