A/N: In the last couple of pre-chapter A/Ns, I've said a little about how to understand the structure of the story, trying to help the reader. One clumsiness of the format of FF is that there is no place, really, for Tables of Contents — at least not a place that could be consulted, complete, ahead of the reading, to help the reader understand the form of what is to be read. Of course, once a FF story is done, you can click on Chapter Title and look at a drop-down menu of Chapters, but that's not possible (at least not with a complete menu) until the story is done. And if there's a structure among the chapters themselves (like the arcs of this story), the menu cannot show that. I've coped with this by sometimes putting up Tables of Contents for some of my longer stories on my Profile. (For example, the Tables of The (Mis)Education of Sarah Walker and Turned Tables: The Long Story are there, among others. I will put a complete one up for this story soon but here's a brief version of it, up to our current arc and chapter. It shows the basic form.

The Missionary

Part One: Burbank & Missions

Arc One (Chapters 1-6): Pairing

Arc Two (7-11): Three's Company

Arc Three (12-16): Revaluations

Arc Four (17-23): The Will to Believe

Arc Five (24-31): Past into the Present

Arc Six (32-41): Sealing the Deal

Part Two: Spyworld Penitents

Arc Seven (42 - 46 and continuing): Hopes and Fears

The Missionary

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

― Ernest Hemingway

Chapter 46: Trust Issues

It was Sarah's turn to listen to Chuck in the shower. He was singing a song but she could not hear it enough to identify it. But the sound of his voice and the sound of the water lulled her.

She stretched luxuriously, arms and legs, and yawned. She was more tired than she had realized.

The descent into the Intersect Lab and then the ascent from it, peaking at the cabin, had exhilarated but also exhausted her — and then the frigid day they'd just spent driving, infiltrating Zarnow's apartment, and then arriving in the late afternoon snow at The Wink Inn Nod, it all closed around her as she drew the blankets around her and nestled in, wanting only Chuck beside her to have all she needed.

A knock, hard, jolted her back to full consciousness.

"Walker, Bartowski, up, now! We have to go! Now!"

It was Casey's voice.

For a split second, Sarah thought it might be a prank — but then she knew better.

She vaulted out of bed and into the bathroom.

Chuck's hair was sudsy as he stood in the steamy shower, eyes closed, humming to himself. Beautiful.

Sarah lamented the lost opportunity for another split second then spoke.

"Chuck, Casey's at the door! We have to go. Get dressed!" His eyes opened wide.

She did not stay in the bathroom; she grabbed the plastic bag with her panties and other things and ran back to the bedroom and retrieved the clothes she had taken off.

Habit had her leave them ready to put on, and so she did. Chuck came out, toweling himself rapidly, and passing her by to go to his clothes, piled in the corner.

In a moment, they were both dressed, panting, coats on, Chuck jamming his feet into his shoes.

Sarah had longed for panting — but not from this cause.

The vise-grip of Spyword was closing around her, Chuck, Casey, its iron exigencies, its merciless deprivations. But there was nothing to be done except comply, keep moving, stay alive and free — or as free as they could be in their current predicament.

Sarah wanted to be truly free, free to love Chuck and continue to discover her heart. She liked how warm her chest felt, inside.

Casey knocked again.

"C'mon, c'mon!"

Sarah opened the door. Casey had plastic bags in one hand, and two duffels in the other. "The stuff from the car. I left it at the Motel Eight down the street. A black SUV just went by, lights off, heading that way. We need to go. They'll figure it out soon enough."

Sarah nodded. Chuck came to the door, holding up the laptop in his hand. "This is Irma's."

Casey gave his head a quick shake, unhappy with himself but resigned. "We'll make it up to her. Keep it."

Chuck frowned but did not argue.

"Come with me," Casey ordered. "We'll use the side door. We're going to the van out front." Casey gestured down the hallway. Sarah had seen the van on the way in and it did not inspire confidence.

Sarah ran ahead and opened the door for Casey and Chuck, following. Then she closed it carefully, running.

Snow covered much of the parking lot; there weren't many customers. The Nod did not have many lights in the lot — a good thing, Sarah thought, since the dark was cover for them.

No cars were on the road that ran next to the hotel. They ran through the wet snow, toward the van. Casey got there first and stopped at the back. He shoved his hand in his pocket and came out with the keys. He tried one, then another. The second key opened the rear. He threw the duffles in and the bags, then gestured for Chuck to climb in.

"In the back, kid. Walker, shotgun." Sarah nodded and ran to the other side of the van.

Casey ran to the driver's side and unlocked it, climbed in, then reached across to unlatch Sarah's door. She jumped inside, the passenger seat rocking unsteadily when she landed in it. She turned to look down the street toward Motel Eight. It seemed infinitely more brightly lit than darkling The Wink Inn Nod, a fiery sun compared to a distant icy planet.

But not so distant. Twisting in her seat, Sarah could see the SUV outside the Motel Eight office, visible exhaust coming out of the tailpipe, the engine running. She slammed the door and turned her head the other way. Chuck was in the back, among the duffles and bags. "Go, Casey!"

Casey turned the key. Nothing happened.

"Shit. Shit." He cursed the van and banged his large fist on the dash.

Sarah looked back toward Motel Eight. Someone came out of the office; it took her a second to realize it was Bryce. One of her skills, learned first from her father and perfected at the Farm, was recognizing gaits, and comportments.

The way a person stands or walks or holds himself is as much of an identifier as facial features, tattoos, scars.

Sarah had learned that lesson well and used it to her advantage on many missions. The man in the distance was Bryce — but Bryce stiffened. The usual easy confidence of his walk was constricted, tightened.

"I see them, Casey, coming out of the office. Bryce."

When Sarah said Bryce she heard Chuck clamber forward, trying to look over her shoulder, but Bryce was in the SUV.

Casey turned the key again. The engine lurched, once, twice, then came to life, pinging and smoking. Casey left the lights off and turned the van onto the street from where it was parked. They went over the curb and the van rocked like a carnival ride.

Chuck fell forward toward the dash, between Casey and Sarah, then backward into the rear, landing on his bottom. "Hold on, kid, Irma said the shocks were bad."

"Bad?" Chuck grumbled, "They're brutal." He rolled to the side and rubbed his bottom.

Sarah smiled; she couldn't help it.

But the smile vanished as she looked up and out the rear window. The SUV had turned around and was stalking up the street, behind them by almost half a block now, but behind them.

And then the SUV turned — turned into the parking lot of The Nod. Sarah turned to alert Casey but saw him looking into the rearview, the area around his eyes lit up by the reflection of the SUV's headlights, then darkened when the SUV turned into the lot.

"Shit," Casey said again, "at least they turned on their lights."

"Why's that matter?" Chuck asked from the rear.

"Because when they thought you were at the Motel Eight, they had them off. They're fishing now, stopping at the next pond, hoping for a bite, not expecting one."

"Oh," Chuck said, looking at Sarah. She nodded her agreement with Casey.

"We've gotta go back, help her!" Chuck said.

Casey just shook his head. "Her vulnerability is her best defense — and our absence." He paused for a moment, gritting his teeth audibly. "God, Irma, be smart. We were never there," Casey said to the air, fiercely wistful, as if willing his words somehow to carry back to The Nod, to his cousin, but knowing that they could not.

He sped up the van, scowling, and The Nod disappeared in the rearview.

Irma saw the SUV stop through the window of The Nod's office.

There were human-ish shadows inside, but through the dark windows and in the faint light of the parking lot, she could not count them. A big man, bigger than Casey, a mountain of shoulders and a dangerous lack of neck, got out of the driver's seat, peering back through the window at Irma.

She made sure her face was her usual business face, the impassive, hardly bothered face she'd given the prostitute and the john earlier. It was never a good idea to seem interested in the clientele at a place like The Nod.

Better to seem indifferent to anything but cards and cash and keys.

The passenger door opened and another man got out. Smaller and less imposing, he was, for lack of a better word, pretty. Very pretty. He should be in a suit, Irma thought. Yes, except there was something off about him, about the way he moved. He seemed stoved up, stiff all over, and his eyes — a cobalt blue visible even outside, through the window — seemed more like glass than actual human organs of sight. She shuddered as he looked at her.

The pretty, stiff man took the lead up the few stairs to the office door and in a moment he and the mountain were inside, along with a substantial blast of cold air and melting snow from their shoes. Hush-hush. Irma could see the same sort of wariness in the two men that she had seen from Cousin Casey and the long, beautiful blonde. She knew immediately that these men were chasing the kid — and that, if they caught him, they would kill him. Likely slow, not fast.

Irma had just finished wiping her video surveillance when the SUV pulled in. Unless Casey or the others had left something incriminating behind, there was no way that they could know he and the others had been at The Nod. Irma had not checked them in. It was her place; she could run it as she wanted.

"Hi," she offered with studied blandness to Blue-Eyes. "How many rooms do you need, and for how many nights?"

Blue-Eyes smiled, a smile that was worse than a scowl, colder. When he spoke, his voice was clipped, almost breathy, like he was speaking through pain. "No room. Looking for friends of mine. Three, a young man, tall, a woman, blonde and striking, another man, older, larger. They might be staying here. Their cars at the Motel Eight and that's where we understood we were to meet them, but they aren't there."

Irma decided she would help Casey and his hard luck cases, delay Blue-Eyes. She reached for the old-fashioned ledger she still used at the front desk. She kept her computer in her apartment — or she had until she lent it to the curly-headed man. "Huh. How many did you say, three?"

She opened the ledger on the counter, careful to open it to a day earlier in the month, then to start thumbing, one page by one page, toward today. Blue-Eyes rubbed his left temple with his left hand; it trembled as it went up and came back down. "Can you hurry, please?" His attempt to be pleasant and polite was as cold as his earlier smile. Irma shuddered again but was sure he hadn't seen it.

"Sorry, these fat fingers and these sticky pages…"

"Look, your lot's almost empty. You don't need to hunt through that book; just tell me. Did three people of the description I gave rent rooms?"

"Well," Irma lied, "my husband, Fred, was manning the desk earlier while I whipped up some dinner," at her use of 'whipped', Blue-Eyes sneered a little, "and they might've come while I was cooking."

"Just go ask Fred," the words were not a request; Blue-Eyes was issuing an order. He was also rubbing his right temple, right hand, the same tremor.

"Fred's out walking the dog, their evening 'constitutional', Fred calls it. Left just before you drove up. Usually take about an hour. Fred takes a cigar; the dog takes a dump."

Blue-Eyes made a gesture, almost imperceptible, and the mountain behind them yanked the ledger from Irma.

"Hey, you can't — "

"Shut up," Blue eyes met Irma's eyes and she saw something there she'd never seen before in another person's eyes directed upon her: a simple willingness to kill her.

It was the way that the Orkin Pest Control man looked at roaches when he came for his monthly visit.

Without meaning to, Irma stepped back one pace from the counter.

The mountain found the page. "No one here but two people in Room 12, Boss. Don't recognize the names."

"Who's in 12?" Blue-Eyes.

"Some woman and some man. I expect they'll be in there for maybe another 30 minutes, an hour at most. If you understand…"

"Give me a passkey, now!" The blue in the man's eyes had changed to feral, his teeth bare.

Irma froze. She did not want to comply but she was afraid. The mountain now held the ledger in one hand; his other hand was under his jacket.

Irma wished Fred were really walking the dog — their little dog, Muffin — but they were both long dead, out for a constitutional from which neither would return, a walk to another world. Tears rose in her eyes at the wish. She didn't let herself think about Fred, bygone days, but seeing Casey after all these years. It brought stuff up, memories from a previously sealed well.

She turned and opened the key safe on the wall behind the counter. She picked up a key, its fob had no number on it, and she turned and handed it to the man. He snatched it and the two men headed down the hallway.

Irma wiped at her eyes and tried to regain self-command. In the distance, she heard heavy knocking and then shouts. She thought about calling the police — even moved her hand toward her phone in her sweater pocket — but then stopped. That might rebound on Casey and his friends.

Suddenly, shouts erupted down the hall, a woman's scream and a man's voice: "What the hell are you doing? Shut the damn door! This isn't your room!"

A door slammed.

Quiet ensued.

And then Blue-Eyes and Mountain came back into the office. Blue-Eyes was holding his head tilted, his eyes blinking, breathing through his mouth. His face was pale but his cheeks flushed. He rubbed his face in his palms and then he looked at Irma. His eyes blazed blue, more feral than before, wild and cold all at once.

"I saw cameras in the hall. Show me the video for today."

The air in the office was now thick with gathered menace.

Irma shrugged bravely and lied again. "The security feed's down. Someone's supposed to repair it tomorrow." She knew that the feed was working and that if Blue-Eyes looked he would know it too. It suddenly struck her how much like the walk of the rusty Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz Blue-Eyes' walk was.

"Show me."

Damn. "Don't have to show you nothing. Get out of here. Give me back my pass key and get out, before I call the cops."

She could threaten it even if she wasn't willing to do it.

Blue-Eyes hurdled the counter and was on her faster than Irma could believe. His stiffness seemed suddenly to disappear and then his hands appeared around her neck.

He began to squeeze, his hands like steel, merciless, his blue eyes so close to hers that she could see herself reflected in them. His gaze seemed more machine than human. She wasn't sure if she was turning blue or if it was just her reflection in the color of his eyes.

He squeezed harder. Blue flashed green.

"Boss?" Mountain asked weakly, unsure. "Boss?"

Irma could not understand Blue-Eye's strength. Her lungs were beginning to burn, the periphery of her vision to darken, and expand, inky nothingness consuming her somethingness, her life running out of her.

Another flash of green.

She faintly heard Blue-Eyes laughing as the black totalized.

"Boss!"

Graham was combing through the ruins, the wreckage of the Intersect Lab, his plan.

Not the actual, physical rubble, but the multiplying reports on his computer: lists of the dead, the injured, the missing, the speculations on the number of attackers and the equipment, the weapons, used in the type of damn helicopter.

He was doing his best to control it all, to manage the fallout.

He did not want to be called to Capital Hill, back to face the HPSCI.

So far, he had kept the recreated Intersect Lab out of the view of the Hill, and so far he had not been called upon to acknowledge the new reality of a large and obviously well-equipped Fulcrum.

The only break he had gotten, as far as Graham could see, was that the destroyed Lab had been far enough away from anyone that the battle had occurred undetected. But the smoke still billowing up from the caved-in Lab the next morning had attracted the attention of local law enforcement, and Graham ended up in a couple of annoying conversations with puzzled, overeager officers, the local sheriff, and a West Virginia Highway patrolman.

After those calls, he tried to call Walker but got no response. That added to his monumental frustration, his slow-burning rage.

Graham had never imagined Fulcrum daring to attack the Lab in numbers, and so he had imagined that the protection he had provided the Lab would be more than sufficient.

But Fulcrum had been stronger than Graham expected, more daring, and better informed than Graham expected. They had destroyed the lab and they had either killed Bartowski or they had taken him captive. It was time now to deal with Fulcrum.

Ever since the raid on Mattress Bob's LA warehouse, Graham had been conducting a quiet search for Bryce Larkin.

But this morning he had intensified the effort and assigned a small army of analysts to find Larkin. It was not Larkin himself that interested Graham, it was Fulcrum. But Bryce was the only real link Graham had to Fulcrum.

Graham had been distracted from pursuing Larkin by Bartowski, by the unexpected but exciting prospect of recreating the Intersect project but around a living, functioning Intersect, with Dr. Astley taking the place of Dr. Zarnow.

As Zarnow had taken the place of Stephen Bartowski.

Graham needed to know if Fulcrum had the Intersect or if they had destroyed it. Both would be bad news, but the first would definitely be the worst.

But where was Walker, and why wouldn't she return his calls? Even with his army of analysts at work, he was betting it would be Walker that found Fulcrum first, maybe even found Larkin first.

And she would kill Larkin for Graham.

Graham turned back to his computer and clicked out of the reports on his computer, calling up another file, the file on Ellie Bartowski. She was her father's daughter as Chuck had been his father's son. Siblings.

Chuck's aptitude had been a surprise; maybe Ellie would be a surprise too.

Graham picked up his phone and dialed the LA satellite office. It was time to think about contingencies. Graham had no Intersect, no Lab, and no Intersect scientist — but Graham never stopped planning ahead. Contingencies, contingencies.

No reason foresight could not be 20/20.

"Casey," Chuck said, scooting forward on the metal floor of the van, frowning at the soreness of his rear, "are we really leaving Irma there, with Bryce? She's family, your cousin! Sarah, tell him to turn around."

Sarah turned to Casey, not to Chuck. "Do you really think she'll be okay?"

"I hope so," Casey said, a non-answer. "What would you do, Walker? Our mission is to protect Bartowski, right?"

"But what about Bartowski's view?" Chuck demanded. "Don't I get a say in my own protection? I don't want to be safe if the cost is Irma's danger."

"She understood, Chuck," Casey said, using Chuck's name, "I didn't explain about you but I…explained about you. She understood the fix we left her in and she still wanted us to go."

Chuck shook his head, his anger palpable to Sarah, and she knew, to Casey. "Dammit, Casey, it's like Zarnow again. I don't want others running my risks. — Sarah?"

Sarah turned toward the windshield. She understood Chuck's pain and felt it cold in her chest but the tactical decision (Sorry, Chuck) was the right one. Her mission — and apparently Casey had adopted it too — was to protect Chuck. She had told him about Zarnow months ago what she now thought about Irma: It's each person's choice what risks the person runs. Sarah was ready to run any risk for him.

"Sarah?" Chuck's voice had become quiet, intense.

Sarah dug her burner phone from her pocket and dialed 911.

"I'd like to report a disturbance in the office of The Wink Inn Nod."

She glanced at Casey but he stared out the windshield and did not turn, although she saw him exhale. She supplied the address. "It looks like an argument about a charge or something, lots of shouting." She ended the call and turned finally to face Chuck.

He looked at her for a moment without any decipherable expression, then he smiled. "Thanks." He looked down at the metal floor.

"We need to call Stanfield," Casey said after a moment of silence. "We need to see him tonight. Did you figure out anything from Zarnow's journal?"

Chuck looked up at Sarah. She looked back at him.

"I'm almost certain — no, I am certain — that Green, that is, Green Lantern, is my dad."

Casey whistled, then laughed quietly, with bitterness, but not aimed at Chuck, not aimed at anyone. It seemed aimed at the heavens, at the disarray the gods allowed below. Sarah had known such helpless bitterness, forced choices between evils.

"Shit, it is all about family."

Ellie thought she heard a noise in her apartment.

Devon was at the hospital, kept there by an unstable, post-operative patient in ICU. She expected him home before morning but not this soon.

She heard the noise again. It sounded like her doorbell but fainter.

She got up and grabbed her robe from the chair next to the bed, and put it on. She walked barefoot toward the front of the apartment, the door.

She glanced at the clock in the kitchen as she went past it. 1:42 am.

The sound had stopped. Now that she was up, she did not think it was the doorbell. It was too faint; it originated from the wrong place.

Again, the bell sounded. It was not the doorbell. It was coming from Chuck's room. Ellie opened the door. The room was dark but bathed in a green glow emanating from Chuck's computer. Ellie walked into the room and into the glow. She stepped in front of the monitor. It went black, then she heard a voice, a mechanical voice, issue from it.

"Trust no one."

There was a deep silence, then the monitor displayed two file icons.

Ellie took a step closer and bent down. One icon was labeled 'Sarah Walker', the other 'John Casey'.

Ellie sat down in Chuck's desk chair. She looked around the room and then clicked on 'Sarah Walker'.

Bob jumped from the SUV and ran up the steps, into the office of The Nod.

The Fulcrum agent who had been driving, a huge man named Philip, was on the ground beneath Bryce, who had attacked the woman at the desk but was now attacking Phillip.

It had all happened in an instant.

By the time Bob got through the door, Bryce was on top of Phillips, beating him with a heavy stapler from the desk. Phillip's face looked like stirred lasagne — red blood, open flesh.

Bob grabbed Bryce's arm and Bryce looked at him without recognition. Then Bryce's nose began to pour blood, both nostrils, his blood dripping onto and into Phillip's. "Bob?" Bryce said, his body slumping, his eyes suddenly empty, bewildered.

Bryce collapsed atop Phillip. Bob heard sirens. He gestured to the two other men, both of whom were just entering the door. "Get them in the car."

Bob looked at the woman behind the desk. She wasn't moving. He couldn't see any motion, couldn't see her breathe. The sirens grew louder.

The video screen behind her desk kept flashing green. Bob stood for a moment, frozen, studying the pool of blood on the office floor. It was black in the green glow, red when the glow ended, then black again. He heard doors closing on the SUV, shook his head, and ran from the office.

Christ, what's wrong with Larkin?

A/N: Thanks for reading. The arc is up and running now. Hope to hear from you!