Frea's A/N the First: Hello from Croatia! Hopefully I'm NOT sunburnt, though, you know, you can never tell. Oh, Chapter Six. Guys, the lamp has arrived. I repeat: the lamp has arrived! THIS IS NOT A DRILL. BATTLE STATIONS, EVERYONE. I hope this chapter is illuminating, lights you up, and makes you want to leave great reviews about how awesome Max is. Thanks to Max, to everybody who's reviewed, and to our wonderfully talented and fantastic beta readers, quistie64 and Steampunk Chuckster!

mxpw's A/N the First: And thank you, Frea, for being as awesome as you are. Okay, guys, as my cowriter said, the lamp has finally arrived. Many of you have wondered where Sarah is or what she's been up to. All I can say is that this chapter contains only a morsel of Sarah's part of the story. But I know this is what you've all been waiting for, so sit down, kick back, and enjoy!

The Secretary and the Lamp

I woke the next morning a little cold, a little tired, and a lot sore. My limbs didn't seem to be cooperating very well as I went through my morning ablutions, shaving off the night's scruff, straightening my clothing for the day, cleaning and bandaging my wound. I picked a shirt I didn't care for much—a hated relative had given it to me—because the roominess of the sleeves would hide the bandage suitably. If Agent Shaw had survived and came at me again, he wouldn't know he'd hit me. There wasn't anything in the papers about a dead cop, but it had been pretty late when I'd left him at the dockyard. Maybe they hadn't had time to break the story before going to print.

So I had a dead man to find, a possibly-dead-or-possibly-crooked Fed, a Southern Belle for a possible client, and Chicago's most notorious crime boss to deal with, and nothing but a bunch of dead ends. What else to do but turn to my best friend?

It took awhile to hunt down Morgan G. Grimes. He worked nights in the inking room for the Trib, but most mornings, I could find him at the Broken Monkey, enjoying a nightcap. The Monkey's barstools were empty today.

"I think he's over at a diner on Eighteenth, down by the McAllister Building," one of the cigarette girls told me with a yawn. "He said something about a lead."

"Thanks," I said, and hit the streets. Morgan sometimes moonlighted as a cub reporter for the Trib, but he'd never managed to get more than a toe or two in the door at a time, even though he'd written a few pieces for Stars & Stripes while I was clinging to the backs of B-17s. Every time he made any progress, he found himself back inking papers. This might have had something to do with his tendency to see conspiracies everywhere. I'm pretty paranoid myself—comes with the job—but Morgan put me to shame.

Indeed, I found him all but plastered to the diner window as he stared at the McCallister Building.

I pulled off my hat and dropped it on the opposite side of his booth before sitting down. "Two eggs, over easy," I told the waitress, who'd tailed me to the table. "And coffee. Lots of coffee."

"Coming right up," she said, and whisked away Morgan's plate, which held nothing but crumbs. He'd been here awhile.

"What brings you to this side of town?" Morgan asked without turning away from the window.

"Stopped by the Monkey," I said. "The new cigarette girl—"

"Bunny."

"Very well. Bunny, then. Bunny said you were hanging out on this side of town today. Thought I'd pop in, catch up. Get some breakfast."

"You got a case?" Morgan finally tore his gaze away from the building across the street to give me a wide-eyed look. "Really? Without Sarah?"

That rankled. "I can work a case without Sarah."

"That wasn't what I—yeah, sure you can. What's the case?"

"I never said there was a case." My coffee arrived. I held onto the cup like a lifeline. "Just the Bishop stirring up some trouble. You should maybe lay low for a couple of days in case Delgado or Colt get bored."

"Great. It's been ages since I've had my front door kicked in. Guess I was due."

"Speak for yourself," I said, thinking of my broken office door. Would I even have an office left when I got back to it? Hopefully. I'm fond of the way the paint peels along the back wall. It gives me a sense of authenticity.

"You in trouble?" Morgan asked.

Shaw's wooden countenance rose to the forefront of my mind. "I'm fine," I said. "You into art deco now?"

"What?"

"You've been staring at that building since I got here, and something tells me you haven't developed a sudden interest in architecture."

"I'm a man of many interests, Chuck." Morgan attempted to look dignified—for a split-second. Excitement quickly replaced dignity, and my stomach began to sink. The only time he got that look on his face, was when there was usually a conspiracy around the corner. The return of Scarface. A political scandal at a local bakery. Something usually fairly ridiculous (though the bakery scandal turned out to be true; this is Chicago, after all). "Caught a hot lead."

"Oh yeah?" I downed the rest of my coffee. "What about?"

Morgan tossed a well-thumbed newspaper onto the table, barely missing a coffee spill. It was folded to reveal a page eighteen article, which I quickly perused. Scientist, found dead in his lab, no foul play suspected.

"What about it?" I asked, looking up from the bald, bespectacled man in the picture. "He slipped and fell."

"Alone. In his lab."

"It says the locks weren't jimmied and the lab was untouched. It looks like it was just an accident."

"That's what they want you to think." Morgan rolled his eyes. "He was an important scientist, Chuck."

"So?"

"He probably knew something, and they killed him for it."

"Who killed him?"

"I dunno. Soviets, maybe. Germans. Either way, maybe he kept something important at his apartment and his killer'll come lookin' for it."

"Hence the stake-out," I said. My eggs arrived and I took my time sopping up the runnels of yellow with a piece of toast. "You really think you're going to find something?"

"Oh, I know I am." Morgan went quiet for a second, while I shoveled my breakfast in. "In fact, I already have."

"What?" I asked around a mouthful of toast.

"Your secretary."

I nearly choked. "Sarah's involved in your conspiracy? That's not funny."

"Not my conspiracy, no. But unless I'm mistaken, that's her, walking toward the corner there." Morgan paused, his brow furrowing. "With a lamp."

I was out of the booth like a shot, shouting over my shoulder that I'd be back to pay the tab. If Sarah was here, I needed to see her. Outside, the early morning sunlight, so unusual in Chicago, made me blink, but it didn't take much to spot Sarah. Not with hair that bright.

I threw decorum to the wind. "Sarah!" I called, not quite jogging and not quite running, either. But given my long legs, I can walk quickly when I put my mind to it. She was maybe half a block ahead of me, striding away, but there was no mistaking those heels or that gait. Sarah had always walked with purpose, while never seeming to be in a hurry at all. "Sarah Walker!"

The woman's shoulders tensed, and I breathed a sigh of relief. It really was Sarah.

She turned. As Morgan had claimed, she was indeed carrying some sort of table lamp. She also looked much nicer than I was used to—her hair swept up into a complicated-looking twist instead of the typical bun she usually wore around the office, her clothing and shoes fancier than I remembered. But then, she'd worked in a two-bit detectives' office, answering a phone that sometimes wouldn't ring for days. No need to dress up, not for me.

She blinked at me as I hustled up to her. "Where's your hat?"

I felt absently at my head. I hadn't even noticed I'd left it in the booth. "Oh, uh, it's around. You're here. What are you doing here?"

"What are you doing here?"

"I—you look good." I felt foolish saying it, but there didn't seem to be much else I could say. Except: "Where have you been? You dropped off the face of the earth! I have been worried sick!" Well, that part wasn't entirely true. I had been worried, but I'd been more frustrated than anything else.

Her shoulders came back up. "Which is entirely within my rights. I don't work for you, Mr. Carmichael."

Suddenly, the day seemed a lot colder. How on earth did the woman have that power, to change the weather with her eyes alone? "That wasn't—that wasn't what I meant." I wished suddenly that I hadn't forgotten my hat at all, as I could have used it to have something to do with my hands now. "I just thought, you know, we were friends, too, and then you disappeared, and..."

Sarah sighed and shifted her grip on the lamp. "We're friends, Chuck."

"Oh, good. It's Chuck again. I was worried you were going to keep it Mr. Carmichael, and then I'd have to call you Miss Walker."

"Though," Sarah said, her voice surprisingly acidic, "I must confess I'm mighty surprised you even noticed I was gone."

"Oh, that's just plain unfair, Miss Walker. With you gone, I have to eat the dill pickle that goes with my sandwich now."

In the past, that would have at least have earned me a smile. Now she just gave me an almost hopelessly blank look. "I see," she said, and turned to leave.

I hurried to fall into step with her. "Sorry, sorry, that was a really bad joke. But I have noticed. My life is so much emptier without you."

"I'm sure."

"My business is falling apart."

"You're resilient, you'll pick yourself up, Chuck." There was real sympathy in her voice.

"I don't think you understand." I gave her a pleading look. "I need you."

She didn't look at me. "I don't think you do."

"What? How can you say that? Everything's been awful since you quit. I can't keep a client to save my life, I can't find a single thing in my office—"

"I recommend cleaning it, then," Sarah said, her voice dry. We rounded the corner, heading toward the El station, and I kept up despite Sarah's brisk stride.

"I'll pay you double," I said.

"You can't afford it."

"I'll work harder."

"That's not what I meant. I meant, you can't afford me." Sarah stopped abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk, and I nearly tripped over my own feet to stop as well. "You're going to be fine, Chuck. Just clean your office and keep your head up. A case will come your way."

I stuffed my hands in my pockets. A month of staring at an empty seat, calling everybody I knew looking for her, and still, all it took was the look on her face right outside some drugstore in uptown Chicago to tell me that her decision was final. And to say I once was a fairly decent detective. "You can't possibly know that it will," I said.

"No, but it will. You're a good person, Chuck. You'll make it through this." Sarah took a deep breath and laid a hand on my arm.

Unfortunately, the shirt I'd picked hid the bandage too well. The instant she touched my arm, the whole thing seemed to shoot up in flame, throbbing twice to remind me that the gash was there. I hissed.

Sarah yanked her hand back as if I had burned her. "What? What is it?"

"Nothing. Ah—"

"You're hurt!" Sarah's look wasn't so much worried as accusing now. "When did you get hurt? How?"

"It's nothing. Just, ah, a little bullet."

"What? You got shot? I thought you said you weren't working a case!"

"Well, technically..." Unable to meet her furious gaze all of a sudden, I looked away. The windows of the drugstore were surprisingly clean, even for this part of town. I could see all the way through to the cigarette advertisements in the back. "I'm not...exactly getting...paid..."

Hold it a second.

My brow furrowed. Had I read that right?

"Chuck, it's very noble and all to take on pro bono work, but you really should be more worried about things like getting shot in the—what is it?"

Though I looked at her, quickly, it was too late. The damage had been done. My stomach sank as Sarah's face fell. Instead of setting in on me again, however, she simply looked tired for a moment. "It figures."

"No, Sarah, it's not like that—"

"The case will always come first, won't it? Don't get yourself killed. And have a nice life, Chuck." This time, Sarah turned on her heel and stalked away, and I knew from the fact that her spine was ramrod straight and her shoulders were rigid that, were she interested in continuing our friendship, I would be in the doghouse for a good long while. If I could even find her again.

"Sarah, wait!"

There wasn't even a hitch in her stride.

I thought about it for a second, gave up dignity completely, and took off after her. "Listen, I'm sorry. I really am. It's just that there's this thing going down..."

She kept walking. "A thing that you got shot over, that you're not even getting paid for."

Put that way...I winced. "Sort of. There was an encounter with a dirty Fed, but it's just a ricochet, I promise. And I wasn't ignoring you, really. I just saw something that I thought—"

"You know what, Chuck?" Sarah did stop now, once again so fast that I nearly tripped. "You say you need me, but I don't think you really do."

"What? Of course I—"

"You need a secretary, and you can find one of those in the book. You don't need me. You never did." And with that, Sarah left. This time, I didn't chase her; I knew the look on her face far too well to dare, even though she was completely and totally wrong. With all of this Bryce Larkin malarkey going down in Chicago, I didn't think I'd ever needed her steadying input more.

But when a woman gives you that look, you listen.

I don't know how long I stood there after she left. Maybe a minute, maybe twenty. My arm hurt, but not as bad as my chest, in that moment. "Right," I said, wishing again I had my hat to worry with my fingers. "So that's that."

It took the glares of pedestrians streaming around me on the sidewalk to remind me where I was. With a sigh, I turned and went into the drugstore. The boy working the counter gave me a strange look, and I wondered what he'd heard of my conversation with Sarah. But he didn't say anything until I asked him for the papers on the Hawthorne Race Course. Lester had said he had an inside man with a tip on a hot pony: Lady in Red. Which was, I had thought, a very strange name for a horse.

Seeing no Lady in Red on the Hawthorne sheet, it appeared the horse trainers agreed with me, so I dug around in my pocket and came up with a few coins. "I'll take a pack of those," I told the shopboy, nodding at the cigarettes.

Lady in Red might be an absurd name for a horse, but it was apparently a classy name for a brand of cigarettes. Lady's cigarettes, at that.

Indeed, the shopboy gave me a look. "Seriously, mister?"

"You got a problem with it?"

"No, sir. Not at all." I slipped the cigarettes into my pocket and made my way outside, glancing in the direction Sarah had gone. It was foolish. She hadn't come back a month ago, she wouldn't come back now.

Once I was far enough away from the drugstore, I pulled the cigarettes out and examined every inch of that packaging and every single one of the cigarettes inside, rolled much more tightly and thinner than normal cigarettes. I'd never picked up the habit in my days in the Air Corps, but most of my fellow soldiers had smoked, so I'd always kept a couple on me, just to share.

There was absolutely nothing interesting about these.

Why would Lester give me that tip when it seemed far more incompetent than usual for him? Of course, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. Lester's partner in crime's advice had led to me running from a Fed and getting shot in the arm, which, thanks to the fact that Sarah had called attention to the wound, now burned. A dead end was to be expected.

Frustrated, I made my way back to Morgan's diner and my abandoned hat. "Does your ma still smoke?" I asked as I sat down across from him.

He gave me a puzzled look. "Of course. Why?"

"Consider these a gift." I tossed the packet on the table.

"Uh, I'll pass them on." Morgan's brow furrowed. "No luck with Sarah?"

"No, and I still can't figure out what I said to set her off, either. But suffice it to say, she is not happy with all things Carmichael." Though my eggs were long cold by now, I dug in with a gusto. "All things considered, it could have gone worse, but I don't see how."

"You'll work it out," Morgan said, and picked up the cigarettes. He made a noise in the back of his throat, a "heh" sound that made me look up. "Wow. I haven't seen these around much anymore. I thought the Monkey was the only place that sold them."

"We sell those at the Monkey?"

Morgan gave me a surprised look. "We?"

"I meant they. They sell those at the Monkey?"

"Yeah, Miss Wu likes 'em."

If Lester was trying to give me a tip, I realized, where better to hide it than the Monkey? I picked up my hat and scrambled for the edge of the booth. "I've got to go. Do you think you could..." I gestured helplessly at the plate I'd cleaned.

"No, I've got it."

"Thank you. I'll pay you back."

"No hurry. See you around, Chuck."

And then I was racing back across town, trying to figure out who would possibly want to leave me a tip at the Broken Monkey, or why they would have told Lester, of all people. Thanks to Morgan picking up the tab, I had just enough to buy the last packet of Lady in Red from Bunny, who looked happy to get the patronage.

The answer was written in ink on the first cigarette. It was like they weren't even trying.

mxpw's A/N the Second: So was it worth the wait, you guys? You can be honest, it was totally worth the wait, wasn't it? I bet that went exactly how you expected it to go. You and Chuck both. Speaking of what Chuck expected, let's take a look at what's in store next for our intrepid detective.

"Nobody important, I assure you. Not to me." Her eyes flashed and danced with life, and I pitied any man who truly did sit across her during a hand of poker. "But he's important to some, and that's all you need to know about it."

"Bryce wasn't the only one I was askin' about," I said, and I kept my voice smooth, like vanilla. It was a trick I'd seen Anna use a time or two at the Broken Monkey, when a couple of japes wouldn't pay their tab. It probably worked better for her than it did for me, though Carina did shrug, daintily, as if imparting the information to me wasn't any skin off of her nose.

"I guess you could say I work for some old friends of yours, Mr. Carmichael," she said.

I quickly racked my brain for who she might mean. The only person I'd ever worked a case with was Sarah, and she hardly ever left the office. My confusion must have shown on my face for Carina chuckled. "From the War, Mr. Carmichael."