Chapter XIII
Gotcha
Sarah parked her car and rushed into Casey's apartment. Damn, the monitoring system was on. She could see their bedroom now on the camera. It was empty but the way the sheets were scattered around ... She remembered what happened there and blushed. How many times has she blushed since yesterday? But then smiled. Finally. What has happened had to happen seventeen thousand years ago, actually.
She started typing like crazy to get to the directory with the video feeds. Only one file, the one starting at 8 and ending at 9 am was there.
Impossible. Where were the files? How could the system be on, saving files each hour and still on, and the files from the night missing? She was lost. Was somebody playing games with the system? Playing games. Yeah, that could be only Carina, the queen of manipulation.
Sarah wasn't sure how and why. Where is the file from 7 to 8? Carina was at the hotel at 8. She must have left Casey's at least at 7.45 so she couldn't have deleted this particular file ...
She looked at the current feed. Bedroom - empty. Living room – Chuck, wandering around. Where is Carina – yeah in the kitchen, trying to wake up Casey. Nothing suspicious.
Sarah went back to the bedroom camera. Watched carefully everything. Shifted to the living room again. A laptop on the table. Was that Chuck's laptop? She zoomed. No. This was an HP. Chuck was using a Dell now. It must be Carina's.
Sarah was thinking.
She saved the current feed on a file and started scanning it. Carina enters the living room, she's in a hurry, opens the laptop. Why the rush? Sarah checked the time. It was the same time Sarah herself was racing here. Yeah, caught you now! Why were you rushing to the PC, ah?"
Did she have remote access to the system here? Did she delete the files? Why? How could she have hacked a heavily protected NSA system?"
Sarah was already convinced Carina was behind all this, just couldn't yet connect all the dots in a definite way to be 100% sure. All she could do was to ask Chuck if he knew anything.
Chuck was bored to death when he got the call from Sarah. He saw her face on the screen and remembered once again how beautiful she was.
He answered with a robotic voice,"Hello, Who's calling. Agent NerdHerd …'
Chuck, I'm trying to figure out something here. Let's leave the playful stuff for later. Talk very quietly. Did Carina mention anything about being able to control the system here at Casey's? Remotely.
'Sure, she told me that she would infect it with trojan horses, teach Casey a lesson, you know. She'll have to teach me all this stuff after you go back, why?"
'Nothing, Chuck, she hinted to me something of the sort as well. I needed to be sure. I got to know how safe the NSA system is. It's nothing, don't worry. Will be back in half hour. Kissing you, bye.'
She hung up before Chuck could say a word.
'Yeah, Carina had manipulated them into getting together. She had deleted the files while Sarah was racing here. So she knew what was on these files. She and Chuck making love. In more than one ways.'
She sat on Casey's couch and tried to process it now that she knew for sure.
She imagined confronting Carina. They were together on several missions. They had spent a lot of time in hotel rooms, on stakeouts, just waiting. Hour after hour. So they talked a lot about life. They knew each other pretty well. Or so Sarah thought. She knew how Carina would react.
'So,' she would say. 'Are you gonna kill me now? For finally helping you be happy?'
Sarah remembered what happened last night and smiled. 'Well, it wasn't exactly a capital offence.' she said with an evil grin. Maybe she should have waterboarded her, before they declared it torture.
Suddenly, she remembered what had tormented her all the time she was in Washington?
'Why did she let Chuck go look for a condom at Barstow? What if she hadn't?'
'Same question Sarah,' Carina would say. 'What would have happened if I hadn't carried out my little operation?'
'You would go back to Washington in 12 hours. What if your plane crashes? What if I fail in protecting Chuck? What if you or he gets a terrible disease? What if you or Chuck gets killed during the incoming mission?'
"Seize the moment" was Carina's philosophy. 'Because you simply can't know if you will be around in let's say 50 minutes, can you?' she had told her once while they were in Pakistan.
Sarah had heard that from her so many times.
Carina was driven by her own logic, no question about that. She saw the Afghani diamond, she lifted it immediately. But then, while sometimes impulsive doesn't mean always impulsive. She is one hell of a manipulative bitch. That's for sure. I really need to keep her in check from now on.
Sarah wasn't sure there was any point in confronting her now. She wasn't that sure whether Carina was actually wrong.
She laughed. It was one of those laughs, mixed with some tears. Incredible. She had played them like a bunch of under-fives.
Sarah grabbed her car keys and rushed out. She got back to the hotel without even bothering to look for herbs. When she arrived and got into their suite, Carina, Chuck and Casey were having breakfast.
Casey seemed to have forgiven Carina. Was she rubbing her feet on his leg under the table? Sarah couldn't be sure since the semitransparent table cover was too long. Strange. The was no cover on this table yesterday.
Sarah approached them and looked at Carina. She smiled at everybody and said playfully: "Excuse me everybody, I need to have a word with Carina in private. She grabbed her arm and towed her away from the rest.
Once they were safe, she bent toward her and whispered on her ear: "I know what you did last night.'
'And that you deleted the files while I was driving to Casey's.'
'Oh, Sarah, I'm so sorry. I decided to move Chuck back to your bed simply because I thought I could sleep at Casey's. The couch is too uncomfortable anyway."
Ooh,' Sarah thought' so you not only saw these file, but you actually moved Chuck into my bed.'
Instead she said.
'Sorry Carina. On NSA computers you have additional memory chip on the motherboard, where video files of the last 24 hours are additionally stored. Automatic backup. You didn't know that did you?' She was silent for a moment.
She was bluffing, but Carina didn't even try to deny.
'I saw you moving Chuck to the bed with me, the undressing. Thank you, sis." Then Sarah kissed her on her cheek and quickly turned around and rushed to the bathroom.'
'Well,' Carina said to herself. 'It could have been much worse. She didn't kill me after all.'
Her little sister was shaking her head, however.
xxx
Ten hours later Carina was driving both Sarah and Chuck to the airport. Sarah was going back to Washington. Chuck was in the front seat next to her, Sarah on the back seat. Both had pretty blissful expressions on their faces and Carina had a very good idea why.
'Poor Casey,' she thought. Toward the end of the breakfast this morning, he had to face the spray again. And inhale her tranquilizing gas.
This time both Sara and Chuck jumped up protesting.
'Now, why would you do that?' both said at the same time, and laughed at the coincidence.
'Sarah's plane leaves back for Washington in 12 hours. Don't you two think you need some privacy? Anybody?'
They were silent. Yeah, with Casey around or on the monitoring system at home, no privacy.
"I thought so." Carina went on.
Sarah blushed again. She just remembered what Carina did last night.
'I'm going to Casey's now. My bosses called me last night. After I'm finished with this assignment, I'll have to join a major DEA operation. I have a lot of planning to do. I'll be at Casey's. Ciao.'
She lied of course. She wanted to leave them alone.
"You could lay Casey down under the table again. He must have already gotten used to this new bed of his.'
'You two just don't hurt yourselves, ok?'
On this, Carina left Sarah and Chuck alone for the next 10 hours, or what they would call later, "our makeshift honeymoon".
Carina started outlining her plans about Vincenzo while still driving to Casey's. She had to hurry as the witness protection people could move him to another location. If they hadn't already.
xxx
Over the next 10 hours Chuck and Sarah left their bedroom only on several rare occasions. To get some refreshments from the fridge and make sure Casey was sleeping safe and sound.
On the fifth hour it was Sarah's turn to check on the colonel. She placed the spray bottle Carina had given her under Casey's nose and pressed it lightly.
'We really need to make sure we don't get interrupted by a wandering NSA colonel, she thought. "That'd be so not awesome". She was now enjoying herself imitating Chuck's imitating of Devon.
Picturing the possibility of a staggering Casey, entering their bedroom, she shivered, looked at the bottle and pressed it again under the colonel's nose.
Pssssssssst.
'Sleep tight Sugar Bear.'
END
Clearly, there will obviously be a sequel to this as we still have some big events ahead. The Iranian black op, Carina's own agenda and some other stuff.