Hello. This is what I get for trying to say something positive about myself. I was talking about how I was much healthier only to wind up back in the hospital again. Thankfully, it was a much shorter stay, and I swear I'm not trying to score sympathy points to get more reviews. Unless it's working. :-D
Anyway, here is the newest chapter. I borrow a lot of lines from the show, which again are the property of NBC and Fake Empire Productions, and I'm still not making a dime off of this. But I do promise to get the next chapter within a week. Hospital stays notwithstanding, of course.
Enjoy and please give reviews!
Echo Park - Los Angeles, CA
September 21, 2015
8:00 PM PDT
"Birthday boy, come on. We're going to be social. You are funny, you are smart, you are handsome…"
"Oh, there's Captain Awesome."
"Please don't call him that."
"OK, I have identified some candidates for Chuck and they're awesome."
Most people would be thrilled to have a big party to celebrate their birthday. Chuck Bartowski was not one of those people. Particularly since his sister, Ellie and her boyfriend, Devon, used it as an excuse to set him up with someone. The majority of whom were doctors the two Westside Medical Center residents knew. And the one woman thinking his Nerd Herd uniform was a costume did not give him much in the way of optimism.
"You work for the Nerd Herd? That is so cute! What do you really want to do?"
What is that gift women have to insult you but make it sound like a compliment? Chuck couldn't figure it out. Of course, there hadn't been anyone since Jill, and that ended as badly as it could have.
"Working on my five-year plan. I just have to choose a font."
As if that wasn't bad enough, one of the women had to grill him about Stanford, the college he was expelled from several years ago. Naturally, she had heard of his ex-roommate and the man responsible for getting him kicked out: Bryce Larkin. She wondered if he knew Bryce's current whereabouts.
"I don't know. I haven't seen him since he was on that TV show."
SCTV Studios - Toronto, ON
September 22, 2015
8:00 AM EDT
Sarah walked into the studio office of Langston Graham. It was different than any other office in the building, given it was soundproof, had an electronic system that swept for listening devices on a constant basis, and had a computer tied in with the FBI, CIA, and NSA. And if he wanted, he could download information directly from servers at British Intelligence, the French DGSE, Russian FSB, and the Mossad.
Sarah was the last to arrive, although she was still there two minutes before the hour. The rest of her team was exactly the way they always were in the morning. Carina had on the same clothes she wore last night, Casey kept rubbing his face as if he thought he needed a shave, and Jimmy was slumped over with an extra-large coffee from Tim Hortons. It was a good substitute for the coffee he'd normally have from Dunkin' Donuts had they been in the States. But even the government liked to save money on occasion, so episodes that didn't need to be shot in a specific location were done in a studio near Toronto. And selling the TV rights all over the world meant the team's missions were self-funded and therefore never audited by the GAO.
"This is a situation that has to be dealt with quickly and carefully," Graham began. "Last night, Bryce Larkin stole a large set of data from the computer systems at a specialized CIA facility in D.C. They uploaded the video footage from the surveillance cameras around the building."
Graham pressed a button on a control panel underneath his desk, and the image on his monitor was displayed on a projector screen for everyone to see. At first, all anybody saw was a large room with a computer sitting on top of a table in the middle. The room was all white, completely bereft of character. Suddenly, Bryce dropped down into the shot, his attire disheveled and bloody. He pulled himself up, slid in front of the computer, and put some sort of device into the computer's drive. He put on a pair of sunglasses and hit a button on the device. At that moment, the video changed to static.
"What happened?" Casey asked.
"A power surge knocked out the surveillance cameras in the room, presumably because of Bryce activating the computer and downloading its contents into that device," Graham said. "The next video we have comes seventy seconds later from the hallway just outside of the room."
The video continued in the hallway as Graham indicated, where the team witnessed the doors to the room exploding outward, knocking two guards down, and Bryce flying out two feet ahead of the blast. He pushed himself up a wall to kick at a guard running at him and did the same with the guard after that. He slid under a table, kicking the chair on the other side of it into a third guard. He tried to go up the stairs but a guard blocked his path. He swung off the railing to nail that guard with a scissor kick before pulling himself up and crashing through a window above the next doorway.
The shot changed to a stairwell, where Bryce appeared to be looking for something on the device he carried. He knocked another guard down the stairwell before making it to the roof. He then jumped across the roofs, going from building to building, eventually losing the guards who couldn't keep up with his acrobatics.
He then took a remote out of his pocket and pressed a button. The video turned to static.
"That's all we have," Graham said to the team. "He knocked out the exterior surveillance cameras. We have no idea if he sent the information or where he went."
"Wait," Jimmy replied. He walked up to Graham's computer. "May I?"
Graham moved away from his computer. "What are you thinking?"
Jimmy started typing away at the computer. "If I saw that video correctly, that side of the building is across the street from First Liberty Bank. Let me see if I can get access to their surveillance cameras. It would be a substantial distance, but maybe we'll see something."
Casey and Carina glanced over at Sarah. Her face hadn't changed expression, but both of them could see her gripping the chair tightly. It was the sort of thing the average person wouldn't notice, but they knew their boss as well as she knew them.
"Got it," Jimmy said after another minute. "Here we go."
The video started playing again. From a distance, Bryce appeared to be looking at his device. Suddenly, his entire body snapped back and he fell to the ground as if he had been shot. The man who walked up to him with his gun pointed seemed to confirm that. The man picked up the electronic device Bryce was carrying, studied it for a moment, and threw it on the ground in anger. He fired two more shots at the prone Bryce. A large SUV pulled up and two men got out of it. They picked up Bryce's body and slid it into the back of the SUV. The man who shot Bryce got into the passenger side of the SUV and the other two men got in the back seat. The SUV sped off into the night.
Jimmy hung his head in shame. "I'm sorry, Sarah. I didn't know…"
Sarah put her hand up. "It's not your fault," she said softly, trying to rein in her grief. Casey and Carina looked down at the ground. They knew how much Sarah had been in love with Bryce, and despite Bryce walking out on her, they knew he held a special place in her heart, even if Bryce didn't share the same sentiment. Jimmy shifted nervously back and forth on his feet. He had never met Bryce, of course, but he never liked to see Sarah in pain like this, especially when there was nothing he could do about it.
"What data did Bryce steal?" Casey asked quietly to refocus the group.
Echo Park - Los Angeles, CA
September 21, 2015
11:45 PM PDT
"Wow. And blast-from-the-past wow. Bryce remembered your birthday, dude."
Chuck looked at Morgan in confusion. He then looked towards his computer to see the email flag Morgan spotted. Chuck opened the email and recognized the line from the old Zork text-based fantasy game. He tried to remember what weapon was the correct one to take from his hero satchel.
"You know, what? You're still really cool."
"And it's time for you to go home."
Chuck sent Morgan on his way because he knew his bearded compadre would never voluntarily leave his room, particularly if they were on the computer or playing videogames. He then typed in the correct response to the terrible troll.
Attack troll with nasty knife.
A series of images started to appear on the screen, flickering by at an increasing pace. Chuck stood there, unable to turn away. He saw hundreds, if not thousands of images. When the images ceased seven hours later, Chuck fell unconscious onto the floor.
SCTV Studios - Toronto, ON
September 22, 2015
8:20 AM EDT
Graham leaned forward in his chair and steepled his fingers as Jimmy returned to his seat. "The computer Bryce stole the data from…did everything. We had been working on this system for over thirty years. The CIA and NSA worked together to collect all of their data in one place. The computer would mine for patterns in the data and make connections we couldn't find. The data was encoded into images and put on this computer. It was developed and shelved several times after a few disastrous attempts at making it work. After 9/11, we put on the full-court press to make it viable."
Sarah glanced at her partners, the reality of Bryce's death having passed for the moment. Casey and Carina were impassive and listening intently to Graham, but Jimmy looked a bit uncomfortable in his seat, gripping the arms of the chair like they were the only things preventing him from falling to his death. Graham had mentioned to Sarah two years ago that Jimmy was in a CIA experiment gone wrong. Could this be that experiment? She would have to talk to him.
"Bryce must have been able to send the data to someone before he was killed," Carina said. "The man who took his electronic device threw it away like garbage."
Graham's phone rang. "This might be the answer." He picked up the phone and listened for a few seconds before ending it with a "very well." He looked at the team again. "The NSA has a lead on where that data went. Pack your bags. You're heading to Burbank."
"Sir?" Jimmy said as everyone else started to rise from their chairs. "Request permission to recuse myself from this operation."
Sarah, Casey, and Carina looked at him in surprise. They never heard Jimmy talk this quietly before, and he wasn't one to bellow from the treetops to begin with.
Graham was more shocked than surprised. "Absolutely not. You're the best person to be on this mission. I suggest you do your job with all of the professionalism and dedication I expect out of you."
Sarah watched Jimmy nod and shuffle out of the office with his head down. Based on Graham's severe retort to Jimmy's request, Sarah was now convinced there was a link between the data Bryce stole and what happened to Jimmy many years ago. She learned to accept not being given every piece of pertinent information from the CIA, but she wouldn't tolerate it from her partners.
She walked out of the office and called Hannah to collect her things from the hotel and have them sent to the studio.
Buy More - Burbank, CA
September 22, 2015
10:15 AM PDT
"Do me a favor and stay off the 5 because cops are in a phased deployment."
"O.K. Thanks for the tip, Ponch."
As if the email from Bryce wasn't weird enough, Morgan had to awaken Chuck, who was still sleeping on the floor when he arrived. Chuck wasn't sure how he knew of the big police presence on Interstate 5, and he later guessed that General Stanfield was already in town despite the news saying he wasn't. Chuck wasn't sure what was going on, but he didn't have much time to worry about it. The Nerd Herd expected to be very busy today as a virus named after Irene Demova, the Serbian porn star, was making its way through the computers of every lonely guy in town. He expected Anna, Jeff, Lester, and he to get a lot of work today. Of course, knowing the working practices of Jeff and Lester…or lack thereof…he figured to be in for a long day.
Given he didn't notice the man in the leather coat keeping an eye on him, his day hadn't even begun.
Gulfstream G550 over Kansas
September 22, 2015
10:00 AM CDT
The NSA worked to get a definitive location for the destination of Bryce's data breach. Until that information was ascertained, there wasn't much to do on the flight. Casey napped in his traditional seat in the second row while Carina used the spacious…for a G550 anyway…restroom to change clothes and freshen up. Sarah looked back from her seat across from Casey to see Jimmy in the last row looking out the window.
She walked back and sat in the seat next to him. "Everything OK?" she asked.
"Fine," he lied, and not even convincingly.
"No, don't do that. I can accept the higher-ups keeping things from me but not someone I trust with my life. What is going on? You don't want to be on this mission and Graham says you're the best person for it?"
"I really can't talk about it," Jimmy timidly replied.
Sarah gave Jimmy one of her glares. She knew how to get information from just about anybody, but a stern glare was all she needed to get it from him. And this was a person who missed breaking Casey's record of being tortured without divulging information by only two minutes.
Jimmy hung his head. Sarah backed off a bit since it was clear this was hurting him. "Does it have to do with what happened to you all those years ago?"
Jimmy reached down to grab his briefcase from under his seat. He opened it up and pulled out a folder buried deep inside and handed it to Sarah. She opened it and looked at the first item in it in total shock.
"That's you?" she said, holding up a picture of a much younger Jimmy Slade. Her eyes darted back and forth between the picture and the man sitting next to her. The younger Jimmy Slade had unkempt gray hair, torn clothing, and looked to be about 400 pounds.
"Almost 25 years ago," Jimmy said softly.
"Where was this taken?"
"I was a student at the University of Illinois. They had an experiment where they claimed they were trying to determine the optimal methods for educating students in various subjects. But it was actually a CIA experiment. The Intersect project, although the name they used at the time was Project Goodwin.
"I passed all of the initial testing, so it was time for the second phase. They put me in a room and started to show me images on a movie projector screen. I don't know how many I actually saw, but I couldn't turn away, move any part of my body, nothing. I passed out. I guess I was unconscious for almost two days, and when I woke up, it felt like my mind was out of my control."
Jimmy's breathing became labored and Sarah took his hand to calm him. "I…I ran for my life, hitting and assaulting anybody who got in my way. I made it across campus to the football game that was going on. But they cornered me there. They said they could fix me, but I was too far gone to believe them. I leapt from the top of Memorial Stadium and landed on an RV. They reported back that I had committed suicide, but I only ended up with a broken arm, leg, and a concussion."
Sarah was quiet. If all of this happened to Jimmy from just the experiment, she shuddered at what happened to him before that, given Graham said Jimmy's childhood was ten times worse than hers. And she did not think she had a pleasant childhood by any stretch.
"Then they found you and locked you up?" she asked.
Jimmy shook his head and gave a little laugh. "Four years later. Shows you the type of luck I used to have. I got pulled over by some asshole suburban cop on a power trip who wrote me up for doing 39 in a 35 MPH zone, and that was all the CIA needed. They tossed me in a cell and threw away the key."
"My God."
"I thought I had hit the bottom of the barrel after I left the U of I. I had nothing. And then even that got taken away. I was…" Jimmy began to struggle with his words. "…I was devastated, I couldn't handle it. I tried to commit suicide in that holding facility at least four times. And twice attempts were made on my life. I think a few organizations bribed some guards at the facility to either capture me or arrange a little 'accident'. Graham pulled me out of that facility to a safehouse. But someone on the inside found me and killed the husband-and-wife couple he assigned to guard me. I blamed myself for them being killed and tried to end my life a fifth time. And had it not been for a misfired gun, I would have succeeded."
Sarah was regretting pressing Jimmy for information. She suspected what happened to him was bad, but she didn't know it was this bad.
"Do you still have this thing in your head?" Sarah asked.
Jimmy shook his head. "No. They were finally able to get it out. Of course, this was years later. At the time of the experiment, nobody owned a PC or even heard of the Internet. I'm sure the technology is better now after almost 25 years. We just have to locate the person who got Bryce's email. I'm sure they wouldn't have been able to open the file."
"But how did you go from being an imprisoned asset to a top-tier agent? More importantly, why would you ever help the people that ruined your life?"
"They changed my safehouse and assigned a new team of agents to protect me. But they were attacked the same as the first couple. Only this time, I took matters into my own hands. The three of us managed to hold off a group of twenty enemy agents long enough for reinforcements to arrive. That got Graham's attention, so he decided to send me on a mission to Las Vegas to recover a memory card containing the account numbers of money laundered from a slew of terrorist organizations. Not only did we get the card, I ended up saving the entire team by base jumping off the Stratosphere Tower into the warehouse where they were being held and took out the Russian mobsters who had planned to kill them."
"And that was with no training whatsoever? That's amazing."
"No, what was amazing was that parachute was able to carry my fat ass."
Sarah gave a gentle growl and smacked Jimmy upside the head. That was her standard response whenever Jimmy made a disparaging remark about himself. But she knew she could get away with that. Casey tried it once and ended up with a black eye.
"So Graham decided you were better off protecting others rather than being protected?"
Jimmy nodded. "He put me through fast-track training, and I finished the program two months ahead of schedule. He put me on the more hardcore jobs, the ones that required fighting skills, expertise in computers, daring rescues, that kind of thing."
Sarah put the pieces together, and a big smile drew across her face. "But you never had to…"
Jimmy shook his head. "Roan was supposed to come out and give me a few lessons on how to seduce, but they couldn't sober him up enough to make the flight."
Sarah laughed at that, remembering Roan paid quite a bit of attention to her during training. But then, so did every male agent trainee…and even some of the female ones.
"So Graham was right. Your first kiss was with me on the beach."
Jimmy looked down at the ground and nodded. "Not exactly a high point in my life, my first kiss not happening until I was 42."
"Stop it," Sarah admonished him. "That's not a character flaw. Given what you've gone through, it was just bad luck. Although I will say, had I known all of this two years ago, there would have been no way in hell I would have let you leave that beach."
Jimmy smiled. "The ol' 'wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then' routine, huh."
"OK, half of it would have been trying to spend the night with a very sweet and handsome person. But I was having a lot of trouble when Bryce left and you are his polar opposite. I just…"
She stopped mid-sentence. "Sarah?" Jimmy asked gently.
He could see Sarah's eyes welling up. He lifted the armrest between the seats and wrapped his arms around her. Sarah cried quietly, burying her face in Jimmy's shoulder so no one else would see her. It was one of the many traits she liked about Jimmy: he was a walking teddy bear. There was no way in hell either Casey or Carina would let her do this.
Buy More - Burbank, CA
September 22, 2015
2:00 PM PDT
Sarah entered the store and surveyed the scene, checking to be sure her Smith & Wesson 5906 pistol was out of sight behind her back but easily accessible. After getting herself together on the flight, the team discussed the best way to approach the man to whom Bryce sent the email. Casey would monitor things in the surveillance van provided by the NSA's Los Angeles office. While Sarah went into the store to meet this person, Jimmy and Carina would break into his apartment and take the file off of his computer.
It wasn't hard to spot Chuck Bartowski. He was the only person in the whole store who looked like he was trying to work. She spotted him at the Nerd Herd desk talking with a shorter, bearded man. If the bio workup on Bartowski was correct, that was his best friend, Morgan.
"Stop the presses!" Morgan exclaimed.
Chuck didn't even look up from the file folder he was working on or take the phone away from his ear. "What, did Vicky Vale walk in?" He started singing in a silly voice. "Vicky Vale, Vick-a-Vicky Vale! Vickity, Vickity, Vicky Vale…"
"Dude, even better than that!"
Chuck still didn't look up. "Who's better than Vicky Vale?"
"Me, I hope," Sarah said, prompting Chuck to drop the phone and folder instantly.
"Uh, hi!" Chuck said, completely flabbergasted by seeing the star of one of his favorite shows in the Buy More. "That…that was from Batman."
"Because that makes it better?" Sarah asked, to which Chuck nervously laughed. Sarah was feeling a lot of confusion right now. If Chuck was a member of some enemy group, he deserved an Oscar for his performance of an innocent tech.
"I'm Morgan, and this is Chuck," Morgan said.
"Wow, I didn't think people still named their kids Chuck…or Morgan, for that matter," Sarah replied.
"Well, my parents were sadists," Chuck said. "And carnival freaks found Morgan in a dumpster."
"But they raised me as one of their own," Morgan added.
"Look, I'm sorry. You probably get tired of hearing this, but I'm a big fan of the show," Chuck said, barely able to hold Sarah's gaze. "It is so much fun to watch the four of you doing all of that action and cracking those one-liners."
"Nothing to be sorry for. I love hearing that from the fans," Sarah replied. "I'd really worry the day doing the show stopped being fun."
Unlike Chuck's sheepish expression, Morgan looked like he just won the lottery. "Sarah, I just gotta ask. I spent so much time on IMDb about the whole Bryce Larkin/Jimmy Slade debate, so I have to ask an expert. Who is better in your opinion?"
"Both of them have their good qualities. I've had a great time working with both of them," she replied, giving her standard answer to one of the most popular questions she gets about the show.
"How can I help you?" Chuck asked.
"I'm here about this," she said, laying down the cell phone Casey disabled for her.
"Ah, yes. The IntelliCell. Yes, absolutely. This model has a little screw that pops loose right in the back here. Just give it a couple of quick turns and…good as new."
Sarah gave him a smile, mostly for cover purposes, but there was something about this guy.
"Wow, you geeks are good."
"Nerds…we're more like nerds. You know, the Nerd Herd."
"Sarah, we have a problem."
Sarah heard Jimmy's voice through her earpiece. She gave a tug to her right earlobe, which was the signal for Casey to ring the phone. Casey typed the appropriate command into the computer, and Sarah's phone began to ring.
"Would you excuse me for a moment?" she said to Chuck and Morgan. "I turn the phone back on and it's like everyone was waiting to call me."
"No, not at all," Chuck replied. As much as he wanted to continue talking to Sarah, a desperate father ran up to the Nerd Herd desk with a daughter dressed in a tutu.
Sarah put the phone to her ear. "What's up?"
Echo Park - Los Angeles, CA
September 22, 2015
2:20 PM PDT
Jimmy and Carina looked around the apartment in total disbelief. None of this was making sense.
"I've got some bad news and some really bad news," Jimmy said. "The bad news is, I couldn't find the file on either of the computers in the apartment. Not on the drives, not in emails, nowhere. The really bad news is someone may have beaten us to it. The apartment's been ransacked."
Sarah kept her look impassive, but she could feel her blood boiling. "That doesn't make any sense. If Chuck knew Bryce sent him something, why would he vandalize his own apartment?"
"We've been duped before, Walker," Casey said. "He could be playing us to keep the heat off of himself."
"No, there's something else going on," Carina said. "Sarah, you're talking to the guy. What do you think?"
Sarah glanced back to Chuck, who was still talking to the harried father. "I don't know. If he is bad, this the best act I've ever seen."
"OK, I've called for a clean-up crew," Jimmy said. "They'll have the place looking like nothing ever happened in a couple of hours."
"Just phone in a police report, moron," Casey replied. "Let him think the place was robbed."
"I'm not worried about Chuck; I'm worried about his sister and her boyfriend. They own the place. Did you see the file on her? Had to raise Chuck since she was fifteen but still got through medical school with honors." Jimmy picked up a framed picture of Ellie Bartowski and her boyfriend, Devon Woodcomb. "The good news is, they're both working twelve-hour shifts at the hospital so they won't be home until 7. You want to try and pawn this off? She's a tough one…in a sort of Demi Moore's uber-hot younger sister kind of way."
Carina gave Jimmy a weird look. "Sarah, do you think you can keep Chuck there until we're done?"
Sarah again looked at Chuck, who was talking to the young ballerina. "I think he'll take care of that for us," she said with a smile.
She watched Chuck line up the ballerina in front of a wall of TVs, all of them showing her. Chuck must have linked the father's video camera into the store's system. Chuck knelt down so he was at eye level with the ballerina.
"You ready?" he asked her. "What's wrong?"
"I'm usually in the back row," she responded.
"Why?"
"I'm too tall. I block the other ballerinas."
"Can I tell you a secret? But you can't tell the other girls. Real ballerinas ARE tall."
Chuck moved out of the way as the young lady started her performance. The crowd went wild for it, and both father and daughter were ecstatic. And of even bigger relief to Sarah, nobody even noticed she was in the store.
She turned away from the crowd and got on her phone, completely unable to get the smile off of her face. "If this Chuck Bartowski is really an agent, we may as well resign now. None of us can put on that good of a show."
"So what's the play, boss?" Jimmy asked.
"I think he needs to go on a date," Sarah replied with a knowing raise of her eyebrow.
"Are you sure you can handle this guy?" Carina asked.
"I'm going to pretend you didn't say that," she retorted with a bit of annoyance.
She walked back to the Nerd Herd desk and waited for Chuck to deal with a short, irate bald man who appeared to be the floor supervisor and took his job much too seriously.
"That was a wonderful thing you did," Sarah told him as he walked back to the desk.
"Thanks," Chuck replied shyly. "It's just part of customer service."
"I've been to a lot of stores, and I've never seen any employee go the lengths you just did to help someone. Even if they were working on commission."
"Well, it just seems like the right thing to do. Although I hope you don't mind me asking, why are you here? Don't you have an assistant or a gopher to take care of things like this for you?"
"Sometimes I like to get out and run my own errands. Keep my feet firmly planted on the ground, as it were. Plus my assistant goes through enough hell already with all of the fan mail."
"I'm certainly glad I was able to help in lieu of your assistant being neck deep in fan letters."
"And pairs of underwear sometimes."
Chuck bristled at that. "They send you theirs or do they request yours?"
"Yes," Sarah said in exasperation, which made Chuck laugh. That gave her an authentic smile as opposed to the ones she was trained to use at opportune moments. The longer Sarah talked to this guy, the more she liked him. It was time to go in for the kill.
"I haven't been in Los Angeles in a long while and I'd really like to go out and enjoy myself. I'm kind of hoping you could come along."
She then fixed him with her best 'come hither' look, guaranteed 100% effectiveness. "That is…if you're free."
"He's free!" Morgan shouted the answer for Chuck. "He's got nothing but time on his hands. He is VERY available. You guys are going to have a great time!"
Chuck turned around, ready to kill Morgan. "What's that sir? Xerox machines? I'll get right on that!"
Chuck turned back to Sarah and shrugged in surrender. "Apparently, my schedule's wide open."
"Great!" she replied.
Echo Park - Los Angeles, CA
September 22, 2015
7:30 PM PDT
Chuck walked into the apartment to find Ellie and Awesome curled up on the couch and watching TV. Fortunately for Sarah and the team, the NSA cleaning crew did their jobs to perfection. Not a single thing was out of place.
"Hi Chuck," Ellie said.
"Ellie, Captain, don't freak out. Remain calm. I have some news."
Naturally, they were on edge. But before Chuck could say anything, Morgan ran in and jumped on Chuck's back.
"Chuck's got a date with Spy Girl!"
"What?" Ellie exclaimed. "You have a date with Sarah Walker?"
"Way to go, Chuck," Devon added. "That's awesome."
Chuck pasted a smile on his face. But for reasons he couldn't figure out, he wasn't nearly as excited about the date as everyone else.