A/N: Maybe, with his new-found success as Shazam, Zachary Levi will manage to acquire ownership of Chuck. That would be cool.

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Prentiss Cuthburt considered himself a relatively cautious man. He had covered the theft of the paper meticulously, but he knew from his expertise with computers that some slight trace of his work might survive. Even if he could change all the numbers he wanted on the Summers' computers, he couldn't protect against unforeseen contingencies. There was always something just past the horizon that he couldn't predict.

In this case, that "something" was Agent Watts. Cuthburt could almost smell it. Watts was getting closer. He didn't know how, but it was like a sixth sense was warning him that it was time to flee. He'd booked a flight to London for later that day. From there he would head to Russia and from there to Taiwan. He would have liked to go directly to Taipei, but he'd be spending most of the day in American airspace if he did that. He wanted to get outside US jurisdiction as soon as possible. So, he'd called in sick to work and was packing a bag. He would leave his Pittsfield apartment within the hour and drive to Boston's Logan Airport for the flight. Once in Taiwan, he'd be safe. Especially when General Chen won the election next year.

The blackberry on his belt buzzed while he was brushing his teeth. He'd only clipped it to his belt as a matter of habit. The fucking thing was the bane of his existence. The office was constantly asking him to fix this or that. He had a staff of fourteen IT people working for him and he seemed to get all the calls anyway. He was supposed to be sick today, for God's sake. 'Well,' he thought, 'after today they'll well and truly learn to get along without me.' He stared at it for a few moments and then threw the device in the trash without responding to the message. 'Fuck them.'

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United States Secret Service Agent Thompson said, "We stick out like a sore thumb here. The desert is empty as shit." To emphasize the point, he gestured at the emptiness of the landscape with a grimace.

His partner, Agent Orly said, "You're always so negative. Look on the bright side. It's in the mid 50's. This close to Death Valley we could be doing this in hundred and ten degree weather. At least today we can keep the car's windows open."

"Awright. Fair point, I guess." He took up the binoculars and scanned the building they believed contained the printing machines a few of hundred yards down the road for the tenth time since they'd taken up the surveillance, replacing the team that had had the first shift.

"You really think Chen himself will show up"

"Naw, probably not. He'll probably send one of his men. We just have to watch it until the warrant is issued. Once we have that, they can't get any of the evidence out."

"Yeah. Hey, pass me the thermos of coffee, huh."

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Cuthburt was startled by a knock at the door. The doorman would normally have buzzed to at least tell him that he had a visitor on the way up. And anyway, it was barely noon. Who would be knocking on his door at this hour on a work day? He looked through the door's peephole and saw Agent Watts with a few men behind him. His heart sank. 'Fuck,' he thought. 'I'm screwed.'

He opened the door. "Gentlemen," he said.

"Mr. Cuthburt," said Watts, handing him a piece of paper. "Here is a warrant to search your home. You may be interested to know that a warrant for the search of your office is being executed right now. In the meantime, we'd like you to come with us to our office in Albany and have a chat." As he spoke, five agents walked past him and Watts to begin a search of his apartment.

"Am I under arrest?"

"Will you come with us willingly if I say no?" asked Watts.

From the bedroom someone yelled, "Packed bag. Looks like Mr. Cuthburt was about to take a trip."

Watts cocked an eyebrow at Cuthburt.

The man looked terrible. Sick. His fear and dread had hit him like a tidal wave. "I have to go to the bathroom," he said desperately. Watts had once had a suspect soil himself on the way to lockup, and he didn't want to live through that again.

Watts said, "Give me your phone."

Cuthburt handed it to the agent.

Watts turned to Casper and said, "Take him there. Make sure there's no fire escape from the bathroom, then bring him back when he's done."

'Come on," Casper motioned with his head. "Which way?"

Cuthburt gestured.

Casper checked the bathroom to make sure Cuthburt couldn't escape out a window.

"Kay," he said to Cuthburt.

Cuthburt went inside and locked the door behind him. He sat on the lid of the commode and sunk his head into his hands. He wanted to cry.

Casper, standing in front of the bathroom, was approached by one of the other agents.

"We good?"

"Yeah," said Casper. "Guy's inside."

"We like this guy?"

"Yeah, we do. Getting the whole thing wrapped up, looks like. We found the print shop in Nevada and we're circling the guy moving the fake stuff. We put the world's most beautiful blonde on him. The asshole doesn't stand a chance." Casper laughed.

Chuckling, his fellow agent gave him a friendly smack on the shoulder and walked away to start a search of the kitchen.

Inside the bathroom, Cuthburt took his blackberry out of the trash can.

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It had taken her almost an hour to calm down from the debacle of the Kirk seduction mission. But eventually, she had come to realize that one aborted mission did not mean that she had lost the ability to seduce a target. An incident like that might not necessarily be repeated on the next seduction mission.

But that left them to plot an alternative plan to get close to Kirk. Chuck, Casey and Sarah were talking about the possibility of putting a virus into the Casino's computer system to get Chuck in front of Kirk. The same strategy they had used with Stavros Demetrios. The phone rang.

Chuck picked it up. "Hello...Lon..." he chuckled, while looking at his partners with confusion. "Sure...really?...sure...both of us?...Yeah, we can do that. It'll be fun. No, don't expect me to bring three million to the table. If I'm playing with my own money I'm going to be a lot more cautious. Ok. See you at 7. Great."

He put down the phone and looked at Sarah and Casey in surprise. "He invited Sarah and me to play poker with him and some of his friends tonight. Upstairs."

"After I puked in his pool?" said Sarah in disbelief.

"Well, yeah. I guess that didn't bother him that much," said Chuck with a tentative shrug.

"I don't like it," said Casey. "It's too convenient. Just as we're figuring out how to get to him, he calls us."

"I agree. I'm the last person he should want to see," said Sarah.

"Well, I wasn't about to tell him we didn't want to go see him. That wouldn't make much sense, right?"

She sighed, "Yeah. That's right. But I still don't like it. Casey?"

"I agree, but how many choices do we have?"

"Well," said Chuck, "You didn't get the invite. So, you will be our back-up. We'll keep the coms open, like we did with Sarah this morning. If it hits the fan, you can come running."

"And we'll head in there loaded for bear. I'll be armed and Chuck will have his trank pistol. We've just been sitting here plotting to get closer to him. We would be pretty nuts not to go play cards with him, right?"

"I know you can play blackjack. Can you play poker too?" asked Chuck.

Sarah started to laugh and walked over to the table with the deck of cards still sitting on it. Casey and Chuck sat across from her, at her direction.

"Maybe I can't seduce a mark any more, but can I play poker?" she asked rhetorically, with a small smile. Chuck thought it was a good sign that she could make a little joke about the Kirk thing.

She began to shuffle the deck from hand to hand, quickly and smoothly. As she shuffled, she said, "Chuck you remember a couple of days ago when I was teaching you to count cards and you asked me if I was teaching you to cheat?"

"Yeah."

"I don't think of card counting as cheating. THIS is cheating."

She put the deck in front of him and said, "Cut the cards, please."

He did. Taking the cards back, she glanced out the window for a second and said, "I wonder if that storm is going to bring snow."

Both men looked out the window at the overcast sky for a moment. Casey said, "Might. It's getting pretty cold. Maybe not enough to snow, though."

Quickly, she dealt five cards to each of them.

"What do you have?" she asked.

Chuck looked at his cards. "I have a straight. Four, five, six, seven, eight."

"Casey?"

"Two pair. Fours and sevens."

Sarah set out her hand. It was a royal straight flush, spades.

"Holy shit, Sarah. How did you do that?" asked Chuck.

Sarah collected the hands and began to shuffle again. Once done, she said, "Take the top card."

Casey reached out and took a King of Hearts.

"Chuck?"

Chuck reached out and took a three of diamonds.

"Ouch," said Sarah.

She reached for the pack and took out the Ace of Spades.

"Holy shit, Sarah. Again, how'd you do that?"

She picked up the deck again and began to shuffle it again.

"I was given a book many years ago. I studied and practiced and practiced. In front of a mirror. As a magician might."

She slid the pack to Casey. "Cut the cards."

Casey did a cut. She slid them in front of Chuck. He did the same, and slid them back to her. She selected the top card. It was the Ace of Spades. She grinned at them.

"Ok. That's just freaky. Spill," said Chuck.

She patted down the cards to straighten the deck. Then she slowly lifted her right hand to show them the palm. Held in the palm of her right hand, invisible before then, was the Ace of Spades. The card was slightly bent and the tension was keeping it in place. She had been palming the card while the deck had been shuffled and cut.

"Wow. That's so cool. Ok, I understand how you could palm that card and always have it available, ...crazy that we didn't see it...but how did you manage the hands you dealt at this start of this little magic show? That was impressive."

"I had arranged a packet of cards on the deck before I ever picked it up. I knew I'd be dealing to both of you to show you what this sort of card manipulation was about. You saw the blind shuffle I wanted you to see. I held that packet of fifteen cards back on top. That packet didn't get shuffled at all."

"Ok, but I cut the cards after the shuffle. I think I'd be able to tell if the deck was missing fifteen cards."

"Oh, the cards were back in the pack when you cut it."

"So, they'd be in the middle of the deck. I know people can deal from the bottom, but not from the middle."

"Nope. Not from the middle. I recut the deck one handed when I got you both to look out the window at the weather."

"Let's see," said Casey.

She held the deck in one hand in the center of her palm of her left hand. As they watched, she used the index and pinkie fingers of her hand to lever up half the deck and the two bottom fingers to push the other half up, dropping the first pile down and the top one on top of what had become the bottom one. The whole movement had taken about a second. She had looked at them while doing it, not down at her hand.

"Holy shit," said Chuck. "That's awesome. You say you learned this from a book?"

"Well, somewhat. It's a long story."

"Remind me not to play cards with you, Walker," said Casey, shaking his head.

"Maybe, Case," said Chuck, "but I'm looking forward to having her play with Kirk. This is gonna be fun."

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Both armed with their weapons of choice, Chuck and Sarah rode the elevator to the penthouse of the hotel. She was dressed in jeans and a purple blouse, her hair pulled back in a pony tail. Her blouse hung loose at her waist and hid the holster for her weapon. Chuck was in jeans, a light sport jacket, and an open neck shirt.

He looked at her with love and said, "You look beautiful tonight. As always."

In their ears, they heard Casey say, "Thanks, Bartowski. I like that jacket on you too." They started to laugh when Casey followed up by saying, "And who says I'm not funny?"

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There was a knock on the door to the suite and Casey went to answer it, his pistol in his hand.

"Yeah?"

"Package, Mr. Carmichael. Might be important, Sir. It's from the Secret Service."

'Ah, crap.' He thought. 'Fucking idiots. There goes our cover. Godammit.'

He looked through the peephole and saw a bellman, and then opened the door.

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Chuck and Sarah were still laughing when the elevator doors opened. There was Lon Kirk. He was standing with Tony Blackman and five of Blackman's men. In total, there were six guns pointed at them. They stopped laughing.

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The door to the suite burst open as two men, one dressed as a bellman, slammed inside, knocking Casey back and knocking the gun out of his hand with the edge of the door. Casey found himself facing two guns, held in rock steady hands and pointed at his center of mass.

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The stars can be beautiful in the desert night, but not this night. The sky was overcast and the wind had freshened. The storm was about ready to break.

Thompson said, "Let's close the window. It's getting chilly. Looks like a storm is coming."

Orly said, "I like it open. I like the night desert air. It's healthy."

There was a slight noise from the desert side of the car. Both men looked in that direction. Li-fu, former-Taiwanese commando, dressed in black from head to foot, his face covered in black camo paint, was standing by the side of the car with a pistol. He fired four shots into the car, killing each of the agents instantly with double-tap head shots. He put his H&K Mod24, chambered for the large .45 caliber round, back into his holster at his hip. He had borrowed the weapon from Colonel Blackman's group, along with the other gear he was using this evening.

He moved to the driver's side door and opened it. Pushing Orly's body over to the passenger side, to lie atop Thompson's body, Li-fu took a position in the driver's seat, ignoring the mess he had made, and started the car. He flashed the headlights twice and was rewarded with the double flash of a flashlight from the building in the distance.

He drove there quickly, passing a black minivan on his way through the doors to the garage. The minivan followed him inside, one of his men closing the large sliding doors behind both cars. The man at the door flipped a switch, illuminating the inside of the space with overhead lights. The building was a large garage, big enough to hold several trucks at the same time. The two cars were the only vehicles there at the moment. In the center of the room, surrounded by racks with tools, ink, and other equipment were two large machines. The first was a printing press and the second was a precision cutting machine to cut the sheets of newly printed money into single note sizes.

Chen watched calmly from the passenger seat as the operation was carried out. First the plates were removed from the press, carefully wrapped in heavy cloth and placed in the back of the minivan. Then the recently printed counterfeit money, bundled into plastic wrapped stacks, was placed into a large canvas sail bag and put into the minivan on top of the plates.

While that was going on Li-fu had placed AN/M14 incendiary grenades onto each of the two machines and one into the car with the bodies of the two Secret Service agents. Then he poured gasoline from a jerry can onto the floor of the building around the machines and near the office area in a corner.

Another man found the box with the fire alarm system and cut the wires to disable it, then he got into the driver's seat of the minivan and turned it around to face the door. Li-fu opened the sliding doors to the building and the minivan drove a few feet out onto the paving outside the building.

Li-fu went back inside and pulled the pins on all three grenades. There was a quick fuse on that variety of grenade, so he ran from the building to the minivan, to make sure he wasn't splattered with any thermite as the grenades detonated.

Each of the grenades ignited with a dull whoomp noise. The burning thermite would reduce the machines to slag and destroy the bodies of the dead men. The vapor from the gasoline ignited next, with a much louder WHOOMP. The windows blew out and the entire building began to burn. The open door and empty windows provided ample oxygen to feed the flames. The fire was visible from I-15 to the west, and would no doubt be called in to the fire department, but by the time they arrived all evidence contained in the building would be gone. A light rain had begun to fall, but not nearly enough to dampen the flames.

The four men drove away. Not a word had been spoken or had been necessary.

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A/N2: The book Sarah referred to is called Expert at the Card Table and was written (anonymously) under the name S.W. Erdnase. Although over 100 years old, it remains the definitive guide to card manipulation. Here's where I stretched realism though. Cards are a fixed size. Hands are not. Some of the things Sarah pulled off would, likely, require larger hands than Ms. Strahovski probably possesses and would be easier for someone with Chuck's or Casey's hand size to manage. But seriously, though, does anyone think that Jack Burton neglected to teach his baby girl how to cheat at cards?

A/N3: Cliffies. I know some of you hate those, so I'll ease a little of the tension. The good guys win. There. Hope that tides you over until next Saturday. If you want to complain about cliffhangers, leave a review.