The Detective and the Tech Guy

Author: Steampunk . Chuckster

Rating: T

Summary: A case of mistaken identity and murder brings Sarah Walker, Pinkerton agent, to sunny California. Protecting the heir to the Bartowski Electronics Corporation should be just business - but Chuck Bartowski fills out a suit nicely and makes a mean martini. Chuck lobbied to hire the Pinkerton Agency, but had no idea the detective they'd send would be as alluring, intelligent and fascinating as Sarah Walker. Will the detective and the tech guy solve the mystery, distracted by the riddle in their own hearts? An homage to The Thin Man movies.

Disclaimer: No money is being made from this story. I don't own Chuck or The Thin Man series.

Author's Note: Thanks for all of your reviews. It makes me want to just sit here and write until I keel over. Seriously. Such fuel. Enjoy this next bit!

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

The Detective and the Tech Guy Versus the ExoBand, Part 5

"How does Mark Vinton feel about exercise?"

Casey lifted his head from where he was typing on his computer, watching her approach his desk. "Uh… Good morning to you, too."

Sarah ignored that. "Is he an exercise guy? Was he wearing a smart watch or something?"

The LAPD detective made a face, then blinked, scratching his head. "Maybe? I don't know. That wasn't something I thought to ask since, ya know, it has nothing to do with the murder of his ex-wife. Or the statutory rape case against him we've got some of our folks on now." He pushed his hand through his short hair in frustration. "That's gonna be a solid case since he admitted to it. But he insists he had nothing to do with the murder and I don't know where to go next."

"Well…ask him how he feels about exercise, specifically exercising apps. See if he has a watch that tracks his work-outs for him." Sarah sat in the chair across from Casey and crossed her legs.

"Why?" He narrowed his eyes.

"It's a stupid theory. I might be crazy. Or I'm letting my boyfriend's overactive imagination rub off on me."

Casey rolled his eyes. "Well, let me have it anyway."

She huffed, leaning her elbow on his desk and propping her head in her palm. "Chuck's brother-in-law bought Chuck's sister one of those fancy ExoBands and she couldn't figure it out so she gave it to Chuck to play with so he could give her a tutorial."

"Get to the point, Walker."

Sarah glared. This guy was a good detective but he was a jerk sometimes. "He found a community you can connect with—other people who use ExoBands. Like, an online community through the app. You can make your own groups with threads, talk about exercise or…whatever you want. But here's the kicker." She leaned in even more. "It's such new technology, the chats are totally untraceable. You can talk to someone without the NSA or Google or…who knows what else…being able to access it."

Casey just kept staring at her and she stared back.

"Okay, so apparently I have to spell this out for you. This is a way you can converse with somebody about stuff you don't want anybody else to be privy to. So…an affair, for instance. Or…" She paused dramatically because she couldn't help it. "…planning a crime."

He perked up at that. "Almost like…meeting on a train. Isn't it?" His eyes were a little crazed, but then he grunted and shook his head. "That's a leap."

"And this whole Strangers on a Train theory isn't a leap?"

Casey grunted again. "Touché, I guess."

"At least it's something we can keep in the backs of our minds."

"How are two people gonna start getting to talk about doing a murder swap in an exercise chat board thingie? That's a good question. Also a good question: How'd they find each other in there? Is there a Murders R' Us thread on this ExoCrap app?" Casey asked with a shrug.

"I haven't gotten that far yet, okay? All we know is Mark Vinton was being blackmailed by one of our victims over statutory rape and there's a good chance she was killed over that."

"Or money."

"See? We don't even know which one it is."

"Or both."

Sarah grumbled in frustration.

"Well, we've gotten some background information out of Vinton, at least," Casey said, playing with his pencil.

That was when Cutlet and Rizzo wandered up to the desk, probably having seen Sarah come in and figuring they were discussing the case. Rizzo sat on the edge of the desk as Cutlet stood off to the side. Neither of them seemed to think it was important to offer any sort of greeting and Sarah was fine with that.

"You telling her about the brother?" Cutlet asked, taking a bite out of an Eggo waffle and chewing noisily. Sarah worked to ignore the sound of it. But then she realized what the officer said and sat up a bit straighter.

"Wait, what? What brother?"

"Mark has a brother—Brian," Rizzo said.

"Oh. Yeah, Casey brought that up when he was first questioning Mark Vinton. I was standing right there watching the footage with you two," she said, making a face and shrugging.

"What you don't know is that Brian's his only family left. They aren't close at all, only exchange a few words a year, really. But Mark controls their parents' assets 'cause he's the eldest son," Casey explained. "And that means Brian really doesn't have much of a choice about how much of it goes to Mark's blackmail clean-up fund and how much of it goes to him."

"That must be a rub. But, I mean, he hasn't called Mark out on it?" Sarah asked. "His brother's taking most of their parents' inheritance instead of sharing it evenly between them. Wouldn't he wanna know why?"

"He does know why. At least, Mark told us he had to read Brian in on the whole thing. The affair with the student—"

"It's rape," Rizzo uttered in annoyance.

"Right, that." Casey nodded his head in assent. "But he also knows Greta was blackmailing Mark about it."

Sarah's eyes widened. "He must be pissed."

"I asked him. He said he has called him a few times to yell at him about it, but Brian knows it would soil the Vinton family's reputation and apparently there's some sort of familial…I dunno…loyalty, I guess. Even though Mark and Brian aren't close by any means."

"Our thinking?" Rizzo said, crossing her arms and meeting Sarah's gaze. "Brian's inheritance is being F'd in the A by Greta Olsen. He won't do anything to his brother about it, but…the brother's ex-wife would be fair game."

Sarah rubbed her cool hand over the back of her neck thoughtfully, nibbling on her bottom lip. "Hey… How does Brian Vinton feel about exercise?"

Casey smirked as the other two looked at her as if she'd gone crazy.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Saturday had become the best day of the week for Chuck to do his beach runs. So when he woke up before Sarah on this particular Saturday morning, he decided to gingerly untangling her limbs from around him and get out of bed, put on his running clothes, and sneak out without waking her up.

He'd succeeded and found himself running the last quarter mile back to where he'd parked as the sun finally began to rise to a bit of a warmer height. At least a bit warmer. Warm enough that he could take off his sweatshirt and hold it in his hand as he jogged.

As usual, these long morning and sometimes evening jogs were when his brain kicked into high gear. He always came up with the best ideas out here, alone, the breeze whipping at his face. Maybe because it distracted him from the aching in his lungs and limbs as he ran further and faster than he usually did.

And this time, his brain went to Sarah's case, the double murder. Strangers on a Mother Fuckin' Train. That thought made him snort and he choked a bit on his own spit, having to slow down to bend over and cough.

Well, that was stupid.

A billionaire coder and tech genius, magazines like Wired and Forbes called him, and here he was almost choking to death during a jog because he laughed at his own really stupid Samuel L. Jackson reference.

Catching his breath, he decided to just walk the rest of the way, shaking his head at himself.

She wasn't so sure the cases were connected anymore, and he found himself clinging to the idea that they were. He got the feeling she wanted them to be connected. There were just too many potential suspects in the lawyer's murder with how many people he got convicted as a prosecutor. It'd be so easy if they could connect the murder to another one and find his killer that way.

Chuck understood that completely.

But the way things just weren't…connecting, or fitting together… He could tell she was starting to get legitimately frustrated. She'd stayed out on the streets of LA late last night working on leads, and then went back to the station with the other three detectives she was working with, Grumpy McGrumperson included. He'd heard her come in at almost two in the morning, sneaking up to his bedroom, undressing, and climbing into bed with him.

He tried not to let himself get too caught up in the layers upon layers of meaning in the fact that she'd come to his place instead of going back to her own apartment. His condo was closer than her apartment to the precinct she worked with. There was that. But he couldn't help wondering if maybe the frustration of their fruitless investigation was getting to her and she needed him for physical comfort, or maybe she wanted a sounding board.

Either way, he'd let himself drift back to sleep when she draped her arm over him instead of rolling over and letting her talk if she needed to. Did he want to know what she'd found out in the last two days he hadn't seen her? Definitely. But he also wasn't sure if she was sleeping enough, so he opted to let her just sleep.

That was why he'd snuck out this morning. She was out cold, unmoving, in such a deep sleep that him lifting and moving her arms and legs hadn't even slightly woken her up. So he left her there, hoping she'd sleep in.

But then he felt the pocket of his shorts vibrate. Suddenly, the scratchy, soulful voice of Ray LaMontagne came from his pocket, crooning, "Yoooou aaaare the best thing…" Grinning, knowing exactly whose phone he'd set the ringtone for, he pulled his own phone out of his shorts and answered it. "Hiya, Sleepy Head."

He could hear her yawning even as she answered him. "Hiii," she drawled. "Where did you go?"

"Went for a run on my special Run Beach. But I'm already back at my car and I'll be home in, like, five minutes. Did you sleep well?"

"Mhm," she murmured, and he heard another yawn. "I'll talk to you when you get home."

"All right," he said, pausing as he swung behind the wheel of his car. "Wait, is there something we have to talk about?"

"Not we as in…we we. Come on, Chuck."

"Oh. No, I didn't think that. I just…the case. I figured the case."

She just made a noncommittal sound and he figured he'd better just get back so that she could tell him. He thought he'd figured right. That something had happened with the case. He could only hope that whatever it was would be a good thing.

"I'll see ya in a bit," he said.

"Okay, love you."

Chuck hung up the phone and rushed back to his apartment, parking in the garage underneath next to Sarah's car and hurrying up the stairs for an extra bit of exercise so that by the time he let himself into his condo, he was well out of breath.

Sarah sat at the table by the window at the other end of his living room with a mug in front of her, long legs folded to her chest, heels propped on the edge of the seat. She tiredly turned her head to look at him and smile. "Hey."

"Hey." He grinned and crossed the room to her, tossing his wallet, phone, and keys on the table and leaning down to give her a careful kiss on the forehead. "Sorry, I'm, um, sweaty." He gestured to himself.

"If you aren't sweaty after a jog, you aren't doing it right," she said, her eyes finally having a bit of a happy shine to them as she smiled up at him.

"Well, then I definitely did it right." He sat in one of the closer chairs to her and scooted even closer, leaning forward with his elbows propped on his knees. "Are you okay?" he asked, getting right to the point.

"Yes." She grinned and shook her head at him. "I'm fine. This case is just super frustrating. I think there's a break and it leads us into another brick wall. Like this unending maze—you think you've taken the right turn and then oh woops nope dead end." She pushed her hands through her hair. "It's easy to get into a sort of defeatist mood when you run into cases like this one."

Chuck nodded and put a clammy hand on her knee, before he thought maybe he shouldn't put his hot, moist hand on her nice, smooth, cool knee. But when he tried to pull back with an apologetic look, she caught his fingers in hers and brought it back to drape over her knee again, smiling at him. He smiled back, then cleared his throat and lifted his eyebrows. "So what happened? If you don't mind talking about it. I mean, you can, if you need to just…get it out and have someone listen."

She giggled lightly. "Casey'd fire me if he knew just how much I used you as a sounding board."

"I'm your sounding boyfriend." That made her throw her head back with a short laugh. "Hey, coin that phrase. Trademark."

Shaking her head in amusement, she laid her hand atop his on her knee and sighed, sobering up a little. "It's just getting convoluted, but not in a way where we're actually figuring shit out. It's more in the direction where the more players get involved, the further away we get to solving the case. And I feel like I'm going crazy or something."

"This is what you do, though," he said with a shrug. She sent him a questioning look like she didn't know where he was going with this. "You're the best detective in the entire world, Sarah Walker. Solving these crazy difficult cases that would seem completely unsolvable to anyone else? It's what you do," he emphasized. "And I know for a fact that you're going to solve both of these murders. You just have to…get there."

Half of her mouth tilted up as she watched him, and she propped her chin on both of their hands over her knee. "I love you. Nobody in my life has ever had so much faith in me, in my abilities."

"I love you, too. But you need to get yourself to my level, baby. Have faith in yourself and your abilities the way I have faith in you and your abilities. Think outside the box. Follow the clues. Er, whatever else you detective types gotta do."

Sarah snorted and gave him a look full of affection. "You're a complete dork."

"Better than being a partial dork. When I do something, I do it completely."

Letting out a short chuckle through her nose, she lifted her chin and turned their hands over to kiss his fingers. "You taste like beach," she muttered and he laughed.

After a beat, he squeezed her hand. "Did you get anything from the, uh, the ex-husband yet? Anything besides the barf-worthy statutory rape situation?"

"We've had to ship him back to Washington so they can prosecute him and all that mess. He didn't murder her. At least, we're pretty sure he didn't. Besides his alibi, it almost seems like maybe his brother did it."

Chuck sat back at widened his eyes. "His brother? Why would Greta Olsen's ex-brother-in-law kill her?"

"He knew she was blackmailing his brother which was siphoning money from his inheritance that their dead parents left him and his brother. Mark told Casey his brother Brian called him a few times furious about it. I mean, it was a pretty large sum of money he was missing out on because Greta was blackmailing his brother. He has the motive, almost as much as Mark Vinton had motive, considering she was the biggest threat to him being found out for victimizing one of his underage students." She huffed and pulled her hand away, pushing them both through her hair again. "But Brian wasn't anywhere near Santa Monica the night Greta was killed. He was at a function at the Huntington Library. The host confirmed he'd been invited and she saw him there."

"Well, you thought maybe the ex-husband had hired someone. What if his brother actually hired someone? Wait, weren't there people who saw someone waiting in a car out on the curb outside her restaurant? Can't you ask them?"

She gave him a miserable look and shook her head. "Their description doesn't fit Brian Vinton. But yeah, he could've hired someone. Rizzo is checking to see if he made any big payments or wrote a personal check for a lot of money, anything that might signify he paid someone to do it."

"It could've been a hit man or something."

Sarah shrugged and nodded. "I need to just buckle down and finish this thing."

"At least you've got a team."

Raising her eyebrows, she smirked at him. "They're a pretty good team, too. I'm a big fan of Detective Rizzo. She sort of…goes to bat for me. It's refreshing to work in this business with another woman for a change. She thinks like me, and listens in a way Casey and Cutlet don't. Not that they mean any harm by it. I think they both respect me even if Cutlet's a bit of a dickhead—I think Rizzo was just the only one around them for a bit and she just sort of dealt with it, and now that I'm there working on this with her, she's…" She shrugged.

"It's probably just as refreshing for her to work with you. You should get coffee with her sometime." She sent him a look and he chuckled, holding his hands up. "I'm just sayin'! You'd be hanging out with someone who gets your line of work, and who knows what it means to work in law enforcement slash detecting while woman."

"Is that weird, though? We're working on a case together and I just ask her for coffee like we're suddenly gal pals? Like…what if she thinks that's lame?"

Chuck tried not to make a face like he thought she was the cutest thing in the world—she really was the cutest thing in the world—because she might take it as pity or something, and that in turn would be condescending.

"Baby, she isn't gonna think you're lame. Just ask her if she wants to grab a coffee with you or a drink or something. You can even talk about the case, away from the dude members of your team. Shoot the shit, share stories about bad guys you've caught." He made his eyes light up for her benefit. "On second thought, invite me! I wanna hear about catching bad guys!"

"Ha! Fat chance. With the catching-bad-guys fetish you have, I'm not sure I'm ready to lose you to an even bigger badass than I am."

Chuck laughed. "Even if I would, you'd never let me."

She nodded with a snort. "Oh, I wouldn't let you go without a helluva fight, Chuck Bartowski."

He grumbled happily and leaned forward to press a kiss to her shin because it was the closest thing he could reach. "I like when you talk that way. But anyway, it isn't really a catching-bad-guys fetish. It's a Sarah-Walker-catching-bad-guys fetish. It has everything to do with you."

Her grin lit up his entire living room. "You say the weirdest but sweetest things. Never change."

"I'm…not liable to at this point. I just turned twenty-eight. That's almost thirty. I mean, not much chance of change, especially not improvement, so if you're waiting for that, you're gonna be disappointed." He winced teasingly and she giggled, ruffling his hair.

"Listen, Chuck…I've had a lot of disappointments in my life, and if there's one thing I know I can count on it's that you're never gonna disappoint me."

"I feel like I have disappointed you a few times. I mean, this is a serious romantic relationship we're in, and I'm certainly not perfect."

"You're not. And okay, fine…but I mean big disappointments. The ones that crush your insides."

"Okay, I'll give you that, then. I'm never going to do that to you."

"I know! That's what I'm saying! I made it kind of…serious and intense, didn't I? When you were trying to be lighthearted and fun."

He chuckled and shook his head. "That's okay. But we're going to talk about this case and I'm going to throw bonkers ideas at you that you can parry away with a tennis racket Serena Williams status. And we're gonna do it while I make breakfast because I just ran a lot and I'm famished."

"I'll make breakfast. You take a shower."

Chuck's jaw fell open. "Are you hinting that I smell?"

"It isn't a hint. You smell. I love you, it isn't a deal breaker or anything, but you smell."

He laughed and leaned in to kiss her, earning a giggle. "Fine. I'll shower, you make the food. Then we get down to business."

The look she sent him over her shoulder as he moved towards the stairs up to his bedroom and the main bathroom made him think she was maybe laying a different definition on 'business' than he was. And that was totally fine by him.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

"Oh, shit!"

Chuck was dozing on Sarah's couch the next afternoon when he heard her yell. He lurched up to sit, trying to blink his eyes open, his hand smacking at the space next to him for something he could use to bludgeon an intruder. "Wha—Wha's—What happened?"

He glanced over the back of the couch to the table where she was sitting at her laptop and she winced at him. "Oh, crap. Were you sleeping? I'm so sorry. But I think I might've finally found it."

The tech guy's brain wasn't fully functional yet, so he just kept blinking at her. "The, uh, pilates transformer you an' Ellie were talking about going halfsies on?"

Sarah furrowed her brow and squinted at him. "What? No. The case, Chuck. My case."

"Oh." What she said settled in his brain then and he crawled up onto his knees, his hands braced on the back of the couch. "Oh!" He scrambled off of the couch altogether, paused for a second to make sure his legs were working, then hurried around to the table. "What-What is it? What'd you find?"

"C'mere." She pulled another chair right up next to hers and patted the seat. "Tell me if you're seeing what I'm seeing."

Chuck sat eagerly and rubbed his clammy hands down his jeans a few times. "Whatta ya got? Lay it on me."

She had an array of pictures in a folder. "Casey gave me this drive with all the photos Detective Rizzo took while she was tailing Brian Vinton yesterday. He gets around a lot so she definitely wasn't bored."

"Is that the thing you found?"

"No," she snapped.

"Hey, you woke me up from a nice nap, P.I., so maybe lose the tone," he teased, and he got a flat look for it. He cleared his throat and gestured to the computer for her to continue.

"Right, this one here where he's on the phone… Notice anything?"

Chuck leaned in and squinted. "I see…his phone. Um, he's balding a little bit at the top of his head. Hair thinning. Makes ya pretty glad you're dating a guy who's got super thick hair, huh?" He tugged at his curls. "These aren't falling out anytime soon."

Sarah rolled her eyes and giggled, bumping his shoulder with hers. "Comforting. Not that I really care much. But no, I'm talking about maybe somewhere around…here." She drew a circle around his lower half with her finger.

"His… sexual instrument?"

"Oh my God! Chuck! Forget it!" she groused, laughing seemingly in spite of herself. "I'm just gonna tell you. Look at what he's wearing on his wrist."

"A smart watch."

"Right, but does it look like an ExoBand to you? Or just a regular smart watch?"

Chuck squinted. "I…can't tell. Hold on." He reached over to her laptop keyboard and zoomed in on the picture, focusing on Vinton's left wrist. Then he Googled the ExoBand and brought up images of it. "It only comes in two colors right now, I think Ellie told me, because Awesome was trying to decide between the black band and the neon green band for her gift."

"Black or neon green? Do they think it's nineteen-eighty-nine still?"

He snorted and shrugged. "That's a fair question…Wait. Wait, there's a limited edition silver band. And it's legitimate silver." He pulled up the zoomed picture again. "That looks like a silver limited edition ExoBand to me. What do you think, Sarah Walker, P.I.?" he drawled, excitement buzzing in his chest.

Chuck watched as her blue eyes flashed once they'd switched back and forth between the images. "Holy shit, it really does. Chuck, this could…this could really be what's happening. I mean, it's crazy. It's insane. A lot of people have bought ExoBands, though, right?" He didn't answer, figuring it was a rhetorical question, but then she turned to look at him. "Right?"

"Well, I mean, not as many people as all that," he admitted. "It isn't near the number of people with other smart watches. This is specifically for exercising and it has a shit ton of social media features and stuff on it, too. And it's new enough and stupid levels of expensive."

"But still…I'm crazy for considering he hired a murderer with his exercise watch, right?"

Chuck furrowed his brow, uncertain. "Ummmm…I don't know how you want me to answer…" He let the end of the sentence fade off and found Sarah's hand landing gently on his upper back, rubbing distractedly as she leaned in to stare at the computer screen.

Apparently she didn't expect an answer to that one, so that was a relief.

"I'm—Where's my phone? I need to call Detective Casey. Right now." But she practically already had her phone in her hand as she was finishing the question, and she pulled it up to her ear after dialing. "Hey, you need to see something," she said, her eyes lighting up with adrenaline as she turned back to the screen. Chuck heard a sarcastic rumble of a voice but couldn't hear what the grump was saying. "Just pull up the photos of Vinton. Brother Vinton," she murmured. "Specifically Photo V13A, and zoom in on his wrist. I'm going to text you a picture now, hang on…" And she pulled the phone away, ignoring Detective Casey's voice coming out of her phone as she quickly googled a picture of the limited edition silver ExoBand, Chuck figured. She must have sent it after about twenty seconds, and she put the phone to her ear again. "There. Tell me when you get it."

There was a long pause.

And then he must have gotten the picture and looked at it, because Chuck heard a clear, crisp, "What the fuck!" even with the phone pressed to Sarah's face.

"Mmhmm! And it could be a coincidence, but we need to find out what in the hell he's doing on that watch of his. Who he's contacting. When he contacted them. And we need to know what he said." She paused for a few seconds. "What do you mean 'if he said anything'?" she rushed out. "He had to, Detective Casey." Then she stopped and frowned. "Yeah, maybe I am only saying that because it'd be our only lead. But there's a good chance he directed Greta Olsen's murder through that ExoBand. And we need to get a hold of it."

An idea suddenly occurred to Chuck as the last few days of playing with Ellie's ExoBand flashed through his mind. Its functions, the things he could do with it besides it just tracking his exercise. "Sarah," he hissed, waving his hand to get her attention. She frowned at him in question. "C-Can I…? Can I say something?"

"Hold on, Detective," she said into her phone, and she moved the mouth piece away from her lips, covering it to keep the LAPD from hearing, probably just in case he wasn't supposed to be privy to all of this. "What is it?"

"If that's an ExoBand he's wearing and using, you don't need the actual watch. That'd be fishy, right? If you went in there demanding his fitness watch…" He sent her a look, tilting his head, and Sarah shrugged in assent. "But the ExoBand app goes on your phone. See?" He grabbed his own phone out of his jeans pocket and unlocked it, showing her the ExoBand app on his phone, the neon green emblem with the giant boxy 'E' on it. "And this is how you access all of the functions and most of the social stuff. Which means the fitness challenges, exercise regimens, and…" He clicked through and then scrolled, stopping on the chatroom and clicking it. "The threads where you can talk with other fitness fanatics…" He clicked out of it, then pointed to the private message function. "Oh, hey look. This is where all of your ExoBand texts go."

Sarah sent him a wide eyed look, and smirked. He thought maybe she was impressed. He hoped she was impressed. He knew for a fact she'd put together where he was going with that. She pulled her phone back to her face slowly, watching Chuck closely. "We just need his phone, Detective Casey. If we can get a warrant for Brian Vinton's phone, we can look at who he's been talking to through the application that goes with the watch."

The detective was saying something for a long while, perhaps giving Sarah orders or something, doing some brainstorming of his own, or maybe even calling her crazy. But then Sarah gave a small nod. "Yessir. See you tomorrow afternoon. Yeah. Happy hunting."

She hung up, put her phone on the table, and threw her arms around Chuck's neck. "You are so handy to have around, Tech Guy," she mumbled, squeezing him tight.

He hugged her back, arms around her torso, and he chuckled. "Gee, thanks."

"Getting his phone is so much easier, and a lot less suspicious." She pulled back, but kept her hands on his shoulders, her gorgeous features still lit up with determination and drive. "Casey and his detectives are building up a case to bring to a judge so that they can get a warrant to take his phone and then we'll be able to access everything we need right from the phone."

He grinned, but his grin dimmed as he watched her frown suddenly. "What?" he asked.

"What if he did plan the murder through the secret text thingy on the app but deleted it all? I mean, wouldn't you delete a conversation if you were planning a murder in it?"

"Not if you're cocky and think you won't be caught," Chuck said with a shrug. "It could also be that the ExoBand is still sort of in that beta stage, so there's a chance you can't delete the messages. A lot of messenger platforms in the beginning were like that. You couldn't delete any of the conversations you were having with people."

Sarah crossed her fingers, then exited out of the pictures on her laptop, removed the drive from her USB port, and shut the laptop altogether, before shifting in her chair to face him. "Part of me wants to rush down to the station and help them win that warrant from the judge to obtain and search Brian Vinton's phone, but Casey was really clear he wanted me to take a break from it for a bit and we'd reconvene tomorrow. And… Frankly, there's an even bigger part of me that just wants to crawl onto that couch and take a nap with you. I want a really nice long one."

He couldn't resist…

"That's what she said."

He got an incredibly flat look for that, before she stood up from her chair altogether, stretched for a moment, and walked away from him, moving towards the hallway that led to her bedroom.

"Hey, where ya goin'?" he called after her.

She didn't respond.

"Are you…taking a nap in your bed?"

She just kept walking, and then she disappeared into the hallway.

Chuck smirked hard, knowing she was playing a game, teasing him. But then he heard her bedroom door shut a few moments later. She was going further than he'd expected with the game, and he couldn't help getting up and following after her.

He stopped at her door and then turned the handle and popped it open slowly. "Sarah? Am I in trouble for doing a 'that's what she said' joke? How in trouble am I, on a scale from one to ten with ten being the most in trouble?"

Chuck inched into her bedroom and frowned. Where was sh—?

His thought was interrupted by the feeling of someone leaping onto his back with their legs around his waist and arms around his shoulders. He cracked up as he staggered forward, hobbling dramatically toward the bed with an, "Oh no! Ohhh noooo!" before he hefted her off of his back to throw her onto the mattress.

She laughed hard as she bounced a few times, and then he crawled onto the bed with her, both of them sliding up to rest their heads on her pillows and tangling themselves together with a long, intimate kiss, full of warmth and a dash of outright heat. But then she pulled back a bit and pushed him onto his back, draping half of her body over his and snuggling her face under his jaw, in the crook of his neck.

He felt and heard a long, contented sigh from her…and he found himself reveling in the way neither of them seemed to feel the need to say anything. Instead, he just shut his eyes and turned his face into her hair, slowly stroking her hip in comforting circles. He felt her breathing evening out after just a few minutes and he followed close behind, for once not dwelling or stressing. He knew Sarah and her LAPD counterparts had this case in the bag. It was only a matter of time.

And as grumpy as John Casey was, Chuck wondered if he wasn't one of the only people in the world who could sometimes—sometimes—get Sarah to listen to him when he told her to take a break.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Sarah impatiently tapped her foot as the elevator took her up to the homicide unit's floor. She felt Chuck at her elbow, filled with nervous energy, adrenaline even. And she didn't want to be condescending to him, but part of her felt the need to give him a bit of a talk before those elevator doors opened. Something along the lines of, "Please just do what they tell you to do. Sit where they tell you to sit."

She didn't think she should do that to him. He wasn't a five year old. He was twenty-eight years old, a man who was grown enough to run a multi-billion dollar tech company. He didn't condescend to her about technology. She wouldn't condescend to him about her career.

And yet…

As the doors opened and she strode out onto the tile floor with Chuck on her heels, she could see Casey's eyes flick up, catch sight of her boyfriend, and immediately make that face.

"The hell you bring 'im for?" he growled, climbing up from the chair behind his desk.

Chuck had his hand out for a handshake and pulled it back. "Oh. Well. Hi, there. Uh, Detective…"

"He brought me, technically," she answered with a shrug, putting a hand on the small of Chuck's back and rubbing him there placatingly. "You called me while I was enjoying the crisp morning air on Chuck's roof, Detective Casey. I can't help it that my car made concerning sounds while I was trying to start it to get here. And he was nice enough to drive me instead of going to his own job."

Chuck grinned toothily at her and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his suit jacket. "Shucks, it was nothin'," he teased.

"We don't have time for this," Casey said. "We've got a few huge breaks in the Greta Olsen murder. Come on."

Sarah's eyes widened and she clasped her hands together, before fixing the briefcase strap on her shoulder and nodding, following after the LAPD detective to the side room where a case board was set up. Rizzo and Cutlet were already standing in front of it and hashing things out.

They turned as she and Casey approached.

"Nice job with the exercise watch, P.I.," Rizzo drawled.

"Thank you." She nodded. "I wouldn't have made the leap if it weren't for my boyfriend having to figure out his sister's ExoBand, though. Full disclosure."

"I just had the thing. The actual detective work was yours."

Cutlet and Rizzo both looked up at the sound of Chuck's voice, both of them furrowing their brows in confusion. "Who's that?" Rizzo asked. "And why's he in our room looking at our board?"

Sarah inwardly winced. Nobody had explicitly told Chuck not to follow. Woops.

"Do you have a partner or something?" Rizzo asked when nobody answered her first question.

"No, he…uh…" she tried, but Casey cut in.

"Secretary."

"Seriously?" Chuck asked at the same time as she forcefully corrected the record.

"He's not my secretary, which is an antiquated term anyway," she said, sending Casey a look and earning a smirk in return. "He's my boyfriend. Chuck, this is Detective Rizzo, and Detective Cutlet. Detectives, this is Chuck."

"Hi, so awesome to meet you both." He reached in and shook a confused Cutlet's hand, and Rizzo didn't even pretend, keeping her hands on her hips as she raised an eyebrow at him. She was looking at him like he had just offered to brush her hair for her or something. Chuck cleared his throat and pulled his hand back, rubbing it awkwardly down his button-up. "I'm, uh, Chuck. Bartowski. So…"

"Wait, wait. Bartowski…" Cutlet pointed at him and narrowed his eyes. "Like, as in…that Bartowski? The uh, techy corporation guy? The electronics guy?"

"I am, um, that…guy. Yes."

"Aren't you, like, old? I mean, you're in your fifties or sixties."

Chuck shook his head and smiled good-naturedly. "That's my dad. I'm…his son."

"Oh, shit. Must be nice. Nepotism and all that," Cutlet chirped, crossing his arms. Both Rizzo and Casey made quiet, amused snorts. "Well, there are no apps in here. No tablets. No computers, even. Uh, also, this is kind of a classified case, so…"

The air in the room was…tense and awkward. Chuck cleared his throat. "Right. Sorry. I, uh, I wasn't thinkin'. Sorry. I'll just…"

Her tech guy slowly started backing out of the room and she inwardly winced. She hadn't wanted to be condescending, but maybe she could've saved him at least this much if she'd done him the service of asking him to wait for her by Casey's desk or something. She turned to give him an apologetic look but he just shrugged and left the room with a quick, "Nice to, uh, meet you all," and a wave.

When he was gone, Casey turned to the board to start as if they hadn't all just been actively rude and dismissive, but she cut in.

"I know this is a big break, like you said, and we have leads now. I'm eager to hear about them. But first, you need to know that as grateful as I am that you're all treating me, a freshly minted private investigator, as a part of the team on this case, the way you just treated him was pretty rude and I don't appreciate it." She forced herself to raise her chin a little, straighten her spine, pull her shoulders back.

"Oh, sorry. Was I supposed to curtsy for the rich man?" Cutlet snarked, nudging Rizzo, who looked surprised as she stared at Sarah. "Call him Your Highness because he built a house the size of mine for his pet chinchilla?"

"His net worth doesn't make any difference. He's a person, and a good one at that. I know he shouldn't have come in here, but he didn't know that and I didn't think to tell him. That was on me. But he didn't deserve that. You could've just greeted him politely and asked him if he could leave the room, again, politely." She shifted her weight. "Anyway, that's all I wanted to say. We can get to business."

Casey grunted, looking uncomfortable. But then he turned back to the board, the others slowly turning to follow his gaze and get back to business, as Sarah suggested. She felt…good about what she'd just done. Sure, she was a team player, and sure, she respected the detectives. But she wasn't going to let that behavior stand. Casey's teasing about Chuck being her secretary…? Well, that was a little annoying, but it hadn't felt as actively mean as the pointed disgust they'd all directed towards Chuck during the introductions. She wasn't going to let Chuck be dressed down, especially because he hadn't done anything to deserve it. What rich guy had spit into their coffee too many times that they painted all of them with the same brush stroke?

Granted… She had to admit that in her experiences with rich men, especially rich white men, Chuck was an incredibly rare exception to the douchebaggery and entitlement. He could actually see his privilege and leveraged a lot of what his company did to try to bring others up with him.

He was still stupid levels of rich. And that was just something he was going to have to continue to be aware of—his privilege and advantages that ninety-nine percent of the population didn't have.

She pushed away the confusing and garbled thoughts and focused on the case, hanging onto that good feeling of having just stuck up for her man to people who hadn't seemed to change their opinions of her worth for doing it. At least not outwardly.

Which was good enough for now.

"Thanks to that ExoBand lead, we were able to scrounge up enough evidence to get a warrant to seize Brian Vinton's phone and laptop. He's not pleased with us for it, but the guy's cocky. He doesn't think we'll find anything incriminating. He has his alibi at that party," Casey said. But then he tapped a print out he'd pinned to the board. "Take a look at this, Walker." He unpinned it and passed it to her. "Nothing at all incriminating in his texts, in his emails. We did a social media sweep? Nothin' there."

"But you also looked at his activity on the ExoBand," she muttered, looking at the print-out. He had a few runs logged, a "weight session", and a training program. "So he's worked out, like, five times since he bought himself the watch?"

"That's not the important part." Rizzo smacked her finger on the print-out and Sarah followed where she was pointing.

"Pepperdine Graziadio Business Alumni Get Pumped. Oh God. Seriously?" she read, rolling her eyes. "So he's a Pepperdine MBA graduate, I guess?"

"Everyone in the group is." Cutlet reached over to grab the laptop and set it in front of her on the conference table, turning it towards her. "Here are the rest of the people in the group. Five hundred and seventy two of them."

Sarah looked up from the screen as everything they were showing her started clicking into place. "I can't believe I'm going to say this right now but… Strangers on an ExoBand Business School Discussion Board."

"Bingo!" Casey exclaimed, pounding his fist on the table.

"Holy shit. Did he find some sort of…sociopathic partner in crime in this group? Is that what you're about to tell me?" Sarah asked.

"Business majors, am I right?" Cutlet drawled with a snort.

Rizzo ignored him. "We put our analysts on weeding out where he commented, who he made contact with, if there are any members he spent more time chatting with than others, if he actually connected with anyone over certain topics. We found out a few things…"

Sarah crossed her arms. "All right, lay it on me."

"We found out that he's a racist mansplaining gasbag who can't seem to resist commenting any time someone has an opinion… The amount of times I had to read, 'Well, to be the devil's advocate…' I want to gauge the eyes out of the next person who says that shit in my presence."

"Get to the point, Riz," Cutlet muttered and he got a withering look sent in his direction. To his credit, he did wither a bit.

"The big thing is we narrowed it down to about five people he's been pretty regularly talking directly to in the discussions."

"Did he invite any of those five people to murder his erstwhile sister-in-law?" Sarah asked.

"Nope. Nah, he's too smart for that," Casey said. "My chug is too smart for that."

Dear God, did Detective John Casey have a chug? She tried hard to save the imagery of the hulking grumpy detective snuggling a tiny chihuahua pug mix dog for later when she could fully appreciate it. Chuck was going to die, though. He was just going to die.

"But we at least have five people we can start digging into, building a profile," Cutlet said. And then he reached behind him and dropped a small stack of files in front of her. "Which we did. They're right here."

Sarah smirked and raised her eyebrows. "You were all pretty busy the last few days since I've been here, huh?" she asked. She bit back the urge to add that she could've helped them out with that. But they were the police detectives, the ones with the badges, and they also had the proper technology and tools to make a thorough job of it. This was what they did. And they had the manpower and resources to do it a lot faster than she could. And through more legal channels than the ones she sometimes ventured into.

"Yep." Casey sent Rizzo a look and the woman reached down to push through the files, grabbing one in particular and handing it to Sarah.

"I'll save you some time and just tell you to look at this one, Walker."

She raised her eyebrows and took the file, not wanting to appear too eager as she slowly opened it and started taking a look at the profile. "Adam Tuck. He graduated from Pepperdine with an MBA almost twenty years before Brian Vinton did, though," she reasoned, scanning through the information they'd compiled about him. "They wouldn't have known each other in school."

"That isn't the point, Walker. They connected on the boards and had some lively conversations about…" Casey paused dramatically, leaning closer to her. "…how faulty U.S. law is when it comes to finances, money."

Sarah nibbled on her lip thoughtfully. "Okay. But! Are we sure this guy isn't just perpetually pissed that his ex sister-in-law is blackmailing some of his inheritance into her own pocket and therefore talks about that stuff with everyone that listens?"

"We thought of that, too," Rizzo said. "So we looked. And he only had that conversation with Adam Tuck."

"Take a look at it, Walker," Cutlet said, coming around to stand next to her and pointing to part of the conversation. "They both got pretty heated agreeing with each other. And I quote, 'The law is all fucked and innocent people pay the price while criminals go free. Lawyers and judges just let it happen. It's fucked.' Unquote." He shrugged.

"Yeah, look at the all caps Vinton used here when he responded," Sarah agreed, slowly scrolling. "Hold on, and then it just…stops. Both of them just stopped."

"Exactly," Casey said with a big of a smug look on his face. "Wonder why that is…"

"They took it to a more private place where they could speak freely without any prying eyes?" Sarah asked, raising an eyebrow, her mouth falling open. "Wowwww. Okay, I get it now. I get why this is the guy you're looking at. Adam Tuck."

"No, keep looking at his file." As Sarah looked, things started falling into place, and Casey continued. "His wife went to prison seven years ago for money fraud. She was in charge of a big political campaign's finances, they broke the law in about a thousand and seven different ways, the buck stopped with her. Literally. And she went to trial for it. Was found guilty. Boom. Slammer for ten years."

"Wow. Wowwwwww," Sarah drawled, eyes widening. "And he thinks what happened was an injustice, that his wife didn't do it but was thrown under the bus by the law, by the prosecution team that proved her guilt well enough that a jury of her peers sided with them." She looked up then. "Was it Van Sant? Did Van Sant work for the prosecution in that case?"

"He was the head prosecutor in Sylvia Tuck's trial," Rizzo chirped.

"Holy fuck."

"Yeah. Holy fuck is what I said, too," Cutlet added, flipping a pen between his fingers. And then he pointed it at her. "You bet your pretty bottom when we looked into it, we found out that Adam Tuck yelled obscenities at the judge and the prosecutors before he was dragged outta there. Granted, he yelled at his wife's lawyers too. But still."

"Can we get enough evidence to pull Adam Tuck in for questioning?" Sarah asked. "That's the real question. All of this is pretty circumstantial. We don't have any genuine contact between them that details any sort of plan or even hints at it. This is us making leaps again."

"We tried to find the ExoBand texts on Vinton's phone. He either deleted them, or he didn't use the phone to privately message with Tuck."

"What else could he use? His laptop?"

"We checked. He didn't use his laptop, either. We're stumped on finding the private messages they exchanged," Rizzo answered.

Sarah sighed. "All right. It should be easy enough to find something. But…we might need to go to someone who knows this piece of tech better than we do," she said carefully. She gave each of them long looks as they blinked in question.

Casey was the first one to work out her meaning. "Oooh, nooo," he groaned, curling his lip.

She merely smiled innocently and nodded.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Chuck Bartowski, future CEO of Bartowski Electronics Corporation, sat alone and slumped in one of the chairs pressed up against the wall next to the elevator. He'd been sitting there for about forty-five minutes now, still feeling the sting from the royal dismissal he'd gotten. Granted, he shouldn't have followed Sarah into any private rooms at a police station, with all of their secret case thingies all around and the case board standing there, but he really hadn't been thinking. Sarah had gone with the detective and he'd gone with Sarah.

And now he was pretty sure he was sitting in one of the chairs people sat in with their handcuffs on while waiting to be tossed into the pen or something.

This was the only seating he could find that wasn't close to the room with Sarah and her LAPD comrades. He needed a bit of space so that his burn wounds might heal while he waited for her to be finished.

He scratched the back of his head and glanced up around the room that was bustling with officers, analysts, and—

His gaze stopped on Sarah then, standing by Detective Casey's desk and glancing around in confusion as if looking for someone. Him. She was looking for him. He was about to stand up and go to her when she turned and caught sight of him, her blue eyes warming immediately as she smiled a little.

He stayed put and let her close the distance until she stood in front of him, peering down with her arms crossed at her chest. "Hi," he said, tilting his head back. "Good leads?"

"Really, really fuckin' good leads," she said with no small amount of satisfaction. "We might get our guys, but we have a bit of a quandary."

Chuck nodded. "You'll work it out." He climbed to his feet and stretched a little, feeling a few things pop in his back. "Ready to head out? I've got a mechanic who can come take a look at your car. He's a good guy and owes me a favor."

Sarah smiled and took his hand. "Later. There's something that needs our attention here, still. Well, actually…specifically, it needs your attention. You game?"

He frowned in confusion for a moment. "M-my—Wait, my attention? Me?"

"Yeah." She rolled her eyes then, and he felt her thumb stroking the back of his hand. "I get it if you don't want to help them after the way they treated you. For the record, I gave them the what for after you left. I was surprised by just how dickish they were. That was bullshit. I'm so sorry."

Chuck's eyebrows shot up. "Wait, you—Seriously? Did you stick up for me to those LAPD detectives?"

"Of course I did. They were freaking rude and I let them know I didn't appreciate it. Bunch o' condescending snobs."

The sting was gone, just like that. His burn wounds were healed miraculously.

"I'll help them. I'll help you. I'll absolutely help you guys. But I just need you to know that I am making you the best martini ever when we get out of here. And then I am going to—You know what? I can't say it in this LAPD precinct with so many people around. I'll keep that under my hat, but I think you know what I mean because you're blushing." He let her see his teeth as he grinned, wrinkling his nose.

"Stop it." She cleared her throat, twisting her lips to the side to keep the vibrant smile he saw in her eyes away from her mouth.

"So you don't want me to do that, then?"

"I didn't say that," she rushed out, and then she blushed harder. "Just… Let's get in there."

She was definitely smiling as she pulled him through the rows of desks and back to the room. He fought the cheekiness out of his features, lest the detectives think he was feeling smug about the fact that they needed his help now that they'd dismissed him rudely. The cheek had everything to do with the fact that he'd just gotten the best P.I. in the business to blush twice. Score.

Sarah let go of his hand as they strolled into the room.

"Walker, you speak his language. Explain to him what we're stuck on," Detective Casey said, one hand shoved in his pants pocket.

Chuck resisted saying hello, or even better: Hello, again. He didn't want to rub this in. If he played nice, they'd feel like even bigger assholes. Maybe. The younger guy seemed like there probably wasn't much that would make him feel like an asshole, no matter how big of an asshole he was.

Sarah turned to face him then, leaning on the table, arms crossed again. "Okay, so we need to find out how to access these ExoBand texts."

"So not the discussion board, but the private messaging service?" he asked for clarification, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

"Mhm. It looks like one of our guys deleted or somehow got rid of it on his phone. And that's the guy whose phone and laptop we were able to legally seize thanks to a court ordered warrant. So we need access to whoever he might've been talking to's app."

Chuck frowned thoughtfully, looking off to the side. "So you think the guy he was talking to…might have records of the conversation still in his phone. What if he deleted everything, too?"

"We don't know that 'til we get access to his ExoBand app," Detective Rizzo said.

"You can't get access to it?" he asked.

"No," Sarah said, shaking her head. "We don't have any kind of probable case to bring to a judge to get a warrant for this guy. We don't even really have circumstantial evidence. It's all…" She shrugged. "Well, we are doing a shit ton of guesswork."

Chuck bit his lip and winkled his nose, pushing a hand through his curls and turning away from them, starting to pace slowly. "Okay. Okay, interesting…"

"What's interesting?" Cutlet asked, sounding impatient. Chuck had a feeling he more than anyone else wasn't on board with bringing him into this and asking for his expertise. The guy was a dick to him and he was probably pissed he was in this position now.

Haaaa haaaaa!

A thought occurred to him then.

"There's a way to access all of that without a warrant. What kind of phone does this other guy have? Not the phone you already have 'cause of the warrant, but the, um, the other one."

Detective Rizzo moved to grab a folder on the table behind Sarah and rifle through it. And then she held it out towards Sarah so that the P.I. could look, and she slammed her finger down on the paper almost immediately. "Android," she rushed out. "He has an Android."

Chuck nodded a bit distractedly. "Mmm. Mhm."

"Mhm what?" Casey asked.

Sarah turned to snap, "Give him a chance to think", over her shoulder, and honestly, he didn't care that they were in a room full of people, he wanted to make out with her face so hard. Casey widened his eyes and shrugged, curling his lip, looking properly chastised.

Chuck pretended to ignore the exchange but still stuck it in his back pocket for later. "Androids use Play for downloading apps, games, whatever else. It isn't something that's easy to access on other devices like, say, iTunes is for Apple users."

"So we're fucked?" Cutlet asked.

"No. No, you're not. Because an emulator would solve the problem."

"Emulator," Sarah murmured, narrowing her eyes. "Is that something I'm supposed to know exists?"

Chuck decided it was best not to answer that question. "It will clone the log-in base onto your device, making his Play account like…like iTunes," he explained.

"Wait, I know what you're talking about," Detective Rizzo said, leaning forward with her palms on the table. "It's what people use to be able to play games they shouldn't be able to access on their devices. Like you said, it clones a program, and makes your…laptop, for instance, act like a different device."

He smiled at her and snapped, pointing. "Bingo. You got it." He appreciated the slightly impressed smirk she had on her face. Whether it was for him or herself, it didn't matter. Either worked.

But then she frowned. "We would need his email address and his password, though, otherwise what's the point?"

Chuck slumped a little. "Right, true. True…Hm…"

"Wait, hold on. Hold on a second." Cutlet held up a hand. "This emulator thing…we get the email and password Tuck uses and then what?"

So Tuck was the 'other guy' they were talking about. Interesting. He wasn't going to let on that Cutlet slipped, just in case. He wasn't sure how much Sarah was supposed to have shared with him and he didn't want her losing her reputation or standing with these people.

"You get access to the other guy's Play account. Which means whatever device you're using makes it think you're him, and you can open every single app he's purchased from the Play store as if you're him."

Sarah's eyes widened. "We could just pop open that ExoBand app and read all of his messages. If they're still there."

"Exactly."

He could see she was impressed and proud as she looked up at him. He pushed down any hubris that threatened to come up. But God, that was such a good feeling.

Casey grunted, then scratched behind his ear. "Well, it's a good idea. But it's all moot anyway. We don't have his email or password, and anyway, we've got laws to follow ourselves. It's inadmissible in court if we go hacking into his phone ourselves, and with no warrant? Pfft."

But even as he said it, Chuck saw some wheels turning in Detective Rizzo's head, behind her eyes. Everyone nodded, even Rizzo…but he'd seen it, that rebellious look. And it got him to thinking.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

A/N: Cannot wait for y'all to read the last chapter of the ExoBand arc. Really. I'm super proud of it. Hope you liked this one. Please leave a review if you have the time and/or energy. I understand if not. Everything's exhausting. Be safe, friends!

-SC