The Nerd Versus the P.I. Family

By Steampunk . Chuckster

A/N: Sarah is a single parent who is also trying to find her place in the world not just as a mother, but as something more than that as well. Even though her son is the most important thing in the world to her, motherhood doesn't define her. She's also a private investigator, a detective, who has found a way to mold a career around her priorities. And she knows how to protect her own kid better than anyone else does. Y'all, just trust her. She's got this. And I've got this. ;)

Summary: Sarah Walker has uprooted her life, leaving her job with the LAPD and going it alone as a private investigator, all in the hopes it provides her with less dangerous stakes and a schedule she can control so that she can handle her most important job, raising her toddler, a bit easier. But when the single parent thinks her computer might've been targeted by a criminal, she has to request help from the unlikeliest of sources: The Buy More Nerd Herd.

Disclaimer: I do not own CHUCK, I do not own its characters, I am not making money from posting this.

Chuck looked up at the knock on his office door. "Come in," he called, going back to his laptop again.

The door was cracked open and he saw the face of his sister appear. "Hello, hello," she chirped. "Are you busy? Am I interrupting lots of hard work?"

"Me? Hard work? Pffft. Please. Never."

Ellie Bartowski gave her brother a flat look. "Listen, three years ago I would've believed you, but not now."

"Hey!" he chuckled. "But you're not wrong…"

Giggling, she walked into his office and shut the door behind her. "What's this mess on your desk? Doesn't everything you do exist on stuff like this?" she asked, poking at his laptop as she stopped on the other side of his desk. "What do you need paper for?"

"This is how I take notes, El! And sometimes I need to write calculations down." He grabbed a piece of paper with columns of numbers on it and wiggled it in the air. "And these are just…really dull and mind-numbing write-ups of what I'm doing for clients and feedback, logging my work. Corporate demands I do this. For SCIENCE."

"Hmm…" She plopped down in the seat across from him. "You're, like…doing your job and then basically recording your own behaviors and activities for them like what Jane Goodall does with chimps."

Chuck blinked. "What?"

"Nothing, I'm tired. It's just interesting that you're basically writing it all down for them."

"Well, this is still sort of a pilot run of a new concept for the corporation. I'm one of the test runs."

"How would you say it's going so far on a scale from one to ten?"

Pursing his lips, he thought about everything. "For them, about a seven or eight so far. For me, more like a…five…six at the most. It's a lot of traveling, sitting in traffic, and a lot of…this stuff." He slammed his hand down on one of the write-ups and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. "I just wanna help people, you know?"

"And you want to get paid for playing on a computer."

"And I want to get paid for playing on a computer."

Ellie laughed, shaking her head. "Everybody has extra pressures at their jobs to do the stupid crap we don't wanna do, but it needs to get done. I don't want to stare at a screen for hours logging every last little thing I do for a patient, arguing with pharmacists about prescriptions and blah blah blah, but it's necessary."

"Well, okay, you're a neurologist, El. I can see why it might be kind of important with your job," he chuckled.

"What I said still stands!"

He nodded. "I know, I know. And I'm not complaining. I've got my own car. I've moved out of your apartment into my own."

"Which reminds me. You need to pick up your shit." Chuck cracked up as she grinned toothily. "No, seriously, I'll be honest with you. It's been, like, a year and a half since you moved out and I miss you."

"You do not," he chuckled, giving her a dubious look.

"I do! I mean it! D'you know the only person I have to talk to now is Devon? Blegh." She made a face and Chuck laughed again. "I miss having my brother lurking around the apartment—"

"Lurking?"

"And playing video games on my TV when I come home from a sixteen hour shift. Your happy face every time you saw me…"

"See, okay, now you're making me sound like a dog. Did I wag my tail too?"

She snorted. "Point taken. Sorry. I'm just saying, I miss having kung-fu movies foisted on me."

"Does that mean you miss Morgan, too?"

"Not that part."

He snickered. "Got ya," he teased, pointing at her. She narrowed her eyes and smirked. "Well, look, now you have all this extra space in your apartment, El. And you can have friends stay over and sleep in my old room."

"First of all, I am not letting anyone stay in your room until you get all those comic books out and move them to your own apartment."

"I will, I will. I just need to buy the right…thing to put them in. This is my own place now, to furnish myself. And it needs to be the perfect bookcase with perfectly spaced shelves for all of my very specifically labeled comic boxes. I'll find it, sis, and when I do…I will move all my comics and books. I promise."

"Fine. Second thing I was gonna say is that I really need some friends. I don't have any."

"That's such a lie."

"It isn't! I barely keep up with anyone from college anymore because we've all spread out all over the country, and the only other people I'm friends with are all medical professional like me. Yuck."

"What do you mean, yuck? You fixed me up with one of them. You fixed me up with a yuck?"

"Well, you must've thought so since you didn't call her back after the first date," she droned, giving him a flat look.

"Is that what she told you? She didn't answer my call, and she didn't call me back after I left a message." He shrugged. "Not to throw her under a bus or anything, because to be honest, the date wasn't…terrific or anything. For either of us. Just didn't gel."

"She lied to me?"

"Drop it, it's fine."

She glowered. "I'm gonna glare at her next time I see her in the break room."

"Please don't."

She smirked. He sniffed in amusement and shook his head, picking a post-it he didn't need anymore of his his computer screen and wrinkling it up, throwing it at her. "Why you here today anyway?"

She bat it out of the air and glared at him for it. "I have a favor to ask."

"Please don't make me date someone," he begged. "Please."

Ellie rolled her eyes. "You're so melodramatic. I've never made you date anyone. You agree every time."

"After my arm is twisted all the way off, just about."

"Melo. Dramatic."

"Fine, what is it you need?"

"Can I borrow your car on Thursday?" She clasped her hands together and made a desperate face. "Pleeeease?"

"Yeah, of course. I'll just take a Herder home on Wednesday night and use it Thursday. You can grab my car from the Buy More lot. Why?"

She made a face. "Devon's going to be at a two-day conference and I have to be at an offsite Thursday in SLO, teaching some med students about what I do."

"SLO? Like San Luis Obispo SLO?" She nodded. "Dang, that's like…"

"Three hours without traffic. I know," she groused. "My little death trap tin can could probably make it. Probably. And I'm waiting for my credit score to improve a little more before I buy a new car…" She groaned. "I'm sorry. I know it's gonna be putting a whole lot of mileage on your new car, but Devon's super worried about me driving all that way in my car when it's so close to death."

"El, come on. Of course you can use my car. But only if you call him by his rightful name."

"Mhm. My brother's car."

"Nope."

"Chuck's car."

"Nope."

"Charles Irving Bartowski's car…?"

"Ellie, you know his name…"

"I refuse."

"Guess you're taking a Lyft to SLO on Thursday. You know how expensive that will be…"

"You're such a dick."

"Maaaaaybe."

"Fine. May I please take…" She sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Duncan Iowa…"

"Idaho."

"Idaho to San Luis Obispo on Thursday?" She crossed her arms grumpily.

He grinned, wrinkling his nose at her. "You absolutely may, sister of mine, whom I love more than anyone on the planet. In the whole universe even," he drawled in a sing-song voice. "You just called my car by his name, Duncan Idaho."

"Yeah, yeah. You freak." But then she got up and danced around his desk, leaning down to hug him tight and kiss his head. "In all seriousness, thank you. You super sweet, super tall nerd. Thank you, thank you."

Chuck giggled and hugged her back. "Of course. No sweat. Just make sure you bring it back not out of gas, I won't have time to get gas until the weekend, probably."

"You got it! Fill it with gas! Check!"

She finally stood up and patted his cheek. "But if you change your mind about the whole…dating someone thing…" He groaned. "There's a sweet girl in my self-defense class. Veronica. So cute. You might—Don't you dare throw that at me!"

Chuck tilted his head and raised an eyebrow, a stress ball painted like a soccer ball in his hand, lifting it up by his head.

"Fine, fine…" She growled at him. "Text me about the car key exchange before Thursday."

"Okay."

She inched to the door and opened it, just a bit. "Lemme know if you want Veronica's num—eep!"

SLAM!

Thump.

Chuck snapped his fingers as the ball narrowly missed her head. The second she saw it leave his hand, she'd ducked out of his office and slammed the door to protect herself. The freaking brat.

Chuckling, he went back to his work, shaking his head. And he wondered if there was anything in the world that would get Ellie Bartowski to stop worrying about that element of his life.

}o{

She yawned with a bit of a moan, stretching her arms over her head and finally shrugging her blazer off, draping it over the back of her chair she sat on and peering up at the popcorn ceiling of her office.

Sarah wasn't a big fan of the popcorn ceiling texture, but beggars couldn't be choosers. And she'd certainly been a beggar when she'd broken off from the LAPD to start her own private investigative agency.

The outer door of her office said WALKER AGENCY. There was a small waiting room that was practically the size of one of those train compartments people squashed into in those old movies. Fine, maybe a little bigger.

And then her actual office was through another door. The blinds were kinked in places, and the window didn't open too well, and in the summertime, the sun angled right in and glared on her computer so she had to shut everything up and use the lights that must have been installed in nineteen-seventy-four. There was a bulb that flickered every so often, but it wasn't exactly out and worked for the most part, so she left it and just dealt with thinking she was stroking out at first. They also gave the room a yellowish tint that hurt her eyes on the bad days and was tolerable on the good days.

But she supposed it was her home away from home.

And she was making enough of a living to provide for herself and for her son. Which was the most important thing. And she was supporting her strange little family while also doing what she loved, which was also important.

She couldn't complain.

Though she was trying to get at least one more case under her belt so that she could see about getting someone in to fix the window so that it stopped jamming, and she needed to replace the blinds. It didn't even have to be a different kind of blinds. Venetian were fine, but she just didn't need the smoker's teeth tint or the kinks anymore. She could do without that. She knew clients could see it when they sat across from her to talk about their troubles. The window was right behind her desk.

She checked her watch and grabbed her phone, texting her mom to ask how Max was doing. He'd fussed a lot when she left him off at her parents that morning before she went to work because he wanted to go to the agency with her. And he didn't like the way she'd tied his shoes even though she'd retied them about four separate times to try to make it better.

But she hadn't been able to take Max to work because she had Carina's client coming in to talk about details of their case, now that both Carina and Casey had roped her more into this thing. The emails with evidence Carina was working on for the upcoming court case apparently weren't enough and now she had to schedule a follow-up meeting for today.

Sarah wasn't complaining. She always preferred face to face meetings. She preferred to watch their faces and read their body language while they spoke. It was as important as the words they used.

Her mom texted her back within a few minutes as she continued scrolling through the information, taking notes in her notepad as she went along.

"He's just fine," the text read. "Taking his nap now. He had a big lunch. A whole banana, half a pancake, and a whole piece of sliced turkey."

Sarah smiled and texted back, "Good. Thanks again, mom."

Then she put her phone down, stretched again, and frowned in curiosity as her phone buzzed again. It was a text from Carina that said, "Can I call you right now?"

Sarah took away the middle man and called her best friend immediately. The lawyer answered after only one ring. "Hey, Sar."

"Hi. I got your emails yesterday. Still making my way through it but so far haven't seen anything that would be much of a help as far as finding some master puppeteer. At least not on the surface. I'll do a deep dive once I get all the way through. This meeting with Kline today will definitely be helpful," she said.

The five seconds of silence made Sarah sit up a bit straighter.

"That's actually what I was going to talk to you about."

She paused again for long enough that Sarah prompted, "Something going on?"

"Yeah. I think so. Something fishy."

"Fishy?" She grabbed her notebook and pen and pushed what she was working on to the site, setting her notebook down. "What do you mean, fishy?"

Carina sighed tiredly. "I can't put my finger on it, but something's just…up."

"Okay, you're a trial lawyer, Carina. Explain to me what that means but in a way that actually tells me what's happened. Is something going on with your case?"

"Yeah. In short. Casey has ears on the street, informants and undercover guys. Somehow case details and evidence that the police gave me, same info I sent you, has gotten out. We just had to pull a witness into protective care. We have a detail on him now, keeping him safe. Somehow they found out he was going to testify for us. There's no way they can know that information…." She paused dramatically again. "Unless there's a leak somewhere."

Sarah shivered. "A leak? What do you mean 'a leak'?"

"C'mon, Sarah. You were a cop. You know what a leak is."

"No, I know what a leak is, Red. I'm just…who the hell is leaking evidence?"

"Well, there are three places it could've leaked from. Captain Casey's already investigating at his end…"

"Okay, the LAPD…the DA's office…" She paused, slowly turning to look at her email she had up on her screen still. "Or me." She clicked out of her email altogether, feeling a little numb. "I haven't told a soul about any of this evidence, Carina, let alone given it out. You kn—"

"Whoa, whoa. Slow down. Nobody's pointing fingers. We're doing thorough checks of our personnel here at the DA's office, Casey's doing the same over at his precinct. I just wanted you to know. Something is up, Sarah. We don't know what. But be careful with what I sent you."

Sarah sighed and pursed her lips, thinking, staring at her computer. "Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'll be careful. Keep me updated."

"And the other thing…considering we don't know who the leak is or where or how, we're going to postpone your meeting with Kline. It isn't safe right now. We're checking our place for bugs. If you could…"

"The second we hang up. Yeah." Sarah already leaned down and felt under her desk for anything, that uncomfortable tingle of panic starting in her fingers.

"Okay, good. Lemme know if you find anything that might figure out what's going on here."

"Will do."

Sarah hung up her phone and cursed, climbing down from her chair and grabbing her keys out of her messenger bag, turning on the miniature flashlight on the keychain and scanning under the desk for any bugs.

For over two whole hours, she pulled drawers out of desks, took the papers out, shook stuff out, turned over her chair, and unscrewed the wheels with the screwdriver she found in one of the drawers that she didn't even remember ever seeing before. She risked her life scooting the filing cabinet back from the wall just enough to sneak her fingers behind it to feel for a bug of some kind.

She eventually had to give up, starting to feel like she was maybe going mad. She also had to pick Max up from her parents' house and take him home eventually, make sure he ate his dinner, got his bath, and then she had to put him to bed.

Then she could continue freaking out about Carina's phone call earlier.

Grabbing her bag and shutting down her computer, she stuffed it away in its carrying case and rushed out of the office, sure she looked as much of a mess as she felt after crawling around on the floor, moving furniture, breaking things apart to look for bugs.

She knew she shouldn't just leave her office looking like it had gotten ransacked but she'd fix it tomorrow after she continued her search. She'd still missed some places.

And damn it, that meant she'd need to ask her parents if they could babysit Max again. Not that they'd say no, because they loved every second they got to spend with him, but a large part of her felt like she relied too much on her parents and Carina to help her raise her son. And the whole point of her making this decision to have him and raise him alone was that she could do it alone. She'd told everyone she could do it alone, especially herself.

And she hadn't done it alone really.

Her mind full of those thoughts, and also the fear that she was somehow the leak in Carina's case, Sarah drove the twenty minutes to her parents' home from Walker Agency with a dark storm cloud over her head.

By the time she pulled into the Walker driveway, she'd worked herself down from a proverbial ledge. She locked her car and walked up the path to her parents' front porch. Before she even got to the steps, the front door opened and Max appeared with a massive smile on his face, his two front teeth predominant as he yelled, "HI, MOMMY!"

All the shit she'd been freaking out about in the car suddenly seemed trivial. But before she could even say anything back, he hobbled across the porch and leapt off towards her.

"Oh God!" She caught him securely, his arms around her neck, and she staggered a few steps, laughing. "Max, careful!"

It was hard to admonish him even as she laughed, beaming and hugging him tight. She turned her face to smell his hair, feeling a soul deep comfort in her son's existence almost immediately.

"I foun'a rock, Mommy!"

"A rock! Wowwww! Did you?"

She climbed up the three steps to the porch just as her mom stepped up to the doorway and smiled, crossing her arms. "He found more than one rock! Didn't you, honey?"

"Yeah!" Max yelled.

Sarah winced a bit as it was right in her ear, and she carried Max up to her mom, leaning in to give the older blonde a one-armed hug, kissing her on the cheek. "Hi, Mom. Thank you so much for watching this menace for me."

"Oh, you know I love it. My days would be so boring and lonely if he wasn't here."

"What am I, chopped liver?" her dad's voice came from inside of the house.

They all went inside and Max tugged on the lapel of his mom's leather jacket. "Can I hab down?" he asked. "I'ma get my rocks!"

"Okay, okay, geeeez!" Sarah let Max down and he dashed away so that she could hug her dad. "Hey, Dad."

"Hi, Darlin'. Hard day?" She gave him a flat look. "Sorry. You just look like you've been through the wringer, that's all."

"Jack…" her mom warned.

"I'm not allowed to be concerned about my kid?"

"That's like saying 'You look tired' to someone. It's rude," Emma said quietly.

"I didn't say she looked tired. I said she looks like she's been through the wringer. It's different."

"Is it?" Sarah chuckled. But then she squeezed his arm. "It's okay, Dad. I'm just having…a day."

"What's going on? The agency?" Emma asked. "Whoa, whoa…Hey, Max, careful!" She rushed to stop Max from running right into the corner of the end table next to the couch. Sarah wondered how bad of a mother she was that she'd seen him rounding the corner and had just winced in anticipation of the moment he would bonk his head instead of lunging to stop him the way her own mom just had. She'd waited for him to get that adorable look of shock…and finally his face would crumble and he'd start to sob.

It was just that it had happened before. More than once.

The kid had a hard head thankfully.

Max just kept running as if he hadn't just been an inch away from smacking his forehead on the corner of the table. And then he held his hands out to Sarah and showed her his three rocks that he must have picked up from the massive yard behind the house Sarah had grown up in, this very same house she stood in now.

"Wowwww, Maaaax! These are so cool! Where'd you get 'em?"

"Grandpa took him to the park, right, kiddo?" Jack came up and put one hand on Max's head, then bent down and pointed to the rock with the reddish tint. "Did Grandpa find that one for you by the bench?"

"Yeah! I's my fave-it!"

"It's his fave-it," Jack said, shrugging in faux modesty.

Sarah giggled and ruffled Max's hair. "I love your rocks, pal. All of them."

"Tanks." He closed his hands over them again and pulled them down, giving her his closed mouth smile that everyone said was just like hers. She smoothed his wavy hair back from his face and felt her heart fill.

When he wandered away, Sarah sighed roughly and let her bag off of her shoulder, setting it down on the ground by the door.

"So what's going on?" her mom asked.

"Just a case I'm working on," she said, watching Max pick up his elephant and have a quiet mumbled conversation the way he usually did. "It's not important." Her parents just stood there quietly and she recognized it as the quiet that happened when they expected her to tell them anything if they just stared at her for an uncomfortably long amount of time. Inwardly rolling her eyes at how it usually worked so well, she mumbled, "I'm working with the LAPD and the DA's office. Carina sent me some of her evidence so that I could help them bring in someone who might have been pulling the strings. A bigger fish, so to speak. Anyway, Carina called and said they think there's a leak somewhere."

"Like the sonofabitch knows you're looking for him?" Jack asked, and she could see him putting on the invisible detective hat as he crossed his arms and tapped his chin. "Sounds bad. Have they tapped your phones?"

"Jack."

"What? I'm helping."

"You're not a detective, Jack," Emma groused. Then she made a pitying face and pat his shoulder. "Does Carina think you're the leak?" she asked Sarah then as her husband glowered a bit.

"No, I don't think so. But I could be and it's killing me to think that there's a possibility. I mean, I only got the emails with everything yesterday morning. And they found out about the leak today."

"It could also be that the LAPD has a leak. Or the DA's office." Jack shrugged.

"If it's me, it'll be bad," she said quietly, tucking her hair behind her ear.

"Well, that's not your fault," Emma said, thrusting her hand out, palm up.

"It is, though. I mean, who wants to use a P.I. who leaks everywhere, Mom?" she reasoned. Her dad snorted and she sent him a look. Her look wasn't quite as effective with him as his wife's, though, so she was glad when Emma gave him a look too. He shrugged defensively. "What if it is me? What if I'm the leak? My agency can't handle an issue like this with the DA's office or the LAPD because I managed to let someone get access to my office to plant a bug or something. They'll never trust me with another case again. That's a good chunk of my income."

"Oh, come now, Sarah. Your old captain isn't going to toss you by the wayside for something that happens to the LAPD all the time," Jack said. "I read about leaks at police precincts all the time. Same with law firms, even the DA's office. Carina would even tell you that. She isn't gonna throw you under a bus, Darlin'. She's your best friend."

"Well, that's her job, too. I wouldn't blame her for just quietly not asking me for help anymore after this."

"You're just assuming it's you that's the leak."

"I know, I know. I'll…figure it out." She sliced her hand through the air, hoping that was the end of it. She didn't want to talk with them about it. She just wanted space to think about it on her own, or to push it out of her mind altogether.

Emma pressed her lips together and nodded. "Well, listen. I bought one of those big rotisserie chickens from the store while the boys went to the park. I've got it ready to eat now. Why don't you and Max stay for dinner?"

Sarah thought about what she and Max would eat when they got back to her apartment. There was half of a quiche she made the day before. She could slice some fruit. Or maybe make a green salad.

"Sarah."

She looked at her mom.

"Come on." Emma winked then sidled up and slung her arm over Sarah's shoulders. "You're eating with us."

Sarah groaned. "Fiiiine. Thanks, Mom."

"What thanks Mom. I'm the one who put the bird back in the oven to reheat it," her dad said, snickering at the two pairs of rolling eyes.

}o{

It was at ten the next morning that Sarah Walker, private investigator, ex-police officer of the LAPD, walked back into Walker Agency. She shrugged her bag off her shoulder and onto her desk then dropped her keys on top of the bag.

She looked at the mess she'd left the day before and sighed heavily. What hadn't she searched yet?

Her eyes fell onto her bag.

…Her computer.

God, why hadn't she thought of this yesterday?

Going in her messenger bag, she tugged out the laptop carrying case and unzipped it, pulling her laptop out and looking at it. She turned it over and ran her hand over the bottom. There was no bug on it, but…she wasn't exactly a computer genius or anything. There were probably invisible ways to get into people's emails, weren't there? Some hacker shit or something like that.

She grabbed her phone and texted Casey immediately. "Can you spare Fran to come to my office and look at my laptop, Cap?"

She was going to have to keep looking for a bug or something because if she didn't, she'd go nuts wondering what if… but if her old coworker Fran, their I.T. guru at the precinct, was available and Casey could spare her, she really needed to know if somebody had hacked her email. Not that she expected Fran to just show up free of charge, or even for Casey to agree to send his I.T. analyst.

He responded after a few minutes. She knew what she was going to see even before she grabbed her phone to look.

"The hell makes you think you can just request help from Fran like she's a IT customer service rep?"

She giggled and sent back: "Yeah, didn't think so."

"Call the Buy More like a regular person. They got those IT geeks for this reason." There was a pause and she saw he was still typing. Then, "What you do, spill yr coffee on it?"

Sarah could picture his smirk. Jerk.

And she thought about how someone could potentially be logging her texts or reading them somehow. People could do a lot of creepy and evil things with technology, she knew. So she didn't tell him the truth. Instead she texted, "It's lagging or something. Thanks for nothing, Cap."

"Nothing, my ass."

Snorting, she looked up the number for the nearest Buy More and called.

It took a few rings before she heard a click, some background noise, and finally, "Buy More, how can I help you?"

"Hi, um…This might sound strange—"

"I've heard stranger."

"Oh. Okay." Sarah blinked. "Um, so my computer needs—"

"Oh, you want I.T. help. I don't know if anyone's at the desk right now since we're low on staff today. But I'll patch you through. Standby."

"Sure, um…thanks."

Hold music blasted so loud she had to pull her phone away from her ear. "What the hell?" she barked in the direction of her phone. "Ouch," she muttered, still holding the phone away to keep her ears safe, making a disgruntled face. What in the hell was she even doing thinking these people could help her?

But then the blaring music stopped and she put the phone back to her ear, sighing in relief.

"Hello, Nerd Herd desk, how can I help you?" a male voice asked.

"Nerd…Herd, huh?"

"Yes, indeed. Got a computer emergency? Cell phone? Did you drop it in the toilet? You'd be the third person who called about that today if so. Definitely submerge it in some rice. It'll soak up the moisture from your phone."

"No, it's—it's not that. No cellphone in the toilet," she said. At least not yet. If she let Max anywhere near the bathroom holding her phone like he loved to do, pretending he was talking to Mub the elephant who was right in front of him, he'd drop it in the toilet eventually. "It is a computer emergency actually."

She had to be careful now. In case her cell was tapped.

"Well, what seems to be the problem?" he asked, patiently. She imagined this guy must deal with some heinously unhelpful people on the phone as someone who worked at a retail store's I.T. help desk.

"I, um…I can't say over the phone. It's—It's way too complicated," she covered when she realized how dumb that must've sounded at first. She can't say? Really? Worst possible way to try to handle this situation. "Can you just send someone to my address?"

"Oh. Uh…" Then he paused. "Yeah. Yes, of course. We can send someone over there. Just give me a moment so that I can get some of your information."

"Sure." She took a deep breath. Hopefully whoever this person sent to her office knew what they were doing.

"Okay, can I have your name, first of all?"

"Last name, Walker. First name, Sarah."

He asked for her cell number, and then he asked for the type of computer she was having issues with, and then he asked her again about the problem she was having with it. She didn't blame him. They wanted to know what they were getting themselves into before they went to a job. Maybe they brought different tools.

She pursed her lips, making a decision.

"Um… Miss Walker?"

She shook herself a bit. "Sorry, I was…I can't really figure out how to describe what I need help with."

"It…It is an issue with…technology, right? A computer or…cell phone…WiFi…"

God, she must be weirding him out.

"Yes. It's my laptop. I'm sorry. I know I'm being…cagey. I just don't know if there is something wrong with it. That's the problem. And telling you that probably isn't going to get you to come out here, is it? Did I just blow it?" She huffed in amusement and rolled her eyes at herself.

"Well… I won't lie, it's intriguing. You want us to send one of our nerds to you because you aren't even sure if there's something wrong with your laptop. I'll, uh, I'll just make something up to put in the form. How does a Trojan horse computer virus sound?"

"Not great, if I'm being honest with you," she said drily and he chuckled.

"You're right. It isn't great. But it's a perfectly valid reason for us to travel offsite for a job."

She sat up a bit. "You're sending someone?"

"Yes, I am. Is this a place of business or a private residence?"

"Place of business."

He asked for her address and then said a "Nerd Herder" would be there in an hour, maybe longer depending.

When she hung up, she made the decision not to give them too much information when they arrived. She didn't want to pull some I.T. helper into this mess. But she also thought maybe Carina and Casey wouldn't appreciate some geek knowing the P.I. they were trusting with their evidence knew someone might be hacking her emails.

She dove headfirst back into searching her office for bugs.

}o{

Chuck stared at the form he'd just filled out and submitted for their records. He specifically stared at where he typed in that a Trojan horse virus was the reason for the offsite job.

She'd used the word "cagey" to describe her behavior, and it definitely was.

That was why he was taking the assignment instead of sending Lester…wherever the hell Lester even currently was. Not that he was trying to protect his employees from potential foul play. Her voice hadn't sounded like the voice of someone who would be involved in foul play.

And that was stupid because serial killers always seemed like totally normal people until you found out they'd murdered ten innocent human beings.

He was incredibly intrigued, just like he'd told her. Why hadn't she just told him what was going on? She had sort of told him, hadn't she? She said she didn't even know if there was something wrong with it. That alone made him want to go and get his hands on her laptop. Everything about it was weird.

And in spite of just having finished an assignment with the LAPD, he was in a bit of a rut with the same sorts of things he was doing as the Buy More's Regional Specialist. Sitting in an office surrounded by I.T. guys mad-dogging him for walking into their turf and outshining them was getting slightly old.

Not that he was complaining about way better pay, enough pay in the last three years that he was now in his own apartment and bought a car all on his own dime.

No, he wasn't complaining.

Except that Ellie had his car, and he would have to show up at this job in one of the Herders. He guessed at least he'd look like a real Nerd Herd tech again. Like old times.

Chuck printed and then exited out of the form, sticking it in his messenger bag. It was then that Lester showed up.

"Charles! What's this? What's going on?"

"Off to go to a job. Can you hold down the fort until Anna gets here? Of course you can, good man." Chuck patted the shorter man on his shoulder as he grabbed everything he thought he might need. It was hard to figure out what to grab, considering she didn't even know if there was anything wrong with her computer in the first place. He really had never heard anything like this since he started his work at the Buy More when he was sixteen. In a decade, he'd heard nothing like this.

He put everything but the kitchen sink into his bag and shrugged. "Let's hope that'll do."

"Why'd you need that much stuff?" Lester asked.

"It's a…big job, Lester. Big job."

"Oh. Godspeed, El Capitan."

Chuck saluted and grabbed the keys to the Herder, going through the back of the store and the warehouse to get to it. It was quicker and it meant answering less questions on his way out. He plugged the address into his GPS, squirming happily in the driver's seat.

Sure, maybe it smelled a little bit like pot inside of the car, and he knew who had done that, but it felt kind of good sitting in the extremely tiny Nerd Herd mobile again. Well, not exactly good. It actually felt bad until he moved the seat as far back as it could go. His knees had been jammed against the steering wheel when he first got in.

At least he'd have his car back later tonight. And it wasn't like he had a date where he'd have to worry about showing up driving in this thing and being embarrassed. He scoffed to himself and made good time.

He parked in the street twenty-five minutes later, standing on the sidewalk once he clambered out of the small space behind the steering wheel and walked around the Herder.

Chuck peered up at the building. It was the typical office building in downtown LA, but one of the older ones that had been rejuvenated, maybe built in the 'twenties or 'thirties, ten floors. He hadn't gotten any information about what kind of business it was that he would be going to. It typically was something he asked, but there was something in the way she seemed not to talk on the phone about the details for whatever reason that made him not want to ask.

He'd figure it out when he got up there, he supposed.

He went into the building and slid into the elevator, pressing the button for the right floor.

He knew he was earlier than he'd said he would be, but it typically did take about an hour or so for them to get to their offsite jobs. It was a good cushion and gave them time for traffic and other unforeseen circumstances.

Chuck wandered down the hall, looking for the suite number she'd give him. He made a wrong turn and ended up at the wrong end of the building, shook his head to double back, found the correct hallway finally, and walked to the door at the very end of the hall. As he walked closer to the door, he saw WALKER AGENCY printed in dark block letters on the glass of the window.

He stopped for a moment when he got to the door and decided to play a guessing game. Was she a talent agent? God, he hoped this wasn't one of those places that shoveled the children of bad parents into the entertainment business. He'd feel icky the whole time.

Not that helping certain organizations and corporations had made him pause before. This was his job. He helped people. Even people he didn't necessarily agree with.

Maybe it was a talent agency for adults in the entertainment business. He liked that idea a lot better. Or maybe it was just an employment agency. Those were all over the place. It was the most likely option.

They probably had client information on their computers and one of them was acting up and they didn't want personal data getting out.

He imagined that was why she'd been so "cagey" on the phone.

Chuck opened up the door and stepped into a waiting area that was about as large as his first college dorm he'd lived in eight years ago. There were three nice waiting room chairs lined up against the wall to his left, a small couch against the opposite wall, a water cooler, a coffee machine, cups, and a small end table with a stack of Smithsonian magazines. At the end of the waiting room was yet another door. It was open all the way. He could see a desk through the doorway, papers littering the top of it.

Frowning a bit in curiosity, he cleared his throat loudly. "Hello? I'm here from the Nerd Herd?"

He inched closer to the office and then stepped in a bit, knocking on the open door. But the knock died when he saw the upended chair, a plant pulled out of its pot, the pot turned on its side. "Hello?"

He heard a gasp, a thump, and then a blond head popped up from behind a filing cabinet that was propped diagonally on its side against a couch in the corner of the room.

The most beautiful woman he'd ever seen in his life peered at him with wide, blue eyes, one hand on her head, her fingers rubbing a spot on her head, teeth clenched in a wince.

He raised a tentative hand in silent greeting, not realizing that the rest of his life had just begun.

A/N: (sings in Karen Carpenter's voice) We've only just beguuuuuuuuuuuuuun...

-SC