A/N: A very, very long time since I last published a chapter of this story, nearly fifteen months. The story has gotten so complex now, with so many strong characters in play, so having to find or create missions where they can all play a part is a real struggle.
Beta thanks to WillieGarvin. I really appreciate his help and thoughts on the story.
Anyway, thanks to those of you who've read and reviewed this story so far. If you haven't, you will need to read the earlier chapters for this to make sense. Existing readers will probably need to reread, too.
If you're ready, let's get started…
Endings
Chapter 9: Third Mission
There was a two-week lull in missions coming from General Beckman. Zondra told Sarah in a private video call about how the team members were coping, at least when they were in Castle.
Lacy spent most of his time cleaning guns and using them in the firing range. Taking out his frustration of the paper targets.
Zondra herself exercised in the dojo. Part of that was using the punching bag for her frustration relief.
Bryce was different. He mostly just chilled, even played computer games. Zondra suspected he did the same when away.
And that left Carina. Zondra commented about how she behaved when she was around Bryce. "They've obviously slept together. I'm not surprised, but it seems to be having an effect on Red."
"Effect?" Sarah asked.
"Yeah. I think she might be falling for him," Zondra replied.
Sarah snorted. "Red?"
"Hey, you changed," Zondra reminded her.
Sarah couldn't deny that, but Carina changing was still hard to believe. She'd look for signs in the video calls.
Their next mission felt like a set up from the start. Bryce spotted someone from their past when out with Carina.
Zondra stepped away from the camera and let Carina tell the remote pair about it. "He gasped," the redhead said.
"I did not!" Bryce said, stepping up beside her.
"You did so!" she snapped.
"Get on with it," Zondra growled.
Carina continued, "It played out like this…"
~o~
"What is it?" Carina asked, looking around trying to find a threat.
"Jill Roberts!" he said, pointing to a woman walking away from them toward Hotel Waldron that they were walking past.
"One of your many conquests, I presume."
"She was with Chuck first," he replied.
She looked more sharply at the woman. Long brunette hair and glasses. That was all Carina could see from her current angle. She was carrying a paper bag from the bakery they'd passed just before.
Bryce started toward Jill, but Carina grabbed his arm and pulled him to a halt. "We'll talk to the team about this first, and particularly Chuck and Sarah."
"Oh, come on! She's just an old friend."
"It's too much of a coincidence running into her like this," Carina argued. "Your ex, who is also Chuck's ex, being in Los Angeles."
By this time, Jill had entered the hotel and Bryce had effectively missed his chance to talk to her, anyway.
~o~
Sarah looked at her boyfriend. This was the woman he was going to propose to at college. The one who dumped him for Bryce. How was he taking it?
Chuck looked shocked, but then his face hardened. "Carina's right. This has Beckman's hands all over it. Another attempt to undermine how we work."
"Chuck," Bryce almost whined. "I think you're being paranoid."
Sarah thought Bryce was probably right, but it still felt wrong to her. "We need to find out why she's here," Sarah said. "See if it is a coincidence or not."
"If she's here for more than a day, she'll go to that bakery tomorrow morning, too," Chuck said.
Sarah looked at him with a raised eyebrow. He didn't get to explain because Bryce said, "She will. She loves the pastries from there." Everyone looked at him. "I met Chuck and Jill there when they were going out. Jill didn't like being around Ellie, so that was where they ate breakfast."
Chuck snorted. "It was more that El didn't like Jill… at all."
"Likewise," Sarah muttered to herself. She looked at Bryce. "So, go and meet her there, by chance, tomorrow."
He grinned. "Will do."
Carina looked annoyed as they ended the call.
Late the following morning, Chuck and Sarah received another call. They were expecting this one.
"She's here for a Bioscience conference and will be here until the end of the week," Bryce said excitedly.
"And he's made a date tonight with her!" Zondra added.
Sarah scanned the room behind them. "Where's Carina?"
Zondra's expression said it all. "She still out."
"Still?" Chuck asked. Sarah wanted to kick him for not reading the signs.
"Oh, she came with me but sat away from Jill and I. She's decided not to come back yet," Bryce said. He seemed as clueless as Chuck. Zondra rolled her eyes.
The two women had seen that Carina was becoming possessive of Bryce, something that surprised them, but then Sarah hadn't expected to fall for Chuck, either.
"Ok. This doesn't seem like a Beckman setup anymore," Sarah said.
"I'll still try to find out about that conference, though," Chuck said.
Sarah didn't argue, but asked Zondra to call her later.
As she ended the call, she turned to him. "Why investigate the conference?"
"Jill attending one here in LA still seems too coincidental," he replied. "She knows I live here, so why risk bumping into me?"
Sarah sighed. "Firstly, how does she know you're still here? You could've moved anywhere in the last six years. And secondly, 'bumping into you' in a city of millions?"
He blushed. "Maybe I am being paranoid, but let me do this."
She nodded, gave him a kiss and left him to it. As she walked away, she questioned her own actions. Was that kiss to remind him who was now his girlfriend?
'Ugh! Who's being paranoid now?'
Chuck had found out that Jill was there because she was presenting at the conference, covering a topic she and her boss, Guy LeFleur, had been researching. So, she wasn't just an attendee. It certainly seemed that this wasn't a set up by the general and was a pure coincidence.
Sarah was about to call the team, when she got a notification that the general wanted to talk.
Chuck quickly got everything set up and they connected to her.
General Beckman launched in without any greetings. "MI6 has reports that the developer of a bioweapon is at a conference in LA where he plans to sell it to the highest bidder."
Both of them groaned. "Is that Guy LeFleur?" Chuck asked.
The general looked surprised. "Yes. How did you know?"
Chuck didn't answer, but instead said, "He's the head research scientist for the European company Cole-MacGregor Pharmaceuticals and, yes, he's at a Bioscience conference here. His assistant is giving a presentation on infectious diseases."
Beckman narrowed her eyes. "And just how do you know this?" He didn't reply. They had no intention of giving up secrets to this woman.
"Are you intending to pay for the team to capture him and, if he has it, retrieve this weapon?" Sarah asked.
The general groaned. "Very well."
"So, the NSA is funding my dinner date?" Bryce asked, grinning into the camera.
"While Lacy and I go after her boss," grumbled Carina.
Bryce shrugged. "Someone gotta keep his assistant distracted while you get all the action."
"Oh, so you're not planning to get any action, then?" Carina challenged.
"I'll be there to pick him up after the dinner," Zondra cut in.
That took the smile off Bryce's face. "Why?"
"Because we need the intel asap," she replied.
"I might call you with that before we leave," he replied.
"Just get what intel you can from Jill, Bryce," Sarah said. "And Carina and Lacy, you get LeFleur and, if he has it, the weapon, too."
She ended the call and growled, "Children!"
Chuck grinned at her. "I don't think children want to get into other children's pants."
She tilted her head as she looked at him. "You ok with all this talk of your ex?" She hadn't asked before, but thought they should get past it.
Chuck clearly appreciated her thoughtfulness. "Thanks for asking, but yes. It might've been harder if you'd keep pushing me away and I felt I should talk to her to understand why women reject me."
She flushed and felt bad. "I fell for you big time. It totally confused me, but I also had to be mindful of the asset/handler rules."
"Story of our first year together, huh?"
She asked the big question, "Would you try again with Jill if we weren't in a relationship? Even though she broke your heart?"
He looked uncomfortable. "It would be hard after the hurt she caused, but maybe, if it was my only chance for a relationship."
"Same as Lou?"
"Yeah. Something like that," he was very uncomfortable now.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. "Well, we are together. Very happily together, I hope."
The look in his eyes spoke volumes, so he just said, "God, yes!" and the kiss that followed was much longer.
Lacy and Carina's visit had been a success. They'd saved LeFleur from an assassination attempt, taking out the assassin in the process. Sarah noticed Carina's absence again.
As expected, Jill's boss was staying at the same hotel as her.
"Thanks to Chuck accessing the hotel records, we knew LeFleur's room number. If we'd not already had that, delays finding it would've meant he'd be dead now." Lacy was obviously appreciative of Chuck's input.
"As it was, we still only just managed to save him," Lacy continued. "The assassin was about to throw him through the window. Carina grabbed LeFleur's wrist and pulled him sideways. That put the assassin off-balance as he was still swinging. I rammed into him adding to that forward momentum," Lacy said. "Unfortunately, I knocked him through the window."
"Quite a ram!" Zondra commented.
"Hence the dent and blood on the car he hit," Sarah commented. She and Chuck had heard it on police radio.
"It's a good job he didn't hit anyone," Chuck said.
"I doubt the owner of the car saw it that way," Zondra replied.
"It'll be insured," Bryce commented.
"Against raining bodies?" Chuck asked.
"Back to what you did," Zondra said to Lacy, getting him back on track.
"We took a very shaken LeFleur and his possessions away," Lacy told them "We have him secured at a safehouse."
"And has he talked yet?" Sarah asked.
"After we convinced him that he was safe, he did. He's not trying to sell a bioweapon, his company is," Zondra replied.
"He recently discovered an antiviral serum for a strain of influenza so deadly it could kill a person within one hour if exposed. Then, he learned that his company is seeking purchasers for it as an influenza bioweapon. He was at the convention to present his research so that the company couldn't cover it up any more."
"Why not just take it to the authorities?" Chuck asked.
"Who'd believe one man against a major international pharmaceutical company that has so many products that save lives?" Zondra asked.
"We need to pass that onto the general so the NSA can take care of the company," Chuck said.
"He'll probably have to present it to her and her scientists," Sarah pointed out. She thought about it for a second or two. "Let's talk to her before we plan to move him anywhere."
"He said he'd been contacted by people in the CIA about his findings and they were interested in both the weapon and his antivirus. He gave us a couple of names," Zondra said next.
She repeated the names and Chuck flashed on both of them. "Fulcrum," he gasped before accepting pain-killers and a glass of water from Sarah.
"LeFleur says he has a list of CIA code names for operatives. It was given to him, but he couldn't remember by whom." Both Sarah and Zondra rolled their eyes. "It's secured on a flash drive."
"We need that list," Sarah stated. "We can't let Fulcrum have it."
Zondra gave her a flat look. "Obviously."
"Sorry," Sarah responded. "I'll leave it to you how you get it."
"He had it pretty secure with multiple layers of non-IT encryption," Lacy commented.
That had Chuck curious. "Such as?"
"This box was the first puzzle," Lacy said, lifting one up.
Chuck leaned close to the screen to be able to look at the tiles on the top with Roman numbers on them and one gap. "Wow! The Fibonacci sequence."
Sarah looked at him. "You can solve it, can't you?"
He waved that off. "Easily."
"But you don't need to, because LeFleur did it for us," Zondra drily stated.
Chuck looked visibly disappointed but Sarah looked at the screen again. "So, what was in it?"
"Further obfuscation," Zondra said. "It sprayed a powder, but nothing serious. It was a powdered fruit punch. 'Rootin' raspberry Hi-C' to be exact."
"Huh?" both Chuck and Sarah responded.
"Playing the High C note opened a hidden drawer in the box. In it were a pair of opera glasses," Lacy said, holding them up.
"How does that help?" Sarah asked.
"Those aren't just opera glasses," Chuck said. "The handle will be a key to a very secret lock box. The Culper Ring used stuff like that to pass information during the Revolutionary War days."
Sarah looked at him. "Chuck, that's impressive."
He shrugged. "I know my history."
"Yeah, he's right about that history," Lacy said. Sarah guessed he knew it, too. "But we didn't need to know it because LeFleur just took the handle off and showed us the key. The opera glasses were also a clue as to the location of that lock box."
"LA Opera," Sarah and Chuck said at the same time.
"He lived in LA for some time and his parents' love of the opera rubbed off on him. There's a family's box there. We're going there with him after this call," Zondra finished.
"Well don't hang around talking to us. Go!" Sarah said.
Zondra glared at her but then turned to get the team to leave.
"Bryce, Can you stay and tell us how you managed with Jill, please?" Chuck said.
Sarah looked at him. He was right, but why did his interest in what Jill said bother her?
When the others had left, Bryce looked at them. "She was different."
Sarah was fed up with indirect comments. "How? Talk to us, Bryce!" she snapped at him.
He winced. "Before…" He looked at Chuck briefly and then continued, "She was always keen to talk about herself and not really interested in what I had to say."
Sarah noticed Chuck nodding. She glanced at him. He shrugged and said, "Suited me. I never liked talking about myself."
"This time, she was reticent about giving any information," Bryce said. "But she questioned me intensely." He frowned. "I'm not sure she believed the story I've stuck with for ages."
"Accountant?" Chuck asked.
"Yeah."
"She was always very perceptive," Chuck commented.
Bryce nodded. "But she believed it back then. So, why doubt it now?"
"How did you leave it with her?" Sarah asked.
"I'm seeing her again tomorrow night."
Sarah should've expected nothing less of Bryce. Then, Chuck asked something she hadn't thought about. "Is she safe?"
Sarah felt guilty for not thinking this. She avoided looking Chuck's way.
"Yeah, I worried about that as soon as I heard about her boss," Bryce replied. "My first thought was that I should join the conference and go with her everywhere, but Carina pointed out that Jill would think that odd, so she's doing it."
Sarah hid her reaction to the comment, but then realized something. "And that's why she wasn't in Castle this morning?"
Bryce nodded. "I'll pick Jill up at the end of the conference."
Sarah couldn't stop herself from looking at Chuck and found him looking amused. "Planning to get back with her?" he asked.
Sarah looked back at the screen. Bryce looked offended. "Of course not!" He denied it so swiftly that Sarah wondered.
Chuck just laughed. "But you'll have to stay the night with her." Bryce said nothing.
"As Carina is with her, you should follow the others," Sarah said. "I'm worried that Fulcrum may know about the opera connection."
Bryce immediately headed out.
As the screen faded, Sarah looked at Chuck, having decided to confront her own feelings. "You're just being your usual self, worrying about someone's safety, aren't you?"
He held her arms and moved closer. "I never thought you'd be worried about this, Sarah. I hated that she dumped me for Bryce back then, but it was part of what led you to being with me. I am happier now than I've even been, and so in love with you. I will never be attracted to another woman. You outshine all of them. You should know that."
She crashed her lips to his.
Sarah and Chuck were shocked at what the team had experienced at LA Opera when Zondra set up a call that evening.
"It all started well. LeFleur took me and Lacy directly to the family box," Zondra told them. "He bent down and pushed the key into the lock on the floor. On the red carpet, the small circular metal was noticeable, but you would probably not even think to look there normally. He then pulled up a tile that acted as a door to a secret compartment and he extracted a box. We left the family box and walked to where we found some comfortable chairs and a table. Placing the box on that, LeFleur opened it. Lacy and I watched as he lifted the lid."
Lacy took over. "Inside was what looked like a bomb with a timer ticking down, already at one minute. 'Don't worry,' LeFleur said. The other contents were another puzzle. A set of cubes with parts of a musical score that had to be rearranged. 'You have to do this before the timer reaches zero,' LeFleur said. He quickly did that, claiming it was the score for Verdi's La Traviata, the opera that was going to play tonight."
"This guy is nuts!" Chuck said. "He takes securing the drive to crazy levels." No one disagreed.
"Once he had the blocks in the right place, a flash drive popped up," Zondra continued. "He pulled it out and showed it to us. I was obviously very happy."
Lacy said, "Unfortunately, because we were distracted, we hadn't heard a man approaching. 'I'll take that,' he said. He was wearing overalls, but the gun he had pointed at us told a different story. We both reached for our guns but he said, 'Hands up or LeFleur dies.' Zondra grabbed LeFleur and pulled him down behind one of the chairs and I brought my gun around to shoot the intruder."
"Another man came at us from a different direction, so I had to push LeFleur down and pull my gun out too."
"We both successfully took out the men, but not before I got shot in my shoulder," Lacy finished.
Neither Chuck nor Sarah had noticed anything different about the NSA agent. "I understand your old partner was able to hide the fact he'd been shot for some time, as well," Zondra commented. "I didn't know about Lacy until we were back at the safe house we were using to keep LeFleur out of sight. My first task was to remove the bullet because he didn't want medical treatment."
Sarah guessed that the NSA agent wouldn't want to focus on his wound, so she asked, "And the flash drive?"
"It was encrypted using a 512-bit AES cipher," Lacy said.
Both Zondra and Sarah huffed when Chuck got excited about that. "Wow. Impressive security. That would be a challenge to crack. You'd have to get a computer to try every possible key. Depending on the key, it could take hours or days to get through it. I wish-"
Sarah cut across him, "But that wasn't needed because you had LeFleur with you."
"It took a while before he was able to help us. Another attempt on his life really shook him up," Zondra replied. "But now we're in." She pointed to the screen behind her and zoomed the camera in.
A large monitor showed a list of aliases on the left, with details of the operative in the middle and their photo on the right. It was scanning down the list and extracting those operatives that were also Fulcrum agents.
"Impressive," Chuck said. "Should be of great use. The full list, though, would've given Fulcrum the full details of CIA operatives, including their locations."
"They may already have it," Sarah replied. "Keep scanning. I want this team to have those names before we provide the drive to the general. She would only supply them as and when she needed to for missions."
"That was my thoughts, too," Zondra said.
Chuck just seemed mesmerized with what was showing on that monitor. Each time a Fulcrum agent was identified, the display halted for a few seconds, probably as the details were logged. Then, it would continue flashing through the others to get to the next Fulcrum agent. Chuck flashed on a few of those found. "Hold on!" he suddenly said. "Can you pause it?"
Lacy quickly stooped down to a keyboard and did just that.
They all looked at the screen. The other three looked back at Chuck in shock having seen the name. "Jill?" Sarah said.
Chuck just stared at the screen in shock.
"So, she's not in danger," Zondra said. "She's Fulcrum herself."
Chuck came out of his shock. "Who's with her now?"
"She'll be on her date with Bryce," Zondra replied.
Chuck and Sarah stared at each other as the implications showed in their faces.
"Call him and tell him to capture her," Sarah said. "Do you know where they've gone?"
Zondra frowned, "No, but I think Carina might."
"Find out and if he doesn't answer his phone, get there quickly," Sarah replied. "Fulcrum thinks Bryce is the Intersect. They'll probably try to take him."
When Zondra and Lacy got to the restaurant, neither Bryce nor Jill were there. They were told that the couple left before having dessert, although they'd had some with them as take out. Bryce was carrying that in one hand and had his other arm around Jill. "A beautiful and loving couple," was how they were described. Zondra told all this to Sarah on a phone call.
Sarah had the call on speaker, so it was Chuck that replied, "Typical Bryce. She was wined and dined, and the take out was in case she needed persuading to be his dessert." Sarah agreed.
"So, where would they go?" Zondra asked.
Sarah answered, "Bryce is less in control than he thinks, but he will want her in her room at the hotel. It's symbolic." She winced after saying this. It would remind Chuck of her being with Bryce.
"We'll go there, then," Zondra replied.
"If they're still there, try to capture her, but be careful. There may be more men there. Where's Carina? Didn't she move into a room at the hotel?"
"Yeah. She's there. She won't like Bryce's plan, though."
"Too bad," Sarah snapped. "This is too important for feelings."
Sarah had explained about the changes in Carina behavior around Bryce. So, as the call ended, Chuck said, "That was the old you speaking."
She thought about what he meant, particularly which part of what she'd said. She guessed it was the last comment. "Yeah, but if she lets her feelings get to her, she could make a mistake."
"Did you ever, when you were with Bryce?"
She needed to come back to what else she'd said, but this was easy to answer. "No," she replied emphatically. She looked at him. "But I did with you sometimes."
He pulled her in for a kiss. She didn't resist.
As their lips parted, she held onto him but looked up into his eyes. "I'm sorry to remind you of me being with him," she softly said as she stroked his cheek.
"This whole mission is one of painful reminders, for both of us. We just have to keep in mind that both of them are in the past. We're together now and very much in love. That's all that matters."
She stood on tiptoes to kiss him again, a long and lingering kiss that confirmed what he'd said.
Their next call prompted a video call.
Sarah could almost feel the tension pouring off of her redheaded friend. Zondra got Carina to speak, though.
"I heard them come back to her room," she virtually growled. "What I heard through the walls between our rooms made me wish I'd chosen a different one." She looked at them. "Or maybe taken one of the men from the hotel bar back to my room."
Sarah felt sorry for her, but said nothing.
"I was surprised when it went quiet. After how Jill had been sounding, I'd expected her to be very loud in bed." She shook her head, obviously trying to dispel that image. "Then, I heard her make a phone call and I made sure I could hear."
Sarah almost smiled. She imagined Carina with a glass pressed against the wall and her ear to that. Very old school. Of course, they had better technology now.
Carina continued, "it was a good job that I had her room bugged and that I had quickly turned that back on. I could only hear her side of the conversation, but that was enough. 'He's out.' I realized that she must've tranquilized Bryce. 'Come and collect him,' she added. I went to the bathroom and called Zondra."
Zondra picked up the story, "We were already on our way to the hotel. I told Carina to wait because we didn't want her getting surprised by more Fulcrum agents. We arrived just behind a black van from which three men jumped out the back. Lacy followed them into the building and I went and shot the driver with my silenced pistol."
Sarah saw Chuck wince at the casual way Zondra had said that, but had to ignore it.
Zondra continued, "Lacy and I followed the men into the elevator." She kept her face neutral, but Sarah knew how they must've behaved. The thought of either of them acting like a loving couple felt odd.
"I heard Zondra as she and Lacy walked along the corridor," Carina said. "I'd recognize her voice anywhere, but a flirty Zondra is not something I'm used to."
"We had to play the part," Zondra growled at her.
"I waited for them to get past before I opened my door. I was in a nightgown and one of the men between us glanced at me in a way that cheered me up. Of course, he couldn't see the tranquilizer pistol I was hiding. Once he looked away I shot a dart into him. He was lucky because Zondra and Lacy shot bullets into the other two. Jill must've heard them falling and cautiously opened the door and found the end of Zondra's gun pressed against her nose." She looked down. "As she was forced back into the room, I couldn't stop myself. I tranq'd her, too."
"We found Bryce lying on the bed," Zondra said. She must've noticed how Sarah and Chuck reacted. She grinned. "Fully clothed, but unconscious."
"Only two of the four men were on LeFleur's list," Lacy stated. "But I recognized one of the others. He was NSA."
"They're probably pulled in from a number of agencies," Sarah said. "So, you took away three unconscious bodies."
"We did," Zondra replied. She grinned. "All of them are in cells in Castle, two of them locked up."
Sarah hid her grin that Bryce was in one, even if his door wasn't locked. "So, none have come round yet?" she asked.
"No, but all will soon."
Sarah looked at Ch
"So, Fulcrum was after LeFleur for his research and to stop him letting the world know about the bioweapon," General Beckman said after she heard the news. "We've raided the company labs and secured it, by the way." The two nodded. They'd expected that. "But they also wanted that list," the general added.
"Probably to keep the Fulcrum names from us, but it would also put a lot of good operatives at risk," Sarah replied.
"True," Beckman said. She looked at Chuck. "Are all the people you know spies?"
"It seems a lot were," he replied.
"Maybe we should round them all up," she muttered. She focused on him again. "I'm not sure if you're more use to us doing what you are now, or whether we should dangle you as bait to bring in Fulcrum."
Sarah bristled at that, but Chuck placed a calming hand on hers. "You know this team, including me, is your best defense, and attack force, against Fulcrum."
The general grumbled at that, but did agree to transfer the funds in exchange for the two Fulcrum agents, LeFleur and the memory stick.
Chuck and Sarah were hooked up to the Castle surveillance and watched Jill's 'interview' with Bryce and Zondra. Both operatives were there because he wanted to grill the woman and she was because she worried he might start to hit her.
Jill was obviously upset that her plan had failed. She glared at the female operative as Zondra walked into the room in which she was secured to the chair and table. Then, she saw Bryce walk in behind her and smirked at him for a second before looking neutral.
"Are all spies taught that look?" Chuck asked.
"Well, not exactly that look, but you have to hide your thoughts and feelings," Sarah admitted.
"She's not as good at it as you," he quietly said. "Although the slips were just as confusing."
She remembered that rollercoaster ride, fighting with her feelings for him. She'd confused herself as much as him.
"How long have you worked for Fulcrum?" Bryce asked, getting right to the point.
Jill sighed. "Since college."
"After we got together?" he asked.
"No. A year earlier than that."
Chuck gasped beside her. Sarah squeezed his hands.
"While you were with Chuck," Bryce stated, but that was obvious.
Jill looked down. "Apparently I was too attached to him. Strong relationships don't go well with being an agent."
Sarah sensed Chuck looking at her without having to see it. "She's wrong," she said quietly.
Bryce had his back to the camera, but Sarah thought he must've looked surprised. "They made you split up with him?"
Jill frowned. "Yeah, but then you made it easier to achieve with that cheating thing."
"But you didn't want to," that was obvious to Bryce as well as Sarah.
Jill shook her head. After a moment, she looked up. "I know it's stupid, but when I knew we were coming here, I hoped Chuck was still around and I could see him again. Reconnect, maybe."
Sarah definitely looked at Chuck then. He still looked shocked, but seeing her turn to him, snapped him out of it. His hand appeared at the back of her neck and he pulled her into a deep kiss.
When he released her, Sarah realized she'd lost track of the interview. "God, you're a good kisser, Chuck!"
"I wanted to make sure you knew that I'm only interested in you," he replied.
Her lips were still tingling. She definitely knew.
Turning back to the screen, she listened again. Jill was speaking, "… on behalf of my boss because he was too nervous to present. He and I had been working on a strain of influenza, specifically how one of the hemagglutinin glycoproteins fuses the viral envelope with the vacuole's membrane." She paused and looked at the two facing her. "That's total gibberish to you, isn't it?"
"Why did you, a Fulcrum agent, want to give that presentation?" Zondra asked.
Jill nodded. "Guy discovered our company was trying to sell the influenza virus as a bioweapon. I thought that sounded as bad as he did, so we both wanted to share that information with the world. It was only later I found out that Fulcrum was going to buy it." She looked at them. "I heard Fulcrum tried to assassinate him, probably to stop him getting in the way of the sale. When I found that out, I thought I was in danger too, but then a way of redeeming myself landed in my lap."
"Me," Bryce said, and she nodded.
"Fulcrum has been after you, the Intersect, for some time since you slipped out of their grasp," she said.
"Fulcrum wanted more from LeFleur," Zondra said.
"I don't know what you mean," Jill said, frowning at her.
"She doesn't know about the list," Chuck said. Sarah saw that, too.
The interview continued for a while, but other than that she'd gotten the four men to help her, they gained nothing more from her. She hadn't told anyone else about Bryce, because she wanted, as she put it, 'that ace up her sleeve' when she faced her handler.
When interviewed, the other man captured knew nothing, just followed orders.
Sarah was lying in bed panting from their latest bedtime exertions. A sheen of perspiration covered her body. "If I'd known that our lovemaking was going to be like that after your ex turns up, I'd've tracked her down before."
Her lover chuckled beside her. "I did want to make it very clear who I wanted in my life, and my bed," he said.
"I guess I wanted to do that, too," she replied as she glanced at him.
"You made that very clear, Sarah."
"This whole thing has shown us two things," she said as she rolled onto her side to face him. "One is that we're both a bit insecure about the other's past relationships."
He nodded. "And the other?"
"That neither of us need to be like that. We're both in the relationship we want and need."
He pulled her to him. "I love you, Sarah."
"I know," she replied.
He chuckled. "Quoting Star Wars, now?"
She kissed him after saying, "Seemed appropriate, my love."
"It was." He tightened his arms around her and she settled her head against his neck. She felt loved and secure, in spite of their situation in hiding from the general.
A/N: I always used to dislike both Bryce and Carina. I've mellowed now, so couldn't resist how they were here.
I will really try to come up with a new chapter quicker than I did this time. In the meantime, how about sharing your thoughts on this one? A review would be great.