Echo Park
“His name is Reese Walker Woodcomb.”
Beth’s head snapped up. Ellie was standing in the doorway. She hadn’t heard her approach, hadn’t even heard the door open, she had been so engrossed with the baby.
Ellie’s face was carefully neutral, but Beth could see the anger, the unbridled hatred, in the older woman’s eyes. “We gave him his middle name in memory of you,” Ellie continued, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice.
Beth looked at Ellie. She didn’t know what to say, what she could say, so finally, she just said, “Hi, Ellie…”
Ellie looked daggers back at her. She took a step toward Beth, and Beth took a step backward.
Ellie’s breathing got ragged. Her eyes narrowed, her face reddened. Her hands clenched to fists. “You… BITCH!” she snarled.
Her left hand moved faster than a snake, her open palm hitting Beth’s face with all the force of a bus. The blow staggered Beth, and she stepped backward. She gasped in pain and tasted blood. Knocked off balance, she looked back at Ellie –
Just in time to be hit with Ellie’s right fist. The blow knocked her off her feet. She fell backward, her head smacking against the baby’s changing table as she fell.
Beth collapsed to the floor, stunned. She had almost double vision, and was unable to re-focus. Then she felt her hair being pulled. The pain was almost unbearable as Ellie dragged her into the living room by her hair.
“Ellie, please stop!” she moaned.
“Hey, babe, look what the cat dragged in!” Ellie shouted, rage coloring her voice.
That statement was enough to draw Devin from the kitchen. “Ellie, what’s going – Sarah?!”
Devin physically dragged his wife off of Beth. “Jesus, Sarah, you look like you got your ass kicked!” Not, “Jesus, Sarah, you’re supposed to be dead!”
He turned to Ellie. “What the hell did you do?!”
“I kicked her ass,” Ellie hissed vindictively. “Any woman who fakes her own death and makes my little brother’s life HELL for seventeen months is DEFINITELY gonna get a dose of Bartowski justice.”
“Ellie, cool it,” Devin said angrily. “I think you might’ve given her a concussion.”
He gently lifted Beth under her arms and set her in an easy chair. “Follow my finger,” he instructed her, moving his index finger back and forth in front of her face. She complied.
“Okay, that’s good,” Devin mused. He put his hand to her forehead, shading her eyes from the light, then removed it. He repeated, and then said, “Alright, pupil reaction time is good. Sarah, I need you to move your hands and feet for me.”
“Okay,” she said softly, and moved her hands and feet.
“Alright, motor function looks good,” Devin said. “Okay, it looks like you were just stunned, but I don’t want you to move.”
“Yeah, I don’t want you to move either,” added Ellie nastily.
The Woodcombs disappeared into the kitchen. Beth could hear them arguing. It seemed that Ellie wanted to call the police, whereas Devin wanted to take her to the hospital.
She had no intention of allowing either to happen. Beth rose to her feet, taking a moment to find her balance. She unsteadily wobbled to the door and pulled it open –
And came face to face with the business end of her own gun. “Nice try, Walker,” John Casey growled. “Sit DOWN.”
Backing up slowly, she returned to the chair Devin had deposited her in. “Nice gun, by the way,” Casey remarked. “Thanks for leaving it in the Porsche.”
“Any time,” Beth replied bitterly. “How’d you know I was here?”
Casey looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “What, you really think I’d remove the surveillance equipment from my godson’s bedroom? Are you nuts?”
That remark took her breath away. “You’re… Reese’s godfather?” she whispered.
“They wanted somebody else to be his godmother – unfortunately, she was UNAVAILABLE,” Casey rasped. “You’ve done one hell of a number on a group of very good people, Walker. I hope you’re happy.”
She shook her head. “No, I’m really not,” she whispered softly.
“Boy, I can’t wait to hear Bartowski rip into you,” Casey growled, an unkind smile on his face.
Beth’s eyes widened. “What?”
“Chuck. He and Veronica will be here in, oh, five minutes or so,” Casey informed her. “Family dinner night.”
She shook her head. “I… I can’t. I can’t be here when he gets here.”
“Well, that’s just tough shit!” Casey shouted. “You should’ve thought of that before you broke into the Woodcombs’ apartment, or better yet, before you decided to do your pseudo-death plunge off of the Vincent Thomas Bridge!”
Veronica’s DB-7 pulled up in front of the apartment complex just after seven o’clock. She hopped out like she was on fire.
“Chuck, I’ve really, REALLY got to use the bathroom,” she said. “Can you grab the groceries?”
“Yeah, no problem,” Chuck replied. As Veronica’s door swung shut, he reached behind her seat and grabbed the two bags from Whole Foods.
He had just stood up out of the car and closed his door when he heard a commotion coming from inside the Woodcomb apartment.
“What the hell is going on?” he asked nobody in particular.
Veronica burst into the apartment. “Out of the way, I’m about to piss my-“
She stopped dead in the doorway. There was somebody sitting in the living room who should not have been there, surrounded by a very pissed off looking John Casey and Ellie Woodcomb and a disturbed looking Devin Woodcomb.
“Jesus Christ!” Veronica exclaimed, horrified. “You’re dead! You’re fucking dead! I’ve seen the death certificate, I’ve been to your gravesite!”
“Clearly, she’s NOT,” John Casey grumbled.
Veronica’s eyes narrowed. She reached behind her back and drew her gun, aiming it at Beth Reynolds.
“Sarah Walker, you are under arrest for falsifying your own death. You have the right to remain silent…”
Chuck had begun walking quickly when he heard Veronica start yelling – and then he heard it.
He heard Veronica say the words “Sarah Walker.”
Chuck felt like his heartrate had tripled in that one instant. His eyes went wide, and the two grocery bags went tumbling from his arms. He nearly tripped over his own feet as he started running across the remaining distance to the door.
He burst through the door into the living room –
And there she was. Her hair was a little shorter, but otherwise, she looked exactly like she had the last time he had seen her.
“Sarah?” he whispered, hoping against all hope that he was right.
She smiled as tears sprang to her eyes. “Hi, Chuck,” she whispered.
He crossed the room toward her. “Is it… is it really you?”
Sarah Walker nodded silently as she stood to face him.
Chuck stopped right in front of her. “Um…”
He turned to his sister. “Guys, can we have a moment, please?”
Nobody moved. Casey and Veronica both still had their guns out. “Seriously, guys, how bad can a dead woman hurt me?” Chuck asked irritably.
With an unpleasant sigh, Casey holstered his gun and left through the front door. The other three followed suit, with Devin closing the door behind him.
Chuck looked back at Sarah, into her eyes. “Why?” he asked.
She bowed her head. “I couldn’t let them use me to hurt you anymore,” she whispered. “It’s as simple as that.”
Sarah looked back up at him. He nodded his head slightly. “I guess I can understand that,” he replied.
He took a step back. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t mad,” he told her. “I just, I can’t believe you’d do that to me. I mean, I understand why, but you have to realize – that hurt me worse than I can say. And now that I know you faked it – I mean, that hurts me beyond all measure, that you couldn’t just trust me.”
The tears were coming to Sarah’s eyes in full force now. “And it just makes me so angry, to think that you’d do that because you thought I couldn’t handle being hurt,” he said, and she could hear it in his voice. “I mean, words cannot describe how mad that makes me.”
Then he stopped and took a breath. Sarah sniffled and wiped her eyes, and then looked down incredulously as Chuck took her hands in his own. “There’s something else that words can’t describe,” he said softly, “and that’s how happy I am to see you.”
Sarah smiled, and a half-laugh, half-sob escaped her lips. Then, before she realized what she was doing, she had thrown her arms around Chuck’s neck, locking her arms behind him as though she were never going to let go. She felt his arms wrap themselves around her torso, enfolding her in his embrace.
After a moment, he pulled back. “Listen,” he said. “Um… the moment that Veronica and Casey come back through that door, they’re gonna put you under arrest.”
“I know,” she whispered.
Chuck sighed. Sarah looked into his eyes – and she could tell that his mind was going a million miles an hour. “What exactly are you thinking about?” she asked.
He looked back and took a deep breath. “How much do you trust me?”
“Um… with my life, pretty much, at this point.”
“Come with me,” Chuck said. Confused, Sarah followed him back to his old room. He opened the Morgan Door. “Out,” he ordered her.
“What?”
“Just do it.”
Sarah climbed out, confused. Chuck followed her. “Alright, we have to stay quiet and unseen,” he whispered. “Do you have a knife on you?”
Sarah turned to him with an “are-you-kidding” look on her face. “Of course you have a knife on you,” Chuck said, rolling his eyes. “What was I thinking. Mind if I borrow it?”
Sarah smiled, dug into her purse, and came out with a switchblade. “Okay, follow me,” Chuck instructed her. Sarah followed as close as she could get to him without tripping him.
When they reached the street, Sarah started to get nervous. “What are we doing?”
Chuck pointed a remote control at a blue Corvette and hit a button. The turn signals flashed, and it unlocked. “Get in,” he instructed her.
Staying low, he ran along the line of cars. He popped open the switchblade, and quickly slashed the right front tire on Devin’s Escape, Ellie’s Pontiac, Casey’s Crown Vic, and Veronica’s Aston-Martin. He ran back to the Corvette and jumped in.
“When exactly did you get so devious?” Sarah asked with a smile.
“Oh, I’ve always had it in me,” Chuck replied. “It’s just that a certain… a certain spy brought it out in me.”
He fired up the Corvette, backed out, and hit the gas.
Casey turned around to see Chuck’s Corvette blast down Laveta Terrace, a gigantic cloud of smoke puffing up behind his rear tires. “Son of a bitch!” Casey shouted. He took off running for his car.
A moment later, he reappeared in the courtyard, a rueful grin on his face. “Well, somebody slashed the right front tire of all four of our cars. Either Walker’s got an agenda up her sleeve, or Chuck has turned into a very bad boy.”
Veronica’s face was alternating between fear and outrage. “How do we find out?”
Casey sighed. “Devin, I need you to do me a favor.”
“What do you need, bro?”
Casey tossed the keys to the Crown Vic over. “Change the tire on the Crown Vic. It’s got a full size spare, so we can go full speed on it. Veronica and I are going to go figure out what the hell happened.”
Veronica followed Casey into his apartment. “What do you mean, we’re going to figure out what the hell happened?”
Casey turned on the TV. He turned to the laptop next to it, and pulled up the apartment surveillance footage for the last ten minutes.
“Okay,” he mused. “Here, we have Chuck chewing Sarah out briefly… and here, we have him hugging her… for freaking ever…”
“Oh, come on, Casey, he thought she was dead,” Veronica said. “Give him a bit of a break.”
Casey rolled his eyes and hit play, sending the playback to normal speed.
“Listen. Um… the moment that Veronica and Casey come back through that door, they’re gonna put you under arrest.”
“I know.” There was silence for a moment as Sarah looked at Chuck. “What exactly are you thinking about?”
“How much do you trust me?”
“Um… with my life, pretty much, at this point.”
“Come with me.”
And with that, they disappeared into the baby’s bedroom. “Goddamn devious little bastard,” Casey said, laughing. “He’s learned well.”
Santa Monica
“Do you keep a bag packed?” Sarah asked Chuck as they sped down Santa Monica Boulevard.
“Always,” Chuck replied. “A week’s worth of clothes, toiletries, a thousand dollars cash and ten thousand dollars in untraceable traveler’s cheques.”
“What?!” Sarah said, incredulous. “That sounds like something that a spy would do.”
Chuck sighed. “It always seemed ridiculous, but I harbored this fantasy since the day you disappeared that you would return, and you’d have to disappear. I wanted to go with you if that somehow happened.”
He laughed. “And here I am, disappearing with you.”
Sarah looked over at him. “Why do you want to do that?”
“Because I love you.”
The answer took Sarah’s breath away. It was something she’d been wanting to hear since long before she had jumped off the bridge. And she wanted so badly to say it back, but her mouth went completely dry.
She took a deep breath, and forced herself to speak. “I… I love you too.”
Chuck’s face lit up with an enormous smile as he turned into his apartment complex. “Okay, what are we doing?”
“We’re grabbing your bag, first of all,” Sarah responded. “Oh, and I want to make sure you’re not keeping a woman stashed in your apartment.”
“Are you kidding?” Chuck responded dryly. “I’ve had exactly one girlfriend in the last year and a half.”
Sarah froze. When Chuck realized she wasn’t behind him, he turned around. “What’s wrong?”
“It was the FBI agent, wasn’t it?”
Chuck looked away. “Yeah, yeah it was.”
Sarah was quiet for a moment, and then she nodded. “Good,” she finally said. “I saw surveillance footage of Casey, talking about how you were bottling up your feelings toward her. My worst fear was that you’d do to her… uh, what I did to you.”
Chuck took a deep breath. “Okay,” he replied. “Let me get my bag… we’ll talk about this more once we’re going wherever it is we’re going.”
He unlocked his apartment door and threw it open. He stepped inside and grabbed the bag. As he was stepping back out of the apartment, he realized that Sarah had snuck up behind him. She grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him to her.
The kiss reminded him a lot of the one at the San Pedro docks. They were in a lot of danger, there was a huge amount of passion involved, and he loved it.
This time, though, she didn’t back away and call it awkward. She backed away, smiled, and said, “Let’s go.”
The Crown Vic sped down Santa Monica Boulevard. Devin and Ellie had stayed at the apartment complex, so it was Casey and Veronica in the Crown Vic.
Veronica snagged the police radio. “This is FBI Agent Veronica Mars,” she said. “I need to put out an APB on a blue Chevrolet Corvette, California license plate one hotel tango november echo romeo delta.”
Casey thought about it for a moment. “Since when does he have a vanity plate that says ‘One Hot Nerd’?!”
“He got it about a week ago,” Veronica replied.
Casey shook his head and rolled his eyes.
Five minutes later, the Crown Vic pulled into the parking lot of Chuck and Veronica’s apartment complex at Lincoln and Santa Monica. “And… there’s the Corvette,” Casey said with a sigh.
Casey followed Veronica up to Chuck’s apartment. “Give me a second, I’ll pick the lock,” Casey said.
Veronica laughed. “I’ve still got a key.”
But there was nobody in the apartment. Nothing seemed to be out of place or missing.
“Where the hell could he have gone?” Casey asked, frustration in his voice.
“Well, he’s not here… he didn’t take the Corv-“
Veronica’s eyes widened. “My LeBaron!”
“What?”
She was already out the door, running down the hall. “He has a key to my old Chrysler. I haven’t driven it since I got the Ast- well, shit.”
“He didn’t take it, did he?” Casey asked with a smile.
Veronica sighed, and pointed over the railing. The LeBaron sat in its parking place – the front two tires both slashed.
“He’s thorough,” Casey admitted.
Marina del Rey
Chuck and Sarah got off the Santa Monica #3 bus at Fiji Way. “Okay, this way,” Sarah instructed. She led the way down Fiji Way toward the marina.
“Here we go,” she said, turning right and heading toward a boat slip.
“Evening, Señorita Reynolds,” the man sitting by the boat said. “How much are you gonna pay me this time?”
“A thousand sound good?”
The captain nodded. “We’ll take the speedboat,” he told her.
Forty minutes later, the captain was dropping them off at the dock in Avalon. “Thank you, Roberto,” Sarah yelled as the boat pulled away.
“Now what?” Chuck asked.
“Follow me,” she said, grabbing his hand. She had a huge smile on her face.
“So this is Catalina,” Chuck mused. “Always wanted to come here.”
“And I always wanted to bring you here,” Sarah replied.
A moment later, they were walking into the lobby of the Avalon Hotel. “Ah, Ms. Reynolds, welcome back,” the front desk clerk said. “Will your friend be needing a key as well?”
“Uh, yes,” Sarah replied.
“Very good,” the clerk said. “And your name, sir?”
Chuck’s eyes widened, and then he smiled. “Ethan Hunt.”
Sarah shot him a sideways look and rolled her eyes. “And may I see your ID, Mr. Hunt?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Sarah grumbled. She reached into her pocket, withdrew a hundred dollar bill, and passed it to the clerk. “How many of those have I given you now?”
The clerk smiled. “Enough that I’ve been able to live quite comfortably this last year and a half.”
Burbank
Casey and Veronica were in the home theatre lounge at the Buy More, waiting for General Beckman to come online. “This is gonna suck,” Veronica said softly.
The Nerd Herd screensaver disappeared, and General Beckman appeared on the screen. “What’s going on?” she demanded.
“We’ve got a huge problem,” Veronica said.
Casey cleared his throat loudly. “I’ll handle this,” he hissed.
“Agent Sarah Walker showed up at the apartment of Devin and Eleanor Woodcomb this evening,” Casey started.
“WHAT?!” Beckman practically shouted. “Agent Walker is DEAD!”
Casey shook his head. “No, no she isn’t. She showed up at the apartment, and disappeared with Bartowski.”
“She abducted the Intersect?!”
Casey shook his head again. “Not exactly. It was Bartowski’s idea. She went along with him.”
Beckman’s eyes narrowed. “Well then. I’ll be putting out a sanction on both of them.”
Veronica’s eyes widened. “Wait, no! You can’t do that!”
“Excuse me, Agent Mars?”
“General Beckman, this does seem like a rather rash course of action,” Casey said uneasily.
Beckman looked at Casey. “Alright, Major. I won’t issue a sanction. Yet.
“You and Agent Mars have seventy-two hours to find them.”
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