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victorianoir · 5 years ago

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The Detective and the ManFatale, Part 2

Here’s the second part to the ManFatale arc. If you’re new to The Detective and the Tech Guy, check out this tumblr MASTERPOST where you can read all of it! If you’d like to read this chapter on fanfiction.net, I’ve got it for ya HERE.

Read on, goils, boys, and the rest of you who are neither!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Almost three years ago, Sarah had been on her way up to a single man's condo just as she was now. She remembered having a boat load of expectations about what she'd find there. Foolish modern art sculptures in the middle of the floor, heinously expensive furniture that still looked like it had been bought at IKEA in spite of the price tag, with no cushions or other things for comfort to speak of, and maybe lights with dimmers for seducing people he brought into his bachelor pad.

And every single one of her assumptions had been dashed the moment she'd stepped inside. Everything had looked so comfortable, the couch so inviting and frequently used. No garish, expensive art. Instead, she'd found science fiction posters from the nineteen-fifties that looked like he'd framed them himself when he was sixteen. He'd been put together and neat, but it was early enough in the morning and she'd surprised him enough that he'd been a little frazzled. And then he'd made her breakfast, which had made her think of morning-afters she'd never had but sometimes thought about. That romantic comedy trope of sleeping with a man and waking up the next morning to him having prepped an entire breakfast for you… It had just been a flash in the pan thought that occurred to her that morning as she ate the food he made, and it had made her put at least a bit of distance there. Because he'd surprised her by how real and human and warm he was, by how quickly she'd found herself daydreaming about him in ways she really shouldn't be thinking about her client. Even if it was harmless…at first.

It had been years since that morning…

She was twenty-eight now and things had changed. So much had changed. But mostly, she'd changed.

And this man she was meeting was not the man she'd visited that morning. Far from it. Even though there were some interesting moments this last week she'd been working for him…moments where he had the same understated confidence that a life of success gave a person, and the self-deprecating humor and self-awareness that had drawn her to Chuck. She wasn't drawn to Robbie Cartwright, but the intrigue was still there. She was…missing something, she thought. Some important piece he wasn't giving her, perhaps. Or something he was hiding. Maybe he was just throwing her off by being not at all what she expected—when he said something that knocked her back on her heels the way Chuck used to, the way Chuck still did sometimes.

Yes, there were some similarities there.

But at the same time, Robbie Cartwright was a foil to Chuck Bartowski. Chuck was so warm and kind, and there was a sincerity in the way he said and did things that had effectively made her a perpetual puddle around him, especially in the beginning when she was supposed to be protecting him and finding a murderer. And while she knew Chuck had been with women before—maybe even a lot of women considering how charming and generally marketable he was—he was the furthest thing from a "womanizer". The one time in the last week that she'd visited Cartwright at his office, he'd had a young, long-legged woman in his lap. She'd had to step outside and wait for the woman to leave, and then she'd had to apologize to her client for not knocking first. He hadn't seemed ashamed in the slightest. Which was almost refreshing because it wasn't what she expected…and yet kind of seedy at the same time.

He owned his lifestyle, he owned his opinions, the way he did things… and she supposed she could appreciate that. But having any kind of relationship with him, even just friendship, would grow old quick.

There was also the way he did business. In just that hour she spent at his office, it was almost as though none of the employees even knew he was there. They'd just waved her through to his office, strange looks on their faces when she'd asked to see him.

Granted, it was just a small office, one floor of a large corporate building, and she'd learned through doing some digging that he'd established it upon returning to Los Angeles from a boating trip he'd gone on around Cape Town, six months earlier.

He'd told her most of his work was done remotely, over the phone.

But then when she'd asked a marketing employee in his office when she caught him at a bar one night to ask him some questions, the drinks he'd had made him pretty chatty and she'd discovered that Cartwright didn't do a good deal of his work remotely.

Cartwright had also told her he knew Stephen Bartowski well enough to have given him the green light money on one of B.E.C.'s projects a few years ago, something that was easily cleared up by calling Chuck's dad and asking him if he knew who Robert Cartwright was. She'd gotten a confused pause before he'd said, "Uh…no, never heard of 'im. Should I know him?"

And of course there was the hotel he'd met some big name pro boxer in, in St. Louis apparently. But when she'd eavesdropped on him while he bragged to an employee, the boxer had another name, and the city was Topeka.

His employees seemed not to care either way, whether he walked around telling them lies or stuck to himself in his office. They got their paychecks.

Yes, he was Chuck's foil in a lot of ways. Because Chuck knew as many of his employees as he could. He was involved in the business, neck deep in it, and he'd single-handedly created an atmosphere that his employees enjoyed being in. He'd made it so they loved their work, loved B.E.C. as an employer.

Granted, sometimes he did have a young leggy blonde sitting on his lap in his office, but she was his girlfriend of almost two years, so Sarah felt like that was perfectly acceptable.

She smirked as she got off of the elevator and headed for the door to Cartwright's LA home. She'd done more digging on him and found out he'd purchased it with cash when he'd arrived from South Africa. So far, she'd been unable to find any other properties in LA that the playboy owned. She'd sought the realtor out but the firm had fired him for malpractice or something like that and he'd moved to Canada. And when she called the firm, they had no record of Robert Cartwright anywhere in their system.

It was giving her a good deal of pause.

While she didn't entirely feel comfortable meeting Cartwright in his home, she agreed when he asked her to. It was his day off, he'd said. And he didn't want to go all the way into the office. So she consented. She could take care of herself, but she didn't think she had to worry about him. Seducing her didn't seem to be his goal. Charming her? Absolutely. He hadn't succeeded in that, but it suited her purpose for him to think he was starting to, at least enough for her to lull him into a sense of comfort, as though she was charmed enough that she wouldn't question what he said to her, or what he was about.

She was prepared to sift through whatever lies he tossed at her. And store them away to dissect later.

Not only that, but she needed to see his home. Maybe she could start to put a few pieces together about him, maybe she'd find that missing something here, amongst his things, in his safe space.

He opened the door before she could knock and her first thought was that he needed to button one more button on that shirt he was wearing. "Oh. There you are. Sorry, I'm a bit of a mess. My, uh, morning was hectic—running all over the place—and I just got out of the shower," he breathed, opening the door wider for her to walk through. She knew for a fact he hadn't left his place all day. She'd sat outside his building nearly all day, waiting and watching.

"Perfectly all right."

"This is it," he announced, shutting the door behind her. The furniture didn't look comfortable. But at least it wasn't a bunch of weirdly colored boxes with no padding, she supposed. The walls had meaningless art she didn't recognize. The windows were massive, though, letting beautiful streams of light into the main room. "Want a tour?"

"No, thank you. If we could just get straight to business, I've got a tight schedule today."

He tsked, but then chuckled and nodded. "You're right. Let's do that. Here, have a seat on the couch. I'll make you a drink. What do you drink?"

"I don't. Not when I'm working. And certainly not at…" She looked at her watch. "Eleven in the morning."

That was a lie. She and Chuck woke up and had martinis up on his roof at nine in the morning last weekend. It had gone really well with their fruit bowls, so sue them. It had eased her grumpiness at him after he'd woken her up accidentally by dropping his phone on the bedroom floor.

"Well, I'm making you a dry martini since that's what I'm having and if you don't want it, you can just waste it," he said with another chuckle, rushing around to the bar. Sarah just shrugged in response. "So have you found something on my friend, Mr. Brown?" he asked as she heard the sloshing of liquid behind her.

Sarah paused for a moment. Was he hoping she would, she wondered?

This wasn't the first time he'd made her wonder that, either. But this was the first time he'd phrased his question in that way.

"Nothing damning yet," she said, and then she turned to glance at him over her shoulder. "If that's what you're looking for."

His profile got a bit of a look to it, and then he laughed. It wasn't forced, per se. But it sounded almost put on. "Yes, absolutely," he teased, sending her a furrowed brow and faux serious frown. "I'm always looking to find dirt on business associates."

He laughed again and came over with the drinks. "This is a Cartwright special," he said. "Dirty and dry. At least try it, Miss Walker."

"Robbie, I really shouldn't drink."

"A sip!"

She gave him a put upon sigh, then chuckled and took the drink, taking a sip. It was pretty good, but all it did was make her want to go back to Chuck's condo where he and Morgan had been playing video games when she'd left, their plates from the pancakes Morgan had made them all stacked and abandoned in Chuck's sink. She wanted Chuck to mix a few martinis for them and she could curl up on the end of the couch and watch the two doofuses argue and shove each other over who was sniping who from whatever rooftop. Because apparently that was cheating…or something. Chuck had yelled at Morgan about…stream sniping? Whatever that meant. She'd left soon after.

Sarah shook herself a bit and came back to the present. She had a job to do, and things were getting more and more interesting here.

"But you haven't found anything…?"

"Nothing yet, no."

"You bring the file you've built on him so far?"

"I did, yes." She pulled her briefcase up from the floor where she'd set it and unzipped it, pulling the file she'd been building about Jerald Brown out, handing it to him. "Everything so far is in there."

"Good, good," he muttered distractedly as he flipped through it, turning the pictures to glance at them. "No affairs, even?"

"Not yet. He goes to meetings, has dinner with associates and friends, but most of those, his wife also attends."

"You're sure it's his wife and not his… 'wife'?" he asked, making air quotes with one hand.

"It's her. I checked wedding records. And her Facebook account has pictures from when they renewed their vows."

"Cracking into their social media, huh? Good work."

"It's not like she made it private. It's all just…open. Almost like they have nothing to hide at all," she added slowly, making sure she sounded nonchalant as she said it, even as she secretly eyed him.

Something in his strong jaw twitched and he bit his lip.

"Huh. Well, I want to be sure. Absolutely sure. So please, keep digging."

She had every intention of continuing to dig.

She just had to make sure he had no idea he was where she was digging.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

He felt something smack into the side of his head as he stared out over the Los Angeles skyline. Blinking, he turned and looked at his best friend who sat about a yard away in his own chair, his feet propped up on a third chair.

"What'd you just throw your trash at me for?" he asked, thrusting a hand out, palm up.

"Dude, you aren't listening to me."

He shook his head. "Sorry." Then he sighed and sat up a bit straighter, looking Morgan in the face. "I'm sorry, buddy. I've got this…thing on my mind with Sarah. And I keep going back to it."

"A thing with Sarah?" Morgan lowered his feet to the ground and sat up. "Everything okay with you two? Please tell me—"

"No, no. Not with Sarah herself. We're good. We're great. It's not about our relationship. She just has this case…and she's been giving me little snippets of it, ya know? Not a lot. But she's been really working hard on it, to the point where I've been seeing her less—that's neither here nor there—and I'm afraid she's…" He huffed.

"What? She's what? Overworking herself? Because pot calling the kettle black, best pal."

Chuck sent Morgan a look, then shook his head. "No, I'm worried that Sarah's…I dunno, on the wrong side."

Morgan's beard twitched a bit and then he pursed his lips. "On the wrong side? Like, she's working for the mafia?"

"No. What?! No! My girlfriend isn't working for the mafia. I just mean, with this particular case, I think the bad guy employed her and is making her scrounge up dirt on a good guy. I don't think she knows it." He sighed and pushed his hand through his curls. "And I feel like a patronizing asshole just saying that out loud. She's the smartest person I know. And she isn't one to be fooled easily. This guy is just…he seems like he could be her ManFatale."

Morgan's eyes widened. "Dude. Trademark that."

"Morgs, I'm serious."

"Right, right. Sorry. Why you think he's a ManFatale?"

Chuck felt a bit of a cloud settle over his head. "Well, first of all, she mentioned offhand that he looks like Alain Delon, and I Googled that name and dear God, I'd turn in my straight card for that man if it were biologically possible. I'm only a little bit kidding." He saw Morgan had already fished his phone out of his pocket and was probably also Googling.

"Holy shit. I don't even know if I can find my straight card now. This guy was spicy." Morgan put his phone back away, and realization came over him. "Oh. Ohhhh. Her client looks like this guy?"

"I mean, not exactly. He has similar features. And the eyes."

"Oh, the eyes. Wow. Uh oh."

"What do you mean uh oh?"

"No uh oh. Nothing. Just…ya know, uh oh."

Chuck glared. "My point is that this guy is good looking, charming, he was flirting at her when I walked into her office while she was discussing the payment plan with him. Obviously, she wasn't flirting back. But I dunno, if he's charming enough, what if she just does what he's paying her for and leaves it at that? You know what I mean? Not that he's charming her outright, but that she just kind of takes what he says and doesn't use her usual…gumshoe brain. You know, picking out the suspicious stuff that she usually does. What if she just…does what he says and that's it?"

Morgan shrugged. "Isn't that kind of her job as a P.I.? The dude pays her to get dirt on another guy, she gets the dirt, she goes home with a big fat paycheck. Badda-bing, badda-boom."

"No badda-bing, badda-boom. Sarah's not that kind of private investigator. She made a point of it when she first started. She doesn't want to be paid to do the wrong thing. And I'm afraid that's exactly what is happening here and she might not know it."

"Why do you think that?"

"Because she's investigating Jerald Brown. I've done my own sleuthing, just surface level, obviously, and the guy isn't just a good dude, he's involved with Gridiron Technology and it's really only survived because of his business acumen—all of it legal and above boards. He isn't even one of those loophole businessmen. He is on the up and up."

"Do you know him personally?"

"No. I don't. Never met him even. But I generally tend to get to know who isn't trustworthy in this industry. I get around. I need to know who not to do business with. I've never heard a wrong word about Brown. Not one bad thing, even gossipy whisperings. And Dad's met him and had nothing but good things to say about him when I asked." He shrugged. "Meanwhile, who the hell is this Cartwright guy? There's barely anything on him."

"And he's…what, some kind of businessman?"

"Yeah. Sarah said he seems like a playboy who just uses the businessman title. You know, one of those guys who persuade idiots to 'invest' money in something fake, he makes a big ol' profit, and swindles the shit outta the idiots. Then he gets away with it. She didn't say all that, I'm kinda just…assuming he's that type of guy."

"Ohhh, boy, a playboy, huh? Your girl is working for a guy like that, I can see why you're suspicious of him."

Chuck just glared again. "It's not like that, Morgan. I mean, I admit, it's hard not to be a little…jealous. That whole rakish good looks and charm thing is hard to compete with. But that has nothing to do with Sarah or our relationship. I don't have to worry about that with her, and she knows she doesn't have to worry about that with me. The big thing is that I just have this bad gut feeling. Something feels…off. About him, about this situation." He groaned, and pushed his hands through his hair. "I really don't like the idea of her getting caught up in something that will make her agency, her work, look bad. Not when she's only really been at it for a few months, you know? I don't want that for her. A messed up reputation for the agency."

"Well, you know she doesn't like it when you get all…SuperChuck on her."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"All protective and shit. And I get it. But she knows what she's doing. She was a Pinkerton detective, for fuck's sake. I'm sure she knows how to watch her own back."

"Of course! Of course she does."

"And I don't think blue eyes are gonna distract her from the truest and purest course." Chuck gave Morgan a flat look for that. "What?! I'm serious! Vickie Vale always does the right thing. Sarah Walker always does the right thing. She isn't gonna let some smooth-talker fool her. C'mon, man. She's your girl, you should know this without my having to tell you."

"I do know it," he snapped, giving Morgan a snotty face. "It's just that she only talks about her progress with Brown's file. She hasn't told me anything about funny feelings, or-or anything she is getting with Cartwright."

Morgan blinked. "If he's giving her funny feelings, I'm not sure you wanna know."

"You ass, I'm not talking about that kind of funny feeling. Like…when you meet someone and something just seems…I dunno, off about 'em. Like how he gave me that feeling when I met him."

"Sure that didn't have something to do with the fact that he was flirting with your girlfriend?"

"At. He was flirting at her, okay? She was not flirting back. Thank you. And yes, I am sure it didn't have to do with that. I can't describe it."

"I can. Jealousy."

"Morgan. Seriously. I'll admit, there is some jealousy there, I'm only human. But I genuinely mean it. He gives me the creeps, man. You don't know 'cause you haven't met him or seen him talk. But he sounds…weird."

"What, does he got an accent or something?"

"Well, yeah. South African. But it's not just that he has an accent. Have you ever met anyone who says words a certain way that makes you think they're, like…really trying hard to sound a certain way?"

Morgan thought for a moment. "Like when Ben Logan went to London for a week with his parents during the summer between seventh and eighth grade and he came back to school with a random British accent?"

Chuck gave him a look. Then he checked himself and hummed. "I mean, yeah kinda. I don't think his accent is fake, per se, but he just thinks really hard about every word he says, how he says it. Like he needs to control the way he presents himself. Like he has a story to sell."

"How so?"

He tried to mimic Cartwright's way of speaking. "He pronounces every word, and makes sure you hear every last sound of every last consonant. Very calculated with the way he speaks. With his charming attitude." He dropped the affectation. "It's really unsettling. It landed just fine at the time and I thought maybe I was just being jealous, but the more I thought about that meeting, the more that stuff stuck out to me. Dude, seriously, he almost talks like a psychopath."

"Ew, Norman Bates vibes?"

"Yeah! But more rakish conman than awkward mommy issues murder boy."

That made Morgan laugh a little.

Chuck shook his head and leaned in closer to his best friend. "And get this. Yesterday when she left to meet him, when you and I were gaming…You didn't hear because you were clearing out the fort on that stupid level we sucked at getting past, but I asked her how things were going with the case, and she said…" He paused dramatically. "Fine."

Morgan stared at him, as if expecting more. And when he realized that was it, he made a face. "That's it? What's so bad about that?"

"It's different from what usually happens when I ask."

"What usually happens?"

"She tells me things?" he explained with a shrug. "Like, 'oh I found out Brown is sleeping with his masseuse.' For example. But she just said, 'fine'. It's different from what I'm used to when she has a case. She'll give me little snippets or ask me what I think about something. Or she uses me as a sounding board. She hasn't this time which kind of worries me. She usually does a super thorough job vetting everything about a case, even sometimes the people who hired her. And I'm afraid she hasn't done it with this guy. Because he's so…"

"Alain Delon?"

"Maybe. I don't know. I might be totally unfair with how I'm approaching this, not giving her the credit she deserves. And maybe that makes me a bad boyfriend, but I seriously have a lot of misgivings about this guy Robbie Cartwright."

Morgan nodded slowly. "Okay, dude. Well, why don't you sit her down and talk to her about it?"

"Oh God no. She'd be so pissed off."

"Why? You're just helping her out."

"She'd be so pissed. About me putting myself in potential danger, you know, in case this guy's actually dangerous. About me butting in on her cases. She'd do what you did, assume it's 'cause I'm jealous…"

"So…don't do it?" Morgan winced. "Or at least, if you do it, lemme play, too."

"Oh. Morgs. Buddy. I need a co-sleuth. You know I do."

Morgan's eyes widened in excitement as he leapt to his feet, arms out. "Forget everything I said. Let's build this hot shady mother fucker a bad guy dossier."

Chuck jumped to his feet as well and high-fived his best friend. "Yes!"

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

They stood on opposite sides of a table, pouring over the papers and pictures they'd laid out. Two days of sleuthing work lay in front of them. On Morgan's kitchen table. Because Chuck didn't want to risk doing it at his own place, in case Sarah came over unannounced and found them like this. God, she'd be pissed.

"Okay, so tell me this. Why is this guy—Robbie Cartwright—Robert in South Africa? That'd be like if I was Charles in LA, then went and established a B.E.C. chapter over in Bangkok and went by Chuck there. Why? Also, he seemed like a total recluse in South Africa, right?" Chuck asked.

"That's what my man Mujahid told me," Morgan said with a shrug. He'd called his friend in South Africa to ask him about Robert Cartwright and Mujahid had sent him whatever he could find on him. "He's got his name on a lot of things but wouldn't ever make appearances, would just send money in his place. Seemed like a legitimate agoraphobe in a lot of ways, or maybe afraid of people? I dunno. Like he was paranoid. But he took this big boat trip with a friend I guess, then after that trip he came here to Los Angeles alone. And suddenly, he's an outgoing, grinny guy with a woman on each arm. It's…weird. It just don't make sense."

"He ain't a recluse anymore, that's for sure. Sarah told me that she'd walked in on him with a woman in his place of work and it was super awkward."

"Oh, damn!"

"Right? Also, look at this. His purchases he made are all so extravagant. You look at what he did back in South Africa, he didn't seem to like jewelry or tailored suits or…any of this crap."

"You know what it could be?" Morgan said, shaking his finger, his other hand on his hip. "Los Angeles is probably pretty different from Cape Town. Maybe he just lets his hair down when he gets to other cities. You know? No one really knows him here. He can go wild. No repercussions. His business is thousands of miles away on the other side of the world. A little hot birdie…finally let out of its cage…"

Chuck frowned. "You might be right about that. It's just…"

"No, it's bizarre. It is."

"I asked around a bit myself, just some cursory questions to make it look like I'm considering bringing in another donor for that conference. He told Jack Reynard at an event that he cared for his dying mother when he was a teenager. Reynard felt bad for him, said 'the kid's really pulled himself up by his bootstraps'. Right, but then when I asked Louise Barnard, you know, Walt's daughter—" Morgan gave him a look and he blushed a little. "Sorry, right. I'm talking to you like I talk to my parents, of course you don't know. Uh, ahem. Louise said that Cartwright was pretty flirtatious but harmless, and she mentioned how many nice things he said about his mother. When I said, 'Oh, sad the way she passed away when he was just a teenager', she paused. And I was like 'What?' And she goes, 'He told me his mom told him he should take the business to LA.' As in, she's still alive. The guy is lying about his mom's death."

"Oh, dude, creeeepyyyyy!" Morgan said, making a face. "So is his mom dead or alive?"

"Fuck if I know. Can't find much on the Cartwrights."

"What. Is. Going. On. With. This. Guy?"

"I think we need to maybe tail him a bit closer. I'm gonna skip out on the office tomorrow. Next day, you think you can let your employees run your restaurant?"

"Oh hell yeah, man. I've got the perfect disguise, too."

"Yesssss! Awesome. Okay, y—" He was interrupted by his phone. Pulling it out of his pocket, he saw Sarah had texted him. He pulled it up.

"What's my tech guy up to?" it read.

"It's Sarah. What do I do?" he asked Morgan, eyes wide. "She's asking me what I'm up to. Shit. She knows. She knows. She's too brilliant not to know. Oh my God, she's gonna break up with me if she finds out we're circumventing her investigation. It's not worth it, man!"

Morgan scratched the back of his head, a bit of panic in his face. And then he scoffed and chuckled, shaking his head. "Dude, it's Sarah. Your girlfriend. My friend. We need to chill out. She's just texting you 'cause you're her other half."

"Oh. Hah. Yeah. Wow." He shook his head, too. "She's just, you know, a super sleuth. Part of me thought she'd found out about this. But she couldn't, right? That'd be crazy."

"Right!" He gestured to the phone. "Just answer her. Uh, in a way that leaves out the truth."

Chuck nodded and texted back, "I'm hanging out with The Beard", adding the Trademark sign to the end of 'The Beard'.

"Nice. I've had enough tailing Brown today and I'm tired. Was thinking I'd head over if you're home," she replied a minute later as he and Morgan went back to trying to piece things together.

He responded: "I'm at Morgan's right now."

"That's weird," she texted back, "You never go to Morgan's apartment."

"I did today!" he typed with a smiley emoji.

"Well, I won't interrupt your Chorgan time then. But if you want to come over later, I'll just be around." Chuck stared at her text for a bit, smirking to himself. He saw she was typing something else, and then a winky face popped up. Oh.

"What? What'd she say?" Morgan asked.

The taller man jumped at the sound of his voice and gave his friend a look. "I'm not telling you."

"Ooooh ho ho hooo one of those texts, huh? Did your girl just booty-text you?"

Another winky face popped up then. And then another. Along with her texting, "Are you getting what I'm throwing down here?"

God, she was so dorky and so hot all at the same time and he was so in love.

"Shut up. She's not booty-texting me. I don't even know what that means." Meanwhile, he typed back, "We prefer Muck, actually. And we're pretty much done hanging out. Why don't I meet you at yours?"

"Hey, help me gather this stuff up," he said to his friend then, grabbing the papers and starting to put them together in a more orderly fashion.

"Oh, it's totally the text I thought it was, for the record. Go get some, dude." Morgan put his hand up for a high five.

"I'm not fiving that, you creeper."

"Maaaannn!"

He thanked The Beard, told him he'd keep him updated about tomorrow, stuffed their file on Robbie Cartwright inside of his jacket, and rushed down to his car. He hurried home to stash the file in a safe spot in his condo before he went straight to Sarah's.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

"Chuck, my nose is coming off!"

The tech guy rolled his eyes and brought his watch up to his mouth. "I told you to put more glue on it."

"No! Dude, I've seen people not be able to get things like this off because they use too much glue to put 'em on! I don't want this weird nose forever! How will I ever smell agai—"

Chuck pressed the mute button on his earpiece and sighed, keeping his eyes on the Alain Delon wannabe as he walked into the downtown high rise where he lived. "Morgan, keep watch on the back door," he said quietly into his watch.

Odd, Morgan wasn't responding to him, not even with a Ten-Four or a Blue-Forty-Two, both things he'd already said in the last two hours they'd spent tailing Robbie Cartwright.

"Morgan. You hear me?" And then he remembered he'd muted him. "Oh." He un-muted him immediately.

"—wrong with the comms, Leader One? Can you hear me? I repeat…Can…you…hear me?"

"Yeah, I got it."

"Oh. What happened to the comms?"

I muted you for being annoying, that's what happened to the comms.

"Um. Nothing. Probably a glitch."

"Bruh, we paid a shit ton of money for these. They better not glitch."

Chuck rolled his eyes again. "We?"

"Fine. You did."

"Are you going to the back or what?"

"I'm already at the back! Jesus! You get a whiff of commandership and you're suddenly a big ol' jerk."

"You're the jerk!" But then something caught his eye. "Wait. Hold that thought. Wait, wait. How tall did we say Codename: Namor the Sub-Mariner is?"

"Six feet exactly."

"Shoulder width?"

"Huh? Dude, I dunno the width of his fuckin' shoulders!"

"I told you to…ugh… forget it. It doesn't matter. Someone just walked out who looks a hell of a lot like Namor the Sub-Mariner but with a full beard and a different suit that fits him, er…differently." The suit was tailored differently, not as tight fitting, and he was wearing sunglasses, but he could swear it was him.

"Differently?"

"Doesn't matter. The point is, Namor the Sub-Mariner just came out of his place in a disguise. I'm following him." He snapped a few photos of the man as he waited at the crosswalk, sticking a toothpick between his teeth because it made him look cool, probably, Chuck assumed. Instead he just looked like a jack-ass.

Then he pulled his phone out, a phone that didn't look anything like the Galaxy he and Morgan took record of when they first began to build their dossier on Robbie Cartwright. "He's got a new phone, I see."

Morgan gasped. "A burn phone?"

"Yep! Sure looks like it to me!"

"This is so cool!"

"I know, right?" he said giddily, snapping a few more pictures, some zoomed in, others zoomed out, before he lowered the camera again and hid it in his coat, leaning against the wall and turning his face to the side as Cartwright walked right past him. Letting him get far enough away, he pushed off from the wall and followed, sliding a hand over his slicked-back hair and sliding his sunglasses on.

"You got eyes on him? I tried to run around the building to see if I could get after 'im but I don't see 'im," Morgan said.

"I'm on him," Chuck said, pulling up his hand to scratch his ear so that it wasn't as obvious he was talking into his watch.

"Good—Gah! This fuckin' nose! I'm taking it off. I can't stand it."

Chuck just shook his head and kept following his mark. He followed him for a few blocks, Morgan rattling off things in his ear, and he wondered if Morgan was just holding the watch up to his mouth the whole time or if he'd accidentally set it so that Chuck heard it even when it was at his hip.

He willed himself to ignore it and instead followed Codename: Namor the Sub-Mariner aka Robbie Cartwright into the park, down the paths, back out of the park, and into a shopping mall. He watched Cartwright walk into a high-end store and decided to take a seat on the bench outside of it to wait.

Chuck shirked his coat, replaced his sunglasses with a pair of reading glasses, and grabbed the rolled up LA Times someone had left on the planter wall nearby. He didn't move his eyes from the store, pretending to read the paper as he held it up conspicuously, in spite of assuming he was being incredibly inconspicuous.

"Chuck. Man, where the hell are you?" Morgan asked.

"At the mall," he murmured into his watch.

"What?! I know you get your Cinnabon urges, Chuck, but you had to do it right now in the middle of a mission?"

"I'm not eating a Cinnabon!" he hissed. "Namor the Sub-Mariner is buying clothes or something. I dunno what the hell he's—oh shit, he's out. Hold on."

The tech guy watched as the suspicious, disguise-wearing businessman slash playboy strolled out of the shop with a briefcase he must have just bought in hand. He made a beeline for Chuck, scaring him out of his skin practically, but then he set his new briefcase down on the other end of the bench, snapped the tag off of it, letting the tag fall onto the ground under the bench without seeming to care even a bit. Then he went into the inner pocket of his suit jacket, tugged some papers that had been folded in half out, and flattened them as best he could, before slipping them inside of the pristine leather briefcase.

He was caught glancing at the scene out of the corner of his eye apparently, because Cartwright cleared his throat and zipped the case back up again. "Gotta look impressive for the job interview, huh, fella?" he asked.

"Mhm!" Chuck squeaked, looking back at his paper and staring at the words hard.

First thing he realized as the man rushed off again was that there had been no South African accent. He was American. Not South African. Because if he was the South African Robert Cartwright, what reason would he have for affecting an American accent with a random man on a bench? There'd be no point.

This person, whether he was really Robbie Cartwright or not, was not South African. Chuck knew that much now.

He got up and started to follow him, but then he stopped, growled, and went back to pick up Cartwright's trash. "Fucking litterer," he grumbled as he tossed it in the trash he swept past and continued following the good-looking, newly bearded bastard.

"Chuck…Chuck…Chuck, you there? What's going on, Chuck? Why aren't you keeping me posted, Chuck? Chuck, I feel left out! Dude!"

Chuck ignored Morgan as he followed non-South African Cartwright back out of the mall, and cursed as he saw the man hail a taxi. "Shit!"

He scrambled to the sidewalk and leapt into the back of a taxi that wasn't currently on duty.

"I'm not on duty," the woman snarked over her shoulder, finishing a gyro.

"If you change your mind, I'll give you a thousand bucks to follow that blue cab that's pulling away from the curb right there."

"You fuckin' with me?" the woman asked, eyes wide.

"No. I have a girlfriend."

"Oh, shit! I'll finish this gyro later!" She tossed the styrofoam box into the passenger seat, licked her fingers, and turned on her car, bursting out into the traffic, ignoring the blaring horns behind her, and following the cab. "I've been waitin' my whole career to do this shit! You a cop?"

"Um."

"Nevermind. You give me a grand and I don't give a fuck what you are, friend. You could be a space alien. I don't care."

She sped up and slid her taxi in behind the one carrying Cartwright and he felt the adrenaline of this whole thing starting to get to him. He pulled his watch up to his mouth and finally spoke into it.

"Morgan, I'm on Namor the Sub-Mariner's tail right now—"

"Namor the Sub-Mariner? What the hell's that?" the taxi driver asked.

"He's a comic book character. Depending on who you ask, he's either good or bad. Like an anti-hero—" He shook his head as he realized that was all beside the point, and brought his watch up again. "He just bought a briefcase at Gucci—"

"Gucci? That shit's expensive!" the taxi driver exclaimed.

"Right? So unnecessary," he said back.

"Seriously, you know that fool is up to no good, buying a Gucci briefcase."

"That's what I am saying." He cleared his throat and went back to the watch just as he saw the blue taxi pulling up next to a nondescript business building. "Morgan, he's stopping. Hold on."

Chuck unbuckled his seatbelt and scooted up to get closer to the driver, taking his second watch off and thrusting it at her. "See this? It's a Rolex. Brand new. Worth quite a bit of money, as I'm sure you know."

"Yessir."

He looked at her driver's ID. "Rhonda. If you wait here for me until I come back, after I see what the hell this asshat is up to, I will give you two grand instead of one. And I'll leave this Rolex with you so you know I mean what I say. As collateral. Deal?"

"Damn. You got a deal. But only if you tell me what that Gucci gutter jerk is up to when you get back."

"Deal! Enjoy your gyro!"

She took the watch and he staggered out of the taxi, putting his coat back on and following Cartwright around the side of the building to where there was an outdoor café and seating area alongside a small, urban garden.

Cartwright met a much shorter, slightly older man at one of the tables but Chuck was too far away to hear what they were going to say to one another, so he looked around almost desperately. He hadn't obtained any listening devices, damn it. He silently cursed himself. And so… he would have to improvise.

When he saw the man standing in the corner of the garden with pruning shears, an idea struck.

Not five minutes later, he was wearing a jacket that said MAINTENANCE on the back of it and he was casually pruning the hedges near the table where Cartwright and his acquaintance had settled.

"It's a deal, Mr. Newman. Or can I call you Mark?"

"Fifty cents on the dollar is a deal, Mr. Lawson—"

"Paul," Cartwright said cheerfully.

"Er, yes…Paul. The only problem is that the boat Mr. Cartwright wants to sell me is all the way in South Africa. And he's requiring me to meet him there to get it myself."

Chuck's eyes widened and he turned a bit so that his back was more to them so that they couldn't see his face in case they looked. What in the hell was going on here, he wondered? Mr. Cartwright was going by the name Paul Lawson…He was Cartwright, though, wasn't he? That was what he was telling Sarah Walker, the private investigator he hired to look into someone else.

All this time, he was the one she should've been looking into.

Holy hell…

"Well, of course, Mark," the poser said. "Robert Cartwright doesn't sell his precious Lola 2 for fifty cents on the dollar if he also has to hire someone to sail it all the way to Long Beach for ya." There was a long pause. "Nobody is going to blame you if you want to pull out, Mark. Honestly. There are plenty of guys on this list but I wanted to get to you first, 'cause I like you. I trust you. The guy, uh…he's hard to get access to." He chuckled.

"So I've heard."

Chuck kept the shears moving, pruning the hedges rather poorly, probably, and he thought maybe he shouldn't totally ruin these things since that poor old guy who was actually supposed to do this would get blamed for it. Granted, Chuck's wallet was two hundred bucks lighter now…

"Listen, er…Paul. I can't pass this up. My Trudy wants a sailing trip this summer and I told her we would…May I ask, would Mr. Cartwright permit me to rename the boat?"

"You buy her, you can call her whatever you please, Mark!"

"Good. You can tell Mr. Cartwright it's a deal. Money up front?"

"Yessir. And I've got this contract here, written up, signed by the boss himself just so you know this is on the up and up."

Chuck casually strolled away from the meeting, approaching the old gardener around the corner and giving him back his jacket and shears. And then he rushed the long ways around the building, took out his camera, and took a few pictures of "Paul Lawson" and Mark Newman for good measure.

And as he went back to the taxi, still waiting for him because Rhonda was the absolute best, Chuck Bartowski decided he and Morgan weren't done yet. They weren't even close to done yet.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

She was already yawning when she let herself into Chuck's condo, swinging the door open and frowning a bit at how dark it was. He wasn't home, the jerk.

The downside of falling in love with a workaholic.

Sarah imagined he was in his office still, going over some program with one of his employees talking in his ear, going over fixes, edits…

But it was after ten at night and she was too tired to go back to her own home now, so she supposed this condo that had been her home for a few months when she first moved to California would do. She'd be here, sleeping most likely, when he got home. And hopefully it'd be a pleasant surprise for him to find her in his bed.

She flicked on the living room light, flooding that corner of the lower level of his condo, then she went into the kitchen and flicked on the light there, getting a glass of water for herself and guzzling it down. She went into his fridge and saw a bowl of sliced watermelon. Greedily, she grabbed it, pulled off the saran wrap, and casually popped a piece into her mouth, munching.

Sarah missed her tech guy.

He'd been really busy the last few days, apparently, not even able to meet for lunch because of meetings with "people, important people". And she'd been out nights meeting contacts, working on this case, and observing Robbie Cartwright's nighttime activities.

Sometimes it included women. She'd watch him from the shadows across the street as he brought a woman up into his high rise building, and she'd leave after that, knowing she had no reason to continue observing that situation. But other times, he'd climbed behind the wheel of his car with tinted windows and drive off. She'd followed it once, not wanting to chance he recognized her or her car, especially if he was as observant as she thought he most likely was. He'd surely know if the same car followed him late at night more times than just the one.

He'd gone into a warehouse near the docks that night, and the light in the second floor office had flicked on before the blinds were slowly shut.

Tonight, she'd broken into that office. It was just a simple lock on the door, easy for her to pick, and when she got inside, she'd used a flashlight to dig around in the desk. There were contracts that he'd signed, deposit slips, bank statements… Rather than steal them to be able to look at them more thoroughly, she took as many pictures as she could. Because Cartwright was selling things like pieces of property in Morocco, tourist hotels in Sudan, one of his yachts, a boat named Lola 2, antique museum-worthy pieces of furniture that were in his South Africa home, art work… And she wondered why. Why was this sketchy playboy selling all of his own things suddenly?

Was he going through some sort of midlife crisis in his mid-thirties?

Perhaps that around-the-world boating trip Cartwright took had completely changed his view of the world, Chuck had surmised when she'd talked to him over the phone the other day. She still hadn't told him she was investigating the man who hired her more than the man he'd hired her to investigate. But she did hint this whole change in Cartwright felt strange and sudden.

Chuck was wrong, though. Something rotten was going on with Robbie Cartwright, and the more she gathered on his actions, the more she thought the rotten thing was Robbie Cartwright himself.

In fact, she had every reason to believe Robert Cartwright was a conman. The South African lying businessman and playboy, fooling everyone back home and moving to Los Angeles to fool people in a different town.

And maybe, just maybe, the gig was up. Maybe someone was after him.

There were many reasons why he might start selling things. Perhaps he planned to flee afterwards and he'd make up another persona in some other part of the world.

He was a con artist, though. And she wasn't about to let herself be conned. The money he'd been shoveling at her had been real. She'd checked before depositing it. But why was he looking to bust Jerald Brown? Why had he hired her specifically for this job?

Did Brown have something on him? Maybe he knew the truth. Maybe Jerald Brown had found out that Robert Cartwright was a con artist. Or perhaps he was simply suspicious. If Sarah found something on Brown, Cartwright could turn the tables on his "potential business partner" and destroy his reputation and credibility before the man could accuse him of pulling a massive, cross-continent con.

Yawning again, she thought about how successful she'd been today during her meeting with "Robbie" of seeming like she was fully in his pocket, doing everything he asked her to do, not suspicious of him at all. And she'd even started to built a legitimate dossier on Jerald Brown, even finding a few discrepancies in his finances that could lead to something big. She still played like she was simply protecting Cartwright's investment, not purposely digging up dirt. She was pretending to play right into Cartwright's hands, and all the while he was playing into hers.

Hopefully.

Once she got enough incriminating evidence on Cartwright, she could take it all to Casey. But first and foremost, she had to reel the con artist in, once and for all. She had to make him bite the bait, latch onto it, make him think she was actually doing the job she was asked, and succeeding at it, too. He wouldn't wait for her forever.

This was a dangerous man. A practiced con artist.

And she had to step lightly.

Sarah went up to Chuck's bedroom after turning off all of the lights on the lower floor and pushed into his bedroom, turning on the light, kicking her heels off into the corner like she always did when she spent the night, and going over to his dresser.

She pulled out some clean boxers, the green and blue plaid she liked so much that fit him a little snug and her a lot, well, not-snug, and then she changed into them, having to roll the waistband a few times as always. She then grabbed one of his T-shirts out of another drawer and tugged that on over her bare torso, shivering a bit at how cool he kept his condo. Or maybe it wasn't something he could control. Maybe this was just such a wide-open condo that it was naturally chilly.

Either way, she headed straight for his bed, her phone in hand. She climbed into the bed on the side where she always slept and she leaned over to turn the lamp next to the bed on, giggling quietly at the Batwoman graphic novel sitting on the nightstand. He'd been trying to get her to at least try to read it for weeks, but she'd resisted. Maybe she'd finally give it a look this time.

And he'd tease her for doing it now on purpose, when he wasn't here to gush or provide commentary.

But then she thought she'd much rather he be here with her than read a comic book. Even if the character did look cool. She was tired, a little nervous about this Cartwright situation if she was being honest, and she wanted that safe, contented feeling of having a particular rich tech heir wrapped up in her arms.

So she picked up her phone from where it laid beside her on the bed and she sent him a text: "Hey, workaholic, guess where I am right now…"

He responded almost immediately. "In the North American tundra?"

Sarah giggled and shook her head. "Good guess. Somewhere much cozier, though."

"Hey, wait. You callin me a workaholic but how you know I'm at work? For all you know I'm at home snuggled up in bed!"

She smirked and bit her lip. "You couldn't possibly be at home snuggled up in bed, otherwise you'd be right next to me. And you're definitely not." She snapped a quick picture of his empty side of the bed and sent it.

He sent a shocked emoji, and then she watched as the dots appeared while he typed. They disappeared, appeared again…as he changed his mind about what he was going to respond with, no doubt. It was stupidly cute.

"Don't move. Don't go anywhere. I'm on my way out of the office now. Your cuddle monster is ON HIS WAY."

Sarah laughed and decided to press the matter a bit by sending him a selfie with her all tucked away in bed. His response made her laugh harder. In all caps, "I'M COMIN, WOMAN. GEEZ."

Suddenly missing him even more, despite the fact that he was literally on his way to her at that very moment, Sarah scooted over on the bed, onto his side, and grabbed his pillow, rolling over and taking comfort from his scent…

Wait…

Her eyes blinked open and she frowned, her brow furrowed.

Something was…

She moved around a bit, uncomfortable no matter how she shifted. It was…lumpy or something.

Pushing herself up on her elbow and glaring down at the offending mattress, she realized it looked almost lifted at the edge, like it was higher than the rest of the mattress. That wasn't normal. She put her hand on the raised bit and pushed on it. It was hard…

Was there something stuck under his bed? Was his bed broken, perhaps?

It wouldn't be the first time they'd literally broken a bed with how they tended to lose themselves a bit in the throes of passion, and she smirked as she remembered Paris, almost two years earlier. God, that had been so damn good.

And it had only gotten better since then.

But then she shook her head, getting herself out of the clouds, and she climbed out of the bed, rising to her full height as she peered down at the thing. She let out a thoughtful, "Hm", and then grabbed the mattress, lifting it up.

Sarah thrust her hand underneath and felt the culprit. It was…She pulled it out and gaped at it. A file. A thick file, too. And it had TOP SECRET stamped poorly on the cover flap. "What the hell is this, Bartowski?" she asked quietly, mirth in her voice.

Why was he keeping a file under his mattress and what was it for? She knew she shouldn't. She really shouldn't do it. Only a bad girlfriend looked through her boyfriend's things, especially something he'd gone out of his way to label TOP SECRET. Then again, he had a peculiar sense of humor that made her think he'd stamp that on something with freaking video game codes because he thought it'd be funny.

And anyway, she'd been a Pinkerton detective, and now she was a private investigator. Nobody would really fault her if she just took a peek.

So she swung it open and looked at the top page.

It was a candid photograph of Robbie Cartwright coming out of his office building.

And Chuck was in so much trouble.

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