Caught Unaware

Chapter 2

CIA OPERATING FACILITY BELOW ORANGE ORANGE FROZEN YOGURT SHOP, BURBANK, CA

CODE NAME: CASTLE

Amelia sat at a table surrounded by Casey, Bartowski and Walker. The room was cold, metallic and purely functional. No warmth or any hint of it being home to anyone was evident in the entire area in the underground bunker that she had been brought. The meeting room, the one she was currently seated in, had only a steel table, a few chairs and a large screen on the wall, blank for the moment.

Casey sat beside her, seemingly her shadow since he opened the door to her closet and laid eyes upon her. On her other side, Bartowski sat, holding hands with the blonde Walker woman and making romantic gestures with her. She had noticed them being very affectionate on the plane back to the US but wasn't sure if it was a cover for their operations or if it was a genuine relationship between them. They certainly made it look real, in any case.

The screen in front of them flickered on and Amelia found herself staring into the face of a decorated war hero, a woman with graying red hair and a stern demeanor. She looked over each of them, waiting for the group to give her the attention she deserved before she began speaking. Casey glanced around Amelia and cleared his throat, getting the attention of the two agents engaged in deep, and flirting, conversation.

"Great job, team," began the woman on the screen. "I know this wasn't an easy task and you handled it beautifully. While I would have preferred Tiberius and Ramona Cershaw to be sitting here with us, it is good to know at least there was one survivor of the attack."

"General," Walker addressed the screen. "While we were down in Costa Rico, we heard rumors. Is it true that the Venezuelans are still on the lookout for Ms. Cershaw even though we took measures in making it look like they succeeded in their attempt?"

"What do you mean by that?" asked Amelia. Walker looked at her and opened her mouth to answer but it was the quiet tone of Casey that spoke first.

"In order to salvage a botched operation, we removed all bodies but those of your parents and one...smaller assassin from the scene. We burned the house to the ground, removing all possible identification from everyone to throw off the scent and make it, as Walker stated, appear as though they had succeeded in killing you all." Amelia stood quickly, knocking her chair over. Her face was a mask of horror and anger as she stared into eyes of the man who had told her the cold, hard truth.

"You torched my house?? You burned everything I owned, everything I could have had left from my parents... You left me with nothing! How could you?!" she shouted before turning, opening the glass door and running into one of the bunker cells that held a mattress they had assigned just for her.

Casey looked after her, expressionless. Bartowski, Walker and the General all looked at each other and then at Casey, who had continued to pay no mind. Finally he looked back to the screen, settling into his chair and shaking his head.

"Women."

The woman on the screen gave him a hard look before continuing.

"It's true, Walker. While the extraction team did a wonder making it look like a successful operation, my sources in Venezuela say there were plans in the making for searching the world for the missing heiress. Her very blood is what they're looking for, the DNA patterns in her will trigger the bombs Cershaw and his wife were forced to build for them before their escape.

"He was smart, building them to be DNA activated but he didn't cover his tracks enough. Now, not only are he and his wife gone, but the terrorist group has gone deep underground. We must find them, bring them to the surface and take them down before they find a way to get around the DNA activation, or they find who they're looking for."