Chapter 31: Kung Fu
Chuck's voice came through the phone in the compressed register of someone speaking at minimum viable volume.
"The guys from last night are here. But you already know that, I can tell by your voice."
"Where are you?" Simon said, moving through the Buy More entrance at a normal pace, eyes already running a soft sweep of the floor.
"Behind the Nerd Herd desk. I can see them from here. They haven't spotted me yet."
"Stay there." Simon had already located Casey — near the laptop wall, browsing nothing, watching everything. "I'll circle back."
He ended the call and moved toward Casey, stopping beside a display of wireless routers and keeping his eyes on a router box.
"Left one is from last night," Simon said quietly. "He went over the balcony before Casey got to the room. He's not here to shop."
"I know," Casey said. Same register. "I have both of them."
Simon looked at the two men — both large, both carrying themselves with the particular economy of people trained to cause problems and not advertise it. The one on the left had a slight favor on his right side, consistent with a twelve-foot drop onto a hard surface. Still functional, though.
"I'll take the left one," Simon said.
Casey gave him a sideways look. "You sure about that."
"I've been sure about things before."
"That's not actually reassuring."
"Man," Simon said, "has never not handled his side of things."
Casey made the sound he made when he'd received information he didn't fully accept but had no immediate counter to.
The store intercom clicked on.
"Chuck Bartowski to the stockroom, please. Chuck Bartowski, stockroom."
Simon and Casey both recognized Morgan's voice, which answered the question of who had been watching the floor situation.
The two men turned at the announcement. The left one looked toward the nearest employee.
"Excuse me," he said. His accent was mid-European, vague. "The stockroom. Where is it?"
Simon put on his best floor associate expression. "Right this way, sir."
He glanced at Casey. "Casey — I need a hand moving that shipment that came in this morning. You got a sec?"
Casey: "Sure."
Four people walking toward the stockroom. Nobody in the store thought twice about it.
The stockroom was the Buy More's unglamorous interior — shelving units twelve feet high, pallets of boxed product, the particular fluorescent lighting that made everything look institutional. No cameras. One entrance.
Simon held the door, let the two men through, then closed it behind himself.
He turned the deadbolt.
The sound was quiet. Both men heard it.
The one on the left reached into his jacket.
The one on the right reached into his jacket.
Simon was already moving.
He crossed the distance in three steps — fast enough that the left man's hand hadn't cleared his waistband. Simon got both hands on the man's gun hand, applied the specific leverage that stripped a weapon from a two-handed grip without requiring strength, and the gun was in Simon's hand before the man had processed what had happened.
Simultaneously, his right leg came up in a flat kick — not high, not dramatic, aimed at the right man's forearm. The impact sent the second weapon skittering across the stockroom floor.
Simon tossed the first gun backward over his shoulder without looking.
Casey caught it, which Simon had been fairly confident he would.
Then Simon moved into the left man.
He jumped, wrapped his arm around the man's neck from the side, and used momentum and leverage to bring his knee up into the man's temple in the same motion. It wasn't elegant — it was fast and it used the man's own mass against him, which was the point. The man went down like a structure whose load-bearing element had just been removed.
The right man threw a punch.
It was a good punch — practiced, committed, on target. Simon stepped back two inches. The fist passed close enough that he felt the air movement.
He caught the wrist on the return, pivoted, wrapped both legs around the man's neck from behind, and let gravity do most of the work. They went to the floor together — Simon on his back, the man face-up with Simon's locked ankles pressing on his carotid on both sides.
The man's hands came up, scrabbling.
Then they went to the floor in the universal gesture.
"Okay," Casey said, from somewhere above and to Simon's right. "That's sufficient."
Simon released the lock and stood.
The man rolled onto his side and spent several seconds reacquainting himself with oxygen. His partner was still on the stockroom floor, technically present but not contributing.
Casey had the recovered weapon pointed at the standing man with the practiced steadiness of someone who didn't need to think about the mechanics.
"Well," Casey said. He was looking at Simon with an expression Simon hadn't seen on him before — not quite impressed, because Casey didn't do impressed, but something adjacent. A recalibration. "Hm."
"Hm?" Simon said.
"That's all." Casey produced zip ties from somewhere. "Help me with these."
They worked with efficient silence — Casey securing wrists, Simon keeping eyes on both men, the particular practiced rhythm of two people who were, Simon realized, actually quite good at this in complementary ways.
When both men were secured, Casey straightened up and looked at Simon.
"Where'd you learn that."
"Martial arts school in Burbank. Three years." Simon leaned against a shelving unit. "Before that, some basics from a youth program. After that, I filled in gaps on my own — Muay Thai, judo, a few other things."
Casey absorbed this. All of it was verifiable. Simon had made sure of that, the same way he'd made sure his carry license was filed properly and his racing record was expunged under the juvenile provision that applied to under-eighteen offenses. If Casey's people ran him, they'd find a consistent story.
"How long has this been building?" Casey said.
"Since I was fourteen, give or take."
Casey picked up the recovered weapons and checked them without comment. He made a call — two words, a location, and a unit designation Simon didn't recognize — and hung up.
"Cargo pickup," he said, to no one specifically.
He found a flat cart and a large appliance box from the stockroom shelving and wheeled it toward the two secured men.
He looked at Simon. "Don't just stand there."
"I was going to offer my assistance," Simon said. "You just did it faster."
They loaded both men into the box with the practiced efficiency of people moving something awkward and heavy. Casey's people arrived at the loading dock six minutes later — a panel van, two agents dressed as delivery drivers, the whole handoff completed in under three minutes.
Simon watched the van pull away.
Casey came to stand beside him at the loading dock door.
"You want something," Casey said. Not a question.
Simon looked at him. "What makes you say that."
"Because people who want nothing don't keep showing up. They don't learn martial arts for four years and carry licensed concealed weapons and have commercial helicopter ratings and then spend their Saturday afternoons working retail." Casey's eyes were flat and watchful. "You're positioning yourself. I want to know for what."
Simon took a moment. He'd been planning this conversation in some form since the night on the hotel roof — knowing it was coming, knowing the shape of it.
"I want work," he said. "Contract basis. Non-disclosure, no classified briefings, no need-to-know information. You tell me what needs doing, I do it, you pay me. Freelance." He kept his voice even. "I'm not asking to be read in on anything. I'm asking for assignments."
Casey studied him.
"What I'm not," Simon added, "is a liability. You've seen me operate twice now. Once in a situation I stepped into without preparation, and once tonight when you had about thirty seconds of advance warning. Both times, the situation resolved." He spread his hands. "I'm useful. I'm discreet. And I need money."
"For college," Casey said.
Simon nodded. "Among other things."
Casey was quiet for a long moment. The loading dock hummed with the ambient noise of the building's ventilation system.
"I'll raise it with my superiors," Casey said finally.
"That's all I'm asking."
"Don't mistake that for a yes."
"I'm not."
Another silence.
"The scissor choke," Casey said. "Sloppy entry. You dropped your left shoulder before you committed."
"I know," Simon said. "I'm working on it."
Casey made the sound again — the non-committal hm that was as close as he got to acknowledgment.
He turned and walked back into the store.
Simon followed him, picked up his name badge from where he'd left it on a shelf, and went back to work.
The afternoon ran normally after that.
Chuck emerged from his various hiding positions approximately forty minutes after the stockroom situation resolved, was informed by Casey that the immediate threat was neutralized, and spent the next hour looking at Simon with the specific expression of someone who had something to say and was deciding how to say it.
By the time Simon was clocking out, Chuck had apparently decided.
"You're going to end up running this operation," Chuck said, at the Nerd Herd desk, in a voice just above a murmur.
"I work here part-time," Simon said. "I'm in high school."
"That's what I said," Chuck said, "before all of this started."
Simon looked at him.
"You're not wrong about Casey," Chuck said. "He respects capability. If you can keep doing what you did today—"
"I don't need Casey to respect me," Simon said. "I need a specific problem solved. He's a tool for solving it."
Chuck absorbed this. "What problem?"
Simon considered how much to say.
"There's a situation," he said carefully, "that I need a particular kind of leverage to get out of. Having a relationship with a federal intelligence operation — even an unofficial, peripheral one — is that leverage."
Chuck looked at him for a moment.
"Is this dangerous?" he said.
"Everything in my life is currently at least mildly dangerous," Simon said. "This is managed dangerous rather than unmanaged dangerous. That's an improvement."
Chuck nodded slowly. "Okay." He paused. "Simon."
"Yeah."
"If you need help — like, actual help, not just combat-adjacent assistance — you can ask me. I know I'm not—" He gestured at himself. "I know I'm not exactly the obvious choice for backup. But I know people now. I have resources I didn't have six months ago."
Simon looked at him — Chuck Bartowski, Nerd Herd technician, involuntary intelligence asset, genuinely decent person navigating a situation nobody had prepared him for.
"I know," Simon said. "Thanks, Chuck."
"Don't mention it." Chuck straightened his clip-on tie. "Buy More family looks out for each other."
Simon picked up his bag.
"Don't tell Morgan I said that," Chuck added. "He'll want to make it a slogan."
Simon walked out into the parking lot, got in the car, and sat for a moment.
The Doc problem was still running. The Intersect was still loading. The world was still operating on a frequency that kept producing situations requiring physical intervention.
But the pieces were moving.
He started the car and drove home.
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