A Cold Angel Eye - The Collector's Edition by Jorden
<Jordan9215@aol.com>


Rating: NC-17 
Classification: Story 
Keywords: Skinner/Scully.

Summary: After Scully has sex with Skinner in a moment of extreme
mental duress, she and Mulder head for Texas to investigate an
X-File involving a Senator's missing daughter, a white slave
ring, a migrating pawnshop, a graveyard visitation, and the
origin of the Great Monkey-Weasel debate.



Chapter One

Skinner put his hands on his desk, fingers spread flat, and
sighed, looking across at his recalcitrant charges. They sat in
their usual places, Mulder to the left, Scully to the right,
looking down at their hands like guilty children. With Mulder it
was because he automatically reacted with shame and defensiveness
when he felt a father figure was putting him on the spot. No
amount of maturity seemed to be able to undo that early
conditioning. Besides which, he was still a bit dazed from his
last scrape, and had only been out of the hospital since that
morning.

Scully had her own reasons for not looking into his eyes very
often, but when she did, her chin came up, and her gaze was
direct and fearless, and Skinner was always the one to look away
first.

"I've called you in here to tell you there've been some problems
with your story in Winslow, Agent Mulder. I know it isn't your
fault. Actually, the responsibility is mine. I sent the two of
you up there off the record, when I should have filed the proper
paperwork. Now the three of us are going to have to fly up this
afternoon and straighten things out." He adjusted his glasses and
looked at Scully. "Agent Scully, your report was excellent, and
normally your deposition would be acceptable, but I'd like you to
come along to support Mulder's testimony, and to double check the
medical work done at the Winslow hospital before they release the
bodies for burial."

Mulder nodded, his eyes, as usual, distracted with whatever
Mulder-thoughts he was having at the moment. He glanced at
Scully, who gave him a stricken look, and his lips curved briefly
into a sympathetic smile. Skinner tensed; what was that about?
Probably some of their almost telepathic shorthand, that ability
to communicate that made them so excellent together in the field.
But for once, Skinner was more paranoid than either of them, and
his skin prickled with a combination of guilt and dread.

After he dismissed them, he got up and walked around his office
nervously. Three hours on a plane with those two was not
something he anticipated with pleasure. A movement outside the
window caught his attention, and he looked down to see the agents
crossing the parking lot, Mulder's careless grace perfectly
juxtaposed against Scully's quick determined stride. The sun
caught Scully's hair like burnished copper, and as they paused at
the curb Mulder reached out and put his hand on the small of her
back, his fingertips just where she was probably carrying her gun
under her trenchcoat. Not for the first time, Skinner allowed
himself the surge of pride and affection a father feels for two
particularly beautiful and gifted children.

For once his eyes lingered on Mulder instead of Scully. Mulder,
who had been missing for two days, presumed dead. It was not
really his fault that Mulder had almost been killed, had nothing
to do with his not filing the right paperwork or Mulder's
carelessness or Scully's skepticism. It had been just plain bad
luck, a thing that sometimes happened like lightning striking a
heavy branch totally at random, causing it to break and fall and
kill the campers sheltering beneath it.

He had been missing two agents, Barlow and Smith, in the field
since Tuesday. Had not received their regular calls; two reliable
agents, not mavericks or self-willed. If they hadn't called in,
something was very wrong. They had last been headed for a small
town in upstate New York called Winslow. Mulder and Scully had
been driving back from a case in Buffalo, and he asked them to
stop in Winslow and check it out.

The two missing agents had been on the trail of Antoine Baxter, a
particularly nasty character who fancied himself a mercenary and
advertised as such in "Soldier of Fortune" magazine, wanted for a
kidnapping in which the victim had been found murdered, and on
several charges of arson and assault. Mulder and Scully had
checked into a motel in Winslow and learned that Barlow and Smith
had stayed in the same motel. They then proceeded with a routine
investigation, going door to door in the surrounding area. Never
suspecting that in one of the houses the real owners lay dead in
the dining room over their morning coffee while Baxter, after
calmly wiping the blood from his hands on a dishrag, slouched in
the doorway and answered their questions with sleepy
indifference.

And then had slipped out the back door while Scully and Mulder
moved on to the next house, and had driven to their motel, and
had wired a crude bomb to the door of their room.

Exactly what happened next was a bit confusing. These were
questions that would have to be answered to everyone's
satisfaction before the case could be officially closed.
Apparently, Scully and Mulder had had some sort of argument in
the car outside the motel. It was probably one of those few
thousand disagreements they had had over the years, a tension
releaser, and Mulder, as he often did, got out and walked away in
the middle of it. A few seconds later, there was the sound of a
huge explosion, and Scully had run to the building to find the
flaming ruins of their room, and a dead body fragmented just
inside the doorway.

In the plane terminal now, Skinner reached automatically for
Scully's extra bag, the one containing her laptop, probably, but
she shook her head and picked it up, shouldering it beside her
carry-on. Her face was composed, but tense. He thought he knew
why, and backed off. Her way was to shut herself off from
feeling; he knew exactly how that worked, since he had done it so
many times himself in the past. Thinking back to that terrible
afternoon, he remembered the series of phone calls he had
received from her:

Call one: Mulder was dead, had been killed in an explosion.

Call two: It wasn't Mulder's body after all, but the body of a
maid who had been going into the room to clean.

Call three: Another body had been found in the room, this one
burned beyond recognition, but carrying an FBI issued weapon in
his holster, and charred remains of an official ID.

Mulder.

Skinner had flown up quickly and found a frozen, tearless Scully,
convinced that Mulder had been killed because of whatever it was
she said to him that made him walk away from her. Skinner had no
time for his own grief; when he saw the state she was in, he did
the one thing he was really good at. He took command of the
situation, barking orders at everyone, even the local police, and
had a doctor sedate Scully. On the flight home she was zoned out,
almost in twilight sleep.

It had broken his heart to see her like that, and his was a heart
long past breaking. After Sharon's death, the most he had ever
allowed himself to feel was a fond indulgence for his two wayward
agents. But the emotional thaw that began when he sat with her on
that plane less than a week ago was coming to completion now, on
this plane headed for Winslow, with a kind of circular
perfection.

They sat together now with Mulder on the aisle seat, Scully in
the middle, and Skinner by the window. Nothing like on that other
journey, when she had been so out of it, so vulnerable, going
obediently where he guided her, her gaze locked in that thousand
yard stare. He wished she would cry, though he was secretly
grateful and even a little proud that she didn't. Every
protective instinct in him was blazing up; he wanted to slaughter
every enemy, protect her from every injury. But he himself was
the enemy in her eyes, or had been in the past.

He had taken her home from the airport in a cab. Took her purse
from her, found the key, led her into her apartment. She had
stood in the living room, looking around as if not quite sure of
where she was. He made her a cup of tea, his big hands clumsy and
unfamiliar with her personal possessions, her china cups, her
spoons, the things somehow charged with intimacy. She drank the
scalding liquid without flinching, staring into space with those
scary vacant eyes.

Although his conscience had tugged at him, he had to leave her
there to take a cab back to the office. An Assistant Director
with three dead agents had a lot of explaining to do. He took all
but two of her prescription pills with him; she already seemed
oversedated. She waved vaguely when he said goodbye, and his
uneasiness grew by the minute.

At exactly five o'clock he screeched out of the parking lot on
the way back to her apartment. It had taken her forever to answer
the door, and he was on the point of demanding a key from her
manager when she finally appeared, and let him in.

She was exactly as he had left her. She hadn't even taken off her
coat. It was shadowy in the living room, and the heat was still
off, so the November chill penetrated to the bone. Skinner lit a
fire, switched on lamps, made her stand up so he could unbutton
her coat, his hands sliding down her arms as he pulled it off. It
was then that he felt the chill of her flesh, and realized she
was in shock.

He knelt before her and took her shoes off, lifting each foot
while she steadied herself with a hand on his shoulder, unmoved
by the deeply intimate act. When Skinner rose again he took his
jacket off and wrapped her in it. It was ridiculously large; he
could not have thought she could be any cuter than she already
was, but his jacket made her look about five years old. He led
her back to the sofa and made her sit down, then drew an ottoman
up and sat across from her, his hands on his knees. Afraid to
leave, afraid to stay, carefully composing words of comfort.

He began with, "Agent Scully, what happened was in no way your
fault."

Her eyes moved to his dully. "How would you know? You weren't
there."

Her voice was rusty from not speaking for so long, but the sound
of it gave him a surge of hope and reassurance. "You did not wire
that bomb," he said firmly. "You did not have any description of
the suspect. There was no way you could have known what you were
walking into."

She was looking at him, those soft blue eyes almost black because
of the size of her pupils, and then the color began to come back
as her pupils contracted. He watched, fascinated; it was like
watching a cat waking up. One minute she was not really there,
and then SNAP! her eyes sharpened and he could literally feel her
presence return to the room as she glared at him.

"How the hell would you know what happened up there?" she
demanded. "You sit up there in your office while we go out in the
field and do your dirty work, and you have no idea what we go
through."

As AD, he should have replied with something curt and harsh, but
as a man trying to help her, he had no idea how to respond. She
was like a wounded animal, normally shy, but now wild with pain
and striking out at anything. Her eyes glowed; even her hair
seemed to take on an extra richness. Her face flushed down to
where her collarbone was revealed by her blouse, where a man with
his fingertip might gently prod downwards to see how far down
that flush extended.

He said quietly, "I do have an idea."

"The hell you do." She jumped to her feet, shedding his jacket
with a contemptuous shrug, and began pacing the room. "All you
ever do is sit there and give orders. Go here, Agent Mulder. Go
there, Agent Mulder. Go get yourself blown to bits, Agent
Mulder."

Her small, smoothly muscled frame charged with energy as she
paced, as if she were picking up static from the carpet; he
imagined that if he touched her then, she would spark. The room
was still cold, but he could feel the heat radiating from her,
and he longed to touch her. Skinner had liked Mulder with an
affection he tried to cover with his brusque, hard- ass attitude,
liked both of them way too much for his own good. She had touched
a secret nerve; maybe it WAS his fault Mulder was dead.

"I did not intend for--"

"Oh, go to hell, AD Skinner," she snapped. "You know damn well
you're glad he's dead."

Skinner rose angrily. "That's not true."

"Bullshit! You always hated the X-Files. You ever wanted us to
find the truth. You wanted me to spy on Mulder and ruin him, from
the very beginning."

Skinner said softly, "Scully, that's not true. I have always been
your friend."

Now, on the plane, taxiing down the runway for takeoff, Skinner
looked out the window to hide his smile at the memory of her next
move. Oh, Scully. She had moved so exquisitely, grace beyond
words, spinning on one foot like a dancer, and had smacked him in
the jaw with her diamond hard little fist.

Packed a hell of a punch, too. Raised a blue mark that was only
now fading. He had staggered back, raising a hand defensively,
and stared at her in utter astonishment.

"You son of a bitch!" she shouted, coming at him. He had moved
away from her, his arms fending off the rain of blows she aimed
at him, though without skill or real intent to harm, he
suspected. Just pounding fists, beating at him, railing against
fate the only way she could.

After a few minutes, he moved in and restrained her, holding her
arms. "Agent Scully, stop this at once!" he commanded.

She stopped abruptly, which surprised him, and then began to cry,
which surprised him even more.

There was a huge rocker recliner by the fireplace. Skinner knelt
slightly and scooped an arm under her knees, lifted her like a
child, and carried her there, sitting down with her in his lap.

In the airplane, shooting up into the boundless sky, Skinner had
to wipe condensation from his window; his flush at the memory had
fogged the cool glass. Her face against his starched shirt, hot
and wet, the sobbing of her frail shoulders, and the sound of her
weeping. His hand spread on her back, rubbing, soothing, as he
rocked her back and forth in the chair. Not fatherly, not the
kind of feelings a boss should have for his employee at that
moment. God. No weight at all across his thighs, as she cried
against him.

He could only rock her and hold her, staring out the window as
the last of the day faded from the pane and they were lit only by
the fire and the one small lamp burning in the living room by the
sofa.

After a long time, she was quiet, but she had begun to tremble,
and he rubbed her arms, her shoulders, the back of her neck, his
other arm tight around her, thinking she was cold. The tremble
was like a vibration, and it only made a bad problem worse; he
was rock hard, a normal response to this living, warm, trembling
woman in his arms, her breasts fuller than he would have guessed
pressing against his chest, her hair tickling his chin. He buried
his face in it, his eyes squeezed shut, inhaling her scent,
rubbing his cheek against her forehead.

At this moment, in real time, Scully was sitting in the middle
seat with her hands folded primly in her lap She had never in
word or glance or act betrayed herself, or him, afterwards. It
was literally as if that night had never happened. Had she
managed to forget the events that followed, the way a drunk
blanks out sins done under the cover of whiskey fumes?

Skinner opened his eyes now as he had that night, reliving for
the millionth time the incredible magica instant when he had
looked down at her, saw her twist her body slightly and lift her
face to his, her drowsy blue eyes focused on his mouth just
before their lips came together. He had not meant to kiss her.
Had he? Or had she kissed him? But it was still all right. He
would be comforting and kindly and --

--then she opened her mouth under his, and the shock of sensation
made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. And even if all
the things he had ever tried not to feel for her had not suddenly
exploded like fireworks in his heart and mind and groin, what man
could have resisted a kiss like that?

He stole a secret, amused glance at Mulder, drowsing in the aisle
seat. You poor stupid son of a bitch, he thought, not unkindly.
Any idiot could see that with just a little nudging that girl
would come to your bed. If Mulder had any inkling of what he was
missing, he would have moved heaven and earth long ago to do some
heavy nudging.

Skinner had talked to the latest bureau shrink, Raul Lopez, about
it, under the guise of dealing with the dead agent's family.
Lopez had said, "Well, it's a pretty well documented phenomenon,
well known and well exploited by funeral directors, or it used to
be. The grieving widow will often sleep with the first man she
finds, men she wouldn't dream of at any other time. It's as if
when people suffer a terrible loss that draws them close to
death, the body rebels, and goes for life as hard as it can.
People lose control of their higher moral center, and roll and
wallow in the one thing that feels good in the midst of so much
pain. People report it's the most intense orgasm of their lives.
But it's usually short lived, and often followed by deep regret."

As was this, of course. On her part, certainly. Not that she had
anything to be ashamed of. Not one damn thing.

He had not seen much of her in the dark bedroom. Most of what he
remembered was tactile and emotional. The incredible swell of
feeling when he mounted her, like a heavy rain suddenly bursting
from the clouds over ground he had thought long dead, so powerful
he thought for a horrible second that he was going to burst into
tears.

He had held her fragile wrists on either side of her head,
looking down at the faint gleam of her teeth, her half closed
eyes watching his face as he entered her. That grip, almost
virginal, the enclosing of flesh by flesh, the heat inside her,
the unspeakable sweetness. No madness of lust could ever cause
him to be less than gentle with her. He'd had his share of women,
God knew, but this was Scully. This was one human being who had
lived up to the ideas he had cherished since boyhood, of honor
and dignity and courage, when one by one all the others had
disappointed him. He knew that Scully had never really liked him,
never trusted him. Knew she once believed that he was the mole
who had betrayed her to her abductors and ruined her life. And he
knew that part of what she was doing was giving herself up to the
enemy in an act of pure self hatred. She had wanted to be fucked
by the enemy, violated, punished. He knew she was steeled for
pain, and that he was an instrument of the devil, and that she
was expecting him to be brutal and triumphant in his victory over
her.

But she'd picked the wrong man for that. He could not help but
make love to her, in the truest sense of the phrase. And she
could not have helped but feel the reverence, the tenderness in
his touch as he prolonged the act, leading her to a climax that
would explode in her like salvation, like the joyful shouting of
angels that would redeem them both from fear and pain and death.

He had followed the signals of her hips to speed up or slow down,
and she had come with him inside her, with soft cries that burned
themselves into his brain, her own hands on his back and
shoulders clutching and kneading with an urgency tempered by
innate gentleness. She had kissed his neck, his jaw, his lips, as
she might have kissed anyone then, he supposed, with gratitude.
He had thrust his tongue into her mouth and she had met it with
her own, licking, sucking, but not desperately, not like a woman
wanting a man so much as a woman accepting one. Some women
clawed, bit, disregarded everything but their own sensation, but
Scully was a generous lover, aware that it was a mutual act, and
was never so lost in herself that she forgot the give and take of
pleasure.

Pleasure. He'd had no more than a few seconds himself, a rush of
intensity, a locomotive roaring through his head and a groan
wrenched out of him. He fell away from her, his blood singing,
and lay panting beside her. She was not trembling now. He put his
hand between her legs and worked his fingers, sustaining her
pleasure as long as he could. And even though her hips moved
against his hand, and her breath still came in gasps, he knew he
was already losing her, that regret was filling her like poison,
and that she was slipping away from him, smoke whirling away into
the night, and there was no word on earth he could use to call
her back to him.

Mulder, Mulder, Mulder. Found alive, heroically freeing himself
and another agent from a hostage situation with Baxter, killing
the son of a bitch in the process in what was obviously self
defense to everyone but the local police, who were still having
problems identifying that other body.

Scully, scolding Mulder furiously for frightening her so badly,
until he hung his head like a dog, and then throwing her arms
around his neck and hugging him as hard as she could, and then
finally letting him go and cuffing him on the back of the head,
promising him bitter death if he ever EVER did something like
that again. Dazed Mulder, whose very brilliance made him blind to
the things going on right under his nose, his partner's obvious
adoration, and her sudden quiet spells when she had to deal with
their boss.

For Skinner there would always be that one moment he would carry
with him forever, one light against all the lonely darkness to
come; he had touched her. He had made Scully come. In that
instant of crying out against his throat and arching so
powerfully she lifted him from the bed, he had given her a
release from fear and anguish, and in return she had given him
back his soul.

Of course she had avoided him after that. There had been that
brief period of insanity that followed, when he could not think
of anything but her, of sending her flowers...No, taking them to
her apartment. She would hesitate, then let him in, shy and
ashamed. He would sit in her kitchen and drink tea and listen to
the liquid gold of her voice, and then later somehow he would
bring his lips to hers, and she would stiffen in shame and fear,
and then she would remember how he had made her feel, and her
mouth would open again under his. And this time he would do it
right. He would make her feel such pleasure she would mistake it
for love, and then--

No.

And so now here they sat, and he breathed her fragrance, a scent
so imprinted on him that his stomach would tighten when he
smelled her in the hallway where she had passed, unseen, moments
before. It never failed to fill his head with dizzy longing.

But no.

Fucking her was the biggest mistake of his life. He would give
his right arm to take it back. He would give both arms to do it
again.

A bump of turbulence made him open his eyes; he had nearly been
asleep.

Mulder was out of it, headphones on, his head tilted slightly
towards his partner, eyelashes fluttering a little in a dream. He
opened them sleepily, and murmured to Scully, "You know how I
hate bugs."

"Yes," she said absently. "I know." And comforted, he went back
to sleep.

But then Skinner saw Scully shift, clutching the armrest with the
classic white-knuckled grip, and all the tense looks, Mulder's
sympathy, her hesitations, suddenly made sense. It had nothing to
do with him.

He leaned towards her a little. "You okay, Agent Scully?"

Her jaw was clenched, her face pale, but she gave a tight little
nod and said, "Fine, sir."

Call me sir when I am thrusting into you, and I won't be able to
keep myself from coming, Agent Scully. He looked down at her
hand, afraid of what his eyes might show, and said, "Not a good
flyer?"

Another lurch, this time sharp enough to make a child somewhere
behind them cry out. Scully was tight-lipped, silent.

Skinner moved in a little closer, keeping his voice soft so as
not to disturb Mulder. "When you were small, did you ever go on a
long car trip with your parents?"

She flicked a glance at him. Those eyes, those cold angel eyes,
the secret color of the vault of heaven. She said, "Why do you
ask?"

"Did you?"

She nodded. "I guess so. Sure."

"Did you ever go to sleep in the back seat when they were driving
for hours and hours?"

She turned to look at him fully then, eyebrow cocked only a
little. "Yeah?"

"When I was a boy, my parents used to make a once a year trip to
visit my grandparents in Florida. I loved that long ride down,
and I always fell asleep in the back seat at some point. There's
nothing safer, no more secure warmer feeling in the world than
being a small child, tucked in the backseat of a car, lulled by
the bouncing of the road and the sound of the engine, and knowing
you're totally protected by the two people who love you more than
anything in the world."

He hesitated for a split second, glancing at Mulder, and added,
"Your parents. That's what turbulence reminds me of."

Her eyes softened. "That's a nice thought."

"Hang onto it."

She kept looking at him until he said, "What?"

"I was just trying to imagine what you were like when you were a
little boy."

He ran a hand over his scalp ruefully and said, "Lots more hair."

Scully smiled. It was a real smile, the kind that had melted
sterner hearts than his. He dropped his eyes quickly, his heart
stumbling on an aching beat.

Making her smile was not as good as making her come, but it was
good, good, good.

And for now that would have to do.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Chapter Two

Marge had scrawled "Bored Meeting" in his day book, and as
Skinner sat at the head of the long table he thought she had
probably not misspelled it after all. He stared down at the
papers before him, elbow on the table, wagging a pen in the air
between his forefinger and middle finger like a cigarette, a
remnant of the old days when he smoked. Now the habit seemed
disgusting to him, but in the Marines it had been one more way
for a bunch of frightened boys to look cool to each other.

From time to time he made notes on the pad in front of him. Or
appeared to be making notes. The conversation was running along
fairly well without him now, something to do with leaving items
too long in the refrigerator in the break room. He felt glances
aimed at him, sensed the pale blobs of faces turning in his
direction occasionally. His impatience at these things was
expected. But for the moment, it all seemed so small and distant
he wasn't even concerned enough to be impatient. Roger Young and
Bill Restin, partners known at the bureau as "Young and
Restless," were trying to explain something about the necessity
of renting cars. Skinner looked up at them, nodding thoughtfully.
He had no idea what they were saying. Of course you have to rent
cars when you travel. How else are you supposed to get around
town? Young and Restin were talking at the same time. Skinner
drew his brows together threateningly, and they shut up, looking
sheepish, and submitted their schedules to Marge without further
quibbling. When Skinner looked down at his pad he saw that he'd
drawn a pair of eyes, shaded the irises lightly, put tiny points
of light in the pupils. Scully's eyes, gazing up at him
accusingly.

Meeting adjourned, Skinner continued to sit at the table while
the rest filed out into the hall. Marge said she was going to
lunch and he waved her away.

"Sir?" Her gentle voice drew his momentary attention, and he
blinked at her expectantly. Her eyes were concerned. "Are you
feeling okay? You look kind of sick."

He tightened his lips in a faint smile. "I'm all right, Marge."

When she was gone, he scrubbed his face with his hands, trying to
snap himself out of this mood.

Sick? How to know when you're got it bad:

You make excuses to be at the front desk in the morning just at
the time she comes into work, so you can nod and she can nod
back, unsmiling, as she passes by. Extra points for watching her
pin on her badge.

You drive home each day through the park and match the color of
the turning leaves with the exact shade of red in her hair.

Any woman passing by with her height and coloration makes you
swivel your head so suddenly you can feel the bones in your neck
snap.

Twice when you hit the intercom to say "Marge" it comes out "Scu-
-" before you can catch yourself.

Okay, maybe five times.

You and Jack Daniels have resumed an old friendship.

But under it all, guilt. Guilt and loss, loss and guilt. What was
first relief and admiration when she chose to say nothing, act in
no way to acknowledge what had happened that night, had slowly
coagulated into a sense of general irritation. No sense of
closure, no recriminations, no grudging apologies. No opportunity
to look into her eyes and see that night somewhere in their
depths, to convince himself that it really did happen.

But it did happen, and they needed to talk about it. There were
things he had to say to her. But maybe it hadn't really meant
that much to her after all. Maybe the whole thing had happened in
his own head, and what physically transpired had only been a
quick carnal act that she really could put behind her.

He could not. He had to approach her, he had to sit her down and
discuss it rationally. Like an employer, not like some love
struck puppy who was one psychotic break away from calling her
house and hanging up or driving by in the middle of the night to
see if her car was there.

Something had to be done. He had to make a decision. The problem
was, he made a different decision every day.

Monday: respect her wishes, take it like a man, let the whole
thing slip away down the river of De Nile.

Tuesday: grab her arms and shake her like a wet rag until she's
ready to talk.

Wednesday: respect her wishes some more.

Thursday: board meeting. Draw her fine blue eyes on a yellow
post-it pad.

Friday night: get misty eyed at a scene in "Casablanca" when
Bogart makes the "you'd regret this tomorrow" speech. Emotion
intensified by one extra glass of Scotch. A glass the size of a
fish bowl.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Saturday morning the phone rang while he was in the shower, and
he waited until he got out to pick up the message. It was Roger
Young, of the Young and the Restless team. His voice sounded
shaken. He only left a number, but years of experience had taught
Skinner that this could be nothing but bad news. Before returning
the call, he dried off, shaved, brushed his teeth, dressed in
starched white and crisp grey. Ran a polish rag over his shoes.
Knotted his tie carefully. Studied his face in the mirror for a
moment, then shook his head and sighed.

"Agent Young? Skinner here."

"Yes, sir. Sir, there's been an incident involving one of our
agents. Rupert Smith is dead."

Skinner shifted his grip on the receiver and took a deep breath.
He allowed himself to squeeze his eyes shut for just a moment.
Smith had been with Mulder in the hostage situation recently. A
good steady agent, ready for retirement in just a couple more
years. They'd played golf once in one of those bureau sponsored
tournaments. Good natured guy, hell of a swing. He was never late
with his budget. Had a son who was a doctor, a daughter who lived
somewhere overseas. Pictures of grandchildren in his wallet.

"What happened, Agent Young?"

"I got a call from him last night. I was...he sounded drunk, sir.
I don't understand why he called. He said something about a town
called Winslow, in upstate New York. It was two in the morning,
sir, and he woke me up. He said something about Mulder, but I
can't really remember what it was. Then he just hung up."

Silence. Skinner prompted, "And then?"

"I feel lousy about this, sir. I was thinking I'd wait until
Monday morning and ask him about it. But then about half an hour
ago the police called me on his redial and told me he'd committed
suicide early this morning, at about two thirty. Shot himself in
the head. The neighbors heard it and called it in. I referred
them to you, but I wanted to tell you first."

Skinner stared up at the ceiling, thinking. He said, "Meet me at
the office in one hour, Agent Young."

"Yes, sir."

As soon as he placed the handset on the table, the phone rang
again. This time it was the police. Skinner asked where the body
had been taken, and requested that the coroner leave the autopsy
until they were contacted by a Dr. Dana Scully sometime later in
the day.

Then he called Mulder at home.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Dana Scully sat in a swivel chair in the anteroom of the hospital
where she had just done the autopsy of Rupert Smith. It had taken
her most of the afternoon, and she wanted to go home. She was
wearing the clothes she'd dressed in when she got up: jeans and
running shoes, a powder blue sweatshirt that said LIVE MAINE
LOBSTERS on it. Gripping the arms of the chair, she rotated it
from side to side, her feet planted on the floor. Fidgeting.

Mulder was flipping through the pages of a magazine, a
Cosmopolitan he had found upstairs in a waiting room.

"Where is he?" Scully demanded.

Mulder glanced up. "Skinner? He said he was going to the office
to talk to Young."

"That was hours and hours ago. What do you think he wants to talk
to you about?"

Mulder put the magazine on his lap and looked at her. "Well,
let's see...What could it be? About the agent who killed himself
last night? The one you just sliced and diced? The fact that he
mentioned my name just before he blew his brains out?"

Scully sighed her exasperation. "But what have YOU got to do with
it, Mulder?"

"Beats hell out of me," he shrugged. He held the magazine up.
"Hey, I know what'll make you less jumpy. Let's take this quiz."

"I'm not jumpy!"

He drew back in mock fear. "Ooo. Sorry. My mistake."

The door to the anteroom opened and they both looked around,
startled. Skinner regarded them both briefly with his customary
scowl, then came in and sat in a chair across from them.

"What did you find, Agent Scully?"

"Well, I don't think it was a suicide, sir."

Mulder leaned forward, eyebrows raised. Scully glanced at him and
then looked back at the Assistant Director, or at least at his
blue and grey tie. "There were contusions on his right hand
consistent with some kind of pressure, probably a hand, though
gloved, because I couldn't identify prints or even fingermarks on
the skin. This could indicate that someone else was holding his
hand wrapped around the gun when the shot was fired."

"So you're just guessing."

"Sir, I'd call it an educated guess."

Skinner was frowning over her head at the wall. His dark gaze
flicked back to her. "Sorry, Scully. I wasn't challenging you.

What I mean is, could you testify to anything?"

She shook her head. "Nothing more than what I just said. His
blood alcohol was high Enough to qualify as legally drunk, but
there was no damage to his liver, nothing to indicate any long
term drinking problems."

Mulder said, "Did you figure out why he called Young?"

"The only connection I can make is that Roger Young was the first
man to arrest Antoine Baxter, in 1987. Baxter was involved in a
mail truck robbery, and served two years in a federal prison.
That's where he made his Soldier of Fortune contacts, which later
formed the basis of a militia group that bombed a string of banks
along the west coast. When I talked to Smith after he got back
from Winslow, he told me that he and his partner were following
leads that indicated this militia group might be based somewhere
around the Blue Mountain Lake area. That's about twenty miles
outside of Winslow."

Scully shook her head, frowning. "I still don't understand why
Baxter took Mulder and Smith in the first place. Was he going to
ask for ransom? Did he hope to get information of some sort out
of them?"

"Baxter was unstable," Skinner said. "Apparently he was right on
the edge of losing it there at the end."

"He was insane," Mulder agreed. "The whole time he kept us there,
he carried on a rambling conversation with himself about the
greater good and the greater enemy, nothing you could make sense
of. He was so involved in one of those conversations I was able
to get my hands free and jump him."

Skinner nodded. Mulder had struggled with Baxter and managed to
get the gun from him, had to shoot the man in the fight that
followed. Skinner said, "I want to put together some kind of
profile on Baxter by the end of this day. Let's do it at the
office; this time I'll file the paperwork and get the case
rolling. Meet me down there in half an hour."

When he was gone, Mulder got up and leaned down to whisper in
Scully's ear, "Hope you didn't have any hot dates lined up for
tonight."

She swatted him away, and he opened the door for her, laughing.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * J. Edgar Hoover Building, 6:00 PM

The minute Skinner stepped into the basement office of Mulder and
Scully, he knew something was wrong. Mulder, his jacket off, tie
loose, sleeves rolled to his elbows, was chewing on the eraser of
a pencil and staring into his computer screen so intently he
didn't even look up when the Assistant Director came in.

A flash of light from Scully's glasses as she turned her head
reflected the blue from her laptop screen. Skinner saw an anxiety
in her face that he knew boded trouble.

"What is it?"

Mulder looked up with a start. Scully glanced at him briefly, and
said to Skinner, "Sir, we've accessed the mainframe and searched
the net and all our databases. There is no record of any arrest
in any police station, nor any record of a criminal
investigation, trial, or incarceration in any prison, State or
Federal, of Antoine Baxter. As far as we can tell, the man has
never existed."

Skinner regarded her for a moment, then said calmly, "That's not
possible, Agent Scully."

Mulder used his pencil to point at his computer screen. "No birth
records, no driver's license, no credit cards. He's the man who
never was."

A serpent of fear twisted in Skinner's belly, and he said, "Call
Agent Young right now. Tell him to get down here right away."

Scully said, "You think he knows something about this, sir?"

"I think he's in danger, Agent Scully. I think we all are."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Mario's Flying Pizza, 9:00 PM

Scully, Mulder, and Skinner sat at a table in the back of the
restaurant, drinking iced tea and looking at the pizza cooling on
the table in front of them.

Roger Young had never called back, or answered his beeper, or
indicated to anyone where he was going. Skinner had gone back to
his own office while the two special agents had continued to
search their resources for evidence that Antoine Baxter had truly
lived. They had agreed to meet at Mario's at nine, all of them
feeling slightly paranoid about talking in their own building.

Skinner sighed heavily and said, "Someone has taken the Baxter
files and all your reports from my file cabinet and wiped all the
information from my hard drive. I checked Smith's office, and
there's no field report or even a record of expenditures in his
computer or his files. I checked accounting, and found nothing to
indicate any of us had been to Winslow."

"It's like the past never happened," Scully said.

Mulder poked at the pizza's crust. "There are men powerful enough
to erase the past," he said. "We know they can, though we don't
know why they'd want to."

"These men are powerful enough to erase people as well," Skinner
said ruefully. "The sheriff in Winslow died of a heart attack
last Sunday night. Forty year old man with no history of heart
problems. Died in his sleep. His replacement was very apologetic,
but he couldn't find any records. Seems there was a small fire at
the police station that destroyed most of their recent files."

Scully made a small gesture as if to move closer to Mulder, and
though it wasn't completed, it struck a painful nerve in Skinner.
One of his deepest and fiercest instincts was to protect that
which was precious to him. The freedom of his country, or so he
believed when he was eighteen and enlisted in the Marines with
the express purpose of going to war. Later, the maintenance of
that freedom, when he began to move through the ranks of the FBI
administration. And now, though he had no right to wish for it,
he wished that Scully had made that worried little move in his
direction. There was nothing he would not do to protect her.

"Our main problem," said Mulder, "Is that we have nothing to go
on in our search. No fingerprints, no photographs, nothing to use
in a search string."

Scully said, "I guess it wouldn't do any good to try to find out
where he was buried and order the body exhumed, would it?"

Skinner leaned across the table. The overhead fluorescent made
his eyes invisible behind his glasses. "We can't very well give
any orders at this point," he said, in a low voice. "We have
nothing to back ourselves up with, nothing to justify the
paperwork. Whoever is behind this has been painstakingly
thorough."

A faint smile lightened Mulder's features. "I notice you saying
'we' a lot, Assistant Director Skinner."

"Someone has been in my office, Agent Mulder. Someone has stolen
my records and erased my files, without leaving so much as a
scratch on the lock on my file cabinet a mark on my desk. Until I
have an inkling of who that might be, you and Agent Scully and I
are in this together."

Scully sipped her tea, not looking up. "Then I guess we'd better
start at the beginning."

Mulder pushed his chair back and got to his feet. "Scully, why
don't you book us on a flight back to Winslow tomorrow morning?"

"No," Skinner said. "We'll charter a plane. I'll pick you both up
in the morning at eight. Mulder, can you be at Scully's place by
then?"

Mulder grinned. "Sure thing. I'll go home right now and pack my
shovel."

Scully rose too, obviously nervous about being left alone with
Skinner. "I'd better go, too, sir."

"Wait a minute, Agent Scully."

She shot a helpless look at Mulder's retreating back, then sank
back into her chair slowly. "Yes, sir?"

He took his checkbook out and opened it, pulling his pen from his
breast pocket. "I want you to cash this in the morning and pay
for the tickets. List us under aliases; we could be traced
through our credit cards. From now on, I want you to watch your
back; take nothing for granted. The people who are doing this are
going to be one step ahead of us up to a point. There'll be a
moment when we reach that point, and then we'll have to move fast
and without hesitation to get ahead of them. Do you understand?"

She nodded. When Skinner gave her the check she looked down at
his hand, the long thick fingers curving under hers. She looked
up at him and for one moment their eyes held. For the first time,
he saw awareness there, though she lowered her lashes quickly and
tucked the check into her purse and made a hasty, if awkward,
retreat.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

They landed at an airstrip near Blue Mountain Lake, and rented a
car to drive the rest of the way, only thirty miles into Winslow,
but through twisting, mountainous country. It rained most of the
way, which made the going slower.

Skinner drove. Scully sat in front, and Mulder slouched
bonelessly in back, staring out the window at the monotonous
green landscape. Once he leaned forward and flipped the back of
Scully's hair with his

finger, and she turned to look at him.

"Got any of those things?" he asked.

She got her purse from the floor and rummaged through it, found a
pack of mints, and gave him one. She offered the pack to Skinner,
who shook his head, then took one for herself and put the package
back up.

Behind them, Mulder crunched happily.

Skinner sighed. It was a long drive.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Winslow, New York, 5:30 PM

The White Horse Motor Inn had a giant plastic stallion prancing
above its canopied entrance, and a vacancy sign that blinked in
red neon. A tripod sign reading "Under Construction" blocked off
the east wing of the building, which had been decimated by
Antoine Baxter's bomb when he had been trying to kill Mulder and
Scully.

Mulder had been outside at the time, buying a coke from a
machine, when the bomb was set off by a housekeeper going into
the room to clean it. He had been knocked down by the concussion,
and taken hostage by Baxter, who had dragged him off to a house
where Rupert Smith was duct taped and trussed like a turkey.

Skinner regarded the construction site thoughtfully as Scully and
Mulder went inside to rent the rooms. In those two days, after
finding the body of Barlow and believing it to be Mulder, Scully
had been out of her mind with grief and guilt. Now, trying to
reconstruct the events leading to their sexual encounter, Skinner
found himself at a loss. Maybe she was right to deny it. Maybe he
should work on his own policy of denial.

Certainly it shouldn't have happened. He should not have felt the
long slow shudder go through her, or heard her cry out, or
somehow through the act found himself touching the secret heart
of her. Now for the first time he wondered if there were worse
things to come, if instead of resolution the future held only
more pain.

"Sir?"

He turned to see Scully standing behind him. At the dark, haunted
look in his eyes, her face softened a little. "I got our rooms,"
she said, holding out a key.

He stared at it in her hand, his mind a million miles away, then
took it. He looked up at her, and saw the light of the setting
sun on her face, catching fire in her hair. Her freckles showed
through her makeup, and her eyes were the color of a peacock's
breast. Whatever she saw come into his face then disturbed her,
and she turned away in silence and walked back across the lot to
the building.

You can only run away for so long, he thought dreamily. And only
so far.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Chapter Three

Skinner collapsed on his bed with a groan. The ride from the
airport had been a bitch. Scully, enclosed in the car beside him,
only a few inches away, moving around inside her clothes; so
close he could have easily reached out a hand and touched her,
had never once made full eye contact, never said anything except
in response to a question. And now she was going to be sleeping
in a big double bed only a wall away.

How did Mulder stand it? Going on the road with her, knowing she
was so close, but not able to go to her. Or had he tried it, and
been shot down? No. No, Skinner had seen the way Mulder looked at
Scully when she wasn't looking. Seen the yearning, the ache;
hell, he felt it himself. And felt it more acutely, he decided,
because he actually had the memory of her skin against his, still
had the taste of her in his mouth. But what did Scully ache for?
Lying on those cool sheets, her cheek on the pillow, hip tucked
into the too soft mattress, forming the long delicious curve down
to her bare feet...

(Don't go there, old son. Don't even think about it.)

Scully loved Mulder. Mulder loved Scully. But there was not the
slightest suspicion in his mind that they were lovers. Mulder had
too much to lose if he made a move and got rejected, and Scully
had rejection written large in her facial expressions, the way
she held her body. Why? Who the hell knew why people were so
self-protective? It was obvious that Mulder would be on her in a
minute if he thought he had a chance. But it was just as obvious
that Scully wasn't giving chances away.

As always, Skinner's thoughts drifted back to Sharon. How many
nights had he come home late, to slide in quietly beside her,
moving gingerly until he had his arm around her, hoping she would
not stir, but always pleased when she did, and kissed him
sleepily, and returned his embrace. That was in the sweet years
of their marriage, before the things he'd seen and done had made
him pull back from her, fearful of contaminating her with his
poisonous knowledge.

Now Sharon was as much of his past as Viet Nam, something to try
not to think about too often. He had survived Nam, survived his
wife's death. He would survive Dana Scully. She had simply
awakened an old tenderness in him, a hunger better off satisfied
elsewhere. Something in her had called to something in him, and
for one intense moment when they joined it had been perfect. But
he had stolen that moment from her, and it would be a cold day in
July before he forgave himself for that.

He sat on the edge of the bed, then stood up restlessly. This
would not do. He would have to act like a man, accept his losses,
and move on. Put Scully out of his head.

There was a soft knock at the door. Looking at it, Skinner had
the eerie sensation that he was looking right through it, to see
Scully standing there. When he opened it, she stepped back and
did that defensive thing, folding her arms across her breasts.

"We were just going to get something to eat. You want to come?"

He was aware of Mulder, hulking down the hall somewhere, hands
thrust in the pockets of his trenchcoat.

"No, thank you, Agent Scully. I'll get something later."

"Uh...we need the keys to the car."

He fished them from his pocket and gave them to her wordlessly.

When she was gone, he lay back on the bed. He did not want to eat
with her. He did not want to talk to her. And most of all, he did
not want to dream of her.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Nightcrawler Bar and Grill 11:00 PM

The waitress was a tall blonde with weary eyes but a kind smile.
"Hit you again on that Scotch, sweetie?"

Skinner nodded, and she took his glass to refill it. When she
returned, he sipped the drink and looked around the bar. He had
considered buying a bottle, but the thought of sitting in his
motel room knocking back a pint of whiskey by himself was a
little too pathetic. And with Scully close by, he needed all his
self control. So he had gone out in search of something to eat, a
little noise and bustle, and the bar had provided a respite.

He was thinking of the last woman who picked him up in a bar, who
he thought was some office girl, but turned out to be a whore,
and a dead whore at that, when he woke up and found her the next
morning in his bed. One of the worst things about that was having
Scully know about it. Not to mention Sharon. He had been at such
a distance from Sharon then, fists shut tight against all tender
touch, although the need in him was a howling void all the time.
He had been afraid that the slightest crack in his armor would
lead to a complete collapse; one whimper would become a scream.

Bitter irony, that now when one night of passion had awakened his
dormant heart, and fear of loving was diminished, Sharon was dead
and Scully was locked up in armor of her own.

Skinner tossed back his drink and laid his money on the bar. As
he was getting up, he bumped into a dark haired girl, almost
knocking her down. His hand shot out to steady her, and she
dropped her purse. They both bent to retrieve it at the same
time; he let her collect it, and backed off. There was something
about the look she gave him, an apologetic smile mixed with fear,
that made him hesitate before walking away.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Sorry." She glanced briefly into his eyes, speaking mostly
into his tie. Upright, she was tall, maybe five eight, though
with spike heels she could almost challenge his six foot two and
a half. But something about the way she held herself bespoke
fear, or at least uncertainty. "Sorry," she muttered again, and
moved on.

Skinner put his coat on as the waitress came up to him to offer
change from the twenty he'd left. He shook his head, and she
rewarded him with a real smile, even sweeter than the customer-
smile, which was worth the tip.

Outside, the streets were deserted. There were only a dozen or so
cars in the parking lot, more on the curb. The dark haired girl
was standing with her purse clenched in both hands, looking up
and down the street. She was thin, and the long jet black hair
that hung halfway down her back was striking. Though pretty
enough, in a pale, big-eyed way, she couldn't have been more than
twenty five years old. Something in her posture struck him again;
she was a puppy waiting to be kicked.

When Skinner spoke softly behind her, she jumped.

"Excuse me," he said. "Are you all right?"

She stepped away from him nervously. "I'm okay," she said.
"Really."

He took out his identification with a long practiced flip, and
she peered at it from a distance. It was too dark in the parking
lot to see it from where she stood, but the gesture seemed to
have a reassuring effect on her.

"FBI," she said, faintly.

"It's almost midnight, and this isn't the safest place for a
young woman to be alone."

"I was  I had a fight with my boyfriend," she said. "I thought
he'd be here. He usually comes here when he wants to get drunk."
She gave a little self-conscious laugh. "He can be kind of mean.
I guess I'm lucky I didn't find him."

Skinner felt a great weariness for all the young women in the
world who for whatever reason let themselves be victimized by
love.

He said, "Do you live around here? I could walk you home, if you
like."

"I have my car."

Skinner locked himself into position. "I'll wait here until
you're safely away."

She flashed him a toothy smile in the dim light, but it was less
sincere than the waitress's had been. She disappeared into the
shadows, her heels scrunching in the gravel, and a moment later
he heard a car door shut. He turned away, but he had only gone
two steps when he heard the unmistakable grinding sound of a low
battery.

He stood for a moment contemplating his next move. She could just
go inside and call a tow truck. He had a cell phone, but he had
left it in his room. The smart thing to do was just walk away and
forget it. Back to the motel room, back to the blue eyes and red
hair and set jaw, the mouth that had crushed so easily under his 

He heard the car door open, and looked across the roofs of the
cars between them and saw the dark haired girl standing there,
shoulders shaking as she began to cry.

White Horse Motor Inn 12:30pm

"Where the hell is he?" Scully asked, putting the phone down in
her room.

Mulder, lying on her bed, said, "Maybe he met someone."

She gave him the Look and he grinned. "Hey, it could happen."

"He'd still answer his phone."

For a moment, Mulder's features grew serious. "Do you think he's
in trouble, really?"

Scully shrugged. Her instincts concerning Skinner were not to be
trusted. She sat on the bed beside Mulder and patted his leg.
"Get your shoes off the bed."

"Mm. Sorry." Instead of getting up, he toed off his loafers,
which fell with loud thumps to the carpet. Scully looked down at
his supine form. He put his hands behind his head on the pillow
and gave her his sweetest smile.

"Why is it my bed always seems so much more attractive to you
than your own?" she asked.

He wiggled his eyebrows at her. "You figure it out."

"It's late, Mulder. We're going to need some sleep if we're going
to go out at dawn digging up graves."

"What do you mean 'we?' You don't think Skinner is going to let
you come with us, do you?"

Scully looked surprised. "What?"

"You watch and see if he doesn't order you to wait here for us.
He's like that. Me, I think you're a swell grave digger. But
Skinner's old school. He's going to want to go on a racon
mission, and then when it looks safe, we'll come back for you."

Scully snorted. "Bullshit."

He regarded her fondly. "I wouldn't take that attitude if I were
you, Scully. He's been in a kick ass mood since we started on
this trip. I wouldn't push any of his buttons."

She looked at him for a long moment. Mulder sat up on his elbows,
eyes changing from green to hazel. "What's the matter?" he asked.

Her reply was a little too quick. "Nothing. Really."

"Has he been ragging on you? Because if he has, it isn't
personal. I think he's scared, Scully. Not for himself, but for
us. That's just how his concern comes out."

"It's not that." She tightened her lips, gave a rueful shrug.
"It's just that...when we thought you were dead, he...Well, he
and I..." He touched her hand. "Don't think about it, Scully. I'm
fine. That's all that matters."

Instead of pulling away, as he expected, she turned her hand in
his and gripped it gently. "No, Mulder. That's not what I mean."

"Well, what do you mean?"

Scully squeezed his hand briefly and then withdrew hers. Mulder
studied her face thoughtfully. She was looking down at the
bedspread, picking at a loose thread. "I thought I'd lost you,"
she said. "I didn't think...well, I was so out of it..."

She got up and walked across the room, arms folded. Mulder swung
his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up. She looked at him
so miserably he got up and went to her.

"Scully," he said softly. "If you're scared, it's okay. I'm
scared, too. These are big players. But nothing's going to happen
to us."

"Mulder..."

"Shh." He put his arms around her, and she slipped her arms
around his waist. They held each other for a few minutes, rocking
slightly. Mulder rubbed his face against her hair and kissed the
top of her head. Scully sighed, comforted, although if she could
have seen the look on his face, she might have not felt quite so
comfortable in his arms.

After a few minutes he drew back to look down at her. She smiled
up at him, but then lowered her face again, and he let her go.

"I'm going to bed," he said. He sat back on her mattress and
collected his shoes.

A knock on the door made them both look up. Scully opened it at
once. Skinner was in the hallway. A pretty young dark haired girl
was standing beside him. For a long moment, everyone stared at
everyone else. Skinner looked at Mulder sitting on Scully's
rumpled bed, putting his shoes on. Scully looked at the dark
haired girl. The dark haired girl looked at Mulder. Mulder calmly
finished sliding into his loafers and got up, wearing a little
shit-eating grin.

Skinner said, "I need the keys to the car."

"They're in my room. I was just going there," Mulder said. He
gave Scully an I-told-you-so look and she rolled her eyes and
leaned against the door jamb. Skinner was looking down at her,
and when her gaze rose to his, she couldn't quite conceal the
little jump of nerves his look incited. He turned away abruptly
and followed Mulder down the hall, the girl in tow. He was
telling Mulder that they needed to jump start the girl's car.

Jump her bones is more like it, Scully thought, and Mulder shot
her a look over his shoulder so full of amusement she knew he had
been reading her mind again. She closed the door and leaned
against it, suddenly remembering Skinner in the dark, feeling his
hands on her--so big, but his touch had been so gentle--feeling
his weight carefully suspended above her, the way he had nuzzled
his mouth along the underside of her jaw up to her ear, and
pressed her down on the mattress.

She sighed deeply and thought, Read this, Mulder.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Chapter Four

The first dull rumble of thunder had warned Skinner of the coming
storm as he had walked June Star, the girl he met in the
Nightcrawler Bar and Grill, back to his motel. Now, as Mulder,
Skinner, and the girl walked back to Mulder's room to get the
keys to the rental car, rain began to fall with a muted roar they
could hear through the thin walls of the building.

Skinner's mood was unaccountably foul. He had knocked on Scully's
door and found Mulder sitting on the rumpled bed putting on his
shoes. Of course nothing had happened, so logic dictated, but
that little smirk Mulder wore was reminiscent of a teenaged boy
caught feeling up his girlfriend. And Scully had looked guilty as
sin. Well, so what if they had been fooling around in there? What
business of it was his?

Mulder was looking at him. Skinner met the younger man's eyes
with a cool, steady gaze. Although Mulder seemed a little taken
aback, he said, "Sir, could I speak to you for a moment?"

They had paused at the door to Mulder's room. June said, "If you
don't mind, I need to use the ladies room. I'll just be a
minute."

She went down the hall to the public restroom near the front
entrance of the building.

Mulder began speaking in the low fast monotone he used when he
was thinking and talking at the same time. "Sir, considering the
situation we're in, don't you think it's wise to be cautious
about any supposedly chance meeting any of us might have in this
town? And don't you think it might be unwise for the three of us
to split up for any reason until we know what's going on?"

Grim faced, Skinner was nonetheless listening. "What's on your
mind, Agent Mulder?" he asked.

"Well, the whole thing seems a little odd to me. You say you just
met this woman in a bar and her car wouldn't start and she did
what? Asked you for help? You, on foot?"

"No, it wasn't like that. She was trying to start the car and she
was upset, and I offered to help."

"Why didn't she just get someone in the bar to give her a jump
start?"

"She tried. No one in the bar had cables."

Mulder leaned closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial
whisper.

"Sir, no one in the bar had cables?"

Skinner looked at him. "Shit," he said. "You're right. I didn't
go in, she did. And she said there weren't any wreckers that
worked late nights in town."

"And you didn't think that was a little...implausible?"

Both men turned to look down the hall in the direction of the
public restroom. Skinner sighed. "Well, what do you suggest,
Agent Mulder?"

Mulder pulled the keys to his room from his pocket and stared
down at the broad piece of plastic attached to the ring that said
White Horse Motor Inn. He had a way of studying objects that made
him look a little vague and absent minded, when inside his head
the gears were whirring.

He said, "It's raining too hard to jump a car, so let's forget
that. Why don't you let me drive her home, and scope out the
situation. You stay here with Scully. I think that Scully and I
are as dispensable as Smith and Barlow-- and maybe Young. Anyone
who had anything to do with Antoine Baxter seems to be a target.
It's as if he's being erased from living memory as well as from
all databases. But you never met him, never saw him, right?"

"That's true."

"And even if you had, your position in the bureau is a bit high
up to not cause a lot of outcry if anything happened to you."

Skinner nodded. "So I should stay with you or Scully at all
times."

"Ideally the three of us should stay together. But there's just
something about this girl that doesn't sit right with me. For one
thing, did you notice she knew exactly where the ladies room was?
Did you pass it on your way in?"

"As a matter of fact, no. We came in through the rear entrance,
from the back parking lot."

Mulder shrugged as if to say, See? "It's a lead we can't afford
to pass up."

"All right," Skinner conceded. "I'll tell Scully what's going on,
and you see where this girl leads you. But Mulder--I don't have
to tell you to be extremely careful, right?"

"Careful's my middle name," Mulder said. "I'll call you as soon
as I find out what's going on. I mean, hell, there's always a
chance she is what she appears to be, right?"

He went into his room and got the keys to the car, and brought
them back out just as June Star was coming back down the hall.
She had washed her face, and most of her makeup had come off, so
she looked younger, more innocent. It was hard for Skinner to
believe she was acting; she seemed so nervous around them both.
If Mulder brushed against her, she moved out of his reach, and
there was an edge in her voice that seemed normal caution for a
woman who had just met two strange men from out of town and was
now about to get into a car with one of them. But Mulder was
right. Was there no one she could call? In a town as small as
Winslow, didn't she have family or friends? However sincere she
looked and sounded, there were a lot of unanswered questions
surrounding her story.

He was annoyed that he had not thought to ask any of these
questions earlier, that his head had been so full of thoughts of
Scully that his professional judgment had been suspended.
Mistakes like that could cost lives.

He watched as Mulder and the girl burst out of the door and raced
through the drenching rain towards the rental car, then he turned
and went back to Scully's room. Lifting his hand to knock, he
hesitated. For one thing, he was in such a bad mood it would be
the wrong time to bring up their encounter. On the other hand, he
felt angry at her and at himself for putting it off for this
long. Maybe if they cleared the air, he'd be able to think
rationally again.

All he had to do was keep his temper, and try not to think of
wanting her.

Nooo problem. He knocked four times, two fast, two slow; their
prearranged signal.

Scully came to the door and opened it a foot or so, peering out
into the hallway. "Where's Mulder?"

"He's taking the girl home. Scully, can I come in? I need to talk
to you."

Her eyes were guarded. "It's late," she said. "Can it wait until
morning?"

Something broke in Skinner. Fuck this. "No, it cannot," he said.
He pushed the door open and entered the room, closing it behind
him a little harder than necessary. Scully stepped back quickly,
all alarm systems on.

"Mulder thinks the girl is part of some kind of setup," Skinner
began. He told her briefly of the conversation in the hallway.
Then he said, "You and I are going to have to get through this,
Scully."

Don't look at the tee shirt, don't look at the way the light gets
in her eyes like the light in an aquarium, shimmering blue
depths, don't look down at those hands, rubbing each other
nervously, don't look at the soft curve of  well, don't look at
any soft curves. He stared at the wall over her head. "Agent
Scully, we can't pretend that nothing happened when Mulder was
missing."

The panic in his voice made him look down at her despite himself.
"There's nothing to talk about," she said.

"Of course there is. And we need to get it out in the open and
deal with it, because this is a critical situation we're in, and
it's important that we clear the air and get on with our
professional lives."

"Look, Skinner, it's been a long day, and I'm very tired. I just
want to go to bed."

"God DAMMIT, Scully!" his voice was not quite a shout, but it
made her jump and wrap her arms around herself. "I am your boss,
and I am not begging for some kind of lover's talk between us. I
am TELLING you that we are going to talk, and we are going to
talk right NOW."

There was a certain angry satisfaction at the look of fear that
came into her eyes then. He knew she wasn't afraid of him
physically. But he felt in a bullying mood anyway. He wanted to
back her down, make her give up this icy attitude, and if all he
could make her feel was fear, then it was gratifying that he
could at least make her feel something.

He advanced on her, and she backed up, and his anger grew with
every step she took away from him. When her back hit the wall,
she said, "I think you should leave, Skinner."

She was trembling, the way she had been trembling the night  "Get
out of my room," she said.

Skinner realized his own hands were shaking. He stepped into her
personal space and slammed his hands against the wall on either
side of her with a loud, stinging slap. His head flooded with
memories of that night, when he had been in this same position,
only above her, horizontal. He remembered a detail he had
forgotten: holding her wrist, his fingers wrapped all the way
around the fine delicate bones, massaging her pulse with his
thumb in small circular motions.

Scully seemed to make the same connection. Her eyes were bright,
and there were high points of color in her cheekbones, though the
rest of her face was pale. Her hair fell across her forehead, and
she was breathing through her mouth in short shallow gasps.

"We slept together, Scully. You and I had sex. LOOK at me,
dammit!"

She jumped, but tucked her chin down, staring at the front of his
shirt, mouth set in a mulish line.

Skinner's voice dropped a decibel as he spoke from the heart. "I
am entirely to blame for what happened, Agent Scully. I am your
superior, your boss, and I should have had better sense, more
self control than to have taken advantage of you. I cannot tell
you how sorry I am for what happened. I cannot tell you how much
I wish I could undo what happened. Scully--"

She jumped again at the sound of her name.

"Scully, you were at a weak moment, in shock, probably still full
of whatever that doctor in Winslow shot you full of. I know you
didn't mean to do it. I know you didn't want it. There's
absolutely no excuse in the world for what I did, and I want you
to know that if you chose to file rape charges against me, you'd
not only be within your rights, but I would offer no defense.
What I did was beyond reprehensible, and there is no way in the
world to make it up to you."

"No!" She bit down on the cry of protest, as if regretting the
word as soon as it was out of her mouth.

There was a moment of eerie silence, as if the universe was
waiting to see what would happen next.

Scully raised her eyes to his, and they were full of unshed
tears. "No," she whispered.

Time swung by like a pendulum, slowing. Skinner could no longer
hear the rain at the window, or feel his own heart beating. His
dark eyes narrowed, staring into her light blue ones, and what he
saw there kicked him as hard as a boot in the stomach. He
actually bent forward a little, knees buckling under the weight
of this sudden knowledge.

Every instinct, every ounce of resolve he had in him, echoed NO.
No, no, no. Pull up, soldier. Use that iron discipline. No to the
urge to turn off the alarm clock after a sleepless night. No to
the second drink after lunch. No to the flirty smile of the
secretary on the fourth floor. No to the hope bursting in his
chest at the look of raw need in Scully's eyes.

His long fingers were sliding through her hair past her ears,
forming themselves in the shape of her skull, a silken pleasure
than ran up the veins in his forearms like hot blood, up his
shoulders and mainlining to his heart. She swayed a little
towards him, making a sound of pure pain, closing her eyes and
turning her head to the right at the exact instant he leaned
down, turning his head to the left, in a motion as smooth as
choreography, as practiced as if they had done it a thousand
times.

The moment their lips met, time came back with a roar,
compensating for its previous pause by speeding everything up to
an insane fever pitch. She had not kissed him like this even in
bed. This was the kiss of a fully aroused woman.

He was touching her somehow; her heart beat against his palm like
the pulse of a rabbit, impossibly fast. He drew back, panting,
and took her hands in his. She looked past his shoulder to the
bed.

"Turn off the light," she told him.

He pulled her to the bed and they both stumbled a little, like
drunks. The room rolled beneath him like the unsteady deck of a
ship on a high sea.

This time make it good for her make it sweet show her with your
hands and mouth and cock what you feel what you can make her feel
this could be the only chance you ever get to make it happen to
show her slow and sweet slow and sweet

Two minutes later he was buried in her as deep as he could go,
his pants around his ankles, briefs tangling his knees. As fast
as he was pumping, she was meeting him stroke for stroke, her
arms under his, hands on his shoulders, both of them making
inarticulate sounds that a passing stranger might mistake for
crying.

Within ten minutes she convulsed, and he fought hard to keep her
from bucking him off; the struggle causing his own orgasm to
shoot through him like a bottle rocket 

DAMN!

As he fell away from her, he grabbed her hand, the way a man
falling off a ship would grab a lifeline; this time he would not
let her go so easily.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Chapter Five

Silence slowly cooled the room, chilling the flesh, though both
Scully and Skinner still had most of their clothes on. Lightning
strobed the windows periodically, illuminating them like deer
caught in headlights. As the sweat dried, it condensed into
clouds of regret.

Skinner's regret: he'd finally had his chance, and taken her like
a rutting animal, even though she had given him little choice in
the matter. Why she did it was still a mystery. The first time,
she'd been drugged and out of her mind with grief. But this time-
-what? What would Scully's regret be?

He raised up on an elbow to look down at her. She glanced at his
throat, not willing to meet his eyes even in the semi-dark room.
Moments ago he had been driving into her, mouths joined, hands
frantic. Now she was as shy as a virgin lying in his bed.

But she was lying in his bed.

Well, technically, he was lying in hers, something he never
expected to do again. He brushed the hair from her face, and
although she didn't wince at his touch, she did stiffen a little.

"You'd better go," she said.

Skinner said, "I don't think so, Agent Scully."

He had not let go of her and, and when she started to move away,
he drew her back. He said, "I can't believe you were so afraid of
talking to me about what happened between us that you actually
had sex with me to avoid the subject."

The corners of her lips quirked; God forbid she should smile.
"That's not exactly what happened."

"Then what did happen?"

She sighed deeply. "I don't know. I wanted you. I won't deny it.
I let this happen."

"Scully, you MADE this happen."

She made a little movement with her shoulders that might have
been a shrug. She said, "That night when you and I...slept
together...It wasn't rape. I admit I wasn't quite all there, but
you didn't take advantage of me." She paused and took a deep
breath, steadying herself. "I was so lonely. I mean, I felt so
alone. Then when I was with you, I...you..."

"What?"

"You're so strong," she said. "You made me feel safe."

Skinner resisted the impulse to flex a biceps, even though he
understood that by strength she meant support and concern. Scully
was the most independent person he knew, man or woman, but that
night she had needed his protection from the raw world.

"But now?" he prompted. "This?"

"I don't know. It's been five years since I've been with anyone.
And then it wasn't so great. Then when you and I were together, I
didn't have to think. It was such a relief. Then afterwards...I
just...I haven't been able to forget it."

Skinner sighed. "Neither have I, Scully. Neither have I."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

The house sat alone, several miles out of the town proper, backed
by woods, though in the dark it was impossible to tell if it was
just a stand of trees or deep forest A porch light came on as
they drove up the path to the gate. It had stopped raining, but
when Mulder stepped out of the car he felt his shoes squelch in
the mud. June Star got out on the other side and waited until he
had come around to join her. Mulder smelled her, a high sharp
tang of fear-sweat under a heavy dose of Charlie. He wanted to
put his hand on her arm; touching people brought them more
clearly into focus for him. But the screen door to the house
screeched open and two young men came out.

"My brothers," June Star said.

And that was how they got close enough to jump him.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

"But you know this is wrong, don't you?" Scully said.

"I still think the first time was some sort of statutory rape,
whether you liked it or not. You weren't in full possession of
your faculties. But if you mean we can't be together now because
I'm your boss..." He paused thoughtfully. "Well, yes, that's
wrong, too."

She looked at him at last. "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For everything. For hurting you." He traced the curve of her
face with his fingertip, ran his thumb over her full lower lip.
She made no attempt to stop him. He said, "You can't help that.
Whenever you're around, a lot of men are going to hurt just
because they want you and can't have you. It's not your fault."

"Still," she said. "We can't do this again."

"Well, probably not," he admitted, "But technically we haven't
finished this time."

He felt more than saw the uneasiness that ran through her. He
began to unbutton her blouse carefully, not touching her in any
other way. She put her hand up to stop him.

"No," she said.

No means no, he thought dreamily. He stopped what he was doing
and put his hand on her breast, over the soft cotton of her
blouse, over the nylon cup of her bra. His thumb stroked her in a
firm, gentle caress. He watched her face, and although she closed
her eyes, her nostrils flared in a short sharp intake of breath.

For the first time, Skinner began to realize what was going on.
Before, she had been grieving, and needed someone strong to help
her through. Then, less than an hour ago, he had been bullying
her because he needed to give her information and she was
resisting him. Scully could not have sex with him on a fifty
fifty basis. She couldn't handle whatever guilt and shame her
full participation would entail. If he wanted her, he was going
to have to push for it.

Still, he would have stopped immediately if not for that one
breath. She wanted him. It was a sign of inexperience that she
wasn't even aware of the signals she was giving. It was possible
that she wasn't even aware of how passionate her nature was. But
it made sense: she'd had to fight her feelings, especially around
Mulder, for so long that her surface had turned to ice.

But it had not touched the fire inside her. Skinner's advantage
was experience; between his first marriage and his last, he had
been with a few women, and those women had given him a PhD in the
art of sexual pleasure. Scully didn't have the slightest idea of
what she was capable of, had never explored this side of herself.
And that was another advantage.

He stared down at her in the dark, his eyes deep sockets with
only pinpoints of light in their centers: the wolf regarding the
lamb. Finally his desire had a cool head, a calculated direction.
It was a good thing Scully was not looking at him at that moment.

As he stroked her breast, feeling her skin warm to his touch
beneath the material of her clothes, she gripped his wrist. But
her fingers were feeble, and the intent half hearted. He took his
hand from her and seized the fingers that had tried vaguely to
push him away, and pinned her wrist to the mattress, leaning over
her.

"Scully," he said softly, in the clenched-teeth growl that was
quintessentially Skinner, "I am going to fuck you again right
now, and tomorrow every time you sit down you're going to
remember every minute of it. Every inch of it."

Her eyes widened in alarm as he brought his face down to hers. If
there was a struggle in her, it was internal, not with him. When
he kissed her, she let him. Then she helped him. Then turned her
face away in panic, not because he was going to do to her exactly
what he'd said, but because of what he was making her feel,
something their twelve minute encounter had barely touched.

Skinner made his decision. It would not have been his first
choice, because his tendency towards all women was gentleness.
But he was going to have to force her, to a point, or at least
bully her into this. It was the only way he could get to her.

In the long run it was going to cost both of them maybe more than
they could afford. But for now, nothing on earth could stop him
from making love to her in the only way she was able to accept.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Mulder stood in the dark taking deep ragged breaths. He knew he
had lost some blood, but he wasn't dizzy or shocky, both symptoms
of blood loss he knew only too well. One of the boys had pulled a
knife, a huge glittering deer-gutting monster of a knife, and
slashed as far down as Mulder's ribs; he had felt the jar of
impact when metal hit bone.

In the struggle he had lost his coat, pulling free while they
were wrestling with the loose material, trying to get a hold on
him. His cell phone was in that coat, and he had to get back to
it somehow. He had to get in touch with Scully and warn her that
it had been a trap, and that they'd be after her next.

Rain began to fall again, and as Mulder looked down, he saw the
steam rising from his torn shirt where his blood was slowly
escaping.

He looked into the dark mass of trees ahead of him, and then back
at the house. He knew he wouldn't last long trying to find his
way back through the woods.

He had to get to that phone. He had to get to Scully.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Skinner undressed her, and himself, in slow stages. His skin had
no memory of hers, as if this was the first time he had ever
touched her. Everything seemed new and magic, almost
otherworldly. And yet he had rarely felt so much in the moment.
When she was naked he only wanted to feel her responses to him,
the pressure of his hands changing the position of her body,
controlling the expression on her face. She seemed in a daze,
wanting to stop him, but unable to find a point at which it was
possible.

He kissed her gently, his mouth moving lightly over hers, tongue
teasing her lips apart for entry, while his fingers did the same
thing under the sheet he had drawn over them for warmth. Still,
Scully resisted, or only surrendered grudgingly, though her body
was fully aroused. It was like trying to rub the knot out of a
cramped muscle. He could feel the fever on her skin, hear her
sharp gasps as he explored her, learning the secret places of
pleasure, but she kept herself distanced.

"If I had a lifetime, the things I could do with you," he
murmured against her breasts.

"Skinner--"

At her tone of protest he pushed her legs apart, shoving his
knees between hers. It was his power that excited her, his
strength that she could give in to without guilt, and he used it
ruthlessly. However aggressive he became, they both knew it was
only a delicious game, an exploration of boundaries, and that she
was safe within the charmed circle of his protection: she was the
one with the true power.

When he fucked her he held her wrists in one hand above her head
in theclassic position of dominance, and he was rougher with her
than he would have been normally, holding her down so she
couldn't move in any way but to give him pleasure, couldn't
struggle in any way that didn't increase her own excitement. He
knew she needed an excuse to feel the full extent of her passion,
and he was giving her one. He made her feel his strength, the
long slow in and out slide of his thrusts, his penis opening her
again and again, stroking down in a long curving motion and
making her shudder each time as he moved with increasing force,
in and out. He could feel her quivering under him, a cornered
thing, her hips rolling in time to his driving rhythm. He fucked
her harder, faster, then deliberately slowed each time she
approached a climax; delaying her orgasm as long as he could.
There was a point at which pain became pleasure--he hoped no one
would ever teach her that. But there was also a point at which
pleasure became pain, and that was what he wanted her to feel,
waiting until the moment she could not control herself, just at
the threshold when teasing would become torture, when she looked
up at him imploringly and groaned, "Skinner. Please."

Then he released her, letting go of her hands and bracing himself
on his forearms to bang her into the mattress as hard as he
could, and when she came it was with a frantic arching and
bucking and twisting that seemed to go on forever, and the name
she cried out was Skinner, Skinner, oh Skinner. And in taking her
this way he knew he was losing every last ounce of himself to
her, that she would have power over him now until the day he
died.

Too intense. Afterwards she cried, not for long, just a few
minutes, against the hollow of his neck. He had his chin on the
top of her head,murmuring nonsense sounds to comfort her,
grateful that in that position she couldn't see the tears in his
own eyes.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Ten miles away, Mulder jerked his head up, his mouth open, eyes
wide. He felt as if a ghost had just walked through his body, and
he saw a vision of Scully's face, tear streaked, for one flashing
moment of clarity. He moved his lips to form her name, Scully.

Somewhere uncomfortably nearby a car door slammed, voices called
to each other. Bodies rustled against leaves. Mulder pushed
himself to his feet and began to run.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

In sleep, Skinner kept his hand on her arm, unwilling to let her
go as far away as a dream. He knew that when he eventually did
turn loose, it would not be an easy thing to catch her again.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

They caught him just before he got to the rental car.

One of them knocked him down from behind, a flying tackle, and
Mulder felt the tendons in his wrist give as he broke his fall.

A boy of no more than eighteen squatted near him, grinning.
"Lookin' for this, pal?" He waggled the phone tauntingly in
Mulder's face. "We're just like the cops, see," the other boy
said. "We let you have that one phone call. Go on. Call your
friend. Maybe she'll come with bail."

Mulder winced as he took the proffered phone. It was a trick; he
was waiting for one of them to snatch it back. But they both
backed off a little. They wanted him to call Scully. Get her down
here. A trap.

Instead, he dialed Skinner's cell phone. The call went through,
rang four times in Skinner's coat pocket in his motel room, where
he should have been at four in the morning. A recording came on
instead: "Leave a message."

One of the boys snatched the phone back and shouted into it, "We
got your boyfriend right here, honey. Elm and Hollow, north of
town. You want to see him again, come alone, and if we see anyone
else, like a cop, we'll fuckin kill him in a New York minute."

They both laughed excitedly, and the phone was hurled onto the
roof of the house. Mulder let himself slide slowly down into the
mud. He heard the girl saying anxiously, "What if the old guy
comes with her? You know you're not supposed to kill the old guy.
Just them."

"Yeah, well if you'd got the old guy down here like you were
supposed to, we could have got them both at the same time in
town."

"I told you--"

Mulder faded out again for a few minutes. When he came to, their
voices had receded a little, and he saw their legs from a strange
angle as they backed up from him.

"Yeah, but what if we need him to get her?"

"She'll come. Don't be a wussy. Go on."

"Screw it," one of the boys said, and Mulder twisted his head to
look up in time to see the muzzle flash of his own pistol.

He twitched, and was still.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Four in the morning. Skinner woke with both arms wrapped around
Scully. It was cold in the room and he pulled the blanket up
around them, tucking her in. She stirred, and her whole body
moved against his, breasts against his chest, warm breath on his
throat, and he thought, Good God, with mild amazement at his
stiffening response.

Looking down at her, a deep sadness began to seep into the empty
places where she had so recently been.

I am all out of tricks, he thought. From now on it's up to you.

Scully's eyes flew open as if he had spoken aloud.

"Mulder," she said. She clutched the sheet to her breasts and sat
up. "Mulder!"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Skinner, dressed in black, grasped Scully's arms as they stood in
his room. "Now listen to me, Scully." He gave her a little shake.
"I'm deadly serious about this. Look at me."

Her eyes met his. "I am looking at you."

"If he'd called your number, maybe. But he called mine. We have
to assume that means he needs me and not you. It must be a trap.
That means they'll be expecting you. Do you understand what I'm
saying?"

"I can understand English," she said, irritated. "Get to the
point."

"You are not to follow me. You are to go to the police station
and wait there for me to call. Am I making myself clear?"

"Clear," she echoed. "But--"

He shook her again, moving his face close to hers. His eyes were
black with fear and a kind of urgent anger. "I am not negotiating
on this, Scully. I know you think you should come with me. But if
something goes wrong, they will not kill Mulder if they don't see
you. Or at least our chances will be better. My responsibility is
to both of you. If you come, you'll be playing right into their
hands. Now goddammit, go to the police station and let me take
care of this."

He released her and tucked his gun into his shoulder holster,
patted his ankle above his boot to make sure his backup weapon
was secure. Then he strode out into the coming dawn to where his
cab was waiting.

Five minutes later, a second cab rolled into position at the
front entrance.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Mulder blinked awake. There was no pain; his side was numb. He
couldn't turn his head. His cheek was pressed into the carpet; it
smelled like old dog. Dimly he realized that they had dragged him
through the mud into the house, that the mud must have dried over
his wound, effectively stopping the bleeding.

Cool.

He could see the door frame, and just the feet of the girl who
was sleeping on the sofa. He could see into the small bedroom
beyond the hall door, at an angle, just as far as the bed. It
seemed to be a boy's bedroom. There was a poster of a race car
over the bed. Under the window there was a kind of toy chest.

As he watched, the window slid open slowly, and Death, all in
black, came gliding through like a huge black panther. Noiseless,
inexorable. Death was coming for him.

No, wait a minute. It was Skinner. Stepping on the toy chest,
coming down on the carpet. Looking around the room. Seeing
something, a baseball bat. Picking it up. Gripping it too short,
Skinner. Don't choke it. Never get any swing on it that way.

Skinner's boot came down not far from his face as he stepped over
Mulder's body. Mulder couldn't look up, couldn't move. He had
something to say but his throat wouldn't make words. Someone, not
Skinner, gave a short yelp of surprise. There were no shots
fired. Grunting, thudding. Smacking sounds, wet and ugly. A spray
of hot blood across his bare arm. Someone saying Shit! and
someone grunting Oof! like in a cartoon. He wished he could see
what was happening, but he really didn't want to see. He just
wanted to say one thing. Needed to say it. He tried to open his
mouth, but his tongue seemed too swollen to work. He croaked.
Someone went flying by him, one of the boys, landing limp as a
discarded doll across the coffee table. Then it was quiet again.

Skinner crouched down by Mulder's body, unsure what to do for
him. There was blood all over his arm, his back, but he was
afraid if he moved him he might aggravate the injuries. He pulled
his cell phone out to dial Scully's number.

While it was ringing he realized Mulder's eyes were open, he was
opening and closing his mouth like a fish on a line. Relief
washed through him. There was no greater gift he could give
Scully than to return Mulder to her alive. The irony of it was
too much to consider at the moment. Above all else, this man was
his responsibility, and he would not let him down.

"Hang on, Mulder," he said softly. "I'm calling for help right
now."

No answer. Dammit, Scully. Skinner pushed the button down and
then dialed 911.

Mulder was trying desperately to speak. Skinner leaned down low
to hear the words as Mulder whispered hoarsely:

"There are three of them."

Before Skinner could react, a booted foot shot out, kicking the
phone out of his hand, sending it flying across the room. A
seasoned warrior, Skinner sprang away from the blow, tucking his
shoulder and rolling across the floor. If he had been attacked,
it would have been the perfect move. But the man who kicked the
phone out of his hand stood still, only looking at him as Skinner
came to a stop against the sofa.

The man was in his early thirties, with a broad face and long
dirty blond hair tied in a pony tail. He wore jeans and a striped
tee shirt, cowboy boots. He held a sixteen gage pump shotgun in
one hand, the butt propped against his thigh.

Skinner said, "Let me guess. Antoine Baxter, right?"

Baxter nodded, smiling. "And you must be that Assistant Director
guy, right? Skinner. Man, I really, really didn't want to get you
involved in all this."

"Then you shouldn't have broken into my office and removed
records."

Baxter laughed. "You dumb sack of shit; that was your own people
did that, not me. Even your little buddy helped out--" he nudged
Mulder with a toe, "--by killing that dufus who was supposed to
be me. What the hell did you hope to gain by coming here, old
man? If you'd just let your guys do their job, and then you'd
have made it through this alive."

Skinner straightened slowly. "Who are you, really?" he asked.

"Just a guy," Baxter shrugged, parodying modesty. "A guy who
knows something, let's say. And in return for passing information
around, I get the Big Boy protection, you know what I mean? Your
guys got a little too close, so I had to hire a guy to be me just
long enough to get himself killed. He was so fucking dumb I
thought he'd blow himself up before he got caught. That's the
Baxter this old boy shot." He nudged Mulder again, who groaned.
"Would have all been tied up neat if you'd just kept your damn
nose out of it."

"You can't get away with killing me," Skinner said.

"Hell, old man, I can get away with anything, just as long as I
clean up behind myself. They'll figure one of these dumb punks
did it. Her, too."

Skinner looked past him, beyond the two crumpled bodies he had
taken out, to the girl sleeping on the sofa. He realized for the
first time that she wasn't sleeping; her head was twisted back
and her eyes were open and glazed.

He had a sudden sickening thought: Scully. He wondered if he
could possibly get to the gun in his ankle holster before Baxter
could get the shotgun up. He knew in his heart he could not.

"So this is it, I guess," Baxter said. He pumped the shotgun
expertly, and Skinner heard the sound of his own death being
chambered into the barrel, KER- CHUNK, a sound no law officer
could ever mistake for anything else, or hear without a curling
sensation in the stomach.

Baxter aimed the shotgun at him and Skinner couldn't help
himself; he closed his eyes, turned his head away. At least it
would be quick and painless. He hoped.

The sound of the shot was high and sharp, not the deep bass
explosion of a shotgun. Skinner dropped down, rolling again,
drawing his weapon from his ankle holster and coming to his feet,
braced against the wall. But Baxter was already slumping over,
the side of his head gone in a splatter of red gore.

Behind him, in the bedroom, Scully stood in the classic
marksman's pose, one foot back to brace her weight against the
recoil, the butt of her automatic set in her left palm like a
teacup to steady the shot.

Skinner bent forward, his hands on his thighs, breathing out hard
through his mouth. Scully was on her knees in an instant beside
Mulder, her hands fluttering over him gently, exploring,
examining.

"Oh, Mulder," she said, and the hairs on the back of Skinner's
neck stood up; it was almost exactly the same voice she had used
only a few hours earlier to cry out to him.

Mulder looked up at her and tried to smile. "I knew you'd come,"
he murmured.

"Always," she whispered. She leaned forward to kiss the top of
his head, and pressed her cheek against his hair in a brief
moment of tenderness. Mulder closed his eyes and sighed.

Skinner retrieved his cell phone and dialed 911 again.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

The paramedics raised the gurney and rolled it level to the back
of the ambulance. Scully started to get in, but Skinner caught
her arm and pulled her back.

"He'll be fine," he said. "You and I need to get out of here
before there are any more questions."

The sheriff had tried to sort out their bewildering tale; an
anonymous tip, two young men attacking the girl, killing her, and
a third man apparently in on it, too, Mulder injured but managing
to call for backup, Scully and Skinner rushing to his aid. Big
fight, everyone dead, end of story. The house actually turned out
to be June Star's, a girl well known in town because of her
reputation for taking boyfriends to the White Horse Inn. The boys
were locals, too, each with a rap sheet long enough to erase all
suspicion of their innocence. Skinner promised a full report to
be faxed before the end of the week.

On the drive back to the motel, Skinner was so angry he couldn't
trust himself to speak. Scully sat as far over on her side as
possible, silent.

Skinner's profile was intractable, jaw set, eyes blazing. She
couldn't tell if he was fighting his rage or building it up for
some kind of explosion. She stared out the window miserably,
thinking of Mulder. He wouldn't die, but he was in pain. He would
want her there. She was his doctor. He needed her for that,
anyway.

At the motel Skinner marched her into his room as if escorting a
prisoner.

He slammed the door and turned to face her, his temper like a
savage dog at the end of its leash. Scully didn't back away from
him, didn't avoid his eyes. She was afraid, but only of his
anger, not of him. This was the kind of thing she could handle.

He paced across the floor in front of her, his fists clenched.
"Scully--"

He had to take another breath. "Agent Scully, if you ever, EVER,
disobey a direct order from me again, I will see to it that you
receive the most severe disciplinary action allowable for the
offense, up to and including your discharge from the agency."

She said nothing. He paced again, trying to release some of the
energy generated by the demons inside him. He saw her kneeling by
Mulder, her cheek pressed against his hair, the look on her face.
He saw her framed against the doorway behind Baxter, a perfect
target if there'd been a fourth man. If the girl had been alive.
If, if, if. But then he remembered these eyes, anxious and
watchful now, when they had been sleepy with satisfaction,
looking into his as she drifted off. And he saw her smiling at
him on the airplane, so long ago, that smile of forgiveness.

The demons saw it too, and fled. Skinner turned away from her
abruptly and went to sit on the bed.

He said, "We still have to make up some bullshit report. I'll
leave that to you. You're good at that sort of thing."

Scully wrapped her arms around herself, a gesture that tugged at
his already battered heart. He felt defeated, and lowered his
head. "That's all, Agent Scully. You can go."

"Oh, so I'm dismissed, am I?"

"I'm sorry if it sounded that way, Agent Scully. I'm just too
tired to be polite right now. I just killed two college aged boys
with a baseball bat. I just found out that certain people I work
for would have been complicit in the murder of as many as half a
dozen of my best agents, and probably me too." He waved his hand
at her. "Do whatever the hell you want. Just don't go see Mulder
until I come with you, okay?"

He felt her staring at him, but all his adrenalin had been spent
in that last rush of temper, leaving him as hollowed out as a
Halloween pumpkin. He stretched out on the bed, putting his hands
behind his head.

"Get some sleep, Agent Scully."

"Is that an order?"

Her voice came from closer to him instead of further away. She
was standing over him. He felt the mattress give as she sat down.

He looked up at her, not knowing what to expect. She reached out
a hesitant hand to touch his face, stroking the stubble on his
jawline lightly. He seized her hand and brought it to his lips.

"I'm sorry," she said.

He was too washed out to defend himself against her sudden
sweetness. It simply worked. He said, "Thanks for saving my life,
by the way."

"Anytime."

He searched her eyes. "No matter what happens in the future,
Scully, I'm not going to be able to stop wanting you."

"But we both know there's no future in it."

"Does there have to be?"

"Well, there has to be a future, and presumably we'll all three
be in it."

Mulder. He was never far from her thoughts. Ah well. Skinner
moved over on the bed and Scully accepted his silent invitation,
lying down beside him. "I'm so tired I can't think anymore," he
said.

"Me, too."

He turned on his side, and turned her too so that he could hold
her from behind, curled up spoon style. Having once given in to
that kind of comforting, it was going to be harder each time to
give it up, easier for her each time to let him touch her and
admit that she liked it. He slid his hand over her stomach,
brushing the undersides of her breasts with his thumb.

Her voice was sleepy, but amused. "Oh, Skinner, don't even
start."

He chuckled. "You overestimate me, Agent Scully."

She shifted closer to his chest, getting comfortable, and he
meant to say something else to her, but sleep washed over him in
an irresistible wave, and he was dragged down into its undertow
with his arms still wrapped around her.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Chapter Six

Scully was late to work on Monday. It was unusual enough to
warrant a surprised look on Mulder's face when she came in at
ten.

"I was getting worried," he said.

"Sorry." She offered no excuses and he didn't ask for any. She
took her seat at her desk and eyed the stack of folders he had
left there. "Is this all new stuff?"

"No, I already went through the dailies. I'm looking at cases
from the last couple of years."

She glanced up, feeling an exasperation so familiar it didn't
even register as annoyance. Mulder never seemed to think these
things all the way through, or else--more likely-- he just didn't
give a damn. In theory it would be great to solve some of the old
cases. And once he got on the track of something, Mulder was like
a bloodhound; he'd keep his nose to the ground to the exclusion
of all else until he found what he wanted. But why old cases?
Didn't he care that each one solved would only garner increased
resentment from the agents who had initiated the files, and then
had given up when all leads died? Didn't he realize that it only
made them more enemies in the Bureau?

Probably he did. He just never seemed to feel the need for
approval from others the way she did. It was one of the things
she admired most about him, and disliked most about herself, and
there was no point going over an argument he was incapable of
understanding. Lately it had begun to grate, that's all. Her mind
had been on other things, and she didn't have the energy to fight
her own battles and his battles too.

She sighed and picked the folders up to stack them neatly.

Mulder, watching her with a troubled expression, said, "You okay,
Scully?"

She nodded. (Fine, Mulder. Just having trouble sleeping, so much
so that I had to take a pill last night at three in the morning,
and overslept the alarm as a result.) But if she said that, he
might say, Why can't you sleep? And then she would say...ummm...

(Well, Mulder. I was thinking of our boss. Actually I was trying
not to think of him, which sometimes works during the day, but
then at night I close my eyes and remember the red burst of light
when he drove into me and made me lose my mind. The way he
touched me in places I hadn't even considered as erogenous zones.
I remember his mouth and his hands, those long thick fingers
prodding, hard, but so incredibly sensitive that if I even took a
breath the wrong way he would ease up. And I try hard to forget
the way it was for us then, when he made me feel something that
made orgasm a pale shadow in comparison. So much so that I cried
afterwards, the way anything so achingly beautiful brings tears
to your eyes.)

(And since we are such good friends, Mulder, and I know I can
tell you anything, let me tell you that although I am no longer
sore, thank God, I remember the hard thick length of him inside
me, and in the night that haunting afterimage makes me feel empty
in a way I cannot begin to describe. He stretched me out , not
THERE so much [well, there, too, actually] but in my spirit, or
whatever that place is that had shriveled like a raisin after all
these years of hopelessly loving you.)

(And now, although I love you so much my heart could break with
it, all I can think of is how to recover from those experiences.
It was like a shot of pure heroin; poison, but heaven, too. I
know he won't touch me again, won't call me, won't make any move
in my direction. Somehow we both understood that when we left
Winslow and came back to work. If there is ever to be a next
move, it will have to be mine. And we both know that isn't going
to happen.

Mulder was staring at her.

"What?"

"You just looked so sad there for a minute," he said. "Are you
sure everything's okay?"

She shrugged. "I'm just tired. Maybe I'm coming down with
something. I'll be all right."

(In a year or two.)

"Well, drink some coffee or something, because Skinner wants to
see us in his office at eleven. He got the report you faxed him,
but he says we need to fine tune it."

Scully's shoulders twitched with an involuntary shudder. Mulder
smiled at her. "Ah, it won't be so bad, Scully. He's mellowed out
a little since Winslow. And he does owe you his life now, doesn't
he?"

Of course Skinner was just doing his job. It would have seemed
odd if he hadn't asked them to confer with him over a report as
serious as the one in which agents and civilians had both been
killed, and probably the CIA had been involved. Wording had to be
exact, but ambiguous enough in case one day there were any
questions. After all, no one knew what had happened to Agent
Young, and Agent Rupert Smith's death had looked like a suicide,
and there were no records on their suspect because someone had
simply wiped the books clean.

But she did not want to see him. In the next hour she thought of
a hundred lame excuses to get out of the meeting. But at five
minutes to eleven, Mulder stood up and put on his jacket. She got
up and went to him, straightening his tie absently. He reached
down and caught her hands, making her eyes focus on his.

"Scully, you know you can talk to me, don't you?"

She smiled at the gentle concern in his voice, and at the fact
that she was only just now registering--his tie had blue clock
faces against a black background, atrocious even for him. And
then the smile turned to real amusement as she pictured the
expression on his face if she blurted out, "Skinner fucked me,
Mulder. Three times. And I loved it."

But she didn't say that, and Mulder smiled back at her, and they
went up to the A.D.'s office together.

Skinner was at his desk when they came in, looking down at the
report in front of him, one hand shading his eyes against the
harsh flourescent light overhead. He glanced up briefly; he was
wearing his glasses, so the light reflected off them from that
angle, and his face gave nothing away.

"Come in and have a seat," he said, waving them towards the much
used office chairs in front of his desk.

Mulder and Scully took their usual positions. Mulder slumped;
Scully sat upright with her hands folded in her lap, her legs
crossed at the ankles.

Skinner said, "Overall, this looks like a good job, Scully."

"Thank you."

(God help me through this) she prayed. (I have sat here a hundred
times and never had these thoughts, these feelings. If I get up
and this chair is damp, Mulder's going to suspect something.)

Skinner, cool as lemon ice cream, acted as if nothing had ever
happened, while she sat there, her wrists aching with memory and
desire. He said, "I think I'd change the part where Mulder loses
his weapon. I'd change it to something like they took it from him
at gunpoint."

She nodded. Their eyes met, and this time she did not look away.
His mouth was set in a straight line, his face guarded, a mask.
She hoped hers was too.

When Mulder spoke, they both jumped a little. "Who'd believe
that?" he asked.

It was a joke. Scully tried to smile, but Skinner just looked at
him blankly.

"And this part about flying up to exhume Baxter's body. You could
leave that out. Just say that since our local contact was no
longer available, you and Mulder wanted to interview local area
people, talk to the motel manager, things like that."

"How would I explain what you were doing?" she asked.

(How indeed.)

"Leave me out of it entirely," he said. "As far as anyone here
knows, I never went to Winslow. I took a couple of sick days off
last week; that's all the record has to show. We can cover our
tracks every bit as well as Baxter's people covered his."

She arched an eyebrow. "So you weren't even there?"

He looked at her deliberately. "As far as I'm concerned, Agent
Scully, those three days never even happened."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

When they were gone, Skinner got up from his desk and went to the
window. He spent more and more time these days staring out from
this position. He had not meant to wound her. He'd seen the
flicker of pain in her eyes; it had been like throwing a ball
hard against a wall, and almost being knocked down by the
rebound. That was the worst moment, the nearest he had come to
losing control.

But he got through it. One day at a time, old man, and you'll get
through it all. But God the next few months were going to be
difficult. His taste for other women had soured, and his self-
respect had taken a beating. He had spent every night for a week
going to his club, swimming until he could swim no more, playing
handball so savagely he had quickly exhausted or intimidated his
partners, lifting weights until his whole body screamed for
relief. And still ended up spending the late hours with a tube of
Astroglide and the hot memories of her underneath him, the wild
flex of muscles as he thrust into her, the soft agony in her
voice as she said Skinner, Skinner, oh, Skinner, a recording that
played back endlessly in his head each night.

There was no reason for them to see each other at the office,
outside of these brief meetings. No reason to call each other. No
reason for him to show up at her apartment, drunk and out of
control, to drag her into the bedroom and fuck the living
daylights out of her. Just fantasies. Just wishes on falling
stars. Too late; his star had already fallen. Their brief time
together was over, and that was that.

He was a strong man. He'd survived a war and the death of his
wife, a loss against which all things could be measured and found
more bearable.

He would survive this.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

"Scully," Mulder said, prompting her to reply with "Hmm?" without
bothering to look up; "Hey, Scully, look at this."

She did look up then, her auburn hair falling away from her tired
eyes, to see him holding up an eight by ten photograph of a row
of storefronts.

"What am I looking at?"

"Senator Dolf Young's teenaged daughter vanished about a month
ago. We got the bulletin in our box. Remember?"

Scully shook her head. Pictures like that were too disturbing;
she turned milk cartons to face forward, and threw away flyers
that came with her junk mail, saying, HAVE YOU SEEN ME? Each of
them had an echo of grief so intense she had simply gotten into
the habit of looking the other way.

"Witnesses say the girl was seen going into a pawnshop right
here." He pointed.

Scully lifted her shoulders and dropped them again. "So?"

"Right HERE, Scully." He got up and went to her, laying the file
on the desk in front of her. She scanned the photo. A nameless
building, a liquor store, a store with a sign advertising
bailbonds, so presumably it was somewhere downtown, near the
courthouse. There was a space that looked like an out of focus
vacant lot, and then a video rental place with a big sign that
said OUT OF BUSINESS. Then just the edge of the photograph.

Mulder tapped his finger on the empty space between two
buildings. "Two kids swear she went into a pawnshop right here."

"There is no pawnshop there, Mulder." She tilted her head at him,
puzzled.

Mulder took other file folders from his desk and held them
against his chest so he could look down as he thumbed them open.
"I have five reports of people missing in Willmington, Delaware,
five in Charlotte, North Carolina, five in Baton Rouge. And two
in Houton, Texas. All cases where someone was seen going into a
place called Issie's, and never coming out again."

"I'm confused," she said. "You think a pawnshop owner or someone
working in pawnshop somehow injured or killed these people?"

"No, Scully. Don't you get it? In each case, the pawnshop itself,
the location, proved a dead end. I've been reading these old
files, and I'm starting to see the pattern here." He dropped the
files on her desk, one by one. "Chicago, four years ago. An
alleyway between two buildings. Colombia, four years ago. Vacant
lot. Each time, five people reported vanishing into that area,
possibly into that shop. And no shop there. Until now." He wagged
a final eight by ten glossy in front of her. "Until this, from
Houston."

"Please God, not Texas," Scully said.

"Don't you think that's pretty weird, though?"

"Mulder, thousands of teenagers go missing each year. Buildings
get torn down all the time. Both are signs of our increasingly
impermanent, highly mobile society."

He went on as if she had not spoken, and from deep inside her she
heard the faraway baying of the hound as he smelled his quarry.
Mulder was ONTO SOMETHING and now the fury of hell couldn't
dissuade him from the chase.

"Each disappearance occurred on a Sunday, when surrounding
businesses were closed. And each time it was a pawnshop with the
same name. Issie's. But here's the best thing, Scully." He was a
little breathless, and his words had run together into a
monotone, the way he talked when something ignited the genius in
him, the leaper of conclusions, the intuition she had long ago
learned to listen to no matter how crazy it first sounded.

So she looked at the picture he gave her. It was a blurry shot of
a building with three balls hanging from a sign above it, the
traditional pawnshop symbol, though there was nothing else to
identify it. The large block letters "ISSIES" might have been
part of some other word; they seemed oddly formed, with no serifs
on the letters, and the E looked like a trident, like a Greek E.

Mulder handed her a magnifying glass and she leaned down to peer
through it. A row of people seemed to be standing behind the
glass, as indistinct as angels in a cloud formation. But one had
her hand on the glass, and her mouth open as if shouting, and
when Scully looked hard, she could see a face.

Mulder laid the bulletin of Young's missing daughter beside it.
The black and white photo had clearly been posed for, and the
makeup was professional, one of those studios that made people
look better than they'd ever looked before, or would ever look
again. But as Scully looked from the bulletin picture to the
photo of the face in the pawnshop, she had to nod. "Looks like
Young's daughter. Has anyone checked it out?"

With a flourish, Mulder presented his piece de resistance, a
final photo of two tall buildings with a wide alley between them.
Scully shook her head. "I don't get it. I don't see--Oh."

The second picture was identical in every way to the first,
except that where the pawnshop had nestled so closely between
those two tall buildings there was now only litter and overgrown
weeds, the look of long neglect in an empty alley.

"This is the same location--but where's the pawnshop?"

"Ex-ACT-ly my point," he said. He took his coat from the rack and
looked at her invitingly.

For what felt like the thousandth time, Scully got up and
followed him out the door.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Chapter Seven

Mulder drove most of the long flat highway from Dallas to
Houston, a four hour trip that was faster, many said, than
driving to the airport, waiting for a plane, taking the thirty
minute shuttle, debarking, and then driving from Houston
Intercontinental down the 59 to the heart of the city. He was
grateful for the time to think while Scully dozed quietly in her
seat, jostling gently against her seat belt restraint now and
again.

Scully. He gave her an affectionate look, but behind his eyes, he
wondered about her. Were her breasts fuller, her lips softer; was
the look in her eye more secret and tender? There was something
different about her lately, though he couldn't put his finger on
it. (Well, he wanted to, but she wouldn't let him.) Old joke,
cheap shot. He grinned through the windshield, watching the open
road ahead of him. But the grin faded as he stared into the
distance thoughtfully. He pinched his lower lip with his thumb
absently, his other hand hanging over the steering wheel.

He was tired, but not sleepy. He'd run out of pain killers
yesterday, and the bullet wound from Winslow had begun to throb a
little, like a stitch after running. And speaking of stitches,
those from the knife wound repair over his ribs had begun to itch
like crazy.

The long drive, with the prick of pain to keep him alert, was
exactly the kind of thing Fox Mulder loved most in the world.
Time to think. Alone but not alone. His adorable little sidekick
was cuddled up on the seat beside him. Cherry on the cake: she
was asleep and not giving him a hard time.

The things Dana Scully didn't know about her partner would fill a
galaxy or two. For instance, did she know that when he put his
hand on her, he could feel her? His mental image of it was like a
line graph, or an EKG readout. Sometimes the line spiked,
sometimes it ran along smoothly, sometimes it jittered up and
down. Occasionally it dipped. He could touch her anywhere, the
briefest brush against her arm, and know when she dipped, when
she rose, when it would only take one more smartass word from him
before she would come down on him like a ton of lead bricks.

If there was a color to the sensation, then it would currently be
blue. She had cooled to him lately, cooled to life in general.
She was in there somewhere, hiding, her eyes watchful and a
little sad. He was not sure that coaxing her out of hiding was
such a good idea just now. There were things that only time could
heal.

Their relationship had run a predictable course. When they had
first met, there was the rush of novelty, of each of them finding
something magic and exciting in the other, and she had formed a
crush on him that was a little embarrassing.

He wasn't that hard up for women that he had to put the make on
his own partner. If he wanted them, they were there. If they
didn't bore him, if he wasn't worried that each time he screwed
some girl she was going to turn into Phoebe and reach down and
yank his balls out through his throat. It was just that as the
years went by, he found himself wanting them less and less. Big
tits, long legs, nice ass, and he'd look, and the old trouser
mouse would stir a little, but beyond that, nothing.

Scully used to trot after him like a puppy, and he loved it, but
when she gave him that soulful, I adore you look, he had cringed.
Like Groucho Marx, he had grave suspicions about any club
nondiscriminating enough to have him as a member.

Then time and the tide of events had slowly, inexorably shifted.
Her strength had been gradually forged into something well beyond
his, and from those unsteady beginnings she had emerged with the
heart of a lion. Her freckles had faded, and her pony tail had
given way to a chic cut. The little sister had grown up, the way
Samantha never would, right under big brother's nose. And had her
feelings changed towards him, too?

He remembered waking in a hospital bed, not once or twice, but
half a dozen times, with Scully at his side, touching him somehow
so he could feel the deep resources of faith and strength within
her, and the first thing he would see when he woke up was her
blue, blue eyes gazing at him with love and concern. But these
days he just saw the concern. In Winslow she had fussed over him,
arguing with the nurse, not like an agitated lover, but like an
anxious mother with a sick child. And there had been that air of
distraction about her; she was never really THERE.

This past year she no longer laughed at his jokes, or hurried to
catch up with him when he strode off towards a windmill to do
battle. She fell behind more and more, and he felt such a
terrible ache at the image of her fading into the distance that
now he reached over and put his hand on her arm, very lightly, to
make sure she was still there with him.

Still there. Not even a stir.

Of course she didn't feel much like laughing after the discovery
and death of her little daughter, and didn't have the energy to
run after him after all those months being crushed under the
dreadful weight of her own mortality, was only just getting her
physical strength back after the episode with her cancer just
before Christmas. He could understand those things perfectly
well. But did she not do these things simply because she was
tired, or was it because she didn't want to anymore? Had they
missed so many opportunities to deepen their connection, had he
turned away from her inviting look so many times that now she was
simply losing interest?

What if that was it? The thing he dreaded most in the world was
the loss of Scully. That was the reason he never made a move on
her, for fear of letting her close enough to see whatever that
was inside him that had made him so...rejectable...all his life.

Mulder stared at the countryside dulling into darkness, seeing
into the past. He remembered trying to get his father to come to
a baseball game, a science fair, a teacher's meeting. It wasn't
that Bill Mulder hated him. He simply didn't care one way or the
other. Of his own accord, he would never so much as turn his head
to look at his son. It was that utter indifference to his
existence that had haunted Mulder all of his life.

Now was he fading from Scully's sight as well? When love dies, it
just dies, he thought. He could only play the sympathy card so
many times before her responses grew automatic; was she already
just going through the motions? Would that explain her
distraction in Winslow?

He shook his head sharply. Knock it off, Dark Side. Scully stands
alone but for you; she needs you. Her father is gone before her,
her daughter and all the children she ever hoped to have are
gone. Like him, she was marooned in the present moment, unable to
reach into the past or into the future.

Stranded on a desert island together; now there was a fantasy
worth pursuing. Gave that whole "I wouldn't have sex with you if
you were the last man on earth" thing a whole new slant. God
willing someday something will happen beyond our control, to
snatch this decision from us and force us into a confrontation,
and then I'll get into her pants, dammit, and put a smile on that
sad little face.

Scully stirred, dreaming. Mulder looked down at her tenderly and
then did a double take when she groaned softly in her throat.
"Nooo..."

The word said no but the groan said Fuck me. Mulder almost
swerved off the road. It was the most sexual, erotic sound he'd
ever heard her make, and his lesser brain registered it and began
to think for itself, standing at attention in case by some
miracle it was called upon to perform.

One sound and blue steel. Shit! No woman ought to have that kind
of power over a man. He tried to concentrate on the cars around
him, their positions relative to his. But his visions were
fragmented and vivid: his tongue meeting hers in a kiss, the
sight of her naked breasts, the room spinning as he rolled over
her in a bed.

Then the chill of aftermath. She was the Queen of the Second
Guess, and however she interpreted a sexual encounter, he could
not imagine a way it could come out happily ever after. Sex was
not a game for Mulder. It was more like a religious experience.
If she stopped loving him once he gave his soul to her--and why
should she not, once he revealed all his inadequacies to her?--
then he would die. Really die, by his own hand.

What point would there be in living without her?

Phoebe had nearly killed him, and then the last time they were
together the only reason she came on to him was because she
wanted to feel the flex of her own power. Even she end up
preferring some old married man to him.

Mulder loved hard, and sometimes that was hard on who he loved.
The last thing Scully needed was another burden like that. Not an
obsessive, needy, depressed pervert like him.

Looking at her, he beseeched her silently, Make that sound again;
let me hear it again, oh baby, just one more time.

But Scully was silent. The miles slipped by underneath them. And
slowly a different kind of thinking began to take over. This kind
was solitary in a different way, and he could never untangle the
crooked pathways it took to explain to anyone else how he got
where he was going. He just got there, helped by the hum of the
engine, the vibration of the car, the slipstream of time they
were caught up in, and Scully breathing quietly by his side.

A scene: he was twenty one years old, thin, intense, standing in
front of a stout dark haired woman who was leaning heavily on a
cane. It was at Oxford, and the air had that particular smell
that was England, something to do with being able to smell the
sea on both sides, a wide open smell.

The woman was a famous folklorist, a visiting lecturer, and he
had stopped her after a lecture to ask her to clarify some
points.

"The thing you're trying to define is called the concept of
limited good," she was telling him. "Many cultures, ancient and
modern, subscribe to this idea. They believe that because there
is only so much good to go around in the world, then when
something good happens to one person, a bad thing must happen to
another."

Mulder had said, "Does it work both ways, then? Is there only so
much evil in the world?"

She had given him a strange smile, her old brown eyes really
looking at him, really seeing him, in a way few people ever had.
"Unfortunately, my boy, there seems to be no limit to the evil in
this world. And yet most of us in most cultures seem to always be
redeemed in the end, so I suppose there's hope for us after all."

Mulder tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. Every bit
of that memory faded, visual and aural, like a picture melting,
to reveal a single word under all the facade: redeemed.

Now it would play like a song over and over in his head until he
had it just where it belonged.

Then an elegant leap in thinking, a flight into unimaginable
space: Pawn tickets are redeemed, aren't they?

Issies. Redeemed, redeeming, redeemer.

Flash to a slow drive down a bad street, six or seven years ago,
diverted by construction, and all right, dammit, lost, he had
meandered into a red light district. Whores prowling the road,
eyeing him. What idiot ever thought that sex made a man
triumphant over a woman? His testicles cringed upwards into his
body as he tried to avoid direct contact with their knowing eyes.
He had slowed for a light, forced to stop for it. Staring
straight ahead told them he wasn't interested. But some
persistent little chick had pecked at his window, and he turned
his gaze towards her. She was no more than thirteen years old,
all made up in garish colors, and she flicked her tongue out at
him with about as much erotic impact as a snake flicking its
tongue to taste the smells in the air.

He had been shocked, and his thoughts were: here is the face of
evil unformed, the place holder, the vacancy, but certainly it
will come, sooner or later, into the features of this child, and
make her bitter and stupid with greed for drugs or money or
whatever substitute for love she finds, and what I am looking at
now is the place reserved for evil.

Then the light changed and he had roared away with relief and a
sense of escape.

Redeem, redeeming, redeemable.

Good and evil. God, Scully, after all we've been through, all the
evil that's come to us, the crush of the wheel of Fortuna, as
they believed in the Middle Ages, that giant wheel of fate that
goes around--and comes around--don't we deserve some kind of good
in our lives? Maybe not me, but you. Certainly you, with your
steadfast heart and faith in God and compassion and basic human
decency. Am I dragging you off to another adventure that will end
in one or both of us in a hospital, the other in that bedside
chair, waiting? Do you deserve that?

He slowed now as he saw a sign for a speed zone ahead. It was
almost full dark, and the vast flat horizon had a lonely, empty
feel to it. He passed a large car dealership, seemingly in the
middle of nowhere, lit like Wrigley Field at night. Beyond that,
a small white house with a psychic's crystal ball painted on a
sign by the driveway: FORTUNES TOLD HERE, and underneath that a
second, smaller sign, written in black felt tip pen, FRESH YARD
EGGS two dollars a doz.

He looked down at Scully and was surprised to see her awake,
blinking up at him. Unaccountably embarrassed, he said, "What's a
yard egg?"

Short naps left her more irritable than refreshed. "How the hell
would I know?"

He scanned the road desperately for any sign of a cafe, a
convenience store. Any place that sold coffee. But when he looked
back at her, she had closed her eyes again, her cheek pillowed
against her hand. Whew! That was close. In the mood he was in, he
could do without a session with grumpy! Scully.

"Mulder?"

He jumped. "What?"

She sniffed and shifted around under her jacket, stretching
cramped muscles. "Where are we?"

"About a hundred miles north of Houston. Still about an hour and
a half to go."

"Mm. Want me to drive?"

"No, I'm okay."

The night settled around them, sparked by the passing lights of
fellow travellers. It was a comfortable, cosy feeling, as when
children wake in the night and shuffle around briefly under the
covers, then are still again.

Mulder said, "Whatcha thinkin' about, Scully?"

She murmured something he didn't catch, and then said, "I was
thinking about a story someone told me once about sleeping in the
back seat of a car when you're a kid."

"Most of my best back seat time was spent when I was a teenager."
He wiggled his eyebrows at her, and she gave him her pained
smile.

"What were YOU thinking about?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Nothing, really."

"Do you mind if I go back to sleep?"

"No, it's okay." A rush of long familiar warmth surged through
him; there was something so intimate in her sleepy voice, so
trusting. He reached over and brushed his fingertips over her
hair, feeling for her, and it was there, the same warmth that
went through his body like a healing balm.

"Sleep," he said softly.

She did.

Redeemed, redeemable, redemption.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Chapter Eight

Standing on the terrace of his apartment, Skinner took a deep
breath of the warm fragrant air. He could smell Spring, a distant
promise of life emerging from what had seemed for so long like
deat. It was a good smell, and he inhaled it with his eyes
closed, his face calm, relaxed. He had worked out earlier,
swimming for an hour in the lukewarm pool, and afterwards played
a game of handball with a young woman who he let beat him twice.
She was a pretty girl, a college student named Jessica. After the
game she had asked him out for a drink, and he had accepted. They
had sat in the bar of the health club and nursed virgin Pina
Coladas, and she had flirted with him and he had enjoyed it. But
after some desultory sparring, they had gone their separate ways.
Inside, behind the glass doors, his phone rang. He ignored it,
letting the machine pick up the message, and took a sip of his
drink. Straight Scotch, no ice. A good solid taste.

There was a certain satisfaction in knowing he could have Scully
in bed again whenever he wanted. Well, that might not be entirely
true. He did know the secrets of her body better than she did
herself, and seduction would not be a problem. Well, that might
not be entirely true, either. It would be a big problem for both
of them. Whatever happened next, he could not be the one to
initiate it. The ball was in Scully's court now, and although it
was a game he was more than willing to let her win, he suspected
she would choose not to play.

(All right, goddamn it, admit it; you're never going to get your
hands on her again.)

He was sorry now he'd let her go to Texas. He forgot how she
hated to fly until Mulder called him and told him they were
driving down from Dallas to Houston. He just hated the idea of
her being afraid of anything he couldn't control. Would Mulder
even think to hold her hand on the plane? Probably not. She had
to be dying before Mulder would hold her hand.

All this time he had misinterpreted Mulder's behavior towards
Scully as a kind of blindness. Now, because he felt much the same
way himself, he realized why Mulder was so reluctant to gaze for
long into her eyes, or to make the natural gestures of comfort
and affection. It was only a small step from kissing her cheek to
kissing her lips, and then the urge to make her open her mouth
for more was too much for any mortal man to withstand. He knew
all too well how slippery that slope was.

Damn that woman anyway. He was glad for his loose sweat pants,
but really annoyed by the semi-erect state his thoughts had
brought him to.

One minute his fantasies were brutal: he wanted to master her, to
force her to her knees and make her suck his cock, to throw her
on the bed and fuck her until she couldn't walk. But the next
minute his thoughts turned to sticky sweet pap,to cuddling her
like a puppy and rocking her to sleep in his arms. Women. Who the
hell thought THEM up?

What worried him, a little, was the fact that he wasn't really
that horny these days. He had never been much of one for casual
sex, though from time to time a kind of savage hunger had driven
him to prowl like a tomcat for nothing more than willing flesh.
Not so much anymore. Hell, never anymore. When he was with Sharon
he had never even considered cheating on her. A man made a vow,
he kept it. End of story. But above and beyond that, Sharon had
satisfied most of his needs most of the time. He hoped he had
satisfied hers. There had been that long bad patch between them,
but the threat of divorce had brought him to his knees. Thank
God. If she'd died before he surrendered to her...

Scully was so different from Sharon. In some ways less mature, in
others, wiser. Still, his feelings for her weren't that different
than those he'd had for his wife, especially in the beginning.
Hot for her all the time, almost to the point of obsession, but
under the passion, something deep and abiding. In a world that he
saw as increasingly polarized between good and evil, Scully
seemed to shine like a light. And it made him a better man to be
with her.

In theory. He was her boss. He would make her toe the line at
work. How could sex not cross over into their professional
relationship, corrupting her respect for his authority? How could
their personal relationship not affect his judgment when he had
to send her out on a case?

(You just screwed the girl, old son. Hardly a personal
relationship. Once because she was too drugged to fight you, and
heartbroken over another man. Once because, face it, you bullied
her into it. And once, once, once...) He took another sip of the
Scotch, feeling the silky warmth of it slide down his throat.

Once because she wanted to.

(Once because I taught our little Agent Scully, she of the fiery
red hair and heavenly blue eyes, some of the finer points of her
own sexuality, and those eyes looked right into mine with desire
for ME. And it was MY name she called, and my body she craved.)

He lost his train of thought for awhile, dragged it back on track
again. Think of something dull, deadly dull. Goodman and Vale.
How could those two agents possibly spend so much on their
routine assignments? They were so far over budget now he was
considering disciplinary action. He had people to answer to just
like they did, and yet when he confronted them with their
outrageous expense accounts they sulked like children being
denied a bigger allowance. They glared at him resentfully, just
short of disrespect.

Damn short of it, he thought grimly. That's the problem with this
job. You're nobody's friend. Nobody's friend, and nobody's lover.
Between the time he had first gripped Scully's arms to pull her
against him and the moment she climbed out of bed to head for the
bathroom, he must have committed at least a dozen actionable
offenses.

The phone rang again, but he only twitched his lips in annoyance.

How could he have forgotten that Scully was afraid of flying
until Mulder had called him from Dallas to tell him they were
taking a rental car down? Not to save money, certainly, though
their travel budget and overall expenses were the lowest in the
department, due at least in part to Mulder's absolute
indifference to his surroundings.

An image came to his mind of Mulder and Scully riding together in
a car for hours and hours. Did she drive? Or did she sleep in her
seat the way she slept in bed, her palms folded under her cheek
like a little girl saying a prayer? Did she lean against Mulder's
shoulder so he could smell her hair and maybe slide his arm
around her, maybe casually brush his hand against her...

(Walter, my man, knock this shit off. Mulder doesn't have the
balls to jump Scully. You know it, he knows it, she knows it.)

(And yet God help me I envy every minute he's with her.)

He finished the Scotch in a quick gulp. He was sorry he'd sent
her to Texas. Or allowed Mulder to drag her off there. At the
time it had seemed like a good idea, anything to get some
distance between them. He'd gladly approved Mulder's request to
investigate a lead on some missing persons; it was an opportunity
to make a diplomatic gesture to Senator Young, to show him the
Bureau was deeply concerned, and he was personally sending two of
his highest solve-rate agents to help.

But hell, it was all politics. People with power needed to keep
their kids on leashes. If the girl didn't want to be found, she
was probably not going to be found. He'd scanned the file, and it
looked like a runaway to him. Still, it was a Potential
Situation, because of the Senator's position in government, his
public image. The Houston Police were probably just as capable as
the field agents down there, and Young had no doubt hired a
shitload of private detectives to search for his daughter night
and day. So it was just a gesture, and Mulder had wanted to make
it into an X-file, so what the hell. Truth be told, he didn't
much like reading Mulder's requisitions too closely.

When the phone started ringing again, he cursed and went back
into his apartment.

His caller ID reflected "Unknown Name, Unknown Number," usually
the signal of the telemarketer.

But a moment after he barked "Skinner" into the receiver, his
attitude changed.

He stood at attention, listening, frowning. Then he said, "Yes,
sir, I understand," and hung up.

Well, this was an interesting turn. Apparently the Director owed
Senator Young some sort of political favor. Skinner had just been
commended for having the good sense to send his own people down
to help search for the Senator's daughter. We want this one to
have your personal attention, if you understand what I mean.

And warned that they had better find out what happened to her.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Chapter 9

"Shit!"

Scully was wrenched from sleep by the sharp expletive, not so
much by the word itself as by the fear in Mulder's shout. She
felt the car moving under her in a dizzying skid, and reached out
instinctively for the dashboard to brace herself against impact.

Lights flashed, horns blared, the world spun around. For one
brief surreal moment they were sliding sideways across all three
lanes of traffic, straight for the guard rail. Then Mulder, used
to driving on ice, self-corrected by turning into the skid and
regaining control of the car. They rocketed around a truck
pulling a horse trailer, and landed back in the mainstream of
traffic, unharmed.

Scully put her hand over her heart, her eyes wide and staring,
for a few seconds. When she could speak, she said, "What
happened?"

"Didn't you see her?"

"See who? Mulder, I was asleep. What did you see?"

"A girl, hitchhiking, right down the middle lane of the road."

Scully twisted around in her seat to look through the rear
window, but all she saw was the lights of the cars behind her.

"A girl? Are you sure?"

"Sure I'm sure." His voice was on the cutting edge between anger
and defensiveness. "She had long blonde hair and a checked shirt
on, and jeans. She had a backpack, too."

"She was hitchhiking down the center lane of the highway?"

Mulder's response was to steer the car to the right so hard
Scully had to catch herself on the door. He sped up to fit
himself between two cars, and took the exit ramp.

"Mulder, what are you doing?"

"I'm going back there. Traffic must be doing eighty miles an
hour, and there's no way someone hasn't hit her by now."

Scully was quiet. She was quiet when he made the u turn at the
next turnaround, quiet when he went two exits down and made
another u turn back up onto an entrance ramp. Quiet until they
passed their original exit.

Then she said, "Maybe somebody picked her up."

Mulder fixed her with a deadly glare. "Damnit, Scully, I SAW
her."

"Watch the road," she warned, and he reluctantly turned his head.
She said, "I never said you didn't see her, Mulder."

Five miles passed by. Ten.

Scully said softly, "What's wrong?"

He hit the steering wheel with the palm of his hand, not hard,
but with feeling. "I saw her."

"And I said I believed you."

He gave her a moody glance. "Bullshit. If you believed me, we'd
be out there right now walking up and down the shoulder of the
road looking for a body."

"Well, did anyone else swerve as if they saw her?"

"As if?"

"I mean, when they saw her."

"I don't know. I was too busy pulling us out of that skid."

"It was a good job, too."

"Don't patronize me, Scully."

"I wasn't--" Scully bit back a sharp reply, and tried to speak in
an even tone. "Well, what do you want me to say, Mulder? That I
saw her, too? Because I didn't."

"Of course not."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means what it means, Scully. You said you were asleep."

"I WAS asleep."

Silence again. This time Scully settled back down into her seat,
her chin tucked down, scowling out the window. Mulder sat with
his back rigid, staring straight ahead, jaw set.

In these positions, they passed the city limit signs and entered
Houston, Texas.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Lone Star Motel, 9:30 PM

Even at thirty five dollars a night, the motel rooms they got
weren't half bad. The beds were firm, the carpets grease-free,
and the walls looked recently painted.

Scully, in her blue pajamas, sat up in bed and tried to find a
television station out of a seemingly infinite cable selection.
She paused in her surfing when she came across Patrick Stewart
doing "Moby Dick." Although she had only seen the actor on Star
Trek, she had the curious sensation that they had met before, and
that she knew him on some level other than as a public performer.

Then she remembered on Star Trek he had been bald. Maybe it was
just something about bald men. She wondered what Skinner would
look like with hair, and smiled to herself. (He's got hair. Lots
and lots of hair. It just doesn't show.)

When she heard Mulder's light four-tap knock on her door, two
slow, two fast, she called, "Come in," and put the mute button
on. She and Mulder always exchanged extra keys to their rooms; it
was an old habit that had once mildly excited her whenever they
did it. Just the idea of Mulder having her key in his pocket was
somehow so...personal. But he'd carried them for years and never
used them. Now she never lay awake in the dark anymore, wondering
if some hot lonely night he would get it into his head to slip
his key into her lock.

Well, almost never.

She gave one last regretful look at Jean-Luc/Ahab and turned to
watch Mulder slink into the room. He leaned against things,
clumsy and overly casual, apologetic but not wanting to say he
was sorry until he knew she wasn't going to bite his head off.

"Going to bed so early?" he asked.

"Not much else to do."

There was a round table in the corner with two chairs. She had
set up her laptop and briefcase there. Mulder pulled out a chair
and straddled it, wrapping his arms around its back and resting
his chin on one of his forearms.

"Sorry I was so edgy back there."

She made a little shrug/forget it gesture. "You must be tired
from all that driving."

He said, "It's just that I feel like you don't believe me
anymore, Scully. About anything."

She tilted her head to look at him from under her eyelashes.
"Well, I never did, you know."

He smiled without humor. "But lately it's different. You used to
love this job. Now sometimes I wonder."

"I don't love Texas," she said.

His smile had a little more warmth. "Maybe this time will be
different."

"Well, it's certainly gotten off to a good start, hasn't it?"

He sighed. "Anyway...I'm sorry."

She turned the television off. "I thought for a minute you'd seen
the famous Vanishing Hitchhiker."

"Who?"

"You know. The urban legend."

He nodded, his eyes distant as he recalled the tale. "Oh, that's
right. How could I not make that connection? A man is coming home
late one night and sees a hitchhiker along the side of the road.
He picks him up and the hitchhiker insists on sitting in the back
seat. As they drive along, the hitchhiker says, 'The time of
judgment is at hand,' or something like that, and then when the
driver turns around, the guy is gone."

"I didn't hear that one," Scully said. "The way I heard it, a man
is driving along a dark road one night and he sees a pretty girl
in a soaking wet dress walking along the side of the road. She
puts out her thumb and he picks her up. She tells him where she
lives but she won't say another word. So he takes her to the
house but when he stops she gets off and runs away. He sees a
scarf in the seat. So he goes up to the house and knocks on the
door, and these two old people answer. When he shows them the
scarf, they tell him it belonged to their daughter, who drowned
the day of her prom twenty years ago that day, and the scarf has
been tied to her tombstone since that day."

Mulder laughed, his eyes sparkling green. "Or else he's given her
his coat to keep warm in, and then when he stops she runs away in
the dark, and the next day he comes back and all he finds at the
end of the road is a graveyard, and a tombstone with his coat
hung over it. And the tombstone is for some eighteen year old
girl who drowned--"

"Exactly a year ago to the day," Scully finished.

"Ah, those hitchhiker anniversaries," Mulder said. "Did you know
that you can ask someone to tell you that story, and by their
version of it you can accurately guess what part of the country
they come from?"

Scully said, "Why am I suddenly craving hot dogs and
marshmallows?"

"But tell me you believed them when you were a kid, Scully." His
eyes were suddenly serious.

"I guess I did. But you're supposed to believe them when you're a
kid. That's the whole point. Urban legends are cautionary tales,
told to teenagers by other teenagers so some message gets across
they wouldn't listen to otherwise. I loved ghost stories of any
kind when Iwas a little girl. But then," she said pointedly, "I
grew up."

Mulder turned around restlessly and spotted her briefcase on the
table. "Are you sleepy?" he asked. "Do you want to do some work?"

Scully pulled the sheet back and scooted to the edge of the bed.
When his back was turned she did up the top two buttons of her
pajamas. "What work is there to do?" she asked. "We meet with
Senator Young tomorrow, and then talk to the local police."

"Did I tell you what Skinner said when I went to ask him to sign
our travel vouchers for the case?"

When she didn't answer, he turned around again to look at her.
"He said Young had contacted him earlier on the missing girl, and
he was glad someone was going to at least make the gesture. He
didn't even ask about the pawnshop. He was actually happy we were
doing this investigation."

"Well, there's a break."

He opened her briefcase and pulled out two thick files he had
given her earlier. "Have you looked at these?"

"Not really. Just what you showed me in the office."

He started pulling out papers and photographs, and Scully got up
and put on her robe and then went to stand at his shoulder. He
nudged the other chair out for her with his foot, and she sat
down.

"Skinner had Marge give me the Young file before we left." He
opened the folder and showed it to her. There were some witness
reports from people interviewed by a Houston police team of
Fernandez and Buckland, who were the HPD officers assigned to the
case, and some photographs.

"Mm." Scully picked up a color snapshot of two girls, a blonde
and a redhead, with their arms around each other's backs. "Cute
kid," she said.

Mulder was silent. He stood with his shoulders hunched as if in
pain, staring down at the table.

"Mulder?" Her voice was soft with concern, and she touched his
arm lightly. He turned his face towards her, but kept his eyes
fastened on a black and white picture on the table.

In a strained voice he said, "It's her, Scully." He put his
finger on the photo as gently as if touching a human face. "It's
the hitchhiker."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Chapter 10

Adam's Mark Hotel, Houston, Texas, 10:13 am They had a meeting
with Senator Young at nine o'clock, for which they were over an
hour late. It turned out that the Adam's Mark Hotel was nowhere
near downtown Houston, and the morning traffic was so slow that
bicyclists streaked past them as they crawled down Westheimer
looking for the Beltway.

The Senator's room would have housed their entire motel building
quite comfortably, Scully decided, as she looked around the
luxuriously appointed suite. He came to greet them, gracious and
forgiving, while his staff flapped around uselessly. They went
onto the terrace to have breakfast, sent up by room service.

Senator Young had come to Houston ostensibly to deliver a speech,
but his real reason was that detectives had traced his daughter
to the city. He was a silver haired man, small and neatly built,
with a bass voice that seemed to have been turned down a notch by
depression and weariness. He had deep set wrinkles and sagging
eyelids, presumably bespeaking the wisdom of his age, but close
up they proved to be the signs of a heavy drinker and smoker. For
whatever reason, there was a certain muted quality about him that
made him seem as fragile as a very old man.

Then as they were shaking hands, Scully looked straight into
those heavy lidded eyes and saw something there that was like
looking into a mirror. Staggered, she made some excuse and walked
to the railing, pretending to admire the skyline, while she
struggled for self control.

What she had seen there was the universal look of the grieving
parent, a sadness from which there would never be a complete
recovery, but only a kind of reconciliation with life, a truce
that tacitly admitted that everything in the universe had
darkened, and things had been altered irrevocably for the worse.

No one, no human being who has not experienced, can ever imagine
what it is like to live with the loss of a child. But those who
have only need to look into each others' eyes for a moment to
share the unspoken communion that transcends all other
differences: gender, economics, age, nationality. Scully had
buried an empty coffin, and this man had only an empty place
where his daughter had been in the world. It was a common bond,
but a terrible one.

The spasm of grief passed, resolving into a steely determination.
Scully was suddenly into this case just as much as Mulder. She
turned and came back to the table and sat down, feeling a renewed
sense of purpose that somehow went beyond the task of finding
this man's child.

Mulder gave her a brief, curious look, but he had laid the
pictures out on the table and was pointing at the one they'd
stayed up half the night arguing over.

"Do you know this girl, sir?"

Young searched the photo intently, then shook his head. "I don't
believe I do."

"You don't know her?" Mulder's disappointment was evident.

One of the ubiquitous aides hovering around Young spoke up. "Sir,
I believe I know who that girl is."

Young blinked up at him. "Smith. I forgot you were still here."

"She was a close friend of Liz Ann's, in Virginia," Smith said.
"I believe her name was Anna...No, Tanya. I didn't know her last
name. She was into aromatherapy or something to do with crystals,
sort of a free spirit. But she disappeared and no one had heard
of her for a long time before Liz Ann left."

Mulder said, "How close were they? Best friends?"

"Oh, yes," Smith said. "When she went away, Liz Ann was
heartbroken."

"Enough so that she might go looking for her?" Scully asked.

Young said, "Was that the girl who came up missing from school? I
do remember now. Elizabeth was always going on about her. But
from what she said, I gathered the girl was a bit wild. Not
surprising she'd run off somewhere; you know how adventurous
young girls can be."

Scully and Mulder exchanged a look that said, "Get a clue," but
only to each other. Then as Mulder was about to ask another
question, his eyes went strange. He jerked his chin a fraction of
an inch, but Scully, who knew him better than any other living
soul, understood. The jolt that ran through him ran through her,
too, although she didn't understand what it meant, beyond the
fact that he had suddenly fit two or more pieces of the puzzle
together.

But was it about Liz Ann, or Tanya, who he was convinced he had
seen on the road to Houston? (Come ON, Mulder. Let's just focus
on this case.) Scully forced herself to be patient, to sit still.

(In the night, lying in bed alone, she had finally found
something to think about besides Skinner. Mulder definitely had
seen something on the highway. God knew what; he was not crazy,
and there had been someone or something there. But he must have
seen this picture somewhere before, filed it away in his
subconscious mind, and then later superimposed it over whatever
was really on the road last night. Two images had simply gotten
crosswired in his brain. She'd done it before herself, been
thinking of someone so hard she thought she saw him in the rear
view mirror of her car, but of course when she turned around to
look, the apparition was gone. The difference was, she could
admit her own mistake, and understand that her mind had just
played a very convincing trick on her. Whereas Mulder would go to
his grave believing in some sort of spiritual energy riding
around in the back of a Buick. Or in a pawnshop, or walking down
a highway, for that matter. Geez.)

She had to wait until they were in the hotel lobby to find out.
Then as soon as they got off the elevator he seized her arm and
hauled her into a corner, bursting with his revelation. "My God,
Scully, we're such idiots!" He actually did hit himself in the
forehead with the palm of his hand. "Why did neither of us
realize this before?"

She waved her hands vaguely for him to go on.

"Senator Dolf Young. Did you see that cleft in his chin? Did you
notice the way his ears stuck out? Or the widow's peak?"

Scully had no idea where he was headed.

Young, Young, YOUNG," Mulder groaned. "Remember the ears on Roger
Young? Like a car with its doors left open?"

Scully felt the jolt again, as before, and said, "Oh, my God,
Mulder. You're right! He looks so much like Agent Young they
could be--"

"We assumed he disappeared because of some particularly thorough
spook cleaning up behind Antoine Baxter. But what if Young is
somehow involved in this missing person thing?"

"Mulder, Agent Young IS a missing person."

"My point exactly." He strode away, and Scully had to hustle to
catch up with him.

In the car they scoured the files. Mulder said, "Okay, listen to
this. Dolf Young says he had a son by a former marriage-- Roger
Daniel Young."

`"Then it IS him! Why didn't the Senator mention this?"

"Why didn't anyone know Roger was Young's son? It doesn't make
any sense. Unless..."

"What?"

"What if the Senator doesn't know his son is missing?"

"But the Bureau would have contacted him by now. Skinner would
have called him."

Mulder's voice was thoughtful. "You'd think so, wouldn't you?"

"Maybe Skinner doesn't know."

"One way to find out." Mulder dug into his coat and pulled out
his cellular. He punched numbers in with his thumb as he started
the car and pulled out into traffic. Then he thrust the phone at
Scully. "You ask him."

Scully spluttered and glared, but Mulder was busy dodging a
schoolbus with dozens of tiny faces pressed to the windows, all
in various stages of contortion. She held the phone to her ear,
reaching out with her free hand to cuff the back of Mulder's head
as he stuck his tongue out at the children, egging them on.

Marge answered with her "Office of the Assistant Director" line,
and suddenly Scully's mouth went dry.

"This is Agent Scully. Is Mr. Skinner available?"

"He's in a meeting just now. I--"

"Hello?"

Scully was not prepared for the effect his voice would have on
her.

"Scully?"

Or the note of deep concern in it. She said, "Sir, this is Agent
Scully."

"We've established that. Where are you?"

"We're in Houston, sir. We've found something out that we need
you to help us with."

"What is it?"

"Sir, are you aware that Agent Roger Young is the son of Senator
Young?"

A long silence that could have been embarrassment at being caught
or could have been a dumbfounded disbelief.

"Wait a minute." Skinner's voice was muffled. "Let me just..."

She envisioned him punching up the keyboard of his computer to
call up Young's file.

"What's he saying?" Mulder asked.

"He's looking it up, I think."

"Then he didn't know?"

Skinner came back on the line. "Young's father is listed as
Anders Young. His mother is deceased; her name is Karen."

Scully looked through the file they had on the Senator's family.
"Maiden name Canny?"

Muffled again: "Shit!"

Scully said, "Senator Young never mentioned Roger at all today.
Does he know that his son is missing? Did anyone contact him?"

"Technically, no."

"What does technically mean?"

"No queries have been made about Agent Young. We still don't know
what happened to him, and he had no family listed to contact. The
situation is still hanging fire."

"Well, sir, someone did erase some of our records of people who
had anything to do with Antoine Baxter."

"Do you think this thing with the Senator has something to do
with Baxter?"

"No, sir. I don't."

"Scully, let me look into this and call you back. Where are you
staying?"

She gave him the name of their motel and then he said, "You say
Senator Young never mentioned his son was missing, or asked any
questions about him?"

"No, sir."

"Find out why."

"Yes, sir."

She punched the end button and handed the phone back to Mulder.
"He wants us to find out why Young didn't mention his son was
missing."

"Actually, that's the question we wanted HIM to answer for US."

"Okay," she said. "But how are we going to find out this
information without revealing anything? I mean, if he doesn't
know, then asking him will be telling him. We can't just say,
'Senator, did you know your son was dead?' Because if he says no,
I did not know my son was dead, we can't just say, 'Well, he's
not.'"

Mulder chuckled. "I say we get one of the aides to ask him."

Scully rubbed her forehead, feeling a headache coming on. She
said, "Not that I blame Roger Young. I mean, would you tell
people at the Bureau your father was a Senator? No one would let
you forget it."

"Still." Mulder turned onto the freeway. "I don't think Roger
Young is dead."

"No? Why not?"

He shrugged. "Call it a hunch."

"I'll tell you what I'd like to call it. Hey--where are we
going?"

"We need to meet those two Houston police officers, Fernandez and
Buckland. They're our liaisons in the pawnshop division of
Burglary and Theft."

"There's a pawnshop division?"

"Apparently so."

Reisner Street was almost as hard to find as the hotel had been.
They finally followed the bailbond office signs to the main
police station, identified themselves at the desk, and waited for
the officers in the lobby.

Fernandez and Buckland turned out to be women, younger, cuter
versions of Cagney and Lacy. Both officers wore plain clothes,
severe dark business suits with holster bulges evident under the
jackets and badges on their belts in prominent view. They carried
automatics, signifying their time on the force (rookies had to
carry revolvers until they had five years of service) and their
experience. They greeted Mulder and Scully politely, shaking
hands all the way around, all business as they signed out and
walked out of the police station to their unmarked car, both the
epitome of professionalism.

For about ten minutes.

Even as they were walking out of the building, the two women fell
back to flank Scully, scoping out Mulder with obvious
appreciation and smiling and nodding their approval at her. She
tried not to smile.

Well, he did have a cute ass, and their eye- rolling and heavy
panting were in good humor.

Buckland, who drove, looked at Scully in the rear view mirror and
said, "We heard you were a doctor. That's really cool."

Scully and Mulder exchanged amused looks in the back seat.

Fernandez said, "We're going to take a little tour down
Washington Avenue. There's a guy down there who knows everything
about pawn shops, and we need to do some business with him
anyway."

Buckland pointed at one of the many pawnshops they passed on the
way. "We caught a guy there with an elephant tusk he was trying
to pawn. Turned out the creep had killed some circus elephant and
had hired a taxidermist to cut it up and make the parts into
ashtrays and boots and umbrella stands. We still come up with a
piece of that poor old elephant every now and again."

She glanced back at Scully with a totally disarming smile. "I
like your hair," she said.

Scully smiled back. Mulder winked at her and formed the words
with his lips, Me too.

Well, Scully reflected, there was a down side to Texas and also
an up side. The open friendliness of the two officers was a
relief after some of the people they'd had to work with in the
past.

"So do you guys know anything about pawn shops?" Fernandez asked.

Mulder said, "Not much. We were hoping you'd give us the full
tour."

The women looked at each other and laughed. "You got a year or
so?" Fernandez asked. "I mean, we can only cover a few dozen a
week."

"And then there's the ones in South Houston, and Pasadena, and
Deer Park, and the Clear Lake area," Buckland said. "But they all
have their own police departments."

Mulder gave a frustrated sigh. He was obviously charmed by the
two women, but his quest was going nowhere.

Buckland said, "Here's how we do it. You want to set up a
pawnshop, you have to lay out a hundred and fifty thousand
dollars of unleveraged cash. That means it can't be a loan. Then
you have to pass a really stringent background investigation--
FBI, so I guess you know about that--and so do all of your
employees."

"We just fined a guy three hundred dollars a day for a week for
each of his high school helpers," Fernandez said. "The guy just
wrote out a check for it, no sweat."

"So then after you set up business," Buckland went on, "You have
to check out everyone who comes in to pawn something. They fill
out a triplicate form, in white, pink, and yellow."

Fernandez held up a broad briefcase. "We take the yellow tickets,
and check them against lists of stolen merchandise."

Mulder said, "You get them from every pawn shop in town?"

"Well, we don't; I mean, our division has lots of people out
there. But yes, every shop has to be checked on a regular basis.
It is a highly regulated business." Buckland glanced at her
partner and admitted, "It does get kind of backed up sometimes."

"How backed up?" Scully asked.

"Sometimes a shop can go for as long as a few weeks without us
picking up the tickets," Fernandez admitted. "But that doesn't
happen very often. If we're looking for something in particular,
like a gun, or some missing jewellery, we crack down, assign
extra people to the detail. Then between times, we aren't quite
so stringent."

Buckland said, "But the point is, no one can just open a pawn
shop without a big bunch of paperwork, and the HPD knows every
single shop in this town."

"So how can this shop just go unnoticed?" Mulder handed Fernandez
the photograph over the back seat.

"Beats me," she said. She studied it for a moment and said, "I'm
thinking this was taken somewhere around North Main, just where
Main Street turns into it. Right around the downtown campus of
University of Houston."

Buckland glanced over at the snapshot and shook her head. "One of
the WAR streets, I'm thinking." She looked back at Scully and
said, "Westheimer, Alabama, and Richmond."

Mulder said, "This is hopeless. We're never going to find this
place."

"Sure we will, big guy." Fernandez cut her eyes at him
shamelessly, and Mulder had to smile. She said, "We're going to
talk to a guy right now who's big in the National Pawnbroker's
Association. He'll be able to tell us if anyone's set up shop
recently."

Scully sighed. Mulder had his heart set on this pawn shop thing,
when she wanted to go back and sniff around Young to see if he
had any news on Roger. The problem was, she'd seen Mulder come up
with even crazier ideas that had turned out to be accurate. And
if Liz Ann really was in that place, then all of this was
important to their investigation.

The pawnshop they stopped at was called Brother John's. No one
was in the shop except an elderly black man in a baseball hat who
was tucked into a folding chair behind the glass counter, his
feet up on a desk, reading a newspaper.

"Ladies." He nudged his hat back half an inch by way of greeting.
"Is it that time again already?"

Buckland introduced the agents and laid her briefcase on the
counter over a row of gleaming weapons, from antique guns to
Bowie knives to throwing stars. She said, "John, we need to ask
you if you know anything about a shop called Issie's."

"Ain't no such place in this town," he said. Mulder put the
picture on the counter in front of him. The old man grunted with
effort as he got out of the chair and limped over to look at it.

Fernandez gestured at the swinging door leading into the
cashier's cage, and John pushed a button to let her in. Buckland
began to walk up and down the rows, her concentration like a
shopper with an incredibly sharp eye for a bargain.

"Here's your problem," John said, looking at the photo. "This
ain't no pawn shop."

Mulder and Scully stared at him. Mulder said, "What about these
three balls, then?"

John shrugged. "Don't know, son. But this here is no pawn shop."

"I thought the three balls symbolized a pawnshop," he said,
puzzled.

Scully said, "Well, they symbolize money lenders. They come from
the crest of the Medici's in medieval Europe, when the Italian
Lombards and the Medicis were the biggest money lenders in the
world. The three balls represent three sacks of rocks used to
slay a giant by one of the Medici family under Charles the
Great."

Both officers and Mulder were staring at her. Scully flushed a
little, and Mulder leaned forward. "Scully, are you trying to
turn me on here or what?"

She faced him smugly. "I also know that the song 'Pop goes the
weasel' comes from pawnbroking. A weasel was the name of a
shoemaker's tool, and to 'pop' is to pawn. In medieval times when
shoemakers needed money, they pawned their tools, like welders
and mechanics do today. That's where the line comes from, 'That's
the way the money goes: Pop goes the weasel."

"Son of a gun," John said, delighted. "I got to tell my boy that
one."

"I thought it was a monkey chasing a weasel," Mulder said.

Buckland said, "What would a monkey want with a weasel?"

"A weasel could take a monkey in a fight," Fernandez contributed,
scribbling the numbers from a gun to her note pad.

"Bullshit," Buckland said. "Well...I guess it would depend on the
kind of monkey. I mean, maybe a gorilla..."

"A gorilla isn't a monkey, you doof. It's an ape."

Scully, sorry she had started this whole thing, said, "People,
can we focus here?"

For lack of anything else to divert everyone from the
monkey/weasel debate, which she was certain Mulder was about to
enter, she put the pictures she had on the counter and said,
"Sir, could you tell me if you've seen any of these girls?"

John nodded down at them. "Oh, sure," he said. "I seen this one
just the other day."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

It had taken Mulder and Scully approximately two hours to run the
prints on the diamond bracelet the girl had pawned through the
local FBI registry to make a positive I.D. She was Tanya McClean,
fingerprinted in 1995 when she went to work for a Foley's
warehouse as a counter assistant. There was no other information
on her. No missing person's report had been filed, and no other
photos were available. The yellow ticket had been filled out
accurately, but with fake identification; the DMV showed no
license registered to her.

Buckland and Fernandez took them to lunch at a Mexican restaurant
to cheer them up.

"Damn, I am sick of these dead ends," Mulder said, poking at the
food on his plate irritably.

The diamond bracelet had been identified by Fernandez, after a
long search, as one reported stolen in a house theft in 1955. It
was part of a whole collection of jewellery stolen from a single
owner so long ago that most of the other information had simply
been lost.

"The good news is that if she pawned this on the eighteenth,
she's probably still around town somewhere," Buckland pointed
out.

"She may be hitting other shops. I mean, she only got a couple of
hundred dollars for this piece."

"What's the bad news?" Mulder asked.

Since both officers finished their shift at three, they were off
for the day, eating fajitas and drinking beer with as much energy
as if they had just come on duty and were preparing for another
day of work.

Fernandez took a bite of a coiled tortilla and said, "The bad
news is that now you've got to deal with Bobby Jo Danson and Carl
Seagram."

Buckland made a face. "They're FBI, and we don't want to speak
out of turn, but we've worked with these guys before."

Fernandez took a long pull from her beer mug and shook her head.
"Bad boys, bad boys" she said. "But whatcha gonna do?"

"Well, it could just be us," Buckland pointed out. "They really
don't deal well with women."

"Great," Scully said. "We're meeting with them tomorrow morning."

"Good luck!" Fernandez said, raising her beer mug in a toast.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Back at the motel, Mulder followed Scully into her room.

"Go away," she told him. "I need to take a shower and let all
this sink in."

"Tell me something honestly, though," he said.

"If I tell you, will you leave me alone?"

"Promise."

"Do you really think a monkey could take a weasel in a fair
fight?"

"Only if the monkey pulled a gun on him," she said. "Now get
out."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Chapter Eleven

Pounding on the door woke Scully from a sound sleep at seven in
the morning. She answered sullenly, in her robe, holding her gun
behind her back.

It was Mulder, wide awake and excited. "I got a call from the
police about half an hour ago," he told her. "A girl fitting our
girl's description was picked up in Victoria just last night for
trying to pawn a piece of stolen jewellery. I'm going to drive
down there to talk to her."

"Victoria?" Scully yawned, trying to clear her head. "Where's
that?"

"It's about four hours south of here."

"Well, is it Tanya or not? Did you run her prints?"

"The prints didn't match. But I want to talk to her anyway. The
jewellery was from the same collection as the stuff we picked up
yesterday at Brother John's."

Scully looked at him in dismay. "Four hours, Mulder!"

"Don't worry. You need to stay here and keep our appointment with
the local agents. See if they've ever met Roger Young, and what
they can come up with on Issie's."

"You're taking the car?"

"I have to," he said. "You can get a cab, can't you?" He gave her
his sweetest, most irresistible smile, and reached down to touch
her face. "You're really pretty when you first get up in the
morning. Did I ever mention that?"

"You are a rat," she told him.

"I'll be back by tomorrow morning at the latest," he promised.
"Call Skinner and let him know what's going on."

She watched helplessly as he went out to the parking lot and got
into their rental car. Then in a plume of blue exhaust, he was
gone.

Scully couldn't help it. She felt ditched again. Four hours in a
car was no fun--they'd just done it  but still, she wanted to be
with him. There was nothing she hated worse than working on a
case alone. Much as she tried to get rid of Mulder half the time,
she really missed him when he wasn't around.

Depressed, she went back to bed, and curled up in a ball, feeling
thoroughly sorry for herself. In that position, she went back to
sleep and didn't wake up until fifteen minutes before her
appointment with the FBI agents.

But it was an appointment she wasn't destined to make anyway.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Skinner called Mulder's room and got no answer, called his cell
phone and got a low battery response. He dialed Scully's room
next, and was rewarded with the incredibly sexy sound of her
sleepy voice.

"Scully."

"Skinner?"

"What have you come up with?"

"Oh my God!" Her heard her muttering to herself, things being
moved around. Water running. "Skinner, can I call you back? I'm
late for an appointment."

"Where's Mulder?"

"He's, ah--following a lead."

"Scully..."

"Please, sir. I really have to get dressed and get out of here,
and I need to use the phone to call a cab."

"Call me as soon as you find anything out."

He heard her disconnect without saying anything else. What was
going on down there? He looked down at the phone in his hand. He
really should talk to Young himself. The personal touch. In
fact...

Almost two hours later, as he was sitting in his office trying to
pay attention to a long rambling story from one of his agents
justifying an extra two days of vacation, the phone rang, and
Marge said, "Long distance from Houston, sir. It's reversed
charges."

Skinner snatched his phone up and said, "Skinner here."

"Assistant Director Skinner, this is Ben Taub Hospital. We have
one of your agents here being treated for some traumatic
injuries, and we need to verify employment."

"One of my agents?" Skinner felt the plastic receiver crack in
his hand.

"Yes, sir, a woman named Dana Scully."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Scully had spent an afternoon in hell, and things were only
getting worse. Fernandez and Buckland had come down to get her
out of the hospital, and she still had to meet with the FBI
agents, though the officers pushed hard to get her to go back to
the hotel and get some rest. But first she had to go down to the
police station again and fill out a complete report on her
attack. Fernandez and Buckland agreed to take her there, and
Scully told them she could take a cab back to the motel. She
called the local branch and asked if Danson and Seagram could
meet her at the police station when she got there. After some
hesitation, they agreed.

It was almost six o'clock in the evening when Scully finished all
the paperwork. The only good news of the day was that her purse
had been found near the scene by investigating officers, and
nothing in it was missing. Fernandez and Buckland vouched for
her, and she got it back with a minimum of fuss.

Shifts were being changed, and people moved in and out, plain
clothes officers, uniformed officers, officers who glanced at her
without curiosity and then moved on. But Sam Diego, the detective
who had taken her report, let her use his office for the meeting
with the FBI, so at last she got some privacy.

She sank down into one of the worn chairs in front of Diego's
desk and took a sip of machine made coffee in a styrofoam cup. A
light sheen of oil floated on the surface, and she stared at it
morosely. The door opened with dramatic suddenness, and an
extremely handsome man in a black suit stepped into the room.
Behind him, a blonde man slipped in quietly and left the door
open for a moment, so that the light from the hall cast his
shadow onto the linoleum floor. For some reason Scully thought of
crows landing on a tombstone.

"Agent Scully?" The handsome man did a slow, deliberate scan of
her, one eyebrow raised delicately. He didn't offer his hand.
Scully felt extra scruffy, her clothes torn, her face bruised.
She sensed animosity, and got up, though her five foot two inch
frame was at least a foot below eye level of both men.

"Yes," she said coolly, looking from one to the other.

"I'm Agent Danson, this is Agent Seagram."

The men looked at her without any expression at all. She tried to
keep her own face blank.

"We expected to meet with your partner as well," Seagram said.

"He had to leave town."

"Leave town?"

"He's investigating a lead in Victoria."

"We expected to pool information," Danson said.

"Well, Agent Mulder isn't here, so you'll have to pool with me,"
she said. (Because he ditched me, damn him. And left me to face
you two jerks by myself.) A longing for Mulder went through her,
and at the same time, a powerful resentment. Not just at Mulder,
for leaving her, but for men in general, who clearly thought they
were going to make this interview go their way.

"Maybe we should wait for Agent Mulder," Danson said. "Then we
can find out what he's come up with."

"Agent Mulder and I aren't joined at the hip," Scully said. "If
you have any information on Tanya McClean or Liz Ann Young, I
suggest you let me have it now."

"Tanya McClean?" Seagram asked.

Scully's patience was wearing thin. "We came here to find a shop
called Issie's. We thought it was a pawn shop. We believe it to
be the last place Liz Ann Young was seen before she completely
disappeared."

She took her copy of the photo from the inside pocket of her
jacket; her purse, cell phone, and gun had all been stolen from
her in the attack. Both agents looked at it, and from the
reactions in their eyes, Scully knew they'd seen the place
before. She felt a surge of excitement; Mulder would be so
pleased when she told him.

Danson said, "Where did you get this picture?"

"I don't know. It was in one of the files."

Seagram said, "We've had this place under surveillance for some
time now. We need to know how this information leaked out."

"Leaked out? May I remind you I am an agent with the FBI as
well?"

"But you're not working on this case," Seagram said.

The two men had moved into a flanking position. Their faces were
hard masks, their voices sharp, derisive. Scully felt like a
badger set upon by dogs. She was familiar with the interrogation
tactic, crowding into her personal space, acting suspicious of
even simple answers, but she was astonished and outraged that
they were using it on her.

"You don't even know what you've gotten yourself into, do you?"
Agent Danson said.

"I'm waiting for you to tell me."

Seagram used his height to tower over her deliberately, bending
his head in an exaggerated effort to look down at her, but Scully
was having none of it. She stared back up at him fiercely, not
taking a step back, not even allowing her body to sway from his,
essentially daring him to touch her.

"I don't think you need to know the things we know, Agent Scully.
I'm not sure from the looks of ..." He gave her another
contemptuous overview, "Of THINGS, that you could deal with this
right now."

There was a sudden profound silence in the room. Scully turned
around and saw that the doorway was almost blacked out by a tall,
broad shouldered figure standing stock still, the light behind
him making him look like a dark avenging angel. He stepped into
the room, his cold eyes surveying the situation detail by detail.

Scully caught her breath.

"Assistant Director Walter Skinner," he said, pulling out his
identification. He held it in front of him for a deliberate count
of four.

One. Two. Three. Four.

Then moved forward again, stopping to the right and behind
Scully, literally backing her up.

Skinner said, "I believe I interrupted you, Agent--was it
Seagram? Would you like to continue now?"

Danson had the decency to look abashed, but Seagram tried to
brazen it out. "I'm sorry, sir. We were just concerned about
Agent Scully's present state of health."

"And questioning her competence, I believe?"

"No, sir. I'm sorry if it seemed that way."

"That's exactly the way it seemed, and it's not me you owe the
apology to."

For just a moment it seemed as if the handsome agent was going to
refuse. Scully watched his eyes and saw the rage he had to
swallow to humble himself. "I'm sorry if I spoke out of turn,
Agent Scully."

Seagram mumbled, "Sorry, Agent Scully."

Skinner said, "Nicely done. But not quite nicely enough. I'll be
speaking with your supervisor tomorrow morning. That will be all,
gentlemen."

Scully, who had been dismissed in this fashion a few dozen times
herself, knew how grating it was, but for the first time in her
career she was glad her boss was such a hard ass. For a terrible
moment she wrestled with the impulse to blow a kiss at the two
departing agents as they slunk out the door. Heroically, she
resisted. Then she turned on Skinner. Her heart was pounding; She
could not believe how glad she was to see him again. Had he
always been that handsome? Was there any reasonable excuse to
touch him?

No.

She said, "Sir, I was doing just fine on my own."

"I could see that, Agent Scully."

She dropped her eyes, unsure of whether or not he was laughing at
her. He came forward and took her arm in a gentle grip. "Let's
get you out of here."

Outside, he opened the passenger door of a black Taurus to let
her in. Scully fastened her seat belt as he came around to the
other side and got in and started the car. She had thought she
was recovering from him, from the memories of him. Whatever had
happened between them seemed like a long time ago. But from the
minute she saw him again she knew nothing was over.

His jaw flexed as he watched the road, clearly still angry, but
when he spoke to her, his voice was concerned. "Are you okay,
Scully?"

"I'm fine, sir."

He gave her a swift glance, his eyes still unreadable. "What
happened to your face?"

She touched her cheek self consciously. "I was hailing a cab this
morning, just after I talked to you, to go downtown and meet with
those two. Two men in a late model white Cadillac pulled up to
the curb and got out and jumped me."

"Jumped you?"

"They pushed me into the back seat of the Cadillac and took off.
They got my purse, my phone, and my gun."

He sighed, breathing out through his nose in a hiss of anger.
"This case is taking some unexpected twists and turns."

"Yes," she agreed. "Yes, it has."

"How did you get away from them?"

"I'm not sure, sir. There was a girl. I didn't really see her,
but she apparently stepped right in front of the car. They hit
the brakes and I jumped out." She rubbed her left arm gingerly.
"They hadn't quite come to a full stop."

"Scully..." He seemed about to say something, but thought better
of it. "Where's Mulder?"

"He's following a lead in Victoria, Texas."

Skinner sighed again. "Certain higher ups have become very
interested in this case, Scully. Did Seagram and Daws tell you
what they're working on?"

"No, sir. We hadn't yet reached that point of mutual trust."

His mouth curved despite himself, but he quickly stifled the
smile. "They're working on a white slave ring running here in
Houston, apparently one that brokers in girls of Liz Ann Young's
age. It's possible that this ring is operating at an
international level, and has some very big and powerful money
behind it."

Following her directions, he took them back to the motel. When he
pulled up, he said, "Let me just go check in and get a room."

"You may as well use Mulder's room," she said, opening her purse
to get the key.

She held it out to him. He said, "What are you doing with the key
to Mulder's room?"

Was that jealousy in his voice? She said, "We always get extras,
and exchange them." She handed him the key and waited; each
seemed to be waiting for the other to speak.

"We need to talk," he told her. "Let's use Mulder's room."

She waited until he went back to the car to retrieve his duffle
bag from the trunk, then she led him to Mulder's room.

Inside, he looked around while Scully folded her arms and leaned
against the door. Mulder's bed was unmade, his bag open on the
table, clothes scattered around. In a few hours he had managed to
make the place look like his apartment.

Skinner laid his bag on the table and turned to look at Scully.
She felt like a sullen child, unwilling and unable to face him.

"Scully."

She refused to be coaxed by that soft tone. She hugged herself
tighter, head bowed, staring at the floor.

Skinner crossed the room and said, "Let me see."

He put his hand under her chin and raised her face. He touched
the bruise over her eye with feather light pressure, and traced
her cheekbone with his finger, down to her mouth, where one side
was swollen.

Scully closed her eyes, drowning.

They moved closer to each other. With Mulder gone, she was
lonely, and she had been scared to death in the attack, and then
at the hospital, without her purse, she had felt helpless, the
worst feeling in the world. Now however desperately she craved
the feel of his protecting arms around her, the last thing Scully
needed was to break down. She knew if he touched her she would
cry, and that wasn't what she wanted. The slightest gesture of
surrender and she would be in his bed again, and there would be
no easy way to stop once this thing got started.

Sensing her withdrawal, Skinner let his hands drop by his sides.
He said, "You should get some rest."

"Yes, sir." Scully toyed with the doorknob. "Can I go now?"

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes wearily, nodding.
"You're going back to your room?"

"Yes, sir."

"All right. It's probably too late to do anything at this point,
and I'm sure you're tired. I need to go see Senator Young, but I
can go by myself. Don't leave the motel without me, all right?"

"Yes, sir."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Something in the night woke Scully, and she lay in the dark,
trying to figure out what it was. Had someone knocked softly on
her door? Mulder?

She sat up, listening, sliding the automatic from its holster on
the bedside table, and waited. The room was quiet but for the low
hum of the air conditioner.

She got up, went to the bathroom, and then left the bathroom
light on. She went to the front door and opened it cautiously,
seeing no one there.

She opened the door wider, and stepped over the threshold. It was
a hot Houston night, and the traffic on the freeway had a muted
roar, like surf. Cicadas were calling, foretelling rain.
Somewhere in the distance a woman laughed, probably on someone's
television set.

There was a creak of hinges, and the door next to hers opened.
Skinner stepped outside, wearing a pair of jeans and nothing
else. He held his gun loosely in his hand, close to his side so
it was hard to see.

"Scully?" His voice was thick with sleep. "Did you just knock on
my door?"

"No, sir. I thought I heard someone at my door." Not exactly,
though. It was more like she had dreamed someone was there,
wanting in.

They both looked around the parking lot for a few minutes. Then
Skinner said, "You okay?"

"Yes, sir."

They looked at each other. Skinner's face was a mask of shadows,
but she saw the wide sensual curve of his mouth; the outline of
his upper lip was like a child's line drawing of a bird.

Scully rubbed her hands on her thighs, then realized she was
wiping sweat from her palms. She knew exactly how that mouth
would taste, how it would feel on her skin.

She tried to say his name, but couldn't get enough breath for the
single word.

Skinner was staring at her. She couldn't move, was fixed to the
spot, thinking, I can't do this. I can't. You'll have to do it
for us both.

Something in Skinner broke with an almost audible snap. He turned
and tossed his gun into his room and shut the door hard, then
strode to her and seized her shoulders, pushing her back into her
room.

In the dark his mouth found hers and she welcomed it with a groan
of longing so deep she felt it reverberate through his ribs, to
where his heart was caged. He pulled at her robe and she shrugged
it off and let him lift her pyjama top from her so that when they
kissed again he could feel the rough hairs of his chest abrading
her naked breasts. It was sensation that made them both moan.
Scully's gun hit the floor with a little clunk as it slipped from
her nerveless fingers.

Neither said a word. He held her to the bed and made her sit
down, then knelt before her, eye level in the room lit only by
the faint light from the bathroom. In that position she was able
to put her arms around his neck when he kissed her again. This
time he was gentle, just a touching of the lips. They held each
other for a long time, rubbing cheeks, kissing throats, ears,
noses. One of his big hands moved between them and rubbed her
breasts, pulling her nipples in a gentle, milking motion that
made her rub her body against him like a cat.

They were such a perfect fit that way, so in accord, that every
movement seemed intuitive. When he moved forward, she moved back,
and then they were on the bed together, Skinner holding his
weight off her, raised up on an elbow, but all he wanted to do
was kiss her, touch her. It was as if her whole body ached, and
only where he touched her did bliss replace the pain.

He slipped her hand down her stomach and into her pyjama bottoms,
cupping the juncture of her thighs. She spread her legs a little
to accommodate him, and he ran a long thick finger, as big as a
young boy's penis, up her labia to her clitoris, where he paused
to rub the sensitive spot in small circular motions, like a well
oiled marble. Scully bit her lip and raised her hips against his
hand, but he only moved with her, never stopping what he was
doing.

She undid the button of his jeans and slid the zipper down, her
fingers trembling. He raised his hips so she could push his jeans
and underwear down, and then he finished the job himself, kicking
them to the floor. He pulled her pyjama bottoms down easily, and
at last they lay together naked.

"Scully." It was the first time either of them had spoken since
they entered her room. She rubbed her chin against his jaw at the
sound of her name.

"Scully." She looked up at him, the dark outline of his head, and
in the light from the bathroom she could see the look in his
eyes.

His voice was so vulnerable it caught something inside her and
made it hurt. "I love you, Scully," he whispered.

She made a slight, unexpected movement, as if to pull back from
him, but he held her still. His finger moved down, found her
entrance, and pushed slowly inside. She gasped at the sensation,
and Skinner clenched his teeth; she was as tight and slippery as
a glove filled with warm Vaseline. He pulled the finger out
slowly, making her feel every slow inch of it.

She felt the sting of tears, saw his face blur. "Then God help us
both," she whispered back.

She had begun to cry, and hoped he wouldn't notice, because she
couldn't seem to stop herself. His lips found her tears, his
tongue tasted them when he kissed her again. The hands that ran
over the curves of her breasts, that pulled her thighs apart,
that tested her for readiness, touched her with a warmth that had
nothing to do with body temperature.

He shifted his weight over her, nudging the head of his penis
until he found her entrance again, and then pushed it in as
slowly as he had fingered her before.

Scully left out a soft cry as she felt him fill her up,
stretching her gradually to accept the thick shaft he was
skewering her on. He began to ride her gently, with long slow
strokes. No more games. This was lovemaking. Scully turned her
face on the pillow, weeping.

Sympathetic as Skinner was, and sensitive to her body, he had no
idea why she was crying. In the overwhelming swell of his own
passion, he could only murmur one thing: "Just tell me I'm not
hurting you."

She shook her head, knowing he could feel from the eager rotation
of her hips that he wasn't giving her body anything but pleasure.
The pain came from the stretching of that small, small place her
heart had shrunk to, from overfilling it with feelings she had
long since ceased to dream of, much less to experience. It was
more than Skinner, more than anything she could put a name to. It
was like a brand new emotion, and it was too sweet to bear. She
sobbed softly as he kissed her neck, the side of her face, and
gave in to him.

Then they both caught fire, and all tears stopped as he grabbed
her hands desperately and pinned them to the mattress, fingers
interlaced, and began to pump in furious earnest, quick fierce
strokes that jerked her up and down on the bed as she tried to
get in synch with him. She wanted it to last forever, but when he
began to fuck her powerfully, she could never hold out. Within
five minutes she began to come, like hearing a faint noise from
far, far away that grew to a roar in her head, and she tried to
cry out, to warn him, to speak his name, but it was all she could
do to catch her own breath as the locomotive rush and thunder of
her orgasm exploded in a deep moan that might have been her,
might have been him, might have been the perfect music of the
universe which for one brief instant forgave all things and made
all things right.

Skinner felt her clenching around him, the convulsive shudder of
her stomach and thighs, and came inside her with a whimpering
gasp. Even when he was finished he didn't want to stop; he kept
thrusting in and out until his penis lost all rigidity. Scully
finally lay still, and they fell apart, still clutching fingers.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

A light wind stirred the curtains, and crickets chirped in the
quiet ark.

Skinner lay with Scully in his arms, her head on his chest, her
fingertips stroking his skin absently.

"So where do we go from here?" she asked.

"I have some plans," he said. His soft bass voice was like music;
there is no other sound like the sound of soft voices speaking
deep in the heart of the night, no greater intimacy than those
words shared in that secret hour.

He ran a finger down her, and she moved her hips in response. "I
want to lick you here, and here..." He drew a map on her body,
making her shift deliciously for more. "And I want to try to last
longer than ten minutes the next time I screw you."

She laughed softly. "Men!" she said. "I meant, what's next for
us, Skinner? You know an affair won't work."

"I don't suppose you'd consider marrying me?"

Scully felt a strange rush of pleasure and horror at the same
time. "No," she said. "I don't see how that would work."

He sighed. "I can wear on your nerves, you know. I can make life
miserable for you until you give me what I want."

"Ordinarily, that might turn me on, but you know it wouldn't
work."

His mouth moved against her ear as he spoke in a low voice. "Then
just dream with me a little bit. Think about it. You go to work
in some safe and sane environment, whatever it is you want to do,
and I go to work at the Bureau. We might meet sometimes for
lunch, and I could ask your advice about a case, or you could
tell me what you're doing at your job. But each night at five or
six or seven, we would end up in our own place, having dinner
together, watching television, making love. And every night at
three or four in the morning, whenever it is you wake up, you'll
be in my bed, and all you ever have to do is move up against me,
and I'll put my arms around you like this, and keep you safe from
all harm. That's a promise."

Scully sighed and cuddled closer to him. "And if I wanted more
than just you holding me?"

"If you ever want sex, just reach down..." he put her hand over
his penis, and she cupped it lovingly, "And tug on it three
times."

She smiled, remembering the old joke, but playing along anyway.
"And if I don't want sex?"

"Then tug on it about seventy five times."

They both laughed. His arms tightened around her briefly and then
released her. He said, "Go to sleep, Agent Scully."

Her eyes were already closed. "Yes, sir."

"I'm going to fuck you again as soon as we wake up," he told her.
"Remind me to make you call me sir then."

She yawned and took the deep sigh that precedes sleep. "Okay,"
she murmured. "I'll set the alarm."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Sunlight, birds singing. People going to breakfast at Denny's,
clashing silverware, the smell of bacon frying. Cars driving by
on the freeway, fumes and honking. A motel stirring to life,
showers running, keys turning in locks, the morning business
begun.

On the bed in a motel room a red haired woman lies with her legs
wrapped around the waist of a tall, powerfully built man who is
driving his cock into her like a jackhammer, making the headboard
shake with each forward thrust.

And further down the road, a girl with a backpack, her shoes
caked with mud, walks along the edge of the highway with her
thumb held high and hopeful.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Chapter Twelve

After the four hour drive he had done the day before, Mulder was
miserable on the long drive down to Victoria. He had a vague
nagging sense that something was missing whenever Scully wasn't
around. The times when she was in the hospital were some of the
most agonized periods of his life because he was so used to
functioning with her. Or against her. Often he didn't realize his
position until she challenged him and he had to clarify it. Like
now, for example. If she was with him, he would be on fire to
prove his theory. But she wasn't, and he didn't even have a
theory, really. He just knew it had something to do with
redemption.

He didn't believe for a minute that Issie's wasn't a pawn shop.
It just wasn't the kind of pawn shop Brother John was used to.

("Then what kind of a pawn shop do you think it is?" Scully would
have asked.) But since she didn't actually ask the question, he
didn't actually know how to answer it.

At school, his most brilliant work had always been done on his
feet, quick responses like rabbits pulled from a hat. The Amazing
Fox Mulder. When he'd first started working with Scully he was
afraid she'd be a plodder, unable to make the ingenious cognitive
leaps he was capable of. Now he knew she just had a different way
of thinking, and even if it was linear, she was able to shorten
the distance between two lines with intuitive leaps of her own.

Well...sometimes little bunny hops. Take that monkey-weasel
thing. He grinned to himself, picturing her at the computer,
digging through the Internet until she came up with THAT, then
waiting until just the right moment to spring it on him.

God, what a woman.

He stopped for gas just outside Victoria, in view of the city
limits sign. As he was stretching, rubbing the small of his back
and leaning forward to pull the muscles back into alignment, he
saw a huge eighteen wheeler that said INDIGO on the side across
the road.

It was just noon, and the truck stop he'd pulled into had a diner
that was filling up fast. Various trucks were lumbering in and
out of the gas lanes, air brakes screeching, gears shifting down,
the hiss of air compression harsh and sibilant.

Through a jumble of trucks going both ways, he saw why the
eighteen wheeler was stopping. A girl was walking backwards ahead
of it, her thumb up. For a moment Mulder thought she was doing
what he had done as a boy; whenever he had been walking along the
side of the road and had seen a big truck coming from the other
direction, he had raised his fist in the air and brought it down
as if pulling a cord, and nine times out of ten the driver would
give a blast or two on the air horn.

But this girl was hitchhiking, and she'd just gotten a ride. He
only caught a glimpse of her in the distance, more of an
impression than anything else. Jeans, a tee shirt, a backpack.
Road kill, he thought wearily. A tidbit for the wolves to devour
along the way. For one second there was a blind impulse to tear
after her, to shout for her to stop, come back, because the next
time anyone saw her they'd be pulling her body out of some lonely
dumpster. If not from this ride, then from the next, or the next.
It was a crap shoot, and just like at the casino, the player
always lost in the end. But his FBI training took over; just
observe the situation, note and remember details. Later, if
necessary, he would be able to tell the police he'd seen this
particular girl picked up by a big truck that said INDIGO on the
side.

His gas pump cut off. He went inside to pay for it, and decided
to get something to eat, charmed by the rural atmosphere, the
smell of greasy burgers and the easy camaraderie of the truckers,
the slinky hipped waitress who brought him a sugared iced tea
when he sat at the counter. He had left his suit jacket in the
car and rolled his up his sleeves, but he was still out of place
in this world of jeans and flannel.

Scully would have sent her tea back and asked for coffee. She'd
have searched the menu and then given up and asked for a tuna
sandwich. The men at the counter would be looking too casually
down and backwards, attracted like moths to that bright red hair
of hers, checking out the compact package of dynamite and giving
him speculative looks.

(Think you can handle that little fireball, son?)

He'd have met their eyes steadily. (Not on my best day.)

Mulder found himself reading the menu for both of them.
Pretend!Scully would give him the Cholesterol Look when he
ordered the chicken fried steak, lapping over the platter like
the bellies of most of these drivers lapped over their belts.
Pour on the cream gravy, too, just to piss her off.

A few hours ago she had answered the door, always grouchy when
she first got up, but redolent of sleep and dreams, and warm from
her bed, and then he had told her was going alone and her eyes
had changed, been hurt, actually. He'd tried to be extra cheerful
and get her mad at him, but calling him a rat had been half-
hearted on her part.

(I am a rat, though. And I wish she was here now. I wish she was
bitching at me and giving me those looks.)

The waitress was looking at him expectantly. He said, "Got any
tuna salad?"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

After lunch he noticed the INDIGO truck was still across the
road, idling. The driver got out, a big man with massive
shoulders, in a baseball hat and Grateful Dead tee shirt. He
crossed the road, came into the diner, and headed for the men's
room. Mulder tucked a tip under his plate and strolled in after
him.

As Mulder squared off in front of a urinal, he watched the
trucker from the corner of his eye. The big man was sorting
through change, trying to find enough for the condom machine.
Mulder looked away, the no-eye-contact rule so entrenched in him
he couldn't make himself watch. He heard the man grunt a curse
and slap a meaty hand against the machine, apparently to urge it
along in its delivery.

Outside, the sun was harsh, and Mulder held his hand up over his
eyes to scan the area. The girl was still in the passenger seat
of the giant truck.

Mulder heard something that might have been a car running along
on a flat tire. Really it was more of a vibration than a sound.
Thump thump thump thump. Maybe it was the mega bass from some
kid's car stereo. There was something deeply disturbing about it,
something dreadful, like a bad dream he didn't want to remember.
A wave of anxiety made him pull his keys from his pocket and move
to his car to get away from it, from this place.

As he unlocked his door he looked over the roof and saw the girl
in the INDIGO truck quite clearly. Her head was turned away from
him. He felt certain the noise was coming from the cab of the
truck. As she turned her head slowly, he realized with a
heartskip that it was her, the girl in the picture. Turning her
face slowly, slowly towards him. Her light blonde hair. Her
forehead. The shape of her nose as it would be in profile. The
slightly receeding chin. The thin upper lip, full lower lip.

Thump thump thump thump.

Mulder fumbled with the keys, dropped them, picked them up. The
girl had turned her head to look directly at him. She was
Hispanic, her hair dyed a reddish blonde, big lips smeared with a
bright red lipstick. Not even close to Tayna MacClean. Not in a
million mile ballpark of her.

The trucker hustled out of the diner and did a little dog trot
across the highway without looking either way for traffic. The
trot and the thin Grateful Dead tee shirt made a convincing
argument for running bras for men. Mulder got in the rental car
and fired it up, leaving a little rubber as he accelerated out of
the parking lot.

Behind him, the bass thud faded into silence. 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Victoria, Texas, 1:15 PM Tuesday

"Tanya MacCLean?"

The girl in the holding tank was blonde, about sixteen years old,
but she was not the hitchhiker. Her face was coarser, the
features bunched together in a wide expanse of spade-shaped face.
She squinted up at Mulder with light grey eyes and his heart
sank, for a variety of reasons. First, because he had just driven
for hours on a futile chase. His instincts had screamed at him
that this was where he would find the girl who could lead him to
Liz Smith. The lost soul who had introduced herself by standing
in the middle of a busy freeway at night. Second, because she was
only sixteen years old and in jail already, or in pre-jail, and
she looked fairly unconcerned about the situation. 

This girl had pawned a piece of the Lanier Collection she had
stolen from a street fence in Houston, and had tried to pawn it
at the Lone Star Pawn Shop on Gregor street, where the proprietor
had immediately called the police. They had picked the girl up
before she even reached the edge of town. Headed south, she said,
for Tijuana.

"Tijuana isn't south of Texas," Mulder told her. "It's south of
California."

"For real?" She gave him a sullen look, the kind of look she was
used to giving the world that had so abysmally failed her. She
was just crossing through time zones in her short life, from the
point at which her moral and cultural stunting was the fault of
her caregivers, to the point at which it became her own
responsibility, her own "recognizance."

"But it's in Mexico, right?" she asked.

The woman who was guarding them, a tall, uniformed officer,
rolled her eyes and walked to the steel door, out of earshot for
the low voice Mulder used as he took the photo from his pocket.
It was beginning to look a little creased and tattered, and he
smoothed it with his thumb, stroked it out flat for her.

"Have you seen this girl?"

The blonde peered at the picture, unsurprised. "Yeah, that's
Tanya, all right," she said. "The old man wouldn't let her go."

"What?"

The girl huddled back inside herself, pulling away from him to
the back of her bunk. "Listen, Mister," she whispered, "You help
me out of this mess, and I'll tell you where to find her." She
shot a nervous look at the guard and lowered her voice even
further. "Where to find ALL of them."

Mulder's eyes flicked to the guard. She was waiting for someone
from the Juvenile Division to pick her up. When that happened, he
would lose the girl forever.

He said, "What old man?"

"You know. The Buyer. That's who you're looking for, right?"

He made an uncertain gesture, unable to decide whether or not she
was lying to get something from him.

She said, "Tanya got away. That's why I figured I could cop the
name. She was, like, one of the first ones, but she fooled him.
She--" The guard strolled back within hearing range, and the
girl's mouth snapped shut dramatically, like a fish gasping for
water.

Mulder said, "What's your real name?"

The girl held her hand out and turned it, wrist up. On the inside
of her forearm was a crude tattoo, a child's crude drawing of a
sunflower.

"Flower," the girl said. "That's what they call me, on account of
the flower, see?"

Mulder stared at the tattoo. Six years ago this was a ten year
old, with scraped knees and maybe missing teeth, holding her arm
out with that look a little girl gets when she gives someone a
flower. She looked like that now.

His voice was husky with emotion. "I see," he said. "It's very
pretty."

What was tender mercy in Scully was broken glass in Mulder; when
someone shook it around, it cut him, and he bled.

He looked at the guard and said, "Mam'n, this girl may be wanted
as a material witness in a homicide. I need to talk to whoever's
in charge of her arraignment."

"Well, there probably won't be any formal arraignment," she said.
"Since she's a juvie, we'll just get a judge to sign the papers
and send her up to county."

"I may need to take her back to Houston with me to further a
federal investigation."

The guard shrugged, whatever. "You'll need to talk to the Chief
about that."

"Fine. Can you take me to him?"

"Sure."

He gave the girl one last look, and she smiled back at him, hope
making her look almost pretty.

"Do you need anything?" he asked.

She brightened a little. "I could sure go for a coke. And maybe a
pizza, too." She gave a little laugh, apropos of nothing.

Mulder said, "I'll see what I can do."

He followed the guard down the hall, determined not to let go of
his single lead.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Houston, Texas, 24 hours later
(than when Mulder found Flower in jail)

They had slept well past noon.

When Skinner woke, his stretching woke her, and she blinked up at
him with sleepy affection. He wanted to watch her dress, but she
snatched up her robe and flew to the bathroom in one tantalizing
flash of skin vanishing into terrycloth. She had nothing to hide,
but as far as he was concerned, what woman did? They were all
beautiful. They just seemed to have some secret standard known
only to themselves, apparently unachievable, and variance from it
was punished in some terrible way only they knew.

He looked at the clock on the bedside stand and sat up, reaching
for his jeans. It just now occurred to him that he was going to
have to go back to his room in nothing but the jeans and briefs
he'd been wearing last night. And it was daylight, and there were
people who would see him leaving Scully's room.

It mattered, but only in a distant, theoretical way. For the
first time since he had really looked at Scully, some years ago,
he felt sexually satisfied, comfortable with her. He was hungry
for breakfast, starving, and starting to wonder about what Young
had told him, and he was trying to remember the number of the
aide he needed to call in Virginia to get a plane back home.

Then Scully came out of the bathroom. She was wearing some sort
of sweater that buttoned up the front, dark green, and blue
jeans. She'd taken a quick shower there were still wet tendrils
of hair clinging to her forehead and cheeks. Her face, without
any makeup at all, was freckled and sweet and enormously
kissable. Skinner's concentration slipped, and while he didn't
think he could manage another session in bed, he knew he had to
touch her.

"Come here," he said.

Scully hesitated, looking at him uncertainly. Boss or lover? His
tone could have been either. She went to him anyway. He had put
on what little clothes he had with him, and he moved to the edge
of the bed, the shift in his weight making the headboard thump
against the wall. He glanced at it almost with nostalgia now,
remembering the workout they'd given it only a few hours go.

He spread his legs and pulled Scully between them so that their
positions were almost exactly reversed from the night before.
They were eye level, and he took her hands in his. "I believe
it's customary for lovers to kiss after the act," he told her.

Her face was sober, but her eyes softened, and she leaned forward
and kissed him lightly on the lips. Somehow that kiss, because it
was so willingly granted, was just as meaningful as the long
sweet kiss they had shared earlier. Not that IT wasn't willing,
but there was something equally pleasing about this one.

"You look tired," he said. "But happy."

It was true. She was as relaxed as he'd ever seen her.

She freed one hand and put it on his face in that shy, hesitant
way of hers, and he wondered if he could ever get her to touch
him with the kind of hunger he felt when he touched her. Probably
not, except in bed, and they couldn't stay there forever. But it
made that caress even more meaningful. She stroked his cheek,
moved her hand down his neck and let it rest lightly on his
shoulder. He sensed a world of affection in her, of loving. But
he could not force it out of her with sex, or coax it out with
tenderness. It was probably inevitable for him to accept that her
love was simply meant for someone else.

He pulled her close to him again and touched his forehead against
hers. "Listen, Scully," he said, "I said some things last night I
shouldn't have said. I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable."

She drew back a little to look at him. He couldn't bear the
impact of those morning blue eyes. He looked at her mouth
instead, not quite as dangerous, but unsafe in its own way. "We
need to talk," he said, "But maybe it's too early." "What things
didn't you mean?"

He slipped an arm around her and stroked her back with his big
hand between her waist and shoulders. "I do love you," he said.
"You can't not know that."

She was silent, looking at his chest. After a moment, she nodded.

"I just realize that proposing to you might have sounded like I
was trying to put some pressure on you. I know it wouldn't work
out."

She looked up at him, relief on her face. "It really wouldn't."

"But I still have this world of feeling for you. I don't see that
it has to affect our working relationship."

"How can it not?"

"Because I've always had those feelings for you. Always. Nothing
has changed as far as I'm concerned."

She sighed. He felt the warm exhalation against his face, scented
with spearmint toothpaste, and he wished he could bottle the
sensation. "But things have changed,' she said.

"For you, yes." He pushed her away a little so he could look
directly into her eyes. "Scully, the only thing I couldn't stand,
and wouldn't stand for, is to not see you again. If you think we
should stay away from each other sexually, then I can respect
that decision. But I don't want you to transfer. I don't want to
lose you."

She looked at him thoughtfully. "And Mulder?"

"I already stay away from him sexually."

She smiled a little. "You know what I mean."

"No, I don't."

"I don't want him to ever know about this."

"He never has to know."

"He's a very intelligent man. He can put two and two together."

"Then let's not give him those numbers."

"Okay." She took a deep breath and let it out, nodding. "Okay."

"Now I need you to do me a big favor," he said.

"What?"

"I need you to get me a shirt and some shoes from my room so I
don't have to sneak out of here like a sixteen year old with his
pants in his hands."

Scully laughed softly. It was such a rare sound that Skinner
treasured it, trying to listen to it the way he listened to fine
music, for intense pleasure at the moment, and to hoard the
memory for later. Ah, Scully.

She ran her fingertips over his chest hairs gently. He felt a
wave of gooseflesh behind her touch, and his groin stirred
protestingly in an heroic, if hopeless, effort. "I'm sorry I
won't see you like this again," she said. In a rush of honesty,
not looking at him, she said, "I liked it. I liked every minute
of it."

e put his arms around her and pulled her hard against him, and
she closed her arms around his neck and held him tightly for a
few minutes. It was not a tearful moment. He was not losing her.
He felt only a quiet joy that he and she would be in the same
world in all the foreseeable future.

And he could live with that. 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Chapter Thirteen

Mulder stood with his hands rigid, fingers pointing at the floor,
like someone who had just been given an electric shock. Even his
hair seemed to be standing on end, or at least was so unkempt as
to give that impression. His face was transfixed with a mixture
of horror and rage.

"How the hell could this have happened?" he demanded.

The guard looked at him and at the bug-eyed Chief of Police. She
said, "She had those running shoes on. Mostly we take the laces,
but since we were just holding her for Juvie to pick up, nobody
thought to treat her like an adult prisoner. I mean, she was just
a kid, you know." She was talking too much and too fast, her eyes
wide like a panicked horse's.

Mulder turned, aiming his rage at her, but at the sight of her
pale face he realized there were more victims around than poor
Flower. He said, "You think this was a suicide?"

The guard's mouth opened and closed several times before she
spluttered, "What do you mean? She was in there by herself,
wasn't she? No one could get in and out without us seeing them,
could they?"

Mulder turned around and walked away. That was all he could do.

In the parking lot waves of heat seemed to radiate up from the
asphalt like the fires of hell. He burned his fingers on the hot
metal of the car door when he unlocked it. Inside, he wrapped his
arms around the steering wheel and put his forehead on it and
thought, Scully, they killed her and I couldn't stop them. I'm so
sorry, sorry, sorry.

Emotion flooded him, a jumble of pictures, the girl's face, still
a baby face, but innocence being crowded out by a bitter
cynicism, her little feet; someone had knelt and tied those shoes
so lovingly only a very few years ago, knotted the laces twice so
they wouldn't come undone, and today someone, as sure as he was
sitting here, had unlaced them and wrapped them around each other
and used them to choke her to death, then to hang the body from
one of the cell bars.

Tears came. He was so glad now that Scully hadn't come. It would
hurt her like this, like it was hurting him.

Flower. Flower. For a few seconds he let himself cry over her,
because he knew no one else ever would. There was no shame in it.
If a man couldn't spare a few tears for the death of a little
girl, what good was he?

After a few minutes he sat up and scrubbed his face with both
hands, running his fingers through his hair, trying to get back
on track. He was getting the beginnings of a sickening headache,
a real blinder. He started the car, feeling aimless and lost,
just wanting to get away from the police statio and the dead girl
whose lead had gone nowhere.

He drove down the street to a crossroad he thought would lead
back to the highway. It didn't. Instead, it curved around, back
to the center of town, and he found himself in the midst of a
section of town heavily peopled with shoppers, lunch goers, bus
riders huddled together at stops. He couldn't seem to find his
way back.

He stopped for a light. Must think clearly. Flower was dead.
There was no doubt in his mind that someone had murdered her to
keep her from telling him something. But maybe she'd already told
him, if only he could figure out what it was.

His head was really starting to throb now. Thump thump thump
thump. He felt the vibration run like cold water down his spine.
Something bad coming. (By the pricking of my thumbs, /Something
wicked this way comes.)

Something wicked bad.

Across the road, coming out of a Dairy Queen, the hitchhiker
strolled down the sidewalk, wiping her hands on her thighs. Her
long blonde hair swayed as she walked, her checked shirt was
untucked from her jeans, flapping behind her. For some reason her
ankle-high shoes were filthy with mud. She walked directly across
the street without looking right or left. When she reached the
opposite sidewalk, she turned her head a little and looked at him
from the corners of her eyes, a little elfish smile curving her
mouth up to reveal a dimple.

Mulder gave a grunt of surprise and hit the accelerator. He
almost hit a woman pushing a stroller, who then demonstrated for
her infant the correct way to shoot a finger at a motorist.
Sorry, sorry, sorry. He wove through people who seemed to be
crossing the road haphazardly, not bothering to go to the
intersections, and tried to follow the bouncing blonde hair. She
turned and went through an alleyway, and he hurried to get to the
next intersection, to turn right and then right again. But the
second right was blocked by construction.

For the next half hour, Mulder followed the girl, or glimpses of
the girl, through a bewildering maze of streets. She never seemed
to speed up or to slow down, but simply appeared in front of him,
or to his left, or to his right, in impossible places all out of
geometric logic to the places he expected to see her. All the
streets looked alike to him, until suddenly he realized there
were no more pedestrians on the sidewalks.

He was on a deserted avenue, with a row of two story brick
buildings hunched down on either side of him. They all seemed to
be a single structure, all closed, boarded windows, doors barred
with wrought iron. Graffiti sprayed on the bricks proclaimed the
Ruthless Assassins as the sinister presence in the neighborhood.
RA was everywhere.

Mulder watched the abandoned store fronts slip by, feeling
queasy. It wasn't just his headache, it was that damn thumping.
He could feel it in the fillings of his teeth. Like music that
sometimes gets in the blood and can't be gotten rid of. He slowed
the car to a crawl, driving with one hand and massaging his
temple with the other.

And then he saw the sign, written large in felt tip pen:

"Issies. Come round back."

Shit! He hit the brake and lurched forward hard enough to lock
his seatbelt. Issie's. Son of a bitch. Right under his nose.

He found a side street, more of an alley, and dove down it. The
back of the building was apparently the front, because there it
was, the three balls above the door, the glass front, the big oak
entrance way, everything he'd seen in the photo. And on the
window, "Issie's" painted in that odd dark script.

In the empty parking lot he stopped the car and sat for a few
minutes listening to the pop and sizzle of the cooling engine.
His headache was worse, if that was possible. Migraine? A brain
aneurism? He wanted to vomit from it.

He got out of the car and gathered his resources for a moment,
performed the standard Mulder checklist, an almost superstitious
ritual, touching the knot of his purple and grey tie to make sure
it was knotted squarely in front, touching his fly to make sure
it was zipped up, touching his I.D., his wallet, his gun, and his
handcuff case in a certain order that reassured him everything
was in order, running a hand through his hair--he had owned a
comb once, but that was long ago--and finally taking a deep
breath and moving forward. Prepared for anything.

Well, almost anything.

There was a sign above the door that hadn't been obvious in the
photo; it read, "Issie's Emporium." Looking up at it, Mulder saw
three balls suspended over the entrance.

And then stopped in his tracks, staring.

There were indeed three balls. They had looked flat and colorless
in the black and white photos. But up close, he could see that
one was glittering gold, one was a strange silverish grey, the
color of a thundercloud, and one was--what? Crystal? Neither
clear nor opaque, but still prisming colors from the other two,
like a fortune teller's crystal ball, swimming with mysterious
secrets.

And they were moving, in strange sinuous revolutions, almost like
small planets. The illusion was intensified by the fact that they
were not suspended by any means he could see. No wires, no
struts, no visible supports.

A movement in the window caught his eye, and Mulder saw the
reflection of the hitchhiker wavering across the glass. He spun
around, but the other side of the alley was only the backside of
another row of buildings facing the next street over, a row of
blank red brick unbroken by windows or doors.

Thump thump thump thump.

He stepped across the threshold and went inside.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Houston, Texas 24 hours later

Except for a headache from where her skull had connected with the
pavement in her jump from the car (great tuck and roll, her older
brother would have applauded), Scully felt well enough to go back
to work right away. She tried Mulder's number for the dozenth
time, got nothing. She called the branch headquarters and got a
prompt, if cool, response.

A car came to pick her up within the hour.

Neither Seagram nor Danson seemed inclined to kiss and make up,
but they gave Scully a grudging respect which she deeply
resented, because it was Skinner they were respecting, not her,
with their polite but distant attitudes. Damn Skinner anyway. She
understood and even appreciated his efforts to protect her.
Nothing better in a boss, actually. But when it came right down
to it, what he gave her in the way of protection, he took away
from her in the way of self-respect. (You never get anything
without paying for it, her father used to tell her. God doesn't
allow shoplifters in life.) Everything comes with a price.

For some reason she couldn't get her father out of her head this
afternoon. Did he watch, from some heavenly perspective, as she
kissed Skinner, let him touch her? (Well, Dana, think about on
THAT your next date, and you'll earn that Ice Queen title for
real.) But that wasn't really what worried her. Anyway, all that
was over. There had been a finality in her parting with Skinner
that was both a relief and a bittersweet pang whenever she
thought about it. When she had time to process all that had
happened, to sit at her laptop and indulge her private thoughts,
then she might feel guilty about it. But probably not. They'd
given each other some sweetness in a time of emptiness and
sorrow. In return, this sadness of farewell, the weight of
knowledge between them that they had done something that would
hurt other people if it continued. That made it wrong somehow.
But it didn't feel wrong. Anyway, there was this pain in her, not
terrible, just a low level sadness, that somehow balanced the
books, paid for all the pleasure he'd given her.

Good Catholic girl upbringing. Pay for pleasure. For each time a
stray image passed through her mind, say, Skinner holding her
down and forcing his way into her, the line of his teeth so
straight and even as her tongue teased his mouth open, the
enormous power of the man held in such amazing check, filling her
with power because she could control his every movement with no
more than a whimper or a soft intake of breath---

Scully pressed her lips together, hard, to keep from smiling.
(Where was I going with this?) Oh, yes. Guilt. Forgive me,
father, for I have sinned. Sinner. Skinner. For each image, a
penance. A stab of guilt.

They stopped in front of a row of abandoned buildings in an area
in the heart of town, or so she thought; the tall buildings of
Houston were somewhere beyond them, out of sight. The street
names were too confusing to follow. Montrose, Waugh Drive, and
then West Gray, but somehow West Gray seemed to run in all
directions, dead ending and then picking up again in improbable
places, blocks over. It was all a maze, and she gave up trying to
memorize it and resigned herself to the back seat position.

Danson handed her a thick file over the back of his seat. "We've
known for some time that the girls were being abducted from all
over the country, and funneled to Houston to some central
location," he told her. "This city is so close to the border that
a plane can have them into Mexico in no time. From there, no one
will ever be able to follow them."

"But Liz Ann ran away from home," Scully said. "Didn't she? Is
there something I don't know about?"

"No, you're right," Danson said. "She and another girl, maybe the
one in your picture and maybe not, took off together. Or else the
other girl set out for Houston and then when she got here gave
Liz Ann the go-ahead to come down. The details of this case are
so sketchy we can't get together an actionable case against
anyone. That's why we're so sensitive about it, I guess."

It was the closest to a real apology he'd come, and Scully was
somewhat mollified. She said, "What's the pawnshop got to do with
it?"

"This is where we hear our chief suspect, a man called 'The
Buyer' is supposed to make his contacts. We've had this place
under observation, but we can't get enough to tag it, so we can't
keep it under constant surveillance. The only photograph we've
ever seen of the place besides the ones we've taken is the one
you showed us."

Seagram said, "All we ever get is vague rumors and heresay. And
yet the girls go missing, twenty to forty a year, and there's
never a sign of them. No bodies, no leads, nothing. They just
vanish from the face of the earth, as far as we can tell. But we
suspect the Buyer doesn't use direct methods. He must draw them
with some kind of bait. Maybe a modeling job, or a promise to let
them be in a movie or something. Whatever, the girls come to him-
-he doesn't go to them."

"And we never catch them going out at the bus terminal, or at
Hobby, or Houston Intercontinental," Danson said. "Whoever has
set up this operation has made it foolproof, as far as we can
tell."

Scully had been leafing through the file. She narrowed her eyes
and said, "Hey! These are the two men who tried to grab me."

Seagram took the file from her and looked at the photographs
clipped to the reports. "This is Omar Kudsi," he said. "We're not
sure who the other man is. We've observed them coming and going
from this area, but never with anyone. We suspect they're the
primary procurers."

"But you don't have anything tangible, or solid, in the way of
evidence?" Scully asked.

The men exchanged looks. Danson said, "Our solve rate is sixty
percent. That's higher than anyone else in our department." He is
tone wasn't defensive, just weary. "They gave us this case so
another twenty or forty girls a year won't end up in some Arab's
tent this year." He sighed. "Now each time it happens, it's like
it's our fault for not stopping it."

Seagram looked at Scully with more genuine feeling than she
suspected him capable of. "Look," he said, "We have files on
these girls. They're clean, almost in every case virgins, as far
as we can tell, and none of them have had any problems with
substance abuse or criminal activity. These are the flower of
American womanhood, in the bud, so to speak."

A poet, thought Scully, though a bad one. She said, "Have you
tried to set up a trap of any sort?"

"This guy is a fuckin' criminal genius," Danson said. "I'm
telling you, we've tried everything. And this place--" he pointed
at Issie's, "Is just one hunch. And only because pawnshops with
this name are found in every city that our girls have been
missing from."

Seagram said, "And even at that, it's just rumor, because this
isn't even a real pawn shop. It's not registered and as far as we
can tell it doesn't advertise itself as such."

"Have you ever gone in?" Scully asked.

Danson and Seagram exchanged a Partner Look, the unspoken
communication that only years of working together can develop.
Scully knew it all too well. Danson cleared his throat and said,
"Uh...no. No, we haven't."

"Why not?"

"We just haven't."

Puzzled, Scully jacked open her door and said, "Well, then, let's
see what we're dealing with."

Neither man moved for a few seconds. Danson said, "Well, what the
hell."

"What's wrong?" Scully asked.

Seagram just shook his head and got out of the car. Danson
hesitated an instant longer. "It's just--" Then he got out of the
car, too.

The three of them stood together, closer than most people would
consider a comfortable distance apart, in the unforgiving
sunshine. Scully, looking at the window, saw something move, a
reflection. She looked around quickly, saw only the ragged
buildings behind her. She rubbed her eyes hard, until she saw
sparks, and then opened them and let her vision clear.

What she had not told anyone, even Skinner, was the real reason
the men had tried to abduct her had lost control of their car.
Bouncing around in the back seat, Scully had seen the passenger
holding a gun on her, and had stopped struggling and was only
trying to maintain her balance. She looked out the windshield and
saw a girl step directly into the path of the Cadillac. No
hesitation, a deliberate act: suddenly there she was, a young
blonde girl with a packback. The driver had let out a yelp of
fear and jerked the steering wheel hard to the left, and the
Cadillac had hit a parked car, giving Scully enough time to get
out and make her escape.

(Easy enough to see it that way in retrospect, though, after a
blow to the head when you're trying to remember details. Mulder's
so suggestive; he could make you remember Skinner as the one who
stepped in front of that car, if he was convinced of it himself.)
Scully started walking towards the door of the shop, and the men
followed. It was a strange sensation, almost like walking in mud;
she felt dragged down, slowed, something about gravity seemed to
change as she moved forward. An intense emotion swelled inside
her like a balloon full of feeling suddenly inflated to its
maximum capacity. A homesickness, a nameless longing. For a
moment her eyes stung with tears, silly, referenced by nothing.
All she could think of was Mulder. Mulder.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Victoria, Texas, 24 hours earlier

Mulder stood just inside the shop for a few minutes, letting his
eyes adjust to the dim interior after the white hot glare of the
sun. He smelled musty odors, and spices, and wood polish, and
human sweat, and mice. He felt rather than heard the dull
thumping of bass from somewhere, everywhere.

There was a long oak bar, like in a pub, across the back of the
shop, which seemed enormous, cavernous, like looking through the
wrong end of a telescope. The sunlight weakened as it had further
to travel, so that the far end of the shop looked almost dark.

Around him were a million items, shelves crammed full of things,
things stacked on the floor, dangling from the ceiling. Guitars,
umbrellas, typewriters, hair dryers. Books of every kind,
backpacks, wheeled tool carts in bright red that said SNAP ON.
Telephones, silver trays with tea services, quivers full of
arrows.

Someone stirred in the depths, behind the counter. Mulder blinked
him into focus, and walked across the creaking wood planks of the
floor, going a further distance than made sense to him, into the
bowels of the shop.

The man was no more than five feet, slim and supple, vaguely
Asian in features. He had lank black hair and slanted eyes, broad
high cheekbones.

When he smiled his mouth reminded Mulder of a marsupial wolf, an
extinct creature he had only seen on the Discovery channel in a
black and white film. When the wolf had yawned its mouth had
opened the length of its whole head.

"Ah, it's you," the man said, as if greeting an old friend.

Something suspended from the ceiling brushed Mulder's face like a
cobweb, and he reached up to push it back. It was a pair of
shoelaces, white, with the word NIKE printed on each one.

Thump thump thump thump.

Mulder felt unaccountably ill. He put both hands on the counter
to brace himself against a wave of nausea.

"I can help you?" the man asked. Or said. He had an accent; it
was hard to tell.

Mulder's voice sounded strange to his own ears, as if he had a
head cold.

"Looking for Issie," he managed.

"I am Issie."

"I'm sorry. You'll have to excuse me. I'm feeling a little..."
Mulder squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again there
was some subtle change in the room. The shadows in the corners
seemed to have deepened, elongated. The light coming form the big
front window was more muted than before, and gave no warmth at
all.

He looked at Issie desperately and said, "What's that noise?"

"What, this?" The little Asian was holding something under the
counter.

Three balls. He held them up, miniature replicas of the balls
above the door. They were no bigger than tennis balls. They
seemed to be moving. One was the color of whirling smoke, one was
melting gold, one was a crystal prism containing light.

His voice was liquid, like a winding snake. "This noise?"

Thump thump thump thump.

Mulder looked into those black, black eyes. For a moment he heard
the whole sound, or almost all of it, the way someone listening
to music in their head hears only a few bars, over and over, and
then hears the whole song on the radio, and it becomes clear.

The sound was: thump thump thump thump
thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump

A music he knew in his blood, hot and bold and terrible. He
clapped his hands over his ears and shouted, "Stop!"

The sound stopped at once. The pain of his headache was so
intense he could hardly breathe. He saw the balls in a blur; they
seemed to be moving around each other like some intricately
complex toy.

"The girl," he began.

Issie smiled that impossibly wide smile, the corners of his lips
sliding almost all the way back to his ears. "Ah, girls," he
said. "Like sweet flowers, aren't they? Sweet, sweet flowers."

Mulder looked away from the entrapment of those eyes. "Do you
know what happened to Flower?" he asked.

"She went home," Issie said. He sounded a little sad. "She was
here. Now she's gone."

Mulder felt drunk. The balls seemed to be juggling of their own
accord.

The guy was a magician. It was all a trick. Gas, drugs. Something
in the air. He swayed, staring at them as they circled each
other.

Issie held one out, the crystal ball. He said, "Gold for
beautiful memories in the past. Silver for present, all smoke and
mirror. Strange reflections, yes? Crystal for future. Look here."

Mulder looked. He saw a blank wall, some kind of innocuous
wallpaper, vaguely familiar. And two posts, connected by an arch.
A headboard. Banging on the wall. Thump thump thump thump.
Daylight blazing through the curtains across a naked back.

Thumpthumpthumpthump 

"No!" He turned and ran, one foot in front of the other, knocking
things over, flailing wildly with his arms like a skier losing
downhill control, stumbling, banging through the front door, and
a thin strange thread of laughter tinkling behind him like a
silver bell 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Houston, Texas

There was a little bell on the door that tinkled when they opened
it, and Scully shuddered for some reason, a goose walking over
her grave, as she glanced up at it.

And saw the three balls suspended in mid air.

Seagram and Danson realized she'd paused, and followed her gaze
up.

"Son of a bitch," Seagram said, with admiration. "How the hell do
they do that?"

Danson said, "I saw something like that done once with electro
magnets and a globe. It was like perpetual motion. Great special
effect, though, isn't it?"

Scully ducked inside, out of the blazing Houston heat into the
vast cool interior of the shop. It was dark inside, light
filtered down from some unseen souce, probably a skylight in the
ceiling, through which dust motes swirled lazily, giving
everything a kind of antique patina, a hazy look.

Scully saw an umbrella stand made from an elephant's foot. She
shuddered and turned away, saw at the far end of the shop an oak
counter with a small Oriental man at the far end. When Danson and
Seagram moved towards him, away from her, she could see that they
were going downhill somehow, not just away, but DOWN, as if the
floor dipped. And yet when she moved to follow them, there was no
gravitational shift to tell her she was going in any direction
but a straight even line.

It took forever to reach the end of the shop. Five mintes? What
the hell was going on here? This place was too creepy. Despite
its huge size, she felt claustrophobic. Danson and Seagram just
kept walking and walking and walking.

Finally time caught up to her, like a rubber band elongated and
then let go with a snap. She had experienced the feeling before,
but she couldn't remember where or when. Then she was standing in
front of the counter.

The small man, whose mouth reminded her of a snake's mouth, that
thin line going from one side of his face to the other, fixed his
black eyes on her and ignored the men.

"You want redeem?" he asked.

He spoke as if he knew her. Danson and Seagram gave her curious
looks, as if wondering whether she'd been here before.

She said, "Pardon me?"

"Redeem?" He was holding something in his hands, some balls like
the ones over the door.

"Is this a pawnshop?" she asked.

The smile came, horribly, as she knew it would. Slowly spreading
like a crack in the universe. His voice was invidious, mocking.
"You want redeem?" he repeated.

Seagram said something. When the dark eyes moved to him, Scully
felt released, and turned around, looking at the shop itself.
There were stacks of old rolled maps, lamps made of brass pipe
fittings, and boxes of crayons. There were sailor hats and latex
gloves and little pots carved from sandstone. There were jars
full of screws and rolls of duct tape and candles shaped like
naked women. It was as if the detritus of the world had settled
here in this shop, the odds and ends of everyone's junk drawer
had somehow sifted down through that smiling crack in the
universe and had fallen into this place.

Scully was in the process of turning back when her eyes skimmed a
rusted rear view mirror lying on a shelf, and saw something
reflected in it. Not her own blue eyes, but by some trick of the
light, hazel ones. riangular, as familiar to her as her own, but
not her own. Mulder's eyes, looking at her.

She gave a short gasp and took a step back. Someone had turned on
a radio somewhere; she could feel the bass thump reverberating
through the wooden floorboards. Must have been a car passing with
the stereo on, rising to acrescendo, then falling away.

Oh Skinner, inside her, forcing her open, harder, faster, the
headboard banging with each forward thrust, his eyes half closed
watching her Skinner Skinner--she flung out her hand, reaching
across infinity, and cried out, Mulder!

Scully blinked. The sound was gone, and her headache with it. The
balls in the man's hands looked dull, flat. Her right hand ached
with emptiness.

(Okay, so maybe you did suffer a mild concussion after all. This
is just some kind of reaction to the head injury. It'll clear up
in a minute. Just hang in there.)

The man behind the counter was answering questions, half smiling,
toying with the balls. The three of them might have been speaking
in a foreign language. Scully felt like she was falling away from
reality, not losing consciousness, just losing her grip. This was
why she drank so rarely, this awful feeling that made some people
mellow terrified her. She didn't want to let go.

Desperate, she played her trump card. During a lull in the
voices, she drew the picture of Tanya MacClean from her purse and
laid it on the polished oak counter and said, "Have you seen this
girl?"

The man's face changed as much as Brother John's had. He shook
his head. "No," he said. "No, no." But he obviously knew exactly
who Tanya was, and didn't like it.

"So," Seagram said. He reached into his own pocket and pulled out
some pictures, sorted one out and laid it on the counter. It was
a picture of Liz Ann, one Scully hadn't seen before. "Then have
you seen this one?"

Your timing sucks, Scully thought sourly. Mulder would have drawn
it out, made him speak before either of them spoke again. In a
verbal match, the first person who speaks loses, and ends up
telling more than they want to say. (You shouldn't have stepped
on my line, you fool. Now we've lost him.)

Indeed, the man visibly regained his composure, his bland
expression creeping back over his features and erasing all trace
of emotion. "No," he said, barely glancing at the picture.

Scully said, "Sir, is this establishment a pawn shop?"

"No," he said, but his smile was so sly, she was confused.

"Then what did you mean when you offered me redemption?" Scully
was aware of how odd that sounded, and thought of how to word the
sentence better.

She looked to Seagram for help, but he was staring at the
retreating back of his partner. Danson was halfway across the
room, headed for the door.

After an obvious internal war about what to do, Seagram gave in
and went after his partner. Scully took a step hesitantly behind
them, but the man behind the counter said, "Wait."

She looked at him, into the obsidian depths of his eyes. They
were like tunnels, like bottomless pits. She said, "Sir, if you
know anything about either of these girls that you're not telling
us, you could be held as an accessory to a federal crime."

The faint tinkle of a silver bell. Scully remembered the fresh
air outside with a longing as if she'd been shut up in a
submarine for a week.

She knew how good it would feel to be out there with them again,
above ground. Clear headed. Alive.

The Asian held a ball on his finger, balanced like a little
spinning basketball. "Three balls," he said. "The past is
remembered golden. The future is just glass, a reflection. But
this one." He held out the silver ball, which seemed curiously
drained of energy. "This is the one you can have if you want."

It was listening to the ravings of a schizophrenic, words that
almost made sense, but didn't, so that the listener began to
question her sanity instead of the sanity of the speaker.

Scully said, "I'm going to ask you one last time. Do you know
anything about these girls?"

He said in a soft voice that seemed to ripple the air around him
like a transparent curtain, "All girls are flowers. Sweet sweet
flowers."

Scully said under her breath, "Shit."

Then sharp and clear, the whipcrack of a gunshot. Scully had her
automatic in her hand in a flash, and was running the eternal
distance to the door. The room around her seemed oddly out of
focus, like a picture dissolving in acid. She couldn't hold
clarity in her peripheral vision; she just knew she had to get to
the exit before it all melted around her.

She burst unexpectedly into heat, glaring sunlight. Danson lay in
the parking lot, a pool of bright red billowing under his
shoulders, one hand flung out over his head. Seagram was nowhere
to be seen. Scully scanned the tops of the buildings for a
shooter. The afternoon was silent except for a dull hum that
seemed to be coming from the spheres above her head.

She saw the glint of sunlight off a car windshield just as the
Cadillac came out of an alley and roared across the lot. She ran
to the agents' rental car, diving and rolling behind it. Seagram
was on the other side, crouched down with his gun pointed at her.
He lowered it quickly.

"Is that the car you saw yesterday?" he asked.

"Yeah, I think so. What happened?"

"They blind sided us when we came out the door. Got Danny." He
peered over the hood at his partner, lying motionless. Scully
straightened up.

"You go after them. I'll call  Damn!" She remembered her stolen
phone and said, "Leave me your phone. I'll-- "

"Fuck that," Seagram said. "My partner's down. I'm not leaving
him."

It was so unexpected and so irrational that Scully wasted
precious seconds staring at him. Then she said, "I'll go after
them. Give me the keys. You call an ambulance."

She went to Danson and checked him out. A pulse, and unsteady
breathing, but she could tell by the amount of blood he'd lost
that his chances weren't good. She found the entry wound in the
right breast. Not good at all. Wadding the tail of his jacket,
she held it to the wound and said, "Keep pressure on this. Like
that. Yes."

She patted Danson's arm--you never knew if they could tell you
were there--and ran back to the Taurus. Seagram threw her the
keys and she got in, fired it up.

The car growled like an animal eager for the hunt, and Scully hit
the gas, coming out of the alley so fast the front tires jumped
the curb and the car came down with a flash of sparks as the
muffler scraped the sidewalk. A fishtail and then she regained
control, and took out after the white car just as it swerved
around a far corner.

At last, something clear and concrete to go after, known felons,
a crime committed under her very nose, one of her own shot and
maybe dying on the asphalt. Something she could get her back up
against. Black and white resolved itself out of the mist of
ambiguity at last, and the last faint wisps of her headache, her
muzziness, vanished, as Dana Scully, Federal Agent, shot down the
street in hot pursuit the big white Cadillac.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Chapter Fourteen

At last, something to put his back against.

Mulder sighed deeply, rolling his shoulders against the cold
stone supporting him. His eyelashes trembled against his
cheekbones as he woke gradually from strange, unremembered
dreams. Beneath the cushion of his hair he felt something slick,
like blood, and he sat up straight and reached up to feel the
back of his head.

It was water, condensation from the marble tombstone he was
leaning against.

Tombstone?

Staggering to his feet, Mulder found he had to brace his weight
heavily against the monument until the pins and needles in his
legs subsided and he got some feeling back. His muscles ached,
particularly where he'd been shot, and where the stitches were
still healing from the knife wound. Older wounds joined in the
chorus of discomfort, and for a moment he could only hang on,
swaying a little, until he was able to get control of the pain,
like holding onto a stubbed toe until the throbbing goes away.

As he began to feel a little better, he realized that he was
standing in a graveyard, apparently in the middle of nowhere, in
the dead of night, under a huge full moon. It was so brilliant
there was enough light to cast shadows, though this was not a
particularly comforting effect.

The night was warm, languid, the Texas humidity laid like a
blanket over the cooling earth. A soft wind breathed through the
treetops, as if the night itself was sighing. Mulder realized he
was in shirt sleeves, and saw his jacket draped over the
tombstone he'd been leaning against. He was reaching for it when
a soft feminine voice said, "Just leave it there."

He was so startled he jumped backwards and tripped over a clod of
earth, almost falling. The voice had a muffled, echo-less
quality, as if coming from a great distance.

"I'm here," it said.

"Here" was a gravestone several rows over, where a stone angel
stared down impassively at Mulder. He took a step towards it,
seeing someone move in its shadows.

The hitchhiker sat cross legged on top of a slightly raised mound
of earth, toying with a spray of artificial roses, like a little
girl picking petals from a daisy, playing "he loves me, he loves
me not."

"Hi," she said. "I'm glad you're awake."

Except for the faraway, underwater sound of voice, she seemed to
be perfectly in the world, which Mulder had begun to wonder about
after that long convoluted chase she'd led him on earlier.
Although the night had a vague, dreamlike quality to it, Mulder
was feeling more and more in the world himself. He was hungry and
thirsty and he needed to take a leak. Where was his car? How had
he gotten here? What had happened at Issie's?

But when he looked at her, the hard edge of his suspicion dulled.
There was something so vulnerable about her, so fragile. So HURT.
He thought of how Scully looked in the hospital, all big eyes and
pale face, so tiny wrapped in that big white bed, diminishing
even as he watched. This girl evoked the same feelings in him of
sorrow and helplessness and loss. Like Scully could sometimes do,
the hitchhiker seemed to be moving away from him even while she
was just sitting there.

"How did I get here?" he asked.

She shrugged, unraveling a string of silk from the flower. "I
don't know. I guess you followed me."

"I don't remember."

"Neither do I."

Mulder studied her for a moment. "Are you Tanya MacClean?" he
asked.

She shuddered all over; he saw the quiver of her hands on the
rose. "I...I haven't heard anyone say my name in a long time,"
she told him.

"Are you okay?"

"It's Liz Ann you should be worried about. And the others. Liz
Ann was my friend."

"Was? Is she all right?"

"No." The blonde hair caught the moonlight, bone white, as she
shook her head. "No, she's not. The Buyer wants her."

Mulder walked across the rows of graves, stepping carefully over
the flat markers half buried in the ground. The grass was wet and
slippery under his shoes, and squashed unpleasantly, like
stepping on frogs. When he was about ten feet from her, she held
up her hand for him to stop, and he did.

"Who is the Buyer, Tanya?"

"That man. That's what they call him."

"Issie? Is Issie the Buyer, Tanya?"

"No. Issie--" she waved the rose at him vaguely, "-- Issie HOLDS
things. He just holds things for people until they come for them.
But if they don't come for them, then he can sell them."

"Like a pawn broker."

"Like that, yes." She looked up at him suddenly, and for some
reason he was glad he couldn't see her eyes. "He BROKERS them."

"Do you know where the girls are now, Tanya? Do you know how he's
going to get them? Do you know where I can find the Buyer?"

She put her hands over her face. "Too many questions! I can't
think!"

"I'm sorry." Mulder sat down in the wet grass. His attention was
focused on the girl under the stone angel. He watched her,
waiting patiently for her to speak. If Scully was here she would
be pretending to write something in her little notebook, waiting
with him, knowing that once the girl spoke she would say more
than she intended to.

Scully. Where was she? Why hadn't she called?

The girl spoke as if hearing his thoughts. She said quietly,
"Only love redeems us, Agent Mulder."

He was surprised. "How do you know my name?"

She was standing, though he hadn't seen her get to her feet. "I
just know," she said. "And so will he. Be careful."

"Wait!" Mulder jumped up, then wavered for a minute as the blood
rushed from his head. "Tanya, wait a minute."

But she was gone, fading into the shadows like a drop of rain
falling into a puddle, only ripples spreading out into
nothingness.

"Tanya!"

Silence.

A mockingbird began to sing from a nearby branch, a flood of
music pouring out of nowhere, strangely beautiful for such a dark
hearted night. Mulder walked part of the perimeter of the woods
for a few minutes, then gave up and returned to the graveyard. He
retrieved his jacket and put it on. He was sweating a little, but
not hot; it felt like the cold sweat of a bad dream.

He ran his finger along the etched letters on the tombstone he'd
been sleeping against, and bent forward to read the name. It
said, "Robin Canny-Young: Beloved Wife and Mother, 1939--1982."

Another goddamned pointless mystery. SHIT! Mulder spun around and
kicked viciously at the clod of earth he'd almost tripped over
earlier. It sailed through the air in a high arc and then
vanished into the ground.

Wait a minute. That wasn't right.

The muted thud came from too far away. Mulder followed the
trajectory of the clod, which had landed beyond the graveyard, on
the other side of a low picket fence that surrounded the area
where the graves were gathered. He stepped over the fence and
then caught himself with a grunt, just before he fell into a
hole.

Teetering on the edge, he pinwheeled his arms awkwardly until he
got his balance, and then took a step back. The hole was about
six feet long, no more than two feet deep. A sorry excuse for a
hole no matter what it had been intended for. Rain had washed
most of the dirt out, but Mulder could see that it had been
filled in and then dug out again; here and there were small piles
of earth pushed into anthill sized mounds.

He reached down and scooped his forefinger along the ground,
raised it to his nose. Mixed in with the dirt there was a whitish
powder that had a faintly caustic smell to it he recognized:
quicklime. This hole had been used for a grave, but now it was
empty.

He stood looking into the dark for a long time, thinking.

Only love redeems us.

He stared up into the sky, the vast passionless ice of the
cosmos, and saw faint wisps of clouds slipping by that swollen,
oversized moon. The stars hung from the heavens like throwaway
diamonds with typical Texan gaudiness.

When his head settled down to the low hum of normal thought
again, he looked at the shallow grave with greater clarity,
seeing what had happened there. Someone had been buried alive in
this hole, someone who later had dragged themselves out of the
loose dirt by shoving handfuls of it into those small mounds, and
then they had crawled, dizzy and bleeding, out of the mud and the
quicklime and the leaves and the horror of their own death, and
had gone off into the woods to God knows what.

And he was pretty sure he'd just talked to that someone.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Houston, Texas, 6:00 PM

The Cadillac was fast, but unwieldy, and its turning radius just
couldn't match that of the Taurus. Scully knew that all she had
to do was stay tight on its tail and sooner or later a police car
would see them and engage in the pursuit.

The driver of the Cadillac, who she couldn't see because of the
tinted windows, knew it too, especially after he took out a
couple of street signs when he tried to cut corners too closely.
A couple of times she brushed his rear bumper with her front one,
but each time he managed to pull away and regain control, gaining
as much as two blocks at a time on her.

The streets they were flying down were short, and almost each one
had a stop sign at each intersection, which neither Scully nor
the driver of the Cadillac bothered with. Traffic was light,
though, and they sailed through each one without incident.

Until a red Jeep Cherokee suddenly pulled directly into an
intersection and came to a complete stop. There was no way for
the Cadillac to turn, no way to avoid collision at that speed.
The driver of the Jeep got out and ran, and the driver of the
Cadillac hit the brakes so hard the they screeched in two
different octaves before he smashed into it.

Scully stood on the brakes of the Taurus and stop twenty feet
away from the collision. She jumped out, holding out her gun
while she used the door as a shield, and shouted, "Get out of the
car! Federal Agent! Get out of the car now!"

Both doors flew open, and the driver, using his door the way
Scully was using hers, fired a shot at her. She heard it hit the
fender of the Taurus and glance off. She fired two shots back,
one of them shattering the glass window of the driver's door. The
passenger ran around the back of the jeep, firing low and fast.
Scully took dead aim and shot him in the thigh, and he grabbed
his leg and went down yelping like a dog hit by a car.

The driver was silent for a moment. Then he stood up and fired
through the window, now that there was no glass to impede him, a
fast series of rounds from some sort of semi-automatic weapon, .
One of the bullets grazed Scully's jacket, singeing the cloth.

Otherwise the door of the Taurus took the brunt of the assault.
Scully, huddled behind the protecting metal, looked at the long
black scorch mark on her jacket and thought, I paid a hundred and
fifty dollars for this jacket, you bastard. Then she heard a
gunshot, not the quick firing of the weapon in front of her, but
a single shot, big bore, maybe a .38 or a .357, from somewhere
BEHIND her.

She looked around, saw no one. On both sides of the street there
were rows of parked cars. She thought she detected a flash of
motion, and swung her weapon in that direction.

Someone was running low, crouched down, along the side of the
street to her left, below the level of the cars.

She risked a quick pop-up to look through the window, and saw the
driver of the Cadillac, a swarthy man in cowboy boots and
military fatigues, running towards her, gun outstretched. She
ducked down again, expecting him to fire, but nothing happened.

She jumped up, aiming to fire, but the man had stopped and was
holding his hands in the air in surrender.

A tall, darkly handsome man in a business suit strode across the
street and patted him down quickly, slapping the semi- automatic
out of his hands. As it clattered to the ground, Scully suddenly
realized she knew this man.

It was Roger Young.

She came around the car and approached him as he snapped a pair
of handcuffs on the prisoner, who she now recognized as the man
named Omar Kudsi, one of the two men who had dragged her into the
Cadillac before.

She had only met Roger Young a couple of times, but they knew
each other well enough to speak in the hallways of the bureau.
Now he looked at her quickly and said, "Get over here, Agent
Scully."

She holstered her gun and went to help him. He was holding a .38
revolver on Omar, and he said, "Let me see your cuffs."

Not thinking, she reached behind her back and unsnapped her case,
pulled the cuffs out, handed them to him.

The man on the ground groaned. Young swung the revolver around
and fired once, a single point blank shot to the head,
executioner style.

Scully gaped, unable to comprehend what she had just seen. Young
stepped into her and reached down, cuffing her left wrist neatly.
He pointed the pistol at her and said, "Other hand, Agent
Scully."

Five minutes later, she was back in the Taurus, driving with her
cuffed hands on the steering wheel, just under the speed limit,
with Roger Young and Omar Kudsi in the back seat.

She was silent, partly because she wanted to be cautious and see
what was going to happen next, but mostly because she could not
think of a single question that would answer anything about the
situation she was in.

"Have they given me up as dead yet?" Young asked her.

"I don't know," she said. "I think it's still an ongoing
investigation."

He laughed harshly. "I'll bet they're turning over every rock to
find me."

"We assumed Antoine Baxter had killed you."

Omar said, "Where are you taking me?"

Without even looking at him, Young came up with his elbow and
caught him just in the point of the jaw. Omar yelped and tried to
cover his face.

"Antoine Baxter wasn't supposed to die," Young said. "He was
supposed to lead me back to the Buyer. Damn Skinner anyway."

"Who is the Buyer?" Scully asked.

"A man who deals in human souls," Young said. "He has a taste for
young white female virgins. Gets them in the city he's working,
kidnaps them, and then they're never seen again."

"What did Baxter have to do with him?"

"Baxter was his procurer. These two were his henchmen. They did
the actual transport, as far as I can tell. I've been after them
for months now."

Scully met his eyes in the rear view mirror.

"Roger, why did you handcuff me? I'm on your side."

Young shook his head. His eyes were narrowed in a kind of
permanent rage. "You don't understand," he said. "No one is on my
side. The kind of power we're dealing with here can buy anything,
even the agency. Even you, Agent Scully. Even my partner."

Scully thought back over the events of the past month, Baxter
hiring a man to impersonate him, the bombings, the murders, the
disappearance of records from Skinner's office and from his hard
drive. She wondered how powerful money could really be. Could it
make you invisible? Could it make you immortal? Could it buy you
a human soul?

She said, "What does your father have to do with all this,
Roger?"

"Not a goddamned thing. Not a DAMN thing. My father is related to
me by a six second ejaculation, and that's the end of it."

Scully was quiet, thinking. He only spoke to give her directions,
and she found herself in yet another part of Houston she knew she
would never find again in a million years. They pulled into a
wide curved driveway in front of an elegant looking high rise.
Following directions, Scully took a ramp down to the lower level
of a parking garage.

Young instructed her in the security codes to enter to open two
gates. At last they pulled into an isolated, but well lighted
parking space.

They got out of the car, went up a short flight of stairs to
where a service elevator took them to a main floor. The gun
jammed in Scully's ribs convinced her not to make a run for it,
and Omar seemed too frightened of Young to try anything.

Scully got a feel for where they were. It was some sort of
exclusive men's club, like a small hotel. Because of exclusivity
laws, these places existed on a word-of-mouth basis only. But
there was the feel of money everywhere, from the expensive
Persian rugs casually scattered around to the ornate fretwork on
the cornices. There were bushy sheffaleras in heavy brass pots,
and the walls were papered in some dark gold and brown fabric,
ornamented with an occasional painting of 18th Century hunting
scenes. The corridors were muffled with deep carpeting.

They went up in an elevator, all iron filigree and mahogany
panels, smelling of lemon oil and pipe tobacco. It slid up on
oiled hinges, the floors passing by like slow shadows, one, two,
three, then smoothly gliding to a stop. The doors slid open
without a sound.

Young shoved Omar into the hallway so hard the Arab fell to his
knees, and Young kicked him viciously to get him up. He only
succeeded in knocking him down again. Scully dragged back against
her handcuffs but grunted with pain when Young yanked her roughly
out of the elevator and into the hall.

The room was small but perfectly appointed, solid wood furniture,
a bed, a dresser, a desk with a marble inlay. An open door led
into what could only be a man's bathroom; rising over the perfume
of cleaners there was that distinctive smell of shit and
toothpaste.

Young pushed Scully onto the bed, where she bounced once and
managed to land in a sitting position. He punched the gun forward
hard into Omar's belly, and the dark man fell to his knees,
groaning.

"Now," Young said "We're going to hear the truth." He glanced at
Scully. "That's what you and Mulder look for, isn't it? The
truth?"

Scully was silent, but Young seemed to have intended the question
rhetorically anyway. He reached into his coat pocket and fished
out a brass jacketed cartridge, held it up to examine it, then
snapped open his Smith and Wesson .38 Police Special, to insert
it carefully into one of the cylinder's six chambers. Scully
realized with a sinking feeling that the gun must have been empty
all this time, that she might have made a break for it if only
she had thought to count the shots spent in the firefight. Damn!

Omar watched Young's actions with as if mesmerized.

Young glanced at Scully again as he spun the cylinder rapidly and
snapped it back into the frame with a neat flip of his wrist.

"Now we're going to find out just how many girls the Buyer has on
his list. Omar?"

"Five," Omar said quickly. "Always five."

"Where were you and your buddy headed when we stopped you?"

"We were going to that emporium place. To Issie's. In Victoria."

"Are the girls there?"

The Arab looked uncertain. "I...they must be."

"And their names?"

"That I do not know."

Young raised the pistol in both hands, the muscles in his
forearms under his jacket swelling, as if bracing for a recoil.
He pushed the muzzle to within three inches of Omar's forehead.

A flash of defiance came into Omar's eyes, though a single bead
of sweat ran from his hairline to the corner of his mouth.

Scully, seeing Young's finger tense, cried, "NO!" but when he
pulled the trigger the hammer clicked down on an empty chamber.

"Man, don't do this shit," Omar pleaded, the defiant act
vanishing instantly.

"What--are--their--names?" Young raised the muzzle of the gun and
broke it open to spin the cylinder once again. He shut it and
lowered it back to the same dead aim on Omar's forehead and said,
"One more time."

"Flower!" Omar cried. "One was called Flower. She had like a
tattoo or something. She and two of the others got their hands on
some jewelry from the shop, and tried to fence it around."

"What were the other names?"

"Flower, and Lizzy--no--Liz Ann--"

Watching Young's face, Scully saw no change at hearing his
sister's name. Omar sputtered, "Some other one--Angie--Angela, I
think. And Tanya. The blonde one was called Tanya. And--"

The hammer snapped down unexpectedly as Young's hands convulsed.
Scully saw a cloud of pain cross his forehead, and he drew his
lips back over his teeth in a doglike snarl.

"You fucking piece of shit," he spat. He drew his hand back and
smashed the butt of the revolver across Omar's nose.

Omar screamed, clasping both hands over his face, blood spraying
through his fingers. Scully winced and looked away.

Young stood up straight and reached into his left hand pocket to
bring out a speed loader. He jacked the shells into the revolver
and then took something from his breast pocket: a hypodermic
syringe.

"As a doctor, you'll appreciate this," he told Scully. "Just one
good jab of air. Pop this boy's brain like a balloon." He pulled
the plastic cap off with his teeth and spat it out, looking down
at Omar, whose terrified eyes over his hands were fixed on the
deadly pointed sharp, glittering in the overhead light.

Scully said, "Roger, if you do this, then you'll be one of them."

He spun on her, his face mottled with fury, spittle flying with
his words. "Don't you GET it, Scully? Don't you SEE? They made me
one of them long ago. I've been one of THEM all along. It's the
only way to stop them."

She tried to make her voice soothing, though even she could hear
the tremble in it. "Roger, you aren't one of them. You're still
one of us."

Omar, rocking back and forth on his knees, keened like an animal.
The smell of fear came off him in sickening waves, and Scully
only saw Young lunge forward with the needle. She couldn't watch
the rest. Eyes squeezed tight, she turned her face to the wall.
She heard thrashing on the floor. When she looked again, Omar was
stretched out horizontally on the carpet, his boot heels drumming
a doubletime death march in his last convulsions.

Roger turned slowly to look at her.

Scully's heart stopped beating, then resumed at a quicker pace.

But his voice was curiously gentle. He said, "You don't have the
slightest idea what you're dealing with here, do you, Agent
Scully?"

"I am trying my best to figure it out," she said.

"Get up."

Scully rose from the bed, looking up at him. He was at least a
foot taller than she was, but she raised her eyes to his. He
reached up and brushed the hair from her face with the strange
sort of tenderness a captor begins to feel for his captive.

"I don't want to hurt you," he said. "I just want the girls
back."

"That's what I want, too," she said.

Young gestured at the door with the revolver. "Then let's go get
them," he said.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Chapter Fifteen

Houston, Texas Apartment of Sita Ortega, CPA

The woman with the long shining hair leaned into Skinner and
touched her lips to his. In heels, she was almost as tall as he
was, and it was no effort for him to allow himself to be kissed.
Her invitation was clear, but not aggressive. She swayed back a
little, and he instinctively swayed forward. Her breasts pressed
against his chest, full and soft.

There was a small, bemused smile on his face as he gazed down
into her warm brown eyes.

"Do you really have to go?" she asked.

A willing companion for the night. A hedge against loneliness. A
haven to rest in to avoid the aftermath of Dana Scully. Hm.

"I can't miss my plane," he told her. "I have to be at work in
the morning."

Her eyes were disappointed, though she tried to smile so he
wouldn't feel guilty. A considerate woman. Probably dynamite in
bed, too. Idiot.

"Thanks for dinner," he said. "And for all the rest."

The rest had been a long discussion of his financial standing, an
examination of his income tax return, a tedious study of his
receipts for the past fiscal year and a review of his IRAs and
CDs and various retirement holdings.

Now, standing at the door of Sita Ortega's apartment, his
briefcase in one hand and his other hand resting on her trim
waist, Skinner felt an odd sort of satisfaction in saying no. It
was good to be wanted. It was good to have an option. And he
liked tall women, liked all that long silky black hair, liked the
fact that she really liked him and wasn't just desperate for some
man to hop in the sack with.

She raised her face again, and he kissed her chastely, sweetly,
the way someone had kissed him goodbye not too long ago.

Then he was down the stairs and into his rental car, driving back
to the motel.

He did not particularly miss Scully. He had a very good reason
for staying over one more night in Houston that had nothing to do
with her. As it happened, his accountant had moved down here
after her divorce, and she still had all his records. She had
agreed to dinner and an evening of discussing his finances while
he killed time waiting for his flight. Which, as it turned out,
was tomorrow morning.

The truth was, he was tired and ready to go home. Ready for
things to get back to normal. It would be good to see Scully
again, but from now on it would always be in the context of
Scully and Mulder, partners. Probably it wouldn't be a good idea
to be alone with her for awhile. He only trusted this mellow mood
up to a point. If she were to accidentally brush up against him,
for example, or touch his hand, or look at him too long with
those impossibly blue eyes...

But some fundamental ache had been soothed in him, some longing
satisfied. While it would have been nice to sleep with Sita,
taking advantage of her sweetness would have been a cold lie,
leading her to believe he was interested in a relationship, when
in fact he was not. Well...not with her. Smiling broadly to
himself, he thought how interesting things would become if he
showed up at the next Bureau function with Sita on his arm. Would
Scully be jealous?

His smile faded as he realized how much it mattered to him. He
didn't mind not being able to sleep with her, not so much now.
What mattered was that she would be there in his life, every day,
five days a week, for years to come. He could keep an eye on her,
talk to her, watch over her. The future had a mellow golden haze
to it, like an apple-sweet October afternoon.

Long years of motor skills took over as he began to dream with
his eyes open. In the best of all possible worlds, he would be
driving home right now, and Scully would be back at his
apartment, waiting for him, curled up in bed asleep, probably. He
glanced at his watch. Well, maybe watching Letterman. But she
would be there, safe within the charmed circle of a gold ring,
and he would sleep beside her all night. And if when he lay down
beside her after a quick shower, she were to turn to him and
murmur some sleepy words against his skin, well, who was he to
deny her satisfaction?

Not that he had even a shred of hope that this would ever really
happen.

He ran his thumb back and forth against the soft leather cover of
the steering wheel dreamily, thinking Walter, Walter, Walter.
Since when did you get to be such a good liar?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Scully moved her fingers on the steering wheel uncomfortably,
hampered by the handcuffs. "I don't know exactly where the pawn
shop is," she said.

Beside her, Roger Young put his gun in his jacket pocket and
said, "You've been there?"

"Yes. Just a few hours ago. Don't you remember?"

"Don't try to fuck with my head, Scully."

She met his eyes, searching them for signs of madness. He was an
angry man, but not a crazy one. She said, "I was in Houston with
two branch agents, Seagram and Danson. They've had Issie's under
observation for some time. Their files are there," she gestured
with her chin, "In the back seat. I think it was on Main."

She realized with a twinge of anxiety that her memories of that
afternoon were complicated and hazy. The blow to the head
wouldn't explain it. There was something about Issie's. Maybe a
nerve gas of some type. Danson had looked positively green.

She went on: "We went there, and went in to question the owner.
Danson left, and I heard a shot. I went outside and saw he'd been
shot, and the Cadillac tried to run down Seagram, I think.
Anyway, I took the car and went after Omar and his partner. And
you know the rest."

Young shook his head. "Scully, I've been following you since you
got to Houston and checked into that flea bag motel with your
partner. He's the one that went to find Issie's, in Victoria. And
he should have been back by now. What did he find?"

"I don't know."

He leaned over to her, and she winced. "I'm telling you, Roger, I
don't know. I haven't been able to get in touch with him myself."

"You and Walter Skinner didn't seem to be looking too damn hard
for him last night."

Scully's blood seemed to run backwards in her veins. Oh no. God,
no.

But Young had only leaned over to start the car, since her hands
wouldn't reach the ignition and still hold the wheel.

"Drive," he ordered, and she pulled away out of the parking space
and headed up the ramp. Young said, "The guy I executed, they
called him the Eraser. He'd have wiped Seagram and Danson both
out of existence if you hadn't been there."

Scully couldn't resist asking. "You were right there, weren't
you, Roger?"

"I had parked the Jeep just between those two buildings and the
next complex. I couldn't figure out what you three were doing,
looking around those abandoned warehouses."

"But...you didn't see the pawn shop?"

"There was no shop there. Don't bullshit me. I'm not so bad at
making people disappear myself."

She risked a glance at him. "You're the one who erased the
records at the Bureau?"

"I had to. Sooner or later Antoine Baxter would be traced back to
me, unless I threw a handful of dust in everyone's eyes. I had to
get his trust, so I could find out how he was involved with the
girls. He was the procurer, actually."

She swallowed hard. "Did you kill Rupert Smith?"

"Hell, no! You might think I'm a monster for taking out those two
lowlife pieces of shit back there, but I'd never kill someone who
hadn't done anything to deserve it."

They drove in silence for awhile. Scully turned the headlights on
against the encroaching darkness.

She said, "You know, Roger, I don't get this. Why didn't you just
tell Skinner what you were onto? Why didn't you just tell him
your sister had been abducted and you needed Bureau resources to
find the people who did it?" (And where would Skinner have heard
THAT before?)

Young sighed and pointed for her to turn left. "First of all," he
said, "Tanya isn't my sister. She's my daughter."

"Your--?"

"I didn't know myself until a few months ago, when Liz Ann
disappeared and I started looking into it. Before all this
started." He gave a long,unspeakably weary sigh. "Back when I was
still relatively unaware of the kinds of filthy bastards there
are in this world."

The freeway appeared ahead. "Go on," Young said. "Head south on
59."

She pulled onto the ramp smoothly and entered the flow of traffic
like a leaf caught in a river current. A road sign told her she
was going in the right direction, and she accelerated to match
the pace of traffic.

"Liz Ann is your sister," Scully prompted. "Yes?"

He shrugged. "We have the same father. That's all, really, I want
to find her, too, of course. Who knew she and Tanya would end up
at the same school together? The people who adopted Tanya turned
out to be as money-crazy and cold hearted as my father. They
shipped her off to school and out of their hair the minute they
could, just like my old man. Who, I just learned this week, gave
them the money to send her there. He must have known all along
where she was, all these years I've been looking for her."

"Known what, Roger?"

"Where she was. Do you know I've never even laid eyes on her?"

Scully looked at him. His eyes were tortured, and her own
feelings softened for a moment. "I'm sorry, Roger."

"My own mother died in 1982. She would never have let Tanya go.
She was so full of love. But she had a problem with alchohol.
Ended up in an institution. Not a cute little Betty Ford place,
but the kind with the soft restraints. She died there."

"Roger..."

He shrugged. "No biggie. Except she wasn't there to help. She
knew about Tanya, and she loved her like crazy when Tanya was a
baby. But my father wouldn't let her tell me. And then she died,
and that was the end of my trail for all these years."

Scully thought of a thousand questions to ask, but couldn't
decide where to begin. Young leaned towards her again, scowling
at the lit panel of the dashboard. "We're low on gas," he said.

Traffic had slowed for a wreck, and Scully saw a police officer
ahead, on foot, waving a flashlight to get cars to exit on the
ramp. Young said, "Go ahead and get on the service road here.
We'll be out of the city limits in a few mintes anyway. Follow it
until you come to a big service station. Not one of those
convenience stores, but a full service."

The traffic on the feeder was backed up to a crawl, and Scully
was beginning to wonder if she could get out of the car and make
a run for it. Not likely, though she kept an eye out for the
opportunity.

Young kept the revolver in his left pocket, but when he had
leaned over to look at the dashboard she had seen another gun in
his holster, in a Sam Brown sling, something with the squared off
butt of an automatic. She remembered how casually he had killed
the man in the street, and was fairly sure he wouldn't hesitate
to kill her.

Surely the police must be out looking for them by now. Seagram
must have gotten Danson to a hospital, reported the Taurus
license plates and asked for back up in the pursuit. The FBI must
be out looking for them, and the fact that there was a dead man
in the road in a residential neighborhood had surely raised some
eyebrows. Help had to be on the way.

Her eyes searched the road as they crept along. A man passed them
on the right, riding a bicycle on the shoulder of the road,
carrying a huge plastic trash bag full of crushed aluminum cans.
Scully's gaze followed him idly as he approached the light,
slowed to a top, put his foot down to balance the bike...

And was passed by a tall lanky figure walking along the sidewalk
in the opposite direction.

Scully did a double take. "Mulder!" she cried.

He looked tired and disheveled, his hair sticking up even more
than usual. He had his hands in his pockets, walking along
staring at the ground. Scully pressed the heels of her bound
hands down on the horn as hard as she could.

"Quit that!" Young slapped her hands away, but she struggled to
hang on for as long as she could, making as much noise as
possible. Then Young leaned back and pushed the revolver hard
under her arm, into her side, and she stopped.

But she'd gotten Mulder's attention. He stood staring at them.

"Ah, shit," Young said. He rolled his window down as Mulder
trotted across the lane of traffic to the car. When he was even
with the window, Mulder saw the gun. Young said, "If you don't
want me to blow the shit out of your partner here, get in and
don't try anything."

Mulder opened the back door and slid into the car, and Scully
pulled up to close the gap between the Taurus and the next car in
line.

The metal barrel of the gun hurt her side, and Young might just
as easily turn to Mulder and shoot him in the head the way he'd
shot Omar's partner, and traffic was bad and it had been a long,
long day. But Scully could not help the wide smile from
stretching her lips back as far as they would go when she looked
in the rear view mirror and saw Mulder, open mouthed, looking
from one of them to the other.

He said, "You okay, Scully?"

"I'm fine. How are you?"

"You wouldn't believe the last couple of days I've had," he told
her.

"Been kinda busy myself."

"Yeah, you look like you've been tied up." His eyes flicked from
her handcuffed wrists to Roger Young. Scully could tell by the
way his eyes narrowed and then widened that he had just
recognized the other agent. "So, Roger," he said. "Been awhile.
Heard you were dead. Feeling better, I see."

"Where the hell did you come from?"

"Just hitchin' around the countryside, having a close up look at
Texas," Mulder said. To Scully, he said, "Hey, Scully, did you
know that mockingbirds sing at night?"

"Sure," she said. "When I was a little girl, we--"

"Shut UP!" Young snapped.

The partners fell silent. A brilliantly lit gas station ahead
offered full service lanes, and Young said, "Pull in there."

Scully complied. When she stopped by a pump and turned off the
engine, Young said, "Agent Scully will tell you I'm not playing
around, Mulder. If you make one wrong move, I'll kill both of
you. Now listen closely to me. When the guy comes over, Scully,
you tell him to fill up the tank, and pay him with cash."

He fished some bills out of his breast pocket, looked at them,
and dropped them on Scully's lap. "Mulder, I want you to get out
of the car on that side and come around here. I'm going to get in
the back seat, and then you come around and get in the front
seat. Got it?"

"Got it."

The switch was made before the attendant came over. He filled
their tank with gas, cleaned the windshield, and took the money
from Scully's hand, looking down at the handcuffs on her wrist.
She gave him a wide eyed look for help, and he grinned and winked
at her. "Been there, done that," he said.

He waved them a cheerful goodbye as they pulled out of the
station.

Scully sighed. "I really, really hate Texas," she said.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Houston, Texas Lone Star Motel,
10:30 PM

The motel rooms, his and hers, were dark. Skinner had to use his
official I.D. and some attitude to get the key to Mulder's room
from the night manager. When he went inside he could feel the
emptiness even before he turned on the light. Mulder had not been
back here.

Nor had Scully. Impatient, he had popped the lock on her door
with his pocketknife, and gone inside. For a few minutes he stood
breathing in her scent, which seemed to permeate the very walls.
High, light, distinctive. Spice. But overlaid with something else
now, something like flowers. Scully's scent was elusive, more
easily detected breathing in than breathing out, like the
aftertaste of a light wine. Maybe the flower smell was some new
makeup, or motel soap. For some reason, it made him feel uneasy.

It was ten thirty at night. Where the hell was she?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Houston, Texas Highway 59, South

"Where the hell were you?" Young asked.

"I'm not sure. Not too far out of Houston, I think. Some place
near a town called Rosenburg. I started walking, looking for a
gas station to call a cab, and a trucker gave me a ride. He let
me off when I saw that big station, and I was going to go inside
and call a cab to take me back to the motel."

"I thought you'd gone to Issie's."

Mulder said cryptically, "Issie's is the kind of place that sort
of has to WANT to be found."

"I don't follow you. Is it in Houston or is it in Victoria?"

"I've told you and told you," Scully said. "It's in Houston."

"Pull over," Young ordered.

Scully took the next exit and rode the feeder until they came to
a road that was under construction. She pulled into an empty area
by a set of sawhorses and orange cones, and turned off the
engine.

For a long moment she and Mulder looked at each other. She wanted
to touch him, to make some kind of physical contact, and begged
for it with her eyes. But he stayed on his side of the car, only
looking at her with a shadowed, unreadable expression.

She felt her heart beating so loudly she was sure he could hear
it: thump thump thump thump.

Young said, "I want to go to Issie's."

"I'm not sure I can find it again," she told him.

Mulder said, "When were YOU there?"

"This afternoon. I--"

Young interrupted, sounding less hostile than puzzled. "I was
right behind you, Scully. I've been one step behind you since you
got to Houston. I even saw Omar and Brad grab you after you left
your motel."

"Thanks for the help," she said.

"I was right there. I wanted to see where they were taking you."

"And yet I ended up in the hospital. Better off than Danson, I'm
sure, but still."

Mulder swung his head up, concerned eyes searching for injuries.
"Were you hurt?"

She made a little self-deprecating gesture. "Banged around a
little, you might say. Which you'd know, if you'd ever answered
your phone."

"Damn thing was useless the minute I left town."

"They stole mine," she said.

"Who stole it?"

"Omar and --was it Brad? Or should I call him Mr. Eraser?"

Young didn't look amused. "So you left the hospital and then the
next morning I see you going off with those two agents. But all
you did was walk around with them."

"We went to Issie's, Roger. I'm telling you."

"Look," he said, "I just saw Danson running, and heard the shot.
Brad was hanging out the window with the Uzi."

Mulder echoed, "Uzi?" but they both ignored him.

"That's right," Scully said. "He shot Danson and tried to run
down Seagram and then I went after them."

"We've established all that. What I'm saying is that you weren't
at any fucking pawn shop!"

"Why don't we just go back there and see?" Mulder suggested.

"By now the investigative team should be done," Young said. "We
might be able to check it out."

"The best thing you can do at this point is give yourself up,
Roger," Scully said.. "They'll be looking for us. The police, the
FBI. Everyone."

Young only looked thoughtful. "You'd think so, wouldn't you?"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Houston, Texas Lone Star Motel
11:15 PM

Skinner drummed the pencil eraser against the tabletop in
Scully's room in an angry tattoo. He had been on hold for ten
minutes, after a fifteen minute runaround to find the right
person in the Victoria ploice station to talk to. Yes, Mulder had
been there. The girl he had interrogated had committed suicide in
her cell. No, no one had seen him after that. He would check the
hot sheet for the rental car.

Finally there was a click on the line. "Assistant Director
Skinner?"

"Go ahead."

"Sir, we did have a vehicle of that description towed tonight.
Well, not us, but the Rosenburg police. It was found on the side
of the road, about ten miles north of Rosenburg, locked, with no
evidence of foul play."

"An agent is missing, his car is found on the side of the road,
locked, and you say there's no evidence of foul play?"

The voice on the line was young, and sarcasm was lost on him.
"No, sir."

"Where exactly was it found?"

"Just by the side of the road, sir. According to the report, had
gas in it and no mechanical failure."

Skinner hung up abruptly. Asshole.

He glared at the phone and when it rang he almost jumped out of
his chair.

"Skinner here."

An official sounding woman's voice said, "Agent Scully?"

"Do I SOUND like Agent--" He took a deep breath. "No, this is
Assistant Director Walter Skinner."

"Sir, please hold. I'll patch you through to Houston."

"I'm IN Houst--"

"Mr. Skinner?"

Skinner closed his eyes and let his breath out through his teeth.
He wouldn't do Scully any good if he succumbed to a stroke.

"Skinner here."

"Sir. This is Special Agent David Seagram. We met yesterday."

It seemed like a hundred years ago. Skinner said, "Yes."

"Sir. I'm not sure if you're aware of the situation down here in
Houston, but an agent was shot and killed this afternoon."

Skinner was locked into position for a second, freeze frame. In
that second, he looked down a long, long road into the future. He
said hoarsely, "Who--"

Seagram's voice trembled on the name. "It was Special Agent
Danson, sir. My partner."

"I'm sorry, Agent Seagram. You have my condolences."

"Yes, sir. Thank you. Agent Scully was with us this afternoon
when we were observing what we suspected to be some sort of
central clearing house for our abductors. We were ambushed in an
alleyway, and the suspects fled in a white late model Cadillac.
Scully pursued in our car, a silver 98 Taurus. The Cadillac was
later found in a residential area, apparently after being
involved in a collision with another vehicle. One man was found
dead at the scene, shot twice. At this point in time, it seems
that the shots were fired from different weapons. Sir, we have an
APB out on our Taurus and your agent. We suspect foul play."

Skinner felt the walls take a slow turn, and end up back in
place. Foul play? No wonder this man was an investigator, with
instincts like that.

"Do you have any idea at all where Agent Scully might be at this
moment?" Skinner asked.

"No, sir."

"And where is the last place you saw her? Exactly?"

Seagram's voice dropped a decibel. "Well...Sir, all our field
reports were in the car Agent Scully took in the pursuit. When
the ambulance picked up Danson and myself, there was no street
address...We can't determine exactly where the clearing house
was."

"That," Skinner said, "Is fucking ridiculous."

"Yes, sir."

Skinner reminded himself that Seagram's partner had been killed
that very day, and wondered if the man might be in shock. "Can
you approximate where it was?"

"Very difficult to say, sir."

Skinner's gaze dropped to something he hadn't noticed until just
now: a yellow Post-it pad on the table by the phone. He looked
more closely, and saw that someone had written something, and
then torn out a page. The imprint of the letters was still
impressed into the page he was looking at.

He said, "Could it have been on Main Street? Or North Main?"

Again, a confusion he would not have normally associated with any
agent, much less the man he had seen trying to bully Scully.

"I couldn't say, exactly, sir."

Skinner had begun to scribble the pencil lead lightly over the
Post-it pad, surprised at the clarity of the address that
emerged.

He hung up on Seagram and picked up the phone again to dial
Central Dispatch, to ask for a keymap code and directions.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Houston, Texas Downtown

"Look in the file and see if they give any directions," Mulder
suggested.

Young turned the overhead lamp on in the car and squinted at the
papers in the files. "They have lousy handwriting," he said, "And
I don't see any case reports in here. Just a lot of scrawled
field notes."

Mulder said, "I used to be guilty of that myself, keeping all my
notes handwritten until a case was over. Then I got a very
Calvinistic partner."

Scully sighed. "First a chauffeur, now a secretary."

Police cars prowled past them, one on every corner. They glanced
at the government plates, glanced away again. Scully was
beginning to wonder if they were invisible.

Mulder said, "Can you clear this thing up for us, Roger? I don't
get it. Why didn't you tell anyone Tanya was your daughter?"

"It's a long story. When my father was first getting into
politics, he found out his wife, my mother, was a hopeless
alcoholic. His way of dealing with things has always been to
sweep them under the rug. He divorced her and spent plenty of
money to make sure she was kept out of sight for good. She was in
and out of hospitals all her life. Me, I had the Housekeeper
Syndrome."

"The what?"

"You know, when a kid is raised by a housekeeper," Young said.
"He gets very attached to her. Then one day mom or dad looks
around and sees that the kid has way more love for the
housekeeper than either of them. So they fire her. The kid is so
broken up it's like losing a parent. You can't imagine. But the
parents just hire another housekeeper. The kid gradually falls in
love with her, you know. Primary caregiver and all that. But then
the folks figure out it's happening again, he loves her more than
them. So she gets the sack, and the kid has now lost two of the
greatest loves of his life, one after the other. In time, he
catches on. It isn't safe to love or care for anyone."

"I have heard of that," Scully said. "It's tragic."

"I was only nineteen years old when I met Meg. The love of my
life." His voice caught in his throat, and he paused, then went
on. "I put all my eggs in that one basket. One last shot at
trust. And I got her pregnant, on purpose, so she'd have to marry
me."

"And did she?"

"Hell, no. She disappeared, with the baby. I never even saw it.
See, the old man didn't want me to drop out of school to get
married. Not that I needed to, with the money we had. But he just
decided she wouldn't make a fit daughter in law to a future
president. Dad, he had plans way, way down the line, you see. So
he paid her off, or hired people to scare her away. And the one
person in the world I knew would have to love me for her whole
life, my child, just vanished into the wind.

"I switched majors in college to law, with a minor in criminal
justice. I made my own contacts. I never spoke to my father
again, by the way. And he barely mentioned me in his acceptance
speeches. I knew my mother had seen the baby, and years later I
found out she had tried to get it, tried to adopt it. She loved
it as much as I did. But then she died, and that was the end of
it. I was never able to find her again. And about that time, my
father got married again and had another daughter. Liz Ann. A
respectable wife, frigid bitch that she was, a respectable second
family. A son somewhere in the FBI. Of course, the minute Liz Ann
was old enough, they sent her away to boarding schools so they'd
be free to hit the campaign trail. And in the meantime, I never
stopped looking for her."

Mulder said, "Liz Ann and Tanya met at school?"

"Yeah. I think the old man must have fixed up the people who
adopted Tanya with enough cash to send her to school. So they
met, never knowing their relationship. Then Tanya must have just
run away. She had a history of it, I found out. Running away."

Young paused and stared out the window at the passing buildings
for a few minutes. Scully was cruising slowly down Main Street,
past the museum. "Or maybe running to something," Young said
softly.

Scully and Mulder glanced at each other.

Young said, "I don't mean to hurt anyone, as God is my witness.
When this is over, I just want to take Tanya with me and go away
somewhere. I just want my kid. After all this time, I finally
found her, and all I want is to take care of her."

There was something about the look on Mulder's face that made
Scully feel very uneasy. His eyes were so sad. This couldn't be
good. Was it the replay of his own tragedy? No...she knew him too
well, and knew that this was something else, something more than
sympathy. Something was wrong.

"I've made other people disappear," Young said. "Now I just want
to take Tanya and disappear myself."

Mulder said, "Do you know who the Buyer is, Roger?"

Young looked not at him, but at Scully, with a kind of apology.
He said, "Baxter told me, or at least hinted at it. He was like
the Buyer's right hand man. He had carte blanche, could do
anything he wanted and get away with it. He could even hire other
men to die for him. It was like he was immortal or something.
Until he ran into you two. I can only hope he suffered like hell
when he died."

"I shot him," Scully said. She still sometimes saw him fall, late
at night, just as she was falling asleep. The spray of gore
across the pale yellow wall, and part of his head blown away. But
one more second and he would have killed Skinner.

Young said, "Seagram and Danson didn't have a fucking clue. It's
no white slave ring. It's nothing like that. The Buyer just likes
to...take his pleasure with pretty young virgin girls. Baxter
thought it was funny, but even he got kind of sick looking when
he told me. Whatever he does to them, he does in groups of five.
Baxter called him a soul-eater. That's really all he'd say. But I
do know he gets his girls through a middleman, and my bet is that
the middleman is right here in Houston now, and that his name is
Issie."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Houston, Texas Main/N.Main

First rule of investigation: begin at the beginning.

Skinner, dressed in boots, jeans, a black turtleneck, and a watch
cap, splashed the beam of his high powered flashlight in all
directions. The row of buildings seemed to stare back at him like
the faces on a jury about to announce the death penalty: blank,
expressionless, but holding some terrible secret within. The
address Scully had written down was 111 Main, which apparently
did not exist. There was the old M and M building, which had been
converted into a branch university, and beyond that, a myriad of
parking lots. He had parked his car in one and set off on foot.
Although the streets were fairly well lit, Main went over a bayou
and under a freeway, and the shadows there were as ominous as an
abandoned bus in Ireland.

There was a short row of brick buildings there, each barred or
boarded up at any possible point of entry. Skinner flashed his
light along the impassive, impenetrable wall, seeing gang
graffiti, the letters RA scrawled in surprisingly elegant
patterns.

A patrol car crawled by. Skinner turned towards it defiantly, but
the officers were talking to each other and only slowed briefly
at the light and then went through it when it changed.

Another car slowed behind it, the indicator light on. Skinner
slipped back into the shadow of the building, realizing the car
was about to turn. As it did, he saw the driver clearly. A knee-
weakening wave of relief went through him when he saw Scully and
Mulder in the front seat. He walked behind them and saw they were
driving around to the back of the buildings. He could have sworn
that there was no opening in the chain link fence, but he must
have missed the gate set into the wall.

The car stopped. A slow flush of rage had begun to creep up on
Skinner; he was going to give them holy hell for not reporting in
for so long. Scully stepped out of the driver's seat. She spotted
him at the same time he spotted her handcuffs.

She gave a frightened look behind her. Years of instinct made
Skinner duck back out of the light.

"It was right over there," Scully said, in a fairly loud voice.

Then he saw the third man get out of the car, after a handcuffed
Mulder. Roger Young.

Roger Young?

The back of the building seemed to be inset, under a sort of
hanging roof that divided the floors, like a landing. Something
moved up there, and Skinner's gun was in his hand without
conscious thought.

Mulder, Scully, and Young all stopped and looked up. What were
they staring at? He moved away from the wall, tried to see.

Three basketball shaped orbs were slowly swirling around each
other, leaving what looked like a trail of fire, like comet
tails.

Any minute now, Skinner thought, this is all going to make sense.

But until it did, he would just have to do the only thing he knew
how to do really well. He stepped out into the light, gun raised,
and said, "Agent Roger Young."

All three people spun around to face him, though only Scully
didn't look shocked. Young had his revolver in his hand, but
instead of bringing it up, he stepped behind Scully and pushed
the muzzle into her back.

"Drop it, Skinner."

Skinner remained motionless. Mulder said, "Put it down, sir.
He'll kill her."

They remained that way for several heartbeats, and in the
absolute silence, Skinner heard a tiny click. He thought it was
Agent Young, drawing back the hammer on the revolver. Young,
hearing the same sound, thought it was the shell jacking into the
chamber as Skinner cocked his weapon. Both men readied themselves
to fire.

But Scully looked over her shoulder to the wide oak door that
started as the click of a latch and a slit of light in the
darkness and then began to swing open wider and wider, like a
huge mouth full of teeth.

Mulder said softly, "Oh, shit."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Chapter Sixteen

For a long time Scully had been aware of the voices, but they
seemed to have nothing to do with her, like falling asleep with
the television on. She yawned, opened her eyes drowsily, and came
to realize she was sitting in a hard wooden chair, her hands
bound behind her back.

She sat up straight. Mulder was also tied to a chair, though his
hands were in front of him, one wrist cuffed on each side to a
thick rung, by two separate pairs of handcuffs, so he had much
more freedom than she did.

Roger Young was on a chair across from them, his hands bound like
Scully's. She looked around frantically and saw Skinner on the
floor, leaning against the wall, untied. He looked totally out of
it, and she stared hard to see if he was breathing.

Issie stood in the middle of the group, his body strangely
tapered, like a narrow V, with tiny feet in slippers beneath what
seemed to be black silk pajamas. It made Scully physically
uncomfortable to look at him for any length of time.

Apparently he and Mulder had been engaged in conversation for
quite some time now, while Roger looked as drowsy and slow to
wake as she felt.

"You amuse me," Issie was saying. All traces of his accent were
gone, except the very slight stiffening of vowels that sounded
not exactly British, but more like someone raised in British
schools in India. "You recognize that good and evil are
exclusively human constructs, but you never think beyond that, to
what it really means."

"Enlighten me," Mulder offered.

Issie shook his head slowly, his lank hair moving at its own
speed, like a badly dubbed movie. "You search the whole universe
for truth, Fox Mulder, and yet you never see it walking right at
your side."

(Does he mean me?) Scully wondered. At that moment Issie turned
his head slowly, like something mechanical on well oiled hinges,
and his eyes found Scully's. She tried to stare at the bridge of
his small flat nose.

"And you, Dana Scully," he said in his soft, scary voice. "Would
you like the truth to be known?"

"I'd like to know where those girls are," Scully said.

"How badly would you like to find them? Would you offer up your
truth as the price of four lives?"

Scully looked around, not sure whether he meant the lives of the
four girls--weren't there five?--or the lives of the four
prisoners in the room. She felt something thumping under her
feet. Mulder looked down as if he felt it too, like something
moving around under the floorboards. But Scully knew instantly
what it was. It was the sound of the headboard in the motel room
where Skinner had made love to her, had tried to touch her in
some secret place no one had ever touched before. And had
succeeded. She felt him there now, solid, real.

And then she looked at Mulder, who was scowling, puzzled,
watching her, and she knew with absolute certainty that if he
ever found out she would lose both of them forever. There was no
doubt of it.

But still. She put her chin up and said, "Yes. Yes, I would."

Issie laughed, an oily, rolling sound. "Little flower," he said
affectionately. "I believe you would."

"Are they still alive?"

"Alive. All sweet and toothsome." He turned to Mulder. "Empty
vessels waiting to be filled."

"They're human beings," Mulder said. "You can't just buy and sell
people."

Issie's smile seemed sad. "But of course you can, Fox Mulder. You
can buy anything, with the right currency. You can satisfy any
appetite. Roger Young knows that, don't you, Roger Young?"

Young's voice was pleading. "I just want to see Tanya," he said.
"She's my daughter. I just want to be with her."

"Oh, you will, Roger Young," Issie said softly. "You will."

Mulder spoke in a loud, angry voice. "He's lying to you, Roger.
I'm sorry, but...Tanya is dead."

Both Young and Scully stared at him in surprise. Young said, "But
you said...you said...I thought you talked to her."

"I did. I talked to Flower, as well. But they're both dead now.
She wanted me to come back here and find Issie again, to help the
other girls."

Issie said, "This is the truth? You talked to Tanya MacClean?"

Mulder just glared at him. Young let his chin drop to his chest.
Tears ran from his eyes to his chin and dripped to the front of
his shirt. His nose ran, and he took one ragged sob, but
otherwise wept silently.

Mulder said, "She was a brave girl, Roger. I think somehow she
must have managed to get away from the Arab and the other guy.
They must have left her for dead. But she got away and she tried
to help the others."

"Yes," Issie said. "That is just how it must have happened."

Skinner groaned and began to move. Everyone turned to look at him
as he pulled himself up into a sitting position, bracing his back
against the wall. He blinked at them, raising a hand to his face
to rub his eyes. His glasses were tucked neatly in his pocket,
and he took them out to put them on.

"What's going on here?" he demanded, in his best surly Assistant
Director's voice.

"Ah," said Issie. "The last of our little group joins us."

Panic flashed on Skinner's face as he ran his hands over his
thighs. "I can't feel my legs," he said.

"No matter, merely temporary, I assure you," Issie said. "No
point in struggling against it, Mr. Skinner."

Skinner slowly leaned back against the wall, looking with
bewilderment around the shop. His eyes stopped when he saw the
balls, moving in lazy circles around each other over the
countertop.

He said, "Would someone care to tell me what the hell is going on
here?"

Mulder said, "That seems to depend on who you ask."

"This is not Rashomon," Scully said. "We're being held prisoner
by the middleman in the white slave ring. The girls are brought
here, and Issie makes some kind of a deal for them with a man
they call the Buyer."

Skinner gave Issie a look of infinite contempt. "You buy and sell
teenaged girls?"

"I only hold things, Walter Skinner. Things no one else seems to
want."

Young said, "He killed my daughter."

Skinner's eyes were filled with sympathy and confusion. "Your
daughter?"

"Not exactly," Issie said. "I am simply a holder of goods. If no
one comes to claim those goods, then I am free to sell them."

"The girls had no say in becoming merchandise, though, did they?"
Scully asked angrily.

Issie said, "Of course they did."

"But I would have claimed Tanya," Young said brokenly. "I would
have given anything for her."

Issie nodded. "Which is precisely why she will never go to the
Buyer. But you must see how she came to us. She didn't know
anyone loved her. Nor did we."

Scully said, "So you think it's all right to take girls if no one
loves them enough to fight for them?"

"Love redeems us," Mulder said softly. Scully saw an unexpected
tenderness in his eyes as he looked at her. "It's the only thing
that can."

Scully looked at Skinner, who was gazing at her with an
unreadable expression. But she could guess what he was thinking.

Issie walked over to him and bent down to look into his brown
eyes. He said, "If I gave you a choice right now, the choice to
save one of these three lives, which would it be, Walter
Skinner."

Skinner snarled, "I wouldn't make that choice."

"Then they all die."

Skinner shot a desperate look at Scully. Issie chuckled. "Ah.
That was almost not even a question." He leaned down further, and
Scully couldn't see what he did, but Skinner turned his face
away, grimacing and coughing. Then his eyes rolled up in his head
and he slumped over.

"You son of a bitch!" Scully shouted.

Issie glanced at her impassively over his shoulder as he
approached Roger Young. "Don't worry, flower," he said. "You can
save him yet."

He stepped behind Young and freed his hands. Young looked dazed,
and he lurched to his feet, staggered, got his balance.

Issie said, "You are free to go, Roger Young. Free to vanish."

Young patted himself down quickly, looking for weapons, found
none. He looked up at Issie from under his lowered brow, like a
bull about to charge.

"Make your choice wisely," Issie warned. "You can go now, choose
your own freedom, or you can stay here forever."

Young hesitated only another microsecond. Then he was striding
away, and the sound of a silver bell tinkled somewhere in the
distance.

Mulder caught Scully's eyes and gestured with his head. She
followed his gaze to the counter. The crystal ball, still moving
slowly around the others, seemed to go dull, almost black. The
golden ball flashed once, so brightly Scully winced; it was like
a flashbulb going off. She thought she heard a scream from
somewhere far away, not far as in distance or even time,
but...somehow removed, like something she only remembered. Then
both balls faded back to their original colors.

Issie approached them. He uncuffed Mulder's right hand, sliding
back to a safe distance gracefully.

"Now," he said. "Fox Mulder, let me see you kiss your partner
here."

"What?" Mulder looked at Scully, confused. They both looked back
at Issie.

"You heard me. Kiss your friend, Fox Mulder. Taste your sweet
flower. Convince me, if you can, of your powers of redemption."

Scully said, "What game are you playing now, Issie?"

When he turned to her his face was like the sun, too intense to
gaze upon. She looked away, wincing. "The only one that really
matters," he said. To Mulder he said in a sharp command, "Kiss
her. Now."

Mulder used his free hand to raise Scully's face. He looked down
at her, his hazel eyes apologetic. They both closed their eyes as
his mouth approached hers.

The kiss was soft, sweet. Mulder ran his lips back and forth over
hers lightly, friction warming them both. Scully's eyelashes
tickled his cheek. He probed between her lips with his tongue.
Surprised, she opened her mouth to protest, and he gained entry.

Scully felt something go through her like a cold shock, as if she
had stepped into a puddle of ice water and someone had handed her
a live wire. It was not a good sensation, or a bad one. It was
only the most unbearably intense thing she had ever felt in her
life.

Mulder, Fox Mulder, Agent Fox Mulder of the FBI, her partner, was
kissing her. Had his tongue in her mouth, probing, teasing hers,
his fingers moving on the back of her head as he held her still
for it.

Mulder. Kissing her. Mulder. Kissing. Her.

She made a sound, not a whimper, not a groan. She tilted her head
and opened her mouth wider and caught his tongue and sucked on it
for a second before letting it go. She felt his instant response,
heard the vibration of her name somewhere, subvocalized, in his
throat.

There was no Issie, no pawn shop, no Skinner dead or unconscious
on the floor. There was only the world spinning around them,
worlds, past and future, as they kissed. Only Mulder's mouth on
hers, moving, and all her feverish desire as she kissed him back,
all the years of love and frustration behind them, and all the
hope and need in front of them, spinning away as time focused on
that one perfect point where their mouths joined, that single
incredible kiss.

Then he jerked away. Scully opened her eyes, feeling the ache of
loss, and saw Issie reattaching the handcuff to the back of the
chair. Mulder looked up as Issie bent down, and for one weird
instant it almost seemed as if they were going to kiss each
other. Mulder looked strange, his eyes out of focus. Issie blew
in his face, a quick short breath, and Scully saw something like
a cloud of smoke pass between them.

Then Mulder went out, chin dropping down, mouth hanging open.

Scully was panting, almost crying from rage and frustration. "You
son of a bitch," she said.

"You already said that." Issie pulled up the chair Young had been
sitting on and faced Scully as if preparing to chat with a close
friend. "Now," he said, with a satisfied sigh. "At last. We get
to the true heart of the matter."

She glared at him, tears in her eyes. If hatred could kill, Issie
would have withered up like a worm and died. Instead, he gave her
a paternal smile.

"The real choice is yours, flower," he said. "It has been all
along. The others, they bump and jiggle, and butt heads. But
you." He reached out with a long bony finger, though she tried to
squirm away from it, and touched her just between her breasts.
"You SPIN. And to you I give the true choice. What could not be
known of the others? Nothing. All foretold, all foreseen. But
you. You. You." He smiled as if savoring something delicious.
"You may save one man in this room. Just one. The other must go
to the Buyer. A man must make his living, yes? Besides, when he
comes, it will be best to have some merchandise, or he might look
around for something else to play with." He chuckled low in his
throat.

"You're insane," she whispered. "I won't choose. You can't make
me."

"Oh, I think I can, my flower. Because if you choose the right
one, the true one, the one who loves you best, then not only will
you redeem him, but to sweeten the pot, I will let your little
girls go, as well." He looked sad for a moment. "Only three of
them now, and I can't promise they won't find their way back to
me eventually. But there is only so much of the world you can
save, Scully. And here it is for you to save. Choose wisely."

Mulder's kiss still stung her lips, like the afterburn of some
acidic citrus fruit. She looked at him, ungraceful, asleep, his
hair sticking straight up on the back of his head. Then she
turned to look at Skinner, and felt the distant bump under her
feet, like someone in the apartment below banging on the ceiling
with a broom. Skinner's naked body on top of hers, each forward
thrust shaking the bedframe. His dark eyes filled with so much
emotion it made her somehow ashamed.

Then the thump thump was her heart as she looked from one man to
the other.

"I can't make that choice," she said.

Issie sighed. "Then they all die. Every one of them. Poor
flowers," he murmured. "All lost and alone."

Scully thought she heard faraway screaming again, children's
voices, or the voices of the dead.

"I would not even for the purpose of this game show you what the
Buyer has planned for that little trio, that lovely posy." He got
to his feet suddenly. "But oh well. You are the only one who
walks away from this place today."

"Wait!" She looked up at him desperately. "Look, I don't know
which man has more love in him. But I know I love them both. And
here's the deal I'll make with you. You let them all go, and you
can have me. Willingly. No fight, no strings. I'll do whatever
you want." Her eyes searched the dark holes in his head. "My
choice is to go with you of my own free will, Issie. My own free
will. You have my word on it."

For a moment Issie's face was utterly impassive, as if he was
listening to something in the distance. Then something began to
happen to it, a change that no words could describe, a slow
distortion that was going to make his mouth perfectly congruent
to whatever he was morphing into. Scully winced and looked away,
turning her head as far as she could and squeezing her eyes shut.

"Above rubies, above rubies," she heard him say. "And that, my
flower, was the only correct answer."

Horrified, she tensed every muscle in her body as she felt him
approach her, felt his hot breath on her face. She knew he was
going to kiss her, stretch his lips out like a camel, and she
knew that when he did she was going to start screaming, and maybe
never stop.

But his...muzzle...only brushed her ear as it moved to form the
whispered words, "Thank you, flower. Thank you for winning for me
the best game we ever played."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Houston, Texas Southwest Memorial
Hospital

Skinner, Scully, and Mulder sat in the hospital waiting room,
their faces worn with exhaustion, their eyes doing the thousand
yard stare like veterans returned from a foreign war. They didn't
speak to each other, couldn't hear if they did, over the din of
the crying. Angela, an exquisite black girl with long coiled
braids and a ring pierced through her navel, was howling like a
four year old in a checkout line.

Liz Ann had not stopped sobbing since the Senator had come, and
although he didn't make as much noise as she did, he had shed
more tears than anyone else in the room. A third girl, still
unidentified, sat by herself, sniffling and wiping long streaks
of makeup across her face.

Officer Buckland held up a hand to the investigating officers,
who were all too willing to let her take a shot. "Can anyone tell
me anything at all?" she asked. "Where were you being held?
Doesn't anyone remember anything? Agent Scully?"

Scully's eyes drifted up to the blonde and she made a gesture of
helplessness with her hands. "The girls were in the warehouse and
we heard them crying when we walked by it."

"At midnight. The three of you. On Main Street."

Buckland knelt before her, taking one of Scully's hands in both
of hers. "Look at your wrists. You've been tied up."

Scully nodded. "There was a man..."

Fernandez said eagerly, "Yes? A man...?"

"With a big mouth," Skinner muttered.

Buckland hurried over to him. "And he had the girls?"

"Sort of," Mulder said.

Fernandez and Buckland looked at each other. Fernandez said,
"Makes the old pawn shop route look pretty inviting, doesn't it?"

"Hey, they're all heroes," Buckland said. "They just saved the
Senator's daughter and two girls slated for slaughter."

"Yeah," Fernandez said, "But I still wonder if this was somehow
related to the other twenty missing girls."

"Twenty one," Buckland said. "They never found that MacClean kid,
remember."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Rosenberg, Texas King Cemetery

"What exactly are we looking for?" Scully asked.

She walked a little behind Mulder as he thrashed around through
the brush, pushing branches out of his way that came back to
slash her across the face if she wasn't careful.

It was the first time they had been alone together since being
released from the hospital. She was still a little nervous around
him, and conversation had been stilted. The memory of that kiss
hung in the air like a noxious cloud, and neither of them was
willing to mention it first. Or at all.

Scully was so acutely physically aware of him that even the 45
minute drive to the middle of nowhere had been excruciating.

"I met someone out here the other night," Mulder said.

"Tanya MacClean?"

He gave her an appreciative glance. "Good guess, Scully."

"Not so far fetched," she said. "It's just odd that the Senator
would choose such an isolated old graveyard to bury his wife in,
even if he was ashamed of her. I mean, the government provides
plots in much nicer places than this."

"I think she was looking for something here," Mulder said.

"But what?"

"Maybe the love she didn't find in life."

Scully gave him a sidelong glance. (Learn any lessons here,
Mulder?) "I just don't think that's a good explanation for all
that's happened," she said. "We--oh." She stopped when she saw
the stone angel, soft grey, rising above the soft green.

"I think we found it," she said.

The graveyard looked smaller in daylight. Mulder poked around the
old ruins, the broken picket fence, the overgrown grave sites.
There was not one tombstone there less that forty years old.

"Where's the Young name?" Scully asked.

"I don't know." Mulder was brushing off gravestones and peering
at them, frowning. "I don't know," he repeated faintly.

Half an hour later they had inventoried seventeen graves, two of
which were so old the names had been weathered away. The other
fifteen seemed to belong in some relationship or the other to a
family with the surname "King."

"It was here, Scully," Mulder said stubbornly. "Right here."

But even he had to admit, if only to himself, that no one had
visited this little cemetery for a very long time. Nor had come
close to it: there was no evidence of a shallow grave anywhere in
the perimeter. Only berry bushes, which had taken over the area,
and scratched and tore at the legs of their pants when they tried
to wade through them.

A large crow flapped down through the trees and settled on a
tombstone, cocking its head sharply right and left. Scully saw it
and nudged Mulder. It made a strikingly eerie picture, the symbol
of death perched on the cold monument to the dead. The overcast
weather and slight drizzle made the scene picture perfect.

"Wait," Scully said. "There's something there."

They went to the grave. On the slightly raised earth they found a
single artificial rose.

The crow flew away when they approached it. Scully picked the
rose up and handed it to Mulder, who looked amazed. She said, "I
guess this makes some sort of sense to you?"

"It does, actually."

She looked at him expectantly. He dropped his shoulders. "Well,
okay, it doesn't," he admitted.

Scully sighed. "I thought...I guess I misunderstood Issie. I
thought I remembered him saying that if I did something, he would
give the girls back to me. I guess he just meant the living ones.
The others must be dead."

"I thought you said you couldn't remember anything that
happened."

"I said I can't remember EVERYTHING that happened. It's like..."

"What?"

Scully shook her head. "I hope you can find your way back to the
car," she said, "Because I am completely lost."

"Follow me."

"You really know your way back? I'm impressed!"

"Don't be. We left tracks in the mud coming in. All we have to do
is follow them out."

He jammed his hands in his pockets and strode off towards the
woods, head down. Scully picked her way along, examining the
tracks he was following. Her own boots left small prints, close
together. His hushpuppies were widely spaced, big, deep.

Scully stopped abruptly. There was a third set of tracks mingling
with theirs. It went a half dozen yards and then veered off to
the right. They were the rippled soles of walking boots; she had
a pair like them at home.

Slowly, as if smelling something in the air, Scully raised her
head. In the woods to her right, under the dripping trees, she
saw something shimmer. A figure. At first it was
indistinguishable from the trees, something made from nature, or
a trick of the light. Then for just a second she saw very clearly
the young girl with long blonde hair, in jeans, wearing a
backpack.

"Hey!" she called.

Mulder, almost out of sight, turned around. Scully started to
trot towards the girl, who slipped away between two scrub oaks
into the shadows. "Hey!" she called, in a louder voice. "Wait!"

Mulder began jogging back, and caught up to her. "What is it,
Scully?"

"I saw someone." She was flushed, breathing hard with excitement.
"Over there."

Mulder went where she pointed, and she followed behind. The place
where the girl had gone into the woods was narrow for no more
than ten feet. Then it opened into a kind of a meadow, ringed and
shaded by old growth trees.

There the tracks ended into a myriad of other tracks. Lots of
them. And evidence of digging. Lots and lots of digging.

Mulder and Scully turned in a slow circle, their backs to each
other. All around them earth had been turned in over two dozen
mounds.

"Scully..." Mulder almost choked on the words. "The girls. All
those lost girls..."

"Mulder, look." Scully went to an oblong patch of ground. There
was a whole spray of cheap artificial roses lying on top to it,
battered plastic flowers that looked like they had been dragged
there by some wild animal.

Mulder knelt and brushed his gloved hand across the ground,
smoothing back the loose dirt. It had originally been deep enough
to conceal a body, but rain and erosion had sunk it in on itself.
After only a few minutes, Mulder had brushed enough dirt away to
reveal a piece of cloth.

Checked cloth. The tattered remains of a shirt.

Scully knelt beside him and touched his arm, leaning her
comforting weight against him. "That's enough," she said quietly.
"We both know who it is."

Mulder dropped his chin to his chest for a few seconds, and
Scully could not help but reach out and stroke his hair back.
"She was so alone," he muttered. "Poor little soul. She never had
anyone to redeem her."

Scully was looking over his head at a long broken area of dirt,
earth so new turned it wasn't even wet all the way through. She
saw something tucked down in it as if hastily concealed after the
body had been buried. Even from where she stood, she recognized
it as the Sam Brown sling Roger Young had been wearing in the car
the day before.

She put her hand on Mulder's shoulder.

"It's all right," she told him. "She has someone now."



End

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