From: jordan <jordan@jetson.uh.edu>
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 08:52:38 -0700
Subject: Repost:A Cold Angel Eye 13/16

Disclaimer: sorry to Chris Carter and the folks at Fox, plus 1013. 

 Summary: Mulder finds his hitchhiker, but for everything you get, as
Scully learns, there is a price to be paid. 

A Cold Angel Eye 13/16

by jordan

    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 boots 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 ^ĄThe 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."  His 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 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 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^x

     "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^x

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

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. 
Triangular, 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 a crescendo, 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 blindsided 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^x 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. 

A Cold Angel Eye 14/16

by jordan

     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, 6:00pm

     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. 

A Cold Angel Eye 15

by jordan

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 o f
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 stop, 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, 10:30PM

     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 
11:15PM

     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, lat+e

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 graffitti, 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." 

YAY!!!!!    We finally come to the final chapter of Angel Eye.
(Writer pours thimble full of beer over head and does victory
dance with reluctant cat.)

A Cold Angel Eye 16/16
Scully's Choice

by jordan

     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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