Disclaimer in Chapter 0.  This is Chapter 11a.
 

********
 

UNKNOWN LOCATION
NEAR ALDER CREEK, COLORADO
MARCH 25
6:03 a.m.
 

The gun felt good in his hands.  Owen Curran gripped it easily, the
weight and presence of it familiar and comforting to him.

He adjusted himself carefully on the hard bench seat of the tree
stand, pulled his camouflage jacket closer around him.  His
companion, a 13-year-old inhabitant of the Sons of Liberty compound
named Thomas, sat with his own rifle cradled in the crook of his
elbow as he blew into his hands, warming his fingers, which were
uncovered by the fingerless hunting gloves.

Neither had spoken for some time, Curran enjoying the quiet, both of
them watching the clearing just a few dozen feet away for any sign of
deer.

Curran had never been hunting like this before, and Thomas had
instructed him on what to do as they'd climbed into the stand, snow
falling from the ashen branches of the tree as they went up the rungs
nailed into the trunk.   They would sit with their Browning rifles,
downwind of the clearing, and wait for a buck to come.

They'd been up there for a little over an hour, with no sign.  Just
a low note of wind coming every now and then through the thick forest
they sat in.  A snowshoe hare that had scampered across the field,
almost hidden against the background of white.  No birds.  Nothing.

Thomas reached down and pulled something out of his rucksack he'd
been wearing as they'd hiked through the woods to the stand - a
thermos full of something warm.  Tomato soup, steaming a cloud from
the mirror surface of the interior.  The boy poured some into the
thermos' top, offered it to Curran.

"Aye, I'll have a bit.  Thank you, Thomas."  He took the cup, blew
on the thick surface of the soup and took a sip, handed it back to
the boy.   Thomas did the same, and they settled in again.

Curran reached into his pocket and drew out a smoke and some
matches.  He put the cigarette in his mouth, struck the match,
sending up a flare and the smell of sulfur.  He took a long drag,
blew it out.

Beside him, Thomas was looking at him, at the cigarette.  Owen
squinted a bit at him as he pulled in another breath of smoke.

"Can I have a drag?"  Thomas asked, doing his best to sound tough.
The boy's sandy blonde hair ruffled slightly in another push of the
cold wind.

Owen smiled around the cigarette, shook his head.  "Not good for a
boy your age," he said, cupping the cigarette in his hand.

"You sound like my dad," Thomas replied, returned his eyes to the
clearing.

Curran stopped at that, looked away from Thomas.  The boy's words
were like someone pushing on a bruise deep inside him.  He couldn't
help but think of Sean.

He wondered once again where he was, how he was.  He wondered if he
would see him again.

He stared off into the clearing, his blue eyes ice.

And then, he wasn't thinking of Sean any more.  It was always the
same when he thought of his son, of Fagan.  And Mae.  Especially Mae.
The one person he had trusted completely in his life.

The image of Dana Scully entered his mind, fury coming soon after.
He felt it flush through his system, a shot of heat.  He took another
drag on the cigarette, held it in until he could blow it out without
it shaking from him.

His hatred was like a living thing inside him, clawing at him.  The
images he had of what he would do to her when he caught her flooded
his mind.

Torture.  He would kill her slowly.  She would pay for everything
that she had done to him with her body, a piece at a time.

And he would break her.  He would control her before he killed her.
He would find a way.  She would beg him to kill her.

He let the breath out slow, smoke seeping from his lips as though he
were on fire inside.

A rustle of movement caught his eye at the edge of the clearing, on
the other side.  He tossed the cigarette and raised the rifle quickly
in one smooth motion, his eye looking through the scope.  Beside him,
Thomas did the same.

Curran looked at the creature.  Soft tan sides.  White chest.  Large
dark eyes glistening in the morning light as it cocked its head from
one side to the other nervously.  It took a tentative step further
into the clearing, its hooves crunching in the snow.

Beside him, Thomas lowered his gun.

"It's a doe," he said, dejected.

But Curran did not lower his own weapon.  He kept the scope trained
on the doe's forehead, above the wide eyes, the ears pricked forward,
soft and dark.

"Mr. Curran." Thomas said, perplexed and a little nervous.  "You
can't shoot a doe."

Curran ignored him, waited until the doe's face was in the
intersection of the sights.

Then he pulled the trigger.

The shot echoed, tearing through the woods and sending up a black
cloud of crows from the tree tops.  The rifle kicked back against
Curran's shoulder, the force nudging a smile from him.

Thomas gasped beside him.

In the clearing, the doe staggered, her head thrown back.  Her front
legs buckled until she knelt, struggling to stand.  The snow around
her was spattered with red.

"Mr. Curran!"  Thomas cried.  "You shoot for the heart!  You didn't
have a clear shot!"   He dropped his rifle on the wooden deck,
shocked,  nearly sending it over the edge, gaping at first Curran,
then the doe.  He reached over and touched the barrel of Curran's
rifle.

"Get your fucking hand off," Curran snarled, jerking the rifle away.
He bolted the rifle, then he sighted the doe again, fired.

This shot hit her in the chest, right at the triangle of white at
the base of her throat.  The doe's head flopped forward, digging into
the snow as she toppled to the side, sending the snow into bunched
piles around her, brown on red on white.

He bolted and fired again.  And again.

"Mr. Curran, stop!"  Thomas implored.  "Please stop!"

Something in the boy's tone reached through the clamor inside him,
the rage.  Thomas' voice was high.  Sounded younger.

He turned and looked at Thomas, found him crying, his chest rising
and falling, fast as a hare's.

He lowered the gun, looked out at the clearing.

The doe lay in a twisted heap, blood seeping into the snow.  She was
still, the only movement her fur as the wind moved over it.

He put the butt of the rifle on the deck, pushed himself into a
standing position.  He bent over and retrieved Thomas's rifle, shoved
it into the boy's hands.

"Get your things," he said, slinging his own rifle over his shoulder
by the strap.  "Let's go back."

Thomas looked up at him, his eyes wider.  "You're not just going to
leave her!"

"I fucking said we're going back!"  Curran spat.  "Now mind me.  Get
your things."

Thomas kept his eye on Curran as he closed up the thermos, zipped up
the bag and shouldered into it, slung the rifle, then followed him
down the makeshift ladder to the white below.
 

***********
 

TWO GREY HILLS, NEW MEXICO
NAVAJO INDIAN RESERVATION
11:34 a.m.
 

Albert Hosteen sat on the concrete porch outside his double-wide
trailer, rocking slowly in a rocking chair and nibbling on the end of
his pipe.  His eyes were on the long dirt road that connected his
house to main road of the reservation, dark pools set into the
pleasant crags of his face.  His long white hair was pulled back,
gathered behind his head with a rubber band, and it trailed down the
back of his flannel shirt toward the low back of the chair.

The chair made a soft squeak as he moved, rocking himself slowly
with one booted foot, deep in thought.  He pulled on the pipe, most
of the smoke leaving his mouth before he inhaled it.  He really
simply liked the taste of the tobacco, not the strength of the
smoke.

They would be there today.  He was sure of it.

He thought once again about the choice he had made.

When the man from the FBI had called him, asking him for a favor,
there had only been a moment when he'd had trepidation at the
prospect.  There was a part of him that thought he had paid his dues
to the U.S. Government, paid more than his dues for what he'd been
given in return.  His time as a Code Talker during the second World
War had made him invaluable to them at the time, but then he'd been
cast aside, paid a small pension for his efforts at creating a Navajo-
based code that baffled the Germans and the Japanese and eventually
helped the Allies win the war.

It all felt very distant to him now, that part of it.  And they were
not the memories that caused him the knee-jerk of fear when the man
from the FBI had called him.  It was the more recent ones -- the
boxcar filled with bodies buried in a canyon a few miles away.  Men
in his house, the beatings, the efforts to kill the other FBI man for
uncovering their secrets.

It had all solidified something he knew from his time with the
government before -- that they were not to be trusted.  That they
would do anything they could to protect their lies and their plans
for things he knew of but would rather not think of now.  He was an
old man.  He would let it be.

He'd made one stand against them, though, before he'd returned to
the reservation and the silence of all that he knew --  he'd memorized
the more damning of the lies, the machinations, and relayed them to
others, passing the story along like a folk tale.  He'd done this to
protect two people whom he'd somehow grown to trust.

The FBI man whose life he had saved -- this man Mulder -- and his
partner, Scully, a woman he knew less of but whom he probably
understood better than he did the man.

He'd protected them then because they were worth protecting.  They
both had a pure human sense of what was right.  The woman even more
than the man in some respects, because her actions were not tinged
with the rage of his.  After all, she had shot Mulder in an effort to
protect him from snaring himself in the trap those men had laid for
him.  She was willing to do anything for what she believed in.

And Mulder, despite his personal anger over what was happening, had
proven the same.

They both sought nothing more or less than the truth, and the truth
was like a faith to Hosteen, the basis for all he did and knew.

So when the man from the FBI had called, telling him of the
accusations against Mulder, the danger that Scully was in, he knew
the right thing to do.

The door to the trailer banged open and his grandson, Victor, came
out, stood next to his grandfather.  Victor looked older than his 28
years, age burned into him with days spent at the corral caring for
the family's small herd of horses and sheep.  He had deep lines
around his eyes, much like his grandfather's, his hair -- jet black in
a short cut that had grown out, ruffling lightly in the wind coming
in off the valley around them.

"What makes you think they're coming today?" he asked, his eyes on
the dirt road, as well.

Albert quirked a smile.  "I feel it on the wind, in the trees, off
the mountains...."

He said it hugely and dramatically, raising his arms for effect.
Victor laughed.

"Yeah, right," he said, still laughing.  He jammed his hands in the
pockets of his Levi's. "Just one of your feelings, huh?"

"Hm," Albert said thoughtfully.  "Yes.  But it makes sense that they
would come as fast as they could.  Been running for a long time."  He
took another pull on his pipe, breathed out.

"I'm still not sure this is such a good idea, grandfather," Victor
said, though his tone was resigned.  They'd been having this argument
for days.

Albert nibbled on his pipe, grunted softly.  "It's necessary," he
said cryptically.  He couldn't explain that feeling, but he was sure
of it somehow.

Victor, who was used to this kind of response from him, he knew,
nodded and said nothing.

Movement caught Albert's eye down the highway and he grew very still
for a moment, watching the car come around the wide curve that led
into town.  He could make it out from where he sat -- an SUV of some
kind.  Older model.  He followed it as it approached.

When it reached the end of his road and took the turn, he stood,
pulling himself up to his considerable height.  He turned and tapped
out the pipe, the glowing tobacco raining down onto the concrete and
snuffing out.  Then he lay it down carefully on the arm of the chair,
faced forward again.

The truck came slowly, as though unsure of itself, bumping up the
uneven road.  Hosteen could make out two figures through the dirty
windshield and recognized them as they pulled up next to Victor's
pickup.  Mulder was driving.  His partner, Scully, was looking out
the side window.  Albert came forward as the truck's engine died into
quiet.

Mulder exited first.  He looked leaner than the last time Hosteen
had seen him, bearded, his hair longer than he remembered.  His eyes
were guarded by sunglasses, which he removed as he came forward.
Scully was just opening her door as Mulder closed the distance to
him, his hand extended.

"Mr. Hosteen," he said, and he sounded ragged.  Albert looked into
his face, saw his eyes rimmed with red, bloodshot.  He hadn't slept
in awhile; Hosteen was sure of that.

And there was swelling at the corner of his left eye near his
cheekbone, a bruise forming beneath his lower lid.

"Agent Mulder," Hosteen replied, keeping his face neutral.  He
smiled kindly as he shook Mulder's hand.  "So you made it, eh?"

Mulder smiled weakly.  "Yes, we made it," he said softly.  Scully
came up, and Albert turned his attention to her as she stood a little
off to the side behind her partner.

He swallowed, and his face fell as he looked at her.

So thin.  Her face pale.  Faint bruises around her neck.  She, too,
removed her glasses and Hosteen looked into her eyes, though her gaze
darted from his as soon as she saw him studying her.

 Something haunted in those eyes.  Pain-filled.

Something terribly wrong.

He smiled to her, regaining his composure.  "Agent Scully."  He
closed the distance between them and reached out.  She took his hand
almost reluctantly.  The smile she gave looked like it would crack
her face.

"It's good to see you again, Mr. Hosteen," she said, distant.
"Though I wish the circumstances were better."

Hosteen chuffed softly.  "They were not so good the last time we
met."

"That's true," Mulder said, and Hosteen turned to see him rubbing
his shoulder absently, as though the gunshot wound Scully had given
him suddenly hurt again.  He smiled at Mulder faintly.

Then he stepped back so that he could face both of them again.
Scully had made no move to stand next to her partner.  Albert
wondered at the distance, his head cocked as he looked at them both,
gauging what he saw.

An awkward silence fell.

Hosteen was so distracted by the feelings rising off of both of them
that he forgot Victor was even standing there until his grandson came
forward himself, breaking the strange moment.

"I'm Victor Hosteen," he said, shook hands with Mulder and nodded to
Scully.  She nodded back.  "One of you is going to be staying next
door to me.  There's an empty trailer there that we've put a few
things in.  It's got two bedrooms, so you could both stay there if
you'd like, but we have another place, too,  if that's not what you
want."

Mulder seemed to look uncertain, wary.  He glanced at Scully, who
did not glance back.  "How safe are these places?"  he asked.  "I
mean...are they secluded enough that people won't see us there?"

Hosteen nodded.  "Yes, both are secluded, Agent Mulder.  No one
comes out this way who doesn't live here -- all my family --  and no
one here will tell anyone of your whereabouts.  They consider it my
business, my concern, and they will not interfere with that."

He studied the two of them again.  Scully was looking away, as
though the conversation didn't involve her at all.  Mulder was
chewing his lip nervously.  He considered for a few beats, finally
nodded.  "We want separate places then, if that's not too much
trouble," he said, and Hosteen heard the sadness behind the remark,
though Mulder had tried to sound nonchalant and business-like.

Hosteen slipped his hands into his pockets, nodded as he began to
understand.

Two things wrong, he thought.  Something wrong with Scully herself.
And something between the two of them.  He could almost see the wall
that separated them, thick and wide and made of stone.

And newly built.  The tension in them was too acute for it to have
been there very long.

"The other place to stay is a smaller trailer here a ways out behind
my house," Hosteen said.  "It's not much, either.  One room.  This
one on wheels, you know.  You'll have to shower at my house, but it's
got propane.  You can cook."  He looked at Scully intently, his head
tilting again.  "Why don't you stay in this one, Agent Scully?  It
would be more...private.  So much coming and going at my grandson's
place with the livestock to care for."

She avoided his gaze again, nodded.  "That would be fine," she said.

"It's about a mile and a half to my place from here, down the road,"
Victor chimed in, and Hosteen could tell the agents' tension was
making his grandson nervous.  "I'm sorry it's not closer.  I see
you've only got the one truck, but I'll be happy to drive you back
and forth if you want to leave the car here--"

"Agent Mulder can have the truck," Scully interrupted, looking away.
"I won't be needing it."

Her meaning was clear.  She wouldn't be going anywhere.  Not even to
see Mulder.

Victor was looking at Scully, then turned to the other two men.
Mulder was looking down at the ground, scuffing a stone with his
foot.   Albert held Victor's gaze for a few seconds, nodded,
reassuring him.

"That's fine," Albert said gently, trying to diffuse the crackle in
the air.  "Why don't I help you get your things and take you back
there, Agent Scully?  It won't be hard with both of us carrying the
load."

Scully nodded and turned, going for the truck.

Now Hosteen chanced a look at Mulder.  The younger man's eyes had
yet to return from the ground, but his jaw was working, his face
hard, fiercely controlled.

Yes, Hosteen thought.  Whatever was between them, whatever had dug
this chasm, was new, indeed.  Mulder's pain was rising off him like
smoke.

"Go on with Victor, Agent Mulder," he said, his voice soft.  "I'll
see to Agent Scully."

Mulder met his eyes then, and their gazes hung.  Then Albert smiled
that same half smile, and walked past him to where Scully was pulling
her suitcases out of the back of the truck.

She didn't look at him as she slammed the back of the truck closed,
replaced the spare tire on its hinge against the tailgate.  He
reached down and hefted the larger of the two suitcases, and Scully
picked up the other and a sleeping bag.

"It's not too far," he said.  "Come with me."

Scully nodded.   "All right," she said, gestured ahead of them
almost impatiently.

Albert's lip curled, but he hid it as he started toward the house.
Scully followed close behind.

Neither she nor Mulder looked at the other as they passed, Hosteen
noted.  Mulder simply turned and went toward his truck, Victor
hurrying to his own to lead the way down the road.
 

* * * * *

END OF CHAPTER 11a.  CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 11b.

Disclaimer in Chapter 0.  This is Chapter 11b.

*  *  *  * *
 

LAKE McCONAUGHY
OUTSIDE OGALLALA, NEBRASKA
12:13 p.m.
 

Jimmy Shea hooked the minnow through the side, checked the sinker
and the hook, then cast the small fish out into the water toward the
shore of the black lake.  There were submerged logs there, overhangs
of branches, and he knew that there would be bass hovering just
beneath the surface, dozing beneath the tree limbs and waiting for
tap on the water, for food to come.

He'd read it all in the guidebook he'd bought in Belfast, The Best
Fishing in All Fifty States, all this information about the bass and
catfish that inhabited the lake.  A quick stop at the tackle shop at
the marina, $30 to rent the boat for the afternoon, and he was back
out on the water, waiting for the fish.

He was just down from Ringgold, a tiny town northeast of the lake he
now bobbed on, the place where Curran had last been sighted.  He'd
gotten the call from Rutherford two days ago, and had immediately
packed up his things and headed west.

Shea had been all over the town, just as he'd been in Tyner, tracked
down the lead that Rutherford had had leaked to him from someone on
the NYPD who was following the case, an Irish cop with ties to the
underground IRA in the boroughs.  The lead was a motel on the
outskirts of town where surveillance video had picked up someone
matching Curran's appearance, and on looking at the still photos
Rutherford had decided that the resemblance was close enough to
warrant notifying Shea about it.

Shea had gone to the motel, shown pictures of Curran to a clerk who
apparently wasn't aware of the manhunt and the manager's report of
the sighting to the CIA and FBI.  The woman had looked at the photo,
said "yes," that Curran had indeed been there, but that it was weeks
ago since he left.  He'd stayed for a week, she said, and then, like
everyone else who stopped in the tiny town, he'd moved on.

So Shea had checked the map in the pickup, called Rutherford on the
cell phone and told him the news.  Then he'd said he was going
fishing until Rutherford called him again, that he'd be staying down
in Ogallala in a cheap motel that had free cable and a restaurant.
In other words, everything that Shea would need.

His back creaked as he leaned back on the small seat in the center
of the boat, and he stretched.  He was feeling his age on this trip.
There had been times when he could hole up in a building for days,
weeks if he had to, sleeping on floors or hunkered in corners.  All
those years of doing the work and then hiding out afterward, waiting
for the heat to die down enough for him to vanish back into the
woodwork.

All those assignments from James Curran.  Those meetings at the
lovely house near Ballycastle overlooking the sea.  Curran's children
growing up before his eyes over suppers.  The smaller James, always
so quiet and serene and growing more so as the years went by.  Mae,
the only girl, lovely and so full of life, always getting into
everything.

And then there was Owen.  Always at his father's side, listening in
on the business at a chair at the table as he played with his toys.
Some of what Shea and the elder Curran had discussed Shea felt
uncomfortable talking about in front of the boy, but James didn't
seem to mind.  He seemed to want Owen to hear.  The younger James was
too introspective, destined from a early age for the priesthood by
his disposition and his faith.  And Mae was just a girl, after all.
Owen was where James had his hopes for the family continuing in the
Cause, the boy fascinated by everything his father said and did, a
slight shadow that followed James almost everywhere he went.

Shea reeled the hook in slowly, giving the line a slight jerk every
few rotations or two of the silver reel.  Nothing.  He pulled the
bait in all the way and checked it, the boat drifting down a bit
further along the grassy bank.  When he saw a good shady spot, he
tossed the bait back out, landing it right against the shore and
giving it a gentle pull down the slope and into the deeper water.

He thought of Ruby back home suddenly, a vision of her as she
bustled about in the morning around him, picking flowers from the
garden as he drank his tea, read the news.  Her coming to him in the
shed behind the house where he worked his wood, bending it, smoothing
it.  She would fuss at him to come for dinner most nights.  He got
that lost in his work.

The small boat he'd been building was nearly done when he'd gotten
the call, and he longed to get back to it.

He missed Ruby.  The thought made him smile sadly.  After all those
years of losing friends, he'd thought himself beyond missing anyone
or anything.  But Ruby was somehow, thankfully, different.  She
proved that something was still alive within him, something that
they'd been unable to completely take with the years of loss and
sacrifice.

He'd thought he'd just been left with his resignation about the work
-- how it was never done, how many of the sacrifices seemed worthless.
Resignation tinged -- and more often these days -- with something like
regret.

For a moment he let the line go slack, the sinker bumping on the
bottom.

Car bombs going off outside the UDR police station in Derry, bodies
staggering from the raging hulks, screaming, engulfed in flame.

A faked road block outside Belfast, two women, 18 and 19.  Heads
shaved and shot in the temples for snitching and fucking the Brits.

Dozens of men at the point of impact, their stunned faces.

The glassy, open eyes of the dead.  Their ghastly faces becoming so
familiar to him when he was younger that he had difficulty, at times,
telling them from the living.

Glass shattering in a hundred store fronts, distant siren wails.
Bombs of Sinn Fein hate and carpenter nails.

He closed his eyes against it, turned his face up toward the midday
sun, shining on the surface of the lake.  He took a deep breath, let
it out slowly.  Then he opened his eyes.  It was like waking from a
bloody dream.

The boat had drifted further down the bank, his line dragging across
the bottom.  Pulling himself together again, he reeled the line in,
pulling up mud and clumps of reeds.  He cleared the hook, tossing the
debris back into the water, laid the pole down in the boat and
reached for the motor.

Enough, he thought, tired.

Enough for one day.
 

* * * *
 

TWO GREY HILLS, NEW MEXICO
NAVAJO RESERVATION
5:34 p.m.
 

The sun was sinking, sending the sky into a pale gold over the bare
landscape of scrubby trees, the rises of the mesas and buttes in the
distance.  Scully watched it as it fell, sitting on the small bed
built into the side of the Winnabago trailer, her back against a
cupboard that acted as a headboard.  Her knees were drawn up against
her chest, her arms looped around them, pulling them in close.  She
wore her shoes still, the soles on the blanket.

She didn't move as she looked out the window, as she felt the cold
creeping in through the metal walls of the trailer, through the blue
bunting top she wore, her jeans.  She'd have to turn on the heater
after all, she thought absently.  There was nothing around her to
hold any warmth.  Just red stones, low dry bushes.  And silence.

She did not think of Mulder.  Or at least that was what she told
herself.  But trying so hard not to think of him was the same as
thinking of him, she thought bitterly, and sank down further against
the cupboard, sighing.  She ran a hand up her forehead, pushing her
hair out of her face where it had fallen, partially occluding her
eyes and the view out the window.

She'd been alone the night before, but had been so numb that that
fact had hardly seemed to matter.  After Mulder had gone, she'd sank
down between the two beds, her back against one of them, curled in on
herself like a shell, and simply sat there.  Occasionally, she had
cried, tears silently streaking her face, but more often she'd just
stared at the draped window, her mind spent and blank as snow.

She'd stayed like that until the light behind the thick curtain had
faded from gold to gray to black, then she's risen, stiff, and
slipped beneath the covers in the darkness, still wearing her clothes
and shoes.  She'd fallen asleep almost instantly.

Now here she was, finally truly away from everyone.  This was what
she had wanted all these weeks, she thought.  To be completely alone,
to have time to process everything that had happened in the past
months.

But now that she had it, she was still as paralyzed as she'd been
the night before, struck into an impasse with her emotions.  It was
as though, since her outburst yesterday, she'd rescinded her
permission to feel anything at all.  What she'd done yesterday had
frightened her, the way she'd given in that much to the anger and
pain.  She did not want to do that again.

She didn't know who that person was, the one who had struck Mulder
across the face with the hard blow, finally driving him away.

This was not to say that she thought what she had said to him before
that had been a mistake.  The things about their relationship being
over.  She truly felt that, and thought that it had needed to be
said.  She should be alone now, unattached.  Perhaps permanently.

The old person she was could give herself that way.  This new one
could not.

The outburst about the rape, she was not so certain was the right
thing to have done.  But it was done now, and there was nothing she
could do about it.

Weary, she rose and went the short distance to the tiny kitchen, the
two burner stove.  She opened the cupboards over the stove, found
soup, crackers, rice.  In the small refrigerator beside it she found
a quart of milk, a few apples.  Butter.  A container of orange juice.
A loaf of dark bread.

Hosteen had given her enough to feed her for the first couple of
days, at least.  She would not have to ask him for a  ride to the
market right away, and she was glad for that.  She felt like a
stranger to the outside world and did not relish the thought of
joining it.

She closed her eyes.

Maybe if she stayed out here long enough, she thought, she might
just disappear.  Mulder could forget about her.  They all would.
Curran.  Padden.  Even Skinner.  They would forget her and all that
had happened to her.

And maybe she could, as well.  She longed for forgetting more than
she'd longed for anything in her life.  For a kind of white amnesia.
Maybe by forgetting, it would stop the hurting, the grief.  Maybe the
outburst yesterday to Mulder had been all the feeling she had left,
and she could let it go, feel nothing.

Maybe that was who she was now, this new person she'd become defined
by that.

And perhaps that wasn't such a bad thing in the end, she decided,
and closed the refrigerator, no longer hungry for anything.

Distantly, she heard a sound, the first in hours.  Footsteps coming
down the road.  A horse, walking slowly, the easy cadence of hooves.

She went to the flimsy door, peered out its small window.  Her gun
was nearby, balanced on the edge of a built-in table.  She eyed it as
the figure drew nearer.

Then she relaxed some as the horse and rider drew nearer.  It was
Albert Hosteen, sitting tall on a beautiful dapple-gray horse.  He
wore a denim jacket, a plaid flannel shirt beneath it, worn jeans and
cowboy boots.  There was a plastic bag slung by the handles to the
horn of the western saddle he sat on.  It swung slightly as the horse
shifted its weight from one side to the other as it walked.

The corners of her mouth drew down.  She was not in a good state for
visitors.  In fact, she couldn't foresee a time when she would be.

Still, she opened the door, stepped down onto the sand, walked
toward him as he stopped a dozen feet from the trailer, looking down
at her kindly.

"Hello," Scully said, forcing her face into something she hoped was
friendly.

"Agent Scully," Hosteen replied, his face kind.  "I came to see how
you were getting on, and to bring you some dinner."

Scully looked down.  "I'm doing fine," she replied.  "And thank you,
but I'm not hungry.  And what you've left for me will be fine for a
few days if I do want something to eat."

Hosteen smiled, dismounted carefully so as not to disturb the bag.
"My wife, Eda, before she died, was a wonderful cook, you know," he
began conversationally, reached up and lifted the bag off the saddle.
"She could make fried chicken and fry bread like no one for miles."

"Is that so?"  Scully said, being polite.

"Hmm," Albert said, turning to her.  "She taught me how to make both
of them before she died.  Said I'd starve to death, me and the boys,
if I didn't learn to do for myself."

He opened the bag, and warm, inviting smells came from it.  Scully
looked at the bag, then at him again uncertainly.

"Well, I made some this evening, some of both, and since my son Keel
couldn't come to eat, I thought I'd come out and eat with you."

Scully tried to smile, but didn't quite make it.  "Really, Mr.
Hosteen, I'm just going to go to bed really early.  I'm very tired
and--"

"Can't let it go to waste," he interrupted.  "And you really should
try them.  They're the best you've ever eaten, I promise."  He smiled
again.  "Eda knew how to make them best."

He walked right past her now, and Scully stepped aside, watched him
go to the cluster of wooden chairs outside the trailer, set just a
few feet from a fire pit that had been dug into the ground beside the
trailer.   There was a pile of ragged branches and old lumber next to
it, a collection of kindling.  Hosteen eased himself down into one of
the chairs, began looting through the bag.

Scully looked at him, not sure what to do.  Finally she sighed.  It
was just a meal with him.  And the sooner she ate it, the sooner he
would most likely go, leaving her to the night of solitude she had
envisioned.

So she went to the chair beside his, watched him pull out a plate
encased in tin foil, which he handed to her.  It was still warm.  He
took out another for himself, setting it on his lap.  She did the
same, removed the foil to reveal three pieces of chicken, the flat
disc of a piece of fry bread, some beans cooked in heavy spice.

She had to admit -- it smelled delicious.  Her stomach rumbled as the
smell drifted around her.

He handed her a spoon from the bag, and she slowly took a spoonful
of the beans and ate.  They were as good as they smelled.

Hosteen was digging into his own plate, eating the chicken with his
fingers, using the fry bread to mop at the beans.  Scully followed
his lead, though with a bit less enthusiasm.

They ate in silence.  Off somewhere, a coyote called, another
answering from the distance.  The sky turned a bruised blue, then
faded to black, lit by a canopy of starlight.  Scully looked up at it
as she finished off the last of the bread.  The number of stars one
could see in the desert always astounded her.  It was like the sky
was more star than night.

The only light besides the stars, the bulb over the stove that she'd
left on.  It threw a small yellow square around them from the window
above their heads.  Scully couldn't see Hosteen's face, but he set
the plate down on the ground in front of him when he finished eating.
Then she saw the flare of a match illuminate his face and eyes, the
burning circle of the interior of the end of a pipe.  The smell of
sweet tobacco came toward her, and she found it somehow comforting.

She set her own plate on the ground, looked down at it, surprised to
have left nothing but bones on her plate.  Maybe she was hungrier
than she had thought.

The quiet stretched again, and she let it.

"You look different than the last time I saw you," Hosteen said
finally out of the darkness, the pipe's end growing brighter as he
inhaled.

She looked up into the sky.  There was a small light moving far up,
drawing a curve across the night.  It was a satellite, she realized,
after watching it a few moments.  Mulder had said you could see them
in the desert if you looked hard enough, but she had never believed
him.  The sight of it and the memory of his words made her smile
sadly.

"I imagine I do," she said at last.  "It's been a long time since we
last met."  She paused.  "It's strange though -- you look the same."

"Not had the years you've had, I should think," Hosteen replied.

She looked down.  "Probably not," she said vaguely.

"Hard years."   He inhaled again, the tobacco glowing like a dim
bulb and then fading out.

She hesitated, unsure of the turn in the conversation.  "Yes.  Some
of them," she replied cautiously.

Another long moment of silence.

"You were so young when I saw you last.  Young in many ways."  His
voice was calming, serious but not probing.  His words and the way he
said them made a lump rise in her throat, and she swallowed it down
hard.

"I'm not so young anymore," she replied, some bitterness coming in.
"In many ways."

"Hmm," Hosteen said again.  "Losing so much will do that to you.
Seeing too much will do it.  Pain will do it."

Something rose in her now at his words as she chafed.

"What do you know about what I've lost or seen?"  she asked flatly.
"Or about my pain?"

He shifted in the chair.  "I know only what I see in front of me,"
he said obliquely.  "That's all any of us can know."

He was turned toward her now, though his face -- and hers, she knew --
were lost in shadows.

"What do you see in front of you, Agent Scully?" he asked softly.
His voice had grown quieter still, now like a voice but like a
phantom of a voice.

She looked away, as though his eyes were penetrating her through the
darkness.

"I don't know what you mean," she said, and recalled saying the same
words to Mulder the day before.  She realized what a lie they were as
she said them to Hosteen, a lie she'd hidden behind with Mulder and
that she was using again to hide from this man, as well.

"I think you do," Hosteen countered, his voice gentle.  "I think you
see a lot in front of you, but you don't want to see it.  And I think
you want -- and need -- to see more, but you can't right now.  But
part
of that is because you don't know where to look."

She said nothing for a long moment, emotions rising.  Sadness.
Anger at the presumption of his words.  A strange feeling of exposure
and vulnerability at being so easily read.

She bent to get her plate, stood suddenly.

"Yes, well..." she said stiffly, turning toward him.  "Thank you for
dinner.  You're right.  It was excellent.  But I think I'm going to
go off to bed now."

She saw the small rain of embers as he tapped out the pipe.  Then
the creak of the chair as he stood with his own plate.  His lean form
threw a thin shadow through the box of yellow on the ground from the
window.  She could see his face now, his kind smile, but she could
not hold his gaze.

"If I think of a place where you can look, I'll let you know," he
said, not seeming to mind her brush off.  "I'll think on it."

She looked away, a feeling of vulnerability coming over her.  "All
right," she said, awkward.  She didn't know what else to say to
that.

He nodded, reached for the bag on the ground and placed both their
plates into it.  "You are welcome, " he replied.  "Sleep well, Agent
Scully."

"You, too, Mr. Hosteen," she said, and watched him disappear toward
the dark shape of his horse, who had waited patiently in front of the
trailer just outside the light the entire time.  She'd almost
forgotten the animal was there.

With a squeak of leather, he mounted, turned the horse around and
disappeared into the dark.

Scully stood there for a long moment, staring up at the blanket of
stars.  Then, tired in more ways than she could name, she turned and
went back into the trailer, closing the door for the night.
 

* * * * *

END OF CHAPTER 11b.  CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 12.

Disclaimer in Chapter 0. This is Chapter 12a.

*********

TWO GREY HILLS, NEW MEXICO
NAVAJO RESERVATION
MARCH 30 (FIVE DAYS LATER)
8:24 a.m.
 

The sounds of a truck engine starting up, of sheep bleating in the
distance, the deep sound of horses, punctuated by an occasional high
call from one of the stallions. All these sounds had grown strangely
familiar to Mulder, his usual wake-up call here on Victor Hosteen's
land.

He lay beneath the open window, clad only in green boxers, his lean
body lit by the gold morning light. Though they were a ways away from
him, he could still hear the Hosteen boys calling back and forth,
their rich laughter. They laughed a lot.

He rolled onto his side, his back to the window now, drawing his
knees up in the twin bed. It was the only way he could lay without
his feet dangling over the end, which made him feel like a man
sleeping in a child's bed. It didn't bother him too much, though.
After all, he'd spent the better part of the five days in this bed,
alternately sleeping and staring at the wall or the window, listening
to the men work in the distance in the pens and corrals.

When he wasn't in the bed, he'd spent some time sitting on the
battered sofa in the living room area off the kitchen, watching the
lousy reception on the television, or, more often, out on the front
patio in a white plastic chair. The patio faced Victor's place,
several hundred yards away, and beyond that, the stable, which he
could always spot by the cloud of dust that seemed to linger over it
and the smell that wafted his way if the wind was right. He didn't
mind the dust or the smell. He wasn't up to minding much of anything.

He drew in a deep breath, eased it out, reached up and ran a hand
over his chest. He was cold, the spring morning here in the desert
bright but chilly. Rather than pull the covers over himself, he sat
up instead, reached down onto the floor where his jeans were still
hunkered, right where he'd stepped out of them the night before. He
pulled them on as he stood, rubbing at his beard as he made his way
down the narrow corridor toward the kitchen.

Water in the kettle, the squeak of the flimsy faucet as he turned it
off. The popping of the stove as it lit, the blue flame bursting
beneath the kettle's shining surface. He stretched, shivering, his
bare feet cold on the linoleum floor.

He supposed he should get a shirt, he mused absently, then discarded
the thought. He stood before the stove until the kettle began its
slow whistle, then poured the water into a mug for the Taster's
Choice he'd found in the cabinet. The date on the stuff was two years
ago. He didn't think, wincing at the bitter taste, that it being more
fresh would make a difference.

He shuffled through the living room, breathing in the smell of dust.
The place had been shut up for months before his arrival, the former
home of one of Albert Hosteen's brothers. The man had died of cancer,
and the trailer seemed to carry the melancholy of a long illness with
it.

Outside on the patio, Mulder took his seat in the flimsy chair,
crossing his legs in front of him at the ankles, crossing his arm
across his ribs as he sipped the coffee. He watched the shapes of
horses, small at this distance, move around the corral, men milling
back and forth.

He wondered how she was, what she was doing. If she was awake yet,
what she was thinking as she started her day. He'd seen nothing of
her or of Albert Hosteen since he'd left the house all those days
ago, doing his level best not to look behind as he'd driven away.

He was still trying his best not to look behind. It hadn't worked in
the truck as he'd bumped after Victor down the road, and it wasn't
working now, either.

He reached up and rubbed his eyes roughly, the beginnings of a
headache coming over him already. He was so tired and he felt useless
and ancient.

He heard a soft noise off to his right and he jerked his head
around, instantly alert. When he saw the source of the sound, he
relaxed, however, simply stared.

The dog was back.

Mulder had first noticed it on the first morning he'd been there, a
charcoal-colored hound of some kind that skulked around the perimeter
of the property. It was so thin he could count its ribs even from a
distance, see the sores on its sides. It walked tentatively, each
step hesitant as it watched Mulder watching it. Its tail was firmly
curled between its legs, its ears and head down. It would linger for
a few minutes, and then scurry away, disappearing into the scrubby
brush behind the house.

Mulder took another sip of the acrid coffee, watching the dog. It
had stopped as he'd turned toward it and was watching him with its
dark, frightened eyes. Mulder held still for a moment, then let his
free hand slowly drop over the arm of the chair. He snapped his
fingers.

"Come here," Mulder said gently, and the dog took a step to one
side, then the other, seeming to grow smaller with the sound of his
voice, closer to the ground.

"I won't hurt you," he continued softly, snapped his fingers again,
made a small whistling sound. The dog's ears pricked for a second at
the sound, as though it recognized something familiar in it. It took
a hesitant step forward.

"That's it," Mulder said, inordinately pleased for some reason.
"Come here."

The dog licked its lips. A small chirp of a whine came from it.

Moving slowly, Mulder put the coffee cup down on the ground in front
of him, rose and went into the trailer. He kept an eye on the dog,
which had taken a few steps back as he'd risen but did not run away.

Inside, Mulder fished in the cabinets for a bowl, settling instead
on a silver pot. He filled it with water at the sink, then carefully
carried it back out the front door.

The dog was still cowering a few dozen feet away, eyeing him warily.
Taking small, slow steps, Mulder moved toward it, the pot in front of
him.

"Want some water?" he asked softly, taking another step, then
another. The dog backed up a step. "I've got some water. I'm not
going to hurt you. I just have some water...."

About 15 feet from the dog, Mulder squatted down and placed the pot
on the ground. Then he stood and began to back up, moving just as
slowly.

The dog eyed him and the pot alternately, its ears flat against its
head in fear. It whined again faintly.

When he'd returned to his chair, Mulder picked up his coffee cup and
crossed his arm over his chest again, shivering again. He took a sip,
pretending to ignore the dog now, though he was watching it out of
the corner of his eye.

It got even closer to the ground now, licking its dry lips again,
and began to creep toward the pot, watching Mulder the whole time.
About five feet away, it was on its belly, crawling now.

Mulder sipped his coffee, waiting, barely breathing.

Finally the dog reached the pot, sniffed, pressing its nose over the
edge. Then, its eyes still on Mulder, it began to drink.

And, for the first time in days, Mulder smiled.

**

Albert Hosteen watched all this with interest from the back of his
horse, up on a rise beside the trailer, a small smile on his face, as
well. He gave the dog a few moments to drink and then started down
the rise toward the trailer, now visible to Mulder on the patio,
though Mulder was watching the dog.

Suddenly, the animal stood upright, catching sight of Albert on his
horse. Instantly it shot off, running behind the trailer and into the
desert beyond. Mulder watched it go, then turned his head to see what
could have startled it and saw Hosteen. Albert couldn't miss the
hopeful look on the younger man's face as Mulder stood, walking to
the edge of the patio nearest him, his free hand jammed in his pocket
for warmth.

Hosteen maneuvered the horse up in front of him, stopped.

"Hello, Agent Mulder," Hosteen said softly. "I see you have met Bo."

"Bo?" Mulder replied, clearly confused. "Oh, you mean the dog?"

"Yes," Albert said. "My brother's dog. Nobody has been able to get
near him since Larry died. He just hangs around the house as though
he is waiting for Larry to return."

"Ah," Mulder said.

Albert dismounted now, stood before Mulder. "You look cold."

"Yeah, I am a little, I guess," Mulder replied, embarrassed. "I just
woke up and was too lazy to find a shirt."

"Huh," Hosteen replied. "Yes, I hear you do not do much with
yourself here. Victor said he rarely sees you and that you never go
anywhere."

Mulder looked down. Around the fringe of his beard, Hosteen could
make out a faint glow as Mulder blushed. "I guess I don't, no," he
mumbled. He looked around, a sad expression on his face. "Where would
I go?" His voice sounded very far away as he said the last.

"Not good for you," Albert replied. "You should get out. Busy
yourself with something." He gestured toward the corral and Victor's
house in the distance. "Victor can always use an extra hand with the
livestock. You should let him put you to work up there."

Mulder shifted from foot to foot. "I'm afraid the closest I've come
to a sheep is a sweater," he said, and Albert laughed. "And I've
never ridden a horse."

"Easy to learn. You will be good at it. I can feel it." He looked
down at the cup of coffee in Mulder's hand. "You have more water on?"

Mulder seemed struck out of his somber mood. "Oh, yes, I'm sorry. I
should have offered. Please, come in."

Albert followed him into the house, the screen door banging shut
behind them. Mulder put the kettle back on.

"I'm just going to go get a shirt," Mulder said, awkward. "I'll be
right back." And he disappeared down the hall.

Hosteen sat on the couch, looking around. He hadn't been back in
this place since just after his brother's death. There just hadn't
been any need. He smiled looking at the beat-up recliner in front of
the television, remembering nights here with his brother over the
years. The place had always been filled with laughter, a warm place.

He hoped some of that still remained for the man living in it now.

The kettle was already whistling again when Mulder returned in a
dark blue sweatshirt, his boots on. Albert watched him pour another
mug of coffee and then come forward to the living room. Mulder handed
it to him and sat down in Larry's chair, perched on the edge, clearly
nervous.

Hosteen sipped the coffee, made a face. "This is awful," he said,
bemused.

"Yeah," Mulder said, a small embarrassed laugh coming from him.
"Yeah, it is. Sorry about that."

"Tastes like ashes," Hosteen said, and took another sip. It wasn't
so terrible the second time around.

Mulder was looking into his own cup, then around the room, glancing
at Hosteen every now and again.

"You want to know how Agent Scully is doing," Albert said finally.
"I can see it on your face."

Color rose around Mulder's beard again, but he tried to shrug, sound
nonchalant. "Yeah, I had wondered how she was holding up," he said,
took a draw from his mug.

Hosteen smiled a bit at his attempt at lightness, when it was clear
from his body language he was more than anxious for news.

"She is doing all right, I would say, considering," he replied.

Mulder looked up at him now. "Considering what?" he asked, his voice
edgy.

"Whatever it is she has been through," Albert replied, echoing
Mulder's previous casual tone. "She will not speak to me about it, of
course, but I know something must have happened."

He did not say that he had already guessed what that something was,
choosing to keep that bit of information to himself.

"How often do you see her?" Mulder asked, changing the subject --
which only confirmed Hosteen's suspicions further. Mulder was still
trying to sound casual, as though they were discussing the sheep or
the sagebrush or the weather.

"A couple of times a day," he replied. "She comes in the morning to
shower and I see her briefly. Then I come to her with dinner every
night."

Mulder looked surprised. "And she *eats* it?"

Hosteen smiled. "She is too polite to refuse, so yes. We sit and
have a little talk while we eat. She tells me things sometimes.
Sometimes she is quiet."

Mulder gazed down at the floor, turning the mug in his palms. "I'm
glad she's talking to someone," he said, his voice tinged with
sadness. "Even if it's just 'sometimes.'"

"Hm," Hosteen replied, taking another sip of the bitter coffee. "She
will talk more, I think, as time goes by. I think there is something
in her that wants to in a way. But her nature holds her back. She is
warring against her nature right now." He looked at the other man
deeply. "I believe you both are."

"What do you mean?" Mulder asked guardedly. "How am I warring
against my nature?"

Hosteen smiled faintly. "You are used to *doing.* You are looking
for something to *do* when this is not about doing. It is about
letting things happen." He cocked his head, watching as Mulder looked
away as though caught.

"Do you know anything about geese, Agent Mulder?" he said after a
beat of silence.

Mulder turned back to him, his expression puzzled. "Geese? Um...I
think they mate for life. I remember hearing that somewhere. But
that's all I know."

"You know how geese fly in formation? That 'V' across the sky?"

Mulder nodded. "Yes."

"Well," Albert said, leaning back a bit on the sofa. "When a goose
becomes hurt in some way, sick or shot from the sky, it will fall out
of the formation. And when it falls, the goose in front of it and the
one behind break away from the group and follow the injured goose
down to the ground. Then they both stand in vigil over the injured
one, waiting for it to regain its strength or for it to die.
Sometimes it takes a long time for one of those two things to happen,
but the geese continue to wait, no matter now long it takes."

"What do they do if it dies?" Mulder asked softly.

Albert sipped his coffee. "If the injured one dies, the two geese
will take off again, finding another flock to fly with until they
catch up to the group they came from." He paused. "But if the goose
lives, they help it take off again, putting it in the middle of them
once again so that there is less wind for it to push through, making
the flying easier, until they find their own flock once again and
rejoin the formation."

Mulder stared into his coffee cup, and Hosteen could see him turning
it over in his head.

"We are waiting, you and I," Albert said gently. "And healing takes
time."

The other man looked up at him and their eyes met. Hosteen nodded,
smiled kindly. Mulder nodded in return.

"All right," he murmured. "I'll try. To be patient."

Hosteen nodded. "I should go," he said, and stood now, placing the
mug on the table in front of him. Mulder stood, as well, and together
they walked out the door, out onto the patio where the grey horse was
waiting, its white tail swishing absently. Albert touched its soft
nose gently as he walked around, mounted slowly.

"Hey," Mulder said from the ground. "How do you know that stuff
about the geese, anyway? There aren't any geese here, are there?" He
indicated the desert around them.

Albert smiled. "'Animal Planet,'" he said, smiling wryly. "Eight
o'clock on Wednesdays. Victor got me satellite TV a few months ago."

Mulder barked a laugh at that.

"I will check back on you in a few days," Hosteen said, turning the
horse to the side. "In the meantime, go help Victor with the horses.
Always good to be around animals. And people, too." He winked and
Mulder smiled back.

"Okay," Mulder said. "They might not like having me, as useless as
I'll be, but I'll give it a shot."

Hosteen nodded. "Goodbye, Agent Mulder."

"Goodbye, Mr. Hosteen."

Then Albert nudged the horse in the side gently, turned and headed
back home.
 

**********

PUERTO PE`ASCO, MEXICO
9:02 a.m.
 

Mae Curran awoke slowly from the dream, a dream where she was
running through a field, Sean in front of her, laughing as he enjoyed
his game. She'd been trying to get him to stop for hours, it seemed,
watching him pull further and further away from her as he ran.

The dream was so real that when she finally opened her eyes,
shielding them from the morning light coming through the open window,
she wondered if he'd really gotten away from her, and had an
irrational urge to rise and check on him in his small room just down
the short hallway.

She looked at the other side of the bed, the pillow rumpled and the
covers turned back, the only evidence that Joe had been there the
night before. That and the fact that she was wearing his t-shirt,
loose on her, covering her otherwise nude body.

And the faint musk smell of their lovemaking lingering. She breathed
it in, sighed it out. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, an
expression she was unaccustomed to but was finding came more
naturally these days.

She was in love and was helpless against it.

God help me, she thought, and closed her eyes, letting the smile
come now, felt it blooming over her.

She lay in the sunshine for a long time, letting it warm her skin,
her arms thrown over her head languidly on the bed of her long thick
hair on the pillow.

Then the dream came back to her, the memory of the panic she felt
running after Sean, pleading for him to stop as he pulled far out in
front of her, laughing...

It bothered her on some visceral level she couldn't quite put her
finger on. It was enough to strike her out of her morning ease and
she sat up, threw her legs over the side of the bed, and pulled on a
pair of sweatpants from the shabby dresser in the corner of the small
room.

She padded into the hallway, down a few feet to Sean's room, its
door closed. She knocked.

"Sean?" she called. She didn't like the silence from within one bit.
She pushed the door open without waiting for a response.

Sean looked up from the floor where he was sitting, a piece of paper
on a wide book on his lap. Crayons and markers and pencils were
spread out around him, and he looked up, his hand stopping its
movement across the sheet where it had been leaving a trail of cobalt
blue across the surface.

"What's wrong, Aunt Mae?" he said softly, fear in his voice.

She relaxed, realizing that her tone when she'd said his name had
been frightened, as well, and had triggered the response in him. "No,
no," she said hurriedly. "There's nothing wrong. I was just worried
when I didn't hear anything from you in the house."

"I was coloring my picture," Sean replied, and his hand started
moving again, the faint dry sound of the crayon filling the room.

She entered completely now, went to him, sitting beside him on the
floor. "What are you drawing then?" she asked with interest. "Do you
mind if I see?"

He shook his head, moved the book over a bit to allow her a better
view. A red ship floating on a jagged blue ocean, dark vague shapes
in the water. There were several stick-like figures on the boat,
three at the bow, two tall and one short. One of the tall ones had
bright yellow hair, one long black, and the smaller figure had hair
done in a reddish brown. The burnt sienna crayon lay nearby next to
the yellow. Sean was coloring the ocean now, cerulean blue.

"That looks like Joe's boat, doesn't it?" Mae said, scooting closer.
"Red on the sides like that."

Sean nodded, seeming pleased that she'd guessed what the drawing
was. "Aye," he said softly. "It is Joe's boat."

"Who are all these people then?" She pointed first to the ones at
the back, all bunched together, their hair all dark.

"Those are the other fishermen."

She put her finger on the figure with the long dark hair. "And that
looks like me, eh?"

He smiled and nodded, his small finger going to the yellow-haired
one. "That's Joe," he said, moved his finger to the smaller person.
"And that's me right there."

"Mmmm, I like the thought of us all on the boat," Mae said. "That
would be fun. We should do that one day. Get up really early and go
out with Joe. Would you like that?"

Sean smiled wider, but kept his eyes down. "Aye," he said softly.

Mae moved behind him, smiling, reached over to tickle him, causing
him to pull his arms down to his sides to protect his ribs as he
laughed.

She curled her arms around him, pulling his back against her front,
her legs bracketing his. He leaned his head back beneath her chin.

"What are these dark things in the water?" she asked, pointing at
the vague shapes. "Maybe seals? Like the one we saw the other day?"

He shook his head solemnly. "No, they're sharks," he said softly.
"Big sharks."

Mae's brow furrowed at the thought of that. "Well, that's a scary
thing, isn't it?" she said, trying to stay light. The image bothered
her, though. The fact that he would come up with that in an otherwise
pleasant picture.

Sean only nodded, went back to coloring his ocean.

As he did so, Mae suddenly noticed the room seemed very hot and
sweat broke out on her forehead, a cold prickle. Then, just as
abruptly, her stomach lurched.

"I'll be right back, Sean," she said quickly, scrambling to her feet
and going out the door, across the hall to the bathroom, barely
making it to the toilet before her stomach heaved again and she
vomited, the force of it sending her to her knees. It continued for a
few moments.

"Jesus," she breathed when she was finally finished, laying her
forehead against the edge of the seat as the toilet flushed. She was
holding her stomach. She felt like she'd pulled every muscle in her
belly.

"Aunt Mae? You all right?" Sean said from the door to the bathroom.
She turned her head to the side, her temple on the seat now, her
breathing heavy.

"Aye, Sean, I'm all right," she said, trying to sound reassuring.
She pulled herself upright as she said it, going to the sink.

"But you're sick," the boy said, unconvinced.

"I'm okay," she said again, turning on the faucet and running cool
water into her cupped hands. She splashed water on her face, dabbed
with a cloth, then reached for her toothbrush. She turned to Sean
again, who was still watching her with worried eyes.

"Go on back in and finish your picture, then get ready and we'll go
to the beach, all right?"

"Okay," Sean said quietly, and went back into his room.

Mae looked at herself in the mirror, color high on her cheeks. She
put her hand on her stomach again. The nausea seemed to have passed,
leaving her just feeling shaky and a bit overwarm.

Must be a little bug, she thought, brushing her teeth. With some of
the things they ate around town, she was surprised this didn't happen
more often to both of them.

She closed the door now, stepped out of her sweatpants and stripped
off Joe's t-shirt, breathing in his scent. Then she turned on the
shower and stepped into the steaming water, light pouring in through
the window and settling on her as she washed herself clean.

**

9:46 a.m.
 

Tom Lantham held the picture up again into the face of the bone
dealer, his nose wrinkling at the smells of bleach and rot around
him. He and Rudy Grey were standing next to a pile of cow skulls that
extended over his head, a cloud of huge black flies hanging over it
as the bone baked in the early morning sun. There were rattlesnakes
coiled to strike on the shelves behind the bone dealer's head.
Armadillos. Roadrunners.

"You sure you haven't seen this woman and this boy?" he asked again,
this time more slowly. The man -- Paco, short with a dark moustache
that trailed down around his mouth -- seemed to have a grasp of
English, but he was so reticent Lantham was having a hard time
figuring out if he didn't understand him, or just didn't want to
respond.

"No, nobody like that, no," Paco said stiffly.

He's hiding something, Lantham thought. The man was too simple to be
a good liar, and Lantham had a lot of experience with people like
that in his line of work.

"Uh huh," he said, putting the picture back in his shirt pocket.
God, he wished he still smoked. These people were driving him crazy.

Grey was toeing the sharp nose of a skull on the bottom of the pile,
threatening to send half the stack down on them, and Lantham grabbed
his arm, pulling him away.

"Let's go," he said gruffly, then turned to Paco.

"Thank you, seor," he said with false graciousness. "You've been a
huge help."

"Any time, gringo," Paco returned, a shit-eating smile on his face.
Lantham scowled and he and Grey walked away, into the crowd of the
marketplace.

"What do we do now?" Grey asked, hurrying to keep up with Lantham.
Grey was sweating in his sportsjacket, which he wore to hide the
pistol at the small of his back. Lantham wore one, too, for the same
reason. "Nobody has seen them here at all."

Lantham quickened his pace. "No, Rudy, they've *all* seen them.
Those two are here somewhere. I know it." He gestured toward the end
of the marketplace, where the view opened up onto the beach beyond.

"Let's go to the beach and see if we see anyone. Maybe we can find
someone there who'll fess up."

They wove their way through the marketplace, through the produce
carts, the fish market area smelling of fresh catch, the stands
selling firewood and fireworks for the beach.

They'd been driving for days, following sparse leads as they went.
Down through Santa Ana and Bonacita, to the coast to Puerto de la
Libertad and then north. There had been a definite sighting of them
at a town called San Luisito, where an old man had told them that if
foreigners passed through that town, they were most likely on their
way to Puerto Peasco, which he called "El Escondite," or "The Hiding
Place."

Lantham had shown the picture of Curran's sister and the boy to half
the town, it seemed, and everyone had the same quick negative
response. Too quick.

They made their way to the end of the market and climbed the dunes
that banked the shabby beach. There was trash blowing in the breeze
off the ocean, the smell of a dead fish wafting in the wind. A few
people had staked out spots on the sand, soaking up sun and listening
to Mexican music on portable radios.

Lantham put his hands on his hips and surveyed the scene, his face
dyspeptic. Grey was red-faced behind him, looking at the waves.

Lantham checked out each knot of people, wondering which to approach
first. Then something caught his eye.

A young boy at the edge of the ocean, squatted down, picking through
things on the sand. A woman stood next to him, long hair blowing in
the steady breeze.

He reached back and slapped Rudy in the gut. "Come on," he said,
keeping his eyes on the pair on the beach as though they might
disappear if he looked away.

Together, he and Grey made their way across the beach, heading for
the waves. They were walking parallel to the two, not directly toward
them. Lantham just wanted to get close enough to get a good look at
their faces.

They stopped at the edge of the ocean, where the sand gave way to
lava-like rocky tidal pools.

"Don't look at them," Lantham said below his breath as the woman
turned and started down the beach toward them, the boy in tow. Seeing
them, the woman headed off at an angle towards the center of the
beach to give them a wide berth.

But she got close enough for Lantham to see her face. Hers and the
boy's, both.

"It's them," Lantham said quietly, reaching down to pick up a shell,
which he skipped into the ocean, trying to appear as touristy and
easy as he could given his attire. Rudy obediently kept his eyes
forward, his hands in his pockets.

Lantham watched them as they went up the beach, up toward the dunes
and the street beyond. It would arouse too much suspicion to follow
them until they reached the street.

These things had to be handled delicately. Especially at this phase.

He looked down, biding his time as Mae and Sean Curran climbed the
dunes, saw a tiny purple crab standing on the rocks, one small and
one huge claw upraised in warning, its black eyes shining like beads.
He toed at it absently until it scurried away into the nooks of the
rock and disappeared.
 

***********
 

END OF CHAPTER 12a. CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 12b.
 

Disclaimer in Chapter 0. This is Chapter 12b.
 

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

THE OVERLOOK MOTEL
AFTON MOUNTAIN
AFTON, VIRGINIA
1:46 p.m.
 

Paul Granger pulled into the parking lot of The Overlook, a two-
story building perched on the edge of Afton Mountain, its windows
gleaming in the afternoon light. The place was mostly windows, he
noted, which didn't surprise him when he turned and looked at the
view the place afforded, a sprawling expanse of valley dotted with
farms and dense woods.

It was a fairly warm day, even for the mountains, and he peeled out
of the jacket he'd put on when he left the house that morning,
tossing it into the back seat of his black Jetta and pushing up the
sleeves of the light, dark sweater he wore. He was in his typical
Saturday attire -- jeans, running shoes -- and it helped him feel a
little less conspicuous on his errand. Though he'd technically come
as a CIA agent, he didn't feel like anyone could tell that by looking
at him. Getting out of a suit did wonders for that.

This had to be the place, he thought as he made his way across the
parking lot. His bad leg hampered him only slightly, the bone feeling
better as winter finally gave way into what he knew would be a short
spring. At this rate, he'd be back to light running in a matter of
weeks.

He headed for the office, the bell tinkling as he opened the glass
door and went inside. A woman came out from the back room -- slight,
blonde hair and holding out well in her mid-50s -- and smiled to him
kindly as he approached the desk.

"Can I help you?" she asked, her southern accent thick. She was from
further south than Virginia, Granger knew instantly. He smiled in
return, reached into his pocket and pulled out his badge.

"I hope you can," he said, flipping the cover open and showing it to
her. "I'm Paul Granger, with the CIA. I wondered if I might ask a few
questions."

The woman looked a little bewildered. The place didn't exactly look
like a hotbed of legal activity, so he wasn't surprised. And "CIA"
always sounded so damn serious, a fact which pleased him and made him
want to roll his eyes at the same time.

"Well, sure, Mr. Granger," the woman managed. "I'll answer anything
I can."

He pulled out a small spiral pad from his other back pocket, reached
for one of the pens behind the desk, looking to her for approval. She
nodded, her eyes still wide.

"What's your name, ma'am?" he asked gently in an attempt to put her
at ease.

"Sue," she said. "Scheiber. My husband Ed and I own the motel."

"Are the two of you the only ones who run the office?" he asked,
writing down her and her husband's names.

"Yes, it's just us," she said, still nervous. "Has something
happened here that we don't know about?"

"In a way," he replied, fingering a slot in his badge wallet. He
pulled out a wallet-sized photo of Mulder, his official FBI photo, a
copy of the one that had gone on his badge. He pushed it across the
counter toward her.

"I'm wondering if you might recognize this man," he said. "He stayed
here on January 12-13, I'm told."

The woman eyed the photo, holding it up to get a closer look at it.
"That was a long time ago," she said doubtfully.

"I know," Granger replied, trying to keep the anxiety out of his
voice. This *needed* to work. He needed someone to have seen Mulder
here.

"Do you know around what time he would have checked in?" she asked,
returning her gaze to Granger's face.

Granger thought back to the last time he'd seen Mulder that day.
They'd been with the task force through most of the day, and Mulder
had returned to the Marriott sometime around four or five that
afternoon, he recalled. Afton was about two hours from Richmond, so
that gave him some idea of his window.

"I'm guessing early evening," he said finally. "Or later."

"Then it would be Ed you want to talk to. I do the early morning and
afternoons here until around four. Ed takes the nights." She looked
at Mulder's picture again. "And I think I'd remember a face like
*that* one. What'd he do, anyway?"

Granger saw her eyes gleam with the intrigue of all this. It was
clearly more excitement than the woman had had in some time. He would
have smiled had the situation been less dire.

"I'm not at liberty to discuss that really," he said. "Nothing
illegal, though. I'm just trying to confirm he was here. Do you keep
a ledger of who stays here? A guest book or anything like that?"

She nodded, placing the picture on the counter. "Yes, everyone signs
in in this here book," she said, and reached down for the thick
ledger, a battered green cover that had the word "Guests" embossed on
the front of it. "We thought we'd do that, you know, kind of like a
fancy hotel does." She blushed.

Now Granger did smile. "I see," he said, and reached for the book.
He laid it on the counter and opened it, flipping through the pages,
checking dates until he'd found January 12. He ran his finger down
the list of names: Long... Selby... Schulz... Reynolds... Brown...
Kucinski... Jolly...

Nothing there. His heart sank.

Then he turned the page over to the thirteenth, and was rewarded
immediately.

Hale. George Hale. The first entry of the day. And he recognized
Mulder's handwriting, as well, having seen so much of it scribbled on
files and legal pads as they'd profiled Curran together in Richmond.
He'd signed in at five in the morning on the thirteenth. Granger felt
a little jolt of adrenaline at the sight of the name.

"You find his name?" Scheiber asked. She'd noticed his reaction
immediately.

"Yes," Granger replied. "I need for your husband to try to identify
him in this picture, if he was the one on duty at five."

"Yes, it would be Ed," she said, excited herself over this little
bit of cloak and dagger at the Overlook. "I don't come on until six.
I'll go wake him up for you."

Granger smiled again, both at her enthusiasm and her words. "I would
really appreciate that, Mrs. Scheiber. Thank you."

Scheiber went around the desk. "Anyone comes to check in, tell them
I'll be right back," she said, and then she was out the door, the
bell chiming behind her.

Granger stood there, his eyes on the name still, looking at the
picture of Mulder. He was glad that he'd found some proof he was
there (though it would have, of course, been even better if Mulder
had signed in using his own name), but he was still puzzled as to why
Mulder would be out this way at five in the morning, what he'd been
trying to do.

Maybe he couldn't sleep and just needed a drive? He knew Mulder
didn't sleep well -- he'd caught him up too many late nights. But to
drive all the way out here? It seemed very strange.

He was still turning that over in his head when Mrs. Scheiber
returned, a haggard- looking man with his shirt untucked and his hair
in disarray behind her. He was cleaning his glasses on his shirt tail
as he entered, then put them on and regarded Granger with sleepy
eyes.

"Sue said you needed me to try to identify someone?" the man asked,
his voice gravelly.

"Yes, I'm sorry to wake you, Mr. Scheiber," Granger said, and showed
the other man his badge just to be thorough. "I was wondering if you
remember seeing this man here in mid-January. The thirteenth, to be
exact."

Scheiber took the picture, held it in front of him, looking down at
it through the bottom of his bifocals.

"Hm...no, I don't think so..." he said almost to himself as he
continued to look.

Granger's face fell.

"No, wait," the other man said, pointing at the picture with his
other hand, touching Mulder's face softly, tapping. "I remember him.
He came in in the middle of the night, or close to dawn, I think? It
was snowing that morning. Pretty hard. I remember that because I
couldn't get a damn bit of sleep that morning with keep the walk
shoveled and the parking lot plowed. I actually checked him out while
Suey was making lunch. Him and that woman he was with, though she
didn't come into the office. I saw her as I was shovelling, before he
came in to give me back my key."

Granger's brow knitted. "A woman?" he asked. "He was with a woman?"

"Uh-yeah, pretty little thing," Scheiber said, looking over the rims
of his glasses. "Red head. Real pretty."

Beside him, Sue Scheiber rolled her eyes. "Figures he would remember
that," and she slapped him lightly on the arm.

Granger groaned inwardly. Oh great, he thought. Now I've got Mulder
leaving the task force without authorization, AND Scully leaving her
cover.

This is looking better all the time, he thought sardonically.

He did, however, take heart in the fact that at least Mulder wasn't
here with Curran (not that he believed that for a moment), and that
someone was with him to vouch for his whereabouts.

Though the two of them meeting like that....it didn't look good on
many levels. Scully's credibility as a witness for Mulder's
whereabouts was a bit compromised, with her own breach of protocol.

And the likelihood that they met not as agents, but as lovers.

And even if it wasn't true, everyone would see it that way.

He had to ask, make one final attempt and making it look cleaner.
"One room or two? Do you remember?"

Scheiber thought about it. "Just the one," he said, handed the
picture back to Granger. "I figured she was his wife, but I didn't
ask no questions. I mind my business about things like that."

Granger nodded, placed the picture back in his badge wallet, then
reached back for the counter and picked up his small spiral pad.

"Could you write down everything you just told me?" he asked,
proffering both the pad and a pen to him. "It would be a big help to
me in my...investigation." He smiled wanly.

"Sure thing," Ed Scheiber said, taking the pen and the pad. He
placed it on the counter and began to write.
 

Back in the car, Granger sat still for a long time, trying his best
to figure out what to do. He would have to tell Skinner about Mulder
and Scully being there together, and he dreaded even that. After all,
Skinner was their superior, and what they'd done by coming up there
together looked very bad, professionally speaking.

The information solved one problem, but created a new one -- the
exposure of Mulder and Scully's relationship, which, though not
forbidden, was heavily frowned upon.

And it was becoming clear that Mulder was going to really only have
Scully to vouch for his actions, and for what really happened in Mae
Curran's apartment. That was a bad thing, as well, as Padden was
already questioning her conduct since she'd gone on the run.

The revelation that the two of them were lovers would make her
credibility even weaker -- Padden would say she was lying for Mulder
because they were together, that she would do and say anything to
protect him.

He shook his head as he started the car. He'd start with Skinner
first. See how he reacted. Maybe Skinner would know what to do with
all this once he knew about the two of them, though Granger hated to
be the one to give even a small part of that secret away if Skinner
didn't know already.

Sighing, he turned back onto the highway. He headed east, going back
toward Interstate 95, knowing he'd found the answer to one part of
this puzzle, but wishing he could feel better about what he'd found.
 

********

GEORGE BUSH CENTER FOR INTELLIGENCE
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
4:17 p.m.
 

The agent's heels echoed through the empty corridors leading to the
closed door of Robert Padden's office.

He looked around as he walked, at the vacant offices, the closed
doors. It was Saturday, and there was no one in the building who
didn't have to be there, the usual skeleton crew of agents working
the weekends.

And the task force he was himself a part of. The one that met every
weekend -- and only on the weekends -- to share their gathered
information and to make their plans for the following week's
activities. And to report to their superior everything they'd found.

He reached the door, Padden's temporary office here at the CIA
headquarters. It was closed, as usual. Padden liked his privacy, even
when there was really no one around to disturb him. His office was
like a cocoon -- dark and insular and quiet. Not a sound came through
the heavy wooden door.

Tucking the folder he carried under his arm, the agent paused
outside the door, preparing himself to have the unenviable task of
being the bearer of bad news.

Unenviable particularly because it was to this man, and about this
subject.

Finally, standing up straighter, he cleared his throat, knocked.

"Come," came the faint response from inside the room.

He opened the door and made his way across the dark carpet to the
desk, where a single bulb glowed on the desk, the only light in the
room besides what little managed to leak through the closed drapes
and blinds.

Padden looked up from a file he was reading, dropped the pen he'd
been holding and took off his reading glasses. The agent stopped,
hesitated.

"Well?" Padden said expectantly, already sounding a bit miffed.

The agent cleared his throat again, gripped the folder in front of
him. Finally, he handed it over the desk to Padden, who did not take
his eyes off the other man as he took the folder.

"We lost them," the agent said quietly.

Padden pursed his lips, still for a moment, the folder held just
over the immaculate surface of the desk.

"How?" The word seemed to echo in the office.

"They got spooked in a town in Arizona," the agent said, choosing
his words with care. "Someone tried to grab her, and the two of them
took off. Our people couldn't keep up with them without looking too
conspicuous, so they hung back a bit. A bit too far, apparently." He
added the last apologetically.

Padden shook his head, clearly frustrated, finally set the folder
down and opened it.

It was filled with photographs.

"Those are the most recent ones we have," the agent added, trying to
sound helpful. "They're from a week ago, and a little before."

Padden fingered them, glancing over them one by one. Mulder and
Scully leaving a motel. Going into a restaurant. At a gas station,
Scully heading around the side of a building.

His hand stopped on one, which he lifted away from the others and
studied, replacing his glasses as he did so. The agent stepped closer
to see which one it was, though he could pretty much guess without
seeing.

Mulder and Scully sitting on a ledge, snow falling. Mulder behind
Scully and his arms around her, his head on her shoulder. The
intimacy in the picture was impossible to ignore or misconstrue.

"Well." Padden held the picture up a bit higher. "I guess there's
one thing we know for certain at this point, isn't there."

The agent nodded. "There is. And to think we thought they were just
sharing all those motel rooms for safety's sake." He smirked, hoping
the humor would lighten Padden's ire.

"You'd think," Padden said almost absently. "that she would have had
enough of that after that business with Fagan." His lips curled.

The agent forced a smile in return. "Yes, you would," he said,
though some dim part of him felt guilty for agreeing to that one.

"Doesn't seem to be agreeing with her one bit," Padden continued,
setting the photo down and picking up the one of Scully going around
the building. "Post-Traumatic Stress seems to have set in nicely."

The agent's smile faded. "Yes," he said, trying his best to sound
agreeable. "We've all noticed that, as well."

"Makes for an easier target for Curran," Padden continued. "And
it'll keep Mulder shaken up, too. That will all work to our
advantage."

"Yes." The agent shifted from one foot to another.

Finally, Padden dropped the photo. "Who tried to take her?"

"We're not sure," the agent replied, glad for the change of subject.
"The people at the station said three men. They all drove away after
they'd shaken themselves off. They were a little worse for wear
apparently."

Padden heaved out a put-upon breath. "Were our people close enough
to pursue if they'd gotten to her?"

The other man nodded. "Yes. They were right there. They didn't want
to take off after Mulder and Scully when they ran, though, since they
were expecting to be followed and it would have blown our cover for
sure. They tried to follow a bit later, since there are only a few
roads out where they were and they thought it would be impossible to
lose them." He looked down at his feet, then back up again. "But they
were wrong, apparently."

Padden leaned back, his face reddening. "How do we know that Curran
doesn't already have her? How the hell are we going to catch the bear
if we can't even keep an eye on the bait?"

The agent looked down again. This was the dressing down he expected.

"We'll find them. We're blanketing all the towns from southern Utah
to western New Mexico, all the way to Farmington. When they stop
again, we'll find them."

Padden scowled. "You tell our people I want them found
*immediately.* All this effort will have been for nothing if we're
not there when Curran gets to her. And I'm running out of things to
feed Granger's task force to keep them occupied. The fact that
someone tried to get her means Curran knows where she is and is
making his move. We'd sure as hell better be there when he does. If
he takes her out while we're not there, they'll be no way to get a
finger on him, nothing to follow to him."

"Yes, sir," the agent replied. "We're doing everything we can."

"Do more," Padden growled, and tossed his glasses back on the desk.

"We still think this would be easier," the man said cautiously, "if
you let us take Mulder out of the equation. Bring him in."

Padden shook his head. "No," he said firmly. "Leave him be.
Especially given this." He pushed the photo of the two of them on the
cliff toward the agent. "Curran's got someone working for him; that's
for certain now. And there's no better target than a man *in love*
willing to throw himself in front of a bullet."

The agent watched that same wry smirk pass over the other man's face
again. He swallowed.

"No, leave Mulder right where he is," Padden continued. "Knowing his
history, he has a way of taking care of himself. If there's a way to
get into trouble, he'll find it, and then he won't be our concern any
more."

The agent looked down, uncertain for a moment. Then he took in a
deep breath. This was what he'd signed on to when he took this
assignment. This was about catching a terrorist, he reminded himself.
About two people operating outside the law. They knew the possible
consequences of the path they'd chosen.

Sacrifices would have to be made, he reminded himself.

He comforted himself with that thought, and nodded to his superior.

"We'll find them," he said firmly.

"Good. I hope you'll pass on my...confidence...to the other agents?"
Padden sat still as he said it.

"I will," the man said. "By next weekend. When we meet again."

"I'm going to turn up the heat a bit," Padden said. "Redo the
posters and make them both wanted now. And I'll put a reward on it
this time, too."

"That would probably help us, yes," the agent admitted.

Padden nodded. "Very good," he said, and now went back to his files,
reaching for his glasses. "I'll leave you to your work. That will be
all."

The agent nodded. "Yes, sir," he said faintly.

Then he turned and headed back through the office, relieved to close
the door tight behind him.
 

***********
 

END OF CHAPTER 12b. CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 13.

Disclaimer in Chapter 0. This is Chapter 13a.

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

TWO GREY HILLS, NEW MEXICO
NAVAJO RESERVATION
10:37 p.m.
 

"Another one!"

Scully pointed up towards the far right quadrant of the sky, her
eyes wide as the streak of light shot a long trail across the dark
canvas of stars above her, the trail fading almost instantly, as
though the meteor she'd seen had never been there at all.

"I saw it, yes," Albert Hosteen said from beside her. "A big one.
Burned for a long time for a falling star."

Another puff of his pipe smoke reached her, lingering with the smoke
from the campfire they'd built in the firepit in front of the two
chairs. She found herself looking over at him in the flickering
firelight, his features thrown in black and gold relief, at his eyes
turned up toward the sky. They were glowing dark pools in his craggy
face as he scanned above. He looked content, and she borrowed some of
that feeling from him.

At first, she'd thought it a silly thing to do, to watch a meteor
shower. After all, she thought, it was nothing but a shower of space
debris burning up on entry into the atmosphere. But Hosteen had said
that it might be pretty, that she might enjoy it, and she'd relented,
let him build the fire after they'd shared their nightly meal.

She smiled at the memory of him coming down off Ghost -- his
obedient, almost silent, horse -- with the foil-covered pan.

"Have you ever had Navajo lasagna?" he'd asked, meeting her as she
came down out of the trailer.

"No, I haven't," she'd replied, already amused at the notion.

"That's good." Albert was smiling as he said it. "Because there is
no such thing. This is Stouffer's."

He had a knack for making her laugh like that. Easy laughter at easy
things.

After she'd fetched the plastic plates, the flimsy silverware, from
the trailer and they'd eaten the meal, he'd told her about the shower
that night, suggested they watch it together.

She had to admit, when he first started coming around with food
every night, there had been a part of her that had resented the
intrusion on her space, her grief. But as the nights had gone by,
she'd found herself welcoming his serene presence, a nightly respite
from her solitude.

She spent the whole day thinking, turning events from her life over
in her head like stones she was lifting up and examining one by one.
She'd grown to realize it had been years since she'd truly had the
time alone to really consider the things that had happened to her, to
allow herself to feel the pain and anger she had over some of them.

Her abduction. Her cancer. Her infertility. The deaths in her
family. Emily. Curran's manipulation of her with the drug.

And then the rape.

But now, with the time alone in the trailer, the hours spent walking
in the desert behind it, she had begun to feel these things. It was
as if the attack by Fagan had finally driven her to a break. It had
somehow simultaneously closed one door and opened another -- closed
the door on her openness to people and possibilities in the present,
but opened the door to her feelings about her past. Opened old wounds
she'd thought long since scarred over.

Apparently she'd been wrong about that. And she was seeping rage and
anguish like blood.

But not when she was with Hosteen. He calmed her during his nightly
visits, always ready with a good meal and his pipe and his stories
and gentle questions.

Another meteor streaked across the sky, this one fast as a wink, but
both of them saw it. Scully smiled, shifting back in her chair. So
child-like, this pleasure. So simple.

As if reading her thoughts, Albert blew out a puff of smoke and
said: "Used to do this with my son Keel when he was a little boy. Sit
out here and watch the sky at night. He still loves to be out at
night. He even has a telescope now and sometimes he shows me things
through it." He turned to her. "You ever think about having children,
Agent Scully?"

Her face flushed and she looked down, into the fire.

"I am sorry if I pry too much," Hosteen said, regret in his voice as
he saw her reaction. "I was just wondering. You don't have to answer
if you do not want to."

"No, it's fine," Scully said, her chin coming up. She wouldn't allow
herself to hide from the truth of that. To do so made her feel like a
coward, and she wanted to appear strong, particularly to this man she
respected. "I...I'm not able to have children."

"Hm," Hosteen said. "I am sorry." He looked into the fire. "It is
strange though. I see you with a child for some reason."

Scully looked down again, this time at the ground. "I had a child
once," she said hesitantly. "I didn't carry her, but she was mine."

"The government project." He said it as a fact. She looked up at him
in surprise. She had forgotten that he knew about that, and wondered
to what extent he was familiar with it. At the same time, she was
relieved not to have to explain.

"Yes," she said at last. "I was taken and left unable to conceive.
But Emily...she happened some time after that. I'm not sure how. I
only found out about her by accident. I was never meant to know."

"But you did know. You found her."

Scully studied her hands. "Yes. I took her away from them when I
found her, but she was very sick because of what they'd done to her."
She hesitated. "She died a few days later." Her voice had dropped to
just above a whisper.

A log fell in the fire, sending up a rain of sparks that swirled in
the air and then blinked out.

"You did the right thing to take her away from them," he said, and
for the first time she heard something hard in his voice, the
simmering of anger. "To try to give her a life away from all that.
From what those men do. It is evil." He looked over at her, his eyes
shining in the flames. "I hope you do not blame yourself for her
death. What you did was right."

Scully looked back at him, nodded, hesitated.

Should she tell him? She hadn't spoken of it to anyone -- not even
to Mulder, though he'd been a part of all of it...

But something about the quietness of the night, the cocoon of warmth
and light of the fire, and something about Hosteen himself, made it
seem safe to speak.

"I forgave myself for it because...she told me to," she said, now
unable to meet his eyes.

Did she even believe it herself that it was more than a
hallucination or dream? How could she expect him to believe it was?

"Before she died, she told you?" he asked, pulling on the pipe.

Scully looked down. Shook her head. "No."

Hosteen nodded. "Hm. Tell me the story."

She pulled in a deep breath. "It was two years to the day after her
death. Mulder and I...we'd been in a terrible car accident and no one
could find us for a long time. We were both injured very badly.
Dying. That's when she came to me. Right into the car, in fact." She
looked down, embarassed. "I know how it sounds..."

"No, never apologize for the truth," he interrupted gently. "No
matter how it might sound to people who do not understand it. You
were close to death. It is a time when we can touch death, the world
of it. It makes sense, I think." He paused. "What did she say to
you?"

Scully's gaze returned to his face with his acceptance of what she
had to say. It relieved her, made her believe herself. It opened her
a bit more.

"She said that what happened wasn't my fault. For me to forgive
myself for her death." She balked. "And she told me...I didn't have
to be lonely anymore."

Hosteen nodded. "A kind child," he said softly. "A good child, to
care for you that way." He pinned her with his eyes. "Though you
don't seem to have listened to what she had to say."

"What do you mean?" she asked, confused. "I told you I've forgiven
myself for what happened to her."

"You didn't listen to the last thing she said," Hosteen replied.
"You might have at first, but you are ignoring it now."

Scully flushed, looked away. "Things are not the same as they were
then," she said quietly. A touch of defensiveness had crept in.

"Not the same in you, you mean," he said. He took another drag off
his pipe.

"No, I mean things are not the same," she insisted, more defensive
now.

"Hm," he said softly, and she was irritated by the blitheness of his
response to her.

"You don't believe me?" she said.

He studied the end of his pipe. "I saw Agent Mulder this morning
after you left the house from your shower," he said. He put the pipe
back in his mouth, spoke around it. "Things seem the same to him."

Angered and feeling invaded, she stood now suddenly, gathering her
dishes from the meal. "Mulder has nothing to do with this," she said
under her breath. "You have no idea what I've been through. But I
will tell you Mulder's not a part of it."

"You have to forgive him, too," Hosteen said as though she hadn't
spoken, and she shot him a look, grabbed up his plate from beside him
with her other hand.

"What are you talking about?" she snapped. "There's nothing to
forgive him for. Mulder didn't *do* anything."

"And that is what you must forgive," Hosteen replied, unaffected by
her tone, the fire catching on his face, the even challenge of it.

Scully pulled in a breath, stilled by his words. She looked at him,
her eyes wide with surprise.

"As you must forgive yourself for this thing that has happened to
you," he continued. A puff of pipe smoke, but his eyes did not leave
hers. "Forgive yourself for not being able to keep it from
happening."

She was stunned now, feeling the now-familiar burn of shame. But it
was more than that, this coming from him. It felt like something
tearing loose in her. Her eyes filled and she swallowed hard.

"How...how do you know these things?" she said incredulously, hoarse
around the lump in her throat. She was still frozen in place in front
of him, a plate in each hand. The left shook so that the fork
chattered on the plastic surface faintly.

"There was a woman here a long time ago," Albert began, looking not
at her but into the fire again. "Went into Farmington one day and a
man took her, kept her for several days and then left her in a
parking lot. Once she got better she came home, back to her family
here. She could not go out. She would not eat. The man she was
supposed to marry waited a long time for her to come back to herself,
but she never did." He gnawed on his pipe end, took a puff. "He gave
up after some time, married another."

Scully swallowed again, struggling to contain her emotions.
"What...what happened to her?" she asked faintly.

He looked back at her, away from the fire. "She stayed with her
family for the rest of her life, which was short. Something in her
had died and the rest of her, it was not far behind."

He paused as she looked down, then back up at him again, desperate,
her eyes rimmed with tears.

"I hated to watch that," he said into the quiet. "We all did. It was
hard to lose someone like that."

Scully looked away, and twin tears escaped as she clenched her eyes
closed, fighting for her badly taxed control. She did not have a hand
free to wipe them, so she let them fall, though they shamed her.

Albert leaned forward. "It was a terrible thing, what was done to
your body," he said softly. "But you are still alive. Your body is
still alive. And what was done to you is not who you are or what you
must become."

She shook her head. It was too much.

"Please..." she whispered, bit her bottom lip, her face still turned
away.

"You can be who you were again," he said with conviction. "You
*will* be her again. You just have to search out what you need to
find her."

She was shaking now, a fine tremor, his words crashing through her.
Her brow knitted over her closed eyes, and she bit her lip so hard it
hurt. But she held on, riding it out. She still could not look at him
as she opened her eyes finally, heaved out a long, trembling breath.

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him lean back in the
chair, set his pipe on the arm of it. Then he reached out and took
the plates from her hands, set them on the ground at his feet.

His voice was supremely gentle when he spoke. "Why don't you sit
down and watch the shower and I will put another log on the fire? We
can sit quietly and watch together for a while."

She didn't know what else to do, every part of her feeling flayed.
Like she had lost a layer of skin, a hard dead layer like a shell.

So she went back to her chair and sat, wiping her eyes quickly as
Hosteen rose and put a piece of wood on the fire. Flaming ashes rose
and winked out as he returned to the chair beside her. He refilled
and relit his pipe.

For a long time she sat with him and watched the sky in a
companionable silence, the night cold but the fire warming her, stars
shooting across the sky's dark face like tears made of light.
 

**********

PUERTO PE`ASCO, MEXICO
APRIL 3 (THREE DAYS LATER)
6:37 a.m.
 

"Katherine, try to drink this."

Joe Porter spoke softly, kneeling on the cracked tile floor of the
bathroom. He proferred Mae a glass of water with one hand, stroked
her back softly through the thin material of his own shirt she was
wearing with the other hand. She was on her knees, as well, panting,
her head over the toilet.

"No..." she said between breaths, and she retched. He set the glass
down quickly and pulled back her long hair, holding it in a ponytail
as she vomited again. He winced. It sounded like it hurt this time.

Sean appeared in the doorway, sleep still clinging to him, the
imprint of the sheets on the side of his face. "Joe?" he asked,
uncertain, his voice tinged with fear.

"It's all right, buddy," Joe replied, doing his best to sound
calming. "She's just sick again. I'll tell you what I want you to do,
though. Go ahead and get dressed and put a few of your coloring books
and toys in your backpack, okay?"

"Are we going out?" Sean asked, rubbing at his eyes.

"Yes, Sean, we're going to go to the doctor's," Joe replied, and saw
Sean's eyes widen. "But it's okay," he added hurriedly. "We're just
going to get your aunt checked out, that's all. Now go ahead and get
ready to go."

"Okay, Joe," Sean said softly, and disappeared from the doorway.

Mae's hand shot out to the side of the bathtub for support as she
leaned back slightly. He looked at her, worried at the paleness of
her face, and let go of her hair, his hand trailing over her
shoulder.

"I don't need to go to the clinic," she said hoarsely, not looking
at him. "It's just a bug. It's nothing."

"You've been sick like this for days," Joe insisted gently, and she
turned to him now, her eyes tired but surprised. "Yes, Sean told me
last night," he said. "Though I wish you would have told me yourself.
Now you're getting weak and dehydrated. It's time to go in and get
some antibiotics or something. This happens to a lot of tourists down
here and it's not serious as long as you get it treated. It won't
just go away."

She sighed, leaned all the way back now, then swooned, her eyes
lolling. Joe moved forward quickly to catch her before her head could
knock against the wall behind her and held her gently, cradling her
against his chest.

"Jesus, Katherine, you're going to be lucky to stand," he said,
stroking her hair. "Now don't argue with me for once, all right?"

"All right..." she said faintly, turned her face into his chest, her
eyes closing. "I'll go then."

**********

END OF CHAPTER 13a. CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 13b.

Disclaimer in Chapter 0. This is Chapter 13b.

**********

LA CLNICA DE SANTA MARIA
8:48 a.m.
 

Joe sat in the hard plastic chair at the end of the long hallway
that led to the examining rooms of the town's small clinic, and
realized suddenly that he was tapping his foot anxiously and he
stopped abruptly.

He blew out a breath and checked his watch. Patience had never been
his strong suit, especially when he had worry piled on top of it. He
shifted in his seat, stretched his long legs out in front of him,
trying to appear nonchalant now for Sean's sake.

Sean sat next to him, his hair still awry from sleep, his brow
knitted in concentration. He had drawn what Joe considered to be a
pretty good picture of a crab, and was now coloring its claws and
body a bright purple.

Joe looked at the boy, at the seriousness of his face, and knew that
though Sean was quiet about it, he was worried, as well. In the time
that Joe had known him, Sean had shown himself to be a very sweet,
very sensitive child, often lost in introspection. Joe knew that
something like this was bound to affect him deeply, though the child
had inherited his aunt's ability to be silent about his thoughts most
of the time.

It was a trait that worried Joe about both of them.

He reached over and cupped the back of Sean's head in his calloused
hand, gave him a small shake. The corner of Sean's lip came up in a
tiny smile, then was gone.

"How you holding up, buddy?" Joe asked softly.

"I'm all right," Sean replied, but didn't look up from the picture,
his hand continuing to scratch the crayon over the paper.

Joe rubbed absently at his hair, looking at the picture, as well.
"She's going to be all right, you know," he said, trying a different
tact in an attempt to get Sean to open up a bit more. "It's just a
little thing she picked up in town, I bet. They'll give her some
medicine and she'll be good as new."

Sean seemed pensive for a moment. "But Aunt Mae hardly ever gets
sick," he said, still not looking up. "I can only remember a couple
times she's been sick like this."

Joe's brow knitted in confusion and his hand stilled on the back of
Sean's head where he'd been stroking the boy's hair down. "'Mae'?" he
asked, and as he said the word, Sean's face shot toward his, flushing
deep red, clearly afraid.

Tears were beginning in Sean's eyes as he searched Joe's face. "I
wasn't supposed to say that," he said, and his voice quivered.
"She'll be mad at me for telling."

Joe let out a tired breath, nodded. A dull ache had lodged in his
chest.

"It's okay, Sean," he said tenderly, stroking Sean's hair down again
to soothe him. "It's okay that you told me that."

"No, I'm not supposed to." The tears were falling now.

Joe reached down and cradled the side of Sean's face in his hand,
brushing at the tears with his thumb. "It's *okay.*" he said firmly.
"You can trust me, Sean. I would never do anything to hurt you or
your aunt. No matter what."

Sean searched his face for a few seconds, his lip trembling.

"Come here," Joe said gently, and he leaned over, put his arms
around Sean and embraced him. Sean slowly brought his arms up, as
well, curled them around Joe's broad back, the purple crayon held
tightly in his fist. The picture slipped to the floor, disappeared
under the row of chairs.

They stayed like that for a long moment while Sean's chest heaved,
his breath fast as he cried. Joe rested his cheek against the top of
Sean's head and let him cry. He wondered at the weight the small body
in his arms had been carrying all this time. He wanted to lift it all
away.

A nurse appeared around the corner, coming from the hallway. She
stopped, met Joe's eyes and smiled kindly.

"Seor Porter?" she asked, her voice gentle.

"S'," Joe replied, letting Sean lean away. The boy rubbed his face
on the short sleeves of his shirt, struggling for his control.

"You can come back now," the woman said in Spanish. "But she only
wants to see you right now." She looked at Sean. "I'll sit with the
boy while you go."

Joe's anxiety ratcheted up a few more notches and he struggled to
keep it off his face as Sean looked at him.

"What did she say?" Sean asked, afraid.

Joe looked down at him. "She's going to sit with you for a minute
while I go back and see...Mae," he said. "I'll be out to get you in a
minute, all right?"

"Okay," Sean said, and Joe stood, pushed his sandy hair back from
his face, nervous.

"Examination room three," the nurse said, and bent down to retrieve
the picture that Sean had been working on that was near her feet,
then sat down next to him. Joe nodded and went down the corridor.

At room number three, he stopped, steeling himself, and knocked
faintly. Mae's shaky voice told him to come in.

She was sitting on the examining table in a gown, her long bare legs
over the side of the table. She wiped at her eyes, which were rimmed
red and wet with tears. She did not smile as she looked at him.

"Where's Sean?" she asked without preamble.

"He's with the nurse. The end of the hallway." He looked at her,
frightened by her state. "My God, what is it?" he asked, his heart
beating hard now.

Mae rubbed her eyes once more, pushed her hair back, kept her hand
on her forehead as she closed her eyes and blew out a breath.

"Joe, I'm pregnant," she said, her eyes still closed as she spoke.

His heart, already running to catch up with his nerves, now nearly
screeched to a halt. His mouth hung open. "You're pregnant?" he
repeated, incredulous.

She nodded, and now she did look at him, drew in another trembling
breath, let it out.

"But I thought we--" he stammered.

"Not even a diaphragm is a sure thing," she said, and her hand came
up to cover her face. She shook her head. "Jesus *Christ*...."

He swallowed down his shock as he saw how upset she was. He couldn't
stand to see her this upset over this, over anything.

So he came forward until he was standing almost against her knees.
Not knowing what else to do, he did as he'd done with Sean -- he
folded her in his arms, tucked her face beneath his chin, her fast
breath on his throat.

"It's okay," he said softly into her hair. "Mae, it's okay. We'll
work with this. Work it out."

She melted into him for a few seconds, then she stiffened, pulled
away quickly, looking into his eyes, the same frightened expression
on her face as Sean had worn at his mention of the name. Her tears
began again.

"Yes," he said gently. "I know your real name. Sean slipped it out.
He didn't mean to. He was just upset." He cupped her face in his
large hands. "And it's all right," he said with conviction. "It's
*all* all right."

She choked on a sob, and her arms came up and around him, pulling
him to her so tightly it almost hurt him. He returned the embrace
gently, rubbing her back in small circles. He turned his face and
kissed her cheek, lingering there.

"Joe, I'm so afraid," she whispered against his shoulder. "You don't
understand. If you knew...God, I've done...terrible things--" She
stopped on another sob.

"I know you're afraid," he said softly, holding her tighter. "But
we're going to work this out. I don't care who you're running from or
what you've done. I know who you are *now* and I love you." He pulled
her face away, looked into her eyes. "And you can trust me. You have
to believe that, all right?"

She looked at him, and he could tell from the way her eyes ran over
his face that she wanted desperately to believe him, even if she
couldn't bring herself to do it yet. He knew it would probably take a
long time for her to trust him like that, but he was prepared to
wait. For as long as it took.

Finally she nodded, accepting the gesture in what he'd said. He did,
as well, and leaned forward. Moving slowly, with a sort of reverence,
he kissed her forehead, then her cheek, and finally her lips.
 

**********

UNKNOWN LOCATION
NEAR ALDER CREEK, COLORADO
2:23 p.m.
 

Larry Kingston, fresh off the plane from Tyner, Kentucky and rattled
by a five-hour drive from Pueblo, listened to the chains grate on the
snow as the jeep he was riding in crawled its way up the mountain
toward the town of Alder Creek.

He knew they were getting close now. As the Grand Marshall of the
Sons of Liberty, he was familiar with this place, having chosen it
for his most secret base of operations himself on a hunting trip ten
years ago. So he knew the way like he knew the lines on his own hand.

First the bend around the big tree at the top of the mountain; then
the slow downhill for a few hundred yards, and the turnoff into the
base, marked only by an orange cone and a sign that warned everyone
to keep out -- private property.

The man driving the jeep, a resident of the compound who'd been
called upon to pick him up from the tiny airport in Pueblo, followed
the way just as he expected, and the snow was just beginning to fall
as he went down the mile-long driveway into the compound, the faint
cotton of smoke hanging in the trees the only sign that there was
life up ahead of them at all.

The snow was coming down more now, heavy lazy flakes, as they pulled
up outside the mess hall and the jeep stopped. There was a knot of
people there to greet him.

He stepped out of the jeep, immediately greeted by Jeff Haskell, the
leader of the compound. The two men shook hands, then embraced
quickly in the stiff way of country men in parkas.

"How are you, Larry?" Haskell asked. "Good trip?"

"Long trip," Kingston corrected. "But it was all right, I reckon.
Could use a pipe and cup of coffee, though."

Haskell smiled. "You've got the pipe, I've got the coffee," he said.
"Want to come into the mess hall? We might be able to scare up
something from lunch, too."

Kingston waved him off. "I will. I'll meet you in there. I want to
do my errand first." He looked around. "Where's he at?"

The smile faded from Haskell's face. "He's in his bunk, getting
packed up. You're lucky to have caught him at all. He's leaving
today."

"Huh," Kingston grunted. "We'll see about that. Take me to him, if
you would."

They moved through the group of people, Kingston smiling and
greeting them as they reached out and touched his arm, shook his
hand. He'd forgotten that these people -- most of them up here to
hide out from some job that he himself had had them do -- needed to
see him to be reminded of what it was they were fighting for in the
first place.

He needed to make more of an effort to get up more often, he told
himself as they made their way across the compound. And not because
that Irish sonofabitch was causing trouble. But because these people
needed him to lead them, even here.

There might be another Bush in the White House who wore a cowboy hat
now, but there was still a lot of work to be done.

The bunkhouse was a small shack in the corner of the property, smoke
curling from the metal stovepipe chimney. Haskell took him to the
door, and then Kingston put his hand on the other man's shoulder.

"I'll take it from here," he said. "Let me talk to him by myself."

"No problem," Haskell replied. "We'll be in the mess hall for when
you're done." And Haskell walked through the faint curtain of snow
back the way they'd come.

Kingston reached into his pocket and pulled out his pipe and tobacco
pouch, filled the pipe with the sweet-smelling flakes. Then he lit
it, puffing out a cloud of aromatic smoke, gathering himself. Then he
knocked on the door.

"What is it?" came the suspicious voice inside, and Kingston didn't
wait to be asked before he opened the door and walked inside.

Owen Curran was at his locker, tossing a few things into an open
suitcase on the small cot. His eyes narrowed at Kingston as he
entered the space, clearly not liking the intrusion. Kingston put the
pipe in the corner of his mouth and held it there.

"I hear you're going away, Mr. Curran," he said, pinning Curran with
his eyes and daring him to speak.

Curran stood for a few seconds, the two men regarding each other
silently. Then Curran went back to the locker, reached in for
something else. "Aye," he said. "That I am. How did you hear about
that then, I wonder?"

His voice was drippingly nice and tinged with sarcasm. Kingston
didn't like it one bit.

"Mr. Curran, this may come as a shock to you, but those two men down
there in Mexico work for me. So they called *me* when they found your
sister and your boy down there. I'm just sorry they called you
first."

"We had a talk, Lantham and I, about that. We have an agreement that
I'm to be there when he takes them." He looked at Kingston with
narrow eyes. "He did as he was told."

Kingston pulled on the pipe, leaking smoke out the other corner of
his mouth. "What I'm wondering, Mr. Curran, is who the hell you think
you are that you can tell my people what to do like that."

Curran stopped rummaging in the locker and squared off with Kingston
now, silent and clearly accepting the gauntlet thrown down.

"Lantham said you threatened him with non-payment if he didn't call
you, as though those orders came from me, so that's why he called
you." Kingston's face iced over. "Who said you could do that?"

Curran pulled in a slow breath, put his hands in his pockets almost
casually. "This is my show, Mr. Kingston," he said softly,
dangerously. "This is my family and my business. We do it my way. And
my way is that I'm there to make sure your men don't cock the thing
up on their way to doing it."

"You need to stay here, Mr. Curran," Kingston said in a tone that
didn't want an argument. "You're under my protection, in my hiding
place, and I say you stay here and let those two men do their jobs
and bring your kin up here to you like you said you wanted in the
first place. I can't have you down there with them if they happen to
get caught. I don't want to be tied to you in any way with the police
should that happen. I don't want nothing to do with you or what
you're standing for."

He puffed out another cloud of smoke into the cool air as Curran
looked at him.

"No offense intended, of course." He added this last with a crooked
smile.

"Of course," Curran said, and returned the smile.

"Apparently nobody wants much to do with you these days," Kingston
continued. "Not even your own people I hear. Not after what you did
in D.C." He shook his head. "I think you should stay up here with us
for a little while until we get these three in for you. Then I wash
my hands of you."

"You've only got the two for me so far," Curran snapped, returning
to packing. He tossed a pistol in its holster into the suitcase
haphazardly. "The deal was for all three and the debt's paid,
remember?"

Kingston nodded. "Almost got the other one, that woman, in Arizona a
few days back. Won't be long until we find her, as well. Got a lot of
people looking around for her now. We'll find her right quick."

Curran froze now. "How did that get fucked up?" His chest was
heaving with emotions that Kingston couldn't quite name. Excitement?
Rage? He couldn't tell which it was.

Kingston took the pipe out of his mouth, studied the end. "She's got
someone with her. A man who's armed. He got in the way. But don't
worry. We'll find her again and we'll be ready this time."

"I should fucking hope so," Curran said angrily, then he turned and
pointed at Kingston, something wild in his eyes. "In the meantime,
I'm going to Mexico to get my sister and my boy. And you're not
stopping me. And if your men move before I get there, I'll be making
a call to the papers about this place and then you'll have the
trouble you're asking for."

Kingston put the pipe back in his mouth. He could feel blood behind
his eyes as he looked at Curran but outwardly he stayed calm, puffed.

Somewhere along the line, Kingston thought, swallowing his rage into
cold hate, this sonofabitch had gone completely crazy.

Nothing worse than a cause gone personal, he thought bitterly. It
sickened him to see it.

"Just so we understand each other," Kingston began softly. "You
potato-eating sonofabitch. You breathe one word about this place
after my good faith in you and my hiding your sorry ass and I'll make
sure all the right people know just where to find *you*. And I ain't
talking about the FBI and the CIA who will treat you pretty, either."

"Call them," Curran said. "I don't give a good fuck what you do.
I'll have what's mine soon enough and I'll be out of your way and
theirs. You won't know where to point them, you country fuck."

Kingston went to the stove now, opened the door and tapped his pipe
into it. The flame hissed in return.

"All right, Mr. Curran," he said evenly. "You go on there down to
Mexico. You call me with where you end up after that. Keep Lantham
and Grey with you until you're done, and I'll send the woman your way
when we get her. Then you and me will be done with each other and we
can just go our ways. How's that sound to you?"

Curran nodded. "That sounds just fine, Mr. Kingston." He turned
toward his locker, dismissing him. Then he spoke, facing the locker.

"You'd better fucking keep your word to me. You owe me, after all."

"Yes, I do owe you," Kingston replied, and turned to go. "And I
always pay my debts. Not to worry. Have a safe trip." Then he was out
the door and in the snow, moving across the compound.

Fury boiled in him. Nobody talked to him like that. And certainly
not some crazy foreign bastard like the man he'd just left behind.

I need to do some phone calling, he thought to himself, calming down
as he made his way to the mess hall.

And he knew just who -- and when -- to call.
 

***********
 

END OF CHAPTER 13b. CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 14.

Disclaimer in Chapter 0. This is Chapter 14.

***********

TWO GREY HILLS, NEW MEXICO
NAVAJO RESERVATION
APRIL 4
5:38 a.m.
 

"Hey Mulder! GET UP!"

The heavy, fast thumping of a fist on plastic startled Mulder from
his dead sleep and he bolted upright in bed, his hand immediately
going for the gun he kept beside his pillow against the wall. His
chest was heaving, his eyes wide as they shot toward the window, only
to find Victor's smiling face peering in at him between his open
hands, which were pressed to the plexiglass.

"*Christ,* Victor, don't scare me like that!" Mulder exclaimed,
laying the gun back down and cupping his forehead.

"Sorry," Victor said, though his smile didn't fade. "I knocked on
the door, but you didn't hear me, I guess."

Mulder shook his head, clearing it, noted it was just getting light
outside. "What time is it?"

Victor's smile widened. "It's a little after 5:30. You're late."

Mulder reached for his watch on the sill as though he didn't believe
the other man, shivering in the early morning cool, his bare legs
having slipped out from under the covers. He looked at the watch --
sure enough. The man was right.

"Late for what?" he asked, cranky.

"You said you wanted to help with the sheep and horses--" the young
man began firmly.

"Yeah, but for God's sake--"

"-- and this is when we start with them for the day," Victor
finished, ignoring him. "We've all already eaten. Time for you to get
at it."

Mulder groaned, rubbed at his face and beard with both hands.

"Come on," Victor cajoled. "You sleep too much as it is. Get
*moving,* man." He pattered on the window with his hands as though he
were drumming, making an enormous hollow racket. Mulder put his hand
up in defeat.

"All right, all right," he said, throwing his legs over the side and
reaching for his jeans on the floor. They'd started living there when
they weren't on his body.

"Hurry up and fix something to eat and come on," Victor said. "Meet
us at the corral. We're going to break horses this morning."

"Sounds messy," Mulder quipped, putting one leg, then the other, in
the worn denim. He stood, pulling the jeans up over plaid flannel
boxers, then turned toward the window as he zipped up. "I'll be there
in a few. Let me burn some bacon and eggs."

Victor grinned again. "Go for it," he said, and then he disappeared.

Mulder reached for a t-shirt from his suitcase, which was tossed on
the floor and overflowing with unfolded clothes, dirty mixed with
clean.