by Julie Fortune
juliefortune@comcast.net
 

Disclaimer: I have absolutely no right to use these characters, just an abiding admiration for the creative work of the cast and crew of X-Files.  All rights to all characters within this story are owned by Fox (that's television, not Mulder) and the fine folks who created and slaved over this series.  Although the story is original, it is a "derivative work" and I claim no copyright.  No profits are made in any way in the writing or distribution of the work.  It is written solely for creative enjoyment.
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 Scully hated driving at night. The headlights made a warm bubble of safety around the car, but the night was too thick, too close. Colors loomed unexpectedly, like exploding bombs. A too-yellow sign glared at her from the right side of the road -- CURVE. Another sign, too-white, said VINTON, 16 MI, and was gone almost before she remembered that was their destination.

"There's a shortcut," Mulder said. It was the first thing he'd said for more than an hour. "It'll be on your right, a gravel road. Hard to see."

Something's wrong, Scully thought. She'd been thinking it for the last two hundred miles. Mulder was no life of the party, but he was rarely this moody. She shot him a look and saw he was staring out the window at flickering jigsaw trees. She cleared her throat and got a slight shift of his dark eyes, enough to acknowledge she was still alive. Then he went back to the view.

"Mulder?" When he didn't answer, she took her eyes off the road and stared at him. "Mulder, what's up?"

"Nothing." He crossed his arms over his chest and slumped farther down in the passenger seat. "I'm not looking forward to this."

"Why? Because it's not an X file case?"

"Not exactly." He turned his head even farther away, shutting her out. "Maybe you should have pulled Baskin. He was frothing at the mouth for this one."

"I didn't want Baskin," she shot back, and shot him -- or rather the back of his head -- another look. She couldn't tell was really bothering him; his eyes were the only clue to the real Mulder, the dreamer, the cynic, the believer. And he wouldn't look at her.

"Up there," he said, and pointed to a gravel-lined road barely visible in the halogen wash of the headlights. Scully slowed for the turn and winced at the meaty thud-crunch of gravel under the tires and against the undercarriage. "Should be about two miles to the main drag."

"I can't believe this road, Mulder. Are you sure you know where you're going?"

"I'm sure." He leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes.

"You've been here before?" There was a pothole in the road, a big one; Scully eased around it and drifted perilously close to the ditch, a long slice of darkness that pulled at her like a magnet.

"My grandparents lived up here. Nice little Norman Rockwell town. Me and my sister came up for summers." Not happy memories; she heard the undertow in his voice. "I heard it's different now. Full of commuters. Suburbia."

"How about your grandparents? They still around?" Scully was aware she was prying, but here in the bubble of light, with the darkness pressing in so close, it didn't seem to matter so much.

Mulder's eyes flickered open, the closed again.

"They died when I was sixteen. I haven't been back since the funeral."

Silence in the car, except for the pinging of rocks and the pop of tires; Scully steered around another pothole saw a glimmer of lights ahead on the clouds. Light at the end of the tunnel, she thought, and then, with our luck, it's the alien mothership.

"So is it Vinton that's bothering you? Your grandparents?" Scully prodded. Mulder sighed.

"I'm tired," he said. So was she. Just the suggestion of a possibility of sleep made her muscles take on a warm, loose glow; she reached down for her cup of coffee and took a lukecold sip, bitter and brutal on her tongue. She had almost forgotten what he'd said when he spoke again, and gave her the real answer, the one she'd been waiting for.

"I don't do kidnappings, Scully," he said quietly. "Not anymore."
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The main road of Vinton ran about a mile north and south from the intersection, lit by warm sepia streetlights. The storefronts were genteel and art-deco, but the business names were modern -- Blockbuster next to KFC, a 7-11 wrapping around a corner where a drugstore had probably once been. Scully turned left and found Acorn Street almost immediately. Mulder didn't give her any driving tips, nor did she need any; she went past the only house with lights still burning in the windows -- 517 -- and drove for two more blocks before pulling the car into the shadows behind a gas station.

"See anything?" she asked Mulder; he'd been scanning the street for a lookout, but he shook his head and reached up to move the dome light switch from DOOR to OFF. Native caution, or paranoia. When they got out of the car, there was no light to tip off any watchers, and Scully eased her door shut with a bump of her hip. She tugged her skirt an inch farther down toward her knees, straightened her jacket, and hurried to keep up with Mulder's long, loose strides. As instructed, they took the alley, a dark, damp, heel-ruining path that ended when Mulder tugged open a wooden gate Scully couldn't even see in the gloom. He stopped about three steps inside and lifted a shoe to squint at it in the moonlight.

"What is it?" she asked, unnerved. She got a slice of the usual Mulder, the quick, upturned smile, the narrowed dark eyes.

"A very big dog," he said and wiped his shoe on the grass. She went around him and up the four concrete steps to the back door, and tried to keep her knocks quiet.

The door opened on her second one, surprising her, and she swayed forward and had to catch herself with one hand on the doorpost. The sudden glare of light made her shield her eyes and squint between her fingers at the man who stood there.

"FBI?" he asked, a deep rumble in his chest. She nodded. "Come on in. I'm Steve Warner, the sheriff."

"Yes sir, Special Agent Dana Scully. This is Special Agent Fox Mulder. The rest of our team are flying in separately."

He stepped back to let her in, and she came into a white kitchen that might have looked cheerful at any other hour, at any other time. There were several unwashed glasses in the sink, coffee cups, no plates. Nobody in the house was eating.

Sheriff Warner looked dead on his feet; the skin under his eyes was bruised purple with fatigue, and his eyes were bloodshot and too bright from whatever he was using to keep himself going. He also took a long, probably a too-long look at her legs. Scully wasn't concerned with that, just noted it and moved on to study the drawings under the refrigerator magnet. A gifted child, one who like pastels and coloring inside the lines.

"Well, Special Agent Dana Scully, I guess you'll do until the big boys arrive. Say, you sure you're not the one called Fox?" He gave her a full, practiced smile that reminded her of big billboards and retouched photographs in singles magazines. "Awful pretty for a federal agent."

She took the drawings out from under the magnet and looked at them closely. The signature at the bottom, in painfully straight letters, said MELISSA LAUTER.

Sheriff Warner cleared his throat and continued. "Got a call about an hour ago from the Bureau; the rest of your folks got socked in by snow; they'll be flying out tomorrow morning. Oh, and the bastard called about an hour ago. Got it on tape for you. Hope you're used to stuff like this." His eyes settled on her face for a second, tellingly, and she gave him a thin smile as she put the drawings back.

"I wouldn't worry about that, Sheriff. I'm from the FBI, not Avon."

For a second those Marlboro-Man chiseled features tightened up and showed her what he really thought about the FBI, and her in particular. Only a second, and then the smile was in place, the hostility gone.

Sheriff was an elected position, she reminded herself.

"Anything else happening, Sheriff?" Mulder might or might not have heard the whole exchange; there was no way of telling. He'd succeeded in cleaning his shoe and now stood behind her, a warm shadow in her peripheral vision. He closed the kitchen door and locked it. "Any new information beyond what we heard at the airport?"

"No, sir, nothing." The Sheriff practically tipped his hat to Mulder, she noticed with annoyance that never quite rose far enough to be anger. "You know, we figured it's a local boy. My boys are doing a house-to-house -- "

"Whoa, whoa, who told you to do that ?" Mulder interrupted, and Scully turned to see his face turn hard and intense. Mulder, focused, was frightening. Mulder, angry, was outright unstoppable. "Are you trying to kill this kid? What's wrong with you? Weren't you told not to make any moves without our approval?"

"But --"

"Get on your radio and call off your dogs, Sheriff, and sit your ass down in that chair until I get back to you. Scully?"

"Coming," she said, and moved into the other room behind him. She allowed herself a quick look over her shoulder at the Sheriff.

She'd never seen a Marlboro Man with his mouth hanging open before.

Two uniformed officers stood uncomfortably in the living room, holding up walls, but even if the room had been packed Scully would have known the father from the loose-limbed despair in his posture. He didn't know what to do with his hands; he was rubbing them when she entered the room, and as she came over he lifted his head and she was struck by the utter misery in his eyes.

Can't rule him out, she reminded herself, and watched his fingers pull at each other like warring animals.

"Mr. Lauter?" she asked, and pulled up a hassock so that she could sit on a level with him. He nodded, red-eyed, and she wasn't sure he'd recognize her again in an hour. "Mr. Lauter, I'm Special Agent Dana Scully, FBI. This is Special Agent Fox Mulder. Can we talk to you for a few minutes?"

When he continued to stare, she produced her ID, a magician's too-familiar trick. Mulder sat down on the couch, triangulating a position between them, and held his ID out, too. Lauter stared from one to the other in utter confusion. He's losing it, Scully thought. She and Mulder exchanged a look.

"My daughter's gone," Gilbert Lauter said, and burst into tears that sounded weary and mechanical. "Gone."

The two cops hitched their weight uneasily and looked anywhere but at Lauter. Mulder leaned forward and put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing, releasing, never quite letting go until Lauter's tears subsided to hiccuping gasps. Scully dug in her purse for a tissue and handed it to him; he wiped his eyes and crumpled the tissue into a ball in his fist.

"I'm sorry we have to go over this again, Mr. Lauter, but it's very important that we know everything." Scully kept her voice carefully neutral. "Can you tell us what happened the day Melissa disappeared?"

"S-she went to school. I mean, Emily -- my wife, Emily -- dropped her off at school on the way to work. I get off earlier than Emily, so I went by to pick Melissa up but she wasn't there. I wasn't worried -- I mean, this is such a small town -- and I figured she had gone with friends, or that -- but -- "

"But she hadn't," Scully supplied gently. He nodded. His thinning brown hair was plastered against his skull, unwashed, uncombed, showing finger trails where he'd tugged at it. His skin looked greenish. She wondered when he'd last eaten or, more importantly, slept.

"No." Lauter stared down at his shoes and his fingers laced themselves together and pulled, turning the knuckles white. "No. I called Sheriff Warner that night."

"That was -- two night ago?"

Lauter nodded. Mulder caught Scully's eyes, and she leaned back slightly and let him take the lead.

"I understand you got a call about an hour ago. Now, you don't have to tell us what he said, we'll listen to the tape ourselves, but did the voice remind you of anyone? Sound familiar in any way?"

Lauter's mouth worked, but nothing came out. His eyes were frightened.

"Mr. Lauter?" she prodded. He looked away and shook his head once, convulsively, as if he were trying to shake away the memory.

"No," he whispered. "No, I didn't know the voice."

"Where's your wife, Mr. Lauter?" Mulder asked. Lauter rubbed at his face with shaking fingers.

"Upstairs. The doctor gave her some pills -- she's going out of her mind. Melissa's our only child, and we tried for six years to get pregnant before -- " He gulped back a sob. "I just don't know what to do. Can you tell me what to do?"

Mulder leaned over and squeezed his shoulder gently.

"Sir, the best thing you can do is stop lying to us about the voice. You know who it was. All you have to do is tell us." Scully envied Mulder's ease at slipping the knife in almost painlessly. From her, it would have been confrontational, but there was something about Mulder's earnest, calm expression, his warm eyes -- Lauter started to lie and stopped, trembling, just watching Mulder's face.

"It's crazy," he blurted. "Crazy. It -- it sounded like my father. But my father's been dead -- twenty years."

It was crazy. Scully glanced down to keep it from showing in her face.

"Sounded like? Mulder asked. "Or was?"

"Was," Lauter whispered. "It was my father. I know it."

In the silence that followed, one of the deputies cleared his throat. Scully looked up and saw him watching her; he deliberately shook his head. She glanced at his nametag -- Dupree -- and nodded back. Dupree was a younger man, dark-haired.

All the lawmen in Vinton seemed to smile too much, as far as she could tell. She didn't smile back.

Another fifteen minutes got nothing more, just a recitation of facts they knew and had already verified. The Lauters were strapped for cash, not involved in sensitive industrial or government work. Even if a ransom demand came, there was nothing to pay with.

Nothing but tears.

"Let's talk," Scully murmured close to Mulder's ear; he nodded and gave Lauter one more reassuring pat on the shoulder before rising to follow her toward the kitchen. "So?"

"You think he's crazy?" Mulder murmured. She gave him a what-do-you-think look. "Let's hear the tape."

"Sir?" Lauter called as Scully pushed the kitchen door open. She looked back; Lauter's fingers were destroying the tissue she'd given him, tearing it into tight white pills that fell around his feet like artificial snow. His eyes were tragic. "Please, promise me something."

Don't, Scully thought instantly, and almost reached out for Mulder's arm before she remembered that he'd had more experience at this, knew better than she did what to promise and what not to.

"I promise," Mulder said slowly, clearly, "that we'll get her back, Mr. Lauter. I promise."

She stared, stunned, as he went past her into the kitchen.

The Marlboro Man was still there, obediently waiting. Scully gave him a tight, artificial smile.

"Sheriff, would you mind waiting outside for just a minute?" she asked, and his head jerked up at her tone. His eyes clouded.

"Done what you wanted, called my boys home, but I'm telling you, it's a mistake. You listen to the tape, you'll see that. Son of a bitch isn't even pretending to want money." His eyes held hers, angry and challenging. "If you don't want us to do a search, I don't guess there's a whole hell of a lot we can do tonight, so if you'll excuse me, I'll go home and get a couple hours down."

"Good idea, Sheriff," Mulder said blandly. "Just leave me your home number there on the table, and I'll call when we need you. You've got the cards with our cellular numbers if you need us, and we'll be staying at the Holiday Inn on Main."

Warner touched an imaginary hatbrim to Mulder, gave Scully another up-and-down, and left with a bang of the back door. Somewhere around the side of the house, a dog let out a deep-chested bark and then fell silent.

"State of the art local help," Scully said, and made sure the kitchen door was shut before she put her back against it and took a long, measuring stare at her partner. "You promise? What is that, Mulder? You know better than to promise anything in a case like this!"

Mulder let all the masks fall away, the calm, the distance, even the cynical humor. He reached out and took the drawings off of the refrigerator and thumbed through them, and she swallowed hard at the look on his face.

"He needed a promise. He couldn't get through without one." Mulder traced the line of a crayon tree with one finger.

"So you just promised, just like that? That's unprofessional, and you know it. It's not like you."

He slid the drawings back under the magnet.

"If you're not committed to winning, you shouldn't have taken the case, Scully," he said, and met her eyes. "I don't intend to lose this kid."
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Scully sat in the passenger seat on the way to the promised Holiday Inn, eyes burning from fatigue, and fingered the tape they'd been given. It was white, labeled plainly 10:47 p.m. She checked the glowing digital clock. 2:17 a.m.

"He called while we were at the airport," she mused. "Probably signing out the car."

Mulder's face was impassive in the on-off flicker of streetlights.

"Let's hear it," he said, and she popped the tape into the rental car's player.

The first thing on it was a child, crying. Scully looked over at Mulder and read the tension in his arms and back.

"Sadistic son of a bitch," he said. She took in a deep breath and nodded.

The crying died away.

Silence. Tape hiss. Suddenly, strangely, Gilbert Lauter's voice.

"No -- no -- please, don't go. You can't take her away. I'll do anything." His voice shattered into sobs. "Anything. Please -- "

Scully felt her eyebrows draw together and reached over to turn the volume up. The hiss of tape was louder, but apart from Gilbert Lauter's agitated sobs, nothing else.

"Please, we want our daughter back," he wept. And there was another pause. "Money -- don't you want money? Anything?"

"Well?" Mulder asked, and Scully ejected the tape and held it up to the light as if it could tell her something. "Am I crazy, or is there only one side of the conversation on that tape?"

"You're not crazy," she murmured. 10:47 p.m. "I wonder if our nice Sheriff Warner had the speaker on, or if he just listened to Lauter's end of the conversation?"

Mulder frowned. The glow of a neon sign that stained his face cherry red.

"So your theory is that the Sheriff is just plain stupid and Lauter's flim-flamming him?"

"You heard it. Lauter was having a conversation with thin air. No perpetrator. No kidnapping."

He eased the car to a stop in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn, turned the engine off, and turned to look at her.

"What about the crying, Scully?" he asked. She started to answer, then thought better of it. "Not even Sheriff Warner's dumb enough not to put two and two together if the kid's crying loud enough that he can hear her. Melissa Lauter was on the other end of that phone. So was the kidnapper."

"Then why can't we hear him?" Scully demanded. His smile was thin and exhausted.

"Why did Lauter think it was his dead father?"
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Scully rubbed her eyes and took a sip of coffee; at least, she thought it was coffee, her taste buds had long since given up identifying it. It was hot and caffeinated, and that was all that mattered.

"What've you got?" Mulder asked; she looked over the bed, past his feet propped on it, to the gray pallor of his face. She wondered if she looked as bad.

"Nothing. Nothing. I can't see a reason in the world for any professional to target the Lauters. He's a telephone salesman, makes about fifty-five thousand a year; she's an ad executive, makes about seventy thousand. Their house is mortgaged to the hilt. They have two new cars the bank still owns. The only real assets they have are a couple of savings accounts, and they aren't nearly big enough to attract attention in a suburban place like Vinton. The house is not any fancier than the others on the block." Scully sighed and pushed the stack of papers away. "Nothing. It doesn't make sense."

"What, after the tape, you thought it would? You figured we'd just pick him out of the file?" Mulder made a circling gesture in the air, trying to catch an idea that was too fast for him. "Should have stayed home and solved it sitting in my own living room."

Scully rolled over to pick up her travel alarm.

"Oh, God, Mulder, it's 3:30."

"We need to be at the school tomorrow morning to talk to Melissa's friends, teachers -- "

"Yeah, I know. It's 3:30."

He chewed on the cap of a pen and stared down at his open file.

"While you're doing that, I'll ride herd on the Sheriff until the posse arrives. Ya hoo."

"3:30," she repeated, making it three long syllables, and pulled a pillow over her head. "Mulder, let's go to bed. Please."

When she took the soft weight of the pillow away, he was looking at her. It wasn't his usual look, but then, she didn't give it the usual return, either. They were both too tired to care about appearances.

"Don't use that phrase around the Sheriff, Scully, he already thinks you're a pretty little filly."

"Caught that, did you?"

"He wasn't exactly subtle." Mulder's smile was just a hairline thinner than usual. "I just didn't think you'd appreciate me riding in to save your honor."

"Got that right," she sighed, and let her eyelids drift closed. "Nothing left to save."

"I don't know about that," he said from a great distance, and, from miles away, "Sleep well, Dana."

When she opened her eyes again, he was gone. She had just enough strength to throw the deadbolt on the door and pull on thick warm pajamas before the dark grabbed her down.

She dreamed about driving on the gravel road, drifting too near the ditch. Don't look, a voice whispered in her ear. She turned her head, but it wasn't Mulder. She was alone in the car. But then she felt someone behind her, in the back seat, and in that bright instant of terror saw eyes flash in the rear view mirror as cold hands wrapped around her throat.

She woke with a scream ringing in her ears, one hand pressed tight to her throat. Not her scream. The telephone.

She clawed hair away from her face and squinted at the alarm clock as she felt for the receiver.

4:15 a.m.

"Hello?" she mumbled, and cleared her throat. "Hello?"

"Are you awake?"

The voice sounded fuzzy, distant. Scully blinked and tried to concentrate with a brain that felt lead-lined.

"Mulder?" she asked. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong." It was Mulder, all right; she could hear him clearly now. "Were you asleep?"

"Of course I was asleep. It's only been -- forty five minutes. What's wrong?"

"I couldn't sleep. There's no time to sleep," he said, and suddenly it wasn't just his voice, it was Mulder himself, as real as if he was in the room with her. Only it wasn't Mulder, exactly -- not the one she was used to. The voice was deeper, softer.

Gentler.

"Are you okay?" she finally thought to ask.

"I'll live. Have you been dreaming?"

"Dreaming?" She sat up in the dark, pulling the covers closer. The light was just a reach away, but for some reason she didn't want it on. Just the dark, and the warm slide of Mulder's voice in her ear.

"Did you?"

"I dreamed," she agreed tightly. "What's the game, Mulder?"

"I used to dream. I don't anymore. I miss it sometimes."

The darkness seemed so thick in the room that it was a pressure on her skin, only the glowing red numbers on the alarm clock giving her any reference at all. I'm dreaming, she thought. I'm still dreaming.

"You can dream and not remember it," she heard herself say. He made a sound in his throat that wasn't quite a laugh.

"I'd remember," he said. "Would you mind if I dreamed about you?"

"What?" She was awake enough now to be angry, a nice warm glow that drove out whatever fear her dream had delivered. "Jesus, Mulder, if you've got something to say, say it or let me sleep!"

A brief pause. She had the strangest sensation that if she turned on the light she'd see him sitting where he had been, at the foot of the bed, watching her. All right, maybe it's not a dream. You're just tired.

"It's been so long," he whispered. She tried to say something, but her voice locked in her throat. Something cold shot through her and made her hands tighten on the covers -- something cold that turned traitorously warm in that second before she could put it out of her mind.

"I don't think I've ever seen anyone as pretty as you, Dana."

She heard the breath go out of her lungs in an audible gasp, just as if he'd stomach-punched her. It seemed strangely unreal, and at the same time his voice was real, alive, undeniable. Mulder would never say these things, not to her, not now -- not even if they were true. He just wouldn't.

"Are you still there?" he asked. "Dana?"

"Who are you?" she demanded. Silence, but the silence was full, like the night.

"I am who you think I am."

"Stop it. I'm not listening to this," she said coldly, and started to hang up the phone -- but she couldn't. The distant buzz of his voice pulled the receiver back to her ear; she realized she was holding her breath, and her heart was hammering.

"Are you sure you know who I am?" His voice got slower and deeper, and she sucked in a deep, gasping breath. "Are you sure who you are, really?"

She hung the phone up and stared blindly into the darkness, heart pounding. The walls were thin, but she didn't hear a sound from Mulder's room next door.

Her gun was on the bedside table; she picked it up as she switched on the light. The carpet felt as harsh as Astroturf on the soles of her feet, and she was acutely aware of wanting to stop for her robe, but she didn't.

She opened her side of the connecting door and hesitated for a few seconds, listening, but there wasn't anything from Mulder's room, nothing.

What if it was him, she thought, and buried the thought deep before she could let it go too far.

She knocked loudly on the door.

"Mulder?" she shouted, and knocked again. "Mulder, three seconds before I break it in!"

She was down to one when the deadbolt rattled; she jumped back as the door swung open.

Mulder. Standing dazed in rumpled pajama bottoms, gun in his hand. Squinting at the light.

"What?" he asked. She darted around him to put her hand on the receiver of his phone. Cold. Ice cold. "What the hell's going on?"

She looked up at him, and felt the ground drop out from under her feet. "I think it was a dream," she said, and was profoundly afraid that she was right.
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Breakfast was at Denny's, the only restaurant with lights on in Vinton at 5:00 in the morning. Scully and Mulder and one caffeine-riddled truck driver were the only customers; she tore her cold muffin apart in silence and watched him try unsuccessfully to eat the pancakes he'd ordered; he settled for the bacon.

"You take me to the nicest places," Scully said, and got a ghost of a smile from him. He lifted his coffee cup and clinked it against hers. "Eat. You need the protein."

He tried, but after two bites the battle was over. He shoved the plate away and signaled the yawning waitress to take it away, and stared moodily into his cup, rotating it between his palms.

"You're not going to tell me, are you?" he asked without looking up. She tried to concentrate on tearing the muffin into thick lumps and transporting it to her mouth. "Some dream, Scully. If it lit that kind of fire under you, maybe it's important."

"Not this one," she said. He looked up at her, and she had to find someplace else to look. The truck driver, yawning, showed brown teeth. "Leave it, please. I just got spooked."

"I heard your phone ring," he said. It was as if he'd shoved a knife under her fingernail. She jerked hard enough to rattle the table, and grabbed for her coffee cup as it nodded on the saucer.

"You couldn't have. I dreamed it." She took a sip of coffee to cover the panic she was afraid was showing, and wished he would look anywhere, at anything, but her face. Had she been wrong? Had he been the one calling?

Oh God, she thought. His cellular. He could have been on his cellular.

"Okay," Mulder said, and shrugged. "We both dreamed it."

"How come you don't do kidnapping cases anymore?" she asked, and he looked away at last. Hit. Direct hit.

"I lost a kid the last time out. Twelve year old boy. He was mutilated." Short and dry. She might have mistaken his tone for callous, if she hadn't known him better. But then, how well did she know him? Really?

"I'm sorry," she said. He nodded. "Did you get the guy?"

"It wasn't a guy, Scully," he said, and no matter how even his voice was, there was no mistaking the anger in it. "It was his seventeen year old sister and her boyfriend. The family that plays together, stays together."

"So you're thinking about the family. About Gilbert Lauter."

"I'm thinking about Emily," he said. "The mother. Who wasn't downstairs."

She pushed her muffin aside and finished her coffee. Mulder signaled for the check.

"We're not going to let it happen again," she promised, and he reached over the remains of her muffin to touch her on the back of the hand, a brief heat, quickly gone. A memory surfaced of his hand warm against her face, his eyes so full of compassion. I'm sorry about your dad, Scully. She hadn't told him what his sympathy had meant to her -- she always held things in, treasured them, hoarded them. Mulder was like water, cool and soothing and irritatingly hard to grasp.

But there was nothing evasive about the look he gave her when she pulled her hand back.

She went cold, remembering his voice on the telephone.

A dream, she told herself again. It had to be a dream.

As they stood at the register, paying out, her cell phone buzzed. She turned away and put it to her ear.

"Scully," she said. "Good morning, Sheriff."

She listened to him for about a minute, took a deep breath, and looked over her shoulder at Mulder. He was signing the credit card slip.

"On our way," she murmured, and slid the phone into her pocket. "Mulder."

He came over and saw it in her face; his went empty. The whole world seemed quiet, waiting for her to speak.

"The ditch," she said, and remembered the magnet pull of the slice of darkness. "The one off of the gravel road. My God, we drove right by it."
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scully stared down at the body and focused on the details; a blue-white hand, fingers curled up, dirt under the nails. A long-sleeved gray shirt. Blue-white skin again, at the throat, on the face, blue lips, a thin line of dried blood smearing the cheek. Wide open brown eyes.

"He's been here about two days, I'd say," the county coroner grunted, and heaved himself up to his feet. The knees of his black suit were slick with mud. "Look reasonable to you?"

"Yes," Scully said. "I don't see any obvious wounds."

"Well, neither do I. Looks like Fred just kind of dropped dead in here, if you want to know the truth. I don't think we'll know anything until we crack him open." The coroner finished wiping his hands on a white towel and looked over his glasses at her. "You'll want to be there, I expect."

"Can't think of anything we'd rather do," Mulder said for both of them; he was standing on her other side, hands shoved in his pockets, collar turned up against the cold misty rain. Nobody seemed to have brought an umbrella, though they'd rigged a green canopy over the crime scene to preserve it. Not that there was much to preserve, Scully thought -- mud and leaves, and the dead deputy.

"How long has he been missing?" she asked as Mulder bent to look at the silver star still pinned to his uniform.

"I asked the Sheriff, he said he'd get back to me. Sounded like he's covering his ass, or somebody else's. Scully. Did you see this?"

He wasn't looking at the star after all. He was looking at the neck. Barely visible under the hair there were three evenly spaced red blisters.

"Ticks?" she asked, trying to keep her voice even. "We're in the woods. Could be anything."

"Could be," he agreed. She didn't like it when he agreed so easily. "Two days means he was killed the same night the girl was taken. I'd say Vinton is a little too small to hold this big a coincidence."

The coroner's assistants came down to take the body, and Scully moved back as they eased him up and into the black plastic bag. She found herself standing next to Mulder again, her arm brushing his.

"I dreamed about this ditch," she said, very quietly. Mulder's head turned sharply as he looked at her, but before he could say anything, the Sheriff skidded down the embankment in a hail of gravel. If anything, he looked worse, a hundred times worse than he had only eight hours before. Scully received a glance, but it was vague and filmed, as if he wasn't really seeing her.

"Mulder," he said. "I got to talk to you."

"Go ahead," Mulder said. The Sheriff shook his head stubbornly.

"Over here."

Away from her, Scully realized. She stuck her hands in her coat pockets and watched Mulder's back as he skidded in the mud after the Sheriff. She managed to resist the wish to see both of them fall on their butts.

It was a one minute conversation, at most. Mulder parted company with the Sheriff and came back toward her, catching himself with an outstretched hand against the embankment wall when his footing failed. She had the satisfaction of seeing the Sheriff slide back while trying to climb out, though. That was almost worth it.

"Boy's club secrets?" she asked sweetly. Mulder didn't take the bait.

"Sheriff Warner says that Deputy Fred Milvern was on duty until three this morning." He paused to let her think about it.

"This man's been lying here two days."

"So I heard. However, the Sheriff's got some pretty convincing witnesses to the fact that Milvern was alive and walking late last night."

"Who?" she demanded. Mulder's eyes were wide and weirdly amused.

"Us. He was one of the two deputies on duty last night at the Lauter house, standing not six feet away from us. We both saw him, Scully. Oh, and here's a good one for you -- he took his dinner break at 10:30 last night. Twenty minutes, give or take, before the phone call."
------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Well, folks, we got us some good news and some bad news. Which you want to hear first?"

"Bad news," Mulder said, and passed his cup across the desk for a refill. The coffee that came out of Sheriff Warner's thermos smoked like lava and poured like molasses; Scully passed on the privilege with a shake of her head, and wondered how Mulder could stomach it. From the taste she'd had -- it lasted -- it seemed Sheriff Warner thought that one can of coffee was a convenient single-serving size.

She hit the CONNECT command on the laptop balanced on the corner of the desk in front of her and got a reassuring white-noise rush from the modem. With any luck, the lines were clear enough to get a decent data stream.

"Your FBI folks can't get here until tomorrow, earliest. That's if the roads don't get closed downmountain, and Duane says that's damn likely before the afternoon's out. It's turning into a real whiteout," Warner said, and she was sure she heard satisfaction lurking somewhere deep in his slippery voice. Happy to have her isolated? Or was she being paranoid?

"Perfect," she said, and shot Mulder a quick look; he was watching her, a slight smile on his lips. "I'll assist the coroner in the autopsy. Maybe something will turn up."

Something had already, although she was digging her heels in about it until she could take a closer look at the red bumps on the body. Ticks, she'd told Mulder. Bugs.

The last time she'd seen marks like that, they'd been in an X files folder.

"What made you say this was a local boy, Sheriff?" Mulder asked. It was a specialty of his, the out-of-the-blue question; she tried to figure out what process he'd gone through to arrive at it, but gave up even before the Sheriff finished blinking in surprise.

"Pardon?"

"Last night, you said you thought it was a local job. Why?"

The computer screen in front of her flickered and cleared to black and yellow. VICAP. She logged on and started the file search, painfully aware of how long it would take, if it worked at all. How would she quantify the strange circumstances of the deputy's death? The voice -- or lack of one -- on the tape?

Maybe VICAP was the wrong database. Maybe --

"Well, stood to reason -- didn't sound like no professional job, no ransom demand or anything," Warner said. He put his feet up on his desk -- a surprisingly small one. Scully had been expecting something the size of a tank, mahogany, in a room decorated in stuffed animal heads. Instead, the desk was plain scarred gray, topped with cracked glass, and instead of animal heads there were wanted posters pinned to a long section of peeling corkboard. One picture sitting on the corner of the desk, a dusty black-and-white photo of the Sheriff as a teenager, even bulkier in football pads.

The office smelled of metal and sweat and mildew.

"Often kidnappers don't name their demands until the second or even third call -- they want to gain the maximum psychological advantage," she said, as she canceled the VICAP search and logged into another level, security-cleared. The Sheriff frowned at her.

"Well, maybe that's true, but -- I don't know, it sounded like he was trying to apologize or something, not get them ready for a ransom demand. That said local pervert, to me."

"You've lived here all your life," Mulder said. "How long have the Lauters been here?"

"Oh, around about ten years. Yeah, that'd be about right. Why? You takin' a census?"

"I'm trying to understand why the Lauters were selected."

"Who the hell knows? It sure as hell don't much matter now, does it? That little girl's out there, waiting. And we're sitting in here on our butts." The Sheriff knuckled his eyes and teetered his chair backward to the balance point. "Ah, hell, maybe that's all we can do. You heard the tape."

Scully looked up and caught Mulder's eye. He nodded.

"You listened in on another phone, didn't you?" she asked. The Sheriff gave her a smile. It was tired, but trying hard.

"Sure did. I believe in being thorough, Agent Scully."

"I'm sure you always get your man," she said, and saw Mulder wince. "Did the kidnapper sound familiar to you?"

And there it was, written all over the broad face, the tense forehead.

"No ma'am, I would've said something if I'd recognized that voice," he said, but it took about one heartbeat too long. She didn't dare look at Mulder, didn't dare look away from the guilt on the Sheriff's face.

"Would you like to reconsider that last statement?" she asked. The Sheriff's chair came down with a crash, and he leveled a finger at her like a .357.

"Would you like to reconsider calling me a liar, Miss Scully?"

"If you want to dance, Sheriff, let me go buy a prom dress," she snapped. "Otherwise, let's clear the floor. You recognized the voice, we all know it. Who was it?"

He stayed quiet. Mulder leaned his elbows on the glass top. He waited until Warner looked up, and locked eyes with him.

"I understand that you don't want to look like a fool, Sheriff. No problem. Let me make this easier for you -- it was somebody who couldn't have been on that phone. Somebody who couldn't possibly be the kidnapper."

Sheriff Warner's eyes were red-rimmed, and miserable. He blinked and looked away.

"It won't mean anything," he said.

"Then you won't have any problem telling us."

Outside, the white flakes hissed against the glass. Scully felt the chill creeping across the room like a wave, lapping at her feet. An undertow of cold.

"It sounded just like John Pyle on the other end of that phone," the Sheriff said softly. "Swear to God, it sounded like him. John used to run the old drugstore, on the corner down here. Strange old guy."

"Where is he now?" Scully asked.

"In the cemetery in back of the First Methodist Church, two streets over. He died in '88." Warner chuckled, but there wasn't any humor in it. "Ghosts all over this goddamn town."

"Just like Fred Milvern," Mulder said.

Scully started a search of the X files.

By the time the autopsy was over, she was punch-drunk from lack of sleep, jittery from too much coffee. And, as always, she had to admit that she liked it that way -- pushed to her limits, she always felt more in control. She liked the edge. If she hadn't, she would have hung out a shingle and treated coughs and delivered babies for a living like her med school colleagues.

When the coroner had cut into one of the red blisters to examine it, it had deflated like a balloon. Empty. The underlying tissue looked normal, and aside from the normal necrotic progress there wasn't anything to comment on about what they'd found.

Sheriff Fred Milvern had died of nothing, apparently. The toxicology would tell the rest of the story.

If there was a story.

Scully tapped on the Sheriff's door and got no answer; she swung it open and was greeted by a new, thicker wave of cold. The storm was getting worse.

The laptop was still working. The cursor blinked under the words SEARCH COMPLETE. READY.

Seventy-eight files. She frowned and narrowed the field, searching for instances of the red bumps, of child abductions

Seven. That was more like it.

In Galing, Arkansas, a child abduction in 1983. One phone call reassuring the parents that the boy would not be harmed. No deaths reported, but the child had never returned.

In Monahans, Texas, a seven-year-old girl taken from a playground. One phone call. On sixty-two-year-old drifter found dead in a shallow grave outside of town, with three red bumps on his neck.

Visalia, California. Owl Eye, North Dakota. Clovis, New Mexico. Larkspur, Georgia.

All had missing children. Two more had dead adults with suspicious red marks.

She checked the last file. 1974.

Vinton, Massachusetts.

Vinton.

"Lightning strikes twice," she murmured. A knock on the door made her jerk; she routed the file to print on the portable bubblejet and turned to look over her shoulder. Sheriff Warner stood there watching her, hands in his coat pockets. Not smiling, or leering, for a change.

"Hope I'm not disturbing you, Agent Scully. Just wanted to tell you you did a good job in there, in the autopsy."

She sighed.

"What made you think I wouldn't?" she asked, and heard the sharp edge in her voice. His face tightened. "Sorry. We're all tense, Sheriff. Thanks, I guess."

"You don't have to be so touchy," he said, and came up to look over her shoulder at the computer. "Huh. FBI stuff, I guess."

She turned the screen off. "Did you want something in particular?"

"Yeah," he said, and leaned against the corner of the desk. "Yeah, I guess I did. I wanted to see if you needed any lunch. Nearly two o'clock, you know. Agent Mulder's off with my deputies, so I thought I'd see if you wanted to grab some grub with me."

"Thank you, no." She kept her tone final, and turned back to the computer. He didn't go away. She hadn't really expected he would.

"Is it just that you don't like me?"

He was serious, she realized. She tried to put it as carefully as she could.

"No, Sheriff, it isn't that. It's that you want to treat me differently than you do Mulder or anyone else on the team. You're handicapping me at a time when Melissa Lauter can't afford it." She held his eyes. "Do you understand?"

He watched her face in silence for a minute, then pushed off from the desk. She thought he'd leave, but he walked around and settled himself in the chair on the other side of the desk.

"You want to know about that case?" he asked. "The one you were looking at?"

She glanced at the bubblejet. It hummed to itself, and the first page slowly rolled out like a tongue.

"You know about the previous abduction?" she asked, and he leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling, where rust-colored water stains made a Picasso sketch.

"Guess you could say so, but I was just a kid." His gaze fell suddenly and locked on hers. "Like your partner."

"Mulder?" I used to spend summers here, he'd said. He hadn't said anything about abductions.

"Don't know if he remembers me, but I remember him, all right. Smart kid, bookish, quiet. Came for the summer that year with his kid sister. I guess I gave him some trouble, kid stuff. I used to be kind of a bully," he said, and smiled. "Anyway, he spent a lot of time with this other local boy, Kerry Jones. See one, see the other. Kerry was the quiet kind, too -- always figured that was because his dad was the town drunk, a real mean customer. Kerry didn't have a mean bone in his body. Must have made for a hell of a home life."

Scully nodded. Page two spit out of the printer.

"So one morning, Pa Jones comes into town babbling about his son going missing in the woods. Nobody took it real seriously, at first, but I noticed right off that something must have been wrong, because your partner, Mulder, he was alone. And he was looking for Kerry, too. Kerry wouldn't have run off without telling his best friend, now would he?" Sheriff Warner opened his desk drawer and found a box of M&Ms; he popped them in his mouth five or six at a time and chewed noisily. "So finally the Sheriff -- that would have been old man Grazier, back then -- he took it seriously when Pa Jones said somebody had come and taken the boy. Turned into a real manhunt, volunteers beating the woods, state police, the whole ball of wax. Most excitement in Vinton in a hundred years."

He chose his next five M&Ms carefully, reds and yellows, and shook the box at her suggestively. She shook her head.

"What did they find, Sheriff?"

"Nothing, Agent Scully. Not a goddamn thing. That kid just up and vanished off the face of the earth, and nobody's heard from him since. Your buddy Mulder left town a little after that, didn't come back until his grandparents died in '76."

The curled roll of pages around the printer was growing. Scully picked it up and started smoothing the paper.

"You remember a lot about it," she said, and without looking up, she knew he was smiling.

"No, ma'am, I didn't. But when I saw Fox Mulder come into Vinton again, working on the disappearance of another kid, I said to myself, Self, maybe we ought to go read up on those old Kerry Jones files. Which I did." M&Ms crunched. "Want to know what I think?"

She kept ordering the pages, straightening them.

"I think Agent Mulder ought to be telling you a little more than he is, wouldn't you say, Agent Scully ma'am?"

She looked up and met his eyes, and saw his face change at the anger she wasn't quite successful at keeping hidden.

Without a word, he tipped his chair back down, slammed the M&Ms back in the drawer, and stalked out of the room. She took a deep breath and watched the printer continue to produce pages, a cheap magic prop.

Are you sure you know who I am? Mulder's voice had whispered. It had hurt, and it had scared her. Worst of all, though, it had fascinated her.

What if she didn't?
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mulder couldn't decide on adjectives for Mrs. Woolery, the administrator at Vinton Middle School -- big and motherly seemed right, until he caught her sending a look at him that would have frozen nitrogen. Resentment for being caught in the investigation? Innocent annoyance? The rage of a kidnapper close to getting caught?

Resentment, he decided. Mrs. Woolery was afraid she was going to be blamed for Melissa Lauter's disappearance.

"I want to talk to Melissa's friends and classmates," he said again. "We don't have a lot of time left, Mrs. Woolery. Let's not waste it."

"I'm sure you understand I can't possibly give you permission to talk to these children until I have contacted their parents. It isn't a matter of being uncooperative -- "

"I'm afraid it's just that. Mrs. Woolery, you have ten minutes to get all of the staff in here to talk to Deputy Dupree, and to start sending the children on this list in to me. Ten minutes, or we take you personally down to the sheriff's office and have him jail you for obstruction. Which is it?" He heard an edge creep into his voice. Mrs. Woolery caught it, and looked gravely worried.

"I -- I -- you're putting me in a very difficult position -- "

"Good," Mulder said, and got a glare. "Look, we're not interested in arresting you or causing you problems, but I promise you, we'll do what we have to do to get our interviews. Are you going to cooperate, or is someone else going to do it while you cool your heels?"

Mrs. Woolery drew herself up in the shreds of her authority and left the room. Deputy Dupree, who was looking out the window at the snow-covered playground, grinned.

"'Cool your heels' They teach you guys that stuff in the Academy?" he asked, and Mulder almost smiled. Almost.

"No, I learned it from old Dragnet episodes." His cellular phone buzzed. He held up an apologetic finger and turned away as he put it to his ear. "Mulder."

"You want the good news or the bad news?" Scully's voice asked; it didn't sound like bad news to him if she was willing to give him the choice.

"The good news," he said. "For a hundred."

"You win the prize. Melissa Lauter just showed up at home, alive and well and crying her eyes out. Want to meet me there?"

He hadn't even known how much he cared until he heard that. The relief brought a friend with it -- an anvil-weight of exhaustion. He braced himself against the wall.

"Hell, yes, we're on our way." He snapped the phone closed and turned to Dupree. "She's safe. Safe and home."

Dupree's smile was as big as the Grand Canyon. He whooped loudly and headed out the door to tell Gentry, who was waiting in Dupree's black Jeep -- the department didn't have enough squad cars to go around, apparently. Mulder started to follow, but his phone buzzed again.

"Scully?" he asked as soon as he had it to his ear. The line hissed, weakened by distance.

"Not this time," said a man's voice. It sounded familiar. "Listen carefully, Agent Mulder, I'm on a tight timeline. Remember when I told you that you were digging into things that some people might not want known?"

"Who is this?"

"A friend."

Mulder's memory put a face to the voice, a heavy-jowled, dark-haired older man. A government man, with a capital G. More government than the FBI. Or even the CIA, probably, though Mulder would never be able to prove it.

"Are you still my friend?" Mulder asked carefully. The man laughed, but there wasn't any humor in it.

"I wouldn't be on this line if I wasn't. Get out of Vinton, my friend. You're an embarrassment, and an inconvenience, and now you're a target of opportunity. They're going to take advantage of your isolation. They have somebody in place."

"Who?" Silence. "Are you still there?"

"I don't know who they have there, and you don't need to know who they are, it would only put you in more danger. You just need to get in the car and get out. Leave Scully, she'll be safe. It's you they're after." The man's voice dropped to a whisper that was almost lost in the hiss of static. "This is the only favor I can do for you this time, understand? After this, you're on your own."

"I understand," Mulder said. The phone clicked in his ear as the other man disconnected. "Well, maybe."

The last time he'd gotten a warning like that, he'd ignored it and ended up drugged and helpless, with a black gap of hours that he couldn't remember. They hadn't been kidding before. He didn't have any reason to believe the warning wasn't real.

Even so, he wasn't leaving town until he saw, for himself, that Melissa Lauter was safe.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Lauter house had a celebratory feel, even from outside -- crowds of people bundled against the blowing snow, all talking excitedly. Sheriff Warner was standing on the porch in the glare of local TV popularity. Mulder went around the side of the house and passed a big doghouse; a liver-colored brown muzzle poked out at him and sniffed. He patted the dog on the head and slogged around to the back door. It was open, and another one of the deputies waved him inside with a big grin.

"Great day, ain't it, sir?" the kid said. Mulder nodded and stamped snow from his shoes. "Your partner's in the living room, with the Lauters."

The kitchen looked different in the daylight -- a box of cornflakes open on the counter, plates and glasses dumped haphazardly in the sink. Mulder brushed Melissa's drawings with a fingertip as he went by the refrigerator, and paused in the kitchen doorway.

Scully sat in a chair on the other side of the room; she was watching Gilbert Lauter, who sat comfortably on the couch with a babbling little girl in his lap. His wife, Emily, was sitting close, and Lauter's arm was around her. Emily's face still had a thin, pallid look, but the joy in her eyes was real.

Melissa was eating ice cream and gesturing with the spoon.

"Agent Mulder!" Gilbert Lauter said, and waved. "Come in, come in! Sweetheart, this is Agent Mulder. He and Agent Scully worked very hard to get you back safe."

"Hi, Melissa," Mulder said, and her big brown eyes met his and widened. He crossed the room and pulled the hassock over close to Scully's chair. "I'm glad you're back."

"Me too," Melissa said emphatically. "I was just telling Mom and Dad that I wanted to come back, and I cried, and he cried too, and let me come back."

"She says he drove her up in a big black car and let her out in front. The neighbors verify that they saw the car. No plates." Scully's voice dropped lower. "Everybody's giving different descriptions of the driver."

Mulder nodded, unsurprised.

"Can you tell Agent Mulder about the man, Mel?" Lauter asked. Melissa nodded, curls bouncing, and slurped chocolate ice cream.

"He looked like Grandpa," she said positively. Gilbert Lauter's face went pale, and he looked at Mulder and Scully for reassurance. Mulder kept watching the girl.

"Looked like, but wasn't?" he asked. She nodded again.

"Yeah, he wasn't. And later he looked like Mr. Jessup, the dog man."

"The vet," Emily said helpfully. "He treats our dog."

"The dog man," Melissa agreed. "And later he looked like Miss Parker at school."

It didn't seem impossible to a child at all. Scary, maybe. Not impossible.

"Did he put makeup on, like an actor?" Scully asked. Melissa shook her head.

"Nope. He just changed his face, and he got taller and thinner and stuff." She frowned at Scully's expression. "Well, he did. I saw him. When he came to get me he looked like Dad and then he looked like Grandpa. He told me it was so people wouldn't find him. He wanted me to travel with him, but I said I didn't want to, and he told me he'd talk to my Mom and Dad because they'd be scared. After he did, I cried again, and he did too. Today he said he was going to travel with somebody else instead, and I could go home."

The temperature in the room dropped perceptibly; Mulder saw Scully's expression change, saw the dawning horror in the Lauters' eyes. Melissa pressed closer against her father's chest, and he put both arms around her.

"Did he say who he was going to travel with, Melissa?" Scully asked. Melissa shook her head. "Did you see him with anybody else? Watching anybody else? Did he mention anybody else at all?"

"He watched you," Melissa said, and pointed unerringly at Mulder. He sat upright; Scully had the strangest look on her face, surprise and suspicion and something else. "He kept calling you Fox."
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The streets had turned into ice by the time the circus at the Lauter house had folded its tents; Scully had remained businesslike and directed the Sheriff to start fielding his deputies. The description of who they were looking for remained deliberately vague. Melissa's dead Grandpa? Her teacher? Mulder wasn't sure he bought the whole story himself, but he had to hand it to Scully, she was able to work around the crazy edges and get the job done -- and do it around Warner's increasingly hostile attitude.

The quiet haven of the rental car felt like paradise, and Mulder flipped the heater on high and let the car idle while Scully strapped herself in the passenger seat.

"You going to tell me why you're angry?" he asked, and saw her fingers stop in the process of fiddling with the seatbelt.

"I'm not angry."

"Yes, you are. The girl's alive and safe, Scully. What's the problem?"

"You." There it was, out in the open, a hard tight tone to her voice that he hadn't heard before. He put his arm over the headrest and turned to face her; the snow made a moving white curtain behind her head, and he let himself notice the way the setting sunlight made her hair spark gold and red. There wasn't much about Scully that wasn't attractive; he'd long ago admitted that. She was beautiful, intelligent, strong, and had more nerve than anybody he'd ever met.

And despite all that, sometimes she was a royal pain in the ass.

"What did I do?" he asked. Her cheeks were flushed, and it wasn't the cold.

"You didn't tell me about the Kerry Jones abduction in 1974. I found it in a file search. Mulder, Jesus, you were a critical witness and you didn't even tell me about it. Why not?"

Well, that was a good question. He wished he had a good answer.

"I don't know," he said, and held up his hand to stop the rush of words he was sure would follow. "Look, I can't tell you what I was thinking except that I didn't have any reason to believe -- and still don't believe -- that the disappearance of Kerry Jones had anything to do with Melissa Lauter's case. Yes, I was here. Yes, Kerry was my friend. Yes, he disappeared. But apart from that, there was nothing to tell. Nothing was ever solved. He just vanished."

She must have heard the sincerity in his voice, because a little of the hardness went out of her dark blue eyes.

"You must have a theory," she said. He smiled.

"I always have a theory. I figured Kerry's dad killed him. He beat Kerry all the time. I thought that it just got out of hand, and Kerry died, and his dad hid the body and we never found it." To his surprise, Mulder discovered a cold place in his stomach; he'd thought he was long over the grief, but it came back at the strangest times. "He was a good kid, and he was my only friend here. I hated this town for letting him die. I even hated my own grandparents for that, because they all knew what kind of hell he had at home, and nobody did anything. It was strange, coming back here after all that. Everything I hated was gone. The people were gone. The buildings were gone. It was like I'd lost sixteen years somewhere."

Scully turned to look out the front window at a swirling whirlwind of snow, a distant orange ball of sun almost lost in it.

"You still should have told me," she said. He nodded. "Warner tried to make me think you did it. I got a little angry with him."

It was her way of apologizing. He accepted it without comment and turned forward. The car lurched left on the ice as he eased out onto the street, and he steered it carefully back to the center. Scully crossed her arms over her chest and stared straight ahead into the setting sun. He couldn't tell what she was thinking.

"The team should be able to fly in tomorrow, from the weather report. The storm'll blow out of here by morning."

She nodded, leaned her head against the seat and closed her eyes.

"Dinner?" he asked, and it surprised him. She didn't open her eyes. "I'll buy."

Her lips twitched and almost escaped into a smile. "Sounds like a date."

It did. He turned his attention back to the road and pretended not to have heard.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

"They're eating, sir."

A brief silence. The man crouched in the shadows and watched the targets through the plate glass window; it wouldn't be any trick at all from this distance. Fish in a barrel. They'd ordered spaghetti; he watched through binoculars he hardly needed as the woman talked and ate. She moved economically, gracefully. She had a nice face, he thought. Capable. Sexy.

"Yes, sir, I understand. The target is public, sir. I'll wait."

He turned the radio off and secured it. His breath came out white and shredded away in the wind. He was past feeling the cold, but his fingers were numb and stiff, and he put his gloved hands in his pockets to warm them. Inside, the targets laughed at something, and the woman gestured with her fork. No, not targets. Target. The target was male, he had to remember that, the man only. Young, serious-looking. A difficult target because of the politics.

Pity. He wanted the woman. He liked women.

He crouched in the shadows with his rifle leaning against his leg, and waited for a target of opportunity. He could always say she got in the way.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The hotel had ESPN, at least; Mulder settled down on the bed, legs crossed, and read through the printout of Kerry Jones' abduction file while two hockey teams tried to conduct a game in between brawls. The print was small, and his eyes were tired, and he more than once he had to stop because the memories came too strongly.

The second week of his summer visit, Mulder had been jumped by two bullies. Kerry had been passing by, a thin blond kid, and one of the bullies had jumped on him, too. Kerry's bruises hadn't all come from the fight. The doctor hadn't said much about them. Neither had Kerry.

A rare summer of friendship, two misfits with dreams of the stars and the future. And then, by the end of the summer, Kerry was gone. No college for Kerry, no brilliant career, nothing but a deep grave and slow decomposition. And a friend who didn't forget.

Mulder closed the file and stared sightlessly at the TV for a while, then switched it off and grabbed his coat. As he left he passed Scully's closed door and started to knock, but thought better of it, just touched the door with his fingertips instead and kept walking.

As he turned the corner, he ran into her head-on. She was coatless, shivering, blue with cold. He grabbed her arm and hustled her into the deserted lobby where the heaters worked overtime to keep the chill to a thin ankle-deep wave.

She looked terrible, and she wouldn't meet his eyes.

"Where's your coat?" he asked, and she shook her head. He took his off and wrapped it around her shoulders. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I -- I needed to talk to you."

He stared at her a minute; he'd never seen her quite so -- so wrong. She wouldn't look at him; her shoulders drooped -- Scully, saint of perfect posture, was slumping.

She looked scared to the bone. He kept fiddling with the coat he'd wrapped around her, trying to think of something to say.

"So talk," he said finally. She nodded, and her hair fell forward to hide her face; he pushed it back with a gesture he realized too late was probably intimate, but she didn't draw back. "Did somebody hurt you?"

Well, that was graceful, his logical self chided, but it was a little voice, because logic didn't have much to do with what he was feeling at the moment. Scully looked shattered. He'd seen pain in her eyes before, but never this -- desolation. He wanted to hold her and knew it was the wrong thing to do, absolutely wrong.

"Do you know me?" she asked. He felt his forehead muscles tense and fought the frown back.

"Scully?"

"No! No! Don't you know me? Please, Fox, say you know me! Please!"

Scully's head came up, and her eyes searched his face. There were tears in them -- Scully, who didn't cry. Who could take a punch like a prizefighter.

This was wrong, all wrong.

"Dana -- " he said slowly, and she shook her head violently in a storm of auburn hair. Her eyes stayed fixed on his.

"Not Dana," she whispered.

Her eyes changed, blue fading, turning lighter and colder and luminous. They were not human eyes.

"Not," she said again.

Mulder couldn't move, couldn't speak. He remembered the sensation with a vivid sense of panic; he'd felt the same paralysis as someone, something took his sister away in the dark. He fought to get a sound out, and succeeded. Or was allowed.

"Who?" he whispered. Scully's face wavered and steadied again.

"You know," she said. "They took me away and changed me. It hurt at first, but now it's not so bad. I do things for them. Good things, sometimes. I'm afraid -- I shouldn't have let the little girl go but I couldn't help it, she was crying and I couldn't help it. I need -- I need -- "

For a terrible, disorienting second, he thought he was looking into his sister's eyes, and then he knew. Knew.

"Kerry," he whispered. "Oh my God."

"Sorry," Scully said again, and swallowed back tears. "I didn't want to take her, I wanted to stay here. I wanted to come home. Only I can't remember where home is, who I am -- all I know is I'm so alone, and they won't let me stay now, and I'll be alone. I need her."

"Who?" Mulder asked; the question came out bruised and painful.

"You know," she said again, and stepped away. Mulder's hands fell to his sides, and his coat slipped off of Scully's shoulders and puddled at her feet. No. Not her. Not Scully.

Kerry turned and pushed the lobby door open again and was gone into the cold. Mulder stumbled forward and got his hand on the chilled aluminum push bar before his knees collapsed. A desk clerk screamed, and he fought to get to his knees against an overwhelming weight.

"No," he whispered. "Not Scully."

Then he fell.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scully finished typing her report on the laptop and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. The lids felt grainy and swollen; she forced herself to scroll back up to the top of the last paragraph she'd written.

"Pending the autopsy results, there is nothing to link the deceased deputy to this case, except coincidence and access. Though Sheriff Warner stands by his statement that the deputy was apparently on duty at the Lauter house two nights ago, neither Agent Mulder nor I can positively corroborate that statement. We observed two deputies, but did not examine them closely enough to make a determination as to their identities. The fact that the apparent Deputy Milvern left the Lauter home on a dinner break at the time of the abductor's telephone call is suggestive, but not conclusive. Melissa Lauter's statements about her abductor are too confused to be taken as reliable; it's possible that she was drugged during her captivity, and her memory inaccurate."

Well, she thought, it's logical. It's what they want.

She stared at the screen for a few more moments, thinking about the voice that sounded like Mulder's on the telephone.

She started typing.

"I do not support this theory, however. It is my belief that we have encountered something strange and perhaps unique, and until the abductor is in custody it will be impossible to verify or disprove any of the theories we have about his identity and methods."

"Chicken," she said aloud, and saved the document and turned the machine off. It powered down with a disappointed whine.

The clock said 10:19. She stored the computer in the carry bag and put her suitcase out on the bed, packing for checkout in the morning. They'd be leaving the second team in place; Mulder had gotten some message about urgent personal business back home, and the Bureau didn't need them here, anyway; the second team would be headed by Baskin and Robinson, and she didn't much relish the idea of being locked into an all-male investigation in Warnerland.

Her clothes made neat, efficient stacks in the suitcase. She left out a pair of pants, jacket and shirt for the morning, found her warmest nightgown, and in ten minutes was under the covers, hugging the blankets close against the smothering chill.

Funny how Melissa Lauter hadn't seemed scared of her abductor, even after she'd realized he wasn't anyone she knew. Was she just a kid with nerves of steel, or was the abductor not the monster Scully had pictured?

It was Baskin's problem, she reminded herself, and turned over on her side to watch the clock numbers change. 10:27. 10:30. 10:45.

She was acutely aware of Mulder's presence in the next room.

Somehow, she fell asleep without noticing. She wasn't sure what woke her -- some noise from a long way off, a voice, a whisper --

Someone was knocking on her door. She struggled out of bed, turned the light on and threw on her robe before checking out the window.

Mulder. She opened the door.

"Where did you go?" she asked, and he pushed past her, white-faced, shivering. "Where's your coat?"

"We've got to go. Now," he said, and she pulled her robe closer together. He seemed awkward, as if he didn't know where to look. "Hurry."

"Mulder -- "

"Now!" he yelled, and she flinched. "There's no time to explain."

She grabbed up her clothes and ducked into the bathroom; through the closed door she heard him pacing restlessly as she struggled into underwear and shirt and pants; she stepped into her shoes and grabbed her coat, and before she could even put it on he grabbed her elbow and towed her toward the door. She broke free long enough to grab her key and shut the door behind her, and then he was running, almost dragging her.

"Mulder!" she shouted, and yanked him to a sliding halt. "Where are we going?"

He jerked her into movement again, just as she heard a snap of sound and the wall next to her head exploded with a puff of dust and bricks. Bullet. They were taking fire. Jesus, she'd left her gun in the room. Did he have one? He hadn't drawn it if he did -- she kept up with him, running now, and dived for the cover of the rental car as the rifle snapped at them again. She eased open the driver's side and dug for the keys in her coat pocket.

Mulder slid in the passenger side, keeping low. She started the car and slammed it into reverse, nearly taking the bumper off of a Chevy parked next to them. She didn't hear the next shot, but the back window exploded in a web of cracks.

She kept it floored until they were on Main, heading away from the parking lot. No cars turning in behind them, but she was having trouble breathing, and her pulse was pounding hard enough to make her sick.

"We're okay," she said, and looked over at Mulder. He bent forward, head almost to his chest. "Mulder! Fox, are you all right?"

"All right," he said, and looked up. There were tears in his eyes and on his face. "I'm sorry about this."

She stared at him and almost totaled the car when she forgot about the ice and tried to slam the brakes on. The car skidded right; she wrestled the wheel and got it straight again, and by the time she looked at Mulder again he'd wiped his eyes and seemed -- better.

"Where are we going?" she asked, and swallowed hard. He pointed to her left.

The gravel road. Oh, God.

Two miles down, he signaled for her to turn onto a path barely big enough for the car; in another minute, it disappeared into a thick solid wall of trees. She braked and waited while the engine chugged and the headlights painted the trees in two-dimensional white and gray.

"Let's go," he said; she reached past him and slammed his door shut when he tried to open it.

"No! No, you tell me what's happening, Mulder, or I swear -- "

She lost her voice.

Mulder's eyes were dark brown, not blue -- but now they were blue, pale in the dashboard lights. Glowing.

"Not Mulder," he said, and reached out to trace her cheekbone with one finger. "I need you to come with me, Dana. Please. You don't know what it's like to be alone all this time, not knowing who you are, who you were -- please, come with me. I need you."

There was nothing supernatural about his touch; he felt like Mulder, looked like Mulder, sounded like Mulder.

Except for the eyes, already fading to brown.

She found that she couldn't move, when she tried.

"I can be Mulder, if you want," he said, and she wanted to scream but the sound locked in her throat. "I can be anyone. Anyone at all."

"No," she whispered. His hand slid down to her neck, warm fingertips stroking.

"I won't hurt you, Dana. You're so beautiful. I just want you to come with me."

She couldn't turn her head, but heard the pop as his door opened, felt a rush of winter along her right side. Footsteps crunched around the back of the car, and her door opened.

Fingers wrapped around her arm and pulled her out. She moved with him, unable to stop. He led her into the trees, their shadows looming ahead, the lights from the car going farther and farther until darkness closed around her. There was nothing else in the world but the cold, and the dark, and him pulling her along like a toy.

When he let her go, she collapsed face down on icy leaves, and gasped in breaths that tasted of moldy soil. It took a minute for any kind of strength to return, and when it did she found she could sit up, but not stand.

They were in a clearing the size of a football field. Mulder -- or not -- stood about ten feet away, looking up.

Looking up. She closed her eyes as she realized, at last, what it all meant.

Traveling.

Going away.

"I'm not going with you," she said, and fought to keep her voice low and calm. "Whoever you are."

"I'm Fox Mulder."

"You're not -- " She stopped in the middle of a raw shout and breathed in knives of cold. Her voice resisted her efforts to level it, but she tried again. "You're not Mulder."

"I can be. I was Dad to the others, or Mom, or Grandpa, because they were just kids. I can be Fox for you, Dana. I like you." He looked down at her, frowning, as if he'd realized something. "I like you. Me."

Where was Mulder? Lying in a ditch somewhere, like Fred Milvern?

"I'm not going," she repeated. He kept looking at her.

"I need you," he said, and returned his attention to the stars.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

"One of my deputies got 'em headed up Long Road at about sixty," Sheriff Warner said, and hesitated as he started to close Mulder's passenger-side door. "Hey, you okay?"

"Let's go." Mulder stared straight ahead. Warner came around to the driver's side and eased the squad car out onto the ice, made the turn to Main Street. "How long ago?"

"About five minutes, maybe less. He recognized Scully and let it go." Warner's eyes flicked over toward him. "Thought he recognized you, too."

"He did. What would you say if I told you that Kerry Jones didn't die, Sheriff?"

Warner smiled.

"I've heard about enough ghost stories for one day, Agent Mulder. Let's go get your partner." He paused and straightened the car out of a fishtail. "I've got every man rolling looking for that shooter, but he could be anywhere."

"And anyone," Mulder said, and braced himself against the dashboard as they turned onto the gravel road.

The glow of light in the trees was on Mulder's side, and for a frozen second he thought they were too late, but then the light resolved into halogen headlights, pointing into the woods. Warner made the turn without waiting for directions; he pulled to a halt behind a black Jeep, which was parked behind the FBI rental car. The doors were open, and the lights still on.

"Goddamn convention," Warner muttered, radioed their position and reached under the dashboard to get his shotgun. "No need to wait for backup, that's Dupree's Jeep. After you."

Mulder followed the headlights into the woods.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Soon," the man promised, and Scully kept her head bowed as she gathered her strength. It would have to be one attempt; she was too weak for more.

"Fox?" she asked, and heard the scrape of his boots as he turned. "It's so cold. I'm so cold."

"Not long now," he said, and reached down to smooth her hair away from her face. "You'll be warm soon, I promise."

She came up out of her crouch, pistoned by her legs, and knocked him back sprawling. Her legs felt numb, but she scrambled up and started running for the tree line. It seemed so far, and her legs so weak -- she forced the muscles to lift, release, lift again. Something in the trees. Someone watching her.

A light overhead, brilliant, cold light. Don't look, something whispered, and she kept her eyes straight ahead. The grass looked white. Her shadow stretched out in front of her, luminous cold blue. God, please, help me.

A man stepped out of the trees; she had a brief glimpse of his face, set hard, and glint of the rifle as he lifted it. The barrel pointed straight at her.

She slowed, and stopped. The rifleman kept his bead on her. She knew him -- one of the deputies, the one who'd smiled at her in the Lauter house. Why was he --

"Scully!" Mulder ran toward her, bathed in the cold white light. "Get down!"

Two more men running out of the trees toward her -- Sheriff Warner came to a skidding stop and brought up a shotgun, aiming up at whatever was above them. Aiming at the light.

Did he see the deputy? Did anyone?

Mulder was coming at a dead run.

Two Mulders, identical.

One of them threw himself on top of her just as the rifle fired; she felt the impact of the slug, felt his muscles convulse.

A shotgun roared.

Darkness, suddenly, as if a floodlight had been smashed; Scully lay trapped beneath Mulder and felt his chest heaving, one breath, two, one more.

Something warm trickled down her cheek.

"Fox?" she cried.

It seemed to take forever for him to speak.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, and her heart lurched so painfully that she felt the shock like lightning. She crawled out from under him and sat up, gasping, choking back tears.

He breathed in once more, and out.

He was just a kid, sixteen years old at most, lost in clothes too big for him. His eyes were open and blue and pure in the moonlight.

Mulder skidded to a stop and went to one knee, searching for a pulse in the boy's neck. Scully reached over and put her hand on top of his, squeezing gently, and saw his shoulders sag as he admitted the truth.

They sat is silence for a while, the cold wind whipping over them and drawing tears from Scully's eyes.

"He was lost," Mulder finally said, so softly she hardly heard him. "And alone."

Scully finally had the courage to look up.

There was nothing in the sky but cold glittering stars. Nothing.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The plane hit turbulence, and the laptop rocked back and forth on Scully's thighs. She steadied it and waited until her stomach was close to anatomically correct, then resumed typing.

"I have no answer to the question of what happened to Kerry Jones on that summer night in 1974, or to where he was since then. I can only report what I saw, and what I saw was a human being capable of assuming any form or voice he wished. I also saw a human being stripped of his very identity, the things that made him Kerry Jones. As to the light that appeared above us, I will not speculate. But there was a light."

She stared hard at the blinking cursor.

"Deputy Dupree's attempt on my life -- or on Mulder's -- remains a mystery. There is, in fact, such a lack of information that I can only conclude that his tracks have been covered professionally, with the resources and complicity of at least one government agency."

She read it, scrolled back up to the last two paragraphs, and deleted them.

"What are you going to say?" Mulder asked; she hadn't thought he was paying attention. He was reading the Washington paper.

"The truth," she said. He looked over at her, and smiled.

"Do you know what the truth is?" he asked, and she had to look away.

She remembered his voice asking her, wistfully, are you sure you know who I am?

Below, the lights of the city wheeled like a constellation.

"Yes," she said, and turned back to stare directly into his eyes. "I know."

### end ###