Disclaimers, etc. w/ first part.

7/12

Samantha would've been fifteen the year she was quietly and legally declared dead by the state of Massachusetts. I wasn't even in the States when it happened, and Mom received a formally impersonal letter from Chilmarc City Hall saying that she could pick up those now obsolete records if she wanted. I'm not even sure what those records entailed, just that I didn't want to see them.

Mom leafed through a poetry compilation, fancying that she would buy a headstone for a small memorial ceremony and have it engraved. I mumbled about exams, and Dad said worse things in a tone louder than a mumble. Mom put the book away. Thanksgiving ended, I caught the first flight out and hit English soil running.

At the time, I had no idea how she felt. Now I wished I'd stayed home a little while longer. But if Mom was used to anything by now, it was being abandoned.

I stood for a moment among the houses, with the horrible sensation that I didn't know what I was doing. Krycek had found the perfect cover in a neighborhood where all the houses looked the same, where the roads didn't vary. There was another tree line three streets away from Madeline Roark's back yard, but why would he run for those when the trees behind Pam Wyeth's provided equal cover and a slighter chance of being witnessed? Four people watching the man, off and on, and one woman with the surveillance capabilities of Dulles airport, and we'd *lost* him. Both of them.

"Mulder?"

I followed the sound of Scully's voice as she gasped, pace quickening. "You're bleeding!"

I looked down. Blood stained my shirt in a straight line across my navel. "No, not mine. Hers. I leaned against the counter."

Scully's brow furrowed. "Her blood?"

"You didn't see the kitchen?"

"McGrath called and said I needed to get over here, that Madeline Roark was gone. I saw you first." She pulled the shirt away from my stomach and it peeled away from my skin. "How much blood?"

"A lot," I whispered dully. "All over the kitchen."

"Let's go look." She piloted me by the elbow towards the house. "Blood is a tricky thing to examine on sight. Maybe it looks worse than it is."

"Maybe it's worse than it looks."

"Krycek goes through all this trouble so he can take her out in the woods and kill her?" She argued. "I don't think so."

"A lot of blood," I said thickly.

"If he injured her, it was restraining wounds. Meaning she put up a fight. Or..."

I looked up when she didn't finish the sentence. "Or what?"

"Or they're defense wounds. Meaning it's Krycek's blood. Either way she put up a fight and didn't go quietly."

I stared disdainfully at the stain on my shirt, feeling the sudden urge to take a shower. "That just makes this more confusing. Someone would've seen something. *We* would've seen something."

"We haven't been here all day, Mulder, and most of the people living in this community haven't gotten home from work. Madeline was on a medical leave, like Pam."

"What do you mean we haven't been here all day? We went to talk to her, and we've had someone out here ever since."

"I mean -- " She stopped when we got to the backyard. "What if he was already inside the house?"

"Already inside?"

"Think about it, Mulder. Madeline's house is identical to Pam's. A garage, an attic, a basement and at least two large storage spaces. And Madeline doesn't have a camera on hers. That gives him more than a few places to be, and to wait until the right moment."

Inside the house, while we were talking to her. Inside the house while we were at the library straining our eyes over microfiche machines. Scully shivered a little inside her jacket and it occurred to me that I was cold. "We have to get an alert to airport security in --"

"Covered it. From Cheyenne to Des Moines." I drew the circle in my head. "Pam has a fax machine. I gave her the number and told her to send the composite with my number."

"Hopefully he didn't charter a private flight."

"So far he's gotten away by moving right in front of us. A private airfield provides no anonymity." I walked up to Madeline Roark's backyard.

"Mulder --" Scully called out.

The blaring of the motion alarm almost brought me to my knees, until Jonson raced around the corner, bag flying off his gun before he saw it was me and quickly dropped his aim.

"Turn it off!" I screamed above the blaring. Jonson dug through his pockets for a control similar to the one McGrath had been carrying earlier and the cacophony was blissfully over, the droning whine still tearing through me.

"Shit!" Jonson shoved his gun back in the bag. "I told you to call before you came in through the back!"

When? While I was in the kitchen trying not to step in blood? Like I'd *heard* him. I turned to Scully angrily. "That's why this makes no sense! He made one step out into this yard and we'd all know it!"

"Actually, no." McGrath stood with Jonson. "It's set up for outside the perimeter. If we set it up to just trigger when someone walked out of the house, it would go off if she tried to leave." He paused carefully. "And it's illegal as it is. If one of her neighbors came to visit her or something, we'd all be talking to that Captain right now."

"And Kersh," Scully added.

"There's no way you could've hooked up anything *inside* the house?" I asked, voice rising with my pulse.

Scully had my arm, as if she was prepared to yank me back with it any second. "There's no way they could've known --"

"Inside the house?" Jonson snorted. "You have no idea what you're talking about! I don't know about Nebraska, but in Washington, that's breaking and entering. I get charged and I lose every single one of my gun permits. I don't think you can afford to pay us unemployment."

Scully cut her hand in a succinct ceasefire. "Enough. We are all going to calm down." She included me in the reproving stare. "Now let's look at the kitchen."

*

Only a few patches of blood existed that were still wet enough to stain Scully's fingers. "Judging by the discoloration here, this blood was bled --" she met my eyes across the floor, where I crouched on the other side, farther away. "Fairly recently. I'd say a little over an hour ago."

An hour ago. What were we doing an hour ago? My mind was a haze of thick black, like a wad of cables all cross-connected. Think. Dammit, it shouldn't have been so difficult just to think. The window, yes. We were looking out the wrong window. I turned to Jonson and McGrath, standing awkwardly behind me. "An hour ago...when the two of you were over in the tree line playing soldiers."

"Now wait a fucking minute -- " Jonson growled, threateningly moving forward.

I stood too and McGrath put himself between us as he turned to me. "We never took our eyes off that house, Mulder."

"You're lying," I said through clenched teeth, wielding a few inches of height over him. "Because if you hadn't, someone would've seen him getting away from the house. But you weren't even worried about that." I shoved McGrath aside so that I was facing Jonson over his shoulder, "Because your precious alarm hadn't gone off. So you left your post and -- "

McGrath was pushing his way back. "At any one second, at least one pair of eyes was on that house -- "

Rage seemed to be clawing at the back of my eyes and I couldn't breathe. "Yeah, unless there was someone running out the back door with my sister bleeding and thrown over his -- "

"Stop it!" Scully screamed, a sound startling enough to silence us. Her fingers pressing into my arm were viced so tightly that I knew there would be a mark later and she pulled me away angrily. "This isn't a damn schoolyard! This is an FBI investigation."

I couldn't breathe, and I couldn't see.

"Do you understand?" Scully asked them, and I felt my knees give way as she turned towards me, her hold useless on my arm as the bloody linoleum rushed up. "Mulder? Mulder -- "

-------------------------------------------

One / Two / Three / Four / Five / Six / Seven /Eight / Nine / Ten / Eleven / Twelve ..

-------------------------------------------

Feedback

Back to Fanfic Index

Home