The woman with the long shining hair leaned into Skinner and touched her lips to his. In heels, she was almost as tall as he was, and it was no effort for him to allow himself to be kissed. Her invitation was clear, but not aggressive. She swayed back a little, and he instinctively swayed forward. Her breasts pressed against his chest, full and soft.

There was a small, bemused smile on his face as he gazed down into her warm brown eyes.

"Do you really have to go?" she asked.

A willing companion for the night. A hedge against loneliness. A haven to rest in to avoid the aftermath of Dana Scully. Hm. "I can't miss my plane," he told her. "I have to be at work in the morning." Her eyes were disappointed, though she tried to smile so he wouldn't feel guilty. A considerate woman. Probably dynamite in bed, too. Idiot.

"Thanks for dinner," he said. "And for all the rest."

The rest had been a long discussion of his financial standing, an examination of his income tax return, a tedious study of his receipts for the past fiscal year and a review of his IRAs and CDs and various retirement holdings.

Now, standing at the door of Sita Ortega's apartment, his briefcase in one hand and his other hand resting on her trim waist, Skinner felt an odd sort of satisfaction in saying no. It was good to be wanted. It was good to have an option. And he liked tall women, liked all that long silky black hair, liked the fact that she really liked him and wasn't just desperate for some man to hop in the sack with.

She raised her face again, and he kissed her chastely, sweetly, the way someone had kissed him goodbye not too long ago.

Then he was down the stairs and into his rental car, driving back to the motel.

He did not particularly miss Scully. He had a very good reason for staying over one more night in Houston that had nothing to do with her. As it happened, his accountant had moved down here after her divorce, and she still had all his records. She had agreed to dinner and an evening of discussing his finances while he killed time waiting for his flight. Which, as it turned out, was tomorrow morning. The truth was, he was tired and ready to go home. Ready for things to get back to normal. It would be good to see Scully again, but from now on it would always be in the context of Scully and Mulder, partners. Probably it wouldn't be a good idea to be alone with her for awhile. He only trusted this mellow mood up to a point. If she were to accidentally brush up against him, for example, or touch his hand, or look at him too long with those impossibly blue eyes...

But some fundamental ache had been soothed in him, some longing satisfied. While it would have been nice to sleep with Sita, taking advantage of her sweetness would have been a cold lie, leading her to believe he was interested in a relationship, when in fact he was not. Well...not with her. Smiling broadly to himself, he thought how interesting things would become if he showed up at the next Bureau function with Sita on his arm. Would Scully be jealous?

His smile faded as he realized how much it mattered to him. He didn't mind not being able to sleep with her, not so much now. What mattered was that she would be there in his life, every day, five days a week, for years to come. He could keep an eye on her, talk to her, watch over her. The future had a mellow golden haze to it, like an apple-sweet October afternoon.

Long years of motor skills took over as he began to dream with his eyes open. In the best of all possible worlds, he would be driving home right now, and Scully would be back at his apartment, waiting for him, curled up in bed asleep, probably. He glanced at his watch. Well, maybe watching Letterman. But she would be there, safe within the charmed circle of a gold ring, and he would sleep beside her all night. And if when he lay down beside her after a quick shower, she were to turn to him and murmur some sleepy words against his skin, well, who was he to deny her satisfaction?

Not that he had even a shred of hope that this would ever really happen.

He ran his thumb back and forth against the soft leather cover of the steering wheel dreamily, thinking Walter, Walter, Walter. Since when did you get to be such a good liar?

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

Scully moved her fingers on the steering wheel uncomfortably, hampered by the handcuffs. "I don't know exactly where the pawn shop is," she said.

Beside her, Roger Young put his gun in his jacket pocket and said, "You've been there?"

"Yes. Just a few hours ago. Don't you remember?"

"Don't try to fuck with my head, Scully."

She met his eyes, searching them for signs of madness. He was an angry man, but not a crazy one. She said, "I was in Houston with two branch agents, Seagram and Danson. They've had Issie's under observation for some time. Their files are there," she gestured with her chin, "In the back seat. I think it was on Main."

She realized with a twinge of anxiety that her memories of that afternoon were complicated and hazy. The blow to the head wouldn't explain it. There was something about Issie's. Maybe a nerve gas o f some type. Danson had looked positively green.

She went on: "We went there, and went in to question the owner. Danson left, and I heard a shot. I went outside and saw he'd been shot, and the Cadillac tried to run down Seagram, I think. Anyway, I took the car and went after Omar and his partner. And you know the rest."

Young shook his head. "Scully, I've been following you since you got to Houston and checked into that flea bag motel with your partner. He's the one that went to find Issie's, in Victoria. And he should have been back by now. What did he find?"

"I don't know."

He leaned over to her, and she winced. "I'm telling you, Roger, I don't know. I haven't been able to get in touch with him myself."

"You and Walter Skinner didn't seem to be looking too damn hard for him last night."

Scully's blood seemed to run backwards in her veins. Oh no. God, no.

But Young had only leaned over to start the car, since her hands wouldn't reach the ignition and still hold the wheel.

"Drive," he ordered, and she pulled away out of the parking space and headed up the ramp. Young said, "The guy I executed, they called him the Eraser. He'd have wiped Seagram and Danson both out of existence if you hadn't been there."

Scully couldn't resist asking. "You were right there, weren't you, Roger?" "I had parked the Jeep just between those two buildings and the next complex. I couldn't figure out what you three were doing, looking around those abandoned warehouses."

"But...you didn't see the pawn shop?"

"There was no shop there. Don't bullshit me. I'm not so bad at making people disappear myself."

She risked a glance at him. "You're the one who erased the records at the Bureau?"

"I had to. Sooner or later Antoine Baxter would be traced back to me, unless I threw a handful of dust in everyone's eyes. I had to get his trust, so I could find out how he was involved with the girls. He was the procurer, actually." She swallowed hard. "Did you kill Rupert Smith?"

"Hell, no! You might think I'm a monster for taking out those two lowlife pieces of shit back there, but I'd never kill someone who hadn't done anything to deserve it."

They drove in silence for awhile. Scully turned the headlights on against the encroaching darkness.

She said, "You know, Roger, I don't get this. Why didn't you just tell Skinner what you were onto? Why didn't you just tell him your sister had been abducted and you needed Bureau resources to find the people who did it?" (And where would Skinner have heard THAT before?) Young sighed and pointed for her to turn left. "First of all," he said, "Tanya isn't my sister. She's my daughter."

"Your--?"

"I didn't know myself until a few months ago, when Liz Ann disappeared and I started looking into it. Before all this started." He gave a long,unspeakably weary sigh. "Back when I was still relatively unaware of the kinds of filthy bastards there are in this world."

The freeway appeared ahead. "Go on," Young said. "Head south on 59."

She pulled onto the ramp smoothly and entered the flow of traffic like a leaf caught in a river current. A road sign told her she was going in the right direction, and she accelerated to match the pace of traffic. "Liz Ann is your sister," Scully prompted. "Yes?"

He shrugged. "We have the same father. That's all, really, I want to find her, too, of course. Who knew she and Tanya would end up at the same school together? The people who adopted Tanya turned out to be as money-crazy and cold hearted as my father. They shipped her off to school and out of their hair the minute they could, just like my old man. Who, I just learned this week, gave them the money to send her there. He must have known all along where she was, all these years I've been looking for her."

"Known what, Roger?"

"Where she was. Do you know I've never even laid eyes on her?" Scully looked at him. His eyes were tortured, and her own feelings softened for a moment. "I'm sorry, Roger."

"My own mother died in 1982. She would never have let Tanya go. She was so full of love. But she had a problem with alchohol. Ended up in an institution. Not a cute little Betty Ford place, but the kind with the soft restraints. She died there."

"Roger..."

He shrugged. "No biggie. Except she wasn't there to help. She knew about Tanya, and she loved her like crazy when Tanya was a baby. But my father wouldn't let her tell me. And then she died, and that was the end of my trail for all these years." Scully thought of a thousand questions to ask, but couldn't decide where to begin. Young leaned towards her again, scowling at the lit panel of the dashboard. "We're low on gas," he said.

Traffic had slowed for a wreck, and Scully saw a police officer ahead, on foot, waving a flashlight to get cars to exit on the ramp. Young said, "Go ahead and get on the service road here. We'll be out of the city limits in a few mintes anyway. Follow it until you come to a big service station. Not one of those convenience stores, but a full service."

The traffic on the feeder was backed up to a crawl, and Scully was beginning to wonder if she could get out of the car and make a run for it. Not likely, though she kept an eye out for the opportunity. Young kept the revolver in his left pocket, but when he had leaned over to look at the dashboard she had seen another gun in his holster, in a Sam Brown sling, something with the squared off butt of an automatic. She remembered how casually he had killed the man in the street, and was fairly sure he wouldn't hesitate to kill her.

Surely the police must be out looking for them by now. Seagram must have gotten Danson to a hospital, reported the Taurus license plates and asked for back up in the pursuit. The FBI must be out looking for them, and the fact that there was a dead man in the road in a residential neighborhood had surely raised some eyebrows. Help had to be on the way.

Her eyes searched the road as they crept along. A man passed them on the right, riding a bicycle on the shoulder of the road, carrying a huge plastic trash bag full of crushed aluminum cans. Scully's gaze followed him idly as he approached the light, slowed to a stop, put his foot down to balance the bike...

And was passed by a tall lanky figure walking along the sidewalk in the opposite direction.

Scully did a double take. "Mulder!" she cried.

He looked tired and disheveled, his hair sticking up even more than usual. He had his hands in his pockets, walking along staring at the ground. Scully pressed the heels of her bound hands down on the horn as hard as she could.

"Quit that!" Young slapped her hands away, but she struggled to hang on for as long as she could, making as much noise as possible. Then Young leaned back and pushed the revolver hard under her arm, into her side, and she stopped.

But she'd gotten Mulder's attention. He stood staring at them.

"Ah, shit," Young said. He rolled his window down as Mulder trotted across the lane of traffic to the car. When he was even with the window, Mulder saw the gun. Young said, "If you don't want me to blow the shit out of your partner here, get in and don't try anything."

Mulder opened the back door and slid into the car, and Scully pulled up to close the gap between the Taurus and the next car in line.

The metal barrel of the gun hurt her side, and Young might just as easily turn to Mulder and shoot him in the head the way he'd shot Omar's partner, and traffic was bad and it had been a long, long day. But Scully could not help the wide smile from stretching her lips back as far as they would go when she looked in the rear view mirror and saw Mulder, open mouthed, looking from one of them to the other.

He said, "You okay, Scully?"

"I'm fine. How are you?"

"You wouldn't believe the last couple of days I've had," he told her.

"Been kinda busy myself."

"Yeah, you look like you've been tied up." His eyes flicked from her handcuffed wrists to Roger Young. Scully could tell by the way his eyes narrowed and then widened that he had just recognized the other agent. "So, Roger," he said. "Been awhile. Heard you were dead. Feeling better, I see."

"Where the hell did you come from?"

"Just hitchin' around the countryside, having a close up look at Texas," Mulder said. To Scully, he said, "Hey, Scully, did you know that mockingbirds sing at night?"

"Sure," she said. "When I was a little girl, we--"

"Shut UP!" Young snapped.

The partners fell silent. A brilliantly lit gas station ahead offered full service lanes, and Young said, "Pull in there."

Scully complied. When she stopped by a pump and turned off the engine, Young said, "Agent Scully will tell you I'm not playing around, Mulder. If you make one wrong move, I'll kill both of you. Now listen closely to me. When the guy comes over, Scully, you tell him to fill up the tank, and pay him with cash."

He fished some bills out of his breast pocket, looked at them, and dropped them on Scully's lap. "Mulder, I want you to get out of the car on that side and come around here. I'm going to get in the back seat, and then you come around and get in the front seat. Got it?"

"Got it."

The switch was made before the attendant came over. He filled their tank with gas, cleaned the windshield, and took the money from Scully's hand, looking down at the handcuffs on her wrist. She gave him a wide eyed look for help, and he grinned and winked at her. "Been there, done that," he said.

He waved them a cheerful goodbye as they pulled out of the station.

Scully sighed. "I really, really hate Texas," she said.

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

Houston, Texas
Lone Star Motel, 10:30PM

The motel rooms, his and hers, were dark. Skinner had to use his official I.D. and some attitude to get the key to Mulder's room from the night manager. When he went inside he could feel the emptiness even before he turned on the light. Mulder had not been back here.

Nor had Scully. Impatient, he had popped the lock on her door with his pocketknife, and gone inside. For a few minutes he stood breathing in her scent, which seemed to permeate the very walls. High, light, distinctive. Spice. But overlaid with something else now, something like flowers. Scully's scent was elusive, more easily detected breathing in than breathing out, like the aftertaste of a light wine. Maybe the flower smell was some new makeup, or motel soap. For some reason, it made him feel uneasy.

It was ten thirty at night. Where the hell was she?

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

Houston, Texas
Highway 59, South

"Where the hell were you?" Young asked.

"I'm not sure. Not too far out of Houston, I think. Some place near a town called Rosenburg. I started walking, looking for a gas station to call a cab, and a trucker gave me a ride. He let me off when I saw that big station, and I was going to go inside and call a cab to take me back to the motel."

"I thought you'd gone to Issie's."

Mulder said cryptically, "Issie's is the kind of place that sort of has to WANT to be found."

"I don't follow you. Is it in Houston or is it in Victoria?"

"I've told you and told you," Scully said. "It's in Houston."

"Pull over," Young ordered.

Scully took the next exit and rode the feeder until they came to a road that was under construction. She pulled into an empty area by a set of sawhorses and orange cones, and turned off the engine.

For a long moment she and Mulder looked at each other. She wanted to touch him, to make some kind of physical contact, and begged for it with her eyes. But he stayed on his side of the car, only looking at her with a shadowed, unreadable expression.

She felt her heart beating so loudly she was sure he could hear it: thump thump thump thump.

Young said, "I want to go to Issie's."

"I'm not sure I can find it again," she told him.

Mulder said, "When were YOU there?"

"This afternoon. I--"

Young interrupted, sounding less hostile than puzzled. "I was right behind you, Scully. I've been one step behind you since you got to Houston. I even saw Omar and Brad grab you after you left your motel."

"Thanks for the help," she said.

"I was right there. I wanted to see where they were taking you."

"And yet I ended up in the hospital. Better off than Danson, I'm sure, but still."

Mulder swung his head up, concerned eyes searching for injuries. "Were you hurt?"

She made a little self-deprecating gesture. "Banged around a little, you might say. Which you'd know, if you'd ever answered your phone."

"Damn thing was useless the minute I left town."

"They stole mine," she said.

"Who stole it?"

"Omar and --was it Brad? Or should I call him Mr. Eraser?"

Young didn't look amused. "So you left the hospital and then the next morning I see you going off with those two agents. But all you did was walk around with them."

"We went to Issie's, Roger. I'm telling you."

"Look," he said, "I just saw Danson running, and heard the shot. Brad was hanging out the window with the Uzi."

Mulder echoed, "Uzi?" but they both ignored him.

"That's right," Scully said. "He shot Danson and tried to run down Seagram and then I went after them."

"We've established all that. What I'm saying is that you weren't at any fucking pawn shop!"

"Why don't we just go back there and see?" Mulder suggested.

"By now the investigative team should be done," Young said. "We might be able to check it out."

"The best thing you can do at this point is give yourself up, Roger," Scully said.. "They'll be looking for us. The police, the FBI. Everyone."

Young only looked thoughtful. "You'd think so, wouldn't you?"

click here for 15b/16

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws