Mulder glanced at the clock--12:47--and back at the shadowed darkness of the ceiling.

Alex--she called him Alex.  It was weird to hear her say it, as if he were some average guy with an average life.  Strange, too, to realize that this girl who'd been a brush stroke on the canvas of his life from a month ago was no longer his in that proprietary sense that whatever makes up the scene around you seems yours--part of your backdrop. She was Krycek's now.

It would have been easy enough to invoke Stockholm syndrome, assume she'd been brainwashed by her time with him, except that she hadn't been a prisoner and anyway, would Krycek have bothered to lay on the charm while he was in that kind of pain?  Even if all he was looking for was a quick lay, it wouldn't explain why he'd put himself on the line to help her escape.  And arguing that she really didn't know who and what he was would have worked for just about any girl but this one.

It was a mystery, but not worth one staying awake for in the middle of the night. Krycek wasn't worth that kind of effort no matter what he did. Mulder rolled onto his side and slipped one leg out of the covers. The room was too warm.

And Diana: why was it not a surprise, looking back, that Smoky'd created yet another child with yet another woman? He seemed to spread his poison around that way. But what woman would choose to take him in? How would he have appeared that would have made so many women drop their defenses, to say nothing of their clothes? And at that time, that propriety-conscious period in society.

So Diana had grown up with the knowledge of the planned invasion. Or more likely he'd fed her on it, molding her into a convenient soldier the way he apparently had Krycek. Three hidden children: one he could hand over to the aliens--his due, like a bridge token--another to shape into personal revenge, and a final one to do his personal bidding. To say nothing of the public son he'd installed in the X-files office. Mulder smiled bitterly.  Jeffrey was so well-suited for a career as a wooden decoy.  Sometimes he almost felt sorry for the kid.  Almost.

Voices came from the living room, low and muffled. Curious, Mulder went to the door and opened it slightly. Tracy and Bethy sat side by side on the couch, heads close, talking quietly. Undoubtedly Tracy would see what was inside the girl--the trauma she'd been through, the things that filled her that she never put to words. They looked like sisters sitting there, an older and a younger, a blonde and a redhead, Tracy with a thin arm around the broad younger girl, allowing her to lean. Samantha had leaned, a forgotten fact that was suddenly clear and palpable again, the weight and feel of her, the warmth of the little squirming body. It was the right; she'd always pulled to the right side when he'd held her.

Mulder closed the door quietly and returned to the bed. Pushing the blanket away, he lay down and covered himself with just the sheet, and closed his eyes to find Scully behind them. She'd been just Dana back there in the cabin this morning--for a little while, anyway. No FBI, no chases, nobody tracking them, her fears about her mother temporarily hidden from view beyond the pull of their play. She deserved more chances to be that woman.

Do you suppose they take long-term reservations for that balcony we were on this morning?
                                                                                                                                            -lark for a nightingale

Raylene opened her eyes and stared at the softly shadowed ceiling. Her grandson's toys sat on a shelf beside the darkened window, tall shadows between them, illuminated by a small night-light. His teddy bear leaned against the shelf's end, tilted slightly.

FBI.

It had lain there ever since she'd left Barkers':  the nagging thought that the redheaded woman had looked familiar somehow, the idea scratching at the back of her mind like a hen determined to find more corn once the feed had been eaten. But it had taken opening that front door, seeing the woman exactly where she'd been the first time, to make the connection. Sand had been terrified, that hand-over-her-mouth, dear-god-my-mother's-going-to-blow-it look she did so well. The woman's--Annie's--eyes had nearly popped out of her head. She'd tried to be very cool at first, distant and professional, but how could she deny anything? It was obvious that she and Sandra knew each other well. More than that, that they were friends and confidantes.

It was almost too much to believe, like something straight out of a movie: Cy drugged and somehow talked into running down the Johnston boy. Then killed, crumpled and thrown away like a paper plate after a picnic. Shot and killed in cold blood with his little boy at his side--her daughter's little boy--her own grandson--while the whole town talked up Cy and what could've come over him to lead him to such an unspeakable act.

As if she hadn't joined right in with the rest of them. Poor Sandy must have been dying all this time.

So now there was more going on--hiding and investigations and the search for evidence. They hadn't offered a lot of details, but it was okay; people's lives were at risk--Annie the red-headed federal agent, her partner...even Sandy and Rita Johnston if this undercover thing were exposed. Hopefully once the dust had settled, the truth about Cy and Roddy could be brought to light. Hopefully they'd find out what that first investigation was supposed to uncover, too; it didn't sound so frivolous now. After all, everybody knew the rumors about the risks of working in the clean room. Everybody knew what had become of people like Bob Johnston and Walter Jenkins and Ron Connolly, Heather Barker's brother, though there were two camps--the mothers and grieving relatives, and then the ones who figured you should take your lumps, that if you work in the clean room, you don't whine. Joe was a no-whiner. You take the job, you do the work, you accept whatever risks go with it. You gonna sue the city because you tripped over a chink in the sidewalk where the cement got raised up, Raylene, when you shoulda been looking where you were walking? Sissies do that. That was Joe all over. He had a point about the sidewalk, but this other seemed different, something about intent, and wouldn't Joe fall right off his chair if he knew that his new mop-pusher was really an FBI agent on assignment, snooping around for evidence?

Not a word would pass her lips, though. It was no game. FBI and lives were at stake: Annie, who seemed to know her daughter so well, and that partner of hers, the one who kissed her as if he not only wanted but needed her, as if she were that valuable. As if he knew value when he saw it.

Raylene got up and went to the window. Down low one of Roddy's handprints showed softly on the glass. She stooped down and put her hand close, careful not to touch the surface.

"Brian?" She tucked the phone against her shoulder.

"You're up early, Maria."

"Just curious. You know me, always a sucker for a good mystery. Were you able to start that fingerprinting?"

"I managed to squeeze it in. You should have your results by mid-afternoon."

"I'll be there. Around three?"

"Three'll be fine." A pause. "You know, it's a good thing I'm doing this, Maria, because otherwise you'd be off somewhere else at three and I wouldn't see you at all." His voice was pleasant. Brian was always pleasant.

"You're making me feel guilty. No, I really do appreciate it, Brian. I know I get absorbed in my work. I'm very grateful that you put up with me. Very few people would; I know that."

"You interested in dinner out tonight? Or would you rather I fire up the barbecue?"

She smiled. "Barbecue sounds fine. Maybe I'll do a little trimming on those roses of yours. Shorts and no shoes on your lawn. Sounds wonderful."

"I'll be waiting."

"See you."

She took the phone from her shoulder, pushed the 'off' button and held the unit absently in her hand. He was more than she deserved. He knew she was married to her work and still he made time for her. Nobody was perfect; he had his own problems--an ex-wife he'd never seemed to get along with and two little girls he didn't know nearly as well as he should. And she hardly led him in the right direction. If a call came on the weekend asking Brian to take them to the zoo or someone's birthday celebration in the park, he'd look to her and she wouldn't tell him to go ahead and take advantage of the time with them. She'd say nothing and he'd make excuses--allergies acting up, a car torn down in the driveway that he was helping a neighbor with or an appointment that couldn't be rescheduled. And who should know better than she the value of time spent with a parent? But it seemed her due, too: quiet time for rejuvenation after the labor and frustration of research, important research that would be of untold benefit if it succeeded. And progress was definitely being made.

A pause and she shook her head. She nearly sounded like Spender himself, smug and self-important.

She climbed off the bed, set the phone on the base and went to the window. A nice morning, not too hot. An opportunity for a little work in the yard. The clematis were growing--blooming--and the small, new tendrils needed to be trained onto the wire framework that circled the oak tree's trunk. Two years of patient work had resulted in a spectacular cascade of blossoms, due reward for a job well done. Diligence, as usual, had paid off.

The doorbell rang.

Maria glanced at the clock beside the bed. 7:40. Odd for anyone to ring the bell. The townspeople had become accustomed to her desire for privacy except for little Mrs. Peltier who was always bringing something--small sweets or hand-quilted potholders or the occasional welcome cutting from some interesting plant in exchange for the opportunity to pry into her life. But no one rang this early--certainly not on a Saturday. She opened the closet door, took a thin robe from the hook on the inside and slipped it on. Smoothing both hands through her hair, she went to the front door. A tall, dark-haired woman stood outside.

Maria turned the knob and opened the door slightly. "Yes?"

"Dr. Vanek?"

"Yes."

The woman extended a hand formally, holding up a badge with the other. "I'm with the FBI. I have a few follow-up questions for you regarding the investigation we were doing a few weeks ago at the plant where you work."

Krycek came awake to sunlight flooding the room and the rapidly-dissolving sensation of lying in a bed set in the open air in the middle of a small valley. Not the valley he'd left the day before, though it had its similarities.  She...

He couldn't afford to think about her.  The only way he could protect her was to keep her out of his mind and stay focused Half a day until the old man got back and there was plenty to do. There was bound to be more of the Maggie Scully investigation to coordinate and he needed to pick up a toothbrush to put in Tracy's room. Then he should question himself the way the old man was bound to, refining his story about her disappearance, making sure it would fly. Probably he should ask around the neighborhood for her, too. The old man would check out his story; he'd know whether or not anyone had actually been out looking for her.

So Mulder wanted to know about Maria Ivanova. Was she just a name he'd come across in his hunt for information or had he actually run into her? If he had, what was she up to? Researchers need funding, labs and time, and Ivanova was... well, Che hadn't dubbed her Madame Piranha for nothing. She could put on that casual front, the nine-to-five lab scientist thing, when it suited her, but inside she was like a nuclear reactor, a cause burning at her core. She'd do anything, go to any length, to keep that fire stoked.

If Ivanova were doing Project research, her name would have come up by now among the Consortium members. On the other hand, if Mulder had actually seen her... He was bound to be looking for something that would take the old man out of his life for good. Would Ivanova be working for the old man, say on whatever little side-project he was bound to be keeping to himself? When he'd known her she hadn't had any love for the old man.  It was the one thing they'd had in common, that and the sense to keep their agendas to themselves.  They'd been two people passing secrets on a street corner at midnight: what he needed for what she needed. 

But anybody could get backed into a corner. If she was desperate for lab access, she might eat out of the old man's hand to keep herself and her work going. Van Braun and the other Axis scientists had done it in World War II: worked on Hitler's rocket program because it was the only lab in town and then done the same in the U.S. once the war was over.  If it was all there was, she'd do it.  And if Mulder had actually found her, well, then the map to the old man's golden little secret might just have been marked with a big, fat 'X'.

Scully sighed, pushed back from the desk and went into the kitchen. What it would be worth to have the ability again to go out, flash a badge, ask questions or push where pushing was needed instead of being reduced to surreptitious e-mails, hiding in the back of trucks or looking out a trailer window in the woods, waiting and hoping that someone else's efforts would accomplish what she should be able to do herself.

Mulder stabbed carefully at the stray bits of scrambled egg on his near-empty plate and managed to coax two of them onto his fork. Fork in the wrong hand: it was working about as well as trying to work the mouse yesterday when Vanek had come through the door. Dale was probably laughing inside, remembering when this had been a new experience to him, too, though if he was amused, he wasn't letting on. Tracy had glanced over a few times while he was working on his mail to Scully earlier, obliquely so as not to make him self-conscious. She'd finished her eggs quickly and then retreated to the back yard.

"What do you think?" Dale said, waving his fork in the general direction of the patio.

"My guess? She's feeling a little uprooted."

"Understandable." Dale cleared his throat. "You know the neighbors are going to see her one way or the other. Might be better not to try and hide her. One stowaway is enough. Too many and somebody's going to start trying to put the pieces together. You know how it is: idle minds want to know."

Mulder nodded.

"Unless you've got a better idea"--Dale reached for the crock of apple butter--"we could pass her off as your daughter. If you don't mind. It would make sense then, her coming here. Especially in the condition she's in."

Mulder nodded again , swallowed the food in his mouth and chased it with a swig of coffee. "I was thinking of taking her up to see Annie. Everybody knows we're close with the Barkers. Should look like a family visit, nothing suspicious." A pause. He pushed back from the table slightly; his jaw tightened. "Or am I losing perspective here? I'm not sure I can even tell anymore."

Dale shook his head. "Sounds good to me. People are going to notice she's pregnant. But then they're going to notice her anyway. The family connection should make sense to 'em."

Mulder stared at his near-empty plate. "Wish I knew whether Vanek made me yesterday, whether she's suspicious. So I'd know if she's"--he nodded toward the backyard--"going to be safe here or whether we're all just jumping from the frying pan into the fire. I feel like I'm juggling too many balls at once and one of them's about to drop and blow up in our faces."

"Can't always be helped," Dale said. "Just the time to hang in there, though. You give up, you get sloppy,  NIce way to assure that you fail. Anyway, you've got help here. Be sure to use it."

Mulder nodded and got up from the table. He took his plate to the sink and passed the table again. "Think I'll see what she's up to."

He opened the sliding glass door and went outside. Nobody. He looked left and right.

"In here," her voice came from the birdhouse.

Mulder strode across the lawn, squinting into the morning brightness. Tracy was inside, shadowed by the screen, curled up on the end of the glider.

"Looking for a little space or is company okay?"

She shook her head. "I wasn't trying to run away. I think I've"--a smile crossed her face briefly and disappeared--"finally been learning not to do that these last few weeks." She motioned to him. "Come in."

"Running from what?" he said, opening the door.

She waited for him to sit. "From myself mostly. I've watched Alex stand there and not swerve from... from some things that have really shaken him." She smoothed out a wrinkled streak on her dress. "Everybody has something to teach you, even the people you'd least expect." A pause. "Maybe especially them. Including small ones. Bethy's gone through so much. She could be bitter or she could be... damaged, or numb. But inside she's so full of compassion. It just flows out of her. Like they say about lavender--crush it and it smells that much sweeter. It's the oil that carries the scent, you know? Instead of bleeding she wipes you with her oil and you carry that around with you."

Mulder nodded and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He looked at his bandaged hand.

"I was just thinking," she began. "Watching you type, watching the two of you--you and Dale--that I've gone from a household with a one-armed man to a household with two one-armed men." She smiled briefly. "I don't mean to make fun of you." She sighed and leaned forward. A mockingbird started to chirp from a sheltered branch in the oak tree. Tracy looked toward the sound and swallowed. "Can I ask you something?"

"Ask away."

"How did you hold yourself together when your sister was taken--all of a sudden that person you were so used to, who was so familiar, gone, just... snatched out of your life?"

He watched her jaw waver and then set. How could anybody feel that way about Alex Krycek? And if Krycek had suddenly reached for some kinder, gentler part of himself in dealing with her, why hadn't he been able to do the same when it was Melissa Scully?  Or Sandy's little boy? Slowly, he let out a breath. She had asked a question.

"I don't know. I guess I was--" He shrugged. "I woke up one morning and she wasn't there." He looked out to the far fence beyond the oak tree. "My mom said... When I asked her, she told me Samantha'd gone to school early that day. Something--some field trip. But I didn't see her all day and then after school she wasn't at home, either. At dinner she still wasn't there and it was dark; there was no place set for her and that's when I started to realize--you know, that something really unspeakable had happened. My mother had pulled into herself, the way she'd get when she and my father weren't on speaking terms. She told me... she said there was nothing to do, that the police had already been contacted, that they'd let us know when they knew anything. And Dad was distant, in his study. I wanted to do something.  I needed to get out my flashlight and go around---parks, friends, anything--but they wouldn't let me." He shook his head. "Mostly I guess I wanted to wake up. All I wanted was to wake up. It was like a bad dream." He paused. "They were both sitting there, numb, and I"--he shook his head and stared out into the yard beyond the screen--"I couldn't figure out how you could just sit there and do nothing."

"I feel like that," she said. "Like I have to do something. Part of me feels like it wants to drown. But then I have to ask myself, "What can I do to help Alex?" She turned to him. "And what can I do to help you? I don't want to be a burden. If there's something I can do..."

"I think he wanted you to get some help. He's--"

"Worried about me. I know."

"So maybe it would give him a little more peace of mind if he knew you were getting some help. Annie's a doctor. I was thinking I could take you up there, you could talk to her. Maybe with the right questions, a little checking, she could figure something out, give us a direction--you know, as to why you don't remember things, any other symptoms you're having..."

She hesitated. "Okay."

"This town, Owensburg," he went on quietly, "it's a pretty small place. Everybody sees you, knows what you're up to. They talk; maybe they just don't have enough news of their own to keep them busy." He offered a smile. "But there's the outside chance, since Smoky's got something going on here, that someone might see you who could recognize you. For your own safety we're going to make some changes--maybe cut your hair--so you won't be so easy to recognize. Dale figured we could pass you off as my daughter."

"Your errant daughter."

He shrugged but she smiled.

He pursed his lips and held them a moment. "I've got to know," he said finally, foot nudging a blade of grass growing from a crack in the cement floor. "What did you see in him?  What did you see to make you--?

"I saw... courage. Real courage at facing things that terrified him. Outside things like the pain, but things inside himself, too. And he reached past own discomfort to help me when I needed it." Her thumb stroked the metal armrest. "There was this little candle flame burning in the middle of all that darkness he's lived, a light his logic would tell him to snuff out, but his spirit needs that light, that nourishment."

After a moment Mulder shook his head. He stared ahead unseeing. "That's not the man I know."

"People change. Or they grow. They go through circumstances that make them see and learn things. He admires you, you know--your commitment, the strength of your compassion. It's why he wanted me to be here."

Mulder sat back. He looked up at the green-painted ceiling and closed his eyes. "He killed my father. He almost killed Scully. He's sold us down the river more times..." Mulder's hands went up.  What more was there to say?

"Up until about a year ago Alex had spent his life running.  At first it was toward what he thought was salvation from the invasion.  Then, when the old men turned on him, it was away to save himself and to try to find a way to save his future.  Eventually he found a way that would save a lot of lives, but just as they were starting to put the plan into action, everything fell apart.  Everything.  All his work was lost, all his contacts gone. He was back under the thumb of the old men, and then of the father who'd already tried twice to kill him. That was about a year ago."

She glanced at him.  How could he keep from sending the message that he didn't care; that Krycek deserved whatever came to him after what he'd done? Tracy seemed not to notice. She looked up, out at the shimmering warmth of the yard.

"He went on running the way he always had, trying to make contacts, to force or bend people in order to fight what's coming, but none of it worked. It was like... when a baseball team's having a losing streak."  She turned toward him.  "You know, your team tries and tries but no matter what it does, it just can't win?"

After a moment he nodded.

He nodded and poked at a pebble on the ground with the toe of his shoe.

The silence continued. He turned to look at her.

"And it makes you stronger than you were before." Her eyes were wet, shining, but she was smiling. "And then you go out and honor that growth by using it to build something positive."

"You caught me in kind of a rusty state here," Sandy said, pulling up another thin, pale lock of hair between two fingers and snipping it several inches above the girl's head. "I mean, you can see from my hair; I haven't cut it in forever. It used to be a thing with me, though, doing other people's. Hope I haven't lost my touch." She paused and put the scissors down. "Bet that makes you feel confident, don't it? Sorry, I didn't mean to make you worry." She lifted the girl's chin slightly and stopped to consider. "No, I think... it looks okay. It looks good this way--you know, with the shape of your face. I think we're okay."

"However it is, it'll be better than what I could do myself," the girl said. "I'm not good with hair.  I guess I just haven't paid that much attention to it."

"Just the back to finish and a few little adjustments." Sandy paused. "I know how you must be feeling. Cutting your hair when you're not ready to, when it's not your choice--it's hard. That's another good thing about waiting until after to color it. You can save your hair, or save a piece--you know, for the memories. My mom used to save little bits of my baby hair. They're kinda cool to go back and look at now."

The girl nodded and smiled but somewhere underneath it was obvious she was lost and aching.  Like the old saying said: it took one to know one.

"It's nice here," Sandy went on. "I mean, the town's nothin' to write home about, but the woods are nice. If you go up to Barkers' there's a really pretty creek and falls and places to swim. If you like that sort of thing."

"I do." The girl was careful not to nod her head and ruin the haircut. "We had a pond.  It wasn't much but water is water." She paused. "Sometimes I'd go out swimming after dark, on hot nights when there was moonlight."

"It's dark along the trail at night because of the trees. But it hasn't stopped me from going to my swimming hole and skinny-dipping sometimes. Things like that just call you, don't they?"

Tracy started to nod but quickly stopped herself. "It's nice that way--swimming, I mean. Without clothes, nothing between you and the water."

Sandy smiled. She lifted another section of hair, snipped, and selected another. Soft, light loops of pale blonde hair covered the floor at her feet. The girl was looking at them, her head tilted down slightly.

"You're gonna have to keep your chin up just a little bit... There." Sandy reached for another lock. "I wish you'd come here out of happier circumstances instead of having to run." She ran a comb lightly through the section of hair in front of her. "But it could be good for you here, too. Seems like we've got a lot in common. I'll be glad to help out however I can."

She set the scissors down and brushed the clipped hair from the girl's shoulders. "Here." She handed the girl a mirror. "Go ahead. You ready for a look?"

The girl took the mirror and turned it toward her face. Her lips pressed together and she nodded slowly. "You did a good job. It'll just take a little while to get used to seeing myself this way."

Sandy went for a broom to sweep up the cuttings. When she returned the girl's eyes were closed tight, the mirror gripped hard in one hand in her lap. Wetness glistened along the line where her lids pressed together.

"Tracy?"

Ben came from where he'd been standing by the sliding door. His voice was quiet, soothing, the way it had been when he'd stopped her in the middle of the road, blindly running home from the Saver's Mart. The girl looked up at him. He took the mirror carefully from her hand and nodded toward the back yard. She got up and followed him out. Sandy moved the chair, swept underneath it and stooped down to pick out a lock to save--four inches of fine, smooth hair. Ben and the girl were in the yard now; she watched them through the glass. Ben had stopped midway across the lawn. The girl was looking up into his face, saying something, a look of anguish on her face. He shook his head; his hands came up slightly. He seemed to be apologizing. The girl nodded but turned away, shaking. Ben looked at her a moment, helpless, then set a tentative hand on her shoulder, coaxing her closer until she leaned against him. He bit his lip and squinted up into the bright morning sky.

"It's not just your hair, is it?"

Tracy shook her head and sucked in a ragged breath. "I feel like a traitor. She has this little boy she carries around in her heart--her son, the boy who lives in Alex's head. If she knew who I was, who I've come from... But how could I tell her that? It would hurt her too badly. All I can do is sit there and smile. And I'm no good at being deceptive. Not even for a good cause."

"I didn't even realize, when I asked her to come cut your hair--" He paused and looked at her sharply. "You knew this would happen, didn't you? Why didn't you say something?"

"I know there are only a few people you can confide in here, and that she's the one who could do this. I figured I could tough it out and make do." She sighed. "It's hard to hold this much pain--hers and Alex's and my own."

Mulder bit his lip. It was Krycek's fault, what she was going through now, caught in the middle. And on the other hand Krycek could have ignored her the first time he saw her, not gotten her that room. She could have been beaten or raped or fallen prey to someone like John Lee Roche.

Mulder sighed and squinted into the bright distance. She could be anyone: his mother emerging from under the sink so many years ago, his sister lost and found, Lucy Householder or Marty Glenn or the young Darlene Morris, full of a kind of experience everyone around her would deny. In a crazy twist of fate she was a present from one of the men he hated most in the world, a man who heaped scorn on his idealism but who nonetheless wanted the expression of that idealism to protect this girl.

"Hard to believe," Frohike said, and grunted.

Langley stared at the screen in front of him. "According to this database, nobody's even inquired about that license plate we hung on Byers' car. Not a single hit. Or the hearse's. Nada."

"Yeah, but this is Darth Vader we're talking about. He must still have something up his sleeve. It was too easy."

"Maybe it was overconfidence on his part," Byers said, coming up behind them. "He was counting on Scully walking into that hospital. At the very most he would have worried about Mulder talking her out of coming. She wasn't supposed to know it was a trap and if not for Wilkins, she never would have. Still, gentlemen, the coast seems clear for now. I suppose we can give Wilkins and Rita the green light they're looking for."

Langley and Frohike glanced at each other and nodded agreement.

There it was, everything laid out with the best possible spin under the circumstances: upbeat without being blindly optimistic, emphasis on the effort that was being made rather than the fact that Scully's mother had been lifted from right under their noses. No sense sending the message yet, though. Better the old man should get it with maybe fifteen minutes of his flight left, when his mind would be full of half a dozen other things and this would be just one more added to the mix. No point exposing yourself to more scrutiny than absolutely necessary.

Krycek hit 'save' and let his head drop onto the pillow. One more new, fresh lie added to a string of how many? He'd lost count. And how far would this one fly? He and Tracy had been the ones--maybe the only ones--to hear the old man's plans for Scully's mother. They'd known when he'd be gone and now she'd conveniently disappeared from the hospital during that window of opportunity. Tracy was gone, too; it could cast the light on her except for the fact that she had no connection to Mulder and Scully that the old man knew of. How long would it take before the old man realized he was the one who connected to all the dots--knowing Scully's mom's location, knowing when the timing would be best, knowing what was planned for Tracy and here she was, gone just when the old man wasn't around to trace her. When he'd been focused on getting her away, it hadn't looked this bad. But all it was going to take was two pieces put together, or some unexpected thread coming loose the way Buzz almost had. Eventually the old man was going to catch up; it was matter of time and percentages. He could take a bullet in the head now or put it off, run some more and get found out later. End result would be the same. Just run and run, looking over your shoulder until it happened. And if you were really lucky, what? The chance to be taken over by Purity instead of the old man? A life with real meaning, like Victor's, bleeding away into a cobblestone alley, laundry dangling from lines above your head, the blue sky not even noticing you were gone.

He pulled up. There was a toothbrush to put in her room--for whatever good it would do. He got it from the bathroom, rubbed the bristles with his thumb to soften them, and headed for the door. Maybe it'd be easier just to get it over with--hey, it's me, old man; I'm the one who screwed you over. A couple of minutes of sweat and sheer terror and then nothing--the old man's hired guns knew how to place a bullet. Rat race done. No more running, living your life with a permanent knot in your stomach, jerking awake thinking every little noise was somebody sent to get you.

Elevator or stairs? He shut the door behind him. A ding sounded; the elevator door opened and he went toward it, stepped inside, pressed '3'. Leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, waiting for the dropping sensation to hit his already-knotted stomach. It was what the old Spanish guy had been talking about, why he'd said he wouldn't set off the bomb again if he had it to do over. There were things more valuable than power or the momentary strength of terror, quiet things you'd only laugh at until you saw them for yourself. Too bad the knowledge had come so late, like a last meal before they walked you off to the electric chair.

The elevator settled. He went out and to her door, worked the lock, stepped inside and closed it behind him. The window sat half-open, the shade halfway down. He could picture her at the desk, kneading her bread dough and smiling and then standing at the window, bowl on her hip with the rising dough in it, the girl with nothing who counted everything that came to her as an amazing gift. It was stupid--fucking stupid to give up. She wouldn't. She'd be out there, looking to help anyone she could. Looking to find him again sometime. He'd promised to be there when the kid came.

Krycek made himself move, took the toothbrush from his pocket and went toward the bathroom. In the doorway he paused, eyes on the bottle of shower gel. He made himself look away. He set the toothbrush on the counter, turned and quickly left.

"Yes. Mr. Dunphee?" Maria traced the square of his ad with the pad of her index finger, black ink on yellow paper. "I saw your ad in the phone book--private investigation..."

She leaned back and waited while he described what he did: missing persons, errant spouses, background checks on potential business partners or potentially significant others. It paid to be careful.

There were six thin drawers below the kitchen counter, four wide which meant twenty-four except for the two large on the bottom of the right-hand rows--eighteen--and two additional to the left of the sink--sixteen. Two blue knobs on each--thirty-two--and six doors above, with--

"Yes, I agree completely with the need for security. That's why I've called you. I myself am very particular. Do you have access to DNA databases?"

The houseplants needed to be fed; it was the last weekend of the month. "Criminal, civilian, government if possible. Do they give access to those?"

He had ways, connections. A dealer--he wanted her business.

"No, I don't need the test done. It's been done already. I just need a match...Some people are intriguing, do you know what I'm saying? But they don't necessarily give you their real names. I just want to check the obvious, find out what I can in advance. Then I'll know I have nothing to worry about, won't I?...Yes, it's very prudent."

She closed the phone book and smoothed the cover flat. "Are you open this afternoon? I live out of town. I won't be able to get in until, say, 3:30--possibly a little later. I know you must have plans, but I'll pay extra if it will make any difference... Yes, how fortunate."

She reached for the pen and clicked the end. "And your address? 138. Yes. I'll be there. Thank you."

"I'm going to leave this to you, Scully." His voice was low. "I've put her through enough already this morning."

"You aren't going back right away, are you?" He was leaving her to deal with their curious guest alone.

He shook his head. "Figured I'd talk to David a little. Maybe find out something more about the beryllium victims, what exactly happened to his brother-in-law."

"Good." She nodded, then looked down and blushed. "Maybe I'm feeling a little selfish"--she looked up--"but I don't get to see you enough."

"I know." His arms slipped around her and she was drawn against the warmth of his body. She put her arms around him and let herself be held. "I'm not going anywhere, Scully."

She reached up. Lips met, lingered. Retreated finally.

"She's going to be waiting, Mulder."

He nodded and let her go. "I know. I think Adrie's got her now. I'll go let her know you're ready." He turned, reached for the door handle and turned back. "Any word about your mom?"

"Byers sent me a note a little while ago. So far Cancer Man's people haven't found anything. As far as the Gunmen have been able to determine. There's been no trace on the hearse's license plate or Byers' car. He said Will and Rita are supposed to be going to visit Mom this morning unless they discover there's someone on their trail."

He raised an eyebrow and nodded toward her. "Hang in there, FBI woman."

She made herself smile back and watched him go down the stairs and start up the trail toward the barn. When he was out of sight she turned and drifted to the kitchen counter. The far ridgeline was a hazy gray-green. A yawn overtook her. Too little sleep and yesterday had involved entirely too much adrenaline. She could still feel the road to Cincinnati, having driven both ways. And then on the way home to a night alone, a stop at Sandy's only to be greeted by Sandy's mother, who immediately recognized her as the FBI agent who'd questioned her daughter after the murders. Raylene seemed safe now; Sandy apparently was satisfied that her mother wouldn't give them away, but it hadn't made sleep come any more easily. In the uproar, the danger to her mother had nearly been swept away: the illness she was still extremely vulnerable to, the riskiness of her escape. Time here passed the way they said battles did, in languid lulls followed by headlong rushes, throwing more at you than you could manage to meet.

A knock came beside the door. Scully turned to see Tracy standing outside. Her hair was short, layered and fell softly around her face.

"Hi," she said, swinging the screen door open and inviting her guest inside. "Nice color choice."

Tracy smiled briefly. "Sandy tried to match it to Bethy's strawberry blonde. It came out a little darker but we thought it'd make me seem like... you know, like I fit into the family."

"Good point," Scully said. She gestured toward the bed. "Have a seat, Tracy."

Tracy looked at the bed a moment. A smile came and went and she sat down. Her hands came together, fingers knitting into a firm gri. "Mulder said that you wanted to see me."

"We wanted to see if there's some way we can help you. Kry...Alex..." She moistened her lips. "He mentioned in his mails that you'd passed out yesterday, that you'd had a... a vision of some sort, and that you'd lost consciousness. He said you'd nearly done it once before. He also said"--she cleared her throat and paused--"that you'd experienced significant periods of time that you have no memory of." Scully pressed her lips together. "We just want to help you if we can."

"I'd start from the beginning," the girl said, "but that's gone. I mean, everything before we moved when I was eight--my mother and me."

"What do you mean?"

"We lived in California--in Pasadena--until I was eight. My father worked there"--she shook her head--"but I barely remember him, just that he wore a tan sweater and a bow tie. And he had grayish hair, so I guess he was older than my mother. And then he died and we moved."

"What did he die of?"

She shook her head again.

"Did your mother not tell you?"

"We never... We didn't talk about it. I didn't really remember and she never brought it up. We went to the farm--my uncle's farm on the Pennsylvania-West Virginia border--and we"--she shrugged--"we were busy. We grew a big garden and things were nice, they were pleasant and quiet there. I guess I didn't think about it. But now..."

"What?"

"I'm beginning to think that my mother didn't even have those memories anymore." She looked up at Scully's unspoken question. "I can read people--it's just something I do--but I could never read my mother very well. I always thought... that she was blocking me some way. But now I'm starting to think the memories just weren't there, that they'd... escaped her somehow. Something Alex said yesterday got me to thinking." She glanced away, at the wood grain on the wall.

"And when you came to Washington recently," Scully said, coaxing her back to the present. "You'd come because..."

"I couldn't stay there--where I was--any longer. I'm a freak... at least to the people back there. My mom died a year ago and--"

"Where were you living?"

"With my uncle and his wife. Maybe I just wasn't used to anybody else; my mom and I had spent so much time together. Especially that last year when she was in bed most of the time."

"You took care of her?"

A nod.

"What did she have, Tracy?"

"They said afterward it was cancer. But we didn't know it at the time. She didn't want any doctors."

"Why?" Scully leaned closer.

"She said she'd had too many of them already. She just wanted them to leave her alone."

Scully swallowed. She ran a finger along the edge of the chair. "And you have other segments of time that you don't remember--besides the time when you and your mother moved?"

The girl looked down. "I don't remember about the baby. I'd never been with a guy. I'm sure of it. I can't see myself... you know, having done that." She hesitated and looked up suddenly. "And no, it wasn't drugs or... I don't do that--drugs. I don't drink. It's not just that my memories got lost behind something else."

Scully let out her breath slowly. "Tracy, may I check something?" She stood. "Can you turn? Here, this way."

The girl put her head down without being asked. Scully smoothed the now-softly-copper-colored hair off the back of her neck. Nothing--no scar. She ran her fingers carefully over the girl's neck, behind her ears, up into her hair. Nothing in the places she and Mulder had seen implants before. She let out the breath she was holding.

"Alex did that--when the old man first brought me to him. He didn't say so but he was afraid that someone had done something to me." She looked up. "The way they have to you."

Scully felt her eyes go wide.

"Alex thinks...He's worried about the baby now, that it may not be...a normal baby."

Somebody had to have tipped Mulder about the old man's plans. She'd been there. She'd come out of the bathroom--probably hadn't been able to think of anything else to organize in there after she'd put away the stuff she'd bought--and the old man'd looked up. He'd given her that smile that says you're doomed and you don't even know it; your life is in my hands now and I can crush you whenever I want. Then he'd made his move--offered her the chair he was sitting on. She hadn't really wanted to be there but she wasn't about to let him know so she'd sat. And he'd sealed her fate by talking in front of her. If she'd left the room, made an excuse and gone upstairs...

Krycek squeezed the beanbag hard and let it drop. It would've been the same in the end. The old man didn't take chances.

But she'd been there. Obviously she didn't like the talk. That was the time she'd asked why he did it, after the old man was gone. Because you're afraid of him? she'd said and he'd said no, he wasn't afraid, but she knew better. She wanted to know what was going on--the thing about Mulder and Scully and Scully's mother. Would've hit her pretty hard, especially after her own mother, to know the old man was going to tamper with someone else's. But would it have made her tell someone? Who could she tell? She'd had no connections.

She knew Skinner. She'd been inside his dreams. Twice. If she'd wanted to, if she'd felt the urgency or that little voice she listened to had urged her, she could've gotten through to him again, probably, knowing lives depended on it. But she'd never said anything. Would she make an end run around him, knowing it might compromise him, make it look like he'd done it? But she wouldn't have figured that; she just would've thought about saving somebody's mother. Would she have held it in later, realizing? Twice she'd mentioned that she knew something and he'd told her not to tell him.

Krycek closed his eyes and traced the ceiling's cracked paint pattern in his mind. They'd barely known each other when the old man'd laid out his plans. Was she capable of that? Could she manage to get out 'I wish I could be what you want', to be what they'd become, but hold back the fact that she'd passed on the word about the old man's plan? Would she do it because saving a life was the more important thing?

Who but Tracy could have known what the old man had in store for Scully's mother?

Scully stared at the trailer door and swallowed.

"I don't..." the girl said softly. "I don't have any memories like the ones you do, no...men, or lights, or the place you were in..." She looked away. "I'm so sorry about your daughter. I can't imagine..." A pause. "I'm so sorry."

"They were..." How had she pulled Emily out of just a few seconds of silence? "They were using...older women...women in nursing homes...to...gestate the babies. They were sedated; they had no idea what was happening to them. It was in..." She moistened her lips. The words hesitated, not wanting to leave her tongue. "...San Diego. That's where we found Emily. I was...at my brother's for Christmas and..."

She closed her eyes. Silence sang around her.

"You're wondering..."Tracy said, "how the phone call could've come, if it was really her."

Scully bit her lip.

"Some things," the girl said, "happen without any physical explanation. I feel the urge to go somewhere, to go to Washington...and I don't know why; I don't know anyone there. But I go and I end up on the stairs by the lake just when Mulder's there. And a few days later I'm there again, and he comes again, and after he's gone Alex comes; the old man's sent him to watch Mulder. He's just come from his mother's; he's shaky, the boy is in his mind--Sandy's boy...And he sees me, and leaves. And then he comes back again. He sees...his mother in me; he sees himself in the baby. Maybe he sees a chance to protect a life after ending one. He does something he would never do; he offers to get me a room for a few days because he knows what might happen to me on the street. He doesn't know why he does it. There's nothing in it for him, no...payoff. But he knows he has to. He bought me a room for a week. He took me there, paid the man and left...and I figured I'd never see him again." She paused. "There's no...logical...way to explain why I came, or why Alex did what he did. There's no way to explain how your sister could be calling you, telling you about your daughter. Sometimes I think we get..."--she sighed--"...tangled up trying to figure out the how or why...instead of just working with what we've been given. It's a blessing--that you found her. Whether it was your sister somehow, or whether the voice just came to you that way so you'd pay attention...the important thing is that you listened, that you found her. Even if it was just for a little while. You were able to be there for her when nobody else was. That had to mean so much to her."

Scully blinked and wiped a line of moisture from below one eye. "I guess...I hadn't thought of it that way--that I was able to be there for her. I was so filled with loss, with the distance between us and trying to...to bridge that..."

"But if she had no chance of a normal life, if this was when she had to go...It takes love--to set yourself aside, your fears and your pain, and help somebody through that. She had to feel that love."

"I hadn't..." Scully made herself smile. "...looked at it that way. Thank you."

The girl nodded.

"Tracy, if...We'll do what we can...to find out about your baby. Dr. Wykoff can do a test, we can take a little of the fluid and do a DNA analysis of it. If something's been done to you--implanted in you--something like Emily, the baby's DNA should reflect that genetic difference."

She swallowed. Finding you were the mother of such a child was one thing, but to actually be carrying one, to feel it grow inside you...How unspeakably violated she must feel.

"It wasn't just you who went to your daughter," the girl was saying. "Mulder was there for her, too."

"Yes, he was."

"He was there for both of you. It's so...amazing, so...beyond words, isn't it?--to have that shelter, that private, safe place with another person..."

To: thelark@zipmail.com
From: dresswhites@zipmail.com
Dearest Annie,
I'm still not ready to be sitting up writing but I just had the most wonderful visit from Will and your friend who's been helping him--and who helped me so much yesterday by standing in for me. They spoke so glowingly of you and the way in which you've helped others through your work. It made me feel that I've been selfish in wishing you in a safer profession for my own peace of mind. I know your father was never comfortable with your decision to join the Bureau, but he would be so proud to know what a fine job you've done. Although I'm showing no real physical strength yet, I feel a firming of resolve to see this through and I am buoyed by the personal care I'm receiving here and by the companionship of a quite unexpected new little friend. You will have to meet her sometime. My constant prayer is that your dilemma will be resolved quickly and that we will be able to see each other again soon. You continue in my heart, as you have been all along. Give my very best to Ben.
                                                                                                    With much love,
                                                                                                                           Mom

Maria looked around the small dining room and out through cafe curtains to the yard beyond. Ten years here: two becoming established, the research necessarily--agonizingly--lying dormant, waiting; another two with the work beginning slowly, and the last six with steady subjects. An old cottage with redone kitchen, new bath, carpeting and the yard transformed into a small, lush oasis. Three years of weekends with Brian, a kind man whose devotion she would never be able to fully return in kind. And if it became necessary to leave it all now? What would be lost? What part of it would she miss the most? Or would there be no deep regret beyond the inconvenience of reestablishment, of the research time lost?

Spender appeared less than committed to safeguarding the work regardless of the fact that it might eventually guarantee his safety in the coming time. The e-mail 'threat', so called, that his agent had showed her seemed nothing more than the impotent cry of a survivor who was beyond recourse, a emotion she knew as well as anyone. Mr. Beeson was being 'watched'. Watching was not harmful. Announcing that you were watching was tantamount to a confession of non-action. Those who acted did so without announcements that would hinder the actions they planned to take. And yet the stirring up that could be caused by rooting around after the authors of e-mail...To bring the subject to mind again so yet another person would eventually call for a crusade of investigation...

Spender should know better. If he cared so little for the security of the work, he would care even less for her personal security. If Wallace were actually on her trail, if his reaction to the drug weren't mere coincidence...

The options were to do something about Wallace, to wait for Spender to do something about him, or to be ready to go: to find another town, another lab, another group. There were other groups. They weren't any more altruistic than the one her parents had put in years for; perhaps they were even more dangerous. But they provided a way, a possibility. Without a lab, without facilities, there was nothing. People would do better to line themselves up before firing squads than wait for Purity to tear them apart. But moving on would mean yet another crucial interruption in the work, an interruption the work could ill afford to suffer.

Maria took the two steps to the back door, opened it and stepped down into the yard. The first six feet of the oak tree's trunk were hung with huge, fragile blossoms of purple and cream-colored clematis, the end product of three years of careful training. The impatiens, sheltered by the walls and by careful covering during the winter, had grown into thick, continuous mounds. It would all be left, and what would the nosy little Mrs. Peltier next door think to find the house abandoned, the good doctor vanished without a trace?

If there were a threat. If janitor Wallace were not who he represented himself to be. Had he been looking at her data files or no? It could have been merely her own jitteriness of late, the lingering remnant of suspicion--uneasiness--from the FBI's investigation.

The talkative Mr. Dunphee should be able to help clear things up.

"Now you're doing what I do," the girl said softly. "You don't need to carry my burden, too."

"I forget sometimes," Scully said, looking down, making her fist uncurl, "how intensely this affects me, the thought of...I see all those women again, a whole roomful of women who'd been taken the way I was, tested...made barren. Of all of them I'm the only one still alive. Sometimes I don't think about it. You go on with your life. And then you meet someone--someone who's been affected--and it all comes flooding back, that..." She blinked and cleared her throat. "I guess I feel the need to fight back, to answer for all of the ones who died, but my hands have been tied lately. We need to maintain our cover above everything--we have nothing without it so I'm...I've had to stay here, out of sight...All I can contribute is the research I can do on the Internet. Mulder thinks he's found something--a lead...if he can develop it before someone recognizes us, or Cancer Man finds someone else to use against us. Like his mother--they were afraid, Mulder and Kryc...Alex...that he might target her somehow..."

"Alex talks about...waiting out the waves. He remembers things sometimes--pictures them for me, and then I can see them, too, in his mind. He showed me this place once. We were standing on a cliff and there were surfers, waiting for waves. They'd stand in the water and the waves would go over them; they'd just lift up their arms and their boards and let the force of the waves go right past them. Sometimes you only see that wave; it's all you can focus on. You don't see...or you forget...that it can pass right by you if you hold your ground. All you see are the obstacles. But your life can turn around in a moment. It can be completely different." She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees. "When I felt so...overwhelmed...he showed me I had strength. You have it, too."

A pause. Scully shook her head.

"I can't...I have a hard time--very difficult time...picturing him...Alex...as someone who would do that--help someone the way he seems to have helped you."

"He just needed a chance. I think he needed to know..." A pause. "...that nobody would strike back at him...if he lowered his defenses. I guess he realized I wouldn't do that."

She hugged her arms to herself and closed her eyes. Her lids squeezed tight.

Scully reached out and set a tentative hand on the girl's shoulder.

"I was watching a spider build a web in the corner of Dale's birdcage this morning," Tracy said, rocking slightly. "And I was thinking...that it's so easy to picture...black widows and...the struggles of caught bugs, and think of deception and little carcasses wrapped up in spider's silk--to think treachery and ignore the beauty of the web, or the fact that where would we be without spiders, you know?--all those millions of insects they catch. She was securing an egg sac in the corner of her web, making sure her babies would be safe. She was only doing what any mother would."

Her head came up. She smiled. "Mulder and Adrie are coming," she said.

It was why the old man kept harping on it--because it was true. What had he done with Mulder all these years?--led him around by the nose with promises of finding Samantha. It worked, and what did it say that he'd done the same, let Tracy in, let the focus take his edge, and now did it say 'clue' in flashing neon letters--all the latest pieces lined up in a neat row, practically giving themselves away?

Krycek pulled himself up, went to the refrigerator and opened it. Stomach was grumbling, or maybe it was just tight with the tension of not knowing how the hell to climb out of this one. Over the edge this time--one favor for Mulder, one for Tracy, end of the line, cliff's edge. He stared at the contents of the small interior--milk, soda, applesauce, the Chinese she'd bought three days ago. He shoved the door shut and turned away. Small desk and the window beyond, the scene hazy in the midday light, the nation's capitol and all its busyness. They'd stood side-by-side at this desk one late afternoon, watching him rerun the Marseilles square where he'd sat drinking coffee with Victor, both of them cupping the clear glasses for warmth, watching the theater and the theatergoers, planning, laughing the way Victor laughed, easy but too easy, his life one desperate attempt to grab what he'd been denied as the bastard son of a rich Spanish landowner. They'd had that in common--the bastard part.

His hand traced the chair back. She'd left the sweater here for days, the one of her mother's. The one she'd worn until it made her collapse. She'd managed to remember to take it with her, though; it'd been sitting there in her pack when he'd opened it to slip in the brown paper bag holding the dress and the book. And the baby...Didn't look good; there were too many memory gaps, too much time lost. And her father--how had he died? Was he part of one of the groups, or like Bill Mulder, a disenchanted participant? Had he balked, the way Bill Mulder had, when they started to work on his wife and daughter? What a time bomb to be carrying--a little surprise from Purity.

His hand was beginning to cramp from its grip on the chair. He let go, rubbed the hand carefully against his hip, went to the door and out into the hall. Pushed the lock button. Stairs this time, the first saying she'd go for saving Maggie Scully regardless, the next that she wouldn't hold back and not tell him what she'd done. Up; he'd been blinded, turned around, upended--he'd said that himself in the note he'd left her and he'd ignored his own words. Up again; her coming in the middle of the night, rescuing him from the bars of pain holding him near the stuck window. One more; who else could it be but her, and what could he expect but that she'd try to do what she could to save somebody? Up--how could she do that, hide it?--and up, how could he get so lax?

Mulder looked through the screen door at Tracy on the trail outside. Adrie was tugging slightly at her hand.

She smiled up at them. "He wants to show me the creek." She seemed alive now, not somber the way she and Scully had been when he'd come in, as if he'd missed someone announcing a death. He watched the two disappear from view beyond the door frame and squeezed carefully on the small shoulder in front of him, letting his thumb graze the smooth flesh at the neck of her shirt.

"What is it, Scully?"

She shook her head and leaned back against him. "Overload. Too many things."

He slipped his arms around her from behind. "I think she did that on purpose..."

"What?" She turned to look at him.

"Leaving with Adrie. I think she meant to leave us alone." He nodded toward the bed. "Take a load off, Scully."

She slipped out of his grasp, crawled onto the bed and lay down, facing away. He got on and curled around her, pushed a pillow under his head and reached to brush a kiss against her temple. She smiled.

"What?"

"She came in here, Mulder, and she looked at the bed--this bed--and smiled, just for a...a second, as if she could see everything we've done here."

"Maybe she can. I was thinking about that, how...crazy that must've made him--Krycek--to know she was in his head, seeing what was there and knowing there was nothing he could do to keep her out." His arm tightened around her. "She probably does know. Imagine what it'd be like, seeing into people all the time, knowing all their secrets, everything they never...show or tell you..."

"Could be pretty depressing." She smiled; the smile faded. She moistened her lips. "I don't think she needs to watch other people's private lives, Mulder."

"Hmm?"

"I'm pretty sure they've got their own, she and Krycek. She said she had no memory of how she got pregnant but she was talking about that time and she said 'I'd never been with a guy.' Not 'I never have' but 'I never had'. I can't really comprehend what she sees in him...but I think I understand what he sees in her. I don't know; sometimes it seems like he's...desperately searching for something."

"What?"

"Meaning, maybe."

A sudden breath of air brushed a low tree branch against the window.

"How about you, Scully?"

"What?" She turned back to him.

"You holding up?"

"Mulder, she's...maybe I'm just...overreacting. Maybe the parallel is just too close, but from what she said..." Her lips pressed together.

"What?"

"...she could be carrying a child like Emily."

He held her tighter and wedged his chin between her neck and shoulder. A hardness settled in his stomach. There it was, the mood he'd walked in on.

"Am I just overreacting, Mulder? We don't even have any kind of medical evidence yet."

"I don't know. I hope you are. I mean, that it's not true." He paused. "You going to have Wykoff run some tests on her?"

She nodded.

"Monday?"

"Uh-huh."

Two more days. He sighed and closed his eyes. What would Krycek think, knowing his own girl--lover--had been violated that way? If it were true.

"Mulder?"

She shifted, turning back toward him. He opened his eyes.

"Mulder, I have to do something..."

"What?"

"Something. I mean, I need to make a contribution to this investigation. I feel like my hands are tied, like it's all...lopsided. That plane flies your boxes to Baltimore tomorrow. You're one-handed for all practical purposes...if it came to defending yourself. I don't want to rush into this...but I'd like to be the one to go."

He looked up at the ceiling. She was lying against him, her head not quite resting on his shoulder, waiting for a response...or a reaction.

"Maybe I'm getting selfish myself. How about we both think this through?"

She nodded and settled her head against his shoulder. He closed his eyes. His hand ached quietly.

"Do you need me to move, Mulder? Are you comfortable enough?"

He smiled. "I need you to stay where you are. Don't change anything. Nothing."

Krycek turned the handle and opened the door slowly. This was hardly the place to get your head on straight.

The half-pulled shade had left most of the room in deep, honey-colored shadow. He glanced out into the hallway, listened, then closed the door behind him. Nothing but warm, thick silence. The closet door stood ajar; it was a good thing, the kind to make you think she'd intended to come back, that she'd just stepped out and unexpectedly not returned.

He let out a heavy breath and leaned against the wall behind him.

She was too transparent to hold anything back even if she wanted to. But this was all about intent. Would she hold something back, deliberately not say anything? Would her devotion to doing what was right override anything else? And why shouldn't it? He had no claim on her; she'd made no promise of loyalty to him.

Maybe it had nothing to do with her. He'd trusted her; she hadn't strong-armed him, or tricked him into it. She'd been there, cut fingers or collapsing in the doorway or weighted down with the burden of her mother and he'd made the move; she hadn't begged him. The old man always said it and he'd seen it himself, over and over--you get attached, you forge a handle for other people to hold you by, to manipulate you with. It's what happened when you gave away your trust instead of shouldering it yourself.

His hand curled tight. It was the old man again, word for word, as if he were the old man's echo, and what was the old man beside a pompous, inflated old son of a bitch? Stick to what you know: hadn't he spent half of yesterday morning pressing that one into her?

But what did he know?

Krycek let himself slide down, back against the wall, to the floor. It was stuffy, too hot and too quiet, like a locked room in a museum. He closed his eyes.

Skinner. He could strong-arm the information out of Skinner. He'd know for sure if she'd been the one.

He could picture her again, stooped down in front of him in the dark, blanket wrapped around her, realizing what he'd known for hours, that she'd have to go, that they couldn't keep this up any longer.

It was about being clear-eyed.

No, it was about trust. It was about what the hell your life was worth, if it held any meaning at all.

Skinner could be forced. But what did it say about him that he had to ask? What would it say about him if he didn't?

The overhead speaker crackled. The old man glanced up briefly.

"We hope you've enjoyed traveling with us today. Our flight is scheduled to land at Dulles International Airport in approximately twenty minutes. Please make sure you've collected all your personal belongings before we begin our descent."

"Not long now," the tired face next to him said, smiling. The man had a receding hairline. A few longer strands had been combed insipidly across the vacant area, as if they could conceal it. He only nodded, forced a brief, sharp smile in return and took another breath of stale, recirculated air.

His hand reached for his inner coat pocket and then retreated. Twenty minutes. If he were a lesser man he'd wish he could go back and begin the day over again. Things were settled in Tunisia--for the moment. But take your finger from one hole in the dike to plug another and water flowed. He stared back at his laptop screen. Undoubtedly Alex had timed the sending of his message strategically so there would be little time to ponder it. Gone. Snatched like a baby from the cradle. Someone had told Mulder, but who? Would Skinner have dared, had he the information? Alex and his little nursemaid had known, but Alex held no love for Mulder and the girl was...loyal, like a found, starving puppy. She kept her eyes down and her hands busy. Once Scully's mother was in the hospital, Mulder could possibly have assumed it to be a trap; he had a suspicious nature, was stubborn once an idea had taken him.

So she was gone.

She could still die, but she was of no use now as a lever, or a lure. An orchestrated substitution, undoubtedly well carried off because Alex and his men had apparently found nothing yet; he'd said 'checking' and listed a number of variables, but that was what it meant--the empty glass was being described as 'soon to be filled'.

And on top of it his dour private researcher had written to berate him about a visit from Diana, as if he were nothing more than someone's novice subordinate. Apparently Diana, too, was in Alex's position, with nothing in hand.

Toying with Mulder, a la cat-with-mouse, was a luxury that was no longer justified.

Maria opened the front door and stepped inside.

"Brian?"

"Out here."

He was on the patio. She went to the bedroom, set her bag inside the door, stopped by the hallway mirror to smooth over her hair and went out into the bright afternoon light. Brian was standing in front of the barbecue, coaxing the coals to glowing life with long, patient breaths.

"Hi," she said, smiling, slipping an arm around his waist.

He straightened, turned from the barbecue and greeted her with a lingering kiss that warmed her mouth and body in a way she didn't allow it to be warmed the rest of the week. It was the perfect arrangement, weekends. Not often enough for things to become dull and routine, each brief encounter enough to send you home with a tantalizing taste for the next, and in the interim the work could be carried on uninterrupted, no resentful partner if you stayed in the lab until midnight, no half-disguised looks of disappointment at breakfast.

"Did you get it done?"

"As per your request," he said, a slight sparkle in one eye. "Now let's see, where would I have put it?"

She slipped her hand into his back left pocket and withdrew a folded piece of paper.

"You're dedicated and thorough, Brian, but you're very predictable." She smiled and opened the paper, which carried the familiar pattern of a DNA fingerprint.

"Is that a complaint?"

A hand settled on her hip and slid behind her, pulling her closer.

"No. Dedicated and thorough can be... very gratifying." She offered her mouth; he kissed her again, then she paused and moved back a step. "I have an appointment downtown in a few minutes, did I tell you? It will only take half an hour or so. Is that okay? Will it ruin your cooking schedule?"

He shrugged and tried to look undeterred. "I'll string it out a few minutes on this end and if you're not back by the time the steaks are off the grill, there's always the oven. I know how to keep things warm."

"Thank you. Do you want me to stop and pick up a movie?"

He shook his head. "Just bring yourself, Maria. As soon as you're done."

"Fine. I'll hurry."

"Original's on the counter," he said.

She smiled at him, turned and went into the house. She took her purse from the breakfast bar and tucked the piece of paper into it. On the end of the counter was a manila envelope with the original clear sheet; he knew she'd want it and he'd prepared it without her having to ask. He was the perfect companion. She picked up the envelope and hurried out to the car. Mr. Dunphee would be waiting.

"Mulder, am I jumping at this rashly? Am I not considering all the factors?"

They sat side by side on the edge of the bed, jeans touching.

He shrugged. "I'm probably the last person you should ask. If it were my mom, I'd..."

"t hadn't even entered my mind until just now. Maybe it would help her, Mulder--to see me. Things like that can have positive physiological as well as psychological effects. But I don't know if I'm just doing it for me. I don't want to fool myself, or do anything that would end up endangering my ability to get back here."

He felt himself swallow. He sucked in his lower lip. "Maybe we should run it by the Gunmen. Depends on the pilot's schedule, too."

"Unless I flew one way with him and caught some other flight back. Then if anyone were to question him, he'd think I'd only gone one way, that I was still in the area. It would make more sense."

He nodded, quiet, then looked up and closed his eyes briefly.

"If it doesn't seem safe, Mulder, I won't go."

He nodded again. A warm hand capped his knee. He let out a breath he'd held unconsciously.

"You know, Mulder, this...sitting here. It reminds me..."

"Of?"

"That night in your mother's basement, so dark. And I couldn't sleep..."

"You said you were falling asleep but I kept hearing those chaise springs squeaking every time you rolled over."

A pause.

"Mulder, had you...did you intend to take me back to your chair the way you did?"

"You mean was it a plan, a calculated siege?"

She nodded.

"No. I mean...It just happened. I was winging it. Why, you complaining?"

She smiled and turned away. "No."

"Actually, I was...I was surprised you went for it, sitting down like that."

"It seemed safe enough at the time."

"Dangerous in the long run." One eyebrow went up; a corner of his mouth smiled.

"It was the best thing I could have done."

He dipped his face into the warm hair beside her neck and pulled her close. "Can I quote you on that, Agent Scully?"

"Yes, you can. You can quote me, Mulder."

A key went into the lock and turned. Krycek's breath caught; he hit 'delete', closed the laptop quickly and shoved it under the pillow just as the old man appeared in the doorway.

"Alex..." He nodded and stopped by the small desk to pull a Morley from his coat pocket and light it. "Well, things seem to have..." A drag on the cigarette. "...taken a downturn while I was away."

He looked around for the ashtray.

"Drawer," Krycek said, nodding toward the one on the right.

He watched the old man pull it out and examine the clean amber dish. She'd always washed it after he left, as if she could wash the old man out of his life.

"Came out of the blue," he said, suppressing a swallow, his eye on the old man. "They were watching...and then she was just gone."

"Undoubtedly it didn't come...'out of the blue'...on Mulder's part. There had to have been some rather delicate planning involved." A pause. Cigarette in, stream of smoke out. "Any indication that Mulder or Scully took part in this personally?"

Krycek shook his head. "All we've got on the tapes is a man--auburn hair, long, tied back, maybe 5'10--who takes her out of the room and a woman, pretty much like Scully's mother, about the same size and hair color." He shrugged and forced a laugh. "Anyway, you know the quality of those tapes. They're a joke. You can't tell much of anything from them."

"I can have the pictures refined."

"Yeah, I figured."

"The hair could be a disguise--changed color or...long hair to cover short."

Krycek nodded. The old man looked at the floor suddenly, to where his jeans lay in a heap with yesterday's T-shirt. The old man's eyebrows went up.

"Your little...housekeeper...have the day off?"

"No, she..." Heat flooded his face. "She's"--he shrugged--"gone. Disappeared. Night before last, I sent her to the pharmacy, maybe eight o'clock..." He shook his head. "Never came back. I...I figured maybe she had something to do--you know, while she was out there, but I checked her room, then I went down...after a while, when it'd been too long...Couldn't make it all that far. Pharmacy hadn't seen her. Asked at a couple of stores between here and there, places she might've stopped..." He shook his head.

"Do you think she...ran?"

"I...Nah. I just...it was spur of the moment. And she said she'd go. Didn't even go upstairs first, to her room, just took the money and went."

"How much did you give her?"

"Ten bucks."

The old man looked thoughtful. "Not enough to travel on." He took another drag on the Morley and tapped a growing length of ash off into the ashtray on the desk.

"I went up...you know, checked out her room. I figured she just...Hell, I don't know. But she hasn't been there. I mean, her stuff's still there the way it was before."

"Her backpack? The one she carried?"

"It's...She had it down here..." He nodded. "Over there, behind the door. So she had that with her. If it turns up..." He looked away. A drop of sweat rolled past his temple; he dipped his head close to the pillow and let the cotton cover wick away the liquid. "I went out again this morning--you know, the grocery store she goes to, places I've sent her..." He shook his head. "Nothing. I figure..."

A pause.

"You figure..."

"I don't know. Somebody looking for a good time...some sick bastard. I mean, she's not worth...It's not like somebody'd pay a ransom for her. Who's she got?"

"I'll have some fliers put out. If somebody has her, as you say, and she's..." He nodded. "...still in one piece..." Cigarette to mouth. "You'll be needing someone, I imagine, in the interim..."

"Uh-uh. I've had enough breathing down my neck. You want to send someone to bring my groceries, that's okay."

"You still need to exercise caution, Alex. Just because you're up and about..."

"I know. Take it easy, let it heal."

"And you're doing better?" The old man's voice went up a notch, hopeful.

"Yeah, I just...I guess I spent...half the night thinking about it. She's just a kid. She...She's got no defenses..."

"Hindsight?"

"Huh?"

"It's much clearer in hindsight, Alex. I think you...underestimated her while she was here. She gave you excellent care."

He swallowed. His hand was shaking. "Yeah, I guess."

"Someone interesting, huh?"

Mr. Dunphee had a thin face and slicked-back hair. He reminded her of a lab assistant she'd known in Kraznoyarsk. Thin nose, tanned receding hairline.

"Yes, very intriguing. But you might say I'm a skeptical person."

"Cautious. Cautious is smart."

"Yes, well..."

"So where would you like to start? It's kind of like a card game, you know? Or something from Las Vegas."

"I can see that." She paused and pursed her lips. "Let's start with criminal. If he's not there, that's a good thing. It can only be more hopeful afterward, isn't that right?"

He nodded. "Criminal it is."

He took the Morley from his lips and relinquished the phone to a spot between his chin and shoulder. The ringing continued. She could be gone, too. If Mulder was perceptive enough to realize that Scully's mother was mere bait, he'd know Teena was susceptible, too. He'd have her tucked away somewhere--if they were lucky, wherever he was himself. Find a mother, catch her son... which was the object in the first place.

The ringing went on. He set the cigarette on the edge of a half-full ashtray, switched the phone off and then turned it on again.

"Yes, I want a home checked out. Right away...You'll need to send someone out of town...Greenwich. Yes. And I need records--phone records, utility bills--current. Let them know it needs to be thorough. Check for a car, or absence of one. I'll send you  the details..."

He hung up, pulled another Morley from the package on the table and lit it. She could have gone to the library; she was a reader...of novels, escapes from the tedium--or hauntings--of her everyday existence. Or Mulder could have hidden her away, believing she wouldn't be traceable.

He smiled.

It was difficult--much more difficult than it seemed--to make someone disappear without a trace.

"So far you're batting a thousand." Dunphee nodded at her and smiled. "Not a criminal; that's a good sign. A definite good sign, I'd say."

"Yes, it is. Well, he's probably just who he says he is, but... It gives you a lot more confidence of mind to be absolutely sure."

"Ready to go on?"

She nodded. Dunphee turned back to the computer. He keyed in an address.

"I don't have any actual official access here," he said, his voice confidential. "But I have a friend; he helped me..."

"How very fortunate."

"Yes, it has been."

Maria smiled. She waited until Dunphee turned back to the computer before she swallowed. Her pulse was racing now.

Krycek pressed 'send' and closed his eyes.

What did it say that he had to ask? Skinner might be anywhere--out playing tennis, or getting laid, or doing whatever assistant directors did to get away from the bureaucratic treadmill. He kept to himself, Skinner did, didn't flash his private life around where everyone could see it. It was a good thing, smart thing.

Skinner might not know, or might not want to say. He'd press. He'd press whether he wanted to hear the answer or not. It had nothing to do with her now. It was a simple question: did I fuck up or not, get lax--should've known better--or...?

Krycek pulled up, got off the bed, went to the refrigerator and looked inside. He grabbed one of the boxes of leftover Chinese, shook some of the contents into a paper bowl and set it in the microwave. Punched the button and paced while it heated. Beep--again and again and again, like a laser going through his head, or like the pain that had pulsed in his side not so long ago. He could see himself on the bed, half-gone with the pain, half-gone with the drug, her sitting beside him, their hands tight together like puzzle pieces that only had one right place. She always stayed until he was completely gone. Not once had he worked his way out of the haze to find himself alone.

He took the bowl from the microwave, jabbed a fork into it, took it to the small desk and sat. He pushed the food around and watched steam rise from it, waiting.

The whole thing was crazy--a mismatch. She deserved somebody she could count on, somebody who'd do her justice. Somebody more like herself.

"Aah, it's slowin' down. We may have a...We've got a match."

Maria's hand tightened around the cuffed hem of her shorts.

"See." He pointed. "Now, you ready for this? The big mystery revealed." A pause. "You want to be the one to push the button?"

He moved the cursor over the 'details' button and hesitated. She bit her lip, heart echoing, then shook her head.

"No, you go ahead." He thought it was a game, Dunphee did, as if he were working an amusement booth at a county fair.

Dunphee clicked and an image came up on the screen--a strikingly familiar image.

"There. That him?"

She could only nod.

"Whoa--FBI. You didn't know that, right? But it makes sense, you know. Those people can't just go around telling everybody what they do. Anonymity's part of their job."

"Yes, it...it certainly is."

"You don't seem so pleased."

"Well, it's such a...surprise. When you're expecting a more...ordinary occupation, to end up with an FBI agent."

"Not bad, missy. You know, those guys gotta be pretty smart. Nerves of steel. Could work out to be a good thing."

"Yes." She shifted in the chair. "I don't mean I'm disappointed with the results. I simply didn't imagine...Well, you can probably understand. It's like finding out someone in your family's actually royalty or something."

"Yes, I guess it could be." He paused and nodded toward the screen. "You want the printout? No extra charge, but I'm going to have to trim off the little edges there with the site address. Don't want those floating around."

"Yes, definitely. Fine, that will be fine." It was a forced smile.

Dunphee stood and busied himself with the printer, putting in paper and then hovering over the place where the paper came out, waiting to catch it as soon as it was ejected. Her pulse echoed inside her as if she were an empty container. FBI. Either he was one of Spender's, or...No, it made no sense. He was somebody else, one of the kind who didn't give up, the ones motivated by causes outside themselves--thematic causes like truth or justice. Like the black agent Wilkins who'd sat on her lab stool, notebook in hand, jotting down item after item as she spoke.

"Ms. Vanek?"

He was holding out the printout; he obviously had been for some seconds. She reached and took it, folded it in four and put it in her purse.

Dunphee busied himself with an invoice. When she signed it her handwriting looked strangely cramped.

"What is it?"

Tracy looked up, finally realizing her fingers were pressed to her temples. Heather Barker sat down on the porch swing beside her, a look of concern on her face.

"It's just..." She shook her head. "...a buzzing up here. Like static. I don't know what it is."

"Tracy?" Scully approached from where she'd been standing with Mulder and David Barker. Clouds of smoke were coming from the barbecue. "Are you okay?" She came close.

Tracy nodded. "It's just some kind of...static. But I think it's mental static, not...a headache or anything physical."

"You're sure?"

"I think so."

"You let me know if it's not."

A hand came out and passed gently across her forehead and into her hair. She was concerned the way a mother would be--especially if that mother were a doctor.

Tracy nodded. "Adrie's having fun, isn't he?"

They turned to watch Adrie, who was turning happy, lopsided cartwheels on the small patch of lawn that extended from the porch.

"I think he enjoys having people around," Scully said.

Tracy turned to Heather, who was looking off into the groundcover to the right. It was her brother's grave she'd turned toward, as if it were north on a compass and she were a magnet. Scully gave Tracy a knowing nod.

"Heather, do you want to show me?" Tracy set a careful hand on the woman's arm and glanced up briefly at Scully. "Do we have time for a walk?"

"I think so. David just put the chicken on the grill."

"Heather?" Tracy put her hand on the woman's shoulder. The tanned face returned to her as if she were a distantly remembered friend. "Would you like to show me, Heather?"

A pause, then real recognition and a smile lit the tanned woman's face.

Heather stood. Tracy got up and followed her past the lawn and down the curving path.

"...and you checked with the neighbors?" He reached for the ashtray, hesitated, and pulled it closer.

"Yeah. Kid next door said she'd gone to Maine for three weeks. Left an address--a hotel in Deer Isle."

"And? She's there?"

"Nope. Reservation but no deposit and she never showed."

"And when did she leave Greenwich?"

"Early yesterday, according to the kid."

He took a sharp drag on the Morley, held the phone away slightly and forced the smoke out in a thick stream. Mulder must have known he was gone but how many people had been apprised beyond Alex and Diana? Diana had developed a weak spot for Mulder early on; it was the reason he'd sent her to Europe after Mulder's 'discovery' of the X-files. She'd been growing too attached, the strength--the perspective, the professional detachment--she needed becoming dangerously dulled. But her European assignment had tempered that; she'd returned on firmer footing. And Alex? Alex was a schemer, barely holding in his bitterness and his resentment, waiting for the right moment, looking for an advantage or a loophole. But what would he have to gain from alerting Mulder? Did he expect to find in Mulder a partner in overthrowing him? Alex hadn't the contacts to maintain the delicate balance holding the world together and Mulder would never agree to any sort of partnership with Alex. He'd seen to that when he'd had Alex dispatch Bill Mulder.

"And her car?"

"Gone."

A pause.

"I have several other places for you to check. One's in Rochester, the other's in...Baltimore, I believe. You may as well get on the road. Call me from Rochester and I'll have the particulars ready for you."

He paused, then hung up the phone. Teena had one sister and parents--her father long dead, her mother frail and in an exclusive nursing home--who'd essentially disowned her when she'd become engaged to Bill. Her mother would be no place to turn for shelter now, but her sister might prove a source of some information--at least, if she was unaware that she might be compromising her sibling's safety.

I hope your hunch regarding your research plays out. If my hopes count for anything, they are that you succeed in your search and pave the way for the peace you both deserve. I'll be in touch. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help.
                                                                                                                        -M
P.S. Please have Tracy open an account and contact me. I have something to tell her.

Krycek stopped under the shade of a striped awning. Had to make it both ways--there and back--and it was hot out, but it wouldn't wait. A stray thought of tortilla'd led to the restaurant and then to Marisela. Your Tracy she'd called her, and if the old man sent his snoops door to door in the neighborhood, the word would get passed. It wouldn't be any impression Tracy'd left; she'd come home from the restaurant with your Alex, too. Maybe they'd just pass it off as the remark of a lovesick waitress, but 'maybe' was about as safe as leaving your car door wide open and hoping nobody'd take what was inside. The hint of a liaison--the old man would love that. He'd laugh, incredulous, and then he'd get down to business and figure out how he could use it.

Krycek stared at a newspaper through the grates that held it in the metal box. There and back and how did he say what he needed to without making it worse or giving himself away? The girl was quiet but she obviously wasn't unobservant. Maybe their tactics would make her pull in, not want to talk. Or maybe they'd come posing as cops and she'd feel obligated.

He stepped out into the light and continued on his way up the block. Frying pan into the fire. No, more like somebody'd turned off the heat for a few weeks and now, back on again, it seemed twice as hot as it had been before. If she'd never come, if the old man hadn't recruited her... He'd be the same sorry son of a bitch he'd always been. He just wouldn't know it.

He looked at the storefronts as he passed them. Pharmacy, hardware, thrift store, laundromat. Health foods, insurance agency, used books. Manzanares. A cutout castle hung from chains on a standard jutting out from above the door. He paused in front of it, waited for his breathing to settle and grabbed the wrought iron handle.

Inside, the restaurant was cool and dark. He let the door close behind him, a streak of brightness against the far wall vanishing with the sound of door fitting into frame. No waiters, no customers; it was too early yet, barely 5:30. Muffled sounds came from the kitchen--a pot set on a surface and then a dish clattering to the floor. The sound of laughter, footsteps approaching--running--and Marisela burst through the kitchen door, trying to catch her breath from whatever'd been going on. Something that had to do with the cook, one of her brothers, who came chasing her and quickly retreated when he saw a patron in the lobby. Marisela froze when she saw him. Her hand went over her mouth, her smile melted and she turned red.

"Senor Alex..." She reached for breath and composure. "I didn' know..."

"No problem. I just got here. It's cool--nice."

"Can I get you something?"

He hesitated.

"Maybe a tortilla. Can you do a small one? Just a..." After a second his lips came together. "...little one."

She seemed uncomfortable and looked down at the countertop between them. The seconds swelled, long and empty.

"Look, has somebody come around here? Somebody..."

The girl's head came up. "They ask about Tracy."

"Were you here? What'd you tell them?"

"That..." He could see her searching for words that had escaped her. She shook her head. "I didn' like them. They have a...nice manner, but not nice, you know? I tell them only that she come here sometimes for food, that the last time she come is three nights ago--Wednesday. I didn' say she had the computer." Her eyes met his. "She's really gone? De veras?"

He hesitated, then nodded. "Yeah. Just...disappeared. You didn't...Did you...?"

"All they ask is about her, have I seen her? I didn' say about you. Nothing. If they come back, I don't say anything." Her eyes were down again, not on anything specific, just not focusing on his. Her finger traced the edge of a dollar bill sealed below the glass countertop. "I hope nothing happens to her, but..." She looked up. "Two days. Is a bad sign, no?"

His jaw tightened. "Yeah."

"I hope...that you find her. She's a good person."

He nodded stiffly. Breathe, stupid. Loosen up.

She turned toward the kitchen door. "I make your tortilla now. It won't take long."

He nodded. She disappeared through the swinging doors and he retreated to the bench across from the cash register, sat down, leaned back. Legs were shaky, stomach knotted and a little queasy. Pulse was pounding, strong, too loud. He could've walked away from the stairs that first time, gone on with his life, fallen asleep to the rewound memory of another shot placed neatly in the back of a head, the body falling cleanly--a 9.5 or higher, as if it were some kind of Olympic sport. Never think about what rain smelled like, the simple security of two hands locked together, the jolt of having her laugh at you, then smile and wipe away all the frustration you thought you had a right to feel.

What was she doing, where was she now--right now? Mulder'd make sure she was okay, not alone someplace dwelling on the distance between them.

Three weeks. It was like taking a ghetto child for a three-week vacation away from the danger and the poverty and the hardness of his life, removing him to someplace green and tranquil...and then putting him back and expecting that three weeks to have changed him. I realized now what the static in my head was--it was Alex, as if he were a distant radio station, trying to adapt to the reality of the life he'd had to go back to. Something had shaken him today, something beyond the old man's return, but he was too far away for me to tell what it was. Even in the middle of the night, when we met in the dream, the shadow of the life that was rushing back at him had been with him like a presence. He'd wanted to make me a promise, something simple that transcended distance--his heart and spirit had wanted to while his mind ran circles, knowing full well that promises were for fools, that circumstances changed, people were snatched away, or changed, leaving promises only empty, mocking shells, like the discarded skins of snakes.

As I sat by Adrie's waterfall waiting for dinner to be ready, I had to ask myself again the question I'd voiced last night to Mulder, whether I'd just confused and complicated Alex's life by coming into it. We led completely different kinds of lives, though his circumstances when we met had made it easy for me to draw him into mine. But the fact was, he had to survive in the one he lived and it was looking a lot like I'd just made it harder for him to do that.

And then I thought, stick with what you know. And even though I was feeling raw and torn away inside, I had to smile, because I knew I'd given him something good; I'd seen him smile and laugh and be relaxed--really at ease--when those were things that weren't any part of his life. It was my gift to him and his gift to me was that thought--to stick with what I knew. It had saved me again, now, even though he wasn't here. It was the fulfillment of his promise--to be with me, somehow, when I needed strength.

It's a strange feeling, to cry and smile at the same time, to ache and feel empty and incredibly filled all at once. In the end somehow I found peace. When Scully came to call me to dinner, I was ready to go back to the others.

Maria lay with her cheek against Brian's chest and stared into the dark. He was asleep now, beginning to snore lightly. They'd made love like two automatons. Correction: Brian had been his usual attentive self while she lay there sensationless, the way she'd been when he discovered her sitting in her car in the driveway, staring at the paper Dunphee had given her. They hadn't even eaten the steaks. She'd slipped off to bed while Brian wrapped them and put them in the refrigerator.

There was the small revolver in her underwear drawer. There were drugs, and plausible excuses for why one of them might be given. But it was ridiculous even to be speculating about those things. Murders--or even 'accidents'--weren't dismissed so easily; certainly one in a town the size of Owensburg would draw the locals' interest like flies to spilled honey. There was the danger of getting caught. He could be left for Spender to deal with, though Spender had been less than reliable of late. Surely he must be an annoyance to Spender as well, this Fox Mulder. There was the matter of the flow of beryllium to his project if nothing else.

The other option was to leave, to find another group and forge another uneasy alliance, possibly a more dangerous one than this. The last time it had taken two years' time from the work. It wasn't nearly acceptable.

Maria eased herself away from her sleeping companion, slipped off the edge of the bed and went to the window. The sky was a deep, clear blue with a handful of stars set into it. She turned and looked back at the shadowed bed. Three years and if she were gone? What would he be left with? A silk nightgown hanging on a hook next to his in the closet? Questions about why she'd run after all his diligence? Two little girls whose place had been stolen by an intriguing woman who had come and ultimately gone?

Other people held onto things that seemed so easily disposable. It would be nice--perhaps it would be comforting as well--to feel the pull of those things: sentiment, attachment, a yearning for the soul of another. They were silent for her; sometimes it took the mirror of a like-minded one to make it clear. There had been that awful night in Kraznoyarsk, the one she'd rather forget except that the memory had never quite chosen to leave. It was supposed to have been just an exchange of information but it had led to a mattress, more a confrontation than a joining. He'd called her 'athletic' and she'd termed him cold and hungry. Together they'd made a sorry pair, so similar in the end. What would he be doing now, the little bastard son of Spender's, if he were still alive?

Brian rolled in his sleep and grunted, searching for her, finally locating her pillow and pulling it up against him. She was supposed to feel something. She was supposed to want to go there, move the pillow, crawl into his arms and feel filled. She looked up at the darkened ceiling and felt cool air seep through her nightgown.

"...And her reaction?"

"I told her I'd accidentally hit her sister's car last week and I had some insurance information for her. But she said she didn't know anything--you know, where she'd gone. She seemed concerned enough. She did say her sister might've used a condo she's got in Baltimore. She called; nobody was there. But I got her to give me the address."

"Good. What is it?"

"Waterston Street. Lemme see here...307 Waterston."

"307...Did she say anything specific about the place? Whether she used it often, anything...?"

"Nope. Sounded like just a place they kept in case they were in the area."

"Very well. Good work. I'll have someone check it out."

He pressed the phone's power button, paused and pressed it again. His hand crept toward the pack of Morleys on the table, found it empty, and pulled out a drawer to get another.

"Yes...I need a job done this evening. Baltimore. Check a condo for an occupant and/or fingerprints. A car, Connecticut license #443 DHK. And phone records for the last two days. Yes, right away. It's a priority."

"According to this, Mulder, they still haven't noticed any activity tracing the license plates used in my mom's escape." She glanced over at the bed.

Mulder pursed his lips. "And they think it's okay for you to go?"

"They're saying Langley and Frohike can assess the contents of your boxes and repackage them while Byers drives me to where Mom's staying."

"At least it's Byers driving." He raised an eyebrow. "If it were Frohike I'd worry. He'd tell you to come, danger or not, just so he could spend a few minutes in the same car with you."

He smiled at her, then looked up at the ceiling. She watched his lower lip pull in, then relax, his jaw set, hold and finally go slack.

"What are we doing here, Scully?" he said softly. "Sometimes you just run and run and run until...you don't know what the hell you're doing it for."

"The usual reasons," she said. "Truth, justice and the American way..." She sighed. "And the fact that we're caught up in it now, no...going to sleep and waking up to find that Cancer Man's melted into a little puddle, like the Wicked Witch of the West. Your sister. You've..."

"I wonder..." He bit the inside of his lip.

"Wonder what?"

He nodded for her to join him on the bed. She got up from her chair and lay down beside him. She plumped the pillow under her head and waited for him to roll into her arms.

"What, Mulder?"

"I guess I'm starting to wonder if I haven't just been searching for her because I had nothing else." He looked up. "...Nothing else in my life. I want to find her. I want to find her more than anything. I guess for a long time I had nothing to lose...no reason not to"--he shrugged--"make a swan dive off some cliff if it'd get me somewhere, buy me a lead..." He rolled onto his back and looked at the ceiling. "But it hasn't. Not a single time, and what does that say, Scully? Am I crazy to be looking when not a single lead has ever panned out? Not one. What does that say about the odds that she's still alive after all this time?"

"Maybe it only says that the people who've been...dangling her in front of you..." She paused. "...don't really know where she is."

He shook his head. A smile crossed his face, then faded. He pulled her into his arms.

"You're just trying to make me feel good, Scully."

"I don't mean to give you false hope, Mulder..." She looked up at him and smiled. "But make you feel good? Yes, I try."

A warm hand smoothed back through her hair. His cheek came to rest against the top of her head. She was carried up and down gently with the movement of his chest.

"You think she's okay up there, Scully? Tracy, I mean? In the house?"

"She seems to have made an inroad with Heather. Maybe nobody shows any genuine interest in Heather, Mulder. Maybe that's part of her distance. I mean, between the fact that you're never sure if she's quite...with you, and her focus on her brother." She paused. "I could see it, Mulder, as soon as Heather sat down with Tracy. Tracy asked her if she'd show her Ron's grave. She's willing to...to look at your pain, when everyone else just wants you to hide it away."

"She was up with Bethy in the night--last night...the two of them sitting on the couch there whispering like long-lost sisters. Maybe that..."

A pause. His Adam's apple rose slightly and then slid back into place.

"What, Mulder?"

"I was just thinking...If there'd been somebody, when I was a kid--you know, someone who would've asked me about Samantha, wondered what I was going through...even one person acting like they really wanted to know. Could've been a powerful thing. Powerful thing."

"Maybe that's what she did for Krycek."

His lips twisted. "More like...a spotlight shining on him and he had no way to escape it, it just kept shining." He let out a slow breath. "Wonder why he didn't just...smash the bulb, though, you know? How they got from...Point A to Point B..."

"Maybe he never had a choice."

"Mmm..."

From the wall above the door the starburst clock sent out a subtle tick-tick-ticking. Leaves murmured on silhouetted trees beyond the half-open window, their shadows shifting against the darkening sky.

"I can hardly believe it, Mulder..."

"What?"

"That I'll actually see my mother tomorrow. It's like...like I've been underwater for longer than I can remember and I'm finally going to break the surface."

He pulled her closer. Warm lips brushed her temple.

"You deserve it, Scully. Just..." Breath against her hair.

"What?"

"Be careful. Come back in one piece. Don't do..." A sigh. "...anything I would've done...for way too many years."

A key was set into the lock and turned. Krycek rolled and reached under his pillow, fingers curling around the steel of his weapon.

Cigarette smoke; he forced his pulse to slow.

The door swung open briefly, letting in a shaft of bright, yellow-white light that pierced the room and then disappeared as the door was closed again. The end of the old man's Morley glowed orange in the dark.

"Alex, are you here?"

"Yeah." He glanced toward the clock and blinked twice. 10:38.

"I brought some photographs--enhancements of the hospital videos. I'd like you to take a look at them, see if you recognize either of these two."

Krycek shoved the gun farther under the pillow, sat up and reached for the bedside lamp. The brightness of the light made him squint. He looked up at the old man.

"The photos..."

A set of 8x10s was held out to him. Krycek flipped through them slowly, paused and shrugged. The old man went to the desk for the ashtray, still on the desktop from the afternoon, and then returned.

"Woman's never got more than half her face in the picture." He shrugged. "Even mirroring it, you're not going to..." He breathed out and stared at the pictures of the man again.

"I've had some renderings done..."

A sheaf of sketches was held out, variations of the pony-tailed man with light hair or dark, short, long, curly, straight. Some with beards or mustaches or both. The old man was intent on nailing this guy. He looked through them twice and handed them back.

"Nobody I've ever seen."

"There's also the matter of a nurse--an Indian woman. The one who comes in with the man to take our patient out for her...bath. It's possible she could have been strong-armed by the man and his companions. Or she could be an accomplice herself. She was interviewed by the police, though frankly I'm not sure I believe the story she gave. If you were in better shape, Alex..." He stopped to tap more ash off into the amber dish, then took a final drag on what was left of the cigarette. "...I'd have you interview her yourself. You can be very persuasive." Raised eyebrows. Threatening was what he meant. Mulder's people weren't going to strong-arm anybody. The woman would be someone they knew, somebody they had a connection to. Threaten a hospital nurse. Tell her her kids might disappear or her husband could come to an unexpected end. Push until you saw raw fear in her eyes.

"Sorry. Maybe another couple of weeks..." A slightly hopeful look for good measure. What a crock of shit. "Nothing on how they transported her yet?"

The old man looked thoughtful. "No. We've got no video. Police haven't come up with anything..." He shrugged. "But we're following through on that list of mortuaries you came up with. Good work, by the way."

"Something you can do over the phone. I checked every oxygen supplier between here and Philly. Came up empty on every damn one--you know, new accounts. Took me a whole afternoon."

The old man seemed pleased. He ground out the stub of the Morley he was holding, set the ashtray on the bedside table and reached into his pocket for another. Cancer stick between the lips, lighter out, flipped--hand cupped slightly, as if he were standing outside in a wind--the tip of the cigarette reaching toward the flame, the flame barely touching it--a kiss. Krycek turned away and focused on the narrow window at the foot of the bed. If the old man'd been able to see her here that first night, what she did and how she did it...He'd picked too well. But he hadn't picked at all. It was her. She'd been there before she was even needed, just waiting for the call, knowing who and what he was, having seen the kid with the hole in his face--maybe a dozen other jobs he'd done--and she hadn't turned away or run.

"...didn't mean to disturb you," the old man was saying. He paused to put the cigarette to his lips. "No sign of your little housekeeper?"

Krycek shook his head and looked away. His pulse ran a steady da-da-da-da-da.

"Well..." The old man reached for the folder of pictures on the end of the bed, tapped it on one side to even out the papers inside it and tucked it under his arm. "I should be going. I'll be in touch."

Krycek nodded, leaned toward the bedside lamp and waited for the old man to go out, for the lock to turn. No switching the light off before he went. Do that and he'd see the old man the way he'd seen her that first night, haloed in the doorway. Uh-uh.

The door closed, the metal thunk of the bolt going into the door frame. He eased himself up off the bed, picked the ashtray from the bedside table and took it into the bathroom. Contents into the toilet. He set the ashtray in the sink and turned on the water. Turned back to flush. She'd trusted him too easily. It was in her to trust, to give her mind and spirit to someone, anyone who needed it: look at the flower seeds she'd sown in the old woman's garden behind the laundry room. She worried about Scully's mom and about the guy two doors down from her, whether he was getting along with his son--people she only knew from reading them through an apartment wall. She gave that spirit to anyone who needed it.

But she didn't give her body. That had been the hardest thing for her, the one that'd made her quake inside. In the end she'd trusted him with that, too. Not because she needed a quick fix, not because she couldn't go without, but because she wanted them to be together. It was the symbolism of the thing--give everything, hold nothing back.

No holding back. She wouldn't.

Should've known.

"Scully?"

He squinted toward the small desk lamp. She was sitting there, cloth in hand, little tube of oil on the desk, little barrel brush. He swallowed and lay back against the pillows. He hadn't seen a weapon in weeks. Hadn't seen hers since she'd shot Krycek.

She looked up.

"I couldn't sleep," she said, mouth small, lips together and perfect, concentrating on her work. "Is the light bothering you? I could try setting something between you and the lamp..."

He shook his head. "No. Don't worry about it."

He rolled onto his side and watched her, movements sure, professional, practiced. That mouth, the set of her jaw--that air of confident expertise, of calm under pressure that'd gotten them through so many tough spots. Three weeks where she'd been just Scully--woman, partner, lover--and here it came, reality check with a bite. It was who they were. It was what they did.

It was a hell of a way to live.

I kept getting this feeling she'd seen everything I'd gone through today, or at least that I'd thrown off enough mental static for her to hear it where she was and worry. I wasn't like her, though--didn't have any radar that would zero in on her, defy space and transport me to where she was. For some reason I kept getting this urge to try, though. Felt a little like some guy standing at the end of a cliff with a bird costume on, knowing anyone who saw me'd be laughing, hoping when I jumped it wouldn't just be a quick trips onto the rocks below, the only thing that seemed a real possibility. But as I lay there I started thinking about holding her in that chair at her mother's, just rocking her and watching her sleep, thinking about the way she was and hoping whatever was running through her head was peaceful. And then I thought about sitting on the edge of her bed a few mornings earlier, watching her fall right back asleep, hardly knowing I was there. Then gradually I envisioned this other room, a place I'd never been, and I saw her there, asleep in a bed. Don't know whether it was the real thing or whether my mind was just making it all up, but I sat down on the edge--didn't want to wake her--and thought out everything I'd gone through in the last sixteen hours, the way I'd doubted her and how I felt--like one unworthy son of a bitch--when I finally realized she'd never do that to me. Wanted so bad to reach out and touch her, but I didn't. Maybe I was afraid of waking her.  Probably I figured it'd break the spell--the idea that it might be real, where I was and what I was seeing. Anyway, I didn't want to disturb her; the old man was back and I had to keep my head on straight for both our sakes. I just wanted to watch over her for a little while and I did in the few minutes I thought I could spare. Had a thousand things in my head I couldn't have put into words to tell her right then, but what I felt--I knew she'd understand that. So I just sent it out and hoped it'd find its way to her somehow. If anybody could pull that kind of thing in out of thin air, it'd be Tracy.