"Alex? God, Alex," he put a hand to his throat, to check his
pulse, as Alex's eyes flew open. Mulder grinned in relief for a
second, then started checking him frantically. "Don't move," he said,
in warning, looking him over.
"Don't worry."
"I swear, the moment you get out of the hospital, I'm taking you
straight to Quantico for a refresher course in ducking."
"Oh, I don't know," Alex said, with a shaky grin, attempting to
raise his arms. "I'd say I'm pretty good at it."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, unless my entire body has gone numb, that he missed
me." He pulled himself up, giving himself a visual once-over. "Yup."
Mulder sagged beside him. "He missed you."
"You sound almost disappointed."
"If we weren't in public, I'd rip off all of your clothes and show
you just how incredibly not disappointed I am. Unfortunately—"
"Can I take that as a raincheck?" Alex grinned at him. He got
up and reached a hand down for his partner, then turned towards the
now-handcuffed shooter. "Recognize him?"
Mulder gave the guy the once-over. "Well, well, well—what do
you know? I believe this is the guy who made you a widower."
"Sandro Mirstov, if I'm not mistaken."
"An old friend of yours?" Mulder asked.
"More like an acquaintance," Alex answered. "I'm disappointed,
Mirstov," he said to the still-struggling man. "You should know better
than to shoot someone without your glasses on."
The man shot him a nasty-sounding epithet in Russian. "I got
contacts," he growled, in English this time.
Mulder almost laughed. "Never trust those one-hour eye
places," he said, flippantly. "They'll screw you over, or hadn't you
heard?" He waved over the backup agents that he saw Skinner had
sent arrive. "Take him away."
Alex checked his watch. "We missed our flight."
Mulder glanced over. "Too bad."
"Should we book another one?"
"I think, under the circumstances, we should probably skip the
trip to Chicago." He pulled out his cell phone. "I'd better call in and
let Skinner know we're both alive."
"Say hi from me."
Mirstov was taken to a tiny room at the airport normally reserved for
customs. Alex and Mulder walked in to find him with two other
agents already.
"You know this guy?" one of them asked.
"Sandro Mirstov," Mulder said.
"AKA Sandy Martin," another voice said, coming through the
door. He held his hand out, "Agent Morris, Central Intelligence."
Mulder groaned internally, but held his hand out. "Agent
Mulder. Why are you here?"
"I've been tracking Mr. Mirstov for three months now."
"Why?" Alex asked.
"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to tell you that, Agent Krycek."
Alex's eyebrow raised at the use of his name, but Morris just
smiled, benignly. He pulled some paperwork out of the file in his
hand. "I'm going to have to take Mr. Mirstov with me, I'm afraid."
"I think the Alexandria police are probably going to be
interested in 'Mr.' Mirstov in connection with an on-going murder
investigation," Mulder said.
"Oh, I'll be able to clear that matter up, believe me." He
signalled for two other agents to come in, and handed Mulder's
handcuffs back to him. "I can assure you, Mr. Mirstov won't be
causing any trouble in this country ever again."
"So he gets a one-way ticket back home, eh?" Alex smiled
bitterly. "First class?"
"I'll say hi to your family for you, Alexei," Mirstov said, smugly.
"You son-of-a—"
Mulder put an arm up to hold him back. "Alex—it's not worth it.
Let's get out of here."
"Hi, Dr. Miller, hi, Doris." Beth waved to her oncologist, and the
attending nurse at the desk. "Ready for me?"
Doris shook her head. "I'm afraid not, Beth. The last two
appointments were pushed back this afternoon. It's going to be
forty-five minutes, at least, before we can take you."
Beth rolled her eyes. "Why am I never surprised?" She
rummaged around in her bag for her hospital card. "Here. Let's do
the next hundred pages of my paperwork while I wait, okay?" She
took the clipboard of papers over to a chair and started filling them
out.
Despite the impressive size of the pile of paperwork, she was
familiar enough with the routine to have them all finished inside of ten
minutes. She checked her watch. "Do you think they could use any
help in the playroom?" she asked Doris.
"I think they'd be very glad for it," Doris replied. "I can call
down there when we can take you, if you'd like."
"That would be great," Beth said, with a smile. "I'll see you in a
few."
They got back to the disaster area of their office within the hour.
Mulder took one look at his partner, rumpled suit and all, and locked
the door.
"Mulder—" Alex started, still upset about the Mirstov business,
but his thought was cut off by his partner's mouth.
Mulder kissed him thoroughly, then started taking his jacket off.
"Uh, did you forget about the 'no fraternization' rule?"
Mulder shook his head. "I also remember the 'i before e
except after c' rule, but I don't care about that now, either." He
kissed Alex again, unbuttoning his shirt. "You could have been killed."
"But I wasn't."
"Thank god. And I think that we should celebrate that fact." He
attached his mouth to Alex's throat.
"Oh, yeah, sounds good," Alex moaned. "The only thing is,
there isn't a whole lot of room in the office, right at the moment." His
eyes widened as Mulder swept his arm broadly, pushing everything
off of the second desk and onto the already-crowded floor, then
grinned at him, yanking off his tie. "You couldn't have done that to
your desk?"
"Sorry," he said, not sounding in the least sorry. He pushed
Alex back onto the desk. "Heat of the moment."
"Do near-death experiences always have this effect on you?"
"Haven't you known me long enough to figure that out, yet?"
He continued kissing and undressing his partner. "This would go a
lot faster if you helped, you know."
"And what makes you think I have any interest in this going any
faster?"
Mulder grinned. "Good point. But the entire concept of a
'quickie', by it's very name, implies some sort of speed of execution."
"True. We'll have to call this something else, then."
"It can't be a 'nooner'," Mulder said, glancing at his watch and
stripping his pants off. "It's nearly two."
"A 'twoer'?" Alex suggested, curling his tongue around
Mulder's ear.
"Oh, I like that," Mulder moaned, "but the name is terrible."
"How about," Alex said, turning them over on the desk, "a 'long,
slow, hard fuck'?"
"Now that is a fantastic idea," Mulder agreed. "But what are we
going to call it?"
Beth left the playroom and thrust her hand in her purse, looking for
her wallet. The more-precious-than-gold hospital parking tokens she
kept were in there, and she wanted to know if she had any left, or if
she had to buy more. A momentary panic swept over her as she
realized her wallet wasn't there.
"Oh, hell." She tried to think of where she'd seen it last.
"Maybe it fell out in the car."
She checked her watch. Still seven minutes to go before her
appointment. Enough time to make a dash for the car.
She continued to poke through the bag on the elevator, and
walking through the parking garage, pulling books, planners, pill
bottles and other assorted items out of the seemingly-bottomless
bag. She made it to the car and got the door open when a voice
directly behind her startled her into whirling around.
"Can I help?"
She reached blindly to drop her bag into the car, but
miscalculated and missed, dumping it and the contents onto the floor
of the garage, where they scattered.
"Dammit," she swore.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. Please, let me help,"
the man said with a smile, bending down towards her, and gathering
some of the stuff together.
She smiled her thanks and turned slightly away to reach for her
paperback. Just as she turned back to put it into her bag, a hand
came over her mouth, hard. She tried to struggle, kicking out, but he
was too strong for her, and she could only watch helplessly as he
produced a syringe. A second later she felt the sharp prick of an
injection, and everything went black.
At three-fifteen, they were in Skinner's office again giving their report
of the events of the morning. Skinner had already been well briefed
on the situation through a few calls to their brother agency, none of
which had led to any better news than Morris had already given them.
"So we're just going to let him go?" Alex asked. "He could
have killed a federal agent. He did kill someone, for god's sake,
and—"
Mulder's cell phone rang. He looked away apologetically
before he answered it.
"Agent Mulder," the voice said, continuing on before he could
reply, "the ones you hold near. You should be very careful of them."
Startled, he was unable to say anything before the line clicked
dead. He shot a look at Alex beside him, then dialled the number of
Scully's cell phone.
"Scully."
"Are you okay?"
"Mulder? Yeah, I'm fine. What's wrong?"
"Oh, nothing. Just the usual day—I'm fine, your husband's fine,
Alex was shot at—"
"What?"
"He's fine, too. Look, I've got to try to find Beth. Do you know
where she's supposed to be today?"
"She's probably in the middle of her radiation appointment,"
Dana said. "She told me she had an appointment at three when I
saw her this morning."
"Great. I hate to cut you off, but I've got to call my mom."
"Is anything wrong?"
"I don't know. I'll call you if something is."
"Okay."
He dialled his mother's place. Both Alex and Skinner were
looking at him with concern. "Mom? Are you okay?"
He talked with his mother for a few minutes, then made a call to
the hospital.
"Radiation."
"Is Beth Locke there for her appointment? This is her brother,
Fox Mulder."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Mulder. Her appointment was pushed back, and
she's not going in for another fifteen minutes."
"Could I talk with her?"
"She's not right here—she went down to the pediatric
playroom. I could have her call you when she comes back."
"Uh, I realize this is unusual, but could you possibly have her
paged? This is an emergency."
"Of course. I'll call down there right now." She put him on hold.
"What's going on?" Alex asked.
"'The ones you hold near. You should be very careful of
them,'" Mulder quoted, holding the cell away from his mouth. "That
was the call I got. A male voice, no background noises."
"I'll put a trace on it," Skinner said, picking up the phone.
"The entire thing couldn't have taken more than ten seconds,"
Mulder said, shaking his head. "I'd call it a prank, but my name was
used. And, until I hear from everyone I 'hold near', I'm not taking any
chances. Yes," he said, his ear back to the phone. All expression
drained from his face as he listened. "She's not there? Can you
repeat the page over the entire hospital?"
Skinner picked up the phone. "I need an investigative team to
Mercy General," he said.
Her car was in the underground garage, the driver's side door open.
Five feet away from the car was a shoe that Dana later recognized
as one of a pair that she'd been wearing that morning. There were
also, they would find out from the forensic report on the car, a few
drops of blood found that matched her blood type.
Alex was keeping a worried eye on Mulder, who was barely
controlling his frustration, going over the crime scene, and generally
getting in the way of the team that was trying to collect evidence.
Finally, he went over to him.
"Mulder—"
"This is my fault."
"How do you figure that?"
"I should have—" he trailed off, at a loss.
"Exactly," Alex said. "You can't keep her in sight twenty-four
hours a day. She'd probably kill you inside of a week. No matter
what you think, you're not responsible for the lives of all of the
people around you." He put a hand on Mulder's arm and tugged him
away from the car. "Let them do their job, Mulder."
"I need to do something."
"Let's go talk to the witnesses they've rounded up. Maybe
they've found out something."
They met Dana as they rounded the corner towards the nurses'
lounge where the two witnesses, an orderly who'd found the car and
called the police, and an off-duty nurse who'd nearly been run down
by a sedan leaving the garage at the approximate time of the
abduction, were being questioned.
"It was dark blue, not very good condition, I think. The
windows were tinted, so I didn't get a look at the driver."
"License plate?"
She shook her head. "I was too busy trying to get out of the
way to notice. I'm sorry."
"Do you remember anything else?" Mulder put in, drawing an
annoyed glance from the officer in charge. "Either of you? Anything
could be significant, even if you don't think it is."
They both thought for a moment, but shook their heads. The
nurse piped up again, "It just happened so fast, I'm surprised that I
even managed to see what colour the car was."
They both left their names and contact numbers with the
officer, and left the room.
"Mulder family characteristic," Mulder muttered.
"What?" Alex asked.
He shook his head. "Just remembering something Beth said in
the hospital. I think too many damn things run in our family," he said,
and headed out the door, Alex at his heels.
She woke up and tried opening her eyes, but it didn't help her any.
At first she had a hysterical thought that the radiation had made her
go blind, before she remembered she'd never made it to her
appointment. She tried to think of why she'd missed it, but her head
ached terribly, along with most of the rest of her body, and made it
impossible for her to gather her thoughts.
Okay, you're not in Kansas anymore. So where are you?
Obviously, she'd been taken somewhere. She shivered. Wherever
this was was extremely cold, and damp. A musty smell joined and
made her think of a basement somewhere. That would explain the
hardness of whatever she was lying on—concrete.
Shifting gingerly, she attempted to sit up. It took Herculean
effort, as her hands and ankles were bound securely with wide tape.
Finally, she stopped trying. What the hell am I going to be able to
do sitting up that I can't do lying here?
A sudden noise startled her, and she tried to settle quickly into
the position she'd been in when she awoke, steadying her breathing
to make it seem as though she were still unconscious.
Footsteps fell closer, and she was nudged with something she
assumed to be a foot. She didn't respond.
A male voice said, "I thought you said she'd be awake by now."
"Maybe she's taking some other drugs that reacted with the
mickey. She was in the hospital, you know." The second voice
startled her further—she had only heard one set of footsteps
approaching.
"Great. So what if she's in a coma? If she dies, she isn't
going to be any good to us at all."
Good to know that if I die, it won't only screw up my day.
"If she dies, she dies. As long as we get paid before they find
out she's dead, everything will turn out fine. You worry too much."
"The boss will not be impressed with either one of us if the
plan doesn't go exactly as he wants it to. If she dies, we could very
well follow."
It might be worth it, at that.
"Oh, shut up. She hasn't even been out for two hours, yet.
Give her some time. Maybe we just gave her more than she needed."
"We? I don't remember handling the stuff at all, Einstein."
"Buddy, for the last time—if this screws up, we both go down.
Throw a blanket on her, so she won't freeze to death, at least."
A musty, damp blanket was thrown unceremoniously on top of
her, but she was glad for any extra warmth. She held her breath as
she heard them climb upstairs, then a door was slammed. Waiting a
few extra minutes, she strained to hear anything else, then finally let
her breath out with a gasp. Shifting around to get under more of the
blanket, she struggled to gather her thoughts, but eventually the pain
and coldness overcame her and she succumbed once again to sleep.
They were tirelessly going through the case files, staying in the
office late into the night. Finally Alex looked up from the box he was
going through. Mulder had put his head down on the desk for a
moment, in despair.
"Mulder," Alex said. He didn't move his head. "She's going to
be okay, Mulder."
"I don't know that. Neither do you. We don't even know who
the hell has her."
"We'll figure it out, but you have to get some rest."
"I can't. Not until we find her." He sat up and rubbed the
bridge of his nose where his glasses sat, polishing them and putting
them back on. "You can go home, if you want."
"No." He came over beside his partner. "I love her, too."
Mulder nodded, wordlessly.
"I just know that we aren't going to find her if you worry
yourself into the hospital."
Mulder sighed. "I can't lose her again. I just got her back." He
crumpled against the desk. "I can't, Alex."
Alex put an arm around his shoulders. "I know," he said,
soothingly. "We'll find her."
Mulder banged his hand against the desk. " 'The ones you
hold near,'" he said, for the hundredth time that day. "Dammit! If I
could just remember why that sounds so familiar."
Alex started rustling through the files again. "It wasn't a case
that you worked on? In VC, maybe?"
"No," Mulder shook his head. "That I would remember for
sure. It's something else, something more insidious."
"Obsessing is not going to help. We should go home, get
some rest—"
"He's right, you know."
They both looked up to see Dana standing in the doorway.
"What are you doing here?"
"I thought you'd both still be here. I also ran through some of
the reports on Beth's car. They're getting really friendly with me
down there. I may get my own parking spot soon."
"Nice to know you have a career in law enforcement to fall back
on," Mulder said, dryly. "Did they have anything?"
"The usual—clothing fibers, hair. They're being analyzed, to
see if they're all Beth's, or if there's something from the abductor.
And this." She held out a evidence bag, with a syringe in it. "I
brought it here for Diane to look at."
"Do you think it's the same as the one you found in Mulder's
car?" Alex asked.
"It may be impossible to tell. The other one didn't have
anything in it, but this one shows some obvious signs of use. We
may be able to find out what they used to knock her out, though."
Mulder was sitting silently, staring at his hands. Finally, he
looked up. "Of course," he said, "it wasn't the words!"
"What do you mean?"
"What was so familiar about the phone call. I was trying to
remember where I'd heard the words before, but it wasn't the words,
it was the voice."
Four
by Mona Ramsey
The entire thing had taken seconds. He untangled himself from the
suspect, throwing his handcuffs at the airport security guy and
rushing to the side of his fallen partner.
