X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X

Chapter Seven

X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X

Mulder cupped his hands around his face to peer in the garage 
door window, and he saw that Diana's car was still inside.  
His own Taurus sat parked in the drive where he had left it.  
He went to the front door and punched the bell with one 
finger.  When she didn't appear, he banged on the door 
itself.  "Diana, open up!  I need to talk to you.  Diana!"

He pounded until his hand was sore, but no one answered.  He 
went back down the steps and walked around the side of the 
condo to look in the windows.  The dining room was empty, as 
was the kitchen.

"Diana!" He tried the back door but it was locked too.

As he walked to the front of the house again, he saw a woman 
watching him from the condo next door.  She had a plate in 
one hand and a dishtowel in the other.  "Can I help you with 
something?" she asked him pointedly.

"I need to talk to the woman who lives here," he called back, 
shielding his eyes from the sun.  "Do you know if she's 
home?"

"She left hours ago in a taxi," the neighbor answered.

"Thanks," Mulder said with a wave, and he fished his car keys 
from his pocket.

Of course Diana wouldn't have let his car stand in her way. 
The tires squealed as he peeled out of the drive, but he 
didn't head toward the Bureau, to find where she was.  
Instead, he went north up the coast to find where she'd been.

He picked up his cell phone as he drove.  "Scully," she said, 
answering before the first ring had completed.

"Scully, it's me.  I need you to check those phone records 
Imogene Brandt gave us and tell me if there were any hotels 
on the list."

"Where are you?"

"Driving up I-95."

"I thought you were coming back here."

"Imogene Brandt's says Diana was with Christopher the night 
he died.  Diana won't talk and Christopher can't talk.  The 
only way to find out the truth is to trace his steps that 
day."

He heard paper rustling on the other end, and Scully lowered 
her voice.  "There are no calls to any hotels listed here -- 
nothing from this whole month."

"Damn it, she must have made the reservation."

"Maybe they didn't have one.  Christopher Brandt was a serial 
adultery, Mulder.  He probably knew to cover his tracks, and 
making hotel reservations is not the way to do it."

"Then how the hell am I supposed to find out which hotel it 
is?  There are about six hundred places they could have 
stayed.  I can't go knocking on every door." 

He cut off some guy in a Beemer and got an earful of horn for 
his troubles.  When he checked the mirror, intending to make 
apologetic eye contact, he saw a black Lexus.  "I think I've 
got company."

"The Lexus again?"

"Yeah, he's about fifty yards back.  I can't see the driver."

"Maybe you should just come back here.  We don't know who 
this guy is, and you have no backup."

"Kersh gets one look at me and he'll chain me to my cubicle.   
No thanks."  He kept one eye on the mirror, but the Lexus 
hung back at a steady distance.  "Hang on, Scully.  I'm about 
to make a quick exit."

"Mulder‹"

He dropped the phone on the seat and grabbed the wheel with 
both hands.  Seizing a narrow break in traffic, he careened 
across four lanes to reach the exit, narrowly missing a UPS 
truck that was also lumbering off the highway.  The driver 
laid on his horn as Mulder hit the brakes.  The back end of 
his Taurus fishtailed, almost hitting the guardrail.  He 
brought the car under control and went right on red at the 
end of the exit ramp.

Soon he was cruising down a wide avenue with shopping plazas 
on both sides.  He scrambled to pick up his phone.  "Back," 
he said, a little breathless.

"What the hell was that about?"

"I think I lost him."

He made a quick right into one of the shopping malls and 
drove around so that the steep embankment hid his car from 
view.  He parked so that he could see the entrance, but no 
black Lexus turned into the lot.

"It does you no good if you end up as road kill," Scully 
said.

"I'm fine," he said, still distracted by the cars trickling 
in from the main road.  "I'm out of sight now."

"I have an idea about the hotel," she said.  "But I'll have 
to call you back."

"What is it?"

"Just don't go anywhere.  I'll call you right back."

She hung up and he rested his head against the seat, watching 
the entrance through slit eyes.  In his mind, he could hear 
the sound of the fire alarm, remembered the panic welling up 
inside him as the security officers tromped through the hall.  
All of it, a setup -- she had drawn him a map, helped him 
climb inside and then tried to seal his doom. 

His fingers tightened on the wheel.

When the phone rang, he jumped.  "Yeah, Mulder," he said.

"Are you still alone?" Scully asked.

"No sign of him.  What've you got?"

"If you want to know where a man is taking his new mistress, 
ask his old one.  I called Dr. Whatshername, his collaborator 
from last year.  She said he took her to a place called the 
Stonefield Inn, about thirty miles north."

"You got an address?"

She rattled it off and he scribbled down the directions on 
the inside of a Starbucks coffee holder.  "Mulder, please be 
careful."

"When am I not careful?" 

She said nothing as he started the engine.

"I'll call you when I know something," he said.

"Call me before that," she replied, and he actually smiled as 
he hung up the phone.


Drops of water pelting her face shook her free from 
bewilderment.  Mulder steadied her on the dirt floor as the 
rain began in earnest.  "We've got to get out of here," he 
said.  "The skies are about to open up."

"It's a hurricane," she told him stupidly.  "What's left of 
it, anyway."  The impending storm had been the other big 
story on the radio for the past few days, sandwiched between 
the coming mid-term elections and the manhunt for Mulder.

"Come with me," he said, tugging her hand, but she stood 
rooted to the ground.

"I can't."

"Yes, you can."

"I could be followed.  I could be tracked."  She gestured 
weakly at her neck.  

"I don't care."  He yanked harder and she came free, 
stumbling after him in the rain as they raced for the side 
entrance to the park.  

He half-dragged her to an old Chevy Malibu parked just 
outside the cast of a streetlamp.  Rain beaded hard on the 
roof as he struggled to get the keys free from his wet jeans.  
Inside, it was humid and dark, the smell of wet hair and 
clothing pungent in the confined space.

"Where did you get this?" Scully asked as she stroked a crack 
in the leather armrest. 

"Frohike.  The guys keep it registered under the name John 
Gilnitz."  The engine came to life easily enough, but the 
stick shift needed persuading to find the correct gear.  

Their headlights cut into the sheeting rain as Mulder 
navigated the narrow street.  With the arriving winds, the 
water poured over them in long, angry waves.  The noise 
vibrated the car, competing for attention with the roar from 
the air vents.

Scully let her head loll back against the seat, allowed 
herself to be hypnotized by the falling rain.  She could feel 
Mulder glancing at her even as he leaned out over the dash 
for better visibility.  

She closed her eyes and saw Diana's living room with the 
blood on the floor.  But then Diana was there, alive again, 
dressed in a gray silk robe and holding a drink in her hand.  
She wore a look of disgust, almost contempt, and Scully 
focused in on her lips as she heard the words Diana was 
saying: "You were never going to save him."

Then the gunshot rang out, making her gasp and sit up from 
the seat.

"You okay?" Mulder asked her, looking so alarmed that she had 
only one answer she could give.

"Yes." Rain dripped down, tears from the sky slipping over 
the curve of her cheek and off her chin.  "I didn't kill 
her."  

She tried the words out loud, and they sounded light and far 
away.

Mulder didn't answer immediately.  He fidgeted in his seat, 
both hands on the wheel.  "Either you were there, or someone 
planted the evidence."

"I wasn't there."  

He glanced at her again, clearly gauging how to proceed.  
"Okay, but your fingerprints were."

"I don't know how that happened.  I can't explain it."

"Maybe you touched her gunŠ"

"I didn't."

"Not once?  You can't recall handling her weapon at all in 
the days before she died?"

"Diana knew better than to let me hold her gun."

His shoulders sagged and he paused to rub at his eyes.  
"Yeah, I know."  He hesitated a moment.   "She hadn't been 
dead very long when I found her.  The lights were on and the 
front door was open -- no sign of a struggle or a break-in.  
The shooter fired once from around four feet away, facing 
Diana at the time.  The bullet entered just above her right 
eye."

"I read the autopsy report," she said shortly.  "I went to 
the scene."

"I'm just telling you what I saw."

She pushed a hank of wet hair from her eyes.  "I don't care 
what you saw.  I want to know why you were so quick to think 
I did it."

"Because I might have, if I were you."  He gave her another 
quick look, not really meeting her eyes.

She sank back, speechless.  They drove several miles with 
just the sounds of windshield wipers and the beating rain.  
The city had disappeared behind them.

"Why did you go there that night?" she whispered at last.  
She held her breath because almost any answer would be bad.

"You mean, did I go to kill her?"  

She couldn't even look at him.  He knew very well what she 
was asking.

"I don't think so," he said, exhaling a long breath.  He 
turned to her, and she made herself look.  His eyes were 
black and bottomless.  "I never got the chance to find out."
"You knew she was dying," she said.

"Yes."

"So it didn't matter."

"It mattered."  He swung back to look at the road again.  
"And she knew it too."

"You think she was pursuing Brandt for a cure?"

"Maybe.  It didn't seem to me like she wanted to be cured."

"What do you mean that she didn't want a cure?"  

A cure was all Scully had thought about from the moment of 
her diagnosis; she'd read every journal article on the 
subject and contacted every expert she could find.  At night, 
she laid in bed, thinking of new ways to defeat the tumor 
growing inside her brain.  She'd imagined it shrinking just 
from sheer force of angry thoughts alone.

She would have done anything.

"You offered, didn't you?" she asked him quietly, her gaze 
trained on her lap.  "You were going to get another chip."

Mulder's answer was a long time in coming. "She didn't want 
one," he admitted at last.

They didn't speak at all after that.
X-X-X-X-X-X

The Inn proved to be a sizable building, with a white stone 
face and a garden courtyard in the back.   The front featured 
a circular drive with a small fountain in the middle; brown 
finches splashed each other in the basin as Mulder walked 
past.

The lobby was simple, with an Oriental rug covering the old 
hardwood floors and a carved oak staircase curving upwards to 
the second level.  No one was at the desk, so Mulder picked 
up the bell and jangled it.

A woman with short red hair and freckles emerged, holding a 
hard-backed book and looking at him through the glasses on 
the end of her nose.  "Hello, there," she said with a 
welcoming smile.  "How may I help you?"

Mulder showed off his ID.  "I need to ask some questions 
about a guest you may have had here last week -- a man named 
Christopher Brandt."

Her smile faded.  "I know Dr. Brandt, yes.  He was a frequent 
guest here, and I was so sorry to read that he'd been 
killed."

"Was he in fact here last Monday night?"

The woman ran her hand over the leather-bound guest register.  
"I don't have to look.  Yes, he was here.  It was the night 
he died."

"I'm interested in the woman who was staying with him."

Her cheeks pinked a bit and her lips thinned.  "The first 
time he came here, I assumed the woman he was with was his 
wife.  He wore a wedding band and so did she.  But then he 
returned a few months later ­ same wedding band, different 
woman.  He never wrote their names down, just listed them as 
Śguest' if he noted them at all."

"Did you see who he was with last Monday?"

"She stayed outside with the car while he did the check-in.  
I didn't get a good look at her.  She had long dark hair and 
she appeared to be on the tall side.  They checked into our 
corner suite, room one eleven."

He took out his wallet and looked at it a moment.  Flipping 
it open, he withdrew a small stack of worn photos.  Samantha 
grinned up at him, showing off her six-year-old smile.  He 
had a faded one of his parents from the mid-sixties, mom in 
awful plaid shorts and dad holding a fork as they worked the 
backyard grill.

His photo of Scully was more official looking because she 
wore a suit with her ID clipped to the breast pocket.  He'd 
snapped it two years ago in the basement, a test of a camera 
that supposedly captured pictures of a UFO.

He slipped his finger back into the pocket, trying to draw 
out the last photograph, which had become stuck to the 
leather.  Diana wore a tank top as she lounged on his old 
balcony, a gin and tonic in her hand.  He closed his eyes 
briefly, holding that moment in his mind for the last time.

The woman behind the desk was watching and waiting for his 
next question.  Once he asked it, there was no going back.  
He pushed the photo across the desk.  "Is this the woman who 
was here that night?"

She pushed up her glasses and studied his tiny picture.  
"Very well could be.  I couldn't swear to it since I didn't 
see her up close, but this looks an awful lot like her."

"Thanks," he said, levering himself away from the high 
counter. 

"Wait, sir!" The woman called as he left.  "Your picture..."

Mulder did not look back.  "I don't need it anymore."

X-X-X-X-X

The rain continued to fall, turning the dirt road of the 
trailer park into slick mud, broken up only by periodic deep 
puddles.  His borrowed Chevy bounced and jerked at a snail's 
pace, and Scully held fast to the door handle for support.  
"Sorry," he muttered.

"What is this place?"

"Somewhere they don't ask a lot of questions when you give 
them four hundred dollars in cash."

Everyone else had their own problems to worry about; the 
other trailers were shut up tight, tiny windows shining like 
lanterns in the gloom.  He stopped the car on a muddy patch 
of grass outside his rented home.

They dashed for the door, Scully hovering behind him as he 
tried to get the flimsy lock to come unstuck.  He literally 
fell inside as it suddenly released, managing to flick on the 
one light as he stumbled past.  

"Come on in," he said when Scully stopped just as the 
threshold.  His narrow bed was rumpled at one end of the 
trailer, and an unwashed pot from his canned soup dinner sat 
at the other end, in the kitchen.

Scully looked around at his drab lace curtains and stained 
brown rug.  She was still holding her paper sack of food, but 
it had become totally soaked, threatening to tear.  

"I think I have a clean towel around here somewhere," he 
said, searching among his scattered newspapers and discarded 
clothing.  He found a faded blue towel with a frayed edge, 
gave it a sniff, and tossed it at her.  "This one's okay."

She caught it with her free hand and gingerly stepped deeper 
into his trailer.  He dug out his used towel from that 
morning and dried his hair until it stood on end.

She set the sack down on the board that passed as his kitchen 
counter, and the orange rolled free, landing on the rug with 
a soft thud.  

"You want some coffee?" he asked.  "I've got instant."

"No, thanks."  She peeled off her wet jacket but had nowhere 
to put it. 

"Here, give me that." He hung it on the hook in the bathroom 
door.  "You want a dry T-shirt or something?" he called back 
to her.

When she didn't answer, he poked his head around the door. 
"Scully?"

"Hmm?"  She did not seem really to hear him.  She still stood 
where he had left here, the towel in her hand.

He walked over, took it from her, and proceeded to rub her 
head gently.  "You're going to catch your death from cold.  I 
don't have heat in this place, you know."

"You don't get sick from the cold," she said from under the 
towel.  "It's an old wives' tale."  Her hands closed over his 
and stopped his ministrations.  "Thank you," she said, and 
gave him a squeeze.

He stepped back, uncertain.  "Why don't we sit down?"

He had two cheap folding chairs, which he brought out and 
opened one by one.  Scully sat down with the wet towel in her 
lap.  "You can't stay here forever.  If nothing else, the 
cops will find you eventually."

It already felt like forever to him.  He didn't even 
recognize himself in the mirror. 

"The only way out of this is to identify Diana's real 
killer," she said.  "Where is her gun now?"

"Skinner has it," he answered, shifting uncomfortably.  Off 
her surprised look, he said, "I needed him to run the 
fingerprint analysis to be sure, but don't worry, he hasn't 
told anyone the results.  He's inclined to believe you're 
being framed."

She huffed a short breath.  "Right, sure he is.  Is that why 
he tied my hands?  He's essentially got me on forced leave.  
If he's so sure it's a setup, why take away my ability to 
investigate?  The last I looked, he was the one with the 
ashtrays in his office.  If I'm being framed, maybe Skinner 
is a part of it."

"No," he said mildly, "not Skinner."

"He took my shield and gun."

"He took them because I told him to."

This shut her up in a hurry, and she looked at him in stunned 
silence.

"It's for your own protection..."

"Oh my God," she said, and got to her feet.  "You really 
think I did this!"

"Scully, wait a second."  He lunged to grab her, but she 
scrambled out of reach.

"You think I killed her!  You really think I went over there, 
got her gun and shot her in the head?"

"I don't think it," he said, going after her.  He had her 
trapped at one end of the trailer, near the bed.  "I don't 
want to think it at all, Scully, but I have to make room for 
the possibility you may not remember what happened."

Horror shone in her eyes.  "You think I killed her and just 
don't remember it?"

"Scully."  He reached for her again, but she jerked away.  
"You managed to drive over sixty miles in the dead of night 
and climb up on a dam with no memory of it.  People died 
there.  You could have died there."

"No," she said, shaking her head emphatically.  "That's 
different.  This is murder we're talking about.  I 
wouldn't...I could never.  Mulder, I wasn't there."

"I called you twice that night, both at home and your cell.  
You didn't answer."

She drew up short, blinking at him.  He could see her right 
hand starting to tremble.  "I was asleep.  I didn't hear the 
phone.  I haven't been sleeping well."

"I know."  Her chin wobbled and he couldn't make himself 
press her.  In his head, the voice continued: *But Scully, 
about that unexplained bruiseŠ*

"I didn't do this," she said, more to herself than to him.  
"I couldn't."  Wind rattled the trailer and the floor shook.

He grabbed the back of her wet head and pulled her against 
him, hoping she couldn't hear his pounding heart.  "We'll 
figure it out," he said as she stood stiff in his arms.

"I can never get out."  She broke away from him and walked 
toward the kitchen.  

He trailed after her, watching as she started going through 
his meager drawers.  "What are you looking for?"

She ignored him and kept searching until she found a steak 
knife.  Stroking the pointed tip with her finger, she turned 
to him with a grim expression.  "You need to remove the 
chip."

 "Hold on.  That's a bit drastic, don't you think?"

"Not if you believe I killed her."  She held the knife out to 
him.

"I don't know that you did."

"If it's even a possibility, I want it out."

He shook his head, mute.  She hadn't seen herself in that 
hospital bed, pale and fragile as a wishbone.  "I can't.  I 
won't."

"Fine, I'll do it myself."  She held her hair back with one 
hand and took the knife to her neck. 

"Stop it!"  He grabbed the knife, but her grip was 
surprisingly strong.  "Scully, this is stupid."

"Let me go!  This isn't your choice."

They fell against the counter, jamming his elbow and sending 
shooting pain up his arm. The glinting knife poked between 
them.  "Stop!"  His shout bounced hard off the low ceiling.

"I want it out.  I want it gone."

He pinned her with his hips and wrested the knife free.  They 
were both breathing hard.  "There's no need for this," he 
told her, still keeping her prisoner near the sink.  "We 
don't know anything for sure."

"If I took it out, I'd be sure," she said evenly.

"You could also be dead."

She looked up at him, her mascara smudged around her eyes and 
her hair hanging in wild, wet clumps.  She looked capable of 
anything.  "Diana knew, didn't she.  That's why she didn't 
want one -- she didn't want to become a permanent lab rat, a 
flesh-and-blood pawn."

"I don't really feel competent to speak on the subject of 
what she knew and what she didn't."

The fight drained suddenly from Scully, and she braced 
herself on the counter.  "She knew."

Mulder tightened his grip on the knife.  "Yeah, maybe."

She searched his face for a long moment.  "Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Did you know what it was when you brought it to me?"

"God, Scully.  No."

She didn't look like she believed him.  "Skinner told me 
where you got it, the whole truth about the Smoking Man."

"I would have done anything.  That's the whole truth."

Her shoulders slumped and she shook her head.  "I knew, after 
what happened with Cassandra Spender, that there could be 
consequences.  I don't think I did this, but if somehow we 
find that I did, I can't pretend to be blameless."  She 
forced a humorless smile.  "Maybe Patrick Henry was right.  
Maybe there really are only two choices -- live free or die."

He tilted her chin up to look into her eyes.  "Promise me you 
won't take it out, not until we figure out what happened."

"It hardly matters.  That you can even think itŠ" She 
swallowed visibly.  "That it might possibly be true... this 
thing was supposed to give me my life back.  A year later, 
I'm alive but it's not really my life, now is it?"

"You were willing to fight this when you thought I might be 
guilty."

She held his gaze.  "That's the thing, Mulder.  I never 
thought you were."

"We don't know yet what happened," he said, easing off of 
her.  He held up the knife.  "But this is not the answer.  If 
I'm going to find out the truth, I need your help."

"If what you think is true, I'm certainly no help."

"I don't know the truth," he said urgently.  "That's why I 
need you."

She shook her head almost imperceptibly.  "No."

He made a show of sticking the knife back into the drawer 
again.  "And I think you should stay with me tonight."

"No, Mulder. I should get back.  The police..."

"There's a hurricane outside.  I bet even Detective Rivera is 
tucked at home in his bed."  As if on cue, the winds picked 
up, battering the trailer like a tin can in the street.  
"I'll take you back to your car in the morning."

Scully acquiesced.  She finally put on the T-shirt he had 
given her, carefully airing out her wet clothes on the backs 
of his folding chairs.  They stood in front of his narrow 
bunk, the one that was barely large enough to sleep him, and 
he cleared his throat.  "You can have it.  I'll take the 
floor."

She eyed the raggedy, stained carpet and shook her head.  She 
climbed into the bed without a word and scooted over to the 
very edge, leaving him the outer half.  

They had no choice but to sleep on their sides, so he decided 
to lie facing her rather than present her with his back.  She 
had tucked her arm beneath her head as a makeshift pillow.  
When she spoke, her voice was gravelly. "You aren't worried 
I'll smother you in your sleep?"

He considered all the times he'd laid next to Diana in the 
dark.  "It might just be a fitting end," he told her.  He 
half-smiled and touched her cheek with one finger.  "Maybe 
you should have shot me dead when you had the chance."

"MulderŠ"

She sounded so pained that he was instantly contrite.  "I'm 
sorry," he whispered, gathering her closer.  "I'm so sorry 
for all of this."

Her fingers tightened and scraped at his ribs.  "It's not 
your fault," she said, her voice muffled against his T-shirt.  
"You couldn't have stopped it."

"Maybe."  He paused and listened to the sound of the rushing 
rain.  "But I should have seen it coming."

She wiggled up so he could see her face.  "Someone wanted her 
dead more than you or me.  The question is why, and I was 
thinking about what you said, that Diana didn't want a cure."

"What about it?"

"If...," she broke off, struggling for words.  "If she knew 
about the chips, about their consequences, she probably knew 
a whole lot more.  Maybe she even thought she was protected 
if she had the Smoking Man in her corner.  Then she turned up 
with cancer.  I'll tell you, Mulder, there were days when I 
was sick that I did think about killing people.  If the 
Smoker had crossed my path at the wrong time, I might have 
shot him between the eyes without a second thought.  I was 
dying, so what the hell would it have mattered?"

"You think Diana might've been keen to take some people with 
her on the way out." 

"And we're the ones caught in the crossfire."

She fell asleep after that, her head so close to his that he 
could smell her hair, still damp from the rain.  Her 
shoulders hitched on a sigh as he pulled the blanket higher 
over her. 

He rubbed his face with its unfamiliar bristle.  His eyes 
were so tired they ached.  Slipping from the bed, he crept 
across the trailer and got the knife from the drawer.   Then 
he got the lockbox from the small freezer.  The cold stung 
his fingers as he carried it quickly to the counter.  He 
retrieved the key, opened the lid, and stuck the knife inside 
with his gun.

Glancing back over at Scully's sleeping form, he tiptoed to 
the fridge and slipped the box into the freezer.   He 
returned shivering to the bed, sliding into place beside her.  

She mumbled something he didn't understand.  He took her hand 
and held it between them, closing his eyes at last.

X-X-X-X-X-X

End chapter seven.  Continued in chapter eight.

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