XxXxX

Chapter Thirteen

XxXxX

Mulder ran through the gate and into the middle of the slick, 
shiny street.  He stopped, turned frantically in one 
direction then the next, but there was no one to be seen.  
The wind blew hard, sending a shower of fat, cold drops down 
upon him.  In the distance, he could hear the rush of a car 
passing through a deep puddle.  Taillights winked at him from 
several blocks away, rounding the corner and disappearing 
into the black night.  Gone.

He bent over, gulping in sharp breaths of air that burned his 
lungs.

Footsteps behind him, heavy boots on the wet pavement, and 
Grenier's angry voice.  "Gone as in fucking not here.  Yes, 
that's what I'm saying."  Mulder stood up slowly and turned 
to see Grenier glaring at him as he growled into the walkie-
talkie.  "A car, a person...hell, even a goddamn shadow!  Did 
you see fucking *anything*?"

Mulder's gaze flickered to Russell, who lingered just outside 
the gate.  She ducked back inside, but not before he caught 
the censure in her eyes.  No one had seen anything, he knew 
as she did, because they had all been on the other side of 
the park, mistaking him for a suspect.  Not more than five 
minutes.  Just long enough for his world to crack open and 
leave him bleeding raw fear into the empty street.

"Anything?" he asked as Grenier lowered his walkie-talkie.  
The other man shot him a long, disgusted look.

"Venaldi saw a large black sedan drive past on the east side 
of the park about fifteen minutes ago.   That's it."

Mulder's panic ratcheted up another notch.  "That's not 
enough.  What about the men on point in the cars?  What about 
--"

"There's nothing!" Grenier roared, taking a step closer.  
"Every pair of eyes was over on the west side with you, you 
asshole.  God damn it."

"We've got to figure out where he's taking her," Mulder said.  
"It's the only chance."

"We," Grenier cut in, "are not going to do a damn thing.  I'm 
having you arrested for interfering with a federal 
investigation.  And when this is over, I am damn sure going 
to have your badge for this."  He signaled to two nearby 
agents.  "Nickerson, Zuffy, take him in."

They looked uncertain.  Grenier whirled on them.

"I said now, Agents!"

Mulder's heart pounded painfully inside his chest, his anger 
rising.  "We're wasting time," he said.  "We need to go back 
over the..."  Nickerson grabbed his arm, but Mulder shook him 
off.  "NO!  Fuck you, Grenier.  This is it, when seconds 
matter, and I know you hate it, I know you hate me but I am 
the one who can do this.  I'm the one who can get inside this 
guy's head.  After, after we find her, if you want to have it 
out, if you want to fucking duel at twenty paces, then I will 
be there.  But right now, you have an agent MISSING, Adam, 
and we don't have TIME to fuck around with the slow, careful 
way!"

Grenier looked like he might take a swing at him.  "And whose 
fault is that?"

"Jesus," Mulder said, pushing past the confused, younger 
agents.  "You want to hear me say it?" he called over his 
shoulder as he stalked back in the direction of his car.  "If 
I tell you what you want to hear, then can we start looking?  
I did it! Okay, I did it!  I caused the distraction. Happy 
now?"

He could hear Grenier on his tail.  "You were always a fuck-
up.  I was the only one who could see the truth."

Mulder halted abruptly, and with one quick motion, grabbed 
Grenier by his coat.  "She has hours!  Don't you understand 
that?  In a few hours it's not going to matter whose fault it 
was!"

The fight seemed to leave Grenier immediately, and up close 
Mulder could see the fear in his eyes.   His lips were 
colorless, his breathing shallow.  "Okay, then.  What the 
fuck are we going to do?  Where would he take her?"

Mulder released his fists and tried to tamp down his rising 
tremble.  "I don't know yet," he admitted.  "But we sure as 
hell aren't going to find out standing here."

XxXxX

Scully braced as best she could against the cramped, slippery 
walls of the trunk, but her feet were tightly bound and she 
could no longer feel her arms behind her back.  She 
concentrated on taking slow breaths and trying to figure out 
where she was being taken.  Probably well outside of the 
city, she guessed, estimating they had been driving for most 
of an hour.  Most of it at high speeds, so they had been on 
one highway or another.

But when the car began a steep upward climb, her thoughts 
spun dizzily, threatening to spiral out of control.  Up the 
mountain again.  Trapped in the trunk.  Up, up, and away.  
Gone.  Flashes of her previous struggle sprang alive in her 
memory -- tied, gagged and fighting Duane Barry every 
stumbling step into the wind.  

She squeezed her eyes shut against the breathless, paralyzing 
terror.  Stop it, stop it.  Think about now.  Think about how 
to get out.

The car slowed, taking several winding turns, but still 
climbing a steep grade.  One particularly large bump caused 
Scully to hit her temple on the car jack.  The pain gave her 
focus.

There was no way to overpower him from the trunk of a car -- 
no element of surprise, no leverage and no mobility, given 
her bound hands and feet.  She tried twisting her wrists to 
loosen the tape, but only managed to dig the edges further 
into her skin.  Panting through her nose from the effort, she 
laid her cheek on the gritty floor of the trunk.  

*Think* she ordered herself, stretching as much as she could 
within the confined space.  More pain.  Something hard 
pressed against her hip, trapped between her body and the 
unforgiving floor.  She wriggled but the object moved with 
her.  

Her cell phone.  Thank God.

Bracing her feet on the side of the trunk, she gained enough 
leverage to roll over.  The deep muscles in her shoulders 
screamed though every painful inch.  Phone, phone.  Her heart 
pounded the word over and over.  She flexed her numb fingers, 
but they were helpless, tied behind her back.  The phone 
remained sagging in her pocket near her waist.  Scrunching up 
her legs, she tried to fold herself inward enough that she 
might nudge the phone with her chin.  

A contortionist she was not.  The tendons on her neck burned 
and stretched; her joints creaked loudly in the blackness.  
She sucked the tape over her mouth in and out as she 
struggled, ripping the top layer of skin from her lips.  Her 
chin grazed the pocket of her windbreaker, but the phone just 
slipped around inside.  Momentary tears of frustration stung 
in her eyes, and she rested, breathing hard and tangled in 
the dark.

XxXxX

"You've caused enough trouble," Grenier growled as he grabbed 
Mulder's car keys.  "The last thing I need right now is to be 
scraping your brains off the pavement after you've crashed 
this thing."

"Come with us," Russell added.  "It's better anyway."

"Whatever," Mulder said as he climbed in the back of their 
car.  "Let's just get moving."

"Where would he go?" Russell asked in the car.  "Indoors, 
right?  Even though the bodies are..."  Mulder flinched, and 
Russell halted, clearing her throat.  She continued in a 
softer tone. "Even though they're found outside, he must take 
them inside for a period of time.  He needs privacy for what 
he does."

Mulder gave a short nod, his leg bouncing nervously in the 
back seat.  "He's got a place somewhere, yeah.  Someplace 
cheap, with few neighbors."

"We've still got men at the other address," Grenier said.  
"Just in case he shows up there.  And we're watching Scully's 
place now, too."

"Scully's place?" Mulder said.  "Why?"

"He likes their shoes, right?  Maybe he wants them to model.  
It's a shot in the dark, but it's better than nothing."

"Yeah, okay," Mulder agreed.  A thought hit him.  "Her phone!  
Does she have her phone with her?"

"I don't know," Grenier said, but Mulder was already digging 
out his phone.  "I gave orders that all phones were supposed 
to be off, in any case.  It's SOP."

"No answer," Mulder said a moment later.  He leaned forward 
into the front seat.  "Have someone keep trying.  And if it 
rings through, let me at him."

XxXxX 


Her arms had gone from numb to shooting pain, and the phone 
still lay in her pocket.  She had managed to widen the mouth 
of the pocket with her chin, but she couldn't get the phone 
free.  Dirt in her eyes caused them to fill with tears, which 
then ran down her face and glued sticky strands of hair to 
her cheeks.

Carl had slowed the car further; time was running out.

Frantic, she tried rolling back and forth to slide the phone 
out of her pocket, but the angle was wrong.  She felt her one 
chance slipping away.

The air was thinning; she felt dizzy and weak, and the fear 
of carbon monoxide poisoning caused a shiver up her spine.  
Even her teeth seemed to ache from the exertion.  She lay on 
her back, trapping her arms beneath her, but the pain barely 
registered anymore. Any minute, he was going to stop the car 
and pull her out.  He would have a knife, and...

Scully swallowed hard against her gag reflex.  
Thinkthinkthink.  One last try.

With grim determination, she braced her feet against the side 
of the trunk and her knees against the top.  Her squashed 
arms radiated with hurt, but she ignored their complaint and 
began rocking back and forth, inching her knees over her 
head.  The process was agonizing, slow enough that she felt 
her muscles nearly tearing from her bones.  She stopped every 
few seconds to catch her breath.

Halfway though a full back-flip, she felt the phone drop out 
of her pocket and onto her chest.  She froze, cramped and 
crooked, so it wouldn't slide off into a dark corner 
somewhere.

*How the hell do I turn it on?*

Her fingers no longer responded to her command.  She couldn't 
tell if they were even moving.  Worth a try, she thought, 
turning in pain-filled millimeters to her right side.

The car stopped.

Scully went limp, her heart pumping so fast there was no 
space between the beats.  The rush of blood roared in her 
ears.  Outside, she heard crunching footsteps.  The sound of 
the trunk popping was like a gunshot; she jumped as the lid 
cracked open.

"Well, well, well," he said, pinning her with a beam of 
bright white light.  "What do we have here?"

Her eye muscles jerked in spasms.  She squinted up at his 
looming silhouette, unable to see his face.  He passed the 
flashlight beam over her in a lingering caress, ending with a 
long look at her feet.

"We're going to have so much fun," he murmured.  Scully saw a 
flash of his hand, and then he had by the hair, tangling a 
fistful in his fingers until tears pricked her eyes.  "Oh, 
yes, we are."

She squirmed and he yanked her back in place.  "Stop that."  
He released his grip, then pulled a knife in front of her, 
bringing it down to her face and illuminating the toothed 
edge with his flashlight.  "We can do this the easy way or 
the hard way," he said.  "But it's going to be my way no 
matter what.  Understand?"

Scully gave a small nod.

"Very good."  He slid the knife blade lightly along her 
cheek.  "Let's get started then."

As he bent to release her feet, Scully stared up at the 
darkness.  Trees, she thought.  It smelled like the woods.

"What the fuck is this?"  He held up her cell phone.  "You 
are a nervy one, aren't you, baby?  But I don't think you'll 
be needing this any time soon."

He pocketed the phone, and Scully closed her eyes.  The tape 
on her feet ripped open under his blade, and her legs shook 
with weak relief.  Carl hummed as he worked.

"Okay now," he said, hoisting her out of the trunk by her 
waist.  She trembled and nearly fell to the ground.  "Move."

The knife blade reappeared at her neck, and Scully took 
several stumbling steps forward.  Behind her, Carl shone the 
flashlight into the dirt path ahead.  Scully's stomach 
clenched when she saw the tracks at her feet -- pointed toes 
and tiny, round heels.  Where the others had gone before.

A death march, she thought, and Carl shoved her along.  One 
step closer.

XxXxX

The BSU meeting room was a grisly shrine to Carl Quentin.  
Pictures of the victims hung on the wall, with the latest 
three given a prominent position in the center.  Mulder 
pulled Beth Kinney's photo down.  "He didn't do this one."

"So you've mentioned," Grenier snapped.  He made a sweeping 
gesture to the rest of the horrific pictures.  "But what 
about all the rest?  Take a look, Mulder.  Take another good 
look at what this animal can do."

"Shut up, Adam," Russell said.  "It's not helping."

Mulder sank into a chair, his head in his hands.  He didn't 
need to look.  The images came fast and furious whether he 
wanted them or not.  Bare white necks covered in bruises, 
limbs askew and vacant, unseeing eyes.  He raised his head 
and stared at the long line of faces.  Under each girl, there 
was a picture of the shoes she had been wearing at the time 
of her abduction.  The shoes weren't recovered, of course; 
they'd had copies sent from the manufacturers.

"They never found the shoes," Mulder murmured.

"What?" Russell asked.  Mulder stood and walked to the 
photographs.

"The shoes.  They never found them." He turned to Arkin.  
"What address did Quentin give when he was arrested in '88?"

"Uh..." Arkin pawed through the papers on the conference 
table until he found the correct folder.  "Baltimore.  He was 
living with his cousin."

"The hell he was.  There's no way Quentin could have been 
bringing the women home and not have the cousin know about 
it."

"Maybe he did know about it," Grenier said, his eyes 
glinting.  "Have we got someone on the cousin?"

"He moved to Atlanta in 1991," Russell said.  "We checked 
earlier, and the house belongs to a newlywed couple now."

Mulder shook his head.  "Did they search the house in '88?"

"Yeah," Arkin said, consulting the reports.  "The cops 
suspected Quentin might be responsible for a half dozen 
muggings in the Beltsville area at the time.  They tossed the 
cousin's place right after Quentin was arrested.  No other 
incriminating evidence was found."

"That's it," Mulder said.  "He's taking them all to the same 
spot, the same place he used eleven years ago."  He looked at 
Arkin.  "Get the cousin on the phone.  I want to know if the 
family owned any other property, had any usual vacation 
spots, any place Quentin might go."

"You got it."

Mulder glanced at the clock and felt the second hand's 
movement vibrate inside him as it ticked away the time.  Two 
hours had already passed.

XxXxX

The first thing she saw was blood on the sheets.  Rumpled, 
white sheets streaked with red-brown smears.  There were 
pieces of rope tied to the bars of the headboard.

"I have everything prepared for you already," he said from 
behind her.  "I've been waiting a long time."

Scully tried to stop shaking.  The cabin was cold, dirty, and 
there wasn't much light.  Her legs were wobbly, and her hands 
were still tied tightly behind her back.  Quentin had yet to 
lower his knife.  He kept it at her neck as he walked around 
in front of her.

She drew back just an inch at the sight of him, so different 
than the mug shot she had seen earlier.  Blond, spiky hair 
replaced his previous dark brown.  There was a scar on his 
left cheek, and he had lost a lot of weight.  "Surprise!" he 
said, grinning, and she saw he was missing a front tooth now, 
too.  "It's me, the man you've been looking for!"

He reached out with his free and touched her hair.  "I bet 
you never dreamed I was this close.  I've never had an FBI 
agent before."

Agent, thought Scully wildly, that's it!  If she could just 
engage him as an agent instead of a victim, she might buy 
herself some time.  She forced herself to stay still under 
his stroking.

"If I take the tape off, will you scream?"

She shook her head slowly, holding his gaze.  He tilted his 
head as if appraising her.  "Okay, I'll do it.  But remember 
there's more where this came from."

He took the edge of the tape and yanked.  Scully gasped as 
more of her skin ripped away.  Quentin laughed.  "Stings, 
don't it?"

"Thank you," she said, hoping to catch him off guard with 
non-confrontational approach.  Quentin appeared unfazed.

"Get in the bed," he ordered.  The knife gleamed in his hand.

Scully swallowed with difficulty and took a tentative step 
toward the bed.  Something else, she thought desperately, 
something else he might want from you. "Carl, please..."

He caught her hair.  "What?  What did you call me?"

She gritted her teeth through the pain.  "Carl Quentin.  It's 
your name, isn't it?"

"And how the fuck did you know that?"

Scully felt a surge of relief.  She had him going now.  
"Mulder found you.  In Ohio."

"Fuck," he said, and the knife point nicked her throat.  
"That sonofabitch."

"We know about Dee-Ann and..."  Her addled brain struggled to 
come up with the name.  "...and Susan Perry."

"Bitches, both of them."  He pushed her closer to the bed.  
"Keep moving."

Scully's gaze caught the line of shoes he had displayed on 
shelf by the bed, all familiar pairs from the photos she'd 
seen in the dead women's folders.  Except the end pair.  
Black, open-toed sandals.  A pair she had bought at Gucci on 
impulse last year.  "You've...you've been in my house."

He shoved her down onto the filthy sheets.  "Several times," 
he told her with a grin.  "And you never even knew it, did 
you?  You think you're so hot, but you don't know so many 
things."

"Mulder knows who you are," she pressed, trying not to watch 
as he readied the rope.  "He'll find you here in no time."

"Fuck Mulder," Quentin said, his smile gone.  "He's a 
nothing, an idiot, do you understand me?  All those years and 
he never figured it out.  He thinks he's got me now...why?  
Because of a name?  He knows *nothing*!"

"He found your first murders.  He can find--" She broke off, 
wheezing as his hand closed around her throat.

"Shut up!  Mulder's a goddamn cocksucker who couldn't find 
his ass with both hands.  I've got news for you, honeybitch -
- Mulder's never gonna find me.  He believes every lie in 
press about me.  Looks in all the wrong places.  Trust me, 
we're not going to have any interruptions."

He released his grip, and Scully coughed, sucking in painful 
breaths.  "What lies?" she croaked.

"Ah, ah, ah."  His grin was back, and he wagged a finger at 
her.  "A good little agent would have figured it out on her 
own.  Maybe that's Mulder's problem, huh?  He's been hanging 
out in the ghetto too much."

What lies? Scully thought, frantic as he slit the tape behind 
her back.  Her hands throbbed as the blood returned.  It was 
a brief respite, because he immediately shackled one arm to 
the headboard. 

"There we go.  Nice and tight."

Scully fought her panic and looked around the room for 
something, anything, to get him talking again.  Below the 
shoes he had taped dozens of newspaper reports on the 
killings, but it was too dark for her to read anything more 
than the headlines.

POLICE SUSPECT SERIAL KILLER AFTER THIRD VICTIM FOUND	

DC SLAYER CLAIMS SEVENTH VICTIM; POLICE CLAIM NEW LEADS

MAYOR CALMS PANICKED CITY

Then, the new ones:

INTERN, 22, FOUND MURDERED

ARCHITECT MURDERED; POLICE SEEK CAB DRIVER

Wait, she thought, wait.  Where was Elizabeth? 

Leaning over to tie down her other arm, he blocked her view 
of the newspaper articles.  She counted the shoes instead.  
Nine.  Nine pairs, not counting hers.  Ten bodies.  No mask.

"It wasn't you," she whispered, and Carl froze.

XxXxX

End Chapter Thirteen.  Continued in Chapter Fourteen.

Thanks to my wonderful beta readers, Alanna, Alicia and 
Jerry.  I am grateful for your help.

Feedback is always welcome at syn_tax6@yahoo.com