Chapter 8

Route 62
Wed. Nov. 5th
9:24 pm

"It won't be long now. Maybe ten minutes," Carol Allison announced with a quick glance in his direction.

Mulder nodded mutely, his repertoire of polite small talk having run out ten minutes after they left Jamestown. He'd been only too eager to accept the receptionist's offer to drive him here, but that was before he knew she'd expect to hear his life's story on the way.

He needed the time to think. When he reached the crime scene, he'd have to hit the ground running, and that meant sorting through the chaos in his head before he got there.

Scully was gone. Wrapping his head around that fact alone was almost more than he could handle. That her disappearance might well be due to his inept handling of Michael Hobart made him physically ill. That her rescue might depend on him threatened to immobilize him with sheer terror.

No matter how he turned the pieces around, the only combination that fit had him squarely at the center. Michael was infatuated with him, that was obvious. Michael was relentlessly pursuing him every chance she got, no matter how clearly he signaled that he wasn't interested. Michael arranged an interview with a bullshit suspect, then volunteered to pick up Scully. And Michael was allegedly the last person to see Scully before she disappeared.

All he could say was Michael better have some goddamned good answers to some direct fucking questions or there was gonna be blood on the walls. And that was a promise.

"That must be it." Carol Allison slowed as they came around a curve to find the road ahead crowded with emergency vehicles. Flashing lights turned the snow blood red and bright blue by turns.

He had his hand on the door handle, poised to jump out as soon as the car stopped. Carol maneuvered around an ambulance with its rear doors standing open. An empty gurney, mired in the snow just behind it, taunted him.

Carol touched his shoulder gently. "I hope she's all right."

"Thanks. I hope so, too." His voice was tight. Every muscle in his body was tensed for whatever he was about to learn. Things could have changed while he'd been in transit from Jamestown-- driving through the 'no service' hell Carol had told him about back at the jail. Scully could be on her way to a hospital, for all he knew. He refused to consider the darker possibilities.

They navigated the maze of police cars and rescue vehicles and stopped next to Michael Hobart's Jeep tilted nose-down in a shallow ditch. A dozen men with flashlights prowled the snowy field beyond.

Mulder opened the door. Paused. "Thank you," he said again.

Her eyes were soft and kind. "Good luck, Agent Mulder. I'll be praying for you."

He nodded again and got out, stepping into snow that came up to his ankles and spilled into his shoes. He closed the door and waited while she turned the car around, heading back to Jamestown and her waiting family.

"Over here, Agent Mulder." Will Kessler motioned to him from across the road. He looked like a man with more bad news to deliver.

Mulder looked at Carol Allison's taillights receding into the distance, then crossed the road to join the sheriff. "Did you find her?"

The sheriff shook his head. "We're thinking she might have been disoriented and wandered off. There could have been tracks, but the rescue team trampled all over them before we got here." He waved his flashlight at the men searching the field. "The brush is too dense to show much once you get a few yards away."

Mulder walked around to the passenger side of the Jeep, digging his own flashlight from his pocket. The door was open, and he moved his light around the interior. Scully's duffle was on the backseat. The sheriff leaned in through the driver's door and added his light to Mulder's. There was no blood. No sign of a struggle.

"I've got a search team coming out with dogs, but it's gonna be another half hour or so before they get here."

Mulder looked across the seat at Kessler. "Can someone give me a ride to the hospital? I want to talk to Michael Hobart."

The sheriff frowned and stood up. "Michael's in no shape to help you, Agent Mulder."

Mulder came back around the car and joined the sheriff, totally filling his shoes with snow in the process. "What's her condition?"

Kessler shrugged. "Don't know the specifics yet, but the EMT's said she was barely conscious. I doubt they'll let you see her until tomorrow."

Mulder leveled his gaze. "She's the only witness to the apparent abduction of a Federal Agent. I'm going to talk to her."

The standoff was brief. Kessler sighed and stuck his flashlight in his back pocket. "Give me a minute." He strode off toward the search team, waving one of the men over to him. They spoke for a moment, then Kessler came back to Mulder holding out a bundle of keys. "Take that car. Just follow this road south and you'll go straight into town," he explained, but Mulder had taken the keys and was already moving.

He called back over his shoulder. "Call me the second you find anything."

* * *

Warren Community Hospital
Emergency Department
10:04 pm

"The doctor is with her now, Agent Mulder, but you can go in for a few minutes. She's been asking for you," the young nurse told him.

He followed her down the hall to a door marked "Trauma 1". Inside, Michael Hobart lay propped on a gurney surrounded by beeping equipment. The doctor he'd spoken with a few minutes earlier looked up as they entered, clearly displeased at having her orders overruled by her own patient.

"Michael, I'm going to ask Dr. Wallace to review your x-rays, then we'll come back to talk with you." She patted Michael's hand and walked over to Mulder. "Five minutes." She stepped around him and left the room.

The nurse gave him a sympathetic smile and followed the doctor out.

Michael held out her hand to him. "Mulder, I'm so sorry. I don't know what to say."

He came over to the bed and took her hand. "Are you all right?"

She shrugged, and then winced at the effort. "I have a headache, but I guess that's normal."

Mulder put her hand back on the bed. "What happened?"

"I never saw him coming until it was too late." She took a shaky breath. "I was knocked unconscious. When I woke up, Scully was gone."

"Who is 'he', Michael?"

She looked surprised. "Why, the killer. Who else would it have been?"

He studied her for a moment. "Did you see what kind of car it was?"

"All I saw were headlights bearing down on us. It's all a blur. They say I told someone we were run off the road, but I don't remember saying that."

"You don't remember saying that." He repeated her words slowly.

"No, but Dr. Adams said that was normal. I might never remember those last few moments."

Mulder shifted his gaze to the wall behind her, hands on his hips. "Why would the killer come after you and Scully? And why would he only take one of you?" He waited a beat before he looked at her. "It doesn't make any sense."

"You're right," she agreed quickly. "It doesn't fit his pattern, unless this time was different because Scully wasn't alone. The other women were alone when he took them."

"Exactly. Why would he risk taking on two adult women at the same time? Particularly when one of them is armed."

"Maybe he didn't know." Michael's voice took on a dreamy quality, as if she'd forgotten Mulder was in the room. "Maybe he means for her to be his final victim. Ending the way he began..." She trailed off, pressing both hands firmly to her temples.

"Michael?"

The door opened behind him, and Mulder turned around. Dr. Adams came in with a middle-aged man he assumed to be Dr. Wallace. They moved to opposite sides of Michael's bed, and Dr. Adams gave Mulder a pointed look. "You'll have to leave now."

Michael didn't move or look up. Mulder nodded to the doctors and walked out of the room.

Sheriff Kessler was waiting for him in the hall. He anticipated Mulder's question, then asked one of his own. "We haven't found anything. I'm here to take you to the office to file a missing person report."

"First, I want you to post a guard on Michael's room."

Kessler's mouth dropped open. "What the hell for?"

Mulder took the man's arm and tugged him away from Michael's door to a less traveled section of the hall.

"What the hell for?" Kessler asked again, with a bit less volume.

"Have you talked to her at all yet?" Mulder jerked his head toward Michael's room.

"No, I've been busy at the accident scene. Why?"

Mulder looked down at the floor, choosing his words. This needed careful handling. When he met the sheriff's gaze, he found curiosity leavened with caution. "Michael has no visible injuries, yet she claims to have been knocked unconscious and to have no memory of the event. She's even recanting her story about being run off the road."

"Her story? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Mulder kept his voice level. "It means I'm not convinced she's telling the truth."

Kessler's color rose to beet red, but he was making an obvious effort to restrain himself. "Look, Agent, I'm trying to cut you some slack here because of the circumstances, but you are way out of line. Why the hell would she lie?"

"That's what I'd like to know."

The sheriff's mouth opened, then closed. After a moment, he said, "I don't know what you think happened out there, but I can tell you this much: that girl in there has no reason to lie about it."

He'd suspected it was a losing battle going in. And there was still the possibility that the sheriff was right. "Michael thinks the killer took Scully."

That earned him an incredulous look. "And you don't?"

"I didn't say that. But I think Michael knows a lot more about what happened than she's willing to say."

"That's absurd."

"Did you see any sign of damage to her Jeep? Did you see any skid marks on the road? Any evidence whatever to substantiate her story?"

Kessler folded his arms. "I saw no evidence to contradict it. You think she's protecting someone? That she knows who the killer is and just doesn't want to say?"

"Something like that, yeah."

He snorted dismissively. "That's about the craziest thing I've ever heard, and I don't have time to listen to any more of it." He turned to walk away.

"Sheriff Kessler." He waited until the man turned around. "I'm willing to consider the possibility that you're right. All I'm asking is that you do me the same courtesy."

Kessler dropped his chin to his chest with a heavy sigh. He walked back and put both hands on Mulder's shoulders. "Son, I couldn't be any more certain that you're wrong if you told me I took your partner."

It was a lost cause. Mulder nodded. "I'd like to go back to the hotel."

The sheriff gave Mulder a fatherly pat on the back. "I'll take you."

The doctors were coming out of Michael's room as Mulder and the sheriff approached. Kessler stopped to talk with them, and Mulder stood silently by, absorbing every word. They weren't able to find any sign of a head injury other than the reported period of unconsciousness, but they would keep her overnight for observation. She was very lucky, they said.

It wasn't as good as having a guard posted, but Mulder would take what he could get. For the moment, at least, she was out of circulation.

Kessler dropped him off at the Holiday Inn's front door ten minutes later, then waited until he walked into the lobby before he pulled away.

* * *
Wed. Nov. 5th
11:10 pm

Walter Skinner was sitting down to his usual microwave dinner when his cell phone went off-- never a good omen at this time of night. He put down his fork and walked out to the desk. The caller ID told him it was Mulder.

"Skinner."

"Scully is missing."

Just like that. No preamble. "What happened?"

Skinner listened with increasing alarm to Mulder's report. The flat delivery worried him almost as much as the content. Experience told him what it said about Mulder's stress level.

"Agent Mulder, I'll contact the Pittsburgh field office and get you some assistance. They'll have someone out there by tomorrow morning. Until they arrive, I'm ordering you to stand down."

"I can't do that, Sir," came the expected response.

Five minutes of arguing produced a grudging commitment from Mulder that he would restrict his activities to the sheriff's department offices or his hotel room. "If I hear you've done more than that, it'll be a cold day in hell before you get out in the field again."

It wasn't much of a threat, given that Scully's life could be at stake, but it was the best he could do on short notice.

As soon as Mulder hung up, Skinner dialed the Bureau operator and asked to be connected to the field office in Pittsburgh. While he waited, he signed onto the Internet travel site to see how much time he had before the next flight to Warren.

* * *
11:50 pm

'Standing down' in his hotel room lasted for all of twenty minutes. Even at that, Mulder suspected it was twice as long as Skinner had really expected.

He relocated to a dark corner of the hospital parking lot that afforded a clear view of the front door, and he waited, debating with himself the wisdom of talking with Michael again so soon. He already regretted sharing his suspicions with Sheriff Kessler. The last thing he wanted to do was tip his hand and give her a chance to cover her tracks... whatever that might mean.

The truth was, he had no clear idea what it was he suspected her of doing. Or of knowing. All he could say for certain was that her story was total crap.

What he didn't know was why.

Whatever her involvement in Scully's disappearance, there was no way in hell she was getting out of his sight until he figured it out.

* * *

Warren Community Hospital
Trauma Room 1
11:55 pm

Dr. Adams sighed and looked at her watch. She should have been on her way home fifty-five minutes ago instead of standing here trying to talk sense into Michael Hobart. It was time to throw in the towel.

"I think you're making a mistake, but it's your choice. I'll have a nurse bring the AMA release for you to sign, and then you can leave."

Michael smiled. "I'm sorry to be such a pain in the butt. It's just that I feel responsible for what happened to Agent Scully. I can't just lounge here while she's still in danger. I hope you understand."

"That may be, but the unconsciousness you experienced could mean serious damage, no matter what the x-rays turned up. I just want to make certain that you understand the risk you're taking."

"I promise that I do."

There was no point in pursuing it further. "The nurse will be right back. You can get dressed."

Michael waited until the door closed behind Dr. Adams before she threw off the blanket. "Jesus, talk about persistent!" She stretched her legs, wiggling her toes to get some feeling back into them after so long on her back.

Her clothes were in a plastic bag under the gurney. Michael shed the worn blue hospital gown and dressed quickly.

There was a pay phone out in the lobby, but she needed privacy. There was a chance the calls made from inside hospital lines were tracked, but she would have to risk it.

She picked up the trauma room extension, dialed nine for an outside line, and punched in Jesse Kendall's cell phone number.

* * *

Scully woke lying flat on her back in total darkness with the worst headache she could ever remember. The blackness was so complete that for a brief, horrifying moment, she thought she was buried alive.

Straining to see something-- anything-- made the headache worse, but she was finally able to make out the faint outline of windows. Shaky with relief, she redirected her energy to figuring out where the hell she was.

Her face was freezing cold. The rest of her body seemed to be encased in something that felt soft and faintly damp. The air was frigid and smelled of old wood smoke, pine needles, and mildew. The mildew, she realized, was coming from whatever was wrapped around her. The cloth tickled her nose and made her want to sneeze. It also reminded her of something.

Sleeping bags. Her brothers had been Boy Scouts years ago, and they kept their sleeping bags in the basement. No matter how often her mother took them out to the clothesline to air them out, the smell they picked up from the basement remained. It smelled just like the material that now surrounded her from chin to toes.

An experimental wiggle of her hands and feet revealed that she was bound with something that felt like duct tape beneath the sleeping bag.

She found she could raise her head from the mattress, but that was all. Her legs were held fast and her hands rested on her chest inside the bag.

That answered a few questions, but not the important ones, like how the hell she got here. Wherever 'here' was.

Start with the last thing you remember, she ordered her racing mind to focus.

Michael Hobart picked her up at the airport, that much was clear in her mind. Why Michael? Where was Mulder?

Michael was there because Mulder was with a suspect. A patient of Michael's. What else? Michael wanted to stop somewhere on the way to wherever Mulder was.

Stop. They had pulled off the road. Something about the car. A flat tire?

The pain in her head was making her sick. Deep breaths cleared her head but dried out her throat and made her cough. Coughing multiplied the pounding in her head.

Think, dammit.

They pulled off the road and... The rest was a blank. They pulled off the road, and she woke up here.

Here, wrapped in a sleeping bag, bound hand and foot, and slowly freezing to death.

Waiting for whoever left her here to come back.

* * *

continued in chapter 9