Cold Cuts

Cold Cuts

"It's not a job, it's punishment," he growled, flicking a single sunflower husk through the car's open window. The pack that he'd taken it from was now empty, even that relief denied. Another hundred miles and they'd be home, and in Mulder's present mood that sounded like a punishment, too.

Scully was in no better spirits, but after a day spent trudging between farms debating their need for big piles of manure, she'd run out of energy, not even enough to indulge herself in another round of complaints. "What options have we got?"

The knuckles of his left hand tapped restlessly against the steering wheel, while his right paid attention to the road. Virginia was green, the road was empty, night was falling, and they had no options. Mulder sighed and glanced at the dial, automatically obeying its silent reminder to slow down. No option there, either.

"We have a potential situation," Assistant Director Cassidy offered.

The other ADs and their section chiefs looked at their agendas and evaded her eyes. They always had a potential situation. Potential situation of the week was?

Cassidy ignored the indifferent slump of her colleagues; rituals had a natural rhythm and she had her role as high priestess to fulfil. "DC and Baltimore PD have requested support. Homicides. Their cases have already been reviewed by the ISU."

Kersh shifted in his chair, struck by a sudden bolt of recognition as his brain read between the lines. Great, all they needed, a serial killer on the loose, here in DC. What do you get when you throw jurisdiction wars, politics and a serial killer into the barrel? He could almost smell the crap as it started to fly. He was just glad that it wasn't his fan that it was heading towards.

Cassidy glanced over in Assistant Director Skinner's direction. "Perhaps you could fill us in."

Skinner nodded, unnecessarily straightening the notes in front of him as he spoke. "We have five deaths with a strong correlation in MO and victimology. One of the victims worked on a community newspaper. The speculation's already started."

Politics, Kersh noted, grateful that Skinner had this particular time-bomb to defuse.

"We've already had inquiries from the press. Suggestions that the deaths may be related. I need to put a team together. The key people are in place, Martin Neill is the Agent in Charge, but I need bodies. If we need to up the tempo..." Skinner paused, confident that silence would convey the appropriate message and unwilling to make any demands until the others had been given at least a few seconds to get past their in-built knee-jerk zero response.

Cassidy completed the request. "Part time. I don't want active cases crippled to do the work. We already have the core team. But we need experienced people, preferably people with credentials in this area. I'm expecting you to give me the names; I don't want to impose a solution."

Kersh looked at the yellow pad on the table and scribbled himself a reminder note. Cassidy needed names to put on inter-office memos; bodies to show up at briefings; impressive numbers of concerned agents to demonstrate the Bureau's commitment to the press. And she wanted it not to affect anything. He sensed rather than saw her looking in his direction.

The question progressed steadily, counter-clockwise around the table, maybes offered and names volunteered. It arrived at Kersh and his even less enthusiastic section chiefs. "Agent Jackson would benefit from the experience," suggested one. Actually, based on what Kersh was hearing, Jackson would benefit from being a little less wet behind the ears. Kersh hated it when they held back allegedly prime-cut rookies to stay in DC rather than making them serve their time pushing paper and making coffee in Nebraska.

Skinner tried not to look too disgusted. Cassidy chose not to sigh. Beggars can't be choosers.

Kersh knew they were waiting for more, so he threw them a bone. "Agent Scully may be able to assist on forensic liaison."

Cassidy raised her eyebrows. "Good thought." She paused, dug around for the rest of the jigsaw puzzle that Scully's name triggered. "And wasn't Agent Mulder in the ISU at one time?"

Kersh hesitated, but decided to show willing despite his qualms. "I believe so."

Cassidy waited expectantly.

Well, if it was bodies they wanted. Kersh rolled his pen between thumb and forefinger. The thought of Mulder on a team of any sort, indeed, the idea of him being out of his line of sight for any reason, did not fill him with confidence.

Skinner had already lost his sense of perspective and much of his credibility while managing Mulder. It was a mistake that Kersh didn't plan to make. But if they just needed someone to make up the numbers? Kersh nodded reluctantly. "I could make him available."

By the time the meeting closed, Agent Neill's team of six had become a team of twenty, a figure suitable for proving serious intent to all but the most dubious press man.

Scully found Mulder glowering at a vending machine, where he was cautiously sniffing an anemic-looking cup of alleged coffee. "Kersh wants us."

Mulder turned the glare for use on her. "Right."

"Now," she added.

He tipped out the contents of the cup, and allowed at least the appearance of irritation to discharge with it, following her without further argument or agreement.

Kersh's assistant announced them as soon as they arrived. "Agents Mulder and Scully to see you, sir."

The introduction was clearly unnecessary. Much as Mulder liked to fantasize about disappearing from Kersh's radar, he was well aware that the Assistant Director didn't need anyone to remind him of their names.

Kersh glanced up briefly to dismiss his secretary from the room, and then opted to ignore the new arrivals by studying the papers on his desk.

Mulder's glare was back with a vengeance, and it was only a sharp shake of the head from Scully that stopped him from opening his mouth.

After much refiling of papers and flourishes of his pen Kersh looked up again, finally satisfied that territories had been defined and pecking orders established. "Sit," he commanded.

Mulder did as he was told, slouching in the chair. If Kersh was going to be so blatant in his attempt to play the high school principal, then Mulder could reward him by playing the ill-humored adolescent. Scully looked professionally polite but decidedly remote, determined to emphasize that she, at least, was above such macho posturing.

Kersh frowned. "I've been asked to supply personnel for a task force. It'll be in addition to your normal duties."

"Task force, sir?" Scully's voice was bright and intent.

"Homicides, clustering round the DC area. A possibility that they are linked. Martin Neill is Agent in Charge."

Mulder cut in before Scully got the chance to reply. "Prostitutes or ethnic minorities?" Even Scully winced.

Kersh's hand drifted to adjust his glasses. Maybe he should have stuck to his guns in the management meeting and kept Mulder out of this. "Meaning, Agent Mulder?"

"The victims. It's not in the press. I assume the victims aren't white, middle class males." Kersh twitched a little. Mulder studied him, curious now. "They are?" He paused for an instant, then caught on. "Gays."

"Are as entitled to the Bureau's protection as anyone else."

"Which is why we can work on the task force in addition to our normal duties."

Kersh growled. "Use your best judgement to prioritize. I'll be watching."

Mulder summarized, just for the sake of clarity. "So, window- dressing, sir?"

"I'm sure you'll get the chance to supply your insight, Agent Mulder." He paused, switching his attention to Scully's carefully composed features. "Agent Scully - Agent Neill is looking forward to working with you. If you need additional time for task force duties, please keep me informed." Having confirmed the division in the partners' status on the case, he looked down at the papers on his desk again, before adding a final, "I believe Agent Neill is holding a 3pm briefing."

"Sir," barked Scully, and Mulder wondered for an instant if she was going to salute. Kersh nodded and Mulder took that as a dismissal.

Dana Scully didn't follow her partner from the room. She waited until he closed the door before speaking. "I'm sure Agent Mulder doesn't wish his comments to be construed as dismissive of the victims."

"So long as you and Agent Mulder do the job your AIC needs, I won't have a problem."

Scully swallowed and her boss found himself awkwardly grateful that she took his briskness as an instruction that the meeting was now most definitely over.

With the room to himself, Kersh could admit that while Mulder's dismissal of the work as "window-dressing" had grated, it had also been apposite. Mulder might be a pain in the ass to work with and an embarrassment to the Bureau, but he was undeniably astute. Perhaps a little too astute for his own good at times.

Rising to his feet Kersh decided to work off the excess energy by pacing, circling the territory a couple of times before finally coming to a rest in front of the window. Mulder could give a saint a migraine. Rubbing carefully at his temples he wished Neill and the task force luck.

Back at their desks, Scully read the email from Agent Neill detailing the meeting scheduled for later that afternoon out loud to Mulder. She spoke with emphasis as if he should find it newsworthy, despite the fact he was on the same mailing list and presumably had by now read the same letter.

Mulder shuffled his feet along the desk, rearranging himself so that Scully could see his computer screen. "Messy work."

Scully stared at the bloody images, whispering her reply. "Where did you get the pictures from?"

"The ISU. They've already taken a shot at it."

"Neill wanted us to come in fresh, without preconceptions."

"Neill thinks he's the ringmaster and I'm the resident clown."

"You don't even know him."

He didn't reply instantly, just switched between windows on the screen to bring up another mass of words. "You think?"

She moved quickly from her seat, almost knocking Mulder off balance in her anxiety to get to the monitor. She switched it off, hissing into his ear, "Personnel records are confidential. Aren't you in enough trouble?"

Mulder removed his feet from the desk and sat up straight, surveying the room in a quick sweep that instantly confirmed his expectations - the place was silent because everyone was watching them. He made sure his whispered response was theatrically loud. "Mea culpa. I got the full latte, not the low fat. Forgive?"

The meeting room was already half full when Mulder and Scully arrived. Neill broke away from the cluster of agents he was talking with to greet them, intercepting them as they headed towards the chairs that offered the best view of the door.

Neill stretched out a hand in welcome and Scully accepted the warmth. "Dana Scully. Long time no see. I thought I'd never get the chance to work with you. And you must be -"

"Mulder," her partner replied, not even pausing on his way to the seat that he'd already picked out from across the room.

"Mulder," repeated Neill quietly, supplying a brief shrug and a smile to Scully as he did.

Scully glanced at Mulder's fast retreating form and then back to Neill.

"We should talk," suggested Neill cheerily, "It'll be great to catch up."

Scully smiled and found it hard not to break into a full-blown grin at his enthusiasm; all these years and some things hadn't changed.

The task force was ninety minutes into its two hour meeting before Mulder said anything. Late enough that the other agents had already been lulled into a happy consensus of mutual agreement.

"You're assuming the profile is correct."

Neill rested the pen against the chart and stared down at the source of the interruption. He'd been warned to keep an eye on Mulder, not to give him an inch. "We haven't got any reason to believe otherwise, Agent Mulder."

"So you'll automatically discard any evidence that runs counter to its assumptions," suggested Mulder.

"Nothing will be discarded. But we can't commit precious resources to wild goose chases. Focus is our key word."

Scully's hand shifted, she tapped Mulder's arm to try and get his attention. It didn't work, Mulder continued his attack. "Focus isn't achieved by failing to gather all relevant information."

The looks from around the table ranged from the long-sufferingly tolerant to the outright hostile. Neill seemed to gain extra confidence from their approval. "I appreciate that you *were* a profiler, but Agent Burton has more recent relevant experience in this field. He consults on literally hundreds of cases per year."

"Which is exactly why he has to assume that the information he is fed is both accurate and complete."

"What are you getting at?"

"He has to make assumptions, we don't."

"I'm not making assumptions."

"You're assuming the victims are gay?"

"The victimology, as you know, is one of the factors that links the killings."

"You assume that the attacker is also homosexual?"

"The profile says..."

"That the attacker picked them up, probably on some promise of sex. I read the profile. Two of the victims had live-in partners."

"It's known that..."

"Queers aren't monogamous?"

The sharp intakes of breath and barely controlled sniggers from around the table underscored the lack of political correctness in Mulder's comment. There was no question about it - Mulder had just pointed out the elephant in the dining room which the others had been so carefully pretending to ignore.

Neill took it as the opportunity to close the discussion down. "Agent Mulder, can I remind you that I asked for sensitivity and discretion on this team."

Mulder ignored the complaint and turned it into one of his own. "May I remind you that people are dying?"

Somewhere along the way battle lines had already been drawn and sides taken; long suffering had turned to horrified, and hostile had turned into angry. Scully's hands were clenched together on the table in front of her, unwilling to be drawn into a war and uncomfortable to find it happening despite her wishes. Only Mulder looked utterly relaxed.

Neill's fingers tightened on the marker pen as he turned away from the conflict and back to the board, where he proceeded to press the pen so hard that he almost tore through the paper. < Don't assume. >

By the time the words were on the sheet, Neill had pulled himself back under the tightest control. Brainstorming sessions always had the potential to be a hazard, and Mulder was a prime example of why. Neill was on the fast-track, racing his way up the Bureau hierarchy. What he didn't need was a Mulder trying to push him off course.

Neill straightened his shoulders as if Mulder's interruption had been dealt with simply by writing the words and therefore could now be forgotten

When the meeting finally closed, Mulder could describe his partner's demeanor in one word - why? Her facial expression mirrored her body language as she shrugged apologetically towards her colleagues. She zealously refiled the papers in her briefcase, and avoided looking at Mulder.

"Scully," his vocal chords froze as he spoke, as if he himself was unsure exactly what intonation to use. Was he trying to soothe her, win her round, or question her?

"It's not our case," she mumbled, a quiet, deep grumble of a reply.

"So why invite us to the meeting?"

"To help Agent Neill get his investigation on track."

"Focused?"

"Is that such a dirty word?"

"If it's on the wrong thing."

"If you haven't got anything positive to say."

"Why don't I keep my mouth shut?"

Scully didn't reply, deciding that keeping her own mouth shut was the most expedient way of handling Mulder. "I'm going to start reviewing the forensics." Then she was gone.

As afternoon drifted into evening drifted into night, so Mulder's thoughts had drifted deeper into the case. Something had felt wrong enough about the profile to make him argue with it at first sight. Despite the fact that they didn't want his opinions. And, as Scully had correctly observed, despite the fact that he had nothing positive to offer as an alternative.

Leaning dangerously far back in his chair, he studied the ceiling, squinting to try to get enough lubrication into his eyes to let him blink again. Adjusting his gaze he attempted to focus on something in the distance, before concluding that even now that it was almost empty of people, the bullpen of an office had no distance, only a claustrophobic clutter of desks and computer screens.

The muscles in his neck chose that moment to protest about him putting too much weight on them. Reluctantly, he pushed himself back upright. There was definitely something wrong with the case and despite Scully's remark, it wasn't just that somebody else was in charge of it.

Mulder closed his eyes, just to let them rest. Maybe he did resent Martin Neill. Perhaps it was just that the walls of this office had now closed in so tight that anything, X-File or not, anything that looked like daylight seemed to be appealing.

No way did he envy Neill. Neill was racing up the Bureau, gathering commendations and brownie points as he rose. Been there, seen it, done that.

So, did he envy Neill, then? Did he wish it was him and not Neill, standing up there with his marker pen and the big pad of paper? Did he want to be the one dutifully writing up the negative and unhelpful heckling, and brushing it off as a minor irritation before returning to the focused actions?

Did it anger him that Neill, who'd gone through Quantico with Scully and had only occasionally matched and never bettered her scores, was now giving them orders?

Had be become that petty?

Suddenly too tired to try to analyze his own motives, he tried to drum up a little energy by turning his focus back onto the outside world.

Clicking the button on the mouse, he set back in motion his own, personal, bloody slideshow packed full of the images of death. Picking up the hard copy photographs from the desk, he started to catalogue them again. Time of death; dumpsite; last sighting of victim; murder weapon; torture method.

The murder weapon was ultimately always the same, a bandana tied to form a garrote around the victim's neck. Only the duration of the suffering they'd gone through before that point and the degree of torture inflicted seemed to vary.

Such a sexually charged crime, yet the posing of the bodies, and the bodies had certainly been posed after their deaths, suggested nothing sexual. Or perhaps he was misreading it. Maybe after the death, the victim was no longer considered to be a sexual object? Except there was evidence that at least the third victim had been raped only after his death.

Maybe there was some kind of apology in the posing. Did the killer feel guilty? About the kill, or about the torture that had preceded it?

There was definitely something wrong with the pictures. The jigsaw didn't fit nearly so neatly as his colleagues wanted to believe. Did it?

Going back to the computer, he changed the slide show again, lining up the pictures that the team had gathered from the friends and families of the men, the ones that showed the victims before they became victims. He set them to appear on the screen one after another, and as one loop finished, he ordered it to repeat.

A sea of happy faces, of people who had loved and who were loved in return. He let the soft tide of their smiles wash over him and settled back to read the printouts of interviews with their families, friends and colleagues.

He switched on the tape recorder, hugging the headphones to his ears as he listened to a radio interview given by one of the victims. A redundant little non-news story about the regeneration of urban centers. The man's voice had been alive with fun and determination, and with a firm belief that the world could be a better place, and that the better place could start right here in DC.

Mulder sighed. He could almost believe in that voice, in its softness and generosity. Self-assured, yet giving. Not hard to empathize with a voice like that. He took off the headset and stretched, yawning as the tiredness tried to take control of his body.

The room felt suddenly warmer, the hum of the screens oddly hypnotic. His skin tingled with macabre fascination as the images playing in his mind shifted from the death and lifelessness of still photographs to create a sudden cacophony of sound and moving pictures.

The New York accent of the third victim came into sudden focus as it asked him "who?" The delicate Georgian drawl of the second dead man asked "why?" He listened to them and heard their voices mingle and rise until all that existed was a cloud of demands for understanding and retribution.

Scully was wrong. It was his case. All of them were his victims.

The first thing that Dana Scully noticed when she got into the office the following morning was Mulder's jacket decorating the back of his empty chair. It was a bad sign; the office wasn't warm enough to provoke that reaction this early in the day.

He could be sick and feverish. He could have slipped out of his normal routine and gone for a run immediately before work rather than before breakfast and the adrenaline rush might still be keeping him warm. Maybe he didn't get much sleep last night and was running hot because he was tired. Her bets were on the last option.

The empty coffee cups seemed to confirm her deduction. If he needed that much coffee this early in the day, something was amiss. She frowned, uncomfortable with the train of thought. She was neither his mother nor his doctor, and if this was the best thing she could do with her expensively acquired investigative skills then it was going to be an unrewarding day.

When Mulder returned a few moments later, it was with another cup of coffee and a video tape. He nodded a quick greeting and slipped back behind his desk.

Scully leaned forwards and experimented with her partner's mood. "If that's yours, I wouldn't risk playing it with all these other agents around."

Mulder turned, half smiled as he shook his head. "It's pretty tame."

She reached out a hand and Mulder politely supplied her with the tape. She read the label - Copy 2 of Evidence Tape 1 - Apache Club - Halloween Party.

"The Bandana murder case?"

"One of the victims is on it, with his lover."

"You think maybe the killer was there?"

"Unlikely. The people look too comfortable, too much at home."

"But the profile says..."

The openness in Mulder's eyes shut down fast. His voice had a hard edge when he continued. "The profile says what people expect it to say - like killed like."

Scully looked away, determined not to spoil the day by getting into a fight this early. "I've started looking at the forensics."

"Yeah?"

"Too soon to say. Too many different approaches. Different MEs, labs, detectives. I'll need to spend a few hours getting them into a standard form before I can really see what I'm looking at."

Mulder nodded, recovered the video from her hand and tucked it into his desk drawer. He shifted back to face his desk, picked up the first file from the stack of background checks that Kersh had allocated and tried to look busy, telling her more effectively than any words that her comments had been noted, but that the conversation was now officially over.

What now? Was she supposed to just leave him to it? Scully couldn't tell. Maybe the right thing would be to bring it out into the open and actually ask him why he was so damned sure that everyone else who worked for the Bureau was incompetent?

More especially, why he was so determined to dislike Marty Neill. Neill had been one of the good guys at Quantico, sweet and charming and without most of the usual sexist hang-ups that often infested even the best of them. The fact that people like Colton had rather cruelly dubbed him J. Edgar Jr. hadn't been fair and Scully now felt a little guilty about playing along with the tease.

She shivered at the sudden déjà vu, shocked and even a little amused at the idea that she'd once joked about "Spooky" Mulder in front of the cancerman and Blevins. It all seemed like a lifetime ago now.

The only action Mulder had been asked to carry out as a result of the meeting was to examine the background checks on the victims. Multiple police authorities and a myriad of detectives could mean that links between the victims were being ignored, details of shared locations and acquaintances could be slipping through the net. It was exactly the reason why the FBI team had been formed. Moreover it also fitted neatly inside Kersh's guideline that it should not interfere with his other work.

Scully was less confident that the same was true for her role. Cross-referencing the forensic and autopsy reports for consistency and variation sounded easy until actually faced with the mish-mash of paperwork and computer records that comprised the evidence.

It would take hours, days even, to make sense of it. It was important that Kersh knew just how much work was needed. The stakes here were high. It wasn't as if she was engaged in some personal campaign for a promotion.

She wanted her old job back. She wanted them both to get their jobs back. And if that meant clocking up the hours of overtime and playing nice with the rest of the Bandana killer team, she would do it. She would prove that she had lost nothing and learned a lot since she'd started working with Mulder.

She looked across to Mulder. He continued talking into the phone, working his way, robot fashion, through that same old list of questions about another potential Federal employee that had been their main official duty in recent weeks.

If only she could convince him that they could achieve something positive on this case and that they didn't have to go to war with Marty Neill to do so. Nor did they need to turn it into some great mystery to make their marks.

FBI - meeting room

Mulder's attempt to unravel the connections between his victims was at best frustrating, at worst pointless. There were matches of course, but none that would offer AIC Martin Neill that focus he was looking for.

A couple of the men were known to visit clubs or make the occasional foray to gay bars, though one of them now had a live-in partner. One of the others had been effectively "married" for the last five years. And the idea that the other two were homosexual at all had been met by a mix of disbelief and sudden recognition by the majority of their friends and family.

A couple had associations with political lobbyists, one supplying research on global warming for a renewable energy campaign. The other was the man on Mulder's radio recording, a reporter for a local gay weekly newspaper who was also an evangelist for urban renewal. But even these two men appeared to have no organizations, no obvious events, and no favorite watering holes in common.

So far as Mulder could tell, their lifestyles and personalities were as different as any other five middle-aged, middle-class white males living in the area.

Those links that he had identified between the men were through their jobs or their political activism, not their sexuality. The notion that the killer was picking them up on some promise of casual sex with a hint of brutality was, in Mulder's opinion, not only wrong, it was also an extremely crass piece of sexual stereotyping. Apparently, the team's political correctness only applied to linguistics.

Three of the men had disappeared overnight, two had vanished during weekends. None had complained of a stalker, there had been no odd phone calls at home or work. There were no mysterious appointments in their diaries. No common phone numbers or names in their address books.

In short, the common links, such as they were, would not supply the FBI with a short-list of suspects or even offer them a filter should a suspect actually fall into their laps.

Which news, at the next team meeting, was greeted by little more than amusement.

"Thank you for your contribution, Agent Mulder." Neill gave the briefest of smirks to clue in the twenty other agents in the room, just in case they'd missed the light-hearted tone in his voice.

Mulder ignored the ripple of laughter that rolled around the table, it wasn't the first time he'd faced that kind of reaction and doubtless it wouldn't be the last. "I might get more if I re-interview some of their friends and family."

"That work has already been assigned. You're collating."

"I think -"

"Agent Mulder - I hope you aren't going to insult your colleagues by suggesting that they're not capable of performing background checks on the victims?"

Actually, Mulder would have cheerfully suggested exactly that except for Scully's unspoken but obvious request that he play nice.

He changed tack, reopening the same argument that had been underway since the first meeting. "The lack of solid leads makes the behavioral profile all the more critical."

"Which is why we're using it. We're already interviewing people in the broader gay community."

"To what end?"

"If you'd been listening," Neill insisted, before taking a deep breath and continuing at a faster pace. "We're asking about the people who've set alarm bells ringing. We're going back through the records looking at men with a history of sexual violence."

"Which will get you nowhere."

By now the amusement had turned to groans.

From the moment he'd joined the team, Mulder had challenged every detail and every action raised by the ISU's behavioral profile. Indeed, it had soon became clear to everyone in the room that the only thing he agreed with was the bullet point that the killer was white, male and over 25.

But this time, as Mulder attempted to revisit the argument, Martin Neill was better prepared. He stopped Mulder in his tracks by announcing that Scully's preliminary report was the next item on the agenda and insisting that he would be happy to discuss enhancements to the profile, but only in the presence of the ISU profiler who'd written it. "I prefer to leave the psychology to the pros."

Neill, having made his point, and before Mulder started to argue again, turned his attention back to the agenda. "Agent Scully?"

Scully turned to look at Mulder as if waiting for his permission to continue, or at least apologizing for doing so. When he blinked, she rose to her feet.

Whereas Mulder had arrived bearing only dissent, bad news and no news, Scully had something positive to offer, if only in the form of a list of what she was planning to do. She also quickly advised them on what kind of information was missing from the original autopsies and what their chances were of filling in the blanks.

Running swiftly through her timetable for the work, she promised that all the autopsy evidence, other than the full DNA workups and some other new lab work she'd ordered, would be available at the next meeting. The team was suitably appreciative. Moreover, she already had new insight to offer. "Based on the preliminary analysis of hairs and fibers found across the five crime scenes it looks as if our UNSUB is either bald or he wears a different wig each time."

Mulder doodled as he spoke. "Any pubic hairs found?"

"We're awaiting DNA tests, but again, visual analysis suggests that we don't have any matches."

Mulder was impressed by both the information and her certainty. He knew how long each report must already have taken, especially given the need to clarify details with multiple investigative teams and four different MEs. She had to be running double shifts to do it. Even then, it was impressive.

When the meeting finally broke up, Neill waved for Mulder to stay behind, obviously not ready to leave the psychology completely to the pros, despite his earlier claim.

Scully looked down at her partner, who nodded briefly to encourage her to leave.

From Mulder's perspective, Neill was of no consequence. Mulder had recognized the type as soon as he saw the personnel file. Neill was competent at everything, and might even be good at some things. Mulder also knew that the grapevine proclaimed him as the hot prospect to become the youngest assistant director in the Bureau.

Reading between the lines had filled in the blanks. Mulder could only assume that Neill was both lucky and a great politician. Offending no one, impressing some, always apparently ready and willing, and never putting a foot wrong, even if that meant not putting a foot anywhere.

He'd been promoted to a supervisory special agent role in the New York City Bureau when he was still in his 20s. Just about the same age as Mulder had been when he'd gone through hypnotic regression and his career took a sudden sharp turn towards the basement.

Consequently, there was no point in arguing about any of this with Neill. There were just no points of contact.

Neill raced through Mulder's arguments as documented in the notes that he himself had scribbled over the course of the meeting, dismissing each in turn as not grounded in fact or for failing to meet the latest standards for psychologically rigorous assessment.

Which brought it all back to where it started when Mulder first looked at the photographs. There was something phony about the crimes. Maybe in the way that the swift efficiency of the deaths failed to reflect the brutal torture of the assaults. Or perhaps in the way the body was posed to lie face down, legs together - as discreet a presentation as possible for a corpse left naked and brutalized - as if the killer himself was denying the overtly sexual nature of the crime.

"No, you look at the photos, Mulder. Look what the bastard did. The profile calls him a sexual sadist, I call him a fucking psycho."

"He might well be a sexual sadist, but that is not his motive," insisted Mulder.

Neill threw up his hands in disbelief. "So what is?"

It was a valid point, but hardly a fair question. Once he knew that answer, Mulder was confident that he'd be well on his way to cracking the case. "I don't know - yet."

"Fine. Call me when you do."

Mulder didn't bother to argue. The arrangement suited him perfectly - he had no desire to talk to Neill either.

The Eat Well Store

To the uninitiated, shopping for food every day might seem like a chore. But if there was a record for fastest "real" shopper, then Peter Hughes felt sure that he'd be in with a chance of claiming it.

The near-nightly visit to the wonderfully well-stocked store, ideally placed on his route home from work and which always seemed to have at least one convenient parking space left, had become something of a ritual over the years. With a busy job, and a preference for fresh produce and home-cooking, Pete needed his errands to be efficient, and they were.

In the last few weeks, it had stopped seeming like a ritual or even an indulgence. It had started to seem like this was just what life was made for. Cooking for two might only look like a symptom of the changes that Daniel had made to his life, but the idea that Daniel's presence made everything taste better was more than just a poetic thought, it was a fact.

The melon glowed with sunshine and the fish smelled only of salty sea. Perfect. An ideal dinner for two. Fast food but real food. He grinned as he loaded the bags into the trunk; there seemed something almost decadent about enjoying it this much. It had been years since it felt so good to shop.

A Starbucks near the Hoover Building

Scully shook her head, dismayed and amused as Marty Neill recounted the story he'd heard about Tom Colton's misadventures while on assignment to one of the white collar crime teams.

"So he manages to arrest an undercover agent for using a Bureau credit card!"

Despite her amusement, she couldn't help but feel a little sympathy. "Easily done though. Relocation to Nebraska's quite a penalty for one mistake."

"One mistake! Dana! You always were too generous. The agent only used the Bureau card to phone his reports in to the office. He only had to look at the number on the bills."

"Ouch."

"Besides, if he'd actually asked his boss he'd have heard the whole story, but not Tom, he was so determined to get the glory."

Neill was grinning, and Scully found his mood infectious as they raced through the list of old Quantico classmates, and their current status both personal and professional.

"Of course," continued Neill, his smile softening to something gentler and more intent, "the real enigma is you. It's like you left Quantico one day and fell off the planet."

She smiled, surprised not to feel angry at the comment, and even a little embarrassed to be reminded of just how far outside the mainstream of Bureau life she'd drifted.

Neill picked up on her reticence. "Sorry. I'm just nosey."

"No, it's fine. I did five years on the X-Files. I kind of lost touch. We were always busy."

"But, now you're working for Kersh. Doing background checks." There was a question in his tone. "I don't get it. I thought you'd be up for an AD job by now."

"It's a long story."

"With Fox Mulder in every scene?"

She tensed, preparing to go on the defensive, but Neill raised his hands in a plea for forgiveness, or at least for understanding.

He shrugged. "I'm sorry, I don't really get Mulder. When I heard you two were coming into the team I thought it was great. Even the Behavioral guys said he was special back then. And your solve rate, it speaks for itself."

"Mulder is special."

"I'll take your word for it. God knows, I can't reach him. Anybody else, I'd have asked for him to be pulled off the team after the first meeting. *Queers*? Has he even been on an awareness seminar or a training course in the last ten years? You can't get away with that kind of thing, we're talking about the new Bureau."

"That's not how he thinks. He just wanted to get a reaction."

Neill shrugged. "One of these days he'll get a reaction all right, but it'll be from OPR. I'd hate to see you get dragged down with him. You can't tell me you enjoy being stuck on background checks. You must want more."

"I want the X-Files back."

Neill smiled. "Whatever I can do. I've already told Kersh you're great. And Skinner, but I guess he knows. So, spill - what makes working on the X-Files so good? And please - don't tell me that it's Mulder."

Scully tongue stabbed at her lower lip, uncertain how to begin.

Neill suddenly exhaled, gabbling out his next words in an embarrassed rush. "Oh God, I'm such a jerk. You two are -?"

She shook her head. "No. We've been through a lot together. We work well together. But, no. We're not."

Mulder's Apartment

The knock was instantly recognizable; Mulder paused the Apache Club Halloween Party video and opened the door to welcome her inside.

Scully took a couple of steps into the room and stopped, exhaling sharply. Mulder, who'd already reached the kitchen door before he realized that she was no longer following, decided to act as if he didn't see the problem. Which, in truth, was a fair response, because he didn't see that there was one.

"Mulder?"

"Coffee?" he suggested brightly.

"I think you've had enough already."

He smiled half-heartedly, not bothering to argue. "You don't like the new decor?"

The walls were festooned with pictures. Corpses of every age, sex and race frozen for posterity in glorious technicolor, or stark black and white. Crime scene photos, autopsy sketches, courtroom diagrams.

The common element - death by garroting.

The coffee table was covered in crime scene reports from the Bandana investigation.

"What are you looking for?" She carefully cleared a space on the couch so that there was enough room to sit.

He let his eyes follow the same path that hers had done. "I don't know." He would know it when he saw it, assuming that there was something there to see. And he knew that there was. He didn't sigh, not wanting to admit the level of frustration he was already feeling. After all, he was only a couple of days into the case; a lot of people were way ahead of him. Or at least they should have been.

Scully sank down a little further into the couch. "I spoke to Marty Neill."

Marty? Of course she'd call him Marty, they'd been classmates. "And?"

"He's concerned. Says he doesn't know how to reach you."

Good, Mulder shrugged; he had no desire to be reached by Neill.

Scully folded her arms, irritated to have to spell it out. "Neill wants you pulled off the team."

"What did you say?"

"That you're good at what you do."

Mulder didn't respond, which left Scully with no option except to make the threat even more explicit. "If Neill makes his objection official, Skinner'll have to act. Kersh didn't want you on the team in the first place." Her voice was an entreaty. "This is our best chance."

Mulder chose to ignore the pleading tone, and allowed most of the words to fly straight past him, leaving only the puzzle behind. "*Our* best chance? Why would Neill want to remove you?"

She sighed, frustrated. "He doesn't, I'm not talking about *me*, I'm talking about us."

Finally hearing her, Mulder swallowed, shocked by her honesty but uncertain how to respond to it. "You want me to play nice?" His voice fell to a whisper. "I don't know if I can."

Baltimore PD

When Daniel James reported Peter Hughes as a missing person, he was greeted by a desk sergeant dispensing one part sympathy, nine parts amusement, and ninety parts by-the-book efficiency.

"He's been missing for six hours?" checked the sergeant, apparently incredulous that anyone would come in after so short a time.

"As I told you. We'd arranged to eat at 8. When he wasn't at his apartment, I started trying to call him."

"So, he's actually been *missing* for four hours! Like I say, it's too early to file a report. He could just be working late."

"I tried his office, he left at 5:30. I get a machine when I call his house. No answer on his cell phone."

"So call his family - maybe there's been an emergency."

Dan James was losing his air of certainty, uncomfortable at having to admit how little he really knew about his friend. "I can't. I only know they live somewhere in the Midwest. Can you trace them?"

"Not until he's officially missing. I've got people waiting here," the sergeant added, pointedly scanning down the others waiting their turn, who obligingly muttered their discontent in response.

James kept his eyes down and his voice soft, leaning as far forward as he dare so he wouldn't need to shout. "Mr. Hughes is gay. Look - I read the papers, I'm worried."

The desk sergeant sighed; newspapers warnings about serial killers were a distinctly mixed blessing. Sure, they might warn some potential victim not to go baring his ass to the next stranger he met, but it was also an open invitation to every fruit in town whose date stood him up to come in here looking for sympathy. "Fill in the form. Leave anything you don't know blank. If a detective needs to speak with you, we'll be in touch. If your boyfriend shows up, let us know." And with that, he turned away, booming out a "Next," to someone in the room.

Next day - FBI

Scully's explanation to the team meeting was met with interest. With the facts laid out this systematically and the key points underlined, it was easier to follow the trail.

She summarized her message. "We don't have enough forensic evidence to lead us to him - which in itself tells us quite a lot. He must have used gloves He wore a condom. Further analysis of hairs and fibers may give us something, but based on the preliminary results the odds are against us and..."

"We're waiting for another corpse?" Mulder suggested.

Scully nodded, her jaw tightening, uncomfortable at being placed on the spot by her own partner and in the process having her efforts dismissed as effectively worthless.

"Dana - thank you. Agent Scully has given us an excellent foundation. Are there any questions? Does anyone have anything *positive* to add?" encouraged Neill.

Mulder was first again, though not with anything that Neill would consider positive. "The reports on all victims suggest anal penetration?"

"There's evidence of rectal trauma."

"But not object rape?"

"There are traces of rubber from the condom."

"Which could be covering an object rather than a penis?"

Neill answered before Scully got the chance. "Why would anyone do that?"

"I'm just asking," pushed Mulder.

Neill was becoming impatient. "Just where are you going with this, Mulder?"

Mulder raised his hands to proclaim his innocence. "I just want to understand. Was there any evidence, say, of the use of lubricants?"

Scully stepped in quickly with her answer. "Only the type and quantity that might have been on a pre-lubed condom."

Neill's impatience gave way to a kind of angry amusement as he followed up Scully's reply. "He tortured them, raped them and killed them - you think he would care about their comfort?"

"No. I think he would care about his own. The severity of tearing says that the men weren't receptive. He won't have enjoyed it."

Neill bounced it back. "The sicko was out of control, he'd have enjoyed it if it had left him limping. He wasn't thinking that far ahead."

Mulder shook his head. "No."

"No what, Agent Mulder?"

"No. He wasn't out of control."

Neill just wanted the conversation over. He looked pointedly away from Mulder. "Are there any other questions?"

Mulder ignored the dismissal. "Could it have been object rape?" he asked again.

Scully's professionalism overrode her frustration at being forced to play pig in the middle of the fight between the two men. "It could."

Mulder spent the rest of the meeting doodling silently on the yellow pad in front of him, showing interest only when he heard Scully confirm her willingness to take on extra actions. He could only assume that she'd made some kind of deal with Kersh to get the time.

When the meeting finally broke up, Scully waved for Mulder to stay behind in the room. "What was that about?"

"Just making sure that I understood the evidence."

"If that was all, you'd have asked me about it before the meeting."

"It was important that they heard the answer."

"Because you already knew the answer, didn't you?"

He shrugged, unwilling to lie to her.

She shook her head. "We're a team, Mulder. If you wanted to make sure they heard it, I could have made it explicit it in my report."

"Because they listen to you?"

"You," she paused, looking for the right words, "You rub them the wrong way." She returned to her packing, carefully re-sequencing her notes and slides, and avoiding his eyes, making it obvious that the discussion was now officially closed.

Sighing in agreement, though not actually accepting the implicit advice, he started to head for the door, pausing a few feet away from it as he heard Neill joking in the corridor with one of the other agents. "Trust Spooky to worry about the fucker's cock getting bruised."

"Well, I guess he'd know."

"Hey, look on the bright side, if we need someone to go undercover, he'll fit right in."

The agent gasped out an amused breath. "*Dana'd* rip you a new one if she heard you."

"Now that does sound like fun."

The guffaws turned to raucous laughter, and if looks could kill, then both men would have been dead as Mulder walked past them.

FBI - next day

Mulder skimmed quickly though the "potential employee" background checks on his desk, dotting the Is and crossing the Ts, and making sure the signatures were in all the right places.

Content that he'd done enough to keep Kersh off his back, he turned his attention to the ever-expanding pile of background checks of his own choosing.

As a weapon, the garrote had some nice features, not least its ability to slip suspicion-free into a pocket and the way it could be improvised at a moment's notice. It was not, however, perfect.

It might improve the ease with which a strangler could kill, but it couldn't be used to subdue or threaten until the victim was already in a choke-hold. It might be silent, but only if the attacker was quick enough to stop the victim from screaming.

In ruthlessly experienced and powerful hands, it might make a good sneak weapon for an assault from behind. Or even for sudden asphyxiation after some particularly rough game that had been planned to stop just short of permanent harm.

It was this last possibility that the ISU profiler, Dave Burton, had supplied. A game that got out of hand, that led to a desire for more, until now there was no game left. Consequently, the eyes of the optimists were locked firmly on the computer records of known sexual offenders and reports of overenthusiastic sexual partners.

And then there was the "weapon" itself, the use of a bandana in each case suggested more than mere utility, it suggested a message.

It had been Mulder's experience that killers seldom left messages about anything other than their own psychoses. Furthermore, when a killer so neat and tidy, who left no significant forensic evidence left something so blatant at every site then it had to be intentional. As a distraction, or as a signature? Either way, it meant something.

Something about the victims or something about the killer? He made a mental note to get the photo lab to do a few manipulated pictures of the victims as they might look wearing such an item. A vague hope that they might ring some witness's bell.

Not that he was going to be allowed to get anywhere near a witness. Neill didn't know how to reach him? Well, Neill certainly knew how to get in his way.

Which was why Mulder was already in the mood to argue when Martin Neill called him to ask for his urgent attendance at an impromptu meeting.

Special Agent Dave Burton on the other hand seemed rather less comfortable about having to explain himself to Mulder, though he was clearly trying to keep the feeling firmly under wraps. Explaining a profile to a "legend" was a little intimidating, but avoidance wasn't an option. Skinner had insisted to Neill, and consequently to Burton, that this was really the only way of settling the matter "once and for all."

The AIC was to sit in judgment over the proceedings, which meant that Mulder already knew the verdict even before they started. Not that Martin Neill's verdict was of any interest to Mulder.

"I know you were in the ISU, back in Patterson's day, but things have moved on," suggested Burton in a cautious but stubborn tone that probably meant that he'd rehearsed his words in the car on the way over.

Which amused Mulder more than it should. "You mean because it's not just white males who go psycho anymore? How long ago do you imagine I left?"

"Just that we've got a lot more statistical data now and by systematic analysis we see patterns, and with the kind of damage being done to these men, we're looking fairly and squarely at a sexual sadist. I'd stake my reputation on it."

Reputation? Mulder had no idea that Burton had one. No matter. "Then you'll accept that the human mind is programmed to find familiar patterns, even if that means ignoring data to do so?"

It was Neill who snapped at that. "I didn't ask Agent Burton to come over here so you could deliver a lecture."

Mulder didn't even glance at Neill. He just kept his eyes locked on Burton, and silently demanded an answer to his question.

Burton shook his head. "There's always an element of doubt. Any profile. Any profiler. But this... Just look at the bodies. What kind of man could inflict that kind of damage? Your own work's confirmed it - these men haven't been killed by some insanely jealous ex in a frenzy. As far as we can tell they've been killed by a complete stranger who'd planned the action in detail."

The profiler glanced across at Neill and took confidence from the certainty that he saw in the Bandana AIC's eyes. He turned his attention back to Mulder. "I've talked with my boss. When I heard you'd challenged it, I put the profile through a peer-group review. Don't get me wrong - there are people in the ISU who think that you're wasted over here. But the bottom line is - if we're ALL supposed to be wrong, just who do YOU think we should be looking for?"

But Mulder wasn't ready to reply. It was early days and he wanted to at least bounce his theories off Scully before he went public. "Look at the pictures, Dave. Look how tidy the actual killing is, look how careful he is in how he poses them." He pushed his favorite photos, now dog-eared from too many hours in his pockets, across the desk.

Burton waved his hands to stop Mulder. "So he doesn't want to kill them. The sexual thrill is in the torture. The murder's a necessity because they've seen him. The posing's a kind of apology for having to kill them."

"No. He's careful about not leaving evidence, he could disguise his appearance too, unless the kill's important. There would be survivors as well as bodies and I've been going back through the files..."

"They're bound to see him because they go with him, Mulder. They're willing to go with him. Then he turns on them."

And there was the real heart of the disagreement. "You haven't got any evidence for that."

"Alastair Dale Falmer - last seen alive, The Sepulchre - it's a well-known pick-up bar."

"Which he left alone."

Neill had grown tired of playing at impartial observer, and decided that it was time to end the discussion. "No one saw who Falmer left with - there's a difference."

Mulder shook his head. "In the specific question asked by the agent, not in the evidence in the eye-witness report."

"Agent Burton - thanks for your time, I know you're a busy man." Neill paused, adopted an altogether lighter tone for his next words. "Agent Mulder - I guess you've got some more background checks to run."

The meeting closed, Neill quickly ushering Burton out for a "quick chat" with AD Skinner. Mulder chose not to protest. He could talk to Burton any time he wanted and Neill wouldn't be there to play chaperone if he did.

The conference table in Skinner's office supplied a suitable place to display the photographs that, according to Dave Burton, were at the heart of Mulder's disagreement. Martin Neill was leaning against the wall, close enough to appear involved in the action and yet not quite looking at the bloody display.

Skinner found himself cursing again the hands-off advice that he'd been given. "Remember, Walter - you're not their manager now," Cassidy had told him. The warning had scarcely seemed necessary at the time.

Time, however, had moved on, whereas the order had remained in exactly the same place.

With Burton carefully reorganizing the photo sequence and preparing to act simultaneously as the chief witness for the prosecution and the sole representative of the defense, it didn't seem right that this discussion should be going on without Mulder.

"Mulder's worried by the efficiency of the kills. He says they're too fast for the level of damage inflicted beforehand."

Skinner frowned, trying not to find the subject distasteful or at least trying not to admit to it. "What was he expecting?"

"Maybe something that links more to the beatings or the knife wounds we see, or just more bruising to the neck. Perhaps that he'd choke them until they pass out a few times before actually strangling them."

Neill swallowed, his face whitening as Burton illustrated the point by suggesting which cuts needed only to go a little deeper, or which hammer blow needed only to be aimed a few inches higher. Skinner could only assume that it was the profiler's casual delivery rather than the images themselves, which must have been old news, that was so disturbing to Neill. Or perhaps it was just that the AIC had never actually considered the story behind the photos until now.

Not that Skinner actually blamed him for his reaction. The only reason he wasn't flinching away as Burton enthusiastically reshuffled the photos to illustrate the posing of the bodies was experience. Too much experience. "So how do you explain it, Agent Burton?"

"There's remorse in the death. It's a necessity, but not the objective."

"And what does Mulder say?"

"He hasn't really said anything."

Which brought Neill round from his slightly dazed condition. "My point exactly, sir. Criticism and no contribution. It's morale sapping and damages -"

"- the team focus," Skinner supplied, knowing this bit of the conversation by heart.

"It distracts people and it drains their energy."

"And you haven't been able to make this clear to him?"

Neill flinched a little, clearly unhappy to hear it thrown back at him as if his management skills were being challenged and found lacking. "Agent Scully understands. I don't think Agent Mulder wants to."

Skinner nodded, letting Neill off the hook. Making Mulder understand something he didn't want to hear wasn't his idea of an easy ride either. "Agent Burton, thank you for the update."

Burton quickly gathered together the photos and headed for the door, looking relieved to be on his way back to his Quantico colleagues.

As soon as the door closed behind Burton, Neill said the words that Skinner had been anticipating from the start. "I want Agent Mulder removed from the task force. He's completed his assigned work."

"And you don't intend to assign him any more." It was more a statement than a question.

"I don't see the point, sir. I'd only have to ask someone else to cover it, too. Unless, perhaps if you were to have a word with him? He knows you, I'm sure he respects you, sir."

Skinner tensed, somewhere between amused and angered by Neill's obsequious tone, before identifying it as the careful phrasing of someone who liked to keep his bosses sweet. No wonder he didn't hit it off with Mulder. "If you can't handle it, I'll discuss the situation with Assistant Director Kersh." Neill winced at the impact. Skinner hadn't intended it to sound like a rebuke, but his tone reflected his frustration with Cassidy's guidelines, and his distaste at having to hand off the problem to Kersh.

It only took a few seconds for the agent to recover his poise, and when he did, he brought out the big guns. "I can handle it, sir. But if we have another incident, like the one I mentioned after the first meeting, when he started talking about *queers* then I think people will expect me to take it to OPR."

They had discussed it before and it was a painful reminder of how just how thin the ice that Mulder was skating on had become. Mulder, according to Scully, had done it to provoke a reaction, and to test the other agents perhaps. Though what exactly such a test might prove was as lost on Skinner as it would doubtless be on any formal meeting of the Office of Professional Responsibility. Sure, saints were in short supply. But not many would slip up like that in a formal meeting full of agents. And who, apart from Mulder, would do it as an experiment?

Skinner nodded. "I wouldn't expect anything less, Agent Neill."

The Sepulchre

The bar was so dark that Mulder was tempted to switch on his flashlight, resisting only because he didn't want to attract that much attention. Not for the first time he caught himself looking around for Scully to share the moment.

Scully, of course, wasn't there. He hadn't invited her. It would have been nice to claim that it was due to the practicalities of the situation. FBI rules and regulations said that he shouldn't be here. If he got caught, Neill would have a field day in front of the OPR enquiry and Kersh would make sure he paid in full for the folly. No need to involve Scully in that kind of career suicide. Besides, Scully was not the ideal candidate to inconspicuously watch his back on an incognito mission to a gay pick-up bar.

Either reason sounded plausible, but actually both were just excuses. Scully wasn't here because Mulder hadn't told her his plans. He hadn't told her because they hadn't really talked since the case started. Which gave Mulder another problem to brood over, because he wasn't sure why they hadn't.

Scully seemed to be thriving on Neill's team, just as Neill seemed to be relishing "Dana's" skills.

No matter. Neill's team was so far off track on this case that only sheer luck would bring them any rewards. Sheer luck or Scully's forensic expertise. Neill was right to fawn over her, she was the best chance they had.

They? He stared into his near empty glass. They? Not a good sign to be thinking of his own colleagues as "them" especially when he wasn't quite sure if there was an "us" to pitch an alternative.

Scully's work was vital. And if that meant she was working for both sides of the argument, didn't that just offer her twice as good a chance of making it count? In any case, wasn't that what scientists were supposed to do - extract all salient information and deliver the facts without personal bias?

It was fine; it was all he needed.

"Penny for 'em?" the voice at his side offered. "Can I buy you a drink?" the man added as Mulder looked up.

"I doubt they're worth it. And I'll buy." Mulder looked across at the bartender, and waved a single finger over the two drinks on the table. The man nodded.

"New here?"

"New anywhere. Is it always this quiet?"

"On a Tuesday? There should be a few more people later, but yeah, pretty much."

"You're a regular then?"

"Could say that, I own the place."

"And you let me buy the drinks!"

"Hey, I offered."

The drinks arrived, the muscle-bound blond bartender winking at his boss as he delivered them. The owner made the introductions, "The Arnie wannabe's Jim, I'm Paul and -"

"Marty," supplied Mulder, vaguely amused at the idea that Neill might add his choice of alias to the list of charges for OPR if he did get caught in here.

Arnold's body double slipped back to his place behind the bar and Paul picked up the conversation. "So," he suggested, eyeing his new customer with interest, and smiling as he spoke, "man trouble?"

"Partner trouble."

"Shit." He shook his head sympathetically. "To partners," he offered, clinking his glass lightly against Mulder's.

"To partners," Mulder agreed, saluting him with his drink as he took a first swig of beer.

FBI Forensics Lab

While Mulder was definitely out of bounds for Skinner, the guidance regarding Scully was not nearly so clear cut. Scully was not considered to be a problem, not even by Kersh who was actually on the look out for better opportunities for her. "Rehab," her new boss had joked. A joke that hadn't sounded quite so funny when Scully was hospitalized a week later with a bullet wound to the stomach, courtesy of her new partner's gun.

Catching up with her in the bay of the forensics lab was therefore well within the norms of professional conduct. Advising her that her contribution was warmly welcomed by Neill was giving away no secrets. Warning her that Mulder needed to learn a few manners if he was going to be taken seriously, was at least a tiptoe from going too far.

"Agent Neill's delighted to have you working with him."

Scully nodded, non-committal, taking advantage of the pause from re-reading autopsy and forensics reports to rest her eyes for an instant before blinking back to a coolly attentive perusal of the AD's features.

Skinner refused to squirm under the scrutiny though he heard her unspoken, "What are you doing here?" coming in loud and clear. He chose to approach with caution. "Do you think he's slipped up? The UNSUB," he added quickly, and then felt immediately embarrassed to have admitted that the question might be seen as being just as applicable to Mulder.

"They always make mistakes. Somewhere."

Skinner noted the slight note of resignation in her voice, she didn't sound hopeful. He quickly surveyed the work area that Scully had carved out for herself, automatically counting up the lab reports, the photographs, and the evidence notes that were carefully stacked around her. If this was the level of attention that she would give when not feeling optimistic, how far would she go if she felt that she was onto something? He smiled a little at the idea, this case needed that. These victims needed her. And Mulder.

"The dump sites?" Skinner queried, knowing that they were part of the reason why the forensics were so tough to gather. Dumpsters with easy access, and a landfill site had supplied the venues for the killer's disposal of the bodies. Easy to find the victims. Much harder to find anything that could be considered significant with those opportunities for contamination.

"Not just that," Scully noted, relaxing back in her chair, allowing a little of her tiredness to be exposed for an instant, clearly comfortable with Skinner's question perhaps having feared something worse. "He's killing them somewhere clean - a private place, maybe a van or something similar. He's hosing them down afterwards, handling them in plastic bags when he moves them. He's careful."

"Yet the attacks are frenzied?"

"Vicious, sadistic - certainly. But it's measured and it's sustained, maybe as long as an hour, and the victims are screaming through most of it."

Skinner tilted his head, demanding clarification of the final observation.

"Their throats - raw from screaming."

"The third victim died of a heart attack," Skinner noted.

"He was dead through most of the torture and through the," she hesitated before supplying the missing word, "rape."

"So, no screaming."

Scully nodded. "Yet still he went through the motions of the torture. It's... " Her voice trailed off.

"It's why Mulder's so bothered by the profile?"

She shrugged, almost imperceptible except to someone who'd seen her under pressure and knew what to look for. "I think it runs deeper than that. He doesn't like the idea that the killer's homosexual, and that the men go willingly."

Skinner nodded, noted the slight edge to her voice. It sounded almost as if she was apologizing for her partner's theories, or was she apologizing for not going along with them? "And what do you think?"

"They don't struggle. There are no defense wounds. They allow themselves to be restrained and they get -" she stopped abruptly, unwilling to deliver the final verdict.

"- more than they bargained for?"

Daniel James was back in the same police station, with what looked to be the same line of complainants both ahead of him and behind as two days before. The only thing that appeared to have changed was the desk sergeant, but that change proved to be superficial, too.

"I reported someone missing two nights ago, Peter Hughes. The sergeant said a detective would be in touch."

The duty officer raised an eyebrow at that; it didn't sound likely. Unless he'd just wanted to get the man out of his hair. He dug around the records for a moment. The initial report had come in when this Hughes character had only been "missing" for four hours. That only qualified as a minor traffic delay so far as most people were concerned. "You've tried to reach him?"

Daniel, nerves already stretched to breaking point, was getting dangerously close to detonation. He'd been trying to keep it low key but if they kept treating him like some sort of idiot... "He hasn't been home. He hasn't been to work."

Which was another thing that Daniel was now boiling about. He'd called Pete's office the first day that he was missing and been given a dismissive, "He's not available right now." A comment that he'd stupidly accepted as a summary brush-off. Only when some nagging fear made him call again a day later, and push far harder, had Pete's secretary grudgingly admitted that, "not right now," actually meant, "not for the last two days," and that they didn't know why.

"Have you spoken with his family?"

"I told the other officer. I don't know his family. Can't you trace them?"

"A lot of people go away for a couple of days."

"I want to talk to someone in authority."

"I am the authority here."

"If something's happened to him and you do nothing I will make the worst sort of trouble. You would not believe how bad I can make things."

"Are you threatening me?"

Daniel sighed. The whole name-dropping thing really wasn't his style, but he couldn't let them just walk all over him - Pete's life could be in danger. He'd already let this drag on for longer than it should. "I know people at CNN, NBC, the Post - for starters. How many threats do you suppose it'll need before you can get someone to help me?"

AD Skinner's Office

The phone buzzed for attention and Skinner's secretary came on the line. "Outside call for you, sir. Daniel James - he says it's personal."

It was a surprise to hear that name here in the office. Skinner wasn't sure whether to be pleased or alarmed. "Put him through."

"Walter?"

"Dan, it's been a while. How are you?"

"I've been better."

That got Skinner's attention straight away. Dan seldom complained, even when he had reason to. "What's wrong?"

"I'm told you're heading up a team looking for a serial killer in DC?"

"Are you planning on writing a piece about it?"

"No. This, it's personal. I need help."

"What's the problem?"

"A friend of mine is missing."

"How long?"

"Two days."

"Dan, I know what you're thinking but so far with this killer - we always find the bodies the next working day." He took in a quick breath as he realized just how cold that must have sounded. It was exactly the kind of thing an FBI Assistant Director might say to the people in this office, but not the kind of thing that an old friend needed to hear. "Sorry, sorry, that was supposed to sound reassuring."

"I know that Walt. But the PD doesn't want to know. Grown man with no family ties goes missing for a couple of days..."

"Have you spoken to his relatives?"

"I don't have their details."

"How long have you known him?"

"We've been together just over a month. I know, I know. But, Walt - I feel like I've known him for years. He wouldn't just vanish without calling me." Dan waited for Skinner's reaction but soon decided that the silence was reply enough. "You're going to say the same thing as the police."

"No. I'll ask one of the team to contact you. Where did you file the report?"

Kersh's order to report to his office and to come alone didn't disturb Mulder so much as surprise him. Kersh had always preferred to keep as much distance as possible between them, and to use Scully as a buffer zone when he couldn't. It was an arrangement that Mulder had approved of, too.

"I wanted to talk to you about your work for Domestic Terrorism."

Mulder nodded, not trusting his voice even enough to say, "Yes, sir," without giving the game away. He'd tried to keep the Bandana case out of office hours and to keep up to date with the background checks and the rest of the necessary but unfulfilling duties that Kersh assigned.

He actually had tried, because he really didn't want to give Kersh an excuse to pull him from the task force. Apparently he'd failed; he sat up straight to await the news.

"You finally seem to have understood what's expected from you."

Revising fast, Mulder tested the words for sarcasm but couldn't hear it even when he carefully reran Kersh's voice through his head. "Is that a problem?"

"Why now?"

Mulder didn't respond, just continued studying Kersh, trying to tune into what the AD was really saying. The man's face was giving him nothing to go on, permanently pissed off was a state of mind. The uncomfortable set of his boss's shoulders suggested that there was more to it than that. He decided to go back to basics - after three months in Kersh's division he'd started to file reports on time, in the correct format and with all the right information. No wonder the Assistant Director was suspicious.

Tired of waiting for a reply, Kersh moved on. "Agent Scully has asked me for more time to pursue the Bandana killer investigation. I'm a little surprised not to have heard the same request from you."

"I'm not sure that Agent Neill would appreciate that."

"Since when have you paid attention to the chain of command?"

"Why did you really ask to see me?"

Mulder was pleased to see that the question put Kersh on the defensive, he preferred it that way around.

Kersh didn't respond, just looked at Mulder in silent contemplation before finally shaking his head as if saddened or at least disappointed. "You're dismissed."

"Sir."

Mulder wandered back to the bullpen, puzzled by how to interpret Kersh's reactions and carefully replaying the conversation in the hopes of understanding what had really just happened in Kersh's office.

Scully soon supplied another piece of the jigsaw. "Kersh is taking over the Bandana killer investigation."

"Why?"

"Rumor says," Scully whispered, well aware that half the bullpen were now trying to lock onto their conversation. "Neill told Skinner that he wanted you removed. Skinner said no."

Mulder shook his head, momentarily lost for words. Skinner hadn't said anything to him about it. Actually he hadn't spoken with Skinner in weeks, not since his old boss had helped Scully to rescue him from that ghost ship in the Bermuda Triangle. "Why?" he said finally.

Scully shrugged, a tight gesture, somewhere beyond bewildered and perhaps closer to angry at her partner's reactions or more accurately at his lack of any. "Maybe he thinks you're worth it?"

It was past 8 o'clock when Skinner left work for the day. He wasn't too surprised to see Mulder waiting by the elevators, though he didn't really want to think about how long the agent must have been lurking there in order to catch him.

"Good evening, sir."

"Loitering, Agent Mulder?"

"Parking level 2, sir?"

Skinner nodded, and Mulder pressed the button.

As soon as the doors closed, Mulder started talking. "Why did you leave the case?"

"That's confidential."

"Was it because of me?"

"What would you like me to say?"

"So, that's a yes. Why?"

"Just do your job, Mulder."

"I'm trying to."

The blood rose under Skinner's skin. "Neill wanted to haul you in front of OPR on charges - derogatory and offensive language? Ring any bells?"

Mulder shook his head, then froze. They couldn't mean? "I wanted to get their reactions."

"Congratulations." Skinner was standing up straight and proud, fighting tall now, bristling with frustration and making sure Mulder knew it before leaning in towards the agent and invading the space. "How could be you be so," he paused, searching for the right word, "careless?"

"They're way out of line."

"So are you." The elevator doors opened, and this time it was Skinner who pressed the button, reaching past Mulder to hold the door open. His face so close to Mulder's now that he was practically whispering and yet still coming in loud and clear. "And if you've actually got a contribution to make, then don't make it so damned easy for them to go after you."

Skinner turned and walked briskly toward his car, the tense set of the muscles in his neck and back telling Mulder better than any words that his old boss would not welcome further discussion tonight.

Skinner's righteous indignation and Kersh's cautious probing had left Mulder floundering. The political sensitivity of the case and the fact that the victims were not only close to home in the geographical sense but were also on the fringes of DC power was bound to make the Bureau's management twitchy.

Were they worried that the next target might be on some senator's staff? Was there some other agenda at work here, some other connection not yet revealed to the team?

Yet that wouldn't explain Skinner stepping back from the case, in fact it should make him want to stay even closer to it. Mulder glanced across at the retreating lights of Skinner's car noting the way the man took the corner a little too fast. Skinner was obviously angry. Disappointed that he couldn't do more?

Perhaps Scully was right, maybe Skinner had left the case so that Mulder could stay on it, because it needed him. Because the victims needed him. No other explanation made sense

Slumped on the couch and with the TV humming as background noise, Mulder scanned the walls of his apartment looking for revelation and finding none.

All the men were broadly similar in age, education and professional status. In their thirties or forties, in good jobs. A freelance reporter, a financial analyst, a lawyer turned environmental activist, an importer of wine, a banker.

And now all of them were the victims of a sadistic serial killer who'd apparently used their sexuality to lure them into a trap?

It didn't feel right.

He let his head rock back against the couch, rubbing his neck as he did in an attempt to unclench the muscles that were already threatening a change from discomfort to full-blown headache. He was missing something, they were all missing something.

A consistent MO was one thing and the killer had that in spades. The men were being taken without anyone witnessing their disappearance, driven to a quiet place where they could be tortured at the killer's leisure, killed swiftly and dumped in a location suitable for early but not instantaneous discovery.

An organized killer? Yet also a torturer?

It nagged at Mulder because of its very neatness. The killer's signature lacked the bloody jagged edges of a sexual sadist.

There should be more differences between the murders. An escalation of violence, of boldness. Yet that was lacking. The third victim had died of a heart attack before the rape, yet still the rape had gone ahead. Did the killer really get the same thing from a dead body as from a live one?

Their mouths had been left untouched - an anomaly in such a sexually charged crime, a discrepancy when it came to the work of a sexually driven killer across multiple murders.

If the killer had a checklist of tasks to fulfil, then the script could not have been more closely followed.

Was that it then? Was he looking at a fantasy being acted out over and over? A reconstruction of some incident in the killer's own past?

For every piece of evidence there were at least two explanations. Mulder's and the ISU's.

And despite his efforts, Mulder was having a hard time explaining, even to himself, the absolute certainty he felt that Dave Burton and the Behavioral team were wrong.

The problem was easy enough to define. The only real evidence in the case came from the photos of the dead men and the interviews with the victims' families and friends. Interpreting the witness statements without the opportunity to talk to them was like doing brain surgery while wearing mittens.

The level of violence, the pain inflicted, and the duration of the attack all suggested such anger that it could only be personal. The men had been chosen and targeted. The decision to torture, humiliate and kill had been made and then the act itself had been so clinical, so professional, that the anger somehow didn't mean anything anymore.

Mulder had known killers that cold - but they were executioners, not opportunist sex attackers.

Which led him back to exactly the same place as he'd started. The key to these murders lay in the men who'd died, not in the kinks of their killer. Which meant that what he really needed was the chance to interview the people closest to them. The banker's ex-wife for example. The analyst's lover. The friends of the political lobbyist. The business partner who'd dismissed the idea that the wine importer was gay.

Of course, Neill wouldn't allow him anywhere near the witnesses.

What about Kersh? What was it he'd been saying about ignoring "the chain of command?" Was there a message in there? What was Skinner hoping to see happen?

As if it wasn't bad enough trying to profile a serial killer with one hand tied behind his back, now he was supposed to analyze his bosses as well?

He poked a finger at the greasy cardboard mush formerly known as microwave pizza on the plate in front of him. What he needed was some real food, some better than barely edible food.

What was it Paul had said about The Sepulchre evolving without conscious thought from pick-up palace to comfortably discreet bar with cozily successful restaurant? "It grew up, just like me. Or got old and boring. Take your pick."

Mulder shrugged into his leather jacket and headed out.

Skinner's Apartment

Sitting alone in his apartment watching the city lights change from working day to sleepless night, Kersh's parting words in the office from earlier that day were still ringing in Skinner's ears. "You seriously believe that Mulder's onto something?"

The meeting had been uncomfortable, but Kersh had accepted the mandate to take over the task force without comment. Since Bill Patterson's "unfortunate" stumble into insanity, Bureau management had been asked to be sensitive and non-judgmental about appeals for help from colleagues, however cautiously they were couched. Besides, maybe some day someone would have to do the same for them and it was best if it all stayed in the family.

"I may be getting too involved in the details," Skinner had suggested, non-committal, hoping that Kersh would rise to the bait.

Kersh hadn't disappointed, he'd simply nodded, his expression unchanged. "Neill could report in to me on it. I know him from his days in the New York office."

Skinner sipped at the glass of whisky in his hand, still wondering if he'd taken the right decision by handing over the case, reworking the possibilities to see how he could have played it better.

It was hard to walk away, but better that than to be thrown off the case later for personal involvement. And surely it was better to let Kersh force Neill and Mulder into some kind of truce than to allow Neill to win by default?

The confrontation with Mulder that had taken place in the elevator a few hours later had helped to reassure him. Mulder clearly meant business, which meant that he needed to be on the case. And that couldn't happen unless someone could placate Neill by sitting on Mulder.

Surely it was for the best? Kersh might be an ass, but he was also a complete professional. The task force would be in safe hands, and would not be allowed to fail due to neglect or lack of resources.

It could however fail for a completely different reason. Skinner had built up to the idea gradually, briefing Kersh about the ISU's involvement and the benefits of Scully's forensic skills before even mentioning Mulder's name.

"Agent Mulder may be preparing an alternate profile."

"May be?"

"I haven't discussed it with him."

"Has Neill?"

"Neill wants Mulder removed from the case."

Kersh had nodded, but Skinner found the gesture oddly reassuring. Kersh wasn't surprised to hear that Neill hadn't hit it off with Mulder, but that didn't necessarily mean that Kersh assumed that Neill was right. Acknowledgment arrived swiftly in the form of Kersh's very next question. "You want me to smooth things over with Neill?"

Skinner felt his lips twitch in a brief gesture of triumph as he remembered Kersh's words. A man didn't get to be an Assistant Director of the FBI without reading between the lines, and Kersh, for all his faults, was a quick reader.

FBI

The team meetings were only days old and yet were already falling into a pattern. A room full of people convinced by a theory about the killer and as a result focused on a set of actions that could be embellished and added to, but which would permit no deviation.

Today's meeting had the novelty of an Assistant Director sitting in the back row with the avowed aim of "getting up to speed."

The consequence was that the meeting was now stuck in an even deeper set of well-worn ruts than usual. People were outdoing themselves to sound enthusiastic and willing. Agents were falling over one another to congratulate a colleague on his efforts and assert optimism that the light at the end of the tunnel, if not actually visible yet, would be found shining brightly, around the very next corner.

Even Scully found the mood contagious. An analysis of stomach contents and other data suggested that death was at least six hours and possibly as long as ten hours after the last known sighting. "Which would put the time of death at being between 2am and 6, so the UNSUB's not just taking his time, he's out overnight, in the middle of the week," she asserted, triumphant.

"We're talking about the meal Alastair Dale Falmer ate at The Sepulchre?" questioned Mulder.

Scully nodded. "The timing comes from his credit card voucher there and was confirmed by the owner."

"Who also confirmed that Falmer left alone?"

Neill moved in to correct Mulder's statement. "The owner didn't see anyone leave with Falmer."

"There was another man at Falmer's table that night," Mulder added.

"Who has been cleared," insisted the AIC.

"But who says that Falmer planned to go directly home, alone?"

"He didn't see him leave the building, just the restaurant area. Falmer went down into the bar."

"Where he had another drink and left."

"This is all in the notes, Agent Mulder. Why waste our time rehashing this?"

"Because Falmer died six hours later?" Mulder snapped. "And you think he went willingly with his attacker, a man he hadn't even met at that point, and who he had no plans to meet."

"No plans that he'd admit to his *blind date*."

"Right. And you know a lot of men who set up a second date just in case the first one flunks out?"

"I don't know many men who go on blind dates with other men. Maybe you can advise me on the etiquette?"

"And maybe you should stop making assumptions."

Another team member decided to help Neill out. "So they'd had a lovers' tiff in the bar - maybe he just made a phone call or hit another bar?"

"But didn't make the call from his own phone? Do you even know how many assumptions you're making?"

Neill kept his voice rock steady, determined to leave no room for argument. "Judgments, Agent Mulder. Based on professional input from people who have to make these judgments every day. We can't all spend our time on wild goose chases."

"Or little green men." Neill's sidekick provided the stage whisper.

Scully's face went white as she struggled against the reaction. The other agents at the table exchanged fast looks, keeping their eyes sheepishly away from Mulder and trying not to let the guilty laughter escape. The other elephant in the dining room had now been unmasked.

Mulder had nothing more to say so he simply resumed his original posture, slumped back in his seat, features impassive, eyes locked on the notes that Scully had written on the white board. He glanced briefly at his partner, wishing that he was sitting close enough to touch her, just to reconnect.

At the end of the meeting, Scully carefully packed her files away and headed towards Mulder, who still hadn't moved. Unfortunately Kersh had reached him first and was showing no signs of going away.

Neill intercepted Scully and drew her into discussion on the other side of the room. "I hope Agent Clarke's comment didn't offend you. I'll be having a word with him after the meeting."

"I'm sure we all sometimes make remarks that we regret."

"Not you, Dana. I've never heard you put a foot wrong. I guess that's why it's hard..."

"To understand why I stuck with the X-Files?"

"No. No. Hell, no. If you thought the work was valid then I'm sure you're right. It's just hard to see how you worked with Mulder."

"He's a good agent."

"I'm sure he was." Neill sounded almost apologetic.

Mulder didn't bother trying to make conversation with Kersh until they were safely in the Assistant Director's office. Instead he watched carefully for clues and saw a man uncomfortable to be carrying out orders. Welcome to the club, sir.

Kersh remained standing, leaning his weight back on the edge of his desk and folding his arms, forcing Mulder who'd been ordered to sit down as soon as they arrived, to look up at him as he spoke. "Why do you let them treat you like that?"

"Sir?"

"Neill. His gopher. Why do you let them get away with it?"

"Neill's the AIC."

"And I'm an Assistant Director!"

Mulder paused to get his bearing back, then half smiled as he finally understood what Kersh was getting at. "Neill's opinions don't matter - he doesn't have any. Whichever way the wind blows, he'll go along with it. When he realizes that I'm right, he'll do what it takes."

When Mulder got back to the bullpen, Scully was waiting for him, stopping him from returning to his desk with an insistent shake of the head as she rose smoothly from her own chair. He followed her obediently from the office and into the empty corridor by the water cooler.

"So?"

Mulder considered feigning confusion at the question but decided that it wouldn't help. Instead he opted to divert attention from his meeting with Kersh by asking a question of his own. "We haven't found any drugs in the victims?"

Her raised eyebrows betrayed her frustration with the answer he'd skipped, but also her curiosity about the question asked. "Nothing significant, yet."

"Would we pick up things like rohypnol if he's taking that long to kill them?"

"Not on the standard tests. I'm waiting for some other lab work, but I'm not hopeful."

"Alcohol?"

"Not enough to be incapacitated."

"Or sedated?"

"You're worried by the lack of defense wounds, aren't you?"

Mulder shrugged.

"They're restrained, there's damage to the upper arms where they've been pulled behind their backs and taped. We've found pieces of the tape. He removes the tape post-mortem. It's all in the report."

"But to do that to a conscious man without him fighting back in any major way?"

She responded in a flash. "Is part of the supporting evidence for the ISU profile."

"But only because of the apparently sexual motivation of the crime."

Scully sighed, and it occurred to Mulder that the only reason she was still standing here and talking to him was because he was the one doing the talking. He'd earned a hearing at least, and there was some satisfaction in that. It tempted him into speculation. "If the men weren't sexually assaulted, then we'd be looking for a completely different kind of attacker."

Her mouth drifted open, disbelief tugging a couple of rapid blinks from her eyes. "Sure, and if they weren't tortured, raped and left naked..."

Mulder chose to ignore the sarcastic undertone to her words, added his own condition to the list instead. "And if they weren't gay men, then no one would assume that it was a willing game turned bad. Imagine five women, one happily married, another living with someone, no history of this kind of sexual play - just disappearing the way these men do. Turning up dead with these kind of injuries. What would the profile be then?"

"But they aren't, that's the point, Mulder. You can't just ignore the victimology."

"I'm ignoring the victimology? Take a look at the men who've actually been killed. What would it really take to capture a man on his way home to his family?"

Scully didn't respond quickly enough for Mulder's taste so he kept on talking, moving in, hovering so close that she was reduced to staring into his chest rather than looking at his face. "We'd be looking for drugs. Or a massively strong attacker and a surprise attack. Or some kind of trick."

Scully shook her head, her teeth nipping at her lower lip. "These aren't small men."

"Two attackers, then?" Mulder suggested, on a roll now and talking a little too fast and too quietly for comfortable listening, so even though Scully's ear was just inches from his mouth she was having to strain to hear him.

"Agent Mulder! Agent Scully?" Martin Neill announced his presence even though he was still several yards away.

Riding in like the cavalry to save the fair maiden, Mulder noted. Scully retreated to the correct distance to demonstrate appropriately professional respect for personal space. This discussion should not have taken place here. Without the basement office, exchanges like this had, by mutual but unspoken agreement, been confined to car journeys, motel rooms and their apartments. The corridor outside the bullpen was not a suitable venue.

"Dana?" Neill added, close enough to her side by now to touch her.

"Agent Neill?"

"Is everything OK?" Neill asked, sounding genuinely concerned for her well-being.

"Mulder and I were just discussing the Bandana killer."

"Is that right, Agent Mulder?"

The tone of voice made Mulder's nerves jangle, and threatened to blow the pressure relief valve sky high. He bit it back, merely snarling his answer. "Yeah. After all, we can't waste time discussing the killer in the meetings."

"Agent Mulder?"

"I've got some background checks to run." Mulder declared the conversation over by walking back into the office.

"Dana?" Neill questioned, still sympathetic, still hoping for more.

"It's fine."

"So, that's... what... normal? I don't get it, Dana. Why do you let him get away with it?"

She shook her head, frustrated to have been pushed onto the defensive by Mulder but almost ashamed to have had the scene witnessed by another agent. Another agent who was now talking to her as if she was some kind of battered wife. Why did she let him treat her like that? "Because he's usually right."

"It's not good enough."

Mustering reserves of energy from somewhere deep inside, she looked directly into Neill's eyes, and let him see some fraction of the turmoil and the steel. "You," she paused for an instant, "don't know what you're talking about."

What she needed right now was some fresh air; she turned sharply on her heel and walked away. Neill's closing comment of, "Don't I?" was still ringing in her ears as she vanished from view.

Mulder reread the email and was convinced that, despite the fact that there were more than twenty names on the recipient list it was written solely for him.

If Skinner had just wanted it to go to some amorphous entity known as the Bandana team, then he'd have sent it to Neill or maybe even just to Kersh for onward transmission. A nice clean use of the chain of command and good protocol. Sending it to everyone on the task force was simply not standard operating procedure.

More ruthless still, Skinner had used Kim to obtain the Baltimore PD record numbers and to send out the email. A nice vague instruction like, "Make sure the Bandana team gets it," and Skinner's ass would be covered.

Accident could be discounted without any time being wasted in consideration. This was Skinner's query and Skinner had wanted Mulder to see it. Mulder recognized the arrogance of the assumption that he was making, but if he was right then wasn't he just being realistic?

The only question in Mulder's mind was whether or not anyone else would respond. When the follow-up message arrived from Martin Neill announcing that he, "had it in hand," but didn't mention any specific action, or name the agent assigned to interview Daniel James, Mulder knew that nothing was actually going to happen.

Martin Neill, mindful of he fact that the instigator of the request was an Assistant Director, would phone the PD himself. He might even talk to Daniel James in his most reassuringly "doing everything we can" FBI bedside manner tones. But no actual investigative work would be done, because Neill couldn't possibly delegate an AD's query to someone capable of investigating it.

Reassured that he was going to get a free run, Mulder printed out the details.

Scully's breath of fresh air had turned into a long lunch hour or two of reflection. Something about Marty Neill had tripped the oddest sensation of deja vu and she was struggling to pin down exactly who or what Marty had reminded her of.

There were many things that she had learned to handle from Mulder. Whether the challenge came in the form of theories that demanded she put her scientific knowledge on the back burner in favor of his intuition, or his dismay at her own forays into the unknowns of God and angels, or even in a drugged declaration of love. Whatever he threw, she could catch, and it was worth it because he would always do the same for her.

The thing that she'd never been able to deal with from Mulder was his penchant for public confrontation and confession. "Sometimes the need to mess with their heads outweighs the millstone of humiliation." He had warned her about that, right back at the start of their work together.

Mulder was her one weakness. Listening to him talk was a private pleasure. The joy, in the adrenaline rush of being sucked along by his energy and forced to open doors that reason said should stay closed, was her guilty secret.

Even that little scene at the office this morning as he hovered over her, talking in whispers, had made her shiver a little. It was, in its way, as intimate as a lover's embrace and even after all these years, her blood still surged in response.

Which meant that Marty's intrusion had felt like a violation.

Neill knew nothing; he wasn't allowed to have an opinion on her relationship with Mulder. No more than big brother Bill Scully was entitled to one. Yet, they both did. And in their opinion she was the victim of abuse.

Head held high, she walked briskly back into the Hoover Building, ignoring both friend and foe along the way. She permitted no detour in action or thought as she returned to the bullpen.

When she arrived, Mulder's chair was already empty, his desk clear and his computer screen blank.

Daniel James' secretary led Mulder directly to her boss who shook the agent's hand with a grip that suggested both relief and gratitude that he'd arrived.

"Fox Mulder," he repeated unnecessarily, James' secretary had already announced him as soon as he walked in.

"Aren't you the UFO guy?"

Mulder smiled, more from shock than any kind of pleasure.

"Sorry, the name's unusual, I tend to remember the unusual. Someone told me they'd heard about you on Springer or something. I asked Walter if he'd mind me doing an interview."

"I've read some of your articles. I read your book on recovered memory."

James raised a questioning eyebrow. "And?"

"These situations don't always feel the same when you're on the inside."

James nodded, sober now, all thought of small-talk or literature gone. "Yeah."

"May I ask you some questions about Mr. Hughes?"

"My lover."

"I guess that's the first question answered."

They were half an hour into the conversation when Mulder's phone rang. He glanced down at the caller ID window which told him only that the call was from someone at the FBI; he hastily switched it off.

When he looked back up, James appeared to have a speech ready. Mulder encouraged him to deliver it.

"He couldn't be a victim of your killer though, could he? The more I think about it. I've been reading all the back issues of the papers. Everything the police said, everything the Bureau's said. I'm just being stupid."

"I doubt that you've ever been stupid, sir."

"Dan. Please, call me... It makes it easier to talk. Peter wasn't... isn't the kind of man to go with some thug on a sex trip."

"And you'd arranged to meet for dinner that night?"

"Meet? I was practically living with him. When he wasn't home, I just sat outside his apartment waiting for him. He had one of those electronic keys; he was getting it copied for me. I know how it sounds. We'd only been together for a month. But..."

Mulder sighed, wanting so badly to be wrong, wanting both of them to be wrong. If Peter Hughes hadn't been taken by their UNSUB then he could be happily enjoying a couple of nights in Vegas losing a few coins, or else holed up in a log cabin in the woods, clearing his head. He could be preparing to return better able to move on with his life, confident of his new relationship. He might be getting ready to walk sheepishly through that door anytime now.

It was true, people disappeared all the time, and so far Mulder's inquiries had been cursory at best. Still, with no credit card transactions against his name since the morning of his disappearance it wasn't easy to feel optimistic. His parents didn't know that he'd left Washington or even his apartment, and could offer no clues on why he might want to.

"I've spent my life writing about crime, about law. I've walked into police stations with victims' families demanding that they get attention. And the first time I've needed to use it myself, I couldn't do... anything... I felt so... helpless."

"Because it's personal, Dan. That never gets any easier."

Dan pushed his fingers back through his hair, shaking his head against the emotions that were rising and making his throat constrict. "Jesus, Mulder. Couldn't you just have told me the fucking aliens had taken him away?"

Mulder almost turned down James' offer to help but was met by such insistence in the man's eyes that he couldn't say no. Dan James wanted something to do. Something positive preferably, but anything that would take him mind off his missing friend would do.

Despite Mulder's misgivings, in purely practical terms Daniel James was a good companion for an evening spent touring some of DC's classier gay hotspots. He also knew everybody, which smoothed over most of the introductions.

The people who knew Peter Hughes were worried about him, though they mostly kept their fears under wraps, perhaps out of respect for Dan James who was still trying to sound optimistic despite the way he felt. Even so, it looked to Mulder as if within seconds of hearing the word "missing" they were preparing for the worst.

There was also a distinct but unstated undercurrent to their words - if Hughes was a target then who next?

If Hughes was into anything more exotic on his nights out than wining and dining then none of them knew, or at least none of them were saying.

Of course there would be time enough to follow up on those kind of questions if Hughes really had become the latest victim and Dan James would certainly not be allowed to witness those conversations. It was enough for Mulder that he knew who to talk to and that the first flavor of the man, his lover and his friends was now firmly established in his head.

The background to the case, that had been filled only with murky shadows before, was now starting to form into a picture.

The killer on the other hand was not.

Neither the choice of men, nor the actual crime made much sense to Mulder.

The rape was clearly an essential element. Based on the bruising patterns it looked as if it occurred after the torture and immediately before the strangulation. It even occurred when the man was already dead.

Yet was it even a rape? Penetration certainly, but would the killer really have deliberately repeated the act without preparation in each case? A killer who took his time, who was almost prissily careful about details, control and even cleanliness and yet who didn't choose to prepare his victim for the assault?

It was certainly supposed to look like rape. If an object was being used, as Mulder suspected and as the absence of contradictory forensics evidence made possible, then it was of relatively normal size, not the comically exaggerated sex toy of fantasy. And it was covered by a condom.

Of course, he could be just plain wrong. The simplest explanation was rape and indifference not only to the victim's pain but to his own. The simplest explanation - but wrong?

Mulder opted to play just suppose, to follow the wild idea down its almost logical track to wherever it took him.

Even if he was wrong then the detour might lead him towards some other source of inspiration.

Just suppose then, that it was an assault with some inanimate object but supposed to look like rape, then why would a killer do such a thing? A sexual sadist wouldn't.

Unhappy to be gay and hoping to purge some sexual need without the actual sex - getting his thrills afterwards as he fantasized about the man's screams? A possibility, he'd certainly kept them screaming. Did he tape record the attacks?

Regretful about his acts of torture and so incapable of the rape? Too fanciful, surely. A possibility if he'd killed once, but not after five murders. Or was it now six? Was Peter Hughes dead?

Was some religious or moral lesson being delivered?

Was their UNSUB once a victim himself? Abused as a child perhaps and killing "daddy aged" men now. Yet the choices seemed wrong for that. They couldn't all look or sound like daddy. And from the background information Mulder had already obtained they didn't seem to be a random selection of men of approximately the right age who were simply targeted as they walked out of a bar one night.

What if the UNSUB was impotent? Psychologically or physically incapable of the rape yet determined that it should happen despite that, or maybe even because of that? An injury, an illness, someone who'd undergone a chemical or surgical castration, a transsexual, a woman?

Strangest of all, how had the killer developed the MO so rapidly? How could a serial be "perfect" from victim number one? Unless of course, victim one hadn't been his first victim. Yet nothing on the VCS computers seemed to be building up to this, neither in the records of those who'd used garrotes or strangulation nor in the reports of sexually motivated attacks on adult men.

Which led Mulder to a conclusion of sorts. The killer had killed before, but not in this way and not for this reason.

Scully's attempt to call Mulder met failure. She heard his phone ring once and then nothing more. When she called it again all she got was a synthesized voice telling her that the phone was switched off and offering her the chance to leave a message.

Checking her watch she realized just how late she'd returned this afternoon. There was even a possibility that rather than the late lunch she'd imagined him taking, he'd actually left early. An event almost unheard of during their years on the X-Files, but not nearly so uncommon now.

She logged into the computer and read her email.

One message stood out from all the others. Knowing just what to expect she picked up the phone and called Baltimore PD. The voice at the other end of the line confirmed that an officer had spoken to Agent Mulder by phone but that no one had actually seen him.

She dialed another number and got an assurance from Mr. James' secretary that Agent Mulder had just left, accompanied by her boss.

Not sure whether to be furious or impressed, she opted for resignation. She checked the time again, another hour at her desk and then she'd leave for the day. They would talk about this.

When she got to his apartment two hours later it was deserted. She walked into the kitchen. The coffeemaker was empty, the kettle cold, the dishes had dripped dry from breakfast and there were no new items waiting to be cleaned. It was pretty clear that he hadn't returned home.

A phone call to his cell phone drew another blank, appeasing Scully only to the extent that it would mean that when he did finally switch the phone back on he would see a call missed from his own home and ought to react to that as serious. She considered calling him from her phone as well but decided that would just be paranoia.

Instead she settled down to wait, whiling away the time by rifling his kitchen and finding sufficient supplies to at least make herself a coffee.

Miraculously, almost as soon as she started to sip her drink, her phone rang. "Scully."

"Hi, it's me. I was in a meeting."

"I know."

"I think I'm finally getting a handle on the killer. I'm almost close enough to write a preliminary profile now."

They already had a profile. No matter. "Do you want me to help?"

"No, I'll be back late, it'll be the middle of the night."

"Fine," she said tersely, because it wasn't fine at all. "Call me if you need me."

She pressed the red button to close the call. What had he once told her? That she'd saved him? Kept him honest? Made him a whole person?

Was this how it felt to be a one in five billion?

FBI - next day

"The current profile is not only wrong, it's dangerous because it's leading us to give the wrong message to potential victims and witnesses."

"And what message would that be, Agent Mulder?"

"That it's the victims' own faults - implying that it's something in their conduct that incites the killer."

Martin Neill was coolly professional. "No one's blaming anyone. We're just offering positive advice, unlike some."

"Some? Is that code? OK - you want to know what the press releases should be saying? That these men are being specifically targeted, that we don't yet know what connects them and we need to. These aren't random assaults. There is a link, we just haven't seen it yet. We need to hear from friends, colleagues, family. We particularly need to hear from anyone who knew more than one of the victims, either now or in the past."

"That's self-evident, Agent Mulder. People aren't stupid."

"You've disguised it by making it sound like it's all about a victim's current sexual preferences and conduct - it scares off the men who played baseball with them or met them at a comedy club."

"It is all about their sexual preferences, that's why it'd be dangerous to dilute the warnings."

"What? Don't play at rough sex with strange men? You still haven't got any evidence for that. Meanwhile victims are getting ambushed on their way home from work."

"Where do you get that idea?"

Mulder frowned. "Peter Hughes."

"Is a missing person. And there's a hell of a leap from that to evidence for your theory."

There was, but that didn't mean that he was wrong about Hughes or the rest of it. "The point is - theories are all we've got."

Neill nodded slowly and checked the other faces around the table. "Then we go with the best theory we've got."

"Criteria?" pressed Mulder.

Neill sounded long-sufferingly polite, though the message was clear enough. "I guess we'll just have to go with a source that we can trust, Agent Mulder. Someone who's actually got as far as supplying a working profile that we can use."

Mulder started talking immediately, crashing straight through Neill's attempt to shut him up, cold and precise and without even a glance at his notes, his eyes never leaving Neill's face. "The UNSUB is white, male, probably aged between 30 and 40, with at least a college degree. He may have recent law enforcement experience. He was promoted fast and early but has already risen beyond his level of competence and the cracks are showing. He's experienced in hand to hand combat but not so confident that he'd rely on it."

"In daily life he exhibits a homophobic reaction exemplified by simplistic generalizations about the lifestyle and sexual habits of gay men." Mulder kept his voice level and his gaze firm as Neill started to squirm away. "This feeds from his own insecurities about sex and sexuality. He probably deals with these fears by making jokes about other men's sexual preferences - though actually he'd be too gutless just to ask the target directly."

Neill's intervention was delivered through gritted teeth. "Agent Mulder, you're walking a dangerous line."

"In the context of the killing - he's obeying orders and will use that to excuse any act, however foolish or barbaric. The automaton-like process of slashing at the skin and beating the already restrained man offers some gratuitous pleasure. However even though rape is mandatory to make the scene work and the victim is powerless - he can't get it up." Mulder looked across at Agent Clarke, the man Kersh had so uncharitably described as Neill's gopher. "He's forced to rely on a dildo to do the job for him."

The silence went on for just a little too long before Neill finally worked out what he was supposed to say. "That's enough, Agent Mulder. I've told you before - I refuse to discuss changes to the profile without a member of the ISU present."

Scully ignored the attempt to close the discussion. "When you talk about obeying orders - do you mean he thinks he's carrying out God's work?"

Mulder was thrown for an instant, though he'd meant every word that he'd said he'd forgotten that not only would Scully take him literally, she might also make that link.

He could remember her words back on a case where she'd found herself "chosen" to witness the death of young girls at the hands of some unknown someone or something. "I was raised to believe that God has His reasons, however mysterious." And his own less than gentle reply, "He may well have His reasons but He seems to use a lot of psychotics to carry out His job orders."

It was possible, a killer made afraid of his sexuality by his own religious beliefs, whose fear had turned to righteous anger. Or else some dark experience giving birth to a need for personal vengeance against an abuser, and then catching hold of some religious precept and mutating it into a hate for complete strangers.

Yet still, despite the appeal of the idea, something said no. A lack of passion perhaps? The same lack of passion that was telling him that this was not an act of sexual frenzy.

Mulder shook his head. "No, I'm sure this is strictly man to man."

Mulder's phone call to Dave Burton found the ISU man subdued. In fact he sounded almost relieved to hear Mulder's voice. Encouraged by that idea, Mulder went straight to the point. "When can we meet?"

"I'm in DC at the moment. I'm expecting to get done here about five. If you want, I can drop by your office later. "

"That's a little awkward, I'm not actually there." Which was accurate mentally, if not strictly true physically He'd far rather have had this discussion take place at Quantico, which would also have given him a good excuse to get out of the building. Not that he needed one, mostly no one noticed if he was in here or not. Perhaps they could try neutral territory? "Could we meet up somewhere? Do you have time this evening?"

"What are you thinking?"

"The Sepulchre - a bit of mood wallpaper?"

Mulder could almost hear the profiler's wheels turning. Hell, he'd been there himself - torn between proper procedures and doing whatever it took to get the job done. It felt almost heartless to dangle temptation in front of the man like this. As if he was corrupting an innocent. An utterly wrong analysis given Dave's qualifications in law and psychology, his ten years as an agent working in violent crimes, his time as a profile coordinator in Chicago, and finally his move to the Behavioral Unit.

"Come on, Dave. You'd only be watching. Where's the harm?"

"You know damn well where's the harm."

"Of course I do. So, are you up for it?"

"If Neill finds out...."

"I'll defend your honor."

Burton was almost laughing when he replied. "Six thirty, the subway station, if we're going in, we're going in together."

"That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me. See you at six thirty."

Work dragged, Mulder found himself checking the clock every few minutes, which of course made it drag even more. Concentration, which had always been a strength in his work, was in too short supply now to waste on Kersh's background checks. All those good resolutions about not supplying Kersh with excuses seemed to have gone by the wayside in the last couple of days.

He'd left early yesterday. Visited a potential witness without getting permission or even informing his colleagues. Went with said witness to a couple of bars and chatted to a variety of other people before finally "outing" himself to Paul, the owner of The Sepulchre.

Paul had been surprisingly unshocked by the revelation, to the point of grinning evilly at Dan James. "Oh man - why are the cute ones always straight?"

"I should have told you that I was with the FBI."

Paul had shrugged. "I'm just pleased they sent a looker. Shows proper respect!"

"They didn't send me, that's the point."

"What? You think I'm going to rat you out to your bosses?"

Mulder stifled a laugh at the memory and came back to earth with a bang as Scully hissed, "What?" in reaction.

"Nothing." Hell, it wasn't nothing. They deserved better than that. Suddenly resolute, he closed down the computer, swept most of the desktop into his drawer and prepared to leave.

"Do you want me to come?"

Outed or not, Scully was not a suitable companion for tonight's excursions. He shook his head.

"Are you going to see Daniel James again?"

Again? How did she know? Hell, of course she knew, she was Scully. His partner. His friend. The most significant other he'd ever had. "Let's go."

It didn't take a second invitation.

The office and corridors having now been declared effectively out of bounds for conversation, they were forced to wait until they reached Scully's car before speaking. "I didn't bring my car in," offered Mulder, skipping over the request that she drive him home as too obvious.

As soon as Scully pulled out of the parking bay she started to talk. "So - Peter Hughes?"

Mulder took a deep breath. "Is probably dead."

"How do you know?"

"He fits the victim profile. The real victim profile, not the thing they're fantasizing over in the men's room."

"Go on," she prodded, her words oddly echoing her own action as she prepared to tug the car into the traffic.

"The victims. They're boring, Scully. White bread, nice guys with mortgages and comfortable shoes and SUVs they bought because they were worried about safety or else sub-compacts they bought because they were bothered by the environment."

"Which doesn't preclude an interest in extreme sexual practices."

"It's their boyfriends who preclude that."

"Married couples don't always know everything about each other."

"Sure. But we wouldn't even be having this conversation if they were married."

She concentrated on maneuvering the car safely into position in the stream of slow moving cars before finally adding, "There's other evidence."

"The lack of defense wounds?"

"Yes."

"A gun to the head? An accomplice? A drug we've not identified yet? He was fast enough to cuff them and then he taped them up afterwards?"

"It just seems as if you never even considered the ISU profile."

Mulder shifted his gaze from the road outside to his partner. "I didn't."

Her lips opened on a brief exclamation of surprise, then slowly relaxed into a gentle smile. "Marty Neill doesn't know why I put up with you."

"Do you?"

"I've just remembered."

Daniel James' apartment was a quietly eclectic blend of Scandinavian modernism, ethnic art and Shaker simplicity. The main ornamentation was supplied by the rows of books on every topic from the art of sandwich making to the sexual politics of ancient Rome.

Skinner nodded his thanks as he accepted the coffee that Dan had prepared. There was no easy way to talk about this. He decided that it was best to get the business side over and done with as quickly as possible. "Did Agent Neill contact you?"

"Sure, he was most reassuring," supplied Dan, in a voice that guaranteed that Skinner would know that he was anything but reassured.

"But?"

"Then I met Agent Mulder."

"Hmmm."

"He wasn't reassuring."

Skinner nodded, moved to sip at the coffee but found it way too hot to do more than make the gesture. "What did Mulder say?"

"Not much." Dan gasped out a humorless sad grumble of a laugh. "We talked for a couple of hours and he hardly said a word. Can you imagine?"

Of course Skinner could imagine that. "What did you talk about?"

"Pete. Friends. The scene. I introduced him to a few people." Dan looked away from Skinner, hesitant. "Is it going to create a problem for you? Will he get curious about us?"

"Mulder gets curious about everything. It won't be a problem."

Scully's 6am phone call was depressingly predictable. A man's body had been found floating in the Potomac. Dead for several days. Nude. With injuries that might suggest a crime had been committed.

Whereas Scully had been invited, Mulder was definitely an unwelcome gatecrasher at this party.

Neill kept it simple. "You're not needed here, Agent Mulder. We have a specialist forensics crew working on the recovery."

"Is it Peter Hughes?"

"It's far too soon to start jumping to conclusions."

Mulder ignored the restraining hand Neill placed on his shoulder. If Neill had a point to make then he'd better be ready to follow through. It was Mulder's betting that he didn't have the guts.

Mulder headed directly to Scully's side, Martin Neill trailing in his wake. "Scully?" She glanced up to give him permission to keep talking. "Peter Hughes - 38, 5'10", 170 pounds, brown hair, dime-sized mole on left shoulder blade."

"Difficult to tell with this kind of water bloating - but, yes, first pass, he could match the description."

It was an hour or so before they took the body away to Quantico for the autopsy. An hour that Mulder mostly spent gossiping with the technicians who'd been sent on what looked to him like a futile errand to collect trace evidence, and the police who routinely patrolled the river and for whom another bloated corpse was all in day's work.

"They get carried miles sometimes."

"So if this one was in the water for five days..." prompted Mulder.

"Could have started anywhere."

"That's what I thought."

"He's dragged some weed with him though - don't get that kind everywhere."

The cop's partner soon put a damper on that. "You've been watching too much Discovery Channel. It doesn't grow everywhere, but you get rafts of it break off - boats, debris, floaters, it's not that tough to find."

Mulder nodded, confident that if there was something tangible to be found, then Scully would find it, but unwilling to discard the possibility that these men might have something more to offer. If not for today, then for one day. He shuddered a little at that, the thought that he might take pleasure or pride in knowing something that only mattered if someone else died.

Still - that was his job. And such knowledge defined him just as effectively as his FBI badge or his Spooky label.

Mulder ignored Neill's explanations of why he was unnecessary and, when that failed to get the desired response, Neill's explanation of why he was definitely unwelcome at the autopsy.

"Agent Mulder, I will be reporting this to the Assistant Director."

Mulder shrugged, a gesture designed primarily to infuriate and succeeding in its mission.

Scully frowned at the men but said nothing. Mulder recognized how hard an act that was for her to maintain. Territorial warfare was being waged on her turf and she didn't like it one little bit.

Establishing her authority as soon as she was safely wearing her armor of scrubs and boots, she announced that she was now switching on the recording equipment and she would be grateful if everyone else would remain silent.

Mulder broke the vow of silence less than two minutes after the autopsy commenced. "Same cause of death?"

"Looks that way."

"And the mole?"

She waved him forward. "There, left shoulder blade."

"Thanks. See you later." And with that Mulder walked out, not bothering to offer even the most cursory of goodbyes to Neill, though he did try not to gloat too obviously over the fact that he'd effectively forced Neill to sit through the rest of what was going to be a rather ugly post mortem examination.

Ugly and most likely futile. The decision to dump the body in the water could mean only one thing. Their UNSUB, knowing that the FBI would have a top team at the recovery of the body, had chosen to complicate the process of finding evidence even further. It was a mark of respect. Mulder wondered briefly if he should offer it to Scully as a compliment, but then concluded that she must already know.

As soon as he left the autopsy bay he was on the phone to Skinner. "You've heard that they found a body, sir?"

"Yes."

"There's a strong probability that it's Peter Hughes."

"I see. Thank you, Agent Mulder."

To Scully an autopsy was a journey of discovery. The corpse was her guide, and her hands, eyes and brain the tools for telling the story.

Which made today's examination painfully frustrating. The previous autopsies had all been performed by competent professionals and they'd found little to work with. Yet still there had always been the unadmitted hope, that if there had to be another body on this case, then at least she would have the chance to be there first and gain more.

Five days in the water was the killer's way of shifting the odds even further in his favor and it looked as if he had succeeded in obliterating the evidence again.

The stomach was almost empty, consistent with the idea that Hughes was returning home from work when he was taken. The pattern of wounds, though confused by water damage and by the violence of a naked journey downstream said that the killer's MO hadn't changed.

She didn't bother to suppress the sigh as she paused to stretch tired and cramping muscles in her back and neck, wincing slightly as she felt the tightness in her abdomen reminding her that she still wasn't a hundred percent fit. Her recovery after being accidentally shot by another agent had gone well, but it could be months before the after-effects faded, and despite the neat work of the hospital's surgeon the scar would always be there.

"Are you OK, Dana? Can I get you something?"

She'd almost forgotten the man's presence in the room. Neill had sat down at the end of the bay as soon as she made her first cut, and unlike Mulder who would oscillate between quietly reading files and sudden animated questioning when he stayed with her during an autopsy, Neill had remained silent and still throughout.

"No, I'm fine." She paused, swallowing the frustration that was threatening to escape. "I don't think we're going to get anything new from the examination itself. Maybe from the tissue samples." She shrugged, making it clear that she wasn't expecting much from that source either.

"You think it's this Peter Hughes guy that Mulder keeps talking about?"

"We'll need confirmation from the lab, but it's highly likely."

"How did Mulder know?"

Scully balked at the question, hearing something in Neill's tone that sounded almost like an accusation. She quickly dismissed that thought as paranoid, or at least as oversensitive. Neill's question might be an absolutely genuine attempt to understand. "He said that Hughes matched the victim profile."

"Skinner mentions that someone's missing and it turns out that he's the next victim. I guess Mulder's lucky."

She shook her head. Lucky?

Eight hours later and Walter Skinner was at Daniel James' side as they walked in to see the body. The formal identification would need to be done by the family who would be flying in the following morning, but Dan had wanted to do this and Skinner couldn't say no.

When they came out from the viewing, James was ghost white and shaking. Mulder handed him a cup of water without asking and guided him to a chair at the table on which he'd already discreetly placed a box of kleenex.

Mulder immediately withdrew a few paces and Skinner followed him, allowing Dan a couple of moments with the illusion of privacy to get his bearings back.

"You haven't asked me," murmured Skinner.

"What?"

"How I know Daniel."

"Law school."

Skinner sighed. "Ah. I was forgetting, the I in FBI. We were the only ones who never fantasized about private practice and plush offices."

"Never?"

"Seldom."

Martin Neill chose that moment to arrive in the room. Mulder stepped forward automatically to block not only his access but even his view of Dan James.

Neill stopped as ordered by Mulder's body language but pretended to ignore Mulder, turning instead to the AD. "I'm here to interview Mr. James."

"It's not necessary." Mulder spoke quietly. "I've already got what we need for now."

Neill continued to direct his words only at Skinner. "Sir. Mr. James may have key information on the movements of the victim and on his habits and associates."

"I've got what we need," repeated Mulder firmly, but just as quietly as before.

"I've got to insist."

This time it was Skinner who spoke, his face coloring red with sudden fury. "Agent Mulder says he already has the information."

Neill ignored the warning in Skinner's voice. "He had no right to interview that man. No authority."

"Not right now. I'm sure Mr. James will be happy to speak to you. Tomorrow. But not - right - now." Neill's acknowledgement didn't come quickly enough, so Skinner increased the urgency, hissing the words through clenched teeth. "Get out. Now."

This time the agent seemed to get the message.

Soon after Neill left the room, Mulder turned to check on their witness. Some change in his posture told him that the man was ready for company. Mulder edged back towards the table. "Dan?"

James waved a hand at a chair, giving Mulder permission to join him. Skinner, not yet cool enough following his brief blow-up with Neill to sit down, decided to play for time by retreating to the soda machine.

"He was still alive."

Mulder frowned at that, puzzling over the words. The body had already been dead when it hit the water. The autopsy had proven it. "What do you mean?"

"When I reported him missing."

"Ahh." Mulder hesitated, knowing just what the man was getting at, but wanting to find exactly the right words to respond. "They wouldn't have been able to do anything, we didn't have any solid leads on the vehicles or locations that might have been used."

"Not the point. I did nothing. I just stood there and let them blow me off with excuses."

"Don't do this. It won't help."

"The fuck it won't. I spend my life telling people how to stand up for their rights. Playing at advocacy. And the one time Pete needed me to go in to bat for him..."

"You did. You are."

"I betrayed him. And myself. A roomful of strangers and I just froze, as if I was ashamed of saying that he was gay, that I was his lover."

"Don't. You couldn't stop this happening. The Baltimore PD couldn't have stopped it." Mulder snorted in a fast gasp of air, recognizing the implications of these truths or at least finally acknowledging them. The only person who could stop these killings was him.

Skinner returned with an assortment of bitingly cold cans of soda, well aware that playing at normality by offering a choice of brands was a redundant gesture. The only thing any of them would taste of was bile.

The following morning all hell broke loose. The press was not only carrying the story of the latest murder on the front pages, they were also explaining that there were rumblings of discontent in the FBI camp.

In particular, they noted that Special Agent Fox Mulder, once a profiler himself, was now a dissenting voice on the team. That he had rejected every major detail of the profile in favor of the idea that the sexual assault had been manufactured at least partly to sensationalize the crime and desensitize both the law enforcement officers working the case and the potential victims and witnesses.

"Agent Mulder. Can you explain this?"

"It's accurate, so far as it goes."

"Then you admit that this is your work?" continued Neill.

"The leak to the press, or its contents?"

"The leak," Neill emphasized, for the sake of the twenty agents sitting intently at the table.

"No. The only people I've discussed this with are other agents."

"What about Daniel James?"

"I didn't talk with him about any of this."

Even Scully looked doubtful.

"You expect us to believe that, Agent Mulder?"

"I expect you'll believe what you want to believe, Agent Neill."

The call to report to Kersh's office came sooner rather than later. Martin Neill was already there and clearly buoyed up by a heady mixture of rage and cheerful conviction that Mulder was finally about to get what he so richly deserved.

Kersh got straight to the point. "Did you communicate with the press in any way?"

"No."

"Have you discussed your theories on this case with anyone outside the task force?"

"Assistant Director Skinner and Agent Burton from the ISU."

"Do you know how this information was obtained by the press?"

"No." Mulder swallowed, and prepared to go from defense to attack. "I'm glad the information is out. But I did not release it."

Kersh nodded and leaned back in his chair locking his fingers as he spoke. "But you did speak to Daniel James without authorization and without briefing Agent Neill on the results."

"Agent Neill's email made it clear that he had the matter in hand."

"Don't try and bullshit me, Agent Mulder."

"I was using the interview purely as background for a profile."

"Background?"

Why get hung for a lamb when there was a whole flock of sheep available? "I also visited The Sepulchre, it's a bar and restaurant, the last known location we have for one of the victims."

"Anything else?"

Confession on this scale just had to be good for the soul. "I met Agent Burton at the same location. My responsibility entirely."

"When?"

"The night before last."

"The night before the body was found. Could anyone have overheard your conversation?"

"No, sir."

"You're certain. No one sitting close? No mikes?"

"Not unless Dave Burton was wearing a wire."

Kersh pushed forward in his seat, folding his arms as he did. "There will be no communication with journalists or any other civilian regarding this case unless it has been explicitly authorized by the press office, Agent Neill, or myself. If you have any, and I do mean any, information relevant to this case you will inform Agent Neill of all the details immediately after this meeting. Is that clear?"

"Crystal."

"Agent Neill, if you'll excuse us."

Neill flinched upright - obviously startled to hear words being directed at him and more than a little unnerved to find that it was he who was now being dismissed. He relaxed only as the realization dawned that Kersh would most likely want to keep any disciplinary action private, at least initially. "Yes, sir," he managed as he left the room.

Kersh started talking only once the door was firmly closed. "There's surveillance at The Sepulchre."

Mulder nodded. "I know. Gray Ford two nights ago. Green one the night I went there with Dan James."

"Is that why you told the truth?"

"Why would I want to lie about it?"

"OPR, professional misconduct - ring any bells?"

"Lack of respect for the chain of command?"

"Did you talk to the press?"

"No." Mulder raised his hands, acknowledging the contradiction. "If I couldn't get a hearing and we were still giving out the wrong messages then I might have been tempted. Fact is, I hadn't reached that point."

"The Director feels that your presence on the team may allay fears."

Funny, that was the first time anyone had suggested to Mulder that he had a future as a tranquilizer. "Because of the nature of the victims?"

"You are known in certain circles."

Mulder sat up a little straighter. Known to who? And why? And as what? "How so?"

"As a man who won't be taken in by surface phenomena." Kersh paused, took a couple of slow breaths, kept his eyes locked on Mulder as if expecting some further confession. When none arrived, he continued his explanation. "That's the only reason you're still on this team. Neill told me about your conduct at the body retrieval, the autopsy, his attempt to interview the witness."

"I didn't have any choice."

Kersh nodded, thoughtful. "You'd better be right about this UNSUB, Agent Mulder. It's the only thing that'll save you."

"Sir."

"I'll look forward to seeing that profile you're writing."

From Mulder's perspective, Kersh's words constituted a green light to play it whatever way he chose. Not that it would have mattered much if they hadn't. But it did make it even easier to justify the decision to duck out of the office without making excuses. It was time to meet some of those witnesses who'd already been interviewed.

"Not by me," noted Mulder as he got into the car and headed towards the offices of an importer and distributor of expensively high-class wines.

The dead man's partner carried both the burden of losing a friend and of running the business alone. The tiredness was visible in his eyes, the strain audible in his voice. "If it were up to me, we'd still be closed." He shook his head, exhausted. "But we've got twenty staff with families to feed. Suppliers to pay. Customers who rely on us. We've got a reputation."

Mulder glanced at the proudly displayed certificates and awards that decorated the office. "Based on quality."

"Of product and service." The man looked away, his eyes resting briefly on one of the photos on the wall before finally shaking his head again, apologetic now, suddenly focusing back in on Mulder's presence and remembering exactly why he had a Federal agent in his office. "I'm sorry. You didn't come here to listen to me complain about a few bottles of wine."

Mulder nodded. "That's quite alright, sir. It must be difficult. Maybe you could tell me about how you first met?"

The man was happy to oblige. From the origins of a friendship whilst both men were students through a summer of exploration in Europe to a final insane decision to create a business based on a shared love for a good Chablis.

"My wife's been marvelous, she's been in the office every day since it happened, helping. But... I know I shouldn't say this. This was Michael's firm really. He drove it. He inspired it. I just kept the books, made sure things shipped on time."

"Did you know any of his friends from outside work?" Mulder asked the question despite being convinced that he already knew the answer.

"He didn't really have any. His work was his life. This office was his home. Can you imagine?"

Mulder nodded, finding that it required little imagination.

"My wife says it was his baby. Well... He didn't have a family."

"You knew that he was gay?" The other agent's interview notes had said differently, but Mulder had already assumed that they were wrong.

"He wasn't really anything. Oh God, I know how that sounds. Sorry. I'm..."

"It's OK, sir."

The man cleared his throat, took a sip of water before continuing. "There was a man, they lived together. He died about eight years ago. AIDS. I don't think Michael really wanted to start again. He didn't go out much socially, the occasional thing if someone dragged him there. But the firm was everything to him. I don't mean he was a recluse. The work - it's very social. Travel, tastings, visiting suppliers, entertaining clients."

"And that was enough?"

"It was how it was."

Out of pure curiosity, Mulder had to ask another question. "Did you tell the other agent this?"

The man exhaled, a grunt of a laugh. "He asked me if I knew any of Michael's male sexual partners. I told him that I didn't."

None of which, as Scully had pointed out, could be assumed to preclude an interest in extreme sexual practices. But it did make it seem even less likely that the man was the random target of a killer prowling gay pick-up bars. At least that was how it seemed to Mulder.

If the man had a secret life then it was not one that revolved around casual sex. Which didn't rule out the possibility of a private club or a special partner but seemed to rule out the idea of an accidental targeting.

Mulder left with copies of appointment books and lists of business contacts, expecting nothing but not yet discarding anything.

Profiling 101 said that it was the choice of the first victim in a series that was likely to offer the most insight. The first victim in this instance came not from the private world of wine but from the more public world on the fringes of politics. Accordingly, Mulder was especially grateful when the victim's lover finally responded to the multiple messages that he'd been leaving on his answering machine.

The first man killed had been a professional lobbyist who chose to work for cash strapped organizations. Another lawyer who'd changed career track, just like Walter Skinner and Dan James. This time the beneficiary of those new priorities was the environment, and his specialist subject had been energy policy.

His lover of two years standing sounded even more promising to Mulder when he called with a swift apology for being out of town followed by a rapid offer to meet anytime, anywhere.

"I thought it was political," the man stated, blunt and straightforward and just about the first words he said after Mulder announced that he was the Federal agent who he'd spoken with on the phone.

"Why?" quizzed Mulder, falling into step with the fast rhythm that had been set.

"He liked to tread on toes, he liked to piss people off. I swear it was deliberate." He shook his head, smiling briefly, remembering. He swallowed. "When they told me that he'd been killed, my first thought was it was an oil company or something. Then they told me how they'd found him. I couldn't believe it."

"Can you remember anyone who seemed particularly angry with him?"

The man stared back at Mulder, surprised to have been asked any kind of follow-up question. "Personally, you mean?"

Mulder waved a hand, urging him to continue down whichever track he chose.

"You couldn't hate him. He wasn't easy, but he was generous and he was charming. Even if he pissed you off, you couldn't stay angry." His eyes were damp with the memory.

"Professionally then?"

The man shook his head, spoke slowly, stumbling over the reply, disappointed to have nothing solid to say, especially after his earlier vehement declaration about the guilty parties. "Not really. They were just THEM. No one specific. It sounds stupid when I say it."

Mulder kept it strictly business, gave him the chance to forget the pain and think aloud. "Could you tell me more about what he was doing in the last few months?"

"Trying to broaden the campaign. More publicity. Get some of the TV companies to take global warning seriously. Put some of the scientists into the public eye."

"How was that going?"

"Frustrating. Oil companies have deep pockets and big advertising budgets. He said he was going to change tack, go after people with political ambitions instead."

Mulder prompted for names and details, at a loss to see how this could possibly fit in with what he knew about the other victims, but hoping that by finding out more now it might make sense later.

When that line of questioning was exhausted, Mulder reached into his pocket and drew out a selection of photos. He started to push them across the table, starting with the second victim. The man shook his head so Mulder supplied a brief biography to accompany the images. "Carl Dobbs. 36 years old. He was in banking. He was married to a woman named Carole Ashe, they divorced five years ago."

The man licked his lips. "I don't recall meeting him, but that name..."

"Carole Ashe - she runs a TV production company?"

"Yeah. I thought I recognized it. She was on his shit list. She makes news shows - wouldn't give him the time of day."

"Why?"

The man shrugged. "Too many corporate sponsors breathing down her neck?"

Mulder nodded, collected everything he could before moving on.

The financial analyst's brother was something of a surprise. Dressed in a mix of tight denim and shiny leather, he looked as if he'd stepped straight off the cover of a magazine targeting gay bikers. He was taller than Mulder and with a build that suggested that weight training was more than just a hobby.

His face, however, was shockingly familiar.

"We're twins," he said tersely. An unspoken "Why don't you people do your homework?" sharpness in his tone.

Mulder had done his homework, but was ashamed to admit that it hadn't included looking at the witness's date of birth. The interview notes didn't even mention it. Nor did they mention much else. "My notes say that you're a photographer. Who do you work for?"

"I'm freelance."

"What kind of assignments?"

"What's this got to do with my brother?"

In other circumstances, the man's tone would have annoyed Mulder. In these, Mulder recognized it for what it was, frustration and sorrow and distrust all merging together and making him assume the worst of everyone, especially another Fed. "Probably nothing," Mulder finally answered.

The man nodded, accepting the reply at least as honest. "Fashion mostly. The occasional mail order catalogue."

The man's tone had an almost teasing note to it now, which was an improvement of sorts, so Mulder decided to play along. "Anything I'd have seen?"

The photographer surveyed him coolly, a head to toe appraisal that amused Mulder because of the rather too overt attempt to unsettle him. "Doubt it. You look more the cotton boxer type."

Mulder smiled. "Boxer briefs actually."

"Figures."

Positions established and contact made, Mulder returned to business. "Did you know any of his friends?"

"Friends or lovers?" The other man barked, more than a little sharp, quick to make the assumption that the Fed couldn't bring himself to say the word.

"Let's start with friends."

The discussion was edgy but ultimately rewarding, the victim's brother loosening up a little more the longer it continued. Mulder was intrigued by the length of the list of friends and lovers that the man provided. The brothers were close. How close? "Was he interested in bondage?"

"Only in fiction."

"Would you have known if he had been?"

The brother smiled, tossed back his head in a "you got me there" gesture and nodded. "Yeah, I'd have known."

"Why so sure?"

"Because he was Mr. Vanilla. I was the one who was into exotics. If they broke into a sweat on the squash court they were too physical for him. You know?"

"So if someone tried to tie him up?"

"He'd run away screaming."

"There's a suggestion that the men knew the killer."

The twin nodded. "I got that."

"Could it have been a friend of yours, a lover perhaps? Someone he knew through you?"

The man paled, horrified at the idea even though it must have crossed his mind before. He considered his answer for a few seconds before finally shaking his head, a little unsteady as he delivered his reply. "No. I'd know. What we do, it's mutual, you know. It's pleasure, fun, release - you'd know if someone really wanted it to hurt, to do damage."

"I understand you feeling that way. But people don't always know, even the people who think they should. Could you give me a list of their names?"

He shifted uncomfortably, stunned to find himself caught in this position. "I... Oh, shit... I didn't say any of this to the police. I can't. These are... Fuck."

"I'm only interested in finding the man who killed your brother. Show me why it couldn't have been one of them, and I'll forget anything else."

He shook his head, frustrated and defensive. "You're a Fed. You file fucking reports."

"Only if it's relevant. Besides, ask my partner, I'm crap at paperwork." Mulder paused to let the offer sink in. "Maybe you could handle the introductions?"

The man slumped back into his chair, hearing the inevitability and rapidly becoming resigned to it. If it meant that they could catch the man who killed his brother, he had to do this. He half-smiled, embarrassed at where his mouth had taken him. "I show up with you in tow, they'll handle the introductions for themselves!"

Mulder returned the smile. "I don't freak out as long as my gun hand's free."

With that vague agreement reached Mulder shifted to the next subject on his list. "Did you know any of the other men who were killed? Had you heard any of their names before?"

He didn't, but that didn't mean that the man's friends wouldn't know more.

With every item of information gathered the image became a little clearer. The blur of faces of victims and families was shifting slowly from anonymity to show real human beings. It was a process that complicated the case rather than simplified it, but still it was a necessity.

The killer was somehow linked to them all. But was it to them as individuals or as anonymous representatives of a "type" of man? Mulder suspected it was the former, but selling the theory to the rest of the Bureau was not going to be an easy ride.

FBI Lab

One glance at her crouching over the microscope told Mulder that Scully was hard at work. He watched her for a moment as her tongue played across her lips as she concentrated on pulling the image into focus. He noted the dark lines under her eyes. She looked tired. He looked again, actually she looked exhausted.

He hesitated in the doorway as she reached for another slide, noted the stiffness in her movements as she turned in her chair. The hints of weakness, the little gestures of discomfort that he wasn't allowed to witness.

She was going to be pissed if she caught him standing here.

He cleared his throat, supplying a breezy, "Hi Scully," as he finally entered the room.

"Where the hell have you been?"

He shrugged, not quite sure what he'd done to provoke the reaction. "Interviewing witnesses."

"For the Bandana case? Neill's on the warpath."

Mulder skipped to the next subject, gesturing vaguely at the neat rows of evidence bags that Scully had arrayed in front of her. "Are you getting anywhere?"

"Mulder, this isn't your case. You can't just skip out of the meetings and your assigned work and go freelance. Have you even bothered to document the interviews you've done?"

"Not yet."

"It's only a matter of time before he hauls you back in front of Kersh. You haven't even got permission to drop Kersh's background checks, have you?"

Did "tacit consent" count? Not with Kersh. Not if he was being set up for another round of misconduct charges. Yet for some reason he felt as if he had, if not Kersh's approval, then at least his acceptance.

Scully sighed, her anger deflating in the light of Mulder's continued failure to reply. "Well, you're here now. Was there something in particular?"

Was there? Well Scully, how about dropping that careful study that you're doing of the hairs and fibers, and those damned confusing bandanas and hoping for the best and assuming that this isn't a trap that Kersh has laid and joining me down in this hole that I'm digging? It didn't sound like an appealing proposition, even to Mulder.

He settled for something less ambitious. "Just checking in. Seeing if anything new has shown up on the forensics."

"Not yet." She sighed, allowing him to see a brief glimmer of her frustration. "I've talked a couple of people into trying to get something off the fabric of the bandanas - maybe a hair that's been missed that was trapped in the weave, perhaps even a latent fingerprint. The technology's getting better all the time."

Mulder shrugged, acknowledging the possibility even as he recognized the near impossibility of the task that she'd set for herself and her colleagues. Besides, even a fingerprint would only help once they actually had a suspect.

"They always make a mistake, Mulder."

Perhaps. He nodded and decided that it was time to go and make some more mistakes of his own.

FBI - Two Days Later

The team meeting had some extra attendees today. Dave Burton had come along and had brought Dale Kendall, the head of the ISU, with him. Assistant Director Kersh was sitting a little back from the table.

Martin Neill, new marker pen in hand, looked like the epitome of FBI cool, a paragon of professionalism amidst the mass of his mostly less experienced and more self-conscious team members. Neill looked over at Mulder as he called the meeting to silence. "As you'll appreciate, we've got the benefit of ISU representation here today. They need to get away early, so we'll deal with item 6 first."

Everybody looked down at their agendas despite the redundancy of the gesture. Agent Mulder was slated to be the star attraction today.

Mulder wandered amiably to the front of the room, smiling as he gestured for Neill to hand over the marker pens. There was territorial and there was just plain stupid, and Mulder had already decided where Neill fell on the scale.

"As you may be aware, it's my opinion that the profile that we've been using is not simply wrong, it's dangerous."

Twenty-odd pairs of eyes turned briefly to look at Burton, who shifted slightly under the scrutiny. The profiler's boss, sitting alongside him, just kept his gaze firmly locked on Mulder.

"The details of how this impacts the team is in the written profile, but I'll summarize. I believe that we've been deliberately misled in these killings. There's a precision and a care at the crime scenes that belies the idea of frenzy. There's an asexual element to the attack that suggests the killer is following a formula."

"Some killers do," noted Kendall, so softly that Mulder could choose to ignore him if he wanted to.

"Some do. But are they so committed to it they'll stick to it across six murders? If we're talking a sexual sadist - experimentation, exaggeration, excess - it's missing. If you want a real comparison then it's with the idea of ritual abuse, popular in fiction but in reality..." Mulder waved a hand and Kendall supplied a single nod in reply, a kind of bitter acknowledgment to punctuate the point.

"The lack of defense wounds suggests that they were overwhelmed by an attack and subdued quickly. Possibly by drugs, though as yet we haven't got anything positive there - added to which drugs would make them difficult to maneuver later. A couple of the victims were over 200 pounds. Consequently I'm suggesting that the capture is the work of two men. Although the subsequent torture and murder may not be."

Kendall was breathing through his mouth, a puzzled frown almost closing his eyes. Dave Burton was scribbling unnecessarily detailed notes on the pad in front of him, even though he'd heard all of this before.

"Again that makes it unlikely that we're dealing with a serial killer in the normal sense - ongoing partnerships are rare. A partnership with both men so cautiously professional about evidence, about the use of the victims' credit cards and so on, a team that suddenly appears on the scene and kills six men in such a consistent way in a matter of weeks is almost unimaginable.

"Logic points in one direction only." Mulder scanned the room, caught Scully's intense curiosity, the ISU men's scrutiny and the faintly bemused expressions on the faces of Kersh and Neill. "We're looking at the work of a professional assassin who's acting according to a script."

"The lead UNSUB is white, male, probably aged 30 to 40. Well educated - college degree or higher. He may have recent law enforcement experience - military or civilian. He was promoted fast and early but has already risen beyond his level of competence and the cracks are showing. He's experienced in hand to hand combat but also experienced enough not to rely on it.

"In daily life he exhibits homophobic behaviors, exemplified by simplistic generalizations about the lifestyle and sexual habits of gay men. This feeds from his own insecurities about sex and sexuality.

"In the context of the killing. He's obeying orders and will use that to excuse any act, however barbaric. He cuts and beats the already restrained man. There's a pride in inflicting damage without actually killing that suggests he takes pleasure, probably sexual, in the act.

"It's almost certainly the only kind of sexual pleasure he gets. The repression of his sexuality means that he's not capable of raping the men even though the sexual assault is needed to make the scene work. That's also carried over into his everyday life where his failure to deal with his homosexuality leads him to attempt to have sexual relationships with women, but he's impotent.

"The second killer is almost certainly more brawn than brain. He's probably been shocked by his partner's enthusiasm for the work, and may now be doubting the lead's claims to be heterosexual."

The audience was mostly now looking at the table, at their yellow notepads, at their colleagues' elbows - almost anywhere except at Mulder.

"None of which matters in terms of victim choice or motive," continued Mulder, "because our real killer is the person paying for the job. He's got some link to these men. Something in his past. Maybe five years ago, maybe more. The victims did something or witnessed something or met someone that they shouldn't have. Something that didn't ring any alarm bells at the time - for them. But that's a big deal now - for the person funding this.

"He's a wealthy man - he's hired expensive crew to do his dirty work. And he's absolutely confident that his hit-men will keep their mouths shut and won't try blackmailing him later. They know he's powerful enough to take them out as well if he has to.

"Because of the victimology and the scene that he's asking his killers to use - they could just as easily have all died in traffic 'accidents' or muggings or drive-by shootings but that wasn't good enough for him - it's highly likely that the initial incident that led to these men being targeted related to his own sexuality or that of someone close to him.

"He's not only taking vengeance, he's attempting to destroy their reputations and undermine sympathy for them as he does it. I think we're looking at someone in a high profile role in public life - politics, or the media. Someone who might have hoped to go even higher so long as no embarrassing revelations emerge."

Mulder glanced around the room again, taking in the silent faces. Only Scully didn't look away. He met her eyes briefly and ploughed on with the presentation. "Finally, I should warn you that whilst I've referred to the real killer - the person who's picking up the tab - as 'he' it could just as easily, because of the use of a third party and the details of the script being played out, be a woman."

Final bombshell delivered, he sat down.

Neill didn't react immediately, but Dale Kendall did. "That was very entertaining, Agent Mulder. Been reading too many conspiracy theories lately?"

"You can never read too many."

"Have you ever heard of Occam's Razor - the simplest explanation is likely to be the correct one?"

Mulder offered a brief angry smile. "Have you ever wondered why so many killers never get caught?"

"Maybe because their teams didn't focus on the right things?"

Kersh intervened. "I think we've heard enough. Agents, if you'll excuse us." The Assistant Director rose, Dale Kendall was right behind him.

Dave Burton almost didn't move, only a sharp, "Agent Burton!" from Kendall actually made him respond. He looked uncertainly towards Mulder, as if awaiting further instructions.

Mulder supplied him the slightest of nods. The profiler gathered together his papers and after a last apologetic glance towards Mulder, he also headed for the door.

Martin Neill was almost smiling as the door closed behind his departing guests. He rose to his feet, preparing to take his customary place by the white board. "I guess you may as well sit down, Agent Mulder."

"You think this is over? This won't be over until we catch the perpetrators."

"Your contribution has been noted. It's time we moved on."

"I suggest we start looking at the press appeals."

"You're not in any position to suggest anything."

All heads turned as Scully's voice broke into the argument. "I'd like to discuss the press appeals."

Mulder shifted to face her and supplied a grateful look of acknowledgment as Martin Neill reluctantly sat back down in his chair.

Scully swallowed, kept her tone measured and precise. "I can see no possible harm in broadening the appeal for contacts of the victims."

"No harm, perhaps. Unless it dilutes the focus," reminded Neill, firm but unerringly polite now that he no longer had the luxury of talking only to Mulder.

"Why should it? It's our request to the public. It doesn't change our priorities."

"Agent Scully, you've read thousands of autopsy reports. Have you ever seen this kind of torture and sexual assault carried out in the course of a professional hit? Let alone as a signature to six so-called hits."

She glanced apologetically at Mulder. "No. I haven't." She licked her lips. "But if we aren't getting witnesses who know the real lifestyles of these men coming forward, then we need to change the message so they do."

"What? Say we don't think the victims already knew the killer? That they didn't go with him willingly? Lie?"

She rephrased it. "Emphasize other aspects of the men's lives?"

The battle was hard fought, but by the end Scully had succeeded in moving it forward and Mulder was breathing a little easier.

Kersh and Kendall were enjoying a quiet cup of coffee in the Assistant Director's office when Mulder arrived fresh from the team meeting. Kersh gestured towards the empty cup on the table as the agent sat down.

"You'd better be right, Mulder. I have never felt like such a prick in my entire life," insisted Kendall, brushing cookie crumbs off the paperwork in front of him.

There was more than a little teasing disbelief in Mulder's voice. "Really?"

"Asshole," supplied Kendall.

"Dave Burton'll need some handling."

"You're telling me."

The Assistant Director's cough brought both men to attention. Mulder poured himself a coffee while Kersh spoke. "How long do we wait for it to hit the papers?"

Mulder failed to answer and directed a different question at the two managers instead. "Any indications from the reporters on how they got the story?"

"Nah," Kendall waved another cookie across the paperwork, destroying his earlier effort at tidying. "And if we hint at why we want to know, it'll blow your cover. It'd help if we could get a motive."

Mulder almost laughed. "You don't say! No, I've been thinking about it. It could be someone who thinks I'm being treated unfairly, but who won't come forward in the meetings. Maybe one of the team is gay. Maybe Neill did it himself to try and get me canned."

"Thing is, if it was 'friendly fire' - why mention your name? Why not just an 'FBI source' or whatever?"

"Young and naive? Old and stupid? Thought it would make the story more credible if it had a name on it?"

Kersh favored the naive analysis. "Could just have been someone at the body retrieval site talking out of turn."

Mulder nodded. The discussion had now returned to where it began. "If there's nothing in the press tomorrow then we'll have to assume the first time was an accident and we'll need to leak it ourselves."

The other men nodded and Kendall started talking. "Just how convinced are you that the UNSUBs are going to come after you?"

"I'm not, I'm guessing. A Fed makes a lousy target - for a serial killer or a pro."

"So you used today to paint a target on your back?"

Mulder's reply was almost playful in its tone. "What - you think the impotence thing was going too far? Though actually I think I'm right about that."

"I was just glad you didn't start on his abusive relationship with his mother and the bedwetting business."

"Ha. He knows exactly what I think about his mother and his bathroom habits."

Kersh frowned, a little uncomfortable at the rather flippant attitude of the other two men. He took over. "You've offended his professional pride by spotting the subterfuge. You're now bent on offending him personally by attacking his manhood. But if he's a real pro, he may just laugh it off and get on with the next job."

Mulder nodded. "He may. But I don't think he's at the top of his game any more - that's why he's had to accept such a nasty, dirty job. And he's working with a partner, which will increase the stress. He's the dominant half of the relationship, but after this story breaks, he'll be looking for any doubts in his partner's eyes."

"More brawn than brain," reminded Kendall.

"And every time his little Neanderthal pal makes an unguarded remark, or has a stupid smirk on his lips - he'll want to kill the guy who gave his sidekick the ammo. Hopefully."

Both Kendall and Kersh raised eyebrows at the "hopefully."

Mulder shrugged. "If he doesn't, then it's still the same game - we've got to get the missing link between those men."

"So, while we play hide and seek with this hit-man of yours in the daily newspapers, we target the gay press with that search for old links between the men and use that to go after the person who commissioned the deaths."

"I'd prefer it if you didn't refer to him as my hit-man."

Kersh's face almost cracked into a smile for an instant before getting deadly serious again. "Protection, then."

"It can't look like you're concerned. There can't be any surveillance."

"You'll be wired," Kersh noted as if that was self-evident.

"Depends who's monitoring the wire," Mulder said insistently.

Kersh sighed, "I accept what you've said - the fewer people who know about this, the better it'll work. But you've painted a hell of a target on your back. And I won't let you kill yourself to prove that it worked."

"If he realizes that I'm not the only one running with this profile, he'll know there's no point in risking going after me. What's more, if we're saying one thing in the press and acting differently he'll know that he's being set up."

"That settles it then," supplied Kendall. The other two turned to look at him, unsure quite what had been settled. "Agent Scully and Dave Burton get to sit on you for as long as this thing runs."

Mulder almost started to protest but stopped, slumping back in his chair to consider it.

Dale Kendall continued with the analysis. "Dave Burton's a good man, he won't let this drop just because I say so. He'll kick up a stink about that profile. He'll be less dangerous if he knows to keep his mouth shut. And I'd suggest the same is true for Agent Scully."

Kersh looked at Mulder for agreement but found no acknowledgment either way. "How long since Burton was in the field?"

Kendall had no hesitation. "He's fit and he can shoot straight, but more importantly he can keep a clear head in a tight corner."

Kersh turned back to Mulder. "Is Agent Scully fully recovered from her stomach wound?"

"The doctors gave her permission to return."

"That isn't what I asked you."

"I refuse to allow her to be bait."

"You said it yourself, Mulder - no pro wants to go after a Fed, no way will he go after two. Agent Scully's the other end of the wire. And Burton's there, when Scully isn't," pronounced Kersh.

Mulder nodded, accepting the inevitability if only because he could see no other option.

Mulder was still pacing his way around Scully's apartment, her living room getting a little smaller with every lap he took. "I don't know what you expect me to say."

Scully turned to the next page of the file that she was pretending to read. "You could try explaining why you didn't warn me what you were doing!"

"How about because I needed you to react the way you did today in that meeting?"

"You wanted me to sound like an idiot? I would have done that. But I'd have felt a lot better about it if I'd known."

"I didn't want you to feel better about it. I was having enough trouble not just blurting out the whole story without having to worry about you doing the same thing."

"You think I would have? You think I'd have blown your cover? I went in front of a FBI tribunal and told them you were dead. Or have you forgotten that?"

How could he forget that? It was a crappy thing to make her do, but at least he'd had a good reason. "You fought them, Scully. Today. In that meeting. You fought Neill and the rest of them. You made them include the hunt for old links between the men in there, and to change the press releases to stop harking on the sex-play-gone-bad idea. And you did it even though you couldn't buy the rest of the profile."

"I'd have bought the profile if you'd given me the chance to understand it that you gave Burton, or Kendall, or Alvin fucking Kersh."

The unanticipated expletive had the desired effect. Mulder accepted the rebuke. "Of course you would. But you couldn't have played that meeting any better than you did." He stopped pacing and walked in front of the couch, pausing just ahead of where she sat, allowing his voice to fall to little more than a whisper. "I needed you in there. Being you."

"Bastard," she mumbled, Mulder catching the word only because he was looking at her lips as she said it.

Ludicrously, he felt a moment of elation. It was as if the storm had finally broken. He sat down in the armchair facing her, exhausted. "So - will you be my back-up?"

She nodded, too angry to look at him, but definite in her reply.

Dave Burton was not much more amused about being kept in the dark than Scully had been. Which was one of the reasons that Mulder had opted for the neutral territory of The Sepulchre for the discussion. "I could have hit the fucking roof with Dale after I got out of the meeting. If Kersh hadn't been there I would have."

Mulder chuckled into the beer glass he was holding. "I know. I think that was why he insisted you get to play guard dog. He didn't know what the hell he was going to tell you otherwise."

"At least *he's* got some respect. So how's this going to work?"

"Scully's covering the time I'm at work - office, Quantico, in the field - and journeys to and from. Otherwise I'm all yours."

"I get the night shift. Aren't I the lucky one?"

"Keep your receipts," Mulder waved vaguely at the glasses. "You're on the clock, remember."

"Like that does me any good. Hey - ever watch a TV show, British thing, called Blackadder?"

"Hmm," nodded Mulder, uncertain where this was heading. Actually the first season had been on while he was still a student in Oxford, but he didn't want to distract Dave with those kind of reminiscences just yet.

"There's an episode where Blackadder primes his servant to help him out in a drinking game. Blackadder calls out for his cup of extra strong ale."

"But he's supposed to get a weak shandy instead?"

"Precisely," Burton leaned away from the table and caught the eye of the muscle man behind the bar, "Two glasses of your extra strong ale."

They left the bar at eight, which unfortunately meant that Mulder had a lot of time on his hands when he reached home. Dave waited until Mulder reported that the apartment was clean before driving away, only to return minutes later on foot and make his way to the apartment building next door to Mulder's. Not ideal but the best they could do at short notice.

Tomorrow, when the actual painting and decorating contractors left the empty apartment on the floor above, temporary neighbors could be more easily arranged. And if this wasn't over in a week or so, then they'd need to find some excuse to switch to a hotel or something. Besides, security tonight shouldn't really be a problem - the problems wouldn't start to get serious until the newspapers picked up the story again. If indeed they started at all.

But whatever happened next, tonight was also realistically Mulder's last night of freedom until this was settled.

Which was why he was still pacing the room, flicking a basketball between his hands at eleven. There would be plenty of time for TV watching later when there was nothing else he could do.

"I'm going for a run."

Mulder slid into his shoes and waited for a single ring of his phone to indicate that the message had been received and understood by Dave. Not having two way communication was going to be painful but an ear-piece would make him too conspicuous and cell phones were too easy to scan.

"I'll stick to doing laps of the block."

He opted to take the stairs rather than the elevator, using it as a warm-up for the run he was about to do. But even as he hit the ground floor he was starting to sweat.

Mouth dry, pulse up. He idly wondered if Dave could hear his heart pounding over the wire he was wearing. He could certainly hear every beat of it himself.

"Shit," he grumbled, stumbling to a halt after only a couple of hundred yards, then quickly correcting the wrong impression he had to be making on poor old Dave. "There's no problem, I'm just more out of condition than I thought."

Which wasn't actually true. A five-mile run was good for taking out a few of the day's kinks, it wasn't normally any work at all. On the other hand, a slow jog to the end of the street when his chest was this tight had almost made him pass out from lack of air.

Being bait sucked! He eventually found enough oxygen to gasp his amusement at the idea. He remembered the sensation as an old and ugly scar on his psyche. Since then he'd walked into danger, willingly and wittingly, many times. He'd found himself in danger in situations where there had been no obvious risk. And neither feeling hurt like this.

He'd lived for a long time with the knowledge that the cigarette smoker, or one of his cronies or even some irate UNSUB he hadn't been able to put away for good would come back and decide that his time was up. "Every life, every day is in danger. That's just life," Skinner had said, and Mulder had agreed.

But this was different. Right now, he was the kind of bait that was only going to tempt a predator if it looked isolated, passive, and better still, damaged. The opposite kind of performance to the one that had kept him alive this long.

His thoughts drifted back to John Barnett, and a night when Scully had played bait for him. They'd caught their fish and Scully had been lucky. So had Mulder.

He cupped his hands over his mouth and nose, and used the focus to steady his breathing. Playing at being passive and wounded was one thing, actually allowing either of those things to infect his thinking was quite a different matter.

Straightening up, using his hands on his thighs to soothe the muscles and keep them warm he waited for the sound of his heartbeat to fade from his ears. "Finally," he mumbled. Out of respect for his colleague at the other end of the wire he added, "I'm up and running again."

The newspapers the next morning had no new revelations about life on the FBI's Bandana team. In an ideal world they'd give it at least another couple of days. But the world was far from ideal and nor was Mulder's mood.

A Post reporter had received an anonymous update on Fox Mulder's isolated stance on the investigative team.

When the journalist approached Mulder to check on the accuracy of his latest story, Mulder played the no comment game to the hilt. Except to ask off the record that the newspaper play up the issue of the FBI needing information on the victims' histories and emphasizing that the common thread was most likely in the past, not the present.

The headline writer, the next day, was not surprisingly more intrigued by the idea of an impotent hit-man of dubious sexuality and his brawny but brainless sidekick.

Mulder wasn't really too concerned. The appeal for witnesses was already getting a far better airing through things like DC's gay newspaper The Blade, the smaller community weeklies, the net, the bars and clubs. At least the message was going out, and the people most in jeopardy were being warned. He hoped.

Having done the groundwork with Dave Burton, and refined the ideas as much as he could through those discussions, convincing Dale Kendall of the profile had been a pushover and AD Kersh hadn't been much harder. What had been a much tougher pill for them to swallow had been the idea that they should allow the old profile to stand.

But if Mulder was going to tempt the killers out into the open, he had to look like their only problem. If the whole of the FBI were a problem, then the killers would bolt and the chances of getting a conviction of the person funding the hits, without any assassins to tie them to, would be approximately zero.

Kersh had taken on the juggling act of deflecting the work of the Bandana team down more useful avenues. Less time was being spent looking through the personal ads for "professional personal correction services" and more on drawing up a picture of the victims' actual life stories.

Meanwhile, to Dave Burton's chagrin, the old profile still represented the official line. Which meant that Kersh, Burton and Scully shared the delicate task of making sure that all the daily actions of the team effectively ignored it without ever admitting that there had been any change in position.

Fortunately, it seemed as if Mulder's analysis of Neill as a man with no opinions of his own, who would blow wherever the wind took him, was being borne out. Better still, a Kersh hint and a Scully practical implementation method and Neill could even make it sound as if he'd come up with the bold new action plan himself.

The Bandana Task Force team meeting was starting to have an eerily familiar ring to it. Mulder ignored the proceedings apart from giving them the occasional angry poke to remind them that the thorn in their side remained.

Scully's contribution was to come in the last item on the agenda, arranged that way officially because she was needed at Quantico first thing and might miss the start of the meeting. Unofficially, her late arrival at the meeting was deliberate - it was hard for Scully to handle the casual dismissal of Mulder's ideas. Even though she knew they hadn't actually been rejected.

When she did walk in, she smiled briefly at Mulder, and tapped the file in her hand. She had news - he sat up straight to listen to it.

She rapidly updated the forensic reports on the bodies with another bunch of negative results. She then turned her attention to the file she was carrying, handing around photocopied lists of the contents of Peter Hughes' car. The car that had just been found in a long-term parking area close to the airport.

"The car's been there since the night Pete Hughes went missing. The security videos unfortunately are on 24-hour loop, so if there was any footage of the driver, it's long gone."

Mulder couldn't hide his disappointment at that. He'd told Daniel that there was nothing that could have been done that first night. Watching out for Pete's car showing up in a parking lot was one thing that could have been.

As quickly as the disappointment hit he dismissed it. The only reason for Pete's car to show up in such a public place would have been to disguise the trail and make them assume that Hughes had flown out that same evening. Moreover, two such careful killers would also have taken care to hide from any cameras. Even if they'd had the video to examine, it would have contained no information.

Moving on, he glanced at the list of contents of the trunk. A melon that had seen better days. A bag of once fresh fish that should have been a quiet dinner for two. Bread, vegetables, a bottle of wine. Everything that Dan and Pete had expected to share that evening.

"Have we found the store receipt for the food?"

"It's from the day he went missing. The timestamp says eighteen-fifteen which is consistent with him leaving work at five-thirty."

"To be home in time to prepare dinner."

"It would seem that way."

"Agent Mulder," complained Neill, "We're all capable of telling the time."

"And what does the time tell you, Agent Neill?"

Neill looked flustered for a moment. Had Peter Hughes actually been ambushed in that parking area, or perhaps car-jacked on the way home? Was there something here that might back Mulder's theory? He found an escape clause. "He went to meet someone at the airport."

Mulder shook his head, finding the comment almost laughable but unable to get the joke. "Do you remember his phone records - office, home and mobile? We've got no calls unaccounted for on that day or the previous day. If he was going to be late and he knew it - why didn't he tell Dan James? If it was a last minute thing - why can't we identify a phone call to match?"

"How am I supposed to know? I don't have your access to psychics!"

Scully grew irritated, pushed too far by Neill's blind intolerance of Mulder's analysis and a tough and mostly unrewarding morning in the lab. "Don't you think it's your job to know?"

"I go with the best theories from the best people the Bureau has got - and the best people in this matter are in the ISU."

Scully hesitated, the desire to tell him what the best people were really thinking almost getting the better of her.

Mulder intervened. His only mission now was one of damage control. "Which is why Agent Scully accepts their profile. But let's say this is your sexual sadist - he already knows Hughes, knows his habits. Hughes has a new boyfriend. Old boyfriend lies in wait while he shops?"

Neill glanced briefly at Mulder and spent a little more time studying Scully before finally replying. "Anybody can come up with a theory, Agent Mulder. We need facts."

Mulder kept up the pressure. "Do we have any security video from that store?"

Scully shook her head. "I asked for it a couple of hours ago. One of the video lab people has gone to collect it."

Neill staked his claim. "Agent Scully and I will examine it as soon as it comes in. Everyone else, you have your actions. Keep me informed of your progress."

As soon as the meeting broke up, Mulder headed quickly for the door, bolting back to the office before Scully got the chance to talk to him.

Neill took the opportunity to step in and question Scully. "Good work. Let's hope we get something from that video."

"Yes - let's hope," she agreed, uncomfortable with everything but trying to at least sound like her usual self.

"I know this must be hard on you. Having to stand against him in public like this."

"You know nothing." She blinked as he stared at her and then felt angry with herself to have given him even that much ground.

"Why so defensive all of a sudden? What is he to you? He doesn't welcome your opinions. You let him talk straight over you. I can't believe that you just give way like that. I can't believe you'd just give way like that to any man. So why him?"

She was seething, her jaw tightening to keep the words inside. Neill was doing it again, making her feel ashamed to be at Mulder's side. Which was exactly the place that she needed to be right now. "When the case is over. We'll talk."

On returning to the office she found Mulder hard at work in front of the computer. When he didn't say anything other than "thanks" in reply to the coffee she placed on his desk, she came to stand behind him so that she could look at the screen.

"Scully - no," he grumbled.

"We've got to talk."

"Not here."

"The Headless Woman then, fifteen minutes."

Mulder nodded, the gruesomely inappropriate name of the bar sending a little shiver down his spine as he remembered a birthday party and Scully's refusal ever to return there after Pendrell died in her arms. It had to be serious for her to break her vow.

She left the office immediately, turning on her heel and striding purposefully for the door. So purposefully that Mulder wondered if she remembered that having returned to the Hoover Building she was once again supposed to be the "other end of the line."

Not that there was much that he could do about it if she'd forgotten - the last thing he wanted to have happen was for Dave Burton to listen in on the conversation that he was about to have with Scully. He waited for the clock to move on by another ten minutes and followed her from the building.

The delay wouldn't help if there was anybody tracking his movements but it might reduce the odds of a casual observer inside the Bureau noticing that Mulder and Scully were still real partners. Perhaps he was overreacting?

He balked at that. Overreacting? He was bait for a team of two hit-men, one of whom was, with any luck, taking it personally. Surely he was entitled to be critical? He quickly and discreetly patted his clothing to check that his weapons were in place and accessible.

"Hi." He waved a vague order for a coke and whatever she's drinking as he took a seat at Scully's table.

"Mulder."

Scully had convened the meeting, but Mulder already knew that it was up to him to supply the agenda. He jumped in, feet first. "I think you should leave the Bandana team." There, he'd said it, succinct and to the point.

She froze, her mouth drifting open as she took in the suggestion. "But - you need me."

"I need you. The Bandana team doesn't."

Frowning, she studied the contents of her glass. "But the forensics."

"Are going nowhere and if something comes up we'll think again. Kersh'll make sure you still see everything."

"Won't it seem strange if I leave?"

"Not if Kersh pulls you onto a different job."

She was already angry, seething under the professionally calm mask she wore. Mulder could feel the tension coming off her in waves. "That meeting today - you thought I was going to slip up."

Mulder was dead still, but the tense set of his muscles was more like the freeze frame from a video of a running man than a picture of someone sitting down in a comfortable bar waiting for his drink to appear. It felt that way, too. "No. I thought I was going to slip up. It's - " he stuttered to a halt, happy to have the distraction of a tray of drinks arriving to give him an excuse to take more time to think of a reply.

When the waitress walked away, it was Scully who spoke first. "Would it really have mattered so much if I'd agreed with you in there?"

"Yes! If we don't smoke them out, the killers will vanish. They're pros. They don't want to take on the FBI!"

Scully looked up at him, tight lipped and unconvinced. Mulder carried on talking, lower and faster now. "Best case - the leak says I'm not a minority of one anymore and they just walk away."

"And worst case?"

"They pick up on the idea that we're in a minority of two."

There was fiery animation in her eyes to match the irritation in her voice. "You think you're protecting me?"

"I'm trying to protect me - you're the other end of the line. What happens if we're both on the same end?"

A sharp intake of breath and she was forced to look away. "Mulder, I..."

He didn't want to hear a confession and he certainly didn't need any kind of apology. All he wanted was for her to know how it felt from his side of the fence. "Besides which - it's difficult for me to lie when you're there."

Scully finally nodded, a little of the tension fading from her shoulders. "For me, too."

One unplanned but entirely welcome benefit of Scully's official departure from the Bandana team was that she was free for the rest of the day. She had been scheduled to assist Martin Neill in the examination of the video footage from the store but that duty now fell to Dave Burton.

Burton, having already been temporarily relocated to the Hoover Building as part of the cover created for him by Kersh and Kendall, was happy to help, despite his reluctance to be in the same room as Neill. "He's such a smug little brown-nosing hypocrite."

Mulder grinned. "Now, now, you're to play nice with the other kids, Agent Burton."

"Scout's honor," he returned, though the one finger gesture that accompanied the words was certainly not the regulation Boy Scout salute.

With Kersh's latest pack of background checks as an excuse, Mulder and Scully headed out of the office together. He stole the keys from her hand. "I'll drive, you ride shotgun."

They were already picking their way along the busy streets before she asked the obvious question. "Do you really think he'd attack in broad daylight?"

"I don't know if he'll attack at all. But as for time of day, I doubt it'll matter to him. I'm just someone he wants dead, he's not getting paid for it. A single shot, a car crash, a mugging - anything'll do."

Scully shuddered at the thought and did another 360-degree scan on their surroundings. From where she sat, everything looked like a threat. "Mulder, are you wearing body armor?"

"Yeah, hate it. I know you are," he added, his eyes wrinkling into a guilty smirk.

"How?" she asked, arching her eyebrows and trying her best to make a game of it, as if it was all perfectly normal.

"High button shirt, too easy." He paused, reaching into his pocket to grab a few sunflower seeds. "And you think this job could run for days."

"Go for it, Sherlock."

"It's new. You've bought some new ones to make sure that you've got enough to be ready for work every day, even if you don't get the chance to do the laundry."

She shook her head, turning away, amused but unwilling to admit how much it warmed her to know that he noticed such things. "Tell me about the witness," she finally suggested, breaking the tension by changing the subject.

"Carole Ashe. She was married to Carl Dodds for five years, two children, eight and six. They divorced five years ago. Irreconcilable differences. No blame. Everything settled amicably out of court. He had access to the kids. Occasional weekends or a couple of days vacation. He was a banker - successful, well respected."

"Carole Ashe?"

"It's her maiden name. She didn't remarry. She runs a TV production company."

"Impressive."

"Inherited it from her dad when it was struggling to make features. Now it supplies in-depth news and documentaries, banking, finance, political, international - some for the networks, the rest goes to cable."

Scully nodded, considering it, rested back in her seat and watched the world go spiraling by and simultaneously close menacingly in. Hoping that Mulder was right and they were soon going to be able to close the case. Hoping that he was wrong and that there was no special danger in heading out of DC in a Bureau car on an unseasonably warm winter's day.

Since his discussion with the first victim's lover, Mulder had been doing a lot of thinking. He'd met a lot of people, seen a few sights, and picked up a whole bunch of interesting terminology during visits to DC's less widely advertised gay nightspots, but still his thoughts kept coming back to Carole Ashe.

She remained the most promising link he'd found between any of the victims. The most significant link certainly because she linked the first two men.

Had it been a man supplying the link then few would have doubted that the link was, if not necessarily yet the prime suspect, then certainly a key witness.

Certainly there were women who killed through fear, or hate, or greed, or anger - but they usually targeted a specific person, often a husband or a lover. But women seldom became serial killers and when they did their targets were usually victims of a more subtle assault. Nurses with Munchausen by Proxy who killed their patients. Mothers who killed their children.

A woman killing strangers was a rarity. But then a male serial killing victims who were stronger than himself was also rare. Serials were predators, and most found it easiest to feed off the weak. Whether that meant killing women because they were smaller, or murdering social outcasts because they lacked the support systems to fight back, or shooting from a safe distance at an unsuspecting target.

A woman killing professional men going about their normal lives would be a novelty.

Yet, if Carole Ashe had the psychological make up to become such a predator, then she was also exactly the right woman for this job. She had the cash to employ muscle so that physical strength would be irrelevant. The social standing to feel secure from her victims.

Adding extra weight to his speculation was the fact that Carole Ashe, as Mulder now knew, once had political ambitions. She'd used her TV company powerbase to flirt with the support of the radical right, pronounced herself pro-business and anti-gay. Her husband must have been a disappointment.

His death as the victim of a killer of gay men must have come as the final insult. Was that how it seemed from her side of the fence?

Unless of course she was the author of his death and its failure to kill the memory of the man and his place in her life had made her campaign of vengeance spread wider.

Was he about to meet someone angry enough to kill? And to keep on killing?

Scully would be walking into the room with no agenda and no such preconceptions and Mulder needed that. He knew that he ought to brief her, but the omission was in a good cause and he knew that she wouldn't mind. Probably.

The Ashe residence was a statement, icing sugar white and rising like a wedding cake from the emerald green grass. Carole Ashe was as dramatically elegant as her home, with frighteningly taloned fingernails and hair that was a rich blend of gold silk and warm fire.

The maid was sent to fetch coffee.

"I have already given my statement."

"We appreciate that, Ms. Ashe," soothed Scully, "but we're looking at the inquiry from a slightly different perspective."

"How may I help you?"

"Could you tell us a little about your ex-husband?"

"He was a good man. He loved me, he loved the children."

"Did you know he was gay when you were married to him?"

"You'd be better off asking if he did."

Mulder responded to that. "And?"

"I think he may have."

Scully took over again. "Can you recall who his friends were at that time? Places he liked to visit?"

When Scully's question drew a blank, Mulder followed up. "Perhaps if we could see some of the family photographs from the period, it might help you to remember. If that's not too intrusive."

Carole Ashe licked her lips, clearly finding it far too intrusive but unable to think of a satisfactory reason not to cooperate. "I only kept a couple."

Mulder maintained the pressure. "But I thought the divorce was amicable?"

"The divorce was amicable," she snapped, in a tone that suggested that the separation on the other hand was not. "Agent... - I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch your name."

That was because he hadn't said it loud enough to be caught. "Special Agent Fox Mulder," he stated, handing her a business card in case she still hadn't quite pinpointed the significance.

"Fox Mulder," she repeated carefully. "You're the one they say is critical of the investigation." The fire in her eyes gave way to something more like ice.

"Is that a problem, Ms. Ashe?" queried Mulder, a little too cold to be polite.

Scully barked an interruption. "Agent Mulder!" Mulder turned to her, a question in his eyes that she didn't dare answer. "Please could you wait for me outside?"

Startled, he accepted her lead and delivered a brisk nod of farewell to his hostess before heading out of the door.

"I'm sorry about that. I had my doubts about bringing Agent Mulder up here. I do apologize."

"There's no need."

"There's every need, Ms. Ashe. It was unprofessional of me. Agent Mulder's a good man but obeying orders isn't one of his strong points."

"You care about him, don't you?"

Scully's response sounded almost like a plea. "I do."

"We can't always choose who we love."

Scully nodded.

"Can't choose." There was a sad edge to Carole's voice. "Be careful of him. You think you know them. They say they'll change. But you can never really change them."

Scully was almost running when she eventually got back to the car. Seeing her agitation, Mulder turned the key as soon as she was safely inside. "Scully? Are you OK?"

Too busy trying to breathe, she gave a single nod, waving for him to start driving. She didn't speak until they were safely out of sight of the house. "Mulder - what did you think of that woman?"

"Do you mean - could she have hired a pair of hit-men? Absolutely. Did she? I think so."

"Yeah," agreed Scully, relieved not to have to explain the cold shiver that had run along her spine as soon as Carole Ashe read Mulder's name from the card.

The visit to meet Carole Ashe had been more than a little disturbing, and Mulder was thankful that Scully had been at his side. Moreover, Scully's shock tactic of throwing him out of the interview might well find some route back to the killers and help confirm to them Mulder's dangerous isolation from the mainstream FBI.

Yet, despite the shake-up of the meeting, Scully actually seemed more comfortable on the journey home then she had been on the trip out. She still appeared bitterly aware of her task as lookout but without the same desperate confusion in her eyes. He even thought he knew why. "Scully - what happened back there?"

When she looked across the car at him, her eyes were bright with certainty. "You trusted me." She was almost smiling when she turned away.

The toughest moment of the trip came as they pulled back into the FBI building. She swallowed before she spoke, an admission that time was short. "I hate that I can't be with you tonight."

Mulder smiled, but the smile faded as his throat went dry. He did his best to turn it into a joke. "Why, Agent Scully, I do believe you're coming on to me."

She supplied a "hmmph" of mock disgust, accepting that the discussion had to end that way - on a joke, and added an, "In your dreams," to underline the point.

"Always," he murmured as she got out of the car.

The handover was inevitably the most awkward thing to schedule. Though now he was armed with three cell phones, his own, a Bureau issued loan and a "state of the art" thing from the Lone Gunmen at least he didn't feel quite so much as if he was about to walk into a black hole for the evening. If his nerves got the better of him, he could phone Dave and Dave could call him. Though they were treating all of those lifelines as "emergency use only," it was still nice to imagine he had an option.

Scully would leave at the same time as Mulder. Dave Burton would leave a few minutes earlier and would be safely in his own borrowed apartment at Hegel Place by the time that Mulder arrived home. Scully would take the same route as Mulder but would be a little way ahead of him. If he was being tailed, then it would be up to him to alert her.

Mulder got back into the conventional looking car that had been chosen by Kersh especially for the purpose. A car on which it wasn't possible to place a limpet type car bomb or to open the doors without tripping an alert. Though novel, it wasn't that unusual for Kersh to order such a machine for agents working a domestic terrorism beat.

He checked the warning lights as he approached the car. Even so, there was still a moment's trepidation as he started the engine and headed for home.

The journey was disappointingly uneventful. Scully broke formation at the end of the block and drove slowly until a single ring on her cell phone confirmed that Dave Burton was now at the other end of her partner's lifeline.

As he walked into his apartment, Mulder paid the same attention to clues. All markers appeared to be in place. No one had entered through the front door. He checked the other doors and windows and found no cause for concern. "It's clear," he mumbled into the mike on his chest.

Wiping the sweat from his forehead he decided that his first stop was going to have to be a shower. Fear clammy skin told him just how rough the day had been - from the tension of the team meeting through the redrawing of lines with Scully.

The day had ended in a rapprochement, but only at the expense of a close encounter with a woman called Carole Ashe. A woman who'd disturbed him just as much as she'd spooked Scully even though he'd already anticipated her behavior.

The drive home from the Hoover building had just served to reinforce the point. This was only just beginning and already his nerves were jangling like a symphony of overstressed piano wires.

He hated waiting. Hated it even when it was a part of some mundane surveillance gig. Cat on a hot tin roof expecting "it" to happen at any moment and not even knowing what "it" might be. Wanting it over and wanting it never to happen at all.

And of course if nothing happened at all it was not just his reputation that was screwed, it was any chance of getting to the killers or their paymaster.

He closed his eyes as the water streamed over his face and wondered if it was possible to drown like this. He certainly felt like he was drowning, running out of air and watching scenes from his life playing out in front of him.

He had to admit that Kersh had impressed him. Once he'd been convinced of the strategy that Mulder had suggested, Kersh had shown himself to be a master tactician. Whatever he thought of Mulder as a man or as an agent he hadn't allowed it to interfere with his own code of professional conduct.

Moreover Kersh had ensured that Mulder wasn't the only person with a lifeline. Dave Burton had a lifeline too, in the form of a team from organized crime who imagined they'd been placed in position to assist Burton once he finally went in to pull out an agent who'd been deep undercover for too long. An agent who might now need to be either dragged out or rescued, depending on exactly why he hadn't phoned home.

They'd even been warned not to be surprised if Mulder was around, and reminded that he was not only armed but that he was on the same side, lest he be caught with a gun in his hand at the vital moment.

Which was reassuring so far as it went but only served to remind him of how dangerous a game they were playing. A game in which friendly fire could be as big a risk as hostile.

He rinsed the last of the soap from his hair and shut off the water.

Being bait sucked.

Within half an hour he'd done everything that seemed important, or at least everything that seemed practical given that his concentration level could be clocked only in seconds rather than minutes. He'd showered, changed, eaten, drank enough coffee to keep him afloat and surfed every channel on the TV.

He was now on the prowl and looking rather less like bait and more like a caged tiger.

Normally this kind of mood would send him around to Scully's. Which amused him to visualize. Why on earth would she want a visitor like him? What did she think when he showed up acting this wired?

Even Dave Burton, just a couple of doors away, was out of bounds. The point was to look like an easy target, not to keep moving. Or maybe he could do both?

He sighed, knowing that he didn't have a choice. He was just bothered that Dave Burton wasn't going to get a choice either. "I'm going to The Sepulchre."

A minute or so later, the phone rang once to acknowledge Burton's readiness to follow.

The bar was quiet and the night was young so even The Sepulchre's restaurant was mostly silent. The bartender welcomed him like a regular. "Alone?"

"Looks like. Is Paul around?"

"He's doing some paperwork. He'll be out. Want a drink?"

"Does he have an office?"

"You want me to get him?" Off Mulder's nod Jim wandered to the mirrored door at the end of the bar, he quickly returned. "He's on the phone."

"Then I'd better have a beer."

"A real one or a glass of your extra strong ale?"

"The realer the better." He paused, reevaluating and remembering that the night was young and if things went to plan, this was just going to be a brief diversion before the real bar-hopping started. "Second thoughts, make it a tomato juice."

Not long after the drink arrived, Paul wandered out of the office to look for the reason why Jim had tapped on his window. He soon identified it. "Let's go," he pointed towards one of the tables in a deserted area of the bar, and Mulder followed him over.

"I'm glad you came in. I've been thinking."

.

Which was exactly what Mulder was hoping to hear. He nodded his encouragement.

The bar owner carried on talking. "You know The Apache Club?"

Only from a video tape and a flying visit that was over as soon as it began - way too noisy a place to talk in, impossible to use as a place to soak up a mood. "It's a party club, kind of place groups go to celebrate birthdays or whatever."

"Yeah, great if you're in a gang of fifty - no fun if you're on your own. Unless you're a professional gatecrasher in which case you can bum drinks all night."

"So?"

"What you said about all this maybe going back years. I thought of something."

Mulder shifted in his seat as a lone man slipped from one set of shadows to another. Someone trying to get a closer look at them? Trying to overhear? Whoever it was and whatever their reasons, it was enough to make Mulder slide his hand inside his jacket and check that his weapon was readily accessible.

Paul didn't seem to notice. "The club was always mixed - different night, different parties - gay men, lesbians, straight. So going there didn't automatically -"

"Make a statement?" Mulder suggested.

"Well, except on Abba night obviously."

"I like Abba," Mulder deadpanned.

"Shit. Armani suits, Gucci leather jackets and Abba. Next thing you'll be telling me that all your coat hangars are wooden."

"Is there another kind?"

"You sure you're not gay? You're wasted on women."

Actually up until the start of this case, wasted was a pretty fair description of how he'd been feeling generally.

Paul realized that Mulder wasn't going to respond and started talking again. "Anyway you were asking about people with too much to lose - the married ones, the politicos and stuff?"

Mulder nodded, urging him on even though only part of his brain was focusing on Paul's words. The rest of it was fixed on the movements of the large shadow dressed in black and in wondering why the hell Paul didn't get some more fucking lights in here.

"There was a man who used to run one of the club nights. Special parties - invitation only. Men who weren't out. Men who were, but who were trying to be discreet. FBI agents," he added, mostly as a last desperate attempt to get Mulder's attention.

"I'm listening. Who's the man and where can I meet him?"

"He's got a party on tonight at The Apache."

Mulder nodded, thanked Paul as graciously as he could with only a couple of percent of his brain available for small talk, and started to walk out of the building, turning at the last moment and heading to the men's room instead.

He closed the door carefully and took up position behind it. The Sig Sauer was already in his hand and ready for action. He thought about alerting Dave Burton but decided that the last thing he needed was for Dave to come crashing in here mid-shootout and then to find himself caught in the crossfire.

So far as he could tell, shadow man was on his own and as it was now Mulder rather than the shadow who had the element of surprise, this was as safe a place and as good a moment for a confrontation as any.

The heavy steps warned Mulder to be ready to act. The door opened and Mulder stopped breathing in anticipation. The man took another step into the room and Mulder announced his presence. "Federal agent. Stop right there. Put your hands where I can see them, on your head." The figure obeyed. "Now, verrrry slowly. Take one step forward and then turn to face me."

The man did as he was told and Special Agent Fox Mulder found himself face to face with Assistant Director Walter Skinner.

"Fucking hell shit! What are you doing here?" Mulder barked, simultaneously furious and relieved.

"I could ask you exactly the same question, Agent Mulder."

"Dave," Mulder announced quickly even though he knew it might already be too late, "There's no problem, don't come in. Repeat - there's no problem. Go back to monitoring." He turned his attention back to Skinner. "If he's had a heart attack, it'll be your fault."

"You're wired?" questioned Skinner, finally seeing the light of explanation.

"No, I always refer to my underarm area as Dave." He slid the safety back on the Sig but didn't put it away. He lifted the gray T-shirt high enough for Skinner to see the kevlar vest but didn't bother to go further. Skinner could work the rest out for himself.

"Why the hell didn't you tell me?"

Because I've had too much on my fucking mind? Mulder didn't bother to say it; the look said it for him. He settled for a tight, "Why didn't you ask?"

Skinner swallowed and Mulder's temper vanished in the face of the pain he saw in the AD's expression. Mulder knew that look, the look of someone too proud to ask for help, because it was personal, and it hurt too much already.

"Doesn't matter," added Mulder. "Just, please - keep out of my way."

"I thought they'd hung you out to dry."

Mulder sighed. Actually this was probably the furthest inside he'd been in years. It was only a matter of time before everyone at the Bureau was undercover with him. Well, everyone except Martin Neill perhaps. Funny how things turn out.

"Kersh?" questioned Skinner, revelation dawning.

"Is trying to keep all the balls in the air."

"You're bait," Skinner said softly.

Mulder raised his hands in acknowledgement, before digging into his clothes. "Dave, I'm blocking you for a couple of minutes, if I'm not back in two, be my guest." He placed a Walkman earphone over the mike and slowly turned the volume up.

Skinner shook his head, a mix of horror, amusement and dismay contorting his features.

"Now we're alone," murmured Mulder. "Why are you here? Is it because of Dan James?"

"Hmm," mumbled Skinner, confirming the story, but not capable of words.

"Because he was there when your wife died?"

Skinner was stunned for an instant, almost angry at the invasion, before accepting it as inevitable. "His... partner died the same week. Car accident. Hit and run. We..."

Mulder nodded, he'd already known of the coincidence, guessed that it might have rekindled and solidified an old friendship. He accepted the answer as good enough and prepared to pull the headphones off the mike.

Skinner waved for him to stop. "Mulder, how close did you come to shooting me, just now?"

"You don't want to know." A final gesture of apology, and then Mulder switched off the Walkman. Mumbling, "Sorry, Dave," to reopen the line.

Skinner, recognizing his role in the fiasco offered to call Dave Burton. An offer Mulder gratefully accepted as it gave him the chance to check that Dave was actually safely in position without using one of his own mobile numbers to do it.

"Where are you going next?"

"Clubbing." Despite the demand in Skinner's eyes, Mulder didn't elucidate further.

If Mulder had been dancing on the high wire before, then now he'd managed to add "while spinning on his head" to the list of unpleasant sensations.

"If Skinner shows up at The Apache, you've got my permission to hospitalize him. OK?" He grumbled into the mike.

If The Sepulchre had been an easy place to slide into the background and mingle then The Apache was just the opposite. Too loud to talk to anyone and unless you were that "professional gatecrasher" that Paul had described, a place where a wallflower was likely to wither and die.

Tonight however, Mulder was a man with a mission. Though it did occur to him that with the background noise this loud if anyone came after him in here, Dave would have a hard time spotting it.

No matter. There was no real danger here, at least not right at this moment. There were no other wallflowers to be seen. He looked around the room again as inconspicuously as possible, while simultaneously trying to look as small and uncertain as he could.
He was only too aware of the need to look self-conscious and out of place. It was not an easy trick for him to make convincing.

He could live with being a target; lived with it every day of his life if it came right down to it. But his survival instincts had always told him that targets should stand up tall, move purposefully about their business, and should always look as if they were aware of their surroundings.

Bait, on the other hand, was supposed to look easy to digest.

Fuck it. The whole idea made him want to throw something, or somebody, or perhaps it just made him want to throw up.

He looked into the bright lights of the dance-floor and squinted, welcoming the first tingle of dry eyed itchy discomfort that they provoked. He slouched his way over to the party organizer, slump shouldered as he avoided eye contact with other people.

The man was gratifyingly surprised to discover that the nervous looking man was a Fed, and moreover that he was the very special agent that Paul from The Sepulchre had sent here to meet him. He pointed at some curtains along one wall, swinging them back to reveal a door marked private.

Closing the door on the noise and the crowd of possible onlookers, Mulder reverted to type - automatically standing up a little straighter, scanning the photos on the walls of the office without any sense of shame, and generally making the assumption that having been invited in here, the office was now a fair target for analysis.

"I used to call them my Superman nights."

Mulder supplied an encouraging tell-me-more tilt of the head to egg the man on.

"By day - mild mannered reporter, then - glasses off - your very own action hero."

Mulder smiled, drew out a wallet from his jacket pocket. "Maybe if we could look at a few photos together."

"Sure, but as I said, I do parties every week. Thousands of people over the years."

"Understood. But maybe one of them will trigger something."

After a sequence of misses, near misses and vaguely familiars, Mulder handed him the picture of Carl Dobbs. "Did you know this man?"

The man shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe. I don't know his name. Is he one of the men who's been killed?"

Mulder tried again. Another photo from Carl's past, this time with a little photo manipulation courtesy of the nice little blonde in the FBI lab.

The man's face started to go pale. "Fuck."

"You think you recognize him?"

"Shit... yeah... I never even thought of it. It was just a fashion thing."

"Sir? Please, go on."

"I used to call him Bandana Man." The man swallowed, stunned by the revelation. "By day a mild mannered... I dunno' - he wore suits... then he'd come out at night wearing a bandana - the party animal, a bit of a throw back because we're talking the nineties. I saw him on the TV one time, a news show or something, and thought look it's Bandana Man - he was going bald, I guess that's why he wore... That's the only reason why I remember him. Shit. That guy you're looking for, he uses a..."

When the other man's voice trailed off, Mulder picked up again. "There may be no connection. It may just be coincidence. It was a fashion. But, now you've placed Carl, maybe you can help me to find some people who might remember him."

The man nodded. Still too pale for comfort, he promised to try.

The night, for all that it had already revealed, was still young when Mulder left The Apache. It was however a little late to start knocking on doors, particularly those of well-respected men who might or might not be out to their families even if still closeted to the world.

There was an obligation, practical as well as ethical, to treat witnesses with discretion. Embarrass them and they could easily forget everything. Make them feel safe and memories could sometimes improve. Add a few pulls on their sense of duty and self-preservation and they could actually be very forthcoming.

Research always helped. Knowing just who he was talking to and what they might have to lose from honesty could help undercut even the biggest doubts and the most valid objections.

He turned left instead of right when he left the club, avoiding walking past Dave Burton's car in order to perform a more interesting check on his environment.

The blue sedan, though not a Bureau car, might just as well have been. The level of polish on its doors suggested the kind of enthusiasm that only an ex-marine might supply. But the real give away was its choice of parking position and angle. It must just have killed him to park that wide and so blatantly non-parallel.

Mulder's Sig was back in his hand and tucked carefully inside his leather jacket. After all, 99% certain wasn't the same thing as positive. He crossed the road a few yards ahead of the suspect car and ducked into a well-shadowed doorway to watch. The reward for a couple of minutes wait was a brief glimpse of bald head.

"Bastard," he grumbled, then added, "I'm heading home," for Dave's benefit.

Why did people have to be so fucking predictable? He'd asked Skinner to keep out of the way. He'd reassured the man that he wasn't flying solo. And it had made no difference. Skinner still felt obliged to hover - parked up so that he could see any movement by Dave Burton and come steaming in like some knight in shining armor.

Mulder was having a hard enough time playing at being bait without an audience. Besides, just how tempting would bait look if you had to wade through sharks just to get to it?

He walked past his own car, past the subway entrance, moving a little faster with every step until eventually he was running. Glad that he'd put his Nike's on before he left home but regretting the choice of tight jeans. No matter, bait shouldn't move too fast, most predators liked to see it hobbled before taking it down.

"What the fuck was that about?" Dave liked to get straight to the point.

"Hi - welcome to my humble abode."

Burton stumbled into Mulder's apartment and Mulder held a finger to his lips to remind him that they didn't know what, if any, technology the potential assassins might be carrying. Burton closed his eyes, embarrassed to be standing here, embarrassed to have cared.

"I told you that I was going home." Mulder was whispering as he turned up the sound on the TV.

Burton followed Mulder's lead. "On foot? I couldn't follow you."

"So?"

"I'm supposed to be your backup."

"And I'm supposed to be bait. Look, Dave - I appreciate it. I do. But we can't talk here."

Dave backed slowly out of the room, angry and uncomfortable, but well aware that the discussion had been closed.

Mulder sighed as he closed the door, adding an inaudible, "And if I fuck up, don't ever think that you could have stopped me," to Dave and the rest of his minders.

Scully couldn't stop herself from staring as Mulder walked into the bullpen the following morning. The call from Dave Burton that had told her that Mulder would be arriving late had been disturbing enough. Seeing his face marked with stubble and exhaustion compounded the doubts.

She'd been so sure after yesterday that they were on the right track. The air had been cleared between her and Mulder, and he'd shown that, when it mattered, he'd still accept her judgement as he had done when he left the Carole Ashe interview on her hurried command.

Carole Ashe. That woman. Despite her skepticism, Scully did recognize the value of intuition in successful police work though she preferred to think of it as careful observation and lateral thinking. Still, the chill that had run along Scully's spine as Mulder handed Ashe a business card had been too much to ignore. Plus the woman fit Mulder's profile for the killer perfectly and Mulder was seldom wrong about those things.

Today should give them the opportunity to tie up loose ends and start homing in on their killers. The dark look in Mulder's eyes told a different story.

"Did you sleep?" she said, by way of a greeting.

He yawned, not bothering to disguise the gesture, which was more of an answer than she wanted to hear. He slid his jacket over the back of the chair, switched on the computer and sat back, eyes closing on another yawn.

"Mulder - are you OK?" she complained, keeping her voice low, despite the fact that half the office was now looking their way.

He opened a single red tinged eye. "Nothing that coffee can't fix."

The team meeting was a bust. The store security video showed only the inside of the store. They had images of Pete Hughes making his fast tour of the shelves and paying the cashier, but no obvious suspects lurking in the shadows and nothing about what might have happened in the parking area.

"The time's confirmed at six-ten to six-fifteen. We've blown up stills of the people in the store and we'll try to get them to identify themselves - we may get a witness from that."

Mulder didn't bother keeping his eyes open.

"Are we keeping you awake, Agent Mulder?" Neill finally asked when Mulder's silence became just as unnerving as his interventions had been on other occasions.

"Nope," supplied Mulder, not bothering to open his eyes.

When Kersh ordered him into his office, he was only marginally more responsive.

"I've just had a call from the crime editor of The Post," pronounced Kersh.

Mulder just kept staring straight ahead as if he didn't hear a question in the AD's words.

Kersh kept pushing. "We've got a prime suspect? We know who hired the killers?" Scully had updated Kersh but they were a million miles from any kind of public statement. The story hadn't even been shared with Neill and the rest of the task force yet.

Mulder's smile was there and gone in a fraction of a second.

"I wonder how they heard that, Agent Mulder? You wouldn't happen to know, would you?" he added, when it became obvious that Mulder still didn't hear a question in the commentary.

"No."

"You'd better not be lying to me, Agent Mulder. I've played fair with you; I expect you to play fair with me."

"Is that all, sir?"

"Get yourself cleaned up before you show your face in this building again."

The day passed without surprises. A battery of circumstantial evidence was building up against Carole Ashe but there still seemed very little prospect of finding anything that might provide them with grounds for an arrest or even for a suitably broadly worded search warrant.

"The trouble is," Scully complained as another search led to a dead end, "she can sign off on payments for millions of dollars through her businesses. This could take weeks, even if we can get the warrants to do a full search. Unless we actually find the assassins, I don't see us being able to prove anything."

Mulder nodded, as if he hadn't heard a question in her words either.

Mulder didn't bother going home after work. Instead he headed directly to the welcoming darkness of The Sepulchre.

Paul soon took the vacant bar stool next to him. "Donna Karan tie?"

Mulder saluted him with the glass of vodka.

"Ever fancied a trip on the dark side?" The bar owner tried to keep his voice light and teasing, not wanting to add to the tension he saw.

"Sometimes the dark side comes looking for you."

Paul swallowed, and heard the bleak tone in the words. Years of training behind a bar had told him when a customer wanted company and when he really needed no one around. Gracious, he said nothing, just took the hint and moved away.

By 10 o'clock Mulder was ready to change locations. By judicious play with two glasses and some ice, he'd nursed a single drink for four hours.

This time as he walked past Skinner's car he called him on the phone. "Keep out of my way."

Skinner had started to protest, but dropped the idea as Mulder barked, "Who else has seen you?" down the line.

Job done, Mulder returned to the location he'd chosen the night before. On a public road but within sight of Carole Ashe's security cameras. He left at seven in the morning to follow her chauffeur-driven limousine to her office on the edge of the Beltway.

At nine he was in the Hoover Building and fending off questioning looks.

It was day three of the suit, which despite its expensive cut was now looking more than a little tired from being chosen as sleep wear. He hadn't shaved. The silk tie now carried the grease stain from an ill-considered burger eaten in the car and the marks of a second night spent rolled up in a suit pocket.

He'd changed his shirt and underclothes for ones he kept in the overnight case in the trunk as a concession to his own sensibilities, rather than other people's. A quick shower in the changing room of the swimming pool on his way into work was as much grooming as he intended to do today.

The Post, as usual, had kept on the clean-cut side of sensational. An everyday story of incompetent assassins who'd kept their own trails muddy but left the route to their employer wide open. A consequence, the article suggested, of the lead assassin's unhealthy interest in the sexual torture window-dressing and his failings as a professional that had led him to take such a lousy job on the first place.

Today was the day.

And if today wasn't the day, then there wasn't going to be a day. And to Mulder that idea was completely unacceptable.

The story had now been blown wide open. The Bureau would have to respond. The lone wolf would be officially reclaimed as part of the chasing pack and Mulder's role as bait would be over.

Indeed if Carole Ashe or her hired help were thinking clearly then it was already over. The death of a Federal Agent was always a big deal. The death of one who'd appeared on the front pages of that week's newspaper would accelerate the investigation of his theories, not close them down. If they could keep their heads and stop their anger from acting then they'd know better than to take the bait.

At which point the killers would bolt just as fast and as far as their numbered bank accounts and false passports would carry them, and Carole Ashe's bank records and other files would remain firmly closed.

Kersh's secretary phoned through the order for Mulder to attend an urgent meeting, but Scully could only say that she would try to find him.

His computer was still switched on; his jacket was still draped over the back of the chair. The radio mike was found in the trash in the men's room following Scully and Burton's high-speed search of the building.

Scully ignited, jumping straight past furious and into panicked when she realized what had happened. "Dave, did he say anything to you?"

Burton shrugged, uncomfortable to admit that he'd allowed tiredness to get the better of him. Having spent just three nights watching over Mulder he'd not had the energy to push for that little talk that Mulder had promised. Especially after he'd heard quite how rough Mulder's voice had been when he spoke to Skinner.

"He spoke to Skinner?" complained Scully. "Why?"

"Skinner saw him at The Sepulchre, and followed him. Mulder got pissed."

Damned right Mulder would be pissed. The only reason she'd not played outrider had been because she knew that too much surveillance and Mulder would bolt. Instead she'd spent two nights either hunting for information on Carole Ashe and her dead husband or else pacing the room, worried sick about what might be happening.

Why the hell would Skinner do something like that?

She hadn't planned on saying that out loud, but she must have done because Burton replied to it. "I think Skinner's got a personal interest in the case."

She looked up at Burton; at least he'd shaved and changed his clothes. "Dave, you should get some sleep, you look like -" She raised her hands as an alternative to actually saying the word.

"Then I look a hell of a lot better than I feel."

"Get some rest, I'll call you if there are any developments." She wouldn't, of course, they both knew that it was a lie, but it was a necessary one.

Mulder didn't take long to notice that the dark blue car in the rear-view mirror that had been so determined to catch up with him had now started to drop back. As if it was trying not to be spotted, but more than that, it was almost as if it didn't need to see him anymore. It could mean only one of two things, either the driver had guessed where they were heading - not impossible, or else -

"Son of a bitch," he hissed, slamming his foot onto the accelerator to increase the gap and then, within a minute, slamming his foot onto the brake to execute a dangerously sharp right turn into a gas station. He parked directly outside the cafe at its rear and went inside.

"Coffee, toast, poached eggs. Thanks," he told the smiling woman behind the counter before heading into the men's room.

He only had a couple of minutes to wait.

"Really, sir. We can't go on meeting like this. There'll be talk."

Skinner turned, and looked almost relieved to find that this time there wasn't a gun pointing directly at his head. "Damned straight."

"Interesting choice of words." Mulder skipped over the question of why was Skinner tagging along, and went to the altogether more interesting question of, "How?"

Skinner was a little slow to respond, so Mulder tried again. "A tracking device on the car?" When Skinner just took a deep breath, Mulder took it as confirmation. So much for tamper-proof cars. Which left only one more question. "Kersh?"

Skinner shook his head. "He's only been your boss for a couple of months, he wouldn't know."

"Unofficial then - which is why you're here. So, who? Scully?"

Skinner swallowed, uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of an interrogation, and determined not to lose any more position. "One of the Bandana team. He doesn't like Neill, didn't like how you were being treated. Came to me. Thought Kersh had hung you out to dry. Wanted to help."

Mulder sighed, resting back against the bathroom door. "He gave that first story to the press, didn't he? Included my name."

"Hero worship, Mulder. He didn't realize he'd fucked up until afterwards."

Hero worship? It'd be funny if it wasn't quite so ridiculous. Scully would be coming along soon, but still, Skinner did have a good reason to be here. Skinner had a personal investment in the case and Mulder had never been the type who'd call the kettle black for following his conscience. "If we do this, you play it my way."

"What do you want me to do?"

"I'm going to Carole Ashe's house. You give me thirty minutes, then you go and visit her."

"And do what?"

"Act like you're an Assistant Director of the FBI."

Mulder parked his car in his favorite location. The same spot he'd spent the last two nights. The biggest difference, apart from the daylight, was the absence of Dave Burton's car in the distance and of the car that was keeping tabs on Dave.

He'd seldom seen the support car. It was supposed to be a couple of minutes' drive away from Burton's position. Not close enough to block an assassin. but close enough that if Dave supplied a, "Go, go, go," then it could still make a difference. So far as Mulder could tell, they'd done their jobs admirably, even though the call had never gone out.

In fact everyone had done an admirable job. Rather too admirable in the circumstances. It was hard to look like a temptingly soft target with a posse of armed guards prowling around.

The phone supplied by the Lone Gunmen launched into a rendition of the Star Wars theme. Mulder smiled as he picked it up. "Hi, where are you?"

Scully seemed startled by the question but proved her ability to read his mind even at a distance by taking the hint to keep it short and to use no names. "About a minute away."

"Wait at her gates, you'll be met." He hung up, hoping that she'd play along.

It had been his experience that forgiveness was easier to obtain than permission. The rule had been his motto for years at the Bureau and it certainly applied to Scully. Skinner would be surprised to see her, but would have no problem briefing her.

The gang's all here.

Or, at least, Mulder's contribution to the gang was here. Now, if only Carole Ashe would be as obliging.

"Ms Ashe. Thank you for seeing us at such short notice."

"You're most welcome, Assistant Director. In fact, I was about to contact you."

"Really?"

"Your Agent Mulder," Ashe directed the "your" at Scully, "has been sitting outside my house for the last two nights. My security people saw a strange car and called the police. They checked. He's there again now."

"I see. I wish I could say that I'm surprised. He's been under a lot of strain. Naturally, we've removed him from the case. But I'm afraid that once he gets an idea into his head, he's tenacious, he won't let go willingly."

"I can't allow it to continue. It's hard enough being married to one of those men."

Skinner let the "those men" comment pass, and kept to the kind of script, though not the wording, that he'd agreed with Mulder. "He's passionate, he can't just switch that off. However wrong-headed and poorly directed the passion seems."

"He's your man to control."

"We appreciate that. It won't happen again." Skinner sounded unconvinced, even as he said the words. "We'll talk to him, I assure you."

"I've already spoken with my lawyer."

"Naturally, I understand completely. Once again, I apologize. I just wanted you to know that we understand. You have my assurance of that."

They turned to leave, Carole Ashe adding a parting, "I understand, too, Agent Scully," as they walked.

Skinner waited until they were outside before turning to Scully. "She understands what?"

"She thinks that I need to be saved from Mulder."

Skinner nodded, unwilling to think too closely about what such "saving" might entail.

They returned to their cars, and drove up the eighty yards or so to meet Mulder, Skinner arriving a few seconds ahead of Scully. Mulder was standing outside the car, leaning back against its hood, the pale winter sunlight highlighting every hairline fracture of exhaustion in his face and the heaviness of his movements.

"Are you going to be OK?"

Mulder only opened one eye. "They've got a camera on us," he reminded Skinner.

"Did you know Scully was coming? Did you call her?"

No and no? Or, more honestly, yes and no. "I didn't call her, she found me."

Scully's car pulled up and as she stepped forward to stand at Mulder's side, Skinner touched her arm to remind her of the camera. She stopped moving and stood next to Skinner, tight lipped, her face dark with some unspoken regret.

Mulder folded his arms and a look of anger and pain crossed his features. "It works like this," he spoke quickly and quietly, "You keep together and you stay away from me, about a minute away would be ideal. I won't let you get any closer. I'll phone you as soon as I get any takers and I'll leave the line open. If I scream...." He didn't bother to finish the statement. If he screamed, then he'd probably be dead by the time they got there.

Scully's mouth drifted open. Skinner tried to think of a reply.

Mulder breathed out heavily. "The camera," he snarled.

Scully nodded, and went into full compassion mode. She shook her head sadly, a look of pleading in her features that Mulder found hard to handle even though he knew it was what he'd asked her for. She had to look as if she was asking him to stop, even as she confirmed her agreement to the deal. "As soon as someone comes after you, not once it's all over. Not the way you did with Dave Burton at that bar."

Mulder didn't quite get the meaning at first and then realized that it was a reference to his first men's room confrontation with Skinner. A hazard admitted to his minder only when Burton overheard the challenge, "Federal agent. Stop right there." Mulder acknowledged it for both Scully and the camera with a shrug that left his shoulders slumped even lower.

The AD was next man at the plate. The mother-hen, "Have you got a backup weapon... are you wearing body armor... don't you think you should get some sleep... do you mean a minute by car or a minute by foot," litany of questions contradicted by the "stand up straight and look at me when I'm talking to you, Agent!" body language that Skinner was using.

Mulder forced a kind of sullen compliance into his movements and got into the driver's seat trailing Skinner and Scully's vehicles back towards town.

It was now past lunchtime, so he went directly to the Headless Woman, dropping off the traitorous Bureau car at the office on the way.

He took a moment to consider his appearance, the dress suit trousers and business shirt, the leather jacket and Nike trainers. It amused him to imagine the reaction that Paul at The Sepulchre was going to provide.

It was a statement, and easy to take literally as a statement that the wearer's thoughts were as disordered as his dress. It was also a story, a story of a man in a hurry who'd left his suit jacket at work and refused to go home to change but who'd instead ransacked the trunk of his car for options. In short, it was ideal.

"Vodka and coke."

The bartender looked suitably unimpressed, and was even less pleased when Mulder decided that he'd take the two elements in separate glasses. "I don't like to see it drowned," Mulder had complained even though the man had yet to make a mistake.

The lunchtime crowd had been and gone. A couple of FBI agents who knew Mulder started to cautiously approach him before proving their detective skills were in full working order by backing away.

He wondered for a moment how Scully and Skinner were doing. Were they as bored as he was? He didn't envy them. Sitting in a car waiting for something to happen was, in Mulder's opinion, suitable for use as one of the circles of hell. At least they had each other. Perhaps he did envy them then.

He returned his half-undrunk coke, now heavily laced with vodka, along with the empty vodka glass back to the bartender. "Same again."

If Scully had any doubts about what was going on then she certainly wasn't going to let Skinner see them.

He tried to break the ice. "How did he know you would come?"

"He invited me."

"What?"

"The phone, it's a special device some friends of his were playing around with. It's easy to track."

"Did Mulder know?"

"I'm sure that he guessed."

"But he wanted to be tracked?"

She shrugged. "What about you?"

"I guess he invited me, too."

"How?"

"He didn't stop using the Bureau car."

"You had a bug on it?" Scully mused, impressed. Pleased as well, because if Skinner's invitation had been direct whereas she'd been left scratching, she might have been obliged to feel offended.

"Tell me about Carole Ashe."

Scully hesitated. Actually she'd be more interested in what Skinner had to say on that topic. "What did you think of her?"

"Scary lady. Did you hear her talking about 'those men' and 'your man to keep under control'?"

"It's so close to the surface now that it's hard to imagine how she made it so far. She was being touted to run for senate. Did you know?"

Skinner shook his head. Of course there was no reason why he should know. Until Mulder and Scully had gone to work, the men's pasts weren't thought to be nearly so important as their present.

Scully started talking again. "Carl Dobbs was an embarrassment to some of her potential allies."

"But having him die at the hands of some serial killer targeting gays wasn't going to be?"

"He wasn't the first victim. Mulder thinks the first one may have tried to pressure her, perhaps he even threatened to publicize Carl's story as a way of making her tone down her anti-gay remarks. Or at least that was how Ashe saw it. He may have just asked the wrong question. Pushed the wrong buttons. The paranoia may have already been too strong, just waiting for the final straw. So she took out a contract on him. When Dobbs started to suspect what she'd done, she had to kill him, too. Which was probably what she'd have liked to have done in the first place."

"And the others?"

"Mulder was still looking for witnesses. They could be Dobbs' exes, or maybe just men he knew while he was married."

"But why risk it? Sooner or later she was bound to get caught."

"Ask Mulder."

Scully knew the answer, or at least the eighty percent answer but she knew that Skinner had that much, too. Carole Ashe had clearly developed a taste for it. The willingness of some in the media and elsewhere, if not to "blame" the victims then at least to declare them as "self-selecting" or "other" would have encouraged her hunger. The failure of the acts to work as originally intended and make the world erase her marriage would have made her crave further vengeance.

A heady brew of revenge and hate, and a killer with the wealth to indulge her fantasy without getting her hands dirty. The power to play God.

The "look" had exactly the effect on The Sepulchre's owner that Mulder had anticipated. "Maybe you are straight." He raised his hands, apologetic. "Sorry, I can be an asshole at times. Is it this case - getting you down?"

"I can't talk to you about that."

"Anything I can do." Paul gently squeezed Mulder's shoulder before adding, "You look like you need a break."

Mulder smiled at the ambiguity as Paul wandered away towards the kitchen. A break was just what he needed. And if it didn't come soon, then it was doubtful that he'd be in any condition to see it. Short of camping out in front of Carole Ashe's house for another night, he didn't really see how much more provocative he could get.

Which in itself told him something vital. Being provocative came easily and if he was running out of steam in that area then other things had to be suffering, too. He glanced down at the shockingly healthy meal in front of him, and caught himself playing with its layout instead of actually eating it. Maybe he should get it wrapped and have it sent to Scully? Let her complete the dissection properly and perform a proper autopsy?

What were they eating? Scully and Skinner were sitting in the car and sharing - what? Pizza? Burgers and fries? Was Skinner a traditionalist - had he insisted on donuts? Had Scully insisted on bee pollen in her yogurt? Maybe he should send them some food out - Scully would love the fresh fish, and the impeccably cooked green beans, maybe she'd even indulge herself and enjoy a smear or two of the piquant sauce.

The idea got into him, rattled around, tickling places that were easily amused, catching on rough edges that sent painful jolts through his brain, provoked vivid images of offers made and imagined promises.

If he got out of this, when he got out of this, then maybe they should eat here one night. An act of remembrance for the dead, a wake for the living to tell them how to move on.

So nearly dead - maybe a wake was appropriate. He sighed, hearing the pun and perturbed by its warning. He surveyed the table, sensing that something had changed. Ah, a glass of nicely chilled zinfandel now stood inches away from his right hand. Who had delivered that? And when?

It was too hard to eat, not when everything tasted of panic and throat muscles tensed even when only offered air to breathe, let alone carefully spiced and sauteed mushrooms to swallow.

He was going to have to apologize, not fair for the chef to see a plate return this full with no explanation.

But that was life. Not fair. And now it was time for him to move on.

He scanned the room again. Wished that Paul would switch on another few lights. A couple had arrived. A table of four had left. When? He ran a hand across his forehead, returning seconds later with a napkin to do the mop-up job more efficiently.

If he'd been observed in here, then he'd failed to return the favor.

The night was young and the men's room was empty. He cleaned the clamminess from his face, ran a damp paper towel around his neck and under his collar to complete the job.

Not that it helped much, what he'd really like to do was get rid of the 30-odd layers of kevlar that were making their presence felt not just by rubbing and making him itch, but which were now starting to chafe and irritate.

Armpits and groin were complaining where three days of sweat had been wicked away from the bullet-proof vest. His own fault for sleeping in the car. At least he'd been able to shower a couple of times, and change undershirts, not that it felt like that. In any case that was hours ago and this kind of heavy-duty gear, which Kersh had insisted upon back at the start of this whole operation, was not intended for use as pajamas.

Peering into the mirror, he blinked hard to clear the tight dry feeling from his eyes, splashed water over them to assist the process, and swiftly stumbled back a few feet when he heard the door start to open.

Adjusting his hold on the gun that had never been far from his fingers in the last couple of days, not even as he washed, he prayed that there would be no challenge, not here, not yet.

The man didn't even notice him, or at least he didn't seem to. The tall figure just walked smoothly forward to assume the customary position in front of the urinals.

Mulder didn't move until he heard the smack of liquid on porcelain. Not changing his grip on the Sig Sauer even as he cautiously moved both gun and hand into his pocket, he backed slowly out of the room.

Turning sharply as he reached the other side for the door, he looked for a second man. Thought for an instant that he'd seen movement in the shadows, but couldn't quite pin it down.

Stop. Stop. Stop. His brain was screaming instructions that his body was refusing to obey. But the instructions were fuzzy and ill-formed so perhaps his muscles had the right idea.

Sucking up the panic for fuel he headed out of the bar. Almost went dizzy as the cold night air hit him, instantly regretted that he hadn't dried his hands or his face which were still wet from his attempted clean up. Perhaps he should have picked up some more clothes from home?

Did he want a confrontation in his apartment?

He took a slow breath, well aware that he had no evidence in today's adventure to think that there was going to be a confrontation at all. For all the adrenaline that had just streamed through his body, there was no guarantee that anything was going to happen.

There was no reason even to think that the man, who'd gone about his business in the men's room without fuss and without showing any sign of having noticed the madman with a Sig Sauer hiding behind the door, was anything other than a customer. Or that the thing that he'd caught moving in his peripheral vision was anything more than a phantom his own mind had created.

He waited, breathing carefully until his heart rate slid back to something more like normal, and went back inside. The men's room, inevitably perhaps, was empty. The man who'd used it was sitting alone at the bar. The shadows were all stationary again.

Short of going up there, cuffing the guy and dragging him outside at gunpoint there wasn't much that he could do to follow it up. And if he did that, and there was real danger in the situation, then wouldn't shadow man just start shooting?

He could, of course, prove a negative. Perhaps. If the man agreed to a strip search. But even then it could just indicate extreme preparedness, not innocence. The potential gain was nothing compared to the possible risk.

He saw no choice, took the scene as finished and headed for the exit. This time when he reached the street he kept on walking.

Scully would know that he was on the move. Neither of his watchers would be surprised by his destination.

The Apache Club was practically deserted, and would basically stay that way until at least eleven according to Nick, the party organizer. The dance acts wouldn't be performing before midnight. Which was, Mulder decided, something to be grateful for.

Nick shepherded him towards the back room where a couple of photo albums were already waiting on the desk. "Standard thing was to take a couple of photos of the cake or the honored guest or the cabaret act or whatever - but only if everyone knew when the shots were being taken so they could get out of the frame. I doubt you'll find much, but you're welcome to look."

The man who'd taken the photographs walked hesitantly into the room. Mulder profiled him without a second thought - the wallflower who would hide in the kitchen of a party but who became emboldened by having a camera in his hands.

Nick waved at the photographer. "Ken may remember some of the people. I never really paid much attention. I was more worried about whether the balloons would fall out of the nets at midnight. You know, the big stuff!"

Mulder nodded an acknowledgment and Nick left.

"Do you suppose we could look at these next door?"

"In the bar? If you want a drink, I could get one brought in here."

Mulder lied without hesitation. "I like to soak up the atmosphere of a place, get the angles right."

"Sure," the other man shrugged, "but it'll get loud out there."

They had pretty much a free choice of tables. Only about ten customers in a room that would look quiet with a hundred. Mulder chose a position to see and be seen. That was, after all, why he was here. The photos, and even Ken, were just window-dressing.

Mulder already knew or could guess everything that could be learned from those albums. He'd already primed Scully on most of it. Just in case.

They talked, or rather Ken talked and Mulder listened and occasionally prodded for more information. Ken would make a fine witness if the case ever came to trial. Carl Dobbs probably knew at least two of the men, and one of those might have been special.

"Ken, how do you think somebody might have found out about Carl's friends?"

Ken looked a little shaken by the question. Which bothered Mulder. A lot.

"Carl Dobbs wasn't officially out when he knew some of those men, was he?"

The photographer nodded, clearly with more on his mind than the question Mulder had just asked.

"Did he seem the kind of man who might boast? Were they?"

Ken shook his head and Mulder forced himself to focus, finally locked onto the likely source of the man's uncertainty. "Were there other photos? Ones that included Carl?"

"Not the kind you mean," Ken protested.

Actually, Mulder meant nothing more than the question he'd asked. If he was right, then a picture of Carl with anyone could merit a death sentence from Carole Ashe. It didn't require that the men be caught in some wanton sexual act.

"It was his thirtieth birthday party. He wanted photos of everything. I took photos."

"And he bought them? Do you still have copies?"

"Yeah."

Thirtieth birthday. About six years ago. Carole would have had a newborn baby. They'd divorced a year later.

"Do you remember anything else about that night?" The man shook his head, so Mulder tried again. "Maybe later, when he picked up his photos?"

"He was very drunk."

"Please."

"He said that life begins at thirty - that he was leaving his wife. That they hadn't... Not in years. Well, you know."

Not really, he wasn't sure he knew at all. Especially not with a newborn. Shit - what the hell? Well, he couldn't analyze it now. It could wait until they started to prepare the evidence for Carole's trial. Maybe that was why the divorce was handled so quietly, out of court?

As the time drifted forward, so the Club had started to fill. Just as Nick had promised.

Just as Mulder had promised himself, that meant that it was time to leave.

The night had a real bite to it now. The clear skies that had given the illusion of warmth in the day had guaranteed that the night would be icy and hard. The wind swirled, howled ominously through the alleyways, picking up paper and boxes, rolling empty cans along the street.

Mulder smiled, oddly amused to have wandered onto the set of a horror movie.

The night was young but the day was old, and the streets he chose, not really busy at any time of the day, were practically deserted.

An icy blast of air forced him to pull up his jacket collar. He looked at his hands, already a little numb with the cold. He really wasn't prepared for the weather. But then prepared was the one thing he wasn't allowed to be if this was going to be convincing.

He wondered if Skinner and Scully were better prepared. Of course they were. For one thing, they were in a car. Somewhere. Weren't they? Somewhere close, like they'd promised. Somewhere out of sight, like he'd asked.

Had they noticed that he'd left the bar?

He should have eaten something. Half a dozen cokes wasn't a balanced diet, even if the glasses of melting ice did offer a convenient way to return the undrunk vodka.

The vagrant in the doorway waved an angry bottle at him and Mulder was just glad that he'd crossed the road as soon as he'd heard the man mumbling in the shadows. An attempted mugging by a not too discriminating drunk on a night like this was not part of the plan. It was a relief to turn the corner.

He tapped the memory button of the Lone Gunmen's tale-telling phone and was relieved to hear how quickly Scully replied.

"There's a dark van following me. Don't come in yet. I'll keep the line open."

"Yet" proved to be a remarkably short duration. It was only seconds before he heard the van rev up and start to rumble in his direction.

A fast scan of his environment and his available options revealed only one.

As the van mounted the sidewalk, he froze. Turned. Startled rabbit in the headlamps of the oncoming vehicle. He heard the acceleration and stood his ground, then spun into a run. The engine note sang high and close and Mulder jumped, crash-landing at high speed and with little grace behind the street lamp.

Timing-wise it had been good enough. Enough to tempt them in, but not so late as to leave him dead. Not yet dead and not screaming either. After all, he didn't need to, not with the noise the van had made as it roared towards him. And definitely not after the squeal of tires and the crash of metal that had accompanied it an instant later.

The van stopped and backed up a little.

All the better to crush you with.

The passenger door opened and a telltale click announced that a weapon had been primed.

All the better to shoot you with.

Mulder lay stock still, huddled between the lamp and the trash can that must have already been overflowing even before the van sent it flying.

Soft slow breaths, the kind that don't make your aim falter. Quiet, nerveless heartbeats that don't make your focus wander. Slow, because there's all the time in the world, because this is the only world there is. Need a clear view, because only the first shot will count and the target's small.

Wait, wait, wait.

He shifted to track his executioner as he rounded the van, a tall thin figure in his early thirties. Younger than Mulder had anticipated. Assassins must be getting burned out faster these days.

The man stepped into the light, an air of cold contempt in his eyes and a Glock in his hand that was already homing in on his head and would soon have the angle to take the shot. And Mulder appreciated that, a mark of respect that the man knew that even a Fed gone off the rails wasn't a fool. That a shot to the chest would be stopped, and that a shot to the limbs wouldn't prevent a return of fire.

All a matter of position and angle and timing and squeezing the trigger just as soon as it all added up. Just about now.

First shot fired but the man seemed to keep on moving and Mulder wondered how that was possible with the amount of blood that was already dyeing the air misty red.

Another shot from a different gun and Mulder thanked Euclid for geometry, and the Mayor for lampposts, and thanked sheer luck and maybe a tenth of a second faster targeting for everything else, as the bullet sped harmlessly past him.

Mulder fired again, and this time the body fell backwards, and the mist of red turned into a spray. The man hit the ground hard and heavy, limbs flailing as he bounced in a final grotesque parody of deliberate movement.

The images of the world around him morphed in an instant from slow motion to full speed and Mulder started to feel the pain in his ankle from where the van, or the sidewalk, or his own weight had asked too much from flesh and bone.

Fuck. That settled it then. Don't bother worrying about whether to stand up. The injury would be less of a hindrance if he just stayed sitting down.

The van started to back out and Mulder had time to wonder whether that was good or bad. Concluded that it could only possibly be bad, because either Mr. More-Brawn-than-Brain would soon be back for another go or else he was about to hightail it out of the area. It really depended on that brainpower thing.

If he had any sense he'd be gone in an instant.

The van suddenly got the angle it wanted, careered forward off onto the street missing Mulder, who had thrown himself through another late sideways dive, by inches but crushing the corpse that lay only a few feet away.

A screech of tires and Mulder thought that bad thing number two was about to happen before a fast moving Ford sedan met the van and sent it off course again. A catastrophic sounding cacophony of wrenching metal and falling brick as the van hit the wall and got impossibly wedged in place by another street lamp.

"FBI." The voice was male and resolute.

Which supplied Mulder with a good enough excuse not to even try to stand up - no point appearing in somebody's sight line when the important work was already in hand. Besides, the view was good enough from ground level. Instead he just carefully rolled himself upright to sit back against the lamp that had saved his life. With any luck, he wouldn't need to move again until the ambulance arrived.

The driver proved that he had some brains by getting out of the van without argument and with his hands in the air.

"You OK, Mulder?" Scully shouted, as soon as the immediate crisis had passed.

Relatively, he decided. A twisted ankle and a few bruises weren't a high price to pay for the night's work. "No damage." Well, nothing that couldn't be fixed by morning.

She nodded, not actually taking her eyes off the assassin, her gun steady in her hands, its muzzle directed full center on its target.

Mulder watched as Skinner stepped forward to lock the cuffs. Scully remained in position until Skinner moved back to take over guard duty, leaving her free to call 911.

Convinced that the killer was secure in Skinner's custody, she walked over to her partner, surveyed him quickly, and found him healthy enough to wait. "Your hit-man?" she suggested quietly.

"I'd rather you didn't call him mine."

She nodded, automatically checking the dead body for vital signs even though the lack of them was obvious. Two bullets through the head and tire tracks across his chest. Nobody hobbled away from that, no matter how good the EMTs might be.

"Was he wearing a vest?" questioned Mulder, recalling his curiosity now as the adrenaline buzz faded. The world was running at normal speed again and his view, which had been blinkered and narrowed down to a few inches by the need to survive, had started to broaden back to take in the rest.

She tugged at the body's shirt collar, revealing battle dress kevlar.

Mulder nodded, reassured that he'd understood how close to keeping it professional the assassin had been, and glad that he'd pushed this hard. A few hours of reflection and the man might easily have had the sense to run away. Tonight had been their only chance.

Free of any moral duty to the killer she headed to her partner. "Your leg?" She sat down on the ground next to him.

"Ankle. Nothing serious."

"Just that you got run over by a van, and attacked by a pro?"

Mulder almost smiled at her angry tone. It was nice to hear that kind of indignation aimed his way. "I think you'll find the description fits your corpse better."

Her features softened as she finally convinced herself that none of the blood she could see was his. Shaking her head as she replied, "I'd rather you didn't call the corpse mine."

Mulder had been watching the interview with the man they'd captured, through the mirror glass wall, for a couple of hours. A tactical choice made to avoid distractions while they waited for the background checks to be completed.

It was time to move in.

Standing up straight as he pulled on his jacket, he carefully arranged the sleeve to show just the right amount of white shirt cuff. Glancing in the mirror to check his tie for alignment and hair for tidiness he pronounced himself fit for duty. He tested his ankle briefly and winced, tried again and told it to forget about complaining.

Glacially arrogant, picture perfect professional, he smirked briefly at Scully ruining the effect before flattening his features back to dead calm.

"Special Agent Fox Mulder has entered the room," announced Dave Burton for the benefit of the recording equipment.

Mulder chose not to think of Elvis, acknowledged Burton with a nod and a polite, "Agent Burton," but didn't even look at their prisoner. He chose instead to focus on the open file in his hand as he slid into position at the desk, selecting the chair directly facing the man.

Closing the folder and placing it carefully face down on the desk, Mulder finally looked at their captive. "Mr. Johnson. Or is it Mr. Alloway. Or should we say Corporal Fisher? I think I'll call you Jim. That's right isn't it - James Fisher, dishonorable discharge from the military police at Connaught Airfield. Taking bribes, wasn't it?"

"Fuck you."

"I really don't think you want to piss me off, soldier. I'm your best chance of staying alive."

"You've got nothing on me," the man responded, folding his arms in a gesture meant to spell contempt and control but with his face tightening in some less measured reaction.

Mulder's voice shifted from flat calm to a rumble of distant thunder. "Perhaps you'd like to explain where you got the money for the new Jeep outside your apartment?"

"None of your business."

"Oh, but it is. You think we need fingerprints and an eyewitness to build a case? You've been in the military too long. Welcome to the real world." Mulder shook his head slightly, as if suddenly remembering something, a cold smile playing across his lips. "A jeep? A jeep! How predictable is that? What were you thinking?" His tone tightened again, drill sergeant terse. "It's a man's life in the army. Want to show everyone how manly you are?"

"Fuck - you."

"Again? Is that a particular fantasy of yours? What's your problem, Corporal? I know you didn't rape them. How could you - it would have taken balls. And then there's the money. What cut did you get? What did he do - give you a monthly allowance? Was he pissed with you about buying the Jeep?"

"You've got nothing," less certain now, as if some raw spots were a little rawer than others.

"I bet Lieutenant Forrester used to tell a good story, before they threw the two of you out of the military. About the men he'd killed, the lives he'd saved, back when he was in," sarcastic edge to Mulder's voice as he moved in for the kill, "*black ops*? You must have been so disappointed when you saw the 'great' job he'd found for you."

Fisher was getting restless now, wriggling a little in his seat and saying nothing.

"You're a soldier. Tell me, where's the pride in killing men who can't fight back?"

Fisher looked around the room as if he was hoping to see an escape route, swallowing as his eyes found only armor-plated doors and Dave Burton's icily confident features.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you, soldier!" Commanding Officer brisk, Mulder didn't permit the smile of satisfaction to escape even when Fisher flinched. "Did you hold them down while he fucked them?"

"He never..." Fisher's voice trailed off and he made one last attempt to scowl at Mulder, before finally turning away from the look in the agent's eyes.

"Was Forrester good at giving orders?"

"He didn't give me orders."

"Just a word of advice." Mulder leaned forward slightly, conspiratorial. "I really think you should change your story before you go into court. Weak-minded individual obeying orders - you might get it reduced to life in prison."

"I want a lawyer."

Good. A few hours of stewing time and a little chat with a lawyer and Fisher would give them everything they wanted. Mulder was sure of it. "Be sure to listen to what your lawyer tells you, Jim."

Kersh hadn't invited Mulder to sit down and Mulder decided that despite the pain in his ankle it would be better not to assume anything. Kersh wanted him on his feet for a reason and Mulder thought he could guess exactly what the reason was.

"I won't insult you by asking for an explanation. Your report was very thorough."

Mulder shifted uneasily as Kersh circled.

"Just tell me why you did it."

Mulder swallowed, "I didn't have a choice. If I didn't force the confrontation, the killers would have run."

"Really. Let's just suppose that I accept that theory - why would that make your life expendable?"

This was not a conversation that he wanted to have, not with Kersh, not with anybody. "It was a calculated risk."

"Bullshit. I said I wasn't going to insult you, at least do me the same courtesy." Kersh's eyes were on fire as he paused for an instant in front of the agent. "I took a calculated risk when I allowed the team to continue with the wrong profile. I took another when I allowed you to work with only a wire to call backup. What you did was suicidal and the fact that you involved other people made it downright homicidal."

"They were there of their own volition."

"Do you have any idea what this has done to Agent Scully, to AD Skinner - to their careers, their reputations in the Bureau?"

Mulder didn't have a reply. They'd been there because they chose to be or perhaps just because they didn't have a choice.

"Can you imagine what it would have done to them if you'd been killed out there? Or to Dave Burton - he came in here sick with panic when he realized that we'd lost you - did you know that?"

No, he didn't, but he could have guessed.

"Dale Kendall blames himself. Says he should have anticipated what you'd do."

Kendall would, profilers always liked to imagine themselves as psychic, too. The only person Kersh had left off the list was himself and Mulder was pretty sure that was coming next.

Kersh didn't disappoint, his voice was a mix of barely restrained anger and disbelief. "I told you that you'd better be right about this UNSUB, because it was the only thing that would save you. Well, it has. You know as well as I do that I should throw the book at you for what you did, but my hands are tied. It would be bad PR!"

Kersh stopped again when he was bang in front of Mulder, and stood up straight and tall, waited there until Mulder responded by doing the same and looking him directly in the eye. The AD took a slow deep breath, made sure the words were crystal clear. "I won't have your death on my conscience, Agent Mulder."

Mulder shifted his stance taking a little weight off the damaged leg. Kersh clearly had more to say.

"I was in Special Ops. I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now. I won't allow you to kill yourself and use an order from me to ratify it. You're grounded. Background checks, cross-referencing chemical deliveries - fine. But if it needs fieldwork you'll hand it over to another agent. There will be no task forces, special projects or temporary reassignments. Do you understand?"

Mulder rather hoped that he didn't. "For how long?"

"Forever. For as long as you work for me." Kersh started to move again, finally breaking the connection to Mulder. "Dale Kendall has asked that you be reassigned to the profiling unit at Quantico."

"No, sir."

"No?"

"I won't go back to behavioral."

"So you're content to be a desk jockey?"

Hardly. But the whole business of returning to Quantico was a red herring. There was only one job Mulder wanted. "I want the X-Files back."

"Not going to happen."

Mulder shrugged. The X-Files would come back to him when the need for his involvement became obvious to everyone, when no one could stop him.

"I don't want your death on my conscience," Kersh said again. "I don't have a choice either."

Scully's arrival at his apartment was unexpected but right on time. Mulder opened the door at exactly the same instant as the microwave pinged in the kitchen.

"Hungry?"

"What is it?"

"Yesterday's frozen lasagna and the remains of the night before's Chinese take-out."

She arched an eyebrow, clearly unimpressed. "I think I'll pass. I just wanted to see if you were OK."

"All clear. Back at work on Monday."

"What did Kersh have to say?"

Too much? He could feel his appetite fading fast. "How about we eat out?"

"That an offer?"

He nodded the confirmation.

But Scully was already starting to back-pedal. "I'd have to go home and get changed."

She wouldn't, from where Mulder stood she looked beautiful. A black wasp of a suit that accentuated her figure over a creamy silk shirt with just the right amount of detailing to look feminine as well as professional. Not a high neck, he noted.

"You look great. Besides it'll be very dark."

The Sepulchre was very dark; the owner hadn't heeded Mulder's advice to switch on more lights. Though he did put an extra pair of candles on the table as a special concession.

Paul welcomed him like an old friend, supplying a brief bear hug of greeting before almost announcing to the other patrons that an honest-to-God hero had just arrived in the bar. But that plan was swiftly halted when Paul spotted that the "shut the fuck up" look that Mulder was giving him was absolutely genuine.

"You're Dana Scully. Gorgeous to meet you, he's told me all about you."

"Not all about you," Mulder assured Scully.

"I'm sure. He's very discreet. Dinner's on the house. The lobster's to die for." Paul stuttered to a halt, embarrassed by the phrasing. "And I'll send over a bottle of something cold and bubbly to wash it down."

"The owner," Mulder noted, in case it hadn't been obvious.

Scully smiled, added a "well duh" movement of the eyebrows to make it clear that that much at least was understood.

The slight smile scarcely left her lips as they ate their way through the menu, Mulder reassuring her that despite the taste, the food was worryingly healthy.

"How's the case against Carole Ashe?" he queried.

"Well you know that we got the deal with the lawyer working for 'brawn not brains' - but as of today, we may not take it."

"What!"

"Carole Ashe has been checked into a psychiatric unit."

"I'm sure she has."

"She's hardly spoken since I met her with Skinner."

"She spoke to her hired help."

"The telephone call to the killers' phone was logged at 42 seconds. So far as we can tell, that may be the last thing she said to anyone."

Forty-two seconds didn't sound like long enough to arrange for a death. But then, just how long did "Go, go, go," take to say? He licked some of the shellfish flavored butter that had dribbled along his thumb and changed the subject. "Was I right about the photos?"

Scully nodded. All of the victims appeared in Ken's special photos of Apache Club parties. An embrace, an arm around the shoulder, a dance, a hand held and a death sentence pronounced.

Scully looked embarrassed for a moment, but Mulder's eyes urged her on. "Dave Burton's still mad as hell."

Mulder nodded, that was only to be expected. "And Neill?"

She smiled, her face cracking past relaxed into the positively giggly, at least by Scully standards. "He's up in front of OPR."

Mulder frowned, curious. "Why?"

"One of the other agents hated the way he handled the case. Brought charges for derogatory, demeaning and sexually offensive language. Career killer stuff."

"At least I've only got another AIC who hates me then - not the next Assistant Director."

"I wouldn't worry too much about it, I doubt you'll see him again."

Mulder tilted his head to demand an explanation.

The bubbles from the wine tickled her nose and she was finding it hard to talk. With an effort, she took a deep breath to keep the giggles away. "How about sexist and racist remarks - regarding a meeting between you and Kersh!"

Too much. Mulder laughed now, wondering when he'd last enjoyed a meal like this. When he'd last laughed like this, looking through candlelight into the smiling eyes of a beautiful woman. If this was a date he'd be thinking about calling a cab by now.

Which stopped the laughter in its tracks. Scully was here as a partner and as a friend. He closed his eyes, and let the other thoughts drain away.

They were on the dessert before Scully tackled Mulder again. "What did Kersh say?"

"No field work."

"That's it?"

Mulder shrugged. She didn't need to hear the rest and he didn't need to remind himself about it. "He thinks that I damaged your career." He sat up straight in his chair, ready to take it on the chin.

She shook her head. "You did what you had to do." She paused for a moment and licked her lips before adding, "So did I."