Tuck and roll, tuck and roll, tuck and roll, tuck and–

When the drag of Skinner's weight finally counteracted the impetus of his forward motion, he came to a stop, his mouth full of snow, his glasses hanging from one ear, his head spinning from the wild spill he had taken almost halfway down the steep incline. He felt dazed and sick, though he hadn't been injured in the fall. He couldn't waste time on checking for injuries anyway, or on thoughts of the car or of his immediate situation: where the hell was Scully? Scully, her white face, her big scared eyes, falling away from him as he jumped out of the car. Had that click he heard been her seatbelt coming loose or the car hitting something?

Had she gotten clear?

He got up on his hands and knees, spitting out some of the slightly bitter snow, swallowing the rest. The car lay below him at the end of a long deep groove where it had gone off the cliff, but it had come to a violent stop at a mound of boulders, and the hood was crushed in all the way back to the windshield, which was crazed into a million veins, chunks of glass lying in rounded pieces like pale green diamonds in the snow. He hoped to hell she'd gotten out, because there was no way anyone could survive a crash like that.

His gaze fastened on something...he wiped his glasses hurriedly and looked again. From the back of the car, at an angle he couldn't determine, there was an outstretched arm, a strikingly white hand, the fingers widespread as if in agony.

The world careened sideways, and Skinner clutched at his stomach as if he'd been punched hard. Even before he could stand up, he was crawling towards the wreckage, then staggering, then running. He should have stayed in the car with her. He should have made her jump first. He should have made damn well SURE that seatbelt had come off–

Flashback: in town, in the car, his gruff command, "Put your seatbelt on."

He stopped and threw back his head, eyes clenched shut, and roared at the top of his lungs, "SCULLY!" accusing the earth, the sky, the world, but most of all, himself, because if only he'd trusted her, if only he'd trusted his heart, she–

"What?"

He opened his eyes and saw her making her way down the hillside towards him, brushing snow from her backside and looking considerably less shaken than he was. As he stared at her, somewhere in the distance a dog or a coyote, hearing the echoes of his cry, began to howl.

"Scully!" He began to slog up the hill as fast as he could in the thick soft snow, as she stumbled towards him, gravity shoving her forward and dragging him back.

"Oh, great," she said, "Now you've got the wolves after us."

When he reached her he scooped her up with both arms and swung her around with pure relief, then hugged her hard against him. "Skinner, put me down!" She had her hands on his shoulders and was squirming like a cat trying to escape a fond embrace. But she had to smile at the look of relief and delight on his normally taciturn face.

"Don't worry," she said, when he set her back on her feet, "You won't have to explain the loss of your prisoner to your superiors. But next time let me take my own damn seatbelt off; you had the buckle turned wrong way around."

Skinner drew back and gave her a stern look, then before she could say anything, moved forward quickly, ducking his head, and gave her a quick, firm kiss on the lips.

"Now I understand why you did that in the elevator," he said.

Scully's face was a study of comic surprise. His grin was quick and it flashed by fast, but it was as devilish as anything Mulder could come up with. Then she looked past him, at the wreck, and saw the arm and hand. "Oh my God!"

When they reached the Taurus, they saw that the arm was extending from the trunk of the car, the only part of the vehicle that hadn't sustained catastrophic damage. Still, Skinner had to strain to get it open. When it finally popped up all the way up, they gazed down on the very dead, very pale corpse of a man in his thirties, with a shockingly dark beard against his white skin. His body was contorted into a curled position, both arms up as if to ward something off...or to push open the trunk.

Scully said, "Oh, God, Skinner, he couldn't have been alive when we were driving, could he?"

"No, no...he'd have made some noise." He looked at her with a shudder of horror. "You're the doctor," he said. "You tell me."

Scully moved forward gingerly and began to examine the body. Skinner reached over her and dragged out the heavy backpack and sleeping bag that had been stuffed in with the dead man. Scully glanced at it oddly. There was a smaller nylon zippered bag under the body, and she pulled it out and handed it to Skinner as well.

"No, he's been dead awhile, I think," she said, with undisguised relief. "The cold has kept him from too much degradation. He could have died last night or last week. But it looks like this is the cold, either sustaining rigor mortis or causing it."

Rummaging through the backpack, Skinner had found a wallet and was shuffling through it, muttering. "Plenty of cash here. This was no robbery. Ah. Here we go. David Hollister, San Jose California."

Scully let out a short, sharp gasp. "Dave!"

Skinner looked up at her quickly. She had both hands over her mouth as if the one word had somehow escaped on its own. He said in a cool tone, "Scully, do you know this man?"

"No."

A light snow had begun to fall, and Skinner bent over the pack again, choosing not to pursue the matter for the moment. "There's a lot of useful equipment in here if we're stuck out here for awhile," he said. He zipped the pack back up and dipped his arms into the straps to shoulder the load. "Strap that sleeping bag on top for me, will you, Scully?"

She was staring at the dead man. She had the hood of her parka up, her red hair blowing in bright contrast against the pale snow, and when he saw her from that angle, something caught at his heart, a sharp, unexpected pain. Something so lovely, amidst all the violence and death. He said, "Scully, if you know something you're not telling me..."

By the quick look she shot him, it was obvious that she did. But she shook her head and hoisted the sleeping bag to strap it onto the top of the pack, and some of his annoyance eased when he realized that at least a lie showed so clearly on her face there was no mistaking it.

"Get the other bag there," he said, nodding, and Scully obeyed, picked up the small pack and strapped it around her waist, under her coat.

"What now?" she asked.

"We'll have to try to hike out of here, I guess. Let's get back up to the road, anyway. It's all downhill back into town, and maybe a truck will come along to give us a ride."

Scully nodded doubtfully. The snow flurries had stopped for the moment, and they stood as if marshaling their resources, their breath fluttering out towards each other like balloons in a cartoon strip, but blank and empty.

Skinner said brusquely, "Well, we'll freeze to death if we just stand around like this. We'll have to get it all sorted out when we get back to–"

Watching Scully, he saw an odd thing. A black line appeared on the shoulder of her jacket, and a little puff of feathers flew up into the air. Delayed by the distance and the snow and the altitude, the sound of the gunshot followed a second later.

"Get down!" Skinner made a dive and bore Scully down in front of him, hunching his body over hers. There was metallic noise and he looked up to see a bullet hole magically appear in the front door of the Taurus. He pushed Scully ahead of him around to the front of the car, into the cover of the rocks, to the tune of half a dozen more shots.

Shooter on the hill, up ahead. Smallish bore rifle, maybe a thirty thirty, a hunter's weapon. Flat report, not the boom of a shotgun or the firecracker sound of an AK-47.

Scully cried in dismay, "You're hit," and only then did he realize there was a sting like the lash of a whip on his neck, and he put his hand up and brought it away bloody. "I'm okay," he said. "Stay down."

He crawled around the front of the car and to the opposite side from the bullet holes, and pulled himself up to the passenger door to look through the windows. There on the hill a dark clad figure with a rifle was scanning the hillside. At that distance, Skinner couldn't see if there was a scope on the weapon or not. He didn't think so, but no point in taking chances.

He jacked open the door and climbed onto the seat, keeping low. There in the glove compartment, which had come open on impact, was his Sig, and two full clips, tucked snugly in his holster like a sleeping rattlesnake. He pulled the leathers out and slid back down and around to where Scully was.

Checking the clip, he said, "I don't suppose you know where your gun is."

"Not a clue."

He could have bitten his tongue; he remembered exactly where Scully's gun was when he'd last seen it, in a ziploc bag on Kersh's desk, bundled with the ballistics report and fingerprint results showing that it had been the gun that shot Mulder, and that it had been in her hand when last fired. Now, however, was probably not a good time to bring that up.

Skinner took his glasses off and rubbed them thoughtfully on the sleeve of his parka. He felt himself slowing down, his mind crystal clear now; he was under fire, and he had to protect Scully. Life could be reduced to the simplest of terms at moments like this. Kill the bad guy, save the girl. No problem.

Scully was staring at him. "You're not by any chance enjoying this, are you, sir?"

He put his glasses back on, looking up the hill. "No," he said, in an entirely unconvincing voice.

Another spatter of bullets. The shooter had stopped to reload. A rank amateur. Still...

He turned to Scully and said, "If we can make it down to that gully below, we should be okay. We'll have plenty of cover down there."

"Skinner, we'll freeze to death out there."

"Well, we sure as hell can't stay here."

She hesitated a second longer, then gave him a tight nod. "Okay."

He stood up, then, a perfect target, except that he assumed a marksman's stance and fired two rounds up the hill. He had the immense satisfaction of seeing something spark against the metal railing and the shooter duck back.

As soon as Scully jumped out of the cover of the boulders, the rifle opened fire again, but whoever was shooting was standing back now, using the crest of the cliff as cover, and couldn't hit anything except by accident. Skinner shoved the handgun into his holster and took off after her.

The downhill rush was faster than he'd anticipated; the angle was increasingly steep as the hill descended. Skinner knew the dangers of snow country from childhood visits to his uncle in Utah. When he was eleven years old he'd stayed up there one Christmas vacation with his parents, and watched his uncle break horses for a living. The owner of one of the horses had insisted on taking it out for a ride on a bright blue day, despite his uncle's strong warnings. When he didn't come back, Skinner and his uncle had out searching the only sensible way to search in the snow, with snowshoes and a pike to gauge depth. Skinner could still remember the way the man looked when they found him, both eyes black, broken nose, chipped front teeth. Apparently he'd been galloping the horse across what he thought was a smooth stretch of fresh snow, but it turned out to be a thin white covering frozen over a narrow gorge that went down thirty feet or so. The man had apparently died of the cold, not his injuries, and for a long time Skinner had had nightmares about how it must have been the last few hours of that man's life. They never did find the horse.

More dangerous, more immediate, was the danger of frostbite, the loss of fingers or toes or earlobes. Both he and Scully were wet, and the temperature would drop as night drew near. Their clothes would be meager defenses against the bitter freeze that was inevitable, and even as he slid down the slope he imagined his blood crystalizing into ice.

In the midst of these gloomy thoughts, Skinner's worst fear came true, and the snow simply gave way under them, and they fell. He shouted for Scully, and she gave a cry of fear as she plummeted down, but fortunately the fall was no more than ten feet, and they landed on a soft bank of snow next to a wide, paved road.

Scully was up first, and hurried to help him, the big pack counteracting his balance. On his feet, Skinner looked around, unable to believe their luck. There were wide, recent tire tracks on the road, and a line of telephone poles along one side of it that seemed to point the way to safety.

"Let's get the hell out of here," Scully said, he nodded wearily.

Two hours later, they had traveled about five miles. The snow that had come in playful gusts and flurries earlier now settled down to a somber, steady beat of wind and ice. The heat of their moving bodies had kept the freeze at bay so far, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that no one was going to come out in that weather, and that they couldn't keep going for much longer. If they stopped, they would die. Skinner knew that much for certain.

Twenty minutes later, Scully lurched into him. She had to shout over the wind so he could hear her, "I think I see something."

"What? Where?"

"Over there!"

She pointed with a gloved hand and he blinked painfully, holding his hand over his eyes to see what she was pointing at. Then he made it out; the angle of a roof, almost but not quite hidden in the snow. "It looks like a building," he shouted back. But Scully was already heading for it.

It was a building, a small linesman's shack, no more than fifteen by twenty feet, and looked long deserted from the size of the holes in the ceiling. They circled it until they found a door, but it was four feet deep in snow, and they got in through a broken window.

Once inside, both slid to the floor and leaned against the wall, groaning relief to be out of the wind and noise of the storm. Skinner took off the pack and unzipped it. He rummaged inside, brought out a candy bar and handed it to Scully, who tore the wrapper off greedily, then hesitated.

"What?" he asked.

"Is there another one?"

Skinner turned his head to look at her. "Yeah," he said, his voice oddly off key. "Yeah, go ahead, there's plenty of food in here."

Before he could finish the sentence, Scully was eating the chocolate, making rapturous faces and sighing. "I'm so relieved," she said. "I was starting to worry about that whole cannibalizing thing."

"Well, we're not out of the woods yet, so to speak." He chewed his candy bar slowly, trying to extract as much flavor as he could from it. "We need to start a fire and get out of these wet clothes."

"Into what?"

He reached into the bag like a magician reaching into a hat, and pulled out a thermal shirt. "A little small for me, a little large for you, but heaven sent," he said. "He's got about three of everything in here, too."

Scully looked around the room. It was almost dark inside, and the roof groaned with the weight of the snow. She drew her knees up to her chest; they couldn't see into the shadowy corners, and there was no telling what was in there with them.

"Here." Skinner was handing her up the shirt, a pair of thermal long johns, and some sweatpants, heavy with insulation. "You can change over there. I won't look."

Skinner's eyes had begun to adjust to the gloom as he changed into long johns and sweatpants that were too big for him in the waist, but the right length by an inch or two. There was actually a fireplace in the room, but it had been packed with snow long ago, and was useless. There were the remains of what looked like a bunk bed, just a headboard and some springs, and a rattan chair, and a lot of empty jars and cans and beer bottles strewn around. He imagined hunters using the place as an overnight respite; it was too far out of town to have the usual marks of an abandoned building–empty syringes and full condoms.

In a heavy thermal shirt and her own parka, the sweatpants rolled up half a dozen times, Scully looked like a little icicle. The cold and exhaustion had begun to take its toll on her, and he remembered she'd been drugged for the past several days. Well...according to her.

Skinner rolled out the sleeping bag and pulled down the heavy duty zipper. Here at last was a really useful piece of equipment. He had found some long burning candles and matches, and had lit one and stuck it on the floor. The small flame burned bravely, illuminating all but the furthest shadows.

"Come over here," he told Scully. "You'll be warm in this."

For once she didn't argue, but climbed into the bag and let him zip her up.

"Mulder has this theory about cold and sleeping bags," she murmured drowsily.

"What theory?"

"Never mind."

"Try to get some sleep, Scully. We may have to hike out of here in the morning."

"What are you going to do?"

Good question. He shrugged. "I'll let you know when I figure that out myself."

*************************

Late afternoon faded into evening. Scully dozed, woke, dozed again. She was exhausted. Hungry, too, but unwilling to get out of the sleeping bag to eat anything.

She rolled over and saw Skinner hunched against the wall, his knees drawn up, his arms around them. He was staring bleakly into the candle flame, shivering.

"Oh, for God's sake," she said, pushing her hand up through the opening in the bag to get to the zipper. "Get over here."

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next: Chapter Seven: Warm Heart