Dana Scully was late to work on Monday. It was unusual enough to warrant a surprised look on Mulder's face when she came in at ten.

"I was getting worried," he said.

"Sorry." She offered no excuses and he didn't ask for any. She took her seat at her desk and eyed the stack of folders he had left there. "Is this all new stuff?"

"No, I already went through the dailies. I'm looking at cases from the last couple of years."

She glanced up, feeling an exasperation so familiar it didn't even register as annoyance. Mulder never seemed to think these things all the way through, or else--more likely-- he just didn't give a damn. In theory it would be great to solve some of the old cases. And once he got on the track of something, Mulder was like a bloodhound; he'd keep his nose to the ground to the exclusion of all else until he found what he wanted. But why old cases? Didn't he care that each one solved would only garner increased resentment from the agents who had initiated the files, and then had given up when all leads died? Didn't he realize that it only made them more enemies in the Bureau?

Probably he did. He just never seemed to feel the need for approval from others the way she did. It was one of the things she admired most about him, and disliked most about herself, and there was no point going over an argument he was incapable of understanding. Lately it had begun to grate, that's all. Her mind had been on other things, and she didn't have the energy to fight her own battles and his battles too.

She sighed and picked the folders up to stack them neatly.

Mulder, watching her with a troubled expression, said, "You okay, Scully?"

She nodded. Fine, Mulder. Just having trouble sleeping, so much so that I had to take a pill last night at three in the morning, and overslept the alarm as a result. But if she said that, he might say, Why can't you sleep? And then she would say...ummm... Well, Mulder. I was thinking of our boss. Actually I was trying not to think of him, which sometimes works during the day, but then at night I close my eyes and remember the red burst of light when he drove into me and made me lose my mind. The way he touched me in places I hadn't even considered as erogenous zones. I remember his mouth and his hands, those long thick fingers prodding, hard, but so incredibly sensitive that if I even took a breath the wrong way he would ease up. And I try hard to forget the way it was for us then, when he made me feel something that made orgasm a pale shadow in comparison. So much so that I cried afterwards, the way anything so achingly beautiful brings tears to your eyes.

And since we are such good friends, Mulder, and I know I can tell you anything, let me tell you that although I am no longer sore, thank God, I remember the hard thick length of him inside me, and in the night that haunting afterimage makes me feel empty in a way I cannot begin to describe. He stretched me out , not THERE so much (well, there, too, actually) but in my spirit, or whatever that place is that had shriveled like a raisin after all these years of hopelessly loving you.)

And now, although I love you so much my heart could break with it, all I can think of is how to recover from those experiences. It was like a shot of pure heroin; poison, but heaven, too. I know he won't touch me again, won't call me, won't make any move in my direction. Somehow we both understood that when we left Winslow and came back to work. If there is ever to be a next move, it will have to be mine. And we both know that isn't going to happen.

Mulder was staring at her.

"What?"

"You just looked so sad there for a minute," he said. "Are you sure everything's okay?"

She shrugged. "I'm just tired. Maybe I'm coming down with something. I'll be all right."

In a year or two.

"Well, drink some coffee or something, because Skinner wants to see us in his office at eleven. He got the report you faxed him, but he says we need to fine tune it."

Scully's shoulders twitched with an involuntary shudder. Mulder smiled at her. "Ah, it won't be so bad, Scully. He's mellowed out a little since Winslow. And he does owe you his life now, doesn't he?"

Of course Skinner was just doing his job. It would have seemed odd if he hadn't asked them to confer with him over a report as serious as the one in which agents and civilians had both been killed, and probably the CIA had been involved. Wording had to be exact, but ambiguous enough in case one day there were any questions. After all, no one knew what had happened to Agent Young, and Agent Rupert Smith's death had looked like a suicide, and there were no records on their suspect because someone had simply wiped the books clean.

But she did not want to see him. In the next hour she thought of a hundred lame excuses to get out of the meeting. But at five minutes to eleven, Mulder stood up and put on his jacket. She got up and went to him, straightening his tie absently. He reached down and caught her hands, making her eyes focus on his.

"Scully, you know you can talk to me, don't you?"

She smiled at the gentle concern in his voice, and at the fact that she was only just now registering--his tie had blue clock faces against a black background, atrocious even for him. And then the smile turned to real amusement as she pictured the expression on his face if she blurted out, "Skinner screwed me, Mulder. Three times. And I loved it."

But she didn't say that, and Mulder smiled back at her, and they went up to the A.D.'s office together.

Skinner was at his desk when they came in, looking down at the report in front of him, one hand shading his eyes against the harsh flourescent light overhead. He glanced up briefly; he was wearing his glasses, so the light reflected off them from that angle, and his face gave nothing away.

"Come in and have a seat," he said, waving them towards the much used office chairs in front of his desk.

Mulder and Scully took their usual positions. Mulder slumped; Scully sat upright with her hands folded in her lap, her legs crossed at the ankles.

Skinner said, "Overall, this looks like a good job, Scully."

"Thank you."

God help me through this she prayed. I have sat here a hundred times and never had these thoughts, these feelings. If I get up and this chair is damp, Mulder's going to suspect something.

Skinner, cool as lemon ice cream, acted as if nothing had ever happened, while she sat there, her wrists aching with memory and desire. He said, "I think I'd change the part where Mulder loses his weapon. I'd change it to something like they took it from him at gunpoint."

She nodded. Their eyes met, and this time she did not look away. His mouth was set in a straight line, his face guarded, a mask. She hoped hers was too.

When Mulder spoke, they both jumped a little. "Who'd believe that?" he asked.

It was a joke. Scully tried to smile, but Skinner just looked at him blankly.

"And this part about flying up to exhume Baxter's body. You could leave that out. Just say that since our local contact was no longer available, you and Mulder wanted to interview local area people, talk to the motel manager, things like that."

"How would I explain what you were doing?" she asked.

How indeed.

"Leave me out of it entirely," he said. "As far as anyone here knows, I never went to Winslow. I took a couple of sick days off last week; that's all the record has to show. We can cover our tracks every bit as well as Baxter's people covered his."

She arched an eyebrow. "So you weren't even there?"

He looked at her deliberately. "As far as I'm concerned, Agent Scully, those three days never even happened."

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

When they were gone, Skinner got up from his desk and went to the window. He spent more and more time these days staring out from this position. He had not meant to wound her. He'd seen the flicker of pain in her eyes; it had been like throwing a ball hard against a wall, and almost being knocked down by the rebound. That was the worst moment, the nearest he had come to losing control.

But he got through it. One day at a time, old man, and you'll get through it all. But God the next few months were going to be difficult. His taste for other women had soured, and his self-respect had taken a beating. He had spent every night for a week going to his club, swimming until he could swim no more, playing handball so savagely he had quickly exhausted or intimidated his partners, lifting weights until his whole body screamed for relief. And still ended up spending the late hours with a tube of Astroglide and the hot memories of her underneath him, the wild flex of muscles as he thrust into her, the soft agony in her voice as she said Skinner, Skinner, oh, Skinner, a recording that played back endlessly in his head each night.

There was no reason for them to see each other at the office, outside of these brief meetings. No reason to call each other. No reason for him to show up at her apartment, drunk and out of control, to drag her into the bedroom and fuck the living daylights out of her. Just fantasies. Just wishes on falling stars. Too late; his star had already fallen. Their brief time together was over, and that was that.

He was a strong man. He'd survived a war and the death of his wife. He would survive this.

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

"Scully," Mulder said, prompting her to reply with "Hmm?" without bothering to look up; "Hey, Scully, look at this."

She did look up then, her auburn hair falling away from her tired eyes, to see him holding up an eight by ten photograph of a row of storefronts.

"What am I looking at?"

"Senator Dolf Young's teenaged daughter vanished about a month ago. We got the bulletin in our box. Remember?"

Scully shook her head. Pictures like that were too disturbing; she turned milk cartons to face forward, and threw away flyers that came with her junk mail, saying, HAVE YOU SEEN ME? Each of them had an echo of grief so intense she had simply gotten into the habit of looking the other way.

"Witnesses say the girl was seen going into a pawnshop right here." He pointed.

Scully lifted her shoulders and dropped them again. "So?"

"Right HERE, Scully." He got up and went to her, laying the file on the desk in front of her. She scanned the photo. A nameless building, a liquor store, a store with a sign advertising bailbonds, so presumably it was somewhere downtown, near the courthouse. There was a space that looked like an out of focus vacant lot, and then a video rental place with a big sign that said OUT OF BUSINESS. Then just the edge of the photograph.

Mulder tapped his finger on the empty space between two buildings. "Two kids swear she went into a pawnshop right here."

"There is no pawnshop there, Mulder." She tilted her head at him, puzzled.

Mulder took other file folders from his desk and held them against his chest so he could look down as he thumbed them open. "I have five reports of people missing in Willmington, Delaware, five in Charlotte, North Carolina, five in Baton Rouge. And two in Houton, Texas. All cases where someone was seen going into a place called Issie's, and never coming out again."

"I'm confused," she said. "You think a pawnshop owner or someone working in pawnshop somehow injured or killed these people?"

"No, Scully. Don't you get it? In each case, the pawnshop itself, the location, proved a dead end. I've been reading these old files, and I'm starting to see the pattern here." He dropped the files on her desk, one by one. "Chicago, four years ago. An alleyway between two buildings. Colombia, four years ago. Vacant lot. Each time, five people reported vanishing into that area, possibly into that shop. And no shop there. Until now." He wagged a final eight by ten glossy in front of her. "Until this, from Houston."

"Please God, not Texas," Scully said.

"Don't you think that's pretty weird, though?"

"Mulder, thousands of teenagers go missing each year. Buildings get torn down all the time. Both are signs of our increasingly impermanent, highly mobile society."

He went on as if she had not spoken, and from deep inside her she heard the faraway baying of the hound as he smelled his quarry. Mulder was ONTO SOMETHING and now the fury of hell couldn't dissuade him from the chase.

"Each disappearance occurred on a Sunday, when surrounding businesses were closed. And each time it was a pawnshop with the same name. Issie's. But here's the best thing, Scully." He was a little breathless, and his words had run together into a monotone, the way he talked when something ignited the genius in him, the leaper of conclusions, the intuition she had long ago learned to listen to no matter how crazy it first sounded.

So she looked at the picture he gave her. It was a blurry shot of a building with three balls hanging from a sign above it, the traditional pawnshop symbol, though there was nothing else to identify it. The large block letters "ISSIES" might have been part of some other word; they seemed oddly formed, with no serifs on the letters, and the E looked like a trident, like a Greek E.

Mulder handed her a magnifying glass and she leaned down to peer through it. A row of people seemed to be standing behind the glass, as indistinct as angels in a cloud formation. But one had her hand on the glass, and her mouth open as if shouting, and when Scully looked hard, she could see a face.

Mulder laid the bulletin of Young's missing daughter beside it. The black and white photo had clearly been posed for, and the makeup was professional, one of those studios that made people look better than they'd ever looked before, or would ever look again. But as Scully looked from the bulletin picture to the photo of the face in the pawnshop, she had to nod. "Looks like Young's daughter. Has anyone checked it out?"

With a flourish, Mulder presented his piece de resistance, a final photo of two tall buildings with a wide alley between them. Scully shook her head. "I don't get it. I don't see--Oh."

The second picture was identical in every way to the first, except that where the pawnshop had nestled so closely between those two tall buildings there was now only litter and overgrown weeds, the look of long neglect in an empty alley.

"This is the same location--but where's the pawnshop?"

"Ex-ACT-ly my point," he said. He took his coat from the rack and looked at her invitingly.

For what felt like the thousandth time, Scully got up and followed him out the door.

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