A Cold Day in July

Chapter Three: The Chase

by jordan

It took Skinner all of five minutes to accept the fact that Scully had made a run for it. Not to understand what had happened; that came in a flash of crystal clarity. But to actually believe it took several sweeps of the second hand, while he walked back to the car and got in, shut the door, turned on the engine. There was only one antidote to the pain that had begun to seep into his bloodstream like poison, and that was rage. Pure, unadulterated, betrayed, RAGE.

With a savage curse he jammed the car into gear and spun out of the parking lot. The Taurus struggled for traction, its rear tires smoking on the wet pavement, and then it fishtailed out of the lot and over the esplanade with a transmission-jolting thump, and onto the road. He swung around to the back of the motel and blazed down the street, swinging wide and spinning to the right, almost making a bootlegger's turn in his haste to u-turn down the second street. As he hit the end of that block and spun again, he saw that the third street was lit by the front sign of an all night drugstore, and there was Scully, just disappearing around the corner and into an alley.

Skinner drove the car to the opening of the alley and parked to block it, just in case. He got out and slammed the door so hard that it caught the seatbelt and swung open again. He made no attempt to be subtle about anything. In the shadows between the two buildings, he caught a glimpse of her red hair, the plaid shirt bouncing as she ran. He set off at a steady pace, no hurry, the way he'd warm up for a run, knowing that she was bolting and using all her energy in the first sprint.

The chase was even shorter than he'd anticipated. The alley led to a dead end, a chain link fence. There were some boxes, a dumpster, a tipped over trash can strewing the ground with litter. Scully was at the far end, just reaching the fence.

Surely she wasn't going to...

He should have known better. She made a frantic leap and seized the chain link, pulled herself up. It was a ten foot climb, at least, with razorwire at the top. She'd have made it, too, if the rain hadn't slicked the wire so that she had trouble finding footholds.

Skinner caught up to her and jumped up to grab her ankles. His hands closed on the bare flesh, and he jerked her down. She gave a cry that pierced him like an arrow, and fell back. He meant to catch her with his body to break her fall, but she turned like a cat in midair, and came down knees first, slamming into him with unexpected force.

They went down together, her sharp bones digging into his midsection, and he felt the air knocked out of his solar plexus with an involuntary, "Oof!" He doubled up, clutching his stomach, and Scully rolled like a quarterback, gained her feet, and started running towards the car.

In the few seconds it took him to recover and get up again, Skinner lost ground. Scully reached the other end of the alley, bent to check for keys in the open car, but he'd taken them with him. She simply used the floorboard for a foothold, hoisted herself onto the roof, and slid across on her stomach.

But by then Skinner was in full pursuit again, and he slid over the roof with far more grace and determination than her terrified leap displayed. He landed fifteen feet behind her, ran her down in the street, and tackled her at the knees, bringing her down hard in the puddles along the curb as he gripped her thighs and rolled over with her.

Amazingly, she still tried to fight him. It was more a slapping of hands against his body, highly ineffectual, but it infuriated him so much that he reached around behind him and pulled the handcuffs from his hip case, and wrestled her over on her stomach, twisting her arms up and back with practiced ease, cuffing her wrists together behind her.

He rested, panting, for a few seconds, with his knee in her back, careful even then not to put too much weight on her, until she gave up all at once and lay with her cheek in the mud, breathing in sobbing hard plumes of white smoke.

Then he got to his feet and grasped the handcuffs and jerked her upright. She gave a cry of pain and he hardened his jaw against it, pushing her back towards the car with the short, sharp prods between her shoulder blades he would have delivered to anyone he had to fight in the streets and drag back to jail like a common criminal.

Scully slid inside the car when he opened the door, no more than a wet bundle of clothes and defeat, and slid as close to her door as she could, pressing her face against the window glass. Skinner was too furious to speak, too furious to ask her about the holes in her story, how she could have made a call to Byers if her phone was out that morning, why she didn't remember renting the suite when he had seen the imprint of her body in that other bed, on the filthy sheets: WHO THE HELL HAD BEEN WITH HER?

His breath, like hers, came in short bursts of steam, and he wrenched the steering wheel too hard as he spun back around, clipping the rear quarter panel of the car against the brick wall of the alleyway. It had been his idea to switch cars carefully so no one would follow him, and the cost of that little clip was going to come out of his own pocket.

Back at the motel, he got out, slammed his door shut, went around to Scully's side and jerked her door open. Every movement he made was just short of violence, the rage trembling in a blazing mist around him. He marched her back across the parking lot like a real prisoner, his fingers closed hard around her upper arm, hard enough to leave a bruise. Their shoes squelched on the walkway and the occasional gusts of sleet burned their bare faces as they went back to the door he'd left ajar, and he pushed her inside and kicked the door shut behind him.

Scully stumbled, and half collapsed into a chair. Skinner stripped off his wet tie and jacket and threw them onto the bed. He was too angry to look at her, too angry to even begin to ask her any of the things he was determined to find out before this night was over. The truth. She would by GOD tell him the truth this time.

He went to the dresser and put his hands on it, bent a little at the waist, and stared at himself in the mirror. He was white with fury, his eyes dilated, lips almost blue from the cold and from being compressed so tightly. He could see her reflection in his periphreal vision but still had to fight for control so hard he couldn't look around.

He heard his own voice, hoarse and unfamiliar. "I thought I could trust you," he said. "I guess I was..."

Whatever he was going to say faded out of his mind when he raised his eyes to look at her at last. His own body in the glass, wearing a white shirt, looked so big, so solid, the shoulders taking up the full breadth of the cheap little hotel mirror, the cords of his neck standing out; he looked like a bull with his head lowered to charge. But just beyond his arm, behind him, she sat looking back at him, soaking wet, her hair plastered to her skull, eyes enormous and black with fear and despair.

Her clothes...soaking wet...with her arms twisted behind her, her breasts jutted against the sodden plaid shirt, and he could see her as clearly as if she were naked. The long column of her throat, that unexpected swell of breasts...naked... Naked and helpless and afraid. Of him.

Something primal and ugly rushed screaming through Skinner's bloodstream; in a split second he was so aroused he could feel his erection throb like a toothache against the fabric of his trousers. He was literally afraid to blink because he knew that if he did, the fantasy would be there, whatever fantasy it was, and terrible and sick as it might be, there was the chance that he wouldn't be able to look away from it.

Neither dared to move for a long, agonizingly clear moment.

Then a slow trickle of blood slid down the corner of Scully's mouth to her chin; she had bitten her lip all the way through, either in the struggle or now, now, because of the monster she saw in front of her, and the spell was suddenly broken.

Skinner reached into his pocket and got the carkeys and fished the handcuff key loose; his hands were clumsy because they were shaking so hard. He went to Scully and winced when she winced away from him. He knelt in front of her and reached around her with both arms to click the key in the lock and free her wrists of the handcuffs, which he let fall impotently on the floor while he took her hands and chafed her wrists where the bite of metal had left red welts.

Surprisingly, Scully sagged forward, against him. He let himself close his arms around her, trying to ignore the press of those breasts through his own wet shirt, and held her, hard, his eyes squeezed tight, his chin on the top of her head. His shivering was so powerful she made a small motion as if to comfort him, a sort of consolation pat on the shoulder. Under any other circumstances, it would have been funny.

No matter what else he was, he wasn't this. No matter what else they made him do, through blackmail or deceit or the love of his country, they couldn't make him do this.

"Scully," he murmured. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

She clutched at the front of his shirt with both hands in a brief, convulsive gesture, and slowly pulled away from him, nodding, her eyes on the floor.

"I'm just...so..scared..." she whispered.

"Jesus." He straightened, looked around the room like a man lost and taking his bearings. He strode into the bathroom, looking for a tub, but there was only a small aluminum shower stall. He pulled a towel from the rack, took it back to her. "You need to get out of those wet things," he said. "Get into the shower, get warm." His voice struggled for authority, and found it. "Get yourself together and then come talk to me. We can work this thing out. But Scully..."

At the sound of her name, she raised her eyes to his face. He saw the bruise on one cheek, and wished he was dead. "Scully," he repeated, in a softer tone, "Don't be afraid. I won't let anything happen to you. I..." he made sure she was looking at him, made sure she understood that he knew he was one of those things that could happen to her. "I won't let ANYTHING happen to you," he promised.

She nodded and got up; she had to hold onto the back of the chair to do it. He couldn't watch. He went through the bathroom into the adjoining room and closed the door behind him.

The other room, which he had only glimpsed before, had more of her things in it. There on the pillow, a red hair. There by the wall, a suitcase. Yet it felt curiously empty, as if ...he couldn't put his finger on the feeling. There was too much else on his mind.

He sat on the bed and after a moment leaned forward with his head almost to his knees. From the bathroom there was the squeal of the faucet, the sound of running water. He wasn't afraid of Scully trying to get away again. He'd seen the toll the struggle had taken on her, the smear of exhaustion under her eyes, the stiffness in every movement.

Sitting hunched over on the bed, he clenched and unclenched his fists repeatedly, hating himself for what he had done. He would NOT turn her over to the enemy, he would NOT betray her. He would be neither the devil's advocate nor the devil himself. And he would not be Mulder, with his fist raised against her. Let her take a pistol and point it at his head. Nothing would make him hurt her again.

Nothing.

He got up, moved restlessly around the room. It was exactly like the other room, except for the things in it. Why this room seemed empty, and the other room full of Scully, he couldn't quite figure out, but the sensation was strong. Calmer, more in control of himself, he began to look around for something he could hand her through the door to wear. He opened the top drawer of the wobbly dresser, looked inside.

There were packages of pantyhose, the kind that came in aluminum looking tubes, and socks, folded together. Brand new socks, thick and warm. Some had price tags still on them.

Skinner stared at them for a few seconds. Then he went to the closet and opened the door. Inside, hanging on the rack, was a heavy insulated jacket, expensive Gore-tex, the kind advertised in the higher end catalogues for campers and hikers. Big, but only because it was sold oversized; it would definitely have fit Scully.

Below it, hiking boots for small women's feet. High grain leather, hook laces to the ankle. And another suitcase, or whatever they called those women's things they carried their toiletries around in. Why hadn't she taken it into the bathroom with her when she took her shower?

Slowly, reluctantly, Skinner knelt in front of the toiletry case. He picked it up; it had surprising heft for something the size of a purse. He unzipped it and pulled the top up.

Inside, nested neatly among loose lipsticks and bottles of bright red nail polish, were bundles of cash, rubber banded together in brown wrappings fresh from the bank, in demoninations of hundreds. At least, at a casual glance, twenty thousand dollars' worth of cash, innocently sleeping in the dark of Scully's closet.

Behind him, he heard the shrill scream of the water being turned off.

And then silence.

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Chapter Four: The Attack