Agent of Chaos (The X-Files: Origins #1)(16)

“Words and images, Fox. Not people.”

“Not faces,” Mulder corrected her. “And we’re talking about an article of clothing and a stain.”

“You can’t remember people’s faces?” Gimble asked, confused.

Phoebe sighed. “Of course he can, just not any better than the average person. A photographic memory doesn’t apply to everything across the board. That’s a myth,” she explained. “But he’s right. He’d never forget the details on someone’s clothes.”

“Then you believe me?” Relief washed over Mulder.

“It’s not a matter of believing you.”

He told her the most important part. “Someone dressed the dead boy in the missing girl’s pajamas, which means they were kidnapped by the same person. But the police haven’t figured it out. They don’t realize the cases are connected.”

“Let it go, Fox,” Phoebe said softly. “It won’t bring Samantha back.”

“Bring who back?” Gimble realized he was missing something, but Mulder and Phoebe didn’t fill him in.

“An eight-year-old girl is missing.” Mulder tried to sound normal, like he’d pulled himself together and now he was just stating the facts. Not fixating.

“I know what you’re thinking, Fox.” Now Phoebe was the one who sounded panicked. “Don’t do it.”

“Do what?” Gimble asked.

“The police will think you’re crazy,” she warned.

“But I know something they don’t.” Mulder’s voice rose.

“Just wait until I get there tomorrow night,” she pleaded. “I’ll help you figure this out. I promise.”

He kicked the leg of the kitchen table. “Fine. I won’t go.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” Phoebe sounded relieved.

“Okay.”

Gimble made it back to the kitchen before Mulder had time to hang up the phone. “I feel like I joined a quest in the middle of the game, and nobody will tell me what’s going on.”

Mulder headed straight for the front door. He grabbed his car keys off the hook on the way out. “I’ll explain in the car.”

“You told Phoebe you weren’t going wherever the hell you two were talking about.” Gimble followed him to his parking spot.

Mulder unlocked the car door. “I lied. I’ll apologize tomorrow.”

Gimble hopped in fast, clearly worried that his friend might take off without him. Mulder threw the AMC Gremlin into reverse and flipped a U-turn like he was driving a Corvette instead of an orange tin can.

“So where are we going?” Gimble asked.

Dread churned in Mulder’s stomach. He didn’t want to do this, but he couldn’t stop himself. “The police station.”





CHAPTER 8

DC Metropolitan Police Department, Third District Precinct

7:00 P.M.



“So who’s Samantha?” Gimble asked from where he sat slouched in the passenger seat of Mulder’s car.

Mulder’s chest tightened, and he almost unleashed on his friend. But how could he when Gimble was riding to the police station with him, even after hearing Phoebe warn Mulder not to go? They had become friends because of their mutual love of Star Trek and the TV show Wonder Woman, because they both thought Lynda Carter was hot. But Gimble had turned out to be a real friend.

And back then, I didn’t even know he had a thing for Farrah, too.

The only person aside from Samantha who had ever trusted Mulder enough to follow him anywhere was Phoebe. Two years ago, when Wendy Kelly was found at a gas station after being missing for three and a half years, Phoebe had ditched school to drive to a hospital in New Haven with him. He had hoped Wendy Kelly could tell him where to find Samantha. Mulder made it all the way to the girl’s hospital room door before a doctor intercepted him and kicked him out.

By the time Mulder found a way to get out of the house again and drive to the Kellys’ house in New Haven two days later, Wendy and her family were gone. The only thing they left behind was a bag of sunflower seeds spilled on the porch.

If Mulder was dragging Gimble to the police station with him, the least he could do was answer his friend’s question.

“Samantha is my younger sister. She disappeared on November 27, almost five and a half years ago. She was eight when it happened.” A knot formed at the base of his throat.

And she’s out there, somewhere, waiting for me to find her.

Gimble stared at Mulder, stunned. “I don’t know what to say. I mean … I’m sorry, but that doesn’t seem like enough, you know?”

Mulder gave him a small nod.

“When you say she ‘disappeared,’ what does that mean exactly?”

It was the story Mulder had replayed over and over in his mind—the story he still had nightmares about.

“Forget it,” Gimble said quickly. “You probably don’t want to talk about it.”

He didn’t. But whether or not Mulder talked about it, the hollow feeling inside him never went away. “Someone took her.”

Gimble fell back against the seat. “And the cops never found her?”

“No.”

“Did she wander off or something? Or was it like those filmstrips they showed in middle school where creeps offer kids candy and then snatch them?”