Agent of Chaos (The X-Files: Origins #1)(23)

“Fox…,” she warned.

“What are the odds?”

“It probably doesn’t mean anything. You know that, right?” Her voice wavered.

“That’s the same thing that happened to his sister,” Gimble said.

Phoebe’s eyes darted to Mulder.

“I told him.”

Gimble frowned. “He had to tell me. I’m his best friend.”

“His second-best friend.” Phoebe jutted out her hip.

“You two can fight over me later. Right now I need your combined brainpower and genius-level IQs,” Mulder said. “I spent the afternoon in the library looking up articles about missing kids.”

She shook her head. “Why would you do that to yourself?”

“Because I found six reports of children who disappeared from their homes at night, under what seemed like similar circumstances, in the past five years. Delaware, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania”—Mulder ticked off the states on his fingers—“Connecticut, Virginia, and Massachusetts. And I didn’t include Wendy Kelly or my sister.”

Mulder reached in his back pocket and took out the library card application he’d taken notes on. He didn’t need the notes to recall the information, but he wanted to see the names of the kids and the dates they’d disappeared.

And the other dates.

His stomach clenched when he looked at them again. “These are the dates the kids were taken.” He held up the paper so his friends could see it. “And these are the dates their bodies were discovered. Except for Daniel Tyler, who vanished six months ago from Cookstown, Virginia. The cops never found a body, so he could still be alive.”

She closed her eyes for a second and took a deep breath before opening them again. “Did the article say anything about dead birds with arrows sticking out of their bodies?”

Gimble shook his head and shoulders like a wet puppy. “That’s a disturbing thing to ask.”

She glared at him. “It’s a legitimate question.”

“There was nothing in any of the articles about finding weird stuff with the kids’ bodies, but you do the math.” Mulder handed her the crinkled page. “The kids’ bodies were found nine days after they disappeared, just like Billy’s, which means the killer keeps them alive for eight days.”

“A cult could be killing the kids,” she said. “A group would explain the different locations.”

Mulder didn’t have that part figured out yet. “We don’t have enough information to know for sure.”

“But the police do,” Gimble reminded him. “They’ve got photos of the body and the crime scene. Plus, they take notes.”

“He’s right,” Phoebe said. “The case file would have all the details.”

Mulder pressed the heels of his hands against his eyelids. “The detectives in charge of the case practically threw me and Gimble out of the station. There’s no way they’ll talk to us.”

“Unless…” Gimble jumped out his chair. “So this one time, Theo—he’s my dungeon master—he came up with a quest where I had to sneak into the royal castle and find out if the king was planning an ambush.” He turned to Phoebe and puffed out his chest. “Gimble—my character in D and D—is a spy, so I do that kind of stuff all the time. But Gimble—my character, not me—doesn’t have a high level of skill when it comes to doing stuff like scaling walls. But he’s a level two—that’s good, by the way—when it comes to deception.”

“Did you really just say the words, ‘my dungeon master’?” Phoebe rolled her eyes. “And I told you that I know how to play D and D. Is there a point?”

Gimble ignored her comment. He was too busy laying out his plan. “All we have to do is stake out the police station and wait until Detective Walker and Detective Solano aren’t around.”

“Or we could call the precinct and find out if they’re on duty or not,” Phoebe said.

“Or we do that,” Gimble said, undeterred. “The point is, we’ll wait until the detectives aren’t there. Then we’ll go in and say we’re witnesses so we can get more information about the case.”

“I tried that already, remember?” Mulder’s mood was getting worse by the minute.

“You told them that you had information, not that you were an eyewitness,” Gimble corrected him.

“What if they don’t offer up anything?” Phoebe asked. “Detectives don’t usually make a habit of telling potential witnesses the details about a case.”

Gimble pulled an octagonal-shaped die out of his pocket. “Then we switch to diversion. Phoebe and I will distract the cop, which will give you a chance to get a look at the case file.”

It wasn’t the worst idea, and Mulder was willing to try anything.

Phoebe frowned. “Why do I have to help you distract the police?”

Gimble waved two fingers back and forth between them. “We speak the same language, like the Fonz and Pinky Tuscadero. You know?”

Phoebe looked at Mulder. “Do we need him? Because I might end up killing him before we get to the police station.”

“You can’t kill him,” Mulder said as he led her out of the kitchen.