Agent of Chaos (The X-Files: Origins #1)(47)

There are no coincidences.

It had become Mulder’s mantra, and this cemented his belief.

Fate had led him here.

In his gut, he knew Samantha wasn’t in this house. But Earl Roy might have answers to the questions that had haunted him for 1,952 days.

Was Samantha still alive? If she wasn’t, what had happened to her?

It might be too late to save his sister, but if Sarah Lowe was inside—or information that might help the police find her—maybe he could save that eight-year-old little girl.

He stepped over the threshold.

Take it easy. You’ll be long gone before he comes home.

Mulder took a deep breath and walked straight through the shotgun-style house to the front door. He wanted to let Gimble and Phoebe know why he was taking so long, even though she would kill him when she realized he’d gone inside.

I’ll make it up to her. All of it.

The tiny, outdated kitchen was surprisingly neat. In the hallway, black-and-white photos, in simple wooden frames, hung on the wall. The place seemed sort of normal until Mulder spotted an ornately carved gold sofa in the living room and six mismatched gold chairs in the dining room. The chairs were upholstered in velvet, each one in a different color, and they reminded him of the fancy furniture in his aunt’s sitting room that no butt had ever dented. They looked out of place in a house owned by a grown man.

On a small table next to the front door, a single silver frame was proudly displayed.

Mulder switched on the light and opened the front door to lean out. He waved, and Phoebe and Gimble emerged from the trees. Mulder couldn’t see Phoebe’s face, but he knew she was pissed.

Their silhouettes moved in the darkness, as if they were walking toward the house. Mulder ducked back inside and picked up the silver frame on the table. A child smiled back at him. He stared at the image, his heart galloping in his chest.

Then he caught a flash in his peripheral vision, and things happened in rapid succession, like falling dominoes.

An arm slid around Mulder’s neck and jerked him off his feet—

The silver frame slipped out of his hand and crashed to the floor—

Mulder gasped, but he couldn’t get any air.

A boy stared up at him from behind the spiderweb of broken glass in the frame.

Billy Christian.

The arm around Mulder’s neck tightened and dragged him out of the doorway. His vision blurred in and out of focus.

A boot kicked the door.

The last thing Mulder saw was the front door slamming shut.





CHAPTER 20

Earl Roy’s Residence

9:27 P.M.



X had trudged through the mud in his brand-new boots, following Mulder and his high-strung friends. He had sucked it up because the kid was smart, and there was a 90 percent chance that he was right about Earl Roy, a chaos magick fanatic who had gotten himself kicked out of the Illuminates of something-or-other, a club for new age weirdos.

In a less-than-genius move, Mulder and his friends had parked a bright orange AMC Gremlin next to the dirt road that served as Earl Roy’s driveway. Anyone coming down the road would see the automotive eyesore from ten yards away.

That was how X ended up slogging through the mud. He had to park off River Road and circle through the woods to catch up to the kids without being seen.

Only, he wasn’t fast enough. By the time he reached the front of the run-down shack, Mulder’s friends were standing in the driveway, out in the open. Granted, X was wearing a pair of prototype night-vision goggles, but even without them, two blond teenagers weren’t hard to spot.

Where the hell was Fox Mulder?

A light switched on in the front room of the house, and X’s career flashed before his eyes—and if Mulder kept tempting fate, it would be a short one.

Because he watched Mulder open the front door of the sad excuse for a house and wave at his friends. The idiot must have a hero complex of epic proportions. X pictured Earl Roy pulling up in his truck and seeing the teenager standing in his living room.

Can this assignment get any worse?

The moment the thought crystalized in X’s mind, he regretted letting himself think it. Things could always get worse, and in X’s experience, they always did.

As he started to turn away, a hulking figure appeared behind Mulder and threw an arm around the teen’s neck. His friends froze in their tracks. They must have seen the guy grab Fox, too. What they couldn’t have seen without X’s night vision was so chilling that it made the hairs on his arms stand on end.

The man behind Fox looked like he was wearing a white mask, like a psycho in a horror movie.

Earl Roy turned to kick the front door with his boot, and X realized it wasn’t a mask.

It was paint.

X was ready to bolt for the door and go after the kid. But he couldn’t let Fox or his friends see him.

“Get in the damn car,” he muttered to himself, waiting for the other two kids to react.

But the girl recovered from the shock first and dragged the short kid toward the car. “That’s right,” X said. “Go get the cops.”

He watched the Gremlin start up and swerve toward the main road.

But the car turned left instead of right. X cursed under his breath. They were driving in the wrong direction.

Did it really matter? The nearest sheriff’s office was thirty minutes away—maybe more—and that was if you were driving in the right direction.