Agent of Chaos (The X-Files: Origins #1)(53)

“It’s no big deal.” Mulder smiled as Phoebe studied his palm with the intensity of a surgeon. Secretly, he loved having her fussing over him.

The paramedic swabbed the cut with some antiseptic and wrapped a bandage around it. Then he asked Mulder some questions and shined a light in his eyes to check for a concussion. “Everything looks good, but you should still go to the ER and let a doctor examine you. And get a tetanus shot for the cut. A deputy found a bunch of rats in the kitchen.”

“Okay,” Mulder said, although he had no intention of going to the ER. He wanted to get as far away from this house as possible.

The sheriff asked Mulder some questions, and he recounted his story while Phoebe bit her nails and Gimble paced.

“If I hadn’t seen that basement for myself, I’m not sure I would’ve believed it.” The sheriff handed him a business card. “Give me a call if you remember anything else.”

“Let’s get out of here.” Phoebe took Mulder’s uncut hand, interlacing her fingers with his. “I’m sure I’ll have nightmares about this place.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

Phoebe squeezed his hand and leaned closer. “You don’t really sleep anyway.”

“I did when you were in my bed,” he whispered. “Maybe you need to be in it more often.” Mulder wasn’t actually flirting. He meant it. His emotions were too raw right now to joke about anything.

Phoebe’s blue eyes searched Mulder’s brown ones, and her eyes welled.

“What’s wrong?” He wrapped his arm around her back, their fingers still interlaced, and pulled Phoebe against his chest.

She shook her head. “I’m going to sound heartless for saying this after you just saved a kid’s life.…” She took a shaky breath.

Mulder watched her long lashes brush her flushed cheeks. One day he’d work up the nerve to tell Phoebe how he really felt about her.

“Come on, tell me.”

“Don’t do anything like that again, Fox. Please. I need you to start caring about yourself. Because I care about you … a lot.”

“How much is a lot?” He flashed her a sheepish smile.

She gave him a little shove. “You know what I mean.”

Mulder pulled her toward him. When their lips met, the kiss didn’t feel like any of their previous kisses.

This kiss burned its way through his body, right down to his soul. It was made of fear and heartache, relief and anticipation, promises and hopes. It reminded him that he still had someone to hold on to in this screwed-up world.

Mulder and Phoebe clung to each other, kissing in the darkness, and for a few minutes, his life was perfect.





CHAPTER 23

Washington, D.C.

April 3, 2:00 A.M.



Mulder had mentally rehearsed the story he planned to tell his father on the ride back from Craiger to DC. He was done lying and holding back to make his parents happy.

Maybe happy was the wrong word.

Nothing made his mom and dad happy. Nothing had since the night his sister vanished. Mulder was just something that Samantha’s kidnapper had left behind, like a smudged fingerprint—proof that the kidnapper had been there, without leaving anyone a trail to follow.

When he finally made it home, all that rehearsing in the car turned out to be a waste, because his father wasn’t there. Phoebe curled up on the sofa while Mulder took the longest shower of his life. He scrubbed his skin until it burned. Being in the same room with a monster who killed kids had left a permanent stain on him, like a different kind of poison.

He toweled off and slid on his last clean pair of jeans. The clothes he had been wearing earlier lay in a heap on the bathroom floor. Mulder picked them up and stuffed them in the trash can, then washed his hands, twice.

In the living room, Phoebe was asleep on the sofa. Mulder thought about waking her up, but she was out cold. He unfolded an afghan from the chair and draped it over her. For a few minutes, he just watched her.

What if Earl Roy had been outside his run-down house earlier tonight, and he had grabbed Phoebe instead of him? He never should’ve put her, or Gimble, at risk.

I should stick to screwing up my own life.

With Phoebe on the sofa, Mulder had no choice but to sleep in his room—meaning lie awake all night in there. He walked down the hallway and stopped in front of his bedroom door. He put his hand on the knob and closed his eyes. It was the same thing he did whenever he stood on this side of the door alone.

Mulder kept his squeezed eyes shut until he entered the room. He imagined opening them and seeing Samantha sitting on his bed, mixing up his basketball cards, as if she had never left. As a kid, he had believed that if he kept doing it, one day he would open his eyes and Samantha would be there. His heart thudded in his chest, and he slowly opened his eyes.

Like all the other times, Samantha wasn’t sitting on the bed.

The room was empty.

The Illuminates of Thanateros were wrong. Believing in something enough couldn’t make it happen, at least not for him.

Mulder spent most of the night rereading chapters from psychology textbooks, serial killer autobiographies, and John Brophy’s The Meaning of Murder. He sat on the floor with his back against the wall, surrounded by books about killers, and for the first time in months, he fell asleep before the sun rose.