"Above Rubies" (8/19) by Rachel Howard

See chapter 1 for disclaimers and other information.


The late Chidi Nwuke turns out to have been a Sudanese 
immigrant who ostensibly made his living selling Rolexes 
and Tag Hauers on street corners off of cardboard boxes.  
The problem with this story is that the watches in 
question were cheap knock-offs, and since he did indeed 
turn up on the deed to the house, they couldn't have been 
his sole source of income.  Santanda was pleased as 
punch; he called his wife right away and told her to go 
take a look at the real estate.

Ballistics informed us that the bullet in his back could 
not have come from a Glock.  I felt good about that until 
they identified some of the prints in the house as 
belonging to one Alex Krycek. All the prints were from 
the right hand, for some reason.

"Skinner said to call when we had him in custody," Scully 
comments from behind her cappuccino. "I don't see the 
point in reporting back to him just because we found 
prints." She sets the paper cup down carefully outside 
the circle of reports we've spread across the table in 
the corner of the district office. She licks her upper 
lip delicately, chasing down an errant trace of foam, and 
I have to work hard at not smiling like an idiot. 

What a cool customer. I've been putting real effort into 
not pawing her every time we're alone in the car, not 
drooling every time she stretches, but Scully is behaving 
like this is just another working day.

"How do you suppose Krycek got hooked up with these 
people?"

Exercising serious willpower, I stop staring at her 
mouth.  "At the clubhouse of the International 
Association of Really Bad People?  I don't know.  But I 
would bet good money on Krycek being involved somehow in 
getting the gas.  Look at these guys, Scully. Fucking 
amateurs.  Nwuke had a Saturday night special in a drawer 
in his bedside table. They're dropping like flies.  Hey," 
I sit up straighter, "did even one of them have a gun on 
him or show evidence of having fired a weapon in self-
defense?"

She thinks about it for a second. "No. You forgot about 
Ajiib, though. He doesn't look like an amateur."

"No," I concede. "So either Krycek or Ajiib was running 
this show.  But that still doesn't explain how two 
American-born Aryan brotherhood types got involved with a 
bunch of Sudanese and Afghani Islamic extremists. It 
doesn't make sense, Scully. It's not as if they'd meet at 
a backyard barbecue."

"We haven't established conclusively that their brand of 
extremism is related to Islam in any way. Also, we now know 
there's more gas out there somewhere."

She's right about the religion thing, and I don't want to 
rehash the discussion about our different attitudes toward
faith. "Do we know that for sure about the gas?" I'd really 
like to hear her say no.

"If that was what was in the canisters, yes. The marks 
created when they were dragged out of the basement of the 
house were fresh."

"How fresh?"

"Last twelve hours fresh.  And judging by the corpse's 
lividity, Nwuke was fairly recently deceased when we 
found him."

"I thought you didn't autopsy him."

"I didn't."  She looks faintly embarrassed.  "I had the 
medical examiner record observations from a surface exam 
only."

"Anything else worth noting?"

"Not that he found."

I hear an undercurrent in her words. "Scully, if it'll 
make you feel better, do an autopsy yourself."

"No."  She stands up, reaches for one of the reports on 
the table.  "It really isn't necessary.  I still think 
Krycek could have killed Nwuke. No prints belonging to 
Ajiib in the house, several of Krycek's."  She's quiet 
for a minute, reading the report.  "No traces of 
gunpowder on Nwuke's hands, so he hadn't recently fired a 
gun." She reaches up and tucks her hair behind her ear.  
I wish I could do that for her right now. 

"Or he could have died at the hands of someone who paid 
$50 for a fake Rolex and then discovered it didn't keep 
time."

She smiles at me.  "Mulder, I'm surprised at you. A 
suggestion that doesn't even hint at conspiracy."  She 
tosses the report down.  "I'm afraid I would have to 
disagree.  I think we have every reason to suspect that 
these deaths are related."

I snicker. "Tease."

Her stern look does nothing to wipe the smile off my 
face.  I doubt a bomb could wipe the smile off my face.  
I have a little bruise on my shoulder from where Scully 
bit me this morning while we were making love.  How could 
life be less than perfect?

Hicks marches in, announcing, "Some kid found a Colt in 
the gutter a couple of blocks from the DOA's house, and 
his mother called it in.  The prints on it are Alex 
Krycek's."

Why did I agree to let this guy back us up just because I 
had a headache?  Now we can't get rid of him. Scully 
doesn't look perturbed.

"I think Krycek =is= the connection.  He's the only 
reasonable link between Ajiib and Garjon," she says.

"We really, really need to find that gas," Hicks adds.

No shit.

Santanda comes in and we all have a big clusterfuck 
discussion that ends in me agreeing that it wouldn't be a 
bad idea to go check out every known address that these 
guys have listed in their credit reports.  Of course, it 
took twenty minutes for us all to agree that was the 
smart thing to do; if it were just Scully and me, we 
would already be on the way to the first site.

This is why I hate working with other agents.   That, and 
the fact that I really want to be alone with Scully.  Not 
to flirt with her or touch her -- well, okay, maybe a 
little bit of flirting -- but just to be with her.

The records search turns up a bunch of addresses in 
residential neighborhoods and a box number in Elizabeth, 
New Jersey.

Scully looks over my shoulder. "Rural?"

"Where?" Santanda asks.

"Elizabeth."

"Not rural."  He looks at the list.  "Maybe industrial. 
What's the connection?"

I read the report. "Pierce is listed as a part owner of 
some land in New Jersey for which the taxes are seriously 
in arrears. This is the property."

Scully looks at Hicks. "What's in Elizabeth?"

Hicks and Santanda get superior looks on their faces; bet 
they're both native New Yorker.  "Not much," Hicks says.  
"Some factories."

It turns out to be an old textile mill.  New Jersey 
hasn't exactly been known for its fine fabrics for a 
while, and this place looks like it hasn't seen action in 
years.

It's enormous, and the gate is padlocked.  We park the 
car and pile out, then stand silently outside the gate.  
Finally, Hicks says,  "Looks like some vandals tore open 
the fence here.  Maybe we oughta go see if the building's 
been damaged, you know?"

Scully says, "Just for kicks, the next time we go poking 
around somewhere new, could we get a search warrant 
first?"

Santanda doesn't bother answering; he just holds back the 
drooping length of chain-link and gestures for Scully to 
go ahead.

She frowns up at the silent walls of the building and one 
hand brushes her holster, then she ducks through the 
fence.

The loading dock door caved in at some point, leaving a 
large hole.  The inside is dark and chilly, echoing 
concrete and empty slabs that once housed frames and 
machinery. The room is gigantic; it smells like dust and 
grease and birdshit.

Scully and I have better flashlights than Hicks and 
Santanda do.  In a low voice, Santanda makes a dumb 
remark about Washington budgets, and Hicks starts to 
laugh until Santanda shushes him.  Scully points her 
flashlight upward and pigeons fly off the rafters, 
stirring dust that drifts through the beam of light. I 
point mine at the opposite wall, but the light doesn't 
reach that far.

We start walking around the perimeter of the room.  We 
should have split up, two and two, to canvass the area 
more efficiently, but no one suggests it. Santanda looks 
wary; Scully just looks alert.

There are no doors off the north wall. Our footsteps echo 
slightly, and I can hear the pigeons overhead, cooing at 
each other. The west end of the room is full of long, 
empty jutting tables bolted to the floor, and we skirt 
them, our flashlights reflecting off the dull metal.  I 
have my weapon in my hand; why the fuck did I draw it, 
anyhow?  I don't like this.  Then I hear a rustle as 
Scully draws her Sig, and Hicks' gun comes out, too.  

But there's nothing here, just rusting metal and dirty 
concrete. Eventually, a faint light cuts through the 
darkness beyond our flashlights and we find a door on the 
west wall with a window, too grimy to reveal anything but 
light and faint shapes beyond.

Hicks shoves his weapon back into its holster and reaches 
for the doorknob with his free hand, but the door doesn't 
budge.  

"Locked?"  Scully bends slightly and peers at it.  The 
doorknob is shiny new.  She looks up at me, and through 
the beam of light pointed at the door I see a question on 
her face.

"There's a lockpick in our trunk. Hang on a sec."  Hicks 
turns around, shining his flashlight directly across the 
cavern of the mill, toward the door we came through.  We 
hear his footsteps cutting across the space, and Scully 
goes up on tiptoes to try and peer through the window.  I 
lean over her shoulder, trying to make it look like I'm 
just helpfully sacrificing a cuff to clean off the window 
while I surreptitiously breathe in her shampoo and the 
hint of perfume that lingers on her skin.

The first shot comes from the darkness behind us and to 
our left. In the echoing room, the report is deafening; 
far above us the pigeons break into a flurry of flight.  
Scully drops to the ground and my heart stops until I see 
that she's just finding cover.  I dive left and my 
shoulder cracks into the base of another one of the long 
tables; it hurts, but it's not me moaning.  I think 
that's Hicks, somewhere behind me, but it's hard to tell; 
there are at least a couple of guns out there in the 
dark, and the noise level is ratcheting up.  

I can hear Scully on her cell from the next row of 
tables, trying to call for backup through the noise; 
Santanda rises up next to her and gets off a round into 
the darkness, then drops back down, yelling "Greg? Talk 
to me!"  A second later, I hear the clank-whizz of a 
bullet hitting metal and rebounding as the shooters 
target the place where Santanda was.  Then Scully gets 
off a round from down low and I hear someone across the 
room cry out and fall. I hope to hell she has an extra 
clip. I want to shout and ask her but if she answered 
they'd fire at her.

If I could get around behind them, we'd be a lot better 
off.  I start moving sideways through the darkness, using 
the tables for cover until I get to the end of a row; 
then I combat-crawl my way up the next one.  It's Hicks 
moaning back there; there's a bubbling sound behind the 
words and he's not making sense. 

Santanda shouts Hicks' name again, and from his voice I 
know he heard the bubbling sound, too.  The shooters in 
the dark let off another volley, and Santanda curses 
fluently off to my right until the sound of gunfire cuts 
him off again.  Please, God, let Scully stay down.  
Please.

I can hear breathing and scuffling up ahead of me, closer 
than I thought, and I nearly crawl across a warm body. 
My hand slips through a pool of blood cooling on the 
concrete.  I can't see him in the darkness on the floor, 
but he mutters something in a language that I don't know.  
It's impossible to tell if this is the man Scully shot. I 
keep crawling.

One more row and I hear other bodies moving around.  I 
reach for my weapon. Something hits the back of my head 
and I feel the floor rush up to meet my face.



I have no idea where Mulder is.  Santanda calls for Greg 
Hicks, his voice breaking, but this time no one answers.

Another shot from across the room, but this one sounds 
like it's farther away. I fire off the last round in my 
clip and duck back down behind the table.  Where the hell 
is Mulder?  Screw it; they know where we're shooting from 
by now.

"Mulder?"

Nothing.  No shots.

"Mulder?"

I hear footsteps from the far side of the room; then a 
square of light opens up far away, on the opposite wall, 
and I hear an engine outside.

"Mulder!"

Nothing, but I see figures silhouetted against the square 
of light; it's a door. I raise my weapon, but what if one 
of them is Mulder? I freeze.

Santanda pops up next to me, his arms coming up with a 
rustle of fabric.

"Hold your fire!" I snap.

He does, then he turns and begins feeling his way back 
toward Hicks.

"MULDER!"

Nothing.  I forget to turn on my flashlight before I 
start to run towards the open door, and I bang my shin 
painfully into the metal edge of one of the tables, but I 
can't stop.  Finally, my flashlight clicks on and I dodge 
past tables and slabs down the length of the room, 
through the open door.  

Two trucks are speeding away from us. Older, one pickup 
with a topper, one red flatbed with a covered load in the 
back. I turn and run back into the building.

Down each aisle, my heels clacking on the concrete.  
Nothing but shell casings here, then the rows of tables 
give way to rows of dark, shallow holes where equipment 
once stood.  He's here, he's here, he just hit his head 
or something, that's why he isn't answering me.

Then another row of tables; I stop dead when I see the 
body.  

It isn't Mulder; my flashlight shows me that much.  But 
five feet away there's another small smear of blood.

"Mulder!"

Another ten rows; he couldn't be back this far, I know 
what he must have tried to do -- circle around, get 
behind them.  My lover, my fool. So where - 

"Mulder, where the =fuck= are you?"

Nothing but silence and a hitching weeping.

When the infantry arrives this time, I am standing with 
blood running down my leg from the cut on my shin, 
Santanda is crying over Hicks' still body and Mulder is 
gone, gone.


End "Above Rubies, (8/19)




"Above Rubies," (9/19) by Rachel Howard

See chapter 1 for disclaimers and other information.


Hicks died before the ambulance arrived. 

Santanda's suit jacket is stiff with blood up to the 
elbows. When I got to where he was kneeling on the concrete 
floor, holding his partner's head in his lap, he was 
shaking with silent tears, his hand clamped to the sticky 
mess on Hicks' chest. Hicks' breathing had stopped, and he 
had no pulse. I glanced at Santanda's hand, still covering 
the wound, then gently rolled Hicks onto his side.  There 
was a saucer-sized hole in his back. 

The evidence team is busy cataloguing the stash they found 
when they got through that locked door. Guns, ammo, some of 
the same stuff we found in Queens, nothing too exotic.  

More skid marks on the ground.

No gas.

We've put out an APB on the two trucks, but the shooters 
must have gone to ground.  

No Mulder.  

I finally pull out my phone and make the call.

"Do you have Krycek in custody yet, Agent Scully?"

"Sir, we found a site where it appears the VX gas may have 
recently been stored."

"How?"

"It belonged to Pierce -- the suspect who was found dead in 
his cell."  Skinner grunts, a noncommittal sound. 

"Did you take backup with you?" I can tell from his voice 
that he suspects something went wrong and he's getting 
ready to chew me out.

"Yes, sir.  Santanda and Hicks." The rest of the story 
comes out in a rush. "We found other contraband at the 
site.  In the course of our investigation, we were attacked 
by unidentified gunmen and we responded with deadly force.  
One of the gunmen is dead. Agent Hicks was fatally wounded.  
Agent Mulder is missing, and we believe that the remaining 
gunmen have kidnapped him."

A long silence.

Skinner says, "I'm on my way." 

He pauses.  

"Hang on, Scully."

A click, and the line goes dead.

A reporter with a notepad tries to corner me just outside 
the fence, and I brush by the man without even looking at 
his face. 

I sit in the car that Greg Hicks drove us here in and 
review the facts I gave Skinner. Mulder missing, no gas, 
Hicks dead.  I left out the blood on Santanda's suit jacket 
and buttondown shirt, and the way he cried over his 
partner's body.  I left out the blood on the floor where 
Mulder must have been.

I should get that tested to make sure.

All I can think of is Mulder's expression this morning when 
he woke up next to me; mixed disbelief and joy. We made 
love again before sunlight started showing through the 
crack in the heavy hotel room drapes. I bit down on his 
shoulder, hard enough to leave a mark.  I've never done 
anything like that before in my life. But he liked it; he 
nipped at my throat in return, smiling into my neck and 
covering my mouth with his own when I tried to apologize.  
"Love bites are good.  Just promise not to shoot me again, 
okay?"

How far could they have gotten from here?

"Agent Scully?" One of the agents from the field office is 
knocking on the window. His voice is dull through the layer 
of glass.

"Agent Scully?"

I unlock the car door and step out.  "That second 
bloodstain on the floor near the dead perp -- I want that 
typed.  I think it's Agent Mulder's.  If he's injured, I 
need to know."

Whatever he was going to say, I stole his thunder. "All 
right, I'll take care of it.  ASAC Lofton wanted to see 
you."

Lofton wants to ask stupid questions about why we went in 
without a warrant or backup.  I tell him about the fence 
and the theoretical vandals in as few breaths as I can. 
When Santanda comes out of the building, he heads straight 
for me.  I turn on my heel, leaving Lofton finishing his 
sentence, and meet Santanda halfway.

"I need to get Greg's car back to his wife," he says. His 
face is blank, shocked.

"I'll go with you."

When his eyes focus on me, he seems surprised to see me 
there.  "No.  I'll take you back to your hotel. Thank you, 
anyway," he offers belatedly.  "Mulder --"

He stops, and neither one of us says anything.  Santanda's 
Fingers clutch the keyring in his hand.  He still has blood 
under his fingernails. Bending stiffly, he opens the door 
on my side and waits while I get in, then shuts it 
carefully, automatic courtly gestures that betray nothing.

Skinner will come with backup, and the dogs will pick up a 
scent trail from the trucks.  I read somewhere that they 
can track a person's scent from a trail left by a car going 
sixty miles an hour on the highway with the windows up. 
They will want money, or safe passage to Afghanistan, and 
they will give Mulder back. A FBI agent is too valuable a 
hostage to waste. 

Then I remember the hole in Sarah Pitts Ajiib's chest where 
her heart had been, and I have to press my fingers into the 
cut on my leg to keep from crying.

"Agent Scully?" Santanda's eyes are red but he seems calm.  
"Are you all right?" he asks.  How old is he, anyway?  
Thirty-five, forty? I want to know how long he and Hicks 
were partners, but I can't find the words.

I look at the unnatural stillness of his face. "Are you?"

Neither of us answers.

By the time we reach Manhattan, dusk is closing in. I make 
my way up to my room, aware of the pain in my leg, grateful 
for the distraction.  

I still have Mulder's keycard and his looks just like mine.  
On the second try the card opens my door.  When I hear it 
snick shut behind me I sag against it and let the tears 
come.

Please, God, I need him back. We waited so long; don't let 
it be too late for us.  I love him but I never told him 
that. 

We are supposed to pray for strength but all I want is 
Mulder, back where he belongs, by my side.

"Tissue?"

The voice comes from the darkness just in front of me and 
it's familiar in a bad way.  I don't reply, I just lash 
out, sending a sharp kick in the direction of the voice.  I 
feel my foot brush something and the rush of air where a 
body was breathing, and then the muzzle of a gun making 
contact with my neck.  Not centered, actually close to my 
shoulder, but a bullet would go through my carotid artery 
anyway.

"Be nice."  The voice is amused.  "There really is a box of 
tissues over by the bed.  Shall we take a walk?"

"Turn on the light," I rasp around the drying tears and the 
pressure from his gun.

I hear something hard clatter against the wall and the 
lights go on.

Alex Krycek.  Why am I even surprised?

"What do you want with me?"

He shakes his head condescendingly and I grit my teeth, 
wanting to put a bullet into his forehead. He pulls back a 
couple of inches. "Put your hands on your head."

I do it, smelling sweat and cordite when I raise my arms.

"March.  Stand next to the edge of the bed farthest from me 
and keep your hands on top of your head.  Don't give me a 
reason to shoot you." Now he sounds bored, like a cop 
reciting the Miranda rights.

He doesn't frisk me, for some reason, just says, "Unbuckle 
your holster and drop it."

I do that, too.  Krycek says, "Sit."

I sit. 

He settles on the edge of the bed across from me. His left 
arm hangs stiffly at his side, and finally I realize that 
it's not real. What happened to him?  I hope it hurt.  
Other than the arm, he looks healthy, alert.  There's a 
certain economy to his movements that I don't remember.  
He's wearing a leather jacket and jeans, casual wear for 
the enterprising killer. He lets me look him over for a 
minute, then says, "Relax a little, Scully.  I'm not here 
to kill you."

"That's comforting."

"Sorry."  He doesn't sound sorry. "The gun is just a 
precaution. I only want to talk."

"I've heard that line before."

He snorts.  "No, really, I mean it.  And I'll even respect 
you in the morning." He cocks his head towards me and seems 
disappointed when I don't laugh. "Seriously, I have a 
proposition for you. If you'd unbuckle your ankle holster 
and kick it away, we'd be one step closer." 

Krycek watches me carefully as I release the straps on the 
ankle holster.  Did he know that I wear one from working 
with Mulder all those years ago, or did he learn that from 
surveillance?  

"Stand up," he says, sounding bored again.  "Got some 
cuffs?"

"What?"

"Lie face up on the bed. Cuff yourself to the bedframe, 
hands above your head."

"What?  Fuck you, Krycek!"

He sighs resignedly.  "Maybe later, sugar." Watching my 
face, he adds, "Jesus, Scully, still haven't learned to 
take a joke, have you?  It's the only way I can frisk you 
with one arm." 

"Must be rough being a one-armed bandit." I don't move.  

"Now come on.  There are plenty of ways I can hurt you 
without killing you, you know."

The flat quality of his voice makes me obey.  With my arms 
above my head, my shirt rides up enough to pull out of my 
waistband. Krycek puts the gun down on the bed near my feet 
and slides his remaining hand up my side professionally. He 
tugs my shirt down before continuing up my torso, and I 
catch myself nearly thanking him.

Krycek displays only clinical detachment while he finishes 
frisking me; it would be like a visit to the doctor if it 
weren't for the gun and the leather. When he finishes, he 
unlocks the cuffs and says, "Sit," again as he scoops up 
the gun.

"Okay. Ready to listen to me or are you going to do 
something stupid and force me to get nasty in return?"

"Why would I want to listen to anything you have to say?"

"Want Mulder back?"

A gasp gets past my lips before I can do anything about it.  
"How did you know he--"

"Do you?"

"Yes."  God, yes.  

I would do anything.

I don't say that out loud but Krycek hears it anyway in the 
silence that falls between us. "Okay, then. Now that I have 
your attention..." He pops the clip out of his gun and 
tosses it over his shoulder, then lets the gun fall to the 
mattress next to him.  It hits the bedspread with a soft 
thump.  He studies my face for a minute.  The leather 
jacket creaks softly as his muscles relax.

I take a deep breath. "Where did you take him and what do I 
need to do to get him back?"

"I didn't take him, Scully. And I don't give a shit what 
=they= want with him.  But I know where he is."

"What do =you= want?"

"Damn, the subtle art of negotiation.  I was thinking we 
could chat first, catch up on old times.  Sort of like 
foreplay, you know?"

"Fuck you. Why did you come here?"

He gives a resigned sigh.  "Fine. You want Mulder.  I want 
something else that they have.  You help me get in there 
and get it, you can have your partner back.  I get to keep 
what they stole from me, no questions asked, no FBI 
assholes on my tail."

Oh, no. "The gas, right? You want the gas?"

"It's mine," he explains.  "Besides, you don't want these 
guys to have it, do you?"

"Ajiib?"

"Of course Ajiib. Who the fuck else?" He looks irritated.

"It was you in the bar in Chelsea, wasn't it?  Did you 
knock Mulder out?"

"This isn't Twenty Questions, Scully. Do we have a deal?"

I want to hurt him so badly I can taste the hot adrenaline 
in my throat. Just one hard blow to the right place on his 
neck; I learned how to do it at the Academy. "You think you 
can just walk away with a truckload of VX gas?  You're out 
of your mind.  You know damn well --"

"I asked you if you wanted Mulder back," he reminds me in a 
low voice.  "This is how you get him back.  You accompany 
me to a certain location and back me up. I know you're a 
good shot. We find Mulder. You help me move the gas. If 
Mulder's in any shape to help, he does." 

I try not to think about what that means, and Krycek 
continues in the same conversational tone. "If I think 
you're not being helpful enough, I shoot you dead and don't 
look back. If I find any of your FBI friends on my ass, I 
shoot them, then I find you and Mulder and shoot Mulder's 
nuts off while you get to watch. That's the deal.  Are you 
interested?"

I breathe deeply through my nose. "How am I supposed to 
make sure the FBI doesn't go after you? There are other 
people involved in this investigation. Skinner is on his 
way down here from Washington right now."

He stands up.  "Then we'd better get moving." He picks up 
both of my holsters and hands them to me, murmuring, "Sig. 
Well, whatever."

"Even if I believed this story, why should I believe that 
you're going to really help get Mulder out of there? You're 
just as likely to shoot us both!"

He looks at me, the lamplight picking out the planes of his 
face, as cold and handsome as if he were marble. "If I had 
wanted to shoot you, I would have done it a long time ago."

"Like you shot my sister?"

Krycek stops dead. With something that could pass for 
regret, he answers, "I didn't shoot your sister. Luis 
Cardinale did."

"Then what were you doing there?  The evidence they turned 
up--"

"You know the answer to that.  Do you want me to say it? I 
was there to kill you."

"And I'm supposed to trust you now?"

"It was business, Scully." There is no apology in his eyes 
now.  "Business. You should understand that.  If it makes a 
difference, I'm glad it wasn't you."

"It was my =sister=, damn it! And what were you -- you were 
just following orders, right?"

He shakes his head.  "You're supposed to be a pragmatist.  
Get a hold of yourself." He reaches over and gets the clip 
for his Glock off the bed. 

I want to kill him, but I want Mulder back more.  After a 
minute, I restrap my holster to my waist.  My hands are 
shaking slightly and I breathe deeply to steady them.

When both guns are secured to my body again, I feel a 
little bit better.  "Why me? Don't you have friends who 
would help you?"

Without a trace of irony, he says, "You don't make many 
friends in my line of work." He taps at an imaginary 
wristwatch. "No time like the present."

"Where are we going?"

His eyes flick towards me without his head moving at all. 
"You'll find out when we get there.  Does it matter? I'm 
assuming you have another clip for that Sig."

"Two.  It matters."

"Not too far," he tells me. "You need to change your 
clothes.  Put on something black."

I had blood on my suit anyway.  

Krycek doesn't exactly leer while I strip off my dirty, 
stained clothes, but he doesn't turn his back either. I 
nearly say something about it, but then I remember that I 
have both my guns back. I wouldn't turn my back on him if 
our positions were reversed. I end up in a black t-shirt 
and dark jeans and semi-comfortable boots.  I don't 
remember packing the jeans.  Mulder must have tossed them 
into my luggage.

It's hard to dress and watch him simultaneously, and the 
situation practically prohibits small talk. Krycek's hair 
is cut short and sleek, showing traces of the white scalp 
beneath, and there are no lines around his eyes. It's a 
nice jacket, too.  Being a hired gun seems to agree with 
him. He rolls his neck and flexes his working arm like a 
boxer warming up for a bout, all without ever taking his 
eyes off me.

Last night there was a different man in my room, watching 
me undress. Please hang on, Mulder -- I'm coming for you.

"How many people have you killed, Scully?"

"Why?"

"You have killed before, I know that.  Ever shoot someone 
in the back? Shoot an unarmed man?"

"No."

He stares at me while I tie my boots.  "If it helps, all of 
these men are bloodthirsty fanatics who would kill you as 
soon as look at you."

I leave without looking back, trailing Alex Krycek to an 
unknown destination.


End "Above Rubies", (9/19)
Snowrider5@aol.com




"Above Rubies," by Rachel Howard (10/19)

See chapter 1 for disclaimers and other information.


I caught her checking the plate on the Ram before we got 
in, not that it'll do her any good. Finding one of these 
things is a cast iron bitch in New York -- the Wall Street 
crowd leans more towards leather-interior sport-utility 
vehicles than real pickup trucks -- but we're going to need 
the cargo space. 

Scully climbs into the passenger seat without comment.  She 
buckles her seatbelt, which makes me snort out loud.  One 
razor-edged look in my direction lets me know what she 
thinks of my opinion, my attitude, and my choice of vehicle 
all at once.  

She looks good.  I mostly remember her being fatter and 
wearing ugly pantsuits.  Of course, I did see some 
surveillance tapes when she still had cancer. She was in 
her underwear in those. A newly paroled convict wouldn't 
have fucked her; skin stretched tight over her bones, hair 
falling out.  This is a nice, happy medium -- she fills out 
those jeans well but there's no extra padding.

"Where are we going, Krycek?"

"You really do have a one-track mind, don't you?"

"Where?"

"Didn't you say something about Skinner being on his way 
here?"

She flinches, and I mentally high-five myself. Scully does 
everything by the book -- just sitting in the cab of this 
truck with me is probably giving her hives.  "I'm assuming 
he's going to call you when he gets here.  What are you 
going to tell him?"

"That I'm following up a lead on Mulder's whereabouts and 
that I'll contact him if it pans out."

"You're a shitty liar, Scully."

Another look.  Mulder's blood must be made of antifreeze; I 
would have booted her out of the basement the first time 
she tried that crap on me.  Personally, I prefer women who 
scream and yell; it saves a lot of time.

I blast across town towards the Holland Tunnel, scaring 
droves of cabbies along the way.  I love trucks, real 
trucks. I forgot what fun it is driving something with 
decent clearance and a piece of shit muffler that lets you 
hear the engine rumbling.

Scully doesn't say anything, she just tugs her shoulder 
strap tighter across her chest, which squeezes her breasts 
in a really intriguing way.  "Where did you get the gas?"

"Shell. No, wait -- maybe it was a Texaco."

"You know what I mean. The VX gas.  Ajiib and the others -- 
they got it from you, didn't they?"

"I already said that I'm not playing that game with you."

Scully lips press into a thin line. "All right." She drums 
the fingers of her right hand against her thigh. "Seen any 
good movies lately?"

I grin at her, taking my eyes off the road long enough to 
make her nervous.  "Is that your best shot?  You must be a 
riot at cocktail parties. Let's just say I imported the gas 
from a country that you wouldn't want to visit."

"I doubt it came from Afghanistan.  Where?  Iraq? 
Pakistan?"

"Why does it matter?"

"It matters because you sold it to terrorists who are 
likely to use it to hurt Americans."

"Really?  I'm shocked. They told me they just wanted it for 
Show and Tell." The deal has gone to shit, but she doesn't 
need to know that.  Actually, she doesn't need to know any 
of this, but it's kind of nice talking to someone who sends 
Christmas cards, does brunch, waters her plants.  "My turn.  
How did you and Mulder figure out that Garjon was holding 
the gas in the first place? And what are you doing chasing 
after terrorists? Aren't you two still on alien-and-spook 
detail?"

Her mouth twitches again.  After a pause, she replies, "It 
was an accident, actually.  We were looking for something 
else."

"No way."  That honestly never occurred to me.  I wonder if 
my sometime employers are still trying to figure out how 
Mr. and Mrs. Spooky got interested in Ajiib and Garjon. 
I'll bet they're shitting themselves. I laugh, thumping the 
steering wheel with the unfeeling plastic of my left hand. 
"Fuck.  That's really funny.  Small world, huh, Scully?"  

Nothing, not even a smile. Damn -- it can't be healthy for 
her, never laughing.  Or maybe Mulder makes her laugh -- 
who knows? 

I'm warming up to this game.  "So, have you and Mulder done 
the deed yet?"

A steely look, flushed cheeks, hands clenching in her lap.  
I get the feeling she would really like to break my jaw but 
she's controlling herself.  Interesting.  "Come on, tell 
me. I promise not to rat on you if you're fucking him. I'm 
just curious, that's all."

"Were you on their side before you joined the FBI, or did 
someone recruit you, pay you off after you got assigned to 
Mulder?" she lashes back.

"Not bad.  If I were that kind of guy, I'd be hurt." 
Strangely enough, it did hurt a little, like catching a 
baseball without a mitt.  "Let's just say I found the 
opportunity for professional advancement at the FBI to be 
somewhat limited."

"You didn't answer my question."  We slip past the New 
York/New Jersey line in the tunnel. "Did he offer you 
money?  The Smoking Man?  Or was it something else?"

A direct hit that time -- no chink in the armor, Scully 
found a big hole.  "We're going to need to surprise them, 
obviously.  They have the gas in a shed behind the house.  
We only need to recover one canister, serial number 
010871."

"Why?"

"Because the other canisters don't contain VX gas." 

That gets me the first real reaction from Scully since we 
left the hotel.  She's gaping. "What? Where's the rest of 
it?"

"You =got= the rest of it, Scully.  These guys have twenty 
canisters.  You found thirty-nine in Manhattan, right?"

She bites her lip trying to decide whether or not to reveal 
the results of their accidental bust, but finally she nods, 
wanting to hear the rest of the story.

"Okay.  Those are real, as your lab rats undoubtedly found 
out.  So's 010871.  The rest are full of nitrous oxide."

"=Laughing= gas?"

"The old bait and switch."  I feel a sudden surge of pride.  
Pulling this job was truly enjoyable.  There's nothing like 
ripping off a bunch of self-righteous, sanctimonious 
assholes to make your day.  Week, month, whatever.

Most of these idiots, Garjon and Pierce included, are sold 
on some bizarre value system that blends religion and 
isolationism in equal parts.  Ajiib is different.  I'm not 
sure exactly what his story is, but I get the same feeling 
from him that I get from big-haired televangelists.  Like a 
Middle-Eastern Jimmy Swaggart, he's got his followers 
frothing at the mouth and giving him their cash while he 
follows an entirely different agenda.  I thought at first 
that he was only after the money, but now I'm not sure any 
more. 

If I have one regret left from my days at the Hoover 
Building, it's that I didn't spend enough time watching the 
profilers do their work.  Being able to get inside the mind 
of a criminal would be helpful on some of these situations.

"So 010871 will be outside, in a shed behind the house."

"House?"

I look over at her and breathe an exaggerated sigh of 
disgust.  "Good one, Scully -- you caught me.  We're going 
to a house in New Jersey. That's where they have both 
Mulder and the gas. Happy now?"  She doesn't answer. 
"Sounds like you've stumbled onto a few of their storage 
places lately so I guess the pickings were getting slim." 
We come out the far side of the tunnel, into Jersey 
traffic. I roll down the window.  Mmm, fresh New Jersey 
air.

"A house where?"

Her cellphone rings. She reaches for her inside pocket 
automatically and I warn, "Watch it."

"Be quiet," she hisses, punching the button on her phone. 
"Scully."

I cut off a grandmother driving a Cadillac. 

"Yes, sir."

Out of the corner of my eye I see Scully sit up a little 
straighter.  Must be Skinner. That's right, her father was 
a Navy captain. Definitely a learned response to authority 
figures -- or maybe it's because she's so fucking short. 
Interesting, either way.

I hear her take a deep breath and begin stammering, 
"Sir.......I am in pursuit -- rather, I'm pursuing......."

Fuck it. I reach over and grab the phone over Scully's 
snarl.  "Hi there, =sir=, long time no chitchat.  Scully's 
on a date with me.  I promise not to bring her home too 
late."  I don't bother hitting the off button before I toss 
the phone out the window.  

"Are you crazy? That was =Skinner!=" That's better; she's 
cute when she's mad -- her face gets all flushed.

"What? It was a shitty phone.  When you requisition a new 
one, ask for a Nokia."

"What were you thinking?"

"Easy, princess.  Just tell him I kidnapped you.  Motorola 
has a couple of nice ones, too. Weigh about as much as a 
candy bar, but the battery life is about twice as long as 
what your piece of shit phone could do."

She leans her head back against the seat and covers her 
eyes with one hand.  "I should have just shot you."

A lesser man would point out that she never had a chance, 
but I decide to let that one go. After a pause, she asks 
hesitantly, "Have you.......spoken to these people today?"

"What.......oh.  You're thinking about Mulder."  She looks 
out the window.  "Look, I =know= he's there."

"How?"

"Damn it, Scully, let it go!  You know, you're just like 
him.  You don't even ask the right damn questions."

"What do you mean?" She sounds really pissed.  I take my 
eyes off the road long enough to take a good look at her.  
Eyes narrowed, lips parted.  There's a little tiger hidden 
under her tidy hairdo and elegant manicure. I wonder what 
she's like in bed.

"I mean, what does it matter =how= I know?  If you're going 
to ask questions, ask about what really matters.  Like, how 
are we going to get Mulder and a tank of toxic gas out of a 
house full of heavily armed fanatics."

That's really what it comes down to, isn't it?  Three hours 
ago I was just looking for another gun.  Now, I'd really 
like to fuck her.  I could chalk this up to just not having 
gotten laid in a while -- and Marita doesn't count -- but 
an strong man admits his weaknesses.  She's much sexier 
than I remember, plus this tidy Girl Scout demeanor is so 
tempting. It would be like walking across a snowfield just 
to see how your tracks disturbed the surface.

"Well, how are we going to do that, then?  And while you're 
at it, what's your connection to these people?"

"Jesus, you're hopeless.  They're =customers.= Or at least 
they were." I grin, thinking about how Ajiib will react 
when he figures out that the rest of the gas won't cause 
anything worse than a mild buzz.  With any luck they won't 
know until =after= they've uncorked the canisters in some 
subway station and made some ludicrous statement to the 
press about the wrath of Allah striking down Western 
infidels. 

"How are we going to get Mulder out of the house alive? And 
how many men do you think Ajiib has in there?"

"Maybe five or ten? More if Ajiib is there himself.  
They're under the impression that the Aryan Revival Army 
sicced you and your friends on them, so they're a little 
antsy right now. Did you manage to off any of them today 
when you ran into them at the factory?"

"How do you know.......One of them, yes. The Aryan Revival 
Army -- is that the name of Garjon and Pierce's group?"

"I think we check the shed first, take out whoever's on 
sentry duty, get 010871 into the truck, then go in after 
Mulder."

"We're getting Mulder first."

"Wrong.  We're going to have to shoot =someone= in that 
house to get him out.  You didn't bring a silencer, did 
you?"

Scully looks at me like I've just asked if she's 
moonlighting for the Crips.  Actually, I sort of did.  "All 
right, never mind.  Reach behind me and grab that black 
backpack.  No, the space behind my seat."

She stretches across the space between the seats, 
stretching an arm into the tiny space behind the driver's 
seatback of the cab.  The pack must have gotten wedged back 
there when I adjusted the seat, because she has to tug to 
get it loose. Her hair brushes my leg; I smell gunpowder 
and female skin, two great tastes that taste great 
together. "There's a Glock in there and a couple of clips.  
The silencer is in the outside pocket." I have an actual 
hard-on just from the touch of her hair, how about that? 

I'm still not entirely sure she won't flake on me when it 
comes to shooting these motherfuckers. As useless as Marita 
is, she never has any qualms about killing someone who's in 
her way.  Oh well -- Scully's a better shot and she's 
better company, and Marita has a bad habit of telling tales 
to the wrong people.  Not to mention that she'd want to 
take a cut off the top.

She's rummaging for the silencer.  I hear her check the 
clip and snap it back in, then fitting the silencer to the 
muzzle of the pistol.

"I'm going to want that back, by the way.  I like that 
gun."

She doesn't answer, and when I glance at her, she's looking 
out the window at the smokestacks passing by outside of 
Newark. At the top of the stacks, the flames topping the 
gas vents waver and twist against the black heat of the 
sky. The gun lies in her lap, her slim fingers flexing 
around the grip. Scully, the sane one, the one who can't 
think outside of the box.

I run the speedometer up to ninety and begin looking for 
the exits to the Garden State Parkway.




The pain in my head wakes me up.

If it weren't so dark in here, I'd press the call button 
and ask the nurse for Demerol.

Scully says I can't have painkillers with a head injury.

A small piece of reality returns.  The scratchy fabric 
beneath my face isn't a hospital pillow.  The confusing 
darkness is due to some kind of blindfold that pulls at the 
skin around my eyes and itches.

I try to roll over, but my arms are behind my back, and 
when I move, it twists my arm painfully, so I stop moving.

I hear a voice say something in a foreign language, and 
footsteps. Someone pokes my leg, hard, and I pretend to 
still be unconscious.

Another poke, and then the footsteps go away.

I should stay awake and try to remember how I got into this 
mess, but when reality begins to get fuzzy again it seems 
like a bad idea to fight it. 

Pretty soon I don't need to pretend any longer.


End "Above Rubies" (10/19)




"Above Rubies," (11/19)
 See chapter 1 for disclaimers, other info. 


The sign says "Welcome to Red Bank." Krycek blows by it so 
fast the letters blur together in the glare of the truck's 
headlights. Our lights illuminate a gas station, a 
supermarket, a liquor store. We bounce over a set of 
railroad tracks, and Krycek chooses this moment to stop 
watching the road completely and peer back over his 
shoulder at the Mercedes dealership we just passed. 

By now, they must know that Mulder is a federal agent, much 
more valuable to them alive than dead. But that's assuming 
these men think rationally. "Did you ever meet him in 
person? Ajiib?" 

"Yeah," Krycek says, distracted. "That was Elm Street we 
just passed, wasn't it?" 

"What's he like?" 

"He's a weird motherfucker on a crusade, Scully. I'll be 
sure to introduce you if I get the chance." He looks over 
at me and his expression changes. "Look, I don't think he's 
done anything to Mulder. Really. He just wants the FBI off 
his case and he probably wants to gas the shit out of the 
Aryan Revival Army. He's broke, too, so he's probably 
trying to decide how big a ransom he can squeeze out of the 
FBI for returning Mulder." 

"How do you know he's broke?" I try to keep the hope and 
resentment out of my voice. Alex Krycek trying to soothe me 
is more than I can take right now. 

"I knew about how much he had to spend before I sold him 
the gas. He's spent it all. So he's broke." He grins 
wolfishly. "Just consider it a public service on my part." 

He pulls the truck over to the side of the street and 
parks. I check the clip of the gun I'm holding again, to 
have something to do. "Some public service. He's still 
holding a canister of VX gas." 

"Yeah, well, we're about to fix that." He climbs out of the 
cab and shuts the door softly. 

"What type of crusade is he on?"

"The wacko Islamic religious kind, Scully. For Chrissakes. 
You really didn't know that?" He stops and glares at me. 
"Don't let the political correctness bullshit get in the 
way of drawing reasonable investigative conclusions." Alex 
Krycek is now lecturing me on protocol. I am sure my head 
is going to split wide open. He seems to catch himself 
doing it and points down the street, like he's changing the 
subject. "The house is down there. We'll take the alley."

It's a little cooler here than it was in the city, a slight 
breeze moving the air, barely catching someone's wind 
chimes down the street. A sign tells me that we're on 
Branch Avenue. The street is quiet, but there are faint 
sounds from some of the white and gray frame houses around 
us. A typical suburban town, with a gang of armed maniacs 
holed up in one of these Cape Cod- style two-stories. The 
one we're parked in front of has a sign on the mailbox that 
reads, "The Hendersons." 

They didn't think it could happen in Oklahoma City, 
either. Serial killers in Milwaukee, militia in the 
Midwest. Ajiib, Garjon and Pierce, all establishing a 
foothold here in the New York Metro area. Maybe extremism 
and madness have finally come into their own, at the tail 
end of the twentieth century, spreading into mainstream 
America like a virus instead of hiding out in rural Idaho. 
I shiver, thinking of the Hendersons, living alongside 
these men. 

No flashlights; we stumble every now and then, and I keep 
expecting to wake up someone's dog. Something crunches 
slightly under my foot and I flinch. Krycek moves smoothly, 
hardly making a sound. How the hell does he do that? When 
he puts his arm out to stop me, all I can hear is a faint 
rustle from his jacket and canned voices from a television 
in a house farther down. 

We're standing behind a tidy two-story, just like all the 
others. It's got an honest-to-God white picket fence. And 
in the dim light coming from the ground floor windows in 
the back of the house, I can see a small garden shed not 
more than thirty paces away, presumably the one that's 
holding the canister of VX gas. The back door creaks and a 
figure comes out in a rush of light; he's talking, which is 
a good thing because it covers the sound of Krycek and me 
dropping into the tall weeds growing alongside the fence. 

The man says something in a foreign language and another 
voice answers from the far side of the shed. Neither of us 
have a clear shot, and we both know it. Krycek's warm 
breath tickles the side of my neck. "Wait," he whispers 
into my ear. The men in front of the shed are talking in 
low voices. A light flicks off inside the house. Crickets 
and the occasional car on Branch Avenue provide a 
background. We wait. 




This time when I wake up, I'm thirsty as hell, and I 
remember right away that the pain in my head is due to 
getting ambushed in the factory. I don't have any idea how 
long ago that was, though. My face hurts. I listen; there 
are voices somewhere below me. I try to open my mouth, but 
I can't. A gag? I try it again. No, I think they put tape 
over my mouth. I'm lying face down on a mattress that 
smells like piss and dust. My head feels a little clearer 
and I take inventory. Hands tied behind back -- no, I think 
they're taped -- feet taped, and I have a bad feeling that 
the reason I can't see is that they put tape over my eyes, 
too. 

I really, really need a drink of water. 

I roll a little, experimentally, and the mattress creaks 
but I can't feel anything else hurting aside from my head. 
I roll over onto my back and that changes right away; my 
bound hands are taking all the weight of my body. I'm also 
dangerously close to rolling off the mattress so I sit up 
and get my legs over the edge, bedsprings creaking, my head 
swimming again. I try to breathe deeply and fight it, but 
colored dots are still swirling against the blackness 
behind my eyelids when I hear footsteps outside the door. 

Immediately, I regret making the effort to sit up in the 
first place. I hear the click of a light switch and voices. 
It sounds like Arabic. What the fuck am I thinking? I 
have no idea what Arabic sounds like. I sit up a little 
straighter and concentrate on the feeling of the floor 
under my feet. I feel hands on either side of my head, and 
a man's voice says, clearly, "Agent Mulder?" 

It's like the world's biggest Band-Aid coming off. My face 
hurts, but at least I can move my jaw. I try to answer, but 
I cough instead, hurting my head all over again. The man in 
front of me says something, and everything is quiet for a 
minute. His hands tilt my head to the side briefly, and 
everything swims again. I think I've got a new concussion, 
or else I woke up the old one. Scully is going to be 
really, really pissed. 

I feel the cool lip of a plastic cup at my mouth and I'm so 
grateful I could cry. The water isn't very cold, and it 
tastes faintly metallic, but I drink it fast, gulping, feel 
it spilling down my chin. 

"Better? All right. Who gave you the address of the 
location you were investigating, Mr. Mulder?" The accent is 
very faint, and the English is precise, careful. The 
question is almost polite, but I know the beginning of an 
interrogation when I hear one. I breathe in before I 
answer, "No one. We were doing a routine investigation --" 
The slap isn't hard, isn't even a surprise, but it ruins my 
delicate equilibrium and my stomach rebels. I let gravity 
find me and I get my head between my knees before I vomit. 

The water I drank comes up, and bile, but not much else -- 
I don't know when I last ate. I really hope I puked on his 
shoes, whoever he is. Fuck, now I'm thirsty again. "We know 
Garjon is dead. So who was it? Maxwell or Pierce?" 

Who the hell is Maxwell? And how does this guy know about 
Garjon and Pierce? I take a chance, and answer, "Pierce is 
dead." 

"How?" He asks sharply, but he sounds interested. 
Downstairs, someone switches on a stereo, and I hear tinny-
sounding music. What do these guys have down there, an 
eight-track? 

"Dead in his cell." 

"Which means your government killed him." 

"That would be my guess," I agree. Well, someone connected 
with the government, anyhow. With good enough connections 
to get in and out of a New York City jail and make Pierce's 
death look like a suicide. After the other things we found 
out, I would give the nod to Alex Krycek, but this guy 
doesn't need to know that. "Really. An interesting 
conclusion for an FBI agent to draw, given the situation." 
His voice is faintly amused, faintly derogatory. I sniff 
hard, try to clear the burning taste in my throat. The 
woman on the recording is singing in French, something 
cafÈ-mournful. The scratchy sound isn't an eight-track, 
it's a turntable, and an old needle. I can smell my own 
puke, and the dry, old sweat smell of the room. "Are 
you Mohammad al Ajiib?" 

A pause, then he asks, "Was it Maxwell, then?" He sounds 
faintly pleased. I would bet a kidney this is Ajiib.. "We 
got the address of that factory off a property records 
search," I reply, stressing each word. "Believe whatever 
you want. I want to know where Maxwell is just as badly as 
you do. How did you people end up working with those guys, 
anyway?" 

"They are infidels. They serve only as mules to carry a 
burden for Allah's soldiers." The change is so quick it's 
eerie. He sounds like he's reciting from a script. His 
answer has a rote, rhythmic quality. Who else has he had to 
justify the relationship with Pierce and Garjon to? 

"You are Ajiib, aren't you?" 

"Was it Pierce who told you of us, then? How long has the 
FBI been investigating me?" 

"I don't know. I was pulled into this investigation last 
week, when the FBI found Garjon." 

That's a lie, but Ajiib seems to believe it -- at least, he 
doesn't hit me again. Or maybe he just doesn't want me 
puking on his feet this time. I wish I could get this taste 
out of my mouth. I want another drink of water but I know 
asking him would only give him more power over me. Not all 
of my field training was wasted time. I wish I could see 
his face, his expressions. "Why did you kill your wife?" 

"I have no wife." The answer is too quick. It's Ajiib, all 
right. 

"What did she do?" He doesn't answer. "Her name was Sarah 
Pitts and you killed her." I know it's a mistake even 
before he hits me. This time it isn't a slap, it's a closed 
fist, and the pain registers in my jaw and I begin dry-
heaving. 

Through my retching, I hear him answer, "I have no wife." 
His voice has that rhythmic, toneless quality again. "You 
work alongside a woman, don't you?" Instantly, I'm on the 
alert. But he doesn't let me answer. "A woman who fires a 
weapon and pretends to be a soldier." The sneer in his 
voice is palpable, but I don't say anything. "I saw her 
today, searching for you when we took you with us. A woman 
who would be a soldier is no woman at all, Mr. Mulder. No 
woman. Nor is a woman who would be a diplomat, a 
politician." 

He's quiet for a minute, and I try to think of something 
that isn't an answer, something to keep him talking. 
Nothing comes to me. After a long pause, he says, "I have 
read your Bible. It says that the price of a virtuous woman 
is far above rubies. This is true. But I do not understand 
what one is meant to do in order to seek restitution should 
her virtue turn to deception, should she become a whore." 

He sounds calm, almost thoughtful, but I wish I could see 
his face because he's finally managed to scare me. The part 
about the price of a good woman rings some bell. Finally, I 
hazard, "I never spent much time reading the Bible." 

"Proverbs 31, verse 10." I hear footsteps, 
then a door closing. And then I'm alone in the dark with 
the pain in my head and the smell of vomit. 




My neck is getting stiff by the time we get a break. From 
inside the house, strains of Edith Piaf waft through the 
darkness. A minute later, someone turns it up. Krycek 
rustles next to me and starlight reflects off his teeth. 
The next time one of the men begins to cross from the shed 
to the front of the house, Krycek rises swiftly to his 
knees and I see the red pinpoint of the Glock's sighting 
laser on the back of his target a second before I hear the 
shot. The man falls to the grass and I hear him thrashing. 

His companion inside the shed hears it too and Krycek 
catches him in the head before he reaches his downed 
friend. For the second time in as many weeks, I hear the 
sound of a piece of a man's brain rapidly exiting his body 
and the dull thumps the chunks of his skull make when they 
hit the grass, followed shortly by his body. The first man 
is still dying. After a long minute, he stops moving. Edith 
is still singing. 

I look over at Krycek, but his expression hasn't changed. I 
think about it for a few seconds, then I move slightly 
closer to him and lean towards his ear. "Let's go in. Now." 

He turns his head and his nose nearly brushes my chin 
before I pull back a little. "Not yet. I saw two different 
men go by that window. And the upstairs light went on while 
they were down here. So it's at least three more." He 
pauses, then adds, "Don't you want to do your `it's the FBI 
so drop your weapons' speech?" 

I don't bother answering. After a moment he grunts his 
approval and goes back to watching the house. 

If Mulder weren't in there, I would. 

A figure moves past the upstairs window, and Krycek shifts 
slightly next to me. "All right," he says into my ear. 
"We get Mulder first, then move the gas when they're all 
dead." I nearly ask him why he's changing the plan, but I 
stop the question before it comes out of my mouth. It 
doesn't matter why. I want Mulder out of there. 

After a while the back door creaks again and both Krycek 
and I are up on our knees before it's all the way open. 
There are two of them, and the light from the open doorway 
falls across the bodies of the two men that Krycek has 
already killed. I would have let the door close before I 
fired, but I knew one of them would shout something when 
they saw the bodies. The stealthy approach is played out. 

I pick out the first man and it's a good choice because 
Krycek has his sight set on the one behind him. Our shots 
are nearly simultaneous and the bodies fall down the back 
steps together, tumbling over each other into the grass. We 
are up and off our knees together, and neither of us says a 
word as we run across the yard to flank the door. It slams 
open and Krycek fires. 

We dive through the open door at the same time and I roll 
right when I hit the floor, straight into a small table 
that isn't heavy enough to hurt me when it falls onto my 
back. I get off another shot at the man Krycek missed, and 
I think I catch him in the stomach, but Krycek's second 
shot takes off a piece of his head. 

Someone is shouting upstairs. We're on an enclosed back 
porch filled with a dirty papasan chair, an old couch and 
stacks of boxes. There are stairs leading down to a dark 
basement and a door opening onto a kitchen with cheerful, 
yellow daisy-speckled wallpaper. Krycek kicks the basement 
door shut and throws the deadbolt, then says, "In." 
Everything is quiet now except for Edith, who is still 
singing. 




I hear the shots downstairs and it clears my head 
wonderfully, better than Excedrin. Time to wake up. I still 
can't see anything, and the tape over my eyes is itching 
like hell. Someone runs down the hallway outside the 
room I'm in, and I hear footsteps on the stairs, then more 
shots, and a thud. 

I know the sound of a body hitting the floor, and it cheers 
me up considerably. With any luck at all, that was either 
Ajiib or one of his buddies getting killed. Things are 
looking up. 

I hear a low voice in the hallway outside the 
room, and then everything gets quiet exceppt for the 
scratchy recordingdownstairs, which is still playing, 
accordions and violins and French lyrics. Please God, let 
that be Scully downstairs with a SWAT team. Well, one way 
to find out. I take a deep breath and do my very best 
Stanley Kowalski impression. 

"SCULLY! I'M UP HERE!" 





It takes everything I've got to keep quiet when I hear 
Mulder, but I do, and a second later I'm glad I did: 
Krycek fires a shot through the kitchen doorway and someone 
answers with a shot right back, which blows out the window 
overlooking the yard. So much for a quiet neighborhood. I 
get low and get off a shot through the doorway, enough to 
see down the hall -- it looks like whoever is shooting at 
us is using a door for cover, which is incredibly stupid 
unless the door is solid metal. 

Krycek must see it too, because I see the Glock's red laser 
sight on the door, and hear a shot over my head. A hole 
appears in the door and I hear a man's voice cry out 
from behind it. Krycek snaps, "Fall back!" 

I'm still watching the door. A limp hand wraps around the 
doorframe down the hall but before I can see anything 
else, an arm wraps around my waist and Krycek jerks me back 
away from the kitchen doorway. 

A second later I hear a shot. There's another man somewhere 
down that hallway. "Sorry," I say, idiotically, to Krycek, 
who is unwrapping his gun arm -- his =only= arm -- from 
around my waist. We both press up against the side of the 
refrigerator, out of the line of fire. "Give me your gun," 
he hisses. "Mine needs a new clip and you can reload 
faster." He hands me his weapon and reaches into his 
jacket, pulls out a new clip. I trade him my gun for 
the clip. I'm starting to like this gun he lent me. 

I change the clip, then we trade back, as smoothly as if 
we'd practiced a thousand times. He grins down at me and 
whispers, "I wish they'd given me you instead of Mulder." 

He was partnered with Mulder while I was stuck at Quantico. 
I remember; I was jealous, thinking about Mulder in the 
field with another partner, one who seemed to think the way 
he did. And how did I figure out what Krycek was talking 
about that quickly? 

He ducks out long enough to get off another shot. I can 
hear someone moaning, but I think it's the man he shot 
earlier -- where's the other shooter? My next shot gets 
lucky -- Krycek is firing over my head, I'm low, and the 
other shooter is wide open, coming down the hallway at us. 
I catch him in the chest, and he falls face-first, skids a 
little, comes to a stop nearly at our feet. 

I wait until the body stops moving, then step over him into 
the hallway, with Krycek on my heels. We move silently, cut 
left through an open doorway, and we're in the living room. 
More boxes, piles of literature, a record player on a card 
table, and a couple of empty pizza boxes. We hug opposite 
walls in the living room, and Krycek pauses long enough to 
lift the needle from the turntable. Edith stops singing. 

I come through a pair of French doors into the front 
hallway, where the nice white banister and the cream 
colored carpeting on the stair treads are now splashed with 
blood. 

I look up and there is Mulder, standing in front of the 
other man on the landing, half-way up the stairs. His 
eyes are covered with shiny silver duct tape, his hands are 
behind his back, and there is a gun pointed at his temple. 
The man peering out from behind him tells me, "Please hold 
very still, and let your gun fall to the floor." 


End "Above Rubies," 11/19 
Snowrider5@aol.com 



Above Rubies, by Rachel Howard (12/19)
See chapter 1 for disclaimers and other information.


I hate New York.  Sharon and I came up for a long weekend 
once, not long before the end, and I think that was the 
last time I was here. The weekend was supposed to help us 
"re-connect," find the romance again.  Her idea.

All we found were things to argue about; half-assed 
paintings in SoHo galleries, overpriced restaurants with 
stoned waiters, our marriage.

The New York field office has terrible coffee, and the ADIC 
isn't doing a good job hiding his irritation at the mess 
that Mulder and Scully have created. To be fair, he lost an 
agent this morning.

"I think you'll find that Agent Santanda is eager to work 
with you.  He has requested that he not be assigned another 
partner until this case is closed." He picks up the phone 
and makes a brief call, then hangs up and tells us, "He's 
on his way up here. Are you going to need anything else to 
proceed with your investigation at this time, AD Skinner?" 

He looks relieved when I tell him, "Not at this time."

I brought Darren Ledeller along for backup. He's clearly 
excited to be here, working on a big case, but he hasn't 
said anything since we got into the office. I wonder if 
Mulder took the time to thank him for saving his ass in 
that alley.

Santanda walks in, we do a round of handshakes, and he 
leads us down a hallway to the break room, out of his 
chief's hair.  Santanda has circles under his eyes, and a 
set jaw.  I ask him to brief us on the case, and he gives a 
calm, detailed description until he gets to the part about 
Hicks going down under fire, when he stops and clears his 
throat a couple of times.

Ledeller and I politely look around the room while Santanda 
gets himself together. When he can look us in the eyes 
again, he finishes by telling us about the APB he put out 
on the vehicle, and the forensics team's findings.

"So it was definitely Agent Mulder's blood on the scene. 
Not much of it, though -- could have been a small cut. They 
found hair stuck in it so it looks like it was a minor head 
wound. No ID yet on the dead perp."

"When did you last hear from Agent Scully?"

"I dropped her off at her hotel late this afternoon. I 
don't know when exactly. Six, maybe."

"Did you see her greet anyone in the lobby?"

He looks at me carefully before he answers. "No, sir."

"And you haven't spoken to her since?"

His voice gets sharper. "She's in trouble?"

"Yeah, she's in trouble," I confirm.

A lot of trouble. 

She's in the company of a known murderer and a traitor to 
the United States of America, and although I haven't said 
this to anyone, I'm damn sure he didn't kidnap her. I know 
what Scully sounds like when she's lying, and that's what 
she was doing when Krycek got on the phone. And the next 
time I lay eyes on that bastard, I am going to kill him 
myself.

I take a breath before I tell Santanda, "She appears to 
have been kidnapped by Alex Krycek.  Although I doubt that 
he intends to harm her personally, he may be planning to 
trade her for the VX gas."

I hear Ledeller shift beside me and I wonder exactly what 
he's making of all this. He was walking next to me at 
LaGuardia when I got Scully on the phone.

I turn to Santanda and begin to explain Alex Krycek's 
history, planning to leave out the personal embarrassment 
he caused Mulder and me.  No man likes to admit he was 
taken in by a double agent.  But Santanda cuts me off, 
saying simply, "I know who he is."

His eyes glitter when he adds, "I want to help you find 
Agent Scully."

"This isn't a crusade," I tell him sharply. "If you're in 
it to get some kind of revenge for Hicks, then I don't need 
you. These men have two of my agents, and =no= one is going 
to shoot without checking his target first."

"Yes, sir." Santanda's eyes meet mine and he holds my 
stare. 

I don't like what my instincts are telling me. Scully 
wouldn't hare off with Krycek unless he offered her a deal 
that she absolutely couldn't refuse.

Mulder.

I think Scully went after Mulder. Krycek is in this up to 
his eyeballs. Somehow, he got her to go with him by 
promising to get Mulder back from wherever his kidnappers 
took him. But how could she be stupid enough to believe 
him?  

I know the answer, even if I don't like it. In general, 
Scully has plenty of common sense. If Alex Krycek walked up 
to her on the street and offered to sell her a Rolex, she'd 
tell him to go pound sand. And then she'd arrest him.

But Scully's common sense goes AWOL when it comes to 
Mulder.

"Sir?"

I snap out of it. "Anything come back from the APB?"

"No, sir."

"Where's the records search that gave you the location of 
that factory?"

We move a box of brittle, day-old doughnuts out of the way 
and spread the paperwork out on the table. 

"New Jersey. Pierce was in trouble with the IRS, big 
surprise," Ledeller mutters. 

Two agents walk into the room behind us, complaining loudly 
about something or other.  The list of addresses I'm 
staring at isn't particularly enlightening; even assuming 
the kidnappers stayed close to home, they could be anywhere 
in the metro area. I look at Santanda; he's reading the 
list, too, his lips moving slightly as his eyes flicker 
back and forth across the page.

The noisy agents are pouring cups of the lousy coffee, 
still arguing.

I try to ignore them. Jamaica, New York. Queens, New York. 
West 37th, in Manhattan. Elizabeth, New Jersey -- that's 
where the factory was, where they were investigating. 

"I know the guy is a little whacked, Sammy, but he's had 
good information before."

"Yeah, but =where?= Red Bank, New Jersey?"

"Not a lot of reports of windows getting shot out in Red 
Bank lately, right? So the informant says."

I turn around. "Where's Red Bank?"

The two agents stop talking and look at me. Santanda gets 
it right away, and says, "Not that far from Elizabeth."

"A window was shot out? When?"

One of the two agents finds his voice. "Uh, about twenty 
minutes ago."

His friend adds, "We had gotten some information about 
suspicious activity at that address before. Our informant 
thought maybe drug dealers."

"Why?"

They trade glances. One of them says, "People driving up 
all the time unloading boxes, you know, weird-looking 
stuff. Equipment. And they, uh, don't fit the profile for 
the area."

"So they're not white and they're living in a white area, 
pissing off the neighbors. I get it. Are they by any chance 
Middle Eastern types?"

The guy looks startled. "Uh, I dunno. The informant thought 
they were Arabs."

Santanda's already halfway to the door, but Ledeller 
remembers to get the address.





I freeze when I hear Ajiib's voice, as does Scully. I can 
see his arm and shoulders through the crack between the 
living room door and the doorframe, which could turn out to 
be a huge piece of luck if he doesn't know I'm here. I'm 
guessing the hostage in front of him is Mulder. That sorry 
bastard has the worst luck I've ever seen.  

I hear Scully tell Ajiib, "I'm laying my weapon down on the 
floor." The joints in her knees creak audibly as she bends. 
I hear her put the Glock on the hardwood. Her voice is calm 
but I'll bet she's wondering if he's seen me or not.

There's fear in Ajiib's voice when he tells her, "Tell the 
others with you to stay outside of the house.  If anyone 
comes in, I will kill your partner."

Gotcha, you asshole.  I'm right here.

Scully doesn't miss a beat. She shouts, "Santanda! Keep the 
team out there!" Her voice breaks slightly when she adds,  
"He's got a hostage!"

I use the sound of her voice to cover the rustling of my 
clothing as I take careful aim at the door.  It's cheap 
looking, but Mulder's too close to Ajiib to allow any 
margin of error.  I aim left, at Ajiib's chest.

"Why did you take him? Are you expecting to trade him for 
safe passage?"

Ajiib laughs.  "I have no need to answer your questions, 
woman.  I am not the prisoner h--"

The impact of my bullet cuts him off.  I was right about 
the door; the thin wood does little to dissipate the force 
of the round. When it meets Ajiib's body it knocks him 
backwards, into the wall. I open the ruined door in time to 
see Ajiib and Mulder tumble down the flight of stairs 
together, a football tackle gone bad.

For once, Mulder's luck is in; he lands on top of Ajiib 
instead of hitting the hardwood floor. I step around 
Scully, who's on her knees easing Mulder off of Ajiib, and 
check out my handiwork, prepared to put more lead into him.

It'd be a waste of a round; he's dying. Ajiib looks 
startled but not agonized, as if his nervous system hasn't 
caught up with the reality of the gaping hole in his chest. 
The wound is more to the right side than then left. Well, I 
had to shoot through a damn door to hit him.  I look at 
Scully, all ready to lay some line on her about my smooth 
marksmanship, and I stop dead.

She's on her knees next to Mulder, who looks like shit -- 
there's duct tape over his eyes and dried blood matting his 
hair.  He's making pathetic little sounds as she runs her 
fingers lightly over the oozing cut on his hairline, and 
she's murmuring something to him.

Well, fuck.  My last dwindling fantasy about getting head 
from Dana Scully dies out like a blown bulb.  An idiot 
could guess it's Mulder who's going to get the girl at the 
end of this job.

Already =got= the girl, I think to myself.  Her small, 
dirty hands are stroking his hair, fiddling with the edge 
of the tape indecisively.

"What's wrong, Scully, didn't they teach you how to get 
duct tape off a hostage's face in med school?" I ask her.  
She jumps, and I get the irritating feeling that she forgot 
I was here. 

"I'll need some mild solvent," she says, getting herself 
together.

"Well, unless you have it in your back pocket, we're going 
to have to do this the hard way.  We don't have a hell of a 
lot of time."  To illustrate my point, the first whine of 
approaching sirens becomes faintly audible in the distance.

Scully looks over at Ajiib's body, her eyes widening.  I 
take advantage of her momentary distraction to reach over 
and rip the tape off Mulder's face.

Yeah, it hurts.  I've had to do it to myself before, and 
it's like taking off a Band-Aid times twenty.  Mulder howls 
briefly. Scully looks wildly at his face, then up at me 
with a homicidal gleam in her eyes. 

"He'll be okay," I tell her. "Think of it as smelling salts 
-- it just woke him up.  Can you get his ass into the 
backyard? I'll get the truck and meet you in the alley 
behind the shed."

"The gas," she remembers, right when Mulder husks,"Krycek." 
He glares at me with the same look Scully just had in her 
eyes, wanting to kill but too well-bred to do it without 
asking some questions first. 

"I'd be more impressed if your eyes could focus," I tell 
him. "C'mon.  You want Scully to get kicked out of the FBI 
for being here? No?  Well, let's get the fuck out of here, 
then."

"Get the truck," Scully orders, back in control.

"I =said= that already," I remind her. 

My guess is that I'm not more than forty seconds ahead of 
the sirens by the time I get back wiith the truck.  At this 
point the neighbors are already awake, so I don't think 
twice before driving straight through the white picket 
fence, into the yard, and right up to the back of the shed.

Scully's gotten Mulder outside; he stands unsteadily next 
to the shed, blinking in the truck's headlights.  Scully 
whips the passenger door open before the truck is 
completely stopped. "Get in," she orders Mulder, and he 
does, with a half-focused glare at me on the way. 

"This one," she snaps at me, pointing into the shed.  

I'll be damned. She found the right canister, and she did 
it fast. 01081971 stands like a dark soldier among its 
harmless comrades, loaded with death.

I start to sweat in spite of myself as Scully and I 
struggle the gas into the truck's bed.  The racket from the 
front of the house is probably the local cops kicking in 
the front door. The canister settles into the padded brace 
I put in the truck bed before we left New York, and Scully 
is moving before I tell her to get in.

Scully jumps in next to Mulder.  I blast the second hole in 
the white picket fence just for the sheer fun of it.

We lurch out of the alley onto Branch Avenue, and the sharp 
corner I take makes me wish for a Porsche for the first 
time this evening. The wheels on the left side may have 
come off the road, but my mind is on the braced canister in 
the back. Unnecessarily, Scully snaps, "We have deadly 
nerve gas in this truck, in case you forgot." 

"I =know=," I snarl back, like a suburban husband getting 
browbeaten about driving the carpool too fast.  =This= is 
why I hate working with women. "Where's my Glock? I =like= 
that gun." She reaches for the holster, and hands it back 
to me without comment, although her partner grunts in 
surprise.

Mulder rasps, "Why did he come with you, Scully?"

"I thought you two kids might have had a little talk while 
I was gone," I drawl.
 
"Krycek knew where you were," Scully tells Mulder, with an 
imploring note in her voice that I haven't heard before.  I 
take my eyes off the road long enough to glance at them.  
She's bound the cut on his head with a black strip of 
cloth, making him look a refugee from a commando movie. His 
eyes still aren't quite tracking but he manages to growl 
back at her, "He could have killed you, Scully."

"But he didn't," she answers quietly, and I feel an 
irrational surge of pride at Scully sticking up for me. It 
dies when I look over at her.

The love shining from her eyes when she looks at Mulder is 
like a beacon over a dark sea.  I think the little worm 
twisting in my gut is envy.  She smoothes his hair, stiff 
with blood, out of his eyes again, and it's only to have a 
reason to touch him.

Mulder says, "What about the gas?"

Her voice is cautious when she replies. "That was his 
price."

He pushes her hands away and struggles to sit up 
straighter, wincing.  "Too high, Scully. How can we let him 
walk away with VX gas?"

"How could I let Ajiib walk away with =you=?" she fires 
back.

"All right, save the domestic squabble for later, please," 
I interject. "This is the plan from here on out, unless you 
have better suggestions: I dump you both somewhere along 
the Garden State Parkway. You tell your fibbie friends that 
I kidnapped you both, planning to trade you to Ajiib, but 
the deal went bad. When I couldn't find another buyer for 
you two, I cut you loose. Comprende?"

"And you drive away with a canister of lethal nerve gas? No 
deal." 

"You sound pretty confident for a drugged guy with a busted 
head and no gun, Mulder."

"Screw you, Krycek.  You're the one who sold the gas to 
Ajiib and Pierce in the first place, aren't you?"

"The Syndicate doesn't know yet that you're fucking your 
partner, but I could change that, too."

I was prepared for it, but Mulder's lurching lunge at me 
makes me jump a little anyway.  I hope I get to interrogate 
him someday; the flash of guilt that illuminated his face 
right before anger caught up with him was priceless. Scully 
catches him before he gets his hands around my neck and she 
pulls him back into the sheltering cocoon of her embrace. 
He =must= be drugged; he hardly fights her at all. She 
looks up and catches my eye. "Who are you going to sell the 
gas to this time, Alex?"

The sound of my first name on her lips gives me an odd 
thrill, in spite of the sight of Mulder slumped against her 
small frame, the tenderness of her hands clasping his.  
Accusatory, certainly, but with another note below the 
anger.

Hurt.

I'm at the tollbooth.  The machine spits out the little 
yellow ticket and hums at me insistently, but I stare at 
Scully for a long minute, trying to see into her mind, 
through the blue eyes locked on my own. 

Mulder must feel me looking at her; he lifts his head and 
snarls like a wounded animal.  But Scully just stares back 
at me until I look away, take the ticket and pull out onto 
the Parkway. 

I run it up into the red just to hear the engine roar. 
Trucks. Guns.  Money.  The rest of this, I don't need.


End chapter 12 of Above Rubies.




"Above Rubies" by Rachel Howard, (13/19) 
See chapter 1 for disclaimers and other information. 


"God DAMN it!" Santanda barks at the house, full of dead 
men. Mohammad al Ajiib's body is still lying in the front 
hallway, detectives swarming around it like flies. 
"Knock it off," I tell him, sharply.

The local police are here, the goddamn metro-region media 
arrived before we did, and between the flashbulbs and the 
crowd, I'm having a hard time not feeling like the entire 
situation has already gone to shit. The front door is open, 
but there's no breeze, only the damp, hot night air around 
us. 

No Scully. No Mulder. And no Alex Krycek. 

Ledeller is on the phone with Counter-Terrorism back in DC. 
The agent on the phone apparently had forgotten that Mulder 
and Scully were working this case, due to the fact that the 
last time Mulder checked with him was weeks ago. Who did 
those two call for intelligence, the local library? 

I shake my head to try and lose the crippling anger that's 
making it difficult to focus on the job. Where did they go 
when they left this house and left Ajiib dead on the floor? 
And why? I know they were here. I personally interviewed a 
hysterical neighbor, Louise Henderson, who described Krycek 
right down to the bad haircut. At least five people saw a 
pickup truck leave here and head down Branch Avenue, with 
several people in the cab. The one consolation is that they 
found the missing canisters of VX gas out behind the house. 

Nice trade, Special Agents. I get the gas, but you go 
missing. This just isn't going to cut it. I tell Santanda 
and Ledeller that we're leaving, let the evidence squad do 
their work. Ledeller nods, his ear still glued to the 
phone. We pile into the car. 

Santanda is tight-lipped, and Ledeller presses the end 
button on his cell as I pull away from the curb. "Sir, it 
seems that Mulder did contact Agent Chiavelli early in the 
investigation, but he hasn't spoken to him recently. Agent 
Mulder had asked him for information about Garjon, but it 
appears that his inquiry was made prior to Garjon's, uh, 
death." 

"Does it also appear that Agent Chiavelli might have any 
useful information about Ajiib and his group that could 
help us determine where the hell Krycek is taking Mulder 
and Scully?" 

"Yes, sir," Ledeller says, surprising me. "Chiavelli says 
that Garjon and Pierce have a known associate who is a 
likely accomplice." 

"Who, and where is he?" 

"His name is John Maxwell. His whereabouts are unknown at 
this time, but Agent Chiavelli has an informant who he 
thinks might be able to locate him." 

"Well, get back on the phone and find him." 

Santanda looks across the front seat at me, but he doesn't 
say anything. The lights of the crime scene and the media 
explosion get dimmer. I reach over and crank up the a/c, 
and the car is quiet except for the sound of Ledeller 
dialing. 

The gas is here. So why the hell did they leave with 
Krycek? Depending on the severity of the injury he 
sustained when Ajiib's group kidnapped him, Mulder might 
not have been conscious. But Scully was there, too. 

If I had to choose, I would say Scully is the better agent 
of the two; disciplined where Mulder is reckless, precise 
when he sometimes shoots from the hip. But if his obsessive 
behavior and tendency to listen to the wrong people are his 
weaknesses, then Mulder is Scully's Achilles heel. When 
push comes to shove, he matters more to her than protocol, 
than her safety, than logic. 

Ironic, if you know her. But I don't think she sees her 
devotion to Mulder in that light, if she admits it to 
herself at all. 




We all jump at the sound of the cellphone. It's Mulder's; I 
found it tucked into Ajiib's waistband, and I took it back. 
He must have been planning to call the FBI and ask for 
ransom. Krycek glances at me. "Skinner?" 

Mulder lifts his head but I don't trust him to do the 
talking if it is Skinner, so I answer myself. "Scully." 

"The resourceful Agent Scully," an unfamiliar voice drawls. 

"Who is this?" 

"Tell Alex Krycek that if he wants to see his sister alive 
again, he will deliver what he owes me." 

"Who is this?" 

"Tell Krycek that he has until noon the day after tomorrow, 
or Katya dies. He knows where to find me." 

The metallic click on the line tells me he's hung up. 

"Not Skinner?" Mulder looks a little more alert now. 

"No," I tell him, keeping him braced against me. Krycek 
drives like a maniac. Mulder has spent most of the ride so 
far swaying with every lane change and acceleration, but 
he's starting to sit up a little straighter. I need to get 
him to a hospital. I want to know what they injected him 
with -- his pupils are huge. 

I look over at Krycek. "It was for you." I repeat the 
message word for word and watch as all the color drains 
slowly from his face. Mulder sits up the rest of the way. 

"You have a sister?" he asks, as if this is the strangest 
thing he's ever heard. Krycek doesn't answer, but he's 
gripping the plastic cover on the steering wheel hard 
enough to make the tendons in his right hand bulge. 

"Who was that who just called? And how did he know to call 
Mulder's cellphone?" I ask him, watching a muscle in his 
temple twitch. 

"Shut the fuck up and let me think," he says, without 
taking his eyes off the road. 

"You have a =sister=?" Mulder repeats, untangling my arms 
from around his torso. This is how he sounds when someone 
sends him a particularly gruesome photo of a cattle 
mutilation -- fascinated and slightly disgusted. An exit 
looms up ahead; the sign reads "NO SERVICES" but Krycek 
takes it anyway, flying down the offramp with a blithe 
disregard for the 40 mile an hour speed limit. 

The truck grinds to a stop in the middle of the empty 
parking lot. A concrete and tile restroom, not much else 
here. "Get out," Krycek says. The color hasn't returned to 
his face, and his eyes stand out, black against the marble 
planes of his face. His upper lip is gleaming faintly with 
sweat. 

Neither of us moves. "You have a sister," Mulder repeats 
for the third time. "And someone kidnapped her. And you 
know who it is, don't you?" 

"Get out," Krycek repeats in an icy monotone, whipping out 
his gun and swinging his Glock around to point directly at 
Mulder's chest. I curse silently at myself for giving the 
second Glock back to him. For a long second, no one moves. 

Then Mulder says, gently, "He wants the gas, doesn't he? 
That's what you're supposed to deliver to him. But we can't 
let you have it." 

I have no idea what's going through Mulder's head right 
now, and it worries me. He's sitting up straight and his 
eyes are locked on Krycek's, as if the gun isn't there 
between them. 

Krycek's eyes narrow, and he grates out, "Anyone ever 
tell you that you suck at math, Mulder? Me, two guns. You 
and little Annie Oakley, no guns. Get the fuck out of my 
truck. Now. As if you couldn't tell -- I have someplace to 
be." 

Another long pause, and no one does anything other than 
breathe and think. Then Mulder says, "I'll make you a deal. 
We help you get your sister, and you give us the gas." 

Krycek doesn't move, doesn't answer, and his gun doesn't 
waver. I can't believe I heard Mulder say those words. 
"Mulder, no. We can't do that. =You= can't do that. We need 
to get you to a hospital." 

Ignoring the gun and the felon holding it, he turns slowly 
towards me. I still don't know what he's thinking, but his 
eyes are swamp-black in the sodium glare of the rest stop 
lights. "I feel all right, Scully. And this is the only 
way. As long as he has even one tank of this stuff, it's 
going to get to someone like Ajiib. Or Garjon." 

"They're both dead," I point out. "There is--" 

"They're dead, but John Maxwell isn't," Mulder interrupts. 
Krycek is still silent, still holding his weapon, but his 
gun hand has drifted down to rest loosely in his lap.

"Who's John Maxwell?" 

He swivels around and glances at Krycek, who just lifts one 
eyebrow sarcastically. "I'm not sure. Ajiib mentioned him 
when he was questioning me," Mulder tells me. 

I swallow, knowing that `questioning' is a polite way of 
describing the interrogation that put those bruises on his 
face, and the lines around his mouth soften as he looks 
back at me. "I think Maxwell was working with Pierce and 
Garjon. And I'll bet that he's the one who's got Krycek's 
sister." 

Krycek doesn't say anything, but I watch as his shoulders 
settle, and I know that a different question is hanging in 
the air now. I feel a brief flare of irritation, as if it's 
Bill and Charlie and me arguing over where we're going to 
build the the snow fort, and they've already taken sides 
against me. "There is another way, Mulder. The same way we 
got the rest of the canisters. Let him leave us here. We'll 
look for the last canister until we find it and get it 
back." 

"Or until they let it loose on a subway car full of 
innocent people. No dice, Scully. We go with him." 

Krycek sneers, "Are you two done yet? Jesus, I know married 
people who get along better than you do." He reaches over 
and opens the glove box, and shoves the second Glock into 
it. Shifting the truck out of park, he says, "You didn't 
happen to take Ajiib's gun, did you?" 

For a second, I think Krycek is talking to me, but Mulder 
answers stiffly, "No."

"Shit. Well, it was a piece-of-shit Saturday night special, 
anyway. So we have to get you a weapon. All right, fine." 
He pulls back out onto the Parkway, accelerating off the 
ramp so fast that I reach for the back of the seat to 
ground myself. Mulder turns to face me again, squaring his 
shoulders so that he can look down into my face, blocking 
my view of Krycek. Whatever he sees in my expression makes 
him frown. He says, softly, "You did it for me, Scully. 
This isn't any different." 

"It =is,=" I tell him. "That was =you=." 

"One canister of gas, Scully. On a bus. On the subway. In a 
school gymnasium." 

I hold his gaze for a long minute, thinking about the way 
Garjon looked when we cornered him in that alley. About the 
lilting tone of Pierce's voice when he described watching a 
woman being stoned to death in Afghanistan. "What are we 
going to tell Skinner?" 

"That I kidnapped you," Krycek interjects. "Tried to trade 
you for more gas, but that Maxwell didn't have any more." 

Mulder looks at him. "Why not say you tried to trade us for 
Katya?" 

"No. You don't talk about her to him, or anyone else. Ever. 
If you do, I'll kill you. Do you understand?" He punctuates 
that comment with a glare, then adds, in a different tone 
of voice, "She likes to be called Kate. He only said that, 
Katya, to make sure I knew that he really had her." 

Mulder nods understandingly. "Is that her nickname?" He's 
using the same tone of voice with Krycek that he used with 
Sarah Pitts' parents, when we were trying to figure out her 
connection with Ajiib. 

Oddly enough, Krycek doesn't snap at him. "We called her 
that when she was a little girl. She hates it. Too ethnic." 
I shut my eyes and breathe deeply, but when I open them the 
world is still insane -- Mulder, Alex Krycek and me, in a 
speeding pickup, breaking about eighteen different laws. 

"Would you mind telling me where we're going?" I sound 
faintly shrewish and it makes me even angrier, but Krycek 
answers confidingly, "We need to get Mulder a weapon, 
right? I know a guy." 

The next time Krycek fails to give me an actual location of 
a place that he's taking me to, I am going to kill him with 
my bare hands. "WHERE?" 

He gives me his most annoying, indulgent grin. "Relax, 
=Dana.= I know a nice gentleman who sells firearms to 
honkies like your boyfriend without asking inconvenient 
questions. I think we'll find him in the Bronx. Mulder, 
gimme your phone." 

Mulder hands it over, scowling like an eight-year-old 
giving up the controls to his Sega. 

One of the scarier things I've seen in my lifetime: 
watching a one-armed man dial a cellphone while driving 
eighty miles an hour while "steering" with his prosthesis. 
I collide with Mulder, who reaches to snatch the phone back 
at the same time I do. "Just tell me the number." 

Krycek feigns injury, but he recites the number and Mulder 
dials, then hands the phone back. Krycek props it against 
his shoulder. "Raoul? Where are you? I need a piece." 

Hearing this, Mulder looks slightly ill, which gives me 
some satisfaction. 





"Terence Resnick, Junior. Employed by a chemical 
manufacturer who regularly sold Pierce small quantities of 
some fertilizer that Anti-Terrorism has been keeping an eye 
on," Ledeller reports, after hitting the `end' button on 
his phone. "I guess they were investigating another buyer 
and Resnick tipped them off that the company hadn't been 
too curious about why Pierce was buying this stuff, even 
though he doesn't have a farm." 

Agent Ledeller looks wide awake, which is somewhat 
reassuring, since I'm beat. He's spent most of the drive 
back to the city on the phone with Chiavelli and someone at 
the lab. "What's the connection to Maxwell?" 

"Maxwell paid for a couple of the shipments. In cash. 
Resnick started paying attention because these guys would 
show up, pay cash, then have the fertilizer mailed to New 
Jersey so they wouldn't have to pay New York sales tax on 
it. But Resnick's got a record -- Agent Chiavelli thinks he 
might be making some of this stuff up to score points 
before they bust the company." 

"What's the record for?" 

"Mail fraud." 

I need a cup of coffee. "All right, where do we find him?"
 
"The local PD is going to have him come in -- they told him 
it's to look at some photos having to do with the case. 
Eight AM. I have the address of the station house." 

"Tell them to get him in =now.="

"Sir? It's after midnight. They want his ongoing 
cooperation for the case against his employer." 

I want to yell at someone, but I can't think of a good 
reason to do it. "All right. Eight AM." 

Santanda drops us off, and Ledeller and I check into the 
Bureau-assigned hotel where Mulder and Scully were staying. 

On a hunch, I flash my badge and get the staff to let me 
into Mulder's room. I let the door slip shut behind me, the 
assistant concierge hovering uncertainly in the hallway, 
clearly worried that two guests who are FBI agents are 
missing. 

The cleaning staff has been here. The bed is turned down, 
Mulder's shoes are tidily lined up side by side, but his 
suitcase, hanging open on a low rack along the wall, hasn't 
been unpacked. 

Trailing my hand along the top of the bureau, I examine the 
complimentary hotel pad. Santanda's number is there, along 
with the phone number for Balthazar, which is a restaurant, 
I thik. A tie curls carelessly across the bureau. No handy 
clues like John Maxwell's address, though. 

The bed is like any other hotel bed, completely anonymous. 
But on the bedside table rest a pair of pearl earrings. 
Simple, but pretty. The kind of thing that a woman might 
wear with a business suit. 

I think they're Agent Scully's. 

I could pick them up, see if they smell of her perfume. She 
wears something called Paris -- I heard Kimberly ask her 
about it once. It suits her, fresh and not very flowery. 
She doesn't wear much of it, but I've caught the scent 
riding next to her on the elevator, sitting beside her in 
meetings. I would know it anywhere. 

She has a black suit that she wears the earrings with -- 
there's a cream colored blouse that goes underneath the 
jacket. 

If they're really Scully's. 

I think about the tightness that settled into Sharon's face 
when we argued about my work, how it kept me from vacations 
and dinner engagements, how the politics and frustration 
made me short with her when I should have been kind. I 
remember the failed trip to New York when we tried to 
put our marriage back together again. 

And I remember watching Scully and Mulder embrace in front 
of a scowling Senate subcommittee whose threats and 
accusations had not been enough to convince her to reveal 
his whereabouts. When he walked into the hearing, I saw 
their eyes meet, like a circuit connecting. The rest of us 
became as insubstantial as shadows after that blaze. 

I don't pick up the earrings. 

I switch off the bedside lamp before I leave the room. 


End 13/19, "Above Rubies"