“No. It’s just that there’s… well… a tad more bad news.”
“Tad?” He leaned forward. “You just said tad?”
“Hank, actually.”
It took him a moment to figure it out, and dismiss it with a no big deal, we can live with it wave.
“And company,” she added.
Someone knocked on the doorframe.
“What the hell does that mean, ‘and company’?” he snapped. “Scully, what’s going on, huh?”
She stood, pointed to the door, and said, “Fox Mulder, meet the company.”
“Hi,” said the tall blonde entering the office as Mulder stumbled to his feet. “I’m Licia Andrews. I’m really glad to meet you, Agent Mulder. Hank’s told me so much about you.”
“Hank?” Mulder echoed dumbly as he shook her hand.
Licia glanced at Dana. “Why, yes. Hank Webber. Didn’t he tell you? We’re partners. Sort of. We’re going to New Jersey with you. Right, Agent Scully?”
“Oh, yes,” Dana said, enjoying herself immensely, and not the least bit ashamed of it. “Absolutely.”
The view from the apex of the Delaware Memorial Bridge was probably spectacular — the Delaware Bay below, wooded shoreline upriver, the ocean to the right, the factories and plants that lined the banks on both sides. It probably was, but Barelli never saw it. He hated the height, hated the seagulls gloating at him from eye level, and his knuckles bled white every time he crossed it. Still, it was better than flying by a factor of ten.
And once on the north side, he aimed his battered yellow Taurus straight for the Turnpike, not wasting any time. Despite the call he had made even before he had seen Mulder, and despite the senator’s reassurances that the family matter would be expedited, he didn’t quite believe it.
Especially after what Dana had said.
After refusing, again, to succumb to his charms, she had coldly walked him to the hushed, vast lobby and had, for God’s sake, patted his goddamn arm as if he were a kid.
“Stick to sports, Carl,” she’d said. “I’m sorry about the corporal, but use your head, okay?”
He’d been so mad, he’d barely been able to kiss and hug her goodbye.
Stick to sports.
Who the hell did she think she was, Sherlock Holmes in a skirt?
Besides, he was not a sports reporter. He was a reporter whose interests happened to lie in sports. There was a difference, and he was going to prove it.
Fifteen minutes later he was speeding north on the Turnpike, through a speckled twilight rapidly slipping into dusk, ignoring the press of the forest on either side, or the late-hunting hawks that drifted patiently above the dense scrub oak and twisted pine that made up the Pine Barrens. He ignored the speed limit as well, keeping to the left of the two lanes, pushing seventy. The Yankees on the radio. Wind from the open passenger window stirring scraps of paper and crumpled tissues on the back seat and floor. A cigarette in his left hand.
Goddamn bitch. He wondered why he wasted his time, and smiled mirthlessly at the all too obvious answer — she wouldn’t give in. He admired that. Hell, he admired her. And one of these days she would learn to admire him.
Soon.
It would be soon.
Although he wasn’t exactly a national figure, his byline in this state carried with it no little recognition. He figured he could trade on that once he reached Marville, wherever the hell that was. It sounded like, and most likely was, a two-bit town that leeched off Fort Dix and McGuire. A celebrity like him should find loose tongues easily. A few drinks, a few questions, a few slaps on the back and a couple of knowing winks, and effing Fox Mulder could kiss this reporter’s ass.
Besides which, Ulman had practically been family. The last time he had seen Angie, her eyes had been so puffed from crying she could barely see.
Nobody, but nobody, did that to his people.
In fact, with a little luck, he might catch the creep alone, the one who did Frankie in.
He smiled again as he switched on his headlamps.
The smile didn’t last.
He couldn’t hold it.
All he could hold was the steering wheel, and the idea that Carl Barelli wasn’t going to be deterred by some freak with a knife. He knew others saw him as soft, too long at the desk. Too often for them, those others found out different.
Don’t worry, Angie, he promised to the early night; you hang in there, kid, Cousin Carl is on the job.
Dana had never liked the way moonlight and headlight bleached the land of its color. There was never any real white, only black and shades of grey, and the things that moved between them.
Graveyard time.
She reached for her left ear and pinched the lobe, just sharply enough to hurt and wake her up. She had thought, had hoped, she would be done with long-distance driving for a while, but Mulder had insisted there was no sense waiting until tomorrow. They might as well get their act together and the show on the road so they’d be ready to work first thing Friday morning.
That wasn’t so bad, actually. He had volunteered to do all the driving, brought the coffee and some sandwiches, and had somehow convinced Webber that he ought to drive on alone with Andrews, get to know her, let her get to know him. Partners, he had lectured solemnly and truthfully, had to be able to predict each other’s reactions so backs could be guarded and missteps minimized when the action got hot. What he had failed to tell them was that the action hardly ever got hot, except in the movies.
Unless, of course, the partner was Fox Mulder.
Licia hadn’t minded; Webber, to Scully’s amazement, had actually seemed flustered.
Now she figured them to be fifteen minutes ahead, their first assignment to book rooms in a motel called the Royal Baron, a recommendation Mulder had picked up from a visiting agent stationed in Philadelphia.
There was no question it would be as horrid as it sounded. Mulder was an expert at picking such places. He called it a knack; she knew it was a curse.
“You okay?” He glanced over. “You can sleep if you want.”
“Mulder, it isn’t even nine. If I sleep now, I’ll be awake at dawn.” She watched him for a moment, then reached over and turned down the heater. The night was chilly, but it wasn’t that cold. “What’s the matter?”
He shrugged. “Nothing.”
“This breaking into pairs isn’t your style.”
“Maybe, but four agents driving into a place called Marville would be like a parade, don’t you think?”
“And two cars with agents isn’t?”
He said nothing.
A mile passed, black and grey, before she repeated her earlier question. “And don’t jive me, Mulder, I’m not in the mood.”
He laughed silently. “Good lord. First ‘tad’, now ‘jive’. What the hell did you do on that vacation?”
“I didn’t change the subject every time I was asked a question.”
He drove on, thumb tapping lightly on the wheel. “I had a visitor the other day.”
She listened as he told her about the man at the Jefferson Memorial, not saying a word. At one point she pulled her coat closer across her neck; when he had finished she had folded her arms across her stomach. She didn’t doubt that the meeting had occurred, but she had never been able to fully accept his absolute belief in extraterrestrial life, or his notion that there were those in the government, and those seemingly beyond the government’s reach, who were just as convinced, and were as dangerous to him as any murderer they had ever sought.
Add to that the equally bizarre idea that among those Shadow People, as he called them, there were also a handful who were actually on his side, and in any other human being she would see a full-blown case of whatever lay beyond extreme paranoia.