Subject: Scene 15 repost
Date: Sat, 27 Dec 1997 07:02:07 -0800 (PST)
From: lisby@earthlink.net

XV

Wednesday, 12/6/95, 1:45 A.M., Alexandria, Virginia
Tina Hill watched Queequeg water the infant hedgerow. The night sky was
starless--not even black, but with an ugly pink overblush bounced from
myriad street lamps. That was one thing she missed about Pine Ridge
Reservation: a billion stars. Heard Carl Sagan's echo, "Billions and
billions...."

Queequeg trotted through the waver of gaslight, through the firmer shaft
thrown by the open front door. She watched him sniff blades of grass,
tucked her hands under opposing armpits when she shivered in the tide of
wind. Tina's thoughts wandered like the little dog: Would man ever go to
Mars or return to the Moon, colonize a new world? Travel at warp speed?
Just what did Patrick Stewart look like naked...and what the heck was that
sudden, small light to the East?

It was greenish-yellow and steady, moving west, then--impossibly--it
switchbacked and swung in a lazy circle. Tina felt her eyes bug as the
light--the orb--paused and shot straight up through night's roseate dome.
"Holy shit," she whispered.

Upstairs, Dana Scully started screaming.

Queequeg snarled and as she swept him up, gnawed her hand as she raced
inside and slammed the door behind her. The dog bounced against fat
cushions when she threw him on the couch then sprinted, pounded up the
stairs, calling, "Dana! Dana, its me! I'm coming!" Her heel slammed the
bedroom door against the inner wall and she hung back cringing. "Mutt?"

Heard a sharp intake of breath and a moan. One peep around the corner: Dana
was tangle-haired, owl-eyed, with her back pressed hard against the
headboard. Her hands were locked around a Smith and Wesson--its muzzle
pointed not at Hill, but at the window. Tina kept her eyes on the gun's
silhouette and smooshed her voice down flat. "Its Jeffie, Dana. It's me.
I'm coming in. Don't shoot me." Gut clenched tight, she rounded the door
jam and took a few experimental steps toward the bed. "Put it down.
Everything's okay."

Not a blink, not a quiver.

Inched in slowly, sweat above her lip. "You hear me? It's Jeffie and if you
shoot me Tom Colton's gonna spurt for a week." A little closer. "You know
he's an ASAC now down in the Charlotte Field Office, don'tcha?" Hill
step-stepped toward the frozen woman whiteknuckling the trigger. Reached
out a tentative hand. "He keeps asking me if I want to come work for him.
Twerp."

Her skin touched Dana's, palm over palm around the chamber, and she sighed
in relief. The sound was lost in rising wind that dragged the nubs of tree
branches across the window screen. "No!" Red nails dug into white flesh at
Dana's high and plaintive adjuration. "Leave me alone!"

"It's me, for fuck's sake!" Hill hissed. "It's Tina! Don't shoot!"

The wind waned; its wake was empty, then filled by a mournful "Oh." Dana's
elbows loosened, her shoulders drooped, and the heavy black gun sank to her
lap. "Oh fuck," she groaned. "The tree again. Shit....God, Jeff, I'm sorry.
It was the tree again." Head hanging, hair hanging. "I thought it was
them."

"Who's them?" Hill unknotted the weapon from slack fingers--had the gun in
her grasp and the cramp in her gut lessened as she locked the safety.
"Who's 'them,' Dana? The ones who took Mulder?"

"No--I--I don't know." Dana lifted her head. Her eyes seemed to beg the
answer.

"Baby, you had a bad dream," Hill touched her hair. "You're stressed to the
max and you had a bad dream."

Tiny. Remorseful. "Yeah."

Tina blew out a long exhalation, walked the service weapon across the
bedroom to lay it on the dresser. Her heart pounded at twice the pace of
her footsteps as she returned to settle beside Dana. "You just freaked on
me because of a dream, sweetie."

"I guess," the redhead sighed. "Shit....Sorry."

Hill rubbed the thin arm beneath the sweatshirt and spoke automatic
placations. "It's okay. We're gonna find him. We will. We're gonna get him
back."

"I don't even remember what it was about." Dana scrubbed her face with her
hands. "'War of the Worlds' or something."

An image of the light and a chill and Hill almost spoke, then she thought
about National and Andrews and the Pentagon all a stone's throw away.

No.

Nope.

Hill shrugged the weight of hair off her shoulders. Prefaced a new subject
with a thin-lipped smile. "Hey, I'm batting zero on that shrink Abloy. I'm
wondering if he isn't deceased. There's a V.A. Abloy on the Social Security
death list for Nineteen-ninety-three in California. Could be our guy. Oh,
and Preftakes faxed over copies of what he's found. There's not much of it
and none of it spells Samantha Mulder."

"Great." A weak smirk.

"But," she patted her friend's shoulder, "On the brighter side, I've
tracked one of the other victims. I should have her on the line pretty
soon. And that guy Frohicke called. You have a seven-thirty meeting; he
says you know where. The toad wouldn't tell me anything else."

"'Ixnay on the onephay'?" Dana rubbed at the base of her neck.

"How'd you guess?" Hill shifted a hand to massage a hot, hard knot. "Jesus,
there's hell of a lot of tension here, Mutt."

"Must be where I carry it," she mumbled.

"I think you need a Swede named Gunthur. "

"Hmmm." Dana wiped the hair back from her forehead and Hill felt the
muscles move beneath her hand. The skin was soft, but underneath....

"Forget Gunthur. Let's upgrade to a few months with a friendly physical
therapist. This is really bad."

Dana's eyelids slipped, bobbed open again as her body sagged, then twitched
off the weight of sleep. "Okay....Right."

Might as well postpone the nagathon. No use in it now. The bedsprings
unkinked as Hill stood, hand lingering on Dana's shoulder. "Just get some
shut-eye now, Mutt. I'll let you know if something breaks."

2:13 A.M.
The phone warbled and Hill's black eyes snapped open. Oh fuck a duck only
just let her head touch the back of the sofa sonofabitch and sat up
straight to grab the receiver from its cradle on the coffee table. "Yeah?"

"This is Special Agent Hill?" A woman's voice...an accent. Tina tossed back
her hair, wanted to whimper as knuckles ground into eye sockets. "Ummm. I
think you've got her. Who's this?"

She heard static and impatience through the earpiece. "I'm sorry to wake
you, but you did say to ring you straight off. I'm calling from London. My
name is Susan Bealby. You left a message on my service. I just got to work
and listened."

"Oh...oh, yes. Right." Hill's eyes followed the black electric patch cord
to where the microcassette recorder was hidden beneath a file folder. "Do
you mind if I record this conversation?"

The tone was cool. "Perhaps you should tell me why."

"The FBI is conducting an investigation and we believe--" Tar-throated.
Sounded like fucking Lauren Bacall. Turned her head and coughed. "We, um,
hope you may have information that could help us."

There was a little, shrill edge on the response. "Me? But I haven't been in
the States for years."

Hill's mouth was flat, but her inflection gave lie to a smile. "You
emigrated in Nineteen-eighty-eight, right? I can hear it in your
voice....Listen, Ms. Bealby, you're not suspected of anything here--"

"Then how does this matter concern me, please?"

"Ma'am, I just need to ask a few questions about someone you knew. One of
the other women at the DiAgosti Estate. Can I turn on the tape recorder?
It's the middle of the night here and I can't trust my notetaking skills."

"I--" The syllable sounded like a salvo.

"Look," Hill rolled her eyes, cut her off with a big gun, "We may be trying
to save an FBI agent's life, Ms. Bealby. I need to be sure of what you tell
me."

The two-tone wail of a British police siren rose in and fell. Papers
rustled. "What happened to this officer?"

"He's been kidnapped."

A still pause, a sigh. "All right. Switch it on....I'll never get away from
him, will I?" The lamentation was petulant. "Just when I think it's
over...."

Hill pressed 'play' and 'record' in tandem and pushed the file aside to be
sure the little wheels turned. "I'm sorry to bring up bad memories for you.
Really, I am. And you're perfectly free to hang up the phone." She
shivered. Dana's house was fucking freezing.

The woman sighed again, deeper and longer. "Just go on."

"I need you to tell me about Samantha."

"Samantha?"

Tina leaned back against the cushions, tucked her hair behind her ear and
the phone against her shoulder. "Didn't you know a girl called Samantha--or
Sam?"

"Oh yes--yes, I did," Susan Bealby assured. "Sorry. But it was always just
Sam, though. Poor Thing. She missed her chance at freedom--was sold off
just before you lot came."

"What did she look like?"

"Sam was tall--about five-foot ten inches. She was quite thin and had muddy
brown hair and brown eyes. "

"What was her face like--round, oval, square...? Her nose--was it long,
snubby...?"

Hill watched the tape turn, tired eyes dry and gritty. "Well," the
transatlantic voice finally spoke. It had only been seconds, but it seemed
like the tape had rolled forever. "Sam had one of those long, bumpy noses
and a long face, too. She was pretty--not stunning, but very pretty."

"Any distinguishing marks?"

"There were several moles on her neck and shoulders, I think."

Hill dug at her eyes again. Blinked to refocus. "Did Sam ever confide in
you? Did she tell you things about her past?"

"Well, she wasn't with me much. She was with Brandy, though. Have you asked
her?"

>From Tina's angle, the screen of the Powerbook looked like mercury. Liquid
and below zero. "We can't find Brandy yet, Ms. Bealby." She tugged a throw
blanket from off the arm of the couch. "Please. Think. You were how old
when you went to the DiAgosti estate?"

"I was about thirteen, Miss Hill, but I don't know exactly how old I am."

Tina heard the regret, cuddled the cotton blanket. She'd always hated
questioning victims. "Jeez, I'm sorry--I--I don't want to be stirring up
unhappiness. Listen, how old do you think Sam was, Ms. Bealby?"

"Uh, I think she and Brandy came the same year I did. They were about
twelve or thirteen, too. I think I'm about thirty-six."

"Are you sure Sam couldn't have been younger?"

Hill flinched at a screech that could have been a drawer opening, a shuffle
then a clunk. "Maybe. I don't know. If she was younger, then she was a big
girl for her age."

Tina leaned down to rest elbows on knees. "Okay. Can you recall anything
Sam said to you about her life?"

"Well...." Hill heard a tapping sound. "I do remember her speaking about
her mum. About missing her. Sam had a mum she loved and who she could
remember--not a rotter like most of ours."

"Did she mention a brother with an unusual name?"

"Not that I recall. Not around me."

Figured. "How about where she was from or how old she was when she went to
live with a master?"

"She was from the South, I think." Irritation hiked Susan Bealby's pitch.
"I'm just not sure, honestly. She was young when they took her. We were all
young. That's all I can tell you. That's all I can remember. Brandy was her
chum. Brandy could help you more."

Tina stared at the screen, at meteors hugging the curve of Netscape
Navigator's black planet. Felt a flutter when the question formed. "Ms.
Bealby, why was Sam sold?"

The white noise of air going out and in. "It was pretty horrible, really.
Sam escaped. They found her wandering in the woods a few miles away. She
told Sir she didn't--"

"Wait--who's 'Sir'?"

A grunt. "Him. DiAgosti. She told him she didn't know how she'd gotten into
the forest--that she didn't remember. He called her a liar, of course, and
beat her badly. Then he sold her off. That was only a few days before the
FBI came."

"Do you--do you have any inkling to whom or where she went?"

"Nothing other than some gossip amongst the girls. Brandy thought she had
been sold to a breaker for correction and resale."

Tina swallowed, "You mean, to someone who would--"

"To a person who tortures slaves until they won't misbehave again. Then the
breaker sells the slave for profit. You know, Agent Hill," Susan Bealby
sounded blunt and wry. "Buy commodities low; sell them high?"

--lisby@earthlink.net
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My frying pan has been violated.
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