Chapter Text
“Mulder.”
He managed, finally, to snag another bag of sunflower seeds from the haphazard mess of road trip supplies in the backseat. “Yes, Scully?”
“If anyone here is panicked about this…attack…then you sure can’t tell.”
He looked up as he opened the bag. The cabin the police report had said the attack occurred at was unmarked by crime scene tape. All around, other renters enjoyed their vacations, picnicking in front of their own rented cabins.
The only sign that something had happened here was a sign on the door reading Under Repair.
“I read the report,” his partner said, opening her door. Mulder joined her in the springtime mountain air. Winter’s bite still lingered, but the village of Ballomar, Colorado was blessed with an early spring this year. “There was an attack here three days ago and one missing person. The sheriff did have it cordoned off.”
“Maybe county forensics works fast.” He led her to the cabin door.
Scully huffed quietly. “Maybe it’s the lack of a body.”
Mulder shook his head as he knocked on the door. “There was a murder here. There is a witness.”
A harried looking older woman swung open the door before Scully could question the reliability of the testimony of a five-year-old boy. “You must be Agent Mulder,” she said, pulling off a yellow cleaning glove to shake his hand. “I’m Sarah Higgs, owner and proprietor of Brightvale Cabins.”
“This is my partner, Agent Scully,” he said and the woman shook her hand as well. “You said there was a murder here.”
“That’s what Callum says.” She stepped back to let them in. “Though I have to be honest, Agents, as the days go by, I just think it’s that my brother’s son ran off again to go chase some other crazy scheme.”
Mulder looked around as the women settled into a pair of armchairs. It was a one-room cabin, but it was a roomy one-room, with a half-wall separating the twin bed from the kitchen and living area. The furniture was older and inexpensive but tough, blocky stuff that had little dings and dents from years of visitors. Cleaning supplies were piled up near the sink and a large red toolbox stood open on the dining table. The place smelled of artificial pine scent. So much for forensic evidence, if there had been any.
There was a couch but Mulder opted for boldness: he perched on the arm of Scully’s chair. “You said your son seemed pretty convinced his cousin died.”
“That’s why I called you.” She wrung her discarded gloves between her hands. “Callum’s an imaginative kid, but he’s never been this…traumatized. And the story he tells…it’s not like his usual games. Not enough cowboys or zoo animals.” She sighed. “I shouldn’t have let him sleep over. Andrew seemed to be turning over a new leaf, helping around with repairs, making good on promises.”
“What was the old leaf like?”
Sarah Higgs scowled. “Name a get-rich-quick scam and he was involved in it. Low man on the totem pole, though, always. His ambition always outdid his sense and he had to get out of whatever tiny town he was in.” She slapped the gloves against one hand. “Must have been up to something right under my nose this whole time.”
“You were letting him stay here until he got on his feet?” Scully asked, glancing at her notes.
“That’s right. Against my better judgement. My husband passed a few years back and I needed help with repairs, Andrew is family and needed somewhere to stay, to make good he said, and…well.” She held her hands out to indicate the cabin. “Single-room cabins never rent as often out here as the family-sized ones, and this one hasn’t been refurbished in years.” She snorted. “Just as well. He’d left the place a mess. You would think the Air Force would have taught him to throw away his trash, but apparently not.”
“Any signs of a break-in?”
“At first I thought there were, but Andrew just lived that way, really. The only real damage was the closet door had been torn off its hinges. I just rehung it this morning.”
“Did he take anything with him when he left?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Sarah said with a shrug, “He didn’t have much, just a few old duffel bags with clothes that I did find. And a laptop that I didn’t.”
Mulder nodded. A missing Air Force veteran with a missing laptop. Well, well. “I’d like to speak with Callum, if I can, get his story first-hand. “
She checked her watch. “It’s almost his lunch time. If you give me half an hour to finish off some things, I can meet you over at the house. It’s also our check-in office so just follow the signs.” She stood and stretched. “Feel free to look around. I need to get this cabin set for renters, but not much has changed since Andrew disappeared except I threw out the trash and changed the sheets”
“Thank you, Mrs. Higgs,” Scully said.
The proprietor gave them a tight, tired smile and walked over to the toolbox, closing it and taking it with her as she left with a wave.
“This is not an X-file,” Scully said.
Mulder wandered over to the re-hung closet door. “You read the boy’s account. He was woken up by shouting and saw a dark figure fire a beam of blue light at his cousin. His cousin went down, then there were two more beams and his cousin’s body vanished.”
“Kids imagine things.”
“From his mother’s description, now and when she contacted me, the lack of imagination in his story stands out.” He tapped the still-unpainted damage next to the hinges. “Looks like this was kicked out.” He stepped into the closet’s threshold. It was not roomy, just enough space to hang clothes.
Scully walked over to examine the damage he’d found. “It does.” Her shoulder brushed his chest and he knew, he knew, she didn’t have to stand so close.
Two months ago, she hadn’t had to let him kiss her, either. He knew that, too.
“He could have been hiding here,” she continued, “Trying to ambush his attacker.” She scowled. “Leaving his child cousin vulnerable.”
“Tight fit.” Mulder pulled her closer to demonstrate. Heat flared where her back touched his chest, a welcome counter to the hint of dying winter that had snuck into the cabin. “No other sign of a break-in.”
“Maybe the attacker had a key. I’ll check when we meet with Mrs. Higgs, see how they control access to the cabins.” She sighed and looked at him over her shoulder. “You think that someone broke in, somehow, through the closet. Alright, Mulder, what’s your theory?”
“Some form of teleportation, possibly linked to some sort of psychic ability. It’s how the attacker got in, out, and how the body vanished.”
“No aliens? No…Flatwoods Monster?”
He grinned. This thing, this beautiful thing, unfolded in his chest like spring’s first rose. “I love it when you talk cryptid to me.”
She rolled her eyes and elbowed him lightly in the ribs, pushing away after a long moment. “The boy’s story is more of a sci-fi one than a psychic one.”
“Either way, it’s an X-file.”
“Local law enforcement didn’t even come to us. He just ran off, Mulder. It’s not like he doesn’t have a history of it.”
He smiled to himself and checked the damaged wall of the closet again. Kicked out. “Come on, Scully. We’re the people for this.”
***
“Don’t we have people for this?”
“We do, O’Neill,” Teal’c said from the front passenger seat, “Us.”
Jack sat up from his sprawl in the back bench seat of the van. “Have you been marathoning Schwarzenegger films again?”
The Jaffa faced forward, expressionless yet somehow smug. Jack narrowed his eyes.
“If a zat gun is out in the wild, sir, we need to find it,” Carter told him, glancing back at him in the mirror before returning her eyes to the road, “It’s not from our inventory. We need to find out if this report is true and if it is, then we need to make sure we get the gun and find where it came from.”
“A crashed Goa’uld ship is a much worse thing than stolen weapons,” Daniel added. He was laying in the middle bench, his nose in report.
Jack reached over to push the file down to look him in the eye. “Doesn’t reading in the car give you a headache?”
“I’m reading up on the history of this town to see if there’s any indication of Goa’uld activity in the historical record.”
“And?”
He shrugged. “It’s always had unusually pleasant early spring weather for a mountain town in Colorado.”
Jack tossed himself back to his seat and sighed, shutting his eyes. He could sleep more but he’d been sleeping for the whole day it had taken them to drive from Cheyenne Mountain. He was full up on sleep, glutted with it. He wouldn’t say he wouldn’t need coffee when they got into Middle of Nowhere, Colorado, but he wouldn’t need a coffee IV.
He knew why General Hammond had sent SG-1 on this: they were the go-to for the unknown, the unpredictable, even (somehow) the delicate. They were also not supposed to be on mission today, but hey, it was better than spellchecking reports or sitting in on supply briefings.
That was a low, low bar. He had to get better standards.
“Are we there yet?” he asked. Someone- not Teal’c, probably- tossed an empty water bottle at him. He steadfastly refused to open his eyes and asked again. “Are we there yet?”
“Don’t start, Jack,” Daniel said wearily.
Jack opened his eyes to take in the forest rushing by. They were off the beaten path but not off the paved one. “Seriously, how much further?”
“Ten miles.” Carter’s tone told him that she had thrown the water bottle and he couldn’t help but grin.
Yeah, yeah, so it was like pulling a girl’s pigtails in class. It was all he could do, really, so there.
“Teal’c, you might want to gear up,” Jack said. With a nod, Teal’c pulled a soft cap over his Jaffa mark. “Sheriff’s office first?” He prepared himself for some terrible coffee.
“We need to see if the deputy who wrote the report will talk to us.” Carter turned at a sign pointing toward Ballomar, Colorado.
Jack relaxed all the way into the hard, gray seat. At least it was pretty out here. Never mind that these operations had always gone wrong, or at least weird, in the past. This one would go smooth. Easy. Simple.
If he kept telling himself that, he could almost believe it.