“Jim, you’re on,” Mulder called, his voice laced with a sigh and his body tipped like he hadn’t slept in weeks. Jim raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement and pushed away from his desk, heading into the conference room with a careless kind of gait and glancing over his shoulder at the empty receptionist desk, sure that Pam was avoiding him...

“What’s up?” he wondered tiredly once he had sat himself down across from the two agents.

“Can you state your name and your place of employment, please?” Scully asked him, her legs crossed, and Jim considered how attractive she was for probably the hundredth time since he’d met her…it was the kind of thing no man could deny. She was tightly wound, he realized, but sometimes that was a good thing. He shifted in his seat, concerned.

“Yeah um, Jim Halpert…I uh…” he was interrupted when Mulder leaned forward and hit the ’stop’ button on the tape recorder in the middle of the table and Jim eyed him curiously.

“Look, Christina Macavoy is missing,” Mulder spat impatiently. Scully’s face started to turn an angry shade of red and she chewed on the inside of her cheek and stared at the table as Jim looked from Mulder to Scully and back again.

“Really?” he asked. Mulder nodded.

“We need you to tell us anything you remember happening after 5PM,” he prodded, and Jim sighed, wracking his brain and trying desperately to forget what he'd overheard Pam say to her mother and how that changed things…how that changed everything…

God.

“Uh…” he croaked, swallowing his thoughts and focusing on yesterday. “Yeah…Pam,” he forced out, his voice breaking a little on her name, “uh…she and I stayed late. We were the last to leave around 6... Creed was coming in when we were going out. Said he forgot his briefcase. Then we um, we went downstairs, Pam got in her car and I got in mine and we went home.”

“We should’ve been recording that,” Scully interjected, her voice low and venomous and her stare still fixed harshly on nobody in particular. Mulder rolled his eyes and heaved a sigh and Jim frowned, feeling some kind of energy in the room that seemed like it had nothing to do with what time he’d walked Pam to her car the day before.

“I just assumed you’d interrupt the interview anyway, so what’s the point in wasting tape?” Mulder replied, and Jim’s eyebrows shot up toward his hairline. Any guy could tell you that was probably not the right thing to say. Scully huffed a chuckle and crossed her arms. “Sorry, Jim, go ahead,” he prompted. Jim shook his head.

“Uh that’s all I…”

“I’m just saying that it’s proper procedure to record any interviews,” Scully interrupted again, murmuring as if she were a student sitting in the back row of math class. Mulder froze with his head tipped and his facial expression incredulous.

“So now you’re all about procedure, Scully? That’s quite the change from this morning…” he spat, and Jim’s eyes widened even further than before. This morning? Interesting… Scully bristled and flinched and cleared her throat and every muscle in her body was tightened…coiled…and it only made Jim more wary of the entire situation.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Halpert,” she announced, meeting his alarmed gaze and forcing an insincere smile, “Will you give my partner and I the room for a moment?”

“Yes,” Jim proclaimed too loudly, bolting up out of his chair and heading for the door of the conference room. He had enough drama in his life at the moment…he didn’t need to be in the middle of theirs.

***

“That won’t work down here,” Jordan muttered, and Pam looked up from her cell phone and sighed.

“I know I just…” She shook her head, willing away the tears that were starting to creep up into her eyes and ignoring the way that the rest of the people in the room looked so…worn. So completely defeated and practically hopeless. She was sure they’d tried pretty much everything they could think of to get out of their little prison, and she was sure they’d already cried their tears and muttered their curses enough to last them a lifetime. The only people in the room showing any emotion at all were Christina Macavoy, who was laying with her head in Jordan’s lap and crying silently, her eyes glassy and fixed on a spot of nothing across the room, and Patrick Carson, who was pounding his removed shoe against the pipes next to the toilet in the bathroom... He'd apparently been doing that for almost 24 hours, thinking someone might hear him...save him. Pam licked her lips and looked back down at her phone, flipping idly through her list of contacts because it was just something to do…something to keep her sort of connected to the outside world.  If this was how antsy she was after only an hour of being cooped up in here, she couldn't imagine what it would be like...later...

She flipped past her mother and her sister, wondering if they would find out that she’d gone missing by the end of the day, wondering if they would panic and demand things of the FBI in their long coats and dark glasses the way she’d seen families do on television.

Pam wondered if the nine of them were all going to die before this was over, and if her funeral would be crowded… She wondered at which point during the past hour her thoughts had gotten so unaffectedly dark…

As she rolled through the names in her phone book she found that she kept flipping back to the same entry…the same three letters that seemed to mock her and tease her with the way that they settled the knot in her stomach if only for a moment…

She stared at his number and thought for the thousandth time that there was no way Jim would go home without figuring out that she was missing…

Without somehow feeling that she was gone.

She started when the door to the shelter swung open and their kidnapper entered, offering her a blue and green plaid blanket that she took from him with shaky pale fingers as he gave her a wide kind of smile that made her break out into a cold sweat.  She swallowed.

"Thank you," she whispered on auto pilot, and his smile widened even further.  But it dripped off his face slow like molasses and he cocked his head as the unmistakeable sound of a woman's high-heeled footsteps echoed through the tunnel and into their room.  The nine shifted in surprise and Christina Macavoy let out an audible cry when the man gripped Pam's forearm and hoisted her up against him, her back to his chest.

"Just stay quiet," he whispered into her ear, "Stay very quiet..."

***

“What the hell, Mulder?” Scully spat, moving Mulder to roll his eyes at her in discomfort.

“What?” he asked dumbly and she bristled in her seat until she finally just stood, unable to sit still with the amount of anxious energy in her limbs.  She began to pace the room.

“You’re doing this on purpose,” she accused and he sat back in surprise, his hazel eyes locked on her as she moved back and forth…back and forth…

“Doing what on purpose?” he asked and her hands moved up to her hips.

“Acting unprofessional…acting like…” she stopped pacing and sighed, turning to him and leveling him with an honest gaze. He would expect nothing less. Scully was not the type to run from her mistakes. “I’m sorry about earlier,” she told him flatly, and he raised his eyebrows at her. “I never should’ve…done that.” Her voice was low and he felt a sizzle of electricity meander down his spine at the mention of the morning and what had transpired in his motel room.

“Uh huh,” he offered, aware that it wasn’t an appropriate response, but enjoying the zing of irritation in her eyes too much to let the opportunity pass. She sighed.

“I mean it. I don’t know what I was…thinking…I was just…” her face twisted with embarrassment and she successfully avoided his gaze, searching the corners of the conference room for her missing reason and intellect. He nodded.

“You were just overwhelmed by my rugged good looks,” he finished for her, deliberately flirting in a way that he knew would ruffle her feathers. She pushed out an incredulous breath and met his stare.

“I was not…overwhelmed by your…Mulder, can you please be serious for just one second?” she begged, shifting and crossing her arms. Mulder shrugged at her and scratched at the back of his head idly.

“I’m being serious, Scully. You were overwhelmed by the wonder that is my body and couldn’t help yourself. It’s ok, it happens a lot.” She was chewing on her bottom lip to keep from smiling and Mulder grinned back at her, their eyes locking to share the joke but then lingering longer than was probably necessary. His thoughts were crowded with her sky blue gaze and the way that he swore there was lust lingering somewhere just beneath the surface…he swore there were emotions there that he had never noticed before…he swore that something new was stretching itself out solidly between them and he thought of the way she had touched him earlier, the way that her skin had felt against his, the way that her lips had sighed out his name and danced against the roughness of his jaw…

There was a heavy pause as they stared at each other and a blush crept up Scully's neck.

“Shut up, Mulder,” she finally murmured, and Mulder chuckled.

“I didn’t say anything, Scully,” he offered quietly. She rolled her eyes.

“You were thinking it,” she accused. “And don’t undermine me in front of witnesses,” she added, her voice pinching, grasping at a familiar tinge of professionalism to avoid this new casual fire that he had ignited. Mulder wagged his eyebrows at her and she pursed her lips.

“You mean specifically in front of the ‘good looking’ witness Jim Halpert,” he corrected. She narrowed her eyes in a warning and turned away from him, opening the door with a swift tug. Glancing over her shoulder, she eyed him coquettishly, making his blood boil a little hotter in the confines of his veins.

“I’ll be right back,” she offered.

“Going to give a personal interview?” he wondered, and Scully tipped her head in irritation.

“I left my phone in the car, Mulder, but thank you for being so concerned with my whereabouts,” she offered and he laughed a quiet kind of laugh, watching as she took a step out of the room.

He called out her name just as the door was swinging shut and she turned back, poking her head in with a look of concerned curiosity on her face. He met her questioning gaze with a heavy one of his own and she frowned.

“This isn’t the end of this conversation,” he told her meaningfully, and she visibly blanched, her expression battling between her ever present concern for him and her fear of having to discuss her own vulnerability. Finally she nodded and left the room completely, refusing to turn back and see the way that he was watching her through the glass.

***

Scully decided to take the stairs. She had enough lust running through her body to warrant taking the stairs up and down over and over and over again…to warrant going on a jog around the block in her pumps just to feel herself sweat out the hormones that were so much stronger today than normal…which was saying something. God she couldn’t even scold him properly. She couldn’t even get herself to be angry because as soon as he looked her in the eye she felt this overwhelming tug deep and low and it made her intellectual responses just sort of…whimper and die.

She sighed and took the stairs at a quiet jog, her eyes glazed over and her thoughts racing with self-recrimination and disbelief. How could she have been so stupid that morning? How could she have lost her cool so easily and just… And why the hell had he been prancing around without a shirt on? What did he think she was, just totally blind to his body and her own impulses? She thought probably he had thought that, until she‘d reached out and basically groped him…and then kissed him…ugh, she was an idiot. Which was probably why he had this need all day to push her various buttons…to test her boundaries and see what exactly this new exciting side to Scully meant for him. She shook her head at herself and rounded the corner before stopping short in confusion at the change in lighting.

She turned around and realized that the door to the lobby was behind her and she’d continued down another darker set of stairs, painted a thick sort of green color. She frowned and really looked around, turning in a complete circle with her hands on her hips.

She'd only taken the elevator before this, and she hadn’t even noticed any tell tale 'B' that would indicate…

Suddenly she jolted into action, pushing through the door to the lobby and rounding the corner so that she was face to face with the security guard.

“Excuse me what is this?” she asked harshly. He looked back at her and frowned.

“What?”

“There are more stairs here,” she explained, pointing back toward the door she’d just come through, “Is there a basement in this building?” she demanded.

“Uh, yeah, but uh…nobody goes down there except the maintenance guys and sometimes if the heating system needs…” She kicked into motion again and was around the corner and down the stairs, only hearing an echo of the guard’s: “Hey! Hey, wait a second!”, and only sort of vaguely considering the fact that she should go get Mulder…or at least call him…

Or something.

The lights in the basement flickered as she pulled her gun from its holster and switched off the safety.

She ignored the way that this had a distinct Stephen King feel to it and stepped quietly past the furnace and into some kind of a dug out tunnel, and she paused at the sound of scuffling at the other end.

"Dana Scully, FBI!" she called, "I'm armed!"

She squinted to focus on the hazy light at the end of the path and thought she definitely should've called Mulder.  A man stood there, eyeing her nervously, the single bulb of light glinting off a knife that he had pressed effectively to Pam Beesly's noticeably pale neck and Scully sighed...

This was not good.

"FBI," Scully repeated, "drop your weapon."  The man tightened his hold on Pam and Scully heard a breathy kind of whimper escape her lips as a thin trickle of blood slipped down her throat from where he had superficially nicked her.

"Put down the gun, Dana Scully FBI," the man ordered, and Scully frowned, unsure what the best course of action was and knowing that she was unable to get a safe shot at him with Pam shielding his chest.  "I'll finish this!" he threatened, impatient with the amount of time Scully had spent debating.  Pam forced out the word please and Scully lifted her hand, shifting her aim so that it was pointed toward the cieling.

"Don't do anything we'll all regret," she murmured, and as she bent over to set the gun down at her feet the man lunged forward and grabbed it from her hand, lifting to aim it at her and tossing the receptionist back into what seemed to be a kind of bomb shelter.  Scully raised her hands in surrender.

"Get in," he told her, tipping his head back to indicate the room behind him.  Scully nodded, wondering how she always managed to get herself into these situations.

She was highly educated but, Jesus, sometimes it really didn't seem like it.  The door swung shut behind her and she heard a bolt slide into place before she turned to take in her surroundings with the sinking feeling that there was no easy way out of this.

She licked her lips in discomfort.  She really...really should've called Mulder.