He pushed and he pulled.  He made sure there were no seams visible in the thick plaster and that the construction and solidity was as immaculate as when he'd first discovered that the wall was false, opening into the tunnel leading to the shelter. 

He secured that wall every time. 

And now he realized he should've been securing it behind him, even when he'd just been going into the tunnel to bring blankets and food.  He realized that leaving the shelter visible while he delivered things had been a foolish thing to do. 

Jesus, it wasn't like he wanted to get caught.  

He knocked against the green paint and threw his weight against it once to make sure the undetectable doorway from the basement to the tunnel was secure and there was no sign of entry.  He took a step back and sighed, brushing his hands on the thighs of his pants. 

Perfect.  It was like there was nothing there.

Nothing.

*** 

Jim had his hand perched against his mouth as if that could hold in his doubts…as if that could somehow magically settle his very palpable unease. His chair was faced completely away from his desk and he was slouched down in it, one arm draped across his middle and his eyebrows drawn in thought. His gaze didn’t waver.

Her desk was empty.

It had been for about two hours now, and for the first forty five minutes of her being gone his coworkers had tossed their curiosity at him, assuming that Jim would know where she was and what she was doing. He’d initially responded to them with things like ‘She’s walking Angela’s cat around the block,’ or ‘She’s talking to her mother on the phone,’ and now he simply didn’t respond at all, his stare unmoving and his eyebrows only flickering with mild acknowledgement. He was sure something wasn’t right.

And for the past hour he’d bounced back and forth between the thought that she actually couldn’t find Angela’s cat anywhere and was avoiding the office in fear of the repercussions, and the thought that she had no desire at all to see his face and was avoiding the office in fear of having to look him in the eye. Of course, being the person that he was, he was most inclined to blame himself for her absence…and he was sure that she would not want to deal with the idea that he had heard her talking to her mom.

But the thing was…the tight coiling in his stomach and the way that he actually thought he might vomit at any second made him think that maybe he was missing something…

And it was about seven and a half minutes ago that he’d finally considered the three words he’d been avoiding at all costs:

Vance Refrigeration Kidnappings.

His knee started bouncing and he shifted and sighed. Her chair mocked him with its emptiness and his nervousness tightened even further. Finally he lunged from his chair and moved like lightening toward the men‘s room.

He was definitely going to puke.

***

“If you could actually just stick to the facts pertaining to the case that would be really…”

“Yeah of course definitely. So anyway after that I just came out and told him that I needed some space even though that wasn’t really what I wanted at all because with guys you sort of just have to say things and make them feel like their territory is threatened so they react like when a dog pees on a fire hydrant…only not really like that but you know what I mean…”

“Helpful, was what I was going to say…” Mulder interjected dryly. He was seriously reconsidering this decision he’d made to continue the interviews while Scully was doing…whatever it was Scully was doing. Which he assumed was mostly just avoiding him at all costs.

Not that he could blame her.

Because if he’d been sexually harassing her before, now it was like…he couldn’t stop himself. He just…he said things without even…

He’d kissed her. She’d gone and put her hand on the slope of his back and now he had this very vivid, very distracting memory just looping through his brain of the way that she’d sounded and the way that she’d felt and the way that she’d pressed herself up against him and it was exactly the way he’d imagined it on multiple, semi-embarrassing occasions. He cleared his throat and readjusted his tie, smiling a false kind of smile in Kelly Kapoor’s direction.

He was thinking that this case was practically a lost cause. Because beyond the fact that he wanted to throw Scully down on the conference room table, beyond the fact that he kept getting distracted by her hands and her face and every single inch of her, he now had this sneaking suspicion that his feelings weren’t as one sided as he’d always thought… and that suspicion put him so on edge that it had actually crossed his mind that he might spontaneously combust. Or something.

The point was that he could see why Scully would be avoiding him.

He interrupted Kelly mid-rant and once again attempted to veer her statement in a more useful direction.

“Did you happen to see anything suspicious or notice anything out of the ordinary?” he wondered, deciding silently that he’d give this interview about two more minutes before he ditched it and went after Scully…

“Um, you mean like someone carrying an axe or something?” she asked him. He met her gaze and felt his curiosity spark.

“Yeah that would… You saw someone carrying an axe?” he repeated. Her brow furrowed.

“No. Did you?…” And, blessedly, at that moment Mulder’s irritation was thwarted by someone bursting through the door.

“Hi, sorry, excuse me.” Mulder looked up, half in relief and half in concern, at the sound of Jim Halpert’s voice. Jim swallowed and scratched at the back of his neck with a shaky hand.

“Jim?” Mulder prodded, feeling an instinctive tickle of worry settle low in his gut.

“Yeah can I um…Pam’s been gone for like two hours?” Jim offered nervously and Mulder leaned forward in his chair, pursing his lips in confusion.

“Gone?” he repeated. Jim glanced back at reception and Mulder, being Mulder, suddenly realized what he was trying to say. Pam was gone…like Vance Refrigeration gone. “That’s not a normal thing for her?  She doesn't take afternoons off or anything?” he asked. Kelly scoffed.

“Please, Pam has like no life. She’s always just there answering the phone,” she informed him in a pinched voice. The two men ignored the way that she was obviously missing the point and Mulder squinted slightly and took in the expression on Jim’s face. There was something weirdly familiar there that he felt like he’d seen in the mirror on more than one occasion. It was a special kind of panic, and even though it seemed like Jim didn’t have any sort of solid evidence leading him to believe that Pam had been kidnapped, he had that expression…that familiar edge that said that he knew because…

He just knew.

And Mulder had been there enough times to know that he shouldn’t question it.

“Where did you last see her?” he demanded, standing and brushing past Kelly and out the conference room door with Jim on his heels. If she’d only been gone two hours that meant they had a real actual chance of finding evidence…of finding her…and there wasn’t time to pause and weigh the options.

He wondered where the hell Scully was.

***

The basement was dark and small, filled almost completely by an ancient looking furnace and pipes. It had four simple walls and a concrete floor.  Jim watched as Mulder turned a full circle around himself and chewed nervously on his cheek. There was nothing here. No Pam…no cat…nothing that might hint to where they could’ve gone. Mulder slowly walked around the perimeter of the room, his hand dragging along the plaster of the walls, his teeth still gnawing on the inside of his cheek. He paused.

“Was there ever something else down here?” he asked, and Jim raised his eyebrows, shifting nervously on his feet.

“I have no idea,” he answered honestly.

“Like a second room or some kind of extension? The size of this basement doesn’t make any kind of structural sense,” he assessed, his eyes sweeping over the ceiling and floor like there was something written on them to be decoded. Jim sighed and crossed his arms.

“Look I’ve never even been down here before, so…” he trailed into silence and wondered how standing in the empty basement and discussing the structure of a building would help them find Pam. The blood pumped heavily through his veins and he pressed his lips together to keep from voicing his thoughts aloud. Mulder tapped thoughtfully against the wall and nodded.

“Ok let’s go, maybe the guard saw something,” he suggested, moving past Jim and up the stairs at an easy jog. Jim took one last look around the room and shook his head.

No Pam. No cat. No second rooms or extensions.

Nothing.

***

Mulder tapped on the Security Guard’s desk and waited impatiently while he finished a phone call that somehow Mulder doubted was in any way business related. Finally the man hung up and met the agent’s level stare.

“Yeah?” the man asked. Mulder held up his badge as a friendly reminder and Jim finally pushed through the door and approached the two. The security guard nodded in acknowledgment.

“Did you see Pam come through here earlier?” Jim interrupted, his voice pinched with an unsettled edge. Mulder shot him a glare, but waited for the answer.

“No sir,” the guard replied casually. Mulder shifted and pushed his badge into his coat pocket.

“Did anything strange or out of the ordinary happen in the past three or four hours? Any unfamiliar people come through or any noises?” he asked for what felt like the thousandth time since he’d arrived in Scranton. The guard’s face twisted into incredulity and he huffed a laugh.

“You mean your girlfriend running around yelling at everybody?” he asked, and Mulder instinctively turned to look at Jim, assuming the guard was talking about Pam but didn’t realize that was her name or… But Jim looked back at him expectantly and Mulder’s head whipped back toward the guard.

“My girlfriend?” he asked. The man nodded. “Scully?” Mulder provided in shock.

“The redhead you’re always with,” the man informed him and Mulder felt like the air had been sucked from his lungs with a vacuum cleaner.

“Scully was running around and yelling at people?” he repeated to the man, leaning forward in impatience. The guy shrugged and pointed a thumb toward the stairs.

“Asked all sorts of questions about the basement and went tearing down there like a mad woman,” he told them matter-of-factly. Mulder paused, his face expressionless, then he thanked the guard and told Jim to go upstairs and wait in case either of the women returned…

And then he went tearing down into the basement like a mad man.