Los Angeles County Coroner's Office
Boyle Heights
1104 N. Mission Rd.
February 28, 1999
2:32 pm

"Sir! I must ask you to stop and identify yourself! Sir!"

Scully looked up in alarm at the echoing bellow. Two sets of
footsteps pounded down the hallway, the first apparently
belonging to Mulder. "Scully!" he called, "Are you in here?
Scully, where are you? You won't believe...." He came to a
sliding stop in the doorway of the laboratory, and his
expression changed from annoyance to the full-blown version of
his panic face.

"What are you doing to her?" He gaped at Browning, who was
standing behind Scully, holding a pair of forceps and a bloody
gauze square.

She held up her hand. "Mulder, it's--"

Mulder strode toward her with the security guard who'd chased
him down the hall clinging like a terrier. Scully slid from
the chair and barely caught hold of Mulder's hand before the
security guard planted his feet and pulled. Both he and Mulder
staggered several steps back, with Mulder straining forward
all the way. "What the hell is he doing to you, Scully?"

"I know you," Browning said to Mulder. He had come forward and
now turned to Scully. "Is this your partner?"

"Yes," Scully said, then grimaced, feeling a warm trickle down
the back of her neck. "Please tell the guard to let him go."

"Seems much more animated than the last time I saw him."
Browning motioned to the guard. "It's okay, Lonnie, he's an
FBI agent. I'll vouch for him."

The guard reluctantly released an oblivious Mulder, who was
watching intently as Scully dabbed at the blood sliding down
her neck.

"Scully, what are you doing?" Mulder's voice held pain and
confusion in equal measure.

"Getting first aid." She eased back up into the chair. "Come
here, Mulder, we need you."

Her simple words seemed to snap him out of his trance. He took
a step forward and looked cautiously at Browning, who had
dismissed the guard and was changing gloves.

"Mulder, this is Dr. Browning. I think you know-- you've met
before."

"Your partner is a brave woman, Agent... Mulder is it? I'm
sorry, I remembered your face, but not your name." Browning
tore open the suture pack that was lying on the bench behind
Scully's chair.

"Yeah, Mulder," Mulder replied in a dull voice. Scully pulled
her hair to one side and motioned for Mulder to hold it there,
moving her hands to grip the edge of the seat.  She winced at
the sting of antiseptic being applied to the back of her head
by Browning.

"Now, Mr. Mulder, if I could get your help, your partner is
going to let me practice my suturing skills on a live body for
a change."

Mulder's eyes cleared as he followed Browning's movements and
he looked down at Scully with relief. He murmured a soft
"Sorry," as she winced and tightened her hands on the chair.

"It's okay," she assured him.

"Ready?" Browning asked, adjusting the heavy overhead
spotlight and peering at the wound on her scalp. "I'm quite
sure I got all the glass out. Just one stitch, that'll keep it
from bleeding. Scalp wounds are the worst for bleeding, as I
recall. I'll try to make it look pretty."

"Just do it, please," Scully gritted out.

She held her breath, suddenly wishing that she hadn't brushed
off Browning's offer to send one of the lab techs to pick up
some lidocaine from the nearby county hospital. Just one
stitch. She repeated Browning's words to herself, then
flinched when he jabbed her with the threaded needle, hard
enough to cause pain, not hard enough to do the job. Her hands
flew out in front of her, fingers flexed. Mulder reached out
with his free hand and took a firm grip on one of hers, and
she gave him a rueful look. She squeezed his hand between both
of hers, and was grateful when he squeezed back hard.

"Sorry, sorry. Easy there. I'll get it," Browning soothed.

She dropped her gaze from Mulder's concerned face, and the
pressure of their clasped hands became her focal point as
Browning made his second attempt. Unfortunately, the image
gave her a sudden, sharp reminder of their conversation in the
car outside the coroner's, and she shut her eyes.  She'd
succeeded in controlling the hurt, filing it away for later
examination, because she had work to do. Apparently Mulder had
done the same, since he seemed to have something important to
tell her. But for just this moment all of that could wait. His
warm grasp offered familiar comfort, and she tried to
communicate thankful acceptance with hers. The irony, she
thought, was that the familiarity that allowed those feelings
to be expressed now was also the source of the painful words
they had flung at each other with such deadly accuracy that
morning.

"It's funny you didn't feel that till it started to itch,"
Browning mused, "but I guess we were all pretty preoccupied.
There, that's done." She felt him snip the ends of the suture
close to her scalp. Mulder let her hair fall back into place
and she opened her eyes, back to the cold reality of the
laboratory, and the job she and Mulder had to do. She tried to
let go of his hand.

He held on tight. "Scully, I have something really important
to tell you, but--"

"Wait, wait, Mulder." She stopped him. "I think we've figured
out why those women burned. Why, if not how. Let me--"

"I won't cover it," Browning interrupted them both, as he
gathered up bloody gauze squares and suture scraps. "And you
won't be able to wash your hair for a day or so you know.
Here, take this. And use it." The tube of antibiotic ointment
was pressed into her free hand. Browning looked up at Mulder.
"It's very true that doctors make lousy patients, as I'm sure
you're aware, Agent Mulder. There doesn't seem to be any sign
of concussion, but there's still a danger of infection. Look
out for her."

Mulder gave him a bleak look, then turned back to Scully.

"Well, then," Browning said, looking curiously at each of them
in turn, then down at their still clasped hands. "I'll just go
see if the micrographs are ready."

"Thank you, we'll meet you in the office," Scully replied.

Mulder ignored Browning entirely. "Scully," he said, as soon
as the older man left the room. "What the hell happened to
you?"

She loosened her fingers, expecting him to withdraw his hand,
but he didn't. "There was an explosion and I caught some
flying glass. I'm fine, Mulder, really."

"Oh, that's okay then," he said. "Just an explosion. Jesus,
Scully."

Since he didn't seem inclined to let go of her, she gripped
his hand between both of hers again and used the leverage to
jump down off the chair. The thud as her feet hit the floor
pounded up through her body. "God, I need some aspirin."

He finally released her. "I'll get you some." He looked
around. "Uh...."

If she didn't feel so bad she'd be inclined to laugh at the
puzzled look on his face. "Yes, Mulder, you're right, most of
the people who are brought in here are beyond aspirin, or
local anesthetics either. I've got some Tylenol in my purse,
I'll get it later. I can't have aspirin anyway. It might start
the wound bleeding again."

"Do you want me to--"

"No, it's not important, now. Mulder, listen to me." She wet
some paper towels at the sink and reached back to try to clean
some of the sticky blood out of her hair. "The Jane Doe tissue
samples weren't stolen from here last night. We think they
disintegrated in an explosion. The force of it smashed the
vials they were contained in and turned everything in the
refrigerator upside down. The only reason the door didn't come
off its hinges is because it was an explosion-proof
refrigerator, designed to store volatile chemicals, like
ether. Thank goodness there wasn't any in there last night, or
the whole building could have gone up."

He'd been watching her struggle with her hair but blinked and
caught her eye at that. "Sabotage?"

"I don't think so. It's something intrinsic to the tissue,
because the second set of samples exploded too, while Dr.
Browning and I were preparing them for microscopy. That's what
this is from." She gestured to the back of her head. "I think
there must be a threshold temperature for whatever reaction is
causing this, somewhere above freezing. The reaction was
slowed by refrigeration, but not stopped. And the samples we
were preparing this afternoon didn't become unstable until Dr.
Browning accidentally let one warm up in his hand. That
precipitated a violent exothermic reaction."

"What would cause that?"

She frowned, then thought better of it as the change in
expression pulled at the skin around the wound.

He murmured, "Scully, " then took the wad of paper towels from
her hand. He pushed gently on her shoulder and she turned away
from him. She heard the water run in the sink, then felt his
hands in her hair again, this time sponging and separating
strands. His fingers were a little clumsy, and the occasional
tug at the sore skin around the wound brought inadvertent
tears to her eyes, but she forced herself to stay still. She
used to prefer to attend to her wounds, both emotional and
physical, in private. But for some reason she wasn't willing
to analyze, she wanted to let Mulder perform this simple task
for her as much as he appeared to need to do it.

She scrambled to pick up on his question. "What would cause
it? Explosions are caused by an unstable or volatile molecule
being exposed to an ignition source," she said. "The solution
we were preparing the samples in is volatile, though it has a
relatively high combustion temperature, above room
temperature, certainly. But there was no ignition source in
that vial, Mulder, other than the tissue itself. At least now
we know why the chemical analysis showed no accelerants.
There's something about this tissue that makes it burn without
any help. I just can't figure out why."

"Finished," he said. She turned to see him throw the paper
towels, streaked with rusty red stains, into the trashcan by
the sink. He turned back to her expectantly. "Is there any
more tissue that you can test?"

"Yes." She began to walk toward the hallway. "All the other
samples were kept on ice and remained stable. We sectioned
them using a cryotome, which keeps the tissue frozen. They
were stained in the cold too. The techs were getting ready to
look at them when I--" She gestured to her head again. "I just
reached up to scratch my head because it started to itch. I
must have dislodged the sliver of glass that was stuck in
there. I never felt it before that."

He had his head down, picking at a cuticle as he walked beside
her down the hall, and she suddenly became conscious how far
apart they were. A far cry from his display of concern in the
lab.

"Scully," he said, just as they were about to turn the corner
into the hall leading to the offices. "That thing I needed to
tell you ... Krycek's involved in this."

She stopped in shock. "What?"

He leaned against the wall and folded his arms. "Let me start
at the beginning. When I went to interview the two losers who
own the warehouse, they gave me the name of a guy who may have
been a witness to the fire. He seems to have been a foreman of
some sort. They say he skipped to Mexico."

She shot a cautious glance down the empty hallway and took a
step closer to him. "Did they also mention Krycek?"

"Yeah, but not to me. After I left the jail I went to their
lawyer's office to try to get more information. He gave me
squat, by the way. I ran into Hernandez there, looking pretty
smug and comfortable."

"Oh, no, Mulder--"

"He was thrilled to threaten us again, high as a kite, in
fact, trying to rub my nose in the fact that he'd cracked the
case, or so he said. I think he's so fixated on his own
personal glory he has no idea what a powder keg this case
really is." His face was still grim. "Absolutely no pun
intended."

"And Krycek?" She forced herself to stay still, when what she
wanted to do was kick the wall beside him in frustration. This
case had suddenly gotten much too complicated.

"Hernandez taped my conversation with the suspects. Or maybe
they do that here routinely, I don't know. Anyway, after I
left the room, those bozos started discussing me, as if they
knew I was coming. They'd been told to give me a song and
dance."

"By Krycek?"

"I don't know," Mulder said slowly. "They were concerned about
the theft of the tissue from the coroners." He gestured at
their surroundings. "It really rattled them. They didn't seem
to know it could be anything else, and they decided to call
Krycek because of that. They said something about someone down
here screwing up, but that part was garbled. If Krycek has a
partner here, we'll have to be really careful until we figure
out who."

"We'll have to be really careful after that, too."  She felt
her heart speed up. She had to ask, but she also knew her
question could just as easily spark another argument, one she
wasn't entirely sure they could withstand. "You told me
everything Dales told you about this case, right? There isn't
anything else I should know?"

His reaction was immediate. "Don't patronize me, Scully." He
pushed away from the wall and loomed over her. "And don't
tip-toe around me. I know what your concerns are now, believe
me."

Crap, she thought, then felt an answering spark of anger.
"Dammit, Mulder--"

"Stop, Scully, please." To her surprise, he reached around her
and settled his hand on her back, urging her to continue their
progress down the hall. "Just stop. This is the truth. I've
told you everything. You know just as much about this case as
I do."

It took her a moment to recognize and accept the preliminary
peace offering for what it was. She dropped her voice.
"Mulder, I haven't noticed anything, but have we been followed
since we've been here?"

"No. I haven't seen anyone." His tone matched hers.

"Okay, then, how did they know you were coming?"

He shrugged and held open the door to the office. "Who knows
I'm here? Dales, Mrs. Bahnsen, Danielle, Hernandez. Of the
four of them, my money's on Hernandez. He's hiding something,
Scully, and he was enjoying taunting me about this. But how
the hell he's connected to Krycek... I don't know, maybe
Krycek is handing out BMW bonuses to friendly locals these
days. Though why the hell he'd want to, or need to...."

"Dr. Browning knew you were here, too," she said, as she
turned toward the hamper in the corner of the room and reached
up to untie her gown. "No, that's not right, he only knew my
partner was here. I didn't tell him... tell him you were the
FBI agent he'd met on the other burn case." She felt his hands
brush hers away, then untie the gown for her. "Thank you," she
murmured. "Is there blood on my blouse?"

"Yeah."

Dammit, she thought. More laundry in the sink. She disposed of
the gown and was reaching into the locker for her jacket when
Kumar bustled into the room, trailed by an apologetic-looking
Browning.

"I certainly hope you realize the utter disruption and chaos
you've caused here, Agent Dr. Scully," was Kumar's opening
salvo.

Scully felt Mulder tense beside her. "Disruption?" she fired
back. "I believe I've assisted you on this case, Dr. Kumar,
and I believe the discovery Dr. Browning and I made saved your
entire staff the disruption of getting grilled for a theft
that never occurred. What other disruption were you referring
to?"

Mulder eased down onto the desk behind them. Just as she drew
breath to continue, she heard the crack of a sunflower seed.

Kumar blustered on. "That's all very well, however, none of
this would have happened--"

"You're right," she said smoothly. "If we hadn't pushed to do
the sectioning, you'd still be thinking of this as
arson-related homicide. Now we know differently, and I'm sure
you would have come to the same conclusion as soon as you got
around to processing the samples. But isn't it better that we
know now?"

"Still, this ridiculous idea of human combustion--" Kumar shot
an irritated look at Mulder as the sound of another sunflower
seed cracking open ricocheted around the room. "Would someone
be so good as to identify this person?"

"My partner," Scully answered. "Special Agent Mulder."

"Agent Mulder," Kumar challenged, not bothering to offer his
hand. "What do you think of this notion of your partner's,
that the bodies combusted on their own?"

Mulder's foot was swinging gently as he perched on the side of
the desk. "You mean spontaneous human combustion?" He chewed a
seed thoughtfully. "It is a pretty far out theory."

Scully rolled her eyes. "Mulder--"

"But then, I'm just a psychologist, not a medical doctor who
also has a degree in physics," Mulder continued, foot still
swinging. "Agent Scully has been kind enough to explain to me
that the phrase 'human combustion' doesn't give a hint as to
mechanism, but is only an observation. And apparently you got
to observe that phenomenon up close and personal, Dr. Kumar.
I'm surprised you'd refute it."

"Nothing has been proven here. There are still tests to be
run," Kumar replied in a stiff tone.

"Having human tissue go boom right in front of you... or was
it behind you, while you were running away?"

"Now see here--"

Mulder continued. "Anyway, I'd say we've got some good hard
evidence here for spontaneous human combustion, wouldn't you
agree, Agent Scully?" Mulder reached into his pocket for
another seed. He seemed unimpressed with Scully's warning
scowl.

She turned back to Kumar. "Speaking of tests, may I see the
micrographs?"

"They're right here," Browning piped up. He stepped around
Kumar, who gave him a frown, and handed a set of photographs
to Scully. "I hate to tell you, but the tissue looks pretty
normal, Dr. Scully, except at the highest magnification. I
can't tell what those spots are. Condensation, maybe. The
slides were still pretty cold when we shot the pictures. Or it
might be dirt on the high power lens."

She peered at the photograph on the top of the stack, blocking
out the sound of Kumar hectoring Browning about getting the
microscope lenses cleaned. Shuffling rapidly through the
remaining photos, she came to the same conclusion as Browning:
At low magnification, the tissue cross sections of bone,
muscle, blood vessels, connective tissue, skin, even the tiny
bit of fat, all looked perfectly normal.

She flipped again to the higher magnification photos. The
first showed a section of muscle, the striated fibers marching
through the elongated cells in a regular, familiar pattern. As
Browning had mentioned, there were also what looked like
coalescing groups of small spots packed between the darker
fibers. She flipped to the next photo, which showed details of
skin and underlying connective tissue. She studied it
intently, then stared up at Browning, and finally, over at
Mulder.

Mulder got up off the desk. "Something, Scully?"

"No," she said, looking up at him. "That is, my, um, my head
really hurts, Mulder. Do you think we can go now?"

He stared at her, then nodded slowly. "Of course."

"Right," Kumar said, as he snatched the photographs from her
and handed them to Browning. "That was a complete bloody waste
of time. Not to mention that the cryotome and microscope may
never work properly again. Why we had to--"

"I'd like to take that one, please." Scully held out her hand
for the last photograph she had examined. Browning delivered
it willingly.

"Now see here--" Kumar protested.

"The file is in the computer and we have plenty of copies,
Steven," Browning interrupted firmly, finally asserting
himself. "And she did help us quite a bit, even you have to
admit that. Besides, you said yourself there's nothing useful
to be seen in them. Let her have a souvenir besides the stitch
in her scalp."

Kumar glared at Scully and Mulder, then turned on his heel and
left the room, grumbling under his breath as he went.

Browning smiled indulgently and shook hands with Scully.
"Thanks for all your help, Dr. Scully, and have a good trip
back to Washington. Keep in touch, and maybe we'll eventually
figure out what's at the bottom of this." He turned to Mulder.
"Glad to see you're doing so much better than the last time I
saw you, Agent Mulder."

Scully watched an embarrassed grimace contort Mulder's
expression just before his habitual deadpan settled into
place. She brushed his fingers with hers, surprised at the
sudden need to re-establish contact, and felt his intent gaze
focus on her. Later, she thought. We will deal with all this,
Mulder. But later. "Good afternoon, Dr. Browning, and thank
you for stitching me up," she replied.

As she left the office, she heard Mulder saying goodbye to
Browning, then hustling to keep up with her as she strode down
the hallway. "You are okay, right, Scully?" he asked, as he
caught up with her.

"Yes," she said, pushing open the door to the parking lot. "At
least, no, my head is killing me, but that doesn't matter,
Mulder. I think I know what caused those women to burn."

* * *

Washington D.C.
December 5, 1953
12:58 am

It occurred to Dales, as he stared at his front door, still
feeling Dorothy on his lips, that he ought to have gone
downstairs to wait with her for a cab despite her protests.
The neighborhood was safe, even at one in the morning, thanks
to its reputation as home to a lot of cops, but still...  He
turned quickly to grab his hat and coat off the rack, and
cried out as pain spiked up his side, an emphatic reminder
that he wasn't going to be doing anything quickly any time
soon. He stood still, breathing slow and shallow, until a
shrill blast from the telephone startled him and he limped
over to answer it.

"Hello?"

"Arthur Dales?"

"Yes, hello, who is it? Don’t you know what time it is?"

"Mr. Dales, my name is Dr. Alvin Kurtzweil."

His heart sank. "Who's hurt? Is it my brother Arthur?"

"What? No, no, nothing like that, no." The hesitant-sounding
caller paused. "I thought you were Arthur."

"Never mind that. What do you want?"

"Mr. Dales, you need to listen to me. You must stop looking
into that warehouse fire. It's too dangerous."

"Who are you?"

"Someone who should have known better."

"Good God, that's just what I need, cryptic threats." The pain
stabbing through his midsection spurred his temper. "Look, I
know who you work for and these scare tactics won’t work, not
this time, and you can tell him that for all I care. Good--"

"No! No! Don’t hang up! Please! I'm not who you think."

"Who are you, then? And make it quick." Dorothy wasn't too
long gone, he ought to be able to catch her.

"I'm a friend of Bill Mulder's."

Dales swore into the phone. "That son of a bitch tried to kill
me the last time he saw me. What makes you think I'd listen to
anything you or he had to say?"

"You don’t understand, Mr. Dales, he can only do so much in
his position. He told me about letting you go inside that bar
with Skur. There wasn't anything he could do, not without
giving himself away. For what it's worth, he was relieved when
you got away."

"Yeah, well, that ain't worth spit.  What the hell do you
want?"

"To tell you to stay away from that warehouse. You have no
idea what they are capable of."

"What could possibly be worse than a group of sick bastards
who operate on innocent people and implant... creatures in
their bodies?" A thumping noise on his wall warned him that
his neighbor didn't keep the same hours as F.B.I. agents with
dangerous interests on the side. He sat in the armchair next
to the phone, wishing he still had the ice pack for his head.
"What could be worse, could you tell me that?"

"Mr. Dales, it could get a lot worse for you, just as it
already has for me. Do you know what mitochondria are?"

"No. Should I?"

"They're organelles, subcellular structures, something like
primitive organisms. They live in our cells and convert oxygen
into energy. It's that energy that makes our muscles contract,
our brains function. They're the only reason we can do
anything, really."

Dales culled the most ominous-sounding word he could
understand from his caller's speech. "Organisms."

"Yes, like bacteria. Millions of years ago they evolved to
survive in nucleated cells, like the ones that comprise the
human body. Symbionts, really."

Jesus, what a night. "What does this have to do with me?"

"I'm getting to that. Have you ever wondered where those
original organisms came from?"

"What?"

The caller sighed. "Forget it, Mr. Dales. It's not important
right now. What is important is that you understand the matter
of national security you've gotten yourself mixed up in.
During the war, there were scientists who worked on many
secret projects. That doesn't surprise you, I assume?"

"Secret projects." Dales paused in the act of standing up and
abandoning the conversation.  He sat back down.  "Like the
bomb."

"Yes, like the bomb," the man continued. "But that's just what
the physicists were doing. You don't think the biologists and
chemists were sitting on their hands, do you?"

"What the hell does biology and chemistry have to do with
making weapons? Are you talking about nerve gas or chemical
warfare? What does that have to do with a fire in a
warehouse?"

"Not weapons, Mr. Dales, at least, not in the usual sense. The
scientists were trying to determine whether mitochondria could
be made more efficient." The caller's deep voice sped up as he
warmed to his topic. "Just think, you'd never have to sleep,
and wounds would heal much faster.  Think of the tactical
advantage of that, Mr. Dales. The military were facing a
horrifying enemy and they wanted a super-soldier. The people I
work for were doing their damndest to help them achieve that."

Dales thought about Dorothy's report from the internment
camps. He hoped she'd already found a cab and was on her way
home.  "So that's how you know all this," Dales growled. More
conspiracies. "Just who is it you work for, anyway?"

"I was recruited, along with Mulder, into a biological warfare
program during the war. I'd already had some medical training,
and for a few months I worked on the mitochondria project
before being transferred. The rest doesn't matter. What
matters is that I quit after the war, or I tried to," he
amended. "The goal was a good one but the means of getting
there were not. I tried to walk away but they keep reeling me
in. Please. I don’t want to see them destroy anyone else. You
have to walk away from this while you still can."

"What does any of this have to do with my warehouse
investigation?"

"My point is that those experiments never ended. And that the
people involved will do anything, and I mean anything, to
protect their project."

"Who? Who are they?"

"I... I'm not sure."

"Goddamn it, then why are you wasting my time with this
nonsense, Kerzweel, or whatever your name is?  What good are
you? I need to know who's behind all this so I can stop it."

Kurtzweil sighed. "That's just why I called you, Mr. Dales. It
looks like you just may be as big a fool as they think you
are."

"Who exactly is 'they'?"

"There was a group… there is a group that is trying to stop
this from the inside.  They know you.  They're using you but
they're not going to be there to pick up the pieces when you
get hurt.  Even they don't really understand what they're up
against.  It's not right to use you this way."

"Who, for God's sake?  I need a name."

"You've already met one.  Bill Mulder.  It's going to be the
same thing as Skur all over again -- you'll get a little
information, blunder around enough to make problems for the
men hiding secret projects, but no one is going to help you
when the next Skur comes for you.  Stop looking into the
warehouse now, before it's too late."

"It's already too late.  Three women are dead and I intend to
stop any more from dying at the hands of these madmen."

"You can't stop it. That's what I'm trying to tell you."

"I can and I will."

"Mr. Dales, they are one step ahead of you now and they are
always going to be one step ahead of you. If I've learned
anything, I've learned that."

"Good for you. Now if you don’t mind--"

"Have you looked out your window lately?"

Dales stopped breathing for a moment. "What?" Had they
followed him home? He hadn't thought so but he hadn't been all
that alert, either.

"I'm warning you, Mr. Dales. I'm putting myself at great risk
here, so please listen to me. If you persist with this
investigation, they will do everything in their power to stop
you.  Someone like you won't have a chance.  I can't--"

Dales put down the receiver and tugged the window open, then
stuck his head through to look down at the street.  There was
no movement on the sidewalk and the windows on the first floor
below were dark.  He looked up at the corner but didn’t see
anyone lurking.  He started to pull his head in when he caught
a glimpse of the back end of a car disappearing around the
corner.  A two-toned car. A Pontiac with whitewall tires.

His stomach clenched tight, pulling muscles across his aching
ribs.  Dorothy should have been on that corner. He whacked his
head on the window frame as he scrambled backwards.  Did many
cabs really come by that corner at this hour?  Damn it.  His
banged-up skull throbbed from the new blow.

As he rushed past the phone, he scooped up the receiver with
one hand and slammed it on the base, cutting off the doctor's
tinny yelling.  He grabbed his keys off the shelf by the door
and raced into the hallway. The light from the fluorescent
fixture stabbed into his bruised skull and for a moment he
reeled, pain screeching through his head, his ribs, his knee.
He froze and concentrated on breathing -- sharp, shallow puffs
of air until the burning ache receded.

Damn, damn, damn, he chanted as he started down the flight of
stairs that would lead him to the first floor, trying not to
put too much weight on the knee the goons had kicked.  It was
harder going down now than it had been coming up hours ago,
and he had to grip the banister to keep from pitching
headfirst down the stairs.  Damn, damn, damn.

How could you? he thought. How could you get her involved in
this?

* * *
End Chapter 10
* * *
To chapter 11