Whirlwind Read Online Free Page B

and flicked on the lighter.
    He didn’t swing.
    His sister screamed.
    He couldn’t swing.
    His sister shrieked.
    So did Paulie.

FOUR
    Assistant Director Walter Skinner sat behind his desk, hands folded loosely in his lap, and stared absently at the ceiling for several seconds before lowering his gaze. He was not smiling. On the desk, in the center of the blotter, was an open folder. He looked at it disdainfully, shook his head once, and took off his wire-rimmed glasses. Thumb and forefinger massaged the bridge of his nose.
    Mulder said nothing, and in the chair beside him, Scully’s expression was perfectly noncommittal.
    So far, the meeting hadn’t gone well.
    The entire transcript of a six-month wiretap on a Mafia don in Pittsburgh had been misplaced,and Mulder, arriving first, had walked straight into the teeth of the storm Skinner directed at his secretary and several red-faced agents. Mulder had been the target of the man’s temper before, and he slipped hastily into the inner office with little more than a here I am nod.
    Then he had committed the protocol error of taking a seat without being asked. When Skinner walked in, his face flushed with exasperation, Mulder wasn’t quick enough to get to his feet, and the Assistant Director’s curt greeting wouldn’t have melted in a blast furnace.
    It had been all downhill from there, even after Scully arrived, with Skinner raging quietly against those whose carelessness had imperiled an important investigation.
    Mulder bore it all without comment.
    At least the man wasn’t raging against him for a change, which had not always been the case in the past.
    Then, as now, the bone of contention between them was usually the X-Files.
    The FBI’s law enforcement mandate covered a multitude of federal crimes, from kidnapping to extortion, political assassination to bank robbery; it also permitted them to investigate local cases when local authorities asked them for assistance and the affair was such that it might be construed to be of potential federal interest, generally involving national security.
    Not always, however.
    Occasionally there were some cases that defied legal, sometimes rational, definition.
    Cases that seemed to include instances of the paranormal, the inexplicable and bizarre, or the allegation that UFO activity was somehow involved.
    X-Files.
    They were Mulder’s abiding, often single-minded, concern, and the core of his conviction that, X-File or not, the truth was not always as evident as it appeared to be. Nor was it always liberating or welcome.
    But it was out there, and he was determined to find it.
    And expose it.
    The cost was immaterial; he had his reasons.
    Skinner thumped a heavy hand on the folder. “Mulder…” He paused, the lighting reflecting off his glasses, banishing his eyes unnervingly until his head shifted. “Mulder, how in the name of heaven do you expect me to believe that this murderer is actually writing his name on his victims’ chests?”
    It was the tone more than the words that told him the Director was actually concerned about something else.
    â€œI thought it was obvious, sir, once the patterns had been established.”
    Skinner stared at him for several seconds before he said, flatly, “Right.”
    A glance to Scully told Mulder he wasn’t wrong about the Director’s focus; it also told him he had somehow stepped on someone else’s toes. Again. As usual.
    He was, as he had told her more than once, a lousy Bureau dancer.
    There in fact were few things that frustrated him more than internal Bureau politics. He supposed he should have known, given the personalities currently involved, that it would have been more politic to let either Neuhouse or Bournell come up with the solution on their own. He should have only been the guide. Suggesting instead of declaring.
    And, given the personalities involved, he should have also guessed that one of them,