Peter shouldn't have worried that Fox Mulder wouldn't be on his best behavior while over for dinner. He should have been much more worried about his own wife.

"So Peter tells me you two used to work cases on the paranormal?" Elizabeth smiled brightly at the pair across the table, as if the paranormal were a completely normal division of the FBI. Neal just did manage not to choke on the Sauvignon Blanc Semillon he had brought for dinner, swallowing the golden liquid without embarrassing himself. Peter on the other hand snorted and spluttered into his wine glass, staring at his wife's knowing smile as if she had just begun speaking in tongues.

If either Mulder or Scully was bothered by Elizabeth's frankness neither showed it. Mulder in fact seemed vaguely amused, a glitter of cautious respect sparkling briefly in his hazel eyes. "I don't know about paranormal, Mrs. Burke, but I'm pretty killer with a pack of tarot cards."

He ignored Scully's blue eyes cutting sharply at him, though Neal could see hidden smirk lying just at the corners of Mulder's perfectly serious mouth. He was doing it to annoy Peter, yes, but more so he was doing it to tease Scully. And she knew it, he could tell by the brief roll of the eyes before she turned apologetically towards Elizabeth slapping on a smile with the force of long habit.

"You'll have to excuse my partner, Mrs. Burke…"

"Elizabeth," she waved off the formality of the two former agents as well as Mulder's flippancy, shooting Peter's still flabbergasted expression a wide grin. "Peter's told me too much about you two for us to stand on formality."

Neal rarely….check that never got to see Peter sitting on the edge of the hot seat, squirming quite as much as he was in that moment. Personally he wished Elle would come by the office more often. "Why Peter, I do believe you're blushing."

"Can it, Caffrey," he muttered around a forkful of glazed carrots, busying himself suddenly with the food in front of him. "Great dinner, Elle, its…good…chicken…stuff."

"It's lemon roasted chicken, Provencal style," Neal murmured back quietly. Peter studiously ignored him.

Neal could well imagine the sort of stories Elizabeth had heard on the infamous pair, and he knew the two of them were thinking the same thing. "You know I was reading up on some of your old cases myself." Why not jump in with both feet, he thought as Peter's surprise now shifted from his wife to Neal with suspicious wariness. "There were some crazy cases the two of you managed….did you really find a mutant fluke worm in the sewers of New Jersey?"

"A fluke worm?" Elle wrinkled her nose in fascinated disgust, like a child who had just turned over a rock and found pale, white things under it she wanted to poke with sticks. "Like a giant one?"

"No, like a walking one." Mulder took the bait with subdued gleefulness. "It was less of a worm and more of a man really."

"No," Elle's blue-gray eyes widened on her pretty face, sparkling over a disbelieving grin, flickering to the clearly less-than-thrilled Scully for confirmation of Mulder's assertions.

"We don't know for sure what it was, the creature escaped, if you recall, before any testing could be done."

"You said it yourself it was a mutant, Scully." Mulder replied glibly, hardly bothered by his partner's scientific rapprochement. "We had doctors looking at it at the time we captured it, it was clearly bipedal, with a complex development similar to homosapiens, not the simple fluke worm creature that you pulled out of that sewer worker."

"Gosh, this dinner is tasty," Peter cut in loudly, voice strained, as he tried to manage a polite smile while shooting both his wife and Neal dark looks over his wine glass. "Just…so darn good, Elle, would really hate to be put off of it."

Scully raised a smirking eyebrow at Mulder who laughed at her response as he dug into his own plate. "Your husband's right, Elizabeth, your cooking is delicious."

"Thanks," she replied, holding up the wine glass. "I can't take credit for this, that's Neal. He's got impeccable taste in wine. Frankly I'd hire him on to consult for me if Peter would let me get away with it."

"If the FBI trusted you enough to make him behave himself for the next four-ish years, I'd foist him on you," Peter hardly bothered looking up from his plate.

"I'm so touched by your loyalty, Peter, really I am." Neal was used to Peter's disgruntlement, and really he knew the poor guy was trying. He wasn't comfortable with this, a fancy dinner in his own home with a man he considered only two steps removed from a total crackpot. But he also wasn't giving Fox Mulder much credit either. Strange, Neal thought as he considered the unique relationship he had with the man. Peter had no problem putting his faith and trust in one Neal Caffrey, known con-artist, forger, and thief, and yet a former fellow agent had him behaving like a petulant schoolboy when the other wasn't looking.

Wherever Neal's thoughts were meandering, Dr. Scully cut in, her soft alto chiming in from her end of the dark table. "You're a connoisseur of wines, Mr. Caffrey?"

"Among other things." Neal flashed the million-dollar smile pridefully. "Wines, art, jewels, a good puzzle."

"That's what it comes down to though, doesn't it?" Mulder asserted conversationally. "The puzzle…the challenge…seeing how far you can take things and get away with it." He glanced up at Neal thoughtfully, watching him intently, as if looking through him, scanning him, picking through the crevices of Neal's brain, banging through the hidden areas that he kept well locked, before shrugging and turning back to his plate again. Neal felt his smile slip and falter the intensity slid away, leaving his mouth dry and feeling as if he'd just been probed in the most uncomfortable of ways.

"I suppose," Neal replied evenly, shrugging.

"The Copenhagen incident…still amazed with that one." Mulder continued. "By all rights you shouldn't have gotten out of that."

"Well, I'm not a big rules follower," Neal evaded, feeling the heat of the sudden spotlight himself, knowing that somehow Peter was enjoying this just as much as Neal enjoyed his earlier discomfort. "I tend to like life outside of expectations."

"I get that," Mulder replied in the same, conversational manner he had so far. But there was a depth to his words Neal noticed, a certain world-weariness. Seeing Mulder's files, Neal was hardly surprised. But there was something else…kinship perhaps. Someone who understood what it was to be Neal, not just because it was what he did but because he felt that way too.

Fox Mulder knew what it was to be on the outside standing in and looking at the world and seeing exactly how it worked. He could see the ways the people operated, the subtle gestures, the hints, the patterns in behavior and thought, just as Neal could. But there was something else. He'd seen things, dark things, the same things that Neal saw in Scully's eyes when he'd met her. Neal thought on their files, on Mozzie's words. They really did have so much in common.

Peter's observations must have been wandering somewhere dangerously close to Neal's own. "You seem to understand Neal here fairly well." The double meaning in his words wasn't lost on Neal, who frowned at Peter's nonchalant shrug.

"Six years at Oxford and thirteen in the FBI, they once paid me the big bucks to do that." Mulder shrugged as he glanced at Scully. "We made a good team back in the day, I'd get in their heads, she'd get in their bodies, between the two of us we'd figure it out."

"You make it sound like some cliché crime procedural on TV," Scully groaned. "I wasn't a bad profiler myself, thank you, or a bad investigator."

"I was horrible around a dead body."

"That was true," she admitted, eyes shinning, a host shared memories and thoughts passing between them in that instant. Neal knew that feeling and look well. He'd shared it with Kate how many times? Up until she walked into that prison and told him it was over.

"You two are amazing, you know," Elle sighed with that sort of noise women seemed to make over romantic movies and puppy dogs. It caught both of the former agents off guard as they turned to her blinking blankly. "You are just so…right together."

"Right?" Scully echoed in bemusement, as if she hadn't ever heard the word used before.

"I'm guessing she's saying we are a cute couple." Mulder looked completely amused by the phrase, reaching an arm around the petite, red heads waist. "Like two sleepy kittens…"

"I will hurt you." In a flash the careful, cool, calculated Dr. Scully was gone, replaced by a woman who vaguely frightened Neal for a moment, but hardly made Mulder flinch. He looked far too delighted with himself.

"See, there you are," Elizabeth crowed in triumph, looking towards Peter for support and finding none from her husband. "Oh come on, Peter, they are a cute couple."

"Elizabeth, I love you, but this sounds dangerously like women's talk." And far out of Peter's league. Neal could sense he was mentally calculating how much longer he would have to stay to be polite before excusing himself to fire up the Knicks game on television and escape from all of this.

"Fine." Unrelenting Elle turned to Neal for backup, a dark eyebrow quirked in challenge. "What about you, Neal, what do you think?" There was an implicit dare in those words, an implication against her estimation of him if Neal were to wiggle out of this like her husband. Already he could see Peter gloating.

"Well," Neal cleared his throat, setting down his fork to lean back and study the couple quietly for a long, admittedly unnecessary and completely over-dramatic moment. It was interesting watching the two of them, the tall and dark Mulder, the acerbic indolence masking a frightening intensity and a mass of energy just barely held in check next to the small, Titian-haired Scully with her cool, unflappable exterior covering what Neal surmised was a core of iron will and razor sharp intellect all her own. As far as two partners in the FBI went you couldn't get two more compatibility personalities for all of Mulder belief in aliens and Scully's skepticism. Somehow he thought they really were just two sides of the same coin when it came down to it.

"I have to say Elle's got a point," Neal finally drawled slowly, long fingers wrapping around the delicate stem, twirling the cool glass between his thumb and forefinger. Mulder and Scully both watched him expectantly, with the same, identical united front of cautious curiosity. Did they even realize they did that, he wondered.

"I don't know if I'd use the word 'cute' though," he clarified. Elizabeth's term hardly worked with these two. "You certainly fit."

"Fit?" That term amused Scully, mischievousness sparkling playful to the surface, only to be swallowed, barely. Surprise, surprise, Neal thought, Dr. Scully did let the playful side out when comfortable enough to do so.

"Yes, fit." Neal shrugged, meeting the other woman's shining eyes as he leaned forward. "You two match. Many couples are comfortable together, many are….cute." He hated that word personally, but he thought it did apply to Peter and Elizabeth well. "And there are those who fit, people who belong together. They balance." As if adding emphasis he set his fork along the edge of his plate carefully, perfectly balancing it between top and bottom.

"From what I can tell Mulder is insightful, passionate, brilliant, but he's like myself, someone who tends to like to walk that fine, dangerous line of expectation." He caught Mulder's ever so imperceptible smile. "His ability to look beyond what is expected gives insights no one else dares to even think about. While you, Dr. Scully are different. You are more calm, strategic, methodical, seeing the things he misses in his direct line insight. Not that I've seen much of your work, but I can guess you like to see every possibility, weigh its options, and decide which of them fits the variables given. I've not seen you two work together but guessing from what I've seen of you separately, my guess is that when you two were partners you played well off one another, Mulder would see the patterns you didn't while you were the one who was able to explain why they made sense. Perhaps for any other two people these opposites would have clashed, grated against one another, but for you two it worked."

"He's good," Mulder laughed outright, impressed. For some inane reason that pleased Neal greatly, the approval from someone with the talent of Fox Mulder, "You probably wouldn't have been bad in this profiling business."

"Pity he had to use it on the other side of the law, isn't it?" Peter agreed ruefully.

"I won't deny he's got us pegged," Scully arched one coppery eyebrow up at Neal, not nearly as forthcoming with her praise. "But anyone who's checked with Bureau scuttlebutt would likely gather that much on us, especially if they've had a chance to go through our personnel files."

"That's true," Neal acknowledged. "But it's the little things with you two as well, things I don't think you are even aware of. If the two of you are alone in a room together one of you is always in eye contact with the other. No speaking, but you gravitate to one another." The way Mulder would hover over Scully, or the way she would slide beside him no matter how many other chairs were in the room. "There's the touches, the glances, the way you two speak without saying a word." The trust he wanted to say. There was an infinite amount of it between these two people; there wasn't a hint of a doubt between them. Not even he and Kate had that, Neal realized with something of a minor pang.

He pushed the traitorous thought aside as he met the good doctor's challenge. "You two like to think you two are as different as night and day, but really you're very much the same. You come from different angles, but you're at the same place. Not even one in a billion couples have that sort of connection."

It was enough to make most anyone jealous, your perfect other. Neal couldn't say in that moment he wasn't. No matter how hard he fought to find the truth, no matter how convinced he was that he was on the right course with Kate, there was still that niggling doubt in the back of his mind, the one that Peter and Mozzie had put there. Did Mulder ever once have that doubt about Scully?

"See, you are right together," Elizabeth echoed softly. "As put eloquently by Mr. Cafferey." She held up her wine glass in mock tribute. "I have to say your romance makes ours look dull and fusty." She prodded Peter affectionately with mock distress. "All I got was a stake out and a mumbled invitation to dinner."

"I tried to ask her out for dinner on stake outs, but she always quoted rules and regulations at me," Mulder feigned looking hurt. "It took me seven years to convince her I was civil enough to have dinner with."

"Can you blame me for wondering when your highest form of cuisine was pizza with sausage and mushrooms on it." Scully dripped saccharine. "Besides, we were partners, and one of us at least always remembered the rules and regulations."

"But you are partners now," Elizabeth broke in with the most obvious point. "You aren't married yet?"

It was an innocent enough question, and probably not the first time that either of them had heard it judging from the flush on Scully's pale cheeks and the wry exasperation from Mulder. "That's been a topic of some debate for a while."

"And we'll keep on debating," Scully murmured into her wine glass she suddenly found herself busy with.

"You are both retired, no more FBI regulations, settle, start a family…" Elizabeth, well meaning, kind-hearted Elle had no idea what a minefield she had stepped into with her words. Neal couldn't even see it coming to divert it as the words landed on the couple with all of the surprises of an oncoming missal attack. Mulder's smile dissolved instantly into a stoic blankness as he reached automatically for the woman by his side. Neal's heart ached to see the stricken look on her face, the fear and hurt he'd seen since meeting the woman surfacing for the briefest of moments, raw and real.

Elizabeth's brightness dimmed in an instant. "I'm sorry…I…" She faltered; realizing something she said was amiss. Elizabeth rarely if ever made faux paux's of any sort, her career demanded she always be on top of any of her clients' demands. But she had no way of knowing this, not even Peter did, as ever perceptive he too sensed the shift in mood.

Neal had always prided himself for being quick on his feet when the social situations reached their stickiest, it was how he survived, how he stayed alive sometimes, but certainly how he kept several steps before anyone else. "So Elizabeth!" Turn on the charm; let her know everything's all right. "I heard you got a Viennese Chocolate Torte from French bakery I like so much!"

Desert….it was the last thing on any of their minds judging from the blank stares at him. Not the first time Neal had experienced it. But Peter was the first to pick up on where he was going, grabbing the thread and running with it. "Yeah, cake and coffee…"

"And the Knicks," Neal suggested, much to Peter's relief.

"Right, games on now, playing the Celtics." On came the pleading look for Elizabeth, the one that said that Peter had been good and patient this far, please couldn't he go now and enjoy himself? For Elle's sake, and for that of Mulder and Scully, Neal hoped she would agree.

"All right," Elle sighed, recovering somewhat from her still as yet unknown transgression, indulgently giving in to her husband. "I'm surprised I was able to hold you this long."

"That's because the game didn't start till eight and I had the DVR set up." He nearly leapt up at Elizabeth's release, but paused at Neal's silent urging. Neal let his gaze flicker to Mulder, still concerned by Scully's side, and back to the FBI agent. Perhaps he and Peter weren't Mulder and Scully, that wasn't to say he couldn't get his point across to him perfectly clear. The question was would Peter go along with it.

The other man wavered, clearly hoping to spend some quality time alone with his beloved television while his guests were entertained elsewhere. But wisdom prevailed, or at least Peter's sense of fairness as he nodded, rising finally and rounding the table to clap a hand on Mulder's shoulder.

"Much into basketball, Mulder?"

The friendly gesture caught the other man off guard slightly, and Neal could sense the surprise and caution as he answer. "Only on days that end in 'y'."

"Really?" Why did Peter sound so surprised by that. "You much into the Knicks?"

"I still have my Bill Bradley jersey from when I was a kid."

Somehow Neal had suspected there would be a common ground in sports between the two of them. "You can show off your new equipment, you know. Impress with your state of the art sound system."

"It is pretty awesome," Peter mused with pride. "Come on, Mulder, you'll be amazed with the picture quality I get on this thing."

Mulder hesitated for only the briefest of moments, Scully's nod and consenting chuckle all the reassurance he needed to follow Peter over to the mammoth television set up as Peter began his now well rehearsed and highly informed demonstration of the high end equipment he had been dying for months to show off to people in the office.

"Don't worry, Peter's recording the game, they aren't missing anything," Elizabeth eyed her husband's childlike glee. "Neal and I have seen his new playthings already."

"Men and their toys," Scully replied, still finding her footing with a nervous glance at Elizabeth. "I'm sorry about that just now, you just…"

"No, I'm sorry," Elizabeth stopped the other woman, face softening for an instant. "Look, I know every relationship is different, and I got carried away. If I brought something painful for you two, I'm sorry. You're guests here tonight. You are helping my husband out a great deal, the two of you didn't have to do this. I just wanted to say thank you."

It was hard to remain hurt under Elizabeth's earnest apology, Neal should know. "Thank you," Scully murmured gratefully, glancing at the scattered plates. "Coffee then? I could use some."

"I'll help," Neal offered, reaching immediately for empty plates, hoping it was as good of an excuse as any to avoid hearing Peter's presentation on his sound system yet again.

"I think I have this covered, Neal," Elle saw through his plan easily enough, foiling it effectively to Neal's disappointment. "Go out with the boys, enjoy the game."

"Enjoy the game?" Elizabeth knew perfectly well that he cared about as much for sports as Peter did for the symphony, opera, ballet, anything involving culture really. "How long have we known each other?"

"Personally or including the time I had to give up anniversaries and birthdays while my husband was tracking you down for arrest?" Elizabeth knew how to cut to the quick. She had him.

"Fine," Neal knew he was beaten. The womenfolk wanted him out, or at least Elle did, and so he retreated from the safe haven of the dining room to the unfamiliar territory of Peter's world. One in which the quality of the man was judged by the size of his big screen television.

Peter was already pointing out buttons and explaining the nifty things that they did. "This one gives me full on, surround sound through the entire downstairs, so no matter if I go into the kitchen for a beer I can still know what's going on.

It was unclear if Mulder was completely impressed or not. "You've got a very tolerant wife."

"Well she agreed to it only as long as I didn't scare the neighbors or get the police called on us." Peter sighed. "It's funny, she probably wouldn't have even agreed to that if things hadn't…gotten complicated at work." And by that Neal knew he meant Garret Fowler bugging everything Peter had in sight in his own home. It was the opportunity Neal had been hoping for all evening, a way to segue into the very business he had wanted to discuss with Mulder since he was brought on board, but Peter unsurprisingly sidestepped it, suddenly became very busy with the business of turning on his expensive sound system. He didn't trust Mulder; the laughing stock of the FBI with the one thing Mulder should an expert at.

So Neal would step in.

"So, Mulder…you played basketball?" The room was suddenly filled with the white noise whisper of thousands of fans cheering in a confined area as the television screen came to life.

Mulder was immediately attracted to it, but answer Neal promptly enough. "Yeah, high school though. Oxford doesn't really have organized, university wide sports like they do here in America."

"Was never good at sports myself….all those rules and regulations." Hit on the one area they did have in common, Neal thought. "Tends to get me in trouble, you know, that pervasive need to do exactly what the authority figures tell me not to do."

"As well I should know," Peter settled happily on the couch, remote in hand

"Poor Peter, he gets the brunt end of it," Neal conceded, glancing at the other man thoughtfully. "Though, really, he should be thanking me for the sound system."

"How so," Peter frowned up at Neal, but he knew where Neal was going with this. And he wasn't happy.

"I'm the reason OPR started bugging your house." Neal bullied his way through, ignoring Peter's silent protests. "And if they hadn't been listening through your cable box…"

"Yeah, well all done now, can we watch the basketball game," Peter did not want to get into this now.

"You had your fair share of run ins with OPR, didn't you Mulder?" If Neal could be any more obvious he didn't know how. The other man knew it too.

"A few," Mulder acknowledged carefully just as he did about everything. Had there ever been a time he didn't dance around subjects as if they were on fire?

"Perhaps you could give me some insight then." Might as well go for broke, Neal thought. "This OPR agent, Garret Fowler, is he someone you remember from your days with the Bureau?"

Mulder looked thoughtful for long moments, searching his memory as he settled on the couch beside Peter. "Not that I recall, though I didn't know every OPR agent by name. They just liked to be a pain in my ass whenever the Justice Department got pissy with me about something else new they could bitch about."

"Like what?" Neal was prying but he didn't care.

"Usually me pissing off the Attorney General." Mulder didn't look in the least bit sorry. "Janet Reno didn't like me very much."

"But did they go so far as to bug your house?"

"A couple of times," Mulder shrugged, as if this was a normal occurrence for him. Perhaps it was. "It wasn't always OPR, but it happened, my office, my apartment, Scully's apartment, phone lines, they were all bugged at one point or the other."

"Why?" This was Peter's interjection, finally getting involved in the conversation he had been trying to avoid with basketball. It had been Peter who'd received the brunt of Fowler's intrusion, Neal as a consultant wasn't nearly as interesting to him for whatever reason. For whatever reason everything seemed to hinge on Peter's involvement in this, and neither of them could tell why.

"I thought that would be obvious." Mulder didn't shy away from what he used to do. "I managed to piss a lot of people off before, Agent Burke, asking questions people weren't exactly thrilled with me asking. I was bringing up truths people didn't want known about."

"Secrets about what the government did and didn't know about aliens?" Neal might as well call a spade a spade, and if he left it to Peter someone would get insulted quickly.

"Some might say that." Mulder wasn't going to openly admit to anything, not anymore at least, not to two people he'd hardly known two days. Trust clearly wasn't something you gained easily from him. "I somehow don't think that this has anything to do with your problem though."

"We don't know what our problem is," Peter muttered lowly, all hope for his basketball game lost for the moment. He paused the action as he glared at Neal. "All we know is that Fowler wants Neal for something."

"A rare music box," Neal supplied.

"What any of this has to do with anything is still eluding us," Peter clarified.

"OPR often has its own agenda, it could be anything. Though I've never heard of anyone caring about a music box before. What's special about it?"

"We don't know?" Peter replied, though he didn't look totally convinced that Neal didn't know. "It's from the 18th century, Russian, owned by Catherine the Great. The value of it could be incalculable."

"Money is money in this world, Burke, you and I know that. There are people who play for things more than dollars and cents." Mulder sank further into the couch cushions. "If someone from OPR is involved this deep it isn't just about money."

"Than what is it?" Neal couldn't get past that part, the idea of who would want an expensive, rare, and valuable art object for anything other than money?

"That's the part you'll have to find out. Likely from Fowler."

Peter snorted. "And you made a habit of shaking down powerful members of the Justice Department, Mulder?"

But Neal knew he had, at least a few times. He'd read through the man's files. "There was that time years ago. You were involved in an investigation of your Section Chief, weren't you? He was involved in some sort of pharmaceutical program doing illegal testing, and he was using the FBI to help cover it up?"

He'd surprised Mulder. For whatever reason, this pleased Neal greatly, the other man didn't look like he surprised easily. "Perceptive and observant," Mulder nodded in approval. "And someone's got a hold of a file I didn't think the FBI let out to just anyone."

"I didn't either," Peter echoed suspiciously, eyes narrowing on Neal who only shrugged affably to the agent, knowing Peter would figure out easily enough just how Neal had gotten his hands on the files anyway.

"I like paying attention to the details. It's what makes me so good." He wasn't going to shy away from the facts as they were. "And I figured I needed to know a lot about you."

For the briefest of moments that intensity returned, that habit the other man had of staring at you as if he was reading your soul or scouring your brain. It was unnerving to Neal, despite his bravado, and it made him want to somehow move from Mulder's line of vision, hide in the kitchen, something to get away from it. But then it was gone as quickly as it returned, and Mulder nodded in satisfaction, apparently pleased with whatever he found. Neal wasn't so sure he liked Mulder finding anything at all.

"Whatever it is this Fowler wants out of the two of you, it's not about him." Mulder returned to their previous thread of conversation. "Nothing like this is ever as simple as that, there is always a string leading back to someone else pulling it. The question should be not why this Fowler person wants the box or what's important about it, but who else wants it and why."

"And before you say that Spooky Mulder has pulled out another cracked theory," Mulder hedged to the guilty glances of both Neal and Peter. "I'm not just speaking out of my conspiratorial ass here. The FBI and OPR are both like every other organization in this government. Someone is always working for someone else's agenda, often when they don't even realize it. Take this case for example. When was the last time you worked a murder investigation, Burke?"

"That didn't relate to a white collar crime?" Peter paused in thought, frowning. "Close to a decade."

"Ever deal with a serial killer before?"

"Not since right after I got out of the academy, no."

"And yet Violent Crimes comes to you with this case, one that they claim they can't figure out with their scores of highly trained profilers, and tell you that not only do they need the insights of your consultant but that of a man who got drummed out of the Bureau as a whack job disgrace?"

Now that Mulder put it that way it brought into sharp relief the questions Neal had been asking since they had been put on this case…why? "They said it was because it dealt with white collar's expertise."

"But it isn't a white collar crime. I know, they had me on that detail for a while; you track down mob lords, art thieves, securities fraud. This is a serial killer, and to get into the mind of someone like this you need to have the experience."

"So you're saying someone is setting us up?" For once Peter wasn't dismissive of Mulder's theory. In fact he looked as if it made a scary sort of sense.

"I think someone is looking for a reason for you two to mess up." Mulder replied. "The angry Senator, the white collar connection, those are just excuses really. Someone out there wants to get their hands on something, and my guess is that it isn't a music box." He looked back squarely at Neal.

"You are both under scrutiny here, and someone is simply waiting for one screw up, one misstep."

"But why me," Neal sputtered as both of the other men focused sharply on him. "I've been out of the game for years now."

"I don't know, Neal," Peter sighed softly, thoughtful. "You've managed to piss off far too many people in your past."

"Enough to create an elaborate plot to try and get me? To do what?"

"I don't know," Mulder shrugged. "But I've heard of grander conspiracies to entrap other people for less than that."

Somehow that didn't make Neal feel any better.