Chapter 16 – Gotcha

Cullen POV

The sun poked through the small crack in the curtain, as I squinted an eye open.

And pissed me right the hell off.

It wasn’t so much that the annoying…goddamn…banging on the motel room door woke me up, as much as it was that I knew who the annoying…goddamn…door banger was.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me…seriously.”

Swan mumbled something, incoherently, and rolled over as I simultaneously wiped the drool puddle away, that she’d left on my chest.

Fucking blech.

Slipping outta the hard as hell bed, I pulled my jeans on from the night before and walked over to the door, deciding to annoy the shit out him, right back.

Tit for motherfucking tat, Gargoyle.

“We don’t need house cleaning today,” I said and he knocked harder.

I made sure Swan was still asleep before I reacted to that one.

“No sheets left after last night, my friend,” I added, then waited, peeking through the peep hole to watch his reaction.  “In fact you might wanna…”

Shit.

“Open the door, Edward.”

Oh…so, not fucking good.

Swan, as though she’d instinctively reacted to the voice all her life, began her groggy introduction to a new day.

And more fuckery.

“Edward,” she said, all sexy, sleepy raspy voiced and all.  “Is that my…?”

“Now, son,” he demanded from the other side of the door and I opened it, slowly.

‘Cause he had gun, and I didn’t, that’s fucking why.

And because that whole, son thing, freaked me the fuck out, when he said it, to be quite goddamn honest with you.

“Morning, Charlie,” I said, smiling as I ran a hand through my bed hair…but he wasn’t amused.

“Don’t you mean, Papa Swan?”

And yeah, talk about fucking awkward.

I got the evil eye as he walked passed and when Bella saw him, she became fully awake, finally, sitting up as she pulled what sheets were actually left around herself, tightly.

Charlie tried to ignore the fact that his daughter was butt naked and had probably been ravaged by a guy he didn’t even like very fucking much and looked everywhere but at her.

“Bells, could ya…get some clothes on, maybe?”

She made eye contact with me, giving me that, I am definitely gonna fucking kill you for the wet clothes thing, later, look, so I made like a fucking turn signal and left.

”I think I’m gonna…” I thumbed over my shoulder, pointing toward the closest possibly fucking exit.

I mean, you know, except for the goddamn window.

What?

I figured I’d go get her some clothes. Not that it would do her any good, while talking to the father figure, but you know, she’d need ‘em later, to get onto the airplane.

It wasn’t like she was gonna be able to wear the mold infested fucking outfit I’d rid her of the night before, anyway.

Right?

And as soon as the door closed behind me, I breathed easier but heard the raised voices of father and daughter start to kick in and I couldn’t help but envision myself, with a daughter Swan’s age, after catching her with some random goddamn asshole who’d just fucked the living shit out of her.

And I shivered.

Not that I wasn’t gonna fuck the living shit out of her again, but…you know.

Different perspective.

I found the first clothing shop I could and started trying to figure out just exactly what the Hell Swan would wanna wear when I was approached by a very small, very insignificant motherfucker that I vaguely recognized.

He didn’t say anything, he just stood there, staring at me with this…annoying goddamn look on his face like he either wanted to kick my ass, or puke.

 “Can I fucking help you?” I asked him and he swallowed down the vile, finally, and said, all, trying to be a bad ass but you could tell he used to get beat up in high school and shit, “You better not hurt Bella…”

Then I realized who he was, pointed at him and smiled.

“Short, loud mouth guy from yesterday, right?”

He nodded, nervously.

“Jake told me about you…” he started and I sincerely had to hand it to the guy.  He was fucking half my size, threatening me, and I was pretty sure if I’d said ’boo’ he mighta pissed his pants. 

I didn’t.

Jesus.

“Sorry about yesterday,” I told him as the crease in my forehead began to hurt.  “It’s just…Sw…Bella, she makes me all…” and the hand gesture, although it made the guy jump a little, I think he got my point.

‘Cause then he laughed a little and said, “Yeah, she’s been doin’ that to Charlie, for years.”

We both laughed at that, ‘cause I could literally, just imagine the hell that poor man must have gone through, raising a seriously stubborn child like what Swan must have been like.

I mean seriously, can you picture her, going through pubery?

He wasn’t half bad, that guy. So we chatted it up while I looked for a not so fucking ridiculous outfit for Swan. 

He told me crazy ass stories about Bella and Jake and how she personally knew most of the criminals in Forks from when they were all growing up, so it was never really hard to take them in…and I told him about her breaking a gang bangers hand without even blinking over in DC.

Hell, he even helped me pick the outfit out for her.

And other than the store clerk giving the two of us that, oh man, are these two together, or what, look, it wasn’t a half bad hour to spend, giving Swan some dad time.

When I got back to the motel room, Swan was finishing up a sentence that I hadn’t prepared myself to hear, exactly.

It wasn’t even on my radar, to be more specific.

And I was a seriously prepared motherfucker.

Most of the time.

“Dad, for the last time, I was never in any real danger, she didn’t even have a gun on her…”

“Who didn’t have a goddamn gun on her?” I asked, entering the room, glaring at Swan, who now looked like a Greek Goddess in her wrap and a Papa Swan who looked like…

Well, who looked pissed.

Much like yours truly, once I’d heard that bullshit about a gun and Swan and her being in danger.

Not my favorite combination.

She rolled her eyes as I held the bag of clothes out to her and went to go change, leaving Charlie and I to some fucked up awkward silence.

Again.

When she came back into the room, she looked fucking flawless in that outfit I’d gotten her, if I do say so, myself.

And then Eddy Jr. and I started a mental countdown to when I’d be able to take them back off of her.

I know, beside the point.

Anyway, I started right in on her ass but before I got much out in the way of yelling, she stopped to explain that shit.

Which was also right about when all hell broke loose, in the motel room.

“I had planned on telling you after we got up and around today…” she said and then Charlie wiped at his scruff a little, asking me, “You mean, you didn’t know about this, either?”

“Hell to the motherfucking no, I didn’t know about this shit…you think if I’d have known about it, it would have happened?  I didn’t even know she was in Forks until yesterday afternoon.”

Charlie shook his head at his daughter, who narrowed her eyes in on me.

“I don’t need your permission to come see my…”

Papa Swan interrupted her before I could. 

Fucking lucky for her.

“Bells, I think you need to re-think running after crazy people when you don’t even know who these people are.”

“Agreed,” I stated, without a goddamn doubt.

“Excuse me?” she zeroed in on me, even more, waving a spastic hand around, while she did. “You do it all the time.”

“That’s because I’m a…”

“If you say man, I swear to god, I will kick…your ass.”

“Bells,” Charlie protested.

To the cursing, I was guessing.  Not to the kicking of my ass.

Maybe.

I couldn’t be sure.

“I was gonna say, trained…” I told her.

What?

“Either way, Bells, you can’t go runnin’ off, half cocked, tryin’ to take down people who’d shoot you, so much as look at ya like that…”

And that was when the conversation changed.

For me anyway.

I realized, I was probably making her feel the same way her dad and Jake had been making her feel for her whole life.

Less than able.

Still someone’s, “little girl”.

Who couldn’t take care of herself.

The reason, at least in part, why she’d left that town, in the first place.

And at least in my case, I knew better but I’d gotten sucked into that same thought process because of how I felt about her.

How I felt about wanting to keep her alive.

At all costs.

“Okay, hold up,” I said, interrupting Charlie’s rant and they both stopped, looking at me like I was either crazy or stupid.

Probably crazy.

Right?

“I don’t know all the deets,” I said, glaring pointedly at Swan.  “But I can guarantee you, she doesn’t go off half cocked…”

No pun intended.

Seriously.

Not yet, anyway.

I cleared my throat a little, and my mind, and continued…“Charlie, Bella’s twice as qualified to take a motherfuc…” I stopped myself, “…a criminal down than half the police force, if not more, in all of Washington, DC…so I wouldn’t go worryin’ about her, if I were you.”

He eyed me.

“I shit you not,” I said and although he fumed at my choice of words, he gave in and made up with his daughter, while I changed.

“I worry about you, is all, Bells, you’re too far away, these days.”

He hugged and kissed her head and Swan obliged him the prolonged physical contact while I packed us up.

What there was to pack, that is.

And shortly after Charlie threatened my life, if anything happened to his daughter, blah blah fucking blah, I shook his hand and gave him my word, which is impenetrable, my friends, that nothing would.

He seemed okay with that.

For the time being, at least.

And then Swan gave me the full scoop on the Jane incident on the way to the airport.

We argued about it while waiting for takeoff.

And by the time we were ten thousand feet up, things were right as rain, again.

I’m pretty sure our fellow passengers thought we were out of our fucking minds, but I couldn’t have given less of a shit.

At least she was with me, again.

And at least we were both still alive.

How I was gonna keep my word to Charlie, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure about, but it would happen.

Even if it meant giving mine, her life was non-negotiable.

“Edward,” she said, interrupting my mental plan for her well being.

She was quiet and her head was leaning against my shoulder and she didn’t look up at me, so I figured this was gonna be one of those conversations that she had already decided, I wasn’t gonna wanna have.

If ya know what I mean.

“Hmmm,” I answered with my head back, eyes closed.

“I know how you feel about kids, but I really think I want to have them…” she started, as if she wanted to get it out before she’d changed her mind…and then she paused, waiting to hear me blow a gasket, probably, but I stayed silent.

I wanted to hear the rest of what she was gonna say, before I lost my shit.

“I mean, at least one…and I know it might sound scary to you, I mean, it’s scary to me, too, and I realize this might mean there’s no future for us, and I suppose, if that’s really where things take us, then I’ll eventually be okay with that…but then, if I wasn’t with you, I don’t think I’d want them…kids I mean…you know?  Because it’s the fact that I am with you that makes me want to have them…I mean, one…at least…I want to share that part of life with you, I want to have a little me, or….a little you…running around, playing with Pup, causing havoc and I think….”

She paused and I thought, goddamn, for a minute there, I didn’t think Swan survived on air.

But aside from that…she was right.

I’d been thinking about that same shit, to be honest.

I mean, how could I not, with all her crazy, hormonal fuckery, goin’ on, lately?

And realistically, I hadn’t wanted kids.  Before her, that is.  And when this shit first came up, I didn’t think I wanted them, still, but…

Well, fuck me, if I was gonna have ‘em, ever, it’d be with her.

I mean, if I could ever handle procreating…it’d have to be Swan that I fucking procreated with.

Right?

“Okay,” I told her, before she’d started in, again.

My head was still back, my eyes were still closed.

And that answer…felt…right.

“And I really think that if you just…”

She pulled her head away from my shoulder, finally, and I opened my eyes up to watch her, looking at me with a scowl that said she wasn’t quite sure she’d heard me right, so she asked, “What?”

“Okay,” I repeated.

Call me “Stone Face”.

Or, Muldoon.

No, don’t call me that shit…

“Okay…what?” Swan questioned.

“Okay, we’re gonna have…little….Cullen and Swan’s runnin’ around and shit….some day.”

And Jesus.

Thinkin’ it was one thing.

Sayin’ it, my friends?

A whole….nother experience all together.

“But I thought you…”

“Swan…listen,” I told her, sitting up a little straighter for this next part.  ‘Cause I wanted her to hear what the fuck I was about to say.

I took a deep breath, before starting, again.

“When all that bullshit happened with Jess and I got sucked into an obsession that’s even beyond my own goddamn comprehension these days, I saw ugly shit goin’ down around me, ugly people, and an ugliness inside my mind that…well let’s just say, most people would consider…disturbing.”

She didn’t have anything to say.

What could one say to that shit, anyway?

I continued.

“And I just kinda figured, I was too fucked up to even think about having kids.  I mean, helloooo, anger management?”

She smiled, a little.

“Anyway,” I said, getting back to the point.  “Lately, you know, with all the shit we’ve been going through, and seein’ how Emmett deals with having a…Lilly…I don’t know, you…”

I took a breather.

‘Cause this bearing my soul shit was new to me and I kinda felt like I was having a fucking heart attack or somethin’.

“You make me feel not quite so fucked up.”

Her eyes said something.

I wasn’t sure what it was, yet.

“If that makes sense,” I added, reading her, or at least, trying to.

And then she started crying.

“Shit, I fucked that up, didn’t I?” I asked her, cursing the day I was fucking born for hurting her like that.

She cried harder.

“I knew I’d fuck that shit up, look, Swan, I’m…”

“No,” she said, sniffling in between breaths.  “You didn’t fuck anything up, Edward.”

Then she threw her hands around my neck and started getting snot all over my ear.

“Jesus…”

“I love you,” she whispered into the mucus covered ear and I put my arms around her, squeezin’ a little. “Ditto, Swan…big time.”

Some kid was leaning over the back of his seat to watch us, like the nosy little fucker he was and although there mighta been a time when I’d have told him, or maybe his mother, to fuck off, I ignored him.

Swan’s head found my shoulder again and my eyes found darkness, one more time and about a blink  or so later, we were home.

We decided a call into that Angela Webber chick at the paper was in order as we found the car.

If for no other reason, to keep her alive.

So Swan dialed her up and gave her some important, disconcerting information about the Volturi and what had happened, in deep, agonizing detail, with Lauren, then made her promise not to go chasing after them on her own.

She told the reporter that we’d give her an exclusive, once the case was closed, to sweeten that deal, and Angela suddenly seemed pretty fucking smart, to me.

‘Cause she agreed to the whole thing and Swan said she sounded like she was being sincere, and scared about it.

Fear can be a top notch fucking motivator, my friends. 

Don’t ever underestimate it.

And while Swan was swindling deals with our friendly neighborhood side kick wannabe, I had called up Jasper.

“Yo,” he answered in a very chipper sort of way.

And since I didn’t really wanna know what my sister was previously doing to him to make him so chipper, I just said, “Hey Jazz, it’s…”

A small token of silence and I caught myself.  “Forget it, listen,  I need a favor.”

He laughed.  “Cullen, when don’t you need a favor?”

And yeah, I know, he had me, there.

But once again, my black ops friend did not disappoint on the tracking front. 

See, I’d gotten a couple of texts from Eleazer, while we were flying back to Maryland, giving me Kate’s credit card numbers, her cell phone number and Social, so I figured, maybe…if there was even a small possibility that she hadn’t  been taken against her will…that she mighta been using the cards, or the phone…or, something.

So he tracked them down and sure fucking enough, we got hits.

So mine and Swan’s day was about to consist of chasing some leads and finding this motherfucker who was responsible for deleting our girl from Eleazer’s life.

Against her will, or not.

And we were starting with Alec.

Not that she’d called him or anything but considering the information that Seth was able to give me before becoming a jail bird, I wanted to follow up on that little tid bit.

……….

“Get off of me…you fucking psycho!”

I smashed his ass up against the wall of his Titus airline office wall, one more time for good goddamn measure.

“Are you hiding her from daddy, Alec?” I asked him, tauntingly. “Trying to make him appreciate her a little more?  Maybe she wants to make him feel guilty over not paying enough attention to his baby girl?”

That wasn’t really my theory, but he didn’t need to know that.

In fact the less that asshat knew about where mine and Swan’s heads were, the better.

“Ow, shit, no!  I don’t know where she is!”

“Why were you pen palling with fucking Aro, then? Dick.”  I shoved a knuckle into his throat as a warning and he told me he was just trying to find out what Aro wanted in return for Kate’s safe return.

“I love her, man…I swear, I’d never do anything to…”

He choked up a little then, and let his ass go.

He could have been faking, but I figured, if he thought that I thought he was being straight up with me, he’d be more likely to fuck up at some point.

Swan was sitting on his desk, legs crossed, inspecting her nails.  She wasn’t exactly playing “good cop”…so much as “bored cop” but God…damn, was she sexy.

Anyway.

By the time we were done at Titus Airlines, I mighta still believed Alec wasn’t exactly innocent in the fuckery, but I did believe him when he said he didn’t know where she was.

Which told me…

Not very fucking much, at all.

I mean, if he wasn’t innocent, then why didn’t he know where Aro was hiding Kate?  And if he was, then….

Hell, let’s face it, he wasn’t innocent.

Either way, he was either really good at acting, or really telling me the truth and I didn’t have time to cause him enough serious pain to get to the truth.

Or the right instruments…

Plus, I taped a wireless bug under his desk that I was pretty sure he was too stupid and too riled up to notice.  So I’d just retrieve it later and find the fuck out what he was up to.

No big.

What?

It’s within the rules of asshattery and this guy was rubbing me the wrong way, the more I encountered his ass

So, I made a note to keep track of when he left for the day and Swan and I moved on to check out some text message pings that were picked up in Southern Maryland.

We were fucking exhausted as shit by the end of our day, that day.

Between checking on credit card transactions, money withdrawals from ATMs, visits to phantom friends that Kate had supposed contact with since she was gone and not eating much, we were both pretty much fucking done by the time we’d gotten home.

I let Pup out while Swan made us sandwiches and that was when I figured a few things out.

“I feel like we covered every fucking square inch of this state, today,” I said to the dog while he sniffed around the yard a little.

“I mean, unless they did take her to Seattle…”

Pup sneezed and I said, “Yeah, I doubt it, too.”

He dug up an old piece of paper from under the fence in the back and when I took it from him, that was when I got the idea.

One I couldn’t believe I hadn’t fucking thought of, yet.

I went back inside to tell Swan I was running to the store and she was out.

Cold.

So I picked her up, put her to bed, grabbed the sandwich she’d left for me on the counter and headed out for a map, some push pins and a bottle of Patron’s finest.

‘Cause, as we all know quite goddamn well…I think a whole hell of a lot better, on Tequila.

While I was out, I got a text from my brother, telling me some shit about a lead and a short cut and that he’d call me the next day and I told the phone, “Cryptic, much?” before slipping it back into my jacket.

It was starting to get really fucking cold out and part of me actually wished for one of those scarves that my mother had made, but then I figured, Eleanor’s heat would crank soon and then I’d just be hot as a motherfucker again, so…not needed, after all.

It was fucking late.

My eyes were burning.

And the odds of this girl coming home, alive, were getting more and more slim, with each day.

To be honest, I wondered if we were already too late but I kept moving forward.

Mostly because if I didn’t, I’d lose my shit, track down Aro and put a fucking bullet in his head.

And possibly a few other strategic places.

Which, probably wasn’t a good idea.

Yet, anyway.

When I got back home, I tacked the map I’d purchased up onto the office wall, pulled out the piece of paper that listed all our stops throughout the day, as well as the ones we hadn’t gotten to, yet and started pushing the pins into the points of interest.

Once I got them all up, I stepped back and looked at the map, trying to find a pattern, or, something, that would fucking tell me where this girl was being held.

Or at least point me in the direction of the low life that could tell me where she was being held.

Or buried.

Pup watched me in silence and I eyeballed him a couple of times.

He didn’t have to be so goddamn judgmental all the time, did he?

Seriously.

It was after my second shot of Patron, that I noticed the pattern.

Or rather, the lack there of.

Another shot and I pulled out the miscellaneous notes that I’d taken throughout the case, placing them on the floor in a semi circle around me, so I could see each of the pages from where I stood, easily.

They coordinated with the pins on the map and listed placed we’d staked out, excluding fucking Seattle, people we’d spoken to…things like that and the one thing none of them had in common, and yet, had in common, was the fact that they were extremely fucking random.

Random, in a way that told me they weren’t random at all.

You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.

“Holy motherfucking right under my goddamn nose, batman.”

My mind had been so wrapped up in the places these dick heads were, that I wasn’t paying any attention to where they weren’t.

Where they were going out of their way to draw attention away from.

My eyes fell on the area of that fucking map that I couldn’t stop thinking was where it made perfect sense to keep a body…

Person….

I mean, person.

But I needed to be sure before we went all, as Charlie would put it, half cocked, after the people who’d been fucking with Swan and I, since the day we’d come across this goddamn case.

So I poured another shot, got some clean copy paper and the phone book out of the closet and started drawing out plots, measuring distances and calling around to some local places, that were still open, that is, around the area of interest, in my mind.

Because if I was right about it, Swan and I were paying our friends, the Volturis…or better yet, James, if I was lucky…a little visit the next day.

And hopefully bringing our client’s daughter home.

Dead, or alive.