Thank you for the favoriting and kind comments so far! Here's the second chapter!

I awoke to the sensation of something firm and large poking into my backside. I smiled under the covers and wondered if I'd gotten lucky the night before and made it home with someone. But I was disappointed to find an empty wine bottle pressing against my ass.

I smacked my lips open and closed, desperate for some kind of moisture. My mouth felt, and tasted like I'd licked the dust off the Venetian blinds that I never opened. I pushed the green sleep mask off my face and reached for the wine bottle beneath the covers. I raised it to my lips, upending it, hoping one drop of liquid remained.

It didn't.

Shit.

I squinted against the grey daylight seeping in around the window, my brow wrinkling unattractively under the even less attractive sleep mask that had bunched up on my forehead. The stupid daylight made me realize I had a raging headache.

I desperately wanted one of the banana milkshakes my mother used to make and to sleep, oh, another seventeen hours, but I knew I stood no chance in hell of falling back into slumber. I cut my losses and dragged myself out of bed.

Despite the threat of rain, an hour later I found myself at the local coffee house picking apart a bagel and drinking my third latte. I wore the darkest glasses I could find, pounded half a dozen painkillers and decided the fresh air might do me some good. I bought a newspaper on my way and grabbed a small table outside the café.

Needless to say, the headline and accompanying picture did nothing to ease my stomach or aching head. On the front page of the paper was my picture with Tyler and Mike at last night's crime scene. My hair was ridiculously limp and stringy, my eyes had dark circles underneath, and the headline read "Anyone is a Victim"—a serious misquote from my spiel to the press.

I was surprised the chief hadn't called me in yet. Maybe he'd skipped reading the morning paper today? Yeah right.

I chucked my glasses down on the table, landing right in the middle of a glop of cream cheese from my bagel. Nice. I voraciously read the article, looking for any other misquotes in the process. The article went on to spout some generalizations about serial killers, but thankfully it wasn't too sensational.

I folded the newspaper and intentionally whacked myself over the head with it. Punishment. Next time I would choose my words more carefully.

Tossing the paper down on the table, I brushed the stray hairs from my eyes as I cursed my own fear and inexperience with the media. The hair on my neck and arms stood up and, having an eerie sense someone was watching me, I lifted my head and looked around the café, shocked to find a pair of eyes staring right at me.

A young man sat alone inside the café, staring out through the front window toward the patio where I sat. He was the kind of sinfully handsome man that made your heart flutter and the muscles in your stomach clench in arousal; so positively beautiful that he must be imagined, unreal. His dark eyes were rimmed by purple circles—as if he got even less sleep than me—and his stare penetrated my gaze, disrupting my obvious leering. He was unnaturally pale and he had the most unusual bronze hair styled in perfect disarray; he kind of hair you could just imagine running your fingers through in the throes of passion. At first, he smirked, as if he could read my progressively dirty thoughts, but abruptly the smile faded and his face bore an almost quizzical, frustrated expression as a thin line formed between his eyebrows. I turned and looked over each shoulder, unsure if he was looking at me or not, but due to the clouds and impending rain, there was no one else out here but me. I wondered vaguely if we'd met before, but I'd remember a face and body like that.

Hanging over the edge of his table, pressed against the window, was the same edition of the newspaper I had. Clearly he'd been reading it. Maybe he'd recognized my stupid picture on the front page—that would explain the strange expression.

Or maybe he was trying to remember his grocery list, Bella. Jesus, get a grip.

Slightly discomforted by his odd, unblinking gaze, I reached out blindly for the paper. I'd rather resume my reading than be stared at, or maybe I was making a half-hearted attempt at being coy. But I shouldn't act coy, because I wasn't good at that shit. I accidentally knocked my cup of coffee over, spilling it across the table.

"Shit!" I hissed, jumping to my feet and grabbing the now wet newspaper.

I let the coffee drip off the paper, shaking the excess onto the pavement. I made to step around the legs of the wrought iron chair when I caught my foot on the leg and barely caught myself before spilling myself onto the pavement.

I could feel my face burning as I looked up to see if anyone had seen me. The young man inside the café had his hand pressed over his mouth, but I could clearly see the uplifted corners of his lips, raising the apples of his cheeks.

Great job, Bella, the cute, albeit weird guy checks you out and you dick it up!

I closed my eyes as I silently cursed myself. That's why I stayed away from good looking guys. I couldn't be cute, girly, or graceful enough either. I threw away the soggy paper and decided to cut my losses for the day. I would get a refill on my coffee and return home to bed. Home is where I should have stayed in the first place. Yeah, that's right, I was running home with my tail between my legs.

Putting on my brave face and my big girl panties, I re-entered the café, empty cup in hand. I was determined to ignore the only patron. I asked the barista for a refill and made a conscious effort to keep my eyes cast down.

As I waited for my grande, double shot, skinny, vanilla latte, curiosity got the better of me. I casually turned and leaned against the counter, eager to see what the café's other patron was doing.

I instantly wished I hadn't.

The hot guy looked anything but hot as he stared me down from across the café. He looked positively furious. Evil. His gaze was cold, his brow furrowed in intensity, and lips curled back to reveal bright, white teeth. His chest heaved from breathlessness.

The newspaper was still clenched in his hand.

What the fuck?

I pressed my back further against the counter, too fearful to turn away. Behind me the machines whirred loudly, brewing coffee and frothing milk. The barista disappeared in a billow of steam. She didn't hear me gasp.

He suddenly looked inhuman standing perfectly still, only his chest heaving. I couldn't fathom what was wrong with him. Was he mentally disturbed? Having some sort of fit or seizure?

The sound of my pulse thundered in my ears, and my breathing was ragged. My shoulders trembled and my arms shook. My service gun was at home on my shelf, but my father's old snub nose .38 took up permanent residence in my purse—which was on the counter behind me. I had a weapon. I could defend myself.

But I was frozen.

My training was forgotten. I was not a cop—I was a scared girl suffering from long-repressed post-traumatic stress disorder.

"Miss?"

I jumped at the sound of the barista's voice and spun around, terrified to turn my back on the young man. The girl stood with my coffee in her hand, no sign of distress on her face.

"Here ya go."

I heard the chime on the door behind me, and I twisted around to find the café empty, the door slowly coming to a close.

The guy was nowhere to be found.

I had turned about instantly; he should have been nearby still. The café's patio was large and quite unobstructed, and yet there was no trace of him.

I returned my attention to the barista. "The young man that was just here, do you know him?"

She rolled her eyes from behind rectangular, tortoise-shell frames. "You mean Dr. Cullen's son, the cheapskate? He never buys anything, but sometimes he comes in to read the paper if it's quiet or listen to music. He's totally weird."

"Yeah, weird," I replied, taking my coffee with a trembling hand. The waitress took notice and arched her eyebrows. "Sorry. Jitters," I lied.

Cautiously, I walked toward the exit and peered outside. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary, so I proceeded.

Dr. Cullen's son. A medical doctor or an academic? I wondered vaguely as I walked down the sidewalk, keeping my wits about me.

Despite the guy's initial handsome façade, his odd behavior had caused my intuition to flicker. He had been reading about the murders and had definitely seen my picture in conjunction with the article. He had appeared normal when I kept my distance, but when I got nearer, he had snapped.

Often, serial killers kept tokens from their victims, revisited the crime scene, or closely followed the stories in the media. I had no idea if the young man had anything to do with the crime, but his behavior had been odd for sure. I'd always been taught to trust my instinct. It wouldn't hurt to follow up on young Mr. Cullen.

Instead of going home, I went in to the station. I didn't care that it was supposed to be my day off, that I had a hangover, or that I wore worn out yoga pants with a hole in the left ass cheek, or that I looked like hell. Curiosity had always gotten the better of me, and I couldn't bear not knowing the answers, especially if they were at my disposal.

I ignored comments and greetings from my co-workers, avoided Newton altogether, and plopped down at the computer in my cubicle.

I repeated the name 'Cullen' like a mantra while I waited for my computer to boot up. I bit the edge of my nail, eyes darting nervously around the confined area.

The wide, yellow spine of the phone book captured my attention. I rose abruptly, grabbing the directory before slumping back down and cracking it open. My fingers fumbled with the thin, onion-peel-like pages, tearing them accidently in my haste to turn them.

I flipped from the Gs back to the Bs, and then forward to the Ds before thumbing the pages back.

Cz.

Cy.

Cu.

My eyes and fingers traced up the page until I found it.

Cullen, Carlisle, Dr.

There was a residential address and a phone number, but no office. So either he was an academic or didn't have a practice.

There were forty-one other Cullens listed; any number of them could have been children or even grandchildren if he was old enough to have an adult son. It's not like I could call each one and say "Hello, do any hot, young men with a propensity for scaring young women in coffee shops live here? No? Oh, that's your cousin Jim. Thanks!"

The welcome screen for the Rochester Police Department finally greeted me, and I logged in.

I quickly searched for the doctor's name in the database—if he had so much as a speeding ticket in recent years, it would show up on his record.

The computer instantly kicked back a 'No Such Inquiry' result, and I pressed my lips together, my forehead wrinkling as I frowned in response.

Okay then, broader search.

I just typed in Cullen and clicked Enter, hoping something promising would show up.

Two results were found, a Jeanette M. Cullen for an MIP, and a George L. Cullen for a traffic violation. A picture accompanied the entry, it was definitely not the man from the café.

I sighed in exasperation, leaning back in my chair. This wasn't exactly a dead end, just a stumbling block. I would have to get creative, that's all.

Angela's head popped over the wall of my cubicle suddenly, startling me. "Hey, somebody said you were here. Isn't today your day off?"

I forced myself to swallow; I was sure my heart had leapt up to my throat. Evidently, you could add paranoid schizophrenia to the list of ailments I suffered from. Honestly, it's not as if he'd march into the Police Department to 'get me.' Next thing you know I'd be having dreams about the boogeyman or something. And now Angela was staring at me like I was a complete idiot. "Um, yeah, it is. Hey, Ang, you're originally from the area, right?"

She leaned against my desk and nodded. "Yeah, why?"

"Do you know a Dr. Cullen?" I hedged, not meeting her curious gaze.

"Doctor Carlisle? Sure. He works at the hospital. Great doctor. The whole family is pretty cool actually. He and Mrs. Cullen donate to a lot of local causes. They adopted all their kids too."

"What's he like?" I asked as I instantly imagined a kind, gentle older man whose kids had run amok.

"Frankly? Hot."

Okay, this totally didn't fit with my image of the old man who probably still wore headgear with the little circular mirror on it as he stood in front of you with a tongue depressor and said, "Say ahh."

"Is he old?" I blurted out, perhaps a little too loud.

Angela laughed, her eyes crinkling behind the frames of her glasses. "Hardly. Our age, maybe? Maybe a few years older. His kids are all grown now."

Now we were finally getting to where I wanted the conversation to be at. "What are the kids like? Did you know any of them?"

She opened her mouth and made to speak, but then interrupted herself. "What is this about?"

I told her the truth, sort of. "I don't know. I saw one of the doctor's sons today, and he behaved so strangely."

"Well, they do keep to themselves a lot. And there's the business of them all intermarrying or whatever."

I had no idea what Angela meant by 'whatever,' but I could tell she was uncomfortable with gossiping about them in this capacity. She took a deep breath, and I settled in for what I knew would be an enlightening conversation.

"I'm going to preface this by stating that none of the Cullen's kids are actually related to one another," she began, and I nodded my head in understanding, not wanting to interrupt her. "When Mrs. Cullen and the Doctor got married, she had already taken in her niece and nephew—Rosalie and Jasper. She and the doctor adopted the other three kids—Emmett, Alice, and Edward. I think they were originally taken in as foster kids from wherever they lived before they came to Rochester. Rosalie and Emmett are married now, and so are Alice and Jasper. I suppose it's not all that odd if they never saw one another as siblings. What's stranger is that they married so early, I guess—like right out of high school."

I frowned, confused. "So how old are they? How do you know them?" This is when I wished I'd lived in Rochester my whole life instead of hot-ass Arizona and Florida. I didn't know many of the locals; I'd only been here a year. Was it strange? My parents married straight out of high school, but I suppose that was more than twenty years ago. I didn't have many good friends, so I wasn't really sure if that was abnormal or not. Did it matter?

"I don't really know. No more than twenty or twenty one? We're from the same burb. My younger brothers went to school with them, and frankly their relationships created a bit of a buzz." Angela looked down, clearly uncomfortable again. "The doctor always supports the Policeman's Ball too."

My mind was just reeling. So they didn't live in the city itself, but man, the family seemed to be really well known. I personally had nothing against marriage, but wasn't it a bit odd in this day and age for couples to marry quite this young?

"So which one did you see today?" Angela asked as she twisted her hair in a bun and secured it with an ink pen from my desk.

I shrugged, trying to act nonchalant, still not ready to share my theory. "I'm not sure. Six foot maybe, 160 pounds, reddish brown hair." I realized it sounded like I was describing a suspect instead of the cute guy I'd seen getting coffee this morning.

A smile twitched at Angela's lips. "That would be Edward. He was a freshman in college when I graduated last year. He's in Laboratory Medicine too."

I paused, hoping not to sound too eager or suspicious, but inside alarm bells were going off.

"So he's interested in Forensics?"

Angela shrugged. "I guess, I think he's more into the research aspect, Dr. Cullen being his dad and all."

This was all too strange. Cullen had more than a basic knowledge of medicine, anatomy, forensics; he obviously had a fucking temper, and was following the case. I had absolutely no concrete reason to name him a suspect, but his behavior was odd at best—and I didn't want to think about the 'at worst' variable.

"Why do you ask?" Angela asked skeptically, a slow smile spreading across her face. "Did he hit on you?"

I snorted, but briefly entertained the possibility of a date with Edward Cullen—you know, before he flipped out on me. "No. I saw him at the coffee shop today near my place, and I thought he looked interesting."

She waggled her eyebrows. "Ah, so did you hit on him?"

No, I pretty much forgot all my training and stood there nearly pissing myself when he looked at me like a fucking serial killer.

"Nah. He just caught my eye is all." It was a serious understatement. He was fuckhot.

"Bummer. You should have asked him out. My brothers told me all the girls fawned all over him at school and even one of the teachers asked him out." She smirked.

I rolled my eyes. He didn't sound like the type that found me interesting at all. No, I occasionally got hit on by old lecherous guys, or guys who got all macho when they discovered I was a cop. There were no second dates or booty calls after they found out about the nightmares and my tendency toward emo and morbidity.

"Eh, maybe next time, Ang," I replied eventually.

She smiled, ever the personal cheerleader. "Okay. I gotta go, I'm expecting some test results back."

She squeezed my shoulder on the way out. I didn't exactly cringe, but I was unaccustomed to much personal contact. I kept shit like that to a minimum—there was less chance of getting hurt. But as she walked away, I couldn't help but wonder what it would have been like if I'd had a friend like Angela back then.

My gaze returned to the open phone book and to Dr. Cullen's entry. I quickly jotted the address down on a scrap of paper and put the directory away.

Could I go to the Cullen house alone? Just the look on Edward's face had made me forget all the self-defense training my mom and the doctors made me take. I swallowed back my fear and stood up, looking over at Mike's cubicle.

"Hey, Newt, you working tomorrow?"

He nodded. "Yeah, why?"

I hated relying on him, but I knew I could count on Mike. "Want to go on a call with me in the morning?"

Author's Note: The plot thickens!

Evenstar from Twilighted made me a gorgeous banner for Cold Case File. I'll post a link on my profile if you're interested.

Special thanks to LittleMissMione and SandiCarr from PTB for beta-ing this chapter. All remaining mistakes belong to me.