A/N: This one is a bit shorter, but I promise that the next one will be much longer. Please review, I would love to learn what to improve.
I do not own Twilight
Light in the Darkness
xxx
Chapter Three
Invisible Ink
EPOV
"It's a morgue, not your bedroom." I interrupted my sister's and Emmett's heavy make-out session.
"Just because you don't get laid, doesn't mean I can't." Emmett grumbled.
"There's a corpse on a table." I reminded him.
"Speaking of which," Rosalie interrupted after straightening her lab coat, "The only physical evidence I got were three 45 caliber bullets - two from his knees and one from his skull - ballistics are working on them as we speak, but I am not sure if that will be any help. It's professional, cold and clean. Though, I have some good news too." she lifted the sheet and turned UV lights on. Chief Swan's chest lit up like a Christmas tree. "That," she pointed, "is an invisible ink tattoo. "
"Wow, I wouldn't have thought him to be a tattoo lover." Emmett boomed
I looked more closely. It was a multi-colored fluorescence ink tattoo of random-looking numbers and letters or gibberish words that was not random at all - it was some kind of code, using which Chief Swan was trying to tell us something that was important enough for him to hide on his own body in invisible ink. That took dedication and time.
"Pictures?" I asked without raising my eyes to meet Rose's.
"Already taken" She extended a batch of pictures to me. I grabbed those and left without saying another word.
"You're welcome, jackass!" Rosalie shouted far behind me.
Emmett caught up with me.
"What the hell is wrong with you?!"
"I have to work." I spat out. "I have to get to the bottom of this."
"Hey, I don't like all the mysterious and creepy stuff too, but we're all on the same team here."
"Are we, McCarty? Five minutes ago you were eating my sister's face off."
"Oh, come on, everyone needs to get away, freshen up sometimes. Doing this job and not getting away from all the crude stuff at least for a minute will eat you alive one day."
I stopped to glare at him. I couldn't stop. every time I closed my eyes I saw images of victims, their crying families and glistening doe-like chocolate eyes of Isabella Marie Swan who, I couldn't shake the feeling, was in danger. I left Emmett standing in the middle of a long corridor.
Three cups of coffee later, I was still at the very beginning. Carlisle texted me that the girl had no recognition of the Tanners, Jazz was still looking into the mysterious stabbing, Emmett was trying to find the artist who made the tattoo and I had worked on the mess of symbols on Chief Swan's body.
At this point, the neon blurred in my vision and my over-caffeinated brain had hard time focusing on anything particular. It felt as if my head was on fire. I hated to admit that Emmett's words were true - there was a certain limit for work. I stood up, rolled the blinds down and fell on the office couch - a powernap was essential for future progress.
I dozed off within minutes.
I was in the cop bar that was just a block away from the precinct. Leon, the owner of the place, was serving beer to happy cops who just closed a big drug operation.
"It's not your turn to celebrate." said a soft innocent voice behind me and I spun around surprised. My eyes met the deepest chocolate eyes in the world and they were disappointed. I disappointed her.
She turned around and left me dumbfounded by the bar. I ran after her outside, shouted for her to wait but she didn't seem to hear me. And then she stopped and turned around, there was a knife sticking out of her abdomen. She collapsed on the cold pavement, the world disappeared, there was only her corpse illuminated by a red neon sign - "Volterra".
I woke up gasping for air, shot up, a little dizzy because of my speed, and ran to my table. It was in front of my eyes all this time and I missed it - red letters AV, CV and MV indicated Aro, Caius and Marcus Volturi - the brothers who ran the largest and probably the oldest mafia ring in the world, the brothers no crime-fighting organization could find and nail, the brothers who became the main characters of mafia tales. If Charlie Swan had any information about the Volturi brothers, there was no doubt he became a target and everyone close to him were targets as well. In this case, Bella was a target.
I locked the evidence in a safe in my desk and took off to the hospital.
