When the oaf man started to talk to Sue about taking the kid with him, Bella lifted her sight. In the corner looking at her intently, was no other but Tony, who timidly waved at her.
Sadly, her phone rang with Carlisle tone.
"Hey boss, where are you?"
"I just parked in the hospital. I know it's early but the picture you sent me was pretty impressive."
Bella chuckled. Of course, it was impressive. It was like the Godzilla of caterpillars.
"Ok, I'm at the dinner, do you want me to bring you something to eat?" She asked, knowing Dr. Carlisle Cullen was known to get so absorbed in his work that he could miss all the meals in the day.
"Hmm, no, thanks. I bought a sandwich, it should be around here on the backseat."
Bella sighed. Sometimes she felt like his mother.
"I'll be there in five. Don't move." She hung up and looked up for Sue. She was waving at Harry who was jumping on the big man shoulders. Tony was walking with them.
"Hey Sue, do you mind packing my food? Work calls me." Sue nodded. "Oh, and add a slice of pie. Who knows when was the last time my boss ate."
"Sure," Sue answered, picking up the plates on the table.
"Hmm, so do you know Tony?" Bella asked, trying to fake nonchalance and failing miserably.
"Yes, he's cute, right?" Sue noticed the blush covering Bela's cheeks and smiled. The guy seemed smitten by Bella too, he just couldn't stop looking at her with a goofy smile while she was talking on the phone.
"Just a bit. So is he a tourist?"
"No, he's one of Newton's tenants. He and his friends were hired to remodeling this dinner."
Bella was shocked. "But it's all shiny and new!"
Sue smiled. It wasn't that new, but if you compared it to the way Jenkins kept it before, certainly it looked like new. "They want to add a kids section on the back. There aren't many tourists with kids around here, but you have to go with the times."
"So that's why the tall man brought a tool belt for Harry."
"Oh, that one is a kid in the body of an adult. He wants us to call him MC, and he became Harry's hero immediately. They just got here yesterday, and he already got him to play cars and pirates. He really doesn't mind to make a fool of himself to make Harry laugh."
Bella nodded. While it was nice to hear, the one who held her interest was the other guy.
"And Tony..."
Sue couldn't hold her laughter. "You know, you can come over here later before we close. We can talk and maybe if you're lucky, Mr. Tony could be around."
xxx
"So you see Harry, these tools are for us because we are big boys and we know to be careful around tools," Emmett said to Harry who was nodding with joy. "And to Tony, who's too distracted and looking to the window, we are going to give him a broom."
"A broom?"
"Yeah, it has to be clean before we start measuring."
Edward, or Tony as he's going to be called, was trying to get a glimpse of the brunette beauty. Just when Emmett convinced him to forget ever seeing her, she was standing right in front of him. Despite whatever Emmett said, Edward thought it was fate. He just had to find a way to meet her without giving away his real identity. He was so engrossed in his daydreaming that when Emmett gave him the broom, he started to sweep the floor without thinking it. That really made little Harry laugh.
"See, I told you, Harry."
Emmett's guffaw was what brought Edward back to reality. He looked at his hands and noticed the broom, which brought more laughter from Harry and Emmett.
"Wake up Tony!" Harry said between chuckles.
"Why am I sweeping the floor?"
"Duh, because it needs to be clean before we take measures. Really, Tony, you act like you never did this before." Emmett was laying it thick on the sarcasm. They were engineers working for a high-end tech company before all this mess started. While they never really build something, they hoped to be able to fake being construction workers.
"It shouldn't be difficult. Just screw part A into B slot." Edward retorted and that brought another guffaw from Emmett.
"You know, that was your subconscious talking. So are you still thinking in the pretty brunette?"
"How did you know?" Edward asked.
"Insert tab A into B slot? Doesn't it ring a bell?" Jasper asked. He arrived just in time to see his partners in crime bickering. He was glad they weren't annoying.
"Shh! There are kids around here." Edward whispered to Jasper, who just shrugged his shoulders.
"Boys, give me hand over here!" Tanya yelled from the back. They just got delivered the box with the jungle gym for the kids. Now, Tanya had a love of solving puzzles so she thought it was better if she directed the assembling and also to keep an eye on the guys. Tanya and Michael had previous bad experiences. Not all the people they helped to hide were nice. One woman had the nerve to steal from them! So she thought it would be better to be safe than sorry.
Jasper was the first to come. "Allow me, ma'am."
He took the first box he found on the floor, not the biggest one. Then Edward, with a broom in his hands, came to take two smaller boxes. He asked if she didn't mind he dropped the broom her for a while. The last one was Emmett with little Harry behind. He made a spectacle of lifting the biggest box, having Harry helping him.
"Look, MC!" Under the biggest box was a ball of fur, the size of a kitten. It started to crawl to where Tanya was watching. She bent to touch it when Harry came running.
"No, don't touch it!"
It shocked Tanya; Harry was a well-behaved kid.
"The lady at the dinner told me to not touch it because it's dangerous," He said.
Jasper was back and curious about the little ball of fur.
"Maybe it's a really hairy cat." But just to appease the worried frown on Harry he used his shoe to kick it.
"Shhii... ouch!" The little ball of fur moved, but not before leaving a spine on Jasper's boot.
xxx
"Angela, this is my boss, Dr. Carlisle Cullen. Boss, this is my dear friend Dr. Angela Webber."
Bella was making the introductions, amused by the way Angela's eyes almost burst out of her face. When Angela guided them to the east wing of the hospital, she mouthed 'He's so gorgeous!'. Sure, Carlisle was a handsome man. But to Bella, he was her mentor since she started with her masters. He was like the father she would rather have. And once you interacted with him, you became aware that he was the opposite of a Casanova.
"Now, this is the lab that we can borrow to you."
It wasn't a big room, but it had a great lighting, enough space for their investigation. The little furball was still caged on the corner of the room.
"Boss, this is Bob." Bella showed the caterpillar to Carlisle.
"Bob? Really Bella?"
"It sounds better than specimen one or whatever name you choose." Bella brought a banana from the paper bag with food. She put it to the side of the caterpillar, it was too small.
Carlisle noticed with astonished eyes, how the worm crawled to where the banana was, but unable to reach it because of the cage.
"Oh, Bob is hungry. Do they eat bananas?" Angela said, trying to push the banana through the holes in the cage.
"Usually, they eat leafs, but who knows? Maybe this one ate something that made him big." Bella continued to look into her bag. Sue was nice enough to pack a salad, so Bella thought that had to be good for Bob. They needed it alive.
To everyone's surprise, Bob began to munch on the banana.
"No Bob! Look, I have a salad." Bella began to toss the ingredients of the salad through the holes of the cage. To her surprise, Bob kept munching on the banana, and then it went for the lettuce.
"He's a bit hungry," Angela said smiling. If it wasn't so dangerous, he would look cute.
"How is the girl it stung?" Carlisle wondered aloud.
"She's recovering. She only had her hand affected, and the swelling is receding."
Carlisle nodded. "I think I'll go for my equipment. I need the pliers to take one spine out. We'll start analyzing the venom."
xxx
"Dr. Webber! We have another one." The flushed nurse said when she came to the lab. Angela hurried outside, Carlisle and Bella in tow.
"This time is an adult." The nurse said and Angela sighed. With the difference in weight and height, she expected the damage to be lesser than Janey's case.
Once they got into the room where he was resting, she hurried to look at the swollen foot of the wounded man.
"I know it hurts, but please describe what kind of pain you have? Is it like a pinch, little shocks,"
"It feels like I'm burning."
Angela addressed the tiny mark where the spine touched his skin. It didn't even get through the skin.
"Ok, I'm going to give you something for the pain. You were so lucky it only touched you and didn't have the chance to get the venom inside."
Tanya was fast to get to Angela. She had to be wrong, Jasper was pale and sweating. One could see he was in pain.
"Are you sure? What if he's allergic or something else?" But Angela shook her head and proceeded to explain what happened to Janey.
Bella made her way to the room, barely noticing who was inside. On the table beside the bed, laid the little spine pierced to one construction boot. Bella took one rag and a plastic bag and used them like a glove to take the spine out of the boot.
"Which size the caterpillar had? Like a cat? Like a mouse?" The spine wasn't as big as the ones Bob sported.
"Caterpillar? It was something like a hairy kitten." Emmett said, but Bella shook her head.
"Nope. We noticed this species of caterpillars has gotten too big. That's why we are here." She pointed to Carlisle who was helping Angela to examine Jasper's foot.
"I did as you told me. I said it was dangerous." Harry said, walking to Bella. She turned to look at him and smiled.
"I'm really proud of you. You did great. Now poor Mr..."
"JW" Tanya was fast to say.
"Mr. JW is going to have a shot of medicine, so he will get fine."
"Will you give him a lollipop? They always give me one if I behave."
"I'll get you a big one too for being so brave. If Mr. JW had touched the caterpillar, he probably would be sicker."
"Are you sure it's a caterpillar? I'd never seen one this big." A soft velvety voice said behind Bella's back. She turned and noticed it was Tony.
"Hmm, pretty sure. We have another one in our lab. It stung a little girl yesterday." Then Bella turned to Harry. "We named him Bob. Do you want to see it?"
xxx
They reunited in the lab after they left Jasper sleeping. Harry wasn't the only one curious about the caterpillars.
"What did you do with the worm?" Angela asked, worried because the animal was right in the middle of town.
"Hmm, we may have dropped a big box on it," Emmett said, with his hand on the back of his neck. "It was an accident."
"Still, I'd like to take a look. You said it was the parking lot of a dinner, which I find odd. These caterpillars usually stay in gardens, or maybe in warm, humid, dark places. So when you mentioned the first one hiding inside the trunk of a tree, it was normal. But this one crawling on plain sight..."
"It probably came in one of the boxes. We just received one of the games for our kid's section." Tanya pointed. "We need to let people know these bugs are dangerous."
Bella sighed. "We went yesterday to the police station but... let's just say, we won't have their aid."
"Oh, right. You're Chief Swan's daughter."
"And what about your boyfriend?" Edward was fast to ask. He just had to know if she was single.
"He's not my boyfriend! He's just a nuisance." Bella answered, with Angela supporting her words.
"He's delusional and one of the reasons why Bella never came back." Everybody noticed how Edward exhaled, relieved. "Maybe we should ask Esme Volturi for help."
"She's still here? I though she asked Mr. Volturi to divorce?"
"No, he never granted it. But practically they live apart."