A/N: I don't want to be pushy but seriously, I need your reviews. It's my first story and I am interested what people have to say and how I could get better, how I could deliver something interesting and worth your time. Also, I'm sorry for irregular updates, life is a bit hectic sometimes and I'm working on two stories simultaneously (my writing depends on my mood and inspiration), but I try not to leave this behind for an extended period of time. Have a great day/night!

I do not own Twilight

Light in the Darkness

xxx

Chapter Five

Walls, walls everywhere

EPOV

My knuckles turned white as my hands clenched the steering wheel of my baby Volvo. The car was running as smooth as a professional ice skater flying across the rink, only the rink for the skater turned out to be too small as a red light flashed in front of my face. It was the second traffic light that conspired against me in my attempt to get to the station and away from the black hole that was Isabella Swan - my mind wandered back to the depth of her chocolate brown eyes involuntarily.

"Screw this." I exclaimed loudly in the privacy of my car and turned on my sirens. The blaring sound solved part of my problems as the sea of Seattle traffic parted to make an almost completely free lane for me. The visual of the blurred city passing by at high speed was exhilarating and cleansing - a slight surge of adrenaline made me focus on the task at hand - driving safe in a city flooded by people and potential victims of my road rage - and made my burdens dissipate in the wind that whirled around my sleek car. All too soon I was back at the police station that was practically my home.

Many nights had I spent working on various case angles in this building, slowly paving my path to the top of the ranks. Well, maybe not that slowly - I was the youngest detective to achieve my position in the history of department. Though, this case was just beggining to unravel, I felt the kind of pressure building in my body I have never felt before. I entered the building hoping to get the sense of normality, sense of the familiar building that was my ground of thriving, but there was nothing normal about working on this case.

It seemed that even always easy-going Emmett was affected, pulled deeper than usually by the dark shadows that surrounded this case. Approaching our office, I saw through the glass door that he was intently staring at his computer screen as his fingers flitted quickly over the keyboard. I opened the door and my Emmett jumped slightly.

"Jeez, Ed, knock or something, stop sneaking up."

"It's my office too, you know." I slumped into my leather office chair - it was not department-issue but I spent enough time in here working overtime to make some indulging updates. "Now spill what you've got." I said emotionless.

"Nothing vital." he huffed.

"The warehouse?"

"Under surveillance right now. I'm trying to get its' floor plan, but this system keep denying me access." he said through gritted teeth

"Did the girl tell you about the coordinates?"

"No, I don't know if she knows about the tattoo. Though, she gave me some inspiration." I logged in on my computer. "Do you know who the warehouse belongs to?"

"Sulpicia and Co."

I typed the name Emmett gave me in the police database search engine. Apart from the country of origin - France - there was nothing about the company. No name of the CEO, no contact numbers, no papertrail. Zilch. I tried googling it but that came out to be a waste of time. I growled while rubbing my temples. I could feel a stubble starting to form on my face - a great indication I wasn't home in awhile.

"Have you tried checking the address for power usage and any other maintenance fees?" I tried to think rationally.

"It's not using a lot of power so it's not a plantation or something." Emmett said. "It would seem it was abandoned if not for the occasional spikes of energy use every other week or so." He handed me a sheet of data which, as Emmett had said, showed occasional spikes of energy use on Thursdays or Fridays every other week for the past three months.

"Hey, if this is correct and whoever is doing whatever in the warehouse according to some plan, they should show up there tomorrow night or Friday."

"We should crash the party." Emmett grinned probably thinking of multiple successful arrests when we barged in on unsuspecting criminals, catching them red-handed and practically unable to make deals or get away from justice in any other way possible. Yet, in this case the red-handed criminals might have a chance to get a deal - we needed the top of pyramid not the bottom and, in my experience, the heads rarely showed up for pre-scheduled, unchanging predictable time meetings - that was too risky.

"Damn timing, they could do this tonight - we have so little and they are forcing us to wait to get more." I punched the armrest of my chair in annoyance.

"We're not even sure if that warehouse would give us more." Since when did Emmett become the voice of reason?

"It's coordinates were tattooed on a dead man's chest in invisible ink. It has to be important enough." I didn't give up on that idea yet. I needed that as if I was drowning and it was a passing boat, I needed that for my sanity.

After a light knock on the door Jasper stuck his head into my office.

"I hope you haven't forgotten our lunch later today."

"What lunch?" Emmett perked up. I swear that man was always hungry - I wasn't sure how my non-kitchen-friendly sister managed to keep him fed and satisfied without living solely on takeout food.

"Nope, we're still on. Fred's at 1, right?" I said without emotion. Fred's was a small dinner close to the police station which was not yet discovered by the force - it was a great place to have a conversation that was not supposed to be overheard by fellow policemen, close enough so as we would not waste time and Fred offered some high-quality steaks.

"Oh right." Emmett caught up with our intentions to discuss the mysterious stabbing. "Yeah, we'll meet you there, bro."

"Super." Jazz flashed a smile and disappeared.

Emmett and I still had three hours till our meeting with Jasper. Emmett continued torturing the database of building plans while I was trying to determine any other information about it. It seemed as if that building didn't really exist - no information about prior owners, no detailed info about current owners, nothing just a blindly closed wall of dark red warehouse bricks.

"I rock!" Emmett boomed making me jump slightly.

"What?"

"The plan." he turned his screen towards me. The blueprint showed a large open space on the first floor of the building and a lot of smaller rooms on the second floor and in the basement - unfortunately, nothing out of ordinary, nothing that didn't seem to belong there.

"Good. Our SWAT teams have to get this before tomorrow."

God, how I wished tomorrow was today. I felt so helpless I wanted to shoot somebody. I needed a rush of adrenaline - something that would speed up my brain, open my eyes. This case was infuriatingly complex - all the evidence, random facts and numbers were swirling in my head, making me slightly dizzy and there in the back of my mind she surfaced again. Idiot. Idiot. I repeated soundlessly to myself. I shoundn't be this attached - I was no teenage boy, but I felt like one when my mind obsessively wandered back to those glorious sweet chocolate eyes. Bella. She possessed my mind. She surfaced from the sea of irrelative information, toyed with my neural network, making even less sense of the overwhelming knowledge or, shall I say, the unknown.

There was a part of me that wanted to run back to her as if she was the light that attracted bugs in the midst of the darkest night. Though, the well-lit streets of a buzzing city of Seattle were never that dark even under thick cover of clouds, but I could only imagine the petite girl lost in the rainforest of Forks. Unseen. Unheard. Terrified.

"Eddie, wake up." Emmett jolted me from my fruitless daze.

"It's Edward." My tone was cold and harsh.

"You realize you look like a crazy man, staring into one spot for an eternity."

I rolled my eyes. While I was a thinker, Emmett was a talker. He never hid his emotions or thoughts very well and that's what I liked about him. I faced enough lies and liars in my life to enjoy the openness of my brother-in-law. Luckily, he refrained himself from speaking something insensitive or too revealing in front of a victim or a suspect.

Nevertheless, I didn't argue about his comment - I felt like a crazy man - I just shifted my gaze from the far wall of the room to the spread out casefile on my table. It mirrored the mess that was my mind at the moment. I started absent-mindedly sifting through the papers as I came to look at the picture of the chief's house - by the front door was a hook on which an empty gun holster hang, I could see no gun in any of the other pictures and no gun was documented as recovered - it was missing. Chief was certainly carrying and I doubted he had given it to his daughter, after all, she was just a child, not to mention that there was no gun in her personal belongings when she was admitted to the hospital.

I ran search on the weapon - maybe it popped up somewhere, was used or discarded and found. Nothing. I put a tag on it - any new information related to the gun would be sent as a notification to mine or Emmett's e-mail. It might have been another possible lead but it still didn't give me anything substantial. It was like being herded in a blind alley - just walls, walls everywhere.

They always say - track the money. I had a monetary paper trail and it was completely useless as after checking the accounts I learned that all of them were in banks that offered complete anonymity and protection. I checked the money wire times against the dates of the meetings in the warehouse but there was no pattern visible. What is more, part of the banking records were old, dated back in 2014 which so far made no sense, because all of the other evidence was about relatively recent events except for the stabbing. The stabbing! I jumped - we needed to meet Jasper and it was almost time.

"Emmett, let's go, bro." I hurried him out of his chair.

"Whoa, bro, you're gonna get a hallway speeding ticket." he laughed. "Rose is joining us."

"What were you doing? Flirting with your wife over the phone this whole time?" I mocked the big man's complete dependency on my sister.

"No need to be jealous, buddy." I rolled my eyes - I had no idea why he thought I was jealous of their relationship. A sudden image of them molesting each other in the morgue flashed in my mind and I felt like throwing up.

Emmett, Rosalie and I arrived at the diner together. Jasper was nowhere to be seen so we took the furthest corner booth. Amanda - our usual waitress - approached us shortly and served us much needed coffee. We ordered four steaks - Rosalie might have looked like a artificial and spoilt supermodel but hell, that girl wasn't shy about eating what was considered a man-meal. The corpses weren't the only thing she was good with too, she was better mechanic that Emmett, Jasper and me together which to most men seemed to be intimidating. Well, I was happy Emmett didn't get scared because of her frosty behavior and "I'm not available" games.

Jasper came just before our steaks were served. Actually, I was pretty sure Amanda waited to serve them all together.

"How's it goin', Jazz?" I pretended to small-talk since Amanda was still within hearing range. She was not a threat but too many people were involved in this and I did not want to risk her blabbing something to another cop, for example, Paul, who might stumble upon this place.

"Busy." he looked around catching my drift and continued after seeing the coast was clear. "I have enough obligations without the odd jobs you decide to kick my way, Edward."

"What stung you today?" I raised an eyebrow at my brother.

"Paul has been following me around all day like a puppy." annoyance colored his voice

"He knows you've been looking into the case?"

"Not likely. He might suspect something. He saw me talking to Emmett yesterday."

That wasn't anything unusual. After all, Emmett was married to his twin sister.

"Ludicrous. Of course you would talk to Emmett. He's your brother-in-law." Rosalie thought along the same lines.

"Yeah, but rumors fly and it doesn't lessen the tension in the office." Jasper explained. Unlike me and Emmett, Jasper didn't have a separated office - he worked in a cubicle and was well aware of the emotion dynamics between cops.

"Rumors?" my voice was a little higher than normal - what happened to everyone minding their own business. Well, maybe it was to be expected, after all, my conversation with Eleazar was quiet a spectacle even if it was behind closed doors and we were surrounded by cops who were all too keen about getting into someone else's business.

"Everyone saw your heated convo with Eleazar. A detective can sense a high profile case coming through the door." Jazz confirmed my suspicions.

"Well, Eddie sens'd it first." Emmett cut in still too occupied with his steak to speak something significant.

"It's Edward, you oaf." I glared at Emmett. "I didn't sense it. That girl," I ground my teeth slightly at the mention of her," was begging for a homicide detective or the captain. I was at the right place, at the right time."

"It's strange." Jasper mumbled under his nose while cutting his piece of meat. "Emmett sent me a copy of the file and it looks more like a organized crime case."

"Chief might not have trusted the OC division." Rosalie commented.

"Yeah, but why?" My mind started to wander off but Rosalie kept me grounded as she continued her hypothesis.

"Remember how your father used to talk about the oldschool Chicago? Didn't he tell us a story that often enough cops from OC were involved with the crime families? Could Chief Swan have thought that there was someone dirty in the force? Someone who was connected to whomever you are looking for?"

Then the jackpot dinged! Blue was the representative color of the police force - the color of the other two-lettered markings on Chief's chest. As the red letter represented the Volturi, blue could have meant dirty cops. I forgot my meal altogether as I rose to leave the diner but Jazz grabbed me by my wrist.

"Sit." that wasn't a question or a plea, it was an order of an ex-soldier. "Whatever you're thinking of, it can wait, I have more for you."

"I researched the stabbing. I don't think it was a mugging gone wrong. In the casefile I found a money trail that matched perfectly the timeline of the stabbing. Two hours before estimated TOD 50K was transferred into an unknown account." Jasper stopped talking as he saw the waitress coming our way.

"Would you like a refill of coffee?"

There was a series of "no thanks" and she left us alone after telling to call her if we needed anything.

"An hour after the TOD of Cecilia Adams another 150K was transferred to that same account. It's too close to be a coincidence." Jazz continued

"Have you managed to uncover whom it was transferred to or from who?" Emmett asked, this time he was serious.

"Secured information. I have no idea, I can't really go snooping around random bank accounts without causing suspicion." even if he tried he would've ran into the same problems I did.

"Is that all?" I was growing impatient, I needed to go back to my office and make sure I didn't hallucinate the blue PL - Paul Lahote - he was not in organized crime, but he was for sure raising suspicion.

"One more thing, the woman had a necklace on her when she died." Jasper's fingers slid over the touchscreen of his phone. "I'm sending both of you the picture now. It caught my eye in the pictures so I went to the evidence storage and took a look - it's antique, perfectly maintained except for an out-of-place engraving of what seems to be a swan on the other side of the pendant."

"Whoa!" Emmett exclaimed in shock.

I just handed a 20 dollar bill to Jasper who was closest to me and rushed out of the diner leaving my gaping unhappy family and half of my uneaten steak behind.