A/N: Mew!


The first was Marcus.

He was frail. Younger than he looked. He was only forty-five. His face was slack, and his eyes dull. Bella didn't know what she expected, but Marcus wasn't it.

She was, of course, perfectly safe. Even if Marcus hadn't been benign as a house cat. They were in room that held only two chairs and a table bolted to the floor. Marcus was in one chair. He was handcuffed and his legs were chained both to the table and each other. There were two cops at the door she'd come in and two at the door he had.

When they were across from each other, Bella smiled, mostly because it was what she always did. She didn't want to lose sight of the fact these men, these murderers were still people, and deserving of that much respect.

But they were devious people. The specialist she'd worked with to prepare for these interviews had made sure she understood just how manipulative these kinds of killers could be.

So she smiled. Marcus smiled back in an odd way, like a child mimicking behavior—not his own. "Hello, Mr. Betaluci. My name is Bella. Did they tell you I'd be coming by?"

"They?" Marcus giggled. "Do you think there are voices in my head?"

"No. I mean to say, do you know why I'm here?"

"You want to talk about the girls I killed. They always want to talk about the girls I killed." He seemed put out by that.

"Yes and no," Bella said. "I'm more interested in talking about your tattoo."

"Oh." He stroked the top of his leg and cocked his head, looking at her curiously. "Do you mean my real one?"

"You think the others aren't real?"

Marcus's expression hardened. "Those girls… they tricked me." His eyes glazed over. "And they got what girls deserve when they lie."

A chill went down Bella's spine. She swallowed hard. "So, you falling in love with them was their fault?"

He tilted his head, looking at her. "Look what they did." The metallic clink of his chains dragging across the metal table was loud in the small room. He turned his arms over, and Bella covered a gasp.

On his arm were two tattoos. Or, they had been tattoos once. Now, they were a mangled mess of scarred skin. Burns, Bella thought. Self inflicted? She looked up at him. "Those girls did this?"

Marcus ducked his head. "Well. I couldn't very well have their mark on me, now could I? It's a damned lie. I only have but one true love, no matter what my skin says."

"I see." Bella was sure to keep her voice steady. "Will you tell me about her? Maybe how you fell in love?"

A fond smile came over his face. "How does anyone fall in love? We were teenagers. A teenage boy will fall in love with anyone who's willing to let him touch her tits." He grinned, but just as quickly, his smile fell. "But it got more serious than that. Oh yes, it did. Doesn't it always?"

He sighed. "She was smart, and funny, and kind. It was one of those things. We were, quite simply, made for each other."

"Mmhmm. I see your very first arrest was for stalking. Stalking the girl you claim is your true love."

His features darkened. Then he shrugged with feigned nonchalance. "As I said, we were teenagers. She was playing silly games and pretending to be scared of me. She took it a bit too far. I tried to tell her I forgave her, but you know how sensitive girls can be. I think she thought I was angry."

"And then you killed her."

He slammed his fist on the table. Bella jumped. "No," he said, his voice harsh and loud. She flinched.

"Hey," one of the guards stepped forward, hand on his gun. "Calm your ass down, Betaluci."

Marcus raised his hands and nodded. He took a deep breath and made an effort to smile at Bella. "No," he said more calmly. "Of course I didn't kill my beloved. How could I? If you love a person, you couldn't kill them, could you? You couldn't hurt them."

He shook his head. "I know they say that I killed her, but that's not true. That's just not true. She's still out there, and I still love her. I would never hurt her."

"And the other girls?"

His eyes turned hard and ice cold again. "As I said. They got what they deserved."

~0~

"The madness of love," Bella said, sitting across the desk from her boss. "I'm beginning to see your angle here."

Eric smiled and swept his hand out wide. "From a lot of the transcript I read, I'd have thought they'd go for an insanity defense."

"He knows what he did. At least when it comes to everyone but the first." Bella's jaw went taut. "And he really, really believes he was incapable of hurting her, because he had proof he loved her."

Eric nodded. "Proof of love has gotten a lot of people off with the right argument."

Bella considered for a moment, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth.

"Are you okay, Bella?" Eric asked.

"Yes, I've just been thinking about what he said about love." She shivered. "It's just that.. I understood him."

"How's that?"

"He talked about what it was to be in love with this woman he killed." She took a deep breath. "I understood what he meant. The enormity of it. How it drives you to the edge of reason."

There was a time, when Bella was desperately in love with Edward and the situation was hopeless, that she considered crazy things. If Tanya hadn't been her friend, her mentor, what would she have done? She'd like to believe she would have held strong regardless—suffered in silence.

"Love isn't easy." Eric sat back, a wistful look on his face. "And it doesn't make you the person you should be by a long shot. Although, I like to think most of us stop short of murder and other forms of destruction."

"Yeah. Still, it's not comfortable realizing you have something in common with a murderer."

"We like to think of these people as monsters. Labeling them monsters is our attempt to distance ourselves, but they're our species."

Bella pursed her lips considering. "This is going to be an interesting piece."

~Edward~

Half asleep, Edward rolled over, reaching automatically for Bella. She wasn't there, and that woke him up a little. He blinked, disoriented, and tried to remember if he knew why his pregnant girlfriend wasn't in bed at—he glanced at the clock—two in the morning.

Edward got out of bed and headed to the living room. He found Bella not there but at the kitchen table. She was hunched over her laptop, papers and folders spread all over. He yawned, scratching the back of his head.

Seeing Bella work usually made him smile. She was a passionate, brilliant woman. Plus, she got the cutest crinkle between her brows when she was concentrating.

The problem was how many nights this week she'd been up this late. This story was consuming her. It was what she did all day at work, and what she talked about at the dinner table.

He triple checked his logic. She wasn't under a deadline. She was in the research stage for her second interview. There was no reason she'd have to work through the night at this point.

Edward stepped forward. She didn't even look up. He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. "Bella."

"Hmm?" she asked, not looking away from the screen.

"It's two in the morning."

Almost a full minute went by while she typed. "Oh, um. Yeah, I'll be there in a minute, babe."

He didn't budge. He took another deep breath, preparing himself for an argument. "Bella," he said again.

"Edward, I'll—"

"Bella." He didn't raise his voice but he said her name sternly.

She finally looked up, clearly annoyed. She opened her mouth but then shut it, remembering, he thought, her promise to let him take care of her. Still, she warred with herself, her eyes darting between him and her computer.

"I promise it'll be there in the morning." He extended a hand.

The way she slowly closed her laptop, staring at it with a forlorn expression, charmed him. She sighed, and took his hand, letting him pull her against him. He kissed her forehead, lingering a long moment before he led her to their bedroom.

Bella started chattering almost instantly. "I didn't mean to overdo it. It's just that I want to be really ready. The last interview got under my skin in a way I didn't expect. I didn't want to feel any kind of empathy for him at all. It bothered me, you know?"

He knew. She'd had a couple of nightmares—vague and mild as these things went—immediately following the interview. He didn't like the idea of these maniacs running amok in her head.

In their room, he sat on the bed with his back against the headboard and pulled her into his arms. She followed on autopilot, talking about James Hunter.

Edward clenched his jaw. Marcus Betaluci had been bad enough. James Hunter was a whole other level of psychopath. His crime scenes were downright brutal, and Bella had been living and breathing his heinous acts all week.

"He likes to get under people's skin, so I have to be ready," Bella said, settling between his spread legs with her back against his chest. "I can't let him surprise me."

He hummed an acknowledgment as he took her hands and guided them to the swell of her belly. She stopped talking almost instantly. He wrapped her tightly in his arms, moving his hands to cover more.

She was showing now—the roundness proud and growing bigger every day.

"It's a dark world you've been walking in tonight," he murmured against her ear. He wanted her there with him for a little while. "Why don't you tell me what our boy did today."

She snorted, but it was a fond noise. Early on, she'd subscribed to one of those pregnancy week-by-week trackers that broke down development milestones. "I didn't look yet, but I can tell you something. The kid loves peaches. I must have eaten ten of them, and that's not counting the little tin. You know, the ones that come in sugar syrup, thus negating all the nutritional value?"

"You hate peaches."

"It wasn't me. It was the baby. Your kid is a weirdo."

"Well, that was inevitable. Look who his mother is."

She scoffed and tilted her head up to kiss him. "That's all you. Weirdo."

~Bella~

James Hunter creeped Bella the hell out the instant he walked in the room. Unlike Marcus, who had looked rather pathetic as he shuffled in, chains clanking, James looked simply dangerous.

It was the eyes, Bella decided. They were ice blue and piercing. Like a sleek, jungle cat in captivity, she got the sense that only his chains and his handlers were keeping him from devouring her. He looked her in the eyes the moment he walked in the door—all alpha male. He was lethal. It was something she simply knew to the marrow of her bones.

But when he was seated across from her, he smiled. The predatory look in his eyes faded to something more open and curious. "Good morning, Miss Swan," he said, his tone polite and pleasant.

Bella blinked, startled. Her skin crawled, and she thought about the men and women Hunter had lured to their deaths. She cleared her throat. "Good morning, Mr. Hunter."

"Please. Call me, James."

"Okay, James. Do you know—"

"I liked it when they let me hold them," he said.

A curl of dread began churning in her stomach. "What?"

"It's a strange thing, isn't it?" His voice was as tranquil as though he were discussing cloud formations. "People's need for affection, I mean. When they cried for someone, I knew I could have what I wanted. Most of them cried for their mothers. Sobbed like little babies, especially when they thought I couldn't hear them. They curled into little balls, and I would tell them to come to me, to let me hold them, and they did. I rocked them and stroked their hair. Well." The smallest twitch of his lips. "The ones who still had hair. Sometimes, I took it."

A wave of nausea rolled over Bella, and she had to grip the arms of her chair to keep from swooning. She breathed in through her nose, trying to control her heart rate. James was watching her. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw the guards' lips curl in distaste.

"You strike me as a daddy's girl," James continued, his tone still placid. "Or would you be one of the few who actually cried for their husbands and boyfriends? Safe, sheltering arms."

Bella breathed in and out, in and out. She cleared her throat. "Mr. Hunter, I'm not terribly interested in your crimes I—"

"Oh, it was artwork," he said wistfully. "Blood like painting. And their screams like a symphony." He tilted his head back, his grin wide as he remembered. Then he looked at her again, and the difference was night and day. The predator was back. "You're not interested in my crimes?"

Bella had to swallow hard past the lump in her throat. "No."

"You're lying."

He was right, and they both knew it. She was horrified. Of course, she was horrified. And she was frightened despite the measures taken to keep him where he was. But, of course she wanted to know. She wanted to know why, and how anyone could talk about the heinous things James Hunter had done with no more inflection than other people talked about what they were going to make for dinner.

"I want to know what you did to the girl whose tattoo you have," Bella said instead, pleased when her voice remained steady and strong. "Did you hold her while she cried for her mother?"

He glared, and the malevolence in his eyes in that moment made Bella want to cower on the floor. It passed quickly though, and the evil gleam was back. "You want to hear the things I wanted to do to her? I wanted to—"

"So you didn't hurt her."

He faltered, thrown.

"You wanted to, but you didn't," Bella said, knowing she had a chance of taking back control of the conversation. "Because you loved her?"

James stared hard at her. But after a moment, he scoffed and settled back in his seat. "I had plans for her." He smiled—it looked almost fond. "We were going to have so much fun together, her and I." He turned his palm over and stroked the tattoo there. A snake, it seemed to Bella. "But she had plans of her own."

"She was different," Bella prompted, knowing she had to be careful now that she had a fish on the line. She reeled in slowly. Her fisherman father would be proud.

James huffed. "She was a pain in my ass. Love." Another huff. "Who the fuck asked for it? And it comes with all these rules too.

"I used to like to fuck them. Especially the boys. Stupid assholes." James scoffed and shook his head. "They'll stick their cock in anything that moves, and they treat it like women should be thankful for the privilege. But they go to pieces at the idea of anything being inside them."

Bella had to work hard to cover her shock at the sudden social commentary. But she didn't have time to dwell. James was still talking. "But then she came along, and she ruined that kind of fun. She could smell it on me like a sixth sense."

"So you didn't want to love her?"

"Hell, no. What the hell did I need that kind of complication in my life for?"

~0~

After the interview, Bella took one step outside the interview room and collapsed onto a nearby chair, trembling hard. A bunch of cops were surrounding her in an instant.

"I'm okay," she said, her voice shaky. She was okay, though. At least, she thought she was. Her brain had just hit maximum overload. Trying to keep up with the mental gymnastics James had put her through was exhausting. The last hour and a half, only sheer force of will had kept her responses calm and measured. It was clear he'd had a good time unsettling her. And she was unsettled. Deeply so.

The crime scenes. The blood and gore. The broken bodies and the smiling people his victims had once been. They all seemed to come to life when James spoke about them.

James was good at recognizing when a subject, however horrible, had piqued her interest. He always found a way of planting the seed that her flairs of curiosity, of anything besides absolute horror, connected them in some way.

"Ma'am, do you need an ambulance?" one of the officers said, eyeing her belly. Her bump wasn't so noticeable, but some people were annoyingly observant. Well, he was a police officer after all.

Bella shook her head. "My boyfriend is in the lobby. Can you get him? I just...need him."

As near as she could figure, her reaction likely had something to do with adrenaline. The last hour and a half had felt like survival of the fittest. Now that she was in a calm, safer place, the adrenaline had drained away, replaced by the overwhelming emotions she hadn't let herself feel at the time.

"Bella?"

Relief flooded through her at the sound of his voice. She stood just as he got to her, and she all but fell against him. Edward kept one arm around her waist, but he pulled back, cupping her face with his other palm. "Are you okay? Do you need—"

"I'm okay," she said, already feeling much better with him near. "I just need you to take me home."

Home, for the moment, was a hotel room—James's prison hadn't been local. Bella was quiet on the drive and, bless him, Edward didn't push. He held her hand as he drove and let her process in peace, except to ask if she wanted to pick up anything to eat. She didn't. She wanted to be as far away from other people as they could get right then.

"Tell me what you need," he said when they were finally closed off from the world, in a room to themselves. He took her face in his hands, concern etched on his features.

She loved him so much.

Like James, she hadn't asked for love, hadn't wanted it. Especially in those early days, in love on her own, she'd resented that love for existing at all. She hadn't invited it, and she had no time or use for it.

Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans, a wise man once said. And what a beautiful twist. He was a treasure. It was a gift that now, she could lay her weakness at his feet and know he would be there.

"Hold me," she whispered, clinging to him. "I need you."

Edward gathered her up in his arms without another word and carried her to the couch. There, he settled with her on his lap. Bella closed her eyes, shivering a little as he began to rock her and kiss her hair.

She knew. She knew that if she had been James Hunter's victim, it would have been Edward she cried for when she was desperate for a safe place and warm, loving arms around her.


A/N: Little more stressful than she thought, poor love.

How you kids doing?