3rd Person POV
"Wakey-wakey, Sunshine!" taunted a man's voice. Bella started to come to and realized she was sitting and hog tied but blindfolded. Her eyed opened but she could only see shadows through the black canvas tied over her eyes. She struggled to speak but felt the binding feeling of tape over her mouth. Her left arm was a little numb and felt sore, like a line had been cut in her skin.
James stood back and watched as Bella's fear seemed to become palpable and hang in the air like a pleasurable aroma. Her fear was a drug that gave him an irreplaceable high like nothing else. Laurent did this business for the money and because he didn't have much of a conscience but James' motives were the people. By evoking that fear in them, he felt more empowered and he decided then he was going to make her scream and tremble.
"Actually," Laurent spoke from the other side of Bella, "it doesn't look like the sunshine agrees with our little Bella, does it?" A slight tremor of fresh panic came over her as the second voice came.
James came closer to her, the wet forest floor under his feet making little sound. "Do you know where we are Bella?" he asked as his cold hand caressed her cheek in a loving way. Bella tried to shout but the tape muffled her speech and James quieted her. "Now, now Bella... You mustn't speak when it's not your turn. However," he continued in a sickly sweet tone, "if you feel the very ground you're sitting on I think you can guess that we're in a forest. Not just any forest, but the forest on the Quileute Reserve so I think it's safe to say welcome home."
Bella tried to calm down to think about how to escape. Charlie, when still alive, had been a cop and of course, had taught his only daughter how to defend herself against someone twice her size with anything from a gun to a flashlight. She also remembered him going over kidnapping scenarios and how to avoid them.
The most stupid mistake done by abductors was to put some kind of tape over their victim's mouth. This was stupid because by creating enough condensation, not only could she get off her tape without hands but more tape wouldn't stick without someone wiping her face (at which point the victim only needs to bite the hand that dries their face as hard as possible).
She started snaking her tongue across the foul-tasting tape and subtly removing the bonding agent from her mouth. James however started his monologue again, "Who do you think will take your death the hardest, Bella? Your dear friend Alice? Or maybe the blonde Rosalie, she might miss you. No, I think your naive little bonbon of a boyfriend will miss you most. Edward, wasn't it?
"Oh, I can see him now. He's probably up in his room thinking about his next charity case or about moving on to someone more... lively. After all you won't be around too much longer, will you?"
"I think it's time we let Bella see a bit, James."
"I think you're right, Laurent."
With that said, the blindfold was loosened and pulled forcefully off Bella's face and her eyes went wide when she saw the fire to her left and the two men before her with an assortment of weapons on the ground varying between clubs, knives and her eyes caught the firelight reflecting off of the revolver tucked into the back of Laurent's pants. Her mind focused still on removing the tape and she almost had it so she stopped, as not to be discovered and worked on figuring out how she was tied.
The knots felt familiar, like the ones Charlie had Bella tying when they were knotting lures to their fishing lines. These guys really weren't that great at their job if she could get free. The guys went to the other side of the fire where they seemed to pick up a bottle or two of liquor and each take a swig of their own bottles. Bella's fingers felt around the thick rope for the end and pushed it backwards to disentangle it. The men obviously thought of the fact that their prisoners might try rubbing the rope against something to wear it down to break free and gone with thicker rope but the rope allowed knots to not be as tight when tied.
She got her right hand free and pulled at the restraints on her left hand and her arms were free. She watched them closely to see if they were looking her way before she rushed to untangle the ropes at her feet. Once she got her left foot free the second man, Laurent, turned around and did a double-take. "What d'you think you're doing?!" he yelled through his alcohol buzz.
She pulled away the ropes and ran, peeling off the tape as she went. Bella remember the next thing that he father had told her, "Bells, promise me that if you ever get into trouble, you'll call for help." This seemed like a good time to apply his thinking.
"HELP!" Bella screamed like she had never before. If she really was by La Push then someone would hear her. Footsteps pound behind her as she yelled again.
Laurent tackled her to the ground and smacked her across the face. "Did you really think you could escape? Think again bitch. You'r-"
A ferocious growl was emitted beside them and suddenly Laurent was off of Bella and the smell of dog was in the dark air. A man shrieking could be heard beside her and the sound of hollow wood being hit reverberated in the black silence of the cold night. Fur was felt beside Bella as the 'dog' growled again near her ear. She stayed on the ground curled in the fetal position as the noise of James' steps could be heard stalking after the noise.
"What the hell?" James stopped and shone the beam from his flashlight on Laurent whose arm was lying a foot away from the rest of him. "Laurent!" The light landed on a wolf with its hackles raised and poised for attack defending Bella's body. In his drunken haze he stumbled backwards and fell, rolling down a hill before a splash could be heard from a ravine.
The growling stopped and a cold nose nudged Bella's back then arm. She whimpered a bit the wolf licked her face. She had fainted from the over-exertion she had forced her body to do. The wolf, seemingly assessed the situation before digging it's head under her stomach and standing with Bella hanging over its back and trotted slowly back to where the humans were nearby.
Many people in La Push had heard the yell of a girl and had their lights turned on or were stand on porches chatting with their neighbours about what it was. The howl of a wolf soon after made it seem like a wolf had hunted a girl in the forest. The tribe elders got every woken up and decided to send out a search party into the woods.
The men of the party came up to the tree line to see a wolf curled around a small girl, licking her arm where there seemed to be a wound. One man lifted his weapon and cocked it to shoot when the wolf lowered its ears and repositioned itself over the girl, growling at the black-haired man with the gun.
"John, lower your weapon. We don't shoot the wolves and this one isn't harming the girl," Harry reminded his friend. The rifle was lowered and the wolf stopped growling but stood over the girl. Harry contemplated how they were to help the girl without anyone getting hurt by the wolf.
Jacob Black came running up, "What did I miss?" He smiled but came to a halt at the sight of the wolf. "Oh," came his not-so intelligent reply.
The wolf sniffed the air and eyed Jacob before barking at him once. It moved away from the girl on the opposite side of her that Jacob was on. Harry nudged him forward and Jacob came closer to the girl and slowly picked her up and turned to leave. The wolf ran off into the woods as Jacob was told where to bring her.
***
Bella woke in a small pale blue bedroom on a bed that seemed to take up most of the space in the room. She thought she heard sounds of her mother and an older man's voice in the next room but the incessant scratching at a door behind the bed was what woke her. Unthinking, Bella opened the door which led to a back yard and a russet wolf launched itself at her, licking her face and every other surface of skin it could reach.
Her initial cry of surprise brought rustling from the next room and the room's second door slid open to reveal a slightly familiar adolescent teen boy with darkly tanned skin and black hair and Bella's mom Renee at the door. Everyone was surprised to see the wolf again as it had been circling the house and could be seen sitting on their lawn when anyone had looked outside in the past hours. Bella's laughter was a testament that the wolf meant her no harm but fled to just outside the door to the yard when others appeared in the bedroom.
The teen boy was about to shut the wolf outside when Bella cried, "Stop! Please." The boy gave her an incredulous look. "Sorry," she withdrew as she backed up away from the boy, "I just don't want you to hurt him."
"Bella, I'm not going to hurt the wolf. It's against Quileute law to injure or kill a wolf." He sighed and turned to look back at the wolf. It acted as a loyal dog would to its owner. The wolf crawled low to the floor towards Bella on the bed and once past Jacob, it fled to Bella's lap. "I have to admit though, that's odd behaviour for a wolf. He acts more like a trained dog than a wild animal."
The wheels in Bella's head started turning and something finally clicked. "Jacob? Jacob Black?" She realized how she remembered playing on the beach with him and his sisters as a kid.
He smiled, "Glad you remember."
"This is your room, then?" she asked, feeling bad for letting a wild animal take residence on is bed. "Sorry about this..."
He just laughed and shook his head, "Don't worry Bells. A wolf on my bed is the least of anyone's worries right now."
"We're just glad you're safe and mostly unharmed," Renee finally entered the conversation. "Did they do anything to you, baby?" she asked as she sat on the edge of the bed while the wolf sniffed her and then licked Renee's hand.
"I... I don't think so. I was out for most of whatever happened. I was at school and his guy was at one of the doors so I let him in and he herded me outside where this other guy got me and I blacked out." Bella unconsciously stroked the wolf's fur as she tried to recall the next part.
"The next time I woke up I was tied on the ground in the forest and they had tape over my mouth. They uncovered my eyes after a few minutes. Then James started talking about... Edward.
"Where's Edward? Is he alright?"
Renee smiled. Only her daughter would still be more concerned about others when she had been the one abducted. "The Cullens are all fine and though distraught, Alice came up here on a whim to see if you were here and is actually just going to the store to get something to eat at the moment. She should be back in the next 10 or 20 minutes. I believe Carlisle, Jasper and Edward are coming up here tonight while Rosalie, Emmett and Esme are coming on a flight tomorrow. They're all concerned about you and told me to tell you when you woke to not fuss about them coming all this way."
The wolf rolled over on the bed with his tongue lolling and panting like a dog. Everyone laughed.
A/N: Thank you to everyone whom is STILL putting up with my erratic updating habits. FYI, I was actually planning on updating last week on Thursday as a 'Happy Thanksgiving' update but of course I was busy with the family dinner then I had to go back to school the next day. Ugh, school.
So I tallied the votes and about less than half of reviewers want Tanya turned in – dead or alive and most people are Team Edward (interesting… :P) but there were a few… 'other' ones I might add. There will be only a few more chapters.