Chapter 22
Present Day
"Just let me at him, Alice!" Bella whined for the fiftieth time in an hour while her sister promptly gave her a disapproving look.
"No." Alice shook her head and sighed.
"Maybe I shouldn't have said anything." Vera said apologetically and Alice shot her a look.
"It's better that we know." Alice said tiredly and Vera nodded as she looked at the door, desperately wishing Mason would arrive.
"Yeah, I really did enjoy having gotten to give the youngest Hale a black eye." Bella smirked. "However, I would've enjoyed it more," Bella said pointedly, "if a certain couple of people hadn't separated us. I've been practicing how to break someone's nose for a month now."
"Why?" Alice asked desperately at her sister and Bella shrugged.
"I don't know, I've always wanted to break someone's nose. It sounds like a good story to tell the grandkids someday, right?" Alice shook her head, she's crazy, she thought.
"Do you want to go to jail?" Jasper asked his brother roughly. "At this rate you will be there very quickly. Start acting like the concerned father-to-be that you are, you should be more-" Royce started to walk away, giving his older brother a scoff. "Hey! Listen to me!" Jasper grabbed his brother's shirt and pushed him against the hallway's wall outside Emmet's apartment.
"Look, you're my brother, I've got your back. But I can't help you if you don't tell me the truth." Jasper said in exasperation. "That thing about having broken up with Rosalie, do you know how that makes you look?" Royce made a face and the door to his cousins' apartment opened. Edward looked at the brothers with distaste and silently offered a bag of frozen peas to Royce.
"What? That's only for lawyers, in a filial relationship I'm pretty sure you don't get full disclosure." Royce argued while accepting Edward's offering and holding it to his blossoming eye.
"Do you use big words to make yourself feel more important? Also I think the word you should use is fraternal, not filial," Edward frowned thoughtfully, "unless you consider Jasper as your father-slash-mother figure? Huh, maybe you should talk to your shrink about that."
"Shut up, Edward." Royce muttered angrily. He was thankful for the ice and for having taken crazy mini-Swan away from him, but if his cousin was going to be such an idiot Royce wasn't going to stand it.
"Yeah, maybe you should try going in there and convincing the youngest miss Swan not to throttle Royce when we go back in." Jasper shook his head tiredly, why did he have to be the mature one?
"I can't make any promises." Edward shrugged with a grin, he was surprisingly proud of the amount of damage the exhibitionist – he should really start calling her Bella, he scolded himself – had managed to inflict on his bratty cousin. And although he had enjoyed watching his cousin cower in fear, e was going to try to get her to save up her energy and maybe transfer her physical force into well-formed sentences so that she could inflict psychological pain on his asshole cousin.
"Wouldn't expect anything less from you, Eddie." Royce sneered at him and Edward's face turned grim.
"Do you enjoy getting beat up?" Jasper asked and motioned Edward to get back inside.
"Next time, try to lean back a little so that you have more momentum. Oh Bella, you're my hero. I've been wanting to punch that douchebag since I can remember." Emmet gave Bella his cheekiest grin, happy to find someone who disliked Royce almost as much as he did.
Edward walked into the small apartment, which seemed to shrink every time someone else entered it and stood next to his beast of a brother. "Emmet, stop. We'll teach her later, we should really focus on other things first. Don't you think?"
"You're right, sorry." Emmet sheepishly apologized. Bella sighed and went to seat next to her sister and Vera.
"S'okay, so Alice, tell us your plan." Edward said as he sat down on the floor directly in front of the oldest Swan girl.
"Well, I was thinking it over and I think we should split up in couples. We can have Vera and Mason, Emmet and his new BFF, Bella, Edward and Jasper, and then me and Royce."
"Well, for the most part I agree, but I think that you wouldn't be able to hold up against Royce if it were necessary," Bella started.
"Yeah, I think I should go with Royce, I can be very persuasive." Emmet volunteered as he wiggled his eyebrows; Edward rolled his eyes.
"No way. I'll go with him, I won't be tempted to pick a fight with him over the small things," Edward pointed at his brother, "and I won't be rendered useless if he tries to do something shady." He pointed at Alice and she rolled her eyes.
"Fine, then Bella and I and then Em-" Alice started.
"No way, Jose. I'm sticking with my bestie, you can partner up with your cowboy." Bella winked.
"Yeah shorty, it'll be interesting." Emmet said enthusiastically.
"Looking forwards to it." Alice said sarcastically. "But we should really start planning how we're going to look for Rose, that way we can start the search first thing in the morning."
"Hit it thumbelina, we're all ears." Emmet prompted and Alice refrained from snapping at him.
"Alright, Bella" Alice turned to her sister, "are Ben and Angela coming tonight?"
"Yup, they said they'd be here in" Bella looked at her wristwatch, "about fifteen minutes."
"Vera, when is your lovely fiancé getting here?" just as Vera was about to answer the door was opened by a very weird looking man, the weirdest man Bella had ever seen. Acne covered his forehead, and he had a nose that was definitely too big for his face; tall and thin, but Bella could see that he had some muscly bulk underneath his clothes.
Bella shuddered but then reminded herself that love did not care too much about physical attributes and tried not to judge Vera too harshly. Besides, Bella thought, his hair has a cute brownish color and his hazel eyes aren't half bad. Also, I'm not the one who's going to have babies with him, so I guess it's all right. Bella gave him a smile and raised an eyebrow.
"That would be me." He said bashfully, "so sorry to have kept you guys waiting."
"Thank God you're here!" Vera went over to him and hugged him "I don't know how long I would've been able to handle so many people alone." She whispered to Mason and he smiled indulgently.
"But we already know Emmet and Edward and isn't Royce your boss?" he whispered.
"Shush, let me be anxious about big groups of people without also feeling stupid about it." Mason laughed and gave his fiancée a quick peck on the lips.
"They're so cute!" Bella exclaimed and Alice slapped her sister's leg.
"Give them their privacy woman." Emmet scolded lightly and Edward cleared his throat, which got the lovebirds attention back to the group.
"Now that we're almost complete," Alice commenced,
"Look, I don't mean to be rude, but-" Mason said as he separated himself from Vera.
"Pizza's in the kitchen you glutton." Emmet answered to a yet incomplete question and Mason mouthed a 'thanks, man' to his neighbor. Bella's phone rang and she answered with a text.
"That'd be Ange, I'll be right back." A few minutes later of awkwardly watching Emmet and Edward do a thumb war and Vera staring nervously from the kitchen to Alice, Bella arrived with Angela and Ben. Alice nodded at them in greeting and they settled near the wall beside the biggest couch and watched curiously all the people surrounding them.
"As I was saying-" Alice started once again.
"Hope y'all haven't started planning anything yet." Jasper said as he and Royce entered the crowded apartment.
"Jesus freaking Christ, when will people stop coming in?" Alice exclaimed, clearly annoyed.
"Sorry," Mason said as he got back to the living room and sat next to Vera's feet.
"Now, are we all here? Does anybody want to invite someone else?" Alice raised her eyebrows. "No? Thank goodness. Now, everybody quiet, when I'm done listing things off you may speak. Got it?"
"That's her 'no fucking around' voice." Bella murmured to Emmet and Alice glared at her, "sorry, sorry, I'll be quiet now."
"As I was saying before, Angela and Ben, Bella and Emmet, Edward and Royce, Vera and Mason, Jasper and me. Those are the teams. Questions? No? Good. Now, I thought of some places where we could look for Rose: hospitals, shelters and that's all I could think of. Any other suggestions?"
"A team should put up flyers across the city." Angela suggested shyly from her place next to Ben. Bella smiled thankfully at her and Angela gave a little nod.
"I think we should go to the last place where your mom saw your sister." Jasper advised and Emmet and Edward nodded along.
"Also, we should try the police station." Bella added. "Not that I could actually show up there, but y'know, someone else."
"Why can't she go to the police?" Emmet asked Alice, who rolled her eyes before answering.
"People there know her as the crazy lady. She has her own holding cell."
"That's not bragging matter oldah sistah Alicia." Bella said indignantly and also blushing furiously. She did not want people to take her to be a crazy girl who was prone to violence, which she sort of was but didn't want strangers to think that of her. "Sorry, and I should clear this up, although I do not have a holding cell, most police stations do know about me." Bella winced. "I would recommend not going to the one near Vernon Boulevard," Bella waved her hand when she noticed Edward about to ask why, "let's just say that Captain Klum doesn't like me much, she's such a nasty woman. There was one time when me and-"
"Wrap it up Bella," Alice said irritably.
"Anyway, if you see her, don't tell her you're doing anything for the Swans, she might not help." Bella concluded with a sigh.
There was certain stillness in the air after Bella's story; not having the police on your side was not good. Jasper knew of a place that needed to be checked, but was not too prone of having to be the one to suggest it. He looked at Alice and noted how her hair seemed to have lost a little of its usual spikiness, he wondered if their break up had had anything to do with it but stopped when he realized that her sister's disappearance was far more life altering than their separation. He moved his gaze away from her when she turned to look at him and sighed. Why did he have to be the pessimistic one? "Okay, I didn't want to say it, but someone needs to check out the morgues."
"What? No! Rose is most definitely alive!" Bella nearly shouted and Vera jumped a little in her seat. "There's no reason to look for her there! Right?" she looked at her sister willing Alice to agree with her.
"Yeah! Our Rosie is a strong one." Emmet said softly, desperately wanting to believe his words but knowing that she was only human. And that she'd had made some very bad decisions lately. He looked at his brother hoping for reassurance but all Edward did was shrug noncommittally.
"Well, I don't want to be the fatalist here, but-" Jasper said as he shook his head and Royce snorted.
"No. He's right," Alice shook her head, "we should look everywhere."
Once again silence befell the group of young people. Some thinking of how they had gotten to this point, some wondering if the girl even wanted to be found, she had left for a reason, right? And Bella was grasping at any thought that she could find so that she didn't have to dwell too much on the fact that her sister was missing. With this goal in mind she broke the quiet.
"So who wants to go visit Captain supermodel?" After seeing all the questioning gazes of the people around her she added: "Oh, well, she's not actually a supermodel, but she could've been in another life. Really tall, kinda has that foreigner air about her, also her name is not entirely- " Alice shot her a look and Bella tried to synthetize her ideas. "Anyhow, her last name I'm not sure what it is, but her first name's Heidi and I know this because most people refer to her like that, but she didn't appreciate her prisoner being on a first name basis with her. Also, she's a bitch."
Alice ignored the last comment and turned to Jasper, "we should go, and they also have access to morgues right? Two birds with one stone and all that."
"Yes." He nodded solemnly.
"So it's settled, Jasper and I will go visit your friends at the police stations." Alice said and shot Bella a look that clearly asked her to behave according to her age.
"Emmet and I'll go put up flyers." Bella said in an uncharacteristic quiet voice. Having heard that her own sister was going to look into the 'Rose is dead theory' had left her terribly glum.
"Then Vera and me can go to the hospitals, we look pretty innocent and they'll probably let us ask around for a missing blonde." Mason declared, trying to be funny and maybe disperse the tension that had suddenly appeared in his friends' tiny living room.
"I suppose that means me and Royce will go to Vermont?" Edward asked and Royce rolled his eye, the other hidden by the frozen bag of vegetables.
"Yeah, and then you should go to Boston, and maybe Philly." Alice said, Bella and Jasper nodded in agreement.
"Do we look like we can make that kind of trip in one day?" Royce challenged and Edward glared at him to shut up.
"You could do it in three?" Alice proposed and Edward nodded.
"Probably, and be back on the fourth day, right?"
"Sounds kind of reasonable." Royce said grudgingly, remembering his earlier conversation with Jasper.
"We'll go to the shelters and other places of the sort." Ben affirmed, speaking for the first time since he and Angela had arrived at the apartment. Bella nodded at them.
"I just have a small tiny question." Mason started: "why are we looking for her in New York, shouldn't we all be looking for her in Vermont, Boston and Philadelphia?"
"No, I don't think so." Alice shook her head, hair moving along with it from how strong her movements were. "I have a feeling that she's closer than we think." Alice stated and looked at all the people in the room, hoping she'd be able to convince them of her feelings. Jasper and Edward nodded, trusting her to know what she was doing.
"Shouldn't we look first in your house, maybe she's already there?" Royce suggested.
"No, she would've called someone to ask why we're not home." Bella answered him as if it was the dumbest thing to ask. Hadn't he dated her sister for several months? Didn't he know better?
"But isn't your mom concerned with that also?" Now it was Emmet's turn to question.
"Ha! No." Bella shook her head. "She thinks I'm screwing one of my teachers to pay for my tuition and she thinks Alice here is now living with Jasper."
"Seriously?" Jasper asked a little too hopefully. Maybe if Alice hadn't told her mother that their relationship was over… No, he shook his head in an attempt to clear it; he knew that their rapport wasn't the best. She would've had no reason to tell her mother about the breakup if Renee didn't bring it up first.
Alice and Bella nodded confidently, they knew their mother. "She's a little weird like that." Bella said.
"Fine, let's go do some maps, Royce." Edward said as he dragged his cousin towards the laptop. "We're going on a road trip!"
"Yay" Royce said gloomily.
"For your sake, try to look more concerned, ok? This is your ex we're looking for, so stop being so damn unhelpful." Edward told him darkly as they left the room. "Snap out of it."
People had already separated to try and come up with strategies for the places they were going to visit. Emmet and Bella had finished the flyers and had gone to print several of them to get a head start before tomorrow and give the other groups some didactic material. Angela and Ben had left a couple of hours ago after deciding which kind of shelters might've heard of Rosalie and which ones she was likely to seek out if she were in need of one. Edward and Royce had developed certain ways to go about searching for a girl in a different state and decided upon going to the police and handing out a couple of Emmet and Bella's flyers. Vera and Mason had agreed upon a story about how their best friend was pregnant and they had agreed to meet up for dinner but she never showed up and they feared for her well being. The only ones without a real plan were Alice and Jasper.
The blond Hale boy didn't know how to start devising a course of action if his partner would not react kindly to his ideas. After all, she hadn't liked his last one – the one that had caused their break up. He figured coffee was the way to her heart and immediately set to it with whatever thing his cousins had in stock. He held two mugs in his hands, one with hot chocolate and one with coffee.
"I thought you might want one of these." Jasper said shyly as he handed her the cup with the caffeinated drink.
Alice nodded and gave him a small smile. "Yeah, thank you."
"I don't know why your feelings are telling you to not trust your mom, but shouldn't we include her?"
"No. No, I'm sorry if it sounds unreasonable, but I -" Alice sighed and took a sip of the hot beverage. "I know that things will get worse than they already are if she figures out we're actively searching for Rose. She thinks we're kind of worried about her but that if anything were to be truly wrong she'd let us know. So she's trusting our trust in Rosalie's communication skills." She shook her head, "but this is different. I can feel it; even if Rose were in trouble she wouldn't tell us. I don't know why it's different, but it is." Alice stared straight into her coffee and took another sip.
Jasper sighed, wondering why he had to make her feel worse than she already did. She was sure about one thing and that thing was her capacity to 'predict' the outcome of certain things, sometimes even sense when something wouldn't go right and now he was making her doubt herself. He fought the urge the hit his head repeatedly on the wall and instead reached out to the girl he still loved and gave his comforting skills a shot.
"Hey, it's okay. I trust you, we'll find your sister, you'll see." He put his hand on her knee; the one that she kept bouncing, and offered her what he hoped was a reassuring smile.
"I hope so." She said sadly, the drink on her hands growing colder by the second.
The time was six in the morning, Vera and Mason looked like they had gotten just enough sleep to look semi-conscious at this point. They practically ran to the reception desk, Mason gave his best concerned face and Vera held a similar look.
"Hello, we're uhm, we're looking for our friend." Vera said a little breathlessly and the eyes of the girl in charge of the reception area widened with worry.
"Yeah, she was supposed to come have dinner with us but she never showed up and she's pregnant." Mason contributed while hugging Vera. The girl nodded in understanding.
"And we thought maybe something had happened to her?" Vera finished and looked at the other girl pleadingly. "We're her only family in town."
"Oh goodness, what's her name?" she asked, concern etched all over her face.
"Rose-" Vera started and then looked at Mason uncertainly, should they say Rosalie? Should they give the real last name? Why hadn't they thought of this beforehand?
"Swan" Mason supplied and Vera nodded before adding:
"Maybe you'll find her like Rosalie Hale or Swan, she has some family issues that are still unresolved."
"Yeah, paperwork's a mess-" the boy said distractedly, as if it was really not such a big deal.
"I'll check." The girl interrupted, sensing the pair could go on for hours, she typed the information on the computer and waited to see if there were any matches. After a minute she clicked her tongue and shook her head. "Sorry, maybe she's just home, have you tried there?"
"Actually, no!" Vera said and slapped Mason's arm. "We assumed the worst. So sorry for having made you waste so much time." Mason smiled and rolled his eyes, trying to make his face look relieved.
"It's no trouble at all, I hope your friend is okay." The girl said with an easy smile, glad that maybe their friend had simply overslept, it happened all the time.
"We hope so too, thank you again!" Mason said this time and the pair started their way out.
A woman had caught the conversation and she looked from one side of the room to the other, trying to decide what to do. She had just drugged up a girl so that her mother wouldn't make another attempt on her life. The couple had been looking for a Rosalie Swan; maybe it was the same girl. She hurried over to where they were.
"Wait! Wait!" Vera and Mason froze in their spots, not sure if they were calling for them. And if they were what could they want. They turned around simultaneously and were startled to find a different woman. This one didn't look too perky and she looked like she was ready to go home.
"Oh! Hi…?" Vera said in slight confusion, had they left something back there?
"Sorry, I -" the nurse shook her head and cleared her throat, "I overheard you searching for a girl. Do you have any pictures of her?"
"Yes, of course," Vera said hurriedly as she gave the woman a flyer, "here. Please if you know anything about her let us know." Mason and her started to go, not seeing the need to stick around any longer, they should be checking out other hospitals, they had to at least finish the Queens hospitals today.
"Of course." The nurse stared at the picture; maybe it was the same girl that was passed out upstairs. "Of course, kids. Thank you." It was definitely her patient, the nurse reasoned, but she looked different. No, but what if these kids were working for the mother? She didn't want to endanger the girl more than necessary.
"No, no, thank you." Mason said as he led Vera outside to continue their search.
Wouldn't an evil mastermind try to make everything seem as if she was looking for her kid and then when the kid appeared dead it wouldn't be her fault? The mother had tried to find her, but it was too late. The nurse shook in her place, what could she do? How could she know if these kids were to be trusted? She'd heard their story they had seemed sincerely concerned.
But Rose had said things had progressed differently. Maybe it was all a hoax. Maybe the mother wanted to see if Rose was awake and trying to find help. If she answered to the flyer then the mother would know. No, the nurse steeled herself and left the building. She'd have to find another way to help Rose. One that didn't involve getting the two of them killed.
A/N: Soooo? Are you feeling frustrated yet? I know I am. On the other hand, I'm so glad to see you guys like this story, please consider leaving a review, they are truly inspiring! Also, this week I'm not going to be able to update, but next weekend you'll get double update. I'm very sorry, but school is crazy. (Sorry)