Disclaimer – Stephenie Meyers owns it all.
Chapter 36 - Explosions
Realistically, Charlie had no doubt that he would be staying with us tonight. When Edward bypassed the turn into his driveway, Charlie didn't even utter a sound. He followed us somewhat meekly into the house. Just as I was about to offer him some ice to put on his bruises, he turned to me and said, "Bells, I'm so sorry to have put you through everything that you went through today. I should've listened to you last night and swallowed my pride and stayed with you guys." I nodded and continued to get the plastic bags of ice from the refrigerator that we never used. "I mean it, Bells. I really am sorry. I underestimated what those thugs would be willing to do to keep me from testifying."
I turned around and handed the ice bags to him. "Charlie, … Dad … , I don't know what I'd have done if I would've lost you today. When I was first turned, I thought that I could walk away from you, leave town, and let you live out the rest of your life with Sue. Then when Alice had the vision of you getting shot, the reality of me losing you hit me like a ton of bricks, and I knew that I couldn't let that happen, and Carlisle and our family agreed to let you in on our secret and allow you to travel with us. I knew, somewhere in the recesses of my mind, that I'd still lose you one day, and when you were missing this morning, I thought that today might be that day. I'm still reeling that you're still with us." He reached out to take me by the hand. "No, Dad, let me get this out," I said, pulling away from him. "I need to tell you how I feel. I need for you to know that I almost broke today when I thought that I'd lost you."
"What are you saying, Bells? You know that one day I'll die, sweetheart. It's meant to be. Everyone dies. It's the natural order of the world, Bells. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that last night wasn't my time, but one day, my time will come, and when it does, I'll be ready."
"But, don't you see, Charlie? It doesn't have to be that way. You can be changed, just like I was. You can live forever, just like me, and Edward, and Alice, and Jasper, and the rest of the family. You don't have to die, Daddy."
"No, Bells. That life isn't for me. I don't want to live forever." I turned away from him and covered my ears with my fists. He came up behind me and tried to pry my hands away. "Bells, I know that you can still hear me. I've lived a good life. I've helped protect society. I've done a hell of a lot of fishing. Most importantly, I've helped raise a wonderful daughter. If I were to die tomorrow, my life on earth would be complete. Right now, I'm living my life one day at a time, and I'm thankful for each day that I have."
"But Dad, you didn't like it when you thought that I was dead."
"No parent is supposed to out-live their child, Bella. It's an unwritten rule. Now, that's enough talk about dying. I want to know what you four did with all of those hoods today."
"Well, Charlie, we made sure that they were tied up," Edward said.
"Yeah, that's what you said this afternoon. I want to know what you meant by 'tied up.'"
"Exactly what we said. Their hands and feet were tied up. We left tied up at a place of our choosing," Jasper said. "In fact, I think that Edward and I need to go and move them to their hide-out in the woods. That way, Mr. Baker can arrange for them to be released."
"Or whatever he has planned for them," Alice added.
"I think that I need to be along on that trip," I said, looking at Charlie, then looking at Edward who nodded. Charlie started to say something, but I interrupted, "I'm not going to kill them, Charlie, but I plan to teach them a lesson that they won't soon forget. Don't worry, Alice will stay with you and protect you." He finally gave his consent, and the three of us left to take care of the three bad guys.
We decided to run into town, for the exercise. Well, okay, not for the exercise, but we did decide that it would probably be best not to put the hoodlums in our car, just in case they were to leave any microscopic fiber evidence and just in case Mr. Baker were to become even more stupid than he already was and use his acquaintances with the police force to harass us. We figured Alice would be able to warn us of such an occurrence, but why take chances?
When we arrived at the roof of the Courthouse fifteen minutes later, the three men were as we left them. The only difference was that they definitely weren't as cocky. They had managed to position themselves next to each other, whether trying to escape their bonds or huddle to get warm, I couldn't tell. It didn't matter to me either way. The fact remained that they were still our prisoners, and we still had a job to do.
I went to "my guy" and lifted him with ease. He had been dozing, and the sudden movement shocked him awake. Had it not been for the gag in his mouth, I'm quite sure that we'd have been serenaded with a string of curse words. I untied his hands from behind his back and retied them in front of his body. That way I could throw his arms around my neck and carry him without quite as much fear of him falling.
I looked at the others, and they'd mirrored my moves. We were ready to move our prisoners. I looked at Edward, and he nodded. The way was clear. I moved to the edge of the roof with my package on my back and jumped down. As soon as my feet touched the ground, I started the run to the hideout. It didn't take us long to get there. The three of us stopped in the edge of the woods and lowered our packages.
I turned to Edward and asked, "Are the others still inside?"
"No, at least they're not alive inside. I don't want you just barging in, Bella. I don't know if they've set any traps to go off when the doors open or anything like that."
"And traps are going to hurt us? Really, sweetheart, be realistic. We're invincible," I said, and then before he could correct me, I said in vampire volume, "I know that fire can kill us, I just don't want them to know." He and Jasper nodded their acknowledgement, and Jasper left us in a flash. Seconds later, we heard a window open, and I could only assume that it was one on the second floor. Minutes later, Jasper called out the the house was, in fact, trapped and that we needed to use the upstairs window.
It didn't take us long to scale the building with our loads, me carrying one and Edward carrying two. We met Jasper downstairs where he was removing the bodies of the first victims in the war between the Baker Gang and the Vampires of Charlie from the chairs that we'd left them in, and Baker had killed them in. We proceeded to place the second group into the chairs and bind them as we had their predecessors. From there, Jasper went to the trap on the front door. I had no idea what he was doing, and he must have sensed my confusion because he said, "This trap is able to be disarmed from the outside with a certain code. I'm changing the code. That way, when they try to disarm it, it will explode." I nodded in agreement. Once he was done, I looked at the men for the last time.
"You chose the wrong side, gentlemen," and with that sentiment, we left them and returned home to Charlie.
When we approached the house, I was surprised to hear Alice and Charlie talking. He was worried about me, it seemed. They were talking about the time that the family left me, how I had been so lost and the time that it took me to "recover." Edward paused. I knew that I had told him about my counseling and about how Jake had taken me under his wing, but I'd never told him how lost I really was before the time that I'd learned to fake it, and now, he was hearing it first hand from Charlie. He fell to his knees and gripped his hair with his hands. I knelt beside him, taking him in my arms, holding him to me. As Charlie described the zombie that I'd become, not knowing one day from the next, not eating, having nightmares of his leaving when I did sleep, withering away to no more than seventy pounds and eventually having to be tube fed in the hospital, Edward began shaking with sorrow. Jasper looked at me with sorrow in his eyes, and then he looked at Edward with hate. I shook my head and, as discreetly as I could, motioned him away.
I allowed Edward to hear the rest of the story, of my counseling and Jake's intervention, and my trek back into a "normal" existence, then with him still in my arms, I stood us both up and walked us into the woods, out of hearing range from the house. I found a log and sat us both down against it, still holding him in my arms.
"I never intended for you to hear that," I whispered, laying my head on his shoulder.
"I don't deserve to live, much less have you in my life," he said. I knew that he'd be crying if we could.
"Edward, I told you when we first found each other again that I hadn't lived since you left, that I was faking a life. I told you that all my counseling had done was to teach me how to fool the people that I loved into thinking that I was living."
"You never told me how close I came to losing you forever."
"Edward, you never intended to come back to me. The only reason that we're together now is because Alice intervened. You have to admit that. You've already admitted that. Thank God that she did. I also thank God that Victoria changed me. Otherwise I suspect that you would've found any excuse to have delayed my change at Christmas break. I didn't want to live without you. You were my life then, just like you are my life now."
"But my leaving nearly killed you."
"And my cheating nearly killed you. I drove you away. Edward, I can't tell you how sorry I am for what I did to you. Not only did I hurt you, but I tore your family apart. I'm ready to go home, Edward. I'm ready to mend this family. You need your mother and father. I need my new mom and Carlisle. I miss Emmett. Leaving the family wasn't the answer, Edward. I understand the reason; you were hurt that they still blamed Jasper and me for hurting you. But, Edward, when we hurt each other, we need to stay and work things out, not run from them. If you hadn't run six years ago, I wouldn't have gotten so sick. If you and I hadn't run after Jasper and me, maybe the family could've worked everything out without the four of us running away. Edward, we've got to quit running."
"But Carlisle wasn't treating you right, love."
"Carlisle was hurt because I hurt you. He was just striking back at the person who hurt his son."
"If I could have forgiven you, so should he."
"Yes, but when did he see you forgive me? He saw you run for so long in Alaska, then as soon as you got back, we left for several weeks to put our lives back together. He never got a chance to see us in love again. He never got to see for himself that you've forgiven Jasper and me."
"Maybe, let me think about it."
"That's all that I can ask." I leaned in and kissed him. He kissed me back and reached to remove my shirt. "Edward, not now. We've got to get back. I want to be at the house in case they come for Dad." He sighed and returned my shirt to its normal position.
"Let's go. I'd like to be there as well." He stood and pulled me up with him. We ran back to the house, hand in hand. When we stepped over the threshold, Alice was still talking to Charlie. Jasper was sitting on the couch across from the two of them. We walked into the living room and sat down on the couch with me in between Edward and Jasper.
"So, are you ready for their cross examination tomorrow, Dad," I asked, breaking into their conversation.
"Well, Bells, I don't think that they can embarrass me any worse than the prosecutor did. Do you?" Charlie asked.
"He did bring out the bare facts, didn't he, Charlie?" Edward chuckled.
"You kids didn't help, all of that snickering and laughing out there in the audience. Don't think that I didn't see it. You four were all that I could think of, especially you, Edward, reading everybody's mind. I didn't know which way to turn. And then when you all got up and surrounded that thug, I almost panicked," Charlie said.
"We took care of it, Dad. We'll be there tomorrow, too. You don't have anything to worry about at all," I said. "Why don't you go upstairs and get a shower. I'll go ahead and cook you some supper, and then we can watch a movie before you go to bed."
"That sounds great, Bells. I think that I'll do that," Charlie said, rising from his place in the armchair. "I just want to thank you all for everything that you've done for me."
"It's nothing, Charlie. We all love you," Alice said as he started up the stairs.
"I'm going to go outside and have a look around," Edward said. I nodded, and he and I walked outside together. I started down to Charlie's house while Edward started making patrols around the houses. Once inside Charlie's kitchen, I found the ingredients for spaghetti and started preparing enough for Charlie to have enough for tonight as well as a day or two of left-overs. Every-so-often, I'd see or hear Edward as he'd make another pass within range of the house. I'd call out that I loved him, and he'd make a noise on the path that would return the sentiment. I knew that he was being stealthy, just in case.
When the meal was finished, I put the extra in the fridge and put the rest in a tupperware bowl to take to Charlie. As I left the house, I felt a little uneasy. Taking a deep breath, I didn't smell anything that didn't belong in the area. Just to be certain, I leaped onto the roof and walked to the other edge of the house, again sampling the air, not finding anything out of the ordinary. My nerves calmed, I started back to the house at a sprint. Not three seconds later, I was inside, placing the meal on the table. In vampire volume, I told Jasper of my uneasiness. He nodded and stepped by me on his way outside, Alice following at his heels.
Charlie was just coming downstairs when my uneasiness became reality. A helicopter fell out of the sky and machine guns began rippling the house. In less than a second, my body was wrapped around Charlie, and we were safely in the basement. I peeled myself off of him, and examined him from head to toe. Only when I realized that he was unhurt did I breath a sigh of relief. Then I began to take action. I went into the downstairs bathroom and punched a hole in the wall. I removed the rest of the inside wall and started in on the concrete that enclosed the basement. Charlie, wisely, stayed out of the way. Once through, I started making a tunnel into the earth that surrounded the basement, making good time. I just had enough of a tunnel to fit both Charlie and myself and had pulled him in and shrouded his body when my fear was realized. Some explosion racked the house above, extending into the basement, causing the entire foundation to shake as everything above came crashing down into the space that we'd just occupied. Moments later, I heard another explosion, not quite as loud, but enough to cause the earth shake, and I knew that Charlie's home had been demolished as well.
Five minutes later, I heard everyone calling my name in a panic. "We're okay," I yelled back. "I got us into a tunnel from the basement. Can you get to us?"
"No, the fire is still too intense. The emergency response has been activated, and the fire department is on its way. We're going into the woods until the fire is out, then we'll be coming for you. Stay put, love," Edward called back.
"Where would we go? We'll be waiting on you," I said. "I love you, Edward, for eternity," I added in a whisper.
"And I love you, for all eternity," he whispered to me. My grin gave away that he'd answered, and I rested my head against the earthen wall.
"What's going on?" Charlie asked. "I know that you're talking with them."
"The fire's still going too hard for them to get to us, yet. The fire department is on their way. The others are going to hide in the woods until the fire is out, then they're going to come and get us."
Soon, I heard the distinct sound of the fire engines and the police cars. They pulled up to the main house and within minutes, water started pounding the fire above us. The sounds were surreal, when the water hit the fire, the sizzling, the crackling when the fire would start up again when the water would go to other areas, the dripping as some of the water would make its way to the basement.
I could hear the fire chief and the police talking as their subordinates went about their business. "Who bought this place. I'd heard that it was sold, but I never met the new owners," the voice that I'd identified as the fire chief asked the man that I'd identified as a police officer.
"It was sold through an attorney in Washington state. The kids went to school at the high school with my daughter. She'd said that they were a little weird, that they claimed to be married to each other. They really caused a stink with Mrs. Summer last week," the police officer said.
"Oh, those kids lived here? How could they afford this place?" the fire chief asked.
"My daughter said that they didn't seem interested in making friends, except for one of them and Teresa Goodwin. They seemed to hit it off. Maybe she'd have some idea where they got the money. Do you think that there's any way that anyone got out of there?" the police officer asked.
"I don't see how anyone could have gotten out of either house. The only way anyone survived is if they weren't home," the fire chief said. "Do you know about any next of kin?"
"As far as I know, there isn't anyone. I'll try the realtor to see who handled the paperwork for the house," the police officer said.
They went on talking about other things for the next forty minutes that it took to finish putting out the fire. When the fire chief called an end to the effort and moved the engines to Charlie's house, I turned and said, "Charlie, stay here. I'm going to take a look around." I pushed a couple of beams away from the area immediately in front of the tunnel. They were still smoking, but the fire was out. Nothing was hot enough to burn me, however, it was hot enough to burn Charlie. I'd have to clear more of a path in order to get him out. As I made my way through the basement, I heard my family making their way down to me.
"Keep an eye out for our safe. It's fireproof," Jasper said too low for the authorities to hear.
It only took about ten minutes with the four of us working for a path to be cleared which was wide enough for me to carry Charlie out. As I turned to go get him, Edward stopped me by putting a hand on my shoulder. He pulled me into his arms. "I thought that I'd lost you when the missile exploded," he whispered into my ear. "Just let me hold you for a second. Alice will get Charlie." I melted into his arms as the shock of what had happened struck home.
"Did you say a missile?" I whispered.
"Yes. The men in the helicopter shot off two missiles, one here, and one at Charlie's. They wanted to be sure that they got us all," Edward said.
"Where were you?" I asked.
"Jasper and I were on the roof, trying to get a shot at the helicopter, and Ali was in the forest, feeding us the trees that we were throwing at it," Edward said.
"Did you hit it?" I asked.
"Unfortunately, no. By the time we had it set up for the shot that we wanted, it had fired the missile, and we had to run and jump off of the roof into the woods," Jasper said.
"Are any of you hurt?" I asked.
"No, we're all fine," Edward said.
"Okay, let's go," Alice said as she came up to us with Charlie on her back. We followed her, silent as we gazed at what was once our home. As we were almost out of the house, Jasper made a detour to the left. He jumped down a layer, and a minute later, he tossed up the safe. Edward caught it, and we finished our climb out. Once we hit the night air, we ran into the woods.
The others led me into a clearing that they'd obviously been setting up while they were waiting for the fire to be put out. Our tent and sleeping bags were set up at a make-shift campsite that they'd prepared during the wait. I was just glad that Charlie would be protected from the cold of the night.
Thursday morning dawned with smoke still spoiling the air. We could still hear the officers down at the houses, and we decided that we'd make a trek down to our homes and tell them that we'd been camping deep in the woods because of death threats against Charlie. We carried our camping gear much deeper into the woods and set up camp, faking it to look like we'd been camping for a week. Then we started down the mountain with Charlie in tow.
I must say that when the five of us stepped out of the shadows of the mountain trees, there were several mouths that hit the ground, not the least of which, our attorney, Mr. Samuels. We looked around at our homes, both of them, burnt to the ground as he made his way over to us. "Thank God you weren't home! Where were you?" he asked.
"We were camping. What the hell happened here?" Jasper asked.
"Well, there was a fire last night. Didn't you hear the sirens?" Mr. Samuels asked.
"Well, we did hear some sirens echoing, but we were above the tree line. How could this happen to both houses at the same time?" Edward asked, running his hands through his hair.
"That's something that the fire marshal is investigating," Mr. Samuels said. "Why were you camping on a school night?"
"Someone made a death threat against Charlie. We wanted to keep him safe. It looks like we did the right thing," I said, looking around and pulling Charlie into my arms. "Is his office still standing?"
"As far as I know it is," Mr. Samuels said, and then he motioned to one of the officers who joined him immediately. "Officer Whittaker, this is Edward and Bella Cullen and Jasper and Alice Hale. They owned the big house, and this is Charles Swan. He owned the Mother-in-Law house."
"Oh, thank God you weren't at home! I need to call this in. Can you tell me where you were last night?" Officer Whittaker asked.
"We were camping in the mountains," Jasper said. "There was a death threat against Charlie, and we wanted to take precautions to keep him safe."
"What do you mean 'a death threat?'" Officer Whittaker asked, pulling out his note pad. "Who made this threat?"
"Stanley Baker," I said, "though he never said so in so many words. He sent his goons to kidnap Charlie Tuesday night, trying to keep him from testifying in court yesterday. We found him and helped him escape in time to testify yesterday. He obviously tried to get him again last night."
"Do you have any proof of these allegations?" Officer Whittaker asked.
"Well, we can lead you to the cabin where we found him yesterday morning," I said, "but he had his goons do the kidnapping. He's too clever to get his hands dirty directly."
"We'll have to take him later, Bella. We have to find some new clothes and get ready for court. We're due back at nine o'clock," Alice said.
"What will you do for money?" Mr. Samuel asked. "Did you have insurance on the house?"
"We have our usual cash on us, so money isn't a problem, and our insurance papers are safe. We can get them to you later today," Edward said. "Do you know any of the managers of the nicer clothing stores? We'll pay for them to open early for us."
"Sure, Edward. Let me make a few calls, and we should be able to accommodate you. Follow me into town," Mr. Samuel said.
We all got into the car, Charlie squeezed between Alice and me, Edward and Jasper in front. We pulled up in front of the local boutique and Alice jumped out, enthused that she had the whole group under her thumb. She rushed the door, disappointed to find that it was still locked. We ended up waiting nearly fifteen minutes for the manager to arrive and let us in. We only had two hours before we had to be in court, so Alice picked out a suit for Charlie which fit him perfectly. Unfortunately, there weren't any that fit Edward or Jasper. They had to settle for slacks and dress shirts with sweaters over them. Alice and I were able to find some nice sweater dresses that would do for court but would also allow us plenty of mobility for when we would need it to take care of business. We would get some more, more appropriate clothes, later today. For now, we needed to get to the courthouse.