BPOV

When I knocked on the door to Emily's room she looked up, startled from the sudden noise. I smiled apologetically. "Do you mind if I come in?"

"No," She closed the book she was reading.

I entered slowly, letting her have time to adjust to my presence in her space. She sat up on her bed, crossing her legs underneath her, before pulling the sleeves of her shirt over her hands. When she was finally settled, hands tucked into her lap, she looked up at me expectantly.

"How are you doing?"

She shrugged. "I'm okay."

I sat down at the foot on her bed, moving my hair behind my ears before picking up the book she'd discarded.

"Is there an update? On my case?"

I nodded, sitting her book back down on the bed. "That's kind of what I wanted to talk to you about."

She sat up straighter, taking a deep but hesitant breath. I wanted to reach out and touch her, tell her that it would be fine, but I knew she wouldn't want me to. I also knew I couldn't lie to her. Instead, I turned so I was facing her and tucked one foot underneath me.

"Emily," I said slowly. "I think that it would be really beneficial if I could bring on another attorney to help me."

"Mr. Whitlock?"

"No," I shook my head. "I found an attorney that has done a lot of advocating for Indigenous women who find themselves in violent circumstances. His name is Quil Ateara and he has a lot more experience than I do fighting these kinds of cases."

Emily swallowed before looking down at her hands. "You want to quit?"

"No," I answered firmly and moved closer. She didn't flinch away from me this time. "Emily, no. I am not quitting. I just need help. When I met with the Elder Counsel they… They basically ignored everything I had to say. I don't know enough about your customs, your tribe, to get them to listen to me. Quil is different. He's…"

I sighed, hating to admit it. "Well first of all he's a man."

Emily raised her eyes to look at me. "Is this what you think will be best?"

I nodded without hesitation. "I do."

"I don't have money-"

"You don't need to worry about that." I smiled encouragingly. "I just need to know that you'd be okay to meet with him. To tell him… everything. To tell us everything."

Her eyes fell back to her lap.

"Emily," I said, quietly. "I know that it can be very difficult to talk about things that have hurt you. It's still hard for me to talk about my past, too. But if we don't have the full story…"

I let my voice trail off- wondering if I should just let her doctor be the one to have this conversation with her.

"We need you to understand that the actions of others, of Sam and your brother, won't be used against you. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"But I told you everything."

"You told me what you thought I needed to know, Emily." I took a deep breath. "But there is more. And you need to trust me when I tell you that I need to hear it. Whatever they did- their actions aren't yours. You don't need to harbor their secrets anymore."

She still wouldn't look at me. Instead she kept her eyes focused on her lap. I could see her fingers moving underneath her sleeves.

"Do you trust me?" I asked after a silent moment.

Emily nodded and eventually her eyes lifted.

"I promise you that we, all of us- me, Edward, Quil, Jasper, will do whatever it takes to keep you safe. But if what you know…" I swallowed before continuing. "Emily, if you have information that can help other women, or their families, then you need to tell us. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Her face was set, motionless. Only her eyes showed any sort of emotion as they moved back and forth between mine- searching.

When she finally spoke it was hardly above a whisper. "How do you know?"

XXXX

Edward was on the phone when I roughly pushed his office door open. He looked up at me, confusion quickly turning to worry, before telling whoever he was talking to that he'd have to call them back.

He was up and out of his chair before I could shut the door behind me. "What's wrong?"

"She knows."

"What? Who knows?" It took a second for the realization to hit.

"Edward, she knows everything."

He processed what I was saying and I watched as the magnitude of what this meant sat in. He swallowed before struggling to ask one of the many questions that were filling his mind.

"Murder?" That was all he was able to get out. When I shook my head, he seemed to relax somewhat. "Trafficking?"

I nodded, taking small steps towards him. "They're working for some guy in Albania. She doesn't know all the details but it's all connected. She knew some of their names. She…"

This time it was my voice that didn't seem to work.

The afternoon passed agonizingly slow as we waited for Quil and Embry to arrive from Marysville. I'd told Edward everything Emily had eventually confessed, and even though I believed she was telling the absolute truth, it still left us with a lot of unanswered questions.

Now, with all of us gathered in a small conference room, I looked around at each person as the weight of what we'd just told them settled into an uncomfortable understanding. Edward, who was sitting next to me, put his hand over mine before lacing our fingers together.

Jasper, who Edward had asked to join us, stared at me from across the table- seemingly at a loss for words. Eventually he was able to form a coherent sentence. "How many more?"

"I don't know. Neither does Emily."

Embry, who had been silently standing in the corner, shifted his weight to his foot.

"But it goes beyond La Push and Neah Bay?" Quil asked.

I nodded but it was Edward that answered him. "She knows of at least two more down in Oregon. More than that up in Canada."

Emily, since she was thirteen years old, had been used as bait for her brother and Sam Uley. They used her to lure other girls into situations where they could easily be taken and eventually sold. They were all targeted simply because they lived on the margins of society and seemingly had no one that cared about them. Some were runaways. Some had drug addictions. Some were sex workers. Their lifestyle made it all too easy for their disappearances to be explained away.

"You were right about the drugs, too." I looked at Quil and then Embry. "They're using Paul and Sam to run it back and forth. The Elders are lining their pockets with the money so it makes sense why they're protecting them."

"Can we prove that?" Embry asked, finally speaking.

I shook my head, not really knowing the answer. "I don't know."

"What do we do?" Jasper asked, looking at Quil, and then me. "I mean obviously the law enforcement in La Push can't be trusted. Who do we contact?"

Abruptly, Quil stood up. "Let me make some calls."

Embry followed him out of the room without saying anything.

When the door shut, just leaving the three of us alone, I turned to Jasper. "We have to protect her."

He nodded before getting out of his chair to start pacing. "If this is as big as what I think it is then we will have to protect all of us."

I watched as he roughly ran his hands over his face.

"This…" He looked at Edward for a minute. "This is way beyond what we are capable of handling. You know that, right?"

He nodded. "I know."

XXXX

I felt Edward before I heard him come back into the conference room.

His fingers gently worked their way through the back of my hair before he leaned over the back of my chair and sighed. "Are you okay?"

It was well past the time when most of the staff at Hope House had headed home, leaving the building eerily quiet. But I'd remained sitting at this table- waiting, thinking. Quil had called and told Edward he was working on a few things and would let us know when he had answers. That had been hours ago.

"Bella?"

"Where is he?"

"I don't know." Edward pulled out the chair next to mine, sitting down, while leaving his hand on my back.

Feeling out of control, of not knowing what I was supposed to do, was something that I'd tried to avoid in my personal life since becoming an adult. In my career it was something I absolutely didn't tolerate. There was always a plan, always something I could do to. There were case laws that could be researched and argued. There was evidence I could present. Witnesses I could examine. But now, in a bizarre twist of irony, the truth Emily had shared most definitely did not set any of us free.

When Quil had originally shared his theory it had been bad. But this, what we knew about the whole story, was horrible. How many more women? How far did it reach? In three years Quil and Embry had been able to confirm fifteen women. If this had been going on since the mid-Nineties…

Jasper had been right. The security that Emily would need went way beyond what Hope House could offer. The legal counsel she'd need was past any experience Jasper or I had. I didn't know what I could do, or should do, to help her.

"Bella, look at me." When I did, Edward brushed my cheek with his fingertips before cradling my face in his hands. "I need you to tell me what you're thinking because you're starting to scare me."

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

He knew me well enough to understand what that meant. I had absolutely no control over what was happening and it was terrifying.

"Okay. So what can we do? What is something you can do?"

What was something I could fix? What would make me feel more in control?

I couldn't protect Emily and I didn't know who could. I didn't know how the tribe's law enforcement worked or if there was even anyone that we could use to go around the elder's counsel.

"Sue," I said quietly when the realization hit me. "I want to talk to Sue."

Despite the panic and anxiety, when I saw my father walking up the steps to Edward's house, I smiled. He looked entirely too eager, balancing pizza boxes and holding a six pack of beer. Sue was right behind him with a matching grin.

I opened the door so he wouldn't have to struggle with the doorbell. "Hi, dad."

"Hi, Bells." He leaned forward to kiss my cheek but stopped halfway through the act. He looking down at my face and frowned. "Are you okay?"

Edward's arm wrapped around my shoulders as he joined me at the door. "Charlie."

Instantly my father was distracted. His grin widened as he looked at the two of us.

"Here," I reached forward to take the pizza boxes.

Edward extended his hand to shake my father's but was pulled into a hug instead. Sue stepped around the two of them, giving me an exaggerated your father look while he vigorously clapped Edward's back.

Dinner passed with an enjoyable amount of reminiscing between the two of them. I leaned into Edward's side as he entertained my father and tried to let myself relax into the feeling of his fingers moving up and down my arm. But no matter how funny Edward was, or how happy it made my heart to see him interacting with Charlie, my eyes kept finding their way to Edward's phone that was sitting on the table.

Without any sort of answers from Quil, I didn't know if talking to my dad and Sue would put them at risk with the rest of us. I didn't know if telling them would help or harm them. Right now there were only a handful of people who knew the truth that went beyond Sam physically abusing Emily and her asking for a divorce. And all of us knew that the truth came with the risk of being brought into the middle of a nightmare.

My chest absolutely ached when I thought about Jasper. Would he tell Alice? Would he keep it a secret? By him being involved at all it put the kids at risk just as much as it did Alice.

Edward must have felt my body stiffen next to his because his fingers tightened around my shoulders.

My dad's smile quickly slipped off his face when he looked at me. "Bella."

Panic was rising up in my chest and I felt suffocated. I looked at Edward, pleading for him to tell me what to, to make this decision for me.

He sat up straight before holding my face between his hands. "It's okay."

"Someone better tell me what the hell is going on." My father had left his chair and was now hovering over me. "Are you… Is she… pregnant?"

Both of us looked up at his question but it was Edward that answered. "No. It's…"

"Charlie." Sue admonished him.

"Well, I don't know!" He defended himself. "The last time she was like this-"

"Stop." I pulled away from Edward and stood up. "I'm not pregnant. I'm…"

He waited for an explanation but I turned to Sue.

"I need your help."