20

Bella snapped her eyes open, for a moment forgetting about the wound in her shoulder. Of course, then she moved and pain radiated throughout her body and she was once again reminded of her sins. Pressing her lips together to keep her scream buried inside her, she sat up and slid her legs off the side of the bed. A quick glance over her shoulder showed Edward fast asleep on his back, one arm covering his eyes while the other was draped across his stomach. She hadn't even felt him crawl into bed with her, something that didn't settle right with her.

Moving as quietly as she could, she stood up and slipped out of their room inside the dust filled bunker. The hallway was lit was dull orange lights that reminded her too much of the lights inside Esme Platt's Den of Hell. Bella shivered and tried to push all thoughts of her other life out of her head. It didn't work, of course. Her demons were always there, always reminding her how weak she really was.

As she entered the control room, she was both surprised and unsurprised to find Garrett in there, his legs propped up on one of the tables with a laptop on top, running through dozens and dozens of news sites at a time. He must have heard her because he looked back at her, his eyes lingering on her shoulder for a moment before he turned away.

"Shouldn't you be asleep?" he asked, pulling his feet down and standing up. He walked to the back of the room, where another table sat with one of those big, industrial size coffee urns lay. He filled two foam cups and turned back to her. "Cream or sugar?"

"No, thanks."

Garrett walked over and placed one cup on the table next to where he sat, while keeping the other for himself. "It's not great, but it works."

Bella nodded and took the few steps to where he sat, gingerly picking up the cup. She took a sip, spitting it out immediately. "You can't call this shit coffee!"

Garrett laughed and propped his feet back on the table. "Like I said: it's not great, but works."

"Hmm," she hummed, placing the cup back on the table and walking around the room. There were half a dozen tables covered with old computers that she doubted still worked, rotary phones, and a clear inch of dust. "You can stop looking at me."

"Just making sure you don't do something stupid like take off after some crazy bitch and get yourself shot," he quipped, and when she turned to face him, she found that he was still staring at her. "I'm sorry: was that mean?"

"Do you care if it was?" she asked.

"Not really."

"Didn't think so," she scoffed, turning one of the chairs so that she could see him, while also keeping her eyes on the entrance of the room. "What time is it?"

"Little after three in the morning."

"So it's Friday?" she asked, knowing they'd arrived late on Thursday.

"Saturday," he said. "You were tired."

"Apparently," she gritted, not liking the feeling of having been sleep for over a day.

"Your man has been worried about you," Garrett added, tilting his head to the side. "Seems to think you're helpless, but that's not true, is it?"

"I don't know," she confessed, pulling her knees up so that her feet rested on the edge of the chair. "Tell me about your scars."

Garrett's eyes widened. "My scars, huh? Which ones? The ones on my face? Or the ones on my neck? Or maybe the ones covering my back and torso."

"All of them," she said, quietly.

"I'd imagine I got mine much the same way you got yours." Garrett stood up and pulled his T-shirt off. Even in the dim lighting, Bella could see the thin scars that laced his body, up and down, and from side to side. "Whips," he said, gesturing to handful that crept over his shoulders. "These are from knives," he added, pointing to the handful around his belly button. He sat back down and pointed to the ones along his cheek. "These are from glass shattering as I jumped through a window."

"Why'd you do that?"

"To live," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "Like you, my parents gave me away. They sold me to pay for their drug debt. I was ten the first time."

"First time?" she asked.

He nodded. "Four times over an eight year span. Like I said, I was ten the first time they gave me away. The man who bought me liked little boys. He kept me for almost a year before I'd worked my parents' bill off. It didn't take long before they'd racked up another debt, though. By the time I served my fourth term in hell, I had almost all of these scars on my back, and half the ones on my stomach. I was seventeen when I was given to a particularly brutal businessman by the name of . . ." Garrett paused and looked at her ". . . Carlisle Cullen."

Bella felt her shoulders tense, which just caused the pain to increase.

"You want me to stop?" he asked.

"No," she lied.

"You can imagine what he did to me, how he broke me," Garrett said.

"I have an idea," she groused.

"I knew what hell was like, Swan, but he took it to another level. See, it didn't take long for him to realize that whips and chains didn't bother me anymore. I'd grown numb to that shit. No, he, um, he changed shit up quick. Started with blood play. He'd be . . ." Garrett shook his head. "Knives turned him on, my screams turned him on. Shit, everything turned that son-of-a-bitch on. After being left in his hands for almost a year, I knew I had to escape. See, Swan, he wasn't going to let me go. Cullen didn't let any of his whores go."

Standing up, Garrett filled his cup with more coffee before he turned and looked back at her. "We were in Chicago. Well, just outside of the city. He'd just finished with his latest round of torture and had left me alone in my room. I don't know how I got the strength, but I found myself standing in front of the window. We were on the second floor. Unlike his place in Forks, he didn't have bars on the window. I suspect that's a measure he took after I threw my body through the panes of glass. I landed on my knee, which I cracked, but I guess adrenalin powered me to run. I don't even know which direction I went. Just ran as hard and fast as I could for as long as I could.

"Eventually, I found myself outside a small hospital. A nurse found me leaning against the wall, blood pouring down my face, my knee twice the size it should have been. They pestered me with questions, but I couldn't tell them anything."

"Couldn't? Or wouldn't?" she asked.

"Wouldn't," he admitted. "I knew what Cullen would do, Bella. I'd breached the deal he had with my parents. I fucked everything up. So, yeah, I kept my mouth shut, pretended I didn't know how I'd gotten hurt. I played the victim, and blah, blah, blah. By the time I got out, my parents had been murdered and Carlisle Cullen had all but disappeared."

"Leaving him to torture other people," she quipped. "You could have stopped him."

"Could I?" he asked. "You know how far his reach went, Swan. What makes you think a nothing like me would be able to bring him down?"

"You could have tried," she argued.

"I wasn't strong enough, Swan. I'll admit it. I wish every day that I had been, but I wasn't. That's my cross to bear, too. I'll own that, but don't sit there and act like I failed you by protecting myself. I was a fucked up kid, who knew nothing in life but pain and humiliation. You sit there and cry because Daddy wanted to fuck you, turned your bestie into a whore, but, honey, you don't know what's it's like to be passed from one pedophile to another just because your momma and daddy like smack more than you."

"As long as it's not a contest, right?" she whimpered.

"That's not what I meant," he said with a sigh. "It took me a long time to trust myself, much less anyone else. Edward found me about a year before you went in, said he could give me the chance to make things right. He gave me a change for redemption, Swan. I do what I can, help where I'm needed, but like you, I don't trust easily."

"Is that why you think I went after her?" Bella asked. "That I'm looking for redemption?"

"Are you?"

"No," she said, unsure if she were being honest or not. "The Leah I knew, the Leah I walked into Hell to save, was gone. I wasn't a hero to her because she had begun to like it, to need to be treated like a whore. So, no, I didn't go after Leah to gain my redemption, Garrett. If anything, I just checked off just one more tick off for my place in Hell." Bella stood up and walked toward the doorway. "Where I belong."

Leaving him sitting alone, she knew without a doubt that when she died, she'd burn in Hell for her sins.

—BR—

Bella found herself sitting in the corner of the room she and Edward were sharing, watching her husband as he slept. His chest rose and fell, rose and fell. He looked peaceful and she found herself envying the way he slept with ease.

Aloud bang echoed from outside of their room and Edward sprang up, his eyes falling on her just moments before someone started banging on the door.

"Ed, man, we got something!" Emmett bellowed.

Edward scrambled to his feet and rushed over to the door, yanking it open. "What's going on?"

"I think we have a hit on Elizabeth."

Edward looked back at Bella before taking off after Emmett.

Slowly, Bella found her feet and followed. When she entered the command room, she found Garrett, Peter, Jasper, Emmett, Rose, and Angela inside the room. Bella leaned against the doorframe, hissing at the pressure on her wounded shoulder, but didn't move to elevate it. What was the point? Maybe she deserved the pain.

"Did you find her?" Bella asked, drawing everyone's attention to hers. Everyone's but Garrett's, who kept his attention on the laptop he'd been searching.

"I don't know," Edward said, reaching his hand out for her, but she shook her head, trying to make him understand that there were too many people, too much going on right there for her to be in the middle of it. "Gar?"

"I've been tracking missing person's cases across the West Coast, thinking this Sandman might be working his way along the coastline. But I wasn't getting anything, so I expanded nationwide, and found the story of a woman matching Elizabeth's description pleading for help in Colorado Springs, Colorado. By the time the police were called, she was gone."

"And you're sure it's Elizabeth?" Edward asked.

"No," Garrett said, turning to look at him, but his eyes landed on Bella first and then onto him. "I'm just saying there is something here that needs to be checked out."

Edward nodded and ran his fingers through his hair. Bella could see the war battling inside him. The part that wanted to run and find her, save her, and the part that knew she needed him here. Guilt filled Bella for being so needed and she herself saying, "What are you standing there for? Go!"

"Bella," Edward murmured, walking over to here.

"It's okay," she whispered, knowing it was anything but okay. "Go find her. I'll . . . I'll be okay."

"You need me," he whispered, one hand coming to rest on her hip while the other came up to cradle her face. "I promised that I'd be here for you."

"I know," she whimpered, hating that her tears filled her eyes. "But she's the reason you started this, the reason you found me. Go, Edward. Find her."

"I love you," he whispered before his lips found hers in a heated kiss. "I love you so much."

"I love you, too."

And as she turned and fled his embrace, knowing that he would leave her behind, knowing that she needed him to hold her together, knowing that if he didn't go, he would resent her for letting Elizabeth slip away again.