Stephenie Meyer owns all TWILIGHT characters.

The Twilight Twenty-Five
thetwilight25[dot]com

Prompt: 13 – i41[dot]tinypic[dot]com/16i7j28[dot]jpg
Pen name: IngenueFic
Characters: Bella, Edward, Jasper
Rating: R

All prompts can be found here:
www[dot]thetwilight25[dot]com/round-five/prompts/

Detective Jasper Whitlock stares at the girl in front of him. She wrings her hands together, fingers twisting over fingers, locking and releasing. He stays silent and stares at her while she hesitantly reaches for the glass of water in front of her. The sip she takes is small but she holds the glass to her lips and breathes heavily, causing the glass to fog up around her mouth.

"Miss Swan."

She jumps slightly and the glass slams back down on the table. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she mumbles. Water sloshes over the rim and splashes against her hand.

"Miss Swan, I'd like to go over tonight."

"Again?" she asks quietly. They've already asked her to describe the events of the night twice. Everything is starting to blur together and all she wants to do is go home. Her only problem right now is that she's not entirely sure where home might be. For the past summer, she's been staying with a man who, up until tonight, she thought she could trust even if he scared her a little bit. Now, she's not sure what to think.

"Last time," Detective Whitlock promises. "Where were you at six o'clock tonight?"

"I was leaving the corner store by my boyfriend's house. I don't know the name, which is stupid, I know, but it's always just been 'the corner store' to me."

"Diablo's," the detective tells her. It's the first time he's said the name of the store.

"Yeah, okay."

"What happened after you left?"

"I went to James' place. He lives on Porter Street."

"And what did you find?"

Bella swallows and begins fidgeting. "There was a party going on."

Detective Whitlock stares at her hard. "You said before you didn't know there was going to be a party."

"I didn't!"

"Do you live with James Graeson?"

"Yes," Bella whispers.

"Yet you didn't know there was going to be a party in your house."

"I just stay there," she insists. "James lets me stay there because I –"

Her eyes drop to the table and she tries to stop the angry and frightened tears from falling. She hates this, hates her situation, hates that James has kept her in the dark for so long. She doesn't know what will happen after they release her from questioning – if they release her.

"Because you what, Miss Swan?" the detective prods.

"Because I don't have anywhere else to stay," she finishes in a strangled tone. "He lets me stay there and we, I mean he, no, I mean that we're together."

A stinging silence grows in the room, a harsh tension that makes Bella feel like she's a live wire.

"So there was a party," Detective Whitlock states after a moment. "What did you see when you walked into said party?"

At his words, Bella starts to cry. She can't help it.

"Miss Swan?"

"I didn't know!" she cried out. "I didn't know, I swear I didn't know."

"What didn't you know?" he asked her in a quiet and soothing tone.

"There were so many people. I didn't know even a quarter of them. They were there, just… God, it was like a bad pornographic movie." She knows she sounds stupid, calling it a pornographic movie but abbreviating it will make it sound even sleazier.

"What did you see?"

"Girls," she says before letting out a sob. "Drugs. Blood. Guns. More girls."

The tears keep coming and she doesn't know what to do or what to say. The images from earlier flash in her mind – the wasted girls sprawled across the floor and over couches, some with red lines running down their arms; the guy holding a gun to a girl's head while he watched as his friend fucked her from behind; the groups gathered around the coffee table, the one she brought from her apartment before she got kicked out for not paying rent, snorting cocaine.

"Miss Swan, you claim you had no idea what your boyfriend was doing or that he was running what is one of the largest drug and prostitution rings this country has seen in years."

"I didn't!" she insists.

"But you lived there!" Detective Whitlock's voice grows louder with each word until the shouts reverberate in her ears.

"I only went there to sleep!" she claims. "Or when he said he wanted me there."

"You just said you had nowhere else to go."

"I work at a diner – Little Rockets, the one down by the beach. I try to spend as much time there as possible – extra shifts, free meals. Please. I swear I wasn't part of whatever James was doing – is doing – I don't even know."

Detective Whitlock moves to stand by the window and he pinches the bridge of his nose as he tries to keep calm. It's obvious to him that Bella Swan is telling the truth but she has to know something. He needs her to know something.

He also needs her safe if she does know.

"Miss Swan," he says her name in a calmer tone. "Is there anything you remember from your time with James Graeson that might have led you to even think he was doing something illegal?"

She swallows and stares up at him with wide, scared eyes.

"Anything, Miss Swan."

She shakes her head back and forth slowly with her eyes closed. There is so much flowing through her mind that she can't focus on any one particular thing. She wants to help the police department, she does. Charlie was a police officer before…

"My dad's old car," she says suddenly.

"What was that?"

"James 'bought,'" she says as she lifts her hands to form quotation marks with her fingers, "my dad's old car from me, said he needed it even though he had his bike."

"What did he need it for?" Detective Whitlock sounds dubious.

Bella shakes her head but she's thinking hard. "He kept it at a girl's place. I heard them arguing once when I… when I wasn't supposed to be at the house. Victoria Mortson."

Detective Whitlock's head whips around to stare at Bella.

"He told her the car was for her use. That it was still registered under my name so no one would ever trace it back to her."

"Do you know what they needed the car for?" he presses.

She hears him but she can't answer him directly. She's too busy attempting to make sense of the hazy images in her mind. The Ford wasn't old but it wasn't the newest car by the time Charlie died and it was passed on to her. After James gave her a place to stay for the summer in exchange for the car, she didn't want to think about it anymore, didn't want to see it. The car was one of the last things she owned that kept her connected to her parents and giving it up hurt more than she ever imagined.

Even as she chastises herself for giving the car up, the images become clearer in her mind, as though finally thinking about it causes her to remember little details that she had hidden away with the Ford's image. She remembers seeing James and Victoria exchange money, remembers a phone call to Black's Garage and then she thinks about the time the garage's owner, Jacob, brought the car over for James to inspect. It was still black but there was something different about it. She knew that car like the back of her hand and the sun was glinting on it strangely. When Jacob popped open the trunk, she remembers noticing that the carpet is different. She also remembers the way James yelled at her to get the fuck inside.

He had been brutal that night, taking her over and over until she felt like she couldn't move. She hadn't tried to stop him and when he was done, she'd curled up on her side and shut her eyes. Hours later, his phone had blared and she overheard the conversation he had in the bathroom.

"Mexico," she breathes out as the memory opens up completely, practically in Technicolor in her head. "They wanted to use it to bring drugs over the border."

Detective Whitlock curses under his breath. "Do you know where the car is now?"

Her head bobs up and down in a hurried nod. Now that she remembers, it's like the words are falling from her mouth on their own accord. "If it's not at Victoria's, it will be at Black's Garage. It's the only place they ever went for their cars and bikes. They kept some there in storage or something."

"Miss Swan," he says her name again, slowly and cautiously, and her body prickles at the seriousness in his tone. She's no longer full of information; she feels like she's about to shut down again. "I'm going to send someone out to both of those places to look for that car. If we find it and can find evidence of James' actions somehow, there is a good chance you will be considered a witness to his crimes. Do you understand?"

"I… Yes. I think so."

"Miss Swan, would you be willing to testify against James Graeson?"

Her heart thuds a fast tattoo against her chest. She knows what's happening. She's seen Charlie in situations like this more than once; it was what caused fear to seize her body every time Charlie left for a trial. The fear covered her face.

"If you agree to testify, Miss Swan, you will be protected at all costs. You won't be alone. No one will be able to find you unless you want to be found."

"Okay," she says softly. She thinks of Charlie and how he died in the line of duty. She thinks of Renee who died less than a year later for no apparent reason though Bella is sure it was of a broken heart. She thinks of the years trying to make it, trying to stay alive, but watching her money dwindle down to nothing. She thinks of James and his steel gray eyes that reeled her in, made her trust him, and she thinks of tonight.

"Okay," she repeats. "I'll testify." Her voice shatters on the last syllable.

"You're doing the right thing, Miss Swan. I'll be right back."

Right back is an exaggeration. For two hours, Bella sits in the interrogation room. Someone brings her a sandwich and her stomach growls at the sight of it so she eats the ham and cheese even though it tastes like sandpaper in her mouth.

When the door opens again, Detective Whitlock enters, this time with a tall man in a suit behind him. Bella can't help but lean back in her chair as if she's trying to get away from the both of them.

"Miss Swan, I want you to meet Edward Cullen. He's the FBI agent that has been assigned to your case."

"My case?" she asks weakly.

"Agent Cullen will keep you safe until all the evidence against James Graeson is found and until the trial." Detective Whitlock turns to the man whose eyes are almost blank as he studies Bella. "I trust you understand how important her safety is, Agent Cullen."

His gaze moves down Bella's body and back up though it's not one of attraction. When their eyes lock, he gives them both a grim smile.

"I understand completely."

Thank you to oOza for the beta work and Vampire_Extraordinaire & shpwhitney for pre-reading.