12

Carlisle and I quickly thanked Adam once more before rushing out to the car and making our way to Demetri's office. I couldn't understand why Carlisle looked like someone had just sucker punched him. Wasn't it a good thing that Gabriel Varner had been found? The question rested on the tip of my tongue, begging to be asked, but I found myself unable to voice my concern. Something about this whole situation hadn't been sitting right with me.

Demetri was waiting for us inside the waiting room of his office. I expected a smile or a look of relief on his face, but there wasn't one, and that scared me.

"Thanks for coming by," Demetri said, shaking Carlisle's hand, before ushering us into his office.

"You're welcome," Carlisle replied, waiting for me to sit before he took the chair next to me. "You said you'd found him."

"I did," Demetri admitted, though once more he didn't look thrilled. "Gabriel Varner — the real Gabriel Varner — died ten years ago. He was murdered. The police never found his killer. His family — wife and three kids — were also killed."

Demetri paused and leaned back in his chair. "Gabriel and Jennifer Varner lived in Texas. They'd both graduated from the University of Texas with degrees in Secondary Education and got jobs in a little place called Hedley. Hedley's tiny, they don't even have a gas station. Over the course of their ten year marriage, they had three kids: Samuel, Morgan, and Daisy. Daisy was only two years old when Jennifer started receiving letters in the mail. Whomever sent them had been watching her. They knew everything about her, about her family. They had pictures of her and her husband together, pictures of her kids playing in the yard. They went to the county sheriff, but they couldn't track down who this person was, or really do anything."

Pausing, Demetri leaned forward and placed his elbows on the desk. "Sometime between midnight and seven in the morning, on the twenty-third of May, someone entered their house. Gabriel was the first to die. He was found in the living room. He'd been stabbed a dozen times before his throat was slashed. The children were found in their beds, also stabbed to death."

"And Jennifer?" I whispered, my voice shaking. "What happened to her?"

Demetri pressed his lips together for a moment before clearing his throat. "She was found in the master bedroom. She'd been . . . She'd been raped and beaten. Multiple times, from what the police report states. Then, she was stabbed seventy-eight times."

"Oh," I whimpered, unable to keep my tears from falling.

"Did the police have any suspects?" Carlisle asked, reaching over and wrapping his fingers around mine.

"Two. The first was a student of hers. A boy named Quil Ateara, but unless this boy can change his skin color, he isn't our Gabriel Varner. Quil is a Native American. He'd had an argument with Jennifer two days before her death about a paper he'd written. She claimed he'd plagiarized it, and he denied any involvement. Quil left Hedley a few months after the murders, but I found him in Austin. He works in a warehouse. He's married, has a couple kids. No police record, nothing to cause me to think the police got it wrong."

"And the other person?" I asked. "You said there were two suspects?"

Demetri frowned. "Aroldo Volturi. Or Aro, as he preferred to be called. His family migrated from Italy when he was two. His parents died when he was twelve. He was a janitor at the high school, though no direct interaction with either Gabriel or Jennifer. According to the police, he had been seen in their neighborhood the afternoon before they were killed, though there wasn't any significant evidence to link him to the crime scene. No prints, DNA, nothing. They questioned him, but he denied any involvement. A year later, he put in his notice and left Hedley. I tracked him as far as Arizona before the trail went cold. But interestingly enough, there was double homicide in Flagstaff around the same time that he was there. Doug and Susan Vaught. They had been traveling through on their way to Florida. They were both stabbed multiple times before being dumped on the side of the highway. Unlike with Jennifer, though, Susan wasn't raped. Their car was stolen, so police labeled it as a carjacking gone bad."

"Are you saying the man who I know as Gabriel Varner is this Aro Volturi person?" I asked, the words trembling as they tumbled from between my lips.

"I believe so, but I don't have any proof. This is all just speculation on my part. A year after Aro disappeared from Arizona, the man who calls himself Gabriel Varner turned up in Forks, Washington."

"I don't understand," Carlisle huffed. "How'd he get a job with the school district? Don't they do criminal background checks?"

Demetri nodded. "They do, and his came back clean. According to their database, Gabriel Varner is a graduate of the University of Kentucky, but I can't find any record of him being there. Nothing he has claimed are true."

"But what about his fingerprints?" I asked. "Don't they run your prints when you're arrested?"

Again, the private investigator nodded. "They do, and the police in Forks ran his, but they weren't a match to anyone's. Not Aro's or the real Gabriel Varner."

"So how can you be sure that they are one and the same?" I asked. "I'm sorry, but it sounds like you're grasping at straws, trying to make a connection that just isn't there."

Demetri opened a manila folder that sat on top of his desk and picked up two pictures. Then, he stood up and walked around so that he was standing in front of me. Holding up the two pictures, I had to stifle my gasp. The picture in his left hand was a blown-up photo taken from our year book. In his right hand, was a much younger version of the same man, but there was no mistaking that they were the same person.

My stalker.

"Oh," I whispered.

"I'm sorry, Bella. I really am," the man said before walking back around his desk and sitting down. "There is no doubt in my mind that the man who has been stalking you is really Aro Volturi."

"Have you told the police?" Carlisle asked, his voice thick with emotion.

"I have. Detectives Hitchens and McCoy have agreed that we need to work together if we are going to find and stop this man."

"I want to leave," I whispered, struggling to keep from screaming, or throwing something, or pulling my hair. "I'm sorry, but I need to leave."

And before either of them could stop me, I scrambled out of my chair, threw open the office door, ran across the waiting room, and outside. The warmth hit me like a hand slapping my face and I found myself crumbling to my knees as the scream I'd been fighting exploded from inside me.

"Isabella," Carlisle exclaimed, dropping onto the hard pavement next to me. He went to wrap his arms around me, but I pushed him away and scrambled to my feet again, running as fast and as hard as I could.

I knew he was dangerous. I'd said it time and time again, but nobody believed me. Would they believe me now? Now that they knew how he'd raped and killed the target of his obsession before? Or how he murdered her children in their sleep?

Dropping into the grass next to the road, I felt my stomach churn as I vomited. My boys. He would kill my boys if they got in his way.

The sound of a car stopping a few feet away from me and the car opening had me tensing, but before I could look and see who it was, I heard, "Isabella."

I stood up and faced my husband, my lover, the man who'd taken me away from a life where I merely existed. "Why me? Why is this crazy, murdering, psycho fixated on me?" I asked. "What did I do? Did I lead him on? Make him think I wanted him?"

"No, you didn't do anything," Carlisle said, slowly walking up to me and placing his hands on my hips. "He's crazy."

"I'm scared, Carlisle," I cried. "He killed that family because wanted her. He'll come after you, after the boys. I can't . . . I can't lose you."

"I know," he murmured, sliding his hand to the back of my head and nestling me against his chest. "I know, Isabella. I'm scared, too."

—TW—

"If you come out of that room one more time, I'm taking away all your toys," Carlisle threatened, and a moment later, he walked back into the living room, ignoring the way Esme, Alice, Rose, Emmett, Edward, and Jasper were laughing at him. They were laughing because the boys had been pushing the boundaries all night, ever since we picked them up from school.

They'd had a great first day, spent much of the night telling us how amazing their teachers were, how they played and laughed, were carefree and happy. I wanted to be happy for them, and I was, but all I could think about was how Gabriel Varner, or Aro Volturi, whoever he was, wouldn't hesitate to steal the life out of them if that meant he could get to me.

"Bella." At the sound of Alice's voice, I shook my head and looked at her, only just realizing that I'd been crying quietly. "Sweetie, what's wrong?"

Carlisle and I hadn't had a chance to fill everyone in on the latest development about my crazy stalker. And as I sat there and stared into the dark eyes of my best friend, the words died in my throat and I found myself unable to speak, unable to share the horrors that filled my mind.

"Bella, you're scaring me," Alice said, sliding to the edge of her seat as everyone's attention shifted between the two of us.

Carlisle shifted his attention back to the hallway, clearly wanting to make sure the boys weren't able to hear him before he settled on the larger of their two couches, sliding his hand over my knee as he said, "We, um, we got some rather disturbing news from Demetri today."

"What was it?" Jasper asked, his eyes moving from Carlisle to me and back.

"Apparently, the man we know as Gabriel Varner is really Aro Volturi," Carlisle explained. "He's . . . Well, he's psychopath. He's proven that he's willing to kill to get to who he wants."

"He'll kill us all," I whispered before standing up and walking down the hallway and into mine and Carlisle's bedroom.

As I stripped off my clothes, pulling on one of his scrub tops, I climbed into bed and allowed my tears to once again fall. I was done being strong. It was exhausting. Maybe it sounded like I was whining, or throwing a pity party, but I was done trying to keep from falling apart. The day would come when we find ourselves face to face with this crazy, unstable killer, and we would die.

I'm not sure how long I laid there in the dark, only the sound of my muffled weeping heard, when the door to the room opened and I watched as Carlisle stepped inside. He closed the door and silently undressed, removing all of his clothes before he climbed onto the bed behind me, wrapping his arm around my waist.

"You knew, didn't you?" I whispered, though it felt like I was screaming at him. "Before we got to Demetri's office, you already knew the news wasn't good."

"I did," he murmured.

"You didn't tell me." It wasn't an accusation, but a statement.

"I didn't know how," he said, sounding like he was confessing his sins. "You've been so worried, so stressed over the move, the boys starting school, about him finding us. Today, you laughed and smiled. You were almost happy, and I didn't want to ruin that for you. Not until I had to."

"He'll find us," I whimpered. "Sooner or later, he will find us and when he does, he'll kill us all."

"But we'll go down fighting," Carlisle whispered.

Neither of us spoke as his fingers slipped between my legs, pushing my panties to the side. My breath caught in my chest as he touched me, knowing exactly how to get me excited. I grabbed his hips, pressing myself against him, feeling his hardened cock nestled between my asscheeks.

Releasing him, I slid from beneath his arm and shifted so that I was facing him. I placed my hand on his shoulder and pushed him back onto the bed. Then, I moved so that I was hovering over him, my pussy above his mouth while his cock begged me taste him. And I did.

Leaning down, I wrapped my lips around the tips, sucking hard before letting him slide further into my mouth. Carlisle moaned before wrapping his hands around my thighs and pulling me down on top of him.

The sounds of us pleasing one another, our moans and whispered pleads for more, were all the filled the air. Carlisle's need to reassure me that he wasn't giving up on us, and my need of keeping him as close as I could overwhelmed me.

I'd already lost my mother because I chose to love him, I'd had to leave the only home I'd ever known so we could be a family, and I'd be damned if I'd let some madman take away my husband and children without a fight. They were mine: now and forever.

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