I know, I know, I'm an hour earlier...no wait, I'm not... :D
I'll ramble in the next chapter.
For now, here you go, my beauties, I give you the Epilogue!
The knock on the door made me look up.
Stephen opened the door, poking his head in and giving me a suspicious look. I raised my eyebrows at him and he looked pointedly at his wristwatch. I frowned, looking at the small clock I kept at my desk before I laughed out loud. I had been sitting here for three hours straight.
"Don't laugh, it isn't funny. I've been standing outside in suspense and I don't appreciate it," He said, coming inside and shutting the door.
"I know, I'm sorry, I appreciate you for it though," I said, assimilating the papers on my desk.
He rubbed his neck, watching me put them into the drawer and locking it. "Did you find anything important?" he asked.
"Lots, most of them are just notes, journaling his activities, they stop about a couple months ago. The other is research but I can't understand most of it. I can tell its physics though." I stopped when he grinned teasingly at me.
"So, the great wise Tulika is bad at something at least." He mocked.
I rolled my eyes at him, nudging him with my hip as I passed him to hide the key to my desk under the carpet inside my closet.
"May I ask now how you got this stuff from Charlie?" he dropped his voice in case the Chief or his daughter happened to be outside.
"Forks Police Station isn't exactly Fort Knox, Steph. All I had to do was bring him lunch, ask him to take a look at the truck to see why it was rattling and sneak into his inner office. He kept his keys on a hook next to the door anyways. Plus, it's been ten days, they've already dropped the investigation and his funeral was last Saturday so no one even cares anymore." I said my own voice low.
"But you do…why do you care? Even I don't care and he called me," he said.
"Yeah, he called you, which is the strangest thing." I mumbled.
"Because I'm the useless one out of the two of us," he muttered.
"Stop it; you're not useless. You're very important to me and to this world, do you understand?" I asked severely. He saluted to it.
"Still, I want to know, why are you going through his things? Do you think you can solve what happened to him?" he asked curiously.
I snorted at that.
"Sometimes, darling, you overestimate me." I said.
"I doubt that. The question still stands." He answered.
I scrunched my nose playfully at him.
"No, I don't think I can solve what happened to him, not at least till I can get him to talk to me," I said.
He blinked twice at me.
"Would you care to repeat that?" he said.
"I don't think he's dead." I said simply.
Stephen stared at me in dead silence for a few seconds before he sank onto the bed, clasping his hands, elbows on his knees.
"Okay…what is your theory?" he whispered.
I sat on my chair too.
"His disappearance; he vanishes into thin air, calls for you…indirectly for me; then turns up at the same stop we'd go to look for him and is killed, after all this preparation…? I just don't buy it." I said.
"Tulika, you didn't see the bedroom…all that blood. He has to be dead." He said.
"Stephen, it's easy to arrange a crime scene. If he was dead, where is his body?" I asked.
"Taken by whoever killed him,"
"But why…? They would have no reason unless they were aliens who want to experiment on the corpse. It doesn't make any sense. Besides, did you see anything that shows a body was taken away?" I asked.
He blinked. "I didn't stand around to look that closely, I felt like throwing up anyway." He said weakly.
"Exactly, neither did Edward, I asked him. He didn't want to say anything but I got him to spill, I saw the photographs. There were no drag marks, no trails, nothing…I'm telling you…"
"You're telling me, Sorenson faked his death." He concluded, looking straight at me, his face grave.
I nodded.
"He faked his death.
All your theories... were you expecting this? I'm betting you did...