Hello readers. I just wanted to say thank you again to all of you who review, it's great to see what you think! Also, this chapter is uh...questionable for those of you with virgin eyes. So just be aware that it gets a little lemony in section III.

Read on, and enjoy!

--Chedea

I.

Son of a bitch.

That goddamn detective, Cullen was his name, he was about to mess everything up. Not only was he getting wise to the game, figuring things out with startling rapidity, but he was there with her, touching her, his mouth moving and smiling, making her feel safe.

Son of a bitch.

She shouldn't feel safe. She wasn't safe. And now he was going to have to show her that more prevalently, more straightforwardly than he ever had. He hadn't planned on doing this so soon, but if she was going be smiling like that, talking with such effortless peace she was forcing his hand. It was her fault it was happening like this. It was her fault it was happening at all. She was the one who had called to him, like a siren when she was a child, beckoning him with an unbreakable spell. She was the one who had run. She was the one who had spent all this time away, all this time in a normal life when she should have been dead a long time ago. She wound her magic into his head and all he could of was her, he breathed, ate, drank and dreamed of nothing but her. Over a decade of his life, finding her, tracking her, moving with her, and plotting, all this planning to finally be able to put things in motion.

And now she was forcing things to progress in a way he was not ready for them to progress. It took patience to create the scenarios he created, took preparation to make sure things went off without a hitch, but it took a steeling of the mind to make himself do what he had planned, and not skip ahead, not just take her, kill her, end this mental torture.

He practically roared in fury and threw his binoculars on the floor. He was kissing her. His mouth was on her mouth, his hands in her hair. He was touching something that wasn't rightfully his to touch, this detective, this interloper, this intruder.

That made him surer, more certain than he had ever been that things needed to progress, now now now now now now now now.

II.

Morning light shone through the uncovered windows. It dappled across the rumpled covers like the rippling surface of a lake. It was so warm under the covers of her bed that Bella scarcely had the will to move. She was surrounded by a large down comforter, the highest thread count sheets she could afford and the very real, very warm, very comforting arms of a man.

Edward was still asleep, breathing slowly and rhythmically. But his arms were wound tightly around Bella's naked torso and she could feel the outline of his arms, of his hands, of every finger as they were pressed to her skin. She couldn't remember the last time she felt so relaxed, so safe. His warm body curved around hers felt like heaven. She didn't ever want to move a single inch. She could happily live and die in his arms, in her bed.

She felt him stir and stilled herself for an entire moment as he moved, stretching, taking his arms back from her, reaching them over his head. He grunted tiredly, flexing his whole body for a moment and then slackened and came back to her, wrapping himself around her completely.

He mumbled something into the nape of her neck, under her hair and she had to ask him to repeat himself.

"I said good morning," he said a little louder, with more diction.

"Good morning," she answered.

"Your bed is very comfortable," he murmured before pressing his lips firmly against her neck, once twice, again and again, uncountable times. Goose bumps broke over her skin even though she wasn't the slightest bit cold under her covers. She turned her face and without a second thought he placed his lips against hers, softly at first, with increasing pressure and passion as time passed.

There was something so right about being there with Edward. Something about the soft pressure of his mouth against hers, his warm skin, his heavy breathing. But eventually all the kisses had to stop, all the teasingly intense touches had to cease and both he and she had to get out of her bed and into their clothes, which were scattered about her floor. Edward collected his things and with the kind of grace only he possessed, reluctantly put them back on. Bella went to her dresser, picked out a suitable work outfit and donned her clothing with the same mentality.

They talked quietly with each other for a few minutes while they dressed, mostly about whether or not Bella should put coffee on, if they had enough time for breakfast. They settled on coffee and bagels and Bella disappeared into the kitchen to take care of breakfast while Edward finished getting dressed, still trying to locate one of his socks. She popped his bagel into the toaster, yelled to him about how dark he liked it toasted and if he preferred butter or cream cheese while she put a new filter in the coffee pot, scooping enough coffee grounds into the filter for several cups of coffee.

"Whatever you make will be fine, and cream cheese," Edward called back to her from the bedroom, and she could hear him hopping into his socks. Bella put the toaster in the middle of the darkness scale and poured water into the coffee maker.

It occurred to Bella for the first time, with swift profundity, that she had slept with Edward Cullen, the detective on her case, a man she was going to have to spend countless more hours with, if her current situation spoke of times to come. Had he not, weeks ago, talked about propriety and how it wasn't appropriate to eat dinner with her? And yet there they were, him walking into her kitchen, straightening his button down shirt, rubbing absently at his five o'clock shadow.

It also occurred to Bella as she got him a mug for the coffee when it was ready and retrieved the cream cheese for their bagels that she could do this every morning. She could wake up with him, make breakfast, drink coffee, steal his kisses.

He started talking about the case as she handed the bagel and cream cheese to him and then shortly after gave him coffee and a small container of half and half and her sugar dispenser. He poured both liberally into his cup, stirred it with the spoon she had given him and she watched him eat and drink as she leaned against the counter, listening to him talk while she waited for her own bagel. When hers popped she brought it and her coffee to the table and sat next to Edward. He kept talking, about leads that were popping up, forensics, about promising outcomes. He also told her that her case might be coming to the forefront of the media sometime soon, and that she should be careful. She accepted all his advice quietly.

"Is something wrong?" he asked, licking cream cheese off his thumb from an errant bit that had escaped his bagel.

"Edward, we had sex," she said flatly. His eyes widened and then smoldered.

"I recall," he answered, his voice a bit lower than it had been the moment before.

"We have to see each other, in a professional capacity. I have to spend time with you in the station house, you have to call me about the case, and we have to see each other and I―"

He cut off her words, his lips upon hers.

"Bella, I don't know if you have noticed, but I really like you. I didn't want to sleep with you because you are insanely beautiful and I couldn't help myself, though I will admit that those things certainly pressed on my mind with insane constancy. I like you. I like your bravery, your culinary skills, your honesty, your heart, your eyes, the way you say my name, the way you fight every day to live a normal life. You make me nervous. You make my heart race. I can't remember the last time a woman made me feel like this. And maybe we shouldn't be doing this, because of the situation we are in. But we won't always be in it. And I wouldn't care even we were. You are the one I want. I'm being selfish because I should have talked to you, I should have thought ahead that it might make you uncomfortable but that is all I have for you. I just want you. I want you. I don't know what else to tell you."

"That's enough," Bella whispered in return.

"It shouldn't have to be," he argued.

"But it is. Edward, we aren't in a normal situation where you could ask me out to dinner and we could progress like any other normal, regular couple would progress. So if this is what we have, nights and mornings together, moments here and there where we can be…whatever it is we are, I will take that for now."

"For now," Edward repeated.

"When all this is over, I will want more than just moments. I will want whole days and even weekends here and there."

"Anything," he promised. She smiled and he smiled back. She felt a kind of peace come over her as she sipped her coffee and ate her breakfast. This was the way things should be, easy, just coffee and breakfast with a man she cared for. Edward finished his cup of coffee and kissed Bella once on the forehead, and after a second thought, again on the mouth quite thoroughly.

"I have to go to work but, um, I was…I want to come see you again, when I get out, probably around seven, is that…I mean, can we do that, is that okay?"

Bella laughed and admired for a moment how adorable he was when he stumbled over his words. She had never seen him so unsure of himself. She stood up as he was standing and brushed a piece of errant hair from his forehead.

"That sounds lovely. Think you could bring dinner? I don't have anything here because we were gone for a few days and I was going to go grocery shopping, but I got distracted last night," she teased.

"By what, exactly?" Edward asked, a wicked grin on his handsome face.

"A man, he's very attractive, very smart, he's on the force, you might know him."

He smiled wider at her teasing and then she had to reluctantly shoo him off to work before he was late and people started calling, wondering where he was. It wasn't unlike Emmett, so he told her, that if he was more than five minutes late, to call him until he either picked up or walked in the door. Not out of worry, he assured her, but only to annoy him. The affection in Edward's voice made it clear he didn't mind being badgered. He and Emmett were obviously very close already, more like friends than partners.

"Go to work. The sooner you go, the sooner you can come back to me," she said lightly. He looked at her, a sudden seriousness in his eyes.

"I will always come back to you," he assured her quietly. She felt herself moved, melting, even though she was trying not to fall too hard for him. It was taking all her effort to not just tumble completely head over heels for him; he only made it harder when he said things like that. She didn't know what to say and so she only smiled. He ducked his head and caught her mouth in one more, brief goodbye kiss. Bella sat back down at the table when she heard the door close behind him and breathed a slow breath.

There was an indelible feeling in her chest that things had changed, so many things, and that she hadn't even seen half of it between the last night and this morning. It was for a brief moment frightening, so many things shifting at once, but the smile on her face just wouldn't go away. So, still wondering what other surprises the day might bring her, she got up, rinsed the cups in the sink, put the cream cheese and bagels away, gathered her work things, brushed her teeth, put her hair up and headed out the door.

It was the last day of normalcy she would get for a very long time.

III.

"You scoundrel," Emmett proclaimed in his booming, commanding voice. Edward felt his face tinge a shade of red as he opened his mouth to deny what he could see Emmett already knew. Emmett gave him a skeptical look and Edward shook his head. He wasn't going to share the details of the night before, not with anyone not ever. It was too personal, too private, too much like a dream to risk speaking out loud.

He had been terrified that when he kissed Bella she was going to rebuke him. But when his mouth met hers, following the immediate shock she seemed to come to life, fingers twisting into his hair desperately, letting her body press along every line of his without second thought or concern. It was like a switch had been turned on somewhere, and every moment of denial, every time he told himself he shouldn't, every thought he had about her that he told himself he shouldn't have came rushing back and he just wanted her. He told himself he should slow down, that he should take it easy, it was just a kiss, a first one at that. But when he pulled away from her she looked back at him and there was the same need, the same want as he felt shining back at him.

Their mouths were never separated longer than it took to take a breath. She moved away from him momentarily to strip off her blouse, which he was pretty sure he heard tear as she yanked it violently over her head. When his hands connected with her bare flesh he felt like he was being allowed to touch an angel, she was so fucking soft, so delicate under his hands. Her body curved in all the right places, ample breasts, a good set of hips under the fabric of her skirt that he wanted to tear it off of her.

Slow down, he had told himself.

But she wasn't slow down. She didn't look like she wanted to. She would have popped the buttons off of his shirt if he hadn't taken her hands off his shirt and undone them as fast as he could. She pushed her hands over his shoulders, into the sleeves of his shirt and slid it down his arms with sudden slowness. Her finger tips slid over his skin with the most delicate touch he could imagine. His whole upper body broke out in goose bumps. She smiled and moved closer to him. He could feel the satin from her still present bra pressed against the now bare flesh of his chest. She pressed her mouth wetly against his neck, down his collar bones, over his chest, all while tracing light lines over his arms, his shoulders, his chest, his stomach. She was making him shake and she was barely even touching him.

He was letting her take the reins, making sure he didn't overstep any of her boundaries—they were unspoken after all. He had no way of knowing what would make her uncomfortable, what would feel too rushed, what would make her freeze up and push him away. So he took his arms and wrapped them around her lower back, pressing his hands to her bare skin, feeling the heat of it as her entire torso connected with his. Their mouths met again. She parted her lips and skimmed her tongue over his bottom lip before he met her tongue with his. She shuddered in his arms and he felt his whole body ache with a need to have her, right then, right there. She must have felt it to, because the heavenly slowness she had taken up with ended as abruptly as it began.

She unraveled her arms from around his neck and within seconds had the clasps of her bra undone and it was on the floor along with her torn blouse. She was so beautiful, perfect peaches and cream skin, the kind of skin that made him want to put his mouth all over her. So he did exactly what he was thinking of. He parted their lips and grazed his over her neck, settling momentarily to nip gently at her ear lobe before dropping lower, pressing wet kisses to her neck before licking his way across her collar bones and over to the other side of her neck. Her whole body went almost completely limp for a whole second as she let out some sort of strangled moaning sound that made Edward want to do nothing but bring that sound from her mouth as often as possible.

She wriggled in his arms for a strange moment and when she extricated herself she was panting heavily, eyes frenzied with need that excited him even more.

"Come with me," she said. She paused a moment, contemplating him. "And take those off," she added, gesturing to his pants. Edward followed behind her as quickly as possible and obliged as soon as they arrived in her bedroom. They were getting too tight anyway. When his pants were off she took another moment to look at him in the light of her bedroom and without hesitation unzipped the tight-in-all-the-right-places skirt she was wearing. Watching it slip down her thighs was possibly the longest five seconds of his life. She stepped out of it, in only her underwear, just like Edward was and it suddenly hit him that they had spoken ten words between them since he had gotten there.

"Bella," he said, before she could touch him again, before she could muddle his thoughts with her mouth and her skin and God, with the smell that came off her, with that glorious body of hers. She paused, mid-step to him and looked at him, with adorable bewilderment.

"Are we maybe going too fast here?" he asked, not believing he was speaking those words when she was standing right there with barely anything on, her hips, her breasts, her ungodly long legs begging him to touch them. And for a moment she looked like she was going to say, it was too fast, she had gotten caught up. But then a slow smile spread across her mouth, both beautiful and mischievous at the same time and she finished closing the space between them with determined slowness.

"Edward, the only way you could possibly think we were going too slow is if you had been completely oblivious to the attraction and tension between us for the last few weeks, which I know for an absolute fact that you weren't."

"I―"

"I am a big girl. I can take care of myself. I know sometimes it doesn't seem like that, the way you know me, but I promise, outside of homicidal maniacs, I am capable of watching out for myself."

"I know that," he argued. She smiled again.

"So stop worrying and just believe me when I tell you that I want this," she answered, taking his hands and placing them on her hips. As soon as his fingers touched her silky skin all thoughts of propriety and of taking it slow were gone. He pulled her to him and kissed her desperately, overwhelmed by how much he wanted her, needed her, how good it felt to just be touching her. her mouth moved with his, in a slow rhythm that built up into a frenzy of motion, until his hands were sliding all over her, hers all over him, his mouth devouring her skin, lips and tongue and teeth grazing over her skin while she shuddered and returned his affections in kind.

Eventually, she pulled him onto her bed and without ceremony climbed atop him, thighs straddling his hips and a prominent erection. She grinned and immediately ground her hips down against him. His head fell back and he groaned, causing her to laugh like the little fucking vixen she was. She moved her hips in slow, agonizing circles, until he grabbed her hips in his hands a little harder than he intended and she looked at him with raised eyebrows, fully aware of what she was doing.

"I am not going to be able to take that much longer," he warned her. She smiled, touched her mouth to his softly, gently, a kiss of acquiescence and affection. The kiss deepened, became more impassioned and she rolled off of him, to his side and he took the hint and pulled her underneath him. He slid his fingers down her sides, over her stomach and hips, down her thighs and back up, under the top of her panties. He looked at her, asking her one more time if she was okay. She lifted her hips and he got his answer.

Her underwear was on the floor within the moment, his followed immediately after.

He wanted to look at her, take in her whole body without clothes, the way he had pictured it a thousand times though he berated himself for it. But he settled for feeling it instead as he pressed his body against hers, from shoulder to hip. She arched her back, like she was trying to make him closer than he already was and he understood that feeling, needing to be closer.

"I want you right now," she said suddenly. Edward started to protest, he wanted to time to touch her, to taste her, to hear her cry out for him before actually making love to her but she raised her hips to his and looked at him with increased need. He slid his hand down between them and realized she was already so ready for him. It made him shiver to realize that it was for him, only for him. She was lying in this bed, naked, waiting, ready, for him. He was about to ask about protection when she told him to go into her nightstand drawer. There were a few condoms in the drawer. He immediately took one out and put it on. He took a deep, steadying breath before readjusting their position so he was more comfortably between her thighs.

She leaned up and kissed him again, that same gentle kind of kiss from a few moments before and he felt his himself start to tumble, right over the edge in love with her as he slid himself inside her. For a moment he couldn't move. She was like heaven, she felt better than anything else he had ever experienced in his entire life. He had to actively concentrate and bring himself back to a place where he could think, if only for a moment at a time.

It was Bella who spurred him on to movement. She lifted her hips just enough that he was pulled even deeper inside her. He moaned and immediately began rocking his hips with hers, finding a rhythm they were both comfortable with. Bella's eyes fluttered and then closed, her lips parted gently as he dipped his head down and licked down her neck, down her chest, his tongue laving over her perfect breasts. She cried out in pleasure and surprise and immediately wrapped her legs around his waist. He muttered a brief swear against her skin and picked up the pace as she began moving harder and faster against him.

Their hips moved in perfect time, and each time he pressed inside her he felt like he was going to fall over some precipice. He was trying to hold on for Bella, so she could be satisfied before he was. But the things she was doing, the way she was moving his hips against was making him insane.

"If you keep doing that I am not going to last much longer," he managed to say. She pressed her mouth to his and kept up her movements. He couldn't form words. He buried his face into her neck and she wrapped her arms around his back. Being so close to her, feeling every inch of her body against his as he pressed inside her, hearing her moaning, made him start to shake. He pressed his mouth against hers desperately, and before he could think of controlling himself, the sensation built to an unmanageable point and felt his whole body shake as he climaxed.

He moved to Bella's side as he came down from the euphoria. His hand covered her stomach as he felt every muscle in his body relax. Bella reached down and pulled the condom off to toss it in the trash on her side of the bed and then rolled right over and settled herself against Edward's side.

They had lain there, in comfortable quiet, for a long time, before Bella started talking to him, not about anything important, mostly inconsequential things. She started telling him stories about when she was in college or something about work and he just listened, just soaked up her voice and her life and committed everything to memory. He wanted to know her, wanted to hear her tell him everything about her, things that he didn't know. He knew what had happened to her, knew what was happening to her now, but he wanted to see beyond that, to who she was when she wasn't a victim.

Eventually though, her voice started to get slower, her words slurred together in incomprehensible jumbles and Edward just pulled her closer, listening as her words became slow steady breathing and she fell asleep, right there in his arms.

The morning had brought the complications of actually having to talk about it, but he wanted to talk about it, wanted to make her understand that it hadn't been sex for sex's sake. He had made love to her, Bella was the kind of woman you made love to, without question, because he wanted her, of course because he wanted her, but also because he liked her, he cared about her. From the very first moment he met her he had liked her, and that feeling had only grown, exponentially so, since then. He wanted to make her understand that even after the case ended, even after everything was settled, he wanted to see her, to be with her. The idea of not being able to do so made him ache from the inside out.

They had left things in an open ended way, but he knew that she understood, that what he had told her had made her understand that he was serious about wanting to be with her. And so with one last reluctant kiss he had been shooed away to work where he was trying to hide the obvious embarrassment at being called out, but also the very real euphoria that hadn't quite all drained away.

"Edward," Emmett said more quietly when Edward had sat down, "I told you to go tell the girl how you feel, not to bed her."

"Emmett…it wasn't like I planned it, okay?"

"So you did!"

"Shut the fuck up, comrade, it's no one's business," Edward warned. Emmett held up his hands in defeat, with a sheepish, yet somehow still mischievous look on his face.

"Can I tell you what I found out about our Detective James Alistair?" he inquired a moment later. Edward raised his eyebrows and nodded.

"Well, his jacket lists two separate complaints made against him that were both dropped, right? So, being the tenacious and skilled detective that I am, I decided to look into those complaints. They were both excessive force complaints, and both ended up being unsubstantiated. But I started thinking about it, and how is it that this guy, he kind of man who can wait thirteen years for a perfect opportunity to go after a woman would fly off the handle enough to actually merit an excessive force complaint?

"And for a while, it bugged me because it just didn't make sense. If he was really our guy, he would be cool as a motherfucking cucumber every minute of every day. That's the way these guys operate, very fucking calm, collected, almost too normal. But then it hit me, what cop, at least one with any real time on the job, has a perfect record? I've got complaints, so do you, shit, so does the captain. So I did some calling around, I found out how to get in contact with the guys who made the complaints. One of them bought the big one a few months ago, but the other one is alive and kicking and lives in Allston, so I say we drive out there and pay him a visit."

"That is the best thing you have said all morning," Edward replied and they got their jackets and headed off.

Later, when things were going crazy, when things were swirling around him, sirens and flashing lights and the kind of blind panic that only comes when you are protective of someone in danger, Edward would remember what Eric Yorkie had told him and Emmett when they went to talk to him at his place of employment.

Eric had been busted for a possession charge, and Detective Alistair was his arresting officer. Eric said he had known he was in trouble and hadn't bothered to struggle or try to deny it. He hadn't said a thing, in fact. He was taking advantage of his right to remain silent. But when Detective Alistair's partner went to the car to radio in the arrest things had changed dramatically. Without warning the detective began assaulting him, punched him, kicked him, basically beat the shit out of him for no reason at all. He hadn't put up a fight, hadn't mouthed off. But as soon as they were alone, the detective had gone ape shit on him and beaten him so badly he wasn't able to see out of one of his eyes for a week.

Edward wasn't much of a fan of drug dealers, but it had been four years since his arrest, and he seemed to have cleaned up his act since then. He and Emmett sat and listened to his story quietly, asking for clarification when they needed it.

"The scariest thing?" Eric said as they were leaving. "Was the way he acted while he did it. He didn't do it in a rage; he looked completely calm while he did it. I remember him wiping my blood off his hands onto my shirt with this serene look on his face. The guy had just given me the worst ass kicking of my life and he looked like he had just made pancakes or some shit."

Edward and Emmett didn't need to discuss it on the way back to the station house. Emmett had guessed that Detective Alistair had provoked the excessive force complaints because it was normal for a BPD cop, or any cop really, to have one or two of them. No one believed that you could keep your cool all the time, when someone was mouthing off, or fighting you too hard, sometimes you just snapped.

Unless you happened to a sociopath, and Edward was coming closer and closer to conclusively saying that James Alistair was conclusively exactly that kind of feeling-less monster.

When they returned to station house they parked the car in the spot it belonged in and went inside, still not speaking. When they got inside, however, there was something happening, and Edward could tell right away it wasn't right.

"What the fuck…Bella?" Edward muttered. He had been scanning the room, looking for someone who might be able to tell him what the hell was going on, when he saw Bella walking into the captain's office, her face a cold, pale white. His stomach roiled and without a second thought he handed his jacket to Emmett, who was more than willing to take it, and went after her.

He knocked on the captain's door a moment after it closed and announced himself. Within the second, the door was opened, and a uniformed officer stepped out and Edward stepped in. Bella looked in his direction and her face calmed a little. He went and sat in the other open chair in front of the captain's desk, careful not to be inappropriately close to Bella but still be close enough to her to give his support.

"Someone broke into Bella's apartment this morning after she left for work," the captain announced.

"Theft?" he asked, even though he knew it wasn't that. He knew what had happened, even before he was told.

"Someone came in and broke all my things. He shredded all my clothes, tore my bed apart, broke all my dishes, wrote…things all over my walls, he even tore up the toilet in my bathroom. That's how we found out about this, there was water leaking into the downstairs apartment. When they went up to see what the problem was that was when…they saw the damage and the super called the police," Bella said quietly. Her voice was flat, even; it did not wobble or whine. She was detaching, because she was afraid and because she didn't know what else to do.

"So what are we doing about this?" Edward asked the captain.

"You and Emmett are going over to her apartment to check this out. Forensics is already there photographing the scene, but they said they wouldn't take anything out until you had time to look it over. And Miss Swan is going to go stay at a hotel with a protective detail until we can figure out exactly what it is that happened."

Edward nodded.

It was clear after that that Edward was dismissed, so he took his cue and left the office, finding Emmett standing exactly where he had been when he left him.

"Someone―" Edward began.

"I know, a uniform just told me what happened. Are we supposed to be checking it out?"

"Yes, captain said to go over there before forensics takes it apart so we can get a look at things."

Emmett nodded. He handed Edward his jacket back and they walked out together, back to the car from whence they had so recently come. Emmett took the keys and started driving over to Bella's apartment building. Edward took his personal cell phone and found Bella's number.

Are you all right?

He sent the text message with more concern than could be conveyed through that medium, but it was all that was available to him. He couldn't call her while she was still in the station house without arousing some serious suspicion, and the last thing he needed right now was for his ethics to be questioned. He needed to do his job. He needed to keep her safe.

Shaken up, but not hurt. Tell me everything is going to be okay.

Edward read her message and had to take a deep breath and steady himself. He wanted nothing more than to wrap her up in his arms and tall her everything was going to be fine, but he couldn't do that now. It made him furious that his only way of comforting her right now was through a text message, but he would give her what she asked for, in any way he could.

Everything is going to be okay. I promise.

He sent the message and put his phone in his pocket as they neared her building. They were waved into one of the handicap spaces by a uniformed officer who was directing the other residents of the building. They ascended the few flights of stairs to her apartment and Edward felt dread building in his stomach. He crossed the threshold into her apartment, ducking under the police tape and almost threw up. He had kissed her in this hallway the night before, and now it was torn apart. All the pictures she had hung were smashed to the floor, glass covering the floor. He walked down the hall and found the kitchen. The food from her refrigerator was all over the floor, thrown against the walls. All her china was obliterated on the floor, save for the two mugs they had used that morning, which were sitting accusingly on the drying rack next to the sink.

Her bedroom, however, had gotten the worst of the destruction. Her closet door was torn off the hinges and every article of her clothing was lying in ribbons on the closet floor. The pictures on her bedroom walls were smashed just like the ones in the hall. The mirror on her bureau was shattered. Her sheets were torn from her bed and ripped apart. The bed itself looked like someone had taken a very large knife to it, ripping through the pillow top, ripping the inside of her mattress apart. He had slept there the night before. He had made love to Bella right there, held her in his arms. He inconspicuously moved around to the side of the bed and looked into the trash can. The condom they had used was still in it, along with its wrapper. They were going to have to take that into evidence.

Shit. Fuck.

Edward looked up from his silent contemplations and decided to read the words on the wall. Someone had taken a sharpie or some other large black permanent marker and written all over her walls.

The first word he read was 'whore'. He flinched at the thought of Bella reading what was on these walls. He kept reading, and as the words went—through her bedroom, down the hall, into the kitchen, back into the hall—the words detailed things he shouldn't have known about her. What she liked to wear to bed at night. How long it took her to shower every morning. Her favorite thing to cook. What she wore to the gym. Endless streams of information that he shouldn't have had, unless he had been stalking her pretty seriously for the past few years. He was trying to frighten her, and he had done it.

The further down the walls he got, the angrier the words got. They went from listing things about her to accusing her of being a whore, a bitch, a stupid cunt, the list went on. Eventually Edward got to the end, even though it made him sick to keep reading. The diatribe ended with "I'll be seeing you soon."

Edward nearly growled. Not if he could fucking help it.

When he and Emmett felt satisfied that they had seen everything and had gotten everything from the scene they could get they let forensics take over. They descended the stairs in the same silence they ascended them with.

"That was some heavy shit, partner," Emmett said when they got into the car. Edward didn't say anything, only nodded. He was trying to puzzle his way through how to stop this, how to get ahead of the curve and prevent anything else from happening.

"Edward?" Emmett's voice broke through the concentration. He looked up and Emmett's face was concerned.

"I don't meant to rub salt in a fresh wound, but that condom in the trash is going to be collected, and they are going to test it for DNA and I do believe you are in the system, just like the rest of us. They are going to find out you slept with her. When they do…you'll be pulled from the case at the least, suspended at the worst. If that happens…"

He stopped speaking. Edward understood what he was saying. He had about a week before the DNA match came up and everyone would know that he and Bella had slept together.

"So my options are what?" he asked.

"Either turn yourself in now, hope to God that the captain goes easy and you just get pulled from her case, or, we can be fucking superhero cops and solve this thing in a week before the results come back."

"That's it, huh?" Edward inquired. Emmett laughed.

"Yeah, so it would seem. And I don't know about you, but I really like the idea of being a superhero cop."

Edward managed a chuckle.

"Well I guess if my options are do nothing or be all John Wayne and save the day, I'll go with the latter."

"I like it."

"I think we should go over to the Vice unit; we are way fucking overdue for a conversation with Detective James Alistair"

Emmett put the car in drive and Edward tried to think about something other than how badly he wanted to be the shit out of the guy they were going to see. He couldn't be sure that he was the one, not yet, but even his suspicion made his hands itch to beat the motherfucker down. But he held it together, if only because he had promised Bella that he would always come back to her. He made her a promise, several promises, about how things were going to work out, and he had no intention of breaking them. He would make everything okay again for her, no matter what it took. Even if it put him in danger. Even if he had to take the fucker down himself.

Even if it killed him.