Hello faithful readers. I am so sorry to have kept you waiting so long. I've had the flue for the past few weeks, so it's been tough going for me. But I found time among all my make up work to write this because well, I love Copward as much you guys do, and I absolutely adore all you readers, so, here it is, the next chapter! I hope you enjoy :)

I.

Edward Cullen was an idiot. It wasn't as though they just told you where a witness under protective custody was being held. In fact, unless you were the captain of the division, the detectives working the case or one of the uniforms on the detail itself you weren't allowed to know, even if you asked. James could have asked anyone on the force and they wouldn't have told him, couldn't have tried to look into the records and would have been denied access. He was sure he could have found a way around it eventually. But Cullen, he made it so much easier. There was no lying to superiors, no having to sneak around, no stealing pass codes and risking his career and cover. All he had to do was follow Cullen and he would find her.

He saw them together, walking down the breezeway that connected the rooms of the cheap motel they had stuck Bella in. She looked sullen, wounded. He looked dangerously close to the same place, defeated. But they were together. He was closer to her than James had been in years and it made him furious. He clenched his hands into fists and began running back to his apartment. He should wait. He knew he should wait for a better time; the weekend would be better. But he couldn't stand it, not one more fucking second of seeing her walking around in the open. He also couldn't stand the knowledge that with her disheveled hair and slightly mussed clothing she had probably just gotten taken to bed again by the son of a bitch Cullen. The longer he left her alone, the more time they would have together and it made James' blood boil.

So he began making his way, sprinting across the city back to his place of residence where he kept the things he was going to need to take her in. A gun with a silencer for the uniforms in the unmarked car outside and for the uniform inside the room, chloroform for Bella so he could take her without her causing too much of a disturbance and calling attention to herself, the keys to the place he was going to take her. The location had been set up for a while now; he had prepared it weeks ago and had checked on it several times since. Each time was just like the time before—everything in place, nothing missing, no activity around the place that would make him think it was being watched.

He knew he was covered at the warehouse. When he got back to his apartment he gathered his things and double checked everything with the kind of methodical obsession that had kept him from ever getting caught. He took one last look at the Polaroid he kept on his refrigerator of Bella from when she was a child. It only strengthened his resolve.

He was taking that bitch tonight.

II.

After Edward left, Bella went back to her hotel room and turned on the television and pretended to watch it if only to distract her senses while her mind was reeling. How could he think it was a good idea to go after the psycho that was coming after her? To catch him was one thing; to lure him out on purpose was another thing completely. He wanted to goad a sociopath. That was like jumping shark infested waters during a feeding frenzy. You would have to be insane to think that was a good idea.

He's not insane she reminded herself he is just trying to keep you safe. It made her skin crawl to think of Edward anywhere near the killer, let alone trying to draw him out, even if it was to keep her safe. She knew he understood why it scared her so bad, the idea of him doing what he was about to do, but she also knew he was the most stubborn man she had ever met. If he had made up his mind, he wasn't going to change it, especially if he thought he was doing the right thing.

She would have thought his valiant efforts to keep her safe were sweet if they weren't so dangerous.

She had this awful feeling in the pit of her stomach that she might not ever see him again as he walked away from her, and she had been working ever since to make it go away. But the mindless television show wasn't distracting her well enough. She wished Edward had left the bottle of vodka behind with her. Likely he wanted it for himself, and she couldn't really blame him for that. It just wasn't as though she could go out and buy her own. She needed a stiff drink or something else to just make her think about something else for a little while. She was about to ask the officer in the room with her if she would mind going out for a quick liquor store run when there was a knock on the door.

"Must be my dinner," the officer said with a shrug. She rose from where she had been sitting at the little round table and went to the door.

"Identify yourself," she said.

"It's Officer Daniels, I have your dinner. Sorry it took so long, they messed something up and had to redo it," a voice answered. She asked for credentials and looked through the peep hole. Bella turned her attention from the door and back to the television, trying to concentrate on something else.

She heard the door open. She heard the officer start to speak. And then she heard two high pitched noises, quiet, like puffs of air. She turned around, curious and the officer that had been standing there a moment ago to get her dinner was on the floor, a bullet hole in her forehead. Bella's mouth fell open. She wanted to scream, but she didn't know how to make noise. Her brain kicked on an instant too late. She watched, passive, as the man holding the gun entered the room. He was tall, blond, very plain looking, just shy of being handsome. There was something strange and cold in his expression, and for a moment, Bella thought he was going to shoot her.

And then she understood.

And then she screamed.

She called out for help, but she had a feeling that the officers outside were already dead and there was nothing anyone could do for her. She just hoped to cause enough noise that someone came to check things out. Maybe if they realized she was gone soon enough they would be able to get find her before he had caused too much damage. Maybe she wouldn't be dead. She felt crippling nausea rip through her with a sudden burst of fear and she started to choke on her own screams as she practically fell off the bed she was on, trying to get away. There was a window in the bathroom she might be able to fit through if she could get there, and so she turned to run, to just get in the bathroom, get the door closed behind her and give her a moment to maneuver. But as soon as her back was turned there was an arm around her middle and a hand over her mouth and nose, a cloth between his skin and hers. She breathed in once and felt sick, twice and felt sleepy, thrice and she was asleep.

III.

Edward had fallen asleep at his kitchen table, his forehead against his arm, the bottle of vodka not far from him. He had powered through almost all of it, trying to figure out how he was going to lure Alistair into the open. He had almost gotten a handle on it, too, when he just couldn't take the mental strain anymore. He needed a few hours sleep before he got up again and finished puzzling this thing out. Then he would talk it over with Emmett. He had put his head down and felt like he had only been asleep for a minute when his phone started to go off. He almost let it go to voice mail, but decided it might be important and pulled himself out of sleep to answer it.

"Lo?" he mumbled into the phone. He rubbed his eyes to try and rid them of sleep as he shook the grogginess from his head.

"Edward…you need to come down to the motel right now," Emmett's voice said across the line. There was a kind of urgency his in voice that made every cell in Edward's body jump to life. He felt sick for no real reason. His hands started shaking.

"Emmett, is something wrong?" he asked slowly.

"Edward, fuck…she's gone, Edward. The unis in the car and in her room were all shot, double tapped, once in the chest, once in the head. There wasn't evidence of struggle so he probably drugged her, but you really should get down here. The faster you come check this out, the faster we are likely to find her."

Edward said something that sounded like an assertion of intent to do just that and then he put down the phone without bothering to end the call. He felt his hands trembling uncontrollably. He managed to stand up and make it to the sink before he started throwing up. Bella was gone. Not just gone, but taken. James had taken her. He had gotten to her even in protective custody. Edward had known he was going to do it, but he had left her behind, left her with people who didn't know what the fuck was going on because it was fucking protocol, procedure. He had left her and because he had left her she had gotten taken. She might as well have been alone.

He was sick for a few minutes before he got a handle on himself and shut down the part of himself that was having a massive attack of pity. It wasn't about him. It was about her. He needed to snap out of the fugue state of shock and horror and focus.

"Fucking focus," he shouted at himself. His empty apartment echoed the sound briefly. He turned on the sink, ducked his head under the water to get the taste of vomit out of his mouth, went to the table, got his wallet, his keys and his gun and was out the door without another thought.

The sidewalk beneath his feet felt good as he pounded the pavement. He was running. He could have taken a cab, taken the train, gone to the station and taken a patrol car, but he wanted to run. He needed to get the panic out of his blood. He didn't know any better way than to run it out. His keys jingled in his pocket every time his feet hit the ground. The weight of the gun on his belt reminded him what he was planning on doing with it when he found James with every downward tug it made.

He made it to the motel in ten minutes, winded, not any less scared, but tired enough that he didn't want to hurt someone anymore. As soon as the strange sadness had worn off, he had felt a surge of rage that he didn't know how to control. If there was a single hair on Bella's head displaced Edward was sure he was going to put James through more pain than any other living being had ever experienced, his own victims included.

When he got to the motel it was lit up with the flashing blue and red of a dozen patrol cars. He wanted to scream at them that shouldn't be here. Bella wasn't here anymore and they damn sure weren't going to find anything that Edward himself couldn't find. They should be out looking for her. They should be pounding the fucking pavement, just like he wanted to be, until they found something to help narrow down where he might have taken her. Hell, they could still be on their way there. It hadn't been that long since she was taken.

Edward flashed his badge at the uni at the barricade and fell into step with Emmett almost immediately.

"What have we got?" Edward asked. Emmett and he began climbing the stairs to the second level.

"Have a look for yourself."

Edward pushed past some of the other uniforms who were standing around interviewing some of the other guests at the motel or being completely useless and stood in the doorway. The officer that was supposed to be protecting her was lying on the floor, her blood a red halo around her head. She was shot once in the chest, once in the head. Edward glanced backward behind him at the door. There didn't seem to be any forced entry. He stepped back to look at it closer at the door and found nothing to suggest it had be kicked in or jammed open. Whoever had done this had been let in the room.

He turned from the door and looked further into the room. At the little round table there was a magazine, folded to a page and left sitting open, probably from the dead officer. Everything else looked mostly the same. The sheets on the bed looked a bit askew like Bella had slid off of it in a hurry. Other than that the only thing different was that the bathroom door was open. Edward could almost see it. Bella had watched in shock as the officer was killed. She had scampered off the bed, desperate to get into the bathroom to try and get out somehow, probably through the little window above the sink. But he had gotten to her before she could get the door shut.

The idea of James putting his hands on Bella made his skin break out in goose flesh. It made him want to throw up more. But he swallowed it down, for Bella. He knew if he was going to find her he was going to have to forget the personal and operate as best he could as a cop.

"Edward, there really isn't much more here for you to see, I just thought you would want to see the scene yourself. You are going to need to get into the fucker's head and start to figure out what the next step is," Emmett said quietly. Edward nodded, not looking at him yet. He was looking at the open bathroom door, the window over the sink. He was thinking about how he wished she had been just one second fast, or him one second slower.

"I'm done here," he told his partner. Emmett didn't say anything, just waved the unis and the forensics guys out of the way as they tried to get out the door. The men and women parted like the red sea. Edward had been very careful not to be overly affectionate with Bella in front of anyone, to not make it obvious his very real, very overwhelming passion for her, but there must have been something in his face and expression, because the room was bathed in careful quietness as he left it. He thought momentarily that maybe it was a bad thing that his distress was showing so readable on his face, but it occurred to him that it didn't matter. Nothing mattered—not what people thought, not this job, not his whole fucking career—none of it unless he could get her back.

When they got outside they walked over to the squad car Emmett had from the station and they sat inside it for one second. Edward closed his eyes and thought. If he were James, what would his next move be?

"James is methodical when it comes to the space he uses. If he took Bella tonight, we have to assume he already had somewhere picked out, somewhere probably already secured and prepared. He isn't new to this, he wouldn't be scrambling trying to get ready for her; he would have everything already set up before he snatched her," Edward said, eyes closed still.

"So we need to be searching abandoned buildings, warehouses, foreclosures, that kind of thing," Emmett said back.

"No, that will take too long. She could be dead by then. We need to narrow it down. How did he find the venue last time, it was somewhere he saw on his job, right?"

"Yeah, part of the beat he walked in Seattle."

Edward opened his eyes and looked at the roof of the car.

"He still works vice here, only as a detective. If he took a location from the beat he walked in Seattle, it is a reasonable assumption that he found a new location in the same way. So we should look into his last six months of cases and see if any of the locations of his latest drug busts fit the kind of description we would be looking for—abandoned, in an isolated part of town, not guarded by any sort of security features," Edward told him.

"That sounds like a good idea, comrade; my only problem is that we can't just go digging through a cop's cases without someone noticing. We need to take this to the higher ups, and if that blows up in our faces we will be major leagued fucked from here to Canada."

"We don't have time for that, Emmett!" Edward shouted, suddenly sitting up, becoming animated. "We don't have time to go through the proper fucking channels, to put in requests and file official documents. We don't have time. Every minute we sit here trying to figure this all out is another minute Bella is in danger. Every fucking second I am sitting here doing nothing is another second he could be hurting her." He stopped, choking on his own words. He looked at Emmett and felt his chest tighten unexpectedly. "He could be hurting her, Emmett," he whispered. Emmett said nothing.

"I can pull some strings. It's going to cost me a favor that I was saving for a rainy day, but if today isn't a right fucking downpour, I don't know what is," Emmett said back. He started the car and began driving. Edward was silently thankful. He wanted to say thank you, but he thought it he tried to speak again he might just burst into tears. Edward wasn't the kind of man to cry in front of his friends, his partner, or anyone else for that matter, but he couldn't stop the feeling in his stomach that it was somehow all his fault. He had left her and when he had, she had gotten taken. She might be being tortured that very second, and he wasn't there to help her, to stop her pain, to protect her like he promised he would. How many times had he told her he was going to make everything okay? How many times had he promised to keep her safe, no matter what?

There was only so many times he could promise something and fail, only so much stress and thinking about if she was hurting or scared without him that he could take before he was going to snap. He didn't want to lose it before he got to Bella. Once she was safe, once she was home, in his arms, he could let go of it all, but for the moment, he needed to hold on to the fear, the bittersweet taste of rage in the back of his mouth that he knew was just one wrong move away from exploding.

When they arrived at the Vice station house, Edward was confused, but he didn't ask any questions as he and Emmett got out of the car. They walked in silent lock step side by side up the front steps, through the door and to the receptionist. Emmett asked for someone Edward didn't know, and when she told them to go straight back to his office, Edward said nothing but followed behind. They weaved through a set of desks not unlike their own, to the back of the large open squad room to the office that sat unceremoniously, with its door open. Emmett walked in first and stayed by the door, closing it quickly behind him after Edward had entered. The man at the desk looked up and his eyes widened when he saw Emmett.

"Emmett, what can I do you for?" the man asked. He was an interesting looking man, not exactly good looking, but not exactly unattractive, and there was something in his eyes that made Edward uncomfortable. There was a calculating edge behind his friendly smile that made him look dangerous if you knew how to look.

"Felix, I have to cash in a favor," Emmett said, not bothering to smile.

"What kind of favor?" Felix inquired back.

"The kind that makes us even for October 2002," Emmett stated. Felix's eyes widened again but he nodded. He got up and closed the shades to the windows in his office and then sat back down.

"That's a big chip to cash in. What do you need?"

"Your detective, James Alistair, we need to take a look at his past six months worth of cases without the whole paperwork clusterfuck and proper channels bullshit."

Felix exhaled in a whistle.

"You could get a whole lot of people in trouble for this, me included," he warned.

"Your ass wouldn't even be here to get in trouble if it weren't for me. This isn't some fucking turf war or a vendetta. We have reason to believe that Alistair is involved in some really dirty shit and we need to figure out where he's holding the operation before some really terrible shit goes down."

"What kind of dirty shit? You think he's on the take or something?"

"I really don't have time to explain the whole thing to you, Felix. This isn't story time, its do what I ask you to do time, or else someone could get hurt."

Felix closed his eyes and bridged his fingers for a moment, thinking. He then got up, signaled for them to follow him and left through the side door to his office. Emmett and Edward walked behind him silently, down the hall, down a flight of stairs and then into a room full of filing cabinets.

"This cabinet," Felix said, tapping a large green metal cabinet, "is all of Detective Alistair's case files, they are filed chronologically, so it shouldn't be too hard to find what you're looking for. This is a huge breach in policy, Emmett; I could get some serious flack for this. We are even now."

Emmett thanked him and then Felix left and closed the door behind him, leaving Emmett and Edward alone.

"Do I want to know what happened in October of 2002?" Edward asked as Emmett opened the filing cabinet, revealing the manila folders within. He flipped through them, checking the dates. Eventually he found the cases that were six months ago and grabbed all of the cases from that point forward in his monstrous hand. He handed half to Edward and took the other half himself. They sat on the floor and started flipping through things.

"Felix and I used to both be in Vice, we were partners. We had been going after this drug ring, they dipped into all sorts of bad shit, human trafficking, coke, heroin, guns; you name it, they were in it. We got a good tip that they were moving a large stash through the city and we were given the address of one of the houses they were going to be stashing it and when. So of course we got the big guns together, planned a raid, the whole nine fucking yards. Only we get there, and there is nothing there. No one from the ring, not a single fucking speck of drugs, nothing. Of course Felix and I were pissed, but it only made us more determined.

"The way we figured it, they had a big stash coming in and wanted us distracted, so they had someone call in a fake tip to get us off track so they could move it without having to worry about us being on their asses. So we traced the call to a cell phone owned by one of the periphery members of the ring, just a small time numbers runner guy, no major play. We took him in, got some real intel, and decided to just go in Felix and I. It wasn't a stash house, it was just a place where some of the guys hung out, they usually had a good amount of drugs on them, maybe some underground sex trade workers in the basement. We figured we would scope it out. When we got there, there were six guys, all probably packing heat. So we radioed for some backup."

Emmett stopped for a minute and looked somewhere past Edward, like he was remembering something he didn't really want to remember. Edward was about to tell him he didn't have to keep telling him if he didn't want to, but Emmett resumed his story before Edward could speak.

"Before the backup got there we heard a woman scream from inside. We were real hero cops back then, you know, the kind who thing the vest makes you invincible and that doing the right thing is more important than continuing living. So we busted in there, no idea when the backup would be there. They started shooting, so we started shooting. I took out three of them. Two of them surrendered. The last of them had the woman we heard scream and was using her as a shield. He had a gun to her head and said that he would kill her if we didn't let him go. I was prepared to hunt his ass down wherever he went if he would let her go. She just kept saying 'mis niños, mis niños'. She was talking about her kids, Edward. She had kids. Felix wasn't having any of it though, he wasn't thinking. The adrenaline had gone to his head and he just wasn't looking at it clearly. He backed the guy into a corner and told him to give it up before he ended up like his dead friends. He must have heard the sirens because he started freaking out. I tried to calm him down. The last thing I wanted was some prick with a gun and a hostage losing his shit.

"The sound of him cocking that gun was loudest thing in that whole fucking house, even though everyone was yelling. When I heard a gun go off I thought he had shot the woman. But then I looked at Felix and I realized that even though he didn't have a clear shot, he had taken one anyway. The woman got clipped in the arm and the motherfucker holding on to her caught it in the stomach, which I've been told is one of the most painful places to be shot. He let go of her and by the time any of us moved the backup was there. The guy was moaning in pain on the floor, three other men were dead and two were in cuffs in the kitchen. And that woman…she got hit in the arm and it tore right through her brachial artery. She bled out before the paramedics even got there. None of us realized how serious it was until we saw she wasn't moving. She didn't do anything wrong, Edward. She was someone they had kidnapped for their sex trade. She had three kids, two boys and a girl. Without her they went into foster care. He didn't mean to but he killed an innocent woman. And I backed him up to the brass. I told them that he had a clean shot, but at the last minute the woman moved, obscuring the path. I lied because I wanted to protect my partner, because we had to stick together, because I knew he had just made a bad call and he hadn't meant for her to get hurt. I didn't realize that it was going to eat at me like it does. Her blood is on my hands, too."

Emmett stopped flipping through files and sighed. Edward didn't know what to say for a long moment. What did you say to a good cop who made one bad call? It was either screw over his partner who made a mistake, or tell the truth and get a reputation as being the kind of guy who rats out his partner. There was no good choice there. Edward didn't judge him for a second.

"That's one of the things they don't tell you about being a cop. Sometimes you don't get to be the good guy. Sometimes, you have to lie; sometimes you have to go against everything you think is right because you know that the truth won't matter as much as it should," Emmett said quietly. He looked at Edward, who simply gazed back at him and nodded. Emmett grinned half heartedly and then looked back down at his files.

They sat in silence for the most part, flipping through pages. Edward put aside files he thought might have something useful, and had a stack of six by the time he had gone through his entire half. He went and looked at them in more detail and took out his notepad to write things down. There was an abandoned warehouse by the pier, a condemned building right outside the city, and an abandoned depot near the River Way. He jotted those down, ignoring the others because they were either too populated or too well protected. Anything with security cameras was obviously off the list, as was anything where someone might hear Bella or accidentally come across them.

He saw Emmett was doing the same thing as he stacked the files back together in order. When Emmett was done they put the files back and discussed the locations they had flagged. Emmett had written down the address of an abandoned theatre in the theatre district, a stash house in Cambridge, and a couple closed down stores in some of the shadier parts of the city. They had seven locations to look into. Just the two of them, it wouldn't take too long to run down all the spots.

"Should we split up to check this out?" Edward asked, thinking only of how much faster it would be. But Emmett shook his head.

"If you think I am leaving you alone with that psycho for a second you are out of your mind. One of you will end up dead, and even though I really hope it would be him, I am not taking any chances. If he has hurt her, Edward, you know you won't be able to keep from going after him."

Edward felt that same swell of fury come up over him like a wave. The idea of her in pain was more than he could sanely bear. It made him itch to hurt someone. Emmett was right; it wouldn't be wise to find him when he was alone. He wouldn't be thinking of the smart thing, he would be thinking of how he could most hurt him.

"Besides," Emmett added with a grin, "you might need help getting rid of the body."

Edward's anger dissolved with laughter. Only Emmett could make him laugh in a situation like that. They left the station house and got into their car, figuring out the most expedient route to check out each of the locales. Edward looked out at the city as Emmett started the car.

Hang on, Bella, he thought, I'm coming.

I really loved developing Emmett's character in this chapter. He is such a good man, even something not so great was awesome to write. If you thought it was awesome, let me know!