Chapter Twelve: Puzzle

"From the witness statements, we're satisfied that you weren't to blame for the accident, but the victim of someone else driving without due care and attention. We have a licence plate and are in the process of contacting the driver. There is a case for them to answer."

"Thank you." I replied with relief, grateful to the Port Angeles Police Officer that I wouldn't be facing charges.

"This person was all over the road from Port Angeles and had come close to taking someone else out a few minutes earlier. We're lucky that the person following was sufficiently alarmed to have noted the licence plate well before the accident. The perpetrator didn't stick around to see what they'd done."

With the worry that I wouldn't be the one facing the charges gone, I relaxed and fell asleep on the sofa that afternoon. I woke later with my leg aching and a nagging sense that things were not right. I felt prickly, unsettled and had a headache that didn't lift regardless of dosing myself twice with pain relief. It was as if the atmosphere was pressing down on me. I checked my phone constantly, but there was never anything from Daniel. Plenty of messages from other people wishing me a speedy recovery, but not the message I really wanted. In a move that would no doubt set back my recovery by weeks, Mom called; desperate to come up and care for me. I managed to talk her out of it, mainly by turning the conversation to Sam. All I did was say his name and off she went. I flicked idly through a magazine as she rattled on about how incredible he was, thankfully zoning back in for the details about her wedding in August. I still wasn't sure about all this.

"Mom, you've known him what, like, seven months? Isn't it a bit soon to be thinking of marrying the guy?"

"Possibly, but at my age you have to grab the chance while you can."

"You're hardly at death's door. I think you should wait a while."

"Isn't this a conversation I should be having with you?"

"I'm not the one getting married."

"How are things with you and Mike? Is he taking care of your every need?" There was no escaping the insinuation there.

"He does have a job Mom."

"I'm wondering if we shouldn't fix a double wedding?"

I scoffed. "Er.. No."

"So he's not 'the one'?"

"No he's not the one."

"What makes you so sure?"

I didn't have an answer to that. Well I did, but I wasn't admitting to it. Mike was not 'the one' as long as there was a chance that Daniel was still in this world. A sudden pang of pain gripped my heart. Where was he?

"Mom, it's early days with Mike and I'm not looking for anything serious right now. I still have Scott to get out of my system."

"I'm so glad he didn't turn out to be the one. Although, I could've saved you a lot of time and trouble there."

"So you told me in Laguna Beach, repeatedly."

She laughed. "Glad to see you finally took my advice. Now; venues. I'm thinking the Pines Hotel, what do you think?" And with that she was off again. I smiled. I was glad she was happy, but regardless of that, seven months, in my opinion, was far too soon.

The days passed with glacial slowness. During the evening Mike came and ate with me, his Mom helpfully having made two portions of everything. Mike was everything a woman needed when she was recovering from a broken leg; practical, considerate and generous with his time. During the day, Heather had taken it upon herself to help me to get washed, after she guessed that I hadn't asked anybody to help. During the afternoon Ness came over bringing news from school. Mike worked there but he didn't have a clue what went on, guys didn't. Ness did and she kept me up to date with who was dating whom and what Dan had been doing this week to sail even closer to exclusion. I could see how much it hurt her to watch her friend descend into a spiral of drink, the suspicion of drugs and behaviour that wasn't the Dan Taylor either of us knew. He'd retreated from Ness and everyone else for that matter.

"He does the absolute minimum to keep in school." She said sadly, nursing a big cup of coffee.

"And he doesn't talk to you anymore?"

She shook her head. "He finds it hard to be around me. I remind him too much of things that hurt."

"Twins are connected in ways we can only guess at."

"Hmm…" She said. She didn't look convinced and I took a guess at the real reason he was hurting.

"And there was this girl?" Ness's eyes flew up and fixed me with a stare that almost dazzled me.

"How did you know about that?" She breathed.

"He told me."

"He told you? All of it?"

"That he was married, or had been married, yes."

"Did he tell you to whom?" Ness's eyes were still wide.

"No. From your expression I'm guessing that it's a really big secret."

"Yes and you mustn't tell anybody."

"I won't. All I want to do is be able to understand so I can help him. So it's this girl that's making him sad?"

"Yes. The Jess thing and her, it all collided in one big mess. Jess's death he can cope with. Dead is dead, they're not coming back. The other thing he can't and he won't let any of us near him to help. She won't let any of us talk to her about it either."

"You know her?" Ness nodded. "Is she from Forks?"

"No, she's from out of town. She's overseas now, in Europe. He can't understand why she left and to be honest, neither can I. What happened could've been sorted in time or would have gotten easier. But for some reason, she got scared and left and he just feels abandoned." I had an indication of how Dan felt. "But please don't say anything at all and certainly not to his parents."

"I give you my word, I won't."

"I'm stunned that he told you. I'm even more stunned that I didn't know he'd told you. That worries me. I need to know if he's casually dropped it into conversations with other people, too."

I smiled "You sound like he's given away state secrets."

Her eyes were fierce. "When it comes to her, he has. Did he tell you her name?"

"No."

"Good. If someone comes asking, the less you know the better."

Oh, not more secrets. This conversation hadn't taken the turn I was expecting. "Has he gotten mixed up in something dangerous?"

Ness shook her head. "I can't talk about it, I've only said this much because it's you…"

"That's exactly what Dan said." I interjected. "'Only because it's you'. What does that mean? Why am I so special?"

Ness wrinkled her nose. "Shit." She said under her breath.

Just then my phone rang, I looked at it, it was Daniel calling.

"I need to take this!" I panicked. "I need some…um…"

"Privacy? I'll go." She turned on her heels and walked out, as I pressed the green button on my phone.

"Hello?"

"Hi." Said a voice that was like water in the desert. "Sorry, stuff happened. And, from what I hear, it did to you too. Can I come over?"

Fifteen minutes later he was in my house. His car was parked a short distance away and he'd picked his way through the forest 'til he'd found the back of my house. He hopped the fence and came in through the back door.

"It's safer if my car isn't here." He said. "I'm sorry, I had to go to ground, things flared up. We're drafting in specialist help"

"From Langley?" I thought of the CIA headquarters.

"From Italy; he's a specialist tracker. Anyway, how are you? Your face looks so bruised."

"It looks worse than it is and it's much better now. My ribs are the worst. Broken ribs and a cough are not a good combination."

"I can imagine. And your leg?"

"Healing nicely, although it'll be another month before I get the cast off. So, where've you been?"

I saw that I wasn't going to get an answer to that and he slowly shook his head. "Sorry, yet more stuff I can't tell you." This was getting annoying. His face looked even sadder as he continued. "Look, they're not going to find that vehicle or the driver involved in your accident. It was part of whatever this thing is with us."

"How do you know?"

"We can run licence plate searches too. It's a dead end."

"Are you saying that I was deliberately run off the road? Isn't there something your people can do to keep me safe?" I was horrified.

"We're doing what we can, but I can't give you a bodyguard, that would be too noticeable. This house and your class are protected, more than that we can't do without arousing suspicion."

"My house is protected?" I started looking around. "I know it's shielded, but there's more?"

"It's under surveillance now and it's worrying that you're very much a creature of habit. You need to vary your routine more. So does Mike. Every day at four thirty he arrives and on the dot of nine thirty he leaves. Tell him to mix it up a little."

"He's going to ask why."

"Make something up."

"I'm not in the habit of lying." Or I hadn't been until Daniel came into my life, now I found myself doing a surprising amount of it. That and just not telling people the whole story. But Daniel's people knew my movements. "Are we being watched now?"

"Not right now, because I'm here. But we are shielded."

"So this shield, would it be causing me headaches?"

Daniel looked perplexed. "I don't know. I'll have to ask. It's not a side effect we know about."

I sighed and in it there was a mixture of relief, that Daniel wasn't dead or gone, but also of foreboding. I was putting myself through a lot for not a great amount of return. I hoped he turned out to be worth it. I wouldn't be the first woman to fall under the spell of a guy who you thought was the cat's pyjamas; but in time turned out to be something the cat dragged in. But there's always something about one man, that's like a fish hook getting under your skin. You can wriggle free all you want; but with every movement the fish hook works its way deeper in. I'd never been like this about a guy, not even with Scott. I'd had plenty of boyfriends in High School and in those first couple of years in College, before Scott came along. But I'd never been as totally absorbed by a man as I was by Daniel. Absorbed was a polite way of saying completely obsessed. I may be a professional woman on the outside, but there was hideous amount of teen-like stuff going on in my head right now. This thing, of him being unable to be intimate with me? In my head I'd fixed that already, with nothing more than a practical dose of TLC. Of course it had taken time – an evening – but by the end of it he was miraculously cured and… ahem… expressing his gratitude. I'll interject the naughty smile there. I was so glad nobody could see my thoughts under this shield.

"What's so funny?" He smiled.

Shit. "Oh um… Nothing."

"That's quite a face for nothing, you're going pink." Daniel crossed to the other side of the room and picked up a magazine,; one that Mike had bought me and which indicated his complete lack of knowledge of what I would be interested in. "Cosmo?"

I rolled my eyes. "Mike."

"Are you having trouble keeping him satisfied in bed?" Daniel smirked.

"I'm having trouble being with him at all." I replied, all trace of my slightly aroused state now having vanished.

"Stay with him."

"I don't want to be with him. If you want me so much, why are you insisting that I stay with him? What's wrong with me being single? Do you have another woman somewhere, just in case it doesn't work out with me?"

Daniel dropped the magazine back on to the pile. "I'm just thinking of you."

"What? You're intentionally making me live with emotional schizophrenia? Why?"

"I told you." He said quietly. "If I go you'll need somebody."

I scoffed. "What? You think I'm going to fall apart if you go? Er…Hello? Gloria Gaynor sings the anthem to that crock of shit." I took a breath and calmed myself. I wasn't doing myself any favours by getting agitated. I looked at him, taking in his perfect face and what I'm sure was a perfect body underneath his clothes. I fixed him with a steady gaze. "Do you really want me?"

"Yes."

"How do you feel about me spending time with Mike?"

"Not happy, in more ways than one."

"Name them."

He walked to the window and looked out. "He can conduct his life in public with you. He gets to see you whenever he wants. He can hold you in his arms, take you to his bed and as much as I want to do those things, there are times, like now, when I struggle to be in the same room as you."

"We've shared a bed."

"And I hold my breath almost the whole time."

I shook my head, unable to believe what emotional damage had been wrought on him. "Are you really that emotionally screwed from what happened to you?"

He sighed. "It's a lot of things. Like I said, I'm a work in progress. I only hope that you won't decide I'm too much to take on." He scraped his hand through his hair and turned back to face me. "There have to be fundamentals in any relationship but I can only tell you a little, a lot of this is going to be down to you. I can only come so far and it will ultimately be your choice whether you discover the rest and step over the line into my world. The thing is, so much has to remain unsaid until you make that decision. So, knowing the little that you do, the key is do you trust me?" He was the one with the rock steady eyes now. Eyes that sent mixed messages; saying 'run to me' and 'run away' at the same time. That was it. Did I want him enough and was I brave enough to cross this line that he'd mentioned?

"Will crossing the line be dangerous?"

"It will be a different kind of danger, but you will be much better protected."

"So, if I decide to cross the line, you can tell me everything about yourself?"

"Yes. There will be no secrets then. But you're a long way from it and you can't decide here and now, you don't know enough about me to make a decision."

"So tell me, what do I need to know?"

He smiled and shook his head. "I can't tell you. You have to discover it for yourself."

"You're not making this easy."

"It's a simple case of join the dots. Everything you need to know to make your decision is out there. But you're the one that has to piece it together and decide - when you see the picture - whether it's something you want to take further."

"You're a puzzle to solve?"

"If you want to look at it like that, yes."

"And the bad guys are out to keep me from putting the pieces together?"

He looked at his watch and flashed me a smile to die for. "Who says they're the bad guys? Sorry, but I have to go."

"Oh nice!" I grumbled. "Leave me with that thought, why don't you?"

He stood in the living room doorway and turned back to me. "You're intelligent, you can and will piece together the information, it's in your nature. But I don't know what you're going to do with it. Once you discover the picture, you'll realise that to cross the line means so much more than deciding if you will accept me for what I am. But it's entirely your call. As much as I hope that you will, I have to respect that it could be entirely likely that you'll say no." And off he went. He was right; it was in my nature to piece together the information. How convenient that I had enforced time off work and what better way to spend it, by piecing together the puzzle of Daniel Mitchell.