Oh yeah, it's true, I did get kicked off my 'Zosie' username for 'plagerizing' my own story, but I knew it was bad to have it up on 2 users at once so whatever. I never did get put up story number 50 there. I'll put it here instead. Bad Kismetian/Zosie, whatever. Now I'm Elle.

It's Murder

Chapter 9

BPOV

"What happened?" I demanded as I tore into Marcus' office. Unfortunately, our deception had made him suspicious, and suddenly I was doing very safe and menial tasks until he convinced himself I wasn't pregnant. I guess he figured there was no other reason I would have suddenly become engaged to some faceless stranger that nobody here had ever seen me with or heard me talk about.

I'd been returning to the building after being out buying Marcus his special coffee from the shop down the corner when I saw the commotion. Something had gone down, and Edward had been out alone. I just knew he was the victim.

"He's okay, the bullet exited the wound cleanly and doesn't seem to have hit anything too important," my Boss assured me.

"Edward's been shot," I cried in disbelief. "I have to go to him. Where is he?"

"He's in the hospital. Actually it's his leg that is necessitating he be kept in, not the bullet wound."

"What happened to his leg?" I screamed.

"After he got shot, he sort of twisted it as he went down. Snapped the bone like a twig."

I shuddered at the image.

"I thought you said this was a routine check and he wouldn't need the backup of a partner."

"Bella, it seemed like that. We just needed a couple of things signed by the witness and we had no idea she was involved in anything illegal."

He took my arm protectively as we hurried down to the underground carpark.

"What exactly happened?" I asked more quietly. My heart was thumping in my chest and I refused to entertain any thoughts of the few times we'd gotten someone with seemingly minor injuries to an ER only to have them collapse and die because of some further, non obvious problem.

"Edward rang her doorbell and her tweaker boyfriend mistook him for the Drug Squad and shot through the door. He stepped back from the force of the blow and fell down a couple of steps and twisted his leg.

A passerby called 911 before he hit the ground, but the ambo's had to wait for the actual Drug Squad to secure the scene before they could get to him. Honestly, Bella, his condition is stable. He'll be out of action for a while but I'm sure we can find him a nice safe desk to pilot until he recovers."

"I don't want another partner, so leave me on coffee fetching duty," I answered back. Suddenly I was glad I'd been taken off active duty.

"Actually, I have a proposition for you but first I want the truth," Marcus stated.

"And what truth would that be, Marcus? If you have something to ask, say it out loud.".

"Actually, what I meant was, are you pregnant or are you available for active duty? I have an assignment for you but there's no way you are taking it if you do indeed have a passenger on board."

Marcus would never openly defy my right to work at my usual job while pregnant but there's no way he'd allow me to be in any sort of danger either. I'd seen it before when we had other females on the squad. They announced their happy news and suddenly Marcus needed old records researched, and their former partners were assigned 'temporary' replacements until the woman in question waddled off on Maternity Leave. Apparently having a baby affected your intelligence so he had to be the one deciding what you could and could not do.

"You know me better than that. I never thought I'd ever be wearing a ring on my finger, that's a big enough commitment for me for the next five years. I'm hardly going to charge into motherhood."

"Good. It may be nothing, but we have lost contact with one of our undercover people. If he fails to make contact in the next week or so, I've been asked to provide someone to go in and just observe from a distance and see if he's okay and just breaking off the connection for safety's sake. As you know, sometimes it's just too risky to call in. Maybe he has a flatmate and can't find time to be alone. It could be as simple as that. I'm not asking you to go in guns blazing and rescue him. He may not even need rescuing."

"It's Riley, isn't it?" I asked.

"It is. I'm only asking you because I'm sure whatever he may look like now, you will still recognise him. We don't have the luxury of any recent photographs. The old ones of him looking like a banker are not going to resemble him after all this time."

"Marcus, for God's sake, this is hardly the time. Edward's been shot. There's no way I'm going anywhere. I need to know he is in fact okay, no matter what you have told me. I'm taking a week off, Edward will need me by his side and believe me, if I'm forced to go to work, I will be useless to you. I'll be on my phone all day talking to him."

"So concerned for your work partner. What's your fiancé going to think about this?"

"Edward is my only concern at the moment."

"Speaking of which, how can I get in contact with his wife? He hasn't updated his personnel file details. You are still his emergency contact."

"She's overseas. Australia or somewhere just as remote. I'll contact her," I babbled, almost confusing myself. Edward had not warned me about his mythical wife before he announced her existence at work.

"You did say he's not in a serious condition, right? Nothing she would have to fly back for?"

"No, Bella, he is fine. I guess you will do as his stand-in wife, you have always played that role anyway. To be honest, I thought you two were engaged. It was a shock to me that you both had other partners. I hope you know what you are doing. Your connection with him seems a lot more real than the one between you and Riley Biers."

"Silly me, thinking what Riley and I shared was real. It certainly seemed real for the three years we were together. I do get your point though. Edward's different. He's important to me. He's special."

"Then what the fuck are you two doing marrying other people? If you ask me, this is a shit storm waiting to happen. He will never stand by and watch you walk down the aisle to someone else. I imagine you were not invited to his wedding. That would have been dangerous. I can imagine you tackling the blushing bride as she walked towards him. What's she like, this Marie?"

"She's the luckiest girl in the world and doesn't deserve him," I said shortly, ending the conversation.

I jumped from the car as Marcus pulled into the parking lot, and ran for the front door of the tall white building, not believing for one minute that Edward as as stable and relatively unhurt as our Boss made out. Visions crowded inside my head of him barely clinging to life. Of me, being left alone yet again.

I barely noticed the others in his room as I frantically found his door, and headed for the figure propped up in the bed, his leg raised in some sort of traction sling. At first I fought against the arms that suddenly surrounded me, keeping me from the man whose arms I needed to be inside.

"Let her go, Emmett," Edward said, noticing my distress at being kept from him.

"I was just thinking seeing you are an old married man and all, and the fact your Boss is walking towards this room , that maybe you two would want time to think about acting appropriately. You are merely co-workers after all," he reminded us.

I pushed past him; at this particular moment in time the charade was meaningless.

"Okay, then I guess I go head off Marcus and tell him you are otherwise occupied," Emmett said with a wink, placing the 'Treatment in Progress, Do Not Enter' sign on the door before closing it behind him as I threw myself into Edward's waiting arms.

"God, Edward, are you okay? Really? They checked everything? You didn't hit your head when you fell? Did they do a full body imaging?"

"Don't fuss, I'm fine. I'll be sprung in a couple of days," he assured me, kissing my lips hungrily.

My heartbeat slowed back toward a more normal range as I saw for myself that he was fine. As fine as he could be in the circumstances, anyway.

When he pulled away, his face was a mass of expressions. To my shock, he looked surprised at my reaction to his injuries, as if he really had not believed how completely I loved him before this moment. However, he also looked pleased as well. That he mattered so very much to me was gratifying to him.

Also, he had been as anxious as I had, for me to be there.

"What? I already admitted I love you more than my own life, why so shocked?" I stuttered as his hands wove through my hair.

"I guess I'm surprised. You keep telling me I'm moving too fast but the way you looked running into this room, I believe had Emmett been a preacher or a JP, you'd be agreeing to marry me right now."

"I feared you were more badly injured than Marcus let on. Edward, you could have been killed. I can't believe this happened. I was so scared I'd lost you forever. "

"And that would have really devastated you? Nice to know," he smirked.

"Don't joke or make light of this. I suddenly know for sure that you are the only thing that matters. If you want to come clean and announce we are together, go ahead. I don't care any more. I'll transfer to whatever department will take me. The job is nothing compared to us being together."

"Really, Bella? This is a little unexpected. Are you sure this is what you want? You aren't just overreacting because I got shot?"

"You have epiphanies, why can't I have them too? Suddenly everything is absolutely clear to me. I would not, could not, exist in a world without you. It's just the truth."

He cradled my face in his hands and looked deeply into my eyes, seeing the truth there.

"Bella, I would never leave you."

He brushed the tears from my cheeks and kissed my forehead softly.

"I could no more live without you than it appears you could survive without me. That's epic news. It makes the whole getting shot thing worthwhile."

"But I already admitted I love you," I replied, confused.

"I guess I had my doubts about how much, but not any more."

"I'm sorry you ever doubted me. It makes sense, though. I guess I've always hidden how deeply I love you, even from myself."

I have never felt as vulnerable before, than in that moment. Edward held all the power. He could make me the happiest woman on the planet or kill me by walking away. Like Riley had, or Renee before him. Their going had never made me feel like this, though. Like life was completely meaningless without them. Sure, I'd grieved for them both but if I'd lost Edward today, my devastation would have been absolute. There would have been no coming back. No making a new life afterwards. I knew this as surely as I knew my own name.

I sat up and faced him, and he saw the truth as clearly as I did.

"I will l do all I can to make sure nothing ever takes me away from you," he promised.

But even he had no control over that. A thirteen cent bullet had almost taken him from me today and it could happen again, at any time. Especially if we stayed in this career.

This lousy, stinking career that used to be all I cared about. Now it had become my enemy, instead of my salvation. Once it had saved me, now it seemed like the biggest threat to our future, a bigger threat than even my earlier doubts and hesitations to let Edward inside my heart in the way he wanted. I had been kidding myself. He was my everything. My career was meaningless if I lost him.

It would not keep me warm at night if it tore Edward away from me.

"I think I want to quit. I wonder if that library still needs an assistant," I voiced out loud.

"Bella, don't rush out and do something reckless because of this little incident," Edward said warningly. "Give yourself time to calm down and keep this in perspective. You loved your career before this happened, and you will love it again."

"No, Edward, it's different now. It could take you from me and steal away our future. I want us both to do something safer."

"Safer means boring," he replied.

" I can handle boring, if boring is what it takes to keep you alive and at my side."

A knock sounded at the door and I reluctantly stood up and sat down in the visitor's chair, allowing Edward to decide what he said, if anything, to Marcus. I would go ahead and keep to our cover story if that was what he chose, or 'come out of the closet 'if he preferred. I no longer cared who knew what.

"Edward, you're alive! Still in the land of the living, then," Marcus said, holding out his hand to my partner as he entered the room and walked towards the bed.

Edward grinned and shook his hand as Emmett appeared at my side.

"Come grab a coffee with me, Bellarina. The Boss Man wants to discuss some heavy stuff with my bro, and we need to catch up."

Yeah, because it had been so long since we chatted. A matter of days, in actual fact, but I complied and left with him to give Edward privacy to make up his own mind of where we went from here.

We went the long route, on our way to the snack bar, and that meant we passed the Nursery viewing window. Emmett stopped and grinned at the babies on the other side of the glass, tapping his fingers against it to attract their attention. It surprised me, to see him so fascinated.

"Look at that cool little dude. He looks tough, right?"

"He's a newborn. I don't think tough comes into it. He looks tiny and vulnerable to me," I answered.

"No, Bella, he's tough. He survived the hazardous journey into this world and I overheard the nurses talking about him. His father died months ago. He's the Man Of The House already. He has a Mom to look after."

"You have that around the wrong way, Emmett. Surely she is here to look after him."

"But he is all she has left of her husband, Bella. This little guy is what is keeping her going. They were soulmates, apparently. Blissfully in love and then Daddy gets himself killed by a drunk driver and if not for him; if not for this little baby boy, Mommy would have jumped off a cliff or something. But she knew he was growing inside her, and would be a part she got to keep of her man. She stayed alive for this child, because he is also the child of the only man she has ever loved."

I stepped closer and looked at the baby with greater interest now.

If the unspeakable had happened today, I had no doubt I would have been tottering on a cliff edge about now. But if I had Edward's child waiting for me at home, I would not have even considered ending myself. Not while that child lived and breathed, and kept apart of Edward here alive.

I finally got it. Why people had kids. Because kids were part of the person they loved.

I want small babes with copper hued hair and green eyes and long piano player fingers.

I held my hand up against the glass and smiled at the tiny wrinkled face. He had saved a life by just existing.

"I want Edward's babies," I said without censoring.

"Hmm, well that would be tricky with him 'married to another woman' and all," Emmett laughed. "You two are so pathetic. Just stand up and admit you love one another and let the cards fall however they will. It feels like High School, all this pretending. Just tell Marcus you want your man and your career and if he boots one of you out, live with it. All this subterfuge is just drama class bullshit."

"You are so right, Emmett. When did you become the wise one?" I chuckled.

We sat across the table from one another and held the hot paper cups of coffee in our hands and grinned.

"So, you gonna grow up and come clean to Marcus, then?" he asked.

"If you grow up and start actually dating women and ask them their names before you bed them," I replied. I didn't really have any great objections to how he lived, just an underlying desire for him to discover how much better his life could be if he searched for a connection that was more than just physical.

"I've spent years avoiding the same things you are avoiding and it's really pointless in the long run. Edward is all I care about and if I'd lost him today, there would be no meaning in my life now. Even if we hadn't gotten together, his death would still have shattered me in a way that would have meant I would have nothing to live for any more."

"We all knew you two knuckle-heads loved one another all these years, it beats me how you two had no idea."

"I can't explain it, Emmett. I guess there truly are none so blind as those who will not see. He's always been my best friend, and I've always loved him. But now it's like my blinkers have been taken away and I can see the whole Edward for the first time. He's more than a pretty face and a warm body in my bed. He's everything I never knew I wanted. I'm not sure how we do this but I just want to go home to Forks and build a picket fence and fill our house with small Edward babies."

"I think he wants the same thing. He's just nervous to admit it, in case he scares you away. You being the career woman and all."

"Not any more. I want him, now, today. I know Edward thinks this is just an overreaction but everything's changed. Even if in years to come I grow to regret chucking my job in, I know I can live with that a lot easier than making a far bigger mistake and losing Edward. As long as I have him, whatever else I have will be enough."

Emmett grinned and put his hand over mine as I lay it on the tabletop.

"You two are so lucky. I'm glad you finally get that. True love is a rare and beautiful thing. Even I know that. Nobody knows me, Bella, the real me. They all see the playboy but there's more to me. It's not that I'm not looking for a connection, you know. I've been searching for my special girl for a long time, and it seems like maybe she doesn't exist. I'm not saying I'm not happy playing the field, but I know it's not real, Bella. I know it's just a substitute for a meaningful life. I want kids. I want a wife and a family, too. I want someone to pull an 'Alice' out of their hat like you did for Jasper. Come on, out of all your friends are you sure there isn't one with my name on her?"

"I don't have a whole lot of friends, actually. I wish I did, for you."

I truly did.

xxxx

Marcus had gone when we got back to the room and Emmett left us alone to talk. I tossed him my keys and told him to make himself comfortable in Jasper's supposed bedroom and just to move whatever the man had left in there into Alice's room once and for all. Even if they came back tonight, Jaz had no use for his own bedroom.

Edward seemed quiet, like he was mulling things over his mind, so I simply lay up beside him and shared body heat as his hands entwined with mine.

Finally, he spoke.

"Marcus told me about the assignment."

For a few minutes I was confused. What assignment? Oh, the Riley thing.

"Someone else can do it. I want to be here by your side, not off searching for a man who probably doesn't even want to be found. Riley can look after himself. I suspect the real reason he has broken off contact is because he likes the life he has now and never wants to return,."

"But we need to know for sure."

"Whatever. I'm sure Rose knows where he is. She's his go between."

"I don't know her. I guess she was undercover before I started in the Squad."

"She's a tough chick. I can't work out why Marcus doesn't ask her to scout around and find Riley. They keep in touch each month or so, just so they know one another is okay."

"Marcus told me they've lost contact with her as well. They need someone new to go find them both. Do you think Rose and Riley could be together?"

"Not in the way you mean," I replied confidently. Rose had a very definite type and Riley ticked none of her boxes at all. She liked them very tall and well muscled and happy. Good sense of humour and relaxed personality traits as well as a free thinking mind and no moral code at all were what my dear friend Rose liked. She was not about to hitch her cart to someone like Riley, who wanted a conventional wife and 2.5 kids. Rose was a million miles behind even where I had been when it came to domestic bliss. But then, if falling in love with Edward could change me so radically and even make me want to claw this plastic ovulation stopper from my arm so he could begin a baby inside me, how could I predict how much Rose could change when she met her One?

Besides, Riley had this hang up about numbers and Rose's number would cause his brain to explode. He had told me he could never consider dating a girl who couldn't count her partners on one hand, and even an octopus had too few hands to count up the men who had visited Rose's bed.

She would never apologize for her sexual 'indiscretions' to any man. He had to have the nads to accept her for what she was and not expect her to knock a nought off her number to make it acceptable and respectable.

Aside from this, she also had no interest in any man she had to teach the finer points of fucking to. No, Rose liked experts who had been around and perfected their craft before they graced her boudoir. I missed her. It had been a long time between girls nights out with Alice and Rose.

Shit. By the time she comes back to the real world,I'll probably be tied down with a husband and dare I think it,...baby.

I wanted a couple of days to keep my epiphany to myself, to be very sure I had permanently changed and now wanted what Edward wanted, before admitting this to him. The tiny thought that maybe he was right and this was just the shock talking forced me to keep my news to myself until I rethought it through long enough to be truly sure. I wanted to present him with the new facts with one hundred percent knowledge that we were indeed on the same page before getting his hopes up.

I loved him completely and utterly and I know that won't change but how could I have gone from fearing and not liking babies, to being desperate to have one just like that? I needed to talk to Alice before formally introducing Edward to the new Bella Swan.

I needed to know this New truth was the permanent truth.

I had very few doubts and my whole body and mind felt lighter, and buzzed with anticipation about how happy my Edward would be when I told him.

"I want you to take the assignment," Edward stated.

I looked at him in surprise.

"I was thinking of quitting, actually," I began, forced to show my hand already.

"Good. And I agree. This could have ended badly. We need to step back and decide what is the most important to us both, as a couple. Maybe ask to be transferred to a squad where getting shot at is a lot more unlikely. But I think you need to face Riley and talk to him and be absolutely sure it's me you want in your future, Love. Hopefully just seeing him will give you that answer, and you'll come back and be completely mine from here on. But if you are left with doubts, then we can at least sit down and talk about what we do next."

"Edward, I had forgotten he existed. Honestly, there are no doubts in my mind when it comes to choosing between you and him. He's changed to someone who was part of my past and nothing more. I wish I could convince you of that."

"You can. Take the assignment, see him, talk to him, and come home to me and serve me up another spoonful of broccoli."

Oh, I would be doing better than that. I'd be serving him up a whole plateful.

I need him to know I want the real engagement but even more, I want the wedding and the baby. I want it all.

"I truly don't need to see Riley to be sure of how I feel about you. Comparing how I felt for him to how I feel for you now...he was a single raindrop and you are the ocean."

"Do this for me then. Marcus assures me this is a completely safe assignment and the sooner you go, the sooner you will be back in my arms."

"You are not letting go of this, are you?" I grumbled.

"Bella, I'm stuck here useless in this bed for weeks yet. Go. Make this time count for something. Once I have recovered I can assure you even a cast is not going to keep me from loving you all night long, every night. Go now, while I'm tethered up and can't play doctor and nurses with you."

"I guess it could be my very last assignment. I have to work out my notice anyway, but nothing will stop me from resigning today."

"I wouldn't dream of stopping you. I want you working somewhere safer. Just do this one thing and when you come back, the rest of our life can begin. And it will be the beginning of forever, my Love.

xxxx

A/N REVIEW if still reading please, so I know how soon to update. Sorry for delay, new baby boy (Carter ) in the family and he's way more fascinating than writing ,lol.

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