Disclaimer: I do not own anything from the collective works of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga

Tuesday the Thirteenth

Rosalie was ranting. This wasn't anything unusual: Rosalie enjoyed ranting and Jasper was more or less a willing audience. It was unusual, however, that Louisa was the topic of said rant. Rosalie hadn't been so incensed since the day the two girls had met. Jasper listened to her dutifully, torn between wanting to defend his mate and offer sympathies to his coven member. It was two days into their trip and Rosalie was still angry about a discussion she had had with Louisa over her doubts in the investigation.

"I'm surprised it's taken so long," he murmured, staring out over the trees. The view was quite lovely, even in the winter. The snow-capped trees looked like they were covered in powder sugar and icicles glittered when they caught the sun. He wondered if Louisa would enjoy it. Unlike himself, she never seemed to mind the snow. Though the edge of the cliff he was sitting on would certainly give her pause. He wondered if she would allow him to help her overcome her fear of heights.

His comment threw his adopted sister off kilter. She stopped pacing, and Jasper was certain that if he were to turn around, Rosalie would be glaring at him. She was angry enough. "What do you mean?" she snapped.

"For her to have doubts," he explained. "I'm surprised that she didn't have them sooner."

"She shouldn't be having them at all!"

"Her feelings are valid, Rose," he chastised. "This is the first investigation where she is involved directly."

"She solved all those—"

Jasper was shaking his head before she had the chance to finish. "Those aren't the same. She couldn't see the impact it would have. You're correct, of course. If Hewitt is guilty, he should go to prison. Louisa knows this too."

"Then why is she pussyfooting around?"

"She didn't know those people like she does the people in town. She knows Mr Hewitt and his children," he explained, patting the rock next to him. Rosalie plopped down next to him with a dramatic huff, the toe of her boot brushing against his ankle.

"I know them too," she argued.

Jasper shook his head again. "No, you don't. You separate yourself from the townsfolk; you don't bother to know them," when she opened her mouth to argue, he turned to give her a tight-lipped smile. "I'm the same way. Alice and Emmett are too, to an extent."

"Not Edward?"

"He's already expressed his concerns to me," Jasper admitted. "Despite how much he and Louisa argue, they are quite similar."

"Edward is the most reclusive one out of all of us."

"Physically, perhaps," he conceded. "Because of his gift, he is rather attached to the people in town, no matter how hard he tries. He knows them too well. He cares quite a bit for them, truthfully."

Rosalie rested her head on his shoulder and they stared out over the scenery in silence. In the distance a flock of birds took flights, the distant sound of Emmett's booming laughter punctuating their indignant squawks. "So she cares too much? That's why she doesn't want to solve this case or get justice for Anna?"

"She does want to finish it," he disagreed. "But she's afraid to do so. Despite Edward's continued insistence of her psychopathic tendencies, she is not without compassion."

"She has compassion for a murderer."

"Indeed." There was no point in denying it. "But such is the curse of humans. They are such fickle creatures. Then again, so are vampires. How many times did I convince myself that the human I fed upon deserved to die? Yet, every time I did so, I felt remorse for my actions. It is a burden, to play the judge, the jury, and the executioner."

"But she's not playing any of those roles. She's investigating a murder."

"Isn't she?" Jasper said in mild surprise. "In this case, she believes she is faced with a situation where solving the case might not the best course of action: one of her peers could lose a parent, like as she did, albeit under different circumstances. For her, that is as tragic to her as letting a murderer walk free. Her personal feelings have confused her, and in turn, confused the relationships she has with sleuthing."

"So because her mum died, she doesn't want to send a murderer to jail?"

Jasper huffed in frustration, trying to explain his thoughts in a way Rosalie would be receptive to. "Think of it this way: solving mysteries has always been a positive experience for her. She shows up, fixes everyone's problems, and the world is a better place because of it. She's starting to see the impact she has on those around her. No matter the outcome, she ponders how useful her mystery-solving is or whether some mysteries are better left unsolved. These are difficult lessons to learn, Rosalie, and she is still so young. We shouldn't be surprised to see her struggle with it."

The silence that followed was a long one, not that he minded. They stared out over the snow-covered terrain once more, listening to the murmurs of the Cullen family whose voices were too far away to be distinct, even with their advanced hearing. They caught sight of Esme glittering in the sunlight as she wound through the trees, her shrieks of delight echoing through the forest. A moment later, Carlisle appeared, chasing after his wife, who allowed him to get close enough to take a swipe at her before darting away.

"I suppose you think I should apologise."

Jasper shrugged. "It doesn't matter what I think. It's your relationship. Handle it as you see fit."

"That's not helpful."

"If you spend your days asking people what you should do, you have to wonder if it is your life you are living," Jasper pointed out. Rosalie aimed a kick at his ankle, which he leapt to his feet to avoid. He offered a hand to her, flooding her body with tranquillity when she accepted. "But seeing as you are seeking my advice on the matter, I would hazard a guess that you already know what you want to do."

Jasper knew that if Rosalie hated Louisa, she wouldn't even bother being angry: she would simply write her off and ignore her as yet another inconsequential human. At the end of the day, Rosalie loved Louisa, plain and simple, and this argument only served to prove to Rosalie how important Louisa was to her. She missed her best friend.

"I should go see her when we get home."

Jasper had originally planned to return the previous evening but had been strong-armed into staying by Emmett, who had whined incessantly about not seeing him enough lately. Jasper had pointed out that his mate did potentially have a murderer stalking her, but had sneaked away to a nearby town to call Louisa about the change in plans nonetheless. Louisa had been gracious about the situation, only requesting that he try to convince his adopted sister not to hate her, should the topic come up.

"You could call her," Alice said, hopping out a nearby tree and landing with a flip that would have put professional gymnasts to shame. "She stole her phone back from her father on Friday night, in the off chance you decided to call her."

"She's still grounded then?" Edward asked materialising next to her. "How long has it been now? Since the New Year, wasn't it?"

"Mr Collins will return it by her birthday," Alice replied with confidence. "Just as long as he doesn't find out that she— oh."

"He'll figure out she stole it, won't he?" Rosalie asked with a sigh.

But no, something was wrong, Jasper realised. Alice's eyes remained glassy while she watched the future pan out but her body began to tense. A moment later, Edward did the same, a ripple of fear slicing through the air. Had something happened to Louisa? Or was something wrong with her father? "I don't understand," Alice whisper.

"Check to see if tonight is any different," Edward commanded. His brow was furrowed in concentration as he stared at Alice, hovering over her and shifting on the balls of his feet.

"No, that's still the same," Alice replied. "But, now Jasper is there? He wasn't there before."

"The movie is different."

The two dissolved into a sort of half conversation, where Alice would mentally comment on what she saw and Edward interpreted it aloud for her. This was an everyday occurrence in the Cullen household, though for Alice to reply out loud meant that she was too busy scanning the future to predict Edward's responses. Yes, something was very wrong here.

"Will someone explain what the hell is going on?" Jasper snapped after a moment, his agitation rising. He stepped closer to his friend, kneeling down before her and grabbing a hold of her shoulders. Alice's eyes were unfocused and she gave no indication that she was aware of him. "Has something happened, Ali?"

It was Edward who answered. "Louisa wants to call us, but is unable to do so."

Jasper's head snapped towards the boy, who shifted in discomfort under his gaze. "Why would she—"

"It's about Dorothy— she's missing."

No Stone Left Unturned

Louisa rubbed the palm of her hand into her eyes as if doing so would somehow alleviate the throbbing ache inside her skull. She wasn't sure if the headache was caused by a lack of sleep (the nightmares of Anna hadn't helped that she was already restless without Jasper around) or the lingering effects of her concussion, but it made it difficult to concentrate. Her inattentiveness had gotten so bad that Mrs Goff had excused her from Spanish with a concerned look and a hall pass to the infirmary. But hey, at least she didn't have to suffer through conjugating verbs.

Not that she planned to go there, of course. The nurse would only fuss over her, which was the exact opposite of the silence she craved at that moment. Instead, she wandered in the direction of her locker where she had stashed her mobile. And if she got caught, she could blame it on the concussion. Honestly, the concussion was the most convenient inconvenience to have ever happened to her.

She spun the dial on her locker, the squeaking of the metal hinges echoing in the deserted hallway. Reaching into the pocket of her bag, she extracted her mobile and turned it on. She sighed when she saw that there were no text alerts from Rose. Could her friend be out of range? Sure. But Louisa suspected that Rose was ignoring her still. Louisa had wanted to give her friend space to calm down as Jasper had suggested. But it was difficult, especially when Rosalie was the only person who would get excited about the developments in the Sweet case with her (Dottie would only get frightened and her father still wasn't allowing her to call Pyotr).

Whilst there were no new texts, she did have several emails. Figuring that those were far more interesting than wandering the halls of Forks High (Home of the Spartans!), she tapped on the screen to open the email app, her eyes sliding over an Etsy notification that Dottie's birthday present had arrived and coupons for Bath & Body Works. The fact that it was from Sergeant Todd let her know that the email was important far more than the subject line titled: "URGENT. READ ASAP".

Collins,

I don't think I'm supposed to tell you this, but you need to know. Mr Sweet found his daughter's diary and turned it over to us this morning. In it, Anna implied a sexual relationship with Lloyd Hewitt…

There was more, but she couldn't focus on the words, her mind racing with the possibilities. The police had focused their attention on Mr Hewitt, just as she suspected they would. His testimony not matching up to the timeline the police had established was almost as suspicious as his vague alibi. A hot ball of emotion spread through her chest and sinking down into her stomach, causing her to tremble with nervous anticipation.

This was a good thing, she tried to remind herself. Anna's mother will finally have answers.

Before she knew it, her nails were in her mouth, teeth shredding her cuticles. She skimmed through the rest of the email, ignoring the taste of blood. Jasper would have a conniption fit if he saw the damage she had done to them. It was fortunate that there were no vampires in the building.

"Miss Collins?"

A jolt ran through her body and she barely managed to suppress a shiver at the sound of his voice. Plastering a dazed look on her face, Louisa turned to give a vacant smile to Mr Hewitt. Of course it was him. It was difficult to tell if the chemistry teacher was following her or not. On one hand, he seemed to be everywhere she looked: the canteen, in the hallways, in the car park, or even at the grocery store. On the other hand, Forks was a small town, and there were only so many places one could be found, and as such, it was very likely she was hyperaware of his presence now that she knew that he was potentially a murderer.

"What are you doing out of class?" Mr Hewitt asked.

"Mrs Goff sent me to the nurse," Louisa explained, waving the hall pass. "My brain bruise makes Spanish hard to speak." And English apparently. What a lame excuse.

"Brain bruise?" Louisa hoped that the blood didn't drain out of her face when she noticed that Mr Hewitt was not only not alone but he accompanied by Dr Bernadette Krantz. Thinking that the day couldn't get any worse, Louisa sent a prayer up to anyone who was listening that Dr Krantz wouldn't recognise her. It had only been a few days, true, but their encounter in the bathroom had been brief. Louisa wasn't even sure if Bernadette had gotten a good look at her face. She had to be safe, right?

"You're the girl from the other day," Dr Krantz stated, her words killing whatever hope Louisa had of making it out of the conversation without incriminating herself. "From the police station."

Damn it, Bernie.

"The police station?" Mr Hewitt asked. Was it her imagination, or was there an angry look in his eyes? "Not getting into any trouble, are you, Miss Collins?"

Blue eyes, her brain thought to point out. Such a beautiful blue, like the colour of a pair of Levi's, or the sky on one of those rare sunny days. God, she was an idiot. She had seen those eyes in her dreams how many times? How could she have missed it?

Louisa heard a strained chuckle slip from her lips. "Oh, you know me, sir. I'm a troublemaker." She turned her head to look at Mr Hewitt's companion, trying to think about how to get the conversation to end in her favour. If she was too quick to excuse herself, she would come off as rude to Dr Krantz and suspicious to Mr Hewitt. And seeing as how Dr Krantz had identified Louisa, it would look odd to act like she had no idea what the doctor was talking about. "I didn't catch your name, the other day."

There, make it seem like their experience was brief and that Louisa didn't know who Dr Krantz was. Give no sign that she knew how Dr Krantz was related to the Sweet case. It wasn't perfect, but it would have to do.

"Bernadette Krantz," she replied, reaching forward to shake Louisa's hand. Louisa already knew this, of course, but she wasn't aware of that. "I graduated from here in 2007."

"Taking a stroll down memory lane?" Louisa jested, hoping she came across as charming instead of as nervous as she felt.

A smile quirked in the corners of the doctor's lips. "Once a Spartan, always a Spartan. I live in Atlanta and my flight doesn't leave for a few more hours," she explained. "I had to come and see my favourite teacher before I left. He inspired me to become a scientist."

The tips of Mr Hewitt's ears blushed pink and a strained smile graced his face. "You flatter me, Bernie."

"Are you interested in science, Louisa?" What, was she running for fucking mayor? Why did she insist on engaging in a conversation with her? Couldn't she see that she wanted to be literally anywhere else?

"It's not my favourite subject. I prefer the humanities, myself." Short and sweet replies. Don't give her too much to work with, and she might go away.

No such luck. "'A noble and vital area of study for the betterment of society,'" Bernadette intoned with a grave nod. "As my friend would say."

Ten guesses as to whom that was.

Louisa shifted from foot to foot, unsure of how to respond.

Bernadette laughed after a second of uncomfortable silence. "I'm sure you have better things to do than to listen to an old woman be nostalgic."

"If you're old, I must be ancient," Mr Hewitt corrected before fixing his eyes on Louisa. "Judging by your current location, I gather that you've managed to find a new entrance to the infirmary inside of your locker?"

"It's like the T.A.R.D.I.S. It's bigger on the inside."

"I see, and where does your mobile phone factor into the equation?"

"I got lost?"

Mr Hewitt gave her an unimpressed look. "Mmhmm," he hummed through tight lips, holding out his hand. "The mobile, if you please, Miss Collins."

Louisa tried to protest but her complaints fell on deaf ears; Mr Hewitt gave her an unimpressed look and extended his hand further.

"Your father can pick it up after school today," he said.

With little choice, Louisa locked the mobile and handed it over, their fingers brushing as the device exchanged hands. What sounded like papers rustling, or leaves blowing on a windy day, filled her ears, so soft and distant that she thought that a storm was starting outside. But the sound condensed into whispers, which whilst echoing and faint at first, crescendoed until it felt like they had wormed their way right up against her brain, an itching and irritating thing that couldn't be scratched. Images flitted across her eyes, of a closet, dark and familiar tunnels, a young woman reading To Kill a Mockingbird beneath a tree. In one rush, she knew two things: Mr Hewitt killed Anna Sweet and he knew that she knew he did it.

She exhaled and the mobile was in Mr Hewitt's hand and he was drawing away. Her ears were ringing and Louisa wondered if she might faint.

"Are you alright, sweetie?"

Her nose was bleeding again. Of course it was. Louisa stepped back and wiped the trickle of blood away with the sleeve of her jumper. "I— bleed," she managed to stutter out, though her tongue felt heavy and gummy in her mouth. "A lot. Sometimes. Not…" Before she could finish that thought, Louisa felt herself pitching forward. She managed to land on all fours instead of face planting into the floor, but there was little room in her consciousness to celebrate such a small victory; she was too busy refraining from vomiting all over Mr Hewitt's shoes.

Bernadette dropped to her knees, rubbing a hand between Louisa's shoulder blades and whispering comforting words into her ear. Louisa watched as drops of blood landed on the linoleum floor, and though she didn't dare move her head, she could see Mr Hewitt was walking away, the clicking of his leather shoes against the ground reverberating in the empty corridor. A teacher Louisa vaguely recognised as the Geometry teacher helped Bernadette pull Louisa to a standing position and they all but dragging the teen towards the infirmary. Louisa's earlier fears were proven correct, and the nurse fussed about, clicking her tongue at Louisa's stupidity ("You have a concussion, Miss Collins. You need to rest, not solve differential equations!") and general stubbornness to receive help. Louisa only just managed to stop the nurse from calling her father, or God forbid an ambulance. The last thing Louisa needed to do was to be sent to the hospital. What she needed was to grab Dorothy and put as much distance between them and Mr Hewitt as possible.

So whilst she impatiently waited to be issued a clean bill of health (or at least, as clean as it was going to get with a concussion and a still bleeding nose), she plotted. The safest thing would be to catch Dottie after class and then drive straight to the police station. The only problem being, of course, Louisa didn't know what class her sister was in. She supposed she could convince Mrs Cope to look up her sister's schedule, but it didn't look like the nurse was keen to let her go anytime soon. The only other option was to wait by her sister's locker after classes let out. This was less than ideal, because who knew what Mr Hewitt could do in that amount of time? Unfortunately, this was looking like the most likely course of outcome and Louisa spent the remainder of the school day in a constant state of anxiety.

Bernadette stayed with her for almost half an hour, hovering and attempting to comfort her, before she had to leave to catch her flight back home. It was hard to be annoyed with the woman when she was so sweet. If Louisa hadn't been so stressed by the situation Bernadette had put her in, she might have put in more effort to converse with her.

Luckily, the nurse couldn't hold her indefinitely, and by the time the end of the school day had arrived, Louisa was able to form coherent enough sentences to pass muster and be permitted to leave. She did so at a run, ignoring the nurse's protest at 'engaging in physical activity', sprinting all the way to Dottie's locker, making it there seconds before the final bell rang.

The wait was agonising and Louisa found herself swallowing her nausea as the minutes dragged on. The deserted hallway burst to life with activity as teens flooded out of classrooms, eager to go home after a day of lessons. The metallic banging of lockers punctuated the noisy conversations of her peers, the sounds setting her teeth on edge. She shoved away a boy who had bumped into her, giving him a rude hand gesture after he snapped at her for blocking the corridor.

Someone grabbed her arm and it took everything in her to quell the instinct to deck him in the face. She spun around, wrenching free from his grip, and glared at him. "What?"

"Louisa, right?" a younger boy asked, hand still outstretched. He looked familiar in a way that was more significant than simply passing by him in the halls on a daily basis, but in her distractions, she couldn't be bothered to match a name to his face. Still, sensing no immediate danger from him, she nodded and allowed her attention to return to peering over the heads of the students around her, searching for her sister's blonde curls. Where was she? It wasn't like her sister to dawdle.

"Are you alright?" He asked, drawing her attention away from the crowd of students. Her eyes flicked down to him in annoyance. She needed to find her sister and get to the hell out of Dodge. She didn't have time to talk to this stupid boy. "I heard you were in the ER again. Why are you here?"

"Not for a month or so," she snapped, impatience and anxiety growing by the second. Couldn't he see that she was a little preoccupied?

The boy was shaking his head. "No, Mr Hewitt said that you were sick again and it was real bad. He said that Dorothy was excused for the rest of the day."

"Where did she go?" she asked. She would have strangled the boy, but she was in too much of a hurry. And there were too many witnesses around.

"She left with him," he explained slowly as if trying to calm a spooked animal.

It was if a bucket of ice water had been dumped on her. She turned to look at the boy, who squirmed under her gaze. "What did you say?" she asked in a voice that was too cold to be her own.

"She—Dorothy left. Mr Hewitt said that he would drive her to the hospital."

"When?"

"I dunno, an hour ago or so? It was during sixth period."

Right around the time Mr Hewitt had sent her to the nurse, then. He must have ditched Dr Krantz and made a beeline for Dorothy. But why? She didn't know anything and posed no threat to him. Louisa had been very careful about keeping her sister in the dark about her investigations.

She had to be leverage, Louisa realised. The most likely scenario was that Mr Hewitt kidnapped Dottie as a ploy to draw Louisa to him. It's what Louisa would do if the position were reversed. Threatening a loved one was very effective in manipulative endeavours. What was less clear was Mr Hewitt's motives for doing so. Did he want Louisa's promise to sabotage the investigation? Or did he want to silence her permanently?

Louisa jammed her hand into her pocket, only to remember that Mr Hewitt had taken her phone. She wondered if he had done so on purpose so that she had no way of contacting Chief Swan. Well, she could rectify that.

"Give me your phone," she demanded, holding out her hand towards that confused boy.

"My— I don't have it with me," he managed to stutter.

She growled in annoyance before spinning on her heel and stalking off. Students parted out of her way like the Red Sea before Moses when they saw the thunderous expression on her face and those who didn't found themselves pushed to the side. There were many shouts of indignation left in her wake, but Louisa couldn't find it in her to care. Every second Dottie spent with Mr Hewitt, the less likely she would make it through the experience unharmed. Louisa knew the statistics: Fifty-seven per cent of children abducted by a non-family perpetrator were missing from caretakers for at least one hour and seventy-four per cent of abducted children who were ultimately murdered were dead within three hours of the abduction. It had been almost two hours since someone had last seen her sister, and if Mr Hewitt had any sort of malice towards Dorothy, there wasn't much time left to find her unharmed.

Louisa burst into Mr Hewitt's empty classroom, her feet slapping against the linoleum as she rushed towards the unoccupied desk. A picture of four boys ranging from seven to sixteen stood on the right corner of the desk, next to an ancient desktop. Opposite stood a lamp, a plastic cup full of pens and a landline. Papers were strewn across the desk as if they had been abandoned mid-use.

Set up for a left-hander, she noticed. Picture shows sons, no picture of wife. Marital issues.

Louisa dove for the landline. She didn't know Chief Swan's phone number or Jasper's or Sergeant Todd's or even her father's. It was 2018 and her mobile could remember that. But there was one number she knew, which had been drilled into her head since she was a small child.

"Nine, one, one— what's your emergency?"

"My sister's been abducted," she replied hastily, rifling through Mr Hewitt's desk whilst trying to answer the operator's questions concerning her sister's description and last known whereabouts.

"Are you sure this was an abduction?" Was the operator's cool reply. "Was there any chance that it could have been a miscommunication?"

Deep down, Louisa knew that there was no reason to snap at the man on the other side— he was only doing his job and was asking for clarifications. But rational thoughts were a bit difficult to access when faced with panic. "A man who is suspected of murder just took my sister from school without my father's knowledge or consent. Yes, she has been abducted and you are useless. If you aren't going to be helpful, I'm going to hang up and go find my sister." She didn't bother to wait for his response before slamming the handset back down into the receiver. Was this the best course of action? Louisa couldn't be bothered to decide.

She abandoned the papers on the desk, realising they were nothing more than homework assignments and tests that needed to be marked. Her eyes flicked across the desktop, searching for something helpful yet coming up empty. She supposed that made sense. Mr Hewitt would hardly leave a post-it note with the location of the cabin in the woods where he took his underage lovers lying around. So where would Mr Hewitt take Dottie? Certainly not back to his own house– if he believed that the police were coming for him, going back to his house would be a dumb move. It would be the first place they looked for him. It would have to be a secondary location. Somewhere secluded where there was no chance of his wife or children stumbling across them, like a hunting cabin or something. But where would that be? Louisa wracked her brain, frantically searched her mental library for any and all information she knew about Mr Hewitt.

Her eyes landed on the picture frame again, and she reached forward to pick it up. Was that… a cabin in the woods? She pulled it so close to her face that her breath fogged up the glass. The photograph featured four boys, ranging in ages from primary to high school, which were standing in front of a cabin. The boys each held a compound bow and were flashing identical toothy grins to the camera, a dead deer lying at their feet. Behind them stood an A-frame cabin, nestled between several massive maple trees. Mr Hewitt didn't live in a cabin, though. She knew that. He lived a small two storey not too far from the Catholic church in town. But if Mr Hewitt had kidnapped Dottie, the cabin was the most likely place he took her. He would want to keep her fairly close to town, if only because it was a terrain he was familiar and comfortable in. So where was this cabin? And how did she get to it?

There wasn't time to track down one of Mr Hewitt's sons and ask. She didn't have time to call Chief Swan. She didn't know how to hack into some database and find the address, like Emmett. Every minute she stood there was a moment her sister was in danger. The thought sent another wave of panic over her and her breathing hitched. God, Dottie must be terrified, wondering what was happening, why Mr Hewitt took her, wondering where she was.

The glass of the picture frame cracked under her fingers, jarring her back to reality. Louisa focused on the blood that had begun to drip out of the cut in her hand, unable to feel it. It pooled across the cracked surface of the picture frame, running down her wrist and splattering on the desk. It was a good thing Jasper wasn't there, she thought, her mind otherwise blank. He would be panicking, especially after the nosebleed—

Louisa actually reached up and slapped herself at the realisation. She didn't need Emmett to find the location of the cabin. She could do it herself. She could find Dottie, just like she had found six-year-old Marie Wu when she had strayed off of the playground during recess; just like she had done when she had pointed the police in the direction Sally Perks, Joshua Williams, and Michael Gomez after they had followed a woman out of the mall, even though she had not seen the abduction take place; just like how in December, she had found Spencer Gardner after some members of the baseball team had tied him to the football goal. She had psychometry.

She wasn't sure how it worked and she was certain Carlisle would disapprove of her experimenting without him there to supervise. It was dangerous to use, she recognised, and it could very well leave her in a vegetative state. Her recent fiasco in the closet with Jasper came to mind. She also had no way to control her gift, and it seemed like every time she used it, it was by some sort of accident.

But one thing was for certain: She had to find her sister.

Her eyes fluttered shut, let her mind go blank. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, smell the faint metallic odour of her blood. Pressure built in her head starting behind her ears, a tingle running across her scalp. In the blackness of her mind's eye, she recalled the picture, mentally removing the boy's from the image so only the cabin remained. It was growing larger as if she was walking up to it… or a car was approaching it. She glanced down at the steering wheel, placing the car into park before killing the engine. He opened the door and slid out. He walked briskly, with purpose, circling around the side of the old cabin and heading off into the woods, following a worn path, hopping down into a creek bed, splashing through the frigid shin-high water. A drainage tunnel came into view and he switched on a flashlight, following the tunnel without the aid of a map. Left, right, straight, left, straight, left, straight, a final right and out of the tunnel, leaping out and into the creek below with practised ease. Up the embankment he went, sliding on the mud, gripping a branch when his feet nearly slipped out from beneath him.

Then a house. Her house. But it was still too light out, he couldn't be seen by the neighbours. He sneaked towards the back of the house, cracking open the door to the crawlspace under the porch. He crawled until he could go no farther, then he reached up and pushed the false ceiling away, revealing a tunnel. He stood, wiping his dirty hands his jeans before grabbing onto the ladder in front of him. Up he went, all the way to the top, gripping the lever to the door and tugging it down. She better have a good enough reason for making him come all the way out here in the rain.

Pain shot through her knees as she fell to the ground. But what she felt in her hands was nothing compared to the pressure in her head. Louisa vomited on the floor, sick splattering across her bloodstained hands. The room tilted and spun and it took every last bit of strength in her to not faint. Her brain was a jumbled mess, trying to sort out this new information, integrate it into her mind in a way that separated a foreign psyche from her own. Louisa panted, gritting her teeth, the sour taste of bile on her tongue. She wasn't sure how long she knelt there for, but she grew aware that she was wasting time her sister might not have. She staggered to her feet.

Wiping a string of saliva off her chin, she stooped to grab the picture frame, ignoring how the glass pricked at her fingers when she plucked the photograph from it. Although the method of gathering such evidence left much to be desired, it was effective. A flash of Anna Sweet's final moments flashed before her eyes, this time from Mr Hewitt's perspective. Louisa screwed her eyes shut counted to ten, and focused on folding the photo in half, then quarters, and shoved it in her pocket.

Mr Hewitt had thought he had made the biggest mistake of his life when he killed his lover in 2007, but that was incorrect. Lloyd Hewitt the worst mistake of his life on the thirteenth of February, 2018 when he abducted Louisa's little sister. Louisa was many things, but forgiving wasn't one of them. He had put a target on his back, marked himself as a dead man walking.

And she was coming for him.


"The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see."― Winston Churchill


A/N: Wooo boy. This was a tricksy one to write. Mostly because I kept getting anxious and having to walk away and make tea. I don't do well under stress real or imaginary. But you know what will make me feel better? Leaving me a comment to know what you thought about it! -CheckAlexa