Disclaimer: Any recognizable Twilight characters and ideas are property of Stephenie Meyer. I am not profiting from the distribution of this story. No copyright infringement is intended.

Author's Notes: Happy to get this next chapter out before Camp NaNo gets underway in a few days. It still leaves me with some time to outline the next five or six chapters of this behemoth, here! ;)

A quick shout out to all my amazing readers. Love you all! Thank you to those of you who were chatting up my story on a Facebook group. How cool! A special note of appreciation goes to all of you who took the time to review. I greatly appreciate hearing your thoughts! :)

From Chapter 8: Ghosts With Just Voices – "My stomach growled to remind me that I hadn't eaten a damn thing since I left for the Rez, this morning. I hauled myself up from my armchair with more effort than I wanted it to take and headed into the kitchen for a bite to eat. Until I heard back from Alice, my hands were tied. Why I made that fool agreement, I'd never know. That girl always had found a way to twist me around and make me do whatever the hell she wanted. Apparently, that worked long distance, too. I was going to need to figure out a way to boost my resistance to her persuasion and fast because Alice would damn well be calling back soon if she wanted me to stay off the research on my own.

This time, I'd be ready for her call."

Chapter 9: Unravel the Web

Present Day

Charlie POV

Four days had passed since I'd talked to Alice, and as I drove once again to the Cullens' property, I worried what it meant that she hadn't called me back, yet. Whether or not there really was something more to the accident in the woods, Billy's letter was not something that the Cullens would be taking lightly. The question was would they include me when all was said and done. I hadn't really been expecting to hear from her immediately or anything, but as each day came to an end without any further word from Alice—or any of them for that matter—I was starting to think that maybe they'd gone back into radio silence and left me in the lurch.

And that just sucked.

I did have one shred of hope left, though. Every time I started to panic that I had lost my one chance to ask Alice the question when I'd had her on the phone, I tried to remember how we'd come to be talking in the first place. I wasn't sure what spooked her so much about me researching the Quileute legends—or even how the hell she knew about my plans to do just that—but I knew one thing for sure. The whole thing panicked her enough to reach out to me, even though the family apparently didn't approve. Something told me Alice would find a way to hold up her end of the bargain if she wanted me to hold up mine. I just needed to hang in there a little while longer.

As for the guys on the rez, I had been cut completely out of the loop after my little stunt with Alice. Jacob was surlier than ever when I called to check up on Seth the other day. Didn't appreciate the attitude or being shut out, but I was at least happy to hear that the littlest Clearwater was doing just fine. Now, how the hell he could be just fine was an entirely different story, but I was taking a break from working myself up into a big ball of stress over all that crap, for now. Work had been keeping me too busy to worry about much else.

The investigation into Brian's disappearance and the mysterious circumstances surrounding his patrol car's discovery—especially the disturbance in the woods beyond it—had taken up almost all of my time. I'd spend a lot of long, frustrating hours at the Cullens' old place helping coordinate the search for Brian. So far, it wasn't going well. We had wrapped up work onsite the day before, but still didn't have enough pieces to the puzzle to come up with any solid leads. Test results were weeks away, which meant that we were stuck with our thumbs in our ears for the time being.

I pulled my cruiser into the Cullens' driveway for the fifth day in a row. Now that the active investigation was done, the drive up to the house was really creepy. The overgrown vegetation on both sides of the narrow road had been broken back a little as all our emergency vehicles brushed against it for the last few days, but it was still way too close to my car for my comfort. Made me feel a little boxed in. Trapped. That feeling might have gotten a little better as the road opened up at the start of the front yard, but staring at the big, empty house definitely upped the overall creep factor. There was no denying how unsettling it was being with how the hairs on my arm actually stood up on end. I had to wonder exactly what I thought I was doing coming out here on my own.

You know why, you nosy old man.

I parked on the driveway before I got too close to the spot where we'd found Brian's patrol car. It had long since been removed for further investigation offsite, but it just seemed really, really wrong to drive over where it had been. Kinda like disrupting a grave site. I didn't want think of it that way, but the more days we got into the investigation, the sicker I was feeling about what the end result was going to be.

It was that feeling that helped me keep my head in the game the last four days as I took point in the middle of the craziness and ran operations. The first afternoon I was called to the scene, I failed pretty much everyone while I was out there, but especially Brian and his family. My focus had been too wrapped up in my own head. I'd been more or less useless thinking about how some clumps of wolf fur impacted my life when I should have hit the ground running to figure out what happened to my officer. Since I left that first evening I had been itching to get back to the second core investigation area—the one in the forest—but I made a commitment to do my duty and actually do everything I damn well could to solve Brian's disappearance. I owed at least that much to him.

Now that the CSI unit had finished processing as much as they could and left the area, I finally had time to explore the scene with its weird paw prints again for myself before enough rain got through the canopy and washed them away.

But I had something I needed to do first.

After checking to make sure the gun in my holster was fully loaded, I got out of the car and began the long walk to the back of the house where the yard ran into the tree line. I kept a wide berth from house as I passed it. If seeing it from further back with the metal shutters in place and landscaping running wild was unsettling, then being practically on top of it was like walking into my own horror film. Without the life that the seven of them had brought to it, the house seemed way too big and incredibly cold.

The closer I got to the tree line, the easier a willow tree just a ways past the far southeastern corner of the yard became to see. The tree was massive and had branches that just kind of spilled out everywhere. When Alice had pointed it out to me years ago, I swore to myself I would never come back here to visit it. After all, she wasn't really there. What would be the point?

Guess I didn't realize just how true that could wind up being.

September 8, 2006

The memorial had mercifully come to an end a little while ago. It was nice, but I was completely spent. What I wanted more than anything in this world—save for the impossible—was to just go home and drown myself in a Vitamin R shower. Instead, I was stuck standing awkwardly in a little group with Renee and Phil waiting for the refreshments to be ready. Not one of us had had anything to say since Phil had stupidly said, "Well, that was brutal," about five minutes ago.

No fucking shit, Einstein.

Memorial protocol for your daughter and her new husband wasn't exactly in the handbook. For a moment, I had wondered if joining the Cullens would be the right thing to do, but they were standing in their own circle and seemed like they maybe wanted a little privacy to be a family. So here we stood on our own feeling drained to the bone and with no one saying anything since Phil's awkward contribution.

That is, until Jake decided to cause another scene.

"I don't understand? No, no, no. You don't understand!" Jacob yelled at his dad.

Here we go, again.

Seemed like the anger that I had been afraid would carry Jacob off when he stood up to speak during the memorial had finally reared its ugly head. He'd been a real hothead since she had gone missing. I couldn't exactly blame the kid. After all, he'd carried a torch for her longer than she had ever known.

If only things had worked out between the two of them, maybe we wouldn't be in this mess.

Maybe he never would have pushed her to try something out of her comfort zone…like camping.

Maybe they wouldn't have been in those woods that night.

Maybe she'd be off at some campus somewhere, not…

I rubbed my hand roughly across my forehead to try and stop that train of thought before it got too far. Wasn't gonna help anyone.

While I was off in fantasy land, Jacob's yelling had drawn most people's attention to him. By the time I looked over at the Cullens to see how they were reacting, the two brothers had already stepped in front of the rest of the family like hired bodyguards. They'd started to do the same when Jake stood up to read. Those two were particularly jumpy today, but I suppose that's what happens when you lose someone close to you. You close ranks and protect the crap out of the ones left behind.

When I looked back at Jake and his dad across the yard, Billy had long since whipped out his pointer finger, a sure sign that he was letting his son have it. Billy always did that when he was feeling particularly upset, which of course meant I'd been on the receiving end of it my share of times.

Jake leaned in and interrupted his dad, pointing a finger right back at him the whole damn time. Holy shit. All these years, and I never would have had the balls to do that to Billy. Whatever Jake said made his dad's face drain of color as he watched Jake turn and skulk away.

Actually, he wasn't skulking away so much as he was skulking right this way, muttering away to himself the whole damn time.

Ah, crap.

I really wasn't in the mood to get in the middle of the La Push soap opera, today.

Movement out of the corner of my eye drew my attention away from Jacob and over to where the Cullens were gathered by the memorials. In a split second, Carlisle's expression completely changed. Completely. His eyes widened and nostrils flared as he caught someone's eye and shook his head firmly once.

I was to move my head quickly enough in time to catch Sam reacting with one nod, but when I looked back at Carlisle, he was holding Esme tightly to his chest wearing the same brokenhearted father's expression I recognized from the mirror.

That's odd. I could have sworn I'd seen that look from Carlisle.

I had, hadn't I?

Why was Carlisle even getting involved in Jake's little melodrama, anyway?

Meanwhile, Sam was already on the move. He reached Jacob well before he'd gotten anywhere near me and stopped his approach with a swift one-handed tug on the kid's bicep. Sam laid into Jake pretty hard, but they were way too far from me to hear what they were saying. Even though I wasn't an expert lip reader, I had been known to catch more than my fair share of conversations if could focus hard enough on-

A hand suddenly landed on my elbow and made me practically jump outta my skin. My hand flew up to grab onto my chest as Alice said, "I'm so sorry, Charlie. I hope I didn't startle you." She smiled when I opened my eyes really wide at her and glared. "I mean, it's obvious that I did. I just didn't mean to."

"It's alright, I was just…I was up in my head, I guess."

I peeked at Jacob out of the corner of my eye. He was already standing back by his dad, but this time he was flanked by Sam and taking his licks like a pup with its tail between his legs. When Alice scared the daylights out of me, I had missed the whole conversation between him and Sam. Shit. That was quick.

"Charlie?" Alice asked. She waited until she had my full attention back before continuing, "How are you holding up?"

My shoulders went up in a shrug before I could stop them. "I don't, uh…"

After a moment of floundering for something else to say, I just shut my fool mouth. I couldn't finish my sentence. The temporary distraction from Jacob was gone, and the haze was settling back over me pretty quickly. I had nothing to tell Alice. Literally nothing.

Nothing left to give.

No tears left to cry.

No one to get up for in the morning.

I felt tears starting to tingle in the corners of my eyes, again. Even though I was still fighting them as hard as I could with all these folks around —not the least of which were the Cullens—I knew at some point I was going to lose.

Will I ever stop needing to cry over this? Over her?

No, of course not.

It was my job to protect her.

She's not here because of me.

Why am I still at this damn thing?

I don't deserve to be here.

I don't deserve their sympathy.

I'm all alone.

And it's my fault.

"Charlie," Alice said, pulling me from my downward spiral. "I don't know what you're thinking right now, but please know that we all love you very much. No one here wants you feeling guilty about anything. There's no reason to be."

Alice's words threw ice water on the pity parade that was about to step off in full swing. At least shock was a feeling. It was nice to feel something, these days.

"Uh, how did you-"

"-know what you were feeling?" she finished for me. "I don't know. Why don't we call it intuition?"

I gave her the biggest eye roll I could muster up, which to be honest wasn't very intimidating at all today. Hell, it could have even have looked like I just shifted my eyes to the side, for all I knew.

Mercifully, Alice was kind enough not to comment on my eye roll or anything else. She just stood next to me for the longest time while I stared straight ahead, not really seeing anything.

One day, I knew I'd have to thank Alice for this quiet moment I hadn't known I'd needed. Hell, for that matter, I would need to thank her for this entire day. Even though Alice definitely should have been with her family before the memorial, sitting next to them at the service, and being by their side during the reception, she had chosen to be my rock all day long. Without her, I may never have even gotten out of the car—something I know I would have regretted so long as I lived.

Maybe I wasn't as alone as I'd thought. I had good friends on the reservation. And I had Alice. She was reminding me so much of her today as she had been taking care of me today in exactly the same, selfless way I knew my daughter would have if she'd been able to. As long as I had little Alice in my life, a piece of Bella would always be with me.

Alice turned her head and gave me a small smile, even if it was weighed down by the grief we both shared. "Is it alright if I show you something?"

I nodded, and before I could change my mind, Alice took my hand and started dragging me across the backyard towards the tree line.

"Uh, Alice?"

"Just trust me. There's something just inside the woods that I think you should see. We showed Renee and Phil before you got here, and it's only right that you see it, too."

As we got closer to one of the tall Pacific Willows just past the property line, I saw that it had a bunch of the same flowers for the memorial wrapped around it that I'd seen all around the house and yard.

I was about to ask what was so special about a damn tree when Alice beat me to the punch. "So, we had to decide what to do with the, um, the clothes that were given back to us."

Alice didn't need to be so PC. It wasn't like I didn't know that those "clothes" the families had gotten back were actually just tiny little scraps of almost nothing with blood on them. I had seen Edward's, but I couldn't stand to look at the other set. She'd been wearing those clothes the last time I'd ever seen her. Held her. Thank God the Cullens were able to identify them as what Bella had been wearing. I couldn't.

Those small pieces of material were all we had left of them and had been given to us so we had something to mourn when there was nothing else. Just scraps.

As the world was starting to spin around me, again, Alice asked, "Charlie? You still with me?"

I tried to ignore the sympathy in her voice, the same tone I'd heard from just about everyone in Forks since the accident and nodded.

Her little scowl told me that Alice wasn't buying what I was selling, but thankfully she just carried on. "We knew that Renee and you both preferred we find some way to inter them since we don't have the, um…"

No.

Don't you dare say the "b" word.

For the last couple weeks, I've done everything I can to avoid that word.

I can't handle it. It's too much to even think. I-

"…anything else to bury," Alice finished, ending my panic before it had taken on too much time, this time. Thank God. Not the "b" word I was afraid of. "At first, we thought about taking the memorial boxes to this little meadow they both loved. But then, Carlisle mentioned that it would be hard for Renee and you to visit and pay respects. It's a little out of the way, you know? It was actually Esme who suggested this willow tree. She's going to go to the meadow and collect some of the wildflowers growing there to plant around it. You know, bring some of their spot to them. I think Bella and Edward would have loved the idea."

I turned my head towards the Cullen Coalition looking for Esme, who I found still in her husband's arms. She must have seen Alice manhandling me across the yard towards the tree and been waiting for Alice to share her plan, because Esme was already looking at us with hope written all over her face.

Even though it almost felt foreign and inappropriate to smile, that's just what I did for Esme. She had clearly put a lot of thought into this gesture, and Alice was right. They would have loved having a piece of the meadow with them. I'd heard a lot about that damn place the two summers she'd lived with me.

God, just two summers.

Alice must have been able to feel my mood slipping because she took her too-skinny arm and hugged me quickly from the side. She stepped back after just a couple seconds, but stayed close to me.

We stood in fairly comfortable silence for a while before I broke it with a question. "Alice, can I ask you something?"

She looked up at me and nodded. I summoned every ounce of courage I could and said, "Okay, I wasn't gonna say anything, but since you're right here and all…Any insight into just what the hell that was with Carlisle and Jacob?"

Her head tilted to the side just the tiniest bit, reminding me almost of a puppy. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"You didn't see it? That-that scarier than hell look Carlisle shot at Sam when he saw Jake walking towards me. It was right after Jake got into it with his dad. Any idea what that was all about?"

Alice looked at me like I was off my rocker before that damned pity darkened her face, again. "Oh, Charlie. I was standing right next to Carlisle the whole time. He glanced over at the commotion, but he didn't do anything more than that. Why would he even have a reason to? Honestly, I think you've just had a really, really hard day. We all have."

Maybe she was right. Maybe I was imagining things.

Of course, this being a hard day didn't even begin to describe it. I laid a bare hand on the tree and dropped my chin to my chest. The tears that I'd either been too numb to let fall or had been fighting valiantly all day finally won over. Once they started to fall, it felt as though they weren't ever going to stop. My stomach clenched hard with the effort to control the volume of my sobbing. It was bad enough Alice was seeing this. I didn't need everyone else watching their chief of police completely breaking down.

Alice was standing somewhere close to me. I couldn't see her, but I could hear little shuddering breaths that told me she had given into her emotions, too. She placed her hand on my shoulder while we cried together, and I focused in on her touch like it would anchor me from falling into oblivion.

Because the truth was that no matter how hard today had already been, the real hell was just beginning. Nothing would be as hard as figuring out how to just keep living my life knowing that she was never coming back.

I choked on several sobs as I realized that Jacob had gotten it all wrong. He was right about her not being there. The universe hadn't even given us a part of her back in the form of her…body. It had just taken her away from us. But that last part of the poem was what haunted me. While it was a nice fantasy to imagine her in the trees and the water and air all around us, the reality was that she would never be here ever again.

Bella did die.

Present Day

The huge willow tree seemed about the same to my eyes. Maybe it had grown in the last four and a half years since I'd last been on the Cullens' property, but I couldn't see any change in the height. What I did notice immediately were the wildflowers that Esme really had planted around the base of the tree. I didn't know exactly what kinds of flowers they were, but there were at least four different ones that I noticed. The purple ones I was positive I'd seen several times in vases in Bella's room. Not for the first time by a long shot, I wished that I had asked Alice to show me their meadow, even if it was pretty hard to get to. I think I would have liked to go to a place that had meant so much to the two of them. At least having them around the tree was a nice tribute.

Just as I had done on the day of the memorial, I laid a hand on the trunk. They say that smells set off memories better than almost anything. They can call up a whole bunch of crap that you'd long forgotten. As I felt the rough bark under my fingertips, I knew that touch had to have the same kind of power. At least, it did for me anyway. Standing in this place again with the tree against my palm, the memories from that day rushed through my mind on fast forward.

The hour I stupidly spent trying to pick out the perfect tie.

Almost taking off from the memorial several times, including when Alice had to come and practically manhandle me out of the car.

Huddled against Renee before the service started, feeling as numb as ever.

Alice squeezing my hand during the memorial when I started feeling overwhelmed.

Jake refraining from any bone-headed move he could have made and actually sharing a touching poem.

Seeing Sam get the look from Carlisle when Jacob tried to come storming over to me.

My eyes snapped open as the last two memories came rushing back to me—Jake's poem and the argument.

"I am not there; I did not die," I whispered to really no one as I dropped down to the grass on one knee at the foot of the tree.

My mind was beginning to race as connections started to fire all over the place.

When Jake had read the last line of that poem, he had looked directly at me. Son of a bitch. Did that mean he had known all the way back then that Bella was still out there?

Of course he had.

There I was at the time thinking that it was big of Jake to put the drama to the side for once and respect my daughter and her husband at their memorial, when really he had to have chosen that poem intentionally to try and say what he wasn't allowed to say otherwise. It was the very first clue I'd ever received, but I just didn't know it at the time.

"I did not die."

He had said it right to my face—the big secret. Right there in the open. No wonder Billy had begged Jacob to sit his ass back down when he stood to read it and why Emmett and Jasper looked like they were about to jump him and beat him into the ground once he was done.

Jesus, and when the poem didn't work getting through to me, was that why Jacob got in a fight with Billy? What was it he'd be shouting? Something about his dad not understanding. Were they getting into it about whether or not to say something to me? About the appropriateness of the poem?

Whatever it was, Jacob stormed off in quite the huff and came barreling towards me. That was until a warning shot from Carlisle—something I was now convinced I really saw—got Sam to stop Jake in his tracks and yell some sense into him. After that, Jacob went back to his dad, the Cullens went back to their business, and I got on with grieving for my lost daughter.

"I am not there; I did not die."

She didn't die, Charlie.

My heart felt like it was going to burst itself right outta my chest, and I was pretty sure my stomach was now conveniently located in my throat. Something had to account for the gigantic lump that had formed there, making it harder and harder to breathe. I rested my elbow on my knee and dropped my head into my hand.

It was times like this that I wished I'd bought into Billy and Harry's ridiculous breathing techniques they would do when they were stressed. I had never given any credit to that new age-y bullcrap that reminded me too much of Renee, but I was regretting my choice to never learn.

Why didn't I see it before? Why didn't I recognize the phrasing the moment I first opened Billy's letter? It was definitely not a coincidence. He may not have wanted his son to say anything to me at the memorial service, but the poem had definitely struck a chord with my closest friend. The phrasing of his message to me said it all. Had Billy been planning ever since her accident to write me a letter, or did hearing the poem at the memorial get Billy thinking about, well, everything?

I had to wonder how close I had come that day to finding out the truth. Billy was obviously feeling guilty enough that night to write a letter telling me the truth. The poem could have easily have gotten the old gears grinding if I hadn't have been so numb to thoughts of any kind that day. And of course Jake probably came the closest to almost telling me when he flat out started heading towards me. There was no doubt in my mind now that that wasn't his goal. I was kind of surprised Jake hadn't tried to talk to me outside of the memorial away from prying eyes and freaky influences. If he had, would I have known the truth before the Cullens had even left town? Could I have confronted them?

Of course, being realistic, I didn't think for a second that the Cullens would have let Jake or anyone else actually get close enough to me to tell me. There was quite clearly some kind of pact going on between the Quileutes and the Cullens that kept the boys from saying anything. The word treaty echoed in my mind. Hadn't I heard Jake use that word a handful of times the last time I was down at La Push? What would have possessed them to write up a treaty? Did it have to do with the wolves? Maybe because the Cullens were…whatever the hell they were…they knew about the pack? Was it a "you don't tell on us, we won't tell on you" kind of deal? It would sure explain a hell of a lot of the comments that had been made over the years.

If that was the case, then Billy and Carlisle were working together to keep Jacob away from me at the memorial? And Sam, too. He had those boys on such a tight leash. For whatever reason, they listened to his orders without much pushback, even when it was clear they didn't want to. Jake was starting to chafe under it, though. That was pretty clear with their argument in front of the Clearwaters' a few days ago.

But besides their little pact with each other, with how much time, effort, and what I had to assume was an obscene amount of money went into staging Bella's death, the Cullens would never have allowed anything to get back to me. Wouldn't have allowed me to know about my own daughter being alive.

Not that it was all on them. I knew Bella was in on it. She had to have been. I had decided a while ago that she knew exactly what was about to happen when she said goodbye to me before leaving that night to go camping. When she gave me my bracelet. When she hugged me just a little longer and a little tighter than normal. Bella knew. There was really no denying it anymore.

Anger crawled back into my gut before I could stop it. I didn't come here to just sit and be mad, but I was having a hard time getting a lid on it. The more I looked at the stupid wildflowers planted around the tree, the more their being planted here was starting to really piss me off. The flowers were from what had to have been an actual meadow that they had gone to. I knew that much was true. Bella had brought a handful of the purple flowers home with her often enough for me to know that much.

But Bella was still out there. Jacob and Billy had basically come out and told me as much. Even though Sam and Alice had both kinda tried to make me think I was clear around the bend when I last talked to them, neither of them attempted to deny it.

So why in the hell was there even a memorial? Why plant special little flowers from their special little spot? Who the hell cared? It seemed completely unnecessary to me, especially after the accident had already been deemed believable and accepted by everyone. Why had so many people gone to such great lengths just to make me believe that my only daughter had died? Why go the extra mile when they already had us?

And now, even though I was slowly starting to chisel away at the layers upon layers of lies and uncover what was really going on, they still couldn't trust me. All anyone could muster the courage to say to me was that whatever the big secret was, it was too "dangerous."

Well, fuck dangerous.

I could handle it. Was the Cullen family secret really that bad? What could be so terrible that Bella, my own flesh and blood, felt like she couldn't tell me?

Did she think that I would have rejected Edward if I'd known their little secrets? If I knew she was leaving because of them to keep me safe?

Wouldn't you have?

If Bella had said that she was leaving forever to protect Renee and me from the fact that Edward was something not quite right, wouldn't I have turned my back on him even more than I already had before they'd left?

The thought started bouncing around in my head before I'd even have a prayer of stopping it. Oh God. I would have. I'd have screamed and gotten all red in the face. Maybe I would have thrown things. I definitely would have tried to forbid her from seeing him. I wouldn't have let anything stand in my way from holding onto her as tightly as I could.

And Bella had known it.

So she had picked them. Edward, Alice, all of them. Bella had picked her perfect little prepackaged family over us. Over Jacob. Over her mom. Over me.

There it was—the truth. When faced with never seeing me again or letting me in on the big Cullen secret, Bella had actually chosen to walk away. And that meant she chose wrong. It shouldn't have mattered what my reaction would have been. I couldn't think of anything that would have possibly made me choose anyone but her.

My face grew hotter and my heart thumped harder in my chest the more I thought about it. This time the new surge of anger was actually directed at the one person who'd really never taken the full brunt of my fury since this whole thing started—Bella.

Whether her disappearance really was something totally normal like witness protection or if it was something more along the lines of gigantic wolf prints and the weird eye color that just doesn't happen in nature, I really believed that Bella was still out there somewhere. But believing that she was still alive meant also believing that she had let me believe that she had died a gruesome death.

How could anyone actually do that to family? To their own parents?

I had lived four and a half long years of my life like half a man thinking that my only child was dead, and I couldn't even bury a body because the bear had taken that away from me, too. My life had been a complete hell, and for what?

For Edward, that's what.

Before I knew what I was doing, I grabbed one of the purple wildflowers by the stem and yanked it right out of the ground.

It had always been that damn kid, hadn't it? Since the beginning, Edward had made her do some seriously crazy, out of character shit – run off to Phoenix and get seriously injured, run off to Los Angles or wherever when he melted down…fake her death, abandon her real family.

Three more flowers met their maker.

Then there was the memorial. What a fucking farce. How many people there knew the whole thing was bullshit? How many people knew that while her mother and I were grieving for the loss of our only child, Bella and probably Edward were holed up somewhere, alive and well?

I pulled more flowers up, moving faster this time. Half a dozen, maybe.

The Cullens, of course. They were all in on it. And the Quileutes. A few of them? Some of them? Fuck, maybe all of them?

Two fistfuls came out of the ground, this time. Who the hell cared, anyway? This wasn't a real memorial. Nothing sad about it; the two people it honored weren't even dead. What did it matter?

Alice had to have known what was really going on when she showed the memorial tree to me. Some of the things she said at the time would have tipped me off if I'd heard them knowing what I know now. But between my grief and the blinders that I apparently wore where the Cullens were concerned, I hadn't even begun to pick up on it. So again, someone else I thought was being supportive and kind that day was really playing their side of The Secret. In Alice's case, it was stringing together lie after lie after lie to pull one over on me. And the shitty part is that I fell for it because I trusted her.

After pulling out two more handfuls of flowers, I felt the rage subsiding a little.

I tried to take some deep breaths as looked down at the floral destruction I'd left. Not all, but most of the wildflowers were laying on their sides in the grass, either because I'd snapped their stems in half or ripped the roots right up out of the ground.

What if she really wasn't out there, and I had just vandalized her memorial? I was almost positive that I had correctly interpreted every clue I'd uncovered and every little thing the boys at La Push, Rachel, Emily, and Alice had said to me, but there was always the possibility that she really had died in that forest. What kind of shitty father destroys his daughter's memorial, regardless of whatever the hell else might be going on? What if Renee visited and saw this?

If Alice ever kept her word and called me back—which seemed like it was becoming less and less likely as the time ticked by—I would have to ask her where that damn meadow was so I could get a new round of wildflowers to replant. Not that I would have the slightest idea where to begin with transplanting wildflowers.

I grumbled to myself and started to pile the flowers together in one spot. It was still going to wind up looking like crap, but at least I could tidy it up a bit. No matter how bad it looked, though, I couldn't worry about the damage I'd done. I hated that it had taken pulling up all those flowers to do it, but I was glad to finally bring my anger at Bella to the surface. I think it had been simmering like a stew just out of my reach since this whole mess started. The sooner I owned up to the fact that I was as mad at her as I was any of the rest of them, if not madder, the sooner I could try and work out my issues about playing second fiddle to that boy so much so that she made me believe she was killed.

After taking a quick breath in and out to clear the crap from my mind, I stood up and brushed the dirt off my hands. I needed to get to the real reason I had come—the second investigation area in the woods. Sitting here pulling up a bunch of flowers, while maybe chicken soup for my battered and chewed up soul, wasn't going to help me figure out whether or not there really were horse-sized wolves running around Forks. Something told me that once I knew for sure what I was dealing with, I may just be able to get through to Jacob. If I had proof, maybe it would be the tipping point he needed to finally come out with it.

I set off next to the path of destroyed vegetation that led from the forest's edge to the investigation site. I didn't know how much of what I wanted to see would still be intact, but I wanted to set my eyes on it one more time before the weather had any more chances at it. According to my staff, the rain from the last few days had been heavy enough to get through the canopy covering the site and begin to wash away the prints and some of the other evidence from the destruction.

Because Jacob and all the others had basically cut me off after my last visit hadn't exactly gone as civilly as I would have liked, I was on my own to figure out if the damage to the trees really could have been done by a gigantic wolf or two. The photos the CSI unit had taken would be helpful later, but I was always one to prefer to see things out in front of me and work with them on my own.

Being out on a lake fishing or walking in the forest surrounded by tall trees and wildlife were always the two places I did my best thinking. Natural consequences of being Washington State born and bred, I guess. This trip into the woods was no different. It quickly brought back everything I'd been thinking about from that first afternoon I'd seen the destruction in the forest.

I had to again wonder if somehow the giant La Push wolves were involved with the odd boulder issues that had been messing with us for the last year. After struggling for so long to understand how massive rocks could suddenly appear in the middle of the road with no signs of trajectory damage to speak of, the destruction here was the first thing that had actually made sense. While it wasn't exactly boulders and roads we were dealing with, I could definitely make a case for the MO being similar enough. Both scenes showed evidence that someone or something would have needed a whole hell of a lot of strength to do what had been done. The ability to toss boulders and knock down trees wasn't something that naturally occurred in the wild. My mysterious wolves seemed like the perfect explanation.

Perfect, but crazy. At least I was still just north of the insanity line to acknowledge that while it made sense, it most certainly did not make sense.

But while the MO might be possible to connect, what was harder to explain was the motive in each of the separate incidents. The boulders seemed to just show up randomly and had even caused fatalities on the road in two separate occasions. Even though there was no signs of how they had shown up the way they did, the events seemed more natural. The event in the woods was more obviously a result of a fight of some sort. The damage the trees and surrounding vegetation had taken told that story pretty clearly. A set of large animals were involved, looking like those gigantic wolves Bella had sworn she'd seen. Unnaturally huge and potentially very dangerous wolves. If the boys were losing their control over the animals, that could possibly explain how the fight started. Of course, I still had no idea how any of them were able to walk away with their lives. I hadn't been able to see Seth. Maybe they almost didn't all walk away.

How did Brian's kidnapper, or God help us, murderer play into this? Was the guy drawn to the same noises that got my department involved later? He had to have been, because it seemed incredibly unlikely that he'd have had knowledge of the wolves beforehand and was there intentionally. If Billy had never felt comfortable passing on tribe secrets like the really "messed up shit" to me—someone who was practically raised right along with Billy on the rez—then they certainly wouldn't have let anything on to some criminal lowlife. It wouldn't add up.

And it wasn't the only thing not adding up. I just couldn't wrap my head around how my best friend's son was connected to everything. It seemed like something out of a fantasy novel. If I turned out to be right, then the rez boys could be involved in incidents that left a family and one man dead under boulders and caused thousands of dollars of damage to the roads. Not to mention they could also be tied to a cop's disappearance and unexplainable destruction in the middle of a forest.

To top it all off, those same boys with their wolves also absolutely hated my daughter's in-laws, who very well could also be connected to something not quite normal. Or be not quite normal, themselves.

What the hell had I gotten myself into?

As I walked, I took in a huge lungful of forest air and let it out loudly in frustration. I knew I was still missing the big picture. I hated missing the big picture. What the hell kind of smalltime cop was I that I couldn't figure any of this out? I was chief, for Christ's sake. Even with the lengths that all sides were taking to keep things under wraps, there had a key buried somewhere that was the tipping point. Why the hell couldn't I see it?

I knew exactly why. Because while this town had been crawling with mysterious crap for years, I either hadn't noticed it, or only seen what I wanted to see. Could it be possible that solving one of the major mysteries—the wolves and the boulders or Bella's disappearance—would lead to solving the other? There had to be some common thread.

If Billy had still been alive for this mess in the woods, he would have said that common thread was the Cullens. For Billy, it always came back to Edward's family and the tribe's legends. Those stories about the wolves and mistrusting the Cullens had always seemed like superstitious garbage he foolishly took to heart, but if I was going to say they were all based in some kind of truth, I was more convinced than ever that there had to be something in them that could at least explain what was going on with the wolves. Something was driving them out of control, and it needed to be stopped. Why the fuck did I promise Alice I'd leave the legends alone until I heard back from her?

With the ruined circle of forest just yards in front of me, I suddenly froze in my tracks. Jesus Christ.

That was it. The wolves weren't out of control. I was right about there being a fight out in these woods. It just wasn't with the wolves and the boys, or at least not only with them.

After Bella's accident, the state K9 unit tracked her scent just fine, but completely refused to track Edward's. Fast forward to whatever happened in these woods, and the KP unit refused the trail, again. It couldn't have been any of the Cullens. Their scents would have been long since washed away, and despite the crap that they'd pulled with Bella, I knew in my heart they weren't capable of kidnapping and possibly murder an officer. But what if whatever made the Cullens different wasn't just special to them? What if someone…like them…had been behind Brian's disappearance? And what if the wolves and Jake and Sam and all of them were actually working together to stop the guy?

The truth seemed so simple. It had already occurred to me that whatever it was giant wolves were supposed to protect the reservation from had to be pretty strong. If whatever this guy was could knock down trees and throw around super-strong wolves and their herbed-up Quileute partners, couldn't he have also tossed boulders onto roads?

Suddenly, the two separate puzzles I'd been trying to solve, the Quileutes and their secrets and Bella's disappearance, started to merge together. What if it was all connected? The Cullens, the boys on the rez, the attack in the woods, the boulders.

Bella.

All of it.

All connected.

Was this the bigger picture that I'd been waiting to see?

When I'd gone waving the photo with the Cullens in the boys' faces and asking just what the family really was, some of them had seemed worried. Paul looked about ready to jump right out of his skin, and Jacob looked completely guilty. What they didn't do is deny my admittedly crazy allegations that the Cullens weren't normal. So, they knew. Whatever it was that made the Cullens different was the same thing that made Billy and Jacob hate them so much.

Of course, those in glass houses really shouldn't throw stones. They're secretly harboring huge ass wolf beasts on the rez. Something tells me they don't exactly know from normal.

So, I'd established that the La Push boys knew the Cullens' secret, and they didn't like them because of it. At all. Hell, the feeling was pretty much mutual. Even though the Cullens had never talked about the Quileutes in quite the same way, the tension from their end was thick as pea soup the few times I'd seen them together. Edward especially was always ready with a scowl or forty when Bella's friends came up in conversation.

Then there was that weird treaty that Jake brought up the last time I was out at La Push. Why? Why bother to write something like that when there was so much hate between them? What was the point? Billy had specifically forbidden anyone from La Push to ever go to Forks General because of Carlisle, for God's sake. If he had been willing to go to that extreme to protect them from the Cullens, why in the hell did they even bother with a treaty? To what? Just to protect others' secrets?

Since Ice refused to follow our perp's scent the same way the state K9 unit refused to track Edward's, that had to mean there were even more people out there carrying the same secret as the Cullens. Was there something about the Cullens that made them able to be trusted? Billy hated the Cullens with everything he had, but if they truly were dangerous, I know he would have done more than just cautioned me from them.

Even Jacob had told me a couple weeks ago that he did trust the Cullens, to a point.

So did that mean the Quileutes kept the wolves from attacking the Cullens because of some treaty? I recognized that I was sounding more and more like the crazy old shut-in I'd become in the last few years, but I swear I was on to something with this.

Now I really needed to get a closer look at those paw prints and whatever other clues my guys might have missed not knowing what to look for.

Of course, Fate had other plans for me, today. I hadn't even made it all the way across the destroyed circle of forest when a heard rustling from the bushes and trees behind me. Whatever was coming towards me was coming fast.

Emily's words of warning sprang back to mind. "Just never, ever let your guard down."

Shit.

Author's Note: Please take a moment to leave a review and let me know what you thought. I like to respond to every review, so make sure you're logged in!

Want updates on chapters or read my general ridiculousness? Follow me on Twitter at _Horizon77_ (yes, you need the annoying underscores). See you for the next chapter! Love to you all!