"Bella," Edward moaned. "Help me!"

How? His leg was bent in a way that shouldn't have been possible.

"Please," He cried. "It hurts so much!"

Emmett! She needed Emmett. He'd know what to do!

"Emmett!" Izzy called.

Something moved in the woods. It definitely wasn't Emmett coming to save them. Judging by the red eyes and elongated limbs it wasn't even human.

"Edward!" Izzy hissed. "We have to get out of here!"

"Why?"

"There's something in the…" Izzy trailed off when she noticed the forest had gone still. Where was it? Had something even worse scared it off?

Wincing, Edward sat up. "Bella, talk to me, what's wrong?"

Before Bella could answer, something slammed into the car causing all the windows to shatter. It was too late to run and there was nowhere to hide. The beast had found them.

Izzy woke up gasping for breath. She frantically surveyed her surroundings and sighed in relief when she saw furniture instead of trees. She was lying on the ground in the Cullen's living room. The thing touching her back wasn't a monster. It was Emmett softly snoring on the couch with one arm dangling over the edge.

Hands shaking, Izzy checked her phone. There was a text from Esme saying that Edward's pain was under control. Izzy resisted the urge to call anyways. As soothing as it would have been to hear Edward's voice, she didn't want to wake him. At least one of them deserved to have a good night's rest.

While Izzy knew there weren't any red-eyed monsters to fight, her dream did make something clear. They were in way over their heads. They needed someone with medical training. Someone who could keep Emmett and Jasper in line. Someone calm and collected. They needed Carlisle. Knowing she wasn't going back to sleep anytime soon, Izzy got up and slipped down the hallway to Carlilse's office.

Anyone who entered the office would have thought it belonged to the proud father of three successful women. There was photos of Rose, Alice, and Izzy sitting on the desk.

A framed copy of Business Week with Rose and Roy on the cover hung on the wall next to an issue of Vogue with Alice walking down the runway. A trio of Black Pack Posters watched over the couch. The only thing missing was any evidence of the men who'd once been their partners.

Hoping Carlisle wouldn't mind, Izzy searched the desk for something to write with. She was surprised to find a half-full bottle of bourbon hidden inside a dusty box of envelopes. She'd never seen Carlilse drink so much as a glass of wine with dinner. Seeing the aftermath of so many bar fights and DUI accidents made him swear off drinking. Then again, that was before he'd buried three children.

Izzy swished the amber liquid around. She wondered what had stopped Carlilse from finishing it. Had he woken up with a pounding headache and said enough was enough? Did he walk into the dining room and decide he wanted more out of life than chasing ghosts? Ignoring temptation, Izzy tucked the bottle away and focused on her mission. She'd done enough looking to know that peace wasn't at the bottom of the bottle.

Izzy had been writing to Carlisle for years. Usually, it was as effortless as breathing. She'd tell him about the dogs she saved at the places she traveled for shows. He'd respond with anecdotes from the clinic. They never spoke of their tragic shared past. On that night, the words wouldn't come. How was she supposed to condense everything that had happened into a few paragraphs?

Izzy was doing her best to describe the situation when bony hands grabbed her shoulders.

"Boo!" Emmett shouted.

Izzy jerked forward banging into the solid oak desk.

"Emmett!" Izzy snapped, rubbing her sore knee. "You scared the crap out of me!"

"Sorry," Emmett said with a smirk that wasn't the least bit sorry. "Couldn't resist."

Three times. It had been less than a day and he'd managed to scare the living daylights out of her three times. At this rate, she'd be gray by her next birthday.

"So, who ya writing to?" Emmett asked, wiggling his eyebrows. "Your secret lover?"

"If you must know, I'm writing to your father," Izzy said, flipping the letter upside down. Emmett would likely disagree with some of the contents. She'd written that 'Emmett is unwilling to admit that his body needs time to heal. He covers up his pain with inappropriate jokes and ill-advised snacking.'

"But my mom already did that, remember?" Emmett said, furrowing his brow. "We dropped the letter off at the post office."

Izzy chose her next words carefully. "He'll probably take it better coming from me."

Emmett took a seat in one of the three chairs opposite Izzy. "Can I ask you something?"

How many times had he sat in that same chair flanked by his brothers while they received yet another lecture from their father? This time, it was his turn to give a well-deserved lecture.

"How much contact do you have with my mom?" Emmett asked. "She told me that you meet up frequently for mother-daughter time, but I'm starting to think that isn't true."

Izzy wished she could say she'd been there for Esme; that their shared grief had brought them closer together. Unfortunately, that wasn't true.

"I'm sorry," Izzy said. "I should have been there for her. I should never have-"

"I don't blame you for moving on," Emmett said, cutting Izzy off mid-sentence. "It's exactly what I'd hoped for."

"Why?"

"Because Eleazar told us you'd all been killed," Emmett said. "He said there was a fire in Forks. Hellfire rained down on the unworthy."

There really was a wildfire in Forks after a historically dry summer. Thankfully, the heroic efforts of the firefighters and a well-timed downpour saved the town. Ironically, the only building burned was the fire department. Carlisle was quick to donate funds for a new building later named the Emmett Cullen Memorial Fords Fire Department.

"The only thing that kept me going was the possibility that you weren't living in Forks anymore," Emmett said. "I hoped you moved on and built lives for yourself somewhere else."

Izzy eyes brimmed with tears. It must have been awful for Emmett to think his home and everyone he'd left behind were gone.

"What we saw in the dining room…that isn't what I wanted for you," Emmett continued. "I'd hoped you found the wrecked car and assumed we'd been killed. I didn't want you to spend the rest of your lives searching for us."

"Didn't you want to be rescued?" Izzy asked.

What if the trip to Alaska had been a trap? Would she have been able to stomach the idea of her friends shrugging their shoulders and moving on without her?

"Not by you," Emmett said. "I wanted the FBI to come storming in guns blazing. I didn't want you anywhere near that awful place."

Izzy recalled Edward's chilling words. 'I was one of the lucky ones. They took a lot more than blood from the girls.'

"I was livid when Edward told me you'd found us," Emmett said. "I didn't understand why you'd put yourself in that kind of danger."

At eighteen, Izzy would have walked through the fires of hell with a smile on her face had she known Edward would be waiting on the other side.

"I knew I had to get you out of there before it was too late," Emmett said. "I told Jasper what happened when he came to take me to the feeding chamber. I couldn't convince him to come along, but he agreed to help us escape."

Something wasn't adding up. Why was Jasper the one to bring Emmett to the feeding chamber? Why didn't he want to escape with his brothers?

"I realized I'd made a horrible mistake when we got to Edward's cell," Emmett said. "He was talking, but there was no one there. He couldn't face living in a world without you in it, so his mind created a hallucination to help him cope. I didn't have the heart to tell him it wasn't real."

Izzy thought back to her own hallucinations. They brought her comfort in the moment but seeking them nearly killed her.

"Somehow, Eleazer figured out we were planning to escape," Emmett said. "I got off easy with a few broken ribs. Jasper…they took him to Marcus."

Izzy felt sick to her stomach. "What did Marcus do to Jasper?"

Marcus. Izzy recalled that name coming up in Edward's nightmares. Was he some type of enforcer?

"I don't know," Emmett replied. "Jasper stopped talking to us after that."

Izzy woke up to sunshine streaming through the window and someone yelling.

"What happened!" Alice shrieked.

Izzy didn't think resting her eyes for a minute while Emmett wrote a letter to his father would be a problem. There was only so much damage Emmett could do with paper and pen, right? That would have been the case had resting her eyes for a minute not led to falling asleep.

"You know you're not supposed to drink!" Alice exclaimed, confronting Emmett with the empty bourbon bottle.

It appeared Izzy wasn't the only one to find Carlilse's stash.

"We can't take you out in public like this!" Alice shouted.

The liquor wasn't the only treasure in Carlile's desk. Emmett had also found a pair of scissors that he'd use to cut his hair.

"It's not that bad." Emmett changed his tune when he saw his reflection on the dark computer screen. "Whoa!"

Emmett's hair was left long in some spots and cut almost to his scalp in others. Even Izzy, the queen of regrettable haircuts, had never messed up that badly.

"Fine, I'll admit it. I screwed up." Emmett said. "Now are you guys going to help me fix this or not?"

"Fix that mess?" Alice scuffed. "You'd need a magician!"

Izzy pulled out her phone. She just so happened to have a magician in her contacts.

Twenty minutes later, they heard rumbling in the distance.

"What's that noise?" Emmett asked.

Izzy blanched. "Motorcycles."