Disclaimer: I do not own the Twilight Saga or anything related, it belongs to Stephanie Meyer.
Leona Hart - Adria Arjona
Revamped and reposted.
Chapter Two: The Swan-Cullen Relationship.
Climbing out of the patrol car, Leona nodded along as she listened to Mark as he explained the pros and cons of the recent speed law change in the area; it had been a quiet first shift and Leona was relieved for that. It had been a good first day in her opinion, wrapping her head around everything and other than a few speeding teenagers around the High School there hadn't been much for them to contend with. Making sure that the patrol car was locked, Leona and Mark made their way to the door to then station for lunch and to check in.
The door to the station pushed open and Leona came to a stop to allow the two teenagers to step out making her wonder why they were not in school. The teenage girl was distracted talking in hushed tones with the teenage boy that she seemed to clinging on to as they stepped out of the building; they barely spared a glance at the two officers as they passed by.
Mark frowned at the sight of them, his eyes following after the pair and he couldn't help but feel angry as he thought about all the trouble that the boy had caused for Charlie. There was something not right about that entire family, something that set Mark's teeth on edge and he couldn't explain what it was.
"Who was that?" Leona asked following Mark inside, once the pair of teenagers had disappeared; she had seen the look on his face and she couldn't place either of the teenagers, he thought the girl looked familiar but she could not place where she had seen her before. The reception was empty and Leona guessed that Diana had already gone to get her own lunch; she would not have wandered far in case an emergency got called in, which while unlikely could still happen.
"Charlie's daughter and her oddball boyfriend," Mark explained with a roll of his eyes and a frown, he did not know what Isabella Swan saw in Edward Cullen but he did not trust the boy for a moment. There was just something about him and Mark feared that Isabella might have bitten off more than she could chew by dating him; he would happily arrested him if Charlie asked him to as would anyone else in the precinct. Leona paused at the emotion in Mark's voice, she was not sure what to make of it but it was strange to believe that he would dislike someone enough to speak out about it; he did not seem the type to believe the small-town gossip mill.
"Sounds like you don't like him," Leona mused following him towards the staff room, she could not help but feel curious and why he might dislike a teenager. Leona didn't think she had heard anything about the Cullens, who had moved to the town shortly after she had left to train to become a police officer.
"He's not the only one," Joanna said knowing straight away who they were talking about, she had seen the two teenagers when she had arrived back herself and she always felt a sense of dread whenever she saw that Cullen boy. Charlie was in his office trying to sort through mountains of paperwork that needed doing; he would not come out until it was time for him to go home and it was safe to talk about it while he could not hear them.
From what Diana had told her, Isabella was spending the evening at the Cullens house again after school; something that was a regular occurrence since prom, she barely saw her own father. Mark pulled his lunch from the fridge and took a seat, a smile forming on his face at the sight of food before he was joined at the table by Leona and Joanna with their own lunches that they had brought from home. The room was empty except for the three of them and it made Leona feel a little more at easy about asking her questions; she could not imagine that she would get a better chance than this to hear what was going on.
"What do you have against the boyfriend?" Leona questioned, she was curious and the fact that two cops did not like him did not send a good sign; she had to know what he had done to make them both uneasy. Joanna and Mark shared a look before both nodding their heads, one more person keeping a close eye on things could not hurt; they had their suspicions and if they were right then poor Isabella could need some help. The more people who knew what was going on the better even if Charlie's daughter insisted that nothing had happened; they did not trust Edward and they worried for Isabella's safety.
"Okay back in March, they had been dating maybe month before he even comes to the house to meet the Chief, they go out on a date afterwards and when they return Isabella flees Forks," Mark explained getting into the story, he picked at his food as he thought about how Charlie had been when it had happened. The poor man had been a mess, desperate to get a hold of anyone when his daughter took off and he couldn't get a hold of her; he had been desperate and even her mother didn't know what was going on, not that Renee was ever much help.
It scared him that the Chief's own daughter had found herself in such a situation, her flighty mother encouraging the relationship flattered that someone like Cullen was even paying attention to Isabella. Leona nodded her head and picked at her pasta salad, her eyes taking in the dark expression on Mark's face while he recounted what had happened.
Her eyes searching his face and she had no doubts what he would do if Isabella was his daughter, she recalled being seventeen and Leona doubted she would have been eager to share the news of a new boyfriend to her own father. Her parents had been protective, drilled it into her head that she needed to focus on her studies instead of any boys in school; they had been young parents and while they didn't regret having her, they hadn't hidden how hard it was.
They'd been married only a couple of weeks after they had found out that her mother was pregnant, her grandparents insisting that any grandchild of theirs would be born in wedlock with her parents dropping out of college to raise her. Leona had been born seven months later, her father going to work with her maternal grandfather in his construction firm while her mother doing her best to cope living back with her parents.
"No sooner has she taken off then so does Edward who apparently went after her to convince her to come back," Joanna added nodding her head, she remembered the craziness with how everything went down and even the 'respectable' Cullens weren't giving Charlie any information into what had happened. It had been her that had comforted him while he waited for a phone call to say that she had arrived safely in Arizona, he had tried to convince Isabella to wait but she was having none of it.
His biggest worry had always been that Isabella would hate living in Forks and that was what she had told Charlie before taking off; he had not even noticed that the Cullens had disappeared at the same time but the others had. Leona furrowed her brow, she did not like where this was going and she had a feeling that this was just the start; she looked between her two co-workers wanting to hear more, already she felt like something was incredibly wrong.
"Then Charlie gets a call from Edward's sister that Isabella fell down a flight of stairs and through a window when Edward came to her hotel," Joanna continued recalling how the call had come to the station since Charlie had been at work. He had been worried sick since Isabella had not been taking his calls and then suddenly, he had gotten that call from Alice; she had tried to reassure him that he didn't need to fly out but Charlie had insisted on flying out.
Leona felt her stomach turn, every part of her tried to avoid coming to the same conclusion but her training made it even harder for her to ignore; everything inside of her and her training told her that something more had happened. Her mind drifted back to the teenager that she had seen, a frown forming on her face at the thought of how this Edward had held the Chief's daughter and aided her when he could be responsible for her injuries.
"Now that kid is accident prone… but not that much," Mark murmured remembering how much Isabella tripped over her own feet, he did not believe for a moment that she had somehow managed to fall down a flight of stairs and out of a window like the Cullens had said. He and Joanna had done research and they had not been able to find which hotel Isabella had apparently been staying at; they had called several but none of them had reports of a teenager falling through a window.
It was also odd that there was no police report or 911 call that could be traced to the apparent incident that the Cullens claimed happen to Bella. There was also the fact that it had been the Cullens themselves that had brought an injured Bella to the hospital, not an ambulance as one would expect when someone apparently fell from a window. Carlisle had been very involved with her treatment from what they had all heard from Charlie.
Something like that would have been hard to cover up and if there was no record of it then Leona could not help but be concerned what that meant for Charlie's daughter. That perhaps the Cullens had done something to make sure that the accident couldn't be connected back to them in anyway.
"Then she comes back to Forks but only hangs out with him and his family," Joanna said finally, she knew that Isabella had friends before she became involved with the Cullens; Charlie had been relieved that she was settling in so well when she moved back. Now however it was clear that Isabella had been isolated away from everyone, the friends that she had when she first arrived had been forgotten and now everywhere you went in Forks, all they talked about was the girl that spent all her time with the Cullens. It just did not seem normal and they were concerned for her, the last thing that anyone wanted was for anything to happen to her; it was like watching a car crash in slow motion and waiting for it to happen.
"Antonio's sister-in-law is in the same year as them, apparently the other kids are no better, they don't interact with anyone outside of the family except for Isabella," Mark noted shaking his head, he had a feeling of dread whenever he spoke of the Cullens and he didn't like to think about it. The entire family was weird, they didn't blend in with the rest of the town and constantly stood out with their flashy cars and clothing.
The family looked like they were constantly walking the runway in Paris, dressed in the latest fashions and all matching when possible; it was odd to see and despite the story that all the kids were adopted they all looked exactly alike. Leona sat back in her chair, a frown upon her face as she pondered what she had been told; she stared down at her food suddenly not feeling hungry.
"Surely there's something Charlie can do?" Leona said, she knew that her parents would do everything in their power to keep her and her sister away from anyone who was trying to control them the way Edward seemed to be doing to Isabella. It was bad enough that it had included Isabella being hurt in some way, that her injuries had been bad enough to put her into hospital and there was no real evidence on how that had happened.
"He's frightened that it'll set her off again, she's very defensive about the entire thing even threatened to move out if Charlie stopped her from seeing him," Joanna said pursing her lips, she knew how helpless Charlie felt in all of this. The last thing that he wanted to do was push his daughter into the arms of a man that could hurt her, cutting herself off completely from everyone else that wasn't part of his family.
"All we can do is keep track of everything and make sure that if it came to it, Isabella knows that we are here for her," Joanna murmured shaking her head, she felt so helpless and she wished that there was something more that she could do. She had known Charlie since High School, he had been a few months older than her and they had always been close; their parents had been friends long before either of them had been born.
It had been her that he had turned to when he felt like an outsider to their other friends, he attributed that distance to the fact that the others all belonged to the Quileute tribe and he did not. They had joined the academy together and then the Forks Police Department with Charlie wanting to stick close to his ailing parents and Joanna not being able to afford to attend college like she had wanted to do.
Joanna had been there the day that he had met Renee during Charlie's first summer as a cop; she had watched her best friend fall in love with that woman on First Beach. It had been her that had been by his side when he had married Renee after their whirlwind romance, her that he had come to when things had started to crumble for them when Renee had wanted to move away.
Joanna had offered to look after his parents to save his marriage, to give Renee what she desperately wanted but Charlie had refused as his parents health declined. It had only been a few months after Isabella had been born that Renee had left Charlie for somewhere sunnier, Joanna the shoulder that he cried on loyally at his side.
Four years after Renee had left him, within six months of each other his parents had passed away; a time that Joanna didn't like to think about and she had feared that one day that she might visit the Swan home and find her best friend gone. Joanna had sworn to herself that she would do anything to help Charlie and keep his daughter safe.
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