Chapter 16 – The Mole

The Following Weekend

Edward Cullen POV

One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand…  Breathe, Cullen.

“Tell me something, do you ever even consider listening to reason?”

“When I hear it, I listen,” she said with a little extra fucking snark than usual. “You however, are not talking reason, Edward, you…  are talking suicide.”

“I’m talking about saving our lives from a no doubt eventual untimely death… both of ours.  Maybe even some of those kids, that…”

“You’re talking the impossible.”

“You’re being impossible.”

“I’m being realistic.”

“You are so…!”  Fucking stubborn, son of a…  I grabbed at my hair, groaning with frustration that she wouldn’t even budge on the possibility of even contemplating the idea of leaving Marcus for good.

Standing up to him, regardless of the consequences. 

Making a fucking statement.

Ya know what I mean?

She let me get the flailing out of the way before she started again.  A little calmer this time.  “I’m not being stubborn, Edward, believe me or not, I’m just being careful.  We don’t even know who the mole in the neighborhood is yet and you’re talking like a crazy person.”

“I’m talking sane for the first time in my life, Bella.”  I think anyway.  “And what does the mole have to do with anything?”

She was thinking out loud, it felt like, more than responding to what I’d asked. “If we could just find out who it is, maybe we can stop them from leaking information to Marcus and then he won’t,”

She stopped herself and after a minute or two, I had to wonder, “I never did get to ask, Bella… What did he say to you at your meeting?”

She chewed her lip a little.  “He said…”

More hesitating.

More bad gut feelings.  Good gut feelings?   Doesn’t matter.

“What?”

“He said I… I mean we…”

“Bella?”

“He said we were doing a great job,” she finally managed to choke out and even though I would have loved to have breathed a sigh of relief at her words, I knew she was lying.

Twirling the hair, remember?

And damn, I wanted to tell her.

I didn’t want to tell her.

About my own personal conversation with Marcus.  About how he’d held her over my head like a fucking carrot and threatened in not so many words, her life, if I didn’t play along.

And as I searched her eyes for something to hold on to, I decided what was best for me.

Clarification there, what was best for her, which in the end, was what’s best for me.

Whatever she decided to do with the information would most likely keep her safe and that was enough for me to live on.  For however long that might be.

“He knows, ya know.”  As soon as I said it I couldn’t believe I’d thrown it out there to be completely honest.  It was stupid.  I had no idea how this woman worked.  Entirely speaking that is.  I mean for all I knew, she was the goddamn mole.

I wasn’t exactly working on all four steam engines lately though, so I couldn’t exactly blame myself for being the idiot I apparently was at the moment. 

Like I said.

Best for her.

And anyway, I highly doubted the mole theory.  Mostly.

She let go of her hair and held my stare for a bit. 

“I need to call Charlie,” she finally blurted and then just like that, I was mouth open, mid trying to say something when she was gone. 

Left with my own paranoid thoughts of what might happen next.  What might have happened with Marcus.  Why she didn’t respond to the information I’d given her other than to announce she needed to talk to her father.

I supposed to myself that Marcus could have said absolutely nothing to her for all I knew.  I mean after all, he still had Charlie to hold over her.   Then again, maybe Marcus said something but she’s not sure she can trust me.  I had to keep reminding myself, I wasn’t the only conman around there.

There were so many possibilities flying around in my head I could barely keep up with them. 

Maybe he threatened her not to say anything.

Maybe she was just processing.  That was always a possibility.  But why call Charlie?

Maybe she’s consulting him for advice.

No.  I ruled that one out, at least.  She was a woman of her own mind.  She didn’t need anyone else to tell her how to think or what the hell to do in circumstances fucked up beyond all goddamn recognition.

I raked a hand through my hair again, forcing myself not to pull at the roots that time.  Then I headed out to find our mole.  Because if that information would somehow make her feel a little better, I was gonna give it to her.

It wasn’t long after I’d left that Bella texted me to see what the fuck I was doing taking off like that but after I told her my plan, she joined the bandwagon and said she’d take Alice Brandon while I sniffed out the little old lady down the street that own cats.

Lots and lots of cats.

She wasn’t the mole.

Either that.  Or those cats of hers were actually intel inside plants that watched the neighborhood for her while she took a nap 23 out of 24 hours a day.

She did however, know an awful lot of bullshit about the neighborhood as a whole and I personally found some of that information to be mole worthy, so I kept on investigating.

Bella texted me that the jury was still out on Alice Brandon. And I had to agree.  That woman was just way to fucking obsessive compulsive about weeds and tree branches to not be a mole.  

Normal people just don’t get off on that kinda stuff.

Do they?

I kinda felt like I’d already done about as much sleuthing on Seth as I could but he was busy cutting someone’s grass for me anyway, to try and get some real live conversation out of him so I moved on to trying to get Bella to open up a little.

I figured maybe if it was via text, she wouldn’t feel quite so vulnerable.

Wanna talk about that thing we were discussing earlier?  I typed and she replied with, Not really.

Short and sweet.

Then I thought, maybe texting via the phones our one and only true to life mad man had supplied us with, wasn’t all that smart after all, and maybe Bella was thinking the same thing.

Gotcha, I typed to her and then was surprised to get one more back.  Try to stay focused, Cullen.

Focused?

Was she talking about finding the mole?  Or on taking Marcus’s power away?  Or on the job as a whole…  or us… or what?

Jesus.

She was right though.  I did need to stay focused until this whole situation was over, one way or another.

I was tapping my thumbs against the iPhone lightly, trying to figure out what to say to her when McCarty happened along.  Of course.

“What’s going down, Edward?”

I slipped the phone away, hiding a smirk.  Going down.  “Emmett.”

“I’m not interrupting anything am I?”

Going down on Bella…. Bella going down on me…  “Not at all,” I smiled and he clapped his big ass hands together then rubbed them like he was creating fire.  “Good, ‘cause I have a tiny favor to ask.”

Internally, I sucker punched him for fucking up my plans.  Externally, I gave him my best suburbianite neighbor type grin and said, “Sure thing.”

Turns out “tiny favor” is equal to help me lug a bunch of heavy shit upstairs from the basement, in Emmett speak.

Not that I should have been complaining much.  I mean on top of the fact that I hadn’t actually been inside his house yet and this afforded me that opportunity, the guy did help me out in a pinch when I needed Bella’s door hung properly.

And damn if thinking about Bella’s door didn’t lead to thinking about how I’d like to hang other things of Bella’s.  Like maybe hanging her wrists from those fucking hand cuffs she had… maybe making her cum till she screamed… maybe exploring her body in ways no one else with any goddamn sense had without her resisting me half the  time from fear of her own lack of self control.

McCarty interrupted my fantasy.

Ironically, with a topic of discussion that was my fantasy.

“So you and Bella seem pretty damn blissful lately.”

Was he making small talk?  Or digging out secrets?  I was almost about to laugh at how eerily similar suburbanites were from conman moles.

I also wanted to choke on the fact that Emmett might have very well been the mole.   So all I really managed to get out was, “Yeah,” as I tried to take a look around the place all covertly like to see if there was anything blatant about him.

Not that I should have expected there to be or anything.  He did, after all, invite me in.

Yeah… I wouldn’t be getting’ anywhere with McCarty that day.

Except for this one little thing he let slip in the middle of our conversation about Bella and I.  “Far cry from BWI,” he snorted and laughed and I stopped short, mid-lift.

“Heh…” I tried to go for heavy lifting grunts but it came out as more of a wounded dog sound.

Because It was one of those moments that kinda gave you the chills and yet, kinda gave you the fucking willies at the same time. Ya know?   On account of the fact Emmett McCarty wasn’t been privy to that information by my mouth, and to my fucking knowledge, Bella hadn’t mentioned it to him for any reason either.

Which meant he knew by other means.

Marcus’s means to be exact.  What could only be worse would be if he knew that information from another means… you know.  Other than Marcus.

Did he even realize what he’d just said?

I picked the object of my hernia up again.  “How long did you say you lived here, Emmett?”

“Couple years?  Close to three maybe?”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he chuckled.

“Because I was talking to the cat lady today and she just happened to mention how your house was vacant for a long time before you showed up this year.”

“Oh yeah?”

He was stalling.

“Yeah,” I insisted and once he realized I wasn’t lettin’ it go, he added a few convincing pieces of data.

“She is one old bitty,”  he joked.  “Ninety-three or somethin’ like that… I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t know if I was home or not on any normal day, Ed… But I bet she just forgets I was gone with work for a while…”

“Gone?”

“Yeah, they send me to New York every once in a while for months at a time.”  I eyed him around the treadmill we were lugging and he shrugged. “It’s the life of a developer, what can I say?”

Huh.

It was plausible.  But then again, everything about being a conman was plausible.  He coulda been lying through this teeth, he coulda been more honest than Abe Lincoln, himself.  I was at a fucking loss.

Of course, it didn’t help I’d been unknowingly letting these people into my psyche lately.

Letting myself believe they were real. 

Friends.

I shook my noggin’ a little because that was the A-number-one mistake when dealing in cons. 

Never let anyone inside your head, or under your skin.  I’d failed at both of those.

I was really not cut out for this shit anymore, I thought to myself…  Hence the whole, wanting to get the fuck out and all.

“Hey you wanna grab some beers, maybe head over to our place tonight?  Hang out?  Watch the game or somethin’?” I asked him, thinking maybe if Bella and I cornered him, held him at gunpoint, we could either A, scare him off or B, get him to spill about what it was Marcus wanted from us… or C, what I tried at all costs to avoid whenever I could, end his life if he didn’t cooperate.

Granted if he was innocent and maybe he’d just happened to have been at BWI airport that day Bella and I had first met… maybe on his way to NYC… and maybe just remembered the interaction… but then why wouldn’t he have ever said anything?

And I couldn’t exactly ask him that because if he wasn’t innocent… I might be a dead man before I could even regret asking the question.

McCarty had answers.  I needed them.   But unfortunately for me, he wasn’t playing along.

“Oh man, Ed, I can’t tonight, I have a date… with Rose.”  He waggled his eyebrows.

“Rose huh?”

“Yeah man, I know she’s like, way outta my league but goddamn that woman is… somethin’ else.”

He trailed off and I nodded in agreement.  ‘Cause I knew exactly what the fuck he was talking about.

“Bummer, well, maybe next time,” I tried and he nodded.  “Definitely next time dude.”

When we got the last of his shit dragged up to the main floor, Emmett thanked me and I told him I’d catch him later, making a mental note of the very non-existent security around his home.  Then told myself I’d be paying a visit to McCarty’s house later on, when he was out on his date with Rosalie Hale.

Thanks Rose.

And later on, when Bella and I caught up with each other and I was making sure I had enough bullets to get me through some reconnaissance, I filled her in on my plan.

“I need you to play back up for me tonight.”

I eyed a box near me, debating the amount of ammo I might want.  Can’t need more than a clip, right?

“Why what’s up?  Edward you’re not…”

I cut her off.  There was no time for that bullshit conversation anyway. “No, but McCarty made a comment today that made me curious, I’m going over to his house while he’s out later and I’m gonna find the fuck out once and for all who he is.”

“What kind of comment?”

I told her and she confirmed she hadn’t ever mentioned where we’d originally met each other but asked why I needed any further confirmation on his identity.  I told her I wasn’t passing judgment on anyone, ever again and I guess she understood it, but didn’t exactly seem like she was a hundred percent on board with it either.

We threw some food together while we waited for night fall and Emmett’s date and managed to chit chat about how each of our information gathering expeditions had gone over.  What we’d picked up, what had made us more curious.  All the while, carefully avoiding that one topic of conversation that might have ruined the roll we were on.

Marcus.

“And so if anything goes wrong, I’m gonna need you to take someone out if at all necessary… warning shots at worst, it won’t be…”  her face made this look suddenly when I mentioned taking someone down and I realized something.   Instinct really.  Based solely on her reaction to my instructions.

“Bella?” I asked cautiously as she continued her assault on the fruit kabob.

“Mmmm?”

 “Have you ever actually fired a gun? I mean I know you’re good with a knife, but…”

She swallowed.  “I can wield a gun if I have to.”

“But…”

After a pause full of who knew what kinda thoughts, she got up from the table and started clearing shit away.  She seemed highly unsure as to whether or not whatever it was she was thinking about was information she wanted me to have.  Luckily for me, she eventually decided she did.  “No.”

“No?”

She threw the dishes into the sink and started for the front living room.  Annoyed, I thought.

“No, Edward,” she finally fully admitted.  “I’ve never actually… shot one off before.” 

And the way she said it.  Like it was the worst thing she could have ever admitted to me.  Something about the way she was so kid like sometimes, it just made me… I dunno… smile.

“Why does this information surprise me?”

“It’s all part of the persona,”  she’d insisted.  Then when I made that face I like to make at her when I feel like she’s talking out of her ass, she explained a little further.   “Marcus wanted me to have one, you know, just in case but I never really felt the need for lessons.  The mere fact that I had one on me most times, scared the shit out of people.”

“Yeah,” I chorted.  “Not to mention that scary face you do when you’re really pissed off.”

I swirled a hand at her. 

She made the face.

I diverted.

“Charlie never taught you how?”

He shook her head and I resisted the urge to ask her why.  It seemed like a no brainer to me.  Dad’s a cop, access to lots of powerful shit… he should want his daughter to learn how to protect herself.

But then, maybe he did send her away for schooling, so maybe he wanted her as far away from anything having to do with guns as possible.

It was making my head hurt to think it through, honestly, so I went another route.

“Look,” I walked over to her, taking my own weapon out, screwing a silencer onto the end as I did it. “It’s really not that hard, let me show ya really quick.”

“Oh,” she held her hands up.  Almost like shooting a gun was against her own warped sense of a cardinal law or something.  Which, again… weird.   “I don’t think so.”

“Come on Bella, it’ll make me feel better.”

“I really don’t…”

“Bella,” I said to her, a little sternly I might add, taking a position behind her, then taking one of her hands into mine.  She stopped arguing and I felt her body tense a little. But it was a good kind of tense.  You know, the kind when the person you’re making mad passionate love to on a nightly ritual type situation presses themselves against you in such a way that even though they’re supposed to be doing something completely professional, it feels more like a sexual experience?

Yeah.

That kind.

I felt it too.  And I nearly bagged the whole gun lesson and threw her down on to the couch but in all honesty, I really wanted to go forward, knowing she could shoot some piece of shit if he, or she tried anything with her.

So instead of ravishing her, I took her other hand and placed it around the gun I’d taken out.

“Alright,” she conceded with a whisper and I helped her aim at some random, all be it ugly as sin, picture that hung on the far wall from us.

Bella stood well, she knew some things.

I lowered my head down next to hers so I was even with her height.  My lips were suddenly neighbor to her right earlobe.  “Okay, just focus, and breathe.”

We raised the gun together and I peeked to see if she was just going through the motions for my benefit or taking the whole thing seriously and other than the licking of her lips that was completely and utterly distracting in a very “raising of the barn” kinda way… in other words, my dick was hard… she seemed into it.

My gun that is.

The gun in my hand.  Our hand. 

The gun I was trying to show her how to handle.

Jesus.

Forget it.

It appeared a few seconds later, that she was indeed taking it lightly though.  And the way Bella took it lightly, meant she was wriggling her ass up against that certain something that wasn’t taking it quite so lightly.

I bumped her with that certain something and watched her lips curl up a little.

I shook my head at her.

Tease.

Then she made like she was getting serious as she breathed in and I watched closely as she let the air out, making this cute little “Oh” shape with her lips when she did and I got lost in the vision for a few seconds before shaking it off. 

“Okay, aim at Mona’s mouth and wipe the shitty smirk right off of her fucking face.”

She giggled.

I felt it.

Her body shaking like that, against my chest was fucking with my dick but I was at least making the fucking effort to make sure she had some kind of goddamn training.  I huffed when her head lowered and her shoulders slacked a little.  “Bella, this isn’t funny,” I warned her but she couldn’t seem to stop.

“I’m sorry,” she laughed some more. “It’s just, the way you said Mona’s mouth… and…”

“Okay, okay, I got it, can we continue now?”

“This is silly, when am I ever going to need to know how to shoot someone?”  she asked, pulling the gun up again.  She squinted one eye shut and aimed, tilting her head just enough to make things twitch some more and then covered her bottom lip with her top teeth making her look like one of those smart TV cops who were too cocky for their own good.

“You’re not taking this seriously,” I finally told her, throwing my hands up into the air, giving up on her attitude for the time being.

“I’m not, I swear,” she promised but the giggles?  Still present, although diminishing at least.

“Okay, fine then… shoot me.”  I spread my arms wide, giving her the go ahead and her eyebrows curled up at me.   “Excuse me?”

 “Shoot me, hot shot… you think you have this thing nailed down, show me.”

I did that cool Matrix move with my hands that Morpheus did to Neo when he was trying to show him the ropes and Bella lowered the gun all together, singly arched eyebrow now.

“I’m not going to shoot you Edward.”

“Why not?  Chicken?”

She rolled her eyes and I started imitating one.  A chicken that is.  Flapping my imaginary wings and all.

That got her attention.

“Do it.”

“No.”

“Shoot me dammit!”

“NO!”

There she is.  And with one last little push… and a smirk even, “Come on, you can do.  Can’t ya… babe?”

And then she did it.  She fucking shot me. Or at least, she almost fucking did. 

“Jesus Christ!”  I jerked and ducked and looked behind me to see she’d only missed me by a few now grayed hairs on my head.  There was a hole in the dry wall and the chandelier I was standing next to was missing a few of its liers.

“What the fuck?”

“You told me to shoot you,” she said, waving the gun around and I weaved and bobbed and then bobbed and weaved out of its line of fire more than once.

I lost it while avoiding another close call.  “Okay well in my defense A… I thought the fucking safety was on and B… I didn’t think you’d really fucking shoot me.”

Seriously.

Do people not read between the lines these days?

Once her face stopped contorting she set the gun down, realizing she was holding a dangerous weapon in her hands and then started to stalk off into the kitchen.

“I don’t understand you.”

“Welcome to the fucking club.”

Her head did this, shaking, circling, almost ready to explode thing and she covered her eyes. “This is why I don’t get involved with people.  There are… way too many loopholes and… tricky statements and… and…”

“Hey…” I stepped closer to her, taking her hands into mine once again and I made her look at me.

“It’s all good.  I’m alive, you’re alive… I just need to make sure you’re okay.  That’s all.”

Her eyes looked worried.   I didn’t know that worry was for her or me, or us.  But it was there.  “I know how to take care of myself, Edward.  I’m a survivor… I’ve survived till now, I’ll keep surviving.  Please don’t ever question that.”

Don’t ask her what that means.  Do not ask her what that means.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah,” I smiled and she let out a huff of half way amused air, taking a glance over at the bullet hole she’d left in the wall, probably realizing that indeed, she’d almost just fucking shot me and then I asked her, “So…”  She looked back up to me.  “We’re involved?”

And then she closed her eyes and shook that pretty brunette head of hers, mumbling, “Oh my god.”

I cut her a break.  “Hey did you get a hold of your dad today?”

“No and I…”

I heard a car starting up outside and turned the light off, then pulled at the curtains to check on what it was.

And what it was… was go time.

“McCarty’s leaving, I’m headin’ in.”

She grabbed at me as I started off to go get some supplies for the job at hand.

“Be careful,” she demanded before laying a kiss on me she managed to fill with concern and doubt and a little bit of promise for late night continuation.  I let my hands move to her neck, tilting for better access, deepening the kiss with the slip of my tongue.

I might not have known for sure at that moment who our mole was or whether or not Marcus would ever make good on his threat to hurt Bella if I decided to fuck things up for him. 

But one thing I knew for sure was that right there, in that living room, we were real.

Maybe the home was fake and our friendships even… maybe.  And definitely Marcus, but not us. 

Even so, when I pulled away from that kiss.  Where a normal couple might have said something along the lines of “I love you” or “Be mine forever”, instead, I told Bella, “Watch my back.”

“I’m on it,” was her reply but instead I took it to mean, “I love you too,” and then I was grabbing gear, a two-way radio and heading out into the darkness to find a good entry point into McCarty’s house.

Getting in wasn’t quite as easy as I’d expected it to be but I made due.

A pulled groin muscle was a small price to pay in exchange for the information I was about to get.

I limped through the poorly lit house and felt my way around until I got to a light switch and flicked it on, then off again.  I only needed to figure out where I was going and besides that, didn’t want anyone outside knowing there was someone inside.

Especially anyone who might know Emmett was out on a date.  Like Alice fucking Brandon.

Eventually, I found his office space.  And another hidden space on the other side of a mock wall within that office space.

“Sneaky motherf…”

“Everything okay?” Bella asked from the other end of the two-way.  Which I had purposely turned on this time.  Thank you very much.

“Yeah, I’m just realizing who it was we should have been suspicious of this whole time instead of Whitlock.”

I entered a room with a single window.  A small one.  As though this was supposed to be a bathroom at some point and… about a fuck ton of technology.

“Holy…”

Computers? Yeah, but also, faxes, copiers, digital cameras… several.  Spy gear, scuba gear, climbing gear…  Cell phones, cell microphones, voice recorders and not to mention the artillery.

“Edward?”

“Who the hell are we dealing with here?” I mumbled to probably more myself than Bella but she heard it anyway.  “What have you got?”

“You name it.  I got it.”

I took a deep breath.  If this guy was a Marcus man… we were in deep. Shit.

Hell even if he wasn’t a Marcus man…

Then something caught my attention and I walked over to a pile of paperwork that had some manila folders stacked on top of it.

The very first one?  Had my name on it.

“What the… mother of?”  I picked up the file and opened it, shining a small flashlight down onto the inside of it.  It had everything.  Things I didn’t even know were in there.  My father’s full name, my real name… my immunizations even.  My record.  

“Shit.”

 Then I saw another folder.  It had Bella’s name on it.

“What’s wrong?”

I didn’t know if it was actually considered snooping to read her file.  I mean, it wasn’t like I’d created the file.  “Nothing, just… gimme a minute.”

I swallowed.

I thought.

There was probably information inside that folder I needed to know.  Things about Bella, how she worked… where she had worked… maybe something that would be able to tell me what to expect with her going forward with… whateverthefuck it was we were going forward with.

I started to open it slowly, still debating, still deciding… licking my lips instinctively when…

“Edward.”  She suddenly sounded urgent. “Get out of there, he’s home!” 

“What?  He’s not supposed to get back till…”

“Get out!”

Then the front door slammed shut and I heard McCarty on his phone talking to someone about broken plans and canceled reservations. 

I dropped the folder.

Shit.

“That wasn’t exactly a head’s up Bella.”

“I’m sorry, I was…” disturbance made me miss that last part of what she was saying. “What?”

“Yep, no problem sir, we’ll try again when…” Then he stopped.  Hesitation was thick.  I could hear it.  He felt something.   Felt something was wrong.  “Hold on a sec will ya?”

Motherfucker!

I had broken out into spontaneous sweating.  Meanwhile, Bella was still trying to figure out if I’d left in time or not.  “Edward?”

I fumbled with the radio and turned it off.  It was bad enough I was in the guys house, I didn’t need him hearing my name echo throughout the damn thing.

Talk about your heart rate increasing to race horse speed.

“Hellooooooooo,” he called out.  It was almost Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fuddish and despite the strong urge I was having to laugh at the guy’s sense of humor, I stood perfectly still in that dark room, waiting to see what my next move needed to be.

My thinking was that if he thought I’d taken off, maybe he’d go about his business and I could sneak out of a window somewhere.

But noooo.  I do not have such luck, my friends.  Not anymore.

I eyed the window.

“You don’t know who you’re fucking with but you picked the wrong house asshole,” he teased like a cat getting ready to corner his mouse. 

He knows you’re still here.

Dammit.

I couldn’t communicate with Bella and I couldn’t very well fucking act like I was throwing a surprise party for one in the outfit I was donning.

In. His. Secret. Room.

“You’ll be better off in the long run if you come out without a fight douchebag.  I’m pretty big, and I have an even bigger gun.”

I heard him cock it.

I had to admit, McCarty had game.  And hopefully he wasn’t actually going for the kill. 

Most conmen shot first and asked questions later.  Much later.  Like after you’re at the bottom of the fucking river having conversations with bottom feeders and shit.  And even then, they’re really just hypothetical questions.

Like “Who the fuck did you think you were dealing with asshole?”  or “What were you thinking?”

Anyway…  with a little bit of luck, he was just talkin’ shit and no one would have to die.

The situation sucked.  I knew I had one way out of that office, and only one way.  The window.  And considering how close the sound of Emmett’s voice was getting, I went for it.

I ran across the room, knocking over anything in my path and that for sure had given Emmett the info on just exactly where the fuck I was.  I knew that based on my own experiences.  But mostly because of the sound of heavy feet falling into a full out run through Emmett McCarty’s hallway.

I threw the secret door shut just to slow him down for a millisecond or two and then jumped onto his desk and lifted the tiny ass glass pane. 

“This shit is fucked. UP.”

I managed to squeeze through and was still falling to the ground when I heard Emmett inside.  “Sonofabitch!”  he screamed as he tripped over something.  His fingers barely grazing my shoes.

Jesus.

I didn’t look back, I took off at full speed, running through the neighborhood thanking fuck he hadn’t seen me but then, just as I thought I was far enough from the house to be in a safe zone, I heard him yelling after me. “Hey! fuck nut!”

“Oh shit.”

 I pulled my phone out and tried to shoot off a warning text to Bella… which, by the way, between sprinting through our fake cookie cutter neighborhood and auto correct?   My attempt to type, “Emmett isn’t civilian” came out more like “Empire Istanbul has Chives”.

Fucking iPhones.

I shoved it back into my pocket and sped up when I heard him right behind me it felt like.

Then I darted.  A technique I’d learned when I was still at the boys home, after not so very successful shoplifting experiences.  I turned down between a couple of houses and took the backyard route the other way, hoping he’d keep following my previous route but fucking asshole was too smart.  He’d obviously been on more than chase scene before and he was rounding off behind me just as I ducked through another yard.

I kept that up for a while before thinking I’d lost him.

I found some taller-ish bushes to duck into to take a breather, crouched down about as far as I could without losing my line of sight on McCarty and waited for another chance to run while I caught my breath a little. 

When the porch light came on.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck… FUCK me.”

It could just be a motion light, dude… settle down.

It was wishful thinking though because just then, the door opened.  “Edward?”

Again… Fuck.  Me.

I looked up, trying not to appear too out of breath… just like it was any other middle of the night.  “Hey Alice.”

She put a hand on her hip.  “What are you doing in my bushes?”

I had to laugh.

Bushes.

Okay… uh…. Right.  “Cinch bugs.”  Thank you, McCarty.

“What?”

I pinched at her grass.  “I think you’ve got them.”

“Really, where?” She stretched her neck but didn’t want to come all the way outside.  She didn’t have her robe on after all.  Thank God. 

“Yeah, I was just out… you know… fertilizing…”  I nodded back toward mine and Bella’s fake home, now that I had my bearings and knew where I was.  “… and noticed your grass looked a little off.”

“Oh no… now I’m going to have to…”

She was talking but I wasn’t listening.  I was trying to make sure McCarty was giving up but along the very lines of my fortune that evening, he was too close for comfort.  “I gotta go,” I told her, jumping up and out of the bushes, taking off again.  I don’t know what the fuck she was saying after that. 

I was in survival mode and not really giving a shit.

And since I didn’t want anyone else happening to see me again so I took the chase away from the neighborhood, down to a play ground that was wooded.  I was sure I could lose McCarty in there.  I was a nimble little fuck in my day and I was in good shape, plus he was too huge to duck through the low branches. 

“I’ve got you now, bitch!” he yelled out when he caught a glimpse of me again but he was losing his momentum.  He was tired and I was cocky.

“Come and get me motherfucker,” I told him but you know… more to myself as I darted through an opening in the brush.

“You’re goin’ down!”  he retorted as I disappeared into the wooded area but what I hadn’t thought of was that now that we were a little further away from actual civilians?  Emmett wasn’t so reluctant to hold back on the whole shooting me thing.

A couple of bullets whizzed past me silently and hit the tree bark of a big ass Maple and I ducked out of pure adrenilin.  “Fuck!”

He laughed. “Ha ha!  How ya like me now douche!”

I weaved and bobbed but goddamn that piece of shit McCarty was faster than I thought he would have been.

And like any time you’re shootin’ at a moving human being and you have more amo then they have stamina… you’re bound to hit them sooner or later.

“Mother!” Fucker!  That hurt. 

He clipped my shoulder and it was a hard enough jolt to throw me forward and onto my face but like I said, adrenalin, so I shot back up and kept on running, hoping I didn’t bleed the fuck out or slow down enough for him to take me out all together.

That woulda sucked.

“Gotch now, ya piece of shit!”  he yelled out and I’m thinking, what, is this guy the latest goddamn Terminator or somethin’?  And then I decided, desperate times called for desperate goddamn measures.   So I hid behind a clump of close knit saplings, hoping if I stood still enough for long enough, he’d think I was somewhere else. 

Maybe I could try the old throw a rock in the other direction routine.

Hey, it worked for Harry fucking Potter, right?

Bad idea with this guy.

I let my head fall against the tree for a few seconds, trying to breathe slowly and quietly, trying to feel out my wound to see how serious it was.  It fucking hurt like shit, that’s how serious it was.  That bitch was lodged and I was gonna pass out at some point from sheer lack of energy.

But then, like someone, somewhere had decided to cut me a break, I saw it.  A pile of pipes piled up next to an access tunnel of some sort.  Probably to a creek or somethin’ nearby.  And I grinned.

Pipes.

YES.

Lovely, long, steel pipes that could break faces of big ass motherfuckers who liked to take their daily dose of amphetamines before they head off after intruders with big ass motherfucking guns.

I knelt down and crawled over to them as quietly as I could and picked one up with my good arm.  Felt it out, swung it a few times and then waited. 

When I felt like I was ready, I made some purposeful noises and then heard McCarty, making his way toward me quietly.

Or at least, what he thought was quiet.

I closed my eyes and silently apologized to the asshole for what I was about to do and when I knew he was close enough, I swung. 

I swung as hard as I fucking could and he fell backwards onto his ass, dropping his gun in the fall.

Then I fell down next to him, unable to make even another move as the excitement of the moment started to wear off.

The pipe was bloodied and I just hoped to God McCarty had been knocked out as I crawled over to him to check if his pulse was still there.

Thank fuck.

I let myself fall back and rest for a few minutes as Emmett’s body lay there like that.  Limp and lifeless, but still breathing and when my own was somewhat controlled again, I stood up, wondering what to do with him as I dripped O negative all over the fucking place.

If anyone was to search that area, I was done for.

Then I cursed him one last time for his sheer size and muscle mass. 

“Okay big guy,” I said to him, even though I knew he didn’t hear me at that point.  “Don’t take any of this personally.”

I slipped my hands under his armpits and started draggin’ him over rocks and branches back toward the street.

“Jesus, what do you weigh, Em?”

Dead weight.  That son of a bitch was heavy.  Let me tell ya, but I managed to get him up to his house.  The long way, without anyone seeing us and I took him around to the back, leaving him on a deck swing he had, overlooking his back yard. 

I sat next to him for a while so I could catch my second wind so to speak.  It wasn’t a long while but it was long enough for me to get nervous about someone spotting me so I made myself get up and then I headed home.

And thank god the slider was open in the back by the kitchen, as usual, because if I’d had to knock, I think I mighta just fallen  down right then and there.

“Oh my god Edward.” 

Bella.

She was there. Pacing.  Chewing on a nail.  And when she saw me, she ran. 

I think I actually managed a smile as I fell.  I didn’t have shit in me anymore. 

I was pretty Emmett hadn’t meant that shot to actually kill me, I was think he’d meant as a warning, even if he didn’t know it was me he was shooting at.

At least I hoped he wouldn’t have shot if he’d known it was me.

Not that he owed me anything.  I mean it wasn’t like we were best friends or anything…

Anyway, the bullet hadn’t hit anything major but because of the fact that I’d done so much strenuous shit with the whole dragging his ass back up the neighborhood and trying to make sure he was at his own home when he woke up, I wasn’t feeling too hot.

“What the fuck happened?”   She was patting me down, trying to find the source of all the blood and then she found it, ran to grab some towels or something from the kitchen and then sat on the floor next to me, putting my head in her lap. 

I smiled up at her.  “Glad to see you too Beatrice,” I tried to tease but she was ignoring my sarcasm, blotting at the wound to assess the injury.

“That hurts by the way,” I told her one eyed.

“Shut up and tell me what happened.”

“Do you know anything about bullet wounds?”

“Edward, what.  Happened.”

I was losing it.  Getting ready to pass out, but I managed to tell her at least one thing before my eyes closed. 

“I think I confirmed who our mole is.”