"You know that we can't let you come with us," I said, my heart wrenching as I watched his chest heave in pure worry. He ran his hand through his hair and stood up from his bed, his breath heavy. "It's not safe."
"I don't give a fuck what's safe for me," he said, "living in my own house isn't safe for me, this isn't any different."
"Cole, relax, we have to go, please just-" I tried, but he cut me off again.
"I'm going to search for her, with you or without you," his voice broke as he stood up. He reached over to grab his sweatshirt off the back of his chair, and I shook my head.
"Cole, we will call somebody and have them take you into custody if you don't stop," I told him, swallowing hard as it extremely hard to threaten him. He didn't seem to care at all about his safety, which was beyond frustrating and upsetting to me.
Liv looked at me urgently. There was already a team searching for Bella, but I knew that the two of us had to hurry as well to join them.
"Cole, whoever she may be with - that is, if she's even with anybody, probably wants you too. What good would it do if you showed up to help her?" I asked, trying desperately to be rational but he was testing me.
"Bella could- she could be getting killed right now and all you're focused on is my safety," he said.
"You are only sixteen, Cole. Listen, you are staying here with your parents. End of discussion. You are not coming with us, and you are certainly not looking on your own," I tried to say, but he ignored me as he pulled on his sweatshirt.
"No wonder your kid doesn't fucking talk to you," he said before pushing past Liv and I to the hallway outside of his bedroom. His words wrapped around my heart like a vice, but I tried to remind myself that he was just upset.
Liv and I followed him out into the living room, where his mother was pacing and gnawing on her nails.
"I hear yelling," Mrs. Mancini said, before her pale eyes looked over at Cole.
Cole didn't say one word to her, he just started out the door, and his mother looked at us with tears in her eyes.
"Where is he going? Cole! Torna qui adesso! Tuo padre ti punirà! Torna qui ora!" she cried out the door after him.
"We'll get him, don't worry," I heard Liv assure her as we rushed out the door.
It was dark outside, and the temperature was below freezing. My heavy breath was fogging the air in front of me as I caught up with Cole and grabbed onto his shirt. Liv moved to start the car as I focused on trying to control him.
He fought back against me, pushing his arm out to slam his elbow into my chest and knocking the breath out of me.
"Stop fighting me, Cole!" I demanded through my teeth.
He then knocked into my injured arm, and I exhaled in pain, before I finally restricted him and shoved him up against my car. He groaned immediately, but I tried to swallow my heart. I had to stop investing myself so much in this case - it was my job, it shouldn't affect my life as much as it was.
"Do you really want me to arrest you right now?" I asked him, my heart racing in my chest. It hurt so bad to do that to him. "Do you seriously want that?"
Cole put his forehead against the window of the car as he gasped for air. "Please let go of me," he pleaded, his voice desperate.
He sucked air through his teeth in pain, so I eased up on him a bit, but still kept him held against the car.
I looked over and found his mother staring out the door at us in worry from the doorway of her house, her figure a mere silhouette outlined by the light which poured out from inside. She had her hand over her mouth as she watched me press her son against the car.
"Don't arrest him! Please do not!" she screamed out to me. "My baby boy! Please!"
"That sick fuck has her right now, I know he does," Cole said, his accent thick as I could practically feel frustration radiating off of him. He sounded like he was in so much emotional pain.
I stared at him, and I contemplated allowing him to come with us. I had broken the rules a lot throughout this case, and if bringing him along on the search meant I got fired, I was willing to take that risk. I wasn't even supposed to be working for another week.
But I couldn't allow it. I didn't care about breaking the rules of my job, but I did care about him. The last thing I needed was for him to die on my watch.
I let go of him, a lump forming in my throat as I watched him exhale in relief and move away from me. He stared at me and continued to back away, almost as if he was frightened by me.
Hot tears formed in my eyes as I looked back at him. I felt like a monster. This kid had been through so much and I was treating him like a criminal of some sort.
I reached my hand out towards him, and he flinched away from me, making my heart shatter into pieces.
"It's not safe for you to come, Cole," I told him, swallowing hard. "But you can't leave your house to look on your own. We're sending officers to watch you and your family."
Cole took a deep breath, before he looked over his shoulder at his mother, who was still standing by the front door.
"Cole! Entra in questa casa ora! Adesso!" she screamed out again.
"Just make sure you check the house," Cole said, and I instantly knew which house he was talking about.
"Why?" I wondered, and his breath was heavy as he tried to relax himself.
"Just do it, please," he said as he inhaled a shaky breath. "I think that, if- if the house hasn't been searched yet, you should search it," was all he said, before he turned and started towards his house.
I watched him walk inside, where his mother greeted him at the doorway with a hug. When she closed the door behind him, I got into the driver's side of the car, and Liv looked at me while holding her walkie talkie.
"No reports of where her or Steven are yet, or if they're with each other at all. But her father swears she wrote the note, it's in her handwriting," she informed me.
"What did the note say?" I asked.
"Jared said something about how she should be back soon but she might not be. And how she loved her father," Liv told me as I shifted the car into drive and began to pull away from Cole's house.
"Where have they searched so far?"
"They've searched almost every area around her house, the trailer in the woods, and the bunker. No sight of her," Liv answered, and I bit my lip in anger while focusing on the road.
"We could look at the creek by the woods, and just search the woods for her," I said, but the idea felt useless.
"We could do that," Liv answered.
"Cole said to look at Rose's house," I mentioned quietly.
"That's... a good idea," Liv said skeptically, "but there are officers there already. They would have called it in. I don't think that she's there. I don't think she would go there, and I don't think Steven would either."
I saw her glance at me through my peripheral vision, and I shrugged my shoulders.
"We could drive by and just make sure there's nothing suspicious going on," I concluded, and Liv eventually nodded in agreement.
"I hope it's not a waste of time," she said, before I started the fifty minute drive to Rose's house.
The drive to the house was long, and I couldn't stop thinking about how Cole was scared of me as I drove. Why was I acting so strange? His safety meant so much to me, yet I was the one shoving him against the car like he was a criminal. I wasn't treating him like a kid who had been through something worse than Hell and was going through severe post traumatic stress.
As I was pulling up near Rose's house, I felt that it was unusually dark surrounding the area. The streetlights were flickering, and some were even out, making the road nearly pitch black aside from the circle of poor illumination from some of them.
There was a police car sitting in front of the lawn, as usual, but it was dark inside the car, and it wasn't turned on.
Liv and I got out of my car. I had my gun tight in my grip as we slowly and carefully approached the police vehicle.
Instantly, I spotted a dark crimson liquid rolling down the edge of the the driver's side door, and the officer's head was resting against the open window. My heart was pounding in my throat as we inched closer. There was a gaping gunshot wound in his head, and when Liv shined a flashlight on him, and then his partner, who I didn't notice before. Both of their eyes were open and they were completely still.
Liv pressed her fingertips against his neck, checking for a pulse, before she shook her head.
"Oh, God," Liv whispered, her eyes wide as she immediately called for more backup. They responded, and we instantly started up the driveway.
She had a flashlight in one hand and her gun in the other, and I was holding my gun as we gently tried the doorknob. The front door was locked, and I looked at Liv in sheer panic.
"Police! Open this door right now!" I screamed, and there was no response. I pounded my knuckles against the door again. "Open this door! Police!"
I finally, with all my might, kicked the wooden door in.
The door fell to the ground and released a cloud of dust in front of us. We were able to see the dark kitchen of Rose's house. The loud sound of music playing immediately startled us.
Liv and I both walked over to the record player that was sat on the kitchen counter, where the eerie sounds of a Doo Wop record warped and skipped against the needle.
"Somebody was definitely in here," I said in a whisper. And they clearly wanted us to know they were there, or had been there.
However, we didn't touch the record player. We were completely discreet as we moved throughout the house carefully with the help of the flashlight. The music followed us.
There was still areas of yellow caution tape surrounding certain parts of evidence that was never collected.
We walked into the living room. There was clothes strewn around the couches, and the television was sitting idly in the corner of the room. We then started down the hallway, kicking the bathroom door open, then the bedroom door, and there was no sign of anybody - not even a sound.
We walked out towards the basement door, and I opened it cautiously, the door creaking slightly as it opened. We tried to silently step down the staircase, practically tiptoeing down each step. The loud sounds of the record player masked our footsteps.
As we descended down the basement, we could still hear the music playing from upstairs, the sound muffled through the closed door.
We reached the bottom and walked into the room which was known as the 'torture room' to the kids, and moved the flashlight around the dark area.
The mattress was still on the ground with caution tape surrounding it. There was dried, black blood staining the walls and the floor. The air in the room was frigid and piercing every pore of my skin as I continued to walk through it.
"We should have shut that awful music off," Liv said, before she moved the flashlight to the doorway.
We both paused when we heard a sudden thumping sound.
"Did you hear that?" I whispered to her, and she nodded, before we both slowly walked out of the room and towards the closed door of the main room the children were held in.
We pushed the wooden door open a little, and I instantly noticed that there was light in the room. It came from a dull lantern which was placed on the floor beside the door, right by our feet.
I pushed the door open a little more, and I almost fell to the floor with the sight in front of me.
The music continued to play from upstairs.
Bella was sitting on her knees, her dress completely ripped and tattered. I didn't have time to think about how odd it was that she was wearing a dress in freezing weather, because her breathing grew heavier as she stared at us. The sound mixed with the music and filled the room with a disturbing echo.
I couldn't believe that it was really her.
Her wide eyes watched at the both of us, and it brought me back to the moment I saw her on the kitchen floor of the house. Her eyelids were completely swollen and surrounded by blotchy, reddened bruising. Blood was pouring down the side of her head, and it was splattered against the bridge of her nose and cheeks like freckles.
Her eyes were in shock, maintaining a completely wide state as they watered and stared between us. Tears dripped slowly down the corners of them, mixing with the blood that settled on her cheek as it dripped down her chin. Her nose had blood crusted beneath each of her nostrils. Her lip was busted open, parted to allow her labored breathing.
That's when I noticed that she had a sharp knife clutched in her fingertips. The crimson liquid was dripping down the knife and trickling down her arm.
In front of her was a man, swimming in a pool of darkened blood as the lifeless body bled to death. Steven's body.