Even when the plane’s wheels touched the tarmac, my impatience
refused to ebb. I reminded myself that Bella was surely less than a mile distant now and it wouldn’t be many minutes more before I could see her face again, but that only made the urge stronger to rip the emergency door off its hinges and sprint to the building rather than wait through the interminable taxiing. Carlisle could feel my agitation in my absolute stillness, and he nudged my elbow lightly to remind me to move.
Though our row’s window shade was down, there was an excess of direct sunlight in the plane. My arms were folded so that my hands were hidden, and I’d let the hood of my airport-shop hoodie fall forward to keep my face in shadow. We probably looked ridiculous to the other passengers
—especially Emmett, bulging out of a sweatshirt that was several sizes too small—or as though we thought we were some kind of celebrities hiding behind our hoods and dark glasses. More probably northern bumpkins who had no frame of reference for spring temperatures in the Southwest. I caught one man thinking that we’d all remove the sweatshirts before we made it down the length of the jetway.
The plane in the air had felt unbearably slow; this taxiing might kill me.
Just a little more restraint, I promised myself. She’d be there at the end of this. I’d take her away from here, and we’d hide together while we figured this out. The thought soothed me a tiny amount.
In reality, it took very little time for the plane to find its assigned gate, open and ready. There were a million possible delays that hadn’t gotten in our way. I should have been grateful.
We were even fortunate enough to end up at a gate on the north side of the airport, tucked into the late-morning shadow of the larger terminal. That would make it easier for us to move fast.
Carlisle’s fingers rested lightly on my elbow while the crew took its time
going through checks. Outside the plane, I could hear the mechanical Jetway maneuvering into place, and the knock against the hull when that was achieved. The crew ignored the sound, the two forward-cabin stewards staring together at a passenger list.
He nudged me again, and I pretended to breathe.
Finally, the steward approached the door and worked to heave it out of the way. I desperately wanted to help him, but Carlisle’s fingertips on my arm kept me focused.
With a hiss, the door opened, and warm outside air mixed with the stale cabin air. Stupidly, I searched for some trace of Bella’s scent, though I knew I was still too far. She’d be deep inside the air-conditioned terminal, past the security post, and her pathway there would follow a route from some distant parking garage. Patience.
The seat belt light turned off with a tinny ding, then all three of us were moving. We eased around the humans and were at the door so quickly that the steward took a surprised step back. It moved him out of our way, and we took advantage of that.
Carlisle tugged the back of my sweatshirt, and I reluctantly let him pass me. It would only make a few seconds’ difference if he set the pace, and certainly he would be more circumspect than I. No matter what the tracker did, we had to adhere to the rules.
I’d memorized the layout of this terminal in the onboard pamphlet, and we’d been loosed into the branch closest to the exit. More good luck. Of course I couldn’t hear Bella’s mind, but I should be able to find Alice and Jasper. They’d be with the other families waiting to greet passengers, just up ahead to the right.
I’d started to edge ahead of Carlisle again, anxious to finally see Bella.
Alice’s and Jasper’s minds would stand out from the humans’ like spotlights surrounded by campfires. I’d be able to hear them any—
The chaos and agony of Alice’s mind hit me then, like a sudden vortex erupting out of a calm sea, sucking me under.
I staggered to a stop, paralyzed. I didn’t hear what Carlisle said, barely felt his attempts to pull me forward. I was vaguely aware of his awareness of the human security officer eyeing us suspiciously.
“No, I’ve got your phone right here,” Emmett was saying too loudly, providing an excuse.
He grabbed me under one elbow and started to move me forward. I scrambled to find my footing while he half carried me, but I couldn’t quite feel the floor under me. The bodies around me seemed translucent. All I could really see was Alice’s memories.
Bella, pale and withdrawn, twitching with nerves. Bella, desperate-eyed, walking away with Jasper.
A memory of a vision: Jasper rushing back to Alice, agitated.
She didn’t wait for him to come to her. She followed his scent to where he waited outside a women’s restroom, face clouded with concern.
Alice following Bella’s scent now, finding the second exit, darting at a speed that was a little too conspicuous. The hallways full of people, the crowded elevator, the sliding doors to the outside. A curb teeming with taxis and shuttles.
The end of the trail. Bella had vanished.
Emmett propelled me into the giant, atrium-like space where Alice and Jasper waited tensely in the shadow of a massive pillar. The sun slanted down at us through a glass ceiling, and Emmett’s hand on my neck forced me to bow my head, to keep my face in shadow.
Alice could see Bella a few seconds from now, in a taxi, speeding along a freeway through brilliant sunlight. Bella’s eyes were closed.
And in just a few minutes more: a mirrored room, fluorescent tubes bright overhead, long pine boards across the floor.
The tracker, waiting.
Then blood. So much blood.
“Why didn’t you go after her?” I hissed.
The two of us weren’t enough. She died.
I had to force myself to keep moving through the pain that wanted to freeze me into place again.
“What’s happened, Alice?” I heard Carlisle ask.
The five of us were already moving in an intimidating formation toward the garage where they’d parked. Thankfully, the glass ceiling had given way to simpler architecture, and we were out of danger from the sun. We moved faster than any of the human groups, even the late ones running past us for their connections, but I chafed at the speed. We were too slow. Why pretend now? What did it matter?
Stay with us, Edward, Alice cautioned. You’re going to need us all.
In her mind: blood.
To answer Carlisle’s question, she shoved a piece of paper into his hand.
It was folded into thirds. Carlisle glanced at it and recoiled.
I saw it all in his head.
Bella’s handwriting. An explanation. A hostage. An apology. A plea.
He passed the note to me—I crumpled it in my hand, shoved it into my pocket.
“Her mother?” I growled softly.
“I haven’t seen her. She won’t be in the room. He may have already…” Alice didn’t finish.
She remembered Bella’s mother’s voice on the phone, the panic in it.
Bella had gone to the other room to calm her mother. And then the vision had overtaken Alice. She hadn’t put the timing together. She hadn’t seen.
Alice was spiraling in guilt. I hissed, low and hard. “There’s not time for that, Alice.”
Carlisle was almost inaudibly muttering the pertinent information to Emmett, who had become impatient. I could hear his horror as he understood, his sense of failure. It was nothing compared to mine.
I could not let myself feel this now. Alice saw the tightest of windows. It was maybe impossible. It was absolutely impossible that we could catch up to Bella before her blood started flowing. Part of me knew what this meant, that there would be a gap of time between the tracker’s finding her and her death. A wide gap. I couldn’t allow myself to understand.
I had to be fast enough.
“Do we know where we’re going?”
Alice showed me a map in her head. I felt her relief that she’d gotten the most vital information in time. After the first vision, but before the call from Bella’s mother, Bella had given her the crossroads near the place the tracker had chosen to wait. It was just under twenty miles, with freeway almost all the way. It would only take minutes.
Bella didn’t have that long.
We were through the baggage claim area and into the elevator bay. Several groups with carts loaded with suitcases were waiting for the next set of doors to open. We moved in synchronization to the stairwell. It was
empty. We flew upward and were in the garage in less than a second. Jasper started for where they’d left the car, but Alice caught his arm.
“Whatever car we take, the police are going to be searching for its owners.”
The brilliant freeway gleamed in her mind, blurring with speed. Blue and red lights spinning, a roadblock, some kind of accident—it wasn’t totally clear yet.
They all froze, not sure what this meant. There was no time.
I moved too fast down the line of cars while the others recovered and followed at a more judicious pace. There weren’t many people in the garage, none who could see me plainly.
I heard Alice instructing Carlisle to retrieve his bag from the trunk of the Mercedes. Carlisle kept a medical kit in every car he drove in case of emergencies. I didn’t let myself think about that.
There wasn’t time to find the perfect option. Most of the cars here were bulky SUVs or practical sedans, but there were a few options a little faster than the others. I was hesitating between a new Ford Mustang and a Nissan 350Z, hoping Alice would see which would serve better, when the hint of an unexpected scent caught my attention.
As soon as I smelled the nitrous, Alice saw what I was looking for.
I darted to the far end of the garage, right up to the edge of the intruding sunlight, where someone had parked their souped-up WRX STI far away from the elevators in hopes that no one would park next to it and ding the paint.
The paint job was hideous—violently orange bubbles the size of my head rising from what appeared to be deep purple lava. I’d never seen a car so conspicuous in a hundred years.
But it was obviously well maintained, somebody’s baby. Nothing was stock, everything designed for racing, from the splitter to the huge aftermarket spoiler. The windows were tinted so dark I doubted they were legal, even here in this land of sun.
Alice’s vision of the road ahead was much clearer now.
She was already beside me, some other car’s broken-off antenna in hand. She’d flattened it between her fingers and shaped a small hook at the end. She popped the lock before Jasper, Emmett, and Carlisle, black leather
satchel in hand, caught up to us.
Ducking into the driver’s seat, I wrenched off the casing on the steering column and twisted the ignition wires together. Next to the gearshift was a second stick, this one topped with two red buttons labeled “Go Go 1” and “Go Go 2”—I appreciated the owner’s commitment to upgrades, if not his sense of humor. I could only hope the nitrous canisters were full. The gas tank was at three quarters, plenty more than I needed. The others climbed into the car, Carlisle in the passenger seat and the rest in the back, and the engine was thrumming eagerly as we reversed into the aisle. No one blocked my way. We tore down the length of the enormous garage toward the exit. I clicked on the heating button on the dash. It would take a moment for the nitrous to heat from gas to liquid.
“Alice, give me thirty seconds ahead.”
Yes.
The descent was a tight corkscrew that spiraled down four floors. Midway, I ran up against the back of an Escalade on its way out, as Alice had seen I would. The way was so narrow I had no option but to ride its tail and try to startle the other driver with one long honk. Alice saw that wouldn’t work, but I couldn’t resist.
We spun out of the last curve into a wide, sunlit payment bay. Two of the six lanes were empty, and the Escalade headed for the closest. I was already to the last kiosk.
A thin red-and-white-striped arm stretched across the lane. Before I could even really consider ramming through it, Alice was shouting at me in her head.
If the police start chasing us now, we don’t make it!
My hands clenched the neon orange steering wheel too hard. I forced my fingers to relax while I pulled up to the automated window. Carlisle grabbed the ticket, stuck behind the visor in an obvious way, and held it out to me.
Alice snagged it. She could see I was as likely to put my fist through the card reader as I was to wait patiently for the machine to work. I drove another two feet forward so Jasper could roll down his window and pay with one of the no-name cards we used to stay anonymous.
He’d pulled his dark sleeve to his fingertips. There was the barest glimmer as he reached out the window to shove the ticket into the slot.
I concentrated on the striped arm. It was the checkered flag. As soon as
it lifted, the race was on.
The card reader made a whirring sound. Jasper punched a button. The arm popped up and I hit the accelerator.
I knew the road. Alice had seen the length of it and everything in our way. It was the middle of the day and the traffic wasn’t terrible. I could see the holes in the pattern.
It took me twelve seconds to shift through the gears until I was in sixth.
I didn’t plan to shift down again.
The first section of the freeway was mostly empty, but a merge loomed ahead. Not enough time to make full use of a NOS canister. I veered to the far left to get around the influx.
I could say this for Arizona: The sun might be ridiculous, but the freeways were exceptional. Six wide, smooth lanes, with shoulders ample enough on either side that it was as good as eight. I used the left shoulder now to streak by two pickups who thought they belonged in the fast lane.
Everything was flat and sun-blasted around the highway, wide open with no place to hide from the light, the sky an enormous pale blue dome that seemed almost white in the glaring heat. The whole valley was bared to the sun like food in a broiler. A few twiglike trees scarcely clinging to life were the only features breaking up the dull expanses of gravel. I couldn’t see the beauty Bella saw here. I didn’t have time to try.
My speed was up to one twenty. I could probably get another thirty out of the STI, but I didn’t want to push her too hard yet. There was no way to know if the engine had been tuned to stage two or three; it would be touchy, unstable. I could only watch the oil pressure and temperature and listen carefully to how hard the engine was working.
The huge, arcing overpass that would carry us to the northbound freeway was approaching, and it was only one lane. With a very wide right shoulder.
I skidded back across the six lanes to make the exit. A few cars swerved in surprise, but they were all a distance behind me by the time they reacted.
Alice saw that the shoulder was not quite wide enough.
“Em, Jazz, I’m going to lose the side mirrors,” I growled. “Give me a view.”
They both twisted in their seats to stare at the road to the left, right, and behind. The view in their minds gave me a much better range than the
mirrors anyway.
I flew alongside the slower traffic, unable to keep my speed over a hundred. I gritted my teeth and held tight to the wheel as I scraped by the wide van that was riding the right lane line. With a screech of metal, my left mirror ripped off against the van’s side, and my right mirror exploded against the concrete barrier.
Bella was running across a white-hot sidewalk, stumbling. Or she would be soon.
“Just the road, Alice,” I spit through my teeth.
Sorry. I’m trying.
Her panic bled through her thoughts. Bella was running into a parking lot. Or would be soon.
“Stop!”
She closed her eyes and tried to see nothing but the pavement ahead.
I knew these images had the power to render me useless. I forced them out of my mind.
It wasn’t as hard to do as I expected.
Everything was the road. I could see it in three hundred sixty degrees and thirty seconds into the future. As I merged onto the northbound freeway, drifting across the lanes to the left shoulder again, up to one thirty now, it felt like our minds were bound together into one perfectly focused organism, greater than the sum of its parts. I saw the patterns in the traffic ahead, shifting and congealing, and I could see the right way through every snarl.
We flew through the shade of two separate overpasses so quickly that the flash of darkness felt like strobing.
One forty-five.
Fifteen seconds ahead of me, the perfect bubble of space opened. I swerved into the center lane and flipped the clear safety cover off the bright red “Go Go 1” button.
The timing was perfect. The exact instant I was clear, I punched the button, the NOS spray hit, and the car shot forward as if fired from a cannon.
One fifty-five.
One seventy.
Bella was opening a glass door into a dark, empty room. Or would be
soon.
Alice refocused, also surprised at the ease of doing so. Her thoughts flickered to Jasper, and I understood.
As a man of peace, Jasper struggled. But as a man of war, he was more than I’d ever imagined.
We were all sharing his battle focus now, something he’d used to keep his newborns on track back in his war years. It worked perfectly in this vastly different situation, blending us into one hyperfunctional machine. I embraced it, letting my mind spearpoint our charge.
The hit of nitrous was already waning. One fifty.
I searched for the next opportunity.
They’re setting up the first roadblock, Alice noted. Neither of us was concerned. They were building it too close to intercept us. We’d be past it before they could pull it together.
And the second. She showed me the spot on the map in her head. Far enough ahead that it would be a problem, even with another window opening in just four seconds.
I considered my options while Alice showed me the consequences. The time was too short—we had no choice but to switch cars.
Abstracted, I flipped up the safety and depressed “Go Go 2.” The STI kicked forward obediently.
One seventy. One eighty.
Alice showed me the specific vehicles available ahead and I sifted through our choices.
The Corvette would be cramped, and our combined weight would be more of a factor than it was with this street racer. I mentally drew a line through a few other vehicles. And then Alice saw it—a glossy black BMW S1000 RR. Top speed one ninety.
Edward, it’s impossible.
The image of myself astride the sleek black motorcycle was so appealing that for a second I ignored her.
Edward, you’re going to need every one of us.
Suddenly her thoughts were full of mayhem and blood, human and inhuman screaming, the sound of shredding metal. Carlisle was at the
center, his hands dyed glistening red.
Jasper kept me from steering off the road. His grip on my emotions was so strong in that second that it felt like a fist clenched tight around my throat.
Together we forced my mind back to the lanes in front of me. It was the shortest part of the journey we’d have left; the car didn’t matter so much. Alice flipped through sedans, minivans, and SUVs.
There it was. A brand-new Porsche Cayenne Turbo, too new for plates yet—top speed one eighty-six—already adorned with a stick-figure family on the back window. Two daughters and three dogs.
A family would slow us. Alice used my decision to take this car and looked ahead into what that meant. Luckily there was only the driver inside. A thirty-something female with a dark brown ponytail.
Alice couldn’t see Bella on the sidewalk anymore. That part was past now. As was the parking lot. Bella was inside with the tracker.
I let Jasper keep me focused.
“We’re changing cars under the next overpass,” I warned them.
Alice assigned our roles in a trilling voice, the words flowing faster than the speed of a hummingbird’s wings.
Carlisle dug through his bag. Emmett flexed unconsciously.
I overtook the white SUV, hating the necessity of slowing down to pace it. Every second I lost, Bella would pay for in pain. Against all my instincts, I shifted down to fourth gear.
The BMW motorcycle sped out of reach. I repressed a sigh.
The overpass was half a mile ahead. The shadow that it threw was only fifty-three feet long; the sun was almost directly above us now.
I started to crowd the Cayenne toward the left. She changed lanes. I followed quickly, then straddled the lane lines so that I was halfway into hers. She started to slow and so did I.
Alice helped me time it. I pulled slightly ahead of the Cayenne and then steered left again, forcing my way into her lane while decelerating sharply. The driver slammed on the brakes.
Just behind us, the Corvette I’d considered before swerved into another lane, laying on the horn as he passed. The whole traffic amoeba lurched to the right as one to avoid us.
We came to a full stop in the last ten feet of shade.
All of us exited simultaneously. Curious faces flew by us at seventy miles per hour.
The driver of the Cayenne was climbing out of her car, too, her face in a scowl and her ponytail swinging with rage. Carlisle darted forward to meet her. She had one second to react to the fact that the most handsome man she’d ever seen was responsible for running her off the road, and then she was collapsing into him. She probably hadn’t even had time to feel the prick of the needle.
Carlisle carefully laid her unconscious body on the raised concrete shelf beside the shoulder. I took the driver’s seat. Jasper and Alice were already in the back. Alice had the door open for Emmett. He was crouched beside the STI, his eyes on Alice, waiting for her command. Alice watched the traffic racing toward us for the moment of least damage.
“Now,” she cried.
Emmett flipped the gaudy STI into the oncoming traffic.
It rolled into the second and third lanes from the right. A prolonged series of crunches began as car after car slammed on the brakes and then slammed into the car in front of them anyway. Airbags popped loudly from the dashboards. Alice saw injuries, but no fatalities. The police, already racing after us, were only seconds away.
The sounds faded. Carlisle and Emmett were in their seats and I was racing forward again, desperate to make up for the seconds we’d lost here.
The tracker loomed over Bella. His fingers stroked her cheek. It was only seconds away.
One sixty-five.
On the other side of the divided highway, four patrol cars screamed in the other direction, headed for our accident. They paid no attention to the soccer mom SUV speeding north.
Only two more exits. One eighty.
I couldn’t feel any strain in the SUV, but I knew the danger now lay not in engine failure—it would take a lot to compromise this German-built tank
—but in the integrity of the tires. They weren’t manufactured for this kind of speed. I couldn’t risk blowing any of them, but it was physically painful to ease my foot back from the gas pedal.
One sixty.
Our exit was racing toward us. I whipped around a semi and swerved to the right.
Alice showed me the setup. An intersection spanned the length of the overpass. At the top of this exit, a streetlight was just turning yellow. In one second, the west side of the intersection would get a green arrow and two lanes of vehicles would cross the middle of the road.
Silently urging the tires to hold themselves together, I mashed down the accelerator.
One seventy.
We shot up the exit on the narrow left shoulder, passing within inches of the cars stopped for the light.
I careened left under the now-red light, the back of the SUV drifting out to the right as I narrowly made the turn, almost touching the concrete barrier on the north side of the overpass.
The cars headed to the on-ramp were already halfway across the intersection. There was nothing to do but hold my course steady.
I bolted past the Lexus leading the charge with not an inch to spare.
Cactus Road wasn’t as helpful as the freeway—only two lanes with dozens of residential roads and even some driveways opening onto it. Four lights between us and the mirrored room. Alice saw we would hit two of them on red.
A speed limit sign—forty miles an hour—flew by. One twenty.
The road gave me one small advantage: A suicide lane edged by bright yellow lines ran right down the middle of almost its entire length.
Bella was crawling across the pine floorboards. The tracker raised his foot.
Alice refocused but my mind veered. For a tenth of a second, I was back in my Volvo in Forks, thinking of ways to kill myself.
Emmett would never… but maybe Jasper. He alone could feel what I felt. Maybe he would want to end my life, just to escape that pain. But probably he would run away instead. He wouldn’t want to hurt Alice. So that left the longer trip to Italy.
Jasper reached forward to touch his fingertips to the back of my neck. It felt like novocaine washing over my anguish.
I tore down the center lane uninterrupted for a mile, veering back into the legal lanes to fly under the first green light. The next intersection rushed toward me. The suicide lane transitioned to a left turn lane, with three cars already lined up and waiting. The right turn lane was mostly empty. I was able to avoid the motorcycle in it by popping up onto the sidewalk for a second, fighting to keep the SUV from rolling.
I glanced at the speedometer: eighty. Unacceptable.
I darted through the light cross traffic—fortunately a few drivers had seen me coming and lurched to a stop halfway into the intersection—and reclaimed the suicide lane.
One hundred.
The coming intersection was bigger than the last, wider and twice as congested.
“Alice, give me every possibility!”
In her head, the vehicles on the road froze. She spun them counterclockwise and then back again. I saw them stretching first vertically and then horizontally. The pattern was tight, but there were tiny holes. I memorized them.
One twenty.
If we clipped another car at this speed, both cars would be destroyed. We’d have no choice but to race out into the blinding sunlight and bolt for Bella’s location. People would see… something. None of the others were as fast as I was. I didn’t know what the story would be—aliens or demons or secret government weapons—but I did know there would be a story. And then what? How would I save Bella when the immortal authorities came, asking questions? I could not involve the Volturi, not unless I was too late.
But Bella was screaming.
Jasper ramped up my novocaine dosage. Numbness soaked through my skin and into my brain.
I jammed my foot against the gas pedal and swerved into the oncoming lanes of traffic.
There was just enough space to weave between the other cars. They were all moving so slowly compared to me that it felt like dodging around standing objects.
One thirty.
I snaked my way through the frozen intersection, crossing to the right
side of the road as soon as it was clear. “Nice,” Emmett hissed.
One forty.
The final light would be green. But Alice had different ideas.
“Turn left here,” she said, showing me a narrow residential road behind the commercial area where the dance studio was located. The street was lined with towering eucalyptus trees, quivering leaves more silver than green. The spotty shade was almost enough for us to move through undetected. No one was outside. It was too hot.
“Slow down now.” “There’s not enough—” If he hears us, she dies!
Unwillingly, I moved my foot to the brake pedal and started slowing. The angle for the turn was sharp enough that I would have rolled the SUV if I hadn’t. I took the turn at only sixty.
Slower.
My jaw locked in place as I braked down to forty.
“Jasper,” Alice hissed at top speed, her words nearly silent despite her fervor. “You cut around the building and come through the front. The rest of us go through the back. Carlisle, get ready.”
Blood all over the shattered mirrors, pooling on the wooden floors.
I pulled the Cayenne into the shade of one of the soaring trees and parked with only the slightest sound of tires against loose stones on the pavement. An eight-foot block wall demarcated the border between residential and commercial. The opposite side of the road was edged with close-packed, stuccoed houses, all with their shades down to keep the interiors cool.
Moving in perfect synchronicity thanks to Jasper, we darted from the car, leaving every door slightly open so there would be no unnecessary noise. Traffic churned both north and west of the commercial building; surely it would cover any sounds we might make.
Maybe a quarter of a second had passed. We surged over the wall, leaping far enough to avoid the bed of gravel at its base and landing almost silently on pavement. There was a small alley behind the building. A dumpster, a stack of plastic crates, and the emergency exit.
I didn’t hesitate. I could already see what was behind that door. Or what would be behind the door one second from now. I angled my body so there would be no mistakes, no tiny window the tracker could slip through, and then launched myself at the door.
