I wanted to rip my hair out in frustration. “You didn’t see—you don’t understand! Once he commits to a hunt, he’s unshakable. We’d have to kill him.”
Emmett looked at me like I was being slow.
Of course we have to kill him, he thought, but his spoken words were milder. He was being uncharacteristically sensitive, aware of the fragile human he was confining. “That’s an option.”
“And the female,” I reminded him. “She’s with him.” This didn’t affect Emmett at all, so I added, “If it turns into a fight, the leader will go with them, too,” though I doubted that.
“There are enough of us.”
Did he count Rose and Esme in his tally? Of course not. He thought he could do it alone, as if they would stand and face him directly, without subterfuge.
“There’s another option,” Alice repeated.
It’s coming anyway. Why not embrace it and make her safe now?
The fury that gripped me felt dangerous, as though I might actually hurt Alice now, despite loving her. I tried to contain it, letting it vent only in words.
“There is no other option!” I roared, inches from her face.
Alice didn’t flinch.
Don’t be stupid about this. There are too many futures, too many twists and turns that I can’t unravel. It’s too far-reaching. You’re right that he won’t give up.… Unless he has no motivation to continue.
In Alice’s head, I could see decades of James hunting Bella while I tried to hide her. A thousand different traps and ruses. Clearly, he’d be harder to kill than Emmett imagined.
Well, I had no problem being vigilant for decades. I wouldn’t trade her life for an easier future.
A small, shaky voice interrupted us.
“Does anyone want to hear my plan?”
“No,” I snapped, still glaring at Alice. She scowled back.
“Listen,” Bella continued. “You take me back—”
“No.”
“You take me back,” she insisted, her voice stronger and angrier now. “I tell my dad I want to go home to Phoenix. I pack my bags. We wait till this tracker is watching, and then we run. He’ll follow us and leave Charlie alone. Charlie won’t call the FBI on your family. Then you can take me any damned place you want.”
So she wasn’t thinking entirely irrationally, offering herself as a sacrifice in exchange for Charlie’s life or our protection. She had a plan.
“It’s not a bad idea, really,” Emmett mused. He had little faith in the tracker’s abilities; he’d rather leave a trail to follow than have no idea from what direction the enemy would appear. He also thought it would be quicker this way, and despite his words before, Emmett really wasn’t much for patience.
Alice considered, watching how Bella’s resolve shifted her futures. She could see that, if nothing else, the tracker would be there for the performance.
“It might work,” she allowed. New visions were crowding fast upon the old. We’d split up, three different directions, leaving only the trail we wanted to leave. She saw Emmett and Carlisle hunting in the forest. Sometimes Rosalie was there, too, sometimes it was Emmett and Jasper, but no grouping held stable.
“And we simply can’t leave her father unprotected. You know that,” Alice added, still watching the play of the images. This part she was sure of. We would go back and give the tracker something to focus on besides Charlie.
But in these very clear visions, the tracker was too close to Bella. The thought strained my already raw nerves.
“It’s too dangerous,” I muttered. “I don’t want him within a hundred miles of her.”
“Edward, he’s not getting through us.” Emmett was frustrated by what he saw as my trying to prevent a fight. He didn’t feel any of the stakes.
Alice worked through the immediate outcomes of this decision—a decision she was making now, seeing that I was frozen with uncertainty. There was no version that ended in a fight at Charlie’s house. The tracker would only wait and observe.
“I don’t see him attacking,” she confirmed. “He’ll try to wait for us to leave her alone.”
“It won’t take long for him to realize that’s not going to happen.”
“I demand that you take me home,” Bella ordered, working to make her voice sound more assertive.
I tried to think through the haze of panic, desperation, and guilt. Did it make sense to set our own trap rather than to wait for the tracker to set his? That sounded right, but when I tried to imagine allowing Bella to be in closer proximity to him, essentially making her bait, I couldn’t force the picture into my mind.
“Please,” she whispered, and there was pain in her voice.
I thought of the tracker finding Charlie at home alone. I knew this must be in the forefront of Bella’s mind. I could only imagine how panicked and desperate it would make her. None of my family was vulnerable that way. Bella was my only vulnerability.
We had to lead the tracker away from Charlie. That much was obvious. This was the only part of her plan that actually mattered. But if it didn’t work the first time, if the tracker didn’t see our performance, I wouldn’t push our luck. We’d come up with another version. Emmett could babysit Charlie as long as necessary. I knew he’d be happy to take on the tracker alone. I was also sure, given Jasper’s enhancements in the clearing, that the tracker would never willingly put himself within Emmett’s reach.
“You’re leaving tonight, whether the tracker sees or not,” I told Bella, feeling too defeated to look up. “You tell Charlie that you can’t stand another minute in Forks. Tell him whatever story works. Pack the first things your hands touch, and then get in your truck. I don’t care what he says to you. You have fifteen minutes.” I looked in the mirror, meeting her gaze. Her expression was stoic now. “Do you hear me? Fifteen minutes from the time you cross the doorstep.”
I revved the engine, then executed a tight U-turn, in a different kind of hurry now. I wanted to get the bait part over with as quickly as possible.
“Emmett?” she asked.
I could see in Emmett’s mind that she was looking at her fettered hands.
“Oh, sorry,” Emmett muttered, freeing her.
He waited for me to object, then relaxed when I didn’t.
Now that the decision was made, I focused on Alice’s visions again. There weren’t very many options, maybe thirty solid versions. In most of them, the tracker would show up at Charlie’s house about two minutes after we did, keeping a safe distance. In a few, he came after we were gone. But even in those, he ignored Charlie and followed our trail.
After that, the possibilities narrowed further. We would go home. The tracker would stay even farther back, not wanting to risk a confrontation. The redhead would be waiting for him there. My family would split up. In no version did Laurent help James and Victoria. So we would only have to split into three groups.
The one thing I didn’t understand was how the makeup of those three groups kept shifting. It didn’t make sense.
Regardless, the next part was very clear.
“This is how it’s going to happen,” I explained to Emmett. “When we get to the house, if the tracker is not there, I will walk her to the door. Then she has fifteen minutes.” I met Bella’s eyes in the mirror again. “Emmett, you take the outside of the house. Alice, you get the truck. I’ll be inside as long as she is. After she’s out, you two can take the Jeep home and tell Carlisle.”
“No way,” Emmett objected. “I’m with you.” You owe me one, remember?
It shouldn’t surprise me he would want that. This was probably why the future groupings were confused.
“Think it through, Emmett. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.”
“Until we know how far this is going to go, I’m with you.”
There was no wavering in his mind. Maybe it was for the best. I let it go.
In Alice’s head, it was Carlisle and Jasper hunting in the forest now.
“If the tracker is there,” I continued, “we keep driving.”
“We’re going to make it there before him,” Alice insisted.
It was ninety-nine percent certain, but I wasn’t taking any chances with some outlier version that was less clear than the others.
“What are we going to do with the Jeep?” Alice asked.
“You’re driving it home.”
“No, I’m not,” she said with absolute certainty.
The vision of how we would divide shifted around again.
I growled a string of archaic curses in her direction.
Bella interrupted in a low voice. “We can’t all fit in my truck.”
As if we were going to make our escape in that geriatric sloth. I said nothing, though, knowing how sensitive she was about her truck. I didn’t have the energy for a pointless argument.
When I didn’t respond, she whispered, “I think you should let me go alone.”
I’d missed her meaning again. Naturally, she’d think it was her job to sacrifice herself so that Charlie could have a redundant number of bodyguards.
“Bella, please just do this my way, just this once,” I begged, though it didn’t sound like pleading when the words came through my clenched teeth.
“Listen, Charlie’s not an imbecile. If you’re not in town tomorrow, he’s going to get suspicious.”
There were so many layers of meaning I missed entirely with her. Was this the real reason for her willingness to endanger herself, creating a believable alibi for me?
“That’s irrelevant,” I said in a tone that was intended to sound final. “We’ll make sure he’s safe, and that’s all that matters.”
“Then what about this tracker?” she countered. “He saw the way you acted tonight. He’s going to think you’re with me, wherever you are.”
All three of us froze, surprised by this direction. Even Alice. She’d been paying attention to other futures than this conversation.
Emmett embraced the logic immediately. “Edward, listen to her. I think she’s right.”
“Yes, she is,” Alice agreed.
She could see that Bella was right: whichever grouping I was part of was the group the tracker would choose to follow. It would undermine the plan and make an offensive all but impossible. Worst of all, it would make her bait again, and this time there were too many futures to be sure she’d be safe.
But what was the other option? Leave Bella?
“I can’t do that.”
Bella spoke up again, her voice as calm as if her first pronouncement had already been accepted. “Emmett should stay, too. He definitely got an eyeful of Emmett.”
“What?” Emmett demanded, stung.
But Alice knew what he was really objecting to. “You’ll get a better crack at him if you stay.”
The divisions, fluctuating so wildly before, seemed to be settling. She saw me with Emmett and Carlisle, first fleeing through the forest, and then changing course in order to hunt.
Where was Bella in this future?
I stared at Alice. “You think I should let her go alone?”
I saw the answer in her visions before she could say it out loud. A standard room in a mediocre hotel, Bella curled into a tight ball as she slept, Alice and Jasper frozen sentinels in the other room.
“Of course not. Jasper and I will take her.”
“I can’t do that.” But my voice was hollow now. I couldn’t see another way. If the tracker was going to choose me as the mark, then I should be far away from Bella. I would have to control the panic, the anguish, and be a hunter. I tried to quash the small amount of pleasure in the idea of destroying the vampire who’d ignited this nightmare. Bella’s safety was the only factor.
Bella was not done with her suggestions.
“Hang out here for a week,” she said quietly. I glanced at her again in the mirror. How little she understood about what had been started tonight. “A few days?” she offered, seeming to think I was objecting to her timeline. I could only pray this would end in a week.
“Let Charlie see you haven’t kidnapped me,” she continued, “and lead this James on a wild-goose chase. Make sure he’s completely off my trail. Then come and meet me. Take a roundabout route, of course, and then Jasper and Alice can go home.”
I looked through Alice’s reaction to this plan, and felt the first relief of the night when I saw that this was possible. There were futures where I would find Bella with Alice and Jasper. The particular destiny I traced resolved into going underground in the long term. The tracker had evaded me. But there were many other threads weaving and unweaving in her mind. In some of them, I found Bella to take her home. Again, the brilliant sunlight intruded, disorienting me. Where were we?
“Meet you where?” I asked. Bella’s decisions were the ones driving the future. She must already know this answer.
Her voice was certain. “Phoenix.”
But I’d seen the next act in Alice’s head. I’d heard the cover story Bella would give Charlie, and I knew what the tracker would hear.
“No. He’ll hear that’s where you’re going,” I reminded her.
“And you’ll make it look like that’s a ruse, obviously.” She drew out the last word, sounding annoyed. “He’ll know that we’ll know that he’s listening. He’ll never believe I’m actually going where I say I am going.”
“She’s diabolical,” Emmett chuckled.
I was not so convinced. “And if that doesn’t work?”
“There are several million people in Phoenix,” Bella said, her tone still irritated. I wondered if it was fear that was sapping her patience. I knew it had exhausted mine.
“It’s not that hard to find a phone book,” I growled.
She rolled her eyes. “I won’t go home.”
“Oh?”
“I’m quite old enough to get my own place.”
Alice decided to interrupt our pointless bickering. “Edward, we’ll be with her.”
“What are you going to do in Phoenix?”
“Stay indoors.”
Emmett didn’t have access to Alice’s visions, but the picture in his head was close to what I knew was coming. Emmett and I in the forest, hot on the tracker’s trail. “I kind of like it,” he said.
“Shut up, Emmett.”
“Look, if we try to take him down while she’s still around, there’s a much better chance that someone will get hurt—she’ll get hurt, or you will, trying to protect her. Now, if we get him alone…” The picture in his head morphed as he imagined the tracker cornered now, himself closing in.
If we could manage it, if we could deal with the tracker quickly, then this would be the right choice. Why was it so painful to make?
I would feel better if there was any evidence that Bella was concerned about her own safety at all. That she understood everything she was risking. That it wasn’t just her own life on the line.
Maybe that was the key. She never worried about herself… but she always worried about me. If I made this about my distress rather than her actual mortal peril, perhaps she would be more cautious.
My control was weak. I spoke in barely more than a whisper, worried that I might scream otherwise. “Bella.”
She met my eyes in the mirror. Hers were defensive rather than afraid.
“If you let anything happen to yourself—anything at all—I’m holding you personally responsible,” I said softly. “Do you understand that?”
Her lips trembled. Had she finally realized the danger? She swallowed loudly and muttered, “Yes.”
Close enough.
Alice’s mind was in a million places, many of them a sunny freeway viewed through dark-tinted glass. Bella always sat in the backseat, Alice’s arm around her, staring blankly ahead. Jasper watched from the driver’s seat. I thought of my brother, trapped in a small vehicle with Bella’s scent for so many hours.
“Can Jasper handle this?” I demanded.
“Give him some credit, Edward,” Alice chided. “He’s been doing very, very well, all things considered.”
But her mind flashed through a dozen future scenes, just in case. Jasper didn’t lose focus in a single one.
I appraised Alice. The tiny exterior made her look fragile, but I knew she was a fierce opponent. The tracker or anyone else would underestimate her. That should count for something. Still, I felt uneasy picturing her having to physically protect Bella.
“Can you handle this?” I muttered.
Her eyes narrowed in outrage—put on; she’d seen the question coming.
I could take you blindfolded.
She snarled at me, long and loud, a disturbingly ferocious sound that echoed against the Jeep’s glass and pushed Bella’s heart into a sprint.
For half a second, I couldn’t help but smile at Alice’s ridiculous display, and then all humor vanished again. How had it come to this? How would I let myself be separated from Bella, no matter how lethal her guardians?
Another unpleasant thought flickered through my brain. Bella and Alice alone, embarking on their foreseen friendship. Would Alice tell Bella her solution to this nightmare?
I nodded once, a sharp jerk, to let her know that I’d accepted her role as Bella’s protector. “But keep your opinions to yourself,” I warned.
23. GOODBYES
THAT WAS THE LAST THING ANYONE SAID AS WE RACED BACK TO FORKS. Of course the way would seem much shorter when I was terrified of arriving. All too soon we were pulling up to Bella’s home, the lights shining from every window, both upstairs and down. The sounds of a college basketball game drifted from the front room. I strained to hear anything not human in the vicinity, but the tracker didn’t seem to have arrived yet. And Alice still could see no future in which this stop turned into an attack.
Maybe we should just stay. Let Bella return to her normal life while the rest of us became perpetual sentries. I could count on Emmett, Alice, Carlisle, Esme—and I was fairly certain Jasper, as well—to join me in such a vigil. The tracker would find it impossible to get to her with so many eyes—and minds—watching. Was unified strength the safer option than dividing into thirds?
But as I considered this, Alice saw how the tracker would wait, how he would adapt. How he would, after the boredom set in, begin a war of attrition. Bella’s friends disappearing in the night. Favorite teachers. Charlie’s coworkers. Random humans who had no connection to her. The numbers would add up to the point where the resulting scrutiny would force us to disappear, regardless. And I could guess how Bella would feel about all those innocents paying with their lives for her continued safety.
So the original plan would have to be enough.
It was hard to process the strange physical sensation that accompanied this realization. I knew that an actual pit had not opened in the center of my torso, but the impression was unnervingly realistic. I wondered if it was some long-forgotten human response that I’d never felt in my immortal life because I’d never had a reason to panic quite like this.
We needed to move. Though I knew the point was to give the tracker something to follow, I still wanted to have Bella long gone before he could arrive.
“He’s not here,” I told Emmett. Alice already knew. “Let’s go.”
Alice and I slid silently from the Jeep, minds ranging through distance and time. Alice saw the tracker showing up while we were still inside. The sound of my teeth grinding seemed extra loud.
“Don’t worry, Bella,” Emmett was saying—in a voice I found much too upbeat—while he loosed her from the harness. “We’ll take care of things here quickly.”
“Alice,” I hissed.
She darted to the truck, then dropped to the ground and slid under the running boards. In a fraction of a second, she’d pulled herself against the undercarriage, totally invisible, even to a vampire.
“Emmett.”
He was already moving, scaling the tree in the front yard. His weight bent the pine noticeably, but he moved on quickly to the next tree over. He would keep moving while we were inside. This was a lot more obvious than Alice’s hidden spot, but he’d see anything coming and would be a solid deterrent, if nothing else.
Bella waited for me to open her door. She looked frozen in place with terror, the only movement the slow crawl of tears down her cheeks. She came to life when I reached for her, letting me help her gently from the car. I was surprised by how difficult it was to touch her now, knowing that I was going to leave her. The heat of her skin burned in a new, painful way. Ignoring this unfamiliar ache, I wrapped my arm around her, hoping my body would shield her, and hurried her to the house.
“Fifteen minutes,” I reminded her. It was too much time. I longed to be far away from this targeted place.
“I can do this,” she replied in a stronger voice than I expected. There was steel in the set of her jaw.
As we gained the porch, she pulled back against my forward progress. I stopped automatically, though my muscles screamed at the delay.
Her dark eyes were intense as she stared into mine. She reached up to press her palms against either side of my face.
“I love you,” she said, her voice a whisper that strained like a scream. “I will always love you, no matter what happens now.”
The pit in my stomach yawned open as if it would rip me in half. “Nothing is going to happen to you, Bella,” I snarled.
“Just follow the plan, okay?” she insisted. “Keep Charlie safe for me. He’s not going to like me very much after this, and I want to have the chance to apologize later.”
I didn’t know what she meant. My brain was too chaotic with panic to try to decipher her obscure thought processes now.
“Get inside, Bella,” I urged. “We have to hurry.”
“One more thing—don’t listen to another word I say tonight!”
Before I could make any progress in understanding either cryptic request, Bella pushed up onto her toes and crushed her lips against mine with what might be bruising force—for her. More force than I would have ever dared to use with her myself.
Red washed across her cheeks and forehead as she spun away from me. Her tears, which had slowed for our brief and incomprehensible conversation, were flowing freely. I couldn’t fathom why she was raising one leg until she kicked violently against the front door—it flew open.
“Go away, Edward!” she screeched at top volume. Even over the sound of the TV, there was no way Charlie would miss a word.
She slammed the door shut in my face.
“Bella?” Charlie called out, alarmed.
“Leave me alone!” she shrieked back. I heard her footsteps pound up the stairs, and another slamming door.
Obviously her frozen silence in the Jeep had not been terrified petrification, but rather preparation. She had a script. My role was to be invisible and silent, I guessed.
Charlie ran up the stairs after her, his footsteps lurching and unsteady. I imagined he was only halfway awake.