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.