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.
I scaled the side of the house, waiting beside her window to see if Charlie would follow her into the room. I couldn’t see Bella at first, which caused me a spasm of fresh panic, but then she was climbing to her feet beside her bed holding a duffel bag and some kind of small knitted sack.
Charlie’s fist hammered against her door. The doorknob rattled—she’d taken the time to lock it—and then the hammering started up again.
“Bella, are you okay? What’s going on?”
I slid the window open and ducked inside while Bella yelled, “I’m going home!” in response.
“Did he hurt you?” Charlie demanded through the door, and I winced while I ran to the dresser to help her pack. Charlie wasn’t wrong.
Despite that, Bella screamed, “NO!” She joined me at the dresser, seeming to expect to find me there. She held open the duffel bag and I tossed clothes into it, trying to get a variety of items. It wouldn’t help her blend in if she only had t-shirts.
The keys to her truck were on the dresser top. I pocketed them.
“Did he break up with you?” Charlie asked in a moderated tone. This question didn’t sting.
But Bella’s answer was a surprise.
“No!” she yelled again, though I thought maybe this—a breakup—was the easiest excuse. I wondered where the script would lead.
Charlie battered against the door again, the rhythm impatient. “What happened, Bella?”
She yanked futilely on the zipper of the now full duffel bag.
“I broke up with him!” she shouted.
I moved her fingers out of the way and fastened the zipper, then weighed the bag in my hand. Was it too heavy for her? She reached for it, impatient, and I put the strap carefully over her shoulder.
I rested my forehead against hers for one precious second.
“I’ll be in the truck.” My whisper did nothing to hide the desperation in my voice. “Go!”
I urged her toward the door, then dove back out the window so I would be in place when she exited.
Emmett was on the ground, waiting for me. He jerked his chin toward the east.
I cast my mind in that direction, and sure enough, the tracker was little more than half a mile out.
The big one is playing watchman tonight. Patience.
So he’d seen Emmett in the trees, but he couldn’t see either of us now. Would he assume I was here, or would he be watching for an ambush? I wished we had Jasper with us now. If we could come at him from three sides…
Edward, Alice cautioned from her hiding place. She thought of the possibilities spinning off from my train of thought. The tracker was slippery. We would leave Bella vulnerable.
“What happened? I thought you liked him,” Charlie was demanding. He was back downstairs now.
I made a firm decision about what would happen next.
On it, Alice responded. She slithered out from under the truck and ducked into the Jeep. Once she had it in neutral, she pushed it silently out of the driveway, one hand on the doorframe, the other reaching up as high as she could to move the steering wheel with two fingers. I didn’t want the sudden roar of the Jeep’s engine to distract Charlie from Bella’s performance. It was better if he thought I was already gone.
Emmett watched Alice for half a second, then raised his eyebrows at me. Do I help her?
I shook my head. Charlie, I mouthed back at him. Follow on foot.
He nodded, then leaped up into the tree, where he would be visible again. It would make the tracker keep his distance. He didn’t retreat, however, even when he caught sight of Emmett; he was fascinated with the scene playing out and confident he could outrun any sudden pursuit. It made me want to prove him wrong. But I couldn’t risk falling into a trap with Bella so near.
“I do like him,” Bella was explaining, her words muffled and breaking. She was crying freely now, and I knew that she wasn’t a good enough actress to fake these tears. The pain in her voice was palpable. The chasm in my stomach twisted in answering agony. She shouldn’t have to do this. She was paying for my mistake. My foolishness.
“That’s the problem,” she railed. “I can’t do this anymore! I can’t put down any more roots here! I don’t want to end up trapped in this stupid, boring town like Mom! I’m not going to make the same dumb mistake she did. I hate it—I can’t stay here another minute!”
Charlie’s mental response was deeper, more searing than I would have expected.
Bella’s weighed-down footsteps moved toward the front door. I climbed silently into the cab of her truck and shoved the key into place, then ducked down. Emmett was close to the front door of the house now, in the shadows. Still, the distance from the door to the truck seemed long. I concentrated on the tracker. He hadn’t moved, listening intently to the drama unfolding inside the house.
What would he hear? This much: Bella preparing to escape, to run. Not planning to return in the near future.
He would know that Emmett had seen him. He would have to assume that Bella knew he could hear. Or would he?
“Bells, you can’t leave now,” Charlie said quietly, urgently. “It’s nighttime.”
“I’ll sleep in the truck if I get tired.”
Charlie imagined his daughter unconscious in the dark cab of the truck, on the side of a freeway in the middle of nowhere, while all around her, dark, amorphous shapes crept closer and closer. It wasn’t an entirely coherent nightmare, but my own panic, savage and irrational, echoed his own.
“Just wait another week,” he begged. “Renée will be back by then.”
Bella’s footsteps stuttered to a halt. There was a low sound—her shoe squeaking as she turned around to face him?
“What?”
I slid back out of the truck, and hesitated in the middle of the front yard. What would I do if his words confused her, delayed her? Did she realize the tracker was near?
“She called while you were out.” Charlie was tripping over his words, rushing to get them out. “Things aren’t going so well in Florida, and if Phil doesn’t get signed by the end of the week, they’re going back to Arizona. The assistant coach of the Sidewinders said they might have a spot for another shortstop.”
Charlie and I both waited, not breathing, for her response.
“I have a key,” she muttered, and her footsteps were now at the door. The knob started to turn. I darted back to the truck.
Her words sounded like a weak excuse. The tracker would have to assume this was a story for Charlie and the opposite of the truth.
The door didn’t open.
“Just let me go, Charlie,” Bella said. I could tell she meant the words to sound angry, but the pain in her voice overwhelmed any other emotion.
The door swung open at last. Bella shoved through, Charlie right behind her, his hand outstretched. She seemed aware of that hand, cringing away from it.
I crouched against the floorboards, mostly invisible. I couldn’t help peeking out the window. Without turning to look at her father, Bella growled, “It didn’t work out, okay?” She jumped off the porch, but Charlie was motionless now. “I really, really hate Forks!”
The words seemed simple enough, but crushing anguish speared Charlie through where he stood. His mind swirled, almost like vertigo. In his thoughts was another face, so much like Bella’s and also tearstained. But this woman’s eyes were pale blue.
It seemed Bella had scripted these words with care. Charlie stood, stunned and splintering, as Bella ran awkwardly across the small lawn, the heavy duffel compromising her balance.
“I’ll call you tomorrow!” she yelled back toward Charlie while she heaved the bulky bag into the bed of the truck.
He hadn’t recovered enough to respond.
I could no longer doubt that Bella understood the gravity of the situation. I knew she would never cause anyone this kind of pain, especially not her father, if there were any other way at all.
I’d put her in this hellish position.
Bella ran around the front of the truck. The quick, fearful glances she threw over her shoulder now were not for Charlie. She yanked the truck door open and jumped into the driver’s seat. She reached to turn the key as if knowing it would be waiting for her in the ignition. The engine’s roar shattered the silence of the night. This would be easy enough for the tracker to follow.
I reached out to brush the back of her hand, wishing I could comfort her, but knowing nothing could make this better.
As soon as she’d reversed out of the driveway, she dropped her right hand from the wheel so that I could hold it. The truck chugged down the street at its maximum speed. Charlie didn’t leave his post at the door, but the street curved and we were quickly out of view. I moved into the passenger seat.
She blinked hard against the tears that streamed down her face and then splashed off the rain jacket she still wore. She passed Alice, without seeming to notice the Jeep on the side of the road. I wondered whether she could see at all.
Alice, still pushing the Jeep so the noisy engine wouldn’t alert Charlie, easily kept up with us.
“I can drive,” Bella insisted, but her words broke and dragged. She sounded exhausted.
She barely registered surprise when I pulled her gently over my lap and eased into the driver’s position. I kept her close beside me. She drooped there, wilting.
“You wouldn’t be able to find the house,” I said as my excuse, but she didn’t seem to be waiting for a reason. She didn’t care.
We were far enough from the house now (though I could still hear Charlie’s frozen thoughts, motionless in the doorway) that Alice jumped up into the Jeep and started the engine. When the headlights came on behind us, Bella stiffened and twisted to stare out the back window, heart thudding.
“It’s just Alice.” I took her left hand now and squeezed it.
“The tracker?” she whispered.
He’s following now. Alice could hear Bella’s whisper easily over the grind of the engine. Emmett’s waiting till he’s clear of the house.
“He heard the end of your performance,” I told her.
“Charlie?” Her voice strained raw.
Alice kept me updated. The tracker’s past the house. I don’t see him going back. Em’s catching up.
“The tracker followed us,” I assured Bella. “He’s running behind us now.”
This did not comfort her. Her breath caught and then she whispered, “Can we outrun him?”
“No,” I admitted. Not in this ridiculous truck.
Bella turned to watch out the window, though I was sure the Jeep’s headlights would blind her to everything else. Alice was watching all the futures related to Charlie that she could perceive. A human she’d never met was not the easiest subject for her. But it didn’t look as if the hunter or his apprehensive companion had any plans to return.
Emmett was running in the road close behind us now. I was surprised at his intentions. I would have expected he’d be itching to catch the tracker in pursuit, to bring this ordeal to a quick and violent end. Instead, his thoughts were focused on Bella. His few moments as bodyguard seemed to have affected him deeply. Her safety was his current priority.
Bella brought out everyone’s protective side.
Emmett was imagining the tracker watching; only Alice and I knew he was carefully keeping his distance, just following the sound of the truck through the darkness. He wouldn’t put himself in closer range tonight. Still, Emmett wanted to make it clear that the tracker would have to go directly through him to get to Bella. He made a running leap that propelled him over the Jeep and into the bed of the truck. I fought with the steering as the truck reacted.
Bella shrieked, her voice rasping with the effort.
I covered her mouth, muffling the sound so she could hear me. “It’s Emmett,” I said.
She inhaled through her nose, slumping again. I freed her mouth and pulled her tight against my side. If felt as if every muscle in her body were trembling.
“It’s okay, Bella. You’re going to be safe,” I murmured. It didn’t feel like she’d even heard me speak. The tremors continued. Her breath came quick and shallow.
I tried to distract her. Speaking in my normal voice, as though there were no danger or terror, I said, “I didn’t realize you were still so bored with small-town life. It seemed like you were adjusting fairly well—especially recently. Maybe I was just flattering myself that I was making life more interesting for you.”
Perhaps it was not the most sensitive observation, considering how her escape had upset her, but it did pull her from her abstraction. She fidgeted, sitting up a little straighter.
“I wasn’t being nice,” she whispered, ignoring my frivolous words and going straight to the painful part. She stared down as if ashamed to meet my gaze. “That was the same thing my mom said when she left him. You could say I was hitting below the belt.”
I’d assumed it was something like that, given the image in Charlie’s head.
“Don’t worry, he’ll forgive you,” I promised.
She looked up at me earnestly, desperate to believe what I was saying. I tried to smile at her, but I couldn’t force my face to obey.
I tried again. “Bella, it’s going to be all right.”
She shuddered. “But it won’t be all right when I’m not with you.” Her words were barely more than a breath.
My arm flexed around her convulsively while the hole in my stomach stretched wider. Because she was right. Everything would be wrong when she wasn’t with me. I didn’t quite know how I would function.
I forced my face smooth and made my voice as light as I could. “We’ll be together again in a few days.” As I said the words, I willed them to be true. They still felt like a lie. Alice saw so many different futures.… “Don’t forget,” I added, “this was your idea.”
She sniffed. “It was the best idea. Of course it was mine.”
I attempted to smile again, then gave up.
“Why did this happen? Why me?” She whispered the questions flatly, as though they were rhetorical.
I answered anyway, my voice sharp-edged. “It’s my fault. I was a fool to expose you like that.”
She stared up at me, surprised. “That’s not what I meant.”
What other reason could there be? Whose fault but my own?
“I was there,” she continued. “Big deal. It didn’t bother the other two. Why did this James decide to kill me?” She sniffled again. “There’re people all over the place, why me?”
It was a fair question, an astute question. And there were more answers than one. She deserved a full explanation.
“I got a good look at his mind tonight. I’m not sure if there’s anything I could have done to avoid this, once he saw you. It is partially your fault.” My voice twisted and I hoped she could hear the black humor in it, the irony. “If you didn’t smell so appallingly luscious, he might not have bothered. But when I defended you…” I remembered his incredulity, his indignation even, that I would stand in his way. The arrogance, the ire. “Well, that made it a lot worse. He’s not used to being thwarted, no matter how insignificant the object. He thinks of himself as a hunter and nothing else. His existence is consumed with tracking, and a challenge is all he asks of life. Suddenly we’ve presented him with a beautiful challenge—a large clan of strong fighters all bent on protecting the one vulnerable element. You wouldn’t believe how euphoric he is now. It’s his favorite game, and we’ve just made it his most exciting game ever.”
No matter how I analyzed it, there was no way around this. Once I’d taken her to the clearing, this was the only outcome. If I hadn’t opposed him, perhaps it wouldn’t have triggered his love of the game.
“But if I had stood by,” I muttered, mostly to myself, “he would have killed you right then.”
“I thought…,” she whispered, “I didn’t smell the same to the others.” She hesitated. “As I do to you.”
“You don’t.” What she was to me, simply physically, was something more intense than I’d ever seen in any other immortal’s mind. “But that doesn’t mean that you aren’t still a temptation to every one of them. If you had appealed to the tracker, or any of them, the same way you appeal to me, it would have meant a fight right there.”
Her body shuddered against mine.
It would have been easier, though, I realized now, if it had come to a fight. I felt certain the frightened redhead would have run, and I doubted that Laurent would have stood with the tracker when it was an obviously losing prospect. Even if they’d all joined in, they could never have survived. Especially with Jasper launching a surprise attack from the midst of his smokescreen while all eyes were riveted on Emmett. I’d seen enough of his memories to believe that Jasper could probably have handled all three. Not that Emmett would have let him.
And if we were a normal coven (though we could never be considered normal at our size), we probably would have attacked just for the insult.
But we weren’t normal, we were civilized. We tried to live to a higher standard. A gentler, more peaceable standard. Because of our father.
Because of Carlisle, tonight we had hesitated. We had chosen the more humane route, because that was our habit, our way of life.
Did that make us… weaker?
I flinched at the thought, but then immediately decided that our choice was still the right one, even if it did make us weak. I could feel that. It resonated deeply in my mind, my being… or my soul, if such a thing existed. Whatever it was that drove this corporeal form.
It didn’t matter now. Alice might give us some power over the future, but the past was as lost for us as it was for anyone else. We had not attacked, and now we had the more complicated version still ahead. The coming fight could not be avoided.