Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,243

“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