Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,257

of Emmett behind me, but he was nearly silent. I couldn’t hear Carlisle at all.

I slipped out of the lake at its southernmost point. The only sounds behind me were the drops of water falling off Emmett and hitting the stony bank.

I took the right, and Emmett the left.

There was a ripple as Carlisle emerged. I glanced back. The phone was in his hand again, and he was motioning to Emmett. I’d chosen the right way. Sure enough, only a few yards farther and I caught the hint of the tracker’s scent. It was above us—he’d leaped into the branches of a tall lodgepole pine. I scaled the tree and found his trail leading off through the branches of the surrounding trees.

And then I was on the chase again.

I fumed as I flew through the branches. We’d lost enough time with the lake that he was many miles ahead now.

He was doubling back the way we’d come. Would south be his choice? Back to Forks to find Bella’s trail? It was a solid seven-hour trek, if run straight. Would he want to give me that long a chance to catch up to him?

But as the endless night wore on, he changed direction a dozen times. He moved predominantly west, easing his way toward the Pacific, I imagined. And he kept finding ways to build his lead, to slow us.

Once it was a wide cliff. We each decided the directions we would search at the base, but Alice just kept texting n n n n n. Her view of the tracker was so limited, she could only see how we reacted to his trail. It took too long for me to see the damage in the cliff face where he’d broken his fall halfway down and then scaled sideways across the stone.

Another time he found a river. Again, we exhaustively imagined the routes we’d go searching. He stayed in the water for a very long way. We lost nearly fifteen minutes before Alice saw that Carlisle would find the tracker’s trail thirty-six miles southwest.

It was maddening. We ran and swam and swung through the forest as fast as we were able, but he just toyed with us, constantly building his lead. He was very practiced and, I was sure, quite confident in his success. The advantage was entirely his now. We’d keep lagging behind, and eventually he’d be able to lose us completely.

The thousands of miles between Bella and me kept me always anxious. This plan, leading him away, was turning out to be no more than a minor delay in his real search.

But what else could we do? We had to keep chasing after him and hope we could somehow catch him out. This was supposed to be our big chance to stop him without endangering Bella. We were doing a pathetic job.

He confused the trail again in another miles-long glacial lake. There were dozens just like this, all raking north to south through the Canadian valleys as if a giant hand had gouged its fingers down the center of the continent. The tracker took advantage of them often, and each time we had to imagine and decide, then wait for Alice’s C or Em or Ed, a y or an n. We got faster at the mental part, but every pause put him farther ahead.

The sun rose, but the clouds were thick today and the tracker didn’t slow. I wondered what he would have done if the sun was shining. We were on the west side of the mountains now, and running into human towns again. Probably he would have just quickly slaughtered any witnesses if he’d had to.

I was certain he was heading for the ocean and a clean getaway. We were much closer to Vancouver now than to Calgary. He didn’t seem interested in moving south, back to Forks. There was a slight northern trend.

Honestly, he didn’t need any more stratagems. He had enough of a lead to just race flat out to the coast with no chance of us catching up.

But then the trail led into yet another lake. I was ninety percent sure that he was toying with us simply for his own entertainment. He could have escaped, but it was more fun to make us jump through his hoops.

I could only hope that his arrogance would somehow backfire, that he’d make a bad choice that would put him within our reach, but I doubted it. He was too good at this game.

And we kept