Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,262

All I could really see was Alice’s memories.

Bella, pale and withdrawn, twitching with nerves. Bella, desperate-eyed, walking away with Jasper.

A memory of a vision: Jasper rushing back to Alice, agitated.

She didn’t wait for him to come to her. She followed his scent to where he waited outside a women’s restroom, face clouded with concern.

Alice following Bella’s scent now, finding the second exit, darting at a speed that was a little too conspicuous. The hallways full of people, the crowded elevator, the sliding doors to the outside. A curb teeming with taxis and shuttles.

The end of the trail.

Bella had vanished.

Emmett propelled me into the giant, atrium-like space where Alice and Jasper waited tensely in the shadow of a massive pillar. The sun slanted down at us through a glass ceiling, and Emmett’s hand on my neck forced me to bow my head, to keep my face in shadow.

Alice could see Bella a few seconds from now, in a taxi, speeding along a freeway through brilliant sunlight. Bella’s eyes were closed.

And in just a few minutes more: a mirrored room, fluorescent tubes bright overhead, long pine boards across the floor.

The tracker, waiting.

Then blood. So much blood.

“Why didn’t you go after her?” I hissed.

The two of us weren’t enough. She died.

I had to force myself to keep moving through the pain that wanted to freeze me into place again.

“What’s happened, Alice?” I heard Carlisle ask.

The five of us were already moving in an intimidating formation toward the garage where they’d parked. Thankfully, the glass ceiling had given way to simpler architecture, and we were out of danger from the sun. We moved faster than any of the human groups, even the late ones running past us for their connections, but I chafed at the speed. We were too slow. Why pretend now? What did it matter?

Stay with us, Edward, Alice cautioned. You’re going to need us all.

In her mind: blood.

To answer Carlisle’s question, she shoved a piece of paper into his hand. It was folded into thirds. Carlisle glanced at it and recoiled.

I saw it all in his head.

Bella’s handwriting. An explanation. A hostage. An apology. A plea.

He passed the note to me—I crumpled it in my hand, shoved it into my pocket.

“Her mother?” I growled softly.

“I haven’t seen her. She won’t be in the room. He may have already…”

Alice didn’t finish.

She remembered Bella’s mother’s voice on the phone, the panic in it.

Bella had gone to the other room to calm her mother. And then the vision had overtaken Alice. She hadn’t put the timing together. She hadn’t seen.

Alice was spiraling in guilt. I hissed, low and hard.

“There’s not time for that, Alice.”

Carlisle was almost inaudibly muttering the pertinent information to Emmett, who had become impatient. I could hear his horror as he understood, his sense of failure. It was nothing compared to mine.

I could not let myself feel this now. Alice saw the tightest of windows. It was maybe impossible. It was absolutely impossible that we could catch up to Bella before her blood started flowing. Part of me knew what this meant, that there would be a gap of time between the tracker’s finding her and her death. A wide gap. I couldn’t allow myself to understand.

I had to be fast enough.

“Do we know where we’re going?”

Alice showed me a map in her head. I felt her relief that she’d gotten the most vital information in time. After the first vision, but before the call from Bella’s mother, Bella had given her the crossroads near the place the tracker had chosen to wait. It was just under twenty miles, with freeway almost all the way. It would only take minutes.

Bella didn’t have that long.

We were through the baggage claim area and into the elevator bay. Several groups with carts loaded with suitcases were waiting for the next set of doors to open. We moved in synchronization to the stairwell. It was empty. We flew upward and were in the garage in less than a second. Jasper started for where they’d left the car, but Alice caught his arm.

“Whatever car we take, the police are going to be searching for its owners.”

The brilliant freeway gleamed in her mind, blurring with speed. Blue and red lights spinning, a roadblock, some kind of accident—it wasn’t totally clear yet.

They all froze, not sure what this meant.

There was no time.

I moved too fast down the line of cars while the others recovered and followed at a more judicious pace. There weren’t many people in the garage,