Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,264

in the pattern.

It took me twelve seconds to shift through the gears until I was in sixth. I didn’t plan to shift down again.

The first section of the freeway was mostly empty, but a merge loomed ahead. Not enough time to make full use of a NOS canister. I veered to the far left to get around the influx.

I could say this for Arizona: The sun might be ridiculous, but the freeways were exceptional. Six wide, smooth lanes, with shoulders ample enough on either side that it was as good as eight. I used the left shoulder now to streak by two pickups who thought they belonged in the fast lane.

Everything was flat and sun-blasted around the highway, wide open with no place to hide from the light, the sky an enormous pale blue dome that seemed almost white in the glaring heat. The whole valley was bared to the sun like food in a broiler. A few twiglike trees scarcely clinging to life were the only features breaking up the dull expanses of gravel. I couldn’t see the beauty Bella saw here. I didn’t have time to try.

My speed was up to one twenty. I could probably get another thirty out of the STI, but I didn’t want to push her too hard yet. There was no way to know if the engine had been tuned to stage two or three; it would be touchy, unstable. I could only watch the oil pressure and temperature and listen carefully to how hard the engine was working.

The huge, arcing overpass that would carry us to the northbound freeway was approaching, and it was only one lane. With a very wide right shoulder.

I skidded back across the six lanes to make the exit. A few cars swerved in surprise, but they were all a distance behind me by the time they reacted.

Alice saw that the shoulder was not quite wide enough.

“Em, Jazz, I’m going to lose the side mirrors,” I growled. “Give me a view.”

They both twisted in their seats to stare at the road to the left, right, and behind. The view in their minds gave me a much better range than the mirrors anyway.

I flew alongside the slower traffic, unable to keep my speed over a hundred. I gritted my teeth and held tight to the wheel as I scraped by the wide van that was riding the right lane line. With a screech of metal, my left mirror ripped off against the van’s side, and my right mirror exploded against the concrete barrier.

Bella was running across a white-hot sidewalk, stumbling. Or she would be soon.

“Just the road, Alice,” I spit through my teeth.

Sorry. I’m trying.

Her panic bled through her thoughts. Bella was running into a parking lot. Or would be soon.

“Stop!”

She closed her eyes and tried to see nothing but the pavement ahead.

I knew these images had the power to render me useless. I forced them out of my mind.

It wasn’t as hard to do as I expected.

Everything was the road. I could see it in three hundred sixty degrees and thirty seconds into the future. As I merged onto the northbound freeway, drifting across the lanes to the left shoulder again, up to one thirty now, it felt like our minds were bound together into one perfectly focused organism, greater than the sum of its parts. I saw the patterns in the traffic ahead, shifting and congealing, and I could see the right way through every snarl.

We flew through the shade of two separate overpasses so quickly that the flash of darkness felt like strobing.

One forty-five.

Fifteen seconds ahead of me, the perfect bubble of space opened. I swerved into the center lane and flipped the clear safety cover off the bright red “Go Go 1” button.

The timing was perfect. The exact instant I was clear, I punched the button, the NOS spray hit, and the car shot forward as if fired from a cannon.

One fifty-five.

One seventy.

Bella was opening a glass door into a dark, empty room. Or would be soon.

Alice refocused, also surprised at the ease of doing so. Her thoughts flickered to Jasper, and I understood.

As a man of peace, Jasper struggled. But as a man of war, he was more than I’d ever imagined.

We were all sharing his battle focus now, something he’d used to keep his newborns on track back in his war years. It worked perfectly in this vastly different situation, blending us into one hyperfunctional machine. I embraced it, letting my mind spearpoint