Disclaimer: Not that it will come as a surprise to anyone reading this, but Twilight and it's characters do not belong to me, Stephanie Meyer is the only one that can make that claim. I just like to play in the wonderful universe she created. As always, thanks to my betas Im2xshy and Kzintikiller for their invaluable support and input.
Author's Note: For those of you still out there, please don't faint, but YES I have a new chapter to post. To say I'm grateful to those that are still out there and interested in this story even after I've been so erratic with my posting is a gross understatement. Between packing up and moving to a new house, having a 12 people at my new place for Thanksgiving, being crazy busy at work and now the holidays, my writing time has been severely limited. So thank you, thank you, thank you to those who have stuck with me. This chapter is from Jasper's POV as most of the gang is still in Alaska. The good news is, chapter 36 is already complete and will post for Christmas next weekend and it's ALL about some citrusy goodness for Edward and Bella.
Recap/Refresher: Bella had gotten over the period from hell and was feeling much better and she asked him to play the piano for her. Bella told Edward she wanted to take their physical relationship a step forward. He was hesitant but talked to Carlisle at length about it and had a lot of his fears put to rest.
Meanwhile, in Alaska, Alice and Rose were hunting when Rose got a call from Charlie. With Rose posing as a US Marshal, she was able to convince Charlie that Bella was indeed in witness protection and he should stop looking for her. The Cullens are all suspicious of the fact that Laurent mysteriously disappeared shortly after their arrival in Alaska, but the Denali sisters are hearing none of it. Fearing that Victoria might be at least part of Laurent's sudden departure and the fact that Alice was still having 'red' visions of Esme, Carlisle asked Esme to come home from Alaska. I think that brings us back to where this chapters picks up.
Chapter 35
JASPER
The mood in the car was decidedly dispirited on the way back from the airport where we'd put Esme on a plane back to New York. Alice and I were riding in the back of the spacious sedan we'd borrowed from Carmen and Eleazar while Rose was seated in the front passenger seat and Emmett drove us back to the Denali's home. Under normal circumstances, it didn't take four people to drive one woman to the airport, but we all welcomed the opportunity to get away from the tension in the house.
Esme's announcement that Carlisle needed her back in New York had prompted no small amount of suspicion from Irina and her sisters, not to mention a renewed level of animosity from them. If they'd been prickly about Laurent before, they were downright sullen now. No matter how many times Esme had lied and said it was unrelated, they viewed her departure as a reaction to the situation with Laurent and as some kind of personal affront to their hospitality. Carmen and Eleazar had remained neutral through it all and had attempted, with little success, to be the peacemakers.
Of course, the sisters were right, not that we were going to admit it, but Esme did leave because of Laurent and a possible threat from Victoria. As a family, the Cullens - without the Denalis- met in secret to discuss Carlisle's request and Edward's insight on the issue of Alice's visions, coupled with Laurent's odd disappearance. Where Esme was concerned, we wanted to be safe rather than sorry, and so we agreed that she should go home where she would be out of harm's way.
Privately, Alice had confided to me that while logically she agreed that Esme would be safer at home, she was still a bit disturbed by the fact that the decision to send Esme home had done nothing to get rid of the red haze she'd seen in her visions of Esme.
"Alls I'm saying, is that I think we should have gone with her," Emmett groused from the driver's seat. Of all of us, he was the most annoyed about staying in Alaska.
"I'm sure she'll be fine on the trip home, Em," I assured him.
"Oh, I'm not worried about her; I'm worried about us, or more accurately, I'm worried about the three bitches," he all but growled.
"Emmett! Don't call them that," Rose admonished but I could feel her amusement.
"What? That was the g-rated version of what I wanted to call them," he said. "I swear, if Irina starts in again, I'm going to pull that stick out of her ass and beat her with it." I couldn't help but chuckle at that.
"Come on, Em, don't be like that," Rose chided, but it didn't take my empathic abilities to know that she was trying not to laugh.
"Maybe you're right. That stick is so far up her ass now, it would probably need to be surgically removed," he growled, then added in a grumble. "In fact, it's so far up there, I'm surprised she's not choking on it."
That time, Rose didn't even try to rein him in. Instead, we all broke out laughing as Emmett continued his rant.
"I mean, it's not as if this has been that great a trip anyway. Sure, the hunting is awesome, but Carlisle and Eddie had to stay behind, I miss little sis, and to top it all off, the Denalis don't even have an X-Box or a Playstation!"
"It's the end of civilization as we know it," I smirked.
"Oh, shut up," he groused. "You know what I mean. Except for their satellite TV and the hunting, it's been dead-dull boring up here."
"You do have your iPad," Alice suggested brightly.
"Nah, it's no fun without little sis making fun of me," he said.
'Little sis' was the nickname he'd given Bella. He'd tried calling her "Belly" but she hated it so much that she threatened to never play a game - video or otherwise - with him again if he kept calling her that, and so he'd stopped. Edward wasn't the only one that Bella had wrapped around her finger. It's just that with Emmett, and if I was being honest, myself, it was in a purely sisterly way.
"Aw, Em, if that's all you want, we can make fun of you," I teased in a sweetly mocking voice.
"You better not, unless you want your limbs rearranged," Emmett grumbled back.
It was Alice that finally put a stop to his complaining. "Look, Emmett, I think we can all agree that this vacation hasn't turned out all that well, and we would rather be going home with Esme than staying here." She paused meaningfully. "But this is where we need to be. We need to stay here for at least a few more days in case Laurent comes back, so we can try and figure out what he's up to and if he has any link to Victoria."
"I know, I know," he conceded. "It doesn't mean I have to like it."
The rest of the car ride back to the house was uneventful and mostly silent, except for the radio. We all felt a little like we were kids being sent to detention rather than recess, and I had a feeling that we'd be spending a good portion of the days Alice said we should remain here out in the woods hunting, or more accurately, hiding out from the wrath of Irina and her sisters.
However, to keep up appearances for the time being, we dutifully returned to the house and attempted to make nice with our hosts. As it turned, out that wasn't hard since Irina, Kate and Tanya were out when got there, and we had no issues with Carmen and Eleazar. Alice and Rose visited with the two of them while Emmett and I sat down in front of the large flat screen TV and Emmett tried to find some kind of sporting event to watch. Of course, I would have preferred something along the lines of the History Channel as opposed to ESPN, but he vetoed that idea, and since he had the remote, I didn't have much say in the matter unless I wanted to physically fight him for it.
Surprisingly though, there wasn't much going on in sports right then either, so Emmett took out his frustrations by continually running through the channels in a demented round robin. Humans had nothing on vampires when it came to flipping through channels. Basically, he could flip through them as fast as the TV or box would allow, and it only took a flash of a channel for him to be able to tell what was playing on a given channel before moving on.
Of course, I found it VERY annoying. It would have been a little better if he'd just used the built-in channel guide, but I assume he found rounding the channels more entertaining. Plus, I am pretty sure he knew it annoyed me and enjoyed hearing me grind my teeth.
By the time he'd started on his fifth trip through the 300+ channels, he was complacent enough that he didn't expect me to reach out and snatch the remote out of his hand.
"Hey! Give that back!"
"No," I said with a little growl, as I pulled up the on-screen channel guide and started scrolling through the offerings. "You can't pick anything, and it's driving me crazy."
"It's not my fault there's nothing on!"
"That's your opinion," I shot back. "I saw lots of things I wanted to watch."
Then he started whining like a five year old. "But everything you always want to watch is so boring!"
"Well, you had your chance to find something and you didn't, so deal with it," I told him as I moved farther down the couch, so it wouldn't be as easy for him to steal back the remote. It probably never occurred to him that he could have just gotten up and pressed the channels on the satellite cable box to change the stations if he really wanted to.
The first thing I came to that looked like it had remote possibilities was a news broadcast. I hadn't seen the news for a while, so I decided to start there. I assumed it would be a broadcast from Anchorage, since that was the closest metropolitan city, although given the fact that the Denalis had the end-all-be-all of satellite packages, it could have just as easily been from South Korea.
As it turned out, it was a broadcast from a station in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Recapping one of our top stories. As rumors swirl about the mysterious disappearance of former Vancouver businessman David Manchester and his wife, Valerie, their family has hired a private investigator to help get to the bottom of it all.
Manchester, 58, is the retired former- owner of Centennial Manufacturing located in Fraiserview. He and his wife disappeared two weeks ago from their home in the Vancouver community of Point Grey.
Their son, Alex, and daughter, Christine, told reporters in a brief press conference that they made the decision to hire a private investigator to work the case after the authorities failed to turn up any significant leads in the case.
The last person to report seeing the Manchesters was their housekeeper, Megan O'Toole. She told police that she fixed their dinner Friday night and then left for the weekend. When she returned on Monday, she observed that the house was in disarray and immediately alerted the authorities and the Manchester's children.
Also missing, is the couple's white 2010 Mercedes sedan bearing the British Columbia vanity license plate reading TAKEOVR.
"We love them so much," said daughter Christine. "And we just want them to come home to us."
"We miss you, Pop-pop, please come home," pleaded their grandson, Tommy.
Anyone with information on this case or the whereabouts of David or Valerie Manchester or their white 2010 Mercedes sedan is asked to call the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at 604-278-1212 or the Vancouver Police Department at 604-717-3321. Anonymous information can also be given to Crime Stoppers by calling 604-252-7463 or sending a text message toTIP657.
I froze.
I knew where their car was.
Before I could even open my mouth to say something, I saw Alice stiffen out of the corner of my eye, and due to both of our actions, the entire room went quiet. Turning to look at her, I saw her staring blankly into space as a vision raced through her head. And then, all at once, I could feel her recognition, as I assumed she saw me, or someone at my direction, finding the car.
Her eyes focused on me. "The car is somewhere in the park, isn't it?" she asked me, referring to nearby Denali National Park.
I nodded. "Yes, right near the Denali Visitor Center. I saw it a couple of nights ago when we were hunting in the park. At the time, I didn't think much about it and just figured it was someone that was camping or doing an evening hike."
"No, that can't be right," Carmen put in. "They don't allow overnight parking at the visitor's center or anywhere else in the park for anyone but staff."
"I didn't know that," I told her. "If it's still where I saw it last, it's off to one side of the visitor's center in a small copse of trees and brush. I don't think anyone would see it, unless you knew where to look. I only saw it by accident because I ran past it on my way to meet up with Alice when we were hunting."
"And you're sure it's the same car they mentioned in the news story?"
I nodded. "Yes, I remember seeing the personalized plate from British Columbia and thinking that it was a bit on the pretentious side."
"Well, what are we gonna do about it?" Emmett asked. "Maybe we should call the park rangers and give them an anonymous tip on where to find it."
I opened my mouth to agree that would be the best idea when Alice spoke first. "No, we need to go there and see it...tonight."
"Why should we care beyond helping the police?" Rose asked. "How does it affect us? We don't know that man from Vancouver or his wife."
"I don't know," Alice said, her eyes went a bit blank again as she reviewed the vision. "All I can tell you is that it's important."
I frowned. "Can you give us anything more, darlin'?"
She pursed her lips in frustration. "No, sorry." Her eyes focused on me. "But we need to go."
Knowing better than to ignore her hunches, I nodded. "Then that's what we'll do."
Hours later, Alice, Rose, Emmett and I left the house on foot. Our departure was made easier by the fact that the Denali sisters hadn't returned, and until we knew what we were dealing with, Carmen and Eleazar had agreed to only tell them that we'd gone hunting. The idea almost made me want to laugh. If we'd actually done all the 'hunting' we'd said we'd been doing since we'd been in Alaska, we'd all slosh when we moved. I wondered if the sisters realized that and were just not calling us out on it.
Luckily, our advanced senses allowed us to see in the dark just as well as if it had been the middle of the day, so we had no trouble navigating through the park. We found the white Mercedes sitting just where I remembered it, and it did indeed have a British Columbia personalized license plate that read "TAKEOVR". The four of us approached it slowly, but didn't see any signs of life or any indications that it had been disturbed. It had rained on and off over the past few days, so there were leaves and other organic debris that had fallen out of the trees and surrounding brush, but otherwise, the exterior of the car appeared to be fairly clean and undamaged.
"Well, I don't smell anything," Emmett commented as we walked to the car. "But there's been enough rain that it probably washed away any kind of scent around the car."
I nodded. "It appears that whoever left the car here is long gone."
Outside of the metallic and faint engine oil smell, the area around the car just smelled like any other outdoor area in the park. But then, a moment later as we got closer, I realized my earlier observation was wrong.
"Or not," I murmured as my senses began to register the hint of something else coming from the car. Given the sudden, surprised emotions rolling off the others, they hadn't missed it either.
It was the smell of death.
"This is not going to end well, is it?" Rose put in.
"I think that's safe to say," I added.
Emmett, Rose, and I all looked in the windows of the car, but didn't see much that looked out of place. No blood or anything else that was cause for concern or indicated where the smell was coming from. The keys were even still in the ignition.
Unlike the rest of us, Alice had yet to move past the back of the car which she was staring hard at. "We need to look in the trunk," she said without looking up.
We all stood there for a long moment contemplating Alice's statement. "Well, I'm not doing it," Emmett finally announced, as he took a couple of steps back and crossed his arms over his chest.
I could tell that like me, he suspected that the decaying smell was coming from the trunk, which meant that there was most likely either a body or some kind of dead animal in it. I could also tell that he was a little freaked out by the idea of finding corpses. In my experience and contrary to what most people would expect, vampires weren't all that big on corpses, or at least those in an advanced state of decomposition. Yes, they dealt with dead bodies when they drained someone and killed them, but usually the body was disposed of quickly and they didn't hang around to see the body once it began to decay.
"I'll do it," I said. While it wasn't as if I WANTED to find dead bodies in the truck, my military experience, both human and vampire had conditioned me so that the idea really didn't bother me all that much. For me, it was a mark in the positive column that at least I hadn't been the one to kill them. "But does anyone have any idea how I can open the trunk lid without ripping it open? We're supposed to be keeping a low profile, not to mention wanting to disturb a possible crime scene as little as possible, and I don't think destroying part of the car exactly accomplishes that."
"Maybe there's a trunk release inside the car," Rose suggested, as she moved to stand beside Emmett. "Some cars have that."
"That's true, but that's still going to present a problem if the car is locked," I said walking to the driver's door.
We hadn't actually tried opening one of the car doors or checking to see if they were locked, so I figured it was worth a try. Given the fact that our skin was hard, and we didn't have the same oils on our skin that humans had, we didn't usually leave fingerprints; but just to be safe, I had worn a pair of leather gloves as an extra precaution in case I needed to touch something.
Reaching out, I gripped the driver's door handle and pulled. The door opened easily, and besides the interior dome light in the car coming on, no alarm or other notable item went off or made a sound.
Of course, that didn't stop my own internal alarms from screaming when I smelled the scent wafting off the interior of the car. Between the rain outside and the fact that the windows had been rolled up so the car was well sealed, I hadn't been able to detect the scent before now. But now, in addition to the renewed smell of death that was much stronger in the interior, I could smell another, even more alarming smell.
Victoria.
Her scent was unmistakably all over the inside of the car.
"Come here, Emmett."
He looked at me suspiciously. "Why?"
I rolled my eyes in exasperation. "Just come the hell over here, you big baby, there's nothing scary to see. I just want to you tell me what you smell."
He still looked a bit skeptical but he cautiously walked over to me and leaned down so his head was just inside the interior of the car. I felt alarm wash over him, and his gaze flashed up to mine.
"What is it?" Rose said coming up behind us. With the door having been open for a minute or two, enough of the interior scent had escaped that she didn't need to get any closer to smell what we had. "Damn," she growled. "I hate it when Alice is right."
"Right about what?" Alice said moving to stand beside Rose. She too was able to pick up on the scent right away. "Oh, I was afraid of that. Victoria was definitely here."
Nodding, I took a deeper draught of the stale air. "I'd say it's been at least four days since anyone's been in here. And I don't think she was alone. Beside the two human scents, I'm picking up the scent of one other vampire."
Rose took a little whiff. "But it's not Laurent," she commented in surprise.
I was almost disappointed that she was right. Having some kind of proof that Laurent and Victoria had been in close proximity would have been helpful to our cause with the Denalis.
"No, definitely not Laurent," I agreed. "It's also not a vampire that I've ever encountered before."
Rose let out a breath. "Well, at least we know Bella's safe. If Victoria's here in Alaska, then she's nowhere near Bella."
I looked back at her. "But that still begs the question as to why of all the places Victoria could have picked, she shows up in Alaska."
"I can come up with only two possibilities," Alice said. "Either it's a gigantic coincidence, which is what the Denali sisters are going to say, or she's here to look up her old buddy Laurent."
Rose stared back at Alice. "Which is what we're going to say."
"Damn right," Emmett smacked his fist into the palm of his hand for emphasis.
We all murmured our agreement, and then I caught sight of a small fob hanging on the key ring sticking out of the ignition. Among the options on the fob were lock, unlock and yes, a picture of a car with an open truck which I assumed was the trunk release we'd been looking for. Reaching over, I pressed the button and heard the trunk lock snick open.
"Emmett, Rose, while I check the trunk make a thorough inventory of the interior, just in case she left behind any clues as to what she's planning," I suggested. "Be sure to look under the seats and inside the glove compartment, but try not to disturb anything unless it's directly related to Victoria."
They both nodded and got to work while I walked to the back of the car. The trunk lid was ajar but not open. As with the interior of the car, the smell of death was much stronger now that it was open. Alice moved to stand beside me, and I paused before lifting the lid.
"Darlin' why don't you go help Emmett and Rose search the car?" I said, trying to spare her the sight of what I was almost positive was going to be the bodies of the two missing Canadians.
She looked at me sympathetically and then squeezed my arm. "That's all right, they can handle it. I'll stay here with you," she said calmly, then added. "Don't worry, Jazz, I've already seen them in my head. It won't bother me."
Of course she would have already seen them. I hated that she saw so many ugly things in her mind and wished there was some way I could take that away from her or spare her from it. But I also knew that she was strong enough to take it and that her abilities were what made her what she was, and I definitely wouldn't change her for the world.
With a nod, I reached down and opened the trunk. Just as I'd assumed there would be, two lifeless faces looked up at us from the trunk with empty eyes. The middle aged couple matched the pictures we'd seen during the news broadcast. I was, however, surprised to see just how well preserved they were and that the stench wasn't too over-powering. I was sure that was because not only was the car parked in a very shaded area, but summer really hadn't taken full hold up here yet, so the average daily high temperature had hovered just above freezing. Consequently, both bodies were about as well preserved as if they'd been kept in a medical examiner's refrigerated drawer all this time.
In addition to the bite wounds on their throats and even over the smell of the decaying bodies, I could pick out Victoria's scent in the trunk as well as that of her companion. They'd definitely been the ones to kill these people.
"I think they've been here a while," I commented to Alice. "The air here seems much more stale than in the passenger compartment. My estimate is that they've been in here for almost two weeks."
"Victoria and her friend must have killed them not long after they snatched them and the car from Vancouver and then left their bodies in the trunk while they drove the car up here," Alice surmised.
I had to agree. "I'm guessing this hapless pair was a picnic lunch for Victoria and whomever she was traveling with."
"Do you think we should search the trunk?" Alice suggested next.
"It wouldn't be a bad idea, but it means we'll have to move the bodies," I pointed out. "How about if I hold one up and you look underneath it?"
"Okay," she said without protest. That was my Alice, always ready when tough things needed to be done.
Picking up the man first, I held him as far away from my body as I could to help keep from transferring any fibers or other evidence from my clothes to the body, and I waited a moment while she quickly searched underneath where his body had been. When she was done, we repeated the process for the woman.
"I couldn't find anything, Jazz," she said as I settled the woman back in the trunk, and then using my photographic vampire memory, I tried to rearrange the bodies back to the way we'd found them.
"We couldn't find anything either," Emmett said as he closed the drivers door and walked back to where we were standing at the trunk. "It was as clean as...ACK!" he let out a cry just like a frightened little girl and jumped back as if someone had someone had stuck him with a cattle prod. "Those are dead bodies!"
Despite the dire situation for the two people in the trunk, I couldn't help but smirk at him. I though it was sort of funny that a big, usually badass vampire like Emmett would be so freaked out by two harmless corpses. "Astute as always, Emmett, but yes, those are indeed dead bodies."
"Ugh!" he said backing up until he couldn't see the bodies. "Okay, this just got real. Now that we have proof that the red-haired bitch is around, but there's nothing else here we can use to track her down, I say we get the hell out of Dodge and drop an anonymous tip to the park rangers or the police or whatever and let them deal with it."
"I agree with Emmett," Rose added. "If someone sees us with this car then there are going to be a hell of a lot of questions that we don't want to answer."
"Agreed," I said, closing the trunk lid and looking at Alice. "Unless there's something else you think we should do before we go, darlin'?"
"No, we're done here," she said. "The police can handle it from here."
I took her hand. "All right, then let's go find a phone they can't trace back to us and get things rolling."
TBC...
And so the plot thickens. But where are Victoria, Riley and Laurent now?
Next Week (I promise it's already written and everything):
Bella has a dream and it leads to some lemony goodness for her and Edward. My little Christmas present from me to you!