3

THE air was chilled as autumn leaves softly rode the bitter Forks breeze. The little town rested peacefully through the early hours of the morning. Not a single voice or sound was heard aside from the swaying creaking of the tall dark oak trees that lined the edge of the woods of the neighborhood that Jasper Hale stalked his way down in a frenzied panic.

Jasper couldn't manage to repress the violent shudder that clawed its way up to his spine and through his heart as he dug into his pants pocket and checked his phone for any text or missed call from his wife. Nothing. No message of any kind from Alice.

Just the thought of his mate brightened Jasper's face a little as he stalked his way down the otherwise deserted street and towards their home, having decided to walk back after spending an evening with Emmett, Carlisle, and Edward for a little bonding time while the girls, save for Alice, spent time with Renesmee, who was now staying the night at Charlie's house.

Alice had expressed a desire to do a little shopping on her own, and not to worry about her when he'd offered to go with her.

He'd been hoping to find his wife back from her trip into town already, though he stopped short when he found their living room unoccupied, and no lights were on in their home. This was enough to send a jolt through him. He checked his phone.

Going on almost one-thirty, the latest she'd stayed out once at the bookstore and café in town that she liked to frequent once was twelve. Alice should have been back by now or called.

"Alice? Baby? You home?" he called out, his voice laced with uncertainty as he turned quickly on his heels and sped through the rooms of their home at lightning speed, almost expecting that he'd missed the waif-like little vampire somehow.

The alarm of not knowing the whereabouts of where his Alice was at such a late hour began to grow in him.

She always texted or called if she was going to be late.

Jasper swore he felt his heart, that now still and lifeless corded mass of muscle give a painful throb within his chest, jolting him back to life, as he forced himself to try to remain calm as he stepped back out onto the porch.

Surely, there was a reasonable explanation as to where Alice might have gotten to.

Jasper tried to tell himself that maybe his wife had simply gotten distracted, so engrossed in a good book, and had lost track of the time or had forgotten to take her phone's charger with her.

It wouldn't be the first time it had happened. He quickened his steps and made a beeline straight for his car.

By the time he reached Carlisle and Esme's house, Jasper's stomach was a sickening, churning knot in the pit of his belly. His worry was almost overwhelmingly sickening. Jasper searched outside his adoptive parents' home at a frenzied pace. No sign of Alice out on the balcony.

His thoughts were coming to him so disjointed that the tentative beginnings of a plan wouldn't even form in his mind.

He barely felt the piercing stares of Emmett and Rosalie as he burst through the front door of Carlisle and Esme's home without knocking.

Jasper could hear a dozen and one unvoiced questions burning within his family's mind as they cautiously observed Jasper's strange behavior of poking his head into each shadowed room that wasn't currently occupied and then back out onto the balcony to check again for any sign of his beloved wife.

Still, there was no sign of Alice. He resisted the urge to throw back his head and roar like an enraged beast. Never, during all of the events that had occurred in both of his lifetimes, up until this point, had such a horrible fear threatened to incapacitate the normally calm vampire as it did now, making logic impossible. As practical and pragmatic as the vampire prided himself on being, his terror right now threatened to consume him. Outside, on the balcony's terrace on the second level, he finally found Carlisle deep in conversation with Esme.

As he nervously approached his adoptive parents, he was hardly aware of Edward and Bella nudging to stand beside him, curious expressions plastered on either of their pale faces.

"Carlisle, E—Esme," Jasper gasped, feeling as though the wind had been knocked from his lungs. "I need your help." He seized a fistful of his sweater and clutched near his heart, his voice trembling with fear.

Edward and Bella were immediately concerned.

"Jasper?" Edward spoke up, not hesitating to rush to his brother's side, with his wife right behind him. "What's wrong? What's the matter?" he demanded urgently, his tone coming across as clipped and hard.

Edward felt a twinge of fear begin to spiral as an uncomfortable hit within the confines of his chest. Never before had he seen his brother in such a state of panic. To see Jasper Hale, a vampire normally so calm, collected, and level-headed, almost lose control like this was unnerving for Edward to watch. Edward felt as though he were intruding upon something private, and yet, couldn't bring himself to tear his gaze away from his brother's panic-stricken face. Nor did he like the grayish tinge his skin had taken on.

The poor man looked like he was going to be sick. Something was horribly wrong with Jasper. Edward reached out a hand to set it gently on Jasper's shoulder and then pulled his hand back, unsure if, in Jasper's agitated state of mind, if his brother would allow it, even right now.

Carlisle, Esme, and Bella were instantly on the alert as well. Even Rosalie and Emmett's curiosity had been piqued, as they'd moved to stand out on the terrace with the rest of the group, their eyebrows raised so far up onto their foreheads that their brows almost disappeared into their hairlines as they looked at him.

"Jasper?"

Esme's voice was cautious and guarded as she took a hesitant half-step forward, looking like she meant to outstretch an arm and gingerly set it upon the man's shaking shoulder, much like Edward looked like he wanted to, but thought better of it and lowered her arm.

She tried again. "What's wrong? Where's Alice?" she asked, furrowing her thin brows into a slight frown.

"I—I can't…" Jasper began, his words escaping his lips as almost a half-choked sounding sob, his words forming three steps ahead of his racing thoughts.

His wild golden irises scanned the spaces nearest to him, still desperately searching, half hoping that Alice would almost materialize out of thin air in front of him.

"I can't find Alice, Esme! Carlisle, I—I tried to call, I tried to text, when I try to initiate our bond, she's not answering me," he spluttered, almost afraid to voice his next thought as he gasped for air.

If Alice wasn't communicating with him via their shared mental telepathy, then Jasper could only assume the worst happened.

The thought was enough to almost make him sick to his stomach as he desperately gasped for air.

"Oh, god, what if she—what if something happened…" Jasper seized on tufts of his blonde hair and tugged so hard that the roots screamed in protest as his fingers entangled themselves in his hair, sticky every which way as he tugged on his hair, as if he thought that would provide him with answers.

"What do you mean, you can't 'find' her?" Emmett spoke up from his place in the doorway next to Rosalie, feeling certain he'd heard his brother wrong. "She was out shopping or something, wasn't she? She isn't back yet?"

Jasper's brother could feel his heart tighten in his broad, stocky chest at the thought of his brother's mate's possible peril.

Alice always called or texted any one of them to let them know if she was going to be late, and the fact that she hadn't, was cause for alarm.

"She's gone, she—she hasn't come back yet, or—or called to let me know that she was going to be late," Jasper informed the group, his entire body wracked with a violent spell of trembling. "I've looked almost everywhere. I—I haven't gone to the bookshop she likes to spend time at, but I was headed there next if she wasn't here with you all, to see if maybe the girl that works there, Kelly might know where she is," he reported breathlessly, moisture forming in his worried eyes as his eyes flicked to the left and right.

Without any semblance of hesitation, his golden irises shifted towards Bella, as if Edward's wife were the only one left in the world who could possibly help him.

"Wait a second. Alice likes to visit your father on Fridays, Bella, right?" Jasper asked and didn't even wait for the brunette vampire to part open her lips to speak before commenting further. "Is there even a remote chance Alice could be at Charlie's house? I—I know it's late, but could she be there?" he asked, unable to keep the desperate note from seeping its way unbidden to the surface of his cracking voice.

"Maybe," Bella added in a nonchalant voice, doing her best not to sound too worried for Jasper's sake as she glanced towards Edward for confirmation, but one look at her husband's face told her more than enough: that he was just as confused and upset as she was, as they all were. She shrugged her shoulders and shifted her purse onto her other arm and dug into the main compartment for their car's keys.

"Could you call and check?" Jasper asked, his tone desperate, having gotten to the point of pleading with her.

"You're more than welcome to ride along with Edward and me if you want," she offered kindly, clutching the car's keys in her right hand. "Maybe Charlie might know where Alice is, or at the very least, put out a call to one of the guys he works with at the precinct to go check out the area where she was last seen and ask around?" Bella suggested, chewing on her lip.

Jasper swallowed down hard past a lump in his throat, not even flinching as he used to back when Bella was still human as Edward's mate took a step forward and took Jasper by the arms. He didn't resist or attempt to shirk away from Bella's gentle embrace.

"We'll all search. She can't have gotten far. Maybe she just got lost in whatever book she was reading, it's happened before," Bella added, glancing around the balcony at the others, who quickly nodded their agreement with her plan.

She tried to give her best friend's husband hope through the own despair that was worming its way into her heart.

When Jasper did not immediately respond to her words of encouragement, she frowned as a thought suddenly came to her. The question tumbled out of her lips before Bella could think of stopping herself.

"Um…just out of curiosity, Jasper, why did you let Alice go out alone tonight?" she questioned, suddenly sounding nervous.

Bella flinched and she took a faltering step backward, barreling straight into Edward's chest as the man came to rest either of his hands on her shoulders, effectively preventing his wife from falling, as Jasper's head whiplashed so sharply upward to regard Alice's best friend as he glowered at Bella. Bella immediately apologized for any harm and tried to back away, though Edward's firm grip kept her rooted in her place.

"It's just that...you usually go with her, don't you, so…why was tonight different for you, Jasper? What changed?" Bella awkwardly pointed out, if not somewhat bluntly, looking around towards Esme and Carlisle in the hopes of receiving some kind of support.

She was met with confusion. They too, it seemed, were stunned.

"Time," Jasper barked in a hoarse, faint voice that did not sound entirely like himself as he summoned enough strength on his throat to answer her question. "She likes to have a couple of hours to herself on the weekend, to go to that café that's open all the time, it's the one place she can let her mind breathe and get a break from it all," he quickly explained, while Bella slowly nodded her head at all of the information. "I like to be respectful of that. Usually I go with, but…tonight, she wanted to be left alone..."

Here, his voice trailed off as he looked at Emmett. Emmett had still been seething over a wrestling match he'd lost to Jasper the following week and had demanded a rematch. Jasper had taken advantage of Alice wanting time to herself to take him up on that.

"Here, why don't I give Dad a call, see if Alice stopped by his place or something on the way home. It doesn't matter what time it is, he always answers if it's Alice, he'd never turn her away, sometimes I think he likes her more than me," Bella offered jokingly, albeit weakly, trying to stay calm for Jasper.

She gave Alice's husband a dutiful little nod and was already digging through her purse for her phone, turning away and already in the process of speed dialing Charlie's number while Jasper looked on as she dialed the phone, feeling utterly lost, helpless, and confused.

"Come with us," Edward told Jasper, as he glanced sideways at Bella out of the corner of his eye, who was talking animatedly with one hand while she held her cell phone up to her ear, seemingly in deep conversation with her dad or perhaps it was Sue. "We'll look for Alice at Charlie's house, or at least we can plead with Charlie to use his connections as police chief. If she's not there, then the next place we'll go is her favorite bookshop and ask around. Maybe some of the employees there might have seen something, or maybe she made mention of where she was going to one of them, Jasper," he murmured, clapping a hand on Jasper's shoulder.

He was moving Jasper away from the balcony and in the direction of Carlisle and Esme's house, his brother's confusion slowly replaced by concern and fear for his sister-in-law, Jasper noted.

The pair waited for Bella by the front door, who returned not but five minutes later, plunking her phone back into her bag and stating she'd talked to Sue, but that Charlie was home and ready to talk to Jasper.

"Dad's waiting for us," Bella mumbled, shooting Jasper an awkward little half-grin, trying to be hopeful.

Carlisle and Esme called out as Edward wrenched open the front door of their home, stating that Rosalie and Emmett were already heading into town to see about asking any of their friends that worked in the shops Alice liked to frequent on weekends if they had seen her.

"We'll be heading there next, thanks Carlisle, call us if she comes back," Edward hollered back, by way of retort.

He paused, casting an appreciative glance towards his parents, silently trying to thank them with his eyes, before steering Jasper out the door and letting out a sigh as the cool autumnal night breeze wafted their hair off of their foreheads.

As they rushed down the driveway to Edward's car parked at the edge of the lot, Edward couldn't help but see the tenuous thread of stability his brother was barely clinging onto.

Without Alice, his entire world was falling to pieces. Edward himself was close to imploding, though he would never dare admit it to anyone, not even Bella as she trailed after them and clambered into the back of their car, letting Edward drive while Jasper sat in the front passenger seat to head towards Charlie's house.

Edward didn't think he could bear the thought of any harm befalling his sister, nor could he imagine the dark abyss into which Jasper would plummet if something had happened to take Alice away from him.

As Edward sped out of their parents' driveway and down the road to head to Charlie's house, Edward watched out of the corner of his peripherals, a sinking feeling churning in his gut, as the hope faded from Jasper's eyes.

Bella sat awkwardly in the backseat, not sure what to say to try to comfort him, not even sure if she should say anything to the distraught husband at this point.

She knew that anything she said might only further upset the man.

Bella peeked out the window and shuddered at the rain that had begun to fall.

When the rain of Forks, Washington, wasn't so much as falling—be in it bucket loads like cats and dogs—but rather slamming into the car like an avalanche of stone, you know it's time to pull the hell over.

Even as a Turned vampire, Bella with her excellent eyesight couldn't see much more than the wipers splashing through the rivers on the windshield of their Volvo.

Bella was suddenly unsure if they were even on the road any longer.

Edward's fingers were white-knuckled and tense on the steering wheel in an attempt to steady their family's car in the face of terrifying wind gusts.

She knew it was so totally time to pull over, and his speeding down the residential streets to get to Charlie's neighborhood was not at all helping her anxiety at this exact moment.

Bella slapped her knee, a pent-up release of her frustrations that had been mounting ever since Jasper had told them Alice was missing.

"Slow down, Edward, will you please just get us there legally, in one piece, please?" she pointed out, peeking over the driver's headrest as the speedometer of their car barely brushed seventy in a forty mile an hour zone as they approached Charlie's house. "You don't want to Dad to give us a ticket," Bella warned, her tone only half-joking.

She breathed a sigh of relief as Edward reluctantly took his foot off the gas and the speedometer inched its way back down to forty.

The squeal of their tires could be heard as Edward swung a sharp left into Charlie Swan's driveway that elicited a cry of surprise from her.

"Sorry," Edward grunted in a voice that didn't sound sorry at all as Bella mumbled a half-hearted curse under her breath, looking for her bag that had fallen to the car floor during his too-wide turn.

But Jasper wasn't even listening. His brother had already opened up his car door and slammed it so hard that it made a dent at the top on the passenger side in the shape of the man's fingers.

Edward stiffened, his body tensing in his anger, his lips curling upward in his anger, thinking Jasper was going to owe him and Bella money for the damage to their car, but then he quickly shook his head to himself as he realized Jasper was worried.

His fear was manifesting itself in the form of aggression. Until they found Alice, Edward knew there was no reasoning with Jasper or consoling with his brother at all, and he could kiss the idea of addressing the new dent in their car goodbye.

If he could, he would magic Alice into Jasper's arms right here and now, in Charlie's driveway be damned. As it were, all Edward was able to do was help Jasper hold steadfast to the small shred of faith and hope that was failing him.

Edward bolted into a run to catch up, Bella right behind him, and was standing alongside Jasper, dutifully standing at attention on Charlie Swan's front porch, his knuckles raised in mid-knock. His glance was fixed upon the front door of Bella's old home, trying to hold onto the belief that perhaps his wife might be behind this door, that he'd see Alice again soon.

"We'll find her, Jasper. I'm sure this is just a misunderstanding, or maybe her phone ran out of battery or something," Bella chirped up in a hopeful-sounding voice, though even her tone lacked the resolve and determination that she knew she should have possessed.

Her voice trailed off as she heard Jasper make an odd, strangled noise at the back of his throat, though before he could speak, the door wrenched open and he was met by the haggard-looking sight of irritable Chief of Police Charlie Swan.

The man was looking pale and drowsy from having been woken up by his daughter's phone call in the middle of the night.

Though upon seeing Bella standing shoulder-to-shoulder next to Edward, the edges of his mustache twitched without prompting as his face relaxed into a soft smile.

Bella ran to her father's arms without having to be prompted, having to crane her neck up to look her father in the eyes as he looked at her.

"Bells," he said warmly, a tone he strictly reserved solely for his daughter.

His tone shifted slightly, as did his stance as he lifted his gaze to look at the two male vampires standing on his porch, awkwardly waiting to be invited inside.

"Dad, it's so good to see you. You're looking alright," Bella murmured appreciatively, somewhat awkwardly as she patted her father on the back.

She pulled apart from the warm embrace slightly to study her father's face. Her father these days was looking much healthier, she was pleased to see. A little more filled out, but not in a bad way, just in a way that meant her father was being well looked after now that she was married and out of Charlie's house. No doubt Sue was cooking for him, so she didn't have to worry about him as much.

Bella cringed, remembering that time he had tried to make spaghetti for dinner, and she'd spent an hour afterward at the kitchen sink trying to salvage the bottom of the burnt pot by scrubbing hard and using as much elbow grease as possible, and how their microwave would have caught on fire had she not caught the unmistakable scent of something burning at the time Charlie had tried to cook.

There was, however, dark purple bags clinging underneath the skin of both her dad's eyelids, which suggested either he wasn't sleeping much, or this was merely a result of them waking him up at the ungodly hour of going on almost two a.m.

Bella couldn't help but look at her father a little guiltily, tending to forget sometimes that her father was still human and needed to sleep.

"I know it's late, Dad," she murmured, still clinging onto fistfuls of her dad's white t-shirt. "But we can't find Alice. Jasper's getting really worried about her. D'you think we can come inside to talk? Just for a minute?" she asked, biting her lip.

Almost instantly, at the mention of Alice's name and the fact that she might be missing caused a shift in her dad's countenance.

His dark mustache bristled, and he gave a curt nod, opening the door a little bit wider and stepped back, allowing the three vampires entrance into his home.

The tension between the group was unmistakable, and thick enough that if the tension in the air would have been a visible color, the air surrounding Jasper would have been scarlet red as blood roared in his ears.

"Sure thing, come in but try to stay quiet, Renesmee just went to sleep a little while ago, the kid insisted on staying up to watch Jaws, hope you don't mind I let her watch it with me," he cautioned, heading towards the kitchen while Bella led Edward and Jasper to the living room.

Bella stifled a groan and found it difficult not to roll her eyes to herself as she heard Edward let out a noise of disbelief from the back of his throat.

"You let our daughter watch that piece of trash—" he started to say, though he cut himself off when Bella gingerly reached up a hand and touched her mate's shoulder.

She shook her head slightly, silently warning him to let it go for now. Edward seethed but quickly nodded his agreement.

Charlie, fortunately, had his back turned and wasn't even watching the exchange.

"I got uh, some tea or something if you guys want anything to drink, I got something a little stronger too, you look like you're in need of a little liquid courage, kid," he added, raising his eyebrows and looking over his shoulder at Jasper in alarm, not liking the grayish tinge the man's complexion had taken as he sat down rigidly in the middle of the leather sofa next to Bella and Edward on either side of him.

Charlie stood in the doorway, holding an open can of beer, before deciding his armchair looked a more comfortable fit and made to sit down.

Charlie's dark brows furrowed into a worried frown as he regarded the blond-haired man sitting as erect on his sofa like a marble statue.

"Now, then," he grumbled, setting aside his can of beer on a small wooden table next to his chair and leaning forward in his chair, keeping his arms folded across his chest. "Why don't you tell me what the hell is going on?" he snapped, his gaze unabashed and unwavering as he looked strictly as Jasper's taut, pale face.

He frowned as Jasper launched into an abbreviated version of events, while Edward and Bella dutifully remained silent next to him and let the man speak.

Jasper told Charlie everything, how Alice liked to frequent a café and bookshop downtown, the one that stayed open 24-7, on weekends, and hadn't come home. How she'd not called or texted to let any of them know that she would be delayed, or if something had happened.

Jasper swallowed down past a lump in his throat as he finished, and awkwardly fidgeted with his gold wedding band.

"I…what if something's happened to her?" he began softly, knowing that the only plausible cause for Alice's silence was perhaps her phone battery had died.

It had happened a couple of times, but his mate was getting better at remembering to keep it fully charged when she went out. Or another vampire had gotten to her, cornered her somehow, and had ended her life, a thought which sent a chill down his veins, or what was almost even worse, a wolf.

He shuddered. But the wolves and the vampires here in Forks had a treaty. They wouldn't dare.

Jasper neglected to divulge the suspicion that perhaps another vampire was involved, as Charlie did not outright know what his precious daughter and the rest of the Cullen's were, but he'd merely accepted that it was all a part of a supernatural phenomenon after seeing Renesmee's chocolate brown eyes—his eyes—and numbly agreeing not to tell Renee the truth.

Jasper wracked his brain as he finished speaking and fell silent, waiting for Charlie's answer, thinking of who could have possibly taken his wife. There was always the nagging, very real possibility in the back of his mind that the Volturi might somehow be involved in his mate's disappearance. However, considering the horrific vision that Alice had shown Aro when the Volturi had come to Forks, hellbent on confronting Edward and Bella over Renesmee, he'd thought they had seen the last of them for now.

Not even Aro would dare to be so bold and stupid and risk angering Carlisle's wrath when it came to the welfare of Alice.

It couldn't be them, right? No. Jasper shook his head to himself. It had to be the work of someone else. If the Volturi were coming for her, surely Alice would have seen it and been able to prepare for it, right? Right, he had to try to convince himself.

Charlie's voice spoke up, sounding quiet and thoughtful, pulling Jasper from his thoughts.

"…Unfortunately, standard procedure dictates that unless it's been twenty-four hours, my guys down at the precinct can't file a missing person report," Charlie said, shooting the trio a pained expression as they sat on his sofa. "I'm sorry. I'll of course put the word out and do what I can to help you find her, but until that twenty-four hours are up, legally, there's nothing much else that I can do except keep an eye out. I'm sorry…"

Jasper bolted to his feet, Edward following suit, while Bella remained rooted to her spot on the sofa, looking utterly shell-shocked at his almost violent reaction.

"You—you don't understand, twenty-four hours is too long, Mr. Swan. My wife may not even be alive anymore by that point!" he shouted, beginning to pace a restless line back and forth on the carpet of Charlie Swan's living room. Charlie merely watched, his expression professionally neutral.

Charlie waited until Jasper finished recanting his version of events that happened thus far. Charlie gave a grunt in understanding and turned his attention back towards the distraught husband, noticing how Jasper was already slowly but surely falling apart at the seams.

"OK. I'll get my guys to file a report. I can make some calls, they'll do it for me. We can at least keep a lookout for Alice. After 24 hours, if she hasn't turned up, we consider her a missing person and we start to investigate her disappearance."

Slowly, with almost a painstaking clarity brimming in his eyes, Jasper lifted his head and glared at Bella's father.

"H—how could she possibly 'turn' up, Mr. Swan? What if someone kidnapped her?" he growled through gritted teeth, slapping his knee in frustration. "Mr. Swan, sir, I really don't think we can afford to wait twenty-four hours," he snarled.

To which Charlie remained unfazed. Though if Edward weren't mistaken, a flickering of something akin to sympathy darted across the seasoned police chief's heavy-lidded eyes.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Cullen," Bella's father repeated firmly in a polite but curt tone, suggesting there was nothing further on his end that he could do. "But it's standard procedure across the country. That's how this works. Unless you can provide us with any evidence that your wife was taken by force, then it's twenty-four hours. If you could find something we could use, then I'd open a case even quicker. Does your wife have anything she may have left behind? Maybe Alice dropped her purse or her wallet? Something might have fallen out of her pockets. We need evidence. Does Alice have any enemies, Jasper?" he asked as he searched his brain to come up with a plausible explanation for his daughter's best friend's sudden disappearance.

If Jasper could have possessed the capability to blush, he would have the moment Charlie posed his question to him. The Volturi, he thought bitterly to himself, but of course, he couldn't divulge such information to the chief of police. He swallowed a lump in his throat.

"Alice?" he stammered in disbelief, hoping his tone sounded convincing enough. "I doubt it." He sniffed in disdain and disgust.

Bella muttered something under her breath to her father about giving the boys a moment and turned to Edward and Jasper, saying she would wait outside with the car. Renesmee was staying the night at Charlie's and Edward and Bella would be by to pick her up come the morning.

"Thanks, Mr. Swan," Edward called out, hoping his voice sounded courteous and kind, though they'd already gone into this little discussion knowing there would be nothing on Bella's dad's end that he could possibly do to help, other than keeping an eye out for any trace of Alice. "We'll call you back if we find any evidence." Edward was unable to keep the disgruntled note of worry from his voice.

Charlie shot the pair of men a sympathetic look, his expression was as grim as an old graveyard. "You do that, Cullen," Charlie nodded to Edward, barely stifling a yawn with the back of his hand before he politely excused himself.

Edward nodded to his wife, waiting to speak to his brother until he heard Bella gingerly close the front door behind her, and Charlie had once again offered his apologies and headed back to bed, but not before awkwardly offering to the two of them that they were welcome to stay if they wanted.

Both politely declined but thanked him for his hospitality, and for putting the word out. Edward was the first to break the silence.

"She's going to be fine, Jasper. We'll get her back, I...I promise," he said quietly, hesitantly.

Jasper stood merely inches away from Edward, frozen in his tracks, utterly trembling, his fingers balled so tightly into fists that the man's knuckles were white.

The rest of the younger vampire had gone grey with despair.

His chest heaved as the two men stepped outside to catch the cold air for which he gasped. Jasper stared blankly at Edward, although Edward was not sure if his brother really saw him or not, as he looked quite lost.

"Where is she? What if…what if someone took her, Edward? Oh, god!" Jasper begged Edward as if his brother held all the answers.

He didn't even wait for Edward's somewhat pitiful attempt at trying to calm the man down but raised his terrified eyes to the dull and grievous skies above them.

"WHERE IS SHE?" he roared at the top of his lungs, not giving a damn at the late hour of the night in which the people of Charlie's neighborhood were sound asleep in their beds. Edward frantically shushed Jasper.

Jasper couldn't hear Edward, nor did he feel the younger vampire's icy cold touch as his hand rested on his shoulder as he wrenched away.

He choked on the sounds that rose from his throat so violently that Edward was sure it was all that Jasper could do not to vomit up the remnants of his hunt from the last two weeks. At this point, Edward was afraid that Jasper would tax his body beyond the point of stress.

"Shh! Do you want to wake up the whole neighborhood? Jasper, listen to me!" Edward begged in a frantic voice as he tried to shush his brother, not wanting the heartbreaking sounds his brother was making to wake up Charlie, Sue, his daughter, or the rest of their neighbors, while at the same time wanting to encourage the man and give Jasper hope. "You have to believe me when I tell you Alice is fine, alright?" he stammered,

Edward briefly looked towards the Volvo where Bella sat awkwardly in the backseat, her brows furrowed as she looked at the heart-wrenching scene now in front of her. "She's got to be. If she weren't, we would know." Edward desperately tried to make himself rely on the same words that he spoke to his sister's husband, hoping to try to calm Jasper down.

But Jasper, it seemed, was beyond the point of listening to logic and reasoning.

"What if we can't—what if we can't find her? What if someone's—if someone's killed her?" Jasper stared at Edward as if he were seeing his brother for the first time since this ordeal began.

Edward quickly covered the few paces to Jasper and tightly gripped onto his shoulder.

"Listen to me," he begged, staring earnestly into Jasper's flickering golden irises, pained. "We will find her. You and me, we'll get Alice back to you if it's the last thing we do, you hear me?" Edward did not even realize he was shaking with the solemnity of his serious pledge.

Jasper desperately searched his brother's eyes for any signs of falsehood, any hint that this was all just a ruse to get him to stay calm, but he could find none.

He had thought he would have wanted to shy away from Edward's firm grip, but in this moment, he found he didn't. It felt nice to have his brother here close, to hear his promise to the young woman whom he considered very much like a blood-sister to him.

All Jasper could do was gawk at Edward. For Edward, it was more than enough.

Slowly, Jasper gathered himself and nodded, telling Edward that he was ready to continue their search and to take him to that old bookstore to talk to the barista and Alice's friend, Kelly, hoping the human girl had spotted any sign of his wife last night during her shift.

Edward nodded and drove in silence once the two vampires had clambered back into the car. Jasper could only hope as Edward sped down the road that they would find some shred of evidence that his wife had been taken.

Something to prove that she was still alive…