Edward Cullen and Jasper Whitlock drove in silence.
Well, almost silence.
Edward's phone had gone off at least 15 times in the last 30 minutes. He'd repeatedly smacked the silence button with his thumb every time, going immediately back to staring out the window into the woods outside of town.
Jasper breaks the road-silence.
"Dude, seriously, you gotta answer that thing sometime."
Edward glances at him and tries to hide a frown. He mumbles.
"It's my fuckin' dad, man. I don't wanna fucking talk to him right now."
Jasper smirks and glances sidelong at him.
"Aw, come on, man. You gotta tell him something. I mean…Bella just got snatched up and you two have been all lovey-dovey for weeks now. It doesn't exactly take godlike intellect to make the connection that you two are dating or that you'll obviously go looking for her. And given the events of late; the cops are already looking at La Push, isn't it basically obvious where Bella will turn up in the end? Whatever weird ritual or crazy shit they have to do, they have to do it there. Sacred ground and all that bullshit," Jasper pauses to take a breath and Edward cuts in.
"Jesus, fuck, dude! Is this what you do when you aren't fucking talking? Do you overanalyze everything?"
Jasper laugh and nods, "Well, yeah, of course. It's called powers of observation, friend. For one to be ninja, one must always know his environment and circumstances at all times." The last is said in a fey-Asian accent.
Edward covers his mouth with his hand and looks out the window, trying not to laugh at Jasper.
Jasper doesn't miss a beat though.
"As I was sayin' though, you have to tell your dad something. What if he calls the cops and tells them to start combing the area around La Push for you? I mean…seriously, dude…we're driving into a shitstorm here. I'm glad I know some nifty backroads. But still…we're at least 2 hours from really getting close enough to the heart of the Rez to really see what is going on. And there is no telling how long we'll be once we get out there. We could be looking for hours, trying to find her even if your friend Leah can help. Speaking of her…do you really trust her?"
The abrupt question caught Edward off-guard. He sat up and looked thoughtful a moment. He actually stopped and really questioned it.
Did he?
He wasn't really sure.
That he was questioning it in the first place struck him as a bad sign and he took that into account. Given her proximity to the Rez and the people on it, she was a wonderful potential spy.
But…
Mutts though they were, the people out there weren't stupid; they'd have noticed that she was the only person he'd gotten along with even a little bit for the short time he'd gone to school out there. That made her a serious potential liability when it came to putting the lives of his best friend and his girlfriend on the line. His own seemed a bit secondary to theirs but he figured that was just one more indication that maybe he really did have a heart under the old douchebag exterior.
Hm…guess that answers that fuckin' question.
He looks at Jasper resolutely.
"No. I don't. Not as far as I can fucking throw her. And certainly not if the odds are the lives of people I love. Why do you ask?"
Jasper flashes a dark smile at him.
"Just wondering how ninja tonight's run has to be."
Edward nods and looks out the window.
They continue on in road-silence, the big off-road tires of Jasper's Jeep humming on the pavement. About 10 minutes later, the Jeep slows and pulls off the road onto a dirt track. Gears click audibly a few times as Jasper puts the vehicle in 4 wheel drive.
The Jeep rockets down the mud-packed trail.
A few moments later, the Jeep slides nimbly around a curve in the track and accelerates out hard, darting toward the tree-line ahead.
Edward fights down the urge to sock Jasper's grinning, laughing ass into next week because he doesn't feel like having the Jeep roll or someshit. "FUCKING HOLY HELL DUDE! WHAT THE FUCK!" was what he did instead, yelling against the overloud growling of the Jeep's engine.
Jasper doesn't even blink, just keeps grinning.
"Oh, come on, man! You gotta break this fear of cars sometime or I'm gonna start sneaking in and taking your Volvo for joyrides!"
Edward narrows his eyes at him, death in his gaze.
"You motherfucker, you wouldn't. I'll kick your teeth in."
Jasper grins wider, if that's even possible.
"Better believe I would! That's a badass ride, homie."
Suddenly, Jasper slams both feet to the floor, clutching in and stomping the breaks. He snatches it out of gear and whips up on the emergency break, turning the wheel faintly to slide sideways into a hard stop without flipping the Jeep.
A spray of gravel flies into the air, peppering the hooded stranger that had just stepped out into the middle of the track.
Well, it should have peppered him anyway.
It instead just passed through him as if he wasn't there.
Jasper and Edward glance at each other and then back out at the stranger. Black hoodie, black cargo pants, booted feet, and gloved hands. Only distinguishable features on him were a faint stubble of white beard and two dangerous eyes glittering from the shadows of the hood.
A deep baritone, strong and resonant, hails them.
"A moment of your time, gentleman."
Again, both young men look at each other and then get out of the Jeep cautiously. As they meet on the driver's side of the 4x4, they wearily regard the newcomer. He was standing just inside the tree-line, like he was blocking them from reaching a certain point.
Jasper was the first to speak, moving a half-step forward.
"You need some help, man?"
Edward's eyes caught a faint flash of steel; a knife hidden in Jasper's right hand. Where'd that come from? Edward took an even shorter step forward, to distract the eye from his friend's lethal surprise.
The hooded visage smiles faintly and spreads his hands in a placating gesture.
"No. I actually really just needed to stop you for about 2 more minutes."
Both men go wide-eyed and tense to start forward. Edward takes a single step forward and lays a restraining hand on Jasper; a bare touch, a brush of the fingers over Jasper's right knuckles.
Something told him this man before them was not someone you could harm with a knife.
"Why? What happens in 2 minutes? Do you know something about Bella?"
The stranger shrugs, his breath puffing out of the hood in the chill.
"In a minute and a half, you'll be receiving a rather important electronic communication. I suggest, sincerely, that you take very seriously what it has to say."
Edward furrows his brow sharply.
"And how the fuck do you know that?"
The hood tilts and a quiet laugh rolls from its shadowy depths.
"Because I arranged for it to happen, duh."
At this, both young men look at each other. Edward grabs Jasper's shoulder and pulls him toward the Jeep. As he does so, he pulls his phone from his pocket, heart racing in his chest, fluttering in this completely unpleasant fashion. Jasper looks at him and then back at the stranger.
"What do you think, man?"
Edward shakes his head and stares at the time on the phone, willing it to move faster.
Jasper arches a brow and blinks.
"What? You think he's for real?"
Edward snaps at him, wide-eyed.
"Well, I'd like to fucking find out. Shut up."
Sighing in exasperation as he stares at the moving too slow digits on his phone's clock, he growls at nothing. "What the fuck! Why the fuck won't time move faster?"
The stranger pipes in, sounding thoughtful.
"I don't think I've ever had that problem…"
Both men glance at him with puzzled looks but before either can say anything, the phone buzzes quietly. Edward jumps so bad he almost drops the phone. It bounces in his hands once or twice before he gets ahold of it again. He'd bumped a button and cleared the new text alert from the screen. Clicking urgently at the phone, he digs through to the text message menu and finds one new message sitting in his in box. When he sees who it's from, Edward almost lets out a shout of joy.
Sparrow
Clicking it open, he reads it. Then again. And then…one more time.
His hands drop slowly and he looks up at Jasper, then at the stranger. Jasper furrows a brow and snatches the phone, reading it.
Come home, baby. I love you.
Edward's voice breaks the forest stillness.
"Who are you?"
The strange smiles darkly from inside his hood.
"Well…it's usually bad news when I come to town. And, " he gestures at the darkening sky "the night is still very young yet. But I got the distinct pleasure of having the opportunity to do something pleasant along the way this time. As for my name…ask your girlfriend. She's waiting." The last is said with a grin and a casual wave.
The Jeep's engine roars to life as Jasper cranks it, slamming the door.
Edward sprints around to the other side and yanks open his door. Before he gets in though, the stranger's voice echoes through the forest to his ears.
"Expect a phone call from an unknown number in about 3 hours."
Edward nods at the stranger as he gets in and slams the door, amazed and grateful at the same time that something was going right again today. Even if some crazy guy he wasn't even sure was really a man at all had intervened to make it happen. The lizard brain in the back of his head idly wonders if there will be any strings attached to this "intervention".
Tires light and throw up a wall of dirt as Jasper hauls ass back the way they came.
Jasper glances in the rear-view and gasps.
"Dude, check it!"
Edward spins in his seatbelt and looks out the back window. His reaction was more subdued; he simply went wide-eyed as his suspicions that the guy probably wasn't really human were confirmed.
The hooded stranger was gone.
Hanging in the air where he'd been standing, leftover dirt and rock that sprayed out in the Jeep's wake traced the outline of an ornate gothic cross, suspended in the air above the center of the track. It hangs for the briefest of moments, then falls to the ground, vanishing.
Both men just look at each other for a second.
Edward voices the thought.
"Where the fuck did that guy come from?"