CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE.

THE HUNT

Edward could hear James following us. He kept up with us over bridges, across highways, and through downtown areas. We lost him through the southern tip of Seattle and didn't hear him again until we were out along the 90. He ran, sometimes completely in the open, unafraid of being seen, other times high up in the hills through Snoqualmie, watching our curving path through the pass. Edward used his talent to scout for speed traps ahead and otherwise positively flew down the road when able.

At some point during this mad flight, he must have figured out that Edward was cheating in some way. Whether he knew what that talent was or how it operated was an entirely different question. Edward and I didn't dare speak in case anything was overheard until James was beyond range of thought and voice.

On the rare occasion it was safe to speak Edward suggested we keep to these main highways to make it look like we had a destination in mind, and a desire to get there directly. We only slowed at the border and for gas.

These stops were our only opportunity to continue with our ruse. I took one of La's shirts out of the backpack and placed it in my pocket to let her scent fill the air as I dashed around in apparent, undisguised panic. Each time this happened Edward could catch only a passing thought to confirm James had caught the scent, our ploy was working. Otherwise, he was staying out of range with only the briefest partial thoughts coming through.

We stopped for gas four more times, the hours of our flight ticking by so slowly I would have sworn time was standing still, like we were chasing a midnight that would never come.

Six hours, then ten hours passed. Fourteen hours passed and still we drove. We were approaching Banff National Park as we neared the end of our gas reserves. Alice and Jasper would have La safely ensconced somewhere in San Francisco by now. I supposed the fact he was still on our trail and no wiser to our deception could be considered a good thing.

We were moments from choosing our next move.

"He's hoping for an ambush," Edward grunted as he exited the highway, and nodded over his shoulder to our right. James was still keeping track.

As much as I'd hate to give him what he wants…. I let the thought linger.

This park was very near to our family home outside Calgary, Edward had taken us to another version of our home turf. Hopefully, our familiarity with this land would give us an advantage.

Are we headed where I think we are? I asked Edward silently. He nodded and turned off the county road onto an old dirt one, but he didn't let up the gas. We rocketed over the dirt and gravel, steadily climbing in elevation. It was nearly five in the morning, the sun would be up soon blanketing the peaks and valleys in golden light. This had been one of my favorite places thirty years ago, long before we moved to Forks.

The road became rougher, eventually disappearing altogether. We drove and drove, carving a trail through underbrush when we had to, but always aiming north. Our pace slackened and picked up at intervals, winding through trees and around sheer drops too steep for even the Jeep to get over. Hours passed before a familiar peak appeared to the west as the sky lightened behind it. I knew what Edward was planning and felt a sharp stab of regret.

"I'll buy you a new Jeep," he promised in a murmur.

No worries, I tried to smile but I was too focused on the timing of what we were about to do.

"Now," Edward barely whispered and I was airborne out the door, swinging the loaded backpack over a shoulder. The car went over the lip of a crevasse and crashed into the valley below. I couldn't help the cringe as I heard my beloved truck roll once, twice, and three times before finally coming to rest.

James was ready for us, and too fast. I heard a shout of glee and then he was gone, barely visible through the trees ahead of us. Edward immediately leaped after him, chasing him north and up further elevation. I trailed behind, frustrated with my comparatively slow pace while crashing through the forest.

I was left chasing the sound of their passage for hours, running flat out with no visibility. My only hope was that Edward could manage to corner him and force him back toward me where my greater strength could finish the job.

At some point during our chase, I heard their trajectory move west and then cut south. Being behind as I was, I immediately cut straight west to head James off. With Edward herding him toward me, we were close to cutting him off. I reached into the backpack and pulled out a set of flash grenades and readied the first one as I drew closer.

Cover your eyes! I put an elbow over my face and lobbed the first one toward the sound of James' crashing feet. It went off with a loud bang and was followed by the crash of a stumbling body. It didn't take James down, but it did halt him for just a fraction of a second. It wasn't much, but it was enough of an opportunity for me to catch up. I vaulted through the trees and tackled James sideways hard enough to fall head over feet, tumbling off the side of the mountain and out into the open air.

The shock of it made me lose my grip. James was able to kick me off mid-fall. We dashed into a glacier lake and sank toward the bottom. I looked around frantically, trying to see which direction James had taken through the murky water but I could barely figure out which way was up. I chose a direction at random and swam hard, hoping Edward would be able to find me wherever I came out.

I emerged on the south tip of the lake on a small rocky beach. Edward was indeed there, holding up a tiny silver flip phone.

"Choose a direction to search, east or west."

"East," I grunted, wringing the water out of my shirt. Edward quickly tapped into the phone. It buzzed back so rapidly Alice must have been writing her response at the same time.

"She says west, let's go."

"We almost had him," I said as we loped off.

"It was a good idea," Edward pointed a little south and we changed direction. "I didn't see the lake in his mind. He must have some idea how my talent works after all."

After that he toyed with us, slowing down just enough for us to catch up, only to dive into a glacial lake as we nearly grabbed him. Alice kept us on the right track, texting e, w, n, or s as needed. She sent no other messages, nothing about La's welfare nor anything else that might be helpful to our chase.

It was becoming increasingly obvious that he was enjoying this game of cat and mouse. Edward was faster than him and managed to put our second flash grenade to use, but it didn't bring us any viable success. The hunter seemed to be aware that my strength was far greater than his and took precautions to keep out of my hands. He took so many detours that even Edward couldn't quite use his superior speed to catch him.

When he started heading south after a long stretch straight west we began to lose faith in our ability to catch him. We were nearing the west coast after nearly twelve straight hours of running. Our clothes were torn and sopping wet, and we'd given up on shoes after the soles of my boots tore off. In Whistler he led us on a merry chase through town, forcing us to move at human speeds, though he took very little care to conceal his own abilities. He was now so far ahead he could flee in any direction and it would take us too long to find his trail to stop him.

We caught his scent on the west side of town and followed it toward an old shed with wide double doors that were flung open to the elements.

"No," Edward cursed. I followed his gaze and finally noticed what Edward had seen as we arrived: an airstrip.

James had found a fucking plane. Probably an old one in heavy disrepair, but just as untraceable as a boat. He was gone.

"Do you think he headed back to Forks?" I asked out loud, hopelessly.

"It is possible," Edward walked slowly through the shed, scanning for any clues. It had the musty, lonely feel of abandonment. A thick layer of dust covered everything except where James' passage and the removal of the plane had dislodged it. Nothing else in the shed showed signs of displacement. Edward picked up a gas can to test its weight, empty.

"He filled the tank," he tossed the can into a corner. "Going back to Forks does not seem to fit with his methodology. He tends toward the unexpected, and Laurent said as much."

"He could be anywhere," I peered toward the sky as if any hint would emerge.

"In theory, but probably not in practice," Edward pulled the little cell phone out of his pocket. "It is unlikely a plane stored in a place like this will travel very far without needing gas quite often, despite beginning with a full tank. We can assume he will be staying on the western seaboard, and likely go south since that was the direction taken by the other cars in our ruse."

"Where do we even start?" I took the phone from him.

"We may as well start in Forks where his partner is," he motioned toward the phone. "Make the call, brother."

First, I called Carlisle, who answered at the first ring.

"What's happened?"

"We've lost him, he took a plane - no idea where." He hummed, unsurprised, but didn't offer any insight. "Are you still with Victoria?"

"Yes," he sounded as bewildered as I felt. "She keeps going in circles and keeping out of hearing range. Edward was right about her talent, she's impossible to pin. Either way, she's been active - I traced her checking every road in and out of town, but we didn't leave any trails for her to catch. She's also checked the school, the cottage, and Kevin's house, though she didn't stay there long, I'm not sure how she got in to begin with. She even went to the airport and checked the terminal."

"Is Kevin safe?" I asked, alarmed that she dared going so close to the reservation. A part of me wished the wolves had caught her presence - they could have taken care of at least one of our problems.

"Yes," he said. "Esme hasn't left him, and he hasn't left La's cottage. He's been staying there since you last saw him."

"We're on our way back," I told him. A part of me hoped Kevin would go home to the rez. The wolves could take over where Esme left off. I briefly wondered if we should warn them, even. "Maybe James is heading back to Forks to meet up with Victoria. Keep your eyes on her."

Carlisle hung up his line after a brief acknowledgment, and I dialed the other number.

"Alice," I said without preamble. "Are you three still secure?"

"Yes," she breathed.

"James managed to find a plane out here in the middle of nowhere. We lost him just outside of Whistler, but we have no idea where he might have gone." I was starting to get itchy, standing around, desperate to be moving. Even the illusion of action was better than staring at an empty hangar.

"I saw him," she scrambled to say. "I had two visions. First, it was the warehouse, Emmett - the warehouse and it's so much clearer now. I can see rubble and building materials. It's very run down, almost crumbling. James is there setting up a desk but seems to be hovering over a decision. I still don't know where it is, but I know he'll be there today or tomorrow. And then I saw him pacing in a dark room. I have no idea where that is either, but it's closer in time. He'll be there very soon.

"Whatever made him get on that plane was leading him to those places."

This wasn't much to go on, but at the very least she wasn't seeing La with him nor was she seeing anything catastrophic yet.

"We're going to go back to Forks and see if Victoria knows anything - some other trail we could possibly pick up. Can I speak to La?"

The phone fumbled as though shaking hands had tried and failed to grasp it, and then I heard her voice and something inside me calmed.

"Hello?" she was trembling.

"Delilah," the relief that flooded me nearly sent me to my knees.

"Emmett, I was so worried." I could hear a couch creak beneath the sound of her voice. She was as weak in the knees as I was.

"Nah," I needed to be strong for her, especially since she insisted on worrying for the last person in the world who needed it. "I told you we would be fine. Don't worry about us, but listen - I am so sorry - we lost him. He's being incredibly careful!"

"I know," she still seemed completely unconcerned with her own well-being, only expressing relief that I wasn't in proximity to that monster and could call her.

"It's like he has a sixth sense about us. He keeps just far enough ahead of us that Edward can't hear what he's thinking. Now he's gone, and it looks like he's headed back to Forks to regroup." It was more than I intended to tell her, but she deserved to know the truth about what was happening, especially since all of this was about her.

"Yeah, Alice saw that he got away," she said. The couch shifted again, and I could hear her steps as she walked through their hotel room. "Where are you?"

"We're outside of Vancouver," I admitted. "You don't have to worry, though. He won't be able to find anything leading to you, just sit tight until we find him again."

"I'm fine," she said, almost too calmly. "Is anyone with Kevin?"

"Yes, Esme has been shadowing him. Carlisle has been tracking the female, and it looks like she's been digging. She went to your house once while Kevin was at work - he's been staying there instead of his house - and she went to Kevin's once as well. Carlisle even traced her through the airport, and all of the roads in and around town."

"What is she doing?" La wanted to know.

"She's looking for your trail, but there's nothing to find. We made sure of that."

There was an audible swallow, but her voice remained steady. "You're sure Kevin is safe?"

"I have no doubt he will be perfectly fine, La. Esme won't let him out of her sight, and we'll be back so quickly this fucker won't have a chance to escape us again."

"I miss you," she was on the verge of tears. My cold dead heart strained in my chest. We needed to find this guy and get this over with quickly. I needed to be with my person.

"I know, babe. Believe me, I know. I feel like I'm missing half of myself."

"Come get it, please. I'd appreciate getting my other half back, too, you know."

"Soon," I crooned into the phone, cradling it as if the woman on the other side could feel my touch.

"I love you," her voice broke.

"I know," I told her, and started jogging south. "I love you, too. I'll come for you soon."

"Okay," she would hold me to that promise, I was sure. "I'm waiting."

I tossed the phone to Edward who pocketed it and bolted south in earnest.

"When did you figure it out?" It was a testament to the years we spent together that I didn't need to explain the question.

"The baseball game," he answered. "I suspected she was your mate before then, but seeing your connection next to the others confirmed it."

"Does she know?"

"She understands what you have is different," he leaped over a chasm, landing lightly on the other side. I followed but didn't quite manage the soft landing. We ran for several miles in silence.

"You were right," he said quietly.

About? I was sure he'd never said those words to me before.

"It doesn't really matter if you're mates, just that you chose each other."

I wondered if that had anything to do with his recent feather-quilled correspondence, but he didn't elucidate, and I accepted his reticence.

Not too long into our run, we received a returned call from Carlisle - Victoria had stolen a car and fled. He couldn't be sure where she was going, but she'd taken the I-5 South. We didn't have to wonder long, as we received an answer soon enough. Alice texted that her vision had been confirmed as a shipping dock in San Francisco, and not just any dock, one that was connected specifically to La, though why any of our family would be there was still a mystery.

Without having to ask, Edward texted Carlisle to get us a flight directly to SFO to collect the rest of the family and plan our next move.

We didn't bother with the ferry from Canada to Port Angeles, electing instead to swim straight through the Salish Sea. It took us just over four hours to get to the peninsula, even avoiding the ferries.

Edward and I picked two routes and ran through the familiar hills of the Olympic National Forest. Edward tracked the original path they had taken but found nothing new while I found nothing at all, though I searched and searched.

The door of our homestead was wide open when I arrived. Edward, Carlisle, and Esme were standing in the living room standing where I'd last seen them. Esme held up a fistful of passports.

"There was no way to get one for La in time," she called as soon as we walked in. "I tried, but her own will have to do. I'm hoping we can still take a circuitous enough route to shake them."

"On our way to where?" I asked, listlessly.

"The Highlands," she took my hand and folded it around a passport registered to one of many aliases. "Our first flight is to San Francisco, honey. We'll get La, then the four of us will go."

"Jasper, Alice, and I will stay behind to finish this," Edward added. "He won't escape us this time."

"When is our first flight?" I asked and dug through the backpack I somehow had managed to keep a hold of through all of this. I pulled out a water-safe bag containing another set of passports and two cell phones, handing Edward his sleek black one, and tossing the passports onto the piano next to a stack of clean and dry clothes.

There was nothing else to gather. I threw the clothes on, not even bothering to look at what had been chosen. We didn't otherwise dally. The four of us piled into the GTI and headed for Seattle International Airport. Utilizing every trick in the book, both official and shifty, we passed through security without difficulty in only a few minutes. On the other side, it finally occurred to me that I could power my cell back on now that we weren't worried about being traced while separated. It rang almost as soon as it connected to the towers.

"He's here," Alice nearly screamed into the phone.

"Wait, whoa, whoa," My stomach dropped to my feet making me stumble as we ran toward our gate. "He's where? At the hotel?"

"Not the hotel, I don't know where," she squeaked out. "But I just had another vision, and as I was drawing it out La recognized it as her mother's house here in SF. If he's not there already, he will be very, very soon."

"Are you still secure at the hotel?" I asked for the second time that day.

"None of us have left at all."

"None of you have gone to La's mom's place?"

"No," she confirmed.

"Then why is he there?" We were powerwalking up to the ticket podium at the gate now. I motioned for everyone else to go ahead while I finished up with Alice.

"I don't know," she said. "But the warehouse isn't crystal yet, whatever he's doing at the house is going to solidify that plan. We're checking out - we'll meet you at the airport to hand La off."

"We'll be there soon." I hung up and handed out my boarding pass blindly. Carlisle had managed to get us first-class seats, which only mattered because we would be the first off the plane in San Francisco.

The flight took an equivalent amount of time to the entire life cycle of the dinosaurs. I oscillated between shaking my knee so hard Edward had to remind me not to break anything, and sitting so still I forgot to pretend to breathe. There were still about a million flight obstacles that could keep me from getting to La. Our flight might arrive too early for a gate to be available, or another flight could be delayed. Wind could make landing too risky, or the fog could be too dense and we could be rerouted.

None of these things happened. We had a perfectly smooth landing and taxied straight to our gate with no problems. The flight attendants had the door open in an efficient and timely manner, and we were able to slip off the plane so quickly we were almost missed.

Edward tapped my shoulder every time I began moving too much like a vampire. There was a load of construction through the airport that we had to navigate, but even that just created distance and no extra problems. As we approached baggage claim Edward grabbed my arm.

"There has been a development while we were in the air," he said bracingly. I looked around for Alice and La but only found Alice, alone and looking scared.

I loped over to her, the family trailing behind. "Where is she?" I nearly roared.

Alice turned on her heel and motioned for me to follow, which I did without pause.

"She went to find James," she said and cringed at my shout of fury. Several heads turned in our direction so I tried to modulate my volume with my next question.

"What the fuck are you fucking telling me right now?"

"It was the best and only option I could see!" she exclaimed.

"You let her go after James by herself?" Carlisle asked, aghast. He had caught up to us and was pacing Alice on her other side. Behind us Esme let out a slight horrified moan.

"Jasper is with her," Alice led us into the parking lot and directly to the back row of cars on the fourth level as if she had this entire conversation mapped out in her head already. "I went through all the options and this was her best chance of survival. Once James decided he was going to lure her to the warehouse, every single vision ended in her irrevocable death."

"How did he lure her?" Carlisle asked.

"He pretended he'd captured her mother," Edward intoned, fury gathering across his face.

"But we caught it as a lie, and it opened up this opportunity to catch him out," Alice finished, and pointed at a Porsche Cayenne parked diagonally across two spaces to keep anyone from parking near enough to it to scratch the paint.

Without hesitation, Edward hopped behind the steering wheel, bending to work some magic with the starter. In under thirty seconds, he had the car purring. Alice took the passenger seat and pulled the parking ticket out from the center console. Between their two talents, we were away and speeding freely up the I-5 toward the Mission.

Morning traffic built steadily around us, but the two of them were able to avoid most of it and kept us moving at insane speeds until we banked off the highway toward the Dogpatch Docks. Navigating traffic through these narrow streets became the sole focus for all of us. Even Carlisle was tapping out his tension on the back of a seat.

"I can hear them," Edward said abruptly. We were about two miles out, still fighting city traffic through the Mission. "Jasper isn't with her, but La is keeping James talking."

"Where is Jasper?" Alice trilled in terror. But there was only one vampire that interfered with Alice's sight, and she'd left Forks about fourteen hours ago, giving her just enough time to have arrived right about now.

"Victoria caught up with him," Edward confirmed my speculation. "He's got her handled, but La is running out of time."

He took a turn so tight the back end of the car swerved sideways. His haste was feeding my anxiety.

"He's just told her he went to Forks looking for her…" he cocked his head. "Alice, he knows who created you…."

Alice shook her head, too worried about Jasper to be distracted.

"He was turned by an ancient - someone called Agnolo?" Edward looked into the rearview at Carlisle.

"I knew him," Carlisle said. "He was in the Volturi court when I was and left for the colonies soon after me."

Edward ceased his translations as he navigated Dogpatch. Alice informed us that La had recognized the warehouse as belonging to a now-defunct company called Hotaling & Co. Old, faded signs were still posted sporadically pointing us in the right direction.

Edward took each turn at the highest possible speed he dared, revving the engine on the straightaways until we skidded to a halt outside a dilapidated warehouse. Barely legible blue chipped paint adorned the front proclaimed the company that once owned the space with a washed-out logo.

"Hurry," Alice pointed Edward in a different direction then sprinted toward a door to the right of the building and tore it off the hinges in her haste to have it open and be inside. "We're almost too late."