Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined (Twilight #5)(114)

We were at the Jeep in seconds. Edythe barely slowed, she just spun and whipped me into the backseat.

“Strap him in,” she hissed at Eleanor, who climbed in next to me.

Archie was already in the front seat, and Edythe revved the engine. She swerved backward, spinning around to face the winding road.

Edythe was growling something so fast I couldn’t tell what she was saying, but it kind of sounded like a string of profanities. The jolting ride was much worse this time, in the dark. Eleanor and Archie glared out the side windows.

We hit the main road. The Jeep raced faster. It was dark, but I recognized the direction we were headed. South, away from Forks.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

No one answered. No one even looked at me.

“Is anyone going to tell me what’s happening?”

Edythe kept her eyes on the road as she spoke. The speedometer read one-oh-five. “We have to get you away from here—far away—now.”

“What? But I have to go home.”

“You can’t go home, Beau.” The way she said it sounded kind of permanent.

“I don’t understand. Edythe? What do you mean?”

Archie spoke for the first time. “Pull over, Edythe.”

She flashed him a hard look and gunned the engine.

“Edythe,” Archie said. “Look at all the different ways this can go. We need to think this through.” There was a warning in his voice, and I wondered what he was seeing in his head, what he was showing Edythe.

“You don’t understand,” Edythe nearly howled in frustration. The speedometer was at one hundred and fifteen. “She’s a tracker, Archie! Did you see that? She’s a tracker!”

I felt Eleanor stiffen next to me, and I wondered what the word meant to her. Obviously it meant a lot more to the three of them than it did to me. I wanted to understand, but there was no opening for me to ask.

“Pull over, Edythe.” Archie’s voice was harder now, steely.

The speedometer inched past one-twenty.

“Do it,” he barked.

“Archie—listen! I saw her mind. Tracking is her passion, her obsession—and she wants him, Archie—him, specifically. She’s already begun.”

“She doesn’t know where—”

“How long do you think it will take her to cross Beau’s scent in town? Her plan was already set before the words were out of Lauren’s mouth.”

It was like a punch to the gut. I couldn’t breathe for a second as what she was saying finally made concrete sense. Up till now, it had all felt like something abstract, like a word problem in Math. It didn’t seem to connect to me in any real way.

I knew where my scent would lead.

“Charlie,” I gasped. And then I yelled. “Charlie! We have to go back. We have to get Charlie!”

I started ripping at the buckles that held me in place, until Eleanor grabbed my wrists. Trying to yank them back was like trying to pull out of handcuffs that were bolted into concrete.

“Edythe! Turn around!” I shouted.

“He’s right,” Archie said.

The car slowed a tiny bit.

“Let’s just look at our options for a minute,” Archie coaxed.

The car slowed again, more noticeably, and then suddenly we screeched to a stop on the shoulder of the highway. I flew against the harness and then slammed back into the seat.

“There are no options,” Edythe snarled.

“We’re not leaving Charlie!” I yelled.

She ignored me completely.

Eleanor finally spoke. “We have to take him back.”

“No.”

“She’s no match for us, Edy. She won’t be able to touch him.”

“She’ll wait.”

Eleanor smiled a cold, strangely eager smile. “I can wait, too.”

Edythe huffed out a breath, exasperated. “You didn’t see! You don’t understand! Once she commits to a hunt, she’s unshakable. We can’t reason with her. We can’t scare her off. We’d have to kill her.”

This didn’t bother Eleanor. “Yes.”

“And the male. He’s with her. If it turns into a fight, Lauren will side with them, too.”

“There are enough of us.”

“There’s another option,” Archie said quietly.

Edythe turned on him, furious, her voice a blistering snarl. “There—is—no—other—option!”

Eleanor and I both stared at her in shock, but Archie didn’t seem surprised. The silence lasted for a long minute as Edythe and Archie stared each other down.

“Does anyone want to hear my idea?” I asked.

“No,” Edythe snapped. Archie glared at her.

“Listen,” I said. “You take me back.”

“No!”

“Yes! You take me back. I tell my dad I want to go home to Phoenix. I pack my bags. We wait till this tracker is watching, and then we run. She’ll follow us and leave Charlie alone. Then you can take me any damned place you want.”

They stared at me with wide eyes.

“It’s not a bad idea, really.” Eleanor sounded so surprised, it was an insult.

“It might work—and we can’t just leave his father unprotected,” Archie said. “You know that, Edythe.”