Our eyes meet and without exchanging another word, we hurry back to the car. The team has likely been hiking since yesterday, possibly traveling through the night to put extra distance between themselves and the Order. We have wheels and can travel quickly, but I worry about our chances. What are the odds our paths will intersect when this land seems to stretch on forever?
Bree drives. I watch the water disappear in the mirror that hangs between us. It fades into a blue sliver, dividing the snow-whitened beach from an overcast sky. In a matter of seconds, it is gone entirely.
It is only when it has slipped from view that the words escape me.
“’Bye, Pa.”
I’m positive Bree hears, but she keeps her eyes on the horizon. I appreciate that small, private moment with my father more than she will ever know.
EIGHTEEN
WE FOLLOW THE TEAM’S TRACKS, but they are disguised by windblown snow, filled in, and often difficult to see. We end up having to obsessively right our course. The air in the car grows warm and thick. It’s making me sleepy, but Bree’s pace is so aggressive I keep getting jerked awake each time my eyelids drift shut.
It is midday when we spot dark silhouettes on the horizon.
“The Order?”
“Don’t think so,” Bree says, her lips pressing into a smile. “There’re six of them. And look at that one on the end, being dragged. That has to be the Forgery. It’s them, Gray!”
She throws a palm against the steering wheel, which makes the vehicle cry like a goose. As we slide over the snowy ground, I roll down the window and hang half my torso out. Bree is laughing and I’m shouting like an idiot at the ants on the horizon, one arm clinging to the inside of the car, the other waving frantically. The wind tears at my face. My eyes start streaming. Soon they are no longer minuscule shadows, but figures with recognizable features. They are all there: Xavier, Bo, Sammy, Clipper, the Forgery. And Emma. Emma with her hair whipping in the wind and sprinting toward the car to meet me. Emma who’s dropping her bag so she can run faster.
Bree brakes and the car skids sideways in the shallow snow. I duck back inside, throw open the door. Emma’s so close, and then she’s in my arms, her body colliding with mine, and I’m hugging her, kissing the top of her head.
“I thought you . . .” She looks up at me, amazed, relieved. I hear the others arriving, their feet crunching in the snow. Someone is greeting Bree, hands are being clasped, but I can see only Emma, her eyes wide and cavernous, so large I lose myself in them.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “About Craw, about everything. I’m so—”
“I know. And I’m over it.”
She looks doubtful.
“I was furious, Emma,” I admit. “Really, really furious. I felt so betrayed, so sick at the thought of you with him, and the anger was the only thing that helped me feel better. I needed the grudge. But then the Forged version of Blaine almost killed you, I nearly drowned on that ship, and now I just want to put it all behind us while we still have the chance. Please? Right now. Let’s forget everything that happened before.”
“But I don’t want to forget it,” she says. “Not the birds, or the day you taught me to shoot an arrow, or climbing the Wall, or how it felt to see your car crest that hill.”
I can’t help smiling, because I don’t want to lose those memories either. “Fine. Only the bad moments. The mistakes. Let’s forget the mistakes and move on.”
She nods, buries her face in my chest. I hug her tighter. And then, in the back of my mind, a worry blooms. If Craw is the mistake Emma must forget, is Bree mine?
But Bree wasn’t a mistake. Bree was never a mistake. I know it. I can feel it in my gut.
Which is why it is all so confusing. Because this, right here, is what I’ve wanted since I was a child: Emma. After so many missteps and grudges and errors, we might finally be able to set things right, and I’m happy at the prospect, so mind-numbingly happy, that I can’t understand how it is possible to be simultaneously sad.
Bree and I ditch the Order uniforms and change into extra clothes from our gear bags, which the team thankfully chose to hold on to even when they assumed we were dead. Xavier explains how the lifeboat got them safely to shore, where they then headed into the trees for cover.
“We heard someone stumbling toward us. Thought it might be the Order, but it turned out to be Sammy. He was blue. Could barely walk. We started a fire but he was shaking so badly we practically had to undress him ourselves before we could get him warm again.”
“Oh, I believe it,” Bree says, and then she drops her head as if the memory of her own struggles last night embarrasses her. Sammy puts an arm protectively around Emma’s shoulders and glares between me and Bree, eyes narrowed. I feel like he’s hearing words that haven’t been spoken.
It’s quiet for a moment and when Bo speaks, my entire being tightens up.
“Owen?” he asks.
I swallow, look at my boots.
“He’s not with us, and he’s not with them, so where do you think that puts him?” the Forgery says.
My fist flies. I hear Jackson’s nose crack, he falls into the snow, and then I’m grabbing the handgun from Bree. I point it at the Forgery, livid, possessed.
“My father is dead because of you!” I yell. The weapon quivers from how hard I’m squeezing it. “You called that Order ship and now he’s dead!”
“Your ship was singled out because you left Bone Harbor suspiciously early,” he responds. “You brought this upon yourself.”
“You worthless, lying—”
“We had a deal! My safety for entry to the Outer Ring. If I’m going to betray you it will be after that deal is complete, not on a boat where I have nowhere to run.”
I press the gun against his forehead and his face washes over with shock. “Tell me why I shouldn’t do it. Give me one good reason.”
Nothing. No pleading. No begging. No words of defense.
Almost as if he wants me to pull the trigger.
My finger moves for it, but it’s like that time in Taem all over again, when I couldn’t bring myself to shoot an Order member even though his bullet nearly killed Bree. My arm starts shaking. The outstretched gun grows heavy.
Killing Jackson won’t bring back my father. And I don’t want another face joining the one I already see in my nightmares: Forged Blaine, the arrow in his skull. No, if I have to meet the people I kill again in my dreams, I’m saving this bullet for Marco.
I lower the weapon, hand shaking, and pass it back to Bree. The team stands there in a ring around me and Jackson, speechless.
“Maybe we should talk about where to go from here,” Bo says eventually. “Clipper, you want to share that theory of yours with Gray?”
The boy pulls out his location device. My pulse is still pounding from the confrontation with Jackson, but I take a deep breath and try to focus on what Clipper’s showing me: the landlines running along the western edge of the water and continuing north once the bay ends, dividing AmEast from AmWest.
“Group A’s around here.” Clipper touches an area of land between the two ears of water. “As you pointed out on the Catherine, it seems like the Order is expecting us to enter AmWest. They’ll probably sail up Border Bay and try to cut us off at the border.”
“That theory assumes the Forgery didn’t tell them exactly where we were going when he ratted us out,” I say. Jackson glares at me.
“I think the Order would have followed us onto land if that were the case,” Bo says. “And they didn’t. That ship took back to sea.”