Stolen by Erin Bowman Page B

makes my father feel better. We’d be lost without you, and as our captain, he sleeps better knowing you’re not running away.”
    Clipper frowns. “I might get scared, but I’m not a coward.” He folds his arms around the location device, clutching it to his chest as we head for camp. Clipper’s spent so much time staring at the thing lately, I’ve started to think he believes Harvey is out here somewhere, waiting in a snow-filled gully that Clipper can get to if he only plugs in the right coordinates.
    Even though my father has been pressing us at a grueling pace lately, the camp is still not broken down when it comes into view. Tents as bright as grass speckle the snow, and a fire sends a thin line of smoke through the tree branches. Xavier and Sammy are pulling their tent stakes from the frozen earth, but everyone else is huddled around September, a mean-looking girl in her early twenties who is actually far sweeter than her angled features let on. She’s dishing out a breakfast of grits. This has been our fare since we set out. Grits in the morning. Whatever meat we manage to catch throughout the day for dinner. And little rest in between.
    Bree spots Clipper and me first. She shoots me a smile, wide and shameless. It’s a good look on her. Refreshing, even, since she seems bent on scowling most of the time. She elbows Emma, who stands beside her, a wool hat pulled over wavy hair. Even from a distance I can hear Bree’s energetic words. “They’re back. I told you not to worry.”
    Emma looks up and raises a hand in a shy sort of greeting. I don’t return the wave. I wish I could forgive her. For replacing me so quickly when we were separated earlier this year—me on the run from Frank, her stuck under his watch in Taem. For moving on as if what we had was meaningless, as if we never talked about birds and pairs and settling into something that feels right. I know it’s foolish to hold a grudge, but I’ve never been the forgiving type. I’ve never been able to look past people’s faults or bite my tongue or be generally decent. I am not my brother.
    Clipper runs ahead to retrieve a cup of grits from September and my father shouts to me from across camp. “Took you long enough!”
    “The wind covered his footprints,” I lie. I don’t want to mention that, like Clipper, I experienced a moment of weakness alone in the woods. That I stopped to ponder it all: the grimness of what we face, the bleakness of our journey so far.
    My father swallows a spoonful of his breakfast before narrowing his eyes at Clipper. “I won’t have this anymore, Clayton.” Hearing Clipper’s true name makes the entire team freeze. “We waste time whenever you take off. Gray has to find you. We all have to wait. And we can’t afford delays like that—not when our mission’s details could be spilled at any moment.”
    Just three days after we left Crevice Valley, Rebel headquarters, Ryder radioed to tell us one of our own fell into enemy hands. We’re now well out of communication range, with no way of knowing how much information, if any, the Order acquired. Still, we spend a lot of time glancing over our shoulders as we hike. Fear is an ugly thing to have chasing you.
    “I need you to start acting like a soldier,” my father adds, jerking his chin toward Clipper. “You hear me?”
    “Oh, go easy on him, Owen,” Xavier calls out, securing his broken-down tent to the underside of his pack. The act reminds me of when he taught me to hunt in Claysoot, him loading up his gear and signaling for me to follow him into the woods. “He’s just a kid.”
    Clipper frowns at this, obviously disagreeing that a boy of almost thirteen is nothing but a child.
    Sammy stops wrestling with his pack. “Yeah, he’s just an immature, no-good, brainless computer whiz who can take any piece of equipment and make it do his bidding. Actually, on that note: Clipper, can you fabricate a time machine so we can get to Group A already? My