Stolen (8 page)

When Bree stood, she was tired and relieved and surprisingly lighter. She couldn’t remember why, exactly, she’d ever thought it a good idea to stop talking to the night sky. It was absurd, yes, a shout into an endless void. It was her words among a million stars. But to put her thoughts on such a large canvas was like emptying her hurt into the ocean. It could hold all her pain, worries, fears, if she was only willing to unload it.

A fat raindrop hit Bree’s forearm. Another, then another, smacking the rock jetty and stinging her bare skin. Thunder rumbled. The waves roared. And then the sky unloaded like a breached dam. Bree was drenched in a heartbeat.

She stood there on the jetty and stretched her arms to the clouds.

THE EARTH WAS SWOLLEN WITH rainwater the following morning, but Bree’s patchwork on the roof with Lock had held true. The reservoirs were up a few inches, along with the islanders’ spirits. Keeva even planted a kiss on Mad Mia’s leathery cheek.

Bree pulled in her share of fish and then slipped into the woods. Heath would need crutches, because he
would
get better—just as Lock had promised—and Bree wanted to provide them. She found a fitting piece of wood in time—still slightly green—but not before stumbling upon something that broke her heart: a heron nest, tucked into one of Crest’s lowest ledges alongside the freshwater lake. Inside the nest were the remains of two babies—shriveled by the sun, half eaten by maggots and flies. Bree looked away. She’d killed their mother, and for nothing.
Nothing
. The heron blood hadn’t helped Heath in the slightest. Or had it? Was it only because it had failed that Bree felt brave enough to take the boy’s leg? Would she have had the courage otherwise?

Bree didn’t bother to make sense of it. Heath was conscious when she returned home, and his bandages were clean. When Sparrow stopped by that evening, she confirmed there was no sign of infection.

As the days passed, the boy grew stronger. He napped less and smiled more. He sat up in bed to hold a conversation. His appetite returned.

Bree carved his crutches in the downtime between her obligations, perfecting their shape, smoothing and sanding. When she wasn’t working on the crutches or her other duties, she was teaching Ness to fish. The girl taught Bree to mend a wardrobe properly in return. Ness could make rips and tears vanish, their scars barely visible. If a spear was an extension of Bree’s arm, a needle was the same for Ness.

By the time Heath was ready for the crutches, summer had faded into fall. By the time he’d relearned how to walk with them, the first frost-tinged mornings of winter were upon Saltwater. With the arrival of December, Bree’s fishing lessons with Ness came to an abrupt halt. The water was frigid and the loons had fled. Bree missed them fiercely. The birds had seemed so sad on the night of Lock’s funeral, but now the days were short, and the nights had never seemed more empty. Even a bittersweet song would have been a comfort.

On the evening before what could potentially be her last, Kent found Bree on the jetty, watching the stars fight to reveal themselves amid the season’s first flurries.

“I never should have said that stuff about Lock,” he said. “That day on the beach.”

“Feeling guilty now that your own birthday’s just days off?”

“Look who’s talking.”

Bree shrugged and said nothing. A small part of her was even excited. If she were Snatched, maybe she could see Heath again in the future. Or Wren and Cora and every other girl who had once been stolen away. Assuming it even worked like that. Regardless, it was better than living her whole life trapped on Saltwater, only to die alone.

Kent took a seat beside her. He had a brooding face, like his features were stuck in a permanent state of regret. Bree watched him wring his hands together and set his stocky shoulders toward the horizon.

“I always thought you were pretty,” he said. “I wanted to tell you for forever, but you only saw Lock, and then as soon as he was gone I went and said the dumbest thing possible—gave you a reason to hate me.” He paused. “I still think you’re pretty, you know. Even if you scowl all the time.”

Bree almost laughed.

“Hey, do you have any regrets? Anything you didn’t do during your time here?”

“Even if the answer was yes, it would be none of your business,” Bree said, drawing her jacket tighter.

“You’re scowling again.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Have you ever . . .” He raised his brows. “You know?”

“Know what?”

“Been with someone?”

“Dammit, Kent, I’m not talking about this with you.”

“I . . . I just thought if you hadn’t . . . if we were both going to die—be Snatched—that maybe—”

“Stop it,” Bree said. “First, there’s no proof that a Snatching means you die. Second, you don’t want to be with me. You think you do, but you don’t. You want to be with someone who wants you back. Someone who makes you better. Someone who challenges you and sees you and gives you as much as you give them. It works two ways.”

“I don’t care how it works. I—”

“Kent, I’m going home now. Thank you for apologizing about Lock. I’ll see you tomorrow, and if I end up Snatched, maybe I’ll see you somewhere else, too. In time.”

She left before a reaction could register on his face.

That night, Bree slept in Heath’s bed, the boy wrapped in her arms and his head tucked beneath her chin. In the morning, he woke first, and nudged her with a bony elbow.

“Go back to sleep,” she muttered. “The sun’s not even up.”

Heath went on prodding her until she retaliated. He suffered a few good jabs in return, but he’d won. Bree was awake now.

“Happy birthday,” he said.

“My birthday’s tomorrow, bug,” she said.

“But I might not get to say it tomorrow. You could be Snatched.” He sat up, using his arms to aid in the process. He was still getting used to the missing muscle on his left side, the new, unbalanced state of his body. “No matter what, I’ll see you again someday. I really think that’s how it works.”

Bree just nodded.

They spent the day doing nothing of importance. They sat around the fire and drank hot tea. They went for a walk through the town, which was dusted with a thin layer of white. Heath was good on his crutches now, but the snow made him clumsy. Bree laughed when he fell, and when she refused to help him up, he called her a word he’d most certainly learned from Lock. Heath managed in the end—awkwardly bracing his weight against the crutches until he pulled himself upright. He tossed another swear Bree’s way but she smiled. He could manage without her, and that was all she’d been testing.

Chelsea brought food back from the bonfire that night and the three of them had a private meal. No one said much, but what really remained to be said? Besides, Chelsea was present, looking at Heath instead of through him, and Bree knew everything would be fine in her absence.

Later, when the town was sleeping, Bree wandered to the jetty. It was here that it always happened, a private occurrence without spectators. The brave would wait. The desperate would chase the horizon. And the people of Saltwater did not interfere.

Against her island’s traditions, Bree witnessed a Snatching for the first and only time at the age of seven. She’d wanted to
see
what had happened to her father—not just hear a vague recount of the phenomenon—and it had been terrifying. The roaring wind, the blinding light, the thrashing ocean. A dark shadow had taken the trembling boy.

And now she was on that same jetty—her harbor, her port—facing an uncertain future.

The horizon was barely discernible from where she stood. The star-strewn sky met the water like an old friend, bleeding into one. Waves crashed around her, a familiar song Bree was suddenly terrified she’d miss. Her thoughts drifted to Lock. She couldn’t change whatever was coming—if it even
was
coming—but she understood him clearly now. The nerves and fears, the overwhelming sense of helplessness that threatened to drown. The difference was that she wouldn’t run.

There were pieces of her that no force could take away. No matter where she might find herself tomorrow, she had the stars as her confidants. And if she lost the sky, she had her hands. She had calluses from spears and the means to whistle to loons. And even if those were stolen she had memories of Lock and Heath and herons and hope and all the things that mattered. They were hers, and nothing could take them from her.

When the night sky went ablaze, Bree didn’t flinch. She didn’t tremble or cringe or cower in fear. She greeted it like an equal.

She might have even smiled.

HER WORLD WAS LARGE NOW. Frightening large. And so much more complex than she ever could have imagined.

She’d read the truth in a series of leather-bound journals, equal parts appalled (at the lies she’d been fed in Taem) and amused (at the minor discrepancies in the captured notes). Saltwater had no Wall—the ocean was a mighty guardian—but it
had
been watched. Just like the other test groups. She, like so many, was another victim of the Laicos Project.

Those journals had lit a fire beneath Bree, a need to right wrongs. She’d picked up a firearm eagerly, shocked—if not a little bit startled—to find it as comfortable as a spear in her grasp.

Her hands were the only things to get her through those first few months. She whistled into them almost obsessively, a loon call reminding her that she was still Bree from Saltwater. Bree, Bree, Bree. The same girl, despite how much of her life had dissolved like a crashing wave.

She peered at her mark through the binoculars. The boy was still dragging his brother—at least, she assumed they were related. They looked identical. Especially in those horrible Order uniforms.

She could hear Fallyn in her ear:
Act now, question later
. Fallyn, whose name Bree had heard whispered around Saltwater fires—a legend there, now a captain here.

But even after tracking the brothers, stalking them in circles through the forest, Bree still hadn’t pulled the trigger. It wasn’t that she hadn’t killed before. She had. She’d done a lot she never thought herself capable of in the past eight months. Disbanding the boys’ mission team three days back had been one thing. But what Bree was doing now? It was hunting. It was tracking prey. Half-dead prey, at that. She knew, with a deep, undeniable certainty, that this kill would rot her conscience like meat under a summer sun.

Bree lowered the binoculars and shook her head. She was only thinking this because she got stuck tracking the young ones. The brothers. The only two of the Order team to flee who looked around eighteen. And so the question weighed on her:
What if they don’t know they’re fighting for the wrong side?

The boy was weak, exhausted, but just a bit farther north he’d find the water. With water, he’d make it. And if he kept on hiking to the mountains and found headquarters . . . Bree didn’t want to think about what Ryder or Fallyn would say. And yet here she was, a clear shot in her sights, and she couldn’t take it.

You’re waiting because he reminds you of someone
.

She told herself to shut up, because now wasn’t the time to think about him.

But that dark hair, the way his shoulders hunch forward, the brother who he can’t stop fussing over. From a distance, it could be him
.

Shut up.

Lock. He reminds you of Lock.

Shut up!

But it was too late, because her past—everything she sealed away in order to stay strong after reading those journals—surfaced like a mirage in the heat.

He did look a bit like Lock from far away, but his care for his brother—that’s what really did it. The way he refused to leave him behind even though it would have made more sense to scout out food and shelter alone and
then
double back. But no, this boy kept fretting like a mother over a newborn. Feel for a fever, check the bandages, drag, drag, drag his near-unconscious brother under the relentless sun. What a waste of energy. What a loyal, devoted, stubborn waste.

Ahead of her, the boy sank to his knees before a green pond. He lamented the undrinkable filth for a moment, then paused, cocking an ear to the side. He stood, walked to the rock face beside him, and found the trickle of water filling the pond, the gap through which he could slip. Undoubtedly hearing the roar of freshwater hidden on the other side as well.

“Blaine. Get up,” he said, shaking his brother. “You have to walk. There’s water.”

He pulled his brother—Blaine—to his feet. Even hidden several trees back, Bree could tell Blaine was in no state to walk. One of his legs was bound and bloody, an injury from her team’s attack on their camp. He was sweating, too, fighting a fever that wouldn’t break. It was like looking at Heath all over again, only aged a good few years.

“Through here,” the boy said, pointing at the gap in the rock. “Can you do it?”

Blaine coughed and moved his chin in a small nod. Then, like an idiot, the boy let go of his brother and turned his back. Blaine collapsed almost instantly, falling like a rock and hitting one in the process. The crack of his skull was audible even from where Bree stood.