Free Stolen by Erin Bowman Page B

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.
    And now the boy—the idiot boy—was panicking. He shouted Blaine’s name, paled at the sight of his bloody scalp. Bree watched him lay an ear to Blaine’s heart—still beating, it seemed—and bandage the head wound. Finally, as he should have done from the beginning, the boy scurried through the gap in the rock alone.
    Now , she told herself. So you don’t have to watch his face blow over with shock when you shoot his brother.
    Bree ran, rifle gripped tightly. She stepped over Blaine’s unconscious body and let her aim settle on the Franconian emblem of his uniform. Act first, question later . But with her finger resting on the trigger, Bree hesitated.
    The boys were indeed identical—she’d been right to suspect brothers, if not