I flick my eyes down, searching the rolling slab of concrete that cuts through the forest, leading to the mountains. We’ve passed several military cars on the highway since we set out over an hour ago; I’ve counted six so far. Mounties, everyone calls them here. But none have stopped our van. To them, we’re nothing more than big-city tourists looking to get away.

If only we could.

“Mira,” Ava’s voice pleads from the other side of the suitcase barrier. I can’t see her, and I’m glad for it. Like the others, I can’t bear to look at her. To see her face, her eyes, would be to see my pain reflected. And I’ve been avoiding mirrors all day.

Either my silence or the relentless rattle of the luggage proves too much for Ava. In one fell swoop she shoves a duffel bag and a silver suitcase into the overstuffed trunk behind us, creating a domino effect. Barely missing my head, an avalanche of trekking poles slides down my shoulder, landing hard on my thighs and feet. Backpacks shift and burst open, supplies spilling to the ground in a nerve-twisting racket. I lift my feet as steel water bottles wheel past like hell-bent cannonballs searching for targets. A hollow thud tells me one found Skye’s ankles.

As the gear settles and the clanking of metal ceases, an awkward hush falls over the van. Ava gives a satisfied grunt, her goal achieved.

No one looks back to find out what caused the hubbub. Behind the wheel, Barend keeps his iron focus on the road, not trusting the GPS or autonomous system with our destination; Emery continues her relentless scrawl of thoughts in her tattered journal; Pawel, Ellie, and Skye all stare out windows. But I feel Ava’s gaze on me, her hand resting in the empty space between us.

“Mira,” she tries again.

Someone rolls down a window, as if to let out the tension. The rush of wind transports me to the past, to the last time I was inside a car heading north with Ava and my long-lost grandmother. Just before I walked away from my sister through a field of a thousand windmills.

I close my eyes, and I’m back in Montana. Memories come surging forward, so strong and sudden I almost can’t breathe. Lingering emotions and forgotten words float unbidden to the surface. Words I thought I left behind on the other side of the wall.

“You told me it would be my fault if Father died,” I barely whisper, trusting Ava to hear.

Through the twenty seconds of quiet, I know she’s replaying our argument. Our heated battle of bitter jabs and low-blow accusations. I wonder if she’ll use my own words against me.

I’m too tired to fight.

“It’s not true,” Ava says quietly, head bowed. “You know I didn’t mean it.” She speaks slow, her voice catching. “I didn’t mean a lot of things I said that day.”

I know. Me too. Why can’t I tell her this? Instead, I just nod.

She moves her hand closer, but I don’t take it. “The only one to blame is Roth.”

Now that Halton’s dead.

I shove the trekking poles from my legs, the sharpened points reminding me of the agent’s knife that pierced Halton’s chest. His grandfather promised we would pay for our crimes. Maybe Halton paid for his.

“We’ll get Roth back for what he did.” Ava’s whisper is like a vow.

“For what he did,” I echo.

For murdering our father. We can’t say it out loud. We failed and couldn’t save him.

Did he wait for us, watch for us? Did he hold on to the faintest hope, even at the very end, that we would come and he would live and all would be made right?

With numb fingers I toss off my seat belt and slide across the seat toward my sister. I tuck my hand into hers, and we both stare out the window, watching the forest whip past in a blur.

“I don’t want to just get him back,” I finally say. “I don’t want to just get even.”

The van turns a corner, revealing the mighty Canadian Rockies ahead. I marvel at the jagged peaks of the endless range that jut out from a cloudy mist. They look like the razor-edged teeth of a monster, and I’m stupefied by the mountains’ sheer size, their utter dominance of this land.

I am so small. Our numbers are small. Roth and his Guard are giants. Who are we to think we can take down a mountain?

“Half an hour left before we reach Paramount Point Lodge,” Emery tells us from the passenger seat.

Everyone else springs to life, stretching sleepy limbs, packing up, preparing for arrival. Ava and I stay still.

My head on Ava’s shoulder, I gaze up at the Rockies and attempt to search through the dense layer of trees and thickening fog for any sign of the rebellion and its headquarters. When I find nothing, my eyes drop to my boots, soles worn and caked with dirt.

“Mira,” Ava sighs, squeezing my hand.

She looks straight at me, and I know I can’t avoid her question any longer. Her hair is wild, tangled from constant worry, her face ashen and young and far from innocent.

“I just want to know one thing. Was it quick?”

I wish I could erase what I saw in the grainy footage, but it will stay with me forever. I had to know. To witness. To be with my father in his last moments, even if I was too late.

“Yes,” I lie, both to her and to myself. “He didn’t suffer.”

An elaborate iron gate bars the road ahead. Its black metal twists and curves into shapes of elk, wolves, and bighorn sheep, with a greeting in the middle:

A PLACE TO REST & FIND COMMON GROUND

Barend drives forward, and the gate yawns open, allowing our three-van party to enter without stopping. A forest of evergreens flanks our muddy road, so fragrant and alive, its sharp pine scent reaching through the window.

We speed on for several more miles through a thin fog before the haze suddenly lifts like a curtain, unveiling a sweeping one-story luxury lodge, a yellow door gleaming in the sunlight.

Skye lets out a sharp whistle. “Richest safe house I’ve ever seen. How do the towers stay up?”

I lean across Ava, craning my neck to get a better view, and catch sight of three grand towers that shoot up from the solar roof, each twenty levels tall. Reconstructed shipping crates, wrapped in spruce and lined with dazzling glass windows, are crisscrossed on top of one another like the giant wooden blocks of a Jenga tower. We spent many sleepless nights playing that simple game back in Calgary. To stave off the nightmares.

The game ends when the tower falls, I remember. Let’s hope these never do.

Inside the highest block of the middle tower, behind the glare of a glass wall, I can just make out a figure staring down at us.

“That’s Ciro,” Pawel informs Ava and me as the van’s doors slide open and everyone crawls out.

Upon hearing the name, Barend stops unloading the trunk and looks up with the rest of us. A softness rounds his downturned eyes, completely incongruous with his usual dour countenance. But the metamorphosis is fleeting, vanishing as quickly as it appeared, his face settling into an exaggerated glare as if overcompensating for his slipup.

“Ciro owns the place,” Pawel continues, Ellie stretching luxuriously at his side. “Owns the Common, too, he likes to say. Some even say he leads us.”

I throw Ava a side-glance. I thought Emery led the Common.

When I gaze back up at the center tower, Ciro is gone.

“Ten minutes before all Elders regroup in the Council Room!” Emery shouts so arriving members from every van can hear. She shrugs off her long chestnut coat, turning inside out the loose sleeves to expose the reversible yellow interior. It’s too risky for any of us to wear the rebellion’s color outside the safe houses. But here Emery slides back on her familiar uniform, bright and unmistakable. I can’t help but think she uses it as a crutch, a bold statement that speaks volumes to every member: I’m in charge. Not Ciro.