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get as many people onto the street as you can!”
    Dad’s secretary looks up at me and rolls her eyes.
    “What’s going on?” I ask.
    “He’s been agitated for the last few days. I guess some deal he really wants is falling apart.” She picks up her coffee mug and heads for the break room.
    Dad has lowered his voice, so I scoot closer to his door.
    “My informant says she’s probably coming from Alaska by boat,” he says. “Could be landing anywhere along the western seaboard. Everyone and their mother will be after this girl. We have to get her before our competitors do. Hell, I’d comb the streets myself, but you’re the security expert, so I’m trusting you to find her.”
    A manhunt, I think. Now this sounds interesting.

9
    JUNEAU
    ON THE THIRD DAY I BEGIN NOTICING EVIDENCE of brigands. Until now, the huskies and I have managed to elude any signs of life. Yesterday we came within sight of a paved road. I avoided it, steering the dogs away and putting a sight-blocking ridge between us and that relic of a dead civilization.
    But today, as we near the coast, we are forced to cross one road, and then another. Seeing no sign of humanity, I resign myself to following along it at a distance. After a while a small structure comes into view—a type of complex built in glass and wood with two plinth-like machines standing in front of it. I immediately recognize what it is from the photos in our books: a gas station—this one obviously abandoned. A fuel reserve would have been cached beneath the pumps and used to fill cars with gasoline. Although the sight fills me with a sort of excited horror, I can’t help but smile. It’s my first real glimpse of the world outside the one where I’ve spent my entire life.
    The sides of the building are plastered with weathered artwork—advertisements, I remind myself, rolling the word around in my mouth like honeycomb candy—that are half falling off and rusted through.
    The dogs pay no attention to the place as we speed by, and once it has disappeared from my vision, I breathe my relief. I have seen the outside world and nothing bad has happened.
    As we pass a couple of other abandoned buildings—one with a burned-out wheel-less car parked eternally outside—my confidence grows. Brigands aren’t hiding behind every corner, as I have always imagined. Maybe the ones who kidnapped my clan are the sole survivors. Maybe I will be able to not only find my clan but somehow set them free.
    As this flash of hope pierces like a sunbeam through my mind’s dark clouds, I see something else on the horizon. Something moving. Coming along the road toward us, just a speck in the distance but growing larger by the second. “Whoa!” I yell, and steer the dogs off the road behind one of the patches of fir trees that has begun to regularly punctuate the treeless expanse of tundra.
    The dogs flop flat on the ground, panting, and I spread the white skin tent over the sled, making us invisible against the snow. I huddle behind and watch as the car grows larger by the moment. It resembles one of the army vehicles from the EB—like a Jeep but twice as big, and bright red like a field poppy.
    My heart skips a beat. The car is brand-new. Not thirty years old. Not rusted out or cobbled together from spare parts like the brigand vehicles that Kenai draws to illustrate Nome’s wild stories.
    This car looks like it was built recently. But I know that’s impossible. How could a car factory exist in a dying world? Unless the brigands have organized themselves. But even so . . .
    The car speeds past our hiding place, and I get a glimpse of its passengers: a man drives and a woman sits next to him. They’re laughing. And behind them in the backseat is a child.
    They don’t look like desperate survivors of an apocalypse; they look like a happy family.
    I crouch, stunned, as the car disappears into the distance. After a minute, I shake myself out of my confusion and force myself to move, pulling