Sneak by Evan Angler Page A

get.”
    “Ah! Not quite,” Papa said, stepping off the porch. “There’s one more trick I have to show you.” And Papa swung his foot out in front of him, making a long arc in the dirt. “Any time in your travels, if you want to find a fisher among the people you’re talking to, you just do this, real casual-like.”
    “Okay. What’s it mean?”
    “Nothing on its own. That’s the whole point. Just a fidgety leg and an arc in the dirt. Not even DOME would bat an eye. But if you’re face-to-face with a fisher . . .” Papa carved a second arc in the dirt now, overlapping it with the first at one end. “They’ll do the same. And do you see it?” He pointed down.
    “A fisher will always have a fish.”
    “There’s just one problem,” Logan said. “There’s still no way
    the Dust is gonna agree to come with us.”
    “Don’t worry about that,” Peck said, erasing the lines of the
    fish with his foot. “I’m telling you, they’ll come around.” Then he smiled and turned to walk back to the barn.
    Logan hurried to follow.
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    Erin rode the elevator to the top of DOME’s New Chicago head-
    quarters, known throughout Spokie as “the Umbrella.” It was
    nighttime, but the doors opened to a full and bustling space.
    The main floor of the headquarters was one big room, fifty
    stories up. It was glass on all sides, including the floor, with desks circling around the building’s tall, central spire. Right now, hundreds of DOME agents shuffled about, preparing reports, ana-lyzing holograms, sorting documents on each desk’s touch screen.
    Mr. Arbitor stepped out of the crowd with a large cup of
    steaming nanocoffee and handed it to his daughter.
    “It’s not fresh,” he warned.
    Erin sipped it anyway. It was bitter and stale and her nose crinkled when she tasted it, but nanocoffee never went cold, and the warmth helped after so many hours of following Hailey in the woods.
    “Come,” Mr. Arbitor said. “Time for an update.”
    The two of them walked to the outermost ring of desks. Mr.
    Arbitor swiped his Mark to unlock his tabletop, and he began pulling up documents for Erin to see.
    “At twenty-two hundred hours, two of our men approached
    the underpass in New Chicago’s Ruined Sector, where Logan
    Langly was identified. According to plan, our informant led Logan away from the group, leaving him vulnerable and alone.”
    Mr. Arbitor pulled up a series of night-vision stills and video feeds so Erin could see what he was talking about.
    “At twenty-three hundred hours, Hailey Phoenix arrived at
    the scene, thanks to your good work this afternoon.”
    “Amazing,” Erin said enviously. “How did she find him? Do
    you know?”
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    “That was your brilliant wording, Erin. The cryptic note you
    ‘accidentally’ left visible on your tablet. Nothing more. She came right to the underpass and headed Logan off early on during his escape. After a brief encounter with our agents, Logan and Hailey were identified, and the two of them were allowed to leave.”
    “Logan didn’t find that . . . strange?”
    “They had a plausible enough means of escape.” Mr. Arbitor
    smirked. “Disguises and alibis and all that. It was cute, I’m told.”
    “But Logan didn’t even catch on that he being was followed?
    That doesn’t sound like him . . .”
    “Ah. He wasn’t followed,” Mr. Arbitor corrected. “Once we had his initial coordinates, we were able to lock on by satellite surveillance.” He pulled up another few files now, dragging them across the tabletop with his fingers. With a series of double taps, he zoomed in from an orbital shot all the way down to a close-up on two teenagers biking and riding a rollerstick through the woods.
    “Wow . . . ,” Erin said, amazed and a little scared by the tech-nology of it.
    “I know. Tastes good to be on the winning side, doesn’t it?”
    Mr. Arbitor winked at her. Erin