The Child Thief 3: Thin Lines

by Bella Forrest

  I nodded, tears coming to my eyes. I hadn’t thought about it like that, but he was right. I’d never known my parents, and the thought that my daughter might never know about me, about who I’d been and what I’d looked like…

  “It’s not fair,” I whispered. “I never even got to hear her speak. She saw me smile, she looked into my eyes, but she’ll never remember that. They’re not just taking our children, they’re taking our hope.”

  He reached up and stroked my jaw. “We’ll find her,” he said quietly. “If that’s what you’re searching for, then we’ll find her. I’ll make sure of it. I don’t want you to be scared or think you’re alone in this. No matter what happens, I’ll be here to take care of you.”

  His eyes closed, then, and his head grew heavier, and within minutes his breath was slow and even again, the breathing of a happy, relaxed man. His cheek grew warm and sticky against my skin, but I didn’t move him. I turned my eyes up to the darkness, where the ceiling of the cave melted into shadows, and let my eyes go fuzzy, then closed them.

  Outside, the wolves continued to howl, and a part of me stayed tuned in to the sound. But most of my brain relaxed, noticing only Jace’s head resting on my chest, the rest of his body pressing against me. And a part of me that had been wound up ever since the jailbreak began to slowly unwind, my heart thudding to the beat of his, my breathing slowing to match his.

  I’d never thought about a future that held anyone other than Hope. I’d never bothered putting anyone else in that picture. Now I wondered whether I’d ever be able to think of a picture that didn’t have Jace in it as well.

  When I woke up the next morning, the sky a predawn gray outside, he was still lying on me, and I stayed there for at least ten minutes, just enjoying the feel of him and the sense of peace it brought me. I knew I was going to have to get up soon, but for a moment, I lay there with the sun still just a smudge of light filtering between the trees outside the cave, and enjoyed life. Enjoyed what it would be like if we were normal people living a normal life. Well, not entirely normal, because we would be sleeping in a cave, but even so.

  “Are you guys going to lie around all day, or are we going to get going?” Nelson suddenly said from right above us, her eyes staring down at me, caught between a laugh and a glare.

  I glared back at her. “No need for jealousy,” I joked, then grinned and poked Jace in the ribs. “Jace, it’s time to get up,” I said softly.

  He exploded up off the ground like he’d been bitten by a snake and came to a crouch just to the side of me, his gaze roving from left to right. Nelson and I looked at him, surprised and more than a bit amused.

  “Was it something I said?” I wondered out loud.

  He turned to stare at me, and then started chuckling. “I guess sleeping outside brings back my caveman instincts,” he said with a shrug. “I’m almost never the last one up. Evidently I was more comfortable than usual.” He gave me a shy grin at that, and I grinned shyly back at him, agreeing wholeheartedly.

  We were in the middle of nowhere, hunted by the Authority, and were on the verge of trying to travel through what might be a swarm of Authority soldiers, just to get to a mysterious contact who may or may not be able to get us to safety. And yet I’d slept like a baby, safe in the knowledge that he was with me.

  I sat up and turned my brain to more important things. I rose and slipped my shoes back on. “Where’s that spring?” I asked Jace. I wanted to wash my face and clean my teeth—and get my thoughts moving forward. “And how exactly are we going to get into Samsfield?”

  “Turn right at the mouth of the tunnel and go about twenty feet, and you’ll find it draining right out of the side of the mountain into a small pond,” Jace said, answering the first question. “By the time you get back, I’ll have an answer for you about how we’re going to do it.”

  I nodded, all business, then turned toward the mouth of the tunnel. Before I left, I stopped by Jackie’s pallet to pick up some company.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked gently.

  “Like I’ve just slept on a bed of rocks next to someone who hogs the blankets,” she answered. “Are you going for water?”

  I nodded. “Want me to bring you some? Or do you want to come with me?”

  She jumped up before she’d even had much chance to think about it and took my hand. “Coming with you. I don’t even have to consider it. I’ve been basically sitting in the same place since we started telling stories last night. I want to move around, and I need a moment of privacy.”

  I laughed softly at that and then turned and walked with her out of the cave. At the mouth, we turned to the right and headed for the pond Jace had told me about.

  “How’s the leg?” she asked as we walked.

  “Better than I expected,” I allowed. “Though, I don’t recommend the leeches. They’re cold and creepy.”

  She shook her head, her mouth a moue of distaste. “That Jace,” she said. “Always surprising me. You two seem to be… getting along well.”

  She looked at me and lifted her eyebrows as far as they would go, and I blushed.

  “More walking, less joking. Jace wants to get moving, and I don’t want the lecture I’ll get if we’re the reason we end up leaving late.”

  We made it to the pond relatively quickly, and I found a tree with the leaves Jace had been using to ferry water and picked one, then filled it at the rush of water coming out of the mountain and held it to Jackie’s mouth. She drank deeply and smacked her lips.

  “God, that’s good,” she said. “Do you think it’s a bad thing that that water tastes so good? Is that my body’s way of appreciating the small things, suddenly? You don’t… You don’t think that means my body knows we’re going to die, do you?” She said it like it was a joke, but I took a look in her eyes and knew the truth—that she was just as worried about what we were about to do as I was.

  I swallowed firmly, gave myself a mental shake, and said, “Absolutely not. It’s probably just the freshest water you’ve ever had. I mean, it’s coming right out of a mountain.”

  She laughed while I tried to get my emotions under control, and I caught more water in the leaf and gave us each a makeshift shower, allowing the cold water to dribble over our heads and down our faces. Then I took a long drink and let the water run down my throat. She was right: the water was delicious. And I didn’t think it was because we were dying. Not yet, anyhow.

  When we got back to the cave, we found Jace in the middle of explaining his plans for our journey into Samsfield.

  “First, we drop off everything we’ve got in another location,” he said. “I don’t want everything in the same spot, in case one or the other gets discovered. Then we get down to where we left the scooters and see if they’re still there,” he said, pointing to things in the dirt.

  I looked down and saw that he’d drawn a rough map in the sand in the middle of the cave. Our location versus where we would be going, I assumed. I could even see a little stick figure house that must have been my cottage, and to the side of it were several simplistic scooters.

  “How do you know that’s safe?” I asked. “Don’t you think the Authority will have someone there watching them?”

  He tipped his head to one side in a halfway shrug. “Maybe,” he said. “But I don’t think they’d leave more than one person to guard them. They think we’ve run into the wilderness. With luck they’ll assume that we’ve died out here. Without luck, they’ll be searching high and low for us in the forest, with as many men as they can gather. We’d have to be completely bonkers to go back to your house or the surrounding area. So, they might be guarding them, but not heavily. And if it’s only one or two men, we can take care of them.”

  He shared a glance with Kory, and I put it to the side, not wanting to think about the fact that they were talking about the guns—and shooting whoever was left with the scooters.

  “Right, so we’ll say the scooters are even still there, and we manage to get through whoev
er the Authority left with them,” Abe said. “Then we’ll assume that we’ll be able to hotwire them again. What then?”

  “We get to Samsfield,” Jace replied. “And we already know what we’re doing there. I even have an address. Any more questions?”

  He paused for a moment, waiting for anyone to add anything, but silence was his only answer, and he nodded once, accepting that everyone was in agreement.

  A moment later, he was barking instructions at the rest of us in regard to what we were taking and what we were leaving—just enough, it seemed, to make the Authority believe that we were coming back—and within ten minutes we were walking out of the cave with Jace’s backpack, a couple of guns, all the blankets and sheets we’d been using the night before, and a large, strong stick for me to use as a crutch in case walking became too difficult. We were leaving behind more than I was comfortable with, including some of our food, but we couldn’t carry it all, and there were important reasons to leave it behind.

  With luck, we wouldn’t be coming back up to the forest at all, because Corona would be ushering us to safety.

  I rushed through the forested valley after Jace with that thought pushing me along, and before long we were in the chasm, Jace taking out his compass to guide us.

  “How do you even know which way we came from?” I asked, struggling to keep up with him on my still-not-quite-right leg.

  “Natural sense of direction,” he replied. “I’ve spent most of my life figuring out how to tell north from south and east from west without using a compass. The sun is there”—he pointed right toward the sun—“and when we got here last night the last glow was there.” He pointed in a different direction. Then he pointed in the first direction again. “That means that’s east, where the sun is rising, and there”—a finger in the second direction—“is where west lies. We were walking right toward the sun setting last night, so we’re reversing that now. Once we get into the forest below, it will be trickier. That’s why I have this.” He held up the compass and gave me a quick grin, and I shook my head.

  “We’d be totally lost if it weren’t for you,” I told him.

  “I get that all the time,” he replied with a chuckle. Then he strode ahead of me, toward Ant. “Ant, do you have your gun ready? We’re about to hit the gorge that leads out of here, and then the trail down the rock face. I don’t know what we’re going to find in the forest below, but I want to be prepared for anything. That means having the weapons within easy reach.”

  Nelson appeared at my side and shoved her arm under mine to support me. “How’re you holding up?” she asked.

  “You don’t have to help me,” I said, laughing, but she shook her head.

  “You were helping me. That’s how you got shot. Figure it’s fair play for me to give you a hand.”

  “Well, when you put it that way…” I said, leaning on her a bit more heavily. Then I remembered that I hadn’t yet really talked to her since we rescued them. And I had questions. “You know, we went to your offices after we got back from the raid. To see whether you were somehow still there.”

  She glanced at me, her eyes wide. “Well, that was suicidal. After what you heard? You must have known that the Ministry—or the Authority, I suppose—would have spies watching it.”

  We hit the chasm, then, and the ground turned rocky. I grunted and leaned still more heavily on her. My leg was better than it had been, but as long as I had the offer of support, I was going to take it. Maybe it would help me save my leg until I really needed it later.

  “I was actually forbidden from doing it, for that very reason,” I told her. “Nathan forbade me from trying to find you.”

  “So you went against his orders,” she said, shaking her head. “Oh, Robin.”

  “Of course I did!” I said. “I needed to see whether you were still there!”

  She shot me a grin. “I appreciate that. And what did you find?”

  I remembered that burnt-out shell of a building in the night, the beams rising up from ashes. The smell of barbequed meat. The destruction in Nelson’s offices.

  “They burned the entire thing,” I said quietly, picking my way carefully across the ground between the walls of rock. “There was nothing left. I mean, just ashes. We were lucky to get out of the building without falling from your floor down to the ground.” I paused, trying to figure out how to ask the next question. “We found your hard drives, though.”

  “How many?” she asked.

  “Only two. We got them back to Ant’s, but they were both fried. Couldn’t take the heat, he said. But the third…”

  “Is hidden,” she finished. “I was afraid something like that might happen. It was why I made three copies in the first place. But then I realized that it would be stupid to leave them all in the same spot. What if the building was destroyed? Or someone found them and destroyed them?”

  “You do have the third one still!” I said, relief coursing through me. I’d thought she must, but until I’d heard it from her own lips…

  Before she could answer me, Jace came to an abrupt stop ahead of us, and I saw that we’d reached the wide, flat plateau that sat right above the sheer face of rock we’d climbed to get up here.

  He turned and stared right at me.

  “Moment of truth,” he said. “Are you going to be able to make it down on your own?”

  “Yes,” I said without thinking. I didn’t want him worrying about me—not when there was more pressing business. Like what we were going to do at the bottom.

  “I got up it on my own, didn’t I?” I asked. “And I’ve had your magical leech treatment since then. It’s bound to be easier.”

  He nodded without even responding to my joke. “I’m going first, to draw the attention of anyone who might be at the bottom. I want you between Ant and Kory.” Then he turned to those two. “I want each of you with a hand on her shoulder. If she starts to wobble, stop her immediately and pick her up. Throw her over your shoulder if you have to.” He turned to look at Nelson and Jackie next, and lifted an eyebrow. “Are you two going to be okay?”

  Nelson just snorted at him, and he gave them both a quick nod, then turned and dropped over the edge onto the ledge of the stone.

  23

  Kory dropped quickly after him, and then it was my turn. I made my way toward the edge and gazed out at the view, then reminded myself not to look over it. Just look at the rock, just look at the rock, I told myself again and again.

  “Get on the ledge and then turn to the side,” Nelson suddenly said from behind me. “Face the rock rather than facing forward. It’ll be easier.”

  I glanced at her, remembering that that was how she’d come up, and nodded. I turned so that my back was to the drop, took the hand Ant offered me, and stepped backward onto the ledge.

  The footing wasn’t any slicker or shiftier than it had been yesterday when we came up, though I wasn’t sure why I’d expected it to change. I took a deep breath, coughed at having inhaled dust right off the rock face, and then nodded to Ant, who was leaning over me, still holding onto one of my hands. Kory reached back from the path ahead of me, put his hand on my right shoulder, and gave me a reassuring squeeze. Then he started scooting down the pathway sideways. I followed him quickly, sliding my feet along the ledge so they didn’t lose touch with the ground and picking them up only when I came across a large rock. A second later Ant had joined me on the ledge and had his hand on my other shoulder. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nelson follow us, and then Abe. Jackie came last. Abe put his hand on Nelson’s shoulder, and then Jackie’s, even though Jace hadn’t told him to, and my heart squeezed a bit. It had been so long since I’d seen him in action that I’d forgotten how very like Ant he was. They were two peas in a pod, which meant that if Ant’s heart was overwhelmingly in the right place, Abe’s was as well.

  Jace was striding confidently down the path as if he were walking along the broadest street in the world, although I thought that the path downward might have been more
difficult than going up had been, given the danger of falling due to too much momentum. Still, it was also a lot faster, and within ten minutes we were at the bottom, each of us jumping down to the ground with relief.

  Jace turned and nodded at us once, then whirled around and started striding quickly through the trees, his compass in front of him. “I was doing some figuring last night,” he said, “and based on the way we came through the trees and how we got to the rock face, I think I know which direction we came from. If my calculations are correct, we’ll be coming to that thick bit of forest in about five minutes.”

  None of us argued with him, having very little idea how he had come to those conclusions, and when we did in fact get to a part of the forest that I recognized as the area where we’d first come into contact with the wolves, I shook my head in amazement. I didn’t know how he’d done it, but he did seem to have found the right path. To this bit of woods, at least.

  Suddenly the wolves materialized around us, looking at first as if they were part of the shadows themselves, but then melting further and further into the light until they were solid creatures, and I gasped in surprise. I wasn’t sure what they were doing there, whether they were seeing us off or running with us to try to ward off any outsiders. I couldn’t imagine that they were heading right toward danger—it just wasn’t their way—and that made me think that perhaps we were in safe territory, rather than an area where Authority soldiers were waiting for us.

  Then we walked through the thick tree line and came right to the clearing where Jace and I had been blown into the air by whatever weapon the Authority soldiers had been using. I stopped abruptly, as did Ant, and stared at the grass in front of us. It felt dangerous here, though I hoped the Authority soldiers would have been long gone by now. Even so, I felt exposed. Vulnerable.