The Child Thief 3: Thin Lines

by Bella Forrest

“We need to be more careful,” Kory said quietly. “Just because we assume the Authority has cleared out doesn’t mean they actually have.”

  “You’re right,” Jace agreed. “We’re getting too close to Robin’s house to be sloppy now. From here on out, single file. I’m in the lead, Robin second, Nelson third, Jackie fourth, and Ant, Abe, Kory, you bring up the rear. Before we go, though, this is where we’re leaving our remaining supplies.”

  He turned and held out his arms, waiting. The rest of us stacked a number of blankets and sheets on him, confused.

  Then, without a backward glance, he jumped into the nearest oak tree and started climbing. Like some sort of ape.

  I watched, mouth hanging open in what had to be a truly attractive pose, until he disappeared into the branches, then stared at the last place I’d seen him until he reappeared and gave me a quick grin.

  “Safe and sound. I don’t think the Authority will ever think to look there.”

  “Is that where you put the stuff we packed up last night?” I asked, too surprised to come up with anything more intelligent than that.

  He shook his head. “I don’t want it all in the same place. Spread our eggs, so to speak, in case the Authority finds one set of things.” He reached into his pocket and yanked out a sheaf of papers. “I’ve kept the timeline. Never know if we might need it.”

  None of us seemed to have any response to that, so he whirled around, reminded us that we were supposed to be in single file, and started forward.

  We immediately became a more disciplined crew, moving after him in single file as instructed, keeping in sync so as to avoid stepping on each other as we walked. I didn’t think we would be running into any soldiers, given the presence of the wolves—I could still see them in the woods around us, their ghostly forms merging with the shadows whenever they got close to the trees—but there also wasn’t anything wrong with being more careful.

  I followed closely behind Jace, my gaze shooting back and forth between the trees surrounding us. Searching for anything out of place. For the dark blue that would indicate Authority presence, or the bright green that would mean enforcers. At this point I knew they were one and the same, and equally dangerous to us.

  We altered our direction and crept along the border of the clearing, rather than going right through the middle, moving from tree to tree, hiding behind the trunks and peering around them until we were sure it was safe. Jace, Ant, and Kory all had their handguns out and held in front of them, and I wasn’t certain whether that made me feel safer or more nervous.

  We passed through the clearing and arrived at a familiar area. I felt suddenly homesick and put my hand to my stomach to try to settle it. Shortly thereafter, we found ourselves in the trees immediately around my house. Here Jace put up a hand to halt us and motioned us forward slowly.

  “We skip Robin’s house,” he said. “It’s obviously too dangerous to go there again, and I don’t think there’s anything for us there anyhow. The Authority could suspect we might try to return for shelter.”

  My heart sank a bit at that, and I glanced in the direction I knew held my cabin, my senses reaching out to it. After so many nights of living in other people’s houses—and more recently, in caves—my mind was crying out to be back in my own space. Back in the space that I called home.

  But then I caught a scent on the wind and suddenly knew that my home wasn’t even there anymore.

  Smoke. Smoke and ashes. And the smell of burnt plastic. Not a fire in the woods, but a fire that had consumed something very manmade.

  My house was gone.

  They’d burned it, just as they’d burned the houses of those techs we’d been searching for last week.

  I clamped my mouth shut, intent on keeping my emotions in check, and turned back toward our path. I found Jace there, still stopped and staring at me, and knew immediately that he’d smelled it as well. His eyes held doubt and sorrow, and also a promise that he would offer me a different home. A home where I didn’t have to live by myself.

  I nodded wordlessly at him, accepting that offer—and telling him that I was fine, and ready to keep moving. I didn’t want to stay here and mourn my house or my things. I didn’t need to see what was left of that cottage. It was part of my past, now, and we had places to go and very little time in which to get there.

  We started running through the forest again, our footsteps as silent as we could make them, Jace keeping his gun up and prepared in front of us, and a moment later we were slowing once more, Jace’s steps drawing to a stop in front of us.

  He turned and motioned for us to stay put, and then whirled around and disappeared into the forest. I backed up against the tree next to me, my heart hammering in my ears, and waited. For the sound of shouts, or gunshots. But there was nothing. Just silence through the forest, interrupted now and then by the sharp call of a jay.

  I’d just started to wonder how long he was going to keep us waiting when Jace appeared in front of us again, his face more relaxed.

  “I can’t find anyone near the scooters,” he said. “Don’t see any sign of a guard. The scooters are all there and look as if they’re in the same condition. Hopefully we hid them well enough for them to have gone unnoticed, and the Authority is positive that we’re deep in the woods.”

  The rest of us didn’t need further encouragement. We broke and ran for the scooters ahead of us, naturally falling into the pairings we’d used the last time we rode them.

  “Remember that you just have to get on and hit the throttle,” I huffed as I ran. “Just get on and ride, don’t worry about trying to start—”

  “Robin, we literally went through this yesterday. I think we know,” Nelson muttered.

  Oh, that was right. How could it have been only one day since we stole the scooters? It seemed like too much had happened for it to have been only a day.

  Reaching my scooter’s hiding place, I rummaged through the bushes and pulled it out. Jace immediately jumped on the kick-starter, bringing the engine roaring to life. I breathed out a sigh of relief, glad to know the hotwiring was still in place, and then tucked myself up against his back, preparing for the start of our journey.

  Kory revved up his scooter, then Abe, then Ant, and we were just rolling out toward the dirt track when a shout came thundering out of the forest.

  “Get off those scooters and put your hands on your heads! You’re under arrest! Stop, by order of the Compliance Authority!”

  We ducked down as one, the drivers hit the gas on the scooters, and we went shooting into the forest, crouched over the handlebars of our bikes. Behind us, I heard several other engines roar to life, and a second later I could hear other bikes behind us. Bikes with much larger engines, if the sound of them was any indication.

  “Jace, they’ve got motorcycles!” I gasped.

  “I can hear them just as well as you can, Robin!” he hissed back. “My gun, it’s in the waistband of my jeans at the small of my back. Right between us. Can you reach it?”

  I shoved my hand in between us, ran it down his back, and found the handle of his handgun sticking out of his jeans. I grabbed it and pulled it out, quickly moving my fingers over it to make sure the safety was still on. The last thing I wanted to do was shoot one of us in the chase.

  Behind us, the sound of the motorcycle engines was getting louder, their riders obviously gaining on us.

  “Dammit, how did you miss them?” I shouted.

  “They must have had them covered with brush!” Jace answered. “I circled the scooters three times!”

  A bullet came whizzing right by our heads, barely missing us.

  “Well, as long as they’re shooting at us, I suggest we return the favor!” Jace snapped. “Think you can take them down?”

  I gaped at him, then pulled myself together and shot a glance behind us. There were three of them that I could see, and the good news was that they were quite close. That would make it easier to hit them. Not them, though, I corrected myself. I’d never
shot a person before in my life, and I really didn’t want to start right now. They might be trying to kill us, but that didn’t mean I had to stoop to their level.

  I held the gun up, pointed at the motorcycle closest to us, and took a moment to steady my arm and sight down the barrel of the gun. Squeeze without turning the barrel, squeeze without turning the barrel, I reminded myself, remembering the things Nelson had taught me the first time she let me shoot one of her guns. Too many people twisted their wrists when they pulled the trigger, thereby throwing off the aim and making the shot go awry.

  I’d never had that problem. I’d learned early to keep my wrist stiff. I just hoped my body remembered that. Because I was under no delusions about the danger in this situation. If I made the first shot, the others would fall back and become more cautious—and give me more time to get another two shots off.

  Jace suddenly ran over something, and my hand shot up and then bounced, and I had to really work to correct my aim. But there it was, a moment later, and I firmed my wrist, made certain that the gun was aiming at what I wanted to hit… and pulled the trigger.

  The motorcycle closest to us skidded out and went running off in the other direction, the front tire blown out. The man who’d been riding it went skidding in the other direction and came to a sudden and complete stop against the trunk of a tree.

  He wouldn’t be getting up to bother us again, I thought, and I turned my arm, aimed for the next motorcycle, and pulled the trigger. The same thing happened, and I grinned to myself and then aimed for the third bike.

  This driver was more clever, though. He’d seen what happened to his colleagues. He knew what I was going to do and started dodging in and out of the trees around him, making it harder for me to lock on with my gun. Until, a few seconds later, I realized that there was a pattern to his movements. Veering on the far side of two trees, then on the close side of one. It meant he was exposed to my gun for less time, but it also made him predictable.

  I followed him with the gun, committing his path to my mind, and then shot as he came around a tree again.

  His bike skidded out and then hit a rock and flew up into the air, coming down in the distance with a horrible crunching sound.

  The man had jumped off during the skid, though, and was barely moving in the pile of leaves into which he’d flown. He wasn’t going to get up and chase us anytime soon.

  “Got them,” I said, turning back to Jace and flipping the safety on the gun.

  “That was well done,” he called back to me. “But keep the gun out. We don’t know how many more agents we’re going to run into.”

  I didn’t argue with him. I just fitted the gun more firmly to my hand and kept an eye on the path behind and ahead.

  24

  The rest of the ride through the forest was uneventful, but I kept the gun in my hand all the same, quickly taking a liking to the security of having it there. I rode with my gun hand lowered at my side, the weapon hanging next to my hip, and my other arm wrapped around Jace’s middle. And for the first time in a very long time, I felt as if I was in control of a situation. As if I had actually accomplished something. Maybe I needed to start carrying a gun all the time.

  Then I realized how ridiculous I probably looked. Who was I kidding? I wasn’t the gun-wielding sort. I hadn’t even wanted to shoot those Authority agents back there. I’d only shot to get their bikes out from under them and make sure they couldn’t follow us. With any luck, they wouldn’t be in any state to radio in to their team where we’d gone, or that we’d gone at all.

  I couldn’t deny, though, that it had been nice to feel powerful for once, and I put the thought into my memory banks as one worth keeping. Maybe I needed to stop taking orders so often and start being more proactive in our actions.

  A moment later we were skidding to a halt at the main highway, and Jace was turning around to grin at me.

  “Amazing!” he said. “I couldn’t have done it better myself!”

  I grinned and blushed, and tried to hand the gun back to him, but he shook his head and motioned for me to keep it.

  “We don’t know who we’ll run into on the road to Samsfield,” he said. “I don’t want to be caught unprepared.”

  When Ant and Jackie pulled up, Jackie was grinning from ear to ear. “Robin!” she cried. “I never knew you had it in you!”

  “Nice shootin’, Rob,” Ant agreed.

  At a sign from Jace, he yanked his own gun out of the front waistband of his jeans and handed it back to Jackie, who took it quickly, checked it for ammunition, and slammed the clip home like a pro.

  Ant pretended to be horrified but actually looked proud, and I laughed at the moment of levity between them.

  On the other side of them, Kory was handing Nelson his gun, so she could fend off anyone who got too close to them, and then we were off again, speeding down the highway toward our next stop. As a lone rider, Abe didn’t have anyone to shoot for him, so the rest of us would just have to keep an eye out for him.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” I shouted, leaning close so that Jace could hear me.

  “Of course!” he shouted back, his face turned so I could hear him. “Samsfield is where I met you for the first time, remember? I know it like the back of my hand! It’s where Nathan held all his meetings.”

  I shook my head, surprised at myself. In the rush of learning about Jace’s plan B, and having just gone through the timeline, I hadn’t paid attention. Now that I was, I remembered Samsfield distinctly. It was a very industrial city, or at least one side of it was. The other side was made up of big, beautiful houses. The sort that the upper crust lived in.

  The places that housed people who could afford to adopt the kids the government stole from the poor class.

  That day when we met him now felt like forever ago. Our first contact with OH+. Back then we’d known Jace only as Mr. X, an admin for OH, and the one who had invited us to a special meeting to discuss something bigger.

  Something bigger, indeed. His mission had been to recruit us into OH+… only, I was starting to think that the real mission had been a lot bigger than that. Because Nathan went a lot deeper than just OH+, and if people like Zion and Alexy had seemed to have access to too many expensive toys, I suspected it was because of that deeper level.

  Which begged the question: Why hadn’t he told Jace what he was into? If Jace was so important to him, why hadn’t Nathan let him in on his larger secrets?

  The landscape flew by me, a blur of greens and blues and purples, and I turned my face to the side, leaned my cheek against Jace’s back, and tried to turn my brain off. I’d been asking myself the same questions over and over again, and it hadn’t gotten me anywhere. It was high time I stopped doing that and started thinking about what we were going to do, rather than what we didn’t know.

  An hour later we arrived at the outskirts of Samsfield, our ears ringing from the noise of the scooters and our hair in knots from the wind. Jace pulled over into a small residential park and turned the scooter off.

  “Remind me never to use scooters for any long journeys again,” he muttered, reaching out and stretching his arms to the sides. “I miss my motorcycle.”

  I stretched as well, agreeing wholeheartedly, and then turned to watch the others pull up. Ant and Jackie looked about like I felt, and the other three looked little better.

  But we’d made it to Samsfield without the Authority getting hold of us, and that had been our main goal.

  “What’s next?” Ant asked. “If she’s not who she’s supposed to be, or she’s not going to carry through on Nathan’s promise, I want to know about it sooner rather than later. So we can start working on our next plan B.”

  Jace gave him a long, level look, and then shook his head. “Have some patience, Ant. If this was Nathan’s plan for the worst-case scenario, I have faith that it’ll work.” He turned to Jackie and held up the palm of his hand. “832 Winston. Can you map it?”

  She stared at him. “You w
rote the address on your hand?” she asked scornfully. “How do you know it’s even right? How do you know it didn’t get smudged into different numbers or something?”

  “Because I also memorized it,” he said. “Now, can we stop with the questions? We sort of have a meeting to get to. We don’t know how safe this city is, and they’ve got to be looking for these scooters. They must have seen them in the forest. Let’s stop acting like we have a lot of time here.”

  She gave him another look that told him exactly what she thought of him bossing her around, but got onto her phone and punched the address in. A second later she nodded.

  “Looks like it’s on the outskirts of the city,” she said. “I guess that’s a good thing, seeing as how we didn’t bring any disguises with us and don’t know whether people in this city have been told about us or not.”

  Before she could even finish, Ant hit the gas and pulled his scooter out onto the street, then revved the engine and shot forward, Jace and me cruising along after him. Behind me, I knew, Kory and Nelson would fall into line, with Abe in the rear.

  The streets here were wide and airy, the houses around us built in a modified ranch style, each of them done in shades of red, taupe, and brown, so that they looked like a color-coded village. Each had a large, sweeping green lawn, and many of them sported copses of trees in front of the houses—both for increased privacy and a place for kids to play.

  I’d been right in my memory of this place. The rich area was exactly the sort of place where adopted children were sent, to grow up rich and forget about their histories as they learned to circulate in the upper crust of society. Several of the trees had treehouses in them, and I paused for long enough to smile at the thought that the parents who lived in those houses cared enough about their kids to build houses in the trees.

  Then the smile died, and I frowned. Those weren’t their kids. Those were kids they’d taken. Kids they’d maybe even ordered, if what we’d found in that Ministry warehouse was true. And though I was glad they were treating the children well, that didn’t change the fact that the kids had been confiscated from their parents.