The Child Thief 3: Thin Lines

by Bella Forrest

  30

  The ride back toward the area that I’d come to think of as my forest was both less eventful than those last twenty minutes at Corona’s house and incredibly tense at the same time. Tense on a very basic level, given the fact that I was now driving my own bike and couldn’t just gaze at the scenery as we passed it, and tense because what I was looking at constantly was my rearview mirror to see whether we were getting out of town without someone on our tail.

  We sped through the rest of the residential area and hit the borders of the town within a couple of minutes after leaving Corona’s house, the bike engines screaming with effort, the seven of us crouched over the handlebars in our need to both hide and try to make ourselves more aerodynamic. Jackie was leading us, glancing at her phone every so often and, I assumed, giving those with headsets updates about where we were going and what we were doing. We were already in territory I remembered from when we arrived, though, and I was guessing that we were going out the same way we’d come in.

  It would lead us right to the main highway, and from there we’d have a straight shot to the forest. Which was good, since it meant we wouldn’t have to worry much about lots of turns that could separate us. But it was also bad, because it meant that we were stuck on a straight highway with little in the way of camouflage. We wouldn’t be going through any towns, and we wouldn’t be going through any forested areas. Just enormous fields of nothing.

  And that meant, in short, that there would be nowhere to hide if the Authority agents suddenly showed up behind us.

  I did my best not to think about that and leaned forward a bit farther, trying to enjoy the feel of the fresh air around me, the wind whipping against the visor in front of my eyes. Thank God Corona had thought to leave helmets for us, and thank God even more that they fit. I didn’t know how we would have pulled this escape off without them.

  Even better, they were now acting as masks for us.

  That brought up the thought that we were currently riding along the highway on motorcycles that we’d just stolen—borrowed?—from the basement of a secret contact within Nathan’s organization. An organization, I told myself, that I needed to start calling Little John, because there was almost zero chance that they were anything other than one and the same. They’d both shown up in our lives around the same time, and it was virtually impossible to believe that they were separate entities. If they were, they were almost certainly working together, and both far better funded than OH or even OH+ had been.

  That begged the question, though, of why Nathan had bothered to start OH+ in the first place. It was obviously some sort of recruitment technique, but why? Why not just ask those of us he’d chosen to join Little John, outright? And that led back to the question I’d been asking myself almost nonstop since that morning in the meadow—was it yesterday?—when we woke up alone and far from civilization: Why hadn’t they just taken us to their headquarters when they had us?

  Mystery after mystery, and none of it was going to get any clearer until we had someone who could answer those questions for us. Which meant, I supposed, that I had to be patient until… Well, until we got to the next step. The step where Corona took us to the refuge, whatever that meant, and we slowed down enough for me to start asking questions other than what we were going to do next.

  “What do we do next?” I shouted in Jace’s direction, wondering if he’d had more success figuring that out than I had.

  He glanced at me from his hunched position on his bike and shook his head. “Don’t see that we have many options!” he yelled back, his voice straining over the sound of the engine underneath him. “Get back to the forest and find a new place to hide. Get the supplies. Do some research and try to get a jump on where we might be going and what we might see there. Wait.”

  More waiting. Terrific. The Authority was actively searching for us, and sitting around waiting for someone else to do something about it felt wrong in a million ways. I also didn’t like the idea of going back to the forest, but Corona had been certain that it was the safest place for us.

  Certainly safer than the cities. Safer than any of our houses. At least in the forest we had more places to run if the Authority found us.

  When we arrived at the spot where the road into my forest broke off from the main highway, we skidded to a halt, took off our helmets, and stared at each other for a long moment.

  “Should we just go in?” Jackie asked hesitantly, her voice loud in the silence that had encased us once we cut the engines.

  Jace nodded, his expression equally tense. “Yup. Less risky in the trees than standing in the open, close to where we recently shot down a bunch of agents. We look for a new spot as far away from here as possible. Somewhere to hide the bikes and then ourselves. Let’s move.”

  I gulped. Right. No problem.

  I grabbed my bike by the handlebars, flipped the kickstand up, and started pushing. The others followed me as I walked into the forest, the bike growing increasingly more difficult to push as we got into deeper cover. I jumped at the slightest sound of twigs snapping around us, at the slightest glimpse of movement through the quavering leaves, convinced that at any moment Authority agents would come lunging out of the trees toward us. But after at least half an hour of walking both away from the road and away from the path that would have taken us toward the cave, all was still calm and quiet.

  We arrived at a spot where a family of oak trees was growing, their branches dipping all the way down to the ground. I gazed around, taken aback by the beauty of it, and then started searching for an opening in the branches.

  It was perfect. Almost like we’d designed the spot ourselves. The universe had finally decided to give us a breather, it seemed. I just hoped it would last until tomorrow.

  I pushed my bike toward a gap I found in the branches of the tree to my right, and within a minute I was through the foliage and inside the sheltered area beneath. I parked my bike and turned to see Jace entering, his eyes wide with appreciation.

  Ant ducked in after him—and of course started asking questions immediately.

  “Can we just leave them here? Do you think we should cover them with brush or something? Are we sure the Authority won’t—”

  “Ant,” I said, interrupting him. “Could you see in here when you were standing out there? Did you suspect there was anything inside?” He shook his head, and I gave him my best version of his own are-you-an-idiot look. “Then don’t you think the bikes will probably be okay in here, even without other covering? What are the chances the Authority is going to happen upon this grove of trees and happen to think to get under and search?”

  I figured the chances were slim to none. Plus, if anyone was under here, they would hear soldiers coming from a good distance anyway. This was the perfect hiding place for us too, I realized. Way better than the cave itself. Not as secure, because there wouldn’t be stone around us, but I doubted we’d find any place safer in the near vicinity. And the longer we stayed out there searching for a hiding spot, the greater our chances of getting caught.

  “I say this is where we stay, too,” I concluded firmly, pulling the key out of my bike and shoving it in my pocket.

  I glanced around the group, but no one posed an objection, not even Ant. His eyes were on the enclosure, his expression seeming to grow more relaxed the longer he stood inside the shelter of the trees. He nodded slowly, and I gave a satisfied nod back.

  New hiding place, check.

  Now we just had to figure out how we were going to get our supplies and what we were going to do for the rest of the day, and another night in the forest. Another night before we were finally taken to safety.

  31

  The moment we had everyone else settled, Jace grabbed my hand and started towing me toward the branches that ringed the tree.

  I struggled against him, wondering what the hell was going on.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, torn somewhere between panic and annoyance. We’d just gotten back from a fairl
y stressful morning, and everyone else was settling down into the leaves on the ground and closing their eyes, trying to recover.

  Why was I being dragged away from that?

  “We need to get the supplies,” Jace said. “We need nourishment and blankets. In these circumstances, none of us can afford to get weak or sick. Not until Corona gets us to safety. Kory! I need you!” he called over his shoulder.

  A moment later, Kory appeared next to us, striding along as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

  “Going to get the stuff?” he asked casually.

  Jace nodded. “We’ll need another set of hands,” he added. “And possibly another gun.”

  I sighed. “Okay. So which batch are we going for first?” I asked, falling into step beside the two men. “The one we hid earlier today, or the one you hid last night? Where exactly did you put the latter, anyway?”

  Jace ducked through the drooping branches of the oak tree, and I followed, my hand clasped in his. Kory came two steps to the side of me, catching the branches before they could come down on my head. I turned and gave him a quick grin of thanks.

  Jace, I had found, didn’t think about the fact that people were following him, and had a bad habit of letting branches snap back into their faces. It was one of the very few faults I’d found in him, but it was starting to affect my life, given how often we found ourselves escaping through forests of late.

  “We’re splitting up,” Jace replied over his own shoulder. He got to the last branches of the oak, ducked through them—and let them snap back in my face—and then stood up and stretched in the open sunlight of the forest beyond.

  I ducked, blinking against the sting of oak leaves on my skin, and then stood up in the fresh air and took a deep, heaving breath.

  “Splitting up?” I asked, deciding we had more important things to discuss at the moment than branch etiquette. “And just leaving everyone else here? Do we think that’s a good idea? Shouldn’t we have guards or something?”

  “Right,” Jace answered. He looked one way and then the other, gazing across the forest with narrowed eyes, and then turned back to the tree. “Ant, Abe!” he called, pitching his voice low enough that it wouldn’t have carried through the forest.

  There was a scuffling at our back, followed by a muttered curse, and two sandy-blond heads poked out through the branches.

  “Yep?” Ant asked, blinking heavily, as if he’d been on his way to sleeping already.

  “You two are going to serve as lookouts for the time being,” Jace answered. “We might think that the Authority doesn’t know that we’re here—and that they won’t be venturing to this side of the forest—but that doesn’t mean that we’re safe, and I’m not willing to take that chance.”

  The twins disentangled themselves from the tree’s branches, twisting and turning with more drama than I believed the task warranted, and ended up in the open air, both of them looking around as if they expected to see Authority agents showing up at any moment.

  Abe tipped his head in agreement. “Good point, I guess. We’ve got it. You guys going after the supplies?”

  We told him that we were, and then strode into the forest after our things, leaving Ant and Abe discussing the best way in which to stand guard, and the merits of guarding the entire copse or the single tree in which our friends—and our bikes—were hiding.

  “Those two are like a nonstop comedy routine,” Kory muttered out of the side of his mouth as we fell into stride together, Jace on my left and Kory on my right.

  “You have no idea,” I answered, grinning at the memory of the twins and their obsession with doing things that made them stand out from one another. “Wait until we get to a place where we can go for more than twenty seconds without running for our lives. You’ll realize that they’re so alike that it’s almost impossible to tell them apart.”

  The forest was peaceful and quiet around us, and I could feel myself starting to melt into that stillness, the tension of the morning draining away from my shoulders.

  Though, it was a trap we couldn’t fall into. We had to expect the worst.

  Jace had already broken into a light jog, and I increased my pace to keep up with him, knowing that he was thinking the same thing.

  “What’s the plan?” I asked.

  “We get as far as the first spot, and then send Kory back with the first set of supplies,” Jace said. “The fewer people we have heading to the second location, the better.”

  “Why?” I asked, already knowing that I wasn’t going to like the answer. “What’s the second location?”

  “It’s closer to the caves than I would like,” Jace answered vaguely.

  He picked up the pace, and I was so busy trying to keep up with him that I didn’t have time or breath to press him further.

  We’d been jogging for nearly half an hour when we reached the tree where Jace had stored our possessions, and he climbed up and back down quickly, handing the stuff to Kory.

  “Good?” Jace asked shortly.

  Kory nodded, not bothering with words, and Jace nodded as well.

  “Good,” he said. “Get back to the others, and make sure that Ant and Abe have been doing their jobs as lookouts. Robin and I are going to go get the rest of the supplies. Text Robin if anything is wrong at the trees when you get there. Look for us within the next hour. If we don’t return…”

  “We’ll come out and find you,” Kory answered.

  Before Jace could contradict him, he spun on his toes and disappeared into the forest again.

  I stared at where he’d been, surprised, but Jace just muttered a curse.

  “Does he know how to get back there?” I asked, frowning.

  “Of course he does. But I wasn’t finished talking to him.”

  I smiled at that, then turned to Jace, ready to make our way forward.

  Jace looked past me into the trees. “Okay, now. Follow me closely.”

  With that, he turned and headed right toward where I knew the steep rock face sat.

  I followed him, my stomach twisting into knots the closer we drew to the rock face’s familiar territory. He’d seriously hidden that stuff near the rocks?

  Not long afterward, I could see the cliff rising up in front of us.

  I gulped and instinctively shoved my hand out in front of me, grabbed Jace’s, and yanked, bringing him skidding to a halt. He turned and looked at me, his eyebrows raised in question.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked, his voice in a whisper.

  He grabbed me and shoved me backward, driving my back up against the trunk of a tree and pressing his entire body against mine, and then stared around us, his eyes intense as he looked for danger.

  “Did you see something?”

  I swallowed as heat rushed through every part of my body and tried to fight the sudden weakness in my knees at the feel of his entire form pressed up against mine. This definitely wasn’t the time to be noticing something like that. But it was also the first time I’d been this close to him, and—

  “Robin!” he hissed, turning his face toward mine and ducking close to look into my eyes. “Did you see something? Why did you stop me?”

  I opened my mouth and tried to engage my voice, but nothing came out. Between the shock of his sudden movement and the further shock of him pressing up against me, my voice seemed to have disappeared completely.

  I cleared my throat and swallowed heavily again.

  “I-I was just going to ask what the hell we were doing, heading for the rock face again,” I said with a croak. “Are the supplies really worth it?”

  “Oh.” He stepped back, his face flushed, and I wondered briefly if he’d felt the same heat I had at how close we’d been standing to each other.

  “I… uh… Yes, it’s where we put most of the remaining Nurmeal,” he said, finishing in a rush.

  I frowned at him. “You didn’t think the cave was safe enough to stay in for more than one night, yet you left the supplies close to where you s
uspected the Authority would be searching?” That seemed uncharacteristically shortsighted.

  Which certainly explained the flush.

  That flush now deepened, and I felt the corners of my mouth drawing up into a smile at the realization that he was actually blushing.

  “I didn’t want to go too far from the cave because… Well, honestly, I wanted to get back and make sure you were okay,” he said. “I didn’t want to leave you for long, okay? And I figured the Authority might find the cave, but that if they were up there, they wouldn’t be down here, and that would make it safer to retrieve anything I left down here. Look, I’m not perfect.”

  He finished the statement defensively, and now I couldn’t stop the grin on my face from growing. I realized abruptly that we were in the middle of the forest, all by ourselves, and that there was no one around to see what we did—or hear what we said to each other—and that made me suddenly braver than I’d been before.

  “So, you wanted to come back to the cave to see me, huh?” I asked, my voice quiet.

  His eyes softened into molten honesty and his head dipped toward mine. “Well, I was worried,” he said quietly. “About all of you, of course,” he added firmly. “But mostly—”

  A shout from about twenty feet away interrupted whatever he’d been about to say, and all the romance fled right out of my head, to be replaced abruptly by absolute, ice-cold fear.

  “What was that?” I breathed.

  Jace’s hands, which had flown to my shoulders and tightened until they were almost hurting me, slid down my arms, one of his hands taking mine.

  “Someone is very close to us,” he breathed back. “Come on.”

  We crept forward, moving from tree to tree, my feet trying to mimic Jace’s as closely as they could. The man was an absolute marvel at being able to move silently, quick and quiet as a shadow, and before I knew it we had progressed all the way to the sheer wall of stone in front of us. We still hadn’t seen whoever had shouted, but now that we were up against the cliff, we could certainly hear them.