“What do you have?” a man asked gruffly.
They were on the cliff’s ledge, I realized. We weren’t at the start of the ledge, thank God, but about twenty feet to the side of it, still in the trees and still hidden. The men sounded like they were about ten feet to our right. They were either climbing the ledge or going back down it. Which meant they were either on their way to finding the cave or had already seen it and were on their way back down into the forest.
Jace gestured to the tree right in front of us, and then mimed climbing the tree itself. I scowled at him, not wanting to believe that he actually expected me to climb the tree with him.
Then another voice sounded out from where I assumed the ledge started, and I quickly nodded. Up the tree, then. Less chance of being discovered up there than down here.
It was an oak, luckily, which meant that there were branches relatively close to the ground, and all it took was one boost from Jace—his hands firmly planted on my butt, and me blushing furiously the entire time—and I was on the first branch and reaching for the second, using the trunk to push my body upward to the next branch, and then finding another one.
Meanwhile, the men on the ledge kept talking.
“Several caves up there,” another voice said. “This ledge opens up onto a wide plateau, and that leads right to another walkway, which leads into another valley. Easy enough to navigate. Caves in the side of the valley up there.”
“Any sign of them?” the first voice asked again.
“Yes, sir. Lots of litter in one of the caves, and we’ve found their footprints in the sand right outside the mouth of it. Definitely the group we’ve been searching for. There are seven of them. Three women and four men.”
My heart dropped, and my hand slipped from the branch I’d been grasping at the mention of us all.
“And have they been back?” the other voice snapped.
“No, sir.”
“What makes you think they’ll be back at all, then?”
“What else are they going to do? These are kids from the city. They don’t know what they’re doing out here. They’ve found shelter, and their instincts will tell them to stick with it. I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to see that these kids aren’t the smartest, sir.”
There was a smirk in his voice as he said it, and it made chills run up and down my spine—and fire spark in my veins.
How dare they? These men had been hunting us for who knew how long and had been actively trying to kill us. They’d captured our friends, done who knew what to them, had ruined our lives, and burnt my house! How dare they stand around insulting us like that? How dare they think they knew us—or what we were capable of?
My eyes narrowed, and I could feel my fists curling up with the need to do something. The need to hit something. Suddenly, all the fear and horror I’d been feeling coalesced into a solid ball in my stomach, and I realized that it had changed. Something had changed.
It wasn’t fear anymore. It was anger. It was fury.
These were the men who supported a government that had been stealing our children and dictating our entire world. And now they were laughing at our expense.
Jace seemed to sense my sudden change, because he reached up from below me and put a cautioning hand on my hip. Looking down, I saw him setting a finger up against his mouth and shushing me, then motioning for me to keep moving.
I took a deep breath. Right. Had to go up. Had to find the supplies. Had to get out of here. There were only two of us right now. We couldn’t afford to pick any fights with the Authority agents. No matter how angry I was.
I started climbing again, my ears still attuned to what the agents on the ledge were saying.
“So, we stay here for the day,” the “sir” concluded.
The other agent muttered some sort of agreement, and then they drew silent, their footsteps indicating that they were climbing upward toward the wolves’ valley.
I dedicated two seconds of time to hoping that the wolves were safely away from there, and then directed all of my energy to getting up the tree, and to the supplies Jace and I needed.
The agents sounded like they’d decided they were going to go up into the mountains instead of back into the forest undergrowth. I just hoped we could get out of here before they changed their minds.
And that they would stay up in those damned mountains until we left here again in the morning.
32
We dropped our armful of boxes and bags on the ground where the others were lying about, and I quickly commanded everyone’s attention.
“Why are you looking so excited?” Jackie asked, frowning at what was no doubt a red-faced, wild-haired version of me.
“The Authority,” Jace said stoically. “We were at the spot where we left the first batch of supplies, which was rather close to the rock face, and we overheard a conversation between Authority agents. They found the cave, and they noticed that we left some things in it, just as we’d hoped.”
“Oh man,” Nelson murmured. “Then it’s lucky we didn’t try to go back there. And? Anything else?”
“They think we’re going to be heading back there after we’re finished with whatever adventure we’re on today,” I said, remembering the laughter in the agent’s voice. “They also don’t have a very high opinion of our intelligence.”
Jace shot me a look that said very clearly that I was missing the important part of the story, and added, “They also don’t seem to be planning to venture back into this particular forest. It might not give us a lot of time, but it might give us some. Which is all we need, right?”
The others gazed at Jace and me in surprise, and then in relief, but after a short discussion everyone agreed that we still couldn’t let our guard down. We did decide, however, that one lookout at a time was probably enough.
With that in mind, we began settling in for the evening. We were all exhausted from the events of the last week, and though I would have preferred to be on our way to safety with Corona right now, I had to admit that it was going to be nice to just sit and rest for an entire night. It wasn’t ideal. Not by a long shot. But as long as we were stuck, I was going to make the most of it.
In our absence, the others had managed to even out the ground in the clearing, scooping and scraping the leaves to fill up any holes so that we were walking on—and would be lying on—a bed of cushy leaves rather than rocks.
Way better than the cave.
It was Ant, of course, who started the conversation back up again and ended my hopes for a night of some sort of quiet.
“What now?” he asked, cracking open a bottle of Nurmeal. “Are we going to… I don’t know, take this opportunity to plan something?”
It was a question we’d had to ask way too often lately, and I was growing sick of the never-ending guessing about the next step. But Ant was right. If we were going to be here, we ought to use the time to figure out what we were going to do.
“As much as I don’t want to have to think about it, I think we do need to come up with a plan B for tomorrow,” I said.
“Glad you said so, Rob, because I was thinking the same thing,” Ant replied.
“You don’t think Corona is going to come through?” Abe asked his brother, frowning. “Don’t you trust her?”
Ant shook his head. “I don’t trust anyone, bro. Not after what I’ve seen in the last week. People we thought we could count on ended up being people that we couldn’t trust, and places we thought were safe ended up being traps. You saw what happened at Jace’s house.”
“But maybe that was a one-time thing,” Abe said cautiously. “After all, we didn’t know Walter. He might have been weak from the start, a piece just waiting to fall.”
“And can you guarantee that Corona isn’t the same?” I asked. “What if she’s another weak piece? What if something goes wrong and she can’t get us out the way she thinks she can? Wouldn’t you rather have a plan B waiting for us?”
He stared at me for a momen
t, and then nodded, but said, “I think we can hope she gets us out, though. I mean, it seems like it’s about time something goes our way, doesn’t it?”
“We might have already used that card with the Authority, honestly,” Jace said. “And things will have a better chance of going our way if we go in well prepared.”
I glanced at him, surprised at this. He’d sounded so sure of Corona when he first decoded the message from Nathan—and even after, when we were on our way to her house. Now that I’d met her, I could see exactly why he was so confident in her abilities, especially if her attitude was a reflection of Nathan himself, like I believed it probably was.
Which was why it took me aback that he was admitting there might be a hole in their protocol.
“You don’t think Corona will show?” I asked.
“I think she’ll do her very best,” he replied fairly. “I know she’s important to Nathan, and I knew he was saving her as a last resort. Which means he trusts her to save the day if everything goes wrong. I’m not questioning her loyalty to him. I’m questioning her ability to evade the Authority agents that are already searching for her.”
He pulled the piece of paper she’d given him out of his pocket and stared at it for a moment.
“She’s given us a location that sits in the forest outside the city,” he said. “There’s not even an address. Just a set of directions. And she wrote it down, which was the smartest possible thing. If the Authority somehow bugged her house or something, writing it down means they didn’t hear where we’re going to be meeting.” He looked up at me, his eyes full of determination. “Still. I’m not saying that Nathan doesn’t have everything planned out perfectly, but he can’t guarantee her safety, and that means we don’t have a guarantee that she’s going to show up when we need her—or that we’re going to get there before she has to leave. We have to have a backup plan. It’s the only sensible thing.”
Well, growing in leaps and bounds, I thought wryly. There was a time when Jace had put too much faith in Nathan, and though I was sorry to see him compromising that level of faith, I was in total agreement.
“Backup plan it is,” I said, shifting to make myself more comfortable in the bed of leaves. “So, what are our options?”
There was a long moment of silence, and I glanced around at the members of my crew, my mind rushing through anything that seemed like it might be an option. Going back into Trenton was out, and I didn’t think we could risk another trip into Samsfield, either, since our escape on the bikes. The Authority would be searching that city more carefully now, especially given what they already seemed to know—or suspect—of Corona’s alliances.
Staying here wasn’t an option, either. We needed some real security. Preferably a location that had walls. Maybe even carpeting and real beds.
“Little John is our only option for a path forward,” Nelson said. “We have to do the same thing we were trying to do before: figure out where we can find them. We know—or at least we suspect, if we follow the Nathan-is-part-of-Little-John theory—that Corona is part of that organization, and that would mean that Little John’s offices or headquarters or whatever are where we’re going to end up. Surely if Corona is willing to bring us in, that means Little John has finally come for us. Or, at least, we’re going to them. Right?”
I frowned. “I still don’t understand why, though. Why make us go through all of this if we’re just going to end up back with them, eventually? What is this, some sort of test? A test where they throw us into the wilderness blind, and don’t bother to get in touch with us afterward? That’s like some sort of insane hazing ritual!”
Jace coughed and held up his phone, the shattered screen glinting in the light that filtered down through the leaves of the tree. “Well, we know why they haven’t gotten in contact with me. As for the rest of you, Nathan wouldn’t have your numbers. He was never on the group texts between us, or even in the encrypted app. Made sure to keep himself separated from all that. So, he wouldn’t have any way of getting in touch with any of you. Cloyd would, but there’s no guarantee that Nathan is with Cloyd, or that Cloyd still has the phone that had all that information on it. We ditched those burners pretty often. It doesn’t explain why they didn’t keep us when they had us, but it does explain the radio silence.”
“And without your phone, and with us so far off the grid, they might be searching for us and failing,” I finished. “They might not have meant to leave us out in the cold at all. They were just waiting for us to figure it all out and get to Corona.”
“Then I guess that leaves us no choice, right?” Jackie said. “We don’t know whether Nathan is trying to save us or not. We can hope that he is, but he’s going to fail. Because we’ve hidden ourselves so well that even he can’t find us. And we can hope that Corona’s going to come through, but we’re smart enough to know that it might not happen. Which means we have to help ourselves. That’s the only option.”
I nodded, agreeing with her on all counts.
Standing up, I moved toward Jace’s duffel bags, where he’d put the timeline. I grabbed the papers out of the bag and marched back toward the group. There, I started laying the papers out in order again, thankful that we’d stacked them that way to make the line easier to reconstruct. It still seemed like an impossible task, but if we were going to find a way to safety, we needed some sort of direction, and the timeline was legitimately the only thing we had going for us. When I was done, I stood up and glanced across the faces in front of me.
“Well, then,” I said, “let’s get to work. This timeline is still our best and only clue to what Little John is doing and where we might find them. We just have to find the right piece of evidence. This time, though, I say we call in some help.”
Before the others could respond, I dialed Gabby’s phone number. After two rings she picked it up.
“Robin!” she gasped. “Why the hell do you keep making me wait so long before hearing from you? What the hell are you trying to do, freaking kill me?”
“Gabby, you’re too young to use that sort of language,” I said sternly. “I’m sorry, but we’ve been kind of running for our lives here.”
“Still?” she asked. “Where are you? What’s going on? Why haven’t you been answering texts? Did you find anything on the timeline? Who’s with you?”
“One question at a time, Gabs,” I said, trying to stem the flow. I knew how stressed she was, having to wait on a boat in the middle of nowhere while we were running for our lives, and not getting regular updates. It had to be doubly frustrating for her after she’d been so involved in things leading up to the jailbreak. But the truth was, we just hadn’t had a lot of time to stop for communications. And there hadn’t been a big need for her skills.
That changed right now.
“You remember those pictures I sent you of the timeline?” I asked, putting the phone on speaker. “Do you have a printer there?”
She snorted. “Robin, of course I have a printer. What do you take me for, a caveman?”
I cast a look at Jace, who was red in the face with trying not to laugh at that, and stifled my own grin. Gabby would be able to hear it in my voice, and I didn’t want to upset her. Not yet. I remembered how easy it had been to take things the wrong way at sixteen—particularly when you were dealing with people who were older than you—and I needed her to focus on what she was doing, rather than getting her feelings hurt.
“I suggest printing those out so you can physically recreate the timeline,” I said. “It’s what we’ve done, and it makes it a lot easier to sort out what’s what. The problem is, we don’t really know what any of it means. It’s just a bunch of dates and locations for when the Authority thinks Little John did something—and for when the Authority tried to track Little John down to a given location.”
“And I see there aren’t any convenient addresses,” she said quickly, demonstrating the nimble mind I’d come to love in her.
“Exactly,” Jace said. “That’s to be ex
pected because if there were, the Authority would have caught Little John already. Which we know they haven’t.”
“And there’s more,” Nelson said. “First of all, hey, Gabs, it’s Nelson. Nice to be talking to you again.”
“Nelson!” Gabby gasped. “You’re back! I mean, I knew they’d gone to get you, but…” She stopped for a moment, and then added, very hesitantly, “Is… Is Robert with you, too?”
I cringed, already giving myself a mental slap for not having prepared for that, because I should have seen it coming from a mile away. Of course she was going to ask about Robert. And of course I didn’t have good news for her.
I didn’t like the guy. But that didn’t mean I wanted to be the bearer of uncertain news about him.
“He’s… not here, actually,” I said, raising my gaze up to meet Jackie’s. She’d been there on the night we got Gabby’s help on the OH+ site and was one of the only people who knew about Gabby’s feelings for Robert.
She was also the only one, aside from me, who had noticed Gabby’s hero worship of the guy. True, Jace and Ant had also been on that call, but as males, they’d been distinctly distant when it came to her romantic entanglements. I didn’t even think they’d noticed, honestly.
Jackie gave me a quick nod and broke in, having evidently already seen this coming and prepared a response. Either that or she was just quicker on her feet than I was.
“He’s actually with Julia and Marco,” she said. “We left them back at Zion’s with the rest of the techs, and with Winter. Figured they’d just be in danger if they stuck with us, and it looks like we were definitely right about that.”
“He hasn’t been answering my calls,” Gabby said hesitantly. “You don’t think… You don’t think it’s because he’s mad at me or something, do you? Or maybe he doesn’t want to talk to me anymore now that we’re not—”
“I’m positive that it’s nothing like that,” I interrupted. “He’s lucky to have one second of your time, and I’m sure he must know that.” And he doesn’t deserve that much, and I’d prefer it if you didn’t give it to him, I didn’t add.
The Child Thief 3: Thin Lines Page 25