The Child Thief 3: Thin Lines

by Bella Forrest

  Ah. This was a manmade forest. It must have been, for the trees to be so different. And these were definitely landscaping trees. The ones people planted in the front yards of enormous houses—houses like the one where Corona had lived, which had to be less than five miles from here, on the very outskirts of the city. This was a decorative forest, then, built for the rich who lived in this area.

  It made me like the forest a little less, and I crouched down, trying to protect myself from a fear that came out of nowhere. If this forest had been planted for the benefit of the rich, it meant it had been done by the construction companies that were owned and operated by the government. And that made the trees seem immediately suspicious. As if they were somehow spying on us.

  Add that to the fact that we were so close to Samsfield again, and I started feeling distinctly worried.

  “Get it together, Robin,” I breathed out to myself. All of this running around and hiding was making me downright paranoid. Now I thought the trees were spies for the government? I was officially losing it.

  “What was that?” Jackie asked sharply.

  Dammit, I’d forgotten about the comm.

  “Nothing,” I said quickly. “Just talking to myself.”

  Suddenly, Jace made a sharp right, swerving off the road and directly into the trees, and slowed to a crawl, then stopped entirely. He hopped off the bike and turned toward us but didn’t take his helmet off.

  “This is where we go into the trees,” he said, the visor across his eyes making it feel strange to be listening to him. Whenever we’d worn masks in the past, we’d only been able to see the person’s eyes, and though it hadn’t been ideal, it had at least given us something to judge them by. A way to tell what the person behind the mask was thinking.

  Losing that was more disconcerting than I’d thought it would be.

  “Everyone keep your helmets on,” he snapped as Ant moved to take his off. “I don’t want anyone seeing our faces. We know the Authority is looking for us with facial recognition, and though they shouldn’t be in this forest—shouldn’t even know to be in here—we can’t take any chances. Helmets stay on, and we’re walking the bikes from here.”

  It was solid reasoning, and we all fell into line after him, our helmets still on and our bikes turned off but left in neutral so that we could roll them through the forest by hand. As we walked into the trees, I began cataloging the differences here. The possible escape routes and the things that would make escape harder. Because we might hope that the Authority didn’t know about this meeting, but I was way past the point of no return there.

  I’d started assuming that the Authority knew about everything. Particularly when it came to people they were hunting—and people who were connected to someone they seemed absolutely desperate to catch.

  We walked for about ten minutes, our eyes on the trees around us, and then Jace allowed his bike to roll to a stop in a small clearing. He glanced at the compass in his hand and then my phone, which I’d loaned him for GPS and mapping. He frowned at both gadgets, then looked up and around us, and then looked at the readings again.

  “What is it?” I asked softly.

  “The directions end in this spot exactly,” he said, his voice just as soft. “But I can’t figure out why she would have chosen it. It’s completely illogical. There’s no good cover here—no place to hide, if anything goes wrong—and it’s too far from the roads for any safe or quick getaway. There… If I was choosing places to meet, and I knew the Authority might be coming after me, this spot would never occur to me.”

  “Maybe this is the start of some super-secret tunnel that leads to the safe spot, or something like that,” Ant answered. “Maybe she’s meeting us here because this is how we get to her refuge.”

  I looked quickly around us, wondering if Ant was right. Was there the start of something here? If there was, would we be able to see it? Could it be that she would walk right up out of the ground, smiling at how surprised we were? Or would we receive some message that told us how to progress from here? The thought of a warm bed and safe walls had me turning my eyes from left to right, trying desperately to find her, positive that she would come with the news that her hideout was secure and that we were approved to move forward. Positive that she would give us direction once again.

  But she didn’t pop up out of the ground like some magician doing a wonderful trick for children. She didn’t step out from behind a tree, nor did she just come walking through the woods. She didn’t even show up pushing a bike—a situation that I had admitted might actually happen, given the relative lack of wisdom in giving us directions right to the safe place itself.

  Instead, we waited until ten, which was the time we’d been told to meet her. We sat in the woods in that spot, freezing, for nearly an hour. And then the time for the meeting came… and went. And she didn’t show at all. We looked around at each other, frowning in confusion and checking and rechecking our watches.

  “Maybe she’s just running late,” Ant said quietly. “Maybe something came up and she was late getting away from the refuge?”

  “Or maybe it took her longer to get back here than she’d thought it would,” Abe said, his tone a match to Ant’s reasonable voice. “Mapping systems can lie, you know.”

  “Or maybe something terrible happened and she’s not coming at all,” I said, my skin itching and my feet jumping with the need to get up and get out of here. Everything about this felt wrong. She’d been too sure of the location, too sure of the time to have just missed it without good reason. She’d even told Jace not to be late.

  Jace, sitting on the other side of the circle from me, was shaking his head. “She wouldn’t just miss it,” he said firmly. “She told me ten, and she meant ten. She even warned me against being late.”

  “She did more than warn you,” Ant added. “She made it sound like being late was absolutely the worst-case scenario.”

  Jackie and Nelson both jumped to their feet at that, and we all stared at one another, our minds working together the way they’d worked when we’d run missions, before OH+ was even a blip on the radar.

  “Her missing the appointment could mean they caught her already, when she was on her way here,” Nelson said quietly.

  “Or they could have been at her hiding place,” Jackie agreed. “We know they were onto her. What if they somehow knew the entire plan, and captured her yesterday when she got to the place where she thought she’d find safety?”

  We all turned and looked at Jace, asking without words what he wanted to do about this. Corona was his contact, and he was the one who was so close with Nathan. Did we stay here, wait it out, and just hope that she’d hit some sort of delay?

  Or did we get the hell out of here while we still could, with the assumption that something had gone very, very wrong and Corona was either already in Authority custody or not coming for some other reason?

  Because I knew what I wanted to do, and it certainly didn’t include sitting around in this forest, waiting. Corona had been firm about the time, and if she wasn’t here when she’d said she would be, that meant we were on our own. Again. Though, at least this time we had a new address as a potential starting point.

  Jace met my eyes again and nodded once. “We go,” he said firmly. “She said she’d be here at ten, and though I don’t know much about Corona, I do know that she meant it. I don’t know why she isn’t here, but we can’t afford to wait.”

  He strode quickly toward where he’d left his bike parked, Jackie and me on his heels, and threw the rest of his statement over his shoulder as he began walking his bike quickly back toward the road we’d come from.

  “We’re going back to the forest for now, so that we can get the supplies and do some planning. It’s dangerous, but it’s also our only base at the moment. I want to be back on the road by nightfall. We’ve already stayed in one location for too long. We have a new address to check out, and I want to get on it immediately. We might still be on our own, but at least w
e have a direction now. We leave here in singles and doubles, so we attract less attention. Robin, I’m taking your phone, so you stick with Jackie. If we get separated on the highway, we meet where the road into the forest takes off.”

  We all nodded, refusing to waste breath on unnecessary words, and without even talking about it, Jackie and I dropped back toward the end of the line. It made sense for Jace to go first—it was the position he’d been taking ever since we found ourselves in danger—and I knew that I wanted Nelson to go with Kory, Ant, or Abe, and as early as possible. She might be able to take care of herself, but that didn’t mean I wanted her on her own, and as far as I was concerned she was still partially injured. Jackie and I were the smallest, lightest riders. We’d make quicker time than anyone else.

  The two of us slowed almost to a stop and let the others draw farther and farther ahead, and a moment later we heard Jace’s motorcycle (I presumed) come to life and then zip out onto the road, the engine roaring as he revved it and took off. Two minutes later, we heard two more bikes do the same.

  “Good,” Jackie muttered. “One of the boys has taken Nelson. I feel better that she’s not going alone.”

  “I was thinking the same thing on the walk out here,” I said, amazed at how our thoughts had once again been in sync. We’d always been partnered when we were on missions for Nelson for that exact reason. When danger reared its head, Jackie and I tended to see the same route forward.

  I just hoped that right now, it would serve us well in terms of getting the hell out of here before anyone from the government showed up. Of course, we were just guessing about the Authority knowing the location, and we had no solid evidence to back it up. But something in my gut was telling me we were right, and my body was twitching with the need to be gone.

  Another bike pulled out onto the road ahead of us, and then a minute later, another, and Jackie glanced at me, the reflective visor of her helmet showing me nothing but my own expressionless head.

  “Our turn,” she breathed. “You ready for this?”

  I nodded firmly, got a good grip on my bike’s handlebars, and started walking forward, Jackie matching me stride for stride. Within thirty seconds we were at the road, and five seconds later we were mounted on our bikes and hitting the ignition switches. Both bikes roared to life, and it took us only moments to get out onto the road and hit the gas.

  Five seconds later, an Authority van came screeching around the corner ahead of us and slammed on its brakes, skidding sideways to block the road almost entirely, and Authority agents in blue jumpsuits started streaming out of the van, their hands up and guns already aimed at us.

  35

  I froze for a moment, shocked at what I was seeing, my brain refusing to accept what my eyes were telling it. No. No, no, no.

  The Authority. How could they have found us? Had Corona’s place been bugged, and they somehow figured out our destination? Had they followed her all this way? Had they caught her?

  What the hell was going on here?

  It didn’t matter, I realized. The Authority agents were less than five hundred feet from us—and they were going to be a hell of a lot closer the farther we drove. They had guns, and though I also had one, strapped to my hip, I knew that one gun against twenty was a lost cause.

  We had to reroute. Now.

  “Robin?” Jackie asked in my ear, via the comm. “What’s our move?”

  “Turn!” I screamed, yanking the handlebars of my bike to the left in a completely stupid move that should have tipped me right onto the pavement—and sticking my left leg out to support me through the turn, to keep that very thing from happening. I got halfway through the turn and revved the engine sharply, knowing that we were sitting ducks and open targets to those Authority guys right now, and ducked as low to the bike as I could.

  Behind me, I could hear the tires of Jackie’s bike screeching and knew that she was doing the same, and probably doing a hell of a lot better than I was. My tires were bouncing, now, the rotations too much for the speed I was going, and I let up on the gas a bit to get them to slow down. The minute the back tire stopped bouncing on the pavement and I was straight again, I yanked my foot back up to its normal resting place, hit the gas, and sped forward, the engine roaring with power.

  A split second later, Jackie was right next to me, hunched and staring intently ahead at the road.

  Behind us, I could hear Authority agents yelling into a megaphone about putting our hands on our heads and dropping our weapons.

  “Where are we going?” Jackie gasped. “Do you have any idea?”

  “You’re the one in charge of mapping things,” I murmured back. “Map it!”

  But she wouldn’t be able to do anything like that, I realized. Not with the way this situation was playing out. We were zooming forward in a straight line right now, but we were going to need to start taking turns soon, if we were going to keep from getting shot, and that wouldn’t allow her to casually use one of her hands to type the new location into her phone. I wasn’t even sure the mapping system would be able to keep up with us, considering how quickly we were moving.

  “What’s going on back there?” another voice suddenly snapped, loud and worried in my ear. “Why aren’t you guys coming out after us?”

  Ant. He must have waited to go right before us. I’d forgotten that he had a comm on as well, allowing him to hear everything that Jackie and I were saying to each other right now. As would Jace.

  But they weren’t going to be any good to us, no matter how bad this got. There were only five of them, and there were at least twenty soldiers on our tail.

  No matter what happened, those five had to get away. They had to. Coming back here would only get them in trouble, too.

  “Authority agents,” I said, motioning to Jackie that we were going to turn right at the next possible opportunity, and to let me take the lead. It would be easier for me to just make decisions and her to follow than to try to sign my intentions at every turn. “They came skidding in before we got to the main road. No idea how or why, but we’re running the other way now.”

  “I’m pulling over,” Ant said immediately. “What do you need? What can I do?”

  “Stay away from this place,” Jackie shot back. She’d dropped behind me now, but I could see her bike in my mirror and knew that her front tire was probably only inches from my back tire.

  If I went down, I was going to take her with me. But we had to stay close together if we were going to get away from the soldiers behind us.

  “You coming back here is only going to mean there are more of us to take care of, and I can’t possibly worry about you if I’m going to worry about myself,” she continued.

  I could almost hear Ant wanting to argue, but I cut him off just as we hung a right onto the street and sped up the road, looking for any route that might take us through the houses. Around us, I could already see people running out into their driveways and opening their windows, trying to figure out what all the noise was about. This was probably more action than this neighborhood had ever seen, and if we weren’t quick, we were going to have to worry about the citizens themselves trying to help the Authority.

  There weren’t any alleys in this neighborhood, and I knew immediately that if we were going to get away quickly, it was going to mean getting a hell of a lot more creative, and hoping the homeowners stayed out of our way, for at least a little bit.

  “Get us directions,” Jackie told Ant. “I can’t get to my phone. You still have the tracking app I gave you?”

  “Got it,” Ant replied. “I’ve already pulled it up. I can see exactly where you are.”

  “Find a way for us to get out,” Jackie said. “We need to lose the agents and then get out onto the highway and away from here.”

  “On it,” he replied.

  We were nearing the end of the road, now—of course we’d managed to pull onto a cul-de-sac—and we were going to be well and truly trapped if we didn’t get out of here.

 
; I slowed and swerved a quick U-turn, hoping that we could get out of this street entirely before they managed to find us, then saw the van racing right past the opening of the cul-de-sac.

  Jackie, who’d turned next to me, came to a stop right next to where I’d halted. “Oh my God,” she breathed. “Do you think they saw us?”

  I shook my head. “No idea, but I don’t want to wait around to find out. Let’s go!”

  I hit the gas on my bike, let the back tire jump on the pavement and then engage, and screeched right toward the first likely lawn I’d seen. There was a gate there, and I thought that if we built up enough speed, I might be able to just bust through it. Hopefully no one was standing right there watching the chase through a hole in the fence. I sped across the street and over their lawn, tearing up the grass as I went and not feeling at all bad about it, and then I was at the gate.

  I busted right through it, just as I’d hoped I would. Splinters and larger pieces of wood exploded into the air around me, and I heard Jackie gasp in the comm, but I didn’t slow down. We needed to hide first and get the hell out of here second. If we were at all lucky, and the people who lived here were too shocked to immediately communicate with the Authority officers, this unorthodox move would accomplish both of those needs.

  The gate opened into a short alleyway at the side of the mansion, where the people who lived here evidently stored their trashcans and various gardening tools, and we spent the next minute trying desperately to avoid the hoes, shovels, bags of dirt, and trashcans that littered our path, while maintaining our speed.

  “Why do rich people have all this?” Jackie shouted, frustrated. “I thought people came and did their landscaping for them!”