“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I answered. I turned to Jace. “We can’t stay here. We’ve got to get to someplace safe, or at least safer than a bunch of trees by the side of a road that the Authority is likely to drive down at any moment.”
He was already turned and walking toward his bike, motioning for the others to do the same. “You’re right,” he said. “We’ve got to go. Guys, the same plan stands. We get back to the supplies; we see what we can do for Jackie. From there…”
He paused, and I knew exactly what he was thinking. We’d been planning to go research that address from Gabby, and we’d been expecting to leave by nightfall. But Jackie’s accident had changed everything. This wasn’t the time for research. We needed safety. Immediately.
And we didn’t know where we could find it. Our only real shot had disappeared along with Corona.
“From there we figure out what our next step is, because going to some random address where we may or may not find safety is no longer an option,” I said, striding toward my bike. “Ant, can you manage Jackie?”
“I got this,” he said, scooping her up and moving toward his bike.
Kory and Nelson headed for their bikes, and after Ant nudged him, Abe jumped up and moved toward his as well. We put them into neutral and rolled them out toward the highway, then paused for a moment to stare back toward Samsfield, our gazes alert for anything that looked like it might be an Authority van.
“The sooner we’re out of here, the less chance they have of catching us,” Jace murmured. “Let’s ride.”
We took about twenty seconds to hop on our bikes and rev the engines, and then we were shooting forward, getting up to speed and merging back onto the highway, Ant and his precious package in our midst.
“Ant, you on your comm?” I asked once we were driving again.
“Yep,” he answered shortly.
“You have any problems, you ask for help. Don’t play hero.”
“Got it,” he said.
We spaced out a bit and sped forward, each of us doing whatever it took to avoid the cars around us. And I had one thing on my mind: trying to figure out where we could go to find safety and medical facilities. Because I could see that Jackie had passed out again, and I knew for a fact that even with all our supplies, we wouldn’t be able to fix whatever had happened to her.
37
By the time we got back to our forest, my body was humming with tension and fear. I didn’t like coming back here again, and I really didn’t like coming back here with a wounded Jackie. We knew that the Authority was in the area.
We just had to hope our hiding place would be good for another few hours.
“As my dad used to say, better the devil you know than the devil you don’t,” Jace told me when I said something to him about it. “Going back to the same place doesn’t make me happy either, but until we can get Jackie stabilized, I don’t want to chance going somewhere entirely new.”
He motioned us forward with his chin, and everyone began to roll the bikes toward our set of trees, Jace in the lead. I followed Jace at first, but quickly fell back to try to help Ant, who was rolling not only his bike but also a floppy and relatively uncooperative Jackie. She hadn’t regained consciousness during the drive, and she looked pale and inert now—two things that seemed wholly unnatural, given how animated the girl had always been.
I gulped, feeling distinctly uncomfortable with the situation, but tried to pull myself together. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen one of my friends hurt. It was just the first time I’d seen them hurt this badly.
“What can I do to help?” I asked, watching him as he struggled with the double load.
He grimaced. “Get her to sit up. Get her to be okay,” he said.
I swallowed. We hadn’t even discussed the possibility that we were doing more harm than good by moving her around like this when we couldn’t tell what was wrong with her. For all I knew, we were doing permanent damage, like paralyzing her or something.
I yanked my thoughts away from that. Get her to a safe place. Try to figure out what was wrong and what we could do. And then decide where we could find someone who could fix her, if we couldn’t.
One step at a time. That was all we could do.
“Just walk on the other side, I guess,” Ant said. “If she falls that way I don’t have to worry about trying to catch her or keeping the bike from falling on her.”
I nodded and fell in right beside him, so that my left side was covering Jackie while my bike rolled along on my right.
“What do you think is wrong with her?” he asked, his voice breaking a bit.
“I have no idea,” I said honestly. “But I’m guessing Jace will know something we can do to hold her over. And we’re going to find her help soon. I promise.”
I could hear Ant gulp, but he didn’t answer, and we walked in silence after that, moving quickly through the forest to keep up with Jace.
What felt like two hours later, but was probably less than one, we were coming upon our hiding place, and I turned my eyes toward the enormous, drooping oak trees. Seven of them, right in the middle of a copse of stately pines, like squatty mushrooms next to giant, soaring towers. I couldn’t have been happier to see them. I turned my bike naturally to the one where we’d stayed last night, but Jace held up a hand and stopped me.
“That one,” he said, pointing to the one that stood exactly in the center of the copse.
“We’re moving?” I asked, surprised.
“We are. I want to be closer to the inside of the copse. We’ll have longer to prepare if the Authority shows up, and more options for getting out of here,” he said firmly. “It’s a lot harder to surround the entire set of trees, and if they search the one where we’ve been staying and don’t find us there, they’ll have to take their time searching the other ones before they get to us in the middle.”
I tipped my head in assent and changed my direction. It made sense. I just wasn’t looking forward to carrying the supplies over from the other tree. My arms were still exhausted from having supported Jackie during the short drive from Samsfield to the spot where I’d met the others.
If the supplies were even still there.
“You don’t suppose they’ve been here, do you?” I asked suddenly. “You don’t suppose this is another trap?”
Jace cast a look in my direction, his eyes narrowed, and put out a hand to hush me. The rest of the group stopped as well, and Jace began to creep forward, his bike left standing on its own. He melted into the shadow of one of the trees in his path, and then moved silently to the next, and then the next, while the rest of us stood there watching him, out in the open.
Several long moments later, Kory broke away from the group, and then Nelson, and then Abe. They each darted toward one of the trees and ducked into the branches—the safer way to check the hidden sections under the trees for intruders. Kory reappeared and gave us a nod, then went to one of the other trees, and within moments all our friends were walking back toward us, their faces clear.
“No one here,” Jace confirmed. “And from what I can see, they haven’t been here. The leaves around the other trees are undamaged, totally undisturbed.”
“That doesn’t mean they won’t show up at some point, though,” Kory muttered.
This copse of oaks was at least in a completely different direction from the cave area the Authority had homed in on earlier, which was one positive thing going for us. And we knew that they hadn’t been planning to search this part of the forest. But that didn’t mean we were safe.
We never knew when they might change their minds.
“Hopefully, they’ll think we’ve moved along,” I said. “The team in Samsfield will inevitably have called the other teams in the area and reported that they saw Jackie and me. Maybe they think we’re traveling from city to city and moving toward… something else.”
Moving toward what, was the question. Something even we hadn’t figured out yet.
“We
can only hope,” Jace said. “But for right now, they’re not here, and our priority is getting Jackie stabilized.”
We all agreed with that and quickly pushed our bikes toward the tree that Jace had chosen, shoving them right through the branches and into the large, sheltered spot underneath. This tree was bigger, which gave us more room around it, and we parked the bikes on one side and started spreading out, moving the oak leaves and grasses around to make a more even foundation, the way we’d done with the other tree.
Ant and I took Jackie and transported her to the base of the trunk, where Abe had scooped together a bed of leaves for her. We sat her down and leaned her up against the tree, and then I stood quickly.
“We need our supplies,” I said.
“Kory and Nelson are already on their way to the other tree for them,” Ant noted. He looked up from where he was crouching next to Jackie. “Do you think we can even help her?”
I grimaced. “I’m no medic, Ant,” I said. “I’m not going to be any good at figuring that part out. And we won’t know for sure until we get her out of some of those clothes. We need to see if there are any external wounds, what they might be, and whether we can treat them. And if there is nothing visible…” I exhaled. “It’ll make finding someone who can treat her all the more urgent.”
At that moment, Nelson and Kory stepped into the shelter of the tree with two of the boxes, and I walked toward them and started searching Nelson’s box for things that would help. Water, I thought. The first thing we needed was water. Nelson’s box had one of the large leaves we’d brought down from the mountain, and I grabbed it and darted out of the tree’s shelter. I took a moment to orient myself with the grove of oaks, then started walking straight back from the last one.
This part of the forest had a lot more streams and gullies than the part where my cabin was located, and Jace had made sure I knew where the closest one was. It took me five minutes of walking quickly through the forest to get to it, and I went to my knees next to the stream and held the leaf down, cupping it and filling it the way Jace had showed me.
On the list of things I never thought I’d be doing, I thought wryly.
Once the leaf was as full as possible, I stood and walked quickly back toward the tree. When I got through the branches, I found the others huddled around Jackie, talking amongst themselves.
“Is she awake yet?” I asked, coming to my knees next to them and handing Jace the leaf.
“No,” Ant replied. “Nothing is working.”
I frowned and nodded, trying to decide whether we should attempt to wake her up, using the water, or attempt to locate any injuries while she was still out cold.
“We search for wounds first,” Nelson said authoritatively, before I could consider the options much further. “Search for them while she’s out and she won’t feel as much pain.”
“Sounds fair,” I said, glad to let someone else make the decision. “Then we need to get her shirt off and the suit down so we can check her torso. I think that’s the logical place to start.”
Ant gave me a look of horror, and I almost laughed. “Don’t worry, Nelson and I will take care of it,” I said. I had no idea how close he and Jackie had gotten, but evidently the thought of seeing her disrobed without her knowledge was more than he could handle.
The others moved away, and Nelson and I quickly went to work, my hands supporting Jackie’s body while Nelson carefully and gently pulled her arms out of the sleeves of her T-shirt. With one more quick tug, she pulled the shirt up over Jackie’s head, and the girl was left in nothing but the second-skin suit. Unfortunately, that covered her from neck to wrists, so it had to go as well.
“There’s a zipper in the back,” I reminded Nelson, even though she had helped me out of my suit in the cave.
“I know, I know,” she said, scooting behind Jackie to get access to it.
She tugged at the zipper and then pulled it all the way down to Jackie’s lower back. I saw the suit go loose over her shoulders and reached up to pull it down her arms while Nelson supported her.
By the time we were done, she was left in nothing but a hot pink—and extremely lacy—bra. And over half of her torso was covered in deep purple bruising.
“Oh, man,” I breathed, horrified.
“I know,” a hoarse voice answered. “It hurts like you wouldn’t believe.”
I looked up, shocked, to see Jackie’s bloodshot eyes staring back at me, hazed over with pain. Though, her lips were curled up in what could have been the start of a smile.
“And don’t think I don’t realize that you guys just stripped me down to my bra in front of a bunch of boys. I’m going to remember that the next time you’re passed out.”
I would have laughed were it not for the dire state of her body.
“Shut up,” I said sharply. “If you distract me, this is going to hurt even worse.”
“How is she?” Jace asked quietly when Nelson and I returned to sit with the rest of the crew.
He had built a small fire and set up a shelter over it using one of my sheets as a blockade against jumping sparks, so it was throwing off a strange sort of only-on-the-ground glow, but it was warm, and the night had turned chilly.
“Not good,” I muttered. “She’s covered in bruises and says that everything inside her hurts. There’s internal damage—things that are perhaps broken, or at least shifted—and I suspect there’s also damage in her back. Definitely in one of her legs, too. And her torso is so purple that I can barely see the color her skin used to be.”
“Can you do anything for her?” Ant asked hoarsely.
I shook my head. “Nelson and I aren’t medics, and even if we were, we don’t have the sort of equipment we’d need. I have no clue where we’d even start. I’ve given her water and some Nurmeal, so at least she’s had some nutrition. She’s sleeping now, and we don’t want to move her again unless we have to.” I turned and fixed Jace with a stare. “But we need to get to a place where she can get medical attention. As soon as possible. She’s badly hurt, and I don’t know how much longer she’ll hang on.”
Jace returned the look and gave me a quick nod. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. And I know exactly the place. We should have thought of it right away. We should have headed there right away. I would bet good money that it’s where Corona was going to take us, if she’d made it to that meeting.”
Wait, what? I stared at him, my mouth falling open at this unlikely statement. What the heck was he talking about? He’d known where Corona was going to take us, and he was just now telling us?
“I didn’t think about it until we were on our way here,” he clarified, seeing the look I was giving him. “I was feeling a little bit sorry for myself, and wishing that there was someone else telling us what to do, someone who actually knew what they were doing, like a parent, or—”
“Where, Jace?” I snapped. “Enough with the vagueness! Where are we going and how are we getting there?”
“The convent. It’s the only option,” he said. “We should have been heading there right from the start, but we were so intent on figuring out who Little John was and where to find Corona that I didn’t think of it. It’s the perfect place. Out of the way, and under the Authority’s radar. They won’t even think to suspect that we went there. Plus, it has medical facilities. And I know they’ll take us in.”
The convent. Oh my God, we were so stupid for having forgotten it. It was perfect. I’d only been there once, when Jace took me to visit his sister, but he was right about them taking us in. The nuns there had been very clear regarding their thoughts on the government, and they seemed to extend help to rebels however they could.
But there was a big problem: the distance. It had been a four-hour journey from Trenton, and Jace and I had traveled by train for most of the trip, then taxi for the last hour of it.
The journey hadn’t been quick and was going to be nearly impossible without easy transportation. Our bikes didn’t count—not with Jackie in such
bad shape. Plus, they left us too exposed. And the train was out, too, thanks to the Authority plastering our faces all over the place and labeling us terrorists. Taxis as well; we’d never know when or if a driver was going to turn us in and collect some sort of reward for handing over dangerous criminals.
Which meant we had to figure out another way. A way that would get us there quickly—and gently, for Jackie’s sake. And a way that would allow us to hide our movements from the Authority. Because the last thing we wanted to do was lead those soldiers right to the doors of a convent they would never have suspected otherwise.
38
“Um, so where is this convent, and why haven’t we heard of it before?” Nelson asked. “This seems like it should have been, oh, I don’t know, maybe first on your list, rather than an afterthought?!”
“I never even thought of it, honestly,” I told her. “There were just so many other things that we had to take care of, and then we were constantly running for our lives from the Authority. Plus, with Corona, we thought we’d had a plan that had actually been set up by Nathan. We would have been stupid not to try it.”
“Well, I guess those are fair excuses,” Ant said. “The question stands, though: where is the place?” He sent a worried glance back toward Jackie, his brow furrowed. “And how do we get there with Jackie in tow?”
“Around four hours from Trenton, the last time we went,” Jace said bluntly. “That was by train and then by taxi. Neither of which is an option for us.”
Ant stared at him, all the hope draining from his face.
“Four hours?” Abe gasped. “Hell! If we’d known about that days ago, we could have been there by now! We should have started trying to get there right away!”
Jace put up a hand to stop the quick stream of exclamation mark-laden sentences. “I know, and believe me, I wish we had. But as Robin just said, we thought we had a better option. Something that was a sure bet and already organized, and probably required a lot less travel.”
The Child Thief 3: Thin Lines Page 29