Thin Lines (The Child Thief #3)

Thin Lines (The Child Thief #3)

Bella Forrest



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1





“What do you mean they’ve been watching us?” I asked, my mind spinning. I was trying desperately to get my brain to cooperate, but my thoughts were still flooded with everything that had just happened.

We had attempted a jailbreak to save our friends. Friends that the Ministry, or Compliance Authority, had captured and imprisoned after our raid on the warehouse.

That raid had failed. And the subsequent jailbreak had gone just as badly.

We’d come across armed soldiers almost immediately, and they’d known that we weren’t supposed to be in the Compliance Authority compound, disguises or not.

There had only been one option—run—and we’d taken it. We’d kept running, with almost no idea of where we were going, until we’d found our friends and broken them out of the large plastic boxes the Authority had been using as jail cells. At that point, I’d taken on another burden: Nelson, who’d been too weak to keep up with the rest of the group. Those soldiers had then zeroed in on me and caught me in the leg with one of their bullets.

I grimaced at the memory of it hitting me. My second-skin suit had deflected the bullet—I hadn’t seen any blood—but the impact definitely hadn’t been good for me. In fact, I couldn’t feel the limb at all right now. Though that could be for a number of reasons, including shock, so I put that thought to the side.

We’d gotten out of the building, which was the important thing. There, we’d been rescued by the anonymous men in black for the second time this week (though who knew if there had been other times). They’d airlifted us out before dropping us in this meadow.

I looked around, my mind still struggling to catch up, and started counting my friends’ sleeping bodies. It didn’t seem that everyone had come to yet, which made it difficult to see if we were all here. The grass in the meadow was high enough to hide anyone still lying down, which had to be at least half of us.

Since I wasn’t quite ready to rise to my feet, I snapped my focus back to my friend, and last functioning tech expert, on the other end of the comm line. “What exactly makes you think they’ve been watching us, Gab?” I asked again.

Jace, also listening in on his own comm, stared at me, his mouth hanging open—and somehow still looking completely sexy. I narrowed my eyes, not sure whether I was more irritated with him for looking so good in such a horrible situation or with myself for noticing it, and waited anxiously for Gabby to answer.

When she didn’t, I spoke again. “What did you hear? Come on, Gabby. We need details!”

“Right, okay,” she said, her voice shaky. “Thing is, I don’t really have details. I heard the bang, which must have been their gas bomb hitting the ground, and then I heard lots of thuds. You guys falling over, I guess. I didn’t count the number of thuds, but what else could it have been? And that’s when they started talking. Though, they were speaking in some kind of code, mostly, and they didn’t say all that much. It was like they all knew exactly what they were doing, and they’d planned it out beforehand, so they didn’t really need to discuss it in-flight, you know? But they said enough to give me the idea that they knew who you guys were and they called themselves Little John.”

I exchanged a long look with Jace, then swallowed heavily.

Little John.

It was the exact name that we’d seen in that office back in the Authority building. It had looked like the Authority—or Ministry—was researching, or watching, the mystery organization. Courtesy of our raid on the warehouse, we’d somehow ended up on that same research board in their office.

What was Little John, to have attracted that much attention? And why the hell had they come to our aid? Were we somehow connected to them, without even realizing it? What made Gabby think that they’d been watching us, of all people?

“So, you didn’t hear much, but I do need you to tell me exactly what you did hear, Gabby,” I pressed. As a spy, she had some growing to do. I’d never been one myself, but I didn’t think it should take so many questions to get the information we needed.

“They were on the radio with someone else, calling in their progress. They said something along the lines of ‘Little John, Team 1 to base. We have the cargo, dropping it off at the meadow. Team 2 still at the compound. Team 3 involved in an air confrontation on the other side of the compound.’”

“So there were multiple teams,” Jace murmured, rising to his feet and starting to pace.

Wondering if that helped him think, I got to my feet to give it a try. If nothing else, it would get the blood flowing, and maybe that would get my brain working, because I was still feeling completely lost.

I hated that feeling.

Unfortunately, the moment I got to my feet, another kind of feeling came back into my leg. And it hurt. A lot.

Of course, I should have expected that. I’d been shot, after all, and no matter how cool the second-skin suits were, a bullet had come into contact with my body. I gritted my teeth, narrowed my eyes, and started walking. I didn’t have time for weakness, and I was not going to cave in to a little bit of pain. I was not a damsel in distress. Never had been, and I was damned if I was going to start acting like one now.