Thin Lines (The Child Thief #3)(109)

The engine turned over and roared to life a split second before I reached Ant and Jackie, and he popped up, her body in his arms, and sprinted toward me.

I turned and ran as well, around the other side of the ship, arriving at the door three steps ahead of him so that I could throw it open.

The helicopters started shooting at us five seconds later.

The explosive sound made my ears sting, and a tremble ran through my whole body as I jerked and turned, wondering what the hell was taking Jace and Henry so long. What was so important about that stupid fuel hose that they needed to be seeing to it while we were in the middle of a damned escape?! This was no time to become environmentally responsible!

I exhaled in relief when I spotted the two of them sprinting toward me—but was confused by the looks on their faces. They were dashing haphazardly through the forest, trying to make themselves less visible to the choppers above us, and were stuttering back and forth as bullets slammed into the ground. But the looks on their faces went beyond the intense, focused look of someone running for their life, and right to… panicked. As if they were running from something a lot bigger than just the helicopters.

Just the helicopters. I could have laughed at myself. The noise around us had become almost unbearable, and I didn’t think it would be long before we saw different weapons from the Authority.

More dangerous weapons.

We were going to have one hell of a time getting out of here at all. Even with an airship in our hands.

“Let’s go!” I screamed, leaning out of the ship and holding out a hand. Jace jumped and grabbed my hand, and I pulled myself and him back into the ship and let go of him, sending him flying into the belly while I ducked quickly back out. My hand shot forward just as Henry jumped, and I yanked him in as well, not even bothering to ask what he thought he was doing.

“Get us out of here!” I yelled, letting go of Henry’s hand. “We’re all on board!”

Nelson was at the controls, Abe flying copilot, and we were good to go. With luck, we could fly through the trees and reach the cloud cover to get away from the helicopters. I was just darting forward to look up into the sky and try to help them with some directions when Jace’s voice shot through the ship.

“No! We wait until each of those choppers is on the ground and the agents start piling out of them!”

I whirled around to stare at him, both confused and, for some reason, angry. What was he doing? Was he trying to get us caught?

“What? Are you crazy?!” Nelson and I shouted at the same time.

“He’s right!” Henry added. “We want them to think there’s something wrong with our aircraft and we can’t take flight. We need to stay on the ground as long as possible, at least for another—”

“They’re already on the ground!” Kory bellowed. He’d been at the back of the ship, keeping a lookout through the rear windows, and was now gesticulating madly in that direction, his face red with tension.

“Agents are coming around the truck right now!” he yelled. He turned to stare right at Jace, and then quickly turned his eyes to Nelson. “Nelson, we’ve got to go. I don’t care what Jace says, get this thing in the air! I am not going back to prison today!”

I agreed wholeheartedly with that assessment and was just turning back toward the front of the ship, my eyes on the sky in search of more aircraft, when I saw a strange look pass between Jace and Henry. A look that was obviously speaking volumes.

Volumes about something that only the two of them seemed to know about.

A split second later, Nelson was revving the engine and lifting us right into the air, and I darted toward the back of the ship to stand next to Kory, my eyes on the agents rushing through the meadow behind us. Kory was right: they were streaming around the truck now, their helicopters surrounding it, and there had to be dozens of them.

They must have been following us during the drive. I kicked myself for having been so stupid as to even hope we might have been disguised—and then gasped as I realized that something else was going on in the forest behind us.

The hose Henry had left on the ground was… on fire. And the fire was streaking quickly back toward the other end of the hose.

A hose that was attached directly to a driving bomb. The truck. And the agents.

Kory and I started backing quickly away from the window at the same time, having both seen the fire in the hose.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” I muttered.

I whirled around and dashed toward Nelson, screaming, “Get this thing into the air, Nelson! NOW! Hit the turbo or whatever you have! We’ve got to get the hell out of here!”

She gave me a quick glance, her brow creased in confusion, but then hit the gas on the ship without asking questions. We shot forward and then up into the sky, bullets flying after us from the Authority agents below.

We must have been about five hundred feet up when the flames in the hose got to Henry’s truck.

The ensuing explosion almost blew us out of the sky. We were all thrown to one side as the airship turned abruptly and started to stutter. I grasped at one of the seats, my eyes on Nelson’s hands, and watched her flying through the motions of trying to straighten it, her hands a blur on the controls, her feet working the several different pedals under the dashboard.

Abe was doing the same thing on his side of the cockpit, and they were shouting back and forth to each other—though I knew that only because I could see their mouths moving. I couldn’t hear anything; my ears were ringing severely after the horrendous noise of the explosion. I glanced to the left and right of me, saw that Ant was on the floor, sheltering Jackie, and realized that we had both doors open.