Thin Lines (The Child Thief #3)(111)

I needed a big move. And I needed it quickly.

I shoved the joystick up and sent the drone flying right for the Authority’s drone, bullets be damned. I saw one bullet hit, and then another, and my drone started to stutter a little, but it was still darting forward toward the other drone. I might not be able to hit it, but I was distracting it—and in the meantime, that battle was getting farther and farther behind us as our airship tore forward.

If we could just get up into the clouds while the drone was distracted, maybe we could get away before it could track us.

I’d barely finished the thought when Henry appeared at my side, the other drone in his hands.

“What are we doing?” he asked.

I gestured to the air battle with my chin. “Trying to get rid of the Authority drone,” I said. “And I’m not going to be able to do it by myself.” I glanced at the drone he held and wondered if we might be able to do it with two drones.

Then I wondered if he even knew how to fly a drone. He’d grown up in an extremely poor household. They’d never had toys like that.

“I’ve learned a lot since the last time you saw me, Robin,” he said grimly. He hurled his drone into the air and grabbed at the remote, his thumbs quickly working the controls to gain control of the aircraft. The controls weren’t complicated, though I couldn’t help but widen my eyes at his ballsy move. “What’s the plan?” he asked, his tone impressively calm. “Is there a plan?”

I could have kissed him for being so quick to understand what I was doing. Of course, there wasn’t time. And when it came right down to it, he wasn’t the boy I wanted to be kissing.

That said, I was willing to take my allies wherever I could get them.

“I’ll be the decoy,” I said. “You be the bomber.”

“All right.”

He didn’t say anything else, but bent over the remote like he was flying through the air himself. I stopped paying attention to him, then, and returned my focus to my drone, which was having a hard time. Two more bullets had found it, and the engines felt like they were starting to go. The steering was getting more sluggish. It was lucky I wasn’t trying to avoid the bullets anymore, because I wouldn’t have been able to do it at this point.

So instead, I just went full throttle right at the government’s aircraft. I couldn’t turn out of the way anymore, and the drone was already damaged beyond repair. Given the fact that we’d only ever used these drones for recon, we’d never bothered to arm them, so I didn’t have anything that could cause serious damage to the other drone.

I didn’t have anything but the drone itself.

“Mission Kamikaze,” I muttered. “It’s got to be done.”

I heard Henry grunt next to me and spared the second it took to look up and see that his drone was now diving straight for the government drone as well. We were going to sandwich it between us. Or try to.

No. We were going to do it, I thought, my breath coming faster as the drones grew closer. We were going to manage it! We were—

A sharp explosion sounded as our drones hit the Authority’s weapon at the same time, and we both fell back, stuck between gasping and laughing at our success. I turned and threw my arms around him, my heart hammering away—and his answering—and gasped out a giggle.

“YES!” I breathed. “That was perfect!” Then I turned toward the cockpit and shouted, “Nelson, we got rid of the drone, and I haven’t seen anything else on our tail. Get us up into those clouds right now!”

I then dropped my arms from around Henry’s shoulders and turned… to see Jace staring at me, his face a blend of confusion, pride, and sorrow.

All the elation drained from my body, and I swallowed hard. I hoped we got to the convent quickly, not only for Jackie’s sake, but also for mine. I needed to sort things out with Jace, regarding Henry. And I needed a quiet place to do it, rather than an airship that was currently in the midst of a dangerous escape from the government.



The rest of the flight to the convent was smooth, but no less stressful. Kory, Jace, Henry, and I spent most of our time hanging out of the open doors, our eyes on the sky around us as we watched for drones, choppers, or other airships. Any sign that the Authority was either still after us or had tracked us via another drone. We didn’t see anything threatening, but that didn’t mean we stopped looking. Not by a long shot.

What we did see were several towns that looked as though they’d been completely deserted—just like the part of Trenton we’d driven through a few days earlier.

“Um, is anyone else seeing that?” Henry asked, his voice full of confusion. “What is that, some sort of exhibit or something? Why would they build an entire city and then not have anything in it?”

“Anyone else getting a sense of déjà vu?” Nelson murmured, gazing down at what appeared to be a ghost town below us. The entire place was empty, and though it had never been a large town to start with, it was absolutely devoid of action now. The houses were all quiet, the lights were all out, and there were cars stopped in the middle of the street, their doors still open.

We were flying far above the town, trying to stay out of range of any drones, but even from up here I could see that nothing was moving.

“What’s going on here?” I whispered to Jace, who had shown up at my side. Like Nelson had said, this wasn’t the first time we’d seen something like this. It was, however, the first time we’d had a bird’s-eye view of it. I’d just thought a neighborhood or two had been affected in Trenton.