Thin Lines (The Child Thief #3)(14)

They were twins. Identical twins. Abe was the only one who had been in prison, but any agent who saw Ant’s face would immediately recognize him, too.

“Ant, you’ve got to get a disguise as well,” I said.

He stared at me as if I’d just suggested that he’d grown pink fairy wings. “Huh?”

I gestured from him to his brother, and back again. “Identical twins, duh!”

The brothers gazed at each other, and then Ant’s expression changed to one of realization, and he gave a quick nod.

“Well, I feel dumb,” he said, pushing his way back toward the hallway. “Jace, where are those disguises?”

“I’ll show you,” Jace replied, turning and going after him.

We watched the hallway where they’d disappeared for about a minute, and then the two of them reappeared, Jace looking frustrated and harried and Ant looking… like he’d just stepped out of some sort of retro disco movie. His sandy hair was pulled back into a mini ponytail, and he was wearing the most horrific multicolored shirt I’d ever seen. He hadn’t changed out of his pants, but he was wearing enormous glasses—the dark version of Abe’s—and they covered nearly half his face.

In a word, ridiculous.

But he was most certainly disguised.

Jackie laughed at him for a full thirty seconds, and then grew serious again. “Right,” she said. “Now that we have the must ludicrously disguised people known to man, I say we get the hell out of here.”

Jace needed no further encouragement. He scooted through the door, leaving Jackie, Ant, Nelson, Abe, Kory, and me to follow. Checking on my leg, it seemed, had taken a back seat to getting to Alexy’s, and I couldn’t say that was the wrong choice. We dashed down the stairs and out into the bright light before Jace spoke again.

“Alexy’s place is about ten blocks from here, toward the center of the city. Comm lines on. Anyone sees anything suspicious, you give an immediate warning. I don’t think the Authority will be looking for us in this neighborhood—they have no reason to know about Zion’s or Alexy’s addresses—but we also don’t know whether or not they’re looking at the feeds from those traffic cameras yet, so faces to the ground as much as possible.”

“Don’t you guys have masks or something?” Abe immediately asked, but Jace shook his head.

“No better way to look suspicious than striding along in broad daylight wearing masks,” he said. “It would get us caught even quicker. Jack, Abe, Nelson, I think you guys will be fine. The rest of you, walk normally. Let’s try not to look like we have anything to hide, or any reason to be nervous.”

He started walking quickly, and I darted after him, trying not to think about the fact that there were cameras on every corner, just waiting to catch our faces—and those of the recent escapees—and turn us in to the Authority.





5





We returned to the main street and headed straight toward Alexy’s apartment, trying to stay together as best we could.

I tucked myself closer to Jace and tried desperately not to be swept into the crowd. I couldn’t afford to get lost here, particularly when I didn’t know where I might find safety if I was on my own.

“Remind me how far we have to go?” Ant murmured via the comm.

“Ten blocks,” Jace replied. “Straight up this street, no more turns. I don’t know how she did it, but Alexy got a much nicer apartment than the rest of us. If she and Zion are smart, that’s where they went. We tried Zion’s first because it’s closer to the train station, but Alexy’s place is closer to everything else and has a better view of the street below it. Zion’s might have better security, but Alexy’s is easier to defend and get out of. Hopefully we find them there…”

I gulped, praying that they would be there too. Because if they weren’t—

“Enforcers, dead ahead,” Jackie suddenly said, making me jump.

I turned to stare at the street ahead of us and gasped.

There were three of them, dressed in enforcer green, and they were checking IDs, by the looks of it. A line was forming in front of them, and they were asking for people to pull something out of their pockets before staring at both whatever it was and the faces in front of them.

“They’re matching IDs to the people carrying them,” Jace murmured. “Dammit.”

I felt a thrum of tension run through him and shivered myself. Although random ID checks were fairly common, they weren’t common enough that I felt we could write this one off as coincidental. We knew that the Authority was looking for us, and the first and most efficient way to find us would be to enforce mandatory ID checks throughout the city in which we lived.

If they were searching for those of our team who’d been arrested, then this would be a sure way to find them. Refuse to produce IDs, and we’d be arrested. Produce IDs that named the people whom we had recently busted out of their prison, and we’d be arrested.

No matter what, we’d be in trouble.

I then remembered that Jace and Kory didn’t even have real IDs. They’d been born and raised in the wilderness and had existed off the grid for their entire lives, until their compound had been raided by soldiers they’d thought had come from the government, their families had been killed, and the survivors had been sent into hiding. From there, they’d somehow gotten in touch with Nathan, who had given them not only their identities but also their paperwork and cover stories for being in the city.