Thin Lines (The Child Thief #3)(16)

Jace took a deep breath, pressed his lips firmly against the top of my head, and then stepped out of the alleyway and into the crowd on the main sidewalk.

We were almost immediately shoved to the right, toward the enforcers we were trying to avoid, the power of the current too strong for us to fight against. Jace grunted but went with the flow, trying to get his feet more firmly on the sidewalk.

I went with him, my arm wrapped up in his to keep us together. I could feel the powerful muscles of his torso contracting and stretching under my arm and began to fight as well, bracing against the people around us to slow our movement. We needed to be going up the street to get to Alexy’s, and instead we were heading down, right toward the ID check.

I looked up at Jace’s face, frightened that we were going to find ourselves in exactly the situation we had wanted to avoid, but relaxed at the grim determination in his expression. If I’d learned anything about Jace in the last—had it only been four?—weeks, it was that he almost always had a plan. It might not always be a good plan, but he was always two steps ahead when it came to ideas for how to get out of sticky situations.

Then, as quickly as we’d been swept up in the current of the crowd, we were swept out of it again. Jace had somehow pushed and shoved until we were in the street itself, where the crowd let up a bit. Not even enforcers could tell the people to walk in the road, where they might get hit by a car, and there were only a few citizens around us in this spot. It was easy enough for Jace to head the other way now, almost running in his attempt to get to the staircase that led to Alexy’s apartment. He pulled me along after him, courtesy of his hold on my arm, and I lengthened my strides in an attempt to keep up—all while following his lead and crouching down into the run to make myself less noticeable.

There were so many people in the area that I thought his plan just might work. What was another body in the mass of humanity, and how hard would the enforcers actually be looking for someone who was traveling below eye level? We bent down and ran back the half block that we’d traveled, and after what felt like thirty minutes of running and tension, we found ourselves directly across the sidewalk from the building that we needed. Though, at this point, I only noticed the waist-high wall of solid white stone that bordered the steps.

That wall meant safety. It meant a hiding place. At the moment, those were the only things that mattered.

Kory was somehow already on the doorstep, his eyes roving over the crowd, and I wondered if he had seen us get swept away. When he spotted us in the street, his face lit up. He jumped down the steps and waded into the mass of people, his hands pressed palm-to-palm in front of him like the prow of a ship to guide him through the crowd.

The moment he reached us, he moved behind me, extended his grip to Jace’s back, and started pushing.

We plowed through the people, earning glares and shouts of annoyance, and found Ant waiting at the staircase, with Jackie in tow. We all dropped down behind it, our chests heaving.

“I thought for sure we were going to have to rescue you from something a lot worse than a crowd of people,” Kory panted. “How did you get so far down?”

“Came into the crowd at exactly the wrong moment,” Jace said. “We must have hit right as there was some big push. Couldn’t fight the current until we got into the street, away from it.”

Kory gave him a nod and then looked up at the door behind us. “Well, shall we?”

Everyone faced the door of one of the fanciest buildings I’d ever seen. It was made of rose-colored stone and was new enough that the grime of the city hadn’t seeped into the cracks yet. Above us, I could see a gabled roof hanging out over the face of the building, complete with angels and gargoyles, and noticed that the windows were sunken behind decorative wrought-iron banisters.

My estimation of Alexy’s importance went up several notches. Nathan had apparently spent a lot more money on her apartment than on Zion’s or Jace’s.

Kory punched the code into the pad, the door slid open, and we all rushed into an entryway made of black-and-white marble.

“La di da,” Ant sang. “Who knew Alexy had such a swanky place? What, does she have family money or something?”

“She’s important to Nathan,” Jace said, shoving past him toward the stairs. “And I recommend that you don’t make any insinuations about it when you see her again. I tried it once and got a black eye. Whatever their relationship is, it isn’t what you think, and she doesn’t take kindly to people guessing about it.”

Ant snapped his mouth shut, and Jackie, for some reason, gave him a triumphant glare. I shook my head at them and turned to look at where we were going.

The stairway was a decorative spiral with wrought-iron railing, and the steps were pure-white marble. Jace jogged up the stairs, the rest of us hurrying after him. When we reached the first landing, he turned right and made for the first door.

I gulped, remembering what had happened at Zion’s house, and put out a hand to stop him. If we were about to be bombarded by noise, I wanted to be prepared.

“Are you going to break into this one, too?” I hissed. I didn’t think that would be a good idea, with enforcers right outside.

He gave me a look that I hoped implied that he wasn’t actually crazy and dug through his pockets. He held up his special lockpicking device before shoving it into the door.

There was a sharp click. He turned the doorknob slowly, then eased the door open.