Thin Lines (The Child Thief #3)(18)

“What exactly are you hoping to find in them?” Abe asked. “Didn’t you guys get a good look at whatever’s in those pictures when you took them?”

Jace looked as if he wanted to snap at Abe but then shrugged. “Yes and no. We weren’t exactly in that prison to do research, and I doubt any of us committed those timelines to memory. They’ll show up too small on a phone. Plus, we’ll want to look at them all spread out, each photo next to the other, so we can get the full picture of the timeline. Thanks to Zion and Alexy being MIA, whatever secret escape plan they might have had is gone, along with our connection to the higher powers. Nathan isn’t responding to my texts or calls, and he’s not on the encrypted app, so no one else has any way of trying to get in touch with him. We can’t hang around on the streets forever or squat permanently in Zion’s apartment—or Alexy’s. We need those pictures to figure out who Little John is and where we can find them.”

“And the Authority or the Ministry or whoever has given us a head start.” I added, picking up on his line of logic. “They’ve been looking into them for years. If we’re trying to find them, that’s the most reasonable place to start. But we have to have the timeline in a format that works.”

Abe was still frowning. “And if the Ministry or the Authority or whoever has been looking into them for however long still hasn’t found them, what the hell makes you think that we’re going to be any better at it?”

Silence met his statement, and I frowned too. None of us had actually thought about that—partially because we’d been hoping that we wouldn’t have to count on the timeline to give us any immediate answers. But now that Abe had brought it up…

“Well, they didn’t have me, did they?” Nelson interrupted. “And they didn’t have Gabby. And they certainly weren’t as desperate as we are.” She held out her hand to me. “Robin, give me your phone. I’ll forward those pictures to everyone else so that we all have them. I don’t want our potential future safety depending on you being careful with that one phone. And while we’re there, I’ll try to get onto a computer and do some quick searches for the events we have on the timeline. Untraceable searches, of course.”

“You have to be careful, though, because we know that the library here got us on camera when we were researching city plans—the day before someone broke into one of their jails,” Jackie said. “Ant, Robin, Jace: we’ll have to keep our faces hidden somehow or they might recognize us.”

I nodded, then fumbled for my phone, pressing my thumbprint against the screen to unlock it before handing it to Nelson.

“I think it’s unlikely that they would have put those two seemingly unrelated things together already, but we’re just going to have to take that risk,” Jace replied impatiently. He turned to face Jackie, who was hopping from foot to foot. “Jackie, you have your GPS loaded up and ready to go?”

She whipped out her phone like it was a weapon. “You can count on me, Captain. I don’t know this area of town well, but I’m good at GPS.”

“Okay. I’m giving us an hour to get this done. But this is going to be extremely dangerous. So we leave this alley in two separate groups in order to be less obvious. You four…” Jace glanced at Ant, Abe, Nelson, and Kory and shook his head at what I now saw as completely ridiculous—and painfully conspicuous—outfits.

“You look like the misfits from some sort of play, so try to keep your heads down as much as you can. You’re going ahead of us, but only by thirty seconds. Nelson, I’m putting you in charge of GPS for that group. Get to the library and wait for us just inside the front doors.”

He frowned then, as if something else had occurred to him. “Robin and I are taking Jackie. If we get separated, or if you look behind you and don’t see us, just get to the library and get as much done as you can before going to the coffee shop above my apartment. We need to check for Allerra, and I need to get to my place. I just hope she’s still there. Ant, do you remember how to get there?”

Ant nodded, and Jace went on. “If we get separated, we’ll have to make our way to the café separately. If we don’t arrive within an hour, though, and you haven’t heard from any of us, don’t wait. It will mean that something’s happened and that you might be in danger. Get Allerra, get back to Zion’s house, and make sure that you’re not followed. See if Allerra knows how to reach Zion or Alexy through some top-secret route—she’s always seemed closer to them than the rest of us, so maybe she knows more than we thought. In fact—” He paused and glanced down at me. “There’s a chance she knows anything that they knew. Maybe that’s the reason Zion left her behind. Maybe she’s our treasure map!”

He looked back up at Ant. “If we don’t meet you, take her and make her tell you everything she knows. You’ll need to contact Julia or Marco—but do not call or text us if you haven’t heard from us. I don’t want any of you leading the Authority to your door by trying to get in touch with us if we’ve been captured. Understood?”

Several heads nodded, and Ant’s eyes grew wide. He took Jackie by the arms and bent down to stare into her eyes.

“I’ll take care of them, but only because you have something else you need to do. You be careful, you hear me?” he said. “Bad things happen to us when we get split up, and I’m not ready to deal with that. I don’t want to have to rescue you from some jail somewhere because you let your mouth run away with you when you shouldn’t have.”