Thin Lines (The Child Thief #3)(2)

I started thinking out loud to distract myself. “So, there were at least three teams and more than one airship—the one that rescued us and one other, if they had a team involved in some sort of air battle. I wonder if—”

I whirled around, suddenly remembering our airship, and the fact that Marco and Julia had said they were involved in an air battle themselves. I’d seen the ship landing when I had woken up, but I hadn’t seen them yet.

My leg gave out completely the moment I put full pressure on it again, and I crumpled to the ground with a yelp of pain.

Jace skidded to his knees at my side and pressed his hand to my face. “What is it?” he gasped. “What happened?”

I rolled my eyes, frustrated and embarrassed.

“I… I was sort of shot during the jailbreak,” I admitted.

“What?” Jace gasped, staring at my leg. “When? How?”

“I’m going to guess it was with a gun, though that’s not a sure bet,” Ant announced, appearing out of nowhere and falling to his knees next to Jace. “Did it get through the suit?”

I shook my head, moving the leg back and forth experimentally. It was stiff and a bit swollen, but it didn’t feel broken.

“Nah. There was no blood, and if it had been bad enough to seep through the suit, it would have slowed me down way more. Honestly, I think it’s probably fine. Just stiff.”

I tried to get up, but suddenly Jackie was by my side as well.

“Oh my God, what?” I asked, frustrated at all the attention.

She cast one look at my face and grinned. “Robin, this is probably going to hurt. Take a deep breath.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but she’d already started probing at my leg. Any words I might have had in mind went flying right out of my head with the pain. My eyes immediately squeezed shut of their own accord. It felt like she was driving hot pokers into the muscles of my leg, and only the thought that she was my friend and trying to help kept me from smacking her.

A second later, the pain from her fingers stopped, and I opened my eyes again to see her leaning back on her haunches.

“The bullet definitely didn’t enter your body,” she said, her words chopped and short. “That’s the good news. The bad news is that you’ve got an awful lot of inflammation.”

“Which I already knew, and which will probably get better with movement,” I retorted. “Look, my leg hurts, but it’s not our biggest problem right now. Focus, people. We’ve got bigger things to worry about than my bruised leg. Like what the hell are we supposed to do next? Where are we supposed to go? And what is Little John? Gabby, did you get anything else at all from them? Anything we can use?”

“I don’t know if it’s anything you can use,” she replied, her voice metallic over the comm. “They identified all of you, as if they were checking off names on a list, and then said that you’d accomplished your mission. Sounded like the team they left on the ground was successful too, though they seemed to expect that. It sounded… It sounded like this was all a foregone conclusion. Like they’d known everything about the mission—who you were and who you were going after—and had been expecting it to turn out the way it did. I don’t think they knew what you were going to find inside that prison, though. They didn’t seem to have any insight there. But they assumed you’d be successful.”

I frowned. So they knew who we were, and they’d obviously known exactly where we were going to be, and at what time. And they’d evidently been waiting to clean things up in case we didn’t manage it on our own. But they hadn’t known what we’d see inside the prison…

Everything about it rubbed me the wrong way. Who were they, and if they were our allies, why hadn’t they appeared sooner? Why send us into that prison unprepared? Had this just been some sort of research mission? Had we been guinea pigs or something? If they’d been worried enough about us that they were watching, then why had they waited until everything had gone directly to hell before coming to help us?

Why help us at all?

Jace frowned and turned on his heel—presumably to resume his pacing—and came face-to-face with Marco and Julia. He jumped in surprise, while Jackie gasped and leapt to her feet.

“Well, it took you long enough,” she remarked. “What were you guys doing, having a picnic in there or something?”

Julia lifted a single eyebrow. “If we’d been having a picnic, I probably wouldn’t feel so sick right now. We got here as quickly as we could, but it would have helped if we’d known where you’d gone! We must have spent three hours flying over and around that compound, looking for you guys without any luck. Then suddenly we get a radio signal from a frequency I’ve never used before, with a written message right to our screens telling us exactly where to find you. It also added that some mystery airship had picked you guys up and saved the day, and, I’ve got to say, that freaked me out a little. Mystery airships just picking you up and towing you away? No, thank you. What the hell happened to you?”

This last question was directed at me. I lifted both eyebrows in what I hoped would be a convincingly humorous expression, then returned to my feet, managing to favor my bruised leg only slightly. “Got shot during the escape. I’m fine, just a bit bruised.”

“And as long as she’s able to keep up, we have slightly bigger problems,” Jace said. “Like who it was that saved us, and why. I’m more than a little curious about Little John and what they want with us. And what the hell we’re supposed to do next. I want to get back into town and get to a safe place, so we can sort through our next steps, ASAP.”