Thin Lines (The Child Thief #3)(26)

He turned and darted into the cave, Kory directly after him. I lurched forward, too, and a moment later felt an arm around my waist, supporting me.

“I’m not willing to take the chance of you stumbling again during an escape, like you did back in that forest,” Ant murmured. “Move it!” he shouted to the others.

I grinned in spite of myself, feeling grateful for the extra support. Nelson, Abe, and Jackie all rushed into the tunnel ahead of us, while Ant and I brought up the rear. He paused to shut the door behind us before we went, and threw first one bolt, and then a second.

The passage had been fitted with light fixtures every ten feet or so, so it was brighter in here than it had been in the apartment itself, which was lucky, because the ground was uneven soil rather than concrete or pavement or even brick. I could see rocks and roots strewn across it, and Ant, ironically, tripped twice and almost went down.

“You’d think that with all the money Nathan evidently has, he could have poured concrete down here or something,” he huffed, getting his feet back under him after the second near-fall.

“Unless he didn’t want to draw that much attention to it,” I replied. “After all, guys with shovels are a lot more subtle than a cement truck.”

Ant grunted in reply, and then we sped up until we were right behind Jackie, who was running directly in front of us.

“How you doin’, JK?” he asked quietly.

“I’m fine, what’s it to you?” she snapped.

“Don’t get grouchy with me just ‘cause you’re getting tired,” he answered. Then he turned his face toward the tunnel ahead of us. “Jack, I’ve got a situation back here!” he called, his voice echoing through the space. “Any chance I can get a hand?”

Another grunt sounded out from the tunnel ahead, and a second later Kory had jogged back toward us, his face full of questions. “What’s going on?”

Ant pushed me quickly toward the burlier man. “Take her. I don’t think she needs a lot of help, but I also don’t want us getting caught because one of us has legs that aren’t working perfectly.”

“Says the guy who just tripped twice,” I muttered.

Ant ignored me and motioned to Jackie. “This little one is getting tired,” he said, then turned and grabbed the girl to him, settling her against his chest. “Good thing you’re small,” he noted, as she moved to punch him—though I didn’t miss the flush spreading across her cheeks at the valor of his actions.

I would have laughed, but Kory had already turned and shot forward again, and I was busy trying to adjust to his stride. He was shorter than Jace, but also wider, which meant I had less trouble keeping up with him and more trouble fitting myself into the tunnel with him.

“How you holding up?” he asked breathlessly.

“Hoping this journey is almost over,” I said firmly. “I want to get to my cabin and sit down for more than thirty seconds. And I want to stop feeling like a hunted animal.”

I looked up from the ground to stare at where we were going, hoping that the tunnel didn’t stretch much farther. It already felt like we’d been running forever, and though it made sense to have set the tunnel on a gentle grade, since we were on foot, I also didn’t like the fact that we were stuck underground and didn’t know what was going on up on the surface—or where we were going to come out. I was also starting to panic at the thought that there could be miles of earth above our heads.

“I expect Jace had the mouth of this thing put some ways away from his apartment,” Kory said, watching my movements and guessing at my thoughts. “It’s what I would have done. That way anyone who discovered it would put it down as something unconnected to where he lived. That sort of thing is important for people like us.”

I nodded, accepting that as logical, and tried to curb my impatience.

In the end, we ran for what felt like at least fifteen minutes, but could have been five. It was impossible to tell, stuck as we were in a tunnel where everything looked exactly the same. After the first short span, the tunnel started to curve steadily upward, and then, just as I was starting to think that it might actually lead us out of the city entirely (as unlikely as that was), Jace stopped ahead of us at a normal-looking door.

A door that ended the tunnel, thank God.

Once everyone had arrived, Jace cracked the door open, took a small hand mirror out of his pocket, and held it through the crack. He turned it this way and that, then shifted and repeated the process. After a full minute of looking around, he pulled his hand back in and turned to us.

“The coast is clear,” he said quietly. “We’re quite a distance from my apartment, and if we’re lucky, we’ll be able to get a ride out of town immediately.”

Before anyone could ask any questions, he stepped through the door and into the light, and we all followed.

When Kory and I got through the door—last—I found that we were in… a parking garage. A parking garage full of scooters. I looked around, confused, and then saw that all the scooters were sporting “for sale” signs. They certainly weren’t new, and some of them looked like they’d been pretty badly beaten up, but we were definitely on a sales lot. A lot that specialized in scooters, evidently.

“Scooters?” Kory asked. “What is this, your second job or something?”