Thin Lines (The Child Thief #3)(28)

Then kicked out of my parents’ house.

Suddenly two objects appeared in front of my face, and I jerked back from the scooter, staring at them.

“Screwdriver and knife combined,” Jackie hissed. “And a pair of scissors that I grabbed from Jace’s apartment on the way out.”

I stared at the combination tool she was holding, vaguely recognizing it as something called a Swiss army knife, then turned my eyes quickly to the scissors, before looking up at her, surprised.

“Where did you get these?” I asked.

She gave me a cheeky grin as she shoved the objects into my hands. “I’ve always found that scissors come in handy when you least expect it. I saw a pair just sitting on Jace’s counter and figured they’d be better off with us than with whoever was coming after us, so…”

I huffed with laughter and then turned back to the scooter, my hands flying up to its plastic casing. The casing right next to the ignition will be what you want to remove, I remembered Henry saying.

I got to work, and once I had traced through the wires of the engine and found the one that connected to the headlight, I sliced right through it with the scissors to create a free piece of wiring. This, I shoved at Jackie, along with the combination tool.

“Strip it!” I said. “I need clean wire!”

She grabbed the pieces and hurriedly went to work while I stumbled to my feet and moved on to the next scooter.

“Jace, how many scooters do you think we absolutely need?” I asked, taking the plastic cover off the next scooter and digging for the cap.

“Seven, if you can manage it in time,” he replied, following me. Then another gunshot sounded out from the other side of the door, and he dropped to his knees next to me. “Scratch that. We don’t have time for everyone to get their own. Get us at least four.”

I heard footsteps and shouting from the tunnel, and almost choked on the wire I was holding in my mouth, but managed to keep it together, and moved to the next scooter to go to work.

“Oh my God, they’re going to shoot right through the lock—or the door—and get us,” Abe stuttered.

“Can’t,” Jace said. “That door and the locks in it are bulletproof. They’re going to have to use something a lot bigger and more impressive than a gun to get past them, and unless they have some sort of laser to cut through the door, I don’t think they’ll be able to risk it. Even if they have bazookas, they would have to be completely insane to use them in a tunnel like that.”

“Laser cutter sounds like exactly what they’d have with them, actually,” Ant muttered.

“Which is exactly why we have to hurry. Robin, I’ve got your wire,” Jackie said quickly, back at the first scooter.

I motioned her toward the second while I moved to the fourth. “Follow after me and do the same with the wires I’m leaving on the ground,” I said. “I’ll go back and use them after I’ve got the scooters prepped.”

That would be the moment of truth, I thought tensely, because prepping the scooters was going to be a waste of time if what I had in mind didn’t work. Another stupid idea. Just added to the list of things I’d tried so far this week that hadn’t worked.

“Stop thinking about it,” Jace said quietly. “If it doesn’t work, it’s my fault, not yours.”

I glanced up from the tangle of wires, surprised, and he gestured at my face.

“You’d make a horrible gambler.” He smirked. “Your face goes through about fifty expressions a second when you’re thinking about something important. The fact is, I’m the one who chose to escape via this tunnel. I’m the one who assumed we’d be able to use the scooters. Not you.”

I just nodded, too preoccupied to respond, and a second later, I was done prepping the scooters.

I shifted back to the first one and knelt down, holding my breath against the pain from the bruise on my leg before taking the cap in my right hand. I glared at the wires, then rotated the box to see the openings at the back. Each opening exposed the ends of the wires going into the front, and those openings and connections were what I needed. If I could use them correctly, it would fool the scooter into thinking that there was a key connecting everything together, and all we’d have to do was hit the gas. I just had no idea whether it was going to work or not.

I grabbed the wire Jackie had prepared for me and cut two small pieces off, then threw the rest away, realizing now that I could have cut only one wire and used pieces of it for all the scooters. Well, live and learn, I guessed. Next time I was trying to hotwire four scooters at once, I’d know a more efficient way to do it.

But my God did I hope I never had to do anything like this again.

I jumped as someone banged on the door behind me, my heart leaping into my throat, and hurriedly shoved one end of the piece of wire in my hand into the opening that connected to the red wire and snapped the catch on the side shut. Next, I moved the other end into the opening that connected to the black wire and repeated the process with the next catch. As soon as they were as far into the holes as they could go, I repeated the process with the other piece, connecting the two holes that held the pieces of green wire.

And that was supposed to be all there was to it.

I exhaled and moved toward the machine, ready to jump it into life.

Only to be cut off by Ant.