Thin Lines (The Child Thief #3)(29)

“Go do the others, Robin,” he said. “I’ve got this. If those Authority agents have a laser cutter, we don’t have much time. It might take those things a bit to warm up, but once they do, nothing is safe.”

I nodded and ran to the second scooter. I cut the wire more quickly this time, located the openings, and started stuffing the ends of the wires into the spots where I hoped they would do some good. I’d just finished when I heard the roar of an engine.

I turned, my face stretched in a wide grin, and saw a matching grin on Ant’s face.

“Never in a million years would I have expected that from you,” he said, and laughed.

He handed off the scooter to Jace, gave him a strong recommendation to not let it die, and then followed me from one scooter to the next, starting them when I was done with them and handing them to their riders when we were finished.

“Don’t. Let. It. Die,” he told Abe sharply. “You know as well as I do that this might not work again.”

Abe gave him a quick nod. “Not my first time, bro.”

We then divided up into pairs and climbed onto the scooters. Abe had one to himself, Kory and Nelson took one, and Ant already had Jackie settled behind him on another. Jace was on the first scooter—colored bright red—waiting for me, and I darted toward him and threw my leg over it just as the door into the tunnel behind us started to melt and crumple.

A moment later, it exploded out of the jamb.

We sped out of the parking lot, tires squealing under us as our drivers hit the gas on their scooters, and I grabbed onto Jace with all the strength I had in my arms, praying that we would get out of there in time.

I feared we wouldn’t be able to outride them. Not using secondhand scooters that were in danger of conking out at any moment. I’d been on scooters that had a tendency to stall whenever they slowed too much, and there was no doubt in my mind that these would give us the same sort of problem if we were for any reason forced to let up on the gas.

We zoomed out of the parking garage in a cloud of dust and debris, coughing, and zipped onto the road in front of us.

“Jace, do you even know where we are?” I shouted, my mind flying ahead of us and trying to find a way out of this mess. I’d been working in this city for over a year and knew my way around, but I didn’t recognize the neighborhood we were in, which frightened me.

“I have a basic idea!” he shouted back over his shoulder.

Still, he looked to our right, where Ant and Jackie were driving too close, their knees almost touching ours, and shouted at Jackie, who had become one of our resident GPS experts.

“Jackie, can you get on your phone and figure out the quickest and easiest way out of town?” he yelled.

She fumbled in her pocket for her phone. “Where are we going?” she shouted back.

“My house!” I screamed.

I quickly gave her the address and watched her type it in, and then twisted to look back in front of us as she started shouting directions.

“Ant, you take the lead!” Jace said, easing off the accelerator a little so that we fell behind them. “That way Jackie’s only shouting at you!”

I glanced back and saw Abe right behind us, his face set in grim lines, and on the next scooter back, Kory leaning over the handlebars as if he could make the scooter go more quickly that way, with Nelson clinging to him, her green eyes narrowed in concentration.

Behind them, Authority agents started tumbling out of the parking garage, all blue jumpsuits, masks, and guns. Guns that were pointed right at us.

“We have to turn!” I screamed, shaking Jace’s shoulder. “We’re going to get shot!”

Ant heard me and swooped a quick right at the next intersection, the tires on his scooter jumping and skidding. I held my breath at the thought that we were going to be making the same turn and tightened my grip around Jace’s waist as we skidded into it, our scooter tipping so far toward the street that our knees almost touched the concrete, gravity trying to pull us all the way over. I glanced over Jace’s shoulder to see the far curb of the street coming up way too quickly and knew that we were going to hit it. We were going to hit it and go flying, and if the crash itself didn’t kill us, the Authority agents behind us would. They’d be on us before we could do anything about it.

Then Jace, the picture of cool, manhandled the scooter back into position on the street and shot forward as if the entire thing had gone exactly according to plan.

Behind us I could hear gunshots, and Abe and Kory both shouting, though I couldn’t make out what they were saying, and then we were shooting right through a crowded intersection, not even bothering to stop, the scooters grouped so closely together that my knee was shoved in between Kory and Nelson. Cars screeched around us, brakes squealing as they tried to stop before they hit us, and two vehicles hit each other, the ensuing crash drowning out even the gunshots behind us.

We roared away from the crash, the scooters’ engines whining with effort, and wound up in the next alley over. At that moment I started breathing again, not knowing when I’d actually stopped.

“Single-file line!” Jace shouted. “Ant, you and Jackie take the lead! Robin and I are next. Abe, you and Jack fall in!”

He ducked down lower, and I ducked with him, positive that bullets were going to start raining down on us at any moment. Why hadn’t Jace built the tunnel to a lot that sold fast cars? Anything that would have put a layer of metal between us and the world outside would have been better than scooters!