Thin Lines (The Child Thief #3)(30)

We tore through the alley, swerving around litter and the occasional cat, and hit the next street at the scooters’ top speeds.

“Jackie, where are you taking us?” Jace shouted.

She had to turn her head to shout over her shoulder so we could hear her over the roar of the engines. “To a neighborhood where I hope they don’t expect us!” she cried. “And from there, out of the city!”

I just prayed she knew what she was doing. If the Authority agents had vehicles, I hoped they’d have to go back to the front of the coffee shop to get them, and that they would have lost our trail by then. But I also knew that there were traffic cams on practically every corner, and that it wouldn’t take much for the Authority to use them to track us down.

I opened my mouth to tell the others to hide their faces, but then realized that was completely pointless. All the Authority would have to look for was four scooters going far too quickly and taking alleys instead of normal streets. They’d find us immediately.

We had to get away from those cameras and onto country roads so we could get to my house. It was dangerous, because we knew that the Authority had the address, and that they would likely be, at some point, checking it. But it was also our only choice right now. The city had suddenly become far too big a liability, with Authority agents everywhere and our faces plastered up on TV screens as terrorists. We needed a place outside of city lines, where we could at least regroup and try to get our feet back under us. Maybe get some supplies. Check the news sites. Even touch base with Gabby.

I exhaled heavily, trying to catch my breath against the wind whipping my face. We’d gone up against the government before, but now it looked like we were real live outlaws.





12





“We should split up!” I shouted in the next alley, after we were out of the rushing traffic of the previous street.

Jace turned his face a bit. “What? Why?”

I gestured upward. “The cameras. We know the Authority can monitor them, and they’d be stupid not to. They’ll spot us in no time, and we’ll be completely screwed!”

He nodded immediately and shouted for everyone to slow a bit. Four scooters came swerving closer, and five pairs of eyes snapped to us, panicked and questioning.

“I hope you have a good reason for slowing us down when we’re in the middle of running for our lives,” Ant sniped. “We can’t afford for these things to stall.”

“I concur,” Abe added in exactly the same tone of voice.

“The cameras,” Jace said shortly. “They’re going to pick us up if we stay bunched up like this. No matter how much traffic is out there on the road, four scooters in a group is going to be a red flag. If we split up…”

“They might overlook us,” Jackie said, huffing. “You’re right. We have to go on separately.” Her gaze shot to me, and she tucked her hand into her pocket and pulled something out, then shoved it into her ear. “Robin, you still got your comm?” she asked.

I nodded and pulled mine out of my ear, where it was still sitting. “Got it,” I said.

I turned and tossed it to Kory, who caught it and popped it into his ear. Ant slid his out of his pocket and threw it to his brother, while Jace fitted his into his ear again, and the moment all our drivers were on the comm link, Ant and Jackie sped toward the mouth of the alley and then out into the street, Jackie shouting coordinates into the comm link as they went. Jace repeated them to me, and I punched the coordinates into my phone’s mapping system and let the GPS do the work for us. Within moments, Jace and I were speeding along, my map taking me in the direction Jackie had indicated.

Abe and Kory, I knew, would do the same, though it would be slightly more difficult for Abe, since he was on his own. I just hoped he was clever enough to figure it out.

From there we sped through the city individually, keeping to the outskirts as much as we could to try to avoid the traffic, and diverting to side streets and alleyways whenever we saw people up ahead who looked like they might be troublesome. It wasn’t too difficult, thanks to Ant and Jackie being in the lead, using the comm to warn the rest of us about anything to watch out for. Evidently one of Jackie’s other hidden talents was rerouting the GPS at the drop of a hat to give us alternative routes to wherever we wanted to go.

Before I knew it, we were in a section of the city I recognized. The area where the factory workers were housed. I wasn’t sure why Jackie had taken us through this area, as it was a very indirect way to get to my house, but I trusted her to get us there eventually.

The high-rise buildings soared up into the sky around us, their tiny, crowded windows staring out over the horizon, and I cringed the way I’d always cringed when I was here. I’d always thought the place looked like a graveyard, the buildings rising above the streets like tombstones, just waiting for the people to die, beaten down by the world into which they were born.

The only difference was that this area was usually horribly congested with people who were alive. In fact, it was one of the most crowded areas I’d ever been in, which was one of the reasons I’d chosen not to live here.

And that made it all the more odd that, right now, the place actually looked like a ghost town. There wasn’t a soul on the streets, and as we shot past the buildings, I could see that the windows and doorways were empty as well. No one crouching in the alleys, trying to avoid factory managers; no children playing in the shadows of the one or two trees on the street.