Thin Lines (The Child Thief #3)(34)

“What are you doing just standing there?” I asked, surprised and frustrated. “It seems safe enough for now, but we don’t know how long that’s going to be the case. It’s probably only a matter of time before the Authority gets here and starts searching for us. It’s far away from the city, so I’m hoping it’ll be one of the last places they get to, but if they realize it belongs to me, and who I am—”

“They’ll be here in a hurry,” Jace finished. “We need to gather as many supplies as we can as quickly as we can.”

“And then?” Abe asked, staring around in what looked like a combination of shock and curiosity.

“And then we deal with whatever happens next,” I said, already moving toward the kitchen. “We don’t have to have a plan to know that we need to get out of here as quickly as we can.”

I didn’t have a lot of food, but I did have several boxes of Nurmeal left under the sink and a few bottles of the stuff in the fridge, as well as vegetables in the small garden outside. I had no idea where we were going to end up, but we would need food.

Spotting my phone charger on the counter, I swooped over and plugged my phone in. I was already on low battery, and I didn’t want to be out of touch for even a moment. My phone had several messages waiting on it, some of them from Gabby, and my hand hovered over it for a second as I thought about answering them, but then I put it to the side. There would be time for that later.

“I have blankets and extra sheets in the chest under my bed,” I called out from behind me. “Wherever we go, we’re going to need stuff like that. You guys officially have my permission to go through the house and grab whatever you think we might need.”

“Just go through your house?” Ant asked from behind me, a note of discomfort in his voice. “But this is your stuff.”

I grinned to myself at his tone of voice, then dropped to my knees in front of the sink. “Guess you’ll just have to take the chance that you might come across a pair of my panties, Ant,” I said over my shoulder. “I promise, though, I don’t keep anything that bites. Not in the house, at least.”

I heard a pregnant pause behind me, but then they launched into action, knowing we had no time to waste, while I started digging through my largest kitchen cupboard, pulling out the boxes of Nurmeal I’d hoarded on weeks when I had more money left over from my check.

“And charge your phones!” I called as an afterthought. “I have a charger right here on the counter, so everyone start taking turns! I don’t think we can afford to lose touch with the outside world.” My voice dropped, and I shivered slightly. “We need to know what’s going on out there if we’re going to be able to plan our next moves.”

We took twenty minutes to gather supplies, stuffing things into a bunch of old boxes I’d had sitting around—and the duffel bags Jace already had with him—and focusing on things like food, medical supplies (what I had of them), and blankets. I still didn’t know where we were going to go next, or even how we were going to get this stuff there, but it was a start, at least.

I also took the opportunity to get into the bathroom and wash my face with my own face soap. The orange-scented soap I’d always favored. I allowed myself to stand there and splash my face again and again, and to enjoy the feeling of clean water running down my cheeks. Then I turned and ran into my room to ransack my closet and pull out every piece of clean clothing I owned, intent on never going without clean clothes again. Even if I didn’t need it all, I had two other girls with me who also deserved clean stuff.

Jace and Kory, meanwhile, made their way into my garden, and judging by the bounty they brought back, they’d stripped the plants of everything, regardless of whether it was ripe or not. With that and the Nurmeal, I figured we’d be okay for food for at least a couple days. As far as water went… Well, we’d worry about that when we got to wherever we were going—or on the way. This was a forest. Surely there was water to be had somewhere.

Once everything was packed up, Jace turned to the rest of the group, his face dark and intense. “Okay,” he said quietly. “I have thoughts about where we go next. We know we need safety, and it would be best if we also had some sort of medical facility. I think finding Little John will give us a good shot at getting both of those things.”

I nodded. “Which was why we were going for the library. To print out that timeline to get us started. But that timeline doesn’t exactly have an address or location for the organization itself,” I said, my mind running through what I remembered of the butcher paper on the wall. “It’s just a bunch of events. Places they think Little John hit for robberies or rescues, or things the government thinks they were responsible for. That’s not going to tell us anything.”

Jace put up a hand to stall me. “It might tell us more than you realize. Especially with the minds we have in this group.” He gave Nelson a quick glance, and then continued. “The minute we’re settled, we’re going to be making that timeline one of our prime concerns. Little John has been too convenient, and too present in our lives, of late. I want to know who they are and what they want with us.”

“And why, if they want us so badly, they didn’t just keep us when they had us on their ship,” I added, frowning. “They could have saved us an awful lot of trouble by actually saving us rather than only keeping us for the short term, and then dumping us to take care of ourselves.”