Thin Lines (The Child Thief #3)(38)

I didn’t think it was going to matter. The bullets were coming harder and faster now, and I could hear the shouts of the agents behind us. Not that far behind us.

“Stop, or we’ll shoot!” one screamed.

“You’re already shooting, jerk!” Jackie shouted back.

“We’ve got orders to take you in!” another shouted.

Ant snorted, then ducked around a tree and came veering back toward us. “Do they also have orders to state the obvious? Do they think we don’t know?”

A bullet hit the tree we were passing, and the bark exploded around us, leaving us rushing through a cloud of tree pieces.

We reached a large clearing, then, and though it made us easier targets, it also gave us more space to run. Almost immediately, the pace picked up and we were flying over the grass, running faster than I could have imagined possible. Even Jackie, who was so much smaller than everyone else, was keeping up, and ahead of us the forest grew thicker, the underbrush denser than it had been in the trees around my cabin. More places to hide, I thought, relief washing through me. Less visibility for the agents with their guns.

We were going to make it. I had no idea where we were going, but if we made it into that part of the forest—

A roar of sound broke the momentary silence as the soldiers hit the clearing and started shooting more frequently, and a split second later, Jace suddenly disappeared from beside me and I was sent flying through the air.





15





I hit the ground with a resounding thud that drove every thought from my brain. I tried my best to roll through it to lessen the shock, then turned on my side and dragged in a lungful of air.

I didn’t know what had happened, but it had been bad. We’d been running, and then the ground beneath me had suddenly exploded. What was that? What had happened?

My panicked thoughts stopped short when I heard someone crying out hoarsely, and I shot to my feet with horror at the sound. Looking up, I realized it was Ant. He’d been tossed to the ground as well, but now he was back on his feet and sprinting toward the tree line.

He never even paused to notice that I was on the ground, hidden within the grass. I couldn’t blame him—not really. I had ears attached to my head, and I could hear exactly what I assumed he’d seen.

The Authority soldiers were gaining quickly, given how close their shouts had become. They sounded like they were more rabid now that they’d taken some of us down. They were screaming at this point, their voices even stronger and more demanding than they had been.

“Get on your knees!” one hollered. “Hands on your head! Drop your weapons, or we’ll shoot!”

Shoot at us. My brain came slamming right back into my body at that, and I whirled around, my head on a swivel as I tried to figure out where Jace had gone. I’d been so concerned about my own body at first that I’d forgotten about the man who’d been running right next to me. God. He must have been shot, it was the only possible answer, but where was he? Where had he fallen?

The grass around me looked as if it would reach my knees, maybe even a bit higher, and was a stunningly beautiful green, but it also hid any bodies that might have been lying in it. I couldn’t find him to save my life, and now that everyone else had carried right along to the next stand of trees, I was suddenly completely isolated.

Completely, utterly alone. With Authority soldiers heading right for me, hollering their heads off and ready to shoot anything that moved.

I was done for.

I closed my eyes while I tried to figure out whether my leg, which suddenly felt much worse from the fall, would respond to me asking it to run. Maybe the agents who were after us would run right by, completely ignorant of my presence. Maybe—

I didn’t have time to finish that last thought because I was yanked up from the grass and thrown over someone’s shoulder. I found myself staring at the world upside-down, stuffed between two duffel bags, watching the grass I’d just been sitting in rush right past my head.

I started to panic anew, but then I realized that I recognized the pants that were now one of the only things I could see.

“Jace!” I gasped, too relieved to see him to worry too much about what had happened or how he was somehow, magically, back in the picture.

“No time!” he huffed. “Keep your mouth shut and try to think light thoughts, Robin. We’re going to have to see if we can hide from those guys behind us, because I don’t think any of us are going to be able to outrun them for much longer.”

I closed my mouth quickly and tried very hard to turn my brain off and let Jace do the running—and the thinking—for us.

Once we were in the woods again, we kept running forward, all of us silently agreeing that we definitely weren’t in the clear yet. I propped myself up against Jace’s back and stared at the Authority agents slowing at the tree line—but not looking like they were planning to stop. They were trying to decide on their route, but they were going to end up coming in after us.

“What’s happening back there?” Jace asked, feeling me squirming.

“They’ve paused at the start of the trees, like they’re regrouping,” I said.

“Okay,” he replied. Then he raised his voice just a bit. “Guys, we have to find someplace to hide.” He cast his voice toward the rest of the team, who I assumed were just in front of us.