Thin Lines (The Child Thief #3)(56)

“What’s your real name?” Nelson asked quietly.

Jace smiled at her. “Jace Huxley. And my sister’s name is Rhea. She’s at a convent near here. An arrangement which Nathan also set up. I couldn’t bring her into the city. Not with the work we were doing. It was just too dangerous. So, Nathan gave her a safe place to go.”

“I had a sister once,” Jackie said, her voice unexpectedly intense. “Didn’t get to keep her long, though… She was so tiny, so fragile. She loved to hold onto my finger when she was going to sleep.” She smiled a slow, dreamy smile. “She was four years younger than me, and I was sure we were going to be best friends. Everyone said we looked the same.” Then, suddenly, her face turned dark. “Then the Ministry came and got her. One night, middle of the night, they just showed up and banged on the door, shouting. We all slept in the same room—didn’t have enough money for a house that had more than the one bedroom—and it woke us all up. Mom, Dad, and I all ran to the front door. We were afraid there was a fire or something like that, because they were shouting that they were emergency officers and that we had to open up.”

She sobbed and shut her mouth. Ant put his arm around her and drew her to him until her head nestled up against his shoulder. The rest of us kept quiet while he rubbed her arm, and when she continued, her voice was stronger again.

“They grabbed my sister right out of my mom’s arms,” she said. “Held her up against some scanner thing they had, and then did fingerprints on her. Said they were the Ministry, and per CRAS standards the baby was being taken and sent to a family that could afford to keep her. Said my parents hadn’t passed the test for being able to keep their own child.”

She sobbed again and turned her face into Ant’s chest.

“I ran,” she continued, her voice muffled by his shirt. “I ran away that night, sure that they were going to come for me too. I mean, I didn’t run far. I was only a kid. But I got out of the house and hid in the backyard for a whole day, watching the driveway to see whether they were coming for me. My parents hardly even noticed. They were too distraught over losing the baby. I went home when I got hungry, though. We moved after that, to another city, where my dad could get a better job. But I never stopped being scared.”

“What was her name?” I asked softly, remembering how much it had meant to Jackie every time we rescued a baby and returned it to its parents.

“Scarlett,” she said. “And I’m Delilah Jacqueline. Well, back then I was. The minute I got out of that house and got to choose for myself, I became plain old Jackie. Delilah never quite fit.” She sat up and blinked at me through stubborn, tear-filled eyes, and I nodded.

Jackie might be a lot of things, but she definitely wasn’t a Delilah.

“Got to keep my brother,” Ant jumped in, saving Jackie from saying anything else. “Don’t know how or why—especially with what we know now, about how rarely they keep siblings together. But we went to the same parents. Decent people,” he said, looking to Abe, who nodded. “A doctor and his wife. Lots of money. Had a few other kids. I never really understood why, though, as they didn’t seem to care for us that much. Didn’t feel like a real family, you know? They were always sending us to nannies and schools and stuff, rather than taking care of us themselves. It was like they just took us in as a favor to the government.”

“You got to stay together?” Nelson asked, and I glanced at her, realizing that she hadn’t been with us when we’d heard this part of the story before. I already knew that Ant and Abe had been adopted and that they’d somehow managed to stay together. I’d already gone through the surprise of it… and the jealousy at knowing that they had someone of their own blood and DNA in their lives. Someone that they were actually related to, rather than someone they’d just been thrown together with.

Abe nodded. “We figure there must have been a mix-up at the hospital, or the collection center,” he said. “Maybe they didn’t label us right, had us down only as a pale-haired boy. Maybe one employee grabbed him, and then another grabbed me, neither of them realizing that there were actually two of us, and we got handed to the couple that adopted us separately. Whatever the case, it probably shouldn’t have happened, but it did, and our parents obviously didn’t complain.”

“Why do I have the feeling this doesn’t have a happy ending?” I murmured.

Ant laughed. “Because you know us. The minute we realized that we looked exactly the same—and that we looked nothing like the other kids in the house, and nothing like the adults who kept telling us to call them Mom and Dad—we started asking questions. Not like it’s a big secret how the CRAS works. We’d learned all about it in school and knew what the answers were ahead of time, but the people we lived with hated talking about it. It was like they thought it was dirty, or some sort of secret. They didn’t have any biological kids, so maybe they were embarrassed that they couldn’t have them and had to adopt poor kids instead. I don’t know. But we… Well, we ran away the first chance we got. What were we, fourteen?”

“Thirteen,” Abe corrected him. “We ran away twice and got caught both times. Caught and punished. The third time, when we were fifteen, we got smart and did it the right way. Actually made a plan ahead of time and knew where we were going and what we were going to do once we got there. Knew how we were going to support ourselves, and how we were going to keep from being caught. Neither one of us wanted to be sent back again.”