Thin Lines (The Child Thief #3)(6)

Abe gaped at his brother, and I almost laughed. For as long as I’d known them, the twins had a specific M.O.: Abe was the leader, and Ant was the goofy younger brother. I had no idea which of them was actually older, but it had always been clear that Abe was the one in charge.

That had changed while Abe was in prison. Ant had done things that I doubted either of them had ever expected, and though Abe might have seen a lot of things he hadn’t wanted to while in prison, Ant had been on the outside, growing by leaps and bounds.

It didn’t take a genius to see that Abe was having trouble with this new version of his brother. This version was taking protecting Abe—and keeping him out of trouble, rather than getting him into it—extremely seriously.

“I… I…” Abe sputtered, frowning.

“We might be able to use him, Ant,” Jace interjected. “If Jack’s coming, I vote we let Abe come, too, if he wants to. If we run into trouble, more bodies and brains might give us a better chance of getting out of it.”

I could see that Ant wanted to argue, but he finally shrugged in resignation and gave his brother a half grin.

“Guess that means you’re coming with us, bro,” he said. “Just try to keep up, huh? I don’t wanna have to rescue you again.”

“As cute as it is to see you two on your reunion tour,” Jackie interrupted, “shouldn’t we talk out some details before we get to Trenton?” She glanced at her watch and then at me. “We don’t have that long before we’re going to be pulling into the station, and this is going to be risky enough for us. We’re the walking wounded. Let’s not make it riskier by going in there blind.”

I looked up at Jace. “She’s right. The quicker we get through town and off the streets, the less chance we have of being spotted by the wrong people. What are we going to do to make that happen?”

Jace’s response told me he’d already been thinking along the same lines, bless him. He didn’t hesitate with his answer. “We go to Zion’s first. It’s closer to the train station than Alexy’s place. Plus, he was the one in charge of planning, which should have included the after-the-jailbreak escape. And even if he’s not there, that’s where we can leave most of the team. It’s too dangerous to continue with so many people. We can grab whatever we can to disguise Abe and Jack and then get to Alexy’s. She and Zion might be there instead, and we really don’t have many options other than trying to find them. It’s the best plan I can think of right now, unless anyone else has other ideas.” When no one offered any suggestions, he nodded.

“I also have to get to my apartment,” he said suddenly, as if he’d just remembered something.

I frowned. That seemed random. “Why?”

“Two reasons,” he answered. “One, that coffee shop is where we left Allerra, and I want to see if she’s still there and get her to safety if we can. Two, I have things I need to get from my apartment. If we don’t find anyone, we’re going to have to start doing some research on our own about what the hell just happened and what our next step should be. Robin, you took plenty of pictures of that timeline we saw, right?”

I nodded quickly, my mind returning to those photos and what they might mean.

“I want to know who Little John is and why they keep stepping in at the last minute. They act like they’re our allies, but if they are—”

“Why do they keep leaving us out in the open?” Ant finished. “Why aren’t they taking us to their super-secret headquarters full of fun toys and safety?”

“Exactly,” Jace finished. “I’ve never heard the name before, but the fact is the Authority had an entire timeline dedicated to them and they just happened to be the organization that’s rescued us so many times. If we’re going to be in Trenton, we should see if we can find out anything about them. Definitely blow up and print those pictures so we can recreate the timeline. We’re in a bad way here, and we need shelter. Seems to me that Little John is the best place to find it, but we need to know who they are and how to find them.”

“We already know that Zion and Alexy knew Little John. You think Nathan has something to do with them, too,” I said, making it a statement rather than a question. I couldn’t be the only one to have noticed that Jace still hadn’t mentioned Nathan, and that he was choosing to look for Little John over Nathan and his organization. We’d known from our earlier encounter with Little John that Zion and Alexy knew the organization, or at least had known how to contact them, so it made sense that Nathan might be connected as well.

Jace turned his warm honey eyes toward me and gave me a sideways smile. “I hope so, because I’ve tried to get in touch with him at least a dozen times, and I’m getting no response. Could be that he’s just gotten rid of the burner phone he was using, or that he has it off for security, but I also can’t get hold of Boyd, and that’s never happened before. I don’t want to believe that they’ve hung us out to dry, but I also don’t want to believe that anything happened to them. I’m thinking that we need to use what we’ve got to find them, though, instead of sitting around and hoping that they’ll come rescue us again.”

“Doesn’t seem very nice of them to up and disappear, though, does it?” Ant asked. “They had us on their ship, man! Why not just take us to safety right away?”