Thin Lines (The Child Thief #3)(71)

He was cut off by someone hammering on the door below us, and we all jumped into action, then darted for various hiding places. I ran toward the bed and dropped to my hip, sliding under it with only half an inch to spare, and watched from underneath as Jackie, Abe, and Ant, who grabbed his phone and the charger from the wall, darted toward the closet. Nelson ducked behind Corona’s desk. Within seconds, Jace and Kory were under the bed with me, cramming me against the wall with their large bodies, and we were all breathing as quietly as we could, our ears pricked to hear any further sounds from down below.

The front door was right under this room, more or less, and that meant that the windows straight ahead of me looked out onto the driveway. The sound coming from below us wasn’t precisely clear, but it was also hard to mistake officers of the law shouting for whoever was here to surrender.

“Open up in the name of the Compliance Authority!” someone shouted. “Corona Luther, we know you’re in there! We have questions for you, and it won’t do you any good to try to avoid us any longer!”

I held my breath, wondering what the hell we were supposed to do now. I was positive that there were back exits to this place—probably about twenty of them, given how large the house was—but our scooters were in the driveway, and we needed those if we were going to get away. I was also terrified that the Authority agents had already seen them, which would mean that they would know there were others in here besides Corona. And if they’d gotten the reports, they might have matched those scooters up to the ones we’d been seen with, or were assumed to be using, in the forest.

If all that happened, it would mean that they’d know we were the ones in here. And I didn’t think they had orders to handle us gently. We’d been labeled terrorists. We’d already been chased by one Authority officer who’d recognized us in Trenton. We had to assume that the ones downstairs would do the same.

“Well, this is bad,” Kory murmured from right next to me.

“I think this blows right past bad to worst-possible-case scenario,” I answered. “We’re effectively trapped in the house of someone the Authority is trying to arrest. If we’re found in here, we’re done for.”

“Which is exactly why we can’t be found,” Jace said sharply.

I would have laughed if I could have done it quietly. “I agree. So how the hell do we get out of here?”

Jace turned to look at me, his face deadly serious. “If Corona has been following the rules, and she was telling us the truth, it means that we’ll find a means of escape in the basement. Any house connected to Nathan was built—or modified—to contain several escape routes and… devices. We just have to get down there.”

He started to move, then, as if he was going to shimmy out from under the bed, but Kory’s hand shot out and stopped him.

“Forgive me for my doubt, brother, but I think we’re all going to need more to go on than that. You’ve dragged us to the house of some woman who was supposed to save us and then didn’t, and now we’re trapped upstairs in that same house, with Authority agents below us. Enough with the vague statements. Give it to us straight. I’m not getting out from under this bed until we know exactly where we’re going and what we hope to find there.”

My eyes grew big at his tone, and though I felt bad for Jace—a little—I completely agreed with Kory.

“I concur,” I hissed. “Jace, enough with protecting Nathan. His cover’s blown with all of us. Just tell us what we’ve got to do and how we’re going to get out of here alive.”

I glanced across the room and saw Nelson peeking out from under the desk at me, listening, and she nodded as well.

“I second—or third—that,” she whispered.

Jace exhaled, but we were right, and he must have known it. There was no reason to try to keep Nathan’s secrets and hidden protocols at this point. Not when they’d started to fail us. Our lives were in danger, and that meant we needed to know the whole story.

A moment later he nodded. “You’re right. Nathan never expected any of this to happen, but now that it has, we have to assume that his cover is blown. No point in keeping him secret any longer. All of our houses were built with high security and escape routes. As a member of the absolute inner circle, and one of the contacts for extraction, Corona should have even more than that here.”

“Like what?” I asked, unsure whether to be excited or worried. How did you get more security than Zion? What more could she possibly have? “She said transportation. What does that mean? Like a time machine or a secret tunnel or…?”

Jace glanced at me, and the corner of his mouth twitched in what might have been a smile of assurance.

“Beyond security is escape,” he said bluntly. “According to the message I decoded last night, her basement will come stocked with vehicles for us. And she basically told us as much before she left, so I believe it to be true. If we can get down there without the Authority catching us, we won’t have to worry about the scooters. We should have something even better.”

Anything else was cut off by the sound of the door being blown open below us. That confirmed it: the Authority was tired of waiting, and the agents were coming into the house.

I had no idea whether we would find anything useful in that basement, but we didn’t have any other options. And we were now out of time.