Thin Lines (The Child Thief #3)(81)

It wasn’t fear anymore. It was anger. It was fury.

These were the men who supported a government that had been stealing our children and dictating our entire world. And now they were laughing at our expense.

Jace seemed to sense my sudden change, because he reached up from below me and put a cautioning hand on my hip. Looking down, I saw him setting a finger up against his mouth and shushing me, then motioning for me to keep moving.

I took a deep breath. Right. Had to go up. Had to find the supplies. Had to get out of here. There were only two of us right now. We couldn’t afford to pick any fights with the Authority agents. No matter how angry I was.

I started climbing again, my ears still attuned to what the agents on the ledge were saying.

“So, we stay here for the day,” the “sir” concluded.

The other agent muttered some sort of agreement, and then they drew silent, their footsteps indicating that they were climbing upward toward the wolves’ valley.

I dedicated two seconds of time to hoping that the wolves were safely away from there, and then directed all of my energy to getting up the tree, and to the supplies Jace and I needed.

The agents sounded like they’d decided they were going to go up into the mountains instead of back into the forest undergrowth. I just hoped we could get out of here before they changed their minds.

And that they would stay up in those damned mountains until we left here again in the morning.





32





We dropped our armful of boxes and bags on the ground where the others were lying about, and I quickly commanded everyone’s attention.

“Why are you looking so excited?” Jackie asked, frowning at what was no doubt a red-faced, wild-haired version of me.

“The Authority,” Jace said stoically. “We were at the spot where we left the first batch of supplies, which was rather close to the rock face, and we overheard a conversation between Authority agents. They found the cave, and they noticed that we left some things in it, just as we’d hoped.”

“Oh man,” Nelson murmured. “Then it’s lucky we didn’t try to go back there. And? Anything else?”

“They think we’re going to be heading back there after we’re finished with whatever adventure we’re on today,” I said, remembering the laughter in the agent’s voice. “They also don’t have a very high opinion of our intelligence.”

Jace shot me a look that said very clearly that I was missing the important part of the story, and added, “They also don’t seem to be planning to venture back into this particular forest. It might not give us a lot of time, but it might give us some. Which is all we need, right?”

The others gazed at Jace and me in surprise, and then in relief, but after a short discussion everyone agreed that we still couldn’t let our guard down. We did decide, however, that one lookout at a time was probably enough.

With that in mind, we began settling in for the evening. We were all exhausted from the events of the last week, and though I would have preferred to be on our way to safety with Corona right now, I had to admit that it was going to be nice to just sit and rest for an entire night. It wasn’t ideal. Not by a long shot. But as long as we were stuck, I was going to make the most of it.

In our absence, the others had managed to even out the ground in the clearing, scooping and scraping the leaves to fill up any holes so that we were walking on—and would be lying on—a bed of cushy leaves rather than rocks.

Way better than the cave.

It was Ant, of course, who started the conversation back up again and ended my hopes for a night of some sort of quiet.

“What now?” he asked, cracking open a bottle of Nurmeal. “Are we going to… I don’t know, take this opportunity to plan something?”

It was a question we’d had to ask way too often lately, and I was growing sick of the never-ending guessing about the next step. But Ant was right. If we were going to be here, we ought to use the time to figure out what we were going to do.

“As much as I don’t want to have to think about it, I think we do need to come up with a plan B for tomorrow,” I said.

“Glad you said so, Rob, because I was thinking the same thing,” Ant replied.

“You don’t think Corona is going to come through?” Abe asked his brother, frowning. “Don’t you trust her?”

Ant shook his head. “I don’t trust anyone, bro. Not after what I’ve seen in the last week. People we thought we could count on ended up being people that we couldn’t trust, and places we thought were safe ended up being traps. You saw what happened at Jace’s house.”

“But maybe that was a one-time thing,” Abe said cautiously. “After all, we didn’t know Walter. He might have been weak from the start, a piece just waiting to fall.”

“And can you guarantee that Corona isn’t the same?” I asked. “What if she’s another weak piece? What if something goes wrong and she can’t get us out the way she thinks she can? Wouldn’t you rather have a plan B waiting for us?”

He stared at me for a moment, and then nodded, but said, “I think we can hope she gets us out, though. I mean, it seems like it’s about time something goes our way, doesn’t it?”

“We might have already used that card with the Authority, honestly,” Jace said. “And things will have a better chance of going our way if we go in well prepared.”