Thin Lines (The Child Thief #3)(83)

Before the others could respond, I dialed Gabby’s phone number. After two rings she picked it up.

“Robin!” she gasped. “Why the hell do you keep making me wait so long before hearing from you? What the hell are you trying to do, freaking kill me?”

“Gabby, you’re too young to use that sort of language,” I said sternly. “I’m sorry, but we’ve been kind of running for our lives here.”

“Still?” she asked. “Where are you? What’s going on? Why haven’t you been answering texts? Did you find anything on the timeline? Who’s with you?”

“One question at a time, Gabs,” I said, trying to stem the flow. I knew how stressed she was, having to wait on a boat in the middle of nowhere while we were running for our lives, and not getting regular updates. It had to be doubly frustrating for her after she’d been so involved in things leading up to the jailbreak. But the truth was, we just hadn’t had a lot of time to stop for communications. And there hadn’t been a big need for her skills.

That changed right now.

“You remember those pictures I sent you of the timeline?” I asked, putting the phone on speaker. “Do you have a printer there?”

She snorted. “Robin, of course I have a printer. What do you take me for, a caveman?”

I cast a look at Jace, who was red in the face with trying not to laugh at that, and stifled my own grin. Gabby would be able to hear it in my voice, and I didn’t want to upset her. Not yet. I remembered how easy it had been to take things the wrong way at sixteen—particularly when you were dealing with people who were older than you—and I needed her to focus on what she was doing, rather than getting her feelings hurt.

“I suggest printing those out so you can physically recreate the timeline,” I said. “It’s what we’ve done, and it makes it a lot easier to sort out what’s what. The problem is, we don’t really know what any of it means. It’s just a bunch of dates and locations for when the Authority thinks Little John did something—and for when the Authority tried to track Little John down to a given location.”

“And I see there aren’t any convenient addresses,” she said quickly, demonstrating the nimble mind I’d come to love in her.

“Exactly,” Jace said. “That’s to be expected because if there were, the Authority would have caught Little John already. Which we know they haven’t.”

“And there’s more,” Nelson said. “First of all, hey, Gabs, it’s Nelson. Nice to be talking to you again.”

“Nelson!” Gabby gasped. “You’re back! I mean, I knew they’d gone to get you, but…” She stopped for a moment, and then added, very hesitantly, “Is… Is Robert with you, too?”

I cringed, already giving myself a mental slap for not having prepared for that, because I should have seen it coming from a mile away. Of course she was going to ask about Robert. And of course I didn’t have good news for her.

I didn’t like the guy. But that didn’t mean I wanted to be the bearer of uncertain news about him.

“He’s… not here, actually,” I said, raising my gaze up to meet Jackie’s. She’d been there on the night we got Gabby’s help on the OH+ site and was one of the only people who knew about Gabby’s feelings for Robert.

She was also the only one, aside from me, who had noticed Gabby’s hero worship of the guy. True, Jace and Ant had also been on that call, but as males, they’d been distinctly distant when it came to her romantic entanglements. I didn’t even think they’d noticed, honestly.

Jackie gave me a quick nod and broke in, having evidently already seen this coming and prepared a response. Either that or she was just quicker on her feet than I was.

“He’s actually with Julia and Marco,” she said. “We left them back at Zion’s with the rest of the techs, and with Winter. Figured they’d just be in danger if they stuck with us, and it looks like we were definitely right about that.”

“He hasn’t been answering my calls,” Gabby said hesitantly. “You don’t think… You don’t think it’s because he’s mad at me or something, do you? Or maybe he doesn’t want to talk to me anymore now that we’re not—”

“I’m positive that it’s nothing like that,” I interrupted. “He’s lucky to have one second of your time, and I’m sure he must know that.” And he doesn’t deserve that much, and I’d prefer it if you didn’t give it to him, I didn’t add.

Time enough to teach her how to judge the man’s character later. Right now, I needed her on point.

“So, Gab, those pictures,” I reminded her.

“And the something more I mentioned,” Nelson added, giving me a significant look.

I’d forgotten that Nelson was even speaking, but nodded at her to continue. Whatever Nelson had to say, I had no doubt it was important.

“What is it?” Gabby asked, evidently past the short distraction of Robert and whether he still liked her or not.

“Little John,” Nelson said. “We’ve been going back and forth on this, but I think we’ve all come to the conclusion that Nathan has something to do with them. The timeline for Little John’s existence also mentions OH’s name, and I don’t think that’s an accident. We also know that Little John has been… rescuing members of OH+, for lack of a better word. And that the only common link there is Nathan himself.”