Thin Lines (The Child Thief #3)(88)

But she didn’t pop up out of the ground like some magician doing a wonderful trick for children. She didn’t step out from behind a tree, nor did she just come walking through the woods. She didn’t even show up pushing a bike—a situation that I had admitted might actually happen, given the relative lack of wisdom in giving us directions right to the safe place itself.

Instead, we waited until ten, which was the time we’d been told to meet her. We sat in the woods in that spot, freezing, for nearly an hour. And then the time for the meeting came… and went. And she didn’t show at all. We looked around at each other, frowning in confusion and checking and rechecking our watches.

“Maybe she’s just running late,” Ant said quietly. “Maybe something came up and she was late getting away from the refuge?”

“Or maybe it took her longer to get back here than she’d thought it would,” Abe said, his tone a match to Ant’s reasonable voice. “Mapping systems can lie, you know.”

“Or maybe something terrible happened and she’s not coming at all,” I said, my skin itching and my feet jumping with the need to get up and get out of here. Everything about this felt wrong. She’d been too sure of the location, too sure of the time to have just missed it without good reason. She’d even told Jace not to be late.

Jace, sitting on the other side of the circle from me, was shaking his head. “She wouldn’t just miss it,” he said firmly. “She told me ten, and she meant ten. She even warned me against being late.”

“She did more than warn you,” Ant added. “She made it sound like being late was absolutely the worst-case scenario.”

Jackie and Nelson both jumped to their feet at that, and we all stared at one another, our minds working together the way they’d worked when we’d run missions, before OH+ was even a blip on the radar.

“Her missing the appointment could mean they caught her already, when she was on her way here,” Nelson said quietly.

“Or they could have been at her hiding place,” Jackie agreed. “We know they were onto her. What if they somehow knew the entire plan, and captured her yesterday when she got to the place where she thought she’d find safety?”

We all turned and looked at Jace, asking without words what he wanted to do about this. Corona was his contact, and he was the one who was so close with Nathan. Did we stay here, wait it out, and just hope that she’d hit some sort of delay?

Or did we get the hell out of here while we still could, with the assumption that something had gone very, very wrong and Corona was either already in Authority custody or not coming for some other reason?

Because I knew what I wanted to do, and it certainly didn’t include sitting around in this forest, waiting. Corona had been firm about the time, and if she wasn’t here when she’d said she would be, that meant we were on our own. Again. Though, at least this time we had a new address as a potential starting point.

Jace met my eyes again and nodded once. “We go,” he said firmly. “She said she’d be here at ten, and though I don’t know much about Corona, I do know that she meant it. I don’t know why she isn’t here, but we can’t afford to wait.”

He strode quickly toward where he’d left his bike parked, Jackie and me on his heels, and threw the rest of his statement over his shoulder as he began walking his bike quickly back toward the road we’d come from.

“We’re going back to the forest for now, so that we can get the supplies and do some planning. It’s dangerous, but it’s also our only base at the moment. I want to be back on the road by nightfall. We’ve already stayed in one location for too long. We have a new address to check out, and I want to get on it immediately. We might still be on our own, but at least we have a direction now. We leave here in singles and doubles, so we attract less attention. Robin, I’m taking your phone, so you stick with Jackie. If we get separated on the highway, we meet where the road into the forest takes off.”

We all nodded, refusing to waste breath on unnecessary words, and without even talking about it, Jackie and I dropped back toward the end of the line. It made sense for Jace to go first—it was the position he’d been taking ever since we found ourselves in danger—and I knew that I wanted Nelson to go with Kory, Ant, or Abe, and as early as possible. She might be able to take care of herself, but that didn’t mean I wanted her on her own, and as far as I was concerned she was still partially injured. Jackie and I were the smallest, lightest riders. We’d make quicker time than anyone else.

The two of us slowed almost to a stop and let the others draw farther and farther ahead, and a moment later we heard Jace’s motorcycle (I presumed) come to life and then zip out onto the road, the engine roaring as he revved it and took off. Two minutes later, we heard two more bikes do the same.

“Good,” Jackie muttered. “One of the boys has taken Nelson. I feel better that she’s not going alone.”

“I was thinking the same thing on the walk out here,” I said, amazed at how our thoughts had once again been in sync. We’d always been partnered when we were on missions for Nelson for that exact reason. When danger reared its head, Jackie and I tended to see the same route forward.

I just hoped that right now, it would serve us well in terms of getting the hell out of here before anyone from the government showed up. Of course, we were just guessing about the Authority knowing the location, and we had no solid evidence to back it up. But something in my gut was telling me we were right, and my body was twitching with the need to be gone.