The Child Thief 3: Thin Lines

by Bella Forrest

  “Security has always been important to the man,” Jace replied. “He has more stuff in that room than you could ever dream of. But we don’t have time to explore. The quicker we get to Alexy’s, the happier I’ll be.”

  A thought suddenly hit me, and I whirled around and stared from Abe to Ant, then back again, the most horrible realization dawning on me.

  They were twins. Identical twins. Abe was the only one who had been in prison, but any agent who saw Ant’s face would immediately recognize him, too.

  “Ant, you’ve got to get a disguise as well,” I said.

  He stared at me as if I’d just suggested that he’d grown pink fairy wings. “Huh?”

  I gestured from him to his brother, and back again. “Identical twins, duh!”

  The brothers gazed at each other, and then Ant’s expression changed to one of realization, and he gave a quick nod.

  “Well, I feel dumb,” he said, pushing his way back toward the hallway. “Jace, where are those disguises?”

  “I’ll show you,” Jace replied, turning and going after him.

  We watched the hallway where they’d disappeared for about a minute, and then the two of them reappeared, Jace looking frustrated and harried and Ant looking… like he’d just stepped out of some sort of retro disco movie. His sandy hair was pulled back into a mini ponytail, and he was wearing the most horrific multicolored shirt I’d ever seen. He hadn’t changed out of his pants, but he was wearing enormous glasses—the dark version of Abe’s—and they covered nearly half his face.

  In a word, ridiculous.

  But he was most certainly disguised.

  Jackie laughed at him for a full thirty seconds, and then grew serious again. “Right,” she said. “Now that we have the must ludicrously disguised people known to man, I say we get the hell out of here.”

  Jace needed no further encouragement. He scooted through the door, leaving Jackie, Ant, Nelson, Abe, Kory, and me to follow. Checking on my leg, it seemed, had taken a back seat to getting to Alexy’s, and I couldn’t say that was the wrong choice. We dashed down the stairs and out into the bright light before Jace spoke again.

  “Alexy’s place is about ten blocks from here, toward the center of the city. Comm lines on. Anyone sees anything suspicious, you give an immediate warning. I don’t think the Authority will be looking for us in this neighborhood—they have no reason to know about Zion’s or Alexy’s addresses—but we also don’t know whether or not they’re looking at the feeds from those traffic cameras yet, so faces to the ground as much as possible.”

  “Don’t you guys have masks or something?” Abe immediately asked, but Jace shook his head.

  “No better way to look suspicious than striding along in broad daylight wearing masks,” he said. “It would get us caught even quicker. Jack, Abe, Nelson, I think you guys will be fine. The rest of you, walk normally. Let’s try not to look like we have anything to hide, or any reason to be nervous.”

  He started walking quickly, and I darted after him, trying not to think about the fact that there were cameras on every corner, just waiting to catch our faces—and those of the recent escapees—and turn us in to the Authority.

  5

  We returned to the main street and headed straight toward Alexy’s apartment, trying to stay together as best we could.

  I tucked myself closer to Jace and tried desperately not to be swept into the crowd. I couldn’t afford to get lost here, particularly when I didn’t know where I might find safety if I was on my own.

  “Remind me how far we have to go?” Ant murmured via the comm.

  “Ten blocks,” Jace replied. “Straight up this street, no more turns. I don’t know how she did it, but Alexy got a much nicer apartment than the rest of us. If she and Zion are smart, that’s where they went. We tried Zion’s first because it’s closer to the train station, but Alexy’s place is closer to everything else and has a better view of the street below it. Zion’s might have better security, but Alexy’s is easier to defend and get out of. Hopefully we find them there…”

  I gulped, praying that they would be there too. Because if they weren’t—

  “Enforcers, dead ahead,” Jackie suddenly said, making me jump.

  I turned to stare at the street ahead of us and gasped.

  There were three of them, dressed in enforcer green, and they were checking IDs, by the looks of it. A line was forming in front of them, and they were asking for people to pull something out of their pockets before staring at both whatever it was and the faces in front of them.

  “They’re matching IDs to the people carrying them,” Jace murmured. “Dammit.”

  I felt a thrum of tension run through him and shivered myself. Although random ID checks were fairly common, they weren’t common enough that I felt we could write this one off as coincidental. We knew that the Authority was looking for us, and the first and most efficient way to find us would be to enforce mandatory ID checks throughout the city in which we lived.

  If they were searching for those of our team who’d been arrested, then this would be a sure way to find them. Refuse to produce IDs, and we’d be arrested. Produce IDs that named the people whom we had recently busted out of their prison, and we’d be arrested.

  No matter what, we’d be in trouble.

  I then remembered that Jace and Kory didn’t even have real IDs. They’d been born and raised in the wilderness and had existed off the grid for their entire lives, until their compound had been raided by soldiers they’d thought had come from the government, their families had been killed, and the survivors had been sent into hiding. From there, they’d somehow gotten in touch with Nathan, who had given them not only their identities but also their paperwork and cover stories for being in the city.

  I had no idea how good that paperwork actually was, but I could guess what Jace was thinking right now: he didn’t want to put it to the test. Particularly not when we already knew we were in trouble and were with people whose IDs would reveal them to be recent Authority prison escapees.

  “Okay,” Jace breathed. “We’re taking the first left we come across. There should be one relatively close, and with luck, it’ll take us around the enforcers. Assuming it’s not blocked off.”

  Everyone picked up the pace and packed closer together, and a few seconds later we were veering left down the first side street. It was, miraculously, less crowded, and thankfully not yet blocked off by the enforcers.

  Perhaps that ID check actually was random rather than set up specifically to sniff us out. If that was an important ID checkpoint, surely they would have gone to greater lengths to make sure that people actually went through it?

  “All of this makes me feel extremely uncomfortable,” Ant muttered. “First the new rules for the people in the factory, and now ID checks in the middle of the day, in the middle of the street? Anyone else feel like something is off here?”

  “Even if it is just a random check, we need to be off the street,” I agreed. It could be that we were just paranoid, but Ant was right. The hairs on my neck were standing up, and my gut was positive that the Authority was laying traps for us.

  We strode quickly into an alley that broke off to the right, and began moving down it, traveling in a path roughly parallel to the main street, with openings every so often between buildings that gave us a clear view of what was going on in the larger avenue. I glanced down each one we passed, my eyes roving over everything I could see.

  “Massive crowd out there now,” I said quietly, staring at what must have been close to five hundred people, based on the glimpses I caught through the small alleys. “They’re all stacked up in front of the enforcers. Looks like the officers aren’t letting anyone past without checking ID. Though, I don’t understand how they’re managing to control that entire crowd when there are only three of them.”

  “Maybe there are more officers behind them and we just didn’t see them,” Jackie suggested. “Maybe they have an entire crew out there.”

/>   I narrowed my eyes, trying to force them to focus faster as we dashed past another alleyway, but it was no good when I was only getting scattered glimpses. All I could see were citizens, now. People who looked as if they were on their way to or from the factories, given their dress.

  That was odd, given that we were now in one of the wealthier neighborhoods. This shouldn’t have been a street that a lot of factory workers walked along. There wasn’t a direct route to any of the factories, and none of those people could afford to live in this area.

  “They’re all factory workers,” I noted aloud. “Or at least, that’s what they look like. In the wrong neighborhood. Why would they even be here?”

  “It’s definitely not on their route,” Jackie agreed. “They’d never be here, unless…”

  “Unless they’d been brought here, or they’re being funneled through here for some reason,” I finished slowly. “But why?”

  “We’re at the right building,” Jace grunted, slowing his pace at the next narrow alley before peeking cautiously down it toward the main street. He paused, then nodded once to himself. “This place only has a front door, so we’re going to have risk the crowds on the street to get to it. We go through this space between the buildings two by two to get out there, so that we have an easier time getting through them, and we keep our faces hidden as much as possible. When you get out of this alley, turn left and go up the first set of stairs on your left. Just shove past people and act like it’s any other day. And if you see any of the enforcers looking at you, duck down behind the wall that lines the staircase. The door code is 121381. Get in and get up the stairs to the second floor. First door on the right is the spot. Robin and I will be inside, waiting for you.”

  He paused to glance at everyone else, and I looked as well, seeing that my friends all looked terrified, but also resolute. Whatever was going on out there with the enforcers, we needed to get into Alexy’s apartment to see whether she and Zion were there with an escape plan. If they weren’t, we were going to have much bigger problems than a handful of enforcers on the street.

  Jace gave them all a nod and then strode right into the alley, toward the crowd of people and the enforcers that were stopping them. He didn’t hesitate or let his steps falter, and I fell in right behind him, matching my steps to his so that I could walk in his shadow without tripping him up. It didn’t take us long to get to the other end of the short walkway, where it opened up onto the larger avenue. There he did pause, long enough to murmur a quick plan.

  “Same cover story goes, Robin. In case anyone stops us, you got knocked down by a cyclist and I’m taking you home. If anyone insists on seeing our IDs, you give them yours, and we say that I misplaced mine in the crowds while trying to get you out of the street after you got hit, but that I’ll be glad to put my thumb on their fingerprint scanner. Once I do that, we run. With any luck, the few seconds the enforcer will need to look at the scan will give us an opportunity to duck into the crowd.”

  I gulped, realizing that it wasn’t actually much of a plan, and put a hand to my chest for the ID that I always kept on a lanyard around my neck. It was a weird thing to do, but we’d been taught at an early age that we always had to have it on us, with the penalty for losing it being so bad that no one ever talked about it. Jace saying that he didn’t have one was going to be horribly risky, but we just had to hope it didn’t come to that.

  Jace took a deep breath, pressed his lips firmly against the top of my head, and then stepped out of the alleyway and into the crowd on the main sidewalk.

  We were almost immediately shoved to the right, toward the enforcers we were trying to avoid, the power of the current too strong for us to fight against. Jace grunted but went with the flow, trying to get his feet more firmly on the sidewalk.

  I went with him, my arm wrapped up in his to keep us together. I could feel the powerful muscles of his torso contracting and stretching under my arm and began to fight as well, bracing against the people around us to slow our movement. We needed to be going up the street to get to Alexy’s, and instead we were heading down, right toward the ID check.

  I looked up at Jace’s face, frightened that we were going to find ourselves in exactly the situation we had wanted to avoid, but relaxed at the grim determination in his expression. If I’d learned anything about Jace in the last—had it only been four?—weeks, it was that he almost always had a plan. It might not always be a good plan, but he was always two steps ahead when it came to ideas for how to get out of sticky situations.

  Then, as quickly as we’d been swept up in the current of the crowd, we were swept out of it again. Jace had somehow pushed and shoved until we were in the street itself, where the crowd let up a bit. Not even enforcers could tell the people to walk in the road, where they might get hit by a car, and there were only a few citizens around us in this spot. It was easy enough for Jace to head the other way now, almost running in his attempt to get to the staircase that led to Alexy’s apartment. He pulled me along after him, courtesy of his hold on my arm, and I lengthened my strides in an attempt to keep up—all while following his lead and crouching down into the run to make myself less noticeable.

  There were so many people in the area that I thought his plan just might work. What was another body in the mass of humanity, and how hard would the enforcers actually be looking for someone who was traveling below eye level? We bent down and ran back the half block that we’d traveled, and after what felt like thirty minutes of running and tension, we found ourselves directly across the sidewalk from the building that we needed. Though, at this point, I only noticed the waist-high wall of solid white stone that bordered the steps.

  That wall meant safety. It meant a hiding place. At the moment, those were the only things that mattered.

  Kory was somehow already on the doorstep, his eyes roving over the crowd, and I wondered if he had seen us get swept away. When he spotted us in the street, his face lit up. He jumped down the steps and waded into the mass of people, his hands pressed palm-to-palm in front of him like the prow of a ship to guide him through the crowd.

  The moment he reached us, he moved behind me, extended his grip to Jace’s back, and started pushing.

  We plowed through the people, earning glares and shouts of annoyance, and found Ant waiting at the staircase, with Jackie in tow. We all dropped down behind it, our chests heaving.

  “I thought for sure we were going to have to rescue you from something a lot worse than a crowd of people,” Kory panted. “How did you get so far down?”

  “Came into the crowd at exactly the wrong moment,” Jace said. “We must have hit right as there was some big push. Couldn’t fight the current until we got into the street, away from it.”

  Kory gave him a nod and then looked up at the door behind us. “Well, shall we?”

  Everyone faced the door of one of the fanciest buildings I’d ever seen. It was made of rose-colored stone and was new enough that the grime of the city hadn’t seeped into the cracks yet. Above us, I could see a gabled roof hanging out over the face of the building, complete with angels and gargoyles, and noticed that the windows were sunken behind decorative wrought-iron banisters.

  My estimation of Alexy’s importance went up several notches. Nathan had apparently spent a lot more money on her apartment than on Zion’s or Jace’s.

  Kory punched the code into the pad, the door slid open, and we all rushed into an entryway made of black-and-white marble.

  “La di da,” Ant sang. “Who knew Alexy had such a swanky place? What, does she have family money or something?”

  “She’s important to Nathan,” Jace said, shoving past him toward the stairs. “And I recommend that you don’t make any insinuations about it when you see her again. I tried it once and got a black eye. Whatever their relationship is, it isn’t what you think, and she doesn’t take kindly to people guessing about it.”

  Ant snapped his mouth shut, and Jackie, for some reason, gave him a triumphant glare. I sho
ok my head at them and turned to look at where we were going.

  The stairway was a decorative spiral with wrought-iron railing, and the steps were pure-white marble. Jace jogged up the stairs, the rest of us hurrying after him. When we reached the first landing, he turned right and made for the first door.

  I gulped, remembering what had happened at Zion’s house, and put out a hand to stop him. If we were about to be bombarded by noise, I wanted to be prepared.

  “Are you going to break into this one, too?” I hissed. I didn’t think that would be a good idea, with enforcers right outside.

  He gave me a look that I hoped implied that he wasn’t actually crazy and dug through his pockets. He held up his special lockpicking device before shoving it into the door.

  There was a sharp click. He turned the doorknob slowly, then eased the door open.

  “No alarm,” I breathed in relief. Thank heavens.

  “Alexy said no when Nathan offered it,” Jace answered. “Said something about not being as paranoid as Zion.”

  He motioned for us to wait while he stepped in to look around. He appeared again a moment later and ushered us into a world filled with glitter and sunshine.

  I would never in a million years have imagined it, but if Zion’s apartment had been all menace, then Alexy’s was all optimism. The place was done up in golds, yellows, oranges, and pinks, and the whole place screamed happy.

  “So she only pretends to be a goth,” Jackie said from behind me. “Interesting.”

  Jace disappeared again, leaving us to stare at the overly bright apartment, before striding just as quickly back into the entryway.

  “And she’s not here,” he muttered, his tone dripping with disappointment. “Neither is Zion. Which means that we have no escape route. We’re officially on our own. I’m not even sure whether we can count this as a safe house, given what’s going on below us. I definitely don’t want to stay here any longer. Let’s get out. We’ll meet the others at the front door. Ant, find us the closest library.”