“What are you doing standing right behind me?” I asked. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
He grinned sheepishly. “No. But I do want to have a look at your leg. I’ve seen you limping, and if there’s anything we can do about the bruise, we need to do it before it gets any worse.” He set the bowls of water down on a flat rock near our feet.
“Wait, what?” I asked, surprised. My leg had been the last thing on my list of things to think about. Well, maybe not the last, but certainly not in the top ten. “We need to get food and water, and then we have to look at the timeline, see if we can come up with anything! Plus, I need to get in touch with Gab—”
He put out a hand and grasped my shoulder to stop the flood of words. “Robin. It’s probably just a bruise, but it could also get a lot worse. You were hit by a bullet, after all. And if we’re going to be doing what I think we’re going to be doing tomorrow, I can’t have you slowing us down. We’ve got to get your pants off so I can have a look at your leg and see how bad it actually is.”
“Well, I’ve heard a lot of pickup lines, but I’ve definitely never heard that one before,” Nelson said, appearing on my other side and giving Jace a look that said she both felt sorry for him and was going to poke fun at him.
I knew that look. She’d used it on Ant and Abe more times than I could count. Right now, I had a feeling she was feeling sorry for Jace for the same reason I felt sorry for all of us: we were exhausted. And yet here Jace was, trying to be responsible and levelheaded about everything, spouting off orders right and left and being the guy everyone could depend on to figure things out.
But he’d been through the same week I had, running from the Authority, getting into scrape after scrape, and watching people he knew and cared for get hurt and captured. He’d just been shot at by the Authority, and, I suddenly remembered, had actually gone down himself in that clearing back there, when the Authority first caught up to us.
“Wait a minute,” I snapped, my memory suddenly coming back to me. “What happened to you back in the field? You were running right next to me, and then you just disappeared. I went flying through the air, and I couldn’t find you, but you…” I started running my hands uselessly up and down his arms and torso, trying to find a wound, trying to remember whether he’d been limping. Had he been shot? Had he come this entire way with a bullet hole somewhere in his body? How was that even possible?
I’d come to think of him as superhuman, but this was too much. If he was wounded and hadn’t told anyone…
He grabbed at my hands and held them roughly to his chest. “I wasn’t shot,” he said bluntly. “And that tickles.”
“If you weren’t shot, then what the hell happened?” I asked, refusing to be sidetracked.
He shrugged. “They shot at me, yeah. The bullet grazed my hip, but…” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, turning it to me so I could see the shattered screen. “Saved by technology, I guess,” he said grimly. “The bullet must have hit the phone in my pocket and skidded along it, then flown off into the bushes. I felt the blow, but it was only enough to knock me down. And then, of course, the ground exploded. But it wasn’t enough to stop me.”
I gaped at him for a moment, and then he tore through my shock and pointed back at my leg. “Your leg is hurt,” he snapped. “Pants off. Now.”
“Okay, hero,” Nelson said through gritted teeth. “You’ve just told us you’ve been shot, and yet it’s more important to see to Robin’s leg? Who are you kidding?”
He rounded on her, angry, and said, “I wasn’t shot. The phone was. And Robin’s more important.”
And at that moment, I realized that seeing me hurting was probably affecting Jace the same way that seeing him hurting would have affected me. The idea that someone had shot at him—and connected, even if it didn’t actually get him in the body—was making me break in a way I hadn’t thought I could still break, and now that I looked closely into Jace’s eyes, I could see the worry and fear hovering there. As well as the mask he was carefully pulling over those emotions, so that he could keep right on being everyone’s rock.
He was intentionally tamping down his own feelings so that everyone else could keep depending on him.
At that thought, my heart felt like it grew ten sizes, and I held my arms out to him, inviting him in for the hug he so obviously needed—and the one that he wasn’t going to ask for, because it might have indicated weakness. He moved into my arms and tucked his nose into my neck, and stayed there while I rubbed his back and held him. I didn’t say anything, but I did notice that Nelson rose quietly and went deeper into the cave to rummage through the boxes for something that I doubted she actually needed, to give us a moment. I looked over toward Ant, Abe, and Jackie, and met Jackie’s eyes wordlessly, and we shared a long look that acknowledged the things that had happened, and how frightened we actually were.
How terrified we were.
But how hard we were going to keep fighting. Because of these people right here, and what they’d come to mean to us. And because this—the family we had built, and the families we would build in the future—were worth fighting for.
“You okay?” I finally asked, figuring we’d probably used up our quota of cuddling time, given everything else we had to do.
“Exhausted,” he breathed, sitting up and giving me a smile. “But much better now. Thank you.”
I shrugged, embarrassed for reasons I didn’t care to admit at having been so close to him, and having shown so much affection in such a public way. “It was just a hug,” I said, staring at the ground.
He reached out and threaded his fingers through mine. “And it meant the world to me,” he said quietly. Then I felt his grip grow firmer, and his voice became more solid. “Now, we really have to get a look at that leg. Nelson?” he called.
She appeared as if she’d been waiting for his call. She’d gone through the clothes I’d brought and picked out a pair of shorts.
“Yup,” she said. “I’ve got a pair of shorts here, and at least that will give you a view of the leg without leaving her in her underwear.”
“I appreciate that so much,” I said sarcastically.
Nelson shot me a look that told me to shut it, and I grinned at her, unable to stop myself. I had butterflies flying through my stomach from the moment with Jace, and though my leg hurt, it was buoyed up by the endorphins flowing through my body. Not even the thought of having to undress right here in the cave in front of everyone, somehow getting not only my jeans but also that darned suit over a bruised leg, could ruin the way I was feeling.
Until Nelson dragged me farther back in the cave, into the gloom, and we actually started trying to do it. My T-shirt was easy enough—over my head and onto the floor, and that was that. Getting the suit down to my waist was easy as well. But at that point, we hit a big snag. My jeans wouldn’t go down past my hips. Or rather, they would on one side, but not the other. My leg was so swollen that it was pressing out against the seams, and, much to my embarrassment, we couldn’t get them off.
I stared down at them, mortified. They hadn’t been this tight when we were at my cottage. Evidently the fall in the meadow had done more damage than I’d realized.
“Scissors,” Nelson said grimly. “I hope you’re not too attached to those jeans, and I hope you’ve got a second pair in that luggage you brought.”
I looked up at her and nodded. I wasn’t usually one to waste a pair of pants, not when I didn’t have money to buy more, but I didn’t think we were going to get them off any other way. And I didn’t feel like living in them for the rest of my life. Or cutting my leg off.
“Let’s do it,” I told her.
“Anyone got a pair of scissors?” Nelson called into the front of the cave.
Jace, ever the man with the tools, walked right to his backpack and pulled out the scissors we’d used—had it only been earlier that day?—to strip the wires on the scooters. He handed them to Nelson, and then she turned
to me, put the scissors to the ankle end of the jeans on my injured leg, and started cutting.
Several seconds later I was free of the jeans, but we were facing another problem. The suit was made of some sort of metal that could slow bullets and control temperature. There was no way we were going to be able to cut through it.
“Where did you guys get these things?” Nelson asked, staring at it.
“Alexy and Zion,” I said shortly, assuming that was enough information to communicate the complexity that came with those two and their contacts.
Nelson simply nodded and went back to the problem at hand. “Well, we’ll start at the top and try to pull it down,” she said firmly. “Maybe it will… I don’t know, stretch?”
We both looked down at the suit, doubtful, but then I decided to just go for it. What did we have to lose, really? I shoved my thumbs under the top rim of the suit… and pushed.
It was incredibly painful because I was pushing the thumb of one hand right down a leg that was sporting what I expected to be an extremely ugly bruise. But to my surprise, it worked. The suit slid over my leg like the limb was still the exact right size, and before I knew it the metal mesh was pooled around my feet and I was standing there in a cave, in the middle of nowhere, in nothing but my bra and underwear.
I bit my lip and glanced down at my leg, half curious and half terrified to see what it looked like. It was throbbing badly now that we’d taken the support away and the blood had started rushing through it again. It made me worry that it was a lot worse than I’d thought.
It was. Or rather, it wasn’t the end of the world, but it was not as straightforward as I’d been hoping. The outer half of my leg, from hip to knee and inner hamstrings to outer edge, was black and blue, and not even subtly. No, this was extreme discoloration, worse than anything I’d ever experienced before.
“Crap. Where did you get shot?” Nelson breathed.
“Somewhere below my hip,” I murmured vaguely. “But it must have hit some big vein for there to be that much bruising, right?” I looked up at her, hoping she’d have a comforting answer for me, but not really expecting it.
She was frowning. “I don’t know anatomy well enough to know,” she said. “But that looks like a lot of bleeding under the skin. Blood in places it shouldn’t be.”
She shoved the shorts and my T-shirt at me before I could follow that thought too much further, and said, “Well, don’t just stand there staring at yourself. Put these on.”
I grabbed the clothes, embarrassed. “It’s not like anyone is gonna try looking!” I hissed back.
“Oh my God, are you actually that blind?” she asked, shaking her head.
Before I could ask her what exactly she meant by that, she turned around and walked away, leaving me to my own devices.
I scowled after her, then started getting dressed again, drawing the shorts carefully up over the bruise and swelling in my leg and getting into my T-shirt again.
I didn’t know what Jace had in mind in terms of treatment, but the quicker we got it over with, the quicker we could go to work on that timeline. And, with luck, the quicker we would figure out what the hell we were supposed to do next.
18
I marched over to the edge of the cave where Jace was sitting with his back leaning against the rough wall, crossed my arms, and gave him my sassiest look. “Okay, let’s get this over with. What are we going to do about the leg?”
Jace examined my leg and nodded grimly to himself, as if he’d already been expecting what he saw. Then he glanced up to meet my eyes. “See all that swelling and bruising? It’s from blood that’s running down your leg, and there’ll be edema to go with it. We’re going to drain all that out to give it a chance to heal.”
I immediately thought of him slicing my leg open and the blood spurting up into the air, and nearly gagged.
“What?” I asked, shocked. “What are you going to do, cut me open?”
He laughed and shook his head. “Not even close, but I don’t think you’re going to like it much. Give me ten minutes.”
And with that ominous line, he turned and left the cave, walking like he knew exactly where he was going.
The rest of us watched him go, our mouths hanging open in confusion.
“What the…” Ant started.
“I have no idea,” Nelson said, her voice mystified. Then she suddenly became all business. “But I also don’t think we have a lot of time to sit around staring after him and wondering. We’ve got a lot of stuff to get through, and like he said, we have no idea how long we’ll be safe here. Let’s start with the simple stuff. Has anyone gotten back to you guys? Any of the rest of the team?”
We all grabbed our phones and began checking our message apps and text boxes, and a couple seconds later, we all shook our heads.
“Still nothing,” I said. “I don’t have read receipts from Julia or Marco, and I don’t even have delivery receipts for Alexy, Zion, or Boyd.”
“I’ve got the same,” Ant said. “I also tried Austin, but I’ve got nothing from him.”
“I have a read receipt from Allerra,” Jackie said softly. She looked up at us, frowning. “But no response. So…”
“So they’re alive,” I murmured. “Or at least she is. But definitely not answering us.” That didn’t make any sense. “Either that or someone has her phone, somehow knows how to unlock it, and read the message. But why…”
“And the others aren’t even looking at their phones,” Nelson concluded. “I’ve texted every one of them at least three times, and I’ve got nothing. Not even from Julia. And she always answers her texts.”
“But she wouldn’t be able to answer texts if the Authority had already found her,” I said, horror dawning on me like a ton of bricks. In the rush to get to my house and then back out of it to find safety, we’d forgotten what we’d thought of in Jace’s apartment—namely that we’d seen how quickly Nathan’s contact had turned on Jace, and that if the same thing had happened when it came to Alexy’s apartment, and Zion’s…
“We might have left them for those agents to find,” Ant said, smacking himself on the forehead. “I’d completely forgotten that!”
I almost slapped myself as well. We’d thought we were leaving our friends in a place where they were going to be safe. Instead, we might have left them in a trap just waiting to be sprung. And now that our friends weren’t answering their texts…
That reminded me of all the messages I’d had from Gabby, and the fact that she was probably thinking the same thing of me, and I quickly dialed her number.
“Robin?” she gasped after half a ring. “Oh my God! Why did it take you so long to call me? What’s been going on? I’ve been having a heart attack all day thinking that you guys were found by the Authority and arrested! You didn’t even answer any of my texts!”
I closed my eyes, feeling intensely guilty at having put her in that situation, and then shook my head, trying to figure out how I was going to explain everything that had happened in the shortest way possible.
“Things went badly,” I said. “We dropped most of the techs—and Winter, Julia, and Marco—off at Zion’s, but we didn’t find Zion or Alexy. What we did find was a huge crowd of people having their IDs checked outside of Alexy’s house. We also had a run-in with an Authority agent who had the scariest badge ever, and definitely knew our faces. So the secret’s out about who we are.”
“I know,” she answered. “I saw the public bulletin. Terrorists, really? I tried to call you, but—”
“I wasn’t exactly in a position to answer,” I replied, wondering if it was worth putting my phone on speaker so everyone else could hear her. I hadn’t planned to call her yet, though, and didn’t think now was the time to talk about anything else she might have found out.
I had asked her to research Nathan before the prison break, and I wanted to get an update on that. But I also wanted to have a look at the timeline before we started talking about him. If we were right about him be
ing connected to Little John…
I shook myself out of that thought process and came back to the conversation. Right now I just had to catch Gabby up and let her know that we weren’t arrested or dead. “We had to get out of town,” I told her. “And on the way out, we went through a huge part of the city that was just… deserted. It was like all the people had been kidnapped or something.”
“Where are you now?” she asked. “Your voice sounds scratchy and far away. Are you okay? Is everything okay?”
Well, there was a question without an easy answer. “Noooo,” I said, drawing the word out to give myself time to think. “And yes. We’re safe. At least, I think we’re safe for the moment. We went to my house—which is outside of town,” I added, remembering that as close as we’d become, I’d never told her where I lived. “We figured it was the safest. But the Authority found us there too, and I think that means they’re probably searching that list of five hundred addresses. We got away from them, and now we’re in a… cave.” I finished the speech with a stumble, realizing how bizarre this must all sound.
“A cave?” she asked hesitantly. “Is that… safe?”
“As safe as we can manage right now,” I said. “Anyhow, I don’t really want to talk about that. I need to talk to you about Nathan and what you’ve found out, but not right at this moment. We have something we need to go over first. Can I call you in…” I glanced at Nelson and sent her a silent question, and she shrugged. “An hour?”
It seemed like enough time to get my leg doctored, get the timeline taped together, and figure out our next moves. The timeline wasn’t that big.
Gabby confirmed that she’d be awake and waiting, and I hung up, feeling a bit better for having talked to her. I hadn’t met her until I’d joined OH+, but she was also the closest thing I had to a little sister, and I was beyond relieved that she was still out of harm’s way. I didn’t know what I’d do if she was with us. Didn’t know what I’d do if I ever had to see her hurt.
The Child Thief 3: Thin Lines Page 14
