The Child Thief Read online

  His lips looked a little flushed and his eyes were slightly hooded when I glanced up at him, giving me the impression that he’d relaxed into the hug just as much as I had. “I’ll be in touch,” he said, clearing his throat and straightening his back with a smile.

  “Right,” I replied as the doors opened. I stepped out with half a stagger, then turned back to face him with a wave. “Talk to you soon.”

  He nodded. “Yup. Talk soon.”

  As the doors closed, I turned and hurried through the barrier, clutching my flaming cheeks. And wondering for the first time if I was actually falling for this guy.

  20

  On returning to my cabin, the first thing I did was race to the bathroom to pee (thank you, apple cider). Then I collapsed on the sofa with a bowl of cereal, thinking about everything the day had thrown at me.

  Specifically, Jace.

  He had been on my mind throughout the entire journey home, to be honest, and I was still wrangling with my feelings about the subject. On the one hand, I couldn’t deny that I liked him. He was cute yet mature, direct yet sensitive, and honest in a way that made me laugh. He made me feel things that I had felt at the beginning of my relationship with Henry. Arguably even more intense.

  But still, where the hell was my head?

  Getting into another relationship—if Jace was even interested in me in that way—was the absolute last thing on my list right now. Had no right to even be a thought flitting through my brain. Not when we were in the middle of so much. Especially after today, when Jace’s trusted list had ended. Things were about to get riskier for everyone, and would require our full attention. I needed to stay focused. Keep my feet on the ground. Not allow them to do another loop around the moon. I’d already done that once and landed with a bump. Literally.

  And now I owed it to said bump to keep on task. I owed it to Hope and to every other parent who had lost a child.

  So I forced thoughts of that dance and that hug aside for now, along with the way he had made me feel, and resolved to stay on a more productive line of thinking for the rest of the evening.

  The first thing I did was pull out my tablet and log in to the portal, which, I discovered, now had a proper name. “OH+” read a new logo at the top of the page. Not terribly creative, but it worked. I navigated over to the forum, to find that it had now tipped a hundred members. The threads were now more crowded and noisy than ever. I scanned the titles of the growing thread list, wondering if anybody had posted about the archives yet, but there wasn’t a dedicated post, so I created one, asking the simple question of whether anybody knew about anyone working on cracking them.

  I then sat back and munched on my cereal, waiting for the replies to come in.

  “Nope,” came the first, less than a minute later.

  I slumped back with a sigh and continued to monitor it.

  Several more “nos” followed, as well as a “you’d be crazy to even try,” which got on my nerves, to be honest. That was hardly a useful contribution to the thread.

  After ten minutes had passed, with five more people replying pretty unhelpfully, I noticed the responses starting to come in more swiftly, and then realized that the post had been pinned to the top of the forum… by Mr. X, who was currently online.

  Despite my determination to brush my feelings for him aside, they resurfaced at the gesture, and I opened up the messages tab and typed one to him.

  “Thanks. I appreciate that. :)”

  His reply came back a minute later: “You’re more than welcome.”

  I grinned in spite of myself, then returned to the thread and continued to monitor the responses as they streamed in. Still, however, none of them replied with what I wanted to hear.

  The portal wasn’t filled to capacity yet, but the fact that not a single one of these people even held a note of hope that it could be done didn’t exactly sit well with me. I hoped that Jace’s contacts, who surely couldn’t all be ex-cavemen like him, but rather actual techies, would come back with a more positive response.

  Gabby’s reply was pretty much the only positive one among the sea of negatives, albeit not very helpful:

  “Don’t lose hope, Robin. I know we’ll find a way. x”

  I smiled, feeling tears rise to my eyes again. She couldn’t know how much her wording touched me.

  And then a red bubble caught my attention over the messaging tab, indicating that another message had come through.

  It was Jace again:

  “I asked my friends once they got over their cider high, after you left, and they didn’t know anything (though I didn’t expect them to, given their lack of connections). But I’ve now put out the word among all the admins, so we’ll see what happens. In the meantime, I have details about visitations for next week, if you still want to come.”

  “Yeah, I’m in,” I replied, with a bit more casualness than I felt. Yes, I wanted to come, but I was also nervous about the kind of people we were going to start meeting. “You need some of my team too, right? How many?” I added.

  “Three would be good.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “Three? So that would make five of us, including me and you?”

  There was a minute before he replied. “Yeah. Like I said, these are going to be sketchier. I’m really not sure how it’s going to go down tomorrow. You should definitely all come armed. And wearing masks. Just in case.”

  I swallowed. “Okay.”

  “I’ll send out messages to each of your group and see who comes back. But for now, so you know, we’ll be meeting at Bridgeton Main Station. Our destination is just nearby.”

  My eyes widened as I took in the name. Bridgeton Main Station. Bridgeton. It was a small town nestled between swathes of forest, and its main attraction was a giant lake. It was also where I had gone for summer camp as a kid. Where I had met Henry… and where Hope had been conceived.

  I blew out, wondering if I was prepared for this. Even if we didn’t go near the campsite, I knew the place well, having wandered around the town with Henry on a number of occasions. It held countless memories. Countless heartbreaks. Reminders of what was—and what might have been.

  But they say you need to face your fears in order to move past them, right?

  I guessed I’d just have to look at it as a character-building exercise, because there was no way I was backing out just because of the location, regardless of the discomfort it might bring me. That would’ve been the old Robin, the one who retracted into her shell when the world outside grew too big or too dark. Not the new one, who woke up facing each day with courage, and looked at obstacles as challenges—straight in the eye.

  At least, that was the person I was trying to be. Because it was the person I wanted Hope’s mother to be. Even if, right now, she didn’t even know I existed, I wanted to be her role model.

  Besides, I needed to be ready for when the day finally came.

  “I’ll come,” I repeated, inhaling slowly. “What time?”

  “We can meet at 7:00 p.m.”

  I chewed on my lower lip, mapping the journey in my head. I’d take the train there straight after work, so it was perfectly doable. “All righty. I’ll be there.”

  I then turned my mind back to the discussion forum, and was about to navigate back to it when a thought occurred to me on the subject.

  “Speaking of tomorrow, do we really need to continue expanding this portal’s membership right now? I mean, we’ve already topped one hundred members, just from Nathan’s trusted lists. That seems like plenty for an initial mastermind group. Wouldn’t it make sense to start smaller, and then expand, once we’ve done a few first projects together? Guess I’m just wondering why we even need to reach out to the riskier members yet when we already have a solid starting place.”

  This whole initiative was still very much an experiment, a pilot test. Surely we should run at least one successful mission together—whatever that might be—before letting in another flood of people? And especially untrusted people.
I worried that things would become too diluted and crowded, even with better forum functionality in place, which would lead to greater tension and distrust. If we didn’t start with an initial solid base of members who’d been given the opportunity to build trust and work together, then it could become just another version of the main network, albeit a bit smaller.

  The issue had been playing vaguely at the back of my mind since I first logged in and saw how much it had grown since the day before. I just hadn’t given it space to surface, in my eagerness to post about the archives.

  There was a pause before Jace responded:

  “It’s a good question. And I agree. We actually filled up way faster than initially planned. In fact, I just came off a conference call with my team and we weren’t expecting such a good response from the initial outreach. Nearly 100 percent of the ‘trusted’ members we met with accepted the invite. So we don’t have to reach out to as many risker ones, for now.

  “Nathan also thinks we should start on a smaller scale, as you suggest. It’s standard programming procedure… not that I’d know a lot about that.

  “Anyhow, he’s shortlisted just a handful of the riskier ones who he thinks could add value, assuming they’re real, to our beta base. So our ‘risky’ list is now way smaller than it was at the beginning. I only have three visitations on my personal list. And we should all be done before Friday, if everything goes smoothly. Then we can close the portal to additions and start serious discussion and planning.

  “Side note: full-fledged forum features will be launched tomorrow, around lunchtime.”

  I read his messages a second time, absorbing his words thoughtfully, and then replied, “Good news about the features. And okay. So just a few dicey ones. Not too bad, I guess. So this contact tomorrow in Bridgeton. Why did Nathan choose him/her in particular? What does he think they could add that could be truly valuable—resources that none of our current members have access to?”

  “Potentially, yes,” he replied. “All of them have claimed that they have valuable resources they can contribute. We have to verify it, of course, but the one we’re visiting tomorrow claims to have access to rare technology that could help with ground missions. I don’t have details about what it is yet, but we’ve had one member confirm they’ve procured something from him, and that he’s legit. One member isn’t much, of course, not enough for Nathan to put him on our trusted list, anyway, considering how long this person has been a member on the platform. But still, it could just be he (or she) is cagey. They’ve agreed to meet face-to-face, which is a good first sign.”

  I took a pause to munch on some more cereal while I thought about it. It still felt like we had a pretty good starting place with just the members we had already, but maybe there was something about this technology that was too valuable to pass up. It was worth checking it out, I supposed. Especially as the guy or gal seemed willing to show it to us.

  We’d just need to arrive prepared and expect the worst-case scenario. Which wasn’t anything new to me and the rest of Nelson’s team.

  “Okay, Mr. X. I think I’m gonna have a chat with my team now, see if they’ve got your invites yet, and touch base with them about tomorrow.”

  “Okay, Ms. Hood. - X.”

  Trying to suppress my smile at his signoff, I navigated back to the forum to check on my archives thread. The smile quickly faded, however, when I saw only more negative responses there. I exited the portal with a sigh, then brought up my conference app and dialed Nelson. Everyone seemed to be online, so while waiting for her to pick up, I sent out invites to the others to join the call.

  Nelson connected first, however, and I was instantly surprised by how red her eyes and the tip of her nose looked, even through the screen and behind her glasses. I also picked up on a slight croakiness of her voice as she said, “Hey, Robin.”

  “Hi,” I replied, distracted by her appearance. “Have I… caught you at an okay time?” I’d never seen her looking like this before. She always looked so put together and professional.

  “Ah, it’s okay,” she said, sighing. “I just… Something really crappy just happened. One of my friends, she—”

  Before she could continue, the twins connected to the line, followed by Marco, Jackie, and Julia, all in quick succession, barely seconds from each other. They all seemed to notice Nelson’s face at the same time, and immediately asked her variations of the same question.

  She gave a watery smile. “Geez, do I really look that bad? I should’ve waited to take the call.”

  “Hey, you don’t have to tell us,” I cut in, not wanting to make her feel uncomfortable. “We could just get on with talking business, of which there’s plenty to discuss.”

  She shook her head, inhaling deeply. “It’s okay. It’s just that someone dear to me lost her baby yesterday. It was all so unexpected. She and her partner both had decent jobs and thought they were well above the danger level. And I’d thought so, too.” She lifted a tissue to her nose and blew into it. “Turns out the Audit Office disagreed.”

  My heart clenched, feeling Nelson’s friend’s pain even though I didn’t know her. I’d heard about incidents like this before, when even the middle class could be targeted, if the government’s auditing super computer calculated that a family was a net drain on the country. Their system computed exactly how much each family was costing with the services they consumed—hospitals, schools, etc.—versus the taxes they paid. And anyone who became a net cost was in danger of being targeted.

  The problem was, those records weren’t made public, and although only the bottom 20 percent of the population were supposed to be targeted, nobody could ever be fully certain who that was.

  “The worst thing is,” Nelson went on, swallowing, “I could have helped them get the kid back. If only I’d known in advance. They only told me what happened last night, after the fact, because… well… they didn’t know anything about what I do on OH. I never told them about my alter ego because I tell as few people as possible, and I didn’t think they needed to know. And now I feel like a self-preserving pig for it.” She ran her hands down her face, and there was a long pause in which everyone else remained silent, apparently as unused to Nelson’s emotional side as I was. And then she finally blew out and spoke again.

  “Anyway, I’m making a mess of myself here. I guess it’s just all the more motivation for me to crack those archives, eh?” Something hard glinted in her eyes.

  I nodded stiffly, my chest still feeling constricted over the news of another child taken. It had the same emotional effect on me every time I heard someone’s story, as if I were subconsciously reliving my own.

  “Speaking of the archives,” I said, wanting to distract both myself and Nelson, “Hux offered to ask around about it, among all his admin contacts. Including Nathan.”

  Her expression perked up instantly. “Oh, that’s good news. Keep me updated on that.”

  “Of course!” I said. “You’ll be the first to know.”

  “And speaking of Hux,” Marco went on tentatively. “You all get a message from him about tomorrow?”

  “Ah, yeah,” Jackie said, clearing her throat. “He says he wants three of us, in addition to Robin. I was gonna suggest that the usual ground team go with him.”

  That meant Jackie, me, Ant, and Abe.

  When I looked to the twins’ screen, I realized that I had been so focused on Nelson that I hadn’t paid attention to their faces. And I discovered now that I seriously couldn’t tell the difference between them. Ant had gotten rid of his moustache.

  “Whoa, Ant!” Marco said, almost choking on his drink as he noticed at the same time. “You really took my suggestion to heart! Attaboy.”

  The twins stared blankly back.

  “Except you don’t know which one of us is Ant, now, do you?” one of them replied after a moment, his voice monotone.

  We really didn’t. The fact that they were both, probably deliberately, wearing the same plain black t-shirt didn’t he
lp, either.

  “Oh, my God, that is just weird,” Julia muttered, rubbing her temples.

  “You asked for it,” Twin 1 replied tartly.

  Jackie sighed, shaking her head. “He’s right. We did.”

  “You’re going to be begging for that ‘stache back by the end of the week,” Twin 2 said smugly, folding his arms over his chest. Presumably Ant.

  Jackie rolled her eyes. “Okay, I agree. The mustache was better than no moustache. Grow it back.”

  Both of them broke into contented smiles.

  “I knew we would wear them down,” Twin 2 muttered.

  “All right,” Nelson said, looking mildly amused, and much cheerier than she had a few minutes ago. “Let’s get back to the matter at hand. So it will be the ground team tomorrow. Have y’all got everything you need? Enough bullets, etc.?”

  Everyone nodded. She had given me a gun, along with ammunition, once I’d officially joined her team, and I kept it in a little box beneath my bed. I presumed she’d done the same with the others, as I’d seen her topping my colleagues up with ammunition.

  “All right then,” she said, giving one long, final blow into her tissue before tossing it away. “Let’s get on another call tomorrow night, after you get back. Oh, and Robin, how did things go today with Hux?”

  I took a deep breath, knowing it was kind of a tricky question. I hadn’t asked for permission from the nuns to talk about their operation, and they seemed to want to keep it under wraps as much as possible, so I just described my day in vague terms, while making a mental note to ask at some point if I could share the info with Nelson. Their facility was a good thing for us to be aware of, in general. Not just for my own child, but in case we ever wanted to provide it as an option for the families we helped.

  I also avoided mentioning the tavern date Jace had invited me on afterward, with his friends. I really didn’t feel like telling them how chummy I was becoming with him. I knew it would lead to some annoying comments, from the twins in particular, which would only serve to put me further on edge about the subject.