The Child Thief 4: Little Lies Read online

  I dragged myself upstairs, hoping a long shower and the crisp, clean sheets of my bed would calm my mind. I was so tired I could hardly see straight, my brain still struggling with where we’d been, what we’d done, and what the repercussions might be.

  Jace was beside me, looking as tired as I felt, and though he cocked an eyebrow at me when we reached our rooms, silently asking if I wanted to come to his rather than my own, I shook my head, gave him a hug, and headed for the room I was sharing with Nelson.

  I wasn’t ready to sleep in the same bed as Jace quite yet. When we finally spent the night together, hopefully in a more private setting than a cave or shared bedroom, I was planning to be awake for the entire thing.

  Nelson and I stumbled through the door of our room, took ten-minute turns in the shower, and fell into bed.

  I was asleep before I had finished pulling the blankets up to my chin.

  It felt like only seconds later, although it was likely hours, that I shot up out of bed, breath caught in my chest, positive someone was in the room, hanging over me.

  Both Nelson and I had forgotten to leave the bathroom light on, so the room was a cauldron of darkness around me. A glance out the window told me it was dark out there, too.

  I held my breath and strained my ears, listening for the creak of a joint, or a floorboard. Nelson’s steady sleeping breaths prompted a surge of panic until I recognized the tone. Yet I still couldn’t shake the feeling something wasn’t right. I could have sworn that whatever I’d heard had been hovering right over my face. I just couldn’t remember what the sound had been, even how long it had been since I’d heard it.

  Slipping silently from beneath the blankets, I crept forward, reaching for the table at the foot of my bed where I’d left my phone. My fingertips found its smooth edges, and I pulled it toward me, my thumb going to the button at the bottom. Pointing it away from me, I steadied myself and activated the flashlight. I swung the phone back and forth, allowing the beam to sweep across the room, heart thundering.

  There was nothing there but the two beds, the royal-blue armchairs by the window, the door to the bathroom, and the door into the sitting area on the other side. Nelson was in her bed, dead asleep, the peach fuzz on her head glinting in the light.

  Dammit, I was getting seriously paranoid.

  A second glance around the room, and then a full tour of the area on foot, proved there was no one in the room aside from Nelson. Sleep, however, was not going to be an option for me for quite some time.

  I crept to the door and out into the hallway. Once my eyes were accustomed to the low-level lighting, I left the enclave of my door and slid out into the corridor itself, putting my back against the wall and letting myself scoot down to the floor.

  Just as my eyes were starting to get a little bit heavy and I thought I might be able to go back to sleep, the door opposite me opened and a shadowy Jace emerged. The surprise on his face was quickly replaced by a gentle smile, and he crept over to sit next to me.

  “You can’t sleep either?” he asked, pulling me against him.

  I shook my head. “I was sleeping fine. Until I woke up thinking someone was in the room. That experience ruined sleeping for the time being.”

  A muffled chuckle rumbled against my ear. “I take it no one was actually there?”

  “Unless someone managed to get out of the room before I jumped out of bed and got my phone up. The only other person in there is Nelson.”

  He squeezed me closer. “I’m sure we can find out from the cameras no doubt hidden in all of our rooms.” He chuckled again.

  I sat up, pulling free of Jace’s arm. “You might be more right than you know,” I said.

  He threw me a questioning glance, one eyebrow quirking up, and I told him of the room I’d seen Corona exit into, and what I thought it might be.

  “There are at least ten monitors in there, and that’s only what I could see,” I said, dropping my voice.

  I cast a glance up at the walls, and then down toward the corners of the hallway, but didn’t see any blinking lights. If I couldn’t see anything, did it mean that there weren’t cameras there? I hadn’t noticed them up to this point, but I hadn’t exactly been looking for them.

  “I know they had one on Asus, and it looked like they had one on Smally as well.”

  “But how?” Jace asked, dropping his voice as well. “Those are Ministry buildings, and we’ve seen the type of security they have. Even if they have operatives in there, how would they get cameras up in the place without getting caught? Or are they somehow piggybacking onto ones that already exist?”

  I shook my head, not having an answer. “All I know is what I saw, and that wasn’t much before the door closed behind Corona. But it was definitely some sort of control room. There were a lot of people in there, and a lot of cameras, and the names of two of the holding centers Corona has been talking about. That can’t be a coincidence.”

  Jace was quiet for a while, the two of us listening to the sleeping Hall around us.

  “You know,” he finally said, “I have an awful lot of questions about this place, and I’ve felt this entire time like we aren’t getting enough answers, even from Corona. So far all we’ve been told is that we’re going into a holding center.” He shut his eyes and sighed. “Do you know how many times I’ve asked where Rhea is, and how many different people I’ve cornered about it? I’ve asked Zion, Alexy, Corona, Savannah and her team, people on the street, anyone. I’ve been quiet about it because Corona asked me to be, but I’m done. I’m starting to think that if we want answers…”

  “We’re going to have to find them ourselves,” I finished for him, feeling a pang of guilt that Rhea had slipped my mind in recent days. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  I could hear the smile in his voice when he replied. “If you’re thinking that the room you saw might be the best way to get more answers, then I’m thinking exactly what you’re thinking.”

  I grinned at him, and then I leaned forward and kissed him. I couldn’t have said exactly what I was thinking, except that the idea of the coming adventure made me braver than I’d ever been with him before. His lips met mine in a perfect agreement of timing, and I fell into the kiss, the world around me disappearing as fireworks exploded in my brain.

  Jace’s lips were soft and perfect. They parted to pull my lower lip into his mouth, the tip of his tongue, sweet and tentative, reaching farther to dance around my own tongue. I gasped softly, feeling my heartbeat throughout my whole body, turning so I was facing him. His other hand went up to cup my cheek, the long fingers slipping past my earlobe and into my hair. He gripped me gently, and though his hand was firm, I could feel the slight uncertainty of his actions. I pressed closer in response, angling my face so his tongue could slip deeper into my mouth, sliding my fingers into the silky density of his hair, taking hold and pulling him harder against me, needing him closer and closer.

  I would have stayed in that hallway, kissing him, until morning’s light broke through the windows and summer turned to autumn and society crumbled around us.

  But for a second, less than a second, I saw Hope’s face, framed in the soft yellow blanket I had made from the sweater I was wearing the day I was disowned. A thousand other faces of a thousand other children joined hers, scattering like playing cards, and I remembered we were sitting in a hallway in the middle of Little John’s headquarters—possibly with cameras on us.

  I pulled back, taking a deep, shuddering breath as I looked up at him, my vision hazy and my heart hammering against my ribs. He looked similarly disheveled, his lips swollen and slightly parted, his hair mussed from my insistent tugging.

  “Wow,” he breathed quietly. “I…”

  “Yeah,” I answered, knowing exactly how he was feeling. “But about that control room…”

  Jace shook his head, as if to clear his thoughts, and nodded. “Right. The control room. We were about to go answer some questions.” He gave me a soft smile. “And i
f we’re going to be running secret midnight missions that will inevitably get us into trouble, I guess we should change into real clothes first.”

  I smiled back, still too dazed by the kiss to come up with anything clever to say to that. “Good point. Clothes. Putting clothes on.”

  Jace got up first, then pulled me up into his arms, folding me against him and planting a soft kiss against my temple. The kiss trailed down my cheek, leading once again to my mouth. His hands smoothed up and down my spine, pressing me closer to his body. He was large and solid and warm, and I fell into him again. This kiss, however, he kept very chaste, almost immediately pulling back and pressing his lips to my forehead with a soft groan.

  “The control room,” he said firmly. “We might not be given a chance like this again, and I don’t want to waste it.”

  I nodded and stepped back. No matter how much I wanted to hide in the aura of safety Jace created for me, giving in to it would be pure selfishness on my part. There was information to be had, and it might lead to all of us better understanding what Little John was up to. I could be safe later. Right now, I had a job to do.

  “The control room,” I answered, my voice just as firm. “Let’s see what we can find.”

  As I changed into some clothes, leaving my shoes behind in order to remain silent, I briefly considered waking Nelson to have her handle the computers, but decided to leave her sleeping. This was the sort of adventure that might very well get us caught, and if that happened, I wanted it to be only the two of us getting in trouble. We would keep the rest of the group out of it. For now.

  26

  By the time I exited my room and got back out into the hallway, Jace was already waiting, his new phone, courtesy of Little John, lighting his face as he typed rapidly.

  “What, you needed to send someone a last-minute text?” I asked, only halfway joking.

  He allowed the corner of his mouth to curve into a half smile. “Research,” he said. “I was wondering if there were cameras in the Hall, or if we were free to move around on our own, and there are only a couple of people who can answer that sort of question. It turns out Alexy’s still awake, for some reason. And more than willing to answer questions.”

  He flipped his phone around and showed me the text conversation.

  Jace: Are there cameras in this joint?

  Alexy: Why, you wanting to know whether the entire organization is going to see you having sex with Robin?

  I blushed furiously, but then realized Alexy had given Jace the perfect reason to be asking about cameras, and grinned. “She’s brilliant, even when she doesn’t know it,” I whispered, almost laughing.

  “You’re telling me,” Jace replied. “I didn’t have an excuse prepared when I first texted her. Thank goodness she’d already thought of one.”

  I wondered for a moment whether she believed Jace was asking for such a shallow reason… or whether she had an inkling of what we were thinking of doing and was telling us in the most hidden way possible that she had our back.

  Jace: Not precisely, but some privacy would be nice.

  Alexy: If you hurt her, in any way at all, I’ll find you and strangle you with your own intestines.

  I didn’t have to hear her saying it to know it was a real threat. Not that I wanted her to hurt Jace, of course, and not that I thought he’d hurt me, but the idea of anyone feeling protective of me at all made my heart sing.

  Jace: You have my word.

  Alexy: No cameras that I know of, at least not in the hallways, and not in the bedrooms. Might be cameras downstairs on the main door and perhaps in a few of the more important rooms. Might be cameras on the cars, and definitely in the Armory. But if there were cameras in this building I’d have gotten in trouble way more than I have. You’re safe.

  I breathed out a quick sigh of relief and felt some of the tension go out of my shoulders. “Cameras on the front door make sense,” I said. “And in the more important rooms and buildings.”

  Jace gave a deep sigh. “You know ‘more important rooms’ almost definitely means the room we’re about to try to break into. Which means we’re likely to get caught. And get in trouble.”

  I shrugged. “It’s a risk I’m willing to take. And I guess that means we just have to work quickly once we get in there. Get whatever we can before they catch us.”

  Jace laughed softly. “You, my girl, are trouble, make no mistake,” he said, his voice full of affection. “But I agree. Mission: get in, go through as much as we can as quickly as we can, and with luck, get back out again before anyone else arrives. They might get us on camera, but if we hurry, we might have a chance to tell the rest of the team what we find before we’re dragged off.”

  “Then it doesn’t matter if we get carted away or not because the whole team will know.” I grinned to hide my nerves. “It’s a revolution within a revolution.”

  Of course, I knew we had a hundred percent chance of getting caught, but we needed answers if we were going to keep going forward. If what Corona said was true, our next mission was going to include breaking into a holding center. It didn’t seem unreasonable to want to know why we were doing it before we risked our lives.

  Holding hands, we walked as normally as possible down the hallway, strolling along like any other newly formed couple out for a midnight wander through the halls of a top-secret building in the middle of a city that shouldn’t exist and was almost certainly funded by people who were dead set on fighting a tyrannical regime until the bitter end. Yeah … totally normal.

  Jace squeezed my hand. “I know there aren’t cameras or anything like that, but if someone is watching, it will make more sense if we’re talking to each other. It’ll make us look less suspicious.”

  “You do realize that if someone is listening, you saying that has just made us the most suspicious-looking people in the building, right?” I asked. “Which, considering we’re in the base of a top-secret rebel organization, is no easy thing.”

  He was silent for long enough to make me think he hadn’t thought of that. “I guess it’s a good thing there aren’t cameras, huh?”

  I huffed out a quick laugh. “In which case we don’t really need to be talking. Let’s just get down there and into that room.”

  We both dropped to the walls on either side of the hall, creeping along them until we got to the stairs. A quick survey of the corridor on the other side and we were rushing down the stairs, staying close to the banister as we sneaked down the steps.

  “Remember to stay away from the front doors,” Jace hissed. “If there are cameras, I’m guessing they’ll be pointed at the doors. As long as we stay near the stairs in the foyer and get into the hallway to the left wing without getting too close to the actual entry, we should be good.”

  As we reached the bottom, I scanned the ceiling by the doors for telltale camera lights and found two tiny red dots blinking in the corners on each side of the doorway.

  Jace was right: the cameras were pointed at each other, their lines of sight only recording the doorway and anything that came through it.

  Jace stopped beside me, taking his cue from my intent stillness, while I spun slowly, checking the other corners for more cameras. I didn’t see any in the room and nodded quickly to Jace before stepping off the last stair and hurrying at a silent run toward the conference room in the left wing.

  From my memory, the room we were heading toward was relatively close to the entryway, and I thought we’d be there in a minute or two. It was pitch black down here, though, all the doors little more than shadowed portals in the wall.

  I tried to remember how many doorways down the corridor the conference room was when I slammed into something wooden and unyielding pushed up against the wall.

  There was a brief shriek of wood on marble flooring, and I landed on my back with a thud. Pain pulsed through my hip and thigh as I lay as still as I could, not daring to breathe. I listened to the silence around me, positive Little John security was going to come running.
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  Instead of security guards, though, it was Jace who appeared at my side. “What did you do?” he asked. “Is anything broken? Do you feel like you’re bleeding?”

  “Ornamental table,” I wheezed. “Ran into it.”

  Speaking was almost impossible, and it was a full ten seconds before I could force my lungs to inhale again. Jace sat me up, keeping his hand on my back while I choked on the fresh air as quietly as I could, trying to get my body to remember how to breathe.

  “Do you hear anything?” I asked, my words thin with pain.

  Jace grew very still, listening, and then the ghost of movement from his direction told me he was shaking his head. “I don’t know how this place gets away with such a lack of security, but I think everyone is asleep,” he said. “They must have a lot of faith in that force field of theirs.”

  Ah, the force field, the reason everyone in Little John was able to get a good night’s sleep every night. Well, maybe not everyone. Surely there were people walking through the city around us, keeping an eye on things.

  Jace grabbed my hands and hauled me to my feet again, and the two of us started forward with a bit more caution this time.

  “Do you remember what room it is?” I asked. We’d always had someone leading us before.

  “Fifteenth door on the right,” Jace answered. “We’ve passed thirteen so far, so we should be nearly there.”

  I grinned in quiet delight. How on earth did he know that?

  “You learn to be observant of everything when you live out in the mountains,” he said in answer to the question I hadn’t asked. “There are no street signs or GPS to get you home in the dark or the rain, or to help you find the safe path across a scree slope after snow. I guess I haven’t lost the instincts.”

  “And I’m very glad of that,” I said, putting out a hand to feel what had to be the fourteenth door on the right, given what Jace had said.