The Child Thief Read online

  I supposed one could argue that I was just being bitter about this whole subject, having been deemed ineligible to raise even a single child. My own child. Jealousy did make it easy to read things into a situation that might not be there—turn something noble into something… less noble.

  Still, I stood by my belief: parents should have the option to raise their own children. It was just a course of nature. I’d have been willing to take out a loan and work like a donkey for the rest of my life to pay it off, if that was what it took to keep Hope and avoid being a burden to my country. But no, as a single teen mother, I’d been deemed a potential drag to the system, and hadn’t even been given the option.

  I sighed, shaking my head and knowing that this wasn’t a productive line of thought. I’d been through it so many times already over the past two years, thinking about how the government could work differently. How there had to be another way for hardworking people with lower incomes to keep their kids, if that was what they wanted. And I still didn’t know what the solution was. I wasn’t a politician or an economist. But basic common sense told me that we’d allowed everyone to keep and raise their own kids before, for who knew how many centuries, prior to the CRAS’s introduction. And that we could do it again. That the way we lived now was a result of humans overthinking things and meddling with stuff we should just leave alone.

  Because this wasn’t what nature had intended for us. Couldn’t be. Not when it felt so damn unnatural.

  “So, returning to the matter at hand,” Abe said after a pause. He leaned back in his chair and gave Jackie and me a sly look. “I really think you two were being disingenuous when you offered to give Ant and me a break today.”

  I wrinkled my nose at him, while Jackie frowned. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Um, if it’s only old Gramps and Grammy, then it’s hardly much of an offer.”

  “Oh, that.” Jackie scoffed. “Yeah, if. Call us disingenuous once we verify that they are actually old folks, smartass. For all we know, we could be about to lower ourselves into little Becky and Jason’s military uncle’s backyard.”

  I shuddered. We’d hit a military family’s house once, on my second mission ever, and the number of Rottweilers they’d had lurking around the grounds had been insane. I’d had a bit of a phobia about dogs ever since, to be honest. Except for my wolves. They were sweetie pies.

  “Hopefully this time we’ll be faced with an army of cats,” I muttered.

  “Yeah, kitties I can deal with,” Jackie said with a smirk.

  “Meow,” Ant purred, throwing us a salacious wink.

  Jackie scowled at him. “What are you, twelve?”

  “Also,” Abe added, “that look would sit way better on you without the ’stache. Just saying.”

  “Oh, thank God someone finally said it!” Marco burst out from the cockpit. “Seriously, dude. Get rid of that thing. It reminds me of Weazeloo, and not in a good way.”

  Jackie erupted into laughter. “How can you look like Weazeloo in a good way?”

  Marco shrugged his shoulders. “Everyone has their taste, girl.”

  Weazeloo was a wizard character from an old fantasy TV series, which had recently been adapted and rebooted for a modern audience. I’d seen one episode of it, and could verify that the comparison was not a compliment.

  “Look, I’d grow a full-on beard…” Ant sighed, scratching at the faint stubble lining his jaw. “But I can’t, okay? And there’s the truth of it. It comes out all patchy and gross.”

  Jackie threw her head back. “Ha! I knew you were twelve.”

  Now it was Ant’s turn to scowl at her. “Laugh all you want, JK, but the ‘stache is staying. It’s the best I can think of to maintain my individuality. Which is important, you know. Keeps me from having an identity crisis every morning when I wake up and see him across the room.” He jerked a finger at his brother.

  “You mean across the bed,” Abe added in a low voice.

  Jackie clapped a hand to her forehead. “Oh, Lord. Oversharing, people. OVERSHARING.”

  “Do you guys seriously share a bed?” Marco muttered.

  “Nah. We love each other, but not that much,” Ant replied. “We have twin beds.”

  “Do you have matching pajamas too?” I asked.

  Abe pursed his lips. “That’s personal information.”

  “Seriously though,” Ant cut in. “If it’s what you people want, I can shave my moustache. If it’s, I mean… if it’s really that bad.”

  “It is,” Marco confirmed.

  “But then how would you be able to tell the difference between us?” Ant mused. “I guess you wouldn’t be able to, given that neither of us wants a change of hairdo. In which case, we could switch names. I always wanted Abe Lincoln, but he nabbed it first and I got stuck with the crappy alternative.”

  “We could take turns,” Abe allowed.

  “Honestly, be my guest.” Jackie sighed, rolling her eyes. “Like you say, I wouldn’t notice the difference.”

  Abe raised an eyebrow. “Why, because we’d both be just as sexy?”

  “You don’t want me to answer that,” Jackie deadpanned.

  I chuckled, then pulled my focus away from the interior of the aircraft and looked out through the small round window near my seat. Judging by the change of landscape—the industrial area we’d left was far behind us now—we’d covered a lot of ground already. Which was another perk to this aircraft: in addition to its stealth, it had sheer speed. These machines were built for spying and had a way of zipping in and out of places incredibly quickly. They were also hard to detect, especially after dark, as the exterior was built to be inconspicuous and blend in with its surroundings. All of which meant it was perfect for missions where we couldn’t afford to be discovered.

  “How much longer do we have, Marco?” Jackie asked.

  I glanced at her to see that she had drawn her attention away from the twins and was looking out of a window, too.

  “Um, about eighteen minutes,” Marco replied.

  A shiver ran through me. That wasn’t long. And although I had gone on a number of these missions now, the nerves were always intense. Perhaps even more so, with each additional trip. Because I had started to realize how unpredictable they could be.

  “You nervous?” Jackie asked in a low tone, switching seats to get a little closer to me, and a little farther from the twins.

  I sucked in a breath and nodded, seeing no point in lying. My cheeks felt like they were flushed with nerves, so I doubted I could hide it anyway, even if I had wanted to.

  She gave me a knowing look, then a small, reassuring squeeze of my knee, before withdrawing. Jackie wasn’t one for physical contact (well, not in the affectionate sense), and that was probably the first that she’d ever touched me. I gave her a grateful smile, but decided she might not appreciate getting a squeeze back, so kept my hands folded on my lap.

  We all went quiet for the rest of the journey, even the twins. I sensed the tension settling around each of us, now that those few initial minutes of levity had passed. I closed my eyes, trying to clear my mind and go over the plan we had discussed before our departure.

  Nelson had sent a drone to the location in advance, and it had scoped the place out and given her schematics, so we knew that the building was laid out over three stories and contained eighteen different rooms in total. Her drone was rigged not only with a powerful X-ray device, which provided us with a reliable plan of the property, but also a detector that picked up electronic frequencies, thus letting us know where the alarms were. So we knew where the children’s bedrooms were. Theoretically. They weren’t too difficult to place, once we had the scans, as they contained the smallest furniture in the house. Of course, given that our target properties usually had several children living in them, it could still be tricky, as we’d have to check more than one bedroom. But in this case, there were only two kids’ rooms located on the ground floor, and the lack of children kind of confirmed to me that we
probably were dealing with old folks whose own kids had flown the nest.

  Which would give us the additional advantage of not needing to examine multiple children’s features to make sure we were kidnapping the right ones. As crazy as that sounded, it was a real danger when the only photographs parents had of their children were sometimes over a year old, and taken when they were still newborns. Some households could have more than one child around the same age, and while we hadn’t made that mistake yet, I was always leery of it happening.

  As for the alarms, it was a large building and there were several of them. But that would be a problem for the twins to deal with, before we set foot on the ground.

  The rest of the journey slipped away quickly, and before I knew it, the aircraft was slowing and Marco was announcing our arrival. I grabbed my backpack and dug into it, retrieving my balaclava/head mask and pulling it over my head. It obscured my entire face, except for slits for my eyes, nostrils, and mouth. We all wore black, unlabeled clothing, and the mask blended seamlessly with the rest of my outfit in the darkness, making me look like one dark, fluid form. Anyone could probably see that I was female, but that was it.

  I reached up to an overhead locker and pulled down a wide, black belt and a pair of gloves. The belt was filled with equipment I might need, and I secured it around my waist, then put on the gloves.

  My colleagues began to prepare, too—with Jackie donning a belt and gloves, like me—and soon, we were all standing up, tensely watching our descent through the windows as the lawn-speckled city of Parkdale came into focus.

  It was quiet now, approaching 2:00 a.m., so hopefully everyone would be asleep. If they weren’t, we’d have to hang around longer, which I really didn’t feel like doing. My stomach was already tight with nerves, and waiting would only make it worse.

  I felt my belt again, double-checking that all the equipment was there, and then straightened and waited as the aircraft descended. Once we were directly above the roof of our target mansion, the aircraft stopped and hovered in place, the side hatch gliding open and letting in a cool gust of wind. The twins pulled the first drone—a small, round, dark gray piece of machinery that was shaped like an oversized beetle, and was also incredibly stealthy— from an under-seat compartment, and once they’d configured the settings, Abe pushed it to the edge of the aircraft’s open door. Ant picked up the control console and, pushing a few buttons and levers, launched the machine into the air. Its soft hum was barely noticeable, even in the dead of night, as Ant took it closer to the house and began to navigate it around the perimeter.

  “Okay,” he murmured. “Zapper’s going off in five, four, three, two…”

  The zapper was another little apparatus Nelson had rigged to the drone. It sent out a pulse that knocked out electronics within specified physical parameters, disabling the alarms, and also helped us once we got into the house, as the absence of light was obviously a good thing. If someone did wake up, darkness caused confusion and gave us the advantage, since people didn’t usually have flashlights or candles on hand.

  Also, it prevented them from calling the police.

  We just had to always be careful to keep our aircraft a safe distance away when the pulse was going out, because if it reached us… Yeah, that would be bad.

  The little red lights that had been flashing at intervals on the exterior walls of the house suddenly winked out, along with a handful of nearby streetlights, and Ant put the drone in hover mode and set the console down before picking up his comm device.

  “Pulse activated,” he said softly into the receiver. “Ready for your takeover, Nelly.”

  Her voice came crackling back. “Roger that.”

  A handful of heartbeats later, the drone was moving again, cutting a wide sweep farther away from the house and then hovering over the neighboring roads, where it would help Nelson keep an eye on the surrounding area.

  Abe then pulled the second drone from its compartment and prepared it for takeoff too, before Ant launched it into the air, controlling it just like he had the first. Abe switched on the screen in the wall of the aircraft, near the entrance of the cockpit, and an X-ray, bird’s eye view of the house blinked to life, our vision of the second drone’s view. The picture was murky, to say the least, and it was difficult to make out details, past the structure of the house and the shapes of furniture, but it was easy enough to tell if there was movement, which was the main thing. A heatmapping tool would definitely be more useful than the X-ray for locating residents, but Nelson didn’t have an unlimited budget, and even her contacts only had so many resources they could offer us. So we made do with what we had.

  Right now, all seemed still, which was a good sign.

  Ant handed Jackie and me earpieces, and we fitted them into our ears. We’d take comms with us too, in case of an emergency, but we needed to avoid talking as much as possible. With the earpieces, the twins would have a direct, quiet connection to us, and could give us a heads-up if anything started moving.

  Jackie reached up to the zip line holder attached to the ceiling and extended two lines, handing one to me while attaching the other to her belt. I attached mine, too. The aircraft lowered a little farther.

  My heart raced as we cast one last look at each other, and then moved to the threshold of the open hatch.

  It was time.

  4

  We landed on the lawn with a soft thud.

  My first instinct was to search for kennels, even though none had shown up on the scan. There weren’t any that I could see beneath the moonlight, in the spacious, ornament-filled garden. Another good sign, I hoped.

  Jackie signaled for me to follow her, her dark eyes glistening with alertness behind her mask, and we crept to the building. Keeping close to the wall, we moved around it toward the opposite side of the house, where the children’s rooms were located. My breathing was loud in my ears, my senses perked for the slightest sound or movement.

  Once we reached the other side of the structure, we walked a few more feet and then stopped outside a rectangular frosted glass window, which was supposed to connect to a bathroom. Jackie reached into her belt and pulled out a cutter, then, after one quick glance around us, pressed it to the edge of the window and began to slice the glass. The device cut through it quietly.

  The kids were a little farther up, per the schematics, but it was too dangerous to cut directly into their rooms in case they woke up. As discreet as the cutter was, it just wasn’t worth the risk, so we always had to try to enter via a room that was near our destination, but less likely to be occupied.

  And we were counting on Ant and Abe to warn us if this bathroom was occupied.

  After two minutes, the windowpane was ready to be removed. We used our gloved fingers to grip its edges and lowered it down together, careful not to let it shatter.

  Jackie moved in first. Deftly, like a panther, she swept over the windowsill and into the large, awaiting—and thankfully unoccupied—bathroom. I followed her, much less gracefully. She was already at the bathroom’s door by the time my boots touched the ground, and I stepped cautiously over the marble flooring, following after her.

  We emerged into a dark hallway and stopped, listening again. After a whole minute of hearing nothing, Jackie removed the flashlight from the belt and switched it on at a dim setting, just enough to show our way. Then we began moving again.

  The photographs on the wall caught my attention as we crept closer to the kids. The first was of a young, brown-haired couple on their wedding day, a tall man and a woman just over half his size. The next photo seemed to have been taken perhaps ten years later and was of both of them standing in front of a Christmas tree. And then a decade later, and a decade later, until the last one, at the end of the hallway, showed an elderly couple with pure white hair, clad in ski suits—the man looking about as slim as he had in the first photo, while the woman had gained at least twenty pounds.

  Yup. I was pretty sure this house belonged to Gramps and Grammy after a
ll.

  I gripped Jackie’s arm and pointed at the frame, wanting to make sure she had noticed that final photograph. She gave me a knowing nod, and then we continued through the house at a slightly more confident pace than before.

  Now, I wasn’t one to take advantage of the elderly, but in this case, I felt our cause was justified.

  We crossed a wide entrance hall, then entered another corridor, and after another half minute, we were stopping outside a pair of pale blue doors.

  “Think these are the ones,” Jackie said, in a voice barely louder than a breath.

  I nodded, swallowing, and then we each picked a door and pressed our ears to the cracks. I couldn’t hear anything, but then again, infants could be quiet when they slept. Pulling away from the door, I caught Jackie’s eye, and she nodded, indicating that she was ready to move in, too. I returned my focus to the door and gripped the handle ever so gently, and was glad to find it well oiled. It glided downward beautifully, and then I was stepping into a generously sized square bedroom filled with colorful furniture… and a cot at the far end of the room.

  Holding my breath, I approached swiftly while doing my best not to step on any of the toys that were scattered across the floor. I was just reaching for the tissue in my belt (smeared with the chemical we used to sedate infants temporarily, to keep the experience from being too traumatic, as well as prevent them from making a noise), when I peered over the edge of the cot and realized that it was empty.

  I blinked, wondering for a second if my eyes were deceiving me. But they weren’t. There was no kid there.

  I backed away and looked around the rest of the room more carefully, wondering if perhaps the child had managed to climb out of the cot and had fallen asleep somewhere on the floor. But there was no kid to be found anywhere.