The Child Thief Read online

  Jackie pursed her lips, considering his words, while Nelson nodded slowly. Her eyes were fixed on the man’s face, and yet seemingly distant with thought. “Assuming we do want to be a part of this, what would be the first step?” she asked finally.

  “The first step of the entire initiative is to figure out which members we want the group to consist of,” he replied. “And for that, we need a trustworthy vetting squad. We have only just started, and since there’s only a limited number of admin volunteers, each admin has been advised to build up a small team for themselves out of their initial contacts. I’d ask you to join mine.”

  “Oh, I see,” Nelson said, taking a step back and folding her arms over her chest. “It’s very grassroots, then.”

  Mr. X smiled. “Very.”

  “How many others have joined your team so far?” Julia wondered, giving him a considering look.

  “Currently, it’s just myself, because you’re the first people I’ve reached out to,” he admitted. “I wouldn’t need all of your group at once, typically, but I need more than just myself. Ideally, no fewer than two people should make a visitation, for security reasons, and sometimes more, because Nathan’s definitely not as confident about all of OH’s groups as he was about you. Which is why he suggested I reach out to you as my first contact. You’re in the top rung of members who are most likely to be trustworthy, as I said.”

  “I see,” Nelson replied again, then drew in a slow breath. She paused, glancing at Jackie, Julia, and me. “Mr. X,” she said after a beat, “do you mind if we have a word in private?”

  “No problem,” he replied with a shrug, and the four of us moved away from the man, back toward the ladder on the opposite end of the catwalk.

  She turned her back on him once we reached it and looked at us questioningly. “Thoughts?” she whispered.

  “I’m up for trying this out,” Jackie replied, surprisingly quickly. She was arguably the bravest among us, and definitely the most badass, but she was also usually the most cautious—and definitely not one to barrel headfirst into a situation unless she felt comfortable with it.

  Which gave me a boost of confidence about my own decision.

  “Me too,” I replied. Yes, there would be risks involved. More risks than in our current operation, as we would be coming into contact with so many more people. But I had already resigned myself to a life of risk, and I wasn’t about to back out on taking on a bit more, given the potential of this project.

  “I’m willing to try it, too,” Julia said cautiously.

  And then we were waiting for Nelson’s answer.

  “Me too,” she replied finally, with a firm nod of her head. “I think we should all give this alliance a shot.”

  And with that, she turned around again, and we all followed her back across the catwalk to the man.

  “I can confirm that I and my team members present here would like to sign up for this. I don’t know about the rest of my colleagues, of course. I’ll have to ask them. But you can put the four of us down on your list for now.”

  A flicker of relief crossed his face. Given that this was his first visitation, which he had made all alone, I could imagine that it must’ve been pretty nerve-wracking.

  “In that case,” he said, straightening his back, “is anyone free for a visitation tomorrow evening? Likely after work hours. I only need one for tomorrow, as I’m still working through the higher rung of trusted people.”

  “Ah, I can’t tomorrow,” Jackie muttered.

  “I’ll come,” I said, knowing I had nothing to do in the evening except watch my six-inch TV. This would be a much more fulfilling use of my time.

  His honeycomb eyes lighted on me, and his lips tugged upward in a small, appreciative smile. “Okay, RobinHood21. I’ll send you a message over the network as soon as I have details, which is most likely going to be either later tonight or early tomorrow.”

  “Sounds good, Mr. X,” I replied, returning his smile, even though I knew he couldn’t see it properly. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  8

  I checked my messages on OH before I went to sleep, and then first thing in the morning, but there was still no word from Mr. X. So I left for work, wondering whether tonight’s excursion might have been canceled for some reason. The thought made me feel disappointed, because I had been counting on it as my carrot to get me through the day.

  This was important stuff. If my occasional missions with Nelson had managed to turn my life around and give it so much meaning, then I could only imagine the impact this whole new project could have on me—on all of us. How much it could change everything.

  If we were careful, of course.

  I knew things could just as easily go down in flames. It would only take one bad apple, as Jackie had pointed out. But at least, on this morning, the risks weren’t enough to overshadow my enthusiasm, and I couldn’t wait to get started.

  I also wished that Mr. X and I had exchanged numbers, so that he could contact me via my cellphone while I was out. I had a pay-as-you-go SIM that couldn’t be traced to me, and thanks to the encryption app Nelson had installed on my phone, I could make and receive calls without my location being compromised, or anyone tapping the call. So no matter who he was or how dangerous this new portal was, a phone call could never lead back to me.

  Unfortunately, we hadn’t actually exchanged phone numbers. So I had to wait.

  When I got home and logged into the network, a message was indeed there, sent a few hours ago, at 3:02 p.m.

  “Can you make it to Umberland Station at 10 p.m.?

  - X”

  A smirk twitched my lips at his signoff, as my brain had registered it as a kiss on first read.

  I then blew out, glancing at the time in the corner of my tablet. It was just after 6:00 p.m. now, so yes, I could definitely make it. Ten at night was a pretty late meeting time, and it meant I’d feel like death getting up for work in the morning. But there was no way I was missing this, no matter how much sleep I didn’t get.

  “I’ll be there,” I typed back. “But can we exchange numbers? In case we need to contact each other once we arrive.” He’d contacted Nelson via her personal phone, so I didn’t see why it would be a problem. I proceeded to type my number and hit send on the message.

  I then left the tablet to scarf down dinner and have a quick shower, and by the time I returned, he had replied.

  “Sure,” followed by his own number.

  I sucked in a breath and entered it into my address book, his becoming the first entry under X. I then hurried to get ready to leave the cabin… while praying this evening would go well.

  The journey was almost a three-hour ride, and it ended up being far too long for comfort. At some point during the trip, the excitement I’d felt earlier in the day morphed into nervousness, then sheer angst, and my stomach was feeling quite sick by the time I pulled into Umberland’s small station.

  I forced myself to take deep breaths as I parked on a road nearby, while trying to convince myself that this was going to go okay. That I could trust Mr. X. He was an OH admin, after all. Or at least, he was supposed to be. Now that my paranoid mind was zeroing in on details of the situation I’d gotten myself into, though, it helpfully reminded me that there was something that had felt kind of off about him last night. He really hadn’t struck me as your typical admin.

  Nerds can work out, I repeated to myself firmly, knowing that this line of thought was not productive. I was here now, and I’d agreed to accompany Mr. X to visit whoever it was we were supposed to be meeting tonight.

  And after a three-hour journey here, there was no way I was turning back.

  I just needed to try to learn more about the guy, because most of my nerves came from lack of information—both about Mr. X and about who he was taking me to meet tonight. Once I got that, I’d stand a chance of feeling better about the situation.

  And if I didn’t like his answers… Well, there was still the option of running.

>   But I hoped it wouldn’t come to that, because I really, really wanted this OH portal idea to work. It was the only step forward for all of us, if we wanted to have any hope of affecting significant change in our country. Otherwise we’d just remain disjointed, weak, isolated little groups forever.

  Plus, it had occurred to me that with so many minds pooled in one place, we might even find someone who had already broken into the government’s adoption archives, or was at least further along in the job than Nelson was. And I was willing to risk a lot for that. Nelson might believe she was close to cracking them, but she’d told me herself she couldn’t guarantee it. The idea of immediate access to my daughter’s location, even if it was only a remote possibility, was enough to give me the kick in the ass I needed to pull myself together.

  Setting my jaw, I forced confidence into my step and crossed the road separating me from the station.

  I climbed the stairs that led up to the entry barriers and was about to walk through them when I stalled, spotting a familiar tall, broad figure, once again cast in shadow, standing in a corner just in front of the barriers.

  Balling my fists reflexively, I headed cautiously over to him. Through the gloom, it took him a moment to recognize me, given the fact that he’d only seen my eyes and a sliver of my lips last night. He looked me up and down, squinting slightly. Unless I was misreading things, it seemed that he was feeling as much caution toward me as I was toward him.

  “RobinHood21?” he asked after a long pause, his voice low.

  I nodded, my neck feeling uncharacteristically stiff. “Yes.”

  Still scrutinizing me, he unshouldered his backpack and pulled out a pad. Then he glanced down at it and swiped at the screen several times before presenting it to me. “I’m going to need you to confirm that.”

  Taking the device, I gazed down at the OH portal’s login window, and paused for a moment, wondering if there could be any harm in entering my credentials. Even if this was some kind of ruse to steal them, though, I didn’t keep any identifying information in my account. And it seemed like a legitimate request, a decent way to verify that I was who I said I was. So I entered my username and password, and a second later, the device was logged on to the network. I handed the pad back to him and watched closely as he glanced at the top of the screen, where it displayed my username, profile, and stats for my general activity, such as how many forum posts I’d made and when I’d last logged in.

  “Hm, okay,” he muttered after a moment, seemingly satisfied. He moved to replace his pad in his bag, but before he could, I took a step forward.

  “Hey, not to be funny, but I’d like to see you log in to your admin account.”

  He blinked, staring at me for a moment, and then nodded. “Of course.”

  He brought the pad back to life, and I watched intently as his fingers moved over the screen, then passed the device back to me. My eyes immediately snapped to the top right-hand corner, as his had done, and I let out a quiet breath upon seeing that it was indeed logged in to the right account. This seemed to be at least some proof that he was who he said he was—the admin Mr. X, whom my group had seen frequently around the network before—and it went a fair way toward loosening the knot in my stomach and making me feel better about the situation. At least, a little. I guessed the fact that he’d seemed suspicious of me too helped with that.

  “So, now that we have that out of the way,” he said slowly, taking the device back and placing it in his bag. “It’s good to meet you again, I suppose.”

  “Yeah,” I replied, wetting my lips and trying to restore some of the moisture there. My eyes scanned the length of him again, and this time I was less focused on his face and more on his general appearance. And I couldn’t help but notice once again that his clothes looked too small for him.

  It gave me another prickle of unease. It was just damn odd for someone to walk around in clothes that were too small. But I decided that wasn’t the best way to begin a conversation. By the end of this evening, though, I was determined to get to the bottom of why that was.

  There was an awkward pause, during which the two of us continued eyeing each other, and then I looked around, flapping my arms against my sides to diffuse the silence. “So, where are we going?” I asked. “Are we going to take a train or what?”

  “Um, no, actually,” he replied, breaking eye contact and glancing toward the street beneath us. “Follow me.”

  He took off down the stairs before I could say another word, and I followed him, struggling to keep up with his swift, broad strides, surprisingly agile for a man so big. He led me around the edge of the station and down a deserted alley nestled behind it. Halfway down, he stopped abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk and lowered to a crouch in front of a drain that lay there, his outfit creaking slightly with the motion.

  I frowned, wondering what on Earth he was doing.

  I knew from last night that he was pretty creative with meeting spots, but when he slipped his fingers around the drain’s edges and dislodged it with one forceful pull, I realized I never could have expected this one. I gaped as he swung his legs through the hole, and, within the blink of an eye, disappeared inside it.

  “Um, what…” My mouth opened and closed like a fish’s as I stared at the now-empty sidewalk. I cast a furtive glance over my shoulder to check that the street was still empty, and then moved tentatively toward the drain, still in disbelief.

  I peered downward and saw him standing at the bottom of a ladder, his face tilted up to me and illuminated by the dull orange lighting of the nearby streetlamp, which somehow managed to reach him down there. He was over six feet underground, plus the six and a half or so feet of his personal height. So basically twelve feet to the ground.

  “Really?” I said.

  A slightly amused expression played at the corners of his mouth as he gazed back up at me. “What?” he asked, giving a shrug.

  I closed my lips, concluding that this guy was a little bit insane. What was wrong with meeting whoever we were about to meet on a dark street corner? This street looked pretty empty, for that matter.

  But he disappeared from view a moment later, ducking his head slightly and moving deeper into the tunnel, and I had no choice but to swing myself into the damp drain and follow after him. Unless I wanted to cave in to my nerves and go home. Which I had already decided I didn’t want to do. This was my way forward.

  I was halfway down the slimy ladder when his deep voice echoed up the tunnel, the sound waves reverberating all around me in the narrow passage and feeling as though they were vibrating my very stomach. “Please close the lid after you.”

  I stalled, my eyes going wide as I looked back up at the drain’s entrance. “What?” I said, incredulous, my voice echoing as well. “But it’d be pitch black!” I hadn’t thought to bring a flashlight with me this evening, as I’d had no reason to think I would need it.

  In response, I heard a click, and then a glaring shaft of white light beamed up through the tunnel, blinding me completely when I glanced down in its direction.

  I exhaled, closing my eyes in an attempt to rid them of the white spots dancing beneath their lids. “Okay,” I muttered. “Point made.”

  But even when my eyes recovered, I hesitated. I pulled a deep frown as I returned my gaze to the grate. Was I really going to do as he said and close it? I had more than one reservation about shutting myself inside a dark tunnel with a guy who was the size of a bear, and whom I had only just met yesterday.

  Yes, he was an admin, but still…

  I exhaled, and after a moment, decided to continue biting the bullet. I just hoped I wouldn’t regret it.

  Moving back up the ladder, I yanked the heavy drain closed above me, then continued my descent, silently praying to the powers of the universe to look after me tonight.

  I reached the bottom and winced as my boots landed in a slushy puddle, but dared not look down, not wanting to get a visual of the dreck I must’ve just stepped into. Ugh. I was
going to return home smelling like a sewer rat. Looking to my left, I could see Mr. X’s light flashing against the walls about ten feet ahead, still casting enough light for me to make my way toward him. He’d been walking at a slower pace, I realized, waiting for me to catch up.

  “So, seriously, X, what is this?” I asked, reaching him. My nerves were too taut for this mystery to stretch out any longer.

  He kept his eyes focused straight ahead, on what seemed to be a never-ending tunnel, though his expression turned mildly apologetic. “To be honest, I technically don’t have permission to talk about it,” he replied. “But you’ll see soon enough. It’s not too much farther along.”

  “You’re about to take me there, and yet you’re not allowed to talk about it?” I asked, incredulous.

  He cast me a serious look. “Yes,” he replied. “As admins, it’s protocol, and part of the oath we take, when it comes to securing the privacy of others. If someone comes with us, they see what they see, but we’re not supposed to talk about stuff in advance.”

  I sighed, feeling miffed. I mean, I supposed it was a good thing they were so respectful of others’ privacy. But still, I really would have appreciated him throwing me a bone.

  I guessed I was just going to have to wait and see.

  Resigning myself to silence, I kept my eyes on the path ahead, trying to make out an end to the tunnel. About three minutes of trudging along later, X stopped abruptly and turned to face the wall on our right—where, I realized, another passageway lay.

  We moved down it, following its gentle curves. It snaked this way and that in a winding path before we reached another offshoot and made our way down that one. After another ten minutes, we were deep in a veritable maze of tunnels, and my nerves returned full force. I instinctively felt for the gun strapped beneath my coat, needing to remind myself that it was still there. I didn’t get the sense that X was going to try anything with me, but his physique made him a pretty intimidating guy, and I still didn’t know enough about him to fully trust him.