Hideout by Jack Heath (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

‘I’ll take a rifle,’ Zara says, holding out a hand.

‘Me too,’ I say quickly. I don’t know how to fire it, but there are only two long-range weapons here; if I have one of them, I’m half as likely to get shot in the back.

Donnie passes the rifles to me and Zara. I keep mine pointed at the floor, trying to look like I know how to hold it. Fred takes the SIG Sauer pistol. Donnie gives one of the Remington shotguns to Kyle and keeps the other for himself. Samson gets the knife.

Cedric holds out his hand for a weapon and realises there are none left. He drops his hand, embarrassed.

‘You should stay here and protect the house,’ Donnie says.

‘With what?’ Cedric asks.

The rest of us are already headed back up the stairs. ‘Use your imagination.’

‘Is there a prize for whoever bags him?’ Samson asks.

‘The prize is we get to keep doing our work.’ Fred pulls a pair of goggles over his head and turns to me. ‘Sorry to drop you in the deep end, Lux.’

‘I’m good,’ I say. An untrue statement in every sense. ‘Let’s do this.’

In the alien light of the night-vision goggles, I can see tree branches bristling with flakes of sleet. The ground is a mixture of rock and muddy slush. If the guy is a hiker, he picked a hell of a night for it. It’s the kind of cold that dries out my lips, and leaves my knuckles cracked and bleeding. There’s a distant moaning that I hope is the wind but might be wolves. I’m wearing a thick coat from the wardrobe, but it doesn’t protect my legs from the frosty air.

We’re clustered on the front porch. Fred has switched off the security lamps. He points at each of us in turn, and then jabs his finger towards a different part of the forest. Apparently we’re splitting up.

Works for me. If the hiker is a cop, and I have to explain that I’m not a psychopath—just an FBI consultant who eats psychopaths—I’d rather the others weren’t within earshot. I just hope I find the guy before anyone else does. And that I see him before he sees me.

‘Try to get him alive,’ Fred murmurs, then he sneaks off the porch into the darkness of the woods.

I move in the direction he chose for me. There’s no trail. I’m wading through thigh-high brush, in shoes that are more suitable for a funeral. With the goggles I have no peripheral vision, but I can see a good distance. Fifty yards away a withered pine leans at a severe angle, threatening to fall. I recognise it from one of the screens inside, so I know there’s a camera up ahead, but not the right one. The camera that caught the hiker was pointed at a birch tree with a distinctive wedge taken out of the side, like someone started trying to chop it down and then gave up. I suspect that when Fred was dividing up the search area, he sent me in the direction where the guy was least likely to be.

This is your chance to walk away. I ignore the voice as I creep through the woods.

They don’t know who you are. You can sneak back to the house, find a key to one of the cars and drive home.

I rap my knuckles against the side of my head, as though I can dislodge the thought. The goggles flicker for a second. It’s not like I can just pretend I never found these guys.

You can call in an anonymous tip. The cops will get them.

And then what?

The voice falls silent. It knows the hunger is already driving me crazy. My supply of cadavers has been cut off. If I go home, I’ll eventually hurt someone. If I stay here, at least my victims will have it coming.

I recognise another tree up ahead. It has a straight-out branch supported by one at an angle, like a hangman’s gallows. I’m starting to get a feel for the lay of the land. There should be a camera … there. I see it—a deceptively small white box, nailed to a different tree. No cables, and the foliage is too thick for solar power. Fred and co must use high-quality batteries, and even so, they’d have to change them every few days.

‘Hey!’ A shout in the distance. A grunt and a splash of leaves from somewhere to my left. I turn my head so fast I get dizzy. Because of the goggles, the light takes a split second longer to reach my eyes, and it feels like I’m still spinning when I’m not.

Even with the goggles, I can’t see the commotion, but I can hear it. A thud. A shallow cry. Someone is fighting for their life, but they’re trying to do it quietly.

I head towards the sounds, my head low. The wind picks up, whispering in my ears, and suddenly I can’t hear the ruckus anymore. I keep moving. My hands are numb, clutching the gun that I don’t even know how to shoot.

Branches whip back and forth up ahead. Someone is running towards me, breathing heavily. I try to move away, but a tree pokes me in the back and snags my jacket.

A figure bursts out of the shrubbery. Not Samson. An older man, Black, maybe forty, with worry lines around his mouth and a wool hat stretched over his head. He’s dressed for the weather but not the darkness, his eyes wide and wild. Part of his puffy parka has been sliced open, leaving a dark stain dripping down his arm and onto his khaki trousers.

He crashes right into me. The branch behind me snaps, and we both hit the ground, hard. I cling to the gun as I wrestle him