Hideout by Jack Heath (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

off. He weighs maybe a hundred and seventy pounds. I can smell his blood, hot and sticky.

I shut my eyes for a second. He’s a bystander. I can’t let myself bite him. I can’t.

The man doesn’t attack me. He scrambles up, backs off. He doesn’t appear to be armed.

‘Don’t shoot,’ he says.

I lower the gun, but not all the way. ‘Are you police?’

‘No.’ He doesn’t offer any other explanation for being out here, just gives a little shake of his head.

I have a million questions for this guy, but there’s only time for one. ‘Druznetski?’

‘What?’ He looks confused, then his eyes narrow. ‘Blake!’

Fear opens its jaws to swallow me. He knows who I am, despite the shaved head and the goggles. How? I’m sure we’ve never met.

He could expose me to the others. If they catch this guy, I’m screwed.

So either kill him, or get him out of here.

Footsteps crash through the forest towards us. Someone is following his trail.

I point in the direction Fred sent me. Hopefully he won’t stray into anyone else’s search area. ‘Go that way,’ I whisper. ‘There are five others after you.’

The man hesitates, perhaps wondering if I’m sending him into a trap.

I put the gun down on the dirt and hold up my bare hands. ‘Go! Now!’

He gets moving, fighting his way deeper into the woods. I pick up the gun and wait, wondering who his pursuer is. Fred sent Samson that way. But if it’s Samson, why isn’t he hollering for the others?

Whoever it is, their footfalls soon stop. Maybe they’re listening for sounds of the man’s escape. I bash through the undergrowth, making as much noise as possible.

Bad idea. I shamble into a clearing only to be attacked with a Bowie knife. A pound and a half of sharp steel sweeps out of the shadows at my chest.

I stagger backwards, swinging the gun just in time to knock the blade sideways into a tree. ‘Samson! It’s me!’

Samson stops trying to wrench the knife out of the wood. ‘Lux,’ he says, realising. ‘You see which way the guy went? I want to talk to him.’

He seems to have talk confused with stab. ‘He ran back this way.’ I point behind Samson. ‘Just now. Must have gotten past you.’

Zara emerges from the woods to my left, as silently as a wraith. Her goggles make her expression unreadable. Unlike me, she looks like she knows how to hold her gun. ‘What’s going on?’

Fred sent Zara in the opposite direction. She must have heard the fight and come running.

‘He’s around here somewhere,’ Samson says. ‘Did you see him?’ He’s favouring one arm, nursing the other close to his chest. The guy must have injured him.

A satchel with a slashed strap lies on the dirt nearby. The fabric is speckled with blood. I reach for the satchel, but Zara grabs it first. She quickly checks inside.

‘Nothing,’ she says. ‘Was this his?’

‘Yeah,’ Samson says. ‘I guess I cut it off him.’

‘And it was empty?’

Samson seems to notice the blood on me for the first time. ‘What happened to you?’

‘I hit him with the butt of my gun,’ I say. ‘I think maybe I broke his collarbone. But he got away.’

‘Shit,’ Zara says.

‘Which way did he go?’ Samson asks.

‘Like I said, I thought he went this way, but that turned out to be you.’

The three of us turn around, all scanning different parts of the woods. I’m the only one looking in the right direction, but I can’t see him anymore.

Who are you? And how did you know my name?

CHAPTER 7

I steal eggs and cook animals. Or is it the other way around?

‘Kill the prisoners and pack your bags,’ Fred says as we walk quickly back towards the house. ‘We leave in fifteen minutes.’

I suppress a flinch. ‘I only just got here.’

‘It’s bad timing, I know. Sorry, Lux.’

‘You want to leave?’ Donnie looks angry. ‘Just let the cops run us out of town?’

‘We can’t stop them,’ Fred says.

‘Sure we can. We have plenty of weapons. We can hold them off. After two or ten or a hundred dead police, you really think they’ll keep trying to get in?’

‘Yes,’ Fred says bluntly. ‘Cops are like mosquitoes. Swat one, and two more will smell the blood and come looking for you.’

Donnie grinds his teeth, but says nothing.

We emerge from the woods and walk up to the porch, where Cedric is waiting. ‘What’s going on?’

‘The guy got away. I’m pushing the button.’ Fred gets out his phone and brings up an app I don’t recognise. A red circle appears on the screen.

Everyone else tenses up. Whatever this app does, it’s serious.

‘For real?’ Kyle says, eyes wide.

‘For real.’ Fred taps the red circle with his thumb. A dialogue box appears on the screen. Are you sure? This action cannot be undone.

‘Wait,’ Zara says.

Fred’s thumb hovers over the yes button. ‘The sooner I do this, the more likely it is to work,’ he says. ‘Right now, that guy will be calling his colleagues. We have thirty minutes tops before they get here.’

Kyle is shifting his weight from foot to foot, his gaze flitting from Fred’s phone to all our faces.

‘I don’t think the guy was a cop,’ I say.

Fred looks at me. ‘Explain.’

I have no idea if the man told me the truth. But this secret, isolated house is the perfect place to prepare my next six meals. I can’t let Fred take the Guards anywhere else.

‘He didn’t have a weapon or a partner. Police always come in pairs.’ I try to sound confident. ‘He would have yelled out to his partner if he had one.’

‘You’re right.’ Donnie sounds hopeful. ‘They usually wear uniforms, too.’

‘A lone