Hideout by Jack Heath (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

police officer, out of uniform,’ Cedric says. ‘Hmm, seems far-fetched.’

He’s calmer than before, his voice flat. Hard to tell if he’s being sarcastic.

Zara speaks up. ‘He didn’t try to call for help with a phone or radio, either.’

‘He might be doing it right now,’ Fred points out. ‘Even if he isn’t a cop.’

‘Or he might not.’ Zara wipes her shoes on the mat. ‘A guy out here alone in the middle of the night must be committing some kind of crime. Like poaching.’

‘Lux said he didn’t have a weapon.’

‘I didn’t see one,’ I say.

‘Okay, so he’s a survivalist or whatever,’ Zara says. ‘Either way, he doesn’t want anyone to know he’s out here. He won’t call the police.’

‘Even a survivalist might take issue with what we’re doing.’ Fred’s thumb is still above the yes button. Like Caesar, on the verge of sentencing a gladiator.

‘He doesn’t know what we’re doing,’ I say. ‘All he knows is that Samson and I were walking through the woods with a gun and a knife.’

‘Not suspicious at all,’ Cedric says.

‘He probably thinks we’re poachers. If he calls anyone, it’ll be Parks and Wildlife, not the police.’

Samson has stayed silent throughout this discussion, even though he was the only other person to see the mystery man. As Fred switches on the porch light, I get a better look at his face. He has a troubled frown and keeps shooting sideways glances at Fred, who doesn’t notice.

‘I vote we keep looking for him in daylight,’ Zara says.

‘We’re not voting,’ Fred says. ‘I’m the CEO. It’s my decision.’

I wonder if he’s actually incorporated his torture porn company. It seems unlikely.

‘Of course,’ Zara says, with a little bow. ‘We can pack some essentials to be ready in case the cops show up in the meantime. If they do, it won’t be many. They don’t know anything.’

‘And if they don’t show?’

‘Then we get back to work. The subscribers are still waiting for the barbed-wire video.’

I keep my expression neutral.

Eventually Fred nods. ‘Okay. We’ll wait—for now.’

He closes the app and returns the phone to his pocket.

‘I can take first watch,’ I say. ‘I have nothing to pack.’

‘It’s okay, Lux.’ Fred is already pouring coffee into a thermos. ‘I got it.’

‘You sure? I want to help.’

‘No, go to bed. You can help with the search in the morning. You look tired.’

After six panicked hours of improvisation, I’ve run out of lies. My brain is fried.

‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘See you in the morning.’

Fred trots down the stairs to the basement. I hear the chair creak as he settles in front of the screens. All those rectangles, monitoring the forest outside and the driveway.

It suddenly occurs to me that one of the cameras may have recorded my conversation with the mystery man. Fred could scrub back through the feeds and find it. See us mouthing words at each other instead of fighting. Then he might come and murder me in my bed.

‘Sleep well,’ he calls.

‘Sure.’ I leave him to it, a sense of doom falling over me like a heavy blanket.

Samson has disappeared into his room. The other Guards roam the house, packing their belongings. I hang around the kitchen, acting casual. I’m pleased to find an acid-based drain cleaner under the sink.

After two hours, there’s still no sign of any police. The others finally go to bed. I’m dirty from my tussle in the forest, so I take a shower.

Under normal circumstances, this bathroom would feel very relaxing. A natural-seeming stone floor, rainforest-green tiles, a huge mirror. A showerhead wide enough for two people to stand under the water at once.

The window is too small to climb through. Ventilation only. Despite this, it’s padlocked shut.

I’ve had some nerve-racking showers in my life. At the group home, the older boys would sometimes sneak into the bathroom and grab me. I never found out what came after the grabbing—they stopped trying when I got a reputation as a biter. But I still showered rarely and anxiously until I turned eighteen and left the home.

Nothing beats this, though. There are six killers in this house. Any of them could walk in and put a bullet through my chest, an axe in my head or chain me up with the rest of their prisoners.

I’m being paranoid. A common problem. Once you’ve done enough bad things, it’s impossible not to imagine them being done to you. But the others think I’m Lux. I’m safe … for now.

I lather up with organic shower gel and ‘nutrigenic’ shampoo, rinse it all off, and pat my body dry with a towel apparently made from bamboo. Someone has left out a toothbrush for me. I scrub my remaining molars and spit, leaving a swirl of pink in the white basin.

The toothbrush isn’t one of those rubber ones you get in prison; it’s bamboo, too. Snapped in half, it would make a decent shiv. Not enough to win in a fair fight, but if plunged into the neck of a sleeping person …

I wrap the towel around my waist and go back into the corridor. All the bedrooms are right here. The weapons are locked up in the armoury. Five killers, defenceless. Could I dispose of them all quietly enough?

A floorboard creaks right behind me.

I spin around. No one there. And it didn’t sound like a footstep.

Maybe I imagined it. There’s something called ‘exploding head syndrome’, where the sufferer perceives sudden loud noises, typically right before or right after bed. A kid at the group home had it—he used to fling himself out of bed and scramble away from it, sweaty and disoriented. Apparently the condition is triggered by extreme fatigue and stress.

I don’t think I imagined the sound—but that’s a symptom, as well. The patient