Hideout by Jack Heath (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

leftover stir-fry from last night, although Samson himself doesn’t turn up to eat it.

‘He’s already out looking for the mystery man,’ Fred tells me, when he emerges from the editing room with bags under his eyes. ‘I’ll join him in a minute.’

Zara spoons the stir-fry into bowls and microwaves them one by one. The men don’t offer to help.

‘You’re a vegetarian, Lux?’ Donnie pours himself some coffee.

When I was investigating Lux for murder—a murder it turned out he didn’t commit—I quizzed a lunch-lady about his standard order at the college cafeteria. Ham sandwich on sourdough. ‘No.’

Everyone around the table looks suddenly uncomfortable. This was a test, and I failed.

‘I eat fish,’ I add.

The tension in the room eases.

‘Oh, that’s okay,’ Donnie says. ‘The environmental impact of fishing isn’t nearly as bad as raising cattle or pigs.’

Fred nods thoughtfully. Kyle copies him.

I look around the table at all these killers and torturers. ‘Are you all vegetarians?’

‘What right-thinking person isn’t?’ Cedric says, in his hard-to-read way.

If there’s no meat in this house—other than the people—I’m going to go crazy.

‘Well, here are your cruelty-free vegetables.’ Zara has several steaming bowls balanced on the inside of her arm, like a professional waitress. No one thanks her.

‘Are you vegans?’ I ask, as she puts the bowl in front of me.

‘What?’ Donnie laughs. ‘Not me. I have to drink a pint of milk a day to keep up my muscle mass.’

I watch his muscle mass, trying not to drool.

‘And I do love an omelette.’ Cedric looks wistful. ‘But it’s never quite as good here as in Spain.’

‘You wound me, Cedric.’ Zara tosses a spear of baby corn into her mouth with chopsticks. I try to remember if I put the can opener back in the drawer before I went to bed. I was so tired. But I’m sure I did. Didn’t I?

‘What’s the popularity of the site like these days?’ I ask, keen to change the subject.

‘About nine hundred people,’ Fred mumbles around a mouthful of rice.

‘Is that site visits per year?’

Fred laughs. ‘No. That’s paying subscribers. We get two thousand site visits per day.’

I try to sound impressed rather than horrified. ‘Wow. People love porn, huh?’

This time, the silence is stony rather than awkward. I’ve said the wrong thing again.

I backpedal, not quite sure what I’m backpedalling from. ‘I mean, you know, it’s incredible that you’ve captured the market so carefully.’

‘It’s not porn.’ Kyle clenches his butter knife like an angry king. ‘It’s justice. Those nine hundred people are helping us give a voice to victims of crime and show them respect, by punishing perpetrators the system let go.’

It’s the first time I’ve heard Kyle say anything without waiting for Fred to say it first, but he still sounds like he’s parroting someone.

‘Yeah. We got a Nazi back there.’ Donnie jerks a thumb towards the slaughterhouse. ‘We got a paedophile. We got a rapist. We got a domestic abuser. We got a paid-up member of the KKK. We got a fucking Isis fighter. That guy I shot yesterday? He stole people’s life savings with fake cancer treatments. There’s nothing sleazy about giving these people what they deserve.’

He’s listed seven people, but I only saw six. Maybe he’s killed someone and forgotten about it.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean your subscribers were jerking off to this,’ I say, although that’s exactly what I meant. ‘It’s like, you know how people say “food porn”? I meant it like that. You’re making high-quality justice porn, you know?’

The tension lingers. Then Fred’s face breaks into a smile.

‘Justice porn,’ he says. ‘I like it.’

Everyone relaxes.

Fred wipes his mouth. ‘All right. Kyle, you show Lux where to ditch his car. Cedric, get to work on those support tickets. Zara and Donnie, start prepping for the mailout. I’ll keep searching for our mystery man, see if I can’t pick up his trail. Let’s get to work, people.’

As we pack up the dishes, unease gnaws at me. I only eat bad people. It’s not much of a moral code, but it’s what I have. The Guards have a similar policy. Which puts me in a difficult position, ethically.

It’s like one of those recursive logic puzzles that I used to get in the mail. Is it bad to kill people who only kill bad people?

But deep down I know that it doesn’t matter. I can agonise and rationalise, but my hunger will eventually pull my conscience into line. The Guards were doomed from the moment Fred let me into their house.

‘Don’t put those knives in the dishwasher,’ I tell Kyle. ‘It makes them blunt.’

CHAPTER 10

I eat until I’m fit to burst, and yet I’m tremendously empty and deep. What am I?

‘Okay, go slow here,’ Kyle says. ‘It’s just up ahead.’

We’re in the midnight-blue sedan I stole, bouncing along the dirt. The track isn’t designed for cars, and the car isn’t designed for off-road. Branches rattle against the undercarriage and scratch the paintwork off the sides. The radio is hissing. Can’t get any stations out here.

Kyle has been sent to help me get rid of the car. At first I assumed that meant he was leading me to a chop shop back in Houston, but like a teenage GPS—‘Yo, go right. Nah, man, that way’—he directed me deeper into the woods rather than back towards civilisation. So I assume we’re going to torch it. Hopefully there’s a clearing big enough that we can do it without burning the forest to the ground.

Kyle lounges in the passenger seat, chewing his nails. He has none of the obvious signposts of disaffected youth—black clothes, piercings, shaved head. I guess those boys, the ones with dog collars and eyeliner, want you to know how little they care. It’s a convoluted way of asking for help.