Hideout by Jack Heath (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

We do. The lactic acid builds up in my muscles. The wheel is a great invention. On it, a three-thousand-pound car seems weightless. Off it, the thing won’t budge at all.

‘We’ll have to leave it here,’ I say. Maybe I can come back later and somehow pull it back.

But Kyle is no quitter. ‘Can we lift it? Lever it over the edge?’

We try. The back of the car is too heavy.

‘We’ll have to start the engine again,’ Kyle says. ‘Get some power from the back wheels. Drive it off.’

I look at the driver’s seat. It’s right above the edge of the cliff. A hundred-foot drop onto stone and steel. Plenty of time to panic on the way down.

Kyle isn’t about to volunteer. He smirks. ‘Go on.’

‘It was your idea,’ I say.

‘I’m a visionary,’ he agrees. ‘Now over to you for the grunt work.’

Grimacing, I ease closer to the driver’s-side door. The icy wind picks up, threatening to hurl me over the edge. I grab the side mirror for support. The car doesn’t feel as immovable now as it did ten seconds ago.

Kyle hugs himself. ‘Hurry up, man.’

I open the door. No way am I putting my ass on that seat. Instead, I lean in and twist the key in the ignition.

The engine turns over. Kyle coughs as he gets a mouthful of exhaust.

I look around for a rock I can put on the gas pedal. Everything is either too small to hold it down or too big to lift. I’ll have to use my hand.

‘You ready?’ I call out.

‘Ready.’

I push my palm down on the gas. The engine roars. The rear wheels spin for a second, then catch. The underside of the sedan grinds along the dirt towards the edge of the cliff. I wrench my right arm out of the cabin just in time. The car overbalances and disappears over the edge.

I crawl towards the cliff and peer over. The vehicle is still falling, the echoes of the idling engine bouncing off the other side of the gorge. Kyle joins me in time to see the impact.

There’s a deafening crash. Parts of the car crumple inwards as others fly outwards. The hood is flattened like a cigarette packet under a boot as the car flips onto its roof, which caves in under the impact. Safety glass surrounds the impact zone in thousands of glittering cubes.

The sedan settles on its side, barely recognisable as a car anymore. The last reverberations of the crash die away.

‘See?’ Kyle says. ‘Told you.’

He wasn’t wrong. Even though that car was my way out, it was oddly satisfying to see it wrecked, and it wouldn’t have been as much fun if the car was a wreck already. The prettier the car, the prettier the crash.

We wait another minute in case the car is going to explode or roll over one more time. Kyle is completely mesmerised. The spectacle, with just the two of us here to see it, creates a strange sense of kinship. I rest my hand on Kyle’s back.

I get a vision of myself pushing him over the edge. One Guard down, five to go. It would be so easy.

But how would I retrieve the body?

Kyle looks uncomfortable, but doesn’t look confident enough to say so.

I take my hand off him. ‘Sorry.’

He gives a half-shrug, like unwanted contact is just part of life.

‘Come on,’ he says. ‘It’s a long walk back.’

CHAPTER 11

First I’m a leafy wall, then I’m a dirty, gluttonous animal. Touch my back and you’ll bleed. What am I?

When we get back to the house, I let Kyle go on ahead so I can get a look at Fred’s pick-up. Thief’s instinct. I can’t walk past a vehicle without wondering how hard it would be to hotwire.

I peer through the window at the dash. The letters RF are inscribed next to the ignition. That means there’s a radio frequency transmitter inside Fred’s key. Even if I took a hammer and screwdriver to the ignition to make it turn, the engine wouldn’t start unless the key was within three feet of the onboard computer.

The garage door has small windows built in, slightly above head height. I stand on tiptoes. There’s a white van inside. I can’t tell what model from here. The garage door looks electric, therefore slow and noisy. At least if any of the Guards goes anywhere, I’ll hear them leaving—

‘What are you doing?’

I turn around. Cedric is standing nearby, a bathrobe billowing around his bare legs. A big triangle of his skinny chest is exposed.

‘Aren’t you cold?’ I ask, avoiding his question.

‘Yeah, well, today’s an inside day for me.’ Cedric sniffs. ‘For you too, in theory.’

‘It is?’

‘Yeah. Time for you to peek behind the curtain.’

His robe flaps suggestively.

‘Come on,’ he says.

Cedric leads me to what he calls his ‘studio’, but is clearly just his bedroom. Plenty of bookshelves, a few landscapes printed on frameless canvases. There’s a PC and a laptop on a desk. His window is locked with a padlock, just like mine. The room smells like air freshener and spiced cologne.

I’ve been trying to figure out who the opium addict is ever since I saw those poppies in the greenhouse. Now I’m pretty sure it’s Cedric.

‘I’ve made a login for you.’ Cedric goes over to the laptop and points to one of the tabs at the top of the screen. He leaves the chair vacant for me. ‘Click up there.’

On one of the bookshelves, a slim hardback volume has been placed face out, like he wants people to notice it—Deciduous, by Cedric Huxley.

I point. ‘Is that your book?’

Cedric tries to look wistful. ‘That was a long time ago.’

I open it up. ‘“The Hedgehog”?’