Hideout by Jack Heath (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

‘There will be no negotiation!’ he bellows at the prisoners. ‘I will kill every single one of you if that’s what it takes. There are plenty more rapists and murderers where you assholes came from.’

He picks up another brick. I get ready. He’ll pull back his arm to throw it, just like before. When it’s all the way back, I can knock the brick out of his hand.

I just don’t know what he’ll do after that. He still has a gun in his other hand.

Donnie pulls back. I reach out—

‘A guy came in last night,’ a woman says quickly. The one with the dark hair and the swastika armband.

I drop my hand quickly. Donnie keeps hold of the brick. ‘Tell me more.’

‘He didn’t say anything. He had a flashlight—’

The moustachioed young guy in the rags—the Terrorist—interrupts. ‘He was normal height, normal weight. Looked like he was favouring one arm. He was in here for about thirty seconds.’ The Terrorist sounds desperate to share in the vacation, or to avoid the punishment everybody else will get.

In the corner, the Abuser starts crying. I watch the blood spread out from Gerald’s shattered skull. His brains look like raw pork.

‘How’d he get in?’ Donnie keeps the brick raised.

‘He cut through the wall.’ The Terrorist points.

Fred goes over to investigate the hole. I stand still, sweating into my mask, hoping none of the prisoners counted the saboteur’s fingers.

‘What time was he here?’ Donnie asks.

‘Eight o’clock,’ the Nazi says.

‘Eleven,’ the Terrorist says, at the same moment.

It was actually about two am. There’s a clock in the Parisian set, but it’s fake. The hands don’t turn.

‘Either way, the hiker was in here before we spotted him in the woods,’ I say, trying to shift blame away from myself.

‘Maybe,’ Donnie says. He finally lowers his arm.

Zara still seems to doubt that the hiker was responsible. She goes around the room, checking that everyone’s chains are secure.

‘What about his face?’ Fred asks the two prisoners.

‘He had a flashlight,’ the Nazi says. ‘He pointed it at us. We couldn’t see.’

‘He was wearing a hooded coat,’ the Terrorist adds quickly.

I nudge Donnie. ‘The guy last night was wearing a coat like that.’ He wasn’t, but Samson and I are the only ones who met him, and I need to divert suspicion away from myself.

Then I remember that everyone else saw him on the monitor. Hopefully the image was blurry enough that no one can contradict me.

Fred has finished examining the hole. He turns to the prisoners. ‘Good work, Emily. You too, Amar. I like your attitude.’

It’s the first time I’ve heard their real names. The Nazi and the Terrorist look pathetically grateful.

‘Those chains secure?’ Fred asks.

Zara nods reluctantly.

‘Okay. We’re done here.’

Donnie puts the brick down. I follow the Guards towards the exit.

‘The vacation?’ asks Emily, the Nazi.

Donnie just laughs as he slams the door shut.

‘Let’s take a look around the back,’ Fred says. ‘There might be footprints.’

Fear clenches around my heart.

‘Good idea,’ I say.

As we walk around the side of the slaughterhouse, I make my way to the front of the group. I’m the first one to turn the corner. The hole in the wall is just ahead. My prints weren’t obvious last night, but in the daylight they’re clearly visible.

I walk right over them, past the hole in the wall. ‘Where did he cut through? Over here somewhere?’

‘No. Back this way,’ Fred says.

I come back, and look down. ‘Shit, sorry,’ I say. ‘I walked all over the prints.’

‘Jesus, Lux,’ Donnie complains. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’

Zara frowns at the ground. ‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t see any prints other than yours. The snow must have covered anything from last night.’

‘Must have.’ I cross my arms in the cold.

Fred looks at me for a long moment. Then he says, ‘Kyle, check the security feeds from last night. Zara, find Cedric and get him to work on a message for the site. Something about a planned outage. Order some new cameras, too. Express shipping. Donnie, fix this hole—and calm down, all right?’

Donnie’s face twists into a sneer, but he’s looking at the wall, not us.

‘Lux?’ Fred beckons. His gaze is hard. ‘Let’s take a walk.’

CHAPTER 18

This word has the same meaning as thousands of others, yet it’s spelled differently to all of them. What is it?

The sun is setting as Fred and I walk through the forest. Hard to believe it’s less than twenty-four hours since I got here. We’re looking for the trail of the mystery man—figuring out where he went after he supposedly wrecked the cameras. But I get the feeling Fred has something else on his mind.

‘Sometimes you trust somebody,’ Fred says, ‘but it turns out they’re not who you thought they were.’

A chill slithers up my spine. I shorten my stride so Fred isn’t behind me, but he slows down, too.

‘Even if you’ve known someone for years,’ Fred continues, ‘they might actually be completely different beneath the surface.’

I don’t have my hammer. No weapons of any kind. My mind is racing, looking for a way out of this.

Fred might not be sure I sabotaged the cameras. If he is, he might not know why. He might not kill me until he finds out. I can stall him.

‘Take Gerald, for example.’ Fred sidesteps to avoid crushing a crawling insect. ‘In all the months he’s been here, he always struck me as a coward, but never as an idiot. I was shocked when he stood up for the group like that and got himself killed.’

Fred says ‘got himself killed’ as though he had no role in the event.

I jam my hands into my pockets. ‘What are you getting at?’