Hideout by Jack Heath (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

Sadness, but perhaps not enough surprise.

‘And he didn’t love you back,’ I continue. I’ve heard worse motives for murder.

‘He loved me.’ Cedric’s voice wavers, and he tries to cover it with a cough. ‘I know it.’

His knife slips, plunging right through the heart of a poppy he only meant to wound.

‘What happened?’ I ask. Knowing if Cedric’s the killer isn’t enough. I need to know if he’s my ally or my enemy.

‘We’d both been drinking,’ he says. ‘The others had gone to bed. I was telling him about something that happened at a literary festival in New York—a librarian hitting on me, her daughter getting embarrassed, a publicist trying to get rid of them both. Samson was laughing so hard. And I thought, See? I can make you happy. Why won’t you let me?’

‘When was this?’ I ask.

‘November nineteen.’ It’s telling that he knows the date. ‘We kept talking. After a while he rested his head on my shoulder. And then …’ Cedric looks away. Wraps his coat a little tighter around his shoulders. ‘Anyway, we stayed on that sofa till sunrise. It was the best night of my life.’

I feel an unexpected trickle of sympathy for Cedric. My situation is different—Thistle fled from me after finding a human head in my freezer—but it’s similar, too. She was mine for one night, and now she’s gone for good. There are some things no amount of couples therapy will fix.

‘But when everyone else got up,’ Cedric continues, ‘Samson acted like nothing had happened. I spent all day waiting for him to talk about it, but he hardly looked at me. When I confronted him, he said he’d been drinking. Like that explained everything.’

I’m surprised Cedric is telling me this all this. Most men wouldn’t talk about it. They’d keep their jaws clenched until they found something to hit. Anger is the only emotion a man is allowed—some would say taught—to feel.

‘That must have made you mad,’ I say. Mad enough to kill somebody.

‘Yes. But not at Samson. At the others, for shaming him.’ He looks up at the greenhouse roof, blinking away tears. ‘He killed himself over it.’

He sounds like he believes he’s telling the truth. I wonder if knowing Samson was murdered would give him any peace.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘He must have really loved you.’

Cedric kisses me.

It comes out of nowhere. I guess it’s been a long time since anyone showed him any kindness, or even listened to him.

His lips, full and soft, are only on mine for a second before I bite him.

‘Argh! Fuck!’ He pulls free and staggers back.

I lick the blood off my lips. It’s electrifying. Like the first salty potato chip out of the packet. Like the first hit of opium after a year sober.

Cedric touches his lips, looks at the blood on his fingers. ‘What the hell, man?’

I still don’t say anything. I’m frozen, playing tug-of-war with myself. I want more, but I can’t have it. That dark voice in my head, saying, You could eat until you’re full and then chop up the rest and bury it in this garden and tell everyone he—

‘Jesus,’ Cedric says.

The word, the shock in it, shames me into a moment of decency. ‘I’m sorry,’ I stammer. And then I run out of the greenhouse without looking back.

CHAPTER 20

Red next to black, safe from attack. Red next to yellow, you’re a dead fellow. What am I?

The urges are worse when I’m stressed or tired. Today I’m both.

I’m digging like a maniac, trying to avoid the hunger burning up my guts. The taste of Cedric’s blood has awakened something in me. I want more. It’s like my stomach is eating the rest of me in desperation.

Samson’s body is nearby, still wrapped in a sheet. He’s going under the vegetable patch. It’s fallow at the moment. No seeds. Plants can turn sunlight into energy, but only if there’s enough nitrogen in the soil. Samson’s body is made partly of nitrogen, so Fred said to bury him here.

Samson would love the thought that parts of him would live on, Donnie told me. I was astonished—and kind of outraged—to see the tears in his eyes when he said this. They’re going to turn Samson’s body into vegetables. What a fucking waste.

But I can’t do anything about it. The vegetable patch is right near the greenhouse. If Cedric walked out and saw me eating his crush, I don’t think I could talk my way out of that.

My plan is to spread the sheet out and lay it on top of Samson, then pile the dirt onto that. Later I can unearth one corner of the sheet, then peel the whole thing back to expose the body.

But there probably won’t be a later. Tonight we pick up the new prisoner—one of Lux’s enemies. He or she will reveal to everyone that I’m not Lux.

The shovel splits the ground. The dirt has been recently turned, and a square of sackcloth has protected it from snow and frost, but the digging is still hard.

It’s not just my life on the line. If I die, or get chained up in that slaughterhouse, those prisoners lose their only hope of salvation. They might be monsters, but the thought still weighs on me. I had the chance to save them, when that sheriff’s deputy showed up. Now we’re all doomed.

Fear of getting caught is a noose, one that’s been around my neck my whole life. Now I can feel it getting tighter and tighter.

The hole is deep enough, but I keep digging. Putting off the moment when all that meat has to go to waste.

There must be a way out of this, a solution to the puzzle—something clever that gets me