Hideout by Jack Heath (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

with him the night before. He seemed perfectly happy. Everyone did, until …’

I trail off, thinking. When I arrived, it did seem like a perfectly peaceful community, right up until the proximity alarms went off and we had to search the woods. I don’t know the Guards well, but I’ve met plenty of murderers and people with murderous intentions. No one was acting oddly around Samson, either watching him especially closely or avoiding him altogether. And Samson himself was chatty and friendly, right up until we met the mystery man in the forest. After that he seemed disturbed.

Something changed in that moment. Suddenly someone had a motive to kill Samson, someone who hadn’t had anything against him before.

Samson ran into the mystery man before I did. You see which way the guy went? I want to talk to him. Did Samson know him somehow?

‘You okay, Lux?’ Zara is watching me closely.

‘What? Yeah.’ I clear my throat. ‘Just thinking.’

‘What about?’

‘Just that you never know what’s going on in someone else’s head.’

‘Too true. Samson shouldn’t have bottled things up the way he did.’ Zara squeezes my hand. ‘You know you can talk to me, right? If you need to.’

I look across at Cedric to see if he’s watching us. He doesn’t glance up from his book.

‘You don’t need to be ashamed,’ Zara continues. ‘There’s a woman in Congo running an illegal blood bank—she captures people and bleeds them dry. There’s a presidential aide in Brazil who sells children as sex slaves. You’re one of the good guys.’

I guess I am, if slave-trader is the baseline.

At the FBI field office, there was a fatalistic agent named Ruciani, although everyone called him Pope. Once, when I was waiting out the front for the automatic doors to open, he flicked a burning cigarette butt in my direction.

A younger agent nudged him. ‘Knock it off, Pope. Folks around here look up to you.’

‘Looking up to people is a waste of time.’ Ruciani spoke like he’d already forgotten I was there. ‘If you want to be happy, find someone to look down on.’

Zara and her friends seem to have taken that philosophy to its logical conclusion.

‘How do you know about those people in other countries?’ I ask her.

Zara waves this off. ‘I used to travel a lot for work. The point is, don’t hide your feelings. I wouldn’t want you to end up like Samson.’ Is her tone flirtatious, or threatening? It’s impossible to tell.

‘Right. Thanks.’ Talking to her is exhausting, especially with Cedric watching us. I go around the corner into the living room. Music is playing quietly from the hidden speakers—an acoustic version of a Lady Gaga song. I sink into the sofa. The fabric is smooth and the padding soft. It probably cost more than my house.

I close my eyes. I’m so tired. But I already know I won’t be able to sleep tonight. Not with Thistle chained up out there in the cold.

The pop and crackle from the fireplace is soothing, although I’m not sure why. Fire is dangerous. My lizard brain shouldn’t find it comforting. I don’t have a happy childhood filled with campfires to get nostalgic about. It can’t be media conditioning. Whenever you see a campfire on TV, something bad is about to come out of the woods right behind the campers.

And now that I think about it, this particular fire smells wrong. There’s a sour tang to the wood smoke. Something plastic.

I open my eyes and look over. Just flames. But the smell persists.

I find the remote and turn up the music. The guitar rattles and the cymbals splash. Someone’s left a half-full bottle of soda on the coffee table. I tip it onto the flames. There’s a loud hiss, but the music covers it. When the cloud of steam dissipates, I crouch next to the fireplace and peer in.

Nestled among the hot, damp coals, there are fragments of paper. Like someone tore up a document and threw it into the fire.

Most of the pieces are too small to be useful, but two parts are larger. I pluck out the closest one and flatten it beneath my shoe, extinguishing the burning edges. Dense text is printed on both sides. I have the left-hand side of a paragraph on one side, and the right-hand side on the other.

On the other large piece, a transparent film has half-peeled away, like it was printed on photo paper. That must have been the source of the smell. The side I can see is blank.

I reach in and quickly snatch it out. It singes my fingers and I drop it on the floor. It lands on the blank side, revealing the photo.

Most of the photo is taken up by a featureless grey backdrop. I can see the corner of a face—one eye, an ear, some hair.

It’s enough to recognise Donnie.

I listen for a second to make sure no one is coming, then I scan the text on the scorched document:

individual, prone to threats and violence. His relationship emotional as well as sexual, and could be exploited. His Donald (Snr) and Glenda Walton, do not appear to have two victims (see appendix B) have both contacted private leading to the engagement of Lila Preyat.

On the other side:

Subject is unsuitable for direct approach as an compromise the agent’s cover. But a third party particularly if his parents are unaware of in the field.

I read both extracts several times. I assume Donnie is the subject. Someone was keeping a file on him. But I’m struggling to fill in the blanks in the text.

So who burned it? Not Fred—he has a paper shredder in his room. And who wrote it?

Normally I would throw the papers back into the fire. Words are easy to remember, since they already have meaning. All I have