Hideout by Jack Heath (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

A new plan starts to form. One that suits me better.

‘Thanks, man. I appreciate it.’ I put a hand on Fred’s arm and give it a friendly squeeze. It’s nice and firm. Fred is one hundred and eighty pounds of lean meat. Donnie is maybe two twenty. What would be the total if I added the others back at the house? A thousand pounds or more?

Without a vehicle or a gun, I can’t think of a way to escape.

But maybe I’m right where I need to be.

CHAPTER 3

I cut and cast. You roll with me even though I’m fatal. Who am I?

‘That’s what expertise is,’ Samson says, throwing some crushed garlic onto the carrots and onions in the frying pan. ‘You know more and more about less and less, until eventually you know everything about nothing.’

I nod thoughtfully, as though he’s said something profound rather than just spouting nonsense, and hand him the freshly washed spinach. There’s no meat in the stir-fry yet, and I’m getting concerned.

‘Thanks.’ He takes the dripping leaves from me and drops them into the pan with a splash of water.

Samson is about my age—maybe slightly younger, thirty-one or thirty-two. His clear blue eyes and perfectly straight teeth give him a movie star smile. Despite the cold, he’s wearing a tank top and shorts. I can smell his sweat from a recent workout. He’s pre-salted.

‘Got a hand towel?’ I ask.

‘Over there.’

I volunteered to help with the cooking largely so I could examine the utensils. So far, I’ve found a cleaver, a carving knife and a nice big freezer.

The hammer is still in the back of my pants. I don’t have anywhere safe to hide it.

As I dry my hands, Samson notices that I only have nine fingers. ‘What happened to your thumb?’

Just like every time someone asks, I find myself flexing the missing digit. I can still feel it there, as though it’s invisible rather than gone. ‘I chewed it off to get out of some cuffs,’ I say.

He inhales, preparing for a laugh, and then realises I’m not kidding. ‘For real?’

I nod.

‘That’s hardcore. Why didn’t you just dislocate it, like the Navy Seals do?’

I frown. ‘Huh. Never occurred to me.’

He does laugh now. ‘Shit, I wish we had a video of that. It would get into our top ten, for sure.’

‘Uh, thanks.’

‘I hope you don’t mind me saying that?’

A considerate killer. ‘It’s all good.’

‘I saw a lot of dislocated thumbs at the hospital.’ Samson crumbles a cube of vegetable stock over the pan. ‘Looked painful. Maybe you made the right call.’

Samson—never Sam—used to be a triage nurse, or so he claims. His mother was a pharmacist and his father a physiotherapist, so it was inevitable that he’d end up doing something medical. Even his older sister was a dental receptionist.

At the hospital, Samson sat behind a glass panel from ten pm to four am six days a week, getting shouted at and spat on by parents who refused to believe that their child wasn’t sick enough to need a doctor. During his breaks he’d be on the receiving end of stern reprimands from doctors and administrators about the patients he did let through who had wasted their time.

And then there was that girl with the headache.

‘She didn’t tell me about the nausea,’ Samson says. ‘She didn’t say anything about the loss of appetite. And her parents didn’t mention her neck had been sore until much later.’

I don’t suggest that it might have been his job to ask those questions. ‘Meningitis?’

He looks at me sharply. ‘Are you a doctor?’

‘What? No. I dropped out of high school.’ The response is automatic. Then I remember that Lux had a math degree. ‘I mean, I went back, but—’

Samson has already turned back to the stove. ‘Yes, it was meningitis.’

‘Did she die?’

He ignores the question. ‘Hospital made me quit when the parents started talking about a suit. That’s what I mean—those lawyers have no idea what it’s like on the front line. And can you believe that girl’s parents? I mean, take some responsibility.’ He snaps his fingers, and I pass him the pepper grinder.

His own parents, he tells me, had been ashamed of him since he was a teenager. He doesn’t say why. But after he quit the hospital, the relationship got worse, and they kicked him out. He enrolled for an MBA, then gave up on it. He hasn’t spoken to them since.

‘So how did you meet Fred?’ It’s risky asking questions like this, since it might be something I’m supposed to know already. But I figure it’s more suspicious to say nothing.

‘Well, after I dropped out of college I had a lot of time on my hands. I was on the dark web, and I saw someone posting about the Guards and how horrible they were. I just wanted to take a look. And the first inmate I saw was the stepfather. You know, the video with all the broken glass?’

I don’t. ‘Sure.’

‘And it was great.’ Samson takes the lid off a pot of rice and spoons it into some bowls. ‘Watching someone like that getting what he deserves. Plus, I’d spent so long trying to heal these bastards, and it had been such a pain in the ass. So watching the opposite, someone getting hurt … it was extra satisfying, I guess.’ He says this with a frown of introspection, but no shame.

‘Right,’ I say.

‘So I sent a message to Fred to thank him, and he said I could help out if I wanted. I needed to prove I wasn’t a cop, obviously. I still had my old ID, so I stole some ketamine from the hospital and mailed it to him. Then he invited me here, and … shit, hang