Hideout by Jack Heath (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

Ackerly. ‘Just wondering. I had a Mrs Spaniucci at my school, too. But I went to South Houston High.’ None of this is true.

‘Really? Was she a moron?’

‘Not that I could tell. Did you ever live anywhere else? Or your mom?’

He shoots me a suspicious look. ‘Why are you asking about my mom?’

‘Just making conversation.’ I turn back to the window and watch the wasteland flit by. I want to know about the woman with whom I might have fathered a child. But I can tell Kyle will shut down if I ask more questions about her.

‘Anyway, she died,’ Kyle says eventually. He can’t take the silence. Can’t retreat into his phone, since he’s driving. ‘Mrs Spaniucci, I mean. She got shot.’

‘At your school?’

‘No. Ordering food at a drive-through. The American Civil Liberties Union tried to have it classified as a hate crime, but they couldn’t prove the guy who did it had heard her accent. Anyway, it sounded like she was being a total bitch. Holding up the line, you know. Nothing to do with where she came from.’

‘Where did she come from?’

Kyle shrugs. ‘What am I, a geography teacher?’

Two hours later we reach the town. I expected a sign with a name and population size, maybe a corny motto, but there isn’t one. This place is too small even for that. It’s really just five buildings around a crossing. On one corner, a middle-of-nowhere bar with crumbling wooden walls and dark windows. The sort of place that would go out of business if drink-driving laws were even half-assedly enforced. On the opposite corner, a feed store with a tractor parked out front, and a gas station with rust creeping up the sides of the pumps. Lacy curtains in the window indicate that the gas station is also a cafe. The feed store is closed, even though it’s a weekday, heavy shutters over the doors. Next is a general store, with racks of newspapers, potato chip packets and candy bars out the front. I didn’t realise they still made 3 Musketeers, I think, then I realise they probably don’t. These candy bars might have been here since the nineties.

Then there’s the post office. A little concrete box, unlike the wood and aluminium structures around it, as though it was built to withstand hurricanes. Some kind of nationwide standardisation, maybe. A faded sign above has both the UPS and FedEx logos.

Kyle parks fifty yards away. ‘Not so far that it’s suspicious, not so close that the truck will show up on cameras,’ he says.

‘Smart,’ I say, pleased that Kyle has some sense, some critical thinking. There are no morons.

‘Yeah, Fred told me to do it that way,’ Kyle says.

Oh.

We get out into the frosty air. Even the weak winter sunshine feels painfully bright after all that time in the woods. It wasn’t exactly dark in the eco-home, but the downlights only shone on certain parts. The dining table, the kitchen bench and the art on the walls all glowed, leaving the people in the shadows. I remember hearing about a study that showed people behaved less honestly in darkened environments. The Guards want everything exposed except themselves.

Kyle opens the back of the van. He unfolds a trolley, extends the handle on telescopic poles, and starts stacking boxes onto the steel flap at the bottom. He moves quickly and diligently, without asking for help. I’m proud of him for working hard, and then I remember that the work is mailing videos of torture to lunatics.

I pick up a box. Envelopes stuffed with USB sticks jostle inside. ‘Let me give you a hand.’

‘Sure, whatever.’ He steps aside so I can add the box to his stack. He squints into the empty van. ‘Not a huge delivery today. Weird that Fred sent you to help me.’

‘Maybe he’s hoping I’ll learn from you,’ I suggest.

Kyle brightens. ‘Maybe.’

He wheels the trolley along the dirt towards the post office. The dirt becomes sidewalk about ten feet from the door. No graffiti or gum stuck to the concrete. No kids in this ‘town’.

We get to the front door of the post office. There’s a tub of B-grade romance and C-grade crime novels under the window with a sign that says, $2.

‘You want to stay behind?’ Kyle asks. ‘Be the van guard?’

‘Ha. That’s clever.’

He looks blank.

‘Because vanguard means the opposite of “stay behind”,’ I prompt.

He doesn’t seem to understand. ‘Are you coming in, or what?’

‘I’ll come in.’

A bell jingles as Kyle pushes open the door.

There’s a security camera right above our heads, another one behind the counter and a third in the corner of the store. With half of rural America now addicted to opioids, this place probably gets robbed from time to time.

I look at the closest camera and give it a meaningful nod. If any of my former colleagues from the FBI ends up watching, I want them to think I’m here undercover and I’m still on their side. Which I am. Sort of.

The store seems to be forty per cent newsagent, fifty per cent gift shop, ten per cent post office. The post office part is right up the back. To get to it, Kyle has to manoeuvre the trolley between two shelves of magazines and past a display of Valentine’s Day chocolates that are either two months early or ten months late.

A dapper little Native American woman is behind the counter. Silver chains dangle from her ears and there’s an opal pin in her inky hair. Her faded name badge says Sue. She looks relieved to see us—we might be her first customers all day. All week, maybe.

‘Hello, James,’ she says to Kyle. ‘How are you today?’

Kyle gives me a smug look. I’m so clever. I have a false identity. ‘I’m spectacular,’ he tells her. ‘How are you?’