Hideout by Jack Heath (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

They’re taking the long way so they’re not visible through the windows. I’ll have to do that, too.

Thump, thump, thump. Donnie goes back to the kitchen.

I exhale and look at the bowl where I last saw Fred’s keys.

They’re gone.

I mouth a bunch of swearwords, pinching my lower lip between my teeth on the Fs, almost hard enough to make it bleed.

I quickly rummage through the discarded clothes on the floor. The pockets of his jeans are empty. His puffy synthetic jacket has two zippered pockets. I check them. Nothing.

But when I drop the jacket, something jingles.

I pick it up again. There’s a secret pocket on the inside. I unzip it and dig out the car keys. Bingo.

Seven minutes, give or take, until Thistle and the others leave. Plenty of time.

But when I emerge back into the corridor, I can hear voices. Closer this time. More people are in the kitchen.

‘Who was the subscriber?’ Zara is asking.

‘Username PrincessChalk,’ Fred says. ‘Real name Matilda Glasset.’

‘How did she even know where he was?’

I can hear the clattering of plates, the gurgling of glasses being filled.

‘So you saw the suggestion—’

‘And lost my shit, yeah.’

They’re setting the table for dinner. There’s no way I can get to the back door without them seeing me. I’ll have to wait until after dinner, by which time Thistle and the others will be long gone, hiking through the freezing forest on foot.

I retreat into Fred’s room. It’s hard to think with a ticking clock. An unfortunate paradox—the less time you have, the longer it takes to solve a problem.

Cedric’s voice: ‘You really think Lux is FBI?’

‘I don’t know. He’s been acting like a cop, investigating all of us,’ says Fred, who told me to do exactly that. ‘And we never saw his face on any of the Abbey Chapman videos, did we?’

‘You’re saying he didn’t even make them?’

‘I’m saying the rest of him needs to go into the grinder.’

Zara doesn’t speak up for me. I guess Kyle already told her that I don’t know anything useful. Now I’m nothing more than a threat, because I know she’s CIA. If I don’t die soon, it’ll be her having to make a quick escape—

And suddenly I know what to do.

I open Fred’s door. To get to Zara’s room, I’ll have to cross the corridor. I’ll be visible for a second from one corner of the dining table. Usually Kyle sits there.

I wait for Fred to speak again, since Kyle always looks at Fred when he’s talking.

The seconds tick away.

‘PrincessChalk is right, you know,’ Cedric muses. ‘He is a good candidate.’

‘I don’t care,’ Fred says. ‘It’s too dangerous to keep him.’ I dart across the corridor, slip into Zara’s room and shut the door almost all the way. I don’t turn on the light.

I’m now convinced that Zara’s mess isn’t mess. She knows exactly where everything is. An intruder in a tidy room can easily put things back the way he or she found them. That’s much harder in a messy room, and the intruder may not think it necessary.

I don’t have time to cover my tracks. I wade through outfits and books and make-up power to get to the window. Hoping the silver dust I noticed around the padlock wasn’t dust.

Until now, I never wondered how Zara’s handler intended to give her the dossier. She was inside with us, and Fred had padlocked her window shut. But the handler went right up to it the following night. I followed his footsteps.

An undercover CIA agent would want a secret escape route. A window is ideal. So Zara would have sabotaged the padlock, just in case. She could have cracked the tumblers with a hammer and chisel, or—more likely, given the metal shavings I mistook for dust—she could have stolen his keys, opened the padlock, filed off just a little from the tip of the curved bar, and then ‘locked’ it again before returning the keys. Fred would assume she was still locked in, but she was free.

Praying that I’m right, I rattle the padlock.

It doesn’t budge.

Grimacing, I pull with as much force as I can—which isn’t much, given that I only have four fingers and eight pints of blood left.

The lock clicks. Zara was amazingly precise, shaving off just enough metal that the lock could be forced open but not so much that it wouldn’t latch closed.

I don’t pause to admire the craftsmanship. I drop the lock into my pocket just in case I need to hit someone with it, then I lift the window and scramble out into the night.

Five minutes to go. As long as I don’t blunder into the sightlines of any cameras, I should be okay.

As I stagger through the backyard towards the safety of the woods, a sound stops me. This time it’s more like a moan than a howl. It seems closer than the woods, but that’s impossible. I spin around and around, scanning the darkness. There’s no one here. Am I losing my mind?

Then I look down. I’m right near the PVC pipe that I nearly tripped over on my first night here. The one I assumed was part of an underground compost system. Suddenly the shape, curving around and down, doesn’t seem so inexplicable. It’s not for letting water out. It’s for letting air in.

Seven prisoners on the website. Only six in the slaughterhouse.

How about the feed on the Pedo?

I checked. Still working fine.

Is it possible that someone is buried alive, right beneath my feet? That they’ve been here this whole time?

I crouch down next to the pipe. I twist it up to face my mouth, and whisper into it: ‘Hello?’

There’s a pause. Then a shriek of madness and terror from below.

CHAPTER 39

I’m joy on your