Hideout by Jack Heath (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

frantically rubs its snout with its paws, trying to get the spray off.

The other dog snaps at my leg. It misses my flesh but grabs my pants. The fabric rips as the dog wrenches its head sideways, like a gator trying to break a deer’s neck.

I spray it with the last of the can’s contents. The dog yelps and backs off immediately. The first one is still freaking out a few feet away.

I have a split second to feel triumphant before the cloud from my first blast, the one that missed, comes back down and settles all over me.

It’s like being set on fire. My eyelids clamp shut as though someone else is controlling them, and even so, my eyeballs burn. The skin all over my face seems to bubble and boil. I can’t breathe. I suddenly feel sorry for the dogs.

I rub my face, but that just seems to make it worse. My palm stings where I touched the chemical.

I’m too dizzy from the lack of air to stand, so I throw the can away and crawl back up the gravel driveway, towards the house. I need water. I can’t think while my whole body is burning. That freezing shower I made Hailey stand in would be perfect, if I can find it.

It’s hard to crawl on one arm. My hand has to jump quickly from one spot to another while my abdominal muscles strain to hold up my torso. How fast can a human being crawl? One mile per hour? Less? It’ll take me hours even to circle the house.

Soon I can’t hear the dogs anymore. I must have crawled out of earshot. Or maybe they ran away. It’s impossible to know.

Grass under my hand, not gravel. I’ve gone off-road. I back up, find the driveway again. But then I hesitate, not sure which way leads to the house. Right or left? The longer I wait, the harder it is to work out which way I came.

Before I can decide, engine noise fills the air. Tyres crunch on gravel towards me. I can see headlights behind my closed eyelids. Has Thistle come back for me?

A car door opens. I can hear dinging from the dash—a door open alert.

Shakily, I stand up. My hopes are crushed when the driver speaks.

‘What the hell?’ Donnie says.

‘Donnie.’ My voice breaks. ‘Thank God.’

‘How the fuck did you get out?’

‘Hailey had a key to her cuffs.’ I spit a glob of peppery saliva onto the ground. ‘Don’t know how she got it. She started letting all the other prisoners go. I waited until she freed me, and then I started screaming for you guys. You didn’t hear me?’

I’m still blind. I have no way of knowing if Donnie is buying any of this.

More footsteps. The other Guards are here.

‘When they ran, I chased them,’ I continue. ‘But Hailey had a key to Fred’s truck, too. I tried to stop them getting away, but the FBI agent pepper-sprayed me. I guess the can must still have been in the pick-up. But how did Hailey get a hold of those keys?’

I stop myself from directly suggesting that one of the other Guards helped the prisoners escape. It’ll be more convincing if Donnie joins those dots on his own. And at this point, turning the bad guys against each other is my only hope.

Silence.

‘Donnie?’ I try to blink the stinging mucus out of my eyes. The headlights are two bright patches. Everything else is dark. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Why didn’t you escape with them?’ Fred’s voice this time. Donnie isn’t alone. Fred sounds like he’s thinking aloud.

I try to spread my arms wide, but with one missing, it probably just looks like I’m pointing to one side.

‘I’m one of you,’ I say. ‘I’ve always been one of you.’

I hear the snick-clack of a slide being pulled back, a chamber checked for a bullet.

‘If he was a cop, he would have left with the others,’ Zara points out quietly.

‘No, he would have stayed to arrest us,’ Fred says.

‘Look at him,’ Donnie says. ‘He’s in no shape to arrest anybody.’

‘To follow us, then, so he can turn us in later.’

‘He doesn’t look like he has a “later”,’ Cedric says.

I can sort of see the group, now. Four blurry shapes. Unclear who is who. Where’s Kyle?

‘What if he’s not a cop?’ Donnie sounds quietly horrified by the possibility that he cut off the arm of an innocent man.

My teeth are chattering. ‘Can we discuss this in the van? I’m freezing to death out here.’

‘Either way, we gotta get moving,’ Cedric says.

‘Who votes we take him with us?’ Zara asks.

Three blurry shapes raise their hands. One doesn’t.

That fourth shape is Samson’s killer. It has to be. But I can’t see who it is.

‘All right,’ Donnie says reluctantly. ‘Get in the car, Lux.’

‘Thanks, man.’ I stagger towards the van, blinking away more tears and pepper spray. My surroundings are slowly coming into shape—including the house. I almost laugh. After what felt like hours of crawling, I’m still more or less where I started. My skin sizzles.

Fred—I think it’s Fred—lifts up his phone.

‘You gonna push the button?’ Cedric asks.

‘Yup. Should have done it five days ago.’

I look back at the house, remembering all the packages of ammonal crammed into the walls. Enough to turn the whole building inside out. Destroy all the evidence that a house was ever here.

I can see Penny at the attic window, watching us. My vision is still too blurred to make out her expression.

Fred pushes the button.

I cover one ear with my remaining hand.

Nothing happens.

‘Okay.’ Fred pockets the phone. ‘Let’s go.’

He opens the van door, and that’s when I see Kyle’s body inside.

CHAPTER 40

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