Hideout by Jack Heath (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

cardboard signs that I can’t read in the dim light. Some are carrying guns.

Fred puts the car into reverse, his gaze on the wing mirrors. I can hear sirens in the air. Shouts. Breaking glass.

‘What’s going on?’ Cedric asks.

‘Our escape plan is what’s going on,’ Fred says.

‘Why here? Why not at the courthouse?’

‘I don’t know.’ Fred swings the van around and drives into a side street.

Donnie still has me against the wall. ‘Are you good?’

I glare at him.

‘Lux,’ he says, ‘you gotta calm down, okay?’

After a pause, I nod, and he releases me.

I rub my throat. ‘What’s happening?’

‘You remember Emmanuel Goldstein?’ Cedric asks.

‘Yeah.’ The fictitious anti-mascot, designed to make people angry. He’s a child molester, an abusive husband, an illegal immigrant, a racist cop who shot an unarmed Black teen, depending who you ask.

‘He just got off on a technicality,’ Cedric says. ‘He’s about to be released from the Herbert W. Gee Municipal Courthouse.’

I’m struggling to understand, and more than that, I’m struggling to care. ‘I thought he wasn’t real.’

‘He’s not.’ Cedric licks his lips nervously. ‘But when Fred pushed the button, hundreds of posts went live and thousands of messages went out. Hundreds of angry protestors should be converging on the courthouse right now. All the police will be there, a nice long way away from our escape route. At least, that was the plan.’

‘Yeah.’ Donnie stares through the windshield at the protest march in the distance. ‘Why are they here?’

I shouldn’t be surprised. Inciting a riot for personal gain is exactly the sort of thing these assholes would think of.

‘Shit.’ Fred has spotted a pair of police cars. He turns into a side alley to avoid them.

‘Maybe it’s not us,’ Zara suggests. ‘Could be an unrelated protest.’

‘At exactly the same time?’

I don’t care about this. Kyle is dead. Nothing matters except that. Fred has to pay.

But I’m outnumbered and unarmed. The only way to hurt him is with the truth. And the escape plan—start a riot to distract the police—is familiar. The last piece of the puzzle falls into place.

I clear my throat. ‘Hey, Rick.’

Fred glances at me in the rear-view mirror.

‘I thought so,’ I say. ‘Frederick is your full name, right? Frederick Allister. Your friends used to call you Rick. Before you shaved off the beard, and cut your hair short.’

Zara looks suddenly interested. She hadn’t known this.

‘So what?’

‘You started hitting your ex-wife, Lynne, after she got pregnant. I think that’s when she started to remind you of your own mother, the one who never loved you enough. Eventually Lynne left. And you tried to kill her. Shot at a bomb you’d planted under her car.’

I had assumed it was a coincidence, Fred filling the house with the same explosive mixture Rick used. But it wasn’t—Fred used that compound because he is Rick.

‘Ex-wife?’ Fred squints, feigning confusion.

‘Whoa, Lux.’ Cedric pats the air. ‘Fred wouldn’t do that.’

‘Because of the bomb, you got classified as a terrorist,’ I say. ‘Suddenly the FBI were after you. So you worked out a way to distract them. You faked a Facebook post from a congresswoman threatening an assault weapon ban. The plan worked, maybe better than you could have hoped. Armed protestors turned out en masse in Hermann Park. There was chaos and violence. The feds were too busy to chase you. By the time the dust cleared, you were long gone.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Fred asks, still looking perplexed.

He knows what I’m talking about. But he can’t shut me up without stopping the car. And if he does that, the protestors might catch up and block the road around us. Then the police might want to know why there’s a dead body in the van.

The other three Guards are listening to me, still puzzled. Maybe wondering if I’ve lost my mind.

‘But you hadn’t realised your baby son was in the car. You nearly killed him by mistake. That rattled you. So you got some therapy. Anger management classes. You came out with a better understanding of anger—not just how to control it, but how to sell it. Rage to riches.’

‘You were married?’ Donnie asks Fred.

‘No,’ Fred says. ‘He’s full of shit.’

‘Your idea was a website that gives subscribers the chance to vent their anger on criminals. But real criminals are hard to catch. So you grab regular people and exaggerate the bad things they’ve done. That’s easier.’

‘Those crimes really happened,’ Fred objects. ‘You can look them up.’

‘No doubt,’ I say. ‘But your prisoners weren’t the real perps.’

He’s not trying to convince me; he’s trying to convince the others. And it’s not working. Cedric and Donnie and Zara are looking from me, to him, to each other, and back to me. No longer sure who to believe.

‘There’s no such person as Druznetski, is there?’ I continue. ‘He’s just like Goldstein—you made him up. A fake source for all your information about the prisoners. To make them seem guilty, for the subscribers—and for the other Guards.’

‘You’re not thinking straight, Lux,’ Donnie says, but he’s starting to look uneasy.

‘Those people weren’t innocent,’ Fred says, and I think he probably believes it. No one’s innocent.

‘Abbey Chapman was, when Lux abducted her.’ I don’t know if the others will notice that I’m referring to myself in the third person, and I’m too far gone to care. ‘Lux sent you the videos, and you made up a story to go with them. That’s why you told me to keep her background a secret from the other Guards. They needed to believe she was guilty of something. What about Reese Thistle? What did you say she had done?’

‘She was a murderer,’ Donnie says. ‘She killed the kids she was supposed to be babysitting.’ He looks at Fred for reassurance.

‘Shut