Hideout, Jack Heath [top reads TXT] 📗

piled high on the bed and books on every other flat surface. There’s a dressing table, strewn with lotions and concealers and a long pair of tweezers. She’s spilled some kind of make-up powder on the floor. Her window is padlocked, like every other one in the house—but unlike the others, there’s grey dust all around the padlock. She hasn’t cleaned the room in months.

If Samson’s computer or phone is in here, it could take me days to find it. And Zara could be back any minute.

A faint scent stops me. It’s fruity and feminine, although that’s an illusion. Women don’t smell like fruit. They smell just like men—sweat and bad breath and farts—until they are doused with chemicals that create the illusion of a fruity odour. Men are instructed to use a different set of chemicals that smell of pepper, smoke or whatever sandalwood is.

This particular scent stops me because it’s familiar: Reese Thistle’s shampoo. The memory is so strong that I turn around, expecting her to be right behind me.

She’s not. Just an empty doorway in a house of killers, where I live now, instead of with her. She’s gone forever, because of my mistakes.

I shake off the despair and try to focus. If I walk into Zara’s room, she might notice my footsteps in the spilled make-up. She could have spilled it deliberately for this reason. It looks like an accident, but is it?

I go to Donnie’s bedroom. Despite my theory that there’s no such thing as a feminine scent, the air in here is undoubtedly masculine—I can practically taste the testosterone. A couple of thirty-pound dumbbells compress the carpet in one corner, and some magazines about men’s health are on the dresser. Under the futon is a pair of running shoes.

I take off my own shoes and pull on Donnie’s. A good fit. Small feet for a big guy. Then I go back into Zara’s bedroom, leaving Donnie’s footprints all over the make-up. The more I can make the Guards suspicious of each other, the less suspicious they’ll be of me.

Zara’s books have no theme. There’s military history, fantasy, biographies of politicians, cookbooks. It looks like she visited a second-hand bookstore with a shopping cart and a blindfold. I open a few books and find receipts tucked into them—painkillers, moisturiser, rump steak. Either the receipt is someone else’s, or Zara has only recently converted to vegetarianism.

I get a flash of a big ceremony, Cedric officiating. Have you accepted cheese and rice as your lord and savoury?

Even reading the words rump steak makes me drool. The jerky is already gone, and it didn’t taste real. Too dry, not enough fat. Like eating a belt with a sprinkle of brown sugar.

The backs of the receipts have jumbles of letters and numbers on them, like Zara was trying to solve puzzles. I used to solve riddles for a living, but these are meaningless to me.

When I dig through the clothes on her bed, I find a laptop and a phone wrapped in some leggings and a dress. When I wake up the phone, the background picture is of Donnie, flexing in front of a mirror.

Did Zara steal Donnie’s phone? Why? And what will she think when she sees his footprints all over the floor?

I don’t know the passcode for the phone, so I open the laptop instead. This time the background is just a beach scene. The username is User73890. No clues there, and no idea what the password might be.

I could take both devices, but I have no realistic way of hacking in and every chance of getting caught. I put the laptop and the phone back where I found them.

At the other end of the house, the front door clicks and beeps.

I race back into Donnie’s room as quietly as I can. I kick off his shoes and pull on my own.

Footsteps approach from the direction of the living area. I stuff Donnie’s shoes back under the bed, scramble out and close the door.

Looking back, I realise that I left Zara’s door open. Too late to close it now—whoever’s coming is almost here. Instead, I stand in the doorway of my own room, facing the corridor, as if I’m just coming out.

Cedric appears. His eyes are red-rimmed. From opium or tears? I can’t tell. But at least I know it’s Zara upstairs.

‘Hey,’ I say.

Cedric jumps. ‘Lux! You startled me.’

‘Sorry, man. Heard you were out collecting yeast with Zara?’

‘I was. I came back early to, uh, work on something for the funeral.’

‘Right.’ He doesn’t seem to know that Zara came back early, too.

‘Would you be willing to read …’ Cedric seems to change his mind about whatever he was going to say. ‘Actually, you want to do some gardening with me?’

‘Sure.’

I follow Cedric out to the greenhouse. It isn’t very green. Just grubby white glass surrounding glazed brown pots filled with wet dirt. It’s winter, I guess. Everything has pretended to die, waiting for the atmosphere to be kinder before they give up their fruit.

But there is fruit, at least according to the labels sticking out of the soil: strawberries, watermelon, grapes, peaches and lemons, along with herbs and vegetables. There’s a small apple tree in the corner. I had assumed this place was just Cedric’s opium den, but it looks like he’s feeding the whole house.

He could poison us all if he wanted to. Apple seeds contain amygdalin, which releases cyanide when digested.

Fred’s theory was that the traitor wanted to kill all the Guards and take over the business. If he’s right, Cedric isn’t the killer. Cedric wouldn’t need to stage a suicide—just sprinkle some ground-up seeds into the cooking pot.

‘Do the prisoners eat this stuff, too?’ I ask.

‘No. They get dog food. Soy-based,’ he adds hurriedly. ‘We don’t want to condone cruelty to