Hideout Read online

  ‘Are you sure?’ I ask. ‘She looks different.’ If they think they’ve got the wrong person, they might let her go.

  Thistle squirms against the rope.

  ‘We’re sure,’ Kyle puts in. ‘We hacked her phone. She’s taken a leave of absence to run some kind of off-the-books investigation. She may not look like a cop, but she is one.’

  ‘What kind of investigation?’ I ask.

  The sirens are getting louder. Donnie swerves off the highway onto a side road. Seconds later, a patrol car screams past behind us.

  ‘Kyle,’ Donnie says, ‘can you get the police off our backs?’

  Kyle pulls out his phone. ‘On it.’

  ‘What kind of investigation?’ I ask again.

  ‘It’s complicated,’ Donnie says. ‘Her partner at the FBI was a guy named Blake. That’s the guy you killed, right?’

  ‘Right,’ I say.

  Thistle looks from me to Donnie and back again, probably thinking fast. Just like me.

  ‘Well, Thistle and Blake were sleeping together,’ Donnie continues. I can feel myself blushing, but no one is looking at me. Donnie’s watching the road, Kyle is glued to his phone, Thistle is looking at Donnie.

  ‘Thistle stumbles across a dead body hidden in Blake’s freezer,’ Donnie continues. ‘So she tells the FBI, and then skips town. He must have been a scary motherfucker.’

  All true so far. I can’t meet Thistle’s gaze.

  ‘So Thistle’s on her way to Mexico when she sees some news on Twitter. The dead man in Blake’s freezer? The cops have pinned the murder on someone else. Officially, Blake isn’t connected in any way.

  ‘Thistle is sure Blake is guilty. She turns around, comes back to Houston and asks her bosses what’s going on. They say the FBI has searched Blake’s house. No sign of the body she told them about. No sign of Blake, either. The place is empty. She reiterates what she saw, but they don’t believe her. They think she’s having a mental breakdown. And they’re not happy about her skipping town in the first place, so she’s suspended without pay.

  ‘But does she go to Mexico? No. She spends two days digging through Blake’s history unofficially. Calling in every favour she’s owed, shaking down every source she can find. And this leads her to a cold case, an apparent suicide at a motel Blake used to work at—’

  ‘Fuck,’ I say, out loud.

  ‘—where the body was never found,’ Donnie finishes. ‘She goes there, rents the exact room, and then we grab her. The end.’

  I clear my throat. ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘One of our subscribers works in payroll at the FBI,’ Donnie says. ‘There’s another at a travel agent and another at the phone company. We got all her emails, her reservations, location tracking, her texts …’

  ‘Who was she texting?’

  ‘That’s the best part! No one. She sent the messages to herself, hundreds of them. Keeping a record, in case something happened to her.’

  ‘Prescient.’ Kyle sounds like he’s proud of knowing the word. ‘We deleted them all.’

  Thistle keeps her gaze steady, but I can tell this is a blow.

  ‘My name is Michelle Paxton,’ she says. ‘I don’t know who any of you people are, and I don’t know who Elise Thistle is.’

  ‘Reese,’ Kyle corrects.

  ‘Whoever!’ Thistle says. ‘I don’t want to get dragged into whatever this is. Please just let me go.’

  I look at the others. ‘She could be telling the truth. Like I said, I don’t recognise her.’

  ‘No. It’s her,’ Donnie says. ‘She—shit.’

  Through the windshield I see a police car heading towards us.

  ‘Too late to turn,’ Donnie mutters. He keeps going straight as the car gets closer and closer.

  Just as it’s about to pass us, Thistle screams, ‘Help!’

  Kyle lashes out at her, panicked. I catch his fist just in time.

  The police car cruises past us without slowing down.

  Kyle shakes his fist loose. ‘What the hell are you doing, Lux?’

  ‘We may need to prove she’s unharmed,’ I say. ‘You start hurting hostages, the cops start shooting.’

  There are more sirens in the air. ‘Kyle!’ Donnie yells. ‘I need these cops gone!’

  ‘I’m doing it!’ Kyle punches some final digits into the phone and puts it to his ear. After a second, he starts yelling: ‘He has a bomb! He says he’s going to kill us all! Someone help!’

  Thistle quickly shouts, ‘This is Agent Reese Thistle, I’ve been abducted by—’

  ‘I already hung up,’ Kyle says smugly. ‘Hello, Reese.’

  Thistle glowers at him.

  ‘You spoofed the caller ID?’ Donnie asks.

  ‘Yeah. As far as the cops are concerned, that call came from City Hall.’

  ‘Nice.’ Donnie turns back the way we came. The sirens in the air fade away. By the time we reach the highway, the only sound is the rumbling of the van’s engine.

  Kyle nudges me. ‘You murdered a serial killer,’ he says. ‘Holy shit.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s what Blake was,’ I say. ‘I got the feeling he was running an off-the-books investigation of his own. That must have been why the body was in his freezer.’

  Every person in the van shoots me a sceptical look.

  ‘Either way,’ I add, ‘Blake didn’t seem like Thistle’s enemy. In fact, he seemed like he’d do anything to keep her out of harm’s way.’

  Thistle scoffs. ‘He hasn’t done a great job so far.’

  ‘He’s dead, bitch,’ Kyle says.

  ‘How do you know?’ she asks. ‘He could still be out there, living under a false name.’

  She’s threatening me. If she tells these guys I’m not Lux, then I’m dead. But if I’m dead, I can’t help her. Can’t she see that?

  ‘Lux killed him,’ Donnie says. ‘He’s six feet under.’

  ‘Lux did, huh?’

  ‘I can see why you’d want to think he was alive,’ I say. ‘Without Blake, you’re completely on your own.’

  I stare at her, trying to make sure she understands.

  ‘You’re all making a mistake,’ Thistle says. ‘You didn’t clean the scene at the motel. Prints, DNA, a bullet left in the wall and a casing on the floor—a SWAT team will be breaking down your door within twenty-four hours.’

  Kyle looks a little worried by this.

  Donnie doesn’t. ‘I’d like to see them try.’

  Thistle has spotted the weak link. ‘You really want to spend the rest of your life in prison?’ she asks Kyle. ‘Assuming you don’t get shot during the raid. You could end up quadriplegic, or brain-damaged …’

  ‘Don’t listen to her, Kyle,’ Donnie says. ‘Nobody saw us take her. Even if someone heard the gunshot, they probably won’t even work out which room it came from, never mind find the bullet hole. And no one’s gonna report her missing. You saw her texts and her emails. She’s divorced. No kids, no friends, no upcoming appointments and on an indefinite leave of absence.’

  Thistle chews her lip. She knows he’s right. But she keeps trying. ‘Kyle, right? I’m Reese. You don’t have to do this.’

  ‘Use first names so your captors think of you as human,’ Donnie says. ‘Try to establish a rapport with your captors. Straight out of the playbook. Anyway, you ever tried to get touch DNA from a cheap motel room? It’s useless. There would be evidence of thousands of people and they’d have no way of knowing which samples were relevant.’

  Donnie clearly has experience with in-person crime, not just the internet variety. I glance at Thistle—she’s realised this, too. It’s bad news. Experienced criminals are harder to catch.

  ‘And you Krazy-glued your fingers, right?’ Donnie adds.

  ‘Right.’ Kyle looks down at his shiny fingertips.

  ‘Well, there you go. No prints, either.’

  No one told me to put glue on my fingertips. If anyone does realise Thistle has been abducted, any evidence they find will poi
nt to me.

  Fred, Zara and Cedric are waiting out the front of the house when we get back.

  Donnie leaps out of the van, buzzing with leftover adrenaline. ‘Honey, I’m home!’

  ‘You caught the Baby Killer?’ Fred asks.

  ‘Sure did.’ Donnie throws Thistle’s handbag into the pick-up, probably so it can be dumped on their next trip to the gorge. If Donnie had a tail, it would be wagging. It’s not just Kyle who likes impressing Fred.

  I’d forgotten Donnie’s claim that Thistle had killed a baby. He seemed to believe it. Why?

  It feels like I’m missing something obvious, but I’m too busy trying to save Thistle’s life—while also maintaining a false identity and trying to solve a murder—to work out what.

  Kyle and I climb out of the van. Fred leans past us and sees Thistle trussed up in the back.

  ‘Nice.’ He nudges me. ‘You like?’

  I don’t know if this is a genuine gift or another test. Lux would be thrilled to see Thistle here, while Blake would not.

  ‘Best surprise ever.’ I grin. ‘Thanks, bro.’

  ‘No sweat.’ Fred looks satisfied.

  Zara unexpectedly wraps her arms around me and whispers in my ear: ‘Does she have nice feet?’

  For a second I think I’ve misheard. Then I remember what she nearly caught me doing to Samson’s body.

  ‘I’m looking forward to getting a closer look at them,’ I say.

  Zara laughs and strokes my chest with a fingernail. Like everything Zara does, it feels like a performance. Maybe for Thistle’s benefit.

  Thistle clenches her jaw in the back of the van. As far as she can tell, I’m Fred’s friend and Zara’s boyfriend. My chances of convincing her I’m not one of the bad guys are evaporating. At any moment she could tell them that I’m not Lux.

  ‘I want to make a deal,’ she says, as if reading my mind.

  Fred raises his eyebrows. ‘Oh, really?’

  I think of the last person to try to make a deal with the Guards, and the brick that went through his skull.

  ‘Wait.’ I climb back into the van. ‘No deals. Not before I’ve had a chance to enjoy her.’

  I hear someone chuckling outside.

  ‘I have something to tell you,’ Thistle calls.

  I clamp a hand over her mouth. Her breath is hot on my palm.

  ‘Talk all you want once you’re locked up,’ I snarl. Then, as I lean over to untie the ropes, I whisper in her ear: ‘I’m trying to help you.’

  I release her mouth. She spits on me. ‘Like you helped the guy in your freezer?’ But she says it too quietly for the others outside the van to hear. Offering me a chance to convince her.

  ‘Please. Trust me.’ I tug on the knot, which unravels instantly—showing Thistle that I never properly tied her up in the first place.

  As I lean back, Thistle gives me a searching stare. Looking for a killer and not seeing one. Maybe I’ve convinced her I’m on her side. Or maybe she thinks she’ll have more to gain by selling me out later.

  ‘Hurry up, Lux.’ Donnie climbs into the van after me. He grabs Thistle and drags her out.

  I follow the group as they take her around the side of the house. ‘Don’t hurt her. I want to draw first blood.’

  Donnie laughs. ‘You’re one creepy motherfucker, Lux.’

  They carry her past the greenhouse and the fence with the two snarling, snapping dogs all the way to the slaughterhouse.

  ‘Wait,’ Kyle says. ‘We don’t have masks.’

  Fred shrugs. ‘The cameras are dead.’

  ‘But the inmates will see.’

  ‘So what? They’ll all be dead soon.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Kyle laughs nervously.

  Thistle stares at the ground, working her jaw.

  Fred unlocks the door and slides it open, revealing the machines, the movie sets, the prisoners. I watch Thistle have the same realisation that I did—Fred is making these videos in-house.

  ‘You want her in China or India?’ Donnie asks.

  ‘India,’ Fred says.

  Donnie chains Thistle up in the fake pharmacy, where Gerald was before. No one has bothered to clean up the bloody smear on the ground.

  The other prisoners don’t say anything. The Terrorist forces an encouraging smile at Thistle. The Nazi avoids her gaze. The Abuser just stares, like a robot.

  ‘Lux.’ Fred gestures to Thistle. ‘Go nuts.’

  Everyone looks at me expectantly.

  ‘But someone sabotaged the cameras,’ I say, hoping Thistle will guess it was me.

  Donnie frowns. ‘So what? This bitch tried to have you arrested. She trashed your reputation so you can’t go home.’

  ‘Plus she killed a baby,’ Kyle puts in.

  Thistle looks shocked.

  ‘Right. Don’t you want to hurt her?’

  ‘That’s the point,’ I say. ‘I want it recorded. I want to be able to watch it over and over. That first moment, you know?’

  Thistle retches quietly.

  ‘You sure?’ Fred says. ‘The new cameras won’t be here for another two days.’

  ‘The anticipation is half the fun,’ I say.

  As we walk out, I can sense every bit of the contempt and fear directed at me. It’s not a new feeling. Everyone hated me at the group home, at the fast food place I once worked at, in the homeless shelters, even at the FBI. It was like my aura disgusted people. But the revulsion hurts more coming from Thistle, the one person who used to see what I was like beneath the surface.

  Except she never really did, did she?

  CHAPTER 24

  Feed me and I grow. Starve me and I’ll die— yet I’ve never been alive. What am I?

  It’s infuriating, not being able to help Thistle. Knowing she’s scared, and angry. As I wash the plates from another meatless dinner, I find myself scrubbing the dishes hard enough to wear away the enamel. Trying to look excited rather than sick with fear.

  Cedric is cross-legged on a beanbag in the corner of the dining room, reading a book. He occasionally scribbles notes on the dog-eared pages. He’s too absorbed, or perhaps self-absorbed, to notice that I’m acting strangely.

  He could have chosen to read in the privacy of his room. Maybe this is for show. Look how smart I am, with my book and my note-taking. Or maybe he’s out here specifically to keep an eye on me. He hasn’t mentioned the kiss, or the bite, but I assume they’re on his mind.

  As I turn to put a dry blade back in the knife block, I see Zara leaning against the kitchen bench, pouring another glass of wine. She wasn’t there a second ago. It’s like she’s teleported in from another, more glamorous, dimension.

  ‘You okay, Lux?’ she asks.

  ‘Yeah. Just, you know, a lot of excess energy.’

  ‘You want to do some yoga before bed?’

  I can see Cedric from here. He doesn’t look up from his book, but I can tell he’s listening.

  My enemy’s enemy is my friend. The one person who might be able to help me get Thistle out of here is Samson’s killer—but I don’t know who that is.

  ‘Did Samson used to do yoga with you guys?’ I ask, fishing.

  ‘Sometimes.’ Zara sips her drink. ‘Poor Samson.’

  ‘How long was he living here?’ My real question is, why now? Whoever murdered Samson would have had plenty of other opportunities in the past—unless the killer was a recent arrival.

  ‘I’m not sure. He was here when I arrived.’

  ‘When was that?’

  Zara considers this. ‘Six, no, seven months ago. Samson was so kind to me. He really took me under his wing.’

  I remember carrying Samson’s body and lying to Kyle about how close we had been. Zara could be doing the same thing.

  I lower my voice. ‘Were the two of you …’ I don’t really think Samson was sleeping with Zara, but I want to see how she reacts to the suggestion.

  A sad smile. ‘No. Not like that.’

  ‘Do you think he was interested?’

&n
bsp; The pause is long enough for me to realise it might be cruel, suggesting the dead man had unrequited feelings for her.

  ‘In me?’ she says at last. ‘No. Some men give without wanting anything in return.’

  This isn’t true in my experience. I especially doubt that it applies to the man who murdered Hailey’s husband and slipped into her bed in the dead of the night.

  ‘Did he get on equally well with everyone? Or did he have a special friendship with you?’

  ‘Why are you asking all these questions?’ Zara sits on the kitchen bench and crosses her long legs.

  ‘This is such a welcoming, peaceful community out here. I’m trying to understand why he would commit suicide.’

  Zara’s face darkens. ‘You’re saying we could have done more.’

  ‘Not at all,’ I say quickly. ‘I was cooking dinner with him the night before. He seemed perfectly happy. Everyone did, until …’

  I trail off, thinking. When I arrived, it did seem like a perfectly peaceful community, right up until the proximity alarms went off and we had to search the woods. I don’t know the Guards well, but I’ve met plenty of murderers and people with murderous intentions. No one was acting oddly around Samson, either watching him especially closely or avoiding him altogether. And Samson himself was chatty and friendly, right up until we met the mystery man in the forest. After that he seemed disturbed.

  Something changed in that moment. Suddenly someone had a motive to kill Samson, someone who hadn’t had anything against him before.

  Samson ran into the mystery man before I did. You see which way the guy went? I want to talk to him. Did Samson know him somehow?

  ‘You okay, Lux?’ Zara is watching me closely.

  ‘What? Yeah.’ I clear my throat. ‘Just thinking.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Just that you never know what’s going on in someone else’s head.’

  ‘Too true. Samson shouldn’t have bottled things up the way he did.’ Zara squeezes my hand. ‘You know you can talk to me, right? If you need to.’

  I look across at Cedric to see if he’s watching us. He doesn’t glance up from his book.

  ‘You don’t need to be ashamed,’ Zara continues. ‘There’s a woman in Congo running an illegal blood bank—she captures people and bleeds them dry. There’s a presidential aide in Brazil who sells children as sex slaves. You’re one of the good guys.’