Hideout

by Jack Heath

  ‘You should arrest me,’ I say instead.

  She looks sceptical and a bit pitying. ‘You want to get arrested?’

  ‘No,’ I say, not sure what I’m feeling. ‘But … you’re an FBI agent. You have to.’

  ‘Goodbye, Blake.’ Thistle leans over and kisses me just in front of my ear. She doesn’t steel herself or take a deep breath—she just does it.

  I swallow the lump in my throat. ‘Wait.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She gets up and walks away.

  The air chills the saliva print on my cheek. I rise. Hesitate. I shouldn’t follow her. It would be frightening, being chased by someone like me.

  But I can’t let her go. She needs to arrest me. Not because of who I am, but because of who she is. We had the same upbringing. We went through the same meat grinder, in a sense. But I turned out bad and she turned out good. She has to stay that way.

  Thistle walks out the door without looking back.

  I’m paralysed for a minute, knowing I have to let her go, knowing that I can’t. Then something inside me breaks and I find myself running.

  The door is hard to open one-handed, especially with the envelope pinched between my fingers. I discard it, twist the handle, barge the door with my shoulder and stumble out into the parking lot.

  The wind blows the rain into my face. I shield my eyes with my hand and scan the lot. Thistle is already in the driver’s seat of her Crown Vic, starting the engine.

  ‘Arrest me!’ If she doesn’t, it will haunt both of us.

  Thistle sees me, standing in a puddle. She waves, tears in her eyes, then reverses out onto the road. I don’t know if she heard me or not. I watch the car zoom away.

  Knowing everything I’ve done, she let me go.

  I’ve corrupted the best person I ever met.

  ‘Sir?’ The receptionist is behind me. She falters when she sees the look on my face, but holds up the unopened envelope. ‘You dropped this.’

  I take it wordlessly. She scurries back inside. Once she’s out of sight, I drop the envelope again. I watch the puddle slowly devour the paper, dark splotches of ink growing like tumours across the surface.

  CHAPTER 45

  Your rock-climbing clothes should go on which hanger?

  When I get back, my house feels cold and empty. It’s shabby, the rot barely concealed by the cheap paint. It suits me. Maybe I’ll strip the paint away, so everyone can see what it’s really like. Smash some windows. Let the whole world in.

  Or maybe just burn the place to the ground. I can see the appeal in what Fred was trying to do. Let everything go up in flames. Erase your home to erase yourself. Turn inner pain outwards.

  I kick the door closed behind me. My eyes still sting from the tears, the exhaustion and the after-effects of the pepper spray. Blinking and sniffling, I go to the bathroom and splash some cold water on my face.

  ‘Is this a bad time?’

  ‘What the fuck?’ I whirl around, crashing against the towel rack. Zara is in my bathtub, neck deep in bubbles.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ she says. ‘I let myself in.’ My heart is still racing. ‘And ran a bath?’

  Her hair has maroon streaks in it and she’s wearing a darker shade of lipstick than before. Her eyes are lighter, roast turkey-gold, without the contact lenses. If she were wearing the right clothes, she might not even be recognisable as the empress of torture from the house in the woods.

  She shrugs her perfect shoulders. ‘You were gone a long time.’

  I’m sick of deception and mind games. There’s no reason not to just ask: ‘Are you here to kill me, or seduce me, or what?’

  Zara examines some bubbles on her fingertip. ‘You cut off a valuable source of intelligence. My superiors are annoyed.’ She purses her lips and blows the bubbles away.

  ‘Well, I feel really bad about that.’

  ‘They’re also impressed.’ Zara stretches out in the tub, putting a foot up on the rim. ‘I was completely convinced that Samson’s death was a suicide, and I’d been trying to work out Fred’s real name for months. You did it in less than a week.’

  I don’t tell her that I’d technically been after Rick for years. ‘You’re welcome. I’m not going to tell anyone about you, if that’s your concern.’ I gesture at my empty, lifeless house. ‘Who would I tell?’

  ‘Hm.’

  I wipe my face with a towel. By the time I can see again, Zara is standing up, naked in front of me. But the look in her eyes isn’t alluring, at least not in the traditional sense. It’s trusting.

  ‘I’m not scared of you.’ She spreads her arms wide. ‘I won’t run away like the FBI agent did.’

  So she is here to seduce me.

  ‘Not interested,’ I say.

  She steps out of the tub, dripping. Moves into my personal space, her face inches from mine. ‘Wouldn’t you rather have a partner who’s more like you? Someone who respects your skills and isn’t disgusted by your hobbies?’

  ‘I’m not looking for a relationship right now.’

  ‘I have a delicate situation at work,’ she says.

  The change of topic throws me. ‘Work?’

  ‘Right. It’s another operation on US soil, so official support is hard to come by. I could use some unofficial help.’

  It takes me a moment to realise what she means.

  ‘You were wasted at the FBI, Blake.’ She reaches past me, plucks my towel off the rack and winds it around her body. Smiles. ‘How would you like to work for the CIA?’

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks so much to all the booksellers, librarians, reviewers and readers who have supported Blake in his journey. I’m more grateful than I can say. Without all you Hangman evangelists (hangfans? hangers-on?), he would be long gone.

  Thank you to the hard-working and talented teams at Allen & Unwin, Bolinda Audio and Curtis Brown Australia for making Hideout possible. Special thanks to everyone who read drafts, provided encouragement and made suggestions, particularly Clare Forster, Angela Handley, Amy Jones, Ali Lavau, Sydney Liau, Sanchita McGregor, Venetia Major, Christa Munns, Jane Palfreyman, Benjamin Stevenson and Gareth Ward. If there was any justice in the world, all your names would be on the cover. (But there isn’t.) Thanks to everyone else who volunteered to read the manuscript—don’t worry, I’ll be back to collect that favour on some future book.

  Sincere thanks to everyone at Wardini Books, whose dedication to spreading the word about Hangman made me a minor celebrity in Havelock North, New Zealand.

  Thanks to Jackie French for the quote about anger on the first page. She was quick to point out that she was paraphrasing someone else who had read Hitler’s Daughter. There’s no cannibalism in that, but you should read it anyway.

  Speaking of good books, thanks to the following journalists: Robert Evans (It Could Happen Here*), Eileen Ormsby (The Darkest Web), John Safran (Depends What You Mean By Extremist) and Jon Ronson (So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed). Their work was valuable while writing Hideout. Views expressed are Blake’s, not theirs (or mine).

  Thanks to Lynne Allister, who donated $500 to #AuthorsForFireys and got a character named after her. I’m sorry your namesake was treated so poorly, but you did read the other books in the series, so you knew what you signed up for.

  A lot happened during the development of Hideout. I moved house, twice. I became a father for the second time. There was the bushfire, and then the pandemic. Thank you to my family—Venetia, Redvers, Ash, Mum and Dad—for keeping me sane during a hard time … well, sane enough to write Hideout, anyway.

  __________________

  * Not technically a book, but still good.

 

 

 
scale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share