Cash snorted. “As if you’re not halfway there already.”
“Piss off.”
“Nope.” He straightened up from burying the last of the cables under a cupboard I’d never noticed until now. “I’m hungry. You wanna go somewhere?”
“Around here?” It was my turn to raise an eyebrow. “That doesn’t really work for me. Goon—uh, that’s the main landowner in the village—pretty much banned me from the pubs and shops. If I want a bag of chips I have to go into the next town.”
Cash snorted. “Sounds familiar. We couldn’t walk down the street without—” He stopped and shook his head. “Never mind. Okay, stay here. I’ll get something.”
“You don’t have to—”
But Cash was already getting out of the van. He slid out and shut the door behind him, leaving me to the luxury of the flash pad he’d built for me in a single afternoon.
Over the last few years, I’d built up a collection of blankets and sleeping bags. Most had been too damp and muddy to bring into the van, but I had enough to spread out into a pretty comfortable bed. I made it as nice as it was ever going to get, then tucked my feet beneath me and considered the TV. There was a USB slot in the side. I rifled through my laptop bag and retrieved the memory stick I’d burned the Go-Pro footage of the last hunt onto. Meg had asked me days ago to check it for anything we could hand to the police, but up until now, I hadn’t been able to face it.
I still wasn’t feeling watching myself get run over, but that was life—my life, at least—and in the comfort of my Cash-built cave, I felt safer than I had in a while.
Steeling myself, I stuck the stick into the USB drive and navigated the interface with the pixie-sized remote Cash had tossed at my head earlier. It was mostly in Japanese, but thanks to my grandmother, that worked in my favour.
The hunt filled the small screen, silent at first until I found the volume controls. Then I wished I hadn’t. The sounds of an active hunt often haunted my dreams. I didn’t need reminding of it.
I pressed the mute button as Sprig’s footage played out, and then mine. The quad bike knocking me down proved anticlimactic without the sound, and I watched it three times with morbid fascination before I realised what I was doing.
I’d left Meg’s footage till last on purpose, knowing that after I’d watched it, I wouldn’t have the stomach to face any more. Because it wasn’t enough that I’d been rinsed by a quad bike, we’d lost the day too. A fox had been chased down and killed, and Meg had seen it all.
I watched through my fingers, anger and horror fighting for dominance in my blood. My hand shot out to shield me from the worst visuals, but despite it all, we had nothing that would make the police finally give a shit about what was going down under their noses.
Heart pounding, I fumbled with the remote to kill the footage. The screen went blank just as Cash opened the van door.
He frowned. “Did you throw up again?”
“Nah. I’m good.” I ripped the memory stick out of the TV and stuffed it into my pocket. “What did you get?”
Cash’s frown deepened, but he let my deflection hold, and thrust two hot plastic bags at me. “Chips and a curry from the Indian place. I didn’t know what you liked.”
“Chips are grand, mate. You have the curry, I’m a veggie.”
“Duh. So am I, dickhead. Goes with the territory, don’t it?”
“You’d think, but there’s plenty of meat eaters around here.”
“Hypocrites. I’d be vegan if I had the willpower.”
“Me too. It’s pizza, man. Gets me every time. And my nan’s omelettes. She’s Japanese—there’s nothing like them.”
“Japanese, eh?” Cash lifted a paper-wrapped parcel from one of the bags and opened it to reveal a steaming pile of vinegar-soaked chips. “Is that where your family is from?”
“Vaguely on my dad’s side. There’s a lot of Greek blood in my mum’s family.”
Cash pushed the chips at me. “That’s a long way from Ireland.”
“You’ve never been travelling? You look the gap year type.”
“There are worse things to look like, I suppose.” Cash picked up a chip, but didn’t eat it. “And to answer your question, I wanted to…planned to, but I got caught up in sabbing straight out of uni. Wound up fixing cars to keep some money rolling in. I don’t sab no more, but I’m still fucking here.”
No trace of bitterness laced Cash’s soft words, but I sensed regret in him, and it hurt. Sabbing was my life, and I wouldn’t change it for the world, but I knew what it was like to leave everything else by the wayside.
Tension blanketed the air. To break it, I reached for the curry bag and peeked inside. “Oooh, is this the hot one with the spinach?”
