“I know that.”
“So what exactly are you asking me?”
“I’m asking if Fletch’s crew have a realistic future if they sell this land.”
Dom shrugged. “I don’t know jack about being a hunt saboteur, but I know enough about vindictive town councils to know their days on that land are numbered, regardless. If I can buy it, and give them a decent price, there’s every chance they can set up elsewhere.”
“Won’t stop the council coming after them, though, wherever they go in the area.”
“Maybe not,” Dom said. “But they’ll be in a better position if they’re not living illegally in tents and dodgy Transit vans.”
“And you won’t let the hunt ride through the land?”
“Of course not. I’ll build a damn wall to keep them out.”
I’d known this already—had heard him tell Fletch, and then reiterate it to me in the car all the way home, but it felt good to hear it again. Another jolt of determination hit me. I punched Dom’s arm. “You’re a fucking hero, but don’t diss my van.”
Dom laughed. “Whatever. Besides, I thought it wasRae’svan right now?”
Bastard. He left me to my washing up, and I went back to pushing suds around the sink while trying to figure out what recommitting to sabbing actually meant. In a short half hour, I’d put a lid on my feelings for Rae, locked them up in a box, but how tight was the seal? And what about the practicalities? Sabbing was Rae’s whole world, like it used to be mine, but I had a job now, a mortgage. I couldn’t spend every day crawling through fields and vandalising trucks.
There had to be another way, or I’d broken my fucked-up heart for nothing.
***
I dropped my Saturday shift at the garage on Lucky, and I got the feeling Dom was relieved, even though it had ruined his weekend.
“He’s itching to come with you,” Dom said when we met in the kitchen at arse o’clock on Saturday morning. “He hasn’t mentioned it, but I can tell.”
I pictured Lucky on a sab op, then immediately wished I hadn’t. The little shit was an agile fucker, sneaky and fast. We could’ve used him. But I never would. “No chance.”
Dom grunted, glaring at me over a protein smoothie that looked like hell.
I punched his arm, accepted the Instagram-worthy breakfast he’d packed me—dude was someone’s mother, I swear—and hit the road. The predawn darkness was my friend. I stuck my Oasis playlist on, cut through the light traffic, and burned into Bedfordshire in a tidy hour. Over the last few days, I’d toyed with the idea of spraying my bright blue car a more countryside colour, but had ultimately decided a camouflaged car on the village roads would draw more attention to the sabs than some twat in a mark two Golf.
At seven a.m., I parked at the supermarket in the nearest town and set off for Rae’s place on foot, detouring through the woods to get a jump on spraying citronella along the likely trails the hunt would take.
My route took me past the house where the chief huntsman, Goon, lived. I gave the front a wide berth, but couldn’t resist the opportunity to scout the kennel block to see if the hound trucks were parked up and waiting.
I skinned up the wall and stuck my head briefly over the parapet, half expecting, given everything Rae had told me about Goon, to get a crossbow bolt between the eyes, but all seemed quiet—tooquiet, for a kennel block that housed over thirty hounds. Even this early, a couple should’ve been up, whining for a breakfast they likely wouldn’t get on hunt day.
Shoulders straining, I gripped the poles that supported the newly reinforced decorative spikes and heaved myself a little higher. I couldn’t see the whole block, but the first few kennels were open, and the scent of disinfectant reached me, signalling that they’d been recently cleaned. Last I’d heard Goon’s place had been stuffed to the gills with hounds, two a kennel, sometimes three. Unless he’d lost some along the way, and the ones I couldn’t see were sleeping too soundly to hear me scrabbling on the wall, the hounds weren’t there.
Alarm bells sounded in my already racing mind. I dropped to the ground, crept away from the house, and set off at a run towards Rae’s camp, chasing the rising sun.
At the camp, I found Fletch up and boiling a pot on a campfire. I called a greeting to let him know I wasn’t an interloper, but instinct took me straight to Rae’s van.
I ripped open the side door.
Rae glanced up from his pot of instant porridge, eyes hooded, hair inexplicable. I wanted to push his hair out of his face and kiss him, but we weren’t doing that shit anymore. “Goon’s moved the hounds. They aren’t at his place.”
He gave me a flat stare. “How do you know that?”
“Passed it on my way in.” I jerked my head back the way I’d come. “Kennels are empty.”
“Fuck.” Breakfast forgotten, Rae scrambled out of his sleeping bag and reached for the combat trousers he wore on hunt days. His long legs were beguiling, and I forced myself to look away while he covered them up. Hid my flushed cheeks under the guise of retrieving his boots from the floor.
He took them from me and crouched at the end of his bed. “Thanks. Right, we need to find Sprig and get him to make some calls. He knows people at every local boarding kennels. If the hounds have been moved there, he can find out.”
