One look at his shadowed face confirmed my worst fears: we’d lost the day.
Chapter Twenty
Rae
The drive back to Bedfordshire was silent. Sprig sat between me and Cash in the front, stoically staring ahead, while I flicked between gazing morosely out of the window and stealing glances at Cash’s solemn profile.
I’d known the moment it had dawned on him that we’d lost a fox. All day he’d been riled up, full of fire, but the light in him had faded in the blink of an eye. In all of us probably, but I’d found myself unable to look away from Cash, even when he’d turned his back on me.
Sprig had followed him outside and filled him in on what he’d missed. The vixen had escaped, but the terrier men had released a second animal—a juvenile—from a cage as a consolation prize. I’d wondered if Sprig would spare him the gory details, but a moment later, Cash’s fist had connected with the weathered wooden doorframe, splintering it.
We’d left soon after. His explosion of temper had stuck with me, though. Shadows had always lurked behind Cash’s gorgeous gaze, but they seemed to grow darker with every day that passed. As if purging his secrets to me had irrevocably opened old wounds. Had I done this to him? Recruiting him back to sabbing had been a no brainer—we’d needed him as much as he couldn’t let the life go—but the sense that I’d poured petrol on a smouldering fire wouldn’t quit.
I wanted to comfort him. To hustle him home, light a fire, and mourn what we’d lost today together, as lovers…friends, whatever. But when we reached camp, Cash jumped ship and disappeared. When he didn’t come back, it was clear he’d gone home.
Depressed, I handed my gear back to Meg, then retreated to the van, crawling into the back and into my makeshift bed. I stuck a flash drive into the TV andBreaking Badilluminated my makeshift bedroom. The volume was low, and I left it that way. After a day of chaos, I wasn’t in the mood for noise.
Despite my best efforts to avoid it, the day replayed in my head. My team had been lucky, our efforts to save the vixen had paid off. Sprig and his partner hadn’t been so fortunate. They’d evaded the quad bikes only to witness the worst of the carnage. Selfishly, I was glad it hadn’t been me. Or Cash. Though I had no idea how his day had panned out. We’d left Buckinghamshire without a debrief, and he hadn’t stuck around to rectify that.
I poked at my phone, considering calling him, but didn’t quite have the nerve. What would I say?“Sorry losing the fox upset you. What else did you see today to fuck you up?”Right. Like I hadn’t messed with his head enough.
Sighing, I tossed my phone aside and sank into the bed he’d built me. My stomach growled painfully, but I didn’t get up to fetch dinner, even when the scent of cooking reached me. I was halfway to restless sleep when Fletch slid the van door open.
“Supper.” He thrust a bowl at me. “And don’t get sulky about it. No good comes from your guts thinking your throat’s been cut.”
Fletch was one of those people who could throw two onions and a tin of beans into a pot and come back with magic, but even his special soup wasn’t enough to draw me out of my funk.
I took the bowl from him and set it on the side. “Thanks. I’ll eat it later.”
Fletch looked as though he might argue, then thought better of it. He leaned in the doorway, just about shielding me from the cold wind. “I just spoke to old Fred from the Bucks lot. We need to sit down and coordinate things a bit better with them.”
“Coordinate? How about they keep a better watch on what’s going down on their land?”
It came out harsher than I’d intended.
“Easy.” Fletch spread his hands. “They don’t have a permanent crew like we have. Most of them work full-time on top of what they do, they ain’t got time to be stalking country manors. Besides, we didn’t notice Goon sneaking off in the first place. Things are what they are.”
He was right, and I knew it, but resentment grumbled in me all the same. When things went wrong, assigning blame was easier than facing up to the loss of another animal.
Fletch cleared his throat. “Did you get anything to hand to the RSPCA?”
I shuddered. “Not personally. Sprig’s partner—a Bucks guy—picked the fox up. They were going to drop it off for testing in the morning.”
“Well that’s something.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. If we can prove how the animal died we’re further forward than we were before.”
I wanted to protest. To argue that it didn’t matter how many times we proved that foxes were being chased down and killed by hunters with dogs, no one gave a fuck. But I was tired. And beaten. I just wanted to sleep.
“There’s something else I want to talk to you about,” Fletch said.
I groaned and flopped back on my bed. “Can it wait? I’m not blogging until the morning and I’m fucking knackered.”
“Understandable, but I was hoping you’d check in with Cash before you call it a night. He looked upset when he left, and you two seem to get on well.”
Get on well. Was that what we were calling it these days? As if I didn’t know the whole camp knew me and Cash had been fucking. “He was upset, we all were, but I don’t think he wants to talk to me about it.”
