I didn’t believe it. How could anyone who got out of bed on a Saturday morning to destroy living creatures possibly have a conscience? But Meg was a bigger person than me, so I let the theory pass. “What if—?”
For some reason, I couldn’t finish the sentence. I opened my mouth. Shut it again.
Meg raised an eyebrow, and understanding dawned on her face. “You’re wondering if it’s police trying to infiltrate us?”
“Do you think it could be?”
“Absolutely. It’s worked for them before…up north. They shut a whole unit down by romantically involving an agent with an activist.”
She knows.
Motherfuckers.
I’d always wondered how much she and Fletch knew about Cash. “You think this is like that? Someone’s trying to hit me up, thinking I’m some sad little queer who can’t get laid?”
It was my turn to bodge a joke that apparently wasn’t funny. Meg frowned. “We don’t know it’s a man, or that they’re trying to…um, woo you. They could be luring you out for a meet to arrest you. Or kidnap you if it’s Goon’s lot.”
“Why,though? When they could just lift me in the field?”
Meg had no answers, and despite having none of my own to offer, I was irrationally pissed off with her for it. I stomped back to the van, but my bed didn’t seem as welcoming. Wired, I sat in the open door and chain-smoked, glaring moodily out over the camp. Most of my colleagues had gathered at Fletch and Meg’s trailer for a drink, but Sprig was sulking outside his own tent, too. Fuck knew where Drey was.
I took a deep drag of my last cigarette.Drey. I didn’t know the dude that well. He was an old friend of Fletch’s and seemed to come and go with the weather. I’d never doubted him, but he’d bought the compromised SIM card. And he wasn’t here now. What if he was the weak link? The betrayal? He’d been around longer than me, so it didn’t make sense, but nothing did right now.Someonewas after me. Was it a stranger? Or a wolf in sheep’s clothes? A friend with a knife ready to stick in my back?
My mum always said I was dramatic. Nosy, and like a dog with a bone when my curiosity was piqued. Years later, university lecturers had said those qualities would make me a hell of an investigative journalist. It was funny how life turned out.
And how it didn’t.
I stared at the short message thread between me and the would-be interloper. Flicked back and forth between that and the text conversations I’d shared with Cash. Both made my heart beat too fast, but for very different reasons, none of which I was in the mood to deal with right now.
With a heavy sigh, I stubbed my smoke out. I was about to retreat to my bed when Fletch morphed out of the shadows.
He held out his weathered hand. “Show me them messages again.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Cash
“Why don’t you go and see him?”
I glanced up from the tools I was packing away, chucking them one by one into the box with a satisfyingclunk. “See who?”
Lucky rolled his eyes. “Rae, of course. You’re constantly on the phone to him, and you’re off tomorrow. Why not?”
“I’m not constantly on the phone to him.”
“Right.”
Lucky laughed, but he was wrong. I’d been on my phone a lot over the last week, but with Meg, Fletch…even Sprig a couple of times. I hadn’t spoken to Rae, and weirdly, considering the role he played in the Bedfordshire gang, he hadn’t come up in conversation until now.
A scratchy sensation coursed through me. I wondered if it was anything like the itch Lucky had described when he’d been craving a hit of the bad habits he’d left behind. Not a physical itch, at least not on the outside, but one that couldn’t be scratched without fucking up the entire world.
I threw a spanner at the box. Missed, and it clattered to Lucky’s feet.
He scooped it up and brought it to me. “What the fuck is going on with younow? I thought getting back into the saboteur stuff was what you wanted?”
I glowered at him. “What does sabbing have to do with you wanting me to go visit Rae?”
“Everything. There’s not much between the two, is there?”
