My frown deepened. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Dunno.”
“Seriously?”
“I don’t fucking know, Cash,” Rae snapped. “I have no clue where you are on anything these days, so how would I know if you’re gonna show up or ditch us?”
“I’ve never ditched you.”
“Right.”
I couldn’t figure out if we were talking about sabbing or something else. My brain hurt, and as desperate as I’d been to hear Rae’s voice, this wasn’t the kind of conversation I’d craved. “Listen, I’ll be there, okay? I’m sorry I’m not there now to help you plan and get shit together, but on Saturday just tell me where you need me.Anythingyou need, Rae. You know that.”
“Course I do, Cash.”
He ended the call. I stared at the screen for a long moment. Then I reached over to my bedside table. At the back of the drawer, behind the johnnies and lube that hadn’t been touched since Rae was last here, was a half full plastic bottle of the worst vodka in the world. I unscrewed the top, tipped my head back, and necked it in one long swallow.
***
The day before the hunt, I came home to find my neighbours had repaired the hole in the wall that allowed Shula and Po to creep into my garden under the cover of thick, untamed bushes. It seemed symbolic…ominous, though I couldn’t say why.
“Don’t kick it down again,” Dom said as though he could read my damn mind. “We’ll find another way for them to get in.”
“There’s no time for that. If they come tonight and they can’t get in, they might not come back.”
“Would that be such a bad thing?” Dom said gently. “You’ve always said it’s wrong for them to depend on you.”
“Onus,” I corrected. “I’m not the only one who feeds them, and that’s not even the point. I can’t—” I pictured Shula and Po making the hazardous journey from wherever they came from and discovering the bricked-up wall, and shook my head. “No. It’s got to be their decision. I can’t block them out.”
Dom had never shown much enthusiasm for our night-time visitors, but perhaps the abrupt shift in my personality over the past few months had made him more amenable to ridiculous things.
At least that’s what I told myself when Lucky came home to find us digging a tunnel and stared as though we’d grown fucking horns.I love my friends.
Next morning, I set off before dawn, but for once, the darkness didn’t match my mood. Days of painstaking coordination meant there’d be more sabs than ever on the ground today, and perhaps even a chance to sit down and talk to Rae properly. About something more than borderlines and phone signals. I’d created a situation with him that didn’t make sense, and I didn’t know how to fix it, but the radio silence was suffocating. There had to be another way.
I followed the sun to the cross-county meeting point in the arse crack of nowhere. There were faces I knew, and many I didn’t, and I tried not to scrutinise every stranger. What was the point? It had been the person I’d been closest to who’d fucked me over last time.
Stop it.
I claimed a space beside Sprig, absorbing an atmosphere that wouldn’t have been out of place in a war bunker.Thiswas what I’d come for. I could wallow in the past at home.
Meg was leading the meeting, backed up by the lead Bucks sab, and a dude I presumed had come over from Herts.
“The only officially scheduled hunt today is in Bucks,” Meg said. “Beds ran unofficially in Bucks last week, so we really have no idea what they’ll pull today, and traditionally, the Hertfordshire hunt have always been transparent in their movements. They’re not due to run today.”
The Herts representative stepped forward. “We’ve been lucky with the hunt we monitor. In the last five years, we’ve only lost a handful of foxes, and I truly believe those incidents were accidental. There are a few hunts out there who stick to the law, and ours is one of them…so far. Obviously we’ll never rest on our laurels, but we’re truly sorry for what you’re dealing with in Beds and Bucks, and we’ll do everything we can to help.”
His assessment of his home turf sounded optimistic to me—jaded cynic that I was. I caught his eye. “Are you sure the main hunt isn’t a front? We had one of those where I was before. Rode out trail hunting every weekend, barely crushing a dandelion, while rogue riders did the real thing two towns away.”
“We’ve considered that,” the Herts sab retorted. “Thanks for asking, but we have more issues with the badger cull right now. Don’t make the mistake of thinking we have it easy.”
Score. I accepted the dressing-down with a nod. I didn’t care if he thought I was an idiot.
Meg took over again. The Bucks reps were dismissed to get ready for their hunt, leaving Herts and Beds to assemble into crack teams who would monitor the other local hunting sites, and stay mobile enough to hop counties at a moment’s notice.
“Cash, you’re with Rae,” Meg said. “Head back to our site and keep the van on the road.”
“With Rae?”
