“Well, well. What do we have here?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Rae
“I still don’t understand,” Meg said. “Why did they go to the trouble of trying to befriend you only to let you tell them to bugger off and walk away? Are you sure they were police? It doesn’t make any sense.”
I knew it didn’t, but we’d been having this conversation ever since I’d come home yesterday to find Cash had fucked off back to London without me, and I was over it. My short conversation with the dude behind the unknown number had given me hives, and the less I thought about him and his sidekick, the better.
Shame Meg didn’t agree. I sighed. “It’s obvious. They did me a favour at the weekend so I’d trust them, then they appear and start plugging me for information? Come on. If they’re not coppers, they’re spying for Goon, but he isn’t that clever. The real question iswhythe police want to infiltrate us now. When it happened to Cash, his gang had ties to fracking protests and Greenpeace. We’re small fry.”
“Unless Cash’s face has been registered. The quad bikes have mounted cameras on them now. If you’re right about there being a serving officer riding in the hunt, surely that could mean something?”
I had no idea. I wanted to talk to Cash about it before we took it any further, but he was ignoring me, calls, texts, and not just me. He wasn’t talking to Meg either.
Git. It wasn’t the first time he’d backed off from us, but this time I was taking it personally. He’d told Sprig he was going home. Why the fuck hadn’t he toldme? I was beginning to believe I was destined to never understand the man I couldn’t seem to forget.
Didn’t want to forget, even if he was as up and down as a giraffe chewing its toenails.
Meg was still talking. I tuned her out and forced myself to think back to the two strangers who’d stepped into my path in the woods, armed with a random tale about infiltrating Goon’s hunt and giving us information from the inside. Six months ago, I might’ve believed them, but not now. I’d walked away, leaving their bait behind, all the while wondering if either one of them was the man who’d broken Cash’s heart, leaving me to scrabble around for the pieces.
“We don’t know they’re police,” Meg said for the thousandth time.
Yeah right.
I left Meg and retreated to the van to write an open letter to whoever these freaks were, inviting them to fuck right off. My only regret about meeting them was that I’d already ditched my Go-Pro. Otherwise, I’d have had their faces on camera, ready to expose to the world, and there was no part of me at all that worried I might’ve judged them wrong. They weren’t hunters, but they weren’tus.I didn’t know much, but I knew that.
An hour later, I was dozing in front of my laptop, my anger worn thin by exhaustion. Down days were always like this—an anti-climax after the chaos of a hunt. I longed for a hit of Cash to take the edge off, but he’d turned his phone off now, sending my calls straight to voicemail. I wanted to hate him.
But I didn’t.
Outside, a vehicle pulled up at the gate. For a split second, my heart leapt, but it sank just as fast. Cash never brought his car this close, so I didn’t bother sitting up to look out of the window. If it was trouble, it would soon come knocking at my door. It always did.
On cue, footsteps approached the van and the door was ripped open a moment later. I was expecting Fletch, Sprig, or even the old bill. Dom Ramos was the last face on a very long list.
“Where’s Cash?” he said before I could sit up. “Is he here? Is he with you?”
“What?”
“Cash,” Dom repeated, eyes flashing dangerously. “Where is he?”
I sat up, irritated. “Home, as far as I know’ cos he isn’t here, mate.”
Dom snapped his gaze to me. “Serious? He’s not here?”
“Um…no.” The urgency in Dom finally penetrated. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“He didn’t come home last night, and he didn’t show up at the garage for the stock check either.”
Dom was already backing away. I scrambled to follow him, stamping into my boots and grabbing my coat. “What the fuck? Are you sure he hasn’t gone somewhere else?”
“Like where? Apart from his uncle up the road who hasn’t spoken to him for weeks, you’re the only person on his radar, Rae. If he’s not home, and he’s not with you, something’s wrong.”
The absolute certainty in Dom’s words terrified me. I glanced around and realised the whole camp had turned out to meet Dom at the gate, and they were all staring at me like the end of the world had happened. Panic kicked in. I rounded on Sprig. “You said he’d gone home.”
Sprig spread his hands. “That’s where he said he was going.”
“What did he say, exactly?” Dom said.
