“Is Cash your boyfriend?” the officer asked.
I closed my eyes.
***
Sprig, Fletch, and Isha were going with the police officers who’d been tasked with searching the woods.
The officer hovering over me wouldn’t let me go. “Best stay here,” he said. “If you’ve had beef with this landowner before.”
I opened my mouth. Shut it again as I watched Isha ditch his banker outfit for clothes more suited to tramping through the woods. What was the point? I knew when a copper was unmovable, and arguing would delay the search party setting off—a prospect I couldn’t cope with.
They left. My teeth chattered as I watched them go, and I clutched at Lucky’s hand on my shoulder. “What if they don’t find him?”
But what if they did? Lucky’s silence said it all and fresh panic rushed through me. And guilt. I didn’t understand how this had happened, but the longer it went on, the more my own pig-headed selfishness carved me up. I’d taken Sprig’s word as gospel, assumed Cash was being a dick, and gone to bed cursing him. If I’d sat up and worried why he hadn’t answered my spiky messages, perhaps he’d be safe by now.
Meg brought me a cup of tea and a packet of biscuits. I ignored her, got up and walked away, drifting to the treeline with my minder on my tail.
“Is there anything else you can tell me?” he said. “I appreciate that you have a lively time of it round here, but is there anything you can think of that’s been out of the ordinary?”
“I’ve already told you about Goon’s thugs attacking us. Shooting pellets at us, ramming us with quad bikes.”
“I meant apart from typical hunt stuff.”
“You think that’s typical? Don’t normalise that shit.”
“Rae,” Dom cautioned.
I hadn’t realised he’d joined us.
The officer glanced at him, then back at me. “Look, I’m new to this area, so I don’t know as much about the hunt as I should, only what I’ve heard over the last few months, and that’s all been reports of vandalism at the huntmaster’s property. What you’ve told me today is the first I’ve heard about retaliation.”
I wanted to punch him. Perhaps reading my mood, Dom stepped between us, and then around me to stand at my back, the perfect position to restrain me if I lost my mind and twatted a copper. “I don’t know why you’re asking me all these questions anyway, when it’s obvious you’ve got someone on the inside.”
The officer raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
I glared right back at him. “The greebo who’s been messaging me. He turned up last night with a mate, claiming he could leak information from Goon’s inner circle.”
“That’s an interesting development,” the officer said. “But it’s unlikely to be an undercover operation. As far as I know, the budget for policing fox hunting has been stripped to pretty much zero.”
He was amused. His face didn’t change, but I could tell. “You don’t believe me?”
“I think it’s farfetched—”
“For real?” Dom cut in. “You think the police haven’t pulled this kind of thing before? Infiltrating activist groups and destroying them from the inside out?”
If I hadn’t been so worried about Cash, the way the policeman looked at Dom when he spoke would’ve infuriated me. The way his words, though the same as mine, carried more weight because he was rich as fuck. But there was no time. I handed my phone over, complete with the sneaky snap I’d taken of the mysterious men in the woods, and gazed after the officer as he disappeared with it.
“What if he calls?” I clutched Dom’s arm. “What if Cash calls me?”
Dom covered my hand with his. “Then they’ll answer. They want this over with as much as we do.”
Over. The word lingered ominously. I shook my head. “It’s Goon, Dom, I know it is. He’s so fucking sure he’s untouchable, there’s no limit to what he’d do to Cash if he caught him.”
“Revenge?”
“More than that. Wefuckedthe hunt yesterday, and publically too. Anyone seeing that fox cub on the news can’t deny Goon’s hunt was trying to kill it. It could change things for them, and he won’t take that lying down.”
Convincing Dom was easy. He’d been worried enough to come searching for Cash in the first place, but with the police preoccupied with my phone, and searching the woods, there wasn’t much we could do but wait.
