PC Harding cleared his throat. “Anyway. I’ll take a statement from you when we’re done here, and then I’ll show you some photographs so you can ID the men we’ve picked up on camera. Turns out, the security on that estate did you a favour.”
Rae snorted. I wished he’d speak. It seemed like a lifetime since I’d last heard his voice.
The police droned on about charges and evidence, but I tuned them out. They had Goon on camera. Add in the damning statement percolating in my brain, and he was toast. I didn’t much care about the technicalities. I cared about the future—mine, and Rae’s. Together. Apart. Goon was the heart and soul of the hunt on his lands, but even if he went to prison, he had dozens of pals ready to take his place. We’d dodged it for weeks, but reality was looming. And foxes were still dying.
Hopelessness gripped my heart. Head spinning, I excused myself and left the room. No one followed me.
Habit took me out into the garden, but I managed to resist Lucky’s tobacco. I’d coughed enough the last few weeks to last me a lifetime. It was too cold for me to linger long, so I shuffled back inside and hid in the kitchen.
A quiet tap at the side door roused me a few minutes into a stare down with the empty fridge.
I found Isha on the other side, dressed to impress as usual. “If you’re looking for dinner, you’re out of luck. Coppers are here.”
Isha stepped around me into the house and shut the door with his long arms. “About time they showed up here. I passed them a file from our own investigations a week ago.”
“You what?”
He shrugged. “Did you think Dom was going to let someone leave you for dead and do nothing about it?”
He said it as though it made perfect sense, but rich people were like that, however nice they were. They didn’t see how improbable their privilege and reach really was.
“Whatever.” I pointed to the kitchen. “Come supervise me making the tea, will you? I’ve been waited on so much recently I’ve forgotten how.”
Isha followed me into the kitchen, but unlike everyone else around me, had no issue taking a seat and watching me make six cups of tea. I felt his eyes on me, though, and it got under my skin.
I thrust a mug at him. “Stop staring at me.”
Isha turned a dark gaze on me that might’ve been sexy if I hadn’t been so bewitched by Rae. “I’m not.”
“Yes you are, and it’s creepy. Stop it.”
“Okay, you got me. I’m curious.”
“About what?”
“About you. I thought you’d be all over this investigation, considering what it’s cost you, but you seem detached from it. Don’t you want to know what my PI found out?”
I tipped a bag of sugar into the empty sugar pot. “I know what your PI found out.”
“Do you?”
“Of course I do. It’s fucking obvious.”
Isha spun his mug around so the handle was in his left hand. His expression betrayed nothing but idle amusement, but I knew him well enough to sense his shrewd gaze drilling holes in my indifference. “Tell me then,” he said. “I’ll admit the whole thing has twisted me up, so I can’t imagine how you feel.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you once loved the man who encouraged Goon to hurt you.”
“Is that what he did?”
“Yes, Cash. I’m afraid it is.”
A bar stool was mercifully close. I abandoned my tea-making and sank onto it. It had taken me a long time to accept thateverythingabout my relationship with Zander had been fake, and when I finally had, I’d convinced myself I’d been a mere pawn in a game I didn’t truly understand. “Why would Zander want to hurt me more than he already has?”
Isha got up and came around the breakfast bar. “I don’t think it was about you. From what I understand, the chief constable riding in the hunt had your ex over a barrel. Pulled him onto this operation specifically to shut Rae’s gang down, which meant targeting anyone Rae was close to. He might not have even known it was you until right at the end. I mean, did you see him while Goon had you?”
“No.” But as I said it, uncertainty set in. There were so many blank spots in my brain from that weekend, I couldn’t be sure what I’d seen, and what had been a figment of my hypothermia-fuelled imagination.
