I settled for filling my lungs with tar-laced smoke, hoping it would bring clarity as I turned over the bizarre chain of events. We’d hooked up by chance, but he’d been sent to find me by design. To seek me out and drag me back to a life that had almost got me killed.Hadkilled me, in many ways. “Do they know?”
“Who?”
“Whoever sent you…do they know you already knew me?”
“No, Cash.Ididn’t know until ten minutes ago. Your name meant nothing to me until I recognised your house, and even then I half thought I’d wound up here by mistake.”
“Mistake?”
“Yeah. That I’d let my dick guide me here, or some shit.”
If only. Rae had been on my mind more than I cared to admit since that night, and the idea of him rocking up for no more than a repeat performance left me dizzy-hot. But I couldn’t escape reality. We had more in common than I’d ever imagined, and that wasn’t a good thing. Rae’s sharp edges now made sense, but he was young. I didn’t want to him to feel like I did.
I finished my smoke and flicked the butt into the fire pit. “I need you to tell me why you’re here, and tell me all of it. Where you’re at, what you need, and why you need it.”
“You’ll hear me out?”
His obvious surprise stung. I glanced at the patio door and took in my reflection. Three years had passed, but I still saw the broken man I’d dragged down to London to take refuge with my father’s favourite brother. My hair was shorter than it had been back then, but still too long, and my face was the same, even without the months of scruff obscuring most of it. Had anything really changed?
I reached for Rae’s tobacco again and shrugged. “Try me.”
***
Rae
This wasn’t going how I’d planned, even after fate had chucked me its best curveball. Being close to Cash again had thrown me, but it was more than that. Picturing him naked and driving into me, his lips twisted in a beautiful snarl as his messy hair obscured his eyes? God, that was easy. Transplanting him from his hipster London home and into my world was harder. How was I supposed to sell him a life I couldn’t imagine him living?
“…Walsh is a legend.”Megan’s words echoed in my head, but I just couldn’tseeit.
And Cash didn’t seem to want me to. The gentle smile I remembered from the night we’d met had been replaced by a challenging glare.He isn’t pleased to see me. And could I blame him? He’d probably never given me a second thought, let alone in this capacity.
“Try me.”
On the train I’d prepared a fucking monologue to coax these veterans home, but Cash’s gaze was demanding the truth, and dammit, it was all I had.
I sucked in a deep breath and tipped my head back, giving up the safe haven of my hood. Cash didn’t react, but perhaps I’d been counting on that. “I don’t know you,” I said. “They didn’t give me anything except your name, and that you’re something of a legend.”
Cash snorted.
I tried for a grin. He stone-faced me.
“Anyway,” I went on. “They sent me because we’re in trouble. The hunt we monitor has grown over the past few years while our numbers have depleted. Trolls have shut us down online, basically getting Facebook to treat us like ISIS, and today, just before I came here, I’m pretty sure we figured out a serving police officer is riding out with the hunt.”
Something flickered in Cash’s gaze. “What makes you think that?”
“The landowner we square up to had a visitor this morning—an unmarked car—but it’s not just that. Since the season started again, the hunts have been policed like a fucking cup final. Cars, vans, helicopters. Fletch reckons one of their own is controlling the budget.”
“Fletch Barnes?”
Shit. Given Cash’s less than welcoming reception, I’d been trying to keep Meg and Fletch out of it. “Yeah. Know him?”
“Knowofhim.” Cash waved a hand for me to continue.
Powerless to refuse, I ploughed on. “Regardless of police involvement, we’re fucked. There are six of us against a hunt of up to thirty every other Saturday. And they’ve been cubbing too—Tuesdays mornings at dawn.” My fingers itched to trace the scar that split my eyebrow. “We can’t cope.”
“Of course you can’t,” Cash rumbled. “Six of you? If you had a dozen it wouldn’t be enough.”
“So we should just stop? Let them ride freely and kill every fox they find? Right…okay, maybe I should retire like you. Get myself a nice fancy house and chill the fuck out for the rest of my life? Fucking—” I snapped my teeth together, cutting off my tirade, but it was too late. Cash had flayed me open with three strikes of logic.
