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 is why the 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 told me? 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’t us. 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.

“He said, “That’s it, mate. I’m off home” and he left.”

“What? Got in his car and drove off?”

“No,” I cut in. “He doesn’t bring his car here. He parks it at Tesco.”

“So he left on foot?”

“I guess so. I wasn’t here.”

The look Dom speared me with should’ve killed me on the spot, as though he knew I’d been fraternising with the enemy while Cash had been trudging back to his car alone. He started towards the Lexus blocking the gate. I followed him. “Where are you going?”

“To look for his car,” Dom tossed over his shoulder. “You coming?”

Nothing on earth could’ve stopped me. I grabbed Sprig. “I’m going with him to look for the car. Get out in the woods and run the route Cash would’ve taken to the cycle path.”

Sprig raised a sceptical eyebrow. “You don’t think there’s a chance he fucked off to his mum’s for the night and didn’t tell no one? Maybe he forgot his phone charger.”

“His mum’s dead, arsehole. Just check, okay?”

Sprig seemed as though he might protest again, but Fletch dragged him away.

“We’ll check, Rae. Let us know if you find his car.”

I shot Fletch a grateful look, then turned on my heel and sprinted the rest of the way to Dom’s car, hurdling the gate.

Dom had already started the engine, and he peeled away the second I shut the door.

My body sank into the plush leather seats of its own accord, but there was no space in my brain to appreciate the luxury of Dom’s flash car as I directed him out of town to the nearest supermarket. “He parks at the back, by the recycling bins.”

“Every time?”

I nodded. “Yeah. He used to park at the shop in the village, but he switched to here when he started coming regularly, so the Goon squad didn’t recognise his car.”

“The what?”

“The heavies the landowner uses to combat sabbing. They put Meg’s car off the road a while ago…totally trashed it.”

Dom tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “Be real with me, Rae. How dangerous are these people? Do we need to call the police?”

Tesco came into view. My stomach turned over. “Let’s see if his car is there first.”

Dom made a sound low in his throat and turned onto the retail park housing the giant Tesco. I swallowed hard and let my mind run away, considering every possibility of what could’ve happened to Cash between him leaving the camp alone and where we were right now. Logic told me his car would be gone, and he’d simply spent the night with someone Dom hadn’t thought of. Cash was an adult with a lifetime he’d lived away from me, and even away from Lucky and Dom. None of us knew everything about him. There had to be something or someone out there that made more sense than the sinister turn my imagination seemed hell bent on taking.

We pulled into the car park. Dom took the long route around, scanning every row, but as we turned the corner by the bins, my hand shot out, unbidden, to grip his elbow.

Cash’s car was still there.

***

We drove back to camp like a storm. Over and over, I called Cash, and over and over, his automated voicemail sent chills down my spine.

Beside me, Dom made several calls of his own, but I was too far gone in my panic to absorb who he was talking to, until we got back to camp to find another top-end car waiting for us.

Lucky was in the passenger seat beside a tall, dark-skinned man who wouldn’t have been out of place in GQ magazine. Black suit, shades, and a phone that looked like something from a Bond film.

“This is Isha,” Dom said. “My wingman.”

But I barely heard him, lost instead to the real fear in Lucky’s piercing blue gaze as he came up on me and got in my face.

“Where is he, Rae? He told me he was staying with you.”

“I thought he was, or that we were coming back to London.”

“So what happened? What changed?”

“I don’t know,” I said desperately. “I was held by the police after the hunt. He was gone when I got back—he told Sprig he was going home.”

“Why would he leave without you?”

“I don’t know. Things haven’t been easy. He gets upset sometimes. I figured he needed some space.”

Lucky shook his head. “Not space from you, Rae. It was never that.”

“Wasn’t it?”

But my words were hollow, even to my own ears, and the doubt lacing them didn’t ring true, not anymore. Cash had been different yesterday, hopeful, happy, as though he’d somehow found the answer—the balance between whatever we were to each other, and sabbing. He’d been the man I remembered from the start.

I reached out and gripped Lucky’s warm hands. “I don’t know where he is.”

Lucky hugged me. One of us was shivering, but I couldn’t tell who, and when he pulled away, new horror greeted me.

Sprig had appeared in the bottom corner of the camp. He walked towards us shaking his head, one of my hoodies clutched in his hand. “I found this at Baker’s Gate,” he called when he was close enough for us to hear him. “Lots of footprints too, tracks leading onto Goon’s land.” He stared directly at me and shook his head again. “Rae, I think they got him.”