Cash

Foxes had a unique smell. To most people, it was kind of disgusting, but their musky scent had always comforted me, and tied me down to a world I sometimes didn’t want to be in anymore.

Somewhere along the last few hours, though—or however long it had been—it had stopped working. Lack of food, the cold, and the boot-shaped bruises all over my body was making me hurl, and every scent I absorbed as I gasped for air made my vision blur.

The cold was the worst. Goon had taken on the task of filling me in himself, and he wasn’t much good at it. His kicks and punches had stung, but there’d been no strength behind them, no belief. Ironic for a bloke who was far too thick for his horse.

Whatever. He’d hurt me, but I’d had worse, and I could’ve dealt with it if not for the freezing stone floor he’d dumped me on, and an inability to get up that my hazy mind didn’t quite understand.

Perhaps it was the cheap whisky someone had been nice enough to tip down my throat, forcing me to swallow it like water, mouthful after mouthful, until I’d puked on their shoes as well as my own. Either way, however I looked at it, I was fucked.

The booze in my system pulled me towards sleep, but I fought it and tried to take stock of my situation, piecing together the jumbled timeline in my brain to how I’d ended up here. Pain lanced my chest, but it wasn’t physical. Rae’s face haunted me, but I couldn’t remember why. Rough hands had brought me here, dragging me from the light to the dark, and it was only Goon’s frequent visits that clued me into where I was—the kennel block, trussed up on the concrete floor.

Lucky me.

More nausea ripped through me, but I had nothing left. The metal gate to my kennel crashed and banged, and suddenly, I wasn’t on the floor.

Goon stood me up against the wall and punched me in the face. His knuckles grazed my already swollen cheekbone—the same one that been cut a while back. Perhaps I was destined to come away from this place with half my face missing.

He struck me again, still not hitting home as much as he thought he was, but I groaned anyway. I wasn’t feeling him fetching someone from his squad who could throw a fair punch.

Goon laughed, as though he imagined himself the hardest man in the world. “Don’t like this, do ya? Well tough shit, you little fuck. Time for me to ruin your day for a change.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him my day had been ruined long before his thugs had hauled me out of the woods and dumped me in a dog kennel, so I let him hit me until he ran out of breath, or got bored…whatever. I was out of it enough to not know the difference, and weirdly, getting thumped in the head a few times had cleared the nausea. I no longer felt sick to my stomach, just profoundly tired…more than that, and for the first time, real fear broke through the apathy that had protected me so far.

A violent shiver rocked me, jerking my body from the floor so hard my head smacked back on the damp concrete. Pain. Fuck. Okay, despite my internal bravado regarding Goon’s strength, this shit was starting to hurt. And I was cold, so fucking cold that somewhere beneath the murkiness in my brain, I knew I had to stay awake. Goon wasn’t going to kill me, he didn’t have it in him, but the icy wind blasting into the kennel could. And fast, if Goon didn’t get fed up with me soon.

In an effort to stay conscious, I shifted my head to stare out between the bars of the door. I couldn’t see much, but I heard things. A horse moving past the kennel block, its hooves clacking on the concrete, and then the unmistakable snap of a crop, and the horse’s pained whinny. Sometime later, a dog yelped, a door banged, and the nausea returned. All this time we’d focussed on the foxes, when the other animals here needed us just as much.

Despite my best efforts, I lost time. My surroundings faded in and out, and I had no idea which way was up when someone came into my kennel.

Strong hands—stronger than Goon—gripped me under my shoulders. The cold floor disappeared and for a brief moment, I felt as though I was flying.

Then my foot hit the metal doorframe—Goon had taken my boots—and the pain that rocketed from my toes to my hip was unbelievable.

My groan this time was real, and my assailant shook me, standing me up, and slapping my face a few times. “Listen, mate. You’ve gotta pull yourself together before the coppers get here. Get yourself home and lay low.”

“Wha—?”

The face of the man holding me up came closer, slipping under the mist I couldn’t seem to shift. His bone structure was familiar, the jet black hair with the tell-tale orange tint of Just for Men, but I couldn’t focus, dammit, and his words made even less sense than his face.

Another slap, harder this time. “Come on,” the man said. “Get moving.”

And suddenly I was moving, and bright daylight hit my eyes. Jesus, where the fuck had I been all this time? In a fucking dungeon?

The black-haired man dragged me along a few steps, then pushed me towards a wooden gate. “Through there,” he said. “Let yourself out and run. And don’t tell no one what happened here, or Goon will shoot your pretty little boyfriend for real next time.”

I turned to stare at him, filing the gravity of his warning away for when I could truly comprehend it. Only one word stood out. Boyfriend. Fuck. If only he knew.

Somehow, I managed to get it together enough to stagger to the gate and let myself out. Beyond it, I found myself on land I recognised. Ahead of me were the lookout points I’d stalked with Rae and Fletch, and the dugout I’d holed up in with Rae that crisp winter dawn.

It was colder than that now. I rubbed my arms and started forward, but my legs were weak, and my foot hurt, and I couldn’t seem to make myself move. My knees buckled. I stumbled, barely keeping myself upright before I reached the treeline.

The woods seemed to cocoon me. Distantly, I thought I heard sirens, but I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t the ringing in my ears gone rogue. I staggered into a tree, sharp bark scraping another layer of skin off my cheek, and fell to my knees. A hysterical laugh bubbled out of me. Where was I even trying to go? To my car that I didn’t have the keys to? To Rae who was apparently more like my ex than my worst nightmares?

Fuck it. Maybe I would go to sleep after all.