Heart by Garrett Leigh

the thought of giving Braden the satisfaction of ending his misery galled him. The bastard had taken enough.
    Resolved, he considered the dormant lorries and their possible cargo. He’d hitchhiked before, but never alone, and not in England. The last time had been in Dublin when he was a boy, and his father’s wise warning then echoed in his head like it had been just yesterday.
    “Choose careful, lad. You don’t want to sit in a truck o’ pig shite all the way to Ballymaloe.”
    Pig shit aside, Dex was wary of the drivers. What if they checked their loads before they set off? And what if they took him right back into town? He wouldn’t last a day on the streets of Hatfield. His own kind would turn him back to Braden in a heartbeat. And the gorjers? He’d only ever known one he could trust.
    A broad-shouldered man with tattoos and a bandana emerged from the service station. He walked toward one of the trucks. It was the truck nearest to where Dex crouched. The shabbiest truck, the one with the flapping tarpaulin. He couldn’t believe his luck. That lorry would be the easiest to get into. He had his hunting knife in his pocket. All it would take was a little cut to the already frayed securing ropes, and he could slip right in.
    He tensed, ready to spring, and watched the driver carefully. If he checked his load now, chances were he’d check it again. It was a risk, a big one, but it turned out not to matter. The driver walked straight to the cab and hauled himself up into his seat without sparing a glance for his cargo.
    Dex sprang from the bush and sprinted across the floodlit car park. His footsteps were deafening on the spongy, fresh tarmac, and he waited for a hand on his shoulder, a shout, anything to signal he’d been seen, but none came.
    He reached the back of the lorry and ducked around the side, feeling for the loose tarpaulin. He found it, flicked open his knife, and sliced through the ropes. The whole exercise took only seconds, but to Dex, it seemed like a lifetime.
    He chanced a glance over his shoulder and, seeing no one, shimmied up the side of the lorry and slipped into the drafty trailer. The lorry was full of cardboard boxes. He wove his way through them to the very middle of the trailer. Once there, he stopped and counted the frantic beat of his heart until it slowed to a dull roar. There was no sound from the outside. He’d made it. He was safe, for now, at least.
    Exhausted, he hunkered down behind a giant cardboard box. Blood on his shoes caught his eye, and though he knew it wasn’t hers, he thought of Cora lying dead in the woods. Thought of the horses he’d left behind. Tauna, Carric, and their stable mates. Without him, most of them would surely starve.
    The gravity of what he’d done hit him like a kick to the chest. He shook and tears streamed in hot tracks down his face. The lorry rumbled to life, and only his fist in his mouth muffled his scream.

Nine

     
    T HE LORRY stopped around dawn. The driver got out, but Dex stayed huddled in the back, holding his breath and wound so tight every nerve in his body felt like it would snap, until he felt safe enough to shuffle to the side of the trailer.
    Cautiously, he peered through the tarpaulin and scanned the car park. There didn’t seem to be anyone around, so he took a chance, slithered out of the trailer, and crept around the cab of the lorry. He hadn’t heard the driver lock up, and sure enough, when he tried the door, it opened right up. After another furtive glance around, he swiped a jacket, a can of Coke, and a wallet from the passenger seat.
    There wasn’t much in the wallet—twenty quid—but it served its purpose. He used it to pay a foreign truck driver to buy him a sandwich and take him the rest of the way to London. The Polish driver didn’t speak much English, but when he let Dex out of the cab in the capital, he told him he was in Regent’s Park.
    Dex watched the lorry disappear into the heavy traffic, and then,