At Risk (3 page)

I watched him stroll out the door, then I
called the farm and arranged for a ride home.

For the next two hours, I stared out the
window at a dreary expanse of black rooftop, thinking unproductive
thoughts while the relay switch in the heating unit clicked wildly.
At a quarter to five, Marty slouched into the room, and it was only
from long acquaintance that I noticed the brief hesitation in his
face as he took in the bruising and the gown and the bandages
around my wrists.

He called over his shoulder. "He's in
here."

Dave, Foxdale's handyman, appeared in the
doorway as Marty hitched a hip on the footboard.

"Tell all," Marty said.

Since I'd started at Foxdale, Marty and I had
become best friends. An unlikely union as we were more opposite
than alike. He was easygoing and coarse, vulgar at times, and
seemingly without ambition. "You first," I said. "What's happening
at Foxdale?"

Marty shrugged. "What you'd expect. Phone
ringing off the hook. Outrage, paranoia, tears." He grinned. "On
the boarders' part, that is. 'Cause the guys are thrilled to death
having seven less stalls to muck out."

"That won't last."

"Suppose not. But some folks'll be afraid to
trust their horses to us now that somebody's taken off with a
trailer full. So give with the details. Whatju run into?"

I sighed. It was going to be a long week.

He waved his hand. "Come on, man. The cops
were crawling all over the place yesterday. You'd of thought you
were dead," he glanced around the room, "or dying."

"It's true," Dave muttered but kept his gaze
on the floor. He'd been checking out the pattern in the tiles ever
since he'd walked into the room.

"Anyway," Marty said, "the boys in blue had
Mrs. Hill holed up in her office for about an hour, and when they
finally hightailed it out of there, she was madder'n hell. But,
Mrs. Hill being Mrs. Hill, she wouldn't tell us a goddamn thing.
And, get this. A fucking reporter showed up this morning. Mrs. Hill
sent him packing, though," Marty added, and it was clear the
thought amused him.

I just stared.

"So, what happened? Rumor has it, the shits
who took the horses took you, too."

"That's right."

"Fuck, man. How'd you get away?"

"I just did. So, why'd Mrs. Hill send both of
you?"

Marty stood and stretched. "She thought you
might be wantin' your truck, so we dropped it off at your place
when we got the clothes you asked for."

"Oh," I mumbled.

"What were you--"

"Marty, shut up," Dave said. "Let Steve get
dressed so we can get outta here." He handed me the paper bag he'd
been holding which I saw contained a fresh change of clothes.

"I knew you were weird," Marty said. "But
goin' to the barn naked?"

I grinned. "My clothes got soaked. The medics
cut them off."

"How'd they get--" Marty said as Dave pushed
him out of the room, "wet?" he finished as the door swung shut.

It was after six and dark by the time Marty
swung his old Firebird round the parking lot behind the loft and
jerked to a halt at the base of the steps. He looked over at my
Chevy parked under the dusk-to-dawn light. "We couldn't find your
keys. Hope you got a spare. And you'd better check your battery
'cause it was dead. You left the door open, and the dome light was
on."

But I had closed it. I distinctly remembered
how loud it had sounded. "Then how'd you get it over here?" I
said.

"Jumped it."

"But--"

"He hot-wired it," Dave said from the back
seat, and I thought I heard a hint of disapproval in his voice.

Marty turned in his seat and grinned at
me.

"Well, who'd of thought." I levered myself
out of his low-slung car, then watched Dave struggle out of the
back seat and plop thankfully into my spot.

Marty ducked down so he could see me through
the passenger window. "Need help with anything?"

I told him I'd be fine and waved him off, but
by the time I made it to the landing, I was doubtful. By the time I
reached the deck and walked into the kitchen, I knew I had lied. I
was exhausted and hungry, but too tired to bother with it. I
swallowed some pain pills, turned off the lights, and crawled into
bed.

* * *

I was running down a long dark tunnel.
Running as fast as I could and getting nowhere. There were no
footsteps. No sound.

I came to a door. Didn't open it. Didn't want
to.

Just the same, I ended up inside a room. A
room without walls.

The ground felt solid but somehow wasn't.
With dread, I looked at my feet. The floor was liquid. It didn't
make sense. I looked closer. Not water. No, it wasn't water.

It was blood.

Ripples lapped against my boots as something
moved on the edge of my field of vision. I tried to turn my head to
see what it was but couldn't.

Couldn't move. Couldn't breathe.

I forced myself to look. It was a head. A
horse's head. Others floated past in the current, rising to the
surface like huge, hideous bubbles. One drifted past my feet. I
could see the dull, lifeless eye staring up at me.

Tight bands constricted around my chest, and
my heart was pounding so hard, I was afraid it would explode.

Someone cried out.

The sound woke me. Though the air was chilly,
I lay trembling between sheets soaked with sweat. The pain
medication had worn off.

I sat up, braced my hands on the edge of the
bed, and worked to slow my breathing. One of the cats leapt onto
the bed and leaned against my arm. Her purring sounded loud in the
quiet dark. Ignoring her play for attention, I nudged her off the
bed and stood up.

I walked stiffly into the kitchen, washed
down a pill, and set the glass on the counter. It had snowed, and I
could see quite easily into the night. Dark shapes were scattered
on the hill above the lake. I picked up the binoculars and adjusted
the focus. Deer, six of them. In the muted light, the fencing rose
and fell like a roller coaster, enclosing pastures that were
otherwise empty, their inhabitants snug in the barn below. On the
frozen lake in the south field, the snow was even and stark.

I glanced at the clock on the stove.
Three-ten. I had slept for a long time. I walked into the bathroom
and switched on the lights. The plush expanse of teal and navy
wallpaper and matching carpet seemed foreign after the cold
sterility of the hospital. The loft seemed different somehow.
Nothing tangible, but a change nonetheless. Or maybe it wasn't the
loft that was different but my perspective of it.

I turned on the shower and looked in the
mirror. Despite the fact that I had two impressive shiners and my
cheek was mottled with purple, black, and yellow, the swelling
around my eye had improved considerably in the last twenty-four
hours.

When I took off my clothes, the view there
wasn't much better. Under the bandages, worse still. Deep red
grooves dug into my wrists. In places the skin was raw and
oozing.

Bastards.

I stood under the spray of hot water, and as
the tension in my muscles drained away, I thought about the horses.
They had been chosen for one characteristic and one characteristic
only. Size. The larger and heavier, the more money they would
command at slaughter. I thought about Shrimpy with his huge,
intelligent eyes. I had watched him in a jumper class once, when he
had slipped going round a turn. He'd regained his balance, zeroed
in on the next fence, and jumped it without a rub. His rider, all
the while, had been grossly out of position, simply struggling to
stay on. The horse had a heart of gold, and now he was heading down
a frightening path to annihilation.

I braced my hands against the wall and
watched the water swirl down the drain, thinking I could have met
the same fate.

I stayed in the shower until the hot water
ran cold.

* * *

I spent most of the day in bed, listening to
music and trying not to think. Not about the horses, or the men, or
what they had done. Around four in the afternoon, I got the coffee
machine going, made some toast, and sat on one of the barstools. I
slid a magazine across the counter and leafed through the pages
until I came to an article on pastern lameness.

Behind me, someone banged on the kitchen
door. My hand flinched, and coffee sloshed over my fingers and
spread across the page.

"Damn."

I wiped my hand on my sweats and walked
across the cold white tiles. My landlord was standing on the
doormat, blowing on his hands and shifting his weight from one foot
to the other.

He looked up when the door creaked open. "Oh,
man."

"Hi, Greg."

He closed his mouth with a snap. "Marty said
you'd tangled with them, but I didn't think . . ."

Cold air and a couple of snowflakes eddied in
through the open door. I backed up. "Come in."

He stepped into the kitchen and stood just
inside the door while the snow on his boots melted and formed an
irregular brown puddle on the tile.

"Susan knew something was up," he said. "She
saw someone drop off your truck Sunday afternoon and thought that
was kind of weird, especially when we didn't see any lights on last
night. You know how she is, the motherly, overprotective type."

Motherly would not have been my first choice
when describing his wife. Beautiful, yes. And sexy. Motherly? No
way.

"Then Foxdale's my first stop this morning,
and I hear about the horses." He ran his fingers through his light
brown hair. "What happened?"

As I told him, I thought that I should have
handled the situation differently. Should have gone back to the
truck and driven somewhere else to call the police. Put up a better
fight. Hell, I didn't put up any fight.

Greg rubbed the back of his neck. "Jesus. Are
you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm okay." I gestured to the coffee
pot. "Want some?"

He glanced at his watch. For answer, he
opened the cabinet door closest to the phone.

"Next one over," I said.

Greg let the door thump closed and opened the
one beside it. He took down a mug and filled it, then sat on one of
the stools and rested his elbows on the counter. He had the
loose-limbed build of a basketball player, and at six-foot-three,
he had a good three inches on me. He kept his hair layered and long
in the back, and he had what many considered Hollywood good looks.
But being a horse vet was about as far from glamour as it got. He'd
once told me he might have reconsidered his career choice if he'd
realized it meant spending half the day with his arm buried to the
shoulder in a horse's rectum.

"What they did," Greg said. "I've been
thinking about it all day."

"How's Sprite's eye?"

Greg raised his eyebrows. "You sure like to
change the subject, don't you?"

I smiled.

"The cornea's healed," he said. "No thanks to
your crew. No one's bothered to medicate it. You must've treated it
aggressively in the beginning, like I told you."

"Yeah, I did."

He unbuttoned his coat and cupped his fingers
around the mug. "Doesn't anyone over there do medications besides
you?"

"No."

"Two hundred horses, and no one else does
medications?" Greg shook his head. "What are they going to do when
you go on vacation?"

"You assume a great deal."

He shot me an amused glance, then took a
tentative sip of his coffee.

I sighed. "Nobody else takes the initiative,
and management cuts corners wherever they can, whenever they can.
As long as the boarders won't notice." I dropped two more slices
into the toaster. "How often do horses get stolen around here,
anyway?"

"I'd bet it's more prevalent than any of us
realize. They don't always make the papers, but I hear about them
on my rounds sometimes. Foxdale's more vulnerable than most
operations because no one lives on the premises." He smoothed his
fingers through his hair. "Someone out there doesn't mind taking
risks for what I would have thought was a small profit."

"Maybe they like the risk more than the
profit," I said.

His gaze sharpened on my face. "What makes
you say that?"

I shrugged. "Firsthand knowledge."

Greg shook his head. "Jesus."

I pulled the slices out of the toaster and
dropped them on my plate. "So, what kind of profit are we talking
about?"

"Well, let's say the bottom'd dropped out of
the meat market, and all they were getting was fifty cents to the
pound. For a thirteen-hundred pound horse, that would be about
six-hundred-and-fifty bucks. Round up seven good-sized horses, and
they'd end up with about forty-five hundred. That's not bad for
something that didn't belong to them in the first place. As the
price gets closer to a dollar a pound, it just plain gets more
tempting."

"What's the price right now?"

Greg shrugged. "Haven't heard."

"How hard would they be to sell? They're some
nice-looking horses. Wouldn't they stick out?"

"Put 'em in a crowded lot for a week or two,
and they'd look like nags by the time they turned up on the auction
block or, more likely, at a packing plant."

I spread some margarine across the toast.
"Then they get slaughtered?"

"Yeah, but probably not in the states. Most
of them are hauled to Canada first. Then the carcasses are shipped
to Europe."

"Why there?"

"Because horse meat is a common . . . Well,
people eat it."

I made a face. The idea seemed alien, like
eating the family dog. "What about proof of ownership? Wouldn't
they need that?"

"Some outfits aren't very careful with the
paperwork end of it. And if the thieves have a connection
somewhere, it would be easy."

I slid the plate down the counter and perched
on the edge of a stool, hoping I didn't look as stiff as I
felt.