Fifth Victim (12 page)

‘I do my best.’ As he reached up to unfasten the top catch on the far side of the ramp, he looked back over his shoulder towards me. ‘You wanna put your horse in first, Pom? Then you can give Dina a hand.’

I didn’t have time to agree, because at that moment a masked figure stepped out from behind the trailer. He had an aluminium baseball bat gripped in both hands and he swung it with all his might at Raleigh’s unprotected head.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

‘Look out!’

Even as I shouted the warning, Raleigh must have seen the shock in both our faces, sensed the rush of movement behind him. He hunched his neck down instinctively, but neglected to snatch his arm down from full stretch. The bat whistled past his head, skimming his hair, and landed across his extended forearm with a solid crunch. Some corner of my mind registered the sound of bones breaking. The shock of the sudden injury put him down, and the pain of it kept him there.

Geronimo had a sudden change of heart about being eager to get home. He spun on his haunches with a grunt of effort, jerking his lead rope through my hands. I’d taken off my riding gloves, so I let go rather than waste time trying to control him. He hightailed it back towards the safety of the horse barns.

At that moment, a second figure emerged from behind another parked trailer, over to our right this time, and closed in on us from the other side.

Like the first man, he was wearing dull nondescript clothing and a ski mask, dark glasses covering his eyes. But this one was unarmed apart from what looked like PlastiCuff restraints.

His focus was completely on Dina, hardly even glancing in my direction until I moved to intercept. Then he tried to shoulder me aside with blatant disregard. To protect my hands, I hit him hard with an upswept elbow under his jaw. He dropped.

Cerdo had started to panic as soon as the attack began, skittering in a circle around Dina. Hampered by her injured leg, she could do little to stop him, although something made her refuse to jettison him as I had with Geronimo. With more courage than sense, she clung to his lead rope with both hands even when he reared up to wave steel-shod front feet in her face.

It was a toss-up, at that moment, whether the greater threat to my principal came from our attackers or from her own horse.

The man who’d clouted Raleigh, meanwhile, was standing over his writhing quarry with the bat still at the ready, as if he’d expected the downed instructor to put up more of a fight. It was only when Cerdo began his antics that he looked across and saw his partner on the ground. He twisted in my direction and stood there a moment, frozen, then hurdled Raleigh’s legs and came for us with the bat upraised.

For a split second, time seemed to slow almost to a standstill, so I had time to analyse our situation with my options spread before me. All I had to do was choose. None of them looked good.

The parking area was out of direct sight of the yard itself. I could only hope that Geronimo’s sudden flight would bring people running, but how much use they’d be when they got here was another matter.

In my peripheral vision, I could see the nose of Torquil’s gold Bentley, one of his bodyguards still in the passenger seat. The man had jacked upright to get a better view – might even have drawn his weapon – but he was too well drilled to get out of the car and come to Dina’s rescue. As far as he was concerned, I was on my own.

I gave momentary thought to reaching for my own SIG, but dismissed the idea before it had formed. If I drew against a charging batsman at such close quarters, I’d have to fire to stop him. And not just shoot, but keep shooting until the threat was neutralised.

Instead, I chose the biggest and best weapon I had to hand.

Cerdo.

The horse’s flailing had spun him so that he was facing away from the trailer. As the man approached, I shoved Dina around onto the opposite side of the horse’s neck, keeping her behind me and the horse between both of us and our attacker. Cerdo reared again, stabbing out furiously with his hooves like a giant boxer. Even armed with a baseball bat, the man faltered in the face of this towering aggression.

As the horse’s front feet touched down again, I made a grab for his headcollar and, ignoring Dina’s protests, yanked his head around towards me, reaching back to prod him sharply in the ribs with the stiffened fingers of an open hand at the same time.

Horses, like people, have a collection of nerve endings in their side which makes them sensitive to signals from the rider’s leg. Cerdo, being a dressage horse, was more sensitive than most. The effect of a strike in that spot was calculated to produce maximum effect. I wasn’t disappointed.

The white horse reacted immediately. I heard the furious clack of his teeth as he leapt away from the blow, ears laid flat, swinging his hindquarters in a rapid arc and cannoning into the man with the baseball bat. Three-quarters of a ton of fast-moving Andalusian, scared and pissed off in equal measure. It was not an even contest.

Cerdo’s primeval fight-or-flight reflexes were well and truly awoken now. They told him to run from the danger. And if he couldn’t run, to lash out at the thing behind him, before it had a chance to jump onto his back and sink teeth and claws into his neck. He humped his back and let rip with both hind legs.

If the man with the bat had been directly behind those flying hooves, he would have been in serious trouble. Fortunately for him, Cerdo’s initial impact had knocked him to the side and he caught a relatively glancing blow to his upper arm. It was enough.

He dropped the bat and scrambled away, obviously terrified of what the animal might do next. People not familiar with horses are often frightened by the sheer size and unpredictability of them close up. Such animals may no longer be asked to go charging towards the enemy on a battlefield, but the basic fear they instil is why police forces around the world still use them for crowd control. A mounted officer is deemed six times more effective than one on the ground.

I reckoned I’d get no arguments from our assailants on that score. The man with the restraints – the one I’d hit – had come round enough to reach his hands and knees, groaning. For a moment I watched his partner debate on leaving him to his fate, then he realised the drawbacks of such a move. He grabbed the fallen man with his uninjured left hand and dragged him to his feet. Together they stumbled through the line of trailers and were lost to view.

I was tempted to give chase, but Cerdo’s nerves were in tatters and Dina was struggling to hold onto him with only one good leg to balance on. With a last regretful glance in the direction of our attackers, I managed to get a hand through the horse’s headcollar and tried to calm him. He took some convincing that it was all over.

Out of sight, an engine cranked and fired. I caught a glimpse of a medium-sized van, possibly a Chevy Astro, go fishtailing over the gravel towards the driveway and freedom. It was moving fast and there was enough dirt liberally spread across the licence plate to make identification impossible.

Dina hobbled over to Raleigh and helped him sit up. He had turned a disconcerting shade of pale green and was clutching his arm. Dina wasn’t looking much better.

‘Be careful he doesn’t throw up on you,’ I told her. She flashed me a look of distaste and said nothing. Cerdo had finally stopped trying to rip himself free of my grasp and was standing with his head low, blowing hard through flared nostrils, his muscles quivering.

Running feet nearly set him off again and I saw Hunt and Orlando hurrying across the gravel. I made a ‘slow down’ gesture with my hand behind me and they finished their approach at a more cautious pace.

‘What
happened
?’ Orlando demanded, eyes huge as she took in Cerdo’s distress and Raleigh’s obvious signs of injury. ‘Did the horses get into a fight?’

Dina’s face snapped in my direction and I saw the sudden pleading in her expression.

‘Something like that,’ I agreed, rubbing Cerdo’s damp ears. It was true, after all – to a point. I just didn’t say who or what he’d been fighting.

Hunt helped get Raleigh to his feet, swaying. He stared at me through a hazy filter of pain and shock. ‘What the bloody hell—?’

‘Don’t talk,’ I said quickly, a warning wrapped up as solicitude. I glanced at Hunt. ‘Perhaps you could take him back to the yard and get some sugar down him.’

Hunt nodded. Orlando began insisting that Raleigh go to the nearest ER and that distracted him from questions into making half-hearted protests about not leaving the yard unattended.

‘We can stay—’ Dina began, but I silenced her with a cutting stare.

‘We’re leaving,’ I said firmly. ‘Your leg needs ice and elevation, and both horses need a night in their own stable to calm down from all of this.’

And I want
you
somewhere secure
.

Dina might have thought about arguing, but not for long. She nodded meekly and limped back to take the lead rope from me. ‘Where’s Geronimo?’

‘He shot through the yard like his tail was on fire,’ Hunt said. ‘One of the girls caught him, I think. I’ll check.’

I nodded my thanks and he and Orlando walked back towards the horse barns with Raleigh stumbling dazedly between them. I leant down and picked up the baseball bat our attacker had dropped, handling it carefully even though I knew there was little chance of useable prints.

Movement caught my eye and I glanced across towards the yard, only to see two figures standing by the edge of one of the buildings, staring at us. It wasn’t hard, at that distance, to recognise Torquil and his bulky bodyguard, the one he’d dismissed while he watched Dina finish her lesson. Now, the man was glued to his shoulder, tense, head constantly moving to survey the scene with his hand never far from the weapon hidden beneath his open jacket.

But it was Torquil himself who really caught my eye. He stood with both hands clenched at his sides, shoulders hunched and his neck rigid. I had no idea how long he had been there, or how much he’d seen, but where I expected to see shock, or maybe even a tinge of excitement at what he’d just witnessed, instead it looked for all the world like someone had just broken his newest best toy.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

‘I don’t know who those two were,’ I said, ‘but they were amateurs.’

‘Tell that to poor Raleigh – they bust his
arm
,’ Dina said tartly. ‘And if they were
so
amateur, how come
you
didn’t catch them?’

I heard the slightly shrill note in her voice and resisted the urge to snap at her, taking a quiet inhalation before I spoke. We were back safe in the living area of the Willners’ house. Caroline Willner was in her customary seat with its back to the windows. Opposite was Parker Armstrong, while Dina and I were on another sofa to the side.

Parker had not come alone, arriving with Erik Landers in tow. Landers was a big guy from Colorado, solidly built, ex-US Marine Corps and proud of his service. He still carried himself with that fierce pride, took everything a little too seriously, never let standards slip. He was utterly dependable in a firefight, but was still adjusting to the very different world of executive close protection. Parker had struggled to persuade him to let his hair grow longer than the regulation millimetre of fuzz.

Landers currently stood behind Dina and me like a sentinel. Dina had changed into a pair of denim hot pants – which looked ‘distressed’ via an expensive designer label rather than prolonged wear and tear – and a silk T-shirt. She had her foot up on a stool with an ice pack draped over her knee. I, too, had taken the trouble to change when I’d finished unloading the horses and now presented my client and my boss with as tidy and unruffled a facade as I could conjure.

I’d called Parker from the riding club and he’d surprised me by coming out right away, arriving back at the house before we did. I hoped that the only reason he’d arrived so fast – and brought Landers with him – was in case I needed more permanent backup, rather than to demonstrate a lack of trust in my ability to handle the situation on my own.

‘Why didn’t I catch them?’ I repeated, keeping my tone even and pleasant. ‘Because that’s not my job, Dina. My job is prevention, not cure.’

‘Which you appear to have done quite well,’ Caroline Willner said, her voice dispassionate. ‘Nevertheless, it is … unfortunate that these people escaped when the opportunity might perhaps have presented itself to apprehend them.’

Before I could defend my actions, Parker spoke for me. ‘Charlie couldn’t have gone after them without leaving your daughter unacceptably exposed,’ he pointed out. ‘It has been known for the initial attack to be just a diversionary tactic to try and draw off the close-protection team.’ He met my eyes, just the hint of a smile lurking in his. ‘And while it may be somewhat unorthodox to throw a horse at an inbound threat, there’s no doubt what she did was effective.’

But despite the praise, I heard vague disappointment in his voice.

‘Next time,’ I promised gravely, ‘I’ll throw it harder.’

His cheek twitched in an otherwise stony face. ‘Unfortunately, I think it’s likely that there
will be
a next time,’ he said. ‘They’ve tried once and been unsuccessful. They may feel they now have your measure and try again – with more … determination next time.’ He pinned me with a gaze that willed me not to make an issue of this. ‘That’s why I’ve brought Erik out to join you, purely as a little extra insurance. So, if they do make another run at Dina, you might just be able to grab one of them without putting her in harm’s way.’

‘No!’ Dina said, more sharp than firm. ‘I don’t
want
anyone else.’ She twisted to offer the man behind us an appealing smile. ‘No offence to you, Mr Landers, but I want Charlie.’

‘Dina, be reasonable,’ her mother said stiffly. ‘We’re merely trying to keep you safe.’

‘I am safe,’ she said. ‘You asked me to accept a bodyguard, and I’ve done that. Now you want me to have two. Where does it end – with me barricaded into my room, afraid to leave the house?’