by Kit Ehrman
* * *
At Foxdale, everything was secure. I fixed myself a cup of coffee and watched Michael run a quick brush over the horse's coat before sliding the saddle into place, seeing firsthand that the perfection evident in his horses' grooming had nothing to do with his efforts but with his groom's. When he led the chestnut down to the outdoor arena, I slumped onto a bench. My eyelids felt like sandpaper, and my head ached.
I closed my eyes and thought of all that had happened since that frigid morning in February. The three men and the fear they had wielded like a weapon. The horses on a fast trip to death. Sanders and his questionable remorse over a horse he'd thought of as an object and had been careful to insure. Harrison's driver and his drunken anger. Blood dripping from my nose. The bulldozers' throaty rumble as they cut into the brown earth and the realization that Foxdale would never be the same. Boris hanging from the rafters, his life blood draining from a slash in his throat.
I remembered the deafening sound of the cold rain hammering on the barn roof as I stared at the pile of charred wood that had once been an artful jump. The words "Your dead motherfucker" painted in red on ribbed metal siding and later, "Cats have nine lives. You don't" scrawled over my name. Tax write-offs and staring at newspaper clippings until my vision blurred.
I thought about James S. Peters in the cold hard ground and Mrs. Peters losing herself to senility, the mind's reflex to unbearable pain. Whitcombe's irritability building to the point of instability. Brian's probation hanging over his head like a scythe. Elsa and Rachel, lust and love. Flip sides of the need for intimacy.
I thought about the trailer search and how it had been thwarted by the Pennsylvania registration. And Randor L. Drake who appeared innocent but couldn't be. And where was he? Had he crouched over a pile of feed bags in Greg's barn and struck his match, or was he stalking rainbow trout in West Virginia?
Had he been in Pennsylvania last week? In a barn set back off the road?
I was thinking that I should call Ralston for an update when Rachel walked down the lane. She had arrived early, presumably to watch Michael ride his Olympic-caliber horse. I stood as she approached.
She flattened her hand on my chest. "Hey there, cutie."
I enveloped her in my arms and gave her a kiss that she encouraged and allowed to linger. All the possibilities were there.
Her hair was still damp from her shower and smelled of apples. I slid my hands over the swell of her buttocks. When I pulled her tight against me, I felt her grin and realized she had noticed the intense, physical reaction her closeness had generated.
Behind us, Michael and his wonder horse executed a ten meter circle at the trot, just the other side of the fence. After their third revolution, I looked up as they came close to the fence on yet another pass. Michael grinned and cued his horse into a canter.
On their next circuit, I mouthed, "Go get some of your own."
Apparently, he wasn't finished.
"He needed that," he yelled to Rachel, and then to me, "Tell her about last night."
Rachel tilted her head back and peered up at me. "What?"
"Umm." I kissed her face somewhere in the vicinity of her left eyebrow. "Someone started a fire in Greg's feed room."
"Oh, no." She leaned back so she could see my face better.
"Luckily there wasn't much damage," I said. "Michael and I were able to put it out quickly."
"Were any of the horses in the barn?"
"No, it was empty," I said.
"Not entirely."
"What do you mean?"
"You were in the barn. A little later, and you might have been asleep." She shivered. "And I see you've already thought of that."
"Uh-huh."
"Oh, Steve."
She tightened her arms around my waist. I felt comforted by her embrace and, best of all, wanted.
Maybe the fire had been a random act, some pyromaniac doing his thing. But they typically chose empty structures to torch.
They didn't check to make sure you were home first.