Christmas Countdown

by Jan Hambright

  Tension snapped in the air. Mac watched hostility spread across Emma’s face, tightening it until he was certain she had some sort of aversion to the man who darkened the doorway.

  “Victor Dago, I’d like you to meet my new farmhand, Mac. He took a tumble and spooked Navigator. I’m sorry if it got your horses riled up.”

  Victor’s eyes narrowed. He stepped through the doorway into the room and reached out to grasp Mac’s hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m glad to see Miss Clareborn has finally hired someone to help her.”

  Mac released the man’s thick fingers, trying to attach a country of origin to his accent.

  “You stable horses here?” he asked.

  “Yes, half a dozen, with two still in quarantine via the Virginia Port Authority at Front Royal. They’re on day two of a fourteen-day evaluation.”

  “Anything contagious?”

  “No. Just waiting for their Coggins results. They’ll come in soon. We’ll go to pick them up and put some track time on them before the Christmas Classic at Keeneland on the twenty-fourth.”

  Emma inched closer to him. If he pushed his elbow away from his body he’d be able to touch her.

  “Sorry for the commotion. I’ll be more careful next time.”

  Victor nodded and turned around. “Good night, then.” He disappeared through the door.

  Emma slumped against the workbench the moment Victor was gone.

  Mac sat again, allowing her to finish what she’d started before the interruption. He held comment until he was sure the man had left the stable. “Who is he?”

  “He trains horses for a sheikh I’ve never met or talked to. They lease my stud barn across the paddock for their racing stables.”

  The explanation was straightforward, but it didn’t explain the visible tension that had sucked the air out of the room less than a moment ago. “I take it you don’t like the man.”

  “He creeps me out. That’s all. Close your eyes, this glue is an irritant. It’ll burn.”

  He did as he was told and a few minutes later he was staring at her again, amazed at how little the cut stung, and how beautiful her eyes were.

  “Nice fix, doc,” he said, patting the closed gash with his fingertips.

  She smiled and he resisted the urge to physically smooth away some of the fatigue he could see lining her face. “Why don’t you get some rest? I’ll take over here. We can talk in the morning.”

  Emma nodded. For the first time in a month she felt a measure of hope. This battle-scarred bodyguard was here to help, she was sure of it. She stepped out of the tack room and glanced at the blade of light cutting across the barn floor. There, peeking up out of the wood shavings in the exact spot where Mac had tackled the intruder, she saw a syringe.

  She reached down to pick it up, but Mac’s fingers closed around her wrist.

  “Don’t touch it. If it belongs to the assailant we might be able to get a print off it.”

  “It’s not mine. I keep my supplies locked up.” She straightened.

  “Have you got something we can wrap it in?”

  “I don’t know, I’ll look.” She moved past him and back into the tack room, where he heard her pulling open one drawer after another.

  Mac hesitated and turned his head slightly to the right, listening with his good ear as he stared deep into the darkness, trying to dispel the nagging sensation crawling up from inside his gut. Instinct had saved his hide more than once and now wasn’t the time to challenge its validity. They were being watched from somewhere in the wall of shadows built into the nooks and crannies of the barn.

  He was sure of it.

  Emma shuffled back to his side. “I found a latex glove. Will that do?”

  “Yeah.” He took it from her and pulled the glove on. Reaching down he picked up the capped syringe by the end of the plunger and raised it to the light coming from the tack room.

  “We need to find out what’s in this.” He studied the syringe full of clear liquid. “It’s likely the creep intended to administer it to your horse if he’d gotten into the stall.”

  Mac carefully pulled the glove off over the syringe, cocooning it in the protective layer. “We have another problem.” He turned his attention on Emma.

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “I think there’s someone in the barn. I want you to put this on the bench and come with me.”

  She didn’t protest, didn’t question—a good sign, in his opinion. She’d be safer if she followed his lead and let him do the job he’d been hired to do.

  Taking the gloved syringe from him, she went into the tack room, put it on the counter and returned to his side as he flipped up the tail of his shirt and unholstered his weapon.

  “Stay close.”

  She nodded and snagged the pitchfork from its spot next to Navigator’s stall.

  The air thickened around them as Mac focused on the rear exit of the stable. One by one he kicked open the stall gates with his booted foot, clearing the cubicles on both sides of the row as they made their way down the wide aisle.

  Staying two steps behind him, Emma wielded her pitchfork like some sort of medieval she-warrior.

  He stopped at the last stall door.

  The hair on his neck bristled.

  Reaching out he shoved it open with his hand and aimed inside, spotting over the barrel of his .44 Magnum.

  Empty, save a tabby cat with a mouse in its jaws, who freaked and shot past them, vanishing into the barn somewhere.

  “It’s clear,” he said as he scanned the loft for anything that moved. Nothing. He tried to relax and lowered his weapon. But the sensation of being watched persisted, locking onto his senses with a tight grip that wouldn’t release.

  Relief softened Emma’s features, convincing him to let it go for the night. The search hadn’t turned up anyone.

  “I’ll walk you to the house.”

  She smiled up at him and turned for the exit. “Thanks. I’ll show you the bunkhouse real quick. I stocked the refrigerator, and I’ll spot you a couple hours a day so you can clean up.”

  “SWITCH TO CAMERA ONE, Agent, and capture a clear shot of his face.”

  “You’ve got it.” The man flipped a toggle switch on the control panel inside the surveillance van. An image appeared for an instant on the second monitor, then faded to a black screen peppered with white specks. “We’ve lost camera one again. We’ll have to get inside the barn to fix it.”

  NSA Agent Renn Donahue stared at the blank monitor. “Go back to camera two.”

  The opposite screen flicked on, displaying a clear image.

  Agent Donahue studied the man next to Emma Clareborn as the video streamed in live from the single working surveillance camera hidden high in the stable’s hayloft. There was a new player on the scene, but how did he fit into everything?

  “Log his image. I want to know who he is and what he’s doing at Firehill Farm. He’s packing a concealed weapon. Consider him armed and dangerous.”

  Chapter Two

  Mac dumped the last wheelbarrow of manure he’d mucked out of Navigator’s stall and pulled off his leather work gloves.

  A crisp December dawn was breaking and he watched the first rays of sunlight push through the waves of mist blanketing the rolling Kentucky hills encircling Firehill Farm.

  He’d forgotten how much he appreciated this time of morning. The stillness that gripped the air, the cold, quiet peace before another day roared to life and sucked him into its grind.

  “Good morning.”

  The sound of Emma’s voice just over his right shoulder jolted anticipation into his blood. He turned around, letting his gaze slide over her curvy body. His impression of her from last night solidified.

  She was beautiful, but his eyes had lingered an instant too long, he realized when their gazes locked and he saw color flood her cheeks.

  “I see you’ve done my morning chores.” She stepped past him and walked into the barn. “Thank you.”

  He followed, not tota
lly unaffected by the sway of her hips, or the thick brunette braid brushing the low-rise waistband of her Levi’s. Yeah, he liked mornings and this was by far the best one he’d spent in a while.

  “My gallop boy will be here at seven to work Navigator.” She emerged from the tack room with a halter, lead rope and a brush. “He needs to be warmed up. We’re going for a timed gallop this morning.”

  Ahead of her he reached out, unlatched the stall door and pulled it open. She stepped past him into the cubicle, dropped the horse brush and put the halter on Navigator.

  A nicker rumbled deep in the big bay’s throat. He nudged Emma affectionately as she bent over and picked up the brush.

  Mac watched her take quick, even strokes across the colt’s back and down his withers.

  “What’s his Beyer Speed Figure?”

  She gave him a glance over her left shoulder and continued to groom the horse. “You do know something about racing.”

  “Yeah.” A measure of hesitation pulled back any need he felt to enlighten her about his past in the world of Thoroughbred horse racing, or his knowledge of the Beyer system of combining a horse’s race time and the inherent speed of the track into a single performance number.

  “It’s 126.”

  A low whistle hissed between his lips. He eyed the bay, pausing on his definable attributes: a well-chiseled head, long neck, deep chest, long legs and powerful hindquarters.

  “That’s not too shabby. Where’d he last run?”

  “Churchill Downs, the Clark Handicap. He won his one and one-eighth mile race by five lengths.”

  A charge buzzed through him, its pulse almost pushing him over the edge into excitement, but he cut the current off with memories of the disappointment that came after the high. A nose-first dive into reality. One he’d seen many men take. The one that ultimately had claimed his horse-trainer father.

  “He’s got good confirmation and a great Beyer. He has a shot.” Mac stepped through the stall gate and leaned against the outside wall, his back to her and the horse.

  “His great-grandfather won the Derby in 1987.”

  Mac ran the date in his head, trying to reconcile the edge of anger creeping through his body like poison. He turned back around, clutching the iron bars that surrounded the stall. “Alysheba?”

  “Yeah. He sired Smooth Sailing, who sired Nautical Mile, who sired Navigator’s Whim.”

  The world was shrinking and he found himself smack in the middle of it. Smooth Sailing was the horse Thadeous Clareborn had stolen from his father in a claiming race. Now he was the grandfather of a Derby prospect? If the Beyer Speed Figure was any indicator, Navigator’s Whim stood a better-than-average chance of winning the Kentucky Derby, and reaching for the Triple Crown.

  EMMA PUT HER FOOT INTO the stirrup, grabbed the saddle horn and climbed aboard her pony horse, Oliver. She reached down for the lead rope attached to the colt and Mac put it in her hand. He stepped back, catching her eye from under the brim of a well-worn hat he’d found in the tack room.

  His gaze was electric, its intensity arcing through her body with a conductivity that left her breathless.

  “It’s only forty-four degrees this morning, Emma. Warm him up good.”

  She nodded. “I’ll jog him out a half-mile and back, then meet you at the gate.” Reining for the opening onto the racetrack, she hoped like crazy he hadn’t seen the blush she could feel stinging her cheeks even as the morning mist cooled her skin. She was feeling shy. She’d had a boyfriend or two, but there was something magnetic about Mac Titus, something primal, untamed, sexy and…haunting about the way he looked at her.

  Tugging on Navigator’s lead rope, she threaded them through the opening and out onto the track.

  Layers of fog obscured the mile-and-a-half oblong, but she could see it with her eyes closed; she’d ridden it a thousand times. Even in the dark.

  Nudging Oliver into a gentle lope, she focused on the rail at the first turn and relaxed into the saddle.

  Mac watched horses and rider fade into the flat gray mist and put his senses on alert. Turning his head slightly to the right, he picked up the whisper of hoofbeats churning soft soil.

  He closed his eyes, letting the sight deprivation intensify his auditory ability. He didn’t know why it worked, but it did. Closing off one always heightened the other. Up until he’d been shot in the line of duty, he’d never really appreciated his razor-sharp senses or the capabilities they afforded him.

  The hearing in his left ear would never—

  Mac jerked around at the pressure of a hand on his shoulder.

  Caught in an instinctive reaction, he leveled the man with his forearm and shoved him back into the fence rail.

  “Easy!” The kid’s eyes went wide. He raised his gloved hands in surrender.

  The adrenaline in Mac’s system diluted as he sized up the young man clad in a coat, breeches, boots and a riding helmet, its loose strap swinging back and forth from the force he’d exerted against him.

  “Oh hell, I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you coming until you were on me.” He lowered his arm and took a step back. “I over-reacted. I’m Emma’s new groom, Mac. Are you Navigator’s gallop boy?”

  “Yeah. Josh Duncan.” He smoothed the front of his jacket. “I’m early. My 5:30 a.m. ride over at McCluskies’ canceled. I came straight here.”

  “Is Chester McCluskie still running Rambling Farm?”

  “Yeah. He has a heck of a Derby prospect himself…had a prospect, I should say, until this morning. His filly Ophelia Mine went AWOL sometime last night, and went down in her stall. Hurt herself pretty bad. They’ve got the vet there now.”

  Caution sluiced in Mac’s veins. Was it possible Navigator hadn’t been the only target of the disguised thug last night? He’d have to get the syringe they’d found turned over to the police for analysis.

  “Emma ponied the colt out to the half-mile post. She should be back any time.” He turned his attention once again to the track, picking up the rhythmic clop of horse hooves in the dirt. “So what do you think? Does Navigator’s Whim have what it takes to win the Derby?”

  “He’s a powerhouse with heart. I’ve barely tapped his speed potential. Under the right jockey he could take the Triple Crown.”

  Great, another true believer. Mac gripped the top rail of the fence while he watched Emma, Oliver and Navigator materialize out of the mist like an apparition. For the first time he found himself analyzing the bay colt’s stride. Looking for that it factor. The look of eagles in his eyes. Knowing. Confident. Fierce. An old saying in the Bluegrass reserved for winners.

  His heart hammered in his chest. There it was, a rush of hope that sent men and women over the edge. Compelling them to move heaven and earth for a chance to bet on a winner. He should turn around and get the hell out while he had the chance. He had nothing at stake in this gamble…but Emma Clareborn did.

  Judging by the run-down condition of Firehill Farm in the light of day, she had everything to lose if the colt didn’t come through.

  Concern embedded itself in his brain and he made a silent vow to do whatever he could to ensure disappointment didn’t destroy her.

  Emma reined in her horse next to the gate and dismounted. “He’s good and warm, Josh. Take him to the wall this morning.”

  “You’ve got it.” Josh took hold of the reins while Emma unfastened the buckle on the halter she’d used to pony him and slipped it off.

  “Break on the outside rail and move him inside, just like last time. If we get a bad gate pick, he’ll be ready to overcome it.”

  Mac stepped out onto the track and approached Josh. “Rider up,” he called. He caught Josh’s foot and hoisted him onto Navigator’s back.

  Josh put his feet into the irons on the flat saddle and gathered the reins in his hands.

  “I wish this blasted fog would burn off,” Emma said. Leading her pony horse, she headed for the opening in the rail.

  Mac followed, watching her tie the leggy black
gelding up before moving over to stand next to him.

  “Want to do the honors?” She opened her hand to expose a silver stopwatch. Every horse racer’s instrument of delusion.

  It should have been a simple decision, but he wrestled with it anyway. The track time wasn’t going to lie, it was finite, a rock-solid indicator of what the horse was capable of.

  “Sure.” He plucked the watch from her palm and saw a slight smile bow her lips.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’d spent a considerable amount of time around racehorses.”

  Caution glided through him. Would she have been old enough at the time to remember the feud that tore their fathers’ friendship apart?

  “It was a long time ago, I was a kid. But you don’t forget something ingrained in your DNA.”

  “Solberg was right then, you’re the man for this job. I’m glad you’re here.”

  Mac stared over at her, at the surety in her whiskey-brown eyes as she searched his face with her gaze. His throat tightened. He could easily fall under her spell if he didn’t pull back.

  He turned abruptly, waiting for the sound of the horse breaking from the far left end of the track.

  The fog dampened the swish of the mock starting gate, but there it was, hoofbeats pounding Kentucky soil. He raised the stopwatch in front of him, feeling his heart rate shoot up. Closer…closer…the colt flashed in front of them.

  Mac started the clock, listening to the horse thunder down the front stretch and into the first turn.

  Emma put her hand on his forearm and shook him. “I told you he’s fast. I know he can win.”

  Her excitement leached into him and he let a degree of the sensation move through his body. Focusing, he turned his head to the right and picked up the hammering of hooves as Navigator thundered his way down the backstretch.

  He didn’t dare look at the time; instinctively he knew it would be incredible. Better to wait until the colt passed in front of him. Seeing would usher in believing, and then some.

  There was trouble. Mac felt it first telegraph through the top rail pipe that ran the entire length of the racetrack. Seconds later Josh’s yelp of pain reached out through the fog.