Ghost Horse

by Patricia Rosemoor

  Damian was rooted, turning, his gaze fixed on his daughter, his muscles bunched just like the horse. His fear for her consumed me. I couldn’t catch my breath.

  On his second course around the pasture, the horse began to tire and slow. Nissa let up her death grip on the reins, and her body appeared fluid again. I watched her hands and legs as she attempted to collect the horse. The struggle was short-lived. The horse slowed, then stopped short with one last twist of defiance.

  And Nissa pitched forward over his shoulder and landed flat on her back on the ground.

  “Nissa!” I yelled, climbing over the fence to get to her, fearing a head or neck injury since she hadn’t worn her hat.

  Damian got there first, but when he tried to touch his daughter, she pushed him away and got to her feet on her own.

  “I’m all right! Leave me alone!” Nissa yelled.

  Relieved, I slowed and stayed where I was. She was angry with me, after all.

  Clifford clucked and shook his head and went after Satan’s Dance, who now stood calmly, as if he hadn’t just caused hearts to stop.

  “What were you thinking, young lady?”

  “I just wanted to ride Satan’s Dance,” Nissa said, her expression sullen.

  “You could have been injured or worse!”

  “Nothing bad happened. I’m fine.”

  “Your attitude isn’t fine,” Damian told her. “It needs an immediate adjustment!”

  Damian was yelling because he’d been terrified for her, I knew, but I could see it was the wrong approach. Nissa dug in her heels and wouldn’t back down. Why, oh, why, couldn’t he just put his arms around his daughter and tell her how much she meant to him?

  Tell her he loved her and no matter what, that wouldn’t change?

  No matter what, he would never leave her?

  That’s really all she wanted.

  That’s really all I’d wanted….

  “I’m not the one who is doing anything wrong,” Nissa said, sliding a glance at me when she said that.

  Guilt stabbed me, and once more I was finding it hard to breathe. In no way did I want to come between Nissa and Damian.

  “No one is doing anything wrong,” Damian said.

  From his emphasis on no one, I gathered he was subtly telling her that we hadn’t done anything wrong.

  I wasn’t so certain.

  I backed away from the argument, more convinced than ever that—despite my feelings for him—getting intimate with Damian had been a mistake. How could I fix it? How could I make Nissa trust me again?

  “I don’t ever want you to do anything so foolish again.”

  Though I knew Damian was furious with his daughter, he sounded more than reasonable.

  Not so Nissa.

  “You keep calling me ‘young lady.’” She crossed her arms and glared at him. “That means I’m not a child anymore. And I’ll do what I want!”

  “If you don’t curb your behavior, come September, I will send you to that boarding school. Maybe the teachers there can teach you some discipline!”

  Nissa’s grown-up facade crumbled and with a cry, she ran from the pasture. Damian watched until she was headed toward the house. Then he looked at me and shook his head in disgust.

  Remembering my father looking at me like that just before he’d left me, I felt chilled all the way through.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Nissa, it’s Chloe,” I said after knocking at her door several hours later.

  Nissa hadn’t come down to eat, and I was worried about her. Damian had ignored her absence at the dinner table. Alex hadn’t shown, either. Dinner had been a quiet affair, with me silently reevaluating Damian.

  I tried again. “Nissa, honey?”

  “Go away!”

  Needing to know if she meant that literally, I said, “Is that what you really want, Nissa? For me to go away? Back to Chicago?”

  Seconds later the door opened and Nissa stared out at me from the dark. The only light on in her room came from the fish tank. Even so, I could see enough to know that she was still upset.

  “Can I come in?”

  She shrugged her narrow shoulders and went back to her bed, where she threw herself on her stomach along the length of the mattress, as if she was intent on leaving me no room to sit near her.

  So I stood.

  “My heart nearly stopped today, Nissa. I was so afraid you were going to be hurt. Your dad was worried, too.”

  “I’m a good rider.”

  “But you don’t ride stallions. You know you’re not supposed to ride any horse other than Wild Cherry with out your dad’s permission.”

  “Dawn did. I saw her.”

  So that’s what had gotten into her. Somehow she’d associated her anger for me with her feelings of abandonment by Dawn. A kid’s mind was sometimes more complex than one might guess.

  “I like it here, Nissa. I like you. I like tutoring you and I hope to keep doing so as planned until school starts. But if you really want me to go back to Chicago now, I need to know that.”

  “You’re going to leave, too?”

  Touched by her stricken tone, I shook my head. “Not if you don’t want me to.”

  “Then don’t,” she said. “I’m sorry, okay?”

  “Okay. I think your dad could stand to hear that, too.”

  Nissa didn’t respond, and I didn’t push it.

  “So we’re okay. We’ll go back to our work schedule tomorrow.”

  “Uh-huh.” She turned her head toward the wall.

  The conversation was over.

  Now I had to talk to Damian, which I expected would be even more difficult.

  I found him in the library at his desk, staring at the computer monitor. I got him with his guard down. Just for a moment I could see how upset he was.

  “What is it?” he asked, his guard back up.

  “I just spoke to Nissa. She’s still upset. I wanted to make sure it was all right with her that I stay.”

  “That’s not her decision to make.”

  “It was my decision. I didn’t want to make her more miserable than she was, Damian.” I’d been willing to go—to give up on Dawn—for Nissa. But now that I meant to stay, I was going to fight for the girl. “Speaking of decisions, do you really mean to send her to a boarding school? That was the worst kind of threat to make to a child who already feels abandoned.”

  Damian stiffened. “Nissa has to know there are consequences to her actions.”

  “But not that.”

  “Look, I have my hands full trying to keep this farm going. I can’t be continually worrying about Nissa and what she’s gotten herself into because she’s angry about something.”

  “Then get her counseling. Don’t send her away.”

  “If I did, it would be for her own good. She is my daughter, and I’ll decide her fate.”

  Just as my father had decided mine when he gave me up to the system. I wondered if he’d felt that was for my own good, too.

  If hearing Damian admit to buying Priscilla off so she wouldn’t try to see her child hadn’t been enough, this did it for me. I simply couldn’t have feelings for a man who would abandon his daughter to a boarding school.

  Only, I did have feelings.

  Part of me wanted to leave now, so that I could protect myself, but I would stay until summer’s end for Nissa’s sake.

  And then I would never have to see Damian Graylord again.

  THE TUTOR LEFT THE HOUSE, her skirts whipping around her in the rising wind. A storm was coming; the horses could sense it. They were restless and noisy. But Chloe seemed oblivious. She was turned into herself, seemingly unaware of her surroundings.

  Unaware of the danger she’d put herself in.

  Thanks to the Internet, the watcher knew who Chloe Morgan was and why she was there. Good thing when instincts were so well honed.

  The teacher had motivated her eighth-grade class to do a documentary that had won a state prize. Plugging her name into a sea
rch engine had quickly produced the photo of her at the dinner honoring the project. She’d been sitting next to her best friend.

  Dawn Reed.

  Which explained all the snooping around.

  Chloe hadn’t believed the fabricated elopement note. Her bad luck.

  Trying to scare her off hadn’t worked.

  Scare time was over. She should’ve taken the hint and hightailed it back to Chicago.

  Now there was only one way left to deal with her.

  How should she die? Should it look like an accident? Or that Damian was responsible?

  All this pressure to keep on top of this situation was exhausting. Becoming a murderer hadn’t been part of the plan. Unfortunately, it had been necessary—the only solution when things had started going wrong.

  Third time had damn well better be the charm!

  MY HEART HEAVY, I was drawn to find my elusive link to Dawn—the horse who must really be a ghost.

  Had Centaur’s special connection to Dawn really survived his death? I had to believe so. He’d led me straight to the place where I’d found the hair ornament I’d given Dawn. They’d starred together in my dreams.

  What had they been trying to tell me?

  Maybe the bluffs held some answers, even if they were ones I didn’t want to know. I pushed that thought back to where I didn’t have to face it and cut through the woods.

  I hadn’t been able to settle down after my disagreement with Damian, so I’d decided to do something that would make me feel better. The bluffs called me. After finding Dawn’s hair clip there, I felt as if they held answers, if only I could focus properly. Whether I found what I was looking for or not, at least I was making an effort and, considering how down I was right now, that was something.

  It would keep me from thinking about him. About how disappointed I was in him. About how much his attitude toward his daughter wounded me.

  Deep in the forested area, I relied on my flashlight to get me through the maze of trees. A noise to my left startled me, leaving me with a heart beating double time.

  I stopped at the familiar sounds whispering along the leaves. Was Centaur nearby, then? I closed my eyes and listened with a new intensity….

  The sounds gradually define themselves…a soft whicker…a neigh…the thud of hooves against soft earth.

  I whistle…call him in my mind….

  “Centaur!”

  The gray moves through the trees…great neck arching…mane flying…tail swishing….

  My heart begins to drum in rhythm. I wait…wait… wait as the pale stallion draws closer and then stops.

  He knows me now. No more weaving and bobbing and flying past me. He stands quietly in the mist and stares at me from liquid dark eyes. In silent appeal, he begs me…for what? I don’t understand.

  “What do you want me to know?” I ask as I open my eyes.

  For the first time I saw him as he really was…magnificent head…long, strong legs rising from the fog-shrouded forest floor…powerful, translucent body… nothing but a pale shadow against the night. My flashlight beam cut straight through him to the trees beyond. It seemed to me that one good puff of wind and he would dissipate, his form no more solid than smoke.

  He was real…and yet not.

  I took a deep breath and waited to see what he required of me. The ghost horse snorted and bobbed his head and turned away. He took a few steps and glanced back as if to make sure I was following.

  “I’m coming.”

  He whickered and moved off, his long stride easily switching from a comfortable walk to a trot. When the gap between us suddenly widened, my power walk quickly turned into a jog. My feet slapped against soft earth, stirring up the scent of decay as I ran. The rush of a racing river swept through me as surely as the blood in my veins. He was leading me straight for the palisades along the Mississippi.

  Was he doomed to haunt them, then? Was this his lot forever?

  Or was there something he needed—from me—to set him free?

  Is that why he chose to appear to me and me alone?

  I wished Damian were here to see him. Maybe he would understand what the stallion wanted. Then again, maybe not. Damian was a man who only understood what he deemed reasonable and logical and within his power to control.

  Just when I thought I could run no farther, the stallion stopped and whinnied. He was in the clearing near the palisades. The sky was threatening. Thunderheads were rolling, hiding the clouds, but the moon avoided them and cast its blue gleam over the fog-draped bluffs.

  Breathing hard, I slowed and only stopped when I got within yards of my guide. Ghostly fingers of mist curled around his slender legs and slipped around his barrel.

  His translucent flesh trembled as he paced…circled…waited for me.

  “What?” I asked. “What is it I’m supposed to see?”

  He stopped and snorted and as if he exhaled a breeze, the fog before me rolled to the sides, revealing a narrow opening in the rocky outcropping that could be a trail of sorts.

  How had I missed that before? I wondered.

  I stepped to the path, and my guide backed, backed, backed into a wall of fog until his image was consumed. Now my flashlight was my only guide.

  Was this it, then?

  Would this trail lead me to the answers I sought?

  My pulse skittered along my veins and kick-started my descent. My light’s narrow beam led me down and around in a serpentine path that crossed halfway under the bluff. Below, the river had been kicked up by the strong winds. The current was raging. Anything falling down into its depths would be swept away in an instant.

  I looked up and realized the rocky overhang would keep anyone above from seeing this path, if one could even call it that. Barely a foot wide with brush and rock on either side, the crude track undulated and eventually circled back in toward the bluff.

  That’s where I saw the opening, half-hidden in a jagged crevice.

  My heart began to thunder and my mouth went dry as I cautiously approached. I slid the beam all around the opening and noticed a pile of rocks to one side, as if someone had dug them free and tossed them there.

  Rocks that had once blocked the entrance to a tunnel?

  Damian had told me that he and Alex had been trapped in the tunnel that led from the house to the river, that rocks had blocked all but an opening too small for a child to crawl through. Had someone found the entrance and unblocked it? Someone who’d used the tunnel to get to the passageway and hidden staircase that led to the attic?

  Wondering what this had to do with Centaur and Dawn, I knew there was only one way to find out.

  The opening was narrow, but someone bigger than I—a man—could get through if he turned sideways. I slipped inside and waited until my eyes adjusted. Not that there was anything to see but walls and floor and ceiling of rock.

  Following my flashlight beam, I edged my way through the yard-wide tunnel, floor strewn with loose rocks, wondering if any minute I would have a nasty surprise. A dozen yards in and the floor softened as did the walls. My flashlight revealed earth mixed with rock underfoot and wooden beams holding back the sides and top of the tunnel.

  The space was eerie—dark and airless—and I could only guess the terror being trapped in here had caused Damian and his brother.

  Loose gravel and small rocks trailed along the floor. As careful as I tried to be, I felt a surge of nerves and missed a beat. I stepped wrong, and my ankle twisted. I tried to catch myself but couldn’t stop from pitching forward. My flashlight went spinning out of my hand, and I went down to the ground.

  The air was knocked out of me for a moment, but when I was able to take a deep breath, I nearly gagged. A foul odor filled the chamber. I held my breath. On hands and knees, I reached for the flashlight, praying that it hadn’t been damaged and that it wouldn’t go out. I felt a bit better once it was safely in my hand and the beam didn’t waver.

  I pulled back and swept the beam across a nearby pile of rocks. Someth
ing pale amidst them caught my eye.

  I tugged at a rock. It came away easily as did the next and the next after that. Suddenly, something slid toward me.

  I screamed.

  The smell…

  A human hand….

  Bloated as it was, I could still see the tattoo around the wrist—the same Celtic design mirrored in the hair ornament.

  “No! Please no!” I sobbed, my heart breaking at the truth I’d been trying to deny.

  At last I’d found Dawn.

  Dead….

  Chapter Sixteen

  Damian sat on the edge of Nissa’s bed and listened to her even breathing for a while. He used to do this nightly when she was a little girl, before he’d gotten too busy trying to keep her mother satisfied. Everything he’d done, he’d done for Nissa. Married Priscilla. Stayed with the grasping cheat for years when he didn’t have to. Then paid her off to give Nissa some peace in her innocent life.

  And Chloe Morgan probably despised him for the last.

  Perhaps her opinion shouldn’t be so important to him, but it was. He’d known her for barely a week and he felt closer to her than to the woman who’d been his wife for more than a dozen years. Chloe was the kind of woman he’d wished for as a mother to his children.

  Kind…patient…loving.

  Mostly the loving part. And he didn’t just think of the sex. She’d comforted him when he’d needed it most, just as she had his child. He wanted to feel her arms around him again. He wanted to surround her with himself and know that at last fate had looked kindly at him. And at his daughter.

  He stroked a strand of hair from Nissa’s face and bent over to kiss her forehead. Her sigh made his chest squeeze tight.

  Amazingly similar to the way he’d felt when Chloe had walked out on him earlier.

  She’d been right about his not sending Nissa to a boarding school. He’d been exasperated, worried to death and obviously not in his right mind. Life wouldn’t be worth living if his daughter weren’t in it every day. It was just that sometimes he didn’t know how to handle a thirteen-year-old girl with issues.