Thankfully, Finn didn’t get himself worked up at the intrusion of another human, not even when Jimi unthinkingly reached over and patted the horse’s neck. Finn merely snorted and swished his tail, altogether normal behavior.
Jane began to believe that there was hope for Grantham Acres, after all.
“The security company was out this morning,” Curran told her after they’d tucked the horse back in his new stall. “As it turns out, no one broke in. Whoever tried to get at Finn had the code.”
“What? But the only people who know the code work here, and I trust them all.”
“Maybe a slipped word over a pint—”
“No! I tell you, I know my people,” Jane insisted, now agitated. Jimi was still in the vicinity, fetching a treat for Finn, and she didn’t want the jockey to overhear this argument and possibly be offended. She lowered her voice. “Anyone who is left has been with us for years. They worked for my father, for heaven’s sake.”
Taking the cue from her, Curran lowered his voice, as well. “How else could someone have gotten access to the damn code, then?”
“I don’t know…” The image of the calendar on her desk opened to the wrong page hit her. “Curran, that first day when I found you in the farm office, had you been looking through my things?”
“You mean your desk? No.”
“How about my day calendar?”
He shook his head. “Not that, either. I merely sat there, waiting for you to come find me.”
“Then someone else searched my office. I found my calendar turned to the date of the Thoroughbred Millions and just assumed you had been browsing through it.”
“Are you trying to tell me you wrote the code to the security system on one of the pages?”
She winced. “Guilty as charged.”
“Well, it could have been anyone, then.”
Her face bloomed with warmth. He didn’t have to tell her it had been a careless act. But how could she have known that someone would actually be trying to get to Finn?
“I won’t be writing down the new code where anyone can find it,” she vowed.
“Plus, I had the security company set us up with a more comprehensive system. There’s a camera installed outside, above the barn door and another in here.” He pointed to a dark spot in the rafters. “The monitor and recorder are in the guest-house den so that I can check things out from my quarters, no matter the time. The picture switches between the two cameras every few seconds.”
“That sounds good,” Jane said, stilling her automatic reaction to the cost. A necessary expenditure, she told herself. “We should be able to breathe easier at night.”
“Don’t mean I’m not sleeping in the barn,” Jimi said as he came back with a big apple for Finn. “I got a shot at the Classic and I’m not letting anything happen to my ride.”
“Good lad,” Curran said approvingly.
Jimi’s face spread into a huge grin and he offered Finn the apple. The horse barely paused before lipping it out of his hand.
“I’ll be back later,” Jimi told Curran rather than her. Curran seemed to charm everyone around him, Jane thought. Nani…Finn…Jimi…
Her.
That troubled her almost as much as someone trying to get to their prized stallion. She didn’t need her mind clouded by an attraction that wasn’t going anywhere. Curran might like to take it to the bedroom, but he was bound for disappointment, she thought fiercely.
What she should be was grateful that she had another pair of eyes around the place. Another interested party and one ready to take charge if there were problems.
But…wasn’t that exactly what she had been wishing for when she’d met Gavin Shaw?
As if he could read her mind, which Jane knew he could at times, Curran said, “You know this thing would go easier if you could open up and talk to me, Sheena. Tell me what happened that night.”
Her mouth went dry. She feared he wouldn’t let it alone—or her—until he heard every detail. But she wasn’t into sharing. Not that.
“I did tell you, Curran. I also told you not to call me Sheena.”
“All you said was that you killed him. Him who?” he asked. “And how?”
Her pulse accelerated even at the thought of sharing the details. She shook her head and got ready for an argument.
“All right,” he conceded, surprising her by giving in and turning his back on her. “We’ll leave it, then.” He started to walk away, but stopped long enough to say, “But when you feel the need to talk, you’ll know where you can be finding a sympathetic ear.”
Would he really be sympathetic? she wondered, almost tempted to give in and find out.
Jane willed herself to stand where she was until Curran was out of the barn.
More likely, he would see her for the foolish woman she had proved herself to be.
“SO YOU’LL BE introducing me to himself tomorrow, then?” Ned asked over a pint of Murphy’s.
Curran and his assistant had downed heart-unhealthy steak dinners at the local pub that had once been a stable, and were now sharing a pint.
“Tomorrow it is. After lunch. I want to get Finn used to one new person at a time, and Jimi will be in the paddock with me all morning.”
“Riding?”
“I can’t say yet. We’ll see how it goes. But the sooner we get him used to people and Jimi on his back, the better,” Curran said.
He was thinking they had a mere ten days until the Thoroughbred Millions when Holt Easterling entered the pub, followed by a fair-haired young man who looked familiar.
“That’s Timothy Brady with Easterling,” Ned said. “His new assistant.”
“Easterling hired an Irishman?”
“Aye.”
Unbelievable, as far as Curran was concerned. Normally, Easterling had only contempt for anything Irish.
“Where have I seen this Brady before?” Curran mused.
“I wouldn’t be knowing that, Curran. Some Irish track, I suppose.”
“That’s it, of course. He must have worked for an Irish trainer before this. But which one?”
Ned said nothing.
Curran saw the Brit point to a table near the stone fireplace, which lay cold this summer evening. Tim Brady sauntered over to the table and flopped into a chair even as Holt Easterling made his way over to Curran.
“McKenna.” He growled at both trainer and assistant. “Rumor has it you’re going to put that mad Irish Thoroughbred in the Classic.”
“Not up to me, now, is it?” Curran mused.
“You can stop it from happening.”
“Why would I?”
“If for no other reason, to save face.”
Curran laughed. “’Tis not my face that’ll be needing saving.”
“This time, Finn mac Cumhail won’t come near Stonehenge.”
“Then what are you fretting about?”
Easterling’s complexion grew even darker. “Don’t give me grief, McKenna.”
“I’ll be giving you whatever I want, Easterling,” Curran stated, sitting up straighter. “First and foremost, a race that your English Thoroughbred won’t be winning.”
“Don’t be so cocky. Stonehenge will win the Classic Cup for me. I shall do what I must to see to it.”
With that, Holt Easterling strode over to his own table.
“Am I imagining it,” Curran asked Ned, “or did that sound like a threat?”
THOUGHTS OF CURRAN distracted Jane all through her monthly meeting of broodmare farm owners.
The temptation was growing to tell him everything, when one of the men came over to her.
“Jane, someone just called to say your black mare got loose again in the back twenty acres.”
Jane sighed. Just what she needed. “Who called? Udell? My grandmother?”
The man shrugged. “I didn’t even take the message. I’m just passing it on.”
“Thank you.”
She called home, but when there was no answer, left a message
on voice mail. Lord, she hoped Nani wasn’t out there looking for Black Widow. It would be dark soon and the back acres could be treacherous. And not just to a human. She feared for the mare, who could easily break a leg in that area. She tried to get Udell, but no answer there, either.
Nothing for her to do but to see to Black Widow herself. The mare was young and thoroughly undisciplined. A good candidate for a mate to Finn when she came in season. The spicy mare had gotten out of her pasture more times than Jane liked to count.
The acreage was on the way home, so Jane turned her car off the pike and went in on a back road. She parked in the area most easily accessible, which wasn’t saying much considering the land back there was hilly and chock-full of limestone rocks. She’d been able to manage it well enough in the past, when she’d been physically fit, but now…well, she wasn’t looking forward to the experience.
With a cane in one hand, a flashlight in the other, she cut through a small wooded area and slowly went up a rise.
When she reached the top, she called, “Widdy!” She always used the mare’s nickname. “Where are you, girl?”
As headstrong as the mare might be about getting her freedom, she was silly enough to always answer, as if she just couldn’t help herself.
“Widdy!” Jane yelled, and whistled as loudly as she could, but tonight she got no answer. “Widdy!”
Twenty acres was a big parcel, and she was barely into it. A bit farther, she thought, flashing her beam around so that she could see where she was going. The moon was wedged behind a bank of clouds tonight. One wrong step and she could land in a ravine. That would be it for her.
“Widdy!”
Listening hard for any return answer, Jane was certain she heard a scrabbling sound from somewhere behind her.
“Widdy, you bad girl, is that you?” she called.
Spinning around in time to catch movement from the corner of her eye, she started. Her pulse triggered and she stared hard as she swept her flashlight over the stand of trees she’d just left. No horse in there, she realized.
A loud noise startled her. A crack. A shot? Someone was shooting at her! Her heart began to pound.
Which way to safety?
Another crack and something whistled close to her ear.
She didn’t have time to think.
Clicking off the telling beam and taking flight, she could barely keep her feet under her. Her heart in her throat, she blindly traversed a ridge along a treacherous drop.
A third shot made her glance behind her just long enough that she skidded and was unable to catch herself. Losing her precious footing, she dropped the cane.
Then she panicked and reached forward to grab it…big mistake…Her feet shot out from under her and the next thing she knew, she was sliding down, down, down…
CURRAN WAS CHECKING the monitor in the den when he heard the banging at his front door.
“Coming,” he said.
Assuming the visitor to be Jane, he was surprised to find Belle there instead.
“It’s about my granddaughter,” she said, her voice panicky. “Jane is in trouble—I know it!”
Immediately alarmed, Curran asked, “What kind of trouble?”
“I’m not sure. But she left a message on voice mail that she was going after one of our mares in the back acres because someone called at her meeting to let her know Black Widow was loose again. That area of the farm is really rough territory, and with her knee problems and all…” Belle shook her head. “Something made me check on the mare myself. Black Widow is still in her paddock.”
“I don’t understand.”
Belle looked close to tears. “Neither do I.”
Why the hell would someone send Jane on a wild-goose chase into an area that she wasn’t prepared to negotiate in her physical condition?
Not liking the only answer he could think of, Curran said, “Don’t worry, I’ll find her. Just tell me how to get to these back acres of yours.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“I’ll be faster alone.”
Belle accepted that, and as they headed for his rental car, she told him how to get to the back road.
It sounded like someone was out to get Jane, he thought as he drove off. But why?
He sensed it had to do with the “accident.” And with the barn break-in.
Only Jane had the truth within her grasp, and he vowed that when he found her, he would make her come clean at last. She couldn’t do everything on her own. She had to trust someone to help her and he meant that someone to be him.
THE WIND KNOCKED out of her, Jane lay facedown at the bottom of the ravine.
Whoever had been shooting at her was still up there. She was torn between getting to her feet and trying to find someplace to hide…and just staying where she was.
The scrape of leather against rock above decided her.
Heart pounding, fearing taking a simple breath, fingers digging into the rocky earth, she lay as still as death. That had to have been the shooter’s purpose—to kill her. She would let him think that he had succeeded.
Was he staring down at her now, celebrating his success? She didn’t dare look.
Her mouth was dry and she could hardly swallow. She didn’t know how long she lay silent and unmoving before a clumsy footfall made her stomach cramp. Pebbles scattered down the ravine, some hitting her square in the back.
Sweat beaded her body.
How long? Jane wondered. How long would she have to play dead?
When she thought she couldn’t tolerate it any longer, she heard the shooter move off, but still she didn’t budge. She would outwait him, make sure that he didn’t come back, that she wasn’t fooled.
She relaxed enough to breathe, no more.
And though she continued to concentrate, to listen for sounds above her, she couldn’t help wondering at the shooter’s identity.
Who would want her dead?
What had she done to drive someone to this?
Only one possibility occurred to her…
From a distance, she heard a car start up. Still she stayed where she was.
Five minutes passed…ten…twenty…
Finally, she sat up and gingerly tested her body parts. All seemed intact. But her knee was hurting. Not the normal hurt from a good whomp, but that special hurt, like an abscessed tooth, a hot-wired nerve that wouldn’t let up. All too familiar with that particular pain, she’d been grateful that she hadn’t experienced it for some time. Now it was back with a vengeance.
Praying that she hadn’t reinjured the knee, she turned over onto her good knee and attempted to stand. Stiff and sore, she awkwardly got to her feet and tested. Though the knee complained, it still seemed to be working.
Now what? No cane. No flashlight. And a wall of slippery earth and rock to ascend to get back to her car.
Jane felt like weeping. But tears would only hold her back, make getting out of this ravine more difficult. It would expend her energy and waste her time.
Crying could wait.
As if to give her a break, the moon slid out from behind the bank of clouds. But the minimal light merely emphasized the impossibility of her task. No getting around it, she had to climb more than a dozen feet up to the ridge.
Determining the easiest route—a path of sorts that snaked along the side of the ravine rather than straight up—Jane began, one step at a time. She leaned forward and dug her fingers into anything that would hold, whether rock or limb or root.
Slowly but surely, she edged upward and gradually a sense of triumph filled her.
Then a vehicle approached the area, the sound of its engine shooting right through her.
Nearly three-fourths of the way to success, she lost concentration and took a wrong step. The earth beneath her foot disintegrated. She slid down and landed on her knees. Then in grabbing for a handhold, she managed to rain pebbles and even rocks down on herself.
Big breaths, Jane told herself as stars lit behind her eyes again. Take b
ig breaths and the pain will pass.
Lying against the incline, she feared she was finished, especially since the engine ceased and a car door slammed and she imagined the shooter had come back to finish the job.
Shaking and with a sense of desperation, she started upward again. Up and into the trees might be her only escape.
One step at a time…one handhold at a time. Fast…faster.
When she reached the top of the ridge, she was breathing hard, sweat slicked her body and the stress made all four limbs quiver.
Though unsteady, she was able to lurch forward, toward the trees. She almost had it when a bright beam from within the stand lit and caught her like a deer in the headlights of a car.
She was caught…
“Jane, are you all right?”
“Oh my God, Curran!”
He was at her side in an instant.
Realizing she was rescued, Jane threw herself against his chest, broke down and wept.
OVER HER PROTESTS, Curran picked her up in his arms and carried her back toward his car. Wiping away tears that seemed to come more from anger than injury, Jane was disheveled and filthy and probably bruised, but she was all right.
Fighting a growing rage at whomever was responsible, he pulled her closer to his chest and demanded to know, “What in the world possessed you to come out here alone?”
“Black Widow—”
“Is fine,” he said. “Belle checked on her. You should have done the same before going off, half-cocked, into a dangerous situation.”
She didn’t argue with that. She didn’t say anything until they reached the back road where he’d spotted her car. He set her down next to his rental and unlocked the passenger door.
“Wrong car,” she said.
“You’re in no condition to drive.”
She dug into her pocket for her keys. “That’s for me to decide.”
“Not this time.”
The moment she produced the key ring, he took it from her hand. Her expression of outrage was more than he could tolerate. Anything could have happened to her because she couldn’t put her trust in anyone else.
“When are you going to learn that you don’t always know best, Sheena?”
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