Forged (Gail McCarthy Mystery) (20 page)

Turning my head, I stared into the stall next to me. There was the dark shape of the horse, head down, eating. Behind him was a square of night sky. The way out, if I could get there.

I took a step towards the stall, then stopped to listen. Nothing. Another step. Nothing. Then another and another. I put my hand on the stall door latch and started to slide the bolt back.

Even as the metal bolt rasped against the latch, I heard the click. Heard it and saw it at once, as a piercing flood of brilliant light blinded me. Blinking, I brought my hand up to shield my eyes from the flashlight beam and heard the voice.

"Don't move."

The tone was harsh, but I recognized the human being behind it.

"Oh," I said. "How are you, Sandy?"

TWENTY-THREE

“What the hell are you doing sneaking around my barn? I thought you were a burglar." Sandy McQuire sounded righteously pissed off.

For a moment that seemed to take hours, my brain stumbled, searching for a possible answer to this question. It had seemed plausible enough at the time to drive up here and ask Sandy if she knew where Barbara's sister lived. Not now. Right now, the last thing in the world I wanted to mention was Barbara King's name.

Sandy would not, I realized a split second later, know that I'd seen and recognized Barbara's horse. I just needed to come up with a reasonable excuse for being here.

"I'm sorry, Sandy" was what came out of my mouth. "I was in the area and wondered how that bay horse was doing. The one with the intermittent colics. I thought I'd check on him. I didn't see any lights on in the house, so I was looking for you out at the barn." The last part of this was true, anyway.

Sandy was still regarding me with a suspicious eye.

I tried a friendly smile. "So, how is the horse doing?"

"Leo? You're looking at him."

I blinked and focused my gaze on the animal in the stall in front of me. Dark bay, unremarkable, head down eating, like the rest of them.

"Is that him?" I asked.

"That's him," Sandy said. Her tone was not cordial.

"He looks like he's doing well. Any more colicky spells?" I knew I was driveling on; I guessed that Sandy wasn't buying the ostensible reason for my presence. But she stood between me and that open doorway at the end of the barn aisle-the doorway that led to my truck and freedom. Somehow I needed to allay her suspicions.

"He's been all right." Sandy was curt. Then, "Why don't you have a look at him?"

"All right." Opening the stall door, I stepped inside. Leo looked up from his hay, assessed me briefly, and went back to eating. I saw a halter hanging on a hook near his water bucket and stepped towards it.

Crash! I spun to see the stall door slammed shut; I could hear the bolts shooting home in the latches. Even as I took this in, a corresponding crash on the other side of the stall caused both Leo and me to jump. Someone had shut the top half of the Dutch door that opened to the outside. The click of the closing latch was plainly audible.

I was, I realized, trapped in this stall with Leo. A second later, the faint light leaking under the door disappeared; I could hear Sandy walking away.

Black, black dark. No light of any sort. I raised my hand to touch my face-couldn't see my fingers even when I could feel them.

My God. My heart thumped crazily inside my chest; my mind spun. Sandy had locked me in this stall. Not just Sandy-two people, one at each door. Barbara's horse was in Sandy's barn. This did not add up to a good outcome. What in the hell could I do?

Even as my mind dithered, I assessed the possibilities. I couldn't see at all. The stall wasn't big, maybe twelve feet by twelve feet. Leo was in it; I could hear him munching next to me, apparently not bothered by my incarceration in his home. What had Sandy said, that Leo was "gentle as a pup"?

What else was in the stall? A five-gallon plastic water bucket and a halter on a peg. In the corner closest to me.

I took a deep breath, tried to quiet my racing heart. Unless I missed my guess, I needed to consider some evasive action. Sandy was not going to leave me locked in her box stall indefinitely. And I had an idea what the alternative might be.

Darkness was absolute, omnipresent, palpable. It was more than the absence of light; it felt like a viscous, inky substance, a weight bearing down. Fanciful as it seemed, blackness was oppressively frightening.

I blinked my eyes. Nothing changed. Only blackness.

I touched my nose again and felt a rush of pure terror as I realized I couldn't see my own fingers, though they were maybe an inch from my eyes. It was almost as if I'd disappeared.

Calm down. Calm down. It's just dark. I tried to soothe myself by focusing on the sound of Leo's rhythmic chomp, chomp, chomp. And in that instant, I knew what to do.

Without hesitation I inched my way forward, feeling with my hands until I touched the stall wall. Guiding myself by touch only, I worked my way along the wall until I came to the corner. Sure enough, there was the halter on its peg. My feet found the round solidness of the plastic bucket full of water.

Slowly, gently, I tipped the bucket over, guiding it so that the water ran away from me. I took the halter and leadrope down from the peg.

With halter in one hand and bucket in the other, I inched my way across the stall towards the munching Leo. This was the difficult part. I prayed that Leo was, in truth, as gentle as a pup.

Reaching out with the hand that held the halter, I felt for the horse, knowing he was nearby, not knowing exactly which part of his anatomy I might touch. After a minute, I found the smooth, sleek warmth of his hair coat.

I stroked him awhile, decided that what I was feeling was his rib cage. Working my way in what I hoped was the right direction, I came to the rough, stringy texture of his mane. Good.

I was on Leo's left side, in the appropriate position. All I had to do was put his halter on by feel.

Easier said than done. I felt down Leo's neck, and pushed on him gently to raise his head from his meal. The head came up; I could tell by the position of his neck and the cessation of chomping sounds. Leo snorted softly.

Reaching out, I felt around in the blackness, trying to pull what I thought was the noseband of the halter over the horse's nose. Leo helped me. Like many gentle, cooperative horses will do, he stuck his face in the halter. "How the hell did you see that?" I whispered as I fumbled around his ears to buckle the halter strap.

Horses have much better night vision than humans-I knew this-but I couldn't imagine that any creature would see anything in this impenetrable gloom.

No time for that. Leo was caught. I felt with my foot and hand until I located his flake of hay, then half dragged, half shoved it until it was in the corner of the stall. Then I turned the bucket upside down and placed it next to the wall, in what I thought was the right position.

Holding Leo's leadrope in one hand, I felt for his body with the other. Guiding him with the halter and my hand against his rib cage, I positioned him until his head was in the comer with his hay and his body was lined up along the stall wall.

Carefully I squeezed under his neck and crept along the wall until I felt the bucket with my foot. Leo dropped his head and went back to eating hay, seeming quite content to stand there.

Using his body to steady myself, I climbed up on the bucket. Then I crouched down, my back against the stall wall, my nose pressed to Leo's rib cage, the leadrope in my left hand. Not exactly the most comfortable position, but one that I could maintain for a little while if I tried.

With any luck at all, I wouldn't have to wait too long. Surely, I thought, the move to dispose of me would come sooner, rather than later. Much safer, especially if I'd told anyone where I was going.

Which I hadn't, like an idiot. I'd told Blue that I'd gone to find Barbara's sister, Paula; I hadn't mentioned that I'd planned to ask Sandy McQuire where Paula lived. I took another deep breath and concentrated on holding my position. Prayed that Leo would hold still. Prayed fervently that I was right-that a person looking in this stall wouldn't see me, that my body was hidden behind Leo's barrel, my feet up on the bucket, my head down below his withers. At first glance, anyway, the stall would appear empty except for the horse.

A moment-that was all I was going to get, if I was lucky. A moment and an open door. I prayed.

My back ached, my legs ached. I tried to relax my muscles, relax my body. I asked that the moment of truth come quickly, before I stiffened too much. I thanked God that Leo seemed quite willing to stand quietly, parallel to the stall wall, eating his hay.

And then I heard it. The softest of noises, but unmistakable to one who was listening for just that sound. Footfalls in the barn aisle. Someone was coming.

The footsteps came to a halt outside my stall, just as I had known they would. I took another breath and asked for the strength to do what I needed to do.

I heard a click, a very gentle, singular click. The sound of the bolt, one bolt, being drawn back. At a guess, the top half of the Dutch door.

The lights stayed off; the blackness remained impenetrable. But I knew that someone was peering into the stall over the bottom half of the door. I waited.

The moment, when it came, was too fast for thought. I heard the click as the flashlight beam blazed in, heard another click that I knew in my gut was a single-action pistol being cocked. I gathered myself.

For a second the flashlight roamed the stall; I heard the muttered "What the hell?" Not the voice I'd expected. My God. Once again my mind reeled in shock, trying to process the new information.

Then there was the sound of another bolt sliding back. My eyes, adjusting rapidly, saw the figure step into the stall. The door was open.

Light swept around the walls-only a moment remained before I was inevitably discovered.

In that moment, I leaped onto Leo's back from the bucket, pulling myself up with the hand that was twined in his mane. Even as the figure whirled with a startled shout, I kicked Leo forward, guiding him with the leadrope. Right at the human being in the middle of the stall.

I heard a yell, saw the person lurch away, and drummed my heels into Leo's sides, urging him toward the open stall doorway. He lunged for the gap just as the stall seemed to explode with sound.

Gunshot. I crouched low over Leo's neck, tucked my knees and feet into his sides and hung on for all I was worth as he crashed through the doorway.

Then we were charging down the barn aisle, as another shot rang out behind us. Leo panicked; he was running headlong, out of control, my tugs on the leadrope had no effect. I wrapped both hands in his mane and clung like a burr with feet and knees and thighs.

I had no idea where Leo was taking me as we sailed out of the barn and into the night, but it didn't really matter. Anywhere was better than here.

TWENTY-FOUR

The moon was up, hard and almost full and white; I could see shapes in its light as we crashed across the stable yard in a flurry of pounding hooves. Like the creature of habit that a horse is, Leo appeared to be making straight for a little riding ring that I could see ahead of us-no doubt the place he was exercised every day.

Good. I could probably regain control of him there. I encouraged his tendency with my hands on the leadrope and we galloped through the open gate of the arena.

Once inside, I worked at pulling Leo's head around to the left, tugging on the leadrope with one hand while I clung to his mane with the other. I gave eternal thanks that he had a flat back and smooth gaits; were it not for that, I was certain I'd be lying on the ground.

"Come on, Leo," I said out loud.

The horse yielded to my tugs, circling to a stop in the center of the ring. I took a deep breath and looked back the way we'd come.

Oh, shit.

A figure stood at the gate to the arena, silhouetted in the moonlight. I could see the pistol, not pointed at me, not yet, but there in the right hand. And I could hear the voice, a little out of breath, but sounding quite calm and in charge.

"You can stop running now, Gail. There isn't anywhere to go."

I glanced wildly around, but could see no other open gates. Taking another breath, I tried to steady myself.

"So," I said, "you're alive, Barbara."