“Mac Titus is ex-Secret Service. He’s out on medical leave after nearly having his face blown off by a bullet meant for a foreign dignitary visiting Louisville six months ago.”
Agent Renn Donahue rocked back in his chair and took the intel report from Agent Conner. “So what’s he doing at Firehill Farm?”
“Trying to get his edge back. He was referred to Firehill by the Solberg Agency, a bodyguard service out of Louisville that mentally rehabilitates agents who’ve been through an incident so they can rejoin their respective employers if possible. More than likely he’s there to protect a high-valued horse.”
“What’s his medical history look like?”
“He has extensive damage to his eardrum. He’s almost totally deaf in his left ear. The assailant’s bullet entered below his earlobe and traveled the length of his jawbone before it exited through his chin. He protected the dignitary with his own body when the shooting started and took the bullet at close range.”
Agent Donahue jotted the fact down on the bottom of the page next to Mac’s service photo. Military-style haircut, clean shaven…a damn far cry from the unshaven, long-haired man in the surveillance still taken in the stable at Firehill. It was an identity crisis, plain and simple, but life-threatening incidents did funny things to a man’s soul, and his nerve.
“Any chance he’ll return to his post?”
“I don’t know, I’m not a doctor. But the service requires all your senses be at a hundred-and-ten percent. His never will be again.”
“Looks like the odds are against Mac Titus. Anything else, Agent Conner?”
“Not that I could access. The details of the attack are encrypted.”
Strange. A knot firmed in Donahue’s gut. “I’ll take the late shift in the surveillance van tonight. You need to spend some time at home with your new wife.”
“Thank you, sir.” Conner pulled a sly grin as he turned for the office door and Renn refocused his attention on the paperwork in front of him, searching for the name of the dignitary Mac Titus had nearly been killed protecting.
Sheikh Ahmed Abadar.
Caution seeped into his bloodstream. The NSA had been listening to chatter from Abadar for months. He was the cornerstone of their investigation at the farm.
So was Mac Titus’s presence at Firehill a coincidence? An odd twist of fate?
Or something more?
MAC LEANED INTO THE RAIL and scanned the entire perimeter of the practice track, concentrating on the wooded area adjacent to the backstretch before picking up the progress of the colt galloping into the clubhouse turn with Emma on his back.
It made him uneasy to see her astride the big bay colt in her breeches, goggles and helmet. The sooner they found a new gallop boy to replace Josh, the better. In the interim she seemed determined to work the colt herself and damn the danger that could be lurking in the woods.
He sucked in a breath of crisp morning air and tried to still the agitation circulating in his veins. He cared about the horse…and the woman on his back.
Navigator blitzed by, his powerful hooves pounding the rich Kentucky soil.
Mac focused on the sweet round curve of Emma’s bottom, pushed up above her sloping back in classic jockey form. A low whistle hissed between his lips. The woman could ride.
In the peripheral vision on his right, Mac saw Victor Dago approach the rail and he turned for an instant to acknowledge him before resetting his gaze on horse and rider.
“He’s fast. He’ll win the Classic,” Victor said.
“Yeah. If we can keep him safe and running until then.” Mac shot Victor a quick glance, trying to gauge his reaction. His eyes continued to follow the progress of the pair on the track.
“What happened last night? My animals didn’t take to all of the commotion.”
“Someone took three shots at Miss Clareborn and myself.” Again he slipped a glance at Dago, and witnessed his genuine look of surprise.
“I’ve heard rumblings of sick horses and threatening notes.”
“Where?”
“Keeneland Horse Park. I buy my crew breakfast at the Iron Liege Coffee Shop once a week. The horsemen talk. I listen.”
“Any names come up?”
“No.”
Mac watched Navigator and Emma pass in front of him for the second time and turned to face Victor. “If a name happens to surface, I’d like to hear it. Some strange things have been taking place on the farms with derby prospects, and I suspect someone is trying to up their odds of winning. Any chance you have a Derby horse?”
Victor’s eyes narrowed for an instant and his brows furrowed. “I’ve got one possibility, Dragon’s Soul, but I’m not sure if he’ll go to nomination this year.”
Mac picked up horse and rider in the backstretch and leaned on the rail. “Keep an eye on your horse, and I’d appreciate it if you’d advise your crew about what’s going on. Sheriff Wilkes is tracking some leads right now. He may want to talk to them.”
“No problem.” Dago pushed back. “Tell Miss Clareborn if she’d like to use my gallop boy, Rodriguez, on his off days, to let me know.”
“Thanks, I’ll do that.” Mac nodded and watched Victor walk away, unsure what to make of him. If he or anyone in his stable were behind the attacks, Mac sure hadn’t wrangled anything out of him by perpetuating the idea the sheriff was tracking solid leads. There weren’t any.
He watched Emma rein Navigator in and slow him to a canter as they jogged down the front stretch and into the first turn for a final cooldown lap.
Pulling his cell phone out of his jacket pocket, he punched in the number of his buddy in the FBI’s Lexington office.
Every Thoroughbred trainer in Kentucky needed a license acquired through the horse-racing commission. It also required an FBI background check. He wanted to know what was in Victor Dago’s.
Emma reined in Navigator and flowed with the rocking-chair rhythm of the powerful horse underneath her. She let her knees act as shock absorbers in the stirrup irons as she kept time with his gait.
He’d barely broken a sweat in the four-mile gallop she’d just put him through. He was in peak condition. Ready to run. Ready to win.
Focusing on the final turn out of the backstretch, she tugged the reins again and shifted him down into a fast trot. The Holiday Classic was two and a half weeks away. A lifetime for something to go wrong. Thank goodness she had Mac looking out for them.
On the right, she picked up a flash of movement in the brush.
Navigator saw it first and shied to the left.
The first bone-jarring jolt almost unseated her.
Half a dozen doves took flight out of the bushes and fluttered into the air inches above her head.
Navigator shot forward and broke into a run.
Emma sat down on the saddle, pulled back on the reins and squeezed him with her legs to bring him under control. “Easy. Just a couple of birds.” She reached down and patted his neck, feeling the tension dissipate in his body and control return. Her heart rate had slowed by the time she eased him into a fast walk and aimed for the opening in the rail, seeing Mac hurry out onto the track to meet them.
“What happened out there?”
“A cove of doves took flight and spooked him.”
“Nice recovery, but he could have dumped you. Hurt you.”
“I know.”
Mac caught one of the reins and walked the pair through the opening and into the paddock, where he stopped the horse and Emma jumped down. “He looks good.”
“He’s ready to run. I could have taken him around again at a full gallop.”
“Conditioning wins races.” He pulled up on the two leather straps of the cinch and released it from the buckle while she took off the bridle and put on the colt’s halter.
In a matter of minutes, Mac was clipping him on the hot-walker for a thorough cooldown.
She gathered up the equipment and headed for the stable, satisfied with the morning’s workout.
Mac joined her a minute later in the tack room and busied himself wiping down the saddle and bridle with an oiled rag.
“Where’d you learn to ride like that?” he asked.
She glanced up at him. “I’ve been riding since I was a kid. My dad used to let me exercise some of the horses until I got too tall.”
“Victor Dago offered to let you use his gallop boy if you need to.”
She stared at him, considering how calm she felt with him next to her. Watching the skilled manner in which he cleaned the dirt and horse sweat off the flat saddle as if he’d done it a hundred times before.
“I’ll pass. Rodriguez likes the whip and Navigator doesn’t. I contacted Sam McCall, the trainer over at Rambling Farms and asked if they had an extra gallop boy, being as their Derby prospect, Ophelia Mine, isn’t in training right now. They’re sending jockey Grady Stevens over on Thursday. I’ve heard good things about him. I’m going to ask him to ride the colt in the Holiday Classic.”
Mac cleaned the last section of the leather and slid the flat saddle onto its metal pin protruding from the tack room wall. “That’s good news. With everything that’s going on around here, I worry about your safety.”
She met his dark blue gaze and felt her cheeks warm under the intensity. Begging for a distraction, she picked up the feed bucket on the counter and turned for the grain sack.
“I trust Navigator. I trained him from the moment he hit the ground.” She put the bucket down into the sack and scooped up a gallon of sweet feed. “He’s a good horse. Not a malicious bone in his body.” She straightened, flipped up the handle on the pail and set it on the counter. “He’d never do anything to hurt me.”
“It’s not him I worry about. It’s whoever seems determined to force an injury. It’s as simple as spooking him like the birds just did on the backstretch. Something like that could end in disaster.”
She sobered, knowing that her argument would mean little to a frightened horse with the power to crush anyone in its path, including the one who’d cared for him from the time he was born.
“You’re right. I tend to give him human qualities and he’s a horse.” She glanced away and reached for the feed bucket topped off with Navigator’s morning ration of grain.
Caution locked on his nerves. “Hold on.” Mac reached out and covered her hand on the lip of the bucket. “Let me see that.”
He stepped closer and released her fingers, still feeling the touch afterward.
He sifted through the top layer of sweet feed and felt his brain go numb. He gritted his teeth as he scooped up a handful of the multi-grain concoction and held it out so she could look.
“See the tiny white crystals?” He isolated one with his fingernail.
“Yes.”
“It’s Butazolidin.”
Emma’s eyes went wide as she stared at the feed in his hand and back up into his face. “Bute?”
“Yeah. How long have you been feeding out of this sack of grain?”
“I took delivery the day before you got here. I’ve been feeding it for over a week. Do you know what this means?”
Mac’s heart jumped in his chest. He saw tears well in Emma’s eyes. Her prequalifying for the Derby dreams were crumbling and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
He dumped the handful of drug-tainted feed back into the bucket and reached for her.
She moved against him and he pulled her into his arms, feeling her body quake.
Mac closed his eyes, working through the problem in his head and mentally trying not to memorize every curve of her body pressed against his in the process. Butazolidin, known as bute in racehorse circles, was banned. Any racehorse caught with it in its system on race day could be disqualified, even barred from competing at racetracks around the country.
He pushed back and grasped her upper arms. “Call the vet. Get him out here for a drug test. We don’t know how long it’s been in the feed. There’s a chance we found it in time, and it’ll work its way out of his system before the race.”
Emma brushed her hands across her eyes, taking her tears with them. Mac was right. They didn’t have any idea when the bute had been mixed into the feed. It could have been done a day ago. “I’ll call him now and we should contact Sheriff Wilkes. Other farms could be affected by something like this and not even know about it until it’s too late.”
“I’ll call Wilkes.” Mac pulled his cell phone out of his jacket pocket.
She hurried out of the tack room headed for the house, the telephone and a measure of hope.
MAC AND EMMA WATCHED Doc Remington tweezer the white crystal out of the sweet-feed bucket and drop it into a test vial filled with clear liquid.
He capped it with his thumb, shook it and held it up to the light.
Within seconds the liquid turned yellow.
“It’s Butazolidin, all right. Do you want me to test your horse, Emma?”
“Is there any way to judge by the blood sample what the percentage of bute is in his bloodstream?”
“Yes. It won’t change anything, but we can get a better read on how long it’s going to take for him to purge it from his system.”
“And if it’s positive, Doc, what are the chances we could treat him with a diuretic mash, green tea and pasture grass to speed up the process?” Mac studied the veterinarian, hoping he’d remembered the layman’s prescription correctly along with the ingredients.
“What’s in the mash?” Doc Remington studied him from behind his glasses for a moment before he poured the liquid out of the vial onto the ground and put it back into his test kit.
“Oats, cabbage, carrots, lettuce, asparagus and a bit of molasses. We’d steep green tea and add it to his water supply.”
“I don’t see why that couldn’t work. It’ll get his kidneys working overtime to flush the drug out, and the pasture grass will help, as well. Give him plenty of exercise. Where’d you learn a remedy like that?”
Mac felt the muscles tighten between his shoulder blades. They were moving into territory he’d rather leave uncharted. “I heard it as a kid and remembered it.”
Doc Remington shook his head and picked up his kit. “Bring the horse over to the truck and I’ll take a blood sample.”
He turned for his pickup. Mac followed.
“Only one man I know ever used those techniques with any success. An old horse trainer named Calliway, Paul Calliway, if I remember correctly. He was one of the best horsemen in the Bluegrass. Don’t know what ever happened to him, but he was always coming up with the damnedest cures. The funny thing is, they usually worked.”
Mac tensed, cocking his head slightly to the right to judge whether or not Emma was in earshot, but she’d already turned away and headed for the hot-walker.
It had been years since he’d last heard his father’s name out loud. A name he’d been more than happy to abandon when his mother remarried and he took his stepfather’s last name. “We’ll keep you in the loop on his progress. Emma has him entered in the Holiday Classic. What are his chances?”
“It’s a long shot. But he might be clean by then.” The vet opened one of the side boxes on his truck and reached inside.
Mac glanced up just as Sheriff Wilkes rolled down the drive and parked next to the vet’s pickup.
“Morning, Doc. Mac.” Wilkes nodded. “It’s a damn shame we can’t catch these guys. Did the vet confirm your suspicions?”
Mac shook the sheriff’s hand. “Yeah. Someone put Butazolidin in Navigator’s feed sack. We’re going to try to clean him up before the race on the twenty-fourth.”
“I hope it works, for Emma’s sake. In the meantime, I’ve got my deputies doing robo calls to every farm in Fayette County advising them to check their feed for the drug.”
“Any forensics come back on the shooting last night?”
“The slugs were from a .22, virtually untraceable, and the prints on the envelope and letter matched Thadeous, his nurse, who brought in the envelope from the mailbox, and Emma’s. We didn’t find anything on the letter Brad Nelson received.”
Mac turned slightly and watched Emma lead Navigator to the rear of the veterinarian’s pickup. “We’ll catch a break. Somewhere, somehow, someone will make a mistake, and we’ll catch him.”
“I hope so. There’s a lot of expensive horseflesh at risk in Fayette County.” Sheriff Wilkes turned for his car.
Mac couldn’t agree more, but it was the bay colt and his owner who occupied his concern right now. He skirted the front of the vet’s pickup and made his way around to the back, where Doc Remington was just capping the hypodermic.
“I’ll rush this, Emma, and give you a call in an hour or so with the results.”
“Thanks, Doc.” She raised her gaze to meet Mac’s and flashed him a hopeful smile, before leading Navigator toward the hot-walker and the remainder of his cooldown.
The vet stowed the blood sample. “I’ll be in touch.” Doc climbed into his vehicle, fired up the engine and pulled away.
Turning for the barn, Mac tried to still the curiosity that churned in his mind. Doc Remington had known his father all those years ago and still remembered him? How was it possible that the veterinarian’s image of Paul Calliway was so totally different from his own?
His cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his coat pocket and glanced at the caller ID—FBI.
“Hey, Doug. That was quick. Have you got something for me?”
“I couldn’t find the man’s name in our Kentucky database. If he’s holding a trainer’s license here, it could be a fake.”
Mac stopped in his tracks and stared at the barn. “What kind of penalties go with an offense like that?”
“A fine, possibly imprisonment, maybe even a ban from the sport.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem.” Doug hung up.
But it was a problem. A problem for Emma Clareborn. A problem he wasn’t sure he could fix.