Christmas Countdown

by Jan Hambright

  “Something’s wrong!” Emma squeezed his arm.

  Navigator galloped from the mist minus his rider and shot past them on the inside rail.

  Mac pressed the stopwatch and shoved it into his pocket.

  “Take Oliver and go find Josh, I’ll go after the colt!” Emma said. She ran through the opening in the gate.

  Mac turned for the pony horse at the same time he heard her shrill whistle for the riderless colt.

  He jerked the knotted reins loose from the rail, untied the pony horse, jammed his foot in the stirrup and climbed aboard. He hadn’t ridden in years, but riding a horse was like riding a bike. You never forgot.

  Spurring him forward, Mac trotted through the gate and out onto the track. Josh was somewhere on the back turn. That’s when he’d felt the vibration of Navigator’s impact with the outside rail. He reined the gelding to the inside and eased him into a lope.

  A hundred yards around the track the fog vanished, giving him a clear view of the back turn.

  Josh lay in a crumpled heap next to the outside rail at the one-mile post.

  Worry ground over Mac’s nerves.

  The kid wasn’t moving.

  He nudged the horse into a gallop and reined him in just short of the spot where he lay.

  “Josh! Can you hear me, buddy?”

  Mac bailed off of Oliver and dropped the reins.

  Going to his knees, he put his hand on the kid’s shoulder.

  Josh moaned, rolled to the left and tried to sit up, but Mac held him down with gentle pressure. “No way, stay put.”

  Mac gritted his teeth, staring at the dazed expression on the young man’s dirt-smudged face, but it was the deformity in his right forearm and the protruding bone, that told him Josh shouldn’t be moved. He was going to need a trip to the hospital ASAP.

  “I gotta catch the horse.” Josh tried to sit up again.

  Mac pressed his palm into his chest. “Relax, Emma is taking care of it. She’ll catch him. You broke your arm. Stay still.”

  Josh glanced down at his right forearm and went pale.

  “What happened?” Mac asked, praying he could get the kid’s attention before he passed out cold.

  “I couldn’t see when I hit the midpoint on the backstretch.”

  “The mist?”

  “A flash of red light hit me in the eyes—”

  “A laser?”

  “Could have been. But it must have targeted Navigator too, because he went wide and slapped the rail. I couldn’t hang on. I hope he’s okay.”

  Mac looked up and saw Emma and Navigator materialize out of the mist and into the sunlight.

  “Is Josh all right?” she hollered the instant she was within earshot.

  He waited until she stopped ten feet out, holding Navigator by the reins and trying to calm him down.

  “Broken arm. He needs an ambulance, and we need the sheriff. This was no accident. They were targeted with a laser. Blinded. Probably from somewhere in the woods.”

  Mac swept the grove of dense foliage with his gaze and considered looking for the perpetrator or perpetrators, but the shroud of fog would make it almost impossible to find them. And he had no intention of leaving Emma, Josh or Navigator alone right now.

  Emma couldn’t prevent her hand from shaking when she pulled her cell phone out of her coat pocket and dialed 911. This was a turn she hadn’t anticipated. Whoever was behind the threats against her horse apparently wasn’t afraid to hurt his human handlers, as well.

  She’d need Mac Titus now more than ever.

  “WE FOUND THIS last night after someone attempted to get into Navigator’s stall. It could have the man’s fingerprints on it.” Mac handed the glove encased syringe to Sheriff Riley Wilkes.

  “This happened last night?”

  “Yeah, just after I arrived around 10:00 p.m. I heard Miss Clareborn scream, booked it to the stable and caught the man trying to run. I tackled him, but he got away. My guess is he wanted to administer whatever’s in that hypodermic to her horse.”

  Mac watched the ambulance carrying Josh pull away and considered his revelation about McCluskie’s Derby prospect. “Josh mentioned one of Rambling Farm’s horses had some trouble last night, too. Maybe the incidents are related.”

  “I’ll get this to the lab and speak with Chester about it. There’s been some trouble at other farms in the area over the last couple of weeks. The horsemen are concerned.”

  Caution pulled Mac’s nerves tight. “Any other horses targeted with lasers on the practice track?”

  “Not specifically. But I can tell you two of the reported incidents have been at farms where Victor Dago stabled horses. I’m glad to hear you’ve been hired as a bodyguard by Miss Clareborn to look after her horse. Keep your eyes open and contact me immediately if anything else happens.”

  Mac took the business card Sheriff Wilkes dug out of his shirt pocket. “I will, and we’d like to know the results of the toxicology on the syringe’s contents as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll put a rush on it.” The sheriff turned to one of his deputies.

  Mac scanned the paddock and focused in on Emma, leaning against the fence watching Navigator cool down on the hot-walker. He walked over and took a spot next to her.

  “Sheriff Wilkes is going to find out what’s in the syringe.”

  “Who would want to hurt him?”

  Mac followed her gaze to the big bay colt moving around the circumference of the electric walker’s path. “I’d like to try and find out.” He watched the horse move, studying him for problems stemming from his contact with the rail.

  “He looks good.”

  “Yeah, not a scratch, but why can’t they just leave us alone? Making it in this business is hard enough without someone trying to sabotage you.”

  He nudged her with his elbow. “I’m not going to let anything happen to him, Emma.”

  Turning, she gazed up at him, her expression contemplative at best, skeptical at worse. “We’re so close to making the cut for the Derby prequalifiers. I need to win the Holiday Classic before I can nominate him in January so we get our shot at the Triple Crown. I need this, Mac. Firehill needs this.”

  “How bad is it?”

  She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. “Bad enough that I had to ignore the rumors circulating about Victor Dago and his crew and lease my stud barn to the man so I’d have the entry fee to get into the Clark Handicap.”

  “Has he done anything to you?” Tension coiled inside his body, ready to spring on Dago if he’d hurt her in any way.

  “Other than make a few inappropriate comments and giving me the creeps, not a thing. The sheikh sends a check religiously the first of every month. They respect my property and privacy. It’s nothing I can put my finger on and I should be satisfied when I put their money in the bank—”

  “But something’s off?” he said.

  “Exactly.”

  The sunlight had incinerated the fog and it blazed down a streak of copper in a loose strand of her dark hair.

  He resisted the urge to stroke it back into place behind her ear. “What kind of rumors are following Dago?”

  Her gaze dropped to the ground and she turned back to the fence rail. “Prowlers. Lots of movement after dark. At the Loomis farm, my friend Janet came out of the house to call in her dog and saw a man dressed in black and wearing a ski mask come out of their stable and disappear into the woods. The next morning she found her dog tied to a fence with duct tape around his muzzle to keep him from barking.”

  Caution worked through him. “Do they have a Derby prospect?”

  “No. They’re an anomaly in the Bluegrass—they raise quarter horses, for crying out loud. After that incident they decided to give Dago notice, and he came to me. I needed the money desperately, so I let him in.”

  He reached out and brushed his hand across her back, a gesture meant to reassure her, but it jolted him hard, and he broke contact. “I’ll keep my guard up. No one is going to
hurt you or your horse.”

  “Thanks.” She grinned and pulled the lead rope off the fence post next to her then went to take Navigator off the hot-walker.

  Mac shoved his hand into his jacket pocket, coming in contact with the stopwatch. He pulled it out and glanced down at the time. His breath hung up in his lungs as he raised the watch out in front of him, like distance from his stare could somehow alter the race time, but it didn’t work.

  It read 1:56. Three-plus seconds faster than Secretariat’s record Derby-winning time in 1973.

  Navigator’s Whim could win the Kentucky Derby with a time like that.

  All he had to do was keep the colt and his determined owner safe long enough for that to happen.

  Chapter Three

  Mac jolted upright on the cot, unsure what had awakened him. He glanced at the illuminated hands on his watch: 4:35 a.m. Turning his focus to his surroundings, he searched for visual threats inside the barn and saw nothing out of the ordinary. The only noise he heard was the sluice of Navigator moving through the fresh straw bedding in his stall.

  Heard. The hearing in his left eardrum had come back one decibel at a time after the shooting, but the healing seemed to have reached a plateau now. It would never be the same, at least that’s what the audiologist believed, but he wasn’t ready to give up yet.

  He laid back and thrust his hands behind his head, staring up at the cavernous ceiling overhead ribbed with giant timbers.

  Maybe he could attribute waking up to the sensation of being watched that seemed to follow him every time he entered the damn stable. Whatever it was, he’d made peace with it after clearing every stall twice last night, and poking around in the haylofts for half an hour only to come up empty.

  An electric purr coming from the entrance of the barn, reignited the caution in his blood.

  He sat up again.

  Silhouetted in the doorway by the first hint of dawn was a man in an electric wheelchair. Thadeous Clareborn.

  Mac cleared his throat as the chair advanced. He’d changed his last name, but would the old man recognize his face? He smoothed his hand over his hair, snatched the hat from next to the cot and slapped it on his head. Throwing back the sleeping bag, he stood up and prepared to go toe-to-toe with the man who’d, in his father’s opinion, destroyed everything Paul Calliway had going for him.

  Thadeous stopped the motorized chair. “What’s your…name, son?” The question was slurred, each word formed with extreme exertion. A by-product of his stroke.

  “Mac. Mac Titus.”

  The old man grunted and rocked the lever forward, rolling up next to the stall gate. “Emma hire…you?”

  “Yes.”

  He raised his hand and rapped his knuckles on the door. “Good horse?” Angling his head, he stared up at Mac, his eyes narrowing in the shallow light streaming in the barn door.

  “Damn straight, Mr. Clareborn.”

  A crooked smile pulled up one side of his mouth. “Do I…know you?”

  Mac’s nerves tensed as he shook his head back and forth. It wasn’t a lie. He’d been a distant witness to the transactions that had transpired between his father and Thadeous Clareborn. He didn’t know the man personally, had only seen him one time. The afternoon he and his father had delivered Smooth Sailing to Firehill Farm, after which Paul Calliway had descended into a bottle of Kentucky bourbon on Christmas Eve and never found his way out.

  Glancing over the stall door, concern took hold of Mac’s senses. Something wasn’t right. Navigator was an animated colt who enjoyed haranguing anyone who ventured close enough to his stall gate for him to nudge, but he stood in the corner now, his head pitched below his withers, his breath coming in long low grunts.

  Mac stepped around the wheelchair and opened the door latch. He stepped inside and moved up on the animal. Reaching out he brushed his hand down Navigator’s right shoulder, the one he’d slammed into the railing.

  “His shoulder’s swollen. We better get the vet in.” Worry ground through him, bringing his thoughts to Emma, and the devastating reality an injury could cause her and Firehill Farm.

  “I’ll…go.” Thadeous turned his wheelchair and rolled out of the barn.

  “Hang in there,” Mac said, rubbing the horse’s neck.

  DOC REMINGTON STOOD outside Navigator’s stall next to Emma. “Three weeks, a month. Keep him moving, so he doesn’t stiffen up. But no strenuous exercise on that shoulder muscle. It’s a deep bruise.”

  From the pained look on Emma’s face, Mac knew the vet’s prescription for Navigator was going down like a poison pill. The Holiday Classic was three weeks away and Navigator’s fitness level would rapidly decline without regular workouts, thereby diminishing his chances of making the first open qualifier for the Kentucky Derby.

  “What about a yarrow-and-mustard poultice?” he asked, recalling the technique his dad had used more times than he could count to speed healing.

  A line creased between the vet’s eyebrows. “That’s an antiquated remedy, labor intensive, but you might get it to draw. It’s worth a try.”

  His only consolation was the look of hope that flared in Emma’s dark eyes.

  MAC SPOONED ANOTHER square of cheesecloth up from the kettle of boiling water and plopped it down on the piece of plywood they’d been using as a makeshift table since dawn.

  Wearing rubber gloves, he spread out the hot cloth and dumped a cup of the yellow paste he’d concocted onto it. He smoothed it around, folded it over to form a pocket for the poultice and pulled off his gloves.

  Emma smiled at him as she reached down, picked it up in her gloved hands and headed back into Navigator’s stall where she pressed the remedy against his shoulder.

  He stepped into the cubicle and watched her over the bay’s back. “How are you holding up?”

  “My shoulders hurt like crazy and I’ve got a cramp, but I’m not going to stop.”

  He liked knowing she wasn’t a quitter. The physical strain would have already put an average woman under the table, but not Emma Clareborn. She wasn’t the spoiled Kentucky blue blood he’d expected to find living at Firehill Farm. She had grit and substance. Respect stirred in his bloodstream.

  Moving around to her side of the horse, he smoothed his hand between her shoulder blades, feeling the knotted muscles. Working them with the palm of his hand, he felt the tension dissipate.

  “Better?”

  “Yeah, thanks.” A tiny shiver rocked her body.

  Stepping back he realized he wasn’t immune to the effects of the contact either. He left the stall to heat another poultice, his body still buzzing.

  “We should walk him out after this one, see if the swelling and stiffness have been alleviated.”

  “Where’d you learn about this anyway?”

  “My dad. When you can’t afford to call in a veterinarian every time something goes wrong, you learn to improvise.”

  “Sounds like he was old-school.”

  “Yeah.” Turning his back to her, he ripped another section off the bolt of cheesecloth and fed it into the kettle. With any luck the treatment would do the trick, but they wouldn’t know for sure until they worked him.

  Mac looked up and watched Sheriff Wilkes stroll into the barn, remove his sunglasses and push his hat back.

  “Afternoon.”

  “Sheriff.” Mac reached out and shook his hand.

  He nodded in Emma’s direction. “You were right. The drug in that syringe matched the one the vet found in McCluskie’s filly. It was a synthetic hallucinogen. Made the horse go plumb nuts in her stall. She’s too banged up to race and won’t make the Holiday Classic.”

  Emma came out of the stall and flopped the cold poultice on the board. “That’s awful. I know Chester put a lot of hope in her. She has some great track times.”

  Mac dragged up the piece of cloth from the kettle sitting on the gas camp stove and spooned it onto the board.

  “What about prints?”

  “None that my technici
an could find. I wish I had better news, but I don’t. My best advice is to stay vigilant. I’m going to send a patrol car by a couple times a night, starting tonight. Maybe they’ll get lucky and catch the culprit.”

  Mac pulled on his rubber gloves and spread out the cloth with his hands.

  “Thanks, Sheriff.”

  “No problem.” He slipped on his shades and left the barn.

  “Maybe we should get a truckload of motion-sensor lights. Blaze the place out like a Christmas tree if anyone comes near the barn.” She arched her eyebrows a couple of times and grinned.

  “That’s not a bad idea.” Mac poured a cup of the poultice on the steaming cheesecloth and smeared it around. “One at the outside front entrance and one at the back would do the trick. I’d also like to put an electronic lock on the stall gate.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Yeah.” He stared at her, hoping some of the concern he felt rubbed off on her. This was war, and it could get more intense as the key races got closer. “This person is going to get desperate. The more times we turn back their attacks, the more intense those attacks could become.”

  “You’re scaring me.”

  “You should be scared, that’s what’s going to keep you and your horse safe.”

  He folded the cloth over and she picked it up, moving back into the stall where she applied it to her horse.

  “I’ll call the hardware store and have them send over the lights tomorrow. And a locksmith to install a lock on the stall door. You can put the lights up, can’t you?”

  “Yeah.” Mac let out a breath and pulled off the gloves.

  Any deterrent would help. In fact maybe they should consider rigging the whole damn stable.

  “It’s cooled off. Let’s see if it worked.” Excitement stirred in Emma’s veins, encouraged by the fact that the swelling was completely gone from Navigator’s shoulder. Her racing dreams were alive, well and pinned on the next few moments.

  Mac snagged the lead rope and held it out to her.

  “You do it,” she said. “You’re the one keeping my hopes off of life support.”

  His expression was serious as he clipped the shank on the halter ring and led Navigator out of his stall.