Christmas Countdown

by Jan Hambright

  His mission at Firehill wasn’t just about a horse anymore. Tractors didn’t go kamikaze on their own. Someone had to have sabotaged it. Someone who knew that Emma and only Emma harrowed the track every other day.

  “Stay put. I’ll go crimp the fuel line to shut it down.” He settled her on the ground and headed for the tractor, its rear wheels continuing to dredge a furrow now six inches deep and still digging.

  Who had that kind of mechanical know-how?

  He popped the metal side panel on the engine compartment and flipped it up. Spotting the fuel line, he folded it over, cutting off the supply of diesel fuel driving the monster. The engine sputtered and clattered to a stop.

  He released the rubber line and stared inside the compartment. It was a grimy old tractor, like the one that had belonged to his dad. The one he’d learned to hot-wire so he could bypass the ignition switch in the dual-start system.

  Tilting his head, he visually located the wires attached to the kill switch. The last fail-safe way to kill it. “I’ll be damned.” This was literally an accident waiting to happen.

  In his peripheral he saw Emma stand up and dust herself off then approach the tractor with a wary look in her eyes. “Did you find something?” she asked from next to him.

  “The kill-switch wires have been cut.” He stepped back and turned toward her, watching her finger what was left of her hair over her right shoulder.

  “I’d bet someone also tampered with the carburetor’s governor and filed the steering column pin so you’d lose control.”

  “This is getting scary, Mac.”

  He met her gaze. “I’ll catch whoever did this. No one is going to hurt you, Emma.”

  She stepped closer and he put his arms around her, hoping like hell he could honor his vow and keep her safe from an unknown enemy. An enemy who could be watching them right now.

  “Come on, let’s take care of the horse, then we’ll call Wilkes and file a report so the crime will be documented.”

  “Okay.” She pushed back and fell in step next to him.

  “By the way, I’m really sorry about your hair.”

  “I’m not. You did what you had to do. Besides, I’ve been thinking about getting it trimmed. I just didn’t know it would be this soon and with a pocketknife.”

  “Maybe later you’ll let me even it up with a pair of scissors. I can cut a straight line.”

  “You’d do that?” She glanced over at him and he enjoyed the easy smile on her lips.

  “Sure. In fact, I’ve been thinking about having mine cut, too. It’s been overgrown for too long.” He pulled off his hat and raked his fingers through his collar-length hair a couple of times.

  It was time for a change. He hadn’t seen a barber since the shooting. Somehow, letting his hair grow unabated for the past six months had been an extension of the anger he’d felt inside at the loss of his hearing, and his identity as a Secret Service agent.

  Now, somehow, it no longer seemed to matter.

  “I’ll recut yours, if you’ll cut mine.”

  “Deal,” she said.

  Mac glanced up, seeing Dago, Rahul and another one of the grooms jogging down the front stretch toward them.

  “Miss Clareborn, we heard the commotion. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, but the tractor isn’t.” Emma steeled herself, trying to compensate for the uneasiness she always experienced in the presence of Victor Dago.

  “Any chance you can fire up your Kubota and harrow the track this morning?”

  “Sure.” He nodded to Rahul, who spoke to the other groom in Arabic.

  The groom turned and headed for their stable at a jog.

  “Thanks,” Emma said, watching him bob through the opening next to the hot-walker. “It’ll probably be a couple of days before the John Deere can be rescued and fixed.”

  “I understand,” Victor said glancing toward the embankment.

  “Maybe we could get Rahul to harrow tomorrow morning. We’ll pay him.” Mac stepped closer, seeing an opening to question Rahul’s abilities behind the wheel, whether it be a pickup on an off-limits corner of the farm, or a Kubota tractor.

  “Rahul is just learning to drive. I don’t trust him with the tractor until his skills improve, but I’ll instruct Karif to harrow again tomorrow morning and every morning until your equipment is working again.”

  “Thank you,” Emma said. “I appreciate that.”

  “Come on, we’ve got an overheated horse to saddle before eight o’clock and you need to get cleaned up, doctor that raspberry on your forehead.” Mac steered Emma toward the opening in the railing and around the hot-walker, where he flipped off the power switch at the post and snagged the lead rope.

  “Learn anything back there?” she asked, dabbing at the dirt on her face with the back of her coat sleeve.

  He followed her line of sight to the two men making their way back to the stud barn.

  “Yeah. Rahul can’t drive for beans.”

  She smiled and shook her head. “So you think his joyride down by the southeast gate was legit?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Tension knotted the muscles between his shoulder blades as he moved in to take Navigator off the hot-walker, still trying to figure out how he could question Rahul about his mechanical abilities without arousing suspicion.

  AT 8:35 A.M. EXACTLY, Mac pressed the counter on the stopwatch and watched Navigator blitz down the front stretch into the first turn.

  Emma put her hand on his arm where it rested on the top of the railing.

  A streak of excitement fired through his body, bringing his stare down to the seconds as they clicked off on the timer in his left hand. “He’s fast this morning, Emma.”

  “He’s fast every morning, Mac.” She turned and shot him a glance before putting her attention back on the colt thundering down the backstretch.

  Mac closed his eyes and turned his head a little to the right, listening to the sound of hooves pounding dirt and the rhythm of the horse’s short bursts of breath as he labored around the backside of the clubhouse turn.

  He opened his eyes; his heart rate ticked up.

  Navigator accelerated into the homestretch and flashed past them on the inside rail. Mac pressed the stop button and held out the clock: 1:54. His breath caught up in his throat. “I’ll be damned, he just shaved two seconds off his own record.”

  Emma smiled over at him. He’d just turned into a giddy kid, judging by the wide grin on his face, and the way he continued to stare at the time, look away and stare again.

  “The week before you got here, he ran it in 1:53.” She watched him sober on the news, trying to decipher his hot-and-cold reaction, but Mac Titus was a complicated man.

  “I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you I was skeptical about your claims, but not anymore. The colt’s got heart.”

  She glanced away, watching Grady slow the horse into the turn for his run out. She knew someone else who had heart, even if he didn’t know it himself.

  “I’ll go mix up his mash if you’ll unsaddle him and get him on the hot-walker.”

  “Okay.” Mac watched Emma turn for the barn with a slight smile on her lips and stared after her until she stepped inside the stable door. He turned back around, picking up the horse and rider’s progress in the backstretch. Still clutching the stopwatch in his hand, he looked at it again.

  For the first time in his life he truly understood his father’s sickness, and unfortunately, he also knew it was contagious.

  EMMA RAN THE COMB through Mac’s hair one last time and snipped a couple of hairs she’d missed along his nape. “Looks good.”

  She stepped back as he stood up and pulled off the towel from around his shoulders. Her pulse quickened as she stared at his bare chest while he put the towel down on the chair in the tack room and snagged his shirt from off the counter.

  Diverting her gaze, she focused for an instant on the scissors in her hand before looking back up at him as he did the last button on his shirt.
She swore she was wearing desire, because she could feel it in the heat on her cheeks.

  Mac gave her a sly grin that did little to alleviate the problem.

  “You promised. Cut it straight off in the back, even with the shortest section.” She handed him the comb and shears and turned around.

  His first touch was gentle, almost hesitant, as he put his hand on her head and eased the comb through her hair.

  Emma closed her eyes, feeling him became more proficient with each stroke, working the strands until they were free of tangles. She heard him let out a long, tense breath behind her, and she tried to hold perfectly still for him to begin the cut. “It’s okay, Mac. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Just good enough to get me by until I can make it in to a salon.”

  Mac stared at her mass of hair as light from overhead lit up the strands of copper streaking through it. What had once brushed the waistband of her jeans now hit just below her shoulder blades.

  He swallowed and tried to erase the sexy image in his mind of shoving his hands into it and pulled her mouth to his.

  “This isn’t like clipping a mane, or combing a horse’s tail.”

  “Just do it. It’ll be fine.”

  He focused on a single span of hair that was longer than the rest. “The sides are already even.” Raising the scissors, he snipped through the hair, smoothed it with his hand and stepped back. “Done.”

  She turned around and grinned at him. “Thanks. I’ll wait around for Doc Remington and feed Navigator another bucket of mash. Why don’t you go check out your haircut in a mirror?”

  “I’ll do that.” Mac picked up his hat off the counter, thought better of it and hung it back up on the hook where he’d found it. He left the tack room feeling like a changed man and headed for the bunkhouse, determined to take his reformation a step further.

  “HE LOOKS GOOD, EMMA. Continue to feed him the mash and keep him moving. I’ll run an analysis on this sample and give you a call on Monday.”

  “Great, Doc.” Emma glanced up and spotted Mac in the doorway of the barn. At least it looked like Mac, but not the one who had left the tack room less than half an hour ago. This Mac was clean shaven, sexy as crazy and headed straight for her.

  “Doc. How’s the patient?”

  The vet turned and stared at him, his brows drawing together. “Mac. I didn’t recognize you for a minute without all that hair and scruff on your chin.”

  Mac grinned, showing a row of even white teeth.

  Emma felt heart palpitations clear down to her toes. “He cleans up really good.” She met his dark blue gaze. Her throat tightened. She pulled in a breath and shrugged off the pull of electricity she felt arcing between them.

  “How’s his track performance?” Doc asked while he dug into his kit.

  “Broke his own record this morning,” Mac said stepping closer to watch the vet load the hypodermic with thyroid hormone.

  “You don’t mind if I share the mash recipe with a couple of other farms, do you?”

  “Do they have Derby prospects?”

  “Yes. A colt over at Sundance Farm and one at Calumet were both fed enough Butazolidin in their sweet feed to reach the same toxic levels as Navigator.”

  “Go ahead and pass it along. There isn’t a prospect that can even come close to his speed times, bute or no bute.” Mac glanced at Emma and watched her smile.

  “Old Calliway would be proud.” Doc administered the medication to the horse, capped the syringe and put it back into his kit.

  Every muscle in Mac’s body tensed, but he worked through the turmoil the vet’s offhand comparison had evoked. He’d never been one to deny credit where credit was due.

  “He’ll need one more dose of thyroid hormone once his system is clean, but we’ll cross that bridge after I see some results on the blood test.”

  “Thanks, Doc.” Emma walked the colt around then put him back into his stall. She closed the gate and glanced up at the thermometer on the wall before she followed Mac and Doc Remington outside into the warmth of the afternoon. She only hoped it remained this warm until the Holiday Classic at Keeneland.

  Together she and Mac watched the veterinarian climb into his pickup and pull up the driveway. “That was good of you to pass the mash remedy along.”

  “Save your adoration. We don’t know if it’s working yet.” He cast her a sideways glance with a devil-may-care smile attached; it was all she could do to resist the need to run her hand along his clean-shaven jawline.

  The drone of a vehicle dragged her attention away from Mac and she saw Sheriff Wilkes’s car pull into the farm. Gravel crunched under his tires as he braked to a stop, shut off the engine and climbed out.

  “Afternoon, Emma. Mac.” He tipped his hat. “Dispatch forwarded your call about the accident this morning. Where’s the tractor? I’d like to take a look at it.”

  “Still down over the embankment on the clubhouse turn of the track. The crash came close to killing Emma.” The words churned up caution in Mac’s bloodstream and he realized just how vulnerable she was, how vulnerable they all were until they caught whoever was responsible. “I’ll take you out there,” he offered.

  “I’m going to stay with the horse, rub him down and wrap his legs.” Emma took off for the barn. She had no desire to look over the scene right now. In fact, she wasn’t sure she’d ever trust that damn tractor again.

  “I THINK YOU’RE RIGHT. It looks like the kill-switch wires have been intentionally cut. I’ll send one of my CSI people out here to get some pictures and I’ll file a report, but without an eyewitness to the tampering, I’m not sure my department has any recourse.”

  “Have things quieted down on the surrounding farms?”

  “No. The robocall we put out on the tainted feed produced a handful of owners with the same problem you have. I’ve got my deputies asking questions, but nothing unusual has cropped up.” The sheriff put his hat back on. “Keep me posted if the incidents continue.”

  Mac fell in next to him as they made their way toward the track’s exit. “What about security? Did any of the farms hire security?”

  “As a matter of fact, a couple of them did, and they haven’t reported any more problems.”

  “Good. That should narrow the field to a couple hundred, but at least we know these thugs have their ears to the ground, and know which farms have hired help. Maybe I should start carrying my weapon in plain sight. Maybe they’ll get the message and leave Firehill alone.”

  “It couldn’t hurt, Mac.”

  They reached the opening, exited the track and walked to the sheriff’s car. “By the way, the reward for capturing whoever’s behind these attacks went up to fifty thousand dollars this morning.”

  Mac let a low whistle hiss from between his lips as he watched Wilkes open his car door.

  “That’s a chunk of change.”

  “The horsemen are worried. Some of them are scared. They’ve got a lot riding on their animals. They want this maniac caught, and they’re willing to pay for it.”

  Mac nodded to Wilkes and watched him get into his patrol car, fire the engine and drive away.

  Thankfully nobody had been killed, although Emma had come closer this morning than he wanted to remember.

  He turned for the barn and glanced up in time to see Rahul duck into the Dago stable.

  A coincidence, or had he been watching and listening the entire time?

  MAC JOLTED AWAKE IN the loft, sat up, pushed back the sleeping bag and turned his head to the right, trying to pinpoint the noise he heard coming from somewhere outside the barn.

  Below him in his stall, Navigator paced, his nervous movements putting a measure of warning deep down in Mac’s gut.

  He pulled on his boots, walked to the ladder and climbed down from the loft, pausing at the base of the rungs to listen again.

  Closing his eyes, he tilted his head to the right, picking up a raking noise at the far left corner of the barn.

  Animals? Maybe a raccoon looking
for a bite, or a skunk who’d wormed his way in under a paddock door.

  Navigator put his head over the gate and gave Mac a rumbling nicker as he stepped close and put his hand on the colt’s forehead. Horses were extremely sensitive to danger, more so than humans.

  “What is it, big guy? What’s got you pacing tonight?”

  Again, the sound drew his attention to the far end of the barn.

  The hair at his nape bristled.

  Mac walked over to the tack room door, reached inside and flipped the switch on the motion-activated lights to the off position. The element of surprise would be his tonight.

  Moving to the open front entrance, he stepped out into the night. His breath crystallized on the cold air as he moved to the corner of the barn and paused against its rough exterior.

  He leaned around the corner for a look and spotted movement through the rows of panel-gated paddocks next to the barn.

  The quickest route of attack was back through the stable and out the rear exit.

  Backtracking, he slipped inside, pulled his cell phone out of his coat pocket and dialed 911. He whispered the information to the 911 operator and closed the phone.

  Hugging the shadows along the stall-lined corridor, he reached the back entrance and silently pulled the pin on the latch.

  Easing the door open a crack, he prepared to slide it wide and take down the thug before he could run away this time.

  Sucking in a breath, Mac froze, his brain registering the scent that hung on the air outside the barn door.

  He tested the smell again to confirm the worst-case scenario playing in his mind. Smoke?

  He smelled smoke.

  Chapter Nine

  Mac’s heart hammered a determined rhythm against his ribs. Fire explained Navigator’s restless behavior.

  He put his eye to the sliver he’d opened in the door and saw movement in the midst of a fiery glow emanating from the outside corner of the barn.

  Locking his hand on the pull handle, he forced the door open and lunged for the man holding a lit portable propane torch, and wearing a bandanna over his face.