Hunter's Moon

by Karen Robards

  Will knelt beside her, with Murphy on his other side. Molly watched out of the corner of her eye as he took the wafer in his mouth. Kneeling beside Will in church felt so—so right, somehow, that it was unsettling. He was a good man, she thought, a decent man, kind and strong. The kind of man who took care of his own.

  What she had to remember was that she was not his.

  When they returned to their pew, she was careful to keep enough distance between them so that their bodies no longer touched.

  The congregation prayed, the choir sang, and then the service was over.

  Will drove her back to the 7-Eleven to change and pick up her car. Molly barely spoke. What she didn’t notice was that Will barely spoke either.

  “I can’t get it out of my head that Lawrence’s death was too convenient,” Will said to Murphy after they had dropped Molly off.

  “The coroner’s report said suicide.” In the passenger seat now, Murphy chewed on a thumbnail.

  “I know what the coroner’s report said.”

  “The body’s been cremated. The coroner’s report is all we have to go by.”

  Will said nothing, just stared out through the windshield thoughtfully. The day was gray and overcast, with the threat of rain in low-hanging clouds.

  “Molly hasn’t found a mismatch yet. Lawrence said their practice is to put ringers in claiming races a couple of times a week. If we’re not finding any, then it’s possible that somebody’s tipped them off. Maybe somebody knows we’re here, and they’ve decided to cease and desist until we give up.”

  “Do you really think they’re on to us?” Murphy was frowning.

  Will shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s possible. Maybe they found out Lawrence was talking to us, and they killed him to shut him up. The next logical step would be to keep the races clean while we’re sniffing around. It’s possible that we’re not finding any ringers because there are no ringers to be found.”

  “It’s also possible that Lawrence committed suicide, and we just haven’t gotten lucky yet,” Murphy pointed out reasonably.

  “Yeah, that’s possible too.”

  Both of them were quiet for a minute, thinking. Murphy glanced at Will.

  “You ever considered that Molly might be playing a double game?”

  “What?” Will threw him a startled glance.

  “Maybe she’s tipped them off to what we’re doing. After all, not many people know we’re here. Just the guys in Chicago, you, me, and her.”

  “Molly didn’t tip them off,” Will said, cold and sure.

  “Look, I know it’s hard to see past the fact that she’s a beautiful girl, and I know there’s some kind of personal thing going on between you two, but you shouldn’t dismiss the possibility out of hand.”

  “I don’t have any kind of ‘personal thing’ going on with Molly.” Will’s voice was sharp.

  Murphy shrugged. “None of my business if you do. Not that I blame you. Believe me, if I were single and in your shoes, I’d be balling her brains out.”

  “Listen, Murphy,” Will said through his teeth. “I am not sleeping with Molly. She’s not much more than a kid—twenty-four years old. She’s our informant. I feel sorry for her, okay? She’s had a tough row to hoe in life. But I am not, I repeat, not, balling her brains out.”

  “Strictly your business,” Murphy said with a shrug.

  Left with nothing to say for fear of protesting too much, Will contemplated wrapping his hands around Murphy’s neck and squeezing until the idiot’s face turned purple. His brain unwillingly grappled with the scenario Murphy suggested: Could Molly be double-crossing him?

  “Wait. Lawrence kicked off the first time I talked to Molly, while I was with her,” Will said triumphantly, remembering. “That lets her out. She didn’t have time to tip off anybody.”

  “That’s right,” Murphy said, chewing on his thumbnail again. “So what do you think we should do next?”

  Molly wasn’t sure, but she thought it was around midnight, or maybe a little later. She lay awake in her bed, flopped on her back in frustration, arms flung above her head. Rain blew against her window. With a low cloud cover obscuring the moon and stars, the night outside was very dark. It was dark in her room too.

  For one of the few times in her life, sleep eluded her. It was maddening, because she was dead tired, but her body just couldn’t seem to relax.

  At least tomorrow was Monday, and she didn’t have to work. She could sleep late, if she liked.

  Tomorrow was the day Mike talked to the deputies.

  That was probably why she couldn’t sleep. She was worried about Mike.

  Her body was restless. Flopping over on her stomach, Molly punched the pillow into submission and closed her eyes, hoping by sheer force of mind over matter to make herself sleep.

  Will’s face materialized on the screen of her closed lids. Molly imagined him stretching out in bed beside her, his hands running over her body …

  Her eyes popped open again, and she gritted her teeth. She refused, absolutely refused, to have sexual fantasies about Will.

  He hadn’t come by tonight, though she’d seen him briefly at Keeneland just after the second race. With a shake of her head she had told him what he had seemed to already know—none of the horses she’d checked had a problem with its tattoo—and he had vanished into the crowd. She hadn’t seen him since.

  Maybe he was mad at her about the skirt.

  Or the hickey.

  This is ridiculous, Molly thought, and sat up. Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she switched on the bedside lamp. Dressed in one of the oversized T-shirts she favored for sleeping, her hair a tangled mess around her face, she headed for the bathroom. The floor was cold beneath her bare feet. The ancient furnace groaned fitfully as it struggled to put out heat.

  She was just coming out of the bathroom when she heard it: the shrill, whinnying scream of a horse in mortal fear, or pain.

  22

  October 16, 1995

  Outside in the cold, drizzly night, a hand holding a knife rose and fell, the action frenzied, frantic with hatred and need. The razor-sharp blade sliced through hair and hide and sinew, unleashing rivers of blood so warm, they gave off little puffs of steam in the air. The mare stirred, moaning. The hand sheathed the knife and snatched up a broom handle. Plunging it, deep and hard, into the animal brought ecstasy, and release.

  Down the hill, lights came on in the house.

  The mare screamed once, twice, fighting to get to her feet. The owner of the hand watched the animal’s struggles with exquisite pleasure. The creature was his, all his. It was under his control. He could cause it pain, or have pity. He could let it live—or die. To the mare, in that moment, he was God.

  Someone stepped out onto the porch of the house, looking up toward the field, straining to see through the darkness.

  The hand shook, and was still.

  Still the mare screamed.

  The figure on the porch came down the steps, running toward the field. For a moment the knife wielder watched almost hungrily. Was it time …?

  No, not yet, he decided. Turning away, he melted into the cold darkness of the night.

  23

  Will thought he had never driven so fast in his life. As his car skidded to a stop behind a convoy of police vehicles in Molly’s driveway, he could see lights and activity on the hill behind the house. Flinging himself out of the car, not even feeling the icy drizzle that stung his face, he bounded up the slope, stopping only when he reached the black board fence. Pork Chop was there, ears pricked forward as he stared through the space between the boards. The dog greeted Will with a brief wag of his tail. Will followed his gaze. Flashlights and the headlights of a black Jeep Cherokee illuminated the scene in the field.

  A horse lay on the ground, its legs thrashing feebly, its head in Molly’s lap. She bent over the animal, cradling it, stroking its mane, protecting it as well as she could from the weather. Even from where Will stood he graspe
d the tragedy in her posture, the sense of horror in the air.

  “What the hell?” he breathed, and vaulted the fence the way he might have done when he’d run track and field at age nineteen.

  A bevy of people stood in a semicircle around the horse—Tyler and Thornton Wyland and Helen Trapp, and a half-dozen or so cops, two of them state boys. J.D. Hatfield was hunkered down beside Molly, directing the beam of a powerful flashlight along the Thoroughbred’s massive body. The Ballards, coats thrown over their nightclothes, huddled behind Molly. Ashley held a battered umbrella over her sister’s bent head, while Mike, of course, cradled the shotgun and the twins clung together. A thin old man in a pricey overcoat crouched by the horse’s side, getting ready to plunge a filled syringe into the sleek, dark neck. Will noticed that the animal’s hindquarters rested in an oily-looking puddle. Then as he almost stepped in it he realized the puddle was blood.

  “Will.” Ashley spotted him first. There was utter relief in the way she said his name. Ashley had called him, reaching him on his cellular phone as he’d been conducting a clandestine search of Howard Lawrence’s office. Though she had been too upset to make much sense, what Will had gleaned from the conversation had brought him running: There’d been an accident, and Molly was in desperate need of him.

  He wouldn’t be surprised to learn he’d broken land speed records getting over here. It was a relief to discover that the casualty was not Molly, or one of the kids, but a horse.

  Disregarding the sudden battery of eyes on him, Will crouched beside Molly. She was kneeling in the wet grass with her legs tucked beneath her, seemingly oblivious to everything but the trembling creature she was comforting. Even Will, who had absolutely no knowledge of horses, could recognize the flashing panic in the animal’s rolling eyes. Red-flecked white foam covered its muzzle. There was a pungent smell in the air; he realized that it was a combination of blood and the terrified horse’s sweat.

  “Molly.”

  Her skin was freezing to the touch, and wet. Will saw that she was wearing some kind of loose short-sleeved T-shirt and that was all. Her legs from the knees down and even her feet were bare. The T-shirt was wet, too, Will discovered as he touched it. So was her hair.

  Ashley must have been late with the umbrella.

  “Molly.”

  She didn’t move, didn’t respond in any way. Will cursed under his breath, and stood up to shed the trench coat he was wearing over his suit. He wrapped the coat around Molly’s shoulders, and once again said her name, with no result.

  J.D., the closest person to him, glared at him over Molly’s bent head. Molly didn’t even look up.

  “That’ll take care of the pain,” the vet said as he withdrew the syringe and got laboriously to his feet. “Where in the heck is that ambulance?”

  “May God damn that pervert to hell!” Helen Trapp’s voice shook. She was in her mid-forties, perhaps, with short, frosted hair and a weatherbeaten face. Dressed in Wellingtons and a hooded raincoat buttoned up over what appeared to be a nightgown, she huddled between her brother and nephew. Both Tyler and Thornton Wyland were fully if haphazardly dressed. J.D., who was clearly put out by Will’s presence, was wearing the Stetson, boots, and duster coat he’d had on when Will had first made his acquaintance. Whether his jeans and shirt were the same, Will had no way of knowing.

  The horse’s legs moved convulsively. Molly talked to it, patted it. Listening to her broken murmurs wrung Will’s heart.

  “Can’t somebody else do this?” he said to the Wylands, to Helen Trapp, to the vet, to the cops. “She doesn’t need to do this. She’s upset.”

  The only assent—a wordless grunt—came from J.D.

  “The mare knows her,” the vet replied. “We need to keep her calm until the sedative takes effect. It won’t be long now.”

  The vet, like Helen Trapp and the Wylands, was clearly more concerned about the horse than about Molly. Will gritted his teeth and looked across Molly at J.D. Unlikely or not, he and the cowboy wanna-be seemed to be allies.

  “She’ll be all right,” J.D. said. Will knew he was referring to Molly, not the horse.

  “What happened?” Will’s voice was grim. His every instinct shouted for him to stand up, flash his ID, and take charge, but the exigencies of the investigation he was already conducting stopped him. Secrecy was all-important to his success. Without it, he might as well head on back to Chicago.

  “It’s the horse slasher.” J.D. shook his head. “Stabbed the mare’s hindquarters a bunch of times. The maniac shoved a broom handle up her—up her—you know—too.”

  “Horse slasher?” It sounded ridiculous to Will.

  “Could I get your name, sir?” A Kentucky State Police officer stood looking down at him, a pad and pencil in his hand.

  “It’s all right, he’s Molly’s boyfriend,” J.D. said morosely with a glance up at the trooper.

  “Molly?” The trooper nodded at Molly with raised eyebrows as Will stood up.

  “Molly Ballard. I’m Will Lyman,” Will said, and obligingly spelled it as the trooper wrote down names. “What’s this about a horse slasher?”

  “This is the sixth Thoroughbred attack in this area in four months. All mares, all assaulted in the hindquarters.”

  “Here comes the ambulance.” J.D. got up as a white van about the size of a small U-Haul bumped across the field toward them, its headlights cutting twin swathes through the night.

  Ignoring the rain that was wetting his hair and face and starting to seep through his suit coat, Will looked down at the girl huddled at his feet. Molly was still folded over the horse, stroking it, talking to it, but the horse was unmoving.

  “Does it look to you like the sedative has taken effect?” he asked the vet. He strove to keep his voice at least minimally polite.

  The vet glanced down at the horse. “Looks like it.”

  “Then we’re out of here.” Will crouched beside Molly again, wrapped an arm around her shoulders and spoke almost in her ear. “The ambulance is here. There are plenty of people to take care of the horse now. It’s time to go inside.”

  When she didn’t respond, Will began to feel the first faint stirring of alarm. He reached over and smoothed the wet, curling dark hair back away from her face. The curve of her cheek was paper white.

  “Molly,” he said, and touched her cheek. She felt as cold as a corpse. “Molly.”

  She looked at him then, and he saw that she was crying. Her eyes were huge and wild; her mouth shook; her cheeks glistened with tears and rain.

  “Will?” Her voice was high-pitched, tiny. “You’ve got to find out who did this. You can, can’t you? After all, you’re …”

  She was in such emotional distress that she didn’t know what she was saying, Will realized. To stop her before she blurted out anything she shouldn’t, he leaned over and pressed his mouth to hers. It was more on the order of clapping a hand over her mouth than a kiss, but in an instant that changed. Her lips trembled and parted beneath his, and her arms wrapped around his neck as if she never meant to let him go.

  Her mouth was warm and soft, and incredibly sweet. Her tears tasted salty on his tongue.

  His body responded instantly. His mind reeled. His heart raced.

  Shit, Will thought, but it was too late to turn back. With that kiss the Venus’s-flytrap claimed another victim. The proverbial line he had drawn in the sand of their relationship was crossed. Everything changed. He felt protective, possessive, wildly territorial. Simply, the girl was now his for real.

  He scooped her into his arms, trench coat and all, and stood up with her. Freeing his mouth, he kissed her cheek, whispered “hush” in her ear, and pressed her face into his shoulder.

  Looking behind him, Will located the remaining Ballards, all of whom were watching him with their sister, wide-eyed.

  “Back to the house,” he said with a jerk of his head toward it. There was no doubt that it was an order. They didn’t question him, not even Mike, but obediently began to mo
ve. Will walked toward the fence with Molly in his arms. The kids were already swarming over it.

  Molly was crying. Will could feel the hot dampness of her tears as her face burrowed against his neck. Deep sobs racked her body. She drew in air in great broken gasps.

  “Just a minute, sir. I need her statement.” The trooper who had taken their names trailed Will to the fence.

  Will stopped and turned to the man. “You’ll have to get it tomorrow. She’s in no shape to give a statement tonight,” he said grimly. After a single glance at Molly the trooper nodded.

  Will remembered the fence. “Hold her a minute, would you?” he asked the trooper, and passed Molly over without waiting for an answer.

  Even as the trooper took her weight Molly murmured a protest, clung tighter to Will’s neck.

  “Just for a minute. Just till I get over the fence,” he said in her ear.

  She let go. The trooper held her awkwardly, ill at ease with a trembling, sobbing, tear-drenched woman, and looked relieved when Will reached across the fence to reclaim his burden.

  “Thanks,” he said to the trooper as Molly wrapped her arms around his neck, and he started down the hill.

  Inside the house, Ashley had taken charge of her siblings, supervising their change into dry garments and handing out towels for their hair. She looked up in concern as Will walked in with Molly in his arms, kicking the door shut behind him because he didn’t have a free hand to close it. Darting inside just ahead of the closing door, Pork Chop shook himself, sending drops of moisture flying everywhere. The kids all dodged; Mike cursed.

  “Do you have coffee?” Will asked, heading for the living room. When Ashley nodded he said, “Fix some. Strong, with lots of sugar. And bring me some towels and a blanket, would you please, and something dry she can wear.”

  By juggling Molly from one arm to the other, Will managed both to shed his wet suit coat and switch on the lamp by the couch without putting his weeping burden down. Then he sank into the Naugahyde armchair with her on his lap, and turned his attention to stopping her tears. She kept her face pressed to his shoulder so he couldn’t see her face; her arms hugged his neck. He kissed her averted cheek, then her ear, murmured to her, brushed her wet hair away from her face with his fingers. Still she sobbed and shook. Her feet were left bare by the wrapped folds of his coat, he saw, and reached for them, trying to warm her toes with his hand. They were long, delicately made feet, cold as blocks of ice.