Hunter's Moon

by Karen Robards

  Hobbling, she made it a few more yards before stopping once more. Cursing under her breath, she pulled off the intact shoe and did her level best to break its heel. Of course it was impossible; that was how life worked. Slipping the shoe back on, Molly stayed where she was, darting quick glances everywhere to reassure herself she was alone. She could not limp all the way home. The idea of walking barefoot did not appeal either. Anything, from horse piles to snakes, might lurk in the grass.

  The intelligent thing would have been to call home and ask Ashley to come to the Big House to pick her up.

  Hindsight was always twenty-twenty.

  Glancing around again, Molly realized that all might not yet be lost. The farm’s veterinary hospital-equine swimming pool complex was perpendicular to the route she’d been taking. But it was only about a tenth of a mile distant, just off the road. Molly could see its cupola against the star-studded sky. It was empty, at present, since Wyland Farm found it more economical to take its animals to a nearby equine vet practice than to keep its own vet, but it had a phone in it, and as far as Molly knew the phone still worked. Don Simpson used the premises for storage.

  Even if the hospital’s phone didn’t work, she could at least walk home along the road. She would feel much, much safer on the road.

  It was ridiculous to be afraid, she knew, but—where, oh where, was J.D. when she needed him?

  Probably parked outside her house, Molly thought with a snort, staring moonstruck at the windows.

  When she reached the hospital, after about a five-minute hobble, Molly found to her dismay that a padlock secured the double doors. Stymied, she stared at the lock for a minute, contemplated the long walk to her house, and limped around the building, trying the doors and windows. All were locked.

  Her legs were aching, she was growing increasingly nervous, and she was not much closer to home than she had been when she had left the Big House.

  To heck with it, Molly thought. Picking up a rock, she smashed a window. Once the tinkle of glass died away, the night was as quiet as before. She was standing deep in the shadow of the barn. The Plexiglas dome covering the empty swimming pool glowed silver in the moonlight. The effect was downright weird. Molly realized that she was letting herself be spooked.

  Putting her hand inside the hole she had made, she unfastened the lock. Then she opened the window and climbed inside.

  37

  Inside the hospital, it was so dark that Molly could barely see her hand in front of her face. She stood motionless for a moment, getting her bearings. Cool, musty-smelling air caressed her cheek. For a moment Molly stiffened, unnerved by the sensation. Then she realized that a breeze was blowing through the open window, stirring up dead air inside. The building had only one story of usable space; divided into a small office, a lab, two stalls, a large operating room, and a smaller recovery room, it encompassed about fifteen hundred square feet.

  She thought she must be in the office. As her eyes adjusted, Molly saw a line of metal file cabinets pushed against one wall. A desk hugged another wall. A phone was on the desk.

  Molly was reaching for the phone when she heard a muffled thump from somewhere inside the building.

  She froze, listening. Her every instinct warned her that she was not alone.

  The thump came again, followed by a huffing sound. Molly frowned. The sound was familiar—a horse blowing on its feed?

  There shouldn’t be a horse in the hospital. It hadn’t been used for anything but storage since the year she’d been hired.

  Another thump, a rustle, and the huffing sound drew Molly toward the corridor.

  At the door she paused, thinking hard. If a person, friendly or otherwise, was in the building, he or she would already be aware of her presence thanks to the noise she’d made breaking in. Sneaking around in the dark was therefore a waste of time. Moreover, if someone was there, already aware of her and with evil intent, she would far rather face them in a blaze of light than in complete darkness. Sliding her hand over the wall, Molly felt for the switch.

  The light was hardly a blaze. More like a dim glow, from what couldn’t have been more than a forty-watt bulb under a frosted-glass globe on the ceiling. A quick glance around confirmed Molly’s impression of office, file cabinets, and phone.

  She walked out the door. Light from the office illuminated the corridor. The lab was next to the office. Its door was open, too, and a quick glance revealed nothing but more file cabinets. Across the hall, the operating room was empty except for a dusty-looking sling hanging forgotten from a hydraulic lift on the ceiling. The recovery room was piled with discarded tack.

  A series of thumps and a soft whinny led Molly to the second of the two stalls. A chestnut filly stood there, calmly munching oats while she looked at Molly out of soft, liquid dark eyes.

  The filly was a Thoroughbred of racing age, around three, maybe four years old. Thoroughbreds of the same general size and color and age are difficult to tell apart unless one knows them well. Molly couldn’t be sure, but she didn’t think she’d ever seen this particular animal before.

  She didn’t think the filly belonged to Wyland Farms. Even if she did, what was she doing in the hospital?

  A quick glance around confirmed Molly’s impression that no horse piles steamed on the floor. Molly surmised that she had been put in the stall not long before.

  “Whoa, girl.” Molly entered the stall, moving carefully so as not to frighten the filly. She touched her flank, then ran her hand along the animal’s neck while the filly stomped and shook her head.

  Molly had spent so much time lately checking horses’ mouth tattoos that by now doing so was almost second nature to her. She ran a quieting hand down the filly’s muzzle, murmuring to her, and pulled down her lower lip.

  The filly had no tattoo. The lip was bare.

  All Thoroughbreds were given lip tattoos as yearlings for identification purposes. If this filly didn’t have one, something was wrong.

  Molly absorbed the import of that, and left the stall. When she got to the office, the first thing she did was dig in her purse for the scrap of paper on which Will had jotted the number of his cellular phone. The second was to flip off the light.

  Then she called Will.

  38

  Will arrived not more than fifteen minutes later. Molly was waiting for him by the side of the road. She moved out of the shadows, flagging him down. The car pulled in beside her. Will got out.

  He listened to what she had to say, his gaze following her pointing finger to the hospital.

  “Come on,” she said, impatient to show him what she had discovered.

  “I’ll go. Alone. You’re going to wait here in the car.” Will’s voice brooked no disobedience. A glance at his face showed no trace of the charming, tender man with whom she had fallen in love. His eyes were grim, his jaw set hard.

  “But …” Molly began, only to be silenced when Will caught her arm, propelled her around the hood of the car, opened the door, and deposited her in the passenger seat. He reached into the glove compartment and withdrew a pistol.

  Molly’s eyes widened. Her FBI man carried a gun after all.

  Will dropped the keys on her lap.

  “As soon as I leave, you lock the doors. Stay inside the car. If you see something that makes you nervous, drive away. If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, drive away. Don’t go home. Go to the Sheriff’s Department in Versailles. Whatever you do, don’t get out of the car, and don’t let anybody in. Got it?”

  Molly nodded. With the gun in his hand, Will was suddenly a formidable stranger. Molly was reminded that he was a federal agent, and that this was serious business.

  Maybe killing business.

  “Be careful,” she said. He nodded. Then he shut the door.

  Molly watched him moving up the overgrown driveway to the deserted hospital, where he disappeared around the side.

  Exactly twelve and a half minutes later—Molly timed him on the dashboard clock—Will walked b
ack into sight, coming down through the grass and talking on his cellular phone at the same time.

  When he reached the car, he stood outside for a minute, presumably to finish his conversation. Minutes later he got in.

  “Well?” Molly asked as he leaned across her to return the pistol to the glove compartment, then placed the phone on the console between the seats.

  “I think you found it,” he said, unsmiling. “I’ll bet every dime I’ve ever earned that horse is a ringer.”

  “Yes!” Molly beamed in triumph, shooting her clenched fist in the air. To her surprise, Will didn’t seem to share her jubilation. He was quiet, his jaw still grim. Molly was reminded that they were no longer on good terms. Since he had kissed her in the barn and she had walked out and accepted Thornton’s invitation, they had said no more to each other than was strictly necessary. He had given her the names of horses to check, and twice asked her to photograph files with his trusty pen-camera. At night when he came by to take Mike to play basketball, he treated her like Mike’s older sister. No more, no less.

  In her excitement over finding the ringer, she had forgotten all that. His stern demeanor reminded her.

  “Are we waiting for something?” When he made no move to start the car, Molly grew puzzled.

  “Murphy’s on his way,” Will said. “I don’t want this horse to get out of our sight until I see what they’re planning to do with it. When Murphy gets here, I’ll take you home. Then I’ve got to come back.”

  His gaze slid sideways to her face. Something about his expression puzzled Molly. He was not reacting as she would have expected to having his case all but solved for him.

  “While we’re waiting,” he said, “maybe you can tell me exactly how you came to be in that building in the middle of the night.”

  A car came down the road, its headlights cutting bright swathes through the darkness. Their beam must have illuminated the Taurus, because it pulled in behind them.

  “Murphy,” Will said, getting out of the car. “Stay put.”

  He was back minutes later, sliding into the driver’s seat. Murphy’s car drove away as Will started the engine. Molly looked an inquiry.

  “He’s going to find somewhere less obvious to park.”

  Will pulled out, made a U-turn that Molly was surprised didn’t land them in the ditch opposite, and headed in the direction of her house.

  “Now,” he said. “Suppose you tell me everything that happened, right from the beginning. I thought you were supposed to have a date with Thornton Wyland tonight.”

  “I did,” Molly said. “We were at a party at the Big House. I—decided to walk home. The quickest way is across the fields, so that’s the way I came. Only I broke the heel of my shoe—Ashley’s, actually—and it was colder than I thought, and when I saw the hospital I remembered that there was a phone in there. I thought I would call Ashley to come and pick me up.”

  Will made an indecipherable sound. Molly glanced at him.

  “So you broke a window to get in,” Will said. Molly had already told him that part when she had phoned him. She presumed he had climbed through the same window himself.

  Molly nodded. “When I was in the office I heard something, so I turned on the light and went to investigate. It was the horse.”

  Glancing out the window, she was surprised to see that they were passing the farmhouse.

  “Hey, you’re driving by my house,” she said.

  “I’ll take you home in a minute. First I want to finish this conversation without hordes of kids interrupting at every juncture,” Will said, pulling off onto the dirt road near the house. He stopped the car, doused the lights, and turned in his seat to face her.

  The moon was high overhead now, but its light did not penetrate the sheltering stand of trees. Will was nothing more than a large, dark shape beside her in the car. She could not see his features.

  “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You decided to walk home by yourself across deserted fields in the middle of the night. Didn’t you consider a small detail like the fact that one or more lunatics who get their kicks from mutilating horses are on the loose?”

  “I forgot about that until I was already out there,” Molly said with a trace of guilt. “Then I got a little nervous, I admit. That’s another one of the reasons I broke in to use the phone. I didn’t want to walk the rest of the way home.”

  Will said nothing for a moment. Then, “So you broke in to use the phone. You heard a sound in a supposedly deserted building. And you turned on the light and went to investigate?”

  “It was a horse,” Molly said. “I could tell it was a horse.”

  “And could you tell that there were no humans there with the horse? Humans who might have been really bad news for a stupid little girl who stumbled across them?”

  “Don’t call me a stupid little girl,” Molly said, eyes narrowing.

  Will took an audible breath. “I’m sorry,” he said politely. “I meant stupid big girl. Or woman. However you like to think of yourself. The important word is stupid.”

  “I found your ringer for you!”

  “Yes, you did.” The overhead light came on. Will dropped his hand away from the switch, his gaze moving over her. “So what happened to your dress?”

  Molly glanced down at herself. She had forgotten about her broken strap, forgotten that her neckline drooped perilously low on one side. She was decent, but just barely.

  “I broke a strap,” she said.

  “Is that blood?” Will touched a smattering of brown spots that dotted her abdomen. Molly supposed that Thornton’s nose had erupted with more force than she’d thought

  “Probably.”

  “Are you hurt?” His voice was sharp.

  “It’s not mine.”

  “Whose is it, then?”

  “Thornton’s,” Molly admitted unwillingly. A glance at Will’s face goaded her. “All right, you want the whole story? Here it is: Thornton drank too much and he tried to kiss me and he stuck his hand down the front of my dress and broke my strap. I gave him a bloody nose. Then I ran out of the house and started across the fields and got scared and saw the hospital and decided to call Ashley to come and pick me up. Only I found the horse and called you instead. Big mistake.”

  “Big mistake,” Will agreed. His mouth was tight and his eyes were so dark, they didn’t look blue at all. Molly realized that he was angry. “I almost feel sorry for Wyland. When you agreed to go out with him, you must have known what to expect. I doubt the poor bastard expected to get punched in the nose for something you knew was coming as well as he did.”

  “Go to hell,” Molly said, opening her door. “I don’t have to listen to this. You don’t own me, Mr. FBI man.”

  She got out of the car, slamming the door, meaning to walk the short distance home. The interior light went out. Will was out of the car, too, moving fast and meeting her in front of the car’s hood.

  He caught her arm. He was close, looming over her. Despite the shadows, Molly could see his eyes. They were dark, intense—and angry.

  “Let me go!” she said, trying to pull free. Her leg brushed the car bumper through her dress.

  “Do you have some kind of death wish?” Will asked with deceptive calm. His hold on her arm was unbreakable. “You go out with a slimeball who can’t keep his hands off you, and you don’t expect him to try anything. You walk home, at night, alone, across deserted fields with a maniac on the loose and don’t think twice about it until it’s too late. You know we’re investigating a criminal conspiracy, I’ve told you it could be dangerous, yet you break into a deserted building, hear a noise, and decide to check it out. Is that not the most self-destructive behavior you’ve ever heard of?”

  “So what’s it to you?” She was standing so close to him that she had to tilt her head back to see his face. In her stocking feet—she had kicked her damaged shoes off in the car—he was much bigger than she, taller and broader and almost menacing.

  Only she wasn
’t one whit afraid of Will Lyman, menacing or not.

  “What’s it to me? What’s it to me? This,” he said through his teeth, and kissed her.

  At the touch of his mouth, Molly’s anger melted, while his seemed to detonate. Will was always so cool, so calm, so much the man in charge. Ever since she had first met him she’d been itching to make him lose control.

  Now she had what she’d wanted. He was out of control, furiously angry, shaking with it, and she was going to bear the brunt of the explosion she had sought.

  His mouth was hard and fierce, his hands on her arms almost punishing. His tongue was wet and scalding hot as it thrust into her mouth. He wasn’t operating on technique now, but on raw emotion. Molly shivered, closed her eyes, and was lost. She clung to him, kissing him as devouringly as he kissed her, catching fire as his hands slid over her slinky dress, caressing her everywhere, pulling her against him. When a large warm hand closed on each separate cheek of her bottom, she moaned, and pressed closer. She was barely aware that he was lifting her until she found herself sitting on the hood of the car, her feet resting on the bumper.

  She opened her eyes. He pressed her backward, yanking her skirt up with rough hands. Molly lay back against the hard, cold metal and spread her knees for him. He was wearing a dark suit and tie. His shirtfront was white in the darkness. Above it, his face was lost in shadows. His thighs were hard against hers through the smooth wool of his pants. The feel of them opening her legs wide, the sensation of his pants brushing against her own panty hose-clad thighs, was unbearably exciting. His mouth slid away from her lips, down her throat, across her chest. Molly clutched the back of his head, guiding his mouth to her breast. He pulled at the delicate silk of her dress. Molly felt it slither down as the other strap gave.

  His mouth closed over her nipple.

  Molly’s eyes closed. She moaned, and pressed his head closer. His mouth was hot and wet as he suckled her like a babe. Molly arched her back, offering him her breasts with abandon, clutching his head with both hands as he kissed and sucked and nibbled and she squirmed like a wild thing beneath him.