Dark Horse

by Tami Hoag

  And if anyone asked him what the hell he was doing, he would say it was all Estes’ fault, he thought irritably.

  He sipped his coffee and glanced over his shoulder. The night guys were still into their paperwork. Landry tapped a couple of keys and brought up a newspaper account of the Golam brothers’ bust, two years prior. He had read it earlier in the day, knew what was in it, knew exactly the paragraph his eyes would go to: the paragraph that described narcotics detective Elena Estes hanging on the door of Billy Golam’s truck, then falling beneath it. She had been dragged fifty yards down Okeechobee Boulevard

  , and was hospitalized in critical condition at the time the story had been written.

  He wondered what she must have gone through since that day, how many weeks, months she’d lain in a hospital bed. He wondered what had possessed her to jump on that truck and try to wrestle control of it from Billy Golam.

  Narcs. Cowboys, every last one of them.

  Two years had passed. He wondered what she’d been doing all that time, and why she’d come out of the shadows for this case. He wondered why her life was crossing paths with his.

  He sure as hell didn’t want the trouble that came with her. But there it was. He’d taken the bait. He was on the case now.

  It was all Estes’ fault.

  J ill ran out the front door of The Players, huffing and hiccuping, fat tears spilling down her cheeks with a dirty stream of black mascara. She swiped the back of her hand under her running nose, then scraped a stringy strand of hair back out of her eyes.

  The valets stood off to the side, staring at her, saying nothing. They didn’t ask if they could get her car, because they knew by looking at her, she wouldn’t have a car worth letting them park. They parked cars for beautiful people, rich people, thin people.

  “What are you looking at?” Jill snapped. They looked at each other, smirking. “Fuck you!” she shouted and ran, crying, across the parking lot, falling off one platform sandal and turning her ankle. Stumbling, she dropped the beaded handbag she’d stolen at Neiman Marcus, and the contents spewed out of it across the pavement.

  “Goddammit!” Crawling on her hands and knees, she broke a fingernail as she scraped at a tube of lipstick and a pack of condoms. “Fuck! Fuck!”

  Spittle and tears and snot ran from her face onto the concrete. Jill folded herself over into a ball and sobbed, a wrenching, ugly noise. She was ugly. Her clothes were ugly. Even her crying was ugly. Pain swelled inside her like a blister and burst with another wave of tears.

  Why? She had asked the question a million times in her life. Why did she have to be the fat one, the ugly one; the one nobody liked, much less loved? It wasn’t fair. Why was she supposed to have to work hard to change herself when bitches like Erin and Paris just had it all?

  She wiped her face on the sleeve of the white lace blouse, gathered her stuff together, and struggled to her feet. An elegant older couple walking away from a Jaguar stared at her with something like horror. Jill gave them the finger. The woman gasped and the man put his arm around her protectively and hustled her toward the building.

  Jill opened her car and flung her purse and the things that had come out of it in the direction of the passenger’s seat. She flung herself behind the wheel, slammed the door, and burst into tears again. She pounded her fists on the wheel, then against the window, then hit the horn by accident and startled at the blast of sound.

  Her big plan. Her big seduction. What a fucking joke she was.

  She’d gone into Players, knowing Jade would be there, thinking he would invite her for a drink, and she could flirt with him and let him know how she’d helped him out with that cop. He was supposed to have been thankful and impressed with her quick thinking, and grateful for her loyalty. And they were supposed to have ended up at his place, where he would fuck her brains out. Phase one in her plan to get rid of Paris.

  But everything had gone wrong, because she could never get a break. The whole stupid world was against her. Jade hadn’t arrived yet when she got there, and the maître d’ had wanted to throw her out. She could tell by the way he looked her up and down, like he thought she was some cheap hooker or something. He hadn’t believed her when she told him she was meeting someone. And the waitress and the bartender had put their heads together and snickered at her as she sat at a table, waiting like an idiot drinking Diet Coke because they wouldn’t go for her fake ID and serve her booze. Then that creep Van Zandt had showed up, half-drunk, and invited himself to sit with her.

  What a jerk. All the mean, rotten things she’d heard him say about her, and he thought he could just suddenly pretend to be nice to her and charm his way into her pants. He’d never taken his eyes off her cleavage for the first fifteen minutes. And when she told him she was waiting for someone else, he had the nerve to be offended. Like she’d ever want to have sex with an old guy like him. So what he’d slipped her a couple of drinks? That didn’t mean she owed him a blowjob, which was what he had wanted. If she was going to suck dick tonight, it wasn’t going to be his.

  And then Jade had finally walked in. And he’d looked at her with such disgust, she had wanted to shatter like a piece of glass. His angry words rang in her ears as if he’d screamed them at her, when in reality he’d asked her out into a quiet hall and had never raised his voice above a near whisper.

  “What were you thinking, coming in here dressed like that?” he demanded. “You’re my employee. The things you do in public reflect on me.”

  “But I was just—”

  “I don’t want the words street whore associated with my barn.”

  Jill had gasped as if he’d slapped her. That was when Michael Berne had come into the hall. She had seen him from the corner of her eye, pretending to make a phone call, watching them.

  “I see clients here,” Jade went on. “I conduct business here.”

  “I j-just w-wanted to see you,” she’d said, her breath hitching in her throat as tears welled up. “I w-wanted to tell you about—”

  “What’s the matter with you? Thinking you can come here and interrupt my evening?”

  “B-but I have t-to tell you— I know about Stellar—”

  “If you need to speak with me about something, we’ll do it at the barn during business hours.”

  “B-but—”

  “Is everything all right here?” Michael Berne asked, butting in like it was any of his business, the skinny freckled dork.

  “This doesn’t concern you, Michael,” Jade said.

  “The young lady seems upset.” But when he looked at her, Jill had known he didn’t care whether or not she was upset. He had looked at her the same way every other man had looked at her tonight—like she was selling it and she ought to be cutting her prices.

  She had glared up at him through a wavy sheen of tears and said, “Butt out! We don’t need you around here or anywhere else!”

  Berne had moved away. “You ought to take your personal business somewhere private, Jade,” he said like a prissy fruit. “This is really unprofessional.”

  Jade had waited until Berne was out of sight, then turned on her again, angrier than before. “Get out of here. Get out of here before you embarrass me any more than you already have. We’ll talk about this tomorrow, first thing in the morning. If I can stand the sight of you.”

  He might as well have cut her with a knife. The pain had gone as deep inside her as if he had.

  Fuck him, Jill thought now. Don Jade was her boss, not her father. He couldn’t tell her how to dress or where she could and couldn’t go. He couldn’t call her a whore and get away with it.

  All the hard work she did for Don Jade, and this was the way he treated her. She would have been his partner—in bed and out. She would have been loyal to him. She would have done anything for him. But he didn’t deserve her or her loyalty and devotion. He deserved to have people betray him and stab him in the back. He deserved whatever happened to him.

  An idea slowly began to take shape in Jill
’s mind as she sat there in her car. She didn’t have to put up with being treated like dirt. She didn’t have to stand for being called names. She could get a job with any stable she wanted. Fuck Don Jade.

  She drove out of the parking lot and took a left on South Shore, heading for the equestrian center, paying no attention to the car that pulled out behind her.

  Chapter 15

  Molly could hear Bruce and her mother arguing. She couldn’t make out all the words, but the tone was unmistakable. She lay on the floor of her bedroom, near the air-conditioning duct. Her room was right above Bruce’s office, where he often summoned her mother or Chad or Erin to shout at them for their latest sin against him. Molly had learned long ago to make herself inconspicuous to the men her mother dated. She made no exception for Bruce, even if he was technically now her father. She didn’t think of him that way. She thought of him as someone whose house she happened to live in.

  The argument was about Erin. Her sister’s name had stood out in the rise and fall of the conversation. Something was definitely up. Her mother had already been upset when Molly had gotten home from school, pacing, nervous, darting out the back door to smoke one cigarette after another. Dinner had been delivered from Domino’s. Krystal hadn’t eaten any of it. Chad had bolted down enough to choke a wolf, then beat it out of the house before Bruce got home.

  And when Bruce walked in the door, Krystal had immediately asked to speak to him in his office.

  Molly’s stomach was churning with worry. She had made out Erin’s name and had heard the word “police.” Her mother’s tone had gone from urgent to angry to hysterical to tears. Bruce just sounded angry. And intermingled with the voices was a mechanical sound, like the VCR going on, going off, rewinding. Molly couldn’t imagine what it meant. Maybe Krystal had found a porno tape in Chad’s room. But then, why had she heard Erin’s name, not Chad’s?

  Heart pounding, Molly left her room and crept down the back staircase. The house was dark except for the light coming from the office. She made her way down the hall on her tiptoes, holding her breath. If the office door opened, she was caught. The family room was adjacent to the office. If she could just slip in there . . . She ducked into the corner behind the ficus tree and crouched down against the wall.

  “We are not calling the police, Krystal,” Bruce said. “First of all, I don’t believe it’s real. It’s some kind of hoax—”

  “But what if it isn’t?”

  “They said don’t call the police.”

  “My God, I can’t believe this is happening,” Krystal said, her voice trembling.

  “I don’t know why not,” Bruce said. “She’s your daughter. You know she’s never been anything but trouble.”

  “How can you talk that way?”

  “Easily. It’s true.”

  “You can be so fucking cruel. I don’t believe it. Ouch! You’re hurting me! Bruce!”

  Tears welled up in Molly’s eyes. She hugged her knees to her chest and tried not to shake.

  “I’ve asked you not to use foul language, Krystal. You can’t be a lady with the mouth of a sailor.”

  Krystal rushed to apologize. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m upset. I didn’t mean it.”

  “You’re irrational. You have to get control of yourself, Krystal. Think this through logically. The tape says no police.”

  “What will we do?”

  “I’ll handle it.”

  “But I think—”

  “Has anyone asked you to think?”

  “No.”

  “Who makes the decisions in this house, Krystal?”

  Krystal drew a shaky breath. “The person who is best equipped to make them.”

  “And who is that person?”

  “You.”

  “Thank you. Now leave it to me. Go take a pill and go to bed. There’s nothing we can do tonight.”

  “Yes,” Krystal said softly. “I think I will do that.”

  Molly knew from past experience her mother would take more than one pill, and she would wash it down with vodka. She would retreat into her own little world and pretend everything in her life was lovely and fine. Molly, meanwhile, felt sick to her stomach. Everything she’d heard frightened her. What had Erin done now? Something terrible, if Krystal wanted to call the police.

  “I’m going for a drive to clear my head,” Bruce said. “I had a terrible day. Now this.”

  Molly held very still, praying neither of them would come into the family room for any reason. She heard her mother’s heels on the tile in the hall. Krystal always went up the main staircase because it was beautiful and she had always dreamed of living in a beautiful house. Bruce walked past the family room on his way to the kitchen. Molly stayed still until she heard him go out the door to the garage. She waited to hear his car start and for the garage door to close, and then she waited a little longer. When she was sure he had gone, she crept out of her hiding place and went into his office.

  No one was allowed in Bruce’s office when Bruce wasn’t there. He expected everyone to respect his privacy even though he regularly invaded everyone else’s. This was his house, and he never let any of them forget it.

  Molly turned on the desk lamp and looked around at the bookshelves and the walls covered with photographs of Bruce shaking hands with important people, with Bruce’s awards for this and that having to do with his job and with his service to the community. Everything in the room was placed exactly as Bruce wanted it, and he would know if one little thing got moved a fraction of an inch.

  Molly checked over her shoulder as she picked up the remote for the television and VCR. She hit the play button and waited, so nervous she was shaking all over.

  The movie started without any credits or titles or anything. A girl standing by a gate on a back road. Erin. Molly watched in horror as a van pulled up and a man in a mask jumped out and grabbed her and threw her into the van.

  A strange mechanical voice came out of the speakers: “We have your daughter. Don’t call the police—”

  Tears flooding her glasses, Molly hit the stop button, hit eject, scrambled onto a chair, and reached up to snag the video out of the machine. She wanted to cry out loud. She wanted to throw up. She did neither.

  Clutching the tape, she ran through the house to the laundry room and grabbed her jacket off the hook. She wrapped the tape in the jacket and tied the jacket around her waist. She was shaking so badly, she didn’t know if she would have the strength to do what she had to. All she knew was that she had to try.

  She opened the garage door, climbed on her bike, and took off, pedaling as hard as she could down the street and into the night.

  Chapter 16

  Despite the fact that every law enforcement agent in Palm Beach County hated me, I did still have contacts in the profession. I called an FBI agent I knew from the field office in West Palm. Armedgian and another agent had coordinated with PBSO narcotics on a case that involved heroine dealers in West Palm Beach and a connection in France. Armedgian had handled all the work between our respective offices, the FBI liaison in Paris, French authorities, and Interpol. The case had lasted six months, and in that time, Armedgian had become not only a contact, but a friend—the kind of friend I could call and ask for information.

  I called him at the end of the day and reintroduced myself. It’s Estes. Remember me? We’ll always have Paris . . . Of course, he said, though there was a pause first, and a tension in his voice.

  I asked him to get me what he could on Tomas Van Zandt and World Horse Sales from Interpol. Again the pause. Was I back on the job? He thought I’d left the profession, after . . . well, after . . .

  I explained to him I was helping out a friend who had gotten mixed up with this character in a business deal, and I’d heard the guy was a crook. I wasn’t asking for anything but to find out if he had a record. That didn’t seem too much, did it?

  Armedgian made the customary noises of complaint and fear of discovery and censure. Federal agents were the kid
s in school who really did worry that going to the lavatory without a hall pass would put a black mark in their permanent records that would ruin their lives. But in the end he agreed to do the deed.

  Tomas Van Zandt hadn’t become what he was overnight. It wasn’t unreasonable to assume if he had terrorized one girl, he had terrorized others. Maybe one of them had dared to go to the authorities. Then again, part of his control over Sasha Kulak had been the fact that she was a stranger in a strange land, and probably there illegally.

  It made me furious to think about it. He was a predator preying on vulnerable women, whether they were his employees or his clients. And the truly infuriating thing about that was the fact that vulnerable women often either refuse to see the danger in a man like Van Zandt, or convince themselves they have no recourse but to suffer through. And a sociopath like Van Zandt could smell that a mile away.