Red Thunder Reckoning

by Sylvie Kurtz

  “It almost looks like he fainted and it caught him off guard,” Ellen said. “He’s been acting weird since dinner.”

  Kevin stepped into the stall and calmed the gelding. Taking great care, he finally got the horse back on his feet. Titan’s balance seemed affected by his ordeal.

  Like Ellen. The horror of the thought made his stomach lurch. The oats Garth had fed Ellen were the same he’d given the horses. Was she in danger of dying from Garth’s experiment?

  Titan swayed for a few steps, then he braced his legs beneath him and started shaking. His breaths came in ragged spurts as if he’d just run a race at top speed.

  “Oh, God, he’s bleeding,” Ellen said.

  Gently, Kevin made his way to the gelding’s mouth. Titan tried to fight him, but didn’t have the energy. Kevin pulled back the lip. From Titan’s gums appeared narrow strings of blood.

  Ellen ran from the barn and reappeared a few minutes later. “Dr. Parnell’s on his way. I’ve got to go.”

  “You can’t. Not now.”

  “Stay with Titan until Dr. Parnell gets here.”

  “Ellen—”

  “I’m trusting you, Kevin. I’m trusting you with Titan, with the rest of the horses, with the ranch. Can’t we start with that?”

  Start. She’d given him an opening, a possibility. But what good would it do him if she got hurt? “Not when it means sending you alone into danger.”

  “There is no danger. Dr. Warner is a broken man whose wife is dying. He doesn’t want to hurt me. He didn’t even want to hurt the horses. He’s going to give me his research so we can help the horses.” She shook her head slightly. Her eyes silently pleaded for understanding. “Dr. Warner has the answer. The horses can’t wait. Please, Kevin, promise me you’ll stay and keep the horses safe.”

  There it was. The impossible deal. It was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? A chance to gain back her trust. If she was right about Dr. Warner, she was in no danger and her effort would bolster her confidence. “If you’re not back in an hour, I’m coming after you.”

  “Give me two. It takes half an hour to get to his clinic.” Before he could say anything more, Ellen sprinted out of the barn. “I’ll be back soon.”

  Still holding on to the frightened horse, he couldn’t go after her. She’d entrusted him with her horses. She’d hinted at the possibility of starting over fresh. But could Dr. Warner be trusted? The vet had too much at stake to let one woman stand in his way.

  Kevin swore. He tried to convince himself he was doing the right thing, but he couldn’t shake the dread clawing at him like attic mice. Would he ever stop making mistakes?

  As soon as Dr. Parnell arrived, Kevin relinquished Titan’s care to him. He gave him a brief rundown on what had happened, then raced to the house and placed a call to Chance.

  “Chance, I need your help. Ellen might be in trouble.” Kevin gave him the bare bones of facts. Naturally, Chance read between the lines, adding the missing meat and a generous portion of fat.

  “How could you let her go alone?”

  “I had no choice—”

  “That’s the story of your life. It’s always someone else’s fault—”

  “No, I take full credit for it.” Kevin understood Chance’s anger, but there was no time to argue right now. “You can ream me up and down later. Right now Ellen needs your help.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Kevin had done all he could to protect her. Rubbing Nina’s feather, he reluctantly returned to the barn to keep his promise.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ellen drove as fast as she dared on the dark country roads. A headache had wormed itself around her temples and pounded a timpanic beat. She longed for a shower and the relaxing blast of hot water between her aching shoulders. But it would be a long time before she could soak the tension from her tired body.

  She glanced at her watch, but didn’t see the time. The image of Kevin standing at the barn door floated into her mind. She shook it away.

  She’d half expected Kevin to head out of Ashbrook in the opposite direction, back to Colorado or Montana—anywhere but Gabenburg. That’s what Kyle had done when the going got tough. That way, she might never have had to deal with him again. At the moment that seemed the easiest solution to the whole unreal situation. He’d have faded from her memory as she got more involved with rebuilding her life, with the horses and with the ranch.

  “Yeah, right!” She snorted. “Just like before.”

  As much as she wanted to deny it, part of her had sensed the truth from the moment Kevin had walked up her driveway and sent her senses spinning out of control. No one but Kyle had managed to touch her so easily, so deeply.

  And now? Now, the feelings were still there, enmeshed with the anger, and she wasn’t sure at all how to handle either. Her life had suddenly become a sweater unraveling from both ends. She wanted him here. She wanted him gone. She didn’t really know what she wanted. What did that say about her mental health?

  Thinking hurt too much. She didn’t want to do it anymore, didn’t want to feel anything. She just wanted to find a way to heal the horses.

  With a shake of her head, she put Kyle and Kevin out of her mind and forced herself to concentrate on Dr. Warner and the help he could afford her horses.

  The Warner house was a modest ranch-style made of beige clapboard and brown brick. No light burned through its windows. A single spotlight on the corner of the high-tech barn illuminated the dirt path leading to the house. The rest of the property lay in shadows. The whole place had a feeling of abandonment. Was Dr. Warner here? Was Kevin right? Was this a trap of some sort?

  “Knock it off!” Kevin had her spooked with his talk of danger.

  Maybe a complication had delayed Dr. Warner at the hospice. Maybe he’d fallen asleep because she was late. He’d looked so wrung out this afternoon, she’d actually felt sorry for him.

  Dr. Warner had said he’d meet her in his office and his defeated expression had looked real enough. His office was probably in the barn where a light glowed from a window toward the back of the structure. Making as much noise as she dared, Ellen made her way to the barn.

  “Dr. Warner?” Safety lights on the ceiling lined the middle of the aisle at regular intervals. The smell of disinfectant burned her nose. Empty stall after empty stall greeted her. The sudden thump of a hoof on metal gave her a start. Then a dark head lashed at her from a steel-reinforced stall.

  Ears flattened, teeth bared, the horse lunged at her again, stopped only by the bars on the door. He bore a startling resemblance to Legacy’s Prometheus, except that he had the gangly appearance of a two-year-old. Why was he alone in this huge barn? The tag on the door bore no name, simply a number.

  “Dr. Warner?” She continued down the aisle, passed a series of closed doors she assumed where the clinic part of the building, until she reached a door from which a crack of harsh white light protruded.

  Hand in midair, she hesitated. Something didn’t feel right. The air around her was thick, unbreathable. Even the black demon in the stall now stood still, leaving nothing but silence to wrap around her like an itchy mantle.

  She knocked on the door. The metal beneath her fist gave. She pushed the door all the way open. The hinges squealed. “Dr. Warner?”

  At first all Ellen saw was blinding light bouncing against white tiles. From the glare emerged a row of glass-fronted, stainless-steel cupboards filled with instruments, a stainless-steel counter, then a large stainless-steel table on some sort of lift. Above the stinging scent of antiseptic arose the sharp bite of copper. Out of the corner of her eye materialized a large dark shape. She turned toward it and gasped at the stark scene that unfolded before her.

  Propped against a wall sat Dr. Warner holding his beloved Lillian in his arms. From a gash on her neck, a wash of blood tracked down her front, soaked into the white material of her gown. It snaked down her side to the slanted floor and disappeared into the drain in the middle of the room where anothe
r thin red trail joined it.

  Ellen followed the jagged line back up. It widened and flowed around an object. A scalpel. The wrist above it bloomed dark red.

  Time, her heart, her breath—everything seemed to stop.

  “No!” She rushed toward the couple posed like rag dolls. With a trembling hand, she felt for a pulse and found none. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she tried to make sense of the scene before her. A wave of nausea came over her. Dizziness made her stumble backward. And the full horror of the macabre portrait punched her in the gut.

  I have nothing left to lose now. Had Dr. Warner killed his dying wife, then taken his own life? “No.”

  Hand over her mouth to keep herself from retching, Ellen staggered out of the room into the aisle. She was rushing down the concrete, when the word office caught her attention. She skidded to a halt, closed her eyes, held her breath and, pulse pounding, pushed the door open.

  She could do nothing to help the Warners, but the horses still depended on her to find an answer. She flicked on the lights, half expecting another gruesome scene. The severe order gave her back her breath.

  She wiped her clammy hands on her jeans, then went about the task of searching the file cabinets flanking the wall. They were empty. Drawer after drawer held nothing more than dust and the occasional stray paper clip. The thick binders stacked above the cabinets offered no more help. Rings still opened, whatever they’d once held was gone.

  Ellen rubbed the wrist holding her watch and stared at the empty drawers that would do her no good. Then on the desk, from beneath the blotter, she spotted the edge of a slim file. Sliding it out of its hiding spot, she saw that the file bore the same number she’d read on the black horse’s stall earlier.

  Code numbers like the ones in Tessa’s protocol book under the heading “subject.”

  She glanced at the clock on the wall, thought about calling Kevin to reassure him, then decided against it. With as little belief in her abilities as he had, he’d insist she come home. Besides, she had no phone in her barn. Instead, she dialed 911 and reported the deaths, then swiped the black horse’s file and raced to the truck.

  With Dr. Warner dead, her only hope to help the horses was to confront the Bancrofts.

  FOR THE HUNDREDTH TIME, Kevin glanced at the clock in the tack room as he paced by it, hands deep in his pockets, fingers frantically rubbing Nina’s feather. Ten minutes. He’d give her ten more minutes, then he’d drag her home kicking and screaming if he had to. He’d let her go too many times already. She’d be upset. He’d lose all chance of the new beginning she’d hinted at. But at least he’d know she was safe.

  Dr. Parnell had come and gone. He’d pumped Titan full of drugs to stabilize him, but Kevin had listened to the explanations with half an ear. He kept listening for the sound of his truck, for Ellen’s voice—for this torturous wait to end.

  When Blue’s ears pricked toward the house, Kevin stopped in his tracks and caught the light jangle of a ringing phone. He sprinted for the kitchen, cursing himself for not waiting by the phone for Ellen’s call.

  “We’ve got trouble,” Chance said. “Looks like a murder-suicide—”

  Kevin’s gut knotted. “Ellen—”

  “No, Dr. Warner and his wife.”

  The breath Kevin didn’t know he’d held rushed out. “Ellen’s all right then. Let me talk to her.”

  “She’s not here.”

  “What do you mean she’d not there?”

  There was a pause. “Her fingerprints, hand prints and footprints are all over the scene. She was here, but the truck’s gone.”

  Shaking his head, Kevin gripped the receiver tighter. “She wouldn’t have—”

  “I know, but this isn’t my jurisdiction. The farm sits on the other side of the Gabenburg county line.”

  Kevin swore. Chance would have done all he could to protect Ellen, but now it was out of his hands. “Where is she?”

  “If she’s smart, on her way back home.”

  Kevin closed his eyes. A dull sensation weighed him down. “The Bancrofts. If she found Warner dead, she’d still want answers.”

  “I can’t leave here.” To protect Ellen’s interest, his brother had to stay at the scene and deal with his peers.

  “I’m on my way.”

  He’d lost her long ago. A broken promise wasn’t going to change anything. And a promise kept was meaningless if something happened to her.

  “THIS BETTER be important,” Brad Bancroft said as he pounded through the French doors of the living room where a uniformed maid had ordered Ellen to wait.

  High ceilings made a dramatic impression, as did the white marble fireplace, the two skylights and huge bay window. Detailed molding and wainscoting in shades of cream accentuated the pristine whiteness of the walls. White-upholstered antique chairs looked as if they’d never supported a body. The cherry coffee table held oversize books whose covers nobody had probably ever cracked. The only footprints on the thick carpet were her own—and now Bancroft’s.

  “It’s about the horses,” she said, suddenly unsure about the wisdom of her impulse. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up. The top button was undone. His mood looked murderous as he poured himself a drink from the bar. “I want to know what’s going on with them.”

  His frown wasn’t one of confusion, but one of anger. “You disturbed me for this?”

  “The horses aren’t doing well and I need to find out what you’ve done to them.”

  He stared at her as if she were a creature from another planet. As his expression darkened and his jowls shook, her mouth went dry. Stalking across the room, drink in hand, Bancroft dismissed her. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve got an important meetin’ in the mornin’. I don’t have time for this.”

  “Wait! What about the racing? The protocol book—”

  “The horses are Tessa’s little project. I just show up in the winner’s circle to indulge her.”

  Tessa, dressed in formfitting black leather pants and a black-fringed halter top to match, appeared and touched her husband’s arm in the doorway. His adoring gaze at his wife told Ellen that indulging Tessa was as much his weakness as the horses were hers. Were those indulgences Tessa’s reward for staying with a bull-ugly husband twice her age?

  “Why don’t you go back to your preparations, sugar, I’ll deal with Ms. Paxton.”

  He nodded once and slanted a rushed kiss across Tessa’s cheek. After a brief, heat-filled admiration of his wife’s chest, he left.

  “Now, why don’t you tell me what this is about.” Tessa glided over the carpet noiselessly and headed toward the bar.

  “The horses. I want to know what’s going on with them. Why are they getting so sick?”

  She shrugged and poured a generous inch of amber liquid into a crystal glass. “Maybe your ministering leaves something to be desired.”

  “I saw Garth today. He told me about the genetically engineered oats.”

  “Is that so?”

  “I think the answer to the horses’ illness has something to do with your ‘protocol.’”

  “Temperature, pulse, respiration.” Using silver tongs, she dropped two cubes of ice into the glass. “What’s so evil about that? All good trainers keep track of their horses’ well-being.”

  Tessa was as much a horse trainer as Ellen was a fashion plate. No, it was something other than the satisfaction of training a good horse that drove Tessa. Once she discovered what, Ellen would find her own answers. “Blood count, liver function. No mere trainer is quite that zealous. What’s the last number you’re keeping track of? Even my vet couldn’t figure it out.”

  A sly smile touched Tessa’s lips. “Really, Ms. Paxton, do you always have such wild delusions? I understand you’re still recovering from a tremendous trauma.” She arched her eyebrows. “Perhaps a visit to a therapist is in order…”

  Tessa’s avoidance only served to prove to Ellen that she was on the right track. She pressed on. “Why are they deve
loping a fever? Why are their gums bleeding? Why are they so lethargic?”

  Tessa took a sip, then pressed the glass against her chest and closed her eyes as she savored the liquor going down. “My guess is the subpar feed you insist on giving them. As I recall, I had my own high-quality blend sent to you.”

  Fine, you want to play that way. “What does RLP–045913Z mean to you?”

  Tessa’s jaw tightened. Her dark eyes narrowed. She slowly put the glass back on the bar, then cocked her head and gave Ellen a smile that sent chills scurrying down her spine. “It means you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.”

  When she came around the bar, her hand held a black, alien-looking semiautomatic handgun aimed at Ellen’s chest.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Now,” Tessa said, her voice overly sweet, “you and I are going to take a little ride.”

  “I don’t think so.” Going anywhere with someone holding a gun was a sure recipe for disaster. Ellen hadn’t survived fifteen years of drugged imprisonment to die so soon. She tried to edge out of the room, but one leg hooked on the arm of a chair. She lost her balance and found herself sprawled awkwardly on one of the pristine white cushions.

  Before she could regain her balance, Tessa shoved the muzzle of the gun under Ellen’s chin. “Yes, I think so.”

  Ellen swallowed hard and bluffed. “My ranch hand and the sheriff know where I am.”

  “If they did, you wouldn’t be here alone. Those two are much too protective of you.” Keeping the gun’s muzzle pressed against Ellen’s neck, Tessa whipped Ellen’s arm behind her back, jerked her to her feet and shoved her forward. “Besides, I don’t want to kill you.”

  “Sure could have fooled me,” Ellen muttered, trying to ease the strain in her shoulder from Tessa’s hold.