by Nora Roberts
It was time to push that aside once and for all, she warned herself. Time to look forward. She wasn’t drifting now. She had a purpose—and questions that needed to be answered. She’d deal with them logically, starting at a twenty-year-old root. First thing Monday morning, she promised herself, she would make that call to Charles Rooney.
The rain had stopped again when they walked to the paddock. Watery sunlight sneaked through breaks in the clouds and fell on dripping eaves. Gutters rang musically and turned the ground to mud.
Kelsey sneaked a look at Boggs. He seemed old, more frail than he had two weeks before. She knew he’d been assigned as High Water’s groom as much for his skill as to help heal the wounds.
“The rain’s a plus,” she said, hoping to lift the shadows from his eyes. “High Water likes a wet track.” And so, she remembered, did Double.
“He’s a good colt.” Absently, Boggs patted his neck. “Steady and kind. Might be he’ll surprise us all today.”
“Last word, he was five to one.”
Boggs shrugged. He’d never paid much heed to the odds. “He ain’t run much this year, so they haven’t seen what he can do. Still, he’s finished in the money more times than not. He’ll move if he’s asked.”
But he’s no Pride. Boggs didn’t have to say it. Kelsey understood.
“Then I’ll ask him.” Kelsey went to the colt’s head and held his bridle so that she could look in his eyes. They seemed so wise to her, and as Boggs had said, kind. “You’ll run, won’t you, boy? You’ll run as hard and as fast as you can. And that’s enough for anyone.”
“You’re not going to ask him to win?” Naomi laid a hand on Kelsey’s shoulder, a small gesture that still touched both of them.
“No. Sometimes the winning isn’t as important as the trying.” She spotted Reno standing to the side, his arm in a sling, his face haunted and pale. “I’ll meet you in the box in a minute.”
Kelsey crossed to him and took his free hand. “I was hoping I’d see you.”
“Couldn’t stay away.” He’d wanted to. The last thing he’d wanted was to stand on the sidelines and watch. “I figured to stay home, maybe catch the race on the tube. But I found myself in the car, driving out here.”
“We’ll have you up again soon, Reno.”
A spasm crossed his face. He looked away from her, away from the horses, away from the track. “I don’t know if I have the heart for it. That colt deserved better.”
“So did you,” she said quietly.
“I’ve spent most of my life dreaming about a Derby win. You can ride dozens of horses, cross dozens of wires, but the Derby’s the one. That’s gone now.”
“There’s another Derby next year,” she reminded him. “There’s always another Derby.”
“I don’t know if I want another chance.” His face tightened when he saw a figure over her shoulder. “Good luck today,” he said, and hurried away.
Rossi noted the jockey’s quick retreat, and filed it. Despite the lack of welcome on Kelsey’s face, he walked to her.
“Miserable day.”
“It seemed to be clearing up, until a moment ago.”
He smiled, acknowledged the thrust. “I was hoping for a few tips while I was wandering around.”
“You’re unlikely to get any, Lieutenant.” She began walking, resigned to the fact that he fell into step beside her. “You look like what you are. A cop.”
“An occupational hazard. I don’t claim to know a lot about horses, Ms. Byden, but that one of yours seemed a little on the small side.”
“He is. Just over fourteen hands. But I don’t think you’re here to talk horses.”
“You’re wrong. Horses are right at the center of this.” He offered her his bag of peanuts, then cracked another for himself when she declined. “I’ve been doing some research. There are a lot of ways to kill a horse, Ms. Byden. Some of which are on the gruesome side.”
“I’m aware of that.” Much too aware now, she thought. It had been Matt who’d told her when she’d pressed for answers. Told her of electrocution. Putting a horse in standing water, then killing him with live battery cables. A cruel and clever murder, sometimes overlooked. Unless a vet spotted burn marks in the nostrils. Worse, she thought, was suffocating them with Ping-Pong balls, thrust up the nose. They were impossible for a horse to expel, causing a slow, hideous death.
“Your Derby colt,” Rossi continued, “he wasn’t just killed, he was killed in full view of millions of people. Risky. It’s my belief that when someone takes a risk, a particularly unnecessary one, it’s because he’s anxious to make a point. Who’d want to slap down your mother in public, Ms. Byden?”
“I have no idea.” But she stopped. The statement shifted the suspicion from Naomi and instead made her a victim. “Is that what you think this is about?”
“It’s an avenue worth exploring. She had the colt insured, heavily. But there’s no cash-flow problem at Three Willows, and in the long term, that colt could have generated a lot more. Your mother appears to be a sensible businesswoman. Now, there’s Slater.”
“He had nothing to do with it.”
“That’s an emotional response.” And precisely what he’d expected. “Backing off that a minute, he reaped the reward. You always want to look at who benefits from murder, Ms. Byden. Any kind of murder. The problem with that is it puts a cloud over him, and his Derby win. So I ask myself, would it be worth it to him? He had a good chance of winning anyway, so would it be worth it to him to stack the deck in so obvious a way? He doesn’t strike me as an obvious man.”
“An emotional response, Lieutenant?”
“An observation, Ms. Byden. He’s not the only one who benefited. There’s his trainer, his jockey. They both got a piece of the pie. And there’s anyone who bet.”
She gave a short laugh, looking around at the crowds. “That certainly narrows the field.”
“More than you think.” He scanned the crowd as well, enjoying himself. “If it ties in with my two homicides, it narrows it a lot more than you think. Who did Lipsky trust enough—or who was he afraid enough of—to let get close enough to kill him? Someone he worked with, worked for? There were a lot more than two horses in that race, Ms. Byden, and a lot more riding on the Derby than a blanket of flowers.”
She stopped, then turned to study his face. “Why are you telling me all of this?”
“You’re new to the game. You might see a lot more than people think.” He paused to crack open another nut. “And you’re involved. Your relationship with your mother isn’t making everyone happy.”
So, he’d been prying into her personal life as well. She should have expected it. “That’s family business, Lieutenant, and has nothing to do with murder.”
“I could quote you statistics that would show you family business leads to murder more often than any other kind. I’m just asking you to keep your eyes open.”
“They’re open, Lieutenant.” She stood her ground, unwilling to have him walk into view of the boxes. There was no point in upsetting Naomi moments before the race. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to join my mother.”
“Good luck,” he called out, and chose another nut. He had a feeling Kelsey Byden would be much harder to crack.
Kelsey stepped into the box just as the horses were being loaded into the gate.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t make it.”
“Ran into someone,” Kelsey muttered, and glanced from her mother to Gabe. It was like him, she thought, to be here. To stand with them when this was so completely his moment. She took his hand and gave it a quick squeeze. “Side bet, Slater.”
“You still owe me from the first one.”
“Double or nothing, then. It’s apropos.” She studied the field through her binoculars. “Your horse by two lengths. The track’s sloppy, but I’ll say he runs it in a minute fifty-eight tops. Our colt takes third in two and twelve.”
He lifted a brow. “That’s a hard bet for a man to turn dow
n. Since there’s no way to lose.”
The starting gun fired. From the first plunge, Double and his rider took the lead. It was as if, Kelsey thought, they both knew they had something to prove. This was a champion, bursting from the pack in a heartbeat with no need to feel the bat on his back to pour it on. By the first turn he was a half-length in the lead, with the Arkansas colt and the Kentucky roan fighting for second.
Again Kelsey lost herself in the grandeur of it. With her binoculars in place, she urged the horses on, not seeing, as she’d been afraid she would, an overlapping image of Pride going down. There was only the mud-splattered athletes, riders and ridden, thundering around the oval.
There was rain in the air, another misty, steady drizzle that blurred her vision and soaked her skin.
A full length now, and moving out, his red wrappings smeared brown, his rider balanced like a toy in the irons. She heard herself laughing at the glory of it.
Then, like an arrow from a bow, High Water shot up the outside. Kelsey’s breath caught at the suddenness of the move. He was gaining, digging in, kicking up turf. Fighting, she thought, dazed, for honor.
Down the stretch, Double lengthened his lead. The crowd roared for him, a flood of sound that overwhelmed everything else. Then for High Water, the five-to-one shot that streaked into third and kept gaining during that heart-stopping final three-sixteenths.
“My God, look at him! My God, Mom, just look at him!”
“I am.” Tears mixed with the rain running down Naomi’s face. She wrapped her arm tight around Kelsey’s waist as they finished 5-7-2. Double had the black-eyed Susans, but High Water had edged out Arkansas for second.
“He did it!” Kelsey let her binoculars drop. “The little guy did it!” She hugged Naomi first, laughing out the victory. “Nobody believed it. None of us believed it.” She whirled and with a whoop launched herself into Gabe’s arms. “Congratulations! What was the time? What was his time?”
Gabe held up the stopwatch, amused when Kelsey snatched it from him. A minute fifty-seven and a quarter.
She laughed again, rain dripping from her hair onto her face. “Gabriel Slater, you’ve just won the second jewel in the Triple Crown. What are you going to do now? And I know you’re not going to Disney World.”
“I’m going to Belmont.” He lifted her high, spun her around once, then kissed her. “We’re going to Belmont.”
Inside the clubhouse, Rich Slater toasted the image of his son and Kelsey on the monitor, then downed the aged scotch. A handsome couple, he thought. A very handsome couple they made, much as he and Naomi would have done if she hadn’t turned her icy nose up at him.
But there were other matters to contemplate. Other matters to celebrate.
He’d put ten of the hundred thousand he’d bled out of Cunningham on Double’s nose. He was quite satisfied with the profits.
For now.
“I hope you don’t mind.” Kelsey opened the champagne with a cheery pop. She’d already had several glasses in her mother’s suite, but the night was young. “I’m going to finish this entire bottle. And I may get considerably drunk.”
Gabe sat, crossing his feet at the ankles. He’d been fantasizing about a long, hot, very steamy shower for two. But he could wait. It might be interesting to see how many more inhibitions Kelsey let fly after a bottle of Dom.
“Just because I don’t drink doesn’t mean I wouldn’t enjoy watching you indulge yourself.”
“I’m going to.” She poured, then watched the bubbles froth recklessly over the lip of the flute. “You know, I’ve never really been drunk. I’ve been close, but I always pulled myself back.” She took a long swallow, waved her hand. “Breeding. Don’t want to get too loose at the club—people will talk. Don’t want to get too loose at a party—other people will talk.” This time she waved the bottle. “Bydens do not solicit gossip.”
“What do they solicit?”
“Respect, admiration, and, above all, discretion.” She closed one eye to narrow her vision and poured more wine. “The hell with that. Let ’em talk. We won. Isn’t it incredible?”
“Yes, it is.” He smiled at her. She was barefoot now, and her hair had dried in a glorious tangle of pale gold.
“Everyone was so down before. Trying not to be, but it was so hard. I saw Reno in the paddock, and it just broke my heart.” She drank again, sighed, and decided she liked the way champagne made the room circle. Glass in hand, she executed two slow pirouettes to help it along.
“Do that again.” He wanted the pleasure of watching the way her hair flowed out, settled, flowed out, settled.
With a giddy laugh, she obliged him. “See, those lessons were good for something. Taught me discipline, too, mental and physical. You know, you could break bricks on this body.”
“I’m sure I can find more interesting things to do with it.”
She laughed again, knowing he could. Would. “We were talking about the race. I hope it made Reno feel better. You could see how happy Naomi and Moses were. Even Boggs. Poor old Boggs, blaming himself ’cause he bet on Pride. It had nothing to do with it. People are always looking for ways to tie things together. Like Rossi.”
“Rossi?”
“Mmmm.” She poured another glass, then absently began to unbutton her shirt. It was getting warmer by the swallow. “He was there, at the race. I talked to him. Or he talked to me. He seems to be there every time you turn around, watching, working out his theories. Why should anyone want to hurt Naomi, or make people wonder?”
Gabe adjusted his focus. Her shirt was open to the first sweet curve of breast. But he wanted to concentrate on her words. “Is that what he thinks?”
“Who knows?” She gave a careless shrug. “I don’t think he really tells you what he thinks. If you follow me,” she said after a moment. “He just says things to sort of plant them in your mind and drive you crazy. But at least he doesn’t seem to be looking at Naomi as some sort of horse assassin.” She smiled winningly. “He’s still got one eye on you, Slater.”
“I never doubted it.”
“But only one eye.” She closed one of her own to demonstrate. “He doesn’t think you’re obvious.”
“Quite a compliment, coming from that source.” He decided he could concentrate on Kelsey’s emerging flesh after all. “You’ve got a couple more buttons there, darling.”
“I’m getting them. I’ve never stripped for a man before.”
“Let me be the first.”
She chuckled, and with her eyes half closed fumbled open the snap of her jeans. “It irritated me, seeing him there. Rossi, I mean. It started me thinking back over the Derby. All the things that happened. Watching the horses come back through the mist after morning workout. The smells, the sounds, the nerves. Boggs hanging up Pride’s wrappings and talking about his last bet. How he thought he saw your father.”
“What?” The blood Kelsey’s careless striptease had been heating froze like a river of ice. “What did you say about my father?”
“Oh, Boggs thought he saw him at Churchill Downs. He thought it was bad luck. But I don’t suppose he was there, or he’d have let you know.”
“Kelsey.” Gabe rose, took her glass out of her hand and set it aside. “What did Boggs say about the old man?”
“Nothing much.” She blew out a long breath. Her head was spinning, a lovely feeling, but Gabe’s eyes were so intense they burned through the fog. “Just that he thought he’d seen him around the shedrow.”
He had her arms now. “When?”
“Sometime that morning. But he wasn’t sure. He said he only got a glimpse and his eyes aren’t good anymore.” She shook her head, trying fruitlessly to clear it. “What difference does it make?”
“None,” Gabe said, gentling his hold. Or all. All the difference in the world. “I just wondered.”
“The past has a way of squeezing the throat.” She lifted a hand to his face. “We shouldn’t let it. We have now.”
“Yes, we do.” It c
ould wait, Gabe told himself. Odds were it was nothing, but whatever it was, he would deal with it when they returned home. “Let’s see.” He cupped her chin, studied her flushed face and blinking eyes. “Darling, you’re going to have one hell of a headache come morning.”
“Well, then.” She hooked her arms around his neck. In one lithe leap she encircled his waist, legs locked. “Then we’d better make it worth it, right?”
“It’s the least I can do. Let’s go into the shower.” He lowered his head and nipped at her bare shoulder. “I’ll show you what I have in mind.”
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
SHE THOUGHT ABOUT TELLING GABE. CERTAINLY IT WASN’T A MATTER of dependence to tell a man you were so intimately involved with about your intentions. It wouldn’t have been weak to ask him to come with her, to lend a little moral support when she faced her past.
But she hadn’t told him. Because, intellect aside, it felt dependent. It felt weak. And it was, when you scraped away all of the excess, her problem.
In any case, he hardly had a minute he could call his own. It wasn’t every year there was a viable contender for the Triple Crown who had two jewels already in place. His hands were full with the press, his mind full of tensions and possibilities, and his days full overseeing the interim three weeks of training before the Belmont Stakes.
She didn’t want to distract him from the goal. A goal, she’d begun to realize, that meant a great deal more to him than money and prestige. To Gabe, the Triple Crown would be proof that he had taken something and not only made it his own, but made it extraordinary.
Underlying that, she didn’t want him to toss her own advice back in her face. It wasn’t wise to let the past strangle you.
But she couldn’t break free of it, not completely. The longer she knew Naomi, the more she grew to care for her, the less Kelsey could believe that her mother had coldly killed a man. Or hotly, for that matter.
There was no disputing the fact that Naomi had pulled the trigger. That she had ended a life. Not only did Naomi admit it, not only had a jury convicted her, but there had been a witness.
