Dark Horse

35

Trey Hughes never came back to Don Jade's barn.

I waited in my car, checking my watch it seemed every three minutes as the time ticked on toward six. Javier led the gray, draped in a Lucky Dog cooler, away from the barn and came back leading Park Lane. Paris and Jane Lennox returned in the golf cart, then Lennox climbed into a gold Cadillac and drove away.

I checked my watch again: 5:43.

At another show grounds some few miles away, Landry and his team from Robbery/Homicide would be in place, waiting for the kidnappers to show.

I wanted to be there to see how the drop played out, but knew I wouldn't be allowed anywhere near the place. I wanted to know where Jade and Van Zandt were, what they were doing, who was watching them. I wanted to know where Trey Hughes had gone. I wanted people reporting these facts to me. I wanted to be running the case.

The old rush of adrenaline was there, speeding up my metabolism, making me feel a hum of electricity running just under my skin. Making me feel alive.

Paris emerged from the barn in street clothes, climbed into a money-green Infiniti, and drove toward the truck exit. I started my car and followed, leaving a pickup truck between us. She took a left on Pierson and we began winding through the outskirts of Wellington, passing through Binks Forest.

Molly would be in the Seabright house, tucked away in a corner like a mouse, eyes wide, ears open, breath held, waiting desperately for any word of Erin and what had happened at the ransom drop.

I wish I could have been there for her, as much as for myself.

I hung back as Paris brought her car to a stop at Southern-a busy east-west drag that led to Palm Beach one way or the rural county the other. She crossed to the Loxahatchee side of the road and continued down B Road, into the wooded darkness.

I kept my eyes on the Infiniti's taillights, very aware that we were traveling in the direction of Equestrian Estates.

A creepy sense of déjà vu crawled down my back. The last time I'd driven these side roads at night, I'd been a narcotics detective. The Golam brothers' trailer wasn't far away.

The Infiniti's brake lights came on. No blinker.

I slowed and checked my rearview as headlights glared through my back window. My heart rate picked up a beat.

I didn't like having someone behind me. This was not a heavily traveled road. No one came out here unless they had to, unless they lived here or worked at a nursery or a mulch-grinding place.

I was revisited by the sick feeling I'd gotten in the pit of my stomach that morning when Van Zandt had shown up at the farm and I had thought I was alone with him.

Until later, he had said when he kissed my cheek.

Ahead of me, Paris had turned in at a driveway. I went past, catching a quick glimpse. Like most of the places out this way, the house was a seventies vintage ranch style with a jungle for a yard. The garage door went up and the Infiniti rolled inside.

Why would she live out here? I wondered. Jade had a good business. Paris should have been making decent money. Enough that she could have lived in Wellington near the show grounds, enough to afford an apartment in one of the many complexes that catered to riders.

It was one thing to stick the grooms out here in the sticks. Rent was cheap-relatively speaking. But Paris Montgomery with her money-green Infiniti and her emerald and diamond heirloom ring?

The lights in the rearview brightened as the car behind me closed the distance between us.

Abruptly, I hit the brakes and turned hard right onto another side road. But it wasn't a road at all. It was a cul-de-sac ringed by several freshly cleared lots. My lights caught on the frame skeleton of a new home.

The headlights turned into the cul-de-sac behind me.

I gunned the engine around the curve of the drive, beating it back toward the main road, then hit the brakes and skidded sideways, blocking the exit.

The hell if I would let that son of a bitch stalk me like a rabbit.

I pulled the Glock out of its box in the door.

Kicked the door open as the other car pulled alongside and the passenger's window went down.

I brought the gun up into position, dead aim on the face of the driver: eyes wide, mouth open.

Not Van Zandt.

"Who are you?" I shouted.

"Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Don't kill me!"

"Shut the fuck up!" I yelled. "I want ID. Now!"

"I just-I just-" he stuttered. He looked maybe forty, thin, too much hair.

"Out of the car! Hands where I can see them!"

"Oh, my God," he whimpered. "Please don't kill me. I'll give you my money-"

"Shut up. I'm a cop."

"Oh, Jesus."

Apparently, that was worse than if I had been ready to rob and kill him.

He climbed out of the car with his hands held out in front of him.

"Are you right-handed or left-handed?"

"What?"

"Are you right-handed or left-handed?"

"Left."

"With your right hand, take out your wallet and put it on the hood of the car."

He did as he was told, put the wallet on the car and slid it across to me.

"What's your name?"

"Jimmy Manetti."

I flipped the wallet open and pretended I could see in the faint backwash of the headlights.

"Why are you following me?"

He tried to shrug. "I thought you were looking too."

"Looking for what?"

"The party. Kay and Lisa."

"Kay and Lisa who?"

"I dunno. Kay and Lisa. Waitresses? From Steamer's?"

"Jesus Christ," I muttered, tossing the wallet back on the hood. "Are you an idiot?"

"Yeah. I guess."

I shook my head and lowered the gun. I was trembling. The afterglow of an adrenaline rush and the realization that I had nearly shot an innocent moron in the face.

"Keep your distance, for God's sake," I said, backing toward my car. "The next person whose ass you run up might not be as nice as I am."

I left Jimmy Manetti standing with his hands still up in the air, pulled out of the cul-de-sac, and went back in the direction I had come. Slowly. Trying to regulate my heartbeat. Trying to get my head back where it belonged.

The lights were on in the house Paris Montgomery had gone to. Her dog was chasing its tail in the front yard. There was a car parked in the drive.

A classic Porsche convertible with the top down and personalized plates: LKY DOG

Lucky Dog.

Trey Hughes.