Blood and Roses (Holly Jennings Thriller) (23 page)

He turned on the TV and headed for the shower.

Fifteen minutes later he was clean and relaxing in his bed, watching an old episode of
Two and a Half Men
. The guy in the bar was not on his mind.

He grew tired and turned off the TV and the light.

He slept like a log for about four hours.

He woke and tried to turn to his side. What the hell? There was a pain in his arm. It stung. He’d been stung by something. Oh hell. He had a bee allergy. He needed to get up and get to his EpiPen. Who would have thought a bee could get into his hotel room?

But he couldn’t move.

At all.

Panic set in.

And then a dim light turned on.

A man stood there with a flashlight under his chin.

What the hell?

Gershon blinked and tried to focus on the guy standing over him. This had to be a nightmare.

“Don’t bother, Jim. I shot you full of Ketamine. You know Ketamine, don’t you? Of course you do. Nice paralytic we use on horses.”

Gershon’s vision swam, then came briefly into focus. Oh God, the guy from the bar.

“You know, you have good instincts. You always did. You knew good horses. You knew my boy, my horse; he was a good horse. Dirty Games. Loved that horse like O’Leary supposedly did. O’Leary, was he in on this, too? He didn’t seem to help me much, didn’t stick up for me when you shitheads started pointing fingers. No problem, though. I’m going to find him, too.”

Gershon knew who the man was, but how…how had he been able to change his face? He wanted to say to him that the horse
had not even been his horse. He had been a piece-of-shit lowly ass groom.

“But neither you nor Tieg nor any of those other assholes cared at all about what you did that night. All for the money. All for the money. Bastards,” he whispered. “And you, Jim, you are probably the worst bastard of them all. You and me, man. It was you and me. We groomed those animals. We loved them. Or at least I did.

“Those horses that you helped kill, they were far more decent than the animals that you and your buddies are.” Ivy sighed, big and dramatic, and a spike of fear lodged in Gershon’s throat. “Well, you won’t be around for long.”

Gershon tried to squirm, but it was no use. He had been completely paralyzed by the Ketamine. He knew he wasn’t getting out of this. He couldn’t even cry. Jim Gershon began praying and confessing. He wanted to scream at Ted Ivy that he would see him in hell.

“Why did you do it, Jimmy? How much did they pay you?” Ivy stood. “You know what, it don’t matter.” He held up a twitch. “You always liked these. Put them on countless horses. Oh yes, it releases endorphins.” He twisted the twitch in his hands. “So the horses have told us fucking humans that when we put the loop of chain or rope around their lip that it relieves stress. That it feels good. Sure!” He paused. “How about when you take the wooden handle of the twitch, which I saw you do, man, and smack the horse over the head? Like this!” He hit Gershon on top of the head with the twitch.

He then forced Gershon’s mouth open and shoved the chain past his teeth. “Can’t take a chance on being heard. Oh wait. You know where a twitch probably really releases endorphins? In your balls, huh?”

Ivy pulled back the covers, yanked down Gershon’s pajama bottoms, attached the twitch to his testicles and squeezed.

Pain flared out from Gershon’s testicles, rippling over his whole body.

“Yeah, feels good, huh? This is gonna feel better.” Ivy held up a blowtorch and all Gershon could do was stare ahead in dire pain and pray for the end to come quickly.

Ivy started the torch.

“Remember that night? The screams of the horses? Their fear? Remember? I sure do, motherfucker. I got to spend eight years in a cell remembering every horrifying second I went in to try to save them. I tried to save my boy. Where the fuck were you?”

He shook his head and brought the torch first down on Gershon’s hands. He singed the hair and burned the skin as he continued the tirade. “You should have looked at my hands. Not my face. You thought you knew me, and you did. At the bar. But you kept looking at my face. If you had looked at my hands, you would have seen the burns. They’re still there. Makeup helps, but if you’d looked close, you would have seen them. But you didn’t look close enough, asshole.”

Ivy lit the torch again and moved to Gershon’s legs. Gershon began to fade. “Know where you were that night? In a bar, because that is where
they
told you to go. Then you did everything else
they
told you. You framed me.”

Gershon had a vision of that night. Everything Ivy was saying was true.

“Now you have to pay, as I have paid.”

Ivy brought the torch up to Gershon’s face, burning his skin to complete black.

He stuck a carrot in the charred skull’s mouth and headed to the airport to catch his flight to Las Vegas.

51

“And Allah took a handful of southerly wind, blew His breath over it, and created the horse… Thou shall fly without wings, and conquer without any sword. Oh, horse.”
—Bedouin Legend

Horses don’t run alone on the track.

Their bodies jostle against one another and dirt kicks up from the hooves of the horse that’s ahead. The noise of the track, the flashbulbs and frenzy and flowers—the world of the track is entirely man-made.

52

After Quentin had learned that Naqeeb Waqqas and the sheikh’s son were in cahoots, smuggling drugs into the US and then laundering money that went back to the Taliban, Quentin set his sights on bringing them down.

But his own government and military had set their sights on him.

And they did.

But not for long.

“You are officially relieved from your duties.” Those words echoed daily in Quentin’s mind.

The group he had worked for within the CIA was so covert, so deep, that it didn’t even have a name. Only a few knew about its existence.

And yet, they still took him down. They fired him, cut him off.

And now…he was sure they regretted not
really
taking him down.

Taking him out.

He was sure that a few of his former colleagues were looking over their shoulders on a regular basis. Including Jack Jennings.

The irony was that he was in plain sight. Right out there in front of everyone. Bradley Security Systems was now the largest private security firm in the country. No one had put two and two together. Bradley was such a common name.

The name Bradley—the one part of his former life that he’d kept the same.

It was amazing what good plastic surgery could do for a person. Colored contacts. Hair color and style—from buzz cut to longish dark brown. When one had money to blend in, put a business together, plant oneself in the middle of the movers and the shakers, changing an identity wasn’t hard.

He lived very nicely on the money that he had taken from the Taliban drug lords. Millions of dollars.

After a stint in Brazil, where he’d had his extreme makeover, Quentin, with his new look and his new identity in place, left South America for his new life.

He had a condo in Cardiff-by-the-Sea near San Diego, and a lake house out in Colorado. He maintained an apartment in Manhattan as well. His offices were in Colorado so he spent a good share of his time there.

It was at the lake house built from cedar, oak, and walnut that Quentin had gone to work to find the perfect patsy after he had decided what he needed to do.

Finding Ted Ivy wasn’t easy. Quentin knew the kind of guy he needed for this job, and it was a narrow role to fill, a specific kind of guy.

He got real lucky with the man who, like himself, had a thing about names. His guy Ivy preferred to be called Joque.

He fit the profile perfectly.

Quentin had started his search for the perfect guy with scandals. Kentucky was filled with them. The racing world was filled with them.

He found murder, abduction, money laundering—the Mafia even had their hands in Lexington at times.

Then he found Ted Ivy.

Quentin’s training and experience told him the guy’s conviction smelled funny. He read the newspaper articles from the case. He knew who the players were to an extent.

He sat behind his desk inside his office, rubbing his hands together—thinking and pondering. Supposing Ivy wasn’t guilty of setting the barn ablaze and killing nineteen horses that were insured up the wazoo. Supposing he wasn’t guilty of manslaughter. Supposing he’d want to get even…

Or maybe the guy was totally guilty. Maybe the guy had a real beef with Tieg and his compatriots.

Either way…Ted Ivy was looking like a man who could use some help, and certainly after eight years of claiming innocence, and eight years spent inside the Kentucky State Pen, this guy would want to get some revenge.

Quentin planned to help him, because if Ivy was who he thought he might be—a man with a need to see justice truly served—then he was his man.

His patsy.

53

O’Leary had finished with the horses. Riding Karma during her morning workout had been amazing. What a fast and lovely animal. And spending time again with Elena felt even more amazing. The love he’d had for her ten years ago hadn’t faded at all. And he kicked himself for ever letting her go. What an ass he’d been.

Elena was busy filling out necessary forms for the race and spending time with her mare. He admired and respected her for what she had done with the filly. He hated that Perez had the privilege of riding Karma for the race, and Perez knew it. Perez was also aware that O’Leary and Elena were hanging out again. They hadn’t made it a secret. Perez and O’Leary had been cordial to each other for Elena’s sake, but O’Leary knew he stuck in the guy’s craw, and he didn’t care one iota. If anything, O’Leary enjoyed watching the asshole squirm a little.

The Infinity grounds were top-notch, and he now sat in the Jockey Stop, an excellent eatery next to the barns that served home cooking.

Waiting on a plate of meatloaf, he jotted down more memories on his legal pad. Once back at his room, he’d get on the computer and transcribe everything.

The night of the fire.

O’Leary had left Tieg’s farm around three o’clock that day. He and Ivy had downed a few more beers together, and then Ivy said he needed to get back to work.

This was all stuff that O’Leary had said in court.

He’d told the judge everything the way he recalled it.

The prosecutor asked, “Did Mr. Ivy say that he’d had an argument with Mr. Tieg and with Mr. Laugherty the day before the incident?”

“Yes,” O’Leary replied. “But, I don’t think—”

The prosecutor held up his hand.

The judge said, “Just answer the question with a yes or no, sir.”

“Yes.” O’Leary glanced at Ted Ivy slumped over in his chair next to his state-appointed defender. The burns on Ivy’s hands were purple and grotesque. The burns on the side of his face didn’t look as bad, but must have been painful all the same. O’Leary had wanted to say that he didn’t think Ted Ivy started the fire. The prosecutor never gave him a chance.

O’Leary had always questioned Ivy’s conviction. If the man had wanted to destroy Tieg’s place out of spite, why would he have risked his own life trying to save the horses? Why wouldn’t he have taken them out of the barn before setting the fire? The prosecutor claimed it was an arson job gone bad. They claimed he confessed and then recanted. To O’Leary, none of it added up. Not then and not now.

O’Leary had his doubts for sure.

Ivy cared for the horses in that barn, and when O’Leary had left him that day, he wasn’t drunk. Maybe he was tipsy, but he wasn’t drunk. He especially cared for Sucio—Dirty Games—and so did O’Leary. Just thinking about the sweet, handsome gray colt brought emotions up in O’Leary that he had not ever really dealt with. That horse had been a real good boy. Special—and he was special beyond the speed he had, the speed O’Leary was developing with him. He was one of those horses that had a real soulful way about him. Karma reminded O’Leary a lot of Sucio.

Good horses.

Back in court, evidence proved that Ivy was way beyond the legal limit with a blood alcohol level of .18. Supposedly he had gone on to have some drinks with Gershon after O’Leary left, which O’Leary found odd because when he’d chatted it up with Ivy that day, Ivy didn’t seem to care much for Jim Gershon.

“That guy is a jerk, too,” Ivy had said. “He’s trying so hard to get in tight with Tieg and Laugherty. Tells me the other day that I’m a peon. That he’s going to be moving up, and moving up in big ways.”

O’Leary had told all of this to Ivy’s attorney. O’Leary recalled the slimy-looking attorney who represented Ivy. Slicked-back hair, cheap suit, bloodshot eyes—O’Leary now wondered if the attorney hadn’t been paid off by Tieg to do a piss-poor job for Ivy. He wouldn’t doubt it. And now Tieg was dead.

Katarina and Tommy were dead, too.

O’Leary still thought Gershon was a creep.

O’Leary set his iced tea down as the waitress brought his meatloaf plate. He dug in. Excellent!

He ate his food and continued thinking. He knew that Ivy had gotten fifteen to twenty years in prison for the “crime.” If he were out of lockup, O’Leary would have to wonder if Ted Ivy had murdered Tieg. But the guy could only be halfway through his sentence by now.

Somehow Tieg and the kids were all tied together. He shook his head. It was useless trying to figure out the murders. Way above his head. But maybe he could figure out what had happened the night that Tieg’s barn burned and those nineteen horses and one farmhand died. Maybe somehow O’Leary could help Ted Ivy prove his innocence.

O’Leary knew that after the Infinity, he needed to go see Ivy up in prison.

He wrote a few more notes, then heard a voice he recognized at a table nearby. He cringed. Juan Perez.

“You got no idea, man. She’s a wildcat in bed. I tell you what, I am going to do whatever I need to do to win her over.”

O’Leary saw that Perez was talking to his agent—Warren Walker. Another slimy bastard.

“Be careful, hombre. You have a good thing with this. Don’t mess it up,” Walker said.