Hoofprints (Gail McCarthy series) (24 page)

Horse trainers, in general, do not get rich. I'd never questioned Steve's obvious wealth, but the thought occurred to me now. Too late.

I stepped silently, slowly backward into the overhang of the big hay barn and squeezed between two blocks of hay, willing myself to be invisible in the blackness. The men were close to me, too close for any sudden movements. If I ran they'd see me.

I held perfectly still. I could see them from where I stood frozen between the two haystacks, and I could hear them over the pounding of my heart. They were arguing. Steve's voice was raised--easy to hear; Paul Cassidy's replies were low and even, the same tone he'd used with me. I had to strain to make out his words.

"I need someone else to help distribute this stuff. I can't do it all myself." Steve.

"Your idea to take Whitney out. You take care of his contacts." Paul Cassidy.

"Don't you guys understand? We had to do something about Whitney. He threatened to blow the whistle on us if we wouldn't let him quit. He came into the money from that damn trust fund and wanted out. We didn't have a choice." Steve sounded resentful. Paul Cassidy said nothing.

Steve stopped and stood still, not fifty feet from the spot where I huddled. I willed my breath to stop, closed my eyes to hide their gleam, prayed to be a shadow among other shadows.

The two men stood out in the lit driveway; I was a dark spot in the dark barn. Their eyes would see only blackness, I told myself fiercely.

Steve was half-shouting, easy to hear. "Listen, you don't seem to get it. I can sell a little product out of here, and I do. I've got a guy in Watsonville and one up near the University. But I need someone to replace Ed. And I can't go around distributing. I do a lot of business for you. You don't want to jeopardize that."

Cassidy's cold voice: "Don't get the idea you're not expendable. I brought you Whitney's little book. See that you get his regular clients taken care of. Or we'll replace you with someone who will."

No answer from Steve. Just the crunch, crunch of footsteps on gravel. Footsteps moving past my hiding place. One set or two? I couldn't tell, was unwilling to risk opening my eyes until they were well past.

Crunch, crunch, moving away from me. No voices. Two sets, I thought. Slowly I opened my eyes. The men were past me, walking toward the Jaguar, saying nothing to each other. I took a deep breath.

I needed to get out of here, right now. But they were between me and my truck. My truck. Sweet Jesus, my truck. They'd see my truck and know I was here. That truck was my death warrant.

Frantically I stared in the other direction. The driveway ran between the hay barn and the smaller horse barn and dead-ended, as I remembered, at the manure pile down by the creek. If I could get down there, I could cross Soquel Creek, only ankle-deep this time of year, and scramble through the cottonwoods and willows on the other bank. Cherryvale Road was over there somewhere; I had a client who lived at the end of the road.

Calculating desperately, I felt sure that Julie Mobley's place was only ten minutes away from me if I started from here and sprinted. But when to start?

The men were still in easy view; if I could see them, they could spot me. As I watched, Paul Cassidy stepped up to his Jaguar and suddenly froze. Like an animal scenting danger, his head turned toward the stable yard. The stable yard where my truck sat.

He said something to Steve that I couldn't hear and Steve walked forward and looked where he was looking. I could hear Steve's comment perfectly. "It's that damn vet."

Instantly both men were moving away from me, toward my truck. I crouched to run, then hesitated. They were still in full view, but their attention was elsewhere. Should I?

They stopped, answering my question for me. There was a gun in Paul Cassidy's hand, as if it had magically appeared there. I held my breath and froze some more.

Steve made a comment to Cassidy I couldn't hear and Cassidy turned to face him, facing in my direction at the same time. I could hear him clearly.

"You listen and listen good, because I'm not going to say it again. You've been nothing but trouble from the start, you little prick, and I'm getting tired of you. We take this girlie vet out the way I say, because I don't want any loose ends screwing up the damn Whitney thing. That'd make trouble for John, and we don't need that. You"-I could taste the metal in his voice-"we can do without."

Steve didn't reply. My own mind spun wildly. John? Who was John? None of the players in this deal were named John. One of Carl Whitney's sons? Hadn't it been Pete and Jim? So who was John?

"So where would the girlie vet go? In the house?"

Steve hesitated. "No," he said finally. "She might knock on the door, but she wouldn't go in if I didn't answer. She's probably in the barn. I don't know what the hell she's doing here."

Reassuring you that Plumber is taken care of, I thought bitterly. What a stupid mistake.

"It doesn't matter what she's doing here," Paul Cassidy said flatly. "If she hasn't seen us, she doesn't know anything's up. But I'm not taking any more chances. You just go on in the barn and call her name out nice and normal, then stand there and talk to her about whatever. I'll get behind her. Then you're out of it."

"What are you going to do?"

"She can drive me up the road in her pickup. It won't take long. When they find her and her truck in the bottom of one of those canyons, it'll just be another nasty accident."

"What if she doesn't die?"

Cassidy's head moved in a slow shake. I could feel the sense of coiled power that emanated from him. "Jesus Christ. I'll kill her first. I can strangle one and never leave a mark. Then I roll her and the truck off that steep spot a couple of miles up the road. No one will suspect a thing. So get the fuck out of here and find her."

Steve turned and headed toward the front of the barn without another word.

Jesus. Now what? Should I bluff? Walk up to Steve normally and then run past him to my truck? No way in the world that would work. Once Paul Cassidy saw me I was dead.

Hide. I had to hide. Hide until they were both near the front of the barn, and then run. Across the creek, to Julie's. They'd expect me to run for my truck; they'd be watching in that direction. I'd get a chance-I'd have to get a chance-to run out the back.

Paul Cassidy still stood near his Jaguar, gun held loosely in one hand. The orange-y sodium lights cast an ominous glow in the air around him, as though the barn was burning. Cassidy's dark suit was black in the odd light. His head was turning toward me.

Once again I held my breath and shut my eyes. Willed myself a shadow in the shadows of the haystack. Prayed my black pants and dark jacket would disappear in the night.

Cassidy was standing near the back door of the barn, the door I'd walked out of when I'd seen the Jaguar. He was facing away from me, facing down the breezeway toward Steve, his back to the hay barn. He was so close the hair on the back of my neck lifted.

As if my thoughts had pushed him, Paul Cassidy began to walk away from me. Slowly, still looking around. Every sense on the alert. Like a big cat hunting rabbits.

I kept perfectly still. I wanted to wiggle farther back into my crack, but I didn't dare. The slightest noise, I was sure, and he would have me. He stopped when he came to the open stall door, the stall that held the bottles of bute, and stared inside.

My God, what a scam. Phenlybutazone, ground up, is a white powder. What easier, safer way for a horse person to distribute another white powder. All those bottles in Cindy's tack room-those were Ed's stash. And I'd seen them. And Steve knew I'd seen them.

Of course, I hadn't a clue what I'd seen. And I never would have guessed. But Steve panicked. That had to be it. He'd talked to me that night, after he'd discovered I'd found the bodies. He'd called me out to look at Amber's mare, when he knew she didn't have a bowed tendon. Called me out to find out if I'd seen the bute. And I had.

But why did that matter? Because, I reasoned, he'd taken it with him when he picked up Plumber. Out of greed, or to conceal Ed's link with drugs, maybe. Either way, he must have taken it, and he didn't want me to mention that I'd seen it. Didn't want it brought up at all.

It was Steve who'd tried to kill me in Bonny Doon; I was sure of it. Amber must have taken him up to her uncle's cabin at some point or other, probably for a romantic interlude, and Steve had remembered it as a good spot for an ambush. But still, what a stupid thing to do. I'd never have mentioned the bute; it never would have occurred to me.

Paul Cassidy, I thought, staring at his dark form in the lit breezeway, would not have panicked like that. Paul Cassidy was a pro. That was why he was mad at Steve. Killing me was unnecessary.

Had been unnecessary. Not anymore. Now it was vital. And Paul Cassidy wouldn't make a mistake. What could I do? What the hell could I do?

I held still. Thought about the hay barn where I stood. I'd never been inside it before, only seen it from the outside.

It looked like a typical hay barn-a pole barn-no walls, just a roof. Under the roof, the hay was stacked in separate twenty-foot-high stacks, set there by a hay squeeze, a kind of giant forklift. All big outfits handled hay this way-hand stacking was prohibitively time-consuming.

At the moment I was standing wedged between two huge blocks of hay that towered over me, their tops vanishing somewhere near the roof. If I wiggled back through the crack, more toward the center of the barn, so to speak, I could get better hidden. But I would lose my ability to see what was going on, to choose the right moment to dash for the creek. I pictured myself curled in a little ball in a crevice in the haystack, waiting silently, like a child playing hide-and-seek, for discovery.

No way. I'd stay here, take my chances on running, get shot down in action if need be.

The strap of the leather bag dug into my shoulder, reminding me that I was carrying a gun. For a second a wave of hope washed over me, but it died instantly.

I couldn't count on killing Paul Cassidy; I shot only moderately well, and I hadn't practiced since I moved back to Santa Cruz. Unless it was a point-blank situation, I'd be far more likely to miss and get myself killed. Still, it would be good to get the gun out, have it in my hand and ready.

Trouble with that was I didn't dare move. Not at all. Paul Cassidy stood in the barn aisle, looking silently and reflectively around him, quiet and relaxed. Holding perfectly still was my only prayer.

Steve's voice. He was half-running into the barn. "She's not in the house." I could see a silvery object in his hand that was probably a gun.

"She must have seen my car." Paul Cassidy's voice was flat. "She's either hiding or she ran up to the road." He looked at Steve. "Where would she hide?"

Oh shit.

I could see Steve's shoulders move. "Anywhere. She could be in any of these stalls. She wouldn't be afraid of a horse."

Cassidy's head turned slowly, scanning. Like a satellite dish finding the signal, it gradually turned in my direction and stopped. "Or in that hay barn."

Paul Cassidy was quiet for a long moment. "I don't want her getting up to the road," he said at last. "You"-he looked at Steve-"stand out in the driveway, where you can cover her truck and watch this barn. I'll be right back."

He turned fluidly and went out, moving with an effortless grace that belied his formal suit and bulky body. I could feel an immediate rush of relief at the removal of his physical presence.

Steve went out the front and the barn was empty. Could I run?

I didn't know. If Steve could see the side of the barn from where he watched, I didn't dare. Hastily I dug my gun out of the leather bag, took it out of its holster, and gripped the butt with a shaking hand. Then I wiggled farther back into the crack in the haystack.

Sweet dusty alfalfa in my nose, prickles of hay against my cheek. The crack narrowed. I looked up.

The crack was about two feet wide. I put my back against one stack and my feet against the other and began to chimney upward, scrabbling at small comers and holds and wishing I had a hay hook in my hand instead of a gun.

The bales were scratchy and slippery. Normally I might have said I couldn't shimmy up a crack between two twenty-foot haystacks, but, driven by fear, I found it was more than possible. I scrambled and slipped once, near the top. Caught myself by jamming my foot out, almost dropping the gun. My breath was coming in gasps as I heaved myself on top.

Lying flat on my stomach, I wiggled to the edge of the stack. I could see most of the horse barn from here, as well as a short section of the driveway that was just outside the hay barn. Because the partitions that divided the box stalls didn't reach to the roof of the big barn, I could look down into the stalls and see the horses inside: bays, browns, sorrels, an occasional palomino or gray----chomping hay, lying down, resting with one foot cocked. They looked glossy and relaxed under the lights, and I could smell their warm, familiar smell. They were everyday life, real life, the life I had somehow stepped out of. I was in a nightmare; I was prey, hunted by the predator.