Tami Hoag - Dark Horse

I scuttled ahead like a crab, reaching for the door across the way to pull myself up. The horse came out of the stall behind me like a rodeo bronc, a raw bellow coming from it as it bucked and kicked out at me. I felt the air whoosh past my ear as the hoof just missed its mark.

Before I could start to turn around, a smelly, suffocating blackness engulfed my head and upper body and I was shoved forward against a stall. I tried to claw at the blanket, but couldn't get my arms up. I wanted air. I wanted what little light there was. I wanted to be free to fight my assailant, who jerked me backward, then sideways, one way and then the other.

Dizziness swirled through my head and I staggered and stumbled and went down on one knee. Then something struck hard, hitting me across the back with enough force to make me see stars.

On the third blow I fell forward and lay still. My breath was a hot rasp in the shallowest part of my lungs. I couldn't hear anything but a roaring in my head, and I wondered if I would know what was happening before the next loose horse ran over me, crushing me beneath its hooves. I tried to push myself up and couldn't. The messages scattered somewhere between my brain and my nerve pathways. Pain kicked me in the back and I choked and coughed, needing air, unable to take a deep breath.

A moment passed. No horses trampled me. No pitchfork impaled me. I figured my attacker had run, which left me in a very bad place at a very bad time. Horses were running loose. If someone came rushing into this barn and found me…

I tried again to gather my strength and managed to shove the horse blanket off my head. Gulping air, fighting nausea, I grabbed hold of the stall door and dragged myself to my feet. Dizzy, the ground seeming to pitch beneath me, I stumbled out the back of the tent and fell down again.

The Maglite lay on the ground where it had landed when the first horse had hit me, its beam a yellow beacon in the dark. I scooped it up, grabbed hold of a tent rope, and pulled myself up.

Horses were running in the cleared ground down the slope. Some were running between this tent and the next. The wind was blowing harder, carrying the first pelting drops of rain. I heard someone shout in the distance. Time to go.

I stepped inside the tent just far enough to flick the beam across the front of an open stall.

In Case of Emergency Phone Michael Berne…

"Don't move. Drop the flashlight."

The voice came from behind me on a beam of light that spilled around my shoulders. I kept the Maglite in my hand, but held my arms away from my body.

"I heard a commotion," I said, turning slightly. "Someone was in here opening stall doors."

"Yeah, right," he said sarcastically. "Guess who. Drop the flashlight."

"It wasn't me," I said, turning a little more. "I tried to stop them. I've got the bruises to prove it."

"I'm not gonna tell you again, lady. Drop the flashlight."

"I want to see who you are. How do I know you're not the person who did this?"

"I'm with security."

I didn't find that reassuring. Security for the show grounds was contracted out to a private company that lowballed the bid for the job. The staff was probably as reliable and well trained as the people who let lunatics get on commercial airliners with guns and knives. For all I knew, half of them were convicted felons. With my back to him, I couldn't be sure he was even wearing the uniform.

"Let me see you."

He huffed an impatient sigh. Before he could say no, I turned around and hit him full in the face with the beam from the Maglite.

I noted his clothes second. I noted his gun first.

"Is that part of the uniform?" I asked.

"It's part of my uniform." He made a motion with it. "Enough with the questions. Cut the light and give it to me. Let's go."

I did as instructed, more than willing to get out in the open where I knew there were other people around. I considered and rejected the idea of making a break for it. I didn't want people looking for me, my description and sketch on the front page of the newspaper. Nor did I want to get shot in the back. Playing along for the moment could offer an opportunity to learn something.

Outside, people were calling, horses were whinnying. I could hear hoofbeats on the hard-packed road. The guard herded me to a golf cart parked on the side of tent nineteen-Jade's barn.

I wondered how long the cart had been parked there. I wondered how easy it would be to buy a guy like this to open some stall doors. Working nights for peanuts guarding horses worth more than the average man would make in a lifetime might alter a person's perspective of right and wrong.

I slid onto the passenger's side of the bench seat, the seat wet and slippery as the rain came harder. The guard kept his gun in his left hand as he started the cart and backed it around. I shifted positions, turning slightly toward him, and surreptitiously touched the Glock, still secure in the back of my jeans, beneath my jacket and turtleneck.

"Where are we going?"

He didn't answer. A walkie-talkie crackled on his belt. Other guards radioing about the loose horses. He didn't get on the air to tell anyone he'd apprehended me. I didn't like that. We started down the road toward the main part of the show grounds, a ghost town at two in the morning.

"I'll want to speak to your supervisor," I said with authority. "And someone will need to call Detective James Landry with the Sheriff's Office."

That turned his head.

"Why?"

I took my turn not answering. Let him wonder. We passed other guards, other people running through the rain to join in the fun of trying to catch half a dozen hot-blooded horses drunk on freedom.

We drove through the maze of tents and down a row of deserted retail shops. The rain came now in sheets. We drove farther and farther away from any source of help. My heart rate increased a beat. Adrenaline was like a narcotic in my bloodstream, the prospect of danger intoxicating and exciting. I stared at the security guard and wondered what he would think if he knew that. Most people would find it disturbing.

He pulled the golf cart alongside one of the big trailers that housed the various show grounds management offices and cut the engine. We clattered up the metal stairs and the guard ushered me inside. A heavyset man stood beside a metal desk, listening to the noise coming over a walkie-talkie the size of a brick. He had a throat like a bullfrog: a sack of flesh wider than his head, spilling over the collar of his shirt. He wore the blue security uniform too, with a couple of extra pins on the chest. Decorated for meritorious ass-sitting and delegating above and beyond the call, I guessed. He scowled at me as I stood dripping water all over the floor.

"She's the one," the guard said. "I caught her opening stall doors."

I looked him in the face and said with just enough point to make my meaning crystal clear: "Any more little surprises like that in your pocket?"

He had stuffed the gun. I could see him struggle with the notion that he'd blown it showing me the thing. I had something to use against him. He wasn't supposed to be carrying on the job. He probably didn't have a permit for it either. If that was true and I reported him to the police, there was a good chance he'd lose his job at the very least. I could see on his face all these things were just now occurring to him.

If he'd been overly bright he wouldn't have been working dog watch in a rent-a-cop uniform.

"You caught me standing in a barn with a flashlight," I said. "I was trying to help. Same as you."

"You got something against Michael Berne?" the bullfrog asked. He had the thick drawl of a panhandle Floridian, where the Sunshine State and the Deep South rub loins, as it were.

"I've never met Michael Berne, though I did see him having a loud, threatening argument with Don Jade this morning. You might want to find out where Mr. Jade is right now."