Tami Hoag - Dark Horse

"What did you do when Erin came to you with this information?" he asked.

Paris dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. "I got angry. I told her of course it was an accident. Don wouldn't-"

"Despite the fact that Don had on several occasions previous."

"I never believed that was true," she said adamantly. "No one ever proved anything."

"Except that he's clever and adept at evading the consequences of his actions."

Even now, she rose to Jade's defense. "In three years I have never known Don to do one cruel thing to a horse in his care."

"What was Erin's reaction when you didn't believe her?"

"She was upset at first. We talked some more. I told her what I just told you about my experience working for Don. I asked her if she could believe him capable of hurting anyone. I made her feel ashamed for even thinking it."

"So, when Jade told you she had quit later that day-"

"I wasn't that surprised."

"But you didn't try to call her."

"I tried to call her, she didn't answer. I left a message on her voice mail. I went to her apartment a couple of days later, but it looked like she had moved out."

She sighed dramatically and looked at Landry with the big eyes, looking for forgiveness. "I would give anything if I could go back to that day and change what happened."

"Yeah," Landry said. "I'll bet Erin Seabright would too."

I went back to the day it all began. The day Stellar was found dead in his stall. The day Erin Seabright was snatched from the back gates of the Palm Beach Polo Equestrian Center. I laid it all out in black and ecru on sheets of expensive stationery I found in the writing desk. A timeline. When Jade had allegedly purchased the cell phone. When Erin and Chad had argued. When Stellar had been found dead. When Erin had been taken. Everything I knew about the case, I wrote down and I spread the sheets out in order on my bedroom floor.

I had become focused on the idea that everything had come out of the death of Stellar, but looking at the timeline, reflecting on what I knew, I realized that it wasn't so. The kidnapping plan was already in motion when Stellar died. Someone had purchased the disposable cell phone. Someone had lined up the trailer where Erin had been held, had gathered the video and audio equipment, had procured the ketamine to drug Erin and found the van used in the abduction. An elaborate plan with at least two people involved.

I wanted to know everything that had transpired that Sunday, the day of Stellar's death and Erin's abduction. I wanted to know what had gone on between Erin and Jade that day and prior to it. I wanted to know where Trey Hughes had been that day, and Van Zandt.

I looked at my timeline and all the things I did know. No matter how many times I went over it, the simplest explanation was not the best. But I knew plenty of people would have been happy to stop there. Landry among them.

I have never been able to do things the easy way.

I went back into the living room, pulled out the tape of the kidnapping, and shoved it into the VCR.

Erin standing at the back gate, waiting. She watched the van approach. She stood there as the masked man got out. She said, "No!" Then she ran. He grabbed her.

I rewound the tape and played it again.

I thought about the things she had told Landry, and the things she had not told him.

I thought about who had come under suspicion and who had not.

Don Jade was sitting in jail. Bruce Seabright was under a microscope. Tomas Van Zandt, known predator, suspected murderer, was nowhere to be found.

I went back to the writing desk and dug through the mess I'd made to find the piece of paper I had taken from Van Zandt's trash. The flight schedule of horses being shipped to Brussels. The plane was scheduled to leave that night at eleven. I would have to give that information to Landry. And Landry would have to pass it on to Armedgian.

Screw that. I wasn't giving Armedgian anything. If I could find a way to make him look like an idiot, I would. God knew, after the fiasco at The Players, neither Armedgian nor Dugan was going to have anything to do with me anyway.

I decided, when the time came, I would go to the airport and wait for Van Zandt myself, then call in Landry. If Tomas Van Zandt thought he could get away with murder in my country, he could think again.

He had no idea how long he had been in the trunk of the car. Night had become day. He knew that because of the heat. The fucking Florida sun was beating down on the car, the temperature in the trunk becoming unbearable.

He was going to die in this horrible place because of that Russian cunt. Two of them. Their faces blended together in his brain. He went in and out of delirium from the pain and the heat.

He would have tried to break out, but he couldn't move. He didn't know how many of his bones were broken. He would have tried to scream, but the lower half of his face was encased in tape. Many times in the hours past he had feared he would vomit and choke to death.

Like the fat groom. Stupid little whore. She had been ready to have sex with Jade. She should have been willing to have sex with him. Some of his beating was her fault. Kulak had known about her death.

An accident. Not murder. If he had gotten rid of her body the way he had wanted, no one would ever have known. No one would have asked questions about where was Jill. Who in the world could give a shit about that one?

If he hadn't been talked into dumping the body into that manure pit, plenty of what had happened wouldn't have. And maybe he would not now be waiting to die.

He could hear sounds outside the car. Machinery running, men's voices. Russians speaking Russian. Fucking Russians.

Something struck the car, rocking it, then it began to move forward. The noise of the machinery grew louder, like a beast from hell devouring everything in its path. The noise grew deafening-the roaring of the beast, the crunching of metal as the front end of the car collapsed.

He knew what was coming. He knew, and he started screaming, even though the sound could not escape his own head. He screamed the names of every woman who had turned against him.

Women. Stupid, ungrateful bitches. The bane of his existence. Many times he had said women would be the death of him. As always, he was right.

The scene was as nightmarish as anything Landry had ever watched. Erin Seabright, tied spread-eagle on the bed, screaming and crying as one of her captors violated her.

Dugan, Weiss, Dwyer, and he stood in a half circle, arms crossed, watching the tape play, their faces like stone. At the top of the half circle, Bruce Seabright sat on a chair, his complexion the color of putty.

Landry punched the power button off and slammed a fist against the side of the television. He wheeled on Seabright.

"You sick son of a bitch."

"I've never seen that before in my life!" Seabright shouted, coming to his feet.

"Landry…" Dugan warned.

Landry didn't hear him, he didn't hear Weiss' phone ring. He was hardly aware anyone else was in the room. He saw only Bruce Seabright, and he wanted to beat him to death with his bare hands.

"What? You were saving it for later?" Landry said. "Planning your own little film festival?"

Seabright shook his head vehemently. "I don't know how that thing got in my office."

"You put it there," Landry said.

"I didn't! I swear!"

"The kidnappers sent it to you, just like they sent the first one."

"No!"

"And if it had been left up to you, no one would have seen either of them."

"That- that's not true-"

"You lying sack of shit!" Landry shouted in his face.

Dugan tried to step between them, shoving at Landry's chest. "Detective Landry, step back!"