“No,” I murmured. “You don’t owe me anything at all.”
I hugged her tight for a long while. If I could have, I would have cried.
B y the time I returned to the farm, the day was slipping away, the sun pouring molten orange along the flat western horizon. I parked my car and wandered down to the barn.
Irina had Feliki in the cross-ties, dressing her legs with witch hazel and alcohol, and wrapping them for the night.
“How’s tricks?” I asked.
“Is fine,” she said, her concentration on making the right front bandage match perfectly with the left.
“I’m sorry, I haven’t been much help lately,” I said.
She looked up at me and smiled softly. “Is fine, Elena. It doesn’t matter. I know the things that matter.”
I was tempted to ask her the meaning of life.
She moved to the mare’s hind legs and sprayed on the alcohol concoction.
“Have the police yet found the Belgian?” she asked.
“No. It seems he simply vanished with Lorinda Carlton’s rental car. They’ll get him eventually.”
“He pays for his crimes, I think,” Irina said. “I believe in karma. Don’t you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“I think yes.”
She was singing when I left the barn.
Landry had parked himself in a lounge chair by the pool. He was watching the sun set through his shades. I sat down beside his legs and blocked his view.
“People are scum.”
“Not all of them.”
“No. I like you, Estes,” he said. “You’re a good and decent human being.”
“I’m glad you think so. I’m glad I think so too,” I confessed, though I didn’t think he probably understood the depth of what that really meant to me.
Or perhaps he did.
“Trey Hughes rolled on Jade today,” he said. “He says it was Jade’s idea to off the old lady so Trey could inherit. Not his fault the guy followed through with it.”
“Of course not. And what does Jade have to say?”
He just shook his head. “Did you get Molly settled in?”
“Yes. She’ll be all right. I miss her,” I confessed.
Landry reached out and touched my hand. “You’ll be all right too.”
“I know. Yes. I will be. I will be. I am.”
“You are,” he agreed, his hand squeezing mine. “What do you say we get to know each other?”
I smiled the half smile and nodded, and we walked toward the guest house hand in hand.
Life can change in a heartbeat.
BANTAM BOOKS BY TAMI HOAG
Ask your bookseller for titles you may have missed
DUST TO DUST
ASHES TO ASHES
A THIN DARK LINE
GUILTY AS SIN
NIGHT SINS
DARK PARADISE
CRY WOLF
STILL WATERS
LUCKY’S LADY
Copyright
DARK HORSE
A Bantam Book / September 2002
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2002 by Indelible Ink, Inc.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hoag, Tami.
Dark horse / Tami Hoag.
p. cm.
eISBN 0-553-89706-3
1. Ex-police officers—Fiction. 2. Teenage girls—Fiction. 3. Kidnapping—Fiction. 4. Florida—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3558.O333 D37 2002b
813'.54—dc21
2002074583
Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada
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