Summer Games (27 page)

Thorne was in his customary spot near the motor home’s door. With his straw cowboy hat pulled low and his legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles, he looked as lazy as a lizard sleeping in the sun. Yet his eyes were alert and wide open in the shadow of the hat brim. Despite the heat of the sun, he wore a lightweight jacket.

“Morning, Mr. Elliot.”

“Morning, Thorne. I’ll be with the U.S. Equestrian Team today.”

“Yes suh.” Thorne’s glance switched to Raine. “Good morning, Miss Smith. Captain Jon said to tell you that you’re scheduled for an hour later than usual.”

“Er, thank you.” She knew she was blushing, but was helpless to stop it. Women her age spent the night with men all the time and no one blushed over it.

But it was new to her, and it showed.

“You going to bring that red devil out here for another combing?” Thorne asked.

She smiled despite her embarrassment. “Red devil, huh? No, I’ll groom him in his stall.”

“Now, that’s a shame,” Thorne drawled, letting the languid southern syllables roll off his tongue. “I was looking forward to seeing Mr. Elliot get bit by something meaner than he is.”

Laughing, she shook her head. “He’s not that mean.”

“Me or Dev?” Cord asked, smiling.

“I’d recommend the Fifth Amendment for that question, Miss Smith,” Thorne said smoothly.

“Sold.” She smiled widely at Thorne, her embarrassment forgotten.

Cord stepped to her left side, put his hand at her elbow, and began walking toward the stables. After a few steps he dropped behind her, turned, and said casually, “Thorne?”

Raine turned around, too. She watched both men, caught by something hidden just beneath the calm surface of Cord’s voice.

“Yes suh?”

Cord’s thumb gestured carelessly at the cloudless sky. “Have you noticed? It’s a blue day today.”

Thorne changed subtly, coming fully alert without shifting his position in the least. “I hear you, suh.”

Just as she started to ask Cord if he meant Delta Blue, she noticed two people coming out of the shadows between the rows of stalls. The couple was close enough to have overheard everything that she, Cord, and Thorne had said. She waited until the people had passed beyond the range of her voice before she turned back to Cord. He was watching her with narrow, knowing eyes.

“You’re Blue’s daughter, all right,” he said approvingly. “Nobody needs to tell you when to talk and when to shut up.”

“Would that be Delta Blue you’re referring to?” she asked sweetly. “As in the color of the sky today?”

He smiled, but it wasn’t a comforting gesture. Once again he stepped around her, moving to her left side. They set off for the stables again. While they walked, she gave him curious sideways glances. From the first time she had encountered Cord in the hills outside Rancho Santa Fe, he preferred to walk at her left side.

Always.

“Is there something wrong with my right side?” she asked.

He looked blankly at her.

“You keep moving to my left side,” she pointed out.

“I’m left-handed.”

“So?”

“So my holster is positioned for a left-hand draw.”

“Oh,” she said numbly, wishing she hadn’t asked. “My God. How can you stand it?”

“Being left-handed?” he asked, deliberately misunderstanding her question.

“Living like you do. Always having to remember to look around before you say anything, making sure that you can’t be overheard. Always having to plan your movements so that your left hand is free to grab the gun you always wear.”

“Do you have to remember each one of the hundred little things that help you to keep your seat on Dev?”

“If I did, I’d spend all of my time in the dirt. By now, keeping my seat is a reflex.”

“Precisely.” His voice was neutral despite the bleak blaze of anger in his eyes. “Not thought. Reflex.”

She knew him well enough to sense the anger coiled just beneath his control. She didn’t want to pry at it; there was no reason to spoil what little time they had together. She had regretted her question the moment it was out of her mouth.

“I’m sorry. I have no right to judge your choices.”

He gave her a sideways look. She had every right, but not now. Not when it was his job to protect her.

While they walked toward Dev’s stable row, Raine was careful to keep the conversation away from anything related to Cord’s work. She talked about tack and Dev’s leg bandages, oat hay versus alfalfa hay, the benefits and drawbacks of certain kinds of horseshoes for jumping versus speed. He asked questions with a depth of understanding that surprised her. He was truly listening to what she said.

Yet despite his very real attention to her words, his eyes were never still. He was always measuring the people lounging against stable walls or carrying feed up the row, the people who walked horses or groomed them or simply stood with them in the dappled shade of trees. He looked at roof lines and deep shadows, and knew instantly if someone was coming up behind him.

And he did it all while exchanging greetings with other people and carrying on a conversation with her. No fuss. No dramatics. Just years of reflexes sharpened in the cold world beyond the castle walls.

A door banged open across the yard, startling Raine. Before she could do anything more than register the fact of an unexpected noise, Cord was between her and the sound.

Even as his left hand swept beneath his jacket and closed over the butt of his gun, he recognized that the source of the sound was harmless, a stall door banging in the wind. He stepped back into place at her side as though nothing had happened. And to him, nothing had.

She shivered, feeling the lethal cold of that other world blowing across her neck. For a horrible instant she hadn’t known whether the sound was harmless or deadly, whether to freeze or run, scream or stay silent.

But Cord had known.

His fingers laced between her. “Don’t worry, love,” he said softly. “I’m as good at my job as you are at yours.”

Her fingers tightened in his. She was very glad to know that he was close by. The thought of being a target had settled in her like winter. She suddenly had a gut understanding of why people built high castles and higher walls and barred all gates against the icy darkness beyond.

The cold was so great.

The fire was so fragile.

And it was so unfair to ask a man like Cord to live out there alone until he froze, never having known warmth.

The radiophone squealed chillingly, an electronic scream in the deep three A.M. silence. Even as Raine sat upright, heart pounding, Cord shot out of bed. In two strides he was on the phone. Soft static and harsh words filled the room.

“Bomb threat at the stables. Smoke spotted. They’re moving horses now.”

She leaped for her clothes before the last word faded into Cord’s vicious curse. He turned, reaching for his jeans, and saw her dressing hurriedly.

“Stay here,” he snapped. “Thorne will guard you.”

She ignored him and grabbed the first shirt she could find. His. She threw it toward him and found her own.

He let the shirt sail right past him. His fingers locked around her wrist. “You’re staying here.”

She spun to face him. “No,” she said curtly, buttoning her blouse one-handed. “With all the commotion, Dev will be an inch away from going ballistic. If anyone but me tries to lead him out of his stall, there will be bloody hell to pay.”

Cord didn’t like it, but he knew it was true. He dropped her wrist. Ignoring his shirt, he scooped up his holster, pulled out the gun, checked its load with a few practiced motions, and secured the gun in the holster. He clipped it to his belt at the small of his back. The whole process took no more than five seconds.

He was reaching for his boots in the darkness when a stallion’s savage scream ripped through the night.

“Dev,” Raine cried, leaping for the door.

As fast as she moved, Cord was faster. He grabbed her and held her struggling against his hip while he searched the television screens that showed the area around the trailer. Some of the cameras on the trailer were immune to darkness. They showed nothing but shadow and the heat signature of distant streetlights. No radiation from a warm body as big as a man.

Fingers locked around Raine’s upper arm, Cord headed for the outside door. Standing to the side, forcing her to do so as well, he opened the door. With a single sweeping glance, he checked the moonlight, shadows, and occasional pools of yellow lamplight for anything that shouldn’t be there. All he saw was Thorne running toward him. No one else moved or crouched in ambush.

“Let’s go,” Cord said curtly.

He leaped to the ground and landed running. She was a half step behind him.

Dev screamed again, shrill and wild, a sound of feral rage.

Driven by adrenaline and fear, Raine ran flat out, her bare feet pale blurs against the darker ground. She had to get to Dev before he went crazy with a horse’s instinctive fear of fire. If he couldn’t be kept calm, he might injure himself.

Or kill someone. It was there in his scream, fear and fury united in a mindless savagery.

Praying silently, she ran as fast as she could. She wasn’t even aware of Cord running beside her, his eyes as feral as the stallion’s cry. She ran without feeling the hard ground or the stones that bruised her feet. She ran without hearing herself call Dev’s name with each breath in a litany of hope and fear.

Smoke darkened lamplight into Halloween orange. Other horses were neighing now, frightened by the scent of smoke. Instincts at red alert, they kicked against their stalls and whinnied constantly, wanting to flee their oldest enemy—fire.

Raine sprinted heedlessly through the night, dodging the men and horses that were streaming out of the stable rows. All around her, men cursed and horses shied violently, their eyes rolling white, sensitive as horses always are to equine and human emotion. Especially fear.

Dev’s scream was a black wildfire raging through the stables, igniting panic despite everyone’s efforts to stay calm. It was important to move swiftly but without fright, to speak softly to the nervous animals as they were led out of familiar stalls into the unfamiliar, threatening darkness.

Thick, oily smoke billowed blackly toward the moon. As Cord and Raine hurtled around the corner leading to Dev’s stable row, the stallion’s chilling scream sounded again. Captain Jon’s slight figure darted through smoke to open Dev’s stall door.

The stallion reared and plunged violently, lashing out with deadly front feet. His mouth was wide open, screaming rage, and his ears lay flat on his skull. Captain Jon managed to hold onto the lead rope for one lunge, two; then the rope whipped through his gloved hands and Dev exploded out of the smoky stall like a devil coming out of hell.

Blind with rage and fear, wholly out of control, the stallion thundered straight for Raine and Cord.

Raine’s first thought was to grab a double handful of mane and swing up on the stallion’s back as he raced by. She discarded the idea as fast as it came. Dev was already in full stride. He would yank her arms right out of their sockets if she tried to mount him from a standing start.

Her only hope was the wildly whipping lead rope. If she could grab it and hang on long enough to slow Dev, she could mount and prevent him from injuring himself or someone else in his panicked flight. Smoothly she pivoted, preparing to run alongside Dev as she held onto the lead rope.

Cord saw it all as though in slow motion. Smoke. Captain Jon. Lead rope. Blood-bay stallion rearing. Dev raging free into the night with the white rope snapping alongside, ready to tangle in the stallion’s pounding feet and bring him down in a pile of mangled legs and agony. Raine nearby, reaching out, ready to grab the deadly rope when Dev hurtled by. Thorne running up behind them.

Cord’s hands flashed out. Before Raine knew what had happened, she was thrown into Thorne’s arms.

“Get her out of here,” Cord said flatly.

In a heartbeat she turned into a raging, clawing fury that Thorne simply, efficiently overwhelmed. When she knew she couldn’t get away, she stopped struggling and watched her stallion, closer with every long stride he took.

“Dev!” she cried futilely.

“Easy, ma’am. Mr. Elliot will take care of that damned red devil.”

And if he didn’t, Thorne would. He yanked his gun out of his holster and waited.

Cord didn’t even glance away from the stallion charging toward him. He had no doubt about the outcome of any physical contest between Thorne and a woman who knew nothing about unarmed combat.

He also had no doubt that Thorne had drawn his gun. If Cord was lucky and strong enough, the gun wouldn’t have to be fired. If he wasn’t . . .

It was Cord’s predatory stillness that warned Raine of what he was going to do. A terrible new fear exploded in her, crowding out the old. “Cord, no! Dev will kill you!”

He never looked away from the shadow barreling toward him. Adrenaline flooded him, wiping out everything but the stallion racing out of the darkness straight at him. As always in combat, time slowed for Cord until each heartbeat seemed to take a minute. Ice-pale eyes measured distance and velocity.

Dev was in full flight, steel-shod hooves pounding out a drumroll of fear, muscles bunching and sliding, ears flattened.

Thirty feet away. Twenty.

Ten.

Muscles flexed, body poised, Cord waited.

Five.

Now.

His fingers sank into the long mane. He sprang off the ground like a cougar just before the stallion’s momentum would have ripped his hands from the flying mane. A rider’s powerful legs clamped around Dev’s barrel. Cord crouched low over the stallion’s neck, fishing for the lead rope that whipped dangerously around the horse’s feet.

The stallion ran like unleashed hell, too caught up in fear and sudden freedom to register the presence of an unfamiliar weight on his back. Cord grabbed the lead rope and settled deeply into the stallion’s stride, letting reflexes ingrained by years on horseback take over.

Automatically he coiled the long rope to keep it away from Dev’s legs. Then Cord tightened his legs around the horse’s muscular barrel and began pulling on the rope. The special halter closed over Dev’s flaring nostrils, cutting down the flow of air.