'Trying to find out who's been killing horses and collecting the insurance money on them, boss.' He added the last word in a dry tone, responding to her arrogant claiming of the Solomon Green stables as her own.
She ignored the not-so-subtle teasing, because she'd heard it so often from her family. What she loved, she claimed; it was as simple as that. She drew her head back deeper into the pillow and gave him a frankly skeptical look. 'Insurance fraud rates a special agent?'
'It does when it involves kidnapping, crossing state lines and murder.' Murder. So she'd been right: Someone was trying to kill them. Had this someone hit her on the head, or had she gained the goose egg by a more mundane method, such as falling? 'What brought you to Solomon Green?'
'A tip.' One corner of his mouth curved slightly. His face was so close to hers that she could see the tiny lines created by the movement, as if he smiled easily. 'Law enforcement agencies couldn't operate without snitches.'
'So you knew Sole Pleasure was in danger?' She didn't like that. Anger began to smolder in her dark eyes. 'Why didn't you tell me? I could have been on guard without causing any suspicion. You didn't have a right to gamble with his life.'
'All of the horses are insured. Any of them could have been targeted. Sole Pleasure should have been their least likely target, because he's so well-known. His death would raise a lot of questions, attract a lot of attention.' He paused, watching her carefully. 'And, until last night, you were on my list of suspects.''
She absorbed that, her only reaction a slight tightening of her mouth. 'How did last night change your mind? What happened?' It was both frustrating and frightening, not being able to remember.
'You came to me for help. You were so angry you could barely speak, and you were scared. You said we had to get Sole Pleasure out of there, and if I didn't want to help, you'd manage on your own.'
'Did I say who was after him?'
He gave a slight shake of his head. 'No. Like I said, you were barely speaking. You wouldn't answer any questions. I thought at the time you were too scared, and once we had the horse safe, I was going to give you a little time to settle down before I started questioning you. Then I noticed how pale and shaky you were, maybe a little shocky from the adrenaline crash. You wanted to go on, but I made you stop here. You conked out as soon as we got in the room.''
That reminded her again of both the interesting question of whether she had undressed herself or he had done it for her and his rather irritating assumption that he could make her do anything. She frowned when she realized that he could back up that assumption with action; her current position proved it. He hadn't hurt her, but physically she was still very much under his control.
Her frown deepened as she grew more annoyed with herself than before. She was doing it again, letting her attention drift. She could keep letting herself get sidetracked by her undeniable attraction to him, or she could keep her mind on the problem at hand. Sole Pleasure's life, and perhaps her own, depended on doing whatever she could to help this man.
There was no question which was most important.
'The Stonichers,' she said slowly. 'They're the only ones who would benefit financially from Sole Pleasure's death, but they'd make more by syndicating him for stud, so killing him doesn't make sense.''
'That's another reason I didn't think he was in danger. I was watching all the other horses. The insurance on them wouldn't be as much, but neither would their deaths cause much of a stir.' 'How did I find you?' she asked. 'Did I come to your room? Call you? Did anyone see us, or did you see anyone?' His room was one of ten, tiny but private, in a long, narrow block building the Stonichers had built specifically to house the employees who were transient and had no other quarters, as well as those who needed to be on-site. As the trainer, Maris was important enough to have her own small three-room cottage on the premises. The foaling man, Mr. Wyse, also had his own quarters, an upstairs apartment in the foaling barn, where he watched the mothers-to-be on video monitors. There were always people around; someone had to have seen them.
'I wasn't in my room. I'd been in the number two barn, checking around, and had just gone out the back door when you rode by on Sole Pleasure. It was dark, so I didn't think you'd seen me, but you stopped and told me I had to help you. The truck and trailer that brought in that little sorrel mare this afternoon were still sitting there, hooked up, so we loaded Sole Plea-sure in and took off. If anyone saw us, I doubt they could even have seen there was a horse in the trailer, much less recognized it as Sole Pleasure.'
It was possible, she thought. The number two barn was where the mares who had been sent to the farm for breeding were stabled. Night came early in December, and the horses were already settled down, the workers relaxing or at supper. The truck and trailer didn't belong to Solomon Green, and everyone knew they had brought in a mare that afternoon, so no one would think anything of the rig leaving, except the driver, who had decided to spend the night and start back at dawn the next day. And Sole Pleasure was exceptionally easy to load; he never made a fuss and, in fact, seemed to enjoy traveling. Loading him wouldn't have taken more than a minute, and then they would have been on their way.
'I didn't have a chance to call my family,' she said, 'but did you call anyone while I was asleep?'
'I went out to a pay phone and let my office know what was going on. They'll try to run interference for us, but they can't be too obvious without blowing the operation. We still don't know who's involved in the ring, unless you've remembered something else in the past few minutes?'
'No,' she said regretfully. 'My last clear memory is of walking down to the stables yesterday afternoon. I know it was after lunch, but I don't know the exact time. What little else I remember is just flashes of being angry, and scared, and running to Pleasure's stall.'
'If you remember anything else, even the smallest detail, tell me immediately. By taking the horse, we've given them the perfect opportunity to kill him and blame it on us, or at least they'll see it that way, since they don't know I'm FBI. They'll be after us hot and heavy, and I need to know who to expect.'
'Where's Pleasure now?' she asked in alarm, putting her hands on his shoulders and pushing. She squirmed under him, trying to slip free of his weight so that she could get up, get dressed and get to the horse. It wasn't like her to be so lax about a horse's comfort and security, and though she had watched MacNeil enough to know that he was conscientious with the animals, the final responsibility was hers.
'Calm down. He's all right.' MacNeil caught her hands, once more holding them down on the pillow. 'I've got him stashed in the woods. No one's going to find him. I couldn't make it easy for them. Leaving him in the parking lot, where anyone could get at him, would have made even a fool suspicious. They're going to have to come to us in order to find him.'
She relaxed against the pillows, reassured about Pleasure's safety. 'All right. What are we going to do now?'
He hesitated. 'My original plan was to find out what you knew, then put you somewhere safe until we had everything settled.'
'Where were you going to put me, in the trailer with Pleasure?' she asked, a slight caustic edge to her voice. 'Well, too bad. I can't tell you what I know, and you need to keep me handy in case I do remember something. You're stuck with me, MacNeil, and you aren't putting me anywhere.'
'There's only one place I'd like to put you,' he said slowly. 'And I already have you there.'
Chapter Four
It wasn't a surprise, given all the evidence at hand.
Pure male possessiveness was in Alex MacNeil's attitude, in every line of his body, staring plainly down at her from those sharp blue eyes.
Maris knew she wasn't mistaken about that look. She had grown up seeing it in her father's eyes every time he looked at her mother, seen the way he stood so close to her, touched her, a subtle alertness in every muscle of his body. She had also seen it innumerable times in her five brothers, first with their girlfriends and later, for four of them, with their wives. It was a look of desire, heated and potent.
