were important either in the social or business communities, or more shadowy groupings about which Roy had his suspicions, and kept them to himself-criminal, intelligence, who knew what they were, some of them? His business was to deliver as promised, and keep his mouth shut.
There was a brief exchange between the lady and the chauffeur in French, none of which Roy followed, but none of it sounded particularly hostile. The collies were bounding out of the car again, and the lady caught them by their leashes and kept them from running off. 'Over this way,' she said. 'Here is your message. Jacques? Ah, Jacques, void le marmaille disponable… fe pouvre faiblard.'
Roy turned and found himself looking at a beige VW- Mercedes-the kind they used here a lot for taxis-with its trunk open, and standing near it, the biggest man he thought he had ever seen, easily seven feet tall, and not skinny, either, but a veritable giant with cropped hair, a dark face, a dark coat. Roy walked over to the car, not much liking the way this was going. If this guy's the driver, Roy thought, he must get pretty cramped behind the wheel..
Whether he was the driver or not, Roy never found out, for the next thing he knew, the man had grabbed him by the shoulders and whirled him around. The chauffeur came from behind, grabbed Roy's wrists, and before he even had a chance to struggle, pulled them around behind him, crossed, and snugged a pair of readybinders tight around them. The lady stepped forward and slipped the note she had written into Roy's breast pocket, inside his winter jacket. For just a moment while she was close, he got a whiff of her perfume, a fragrance dark and sweet. And the next moment, struggling-though it was too late now-Roy was lifted up into the air without an effort by that big man and folded ungently down into the Mercedes's trunk… and the lid of the trunk closed above him, leaving him in complete darkness.
It was hard to know how long the ride lasted. Roy lay there gulping again and again, ineffectively, his mouth dry with fear as the engine started and the car started to move. He tried to keep his wits about him, but it was hard. No matter what anyone said, no matter how he tried to convince himself otherwise, Roy knew that no one who stuffed you into the trunk of a car and drove off was very likely to want you to tell anybody about it afterward.
For what must have been an hour or so, in ever- escalating terror, Roy could do nothing but lie there, unable to move much, and afraid to try to thump or bang inside the trunk to attract attention, for fear that it should make whatever bad thing was about to happen, happen even faster. The blackness was full of the smell of tire irons and old gasoline spills and the cheap carpet they put inside car trunks, and lying there with his face against the harsh carpet, Roy tried to do a hundred things. He tried to think of a way out, to make a plan, even tried to pray and found that he couldn't even do that. The fear was just too great. And it was almost a relief when finally the car stopped, and he heard the driver's side door open, and close, and after a moment, the door of the trunk opened. Now at last it's over…
He looked up into the darkness, surprised. Somehow he had expected there would be daylight. What light there was was very faint, so that Roy saw only the faintest glint of it, bluish, off the blued-metal muzzle of what the driver held: and all relief and anger fled together in one last huge wash of fear. Suddenly everything was laid out plain before him, a long road that ended here and now, this second. Roy wished with all his heart that yesterday, or one of the days before, when there had still seemed to be endless tomorrows ahead, he had called his mother and just told her he was alive, and not to worry, so that if nothing else, she could have stopped wondering what had happened to him.
She'd never know now…
Chapter 2
The sun was extremely hot on the back of Megan O'Malley's neck as she rode in a careful circle, eyes ahead of her, taking care about how she sat in the saddle as she came around toward the painted white top rail of the fence around the arena-a sight which, after three straight hours of this, was now causing her a mixture of apprehension and disgust. Her muscles ached, but that was the least of her problems. The biggest problem on her mind right now was underneath her, a problem called Alistair's Kingstown Walk Softly, known to his friends as Buddy, and to his detractors-of whom Megan was rapidly becoming one-as the Big Stick.*
This was because he seemed to have a big stick, ramrod, or other such straight and inflexible implement stuck right down the middle of his spine. In a horse being trained for dressage-the art of riding a horse with seemingly effortless grace through complex steps and paces in the showring-this made for a problem, since one of the moves required of even beginners was to walk or canter gracefully and evenly in a circle. And at the moment Buddy didn't seem willing to bend his body into the slightest kind of curve. Nor was he terribly interested in walking in circles, either. Every time he got near one of the fence rails in the dressage arena, he tried to break out of the circle and follow it straight on.
Now they were approaching the rail again, moving softly through the sawdust in what for the moment was a tolerable enough curve. Oh, please just do it right this time, just once, Megan thought, more in despair than in any hope that it would actually happen. She concentrated on keeping her seat correct and looking straight ahead, rather than down between the brainless creature's ears at the spot where she would love to take a club and whack him, and at just the right moment shifted her weight in the saddle just fractionally to the right, just so, the signal for Buddy to turn. Megan knew that she was doing it right, she knew it, and sure enough he altered his angle toward the rail just enough, and began to make the curve, continuing the circle-and then at the point when he should have started to curve away, took another step straight, and another, and another-
Megan couldn't stand it. She reined him in and just sat there, looking around the arena, trying to find the patience to keep from saying all kinds of horrible things. Buddy stood there, chewing reflectively on his bit and looking completely unconcerned.
'What happened?' Wilma said.
'You saw! He just broke out of circle and started to go straight.'
'You shifted-'
'I didn't! Not the wrong way, anyway.' She let out a long exasperated breath, glancing around the sunny ring. 'I swear,' Megan said, 'if I owned him, I'd sell this dumb cluck off to Amtrak and let them convert him for rails. He'd be more use as part of a freight train.'
Leaning against the rails on the far side of the arena, Wilma snickered, then pushed off and walked over to her. Megan glanced around the arena, a duplicate of the one where they would be riding at Potomac Valley over the weekend-a rectangle sixty meters long and forty meters wide, surrounded by white three-rail fencing a meter and a half high. Under the downpouring sunshine, covered bleachers where all too many spectators would be sitting ran down both 'long' sides of the rectangle. And in front of those spectators she and Wilma would both ride out, one at a time, on Buddy, to do their Level 3 routines…
And die horribly, because the horse has suddenly become a waste of time, Megan thought. But she didn't say it out loud. There was still a chance of a miracle, or that something had gone wrong here that wasn't wrong in the real world.
Wilma came over to her, looked Buddy over. It was Megan's considered opinion that Wilma Christensen had more brains, as regarded matters equine, than any other rider she'd met since she got started sitting on top of horses. Wilma seemed to think good things about Megan, too. At least, they had hit it off instantly when they'd met a few years back, though they made something of an odd pair-Wilma short and thin compared to Megan's height and somewhat athletic build, Wilma blond and fair where Megan was tanned and brown. In any case, they had become inseparable at riding school, and later it had seemed obvious that they would start eventing together. But neither of us thought we'd wind up with a horse who's overnight turned into an idiot, Megan thought, and a 'model' who seems to be doing the same thing…
Megan wondered, though, if Wilma was having the same kind of thoughts as she patted Buddy and walked around him, looking him over. 'Are you sure you're not giving him some other kind of signal besides the weight shift?'
'I am not giving the big stupid lump any signal except that I want him to go in a circle,' Megan said, annoyed, 'that being probably one of the first things that a dressage animal ever learns, and which he knew perfectly well how to do until about a month and a half ago, except that now he doesn't. He just glues himself to the rail and goes
