At Risk Read Online Free Page A

had been grossly out of position, simply struggling to
stay on. The horse had a heart of gold, and now he was heading down
a frightening path to annihilation.
    I braced my hands against the wall and
watched the water swirl down the drain, thinking I could have met
the same fate.
    I stayed in the shower until the hot water
ran cold.
    * * *
    I spent most of the day in bed, listening to
music and trying not to think. Not about the horses, or the men, or
what they had done. Around four in the afternoon, I got the coffee
machine going, made some toast, and sat on one of the barstools. I
slid a magazine across the counter and leafed through the pages
until I came to an article on pastern lameness.
    Behind me, someone banged on the kitchen
door. My hand flinched, and coffee sloshed over my fingers and
spread across the page.
    "Damn."
    I wiped my hand on my sweats and walked
across the cold white tiles. My landlord was standing on the
doormat, blowing on his hands and shifting his weight from one foot
to the other.
    He looked up when the door creaked open. "Oh,
man."
    "Hi, Greg."
    He closed his mouth with a snap. "Marty said
you'd tangled with them, but I didn't think . . ."
    Cold air and a couple of snowflakes eddied in
through the open door. I backed up. "Come in."
    He stepped into the kitchen and stood just
inside the door while the snow on his boots melted and formed an
irregular brown puddle on the tile.
    "Susan knew something was up," he said. "She
saw someone drop off your truck Sunday afternoon and thought that
was kind of weird, especially when we didn't see any lights on last
night. You know how she is, the motherly, overprotective type."
    Motherly would not have been my first choice
when describing his wife. Beautiful, yes. And sexy. Motherly? No
way.
    "Then Foxdale's my first stop this morning,
and I hear about the horses." He ran his fingers through his light
brown hair. "What happened?"
    As I told him, I thought that I should have
handled the situation differently. Should have gone back to the
truck and driven somewhere else to call the police. Put up a better
fight. Hell, I didn't put up any fight.
    Greg rubbed the back of his neck. "Jesus. Are
you all right?"
    "Yeah, I'm okay." I gestured to the coffee
pot. "Want some?"
    He glanced at his watch. For answer, he
opened the cabinet door closest to the phone.
    "Next one over," I said.
    Greg let the door thump closed and opened the
one beside it. He took down a mug and filled it, then sat on one of
the stools and rested his elbows on the counter. He had the
loose-limbed build of a basketball player, and at six-foot-three,
he had a good three inches on me. He kept his hair layered and long
in the back, and he had what many considered Hollywood good looks.
But being a horse vet was about as far from glamour as it got. He'd
once told me he might have reconsidered his career choice if he'd
realized it meant spending half the day with his arm buried to the
shoulder in a horse's rectum.
    "What they did," Greg said. "I've been
thinking about it all day."
    "How's Sprite's eye?"
    Greg raised his eyebrows. "You sure like to
change the subject, don't you?"
    I smiled.
    "The cornea's healed," he said. "No thanks to
your crew. No one's bothered to medicate it. You must've treated it
aggressively in the beginning, like I told you."
    "Yeah, I did."
    He unbuttoned his coat and cupped his fingers
around the mug. "Doesn't anyone over there do medications besides
you?"
    "No."
    "Two hundred horses, and no one else does
medications?" Greg shook his head. "What are they going to do when
you go on vacation?"
    "You assume a great deal."
    He shot me an amused glance, then took a
tentative sip of his coffee.
    I sighed. "Nobody else takes the initiative,
and management cuts corners wherever they can, whenever they can.
As long as the boarders won't notice." I dropped two more slices
into the toaster. "How often do horses get stolen around here,
anyway?"
    "I'd bet it's more prevalent than any of