At Risk Read online

  * * *

  I was rolling downhill in a clanging metal drum, and my head was spinning. When I opened my eyes, memory returned along with a flood of pain. I was half-sitting, half-lying in a horse trailer, and I wasn't alone. Seven horses were crammed into a trailer designed for six, and I was in danger of being stepped on.

  I shifted. Pain splintered through my side and snatched the breath from my lungs. Busted ribs. I'd done it before and knew the drill. I closed my eyes. I couldn't move anyway. My hands had been tied behind my back, latched together around the metal post that formed the lower portion of the stall divider.

  The metal was cold. I was cold, stiff.

  I pushed myself into a sitting position and rested my head against the post. The horse behind me snorted, and I realized that the big gray was Gulf Coast. One of my favorites. Lines of worry crinkled the skin above his eyes, and he was standing so close, his warm breath trickled through my hair.

  "That's a good boy, Shrimpy. Everything's going to be all right," I whispered. He lowered his head in response to my voice and fluttered his nostrils. In the next stall, Steel, an open jumper, leaned against the stall partition. A good bit of white shone round his eyes--never a good sign--and his skin was stretched taut over tense muscles. His coat was patchy with sweat. Steam curled off his chest and neck and rose toward the ceiling, back lit by the only overhead light fixture in the trailer that wasn't broken.

  As I listened to the whine of tires on smooth asphalt, I realized I hurt in more places than I should have. More places than I recalled taking a hit. Then I remembered the crack about getting in a workout.

  Damn him.

  Why had they taken me, anyway? Why hadn't they simply left me in the arena? Something to do with my truck. Did that mean they knew me well enough to know that I drove a truck, or had they just seen me pull in off the road? I had no idea.

  One thing was certain, they hadn't kidnapped me to collect a ransom. Though my father had a ton of money, few people knew I was the son of Robert J. Cline, MD, cardiovascular surgeon extraordinare. One of Johns Hopkins' elite superstars. If that had been their plan, they wouldn't have bothered with the horses. And they couldn't have known I would show up at the farm in the middle of the night. But if they wanted to kill me, why not just do it while I lay helpless on the arena floor?

  I decided I didn't want to hang around and find out. I yanked at whatever was binding my wrists. The horse across from me lowered his head and pawed the floor, and Steel, who was high-strung to begin with, pulled against his chains. They wouldn't hold him if he lost it, and a horse, panic-stricken and loose in the trailer, I did not need.

  I reconsidered my options. What was knotted around my wrists felt like nothing more than baling twine, which I knew I could break under normal circumstances. But this was anything but normal. Between the twine and the cold, I had already lost feeling in my fingers. I jammed my fingertips into the half-inch space between the rubber matting that covered the floor and the metal post, hoping to find a way to dismantle the partition. I couldn't find a bolt to unfasten or a lever or mechanism of any sort.

  I wanted out of that trailer more than I had wanted anything in my life. I drew my feet beneath me, braced my back against the post, and pushed with my legs. My side felt like it was splitting open. I clenched my teeth, gripped the post with both hands to steady myself, and made it to my feet.

  I stood there shaking and sweating, swallowing against a wave of nausea. After a minute or two, I braced my legs, and when I thought I wouldn't be thrown off balance by the trailer's movement, I twisted around and examined the partition. It was made to be dismantled, but not by someone tied up in the dark with hands stiff from the cold.

  The trailer lurched around a bend, and I went down on my knees. The truck slowed to a stop. I held my breath and listened. No doors opened. No one came to see if I was awake, and in a moment, the truck pulled off, swept into a wide turn, and picked up speed. I exhaled slowly as the vibrations in the floorboards increased, and the metal shell of the trailer rattled so loudly, it was hard to think. We had left the highway.

  I spread my wrists and got to work on the twine.

  Ten minutes into it, one of the fibers gave way and then another, so that when they finally separated, I overbalanced and crashed against the horse tied in the aisle. I patted his shoulder, then ducked under his neck and squeezed around to the other side. Most older trailers have emergency exits, and this one was no exception. I gripped the lever that latched the door into place and pushed upwards. It was jammed, frozen with rust and disuse. I crouched down, put all my weight behind it, and tried again.

  Without warning, the lever snapped off.

  I dropped it on the floor, leaned against the cold metal wall, and felt the vibrations go right through me. If I didn't get out, I was dead. I pushed myself upright and studied the door. It had been damaged in the past and no longer hung flush with the opening. Through a crack, I saw that the hinges were simply bolts slid into grooves on the trailer's frame. With a tool of some sort, I could push the bolts up and out. But what tool? I looked at the lever lying at my feet.

  I wedged it into the gap and pushed upward. The bolt moved a quarter of an inch. Half an inch. I pushed harder. The lever slipped and the door slid back into its original position. I repositioned the lever and tried again with the same result. After a third unsuccessful try, I looked for another way out. All the exits were locked on the outside, and metal bars had been welded across the windows.

  As I passed the side door used for loading the horses, the toe of my boot knocked against something. It rolled across the rubber mat and wedged in the angle where the wall meets the floor. I slid my fingers into the narrow groove and felt the rounded metal. Picking it up, I held it to the light and thought I had a chance after all.

  The old bolt, with part of its anchoring chain still attached, had once been part of a stall partition. It was rough and discolored with rust, but it was narrow enough to do the job. I used it along with the broken lever and, after a few false starts, worked the door up and out of its hinges. Before I could get hold of it, the door swung away from the trailer.

  "Oh, shit."

  Even thought it was still dark, if they were paying any attention at all, they would see the escape door, which now hung at an odd angle over the speeding roadway. I reached out and grabbed the lower edge, but the weight of the door caused the whole thing to break off and crash onto the road.

  The driver hit the brakes. The trailer shuddered and bounced, and the horses were almost thrown off their feet with me right along with them. I grabbed the metal frame, pulled myself upright, and watched as the trailer slowed.

  Before it came to a stop, I jumped out. I instinctively rolled when I hit the ground and, by some miracle, landed on my feet. Behind me, voices shouted and doors slammed. I ran past the back bumper and didn't risk a look back. Didn't dare.

  A loud noise cracked through the air, and it took me half a second to realize it was a gunshot. The second bullet whined above my head. I darted to the right and stumbled across the shoulder of the road. The ground dropped off into a wide drainage ditch, and as I picked up speed, I realized too late that there wasn't any cover until I made it to the woods on the far side. I'd almost reached the bottom of the ravine, when my foot caught on something hidden in the long grass. I crashed onto my shoulder, and a layer of ice shattered like glass under my weight.

  I scrambled through the water, struggled up the far bank, and lunged into the woods. Another crack. This time the bullet splintered a tree limb to my left. I stumbled uphill, crashing blindly through tree limbs and heavy undergrowth, conscious of the noise I was making and could do nothing about. I had gone about fifty yards up the steep incline, when I came to a fallen tree blocking my path. I clambered over the rough bark and dropped to the ground, then cautiously looked back toward the road.

  They were closer than I'd imagined. Too close for any margin of safety. Two of them stood alongside the trailer's
back fender, and as I watched, the third jumped down from the cab and ran back to meet them. When he flicked on a flashlight and pointed it toward the woods, the largest of the three snatched it out of his hand. He played the beam across the hillside, concentrating on the area to my left.

  I sank farther down behind the log and tried to control my breathing. As long as I stayed still and didn't make any noise, they wouldn't find me. Just as that thought crossed my mind, the beam caught me full in the face. I stopped breathing.

  The light moved off to my left, and for a moment, its afterimage was all I could see. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to clear my sight. When I opened my eyes, the men had moved past the trailer's bumper. The glow from the taillights bathed them in red. They were no longer wearing masks. The one with the flashlight gestured aggressively, barking commands I couldn't hear. When the other two wheeled around and took off down the road, the skin on the back of my neck tingled. Though I doubted they knew where I was, the image of them sneaking up behind me was overpowering.

  I scrunched deeper into the leaves, pressed my shoulder against the log, and waited. When I next heard voices, I lifted my head and squinted toward the road. The two men had returned with the escape door and were loading it through the opening.

  Light flashed in the woods to my left.

  He was part way up the hill with his damn flashlight, shining the beam across the wooded slope behind me and to my left. If he moved much farther uphill and swung the light to his left, he'd see me. I watched as he ducked under a tangle of tree limbs and came closer. Another thirty feet, and he'd be level with my hiding place. He moved off to the right, toward a downed tree. As he crept around the base of the stump, light glinted off his gun.

  If I ran, he'd see me, and he was too close to miss. But if he checked behind my log, I was as good as dead.

  The cone of light cut across the ground just beyond my head. I waited for it to refocus on me. Waited for the shouts. When neither happened, I cautiously lifted my head. The flashlight was out, and as I listened, I realized why. A car was approaching. The engine's whine dropped a notch or two as it slowed to pass the trailer. After the car moved off, he switched on the flashlight, studied the hillside above my head, then turned and started back down the slope.

  I kept my head down until I heard noises by the trailer. The one with the flashlight swept the beam in broad tracts across the asphalt, and I wondered what he was up to. Twice, he reached down and picked something up.

  "Son of a bitch," I whispered.

  Evidence. He was making sure they didn't leave anything behind. He found the third shell casing along the shoulder of the road. A pickup sped past as they climbed into the cab. Doors slammed, the truck dropped into gear, and they drove off. They probably figured they didn't have much to worry about, and they were right. I couldn't identify them. Even without the masks, it had been too dark.

  As I watched the taillights fade into the distance, the thought of what I had narrowly escaped made my stomach do a quick one-eighty. I began to shake and not just from the cold. I stared at the vacant road, and pain I hadn't noticed since I was free of the trailer reawakened with a vengeance. Ribs, face, head.

  I pushed off the log and stood up. My jeans were stiff and unyielding. They had begun to freeze. I'd be next if I didn't hurry. I turned my coat collar up with fingers that felt as if they belonged to someone else and stumbled down the slope. The drainage ditch was too wide to jump, so I waded through the icy water and climbed the embankment. I started walking.

  A vehicle rounded the bend in the road ahead and accelerated toward me. I stood, frozen in the bright headlights. I hadn't noticed whether it was a car or a pickup or a dualie pulling a horse trailer. I staggered into the woods and dropped to the ground.

  It whizzed by. A car . . . only a car.

  I hung my head and listened to my pulse pound in my ears. After a minute or two, I stepped onto the pavement and tucked my hands under my armpits. My fingers felt like blocks of ice, and my teeth were chattering so hard, my jaw hurt. The idea of curling up in the leaves and going to sleep seemed attractive, and the fact that I was even considering it scared me. I had to get somewhere warm, and fast. Given the right circumstances, cold could kill as effectively as bullets.

  I kept walking.

  By the time I reached safety, in the form of an all-night convenience store, the sky had lightened into a dull gray. The police arrived, as they typically do, followed by the medics and later, at the hospital, a detective--all of them asking questions, most of which I couldn't remember afterwards. At first, like the convenience store clerk, the cops thought I was drunk and had upended my car in a ditch somewhere. But the ER doctor told them that hypothermia did that. That they shouldn't be surprised that my speech was slurred, reactions nonexistent, memory faulty.