Gorton was only half-listening. He was picturing himself stopping at the Honor Bar for a Bloody Mary. He checked the dashboard clock. A little early, but they’d goddamn well open for him.
“So we’re back where we were before she won the damn thing,” Gorton said. “We’ve got to find a way to get her off the horse for good.” He paused. Definitely the Honor Bar. He could already taste the first drink of the day. “You made any progress on what we talked about?”
Cullen was cautiously optimistic, saying he had to be careful.
“I like the way you think,” Gorton said.
Cullen laughed.
“Only because it’s the way you think,” he said.
“Couple of sore losers,” Gorton said.
They were both laughing when Gorton ended the call and headed for the Flagler Bridge.
Sometimes he screwed with people for the best reason in the world: because he could.
FIFTY
Maggie
MAGGIE WOULD HAVE gone to the gym instead of Gus’s barn had Becky wanted to join her.
She told herself, when she finally made the decision to reach out to Gus, that it just hurt too much not to ride. Only now it was riding that hurt. Like hell. A lot. Every day. About an hour into this morning’s ride, Maggie couldn’t decide if she’d come back too soon. Or shouldn’t have come back at all. Another way of looking at it.
She was being reminded right now how much riding taxed her legs. Her back was sore, too, and her neck, and even her forearms. And her butt. As she posted, the simple up-and-down of being in the saddle, every time she’d land, she’d feel a stab of pain that would shoot all the way up to her neck and shoulders, almost into her brain. At which point the ache in her upper body rivaled the pain in her legs. She’d get herself into a hot bath when she got home.
“Is there a problem?” Gus said from his chair. “You could always take up a new sport if this is too painful for you.”
“Who said anything about pain?”
“You didn’t have to,” he said. “My legs don’t work. But my eyes do just fine.”
“If I wasn’t ready for this, I wouldn’t be here,” she said.
“Don’t tell me,” he said. “Show me.”
“Do your other riders get this kind of tough love?”
“Who said anything about love?” Gus said.
Dr. Garry had told her two months, absolute minimum, to get back on a horse. She’d done it in half that time, as much out of stubbornness as need.
She winced suddenly.
“What?” Gus said.
“Cramps,” she said, through clenched teeth.
“Where?”
“Every…where.”
They could come up on her that fast and cause her legs to seize up the way they were seizing up now. Gus yelled for Seamus, who came running. When her boots were on the ground, both legs gave out, and she sat down. Hard.
Gus reached into his chair’s side pouch, grabbed a bottle of water, handed it to her, told her to drink all of it. She did. When the pain slowly began to subside and the muscles relaxed, she lay on her back and did some stretches that had helped her in the past.
Finally, slowly, she was able to get to her feet.
“You ready to get back to work?” he said.
“Now?”
“You know what they say,” Gus said. “Don’t tell me about the pain. Just show me the baby.”
“You know who says that?” she said. “Guys.”
It was when she had turned Paladin and put him back into motion that she saw Daniel Ortega staring at her from the other side of the fence.
FIFTY-ONE
Maggie
SHE TROTTED PALADIN one more time around the ring. When she finished, Daniel was the one coming out to help her down. Her legs were cramping again, though not as badly as before. But she wasn’t going to let him see that.
“What are you doing here, Maggie?” he said.
“Isn’t that obvious?” she said.
“What’s obvious,” he said, “is that it’s too soon for you to be doing this.”
“Probably so,” she said. “But not your call.” Then she snapped at him, “The one who has no right to be here is you.”
She knew she had no right to be angry at him. But she wanted to be angry at somebody. Mostly because she’d been caught.
“We need to talk,” she said. “Right now.”
She ignored the pain in her legs, her knee really barking at her now, and led him out of the ring and over to the driveway where Daniel had parked his car next to hers. She resisted the powerful urge to sit down and she leaned against the side of her car instead.