them, once he got his hands around her lovely neck. He winced as another flash went off, then gazed steadily into the cameras. Because somewhere out there, she’d be watching. Read it in my eyes, Tex, wherever you are. You can run, you can hide, but I’m coming to get you. Gonna get you, babe, if it’s the last thing I do!
CHAPTER FOUR
PAYBACK WAS THE LEAD story on the eleven o’clock news that night, and the network anchor reported it with a stern, semisorrowful expression that failed to hide his glee in relating such a juicy scandal.
Phone off the hook and with emergency bottle of scotch near at hand, Tag shoved a tape into his VCR, gazed owlishly at all its buttons, then nodded to himself and hit Record. Facts could be weapons and he didn’t mean to miss a single one.
“In a bizarre and still-breaking story,” intoned the anchorman, “NBC News has learned that sometime late last night, Susannah Mack Colton, wife of bluegrass millionaire Stephen Colton, secretly removed the world famous thoroughbred stud Payback from his stable at Fleetfoot Farm in Kentucky. The former exercise girl drove the Triple Crown winner and five-time Eclipse Horse of the Year to a small town in Vermont, where she paid veterinarian Richard D. Taggart to... geld the famous stallion.” Brief pause to let the magnitude of this outrageous act sink in around the nation.
“Seen here in his unforgettable Kentucky Derby victory, headed home eighteen incredible lengths ahead of the competition—” the camera shifted to a clip of a chocolate-brown stallion covering the ground in gigantic, effortless strides, a jockey crouched high on his withers with whip hand unmoving, while in the background a grandstand seethed with silently screaming racegoers “—Payback has long since retired to stand at stud at Fleetfoot Farm, renowned racing stable in the Kentucky bluegrass.” The view shifted to an overhead shot, showing the rest of the Derby field laboring farther and farther behind, then Payback sweeping smoothly under the wire at the finish line, while the anchorman continued off camera, “As top racing sire in America for the last eight years, Payback commanded a stud fee of four hundred thousand dollars... per mare.”
The camera returned to the studio and the anchorman. “And in an average breeding season, the stallion serviced one hundred of the finest thoroughbred broodmares in the world.” The newsman lifted his craggy brows to fix his audience with a significant gaze. “Meaning, folks, that this equine Romeo’s earnings averaged out to some forty million dollars per year!”
The anchorman touched the tiny receiver in his ear and his smile broadened to a blissful grin, immediately stifled. “In fact, NBC has just learned that one of the holders of a lifetime breeding right in Payback is Qeen Elizabeth II of England, herself an ardent racing fan.
“According to owner Stephen Colton, Payback was insured by Lloyd’s of London for sixty million dollars. But with his gelding today, this stud of the century’s value has been effectively reduced to... zero.
“The question that racing fans everywhere are demanding be answered tonight is why? Why did Susannah Mack Colton, er...pluck this fow-legged golden goose?”
The camera shifted from the newsman’s wounded perplexity to a shot of Susannah, standing somewhere in a parking lot, gripping Payback’s halter. The camera lights made her eyes seem enormous, bruised by shadows, but her chin was tipped to a familiar angle of defiance. “When Mrs. Colton, Payback at her side, was asked that question during a press conference she called in Boston earlier this evening, she had only this to say...” The sound switched to a taped recording, and Tag winced at the hunting-pack yammer of four reporters shouting questions at once.
An insistent tenor rose above the others as a microphone was thrust into the picture. “But why, Mrs. Colton? Why did you have Payback gelded?”
The gelding’s ears flattened back and he lunged teeth-first at the encroaching mike. Susannah staggered, then dug in her heels and hauled his nose around. “Why don’t you go ask my husband?” she cried over her shoulder. Payback shook his head again, shaking her like a rag doll.
The view swung wildly, showing reporters scattering like a flock of panicked pigeons, then steadied on Susannah, who stood poised and alert, facing Payback as he reared. When his flailing forefeet touched earth, she closed in and caught his halter, backing him away from her inquisitors.
“Damn, Susannah!” Tag muttered. If the horse yanked her under his hooves...
But she had him under control again and she glanced back at the cameras. “Now that’s enough! He’s tired and ya’ll got what you came for.”
“Just one more question, Mrs. Colton!” called the tenor, a short, hatchet-faced man. “Who did the actual gelding?”
“I told ya’ll, that doesn’t matter. What matters is—”
“You phoned the Boston Globe this afternoon from the Green Mountain Clinic in Vermont.”
“H-h-how—” She stood, blinking in the harsh lights, mouth ajar.
“Caller ID, you nitwit!” Tag groaned and gripped a handful of his own hair. She’d set up her news conference from the barn phone—and obviously never stopped to think that any half-competent investigative reporter would surely have—
“So if you know-it-alls know it already,” she cried, then staggered as Payback sidestepped, “what are you asking me for? Oh, what’s the—” She wheeled her horse in a circle. The picture wobbled as the cameraman retreated from Payback’s wicked back heels, then the scene ended—to be replaced by Tag himself, scowling from the top step of the clinic.
“Good God!” Tag thought. He looked like that? Ax murderer at bay?
“We asked the same question of Dr. Richard Taggart. Why would a reputable veterinarian agree to geld the finest racing sire ever bred in America—and without consent of his owner?”
“No comment!” Tag’s image snarled at the camera.
Tag moaned and dropped his head in his hands. With a few final words promising to keep viewers informed of latebreaking developments, the anchor wrapped up—to be replaced by a cheery jingle assuring Tag that if he used a certain breath mint, all his troubles would be over.
Tag grabbed the remote, slapped the mute, groped blindly for his Scotch. Reputable vet! Funny how they could say one thing and mean precisely the other. And once they’d put their spin on the situation... Maybe he should have talked when they were hollering their idiot questions.
His stomach revolted at the thought of himself, pleading his innocence to those carrion pickers, while half the country gleefully watched. Don’t whine, and never explain to strangers was more his style.
“Tomorrow,” he consoled himself. He’d talk with Glassman, the lawyer he’d consulted when he’d bought into Higgins’s practice. And he’d talk to Higgins—if the old man hadn’t suffered another coronary tonight watching the news.
He looked up at the TV in time to see a hulking policeman palm the top of Susannah’s crinkled-silk head, then tuck her neatly into the back of a patrol car. “Crap!” He snatched up the remote, jabbed buttons.
“—on charges of horse theft,” concluded the announcer, while behind glass, Susannah lunged for a nonexistent door handle, then rapped furiously on the window. “Just one more twist in this bizarre tale about a legendary racehorse, a jockey’s beautiful daughter from Texas and a bluegrass millionaire,” observed a voice-over as the
