Travis nodded. He could have been offended that Ellie was taking charge of the situation, but her military background, like his, had made her organized to a fault. While he was the face of the Bishop Performance Horse operation, she was the guts of it. “Yeah. That sounds good. I’ll be back in a bit.”

  “I’ll be here,” she said, opening one of the stall doors and sliding inside. As Travis walked away, he could hear her murmuring to Joker, as if they were having a private conversation.

  Travis quickly found the truck where Ellie had left it parked outside of the barn. He got in and started it up, feeling the cool air from the ventilation system blowing on his face. It felt good. The day was warming up already. Pretty soon he would no longer need the jacket, but that would expose the gash on his arm, not to mention the gun. He grimaced. It was a good thing that all the riders showed in long sleeves at least this once, he decided.

  The drive to the hotel only took four minutes, the small brick building a block from the entrance of the fairgrounds itself. As Travis walked into the lobby, he saw a few other people he recognized from the show circuit, giving them a quick nod, the smell of their soap and freshly washed clothes trailing them as they walked by, the smell of eggs and sausage cooking somewhere nearby. His stomach grumbled. At least they’d had the benefit of sleeping in a soft bed and getting a morning shower. For some of the larger training operations, the pros never spent any time at the barn. They just showed up when it was time to ride and that was it. No sleeping on hay bales, no lugging tack. No driving a slow trailer hundreds of miles back to the barn.

  Travis shook his head as he walked into the elevator. Maybe someday his operation would be like that, but it wasn’t that way now. And if he didn’t figure out whether Catherine was right about the hit put out on him or not, he might never know.

  As the elevator doors opened on the second floor, Travis stepped out, checking the hallway left and right. If Catherine was correct, then another attack could come at any time, without warning.

  The hallway seemed to be clear. There were no open doors or long shadows cast over the cheap gray carpeting that lined the floor. Off somewhere at the end of the hallway, Travis could hear what sounded like a blow dryer running. As he walked to his room, he heard the click of a door open next to him across the hallway. Travis flinched, immediately turning and grabbing for the butt of his gun. From inside, a woman and a man emerged, the two of them smiling. Travis nodded, relaxing his arm, “Good morning,” they said in unison.

  Travis nodded, using the key card to open his hotel room door, quickly closing it behind him and turning the deadbolt.

  He walked through the room, scanning it for any signs of intrusion. One of the two double beds was rumpled, the other one neatly made. Ellie’s suitcase was perched on the bed closest to the windows. It looked like she’d already packed and was ready to head out. That was good. Travis made a mental note to grab her suitcase and get them checked out of the hotel after he took his shower.

  Other than Ellie’s things, there was no sign anyone else had been in the room. Satisfied, Travis went into the bathroom, setting his baseball hat on the small bathroom vanity, pulling his pistol out of his holster and setting it next to the sink, keeping it close by. More murders happened in showers than anywhere else. Most people weren’t prepared to defend themselves while they were wet, slippery, and naked. If what Catherine had said was true, Travis would have to be, no matter where he was or what he was doing.

  Travis turned on the hot water in the shower and let it run for a second while he stripped off the dirty clothes he was wearing. As he pulled off his jeans, he realized how filthy he was — dirt and grit from the fight the night before caked on his pants, a thin layer of dust mixed with sweat covering every inch of his skin.

  He stared down at the white gauze bandage wrapped around his forearm. He left it in place as he stepped into the shower, letting the water run over him. As the hot water soaked through the gauze his arm stung, but he ignored the pain. He put his head under the shower for a solid minute or two, allowing it to cascade down his back before scrubbing himself clean and stepping out.

  Drying off and then wrapping a thin, white towel around his waist, Travis walked over to the sink where he’d left his hat and his gun. He brushed his teeth and then strode out into the bedroom, fishing a clean pair of jeans and a red t-shirt out of his suitcase, pulling them on.

  Back in the bathroom, he unwound the bandages Georgiana had expertly wrapped over the wound, looking at the damage. Whoever his attacker had been had gotten a single slice into his forearm, exposing the blood-red edges of his skin. Any deeper and the knife would have penetrated the muscles of his arm. Travis sighed. He’d recently read a statistic that fifty percent of the people involved in knife fights died as a result of their wounds. Unbelievably, the statistics were much worse than a gunfight, where only twenty percent of people were casualties. He pressed his lips together. He’d been lucky. Things could have turned out much worse.

  Travis tossed squares of wet gauze in the trash, grabbed a couple of clean tissues out of the box mounted on the wall next to the mirror, and used the damp rolled bandage to rewrap his arm. Putting a wet bandage on an open wound wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do for the moment. When he got back out to the truck, he had more first-aid supplies he could use to wrap it properly. Being in the military had taught him to make do. That’s what he was doing. He quickly combed his dark hair and fished his belt and holster back through the loops of his jeans, shoving the gun back on his hip. He looked at himself in the mirror. Although he’d had very little sleep and was attacked only a few hours before, he didn’t look much worse for the wear. A shower and clean clothes had done him good. His square jaw and brown hair looked much more presentable after a shower, even if he needed a shave.

  Anxious to get back to the show, Travis walked out into the bedroom, striding over to the closet. He pulled out two shirts on hangers covered by filmy plastic bags. They were his show shirts. He added them to the pile. Walking through the hotel room, he put the last things in his bag and zipped it closed, grabbed Ellie’s suitcase and his own, lining them up next to the door, glancing around the room to make sure that he’d gotten everything packed. With everything ready, he tossed his key card on the dresser, pulled on his jacket to hide his gun, grabbed the suitcases, and walked back into the hallway. The door clicked closed behind him.

  Travis wheeled the suitcases to the elevator, ignoring the pain in his arm, and then went to the first floor. He gave the woman at the front desk a curt nod as he walked out to the truck. Unless something happened he didn’t expect, he wouldn’t see her again for a year, if ever.

  After loading the suitcases into the back seat, he dug under the seat and found a first aid kit. Unwinding the damp gauze and tissues from his arm, he opened up a sealed packet of antibiotic gel, squeezing it over the wound. He found two oversized square adhesive bandages and smoothed them over his skin. After looking at the wound, Travis realized Georgiana was probably right — the skin was cut deep enough that he’d likely benefit from stitches. The reality was he didn’t have the time or the inclination to go to the hospital. He’d deal with it when he got home. He was sure he could get Dr. Scott, the local coroner he’d helped with the Jake West case, or Dr. Wiley, his veterinarian, to give him a hand if he needed it.

  Getting back in the truck, he started it up and headed back to the fairgrounds, passing the same couple he’d seen in the hallway by his hotel room as they left the building, arms wound around each other. He eyed them, but they didn’t make a move toward him, too busy looking at each other. Their life seemed simple. His was not, especially not at that moment. Thoughts were circling in Travis’s mind, the memory of Catherine appearing out of nowhere the night before and the searing sting as the metal blade from the attacker bit through his skin. Was there a chance Catherine was wrong? Was the attack just a coincidence? Travis rested his head on his hand as he stopped at the fairgrounds gate waiting to be let in. Was it possible her sources were incorrect? Espionage was much more of an art than a science, that was for sure. Agencies like the CIA and MI6 got things wrong all the time. Maybe there was a kill order out, but maybe it wasn’t on him. Perhaps it was on someone else.

  But that didn’t diminish the fact that someone had come at Travis the night before and it was lucky he’d gotten away with his life. The man’s face was burned into Travis's memory, the wiry brown hair, scruffy brown beard, and taut muscles, evidence of time in the gym, or more likely, out in the field.

  As the guard at the gate waved Travis through, Travis gave him a nod, studying him carefully. If Catherine was right, then everyone he encountered was a potential threat. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Everyone. The next assassin could be the checkout clerk at the hotel, the guard he just passed at the exhibitor’s gate of the fairgrounds, the blacksmith the Derby had hired to have on the scene in case a horse lost a shoe. Everyone he ran into became someone to be wary of.

  Travis shook his head, pressing his lips together as he pulled into a parking spot near the barn. The weight of dealing with the show and the threat was a lot at the same time. He felt his stomach lurch. He’d been trained, yes, but he hadn’t done much with his skills for the better part of five years. He’d had the incident with Elena and helped diffuse the terror threat in New Orleans, but other than that, he was focused on his horses. He gritted his teeth for a moment. He should be more prepared.

  Getting out of the truck and slamming the door behind him, Travis strode towards the barn. Voices and noise echoed off the walls, the horses walking up and down the aisles, their metal shoes making a dull metallic thud with each stride against the concrete, the laughter of kids in the background, the jingle of metal buckles as horses were being saddled. He swallowed, stopping just inside the door. If Catherine was right, then showing today would be a danger to him and the people around him, but was he ready to give someone else that kind of power over his life? The power to change what he’d built so carefully? He balled his hands into fists and swallowed, walking forward.

  The answer was no.

  No matter what Catherine said and what happened the night before, Travis was at the horse show to do a job. This was work. The clients were counting on him, not to mention the hit his reputation would take if he didn’t finish. He was a man of his word. The commitment he had to his horses and owners was no different than when Travis was in the military or in the CIA. There were risks to everything and some risks were bigger than others. He sighed. There were people at the show who had trusted their horses to him. It was that simple.

  “You got back fast!” Ellie smiled, meeting him halfway down the aisle. A grin tugged at her cheeks, her customary blonde braid dangling just beneath her shoulders, a Bishop Performance Horses baseball cap on her head.

  “Yeah. Didn’t take too long to get ready. I grabbed your suitcase from the hotel room. We’re checked out.”

  She shook her head, “I totally forgot it! Thanks.”

  “What time is your class?”

  “Ten. We’re next up. Like I told you this morning, the pros ride after lunch. Somebody in the show office told me they might move it up though, so keep your ears peeled”

  “All right,” Travis nodded. It felt like something had tripped a switch in his mind. He stared at Ellie and Joker. “Let’s get you ready. You’re gonna crush this.”

  Travis helped Ellie get Joker saddled. He was a chestnut gelding with a wide blaze on his head that covered nearly his whole face as if someone had smeared his head with white paint. Two differently colored eyes, one blue and one brown, gave him a wild look. Travis wandered over to the exhibitor’s warm-up ring and stood leaning on the fence as Ellie warmed up Joker, watching her trot him in small circles stretching his back. Two minutes before her turn, she loped him around the ring a few times, running him gently through the pattern their class had been assigned, dipping and dodging through the traffic in the ring. She stopped at the gate as she was ready to head into the ring. “You look good,” Travis said, rubbing Joker’s neck. “Just go in there and do what you do.”

  “Copy that. Be back in a flash.”

  8

  Travis fought the urge to go and watch Ellie and Joker run their pattern. As much as he would have liked to, there was too much to do before they could leave. Leaving was the priority at the moment. Travis rubbed the back of his neck as he walked back to the barn, wondering what had happened to Catherine. He felt a sinking in his gut. He needed to talk to her but she’d disappeared. Where she was now, he had no idea. For all he knew, she could be halfway to London.

  Shaking his head, he walked inside the stall they were using for storage. Grabbing the handle of the wheeled cart they’d brought with them, Travis loaded it up with the extra supplies they wouldn’t need – two, still twined bales of hay, a third of a bag of sweet feed, an extra bucket of brushes and hoof picks, a plaid saddle pad and one of the schooling saddles. Wheeling it outside, he pushed the cart toward the line of trailers that were parked nearby. Luckily, the Oklahoma City Fairgrounds allowed them to keep the trailers close to the barn, at least relatively speaking. There were other shows where it felt like the trailers were left in outer Siberia, making it almost impossible to access them until it was time to head home.

  The wheels of the cart ground to a halt as Travis stopped and unlocked the door to the trailer storage room. He unloaded the cart and carried the collection of things he had brought from the barn inside, putting things away as he went. Not more than a minute later, he came out, ready to walk back to the barn. Over the loudspeaker he heard the announcer call for the pro class, his voice booming over the loudspeakers. “Pro riders, get ready! Your class is on deck!” Travis checked his watch. They were ahead of schedule, just like Ellie said. He still probably had an hour or so before he had to ride, but he would need every bit of that time to get ready. Grimacing, Travis opened the trailer again, taking off his holster and gun. As much as he wanted to keep it on him, showing Gambler with a gun on his side would be a no-go.

  Pushing the cart back to the barn, Travis stopped inside of the extra stall they had rented. He took off his jacket and changed into a long-sleeved, turquoise button-down shirt with a black scroll design and matching piping on the shoulders. It wasn’t his taste, but Ellie said it was the newest in show fashion, so that’s what he wore. He switched his baseball cap for a black felt cowboy hat with a flat brim and curled sides that he kept inside their tack locker. It was his show gear. Not as comfortable as his baseball hat, but it would do for a few minutes.

  Shoving the hat down hard on his skull, Travis grabbed a lead and walked toward Gambler’s stall. As a pro rider, he had his choice of which horse to ride in the finals. Unlike a lot of other equine sports, it was the rider that qualified, not the horse. Travis stopped for a second and blinked, looking at Smokey. He decided to stick with Gambler, the horse he’d qualified on. Certainly any of the other horses he’d brought could do the job, but there was something special about the black gelding with the single white star on his forehead and one white sock on his right hind leg.

  Opening the stall door, Travis lifted the halter over Gambler’s ears and attached the lead to it, walking him out into the aisle and securing him with the cross ties. From the bucket of grooming supplies they’d brought with them, Travis grabbed a brush, quickly cleaning up Gambler. He stood calmly as Travis ran a comb through his thick black mane and tail to get the last few knots out. Ellie had given all of the horses baths before they left. Gambler’s coat was sleek and shiny, so dark it was almost mirror-like, still clean from the qualifying run the day before. He only needed a touch-up.

  Travis stood back for a second, shaking his head. If he hadn’t had Catherine on his mind, he might spend more time getting Gambler cleaned up, but at this point, he needed to do his job and get out of Oklahoma and back to Texas. His heart skipped a beat. He had no way to contact Catherine. It wasn’t like she’d given him her cell phone number or something. She’d appeared like a blip on a radar, flying fast and low and disappearing just as quickly.

  Swinging his silver inlaid show saddle onto Gambler’s back, Travis secured the girth, got him bridled, and walked out of the barn. Outside, Travis stuck his left foot in the stirrup and swung his right leg over the horse’s back, giving the gelding sides a little squeeze with his legs and clucking his tongue to get him moving.

  The exhibitor’s warm-up ring was crowded, with many of the pro riders already warming up their horses. He saw Ellie. She gave him a smile and a nod. Their run must’ve been good. Normally, he would’ve ridden over to see how she did, but he had other things on his mind.

  Twenty minutes later, after getting Gambler warmed up, they called Travis’s number. Travis walked the gelding up to the entrance of the arena, staring at the thousands of people that had amassed inside to watch. He felt a flutter in his stomach as he tightened up his reins. Whether it was show nerves or the threat to his life, he didn’t know. Travis squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. It was time.

  Cuing Gambler, the horse took off at a dead run into the arena, ears pinned, pulling into a sliding stop just seconds later at the other end of the arena to the hoots and hollers of the crowd inside. Travis rolled Gambler back the other direction and then started loping him in a slow circle, following the pattern he’d memorized. Glancing up at the stands as he passed, he spotted a woman wearing a red blouse and a beige cowboy hat. She waved. Catherine. His stomach dropped as he looked back down at Gambler. Everything in Travis wanted to stop his run and ride over to her and ask where she’d been, but he had a pattern to finish. He gritted his teeth, gave Gambler’s sides another squeeze, and kept going.

  Exactly a minute and a half later, Travis finished his last sliding stop, a cascade of damp clots of dirt flying into the air behind the strong Quarter Horse as he dug his hindquarters into the ground while letting his front legs run. Travis heard the yells and applause from the audience, but barely. He took off his hat, nodded at the judges, and scanned the crowd for Catherine as he rode Gambler out of the arena.