The Prince
They walked up and down the center corridor of the stable. Horses poked their heads out and whinnied peevishly at them. Nora reached out to pet one and Wesley pulled her hand back.
“I know, I know. These are Thoroughbreds, not kittens. They bite.”
“Exactly. And they bite hard.”
“So do I,” Nora said, baring her teeth at him. A big brown horse chomped at her and Nora growled in reply. He gave her a shocked look before retreating into his stall. “What, pray tell, are we—shit—!”
Nora grabbed the back of Wesley’s shirt as she tripped on something and nearly fell.
“Nora? You okay?”
“What the f**k? I kicked something. Sorry.” She bent down and dug through the straw, pulling up a piece of rotted wood with a rusted silver hinge attached to the end.
Wesley took the board from her hands and examined it.
“Weird.”
“Weird, what?” she asked.
Wesley didn’t answer. Turning around, he walked down the corridor again, pausing at each stall.
“Wes…what is going on?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Come on. Let’s go see the mares.”
With the rotted board in one hand, he grabbed her with the other and nearly dragged her from the stallion stable.
“Talel asked us to stay in the stallion barn.”
“I know. That’s why we’re not staying here. The stallions are the big money. They’re the ones everyone cares about. Those are the prizewinners in there. I want to see how the other half lives.”
Wesley seemed on high alert as they left the stallion stable and headed down a path toward a white barn with green trim. It looked just as elegant and well-maintained, but when he reached the door and saw a big silver padlock hanging off the door handle, he swore.
“Dammit. Locked.” He stared at it with such intensity Nora thought he was trying to open it with sheer mental power.
“Why would anyone lock up the mares, but not lock up the prizewinning stallions?”
“That’s my question.”
“Well, better find out the answer, then.”
Nora pushed past Wesley, opened her bag and pulled out her lock-pick set. “Cover me.”
“Nora, what are you doing?”
“Stop freaking out. I’m just picking the lock. Give me a second.”
“How do you know how to pick locks? And why do you have a lock-pick set in your purse?”
“Wesley, my boy, I got arrested at age fifteen. That was arrest number one. There have been twelve since. You get arrested as many times as I have, and you start planning for all contingencies.”
“Nora…”
She popped the padlock and it fell off the handle. They slipped inside the barn and closed the door behind them.
“Fine.” She turned her face up to Wesley. “Søren’s really into bondage. Huge shocker, right?”
“I’m stunned beyond words.”
Nora rolled her eyes. “I learned how to pick locks to piss him off. I wanted him to know that anything he put me into, I could get out of. Even if I didn’t try.”
“Why? I thought you loved him.”
“I do love him. Love and having an escape plan are not mutually exclusive. They are, in fact, both highly recommended.” Nora found a light switch and flicked it on. “Now this is weird.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.”
In silence they studied the stable. It was empty. Completely empty. No horses. No horse tack. No staff. No jockeys. No nothing. Just old straw on the floor rotting away in the sweltering darkness.
“Looks like it’s been empty for a long time.” Wesley peeked his head into every stall.
“Feels like it, too. Weird putting a lock on an empty stable and not on the one full of moneymaking horses.”
“Let’s check out the others.”
“I’ve got my picks.”
Nora followed Wesley from the second stable to the third. Again they found it padlocked. Again they found it empty. The fourth and fifth stables were also empty. No horses. No nothing.
“What the hell is going on?” Wesley stood in the final stable and stared at the nothingness it contained.
“You tell me. You’re the horse expert.”
“I don’t know. Unless Talel’s moved all his horses to another farm...makes no sense. A farm this size should have hundreds of horses—yearlings, stallions, broodmares. Even if he’d moved all his horses to another farm, he should at least have some mares here that he’s boarding for others. We’re boarding about a hundred horses that aren’t ours.”
“I should go ask him. He’ll tell me anything.”
“Don’t ask him. Not yet. I want to ask some of my own questions first.”
“Like what?”
Wesley held up the board from the stallion stable. “Fresh paint over rotting wood, Nora? My first question is going to be why can’t a billionaire afford to fix his broken stall doors?”
Nora looked at the wood and then looked up at Wesley. He saw something in her eyes, something like understanding. He waited, but she didn’t seem willing to enlighten him. Heavily, she exhaled, as the light in her eyes went out again.
“Damn good question.”
NORTH
The Past
Kingsley groaned in the back of his throat, a groan Søren swallowed with his mouth. He pulled on the rope that bound him to the cold metal at the head of the cot, but couldn’t free his hands.