Dark Horse Read Free

evade enemies, but to attack them. Over the centuries the training went from the battlefield to the showring, and dressage evolved into something like equine ballet.
    To the untrained eye it appears graceful and elegant and effortless. A skilled rider seems to be so quiet, so motionless as to virtually blend into the background. In reality, the sport is physically and mentally demanding on both horse and rider. Complex and complicated. The rider must be attuned to the horse’s every footfall, to the balance of every inch of the horse’s body. The slightest shift of the rider’s weight, the smallest movement of a hand, the lightest tensing of a calf muscle will affect the quality of the performance. Focus must be absolute. Everything else becomes insignificant.
    Riding was my refuge as a teenager, when I felt I had little control over any other aspect of my life. It was my stress release when I had a career. It had become my salvation when I had nothing else. On the back of a horse I felt whole, complete, connected to that vital place in the very center of me that had otherwise closed itself off, and the chaos within me found balance.
    D’Artagnon and I moved across the sand arena through the last wisps of the morning ground fog, the horse’s muscles bulging and rolling, his hooves striking the ground in perfect metronome rhythm. I massaged the left rein, sat into his back, tightened my calves around him. The energy moved from his hindquarters, over his back; his neck rounded and his knees came up into the stylized, slow-motion trot called
passage
. He seemed almost to float beneath me, to bounce like a huge, soft ball. I felt he might take wing if only I knew the one secret word to whisper to him.
    We halted in the center of the ring at the place known as X. In that moment I felt joy and peace.
    I dropped the reins on his neck and patted him. He lowered his head and started to walk forward, then stopped and came to attention.
    A girl sat on the white board fence that ran along the road. She watched me with a sense of expectation about her. Even though I hadn’t noticed her, I could tell she’d been there, waiting. I judged her to be about twelve. Her hair was long and brown, perfectly straight, and neatly held back from her face with a barrette on each side. She wore little round black-rimmed glasses that made her look very serious. I rode toward her with a vague feeling of apprehension that made no sense at the time.
    “Can I help you?” I asked. D’Ar blew through his nostrils at her, ready to bolt and save us from the intruder. I should have let him.
    “I’m here to see Ms. Estes,” she said properly, as if she’d come on business.
    “Elena Estes?”
    “Yes.”
    “And you are . . . ?”
    “Molly Seabright.”
    “Well, Molly Seabright, Ms. Estes isn’t here at the moment.”
    “
You’re
Ms. Estes,” she declared. “I recognize your horse. His name is D’Artagnon, like in the
Three Musketeers
.” She narrowed her eyes. “You cut your hair.” Disapproval.
    “Do I know you?”
    “No.”
    “Then how do you know me?” I asked, the apprehension rising up like bile through my chest to the base of my throat. Maybe she was a relative of Hector Ramirez, come to tell me she hated me. Maybe she’d been sent as a decoy by an older relative who would now pop out of nowhere to shoot me or scream at me or throw acid in my face.
    “From
Sidelines,
” she said.
    I felt like I’d walked into the middle of a play. Molly Seabright took pity on me and carefully climbed down from the fence. She was slightly built and dressed neatly in sensible dark slacks and a little blue T-shirt with a small daisy chain embroidered around the throat. She came up along D’Artagnon’s shoulder and carefully held the magazine out to me, folded open to an interior page.
    The photograph was in color. Me on D’Ar, riding through thin ribbons of early-morning fog. The sunlight made his coat shine as bright as a new penny. My hair