Dark Horse Read Free Page A

was pulled back in a thick ponytail.
    I had no memory of being photographed. I had certainly never been interviewed, though the writer seemed to know things about me I didn’t know myself. The caption read:
Private investigator Elena Estes enjoys an early-morning ride on D’Artagnon at Sean Avadon’s Avadonis Farm in Palm Beach Point Estates.
    “I’ve come to hire you,” Molly Seabright said.
    I turned toward the barn and called for Irina, the stunning Russian girl who had beat me out for the groom’s job. She came out, frowning and sulky. I stepped down off D’Artagnon and asked her to please take him back to the barn. She took his reins, and sighed and pouted and slouched away like a sullen runway model.
    I ran a gloved hand back through my hair, startled to come to the end of it so quickly. A fist of tension began to quiver in my stomach.
    “My sister is missing,” Molly Seabright said. “I’ve come to hire you to find her.”
    “I’m sorry. I’m not a private investigator. This is some kind of mistake.”
    “Why does the magazine say that you are?” she asked, looking stern and disapproving again. She didn’t trust me. I’d already lied to her once.
    “I don’t know.”
    “I have money,” she said defensively. “Just because I’m twelve doesn’t mean I can’t hire you.”
    “You can’t hire me because I’m not a private investigator.”
    “Then what are you?” she demanded.
    A broken-down, busted-out, pathetic ex–sheriff’s detective. I’d thumbed my nose at the life I’d been raised in, been ostracized from the life I’d chosen. What did that make me?
    “Nothing,” I said, handing the magazine back to her. She didn’t take it.
    I walked away to an ornate park bench that sat along the end of the arena and took a long drink from the bottle of water I’d left there.
    “I have a hundred dollars with me,” the girl said. “For a deposit. I expect you have a daily fee and that you probably charge expenses. I’m sure we can work something out.”
    Sean emerged from the end of the stable, squinting into the distance, showing his profile. He stood with one booted leg cocked and pulled a pair of deerskin gloves from the waist of his brown breeches. Handsome and fit. A perfect ad for Ralph Lauren.
    I headed across the arena, anger boiling now in my stomach. Anger, and underlying it a building sense of panic.
    “What the fuck is this?” I shouted, smacking him in the chest with the magazine.
    He took a step back, looking offended. “It might be
Sidelines,
but I can’t read with my nipples, so I can’t say for certain. Jesus Christ, El. What did you do to your hair?”
    I hit him again, harder, wanting to hurt him. He grabbed the magazine away from me, took another quick step out of range, and turned to the cover. “Betsy Steiner’s stallion, Hilltop Giotto. Have you seen him? He’s to die for.”
    “You told a reporter I’m a private investigator.”
    “They asked me who you were. I had to tell them something.”
    “No, you didn’t have to. You didn’t have to tell them anything.”
    “It’s only
Sidelines
. For Christ’s sake.”
    “It’s my name in a goddam magazine read by thousands of people. Thousands of people now know where to find me. Why don’t you just paint a big target on my chest?”
    He frowned. “Only dressage people read the dressage section. And then only to see if their own names are in the show results.”
    “Thousands of people now think I’m a private investigator.”
    “What was I supposed to tell them? The truth?” Said as if that were the most distasteful option. Then I realized it probably was.
    “How about ‘no comment’?”
    “That’s not very interesting.”
    I pointed at Molly Seabright. “That little girl has come here to hire me. She thinks I can help her find her sister.”
    “Maybe you can.”
    I refused to state the obvious: that I couldn’t even help myself.
    Sean lifted a shoulder with lazy indifference and handed the