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He grinned. “She only does two things better than cooking.”
“And they are?”
“One of them is ride, and the other I don’t talk about in mixed company.”
Alice laughed. “She’s right. You’re a jackass.” Harper joined them. “This is delicious.”
“Thanks, Alice, there’s lots more to eat. There are more burritos, some breakfast sandwiches, seasoned potatoes, and still warm cinnamon rolls.” She watched Alice walk up to the truck. “You aren’t really mad, are you?” she asked looking up at Spence.
“I’m not happy that you didn’t stay put. They ran the delivery driver off the road—almost killed him. I want you some place safe. Standing in the middle of the road where you could be picked off by a sniper isn’t one of them.”
“I don’t think this group has a sniper.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I cracked Dulcie’s password.”
“How? Why didn’t you call me?”
“Because I just did it, and I didn’t want anyone to know. I haven’t deciphered all of the code, but after looking at her schedule and some of the testing she had done, I think I know what she was after.”
“Does it relate back to your mustangs?”
“Not mine specifically, but to some of the herds that can be found in Montana, Idaho, and the Badlands.”
“Is there a difference in mustangs?”
“Quite a bit actually, but the big difference in those areas is their proximity to Canada.”
“So, she was after a bunch of Canadians? Because the guy who rented the SUVs to our assailants described them as being of Middle Eastern descent with a heavy accent.”
“Then I know I’m on the right track. Can you get somebody to run me back to the ranch? I want to follow up.”
“Alice? I’m taking Harper back home. Call if you need anything.”
“If you guys come back to the ranch, I can make sure you have something to eat,” offered Harper.
Spence guided her back to the SUV and headed back to the ranch. “So, what is it you think you know?”
“How much do you know about Premarin?”
“Not a damn thing,” he admitted.
“The short version is Premarin is extracted from the urine of pregnant mares. The PMU farms like draft horses. It’s a drug prescribed to millions of women worldwide as hormone replacement therapy. It comes from pregnant mares’ urine. The bigger the horse, the more urine she produces. They would breed draft mares for their urine and would discard the resulting foals, as well as any mare who could no longer be impregnated easily.”
“That’s kind of barbaric. You mean they use actual horse urine?”
“Specifically pregnant mare urine. The program is referred to as PMU and the mares lead pretty dismal lives. Some of those who collect the urine sell off the foals as soon as they can. Some of them just send them directly to slaughter. The mares are tied up and have huge collection bags so aren’t allowed any freedom at all. And at most PMU farms, if a mare doesn’t conceive, she, too, is sold off.”
“I don’t get what one has to do with the other, or with guys that may or may not be from somewhere in the Middle East.”
“Dulcie’s last special assignment was in Dubai. She went over there at the request of the Dubai Racing Club. I’m not sure what she went there for, or what she found, but my guess is they are all tied up together.”
“That makes sense, but what do mustangs have to do with it?”
“I don’t know yet, but I’m guessing if I can decipher some of those test results and her notes, we’ll have a pretty good idea as to why they killed her.”
“We don’t know who killed her yet, but if you can get into your sister’s notes and the files you think are test results, we may be on to something.”
