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Mac swore roundly and then sighed. “I’ll be right over. ls anyone else around?”
“Just Zane. Everyone went home for the night.”
“I’ll call John and a few of the other stable hands that live close. We’ll be at the house in ten minutes.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
She hung up and then dialed the number of the local police. Within minutes she was explaining her situation to the officer on the other end of the line.
When she had finished with the phone call, Tiffany hurried outside and listened to the sounds of the night. The rain was beginning to sheet and run on the pavement. It gurgled in the gutters and downspouts. In the distance, faint to her ears, she heard the sound of running hoofbeats . . . on asphalt.
“Oh God,” she swore in desperation.Moon Shadow was on the road!
Tiffany began running down the long driveway toward the county road that bordered the farm. She heard the truck before she saw it, the loud engine reverberating through the night.
“No,” she cried, spurred even faster. Her legs were numb, her lungs burning. Headlights flashed between the trees bordering the farm, and the roar of the truck’s engine filled the night.
She heard the squeal of locked brakes, and the sound of the truck’s dull horn as it slid out of control on the wet pavement. “Moon Shadow!” Tiffany shrieked over the deafening noise.
A stallion squealed, the truck tore through the trees, crashing against the solid wood until finally there was nothing but silence and the sound of the pouring rain.
“Oh, God, no,” Tiffany whispered as she raced to the end of the drive. Tears blurred her vision and her voice seemed distant when she screamed.“Zane . . .”
Chapter Eleven
Tiffany raced down the slick pavement of the county road, mindless of the rain running down her back. The smell of burning rubber filled the night and the truck’s headlights angled awkwardly up through the broken branches of the giant oaks, like a pair of macabre searchlights, announcing the place of the accident.
As she approached, all she could hear was her own ragged breath and running footsteps. “Zane, dear God, where are you?” she screamed, listening for a sound, any sound indicating there was life in the wreckage. Her mind filled with a dozen bloody scenarios involving Zane and Moon Shadow, but she pushed her horrible thoughts aside and dashed toward the jackknifed truck.
“Goddam it, man, what the hell was that horse doing loose?” a gravelly voice demanded. The truck driver was crawling out of the cab and swearing profusely. Rain poured down upon him, and the broken branches of the trees snapped as he stepped onto the road.
Zane must be alive! Who else would be absorbing the angry trucker’s wrath?
Tiffany made it to the wrecked truck. Her heart was thudding wildly in her chest, and she had to gasp for air. The truck was lying on its side, the cab at an awkward angle. It looked like some great downed beast with a broken neck. In her mind’s eye Tiffany saw another truck, the rig that had taken Ellery and Devil’s Gambit from Florida to Kentucky, the one that had rolled over and burst into flame, killing both horse and driver. Her stomach turned over at the painful memory.
From inside the cab the sound of a CB’s static pierced the darkness and brought her thoughts crashing to the present.
“Zane?” she cried, looking into the darkness, searching for any sign of the man and the horse.
“Hey, lady! Over here!” The large truck driver commanded her attention by calling out in his gravelly voice. “What’re you doin’ out here? Jesus, God, you’re soaked to the skin!”
“Zane . . . My horse—”
“That black son of a bitch? He’s your goddamn horse?” His agitated swearing continued. “Christ, woman, can’t you see what that horse of yours did? He ran right up the road here—” the trucker pointed a burly arm toward the bend in the road “—like some demon. Scared the hell out of me, let me tell you.”
“He got out.... I’m sorry. . . .” She looked around frantically, dread still taking a stranglehold of her throat. “Where is he . . . ?
Where is Zane?”
“Who the hell is Zane? The horse?”
“No!”
“Tiffany,” Zane shouted from somewhere in the thick stand of oak and fir trees near the road. Tiffany’s head snapped in the direction of the familiar sound, her heart nearly skipped a beat and relief washed over her in soothing rivulets.
Without another glance at the truck driver, who was busy clearing debris from the road and placing warning flares near his truck, Tiffany hurried toward the familiar welcome of Zane’s voice.
Then she saw him. Wet, bedraggled, mud-streaked and walking toward her. He was leading a lathered Moon Shadow, who skittered and danced at all the commotion he had inadvertently caused. “Oh, God, Zane,” she cried, “you’re alive.”
