LITMIR.BIZ

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Kate and Ben with him.

      She watched him go, wondering what on earth to say to Ben, who was still standing beside her.

      “So I hear you’ve got the technology for Fireflight to sire more,” Ben said, looking sideways at her.

      “It’s not for sale,” she said quickly.

      “No?” He looked surprised. “I was misinformed, then.”

      “It was for sale. My father sold some, but there’s very little left now. As I’m sure you can imagine, offering Fireflight’s bloodlines is our ace in the hole.” She thought about that for a moment. “So to speak.”

      “Hmm.” He nodded, keeping his eyes on the track and the horses that were running against each other. Kate’s Flight was leading the competition by a considerable margin. “Not at any price, huh?”

      “Nope.” Then, as an afterthought, she added, “Sorry.”

      “No problem.” His words were casual, but when Kate glanced at him she thought he looked grave.

      “Hey!” a voice barked behind them.

      Kate turned to face a squat, wizened old woman she’d noticed several times running the betting windows.

      “One of you Katherine Gregory?”

      Kate had to work to keep from laughing. “That would be me,” she said, adding the obvious, “Not him.”

      The woman didn’t so much as crack a smile. “There’s a phone call for you up in the shop.”

      Kate frowned. “That’s weird. Did they say who it was?”

      “Think it’s your father or something.” The woman gave an exaggeratedly disinterested shrug. “He said he couldn’t get through on your cell phone.”

      “That’s crazy. I don’t need to go all the way to the track shop to get a call.” She patted her pocket, looking for the phone she was sure had been there earlier. But it was gone. “Hmm. Okay, I guess I do need to go all the way up to the shop.” She started toward the main building, tossing over her shoulder, “Nice talking to you, Ben.”

      He raised a hand in response.

      The woman asked, “Ben Devere?”

      “That’s right,” he said slowly.

      “There’s a telephone message for you there, as well.”

      Kate paused. “We both got phone calls up there?”

      “Guess so,” the woman said.

      Ben looked at Kate with a frown. “You don’t suppose that fence is down between the properties again, do you?”

      She groaned. “I hope not. That was a mess.”

      “We’d better go see what’s going on.”

      They hurried to the building, up the stairs and into the darkened shop. “You’d think she could have left the lights on, at least,” Kate commented, feeling her way to the counter, where she remembered having seen a phone before.

      “There’s something strange about this,” Ben said.

      The door closed behind them and they both looked back at it for a moment. Then Ben found the light switch and the room was flooded with fluorescent glow.

      Kate found the phone and picked it up, looking to see which line was on hold.

      None of them were.

      “For Pete’s sake.” She pressed line one and dialed her father’s number.

      As soon as he answered, she asked, “Is everything okay?”

      “Everything’s fine, Katherine,” he said. “Why?”

      She frowned. “They said you were trying to get hold of me and couldn’t get through on my cell phone.”

      “That’s nonsense,” her father said to her. “I didn’t try to call you.”

      She was somewhat relieved, even while she was flummoxed. “What about Bianca? Where is she?”

      “She’s at the track with Victor. With you, too, I guess, if you’re there.”

      She watched as Ben poked around, looking for the message that had supposedly been left for him. An uneasy feeling snaked into Kate’s stomach.

      “I gotta go, Dad. I’ll talk to you later.” She hung up the phone and rushed to the door.

      “Hey, what’s going on?” Ben asked. “What’s the emergency?”

      She got to the door and tried it.

      It was locked.

      Exactly as she’d suspected.

      “I don’t think there is an emergency,” she said, not adding that there was going to be one just as soon as she got out of here and wrapped her hands around Bianca’s neck. “There’s been some sort of…mistake.” She jiggled the doorknob, hoping to throw the lock.

      “Is that locked?”

      Kate turned around and leaned her back against the cool door. “Yes, it is.”

      “So we’re locked in here?”

      “Yes, we are.”

      He heaved a sigh and went over to the phone, muttering something about idiots in charge. He lifted the receiver and pushed a button. Then another. And another.

      Then he tapped on the receiver button.

      Kate watched with growing trepidation. “What’s wrong?”

      “Phone’s dead.”

      “I just used it.”

      “Well, now it’s dead.”

      “Do you have a cell phone?”

      “No.”

      This pushed her panic buttons. “What do you mean, no? How can you not have a cell phone?”

      “I notice you don’t, either.”

      “Yes, but I did.”

      He looked at her too patiently. “Then where is it?”

      “It must have fallen out of my pocket. Or something.” At this point she was sure Bianca was behind this somehow.

      “Whatever. Let’s stop talking about what we can’t do and figure out what we can.” He frowned and looked around. “First thing is, we should look for keys.”

      “Okay. Good.” Hope surged in Kate. Surely, Bianca hadn’t been that thorough. They began riffling under the counter and in the cash register, looking for a key.

      At one point they both put their hands in the same cubbyhole at the same time and Kate pulled her hand back as though she’d touched a snake.

      Ben looked at her for a moment. “Something wrong?”

      “No, I—” What could she say? How could she explain what looked like such a distasteful reflex? “I was startled.”

      He kept feeling around the cubby before pronouncing, “And for nothing. There’s nothing here.” He stepped back and folded his arms in front of him. “We’ll have to figure something else out.”

      “We could break the window,” Kate suggested, gesturing toward what she thought was obviously the only thing left they could do.

      “Kate, it’s a racetrack. They plan for security breaches. That’s not glass. It’s thick Lucite. You couldn’t break it if you tried. Not without a power tool.”

      “Do they sell power tools in here?” she asked halfheartedly.

      “Afraid not.”

      They

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