“Son of a bitch,” he muttered under his breath. He opened the door and found a lead, then snapped it onto the filly’s halter. “Come on, girl,” he said softly, clucking his tongue and leading her inside the stable. Warm air that smelled of horses, saddle soap, and urine greeted him. Horses shuffled in their stalls, hooves swishing in the straw, an occasional nicker reaching his ears.
“You caused a stir, Nova,” he told the sorrel filly, who tossed her head and nervously danced. “Hey, come on. You’re okay. Here ya go.”
Other horses stretched their heads over the rails of their boxes, and he rubbed the gray’s nose before he settled the sorrel into her stall. After filling her manger with a ration of grain and hay, he brushed her shivering coat until it gleamed red under the stable lights. That seemed to have calmed her. “Better?” he asked kindly, though inside he was burning, pissed as hell that someone had left the filly outside when the temperature was well below freezing. Idiot!
The dogs were going crazy now, their soft woofs having escalated to serious barking.
“No!” a man said firmly, and the noise stopped instantly.
Flannagan.
Several horses raised their heads and looked expectantly at the door.
It opened a second later, and Bert Flannagan, his face set in a scowl, a rifle gripped in his right hand, strode in. “What the hell is going on?”
“Nothing that requires a gun, Bert.”
“You never know.”
“What were you gonna do? Shoot someone, probably a student, in the stables, and maybe hit a horse or two? Scare the rest of them so that they kicked out of their boxes and injured themselves? Put the damned thing away.”
Flannagan hesitated, glaring at Trent as if he wanted to shoot him on the spot, but he set the rifle, butt on the floor, near the door. “Okay, so I asked before, what the hell’s goin’ on?”
“You tell me. I found Nova outside.”
“Outside?”
Trent explained how he’d found the filly in the field while heading to his cabin. He left out the part about the voices he’d heard for now, until he got a bead on Flannagan. But as he told the older man about the filly, Flannagan’s face grew hard. His nostrils flared, his mouth stretched tight over his teeth.
“That’s the problem with leaving kids in charge,” he said through lips that barely moved. “They have no sense of responsibility, no sense of purpose.”
“Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be teaching them?”
“Impossible with the mambie-pambies that we get—rich kids whose mommies and daddies don’t want them to suffer the consequences of their actions. Just ship ‘em out, pay a buttload of money, and have someone else teach ‘em how to grow up.” He eyed the filly and shook his head, his short silvery hair in deep contrast to his tanned face. “I’ll tell ya what. If the parents would let those damned kids face up for what they did, let ‘em go cool their jets in jail for a while, it would save them all a whole lot of money and you and me a whole lotta time.”
“And you wouldn’t have a job.”
Flannagan threw him a dark look. “There are better jobs, believe me. I didn’t put in twenty years with the marines to end up here, wiping the noses of these kids. For the love of God, who leaves a horse out in the middle of the winter?” He walked into the filly’s stall and ran knowing hands over her muscles. She flicked her ears but otherwise didn’t object.
“Who was in charge tonight?” Trent asked.
“That’s the hell of it.” He rubbed the horse’s forehead and she snuffled loudly. “Bernsen and Rolfe were in command, but they had kids from your pod, that girl who’s always with her damned guitar.” He snapped his fingers and the filly snorted.
“JoAnne Harris.”
“She’s the one. Along with the Asian girl with spiky hair—Yang—and Bell. And I don’t care if it’s PC or not, but Bell doesn’t know a damned thing when it comes to horses.”
“I don’t think it’s because she’s black.”
“‘Course not. It’s cuz she grew up in the middle of godforsaken Detroit! How many horses you think they got in the Motor City?”
“Wasn’t Missy Albright supposed to be part of this group?”
Flannagan nodded. “Always thought she was all right, aside from that annoying voice. Hell, she’s smart, that one, good with animals.”
And a blonde. As was the person he thought he saw dash between the dorms. What had the woman said? We could be next. She sounded frightened and had been told not to “panic” by her companion, but Trent didn’t know what “next” meant. It could have been anything from disappearing like Lauren Conway to failing a class. He hadn’t heard enough of the conversation to come to the right conclusion.
Besides, Missy was not the only blonde at Blue Rock. Off the top of his head, he came up with half a dozen, and that was just the students. The school nurse and the cook could be added to the group.