“You should have called me sooner,” Daniel said.
“Probably. But I wanted to know exactly what was going on.”And I didn’t want to get my family killed.
“I’ll get on this thing, Jake. Where can I reach you?”
“You can’t. In the morning I’m leaving with the team for Paris. I’ll have to find you.”
Daniel gave him a number. “Keep me posted. I’ll need to know everything as it happens. We’ll have men in Paris, but you won’t know who they are.”
“Dan? This is my mother and sister we’re talking about.”
“Trust me, Jake.”
“I always have, haven’t I?”
Daniel rang off and Jake felt somewhat better. No matter what happened, he was no longer alone.
CHAPTER NINE
Just before two p.m. on Thursday, Ellie loaded her bags and left the small apartment she had rented above the garage of a two-story house in Gladstone while she was training.
Her rooms in Santa Barbara, luxurious by comparison, were above her family’s four-car garage at their exclusive residence in Hope Ranch. Her apartment there had a fireplace, kitchen and dining room, and a jumbo-sized bedroom. She’d decorated the place herself in a Southwest motif, using soft mauves and beiges with a trace of mint green.
In New Jersey, her tiny rented apartment overflowed with Duncan Fife mahogany and white lace doilies. Not her style, but it reminded her of her grandmother’s house, and she would miss the place over the coming weeks.
Ellie returned her rented Toyota to the Avis drop off at the airport. She’d rent another when she returned for the horses’ twenty-one-day quarantine before the Olympics. With the recent outbreak of Pyroplasmosis, the quarantine was imperative.
In the meantime, there were four European competitions ahead: Paris, Rotterdam, Hickstead, and Dublin.
At the terminal, a kindly dark-haired woman checked Ellie’s tickets and sent her along the corridor to gate thirty-seven, a chartered Lufthansa flight that would arrive in Paris at eight forty-five in the morning.
The horses had already been loaded. Ellie entered the front of the plane to find a dozen members of the dressage, three-day eventing, and show jumping teams. Numerous grooms and handlers were already seated. Once they reached Paris, the teams would split up, each attending shows in different cities. They’d return on different planes at the end of the tour.
The big 747 had been sectioned in half: the horses quartered in the rear, the riders and lay members of the team in the front. Jake Sullivan wasn’t on board.
“Have you seen Jake?” Ellie asked Prissy Knowles. Four inches taller than Ellie, Prissy weighed twenty-five pounds more, but she was far from fat. She was attractive, with light brown hair and hazel eyes.
Though they had only recently met, Ellie knew a little about her. Raised in Massachusetts, Prissy had been riding the Eastern circuit since she was ten years old. Since her family wasn’t wealthy like those of most world-class riders, she’d worked in the stables to earn her keep. By the time she’d reached eighteen, she’d been good enough that several stables were willing to provide her with horses.
At twenty-eight, a gold medalist at the Pan American Games, Prissy could pick and choose. Julius Caesar and Deuteronomy, owned by the Greenbriar Stables just outside of Boston, were the horses she would be riding in Seoul. As Flex had predicted, she and Ellie were becoming fast friends.
“Jake’s in the back, making a final check of the horses.” Prissy eyed the quilted down jacket Ellie carried beneath her arm. “Don’t tell me you’re planning to ride back there?”
“Jake said I could since Jube isn’t used to flying. I want to be near in case he gets nervous.”
“Why don’t you send Gerry back? Surely he can handle him.”
“I’d just feel better being there myself.”
“Well, you brought the right clothes. It’s twenty degrees colder back there. The horses don’t mind, but you will.”
“I’ll be fine.” Ellie flashed a smile and headed back out through the open cabin door. She couldn’t resist a last glance around the interior for Clay. Probably chartered his own private jet, she thought waspishly, and realized she was still mad at him.
She had no right to be. If the man wanted to get drunk and make a fool of himself that was his business. It just seemed such a waste.
Hurrying along the tarmac, Ellie made her way into the back of the plane, her boots ringing against the metal stairs. It already held the musky, alfalfa-horse scent of the stables, and Ellie was immediately glad to be there.
Glancing at her surroundings, she found Jake checking the horses, Gerry cooing to Jube, and several grooms feeding their animals handfuls of oats in an effort to keep them calm in their unfamiliar surroundings.
