Two hours into the trip, Clay excused himself to go to the bathroom. The plane dipped unexpectedly, and Ellie’s stomach rolled. Julius Caesar whinnied loudly and began to kick the board slats holding him in. He jerked at his rope with a snapping pop that rang through the cabin, and a dark-haired groom Ellie didn’t recognize unbuckled his seat belt and moved toward the horse at the same time Ellie did.
Standing next to Caesar, now Lass was beginning to get nervous. She kicked the back of the crate and whinnied, and Caesar tore his rope free.
“You sonofabitch,” the groom said. “You’ll have them all stirred up if you don’t settle down.” He took the loose end of the rope and whacked Caesar hard across the nose. The horse reared up on his back legs, hitting his head on the top of the pallet.
“Stop that!” Ellie cried. “Leave him alone. He’s just scared.”
“Stay out of this. It’s my job to see these animals arrive safely. The way he’s acting, he’ll have them all going nuts.”
Thwack, the rope came down on Caesar’s nose. He flattened his ears and tried to bite. Teeth bared, he snorted and pawed and fought, rolled his eyes back to expose the whites. Thwack, thwack, thwack.
Ellie’s chest tightened. “Please don’t do that.”
“Leave the horse alone.” Clay’s deep voice cut like a knife. “You know better than to treat an animal like that. If you don’t, you don’t belong here.”
The groom took a step backward. “Look, Whitfield. We’re forty-two thousand feet up. The sonofabitch will have them all trying to break out. God knows what they could do to the plane. What do you suggest we do?”
“I suggest we try to figure out what the hell is wrong with him.”
“Obviously, he doesn’t like to fly.”
“Obviously.” The sarcasm went unnoticed by the groom. “Snub him down, and I’ll take a look.”
The groom did as he was told, putting a loop on the end of a stick around Caesar’s nose and twisting until his head was immobile. Caesar braced himself on all four feet, trembling all over, but he didn’t move. Through the slats of the crate, Clay checked the animal’s feet, checked the horse’s haunches and flanks. Nothing.
Then Caesar’s dark pupils caught Clay’s attention. They were dilated abnormally.
“I hate to say this, but I think he’s been drugged.”
“What?” Ellie moved close. “Why would anyone want to drug him?”
“Apparently to make him hyperactive. If nobody had been back here, God knows how much trouble he might have caused. Maybe whoever did this didn’t count on our being here. Or maybe they were just creating malicious mischief. My guess is there was something added to his grain or water. We’ll have the buckets checked when we get to Paris.”
“Will he be all right?”
“We’ll have to keep an eye on him. He’s going to make this trip a living hell.”
“Let’s get a rope over his head and around behind him,” Willie Jenkins, the second groom suggested. “That ought to keep him fairly immobile.”
In fifteen minutes, they had him tied as securely as possible. Caesar snorted and whinnied, stomped and strained against the ropes, but it looked as though he would be all right.
“As soon as we land, we’ll let Jake and the others know.” Clay followed Ellie back to their seats. “It’s possible whoever did this is a member of the tour.”
She paused as she strapped herself back in. “You can’t believe it’s one of our own people.”
“I’m sure it isn’t, but you never know.”
The trip passed with agonizing slowness, the cold creeping into everyone’s bones, Caesar’s shrill neighing keeping all of them on edge. Being the farthest away, Jube seemed unconcerned. Off and on, Clay soothed Max, speaking to him quietly, rubbing his nose and his sleek, powerful neck. Surprisingly, each time the horse quieted almost instantly, and eventually settled down to grazing in his pallet.
Returning to his seat, Clay stretched his long legs out in front of him, trying to make himself comfortable.
Ellie flashed Clay a smile. “I just...I want to say how great you were with Caesar. If you hadn’t been here, I don’t know what we would have done.”
“You’d have done just fine.” He returned her smile. “Why don’t you put your head on my shoulder and try to get some sleep?”
She hesitated. But considering the cold and the grueling hours in the air, it was probably a good idea. Resting her head against Clay’s thick shoulder, she let herself relax. He felt solid and warm, and her eyelids began to droop. She closed them for a while, but she never completely fell asleep.
When the plane landed in Paris, she found herself hoping Clay would ask her out as he had before. Against her better judgment, she would accept.
