Free Hoofprints (Gail McCarthy series) by Laura Crum

few huge trunks. Their earthy, bittersweet smell rose above the cold, wet, ocean smell of the fog.
    Stepping forward into the night in the direction the arrow pointed, I went a hundred feet when another building bulked up in front of me. Again there were no lights and no noise. I stopped and stood still. This morning a routine call had turned into a murder case. Maybe it had upset me. All I knew was this silent, empty barnyard seemed odd.
    I was used to midnight emergencies; I was accustomed to driving up to strangers' homes alone, to unknown faces filled with panic, to animals in life-or-death situations, their owners almost irrational with distress. My nerves were proof against all that, but something about the eerie stillness here was bothering me.
    Eventually, I walked forward. The normal thing would have been to call out "Hello," or "This is the vet," but somehow I didn't want to do that. I walked quietly toward the dark building and felt myself straining to hear any sound in the night around me.
    The barn was big and high-roofed, with a silo tower at one end of it. I could tell that much with my flashlight. There was a black hole in the middle-the doorway. Stepping inside, I swung the flashlight around. The beam picked out a couple of wooden pens, but they were falling apart. There was no sign of a horse or any human being, and the barn had a musty, long-dead smell. I didn't think there had been any animals in it for a while.
    Staring at the empty pens, I felt annoyed and a little nervous. It wasn't a mistake. The note on the cabin door proved that. Somebody wanted me out here. But why, and where were they? I swung the flashlight around the barn again. I saw a few rusty pieces of old haying equipment, a few gaps in the board wall, a stack of firewood in the corner. A bright new nail glinted in the light at my feet. Automatically I bent to pick it up. Nails on the floor of a barn, even an apparently empty barn, went against my instincts; nails are horse cripplers.
    That nail saved my life. As I bent over, the silent darkness was blown apart with a loud, angry boom. I dove for the door, not thinking, reacting on my nerves. Something told me that the gun and whoever held it were very close to me.
    I landed scrambling, got to my feet, and ran into the night in the direction of my truck. There was another crashing boom behind me. I dodged to one side of a tree and ducked around a branch, trying desperately to see where I was going in the jerking beam of the flashlight.
    Another shot cracked just as I saw the black bulk of the cabin ahead of me. I dove hard to get behind it and heard a crunch as my flashlight went out. "Shit," I gasped, struggling to my feet and running blindly toward where I thought my truck was. Where it had to be. Somewhere in the darkness.
    I ran toward where I remembered it and it materialized out of the night. Thanking God it was a white truck and not a black one, I threw open the door which, mercifully, I hadn't locked, reached for the key which was still in the ignition, and threw the thing into gear as I started it.
    I spun a wild circle in front of the cabin, the headlights cutting a crazy path through the dark. I thought I saw a human figure standing by the building in the fog, but I didn't hesitate to find out. I heard another crack and asked the engine for everything she had. I shot through the wooden gate with a roar and bounced across the field as fast as she would take it. I probably set the world's speed record for opening a gate and getting back into the truck.
    When I was finally on the public road, doing a good brisk fifty miles an hour away from the deserted cabin, my heart started to slow down a little. Not much, but a little. I saw that my hands were trembling on the steering wheel. Shock, I noted clinically.
    The Lost Weekend showed ahead of me in the headlights. What I need, I told myself, is a drink. I pulled into the parking lot and headed for the bar.
    Inside it was warm and lighted