Free Horse Spy by Bonnie Bryant

even though we don’t usually think of Pine Hollow as a hotbed of terrorism. You girls need to respect the fact that these fellows are just doing their jobs.”
    “Well, they’re doing them pretty weirdly,” Stevie said, glancing at one man who was scanning Starlight with a metal detector. Starlight’s shoes set the machine to beeping. Carole went over to explain about horses’ metal shoes and to calm the man down. He might know a lot about personal security, but he didn’t know the first thing about horses. Stevie thought Carole was probably exactly the right person to straighten him out on that subject and suspected that before they were done, he’d have learned a
whole
lot about horses. Stevie almost felt sorry for the man as she heard Carole launching into a history of horseshoes.
    While Carole finished up her lecture on horse hoof care, Lisa and Stevie went to check on Polaris and Blue, who were getting the afternoon off. It didn’t surprise the girls to see that neither horse seemed the least bit flustered by the flurry of activity at the stable.
    “They’re used to being in the middle of madhouses, aren’t they?” Lisa asked.
    “I guess they are,” Stevie said. “It can be pretty wild at a horse show. This pair is just taking it in stride.”
    “Well, they’re doing better than anyone else here,” Lisa said. “I can’t believe what’s going on.”
    “I wonder if it’s always like this around Karya,” Stevie said. “At first I envied the fact that she never had to muck out a stall, but if she’s always got this many people looking after her, well, I think I might feel sorry for her.”
    “It must be calmer in her own home,” Lisa reasoned. “I mean, like they’ve got a gate or something so the family can just be together, right?”
    “Maybe, but I bet every time they look out the window, there are men in black to remind them of the dangers outside.”
    “Weird,” said Lisa.
    “Makes me think that living with my three brothers isn’t the worst thing in the world,” said Stevie.
    “Well, let’s go rescue that guy from Carole’s forty-five-minute lecture on hooves and see if Red’s finished with Barq and then wait for Karya,” Lisa said.
    The security man seemed relieved when Lisa and Stevie called Carole away from him, although she was annoyed to be interrupted in the middle of an explanation of egg-bar shoes. Red was, indeed, finished grooming Barq, whose chestnut coat gleamed from his attentions. However, the girls did find a security guard there as well, demanding an explanation as to why they had not been informed that this was the horse selected for Karya.
    “We have no information on his background whatsoever!” the man declared explosively. “What if he is not satisfactory to Ms. Nazeem?”
    Carole interrupted the tirade. “Let me assure you that she will be allowed to choose whatever horse she wants. We thought she’d like this one because he’s a fine horse and an Arabian. It seemed like a good choice to us, but the ultimate choice is hers.”
    The man looked at Carole. Then he looked at Red, who nodded agreement. Then he left.
    “Weird,” Stevie said, echoing Lisa’s earlier remark. “You’d think these men had never seen a horse before.”
    “They definitely haven’t,” Carole said. “That other guy—with the metal detector—didn’t know the first thing about horseshoes!”
    “He does now!” Lisa teased.
    “You bet,” Carole agreed.
    “Come on. Let’s go wait for our guest,” Stevie said, looking at her watch. “It’s almost two-fourteen.”
    The three girls trooped out to the parking area, delivering their password on the way out, though Alek told them they needed it only to get back in again, and settled onto the top rail of the paddock fence to await the diplomatic cavalcade they were sure would accompany Karya Nazeem to Pine Hollow.
    Eight cars went by, but none of them had flags and none of them was escorted by motorcycles or police