on a clipboard of papers, scratching notes on one before flipping through others and writing something else.
"You're late, Doctor." He turned to a metal filing cabinet and yanked open the drawer. "Rounds start at six sharp. It's now six thirty-five. Your tardiness has put us half an hour behind schedule."
Leah opened her mouth to apologize—
He slammed the drawer shut and turned on her, jaw unshaven that morning, eyes as clear blue as a mountain spring, and just as icy. She'd heard he wasn't bad to look at—true, in a rugged sort of way, if one liked the Foreign Legion mercenary sort who appeared as if he would rather run you through with a bayonet than say good morning. Whatever qualities might have made him appealing were canceled out by the intimidation of his scowl and the downward slant of his mouth.
Graham shoved the clipboard at her as he walked around her toward the door. "I just got a call from Lorian Farm. Their stakes winner, Cool Me Down, has a gut problem. Get your ass in gear and follow me."
Her face beginning to burn, Leah glanced toward the coffee maker on a table near a water cooler that sported a label from a distillery just outside of town. Graham had every right to be angry, she reminded herself. She'd fallen back to sleep when her alarm went off. If it hadn't been for Shamika dragging her out of bed, she would no doubt still be sleeping or thinking of Johnny and the ridiculous fear she'd experienced over his reaction to Val. She'd spent the better part of the night tossing and turning, not out of worry but over the memory of watching Johnny hold her son, and hearing his words, "I wish he were mine."
She hadn't bothered with coffee after her shower to revive her, and without coffee her mind would continue to feel like cotton for another two hours.
"Starr!" Jake shouted, causing her to jump and turn away from the coffeepot, toss her purse into a corner, and hurry out the door, into the bracing morning that was barely an hour old.
Business was bustling throughout the facility's vast barns. Electric horse walkers hummed as they went round and round with horses walking or jogging on the end of ropes. The high-spirited, muscular animals wore leg wraps around their cannon bones, their glossy bodies sending steam into the cool air. In the distance animals sprinted around the track with jockeys checking them back or driving them on, trainers standing on the sidelines with stopwatches in hand shaking their heads, cursing and shouting directives to the slender young men riding the horses.
Leah ran to catch up with Jake Graham, whose long legs made quick time of crossing one barn lot after another. She did her best to read the material Graham had shoved into her hands—not easy considering she was forced to jog just to keep up with Graham.
"Clinical Diagnosis," she read aloud. "Gastric ulceration hyperkeratosis. The horse is suffering from stomach ulcers."
"The gastric mucosa looks as if it's been sprayed with buckshot. You'll see the endoscopic evaluation there in the file. He's been on twenty-four hundred milligrams of Ranitidine tablets two times a day for the last week. He gets nothing more to eat than alfalfa and timothy hay four times a day. Until this morning the abdominal discomfort had abated. We were due to rescope tomorrow."
"Signs of discomfort this morning?"
"Pawing, lying out flat, looking at his side, camping in back."
"Colic."
"Maybe."
By the time they reached barn six, Leah was struggling to breathe. She paused at the door long enough to take a much-needed breath as Graham moved down the barn aisle, glancing back at her with a smugness on his face that made her want to take his stethoscope and palpate him with it.
Finally she followed, catching up with him just as he reached the string of stalls belonging to Lorian Farm. A tall, lanky man with faded orange hair that had thinned to a half-dozen strands wrapped over his bald head stood by a sleek black thoroughbred stallion with drawn-in flanks and heaving sides, its head down with nostrils wide and muzzle pinched.
His step slowing, Jake looked down at Leah and said quietly but firmly, "Watch. Listen. Do what I tell you to do and nothing more. Don't give Lorian an opinion. Don't even open your mouth. You have no license yet to practice here. If you were to diagnose wrong, that son-of-a-bitch could sue us and the state