The Filly

Chapter One-1

Chapter One

The man startled Morgan, coming up beside her to match her pace, reducing the length of his stride to compensate for his longer legs. Her headphones had masked the sound of his footfalls, and she had been too preoccupied to be aware of anyone behind her. The running path was usually hers alone at this hour, when most souls were still snug in their beds or putting on the coffee pot. Few were willing to brave the cold dawn. Winter was coming, and the ranks of fair weather joggers, so resolute in April, had thinned with the autumn leaves.

She shot him a look devoid of either challenge or allure, and kept her headphones on to discourage conversation. She didn’t care to race, and she wasn’t interested in hearing his well rehearsed pickup line. Her morning runs had always been a time of solitude and meditation, and she needed those things more than ever now.

He just grinned back and c****d a finger in the air by way of greeting, then looked straight ahead and held his place beside her, not close enough to be threatening, but disinclined to renounce his post position.

All right, she thought, I know how this game is played.

As a child, she had often annoyed her older brother Robby with the echo game, imitating every one of his words and gestures. The game was the most fun for her when he became exasperated and began to threaten. Then she would shout his own words right back at him.

“Stop that!”

“I’m telling Mom!”

“I mean it!”

“It’s not funny anymore!”

Eventually he found a way to defeat her. As soon as she began the game, her brother would drop to the ground and start doing pushups. She was a strong girl, but more than two or three ‘boy- style’ pushups, with only her toes and palms on the floor, were beyond her ability.

Game over.

That had been years ago, of course, when Robby was healthy.

But running was her forte, and this cocky Lothario was about to learn a lesson. She guessed that he was new to jogging, his sweats had a fresh pressed look, and his shoes were barely scuffed. Perhaps he had seen her here on other mornings, and thought that this would be a clever way to meet her. She dismissed the thought as paranoia. She didn’t regard herself to be beautiful enough to merit a stalker, especially one handsome enough to meet women without subterfuge. Anyway, tending bar taught her to see trouble coming, and this one ranked low on the creep scale.

So she would test his stamina and see what price her companionship was worth.

It was three miles around the lake, an easy enough run at a moderate pace. The course was mainly level. A busy street paralleled the path on the left, with condos beyond. On the right was only water. She had been taking it easy, wanting to make the run last, but was capable of much more. So she picked up speed, and smirked as she saw him begin to drop back.

Her triumph was brief. In a moment he erased her lead and drew alongside.

All righty then!

She stretched out her long legs, relaxing into the long lope that had served her so well in her competitive years. At such times, she felt as though she were being drawn forward by an invisible force, and the rhythmic slap of her feet against the earth was merely a metronome ticking off the miles. The music swelled in her earphones, carrying her along. It was a new age mix, heavy on the wind chimes and Gregorian chants, but selected for its steady beat.

Her companion drifted away from her side momentarily, as they purled past a fat man grinding along on a bicycle, then they flowed together again. She glanced at her silent companion, expecting to see him sweating and laboring to keep up, and was annoyed by the indifferent ease of his stride.

A test of endurance began. Many runners could match this pace for a few hundred yards, but oxygen starved muscles eventually lose strength and falter. She expected to outlast him easily, yet they strode on for more than a mile, arms pumping, plumes of steam exploding from their mouths and trailing in their wake.

As they made the last turn, she could see her finish line ahead, the bench where she had stripped away her sweatshirt and dropped it beside her water bottle and towel, ignoring the chill air on her bare arms, knowing that the run would warm her. When she saw the gym bag beside her gear, his gym bag, she reacted with a hitch in her stride, as she thought again of the possibility that this meeting had been no accident.

Taking advantage of her moment of hesitation, the man began to sprint.

Cocky bastard! She had nearly convinced herself that he had reached his limit, that pure stubbornness was allowing him to keep up with her. It was daunting to know that he still had unsuspected reserves.

But so did she.

Grimacing, she shifted into overdrive, feeling the thrust of her hips as they transformed each step into a bound. Just before he reached the bench, she flanked him, and was gratified to see his surprised sidelong glance.

Laughing like a schoolgirl, she slapped a hand on the back off the bench and slid to a halt.

For a time, neither of them spoke. They just paced and gulped air and grinned at each other, sharing the rush of oxygenated blood and endorphins pumping through their bodies. He was a good looking guy, after all, and she was slightly ashamed that she hadn’t spoken to him yet. She slipped the headphones off and draped them over her shoulders, threading her ponytail through the metal head band and fluffing her hair a bit, then abandoning the effort when she realized that she was unconsciously primping. As though to mock her, the music took on a romantic character, lush with strings and piano. She could still hear its ironic whispering.

Angel on the right shoulder, devil on the left her mother used to say.

“Shall we call that a draw?” he said at last.

She shrugged magnanimously, “Fair enough.”

He opened his gym bag and brought out a towel, mopping his brow as he extended a hand. “Brian Boison,” he said.

She stopped with her hand halfway up.

“THE Brian Boison?”

He let his hand drop. “I’m flattered that anyone remembers.” Morgan detected the accent then, that sort of mid-Atlantic polyglot only jet setters speak. He had roots in France and England, but the U.S. had awarded him a fleeting celebrity.

“You took the silver medal!”

He nodded ruefully. “Exactly. No one remembers number two.”

She recalled that she had been about to shake his hand and took it now, trying hard not to appear star struck.

“What brings you to this corner of nowhere, Mr. Boison?” she asked.

He looked a bit embarrassed when he answered, and the music whispering from her earphones chose that moment to hit an ominous minor chord.

“Actually,” he said, “I came to meet you, Ms. Mayfield.”

She let go of his hand and threw a meaningful glance toward the street that paralleled the path, filling now with commuters, some of them no doubt sturdy males who would be honored to aid a lady in distress.

“An explanation would be good right now,” she said evenly, “before I have to start, you know, screaming for help?”

He laughed disarmingly. “Shouldn’t you be wondering how you managed to run a silver medalist to a photo finish?”

“You let me.”

He shook his head, smirking. “I’m not in contest condition, maybe, but I wasn’t holding back.”

She wasn’t buying any of this. “First you stage this little race to meet me. Then you pretend to be somebody famous so I’ll be flattered.” She blew at a lock of hair that had come loose and strayed into her eyes. When it persisted, she tossed her head to banish it.

“There is a phrase that covers situations like this,” she said, “restraining order.” She spoke the last words slowly and clearly, through her teeth, so that there would be no question about her seriousness.

Laughing, he dropped down onto the park bench and put his laced hands behind his head, crossing his legs at the ankle. “You have a quick mind,” he said. “You aren’t easily flattered either. I like that.”

“I’m also immune to cheap charm,” she said. “How do you know my name?”

“It’s a long story,” he said. “I’m cooling down here. Let’s go get a cup of coffee and I’ll explain everything.”

“I have to get to work,” she lied. It was early, and the bar didn’t open until noon.

“No you don’t.” She was really learning to hate that goofy grin. “I’m buying.”

“So who are you, and how is it you know so much about me?”

She wasn’t as nervous now. The coffee shop was a safe and familiar place to her, and he seemed less of a threat with a table between them. He had displayed only polite attention as they ordered coffee and bagels. Whatever he had on his mind, it didn’t seem to include any salivating or heavy breathing

He opened his wallet and laid it on the table with his driver’s license showing. “I don’t have my silver medal with me today,” he said dryly.

“I can’t believe that you came here just to meet me,” she said. “Were all of the supermodels and starlets busy this week?”

He winced a bit at that. His fifteen minutes of fame had included a few affairs that had been extensively covered by the supermarket tabloids.

“I regret to say that my interest in you is more professional than personal,” he said sincerely. “You are a very attractive woman, beautiful, intelligent, strong, loyal, dutiful.”

She snorted, “Puhlease!”

“It’s true! You dropped out of high school, even though your grades were excellent and an athletic scholarship was waiting; because your brother needed your help.”

She shrugged, trying to ignore the fact that he knew entirely too much about her. Her brother’s condition was a private matter, but hardly a secret.

“We never knew our father. Mom worked herself to death for us. No one else was stepping up.”

“Your brother has a wife,” Brian reminded her.

“With two kids to take care of, they never saw his sickness coming. How much health insurance do you buy when you’re twenty two? I do what I can. Bartenders aren’t exactly rolling in cash, even if the steelworkers do over tip me.”

She smiled self consciously as she spoke. She was modest, but not blind. Hard work and running had given her a body that was graceful and muscular. Her mother had given her big brown eyes, pert features, and glossy auburn hair. Two weeks after hiring her the bar owner had added up his receipts and doubled her pay.

“I understand that there is a clinic in Switzerland with an experimental treatment that could help him,” Brian said sympathetically. “They may even have a cure.”

She nodded and sipped coffee. It gave her an excuse to look down and hide the tears of frustration that burned unshed in the corners of her eyes. She blinked them angrily away. “It doesn’t come cheap though.”

“He is one of the reasons I am here.”

She smirked. “Do you have a check for me from the Brian Boison Medical Endowment Fund?”

He shook his head. “Silver medals aren’t worth much. I don’t even get to do sneaker endorsements anymore. I make my living by representing the interests of a certain wealthy client who wishes to remain anonymous for now.”

“This reads like dialogue from some bad novel,” she pulled a paper napkin out of the dispenser and blew her nose noisily. “You’re telling me that some crazy rich guy sent you to find me?” She barked once with incredulous, bitter laughter.

“He is eccentric,” Brian said dryly. “Only poor people are crazy.”

She bit off the laugh and pushed the bagel around on her paper plate with a forefinger before she picked it up. “Thanks, but charity isn’t my style.”

“It isn’t charity,” said Brian. “It’s a job offer.”

“I already have a job.”

“My client would send your brother to that clinic in Switzerland and pay you fifty thousand dollars if you spend a month in training at his facility.”

She had been in the process of spreading cream cheese on her bagel. Her hand froze as he mentioned the sum. She was good with numbers, and even as she glanced up warily a small part of her mind was dividing fifty thousand dollars by thirty days and comparing it to the income of a pretty barmaid on a Friday night.

“What kind of training are we talking about?”

“You are familiar with the sport of harness racing?”

“Sure, horses pulling carts around a track. I’m sorry to have to tell you that I don’t know much about horses though.”

“There aren’t any horses involved in this sport. The carts are drawn by humans—women usually.”

She looked around for a hidden camera, expecting to see the guys she worked with at the tavern hiding behind the cash register and stifling laughter.

“This is a joke—right?”

“No joke. I know, this isn’t something you usually see on television, even cable wouldn’t touch it, but it is a real sport. The competition is earnest, and considerable sums are bet on the outcomes. Talented runners are in high demand.”

“There is something you aren’t telling me about this,” she sniffed. “What? Do they race naked or something?”

He sipped coffee to buy time before he answered, burned his mouth and slopped a bit reacting. She mopped the table between them with a napkin, reacting automatically with a bit of instinctive barmaid behavior she instantly regretted. He might take it as a sign of weakness, the meek little woman cleaning up to mask her discomfort.

“Well,” he stammered, “the harnesses are rather brief.”

She snorted. “Bits in the mouth too, I suppose?”

He nodded.

She folded her arms across her chest. “Tails?”

He held up his hands defensively. “I know where you’re going with this. It may not be what you think. The competitors are highly regarded and well rewarded.”

Her face was tight. “I may be a small town girl, but I have been on the internet, and I read a lot. This is some pervert thing, right? Ponygirl racing to feed the fantasies of a bunch of rich old degenerates?”

“Well, if you want to put it in the worst possible light,” he sighed.

“You’re nothing but a procurer!”

He blushed. “I prefer to think of myself as a talent scout.”

She leaned back and finished her bagel with angry little bites. She didn’t want to leave good food behind when she walked out, and the necessity of avoiding waste chafed. She had known a moment of hope, thinking that Robby might be helped, and her own poverty eased. Now she felt cheated.

“Help me out here.” She didn’t like the way her voice sounded, as though she were begging. “Give me a reason not to walk away from this.”

Fifty thousand dollars

“Sell me.”