The Kill by Jan Neuharth

about the previous afternoon.
    Of course, just because he couldn’t remember, didn’t mean he hadn’t been there. And if he had been, the obvious question was whether he could have—
should have
—done anything to protect Richard. Or whether he’d seen anything that could provide a lead as to what had happened. A clue that was locked away in the deep recesses of his drunken haze.
    Fear crashed over Manning in waves, biting at his gut. What if he hadn’t made it to Longmeadow? The alternative scenario was no better. That meant he’d stood Richard up. Caused Richard to hang around waiting for him. Alone. A sitting duck.
    Not that it would ever have entered his mind that Richard, or anyone else for that matter, might be in danger alone at Longmeadow. That was almost laughable. The kind of thing people who lived other places worried about. Not people in Middleburg. People out here worried about lame horses, droughts, storms, preserving open space.
    Sure, the community had its fair share of scandal, even murder. Domestic disputes, revenge killings, crimes of passion. And there was the occasional tack theft, or, rarer still, horse theft. There had even been a time, years back, when a nutcase had slipped into barns in the still of night and sodomized horses. But city crimes—random robbery and the like—just didn’t happen in Middleburg.
    And yet it had happened.
    Manning blew out a loud sigh. “To hell with it.” He reached out and tilted the bottle, watching the golden liquid glug to the rim of the glass. He raised it to his lips and knocked back a mouthful, closing his eyes as the burn slid down his throat.

CHAPTER
17

    A bigale clutched the wool blanket tighter across her chest as she scooted lower in the hammock seat of the C-17 and leaned her head against the backrest. During her stint in the Middle East she’d become adept at catching shut-eye whenever—wherever—she could. But sleep eluded her. The drone of the plane’s engines, normally hypnotic, did nothing to drown out the questions racing through her mind.
    She knew only the headlines from a brief phone conversation she’d had with Margaret from Kabul: Margaret had found Uncle Richard at Longmeadow racecourse, shot dead with his own hunting rifle. His wallet and watch were missing, and the authorities were treating it like a botched robbery. Period. That’s all she knew. She didn’t know whether her uncle had died instantly or if he’d suffered. Had no idea if there was evidence of a struggle, or whether the sheriff had identified a suspect. When Abigale had pressed for more details, Margaret had told her she’d fill her in on everything when she arrived.
    Abigale had called her mother during the stopover in Germany, and had thought she’d done a good job of playacting when she’d told her mother she would be okay returning to Virginia. But her mother had seen through it. She, better than anyone, knew why Abigale hadn’t been back in seventeen years. The last thing her mother had said to her was, “Just remember, Manning’s not the boy you once knew. He’s a grown man now. He has made his own choices with his life. None of it is your fault.”
What the hell did that mean?
    She opened her eyes and caught a glance from one of the soldiers strapped to a gurney in the aisle of the military transport, his face no more than a few feet from hers. He smiled tentatively, then shot his eyes toward the camera that hung against Abigale’s chest. “Think I could ask you to take a photograph of me?” His drawl was Deep South, the clear voice of a boy, not yet weathered by age. She pegged him at around eighteen or nineteen years old.
    “Of course,” Abigale said, unsnapping her lens cap.
    “I want it for my baby boy,” the soldier said. “So when he grows up he’ll be proud of his papa.”
    His arm snaked out from beneath the military-green blanket and Abigale peered at the photo clutched in his hand. “He’s beautiful. What’s his