A/N: Another shorter chapter for you. I didn't have time to write down a longer one. See chapter 1 for disclaimer, notes, etc. I have discovered two omissions from the acknowledgements and disclaimers in chapter 1, which was transferred from mind to document on a night I shouldn't have tried it. First, Ruth should have been credited as a real character. Being a cat, she has not exactly granted me complete rights, but she does eat at my house. Second, I am also grateful to my aunt, vice president in a bank, for giving me an insider's view of bank robbery and the precautions the banks take against it.

(H/C)

"There is no secret so close as that between a rider and his horse."

Robert Smith Surtees

(H/C)

Horatio arrived at Gulfstream Park the next morning after a quick stop at CSI. The morning bustle was at full force, and a groom told him to look for Duncan over at the track. He left the Hummer at the barn, since walking was about as fast as driving under these conditions. The backstretch was even busier than the previous morning, with horses and people everywhere. Horatio carefully picked his way through the activity, watching it with a professional eye at the same time. This actually would be a smart choice for a clandestine meeting, two people hiding their conversation in plain sight of a hundred others who were too busy to care. Much less attention getting than surreptitious whispers in corners. Only the eye of Pete's camera had caught them. Hopefully, it had caught them at least twice. Back at CSI, Calleigh was thoroughly sifting through Pete's previous rolls of film, and Horatio knew that if a prior shot was there to be found, she would find it. Speed and Eric were processing other evidence from the tack room, including Pete's DMSO. Horatio could feel this case building, the evidence linking into chains that would eventually cuff the as-yet-unknown killer.

The musical thunder of hoofbeats rolled along the track, announcing in advance the storm of speed to come on Saturday. The horses seemed to be divided into unmarked lanes, faster ones by the inside rail, slower moving ones out toward the middle of the track, precisely following unposted traffic laws while totally ignoring each other. Horatio was surprised at how vocal the exercise riders were, many talking constantly to their mounts. A few of them were even singing as they galloped around, and no one within earshot seemed to think it was at all odd for these hardened, grown men to be singing to horses in public. Each horse and rider existed in their own personal cocoon for these few moments, oblivious to the audience, oblivious to anything except the track and the rhythm of their flight.

Horatio spotted Duncan up ahead, leaning against the rail around the outer edge of the track. His hands clutched a stopwatch like a lifeline, but his eyes ignored it for the moment, glued to the horse. Silver Lining came down the inside rail, stretched out in a pounding gallop, hooves greedily reaching out for the ground and conquering it with each stride. The horse flashed past the marked post directly in front of his trainer, and Duncan's finger snapped down on the stopwatch stem. His hands closed over the watch face, and he still did not look, almost afraid to. His head turned, following the slowing horse, and only when Silver Lining had dropped down to a trot and turned around did Duncan stare at his hands, then slowly open them. His shoulders quivered slightly as he released a shuddering sigh.

"Mr. Duncan?" Horatio had been standing behind him for a minute, but Duncan obviously hadn't noticed him. He nearly dropped the watch as he whirled.

"Lieutenant. Have you found out who killed Pete yet?"

"Not yet, but we're making progress. I'd like to ask you a few more questions."

"Of course. Anything I can do to help." Duncan turned his back on Horatio even while he was saying it, completely focused once again on the approaching horse. "Well, Sarah?"

Horatio realized for the first time that the rider was female. They were the exception on the backstretch, but he had seen several among the men. Sarah pushed her helmet back to wipe sweat off her forehead. "He's ready. Pulling my arms out. I had an awful time making him gallop that slow half mile first."

"What about the leg?" Duncan was ducking under the rail and stepping forward to check it himself even as he asked.

The rider hopped off the horse, still holding onto the reins. "I couldn't tell any difference in his stride. Changed leads right away off the turn when I asked. He's feeling good, Randy. What did you get him in?"

The trainer straightened up and glanced at the stopwatch again for confirmation. "57 and 2/5."

Sarah whistled, and Silver Lining pricked his ears and looked at her. "He's ready," she repeated.

Horatio cleared his throat softly, and Duncan looked startled, like he'd forgotten he was there. "Um, yes, take him back to the barn yourself, Sarah, okay? Ben's there. I'll be over in a few minutes."

The rider looked at Horatio curiously, noticing him for the first time herself, then shrugged, returning her attention to the horse. "Come on, champ. Won't be too many more days. You can't wait, can you?" She walked off, leading the horse and talking to him in a one-sided conversation that somehow seemed two-sided. Duncan turned to face Horatio.

"So, about Pete. How are you doing?"

"We've found out a few things at the autopsy. Do you have a list of his allergies, Mr. Duncan?"

"Of course. I've got everybody's allergies and medical conditions in a notebook. It's back at the barn."

"Would everyone know that?"

Duncan nodded. "In case we need it quickly when someone gets hurt." He nodded toward an ambulance parked at the outer edge of the track. "Horses are a lot of things, Mr. Caine, but safe isn't one of them. This is the only sport where an ambulance actually drives around the track behind the athletes during the races. Fall off a horse at 45 miles an hour in a whole field of galloping horses, and you don't just get up."

"Did you know Pete had multiple old fractures?"

"Not odd for a jockey. Probably most of them riding Saturday average in the teens for broken bones." Duncan was totally professional, relaxed, and helpful at the moment. This was the man Lisa had described. "Why do his allergies matter?"

"He died from an allergic reaction."

"Not the hook?"

"No, he fell on the hook as he collapsed."

"Then it was just an accident, right?"

"I'm afraid not, Mr. Duncan. You keep DMSO around the barn, don't you?"

"Of course. We use it all the time. It wouldn't kill somebody, though."

"It might if something else was mixed with it. Something Pete was allergic to."

Duncan was shocked. Horatio, watching him critically, was absolutely convinced the reaction was genuine. "You mean somebody researched it and deliberately killed him? I thought it was a fight or something, with the hook. That's almost worse, that somebody could be that cold-blooded."

"Unfortunately, many people are. I'd like your book of allergies, Mr. Duncan, for fingerprints."

"Of course. Could I have a copy of the information, though? We do have a reason for keeping it available."

"Certainly." They started walking back toward the barns. "Describe your grooms and workers to me, please."

Duncan hesitated, then accepted the obvious fact that it probably was one of them. "Mixed bunch. Any trainer has different kinds. Some of them come in with romantic ideas, find out how hard work it is, and split within a few weeks. We have a lot of turnover. Hardly a week goes by that someone isn't quitting or someone else isn't asking for a job. Of course, I don't assign the best horses to the new ones until they've proven themselves."

Horatio suddenly jumped on that train of thought. "You mean anybody could get through that security gate into the backstretch just by saying he was looking for a job?" With all the elaborate security, he'd wondered how someone made it back here to meet with the killer and get photographed doing it.

Duncan looked puzzled. "Not at night, certainly. Only during the day when at least a hundred people are around. Nobody got in like that to dose Pete's DMSO at night."

"That wasn't what I was thinking of." Horatio filed that information and made a note to check the security gate log. "Back to your employees, please."

"I have 16 grooms at the moment. Some of them have been with me for years, like Ramon. About two-thirds of them are new this year in different months. Pete, of course, was researching his book. He was good, though. Carlos is one I don't expect to last long. Harder work than he thought. Misael is good, but he wants every week to be the Breeders' Cup. You lose a lot more than you win. He'll probably quit before long. Then, there's Juan. He's been with me a few months. He's doing research, too."

"Another book?"

"No. He's one of those people who thinks he can develop the perfect gambling system." Duncan smiled for the first time Horatio had seen. "The perfect gambling system doesn't exist. He's trying to combine statistics with inside information, watching the horses work, getting a feel for who's sitting on a big race. He's had trouble keeping jobs in the mainstream world because he didn't have the office mentality. He likes the horses, even if he thinks of them as commodities. Good groom, but I don't give him the best ones. He'll never find what he's looking for, though. If his system worked, we'd all be rich around here." Duncan's helpfulness abruptly shattered against the rock of desperation. He unconsciously pulled the stopwatch out of his pocket and looked at it again.

Horatio filed Juan for further investigation. Maybe he was the one with gambling debts. "One more thing, Mr. Duncan." He hesitated long enough for the silence to draw the man's eyes away from the watch face. "What are you hiding?"

Duncan looked away again and swallowed hard, but Horatio had read him correctly. He would respond with resistance, not evasion like Ramon. Of the two, resistance was easier to overcome. "That doesn't have anything to do with Pete's death."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Duncan, but I can't just accept your word for that. I'm investigating a murder."

They had stopped to face each other, creating a ripple in the morning traffic as horses and people flowed around them. Duncan eyed Horatio, who was standing like a polite rock, solid and immovable. "If I can convince you, you wouldn't have to put it in the report, right?"

"If it has no business in the report, it won't be there," Horatio promised.

Duncan looked away again at the passing horses. It was easier to watch them than this stranger. "My father was diagnosed a few months ago with Alzheimer's disease. He'd been slipping for a long time, but my mother didn't realize how much. None of us saw it. None of us wanted to see it." He glanced back quickly at Horatio and was surprised to see genuine compassion, not pure professional analysis. "He's in a nursing home now. But he was the one who always handled the financial affairs, and obviously, his judgment's been disintegrating for the last few years. He cashed out their retirement funds and invested them in pipe dreams. Everything's gone, and the house has two mortgages on it that Mom didn't even know about until she took over and the banks started talking to her instead of Dad. They're going to foreclose on her, Mr. Caine. That house was built by my grandfather before she was born. She's already lost Dad, the person he used to be, anyway, and she's about to lose everything else familiar to her."

Horatio understood. "The money on Saturday would stop the foreclosure."

Duncan nodded. "I've tried to help her as much as I can, but nobody gets rich working in this business, Mr. Caine. I charge a flat fee per horse per day, and all the feed, employees, supplies, and expenses come off of that. Outside of my percentage of winnings, I hardly clear enough to support my wife and kids. There isn't any extra."

"A friend I asked said that you had two horses running Saturday."

"One of them honestly is here for the fun of it. She's already gone a lot higher than we ever would have dreamed of. She might surprise us, but there are better horses in the field. They'd have to falter for her to win. Besides, more of the money is in the Classic. It's the richest race in America." Duncan stared down at the stop watch again briefly. "Mr. Caine, nothing has gone right this year for Silver Lining, but the last few weeks, I can almost feel it. He's finally back to himself. I honestly think he should win. And if he did, in one race, Mom would be off the hook with the bank. So yes, I'm desperate for this win, and then I'm afraid to be so desperate, because I know how much can go wrong. I hate having so much riding on one race. But I don't know anything about who killed Pete Carter."

"I'm sorry," Horatio said softly, and Duncan looked back up from the watch to meet his eyes. "I hope everything turns out for you, and I won't write this in the report."

"Thank you." They started walking toward the barn again.

"What do you know about Ramon?" Horatio asked.

"Wonderful groom. He's spent hundreds of hours with that horse this year nursing him back after he was injured. He's always quiet, but he has a real feeling for the horses. I wish I had a dozen like him."

"Do you know anything about his family?"

"I know his father is dead. His mother is still in Mexico, and I think he has at least one younger sibling. He sends his money back to them. Probably, they're saving to come here, too."

"If Silver Lining won, he'd get a nice paycheck, too, wouldn't he?"

"Over $40,000." Duncan suddenly saw the money through someone else's eyes. "I hadn't thought of that. That win would probably mean as much to his family as to mine." Automatically, the doubts crept in to apply brakes to his speculation. "Nothing is guaranteed, though. The fastest horse doesn't always win. He should've won last time, and he ran into traffic problems."

They arrived back at Duncan's barn, and the trainer went to the second tack room, at the opposite end of the barn from the one where Pete had died. Hanging on a hook in plain sight was a notebook that said Medical Information in red letters on the cover. Duncan started to reach for it, and Horatio stopped him, snapping on gloves before he picked it up himself. He flipped through the pages, noting the crossed out employees and the additions. "You do have a high turnover."

"Believe me, everybody at the track does. Mine's actually better than average."

The turning pages stopped at Pete Carter. His broken neck was noted along with the other fractures, and he had been allergic to penicillin. Horatio froze in thought. Penicillin had a low molecular weight. He dropped the book into an envelope. "Randy," he said, using the man's first name for the first time, "I don't want this handled any more than we can help, but I promise, I'll have it photocopied immediately at CSI and give you copies. In the meantime, if you need anything from it, my cell phone is always on." He handed the trainer a card with the number. "Is penicillin hard to find around the track?"

"It's all over the place. You can buy injectable penicillin over the counter. It doesn't even require a vet."

"I want all of your penicillin bottles." Randy opened a small refrigerator and pointed without touching to three bottles filled with a milky white substance. Penicillin G, the label read clearly. Horatio carefully bagged them, and the two men left the tack room together.

"Randy!" A couple was practically scampering down the barn aisle toward them. They looked alike in that odd way that people married for a long time achieve. Both were at least in their 70s, but at the moment, they were acting like kids in a candy store. "We just got here today. Isn't this exciting? How's our girl?" The woman bustled up and caught both of the trainer's hands, pumping them enthusiastically.

Randy performed the introductions. "This is Charles and Meg Donovan. They own my other Breeders' Cup horse. Lieutenant Horatio Caine, Miami-Dade PD."

The woman automatically reached to shake Horatio's hand and hesitated as she saw the latex gloves and evidence envelopes. The man swept him with a look in which enthusiasm instantly yielded to professionalism. "Had trouble, Randy?"

"One of the grooms was murdered yesterday morning."

Meg's enthusiasm melted a second after her husband's, and Horatio quickly came to the conclusion that neither one of these people was half as scatterbrained as they had appeared at first. The eyes were full of calm, sad intelligence. "Oh, dear. Which one?"

"Pete Carter."

She shook her head. "Such a nice young man. Have you caught the perp yet?"

Charles saw Horatio's raised eyebrow at the term. "I'm retired FBI. 30 years. Meg and I have been through more murder investigations than I care to remember. Somehow you always do remember them, though."

Horatio nodded. "That you do. We're making good progress, I think. Randy, I need to get this evidence back to CSI. I'll come back later today to bring you the copies of the medical book, and I'll also want to talk to Ramon and to Juan. Don't tell them that in advance, though."

Randy reached out and touched him on one arm, not disturbing the evidence. "Thank you, Lieutenant Caine."

"Horatio," Horatio offered.

"Thank you, Horatio. For everything." Horatio smiled at him, then turned to leave the barn. Behind him, he heard Meg and Charles asking about their horse, and Randy replied, confident, friendly, without a trace of anything being wrong. The desperation was safely hidden.

The morning bustle was still in full swing outside as Horatio got in the Hummer. He wondered how many other secrets besides Randy's were hidden here. Glancing at the envelopes, he thought of Pete Carter, the jockey-photographer-groom who had apparently stumbled across one of those secrets and died for it without even realizing his knowledge. "There's about to be one less secret," Horatio vowed. He wound back through the maze of barns and out of Gulfstream, heading for CSI.