"Damn right. Come here." They were nearly at Pride's saddling stall and there was plenty of traffic.

"Cut it out, Slater." But he'd already caught the ponytail she'd looped through the back of her cap.

"I'm just going to kiss you. The risk's on both sides."

She thought she heard some of the grooms hooting with laughter before her mind went blank. She'd wondered if that first, that only, intellect-sapping kiss had been a fluke. A coincidence. A one-time trip.

Apparently not.

There was something about his mouth. She opened hers to it eagerly, swamped in the taste, the texture, the heat. It moved against hers, clever and tormentingly slow, as if there was all the time in the world to sample. On a moan of agreement, she plunged her hands into his hair, holding on until the sounds of the track were no more than misty white noise.

I want. It was all he could think. He'd spent so much of his life wanting-decent food, a clean bed, the simple peace of living without fear. As he'd grown, those wants had grown with him. He'd wanted women and power and the money that would ensure both.

But he'd never craved anything, certainly not anyone, as he craved now. One woman. One night. He'd have gambled everything he had for the chance of it.

"How much longer?" he murmured against her lips.

"I don't know." She struggled to catch her breath. "I don't know you."

"Sure you do."

"I didn't know you existed a couple of months ago." She drew away, surprised her legs didn't fold under her. "I'm not-" She straightened her cap with a shaky hand as applause rang out behind them.

"We need to talk about this later. Without an audience."

"Well." He skimmed a fingertip over her jaw. "I accomplished something, anyway. The word's already going out that you're off limits."

"That I'm-" She set her teeth. "Is that what that was for? Some sort of macho claim staking?"

"No. It was for me, darling. But it worked. See you around."

She kicked the soda can she'd dropped when he'd kissed her. "Idiot," she muttered. Fighting for dignity, she turned and nearly ran into Naomi.

"It's odd," Naomi began while Kelsey struggled for words. "Watching that. If you'll pardon the analogy, I often have the same sensation when I see one of my horses led to the track. It's like watching your child get on the school bus, or recite in a class play. You suddenly realize that they're not just your child anymore, and that there's so much you don't know about them."

"He just did it to annoy me."

Though her heart was still swelling, Naomi smiled. "Oh, I don't think so." She took a chance and lifted a hand to Kelsey's cheek. "Confused?"

"Yes."

But not ready to talk about it. "Would you like me to speak with Gabe? He won't appreciate it, but he's fond enough of me to put up with the intrusion."

"No. I'll handle it." She glanced around. There were still a number of grinning faces pointed her way.

"Don't we have a race coming up?" she snapped. "You're not being paid to gawk."

As Kelsey stalked over to the saddling stall, Naomi let out a grin of her own.

On the track, Pride ran like a dream, bursting through the gate with a fierce look in his eyes and Reno driving him on. At the first turn, he was fighting for position, but after that it was over. Down the backstretch there were three lengths of daylight between him and the closest contender.

"Looks like a rich man's horse," she heard someone comment behind her.

Yes, she thought, he did. But money had nothing to do with it.

Gabe joined her at the fifth race, as cool and casual as if they'd recently shared a sandwich rather than a torrid, public embrace. "Reno ran a smart race."

"He and Pride make a good team." She shot Gabe a look. "The best team on the circuit."

"We'll see," he murmured. "Keep your eye on Cunningham's Big Sheba. Tell me what you see."

Frowning, Kelsey watched the horses being loaded in the gate. The big bay filly was fractious, nervous.

She took a swipe, a bad-tempered kick, at a groom and sent him sprawling.

"She's wound up. That's not unusual." She shifted her gaze to Three Aces. He was giving his own handlers a fight. "Your colt's feeling frisky himself."

"Just watch."

The bell sounded. Horses charged. Cunningham's filly took the lead, her long legs extended, digging up dirt. Kelsey narrowed her eyes behind the binoculars. Big Sheba was sweating heavily by the first turn.

"She's fast. Why is he pushing her so hard?" She winced as the jockey used the bat, quick and often.

"He's doing what he's been told."

At the halfway mark she began to flag, just a fraction, but enough for the field to close. Kelsey felt her eyes begin to tear. Big Sheba had gallantry, but she didn't have wind. And they were hurting her.

On the backstretch she fell a half-length behind Gabe's colt, then a length. Sheer heart kept her in the place position by a nose when they crossed the wire.

"That's inexcusable." Furious, she whirled on Gabe. "There have to be rules."

"We've got plenty of them. None say you can't push a horse past its limits. Rumor is she's got lung trouble. So the idiot has his jockey run her full out at seven furlongs. He wants the fucking Derby so much he'll kill her to have a shot at it."

"I thought he was just a fool."

"He's a fool, all right. An ambitious one. He wants that first jewel."

"Don't we all?"

"Yeah. The difference is just how far we'll go to get it."

He left her to head down to the winner's circle. Kelsey turned her back on the track. Suddenly it had lost a great deal of its glamour.

CHAPTER TWELVE

JACK MOSER RAN A CLEAN PLACE. MAYBE SOME OF HIS CLIENTELE rented a room by the hour, but that was none of his nevermind. Jack figured what went on behind closed doors went on behind closed doors at the Ritz Hotel just as it did at his place.

Only they paid more for it.

He didn't have bugs, wouldn't tolerate carryings-on after the decent hour of midnight, and paid extra so his guests could have cable.

At twenty-nine dollars a pop for a single, it wasn't a bad deal.

Children under eighteen stayed for free.

He gave his guests the amenity of a sliver-sized bar of Ivory soap along with the bath-mat-size towels, and for their convenience, he had a deal going with the nearby diner to deliver meals after six A.M. and before ten P.M.

Maybe he slipped some of the cash under the table and didn't push for ID, but that was his business.

The sheets were laundered, the bathrooms disinfected, and there was a good sturdy lock on each and every door.

He liked the summers best, when vacationing families heading north or south spotted his blinking vacancy sign. Mostly they just tumbled out of their aging station wagons and into bed. Didn't have to worry about them spraying beer on the walls or tearing up the sheets.

He'd been watching people come and go for twelve years and figured he knew a thing or two about them. He knew when a couple rented a room to cheat on a spouse, when a woman was hiding out from the guy who was as likely to put his fist in her eye as look at her. He recognized the losers, the drifters, the runners.

He'd pegged room 22 as a runner.

None of my nevermind, Jack told himself as he hooked the passkey from the Peg-Board. The guy had paid cash for three nights in advance. So what if he'd had the smell of fear around him, or if he'd had a way of looking over his shoulder as if he was expecting somebody to shove a knife in his back?

He'd paid his eighty-seven bucks plus tax and hadn't made a peep since.

Which was the problem. Room 22's time was up, and according to skinny-butted Dottie, the housekeeper, his lock was still bolted and the DO NOT DISTURB sign was out. Just the way it had been for three days.

Well, he was going to have to be disturbed, Jack thought as he strode across the parking lot to the line of identical gray doors and shaded windows. Room 22 could come up with another day's rent, or get his butt moving.

Jack Moser didn't extend credit.

He knocked first, sharp, authoritative. Nobody but Jack knew the secret pleasure it gave him to hustle along a deadbeat. "Manager," he said crisply, and caught Dottie poking her head out of 27 where her cart was parked, to give him the eye.

"Probably dead drunk," she called out.

Jack sighed, and straightened his sloped shoulders. "Just do your job, Dottie. I'll handle this." He knocked again, missing the face she made at him. "Manager," he repeated, then slipped his key into the lock.

The smell hit him first, gagging him. His first thought was that 22 had ordered something from the diner that had disagreed with him, violently. His second was that it would take a frigging case of Lysol to cover the stench.

Then he had no thought at all. He saw what sat slumped at the tiny, scarred table, eyes staring, body bloated. Whoever had checked into 22 had metamorphosed in three days into a thing as horrible as anything Jack had ever seen on a late-night horror movie.

He staggered back, overwhelmed by the sight and the odor. A strangled cry caught in his throat, and he threw up on his shoes. It didn't stop him from running. He continued to run even after Dottie hurried into room 22 and began to scream.

The body had already been bagged by the time Rossi pulled up at the motel. It had been through sheer doggedness and a touch of luck that he was there at all. His ears didn't perk up at every suspicious or unattended death that came into Homicide. But the name Fred Lipsky had rung a bell. It was a name on his list, one he'd been unable to check out.

Now, it seemed, he had his chance.

The medical examiner, Dr. Agnes Lorenzo, was packing up. Rossi nodded to the small, athletic woman with graying hair and puppy-dog eyes. "Lorenzo."

"Rossi. I thought this was Newman's case."

"It ties into one of mine. What have we got?" He hooked his badge to his pocket and moved through the uniformed men stationed at the open door.

The body was already zipped, ready for transfer to the morgue. The air still smelled ripe, but it wasn't a smell that affected him much anymore. He scanned the room, taking in the unmade bed, the bag of clothes tossed in the corner, the dust left over from the forensics team. A bottle of gin, three-quarters empty, a single glass, and an ashtray full of Lucky Strike butts.

"Don't ask me for cause of death, Rossi," Dr. Lorenzo began. "I can tell you it occurred forty-eight to sixty hours ago. No wounds, no sign of a struggle."

"Cause of death?"

She'd known he would ask, and smiled thinly. "His heart stopped, Rossi. They all do."

He ignored the jibe and formed a picture. A man drinking alone. Angry? Guilty? Afraid? Why did a man rent a cheap room to drink in when he already had a cheap room thirty miles away?

And if Lipsky had been running, it meant he had something to hide.

Since he'd taken her sarcasm well, Dr. Lorenzo decided to give him a break. "He had about three hundred in his wallet, and an expired credit card. There was a copy of Daily Racing Form in his bag, four days old, and a knife in his left boot."

Rossi sprang to attention like a setter on point. "What kind of knife?"

"Six inches long, thin blade, smooth edge."

Rossi's cop's heart began to swell. Forensics would have the knife, and if there was any trace of blood, man or horse, they'd find it. "Who found him?"

"Manager. Name's Moser. He might still be in the office over there, with his head between his knees."

"Not everyone's as tough as you, Lorenzo."

"You're telling me." She stepped outside again, sorry the spring air was marred by the whoosh of traffic on Route 15. She'd left a body on the slab, and now she had another to add to her backlog. Every day, she thought, was a picnic.

"I'll need a copy of the autopsy report."

"Two days."

"Twenty-four hours, Lorenzo. Be a pal."

"We're nobody's pals, Rossi." She turned away and got into her car.

"Hey." He grabbed her door before she could close it. He'd known Agnes Lorenzo for three years. She didn't have many buttons that could be pushed, but he'd uncovered a few. "You know that stiff you did last week? Gordon. Mick Gordon. Old man, gut-knifed."

She pulled out a cigarette, a habit she no longer bothered to feel guilty about. "The one who got his skull cracked and most of his internal organs smashed for good measure? Yeah, I remember."

"I think this stiff's the one who did him."