Sleuthing

For =decors because she is awesome, has given me many gifts and is already plotting more, and was the person who originally thought up having a Swedish jockey named Sven. Also, all thanks must go to her for help with the Swedish language. It's still not all right, though, so I apologize to any Swedes who might be reading. Please forgive my mistakes!

This DOES continue the current BCC Stables timeline, btw, so if you're not caught up don't read the following story!


Continuation of:



It was a somber reunion for the BCC team. Dawson and Drew flew from their current station at Churchill Downs to the Ruffian Equine Medical Center next to Belmont Park to meet up with the rest of them and lend them their support. So consumed with their worry for Neverland, no one batted an eye at Drew's white-blonde shadow, and Sven quietly took up residence next to his best friend as they awaited news of Cagar's son. "Vhat is going on?" he murmured in question. Drew glanced over as he slumped down in one of the hard plastic chairs. "Neverland's getting x-rayed now. We'll know soon what the Rittersons are going to do."

Hearing the unfamiliar voice of the new jockey, Will glanced over. He recognized the spiked white-blonde hair and sat up straighter, ignoring the pain that shot through his hip. "Hey," he said gravelly, "don't I know you from somewhere?" The young jock glanced over to him, blue eyes widening in alarm. The innocence in this kid made him wince. Even Drew, with all his youthful prettiness, had a hard edge to him, shadows in his eyes that foretold of a hard life. Yet, this familiar stranger was so naive it actually hurt to look at him.

"Wve have not met, I don' think," the young man murmured quietly. The long, thin braid cascading down the left side of his jaw swung slightly as he shook his head.

"No, but I know you," Will insisted. He shifted in his chair and barely held back a yelp as his hip turned awkwardly. A hip sprain. What luck. The doctor's note and prescription sat in his back pocket, burning a hole through to his skin. Six weeks without riding. Might as well shoot him down dead. Fox had promised to watch after his BCC mounts, but six weeks was a death sentence to a jockey. They needed to be in top form, all the time, constantly seeking out new mounts to stay ahead of the brutal game they played. Six weeks gone, and the world would forget about him and then where would he be?

Suddenly, it clicked. "Hey, you used to be in New Orleans, right? Fair Grounds? You worked for that old bastard Addersburg." He wouldn't have thought the Swede could get any paler, but he did.

Dawson's head swung around to Will. "You know Addersburg?"

"Yeah. Never ridden for him, but he's Titanus's trainer. He used to be stationed solely in N'awlens before making his big break with the Titan."

Nearby, Drew gulped. Sven scrunched closer to the kid, and Dawson rose slowly out of his seat and walked to the window, his face a stony mask of indifference. The vibes of anger emanating off of him told a different story, however. "What don't I know?" Will asked.

"That man is a bastard," Sven hissed, suddenly coming to life. "He treats his ani-mals like... like..."

"Animals?"

Sven nodded to Drew. "Exactly! He wvips his horses too much, too fas', and I swear that man uses drugs even though the stewards nevar pinned any on heem."

Will suddenly remembered the red flecks he had seen on the back-inside of Titanus's thighs. His original thought that it had been blood resurfaced. The small yet numerous wounds would have been completely hidden by Titan's tail when walking or trotting--in other words, easy to hide.

"Sven, I have a task for you. Would you look into what that bastard does with his horses during training?"

Sven frowned. "Vat do you mean?"

Will carefully shifted to fully face the Swede. "Have you been following the Triple Crown bid this year?"

"Ja."

"Do recall hearing anything about Titanus's morning workouts?"

Sven frowned even more, and this time the eavesdropping Drew joined in. "Nej, I have not," Sven said, puzzled. "Not any-thing at all. They say the Titan has not vorked at all since the Derby."

"Exactly. What racehorse doesn't train before races?"

Drew jumped in. "Are you saying Addersburg has been working him in secret?"

Damn, the kid was quick. "That's exactly what I'm saying."

"Why wvould he do that?"

"Because he's doing something illegal?"

Drew's and Sven's eyes rounded.

"Shit."

"Herre Gud."

"Yeah. So will you check it out for me?" Will gestured to his sprained hip.

A pause, then, "Ja, I wvill do it."

"Don't leave me out!"

"But you're not a jock, brorsan," Sven murmured quietly.

The kid grinned. "Actually..." he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded-up piece of paper.

"Holy shit," Will breathed. "You got your permit."

"Yeah." Drew's grin was blinding now.

"Åh fan, When?" Sven cried excitedly.

"Yesterday. I am now officially an apprentice jockey."

"Ms. Griffen?"

All looked up at the doctor's sudden intrusion. TJ hopped up while Rafe clutched Lia closer. "Yes?"

"Neverland's x-rays came back. It seems he fractured his right front cannon bone in the fall. It's a hairline fracture, however, so he should fully recover with the proper care. I'm ordering a rest and recovery period of at least four months before he returns to training."

The entire room as one breathed out a giant sigh of relief.

***

In the aftermath of the accident, a quiet investigation into Mike Addersburg ensued, centering around Titanus. The colt had sprained quite a few body parts in the fall, but no broken bones resulted. A mere two weeks after the accident, the stiff colt was put back into training.

"Vat are we doing?" Sven whispered frantically as the two boys slunk through the closed grounds of Belmont Park. Fox had taken up temporary residence at Churchill Downs to guide Azrael through the Stephen Foster Handicap that weekend so that Sven and Drew could look into the Addersburg business.

"Skulking," Drew answered.

"Skuking? Vat is this skuking you speak of?"

"SKULking, Swede. Skulking. It means sneaking around where we shouldn't be. Now hush!"

Sven did, and soon enough they heard the faint but identifiable sound of hoofbeats in the distance. It being 1:00am, all the lights were off on the track, only the faintest of glows coming from the barns far off behind them. Add in the fact that it was a new moon that night, and it was bloody dark outside.

Their hearing wasn't impaired however, and as they inched closer to the bushes lined near the track, they were just able to make out the moving form of an equine and rider. Drew lifted a pair of specialty binoculars and trained them on the moving entity.

"Vat are those?"

"Sshhh! Some kind of night-vision binoculars Dawson had lying around. Can't imagine what he'd use them for, but he loaned them to me for this." Drew looked through the binoculars again. "What the... hell?"

As the galloping horse and rider drew close, the two young men could hear the distinct sounds of a pinwheel whip, the whooshing noise like a fat elephant proclaiming that the rider was constantly whipping his horse nearly once every second for large stretches of time.

"Vat? Vat is happening? Is it the Titan?"

"I'm not sure exactly what's going on, but yeah, that definitely Titanus. Never seen a horse so small before. The rider looks like Javier Martinez, but I can't be sure. He's whipping him constantly, and there seems to be some sort of contraption looping from behind the saddle to under Titan's tail dock, running between his thighs. Every time T speeds up, the rider reaches back and... Christ, it looks like he's loosening it. Shit, Sven, I think there are spikes in that leather."

"Jävlar!"

***

Four hours later, Dawson clenched his fists hard enough to snap the plastic pen trapped between his fingers. "Classical conditioning," he hissed. "Of course! It's so obvious!"

"Vat is that?" Sven asked, watching Dawson's fists warily.

"It means Addersburg is training Titanus so that when he runs faster, the pain of the spikes in that leather contraption dissipates, thus teaching him that going faster means less pain. Those flecks of blood Will saw under his tail during the Belmont had to have been from those spikes."

"So what're we going to do?" Drew asked, surprisingly calm in the face of such cruelty.

"Report him," Dawson growled. "Then sit back and watch the magic happen."

"Cool! Is he going to get arrested?"

Dawson rolled his eyes at his son's enthusiasm. "Perhaps. Hopefully. He will definitely get his license revoked, and he'll be fined heavily."

"And if he isn't?"

A cold look overtook Dawson's normally-expressionless face. Those fists tightened further and Drew and Sven actually began to squirm where they stood. "Then we go to Plan B."

"Vat is Plan B?"

Dawson cut a narrowed glance over to Sven. "You don't want to know," he growled.

***

Dawson clicked his phone closed and focused on the trainer currently throwing a fit down the barn hall. He leaned back against Ray's former stall and counted the minutes. Sure enough, three and a half counts later a small wave of men in uniform stormed through the barn doorway. An investigation ensued, and eleven minutes after that one was reading Addersburg his miranda rights while another bagged that strange spiked contraption that Addersburg looped under Titan's tail. As he watched, the other trainer was shoved in the back of a cop car and an unhappy Titanus was escorted into a different section while the owners were contacted.

When all the chaos was complete and the barn emptied, a shadowy figure emerged from one of the stalls at the other end of the barn. Snake raised his phone in salute and casually walked away. Plan B had not been necessary, but it was nice to know his men were ready to back him up if he needed them.






Art and Characters (C) Me
Ref: Jared Padalecki (I told you I would use it, GAQ and Scara. I TOLD YOU.)


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