Read Cutter (Gail McCarthy Mystery series) for Free Online Page B

Kristin Griffith's-both for the convenience and for the fact that Kris was one of my favorite clients and a woman I felt I could be friends with. That was the upside. The downside was that Kris was expensive. Expensive by my standards, anyway. One hundred and twenty-five extra dollars a month was a lot for an underpaid vet to afford.
    "Hi, Gail."
    I turned to smile a hello at Kris, genuinely pleased as I always was when she found the time to socialize with me for a moment.
    A slim, spare woman in her late thirties, Kristin Griffith had the taut body and fine-boned face of a racing greyhound. This, combined with short, no-nonsense blonde hair and her slightly tinted glasses, gave her a stern, school-teacherish look that both was and wasn't representative of her personality.
    Kris was a world-class endurance rider; the genuine toughness that showed in every line of her face and body was reflective of a toughness of spirit that had taken her on to win the hundred-mile Tevis Cup, a legendary race. But the part of her that didn't show on first acquaintance was her playful streak, an essential lightheartedness that separated her from the driven fanaticism of some of her competitors.
    "How's your baby doing?" Kris leaned on the fence next to me for a minute and rubbed Gunner under his chin.
    "You should know. You see him a lot more often than I do." I sighed-lack of time to spend with Gunner wasn't much of a problem now but it would be in six months, when he was ready for light exercise. "How's Rebel?" I added.
    "Great." Kris flashed a wide smile. "Took him out for a little spin this afternoon. Just twenty miles. He's doing great. "
    I whistled. "Better you than me."
    Twenty miles, a major day in the saddle for most experienced horsemen, was a regular exercise ride for an endurance rider like Kris. Where she found the stamina I couldn't imagine.
    Giving Gunner a final pat, I wandered back outside with Kris and we surveyed her horse Rebel Cause, ambling up to greet us with a long easy stride-for all the world as though he'd been resting all day instead of trotting and loping twenty miles.
    Among endurance horses, Rebby was the exception that proved the rule. Endurance horses are mostly Arabians and half-bred Arabians, with a few mustangs thrown in. Rebby was a registered Quarter Horse, bred for the track, which means mostly Thoroughbred, as far as his background went. A leggy I5.2 hands, and about eleven hundred pounds, he was too tall, too heavy, and of the wrong ethnic group, so to speak, to be a long-distance champion. But he was.
    As if she could read my thoughts, Kris said, "It's all heart. This horse has more try than any horse I've had. He wants to go. And he has no quit. It's that, and his ability to recover. He's got the quickest recovery rate of any horse I've ever seen."
    Rebel thrust his face over the fence at us and I rubbed the white star on his forehead. Like Gunner, Rebby was a friendly horse who always wanted attention.
    "You sure wouldn't pick him out of a crowd on his looks," Kris mused.
    "Oh, I don't know," I told her, "he's pretty well made."
    "But look at that mouth. And his color doesn't take your eye. And he's light-boned."
    I shrugged; those things were all true. Rebby had a parrot mouth, an overbite, that was a serious confirmation flaw, his solid dark brown color was both common and not eye-catching, and his slender leg bones were an invitation to unsoundness.
    "He's got a nice eye, though," I offered, "and I'll bet he cinches real deep."
    "He does." Kris grinned. Depth through the heart girth was a good indicator of a horse's capacity. "Don't worry, you don't need to defend him to me. He knows I love him." She patted the gelding's shoulder. "Rebby's got a home."
    I smiled and my eye caught the motion of a little gold Porsche as it turned in the driveway. Rick Griffith, Kristin's husband, was home-no doubt from work.
    An engineer for some high-tech munitions firm in San Jose's Silicon Valley, Rick worked