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like what FBI agents used on belligerent suspects. Only Brent’s touch was tender, gentle. And the animal didn’t protest. When the vet lifted the syringe, his assistant leaned even farther forward, shielding the horse so that it wouldn’t see the needle.
    â€œSon?” Doc Madison said, speaking to the pinned rider. “I’m going to get this horse off you now.”
    The jockey translated, and Brent turned his head, looking back at the man under SunTzu. He squinted at him, as if noticing him for the first time. Then he turned around, watching as the vet pressed his thumb hard into the animal’s jugular and stabbed the engorged vein with the needle. SunTzu twitched.
    â€œIt’s okay,” Brent whispered. “Shh. It’s okay.”
    The Spanish jockey kept up a low murmur. His words were rhythmic, incantatory. After a minute I realized he was praying.
    â€œWhere’s that ambulance?” the vet hissed.
    â€œI told you,” Brent said. “It’s coming.”
    Emptying both syringes into the horse, the vet stood. His chest was heaving again. He turned to face the maintenance crew. Behind them the wall of blue curtains covered fifty feet of white rail, removing the entire grandstand from view. The men stood in a silent half circle around us, and except for the horse’s breathing and the jockey’s low, murmured prayers, the world seemed too quiet, almost aquatic, as though the rippling blue curtains were an ocean, hemming us onto the sandy bottom beneath gray cumulous waves, while the animal rode on its side like a sea horse, floating to its destination. But the rain told me this was real. I could hear the drops tapping on the maintenance crew’s green baseball caps, the water rolling off the brims as the men stared down at the immobilized rider, their own faces slack with fear.
    â€œThat horse will be unconscious in ten seconds,” the vet told the crew. “I want two of you on each leg. When I give the word, pull the horse forward. Onto the board. Stop when I say stop.”
    SunTzu was out cold before the vet finished speaking. Grabbing the ankles, the men dragged the horse forward, the weight heavy and awkward as a dead body.
    Now the rider was exposed. His short legs splayed, thin as stilts. The jodhpurs were no longer white but stained with dirt and sweat and the thin contents of the man’s bladder.
    â€œAyuda?” the other jockey asked.
    â€œIt’s coming,” the vet said. “Tell him not to move. Anything, don’t move anything.”
    His soft Spanish fluttered through the rain, intonations rising and falling like some bird of language. And finally the pinned man blinked.
    â€œBrent,” the vet growled. “Where the—”
    He pointed down the track. “There it is.”
    The white ambulance raced toward us, fishtailing through the mud. The red light on top was spinning but the siren made no sound, silenced to keep the other horses from panicking. But the muted wail gave me that underwater feeling again, along with the futile hope that maybe none of this was really happening. Maybe it was a dream, soundless and horrifying.
    I looked over at the jockeys.
    The kneeling man wiped the rider’s face, brushing away the rain that now mixed with tears.

Chapter Nine
    E leanor’s gray battleship had come to a stop inches from the medical clinic’s wooden siding. When the vet’s dilapidated van pulled up, I could see the queen herself, standing apart from the crowd gathered by the door. Trainers, grooms, pony riders. But only one or two jockeys.
    â€œRaleigh!” she called out as I climbed from the vet’s van.
    She stood under a bright red umbrella held by Bill Cooper, but as I walked over, the trainer’s cold gray eyes stayed fixed on the equine ambulance pulling up behind the van. The crowd closed in as the ambulance backed into the garage door. The expressions on their faces were a