Three Strides Out

Saving a champion show jumper from a burning horse trailer gives young rider-trainer Robb Slaughter one job: find out who tied that horse in that trailer and make them pay.

For Robb, avenging that horse means atonement. Sure, he was just a kid when he left his mother screaming while her lover killed her, but that doesn't mean he ever quit hearing those screams.

It's the horses who've saved him from the torrent of unanswered cries inside his head. Clearing the big jumps on horses he cares about has given him a hard-won mental peace. He has built a good life for himself as a professional show-jumping rider, on his way to Grand-Prix stardom . . .

Until that fire.

You were crazy to jump into that trailer to save that horse, everyone tells Robb. But for Robb saving the horse like he did is just the beginning. Let the police solve it, everyone says. But Robb knows no cop will ever deliver the right kind of justice. Only somebody brave enough and driven enough can hunt down the killers and exact true justice. Somebody with a visceral need to right wrongs and find peace from his own torment. Somebody like Robb.

With the help of a sharp-witted female reporter, Robb unravels the plot that put that horse in that trailer. He's ready to do whatever he has to-until he learns that one of the people involved is a troubled young woman he has always dreamed his love could rescue. But what if saving her asks a lot more of him than saving the horse?

Set against the daily background of a hunter-jumper show barn in rigorous international competition, Three Strides Out pits a young rider's life against fraud, money-laundering, blackmail, and murder. Like a Grand Prix class that asks horses to jump fences they can't see over, Robb's quest to bring killers to justice demands an ultimate commitment-and an ultimate sacrifice.