Dressage is a discipline born on the battlefield in ancient times. Warhorses were trained in precision movements to aid their masters in battle, not only to evade enemies, but to attack them. Over the centuries the training went from the battlefield to the showring, and dressage evolved into something like equine ballet.

To the untrained eye it appears graceful and elegant and effortless. A skilled rider seems to be so quiet, so motionless as to virtually blend into the background. In reality, the sport is physically and mentally demanding on both horse and rider. Complex and complicated. The rider must be attuned to the horse's every footfall, to the balance of every inch of the horse's body. The slightest shift of the rider's weight, the smallest movement of a hand, the lightest tensing of a calf muscle will affect the quality of the performance. Focus must be absolute. Everything else becomes insignificant.

Riding was my refuge as a teenager, when I felt I had little control over any other aspect of my life. It was my stress release when I had a career. It had become my salvation when I had nothing else. On the back of a horse I felt whole, complete, connected to that vital place in the very center of me that had otherwise closed itself off, and the chaos within me found balance.

D'Artagnon and I moved across the sand arena through the last wisps of the morning ground fog, the horse's muscles bulging and rolling, his hooves striking the ground in perfect metronome rhythm. I massaged the left rein, sat into his back, tightened my calves around him. The energy moved from his hindquarters, over his back; his neck rounded and his knees came up into the stylized, slow-motion trot called passage. He seemed almost to float beneath me, to bounce like a huge, soft ball. I felt he might take wing if only I knew the one secret word to whisper to him.

We halted in the center of the ring at the place known as X. In that moment I felt joy and peace.

I dropped the reins on his neck and patted him. He lowered his head and started to walk forward, then stopped and came to attention.

A girl sat on the white board fence that ran along the road. She watched me with a sense of expectation about her. Even though I hadn't noticed her, I could tell she'd been there, waiting. I judged her to be about twelve. Her hair was long and brown, perfectly straight, and neatly held back from her face with a barrette on each side. She wore little round black-rimmed glasses that made her look very serious. I rode toward her with a vague feeling of apprehension that made no sense at the time.

"Can I help you?" I asked. D'Ar blew through his nostrils at her, ready to bolt and save us from the intruder. I should have let him.

"I'm here to see Ms. Estes," she said properly, as if she'd come on business.

"Elena Estes?"

"Yes."

"And you are…?"

"Molly Seabright."

"Well, Molly Seabright, Ms. Estes isn't here at the moment."

"You're Ms. Estes," she declared. "I recognize your horse. His name is D'Artagnon, like in the Three Musketeers." She narrowed her eyes. "You cut your hair." Disapproval.

"Do I know you?"

"No."

"Then how do you know me?" I asked, the apprehension rising up like bile through my chest to the base of my throat. Maybe she was a relative of Hector Ramirez, come to tell me she hated me. Maybe she'd been sent as a decoy by an older relative who would now pop out of nowhere to shoot me or scream at me or throw acid in my face.

"From Sidelines," she said.

I felt like I'd walked into the middle of a play. Molly Seabright took pity on me and carefully climbed down from the fence. She was slightly built and dressed neatly in sensible dark slacks and a little blue T-shirt with a small daisy chain embroidered around the throat. She came up along D'Artagnon's shoulder and carefully held the magazine out to me, folded open to an interior page.

The photograph was in color. Me on D'Ar, riding through thin ribbons of early-morning fog. The sunlight made his coat shine as bright as a new penny. My hair was pulled back in a thick ponytail.

I had no memory of being photographed. I had certainly never been interviewed, though the writer seemed to know things about me I didn't know myself. The caption read: Private investigator Elena Estes enjoys an early-morning ride on D'Artagnon at Sean Avadon's Avadonis Farm in Palm Beach Point Estates.

"I've come to hire you," Molly Seabright said.

I turned toward the barn and called for Irina, the stunning Russian girl who had beat me out for the groom's job. She came out, frowning and sulky. I stepped down off D'Artagnon and asked her to please take him back to the barn. She took his reins, and sighed and pouted and slouched away like a sullen runway model.

I ran a gloved hand back through my hair, startled to come to the end of it so quickly. A fist of tension began to quiver in my stomach.

"My sister is missing," Molly Seabright said. "I've come to hire you to find her."

"I'm sorry. I'm not a private investigator. This is some kind of mistake."

"Why does the magazine say that you are?" she asked, looking stern and disapproving again. She didn't trust me. I'd already lied to her once.

"I don't know."

"I have money," she said defensively. "Just because I'm twelve doesn't mean I can't hire you."

"You can't hire me because I'm not a private investigator."

"Then what are you?" she demanded.

A broken-down, busted-out, pathetic ex-sheriff's detective. I'd thumbed my nose at the life I'd been raised in, been ostracized from the life I'd chosen. What did that make me?

"Nothing," I said, handing the magazine back to her. She didn't take it.

I walked away to an ornate park bench that sat along the end of the arena and took a long drink from the bottle of water I'd left there.

"I have a hundred dollars with me," the girl said. "For a deposit. I expect you have a daily fee and that you probably charge expenses. I'm sure we can work something out."

Sean emerged from the end of the stable, squinting into the distance, showing his profile. He stood with one booted leg cocked and pulled a pair of deerskin gloves from the waist of his brown breeches. Handsome and fit. A perfect ad for Ralph Lauren.

I headed across the arena, anger boiling now in my stomach. Anger, and underlying it a building sense of panic.

"What the fuck is this?" I shouted, smacking him in the chest with the magazine.

He took a step back, looking offended. "It might be Sidelines, but I can't read with my nipples, so I can't say for certain. Jesus Christ, El. What did you do to your hair?"

I hit him again, harder, wanting to hurt him. He grabbed the magazine away from me, took another quick step out of range, and turned to the cover. "Betsy Steiner's stallion, Hilltop Giotto. Have you seen him? He's to die for."

"You told a reporter I'm a private investigator."

"They asked me who you were. I had to tell them something."

"No, you didn't have to. You didn't have to tell them anything."

"It's only Sidelines. For Christ's sake."

"It's my name in a goddam magazine read by thousands of people. Thousands of people now know where to find me. Why don't you just paint a big target on my chest?"

He frowned. "Only dressage people read the dressage section. And then only to see if their own names are in the show results."

"Thousands of people now think I'm a private investigator."

"What was I supposed to tell them? The truth?" Said as if that were the most distasteful option. Then I realized it probably was.

"How about 'no comment'?"

"That's not very interesting."

I pointed at Molly Seabright. "That little girl has come here to hire me. She thinks I can help her find her sister."

"Maybe you can."

I refused to state the obvious: that I couldn't even help myself.