Buck Jones yawned and looked at his watch. It was funny how time went late at night. He had started his shift at midnight, relieving Louis Otero, and all he had done since then was pace up and down the shedrow or lean against the wall and sip coffee from his thermos. Yet it was already half past three.

He didn’t even have a radio. This was Frank Whiteley’s barn, and Whiteley didn’t allow radios. Buck could understand that. He’d been a horseman himself for almost twenty years. The boss wasn’t paying him to listen to music. Horse watching was a job. Especially in a case like this. The President, the Pope, and the Queen of England all rolled into one couldn’t have gotten more attention than this filly had been getting the last few weeks, ever since they had announced the Match.

Buck looked over at her. She was awake now, alert in her stall, ears pricked forward.

“You’ll get your breakfast soon enough.” Buck smiled and tugged at the belt of his uniform. He was a big man, and he’d put on a few more pounds since becoming a Pinkerton. He could appreciate the filly’s appetite.

She wasn’t fidgeting or fussing, though. She never did. But there was something about her—Buck had been trying to figure it out all week. He had watched her before, when she raced, but only from the paddock or the stands, like everyone else. Up close, these past few nights, he’d begun to realize what it was: She had the uncanny ability to seem calm and excited at the same time. Perfectly at ease, and yet—eager, intense, wired. He had never seen that in a horse before. Or, for that matter, in a person, either.

The filly stretched ou...