Not Your Lucky Day

Not Your Lucky DayA Murphy's Law Farm Mystery L. R. Trovillion Not Your Lucky DayCopyright © 2023 by L. R. Trovillionwww.lrtrovillion.comAll rights reserved.No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.This book is a work of fiction. References to real events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. The characters portrayed are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. First EditionPrinted in the United States of AmericaISBN: 979-8-9880714-0-2 (ebook)ISBN: 978-0-9908995-9-4 (print)Cover: Get CoversEditor: Kimberly Hunt, Revision Division Contents A Medical Laboratory in Western Maryland 1. Pia Murphy, Pimlico Race Course 2. Captain Jonah Watkins, Forward Operating Base (FOB), Afghanistan 3. Murphy's Law Farm 4. National Security Agency 5. Burke and Hingham Insurance Investigations, Inc. 6. Military Hospital Rehab Unit 7. Pia 8. The Pegasus Equestrian Center 9. Pia 10. Caleb 11. Pia 12. Pia 13. Pia 14. Pia 15. Pia 16. Pia 17. Pia 18. Pia 19. Watkins 20. Pia 21. Watkins 22. Pia 23. Watkins 24. Pia 25. Watkins 26. Pia 27. Watkins 28. Pia 29. Watkins 30. Pia 31. Watkins 32. Pia 33. Watkins 34. Pia 35. Watkins 36. Pia 37. Watkins 38. Pia 39. Pia 40. Murphy’s Law Farm and Pegasus Equestrian Therapy Center The Devil's Luck About the Author Final Thoughts and Thanks Also by L. R. Trovillion A Medical Laboratory in Western MarylandPrologueTHE LABORATORY WAS HOUSED in a squat, brick building nestled in the cleavage of western Maryland’s mountainous landscape. This small town’s residents passed by it without thinking twice about what went on there. They assumed it was one of many other similar looking industrial buildings with few windows and featureless brick walls—perhaps an office building, a physician’s suite, or a tech company’s satellite office. If anyone noticed at all, it wasn’t considered odd that cars rolled up its long driveway in the middle of the night. The building was rendered nearly invisible by virtue of its bland commonality. And that is why it was selected. Guided by the light from the full moon on a clear night, the driver backed the trailer to the oversized bay doors behind the building. Two men dropped down to the pavement from the cab of the truck. The short, muscular one took charge of the shipment. He opened the top doors of the trailer and checked on the live load. The horse craned her neck, struggling against the ties attached to her halter, to look behind her and see what was happening. The other man—tall, lean, with an air of authority, disappeared into the building.Before the shipper could unload the horse, a woman dressed in dark scrubs appeared at the back entrance with the tall man at her side. Her gray hair was cropped short like a helmet. “Wait,” she ordered and strode with purpose to where the short man was unhooking the ramp in preparation for lowering it.The woman strained on tiptoes to peer over the top. A smile crept over her face when she caught sight of horse’s haunches rising above the edge of the ramp. “That’s her alright.” She stepped aside. “Get her inside. Quickly.”The man lowered the ramp and went around to the horse’s head to walk her off the trailer. Even in the weak glow from the security lights, the horse’s strange coloring was visible.“Weird-looking horse,” the tall man commented. He stood far away from the dancing animal. The mare’s nostrils flared, sucking in the strange scents on the night air. Her hooves ground up the gravel underfoot, spinning on the end of the short lead. The man jerked the lead with a chain over her nose with two quick snaps. Instead of yielding, the mare strained her neck, holding her head high and swiveled her dark eye, watching. The moonlight reflected the white edges of her eye, giving the horse an otherworldly look.The woman took the lead rope and spoke to the mare in a voice one might use with a visiting dignity—respectful, deferential. “Welcome to the lab, my dear. I’ve got some exciting plans for you.”She brought the horse through the rear of the building into a room lined with small animal cages where the scent of cedar shavings and sharp chemicals competed in the flow of forced air. A thousand small, black eyes followed her progress as she led the mare into a stall. The tall man followed a few feet behind her.The mare spun in her stall, sniffed the hay, and called out in a high-pitched whinny. The man flinched.“Is she going to do that all the time?” he asked.“She’ll settle down.”His lips pressed into a thin line. “What’s with the tiger stripes?” He flicked his hand at the mare’s haunches in a dismissive gesture. “And her eye…it looks weird.”The woman’s smile returned. It was not a warm smile, but one of self-satisfaction, one that said she knew more than most people around her and she might be gracious enough to bestow her knowledge on them, if she cared to. This evening, she would, because she was pleased with her new acquisition.“You refer to the color striation of her coat over the hip—the mix of colors. It is one outward sign of how incredibly special this particular horse is on the inside. She’s a chimera, and that will make all the difference to my work here.”The mare lifted her head, startled by the clang of the trailer ramp and truck engine roaring to life in the still air. The churn of the tires on gravel signaled the horse transport had left.The woman turned her attention to a computer, preparing to enter new data and waiting, with a bit of a smirk, for the inevitable question.“Chimera? What’s that mean?” he asked.She prepared a syringe. First step, she thought, will be to draw blood. She didn’t look up to answer his question. “It