A counterfeit stallion lures a Virginia horseman into a billion-dollar conspiracy Vicky Clay awakes with chills. She’s still glowing from her victory in last night’s steeplechase—the genteel form of horseracing for which the Virginia gentry lives and dies—but that’s not why her skin tingles. She has been poisoned, and within seconds, she’s as useless to the world as a thoroughbred with a broken leg.   The stakes are high in the world of Virginia horseracing, where fortunes are won and lost by a hair. Captain David Showers, whose family has bred racing horses since before the Revolutionary War, knows how quickly luck can change. When he gets the chance to buy the descendant of a legendary mare, he leaps at the opportunity to revitalize his family stables. But the horse’s bloodline turns out to be a fabrication of the mafia, and Showers will have to ride faster than ever if he wants to stay alive.