Page 27 of Mistaken

Some.

“Okay,” she said. “Then it sounds to me like we need to take one of those drones and fly it into Ghost Ranch so we can have a look around before going in on foot. If Sarah fell down a hillside or something, we’ll have a much better chance of seeing her with the drone.”

Miles steepled his fingers and tapped them against his chin. “I suppose that might work.”

“It should,” Shawn said. “And I’ll fly the drone, since I’m the one who’s been practicing with it the most. Even with the roads north of La Chuachia mostly gone to shit, we should still be able to get to the entrance to Ghost Ranch in a couple of hours in my Tundra.”

“Then you get the drone and meet me back here,” Lindsay replied, and Miles’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses.

“I’m not sure if it’s a good idea for you to go up there — ” he began, and she shook her head.

“I’ll be fine,” she said, in tones quelling enough that he got the hint. This was not the place or time when she wanted to announce her pregnancy, but if Miles kept acting like a helicopter daddy, someone was going to figure out something was up.

“She will,” Brent said. “Because I’ll go with them, and if Shawn spots Sarah with the drone, then he and I will be the ones to go in and get her. Lindsay can wait in the truck.”

Miles glanced from Brent to Lindsay, and she fixed him with the kind of stare she always used when she needed to let him know she was a big girl and could handle things on her own.

To her relief, her husband didn’t offer any further protests, instead saying, “That sounds like a decent plan.”

“But you should all have a quick lunch before you go,” Nora suggested. “An extra fifteen minutes isn’t going to make much of a difference one way or another.”

Lindsay wasn’t so sure about that — a lot could happen in fifteen minutes — but she had to admit to herself that whatever the reason for Sarah’s disappearance, the critical event had probably already taken place. Besides, it wasn’t as if they could blink themselves to Ghost Ranch djinn-style and immediately get to work. No, they’d have to bump their way along some pretty crappy roads to get there, and that would take time.

“All right,” she said, knowing there wasn’t much use in protesting. “Let’s all meet back here at 12:30.”

The group got up from the table then and headed for the door. As Lindsay went with them, she found herself hoping this wouldn’t all turn out to be an exercise in futility.

Their ride ended up taking the greater part of three hours, but Abdul thought that wasn’t too much of an inconvenience, especially after they’d ended up in another canyon he knew about, one with another creek, albeit one that bubbled up from a secret little spring rather than being fed by snow melt from a far-off mountain range. There, he’d conjured himself and Sarah a picnic lunch and several camp chairs, and they ate their noon meal surrounded by cottonwoods and sycamores and oaks, and were serenaded by lively little finches and sparrows and other birds whose names he was just beginning to learn — siskins and chickadees and the gorgeous jays whose plumage shaded from deep black on their feathered crests to brilliant blue along their wings and bodies.

Sarah had seemed happy enough to eat outdoors, especially after Abdul also summoned feed bags for the horses, who began munching immediately after their lunch appeared.

“It does seem like you can ride out here forever,” she said, and then took a bite of her sandwich, a tasty concoction of a croissant filled with chicken salad that he thought was the perfect thing to break their fast.

“Perhaps not forever,” he replied. “But certainly for many hours. However, after we eat, we will take a trail that leads us back to the house. For your first ride, it is better that you not be in the saddle all day.”

She nodded, mouth lifting in a rueful little smile. “Yes, I can already feel it in my legs. But that’s okay. It’s been wonderful to get out and see so much of the countryside.”

Although Abdul knew he was not the best at reading people, he thought she was telling him the truth and nothing more. Certainly during their ride, he’d looked back several times to see her glancing at their surroundings with interest, and noticed the way she smiled with delight when she noticed a new wildflower or species of bird.

All the same, he knew it was time to head home after they ate. It would not be very kind to make her positively bow-legged after spending most of the day in the saddle.

Even as that thought went through his mind, he wanted to shake his head at himself. Sarah was his prisoner, after all. What difference did it make if he ended up causing her some physical discomfort?

Somehow he knew it did matter, even if he did not quite want to admit such a thing.

Not yet.

The rest of their lunch conversation was innocuous enough, though, with both of them commenting on the scenery and the wildlife, and not so long after that, they were back in the saddle and winding their way down out of the hills, going toward the house. Once again, Sarah had accepted his help in getting back on her horse, and even now, he thought he could sense the pressure of her slender fingers against his, the way she seemed so wonderfully alive in a way he couldn’t quite articulate to himself.

It is only that you have had very little contact with anyone at all,he thought as they slowly zigged and zagged their way down the hillside.That is why this seems so strange.

A logical enough explanation, although he was not sure whether that was the entirety of the matter.

Well, he would worry about it later.

Once they were back at the house, he showed Sarah how to remove her horse’s tack and how to rub down the mare so that she would not suffer any ill effects from their extended ride. During all this, the human woman’s expression had been slightly skeptical, as if she wondered why they needed to go to all this effort when he could simply snap his fingers and have both their mounts properly groomed and cared for.

Perhaps it was foolish, but it was a ritual he had come to enjoy. It made him feel more connected to the animals, made him more appreciative of the way they labored to provide him with one of his few forms of entertainment.

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