Page 50 of Mistaken

The truck gave him pause, but only for a moment. While he had no idea where the men lived in Los Alamos — and he could not have sent the vehicle there even if he wanted to, thanks to the devices that protected the human settlement — he could at least blink it back to the border of the protected lands, well away from here.

A snap of his fingers and the bloated vehicle was gone. Unfortunately, he could not deal with humans in quite the same way, although he thought what he had in store for them was not anything they would soon forget.

Wind surged, sending his black robe fluttering…and wrapping the tent around the two men who had sheltered within, forming a sort of cocoon they could not easily escape. That same gale caught the tent and sent it into the air, whisking them away from the campground and following the course of the Rio Chama until Abdul knew it would deposit them close to the truck he had disposed of just a moment earlier.

There. If that did not send a message to stay far, far away, then he would just have to come up with something much more forceful the next time.

The walkie-talkie crackled to life. As usual, Lindsay had it with her at the lab, since it was the only way anyone could easily get in touch with her unless they wanted to drop everything and come see her in person. A few feet away, Miles lifted his head from the piece of Millerite he had placed under a microscope. As far as they’d been able to tell, the odd mineral discovered on the Miller farm in Cedar Crest would never provide enough long-lasting protection from the djinn to become a viable alternative to the devices he’d invented, but that didn’t mean he didn’t intend to keep working with it.

“Lindsay?”

Shawn Gutierrez’s voice, cracked and hoarse and barely sounding like him.

At once, she set down the touchscreen she’d been holding and hurried to pick up the walkie. “Lindsay here. Are you all right?”

“Well, we’re alive,” Shawn said dryly. “So I guess that’s better than the alternative. But I can tell you for sure that someone — or something — doesn’t want us anywhere near Ghost Ranch. It grabbed my truck and then José and me, and dumped us just outside the protected zone. José has a broken ankle, and I’ve got a dislocated shoulder. And the truck won’t start, so we need someone to come and get us.”

Lindsay stared down at the walkie-talkie she held. What the hell had just happened?

What happened is that you ignored what Zahrias was trying to tell you, and now two of your men are hurt,she scolded herself.

But she would have plenty of time for self-recriminations later. Right now, the important thing was to get Shawn and José back to Los Alamos.

“Where are you?” she asked. “We’ll get someone out there right away to pick you up.”

“About a half mile north of La Chuachia, just past mile marker 143.”

“Got it,” she said. “Hang tight — we’ll be there as fast as we can.”

She set down the walkie-talkie, only to see Miles regarding her with grim gray eyes.

“You’re not going.”

“I am,” she said. “It’s my fault they’re in this situation in the first place.”

Although she knew her husband was not one for public displays of affection — or even not-so-public ones, since they were currently alone in the lab — he came over and took her hand, then pressed a kiss against her cheek.

“We’re not going to talk about ‘fault,’” he said. “What we’re going to talk about is that this is still a potentially dangerous situation, and you’re ten weeks pregnant. Brent and I will go.”

Lindsay wanted to argue, but she knew Miles was right. Shawn and José were near the edge of the protected territory, not in it.

And that meant whatever had deposited them — and Shawn’s truck — in that spot might still be lurking somewhere near, just waiting to pounce when the rescue party showed up.

“You’ll take a device with you,” she said, and Miles smiled.

He knew as well as she did that her comment was her way of saying she wouldn’t protest…but she’d make damn sure her husband was as safe as possible.

“Of course,” he replied, as though that was a given.

And it was. No one left the protected zone without one of the glassy little cubes in their possession.

He squeezed her hand, then reached for the walkie-talkie and shifted the channel.

“Brent?” he said a moment later. “Miles here. It looks like we have to go on a little rescue operation. Meet me at the lab with one of your trucks.”

Abdul seemed in an unusually good mood this morning, although Sarah couldn’t say exactly why. Maybe it was only that the storms of the day before were now well and gone, and the day outside was bright and fresh, the grass and the trees looking greener and lusher after their soaking.

And while the ground had to be muddy, they’d already planned to practice first and go riding later, so there was no reason to believe the trails wouldn’t have recovered by the time they set out on their horses, especially with how rocky much of the soil was around here.

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