Page 44 of Mistaken

“We don’t know anything,” she said reasonably. “That’s why we need you to go take a look. It’s very possible that she got a late start and went looking for Carson and maybe got lost.”

“If that’s the case,” Shawn pointed out, “don’t you think she would have tried to get back to the highway and kept going? Yes, it’s kind of a slog when she’d have to walk all the way to Española instead of getting a ride starting in La Chuachia, but still, she would have made it here by now.”

“Not if she got lost enough,” Lindsay countered. “It’s not like that’s familiar territory to her, even if she did visit Abiquiu when she was a kid. If she was out of walkie range, there wouldn’t have been any way for her to get in contact with Carson.”

José frowned. His black hair was slicked back into a tight ponytail bound with a leather thong, and with his broad shoulders and thick biceps, he definitely looked like he’d be able to handle almost anything they encountered.

Well, except for what might be hiding in Ghost Ranch.

Whatever arguments he’d been about to offer, though, Shawn effectively forestalled them by saying, “I suppose we’ll find out one way or another. We should get going — the sun’s up already, and it’s just going to get hotter as the day goes on.”

True enough. The weather had been fairly mild so far, and they’d even gotten some rain the night before last, but Lindsay had also noticed that the days were trending warmer as they approached the solstice. At least Shawn and José were going to drive the whole way rather than hike the latter half of the journey. Shawn had insisted his truck could handle it.

“And if something goes wrong, I know how to put her back together,” he’d added, patting his Toyota Tundra’s fender.

Since he’d been working on and off in the community motor pool for nearly five years and had regularly wrenched on vehicles long before that, Lindsay had known he was only speaking the truth. And she had to admit that driving would be a lot faster.

It might also attract more notice, but they’d all decided it was a risk they’d have to take.

“Yes, better to go now,” Miles said, and the little group moved out of the lobby of City Hall where they’d met, and into the parking lot where Shawn’s Toyota sat waiting.

The two men were traveling light, so it only took them a moment to toss their backpacks in the extra-cab’s rear seat. Then Shawn lifted his hand in a wave.

“We’ll be back as soon as we can.”

“No more than two days,” Lindsay warned him. “If you haven’t found any sign of Sarah by then, I doubt you ever will.”

“Two days,” Shawn promised, and he climbed into the driver’s seat even as José also got into the truck. “Piece of cake.”

He closed the door, then started the engine. A moment later, the oversized truck was pulling out of the parking lot and onto Trinity Drive.

“It will be okay,” Miles said, and touched her arm. “Let’s get to work.”

Chapter14

The moment had come.Sarah stood next to the piano and watched as Abdul seated himself on the bench. He looked at her expectantly, and she swallowed.

Why did something that had once come to her as easily as breathing now feel like utter torture?

Because you’re doing it to yourself,she thought.Abdul went and somehow taught himself to play the piano overnight, and you’re sitting here and stressing about singing a basic scale in C?

All right, she was standing, not sitting, but the point remained.

And it wasn’t as if he’d never heard her sing before. Not like this, not only a few feet away from where she stood, but still, that particular horse had already left the barn.

“We’ll do some scales first,” she said. She sounded extremely matter-of-fact to herself, but she knew that was only her way of trying to manage her nerves. If she could make the whole process seem like it was no big deal, then maybe she could get past the awful mental blocks she’d built for herself. “You know how to do scales, right?”

In answer, Abdul reached out with one hand and played a simple scale starting on middle C. “Like that?”

“Exactly,” she said. “Each time, go up a half step. You know what that is, right?”

Again, he responded by playing the note in question, this time a C-sharp. “Yes?”

Despite the anxious butterflies dancing around in her stomach, she couldn’t help flashing him a smile. “Yes. So let’s get started.”

He touched middle C again, probably to remind her of how it sounded.

Not that she needed the assistance; she might be rusty, and she might not have formally practiced for years and years, but she still had more than a decade of running through these exercises on a daily basis under her belt. Besides, she’d always had perfect pitch, had been able to sing a note that was exactly right even without the help of a piano.

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