Page 72 of Mistaken

He lifted his hand to wave goodbye, and she rolled down the window so she could return the gesture. After that, though, the truck accelerated, bumping its way along the uneven road, until it traveled around a bend and was lost from view.

Even though he knew exactly where she was going and that she intended to come back to this spot as quickly as she could, Abdul could not quite prevent the pang of worry that went through him as she disappeared down the highway. What if something went wrong? What if Lindsay decided that Sarah wasn’t thinking clearly and tried to keep her there in Los Alamos?

Well, if that happened, he would go and fetch the woman he loved.

No matter what doing so might cost him.

Miles had volunteered to head over to Pajarito’s and grab a late lunch for both of them, so Lindsay had the lab to herself. She supposed she could have gone with him, except it had become routine for her and her husband to always eat lunch on-site rather than going out and sitting down at the town’s only restaurant like a couple of civilized people.

Most of the time, she was fine with being here. At her suggestion, they’d brought in a small bistro set and put it in one corner so they could at least eat at a proper table rather than one of the workbenches, but today, she knew she was out of sorts, annoyed with their continued lack of progress at modifying the devices and at the same time fretting over the continuing mystery of Sarah Wolfe’s disappearance. Both Shawn and José were healing fine — well, Shawn was pretty much back to normal, and José, while on crutches, should be back on his feet in another few weeks — so Lindsay knew things could be a lot worse.

On the other hand, they could be a lot better, too.

Or maybe this was all the effects of pregnancy hormones and nothing more. At least she hadn’t been feeling queasy the past couple of days. No, she was turning practically ravenous, which made her hope that Miles would be back with their sandwiches soon.

The door opened and she turned, thinking it must be her husband and her long-awaited lunch.

Her eyes widened.

Sarah Wolfe stood in the doorway, expression diffident. On the surface, she didn’t look much different from the woman who had disappeared more than a week ago — she was dressed in jeans and hiking boots and a sleeveless cotton blouse — but at the same time, something seemed to have changed about her, since she almost looked as if she was glowing from within despite her obvious uncertainty.

“Hi, Lindsay,” she said, casual as though she hadn’t gone missing without a trace, as though no one had known what the hell had been going on with her for the past ten days.

“Sarah!” she exclaimed, and got down off her stool so she could go to the door. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” the other woman replied. “I just — I wanted to come and let you know I was all right so you wouldn’t send anyone else to come looking for me.”

The words sounded normal enough, and yet Lindsay thought the situation was anything but normal. “Where have you been all this time?”

“At Ghost Ranch,” Sarah said. She hesitated for a moment, as if deciding the best way to go on. “I…met someone there.”

“A djinn?” Lindsay asked, although she couldn’t think of any other possible reply, not after the elders had warned them off…not after what had happened to José and Shawn.

A pause, one so brief that it was almost imperceptible.

Lindsay noticed it, though, and couldn’t stop herself from frowning.

“Something like that,” Sarah responded, which wasn’t much of an explanation. “He’s — he’s not like anyone I’ve ever met. I’ll be staying with him there, and I wanted to make sure everyone knew to keep away from the place.”

This was sounding sketchier and sketchier. True, Sarah Wolfe looked like she’d just come back from a spa vacation with lots of expensive skin treatments, but if everything was going well for her, why would she need to warn everyone to stay away?

Well, nothing like going straight to the heart of the matter.

“Why not?”

Sarah stared back at her steadily. If she’d been trying to hide something, wouldn’t she have glanced away or at the very least done her best not to lock gazes like this?

“Because he values his privacy,” she said. “That’s why he went to live in Ghost Ranch in the first place. He had no idea we were planning to try settling there.”

That sounded almost plausible. After all, the town council had only recently decided to see whether expanding in that direction was even a good idea or not. It wasn’t something they’d discussed with the Santa Fe djinn until after the fact, so there was no way anyone else could have even known about their plans.

“‘He values his privacy,’” Lindsay repeated slowly. “But he’s okay with having you there.”

Maybe the slightest tilt of Sarah’s head. “Something like that. We’ve come to…an understanding.”

That brief hesitation in the other woman’s voice told Lindsay pretty much everything she needed to know. This mysterious djinn or whatever-he-was wanted the rest of the world to be hands-off, but he was absolutely fine with having a pretty human woman around.

And it really wasn’t any of her business. If anyone had a problem with Sarah being there with her djinn, that would be the djinn elders, not a mortal woman who was just trying to keep Los Alamos going and knew when she needed to keep her nose out of things.

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