Chapter 9

"There was absolutely no sign of Sarah Wolfe?" Miles asked, and Lindsay shook her head.

"None at all. Right, Carson?"

"Right," he said. His expression was troubled, although Lindsay couldn't help thinking he was probably more worried about what the town council would say about him leaving his companion behind than fearful that something awful might really have happened to Sarah.

As soon as they'd gotten back to town, Lindsay had picked up her walkie-talkie and contacted her husband, then asked him if he could get in touch with the rest of the council so they could meet at City Hall and decide what to do next. Brent Sutherland must have already been there on some kind of business, because he was waiting in the conference room when she and Carson showed up, and Miles and Shawn and Nora arrived soon afterward.

"I knew this was a bad idea," Shawn muttered, and Miles frowned at him.

"There was absolutely no reason to believe either Sarah or Carson would run into any trouble in Abiquiu or Ghost Ranch." He fixed Carson with a piercing look, the kind Lindsay knew meant he wasn't in the mood for any bullshit. "Did you see anything strange at the lake?"

"No," Carson replied immediately. Now he looked a little more relaxed, as if he realized he was back on firmer ground here. "I hiked around and stayed in an abandoned RV that first night. Worst thing I saw was a couple of coyotes, but they took off as soon as I shone a flashlight at them."

"See?" Miles said, although the word was directed at Shawn Gutierrez, and not at the man who'd just spoken. "That sounds perfectly normal to me."

"Well, something must have happened to Sarah," Nora put in. "She's always been very responsible — shows up for her work assignments on time, is always there if you need someone to pitch in for a special project. I can't believe she'd forget when she was supposed to show up."

Lindsay had to admit that did sound very out of character for the woman. No, she didn't know her very well, but on the occasions when Sarah had been assigned to work in the lab, she'd always been there right when she was supposed to be, and had labored over repairing devices or whatever other tasks she'd been given with a good eye for detail and not a lot of idle chitchat with the other people who were working at the same time.

Honestly, she wasn't sure whether anyone had known Sarah very well.

"We'll have to go take a look," Brent said. "Take one of the four-wheel-drives, get up there and see if we can figure out what happened. She could have fallen and broken a leg, or worse."

That same sort of terrible scenario had entered Lindsay's mind as well, but she kept hoping the situation might not be quite so dire.

Before she could speak, though, Shawn said, "Or we might still be dealing with djinn here. I don't know if it's the best idea for us to go barging in there with a truck and a search party. Yes, we need to find her and get her out of there, but we also should be cautious."

"Then we'll send in a drone," Brent said, and Lindsay blinked at him.

"We have drones?" she demanded. "Since when?"

"One of our gleaning crews found a couple in the basement of a house in Espa?ola," Shawn replied, not looking too put off by her tone. "We've been experimenting with them, trying to get used to how they work, since none of us here had ever flown one."

"And you didn't think about mentioning this to me?" she returned. "We could have sent drones in to scout that country rather than risking several of our people."

"Now, Lindsay," Brent said, his tone doing its best to be consoling, "we just found the things a week or so ago, and we didn't see the point in bringing them up until we had a better idea of how to work with them. Anyway, these aren't commercial or military drones — they can't fly for miles and miles. Even if we use one of the drones to look for Sarah, we'll have to be nearby and fly it in from the highway, something like that, especially since we'll need to rely on the drone's wi-fi to communicate with it since there's no cell service anymore."

Some of her annoyance subsided at hearing these limitations.

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.

"But you will probably want to rest until dinner," he said after he'd lowered the mare's saddle to the fence near where they stood. Now that they were done, he would blink the thing into the stable, but he saw no reason to do that until Sarah had gone back into the house.

She didn't protest. "Yes, putting up my feet and reading for a while sounds like a good idea. That was a marvelous ride, though. Thank you again."

A quick flash of a smile, and then she headed inside the house, as natural as though this was already an established routine for them. In a way, he supposed it was; Sarah had clearly come to accept her situation here, and he had not glimpsed even a single sign of her wishing to escape.

Perhaps she was beginning to see that, while she might not have her freedom, her existence at Ghost Ranch was much more comfortable than the one she'd left behind in Los Alamos.

Odd how her presence, rather than annoying him, was something of a comfort. She might ask a probing question every once in a while, but mainly she seemed content to live in the moment, to enjoy the beauty of a waterfall in a hidden canyon, or to smile at the sound of a goldfinch chirping from a nearby tree branch. Because he had never spent any time around humans, he had no idea whether this was normal for them, or whether Sarah Wolfe was something of a special case.

He wanted to believe the latter. Otherwise, he would be forced to reexamine his actions of the not-so-distant past…and wonder if he had truly done the right thing after all.

A strange buzzing sound made him glance upward. Through the trees, he detected an odd object, shaped rather like a cross, with four miniature propellers whirring away in the air.

Abdul would never have said he was entirely familiar with human technology, and yet he thought he knew what the thing was.

A drone.

Piloted by humans, of course, and clearly sent here to spy on him. Or perhaps not him in particular…no mortal save Sarah even knew of his existence, and even she had no real knowledge of his true nature…but to investigate Ghost Ranch, and most likely try to discover what had happened to their missing explorer.

That was one piece of information he would never allow them to have. If they learned of his presence here…worse, if they somehow managed to learn the truth about him…then he knew he would never have a moment's peace.

His fist clenched, and in the next instant, the drone exploded in a miniature ball of fire. It would not do to have its shrapnel fall here where Sarah might see it, so he immediately blinked the remnants of the little spy machine out of existence.

Only just in time, for a moment later, she emerged from the house and shot him a questioning look.

"What was that?"

He'd already determined it would be best to feign utter ignorance. After all, the evidence of the explosion was already gone.

"What was what?"

Sarah glanced around, but he knew nothing had changed during the intervening few minutes after she'd gone inside, except that the horses had already wandered off down the hill, presumably on their way to forage in the pasture next to the stable.

A frown pulled at her delicate brows. "I could have sworn I heard something go bang. "

"Well, there is certainly nothing like that out here. Perhaps," he suggested, "it was the icemaker in the freezer. It can sound somewhat explosive at times."

She still looked puzzled, but it appeared she was willing to accept his explanation, for she gave a shrug and said, "I guess that was it. Sorry to bother you."

"It was no problem," he said politely, and she gave him a hesitant smile before going back inside once again.

No, it was definitely not a problem.

He would not allow it to be.

"What the hell?" Shawn stared down at his phone, which he'd been using to steer the drone.

Lindsay sent him a worried look. Shawn Gutierrez was not the kind of guy to explode like that unless he had a damn good reason.

"What's the matter?"

"I don't know," he replied. "But the drone was there one minute, transmitting images…and then it just wasn't."

"Did it run into something?"

Shawn didn't quite roll his eyes, but he looked like he wanted to.

"No. There was nothing to run into. It was in an open area, moving toward a house I'd spotted. And then…nothing."

Lindsay and Shawn and Brent were all in Shawn's big pickup truck, which he'd parked at the entrance to Ghost Ranch. It felt awfully conspicuous sitting out in the open like that, but because there wasn't another soul around for miles and miles, she knew her feeling of unease was purely visceral and nothing that was actually based on reality. At any rate, the facility itself was located several miles away down a very rough dirt road, so there wasn't much chance of anyone — or anything — sneaking up on them.

"Let me see," she said, and Shawn only shook his head.

"There's nothing to see," he replied, holding up his phone so she could see the screen.

Sure enough, it was now utterly black, which hadn't been the case a few minutes earlier. The two men were in the front seats while she was in the back, but the whole time Shawn had been controlling the drone, he'd done his best to position his phone so she could mostly have a good view of what was happening.

Not that she had a very good frame of reference, since she'd never visited Ghost Ranch in the before times, so she had no idea whether what she'd been looking at was the same old, same old, or whether something had changed here over the previous four-plus years.

And neither Shawn nor Brent had been here, either, so they were all kind of flying blind. The only thing she'd been able to tell was that there didn't seem to be any sign of Sarah Wolfe anywhere in the area.

Judging by the scowl Shawn currently wore — a departure from his usual sunny expression — he wasn't too happy about his new toy going kaput.

"I could have sworn I saw something down there," he said as he set his phone on the console that divided the two front seats.

"Like what?" Brent asked.

"I'm not sure," Shawn replied, and his gaze moved to the phone, even though the drone had obviously stopped transmitting and there was nothing to see on its screen. "There were trees in the way, but it still looked like something was moving beneath them."

"Maybe some kind of animal," Lindsay suggested. "A goat or a horse or something. Lots of them running wild these days."

That was for sure. They had their own herds of sheep and goats and cows in Espa?ola, but there were far more that still roamed around the countryside, fending for themselves.

Shawn looked dubious, but it seemed as if he didn't want to argue. No, he only said, "That could have been it. Still doesn't explain what happened to the drone."

"It must have malfunctioned," Brent said. "I guess that's not so weird, considering how long it had been sitting when we found it. Maybe something in the wiring or the electronics went bad, and it just needed some more flying time before it totally failed."

"I suppose so," Shawn said, but then his gaze moved to the empty landscape beyond the lodgepole gate that framed the entrance to the ranch. "Still, I can't shake the feeling that someone did that on purpose."

"You mean a djinn?" Lindsay asked. She guessed her expression now was as skeptical as Shawn's had been a moment earlier. "No one's ever heard of any djinn settling out here."

A shrug. "Maybe not. Is it something we can check on?"

"Sure," she replied, since she knew finding out whether Ghost Ranch was occupied by a djinn should be easy enough. "I can radio Julia and Zahrias when we get back to Los Alamos."

"Then we might as well get going," Shawn said as he began to reach for the ignition button.

Brent stared at him. "Aren't we going to go in and look for Sarah?"

While that might have been the right thing to do, something about Shawn's previous line of questioning made Lindsay wonder if there was a lot more going on here than met the eye. Never in the world would she have said she was remotely psychic, and her hard-headed engineering background made her a great foil for her scientist husband…but the thought of venturing into Ghost Ranch right now with only Brent and Shawn for backup made chills run up and down her spine.

"Eventually," she said. "But I think Shawn is right on this one. If there really is a djinn lurking somewhere on the ranch, we can't just walk in there like we own the place. Look at what happened to the drone."

"A djinn might not have had anything to do with that," Brent argued.

"Or they could have had everything to do with it," Shawn returned. "I don't want to stir up something we can't handle."

For a few seconds, Brent didn't say anything. His jaw was set, and Lindsay knew he hated the idea of abandoning Sarah there without even attempting to go in and find her.

On the other hand, drones didn't usually blow themselves up in the middle of a clear sky…if that was even what had happened. The drone was too far away for them to have had it in their line of sight, so it might have simply lost power, dropped like a stone, and broken apart on impact.

Mechanical failure didn't give her the creepy crawlies like this, though.

"We'll come back for Sarah," Lindsay said, keeping her tone gentle.

"But first, we need to figure out what's really going on out here."