horses. The man at the front counter kept trying to sell us a guide until I told him I’d been out plenty of times to see the mustangs. “Have you rented one of these recently to Sam Meacham?”
He glanced at his book of rentals. There weren’t many on the page since it was a slow time of the year. “Yeah, sure. He was here a few days ago. He was taking a man out to see the horses, like you, Mayor O’Donnell.”
“Do I know you?”
“I recognize your name from your driver’s license and credit card. I heard it on the news report about the museum exploding. Hope that doesn’t happen here. Do you think it really was the pirate ghost?”
“Of course not!” I told him. “Thanks.”
“What did the man with Meacham look like?” Kevin asked the outfitter.
“I don’t know.” He thought back. “Medium height. Maybe brown hair. He had a two-way radio. Could be a highway worker.”
“Thanks.”
“If you see them, tell them I need the Segways back. Normally I’d call the police, but it’s Sam and everything. But I still need them back.”
The Segways were a lot easier to balance on than I’d thought they’d be. In no time, we were both up and going down the hard-packed sand at the edge of the beach.
The air was fresh and cool, drawing large groups of people to the beach. Huge kites were flying across the whitecaps on the water. One man with a large, purple kite was actually having trouble keeping his feet on the sand. The wind picked him up again and again, threatening to take him out to sea. Finally, two more people joined him to help hold the kite. There was a reason Orville and Wilbur Wright came down here from Ohio to fly their airplane.
There were heavy bushes and some squat trees where the path wandered. At times I couldn’t see the water. The steady hum of the Segway motors and the whirr of the wide tires ate up the distance down the coast.
We stopped near a small group of mustangs—a mare, a stallion and a colt standing on the beach. A group of tourists were snapping pictures while the horses posed calmly for them.
“I hope there are more horses than these,” Kevin remarked. “I don’t see Sam here.”
“There are a lot of horses out here. I’m hoping we’ll run into some of the Wild Horse Preservation Society that manages the herd. One of them might know Sam.”
He nodded and we got back on our Segways. From that point on, it was as common to see the horses as it was to see the statues of them that littered the Outer Banks. Large groups of them gathered to munch on the grass between the sand dunes and sea oats. Young stallions bucked and played with one another. A mare nursed her colt. It was inspiring to see them living so free.
I pointed to one of the Wild Horse trailers near the old life station, and we slowed our Segways again. “Not a bad way to travel,” Kevin said.
“It’s fast anyway.” I didn’t want to mention that I felt gritty all over from the sand flying up as we moved. “Let’s check in with them.”
A burly man in a green sweater who was smoking a pipe greeted us at the trailer with a hearty handshake. He introduced himself as Tom Watts, one of the local Wild Horse workers.
“I’m looking for Sam Meacham from the Corolla Historical Museum,” I said when I could get my hand back. “Have you seen him?”
“Of course! He was here yesterday. He was taking his friend around to see the horses.”
“Medium height, brown hair?” Kevin guessed.
“That’s right. I can’t recall his name. He was in a hurry. Sometimes people have to be patient. The horses aren’t here for our amusement even though it may seem like that to some.”
“Any idea which way they went?” I asked him.
“I told them we had a group of people from the mainland down here doing a study on the horses. They’re about two miles up from here. Sam went that way with his friend.”
“Thanks.” I made the mistake of shaking his hand again.
As we went back to our Segways, Kevin said he was glad the descriptions of the man with Sam matched. “Is that what you saw when you were holding the horse statue?”
“I really only saw them shaking hands.” I shrugged. “The other man was wearing some kind of ring with an unusual design. I couldn’t tell you what right now, but I’d know it if I saw it again. I know that’s not very helpful.”
“It’s all we’ve got right now. You’ve managed to track Sam this far, which is more than the police could do.”
We roamed the trails for another few hours, but it was getting late. We hadn’t seen many horses and couldn’t find the group Tom had told us about. We were about to turn back when we both noticed a Segway parked in a heavy thicket.
Thrilled that we’d found it, I got off of my scooter quickly, but Kevin held me back. “Let’s take it easy here. We don’t know what’s going on.”
It was very quiet at this far end of the island. There was only one Segway and no sign of Sam or his friend. Kevin searched through the thicket and further up along the path, but found nothing.
“It could belong to someone else,” I suggested, looking around, probably not as efficiently as him.
“There doesn’t seem to be any sign of a struggle or any problem. Just to be on the safe side, let’s call in the serial number and see if it matches up to what the outfitter in Corolla has listed for Sam.”
It was a good idea, but of course, there was no cell phone signal. We tried his phone and mine. Both spent all their time searching for service.
“It’s no use. We can’t find out like this.” Kevin put his cell phone away.
“There’s another way.”
“I know what you mean, Dae. I don’t know if it’s a good idea. There’s no way of knowing what you might see.”
I took off one glove and approached the scooter. I agreed with Kevin that the Segway might show me something I wouldn’t like to see. On the other hand, it might reveal something important. We were too far from Tom Watts’s trailer to go back and see if he had some adequate form of communication. And I had to be back in Duck for the town meeting or the chief would get kind of riled.
“This might be the only way to know where Sam is. I think that’s important enough to take a chance. If I fall on the ground again, just leave me there. I’ll get up eventually.”
He came to stand behind me and slid his arms around my waist. “How about if we prepare for that problem and I won’t let you fall. Be careful, Dae. If there’s something you see that doesn’t look right, get out.”
“Do you think something has happened to Sam?”
“I don’t know. I’ve had a bad feeling about this since we saw his office at the museum. And finding only one Segway isn’t a good sign.”
“You could’ve said something.”
“I’m not intuitive.” He shrugged. “I’d rather let you lead the way.”
“As long as you’re my backup, that’s fine.” I smiled at him and we briefly kissed before I put out my hand and grasped the handle on the scooter.
I pulled away from it, gasping, but in better control than I had been with Adelaide’s dress.
“All right?” Kevin asked, his arms around me. “What did you see?”
“I’m fine.” I moved away from him, staring back at the scooter. “Sam was here. Someone was chasing him. He thought his life was in danger. He ran until he couldn’t run anymore. That’s all I could see. I think something terrible happened to him out here. We have to tell someone.”
“All right. We’ll have to go back to the trailer and call for help. If the cell phones won’t work there, I noticed a ham radio antenna. We could use that.”
“That means calling the Corolla police.” I grabbed my scooter. “Chief Michaels isn’t going to like this.”
“Dae O’Donnell.” Corolla Police Chief Walt Peabody got off his ATV and walked toward us, removing his sunglasses as he came. He was a lean, hard man whose pale gray uniform matched the frigid gray
