Walker had started downhill the minute he’d seen smoke rising behind the lodge. From his vantage point, he could see the crazy coven in a clearing far below.

He watched as, surrounded by the Lucys, Samantha raised a stick. In the flash of an instant, the circle exploded in an inferno of light.

Save him from the effing crazies! Walker broke into a run. Arson was no laughing matter. Just when he thought—

Sam collapsed, screaming, while smoke rose around her. Her cry escalated his heart rate to terror mode.

He leapt over fallen trunks and skidded through debris, descending the hill at breakneck pace. Lodge personnel ran toward the clearing with buckets and hoses, but he could only see Sam crumpled in the weeds. He barely noticed the women stomping out smoldering branches and chanting what sounded like Blessed Be. It was his own damned fault for letting a mentally impaired female loose with the looneys. Sam’s lack of memory was definitely an impairment if she didn’t know better than to set fires.

He stumbled into the clearing, out of breath and furious.

The women finished stomping on their smoking sticks and throwing dirt on their fire. Lodge security shouted curses and dumped buckets of water on hot rocks, exploding them in steam. Walker could see Carmel Kennedy and her chauffeur marching in this direction, steaming hotter than the rocks.

His duty was to keep the townspeople from killing each other, but right now, the victim he’d sent into this brawl was his primary concern.

He scooped up Samantha and felt her wriggle. Good. She was alive. Now he was damned well taking her down for medical help, as he should have done in the first place.

“I’m fine, put me down,” she sputtered, wriggling to get free. “I was just a little overcome with smoke.”

“Yeah, most people shriek and wave wands when they have smoke inhalation, right.” He marched on, taking the shortest unmarked path to the parking lot. Stones and rubble rolled beneath his boots, but he didn’t release his grip.

“Not a wand,” she muttered, pounding his shoulders. “Just one of Harvey’s walking sticks. I kept the Lucys busy, didn’t I?”

“You let them nearly set the mountain on fire! That is not what I meant about keeping them busy. What the hell did they explode on that fire? The place lit up like a ten-thousand megawatt magnesium flare.”

“For all I know, it was magnesium.” She shoved hard, nearly toppling them both. “I do not need medical assistance.”

“Pretend you do so I can get us both out of here. The sheriff has his homicide team up there and doesn’t need me. I’m supposed to be covering my rounds or giving assistance to the locals. You’re the local. I’m assisting. We’re getting off this mountain now, before Carmel rains fire and brimstone on our heads.”

Even as he said it, he saw Kurt Kennedy crossing the parking lot and Aaron Townsend jogging up the trail, headed his way.

“We can take Miss Moon down to the ER,” Kurt said with concern. “This happened on lodge property, and I’d like to see that she’s unhurt.”

“I’m unhurt,” Samantha shouted. “And I’m not going anywhere with potential murderers.”

Kurt’s dark eyebrows shot up. Aaron looked amused. Walker kept walking.

“She’s impaired,” Walker said grumpily. “The Lucys probably put pot on the fire.”

“We did not,” Aaron protested. “We released the spirit of the man who passed this mortal coil last night. Miss Moon was not prepared for the impact. And I wish everyone would quit calling us Lucys. I am not female, nor is Harvey.”

“We could call you Looneys,” Kurt offered, following Walker across the gravel lot.

Aaron was a big man, almost as large as Kurt. If they squared off. . .

Samantha yanked one of Walker’s fingers and pulled it back almost far enough to break it. In retaliation, he dropped her. She had to grab his arm to steady herself once she was on her feet again, but she had everyone’s attention. “I am not going anywhere with any of you. I’m going back to town to play in dirt.”

“Not with emergency vehicles flying up that drive, you’re not.” Walker caught her arm and kept marching her to his Ford. “I’ll take you down.”

“I can go with one of the others.” She tried to shake him off, but he wasn’t allowing that finger trick again.

“We offered rides,” Kurt reminded them. He crossed his arms and watched Walker open his door and fling Sam in. “Are you arresting her?”

“Maybe. I’m thinking about it.” He slammed the door. When she opened it again, he removed his cuffs from his belt. “You stay put or I’ll lock you in.”

“You wouldn’t dare.” Her eyes were a challenging, long-lashed azure, and Walker could almost feel her ire cutting out his heart.

“I don’t respond to zanies anymore,” he told her. “Stay there or I’ll haul you in with cuffs.” He glared at Aaron and Kurt, who were looking belligerent. “She needs help. Stay out of this.”

“Zanies, nice,” she repeated in a fulminating tone that might well lead to explosion.

Walker checked to see that his gun was still in place.

Mariah popped up like an evil genie, her hair braided with trinkets, making her look more a lunatic than any of the Lucys. “Find out about Cass,” she commanded. “That was her with us just now.”

Even Sam stopped protesting to stare.

Mariah shrugged. “If you can’t tell, I can’t explain. Just go. She shouldn’t be on the astral plane this long.”

Walker climbed in, shoved his sunglasses on, and turned the ignition. “Are you sure you want to stay with the Looney Tunes?”

Sam remained silent long enough for him to send the car rolling down the drive and away from their audience.

“I understood what she meant,” she finally said in a small voice.

“About the astral plane?” He almost ground his teeth. His late wife had always sounded perfectly rational when she’d talked about the voices in her head. He’d never known when Tess was referring to characters in the novels she wrote or the demons that controlled her.

“No, I know nothing of astral planes. But I felt another presence that wasn’t me, unless I really am crazy. I need to dig some plants, do something constructive.”

“You need grounding,” he almost said in relief. People who realized they were thinking crazy weren’t really crazy, were they?

She smiled weakly. “Right. Grounding. But I remember what Cass looks like now.”

He almost slammed the brake. Instead, he drove straight through town, aiming for the main highway. “Describe her.”

“Tall and thin, like me. Classic roman nose, no makeup, blue eyes, silver hair pulled back tightly from Katharine Hepburn cheekbones.” She fell silent, as if waiting for his approval.

It was only as he recognized the description that he realized what she was really waiting for. “She resembles you. That’s why the Lucys took to you.”

“You said she’s in her sixties. She couldn’t be my mother unless she had me in her forties.” Her voice trembled.

“What do you mean, your mother? Your mother is Jade Moon. Her name is on all your records.” He’d been hoping against hope that she was sane and it was the town that was nuts, but none of this computed.

“You didn’t look up my parents, did you?” She gazed out at the passing landscape. “You’d understand if you’d seen their photos.”

“My phone should start working when we pass the gas station.” He handed it to her. “Call up the images you saw.”

She poked at icons as if she knew what she was doing. “Jade appears to be Chinese, Wolf, Native American. Neither of them look anything like me. And they must have looked horribly out of place in Provo. I researched the town where I grew up too. It couldn’t be any more white if it had been bleached.”

“Maybe they were Mormons,” he argued, even knowing that was grasping straws.

He pulled into the gas station and took the phone when she passed it to him. The couple staring back at him possessed none of Sam’s classic—blond—beauty. They were handsome in their own way, but he could see what she was saying. Her mother looked more like him than Sam. He scrolled down, read the article, then handed the phone back to her and returned to driving.

So chances were good that Sam had never been who she was raised to be.

“What else are you remembering?” She’d been raised by a Chinese mother, as he had. What did that signify? Jia Walker had more superstitions than a house full of cranks, but she was completely, totally sane—almost painfully so.

Sam shook her head. Her hair was falling from the combs she’d used to hold it off her nape. Had Cass’s hair once had streaks of gold and ash?

“Nothing, really. There are just these vague. . . shadows. I may be remembering the restaurant where I met her. I’m not certain. But my life before, nothing. Maybe I need the Lucys to chant over me.” She said that grimly.

He glanced over to be certain she wasn’t looking as if she’d like to jump out of the car. His late wife had led him to be wary of hysterical females. Sam seemed weary but calm, so he brought the conversation around to a subject that almost made sense. “Thank you for keeping the Lucys off my back and bringing Val down. She was giving us all the willies. Was that a signal fire that had her scrambling off that rock?”

“You don’t want to know,” she assured him. “But I’d take matches and lighters away from the lot of them if I could.”

“I’ll agree with that, but even if I catch them on a no-fire day, all I can do is slap a penalty on them.” Remembering that flash of light, he resolved to investigate the ashes, but first things first. “Val has probably spread the word of the body’s identity in her death goddess role, but she doesn’t know the details. If I tell you what I know, can you keep quiet?”

He didn’t know why he would trust anything she said, but he liked it when Sam was paying attention. Her powers of observation were as keen as her hearing.

“Like you, I know how to keep my mouth shut.”

He nodded approval. “We found Juan up there, the lodge’s security manager. He’d been mauled by a cougar. He was last seen at the bar at the lodge, so I don’t know how he got out there. We’re treating it as suspicious. How did Val know he was there? We need to nail where everyone was last night.”

“As far as I know, we were all in bed, listening to his spirit howl,” she said, sounding as unhappy as he felt. “Did he have family?”

“No wife or kids. He’s a long-time local. His parents live down the mountain. They’ve been notified. I hate that part of the job.”

“I don’t even want to imagine it,” she said in a troubled voice. “But as far as the Lucys are concerned, Juan now rests in a better place and his spirit won’t haunt us. Let’s find a normal topic. Who are you and what are you doing up here?”

“Wow, that took a nasty turn.” Walker ran a hand through his hair. One thing led to another, and he really didn’t want to open up his life to anyone.

“I ran a search on you, you know. I like knowing I can trust the people to whom I’ve bared my soul.” Her voice was distant and stiff.

Shit. Of course she had. “You didn’t find much,” he said with assurance. “My firm is paid well to keep personal information out of the news when it’s of no importance to anyone but the people involved.”

“Yeah, if you’re the Chen Ling Walker from LA, your firm did a good job,” she said with a wry intonation that he deserved. “I don’t want to pry into your family situation, but it would be good to know why a CEO is working a deputy’s job. Is that part of your business?”

Shit, he was bad at explaining and she had every right to be ticked at his keeping secrets when she was an open book.

“I took time off,” he said, weighing his words. “My father started the company. He was into fraud investigations, had an accounting and a criminal justice degree. He disappeared on a case eighteen years ago. At the time, his office was ransacked. The files he was working on were destroyed, the computer hard drives smashed. Back then, cloud computing wasn’t easily available. Even flash drives were pretty high-tech, so he backed up his files on paper. Recent files, he carried on memory sticks, which he carried with him. Needless to say, none of the files were found.”

She uttered a sympathetic noise and patted his thigh—the sore one. If she thought that would make him feel better, she was mistaken. He got hard. Therapists had told him that it was far easier to get physical than explore the emotion. More pleasant, too.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. You don’t have to talk about it if it’s painful.”

Yeah, this itch could become real painful if he didn’t satisfy it—especially since he wasn’t satisfying it with any more lunatics. Walker forced his dirty mind back to a subject guaranteed to cure what ailed him. “The only clue we had was a phone call. Dad called my mother every night that he was away. The last one came from Hillvale. He was staying at the lodge. The police questioned everyone in the blamed town. You know enough to understand how far they got.”

“Even the Kennedys didn’t cooperate?” she asked in surprise.

Recalling his research on his father’s disappearance eased the tightness in his pants. “Eighteen years ago, Kurt and Monty were kids. Carmel had just lost her husband to a sudden illness. She was trying to cope with his estate and the business and claimed to know nothing about the guests. They verified my father had checked in. His car wasn’t there. They found it in San Francisco a week later.”

“You think the skeleton belongs to your father,” she said in horror.

“Almost certain. Just waiting on the tests.” He could feel her stare nailing him, but he kept his eyes on the road.

“Was Val there then? Did she wail his fate?”

He was relieved she skipped over the sympathies and platitudes. He could handle no-nonsense, practical questions, even if they were about insane subjects. “As far as I’m aware, she didn’t show up in Hillvale until about five years ago. We’re still trying to find out who lived in Hillvale back then—Juan did, he’s lived here all his life, but he swore he knew nothing.”

“And now he’s dead. That’s suspicious,” she said, as if thinking to herself. “All I know is that Mariah, Tullah, Amber, and Dinah weren’t there then, but the Kennedys, including Carmel’s brother, were. I haven’t got further than that. The older people keep to themselves and don’t talk to me much. Cass really is your ticket, isn’t she?” She slumped lower in the seat as they drove into town.

“Yeah. I’ve got the cops and my firm working on her, but she’s disappeared into thin air. We don’t even know how she gets off the mountain.” He pulled into a run-down shopping center. “Clinic is here. They’re expecting you, but I’ll go in and show them my badge so they don’t ask for details. Then while they’re drawing blood, I’ll run over to the taco shop and pick up food.” He nodded at the restaurant.

“You’re not hauling me to the hospital?” she asked warily.

“Not as long as you remain sane.” He got out before he weakened beneath the light of those gorgeous eyes.

While he was here, he’d make a few phone calls. By now, his firm ought to have a good list of the town occupants at the last census before his father’s death.

Pulling her denim jacket on over the bandage taped to her arm, Sam left the clinic to find Walker waiting for her with a heavenly-smelling white bag. He handed her a big cup of sweet horchata.

“I think you’re supposed to eat sugar after you’ve given blood.” He was already tearing into a giant burrito while leaning against his cruiser.

He’d was wearing his mirrored sunglasses, concealing his expression, she noted grumpily.

“I have no idea about sugar, but the horchata is good.” She drank deeply, then dug into the bag, producing a deliciously greasy pork burrito. “I don’t know what I’m accustomed to eating, but I recognize good Mexican. And I know when someone is concealing his thoughts. The Chinese inscrutability thing doesn’t work so well when you have your father’s eyes, right?”

He bent a scowl on her. “Is that something you remember?”

“Heck if I know.” She leaned against the car next to him. The closeness seemed odd but also. . . right, even if she ought to be mad at him. They’d both gone a little insane back at the lodge. There was something about that lodge. . . that unleashed her inner demons, apparently. “In that photo, Jade’s eyes appeared flat-lidded to me. She just used fake lashes and eye make-up for definition.”

He snorted, took off his shades, and tucked them in the V of his shirt. “So did my mother. She still did inscrutable well, when she wanted. Other times, she’d take my head off with her sharp tongue, so inscrutable doesn’t go far.”

She laughed, relaxing enough to enjoy her lunch. She was still tense about Cass and his earlier fury, but they’d both been shaken. Maybe they could work past it.

In between bites, he caught her up on what lay ahead. “I’ll take you over to have your fingerprints run through the database when we’re done here. Once I prove your ID, I’ll give you the data you need to file for a new license and birth certificate. The office has sent an address-forward request to your last known address. It might be good to see if you’ve established a mail drop.”

They were practically rubbing elbows. After this morning’s encounter, she was hyper-aware of his proximity. But she had no clue how to act on tingles of awareness, especially when dealing with an older man with way too much authority. “I’m guessing I need a non-public computer to file for the birth certificate,” she said dubiously.

It would be good to intellectually know that she was Samantha Moon, but in truth, she simply didn’t feel like anybody. Although if she resembled Cass—there had to be a connection.

“Finish up the burrito, and we’ll see if we can expedite the fingerprints. Once you’re free to use the data, you can use my laptop. I don’t generally carry it with me since I have the official one. I have an apartment here in Baskerville, we can pick it up later.”

“I looked up Utah drivers’ license replacement. I can’t do it from here,” she said glumly. “And without a Utah license, I can’t get a California one without an address and taking the driver’s test again. Officialdom is complicated.”

“One thing at a time, grasshopper,” he said in amusement. “Maybe we’ll find your missing purse before all that happens. And if you were moving here, you’d have to go through the system anyway. You’re just feeling overwhelmed.”

“There’s the understatement of a lifetime. Okay, let’s get on with this. I wish I had some way of looking for Cass. I can’t help feeling she’s the answer to everything.”

“Yeah, I know.” He handed her a paper napkin and began wiping the grease off his fingers with another. “We’ll see if there are any reports waiting when we get there.”

Sam caught herself staring at Walker’s fingers and had to jerk back to the moment. He’d carried her down a damned mountain, kicking and screaming. For a CEO, he was pumped. Had she ever had a lover like that?

She couldn’t remember ever having a lover at all, but her body knew what it wanted.

Wiping her hands, she got back in the car and apprehensively waited for her visit to a sheriff’s office. Walker’s threat to lock her up rang loud in her head, but he was behaving reasonably for a change. How long did it take to get back bloodwork? He couldn’t arrest her if she had drugs still in her system, could he?

They didn’t have far to drive before Walker pulled the car into a lot filled with official vehicles. She’d thought this was a rural area, but the building looming over the lot was a sprawling concrete monstrosity. Maybe they had a lot of criminals in the mountains.

“I was hoping we could see the ocean from here,” she said in disappointment.

He turned off the car and looked at her with curiosity. “Why do you say that?”

She wrinkled her brow in puzzlement. “I’m not sure. If I grew up near Provo, then I probably never saw the ocean. Maybe that’s the reason I drove this way once I graduated.”

“So maybe this is some wisp of your memory creeping up?”

“A wish can be a memory? Maybe. I don’t know the geography here. I just assumed a road going west would take me to the ocean, I guess.”

“We’re not far from the coast. I’m supposed to be on duty, so I can’t take you right now. Maybe later.”

She took his hand without protest as he helped her out of the SUV. She’d calmed down since the incident on the mountain. She still resented that he’d turned into macho man and threatened her, but maybe she’d frightened him as much as she’d frightened herself.

She dropped his hand once they were inside. She followed him through cold-tiled corridors, past busy offices, until they reached a portion of the building where people greeted him with waves and stared in curiosity at her.

A young Hispanic woman in uniform rushed toward them, carrying a sheaf of paperwork, as soon as they entered the door marked Sheriff’s Department. “They’ve found her,” she called, waving the papers.

Walker stopped to take them away. “Found who?”

“Cassandra Tolliver. From the description you gave, she’s the Jane Doe down at Community Hospital in Monterey.”