With the announcement that Cass had been found, Walker picked up another file full of papers from his desk and handed the lot to Sam. “Let’s get your fingerprints done.”

Once he had prints, he passed the file on to the secretary to match against government data. Then he caught Sam’s elbow and steered her out of the building and toward his official car. “Now we can go see the ocean.”

He was more eager than she to get his hands on Cass. Sam was trying to read the file as she walked and slowed his speed.

She waved the papers at him in protest. “You’re taking me to see Cassandra? What about the others who really know her? Should we let them know?”

“How? Call? I’m not driving back up there. What are the chances that any of the Lucys stay connected to their computers or landlines?”

“Probably not good,” she admitted. “But I can’t say for certain that the person in my head is actually Cassandra.”

“If you recognize her as the person you met at the restaurant, we’re on the way to solving two mysteries. I’m willing to take the chance.” If Cass could bring him closer to his father’s murderer, he was all over it.

She slid into the passenger seat and began flipping through his file folder as well as the papers the secretary had handed him. “Coroner’s report on the skeleton.” She handed him a brown folder.

Walker grabbed it before he started the car. “A blow to the back of the head. If it’s my father, that’s the only way they could have done it—from behind, and even then, it’s suspicious. They may have drugged him first. He never drank to excess. They don’t have the DNA back yet, but everything else fits him.”

He slapped the folder back in her lap and turned the key in the ignition. The sheriff wouldn’t appreciate him leaving the county without permission, so he’d just forget to let him know. At this point, they could fire him, and he’d still be good.

“They don’t have a medical reason for Cass’s coma,” Sam said worriedly, apparently reading the hospital report. “She had no identification on her when a maid found her in a hotel room.”

“Did she have a car? Was there any luggage in the room that might be yours?”

She shot him a puzzled glance. “Why would she have my things? From what I’ve heard, she’s hardly a purse snatcher.”

“Because this case is weird from top to bottom and someone has your purse. If you remember seeing Cass in Monterey, it’s the next natural step.”

“You think I drugged her?”

“Given your squeaky clean record, if anything, Cass drugged herself. She has a history with drugs, you don’t.” His mind was running full throttle. “Does the report say they checked the parking lot at the hotel where she was found?”

“They did a cursory check but haven’t invested time in running every plate,” she said, reading through the report.

He radioed in a request for another sweep of the parking lot and told the Monterey police that he was bringing in someone to ID their Jane Doe. But he knew what Cass looked like. Taking Sam was just a meaningless gesture of hope that something would jog her memory.

There was no fast way to traverse narrow county roads to the coast. Due to the rugged terrain, the major state highway ran parallel to the Santa Cruz mountains and the Pacific, through rolling valleys of grape vines and nothingness. Walker tried to imagine the woman beside him traveling this road at night, in a fugue state—as she called it—with no knowledge of the geography or facilities. Mindless might be the best way of traversing this route.

They pulled over once to refuel and refresh. Sam spent most of the drive with her head buried in his files on his father and Cass. He had a lot of research in there. She only spoke when she had questions. He took radio calls from the office. When the sheriff’s assistant called to say Sam’s fingerprints matched her TSA file, he pumped his fist in the air. Sam slapped his hand in acknowledgment and went back to reading.

Even though they’d verified her identity, she still had no memory of who Samantha Moon was. Got it. At least she wasn’t waving sticks and chanting. The scientist doing research was more relaxing.

It was dinnertime before they made the outskirts of Monterey. If he’d been in his hybrid i8, he’d have cut the time considerably. In an official vehicle, he had no excuse to turn on the emergency signals and break the limits.

“Need food?” he asked, glancing her way at the first red light intersection they hit.

She looked at him as if he were the crazy person. “Cass first.”

“A lady with her priorities straight, right. I’ll take you to eat on the ocean later.”

That earned him a beatific smile. He’d chew tacks to earn that smile again.

He needed to get a grip. It was probably just the adrenaline rush.

Walker pulled into the hospital parking lot and helped Sam out of the SUV. She tugged nervously at her hair, pulling it back up in combs and buttoning her jeans jacket over her dirty shirt. He could tell her she’d look like a regal princess even if she wore rags, but that probably wasn’t appropriate.

He flashed his badge, and they were directed up to the ICU. While Walker checked in at the desk, Sam strode straight to a window as if she knew where she was going. The patient inside looked like all the other patients being watched—swaddled in blankets, pale, shrunken, and surrounded by beeping equipment.

The nurse followed him over to the window—Sam had picked the right one without inquiring.

“Can you recognize her from here?” the nurse asked.

It didn’t look much like Cass. Her silver hair spilled over the pillowcase in a tumble she never allowed. Her face was pulled so taut it looked like thin paper over raw bone. Her snapping frosty blue eyes were closed. Her lips had nearly disappeared.

“That’s her,” Sam said in a whisper. “That’s Cass. That’s my grandmother.”

Without waiting for permission, Sam pushed open the hospital room door. She could feel the connection with the woman in the bed.

The nurse hurried after her, complaining about contamination. Acting on pure instinct or a call deeper than that, Sam picked up Cass’s bony hand.

Her eyelids moved.

Sam squeezed her hand tighter. “Let go now, Cass. I’m back. We need you.”

She had no idea why she said that. She had no idea why she’d called Cass her grandmother, because even with her fuzzy head she knew that wasn’t quite right. But there was an essential essence that bonded them. She could feel Cass’s stirring within her own head, feel Cass’s brain bubbling with activity.

The bony hand stirred. Sam stroked it. “Cass, please, let go. Come back.”

Walker’s big male presence in his official uniform hovered uncomfortably. He must think she was crazed. Maybe she was. But she couldn’t stop. She stroked, she whispered, and the woman beneath her hands gained color and movement.

The nurse checked monitors and hurried off, presumably to find a doctor. Walker, miraculously, stayed silent, not interrupting their internal communication.

“Water,” Sam murmured. When Walker handed it to her, she offered the glass to Cass, as if the patient had been the one asking for it.

Thin lips closed around the straw and sipped weakly. Sam nearly collapsed on the floor. Walker shoved a chair beneath her so she didn’t have to drop Cass’s hand.

Her brain felt empty, floating, as if a weight had been lifted.

“Samantha,” the woman on the bed whispered. “Sorry.”

A young doctor rushed in, followed by the nurse. He demanded they leave while he took vital signs.

Feeling completely drained, Sam squeezed the frail hand in hers. “I’m here. Come back now, please.”

The doctor repeated his demand that they leave and Walker dragged her out. “You look like a ghost. We need to get food in you.”

“Give me a minute.” She slumped to the hall floor and rested her head against her knees. It wasn’t exactly classic non-fainting mode, but it was the best she could do without a chair. Her head spun, and she didn’t feel as if she had the strength to remain sitting.

A nurse brought crackers and soda. Sam dutifully nibbled and sipped.

Walker offered his hand. “Let me at least take you to the waiting room where there are chairs.”

“No, I’m good. I need to be here.” Close to Cass, close to whatever was happening between them.

Lowering his dignity, he slid down beside her. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

“No, because it makes no sense. I’m a scientist. I know this. I may know more about plant anatomy than human, but I know what’s happening isn’t. . . I don’t even have a word for it. Cass is inside my head. I need to get her back into her own. Did they find drugs in her system?”

“Nothing for which they’re equipped to test,” he admitted, sounding wary. “What do you mean, she’s in your head? Do you hear voices?”

Oddly, he clenched his fists, as if a cold wind blew between them.

But she was too shocked to do more than explore her own dilemma. “No. No, it’s like. . . the part of my brain that is me has been cut off by a wall, and the wall is coming down, only it’s not that solid and feels like Cass. How does hypnosis work?”

That silenced him. Sam took deep breaths, finding it easier now. She was afraid to stand and see what they were doing to Cass. Her head ached in a vague sort of way, as if numbness was wearing off from a root canal. There was a hollow but it didn’t hurt.

“The hippies experimented with hallucinogenic drugs and hypnosis back in the day,” Walker said haltingly. “I need to do more research. If you met Cass in the restaurant and she gave you something. . .”

“Why?” Sam asked. “Why would she do that?”

“We’ll have to ask her.” He stood as the doctor left the room. “How is she?”

“Coming around. If she’s more coherent in the morning, we’ll take her to a private room. Visiting hours are all day. Why don’t you come back after she’s had a good night’s sleep?”

“May I see her again?” Sam asked, accepting Walker’s hand and standing. “I need to let her know I’ll be back.”

“You’ve helped, but don’t take too long.” The doctor strode off, leaving the nurse to let them back in again.

Sam hurried back to take Cass’s hand. Her veins were blue beneath her pale skin, but her face had color again. After squeezing her hand reassuringly, Sam rolled up Cass’s silver hair, pressed it against her skull, then fastened one of her own combs in it. “I’ll be back in the morning. We need to talk, please. There’s too much I don’t understand.”

Cass’s eyes flew open for a brief moment. “Samantha,” she said in what sounded like satisfaction. “Welcome home.”

She appeared to drift into a normal sleep. Without giving it any thought, Sam slid her hand into Walker’s, clinging to it as a lifeline as he led her out of the hospital.

“We’ll go to the wharf. It’s easier than finding somewhere fancy at this hour.” Without asking questions, he helped her into the car.

Grateful for his understanding, Sam meditated on the empty place in her head and the memories slowly infusing it. Not until they were walking on the wharf, smelling the salty air, watching the waves, did she finally breathe freely again. “The ocean is so. . . immense.”

“Puts things in perspective, doesn’t it? Sit here, just take it in, and I’ll be back with food.” His voice was warm chocolate reassuring.

Sam sensed an emptiness when he left, but she still experienced a connection with him, like a filament of invisible essence, as she had with Cass. Rather than examine that weirdness, she admired the brilliant blue shades of the ocean lapping beyond the wharf. The noise and colors of the people and shops lining the old pier fell into the background as she concentrated on the battering wind and the crying gulls. She let these new sensations wipe the slate clean, let her body relax, and began the blessed process of refilling her memory and becoming herself again.

Walker returned with a bread bowl of chowder and bags of fried seafood and slaw. “It’s tourist food, but decent.”

“I’ve never had fried food,” she said, and her heart felt lighter at the recollection. Samantha Moon had returned.

He dropped down on the bench beside her, sprawling his long legs across the planks and digging into his soup before he halted in mid-bite to stare at her. “You remembered that? Of all the things to remember, it’s fried food?”

“Lack thereof,” she corrected with a smile. “All organic, all the time, and lots of tofu. We had goats and chickens for milk and eggs. I never saw the inside of a Walmart until a friend took me when I was sixteen.”

His eyes narrowed warily. His five o’clock shadow made him look tough, but at least he wasn’t wearing his damned shades.

“I learned to curse at college,” she added, digging into the chowder.

He all but inhaled half his soup before speaking again. “How much do you remember?”

“You’re thinking this was all a hoax, aren’t you?” She opened a brown bag and pinched off a bite of fried fish. Remarkably, she didn’t resent his assumption. Knowing who she was made everything sane again. Joy ballooned inside her. One took moments of happiness and reveled in them as they happened, she’d been taught.

She would get angry later, but her empty head required peace to fill it.

“I’m thinking you’re as looney as the rest of the Lucys if you want me to believe that finding Cass magically returned your memory.” He reached into the bag, produced a fish sandwich, dumped slaw on it, and ripped off a huge bite, obviously not as happy as she.

“That’s fair,” she acknowledged. “I have no idea how she did it. The night we met, Cass explained that Jade and Wolf had been paid to keep me away from her and her family and anything to do with Hillvale. It’s a complicated history. I’m not sure how much of it I buy either.”

The fried fish melted on her tongue. She didn’t want to pollute it with cabbage. She poked around and found shrimp and sampled that next.

He tugged his cell phone from his pocket, hit a number, and said, “Sofia, did you run the genealogy on Cassandra Tolliver?”

Sam wriggled with happiness. She knew problems still existed in Hillvale, but for right now, she was a recent college graduate with a master’s degree and her whole life ahead of her, and she was about to find out about her birth family. And she was sitting next to a powerful man who could summon information with a phone call. She was pretty certain Sofia wasn’t in the sheriff’s office.

“I’ll check my account, thanks.” He clicked off, hunted through his phone icons, pressed one, and opened up a list of files.

“Cass took my backpack. That’s where all my valuables are.” Sam watched with interest as he opened what looked like a family tree. He had to scroll back and forth to follow the lines on the little screen.

“We need my laptop to read this,” he said, as if reading her mind. “But if I start at the top, it looks like Cass is related to the Kennedys through her father. He was married twice, to her mother first when they were young, and to Geoff’s mother after his first wife’s death.”

“Geoff?” For cheap thrills, she peered over his muscled shoulder while nibbling her way through fried shrimp.

“Geoffrey Kennedy was Carmel’s husband, father of Kurt and Monty. I knew that much. He died from a sudden illness just before my father disappeared.”

“Ah, I remember that. So that makes Cass their what? Half aunt? Do they know that?”

“I didn’t know enough to ask.” He scrolled through some more, then hit a contact number. “I think we’d be better off asking Cass to explain in the morning, if she’s up to it. We need to find a place to stay for the night. I’m off duty at this point, but I’ll have to let the sheriff know I’ll be late coming in tomorrow.”

Sam munched her way through the food while he called both his offices. She tried recalling meeting police officers or even businessmen, but the gallery owners her adopted parents occasionally entertained were the best she could summon. Her university professors occasionally wore suits, but there was nothing particularly authoritative about scientists and teachers. Even in his uniform, Walker exuded command—the kind that got things done.

Which was why she was surprised at his frustration in arguing with what she had assumed to be his secretary.

“Then take the f. . . frigging suite,” he all but shouted, obviously substituting a mild swear word as if talking to his mother. “I’m not driving back up the highway at this hour.” He grimaced, ran his hand through his short hair, and listened to the voice on the other end. “Fine then, call it my case and bill it to me. It’s not as if the d. . . darned suite will break us.”

He waited a moment, nodded, muttered, “Good, got it, thanks,” and clicked off.

Taking a deep breath, he visibly calmed his temper and reached for a fry. “I inherited my secretary from my father. She thinks we’re still building the business and counting every penny. She runs a tight ship and I can’t complain, but sometimes. . .”

She hid her smile at his frustration. She liked that this powerful man treated his elderly secretary with care.

He munched the fry, checked that the bags were empty, and stood up. “There’s some kind of festival in town. All the hotels are booked solid. The only opening is a suite at the resort back up the road. I hope you don’t mind.”

He didn’t sound as if he cared if she did. He was already stalking toward the car. Taking her time, Sam strolled after him. Powerful men needed people who reminded them they didn’t rule the world.

Her parents had raised her to be independent, although the extremely narrow environment they’d raised her in hadn’t fostered independence. Interesting.

Walker turned around and realized she lagged behind. He waited for her at the end of the pier. “Did you want to see more of the coast? We can walk toward the cannery.”

She brightened. “Is there a place where we can have wine and watch the sunset?”

“It will be packed at this hour,” he warned, but he took her hand and led her down the street.

She’d tell him later that she knew where her backpack was and what was in it.