Sam marched defiantly into the lodge lobby to inquire about the computers. Walker followed her, like any good escort. Apparently, the desk clerk had no orders to keep her out, so she pressed a kiss to Walker’s stubbly cheek, inhaled his confidence, and headed for the guest business office off the main lobby as if she’d spent her life using hotel computers.

She now knew she’d been in hotels a few times, traveling with her parents to San Francisco, but Wolf and Jade hadn’t taken vacations the way other families did. Wolf had been a pilot, and he’d flown them back to visit with his family in Arizona, where they’d stayed on the reservation. Jade had a small family in the San Francisco area. They’d stayed in their homes occasionally. Or they’d gone camping. Business hotels weren’t part of the experience.

She was aware now that she had adopted family, cousins and aunts who could take her in, if she needed familiar faces and normal. She didn’t have to stay in Hillvale. Until tonight though, she’d felt more at home in Hillvale than she had with her adopted relations. The realization unnerved her.

Biting her lip in frustration, she opened a computer and checked her email box to prove she was still who she used to be. She responded to friends who were too busy with their own lives to worry about her. She had a message from one of her professors about a job he thought she might be interested in—in Alaska. Academia was boring but safe. She’d assumed that would be her career path, maybe in a more multi-cultural area.

And now. . . ? She was jumpy and on edge, but her parents’ admonitions of don’t back down and persevere forced her to clench her jaw, straighten her spine, and keep digging into who she really was—which wasn’t necessarily who she thought she was before she came here.

She’d given Walker her email address earlier. As promised, he’d sent her links to all the files he possessed on her birth family, including the genealogy chart. She studied the visual, trying to assimilate all the information he’d collected. How had the Ingersson farm ended up in a trust? Shouldn’t it have gone to her mother instead of to an infant and a woman deteriorating into madness? Although Val had been young and presumably sane back then. The legal document didn’t reveal the court’s thoughts.

As Walker had predicted, Kurt Kennedy knocked on the door before she’d dug too far into the files. Sam closed the browser and cleared history as Kurt entered.

“Hope I’m not disturbing important research,” the lodge manager said. Despite his bespoke suit and expensive haircut, he looked older than the early thirties she knew him to be. He was a well-built, striking man, but he possessed the charisma of a dried oak leaf—as if the life had been sucked out of him.

Now she sounded like one of the Lucys!

“Just checking email. I have an offer of a possible position as a federal environmental program manager in Anchorage,” she said brightly, just to prove she had a life outside of waitressing in a small-town café.

“And I don’t suppose you’re going to take it?” He sat on one corner of the printer desk and played with a rubber stress ball someone had left there.

“I might send a resume, but no, I don’t imagine I’ll pursue it.” She didn’t give him more than that but let him take the lead.

“You were at the town meeting tonight?” he asked. “Has Cass talked them into burning us at the stake?”

Sam leaned back in her chair and tried to work out what was expected of her, but she couldn’t. Honesty and openness were all she’d been taught. “I’m wondering if my mother gave me to my adopted parents because they were the most down-to-earth, honest, upright people she knew,” she said, not giving him an answer yet.

“And they lived someplace so barren of magic and imagination that she thought you’d be safe from this town’s craziness?” he asked with both amusement and sympathy.

She almost liked her uncle at that point.

And then he had to add, “Cass hates us. She won’t be happy until she brings us down. It really isn’t about smoke and magic, just plain old family feuds.”

Sam shook her head and said gently, “I don’t think so. I know I haven’t been here long, and I’m far from understanding all the nuances, but Cass isn’t a woman who hates. She’s afraid, maybe, and possibly bitter, but hate. . . ? No, that’s much too strong. She and Mariah and the other Lucys oppose what you want, maybe even what you stand for, but that’s not the same as hate. Yet. There is still a chance of reconciliation.”

He grimaced as if in thought, then rejected the notion. “No, I don’t think so. They live in a utopian world that doesn’t exist. We live in a world that requires we pay the mortgage and payroll. I hope you don’t fall for their idealistic bullshit.”

Sam was debating how much she ought to tell him, when a large shadow passed the plate glass window and shoved open the door. Walker.

“It’s midnight; the witch’s spell has broken,” Walker said in a cool tone that covered many layers of meaning.

Sam warmed at the look he gave her, but the way he took a confrontational stance in front of Kurt gave her cold chills. Walker had a defensive streak a mile wide. She needed to establish boundaries.

Kurt returned to his feet, one bull facing another.

“You’d do better to talk to Cass or your mother than to Sam,” Walker said in a deliberately casual tone. “You’re placing her in a tough place by putting her in the middle.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Walker,” Kurt said. “We were just discussing generalities. It’s been a long day, and I thought talking to someone who wasn’t from Hillvale might wind me down.”

“A pretty someone,” Walker supplied for him. “Sam, you really need to explain who you are so Kurt here doesn’t get any odd ideas.”

Sam didn’t know whether to laugh or roll her eyes. “Don’t go all macho on me, Walker. I’m trying to be polite by telling Mr. Kennedy he needs to talk with Cass. If Carmel hasn’t said anything by now, I don’t think she intends to open communication. The Nulls and Lucys need to find channels for talking besides me.”

Kennedy made a face. “Don’t make me feel older than I already do. Call me Kurt, please. And I may be busy, but I’m not ignorant. I know Cass was my grandfather’s daughter by his first wife, that she inherited a large portion of his assets and has blocked any expansion in the direction of her property. My mother despises her and anyone who has anything to do with her, which means Sam. Sam, you tell me Cass doesn’t hate, but my mother does, so don’t be too certain about Cass. What two old women do means nothing to me. I make my own decisions. And I have no reason to talk to the Lucys.”

“You should,” Sam said, standing. “Because apparently I’m one of them, Uncle Kurt. Talk to your mother. Talk to Cass. I won’t be here long enough to resolve the problems you’re not seeing.”

She walked past both men and into the dim corridor, in an emotional turmoil she had no experience in handling.

“Uncle Kurt?” Kennedy asked Walker in shock, watching Sam walk away.

Walker shrugged. “I was raised to respect my elders. You probably ought to learn to talk to yours, as Sam said. She apparently thinks it isn’t her place to explain what the whole damned town keeps hidden, but she’s leaving you holes wide enough to drive a Cadillac through. And chances are very good, when you start digging deep enough, we’ll get closer to what happened to Juan.” Walker opened the door but gave Kurt a moment to gather his thoughts and follow up that statement.

“What happened to Juan? It wasn’t cougars?” Kurt shoved the door closed again.

“He was shot in the back at close range and dragged up the hill for the cougar to maul,” Walker told him. “The fire conveniently wiped out any evidence we didn’t collect earlier.”

“As well as the cats,” Kurt said, running his hand through his hair. “They’ll be on the other side of the mountain by now. Damn, Juan’s death was a tragedy, but this. . .” He shook his head as all the implications arose. “You’ll have this place covered in cops again. My mother just left for Hawaii.”

“Expect the sheriff’s team in the morning. They were waiting for the autopsy before coming out with a warrant, not that there’s much left to search now, unless he was shot inside. Maybe it’s a good thing your guests bailed.” Walker hauled the door open again and this time, he limped out after Sam.

He shouldn’t feel sympathy for the poor rich guy, but Kurt had lived too long in his protected bubble. Hillvale was about to rip it wide open. He didn’t want Sam caught up in the fight any more than she did.

She was waiting for him on the lodge porch, hugging herself as he’d seen her do earlier this evening. Walker wrapped his arm around her waist and led her toward his car. “Your place or mine?”

She threw him a haunted look. “If your place is a thousand miles from here, let’s go. Otherwise, mine will have to do.”

“Other than a room at the lodge and the apartment in Baskerville, I have a place in LA, but it will be tough to make it back to work tomorrow.” He helped her into his official vehicle and started the engine.

She snorted in what he hoped was humor. “There is that. So, do I stay here or move on?”

“Why don’t you hit me with that in the morning? Right now, I have better things on my mind.” Like the smoking hot woman he should be keeping his hands off of until she knew where she was going and how. He refused to believe Sam was as unbalanced as his late wife had been.

“On your mind, or elsewhere?” she asked with a laugh. “I’m all for mindless right now. Any more Hillvale and I’d have to pack the car and drive far, far away.”

“It’s intense at the moment, but the town is usually pretty laidback and friendly. There’s something to be said about you stirring the hornets, but it’s in the hornets’ nature to be stirred. You either let the bugs drive you out or you find cold water and douse them.” He steered through the quiet town, keeping his eyes open.

“Water,” she murmured, not offering explanation. “There could be something in that.”

“Water rights are complex out here,” he warned. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t count on it.”

As they drove up Cemetery Road, Walker could see all the lights on in Cass’s place. Beside him, Sam tensed. “You need to see what’s happening?” he asked.

“I do—and I don’t.” She crossed her arms and rubbed her elbows. “How comfortable are you with one of them heading over as soon as we pull in the drive and go upstairs?”

“If you’re asking if I want to keep our sleeping together on the down low, it doesn’t matter to me. You’re not my case anymore, and Cass isn’t stupid. This comes down to how much you want the town to know about you.”

She slanted him a look that probably would have curled his toes if he wasn’t concentrating on the road.

“I like a man who makes a stand. Let’s go to my place and see if the Lucys are crazy enough to disturb us.” She unbuckled the instant he pulled up her drive.

She was as eager as he. Walker laughed softly. “We could hang a tie on the door.”

“Did that ever work for you?” She opened the door and climbed out before he could come around and get her. Her urgency excited his.

“The tie worked for me, when I bothered to use it.” He loped after her, ready to carry her up the stairs if that got them to bed any faster. “Mostly, I stuck a chair under the knob because the chicks got off on manly-man crap.”

“I have a feeling neither chair nor tie will work with Lucys.” She laughed in a low throaty voice that raised his pulse a few more notches.

The marmalade cat strolled out of the bushes to check them out.

“Even Emma doesn’t want to be near Cass tonight. Smart cat.” Walker enjoyed the sway of Sam’s hips under his hand as they followed the cat toward the stairs. It meowed and waited for them.

Sam’s haste abruptly halted at the foot of the stairs. “What’s this?” Giving evidence of the wariness she’d learned these last few days, she didn’t touch the object that had raised her curiosity.

Walker leaned around her, removed his flashlight, and turned on the beam. He relaxed and chuckled. “That’s one of Daisy’s sculptures. She calls them lamassu and I think they’re supposed to be protective spirits.”

He picked up the palm-sized collection of wired rocks and crystals to show her. “Yours almost looks like a butterfly.”

She smiled in delight and took it from him. “How does she do this? I’d never be able to get all those stones to hang together long enough to wrap them with the wire. Look, it even has some tiny blue stones glued to the head. For eyes?”

They hurried up the stairs to the apartment. Sam handed him the statuette so she could dig her keys from her purse. Stopping at the top of the stairs to scratch Emma’s head, she jerked back, as if startled. “Mr. Black? What are you doing here?”

“Xavier?” Walker pushed past to see the rental agent slumped in the wicker porch chair, unresponsive. He flashed his light at the visitor and his gut froze. “Go get Cass,” he ordered curtly. “I’ll call for an ambulance.”

Although Xavier Black looked past the need for a hospital.