“Here,” Daisy shouted, stabbing her staff into a crystal-lined pit in the concrete floor as the ground began to rumble. “Connect them here.”

Val did the same with her staff, then yanked Sam’s in the same direction when she didn’t respond fast enough.

Sam almost fell backward from the earth energy surging through the wood as it touched the other two. Terrified, she grabbed the staff’s grip with both hands and hung on, praying to whatever gods might be watching that she wasn’t harnessing a dragon.

A shattering boom shook the bunker. She bit back a shriek as pieces of rotten concrete tumbled from the walls, creating a fog of dust. Glancing fearfully at the ceiling, she didn’t see cracks, but the crystals blazed a brighter blue. That’s when she noticed their staff crystals glowed weirdly. The effect of concrete dust?

Energy continued surging through the wood, and her stick bucked like a wild horse.

The ground rumbled. What sounded like an avalanche roared in the distance. But it was the power rushing through her hands that frightened her most.

Her aunt and Daisy hummed a high-pitched note that was almost as scary as the thunder outside. But the energy they evoked was positive—she could swear it was as if she were part of a giant magnet pushing back a negative charge.

The rumble rolled closer, lifting the ground they stood on. Earthquake?

Walker could only watch in horror as the detonator falling from Gump’s pocket set off explosives beneath Bald Rock. The impact blasted the enormous outcropping into individual boulders, shooting them into the air. The debris slammed back to ground on the already dangerously loose hillside. Rocks and dirt began to slide.

In an instant, an avalanche cascaded straight toward the farm and Sam.

She was down there, he knew it, he could feel her terror resonating with his, and it was all he could do not to follow the landslide down.

Take out the enemy first. Think, Walker, don’t react.

Fighting the bile boiling up his gullet, Walker gripped the rocks of the cliff wall while the ground beneath his feet shook. The wide path he stood on didn’t crumble. The same couldn’t be said of the precarious ledge where Gump perched.

Even as Walker reached for him, the ledge cracked. Before his eyes, the sociopath lost his balance—and tumbled into the snakes’ nest as it slid downward with half the mountain.

Gump’s screams followed him down—a violent end to a violent man.

But Walker had no compassion for evil. His heart and mind roiled in terror for Sam—beautiful golden, laughing Sam, frowning, snarky, intelligent Sam, naked loving understanding Sam—down there, amid the rubble and debris surging relentlessly toward the shrub-covered foundation he assumed had to be the original farmhouse. Where the hell could she be hiding? There was nothing to hide behind or stop the tide of destruction.

His heart plunged with the rocks. Paralyzed in shock and helplessness, he watched Gump’s green jacket disappear in a cloud of dust and stone. Once again, he had no control over the shit life threw at him. He hadn’t even prized a confession from the bastard, although the detonator and explosives confirmed the man wasn’t worth the rocks he’d stood on.

But Sam didn’t deserve to die because Walker hadn’t been able to stop a lunatic—again. He had to find a way down, find Sam. . .

The eerie hum continued in a crescendo, echoing off the bluff face, even as the slide lost momentum on the level ground of the farm. Skidding downward on the loose shale in his quest to find Sam, Walker watched in disbelief as the powerful tide of granite and debris tumbled to a gradual halt.

It formed a barrier of rocks and dirt outside what appeared to be a line of Daisy’s peculiar guardians. A few smaller stones rolled through an unfinished area of the circle—just as if the tiny stone statues had halted a landslide.

Harvey climbed up to stand beside Walker in silent appreciation of the utter destruction. In the distance, sirens screamed.

“Holy shit,” Walker muttered, searching for any sign of movement below. “The sheriff won’t believe this.”

“If Gump’s head wasn’t crushed, he’ll die of snakebite,” Harvey said prosaically. “We could pretend we didn’t see him, if that helps.”

That jarred Walker from his shock. “If he’s alive, I want a confession. But if Sam’s down there, I’m going after her first.”

“She’s there all right. Her energy is almost as powerful as Mariah’s,” Harvey warned. “She’s not going anywhere. This earth is hers. You’d do better to look to yourself.”

Walker didn’t bother sending him an incredulous glance. Choosing the safest trajectory over the loose stones, he clambered down to the farm. The avalanche had provided a safer angle than the steep bluff.

By the time he reached the bottom, ATVs were roaring up the rutted drive from town. Lucys trekked up from the vortex or off the bluff from various directions where they’d been concealed. It was as if all the spirits on the mountain had materialized and were finding their way to the farm. If he didn’t know better, he’d think the Lucys had been hiding in caves with their ancestors.

Praying that Harvey was right and that Sam was safe, Walker hurried downward, hailing the sheriff and Monty on the first ATV in his path. Another deputy and Kurt rode the second. Officialdom and Lucys gathering on the same plain. The sun might implode next.

When he got close enough to be heard, Walker gestured up the rock slide to where the sleeve of an emerald coat could just be seen. “Alan Gump is up there. He had a detonator in his pocket. Watch for the vipers.”

The sheriff and his man looked grim and spoke into their radios. No one seemed eager to climb to the rescue.

Walker kept walking. Or limping. The climb had been hard on his bad leg. He didn’t stop to investigate Daisy’s crazy lamassu farm, but slid over it, trying not to fall on the hill of loose rubble. Inside the circle, Cass was shoving aside shrubbery and tugging on a nearly invisible steel door. A bunker. Of course the crazies would have a bunker, if only for drug storage. Either he was going insane or he was starting to understand their rationale.

Daisy popped out of the concealed door, her frizzy gray hair coated in dust. Ignoring Cass, she strode straight past the gathering Lucys, to her line of lamassu. Walker noticed the gathering Lucys deliberately placed themselves between the door and the Nulls, hiding it from view.

Sam emerged next, with a hopping Valdis on her arm. Walker thought he’d never seen anything more beautiful than Sam’s smile as he hobbled up to greet her.

“You’re alive,” she said, joy lighting her eyes like blue sapphires. Just the sight jump-started his long dead heart.

Someone took Val’s arm, leaving Sam’s free. In heady relief, Walker gathered Sam against him, offering prayers to this universe of insanity that had returned her to him, hearty and whole. He drank in the wonder of her heart beating against his, of her arms wrapping around him as if she could never let go.

And the adrenalin racing through him like speed found a focus. He was almost light-headed with the joy as his terror seeped away. That didn’t mean a new set of fears didn’t take its place, but this was the kind of anxiousness that formed when someone you loved was endangered.

“I need you,” she whispered, clinging to him as she never had before. “I spent these past hours with you in my every thought. It was almost like having Cass in my head again, but better. I knew you would come.”

He wanted to jump for joy and carry her away and make love and never come out into the real world again. He nibbled her ear and ran his hand down her back and pulled her closer. “I couldn’t protect you,” he protested, releasing some of the horror of these last moments.

“You don’t need to,” she told him, hugging him harder. “I am responsible for me.”

Sam said that heroically, trying to absolve Walker from his overactive sense of responsibility, but having him in her arms. . . she wanted to weep for joy. “I thought I might never see you again,” she murmured, giving in to tears.

He clutched her tighter, covering any part of her face he could reach with his kisses. “You want to imagine how I felt, watching a mountain tumbling down on you? I’m not sure I could survive losing you.”

And there it was—they’d both suffered such losses. How did they find the courage to move forward? She lifted her face to give him a salty kiss, then murmured, “Then you know how I feel. If we’re only given these fleeting moments. . . shouldn’t we face our fears and grab the joy while we can?”

Walker shuddered and rested his cheek on her head. “It’s more than just sex, isn’t it? That’s what scares the crap out of me.”

She smiled through her tears. “You can afford to lose a little crap. I want to believe what we feel is real and not just a result of terror, but I’m too shaky to think straight. Give me time.”

“I’d give you the stars, if I could.” Walker glanced over his shoulder to see if they could get way.

In the dusk, the mob of Lucys was gathering brush and blocking view of the door. The sheriff and the town Nulls were further up the hill, playing with ATVs and shotguns, going after the snakes and climbing up after Gump.

With decision, he shed the need to follow up on the killer. “Gump most likely killed my father for the same reason he blew up the mountain—money. He can go to a hell of his own making.”

She nodded in understanding. “We can’t help up there. I want you to see something before the Lucys hide it all again.”

“I’ll gladly follow you anywhere. Just don’t do that to me again.” Walker took Sam’s hand, relishing the warmth and life and fearing what lay ahead for his damaged heart..

“Do what? Stay alive?” she asked, blinking and feigning innocence as she led him down the cold stairs. “Did we have an earthquake?”

“Of the human kind.” That’s what he liked, maybe loved, about Sam. She might be a starry-eyed Lucy, but she stayed grounded. His heart still hadn’t slowed down, but he flicked on his flashlight to see what she wanted him to see. The beam glinted off a crazy construction of mirrors and crystals. Paintings were stacked against walls and hung anywhere that had space.

She briefly leaned into him, letting their mutual relief calm their racing pulses. As if afraid to get too close, she kissed his cheek, then pointed at a gallery of small portraits. “Look, that’s Xavier, when he was younger. His eyes are a lovely brown. He must have visited here back when it was a commune.”

She’d brought him down to look at an ancient painting? “What am I supposed to see?”

“No red,” she said inexplicably, dragging him on. “The small portraits are Lance’s style. Daisy probably stole them from his studio. He’s not very original, but he’s obsessive and a good copyist. Look, doesn’t this look like a younger Gump?”

She pointed at an arrogant-looking blond man in his early thirties, with his coat pushed back and his thumbs hooked in his trouser pockets. Even then, he wore expensive suits. There was something peculiar about the expression. Fascinated by the way her mind worked, Walker leaned over and studied it closer. “Why are his eyes red?”

“Evil. He’s infected with evil. Most of these paintings down here are portraits of evil. This is Daisy’s way of burying them.” Sam gestured at the bunker. “Let’s go back up before they lock us in.”

She grabbed the small portrait of Xavier and took Walker’s hand.

To hell with portraits and evil. What was important was Sam’s trusting hand in his—and that they were alive to see another day.

“I’d give you the stars, if I could.”

Sam replayed Walker’s words in her head as she showered. She longed for family. She wanted to believe she was the one who could fill the empty place in his heart, make a family with him, build the life they both craved. There hadn’t been time enough to grasp what she was feeling, but it was much stronger than sex. She could easily love a man as thoughtful and caring as Walker. But was she twisting his promise to suit her needs?

Exhausted, rattled, and thrilled that Walker had come for her, Sam dreamed an impossible future while scrubbing off a mountain’s worth of dust. How could they make a life here, where her only family lived, after what they’d just experienced?

She still couldn’t process what had happened. Had Daisy’s lamassu actually stopped an avalanche? Had the positive energy she’d felt in her staff been real or just her imagination?

Was there a study she could conduct to test physical energy around what everyone called a “spiritual” vortex? What if ghosts were part of that spirit energy?

That’s how tired her mind was.

When her bathroom door opened and a filthy, disheveled Walker entered, she forgot thinking entirely. He’d been magnificent out there today, with his shirt stripped off, his shoulders and biceps bulging and covered in sweat while he shoveled and hauled with the rescue crews. But inside that muscled body existed an inquiring mind and a huge heart, a heart he was currently protecting from harm after a merciless bruising.

She didn’t know if she could heal him, but she welcomed him into the shower with all she had to offer. Until Walker had come along, she’d felt like a lost child. Despite his ridiculous need to protect, he made her realize she was a grown woman capable of accomplishing anything she set her mind on. Her mind wasn’t on anything except him right now.

They made passionate, bone-jarring love in the shower, then tumbled between the sheets in sheer exhaustion.

“Did Mr. Gump survive?” Sam asked in a sleepy whisper.

Walker tugged her into his arms. “Not long enough. I couldn’t wish that level of agony on anyone. What the rocks didn’t crush, the rattlers poisoned. We didn’t even try to make sense of his curses, although he seemed to be blaming Xavier and half the world for not doing as told. He wouldn’t admit wrong, even at the end.”

“Proof he was a self-serving ass, but not that he killed your father,” she said, understanding. “I’m sorry. Do you have enough information to lay the case to rest?”

He hugged her closer. “Cass took Xavier in, promising to work her voodoo and see that he stays clean. We’re hoping he’ll talk. And we’re thinking Gump has been threatening Francois about the gun. We’re hoping he will speak up. We’ll see. But other than details, I have a good idea what happened and why. It’s enough.”

She nodded against his broad shoulder. She could already hear the distance in his voice. He was thinking of the time ahead, when he returned to his real world. This was the point where she had to make herself vulnerable, strip away the immature Sam, and become the woman he needed.

She kissed his shoulder and tilted her head to kiss his bristly jaw. “I’m not ready to give you up,” she murmured. “I don’t think what we have is just physical.”

He hugged her closer. “That’s what I’m afraid of. You make me want to live again—which terrifies me. I should let you walk away, find a better man, but I want to find a way to keep you. I want to see what we can build together. If that’s selfish, I won’t apologize.”

“It’s not selfish to follow our dreams, our instincts.” She snuggled against him, reassured that she wasn’t the only one dreaming here. “As long as we’re honest with each other, we can do this one day at a time.”

“Come with me to LA then. You won’t have to be a waitress. I can take care of you while you decide what you want to do next.”

She punched his biceps instead of kissing it. “I can’t believe you just said that.”