As Walker drove his route, he used his radio and Bluetooth to make calls. Just because he was 99% positive he’d proved his father had died on this mountain didn’t mean he could shirk his official duties to investigate his personal concerns. He made his usual stops, talked to the people along the route he was there to protect, and drew satisfaction from the basic task. These past years, he’d distanced himself too much from his original purpose in pursuing a career in justice. This job was a good reminder, although it offered a few too many opportunities to brood about what he’d lost and how he would move forward. Having Sam’s case to work on was a relief.

Once he was off duty, Walker pulled into the sheriff’s office in Baskerville. He checked his desk for the coroner’s report, but it still wasn’t ready.

Sheriff Brown came in and caught Walker’s scowl. “The body’s been up there for twenty years or so. Coroner figures another few days won’t hold us up. He’s got a fresh victim to work on.”

“I’d be good with that except this skeleton is stirring up the locals. They’re only at the finger-pointing stage now, but you know how quickly that escalates.” Especially with the Lucys chanting and beating the bushes.

“That’s what we have you for, de-escalation. Don’t see how your amnesia victim fits in, though.” Brown threw a stack of papers on his desk.

“You’d have to understand how superstition and gossip work in a place like Hillvale. Half the town believes in ghosts. Some of them are trying to hold exorcisms. And the Kennedys are out to sweep the whole scene out of sight. And for reasons beyond my understanding, Miss Moon is in the thick of it.”

“Well Jennifer has the clinic lined up, like you asked. And she’s done some basic research on the family. We can’t place them in Hillvale, but the Moons are originally from ’Frisco, not Utah. You might be onto something.”

“That’s a start, thanks. I’m going to treat Miss Moon as a missing person and run her through the database, along with Cassandra Tolliver. Two people in town have filed a missing persons report on her too.” —After he’d persuaded Harvey and Dinah that he couldn’t search without one. Legalities tended to elude the village inhabitants. “Weird to have two essentially missing persons in one small town.”

“Plus the skeleton, if he’s your father as you suspect. He went missing too. Not that any of this connects as far as I see.”

The sheriff hurried off, leaving Walker to commune with his computer. It wasn’t as if he had a life after work. Once upon a time he thought he had—but that illusion had ended badly. He straightened his aching leg, kneading the muscle as he typed one-handed.

He dug into Samantha’s history first, since it would be the shortest and easiest. As he’d told her, she was pristine clean. She didn’t even have traffic tickets. Her driver’s license photo matched her appearance, so she was definitely the Samantha Moon in her textbook. Amazingly, she’d sought a TSA Pre-check recently, so she had fingerprints on file. Had she planned on doing a lot of traveling? On what money?

The address she’d given to the TSA was different from the one on her license. He looked it up—just graduate student housing. He sent a message to the Provo police department asking them to question the residents, but unless she was in danger or a murder suspect, they wouldn’t act quickly.

He could send one of his investigative firm’s agents, but the downside of working corporate level research was that they were accustomed to paid travel expenses and billable hours. As CEO, he could order them to do as told, if he had good reason. But he was supposed to be taking a sabbatical.

Sam’s credit bureau report showed one credit card with little activity. Her only employment history was at the university. With date and place of birth, she could apply for her birth certificate. Then she could get a new social security card and driver’s license.

Sam was only six years younger than he but her sheltered life escalated the difference.

He sent all the information to his research assistant back in LA.

Walker noted recent credit inquiries. Often, employers would check the bureaus when they were considering a new hire. Sam must have driven to California for a reason. For a recent grad, a job made most sense. Of course, not enough employers did due diligence, so these could be dead ends. He wouldn’t make inquiries until he’d shown them to Sam.

Since he’d identified Sam, he didn’t have a good excuse to investigate her parents, so he started on Cass. Cassandra Kennedy Tolliver—Walker’s eyebrows rose over that—had been born sixty-seven years ago. She’d lived in San Francisco in her early years. She’d gone to Berkeley, and her address after that varied between Hillvale and Berkeley. Cass was practically the stereotype of the hippies who’d inhabited the commune over forty years ago—except for that Kennedy part. With that name, she could have been living with family at the lodge.

He’d have his assistant do a genealogy search to see how she was related to the current Kennedys. He noted Cass moved into the house on Cemetery Road when she was in her early twenties, but no mortgage or deed was filed. That indicated no ownership transfer— a family trust, perhaps. At the time, she appeared to be working for a charitable foundation as director. If she was a Kennedy, then her wealthy family had enough connections that they could have found the job and given her the house. Or they could have funded the charity for all he knew.

She married Tolliver when she was twenty-three, and he died not long after she moved into the house, when she was barely twenty-five, so she wasn’t living at the commune. They appeared to have one child—which was a surprise to him. None of this was helping him find her—unless he wanted to blame the Kennedys for Cass’s disappearance. She had a history of being a thorn in their collective sides—but if she was family, it was hard to imagine they’d hurt her.

He found no credit cards in her name. She had no known employment these days, so there were no workplace inquiries. She kept a bank account at one of the private banks the wealthy used, so he had to assume she’d come into money at some point.

She had no frigging driver’s license. How had she left the mountain? Broomstick?

Without even a driver’s license photo to use, Walker had little to enter on a missing persons bulletin, but he sent one out, then called the Monterey police to have them start questioning at the restaurant in Sam’s GPS.

He’d have to look for her son next.

A little after eleven, a report of shots fired in Hillvale dragged him from his desk. If the Nulls started shooting at the Lucys, he’d need to permanently rent a room at the lodge.

Sam woke to an odd howling moan that halted when she sat up, as if she’d startled an owl into silence. Rubbing her sleepy eyes, she glanced at the clock—it wasn’t even midnight.

The mountain air was chilly at night. She slept in heavy socks and sweats. Pulling on a cardigan she’d been using as a robe, she abandoned her bed. A cup of warm milk might relax her shattered nerves and put her back to sleep.

She wished she had a computer. A mindless game always helped. . .

Wait, what? She remembered playing mindless computer games?

Now she really wouldn’t sleep.

Emma woke up from her bed in the suitcase and came out to curl around Sam’s ankles. The cat’s dish was empty.

Sam had bought a few basic fresh groceries with the money Dinah had given her. She poured a little milk into Emma’s water dish as a treat, then heated more in a saucepan. Looking out the studio’s enormous windows, she rubbed her elbows. What else might she remember if she tried hard enough? Or was trying the problem? Did she need to be startled into remembering?

It would be far more useful if she could remember why she was in California than the fact that she used computer games to go to sleep.

While Emma happily lapped her treat, Sam watched a light bob up the shortcut path from town. Mariah lived down there, but she was up at the crack of dawn, and had to be asleep at this hour. So who was coming up the path?

Car beams flashed on the road on the other side of the bushes, heading in the direction of the cemetery. Who would go to the cemetery at midnight?

She ought to drink her milk and go to bed. But she was too on edge. Living with uncertainty was not conducive to sleep, and this mystery wasn’t helping.

She pulled on her furry boots and a coat, filled a travel mug with warm milk, and let herself out on the balcony. The car lights had gone out. The flashlight was still approaching. Did she need a weapon? She snorted. As if she knew how to use one.

So, sneaky does it. She’d already found several flashlights scattered around the studio, presumably for power outages. She tested the one in deck storage and it worked. The concrete steps didn’t creak. With light off, she quietly slipped down them.

The person on the path wasn’t as surreptitious. They walked right up past the rose bed with their flashlight still on. Heart pounding, Sam waited in the shadows of the wall. There were only two houses out here, the studio and Cass’s place. The person would have to walk right past her to reach the mansion.

Did she make herself known or follow them?

The light hesitated at her driveway. The figure was tall and lean and quite possibly male, judging by shoulder width. The silhouette of long hair tied at the nape made her doubt her assessment until she remembered Harvey, the guitarist at the diner. A car door slamming up by the cemetery caused him to flick off his light.

The evening fog was rolling in, but she could see enough to follow him as he walked down the drive to the road. She had absolutely no reason to be suspicious, except that was apparently what she did. Was that telling her something from her past?

He didn’t try to hide as he strolled toward the cemetery. She was probably out of her gourd to even bother keeping up with him. But her head was empty and needed filling, apparently.

He grew more cautious as he approached the cemetery. The car had turned off its beams and engine. The night was still. The wisps of fog could easily be mistaken for spectral figures forming and dissipating. An eerie creak caused her to bite her tongue and freeze, before she realized what it might be—the door to the Kennedy vault.

How many people had keys to the vault?

Harvey—if it was he—halted. His shadow nearly blended in with that of a fairly young pine. A moment later, a car swung back to the road. It turned on its beams at the curve leading downhill toward town. Sam didn’t know one car from another but this was a large SUV in a light color, like the one Carmel Kennedy had used earlier that day.

She waited until the hidden man started back down the road, swinging his flashlight beam. He wasn’t really trying to hide—except from the car. Interesting, but not enough to raise even her suspicion. After all, she was doing the same exact thing—being nosy.

She needed to get a life—if only she could remember where she’d left it.

Walker cruised into Hillvale a little over half an hour after the shots-fired report. The deputy on duty had been writing up a bar fight in Baskerville and had been relieved when Walker had agreed to take the call. He had used his flashers and the safest speed possible on that narrow road, but the town was isolated. They couldn’t expect instant response. If they’d had to wait on the assigned officer, it could have been another hour or more.

Dinah’s café was closed and dark, as were all the other shops. He found Valdis and several of her sycophants waiting at the base of the road leading to the lodge. They huddled around a small campfire and gazed up at him expectantly when he climbed out. Had he been in the city, he would call it a homeless encampment, but they had homes when they weren’t fomenting trouble.

“Did security shoot at you for trespassing?” he asked.

“Menendez land isn’t theirs,” Val said snottily. “We have permission to use that land. But we heard shouts and gunfire as we came down the path. They came from up near the lodge. Has anyone filed a report?”

“Just you. Has anyone come down from the lodge since you heard the shots?”

They were nicely located on the only car access to the inn, so they would see anyone making a vehicle escape.

“The big white Escalade Carmel uses,” Val said in satisfaction. “It went out right after we heard the shots and came back not long after. The engine will probably be cold by the time you get up there though.”

Spoken like a true mystery aficionado. He wouldn’t have pegged Val as one.

“Go home. If I need you, I’ll let you know,” Walker said curtly, returning to his car.

That they were camping out here, reporting unusual occurrences probably meant that the Lucys were up to something.

Since the women might be slightly deranged but were generally not vindictive, he didn’t worry about them. He drove on up to the lodge, watching for any unusual activity. Most of the guests were sound asleep in their beds, if the darkened windows were any indication.

Xavier Black and Alan Gump from the real estate company emerged from the restaurant and headed for Alan’s BMW. Late for a dinner, but they were probably having a business meeting with Kurt. Gump had a long drive back to the city, but Black lived locally. They didn’t appear to be carrying guns, and he’d rather not speak with guests.

But out of curiosity, Walker pulled into the private parking lot the Kennedys used. The Escalade was there. The hood wasn’t warm, but there was no condensation on the windows. He looked at Kurt’s Mercedes next to it—the fog had formed a thin layer of moisture across the windshield. Carmel or her driver had been out, but that was meaningless. For all he knew, they might have been in San Francisco and had just returned.

The light was on in Lance’s studio. Carmel’s artistic brother kept odd hours and tended to leave the light burning night and day. The man barely knew how to feed himself. Walker doubted he’d be out shooting guns. Disturbing him would mean enduring a tour of his gallery while he mumbled through whatever was in his head. Lance wasn’t much better than a Lucy except that he seldom went anywhere.

Walker drove around back to the security office. Alonzo was the evening shift officer in charge. He got off the phone as soon as Walker entered.

“What brings you out here at this hour?” Alonzo asked, rightfully curious.

“Report of shots fired,” Walker said without expression, waiting for reaction.

Alonzo shrugged. “Bernard thought he saw a cougar near the dumpsters. We’ve told him not to disturb the guests, but he’s young and stupid.”

“Mind if I take a look around anyway? Just to show I’m doing my job?”

“Sure, knock yourself out. I’ll take my break and get some coffee. I’ll let Bernard know you’re out there so he doesn’t try to shoot you too.”

“Generous of you,” Walker said wryly.

Cats and bears in the garbage were nothing new. The Lucys knew that. It was illegal as hell to shoot at them in a residential area, but people out here hunted. That’s what they did and there wasn’t any stopping them. So why did the Lucys want him here?

He strolled around to the dumpsters, but there wasn’t enough light to check for tracks in the woods. The pavement showed no dusty paw prints, but that didn’t mean much. He didn’t find any shell casings either, but Bernard might have been smart enough to pick those up.

Circling the sprawling lodge, he found Bernard sneaking a cigarette by the glass-enclosed swimming pool. “Do you think you wounded the cat?” Walker asked, admiring the expanse of glistening blue water in an area surrounded by parched and dry.

Bernard looked startled, then shrugged. “Nah, just scared him off.”

Bernard was a lousy liar. He puffed his cigarette to hide his nervousness.

“You shouldn’t be using firearms around here. Just keep guests away from the cat and call the game warden. A wounded lion can cause a lot of trouble, and if she has a litter, someone is bound to report it. Don’t lose your job over an animal.”

The kid didn’t look happy about the reprimand, but he nodded. “Sorry to bring you out for nothing.”

“It’s okay. I’ll just crash here for the night. Let me know if the cat comes back.” Not satisfied, Walker continued his survey of the guest cabins further up the hill, but all the lights were out.

An owl screeched deeper in the woods. He shuddered and headed back to the lodge. Instinct told him something was off, but this was private property. He could only push so far with no evidence of criminal activity.