Sapphire Nights (Crystal Magic Book 1)(31)

She sat there, staring at the lodge. “Call the sheriff first, get people up here. Val may very well be right about evil. And if it exists, this is the place closest to where the bodies are. It didn’t feel right up there.”

She got out and walked away as Walker punched the call on his radio. The lodge didn’t feel right? The dispatcher responded before he could go after her.



Sam pulled the keycard out of her back pocket. Had it only been yesterday that she’d learned the names of her parents? So many things had happened. . . and she’d had no way to combat her anxiety and curiosity and get to the lodge until now.

Before she could slip in the side door where Walker had left her, a lanky, graying blond man ambled out of a small cabin near the lodge kitchen. He bore a strong resemblance to Carmel in the broad, bony shoulders, sharp nose and cheekbones. She’d heard about Carmel’s artist brother. Splashes of paint on his shabby gray clothes identified him.

If she ran into him in the dark, she’d almost believe in ghosts, though. From the little she’d seen, Carmel was brimming with color and temperament. It was hard to believe the two were related.

Sam stopped to greet him, but he didn’t seem to notice her existence. He opened the kitchen door and wandered inside. Shrugging, Sam took the side hall back to the empty business office. The aroma of coffee and bacon emanated from the restaurant, so she assumed most of the guests were eating. Taking a seat at the computer, she logged in and put her parents’ name into the search engine.

She didn’t find much. Her father had been a pilot. The plane had gone down in a winter storm over the mountains just after she started at the university, as Walker had said. The Utah paper called them local artists who showed their work in galleries in major cities.

Having just seen Lance, the Kennedy artist, she wondered if he’d known her parents—but she had no way of connecting them to Hillvale except her strange position.

She searched under her parents’ names as artists and found one or two newspaper articles from San Francisco and Los Angeles. The news photos of their artwork weren’t good, and she got no sense of familiarity from them. She’d have to drive down to the galleries. . . After she got a license.

Had they left a will? A house? An executor?

Digging deeper, she found one grainy photo of the two of them together. She stared in disbelief.

Wolf Moon was as Native American as his name—thick black straight hair pulled back from a wide dark brow. Sharp nose, powerful jaw, grim mouth.

And Jade. . . Jade Moon was at least part Asian. Delicate, beautiful, elongated eyes, petite nose, smiling warmly.

Sam felt a distinct tug at that smile, but nothing in this photo looked like her image in the mirror. How had Walker concluded that they were her parents? She dug her fingers into her own pale haystack of hair and gazed in admiration at her parents’ silken black locks.

If she’d been adopted, she supposed their names would be the ones she would use as her parents on a university application. She wouldn’t know any other.

Feeling totally spooked now, she decided she ought to know as much about Deputy Walker as he did about her. That decision tilted her world back upright.

She dug down, looking for a Chen Ling Walker with a police background and an age of roughly early thirties. She uncovered a small article from about a year ago, in the LA Times, about a Chen Ling Walker who’d been shot attempting to save his young son from his suicidal wife. There were no follow-up stories. Someone had hushed it up or there would have been big headlines on a story this juicy.

Sam stared at the article, her stomach roiling. It merely listed this Walker as CEO of a Los Angeles security company. The wife had a history of mental illness. No specifics. The son had only been a baby. He’d died. Her heart ached for a man she didn’t know. Or did she?

Walker limped—from a gunshot wound? There weren’t too many Chen Ling Walkers in the world. Could this really be him? If so, she wished she hadn’t looked. How did one survive that level of anguish?

But why would the CEO of anything be working as an underpaid deputy in the middle of nowhere?

She poked around and couldn’t find anything more likely. Maybe he was related to this other person, and it was a family name. Or maybe he really was just that invisible—no public recognition for anything. She didn’t have the ability to search credit records and government databases the way he did.

She had just put her own name into the search engine when the glass office door blew open on a whirlwind. Sam looked up, startled, as Ms. Viking Shoulders swooped in. Carmel Kennedy practically glowed California gold—including amber eyes that weren’t warm as she glared at Sam.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?”

“Good morning,” Sam said brightly. “And you are?”

She was definitely smart-mouthed. Wouldn’t a poor student be obedient and terrified?

Carmel obviously thought so. Her glare grew colder. “I own this place and you are not one of my guests.”

“What gave that away? The tattered jeans? The muddy Nikes? Sorry I didn’t wear my diamonds to climb the hill.” Really, if she’d talked like this all her life, someone should have shot her—except she didn’t talk like this at the diner. “May I help you? The other computer should work, if you need it. The facilities here are excellent.”

“Only guests are allowed access to this office. I will have to ask you to leave,” the ogre demanded frostily.