Sapphire Nights Read online

  “You’re not hauling me to the hospital?” she asked warily.

  “Not as long as you remain sane.” He got out before he weakened beneath the light of those gorgeous eyes.

  While he was off the mountain, he’d make a few phone calls. By now, his firm ought to have a good list of the town occupants at the last census before his father’s death.

  Pulling her denim jacket on over the bandage taped to her arm, Sam left the clinic to find Walker waiting for her with a heavenly-smelling white bag. He handed her a big cup of sweet horchata.

  “I think you’re supposed to eat sugar after you’ve given blood.” He was already tearing into a giant burrito while leaning against his cruiser.

  He was wearing his mirrored sunglasses, concealing his expression, she noted grumpily.

  “I have no idea about sugar, but the horchata is good.” She drank deeply, then dug into the bag, producing a deliciously greasy pork burrito. “I don’t know what I’m accustomed to eating, but I recognize good Mexican. And I know when someone is concealing his thoughts. The Chinese inscrutability thing doesn’t work so well when you have your father’s eyes, right?”

  He bent a scowl on her. “Is that something you remember?”

  “Heck if I know.” She leaned against the car next to him. The closeness seemed odd but also. . . comforting, even if she ought to be mad at him. They’d both gone a little insane back at the resort. There was something about that lodge. . . that unleashed her inner demons, apparently. “In that photo, Jade’s eyes appeared flat-lidded to me, not inscrutable. She used fake lashes and eye makeup for definition.”

  He snorted, took off his shades, and tucked them in the V of his shirt. “So did my mother. She still did inscrutable well, when she wanted. Other times, she’d take my head off with her sharp tongue, so enigmatic doesn’t go far.”

  She laughed, relaxing enough to enjoy her lunch. She was still tense about Cass and Walker’s earlier fury, but they’d both been shaken. Maybe they could work past it.

  In between bites, he caught her up on what lay ahead. “I’ll take you over to have your fingerprints run through the database when we’re done here. Once I prove your ID, I’ll give you the data you need to file for a new license and birth certificate. The office has sent an address-forward request to your last known address. It might be good to see if you’ve established a mail drop.”

  They were practically rubbing elbows. After this morning’s encounter, she was hyper-aware of his proximity. He’d scooped her off the ground as if she’d been no more than a sack of potting soil. But she had no clue how to act on tingles of awareness, especially when dealing with an older man with way too much authority. “I’m guessing I need a non-public computer to file for the birth certificate,” she said dubiously.

  It would be good to intellectually know that she was Samantha Moon, but in truth, she simply didn’t feel like anybody. Although if she resembled Cass—there had to be a connection.

  “Finish up the burrito, and we’ll see if we can expedite the fingerprints. Once you’re free to use the data, you can use my laptop. I don’t generally carry it with me since I have the official one. I have an apartment here in Baskerville, we can pick it up later.”

  “I looked up Utah drivers’ license replacement. I can’t do it from here,” she said glumly. “And without a Utah license, I can’t get a California one without an address and taking the driver’s test again. Officialdom is complicated.”

  “One thing at a time, grasshopper,” he said in amusement. “Maybe we’ll find your missing purse before all that happens. And if you were moving here, you’d have to go through the system anyway. You’re just feeling overwhelmed.”

  “There’s the understatement of a lifetime. Okay, let’s get on with this. I wish I had some way of looking for Cass. I can’t help feeling she’s the answer to everything.”

  “Yeah, I know.” He handed her a paper napkin and began wiping the grease off his fingers with another. “We’ll see if there are any reports waiting when we get there.”

  Sam caught herself staring at Walker’s fingers and had to jerk back to the moment. He’d carried her down a damned mountain, kicking and screaming. For a CEO, he was pumped. Had she ever had a lover like that?

  She couldn’t remember ever having a lover at all, but her body knew what it wanted.

  Wiping her hands, she got back in the car and apprehensively waited for her visit to a sheriff’s office. Walker’s threat to lock her up rang loud in her head, but he was behaving reasonably for a change. How long did it take to get back blood work? He couldn’t arrest her if she had drugs still in her system, could he?

  They didn’t have far to drive before Walker pulled the car into a lot filled with official vehicles. She’d thought this was a rural area, but the building looming over the lot was a sprawling concrete monstrosity. Maybe they had a lot of criminals in the mountains.

  “I was hoping we could see the ocean from here,” she said in disappointment.

  He turned off the car and looked at her with curiosity. “Why do you say that?”

  She wrinkled her brow in puzzlement. “I’m not sure. If I grew up near Provo, then I probably never saw the ocean. Maybe that’s the reason I drove this way once I graduated.”

  “So maybe this is some wisp of your memory creeping up?”

  “A wish can be a memory? Maybe. I don’t know the geography here. I just assumed a road going west would take me to the ocean, I guess.”

  “We’re not far from the coast. I’m supposed to be on duty, so I can’t take you right now. Maybe later.”

  She took his hand without protest as he helped her out of the SUV. She’d calmed down since the incident on the mountain. She still resented that he’d turned into macho man and threatened her, but maybe she’d frightened him as much as she’d frightened herself.

  She dropped his hand once they were inside. She followed him through cold-tiled corridors, past busy offices, until they reached a portion of the building where people greeted him with waves and watched her with idle curiosity.

  A young Hispanic woman in uniform rushed toward them, carrying a sheaf of paperwork, as soon as they entered the door marked Sheriff’s Department. “They’ve found her,” she called, waving the papers.

  Walker stopped to take them away. “Found who?”

  “Cassandra Tolliver. From the description you gave, she’s the Jane Doe down at Community Hospital in Monterey.”

  Chapter 13

  Late afternoon, June 19

  * * *

  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. Trying to read the file as she walked, Sam slowed him down, waving 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 a 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.”