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.”
Chapter 33
Striding into Hillvale the next morning, Walker rubbed his bruised arm and studied the gardens of colorful flowers decorating the boardwalk and every vacant alley. Heavily blooming pink roses had seemingly sprung up overnight, spilling over what had been a broken, faded fence by the town hall. In addition to the playful barrels on the boardwalk, baskets displayed an array of blossoms dangling from the sagging overhangs of several stores.
Sam had turned the tired town from faded gray to a bouquet of vibrant color and fragrance—just as
she was bringing him back to life. If he believed in magic, he would call her enchanted.
The men waiting inside the town hall were not in the least magical.
Walker had persuaded the sheriff that Xavier and Francois were more likely to talk if they weren’t intimidated by badges and uniforms. Monty was there as witness. He’d brought in more chairs from the lodge, and the two older men had aligned themselves in front of the mayor’s desk. Walker pulled the last chair to one side so he could watch faces.
Xavier no longer wore a green jacket. Someone had provided him with a navy blazer that he wore over an open-necked white shirt. Clean-shaven, back straight, with his graying hair trimmed, he almost looked like a lawyer again.
Francois had removed the epaulets from his livery, but his brass buttons still shone with polish. His face was lined and yellowed by years of smoking, and he hadn’t done more with his thinning gray hair than tug it into a rubber band at his nape. His brown-stained fingers shook as he reached for a cigarette that wasn’t there.
Monty had dressed casually, sporting a short-sleeved shirt—a blue one with a fancy collar and expensive detailing that had been probably been purchased in a Monterey boutique. Kennedys couldn’t even do casual properly. The mayor glanced at Walker, waiting for him to lead the discussion.
“All I want is details for my report, gentlemen,” Walker said. He wasn’t wearing his uniform, but he’d chosen his blue, collared shirt and khakis to give him a measure of authority. He addressed the lawyer first. “We’d like to close the case with no loose ends.”
He pulled out his recorder. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to record while we talk. Xavier, do you mind if we start with you? I think you’ve been familiar with Hillvale for as long as Monty and Kurt, am I right?”
The rental agent looked relieved to be able to speak. He hesitated, apparently seeking a starting place. “I came up here with their father during spring breaks, before Geoff married. Hillvale had quite a reputation as a happening place.” He looked almost startled that he’d said that. “The commune was no more than a group of starving artists, and the farm was dilapidated. We mostly came to do drugs. Ingersson always had a supply.”
“How much did you know of Geoffrey Kennedy’s desire to acquire more land and create a resort town?” Walker asked, not looking at Monty.
“Everything.” Xavier shrugged. “The shops were empty. Rats ran loose. The Ingerssons smoked up anything they earned. By the time I had my law degree, we’d already started buying out people who wanted to leave. Our families had money, and property up here wasn’t worth anything then. It was all perfectly legal.”
Walker waited, letting the older man gather his thoughts. This many words out of the spaced-out lawyer was a miracle in itself. Cass had done some serious mumbo-jumbo on his head.
He couldn’t believe that Cass had magic potions or hypnosis to influence witnesses, but Xavier had changed overnight. Or maybe he’d just dried out. That ought to worry him, but oddly, it didn’t. He’d seen what Cass had done to Sam—and what the Lucys had done to an avalanche. He still didn’t believe in magic, but there was something at work in Hillvale that he’d never seen in the city. He’d settle for believing in geological energy for now.
“But after a while, Geoff got impatient. He partnered with the Commercial development team and. . .” Xavier wrinkled his forehead. “I’m not sure when it became intense. He hired me to work with his mortgage company, and we started with aggressive sales pitches. We used borderline coercion on the shop owners to borrow and improve their buildings, even though we knew they couldn’t pay back the loans. I arranged a refinance on the Ingersson farm, even though they couldn’t prove they had an income, knowing they’d smoke the money and fall behind. Ingersson thought we were friends helping him through a bad time. But we were focused on the end game and didn’t really care about people who lost their homes or stores. They were old shacks and needed to be torn down anyway. We were young and ambitious and the world was our oyster, even after Ingersson went bankrupt and sued.”
Monty got up and opened a small refrigerator, producing icy bottles of water that he handed around. This was Monty’s father Xavier was talking about. It couldn’t be easy hearing this.
“And then six or seven years after the lawsuit was settled, and we had almost acquired all the land we needed, I had a tourist ask me an odd question about the ownership of the farm and some of the lots in town.” Xavier quit looking in Walker’s direction. “That was nearly two decades ago. The face and name have faded. I was drinking heavily then. I got sloppy drunk and talked to a few of the guys in the development team. They wore those awful green jackets and everyone hated them.”
“The people or the jackets?” Walker asked, hiding the horror building at this tale. Xavier didn’t even remember Michael Walker’s name, but his father had almost certainly been the tourist asking questions.
“Both,” Xavier replied with a snort. “But they were going to make us rich. So I told them about the snoopy tourist, pointed him out in the bar. Alan Gump was one of the men I talked to.”
Walker glanced at Monty, who looked paler than usual. But the mayor tightened his jaw and drank from his water bottle without speaking.
Xavier continued, “Talking to Gump was probably the worst decision of my life, but at the time, it was just meaningless bar talk. He said he recognized the inquisitive stranger from LA, and he’d have a talk with him. I went back to my office in San Francisco the next day. I had no idea what happened until later, when the sheriff started making inquiries about a missing tourist.”
Francois had tensed at the mention of Gump. The chauffeur reached for a cigarette again, then took the bottle of water just to steady his hands.
Intent on telling his tale, Xavier seemed unaware that anyone was in the room. He stared at an ugly piece of abstract art over Monty’s head. “The bottom started falling out of our dreams about that time. It’s all pretty blurry in my head,” Xavier admitted. “The sheriff canvassing the town for a missing tourist was followed by legal beagles from the attorney general’s office. Gump and the rest of the green jacket sales team faded away. Geoff died, and I. . . fell apart.”
He stopped like a mechanical toy whose spring had worn out. He stared blankly at the bottle cupped between his hands.
“Kennedy’s death halted the development plans?” Walker asked, disappointed that Xavier knew no more about his father’s death. “The plans died with him?”
Xavier shrugged. “Some of the team may have hung around, talking to Carmel, but she was too grief-stricken to care. She sold the mortgage company, and I was too addled to hold onto my job. I’m sorry I can’t be more help.”
Francois took a swig of water, then spit it at the worn wooden floor. “You let the monsters live to kill and torment again, you pathetic, sanctimonious bag of hot air.”
After the chauffeur’s burst of venom, Monty Kennedy lost it. “Francois! This is not the time to throw blame. They found your fingerprint on my mother’s gun, the one that killed Juan!”
Walker understood the explosion. Until this moment, Xavier had seemed to convict Gump for murder, if only by innuendo. But Francois had hit the guilt button. Not spineless Xavier, but Geoffrey Kennedy had been the one to set the vultures to picking Hillvale’s bones. Monty’s father had let loose the soulless fortune hunters to claim the land, much as the gold diggers had destroyed the Spanish in a different era. And the Spanish had destroyed the natives before that.
Walker gestured for Monty to sit back. “Tell us about Juan and Gump,” he said to Francois, offering him a stick of gum.
The chauffeur ripped off the wrapper and chewed to calm himself. “They are murdering turds,” Francois finally said.
Monty clenched his hands in an apparent attempt to keep from throttling his mother’s toady. Walker had to keep one eye on him while interviewing Francois.
“You saw them kill Michael Walker?” he asked without inflection.
Francois shr
ugged. “I saw nothing back then. The green-jacket turd told me he needed to change his tire, and I gave him my tools. He brought them back washed. He was wearing his ugly green jacket when he borrowed the tools but not after. He stank of sweat, but I thought nothing of it until I saw him get in a car with matching tires. Who keeps matching tires for a spare? Not in that little Corvette.”
Walker’s gut twisted, but he pushed on. “Was anyone else with Gump who might have seen him change or not change his tire?”
“Juan,” Francois spat. “The blackmailing little worm was everywhere, even back then. I had to give him the watch Mrs. Kennedy gave me for Christmas when he threatened to tell her I was letting kids wash the car and pocketing the extra she paid me to have it done.”
Monty raised his eyebrows. “That was an expensive watch. You make that much on car washes?”
Walker figured the blackmail was over more than car washes, but that line of questioning was beside the point. He gestured for Monty to quiet.
“So Juan might have seen Gump using your tools for whatever purpose?” Walker asked.
Francois shrugged. “I saw Juan burn a green coat in the incinerator. It looked muddy, and when I asked him about it, he told me Gump was good for a lot of cash for keeping his mouth shut. I figured I’d look out for chances, but the ugly coats did not come back much after that, not until recently. The snake shed his green skin, but he was still poisonous.”
Walker kept his expression neutral, even realizing that Francois offered only circumstantial evidence that Gump had killed his father. But everyone involved was dead, adequately punished for their misdeeds.
What mattered was how justice should be served now.
“And recently?” Walker asked. “What made you take the gun? Were you frightened?”
Francois gestured dismissively. “Me? Not me. It was Mrs. Kennedy. That pig Juan threatened to tell you about how the skeleton died. He said it would look very bad for her and her family. He wanted a pay increase.”
Sapphire Nights: Crystal Magic, Book 1 Page 31