The Parks Empire: Secrets, Lies and Loves

That was one way to get rid of the competition, Sara mused. Join forces, then make sure the other man faded from the scene. The ink had hardly dried on the contract of the joint endeavor when Jeremy conveniently drowned, leaving Walter in charge of everything.

The newspaper article stated that after the celebration party was over, Walter and Jeremy had stayed on board to drink a final toast to the success of their joint effort. Someone from a neighboring berth in the marina saw the yacht leave its moorings and head out for another cruise.

Later, in a statement to the police, Walter reported that he’d had too much to drink and had fallen asleep. When he awoke, the boat was drifting aimlessly at sea near the dangerous currents by the Golden Gate Bridge. Perplexed, he brought the yacht back into the harbor.

When he later discovered his new partner was missing, Walter could only surmise that Jeremy, equally intoxicated over their potential success, had taken the boat out, then fell overboard at some point during the night. There had been no one to dispute Walter’s word, so the tragedy had been marked up as an unfortunate accident.

Sara shook her head in anger and frustration. Derek had also been aboard the yacht when it went out the second time, according to her mother’s story. He’d gone to sleep in a cabin and was awakened by the quarrel between the two men. He heard Walter admit he was smuggling diamonds into the country. Opening the door to the main salon a crack, he saw Jeremy apparently pass out, then Walter had started up the yacht and headed out to sea.

Not sure what was going on, Derek had stayed in the dark cabin. When the engine slowed to an idle, he had witnessed Walter drag Jeremy onto the deck, then had heard a splash. Walter had returned to the salon, washed the used highball glasses, then returned to the wheel.

After they’d arrived at the marina and Derek was sure Walter had left, he sneaked out and went home. Later he told Marla what he’d seen. Marla had told him to keep his mouth shut if he didn’t want the same thing to happen to him.

Sara rested her forehead on her clasped hands as the bitterness surged and burned in her. Greed begat violence. Maybe her family had been better off without wealth.

“Are you all right?” a soft voice asked.

Raising her head, Sara stared at the young woman seated at the next computer. She managed a smile and nodded. “Just thinking,” she said.

“Well, that can be difficult,” the other woman admitted in a rueful tone.

Sara laughed with her, then quickly read all the other articles on Walter Parks and his family up to the present day. There wasn’t much information. The family had maintained a low profile with the press, it seemed, since that fatal incident. The yacht, according to Mark Banning, had been sold once the investigation had closed.

Interesting.

Sara closed the files and signed off. Any doubts that had lingered over her mother’s story were now laid to rest. Walter’s story didn’t hold water, one might say.

An hour later, Sara met Tai on the front walk to the school. “Hi,” the medical student said, looking embarrassed. “Uh, I came by to pick up Stace. My mom is doing fine, so I’m back on the job.”

“That’s good news,” Sara said warmly. “I’m no longer teaching here, but I’ve been picking up Stacy in the afternoons.”

“Yeah, Cade called and explained…sort of.” The student gave Sara a questioning glance.

The bell rang. Sara backed up a step. “I’ll leave you to it, then,” she said and hurried along the street, heading home before the youngster spied her and insisted she join her and Tai. Sara didn’t feel up to cheerful chatter.

At the house, she stayed inside with the doors closed, like a criminal hiding out after a robbery. It wasn’t until well after dark that she ventured onto the back deck, needing fresh air and freedom from her own company and the thoughts that went round and round in her head.

She stiffened when the door opened behind her. The lights had been off next door, so she’d assumed Cade was in bed. It was almost eleven o’clock. Huddling deeper in the afghan she draped over her shoulders, she hoped he wouldn’t notice her.

“Hello, Sara,” he said quietly. “Are you in hiding?”

“Yes.”

His chuckle wasn’t one of amusement. There was anger in it, and a cool detachment she hadn’t heard before.

He sat in one of the deck chairs. She sensed him gazing her way. Reluctantly she turned her face to him.

“Where do we go from here?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Nowhere, I guess.”

“No,” he said, disagreeing. “Things have gone too far for that. I talked to Mark Banning this afternoon.”

“Mark,” she repeated, trying to decide what this meant.

“I want him to check on certain things for me. It seems he’s already been doing that.”

Sara was pretty sure she knew what was coming, but she kept her mouth shut.

“He knew a lot about my family,” Cade concluded, still in that same quiet, coolly controlled tone.

His very air of calm made her nervous. He should have been openly furious or something. Instead he seemed remote and above it all. However, she’d grown up with her mother’s unpredictable moods, so she wasn’t sure.

“His brother works with mine,” she finally murmured after the silence lasted too long.

“So he said.”

“Then…you know everything.”

“I think so,” he admitted. “Like you, I think it’s time we laid these old ghosts to rest.”

She wasn’t taking anything for granted. “What do you mean?”

“I want to help you and Tyler with your investigation.”

She shook her head. In the dim glow of the city lights, she saw him nod affirmatively. “We don’t need help.”

“I think you do. Who would be better at researching family history than the family attorney?”

Clutching the afghan in shaking hands, she shook her head again. “Walter Parks is your father.”

The pause was brief. “I know.”

“I never wanted to hurt you.” She realized how lame that sounded. “I didn’t think about it like that,” she said, “in terms of pain and loss to others. Tyler and I wanted justice for our family. That was all.”

“Justice,” he echoed, a wealth of irony in the word. “I’ll help you find it. This shadow has been hanging over our lives for twenty-five years. I agree with you and your brother. It’s time we dispelled it.”

Questions raced through her mind, but she didn’t ask any of them. They sat there in tense silence. Traffic noises came to them at intervals as an occasional vehicle drove down the neighborhood street.

“Mark didn’t tell me much,” Cade continued. “He said it wasn’t his story to tell. Will you fill me in? I need to know what evidence you have or what you’re trying to find out, in order to help.”

“I can’t tell you, not without speaking to Tyler first. It’s his story even more than mine.” She couldn’t tell him why—that her half brother was also his half brother.

The tension became unbearable before Cade nodded. “I understand.”

“I don’t think so.” Her heart hurt, physically hurt, as she thought of him and his siblings and her own. He wouldn’t believe the duplicity of their parents—his father’s crime and her mother’s silence.

“Do you have a witness?”

She was so startled by the question, she could only stare at him. That action was enough to give her away.

“There was,” he concluded. “Or you think there was. Who was it?”

Sara’s heart pounded like a runaway train. She pressed her lips tightly together as if the answer might escape before she could stop it. She had her own questions about the past and its strange connections.

Why hadn’t Marla brought her brother forward all those years ago and had Walter convicted for his crime?

Even though Marla had expressed her fears of the man, obviously for good reason, her silence was something Sara would never understand. Of course, there had been the pregnancy and the twins that belonged to the murderer. That added to the tangle.

“You’re afraid to tell me. Do you think I’ll tell my father and that he’ll murder him, too?” Cade asked with more than a tinge of sardonic amusement in his voice.

“No,” she denied, but her voice quivered, betraying her doubts. “It’s so complicated, so unbelievably complicated,” she murmured, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms and the afghan over her legs as if to hold the tide of misery at bay. She sighed despondently.

He observed her huddled form before speaking. “We’ll sort one thread out at a time.”

“And then?”

“And then we’ll see.”

“I hate it when children are involved,” she told him.

He hesitated. “I heard Stacy tell you she didn’t like visiting her grandfather. She said he didn’t like people.”

“I didn’t encourage her to talk about him,” Sara quickly said.

Cade waved aside her remark. “I don’t think she’ll be surprised or particularly upset by anything that happens to him. He hasn’t earned her affection.”

That struck Sara as the saddest thing of all. Children should have loving grandparents that thought they hung the moon. Her own had died before she was born or before she’d been old enough to remember them. She’d always felt she and Kathleen and the twins had been cheated out of something important because of that.

“I think you should stay out of it,” she said to Cade.

“I can’t. We’re too deeply involved.”

She lifted her head and stared at him. He returned it, his face grim and determined.

“Will you set up a meeting with your brother?” he asked. “And Mark Banning and his brother. Is there anyone else in on this?”

“Rachel knows some of it,” Sara admitted. “She helped me get the town house…” Realizing she might have said too much, Sara let the words trail off.

“Yes, I’d already figured a bit of collusion there.”

“I didn’t plan the rest,” she said in a low voice. “What happened between us, the visit to the ranch and…and everything.”

He stood and paced the deck like a caged beast. “That’s good to know. For a while, I thought maybe you’d faked your response, then I decided you hadn’t. It was too compelling for either of us to pretend.”

“I didn’t expect it. The passion, the terrible need, like lightning inside me.” With an effort, she stopped the futile confession. “It was unwise.”

“But good,” he murmured, so quietly she could hardly hear. “So very, very good.”

They observed each other without speaking for a full minute. Torrents of hunger surged between them like a storm tide caused by an angry god, bent on vengeance.

Sara stood it as long as she could, then she fled inside and locked the door behind her, not to keep him out but to remind herself that she must stay in. His arms were not the safe haven she sought.

There was no safe place, she realized, until the past could be exposed, then decently buried for all time.

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