The Parks Empire: Secrets, Lies and Loves: Romancing the Enemy

“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.”