Marie Ferrarella - The Parks Empire - Secrets, Lies and Loves

“Did the courier arrive?” he asked the store manager, not bothering with a greeting.

“Yes. I put the package in the safe.”

He nodded and disappeared into the back.

Murderer. Murderer. Murderer.

The word pounded in Sara’s head with each beat of her heart. She could hear her mother’s weakened voice, murmuring his name and the accusation as she sank into a coma, her heart giving up the battle to sustain life.

“Make…him…pay,” Marla had whispered to her children as they gathered at her bedside.

“We will,” Tyler had vowed.

“Let’s go,” Sara said to Rachel. “Let’s get out of here.”

After one glance at Sara, Rachel nodded and took her arm, leading her outside and away from the sight of anyone in the store. Sara leaned against the building and forced air into her constricted lungs.

“Are you all right?” Rachel asked.

“Yes. I think so,” Sara added, pushing a smile onto her face. “I am. Really.”

“I didn’t think about him walking in the door while we were there,” Rachel admitted. “It took us both by surprise.”

“Yes. He looks like…”

“Cade?” Rachel guessed.

Sara nodded. “I didn’t realize there would be so much family resemblance.” She shook her head slightly as if to ward off the comparison. “I think I’m ready to go home.”

Back at Sara’s house, Rachel dropped her off, then rolled down the car window. “Don’t forget our big date tomorrow night,” she called out, laughter in her voice.

“I won’t.” Sara waved goodbye before opening the door to her place. No one seemed to be in next door.

Thinking of Stacy, she was filled with regret for the future and the possible hurt to the girl and her father. But then, there was all the regret of the past that Marla Carlton and her four children had had to live with.

“You’re all dressed up,” Stacy said Saturday evening, coming out the door and sitting on the stoop beside Sara.

Sara wore a red knit pantsuit that was one of her favorite outfits and a splurge last year when she’d been happy. Before her fiancé, Chad, then her mother, had died.

“I’m going out to dinner with my brother and his friend tonight. Miss Hanson is going, too.”

Stacy nodded as if she approved.

Sara glanced up and down the street. “She’s supposed to be here by now, but she’s late.”

“Maybe she had a wreck like my mother did.”

The child’s matter-of-fact suggestion startled Sara. Stacy’s world had been shaken by her mother’s death when she was three. Sara wondered again how much the child remembered. Did the bright youngster recall anything her grandfather and father might have said—

Realizing where this thought was leading, Sara broke it off, appalled at the idea of quizzing a child about her family’s private conversations. She could never be a detective as Tyler was, asking intrusive questions and suspecting people of lies and evasions.

“Hello,” a masculine voice said behind them.

Sara stood, her gaze held by Cade’s as he stepped out the door. His smile was warm and beguiling, but in an open way, as if his thoughts were as innocent as his daughter’s.

Since meeting this man, she’d realized how self-centered her fiancé had been. He’d always insisted on having his way. Cade was considerate and good-natured.

“Good evening,” she said, sounding breathless and unsure of herself as undefined emotion clutched at her throat, making it difficult to breathe.

“You look especially lovely tonight.”

“She’s waiting for her boyfriend,” Stacy informed him.

Sara felt heat rise to her face. “Just friends,” she quickly corrected. “And my brother.”

Two cars arrived at the same time. Rachel pulled into the driveway behind Sara’s car. Tyler stopped at the curb and got out. “Ready?” he asked, coming up the sidewalk.

“Yes,” Sara answered.

She realized she had to introduce the two men. She did so quickly. Tension crawled along her nerves like a poisonous snake as the men shook hands and spoke.

“You look like Sara,” Stacy said.

Tyler dropped to his haunches and shook her hand as Sara introduced the child. “Yes, all of the kids in my family look like our mother.”

“I look like my daddy,” Stacy told him.

Tyler studied her, then her father. “You sure do,” he agreed. He smiled at the child, then stood. “We have dinner reservations, so we’d better get along.”

“Have a pleasant evening,” Cade said.

Rachel was already seated in the back of Tyler’s car along with Nick Banning, Sara noted when she and Tyler joined them. She sat in the front passenger seat.

“I recognized Cade Parks,” Nick said when they were on their way. “The child was his daughter, I presume?”

“Yes. Stacy. She’ll be in my class Monday.”

“I don’t think I’m ready to face a roomful of rowdy kids.” Rachel made a fearful grimace.

Nick chuckled, then became serious. “Mark is meeting us at the restaurant.”

“Has he learned anything?” Tyler demanded.

“I don’t know. He’ll tell us when he sees us.”

At the cozy Italian restaurant, complete with an accordion player, the two couples met Nick’s older brother.

“My brother, Mark,” Nick introduced them. “He’s a private detective and is helping us on the case.”

Mark Banning wasn’t old—early thirties, perhaps—but his eyes said he’d seen enough to last a lifetime. A terrible scar under his right eye spoke of his days with the New York police force, before he and Nick had moved to San Francisco and he’d opened his own detective agency.

Sara took Mark’s hand. Smiling into his eyes, she said, “Thank you for helping us.”

His manner was introspective and serious. “I believe in justice being done.”

After they were seated, she leaned close to him. “Have you found anything on Derek Ross?”

“Yes. At least, I think I have. Tyler mentioned your mother once said her brother was a book lover and collected antique volumes.”

Sara nodded. “Yes, she did.” She waited impatiently as they placed their orders with the waiter. “You’ve traced him?” she asked as soon as they were alone again.

“Not quite, but I did some checking with a dealer in rare books who I ran into while investigating a theft once.” Mark paused while he studied first Tyler, then Sara. “I asked him if he’d heard of Derek Ross. He hadn’t, but he had done business over the years with a man called Derek Moss.”

“Oh,” Sara said in disappointment.

“Lots of times, when people change their names, they use the same initials…or something very similar to their real names, usually by changing one or two letters.”

“You think…” she began, then stopped, almost afraid to voice the question.

Mark shrugged. “I’ve got a trace going on the man. The dealer couldn’t find an address in his records, but he’s pretty sure Derek Moss has, or had, a bookstore. Moss got a discount on the books due to having a retailer’s license.”

Sara’s mind whirled with the possibility of finishing the case so soon. She pictured the tall, older man she’d seen in the jewelry store behind bars, paying for his crimes against her family.

Tyler must have had the same thought. “It’s odd,” he said, “to discover that you belong to another family, that your father is a man you despise, that you have other brothers and sisters you’ve never known. And a five-year-old niece who’s bright and friendly…and innocent.”

At once another image imposed itself in her mind—Cade Parks and Stacy, their eyes accusing as they stared at her.

Pressing a hand to her chest, where a ball of pain and misery formed, she wondered for the hundredth time that week if she and Tyler were doing the right thing. People were going to be hurt….