The Parks Empire: Secrets, Lies and Loves. Marie Ferrarella

the feeble voice said in a whisper.

      “Yes, Mom?” Sara rose from the hospital chair, which also made a bed, and went to her mother’s side. It was the day after Christmas.

      Marla Carlton gazed intently at her daughter. “You remember everything I told you? Kathleen and the twins…they know, don’t they?”

      Sara took her mother’s restless hand. It felt like a skeleton’s, it was so thin and bony now. “Yes, they know. We all know.”

      “Find my brother. Find Derek.”

      “He’s here, Mother. He arrived this morning. He’ll be back at visiting hours.”

      “He knows…he saw…everything.”

      “Shh, don’t talk. Rest now,” Sara urged.

      It hurt to look at her mother. The vestiges of her former beauty were still visible. Full, sensuous lips. An enchanting smile. Black hair threaded with gray but still thick and luxurious. Green eyes with long black lashes. A petite, lovely Cleopatra once, she was ravaged by illness more than time. At fifty-five she was dying of heart disease and there was nothing the doctors could do.

      Pain speared through Sara at the thought. As the oldest of her siblings, she’d taken on the responsibility for the family during her growing years. Their mom had never been well. Depression and dark moods had plagued her.

      Now Sara understood why. Marla had carried a horrible burden in her heart for twenty-five years, ever since her husband had disappeared from a yacht off the coast of California. Now Sara understood why she and her sister were snatched from their familiar world in San Francisco and taken to Denver to a life of struggle and uncertainty.

      “Derek was there,” Marla said, clutching Sara’s hand as if to hold her captive to the tale the daughter had already heard more than once of late. “He saw Walter….”

      Sara bent close as her mother’s eyes closed and her words lapsed into agitated mumbling. The story she’d heard during the past week had been a strange, terrifying Christmas gift—a disclosure of greed, murder and ruin visited on her father by the man who was supposed to be his friend and business partner in the diamond trade.

      Walter Parks.

      The name conjured up unspeakable evil in her mind as she stared into her mother’s pale face. The man had threatened Marla with her life if she didn’t disappear from San Francisco forever. He’d threatened the lives of her children, Sara and Kathleen, too. He hadn’t known Marla had been pregnant with the twins, Tyler and Conrad.

      Or that those two unborn babies were his—

      The ring of the doorbell startled Sara out of the painful memories. It was almost nine o’clock. Maybe her brother was making an appearance at last. She’d expected him yesterday.

      “About time,” she scolded when she opened the door and saw that it was indeed Tyler.

      He was still in the suit he wore as a detective with the police department. Giving her a grin, he swept her into a bear hug.

      It never failed to amaze her that the twins she’d adored—at five, she’d thought they were some sort of living dolls made especially for her—had grown into men, six feet tall with broad shoulders and muscular bodies.

      “Oomph,” she said to let him know he was squeezing the breath out of her.

      “Sorry, sis,” he said, not at all apologetic. “God, it seems like years. I’m glad you’re here.”

      “Me, too. I think.”

      Their eyes met in grave acknowledgment of the task they’d set for themselves before leaving Denver—find their uncle, sole witness to the crime against their family, then present the case to the local district attorney.

      “The den is through here.” She led the way.

      His low whistle told her he was as impressed by the town house as she’d been. Tyler had arrived in town a few months ago, landed a job as a police detective and found a best friend in Nick Banning, his partner on the force.

      Nick was responsible for the connections that had led to her living in the town house, right next door to Cade Parks, son of the man they were after. Step Two of their plan was now in action.

      The first step had been for both of them to get jobs here. The second had been to find a way to infiltrate the Parks family. What better way than to live next door to the oldest son, who was also the Parks family attorney?

      “Pretty nice digs,” Tyler said, settling in one of the easy chairs before the hearth. “You should see the place Nick found for me.”

      His wry laughter dispelled any impression of envy. Her baby brother didn’t waste time on useless emotions.

      “Irish coffee?” she asked. “There’s a latte machine, if you’d prefer that.”

      “Can you make it both?”

      Sara foamed nonfat milk into fresh coffee, then added a generous splash of Irish cream liqueur. After placing a stirring stick coated with brown sugar crystals in each tall mug, she carried them into the den where Tyler waited, his eyes, green like hers, fixed on the flames leaping over the fake logs.

      Marla had left her stamp on all her children, bequeathing her black hair and cat eyes to each of them, along with a megawatt smile and a metabolism that enabled them to eat anything and stay thin, a fact their friends often lamented.

      “Have you met your neighbor?” Tyler asked.

      Sara was drawn out of her introspection. “Yes, yesterday. Cade’s daughter, Stacy, is friendly and inquisitive. As soon as she saw me weeding the front yard, she came over and demanded to know if I was the new gardener and what had happened to Mr. Lee.”

      “Cade?” Tyler questioned, at once picking up on the use of the first name.

      “He and Stacy had me over for dinner last night. They made a surprise cake. And sang happy birthday to me.”

      Tyler muttered an expletive. “I forgot about your birthday.”

      “That’s okay. Some friends in Denver took me out for a gala celebration.”

      “You’ve lost weight. Is this going to be too hard on you? Nick and I can handle the investigation.”

      “No, no. I want to do it. I want to find out the truth about our father and his partner.”

      When Tyler’s eyes flicked to her with more than a little irony in their depths, she recalled her father wasn’t his father. She still found it hard to believe that the man they sought to bring to justice was father to the twins.

      “Dear God, what a mess, if this is all true,” she murmured.

      “Didn’t you believe Mother’s story?” he asked in his blunt fashion. His gaze bored into her as if he dared her to deny it. Tyler was always direct.

      “Yes, but we can’t prove anything without finding the uncle I don’t recall ever seeing until just before her death. How did he know she was sick? He had to have been keeping track of her somehow. Could they have corresponded all these years and Mother never told us?”

      “Who knows? Mother could be as silent as a sphinx when she chose. Derek Ross is one hell of an elusive relative,” Tyler admitted. “All I could find out was that after the funeral his flight from Denver ended in San Francisco. He isn’t listed on the Internet or in any telephone book, hasn’t been called to jury duty, gotten any traffic tickets or been delinquent on his taxes that I can find.”

      “I was thinking of those last days in the hospital earlier tonight, just before you arrived, in fact,” Sara said in a pensive tone. “We all reacted differently.”

      “Yeah,” Tyler agreed in disgust. “Kathleen, the mystery writer, ran away to New York after the funeral. You would think solving