at all. Age makes one wiser, I’ve heard.”
A full, unforced smile appeared on her sensuous lips. Cade couldn’t take his gaze from them. “I’ve seen that smile before,” he said. “Where have we met?”
Sara was unprepared for the question or his intent perusal. After twenty-five years, she hadn’t expected him to make any connection to her at all. She tried to maintain the smile, but it was impossible.
“Long ago,” she said in a low voice, “we were in kindergarten together. You and I and your twin sister, Emily. Here, in San Francisco.”
His eyes narrowed as he stared at her. “Yes,” he said after a thoughtful silence. “Sara Carlton. Yes. That explains the eyes. And the smile. I knew I’d seen them somewhere. I had a terrible crush on you. Then one day you left without a word. I was heartbroken.”
“We moved away.”
He nodded. “I remember. Your father died. A boating accident or something,” Cade said.
Or something, Sara echoed to herself, that something being the murder of her father by his. She bit the words back with an effort. She hated subterfuge and lies, but in this case it was necessary.
“A hard year for you,” he murmured. “For everyone,” he added on an introspective note.
His smile was sad as well as sympathetic. She knew his mother had been sent away “for health reasons” later that same year.
She rejected pity for him and his family. After all, she was here for revenge….
No, it was justice she sought. She was here to see that Walter Parks paid for his crime.
Chapter Two
Sara sat on the sofa in the den Thursday night and watched a bead of moisture gather, then meander down the window, gaining speed as it collected more water.
No rain fell. With darkness, the fog had rolled in off the ocean and tumbled over the low hills like spirits released on the unsuspecting city folk. It condensed on the panes and formed the droplets.
Inside, she had a fire going in the grate, which held artificial logs, the flames fed with gas rather than wood. But it was still cozy and cheerful.
She needed cheering.
During the day, her first full one in the city, she’d kept busy. There’d been groceries to buy and errands to run, then she’d walked over to Lakeside School for the Gifted to be sure she could find it come Monday.
The private school was housed in elegant brick quarters, which had been a donation from the school’s founder in memory of his son, much as Stanford University had been established.
On her walk along St. Francis Boulevard, she’d passed the California Scottish Rite Temple and a forest preserve called the Sigmund Stern Grove. Directly across the street from the preserve, she’d found the school.
She’d also discovered that street names often changed at a cross street for no discernible reason. Junipero Serra became Portola Drive which became Market Street as it neared downtown. However, the area was interesting and lovely, with the ocean, several parks and golf courses, plus three universities within a two-mile radius of her temporary home.
Like Rome, San Francisco was built on hills. Mt. Davidson at nine hundred and twenty-seven feet was the highest peak in the vicinity while Twin Peaks, a short distance north of it, was next at nine hundred and ten feet. They were nothing like the rocky, snow-covered crags near her old home in Colorado.
During the fall and winter, she’d often sat for hours and gazed at those lofty spires as she’d waited for her mother’s life to be over….
“Sara?” 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
