Chapter 2
Sabrina
Sabrina stared out across the Seattle skyline. It was a city to behold, that was for sure. She sucked in a breath and pushed back the tears that formed in her eyes.
Dad, why'd you leave me this mess? Why didn't you tell me what was going on? Or did you know?
The hard part about taking over a family business was that it didn't mean you knew all the family secrets.
The sun was setting, just like the problem settled into the inside part of her heart—a part that had once been soft and happy and filled with a future.
Now it was hard. It was painful. She rubbed the heel of her palm into her chest, trying to massage it, wishing this pain wasn't there.
They shipped rugs. That's what she thought.
She thought they had the best rugs in the world.
They had a factory, they had ports. They had clients throughout the world.
After college, she had been hired by her father's company, and she'd been trained.
She'd been trained in advertising, been trained in shipping, been trained in the day-to-day operations.
Her father had always told her she would take over.
She actually never thought it was true until a year ago when he ended up with a bullet in his back, his body bloated after it had been dragged out of the lake.
She'd found herself in a whirlwind—the funeral, her weeping mother, shareholders and board members looking up to her, wondering what she would do, how she would handle it.
She pushed everything down and had done what her father trained her to do.
She'd taken over, she'd focused. She'd relied on the Justice Department to figure out who'd murdered her father.
She'd done her own digging, hired a private PI company, but the longer they pursued that course, the more problems there'd been, the more threats she'd gotten.
She was still at the end of her rope. No answers, no solutions, just more bodies piling up.
The PI she'd hired was dead, which made her palms sweat and go cold and clammy.
She thought about his family, not that she knew them, but she was sure he had one.
Even if he didn't, it was a life. She thought about other members of her team who'd resigned because of their own death threats.
"Dad," she whispered, "what did you get yourself into?" Tears finally fell down her cheeks. She wiped them, unable to really feel deep sadness, just this pressure inside her heart. She was numb to it. Sometimes it leaked out.
Her phone buzzed, and she saw it was her mom trying to call her. She couldn't answer her tonight. Her mother would want her to come over. She would have dinner. They'd cry. She would beg Sabrina for answers, and Sabrina didn't have any.
She texted: "Busy tonight. Love you, Mom.
" That was all she could give her, and it felt like it wasn't enough, and yet it was too much.
She wanted to throw the phone, but she had already been through five phones.
She slid it into her pocket, sucked in a long breath, and turned to notice that the lights were going off in the main part of her building.
She guessed nine o'clock at night was plenty of time for people to call it a day.
Her father had always had a rule that no one went home until he did, but everyone at the company had joked he usually went home sooner than they did.
He was usually a right-on-five-o'clock guy. He wanted to get home to her mother.
When he'd been alive, Sabrina had often joined them for dinner, and they'd laughed, they'd joked.
During her first marriage, Rob had enjoyed hanging out with her parents.
It had been the best of times. She thought about all the years of infertility and all of that pain, and then the messy divorce.
The only thing that had gotten her through was her father.
He'd been the man in her life, and Rob had always said it, especially when he was angry.
Sabrina went to her desk, gathered her laptop, put it in her office bag, left the office, locked it up, and then headed for the elevator. Henry, her security guard, found her. He always waited for her.
"Ms. Clark, how are you tonight?"
"I'm good, Henry."
He always asked her that question, and she always gave him that answer.
He'd been with her father's company as long as she could remember.
He was older than her father, which put him right in his mid-seventies.
But he was wise. She knew her father had often confided in him, shared things. They'd talked about things.
Henry not only walked her down to the elevator, he accompanied her to the car, and then on the way home.
Henry was her security now. After her father's demise, the security had started watching her house at night, which she both liked and hated.
When she complained about it, Henry told her it was an outside security company.
He knew that she didn't want him staying up late at night.
He always kicked off about ten, he told her, which worked out because another guy named Timothy escorted her to the office and stayed there until two, when Henry came in. So it worked out.
She rode in the back of the car in silence, just lost in her thoughts. It was a twenty-minute drive outside of the city to her suburb, which was gated. The car went inside the community and then up a long driveway.
Her father and she had built the house together.
After her divorce, he told her she needed a place to call her own that no man could ever take from her.
It was beautiful, with ten acres and a four-thousand square foot home.
She had a little lake so she could row in the mornings if she wanted.
It had a path around it, plenty of trees, shrubbery. It was breathtaking.
As they drove up, she asked the driver to just open the garage. He dropped her off, and Henry watched her go inside until the garage closed.
She walked into the house. There was a warm meal on the stove. This had been a thing when she'd taken over from her father—her mother had stepped in and hired a private chef for her.
It worked out because the chef knew what she liked, and he just designed meals for her.
The first two years, he'd wanted feedback, and he would ask if she liked it or not.
Now, he just went with his gut. He always did a great job.
The meal was covered, still warm. She put her bag down, washed her hands, went to her room, and changed into her nightgown, which consisted of sweats and a T-shirt.
She didn't know if she would try and run on her treadmill.
Sometimes that helped her when she couldn't sleep.
She went back to the oven and pulled the warm chicken pot pie out from under the foil.
She moved into the little parlor off the kitchen.
It was already set up with the TV tray and the remote, a glass of water.
She wasn't sure who set this up every night.
Probably the chef. She leaned back into the chair, breathed in the aroma of the food before turning on the light—and she nearly fell off the chair.
"Hey, Sabrina," the man said softly.
"Oh my gosh!" She jolted. She hit the leg of the TV tray, and her whole meal collapsed onto the floor with the glass of water.
The side of the man's lip tucked up. The man was weathered, tan, with toe-headed blond hair. It had grown out, and he had facial hair, but those eyes, those piercing blue eyes.
"Oh my gosh, Walker?" she asked quickly and stood. She pressed her hand to her heart. "Do you know what you just did to me?" She yelled at him, trying to process that Walker Star was here and that she'd nearly had a heart attack.
He leaned back, his eyes looking her up and down. "You reached out to my brother, right?"
"Right, right." She sat back down. "Yeah, okay, I didn't know you would just show up at my house." She was confused. Her mind raced. "Aren't you, like, a Navy SEAL or something? When I talked to your brother, he said that all you guys were serving."
Walker shrugged. "Well, retirement came early."
She had no idea what he meant. She was still trying to process the fact that he was here in her home. "Okay," she said, walking in a little circle, still pressing her hand into her heart.
Walker stood and looked at the mess on the floor. "Let's go into another room."
She sucked in a long breath and then blew it out. "I seriously don't think you realize that you gave me a huge scare."
Walker moved past her, smelling of leather, soap, and something else manly.
She was attracted to him still. She hadn't seen him in a long time—since they were both at her college graduation.
Their families had gotten together, and he'd just gotten out of SEAL training.
He looked a lot different now—older, wiser, more dangerous.
He walked into the kitchen and gestured to the oven. There were two more pot pies. "Do you mind if I have one?" he asked quietly.
She threw her hand up at him. "Sure." This whole thing felt ridiculous. "I mean, why not come to my house and scare the crap out of me and then have a pot pie? I mean, why not, Walker?"
He gave her a smile, a different smile than before, one not so jaded.
"Well, you do know I like to eat." He picked up both pot pies and put them on the counter.
"Let's both eat." He turned back and grabbed two glasses, filled them up with water, and then made his way through the kitchen, looking for the silverware until she pointed to a drawer.
He grabbed two forks and put them down. "Shall we? "
She eyed him. "How about you just eat? I'll try and recover from nearly dying."
He moved to the counter and shrugged again. "Suit yourself."
It didn't take a lot of bites for him to wolf the whole thing down. She was floored. "What, do they starve you wherever you've been?"
He rolled his eyes and then drank his whole glass of water. He put it down. "Tell me about the problem you called my brother about."
She was finally calming down. She picked up the glass of water and took a sip. "What did he tell you?"
Walker looked bored. "He told me that your father died a year ago, that you've been drowning in running a company and trying to figure out who killed him, and now the bodies are piling up."
She moved to the seat next to him and sat. "That about sums it up."
Walker gestured to the food. "I would have been sure to guess you haven't eaten all day. You're pale, you're shaky. You need some food."
She shrugged. "You just got to my house, and you're bossing me around." But she picked up the fork and took a bite.
He seemed pleased. He stood and crossed his arms. "I need you to take me through it. I want to know everything since your father died. I want to know things before that. I want to see all the records. I want to see everything."
She hesitated, but the truth was, she'd called his brother, Reed Star, for a reason.
She knew she could trust the Star family, and having Walker here.
.. She didn't even have to think twice. She could trust him completely.
He was the man who had once proposed to her, the man she'd told no, the man she'd wondered about since the day he'd walked away from her.