Walker kept walking. "No, I wouldn't." There was no way Reed had anything on him. They hadn't been in the same circles for years.
"Sabrina Clark."
Walker stopped walking.
"She's into some bad stuff with bad people. Can't tell if it's her fault or someone else's, but she reached out."
Walker thought about Sabrina. Their families had been friends. They'd gone to the cabin in Wyoming all the time together. Okay, maybe she'd been more than a friend a long time ago.
"She's in trouble, Walker. She needs help, and she's asked for the best."
Walker turned around and cursed. "Well, you've got plenty of monkeys to do your dancing. You don't need me." It was true. Star Enterprises did have the best. Walker always thought it was funny. Their last name was Star, and now his brother used it as a brand. A way to advertise.
His brother shrugged. "Well, if you don't want to be involved, that's fine. I mean, it doesn't seem like fate put you in my path or anything today, does it?" He gave Walker one hard look, then put his sunglasses firmly back on his face and turned and walked back to the helicopter.
Walker hesitated. No, no, no. He clamped his hand into a fist. No. He had just gotten untangled from the biggest thing that could ever control you—the government. Now he was staring his brother in the face, and not just him, but Sabrina Clark. Sabrina Clark.
Walker started walking toward the helicopter. The blades started moving. He started moving faster. He got to the helicopter and hopped on just before it took off. His brother sat in the front. Walker put a pair of the stupid headphones on. The pilot took off. Walker looked over, and there were his brother's men with the body on the side. Great. On a helicopter with his brother and a dead body. Perfect. No problem here.
His brother let out a light laugh. "Welcome back, Walker. Welcome back."
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."
