Her Forever Hero (Unexpected Heroes #3)(64)

“Your brother is fine, Cam. I should have said that right away,” she told him after taking a long swallow of her drink.

“Then this is about Grace.” It wasn’t a question. There were very few people who would cause Sage to look that way while talking with him.

“It’s about Grace,” she said, and her eyes filled with tears.

“You’re going to have to explain to me what’s going on,” Cam told her, frustrated at all the preliminaries. Okay, she hadn’t been in his office all that long, but it seemed like forever.

“You know she’ll murder me if she knows I’m talking to you, right?”

“No, she won’t, Sage. You’re her best friend, and she trusts you. I’m the man who loves her, and she’ll learn to trust me again.”

“I know you love her, and that’s why I’ve come to you with this.”

“Then tell me, please.”

Cam got up and grabbed the bottle of scotch again. He had a feeling that they were going to need a lot more of it before this conversation was finished.

“You know about her relationship with Jimmy, right?” Sage downed her drink and pushed it toward him for a refill.

“Yes, Sage, I know about it, and I’d really rather not discuss that aspect of her life. Unless you know something to tie him to the embezzlement case—and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised—I don’t want to discuss that man.”

“I don’t know if he’s involved, but I do know he raped her, shamed her, and then held something over her head for years. She finally walked away when she found him in bed with her mother, but I have a feeling he’s the one behind these little acts of terror against her.”

“Why? What could he possibly be holding over her?” This wasn’t something Cam was expecting.

“This is so much harder than I thought. I don’t want to betray my best friend. But she needs us.”

“If you aren’t going to tell me, then why in the hell did you come down here and throw out the bait?” Cam snapped, jumping from his chair and pacing his office.

“I’m trying to tell you,” Sage countered.

“If I’m going to help her, then I need all the information.”

“Jimmy was a monster—is still a monster. How do you think he managed to go from ranch hand to an important position in an exclusive art gallery? The man has skills, backwoods kind of skills, and he’s dangerous.”

“I know all of this, Sage.”

Cam was losing his patience. He turned away and took in a long, deep breath as he tried to pull himself together. Sage needed to work up to telling him whatever it was she knew, and if he pushed her, she would clam up again.

“I’m sorry, Sage. I’m just worried about Grace.”

“I’m worried about her, too,” Sage said with a sigh. “We all abandoned her after high school. But it started with you, when you left and didn’t come back that summer we graduated. You left for law school and she was devastated, but she had faith that it would all work out. While you were gone, she met Jimmy. Everyone knew she was your girl, and the hands warned the new kid on the ranch that Grace was a hands-off kind of gal. He ignored them. He pursued her. She didn’t think anything of it at first—just that he was a nice guy and she was helping him.”

“I was in law school, a good law school. Considering I was in foster care up until I was thirteen years old, that’s a pretty damn good accomplishment. I didn’t mean to abandon Grace. I was coming back for her. I was just busy . . .” Cam trailed off. He could spout that all day long, but he knew he’d left her, the calls starting to come in less and less, the visits rare. He’d left her because he figured she’d be waiting for him when he came back. He was twenty-two at the time, young and foolish.

“That doesn’t matter. Grace turned her sadness into anger, and so she flirted a bit with Jimmy—not enough to cross a line, but enough to make herself feel wanted. Then Jimmy didn’t appreciate the fact that she was playing with him.”

When Sage’s eyes filled with tears, Cam wanted to stop her, didn’t want to hear what she was going to say, although he already knew. Grace hadn’t admitted it that night a few months ago, but he knew what had happened.

“He raped her. She wasn’t sure at first, because he had drugged her. And she didn’t tell anyone, feeling ashamed and dirty. It was right after I left for college. He’d been priming her for an entire year, and then he did his filthy deed when she was all alone. We’d all left her, something I feel horrible about. She never told me, never told anyone. Then they moved away, and she figured she’d seen the last of him, but he showed up, and he had horrible images of her—horrible, Cam.” Sage stopped to calm herself.

“What do you mean, ‘horrible images’?” Cam asked.

“Once she was drugged, a friend showed up . . .”

Sage jumped from her seat at the sound of the wall breaking when Cam shoved his fist through it.

“What happened, Sage?” he thundered.

“There were pictures, lots of pictures of her with them, and the way they did it made her look like she was a willing participant,” Sage whispered.

“Why didn’t she go to the police? Why didn’t she charge them with assault?”