"Ugh! It's not that simple. We have history together. It's just . . . I don't know, it's complicated. When she came back to town last year, I could see she was bitter, but it's a year later and nothing I do seems to change those feelings. I can only help her if she allows me to."
Camden moved to his window to look out over the small town square. Two kids played tag in the park while their mother sat on the bench watching them. Sterling was a great place to grow up, to work, and to raise a family. It's why Cam had come back.
At one time, he'd imagined settling down with Grace, having children, and living a happy, normal life. But the world had a way of intercepting the ball even in the best of plays.
Grace and Cam had been friends from the time he'd moved to Sterling. She'd been four years younger than he was, but tougher than any boy, and their relationship had begun out of respect and deepened into a genuine friendship. They'd stayed in contact while he was away at college.
The summer he'd come home with a bachelor's degree in hand, before he'd gone on to law school, he began to see Grace in a whole new way. She was eighteen, beautiful, and going into her senior year of high school. Their love blossomed over the summer, and when he left for law school, Cam had been sure their love could last-but he'd been wrong. By the end of his first year, there had been nothing left for him to come home to.
He would never forget what he'd found when he had come home, and because of it he'd made some very poor decisions during the next couple of months. Since then, the odds had seemed forever in their disfavor, and it appeared there was nothing Cam could do about it-nothing but annoy a woman who just might wind up in prison.
"I've been fighting with her for a year on this," Camden said. "It won't be long before the feds get involved, you know."
"Okay, boy. Let's take another look at the file together and see if there's anything we can come up with."
"We may as well," Cam agreed with a sigh. Grabbing the file off his desk, he sat down at the large conference table in his office.
His father joined him and they pulled out the three-inch-thick pile of papers.
Martin flipped through the stack and stopped at a bank statement. "Right here is where it all began. Why don't you describe to me what you've figured out, start to finish."
"C'mon, Dad. You know everything I know."
"Sometimes putting things into story form helps clarify it," Martin said. "Let me start our little fairy tale off. Five years ago, one Grace Sinclair, the accused, opened a nonprofit by the name of Youthspiration. You pick it up from there."
"This is so lame . . . okay, okay," Cam said when his father gave him a warning look. "To an outsider, an auditor-hell, to the average person, it looks like all is well in paradise. If you look closely, the donation amounts coming in and then going back out all match up perfectly."
Martin broke in. "There's nothing wrong with starting up a nonprofit."
"What are you doing here, Dad?"
"I'm playing devil's advocate, pretending I know nothing."
"This isn't a game. It's serious. What can you possibly be smiling about?"
"I'm not enjoying the fact that Grace is in trouble. It's just a pleasure to see you so focused about work, to see you on a mission," Martin told him. "Right now think of me as just Joe Schmoe, juror, at your service." Martin sat back and ran his fingers across his mouth as if zipping his lips shut.
"All right, I'll play along. About a year ago, somebody made an anonymous tip to the IRS, telling them that they might want to dig a little deeper into this nonprofit. They dug, and found nothing. So then this file pops up on my desk, and me being me, I can't help but do some of my own digging. The nonprofit looks aboveboard. But when you peel away the layers of the onion and get to the heart of it, something's rotten. All the outgoing checks are written and seem to be going to real organizations, but there are duplicates, and those are heading straight into offshore accounts. Whoever's doing this is smart, though, because the money is siphoned off in such a way as to not raise red flags, and to keep the culprit highly protected."
"How so? If you found offshore accounts, can't the feds?"
"Yes, they can, and I don't see how they haven't yet," Cam said. "Anyway, all signs point directly to Grace."
"And what does Grace have to say about it?" Martin asked.
"She says I'm out of my mind. That she never opened up this or any other nonprofit and she certainly didn't take any money."
"Her word is good enough for me," Martin piped in.
"You're Joe Schmoe, juror, remember?" Cam pointed out. "They don't know Grace. Hell, Dad, we don't know her anymore, either. She left home for a very long time. Life has a way of changing us."
"That's BS and you know it, son. Little Gracie would never be involved in something like this."
"I don't think she would, either, but then there's also a bank account in her name, where large dollar amounts are randomly deposited and then immediately taken out as cash. The withdrawals coordinate with the times she's in the area of that particular branch of the bank."
"What do you mean?" Martin asked.
"I mean that she goes to Billings, and then there's a withdrawal in Billings."
"So, it looks pretty bad for her, huh?"
"Yeah, it looks pretty bad. And each time I've tried to discuss this with her, she says she has nothing to do with it, that it's not her, and then we get into a fight."
"You have no other choice but to make her listen."
"Easier said than done, Dad. Now we go back to our history together. It isn't exactly a smooth road."
"This could mean the difference between her going to prison and being exonerated from a terrible crime. You have to make her listen."
"It gets worse," Cam said with a sigh, shutting the folder.
"How can it get worse than Gracie going to prison?"
"I think she either knows who is actually involved and she's protecting them, or she's been aware of this scheme the entire time."
"No way!" Martin exclaimed. "Not a chance."
"I don't know. I'm just trying to get to the bottom of it. I can't contact the IRS without her hiring me as her attorney, and I'm really at an impasse until she agrees to do something about this mess."
"Have you thought of option number three?" Martin asked. "Maybe she wasn't aware this was going on, but she has an idea of who it could be, and she's in denial."
"Wouldn't she want to go after the people smearing her name?" Cam asked.
"Not if it's someone she loves and trusts, and she doesn't want to find out they've betrayed her. We tend to bury our heads in the sand when reality is too much for us to take."
Cam didn't know how to respond to that. It was an option he hadn't even considered. There were very few people in Grace's life she truly loved. Maybe her parents, though he doubted it. And then there was her best friend, Sage, who had just married Cam's brother Spence. Grace couldn't be protecting her parents. They were wealthy, far too wealthy to need to embezzle the sums being stolen here. Yes, the total amount added up to a couple of million dollars, but that was chump change to them.
And Cam refused to believe it could be Sage. She was an incredible woman, in training to become a surgeon just like Cam's brother. No. There had to be another explanation.
"I have to go, Dad." He stood up and moved toward the door.
"Where are you off to in such a hurry?" Martin asked as he followed Cam from the office.
"I'm going to see Grace," he said, determination in each stride. "It's time for a showdown."
"What's your plan?" Martin asked before he got in the car.
"I'll think of one on the way."
Her time of fighting him was over. That was all he knew for sure.