Again, she laughed without humor. “Dillon, you don’t know me very well, do you? As soon as I could move, I crawled to the highway. I didn’t care if I died afterward, so long as I lived long enough to see them punished.”
She recounted her visit to the hospital and all that had happened the following day in Sheriff Jolly’s office. Dillon was incredulous. “So a gang rape was swept under the rug and forgotten?”
“Until now.”
“Here, fifteen years later, you’ve come back with a vengeance. You want to make them pay for raping you.”
“Not just for that.”
“You mean there’s more?”
“Gary.”
“Oh, right. I forgot.” Gently, he said, “Boyfriends often have a tough time dealing with something like that, Jade.”
“Gary certainly did. Especially when Neal and the others painted me as a scarlet woman. Neal couldn’t leave it alone. He taunted Gary with innuendoes until he couldn’t take it anymore.”
When she told him what Gary had done after seeing her at Georgie’s house, Dillon was stunned. He plowed his fingers through his hair again and searched for something to say. He thought better of saying what had first occurred to him: that Gary should have had more faith in the woman he loved. She wouldn’t welcome hearing that.
“I couldn’t stay in Palmetto after Gary’s suicide. But I swore that one day I would come back, and that when I did, I would be in control.”
“You’ve already constipated Ivan and Neal. They see the handwriting on the wall. They know what a new industry will mean to them.”
?
??They’ve got a lot to answer for. I’m not the only one they’ve hurt over the years.”
“Did you know before you came back that Hutch was sick?”
“No. I planned on exposing the corruption in his sheriff’s department.”
“Is it corrupt?”
“I would bet my last nickel on it. He covers the Patchetts’ tracks just like his father did.”
“The point is moot, anyway, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so.”
Early indications were that Hutch’s kidney transplant had been successful. His doctors were being conservative until the threat of infection abated, but their initial prognosis was good. Organ rejection was being combatted with drugs. Reportedly, he hadn’t suffered any negative side effects. Even so, it was doubtful that he could ever hold public office again.
“What about Donna Dee? She’s as much to blame as any of them.”
“She’s always loved Hutch. If I had exposed his corruption, she would have suffered disgrace along with him. As it turned out, she had to come to me, begging for his life, just as I begged her to tell the truth in Sheriff Jolly’s office.
“That’s not why I refused to consider Graham as a donor, but now she knows what it feels like to be desperate—abandoned by your last hope.”
“Does Lamar have a family here?”
“A mother. To my knowledge, she never knew about the rape.”
“Any form of revenge would be ineffective then, wouldn’t it?”
“Except that Graham might be her one and only grandchild.”
“You honestly don’t know which of them fathered him?”
“No.”