“Laying low?” Hill punctuated the query with a harsh laugh. “You were supposed to be laying six feet under.”
“There uh...there was a funeral, though?” Caiphus appeared as though he were trying to settle that in his mind. “The church was packed. Uncle Gabe was crying all over everybody.”
“My dad?” Brogue straightened in the chair he occupied between the sofa and fireplace. Surprise and perhaps the thinnest shards of hope registered in his sea blue eyes.
“I went to survey who all would show,” Caiphus explained. “I thought the man might try to climb in the casket with you. Uncle Ari says he’s at the cemetery every week crying over your grave.”
More glances were traded across the room. Dena gave her rum glass a twirl, looked to Carlos and then to the bar across the suite. “I believe we’re gonna need to bring the bottle over,” she said.
“It’s not me he’s crying over. It was never me.”
“Smoak found you in that room, man.” Hill waved a hand towards the others joining them in the suite. “A lot of people saw you at Sabra’s.”
“And I was there. I’d arranged to meet Austin there before he was…”
“Austin Chappell? What the hell for?” Hill asked.
“At the time, Austin had suspicions that old acquaintances were out for revenge. Looks like he was right. He wanted to meet at Sabra’s-he’d done some artwork for her or something, figured he could move around easier there without it looking weird if we met.”
“Why not just talk on the phone?” Bill asked.
“He was paranoid-thought those acquaintances were on his phone.”
“When Smoak found you, he said you’d called him.” Hill was saying then. “The time of your call and the time of your alleged death didn’t jive. Maybe someone was on your phone too.”
“What’d Austin want to tell you?” Caiphus asked.
Brogue looked to Hill. “Besides the revenge warning, he said Eva wasn’t the only one drugged that night. Not just with the simple shit we were accustomed to in order to mellow out, but some new… concoction from the lab-guaranteed to give us at least forty-eight hours of mindless pleasure.”
Everyone looked to Hill and then back to Brogue.
“Us?” Hill appeared stricken. “Why?”
Brogue’s shrug sent a wrinkle through the T-shirt hanging outside his jeans. “Eva had a lot of enemies-female ones. Austin swore not to say a word to any of us. It had to be a slick set up. They were just waiting on the right time and when Fern came looking to put together a party…”
“I thought you and Austin took care of drugging her?” Hill probed. “She was already there, remember?”
Brogue was shaking his head. “Her…girls took care of drugging her and getting her to the room. We took care of...party favors to make everyone loosen up. We-Austin and me, we did some pretty freaky shit back then, but it was always supposed to be consensual and with way more than one girl. According to Austin, Eva and the camera used to record what we did…it was already in place. He found the tape in his room a few days later. Putting us all together in that room...it couldn’t have gone down any other way.”
Persephone watched Hill let out a long, low breath and put his head between his legs. She fought the need to go to him, knowing he needed the moment on his own.
“So you were there? In Vegas?” Caiphus gave his cousin the nudge to put the discussion back on course.
Brogue nodded and then leaned forward in his chair as well. “I was there, but it wasn’t me in the room when Rain came calling.”
“Sabra’s got cameras all over that place, how-”
“Come on Cai,” Brogue sent his cousin a knowing look. “You know how easily camera footage can be doctored, stolen, switched…”
“Your uncles moved your body.” Hill chimed in, having recovered from the blow dealt by Brogue’s previous revelation. “My dad, uncle Pitch- I think they’d have noticed if you weren’t you.”
“Not if they had no reason to. Not if the face they saw was the face they expected.”
“Brogue?” Persephone’s voice cut through softly. “What are you saying?”
He fixed her with a smile that was just as soft. “I’m saying it was someone else. Someone else with a face just like mine. By surgical means of course,” he shrugged.
“The Captain’s people handled it. Finding the right mark, with the build, blood type, coloring… from there it was a simple matter of grafting my features onto the other guys face.”
“So someone else was just sitting there waiting to die?” Carlos asked.
Brogue grinned. “That’s where it got tricky. We had to uh...keep the guy...feeling relaxed until his number was called.”
“We?” Bill questioned.
“The Captain and me. I’d been working for him for a while-outside of the family.” Brogue allowed the statement to hang a while so that his meaning was clear.
“After what happened with your mom,” he shifted on his seat then, inwardly cringing at the acid looks that sharpened his cousins’ faces. “I knew I had to step back from my dad, Vale...that whole side of our family. When Pike followed Belle to my place in Oregon, I was there under the Captain’s orders. I knew it wouldn’t be long until I followed the same path as Marcus.” He looked to Bill and then Dena.
“I told Jasper everything that went down that night with Eva and what Austin suspected was about to happen. Pike wasn’t in a good...frame of mind at the time. He was so stressed out about Belle and a fucking hair away from killing me when he found out she came to me for help. I couldn’t talk to any of the rest of you given what was going on with Aunt Immi.”
“She’s walking now.” Caiphus shared.
Brogue nodded quickly, relieved. “The Captain told me-via an email.” He shook his head. “The Cap he-he wasn’t quite sure how to warn the rest of you without exposing himself and, aside from telling Belle who he really was, he wasn’t ready to do that-explain his attachment to us,” he looked to Hill again. “I believed Austin about Eva and that on top of everything else was enough to make me want to disappear. That’s when I thought of our uncle and counted on him being shady enough to help me do it.”
“Vale.” Hill and Caiphus spoke at once.
“My dad was always talking about how the man was keeping him out of the loop-he was real pissed seeing as how Vale was his younger brother and all. Anyway, I banked on that, banked on his wanting to one-up my dad. I guess he played the role. None of you thought any different. Not even my own father.
