CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 38

Brooke kept the bandage on, just in case anyone returned. She hadn't really hurt herself seriously. Yeah, she'd bumped her shin and tweaked her ankle, but she knew it wasn't sprained. She'd staged the accident so she could skip mass and have time alone in the house.

With Shep curled on his bed and snoring softly, she went outside. Her fingers ached instantly from the freezing air, but she put up one last little camera, this one over the back door to take in the porch, yard, and door to the woodshed.

Once inside again she started up the stairs.

"Forgive me," she said to a picture of Nana on the landing. Her grandmother wouldn't have approved of her lying to get out of mass, especially at Christmas, but then, there were a lot of things Nana wouldn't have liked about Brooke. Maybe she'd work on all those supposed faults come the new year. That would be her resolution—if she survived.

Her leg ached a bit and her headache was threatening again, but she ignored the pain, made her way to her bedroom, and pulled out her laptop.

Hoping beyond hope that Caleb had gotten back to her, she checked her email.

She found nothing she didn't recognize.

"Come on, come on."

Time was ticking by.

She figured she had two and a half hours, maybe three at the most until the others returned.

With time ticking by she rapidly sifted through her spam folder.

Still nada.

Then she searched the guest room again, found nothing consequential, and left Eli's wallet under the bed, not far from where she'd found it. She decided not to tip him off yet, but deep down wished it was a dead rat. Wouldn't that be perfect? And Leah would have an absolute heart attack.

She kept the knife.

It had proved useful so far.

In the hallway she double-checked that her cameras were working, and the images of the areas she was surveilling appeared on her phone when she accessed Clayton Electronics' security app.

All good.

Returning to her room, hearing the wind picking up and rattling the windows, she went through the footage the little spy cameras had taken and caught the fight downstairs, Leah stomping down the hallway and then, in the guest room, what appeared to be an argument between her sister and Eli. There was no sound so she couldn't hear what they were discussing, but Leah was pouting. Again.

No surprise there.

But Eli looked straight into the camera's lens, as if he knew the tiny device was recording everything.

Brooke held her breath, thinking he would come over and pick up the picture frame, discover the camera, and remove it.

But he didn't.

She watched as they changed clothes.

All business, no lovey-dovey stuff. When he stripped off his shirt, then scratched the back of his neck, she saw it. The bit of ink, a tattoo covered by his longer hair. She zoomed in and the image was fuzzier, but it definitely could be the curled end of a tentacle from the octopus inked at the base of his skull. And as she zoomed in closer, she saw a scar she'd never noticed on Gideon, a small mar in the flesh of his back, where a bullet may have grazed him or gone through. Sure enough, he turned to say something to Leah and there it was. A small scar. Through and through, the bullet probably on the floor of Elliott Bay, the reason there'd been so much blood roiling in the water that horrid night.

"Gotcha." She should have felt satisfied. There was part of her proof. Instead, she was on edge, thinking of her family with him.

The rest of the footage was nonconsequential, but obviously an argument had been simmering between Eli and Leah, trouble in paradise.

Maybe she was getting wise to him.

"No way," she whispered to the empty house. Once Leah had decided on a mate she ignored every last warning sign that came her way.

The last images were of Leah and Neal in the hallway, after Marilee and Eli had gone downstairs. Again, the footage was silent, but their conversation appeared hushed, and whatever Leah said, Neal shook his head and wrapped his arms around her.

Brooke stared in stunned silence.

Neal kissed the top of Leah's head. Tenderly. His eyes closed, and when she turned and tilted her head up he kissed her on the lips.

"You damned . . ." Brooke let the sentence fade. She'd suspected Neal of cheating of course. There had been the Jennifer Adkins situation, and then he and Leah had always seemed to have some connection. She'd wondered about an affair when Marilee was very young, and although she'd thought there might be something going on, it wasn't until Gina Duquette had mentioned seeing them together that her mistrust had solidified. Still, she hadn't been really faced with proof until this tender scene.

Her stomach turned over and she told herself to let it pass for now.

"Bigger fish to fry," she said aloud, echoing her grandmother's words.

She checked the time. An hour had passed already, so she opened up her laptop, where she perused social media, first checking Leah's pages, then searching for Eli Stone and Gideon Ross, or Gideon John Ross or Eli John Stone or Gideon Eli Stone and on and on. She even added Jake to the mix; Eli had mentioned him as a brother.

Not that he couldn't have lied.

Not that none of those names, despite the information on his driver's license, might be his true identity. Fake ID's could be purchased if one had the right connections. However, in this case there were so many incarnations of the various common names that it was impossible to locate any person on the Internet that looked to be the man she knew as Gideon Ross.

A ghost.

If he'd ever existed.

"Who the hell are you?" she asked to the empty room.

The lights flickered again and she cursed her luck. She couldn't lose power now. She found her overnight bag and searched through it. No battery charger. Then she remembered Neal asking about it earlier, so he must've put it somewhere. She started to text him when the lights blinked again.

"No," she said. "No, no, no." Worse yet, her phone was about out of battery life. And where the hell was her charger? In her purse? Not by the bed. Downstairs in the kitchen?

She checked her email again, noting the time. The midnight service should be over, so they should be returning, back within a half hour or so. No new email had come in.

But when she looked into her spam folder she found a new message. The sender was a garbled mess of letters, numbers, and symbols, the letters that she nonetheless recognized as being sent from Caleb Reynolds.

Yes!

Quickly, she opened the email from Caleb Reynolds.

The message was direct:

GO TO THE POLICE!

You were right.

He's a scam artist with a complex background.

POSSIBLE MURDERER.

Call me.

An attachment was included.

She skimmed the documents he'd sent with the email and as she did, a cold fear washed over her. Not only was Eli Stone/Gideon Ross actually Elijah Jacob Rossario, known as "Ross," he was also involved in an accident near Estacada, Oregon, when he was a teenager. Everyone else in the pickup died at the scene, his parents and his brother, Gideon. However, it was suspected his parents and brother were murdered before the accident. Their wounds were more in line with a beating than with vehicle crash injuries. However, because of the mangled wreckage and bodies and ensuing fire, it was hard to determine the cause of death. Ross was the only survivor and wasn't unscathed. He'd ended up with a broken clavicle and bruised and broken ribs.

The cuts and contusions on his body were consistent with him being thrown from the vehicle, but there were questions about the rest of his family. Unfortunately, the driver of the other vehicle involved, the owner of a small logging business, died from injuries he sustained as his truck and load rolled down the same sharp ravine as did the Rossarios' extended cab pickup.

Did he slaughter his family and collect the insurance money and all their assets? Or was he a victim? Whatever the reason, no charges were ever brought against him. He lived with an aunt and uncle until he came of age and then he collected his inheritance and sailed the world on his boat, the Medusa.

According to records Caleb had plumbed from Las Vegas, Elijah Gideon Rossario was married to a woman named Emme Cosgrove, who supposedly traveled with him aboard his sailboat to French Polynesia. That's where her family lost touch with her.

"French Polynesia," Brooke whispered, fear sliding down her spine as she remembered the necklace she'd seen on his boat, the one she'd fingered with the fish hook made from bone. He'd seemed to tense when she touched it.

Now she knew why.

Oh. God.

Caleb included a few sparse links to news clippings about the accidents.

She skimmed them twice, then called the unfamiliar number, presumably Caleb's burner. He picked up on the first ring.

"This dude is bad news," he said before she could utter a word. "You see that, Brooke. This is serious stuff. He may have killed his entire family and his wife. He's certainly a person of interest. People around him either die or disappear, so my advice is to tell your sister to end it with him."

"What if he won't take no for an answer?"

"Then get the police involved. Hell, do it anyway. The guy's dangerous," Caleb said. "I just scratched the surface. I've only been at it a couple of hours, so who knows what more I might find? As far as I can tell he doesn't have a rap sheet, no charges have ever been filed, but that's only because he's slick. Got it?"

"Yeah." He was right.

She did get it.

Elijah Gideon Rossario, the man she'd known as Gideon Ross, the man Leah thought was Eli Stone, was deadly.

"Look, I'm sending you the only picture I could get of Emme Cosgrove."

A second later it arrived in the spam folder, again from the same garbled address.

"Got it," she said. Dreading what she'd find, she opened the attachment.

Then her heart stilled.

"Notice anything?"

She did. "Yeah," she admitted, her throat suddenly bone dry.

The woman in the photograph, a young, blond woman with bright eyes and an easy smile, looked exactly like Brooke.

"Oh my God."

In the picture Emme Cosgrove was younger than Brooke, her hair slightly darker, the wild curls the same, the high cheekbones, straight nose, and wide green eyes. And around Emme's slim neck? The very necklace Brooke had seen in the cabin of the Medusa. Across the bottom of the picture a single word was visible: MISSING.

Fear congealed inside her.

"I assume your sister resembles you."

"Aside from the coloring, our hair and eyes, yes," she admitted, thinking how often they'd been mistaken for each other growing up.

"I'm guessing she's in serious danger. Probably you too."

"You're right," she said to Caleb, suddenly frantic.

"So you're calling the police?"

And tell them what?

That she'd been snooping around about her sister's intended? That she'd called in a favor that could get a coworker fired? That she'd been involved with the same man and they'd had brutal, near-death struggles? That she had foolishly put everything she'd held dear at risk to have an affair with a man she'd barely known, a man who had been lying about his identity.

He's not who he says he is.

Someone else had known he was a con artist and tried to warn her when she was seeing him. Someone who knew her phone number and had access to her burner phone. That person might know more. But would they have proof?

"Did you hear me, Brooke? You're telling your sister to avoid him, right? You're going to the police."

"I think I need more evidence before I call in the authorities," she said, and she heard Caleb's unhappy sigh on the other end of the line. Just because she looked like Emme, the missing woman, wasn't enough. All her suspicions couldn't be backed up. If she had the necklace . . . maybe. But even then, she doubted there would be enough of a connection for the police to arrest him.

"Brooke, just stay away from him," Caleb insisted as the wind howled outside. "Have your sister break it off and change the locks. Who knows what he might do?"

Exactly, she thought, her blood turning to ice.

"I will."

"Promise."

"On my life."

"That's what I'm worried about, but I'm going to keep looking," Caleb said. "See what else I can find. I'll get back to you."

"Thanks," she whispered.

She thought of her family. All in one vehicle. With Elijah Rossario, suspected murderer. She had to warn them. She had to call the police. She glanced at the time. It was after one. The service was over.

She was about to text Neal when her screen lit up with a text from Marilee:

He disappeared.

Eli's not with us.

Mom, be careful.

He's not who he says he is.