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** KEVIN **

I could feel four sets of eyes burning into me as I struggled to decide what to do. As much as I wanted to be the one to relay the facts to the others, I just didn’t feel right about delivering the news without Howie being present. I rubbed anxiously at my eyes and leaned back in the chair.

“I won’t tell the story without Howie.” I dropped my hands from my eyes and looked around the room. AJ, Brian, and Nick looked upset, but they also looked as though they understood. “I guess that means that Detective Bell will be filling you in.”

Detective Bell let out a heavy sigh and repositioned himself in his chair. He gave me a sideways glance before turning his attention to the others. He paused as though waiting for Nick and Brian to move from the bed in order to make themselves more comfortable. When it became apparent that neither one of them was going to leave AJ’s side, Detective Bell let out another exasperated sigh and launched into his explanation.

“It’s probably best to start by letting you know that Sarah Moss works as a senior-level administrative assistant for the Franklin Police Department.” Detective Bell delivered the chilling news in the same way that he had told me; stone faced and deliberate. “Well, given the circumstances, she is obviously no longer employed …”

“What the fuck?!” AJ interrupted at record speed, just like I knew that he would. “The nut-job who tried to give me brain damage works for the police?”

Detective Bell cringed. “Unfortunately, yes. She started working for the department three years ago. She passed all of the background checks, the employment qualifications, and the psychological evaluation. As far as we can tell, this is her first instance of any type of criminal activity.”

“She passed a psychological check?” Brian raised his eyebrows in disbelief. “How the hell did she manage to do that?”

Detective Bell shrugged. “It’s anyone’s guess, really. However, you can all rest assured that we will be doing a thorough overhaul of our testing procedures from this point forward.”

“Well, gee, that sure makes me fell a hell of a lot better.” AJ made a huge show out of rolling his eyes before he gingerly leaned back against his pillows. “Keep going with the story.”

“You’re the one who keeps interrupting.” I pointed out. “He could be finished already.”

“Now who’s interrupting?” AJ shot back, his eyes narrowed.

“As you’ve already learned, aside from working for the police, Sarah filled her time by nursing a rather unhealthy infatuation with Mr. Carter.” Detective Bell raised his voice in order to be heard over the bickering, and AJ and I immediately fell silent. “It was this intense infatuation that led Sarah to orchestrate the murder of Dan Scott. She met Mr. Scott online through the forums on bsbcrazies.net. Sarah befriended Mr. Scott because she knew that he was undergoing a significant physical transformation in order to make himself look more like Mr. Carter. Once his physical transformation was complete, and it became well known on the forums that Mr. Scott was in possession of Mr. Carter’s identification, Sarah arranged to meet Mr. Scott at the bar in Franklin.”

“She set him up.” Nick whispered. “She told us as much. She killed Dan to bring the five of us together.”

Detective Bell nodded grimly. “You’re right. Sarah used Mr. Scott to generate the media attention that she needed, as well as to ensure that the five of you would come together in the Nashville area. She sent her cousin, Vinny Capotti, to the bar that night with explicit instructions about how to drug and murder Mr. Scott.”

“Vinny is her cousin.” Brian repeated that small bit of information to himself. “And Tony is her brother …”

Detective Bell raised his eyebrows in surprise at Brian’s comment. I must have failed to mention the fact that we already knew that piece of the puzzle when I had been speaking to him earlier.

“That’s right.” Detective Bell nodded. “Tony is Sarah’s biological brother and Joey, as it turns out, is her step-brother on her father’s side.”

“It’s good to know that this whole event was a family affair.” AJ snorted. “We wouldn’t have wanted anyone to feel left out.”

I resisted the urge to tell AJ off for the second time. His comment had actually been kind of funny. Of course, I would never give him the satisfaction of knowing that he had come close to making me laugh in such a stressful situation.

“It’s obvious from the depth of her planning that Sarah had been working on this abduction scheme for months, maybe even years.” Detective Bell also ignored AJ’s comment and pressed forward. “As a second-tier administrative assistant, Sarah had access to confidential information, including requests for private security coverage. When the request for your twenty-four hour security coverage was issued, Sarah was the one who organized the contract with G4 Security. We checked their employment records and both Joey and Tony have been working for the company for a little less than a year. It seems as though Sarah is quite friendly with the security coordinator at G4 and she was able to ensure that Joey and Tony were assigned to your case by manufacturing certain requirements on their behalf.”

“I can’t believe that we didn’t realize what was going on.” Nick shook his head. He looked beyond defeated. “Joey broke into the house and tried to beat the shit out of both Brian and AJ, and we still didn’t figure it out.”

Detective Bell’s face grew even more solemn as he turned to address Nick, Brian, and AJ more specifically. “We should have looked into that incident more closely. We now assume that the sole purpose of that ‘attack’ was to determine which of you would be the most likely to fight back. After that little ‘test’, Sarah made sure to take Mr. Richardson and Mr. Dorough first because she knew that the two of them would put up less resistance. She used the two of them as leverage to make the rest of you easier to take down. She obviously knew that the three of you wouldn’t put up too much of a fight if you thought that it would cause more harm to your friends.”

“What was the end goal?” AJ was clearly becoming impatient. “I get that Sarah was obsessed with Nick and that she blamed him for the fact that her life is a complete pile of shit, but what is it that she wanted with all five of us?”

“Her overall plan was to make Mr. Carter watch as she killed the rest of you one at a time. The entire episode was supposed to be broadcast online through your official website, as part of her goal was to make Mr. Carter's pain as public as possible. According to Joey, who was pretty quick to spill most of the details, Sarah was going to somehow arrange for you to actually kill each other. That’s why she initially removed your wrist constraints.” Detective Bell looked cautiously around the room as he spoke. “As Joey told us, it was Mr. Littrell who messed up Sarah's plan by moving to save Mr. Richardson. It seems as though Sarah had a pretty good handle on your respective relationships and Mr. Littrell's decision to save his cousin apparently took her by surprise.”

I caught Brian’s eye as the detective’s words hung in the air. Brian’s decision to try and save me had also taken me completely by surprise. Even though Brian and I were officially family, we had never bonded in the same way that he had with Nick and AJ. The thought that he would risk his life to save mine had never even entered my head. If the situation were to have been reversed, I would have done the same thing, but I seriously doubted whether or not Brian knew that.

Brian returned my look; his face a mixture of pride and regret. He gave me a small nod to let me know that the regret was not meant for me before he turned to face the detective. “Sarah had a specific order, didn’t she? When Howie got shot first, her plan fell apart. I could see it in her eyes; she was panicking when Howie hit the floor.”

Once again, Detective Bell nodded in agreement. “If you choose to believe Joey, Mr. Dorough was supposed to be killed last.”

“Last?” The word slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it. I could feel my face flushing as I struggled to find a way to cover up my surprise. Detective Bell hadn’t told me that tidbit of information during our earlier conversation. “I mean – I just don’t – I figured that …”

“You figured that I was supposed to be last.” Brian supplied. He cast his eyes to the floor to avoid the fact that Nick was staring at him with an intense look of pain and confusion. “This girl knows us better than we know ourselves, Kev. She had it right.”

“But Howie isn’t …” Nick stopped, took a shaky breath, and started again. “I wouldn’t have been able to cope, regardless of the order. Her plan would have worked; she would have broken me.”

“The whole situation is partially our fault.” Detective Eaton’s voice echoed from the doorway. He took a few cautious steps into the room and looked around, his eyes eventually landing on me. “We let you down.”

“This is nobody’s fault.” I shook my head. “Y’all did the best that you could with what you had to work with. It’s nobody’s fault that Sarah is clearly battling with some pretty serious mental issues. The fact that she let her infatuation with Nick consume her whole life is proof of that.”

“If it hadn’t taken us so long to trace the emails things would have turned out differently.” Detective Eaton argued. “Once we realized that it was Sarah who had sent the messages, everything fell into place faster than we could blink. The structure where you were being held is off the grid, but the land is registered to a relative of the Capotti family. As soon as we connected Vinny with Sarah, it was essentially game over. I just wish that we had been able to navigate our way through Sarah’s scheme before she was able to get as far as she did. The mentality behind her motives may be questionable, but there’s no doubt that the girl is smart. How she ever managed to convince three of her family members to back her up and to participate in such a heinous crime is still beyond me.”

“When it comes to family, people often act without thinking things through.” Brian interjected. He gave me a small smile as he spoke. “People will do anything for their family.”

I couldn’t speak; the lump in my throat was too big. I swallowed painfully and struggled to keep myself planted firmly in the chair. All I wanted to do was rush across the room, throw my arms around Brian and let him know that I, too, would do anything for my family. I tended to act like a hard-ass, a role that I had adopted simply because I was the oldest and it had been silently implied that I was supposed to be the one who kept everyone in line. Now, I desperately wanted nothing more than to be part of the brotherly banter, but I was having a hard time letting go of my ‘big brother’ role, of letting the other guys know that I was ready to just be their friend and not their ‘protector’.

“Kev?” Nick interrupted my thoughts. “Are you okay?”

I nodded, still unsure if my voice would be able to support my thoughts. “I’m fine.”

“Excuse me?” A soft knock on the door caused all of us to look up. A middle-aged, male doctor was standing in the doorway. “I’m looking for the family of Howard Dorough. I was told that they might be in this room.”

“That’s us.” AJ, Nick, Brian, and I all spoke at the same time; our heads simultaneously bobbing in anticipation.

The doctor looked down at the clipboard in his hands. “You’re all his immediate family?”

“No.” I clarified. “Actually, none of us are directly related to him.”

“But we’re still his family.” AJ added. “All of us.”

“Is he okay?” Brian jumped in. “Is he out of surgery? Are we able to see him?”

The doctor let out a long sigh and rubbed his hand against the back of his neck. He cautiously eyed Detective Bell and Detective Eaton before turning his attention to Brian. “I’m not supposed to release any information to non-immediate family.” He paused. “He’s out of surgery and he’s awake. I suppose that I can let one of you see him.”

“Nick, you go and see Howie.” I spoke before anyone else had the chance to open their mouth. “AJ, you’re not supposed to get out of bed, and I think that Brian and I should be the ones to make the statement to the media.”

“That’s fine.” Brian agreed without hesitation. “Nick, you should be the one to go.”

Nick studied Brian’s face long and hard before he turned and gave me a small, sincere smile. “Thanks, Kev.”