“All of them,” Beau said. “All his men, and Saria led the way. They must have run.”

“And waded through the reeds in a couple of spots,” Gilbert contributed. “There was no other way.”

“My sister was runnin’ the swamp at night? Wadin’ through the reeds with gators?”

Remy’s voice had gone very quiet. Drake had hoped he wouldn’t go all commando on him, but now that he knew how insane he’d been to even try it, let alone have Saria with him, he couldn’t really blame the man.

“We knew they were running do, Remy,” he said. “Although we’re familiar with the rain forests and the danger in them, we had no idea how truly dangerous what we asked Saria to do last night really was. She was amazing and we were damned stupid to risk it.”

That was as much as he was conceding to Remy. The man could take it or leave it.

“So you were runnin’ dope, Beau? Right under my nose?”

“There’s a big difference between takin’ a boat out to deliver soap to a buyer and killin’ someone, Remy,” Beau pointed out. “We didn’t kill anyone.”

“So how did you get into the drug business, Beau?” Drake asked.

“Delivery,” Gilbert emphasized. “That’s what we were comin’ to talk to the boy about.”

“First of all, let’s get something straight,” Drake said in disgust. “Joshua is a man. He does a man’s work and he takes a man’s responsibility.”

Beau sighed and looked at his brother, shaking his head. He looked down at the ground, defeated. Gilbert scowled. “You don’t want to hear the truth.”

“Sure we do, Gil,” Remy said. “Spit it out and don’t try sugarcoatin’ it, because I think our leader has an itchy trigger finger right about now.”

“You may have heard the rumors about our father,” Gilbert muttered. “Every one of them was true. He raped women and beat them. He beat our mother, beat us. He killed Renard. We couldn’t prove it, but he did. And he gambled. Mostly he lost.”

Drake raised his eyebrow.

Gilbert flushed. “I’m not whinin’ about my life. I’m tellin’ you the truth. He began workin’ for the Merciers, runnin’ their gardens for them. Mostly, he told everyone what to do. And he made deliveries to special customers. Eventually we took over makin’ the deliveries. The money was good and we didn’t think much about it until we started makin’ those deliveries in the middle of the night to boats comin’ in from all over.”

“So you’re saying you didn’t know about the opium when you first started working for the Merciers?”

Gilbert shook his head. “When the old man got sick, he told us to take over the night deliveries. That was when we knew. So about three years ago, we get a call and we go. We should have stopped as soon as we figured it out, but the money was good and we didn’t want to keep huntin’ gators.”

“And there was Evangeline,” Beau added. “We both felt we had to protect her.”

“Did someone threaten her?” Remy asked.

Beau looked at his brother. “Not outright. One night we came home and Evangeline’s room was wrecked. There was a knife stuck in the middle of her mattress. We’d hesitated about makin’ the delivery, hedgin’ a little when the call came in. We didn’t do that anymore. We figured whoever made those calls was tellin’ us we play ball with them or Evangeline dies.”

“Who made the calls?”

The two men looked at one another. Gilbert shrugged. “I don’t know. They used something, a device, to change their voice to a mechanical sound.”

“So after all this time working for the Merciers, you want us to believe you don’t have a clue who gives the orders?” Drake demanded.

Beau shook his head. “We didn’t want to know. We thought it was safer that way. They have a master gardener and crew tending the flowers. We just make the deliveries. To the dock, to the local shops and the special ones.”

“So what were you coming here to tell Joshua?” Drake asked. They were telling the truth. They’d closed their eyes to everything but the money for a lot of reasons, but their voices resonated with the truth.

“We thought if we told him what was goin’ on he’d think of a way to get us out without puttin’ Evangeline in danger,” Gilbert admitted. “We argued about it. Beau didn’t think you’d believe us. In the end we didn’t really have a choice. We knew you had to have seen us. That girl—Saria—she’s good in the swamp. She got you to the point in time to see the boat dockin’. She just doesn’t know how to quit.”

“She got us there,” Drake said. “In plenty of time to identify both of you.”

“Well, we finally quit arguin’ and came up through the canal and swamp in our boat. It’s docked down there at the lake. When we got close to the inn, we could see smoke. We tried the doors downstairs, but they were all locked,” Gilbert explained.

“Gilbert was goin’ to break in, but then we heard glass shatter on the second-story balcony. We ran, afraid if you saw us, you’d think we started the fire. But when we got down to the lake, both of us couldn’t just leave, knowin’ there were people maybe burnin’ in the inn, so we ran back.”

Again, there was that ring of truth in Beau’s voice that Drake couldn’t ignore. He glanced at Remy, who nodded. He thought they were telling the truth as well. They were guilty of taking drug money, but neither man was a killer—certainly not a serial killer. And Drake doubted if either possessed the brains to mastermind placing opiates in perfumed soaps.