“WHAT!”  Frank’s shout froze whatever either of his parents was going to say next, as they turned to see him standing in the doorway.  He’d heard the door and come down to see who it was.

“Joe is working for me.”

Frank looked at his parents as they all felt the same emotions at once – relief, excitement, disbelief, and betrayal.

Why would Joe purposely let them believe he was dead…and for so long? 

Two months of hell…two full months….

The Gray Man put up his hand to continue.

“It wasn’t his choice.  Look, let me explain.… I was on my way to offer your boys a mission when I heard about the accident…. I snuck into Joe’s hospital room while you were talking with the doctor, and was there when Joe started to come around.  He had no idea where he was, who I was or, more importantly, who he was.” 

“I saw it as a perfect opportunity.  I’m sorry, but I needed him… and with him not remembering anything about who he really was – it was perfect!  He passed out again and I overheard the doctor telling you that Joe had a severe head injury and might not make it.  I couldn’t let that happen.  I couldn’t let him die – I needed him too much.” 

“So I made a phone call and had him moved to one of my facilities.”

“I saw his body!” Frank anguished.  His father had moved beside his mother and they were holding onto each other in disbelief.

The Gray Man shook his head.  “No you saw ‘a’ body – but not your brother’s body.  Please…” he motioned for them to sit, and running his hands across his face, a nervous gesture that they had never seen before, he sighed, “let me continue.  We don’t have much time.” 

Fenton, Laura and Frank sat down together and waited while the Gray Man took a deep breath and prepared to continue. 

Just then the phone rang and Frank grabbed it.  “Hello.”

“Frank, is Biff with you?” came the distraught-sounding voice of Mrs. Hooper, as she asked about one of the Hardys’ closest friends – and Joe’s best friend. 

Frank frowned as he answered, “No I haven’t seen him today.”   A moment of guilt flashed through him as he thought about how much he had been neglecting Biff since the accident. 

Being around Biff had poured salt into his wounds because he had been Joe’s best friend.  Frank quickly decided that he needed to fix that, but he didn’t have time to talk to her right now.  “No, I haven’t.  But I really need to go right now.”  And he hung up.

“The reason I was on my way here, was to offer you—” he indicated Frank, “an assignment.  Well not you, specifically – it was Joe I needed, but I knew you would never let him go undercover without you.”

“I’ve been working for a long time to bring down a white slavery ring run by millionairess Andreya Plyth.  Andreya has two sons, Pharaoh and Remus – and they are kind of like your boys, Fenton, only meaner.”

“Pharaoh is the older one, but it is Remus that concerned me.  Remus is the spitting image of your son, Joseph.”  The Gray Man watched as Fenton’s eyes narrowed and both he and Frank exchanged a knowing look - they were beginning to get the picture now.  But they let the man continue.  Laura just stared at him in disbelief.

“I thought that if we could remove Remus and replace him with Joe, then maybe we could finally bring down this ring.” 

At this point Frank had to interrupt.  “Excuse me for asking… but why the interest?  I mean isn’t this a little beneath your usual interests?  Or is there some hidden Assassin-type connection that we haven’t gotten to yet?” 

Fenton was wondering the same thing, and they waited while the Gray Man once again ran his hands over his face.

“Because….Because this is personal…. Andreya took my son from me.  Anyway, when I saw Joe and realized that he didn’t know who he was, I had to make a decision – there was no time to wait.  I made a call and it happened.” 

For a few minutes no one spoke until Laura cleared her voice and asked, “Who was in the morgue?  Who did we bury??”

“Remus.”

“What!!” three voices in unison exclaimed.

“We didn’t kill him.  As coincidences should have it – he was murdered.  We found his body, beaten and bruised, in a back alley and put him on ice while I could talk to you.  Then with Joe’s accident – well it seemed all too coincidental.  I couldn’t wait…so I switched the body with Joe and had you talk to one of our doctors - who explained that Joe died from his injuries.” 

“Who did you bury?  No one.  We removed the body before burial and weighted down the coffin.  When this whole thing was over I was going to return Remus’s body to the estate for a proper burial – it was too much to allow you to bury him in a Hardy plot and then exhume him at a later time…. Plus, if Joe had regained his memory and found out – well, let me just say I didn’t need that to deal with as well.”

Suddenly in the back of his mind, Frank heard Joe’s voice from the night of the accident asking him if he was all right, and then again every night in his nightmares. 

He jumped right up off the couch and smacked himself in the head.  “I should have known!”

His parents stared at him in horror as he continued to smack his forehead until his father jumped up and grabbed his hand. “What’s wrong?”  he asked, worried that Frank was losing it. 

Frank turned to him wild-eyed.  “I should have known that Joe wasn’t dead.  The last thing I remember before blacking out was Joe asking me if I was all right!  But Joe was supposed to have been thrown through the window and the body in the morgue was so disfigured that there is no way he could have asked me anything!  I should have known – it was staring me right in the face…every night!” 

He sat down in shock – he had known all along that his brother was alive and yet he didn’t see it.  Night after night he was asked the same question – are you okay?  Are you okay?

“Is he okay?”  Frank heard his mother ask and it brought him back to his father’s office. 

The Gray Man shook his head sadly. “I don’t know.  He suffered a bad knock to his head from the accident and it has left him with amnesia.  Our best doctors have done what they could, but it’s doubtful that he’ll ever remember who he was – the best that you could hope for is maybe some partial memory…. Other than the head injury, his other injuries were minor, with the worst being a bruised lung.  The seat belt saved his life – both of your lives.”

“The only memory he does have is being in the accident.  He knows that there was someone else in it with him, but other than that… no, Frank he doesn’t remember you.  I showed him pictures to see if he would remember you being with him.  But he didn’t know you….”

The Gray Man looked compassionately at the young man in front of him.  He watched as the teen tried to keep from breaking down as he was told that his brother didn’t know who he was… and that he probably never would again.

“But he asked me if I was okay”, he repeated, and the Gray Man only nodded sadly. 

“Yes, he said that there was someone else in the van and he was worried that they were hurt.  But he doesn’t remember who that was.”

“What did you tell him?”  asked Fenton, and then he continued as the Gray Man looked at him questioningly, “What did you tell him when he asked about the other person in the vehicle?”

“Well…ummm…” the Gray Man looked first at one Hardy man and then at the other, “I told him it was his chauffer…and that he was dead.”

By the time the Gray Man finished telling the distraught family everything, they were in disbelief. 

Joe actually thought he was Remus Plyth and that he had been the victim of an assassination plot.  He also thought that he, Remus, was working for the Gray Man to end the slavery ring, and right at this moment was deep undercover at the Plyth estate.  Undercover and very much in danger….

“Why are you telling us this now?” demanded Laura. She was angry.  How dare this man sneak into the hospital and steal her son; convince him that he was someone else and send him away?  How dare they bury ten bags of sand?! 

Both Fenton and Frank listened intently as the Gray Man continued.