Part 10:

Because I’m Not Ready to Let Him Go

Mo drove along silently, checking over his shoulder every few minutes to make sure that the kid on the floor wasn’t coming to, which he wasn’t. Mo wasn’t sure why he didn’t just pull off to the side of the road, drag the kid out of the car, and kill him. But something told him to wait. He was obviously associated with Nick and Brian, and where those two were, there was money, so he was hoping that with this one, he would find more of the same.

Taking the Kentucky hat from his head, he tossed it to the passenger seat and turned out onto the highway, which was starting to build with bumper to bumper morning rush hour traffic. Blending into the traffic, he noticed a few people glancing over in his direction. Most likely, it was the sight of the shiny, luxury town car with a huge dent in the front from the impact with the tree that caught their eye. Besides, the windows of the car were tinted, so no one would be able to see the two bodies in the backseat, let alone make a positive I.D. of the man in the driver’s seat if it came down to that.

***

Kevin crawled on his hands and knees to the table in the corner of the room, where the phone sat. Reaching up for the receiver, he pulled the phone to the floor and sat with his back against the wall, tears blurring his vision. He punched in the numbers to Brian’s cell phone. He was praying that Brian would answer the phone and reassure him, in that calm and wonderful way that Brian possessed, that this was all just some horrible nightmare. But looking back over to the TV, which now flashed brightly-colored single photos of Howie and Nick, he had a feeling that Brian would not be able to help him.

As the phone continued to ring, he tugged at the neck of his faded denim shirt over and over; it felt like it was strangling him, as he struggled to breathe.

“Shit, Kev,” he said, pushing the end button and dialing again. “Get a grip; you’re okay.”

Now the TV was showing images of Nick from their unplugged concert. Long ago images of him looking so young and innocent with his long, shining blonde hair and wide-open smile. They did a freeze frame on him singing “I Need You Tonight”.

Standing up, Kevin dropped the phone and made his way to the TV. Picking the ancient black and white set up, he hurled it into the wall opposite him, watching it as it made a loud pop and then crackle down to its death.

And then, struggling to make his way back to the phone, he tried to call A.J.

***

A.J. was sitting on the deck of the new home he had purchased in Port Townsend, Washington, watching the sailboats move slowly across the water. He was positive that this must be the most peaceful place on earth, and he was so happy he had taken the advice of his real estate agent and purchased the Cape Cod style home on the water just the month before.

Sarah was the one who had drilled it into A.J.’s head that he needed a place far from the evils of the business. A place where he could come and get centered so that he could just be Alex. Smiling to himself, he could hear her whistling in the kitchen while she made them a pitcher of lemonade. Closing his eyes, he could see them when they were older, at this home, surrounded by their children and grandchildren. Drinking Sarah’s nasty, bitter lemonade with smiles on all of their faces.

Standing up, A.J. walked to the edge of the balcony to get a closer look at a beautiful boat in the distance. He could hear the phone ringing.

“Hey, babe, will you get that?” he called over his shoulder.

“How about you put the chicken on the grill, and I’ll get the phone.”

A.J. laughed to himself at the not-so-subtle hint from his future wife. Turning, he walked over to the grill and tossed the two chicken breasts on with a satisfying sizzle.

His life was about as close to perfect as it could ever be, and nothing was going to screw that up for him now.

“A.J., you need to come quick. Kevin is on the phone…”

***

Dan Fortis was standing in the middle of what could only be called a media circus. Trucks, vans, and cars now littered the road outside of the woods where the shootings had taken place. There was a frenzy of activity and chaos, as reporters from legitimate TV News all the way to sleazy scumbags from the National Enquirer crawled around the scene, snapping pictures and sending live remote feeds back to their stations. Dan smiled to himself, so grateful to be in the middle of it all. So grateful to be the one who first broke the story.

The police, lead by Sergeant Cox, had roped off the whole road now. They had also called in reinforcements for crowd control as the Backstreet Boys fans began to swarm the scene, along with the same morbid onlookers who seemed to come out in full force to every crime scene they saw on the news or heard on their police scanners.

Dan walked around the crowd, listening to the various news stations’ live reports as he checked his watch. He had managed to score a one-on-one interview with Sergeant Cox before the police gave a press conference to the growing crowd. This was in exchange for Dan shutting his mouth about the way he had just strolled into a secured crime scene without any of the police officers or their Sergeant even noticing he was there. As he made his way around a bright blue van, a couple of teenaged girls spotted him and charged forward, mascara streaking their faces from fresh tears, fear etched in their youthful, wide eyes.

“Hey, you’re that reporter from the TV!” A girl with short, platinum blonde hair spoke first. Dan just nodded.

“Did you see them? Did you see Nick and Howie? Were they in a lot of pain?” Another of the girls came forward, choking out the words in between sobs.

Dan tried to speak, but found he couldn’t, as another girl with long, brown hair put her arm around the girl who had asked him if he had seen the bodies.

“I hope that they know that we came here. I hope that they know we loved them so much.”

***

Looking up, Brian could make out a figure on the shore. It was a girl with long, dark hair, standing with her arms outstretched, willing him to come to her, giving him the strength he would need to compete the task at hand. He locked eyes with her, never breaking the intense connection, and suddenly, what seemed impossible became possible, as he overcame the waves, wind, and rain and made his way to the shore.

The girl walked out into the water and met him, reaching down to grab one of Nick’s arms. The two dragged him from the water and lay him out on the now blackened sand.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Brian asked, his voice echoing all around them. She shook her head.

“No, Brian, he’s not dead.”

“But he’s dying. I know he’s dying.”

“Look at him, Brian,” she replied, bending down to run a soothing hand over Nick’s forehead. “You need to look at your friend.”

“No, I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want to watch him die.”

The girl reached out, taking Brian’s hand in hers. “Why won’t you look at your friend?”

“Because I’m not ready to let him go.” Thunder crashed, and lightening filled the sky with rage and light.

“Look at him, Brian. You don’t need to be afraid.”

But Brian was afraid. Looking down to the girl with the long, dark hair, he searched her face and her beautiful eyes, tears running down his cheeks. And in her eyes, he found courage.

Slowly, he knelt beside her and looked down at his friend.

Brian was shocked at the pale, bluish skin, the large gaping wound in Nick’s stomach, and the pain etched on Nick’s face. And then, suddenly, something strange began to happen. Brian watched as Nick’s features slowly began to change right before his eyes. The pained features of a dying man became the youthful features of a boy.

A boy with shining, golden hair and tanned skin.

A boy with long fingers and big feet.

A boy full of hopes and dreams.

It was the Nicky Brian had first met all those years ago in Florida.

Brian reached out a hand and touched Nick’s face. Nick’s eyes flashed open, a radiant shade of blue as a bolt of light lit Brian’s fingertips and sizzled up his arm. And then, as quickly as he had become a boy, Nick became a man again. The features aged before Brian’s eyes to the twenty two-year-old with so much life left to live.

Nick blinked his eyes twice, and then he smiled up at Brian and mouthed the words, “Thank you.” Brian looked down, amazed, as the wound in Nick’s flesh began to heal, and his skin went from the pale color of death to the warm flesh tones of life.

And he didn’t look like he was in pain anymore.

“Brian,” the girl with the dark hair said, “you saved his life.”

***

“BRIAN!”

Nick screamed the single name from beneath the oxygen mask, where he lay on the operating table. All of the nurses and doctors froze in silence, their eyes glued to the young man whom they had pronounced dead just seconds before.

He was still alive.

***

Mo pulled into the stall outside of his dump of an apartment and turned off the ignition. There was nobody around to question what he was doing. There never was. Glancing up, he flashed back to the last time he had been here, less then twenty four hours before, when he had shoved St. Nick down the metal stairs to Gus and the waiting truck below.

Opening the back door of the car, he reached in and grabbed Howie by the arms, pulling him out, then dropping him to the pavement below. Rolling him onto his stomach, Mo then reached down and grabbed him around his waist, hauling him up to a standing position that made it easier for him to haul the kid up onto his shoulder. He took the metal stairs two at a time up to the apartment and unlocked the door. Walking quickly to the couch, he dropped Howie down onto it and went to the kitchen. Rifling through the drawers, he came up with a large roll of duct tape and a rag and went back to the couch.

The kid twitched slightly and began to moan, as Mo pulled off eight large pieces of duct tape and wound them tightly around Howie’s wrists and ankles. Then, prying open Howie's mouth, he stuffed the rag in and walked across the room to the door. Glancing back, he opened the door, stepped out onto the landing, and pulled it shut behind him, locking it before heading down to the car.

***

Officer Park came out to the edge of the crime scene tape, searching for the stupid son of a bitch reporter that had broken the story. He spotted Dan standing in a crowd of young girls. Waving his arms, he got Dan’s attention and called him over.

“Please tell us what you saw.” The blonde girl grabbed at the sleeve of Dan’s coat, her eyes pleading. “We need to know.”

“I’m so sorry,” Dan said, nodding towards the officer who was calling him over. “I-I have to go.” The dark hair girl began to cry harder as he turned and walked towards the officer. Looking back at the girls, with their sad eyes and trembling hands, he wished there were something he could do or say to make things better. He had never seen anybody look as distraught as those girls looked. Or maybe he had just never paid that close of attention to people before. His life had become so much about finding the perfect story to get him recognition that he realized he had forgotten that there were real human beings behind the stories.

***

Sergeant Cox gave Dan ten minutes of his time, quickly going through the details he was allowed to give out. There were three victims. Two dead, one at a local area hospital, clinging to life. The identities of all three involved were unknown. There was the possibility of a link to the Backstreet Boys, but right now, it was speculation at best and was based on a call made to dispatch sometime in the early morning hours. Dan quickly scribbled the words on his pad of paper.

“Have you notified the families of the Backstreet Boys or the members themselves in order to determine whether or not they were involved?”

Sergeant Cox glared at Dan, pausing before he continued. “I’ve given you all of the information that I can give you right now, Fortis. Anything else you want to know, you can find out with all the rest of the asshole reporters out there when we are damn good and ready to tell you.” Turning, Sergeant Cox walked, away leaving Dan speechless.

***

As the door shut, Howie blinked his eyes open and looked around the room. He had come to right around the time the rag was being stuffed in his mouth, but the pounding in his head, along with his own general confusion, made him slow to wonder what the hell was going on.

Looking around the room, he realized that he had no idea where he was, but how he got there, that was another thing. The flashback was furious, just like in the movies. Visions drenched in pale brown tones, with slow, dragging sound.

“H-help… I-I-I’m… d-d-d-ying…”

“Nick is dying, Leighanne. I have to get him help. He’s dying…”

“Whatever you do, don’t open this door to anybody, do you hear me?”

“But there is a guy in the road waving us down. He looks like he needs help…”

“I’m sure that the Nick and Brian I know aren’t the same guys you know…”

“Two stupid little fucks, my Nick and Brian...”

Howie winced at the memory of the man’s hand shooting forward into his face, slamming his head into the window before he passed out… and then he could remember nothing after that. It was as if time had stopped from that moment until right now.

Slowly, Howie tried to stand on shaky legs, his stomach lurching at the realization that both his hands and ankles were bound. He’d seen a million late night movies about this sort of situation, and rarely did they have a happy ending. Hopping forward, he lost his balance, tumbling into a table before he fell to the ground. He felt something bounce off of his head and then something else flutter past his face to the ground. Lifting his head up, he could see that the thing that had bounced off of his head was a worn, brown billfold with the letters N-C carved into the bottom left corner. And beside the billfold was the second item that had fallen from the table… Nick’s Florida driver’s license.

Howie tried to push himself up into a sitting position, his eyes glued to the picture of Nick smiling up at him from the driver’s license. Shit, he had to get the hell out of there, and he had to get the hell out of there fast because wherever he was now was where Nick had been. And for all he knew now, Nick Carter was dead, and he was going to be next.

Just as he worked himself up to his knees, the front door burst open, a wedge of light breaking across the carpet where Howie was struggling desperately to stand.

And looking up, Howie knew he was staring into the eyes of a madman.

***

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