“What the--?”   Nick dropped the hand towel he was using onto the bathroom countertop and reached for the tiny, platinum wedding band resting in the empty soap dish, his hands still damp from washing them.  He rolled the slippery metal between his thumb and forefinger and squinted as he examined it carefully.  He was pretty sure it belonged to who he thought it belonged to, but he hadn’t seen it in months, and the thought that he was seeing it now scared him a little.  The last he knew, it had been boxed up and put away in the attic for safe keeping, so actually, seeing it today scared him a lot.  He gulped and stared at it, and the longer he stared at it, the more his hand started to shake.  Why now?  After all this time?  Mentioning it to her seemed like a bad idea.  The last thing he wanted to do was start a fight, especially today.  

The wind outside roared, and a tree branch just outside the little porthole window in the bathroom cracked.  Curious, he looked out. The sun was shining brightly, and the morning dew glistened in the sunlight, lifting off the grass and forming a light fog that hovered above the grass in the backyard.  Nick gasped when he saw him standing there, about halfway in between the deck and the tall wooden fence bordering the yard.  Then the man waved. Nick lost his grip on the ring.  It fell to the floor and rolled into the baseboard, just narrowly missing the slats of the air conditioner vent.  Nick breathed a sigh of relief and stooped down to pick it up.  When he looked back out the window, the man was gone.  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  “You’re too nervous, Nick,” he said to himself under his breath.  He placed the ring back in the soap dish and hung the towel back on the towel rack.  

As he was going back out into the hallway, his cell phone rang.  He pulled it out of his jeans pocket and looked at the screen to see who it was.  “Do you believe in ghosts?” he asked hastily as he brought the phone up to his ear to answer it.  

“Do I what?”  Brian asked on the other end of the line.

“Do you believe in ghosts?”  He said again.  “Angels? Apparitions? Warning signs?”

His friend chuckled.  “What is this, Nick?  Some new movie plot you’re cooking up?”Nick opened his mouth to answer then closed it back again. He jogged down the hall into his bedroom and shut the door.   “Nick?”

“Uh-- yeah.  Something like that.”  He sighed.  Perhaps this was the type of thing he best keep to himself.

“You sound nervous, buddy.  You okay?”

Nick gulped.  “I’m good,” he said quietly.

“I bet you’re just wound up about tonight. Are you ready, by the way?”

Nick shrugged, but then realized that Brian couldn’t see him shrugging.  “I don’t know,” he answered honestly.  

“Well, let’s just talk about the show,” Brian said brightly.  “What time is rehearsal again?”

“We’ve got the stage from 11 to 12.”

“Good.  We should make it into Nashville just in time, then.  Just chill out.  Everything’s gonna be great!”

“I hope so...”  Suddenly, Nick wasn’t so sure.

“I promise!  See you soon.”

“See ya, man.”  Nick ended the call and stuffed his cell back in his pocket.  He leaned his back against the door and looked up at the ceiling.  Maybe he’d just been seeing things outside, but that ring was definitely real.

 

 **********

“First, you’re a Backstreet Boy, then you’re a solo artist but still a Backstreet Boy, and now you’re the drummer in my band?”  Annie Morgan asked her boyfriend, placing her hands on her hips with an amused smirk.

“And still a Backstreet Boy,”  Adam the guitarist laughed from the other side of the stage.

Nick grinned sheepishly and  shrugged as he spun one of the drumsticks he was holding with his fingers.  “It’s just for tonight.  Lenny’s carpal tunnel was apparently flaring up really bad this morning, and we needed someone to fill in, so... Surprise!” He held his hands up with a dramatic flair and the drumsticks toppled to the floor,  clanging off a cymbal and  bouncing off a snare drum on the way down.  Annie laughed, but inside, her first inclination was an intense desire to call Lenny and make sure he was taking an anti-inflammatory and resting his wrists.  The doctor inside her was always going to be there, even if she was no longer actively practicing.  She watched as Nick bent over to pick up his drumsticks and smiled.  She loved that Nick Carter, an international pop star, was on a first name basis with her contemporary Christian backup band. His use of the word, “we” when referring to them didn’t go unnoticed.  Of course, then again, he did happen to be listed in the album credits as one of the producers on this song in particular, which they would be performing at the Dove Awards that night.

“Am I late?” Brian Littrell asked as he trudged through a side door of Ryman Auditorium with his wife and son trailing close behind him.  

“Nope,”  Annie answered quickly.  “You’re just in time  for Nick here to start practicing with us on drums.”  She stretched out her arm, gesturing towards her boyfriend, who was now twirling his drumsticks with both hands as he skimmed over the sheet music on the stand to his left.

“When did that happen?”  Brian asked, making his way onto the stage.  

“About fifteen minutes ago,” Nick answered matter-of-factly.  “Lenny’s got carpal tunnel, and I’ve got mad percussion skills.”  Brian ran across the hardwood and stopped in front of the drums.  He grabbed the chipped, black painted sticks out of Nick’s hands and played three beats, the first two on the drums, and the third on the hi-hat cymbal.  Ba-dum-ching!  “Well, that’s not very nice,” Nick deadpanned.  Baylee cackled from his seat on the front row.  Annie placed a hand over her mouth and stifled a giggle as Nick winked in her direction.

Brian laughed and handed the drumsticks back to his friend and bandmate.  “You ready to accept that ‘Song of the Year’ award with us tonight, Mr. Carter?”  

At the mention of their nomination, Nick’s heart started beating wildly.  It was funny how life could change so dramatically in less than a year.  Last October, he’d hopped on a plane headed to Atlanta because it was the first flight out of Los Angeles he was able to get a first class seat on.  Subsequently, he’d ended up on Brian’s doorstep, sloppy drunk after a cute stewardess kept bringing him drinks, and that’s where he met Annie.  After their initial meeting, he was pretty sure she hated him, but luckily, first impressions didn’t always stick.  He was reeling from a bad breakup, and she was a single mother who wasn’t quite ready to move on.  The chase to “get the girl” had definitely been the longest and hardest of his life.  Totally worth it, though.  

As it turned out, Annie and Brian were recording a duet in Brian’s in-home studio for his second Christian album, and Nick ended up doing most of the mixing on the sound board and throwing in his two-cents on harmonies and arrangement. That version ended up being the one that made the album, so there was Nick’s name in black and white on the song’s credits in the album insert-- Producer: Nick Carter.  He’d bought the first copy.  

He watched from afar as Annie tinkered on the piano while she and Brian warmed up, occasionally glancing down at the music on the stand in front of him to make sure he knew it as well as he thought he did.  Truth be told, even though he could probably keep a tempo on the drums in his sleep, he was a little nervous.  Not only had Brian and Annie’s song been nominated for the prestigious “Song of the Year” award, but Annie had also gotten much deserved nominations for New Artist of the Year, Female Vocalist of the Year, and Album of the Year.  He had a feeling it was going to be a really big night.

 

Since Nick had a house was just a few miles outside of Nashville, they opted to get ready for the show in the comfort of home.  Annie and her young son had basically lived there during the months she was recording and promoting her debut album, with Nick coming and going as his schedule allowed.  It originally started as a landlord/renter type of arrangement, except that Nick would never actually allow her to pay rent.  As their relationship grew, it began to feel more like “home.”  Yet unlike conventional couples who were “living together,” they each had their own rooms.  Annie was a traditionalist, and Nick, in love as he was, was happy to go along with it-- for now, anyway.  After the makeup artist and hairdresser had worked their magic on her, and Leighanne helped her step into her dress and zip it up before leaving to check on the guys, Annie found herself staring at her own reflection in the mirror.

 

Every curl was in place, expertly pinned out of her face  with finger waves across the side of her auburn head in an “old Hollywood” fashion.  Glossy red lipstick complemented her green eyes, making them appear even brighter, and the diamond earrings Nick had given her that morning, calling them an “early birthday/good luck tonight” present, sparkled in the warm, late afternoon sunlight that streamed through the window blinds.  She looked down at the top of the oak dresser in front of her to grab the matching bracelet and put it on, and gasped, her hand frozen in the air as she saw a third piece of diamond jewelry glistening in the September sun.  “How did that get there?” she asked herself.  She gulped and bent down to examine the engagement ring she hadn’t seen in months.  Curiously, the platinum band that was beginning to lose its luster and had taken on a gray tint the last time she’d worn it, was now bright and shiny, as it someone had taken it to a jeweler to have it cleaned and polished, and the two-carat princess-cut diamond glinted blindingly. With her hand shaking, she picked up the ring, held it between her thumb and forefinger, and stared at it.  Was this some kind of joke?  It had taken her years to finally pack the ring that her late husband had given her in a box and stow it away in the attic.  Now, someone had put it back on her dresser right before she was going to debut Nick as her serious boyfriend in front of TV cameras and the Christian music world while she walked the red carpet with him by her side?  The thought was a little unnerving.  

 

Suddenly, she had the urge to call her former mother-in-law and check on her son.  She walked over to her nightstand and picked her cell phone up.  After three rings, the older woman answered sounding breathless.  “Hello?”

 

“Hi, Gail,”  Annie smiled at the sound of the familiar voice on the other end of the line.  “I just wanted to check on Drew.”  

 

“Annie, honey, aren’t you supposed to be getting ready for the show?  We’re so excited to watch tonight.  He’s fine, by the way. He’s wearing me out, but he’s fine.”

 

Annie laughed. “We’re leaving in a few minutes.  I just needed to check in.  Once everything gets started tonight, I’m not sure when I’ll be able to do it again.  I worry even when I know he’s in good hands.  You know how it is.”

 

“I do,” Gail answered wistfully.  “I sure do.”  Annie couldn’t keep the tears from starting to well up in her eyes.  This woman knew exactly what it meant to worry about her son.  She also knew what it meant to have those worries and fears come true.  Undoubtedly, she’d worried when her son had left for that business trip.  Then, he’d returned in a body bag.  Gail Morgan had taken Annie under her wing after the death of her son, Annie’s husband, so much so that Annie had made the decision to move to Andrew’s hometown to practice emergency medicine in the local hospital after she’d completed her training.  However, after her son was born, things changed.

 

“I’m sorry, honey.  It’s just too painful to look at him,” Gail told her when Drew was only one month old.  Annie’s son was the spitting image of his father, with a crop of light blonde hair, wide eyes, and dimples when he smiled.  If it weren’t for the fact that he had the same emerald green eyes as Annie, you’d never know he belonged to her at all.  Even though they were living in the same small town, Annie and her mother in law rarely ever crossed paths for almost two years.  Luckily, Gail and Allyson, Andrew’s older sister, approached her when they heard she was moving to Nashville to start her music career.  As time healed their emotional wounds, they realized that having a little grandson/nephew who was Andrew’s, bittersweet as it was, was something they didn’t want to let go of. After several successful visits, Gail offered to keep Drew for a couple days surrounding the awards show, and Annie reluctantly agreed.  He loved his “Gamma,” and besides, Berea, Kentucky was a heck of a lot closer to Nashville than Boca Raton, Florida, where her own parents were happily enjoying their retirement.

 

“You’re going to have to get that boy a puppy,” Gail laughed.  “He’s making Rusty young again,” she said, referring to the old hound dog that her Andrew had always loved so much.  He must have been about 15 years old by now.  “I tried to get him to come to the phone, but he’s too busy wrestling in the grass with that dog!”

 

“One of these days, I will,”  Annie assured her.  “But right now, we don’t stay in the same place for very long, so it’s probably not a great idea.”

 

“I’m sure Nick’s dog sitter wouldn’t mind another,” Gail said nonchalantly.  Annie had been afraid to let Gail and Allison (Mr. Morgan had died of a heart attack a few months before Annie met Andrew), know about her new relationship, but again, time was healing wounds, and they’d been genuinely happy for her.  

 

“Hey there, gorgeous.”  Nick appeared in the doorway looking dapper in his dark grey suit and striped tie that complemented Annie’s navy blue, one shouldered evening gown.  “You ready?

He cocked his head to the side and flashed her his irresistible smile.

 

Annie smiled back and held up her index finger as she nodded toward the cell phone against her ear.  “Give Drew a kiss for me, Gail.  Call if you need anything.  My cell will be on silent, but I’ll check it throughout the night.”

 

“Sure thing, honey.  But don’t expect me to call.  He’s fine!”  Gail reassured her warmly.  “Now have a great time, and bring home one of those shiny bird trophies!”  Annie laughed as she told her goodbye and hung up the phone.  

 

She looked up at Nick, who was now standing beside her.  Then, her eyes flashed to the engagement ring still laying on the dresser.  “I’ll be just a minute, okay?”  She stood up and leaned forward to kiss him lightly on the jawline, careful not to leave a big lipstick mark there.

“Well, hurry up. The limo’s here.”  Nick gave her waist a gentle squeeze with his arm and started walking out.  “I’m kind of excited to see you walk down the stairs, all Scarlett O’Hara, anyway.”  Annie couldn’t help but giggle.  Nick had never seen Gone With the Wind until she made him watch it with her a few weeks ago.  Once he was out of sight, she hurried to get her bracelet put on and dropped her cell phone into her handbag.  The last thing she did was take the ring and stash it in her dresser drawer.  She didn’t think another thing about it for the rest of the night.

 

 

 

 

“You’re amazing,” Nick murmured against Annie’s lips as they crossed the threshold around two AM.  Just across the yard, a figure shrouded in black hid behind the mature pine tree near the driveway.

 

 

 

“You too, Mr. Producer.”  Annie looked up at him and smiled, her cheeks flushed with the excitement of the night, and her green eyes bright with happiness.  

 

 

 

“You tired?” Nick asked, hopeful.  After the night she’d had, he expected she’d say no.  He knew that adrenaline surge feeling quite well.  Not only had they snagged the award for Song of The Year, but Annie had also walked away with Best New Artist, and tied for Female Vocalist of the Year.

 

 

 

Annie smiled and placed the three awards she held in her arms on the table in the foyer.  “I’m sure I am, but I don’t expect sleep to come for a while.”

 

 

 

“Let’s keep celebrating, then.”  Nick gave her a quick kiss on the tip of her nose, unwrapped his arms from around her waist,  and jogged into the kitchen, where he retrieved a bottle of champagne from the wine cooler under the counter.  Annie came into the kitchen and leaned against the doorway as she watched him pull a couple of champagne flutes out of a cabinet above his head.  He grasped them carefully, crossing the crystal stems over each other with the fingers of one hand while he grasped the neck of the bottle of Annie’s favorite champagne in the other.  “I’m not used to coming home from awards show after parties sober,” he admitted with a sheepish grin, as a shadow passed by the kitchen window unnoticed.

 

 

 

“Well, the Gospel Music Association frowns on that sort of thing,” she replied.  “Thanks.”

 

 

 

“You’re welcome,” Nick answered with an affirmative nod.  

 

 

 

Annie didn’t necessarily disagree with the hardcore conservative Christians’ stance on alcohol, but she didn’t particularly agree with them either.  As a doctor, she knew the value of having a glass of red wine every night, and wasn’t opposed to having a cocktail while out to dinner, either.  She did like to abide by the biblical principle of “do not be a drunkard,” but that wasn’t to say she’d never done it.  The last time she’d been bonafide drunk, though, had ended with disastrous results, and she’d vowed to never go there again.  Still, the idea of celebrating with a glass of her favorite champagne seemed like a perfect way to relax at the end of the night.  “How’d you know we’d be celebrating, anyway?”  she asked Nick, her eyebrow raised in an amused smirk.

 

 

 

Nick shrugged as he crossed the tile floor to stand in front of her.. “Well, Best New Artist and Female Vocalist of the Year were in the bag.  Song of The Year had me a little nervous though.  It’s often that a Christian artist goes up against the likes of Steven Curtis Chapman and wins.  Plus, you were singing with Brian.”

 

 

 

Annie rolled her eyes and gave him a playful little shove.  “Be nice!” she scolded.

 

 

 

“Aren’t I always?”  He batted his eyelashes innocently and smiled as he bent down to give her yet another kiss, sad that his hands were full and he couldn’t touch her again at the moment.  After pulling his lips away, he gestured towards the stairs.  “Mi’lady.”  He bowed reverently and she giggled as she turned and started jogging up them, but not before first kicking off her heels on the hardwood floor at the bottom.  Nick followed close behind her, and bit his lip and smiled as he watched her bypass her own bedroom and head straight for his.  She went straight for the almost floor-length window by his bed and flung the curtains out of her way, then unlatched the lock and pushed it open.  She hiked up the skirt of her navy blue satin gown and climbed not-so-gracefully onto the rooftop, where she found an old quilt spread out across the shingles and a hammered steel ice bucket beside it.

 

 

 

“You’re sneaky,” she remarked as she lowered herself to a seated position on the quilt.

 

 

 

Nick shrugged nonchalantly as he clambered through the window as best he could while his hands were full.  “I knew we’d be celebrating,” he said as he sat down beside her and handed her the champagne flutes.  “I might have given Brian a key so he could fill the ice bucket before we got home.”  He grinned sheepishly as he put his own flute down and started working with the stopper on top of the champagne bottle.  He popped it off with a grunt and it went flying through the air, bouncing down the slanted rooftop and into a bush down below while champagne foamed out of the bottle and into his lap. “Oops.”

 

 

 

Annie threw her head back and laughed as she held out her glass and waited for him to pour the bubbly liquid into it.  He obliged and poured a glassful of his own before he placed the bottle into the bucket and scooted over until he was behind her.  He spread his legs and inched up towards her back, then enveloped her with his free arm as he took a long swig of his champagne.  Annie sighed happily as she leaned back against his chest.  They sat there in comfortable silence while they sipped their champagne and watched the occasional car or 18-wheeler pass by on the neighboring highway above and in front of them.  The roof over Nick’s covered porch outside his bedroom window had become Annie’s sanctuary shortly after she moved to Nashville, and before she and Nick started officially dating.  She loved that even though he was in a small neighborhood, there were no houses facing the front of Nick’s house, so no one could see her up there.  

 

 

 

The leaves on a nearby tree rustled in the cool September morning breeze, and Annie shivered, prompting Nick to put his now empty champagne flute down and wrap the edges of the jacket he was still wearing around her bare shoulders, pulling her in closer.  He dropped a kiss on the top of her head and rested his chin against it while they basked in the moonlight and she finished her own glass of champagne.  Nick could feel his heart pounding hard in his chest, and prayed she didn’t notice.  Her medical training made her quick to pick up on that sort of thing, so he basically had to wear his heart on his sleeve around her.  She knew him well enough to know when he was nervous, and her uncanny ability to recognize the physical signs didn’t help matters.  She tipped her head back to finish off her own serving of champagne, then wiggled out of his grasp and got up on her knees so that she could reach the still more than half-full champagne bottle.  When she turned with the bottle in her hand to ask Nick if he wanted another glass, he was leaning forward with his elbows on his bent knees and smiling warmly at her.  “Marry me.”

 

Annie’s hands started shaking, and she gripped the bottle in her hand tightly so that she didn’t drop it as she lowered it back down into the ice bucket.  She stared at Nick with wide eyes as he stood up and took a step towards her, then lowered his hands and put them in hers.  He gave them a little squeeze and pulled her up to her feet.  “Nick-”  He dropped his index finger onto her lips to quiet her.  

 

“Hold that thought.”  He turned on his heel and disappeared through the window.  Seconds later, he pushed his way through the billowing curtains and climbed back outside.  He dropped to one knee and pulled out a ring box.  “Marry me,” he breathed, popping the box open with his thumb to reveal a large, oval diamond, surrounded by a border of smaller diamonds that encircled the center diamond and scattered down the intricately engraved platinum band.  She took in a sharp breath and brought her hand up to her mouth as she choked back tears.  “I didn’t want to take away from your accomplishments tonight, and I was planning on doing it tomorrow before I have to head back out to LA the next day, but one of them was our accomplishment, and technically it’s tomorrow, and it seemed like a good time which is why I didn’t actually have the ring on me, but....”

 

“Yes!”  Annie exclaimed excitedly as tears coursed down her cheeks.  “Yes,” she said again, this time more of a quiet whisper, as she dropped down to her knees so that she could look at him face to face.  

 

“Really?”  Nick choked back the lump that rose in his throat and batted away his own tears with one hand while he still held the open ring box with the other.  Annie pulled her hand up to his face and brushed one away with the pads of her finger, still smiling at him through happy tears.  

 

“Really.”

 

“I-” His breath hitched in his throat.  “I was kind of afraid you’d say no,” he admitted clumsily.   

 

He thought of her old wedding ring that he’d found on the bathroom countertop the previous morning.  It was the first time he’d seen it since he helped box it up and put it away in the attic back in January when they’d finally decided to give a relationship with each other a shot.  Up until that point, she’d been prone to still pulling it out of her dresser drawer whenever she was really missing Andrew, and even wearing it occasionally.  She’d given up the engagement ring, but the wedding band was something she still wasn’t quite ready to let go of.  She ceremoniously “let go” of Andrew before she was able to fully be involved with Nick, but he still felt a pang of jealousy when he ran across that wedding band.  He didn’t say anything to her about it, because he figured maybe she’d just been missing him and gotten it out.  At least he hadn’t seen her wearing it.  It’s not like he expected her to forget about her late husband and the father of the little guy he’d grown so attached to, but still, it kind of rubbed him the wrong way, hence his fear that maybe she’d say no.  In the end, the ring disappeared later that afternoon, and she’d said yes, so it didn’t really matter. Strange though, that when he saw the ring, he also thought he saw a ghost.

 

Annie pursed her lips and gave him a knowing nod.  Letting go of her past and allowing herself to forge a real relationship with Nick had been one of the hardest things she’d ever done.  Once upon a time, she felt like she’d lost the love of her life at the mere age of 24, all her hopes and dreams dying in that accident along with her husband of only three years.  Now, she knew she was staring into the face of her future-- the man she was truly meant to spend the rest of her life with, have more babies with, live happily ever after with.  Oh, she knew the possibility of tragedy all too well, but now she also knew what her mother was talking about when she’d gathered her into her arms on the day of Andrew’s funeral, and told her “God always has a plan.”  She closed her eyes and silently thanked Him that Nick was part of the plan.  When she opened them, she looked down at the ring Nick was still holding in front of her face.  “Well, are you going to put it on me?”  she asked, holding out her left hand and wiggling that all-important finger.

 

Nick laughed and pulled the ring out out of its cushion in the box, then slipped it onto her finger.  He held her left hand with his right, and brought  it to his lips, grazing them over her knuckles.”You should have seen me going through your jewelry box trying to figure out your ring size,” he told her with a chuckle.

“Oh!”  Annie thought to herself.  “He must have gotten my old engagement ring out of the attic to check the size and forgotten to put it back!”  Now she felt silly for thinking it could have been anything else.  

“So, when’s the big day?” Kevin asked as the group took a break from recording to have lunch.


Nick smiled despite the little argument he’d just lost to his “big brothers” in the studio just moments before, his demeanor completely changing. “We’re thinking December-- maybe around Christmas,” he said excitedly before taking a swig out of his water bottle.


“That soon?” Brian asked, his eyes wide. “That doesn’t give you a lot of time to plan.” He chomped into his sandwich.


Nick shrugged. “We don’t need a lot of time to plan. This isn’t Leighanne I’m marrying.”


Brian coughed and sputtered around the ball of chewed up bread he’d been trying to swallow as he started to laugh. “What’s that supposed to mean?”


“All I’m saying is that there aren’t going to be any synchronized swimmers.”


AJ burst out laughing. “Do I get to help?”


“No!” Nick insisted. “We’re planning on simple.” AJ pouted dramatically. “Nothing fancy--just the two of us and Drew, you guys and family, and a minister. We’ll be finished promoting ‘It’s Christmas Time Again’ a few days before Christmas, so we should have time for a little honeymoon before those couple shows we have scheduled at the end of the year.”


“Aha!” Howie interjected, looking up from texting Leigh on his cell phone. “A little excited to get to the honeymoon are we, Nicky?”


Nick could feel the heat starting to rise in his cheeks. “You two still haven’t sealed the deal yet?” Kevin asked playfully.


“We’ve sealed the deal!” Nick argued. “Once,” he added quietly.


“That doesn’t count!” Kevin argued back. “You two weren’t even together then.”


“Why are you so concerned about my sex life, anyway, Mr. Preacher’s Brother?” Relief washed over him as the sound of this cell phone ringing cut the conversation short. “Hey, baby! I just fought Kevin to sing a verse about Kentucky girls and lost. I’m the one who’s actually marrying one, but apparently, I don’t have the authentic ‘twang’ required to sing such a verse. But it’s all good. As a consolation prize, I get to sing about Bangkok,” he said with an eye roll as the rest of the guys snickered.


Annie wasn’t amused. “There’s something wrong with the alarm system, Nick.”


“The alarm system?” He asked, sitting up straighter and giving her his full attention. Brian whipped his head in Nick’s direction and scooted his chair closer to listen in on his end of the conversation. Nick’s phone beeped in his ear, alerting him to an incoming call, but he ignored it.


“The control pad says ‘fault zone 18.’ I don’t even know where zone 18 is.”


“I don’t either,” Nick admitted with a sigh. Suddenly he realized that his fiancee was calling him to tell him something was wrong with the alarm system in the house that she was staying in-- alone-- literally thousands of miles away, and there was a very real possibility that maybe someone was in the house. “Where are you?”


“Standing in front of the downstairs control panel. That’s why I know what it says,” she answered nonchalantly.


Nick gulped and took in a deep breath in an attempt to control his now erratic heartbeat. “Where’s Drew?”


“He’s right here with me.”


“Annie, get out of the house,” he said frantically. Now he had the full attention of all of his bandmates. After being together for so long, it had become customary for the other guys to “check out” while one of them was talking to his wife or girlfriend in the same room, so as not to listen in on the conversation. Hearing the panic in their little brother’s voice, though, they had all officially checked back in.


“What’s going on?” AJ whispered to Brian, who was now nervously biting his fingernails.


“Something’s going on with the alarm system at Nick’s house in Tennessee and Annie and Drew are there.” Brian sent up a quick prayer for the woman he’d met and forged a quick friendship with just over a year ago.


“Shit,” AJ muttered under his breath. Then, he sent up a quick prayer of his own.


Kevin put a reassuring hand on Nick’s shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. “Tell her to get in the car and call the 800 number on the control panel.”


“Annie?”


“I heard him,” Annie told Nick quickly. “We’re on our way out the door.” She stooped down to pick up her two year old with her free arm while she grasped her cell phone tightly in her other hand. It hadn’t even occurred to her that they might be in danger when she walked into the house and saw the message on the control panel when she started to punch in the passcode. She called Nick hoping for some guidance on a little inconvenience, but when she heard the panic in his voice, she looked down at Drew and realized she had to get out of there. She held the phone between her ear and her shoulder and balanced Drew on her hip while she fumbled to unlock her car door.


Nick’s phone beeped, signaling yet another incoming call, and he gripped it in frustration, his knuckles turning white. “Are you in the car yet? You need to call them now.”


“No, Nick. I’m not in the car yet. I have a wiggly child to put in a car seat,” Annie answered, her voice on edge. “Lean back, Drew. I need to make the seatbelt click, okay?”


“Seatbelt click!” Drew squealed happily. The toddler’s unknowing happiness only served to multiply the tension growing in her neck and shoulders. Once she was satisfied with the tightness of the harness, she rushed to the driver’s side door and got in, locking the doors with one hand and buckling her seatbelt with the other, all the while still balancing her cell phone between her shoulder and her ear.


“I have to hang up now, Nick,” she lamented as she put the key in the ignition and turned it.


“What? Why?”


“Because I need to call the security company.”


“Oh,” he responded, his heart sinking at the thought of having to let her go. “I’ll hold. Just put me on hold, okay?”


Annie sighed. “Do you think maybe we’re overreacting a little?” She backed out of the driveway slowly and headed down the street.


“Maybe...” Nick said cautiously. “But you know, this is my house, and we do have some pretty crazy fans. You can’t be too careful.” While he was talking, the phone beeped in his ear yet again, indicating a third incoming call. Again, he ignored it. “I’m staying on the line while you call them, Annie. Don’t keep me waiting too long, okay?”


“I’ll do my best.”


“Oh....and Annie?”


“Yes, Nick?”


“I love you.”


She smiled. “I love you, too, Nick.”


Nick drummed his fingers nervously on the table in front of him and bounced one of his legs up and down on the ball of his foot while he waited impatiently for Annie to make the phone call. Brian placed his hand firmly one of Nick’s shoulders while Kevin did the same on the other. “She’s been gone a long time, hasn’t she?” he asked aloud.


Howie glanced down at his watch. “About a minute and a half, Nick.” Nick nodded slowly. “Just chill out, buddy. I’m sure it’s fine.”


“I just wish she’d let me know what’s going on,” Nick admitted with a sigh.


“A minute and a half, Nick. Give her time.”


As if on cue, Annie came back on the line, sounding much more relaxed than she did earlier. “They’ve called your cell phone three times, Nick. From their end, it looks like a dead battery in one of the window sensors. They gave me a model number, and I’m on my way to buy one at the hardware store, now.”


Nick let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. “Dead sensor battery,” he said to his bandmates to fill them in, then he turned his attention back to Annie. Immediately, the tension in the room started to let up. “Aren’t they going to come out any change the battery for you? I mean, isn’t that the kind of stuff I pay them a monthly maintenance fee for?”


“Well, yeah,” Annie replied lackadaisically. “But since this isn’t technically an emergent situation, they can’t make it out until the end of the week, so I figure I might as well do it myself now.”


“Do you know how to do that?”


“It’s not rocket science, Nick. All I need is a battery and a screwdriver.”


Nick bit his nails as he pondered his fiancee’s situation. “Can you leave the alarm on while you do that? I mean, what if somebody tries to break in while you’re working on the system?”


“Relax, Nick. I’m sure it would be fine to leave it off for a few minutes, but I’m going to call Jason back after I buy the battery. He’s going to walk me through setting that zone on bypass while I fix the sensor so that I can leave the alarm on for the rest of the house, then test the sensor to make sure changing the battery fixes it.”


“Jason?” Nick asked with a raised eyebrow.


“Customer service guy at the security company,” Annie filled him in.


“Oh, okay. Sounds good.” He watched as Howie, Kevin, Brian, and AJ filed back into the studio. “Looks like we’re getting back to work, but I’ll call to check up on you later, okay?”


“I’ll look forward to it.” Nick breathed a sigh of relief as he hung up his phone and put it in his pocket. As he sauntered back into the studio, he made a mental note to call the security company later and set up an appointment to have someone come out and inspect everything, just to be on the safe side.

“Just a minute, Howie.” Nick held up his index finger and gestured to the cell phone attached to his ear as he turned his back to him and kept talking. “So, what did you find out for me?.... Good. That’s good..... No, she doesn’t know yet. I wanted to get all my facts straight before I talked to her about it..... Thanks, man. I owe you one. Oh, and Jordan, let me know when you have everything ready, okay?” He turned off his phone and tossed it on the couch. “You ready, D?”


Howie raised an eyebrow. “Were you just talking to Jordan from legal?”


“Yep.” Nick crossed his living room and bent down to examine the computer and web cam that had been set up on one of his end tables.


“What are you up to?” Howie asked, squinting his eyes at him suspiciously.


Nick gave him a non-committal shrug. “Nothing I can really talk about right now.”


“Everything okay?” He couldn’t help himself. Even though Kevin was back, Howie was forever and always going to be in protective big brother mode after having to step up to the plate in the older man’s absence. Kevin was always “there,” so to speak, assuring them that even though he was no longer in the group, they could count on him if they needed anything, but when they were out on the road or in the studio, that job became Howie’s, and he couldn’t help feeling that maybe Nick’s needing some legal help might not necessarily be a good thing.


“Oh, everything’s great! Really. It is. Jordan’s helping me out with some stuff, but ultimately, it’s good stuff. I promise.” Nick gave Howie a genuine smile that set the older man at ease. “There’s lots of lovely ladies waiting anxiously for our lovely faces to appear on their computer screens. What do you say we get this thing started?” Nick plopped down one of the kitchen chairs situated in front of the web cam and looked up at Howie expectantly.


“Uh-- is that what you’re wearing?”


Nick looked down at his ensemble of old, white wife beater and black basketball shorts, then back up at Howie. “Yeah. What’s wrong with it?”


Howie rolled his eyes. “Nothing. You might as well just go shirtless.” Nick shrugged and started pulling at the bottom of his tank top. Just as Howie got a glimpse of his bare stomach, he scrambled to grab Nick’s wrists. “I was kidding.”


“They’d probably like it,” Nick said with a smirk.


“Of course they’d like it.”


“Annie might like it. Did you know she always watches these things? How cute is that?” Nick let out a little chuckle, his eyes bright with happiness.


“I have a feeling Annie would be mortified. Leigh usually watches, too, for the record,” Howie answered matter-of-factly. “But it’s usually so she can make fun of me later.”


**********************************


Nick was wearing a life preserver on his head, and Howie was having a hard time keeping a straight face while they ended their BSB cruise planning video chat. Just as they turned off the webcam, he burst out laughing. “You are such a dork!”


“Oh yeah? Well, takes one to know one!”


“That’s real mature.”


“You want a beer?” Nick got up and started heading for the kitchen.


“Sure. Why not?” Howie stood and picked up Nick’s kitchen chairs, then carried them into the kitchen and slid them back under the table.


Nick’s phone rang from it’s place on the couch in the living room just as he was closing the refrigerator door. He tossed a can of beer in Howie’s direction as he jogged past him. “Bring snacks!” Howie grasped the frosty can in his hand and eyed a bag of kale chips on the counter warily, then went to grab them, doubting there would be anything else that was actually considered “snack food” in the house.


When he heard Nick exclaim, "What the fuck?!" he dropped the bag and immediately rushed back into the living room. A year ago, he'd have thought nothing of Nick's little profane outburst, but since he'd been with Annie, he'd toned down his language considerably, especially since he was around Drew's "tiny impressionable ears," as Annie called them, quite a lot. Something was wrong.


Howie found Nick sitting with his shoulders hunched forward, his elbow resting on his knee, and his hand clenched in his messy blonde hair in frustration while he held the cell phone to his ear with his other hand. "Oh my god, is she okay?....Where's Drew?....Can I talk to her?.... I said let me talk to her damnit!". His voice shook and his cheeks were flushed. "I'm so sorry. I'll be there as soon as I can, okay?" His tone changed instantly when Annie apparently got on the phone. Howie stooped down to pick up the unopened can of beer that was lying on its side at Nick's feet. "Of course I'm coming! Right now. I'm coming right now." Nick stood and marched out into the hallway, brushing past Howie’s shoulder as if he wasn't even there. Without missing a beat, Howie turned on his heel and followed him into the messy bedroom. "I'll call you as soon as I book a flight out, okay?" He pulled a duffel bag off the top shelf of his closet and started opening dresser drawers and stuffing clothes into it. "Just hang in there and take care of yourself. I'll see you in a few hours. I love you--" He lingered on his last words, his voice quivering, as he clenched his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger in an attempt to hold back the tears forming in his eyes. He held the position for several moments, gripping the phone tightly against his ear as he let out a loud sniffle. Finally, he pulled the phone away from his ear and dropped his arm to his side like a dead weight. The phone clattered on the floor.


"Nick?". Howie took a few cautious steps towards his friend. The taller man looked down at him and sighed. "What happened?"


"I have to go to Florida," he answered stoically.


"Florida? Why?"


Nick gulped and looked down at the floor, then back up at his friend. "Annie's parents were murdered this morning,” he rasped.


Howie gasped in disbelief as Nick sank down onto the bed, burying his face in his hands. Howie eased down beside him and placed his hand in the middle of his much larger little brother’s back. Nick turned to look at him with sad eyes, his shoulders still hunched over in defeat. “What am I supposed to do?” he asked quietly.


Howie pursed his lips thoughtfully. He took in a deep breath through his nose and let it out slowly with a sigh. “I think you just do what you’re doing, Nick. Pack up your bags and go to Florida. Is she there now?”


“She’s on the way with her brother and sister in law. That was her brother Josh that called me. His wife Katie is going to watch Drew while they go to the police station.”


“So go. Be with her. Grieve with her.”


Nick nodded slowly and looked up to stare at a blank space on the wall in front of him. “What do I say? I mean, she just lost her parents. My parents kind of suck, but if they both died, at the same time, and like that, I’d be falling apart. I’ve never lost someone that close to me, and here she has to go through something like that again. Tell me what to say to her, Howie,” he begged.


Howie nodded in silent understanding of the undertones of what Nick had just said to him. You’ve been where she’s been, Howie. Help me help her. He closed his eyes and thought about his sister and his father, then opened them and faced Nick, placing his hands on his shoulders and staring intently into his eyes. “You know, Nick, usually it’s not the things people say that make a difference in times like this. It’s what they do. Being surrounded by the people you love really helps. She’s really going to appreciate just having you beside her while she deals with this.”


Nick only pondered Howie’s words of wisdom for a few seconds before he jumped back up and grabbed the still-unzipped duffel bag, slinging it over his shoulder. "I have to go." Howie followed Nick's footsteps as he raced out the door.


"I'm coming with you."

Nick didn’t even bother arguing with him, but once they’d secured a flight to Miami and boarded, he turned to Howie as he was buckling his seatbelt and said, “You didn’t pack anything.”


Howie shrugged. “So?”


"So, you're flying with me cross-country with nothing but the clothes on your back."


"So? I've got a wallet in my back pocket and a family in Florida. I'll manage."


"But Annie's mom and dad live in--" Nick paused and clamped his mouth shut, then awkwardly corrected himself. "Lived in Boca Raton. Your house is in Orlando. That's like a three hour drive."


"So?"


Nick grunted and crossed his arms over his chest, then leaned his head against the window. "Thanks for coming with me," he said softly, holding his cell phone up weakly. “And everything else.” In his rush to get to Annie, he’d completely forgotten about the phone he’d dropped onto his bedroom carpet, and didn’t realize it was missing until he reached into his pocket to retrieve it and call Annie after booking a flight at the airport. Howie had calmly pulled it out of his own pocket and handed it to him. The same happened when Nick went to look for the boarding pass he’d left sitting on the ticket counter before checking in through security.


"No problem. I'm going to call Brian as soon as we land," Howie told him. “Do you think she’s called him yet?”


“Probably not.”


“Do you know if she had any appearances or studio time or anything scheduled in the next few days?”


Nick sighed. “There was some sort of benefit concert in Atlanta she was doing with Brian next weekend, and I know there was some other stuff, but I don’t remember the details.”


“Brian’s her manager. He’ll know,” Howie assured him. “That’s why we need to call him. Well, that, and he needs to know about this regardless. I’ll call Kevin and AJ and let them know we’ll be down here a few days. Maybe they can get up with Morgan and Prophet for a little while anyway.”


Nick nodded and stared out the window as thin clouds passed by in the bright blue sky. The weight of Annie’s tragedy bore down heavily on his shoulders and he unconsciously let out a sob.


“Nick?”


“I just wish I could have been there with her when she found out, you know?” Nick’s voice cracked as he attempted to explain himself.


Howie nodded in understanding and placed his hand over Nick’s on the tray table in front of him, giving it a little squeeze. “Was she alone?” he asked cautiously.


Nick shook his head quickly. “No. Her brother was listed as their emergency contact and the police called him first. His wife drove him down to Nashville from Lexington to tell her.”


“That’s good. And it’s good that she was in Nashville and not LA so they could get down there faster.” Howie reasoned.


Nick knew he was right, but that fact didn’t particularly make him feel any better. He sighed and turned to look back out the window. He’d been on his fair share of long flights, much longer than the four and a half hours it took to get from Los Angeles to Miami, but this was shaping up to feel like the longest flight of his life.

*********************


“What’s the address to the police station?” Nick jotted it down roughly with the pen he’d taken from the counter at the car rental agency onto his receipt as Josh recited it to him over the phone. “How is she?”


“Not good,” Josh admitted quietly. “We just finished ID’ing the bodies at the morgue. I told her she didn’t have to go with me, but she insisted, and--” He choked back a sob. “She examined them, Nick. She kept whispering all this medical jargon to herself. Eventually, a guard had to help me get her out of there.”


Nick blinked back tears as he let out an anguished groan. “Tell her I’ll be there soon.” What worried Nick the most was the eerie silence, save for Josh’s comments, on the other end of the line. He knew Josh would never leave his baby sister’s side, yet he didn’t hear her crying or anything. Not so much as a whimper, or a whisper, or a sob. He placed his hand on the handle of the driver’s side door, but Howie pecked on his shoulder from behind him.


“Give me the keys, Nick,” he demanded, holding his open palm out.


Nick obliged and ran over to the passenger side as Howie opened the door and climbed in. “Just hurry, okay?”


“I’ll do my best.”


They arrived at the Boca Raton Police Department in record time. Nick jumped out of the car before Howie had even put it in park, and started sprinting for the front door. Howie yanked the gear shift up and scrambled after him. There were several people milling about in the lobby waiting room. Nick looked around for Annie and Josh, but he didn’t see his fiancé , or her brother, a taller, more masculine replica with the same same shade of auburn hair, fair skin, and green eyes. A bored looking receptionist looked up at Nick when his hands slammed down heavily on the faux wood of the front desk. “Can I help you, sir?”


“I’m looking for Annie Morgan. She’s the daughter of Molly and Jack Donohue.”


“And you are?” She asked with raised eyebrows.


“I’m her fiancé,” Nick answered quickly.


The receptionist gave him a curt little nod and reached for the phone to her left. She punched in an extension and said, “Detective Jones, there’s a young man here inquiring about the Donohue case. He says he’s the daughter’s fiancé.” She paused while the detective’s deep, muffled voice spoke on the other end of the line. “Your name, sir?”


“Nick. Carter.” He tapped his foot on the dirty linoleum floor impatiently.


“His name is Nick Carter. And you are?” She looked over at Howie.


“He’s my friend,” Nick answered for him.


“Howard Dorough,” Howie added.


“And a friend named Howard Dorough,” the receptionist spoke into the receiver. “Thank you, detective.” She pointed to a door on her right. “Go through there and take a left. Then it will be the second door on your right.” She pressed a red button on the desk to buzz them in as Nick raced to the closed door and shoved it open. He jogged down the hall and skidded left, then came to a halt in front of the door. He placed his hands on the door frame and peered through the tiny window. In the dimly lit room, underneath a dangling light fixture, Josh was seated at a small wooden table across from a uniformed police officer and a man in business attire, who Nick assumed to be Detective Jones. The sleeves of his white oxford shirt were rolled up and the tie around his neck had been loosened, the top button of the shirt unbuttoned as he jotted notes down on a yellow memo pad. Annie sat on a worn out blue couch in the corner with her knees pulled up to her chest and her feet poking out from a beneath rough-looking jail issued brown blanket. She was shaking and shivering despite the blanket pulled tight around her shoulders and dried mascara tracks stained her ashen cheeks. He looked back at Howie and gulped, then flung the door open and ran inside. The men at the table stopped talking and watched Nick as he sank down to his knees in front of Annie and pulled her into his arms protectively.


“I’m so sorry, baby,” he soothed against her ear. She tensed under his grasp, but buried her face into the crook of his neck and sobbed.


“I’ll give you a minute,” the detective said somberly as he stood up and walked outside, the uniformed officer following him.


“You must be Josh.” Howie held his hand out to Annie’s brother. “I’m Howie. So sorry for your loss.” Josh nodded and gave Howie a firm handshake. They watched in silence as Nick and Annie cried together on the couch. After several minutes, Annie finally went limp in his arms, spent from her crying jag. Nick kissed her forehead and climbed up onto the couch beside her from his perch in the floor in front of her. She leaned into him heavily as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, but still said nothing.


The detective cleared his throat as he opened the door and he and the police officer came back into the room. “For those of you just joining us, I’m Detective Kendall Jones. I’m handling this case.” He shook Howie’s hand, then turned to Nick and gave him a nod of acknowledgement. “This is Officer Matt Davis. He was the first responder on the scene after the housekeeper found Dr. and Mrs. Donohue this morning.” Both men sat down at the table again. “I’ve just finished talking with the medical examiner.” Annie bolted upright and jumped to her feet, dropping the blanket around her shoulders to the floor as she stood. Nick followed as she wobbled over to the table. He pulled the chair out for her and she sat down across from Detective Jones. “Your assessment of their injuries was spot-on, Dr. Morgan,” he told her. She gulped and nodded. There were only four chairs at the table, so Nick stood behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders. Howie casually and quietly walked over to the couch and sat down. “Both had multiple stab wounds that appear to have been inflicted by a simple kitchen knife. More specifically, judging by the size and shape of the wounds, it was probably a santoku knife-- a wide, sharp blade with a relatively dull point, usually used for chopping and slicing.”


Nick felt a wave of nausea wash over him as he took in the detective’s description of the murder weapon. He looked down at Annie to gauge her reaction, but she didn’t even flinch. She just stared blankly ahead.


“There’s an empty slit in the knife block on the kitchen counter, but we’ve yet to find the knife,” Detective Jones admitted somberly. “As far as motive, right now it basically looks like a robbery gone bad. My guess is that the intruder didn’t expect your parents to be such early risers and was unarmed. He-- or she- got startled when he found them eating breakfast in the kitchen and during the struggle, reached for the closest weapon he could find.”


“Dad always had to be at the hospital so early...” Josh muttered under his breath. “He said his body just wouldn’t let him sleep late after he retired.” He closed his eyes and bowed his head in frustration.


“Do you have any suspects?” Nick spoke up.


The detective sighed. “The perpetrator was very clean. We’ve yet to find any evidence that links anyone specifically to the crime scene. No finger prints that don’t belong to Jack or Molly. Not even the housekeeper.”


“She was new,” Josh clarified. “It was her first day. Mom always insisted on doing it herself, but her knees were getting bad, and....” He trailed off and quietly wiped away a tear that trickled down his bearded cheek.


Detective Jones gave him a sympathetic smile. “We’ve had a team there all day, Josh. We’re going to keep looking, but so far there’s no fingerprints, no footprints, not even so much as a hair or clothing fiber. It’s almost as if we’re dealing with a ghost.”

Nick glared across the table at the detective. “Excuse me?!” he asked incredulously. “A ghost? That’s the best you’ve got? A ghost?!”


Kendall Jones looked up and stared down the tall blonde man standing across the table from him. “I’m not implying that our suspect is a ghost, Mr. Carter,” he replied defensively. “I’m just saying that he- or she- was apparently a seasoned professional. He knew how to avoid leaving a part of himself at the crime scene. It’s only day one of the investigation. I’m sure we’ll find something soon. I was actually hoping the two of you might be able to help us out.” He turned his attention back to the siblings sitting across from him.


Annie widened her eyes, but still didn’t say anything, so Josh was left to do the talking again. “How can we help?” he asked expectantly, eager to actually have something to do besides mourn and question the seemingly senseless death of both his parents.


Detective Jones took in a deep breath and let it out slowly as he brought his hands together on top of the table and leaned forward. “The only issue with the robbery gone wrong theory-- and I’m telling you that’s really what it looks like so far-- is that the house is still chock full of valuables-- things that should have been taken if this was truly a robbery gone awry. Do the two of you think you would be able to tell if anything was missing?”


Annie looked at him and nodded, while Josh shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”


He stood up. “How do you feel about going tonight?” Annie’s shoulders tensed under Nick’s hands, and he kneaded them softly.


“Tonight?” Josh stared up at him wide-eyed, like a deer frozen in headlights.


Detective Jones put a hand on his shoulder. “I know it’s fresh. It’s not going to be easy. But the sooner you can either confirm or deny that we’re working with a burglar, we can crossmatch any evidence we happen to find with our database of convicted house burglars, bank robbers, and the like. It would make us one step closer to finding this guy. I have a feeling whoever it was is likely to skip town, so the sooner the better.”


Annie stood up, momentarily knocking Nick off-balance as she pushed him out of the way. “Let’s go,” she said, her jaw set in determination.


There were two marked police cars-- one from the Boca Raton Police Department, and the other belonging to the Florida State Police, and several unmarked official vehicles-- parked in the driveway and along the street in front of the Donohue’s large, waterfront home. The house, which he’d only been in twice before now, reminded Nick of his own place in Tampa, save for the bright yellow crime scene tape, of course. The yellow tape was stretched from light pole to fancy light pole across the driveway and sidewalk in front of the house, and perpendicular to the sidewalk back to a big fountain in the back yard, with “Crime Scene- Do Not Enter” emblazoned across it in bold, black letters. It was the first time Nick had seen the real crime scene tape up close and personal, and he shuddered at the thought of what he was going to see when he followed Annie, Josh, and the investigators into the house. Officer Davis lifted the plastic tape above his head, and Annie and Josh walked under it, with Nick following suit, except he had to duck because he was taller than the rest of them. He turned to look at Howie, but he stood still on the sidewalk beside their rental car and held his hands out in front of him. “I’ll wait,” he said cautiously. This was a personal, family thing, and he felt perhaps he’d already intruded enough for one day. Nick nodded, and silently wished he could stay behind with him, but Annie’s hand was clutched tightly in his, and he didn’t plan on letting go any time soon.


Detective Jones led them across the grass and brought them into the house through the front door. “Put these on.” He pulled several shoe covers, much like those worn by surgeons in the operating room, out of a dispenser on the bookcase in the foyer and passed them around. Annie scoffed inwardly at the irony as she pulled back the elastic and pulled them on. Her father had been a well-known general surgeon. “This is very much an active investigation, so don’t touch anything, okay?” The detective looked at the three of them pointedly as he spoke. “When we finish up, you’ll have complete control over the place.”


Once they moved into the living room, it became abundantly clear why the investigators thought they were dealing with a robbery. The place had been completely ransacked. Books, picture frames, and knick-knacks were strewn across the floor, broken glass everywhere. Detective Jones pointed to the French doors leading out to the back patio. “We think that’s where the guy came in.” One of the glass panels near the door knob was broken out neatly and shards of glass glinted harshly on the hardwood floor. Nick glanced into the kitchen as they walked by and immediately regretted it. As it was the primary crime scene, the door was blocked off with the same crime scene tape from outside, but it was easy to see the dark crimson blood spatter splashed the whitewashed cabinets. He pressed his hand on the small of Annie’s back and purposefully pushed her gently in another direction. “Other than the obvious, does anything look particularly out of place yet?” The two Donohue children shook their heads just as an older woman stuck her head out the kitchen door.


“Kendall, you need to see this.” Detective Jones immediately pulled his head up attentively and started walking towards her. Annie and Josh instinctively started to follow, but he turned to stop them. “Not right now. I’ll let you know if it’s something significant. Keep looking around and let me know if anything at all seems ‘off’ to you. Just remember not to touch anything.” He left them standing in the living room with Officer Davis and trudged into the kitchen, ducking underneath the crime scene tape on his way. “What do you have for me, Natalie?” he asked with an air of professionalism.


The woman held up a pair of tweezers and Kendall leaned forward to take a closer look at the hair she had pinched in between the prongs. “It’s blonde,” he noted.


“Is anyone linked to the case so far blonde?”


Kendall shook his head. “No. The housekeeper was Hispanic, and the Donohues are all varying shades of brunette, red, and gray. Are you sure this isn’t gray? Maybe it belongs to one of the victims?”


Natalie held the short hair against her white glove. “Definitely blonde.”


The detective let out a long, low whistle. “Well, now it just got a little more interesting, didn’t it?”


Another agent eyed him cautiously. “Have you seen the background check on the fiancé?”


“Yes,” he answered curtly.


“Do you think there’s any motive there?”


“I don’t know, but I’m about to find out.” He turned on his heel and marched authoritatively towards the door, stooping down to grab a white envelope from a black toolbox in the floor on his way. “Get that to the lab for analysis ASAP and get me an arrest warrant if it looks like I’m going to need one.”


He found Nick, Annie, Josh, and Officer Davis standing on the stairs. “Nick. Can I have a word with you, please?”


Nick turned to look at the detective and brought his finger to his chest, pointing to himself. “With me?”


“Yes.” Nick started descending the stairs, his hand still clutched tightly in Annie’s. “Alone.”


Nick paused with one foot poised in the air above a stair. He turned to look at his fiancé and reluctantly let go of her. “I’ll be back soon, okay?” Annie nodded silently and he jogged down the rest of the stairs.


Kendall led him into the empty dining room and shut the large, wooden double doors behind him. “When was the last time you were in this residence, Mr. Carter?” he asked.


Nick raised an eyebrow. “Last month,” he answered honestly.


“What was the nature of that visit?”


“The Donohues are old-fashioned, Detective Jones. If I’m going to go through with getting married, I’m going to do it right. I was here to ask for their daughter’s hand.”


“So, you were alone?”


“Yes.”


“And how did that go for you?”


Nick stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked down at the ground as he cleared his throat nervously. “Not so good,” he admitted.


“And why is that?” Detective Jones stepped closer so that he could look the man in the eye.


“Jack wasn’t too keen on the idea of his daughter marrying a--” Nick paused. “Celebrity,” he finished. Not surprisingly, Kendall’s expression didn’t change. “I take it you already knew that about me?”


“Of course I did,” he answered shortly. “Tell me, Mr. Carter. Did their response to your asking permission to marry their daughter make you angry?”


“Well, yeah, but--” He watched as curiously as the detective pulled a pair of latex gloves out of his back pocket and donned them, then tore open a white packet and pulled out a long, q-tip shaped swab. “Swallow, then open your mouth.”


“What’s that?”


“It’s a specimen swab. I need to collect a DNA sample,” the detective answered non-chalantly.


Nick gulped, his eyes suddenly wide with fear. He gasped in sudden realization. “Wait a minute! Do you think I’m a suspect?!”


“Right now, everyone’s a suspect, Mr. Carter. Now, swallow again and open wide.”

“Why?!” Nick gasped. “How could you possibly think I’m a suspect?”


“We’ve found a piece of evidence potentially linking you to the crime scene.”


“What?”


“Open your mouth, Nick,” Detective Jones said, this time more forcefully. Nick simply stared at him wide-eyed. “What’s the matter, Carter? You got something to hide?” Kendall taunted.


“No!”


“Then, you should have no problem letting me swab your cheek for a DNA sample, right?”



Nick hoped Annie couldn’t see how shaken he was after the encounter he’d just had with Kendall Jones in the dining room, but he soon found that wasn’t going to be an issue. He found her on her hand and knees on the floor of the den staring down at a broken picture frame, her eyes wide and her mouth agape. A member of the forensics team was stooped down beside her snapping taking pictures of what had apparently become a new piece of evidence. There were a lot of broken picture frames strewn about, so he didn’t understand

the significance of this one until he got close enough to see the picture inside of it. It was black and white picture of Annie and her late husband, Andrew, on their wedding day. Not surprising, because the Donohues still had a few pictures from Annie’s first wedding on display. It was what had been done to the picture that was so shocking. The shattered frame was empty, and the picture had been ripped in half, Annie on one side, and Andrew on the other, then placed on top of the frame. “Anything else like this?” Detective Jones asked as he looked down at the broken woman leaning over the torn picture.


“My wedding album,” Annie croaked. “My wedding album is gone.”


“Are you sure, Annie?” Josh spoke up. Maybe mom put it up somewhere.”


“It’s always been right there.” Annie stood up on her knees and pointed to the coffee table. “Why would she move it?”


“Maybe because you’re getting remarried in three months?”


Annie looked up at Nick, then back at her brother. “You might be right. Maybe she did move it. We’ll keep looking. As she stood to her feet, Nick put his hand under her elbow to steady her, but she shrugged him away.


“Annie-” he pleaded.


“Not now, Nick.”


Their little exchange didn’t go unnoticed by Kendall Jones, who was now building his case against Nick Carter.


**************************


“Annie’s-- quiet,” Howie observed as he watched her retreat to the restroom of the Steak N’ Shake he, Nick, Annie, and Josh had stopped at on the way to the hotel they’d reserved rooms in for the night.


“Yeah,” Nick sighed. “That’s how she deals with this kind of thing. She just-- shuts down.” He took a sip of his water and slammed his glass back on the table. What a day this had turned out to be. Hard to believe that just eight hours ago, he’d been goofing off with a life preserver on his head for all the fans to see back in LA. Now here he was struggling to watch his fiance’s feeble attempts to eat a Steakburger and fries. She’d managed maybe two bites of her burger and one fry. He looked down at his own plate. It was nearly empty, just like Howie’s and Josh’s. Ordinarily, a day like today would have made it hard for him to eat, too, but having missed dinner, he’d been ravenous. Annie had excused herself to go to the restroom twice in the half hour they’d been there, and he worried that maybe she was getting sick, or worse, avoiding them. He remembered the tragedy the two of them had endured back in January, and Annie’s behavior felt all too familiar. Of course, he couldn’t share this particular concern with anyone because he and Annie had agreed not to share what had happened to them with anyone.


“What would you know about it?” Josh huffed from his corner in the opposite side of the booth.


“What?” Nick looked at his soon-to-be brother-in-law, confused.


“Did you practically carry her out of the hospital on the morning her husband died? Take the bottle of tequila out of her hand and make her sober up for his funeral?!” he snapped.


“No,” Nick answered quietly.


“Did you drive from Lexington to Nashville so that you could tell your baby sister that both of her parents were dead? And murdered, no less?” Josh’s nostrils flared in anger and his cheeks were flushed.


“No.”


“Then what could you possibly know about how she handles ‘this kind of thing’?” Josh retorted sarcastically. From his seat beside Josh, Howie wondered the same thing himself.


“Sorry.” Nick held his hands up in defense. “I haven’t seen her deal with something quite like this,” he admitted softly. “I’m sorry.” Josh clenched his jaw tightly and nodded in acknowledgement. The man had been holding it together so well throughout the evening, and he’d been so wrapped up in worrying about Annie, that Nick almost forgot Josh had lost his mom and dad that morning, too.


Back in the restroom, Annie splashed cold water on her face and tore a paper towel off the dispenser attached to the white painted brick wall to pat it dry. “Andrew?” she whispered as she stared at her own reflection, dotted by water spots on the mirror. “Are you here?” Of course, she heard no reply, but kept talking anyway. “Because for some reason, it’s like I’ve been able to feel you today. I guess it’s probably because losing them reminds me of losing you.” She felt a slight chill run over her as she moved to reach for the door handle and sighed. “I miss you,” she admitted quietly. “Today, I miss you.” She swung the door open and started walking towards their table, then froze dead in her tracks. It couldn’t be, could it? Granted, the face was a little thinner, and his posture wasn’t quite the same, but the blonde man walking out the door with a blue University of Kentucky hat pulled low across his forehead looked remarkably like her dead husband.

“Trust your instincts,” they always told him, and Kendall Jones took the advice of his senior officers to heart as he quickly worked his way up the ranks in the police force. When the forensics team found that blonde hair at the crime scene the that evening, he immediately thought of the only head of short blonde hair associated with the case, and that belonged to Nick Carter. So, he went with it. The aging pop star’s record had been surprising-- DUIs, bar fights, drug possession-- a very public relationship with Paris Hilton that ended with the release of very public photos suggesting domestic violence. Of course, no charges were filed, but it certainly did look suspicious. Google told him she was most likely full of crap, but still... Nick didn’t at all fit the bill of the squeaky-clean All-American boy he envisioned with Jack and Molly Donohue’s squeaky-clean daughter. No. That was the man in the torn picture they’d retrieved from the crime scene.


A quick search for Andrew Morgan’s death records showed that his death was untimely, tragic, and all over the news. The fact that the Donohue’s assailant apparently felt the need to rip that wedding photo in two didn’t make any damn sense-- unless maybe it was Nick. Perhaps he was jealous of Annie’s dead husband? Maybe the Donohues kept holding him up to an impossible standard set by their daughter’s first husband. Judging by what he’d learned about the older couple over the course of the past day, it didn’t seem too terribly implausible. Jack Donohue was a surgeon. Annie Donohue Morgan had been an emergency room physician married to another physician. Now she was a singer who was planning to marry another singer. Quite a 180. Still, though-- could a guy with a criminal record littered with simple DUIs and bar fights be jealous enough to kill? The 21-year old he’d arrested at a club in Tampa on his first night on patrol eleven years ago was a prick, but he certainly didn’t seem to fit the profile of a murderer. The much more mature 32-year old whose cheek he’d swabbed a few hours ago didn’t really seem like one, either, but something about the way he looked down at the floor when asked about the confrontation he’d had with his girlfriend’s parents last month rubbed the detective the wrong way.


“What do you have for me, Natalie?” Kendall asked as he entered the lab. Natalie looked up from her nearly clutter-free desk, quite the contrast to his own desk, and handed her boss a manila folder. “Does the hair belong to Carter?”


“Maybe. Preliminary analysis of the follicle cells on the hair recovered from the crime scene shows that we can’t exclude him as a suspect.”


The detective sighed as he opened the folder to read the official report. He’d actually been starting to think that maybe his gut was wrong this time. Nick Carter just seemed so smitten with Annie Morgan that Kendall had a hard time believing he could kill her parents in cold blood. However, when it came to this business, nothing surprised him anymore. “Run PCR on it. We need something more definitive.” He shut the folder and handed it back to her.


“If the hair really does belong to Nick Carter, does that give us enough evidence to charge him?”


“No,” Kendall answered quickly. “He’s already admitted to being in the house a few weeks ago. It could have easily been left behind. Anything we have against him right now is purely circumstantial.”


Natalie bit her lip and looked up at the tired man in front of her, nearly twenty years her junior. “What if I told you we found dried blood and skin cells under Mrs. Donohue’s fingernails?”


Detective Jones couldn’t hide his smile. This was exactly the type of breakthrough he was looking for in this case. “Extract the DNA and run it against the sample I collected from Carter last night. If it’s a match, we got him. How long will it take you.?”


“Preliminary non-exclusion analysis will only take a few hours, but if you’re wanting something more definitive, it might take a couple of days.”


“Let me know the preliminary results when you have them, and we’ll go from there. I’m heading back to the house to help them dust for fingerprints again.” Kendall started toward the door with a little bounce in his step, then turned back to face her again. “You need some coffee?”


Natalie laughed. “Honey, you need a nap. I can do this for another 24 hours if you want me to, coffee or not. Just remember that the material we found under the victim’s fingernails might not belong to the suspect at all. It could always be from her husband.” Kendall nodded in understanding and kept walking towards the door. “Cream, no sugar!” she yelled after him.


********************


“How is she?” Brain asked Nick as he met him in the hotel lobby early the next afternoon. He leaned in to give his much larger little brother a hug.


Nick sighed as he wrapped his arms around Brian’s shoulders and gave them a squeeze. “I wish I really knew,” he muttered into his ear. “She’s barely spoken two words to me since we checked into our room late last night. Seeing Drew this morning helped, I think.”


Brian smiled. “Kids are good for that.”


“Then he asked for his Nana,” Nick said somberly.


“Oh.” Brian’s face dropped. “How’d that go?”


Nick’s face scrunched up like he was going to cry. “Apparently, he saw the water on the way in and assumed he was going to go see his Nana and Papa since they live by the ocean and all.”


“Wow, that sucks. What did she tell him?”


“That Nana and Papa were in heaven.”


“Good. Heaven’s good.” Brian nodded his approval. “He’s just two, but he’s been in church all of his life. He probably knows that’s a good place for them.”


“Well, he was satisfied with that for a while, but while Annie was taking a shower, he asked me when they were coming back.”


Brian winced. “Ouch. What did you say to him?”


“I rolled over his foot with a race car to distract him.”


“Nice.” Brian couldn’t help letting out a little chuckle as he gave Nick a pat on the back.


“Is it bad that I avoided talking to him about it?” Nick asked quietly. His hands were shaking and his blue eyes glistened with unshed tears.


“Nick, no-” Brian led him over to a couch and gently sat him down, then followed suit beside him. “He’s still just a baby. Playing with him to distract him from such a serious situation is good.” The younger man drew in a shaky breath and let it out slowly in a still uncertain sigh of relief. “You’re going to be a great dad someday, you know that?”


Nick’s lips twitched up into a little smirk. “I honestly can’t wait.”


********************


“Talk to me.” Kendall Jones answered his cell phone with one hand while he drove swiftly back to the station with the other, palm trees whizzing by in the early autumn sun.


“Kendall, I’ve got some results for you,” Natalie announced.


“Go ahead.”


“It’s just preliminary, but it looks like the genetic material we collected from underneath Mrs. Donohue’s fingernails matches Nick Carter’s.”


Kendall did a little fist pump in the air with the hand that held his phone as he let his foot off the accelerator to get into the left lane and do a u-turn. “That’s enough for me. Have them type up a warrant and send an officer out to meet me at the Wyndham on Glades Road off I-95.”


“How do you know where to find him?” the forensics specialist asked him, perplexed.


“When we left the house last night, I gave Joshua Donohue my card and told them to call me if they thought of anything else that might help with the investigation. He gave me his number and told me where they were staying in case I needed to contact them. Of course, he didn’t know he was helping me keep an eye on my suspect.”


“Do you really think he didn’t run after you confronted him yesterday?”


“I really think he didn’t run,” Kendall scoffed. “It’s twisted, but I don’t see him leaving his girl willingly, even if he did kill her parents.”


“Innocent until proven guilty, Detective Jones,” the older woman warned him.


“I think we’ve got him, Natalie.”


“But, Kendall--”


He cut her off as he hung up his phone and tossed it onto the seat beside him. It landed on the small file on Nick Carter he’d been working on since last night. “Gotcha.”


********************


“You brought Leighanne,” Nick deadpanned as the petite blonde rushed through the sliding glass doors and into the lobby, loaded down with stuffed Wylee bags and rolling a bright pink suitcase behind her. It’s not that he particularly disliked Leighanne the way he did, say, ten years ago, but he’d kind of been hoping to have Brian to himself now that Howie had gone to Orlando and see his son and pregnant wife for a couple days. He’d been hanging out with Drew while Annie avoided him, but the little guy seemed to be the only ray of sunshine in an otherwise gloomy circumstance, and everyone seemed to want a piece of him.


“Of course I brought Leighanne,” Brian answered matter-of-factly.


“How long is she planning to stay?” Nick asked, eyeing the sheer volume of bags the tiny woman was carrying, not to mention the two large pieces of luggage that were on the luggage cart the bellhop had rolled in after her.


“I brought dresses,” Leighanne announced. “Black one, grey ones, navy blue ones-- anything that might be suitable for a funeral.”


“What?” Nick raised an eyebrow incredulously. Was she really turning the impending funeral into a fashion show?


“Annie said she’d completely forgotten to pack something she could wear to the funeral when she headed down here, and doesn’t feel like shopping, so....”


“Oh.” So apparently, Annie was talking to Leighanne Littrell, but no to her own fiancé. Great.

The sliding glass doors of the hotel lobby slid open again, and in marched Detective Jones and Officer Davis. Kendall never imagined it would be so easy as to just walk into the lobby and find Nick sitting on the couch. “Detective Jones--” Nick said in surprise. Brian stood and started to shake his hand to introduce himself, but the detective had another agenda. He held up a piece of paper that they would soon find out was an arrest warrant.


“Nickolas Carter, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be provided for you...”


Brian and Leighanne watched in fearful astonishment, eyes wide and mouths hanging open, as Detective Jones recited Nick his Miranda rights. The accompanying police officer forced the dazed man up to his feet and pulled his wrists behind his back, then silently pulled a pair of handcuffs out of his back pocket and started putting them on. Brian could feel his blood starting to boil, as he clenched and unclenched his fists in an attempt to calm himself down, but as the officer shoved Nick towards the doors, he couldn’t stop himself. “On what charges?” he demanded furiously. He watched as his friend looked down at his feet, then up at him helplessly.


Detective Jones stopped walking and looked at Nick, who looked absolutely terrified, then at the man he recognized as his Backstreet bandmate, who looked absolutely irate. When he answered, he didn’t look at Brian, but at Nick. “Mr. Carter here is the primary suspect in the double homicide of Jack and Molly Donohue.”

“Nick just got arrested!”


Kevin winced at the shrillness of his cousin’s outburst on the other end of the line. “Come again?”


“Handcuffs! They led him away in handcuffs!”


“What?” Kevin had certainly received phone calls like this one before, but it had been a while, and he hadn’t expected to get another one in, well…..ever.


“Oh my God, what are we gonna do?”


“Brian, sit down.”


Brian stopped in his tracks, giving the tile floor a sudden reprieve from his frantic pacing. How did he do that? “Okay.” He sank down onto the lobby couch, looked over at his wife, and gulped.


“Tell me what happened,” Kevin said calmly. He gripped the phone tightly and braced himself for whatever (albeit shocking) idiot thing his little brother had done this time. He suddenly felt like it was 2002 instead of 2012.


“Leighanne and I got into the hotel in Boca Raton just a few minutes ago. Nick and I were talking in the lobby, and this detective and a police officer marched in like they owned the place and arrested him! He’s a suspect, Kevin. They think he killed Annie’s parents. How in the world could they think he killed Annie’s parents?”


“I-- I don’t know,” Kevin admitted, flabbergasted. Of all the crazy reasons for why Nick had gotten arrested that he imagined Brian telling him, this wasn’t one of them. This was-- ridiculous. “What does Annie think?”


Brian drew in a sharp breath and his eyes widened to the size of saucers. “Oh, shit.”


********************

“Intimidate them,” they told him. “Let them know you mean business.” Kendall recited the advice in his head as he opened the door of the interrogation room. Nick Carter jerked his head up in the direction of metal-meets-concrete bang of the door handle against the cinder block wall and eyed Kendall Jones. It was a ballsy move-- volunteering to be interrogated without a lawyer present. The suspect had smugly told him that he had nothing to hide, and didn’t expect he’d be needing a lawyer. Of course, the detective had seen that before, even with the guiltiest of criminals. Nick jumped as the detective slammed his hands on the table in front of him and bent down to stare him in the eye. The armed guard standing in the corner didn’t flinch. He’d seen this plenty of times before.


“Where were you on the morning of September 27th?”


“In bed. In Los Angeles,” Nick replied without missing a beat.


“Can you prove that?”


“There was a live streaming fan chat yesterday at noon that we filmed at my house,” Nick explained. How could this guy not realize that he had an alibi?


Kendall Jones didn’t bat an eye. “At noon?”


“Yes.”


The detective smirked. “The coroner determined time of death to be sometime between 5 and 6 AM Eastern time yesterday morning. That would have given you plenty of time to get back to Los Angeles by noon Pacific time.”


Nick gulped, but his jaw remained set in determination. “I flew from Los Angeles to Miami yesterday evening. Surely, you’ve seen flight records that don’t show me doing the opposite yesterday morning.”


It was time for Kendall to open his bag of tricks. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out the stack of paper he’d folded once vertically and stuffed into it just minutes before. He tossed it onto the table, unfolded the sheets, and handed Nick the top one. “Ordinarily, that type of information would uncover a rock-solid alibi, but as you know, Mr. Carter, I’m dealing with a celebrity.” The way he emphasized the word celebrity made Nick wince, like obviously, he didn’t have any real regard for the word. It was obvious that the “star treatment” wasn’t what he was going to be getting here. “Have you ever flown under an alias, Mr. Carter?” Nick looked down and skimmed the list of names typed on the stark white piece of paper shaking in his trembling hands. He recognized all of them. He looked back up at Kendall Jones and nodded. “These are just the names I was able to come up with in the past few hours. Considering your long and lucrative career, I’d guess there’s more. Stephen Perry’s my favorite, but I’ve got to admit that Carter Nickelson made me giggle.” Kendall gave Nick a sly smile, but he just glared at the detective, unamused. “There was no passenger with any of these names on either of the two flights leaving Miami for Los Angeles this morning, but we’re still checking Fort Lauderdale, and there were three private charters that flew to southern California this morning as well. Any chance you’ll turn up on one of those?”


“No!”


Detective Jones could see the emotions of his suspect starting to unravel. “Can you prove it? Of course there’s no Nickolas Carter on any of these flights, but how do I know you don’t have some other alias I haven’t found yet?”


Nick crossed his arms over his chest and fell against the back of his chair in defeat. “I guess you don’t.”



********************


“Just knock on it, Brian! Leighanne hissed into her husband’s ear as he stood frozen in front of the closed hotel room door.


“Do you hear what’s going on in there?” he asked incredulously.


“No!” Drew screamed. “No nap, Mommy! I. DON’T. WANT. TO!” Then he started shrieking controllably.


Leighanne rolled her eyes. “You act like you’ve never heard that before.”


“That’s a big set of lungs for such a little kid,” Brian remarked.


“He’s a future singer, of course. Now knock on the dang door!” Leighanne literally grabbed her husband’s clenched fist and banged it against the wood beneath the peep-hole.


“Traitor!”


Annie opened the door looking exhausted. Dark circles hung beneath her red-rimmed eyes, her hair was piled into a messy bun atop her head, and her face was make-up free. Drew’s screams stopped the second he recognized the visitors at the door. “Bri! Weighanne!” she exclaimed happily, running towards Brian with outstretched arms.


Brian immediately bent down and scooped the red-faced toddler up into his arms and swiped a tear off his warm cheek with the pad of his thumb. “Hey, buddy!” He ruffled the mop of curly blonde hair atop Drew’s head with his hand. “What’s goin’ on?”


“I no take a nap today!” Drew announced loudly.


“So, I’ve heard,” Brian chuckled. He turned to Annie, who was staring past his head out into the hallway through the open door, and gave her a sympathetic smile. “Hey.”


“Where’s Nick?”


Brian pursed his lips and handed Drew off to Leighanne. “Where’s Baywee?” he asked her, cocking his head to one side in curiosity.


“He’s not here, sweetie. He’s visiting his aunt Jodi today,” Leighanne told him.


“I have aunt Katie!” Drew chirped happily. “And aunt Allie!” Brian knew Katie, Josh’s wife. He’d found a good friend in Annie’s older brother when the two of them met before one of Annie’s first concerts, and remembered guarding each other at basketball camp as teenagers. He didn’t remember an Allie, though.


“Andrew’s sister,” Annie filled him in, sensing his confusion. “Where’s Nick?” she asked him again, looking back out into the empty hallway.


“Annie, we need to talk.” He placed his hand on her arm and looked over at Leighanne, who gave him a little nod and took Drew out into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind her.


“What’s going on, Brian?” she asked as he led her over to the foot of the unmade king bed and pulled her down to sit beside him.


“Annie, Nick--” Brian’s breath hitched in his throat and he paused. How was he supposed to tell her this? He should have practiced.


“What?!” she asked, her voice raising an octave.


“He just got arrested, Annie.”


Annie gasped and clamped her hand over her mouth in surprise. “He just did what?” she exclaimed, her eyes wide. “WHY?”


Brian shook his head and sighed. “I have no idea why, but apparently he’s a suspect.”


“A suspect.” Annie’s exhausted brain couldn’t quite comprehend what her friend and manager was trying to tell her.


“Your parents….”


Annie’s mouth fell open in shock. That was why detective Jones had taken Nick away to talk to him in private last night, wasn’t it? She’d noticed that Nick’s demeanor seemed to change after that, but she’d been a little preoccupied with the fact that her parents were murdered and now she was apparently seeing her dead husband to even notice. Still, given this information, there was one thing she knew for sure. “That’s ridiculous!”


********************


Kendall sat down in the chair across the table from Nick and slid another piece of paper in his

direction. “This is the DNA analysis on the blonde hair we collected at the crime scene. It’s yours.”


“I already told you I was in the Donohues’s house last month.” Nick replied through gritted teeth.


“I know,” Detective Jones answered with a nod. “This alone isn’t enough to put you at the crime scene, or to charge you.”


“So, why am I even here?”


“This.” Kendall slid a third sheet of paper across the table.


“What’s this?”Nick asked him as he looked down at it.


“This is initial DNA analysis of skin cells collected from underneath Molly Donohue’s fingernails. We ran it against the sample I collected from you last night.”


Nick’s eyes skimmed the typed document, unable to make much sense of the technical terminology or diagrams, but when he got down to the bottom, the result was very clear: MATCH. His heart started beating wildly, his hands started to shake, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. “Detective Jones? Can I ask you something?”


“What’s that?”


“That one phone call I’m supposed to get-- Does that include the call to my lawyer?”

Annie stormed through the front door of the Boca Raton Police Station, her ponytail flailing wildly behind her, as Brian and Josh struggled to keep up. “Get me Kendall Jones!” she roared, slamming the palms of her hands on the faux wood receptionist’s desk.


“Ladies and gentlemen, she’s come alive,” Josh remarked under his breath. Brian silently nodded his agreement as he watched the woman stare intimidatingly into the bewildered eyes of the kid sitting at the desk. As soon as he broke the news to her, Annie had become like a lioness protecting her cub. She had changed out of her pajamas and pulled her appearance together, retrieved Josh, and gave Drew (now sleeping in Leighanne’s arms) a good-bye kiss on her way out the door in a matter of five minutes. Then, she insisted on driving to the police station, much to Brian and her older brother’s chagrin. However, instead of the dangerous, emotional wreck they imagined operating a moving vehicle, she was focused and methodical. Her hands were steady on the wheel and her eyes were focused on the road, acutely aware of her surroundings as she sped to the station in record time.


The college-aged young man sitting at the desk didn’t even question her. “Yes ma’am,” he said quickly, diving for the telephone, and shaking in his boots. Annie crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot impatiently while he spoke to someone in another location in the building. “I apologize. I didn’t get your name,” he said politely, pulling the phone away from his ear.


“Annie Morgan,” she replied curtly.


“I’m sorry, Ms. Morgan, but he’s interrogating a suspect.” He placed the phone back on the hook and looked up at her apologetically.


Annie narrowed her eyes at him and leaned forward. “Would that suspect happen to be Nick Carter?”


“I- I don’t know,” the boy stammered.


“Well, you can tell Detective Jones that the daughter of the alleged suspect’s victims needs to see him immediately,” she hissed at him, emphasizing the word ‘alleged’ harshly.


“I’m not supposed to interrupt him, ma’am.”


“So help me, God, I will come across this desk if I’m not face to face with Detective Jones in the next sixty seconds!” The young male receptionist lunged for the telephone again while Brian attempted to hide his smile.

********************

“Good decision, Nick,” Kendall Jones told his suspect as he stood up from the table. “Can I assume you won’t be talking anymore until your lawyer is present?” Nick nodded quietly.


An officer poked his head in the door. “Sir, we have a situation in the lobby.”


Kendall nodded and headed for the door. “I’m finished here for now, anyway. Take Mr. Carter to use the phone. He needs to call his lawyer.” The officer nodded and held the door open for his colleague. The detective walked the narrow hallway to the lobby and pushed open the side door. There, he found Annie Morgan, Josh Donohue, and the Backstreet Boy who’d been in the hotel lobby when Nick was arrested. His name escaped him at the moment.


“Detective Jones!” Annie hissed. “Can I have a word with you?”


“Of course,” he said cordially. He held the door open for the three of them to file into the hallway and out of the lobby. Once the door was shut, Annie promptly grabbed him by the lapels of his blazer and shoved him against the wall.


“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she growled.


In a way, Kendall had been expecting this, but considering the cold shoulder this woman had been giving her betrothed last night, he was still surprised by her reaction to Nick’s arrest. He held his hands up in defense. “I’m just doing my job, Ms. Morgan,” he replied as professionally as he possibly could while in the vice-like grip of his victims’ daughter and his suspect’s fiancé.


“Oh, really? Because I thought your job was to find the monster who killed my parents!”


“That’s what I’m trying to do.” Kendall gently pried Annie’s fingers off of his jacket and grasped her wrists as he spoke to her, his gaze softening. “I have DNA evidence that puts him at the crime scene, Annie. I’m sorry, but your fiancé is our primary suspect right now.”


She jerked away from him hastily, but the look in her eyes changed from rage to fear. “That’s impossible!” she retorted. “He was in Los Angeles!”


“Do you have any proof of that?”


Annie pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I called him at 2 AM.”


“Eastern or Pacific time?”


“Central. I was at our house in Nashville. My son woke up in the middle of the night and after I got him back to sleep, I couldn’t get back to sleep myself, so I called Nick. He was awake playing World of Warcraft. It would have been midnight in California, three in the morning here. So, he couldn’t have been in mom and dad’s house at 5 or 6 in the morning, right?”


“Cell phone or landline?” the detective asked without skipping a beat.


“Cell phone. But can’t you trace it?” Annie answered with another question.


Kendall nodded. “Yes. We’ll try to trace it, but Annie, you need to prepare yourself.”


Annie crossed her arms over her chest and glared up at the detective. Prepare herself? Who was he kidding? She’d recited those words so many times to grieving, yet still hopeful family members in hospital waiting rooms. But this wasn’t a hospital waiting room, and her fiancé wasn’t dying. He was a murder suspect-- a falsely accused murder suspect. She didn’t need to prepare herself for anything, aside from going back home with Nick when this nightmare was all over. Detective Jones’ eyes darted around the busy hallway, then he turned on his heel and headed for an open door. “Come with me.” The trio readily followed him, where they all sat around a round conference table in a small room with stark white walls, further brightened by cheap fluorescent lights. Brian found himself staring up at one of the white tubes on the ceiling that was about to burn out, flickering and black on one end. “I don’t just go arresting suspects willy-nilly based on hunches,” Kendall announced, eyeing each of the three people around the table with him individually.


“Oh, really?” Annie raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Then, enlighten us, detective. What could you possibly have on my fiance that makes him a person of interest in the murder of my parents?”


Kendall sighed and pulled the same three pieces of paper he’d shown Nick just minutes earlier out of his back pocket, but this time, he only displayed the bottom one. “This.” He slid the unfolded sheet of paper across the table in front of Annie Morgan.


“What’s this?”


“We performed genetic testing on the skin cells collected from underneath your mother’s fingernails and ran it against the sample I collected from Nick at the house last night. This is the preliminary result.” He didn’t need to make any further comments as the young woman hunched forward and began to read. When she got to the word “Match,” she gasped, clamping her hand over her mouth as hot tears pricked at her eyes. Brian and Josh both leaned across the table from either side of her to see for themselves.


Josh immediately hooked his arm around his baby sister’s neck and pulled her into him protectively, stroking her hair and murmuring into her ear quietly. “It’s going to be okay. Whether he did it or not, you’re going to be okay.”


Brian felt like he was going to be sick. “Detective Jones, can I ask you something? he stammered.


“Sure.”


“How accurate are these things? Like, if you have a preliminary match, what are the odds that it’s not actually a match after further testing?” Brian’s piercing blue eyes silently pleaded with the detective.


Kendall narrowed his eyes at Nick’s Backstreet bandmate and leaned forward, bringing his hands together and tenting his fingers on top of the table “Well, there are a lot of contributing factors there, and every circumstance is different, Mr…..?”


“Littrell,” Brian answered him. “Brian Littrell.”


“Mr. Littrell,” the detective nodded and cast a glance at the mourning siblings. “The numbers are messy, but if I really had to throw out odds, I’d say maybe 1000 to 1. In this particular case, I’d say the odds of those skin cells not being a match to Nick Carter are about 1000 to 1. Then of course, there’s the blonde hair that’s a final match to him.” Brian gulped and brought his own hands together on top of the table, almost as if he were praying. “All I can say is he better have a good lawyer.” Kendall started to stand up, but Brian reached for his forearm, grasping it desperately. The detective stared down into the determined eyes of Nick and Annie’s friend questioningly.


“Detective Jones, I’ve known Nick for a really long time-- almost twenty years. I just don’t think he could have done this. Check out the phone call. I guarantee that Annie will be right.”


Kendall Jones groaned. He’d heard this kind of thing so many times, shrugging it off as naive friends and family family members who just weren’t able to open their eyes to what was right in front of them, but something about the sincerity in Brian’s voice and the devastation in Annie’s face got to him. “It would help if I had a witness,” he told them.


“Howie!” Annie exclaimed.


“Yes, Howie!” Brian cheered in response.


“The guy that was with him last night?”


“Yes!” Annie answered. “He’s been living with Nick while they do some songwriting for new album. He would know know whether or not Nick was in LA with him yesterday morning.”


Kendall’s case had just gotten much more complicated. On one hand, the guy’s DNA was found under one of the victim’s fingernails. On the other, he had an alibi. He couldn’t have possibly been in two places at once. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed it. “Get me a subpoena for Howard Dorough.”


In another wing of the station, Nick stood with the black telephone receiver held to his ear with one hand. He nervously twisted and pulled on the coiled black cord with the other as it rang.


“Jordan Keller.”


“Jordan, I’m in trouble,” Nick panted.


“So, I’ve heard,” the lawyer, who’d been with the Backstreet Boys for years, told his client.


“What?” Nick’s eyes widened in fear. Immediately, he thought of the media. Having been under the paparazzi’s microscope for almost twenty years, he knew all too well how one little tip could have them tearing him apart on Entertainment Tonight within a matter of hours.


“Kevin called,” Jordan answered matter-of-factly. “Then Howie called. Apparently they forgot to call each other.”


“Oh.”


“I’m at the airport now,” Jordan reassured him. “But I’ve gotta say, all I was planning on doing was working on some adoption papers and re-writing your will after you called me up last week. I wasn’t imagining…..this.”


Nick groaned. “I wasn’t really planning on….this.”


“You need to know that as a defense attorney, I’ve never done a-” He paused and lowered the volume of his voice a few notches. “Homicide.”


“Well neither have I!”


“Good. Then, we can definitely deal with this.”


“Thanks, man.”


“Oh, and AJ’s sitting across the aisle from me,” Jordan added before hanging up.


“He is?”


“He says you were framed. He’s planning to tell whoever will listen that you were framed. Do you think you were framed?”


Nick shrugged helplessly. “All I know is that I didn’t do it.”


********************


“Can I see him?” Kendall Jones turned towards the small voice behind him to find Annie Morgan looking up at him intensely.


He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. This wasn’t typical protocol in a case like this, but Nick’s lawyer was still a few hours out, and the guy was literally just sitting alone in an empty room until then. He may not have been giving his suspect “the star treatment,” but leaving a pretty boy like that in a holding cell with the rough bunch they had in the jail wasn’t a good idea. Besides, the less they moved him around, the better. The local news was already covering the double homicide, and he was pretty sure that given the male victim’s circumstances, it would soon be picked up by national stations as well. The last thing he needed was a frenzy of paparazzi outside the station because of the suspect. “Sure.” He shrugged. What would it hurt? There was an armed guard at the door, and maybe he could observe them through the double-sided mirror so see if he could pick up any more tension between them-- or fear on Annie’s part-- build the case a little. As he started to lead her down the narrow hallway, Josh and Brian followed, but she turned to stop them.


“I’m sure you want to see him, too,” she said to Brian. “And I know you want to go with me,” she told her other brother. “But this is going to be just the two of us.” The hovering males in the group stopped walking and watched Annie follow the detective through a steel door on the other end of the building.


Nick sat with his head down, literally twiddling his thumbs atop the table, and immediately jerked his head up at the sound of the opening door. He grimaced at the unwelcome sight of Kendall Jones, but his eyes lit up at the sight of his future wife. “Annie,” he breathed, his face contorting in an expression of happiness mixed with fear.


“You’ve got an hour,” Detective Jones said authoritatively. Then he closed the door shut, giving it a little slam to emphasize the fact that he was still in charge.


Annie pursed her lips and walked to the table where Nick was seated. She pulled the chair across from him out, the legs squeaking on the linoleum floor, and eased down into it. “Nick, I need to ask you something, and I don’t want you to get mad--” Nick’s eyes flashed in worry, but he didn’t say anything- just gulped and nodded. “Remember it’s just the two of us.” She smirked. “And an armed guard outside the door and Kendall Jones probably watching on the other side of that mirror.”


Nick smiled weakly. “Ask me anything, Annie.” He stretched his arm across the table, palm turned upward, as an invitation for her to place her hand in his.


She didn’t move. “Did you do it?”


Nick frowned, but kept his eyes trained on hers. “No,” he said simply.


“That’s good.” Annie let out a little sob and put her hand in his, then gave it a little squeeze. “But they found one of your hairs at the crime scene,” she said seriously.


“I was in Boca a few weeks ago,” Nick told her. “I needed to ask for your parents’ permission before I proposed.”


Annie let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. “I bet Daddy wasn’t too happy,” she said with a little glint in her eye.


“No,” Nick shook his head and smiled. “I asked anyway.”


“I’m glad you did, but--” Nick didn’t like the sound of that ‘but.’


“I don’t like the sound of that ‘but’.”


“How in the world did your DNA get underneath my mother’s fingernails?” She took a moment to study him. His forearms were tanned and toned. She turned his hand over to study the underside of it, then did the same with the other. She took in the sight of his handsome face. No scratches that she could see. She doubted there were any under his clothing, either.


“I have no idea,” Nick answered honestly.

“Do you always do that when you’re nervous?”


Brian kept pacing back and forth in the police station lobby. “Do I always do what?”


“Wear the floor out with your crazy shoes,” Josh answered from his hard plastic chair, his head moving back and forth as if he were watching a tennis match.


Brian frowned and looked down at the floor. “What’s wrong with my shoes?”


Josh let out a little chuckle. “I didn’t say anything was wrong with them, I just said they were crazy.” He looked down at his own gray Converse All-Stars. They paled in comparison to Brian’s loud, bright blue Nike high-tops.


“She’s been in there a long time….” Brian remarked, momentarily slowing down and putting his hands on his hips as he looked down at Annie’s brother. “Do you think she’s giving him the third degree?”


“Maybe it’s a conjugal visit.” They both smirked, but Josh quickly turned serious. “Can you stop pacing for a minute?” He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and looked up at Brian.



Brian stopped in his tracks and gave Josh his full attention. “What’s up?”


“You know Nick, right? I mean, you really know him?”


“About as good as anybody knows him,” Brian affirmed with a little nod.


“And you really don’t think he could have done this?” Josh’s fearful eyes searched Brian’s.


Brian sat down beside him and put his hand on his Josh’s shoulder. “I really don’t think he could have done this.”


“Good,” Josh said, his eyes watering. “Because that’s my little sister back there with him.”


Brian nodded. “I know.”


“And that’s my little nephew living in his house.”


“I know. Trust me. They’re in good hands.” Brian gave Josh’s arm a little squeeze and stood back up, intending to resume pacing, but he was distracted by the sound of the hinge above the glass front door squeaking as it opened. “Kevin?”


“Hey. Is Nick here?” Kevin charged in like he owned the place, laptop bag slung over his shoulder and sleeves rolled up.


“They’re apparently holding him somewhere in the back.” Brian gestured towards the door next to the receptionist’s desk. “How’d you get here so fast?”


“I was at the airport in Lexington when you called. So, Kris and Mason went on back home, and I got a flight down here instead,” Kevin answered, as if this were the only logical possibility.


“I didn’t know you were in Kentucky,” Brian said, cocking his head to the side.


“Yeah. That’s why I wasn’t there for Nick and Howie’s chat yesterday.” He leaned forward to give his cousin a hug. “Aunt Jackie says you need to visit more often, by the way.” Kevin loved living in LA, but there was nothing like going home to the bluegrass hills of Kentucky, so he did it every chance he got. Unfortunately, that wasn’t all that often. Brian seemed to have settled more into calling Georgia “home.”


“Mom would say I needed to visit more often even if I lived next door,” Brian said with a playful eye roll.


“True.” Kevin noticed Annie’s brother sitting quietly, his head hanging down,on the row of hard plastic waiting-room style chairs. “You must be Josh. He held out his hand so that Josh could shake it. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”


Josh nodded in quiet appreciation. “Thanks.” Based on the course of the investigation, his parents’ funeral was likely still days away, but he’d already become numb to the “I’m sorry for your loss”es. Now he had an understanding of how his sister must have felt when she lost her husband a few years ago. Speaking of his sister, she was being escorted back into the lobby by a uniformed officer at that very moment.


“You Howie Dorough?” the officer asked.


“Who, me?” Kevin pointed to himself. “No. The last I talked to him, he was about 40 miles away on the interstate. But, if you’re looking to interview someone, you should talk to me.”


********************


“Please state your name, for the record.” Kendall stifled an eye roll as the man sitting across from him at the table leaned forward. Who did this guy think he was-- just barging into the station and demanding to be interviewed regarding the Donohue case?


“Kevin Richardson.”


“And what is your relationship to the suspect?”


“It’s not on paper, but I’m family.”


“Can you attest to where Nick Carter was yesterday morning at 5 AM Eastern, 2 AM Pacific time?”


“No.”


“Then what is it we’re doing here?”


“I have some questions for you.” Kevin stared at him intensely.


“You have some questions for me? I’m the detective here, Mr. Richardson,” Kendall declared, leaning forward and matching Kevin’s stance as they stared each other down.


“A detective who humiliated my little brother by leading him out of a busy hotel lobby in handcuffs. What motive could he possibly have? He’s a millionaire, detective Jones. He doesn’t need their money, and he’s already put a ring on their daughter’s finger. I know Annie well enough to say with confidence that I don’t think she would have done this, but I only just met her brother. Don’t you think he’d have more motive than Nick? Based on the fact that his parents retired in Boca Raton, I’d say he’s got a pretty hefty inheritance coming to him.”



Kendall smirked. “I’m under no obligation to share any kind of information regarding the case with you, Mr. Richardson, but since you’re asking, of course we checked out the children first. Their alibis are rock-solid. Mr. Carter’s is sketchy by default because he’s a celebrity and has several travel aliases. It’s harder to track where he was and when.”


“But you can get the official airline documents to confirm,” Kevin stated firmly.


“I can,” Kendall agreed. “But you already told me he’s a millionaire, and some of the documents on the private charters are locked up tighter than Fort Knox.”


“Well, this is a murder investigation, Detective Jones. I’m sure you can get them.”


“Rest assured. We’re working on it.” Kendall pushed his chair back, the legs squealing against the floor as he started to stand. “Now, if you don’t mind, since I’m obviously not going to get any information relevant to the case from you, I need to interview my next witness. I’m not at liberty to discuss this any further with you.”


“Just tell me one thing, Detective Jones.” Kendall started walking towards the door as Kevin kept talking. “How can you arrest an innocent man based on circumstantial evidence and erroneous conclusions?”


“I wouldn’t call DNA evidence circumstantial, would you?” As soon as he said it, he knew he’d made a rookie mistake. Sharing details about the case with the victim’s family was one thing. Sharing it with a random Backstreet Boy was quite another.


Kevin raised his eyebrows in disbelief. He hadn’t gotten to that part of the conversation with Brian, apparently. “What DNA evidence?”


********************


“Please state your full name, for the record.” Kendall sat down at the table in yet another interrogation room and pressed the record button on the tape recorder beside him.


“Howard Dwaine Dorough,” Howie answered professionally.


Detective Jones cast a glance in the direction of the lawyer sitting to Howie’s right. Jordan Keller was a music industry lawyer, dealing primarily in copyrights and contract negotiations. He’d served as a personal attorney for a number of his musical clients, including all five Backstreet Boys in the past, but if Nick Carter was guilty, this guy was completely out of his league. “Where were you at midnight Pacific time on the morning of September 27th, 2012?”


“In Los Angeles. On Nick Carter’s couch.”


“Was Nick with you?”


“Yes,” Howie answered in earnest. “He was playing World of Warcraft on his laptop. I was bored out of my skull.” He let out a nervous laugh.


“Where were you three hours later?”


“Asleep in Nick’s guest room.”


“So, you’re telling me that at the time the alleged murders took place, Nick was with you at his residence in Los Angeles?”


“Yes.”


Dorough seemed unusually fidgety. This did not bode well for the suspect or his witness. “Tell me something, Mr. Dorough.” Kendall sat up straighter and leaned forward on his hands, making himself larger, more intimidating.


“Okay…”


“How do I know you’re not an accomplice?”


Howie blinked rapidly in surprise. “I-- I’m not,” he answered clumsily.


********************


“Please state your name, for the record.” Kendall sighed and looked at the bearded, tattooed man now sitting across the table from him. Backstreet Boy #5 had been even more insistent on talking to him than Kevin Richardson.


“Listen, you’ve got the wrong guy,” AJ said hastily, barely registering what the detective had said to him.


“Please state your full name, for the record,” the detective said again, this time with a little force.


“Alexander James McLean,” AJ answered quickly. “Now, like I said, I know you’ve got the wrong guy.”


“Is that so?” Kendall raised an eyebrow in AJ’s direction. “How’s that?”


“Nick’s like--” AJ paused in search of the right word. “A big, lovable kid. Sure, he’s lived the life of misguided youth, but haven’t we all at one point or another? I know I’m the freakin’ poster child, but Nick-- Nick’s got it together now, okay?” AJ’s big, brown eyes glistened in the dim light from the old fixture dangling above their heads, basically putting a spotlight in the table between them. “Nick’s good. He’s awesome. We need more Nick Carters in the world. He loves that girl more than he loves the air he breathes. I don’t care what crazy circumstances you’re imagining or what crazy motive you might think he had. He didn’t kill her parents. He was framed. Period. Now, you and your people need to get your shit together and figure out who’s framing him.”
********************

The sun was setting over South Beach, and Annie was staring blankly down the pristine coastline as she sat in the damp sand, her knees pulled up to her chest as she took in deep breaths and let them out, one after another, in an attempt to calm her weather-worn heart. After seeing Nick at the police station, she declared that she “just needed to be alone” and told Kevin to take care of getting Josh and Brian back to the hotel. She’d driven to the public park just down the beach from her parents’ house. Then, she took her shoes off and walked the shoreline, allowing the waves, still warm from months of summer heat, to crash over her bare feet until she came to the property behind her mom and dad’s beachfront home. Yellow caution tape was still stretched out behind it, and from several yards away, she could see a CSI team still combing the backyard for evidence. She sat down in a sand dune, still wet from high tide late that afternoon, and stared out at the ocean. She could still see Nick and Drew playing on the beach from their visit to “Nana and Papa’s” back in June and longed to go back to that moment. Yet, her daydreams were cut short by one of the very few people who walked in front of her on the beach.


“How you doin’, Annie?” Kevin sank down in the sand beside her and draped his arm across her shoulders, then gave her a little half-hug.


Annie sighed and forced herself to look at Kevin. “Can I ask you a personal question?”


“Shoot.”


“Do you ever,” she paused and shuddered in the ocean breeze. “See your dad?”


Kevin gulped and looked out over the ocean for a moment, blinking back tears. He wasn’t expecting that. “All the time,” he said quietly.


“Really?”


“Yeah. I mean, every once in a while, I’ll be out-- the grocery store, a restaurant, somewhere like that, and I’ll see a man who looks like him. He might remind me of how dad looked when I was kid, or the age he was when he died, or it might even be an older man with his grandkids who looks kind of like I imagine he’d look now. It makes it hard to breathe sometimes, you know?”


Annie nodded silently and stared past Kevin towards the pier on their right. “I never saw Andrew. I could feel him sometimes. I talked to him a lot, but I never saw him . Not until yesterday. Now, I feel like I’m seeing him everywhere. See that guy?” she pointed towards a man walking towards the pier, a hundred yards or so away with his back to them, wearing a white shirt and royal blue baseball cap.


Kevin squinted and held his hand over his eyes as he looked in the direction of the sunset. “Yeah.”


“He looks like Andrew. It took everything I had in me not to talk to him when he walked by.”


Kevin nodded in understanding and pulled Annie into his shoulder. “It’s because it feels fresh again. After Hoke Dorough died, I did the same thing.” Brian sat down on the other side of her, and Howie and AJ followed, settling down on either side of Kevin and Brian.


“How did you guys know where to find me?” Annie asked aloud to none of them in particular.


“Josh told us,” Howie answered.


“He’s got you pegged, little sister,” AJ added.


“They’re supposed to have a bond hearing for Nick at 10 in the morning,” Brian told her. “What can we do for you until then?”


Annie pursed her lips thoughtfully. “If the judge lets him out on bond, it’s going to be big, isn’t it?”


“We’ll take care of it,” Howie assured her. He was haphazardly digging in the sand in front of him.


“Thanks.” Annie stared back out at the ocean, momentarily forgetting about the man walking down the coast, now practically out of sight.


The five of them sat in silence, Annie temporarily taking Nick’s place in the set of Backstreet brothers, until Howie gasped. “Oh my god!”


“What?” They all jerked their heads in Howie’s direction to find him looking down wide-eyed at a large kitchen knife in a clear plastic bag, emerging from the overturned sand, and stained with blood. Annie clamped her hand over her mouth in surprise and stifled a scream. Kevin immediately jumped to his feet and started running towards the house.


“Don’t touch it!” yelled behind him.


********************

“What do you have for me, Natalie?” Kendall Jones sauntered into the forensics lab casually, but picked up his pace when the older woman held up the piece of evidence, gripping ithe handle loosely above the stainless steel countertop with her white glove.


“I have a murder weapon, Detective Jones, and I have a fingerprint.”


“Does it matcher Carter’s?”


“Nope.” She took her gloves off and led him over to her desk, where she sat down at computer.


Just a few clicks of the mouse, and Kendall Jones was staring face-to-face with an image of his new suspect. “I’ll be damned.”


“Then, there’s this. I put a rush on it after Nick got arrested.” Natalie handed a piece of paper to the detective. It was still warm from the printer. She watched as the detective read it, then put it down on the desk gently, looked up at her, and gulped. “I told you it was preliminary, Kendall.”


********************


“Apologize,” they told him. “When you’ve falsely accused a suspect, apologize. Do everything in your power to regain his trust, because even if he’s no longer a suspect, he may be a valuable source of information.” Kendall gulped as he pushed the door to the interrogation room where he’d been holding Nick Carter. Also around the table in the center of the room were his attorney, Jordan Keller, his fiance, and her brother. Kendall had called them and asked them to come in before the bond hearing. Nick was walking animatedly, and didn’t even notice the detective come in the room.


“All I’m saying is that I don’t trust the guy. I mean, have you seen him? He can’t be any older than me, and he’s a detective? And what kind of a name is Kendall, anyway? How can he possibly know what he’s doing? A high-profile murder case is hardly the place for a local cop turned detective in a retirement town, don’t you think?”



Kendall Jones cleared his throat. “FBI, actually, Mr. Carter.” Nick’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head. “I was local cop until about five years ago, then I made detective. The FBI deal is a pretty new development, and no, I don’t do a lot of murder cases. Drug cartels and the mafia-- that’s what we’re typically investigating in Boca. But, since I’m stationed here, and because of Dr. Donohue’s political ties, I was asked to lead the case. Did you two know your father was planning to run for Senator?” Annie and Josh both nodded. “But that’s not why I called you here this morning.” He sat down at the table and placed a manila folder in front of him, opening it up and spreading the papers inside out across the table. First, he showed them a picture of the santoku knife Howie Dorough found buried on the beach. “Blood tests confirmed that this is, in fact, the murder weapon. As luck would have it, we found our first fingerprint of the investigation on the bottom of the blade near the handle. It was just a partial; looks like maybe the perpetrator busted a glove. We ran it against our database, and found a match, though.”


“That’s good, right?” Annie asked him quietly.


“It’s very good. Now, this is the final DNA analysis of the genetic material collected from underneath your mother’s fingernails.” He slid a couple pieces of paper across the table. “It’s not yours, Nick. When we’re finished here, you’re free to go.” Nick let out a long sigh of relief, a breath he felt like he’d been holding for almost 24 hours. “But I want you to understand why we thought it was an initial match.” He brought their attention to a photocopied picture. “This is the final western blot analysis of the DNA we found at the scene, comparing it to Nick’s. See how most of these bands match up?” Kendall pointed back and forth between the two images while Annie, Josh, Nick, and his lawyer studied them intently. “But here, here, and here- these don’t match. It’s close, though. Really close. Once we saw this, we knew we had to be dealing with a family member.”


Nick looked up at Kendall, his brows knit in confusion. “A family member?”


Kendall nodded affirmatively. “Our new suspect, Mr. Carter, is your father.”

Annie gasped loudly, and Nick’s eyes darted back and forth from his fiancé to the detective, and back again. “Bob?” she asked incredulously. This was unbelievable. Nick’s parents weren’t his favorite people, and they weren’t hers either, but she’d met them a couple of times, and these days, Bob seemed pretty harmless, really. Besides, why would he want to kill her parents? He’d never even met them. Detective Jones looked down at the criminal profile in front of him. Bob? Did the guy have an alias they didn’t know about?


“You’re not talking about Bob, are you?” Nick asked him quietly.


“I don’t think so….” Kendall said cryptically. “Am I right to assume that Annie doesn’t know about him?”


“Yeah,” Nick admitted somberly. He fell back against his chair, suddenly exhausted, the effects of two sleepless nights finally catching up to him. “I thought he was still in jail,” he said, looking up at Kendall with wide eyes. “Why is he not still in jail?”


“He was up for parole two months ago, and they let him out, for good behavior,” Kendall told him. This time, he knew his suspect. This time, he was going to get it right. He’d been up all night for the second night in a row reading up on him and finding out everything he could about his new suspect. “I’m sorry, Nick.” He said earnestly, staring into his former suspect’s eyes intently. This “I’m sorry” was so much more than “I’m sorry the justice system let your father out of jail.” It was “I’m sorry I was wrong, and I’m sorry the justice system failed you, your girl, and her family.”


Nick’s hands started to shake, and he looked at Annie, tentatively taking her hands in an attempt to steady his own. “I’m so sorry, Annie.” He looked at her brother. “Josh.”


“Nick, what’s going on?” she pleaded.


Nick glanced at Kendall, then at Jordan, and settled his gaze back on Annie. “I never intended for you to know about this. I don’t know why, exactly. I mean, you’re going to be my wife by the end of the year. I guess it never really mattered that much, but apparently it matters now.” He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head back and forth as he breathed out a disgusted sigh. He grasped both of her hands in his and turned so that he was facing her, his knees grazing up against hers. “For whatever it’s worth, Bob’s my dad. He’s the man who raised me, but he’s not my father.”


Annie knit her brows in confusion. “But you look so much like him!”


Nick gulped. “Yeah, I know. That’s because Frank’s his brother. We’re talking about Frank, right? My father?” He spat the word ‘father’ out, as it obviously left a bad taste in his mouth, and looked across the table at the detective with questioning eyes.


Part of him was silently begging Kendall to jump up and say, “Gotcha! Your psycho serial killer father is still locked up tight in prison and Annie’s parents aren’t really dead.” Perhaps Ashton Kutcher would jump out from behind the detective and tell him he’d been Punk’d. But that show had been cancelled years ago, and Detective Jones could only confirm that this nightmare was still far from over. “Yes,” he answered. “We’re talking about Frank.”


“What the hell ?” Nick grimaced. “I haven’t talked to him in years. I didn’t even know the guy existed until I was twenty-- as if I didn’t have enough reasons to not trust my family already.”


For a moment, Annie almost forgot why they were there in the first place and gazed longingly at her fiancé, her head cocked to one side as her heart crumbled for him. His family dysfunction obviously ran even deeper and wider than he’d ever let on, and the years of hurt and confusion were etched all over his face. “He doesn’t even know about Annie. What reason could he possibly have to want to track down and murder her parents?”


“My thoughts exactly,” Kendall replied matter-of-factly. “That’s what I’ve been up all night trying to figure out. My team and I have some theories, and one of them looks pretty solid. If it’s okay with all of you, I’d like to ask some questions about your parents.” Nick choked down the lump in his sandpaper-dry throat, and Annie gave his violently shaking hand a reassuring squeeze. This was crazy, but it certainly wasn’t Nick’s fault, and she was just relieved that now the investigation seemed like it was actually going somewhere. Kendall gave a nod to the stenographer in the corner and pushed the record button on his tape recorder. “When was the last time you had any contact with Frank Carter, Nick?”


“He sent a Christmas card last year,” Nick replied stoically.


“To what address? Los Angeles? Nashville? Tampa?”


“Tampa. It’s the only one he has, and that’s where I was living when he first contacted me.”


Kendall nodded and jotted down some notes on the yellow notepad on the table in front of him. “And do you recall the return address?”


“Lewisburg, Pennsylvania,” Nick answered, without missing a beat.


“The United States Penitentiary?”


“Yes.”


“Good. Do you remember anything about the correspondence, specifically? Did he write anything in the card?”


“No, not this time.”


Detective Jones raised an eyebrow. “Not this time? What has he written in the past?”


Nick rolled his eyes. “He thinks we’re friends, and just like everyone else in my family, he wants my money,” he scoffed. “I never really understood the logic in that, considered he was serving twenty-five to life in a maximum security federal prison. What’s he going to do with it? I guess he figured he’d get out eventually? If that was the case, why would he go and do something that would put him right back in?”


“Did he ever say anything about revenge?”


Nick’s breath caught in his throat, and Annie mirrored his reaction from beside him. “Revenge? No, not that I can remember.”


“Are you aware of the nature of your father’s crimes, Nick?”


Nick pursed his lips and nodded. “I know he killed a lot of people. I honestly never wanted to know the details.” This was why he never brought it up. Pretend your father’s not a crazed murderer and maybe it didn’t happen. Maybe you can pretend he’s not even your father. Sad that the man he much preferred to claim as his dad was Bob Carter-- certainly not a saint in his own right, but still the man who took in his nephew to raise as his own when he was just a baby. “Is it okay if I share some of the details?”


Nick hesitated. “I-”


“It’s relevant to this case,” Kendall Jones clarified quickly.


“Ok.” Nick looked at Annie, then at Josh, took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “Go ahead.”


“Thank you.” Kendall turned his attention to the children of his victims in the current case. “Frank Carter was an orderly at St. Vincent’s hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1979. Around that time, there was a string of mysterious deaths among patients in the surgical ward at the hospital. Initially, the deaths were attributed to natural causes or surgical complications, but after five unexpected deaths in as many weeks, the state medical board began investigating the hospital. An autopsy of patient number five showed toxic levels of labetalol in his bloodstream. All the previous patients had died due to sudden cardiac arrest. Only one of them had an EKG tracing before her death, and it showed extreme bradycardia before her heart eventually stopped.”


“Labetalol slows the heart rate,” Annie clarified. “Toxic levels would easily result in cardiac arrest and death.”


“Yes,” Kendall agreed. “After the cause of death was determined, there was an investigation into the nursing staff and pharmacy procedures to see if medication errors were causing the deaths, but it was a third-year surgical resident named Jack Donohue who came forward and reported that he’d seen an orderly retrieving a vial of labetalol from the med room on the night of one of the deaths.”


“It was Dad,” Josh whispered. “Dad turned him in.”


“Yes. It was your father’s testimony that led to Frank Carter’s eventual indictment and sentencing. The fact that you two--” Kendall gestured to Annie and Nick. “Are engaged seems to be a huge coincidence. We have an APB out for him, but we’ve yet to locate Frank. Nick, do you have a bodyguard?”

“You know, Nick, for a free man, you sure don’t look happy about it.”


Nick turned to look at his oldest brother, who joined him on the bench outside the hotel. “What is there for me to be happy about, Kev?”


Kevin sighed and put his hand on his little brother’s shoulder. “You’re right. Everything about this sucks.” Nick nodded and stared blankly out at the interstate. Kevin and Brian had picked them up at the police station and dropped Annie and Josh off at the funeral home that the coroner had released the bodies to that morning. Nick bailed out of the meeting at the funeral home, while Katie rushed to be at her husband’s side. He felt bad about it, but it seemed like a family thing, and while Annie was definitely his family, the awkwardness of the situation was just too much for him. If it hadn’t been for his father, there would be no funeral to plan. Logic told him that he had nothing to do with it, but still, he could feel the guilt eating away at him piece by piece. Actually, being eaten piece by piece didn’t sound too bad right now. He’d give anything to be able to disappear for a while.


The car ride was quiet, the shock of Kendall Jones’ revelation about their fathers weighing heavily on Nick, Annie, and Josh. Brian and Kevin decided not to push the issue, knowing they would learn about the circumstances of Nick’s release in due time, but as Howie and AJ entertained Drew and Nick sat alone with his thoughts on the bench outside the hotel lobby, Kevin decided it was time to push. “There’s more, isn’t there?” He draped his arm across Nick’s shoulders and coaxed his baby brother to look at him.


Nick bit his quivering bottom lip and stared into Kevin’s concerned eyes, his own gaze clouding over with unshed tears. He could see Brian approaching over Kevin’s shoulder and sighed. Maybe it was time. “It was Frank. The reason they thought it was my DNA under Molly’s fingernails is because it was Frank’s.”


Kevin furrowed his brows in concentration and stared at Nick, pursing and unpursing his lips as he thought about that exactly he was supposed to say to that. “Frank? Really?”


“Who’s Frank?” Brian eased down into the empty spot beside Nick and leaned forward, looking to his left to join in on the conversation.


Nick glanced at Brian, then back to Kevin, back to Brian, and finally settled on looking back out at the traffic whizzing by in front of him. “He’s my father,” he croaked.


“What? No, Nick. BOB is your father. You need sleep.” Brian joked with a playful smirk.


Nick turned to look at the man he still liked to call “his Frick” and shook his head slowly. “Technically, Bob’s my uncle. His big brother, Frank-- he’s my father. He’s also now the primary suspect in the murders.”


Brian’s breath hitched in his throat, and he let out a choking noise as he gasped at Nick’s revelation. “What?! Did you just find out?”


Nick looked down and kicked at a gravel on the sidewalk with his tennis shoe. “That he killed Annie’s parents-- yes. That he’s my father-- no.”


“Oh my God… How did they know it was him?”


“Fingerprint on the murder weapon matched someone in the criminal database-- who just happens to be my bastard serial killer father. That would be why the DNA evidence matched mine.”


Kevin watched Nick as he told Brian the story, learning new bits of information himself. “Do they have him in custody?”


“No. They’re still looking.” For what felt like the hundredth time that day, Nick’s hands started to shake. “Mike and Q are on their way down here. Detective Jones doesn’t seem to think he would want to hurt me, but he might try to contact me. Of course, I can’t exactly trust much of what Kendall Jones says, considering.”


“How long have you known? About Frank, I mean?” Brian asked softly.


“A little over twelve years. He wrote me a letter while we were working on Black and Blue. At first I thought it was a joke, but …”


Brian looked at Kevin, who was protectively holding Nick against him with one arm, and gently massaging one of his shoulders . “You knew?” Kevin gave him a silent nod. “Why didn’t you tell me, Nick?” He braced himself for his little brother’s answer.


“I tried,” Nick answered softly. “Believe me, I tried.”


Brian softened his gaze and placed his hand tentatively on “his Frack’s” back. “And?”


“And you had your head stuck too far up Leighanne’s ass planning the wedding of the century to even notice.”


Brian winced, but knew that his little brother spoke the truth. “I’m sorry,” he said earnestly. “I should have been there.”


“Kevin went with me to Pennsylvania to meet him in prison. I did it alone, though. I felt like I needed to do it alone.” He looked up at Kevin, who had his eyes clenched shut tight in an attempt to stop the flow of tears that threatened to fall. “I shouldn’t have done it alone,” he whispered.


“You never told me what happened in there,” Kevin said, his voice cracking.


Nick stared back out at the interstate and breathed heavily, drawing the humid air in and out of his lungs as he thought back to the day he met his biological father face to face. In. Out. In. Out. In-- “He said he did it for me.” Out.


“Did what for you, Nick?” Brian asked quietly, his face ashen and pale as he watched his friend relive the moment.


Nick let out a sarcastic snort. “Killed all those people. Jane was pregnant, and she was trying to stay out of the bar so she wouldn’t drink. Frank was driving to Erie to work at the hospital. He wasn’t even a nurse, but an assistant- barely making minimum wage and spending a lot of that on gas. Jones said all the victims had one thing in common-- a large sum of money or valuables in their patient belongings locker-- and little to no family to claim it. He’d kill them, then steal from them and bring it home to Jane. Why he didn’t just steal from them and call it a day, I don’t know. And mom was totally clueless. I asked her later. She said she had no idea.” Brian gasped and brought his hand up to his mouth, which was hanging agape in shock as he listened to Nick’s story. This sounded more like a movie than real life, yet it was real life, and his little brother was one of many innocent victims. “You know what she said after that? That she still loved him. All these years, and she still loved Frank while she was married to Dad. I never thought my family dysfunction would somehow break Annie’s family in the process.”


Nick let out a sob as Kevin pulled him into a fierce hug, rocking back and forth as Nick grasped onto him, holding on for dear life to the only respectable father figure he’d ever had. “This isn’t your fault, Nick. You didn’t have anything to do with this.”


“That’s the thing,” Nick whimpered. “Apparently, I didn’t. Kendall says this wasn’t about me. Jack Donohue was working at St. Vincent’s at the time Frank was. He’s the guy who turned him in. How crazy is that?”


“The craziest,” Brian agreed. “Maybe fate brought the two of you together. I mean, I like to take credit for it, but Nick-- God knew she was the one for you before either of you were even born. I know it’s hard to see right now, but if you just love each other and stay strong for each other through this, you and Annie will come out even better than before.”


“You think so?”


“I know so,” Brian said confidently. “You can’t go blaming yourself and feeling guilty. We all know that’s a slippery slope for you. You deserve happiness, Nick. Annie and Drew-- they’re part of that happiness. Don’t let this ruin it.”


Nick took in a deep breath and sat up, pulled himself out of Kevin’s grasp, and wiped at his wet cheeks to dry them. “I think I’ll go check in on Drew and make sure he’s keeping Howie and AJ in line.”

“Atta boy,” Kevin said proudly.

Grief is a funny thing. For Annie, comparisons between the deaths of her parents and that of her husband were unavoidable, even natural, but it was in the grieving process that she saw the contrast. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. She studied the stages of grief in depth in her college psychology class and again in medical school. She’d gotten firsthand experience in seeing patients and their families experience the stages, sometimes all within a matter of a few minutes, or even seconds, when she’d been the bearer of bad news. She dwelt within the grief cycle herself for much longer than was comfortable. Even now, years later, she sometimes felt like she was stuck in the denial stage when it came to Andrew. Nick had helped, more than she imagined he’d ever know, to pull her back to acceptance, but the circumstances had been brutal, and Andrew was so young. She still often found herself questioning the hows and the whys of her late husband’s untimely death, and looking back, couldn’t shake the sense of disbelief that went along with it.


On the other hand, when it came to her parents, she found herself settling on acceptance rather quickly. Perhaps it was because they lived much longer and fuller lives than Andrew. They’d both been well-educated and well-traveled. They lived to raise two children, retired from lucrative careers, and experienced the joy of having a grandchild. Andrew’s career was only just beginning, and he didn’t even live to see the birth of his child. In contrast to the 40-year long marriage of the Donohues, Andrew and Annie Morgan had only three years together before their own marriage was cut tragically short. Then, there was Nick. Undoubtedly, Nick’s presence this time around helped to curtail the sense of loneliness and hopelessness she’d endured when she lost Andrew. This time, she wasn’t alone, and this time, she wasn’t hopeless. She was looking forward to a lifetime with Nick. Of course she grieved. She was heartbroken over the murder of her parents, and more than anything, she wanted justice for them. Yet, she also yearned for the ability to move on, for her sake, as well as Nick’s.


“Oh, gross!” Annie grimaced and dramatically wiped at her wet cheek, freshly licked by her two-year old son, with the back of her hand. “Did Nick teach you that?”


“Hey!” Nick squealed in mock surprise. “Why you gotta go thinking I taught him all the gross stuff?”


“Because you did!” Annie laughed. Nick grinned and leaned across the kitchen table towards his fiancé as if going in for a kiss, but turned at the last minute and slurped his long tongue upwards from her jawline up to her cheekbone. “Argh!”


“Are you a pirate, now?”


“Yo ho mateys!” Drew exclaimed, quoting his favorite Disney Junior cartoon. Nick’s eyes danced with laughter and he held his hand up for Drew, who was playing in the floor beside his mother, to give him a high five. The toddler squealed in delight and slapped his little hand up against Nick’s palm. “We got you, Mommy!”


“Yeah! We got you, Mommy!” Nick echoed. He gave Annie a playful wink, then bent down to actually kiss her on the cheek. “You were a knockout,” he said, pointing to one of the photo albums spread open across the table top.


Annie looked down at the school picture of a little girl smiling up at them with a toothless grin, long auburn curls pulled into low pigtails with purple ribbons, a light spattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks, and bright green eyes that stood out against her denim jumper and the gray backdrop. “I was six!”


“Well, seven year old Nick would have thought six-year old Annie was hot!” Nick deadpanned with a smirk.


“Oh, he would?”


“He would.” Nick nodded affirmatively and plopped into a chair at the table beside her. He leaned on his elbow and rested his chin in the palm of his hand as he watched his future wife turn the page.


It had been two weeks since tragedy brought them to Boca Raton, Florida, and Annie and Josh were busy getting their parents’ beach house ready to put on the market. They had inherited it, but the thought of vacationing there after their parents died there was beyond awkward, so they were packing up the items they wanted to keep and giving the rest away to charity-- the items that hadn’t been deemed evidence in the criminal investigation, anyway. Looking at old family photos and recalling happy memories proved to be very therapeutic.

Annie sighed, her eyes settling on a picture of Josh and herself standing in front of the Washington Monument. A well-manicured finger cast a shadow in the upper right-hand corner, and Jack Donohue’s eyes, balding forehead, and furrowed brows encompassed the bottom corner as he tried to figure out why he couldn’t hear the characteristic picture-taking “snap” of his "newfangled" digital camera when his wife pressed the button.


"That was a good day," Josh remarked, appearing behind his little sister and leaning his hands on her chair as he looked over her shoulder and nuzzled his head against hers.


"It was," Annie agreed.

“You sure you’ll be okay?” he asked. “We don’t have to go out on the boat this afternoon if you’ve changed your mind.”


Annie nodded with a smile. “We’ll be fine, and I haven’t changed my mind. It was my idea, remember?”


“Just checking.”


“Now, you two get out of here so that maybe I can accomplish something in this house with the two of you out of my hair!”


“You sure you don’t want us to take little man with us?” Nick asked her as he stood up, pausing to drop a quick kiss on her forehead.


“As tempting as that sounds, the idea of my baby on a speedboat out in the middle of the ocean scares me, even if I know he’s in good hands. Besides, it’s almost nap time,” Annie explained.


“No nap, Mama!” The toddler tended to resort back to his “baby talk” when he was tired.


“How about some milk in your sippy cup and we can watch Jake and the Neverland Pirates?” Annie stood and headed for the refrigerator.


“Okay!” Drew agreed excitedly.


Annie gave Nick a wink and gestured her head towards the back door. “You guys have fun, and don’t stay out too late. I don’t want to be worrying about you.”


Nick crossed the room and retrieved a green sippy cup from Annie’s oversized beige leather bag. He took the top off and placed it on the granite countertop, holding it in place so that Annie could pour the milk. “Actually, we won’t be gone very long. It it’s okay with you, Josh is going to watch Drew tonight so we can spend some time together-- maybe even go out to dinner. I want to talk to you about something.” Nick thought about the legal documents he’d had Jordan mail to him earlier in the week. It seemed like it might be the right time to talk to Annie about this, and he prayed he was right.


“Actually, that sounds great,” she answered with a smile. “You guys have fun.” Annie leaned into Nick and gave him a quick hug and kiss before shooing him and Josh out the door.


Fifteen minutes later, Drew was sprawled out on the couch, snoring softly with his mouth hanging open, and Annie was turning off the television and pulling the half-empty sippy cup out of his limp grip. It wasn’t the best way to get her child to sleep, but it was effective, and sometimes necessary. She took the cup to the kitchen and washed it, then checked to make sure all the first floor doors and windows were locked before gathering Drew into her arms and carrying him upstairs with her. Despite the fact that she was ready to “move on” after her parents’ death, and that she hoped and prayed for Nick to be able to do the same, Frank Carter was still at large, and she wasn’t taking any chances by leaving her son alone downstairs while she worked upstairs. After a week-long manhunt, Detective Jones and the FBI assumed that Frank had most likely gotten his revenge then left the country, so tracking him down became much more difficult. When the suspect didn’t make any attempt to contact his son in the days following the murders, Kendall attempted to assure them that they weren’t likely in any danger, and they believed him, but now that Annie was alone, she found herself feeling a little uneasy. Then, there was the fact that she still hadn’t found her wedding album. What could Frank Carter possibly want with her wedding album?


Annie placed Drew on the bed of the guestroom that her mother tended to use more as storage. She opened the chest at the foot of the bed and peered inside, sifting through the stacks of albums and eventually taking them out one by one to make sure she wasn’t overlooking anything. Still nothing. She sighed as she came across a college yearbook and picked it up. This was the only University of Kentucky yearbook she’d ever bought, mainly because it had been brought to her attention that there were two pictures of her and Andrew in it-- one of them studying together at the library, and another of them cheering in the stands at a football game, complete with blue and white face paint. She sat down in the window seat overlooking the beach and turned to page 62, then to page 150. She’d memorized the page numbers of the aforementioned pictures years ago. She smiled and looked out at the ocean, then gasped at the vision below her. There he was again-- the man who looked like Andrew. He had a funny way of showing up whenever she was thinking about her late husband, and she was beginning to think that maybe he didn’t look as much like Andrew as she thought he did, and perhaps it was just her subconscious making her think so. However, future events would soon force her to re-examine that theory.


********************


“I think Annie wants us to bond,” Josh remarked as Nick handed over control of the boat to his future brother-in-law and took a seat.


“Oh, I know she does,” Nick answered. “Tighten your grip on the throttle and pull up on it a little as we go move into this wave.”


Josh did as he was told and kept talking. “I never really went out much with Dad in his boats. I was more into sports and stuff.”


“You don’t think speedboating is a sport?” Nick asked incredulously.


“Um…..no?”


“I used to race with my dad. Uh, Bob, I mean. The boats were bigger and faster, but it’s fun, right?” Nick smiled as he leaned back against the hull of the small motorboat, clasping his hands behind his head and propping his feet up on the other side. He closed his eyes and breathed in the salty ocean breeze as tiny droplets of the cool sea spray hit his face and were instantly warmed by the bright sun.


“It is fun,” Josh admitted with a smile.


“Well, the boats are yours now. We’ll do this again sometime-- maybe even convince Annie to let us bring Drew in a few years, or go fishing or something.”


“I’d like that,” Josh answered wistfully. He looked over at Nick, then back out at the ocean. “I wish I could have done a lot of things differently. I mean, I was close to Dad, but I should have spent more time doing stuff like this with him.”


“I think we all wish we could have done things differently for one reason or another,” Nick replied. He intended to answer quietly, but really, both of them were shouting over the sound of the boat motor, wind, and water.


“I’m glad you’re marrying my sister,” Josh said earnestly. “Dad had his reservations because of who you are, but you’re a good guy.”


“Thanks,” Nick answered seriously. “That means a lot coming from you.” Josh nodded ,and they sat in relative silence while he concentrated on maneuvering the boat, with Nick interjecting a few pointers when he thought necessary.


“I can see the coastline. Do you want to take over from here?”


“No, you can do it. I’ll tell you what to do,” Nick answered. He did stand up to look over Josh’s shoulder and assist as needed, though. “When you can see the dock clearly, slow down and approach at an angle. Then, you’re going to let go of the throttle so that the engine is in idle, but still set to forward.” Josh did as he was told, but when he let go of the throttle, the engine didn’t idle. “Hmm,” Nick grunted. “Let me see that.” Nick pulled up on the throttle, then let go again, steering the boat toward the dock, but it still accelerated forward. “Pull the kill switch!” he demanded. Josh yanked on the cord hooked to his belt loop, and still the engine roared, and the boar jerked forward. He looked up at Nick who gulped, his eyes frozen in fear as the boat approached the dock as top speed, getting closer and closer as the moments ticked by. He felt his heart leap up into his throat and his entire body started to shake. This was one of those worst-case scenarios you only heard about in boating safety classes. “Get off the boat!” he shouted.


“What?!” Josh took over control of the steering wheel. “No! This is my dad’s boat!”

“Get. Off. The. Boat!” Nick demanded. He reached for the outboard motor and turned it sharply to the left, where there were fewer boats along the dock and it was likely to do less damage. He lunged for Josh, grabbing him by the shoulders as he jumped out into the water away from the boat. The smaller man, however, slipped out of his grasp, and remained on the boat as it headed straight for a large yacht parked a few yards away. “JOSH!! NO!!!” Nick coughed and sputtered in the cool, choppy water, gasping for breath and watching helplessly as the small motorboat crashed into the much larger one and burst into flames.

Nick sat stiffly on the back of an ambulance with a heavy blanket draped across his shoulders, holding an oxygen mask to his face as an EMT bandaged the burn on his arm. “Is he dead?” he asked with a gasp.


The EMT paused and looked up at Nick. “He wasn’t when they left with him,” the middle-aged man answered solemnly. “I wish I could tell you more, but anything beyond that would just be my best guess at this point.” Then he went back to bandaging his arm. Nick nodded silently and clenched his teeth, staring blankly ahead at the road in front of him that just moments ago was shrouded in flashing lights as the ambulance carrying Joshua Donohue sped away. A police cruiser pulled up to the spot previously occupied by the other ambulance, and Annie jumped out of it and pushed through the crowd, leaving Drew in the car with the young officer Nick vaguely recognized from the police station two weeks ago. “That the sister?” the older man asked. Nick gulped and nodded. “You want me to talk to her?”


Nick’s ragged breath hitched in his throat. “Oh, God,” he croaked. “No. I need to do it.” His mind flashed to the conversation he’d had with Howie on the plane two weeks ago. “I just wish I could have been there with her when she found out, you know?” he’d told Howie. His only consolation at the time was that her brother was there to tell her about the deaths of her parents, and she didn’t have to hear it from a police officer alone. Now, the thought of telling her that her brother may or may not have already suffered the same fate was beyond daunting. However, he knew he owed it to her to be the one to tell her, especially since he was one of the last people to see Josh alive. Nick winced in pain as the EMT secured the dressing on his arm. It still felt hot from the flames that surrounded him as he pulled Annie’s brother from the wreckage, despite the saltwater he’d plunged them into to pull him to safety and the first aid he was currently receiving


“Nick! What happened?” Annie panted as she jogged towards him and threw her arms around his neck. He drew in a sharp breath as searing pain ripped through his shoulder and hot tears pricked at his eyes, mostly unrelated to the physical pain he was experiencing. “Nick?” Annie hesitantly pulled away and sank down onto the back of the ambulance beside him. “Where’s Josh?”


Nick’s face crumpled. “The boat. There was something wrong with the boat.” Annie gasped and clamped her hand over her mouth to muffle the sob that rose in her throat. She feared she already knew where this was going. Why else would she get a police escort to the docks? Obviously, it was very bad news. “I did everything I could to get it to stop, Annie,” Nick whimpered. “When I realized there wasn’t anything else we could do, I tried to get him to jump off, but he wouldn’t because he wanted to try to save your dad’s boat. I grabbed him when I jumped off, but--” He trailed off and slumped his shoulders in defeat, looking down at his feet, which were dangling limply below the chrome bumper. “I’m so sorry, Annie.”


“Is he….dead?” Annie whispered, her breathy voice barely audible, even to Nick, who was only an inch away.


“I don’t know,” he lamented. “They say he was alive when they left with him, but--”


“You might have saved his life by going and pulling him out like that,” the EMT chimed in. Annie gave both men a weak smile. “We need to get you checked out,” he reminded Nick. “Let me help you get up in here.”


“No, no. I’m fine.” Nick insisted. He brushed the man off and attempted to stand up, but Annie promptly placed her hands on his chest and gently shoved him back down. “Get in the ambulance, Nick,” she said sternly.


“Annie. Nick.” Annie turned around, startled by the familiar voice behind her.


“Detective Jones? What are you doing here?”


********************


Kendall Jones didn’t know much about boats, despite the fact that he’d grown up in south Florida. He’d always preferred land sports like golf and volleyball. What he did know was that it was suspicious for the sons of two recent murder victims and the prime suspect, respectively, to be involved in a freak boating accident just two weeks after the murders. So, he enlisted the expertise of the boat dock operator in investigating the crash scene.


“See this?” Danny Alvarez was actually wearing a sailor’s hat. Kendall wasn’t sure if he was going for a touristy retirement community type of authenticity, or if he truly like wearing it. Nevertheless, he was having a hard time ignoring the corny white hat and taking the man seriously. It seemed that after over an hour or combing through the wreckage, he might finally be on to something, though.


“What’s that?”


“It’s the throttle lever.” Danny held the cylindrical piece of metal up in front of his face and eyed it carefully. “It’s broken.”


Of course it was broken. Everything around them was broken. “Couldn’t that have happened in the crash?” Kendall asked.


“Yes,” Danny replied matter-of-factly. Detective Jones stifled a frustrated sigh mixed with an eye roll. “But it didn’t.”


“How do you know that?”


“See this line of rust here?” Kendall stooped down and eyed the broken end of the lever opposite the hard plastic throttle handle as Danny pointed to it.


“Yeah.” He assumed it was possible that the lever could have naturally rusted in two due to age or a factory defect, but the line of rust was along an edge that was too clean, almost perfectly straight.


“That means it didn’t happen in the crash.”


“You’re right. It didn’t.” Detective Jones may not have known much about boats, but he did have the keen eye of a detective, and he didn’t like what he was seeing. The rust line stopped just short of the diameter of the throttle, meaning that someone had likely sawed through it so that it was still intact, but was likely to break once handled. “How long does it usually take for a piece of equipment to rust like this?” he asked the dock operator.


“I’m no chemist, detective, but as a deck hand, I can tell you it doesn’t take that long. Once the surface of a piece of equipment is compromised, the sea air can corrode it pretty fast. I’d say as soon as a matter of a few weeks, maybe even days.”


“So this could have happened just a few days ago?”


“Maybe.”


Kendall stood tall and placed his hands on his hips authoritatively. “So, tell me, Danny. Can you recall having seen anyone loitering around this boat any time in the past few weeks?”


The man flinched at the detective’s sudden change in demeanor. “There are almost always people loitering around here, detective,” He answered. “Mainly kids-- teenagers who can’t stomach another bite of Grandma’s cobbler or don’t want to hear another story about ‘the war’ from Gramps. Harmless, really.” He paused, seemingly deep in thought. “I’m sorry, detective, I can’t remember anything specifically about that boat at all.”


Kendall gave him a curt nod. “Okay, then. Thank you so much for your help.” He held a gloved hand out to retrieve the broken throttle and placed it in an evidence bag. “Please feel free to call me if you think of anything else that might aid in the investigation.” He held out his card, and the deck hand took it.


“Sure thing.”


********************


“He has multiple broken bones, and we suspect he has a spinal cord injury, but the more pressing issue right now is the fact that he has second and third degree burns covering over 60 percent of his body. This makes him highly susceptible to infection. It will be hard to regulate his body temperature, and to say that it’s extremely painful would be an understatement. In order to protect his airway, we have him intubated. He’s heavily sedated, but he is trying to breathe on his own over the tube. Based on what the paramedics told us about the crash site, it’s a miracle he even survived the impact.”


Nick clasped Annie’s hand reassuringly, then glanced over at her brother’s distraught wife. Since one arm was out of commission in a sling due to a dislocated shoulder, he momentarily let go of Annie’s hand, then reached behind her to give Katie’s shoulder a tentative squeeze. She gave him a small smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. With her straight blonde hair and sad blue eyes, she kind of reminded Nick of his sisters, which made him want to reach out and comfort her. Then, of course, there was Annie. How much more of this could she take? He prayed he’d never have to find out. Yet, as if on cue, Kendall Jones walked into the hospital waiting room, and the expression on his face gave Nick chills.


“How’s Josh?” he asked solemnly.


“Alive,” Annie answered quietly. “For now,” she added under her breath.


“That’s good news,” the detective acknowledged. “But I’m afraid I have some bad news about the boat crash.”


An eerie silence fell over them, but this was nothing new. It was the same silence that had enveloped them as they waited for news on Josh-- the same silence that would hang thickly over the room whenever they remembered what had brought them to Boca Raton in the first place. “Well, go on,” Nick prompted, an air of frustrated sarcasm in his voice.


“The boat was tampered with.” Annie and Katie both gasped in surprise, but not Nick. He’d been around boats enough to know that a malfunction like that was highly unlikely, especially in a boat the assumed Dr. Donohue kept well-maintained. “Somebody intended for this crash to happen, and for it to look like an accident. I’m not sure who his target was, but--”

Nick interrupted him. “Do you think it could have been me?”

“It’s hard to say,” Kendall admitted. “Chances are that maybe Frank did this a few weeks ago and Jack was the target. When he didn’t get out in his boat as soon as he wanted him to, he went into the house for the kill. That seems most likely, but we’re not ruling out any possibilities right now.”


Nick nodded slowly. “So, what do we do?”


The detective sighed. “For starters, I’d recommend you call your bodyguard back down here. I’ll assume you all will be staying in town while Josh is hospitalized?” Annie and Katie nodded eagerly, and Nick followed suit. “I still feel like he’s probably left town by now, but at this point, I don’t want to take any chances.”


“Nick--” Annie placed her hand in his shoulder gently. “You’re supposed to go back into the studio with the guys next week,” she reminded him.


“So?” Nick eyed her dubiously.


“So….it’s okay if you want to go back to LA like you’d planned. Katie and I will take care of each other.”


Nick gave her hand a little squeeze. “I appreciate that, but for now, I’d rather be right here.” Annie fought back grateful tears. Nick had truly been her rock throughout this whole ordeal, and deep down, she didn’t really mean it when she said he could go back to LA and leave her there. Still, though, offering felt like the right thing to do, and she didn’t doubt that she actually could handle herself and her sister-in-law if Nick did in fact head back to Los Angeles. “I need to call one of the guys,” Nick announced. He let go of Annie’s hand, and with his one useable arm, he instinctively reached for his pants pocket. Except, he didn’t have pockets. Seeing that he was cold and wet, an ER nurse insisted that he change out of his clothes and into a set of green hospital-issued scrubs. Even if his phone was indeed still in his pants pocket and not at the bottom of the bay, it surely wouldn’t be functional. He sighed and started to ask Annie if he could borrow her phone when it started to ring from inside her purse.


She quickly retrieved it, looked at the screen, and handed it to Nick. “It’s AJ,” she said with a shrug.


Nick took the phone and held it to his ear. “Hello?”


“Oh, thank God!” AJ’s voice bellowed at him. “Where’s your phone and why aren’t you answering it?”


“Uh, I’d say it’s somewhere on the bottom of the Atlantic about now,” Nick answered quietly.


“Holy shi-- vas! We didn’t think of that!”


“Holy what?”


“Hell if I know, but I’ve got a baby girl on the way, and little princesses aren’t supposed to cuss, so I’m trying to quit.”


“I see.” Nick smirked, despite the grave situation. “What’s up, J?”


“You’re on Access Hollywood. Actually, there’s a picture of what I think used to be a boat, and they’re saying you were there. Are you okay??” he almost shouted.


“I--” Nick paused and looked at Drew, sleeping soundly across two waiting room chairs, then at Annie and Katie, both visibly shaken, but otherwise holding up pretty well. Then he looked at Kendall Jones, who was now seated in a chair across from them and flipping through notes in a small stenographer’s pad. “Yeah. I’m okay.”


“Hmm….”


“Hmm… what?”


“But?”


“What?” Nick furrowed his brows in confusion.


“You’re okay, but...”


Nick sighed. “But Josh was driving the boat, and he’s-- he’s not okay, AJ,” he stammered.


“And neither are you,” AJ observed knowingly.


“Neither am I,” Nick admitted with a sigh.


While Nick continued his quiet conversation with AJ, Detective Jones turned his attention to Annie, leaning towards her attentively with his pen poised over the pad of paper resting on his knee. “Where were you at the time of the crash?” he asked.


“I was in the beach house,” she answered. “After your team cleared the crime scene, we brought in a professional cleaner and started getting it ready to sell.”


“That’s usually what happens in cases like this,” Kendall noted. “So, since you’ve been in and around the house a lot lately, have you noticed anything strange?”


“Strange? Strange how?” She could tell him all kinds of strange things-- like how strange it felt to be pilfering through her parents’ belongings without either of them present, the strange sense of calm she felt about their deaths, the strange visions of her late husband…


“Have you found anything else out of place? Noticed anyone loitering around the property?”


“Well, I still haven’t found my wedding album,” she told him. “But if you really think Frank’s murdering my parents didn’t have anything to do with Nick or me, I don’t know what he could possibly want with it.”


“It is strange,” Kendall admitted. “Anything else you can think of? What about while you were there alone before the accident?”


Annie opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. She’d almost told him about seeing Andrew’s doppleganger walking on the beach, but then realized just how crazy that might sound. She imagined that if she told the detective she’d been seeing her dead husband practically every day since the murders, she might end up in the psych ward instead of the ICU waiting room. “No. Nothing else.”


********************


Just as the doctor had warned them, Josh contracted an infection within only a few days. “He’s septic,” the doctor lamented in the ICU waiting room three days after the crash.


“What’s his blood pressure?” Annie asked immediately.


“Sixty-five over thirty-two maxed out on Levophed and dopamine,” the intensivist answered without missing a beat.


“His temp?”


“103.4 with acetaminophen.”


“His heart rate?”


“40-- give or take.” Nick watched curiously as Annie continued to interrogate her brother’s doctor. These days it was easy to forget about that “M.D.” at the end of her name, but right now, the M.D. was coming out of the concerned sister loud and clear. He couldn’t help but be a bit in awe of her. This bright woman spouting off medical jargon, and subsequently interpreting it, was the woman he was going to marry in just two and a half months. Crazy.


Meanwhile, Annie’s heart sank as the took in the information being relayed to her. “He has a fever, which usually increases heart rate, he’s maxed out on dopamine and Levophed, and his heart rate’s still only 40 beats per minute,” she said, a dejected sense of dread filling her heart with each passing second.


“Yes,” Josh’s doctor answered solemnly.


Annie reached for the chair behind her and eased herself down. Nick followed suit beside her, but Katie kept standing, her arms crossed protectively across her chest while she shifted her weight back and forth from one foot to the other nervously. “Have you tried Neo-Synephrine?” Annie asked meekly, looking up at the doctor with hopeful eyes.


“We considered it,” he answered with a knowing nod. “But because of his burns…”


“You don’t want to cause too much vasoconstriction,” she finished for him with a defeated sigh. “Without adequate blood flow, they’ll never heal, and he’d be at an even higher risk of losing his limbs.” The doctor nodded. “Josh wouldn’t want that,” Annie declared, eyeing Katie cautiously.


“No, he wouldn’t,” his wife agreed, her voice barely above a whisper.


Annie gulped and got back down to business. “How’s his kidney function?”


“His serum creatinine jumped from 1.5 to 2.7 this morning. His kidneys are failing.”


“His LFTs?”


“High. His liver’s taken a hit, too.”


“What antibiotics do you have him on?”


“Vancomycin, Zosyn, and gentamicin since he got here.”


“So they’re not working,” Annie surmised, her voice on edge.


He shook his head slowly. “No, they’re not. Given the extent of his burns…”


She help her hand up, palm outward towards the man in the white coat. “You don’t need to explain. I get it.”


The doctor pursed his lips and studied her. “What else do you want to know?”


“Is he in any pain?” Katie interjected from her position standing beside her husband’s doctor. Annie groaned softly and looked down at the floor, gripping the sides of her chair until her knuckles turned white, bracing herself for the doctor's inevitable answer and her sister-in-law's response.


He took off his glasses and sighed, then placed his hand gently on Katie’s shoulder and looked directly into her eyes. “We’re doing the best we can to control his pain, Mrs. Donohue, but it’s a delicate balancing act between keeping him sedated and keeping his heart rate and blood pressure from dropping any further. Unfortunately, yes, he’s in some pain. We’re giving him morphine, but the dose that his body is able to tolerate without becoming too bradycardic or hypotensive isn’t really enough to adequately control his pain. In severe burn cases like these, the nerve endings are exposed and often damaged. Topical anesthetics help some, but can may cause further tissue damage. We’re using them anyway. He’s semi-conscious, but if we were better able to control his heart rate and blood pressure, I’d have him completely knocked out just because it’s so painful.”


Katie let out a sob while Annie blinked back the tears what welled up in her eyes. Nick looked at her and caught a tear drop with the pad of his thumb as it trailed down her pale cheek. “He’s dying, Katie,” she told her sister-in-law, her voice cracking in agony.


“I know,” Katie whispered.

Katie called it a mercy killing. Annie called it practicing good medicine (and loving her brother enough to let him go). Nick wasn’t sure what to call it, but the chilling revelation just moments before Joshua Donohue took his final breaths would be forever etched into his mind, playing over and over like a bad dream he couldn’t wake up from.


*********************

"You have great timing, AJ,” Nick murmured as he slipped out of Annie’s brother’s hospital room and pulled the door together quietly behind him.


"Why do I have the feeling that what you really mean is 'Your timing is terrible, AJ'?"


Nick let out a tortured sigh. "Because you've known me most of my life, and depending on who you ask, I guess you're right."


"What's up, Nick?" AJ asked, his voice immediately filled with concern. "How's Josh?"

Nick squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to quell the tears that were rapidly forming. "Nick?"


"He's dying, AJ." Nick let out a shuddered breath and got back to pacing nervously atop the dull white linoleum tile outside the door of Josh's room in the intensive care unit, just as he'd been doing on the other side of it inside the room just moments ago while Annie and Josh's doctor explained to Katie what was about to happen. He knew it must be wrong to feel thankful for the phone call on his new phone, but he was anyway. “They’re taking him off life support right now.”


“Oh, God… I’m sorry, man. What can I do?”


“Distract me,” Nick answered quickly. For the sake of his own mental health, he'd tried desperately not to blame himself for this, but every time he closed his eyes, he could feel Josh's shoulder's slip out of his grasp as he jumped off the boat.


“Done,” AJ said in response. “I was actually calling to tell you we were just checking out the Christmas song you and Howie wrote a few weeks ago. It’s really good!”


“Oh yeah? What do Kevin and Brian think of it?”


“They love it, too.”


“They do?” The fact that the other guys really liked his songwriting was a revelation from the London trip that Nick was still getting used to.


“Of course they do!”


Nick turned at the sound of the door behind him opening to see Annie coming out, her steps unsteady, her eyes and the tip of her nose red, and her cheeks tear-stained. “AJ, I’ve gotta go.”


“Sure. Please let us know if you guys need anything.”


“I will,” Nick promised-- and this time, unlike so many other times he’d said it before, he meant it. He was glad to have finally realized the comforting power of the love of his Backstreet brothers, and with that fresh on his mind, he tucked the phone into his pocket and gave the broken woman standing before him his full attention. “Hey,” he breathed, taking several quick strides towards her.


“He’s awake,” Annie whispered.


Nick’s jaw dropped. “He is?”


“It happens sometimes,” she explained. “Occasionally there’s this surge of hormones that people get before they die that makes them more alert. I’ve always thought of it as God’s way of letting people say goodbye.”


Nick pulled her into his arms and wrapped them around her shoulders, resting his chin on top of her auburn head while she clutched handfuls of his t-shirt in her fists. “I’m so sorry, baby.”


“Don’t be,” she squeaked into his chest. “It’s better this way. For Josh, it’s better this way.” They stood there, Nick holding Annie in a tight bear hug as she leaned into him weakly, for several minutes, until Katie peeked her head out and motioned for Annie to come back in.

Nick loosened his grip on her and started to back away, not feeling particularly comfortable with going back in there. However, Annie reached for his hand, and he felt he had no choice but to put his hand in hers and follow her into the dimly lit hospital room.


The fluorescent bulb above the bed flickered against the pale green wall behind it, illuminating Josh’s broken body in an almost ethereal light, and the breathing machine that just minutes ago forced air through a tube into his lungs was now pushed into a corner. The clear hose that had been Josh’s lifeline dangled limply just inches above the floor, and the tape that secures it to his mouth still clung to it, now crumpled and stuck to itself. A heart monitor beeped loudly, and even Nick could tell that the pauses between beeps were too far apart.

His eyes met Josh’s, and beneath the burnt, swollen flesh and bandages, he thought he detected a smile. Then, Josh held up a piece of hospital stationery from the bedside table that was gripped loosely in his fingers. As Nick and Annie walked closer to the bed, they could see the words “I love u,” scrawled across it, except instead of the word “love,” there was a roughly sketched heart. “I love you, too,” Annie said warmly.


“He isn’t able to talk,” Katie explained. “Because of the damage from the burns in his throat and the breathing tube they just removed.” Nick nodded in understanding as Annie let go of his hand to sit down in the chair pulled alongside Josh’s bed. She gently took the sheet of paper out of Josh’s hand and placed it on the tray table, then took his hand into both of hers.


“Tell them hello for me,” she said to him. “We’ll be just fine down here, okay?” Josh nodded slightly. Nick shoved both of his hands in his jeans pockets and stood awkwardly as the siblings sat in silence, yet very obviously were having a conversation with only their matching green eyes. After a few moments, Josh raised his other hand and reached out towards Nick. Nick hesitantly took a step forward, and placed his shaking hand into Josh’s. Josh wriggled out of Annie’s grasp and used two fingers to point to his eyes, then at Nick, as if to say “I’ll be watching you.”


Nick let out a little chuckle. “Understood,” he replied. "I'll take good care of them," he promised, in reference to the man's little sister and nephew. Josh smiled, then gave Nick a weak handshake before letting him go. He pointed towards the pen and paper atop the faux wood tray table.

“You want to write again?” Josh nodded, and Katie rushed to the rolling table and pushed it closer to the bed, then placed the pen in his hand. He looked at Annie, then down at the paper as he began to write. They all leaned forwards as his shaking hand, barely holding the pen emblazoned with the hospital logo in its grip, began to write. Not surprisingly, the penmanship was akin to that of a preschooler, but the letter “A” was easily legible, as were the, “N, D, R, E, and W” that followed it. “Andrew,” Annie whispered. Then, she looked up at her older brother with wide eyes. Josh blinked, then took in a final gasp as alarms went off. Without another word, his sister stood to silence the alarms while Katie threw herself across her husband’s chest and sobbed. Nick bit his quivering bottom lip and placed his hand across the small of Annie’s back. She sighed and leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder as they watched the blips on the heart monitor slow to a flat line.

“What do you think that means?” Nick asked his bandmates as they all stared across the table at him, dumbfounded after his re-hashing of what happened on the day Josh Donohue died.


“Holy shit,” AJ muttered under his breath. Howie shook his head in disbelief and gave Nick a brotherly squeeze on the shoulder while Brian gave him a wistful half-smile through tear-filled eyes. Kevin took a more diplomatic approach.


“Do you think maybe he had an out-of-body experience?” he asked calmly.


“Yeah! LIke he saw his brother as he was going into the light? Something like that!” Brian piped up excitedly.


NIck pursed his lips and nodded thoughtfully. “That’s what Annie said,” he remarked. “But…”


“But what, Nick?”


“Annie’s--” He paused, looked each of his brothers in the eye, then stared down at the table. “Different.”


Kevin reached across the table and gave Nick’s forearm a reassuring squeeze. “Give her time,” he said gently. “It’s been what? Two weeks since her brother’s funeral?” Nick nodded. “She’s grieving, Nick. She may always be a little… different.”


“I understand that,” Nick interjected. “It’s just that--” he trailed off and looked back down at the table. Should he tell them? It’s just that I’m pretty sure I’m being haunted by the ghost of my fiance’s dead husband. You know-- Andrew? The guy my dead almost- brother-in-law wrote about before he died!


“It’s just that what, Nick?” Brian and Howie asked simultaneously from either side of him.


Nick sighed and groaned, running his hands up and down his face in frustration. “I’m sure I’m just going crazy.”


“I’m sure you’re not crazy, Nick,” Kevin reassured him with a squeeze on the forearm.


Nick groaned again. “Just forget I said anything, okay?”


“You’re not getting away that easily.”


“It’s almost like he’s haunting me,” Nick whispered.


Suddenly, before anyone else had a chance to respond to Nicks revelation, there was a spark in AJ’s eye, a turning on of the proverbial lightbulb above his head. “Maybe I can help,” he said, his big brown eyes both eager and hopeful.


*******************


“Alex, where are we going?”


“You’ll see, Nick. Just chill out.” AJ drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, the chipped black polish glaring in the afternoon Los Angeles sunlight, as he waited for the left turn light to turn green. “We’re here,” he said just moments later, as the black sports car slowed to a stop on the side of the street outside a quaint little white house on the outskirts of town. AJ turned off the engine and opened the door, lighting a cigarette as he did so.


Reluctantly, Nick followed suit, stooping down to avoid hitting his head on the door frame as he climbed out of the small car and stretched his legs. He turned to watch his bandmate take a long drag on his cigarette, then toss it on the sidewalk and stomp it out. Unlike in the more affluent areas of LA, it was obvious the street sweepers didn’t make the rounds here. The sidewalk was littered with cigarette butts and sand.



He ran his fingers along the gothic, dark purple lettering against a black painted background that adorned the handmade sign standing in the yard. It was barely legible from the road, but now that he was up close and personal, he could clearly read that it simply said, “Madame Alexandra.” Wasn’t she a doll maker? He could vaguely remember Angel fawning over some doll on QVC when he was eighteen, and he promptly whipping out the shiny new credit card that was burning a hole in his wallet and ordering it for her. Somewhere in the depths of his brain, his file of useless information reminded him that was actually, “Madame Alexander.” He raised an eyebrow in AJ’s direction. “Madame Alexandra, AJ? Really?”


AJ shrugged and galloped up the front steps. “We’re kindred spirits.”


“So you brought me to see a psychic?” Nick couldn’t hide his amusement. Leave it to AJ to bring him to a psychic in an effort to solve all his problems.


“Pshh- of course I didn’t bring you to a psychic, Nick. I understand how serious this is…..” He trailed off and raised his hand to use the gargoyle-like door knocker on the otherwise plain wooden front door. “She’s a medium.”


“A medium.”


“Yes, Nick. A medium.”


“A medium???”


“An individual held to be a channel of communication between the earthly world and a world of spirits.” *


Nick gulped and clenched at his chest, willing his heart to slow down. “Spirits?!”


AJ stared at him pointedly and pulled the sunglasses off his face. “You’re worried because Josh wrote about Annie’s dead husband, right?”


“Yeah….”


“Then maybe Alexandra can communicate with their spirits and see what that was all about? It’s probably exactly what Annie and Kev think, and it was some sort of ‘going into the light’ experience. It that’s what Alex thinks, too, then I’d say you can rest easy.”


Nick could feel his heart rate normalizing. When did AJ become the voice of reason? And why did he call Madame Alexandra “Alex”? “That’s-- brilliant, actually.”


AJ flashed a smile in his direction as the front door opened. A petite, elderly lady with long, white hair in a side braid peeked her head out. “Alex!” she exclaimed, enveloping AJ in a hug. “I’ve missed you, sweetheart!”


“Alex!” AJ exclaimed in return, giving her a quick peck on her crepe-paper like cheek. “I’ve missed you, too!” Nick cocked an eyebrow as he watched the exchange, standing back a safe distance with his arms crossed nervously across his chest. “Madame Alexandra,” or “Alex,” as it were, seemed more like a grandmother than a psychic, er... medium.


“Nickolas… I’ve been expecting you,” Alexandra said, pulling herself away from AJ and beckoning Nick to come closer. Nick’s right hand tightened around his left bicep and he felt himself subconsciously stumble backwards as his eyes widened to saucer-like proportions. “You’ve been on the news, dear,” Alexandra explained gently as she walked towards him on the porch, a loose board creaking under her miniscule weight. “The woman you love is hurting, and you’re looking for answers. Am I right?” Nick licked his suddenly dry lips, pursed them together tightly, and nodded meekly. Alexandra held out her wrinkled hand, reaching upwards towards Nick because of her small stature against hers. “Come inside with me, then.”


Reluctantly, he obliged. Despite the fact that his huge hand seemed to envelop her small one, he suddenly felt small. Perhaps it was the way she carried herself, with the poise of Miss America, the gentility, yet assertiveness, of a southern matriarch, but she made Nick feel comfortable, if only for a few minutes. She led them into a sunny living room with a comfortable beige couch, ornately weaved off-white rug, and warm, yellow walls. A lace runner adorned the dark chestnut coffee table, an obvious antique, and three cups of tea were steaming atop matching saucers of fine china with dainty yellow roses hand-painted on them. Alexandra settled herself into a white rocking chair and picked up a cup of tea. She took a sip as she rocked gently. “Sit down, gentlemen, and tell me why you’ve come to see me,” she said calmly.


AJ promptly plopped down onto the couch and helped himself to some tea. Nick eased down onto the edge of a couch cushion and leaned forward, more than ready to get this over with.


“Well, go ahead…”


“My fiancé’s brother died a couple weeks ago after the speedboat we were in was tampered with.”


“Yes,” Alexandra said knowingly.


“Her husband died a few years ago.”


“Oh?”


“Yeah. So… before Josh-- that’s Annie’s brother-- died, he wrote her dead husband’s name on a piece of paper. I’m just wondering what he meant by that, exactly.”


“I see.” Alexandra placed her tea cup and saucer gently on the table and reached out for Nick’s hands. He put them in hers, almost eagerly. “You love this woman,” she observed.


“Very much,” Nick responded instantly.


“I can feel how deeply you love her,” she said with a warm smile. Then, she closed her eyes and furrowed her brows in deep concentration while still grasping Nick’s hands. Nick looked over at AJ, who simply smiled and nodded from beside him. Suddenly, Alexanda’s hands started to shake. Nick instinctively tried to pull his own away, but she grasped them harder and opened her eyes.


“He’s angry,” she said simply.


The hair on the back of Nick’s neck stood on end. “Who’s angry?” he rasped.


“Her first love. I’m not sure, why, exactly, but he’s angry. He feels threatened.”


“You mean her dead husband?” Nick asked hastily.


“I communicate with spirits, Nick, dead or alive. Now… are you going to ask me about your father?”



*http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/medium

Survivor’s guilt. Nick knew that was what he was feeling that morning as he poured his coffee. Yet, there was something else-- Fear. Fear of thirty-something men with short blonde hair who, according to Madame Alexandra, may or may not be alive. Fear of men in their fifties with blonde or grey hair and blue eyes who somewhat resembled his estranged father. Fear of going to sleep at night…. hence, the never ending coffee.


“Red, blue, or green?”


Nick jumped at the sound of the voice behind him and dropped his coffee mug. “Damnit!”


“Nick?” Annie raced to his side and helped him wipe the hot liquid off his bare legs and feet with a dish towel she grabbed from the back of a kitchen chair. “Are you okay?”


“I-- I’m fine,” Nick stammered, stooping down to pick up the ceramic pieces of broken mug.


“Let me get a cold washcloth-- maybe you won’t burn so bad,” she soothed.


“Annie, I’m fine,” Nick insisted as he stood up and dumped the broken mug into the trash.


“Oh really? Because you’ve practically been jumping out of your skin every time I walk into a room for the past week,” Annie joked as she sat down in a kitchen chair and gestured for Nick to do the same. He did as he was told, and Annie promptly lifted his big feet into her lap as if they didn’t weigh anything and covered them with a cold, wet, dish towel. “So, red, blue, or green?”


“What?” Nick furrowed his brows in confusion.


“Those are the colors I’m trying to decide between for a December wedding. I mean, red seems like the obvious choice for a Christmas wedding. We could have poinsettias and touches of gold. Then, I was thinking maybe a ‘winter wonderland’ type of theme with blues and silvers.” Nick raised an eyebrow. This didn’t sound like Annie at all. Did all women get like this when it came to planning their weddings? He thought they’d decided to go small… Still, though, he’d rather have her chattering away about wedding colors than sinking into the silent solitude he found her in most days. “Then, again, I was thinking a pretty emerald green might be nice…” Annie trailed off and looked at him with wondering eyes.


Nick smiled. “I think we should definitely go with the green, but I don’t think we’ll be able to find a shade as pretty as your eyes.” He winked and reached out for her face, tucking a wisp of hair behind her ear so that he could stare into the aforementioned eyes for a moment before leaning in for a kiss.


Drew chose that moment to march into the kitchen holding a well-loved teddy bear under one arm and rubbing his eyes with his fist. “Nick got a boo-boo?” he asked innocently.


“Yes, honey. Nick got a boo-boo,” Annie answered. Despite his best to control it, Nick’s ears burned red with embarrassment.


“Mommy fixes boo-boos!” Drew chirped cheerfully.


“Yeah, buddy, she does,” Nick agreed with a wink in Annie’s direction.


“Drew’s hungry,” the two and a half year old announced to no one in particular.


“How about some strawberries?” Annie asked him cheerfully.


“Mmmm….berries!”


The almost year-round fresh fruit was one of her favorite things about California. Though, she still wasn’t sure she wanted to settle there permanently. The outskirts of Nashville seemed more likely to fit her lifestyle, and if Nick was being honest with himself, he was more suited to the Tennessee lifestyle as well. This was temporary. While Nick finished recording with the guys, Annie planned to stay with him in Los Angeles, possibly finding a recording studio of her own to do some work in. After what they’d been through in the past month, a cross-country relationship was less than appealing. They needed to be together right now.


“Let’s see your feet.” Annie lifted the cool dish towel off of Nick’s feet and lower legs to examine them. They were red, but otherwise didn’t look too bad. “No blisters. That’s good. I’ll get some antibiotic cream to put on them after I get Drew’s breakfast.” She gently pushed his feet out of her lap and stood up. As she was heading for the refrigerator, Nick’s phone rang.


“Yo,” he said as he stood up, only wincing slightly due to the burns on his feet.


“Hey, NIck. It’s Jordan. I’ve had all the papers ready for weeks whenever you want to come by and pick them up. There are some things I’d like to explain to you in person. Otherwise, I’d just mail them. Have you talked to Annie about it yet?”


“No, man, Things have just been, well, a little awkward around here, considering….” Nick trailed off and slipped out of the kitchen into the living room.


“I understand. I can hold onto these for as long as you like, but eventually, I would have to re-petition the Kentucky court system, so…”


“I’ll talk to her about it soon, okay? Maybe she and I can come by your office together sometime to talk about it.”


“Sounds good, Nick. I’ll wait for your call.”


Drew chomped into a big strawberry as Nick waltzed back into the kitchen. Pink juice oozed down the toddler’s chin, and Nick found himself instinctively reaching for a paper towel to dab it off. “Who was that?” Annie asked, perplexed as to why Nick needed to leave the room to take a phone call.


“Jordan,” he replied nonchalantly.


“Keller?”


“Yes.”


“Why?”


“I’ve got some legal stuff to take care of before the wedding. That’s all.”


“What kind of legal stuff?”


“Well…” Nick gulped. “My will… and stuff.”


“Oh.” Annie went back to bustling around the kitchen, wiping down the marble countertop with a Clorox wipe. “You know I don’t expect you to change your will, right?”


“Annie-” Nick approached her and placed his hand on the small of her back. “Of course I’m going to change my will. I’m going to have a wife and a step-son.”


Annie bit her lip thoughtfully. “Okay,” she said finally. “But why did you need to walk out of the room to take a call from your lawyer?”


“Go on a date with me?” Nick asked quickly.


Annie eyed him dubiously, taken aback by the sudden change of subject. “We’ll need a babysitter,” she rebutted, playing along. Who was she to judge? She’d been doing a lot of subject-changing herself these days.


Nick smiled. “I’ll call Kevin.”

As he lay there breathing, all Nick could think about was how great the past two days had been...


“Man, I love Disneyland!” AJ said with a grin as the stagehand secured the battery pack for his earpiece into the back of his pants. “I can’t believe we’ll be singing for Disneyland in less than five minutes!”


“In scarves,” Nick said with a snarl as he wiped the sweat from his brow with a towel. “And jackets,” he sighed. Annie expertly balanced Drew on one hip and smoothed the back of Nick’s wool blazer with the other.


“Well, this is a Christmas show,” Brian remarked.


“In Anaheim!” Nick rebutted. “Nobody needs to wear a jacket and a scarf in the middle of the afternoon in Anaheim! Who cares if I lose the jacket?” He looked at each of the four of his bandmates, who may as well have not heard them while they readied themselves for the quickly approaching performance. “Anybody?”


“This earpiece really doesn’t fit very well. Do you have any spares?” Howie asked one of the sound guys, who jumped to attention and started fumbling through his pockets.


“Alrighty, then.” Nick shed his jacket, tossed it across a clothing rack next to a big, green Goofy hat, and straightened up his scarf.


********************

“I can’t believe you aren’t going to ride the teacups with us!” Nick exclaimed in astonishment as Drew bopped him on the head from his position atop his shoulders.


“Come on, Annie!” Baylee whined.


“Yeah, come on, Annie!” Mason jumped up and down excitedly in the afternoon sun as he held onto the railing in line for the notorious ride.


Annie let out a little laugh. “Well, if you want my lunch to stay inside my body, I think I need to sit this one out.” Nick pouted dramatically, but gave her a quick, understanding wink as the ride in front of them came to an end and the gate opened for them to get on. Annie grasped the camera slung around her neck with her hands, and from beside her, Kristen did the same. “Take some good ones for me, okay?” she told the older woman. “I suck at this.”

“No problem,” Kristen answered nonchalantly. She was already snapping away as the crowd of Backstreet Boys and their families and bodyguards launched themselves towards the large, pastel teacups. It was really a sight to see-- Kevin and Nick heading for the same blue teacup, only to discover that between their four long legs and two little boys, they weren’t all going to fit; Mike and Q actually squeezing into the same yellow one; Leighanne purposely leading Baylee and Brian, both grumbling all the way, into a feminine pink and purple teacup; and Howie and James nothing but an orange blur as they started spinning the teacup long before the ride was ready to start moving. AJ had opted out of the rides and taken a very pregnant Rochelle home to rest after the performance. They all expected the first Backstreet girl to make her appearance very soon.


Now settled into a green teacup sans Kevin and Mason, Nick looked down at Drew. His cheeks were flushed with excitement as he waved at his mother’s camera. Nick placed his hands on the wheel in front of him and gave the teacup a tentative spin. Since his soon-to-be stepson was still only two years old, this had the potential to either be really fun or a little traumatizing for the toddler. Luckily, it was the former. Drew let out a delighted giggle as they whirled around, which prompted Nick to spin the teacup faster. “Fast, Nick, fast!” Drew squealed, and his soon-to-be stepfather was happy to oblige. The mop of blonde hair on the child’s head flapped wildly in the breeze, and his big, green eyes literally sparkled with excitement in the afternoon sunlight that streamed down on them. He was still giggling as the ride came to an end and Nick scooped him up and carried him to his mother.


“You okay?” Annie laughed as she took Drew into her arms and Nick leaned on the railing to catch his breath.


“I’m great!” Nick answered once his world stopped spinning. He took Drew back from her and swung him up on his shoulders, then trotted towards the cotton candy kiosk.


********************


The purple maxi dress she wore the next afternoon reminded Nick of the evening gown she’d worn on the cruise last year. Her hair was pulled into a bun on top of her head, and soft auburn tendrils framed her face. She smiled as Nick pulled his car into Kevin and Kristin’s driveway. “Thanks for suggesting this. We needed a day out together,” she remarked as he ducked out of the driver’s side and opened the back door to get Drew out of his car seat.


“I agree,” NIck said with a grin as he unbuckled the carseat, pulled the toddler into his arms, and started walking up the sidewalk to Kevin and Kristin’s front door. Mason greeted him by swinging the door open with a flourish before be had a chance to knock. The six year old wore a bicycle helmet on his head and a super hero cape around his neck.


“Hi Drew!” he exclaimed excitedly. Drew wiggled out of Nick’s arms and made a beeline for the playroom with Mason not far behind.


“Mason needs a little brother,” Nick remarked.


Kevin smiled wistfully and patted his little brother on the back. Nick let out a little gasp as he remembered the tote bag Annie had packed still sitting in the backseat. He turned on his heel and reached for the door knob to find Annie standing on the front porch holding the bag in her right hand with an amused smirk on her face. “Forget something?”


Nick frowned. “Sorry.”


“No problem.” Annie handed Drew’s bag to Kevin and smiled. “Thanks for baby-sitting.”


“No problem. Now you kids have fun and stay out as long as you want. Drew’s in good hands here.” Kevin shooed them out the door any they were on their way.


********************

“So, uh, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about something for a while now,” Nick stammered as he wiped his mouth and placed the white linen napkin back in his lap.


“Oh?” Annie sat her wine glass down on the table and ran the stem between her manicured fingers. “What’s that?”


“It’s about Drew, actually.”


“Drew?”


“Yes. Drew.”


“What about him?”


Nick cleared his throat. “Well… you know I’m crazy about him, right?”


“You’re great with him,” Annie agreed with a smile.


“I love him like he’s mine, Annie,” Nick admitted as he reached across the table to grasp her hand.


“I know you do.” Annie wiped at a happy tear with her free hand.


“And I can’t wait until we’re a real family.”


“I can’t wait either, Nick.”


“So… what do you think about making it official?”


“We are. December 18th, remember?”


“I can’t wait,” Nick acknowledged, his lighting up in anticipation. “But I’m talking about Drew. I want to adopt him, Annie.”


Annie flinched, but didn’t loosen her grip on Nick’s hand. “You do?”


Nick stared intently into her eyes. “More than anything. I’ve already had Jordan Keller drawing up some potential documents to speed up the process, actually.”


Annie bit her bottom lip thoughtfully before her face spread into a smile. “I think that’s a great idea, actually.”


“You do?”


“Of course. You’re already a father figure to him, but there is one thing…”


“Oh.” Nick’s heart sank. “What’s that?”


“I don’t think it will be that big of a deal, but I’d like to run it by Andrew’s family first and get their blessing before we truly make it official.”


********************


“Let’s celebrate.” Nick peeled himself off of Annie long enough to take his keys out of the ignition. The two of them had been necking like teenagers for the past fifteen minutes in the parking garage of Nick’s condominium complex.


“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?” Annie winked.


Nick blushed. “Well, yeah, but there’s a bottle of champagne upstairs with your name on it. Let’s drink it on the beach.”


“Sounds great. I’ll just give Kristin a call and check on Drew while you get it.”


“I’ll be back soon.” Nick gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and ducked out of his car, heading for the stairway. He skipped up the stairs two at a time, and as he slid the key into the lock outside his condo, the hair on the back of his neck instinctively stood on end at the feeling of someone standing behind him. Hot breath licked at his neck, and Nick wondered how he’d been so distracted that he didn’t hear the footsteps coming up behind him. He gulped and gripped the doorknob as he turned to his left.

“Hi son.”

Nick gripped the doorknob, his fingertips red, and his knuckles turning white. “Frank,” he gasped.


“Nick.” The older man smiled, his eyes glinting dangerously.


“How did you get past security?” He knew it was obviously a moot point now, but his mind instinctively asked the question. He was a celebrity living in the Los Angeles area. Of course his condo complex had 24 hour security surveillance.


“I have my ways.”


Nick momentarily closed his eyes and recalled his entrance into the parking garage just minutes before. He punched his personal security code (Nacho’s birthday) into the keypad by the gate just like he always did. He didn’t remember acknowledging the security guard, nor did he even recall who it was sitting in the little windowed building by the gate. Was there even anyone sitting in the little building by the gate? He’d just taken for granted that someone was always there. He opened his eyes and studied his smiling, estranged father, then gulped and sent up a silent, startled prayer when he saw the metal blade flash in the moonlight.


********************


“Hey, Kris. I just wanted to check in and see how Drew’s doing.’” Annie drummed her fingers atop the console as she looked out the window over the ocean. It sparkled and danced in the moonlight as waves crashed gently across the shore.


“Oh, he’s great!” Kristin answered. “He ate all his dinner, and he’s in his jammies. Mason and Kevin are helping him build a Lego tower now. He’s getting sleepy, I think. You might as well leave him here tonight. No sense in disrupting his sleep by coming by late to pick him up.”


“Hmm… We may just do that,” Annie agreed. After all that had been going on for the past couple months, she knew she’d definitely neglected any personal time spent with Nick. In fact, they probably hadn’t really spent any quality time together, just the two of them, since the night of their engagement. That seemed so long ago, even though it had just been two months.


“We’d love to keep him,” Kristin gushed. “He’s just the cutest little thing, and he’s really no trouble at all.”


“Well, I don’t know about that, but I’m glad he’s being good for you. I knew about the terrible two’s, but really there’s no preparing for them until you’re experiencing them.”


“Oh, just wait until he’s three!” Kristin laughed. “At least you have a few more months to prepare.”


Annie rolled her eyes and sighed. “Just let me think it gets better, okay?”


“Oh, it does. I promise. I even miss it sometimes. Toddlerhood is such a sweet age, even though it’s tough.”


“You’re right. It is.” Annie never knew it was possible to love someone so much who could drive her so crazy. Of course, the same could be said about Nick sometimes…


“So leave that sweet little toddler with us tonight and spend some time with your man!” Kristin insisted. “Call us in the morning and we’ll arrange pickup.” Annie reluctantly agreed and hung up. She took note of the time on her phone as the screen faded to black. Nick had been gone over ten minutes. It shouldn’t have taken him so long to just grab a bottle of champagne and a couple of glasses, right?


********************


Howie locked the studio behind him and turned on his heel with a little extra bounce in his step. Nick had handed over the reigns to him to listen to the second edit of “Soldier” and “Love Somebody” with Morgan and Prophet and suggest some tweaks before their scheduled listening session with all five guys in a couple of weeks. They had just finished up, and Howie spent some time looking over a couple of contracts by himself before locking up and heading back to his West Hollywood townhome. Leigh and James were heading back to Florida the next afternoon, and he and his son had an early morning date at Dunkin Donuts and the park down the street from the small house. He jogged to his car waiting in the near-empty parking lot and stopped just for a second to breathe in the ocean breeze and enjoy the end of the sunset as the brilliant pinks, purples, and oranges faded into the horizon. He didn’t notice the black SUV parked across the street as he climbed into his car and turned the key in the ignition. He turned the radio up and sent Leigh a quick text to let her know he was on his way.


He was zooming up into the Hollywood hills when he noticed the bright lights from the dark colored SUV behind him creeping closer and closer in the rearview mirror. He lightly tapped on his brakes in an attempt to get the driver behind him to let up, but to no avail. The beams of the headlights inched even closer, and got brighter as the driver turned on the high beams. Howie looked for a place to pull over and let the obviously impatient driver pass, but only found a guardrail on his right and the other lane flanked by mountainside on his left. He gripped the steering wheel and pushed in on the gas pedal slowly, steadily increasing his speed to a level that was uncomfortable as he maneuvered through the mountainous curves. He slowed to clear a sharp break in the mountain and glanced back up into his rearview mirror just in time to see the headlights disappear from view and hear the characteristic crunch of metal on metal. Howie’s heart leapt up into his throat and a sheen of sweat broke out across his forehead and upper lip as the car lurched forward. It was clear that the SUV behind him had no intention of stopping or slowing down. As he was still met with only guardrail on one side, he jerked his car into the other lane in an attempt to let them pass on the right. The car slowed to stay behind him, so he slammed on his brakes and prayed for no oncoming traffic. The black SUV did the same. As the headlight beams from a large truck came into view in front of him, Howie frantically slammed on the gas and swerved to the right, back into the path of the SUV. The driver revved the engine behind him and Howie pulled his car forward, speeding into a blind curve. He wasn’t sure if he lost control of the vehicle before or after he once again heard the tell-tale crunch of metal on metal and felt the himself being plunged towards the steering wheel. He struggled to gain control of his car, but it was too late. He crashed into the guardrail and flipped into the ravine below.

Nick let out a strangled cry as he slammed the door shut behind him and locked the deadbolt. He waited for the thud of Frank’s shoulder against the door as he attempted to get in and continue the assault, but it never came. Instead, he heard the distant ding of the elevator as the doors opened and closed down the hall. He breathed a sigh of relief as he leaned his back against the door and sank down onto the tiled foyer floor. The tile was cool against his sweaty hands, and he fought the urge to lay down and press his hot face against it. He feared that once he was down, he wouldn’t get back up. He winced in pain as he drew in a deep breath and looked down at his abdomen. Blood seeped through his grey shirt and pooled in a fold in the cloth before soaking back through to his pants. The red stain grew larger by the second as Nick stared down at it, gulping back the bile that rose in his throat. He needed something- anything- to help stop the bleeding. With bated breath, he slunk across the floor in a half army crawl into the kitchen, his arms shaking violently as he struggled to hold his own weight. The thousands of push-ups he’d done over the years seemed futile as he leaned against the kitchen wall and stretched to grab and pull a dish towel off the handle of a cabinet drawer. In that fleeting moment, he was thankful for Annie. He tended to leave the dish towels in a heap on top of the counter by the sink while she always hung them neatly to dry. He’d never be able to reach the counter top in this condition.


Annie. He choked back a sob as he raised his shirt and winced as the fresh air stung his wounds, temporarily overshadowing a deeper ache that terrified him. Blood rushed out of his side and he hissed as he pressed the towel against it. A sharp pain seemed to shoot through his entire body. He needed Annie. Annie had been an emergency room doctor for years. She’d know exactly what to do. Yet, the thought of her seeing him like this-- weak, vulnerable, and hurt-- killed him. Yet, he didn’t want to die there in his kitchen floor, and Annie was his closest medical aid. He had to call her. His hand shook violently as he reached into his pocket and pulled his cell phone out. Red liquid streaked across the screen as he dialed his fiancé. She answered immediately. “Nick?!” she said frantically.


“Annie…” He breathed.


“Nick, what’s wrong?”


“I-- help--” he stammered. Nick could feel the blood draining from his face, and a wave of nausea washed over him as the room started to spin. “Annie, I love….”


“Nick?! Nick!!” Annie shrieked into the phone. She jumped out of the passenger side of the car and slammed the door shut, taking off for the stairs, as she had no intention of waiting for the elevator. She bounded up the stairs, taking them two at a time, until she made it to the third floor and ran into the hallway. Her lungs burned as she struggled to catch her breath, but there was no slowing her down. She gulped when she saw the blood spatter across Nick’s door, but grabbed the knob anyway and pushed her way inside. The scene inside made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end as she screamed. A large, bloody handprint was pressed across the doorframe when she turned to close the door behind her, and a bloody trail led into the kitchen. She immediately knew it was Nick’s blood, and she took off through the foyer and into the kitchen. It didn’t occur to her that whoever did this to Nick may still be around and she may be in danger, but she think for just a moment that this must have been how Nick felt when he found her in her bedroom back in January.


She gasped when she found her fiancé laying in the kitchen floor, blood rapidly pooling around his lifeless body. “Nick!” she shouted. “Nick!!” He didn’t answer, but she was relieved to see the slight rise and fall of his chest as she knelt down beside him. “Nick, what happened?” she whispered distraughtly, placing her hands on either side of his face. His skin was pale and clammy, and his eyelids fluttered ever so slightly, but he never roused. Annie grabbed the bloody cell phone in his hand and immediately jumped into action, dialing 911 and placing phone to her ear, and holding it in place with her shoulder as she got to work. She found the bloody dish towel splayed across his stomach, and gently moved his large, limp hand off of it so that she could take a look. Multiple stab wounds gushed dark red blood, and she immediately pressed both of her hands onto the soaked dish towel.


“911, what’s your emergency?”


“I’m at 907 Sunset Drive, condominium K. I have a thirty-two year old male with multiple stab wounds to the abdomen, currently unconscious, and losing large amounts of blood,” Annie rattled off the information as if she were the dispatcher himself.


“I’m sending an ambulance now, ma’am. Is the victim breathing?”


Annie watched Nick’s chest continue to rise and fall with each rattling breath, but his breaths were already slower and more shallow than they had been when she arrived just moments ago. “Shallow. Slow and shallow,” she answered solemnly.


“Do you know how to deliver rescue breaths?”


Annie gulped. “Yes,” she whispered. “I know how to give rescue breaths. I’m-- medically trained.”


“Good. Would you like me to stay on the line with you until help arrives?”


“No,” she answered hastily. “I-- I have work to do.”


“The ambulance should be there shortly.”


Annie dropped the phone and stared at the kitchen drawers that were just outside of her reach. Warm, sticky liquid seeped through her fingers as she continued to apply pressure to Nick’s wounds. She needed more towels. Quickly, she dove for the drawer, removing her hands from her fiance’s abdomen for just a moment as she grabbed more towels and pressed them down onto him. She prayed for a scream, a wince, anything from Nick to express that he was in pain. Not that she wanted him to be in pain, but his lack of response frightened her.. Tentatively, she took one hand away and reached for his neck, feeling for a carotid pulse. Thankfully, it was there, but it was weak-- too weak-- and erratic. Without a steady pulse under his cool, clammy skin, it was obvious that his heart wasn’t pumping blood efficiently to the rest of his body, evidenced by his ashen skin color. “Nick!” she hissed. “Stay with me, Nick.”


His breath was coming in short, agonal gasps now, and she realized it was time to start delivering those rescue breaths. She hesitated as she removed her hands from the towels over Nick’s stomach. Blood gushed onto the kitchen floor, but there was no point in trying to stop the bleeding if there was no oxygen in said blood. Swiftly, she tilted Nick’s head back to clear his airway and pinched his nose, covering his mouth with hers as she pushed her own air into his lungs, pausing briefly to check for the rising of his chest. She was satisfied with the rise and fall of his chest, so she delivered another breath, then another, then paused to check for a pulse.


“Los Angeles County EMS!” A man’s voice bellowed out into the hallway from the front door.


“In the kitchen!” Annie yelled back. “Down the hall and to your right!”


Two EMTs appeared in the kitchen and quickly went to work, asking Annie all the relevant questions as they came up. “How long has he been down?”


“Half an hour or less.” Annie started giving Nick chest compressions after she realized she could barely feel a pulse.


One of the emergency workers placed a bag-mask ventilator over Nick’s mouth and nose and began squeezing the bag as the other moved a stretcher beside Nick on the floor. Annie paused with her compressions long enough to help him gently roll Nick’s body onto the board,and resumed them just as quickly as she stopped. “Pulse-ox 75 percent.”


“We need to intubate!” Annie answered him.


“Let’s try the bag first,” the other man said calmly as the raised the stretcher. Annie climbed on top of Nick, straddling his hips so that she could keep giving him chest compressions as they rolled him to the ambulance.


“Call Cedars-Sinai and tell them we’re in route with an unstable stabbing victim,” one of the EMTs directed the driver.


“Pulse-ox 70 percent,” the other reported as he kept bagging.


“Switch places with me!” Annie demanded. “And get me an intubation tray!”


“Get you an intubation tray?”


“I’m a licensed emergency physician in Kentucky,” Annie answered hastily as she squeezed the ambu-bag.


“Kentucky?”


“Are you going to keep questioning me, or are you going to help me save this man’s life?” The man hesitated as he reached for an airway tray and handed it to her.


“Check for a pulse,” she demanded.


“Faint, but still there.”


“Do you have any epi?” she asked as she grabbed a flashlight to visualize Nick’s vocal cords and inserted the tube into his throat.


“Yes, but he still has a pulse, ma’am.”


“I’m aware of the protocols. Keep giving compressions,” she answered curtly. She looked down at Nick’s lifeless body and prayed as the EMT completed another cycle of CPR. “Pulse?” she asked meekly.

He placed two fingers on Nick’s carotid artery and paused for much longer than Annie felt was comfortable. “Get the epi ready,” he instructed his partner. “Call the medical center and tell them we have a code blue!”

It was dark. He was cold. His chest felt like it was about to explode. He could hear distant voices, but what they were saying, he couldn’t quite make out. There was shouting, but it was muffled, as if he were under water. Suddenly, he was a kid again, plunging himself to the bottom of the community swimming pool in search of those neon-colored diving sticks as his brother and sisters played “Marco Polo” in the background. Chlorine stung his eyes-- or was that smoke? He gasped, and immediately started coughing and sputtering. Smoke. It was definitely smoke. No pool water tasted like that. Suddenly, he was conscious and aware that where there was smoke, there was fire. Why was there a fire? And why was it so dark? He scrambled to evacuate, but he was pinned in place. He let out a cry as hot smoke singed his nostrils.


“Sir! Sir, can you hear me?” He turned towards the voice and flinched at the bright light of the flashlight shining in his face. He nodded, his voice somehow escaping him. “We’re going to get you out of here, okay?” the muffled voice told him, followed by the sound of breaking glass. Two large arms reached through the driver’s side window , and a hand unbuckled his seat belt. His seat belt. Of course. Why hadn’t it occurred to him that the seatbelt might have been the only thing pinning him down? Maybe because until now, it hadn’t even occurred to him that he was in a car. The head belonging to the arms, which he could now see belonged to a firefighter, lowered into the window to look at him. “Usually, we wouldn’t move you until the paramedics get here, because we don’t know the extent of your injuries, but the car’s on fire, sir, so we’ve got to get you out right now,” he said calmly. Then, he immediately reached inside and wrapped his arms around his torso. His body screamed in pain, and his voice followed suit. “I’m sorry,” the firefighter lamented, but he kept moving, lifting the crash victim out of the wreckage as if he were a limp ragdoll. He climbed the hill, flanked on either side by his partners, until they were what seemed like a safe distance away, just in time for the entire car to be engulfed in flames. He laid him down gently on the flattest piece of land he could find, and helped the recently arrived EMTs to stabilize his neck. “Sir, can you tell us your name?” He opened his mouth to answer, but then realized that he didn’t know.


____________________


Annie paced in the emergency department waiting room, her breath coming in ragged hiccups and tears stinging her eyes, but not quite falling yet. She’d never really been on this side of it. Nick had been wheeled into Trauma 2 where a nurse took over chest compressions and a doctor immediately began running the code. Annie, the distressed fiance, was led out to the waiting room. She considered asking to stay, but really, she wasn’t so sure she wanted to see any more than she already had. Code blues were one of the reasons she’d hated her job as an emergency physician. Depending on the situation, the success rate of an appropriately run code blue was about 20%, and even then, the surviving patient usually remained in critical condition and either died later or suffered catastrophic health problems in the aftermath. It was that tiny percentage of code patients who made a full recovery that made it worthwhile, but it was the rest of them that she took home with her-- that ate away at her piece by piece until she was devastated and burned out. The hardest part though, hadn’t been directing the unsuccessful code or even being burdened with the decision to call it and forced to rattle off the time of death. The hardest part was walking into the waiting rooms like this one to deliver the bad news to the hopeful friend or family member. There was really no way to soften that blow.


Speaking of blows, Nick’s doctor was walking through the door-- in clean scrubs. She looked down at her own attire. Dark red stains dotted the long skirt of her dress, and she shivered, subconsciously crossing her arms across her chest to cover the blood-soaked cuffs of her cardigan sweater. She’d always changed into clean scrubs before talking to families after particularly bloody codes, especially when the outcome was bad. There may have been no way to soften the blow, but nobody needed to see their loved one’s blood as they found out they had died. Oh God, Nick was dead! The doctor pursed his lips and removed a hand from his white coat, outstretching it towards her. “I’m Doctor Anderson, and you are Doctor…?” He trailed off as Annie widened her eyes in surprise, and she gulped.


“Morgan. Doctor Morgan,” she said quietly.


“Frank, the EMT, told me about what you did in the ambulance.” Annie shuddered at the first name of Nick’s at-large, estranged father. “We don’t typically insert chest tubes en-route to the hospital,” Dr. Anderson remarked.


“I thought he had a pneumothorax. I needed to relieve the pressure on the collapsed lung if he was going to have any chance of survival,” Annie told him, her voice barely above a whisper, still bracing herself for the worst.


“You thought right,” he answered with a little smirk. “Chances are you saved his life, Doctor.”


A tear broke loose and trailed down Annie’s cheek. “He’s alive?”


“He is.”


She smiled, then all the pent-up tears she’d been too worried to release suddenly flowed freely from her eyes and she let out a sob, bending over in an attempt to catch her breath. She knew, due to the extent of the injuries she’d seen herself, that Nick likely wasn’t out of the woods yet. However, in that moment, all that mattered was that he was still there. “How bad is it?” she asked, wiping at her cheeks with her fingertips as she tried to collect herself.


“Preliminary CT scan results show a possible splenic laceration, and damage to his liver and bowel. Of course, you know it’s impossible to completely assess the damage until the surgeon gets in there and sees what he’s dealing with. He’s in the OR now.” Annie nodded silently as he went on. “We drained a pericardial effusion and replaced the chest tube you put in while we coded him. You’re aware of the blood loss. He received 20 units in the ED and of course, they’ll have to replace it again while he’s in surgery. I can have one of the nurses show you to the OR waiting room. Would you like some clean scrubs to change into?” he asked, gesturing to her soiled clothing. “I’ll make sure the police know how to find you.”


Annie cocked her head to the side in confusion. “The police?”


“Well, he was stabbed multiple times, Dr. Morgan.”


He was stabbed. “Right,” Annie answered with a nod. Her face paled, and she found herself reaching blindly behind her for a chair. Nick was stabbed. Doctor mode had taken over shocked fiance mode so quickly that she hadn’t even stopped to take in the circumstances of the situation. Of course, she knew he’d been stabbed, but she’d been too busy assessing and attempting to treat his injuries that she didn’t have time to think about what that implied. Now, it was clear. Somebody out there wanted Nick dead-- just like her parents and her brother.