“You’re not going to believe this!”

Both Knox and Jensen made the declaration simultaneously, each grasping a valuable piece of evidence in their hand like it were a golden trophy. Knox went to speak again when he noticed Brian and Hilary standing off to the side.

“Um, hi,” he said with a chuckle. “Nice to see you again, Brian. Who’s your friend?”

“That’s part of a somewhat complicated story,” Jensen said. “Why don’t you go first?”

Knox nodded, “First, you need to know the prosecutors came through for us and we got the 72-hold so we need to work quick,” he said then launched into an explanation behind the lab report he held.

Brian was trying to follow along even though he didn’t know the other details but he was soon lost. He turned to Hilary to see if she knew what was happening but the woman was gone. The two detectives were still deep in conversation so Brian quietly backed away until he felt safe to walk down the hallway without anyone noticing.

“Hilary?” he called out in a hushed tone, his eyes scanning back and forth, from one door to the next, looking for his companion.

“Brian!”

He heard his name but couldn’t find where it was coming from until Hilary’s head popped out from a door down the hall and she frantically waved him over. Without hesitation he followed her inside, realizing once the door had closed that the darkened room they’d entered was an observation room, just like he’d seen on television.

“That’s him, right?”

Through a large two-way mirror on the wall, Brian immediately recognized his friend. Nick was sitting behind a large metal desk, the only piece of furniture in the room save for an extra empty chair. His cell phone was balanced with one corner against his finger and the other against the table and he absentmindedly spun it around, clearly waiting for something to happen.

“How did you know he’d be here?”

“A hunch,” Hilary shrugged. “That guy said they got a hold and I’ve seen enough procedural crime dramas on TV to know that means they got approval from a judge to hold him for questioning without charges. I didn’t know if he’d already be in lockup or still in an interrogation room so I figured I’d look. I just wasn’t sure if that was him.”

“That’s him,” Brian confirmed with a nod, still staring at the other man through the glass. He was starting to second guess the path he was on, worried that he was going to accuse the real Nick Carter of incomprehensible crimes that he was innocent of and even more worried that maybe he was just guilty.

“We should talk to him.”

“What?” Brian asked in surprise. “No, we shouldn’t. We’ll get in trouble. We could mess the whole case up.”

“How? We aren’t cops, nothing he says to us is going to be admissible in court. I really doubt they’re going to believe anything we’ve told them, though. We have no idea where the real Nick is and maybe if we talk to him we can find out the information we need to find Nick and prove that they’re two different people.”

Brian sighed heavily and ran his hand anxiously over the fine hair on the crown of his head. He didn’t see Nick being open with confessing anything when he’d done such a stand up job at covering his tracks up to that point. If Hilary was right, and he wasn’t crazy for believing her, then he couldn’t deny that he wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity to find out where Nick was and what kind of shape he was in. His companion was right in that the likelihood of anyone else believing them was slim, and he had no idea what would happen if the Nick lookalike ended up in jail.

“How are we going to get him to tell the truth?”

“Not we,” Hilary said with a chuckle. “You. I’ll stay here and be lookout.”

“I’d better hurry before the detectives start looking for us, then.”

Brian had absolutely no idea what he was going to say when he got to the other side of the steel door that separated him from the interrogation room. He wasn’t a trained negotiator, he didn’t know how to get information out of someone without coming right out and asking them because he was an honest person. He knew that he had to show Nick that he was aware of his secret and somehow get him to confirm the truth while sitting in a room that was likely full of video cameras and where someone was watching their entire conversation. Success seemed completely impossible.

Taking a deep breath, he pushed through the door. Nick’s head snapped up immediately to see who had entered and surprise was clearly written across his face when he realized it was Brian. He leaned back and looked around the other man in an effort to see if anyone else followed while Brian took a seat on the other side of the table.

“What are you doing here? Are you with the lawyer?”

“I’m alone.”

“How did you get in here?”

That probably should have been the first answer Brian thought of in preparation for this discussion. He had no idea how to explain his presence in a restricted area of a police station, let alone why he was in the police station in the first place. Luckily, years of interviews had given him a few skills in the art of bullshitting on the fly.

“I snuck in,” he said, not straying too far from the truth. “I heard you were here and I tried to get the cops to let me see you but they wouldn’t. I was standing out in the lobby and no one was paying any attention so I started looking in case you were here. Guess I got lucky.”

Nick didn’t look completely convinced but he also didn’t look like he was going to press the issue any further. Brian knew there were holes in his story, like who he would have heard from about where Nick was in the first place, but so long as the other man didn’t ask any questions he wasn’t going to offer up any information.

“So what’s going on?” he asked.

Nick was leaning against the cool metal table, still clutching his phone between his hands. Though Brian was speaking to him, he was looking toward the mirror suspiciously as if someone else would be coming through the door at any moment. Slowly, he turned his attention back to Brian.

“They think I had something to do with Lauren turning up dead.”

The Nick that Brian knew would have been destroyed at having to speak those words, but the man in front of him seemed almost casual about it, like it was a simple inconvenience.

“I’m really sorry, man. I couldn’t believe it when I heard.”

“I don’t know what they could possibly have that would make them think I killed her, or know who killed her.”

That wasn’t the denial that Brian had been hoping to hear, by any means, “I’m not sure,” he said. “Promise me you didn’t have anything to do with it?”

Nick’s attention had already turned back to the mirror, ignoring the question. “Who is back there?”

“Where?”

“In the other room? Who is on the other side of the mirror?”

Brian laughed nervously, feeling sweat begin to pool at the small of back and at his temples. “Angel of Music?”

Nick turned to him with a perplexed expression, “Sorry?”

“You asked who is on the other side of the mirror...that’s sort of what Raoul asks in Phantom of the Opera when Christine disappears. The Angel of Music.”

“Guess I don’t remember seeing that one,” Nick said dryly.

Brian suddenly felt his heart begin to beat in double time, “You don’t remember being in it? You...you played the Phantom.”

If Nick felt stressed by the line of questioning, he wasn’t showing it at all, but Brian wanted to do nothing more than run out of the room. There was no way Nick would have forgotten being in the Phantom of the Opera as a child. It was his favourite musical for as long as Brian had known him. He could vividly remember years of sharing rooms with Nick, listening to him regularly belt out some of the classic songs in the shower.

“I’m under a lot of stress right now, Brian. I’m hardly thinking about my Broadway trivia knowledge.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry. So, how did you end up in Atlanta? Have you been here since we wrapped up?”

“No, I went home. I had things to take care of,” Nick said.

“There's something that's been bugging me, bro. Did you lie to me about getting the phone call from Lauren? You told me that she moved all of her stuff out of your house, but she never left Atlanta. How is that possible?”

Nick’s eyes turned a steel blue and he leveled at a look at Brian that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Nick leaned his long body forward across the table, putting his weight into his folded arms and didn’t let his eyes leave Brian’s as he spoke.

“I think it’s time for you to go. I wouldn’t want to get you into trouble.”