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Chapter One


Avery leaned against the clerk’s desk, spreading a plethora of brochures about local tourist traps across the glass counter top that housed the lotto tickets and cigarettes, knocking the Zippo light rounder with her elbow, making it spin with a crickety, squeaky sort of sound. “Sorry to bug you,” she said, her breath coming a little heavy after having walked all the way inside the 7-Eleven from the car. She held her curve of her stomach with her palm across the bottom of her abdomen. The clerk looked up from the newspaper he was paging through. “Could you help me with these for a moment? Have you ever been to these places?” she asked, fanning the pamphlets in his direction.

The clerk folded his paper and stood up, coming over to the corner of the counter she’d chosen, turning his back to the security monitor on the desk behind him. He looked down at the brochures, “They’re tourist traps, mostly, those are,” he said.

“But have you been? Are they any good? My boyfriend and I are travelling and I wanted to get a taste of the local culture,” she said. She ran her hand over her belly.

The clerk chewed his lower lip. “I reckon I wouldn’t particularly recommend none of these places,” he said, looking over them. He picked one up, “Well this one ain’t bad,” he conceded, picking up one for a local aquarium, “But sure is alotta walkin’ and you probably don’t want none of that in your, uh, condition.”

Avery nodded, “The less walking around the better,” she agreed.

He was picking through the brochures, telling her the pros and cons of each, detailing the sort of crowds and prices she could expect at each one, offering his expert family advice to her. Meanwhile, over his shoulder she watched on the monitor as Marty slid bottles of alcohol into the deep inner pockets of his bomber jacket, stuffed granola bars in his back jeans pocket and chips into the sleeves of his coat. He poked around the tiny pharmacy aisle, adding a couple bottles of cough syrup into the pockets as well. He mosied around the store for a few minutes, adding little cups of cookies and packs of gum and a box of matches. Finally, as the conversation at the front seemed to slow, he walked up with a small bag of chips, two chocolate milks and a box of safety pins, which he paid for with a ten dollar bill.

“You have a good day,” the clerk said as they headed for the door, Avery hugging her stomach. “Safe travels. Good luck with the baby. Enjoy that antique store.” He waved as they left.

In the car, Avery pulled the sweatshirt she’d got from one of the tourist trap rounders out from under her shirt. She laughed as she tugged it on over her head, her hair tumbling over her shoulder, “Jesus, he was so nice I almost felt bad stealing from him.” She shook the sleeves over her hands and held the wheel. “Now you can turn the A/C up if you want to and I won’t freeze half to fuckin’ death,” she added, turning to Marty, who was working on unloading all the stuff he’d picked up from his various pockets and sleeves. “Hey let me see those safety pins you bought,” she said, and he handed them to her as the pile of stuff at his feet grew and his bomber jacket became less and less puffy. She rolled the sleeves of the sweatshirt up over her wrists and safety pinned them there. She wished she’d taken the time to glance at the size of the sweatshirt she’d used as her baby bump. She could’ve used a medium instead of this XXL.

Marty held up a package of Chips Ahoy he’d gotten, “Just for you,” he said as he unscrewed the lid on the Yoohoo he’d bought. “Good haul,” he added. “We got some good stuff here.”

“I’m eyeballing that Robitussin like nobody’s business,” Avery replied.

“One more stop and we can go back to the hotel,” Marty answered. He took a long sip of the Yoohoo. Avery sighed, but didn’t argue, she just ripped into the cookies and stuck one in her mouth as she pulled away from the curb, the headlights of their car cutting through the dark. The radio played some terrible country song, but neither of them had the ambition to search through the channels for something else, so they rode through the streets with the song blaring until finally Marty pointed to the left a couple blocks before the hotel they were staying in, “Pull into this 7-Eleven up here. We’ll knock this one off and call it a night.”

Avery pulled in and parked the car in the space nearest to the door.

Inside, she poured herself a slushy from the ICEE machine on the back wall while Marty took his time sizing up the place. The plan was that when he gave her the go ahead signal, she’d spill the ICEE and the distraction caused by that ruckus would be enough time for him to grab hold on what he needed to. So she fiddled with mixing colors from the nozzles as he walked slowly around the store, pausing here or there to pretend to read the nutritional labels on various food products while the vigilant clerk watched from behind the counter.

When Marty cleared his throat, she turned and let the cup slip from her fingers, splashing onto the floor in a cascade of red syrupy ice. “Oh shit!” she cried out as the clerk rushed around his desk to help her out. He didn’t even see Marty duck back there the moment his back was turned. Marty started stuffing anything he could get his hands on from under the desk into his jacket. Cigarettes, lotto scratchers, a zippered leather envelope full of money, and other odds and ends.

“I’m so sorry,” Avery cried as the clerk went to fetch a mop and bucket from the closet by the beer coolers, “I didn’t mean to!”

“Is alright, is alright,” the clerk was trying to console her in his broken Indian accent. “I can clean, it take just a minute; look, look, not a problem worth your tears, miss.” He waved the mop at her and swiped it over the slushie.

Just then, several things happened at once.

A second clerk came out a door directly adjacent to the counter where Marty was crouched, prying open the cash drawer. The front window of the store was suddenly lit up as a large tour bus pulled into the lot and came to a stop at the pump. Avery, knowing the second clerk was trouble, tried to rush forward to go get the car running, and instead slipped on the slushie and landed square on her ass in the mess.

“What are you doing?!” shouted the second clerk to Marty. He looked around for the first guy, who was busy reacting to Avery’s fall, trying to help her up. “Call the police!” the second clerk snapped when the first one looked up from pulling Avery to her feet. “We’re being robbed!” The first clerk ran toward Marty.

There was only one way out from behind the counter and the clerk was now blocking it. Desperation kicked in and Marty reached into the back waistband of his pants and pulled out the gun he’d concealed there and took aim. He pulled the trigger before the clerk even realized there was a gun and the guy folded to the floor, falling on top of Marty, the blood already blossoming on the guy’s blue button-down shirt.

“Oh shit!” the first clerk yelped, dropping the mop and Avery’s hand, making her slip back to the floor a second time. She cried out in shock from both the sound of the gun, which she hadn’t known Marty had in the first place, and the surprise of hitting the hard floor again, then scrambled away on her hands and knees and got up, grabbing onto the candy shelves in front of the register for support. One of them broke and Reeses and M&Ms and Snickers and Bubble Yum and whatever else was on it went flying across the floor, joining the mess of the slushie. The clerk held his hands up in the air as Marty came around the desk, blatantly holding the cash drawer from the register in his hands now.

“Get the fuckin’ car!” he yelled at Avery, “Now.”

She ran for the door. “Don’t hurt him,” she yelled at him. The clerk had been so nice to her, she didn’t want him to be hurt.

“I said get the fuckin’ car, bitch!” Marty yelled. This had gone downhill so quickly. He tried not to think about how good of a shot of Avery’s face the security videos had probably gotten from her two falls to the floor. His stomach turned at the thought of a positive identification on them. The cops had been after them for months without having a clue what they looked like. That would be changing now. Panic rose in his throat at the thought of the cops. “Hurry the fuck up!” he yelled.

Crying, Avery ducked out the door.

“Jesus.” Marty spit, frustrated, at the floor then turned to the clerk. “Get on the floor,” he demanded, because he wasn’t sure what else to do. “Just get down on the floor.”

“I sorry, I sorry, I sorry,” cried the clerk as he dropped to his knees among the fallen candy and slushie. He held his hands up as he crouched down. Marty stood there holding the drawer trying to decide if there was a way to kill the security footage, if it was worth the extra time to try.

As he was deciding, the door jingled and a guy walked in, a guy with messy blonde hair and a bright red sweatshirt, the hood pulled up, a pair of white Beats headphones around his neck. Marty looked over, the guy’s eyes met his, they stared at each other for several long seconds. Then the guy’s eyes travelled down to the cash drawer in Marty’s hands, the clerk at his feet, laying on the floor, in the mess of spilled slushie and candy and the guy’s jaw dropped. “What the hell ---?”

Marty stopped thinking. He aimed the gun at the guy. “Get down on the floor!” he yelled.

“Fuck.” The guy dropped to the floor. “Don’t shoot me, man,” he begged.

“Yes, don’t shoot us, please, you take money, just don’t shoot,” the clerk begged from the floor. “My wife need me, I make the money, she need me,” he continued.

Marty started backing away, toward the door.

Just then, an alarm went off. The whole store was filled with this larger-than-life sound and red lights flashed from the security cameras. All three of them jumped, unsure what had caused the alarm to sound - they couldn’t see that the other clerk, the one who’d been shot, had not in fact died and had reached the emergency call button located under the register. Marty swore, loud enough that they could hear it over the alarm sound.

“I stop it, I turn it off,” offered the clerk on the floor, and without waiting for a response from Marty, he started to get up to turn off the alarm.

Marty turned, having not heard him say his intentions, aimed and fired his gun right into the top of the clerk’s head, and he dropped back down to the floor.

“Fuck!”

Marty turned to look at the guy crouched beside the Lays potato chips, whose eyes were wide and panic-stricken, staring at the already pooling blood under the clerk’s head. “Lay the fuck down on the floor, mother fucker,” Mart hollered at him.

The guy rolled quickly to the floor, pressing his entire body against the floor, face and all. His face was crumpled into a grimace, tears in his eyes. “I won’t tell nobody, man, I won’t tell nobody nothin’ man, I swear to Christ,” the guy sobbed.

Marty hesitated. He glanced out the window. He could see someone running toward the store from the gas pump. He didn’t feel like dealing with yet another witness, so he said, “You better fuckin’ not or I’ll come after you and make every last one of your goddamn nightmares come true,” and with that, figuring that he’d sounded menacing enough to keep the guy from talking for at least a few minutes, he rushed out of the store and ran to the waiting getaway car, where Avery was sitting in the driver’s seat, clutching the wheel, her hands shaking.

Marty passed the second guy just as he was getting to the door and moved quickly to dodge past him, keeping his head down and holding the cash drawer and gun to his chest, trying to minimize the descriptive details the guy could possibly have of him. He threw himself into the car. “Drive!” he bellowed at Avery before the door was even all the way closed. She peeled out of the lot so fast, the tires squealing on the pavement. It had started to rain and the wipers ran full blast against the window as they pulled away.





Nick lay there on the floor of the convenience store, unsure what to do. He’d never been so close to a dead body before. He tried not to think about the pool of blood that was probably growing larger by every moment over there, tried not to think about the way the guy’s brains and blood had splattered every which way from the moment the bullet struck his skull, tried not to think about the guy had cried and begged not to be shot… Nick didn’t dare to move. He could feel his tears on his cheek, rolling across the bridge of his nose, falling to the floor under his face. Every nerve ending in his body shook, and he just laid there, feeling rather paralyzed by the whole thing.

It seemed nearly impossible to believe that less than ten minutes before he’d been on the tour bus, happy and laughing with Mike and Justin and Eddie, watching Jaws on DVD and headed to the next Backstreet Boys tour date in St. Louis. The bus had needed gas and Nick had needed snacks and they’d pulled off the highway and found this particular gas station and all of that had led to this, his palms and cheek pressed to the dirty tiles of a 7-Eleven somewhere southwest of Cincinnati.

The door jingled as it opened and all the muscles in Nick’s body tightened, his eyes squeezed shut. Overhead, the alarm was still going off, echoing loudly throughout the store. Nick was sure the guy with the gun was back, sure he was about to die. He thought about all the things he’d never gotten to do, but had always wanted to do. He thought about his family, about the girlfriend he’d recently broken up with but had meant to call and apologize to that would never know he still kinda sorta might feel something for her. Thought about Brian, Kevin, AJ, and Howie whose tour buses had gone on ahead without stopping, who would find out soon that they were down one Backstreet Boy. He wondered if they’d keep singing, if they’d break up, if the fans would follow along. Shit, the fans. They were gonna freak out. Of all the ways for him to die - after everything he’d been through, all the near hits with the heart problems and the drugs and the alcohol - and here he was, gonna die by gunfire for having walked into the wrong convenience store at the wrong time.

“Nick? Holy mother of Jesus.” It was Mike.

Nick looked up, shaking, “Is… is he gone?” he asked.

“That dude? That dude did this?” Mike spun around to look but the car was already gone, “Jesus fuckin’ hellfire. Get up, get up.” He rushed over to help Nick up, pulling him up by his arm. “Oh shit, man, you seen this?” he was looking at the poor clerk.

Nick tried not to look, “He just shot him,” he cried. “He just shot him, like it was nothin’.” He couldn’t stand up, his knees were too weak. Mike pulled him up anyway, tugging his arm around his neck to support him.

“C’mon, we’ll get you out to the bus so you can sit down. Holy shit.” Mike was normally so much more put together than this, Nick thought. Usually, Mike was the calm one. He was literally paid to stay calm in emergency situations. Then again, he was also paid to protect Nick from bullshit like this happening. But he’d been playing MarioKart with Justin on the bus, though. He’d come after Nick when the bus was finished gasing up and Eddie, who’d explicitly told Nick that he had ten minutes to get in, get his shit, and get back out to the bus had told him to go make him hurry up. Now Mike understood why Nick had been taking so long.

The two of them made the way across the parking lot. Justin and Eddie were running toward the store, having heard the alarms going off. “What happened?” Eddie yelled. Justin had a panicked look in his eyes as Mike practically dragged Nick across the lot toward the tour bus.

“He shot him,” Nick cried.

“What?” Eddie’s eyes widened.

“He’s dead, he’s dead,” Nick’s voice shook with emotion, “His wife needed him and now he’s just dead.”

Mike pushed past Eddie and Justin, who followed them to the bus.

“Who is? What happened?”

“The store just got robbed and the clerk’s been shot,” Mike replied, “That’s why the alarm.”

“Should one of us go help him?” Justin asked, half turning to the convenience store.

“Guy’s very dead,” Mike replied, shuddering at the memory of the mess.

“Shit,” Justin muttered.

Eddie already had his phone out to call the police.

The door of the tour bus as opened and Nick struggled to sit on the bottom step. He leaned forward, his head between his knees, staring down at the cement. The smell of the gasoline was making his head spin, emotions swarming him, but the rain drizzling down had wet his face and the cool night air was helping him refocus, recenter. The tears had stopped, at least, either because he’d realized they were pointless or else because he’d run out, he wasn’t sure which. He gripped his knees, nauseated and shaking, the mental images running on repeat through his mind.

“Hello? We have an emergency,” Eddie was talking into his phone, “We’re at a 7-Eleven and it’s just been robbed and the employees have been killed.”

“Nick, you okay man?” Mike was crouching down beside him, looking up at his face like a person might do to a little kid.

Nick shook his head. He felt like he wouldn’t ever be okay again after that. The gunman’s words spun in his head over and over again. I’ll come after you and make every last one of your goddamn nightmares come true. He felt another wave of nausea crawl up his stomach and he jumped up, leaned over the trash can by the gas pump, and threw up into it.

Mike stood up.

“I’m not sure our location, but the alarms are going off inside,” Eddie was still on the phone, answering questions the 911 Operator was asking.

Nick’s hands curled around the edge of the cool metal waste bin. “He’s gonna come get me,” he choked, barely coherent.

“What?” Justin, who was closest to the trash bin and still only half heard Nick’s words, leaned closer.

“That dude, he’s gonna come after me,” Nick spit into the bin, trying to get rid of all the throw up taste in his mouth. “He’s gonna come after me and kill me.”

“He’s not gonna come after you,” Mike said, “I’ll fuck him up if he even tries.”

“The cops are on the way,” Eddie said, covering the mouth of the cell phone. “Nick, are you okay?”

Mike shook his head in reply.

“Someone call Jen and let her know what’s going on. We might have to postpone tomorrow’s show, we might not get out of here for awhile if they gotta question Nick and everything,” he said, and he started pacing the length of the tour bus, still on with the 911 operator until the police arrived.

“Question me?” Nick squeaked, “They can’t question me, I can’t tell them nothin’. I said I wouldn’t tell them nothin’.” He looked at Mike with wide eyes, “Please. I can’t. They can’t question me, please.”

“They gotta question you, man,” Mike said, “You’re the only witness that saw what the hell went on in there.”

“It’s the only way to help that dude’s wife,” Justin added as he pulled out his phone and started searching the contacts for Jen, the Boys’ manager. “Justice and all that.” He turned as he pressed the call button.

“Guy’s gotta know you’re gonna talk when the police come,” Mike added.

“I told him I wasn’t gonna talk, that’s why he didn’t shoot me. Then he said if I told anyone he’d come after me.” Nick felt his stomach turning over and over and over inside him. “He said he was gonna come after me,” he added, panic rising up in his throat, along with more vomit. He retched again and again into the trash bin. Mike patted Nick’s back in what he hoped was a reassuring way.