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Chapter Six


Avery had been sitting up in bed for at least an hour now, glancing over at Nick every few minutes, hoping he’d wake up so they could get going on the rest of the drive to the Isle La Motte. He’d fallen asleep with the headphones on and other than his head having slumped so his chin rested on his shoulder, he hadn’t moved the whole night.

Honestly, it was too quiet in the room and she kind of - in a weird way - missed the unending chatter.

Quiet gave Avery way too much time to think.

She chewed her lower lip and inched to the edge of her mattress, extended her leg so it rested on the edge of his mattress and gave the whole thing a good kick. The bed was so plush that the kick barely moved him, so she did it again and again, rocking him until finally he stirred, taking a deep breath in through his nose and blinking his eyes open. She pulled her legs back onto her own bed and pretended to have simply noticed he was awake.

“Well look who decided to join the land of the living,” she said.

Nick looked over, pulled his headphones off his head, his eyes registering disorientation and a pinch of confusion. He glanced at the sun streaming in the windows. “I fell asleep?” he asked. He shuffled himself into a sitting position. “What --” he paused to yawn, a big bear yawn, accompanied by an arm stretch, “-- time is it?”

“Almost eight,” she replied.

“Damn, I slept a lot,” he said in surprise.

“Have a rough time sleeping usually?” she questioned.

“Not usually,” Nick answered, “But lately. Yesterday.” He folded his headphones up and wrapped the cord around them, carefully replacing them in their fancy ass case. Avery couldn’t help but think that his fricking headphones probably cost more money than she’d had in her name in the past year - not counting stolen money, of course. “Guess it says something for how much safer I feel now that I’ve got police duty,” he smiled at her in a kiss-up sort of way, then added, “Even if she’s snoring like a beast in the next bed.”

Avery’s eyebrows shot up, “I don’t snore.”

Nick laughed, “Oh yeah you do,” he said with a smirk, “A lot. Loud.”

“Bull shit. You had headphones on all night, you wouldn’t even know,” she argued.

“Why do you think I kept ‘em on?”

“You couldn’t hear a snore over headphones like those,” Avery accused, “You’re lying.”

“Oh yeah? You think so? Ask the people in the next room over, I’m sure they heard you, too,” he said meanly.

Avery narrowed her eyes. She wasn’t the best at taking any kind of criticism - although she’d always wished that she could be one of those women who let things like this roll off their backs with a laugh and a smile, that just wasn’t her style. She frowned. “Get up already, Jesus Christ, we’re already late enough without you sitting here wasting all this time bitching about everything.” She rolled off the bed and snatched up her suitcase from the floor and started going through it for a fresh change of clothes.

Nick was still smirking. “I wasn’t aware we were on a tight schedule.”

“Yes. We are. We have to be to the house by tonight and the ferryboat eventually stops making trips to the island,” she replied.

“I thought it was only like four more hours away?” he asked.

“The way you have to take a pee every five seconds it’ll be like eight hours, and besides, we have to stop for food and supplies before we get to the island, so hurry the fuck up already,” she snapped.

“Aye, aye captain,” Nick said. He got up and grabbed a fresh shirt from his bag, tugging the old one off over his head and balling it up. “Isn’t there a store on the island?” he asked as he pulled the new shirt on over his unruly hair. He looked over at her.

Avery hesitated, “Well. Kind of. But --” she cringed. “Trust me. You’ll see when we get there.”

“Okay,” he replied. He paused. “I’m ready, by the way.”

Avery was still gathering fresh clothes. “What?”

“I’m ready to go.” He stared at her pointedly. “So hurry the fuck up already.”

Avery glowered at him, “You didn’t even brush your teeth or anything.”

Nick shrugged.

“That’s disgusting,” she said, and she huffily carried her clothes to the bathroom.





Marty was up and charging his phone in a coffee house, sipping a latte and eating a bagel, a luxury he was allowing himself as reward for being thrifty the night before and saving hotel money by sleeping in some kid’s fully furnished tree house in the suburbs. He chewed the asiago bagel slowly, watching a particularly short-skirted high school girl placing her order at the counter, half wondering what it would be like to gnaw on her instead of his bagel, when his phone rang.

It was Avery. Probably checking on the status of the ransom note. He didn’t much feel like explaining why he hadn’t done it yet, so he put the phone on mute and shoved it back into his pocket. She just didn’t get how this stuff worked, she didn’t have the patience to wait for the opportunity to maximize the payoff.

The high school girl moved closer to him, stirring her sugar and cream into a plain coffee. He was surprised, he’d have pegged her for a froo-froo drink sort of person, like a java chip frappuccino or something. He liked surprises, and he liked no-nonsense drinks, and the girls that ordered them, too.

Avery always ordered the java chip frappuccino froo-froo drinks.

He bet this no-nonsense drink girl would understand why he was waiting to deliver the call for ransom without badgering him about it.

His eyes followed the hem of her skirt as she walked to her table across the cafe, giggling with another couple girls.

Marty leaned forward as another patron sat down, blocking his view of the girl and swept the crumbs of his bagel into the little paper bag that had housed his bagel. The new comer shook out a local newspaper, revealing a front-page cover story about the 7-Eleven shooting, along with a picture of Avery’s face, taken from the security camera.

He felt a chill tremble it’s way down his spine and he got up and walked out of the cafe quickly.

Marty walked down the sidewalk, clutching his cup. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the cellphone. She’d left him a voicemail.

”We’re getting ready to leave Watertown,” she’d said in the message, ”I was just calling because reception gets choppy and stupid up in La Motte because it’s so close to Canada and so far from, like, everything else and other than moose antlers in the woods there’s not much to bounce reception off of up there, which I get is like part of why you thought my grandmother’s place would be perfect to bring him too but also it means I can’t call you as much without taking a jog to the other side of the island where the reception comes in okay…” She’d sighed here. “I just miss you. But whatever. Hope you’re doing okay. Love you.”

He rolled his eyes.

She said that every now and then, and he hated it because he didn’t feel it back. It’d always been more business than pleasure for him. Well, that’s not strictly true, there was definitely pleasure, just more in a businesslike manner is all. He tried to keep her at arm’s length. There was no telling when he might have to ditch her to save his own skin and that was always easier when he was not emotionally attached.

But emotionally attached or not he had to admit that seeing her face on the newspaper had really gotten to him. He didn’t think it was newfound love or anything, though, that had caused the nervous streak in him. Rather, he was pretty sure it was because if they had that clear a shot of her, then it was only time before they find one of him, too.

It was a lot harder to hide yourself when you’re a dude than when you’re a chick. Chicks can dye and cut their hair and look like completely different people. Ain’t much you can do to disguise a guy that way.

Marty thought about calling her to tell her about the papers, but changed his mind.

He didn’t feel like trying to dodge that I love you she kept trying to throw at him.





Somehow, they’d managed to only take four and a half hours to make it from Watertown to Champlain, and Nick had to bite his tongue to resist gloating that his pee breaks hadn’t resulted in extending the trip as much as she’d insisted it would. They were just a couple miles south of the Canadian border. Literally, a couple miles - 2.48 miles, to be exact. Or, as the sign pointed out in a Canadian-friendly way, a mere 4 kilometers. Nick stared at a sign that informed them of such as they sat at a red light, about to pull into a grocery store parking lot. He squinted ahead on the road, like he was trying to see the new country from there.

Avery turned into the lot and wove the car between the lines until she found a spot and parked. She turned and grabbed her purse from the backseat.

“So what’s the game plan here?” he asked, staring at the grocery store.

“Uh… buy food?” she asked.

“No kidding. I meant as far as, you know, The Program.”

Avery stared at him as she slid the strap of her purse over her head. “What do you mean?”

“Well, like, you don’t seriously think I’m gonna just walk in here and not be recognized.”

“I do, yeah,” she said with a nod, and reached for the door handle.

Nick laughed.

She turned back. “What?”

“You dunno what you’re dealing with,” he said, “Obviously.”

She raised one eyebrow. “Enlighten me,” her voice was dry.

Nick had a really arrogant looking smile on his face, somewhere between a smirk, a chuckle, and a condescending smile. “I’m sorry Officer,” he said, “But the ladies -- especially the Canadian ladies -- they go a liiiiiittle bit wild over me and it’s really not my fault, or their fault, it’s just my natural animal sexuality that gets ‘em.”

“Animal sexuality,” she repeated in a doubtful tone.

“Mmhm,” Nick nodded. “My fans, they could find me anywhere.”

“I think you’re safe,” she replied, “We are in the middle of buttfuck no place, Nick. Your groupies aren’t going to be hanging around the local Price Chopper waiting for you to arrive.”

“They always find me, even in the middle of buttfuck no place.”

Avery took a deep breath.

“So I just wanna be prepared. What’s the game plan? I wanna know so when they approach me asking for my autograph and a selfie with me I can know what to say to ‘em?”

Avery got out of the car.

Nick followed a second later. “Dude, this is not an insane question. This is a very real question!”

“Could you be a little more full of yourself?” Avery asked as she walked swiftly along. Nick easily kept stride with her. “Like seriously, if you try real hard you might be able to shit gold the way you talk about yourself. Or do you already do that? Do your farts smell like chocolate chip cookies? Do you piss rainbows?”

Nick smirked.

“Stop smirking at me!” she said as they approached the building.

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry.” Nick stopped as they stepped onto the curb and touched her arm so she did, too. “In a completely not-being-an-arrogant-asshole way: how am I supposed to respond to someone recognizing me should it happen?”

Avery hadn’t really thought about it much. She’d just thought about how pitiful and empty La Motte always seemed when she was a kid and assumed there’d be nobody there that would recognize a Backstreet Boy if they fell over one. Most of the residents of La Motte were well over sixty. She shrugged. “I dunno, what do you usually do when all these ladies come after your animal sexuality?” she asked.

Nick shrugged, “Give’em what they want.”

“Okay. Ground rule. There will be no sex at the safe house,” she stated firmly, and started walking to the door.

“Sex? Who said anything about sex?” Nick looked at her with a flabbergasted expression, “I don’t fuck’em, I just give’em a thrill. Most of ‘em practically orgasm if I just look at’em right -- like this --” and he let his face drop into a grin so dazzlingly white, with just the right amount of suggestiveness to the folds of his mouth that Avery could actually see how a woman might wanna fuck him just because of that smile. For a second anyways. Because in the next second, he’d walked directly into the door.

Nick bounced back off the door, his face recovering from his Fuck Me I’m Sexy Carter Grin into a look of bewilderment. “What the --?”

“It’s called a door,” Avery said, holding open her side as a mother with an infant strapped to her in one of those baby backpack things went through. “You pull the handle and it opens. It’s like magic.” She stepped through, leaving him outside.

Nick studied the door a second, then pulled it open and followed Avery. She already had selected a grocery cart. The smallest grocery cart Nick had ever seen. Well, like of a full cart anyways. Whole Foods had these little half carts that were perfect because they had cup holders and everything, but this wasn’t one of those, this was supposed to be an actual grocery cart and it looked like something that a kid might play with. He half wanted to flip it over and find the Fisher Price logo on it.

“Not used to non automated doors, huh?” Avery asked.

“You know the last time I saw a door that wasn’t automatic?”

“The hotel,” Avery said. “You had to push and pull those doors open, too. And I’m willing to bet that fancy tour bus of yours isn’t equipped with automatic doors, either,” she said.

“I mean in a store,” he answered, glancing back at them as they walked into the produce section. “It’s like the fuckin’ stone age.” He turned around. The whole store was smaller than his house in Los Angeles. There was a grand total of seven aisles. “Holy mother of Jesus,” he muttered. “This is the whole store?” He looked at Avery.

“Welcome to the North.”

“Is this the store that you said wasn’t a store that I’d understand when we got there?” he asked.

“No this is the last real store before that one,” she answered. She started picking up fruits and vegetables and putting them in the cart.

“This is a real store?” he asked. He shook his head, “Fuck.”

Avery cleared her throat, “If I was you, I’d stop bitching about the validity of the store and start picking out food for you to eat for the next week.”

“A week? All at once? But I dunno what I’ll want later in the week. Why don’t we just come back tomorrow?” he asked.

Avery picked up a bunch of bananas, “Because it’s another hour to the island and that’s a long way to go everyday.”

Another hour?” Nick stared at her incredulously. “And this is the last real store? Bullfuckin’ shit. Is it really?”

“Yes,” she replied, bagging the bananas and putting them into the cart.

Nick took a deep breath. “I’ma need another cart just for the cereal aisle…” he muttered and he wandered back to the doorway to get another cart.