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Chapter Nine


“Backstreet Boy Nick Carter was reported missing this weekend by the band’s management team after the singer allegedly witnessed the fatal robbery at the 7-Eleven store in Cincinnati, Ohio, following the band’s last tour date. Subsequent dates have been postponed or cancelled until further notice by Ground(Ctrl), and a public statement is expected later this afternoon…”

“They won’t waste any time, do they?” Eddie flicked the TV off with a twitch of his wrist on the remote control. He sighed, leaning forward to cup his forehead in his hands.

Officer Flynn was sitting at the makeshift desk he’d set up in the hotel room, which had become the official control room headquarters of the Find Nick Carter campaign. He had papers spread all over the desk, and was sipping from a mug of steaming coffee with the picture of a cartoon cow that said de-calf, though the liquid it contained was anything but. A plate at his elbow held a single sugar-coated donut. It had once held three. “Time wasted is time better spent on trying to find him,” Officer Flynn said.

Mike looked at Eddie with annoyed eyes.

Officer Flynn’s systematic study-the-facts-and-paperwork approach to helping find Nick was frustrating, to say the least. Personally, Mike felt like he couldn’t sit still. If he wasn’t up pacing, his one leg was bouncing up and down with anxiety he didn’t know how to vent. He couldn’t understand how Officer Flynn could sit there and pour over paperwork. If it was him, he’d been out walking the streets desperately. He pictured himself driving slow through Cincinnati shouting his name out the window like he was looking for a lost dog.

“Through the peephole, the badge looked real,” Mike muttered for possibly the millionth time.

It’d become a sort of mantra, something he muttered every now and then, not because he was prompted to by anyone accusing him, other than himself, it was just something to say when his mouth felt that it, too, couldn’t be still.

Nobody even looked up when he said it.

Eddie threw the TV remote onto the bed and stood up, walking over to the desk and peering over Officer Flynn’s shoulder. He was sifting through black and white images of females that had been arrested in the past five years on his laptop, the picture of the girl from the 7-Eleven propped against the keyboard. Next to the computer on the desk he had a folded map of the state of Ohio, circles drawn around a few points on the map. Each point had a number on it.

“What’s this?” Eddie asked, waving his finger at the map.

Officer Flynn didn’t even glance at it. “Places where our Bonnie and Clyde duo have hit,” he said. The markings were all over the place. There didn’t seem to be any kind of rhyme or reason linking the places, just dots on a map.

“What’s with the numbers?”

“The number of places we believe they’ve struck in each city,” he answered.

Eddie sighed. “So he could be anywhere.”

“The odds are that he is within state lines,” Officer Flynn answered. “Our Bonnie and Clyde haven’t struck outside of Ohio before, and we have no evidence to tell us that they may have left the state at this time.”

“But we’re so close to the Kentucky border,” Eddie pointed out. “Could’ve been like a ten minute drive south, basically. Are Kentucky patrol cars keeping an eye out?”

Officer Flynn shook his head, “They ain’t in Kentucky.”

“You don’t know that,” Eddie said, frustrated.

Officer Flynn looked up. “Which one of us is a police officer?” he asked.

Eddie sighed and turned around, going back to the bed and setting himself down again. He glared at the ugly pattern on the carpet. “Where could they possibly have put Nick Carter that he hasn’t been spotted yet by a fan, for Christ’s sake?” Eddie groaned. He rubbed his temples.

“The BSB CIA are failing us,” Mike agreed, and, despite the situation, he chuckled a little. “They always know where he is. Maybe we should take to the fuckin’ fan forums.”

Eddie laughed, too.

Officer Flynn turned around, “This is not a laughing matter,” he said. He shook his head in disapproval, then turned back to his work.

“Well, it’s out there now that he’s missing thanks to the friggin’ media,” Eddie said, waving at the silent TV. “They’ll be all over that in an hour. If there’s a fan out there that’s seen him since he went missing it’ll be all over Twitter soon enough.”





Avery was still fuming, slamming things around in the kitchen. Nick had pulled all the plastic off all the furniture in the living room, smashing it into a big dusty ball that he pushed out onto the lawn, and now he was standing there staring around a room of ugly furniture. There wasn’t even a TV. He sighed and turned around, headed to explore the other rooms the opposite direction from Avery.

Sure enough, the three doors off the hallway proved to be a bathroom and two bedrooms. He used the bathroom, remembering after peeing that the water wasn’t running, and went back to the hall to check out the bedrooms, wiping his hands across the thighs of his pants. One room, the master room, was done out in this rustic teddy bear and plaid theme and he cringed at the red and black plaid and the bears everywhere. Avery could have that room, he thought, and he backed out and opened the door to the other room. It was smaller, but that was okay, he preferred smaller spaces anyways. It was done in greens, too, which was his favorite color. So he settled himself onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling, the door wide open.

He could still hear Avery muttering to herself about what an asshole he was.

Nick rolled onto his side and looked around the room. It was basically bare. Guest room, he thought. Or maybe witness room.

Finally, he stood up and went over to one of the book shelves, letting his eyes scan titles. Mostly the books in there were crappy sci-fi, like the nerdy version of Harlequin romance novels, the type books with a shit ton of bad writing available freshly regurgitated every month.

There were a few classics, too, like the Lord of the Rings books and the Mars Chronicles and Brave New World and that sort of thing. He ran his hands over them. He wasn’t much of a reader. He turned back to the hallway and went out to get his bag from the foyer, planning to get his iPod and lay on the bed ‘til he fell asleep.

Avery was sitting on the floor, back against the stove, knees to her chest, arm over them, head in her arm.

Nick hesitated, holding the bag’s shoulder strap in his hand. She didn’t know he was standing there, he could easily just sneak off and pull those headphones on and ignore her very existence. But Nick wasn’t that kinda guy, a fact he acknowledged with a sigh as he gave in, dropped the bag back to the floor, went out to the kitchen and sat down next to her.

Avery didn’t move.

He elbowed her gently to get her attention.

Avery looked at him.

He took a deep breath, “You okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

Avery looked away.

Nick sighed. He felt bad for upsetting her, even if she'd been kind of a bitch to him she still wasn't as terrible a police duty as she could've been. He could've ended up with some fat lazy cop who did nothing but sit around and slurp donuts or something. Avery beat that, at least. So he nudged her again.

She shuffled an inch away.

"Y'know, I got this friend," he said, "Big guy, really works out, you know? Has biceps like bazookas. Anyways, he came to my place in Key West this one time, down in Florida, and we go out on my boat and we're off on this island and I got this little hibachi grill and we're cooking. Well the food gets the gulls attention and next thing you know, here we are sittin' around on these rocks and this seagull swoops down and lands on the rock next to him. He about pissed himself. You ain't never seen nobody run like the way he ran. Scared to death -- of a bird."

Avery had looked up at some point during the story and she stared at him now with wet eyes. "I'm not particularly fond of birds either," she said. "My sister had a parakeet once, that nasty little sonofabitch scared the bejesus out of me. Always peckin’ and staring at you with its beady little eyes… He was a killer, that one.”

Nick tried not to laugh at the thought of a killer parakeet. "Anyway. My point is, everyone is scared of something, even the people who we think are too big or powerful -- or armed -- to be." He looked at her meaningfully. He just wanted her to know he was sorry, even if he was bad at getting the actual words out.

Avery sighed.

"I'm scared of stuff, too," Nick said, "I mean, if I wasn't we wouldn't be here, would we?"

Avery glanced at him. Little did he know his being there had nothing really to do with his fear at all, but more about Marty being aware of the likelihood his bank account balance being rather high. She didn't say anything.

"C'mon," he said pleadingly, "This place is boring enough without you giving me the silent treatment on top of it."

Avery still wasn't sure why she was so angry at him, even after thinking about it for awhile she hadn’t come up with any reasons - nor had she managed to cool down much. Maybe it was because he'd made her come back here, or because he'd made her leave her life she was with comfortable back in Cincinnati, or because he'd made it so she couldn't imagine a happily ever after with Marty anymore that didn't include border hopping and police dodging for the rest of their lives. Maybe it was because he'd caused the nightmares that plagued her dream - a single shot sounding, falling into the deep pool of red slushie below… She'd awakened a dozen times in the last couple nights, her heart racing, unable to breathe as though it was her that had been shot, as though it was her falling, as though she was drowning, falling deeper and deeper in blood red water.

Of course even Avery knew none of this stuff was Nick's fault exactly. Or at all, really. He was as much a victim as she was.

Really it was Marty's fault.

Really she was mad at Marty.

But Marty wasn't here. Marty was off some place in Cincinnati, forming and hopefully executing Step Two of their Grand Plan while she was exiled off with Nick. So she couldn’t get mad at Marty too much.

Nick however -- Nick was there. Nick she could be mad at. So she'd be as mad at him as she wanted and he would just have to deal with it.

In that spirit, she stood up and stomped out of the kitchen, leaving him there on the floor.

Nick shook his head as the door down the hallway slammed shut and he flipped his middle finger high in the general direction of her. He struggled up to his feet and grabbed his bag off the floor and went back into the bedroom he'd chosen and threw the bag across the room. He sat down on the bed and pulled the pillow under his neck.

Fuck her, he thought. He could play the silent treatment game as well as anybody. He pictured never speaking another word to her for the rest of the time they were here. He wouldn't crack, he told himself. No way. Avery would just need to endure the silence, unless she wanted to talk first, then maybe --- if the words she said were “I’m sorry”, then maybe --- he would accept and allow her the courtesy of hearing the sound of his voice.

He fell asleep fuming, plotting his passive aggressive revenge.





The next morning, Nick woke up at the very first breaks of dawn as the sky was turning violet and orange. His legs were stiff and his muscles tense from the long car rides. He got up and tugged on his sneakers, tying the laces quickly, headed for the door, stretching his arms as he went.

The air was chilly, so he flipped the hood of his grey sweatshirt up onto his head and pulled the strings tight to his chin, his headphone wire snaking down his chest to the kangaroo pocket, where his iPod was cradled gently, playing a mix of 80’s rock songs, and he took off jogging down the length of the driveway, past the line of trees and out onto the road. He tugged the map from the ferry out of his pocket and followed West Store Road north.

He’d spent some time studying the map, memorizing the fairly non-complicated circular route that would give him approximately 3 miles for every lap he did, similar to the route he jogged back home in around his gated housing community. He puffed the cool morning air in and out of his lungs with the precision his trainer had taught him, trying to strike his feet on the ground to the beat of the music he was listening to.

As he ran, the sun came up and painted the clouds brightly, turning the sky into bright blue with cottony white clouds hanging above the earth. He liked the feeling of the seclusion of the trees and the pounding of his sneakers on the pavement beneath him. He passed by a couple houses, mostly just trees. The lake lay to his left as he ran for the first stretch, and he was sad to see it go as he turned right onto New Road.

There wasn’t anything new about New Road. It was all woods with veins of tiny shack-type homes sprouting off to the left and right. A campground that had a couple RVs with paper lanterns hanging from their awnings stood among the trees. The next turn was a right onto Main Street, which must’ve been Main only because it had actual lines painted onto the pavement. There were more houses on Main Street, at least. He passed one painted a violent, 1970s-eyeshadow blue color with a pathetic looking cow standing in a wide pen to one side.

Further on, he passed what looked like a farm with a little shed-sized cafe out front with a little sign street sign boasting they had homemade apple cider donuts with cinnamon sugar. Several trucks were parked in the driveway there and a flag pronounced that they were open. Nick glanced over as he jogged by, only to find himself being watched by several people milling around the trucks… including the cop that had come by the house the day before, who was leaning against his police truck holding a mug of steaming coffee.

Bobby? No. Billy.

The guy tilted his ugly ass hat Nick’s direction when their eyes met, and Nick waved a hesitant arm as he passed by and the cop turned to the guy standing next to him to say something.

Another mile down the road and Main Street turned back into West Shore Road and Nick was running with the lake to his left again as he rounded a curve and the driveway of the safe house loomed into view. He felt his lungs burning from the fresh air and decided he only needed to take one lap this time - promising himself that the next day he’d do two. He turned down the driveway, his jog slowing down to a slow trot and then a walk as he reached the house.

He bent to clutch his knees when he came to a stop, shoving the headphones and sweatshirt hood off.

“Where the fuck were you?!” Avery came running out the door of the house.

Sticking to his passive-aggressive revenge plot, he didn’t answer, he just stood upright and passed by her, climbing the porch steps and going into the house. She followed, her face puckered in anger. “Nick…” she snapped, “Nick!”

He went into the kitchen, opened the fridge and grabbed a bottle of water he’d bought the day before, unscrewing the cap and swallowing half the bottle in one go. “Nick, where were you?”

He lowered the bottle, stared right at her, shrugged in a haughty, non-apologetic manner, and pushed by, headed for the bedroom, his headphones around his neck, taking another swig of water.

Avery stared after him, incredulous, then bolted to catch up before he could close the bedroom door, catching it to keep it open. She stared at him as he plugged the iPod in, folded the headphones and put them in their case in his bag, then laid on the bed, arms behind his head, feet crossed.

“Are you punishing me for last night?” Avery demanded.

He still didn’t answer.

“Talk to me, you son of a bitch,” she snapped.

Nick shook his head.

“No?”

He smiled.

Avery sighed. “Okay I’m sorry for giving you the silent treatment last night, alright? Are you happy?”

He ran his hand behind his ear, like he was hard of hearing.

“I said I’m sorry, asshole.”

Nick grinned, “You could’ve left the asshole part off of that, but I’ll take what I can get.”

“Where were you?” she demanded.

“I went for a jog,” he answered.

“A jog?” Avery raised her eyebrow.

“A jog,” he answered.

“A jog,” she said with a groan. “Next time leave a freakin’ note, I thought you took off or something.” She shook her head and leaned against the door frame.

“Took off?” he asked.

Avery sighed, “Yeah.”

“Where would I go?”

“I don’t know!” she cried, “I didn’t think that far ahead.”

Nick raised his eyebrows, but he didn’t say anything. He wondered fleetingly why she’d think he would take off before they’d caught the gunman that was after him - but then he passed the thought off, figuring she’d probably thought that he meant it when he’d said he didn’t feel safe with her.

But he wasn’t sure he’d meant it at all.